Archive of Our Own ^beta

They’re together on Beomgyu’s couch. Beomgyu is wearing a pair of pale pink thigh-highs, and his feet are in Kai’s lap. There’s some random alt rock song playing from Beomgyu’s phone that’s laying face down on the coffee table in front of them. Outside, it’s raining hard, the water knocking into the glass relentlessly ever since Kai got here.

Beomgyu’s cheek is pressed into the backrest and he’s staring at Kai who’s loosely holding onto one of his ankles, smiling mildly like he knows something Kai doesn’t. Like he understands something Kai couldn’t even fathom. He wouldn’t be surprised if it were true.

The music cuts off abruptly, and then the both of them watch Beomgyu’s phone dance on the table as it buzzes with an incoming call. Neither of them move. Beomgyu’s eyes are unreadable. The phone keeps ringing.

“Are you gonna pick it up?”

Then Beomgyu looks at him, weirdly placid, perfectly composed. “Nope.”

Kai studies his face - his pretty lips, the corners slightly upturned, his cute nose, his long eyelashes. “You know who’s calling you.”

“Yep.” Beomgyu leans against the backrest again. He pushes two fingers under the elastic hem keeping the thigh-highs clinging to his skin, and Kai’s silly, childishly unrestrained eyes gravitate to them immediately. His thighs are smooth, hairless - a manufactured answer to a stupid fantasy they’ve shared with each other. Kai wants to touch it, but Beomgyu always makes the first move, and he can be patient. Beomgyu likes him when he’s patient.

The buzzing stops and Beomgyu takes a visibly deep breath before it starts up again, just as relentless as before.

“Who is it?”

Beomgyu throws his head back, staring at the ceiling for a moment, and Kai almost thinks he won’t answer at all. His lips move eventually though, sounding the words out carefully.

“My stalker ex.”

The words jolt Kai, and he grips the ankle in his hand a little tighter. “What? Seriously?”

“Nope.” Just as placidly as before. Beomgyu runs his fingers through his own hair. “We never dated.”

Kai’s heart is beating too fast. Beomgyu is smiling. The phone is still ringing. “You’re still lying.”

“Yep.”

It’s none of Kai’s business, really - he and Beomgyu aren’t close. Most of the things he knows about Beomgyu are the things he likes in bed and the little details he picks up when they’re just like this, at Beomgyu’s place, not hurrying to get each other undressed, and Kai gets to take a look around, take a good look at Beomgyu for once.

He has a console under the TV - it’s not the newest, but he has a wide repertoire of games lined up on the shelf. There’s a book of poems like a permanent fixture on Beomgyu’s coffee table, and its spine is cracked, but the bookmark with bunny ears peeking out from it hasn’t moved at all throughout the months Kai has been coming over for. Beomgyu has a cork board full of pictures of landscapes and people laughing and smiling that has suspicious empty spaces in it that Kai has always suspected were left behind by someone whose absence Beomgyu hasn’t yet learned to fill in.

Somewhere between those little details and the way Beomgyu holds Kai’s hand while they stare at the ceiling of his bedroom together sometimes, he thinks he has some idea of who Beomgyu is; what strange, convoluted twists and turns he’s made out of. Kai likes the picture he makes, with his heavy sighs and giggles, long heavy looks and pretty smiles. Too much, sometimes, when he lets himself. They’re just casual, though. He only comes over to have sex, and Beomgyu only talks to him about things that do not matter. Anything else is just a harmless bit of wishful thinking.

The phone shuts up, and the song starts back up. Beomgyu blinks slowly, like a cat, and fits the arch of his foot right up against Kai’s dick, wiggling it around, teasing with a pretty, challenging smile on his face.

Come and get me, the expression says - that first move he has been waiting for since he got here, and he wastes no time shifting his grip on Beomgyu’s legs, pulling him in, into his lap. His skin is just as smooth as the material the thigh-highs are made out of. Snapping the elastic of them makes Beomgyu gasp and the skin turn an inviting shade of pink; it makes him bite Kai’s lower lip and try to get even closer.

Beomgyu is panting into Kai’s own flushed cheek by the time the doorbell rings. They still, like a couple of teenagers who just almost got caught by their parents. Beomgyu is tense and frozen where he melted into Kai’s lap earlier, his fingers fisted at the back of Kai’s head.

The doorbell rings again - Kai runs his nails up the outside of Beomgyu’s thighs, and he shudders violently, somewhere between startled and aroused.

“Should I get the door?” He whispers, Beomgyu’s face still tucked into his, leaving no question as to whether or not he can hear the question loud and clear.

Beomgyu’s hands on him shift - he runs his thumb across Kai’s jaw, drags the tip of his fingers down Kai’s throat. Another sharp ring of the doorbell echoes through the room.

“Just say whatever you need to get him to go away.”

“I can do that,” Kai reassures, and then Beomgyu pulls back, smiles, and kisses him, flopping over to land on his back on the cushions, running his hands up his own thighs.

“I’ll be ready for you to come back, then.”

Kai kisses his knee before he goes, and Beomgyu’s eyes on him are deceptively fond as he gets up. He adjusts his pants; rights his shirt. Fixes his hair. Whoever it is, whatever he wants from Beomgyu, Kai can be courteous enough to not make it painfully obvious what he and Beomgyu have been doing.

He has carefully avoided having any expectations of what’s waiting for him once he opens the door, but he can feel his expectations shattering anyway when he does. It’s just a guy. He’s taller than Kai, wearing a simple beige coat that has a few raindrops soaked into it, his dark hair is fluffy and he looks tired. A plain black umbrella is dripping water onto his dress shoes. His eyes are red-rimmed when he meets Kai’s.

“Beomgyu still lives here, right?”

It’s barely a question, but Kai nods, anyway. The man glances over Kai’s shoulder, then studies Kai himself with a hollow expression. He shifts on his feet; switches the umbrella from one hand to the other. Kai wonders what he’ll have to say to get him to leave.

“Good night, then,” the stranger says eventually, then turns and walks away without waiting for a response. Kai, startled, leans out the door to watch him walk down the hall, pass by the elevator and into the stairwell instead. The door crashes closed behind him loudly. 

There is a strange numb feeling in his arms when he pushes the door to Beomgyu’s apartment closed; empty, unfinished. Beomgyu’s not on the couch when he turns around, but the door to his bedroom is open. Kai follows him there, finds him naked on top of the sheets save for the thigh-highs, legs spread wide, head tilted back. Inviting - offering himself up. A price for his silence. It’s what he gets instead of the question nagging at his mind. Who was that? What’s wrong? Why won’t you pick up his calls?

He lets himself fall into Beomgyu’s arms; lets him take his pants off ungracefully, trap him between his thighs. Lets Beomgyu buy his silence with the heat of the inside of his mouth, the inside of his body. With clever fingers dancing over Kai’s skin, sighs and whines and fragile shudders that make Kai feel like he could snap Beomgyu in two if he tried, like he’s not even holding a human being but a beautiful, hollow-boned bird.

Beomgyu intertwines their fingers while they stare at the ceiling together; he offers Kai one of the thigh-highs as a memento, and he takes it, tucking it into his backpack before he leaves. It’s not quite a lock of hair to make him dream of Beomgyu, but it’s something - another detail to add to the panorama of Choi Beomgyu.

He sees him again - the guy who showed up at Beomgyu’s door that day; not even a full week after they met for the first time. Kai is walking across campus to a café to kill the two hours before his next lecture, when he looks up and sees Beomgyu’s stranger just standing there.

This time, he’s wearing a simple faded blue sweater and a black beanie, his hair and a pair of glasses mostly hiding his eyes from view.  His mouth is set in a line, like it can’t find it in itself to curl either way. He looks even taller like this, standing out in a crowd of people milling about.

Their eyes meet almost by accident, but Kai catches a dark glint of recognition through the messy bangs. To his surprise, the other man picks himself up and walks closer, making Kai stop in his tracks when he blocks his way forward.

“Hey.”

“Hi.”

“You know who I am.”

“Vaguely.”

The guy’s mouth purses. “How much did Beomgyu tell you?”

Kai thinks about his answer for a second, then shrugs. “Nothing. Beomgyu didn’t tell me anything about you.”

It gets him a nod. Sure, it’s none of Kai’s business - but the both of them being this cryptic about whatever had happened between them has Kai’s curiosity running wild. There’s nothing in the guy’s eyes or posture that would give anything away, though, no little details for Kai to latch onto and come to conclusions from. He’s a blank slate, watching Kai like he’s something fascinating - probably figuring him out in turn.

“You’re the guy he’s sleeping with now, aren’t you.”

“Yeah.” There’s no point in hiding it - he clearly knows, even if Kai doesn’t confirm it, and it’s not like there is anything wrong with that. It’s obvious this dude and Beomgyu aren’t dating. However he feels about Kai and Beomgyu hooking up, it’s on him.

The guy nods again, then glances around them. “Do you want to get coffee?”

It’s not what Kai ever expected him to say. At all. Not in a million years. And yet—

“Okay.”

He’s curious, and the dimple that appears in the guy’s cheek when he smiles a little in response is another piece of Beomgyu’s puzzle. Kai wants to know - and he was going to get coffee, anyway.

His name is Soobin. He's a journalism student and he's interning at a local TV station. He listens well – intently. Like Kai is the most interesting thing at the café. Soobin has been stirring his matcha latte without drinking a single sip of it for the past five minutes while Kai has been explaining to him what music theory is all about. Everyone always zones out after asking that question, but Soobin still seems tuned in. He's actually listening to what Kai is struggling to say.

Neither of them has brought up Beomgyu since they got here.

Soobin has a pretty smile – he flashes it easily, clearly practiced until perfection, at the barista, at the random people who say hello to him while passing by their table. Every single person looks at him over their shoulder afterwards. They keep getting looks from the other tables; the barista whispered something to her colleague behind the counter, and now they're both sneaking glances at them whenever there's a lull between customers.

He's one of those people – the ones who draw others' attention almost involuntarily, by accident, just by sheer force of their presence. An easy, comfortable sort of charisma.

Jealousy bait, Kai labels him in the privacy of his mind. Driving his partners crazy with how easy he is to fall for. Driving the people around him insane with how others’ eyes gravitate towards him, and never towards them.

The perfect guy to have a complicated history with.

Kai likes him. Just as accidentally, as involuntarily as everyone else. He doesn't want to; he saw Soobin blowing up Beomgyu's phone, got to taste Beomgyu's desperation not to ever bring up what happened between them on his own tongue.

And yet.

Soobin has funny, way too passionate feelings about Aggretsuko. His nose scrunches adorably when he hasn't put enough sugar in his drink. He doesn't like parties. He has a very specific Mario Party minigame he claims to be unbeatable at.

They don't talk about sex. They don't talk about Beomgyu, or dating, or anything that would make this odd coffee date make sense. 

And yet, as Kai gets up to go to his next lecture and Soobin flashes him a smile, he thinks, I like this guy.

He smiles back, nods to Soobin's faint, “See you around.”

They don't exchange phone numbers. If they're lucky, they won't ever see each other again.

“You took some of the photos down, didn't you.”

They're in Beomgyu's bed. Kai is only wearing a shirt and Beomgyu is naked, a pair of white lace boyshorts somewhere off by his foot. He's keeping Kai's hand trapped between his thighs while he scrolls through his phone to find a playlist he likes and Kai studies the cork board over Beomgyu's desk. It's almost cozy. He's never felt this comfortable after sex with anyone else.

“What?” Beomgyu's voice is careful; faint.

“There used to be more photos up on that board.”

There's a pause, and Kai assumes it means he won't be getting an answer. He squeezes the inside of Beomgyu's thigh reassuringly, and he shifts a little, reaching down to scratch his nails lightly over Kai's wrist that's resting right next to Beomgyu's soft, exposed dick.

“Maybe.” He replies then, quietly.

Kai looks at his profile. He's perfectly expressionless, eyes empty as he scrolls down a list aimlessly.

“I met Soobin the other day.”

The name makes Beomgyu's body lock up, every muscle on display tensing.

“Did you?”

Kai hums. Beomgyu visibly swallows, then shakes his head and continues his mindless scrolling. He's still tenser than before.

“Was he alone?”

The question catches Kai by surprise. “Was he supposed to be?”

Beomgyu shrugs, but he doesn't ask again and Kai doesn't volunteer the information. “What did he say?”

“About you? Not much. He asked if we're sleeping with each other.”

Beomgyu finally looks at him. His eyes don't betray a single thing. “Did you tell him?”

“Yeah.”

He nods, and goes back to his phone. Kai frees his hand from between Beomgyu's thighs and runs it up his body instead.

“Were they pictures of him?”

Beomgyu sighs deeply, then turns over so his back is facing Kai instead of them resting side by side on their backs. “Some of them.”

Kai bites his lip, then reaches over to leave a kiss between Beomgyu's shoulder blades. “And the others?”

“Were of someone else.”

He finds himself nodding, even though Beomgyu can't see him. After a few breaths, he makes up his mind and shifts onto his side too, wrapping an arm around Beomgyu.

“You looked so hot today.”

To his surprise, the compliment makes Beomgyu turn around again and assess his face thoughtfully from up close. Like he's checking if Kai means it. As if it's important to him that he does. Kai hopes that his helpless admiration is obvious enough. Beomgyu is the eighth wonder of the world, wearing a knapsack or nothing at all, and Kai got so stupidly, cosmically lucky to ever get to hold him like this.

“Can I take a picture of you?”

It's raining again. Kai runs up the stairs of Beomgyu's apartment building with a spring in his step, hair and jacket drenched, but looking forward to seeing Beomgyu enough to not mind at all.

He halts as soon as he walks through the door to his floor, seeing a familiar silhouette stretched out next to Beomgyu's door. Soobin is there, with his back to the wall, legs stretched out in front of him, staring straight ahead blindly. He's wearing a black coat with a high collar this time, his hair neatly combed and styled, and it makes him look too posh to be sitting on the cold floor of a hallway at 5 in the afternoon. When the door crashes closed behind Kai, Soobin looks up and their eyes meet, but as soon as they make eye contact, Soobin looks down at the tips of his shoes instead.

Some part of him feels kind of bad for the guy – whatever his and Beomgyu's deal is, Soobin seems so sincere in his attempts to just see him. To talk to him. He could have tried to intimidate Kai into letting him in when he opened the door for him. He could have tried to talk Kai out of seeing Beomgyu, but he didn't do that. He was relentless, but still seemed to maintain some sort of respect for Beomgyu's constant rejection.

Kai walks closer to him, stopping a polite distance away.

“Is Beomgyu not home?”

Soobin's mouth purses. “I don't know. He's not answering the door, but he always seems to know when it's me.”

That's true; it's like Beomgyu has a sixth sense that tells him exactly which calls to ignore, which dings of incoming messages aren't worth getting out of bed for. His own dread, the same thing that makes his entire body seize up at the mention of Soobin's name, is making Beomgyu incredibly efficient at avoiding him, the prey animal instincts kicking in fully to protect him from whatever was waiting in the maw of the beast.

Soobin doesn't look like a beast today. He looks exhausted; a man defeated.

Kai pulls his phone out to text Beomgyu. He was supposed to come over today, but life sometimes gets in the way of their fun. Maybe he really just isn't home.

hey, are you home? I just got to your place

He watches Soobin over the top of his phone screen while he waits for Beomgyu to respond. Soobin doesn't have his glasses on, and he's dressed formally; he probably came straight from working at his intern job. Maybe the station is close to Beomgyu's place, and that's why he shows up in person sometimes. Maybe Beomgyu knows when he works there, and that's why he knows when he shouldn't open the door.

oh shit, that was today? 
sorry Hyuka, i totally thought we said Thursday so i stayed at the campus to study

He can't tell if it's a lie over text. If he called, he would probably know immediately, but like this, he's left to wonder, just like Soobin. Waiting by the door of a guy it feels like he's been waiting ages to see already.

oops lol
dw about it! I can do Thursday actually.
I'll see you then? 5 pm again?

Once again, he glances at Soobin. His eyes look hollow again. What could possibly be their story?

um could we do 7 this time? ›.‹ I've got a lot on my plate this week.

He's doubting everything Beomgyu says now. What if everything he does is somehow, in the end, motivated by Soobin?

sure ;) 

He pockets his phone. Soobin looks up, clearly unable to contain his curiosity.

“I guess we're both shit out of luck,” Kai quips, crossing his arms.

“He's not home?” Soobin sounds actually surprised. Maybe that's a little sad in itself.

“Not for either of us, anyway.” He gives Soobin an obvious once-over, then shrugs. “Do you wanna go get burgers? Or noodles – whatever you're into. Wanna come get food with me?”

Soobin bites his lip so hard it goes white but nods. “Yeah, sure.”

There is a picture of Kai on the cork board now. It's filling one of the empty spots, between a scenic picture of a waterfall and a photo of Beomgyu and a man who looks too much like him for them not to be related, sitting on the hood of a car and grinning. He's half-naked in it, his eyes are closed and the soft lighting around him gives the whole photo a dream-like vibe.

He can't stop looking at it.

“I missed you the other day.”

“Sorry for making you make the trek over here for nothing.”

Kai doesn't mind anymore; he and Soobin had food together on Tuesday, and enough beers to think that going to karaoke together and drinking more was a good idea, and he can’t remember the last time he had that much fun with all his clothes on. It’s a little strange, thinking about what Soobin means here, in Beomgyu’s bed, the elephant that’s both in the room with them all the time now and loudly, glaringly absent, and what he means out there in the real world, a dimpled smile and scattered pleasant memories.

He doesn’t have a lot of friends, if he’s honest with himself. Soobin and Beomgyu feel the closest he gets to it these days. Maybe there’s something a little depressing about that.

“Don’t worry about it.”

When he looks over at Beomgyu, Beomgyu is already looking at him. There’s a question in his eyes, and maybe Kai knows exactly what he’s trying to say without words, but he just doesn’t want to know. Over the past couple months, Beomgyu has confessed so much to him. So many weird fantasies for them to make true; insecurities for him to tiptoe around, tips for him to follow to make this even more fun for the both of them. He pulled himself open for Kai, both literally and figuratively — bravely. Showing all he had to offer and trusting him with it.

Maybe he could trust him again; and maybe more than any other fantasy Kai wants him to do that the most.

Say it out loud; what he wants, what he’s thinking, like he’s done before.

Instead of doing that, Beomgyu rolls over until his upper body is resting on Kai’s and tucks his face into his shoulder. Kai instinctively reaches up to card through Beomgyu’s hair that’s clearly growing too long to be comfortable, and Beomgyu hums happily into his bare skin.

Then he pinches the skin on Kai’s stomach and asks, “Have you ever dated anyone?”

Kai thinks about it - more about the fact that Beomgyu is asking at all than about the answer. “Not seriously, no.”

Beomgyu hums, then lifts his head to rest it on the back of his hand on Kai’s chest, looking up at him even though the angle is awkward for the both of them. “Casually, then?”

He tucks a lock of hair behind Beomgyu’s ear. Even his ears look cute, feel delicate under his fingertips. He thinks he’s obsessed with Beomgyu’s body sometimes; he wouldn’t be this taken with every tiny detail if he wasn’t, would he? “In high school, for a couple months. He was my best friend, we really got each other, and we were the only out queer kids our age.” When he stares into Beomgyu’s eyes hard enough, he thinks he can see a glint of Taehyun reflected back at him; somewhere in the playfulness and the stillness that comes in the afterglow. “At some point, we realized we were just trying to make it something that it really wasn’t.”

“Where is he now?” He thinks Beomgyu looks a little apologetic; like he thinks Kai is sad about it, or that he should be. Kai is just glad they called it quits before they did any more damage to their relationship.

He smiles and runs his thumb across Beomgyu’s cheekbone. “At a better school than me. He has a really cute boyfriend now who looks nothing like me. It’s kind of comforting.”

Beomgyu snorts, and then pouts a little. “You’re cute, too.”

With a laugh, Kai picks up Beomgyu’s unoccupied hand to kiss his palm. “Thanks.”

“I mean it,” Beomgyu insists while he picks himself up and resettles so he can sit on Kai’s thighs instead, in all his naked glory, with red marks all over him. Today was fun as well, in a very different yet similar way to Tuesday. Kai believes that if nothing else, Beomgyu finds him attractive, too. That, he has no trouble believing.

So he puts his hands on Beomgyu’s knees and nods. “Okay.”

Beomgyu studies him quietly, then looks over at the corkboard Kai was staring at earlier. Kai draws his hands further up his thighs, and Beomgyu nods, like he came to an agreement with himself just then. He puts his hands over Kai’s and sighs.

“I had my first boyfriend in high school, too,” he says, like it’s a heavy confession, like he’s just shared something important, so Kai squeezes his fingers supportively and tries to smile.

“How long were you together?”

Beomgyu is looking at Kai’s chest instead of into his eyes. “Five years.”

Kai feels his tongue freezing in his mouth. “Oh,” he lets out, dumbly. Beomgyu starts rubbing at Kai's hands, up his forearms, like he needs to be touching something to keep himself calm. “Soobin?”

“No,” Beomgyu says almost derisively, snorting out his nose as he says it. “Yeonjun.”

He glances up at Kai, then, and he’s not fast enough to hide the confusion on his own face. Beomgyu shifts his palms to Kai’s chest, dragging them down over his stomach, drumming his fingers against the skin around his navel. It’s ticklish and pleasant, despite the situation, but the atmosphere in the room is making Kai want to shift away from the touch. Beomgyu shouldn’t be making him feel good right now.

Shivering, his eyes stray towards the cork board with all its empty spaces. “Is Soobin the reason you’re not together anymore?”

Beomgyu scratches his nails over Kai’s ribs, and he struggles with himself not to push his hands away. “I think he thinks so, but he’s wrong.”

“Is that why he keeps wanting to talk to you?”

Once again, Beomgyu looks directly at him, and Kai feels pinned even before Beomgyu leans forward and actually traps him between his arms. “I don’t know what he wants to say,” he points out, tilting his head to one side. “I never let him say it. I don’t want to hear it.”

Kai is convinced there’s something he should do; that he should say, but all he can do is stare up at Beomgyu, pretty and somehow ice cold above him. Firm as steel where he usually seems so fragile.

“I think he wants to apologize,” Beomgyu adds eventually, when Kai doesn’t say anything. “Or tell me he loves me.”

Kai wonders if he does. Soobin seems guilty, but does he seem in love? Maybe he would if Kai ever saw him around Beomgyu. Maybe Kai would seem in love with Beomgyu too, if Soobin ever saw them together. “Which one would be worse?”

A sardonic smile twists Beomgyu’s mouth, and Kai thinks that’s enough of an answer. “I don’t want to hear a single thing out of his mouth anymore.”

It’s a pretty mouth; he has a pretty voice. He sings well when he’s sober, and passionately when he’s drunk. He seems so sad, when Beomgyu is involved, and so full of life everywhere else. It’s like the thing between them is a drain on both of them, a leech they just can’t shake. That Soobin obviously doesn’t want to shake, and keeps pressing deeper and deeper into Beomgyu’s flesh. That’s not fair, is it?

It’s not fair.

Kai runs his fingers over Beomgyu’s knees again. “Where is he now?”

Beomgyu frowns, obviously thrown off-balance by the question. “Soobin?”

“Yeonjun.”

Slowly, Beomgyu’s face clears, flattens. He sits back and arches his back like he’s showing his body off, and maybe he is, in an effort to distract, which just brings attention to the fact that he hasn’t said anything yet. “Gone. You’re here instead. Didn’t you notice?”

Kai looks at the corkboard. Beomgyu leans forward again and bites his clavicle. He swallows back a wave of nausea.

Kai doesn’t have Soobin’s number. He never gave it to him, and Kai never asked or offered his own. It would feel wrong, in some twisted way, to have the ability to talk to him, to meet him, at any time, aside from chance encounters on campus and meeting because of Beomgyu.

Today it’s both, in a way. They run into each other right outside the doors to Beomgyu’s apartment complex, Kai on his way out, and Soobin on his way in. Soobin is wearing his beige coat again, and it’s nice enough outside for it to be open, showing the polite button-up he’s wearing underneath. He looks like an office worker on his way home; handsome but unassuming. Kai knows better.

Soobin smiles and nods at him, and Kai steps in his way, making the smile drop as soon as it appears.

“You need to stop coming here. You need to leave him alone.”

Soobin’s eyes drop to their shoes. Kai’s wearing sneakers, and Soobin is wearing dress shoes. They couldn’t look more different; more disparate in age, even though Kai knows there’s barely a couple years between them. He has to look immature, standing resolutely between Soobin and the door in his casual clothes, with his hair still messed up from Beomgyu running his fingers through it while he was sucking his dick like his life depended on it. But who’s the immature one, really?

“I know,” Soobin says simply, but doesn’t turn to leave.

“You’re hurting him,” Kai adds, as emphatically as he can. Soobin has to care, right? Otherwise he wouldn’t be so adamant about seeing Beomgyu.

“I know,” Soobin repeats, and meets Kai’s eyes. They’re empty again, the same strange emptiness that’s there when Beomgyu talks about him sometimes. “But he’s hurting me, too.”

That’s not something Kai expected Soobin to say; at all, really. He’s out of his depth, isn’t he? And it’s still none of his business; but he wants it to be. He wants at least one of them to care enough to want him to know.

“He told me about Yeonjun,” he says, resolutely, because it feels like leverage; like ground to stand on. He’s a player in this game too, now. He knows.

And it works; Soobin’s face shifts entirely, shifting through emotions rapidly, from shock to confusion to a deep frown. “What did he tell you about him?”

“That they dated; and that you think it’s your fault they broke up.”

Soobin’s face twitches strangely, and then he laughs, snide and derisive, a sound Kai has never heard or expected to hear from him. It stabs him right in the chest, the mocking in it clear. “So he didn’t tell you jack shit.”

Kai doesn’t know what to say; Soobin isn’t wrong — Kai barely knows more than a name, a vague amount of time. He doesn’t even know his last name.

Soobin pushes past him when Kai makes it clear he has no clever comeback to give, and Kai doesn’t stop him.

Kai opens the poetry book on the coffee table while Beomgyu is in the bathroom. The bookmark makes it open on some sad poem about heartbreak, about longing for a lost love in the middle of the night. It seems weirdly fitting. Tucked in the book on the same page is a print-out of a Sylvia Plath poem, about as happy as the one in the book. That feels fitting, too.

He shuts the book when he hears the bathroom door close, and lets Beomgyu, pantsless and smelling sharply of chocolate, settle right in his lap. Beomgyu wraps his arms around Kai’s neck, smiles sweetly, and says, “Come tie me up?” in his most adorable voice.

And Kai thought he wanted nothing more, daydreamed about winding smooth black rope around Beomgyu’s beautiful thighs on his way here, practiced his knots while rewatching his favorite show last night, felt a flutter in his chest when he saw Beomgyu’s eyes light up when he shared this particular fantasy, but he looks at Beomgyu’s pretty face, at his freshly cut hair, at the crewneck he’s wearing that’s deliberately too big for him and makes his frame look smaller than it is, and all he can think about is saying:

“Come on a date with me.”

Beomgyu freezes when he says it, and his eyes flit back and forth between Kai's, like he's trying to figure him out, anticipate the next attack, but Kai just keeps looking at him, hoping he looks as adoring as he feels. He likes Beomgyu – with his secrets and the skeletons in his closet and his kinks and his deep voice that gets so soft when they're basking in the afterglow, with his smile and his playlists filled with songs about longing and contentment, longing and contentment. He wants to know more about him – find more things to like, or to overlook because of how much he likes the rest of him. He wants to find something he could love.

Then Beomgyu's mouth falls open, and he breathes out Kai's name, palms falling onto Kai's chest, then sliding up to his shoulders, then Beomgyu's arms wind around his neck again, tighter this time, and he leans his whole upper body into him, hiding his face from view, arching his back, saying – moaning – his name again when his mouth is almost pressed against Kai's ear.

Kai hugs him around the waist, as tight as he can, and says, “It's okay if you're not into me that way. But I wanted you to know.”

Beomgyu shakes a little in his hold, and says, “I'm in love with someone else.”

Somehow, it makes Kai relax instead of upsetting him. He rubs Beomgyu's back in little soothing circles. “How about you let me try to change your mind?” Soft, not insistent. This thing between them was always fun and experimental, and he doesn't want that to change.

“Nobody ever managed to before,” Beomgyu mumbles into Kai's shoulder.

Kai squeezes his waist. “Not even Soobin?” he asks tentatively.

Beomgyu pulls back, and Kai half expects him to push himself off of Kai's lap entirely, but he just settles down with some space between them, only touching where Beomgyu's butt is settled on his thighs while Beomgyu studies his face carefully.

“You don't get it,” he says eventually, a weird tone of disappointment in his voice.

“Then tell me what's going on,” Kai offers, shrugging. “I won't judge.”

Beomgyu seems to believe him, because when he replies, “It's complicated,” he sounds like he hates saying it.

He wants to confide in someone; Kai is not the wisest guy in the world, but he can listen, can’t he?

“Then explain it to me; you don't have to just give me the whole thing at once – you can go slow, if it's a lot for you; like we always do.” He smiles at the end, cheeky and encouraging. Maybe they never got too deep when talking, but it's not like they haven't shared intense experiences before. They've guided each other through pain, through embarrassment, through fear and overwhelming pleasure, and they haven't let each other down yet. Beomgyu can trust him with this too, like he trusts him with his body, with his mind when everything goes blank and empty and it's up to Kai to fill the void.

And maybe he feels the same, because he fidgets with his sleeves in his lap for a bit before taking a deep breath and saying, “The thing is that I loved Soobin first.”

It shakes Kai a little even though it makes sense, because it turns the whole story on its head in his mind. Was Soobin not the one who came between Yeonjun and Beomgyu, their five-year romance that left huge gaps on Beomgyu's corkboard of memories?

“Oh.”

Does he still love him? Even though he seems desperate to keep him away? 

“Okay. I still want to take you out on a date.”

Slowly, Beomgyu smiles. His eyes glisten as he does, the overhead light reflecting in them, in the tears he holds back. “Some other day?” he sniffs, then reaches out for one of Kai's hands, tugs at it with their fingers tangled together. “I'm busy getting tied up tonight.”

Kai tugs their hands towards himself, and kisses the back of Beomgyu's. “It's okay, I've already got a thing planned, too.”

There's a new picture on the corkboard now, of Beomgyu's bare, spread thighs with black rope wound around them. On the left thigh, the loops are spaced out, unevenly but in an orderly fashion, a little clumsy but not too bad, and on the other thigh, it's just a single loop, the loose rope hanging from it wrapped around  Kai's own hand while he uses it to tug Beomgyu's leg to the side, letting it dig into his flesh so he can take a pretty picture, pink and red marks from him doing it over and over again all over Beomgyu's skin already.

It was a good night, and Beomgyu kissed him over and over again like he couldn't get enough while they were lying in his bed afterwards.

Kai thinks about that picture, about Beomgyu's lips on his, when he sees Soobin on campus, reading a book on a bench with a tall cup of steaming tea next to him. Soobin seems like a nice guy. He likes fantasy stories and video games and knows how to shed his dignity at a karaoke bar. Kai genuinely enjoyed spending time with him. Beomgyu is probably in love with him, somehow, still, after what has to be years and years of history between them. Something that made Beomgyu never want to see him again, after all that.

He sits down next to Soobin with his hands shoved deep into his pockets for warmth. Soobin looks over, and his eyes widen a little.

“Hi?”

Kai kicks his feet awkwardly. “Hey.”

“I haven't been to Beomgyu's since we last talked,” Soobin says, a little defensive, and looks back down at his book.

It surprises Kai; he wasn’t expecting Soobin to actually listen to him, after brushing him off like that. “I thought I didn’t know jack shit.”

Soobin snorts and shakes his head. “You know some things. You know how Beomgyu feels better than I do at this point.”

“But it didn’t use to be like this.”

To that, Soobin has no answer, so Kai picks at his own sleeves and watches Soobin sip his tea carefully. It smells like strawberries and cream.

“Have you ever dated anyone?” He asks eventually, an echo of Beomgyu from all those days ago.

Soobin pauses with the cup against his lips, then clicks his tongue. “Yeah. I'm not really the casual dating type, but there were… a couple people.”

“A couple?”

“Two,” Soobin clarifies and drops his eyes to his own lap.

“And Beomgyu was never one of them.”

Beomgyu himself never really gave Kai a straight answer to this, but at this point he feels like he's slowly able to put the pieces together. Maybe Soobin could help him paint an actual picture.

“Nope.”

Bingo.

“Are you dating anyone now?”

Soobin smiles a tight little smile while playing with the edges of the pages of his book. “Are you coming onto me? I thought you were Beomgyu's boy.”

“We're not dating.”

Friday, after my last lecture at 3? I'll meet you by the fountain, Beomgyu texted him earlier,  then sent a heart separately.

“Not yet.”

The smile doesn't leave Soobin's face. “Good – he deserves to be happy.”

Kai stares at his profile, at the curve of his nose, his jaw. He doesn't seem like he's lying, but…

“Why won't you leave him alone?”

Soobin presses his lips together, then turns his head quickly to look Kai right in the eye. “I want Beomgyu to be happy again, but I want my closure, too. I think I deserve that much.”

Kai stares right back, confused and searching. “It wasn't just a bad breakup, was it.”

It takes Soobin a surprisingly long time to swallow and say, “No.”

“Then what—”

“If you want to date Beomgyu,” Soobin cuts him off, “then you should hear it from him, not from me.”

He can see the logic in that, frustrating as it is. He doesn't want to betray Beomgyu's trust by backdooring his way to Beomgyu's story, but he's just so desperate to understand these two. “But it's your story, too.”

“It is,” Soobin admits, a little thoughtful. “And maybe at some point I can tell you my side of it, too.”

“I'd like to hear it, at some point.”

A more easy smile grows on Soobin's face. “I get why he likes you, Kai. You're a nice guy.”

Kai thinks he might be blushing, stupidly. He thinks about Beomgyu’s smile, his fluttering eyelashes. “Does he like nice guys?”

“I think he does – I’m not sure he realizes that.”

He laughs, and watches Soobin’s pretty smile widen. He likes watching them both smile – he hopes that one day they’ll both be able to do it all the time. “Do you like nice guys?”

Soobin’s eyes glint in the weak sunlight. “I don’t think I care that much.”

Kai shifts on the bench, turning his body towards Soobin. “What do you care about, then?”

He’s not sure what he’s doing, but maybe Soobin understands better than Kai himself does, turning a little as well, trailing his eyes over Kai’s features, his frame, lingering on his cheekbones, on his lips. “I like them pretty.”

There’s a memory Kai cradles at the back of his mind, of Beomgyu on his back with his eyes closed, barely covered by an untied lacy robe, painted in soft pink hues by rose-shaped fairy lights. Kai was on top of him with all his clothes on and shaky hands, still not sure what he did to get someone this beautiful under him. He held up the feather Beomgyu gave him earlier, and touched the center of his bottom lip with it, then trailed in down to his chin, drew the curve of his jaw, hugged the shell of his ear. He traced his lips, the straight line of his nose, tapping the tip of it, drew laugh lines from his eyes to the corners of his lips. Beomgyu kept shivering with the ticklish sensation, but stayed completely still, as Kai slowly let the perfect details of his face entrance him. His eyelashes, his angles and curves. His smooth forehead and hints of stubble. His exposed throat, sharp Adam’s apple. The hint of a smile when Kai drew the tip of the feather up the underside of his chin, like he was tickling a cat.

He said something like, that’s not where you’re supposed to be touching me, and Kai had no good answer to that.

“Like Beomgyu?”

He wonders what Soobin would do, if he were in Kai’s position; or if Kai were in Beomgyu’s.

Soobin looks up into his eyes again. “Sure.”

Is Kai pretty, too? Beomgyu called him cute; maybe he called him hot at some point. Taehyun used to say he was handsome enough. Soobin looks like he might disagree.

“Kind, too.”

He can’t keep up the eye contact anymore. Soobin looks away as soon as he does, facing forward again, bouncing his foot, looking like he regrets saying anything at all. Kai stares at Soobin’s bobbing knee, still turned towards him. He should probably extricate himself from the conversation now; go about his business again.

Instead, he licks his lips, and then says, “Do you have any other stories you could tell me?”

Soobin’s leg stills, and then he looks at Kai’s own lap curiously, still not daring to meet his eyes. “Like what?”

Kai shrugs. “Anything.”

Soobin looks so out of place in Kai’s dorm room; like he’s too large for it, even though he’s not much bigger than Kai himself. He has a single room in an apartment-style dorm, and there’s something awkward about knowing that nobody will walk in on them now. Soobin seems to feel it, too, messing with the sleeves of his off-white sweater, eyes skittishly flitting from place to place, from Kai’s manga posters to the penguin-shaped night light on his desk.

He’s not sure how they ended up here, or rather he knows and doesn’t really want to think about it. They took a walk together, while Soobin told him about his family, his siblings and the town he’s from. He told Kai he used to be a loner, for the longest time, until he met a friend who finally forced him out of his shell; who taught him how to live his life without fear.

They haven’t said Beomgyu’s name again since the bench, but it screamed out of every obvious empty space in Soobin’s stories. Someone was there with him, from middle school to college that they applied to together, his best friend, his soulmate.

Kai realized at some point he started aiming for the dorms, where he was headed before he ran into Soobin, and it occurred to him that he didn’t know where Soobin himself lived, at all. Instead of asking, he invited him up to his room, and Soobin said yes without asking why.

And now they’re here; alone, in private.

Soobin is sitting on his bed, and Kai is hovering by his desk, not sure whether to sit down, what to say, what they should do now.

“You never told me that much about you,” Soobin says, eventually, breaking the silence.

Kai scratches at the back of his neck. “There’s not that much to tell.” He wouldn’t know where to start. His life isn’t really that exciting. He’s had only one friend for most of his life, too, and now he has a fuckbuddy and the guy his fuckbuddy is in love with. He has a loving family he likes to spend time with during the holidays. He broke his arm one time falling out of a tree, and his sister got scolded for it. For his first date, he took Taehyun to a creek they used to hang out at as kids and played the guitar for him.

He doesn’t have any trauma to deal with; no skeletons in his closet. He’s just making his way through life as smoothly as possible. No stress; no worries; things come and go quietly. Maybe that’s not how it should be.

“How did you meet Beomgyu?”

“We had a class together.”

In the most mundane and somehow most teen romcom way at the same time, the first time Kai saw Beomgyu, he had just lifted his head from doodling in his notebook after someone politely knocked at the desk in front of him, taking off his headphones to give the person his attention, just to come face to face with probably the most beautiful guy he had ever seen. He looked a bit apologetic and a lot cute when he tugged at his own ear and said something like, “Hey, this is so awkward – I had to miss the intro lesson, and now I have no idea what we’re gonna be doing. It looks like everyone’s got some kind of handout? Do you think I could take a peek at yours?”

Kai gave him his and then never got it back; Beomgyu gave him the prettiest, widest smile in return, and it felt like enough of a reward for the favor. They talked a bit that day, about their majors, exchanged names, talked about the dorms and the cafeteria food. Beomgyu didn’t really approach him after that, and Kai was too shy to do it himself, but he always smiled when their eyes met while they were both spacing out during their lectures.

“Something fun?” It’s a weird question to ask, technically, but Kai just shrugs.

“History of opera.”

“So no,” Soobin deadpans, and Kai laughs.

“It was alright.” He liked it, some days, their lecturer obviously passionate  about the topic enough to sometimes draw his students in as well. There was a day when they spent their entire class listening to Prokofiev, because he was their professor’s favorite, and Kai, who at that point had had Beomgyu under him already, spent it staring at Beomgyu’s hands playing with a pen, at his neck, at the way light reflected off his messy hair; wondering if he thought about the night he spent with Kai at all, spacing out at 4 pm on a Thursday.

“Sure.”

Kai grins at Soobin’s sarcastic tone. “It’s actually good music, you know.”

Soobin rolls his eyes, overdramatic. Cute. “Sure.”

“One day, I’ll make you listen to The Turn of the Screw.” It sounds flirty when it leaves his mouth, like a promise to your date you’re going to see each other again. There will be a next time, for him and Soobin. A ‘one day’.

“That sounds like a torture device.”

He didn’t even hesitate, and Kai just kind of… keeps smiling. “I think that’s kind of the point.”

“Is it torture to listen to it?”

Kai sticks out his tongue at him. “For uncultured guys like you, maybe.”

Instead of quipping right back, Soobin looks a little startled, then thoughtful. He picks at his own sleeves again. Kai half expects him to ask about Beomgyu again – if he likes opera, too; how Kai ended up fucking him – but he just bites his lip and then asks, “Can I have your number?” Then his mouth twitches a little, and he adds, “I think we have some plans to make.”

It’s cold as hell, but the day is perfectly clear on Friday. Beomgyu is sitting on the edge of the fountain, bundled up in a thick coat when Kai gets there, his good camera, the DSLR that sits on the shelf above his desk when Kai comes over, in his hands. He smiles at Kai when he sees him and waves, pink-cheeked and cute and everything Kai could ask for in a boyfriend.

If this doesn’t work out, he’s not sure what he’s going to do with himself.

“Hey.” He doesn’t know what to do with himself when he makes it all the way to the fountain. Can he hug Beomgyu? Can he kiss him? They’ve done a thousand things together, but not as more than friends, or friends with benefits. It’s a strange ground to stand on; and it feels nothing like dating Taehyun did, somehow. With him, nothing really changed about their relationship except for the kissing. With Beomgyu, it feels like everything is different now, even though it shouldn’t be.

“Hi.” Beomgyu doesn’t move to do either, so Kai doesn’t make a move himself; he just looks Kai over, like he’s checking whether he dressed up – he did and he didn’t, fixing his hair a bit more carefully, picking a pair of jeans that fits him a bit better than the others. He’s never really dressed up for anything – in a good tradition between the two of them, Kai is trying things with Beomgyu he hasn’t ever gotten to do before.

“You said you had a place you wanted to take me?”

Beomgyu nods, and hops off the fountain, putting the camera away into the camera bag hanging off his shoulder. “Yeah, I have somewhere in mind. Follow me?”

Kai does, weirdly mindful of the amount of space between them as he does. He keeps pace, tries to stay close but not close enough for their hands to brush. He feels fifteen again; acne-ridden and stupid. “Is it a surprise? Or are you going to tell me?”

“I can give you a hint?” Beomgyu glances up at him, something a little strange in his eyes. “It’s a place I go to a lot; you’ll understand when we get there.”

“Well, that’s not ominous at all.”

Beomgyu laughs, then reaches out to hold Kai’s hand, squeezing it. “It’s a place I have to take you, if you’re serious about this.”

Kai whines, finally stepping closer, letting their arms brush. “That’s not helping.”

Now he’s nervous, and apprehensive, but then Beomgyu leans into his shoulder and asks, “Second thoughts already?” Like he was expecting it, like he was baiting Kai into chickening out this whole time, and it all dissipates, because this is Beomgyu, and Beomgyu is worth a little apprehension. Worth a little wait.

So he squeezes Beomgyu’s hand back. “Not at all.”

And Beomgyu has nothing to say to that.

The path leading out of campus and into the adjacent town is lined with trees, and Beomgyu keeps stopping to take pictures of ice clinging to their branches. He takes a picture of Kai waiting for him by the gate after they stop so Beomgyu can take a picture of a brave pigeon walking down the paved path, and he smiles after he drops the camera, so fondly Kai wonders if he should have asked Beomgyu out ages ago.

They hold hands while they follow the road that stays at the edges of the town instead of heading downtown, and it’s quiet there, especially after the bustle of the campus. Kai hears their synchronized footsteps, hears their jackets rub together when they stray a bit too close. To break the silence, he asks Beomgyu about his day, and hangs off of every word as Beomgyu explains his dilemma of picking between frosted flakes and chocolate cereal that morning. Kai, in return, tells him about the mental breakdown his entire composition class had as a collective because someone didn’t unlock the door into the students’ lounge that day and cut off their access to the coffee machine everyone in the music building depended on to survive.

They talk about Beomgyu looking up handcuffs on the website he likes to buy his toys from, about him managing to get all of the stains out of his favorite skirt. He promises Kai to shave his legs for him again, because Kai enjoyed the feel of them last time, and Kai kisses his temple.

It feels normal, so pleasant and easy by the time Beomgyu stops them by another gate.

Kai glances through the bars of it, and feels his stomach drop. Beomgyu squeezes his hand.

“Second thoughts?”

“No,” Kai says, but he knows he sounds tense. This is… “Not about you.”

Beomgyu looks away too quickly for him to really be able to tell, but Kai thinks he smiles a little before he pushes the gate open.

This time, Kai follows behind Beomgyu rather than by his side, even though the path is wide enough for the both of them. The air is odd, the whole place smelling like soil and flowers. The path is lined with rose bushes that someone covered for the winter, and Kai can’t help but be a little sad that they’re not here while they’re in bloom.

Eventually, Beomgyu’s hand slips out of his, and Kai looks away from the path they’re taking and at the boy he followed here. He’s keeping his head high, even as he finds his destination and comes to a halt, swallowing before looking Kai’s way. A gust of wind messes with his hair, and he looks so good, so perfect, that Kai can’t help but follow. He stops next to Beomgyu, who fishes a lighter and a candle out of his pocket.

Kai watches as he puts it in the lantern next to the gravestone and lights it, then stays crouched there for a little while longer before kissing his fingers and pressing them to the stone.

Everything makes more sense now. Kai isn’t sure if he’s necessarily happy about it.

When Beomgyu comes back to Kai’s side, he takes his hand again and intertwines their fingers.

“So. This is my special place.”

A graveyard. A graveyard with a tasteful black headstone with the name of Beomgyu’s high school sweetheart on it. He died three years ago – the anniversary wasn’t that long ago. Somewhere around the time Kai first met Soobin, in the doorway of Beomgyu’s apartment.

“How often do you come here?”

Beomgyu shrugs, swings their joined hands between them. “Depends on how much I miss him.”

Kai chews on the inside of his cheek, hesitant. “How… what happened?”

“Car accident.” He feels Beomgyu’s fingers flex, a restless energy course through his whole body. “His car got T-boned at an intersection. He didn’t have a chance of making it. Nothing short of a miracle would have saved him.”

There’s that familiar emptiness in his voice; the void he calls in seemingly whenever his feelings get too deep for him to feel. It’s strange to see it out here, in broad daylight, outside of Beomgyu’s bed, with no music to fill the silences.

“You… you said that Soobin blames himself.”

Beomgyu squeezes his hand harder. “Yeah,” he allows, and Kai almost loses faith that he’ll continue when he adds, “He was in that car, too. Jun was driving him home.” Then Beomgyu looks up at Kai with an expression he can’t read at all. “Soobin got that miracle.”

Instead of Yeonjun. The pit in the bottom of Kai’s stomach grows.

When he doesn’t say anything, Beomgyu nods to himself, then leans his head on Kai’s shoulder. “He was kind of a jock, back in high school – it made no sense to me when he asked me out. But he was nice, he really liked me, and I was lonely, so I said yes.”

Kai wishes he could do something, but he can’t bring people back to life, so he just hums, to encourage Beomgyu to continue, if he wants to.

“He was one of the kindest people I’ve ever met – and he didn’t always get me, but he always tried to, anyway. He loved dad jokes, and ramen and expensive clothes. I went to this school because of him, since he got here on a sports scholarship.” Beomgyu digs his nails into Kai’s hand and he does his best not to flinch. “We got an apartment together, off-campus, and we were planning to stay after graduation – his parents didn’t approve of us, so he didn’t want to go back home. He was gonna coach varsity, and I’d become a wedding photographer.”

“You had it all planned out.”

It’s such a simple picture, laid out like this. High school sweethearts, a jock and an artsy soul, maybe an opposites attract kind of deal. An amiable romance, the stable, we’ll-get-married-one-day type. Then the single moment that tears it all apart.

But.

Soobin is still here. In high school, with Beomgyu, applying to college with Beomgyu. In Yeonjun’s car on that fateful day. And he just doesn’t fit into an A+B equation, the way Beomgyu is putting it. Was it ever really that simple?

Maybe he wanted it to be; maybe that’s the way he wants to remember it – remember him.

“Yeah.” It sounds so small, and for the first time, Beomgyu sounds like he’s about to cry. “I loved him so much.”

He hides his face in Kai’s chest before the tears spill over. Kai embraces him through it, runs his fingers through Beomgyu’s hair, and doesn’t say a thing. There’s nothing he can say.

It’s too late for words; for condolences.

They go to Beomgyu’s and lie on his bed, spooning with Beomgyu’s back pressed tightly against Kai’s chest. The lights are off and their fingers are intertwined. Beomgyu’s hair smells like soil and flowers and frosty air.

He pulls Kai’s arm tighter around his own waist, and then asks, “Are you in love with me?”

Kai thinks about it, then says, “Starting to.”

“Why?”

“Because… you keep snapshots of your life on a corkboard in your room. And you light that room with all kinds of mood lighting that never stick around for more than a month. And you have about a hundred different playlists, even though I’m sure there aren’t even that many moods for them to fit. You like trying new things out with me, and you’ve never judged me for a single thing, a single stupid fantasy. You don’t care that I’m a loser, outside of this apartment. You make me feel accepted, confident. I think… that I like you a bit more, with every new thing I find out.”

Beomgyu squeezes his hand; he’s quiet for a little too long.

“Maybe we should stop seeing each other,” he says eventually, then turns around to face Kai. They can barely see each other with the faint light from the streetlights outside, but Beomgyu’s eyes shine anyway. “So you don’t find out anything else.”

Kai tries to study his expression, but there just isn’t anything for him to go off of. “Are you afraid I’m gonna find something I won’t like?”

Beomgyu blinks. “Or that you won’t.” He turns onto his back. “It hurt a lot, you know. Losing him.” Kai can’t really see his face but he can see his throat jump. “It’s the worst feeling in the world. Having your entire future with someone you love ripped away from you like that. It’s like you died with them, and now you have to keep going because the rest of the world didn’t get the memo. You’re not you anymore, not without them, but people keep expecting you to be. I don’t ever want to feel like that again.”

“I—” He can’t promise not to ever die on him, can he? No one can.

“You weren’t the first guy I fucked around with after he died,” Beomgyu says, a bit sharply, like he’s expecting Kai to react badly. “And I wasn't gonna ever call you again after that first time.”

But he did. Kai didn't reach out to Beomgyu after they hooked up; it was Beomgyu, texting the number Kai left in his phone, offering to fulfill some stupid fantasy he shared in the heat of the moment. And it became their thing: fulfilling each other's fantasies.

“I'd always get off, but it would feel wrong, because it wasn't him, because I was supposed to be grieving…” he sniffles and Kai wants to reach out, but knows it wouldn't be welcome. It startles him when Beomgyu turns his head to look at him right afterwards. “But not with you. I don't know if it was you, or if it's finally been enough time. But it was good with you. I felt good with you.”

Kai cradles that statement in his chest, warm and comforting. If nothing else, he made Beomgyu feel good, for a little while.

“You can just let me keep making you feel good.”

Beomgyu turns to stare at the ceiling again. “With no feelings involved?”

“Why?”

“I just told you why,” Beomgyu snaps.

“For the same reason you're avoiding Soobin?”

Beomgyu turns away from him, and Kai stays put, watching his shoulders heave as he breathes through his bout of anger. This time, he can't just cuddle up, call him beautiful and brush it away.

“You don't get it,” Beomgyu says quietly when his breathing slows again. “He was in the hospital after the accident. Only conscious a couple hours a day. When I was at my worst… he wasn't there. And it's not his fault, but every night I had to spend alone, without them, it just made it more obvious to me — I didn't lose Soobin this time, not really, but if I did… I think I would've died. My heart would've just given up. If I'd have lost the other man I loved… after already losing Yeonjun… it would've killed me. So I let Soobin go. Stopped coming to the hospital, picking up his calls, responding to his texts. Because… I'd rather have him hate me then have him love me when he dies on me too. And if I let you in…” he looks over his shoulder, briefly. “Then I'm just giving the universe another chance to fuck me over.” Flopping over onto his back again, he swipes a hand down Kai's chest. “I thought I could scare you off, by showing you what happens to people who try to love me.”

“You thought I'd give up on you, because your boyfriend died?”

“Or because you'd understand why I can't do this.”

“Beomgyu,” he takes the hand touching his chest, and presses it to his sternum tightly. “If you think you're not ready, because it's too soon for you, I get it. You've been together five years. I know you can't just set up a timer and feel better after a certain time. But if the only reason you don't want to be with me is that you're afraid I'm gonna die…” he bites the inside of his lip. “You can't do that to yourself, Gyu. You can't just decide to not love people just because it won't last forever. There's always gonna be missed chances; and you're always gonna wish you had just a little bit longer with them – but that's not a reason to stop before we've even started.”

Beomgyu rolls towards him again, clenching the hand on Kai's chest into a fist. “I don't… I don't know, Kai. I'm not even sure how I feel about you, yet.”

It hurts to hear it, just a little bit, but Kai tries to toss his insecurities to the side, shrugging with a small smile. “Well, it was just the first date?”

“Was it even a date? We just went to my ex's grave.”

He leans forward, presses a brief, gentle kiss to Beomgyu's lips and then pulls away again. “We kissed at the end; so it counts as a date.”

Beomgyu lets out a quiet laugh. “Wasn't very romantic.”

“Well, starting with the romance isn't really our style.”

“But doing things together we've never done with anyone before is,” Beomgyu adds, reaching out his free hand to pinch Kai's cheek.

“Exactly.”

For a moment, Beomgyu is quiet, and then he presses forward to kiss Kai again. “I'll make up for it on the second date.”

“Okay,” Kai replies easily, winding his arm around Beomgyu's waist to pull him closer again. “But I'm picking the location next time.”

He can feel Beomgyu smile as they kiss again, leaning in nearly at the same time. “Fair enough.”

Kai nudges their noses together, and Beomgyu shifts to rest his face in Kai's collarbones. It feels warm; comfortable.

He makes Soobin watch the entirety of The Turn of the Screw on YouTube while they sit on Kai's bed with the laptop on a chair in front of them, eating chips and drinking box wine out of Sanrio mugs. Soobin turns his nose up at the shitty Shiraz, then at the genius of Benjamin Britten. Kai, undeniably, has a great time. 

“I don't think this is how the opera is supposed to be enjoyed,” Soobin grumbles when Kai leans forward to stop the next video from auto-playing.

“Would you rather be wearing a bowtie right now and be too broke from getting the tickets to get a glass of water after sitting in the theater for hours?”

“No, I'd rather have enough money to go see it in the theater so I could buy the good booze after it's over so I can forget the whole thing again.”

Kai laughs, squeaky and maybe too loud, but it makes Soobin smile cheekily, too. “Your taste is an insult to the art form of music,” he says mock-seriously, shaking the box of wine that's still resting on his night stand. “There's maybe, like, half the Shiraz left if you want it.”

Soobin pouts. “This is a terrible date.”

He doesn't freeze, but he doesn't just move on from that remark, either; he watches Soobin, who watches him back with the same pout without taking it back, making it into a joke.

“You think you could do better?” Kai challenges, a little hesitant.

“One hundred percent.” Soobin sounds unhesitant; unafraid. Maybe that means that the ball is in Kai's court; which means that they have to talk about the elephant in the room.

“Beomgyu and I went on a date the other day.”

It looks like Soobin is taking a second to think about his answer in the aftermath of it, his mouth and face twisting and twitching as he seems to consider this.

“Did it go well?” He asks eventually.

“I think so.” Beomgyu held Kai close and kissed him deep before he let him slip out of his apartment, and it felt like a promise.

“Okay,” Soobin says carefully, like he’s hedging, not yet sure how to feel about that. Then he finishes the wine still in his mug and leans back against the wall fully. “What’s this, then? Just friends?”

Kai hesitates; Soobin sounds a little put out, despite having known since the start how complicated this whole thing is. Maybe he was just… hoping, given how their last interaction went, that there was a chance to make something simple out of a tangled mess.

But it still remains a tangled mess, in the end, Kai just adding to it instead of pulling the threads apart and fixing it into something navigable.

He wants to say yes, but he likes Soobin, and he doesn’t want to lie. The truth is that he just wasn’t thinking about what it meant to take Beomgyu out one day and have Soobin over the other. His feelings for Beomgyu are separate from his feelings about Soobin, even though the two of them are so intrinsically intertwined.

Soobin pulls a face when he takes too long to reply. “You picked a hell of a duo to two-time.”

Kai can’t help but roll his eyes. “You knew I was sleeping with someone else from the time you met me.”

“I don’t care who you sleep with,” Soobin shoots back with an even more unpleasant grimace, but he sounds sincere. “But I know how this kind of thing ends. I’m not gonna get my hopes up just to get my heart broken again, thanks.”

“Again?”

Soobin shakes his head. “Beomgyu must have told you something.”

Kai frowns. “He told me about what happened to Yeonjun.”

For just a moment, Soobin looks taken aback, then he narrows his eyes. “Did he tell you what happened before that?”

He told Kai that he was in love with Soobin; before he ever loved Yeonjun – but he can’t tell Soobin that, can he? Not when he doesn’t know if Soobin knows. “Not in detail.”

Soobin huffs out through his nose, clenches his fists in the fabric of his own pants. “Well, let me tell you something. From my side of the story.”

“Okay.”

“You know that I was in the car.”

Kai nods. Soobin nods back.

“I confessed to Beomgyu that day.”

Desperate not to interrupt Soobin by reacting, Kai covers the bottom of his face with his palms. Soobin stares at him intently, challengingly. It reminds Kai of Beomgyu – of him asking if he had second thoughts right before he took him to that cemetery.

“At that point, he’s been together with Yeonjun for five years, and I… I had someone else, too. I really thought that that was it – that they were the one: the one that could finally make me forget about him. I thought we were both moving on with our lives, you know? We’ve always been… so intertwined, ever since middle school.”

Kai blinks rapidly, and he can’t help but lower his hands and ask, “So you were in love with him?”

Soobin shrugs jerkily. “It’s always been… kind of both easy and complicated between us. He was the first guy I ever realized I liked, but it just… never was the right time for us. And I guess now it’s never gonna be.” He shakes his head. “That day, I wanted to put it all behind us. I think part of me knew he had some feelings for me, too. Even Yeonjun kind of knew, I think, that things between us weren’t ever fully platonic. But he tolerated it, you know? He…”

Kai has to fight the urge to reach out as Soobin’s eyes fill with tears, and he takes a deep breath, blinking them away.

“He was a great guy. And he was so good to Beomgyu. It’s kind of fucked up, you know? I never got to say sorry to him. The last thing I did was hurt both of them, and the last thing Yeonjun did was be the bigger man, like he always was.”

“Beomgyu said he was driving you home,” Kai says quietly.

Soobin nods, straightening his posture a little. “Yeah. I drank for courage before I went to see Beomgyu, and I overdid it. They could’ve just kicked me out, let me walk home on my own, after what I did, but Yeonjun insisted on driving me home. I kind of thought he was going to pull over and kill me before we got home, but he just… didn’t say anything. And just drove.”

Kai studies him; his reddening eyes, his trembling lips. He’s been here before; in a stupid love-triangle with a man who isn’t quite willing to let go of him, even though he wants a committed relationship with someone else. He’s been here, being the ‘just friends except not quite’ option. Soobin has been the second choice, the one you keep around just in case your other relationship doesn’t pan out.

But that’s not what he was to Beomgyu, is it?

“Beomgyu yelled at me, when I told him I was in love with him.” Soobin almost laughs, huffing out a breath incredulously. “I don’t think I’ve ever heard him sound like that before. He told me I couldn’t do that to him. That it was cruel of me to say that – that I’ve been in love with him all this time without saying anything. How dare you and what the fuck do you expect me to do now, you piece of shit? He called Yeonjun so he’d kick me out, even though he was supposed to be out with friends that night – he told him what I said, that I told him I loved him, and I think he expected Yeonjun to punch me or something, but he didn’t do it. He hugged Beomgyu and told him he was sorry and that it was okay, and then he took me outside to his car and told me that he was taking me home. I never got to know what he was really thinking; neither of us did.”

Kai can’t look at him anymore, so he stares at the floor instead. He can’t imagine what it had to feel like. For Soobin or Beomgyu. The scars that had to leave.

“I don’t want to be in that situation ever again, Kai. You’re a nice guy, and I like you, and I can tell you’re interested, too. But if you want Beomgyu… please don’t string me along. If I wait around again… I don’t think it’s gonna end well for anyone.”

He chews on his lip, and finally looks at Soobin again. Soobin looks earnest, and a little pleading, and there’s still red around his eyes. It’s not fair to him, is it? As much as Kai wants to compartmentalize, keep him and Beomgyu separate, pretend that the world in which he’s trying to crack through Beomgyu’s shell is a different world from the one where he might be falling for a handsome journalism student who doesn’t understand good music, there’s only one reality, one in which Kai can’t have his cake and eat it, too, one in which consequences exist, and he doesn’t want them to hurt either of the men he’s grown to care for.

“Okay.”

Soobin’s mouth twitches in a hint of a smile. “Okay?”

Kai nods. “I understand.”

“Thank you,” Soobin whispers, and sniffles hard, still staring Kai straight in the eye.

“I think Beomgyu needs me.”

“I think Beomgyu needs someone, too.”

“I’m sorry.”

“It’s okay.”

Soobin bites his own lips; there’s a tension now, between them, and Kai can’t stop looking. Can’t move away; can’t break this spell. They like each other, don’t they. In the simplest terms, in the most basic, instinctual, uncomplicated ways. Soobin doesn’t need him, and Kai doesn’t feel the need to fix him. He just likes having him around. He wants to kiss him, he wants to see what Soobin’s shoulders look like under his sweaters and the dress shirts he wears to his internship. He wants to know how he’s different from Taehyun, from Beomgyu, when there’s nothing between them but want.

It’s curiosity, isn’t it? The string that’s keeping them tied together. The reason they can’t let go just yet; the reason they can’t stop staring – what if they did? What would it feel like? What does Soobin and Kai taste like?

When he moves forward, Soobin meets him halfway, and he’s grateful for it, because he doesn’t know if he can explain this; if he wouldn’t cave the second he tried to explain why he feels like he needs this. Soobin holds his neck while Kai lets his hands travel down Soobin’s front, over the line of his shoulder that he was so curious about. Soobin is a reserved kisser, or maybe it’s something about the situation that makes him reserved, so Kai tries not to push his boundaries too much. They kiss pretty; they kiss romantic – the best Kai can do with that sort of thing without much experience with it.

There’s a moment where they could stop. They both pull back to breathe, and Soobin’s eyes are shut and his face is pink and mouth red and inviting, and Kai wants nothing more to get even closer, kiss his lips purple, pull his sweatshirt off so he could follow the blush disappearing under its neckline all the way down.

Soobin lets one hand drop from Kai’s neck, lays it on his thigh instead and asks, “Beomgyu?”

And Kai holds his breath for just a second before sneaking his hands up under the sweatshirt and holding onto Soobin’s hips. “We’re not dating yet.”

He watches Soobin’s breath hitch and his lips tremble. It looks a little like he’s not opening his eyes on purpose; like he wants to stay in his head for this. “But you have to tell him.”

“Of course,” Kai says and means it. He hasn’t told Beomgyu about this at all yet; about him seeing Soobin – but he needs to. If he wants Beomgyu to trust him, to be his one day, then he needs to. He can’t keep these two worlds separate anymore. “He deserves to know.”

Soobin smiles a little, and he finally blinks his eyes open. They still look a little tearful, but also warm. “I like you, Kai. It’s a shame he found you first.”

Kai swallows heavily and nods while Soobin brushes his cheekbone with his thumb gently, lovingly. “It’s a shame I met him first.”

He doesn’t really want to see Soobin’s reaction to that, so he buries the emotions that well up with it under Soobin’s jaw, dispels his own thoughts with licks and bites, busies himself along the path down to Soobin’s clavicles. He shifts over to Soobin’s lap like it’s the most natural thing in the world, pulls his shirt off and bites into a nipple like they’ve been doing this for ages. Soobin feels so natural – Kai doesn’t even think to doubt himself, not when he’s kissing down Soobin’s body or sliding down to the floor to his knees and pulling Soobin closer with hands wrapped around the underside of his knees. He doesn’t worry too much about his technique, about looking good, when they pull Soobin’s pants down together and he takes him in his mouth. Soobin is only the third person he’s ever had sex with, but it doesn’t feel like it, somehow it feels just as easy, just as familiar as running his hands over Beomgyu’s body does these days, when he’s brushing his lips against the underside of Soobin’s dick, when he takes his balls into his mouth, when he runs his hands up Soobin’s thighs with his cheek pressed against his knee, and asks if he wants to cum on his face with his eyes closed.

He keeps his eyes closed while Soobin finishes all over his cheeks, his chin, while he rubs his tip into Kai’s lips until he’s too sensitive to continue.

“You’re really pretty,” Soobin says hoarsely while Kai is licking over his own bottom lip, breathing hard in the aftermath.

“No one’s ever called me pretty before,” he admits.

“They should,” Soobin replies simply.

He came on Soobin’s back later, after rubbing his dick between his ass cheeks until he got off, teasing them both. Soobin was willing to bottom for him, nodding enthusiastically when Kai reached for his ass while they made out with Kai between his legs after the blow job, when Kai pulled it further against his hips. But he didn’t have lube. Or condoms.

It was almost a wake up call, having to pull back from kissing Soobin feverishly to admit that. He didn’t have anything in his dorm, because he never had sex in his dorm.

He only had sex at Beomgyu’s apartment, with Beomgyu. It never occurred to him, before he met Soobin, that he could ever have sex with anyone else. That he could fuck somebody in his dorm, spontaneously, because they were both into it, because someone else than Beomgyu found him attractive.

Found him pretty.

They don’t cuddle after sex, there’s no music and no easy intimacy, Soobin doesn’t hold Kai’s hand between his legs or holds it in his own, they just lie next to each other, then sit up and drink the rest of the boxed Shiraz. Soobin smiles at him sadly, then kisses him and tells him he had a good time. Kai thanks him and then feels stupid for saying that, but Soobin just keeps smiling before he looks away and starts putting his clothes on. It feels a little empty, with no mood lighting and corkboard to stare at, just the sounds of Soobin’s clothes rustling as he dresses himself, the sound of his voice when he says, “You have my number,” without looking at him.

Kai walks him all the way to the reception of his dorm, but they don’t say anything else. He feels a weird feeling at the bottom of his stomach; is this what casual sex is usually like? Is this what it’s supposed to feel like? He’s not sure if he likes it.

He’s watching Beomgyu rummage through a grocery bag in his kitchen when he finds the courage to say,

“I sucked Soobin’s dick the other day.”

And Beomgyu freezes. Kai feels guilty immediately, for bringing it up now, bringing it up like this, bringing it up at all. They had a good night planned for today, making dinner together – or rather engaging in some filthy, sticky food play with Beomgyu in nothing but a cute apron, some thigh-highs and leather garters with cute heart-shaped loops. Beomgyu sounded genuinely excited; now he looks carefully blank as he straightens up and faces him, slowly tilting his head to one side.

“My Soobin?”

The word my stabs into Kai’s stomach uncomfortably. Did he take something that was Beomgyu’s that day? On top of giving himself away, when he was only supposed to be focusing on getting Beomgyu comfortable with having feelings for him?

“Your Soobin.” My Soobin. Our Soobin.

Beomgyu takes a slow step backwards, keeps his hands behind himself as he leans on the back of a chair. “How did that happen?”

His voice doesn’t betray anything, and Kai feels tortured in the absence of anything to fight against. The only option he has is being honest; telling the whole truth. “I told you I met him on campus once.”

Beomgyu only nods, still not giving anything away.

“We met again after that. A couple times. We… had food, went to karaoke. Went on a walk.”

“And you fucked him.”

Kai shrugs, a bit helpless. “I promised I’d show him an opera I liked, so he came over, and I…”

“Fucked him.”

He closes his eyes, even though that doesn’t erase the fact that Beomgyu is not wrong. “It was just… that one time. I promise. We talked about it, about…” he opens his eyes again to look Beomgyu in the eye, to try to convince him he’s being sincere. “How I want to be with you. And that it means that whatever’s between us needs to stop.”

Beomgyu takes a deep breath through his nose, his nostrils flaring, and he rolls his eyes. “You’re not my boyfriend.”

“But I want to be.”

“So you broke up with Soobin and what – blew him as a consolation prize?”

He shrugs again, jerkily this time, unable to keep up the eye contact. “It felt right. To get a taste of what I was letting go.”

Beomgyu snorts sharply, and his rigid posture loosens, turns into something more relaxed, a little sultry as he lifts his chin and exposes his neck. “Was it good? Did you do him right? Did you make him scream?”

“I didn’t fuck him, Beomgyu.” He wanted to, but he couldn’t – because he was too close to being Beomgyu’s already.

Maybe Beomgyu needs to know that, too.

“Sure,” Beomgyu says, like he doesn’t believe a word of it. “You just sucked his dick.”

“I let him cum on my face.”

Beomgyu’s eyebrows shoot up at that, still carefully cool but with a curious glint in his eyes. “Why? I thought you wanted to be mine, not his.”

“That has nothing to do with that.”

“Really?” Kai watches as Beomgyu slowly lifts his own shirt and runs his fingers over his stomach that Kai has painted white at least a dozen times already. “You don’t feel like I’m yours when you cum on me?”

“I’ve never felt like you were mine.”

Beomgyu swallows, his throat jumping. His hand closes into a fist. “Smooth. Liar.”

“I’m not lying – that’s not how it works for me. You’re not mine because I get to be inside of you, or because I get to cum on you, or even because I’m the only one you’re sleeping with. You’d be mine if you decided to be mine. And I don’t think you have.”

There’s a pause where Beomgyu doesn’t say anything. He lets his shirt fall again, and grips the back of the chair with the hand that was keeping it up.  He stares Kai down, pulls his bottom lip between his teeth. Looks like he’s trying to read the tea leaves of Kai’s pained expression; trying to see the future: if he’s worth trusting.

Then he sighs, crosses his arms over his chest and looks down at the floor between them. “Was he good in bed?”

Kai can’t do anything but admit, “He didn’t do a lot of work himself, to be honest.”

And somehow, Beomgyu closes his eyes and laughs – it sounds like it hurts a little coming out of his chest, but it leaves a hint of a smile behind it.

“This is fucked up.”

“A little,” Kai admits.

Beomgyu opens his eyes, looks up at Kai through his lashes and says, “I want to eat whipped cream off of your face now.”

And it’s just as good a peace offering as any.

They shower together afterward, since they were both covered in sticky sugary residue in the aftermath, and then lie in Beomgyu’s bed, for once facing each other instead of laying side-by-side, holding onto each other. There’s a happy but low-key playlist playing, and the only light in the room are two big candles on Beomgyu’s desk. They’re different sizes, and come in different containers, but they both smell like lavender. Beomgyu is holding one of Kai’s hands in both of his own, and is using the pad of Kai’s thumb to play with his own nipple. Kai isn’t sure what he’s trying to accomplish or why, but not knowing and it not being important why feels kind of pleasant. Their legs are all tangled up. Like this, when he’s facing Beomgyu, Kai can’t see the corkboard on the wall. It’s just the two of them in low light, surrounded by music and lavender.

This is what sex should feel like. Or rather, what he should feel like after it. Warm and full, not cold and empty. Relaxed. Good. He feels so fucking good.

“I love you.”

He regrets it the second he says it. Beomgyu closes his eyes.

“I like you,” he responds quietly.

Kai leans over and Beomgyu opens up for a gentle kiss without hesitation. His hand is pressed to Beomgyu’s chest while they kiss, and he feels Beomgyu’s heartbeat rush under his palm. Fluttering, like a little bird, nervous and fragile but still brave enough to fly.

Kai takes him on a real date. They go to an arcade where Beomgyu kicks his ass in a shooting game, they spend way too long swapping out at a claw machine until they finally claim a unicorn plushie that Kai magnanimously lets Beomgyu have even though he falls in love with it the second he sees it. They go to a dog café and let their hot chocolates run completely cold while they play with the puppies, only leaving ten minutes before closing.

He’s never seen Beomgyu smile so much.

There’s a brightness to him that Kai isn’t sure he’s ever seen in him before but that he’s sure he loves. A strange lightness in his step, and ease to his laugh. Every single one of his smiles is radiant and beautiful, even the small ones, the slow ones that build while he watches Kai cuddle with a puppy. He complains about a professor, but he sounds happy, he pouts at his cold cup of cocoa but he just sounds sweet. He stands silently in front of Kai when they stop in front of the doors of his apartment complex, but his face isn’t blank. It seems open; it seems fond.

He wants to say it again, I love you, keep saying it until it’s enough to make Beomgyu say that he loves him back.

Instead he says, “Thank you.”

And Beomgyu grins and asks, “For what?”

“Letting me take you out.”

Then the grin turns into a smile, and Beomgyu looks down, and they’re close, they’re end-of-a-date close, just enough to not have to do much but lean in for a kiss, but Beomgyu doesn’t do that. He plays with a corner of Kai’s open jacket, and says, “Thank you for taking me out.”

“We should do this more often.”

“We should.”

Kai can’t help but smile himself, maybe too wide when Beomgyu peeks up at him and laughs at his expression. Thankfully, he follows it up immediately by taking Kai by the lapels and pulling him into a kiss, so he doesn’t have to be embarrassed for too long. They both ruin the kiss a little by not being able to hold smiles back, but it just feels better, warmer, lighter in the center of Kai’s chest.

“You’ll still come over Thursday, right?”

“Of course.”

Beomgyu scrunches his nose adorably in response, and Kai has never thought the words I love you this loud.

Kai sits on Beomgyu’s couch in a skater skirt. It’s turquoise, and he has a plain black shirt tucked into the waist of it. His legs aren’t smooth, and it bothers him a little, but he was afraid of committing. He’s still afraid. Beomgyu is sitting on his feet in front of him in sweatpants and an open flannel shirt with nothing under it, his eyes bright and intent on Kai’s, and Kai is terrified.

Then Beomgyu leans back, his shirt falling even more open. “You look really pretty today.”

He swallows. It should feel the way it did when Soobin said it, it should feel better, but it kind of doesn’t. “Do I?”

Beomgyu gives a slow, sure nod. “You’re beautiful.”

No. He can’t take it. He closes his eyes, bites into his lip and shakes his head, breathing in shakily, struggling to breathe out. It doesn’t feel right.

He feels and hears Beomgyu coming closer, feels a hesitant hand closing around his ankle, looking for a safe place to ground him from. “What’s wrong?”

Beomgyu’s voice is low and warm and reassuring, and it makes him calm enough to say, “I can’t do this today.”

“Do you know why?”

Kai shakes his head harder. “I can’t think. I need to take it off.”

“Here, or in the bathroom?”

“Bathroom.”

“Should I go with you?”

He shakes his head again. Beomgyu hesitates for a second, then moves away, letting go of him.

“Okay, I’m covering my eyes. Go.”

Kai blinks his eyes open, ignoring the wetness in them, to see Beomgyu sitting at his feet, just scooted slightly to the side, with his palms firmly over his eyes, like a kid playing hide-and-seek. It kind of makes him want to cry more. It’s so unnecessarily sweet.

He rushes to the bathroom to get the skirt off of himself, hides it between two towels so he doesn’t have to look at it, then leans on the sink, trying to breathe. He’s still not sure why he freaked out; he’s not usually the one getting skittish when they try new things. Kai only ever needs a second to breathe when he’s being overstimulated, it’s really the only time he had to tap out of anything. No role play or sensation play has ever made him feel like this. Restraints, nicknames, insults… it’s never felt quite like this.

But it’s never been quite like this, has it?

The reason behind this one is different. It’s not something Kai has had horny thoughts about doing with a nameless, faceless stranger. It’s not something he’s dreamed about doing to Beomgyu, or Beomgyu doing to him.

It’s a fantasy where he gets to be Beomgyu – the pretty one, the beautiful one, the one being worshiped, lusted over, the sex kitten, the prize.

And he doesn’t think he can achieve it while looking at the real deal, into Beomgyu’s long-lashed pretty eyes, at his perfect lips and lean physique, feeling what he always feels when he’s with Beomgyu: lucky to just be able to look at him, to touch him, honored to be trusted with his body, with his pleasure. When there’s Soobin’s voice in his head, calling him pretty, Soobin's hands running up Kai's bare thighs. He calls him pretty and he's just as powerless in the face of it as Kai is when he has Beomgyu's shaved legs in his lap, when he's pulling up the skirt of a babydoll dress to press up against his bare ass.

This fantasy doesn't belong to Beomgyu. And it probably never will.

Kai washes his face and leaves the bathroom; Beomgyu is sitting cross-legged on the floor still, a few buttons of his shirt done up now, frowning slightly down at an open book. It's the book of poems from the coffee table, the one Kai never saw Beomgyu touch before.

“What's that?”

Beomgyu's face shoots up towards him, and he gives Kai a thorough once-over before responding. “It was a gift for Soobin. For my 18th birthday. A Pablo Neruda poetry collection.”

Kai hums. He slowly makes his way to the couch, his legs feeling shaky, and sits down in the same spot. Beomgyu watched him warily.

“Do you have a favorite poem from it?”

“Sure,” Beomgyu looks down at the book, and Kai follows his eyes. It's not open where the bookmark is, or the printed-out poem, but the bookmark is still there.

“Read it for me?” he requests, his own voice sounding thin to his own ears.

Beomgyu's face softens, and he nods, gathering himself up and sitting on the couch instead. His shoulder is pressed into Kai's, and his legs are thrown over Kai's lap. He's warm, and there's stubble on his shins when Kai slips a hand up his pant leg. Kai watches him flip through the pages, not stop when he passes the bookmark at all.

By the time he finds it, Kai isn’t looking at the book at all, he’s just watching Beomgyu’s face, his lips pursing in concentration, then the dawn of small joy on his face when he finds what he was looking for, and then he’s reading, and then he’s not reading at all, and maybe saying the words of the poem from memory or maybe making it up as he goes, and there’s a gentle blush blooming on his face and his voice is deep and warm and all Kai can remember when he’s kissing him quiet afterwards are the words,

I want to do with you what spring does with the cherry trees.

Beomgyu and Kai have lunch together between classes, and Beomgyu laughs just as easily as on their previous date. He steals sips of Kai’s cherry soda, staining his tongue red with it, and he kisses Kai before they part again. They’re not dating.

Kai buys him groceries for real this time before getting to his apartment on Saturday, not with the intent to eat all the food off of him later. Beomgyu cheers when he finds the pack of chocolate-covered strawberries Kai got him on a whim, and hand-feeds him half of one before eating the other half himself. He smiles at Kai prettily afterwards, and they make food together without doing more than kissing when they get bored waiting for water to start boiling. They’re not dating.

They take the bus to a nearby town together the next week, and Beomgyu naps on his shoulder on the way while Kai plays games on his phone. Then they go to the local zoo, feed every single animal they’re allowed to feed, spend way too long in the aviary arguing about which bird they look the most alike to, then spend another half an hour in the gift shop, hemming and hawing over plushies and animal-themed hats. They grab some overpriced french fries for lunch, and eat them at a river bank, with their feet hanging over the water. Kai has a black bear hat on his head, and Beomgyu is wearing a white tiger one. Beomgyu tugs at his ears while kissing him the whole day. He sleeps over at Beomgyu’s that day, because he’s too tired to make it back to his dorm. They’re not dating.

He wakes up with Beomgyu in his arms, and he kisses his bare shoulders until Beomgyu wakes up, and Beomgyu is too confused to remember all of the previous day, and Kai laughs and bites his chest until Beomgyu stops frowning in confusion. They have ramen for breakfast, because they’re too lazy to cook, and they have sex on the couch, because they’re too lazy to get off of it. Kai has homework to do. Beomgyu asks if he can do it at his place. Kai has books he needs that are in his bag at his dorm. Beomgyu kisses him goodbye lazily for ten minutes straight. They’re not dating.

Beomgyu buys new mood lighting – they’re cloud-shaped string lights with little happy faces on them. He says they reminded him of Kai, then hands him the handle of a leash. Kai spends a little too long that day just keeping Beomgyu kneeling between his legs, playing with his mouth and tongue, brushing the pads of his fingers over his teeth, touching his face, petting his hair until he’s an absolute, drool-covered mess. If they were supposed to be strictly sexual, he’d be in trouble. Like this, he finally pulls Beomgyu up towards him and into a kiss, calls him a pretty puppy, and Beomgyu noses at his jaw eagerly, and asks,  “Your puppy?” and Kai grabs his hair a little too tight and replies, “My puppy.” before kissing him again, even harder, and pulling Beomgyu all the way up and into his lap. Beomgyu almost convinces him to fuck raw that day, but they do it with a condom and Kai pulls out to cum on Beomgyu’s pretty collarbones instead while Beomgyu whines the whole time, just like a puppy. It’s in the afterglow, during the aftercare, that Beomgyu presses wet eyes into Kai’s shoulder, hugging him close almost desperately, and says his name over and over and over again, like there’s something important he needs to tell him, something he needs him to understand. Kai cards his fingers through his hair and rubs his back and does his best to shush him, but at some point Beomgyu starts sobbing, anyway, until he cries himself to sleep.

Kai goes to get his bag from the living room and does his homework at Beomgyu’s desk until he wakes up, then makes him tea and kisses him for comfort. Beomgyu assures him that his little crying breakdown was a relief. He doesn’t say what made him cry. They’re not dating.

Instead of playing music after they have sex, Beomgyu sits up with Kai’s head resting on his thigh and sings for him. He has a nice, deep, breathy voice and he sings dreamy little songs that seem to perfectly fit into his bedroom – with the corkboard full of memories, string lights, poetry books and a camera on his shelf. He plays with Kai’s hair and sticks his fingers under the collar of his shirt to touch bare skin, and Kai thinks he might fall asleep like this.

Then Beomgyu finishes a song, tilts Kai’s head back with his fingers and says, “I think you should be my boyfriend now.”

And Kai has to hold his breath just to not embarrass himself with the rush of emotions that hits him instantly. Isn’t he already? Basically? It doesn’t matter. Beomgyu wants this. Wants him. “Okay. Will you be mine?”

Beomgyu bites his lip. It shouldn’t be hard to answer – if he wants Kai, then Kai gets him in return. That’s how this works. He still lets Beomgyu think about it. “Okay.”

Maybe they should kiss to seal the deal, but it feels right to do it this way. Quietly. Beomgyu brushing hair out of Kai’s face while they watch each other fondly.

“What do boyfriends do that we don’t already?” Kai asks, tentatively, voice a bit hushed. He’s afraid of the answer, honestly.

Beomgyu shrugs, swallows hard. There’s an answer, a real answer, that he won’t give, and it’s obvious. Have a future, maybe, is what he doesn’t want to say. “Have unprotected sex.”

It’s a deflection, and Kai takes it, pulling an exaggerated face in return. “Maybe on your birthday.”

“Do you even know when my birthday is?”

He doesn’t. Beomgyu never told him. Beomgyu doesn’t know his, either. They do everything backwards – maybe that’s their charm.

Beomgyu smiles a little, and shakes his head around by the chin. “March 13th. Mark your calendar, boyfriend.”

It’s kind of inevitable, and yet Kai doesn’t see it coming. He’s walking Beomgyu to class after he stayed over at his place for the weekend again, they’re holding hands and swinging them obnoxiously between them as they make plans for the week. Beomgyu has Kai’s bear hat on from their zoo trip, and his nose is pink from the cold, and Kai is in love with him, head over fucking heels.

Kai sees him first.

The sight brings him to a stop, and Beomgyu stops too and looks at him curiously before following his eyeline and then freezing, too.

It’s Soobin, and he’s dressed up again, in a dark blue coat and shiny dress shoes, wearing glasses and carrying an armful of books, smiling down at a young woman who is blushing all the way to her hairline. Beomgyu squeezes Kai’s hand. Soobin glances up, sees them, and his smile slowly dissipates into something Kai can’t read. The young woman scurries away. Soobin keeps looking at them. Beomgyu doesn’t drag Kai away.

When Kai looks at him, though, Beomgyu is just staring at Kai pleadingly, and Kai knows that if there will be a time, it’s not now. He squeezes Beomgyu’s hand back, and they keep walking.

“You said you don’t want to hear what he has to say.”

Beomgyu sighs. His hair is wet. They just tried to dye it red, and maybe it’ll be a disaster, or Beomgyu will look prettier than ever. Kai knows he’ll love him either way. “I meant it.”

“Why? What’s so bad about just hearing him out?”

“It’s never just hearing him out.”

It’s been a while since Kai saw that blankness on Beomgyu’s face; since he saw him clear it of all emotion, like he closed a door shut, not wanting Kai to follow. He decides he hates it now, more than ever.

“What do you mean?”

Beomgyu looks away. “I told you nobody managed to get me to fall out of love with him.”

“You did say that.” Kai crosses his arms, and sits down on the lip of Beomgyu’s bathtub. It feels like a strange place to have this conversation, but if not now, then when?

“Loving him makes me do stupid things,” Beomgyu says quietly, but heavily, as if he needs Kai to understand that.

“Like what?”

“Want him back in my life.”

Kai studies his face. “Would that be so bad?”

Beomgyu raises his eyebrows like it’s a stupid question. “I have a boyfriend now. Again.”

“So?”

“A boyfriend who almost loved him, too.”

Kai bites into his lip and looks away. Point made. “I just think… neither of you can move on like this. He told me what he wanted from you was closure. He wants… this for you. He wants you to be happy, but…”

“But.”

He shrugs helplessly, and meets Beomgyu’s eyes again. “I can’t speak for him, but I think he feels like he needs your permission to be happy, too. You say you don’t blame him for what happened to Yeonjun, but would you blame him for thinking that?”

Beomgyu frowns. “Is that what he thinks?”

“I don’t know what he thinks, Beomgyu. That’s why you should talk to him yourself. Whatever happens, it has to be better than this. Having a skeleton in your closet like this, a ghost of the past walking around campus that you have to pretend not to see.”

Instead of responding, Beomgyu looks away, and he plays with his own ratty shirt and his fingers, worrying at his lips before he shakes his head and says, “You know, that’s what he told me, the night Yeonjun died – that he wanted me to be happy. That he knew I was happy with Yeonjun, maybe happier than he could ever make me himself, he said.” He blinks his eyes rapidly, then shakes his head again. “Maybe it’s time for us to move on. From each other. Stop clinging to each other. Grow up. Grow apart.” His voice gets quieter and quieter as he keeps going, like each word is harder to say. “You don’t need me anymore, and I hope one day I won’t need you, either. There’s nothing— nothing I need to do, nothing I need you to say, I just need you to know that I loved you, that I love you, and I think I’ve loved you since I met you, and these have been the best years of my life.”

There are tears on Beomgyu’s face. Kai doesn’t reach out. Beomgyu stares at nothing as he swallows back a sound, as he sniffs and clears his throat.

“Yeonjun said that it would be okay. That he loves me.” Beomgyu licks his lips, then looks up at Kai with eyes full of tears. “He used to tell me to quit crying a lot. I don’t think he knew how to handle it. But he tried.”

Beomgyu smiles a little at the end, and Kai smiles back, tight-lipped.

“You wouldn’t tell me to quit crying.”

Kai shakes his head. He thinks his eyes might be glassy, too, just from watching Beomgyu, hearing the pain in his voice. “It’s good for you.”

“It gives me a headache.”

“I’ll bring you water.”

Beomgyu wipes at his wet cheeks with the heels of his pals. “You’re so stupidly good to me.”

“I’m in love with you.”

“He was, too.”

Kai nods. Then he says, “Soobin is, too.”

Beomgyu watches him carefully. “What if you can’t prove me wrong? What if you can’t make me fall out of love with him?”

He swallows and shrugs. “I don’t think I want to – not for my own sake. I’d love you the same.”

“Are you really that sure?”

“No second thoughts.”

Beomgyu smiles another small smile. He looks down, then away.

“I think…” he starts, then shakes his head, breathes out a laugh. “Never mind.”

Kai sighs. “That’s okay.”

Beomgyu smiles at him a little wider. Kai lets one side of his mouth tug up, a little wry. It’s imperfect, but it’s them, and it works.

Beomgyu looks amazing with his bright red hair; Kai can’t stop kissing his face, when they’re making food, when they’re watching Netflix together, when they’re cuddling, when Beomgyu is trying to sleep. Beomgyu threatens to cover it with black dye and Kai kisses him until he forgets to be mad. They buy cute hair clips with bows on them and Beomgyu sits on the bed obediently while Kai puts them in his hair. Kai asks Beomgyu to top for the first time in a while, first time since they started dating, and he buries his face in Beomgyu’s hair when it gets too overwhelmingly good for him to not want to hide away. While Beomgyu’s dick is softening inside him, he skates a hand up his back and asks something like, “What do you like the most about me?”

And Beomgyu holds his chin in his hand, looks him in the eye and says, “You’re not afraid.” before kissing him.

Later, when they’re lying next to each other, facing each other again, and Kai’s hand is in the back of Beomgyu’s shorts so Kai can keep a hand curled over the curve of his ass, and Beomgyu’s eyes are closed and there’s a jazz song playing, Kai can feel a kind of tension snapping, and then Beomgyu blinks his eyes open like he just woke up, even though Kai knows what he sounds like when he sleeps now, and he’s been awake this whole time.

“Do you have Soobin’s number?”

“I do.”

“Maybe we should have dinner with him.”

“We?”

Beomgyu nods, and there’s something small and vulnerable about the way he does it, so Kai kisses him instead of questioning him. Beomgyu holds his face gently while they kiss. Like Kai is precious to him.

The first time they had sex, Kai wasn’t drunk. He’d like to say he was, or that Beomgyu was, but neither is true. If he was mindless for any reason, careless, sneaking off with a handsome guy to have quick and filthy sex with him in an empty classroom, he was mindless with attraction with the exhilaration of being wanted, by someone this… hot. Pretty. Someone whose smile looked like sunshine until it turned devious the longer they had to work together after hours, until he gave a proposition Kai couldn’t say no to. Wouldn’t.

The first thing Kai did with Beomgyu that he never did with anyone else was spit in Beomgyu’s mouth, just because he asked him to, and he did it without hesitation, unlike half the things they did that day, because Beomgyu’s eyes were cloudy and his voice was hoarse and if need sounds like anything, it is Beomgyu’s voice back then. Beomgyu laughed a little at his willingness to please, and teased him about being dirty-minded, and instead of defending himself, Kai narrated a dirty fantasy he had into his skin, just to hear him choke on another laugh, to hear him moan, to ask if he’s imagining it, too.

Beomgyu gave him his number, and Kai gave him his in return, but he didn’t even think of texting. Kai didn’t do booty calls, or casual sex, and there was a nagging voice at the back of his mind telling him that Beomgyu wasn’t that attracted to him anyway, most likely. Beomgyu was bored and horny, and Kai was there and a novelty, not a staple at the kinds of parties people went to to hook up. He was fresh and interesting. That was all.

But then, a couple weeks later, it was Beomgyu texting him, repeating that stupid fantasy back at him, saying I could make that happen. Texting him his address.

And Kai thought about the smiling face stealing his handout, the smirking face leading him through a door that should have been locked, the way it relaxed into something wanton but still beautiful when blissed out, and he just couldn’t say no. Wouldn’t say no.

Kai wears his nice jeans and a sweatshirt Beomgyu once told him looked cute on him. Beomgyu wears a thick white cardigan he wears when he’s stressing out over class assignments, a pair of slacks Kai has never seen in his life, and a reddish brown choker that he makes Kai help him put on, saying it makes him feel more confident when he has it on. He kisses Kai about a hundred times for comfort, until their lips are both bright red by the time they finish cooking.

Soobin comes a little late; like a gentleman.

He doesn’t flinch when he sees Beomgyu’s arm wrapped tightly around Kai’s body, or Kai’s arm wound around Beomgyu’s shoulders. He just takes a deep breath and visibly tries to smile.

“Hi.”

Beomgyu looks him up and down, then tilts his head. “You should’ve brought wine. We might need it.”

Soobin’s brow furrows, even as the smile lingers on his mouth. “I thought you didn’t really like wine.”

Beomgyu makes an unhappy sound instead of replying, and walks off towards the kitchen, leaving the two of them hovering in the doorway.

They watch each other silently, both obviously unsure of how to approach each other, then Soobin reaches out and Kai falls into his embrace. He doesn’t think they’ve ever just hugged each other before. But it feels nice.

“Thank you.”

Kai snorts. “You’re not out of the woods yet.”

“I’m in the woods,” Soobin argues, and smiles at him when they pull apart. “That’s further than I got on my own.”

His smile is still so pretty to Kai; he has nothing to say to that, so he just leads him to Beomgyu’s kitchen instead.

They made spaghetti together, some simple sauce they found the recipe for on the internet, and Beomgyu is hovering over the pan of it when they enter the kitchen, looking like he’s trying to figure out whether it’s poisonous. Kai comes up right behind him, hugs him briefly and leans down to kiss his neck right above the edge of the choker he’s wearing before he reaches up above him to get the plates.

In his peripheral vision, he can see Soobin stop in the doorway to watch Kai do it.

Beomgyu has to see it, too, because he glances over a little too casually. “Go take a seat. There’s no assigned seating here.”

Soobin nods awkwardly, and sits on the chair closest to the door. Kai sits the plates down next to the stove, then announces he’s gonna get the drinks, and Beomgyu starts plating the food. They work well together; efficiently.

He asks for Soobin’s drink preference and doesn’t bother asking for Beomgyu’s, just putting the right drink next to his favorite seat so he can hurry over and make sure Beomgyu doesn’t try to carry three plates of spaghetti on his own. He takes two of them out of Beomgyu’s hands, and Beomgyu rolls his eyes at him, but Kai just winks in response and carries them over to the table – one for himself, one for Soobin, right opposite each other.

Beomgyu brings the cutlery with him instead of complaining, and as soon as they are all sat down, Soobin opens his mouth.

“So you two are dating now.”

Beomgyu huffs. “Yes.”

“How long?”

Beomgyu shrugs. Kai could tell Soobin down to the day, but he doesn’t.

Soobin licks his lips. “You wanted to talk.”

“I wanted to have dinner,” Beomgyu says a little sharply, stabbing at his own plate with a fork and a pout. “My boyfriend made you spaghetti. Enjoy it.”

Kai frowns. “We made it together.”

Beomgyu pulls a face. “And now I can’t just blame it on you if it sucks.”

Soobin laughs. It’s so startling, the sound of Soobin’s laugh and Beomgyu existing in one room. Beomgyu’s eyes flicker towards Soobin, but don’t make it all the way there.

“I put in most of the seasoning,” Kai lies, and Beomgyu looks up at him, smiling.

“I’ll be careful,” Soobin says lightly, and Kai rolls his eyes at him.

They ate in perfect silence. After his last bite, Soobin looks between the two of them and says, “That was good.”

Kai meets his eyes, Beomgyu doesn’t – he just picks up their plates, including his own half-eaten one and brings them over to the sink. It lets him have his back to the two of them. Kai slowly finishes his glass of soda. This is the hard part.

“I guess you have a lot of things to say to me.”

He didn’t expect Beomgyu to take the leap on his own, but he does, still turned towards the sink, plugging it closed and filling it with water to occupy his hands.

“I do,” Soobin admits, glancing at Kai almost guiltily.

Kai should leave, shouldn’t he. But does Beomgyu want him too?

“Why? We could just be out of each other’s hair. For good. You’ve said your piece years ago. You said you wanted to let me go – and now you changed your mind?”

“It’s different. You know it’s different.”

Beomgyu drops the empty plates in the sink too loudly. “Because Yeonjun’s dead.”

Soobin flinches, and Kai can’t tell if it was the sound or Beomgyu’s words that did the trick. “Sure – that, too.”

Then Beomgyu turns around, his eyes narrowed but with that familiar flat tone in his voice. “Did you think I was gonna be yours? Because he was out of the way?”

Soobin’s face twists. “What?”

“What,” Beomgyu shoots back, throwing his arms out, flinging water all around himself. “That’s how it goes, right? Star-crossed lovers, uncrossed or whatever. You want me, but I’m taken, then my boyfriend kicks it, so I’m free real estate.”

“Choi Beomgyu, what the fuck are you talking about.”

“Or – you don’t want me. And then it’s me clinging to you while you’re trying to move on with her, but you love me and I need you, and you can’t drop your best friend while he’s grieving. Maybe you pity fuck me and ruin your relationship with your girlfriend. Maybe you pity date me, and then we get married, and there’s part of you that hates me for the rest of your life.”

Soobin blinks, but he doesn’t say anything this time. Beomgyu shakes his head.

“Or everything works out, and I find some healthy way to get over this. Maybe I meet Kai a little earlier, and I don’t lead him around for fucking months because I have the balls to have feelings for him.”

He glances at Kai, and Kai wants to look away, but he doesn’t.

“And then there’s another car, at another fucking intersection.” He shakes his head and looks down. “Or it’s not a car at all. Maybe you have survivor’s guilt, and you wish the car hit you from the other side. Or the doctors overlooked something. And whether it’s weeks, or months, or years later… you’re just gone one day.”

He finally looks at Soobin, and Soobin meets his eyes steadily. Something in Kai loosens. Soobin is ready; maybe they’re both ready.

“I had nightmares about it, daydreams about it. Every single thing that could go wrong. All the things that could go right that shouldn’t.”

“Yeonjun—”

“Would have wanted me to be happy, I know.” Beomgyu shrugs helplessly. “I’m trying to understand that now. Three years later.”

Soobin purses his mouth. “You weren’t there on the anniversary.”

“I went at midnight – I knew you might be there during the day.”

“I was waiting for you.”

“I couldn’t come.”

Soobin sighs, glancing at Kai again. “What changed?”

“A lot of things. I did, maybe.” Beomgyu reaches up to slip his fingers under his choker. He doesn’t look at Kai, but he takes a deep breath. “I’m trying to be braver now. Not be so scared of things that are just in my head.”

“How’s that going for you?”

Beomgyu smiles a little. Still doesn’t look at Kai. “Pretty good. Fell in love.”

Soobin looks down at the floor. Kai tries not to react. Beomgyu hasn’t said it to him yet. Never returned his ‘I love you’s.

“I guess I’ll always be late to the punch,” Soobin says eventually. Beomgyu shrugs.

“Maybe you could do with some bravery of your own.”

Their eyes meet, then Soobin looks away again. “I thought I was being brave that day, when I finally confessed to you.”

“And I thought you were a coward, only saying it when it was already too late for the both of us.”

“Did you blame me for it?”

“What?”

“Yeonjun.”

“A couple days, maybe. I wanted to. Couldn’t bring myself to. I was…” Beomgyu closes his eyes. “Too relieved that you survived.”

“But you stopped visiting.”

Beomgyu takes in a shaky breath. “The longer I had to think about it, the worse it got. The more I convinced myself that… it would be the best if it was all over.”

“You could’ve told me that. Left a letter. Called. Texted.”

“I know.”

“Why?”

“Didn’t have the guts to do to you what you did to me.”

Soobin blinks at Beomgyu, confused.

“Told the truth,” Beomgyu says with a shrug. “That I loved you too, ever since the start, and that I knew that I should go on living, that Yeonjun, you, that everyone would want me to, but that I didn’t want to. I didn’t want to keep living my life. I didn’t want to…” Beomgyu swallows, and it looks almost painful. “I didn’t want to live a single day when I didn’t remember him. When life didn’t suck without him. Because that’s what he deserved, right? To leave a hole nothing could fill. But I knew that… if you stuck around… I’d want you to. I’d want to fill that void with you. And I couldn’t let that happen.”

“I wouldn’t have let you.”

“Sure. But you weren’t there.”

Soobin purses his lips. “I was—”

“It’s not your fault. That’s not what I’m saying. I’m just telling you what happened.”

And Soobin just nods. The kitchen falls silent. Beomgyu looks over at Kai, looking grim, and Kai hopes he manages to look reassuring.

“I used to dream about it all the time. I still do, but it’s less frequent now. They got me a therapist and some medication.”

“Did you tell your therapist you were stalking me?”

Soobin sighs. “It was almost the anniversary. I always want to talk to you the most around the anniversary.”

“What did you imagine you’d say?”

“I don’t know anymore.” Soobin’s eyes are sad, and earnest, and tired. “Something that would make you hug me again like you used to when we were kids, and then we’d crack open a bottle and drink to Yeonjun’s honor and tell stories about him.”

Beomgyu’s eyes are glassy and scared and so, so beautiful. “That’s it?”

“I didn’t dare think about anything else.”

For a moment, Beomgyu seems to study Soobin’s face, looking for a lie, for an excuse to dismiss what he’s saying. Then he looks at Kai instead, still thoughtful, still a little scared. “Kai told me you slept together.”

“We did.”

Kai swallows and tries not to react too much. This is not his conversation; as uncomfortable as it is. He’ll speak up if Soobin lies, and only then.

“Did he really not fuck you? Or did he lie to me?”

Soobin glances over at him, too. “He didn’t.” Then he looks down, seeming embarrassed. “We wanted to, but….”

“There was no lube in my room,” Kai steps in to bail him out. Truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.

“Because I always have some here,” Beomgyu surmises, and there’s almost a smile on his face.

Kai shrugs. “Yeah.”

Soobin’s head lowers, and Kai feels a little guilty, but nothing can be better for them than to have this all out in the open, can it? They have to open wounds to let them heal.

“Do you regret it?” Beomgyu’s voice sounds level, and he’s looking Kai straight in the eye.

“I do,” Soobin answers instead, taking a sip of his soda when Beomgyu’s eyes fix on him. “If I have to keep having the guys I’m in love with ditch me, at least I could’ve had one of them fuck me before he left.”

And somehow, Beomgyu snorts, and some of the fear in his eyes is replaced by dry amusement. “Would you have wanted me to fuck you, too?”

“‘Course not,” Soobin responds just as dryly, sarcastically. “I’ve only been dreaming of it since I was 16 years old.”

A shine appears in Beomgyu’s eyes, and it’s familiar – Kai knows what he looks like when he’s about to pounce; when an encounter is going to go from the ‘just hanging out’ phase, from the awkward greeting phase, in the prelude for sex, for play. It looks something like this. “You had wet dreams about me in high school?”

“I only had wet dreams about you.”

Soobin says it like it’s the easiest thing in the world to admit, and maybe it is at this point.

Beomgyu bites into his lip. “You were dating someone else.”

“I guess you know now why we broke up.”

“Then why did you date him at all? If it was just me?”

“I thought I had to be sure. That it’s not just you. That it’s guys. And that it could be more than sex, that it could be more than friendship. I wanted to be sure. I wanted to be ready, by the time I asked you out.” He shrugs, a little aggressively, like he’s trying hard not to seem like he cares. It’s such a teenage gesture, like high school Soobin is the one sitting across the table from Kai. “But I missed my chance, and Yeonjun was… Yeonjun. So I let it go.”

“But you didn’t.”

“But I couldn’t.”

Beomgyu is the one to break eye contact, looking away, then at Kai, then back at Soobin. “It was lonely without you. When you suddenly had a boyfriend and places to be that weren’t my house or all our usual spots. When you had someone to pretend to do your homework with while you did anything but.” Soobin huffs out a laugh, and Beomgyu smiles sadly. “I felt like shit, like my best friend who I just might love a bit too much abandoned me, even if we still hung out sometimes. I wanted someone who wanted me, wanted to have me around, so bad.” He shakes his head. “I didn’t think me and Yeonjun would last a year. But I really wanted some company.”

Kai can’t read the expression on Soobin’s face, so he doesn’t even try. “You underestimated him.”

“I know. He looked like such a—”

“Jock?”

“He looked like he was filled with hot air with nothing to show for it.”

“But he had a lot to show.”

Beomgyu’s eyes are glassy. “He did.”

Soobin looks firm, steady. Like he’s ready to catch Beomgyu if he starts falling. “And he gave out a lot of love. No one’s forgotten that.”

“Did you meet the others on the anniversary?”

“Yeah – we went out for drinks. Everyone missed you.”

Beomgyu chews on his bottom lip. “You should’ve brought that wine.”

Soobin squints at him. “Do you actually like it now?”

“No, but I don’t think I’d care at this point.”

Kai sighs. “I’ll go.”

They both look at him, like they’re startled by the fact that he’s still there, even though they both keep glancing at him. Beomgyu blinks slowly, looking lost.

“I’ll go buy us some alcohol,” he clarifies. “I can be right back.”

For some reason, Beomgyu looks almost confused while Kai gets up from the table. “You don’t have to?”

Kai walks over to him, steps deliberately between him and Soobin so they can have some privacy, laying a hand gently on Beomgyu’s hip. “Do you really want a drink?”

Beomgyu doesn’t meet his eyes. “It’s just overwhelming.”

“Are you worried about being alone with him?”

He shakes his head, and Kai’s shoulders loosen, even though he never realized he was tense in the first place. “If you’re not worried.”

“I don’t know if you can do anything with Soobin that I haven’t already in the time it’ll take me to drop by a convenience store.”

It does its job of making Beomgyu smile a little. “We’ll try not to fuck while you’re gone.”

Kai lets one corner of his mouth sneak up, leaning down to kiss him. “Don’t let me stop you.”

Beomgyu groans as soon as Kai pulls back. “Is that a new kink we need to talk about?”

With a casual shrug, Kai strokes the side of Beomgyu’s neck with his thumb, brushing over the choker over and over again. It’s so easy to say; to joke about. “I’ve always had a kink for seeing you happy.”

Beomgyu makes a face at him, and it’s more adorable than anything else. “You should go before you get any more cheesy.”

Kai winks at him, then kisses him again, then turns around with his hands still on Beomgyu to look at Soobin, who’s just watching them curiously.

“I’ll be right back.”

It felt right, for some reason, to leave Beomgyu and Soobin alone for a bit, to let them say the things they could only say when it’s just between the two of them. They’ve known each other longer, been close longer than Kai himself has been with anyone he wasn’t related to, maybe with the exception of Taehyun. No matter whether Beomgyu actually fell for him or not, whether Soobin genuinely felt something for him too, their bond with him will always be different from their bond with each other – and maybe it won’t be better, but surely it will be made of a slightly different cloth.

When he gets back with peach-flavored soju and no idea how much time has passed, Soobin and Beomgyu are on the couch instead of in the kitchen, and Beomgyu’s head is resting on Soobin’s shoulder. The book of poems from the coffee table is on Soobin’s lap, and the bunny ear bookmark is resting between Soobin’s fingers. They both look like they’ve been crying. Soobin seems to be reading whatever poem the book is open on, and Beomgyu is just staring straight ahead blankly, one arm wrapped around Soobin’s.

“Booze delivery,” Kai says, muted, even though they both had to hear him coming in.

Beomgyu tilts his head back in response, pouting his mouth, and Kai comes over obediently to kiss it. Soobin watches from the corner of his eye.

“What’d you get?”

“Soju.” He raises the clear plastic bag to Beomgyu’s eye level. “That good with you?”

Beomgyu shrugs and reaches out his free hand for it. “Don’t care.”

Kai hands him his bottle, then turns to their guest. “Soobin?”

“Please.”

They all get a bottle each, then, and Kai hovers awkwardly before making up his mind and sitting by Beomgyu’s feet. Both Beomgyu and Soobin watch him curiously, but he just leans against his boyfriend’s legs and cracks his drink open.

“How’d it go?”

The two of them take a long time to answer Kai’s question. He doesn’t push them.

“Wet, and not in a fun way,” Beomgyu says eventually, dry and a bit hoarse. Soobin snort-laughs and it’s unattractive but raw in a pleasing way.

“And how do you feel?”

“Better,” Soobin answers almost immediately, firm and sure.

“Hollow on the inside,” Beomgyu replies afterwards, and it’s obvious from his tone. Kai presses a kiss to his knee. “But I’ll be alright.”

They just drink for a bit, and Kai lets his eyes slip shut. “What do we do now, then?”

Where do they go from here? Apart? Back together again?

“All I want to do now is fuck until I can’t think anymore, but I can’t find a way to tell Soobin to leave.”

Soobin laughs out loud, and Kai sees him pat Beomgyu’s thigh when he sneaks one eye open. “I’ll go.”

“If you want to.”

The room goes silent again. Beomgyu is looking at Kai, not at Soobin, even though he was clearly speaking to Soobin just now. It’s a question for both of them, really.

“I don’t think I’m drunk enough to make those kinds of bad decisions.”

Kai takes a deep breath and kisses the top of Beomgyu’s thigh. “I have a couple more bottles here if you need them.”

Soobin hesitates, visibly, even though Kai only sees him in his peripheral vision. “You don’t mean that.”

“We could,” Beomgyu answers for him. “You said it yourself – whatever whatever, let’s get a good one for the road before we go our separate ways.”

“You two are dating.”

“And Kai has seen us both naked already.”

“You can’t do that to your boyfriend.”

And Beomgyu looks down at Kai, plays with the hair on top of his head and asks, “Can I?”

And Kai shrugs, because he doesn’t feel like it’s his call to make at all. “What do you want, Beomgyu?”

“I’ve got too many fantasies built up over the years to just pick one.”

Soobin’s hand is still on Beomgyu’s thigh. It hasn’t moved yet. “Do any of them have Kai in them?”

Beomgyu throws his head back over the back of the couch. “Of course they do.”

Something warms in Kai’s stomach when he hears it. He puts his bottle away on the coffee table and shifts over, nudges Beomgyu’s knees apart to make space for himself between them. Beomgyu’s hand comes down to the back of his neck, rests there even though Beomgyu doesn’t look back down at him. Kai pushes his face into the inside of Beomgyu’s thigh, right next to Soobin’s fingers, and he takes a deep breath.

“What do you like about Kai?” Beomgyu asks quietly, sounding a little strangled.

“He’s funny. And kind. And really pretty.”

Kai smiles into the fabric of Beomgyu’s slacks and Beomgyu lets out a little laugh. “Okay.”

“What do you like about him?”

“He takes good care of me. And he’s the first thing in my life that didn’t have to be complicated.”

Soobin’s fingers tighten in their grip. “I was complicated?”

“You were the most complicated.”

Kai lifts his head to rest his chin on top of Beomgyu’s thigh and looks up at Soobin through his lashes. “I think you should kiss my boyfriend. I think he wants you to.”

Beomgyu tugs at Kai’s hair. “Don’t call me out.”

“We said we wouldn’t judge each other for our fantasies. I meant it.”

“Well.” Beomgyu finally looks down, meets Kai’s eyes with a little pout. “In this fantasy, you kiss me first.”

Smiling, he lifts himself up, using Beomgyu’s knees for leverage, leaning all the way over him until their faces are level. “Do I tell you I love you before I do that?”

Beomgyu bites the inside of his lip. “It’s not a dealbreaker.”

With a little laugh, Kai leans in the rest of the way, catching Beomgyu’s mouth in a kiss. It’s slow, lazy, affectionate. It tells Beomgyu everything he needs to know, probably, but Kai still brings his mouth close to his ear afterwards to say:

“I’ll still love you the same.”

And Beomgyu takes his face in his hands and brings it back close to his own, until they’re breathing the same air.

Then he says, “I love you,” and Kai believes every single sound the words are made out of.

Soobin fits into them, around them, in between them, in strange but exciting ways. Kai has to kiss him first in the end, because Beomgyu seems almost afraid to, and he bites at Soobin’s mouth while Soobin holds him carefully in his lap again, and Kai can’t help but think about it again, about Soobin’s voice in his ear calling him pretty, about the skater skirt in the bottom drawer of Beomgyu’s dresser. About Soobin looking powerless and captivated under him, because he’s beautiful and worthy of admiration, of adoration.

Then Beomgyu pulls Soobin’s head to the side by the chin, leans up and over him, kisses him wet and messy and open-mouthed, and all Kai can think about is how mesmerizing it is to get to see something like them culminate like this. Beomgyu kisses Soobin meanly and then he kisses him sweetly, presses his lips to where his dimples would be until they bloom under Beomgyu’s mouth. He kisses Soobin’s neck and bites his collarbone and Kai can’t help but stare, while one of Soobin’s hands leaves Kai’s thighs to tangle in Beomgyu’s bright red hair and the other digs in with its fingers.

Soobin pushes the cardigan off of Beomgyu and Kai helps him with the shirt he has underneath, they undress Soobin together and Beomgyu tugs Kai’s sweatshirt off between feverish kisses. He loses his pants on the way to the bedroom, and Soobin covers Beomgyu almost completely with his body while they stand together, looking at the corkboard that’s only illuminated with those cloud-shaped string lights, and Soobin undoes Beomgyu’s pants with shaking but unhurried hands.

He nods at the board, and Kai can’t tell what he’s looking at, but he asks, “Is that the two of you?”

And Beomgyu nods silently.

Soobin smiles and presses a kiss to Beomgyu’s cheek, and Beomgyu closes his eyes and melts into Soobin’s chest while Soobin slips both his hands into his underwear.

Quietly, so quiet that Kai thinks he wasn’t meant to hear, Soobin says, “I like the way he loves you,” and Beomgyu smiles a little and responds, “I like the way he loves me, too.”

The sex itself feels almost insignificant with all the love happening around it, interspersed in it, Kai fingers Soobin open and Beomgyu takes him in his mouth to keep him relaxed and interested, but it’s about the sweet way Soobin touches Beomgyu’s hair and his back, the stupid things that fall out of Kai’s mouth, blind admiration for both of them, praise and encouragement and pet names he’s never even dared to use with Beomgyu before. Baby and sweetheart and love, love love love over and over again. ‘Yes love.’ ‘There you go, love.’ ‘Just a little bit more, love.’

And Beomgyu doesn’t stop him, just holds him close and kisses him with his mouth tasting like peach soju and dick before he sinks into Soobin with Kai draped over his back, touching him all over, feeling the flex in his thighs, in his hips, playing with his nipples, with the choker they left around his neck, but Beomgyu starts shaking a bit too much a bit too quickly like this, so Kai shifts to loving on Soobin instead, kissing his stomach and biting his chest, kissing him on the chin when his mouth is too slack to kiss back. Kissing his cheeks when tears spill over onto them. Jerking him off when it’s clear that Beomgyu won’t last much longer. He calls him gorgeous and pets his hair and thanks him for making Beomgyu feel good. He holds his hand while Beomgyu holds the other as Soobin cums all over himself, strokes down Beomgyu’s side when he finally lets go, too.

He muffles his own moans in Beomgyu’s arm as his boyfriend stays cuddled up to his side while Soobin lazily sucks his dick, spending almost more time just licking at him and nosing at his balls and the juncture between his hip and thigh rather than trying to get him off. Kai almost thinks they should just give up and take a nap, but there’s something loving about this too, about the half-hearted effort, Beomgyu’s hand nestled in Soobin’s hair, the little satisfied sounds Soobin makes. 

Kai feels dizzy with how long he’s gone without any real feeling of satisfaction by the time Beomgyu kisses his head, says, “Let’s stop torturing him,” and pulls Soobin up by his hair, guiding him to take Kai into his mouth properly and pushing his head down.

He bites into Beomgyu’s shoulder when he finishes, unable to watch himself fill up Soobin’s mouth. It feels like it just might be too much, one blessing too many. Soobin spits into the wastebasket Beomgyu keeps by his desk while Beomgyu laughs and cards his fingers through Kai’s sweaty hair. Soobin flips him off with his eyes red and teary. Kai winces in sympathy.

Beomgyu’s bed is barely big enough for all of them, but they make do, with Soobin on his back, one of his arms wrapped around Beomgyu and his hand on Beomgyu’s ass, the other both pillowing Kai’s head and keeping him close. They put a calm playlist on, and the music is so low-key Kai can’t even tell what the lyrics are. Beomgyu holds his hand on top of Soobin’s chest, and they feel his heart beating steadily through his shirt.

Kai almost thinks the other two have fallen asleep already, his own eyes closed, when Soobin speaks up.

“Does this mean that it’s all over?”

And Beomgyu hums and squeezes Kai’s hand. “I don’t know. I don’t know where this is headed.”

“Do you want it to be over?” Kai asks nobody in particular.

It’s Beomgyu again, who replies, “No. But I’m afraid that it is.”

Soobin’s fingers draw shapes into the back of Kai’s shoulder. “There’s a lot of things that could go wrong like this.”

“That’s not a reason to stop before we’ve even started,” Kai can hear the smile in Beomgyu’s voice, and he smiles back even as he keeps his eyes closed. “You can't just decide to not love people just because it won't last forever.”

Soobin snorts. “When did you get all wise and shit?”

Beomgyu sniffs. “Couple months ago.”

“He’s quoting me,” Kai points out, just to make sure it’s clear.

“Is that how you got Beomgyu to date you?”

“No,” Kai finally opens his eyes and pouts at Soobin, who’s watching him with warm fond eyes. “I did that by being amazing.”

“In bed,” Beomgyu says dryly.

“That, too.”

Soobin laughs, and leans over to kiss him, then leans the other way to kiss Beomgyu, too. “I have a lot to live up to.”

“Yes you do,” Beomgyu grumbles. “I’ve waited almost a decade for this. You better make it worth it.”

“Same here.” Soobin pulls Beomgyu a little closer, even though they’re already pressed together as tightly as possible. “I’ve been waiting for you just as long.”

“Yeah, but I’m perfect. I’m a great boyfriend. Right, Kai?”

Kai closes his eyes again, smiling. “You’re pretty okay, love.”

“Rude.”

Kai laughs, and Beomgyu tugs at his hand playfully, but leaves it alone. Kai falls asleep while nuzzling into Soobin’s shoulder, with Beomgyu’s fingers intertwined with his.

On March 13th, Kai comes home from his classes with hands full of groceries, and Soobin starts kissing him as soon as he walks through the door instead of helping him with the bags, and Kai has to pinch his butt to get him off of him so he can go take a shower and change without them falling awfully behind schedule. He washes himself off, changes into a baggy black sweater and a turquoise skater skirt, and Soobin sneaks into the bathroom to help him pull on a pair of black lace underwear. Kai wants to complain, but Soobin kisses any shadow of a doubt out of his mind firmly, brushes his hair off of his forehead and calls him pretty, and Kai can’t help but feel grateful for him. Lucky to have him.

Kai cooks while Soobin finishes baking a tray of strawberry lemonade cupcakes they decorate with marshmallows to look like little cat faces. Soobin tries to help with the dinner, but he’s a verified kitchen disaster, so he’s sent to set the table instead.

Beomgyu gets home just on time, while Kai is putting the finishing touches on their meal, and he’s the first to make it to the hallway to greet him. His boyfriend squeals in delight when he sees his clothes, and he launches himself into Kai’s arms, wrapping his legs around him like a clingy koala while hugging him tightly. He says something about Kai looking really good, but he finds that he doesn’t really care, as long as Beomgyu sounds this happy, as long as he keeps dropping happy kisses on Kai’s jaw like this.

Soobin complains about not getting a hug himself, so Kai helps Beomgyu get down off of him and lets him jog over to Soobin to tackle their boyfriend into a wall. Despite having the wind knocked out of him, Soobin laughs happily, and pulls Beomgyu into a long kiss before wishing him happy birthday. Kai walks up to them, slotting his hands under Soobin’s on Beomgyu’s sides, kisses the side of his face, and wishes him a happy birthday, too.

Beomgyu leans into Kai’s chest and closes his eyes, mouth stretched into a wide smile.

“Mhm, happy birthday to me.”