Chapter Text
Confession 37:
Soobin has tried several times to convince Beomgyu that they’re in love, but it never quite seems to take.
There’s always something.
“Hello?” Soobin prompts. “Choi Beomgyu? Did you hear me or what?”
As a bit, Beomgyu goes all bug-eyed and bites his knuckle in fake terror, like Soobin is an approaching zombie, lumbering over with his guts hanging out.
It makes Soobin laugh in spite of himself, exhausted. “Hey. Beomgyu-yah.”
Beomgyu laughs too, then, and hits pause on his bluetooth speaker, and the room descends into silence.
“Choi Soobin,” he finally replies, visibly wrestling his mouth down into seriousness again. “Why are you saying this now?”
Soobin throws his hands up in frustration. “Why can’t I say it?! You just— I’m allowed to say it! You said—”
Beomgyu looks sidelong at his bedroom wall. “Hm, okay, we both say a lot of things—”
He’s being obtuse on purpose, trying to rile Soobin up, and, as it sometimes does, it’s working.
Soobin grabs the sides of Beomgyu’s head, and Beomgyu puffs out his lips and nostrils and crosses his eyes.
“Well, what I’m saying is that I love you!” Soobin shouts into his silly face. “You should respond!”
That makes Beomgyu laugh again between his hands, and he tilts his pretty little chin to look up at last, blinking guilelessly.
There’s a moment. Of course there is.
Things are different lately. Everything’s different since Soobin got back from hiatus.
The mirth fades off of Beomgyu’s face, but his smile doesn’t quite drop. “Soobin-hyung,” he says meaningfully.
Soobin gives a shaky chuckle. His thumb passes over the stray freckle on Beomgyu’s left cheek. “Listen to me,” he says urgently. “Beomgyu, we can just—”
Right away, Beomgyu holds up his two arms crossed in an X in front of his face. “Failure!” he replies, wriggling his way out of Soobin’s hold.
Soobin huffs a laugh in disbelief, pointing at Beomgyu with his whole body. “You’re being impossible!”
“You’re being annoying and tall and loud and you’re bothering me,” Beomgyu replies as he turns his face toward the glow of his computer, leaning back in his chair as casual as anything, like Soobin isn’t trying to alter the course of their lives right now, “and what I actually said was to wait for next week but you’re a terrible listener, and like I also said I’m going to play LoL now, and if you actually loved me you’d be playing too, but you allegedly ‘have to go to bed early tonight,’ and I’m wasting away because you refused to eat dinner with me three times this week, so I just think it’s funny how—”
This goes on for quite a while, ascending in volume and speed until finally Soobin plugs his ears and shouts, “AGH! WHATEVER!” and storms out.
He tromps all the way back into his room and slams the door, and then he notices the stretch of the grin on his face threatening to pull a muscle, because Soobin is the world’s second most deranged man and being incredibly frustrated apparently only exhilarates him.
He signs onto his gaming laptop and joins Beomgyu’s LoL team right away, and the Beomgyu in his headset burbles out a string of nearly incomprehensible aegyo in gratitude, including at one point, thoughtlessly, “Soobinnie-hyung, I love you!”
All of which makes this one of Soobin’s top 5 most successful love confessions. Top 3 if you count what happens next.
Confession 1:
At first, Soobin thinks it’s only because Beomgyu sort of looks like a girl.
During this past year since debut, Soobin has just been so cloistered, locked in such a constant onslaught of psychological punishment for any meaningful interaction with the opposite sex, that his body is calling out in starvation for the nearest, most feminine form it can rationalize its way into actually touching.
And that’s…Beomgyu, of all people.
Soobin is attracted to one of his makeup artists, and all the members of Kara, and almost half the female idols he’s ever had the chance to interact with, and also Beomgyu, who’s known to loudly declare, PASS THE SOJU! in their room while Soobin is on calls with his dad and then sprint away screeching like a goblin.
Soobin confesses right away.
For a moment, they’re standing alone in the hallway outside the practice room, staring at each other in shock at what has just been said.
And then Beomgyu…starts cackling. His eyes sparkle, and his tongue shows between his teeth, and his thin frame crumples inward like a piece of paper. He’s still wearing his sweaty practice clothes, sparkling all over with perspiration and hard work. He looks so pretty, even like that. How did Soobin not notice before now?
Beomgyu has always been objectively cute and handsome. Standing near him has always felt like a sunny day, but now, suddenly, it’s more like a solar storm.
“You think you like me?” Beomgyu shrieks, holding his stomach.
Soobin, somehow, is laughing too, at this unexpected and yet extremely characteristic reaction, but he reaches out and touches Beomgyu’s wrist, and says, “Yeah. Yes.”
Beomgyu hiccups and boggles at him. “You—” he squeaks. He shakes his head. “I. What?”
Soobin shrugs with one shoulder. “Is that so crazy?” he asks, a little hurt hitting him belatedly.
Beomgyu’s smile finally droops off of his sweet face, and he snatches Soobin’s hand to drag him into a vocal practice booth. Then, when the door closes behind them, he demands with a frown, “Since when did you start liking me?”
Soobin hesitates.
Beomgyu looks so different in private now that Soobin likes him. The honey-bleached hair buzzed at the nape of his neck looks delicate and soft. His skin where it dips beneath the collar of his practice tee looks warm and smooth. His whole body looks like it’d be satisfying to touch or partake in. And these things are all in a small, dark room alone with Soobin.
He feels like he’s supposed to be touching Beomgyu suddenly, like Soobin’s body is calling out for food or sleep. Magnets. Static electricity. His fingers tingle with it.
“This morning,” he says stupidly, tongue too big for his mouth, though he’s not sure that’s really true. How could he not feel this yesterday?
Beomgyu gives another little laugh, eyebrows quirking together and up as he comes closer to pat Soobin’s arm, then squeezes his shoulder.
Sparks shoot through Soobin’s body immediately. He might fall down. He doesn’t know what’s going on.
“Okay, hyung,” Beomgyu says, still laughing a bit. “Acknowledged. Alright?”
And he goes to push past out of the booth without further discussion.
Soobin grapples at his hand. “Hey, no, what, wait—”
Beomgyu changes tacks in an instant, like he sometimes does, and immediately starts wrestling.
He attempts a headlock around Soobin’s neck and grunts, “Name three things you like about me then, you fool Choi Soobin—” which means he doesn’t believe Soobin is doing anything other than spewing delirious overworked nonsense.
And Soobin is possessed by the inexorable impulse to make Beomgyu’s frustrations worse, which he sometimes is, and so he wrestles back, bending around to try to grab one of Beomgyu’s ankles out from under him.
“Well, for one, I like how easy you are to beat at everything—” Soobin grits out, by which he means he likes the way they banter.
But then Beomgyu bites a pinching slice of pain into the meat of Soobin’s back, and Soobin yelps and surrenders, letting go and crumpling down onto the carpet. “Ow!” he shrieks. “What is wrong with you?!”
Beomgyu only says, “I won,” in victory and plops his skinny self down into the only chair in the room, leaving Soobin to look up at him from the floor like a worm.
Soobin slumps and tries to rub at the still-smarting bite mark over his shoulder blade. “Congrats,” he says, sullen.
“Say three things,” Beomgyu orders.
He’s picking his cuticles absently, but he’ll probably start biting again if Soobin tries to stop him, so instead Soobin blurts out, “One: You’re pretty. And you’re fun to hang out with. And you’re…”
Beomgyu blinks down at him. His lips are glossy and pink. His eyes are so wide. His nose is cutely swollen after exercising.
“…so pretty,” Soobin says again, mouth dry, tugging at one of the wheel spokes of Beomgyu’s chair to get him closer.
Beomgyu looks down at Soobin’s hand on the chair and goes still for a moment.
He breathes in deep, and then he lets it all out.
He picks his fingers more than ever, settling down into the more subdued serious version of himself.
“I just think,” he says softly, “that we’re in a really strange situation.”
Which means no.
His ears have flushed pink, though.
It’s not like he’s totally unaffected. He could at least give Soobin a chance.
“Anyway— what are you trying to propose, here?” Beomgyu goes on, making a face. “You want to somehow date a member of your group? When we’re just getting started?”
Truthfully, Soobin had simply not thought that far ahead.
He’s been thinking but perhaps not thinking about the correct things to think about. He’s putting together pieces, but the picture might have come out sideways.
Lately, he’s noticed that Beomgyu does this thing where he reaches out and plucks at the edges of Soobin’s clothing, to get his attention, to keep from getting separated in a crowd, or just for something to do with his hands. His nimble little fingers pinch onto Soobin’s hoods, seams, and the elbows of his sleeves, and tuck just barely into his pockets, holding on. Soobin has been perseverating on the thought of what might happen, what those fingers, thin and pretty and rough with guitar callous, might do if they misjudged their aim and grabbed Soobin’s skin instead.
And then during dance practice earlier, Beomgyu actually did it.
He reached over as they were both sprawled on the humid floor of the practice room and first tugged at the strap of Soobin’s sweaty tank top, then pulled it out of the way to gently pinch at his collarbone, curious rough fingers catching on overheated skin, and suddenly Soobin’s whole body washed over boiling hot, then freezing, and he jolted away in abject shock.
Everyone laughed at his outsized reaction, but Soobin’s entire self-concept had shifted and left him gawping over at Beomgyu, who just held his stomach and giggled, being funny and cute and touching Soobin like he owned him.
My make-up noona, he’d thought. Kara’s Seungyeon… and Beomgyu.
Soobin had realized what he was feeling, he’d auto-piloted his way through the rest of dance practice, and then he’d wandered out mindlessly to confess the second he had Beomgyu alone.
It all made perfect sense until this very moment, like he had been slowly becoming aware of a priceless, plush carpet, just beneath his feet this whole time, cataloguing each thread by touch alone, when suddenly the whole thing was yanked out from under him.
He’d only thought as far as genuinely expecting Beomgyu to confess right back. Up until the first peal of laughter, anyway.
Beomgyu, on the other hand, pretends to be impulsive but actually isn’t. He’s surprisingly wise when he slows down enough to tell you what he’s thinking about.
“I—” Soobin stutters. “I don’t know. Couldn’t we just—” The disappointment and humiliation of this situation starts to close over his head like a noxious fog. What was he trying to propose?
Beomgyu scoots down to kneel in front of him, his delicate little hands rubbing Soobin’s arms, leaving shocky tingles in their wake. “Hey, it’s okay,” he says so, so softly. “It’ll be fine.”
Soobin sucks in a rattling breath. “Did I almost just break up the group?” he asks, haunted, wide-eyed.
Beomgyu, sparkling like an enchanted little fairy in the dim booth, smiles and ruffles Soobin’s hair, then slides his hands down to hold the end of each of his sweatshirt strings, tugging lightly, close but not close enough. “Of course not. Don’t be dramatic.”
Soobin nods vacantly. “Stop touching me,” he says. “You’re making my brain not work.”
Beomgyu cackles again at that, but retracts his hands. “Okay, okay. You want to get dinner tonight?”
“You’re being so calm, you weirdo,” Soobin observes, wrapping his arms around himself, trying to get small. “If one of the members confessed to me, I’d probably have a mental breakdown.”
Beomgyu smiles a little. “Even me?”
Soobin spares a moment to imagine it happening any time before this morning— Choi Beomgyu getting nervous and vulnerable and gathering up all his courage to tell Soobin he likes him, unprovoked, fidgeting his hands and biting his lips and blinking his eyes and nodding a lot to cover his anxiety.
“Especially you,” Soobin says with feeling. And, rolling his eyes, “Also, yeah, let’s eat.”
Beomgyu’s face is so strange. He’s still smiling, sort of, but he rubs his neck and looks down. “Well, it’s not like I’ve never been confessed to before,” he says with a shrug. “And anyway,” he sniffs, striking a grandiose pose in his computer chair. “I’m sure my charms are enough to trick anyone for a little while. Give it a couple weeks.”
Confession 2:
“I didn’t literally mean for you to wait two weeks and try again,” Beomgyu says two weeks later.
He’s down on the hotel room floor, where he’d been working out, supposedly. Only actually he was just lying motionless, watching a drama on his phone, intermittently sniffling at all the touching moments and snickering at the funny bits, when Soobin suddenly sat up like a ghost possessed him and announced, “I really like you.”
Beomgyu blinks rapidly, nonplussed, tapping pause and hauling himself from the ground to get a better look at Soobin, who is sitting up straight on his bed like someone might walk in to grade him on his posture.
Soobin is ready this time. He’s not going to get talked out of it again.
It’s Beomgyu’s own fault, really. All day he’s been acting cute, prodding and teasing and provoking little reactions out of everyone and laughing extra hard when he gets Soobin to retaliate. He stole Soobin’s coat in the morning, hid his chopsticks at lunch, beat him at a mobile game over dinner, and giggled like a maniac when Soobin demanded a rematch, which Soobin only did because he knew it would make Beomgyu laugh.
Technically Soobin was going to wait for a more romantic moment to bring it up, but between Beomgyu’s generally agitating state of being and the sentimental drama OST flooding their hotel room, Soobin has reached his limit, and so a Japanese hotel on a random Wednesday will have to do.
“I really like you,” he repeats for good measure. He tries to make his face as serious as it can get, which is so difficult when Beomgyu is in the room, romantic feelings be damned. “Like, ac—You know, actually.”
Beomgyu’s eyebrows quirk together. He folds his legs criss-cross. “So now you actually like me? What was last time, then?”
Last time, he was so caught up in the new insane idea that Beomgyu could be an object of physical attraction that Soobin was having trouble seeing past that aspect.
Since then, he’s been pondering.
If it were just Beomgyu’s objectively attractive features and lithe little body, Soobin would drop it. He’d agree with Beomgyu’s assessment completely.
However. It’s not just the way he looks. It’s all connected to their conversation that never seems to run out, and how hard they laugh together, and the way they can both switch on a dime to be nice and supportive when they sense the other actually needs it. It’s connected to why they became friends in the first place. It’s all connected!
Instead of that, Soobin just says, “Last time, I was overwhelmed by how cute you are.”
Beomgyu gets out a shocked laugh. “And this time I’m ugly enough to not overwhelm you?”
He’s sitting there with two pimple patches, bangs tied up in a sprout at the top of his head, wearing his centimeter-thick eye-shrinking high school glasses and old national soccer t-shirt, one slipper on and one discarded under the bed.
…No, he’s not ugly enough to not overwhelm Soobin. Soobin is just other things other than overwhelmed, too.
“Correct,” he replies automatically, which Beomgyu laughs at, still wide-eyed and delighted— before Soobin follows up: “Actually, no. I just mean— I didn’t say it right last time. I didn’t get it, yet. I’ve been thinking a lot, and—”
Beomgyu holds up a hand to stop him, rearranging his face to be all shocked and dismayed. “This is a lot to take in,” he sighs. “I didn’t know Hyung could think.”
Soobin says, “Beomgyu,” real serious.
“Oh,” says Beomgyu.
There’s a pause.
The room falls silent.
Beomgyu blinks a few times and frowns, lashes fluttering as he looks up hesitantly.
“Okay…” he hedges, pulling his legs toward his chest. “So…”
His awkwardness makes Soobin feel awkward too.
He doesn’t remember the last time he felt awkward around any of the members, let alone Beomgyu. What a strange problem to have.
Still, Soobin tries to gather his thoughts. His plan. He’s sure he had it all worked out, five minutes ago. There’s an airtight argument somewhere in his brain if he can just tease it back out through this strange new atmosphere.
He clears his throat and looks at his lap and manages to say, “You, uh… You asked before what I was proposing, and I realized I didn’t have anything planned, which was—”
When Soobin peeks at him, Beomgyu seems to be stuck in the middle of one, long, slow-motion wince.
But Soobin plows on ahead, even as his palms start to sweat. “That was my mistake! Anyone would say no to that.”
“Soobin-hyung…” Beomgyu says quietly, which means he’s going to say no again.
“We’ll date secretly!” Soobin says, heedless, by which he means that Beomgyu should seriously consider reconsidering. “We have to date people secretly no matter what! It’s— It’s not that different. We just can’t tell the other members either, that’s all, and—”
But no matter how long Soobin rambles, Beomgyu just looks sadder and more uneasy.
And Soobin suddenly realizes it’s actually very possible that Beomgyu just— doesn’t like him back.
He comes up short.
How did he not consider that before?
He’s been thinking on this for two weeks. Maybe Beomgyu is right about his brain not working.
Maybe Beomgyu is right about everything! What a terrifying concept.
Beomgyu might even…not like guys at all.
What the hell? Beomgyu? Tomorrow by Together’s Beomgyu? Choi Beomgyu?
The Choi Beomgyu in question grimaces and slowly looks around the hotel room like someone might rescue him from this conversation.
And meanwhile Soobin’s whole worldview is spinning. He’d assumed that someone that pretty had to be at least a little queer, a little fluid, and Beomgyu hasn’t ever talked much about girls, but—
“Are you gay or aren’t you?!” Soobin demands.
Beomgyu goes bug-eyed and screams out a laugh. “WHAT? Soobin-hyung! Are you gay?”
“No!” Soobin yelps, pointing an accusatory finger. “I don’t know! Why are you asking me that?”
“Why are you asking me that?!” Beomgyu yelps in return. His face is still split with an enormous stunned grin.
“It’s relevant!” Soobin insists. “Isn’t it? I’m not. At first, I thought I only liked you because you look like a girl—”
Beomgyu squawks his disapproval at this idea, unfolding out of his nervous little pose like he might get up and beat Soobin for his audacity, but Soobin interrupts him partway through the potential attack.
“—But it wasn’t that!” he hurries to say, waving both his hands in placation. “You don’t, even, really. I just like you! I like being with you and talking with you and I want— I’m telling you I really like you!”
Beomgyu’s outrage fades a little and he narrows his eyes. “You keep saying that,” he comments.
Soobin feels defensive suddenly. Nothing is going according to plan.
“You just— You said in a couple weeks— And— What am I supposed to do— pretend not to?” he whines. “I’m not like you; I’m terrible at lying, Beomgyu, you know that.”
“Five seconds ago you said we were going to lie to our bandmates, forever,” Beomgyu laughs in disbelief.
“Do you really not like me back?” Soobin asks, maybe a little pathetically.
And Beomgyu’s laugh stops. He winces again.
It’s dumbfounding.
Soobin is usually so good at knowing what Beomgyu likes and doesn’t like. All day every day, they trade back and forth based on his picky little preferences. He knows what Beomgyu likes when it comes to food and music and games and dramas and clothes, and he really thought—
He thought he’d make his case with a clear explanation and plan forward and no misunderstandings, and Beomgyu would summarily fall into his arms. He thought Beomgyu would get quiet and serious the way he sometimes does when he’s trying to express something really big, and he’d say, Me too, Soobin-hyung. I think— I think I might really like you, too. And then Soobin would get down on top of him on the floor and touch his pointy little face and kiss him senseless.
He spent every waking moment of the last two weeks imagining how it might go, whether Beomgyu would want him to cop a feel, how sex works between two guys, and now suddenly he’s just hoping he’ll be fortunate enough to escape from this conversation psychologically unscathed.
Maybe he’ll get lucky, and Beomgyu will leave it unspoken, and they’ll just— pretend this never happened without Soobin ever having to hear it directly.
But Beomgyu doesn’t leave it. He says, out loud, for them both to clearly hear, “Yeah, uh. Sorry. I just— don’t.”
“Ah,” Soobin says, deflating.
It gets really quiet again.
“Don’t look like that,” Beomgyu says, finally coming over to Soobin on the bed. He reaches out to hold his hand, and Soobin looks down, confused.
He grabs Beomgyu’s hand back and pulls him closer, so that Beomgyu has to scoot forward on his knees, giving him a big, long look in the eyes. Just— Just looking.
Beomgyu’s face smooths over blank, which means next to nothing. He’s always been better at keeping a straight face than Soobin is.
His face really is lovely, though, even with his silly hair and pimple patches and thick glasses. Wide set eyes, a sharp jawline, a cute nose, a pretty mouth.
Oh, well.
“Hm,” Soobin says finally, releasing his hold and sitting back. “Okay. Fine. I got it.”
Beomgyu purses his lips and blinks. “We’re too isolated here,” he says, sounding irritated all of a sudden. “When we get back to Korea, things will feel different, I bet.”
Soobin scoffs. Beomgyu means that Soobin will have other people to try confessing to. He thinks Soobin is just doing this because Beomgyu is one of the ten people he sees on a daily basis who speak the same language as him. Maybe he’s right. Maybe he’s right about everything.
“So I should wait longer than two weeks next time?” Soobin asks grumpily.
Beomgyu cracks a smile. “It takes a few months to get over a crush, probably?” he suggests. “A year, if you’re really unlucky, which Soobin-hyung obviously is. I mean, look at the face you got stuck with—” Then he’s shrieking a laugh and springing to his feet as Soobin tries to smack him in the head with a pillow.
“This hyung is gonna explode you with his mind,” Soobin promises, getting up too.
Beomgyu cackles, making big innocent eyes in an otherwise unforgivably smug face as he procures his own pillow to defend himself. “Yeah? With your weak mind?” he goads. “I’d like to see you try!” He follows that up with several incomprehensible sentences in an alien language created by elementary schoolers solely to tease each other and whips his pillow against Soobin’s shoulder.
Soobin is laughing, somehow, exhausted though it may be.
It’s a pretty transparent attempt to change the subject and lift the tension, but Beomgyu’s really good at that. It works anyway.
A ray of hope opens up in Soobin’s heart as he savagely assails Beomgyu with every piece of bedding he can get his hands on, and Beomgyu yells loud enough to wake up three floors of the hotel.
Maybe Soobin really can get over him, given enough time. He’s so fucking annoying.
Confession 3:
In a brave, selfless act of nearly inhuman endurance and fortitude, Soobin actually does wait a whole year before his next confession.
Which is to say, he definitely did not get over it.
He tilts his head, considering, and he says, “Here’s the thing, Beomgyu…”
Beomgyu hums impassively in answer, trying to gather fresh snow off of a nearby railing to make a snowball that he will surely hurl in Soobin’s direction before long.
He’s bundled up in a big black padded jacket and a fuzzy gray beanie, dark hair poking out around the edges to frame his fresh, curious face. He’s been looking so striking these days, the last remnants of his baby fat rendering into sharp, elven features that he spends all his time contorting into more and more ridiculous configurations, which Soobin finds just as charming, because there’s something very wrong with him.
They’re stopped on a pedestrian bridge over a lower neighborhood near their dorm, tromping softly between hushed buildings and humming street lamps. The city around them is startlingly silent, the sky above orange and glowing amidst the slushy flakes slowly drifting down, blanketing every tree and structure and creature under the sky, melting on Beomgyu’s eyelashes and his tricky, cold-pinkened hands.
Soobin was going to wait a little longer before he brought this up again, but then Beomgyu shook him awake already wearing his coat and grinning huge and sparkling down at him when Soobin had simply not had enough time conscious to gather any defenses against it, and he’d whispered, plainly thrilled, Soobin-hyung, it’s snowing! Let’s go outside!
Soobin takes a deep, chilly breath, frowning, trying to think how best to put it.
“No matter how much time passes,” he ends up with, “I just keep thinking you must actually like me back.”
Beomgyu drops his snowball in shock.
None of this is according to plan, of course.
The plan, such as it was, was to return to Korea and be less isolated and date around with his limited free time and wantonly eat up all the non-Beomgyu fish in the sea until he got over his unfortunate crush, but the plan—like a lot of plans made in the year 2020—was catastrophically delayed.
Instead, Beomgyu and Soobin have spent the strange, timeless months together in their shared bedroom in their shared dorm in their shared idol group. They’ve performed to empty studio halls, practiced choreo with masks on, recorded To-Do under strict hygiene guidelines, ordered food, played games, and FaceTimed their families like everyone else.
Despite the inherent forced proximity of lockdown, Soobin still might have expected someone who had rejected his love confession twice to act awkward around him or try to get some distance, but if anything, Beomgyu has only gotten clingier.
And maybe with anyone else in the world, Soobin might have felt awkward after getting rejected twice, too, but Beomgyu’s just so good at twisting the atmosphere to his whims that he makes it easy to follow his lead. They frolic and play just like they always have.
They never stop talking.
Soobin and Beomgyu sit together over meals and gossip about the other members in front of their faces. They reminisce about the before-times during dance practice, giving updates on what friends and family are doing in their own quarantine bubbles. They trash each other about CS averages and K/D ratios and have fiery debates about what song to play next in the van. Lately they’ve been hotly discussing and analyzing the plot of Itaewon Class episode by episode, transfixed by the characters and enraptured by the romance. They tease during tapings and rag their way through recordings. They’ve been together 24/7 for years, and now they’re somehow together 25/8, and they still have so much to talk about.
Except Soobin seems to have struck Beomgyu silent for maybe the first time ever.
He remains motionless, hands still up, curled like he’s frozen solid in the snow, getting paler by the minute under the sidewalk lampposts. He looks like he’s seen a ghost.
The ghost of Soobin’s dignity, probably. Whatever. He’s feeling pretty zen about the whole thing these days.
“Okay,” Soobin allows generously, swiping a sulky finger across the snowy railing, “so maybe you didn’t like me then, but you are starting to like me now, right?”
Beomgyu opens his mouth a few times and then closes it, blinking and shaking his head quickly and only then thinking to look around for— anything. Cameras or microphones or fans, like Soobin is stupid enough to bring it up anywhere where they could be overheard.
Then he bends down in a flash to grab a loose handful of snow and throw it at Soobin’s jacket, yelping, “No?! What the hell!”
Soobin yelps right back, grabbing at the spot the snow landed on him like it’s a bullet wound. “What the hell yourself!”
Beomgyu points at him, gawping, his eyes huge and sparkling in the light of the lampposts. “You were supposed to get over me!” he accuses.
Soobin scoffs, pointing right back. “When?” He points again more aggressively. “When lockdown started? When you insisted on being roommates? When we spent this whole year getting closer than we were before?”
Beomgyu scoffs right back and points right back at Soobin’s point back at him and huffs in offense. “That should’ve made it even easier!”
“How?” Soobin scoffs and points and huffs right back! “You’re basically my closest friend at this point!”
At that, Beomgyu drops his offended act and gasps in delight, reaching out to pinch at the cuff of Soobin’s coat sleeve with his face lit up like a Christmas tree. “Wait— Hey— Soobin-hyung, I’ve finally overtaken Ansan’s famous Lee Donggeun?”
Lee Donggeun is not famous in Ansan or anywhere else, or to anyone else besides Choi Beomgyu, to whom he is famous only for being Soobin’s childhood bestie and thus, an object of irrational envy. But regardless—
“I barely talk to Donggeun anymore,” Soobin whines. “He got a lockdown girlfriend and quit playing video games. I only talk to you now.”
Beomgyu pumps his fist and crows in celebration, then course-corrects and turns his fist-pumping into patting Soobin on the back. “That’s not true, Soobin-hyung,” he says.
Soobin pouts. “The other members don’t count.”
Beomgyu sighs, tilting his head in thought. He’s so cute, but Soobin tries to steel himself.
“You have tons of friends these days,” Beomgyu says eventually. He sounds a little irritated about it, because he is psychotic and definitely likes Soobin back. “Your successful MC career is ruining my life, actually, and people keep breaking social distance to ask me for your Kakao profile and if I know whether you and Arin are dating for real, and so it really doesn’t make any sense that you’re—”
“None of those words are ‘No, Hyung, I don’t like you back,’” Soobin interrupts.
Beomgyu stops talking abruptly. His face visibly withers.
Soobin swallows, feeling as though he’s tripped a booby trap. His dark impulse to always make Beomgyu’s cute little frustrations worse has betrayed him. His heel bounces under his leg. He stutters out, “I— Am I wrong? Lots of people like me!”
Beomgyu bends down to get more snow to chuck.
Soobin tries to duck and ends up with an earful of powder. His cursing is muffled by the snow.
“Wow,” Beomgyu says in amazement, just pointing and huffing and scoffing at his leisure now. “You’re so full of yourself it’s unbelievable.”
“How am I full of myself?!” Soobin complains. “You’re obsessed with me! You never leave me alone!”
Beomgyu opens his mouth wordlessly, then closed, then open, then closed, like a fish, all while looking self-righteous and offended.
But what can he say? He sits next to Soobin at meals, is the first to hop in the same van on the way to events, and demands to hang out after schedules. He’s been relentlessly campaigning for them to stay roommates even though there is another room at the new apartment.
Beomgyu justifies it like this: “Because you’re my favorite hyung!”
Soobin scoffs again for what feels like the millionth time since this conversation began. “So why are you so obsessed with sleeping in the same room as me?”
“I have insomnia!” Beomgyu says, laughing now for some reason. “Your disgusting snoring helps me sleep!”
Soobin is laughing too! How does Beomgyu do this to him?! “I don’t even snore, you crazy little—!”
Beomgyu shrieks a bigger laugh than ever. He doubles over with the force of it.
“And you’re always hanging all over me!” Soobin tries next, his chest swelling, powerlessly fond of Beomgyu’s weirdness. “Seriously!”
Surely he can’t argue with that. If he’s within four feet of Soobin, he drifts in to flutter at him like a moth, picking at his clothes and pinching his fingers and looping their arms.
“I never touch you!” Beomgyu declares, and he simultaneously grabs onto Soobin in a wild hug that spins them in a circle under the snowfall. What is going on?
“You invited me to go back to Daegu with you after we get vaccinated!” Soobin accuses.
“Because my mom loves you!” Beomgyu retorts, smashing his face against Soobin’s coat front now. “Maybe you should confess to her!”
Soobin tries to be serious, pushing Beomgyu off of him and back a step. “Be serious!” he says.
His seriousness must fall flat, though, because Beomgyu cackles, “You be serious!”
It’s the kind of chaos they both thrive on, just on the precipice of too much, right up against the knife’s edge of touching on something really emotional or hurtful, but not quite there. Another way they’re compatible, Soobin supposes.
“We talk until we fall asleep!” he argues. “And then we wake up and start talking again!”
It feels like that means something. To Soobin, it means something.
Beomgyu sighs, all his tricks falling away for a moment. “Which is why you’re my favorite hyung,” he says. He’s looking a little sad, suddenly.
Soobin whips around to lean his elbows on the railing of the bridge and look out at the sleeping city instead of at Beomgyu’s stupid sympathetic face.
“You said it usually takes a year at most to get over a crush, right?” he says. “So what’s going on here?”
Beomgyu is quiet behind him for a while and then hesitantly asks, “Well… I don’t know, how long did it take to get over your crush on Ansan’s famous Lee Donggeun?”
—which is so ridiculous that Soobin smacks his forehead down on the cold railing, laughing in spite of himself. “You’re killing me,” he whines. “I’ve never liked Donggeun.”
Beomgyu gives a soft laugh, too, annoyingly charming even under the worst circumstances, and his hand settles on the back of Soobin’s neck and massages automatically, like he sometimes does, just touching people for something to do. Tingles go down Soobin’s back and up his front.
“I’m not trying to be mean, Soobin-hyung,” Beomgyu says quietly. “Is there anything I can…I don’t know—do?”
“Say you like me back,” Soobin mutters into the railing.
“I mean something reasonable,” Beomgyu corrects him, no arguments.
Soobin hits his forehead against the railing a few more times.
When he takes a deep breath and straightens up, Beomgyu purses his lips around a chuckle.
“You have snow in your hair,” he says, reaching up to shake it loose from Soobin’s bangs.
And Beomgyu looks… gorgeous. His eyes are sweet and friendly, long hair framing his striking face like some kind of fairy prince, skin glowing in the light of the lamp posts. He looks like that at three in the morning and makes Soobin laugh like he’s never laughed in his whole life, even when he really shouldn’t, and he ‘doesn’t like Soobin back.’ Life is full of jokes and ironies.
“Hey,” Soobin says.
“What?” Beomgyu asks warily. He takes a careful step back out of Soobin’s space.
“This is just like Itaewon Class,” Soobin says, and the tension on Beomgyu’s face breaks into a sunny little laugh. “‘Those are all excuses,’” he quotes the rejected heroine. “‘Do I really have no chance?’”
Beomgyu does a goofy impression of Park Seojoon in response, contorting his face into one of awkwardness and distress: “Yeah! ‘Stop liking me!”
Soobin sighs. “Fine. But I need my own room to do it.”
Beomgyu grabs onto his arm and gets all cutesy. “Soobin-hyung, no way! We’re going to be roommates to the grave and beyond!”
They aren’t.
Soobin already overruled Beomgyu’s requests to stay together, just in case his next confession went to shit, which clearly it has. Although…it’s strange; Soobin still somehow doesn’t feel awkward. Beomgyu’s so incredibly good at that.
Beomgyu’s still going: “—and our future wives and children and dogs and cats and birds and rodents will just have to be roommates with us too, and that’s just how it is!”
“What a cool plan,” Soobin says. “No potential issues.”
Beomgyu shrugs and makes little “Hm? Hm?” noises like he has no idea what issues Soobin could be referencing.
Rolling his eyes, Soobin huffs a laugh and leans his elbows on the railing again, surveying out over the snowy, sleepy city.
Beomgyu leans his elbows too, bonking their shoulders together.
It’s nice.
Even after everything.
They’ll both be ruined for practice tomorrow, but Soobin still likes that Beomgyu woke him up instead of anyone else.
He likes that Beomgyu is shorter than him. He likes that Beomgyu is so difficult to pin down. He likes that Beomgyu wears cologne that smells like fruits and flowers. He likes that Beomgyu gets excited and sentimental about things like the first snowfall of the year. He just likes him.
Eventually, Beomgyu turns toward him and hesitantly asks, “Are you… really that happy we won’t be roommates anymore?”
Soobin sort of peeks down at him. He looks too cute with his hat covered in snowflakes and his puppy dog eyes.
Sometimes Soobin’s used to it. Sometimes he isn’t.
Given enough time, the human body can adapt to almost anything. You can put on glasses that make you see upside down and your brain will switch your vision around for you in response. Soobin has a human body, technically, and so he’s gotten used to the stomach drop when Beomgyu pops up in his field of vision looking enchanting and doing ridiculous things that are twice as enchanting. He’s gotten used to the butterflies and sparks and heartache of it all. It’s become the background radiation of his life, relatively harmless unless he steps too close to the source for too long with too little shielding.
Beomgyu frowns, straight eyebrows furrowing beneath a soft fringe of dark hair, and Soobin’s heart constricts.
“I get it,” Beomgyu says, very quietly. “But I’ll miss you. And so will my wife and my kid and my cat and my dog and—”
Soobin gives a small laugh, like Beomgyu was trying to get him to do, but he doesn’t take the out. “Nah,” he says, rubbing Beomgyu’s head overtop of his hat. “I’ll miss you, too.”
Beomgyu blooms with a pink-cheeked grin. “Is that so!” he chirps. He tries to tamp down his smile and fails. He twists in place and kicks his little foot in the snow like his whole body wants to express how happy he is, but he’s trying to hold it in just as hard.
He looks for all the world like a guy whose crush just said he likes him.
“You’re so weird,” Soobin comments, forlorn. “You’re like some kind of psychopath.”
“Just like in Itaewon Class!” Beomgyu replies cheerily.
Soobin sighs. “You know he starts to like her back in the end, right?”
In response to this, Beomgyu starts making another snowball, and so Soobin flees back toward the dorm without further comment.