Chapter Text
It all started just over a month after they moved in together.
It was one in the morning on a Saturday. Yuta was out with Ten, his friend from beauty school whom Taeyong hadn’t yet met but whom Yuta had described as having “more veteran gay points than you and me combined.” Taeyong had elected to stay home, blaming sore muscles after a long week at the dance studio. Now, as was always the case when he voluntarily spent time apart from Yuta, he was regretting it.
Yuta had been texting him steadily for an hour and a half before he stopped replying after Taeyong had sent a brief “lol same” at 11:40. Taeyong paused the movie that was playing on his laptop and pulled up the chat again. “i miss youuuuouiouo” he typed.
The reply came in seconds later. “u should have come out with us. Loser”
Taeyong shifted his laptop off his lap and rolled onto his side, propping his elbow up on the pillow. “you said ten wanted to go to rainbow bar and i don’t have the energy for so much GLITTER tonight,” he sent.
Instantly, Yuta answered, “losing ur gay points fasstttt”
Taeyong was trying to think of a snarky reply when another text came in from Yuta’s number: “who the hell are u i’m tryuing to get yuta to dance,” with a series of kissy and star-eye emojis following the words.
Taeyong bristled. “only his best friend since we were 15 but go off”
There was a short pause, and then Yuta said, “ten grabbed my phone sorry he’s kinda drunk lmao”
“who the hell am i? who the hell aM I he said,” Taeyong sent, and then added for good measure, “EYE, lee taeyong, nakamoto yuta’s roommate, partner in crime, favorite person in the universe??? WHO THE HELL AM I”
“I’M SO SORRY I DIDN”T SEE THE CONTACT NAME OMG I’vE HEARD SO MUCH ABOUT U TAEYONG!! HELLO HONEY WHY DIDN’T U COME OUT OTNIGHTT!!” The reply was signed with the number 10.
A little surge of joy tingled in Taeyong’s stomach. He was Yuta’s best friend, so of course Yuta would mention him. Still, it was nice to know that he was talked about. “heard a lot about you too,” he texted, “but i’m tired tonight :(”
“it’s me again,” came the reply. “it’s already 1 am why aren’t u sleeping tired bby”
Taeyong bit his lip, considering, and then answered honestly, “because you’re not home,” tacking on a sniffling emoji so as not to seem too tragic.
“awwwhhhhh,” Yuta replied, and then, “hang on one second”
One second turned into fifteen minutes, and Taeyong thought that Yuta had forgotten to reply when his phone buzzed with an incoming FaceTime call. Yuta’s grinning contact picture from when he had purple hair back in college illuminated the screen. Taeyong smiled, warmth flushing through him, and picking up immediately.
Purple Yuta was replaced by the black-haired Yuta of present day, frowning and slightly blurry. “Can you see me?” he said, peering closer at the screen.
“Yeah. Kind of. You’re in pixels,” said Taeyong.
“Oh, there you are.” Yuta’s face sharpened into high definition at the same time that it was lit up by a dazzling smile. Taeyong had always been vaguely, fondly jealous of that smile. No matter how widely Taeyong smiled, he never looked quite as warm or sincere as Yuta did when he beamed like that.
“Where are you?” Taeyong asked, looking behind Yuta at a dimly glittering wall. Muffled bass was thumping in the background of the call.
“I’m in the bathroom,” Yuta said. “If I called you out there, you wouldn’t be able to hear a thing. Sorry it took me so long. I was waiting in line for like twenty minutes.”
“Aw. You didn’t actually have to call me.”
“It’s okay, I had to pee anyway so,” Yuta shrugged. “There are still people out there in line and it’s a one-stall thing but lemme sing you a lullaby real quick.”
“A lullaby?” Taeyong said.
“Yeah, so you can stop missing me and go to sleep,” Yuta said, looking over the top of his phone at something—a mirror, maybe, and ruffling his hair.
Taeyong closed his laptop and shoved it to the other side of the bed, snuggling down further into his pillows. “Mm. Okay.”
Yuta looked down at the screen again and let out a laugh. “Cute baby.”
“Sing to meeee,” Taeyong singsonged.
“Okay, shh.” The wall behind Yuta shifted up, as if he had sat down on his heels. “Tonight,” he sang softly, “I’ll send the glow of a…”
“Oh, IU, I love this song,” Taeyong said. Yuta shushed him and continued.
“I’ll send the glow of a firefly
To somewhere near your window
To tell you I love you.”
It wasn’t the first time Yuta had sung to him. It probably wasn’t even the hundredth. But it was the first time Yuta had sung him to sleep, and it was also the first time this peculiar feeling had blinked to life inside him. This little sense of wonder, like looking up at a starry sky, but he was looking at his best friend’s face.
“Just like letters on the sand where the waves were,
I feel you’ll disappear to a far-off place.
I always miss you, miss you.”
Yuta’s eyes wandered around the small room while he sang and then met Taeyong’s through the screen. His head tilted back and forth to the rhythm of the words he sang, ignoring the heavy beat of the club music on the other side of the door. “All the words in my heart,” he sang quietly without looking away from Taeyong, “I can’t show them all to you, but they say I love you.”
A loud knock sounded on the bathroom door. Yuta’s eyes flicked towards it, and he giggled over the word “love.” Taeyong realized he had been holding his breath. He let it out.
“Almost done!” Yuta yelled, and then turned his attention back to Taeyong, ignoring two more, angrier-sounding knocks. “Okay, I think I really have to go now. Sweet dreams. Bye.”
Yuta looked at him, waiting for a response. Taeyong cleared his throat. “Oh. Bye.”
Yuta puckered his lips in an air kiss and then the call was ended.
Taeyong stared at the screen for several seconds. Then he shoved his phone beneath his pillow and rolled onto his back.
That had been a little…strange.
Looking at Yuta always made him happy—gave him a rush even, sometimes, to know that this miracle of a human being was his to claim as a best friend. As a “soulmate,” Yuta had even said once or twice. But the feeling that had swept through him when Yuta sang while holding his gaze without a hint of shyness or embarrassment—something about had felt more acute than usual. A little more insistent, demanding that Taeyong look it in the eye.
Instead, he brushed it off. Yuta was special to him. Of course Taeyong would feel…affectionate towards him. Sure. Why not? They were best friends.
When Yuta got in two hours later, Taeyong was only just beginning to doze off. He jolted fully awake with a start and listened for a minute to the sound of Yuta shuffling around in the front hall. The desire to see Yuta’s face was greater than the need to go back to sleep. He crept down the ladder from his loft bed and creaked open his bedroom door, leaning against the doorframe.
Yuta, who was sitting on the ground struggling to pull off his left boot, looked up at Taeyong through feathery black fringe and grinned. Taeyong’s heart rose like a balloon. My best friend. Mine.
“Hellu,” Yuta said.
Taeyong coughed. “You…you’re a mess. You’re trailing glitter like Tinker Bell.”
It was true. One side of Yuta’s head was covered in glitter, and both his boots were caked in it. “Courtesy of Rainbow Bar,” he grunted, yanking at his boot, “and a certain drunk gay who thought it would be fun to toss twenty thousand won at a bartender and say ‘I’m buying out your supply of glitter bombs.’”
Rainbow Bar was famous for selling paper balls full of glitter meant to be cracked over people’s heads on their birthdays. Taeyong could imagine Ten finding an excuse to buy them any day of the year.
“Ten?” he said.
“Mm hm. Fucking lightweight...For fuck’s sake, this fucking shoe is, like, suction cupped to the bottom of my foot…”
Taeyong knelt and took ahold of the boot, sliding it off easily. Yuta’s eyes widened. “How did you do that?”
“All you had to do was unflex your ankle,” Taeyong said. Yuta ignored him, pointing at his hand and whispering, “Magic.”
“You’re hammered,” Taeyong said as he took hold of Yuta’s other boot.
“Why are you still up?”
“Are you listening to anything I’m saying?”
“No. Why are you still up?”
“Uh…” Taeyong didn’t know how to answer. Why was he still up? Why hadn’t he been able to fall asleep? “I was thinking about…something.”
“Something,” Yuta repeated.
“Like, stuff.”
“So my lullaby didn’t work?” Yuta said, sticking out his bottom lip in an exaggerated pout.
“I mean, it made me happy. Didn’t put me to sleep though.” Taeyong stood up.
“Okay, well, go back to bed,” Yuta said, struggling out of his jacket. He tossed it in the general direction of the hall closet and a shimmer of glitter fell from him. “My baby needs his beauty sleep.”
Yuta called Taeyong “baby” often, and only slightly more when he was drunk. That never stopped Taeyong’s insides from doing a little flip. It was cute, after all.
“Okay,” Taeyong said. “You…get to sleep too.”
“Anything you say,” Yuta said, aiming finger guns towards Taeyong and flicking them up as if they’d gone off. When Taeyong jolted one way and then the other, pretending to take two bullets, Yuta rushed dramatically to catch him. Both of them laughed as Taeyong fell to his knees and leaned back into Yuta’s arms.
“Promise me…you’ll take care of Mark when I’m gone,” Taeyong whispered.
“No! Don’t leave me! Not like this!” Yuta gasped, cradling Taeyong’s head in his hand.
Taeyong looked up into Yuta’s face, giggles slowing down. Yuta’s smiling eyes were radiant, and a piece of glitter glinted in his eyebrow. Another few centimeters closer, and Taeyong could kiss him.
Kiss him?
“Too late, I’m dead,” Taeyong said, ducking out from under Yuta and back into his bedroom. Yuta pulled a tragic face. “I’m sorry, Mrs. Lee, I couldn’t save him…”
“And clean up the fucking glitter before it Max walks in it or gets it in his eye or something.”
Yuta spun around at the mention of the cat, warbling, “Where is that funky little chubster?”
“I already gave him two treats at dinner, don’t give him any more!” Taeyong called through the halfway-closed door, knowing Yuta wouldn’t listen to him, especially drunk.
He watched Yuta wave an indifferent hand as he walked off down the hall. He sang while he went, “I hope you have a good dream.”
It was the last line of the song that he hadn’t finished earlier.
“Night,” Taeyong said, and shut the door.
In the darkness of his room, Taeyong slapped his hands to his cheeks to try to force the warmth out of them. What was that? What was going on with him tonight? Wanting to kiss Yuta—no, hoping, the feeling was hope—hoping, for a flash of a split second, that Yuta would bend down just a little further, smile, and tilt his head sideways so that their lips would meet and…no. That was absurd. Yuta was his best friend. The operative word, of course, being “friend.” Friends didn’t kiss, except maybe for fun, and a just-for-fun kiss wasn’t what Taeyong had found himself hoping for.
Taeyong shook himself and climbed the ladder to his bed. He needed to relax. He hadn’t gotten much sleep this week, and his emotions were out of whack. That must be it. Nothing that a good night’s sleep couldn’t put to rest.
Taeyong tucked himself under the covers of his bed until only his eyes and nose remained exposed to the cold air. Yes, this feeling clinging to his ribcage, this little sweet glow—it was just the result of too many four-hour sleeps in a row. No reason to worry. Yuta was the most perfect thing in Taeyong’s life, and nothing between them needed to change. Nothing had to change.
At least, that was what Taeyong told himself, through nearly every moment of every day until the night Yuta introduced him to Ten. It was two weeks after Taeyong had first felt that thoroughly ridiculous flash of desire to kiss Yuta, and although the entire notion of kissing his best friend was, of course, completely outlandish, silly, and out of the question, it had been crossing his mind with increasing frequency. He thought about it when Yuta passed him in the hallway carrying a load of laundry. He thought about it when Yuta cuddled into his side while they watched TV. He thought about it when Yuta sulked after losing to Jaehyun at game night at Sicheng and Taeil’s. He thought about it when he was washing dishes at the sink and Yuta nudged in beside him to fill a glass with water. He definitely thought about it when Yuta emerged from the bathroom in only a towel, hair wet, skin flushed in blotches from the hot water. It was concerning. Concerning, but no reason to panic. Taeyong was a firm believer in not panicking.
He didn’t even panic when Yuta, face a breath away from his own, moaned, “God, your lips are so perfect,” as he brushed cherry-red lip tint over them on Saturday night. He knew it was only the makeup artist in Yuta talking, a conviction which was affirmed when Yuta introduced Ten to Taeyong an hour later and the first thing Ten said was, “Oh, now I know what you meant when you said his face is the perfect canvas.”
“Isn’t his eye shape insane? What do you think of the eyeshadow? I tried the wet pigment technique Han was talking about on Monday,” Yuta asked Ten. Taeyong had already told Yuta back at the apartment that the makeup Yuta had done for him was stunning. Taeyong’s opinion was usually enough for Yuta, which was telling of how important Ten had become to him in such a short time. Taeyong shushed the twinge of resentment he felt at the thought and tried to focus on the gladness that Yuta was making friends at beauty school so fast.
“Exquisite,” cooed Ten, eyes hovering over Taeyong’s as he studied them. His eyes narrowed just slightly, and he added, “I might have toned down the shade of bronze, though. Since the wetting is already a brightener.”
“That’s the point though. That’s the look,” Yuta said.
“Well,” Ten shrugged, “it’s not like you play by the rules, anyway. So, Taeyong!” Finally Ten looked into his eyes instead of at them, and smiled, pulling Taeyong into a tight hug. “It’s a treat to meet you, sweetie. I’ve heard a lot about you.”
Taeyong gave Ten a squeeze in return before letting him go. “All good things, I hope?”
Yuta, who never had time for pleasantries like this, rolled his eyes. “Yeah, I told him all about how you’re a neat freak and that our cat likes me better than you.”
“He likes us equally,” Taeyong scowled.
“But the neat freak thing you admit.”
“I swear I’m not that bad,” Taeyong said, turning back to Ten, who was watching the exchange with folded arms and a grin. It was a smug grin, almost a smirk, which Taeyong didn’t understand until they were inside the bar and Yuta had left them alone at a table to go buy the first round of drinks.
“So what’s, like, going on with you two?” Ten asked, tone lowered conspiratorially, after Yuta had disappeared into the crowd.
“Going on…?” Taeyong repeated.
“You know,” Ten said with a meaningful head tilt, “you and Yuta.”
“Me and Yuta? We’re best friends. We’ve known each other since we were 15,” Taeyong said. He smiled—he always liked to tell people about this. “We met at an art camp the summer he and his family moved to Seoul, and we’ve been best friends ever since.”
“Uh huh. And how long have you been fucking?”
If Taeyong had had a drink to spit out, he probably would have. “Fuck—fucking? We’re not fucking.”
Ten seemed to find this answer extremely amusing. “Is it supposed to be a secret or something? Because you guys are, like, kind of obvious.”
“We’re not obvious!” Taeyong said, and then backpedaled, “I mean, we can’t be obvious because we’re not—we’re not hooking up. We’re just friends.”
“Okay, okay,” Ten said, holding up his hands, “sure, you’re just friends.”
“Why, uh,” Taeyong said and drummed his fingers on the table, “why did you think…?”
“Oh, I assumed a long time ago. I guess just from the way he talks about you.”
“How does he talk about me?”
“Well, he referred to you as his ‘baby’ once,” Ten said.
Taeyong waved a hand. “He always does that.”
Ten raised his eyebrows, blinking overstatedly.
“Is that it? You thought we were fucking because he called me ‘baby’ once?” Taeyong said, trying to sound more playful than disappointed. But…was he disappointed? Of course not, he told himself, even knowing it wasn’t fully true. This was not the time to panic.
“Oh, no.” Ten laughed. “‘Is that it,’ he asks. No, honey. He brings you up constantly. It’s like you never leave his head. ‘My best friend Taeyong would kill that double wing eyeliner.’ ‘I practiced this technique on my roommate Taeyong yesterday and it looked better than picture in the textbook.’ ‘My baby Taeyong’s prettier than all the models they teach off of in this class.’ Like, with the amount of times he mentions you while we’re at school, I thought you guys must at least be friends with benefits, if not more…”
“We’ve known each other for nine years,” Taeyong said. “We’re just close.”
Ten continued as if Taeyong hadn’t spoken, “And the way you look at him…”
“I don’t look at him any way,” Taeyong said.
“Maybe I’m just seeing things, then.” Ten smiled impishly.
Taeyong squirmed. “How do I…how does it look like I look at him?” he asked.
Ten leaned in, like he was delivering some intimate secret. “Like someone who’s dying of thirst looks at a lake.”
“I…” Taeyong was speechless. He felt somehow muddled. He looked around for Yuta, wondering when he would get back with the drinks.
“But I must be wrong,” Ten said with a shrug, and sat back. “You say there’s no sexual tension, there’s no sexual tension. I just would have thought, from the way you guys act. I mean, why not, you know? You get each other, you trust each other, you’re gorgeous, he’s gorgeous…”
As Ten spoke, Taeyong finally spotted Yuta across the room, thanking a bartender and struggling to pick up three glasses of soju between his two hands. A woman passed between them, and when she moved, Yuta was looking back at Taeyong. They caught each other’s eyes and Yuta grinned, holding the glasses aloft.
“He is, isn’t he,” Taeyong murmured.
“Oh, no,” he heard Ten sigh. He turned back to see Ten wearing a softer, almost pitying smile.
“What?”
“I misread,” Ten said. “You’re in love with him.”
Taeyong opened his mouth to speak and suddenly Yuta was there, powerwalking towards the table with the triangle of drinks held out in front of him, babbling, “Taeyong, Taeyong, Taeyong, Taeyong, Tae—”
Taeyong stared at him. Ten, realizing Yuta was about to lose one of the drinks, lunged forward. Taeyong watched as a glass slipped from Yuta’s grasp and sloshed a little before Ten saved it, planting it firmly on the table and reaching to help Yuta maneuver the other two to safety.
“Thanks, Ten,” Yuta said. “Fuck, did it spill you?”
“Barely,” said Ten, grabbing a napkin.
Yuta turned to Taeyong and waved in front of his face. “What’s with you? Did you forget your name or something?”
Taeyong felt like someone had just dumped a bucket of icewater over his head, only it wasn’t icewater, it was sunshine, and it was warm and bright, and sparkly, and soft, and smelled like flowers, and all of it was radiating off the extraordinary human being standing in front of him. Everything suddenly made sense. The glow. The tenderness. The need to be around Yuta, the occasional bumps of jealousy, the times his breath hitched or his heart beat faster. How had it taken him nine years and a conversation with a nosy Thai boy to realize? Yuta was it. It was Yuta. It was always Yuta.
“Why are you smiling like that?”
His best friend was looking at him with a one-eyebrowed frown. Ten was biting down on his lips, as if holding back laughter.
“Huh? What? I…nothing,” Taeyong said. The golden haze fell away, the singing angels, the scent of roses, all of it disappeared with a jarring record scratch.
“Are you good?” Yuta asked, squinting at him closely.
Taeyong swallowed, only to find that his mouth was dry.
“Yeah. I’m fine,” he said.
“O…kay,” Yuta said, and circled around the table to sit down on Ten’s other side. Every fiber of Taeyong’s body felt Yuta move away, as if Yuta were a magnet, or a very small planet reminding those around it of its gravity.
When Taeyong finally looked away from Yuta, his eyes met Ten’s. Ten winked.
You’re in love with him.
“So does anyone want food, or are we just here to get smashed?” Yuta asked as he picked up a menu, and Taeyong knew.
Now. Now was the time to panic.