for chateaucartoon
Title: let’s put lonesome on the shelf
For: chateaucartoon
Pairing: Jaehyo/Taeil
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 7333
Summary: Jaehyo opens his eyes to see Taeil’s smile, bright and easy, and thinks oh.
Notes/Warnings: Dear recipient, here is something that I’m hoping comes off as an ok attempt at wooing/boy-next-door fic! I chose to write Jaeil because the words ‘boy-next-door’ had me thinking of the boys’ skit from their first Play! BBC World Camp teaser. I tried my best to write something that is hopefully readable to you, and maybe you’ll even like it! Merry Christmas!
Jaehyo falls for Taeil quite simply.
It isn’t anything spectacular; there is no light shining down from the heavens, no painful heart constrictions from a cupid’s arrow, no neon signboard in his head with a snazzy statement signifying the impact of a love interest in his life. It’s nothing special, but it happens, and the newly realized feelings settle at the base of Jaehyo’s stomach like warm tea on a rainy day. Tea-or alcohol, really.
They’re drinking together in Taeil’s apartment when it happens, sipping at cheap beer from the corner store and a pina colada mix Jaehyo had acquired while grocery shopping the week before, and it’s not unlike any other night they spend together as neighbors.
“Why... are we drinking this again?” Taeil asks, after they’re both three bottles in with multiple pink-stained cups strewn around them.
Jaehyo blinks at him, head a little fuzzy from their alcohol consumption, and answers. “Because it was on sale, has only five net calories, and zero trans fat.”
“It’s pink, Jaehyo.” Taeil says with a raised eyebrow.
“Mmhmm..?” Jaehyo hums around the rim of his paper cup and motions for Taeil to go on.
Taeil sighs and sets his own paper cup down on the coffee table. “So I’m sure that whatever health benefits this mix once had has already been drowned in the copious amounts of food coloring in it.”
Jaehyo continues to chew on his cup, and he stares back at Taeil for a while. He feels a prick of urgency from his bladder crawl through his abdomen. “Huh,” Jaehyo mumbles, and he bats his eyes at Taeil over the cup, “At least it’d be somewhat cool if it turned by piss pink too.”
He waits until Taeil is opening his mouth to say something else when he narrows his eyes and sends the now empty cup flying from his mouth with a smack of his lips, travelling just far enough to hit the edge of Taeil’s glasses and fall to the floor.
The look on Taeil’s face is incredulous, but Jaehyo can tell that Taeil isn’t mad at him, and the curl of his lips is unhindered by the new retainer he’d gotten and hadn’t bothered to remove before their binge drinking session. He’s about to
mutter an apology for his childishness when Taeil contorts his face into a mockery of what a rage-filled expression is supposed to be, and Jaehyo leans back against the couch’s armrest and laughs so hard he’s sure his bladder is going to rupture.
“Hey.” Taeil interjects between Jaehyo’s snorts, and Jaehyo only has a split second when he opens his eyes to fling his hands in front of him to prevent the bottle of beer Taeil tosses to him from hitting him smack in the stomach. There’s
droplets of condensation dotting the bottle’s surface, but the beer is bordering on lukewarm when Jaehyo takes a sip.
Jaehyo wiggles down the couch and closer to Taeil, who rolls his eyes and leans back to make space for Jaehyo’s gangly limbs. “Taeil,” Jaehyo whines, and takes a swig of his lukewarm beer. His mind is still filled with paper cups of pink pina coladas, and he’s pretty sure that the overly sweet taste of pineapples and pink isn’t going to be out of his mouth anytime soon.
“Is my tongue pink?” Jaehyo decides to ask, breaking the silence between them. Taeil looks up from his beer bottle towards Jaehyo and stretches his arms out before resting one along the back of the couch. Jaehyo lets his head lol to the side and leans into the cushions to wedge Taeil’s hand between the couch and his chin.
Taeil squints at him, and Jaehyo opens his mouth to stick his tongue out. “Pink,” Taeil confirms, and probably says something else that’s witty and a jab to Jaehyo’s intelligence, but Jaehyo is past paying attention to what he has to say and is instead staring intently at Taeil’s lips. They’re slightly chapped, stained an unnatural shade of pink at the edges by Jaehyo’s drink mix, and Jaehyo is just about to recommend that Taeil use chapstick when Taeil’s tongue darts out to lick at them, the motion slow, a habit picked up recently due to his retainer, and Jaehyo kind of wants to kiss him.
Jaehyo wants to kiss Taeil.
It’s a sobering thought in the midst of his trip to inebriation, and Jaehyo shuts his eyes and thinks about it for a moment, running repeated lines of I want to kiss him and I want to kiss Taeil through his mind. Something tells Jaehyo that he should be more panicked about this, about wanting to kiss his friend, but the panic never comes, and Jaehyo hums under his breath. He feels drowsy and warm and comfortable on Taeil’s couch, drinking with him and using his hand as a pillow, and Jaehyo knows that things are going to be okay because
he genuinely likes Taeil.
Jaehyo sucks in his bottom lip and nods into Taeil’s hand, and when Taeil pulls his hand away to flick him in the forehead and tap at Jaehyo’s jean-clad knee with his beer bottle, Jaehyo opens his eyes to see Taeil’s smile, bright and easy, and thinks oh.
Taeil had shoves him off the couch when Jaehyo starts to drool on his hand, but his hand on Jaehyo’s shoulder is warm and firm when he leads him to the door, and Jaehyo still feels the warmth of Taeil’s grip as he walks him the short distance across the cramped corridor to his own place right across the hall. After he slinks through the door to his apartment, Jaehyo peels his clothes off on the way to his bedroom where he flops onto his bed in his briefs, one hand coming up to scratch at his shoulder as he rolls onto his stomach.
Still warm, Jaehyo thinks almost instantly, prodding at his shoulder. Heat seeps into his cheeks when the image of Taeil’s pink-stained mouth fills his head, and Jaehyo lets out a low groan into his pillow, mind too fuzzy to deal with the new onslaught of feelings he has for the boy next door.
*
He tells Kyung about his feelings when they meet up for lunch the next day.
Kyung doesn’t even bat an eye. “What is this, The Wonder Years? Is Taeil your perfect boy-next-door, your soulmate?”
"It just feels right," Jaehyo tells him, because it honestly does. Admitting that he likes Taeil isn't a big deal to him, nothing revolutionary at all, just like how his own realisation of feelings came with minimal worries and damage to his understanding of himself. Then again, he was partially inebriated at the time, but Jaehyo figures that if he woke up with the same feelings, then his heart must be set on the idea of Taeil being more than just a friend to Jaehyo.
Kyung doesn't seem all that convinced. "Well, I'm worried for you," he says, picking the croutons out of Jaehyo's salad with his chopsticks and dipping them into a mixture of Dijon mustard and gochujang that he'd piled onto their shared condiment dish. Jaehyo wrinkles his nose, and Kyung continues, "You remember what happened the last time you were 'openly and honestly in love'."
He taps Jaehyo's left wrist with the back-ends of his chopsticks, and Jaehyo flexes his hand and fingers self-consciously. His tattoo, though faded, is still as noticeable and eye-catching as the day he got it done-a reminder of his foolishness for rushing into a relationship and commitments he had no idea how to handle when he was in college. The jut of his wrist tingles from where Kyung pokes at him, and Jaehyo scratches at the slight space between the K and R.
“Hmm,” Jaehyo’s hum is non-committal, “I wouldn’t consider the way I like Taeil to be the same as what I felt for her, though.”
He knows that he’s matured since that time with his old girlfriend, and his feelings for Taeil are different from the whirlwind romance he’d attempted to have once upon a highschool fantasy. When he looks up, Kyung raises an
eyebrow at him slowly before he rolls his eyes and dumps some of the hotsauce-soaked croutons onto Jaehyo’s plate. They’ve turned an orange-copper color from the sauces, not unlike the color Kyung’s hair had been last summer, and Jaehyo snorts before picking one up and popping it into his mouth for a taste.
Trying it out turns out to be an extremely bad idea. Jaehyo sputters at the spiciness of the tiny piece of bread and Kyung laughs at him, one hand clutched to his face as Jaehyo scrambles for his iced-tea to soothe his tongue and throat.
He finishes the drink quickly and flicks his bendy-straw at Kyung. “What the hell, Kyung, how did you even eat that.”
Kyung grins at him. “You forget that I don’t eat spicy food. And besides, you were too busy thinking about your new feelings for Taeil-hyung to pay attention to me to notice that I didn’t actually eat your food.”
Jaehyo lets out a whine at him and proceeds to crunch on the ice at the bottom of his glass. “Why would you sabotage me like that,” he grumbles, and his teeth chatter from the temporary Ice Age in his mouth, “I think my lips are on fire.”
“You’ll live.” Kyung deadpans, and he picks at the cheese bits in Jaehyo’s salad, and Jaehyo notes that he actually eats the flakes this time. “Besides, a simple remedy to get rid of spiciness taking over your mouth is to counter it with something sweet.”
Jaehyo stares at him incredulously at that, but he’s at least happy that Kyung seems to have temporarily let his newfound feelings slide. “Kyung, you know this place doesn’t sell dessert.”
“You know what you should do,” Kyung says, and Jaehyo is a little bit wary of the way his brows tilt down just the slightest bit, “You should ask Taeil to help you out.”
“What.” Jaehyo is definitely wary now.
“You should go up to him and ask him to ‘give you some sugar’. He is your neighbour!” Kyung pitches his voice up high and finishes his sentence with a flourish of his hand in the air, chopsticks brandished, and Jaehyo feels inclined to punch Kyung to get the mischievous smile off of his face.
“That was the cheesiest thing you have ever told me to do, and I mean ever.” Jaehyo says, and Kyung’s smile only gets wider.
“Well actually one of the best remedies is to drink some milk but I thought that you asking Taeil for some of his ‘milk’ would be a little too much now-”
“Ugh.” Jaehyo lets his head fall to the table-top with a groan, too used to Kyung’s considerably useless advice and innuendos he probably hasn’t stopped using since middle school.
Kyung chuckles, and Jaehyo pulls himself upright to finish what’s left of his salad, taking care to avoid his ruined croutons. “Really though, Hyo-hyung,” Kyung says then, and Jaehyo can tell from his tone that he’s ready to be serious. “Be careful ok? Don’t get yourself hurt, or hurt yourself worrying about what to do.”
The look in Kyung’s eyes in sincere, and Jaehyo gives him a smile after swallowing a slice of tomato. “It’s not as if I’m going to really do anything about this, Kyung, it’s honestly no big deal.”
“Yeah well, just don’t get a tattoo of Taeil-hyung’s motorcycle on your arm, alright-”
“Kyung.”
--
Taeil asks him out on a date the on a dreary Sunday morning.
Except that it’s not actually a date, because who in the world would ask someone out on an overcast, grey-skied day, let alone a date to the laundromat.
Taeil had walked across their corridor that morning to bang on Jaehyo’s door, and Jaehyo had done a good enough job trying to smother himself with his pillow and ignore the insistent thumps and shouts until his mind registered that it was actually Taeil trying to barge into his apartment.
He looks out of his peephole to see Taeil with a laundry bag slung over his shoulder and a beanie squashed over his hair, and if it were anyone else Jaehyo would think they’d look ridiculous. Instead, when Jaehyo lets his door creak open and allows Taeil to shuffle into his apartment, all Jaehyo manages to think about is how soft Taeil’s hair looks curled and unstyled around his eyes, the glint of his eyebrow piercing bright in the lowlight of Jaehyo’s entryway.
This is how Jaehyo finds himself stumbling about his apartment with his laundry basket early one Sunday morning clad in only his pyjama bottoms, picking up socks and underpants from around his living area and bedroom. His mind is still hazy from sleep and he’s looking at the world through bleary, sleep-crusted eyes, but Taeil is standing in his doorway with his own bag of laundry, wry smile upon his face, and Jaehyo promptly fails at his attempt to make it through the morning without tripping over his furniture.
“Are you always up this early?” Jaehyo mumbles from his place on the floor after tripping over one of his coffee-table’s legs. He stretches his arms out when he spies a stray sock hidden among the dust bunnies under his couch, using one hand to drag himself forwards when he snags the sock with the other. Taeil had come in all sly smiles and chirpy greetings, and the harsh beating of his heart even minutes after Taeil’s early-morning appearance makes Jaehyo considerably glad that he literally can’t face Taeil right now.
He looks up when Taeil laughs, choked out and almost out of breath, the usual sharp sound fading into softer chuckles. Jaehyo has no idea why he’s laughing, but the laughter genuine amusement on his face have Jaehyo smiling to himself as he pulls himself upright to sit crossed-legged on the floor. He’s always been forgetful and somewhat clumsy, not to mention too talkative for his own good, but Jaehyo has never minded being the brunt of Taeil’s jokes and always revels in the delight of hearing Taeil’s laugh.
“No,” Taeil says, and Jaehyo almost forgets the question he’d asked, mind preoccupied with more of his feelings for Taeil. He’s sitting at Jaehyo’s kitchen table now, and it’s almost as if he belongs there. Jaehyo shakes the thought out of his mind when Taeil continues, “I woke up too early and couldn’t go back to bed, so I decided to drag someone else with me to the laundromat so I won’t be bored.”
Jaehyo presses his face into the seat of his couch. It still smells a little like pizza sauce from his last party a few weeks back, when Taeil had sat on a pie-slice as a result of a tickle fight with Jihoon. “So you just barged into my apartment, at some godforsaken hour on a Sunday, just because you don’t have to go to the laundromat alone.”
“Yup.”
“Because you’re bored.”
“Basically.”
“...I’m going back to bed.” Jaehyo says, and he hauls the upper-half of his body up onto his couch. He flings the dusty sock at Taeil, who evades it easily, the sock coming to land next to his box of muesli on the table. Jaehyo can’t help but let out a frustrated whine at the back of his throat then rolls onto the couch to stuff his head under a cushion. It’s been a month since Jaehyo’s moment of realization in Taeil’s apartment, and while he’s usually accepting and happy with his increasingly frequent daydreams of how a first date with Taeil would be, he’s seriously questioning his taste now.
He’s blowing a hot stream of air out through his nose into the synthetic-leather of his couch when he hears a chair scrape across his parquet, and the next thing he knows, Taeil is sitting sprawled across his legs. When Jaehyo twists to look back at him, he sees Taeil idly clicking away at his smartphone.
“Come on,” Taeil says, and when he leans forwards over Jaehyo’s back,
Jaehyo huffs and twists back to wallow into his cushions. He hopes he comes off as petulant instead of embarrassed, because his cheeks feel hot just from having Taeil this close, and Jaehyo silently curses himself because this proximity isn’t even close to other times they’ve huddled together to stare into laptop and iPad screens, not as if he and Taeil have never sprawled over each other before during movie nights at Minhyuk’s either.
Jaehyo presses himself deeper into the couch. “It’s too early, go away,” he grumbles, and shoves a cushion in the general direction of Taeil’s face.
“I’m going to sneeze.” Taeil says, deadpan, and Jaehyo snorts.
“Is that the best you can come up with?” he retorts, at the same time Taeil says, “I’m going to sneeze on you.”
“Taeil what the fuck-” is all Jaehyo gets out before Taeil inhales shakily and lets out a great sneeze onto Jaehyo’s bare back.
Jaehyo stills. His back feels damp.
“Did you really just-”
“Yup.”
“Oh my god,” Jaehyo says, mortified, and he’s lifted his head out of his cushions at this point, ready to shake Taeil off his legs and bemoan his life. Taeil hasn’t left from his seat on the backs of Jaehyo’s calves, and Jaehyo hears him sniff. He’s probably scrunching up his face as he does it, adorable and charming and ridiculous and Jaehyo wants to punch himself in the face because here he is: lying flat on his couch pining over his neighbor who’s also one of his closest friends. Lee Taeil, the one with a love for small animals and a soft spot for most people younger than him, the man he’s lived across from for years now and the very same jackass who’s just blown out the entire contents of his nose onto his bare back.
Jaehyo lets his head drop forward into his cushions again, and the crocheted cushion cover probably presses patterns into his cheeks. In a moment he’ll get up and rage and shout at Taeil, who will probably smile at him toothily and sling an arm over his shoulders, and Jaehyo will seethe for a moment before going to wipe himself off with a towel and change into a t-shirt. He’ll most likely let Taeil drag him to the laundromat too, and somehow end up paying for both of their breakfasts at a coffee shop later.
Jaehyo wonders briefly what his life has come to.
-
“Your feelings just make it such that Taeil can’t do anything wrong in your eyes,” Minhyuk says, when Jaehyo runs into him at the hypermarket when he’s doing his grocery shopping.
“Yeah well, I don’t get it.” They are standing in the fresh vegetable section staring at bell peppers. Minhyuk picks a few loose ones up from the crate and inspects them carefully, but Jaehyo just grabs a shrink-wrapped pack of green peppers and drops it into his shopping cart hastily, mind too preoccupied to spend too much time musing over vegetables that come in two colors too many.
“It’s not that hard to understand.” Minhyuk places his three carefully chosen peppers into a sheer plastic bag, all different sizes and each a different color . He puts them into his basket before he turns to Jaehyo. “Not to mention you’ve always let Taeil get away with things even before you realized the true extent of your feelings anyway.”
Jaehyo chews on his lip at Minhyuk’s words. Ever since that Sunday when he had let himself be dragged around the block barely after sunrise, he’s been extra careful to monitor the way he reacts to Taeil, only to discover that he is particularly lenient when it comes to bitching at Taeil and physically assaulting him. Jaehyo sat at his table the weekend before and let his forehead hit it’s surface when he realized that he’d pick Taeil up and swing him around more times than he would punch him in the arm like he does with his other friends.
Jaehyo lets out a sigh when he and Minhyuk look over yogurt brands at the dairy section. “I know that, but this way I have no way of knowing how long I’ve actually liked Taeil-for all I know it could have been something that happened on the spot when we met all those years ago, and my feelings have just been lying there dormant at the back of my brain.”
“I wouldn’t say they’re dormant, really,” Minhyuk says, and Jaehyo watches him pick up two cups of flavored yogurt drink, supposedly infused with the benefits of collagen. Jaehyo wrinkles his nose at Minhyuk’s odd taste, and Minhyuk continues, “Your feelings have been pretty active this entire time, it’s just that you’ve never taken the time to sit down and notice them.”
“What, and you’ve known all this while?” Jaehyo asks warily, and Minhyuk looks up at him. His cheek dimples as his face turns thoughtful, and Jaehyo suddenly worries that he’s been living his whole life in pure oblivion.
Minhyuk rolls his eyes at him. “Jaehyo, I think even Taeil probably knows he’s always being let off easy by you. You might not be doing it consciously, but to the rest of us, you’re not exactly being subtle about it.”
Jaehyo stops in his tracks, hand hovering in the air above a stack of greek yogurt. “Do you really think he knows?” he asks, and the tone of his voice is serious. He’s never even attempted to think about how Taeil would react to his feelings, to a confession, and the thought sinks down his from his mind to rest unsettled at the pit of his stomach. His past girlfriends had been the ones to confess to him, handwritten letters on cute stationery and secret meet ups after school. The last time he’d had to woo someone was with Karyeong, and that relationship had ended up rather disastrously.
“Maybe not that you love him,” Minhyuk says slowly, and Jaehyo finds it funny because it’s usually him that has to spell things out for Minhyuk, but the tables are turned this time. “But he definitely knows you treat him differently as compared to the rest of us.”
“Okay,” Jaehyo starts, but his voice is lost when his phone blasts out a loud jingle. Minhyuk steps forward to take control of his shopping cart, and Jaehyo nods at him in thanks. He fumbles for his pocket and taps ‘Accept Call’ without looking at the caller ID.
“Jaehyo?” Taeil’s asks him on the line, and Jaehyo doesn’t know how his voice still manages to flood his chest with warmth even through the static.
“Taeil!” Jaehyo half-shouts half-replies, and he winces at what his feelings are doing to make him even more socially awkward than usual. Minhyuk stifles a laugh from where he’s supposedly looking at bottles of ketchup, but Jaehyo knows he’s keeping his eyes and ears open for dirt to use against Jaehyo and tease him with later. Jaehyo narrows his eyes at Minhyuk, smoothing a his free hand down his sideburns.
Taeil is still on the line. “God, Jaehyo, are you trying to make me deaf or something?”
“No, sorry,” Jaehyo says sheepishly, and he watches Minhyuk mimic squirting ketchup onto a six-pack of hotdog buns further down the aisle. “It’s just loud in the hypermarket. I’m grocery shopping with Minhyuk.”
“Yeah, I know,” Taeil says, “Minhyuk texted me to tell me you guys met up-”
“-he what?” Jaehyo sputters, and Minhyuk choose that time to make a quick getaway, leaving Jaehyo’s shopping cart in the middle of the aisle as he quick-walks to disappear around another row of shelves.
“Mmhmm,” Taeil says, and Jaehyo can see almost see it, Taeil biting at the corner of his lips as he hums, and Jaehyo thinks he’s really screwed if he can imagine Taeil this clearly in his mind. “He told me to call you if I needed anything, so here I am calling you!”
“Sure,” Jaehyo breathes out a sigh of relief. He’s going to douse Minhyuk in ketchup at their next movie night. “What do you need?”
“Actually, I don’t need anything from the grocer’s.” Taeil lets out a little breathless laugh after the line, and Jaehyo’s heart thumps. “But I do need you to be my plus-one at a wedding in about three months.”
*
Jaehyo finds himself on another ‘date’ the next month. “Why do you need me here at the tailor’s again?”
“I need your help looking at cuts and styles and things like that,” Taeil answers, standing at the counter and looking over a few swatches of fabric the tailor has laid out for him. His glasses slip down his nose a little, and when he pushed them up, Jaehyo lets his eyes linger on Taeil’s fingers just for a moment longer before looking down at the rolls of pinstripes and tweed alining the shop’s walls.
“Well, of course, I can help you pick out a suit,” Jaehyo says, and if there’s anything he’s proud of in life, it’s his ability to look well groomed and chic at any given time. “I mean, I was a popular uljjang in highschool and all, style is a must-have when you have thousands of followers on your Cyworld.”
Taeil picks out a cool, dark grey swatch and hands it to the tailor, then looks at Jaehyo cooly, raising an eyebrow. “You do know that ‘best face’ doesn’t necessarily mean ‘best dressed’ right.”
Jaehyo’s jaw drops. He scoffs and shoves at Taeil’s shoulder, bumping Taeil’s hip into the counter. “Have you even seen my photos from my old blog?”
“Of course I have. It’s not that easy to forget the intense bowl-cut you were sporting.”
“Are you insulting my style.” That’s a blow to Jaehyo’s ego right there. He’d had thousands of loyal followers on his Cyworld when he was a teenager, and the fact that the one object of his affections a few years later would jab at him about his sense of style is a little too much to bear.
“... Jaehyo, I’m not asking for an entire new wardrobe or anything I just need your help to pick out a suit for a wedding.”
“Fine,” Jaehyo says, wounded, he crosses the room to take a seat on a stool. “You don’t have any other suit that you could use? Getting one specifically for a wedding that isn’t yours seems a bit much.”
“Not all of us strived to win regional pretty-boy competitions in our adolescence, Jaehyo,” Taeil says, sarcastic. “I’ve never had a need to buy a formal suit before. So I’m getting mine today and you can use whatever you have in your closet.”
“Why do you need me to go with you again?” Jaehyo asks, and the reason why Taeil had asked him to be his date-his plus-one, Jaehyo reminds himself-is still lost to him. They’ve had countless dinners and gatherings together as friends, days and nights spent together in their respective apartments and out on the town, but Jaehyo has never been to a formal event with Taeil before, at least, not alone at a formal event with Taeil.
“There’s an empty seat at the table I’m supposed to be sitting at.” Taeil tells him simply, and the tailor takes Taeil’s measurements silently, Taeil spreading his legs and lifting his arms when prompted to. He looks like he’s imitating Da Vinci’s Vitruvian Man, but instead of finding his stance hilarious, Jaehyo just finds Taeil ridiculously endearing.
Jaehyo sits up straighter on his stool in the corner of the shop. “I’ll be sitting with you?”
“No,” Taeil says, and he scratches at the back of his neck, “You’ll be taking my seat because I’ll be singing as a part of the wedding band throughout dinner.”
Jaehyo takes a moment to let that sink in, and his hands are lying useless in his lap, so he starts picking at his cuticles. “So you’re just going to leave me alone at a table of people for the night while you belt your heart out on stage.”
“I’ll be back to join you during breaks! But...Pretty much, yeah.” Jaehyo narrows his eyes at Taeil’s answer. This really isn’t the kind of night Jaehyo has been hoping for, but with Taeil...
Jaehyo looks up from his hands, and Taeil is standing there looking slightly sheepish, fabric stretched across his chest with pins holding unfinished sleeves to his shoulders, and Jaehyo knows that when it comes to Taeil, he can’t say no.
Jaehyo sighs, and his heart clenches at the sight of Taeil’s toothy smile. “Well. Okay.”
*
On the day of the wedding, Jaehyo puts on his best suit-a cream jacket and vest set with black buttons over black slacks. When he looks into the mirror, he looks sharp and composed, even though his insides are squirming something awful. Taeil is due to get him from his apartment in just a moment, but Jaehyo sits at the corner of his bed, careful not to crease his jacket, and thinks.
It’s been awhile since he’s come to terms with how he honestly loves Taeil, in a more than brotherly way, but there haven’t been any developments in their relationship. They still go through their usual routines of drinking at each other’s houses, meeting up with the others at Minhyuk’s place for movie night, and maybe they’ve started going to the laundromat more frequently with each other, but apart from that, nothing much has changed.
Jaehyo has been leaving hints about his feelings, tiny breadcrumbs on a trail he’s trying to lead Taeil on, one that leads to his heart, but he’s read Taeil as a friend for so long he has no idea how Taeil is really responding to his minute romantic advances. Jaehyo has tried to play hard to get by refusing when Taeil has asked him out to dinner, whined about footing the bill at the movies, declined when Taeil has called to ask him if he needs anything from the hypermarket. Taeil reacts the same way he always has, and Jaehyo just can’t tell whether anything is going to happen without him saying anything.
Now he’s sitting at the end of his bed feeling sorry for himself, and it’s not as if he’s going to Yumi’s wedding as Taeil’s date either, just someone to take his place at the table, and Jaehyo tries not to feel sorry for himself. He picks at some stray lint on the shoulders of his coat. Hopefully the food at the wedding will be good.
The doorbell rings, and Jaehyo shakes his thoughts away and makes his way out of his bedroom. He leaves his thoughts behind, but his feelings follow him wherever he goes, and when he opens the door to Taeil, the warmth in his chest spreads throughout him.
Two hours later, Jaehyo has to say that the wedding really is a beautiful affair. He’s said his congratulations to Yumi and her beau already, having been introduced to Yumi by Taeil as a senior from Taeil’s highschool who he’s been in choir together with, and now he’s sitting at the table with Jihoon, thankfully there because his father is somehow a second cousin to the bridegroom.
Taeil had left him there with Jihoon to set up on stage before the dinner started, and he’s been wonderful in the hour that’s passed, voice rich and mellow, carrying melodies of realized love and longing, and while the food is as delicious as Jaehyo had hoped, he finds himself more engrossed in watching Taeil sing into the microphone than he is in the softshell-crab salad placed before him.
“You know, hyung,” Jihoon’s voice snaps Jaehyo out of his reverie, “You’re being painfully obvious.”
Jaehyo steels himself mentally before looking at Jihoon, and he stabs at his piece of crab with his chopsticks. “Hmm?” is all he manages to get out, and out of the corner of his eye, he can see Jihoon’s face scrunches up in amusement.
“Your feelings, hyung. You’re not really doing a good job of hiding them, if that’s what you’re actually trying to do,” Jihoon continues, and Jaehyo stops attacking his food to look up at him. He’s watching Taeil, still singing on stage, and the look on his face is fond. Jihoon has always adored Taeil, and for the longest time Jaehyo didn’t understand the kind of infatuation Jihoon had for Taeil, not until he figured out the truth of his own feelings.
“Have you been talking to Minhyuk,” Jaehyo states more than asks, and he narrows his eyes at Jihoon, who only smiles back at him, immune to Jaehyo’s blatant scrutiny.
“Kyung-hyung, actually,” Jihoon replies, and Jaehyo knows whose drink to mix with hot sauce the next time they’re over at Minhyuk’s. “But we already knew you’d figure things out eventually!”
Jaehyo takes a bite out of his crab before responding. “I don’t actually have
anything figured out, Jihoon. I don’t even know what I’m doing here tonight, let alone how to let Taeil know how I feel.” He sounds whiny as he says it, even he himself can hear the lilt to his words, but Jaehyo is grateful that Jihoon knows to not tease him when he’s feeling particularly down or conflicted.
“I don’t think it’s that hard to choose what to do next, hyung,” Jihoon says, and he’s tapping his fingers along the base of his wine glass in time to the song the band is playing. “What did you want to do when you first realized your feelings for Taeil-hyung were different from what you thought they were?”
There’s a split second then when Jaehyo feels a weight lift from his chest, and it’s as if the phantom hand around his heart loosens its grip when Jaehyo recalls the first night he’d wanted to kiss Taeil. It had been a simple thought back then, accompanied by an oh, but even though he’s entirely comfortable with his feelings, the thought of confessing and making Taeil uncomfortable makes everything a lot more complicated. A kiss would be a simple enough gesture, but still an action that would require an explanation, and Jaehyo isn’t ready to plant one on Taeil out of the blue and face plausible negative repercussions after.
“I wanted to kiss him,” Jaehyo tells Jihoon, and Jihoon nods, “We were drinking, and I kept staring at his lips. Things were simple, and all I wanted to do was kiss him.”
“And what about now?”
“I’m not going to just lay one on him, Jihoon,” Jaehyo starts, and Taeil has finished the last song of the first half of his set now. “Sure, I still want to kiss him, but I can’t just go up to him and say ‘let me kiss you, Taeil’ then kiss him and make a run for it.”
Jihoon uses a moment to take that in, and he leans back in his chair to wave at Taeil, who’s slowly making his way to their table. “You’re telling me a lot of things, hyung, but I think that instead of just stating things, you should start asking some questions instead. Taeil-hyung might get pissed if you suddenly smash your lips against his, but asking is a good way to go about things.”
Jaehyo is left with that then, because Jihoon gets up from his seat to walk over to Taeil at another table, poking at his cheeks and most likely blabbering about how cute he is and how well he’d performed. Taeil looks calm and satisfied with himself, comfortable with Jihoon’s arm over his shoulders and leaning into him, and when he looks over at Jaehyo, his smile is wide and unabashed.
It’s only later when the wedding is close to over and Taeil is finishing his set that Jihoon speaks to him about Taeil again. Jaehyo is watching him perform, all ease and minimal effort, and there’s a long moment in the chorus of the song when Taeil angles his body Jaehyo’s way and catches his eye. His song is unfaltering and neither is his gaze, but Jaehyo feels like someone has lit a bonfire underneath his chair and at the same time dumped a bucket of ice over his head. Taeil looks straight at him, eyes warm, and Jaehyo feels another oh settle deep inside his bones just as Jihoon leans over to whisper in his ear: “Don’t complicate the simplest of things, Jaehyo-hyung. And besides, you ought to know by now that the solution to this is easier than what it seems.”
*
The next morning, Jaehyo wakes up an hour before he usually does on a Sunday. He’d shared a cab with Taeil the night before to get home from the hotel where the wedding was held, and the atmosphere between them had been different, to Jaehyo at least, and something tells him that it didn’t have to do with the glasses of wine he’d consumed during the reception.
He’ll be seeing Taeil in another hour or so when Taeil threatens to knock his door down and go to the laundromat with him, but for once, Jaehyo doesn’t feel like lazing about and waiting for Taeil to appear and force him out the door. He wants to think about things seriously, about what Kyung and Minhyuk and even Jihoon have advised him:to not overthink things.
This is how he ends up sticking a Pororo post-it on his door with a hastily scribbled ur too slow. meet u there! :) as a message before heading out, and he’s at the laundromat in record time.
The whir of the many washing machines and dryers is familiar to Jaehyo, having spent most of his weekends idly wasting his time with Taeil, watching their laundry tumble-dry and talking about everything under the sun. It’s comforting, almost, like being under the covers in bed on a rainy day, and Jaehyo crosses his arms and pulls his jacket tighter around himself in the morning chill. He’s thinking about love and ease and simplifications when his eyes start to droop, and a familiar smile when his vision finally fades to welcoming black.
Jaehyo wakes up, and the first thing he sees when he opens his eyes is a very familiar chin. He’s fallen asleep many a time on other people, most frequently on Taeil, and Jaehyo has gotten very accustomed to what the bottom of Taeil’s head looks like.
His heart gradually picks up speed at the realization that he’s lying across Taeil’s lap, and Jaehyo turns his head and lets out a sigh into Taeil’s thigh.
“Good morning,” Taeil greets him, “Your bedhead is atrocious, just so you know.”
Jaehyo doesn’t move from his position on his back. “Technically, this isn’t a bed”
“True.” Taeil says, and he doesn’t say anything else. Jaehyo itches to say something, but he keeps his mouth shut, even though Taeil is looking down at him almost expectantly. They’re both waiting for the other to say something, but still, the words don’t come, and Jaehyo twists to press his cheek against Taeil’s thighs instead so he won’t have to look at him directly.
Things are quiet for the rest of the morning, but the pounding of Jaehyo’s heart in his ears as he feigns sleep is as clear as the feeling of a lost chance deep in his gut.
They walk back to their apartments in silence later, and Jaehyo looks straight ahead as he walks, though he knows that Taeil is watching him. He wants to say something, maybe even take Jihoon’s advice and ask if he could kiss Taeil, but before he knows it, the two of them have bid their goodbyes and gone into their respective apartments.
Jaehyo drops his basket of clothes on the floor and kicks it over, frustrated with himself. A flash of hot pink catches his eye, and Jaehyo bends down to pick out a bring pink ankle-sock from underneath his pile of fresh underwear. It’s most definitely not his, but he’s seen the color peek out from Taeil’s sneakers more than a few times before.
He’s about to send Taeil a text when the doorbell rings, and Jaehyo tries to keep his cool in case it’s just a door-to-door salesman and not the person he wants to see most.
A quick look through the peephole confirms that it is Taeil standing on his doorstep, and when Jaehyo gets the door open, Taeil pulls him out into the hall, then sits them down cross-legged in the corridor.
“This corridor is neutral ground or something, okay?” Taeil tells him, “Concerning what we’re going to discuss.”
Jaehyo nods and it’s a little bit awkward between the two of them. Jaehyo leans back against the wall and bumps at Taeil’s knee with his own.
He watches Taeil’s brow furrow, and he lick his lips twice before he speaks: “Firstly, are you ever going to ask me out?”
“Wh-what?” Jaehyo asks, and he’s confused and surprised and ridiculously hopeful all rolled into one.
Taeil stretches his lips out into a thin line. “You can’t have been waiting for me to make another move or something okay, Jaehyo, I’ve been asking you over, to the movies, to go shopping, for something like the past two years or something, there is no way you can tell me that you can’t have noticed how much time I like to spend with you.”
Jaehyo feels his heart swell. Two years? he thinks, and his mouth must be open and he probably looks like a gaping fish right now, though it’s most likely fitting considering how his mind is swimming in countless memories of Taeil seeking him out to spend time together. “Those were dates to you?” is all he can manage to say in return.
“I genuinely like you. They were chances for the two of us to hang out alone, not with the others,” Taeil says, and he looks as sheepish as Jaehyo feels, but there’s a hint of a smile lurking at the backs of his teeth. “You were just too oblivious to notice.”
“I only realized how I felt for you when your lips were stained with my pink drink mix. I wanted to kiss you,” Jaehyo admits.
Taeil rolls his eyes at him. “Well,” he says, “You always have been pretty slow on the uptake. I knew you liked me from ages ago, what with the way you coddle me sometimes.”
A smile makes it way onto Jaehyo’s face because he can’t hold it in anymore. It’s like his heart is having a party in his chest cavity, and all he wants to do is kiss-
Kiss Taeil.
“Can I kiss you?” Jaehyo asks, and he settles his hand on top of Taeil’s closest knee.
Taeil shifts closer. “It’s taken a while for both of us to get on the same page, but you ought to know by now that the answer to that question is yes.”
Taeil’s lips are chapped, and they might not be the same shade of obnoxious pink that they were the first time Jaehyo wanted to kiss him, but he smells like fresh laundry and his smile has always remained the same.
“Hey,” Jaehyo says, and Taeil laces their fingers together between them. “I really like you.”
Taeil’s smile widens. “Great,” he says, and he pushes his glasses out of the way to rest on top of his head. “Now wasn’t that simple?”
This time Jaehyo really has no answer, and he huffs out a laugh before he leans in to kiss Taeil. It’s just a simple press of lips, but it has Jaehyo’s heart soaring.
It ends up being the first out of many kisses to come.
For: chateaucartoon
Pairing: Jaehyo/Taeil
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 7333
Summary: Jaehyo opens his eyes to see Taeil’s smile, bright and easy, and thinks oh.
Notes/Warnings: Dear recipient, here is something that I’m hoping comes off as an ok attempt at wooing/boy-next-door fic! I chose to write Jaeil because the words ‘boy-next-door’ had me thinking of the boys’ skit from their first Play! BBC World Camp teaser. I tried my best to write something that is hopefully readable to you, and maybe you’ll even like it! Merry Christmas!
Jaehyo falls for Taeil quite simply.
It isn’t anything spectacular; there is no light shining down from the heavens, no painful heart constrictions from a cupid’s arrow, no neon signboard in his head with a snazzy statement signifying the impact of a love interest in his life. It’s nothing special, but it happens, and the newly realized feelings settle at the base of Jaehyo’s stomach like warm tea on a rainy day. Tea-or alcohol, really.
They’re drinking together in Taeil’s apartment when it happens, sipping at cheap beer from the corner store and a pina colada mix Jaehyo had acquired while grocery shopping the week before, and it’s not unlike any other night they spend together as neighbors.
“Why... are we drinking this again?” Taeil asks, after they’re both three bottles in with multiple pink-stained cups strewn around them.
Jaehyo blinks at him, head a little fuzzy from their alcohol consumption, and answers. “Because it was on sale, has only five net calories, and zero trans fat.”
“It’s pink, Jaehyo.” Taeil says with a raised eyebrow.
“Mmhmm..?” Jaehyo hums around the rim of his paper cup and motions for Taeil to go on.
Taeil sighs and sets his own paper cup down on the coffee table. “So I’m sure that whatever health benefits this mix once had has already been drowned in the copious amounts of food coloring in it.”
Jaehyo continues to chew on his cup, and he stares back at Taeil for a while. He feels a prick of urgency from his bladder crawl through his abdomen. “Huh,” Jaehyo mumbles, and he bats his eyes at Taeil over the cup, “At least it’d be somewhat cool if it turned by piss pink too.”
He waits until Taeil is opening his mouth to say something else when he narrows his eyes and sends the now empty cup flying from his mouth with a smack of his lips, travelling just far enough to hit the edge of Taeil’s glasses and fall to the floor.
The look on Taeil’s face is incredulous, but Jaehyo can tell that Taeil isn’t mad at him, and the curl of his lips is unhindered by the new retainer he’d gotten and hadn’t bothered to remove before their binge drinking session. He’s about to
mutter an apology for his childishness when Taeil contorts his face into a mockery of what a rage-filled expression is supposed to be, and Jaehyo leans back against the couch’s armrest and laughs so hard he’s sure his bladder is going to rupture.
“Hey.” Taeil interjects between Jaehyo’s snorts, and Jaehyo only has a split second when he opens his eyes to fling his hands in front of him to prevent the bottle of beer Taeil tosses to him from hitting him smack in the stomach. There’s
droplets of condensation dotting the bottle’s surface, but the beer is bordering on lukewarm when Jaehyo takes a sip.
Jaehyo wiggles down the couch and closer to Taeil, who rolls his eyes and leans back to make space for Jaehyo’s gangly limbs. “Taeil,” Jaehyo whines, and takes a swig of his lukewarm beer. His mind is still filled with paper cups of pink pina coladas, and he’s pretty sure that the overly sweet taste of pineapples and pink isn’t going to be out of his mouth anytime soon.
“Is my tongue pink?” Jaehyo decides to ask, breaking the silence between them. Taeil looks up from his beer bottle towards Jaehyo and stretches his arms out before resting one along the back of the couch. Jaehyo lets his head lol to the side and leans into the cushions to wedge Taeil’s hand between the couch and his chin.
Taeil squints at him, and Jaehyo opens his mouth to stick his tongue out. “Pink,” Taeil confirms, and probably says something else that’s witty and a jab to Jaehyo’s intelligence, but Jaehyo is past paying attention to what he has to say and is instead staring intently at Taeil’s lips. They’re slightly chapped, stained an unnatural shade of pink at the edges by Jaehyo’s drink mix, and Jaehyo is just about to recommend that Taeil use chapstick when Taeil’s tongue darts out to lick at them, the motion slow, a habit picked up recently due to his retainer, and Jaehyo kind of wants to kiss him.
Jaehyo wants to kiss Taeil.
It’s a sobering thought in the midst of his trip to inebriation, and Jaehyo shuts his eyes and thinks about it for a moment, running repeated lines of I want to kiss him and I want to kiss Taeil through his mind. Something tells Jaehyo that he should be more panicked about this, about wanting to kiss his friend, but the panic never comes, and Jaehyo hums under his breath. He feels drowsy and warm and comfortable on Taeil’s couch, drinking with him and using his hand as a pillow, and Jaehyo knows that things are going to be okay because
he genuinely likes Taeil.
Jaehyo sucks in his bottom lip and nods into Taeil’s hand, and when Taeil pulls his hand away to flick him in the forehead and tap at Jaehyo’s jean-clad knee with his beer bottle, Jaehyo opens his eyes to see Taeil’s smile, bright and easy, and thinks oh.
Taeil had shoves him off the couch when Jaehyo starts to drool on his hand, but his hand on Jaehyo’s shoulder is warm and firm when he leads him to the door, and Jaehyo still feels the warmth of Taeil’s grip as he walks him the short distance across the cramped corridor to his own place right across the hall. After he slinks through the door to his apartment, Jaehyo peels his clothes off on the way to his bedroom where he flops onto his bed in his briefs, one hand coming up to scratch at his shoulder as he rolls onto his stomach.
Still warm, Jaehyo thinks almost instantly, prodding at his shoulder. Heat seeps into his cheeks when the image of Taeil’s pink-stained mouth fills his head, and Jaehyo lets out a low groan into his pillow, mind too fuzzy to deal with the new onslaught of feelings he has for the boy next door.
*
He tells Kyung about his feelings when they meet up for lunch the next day.
Kyung doesn’t even bat an eye. “What is this, The Wonder Years? Is Taeil your perfect boy-next-door, your soulmate?”
"It just feels right," Jaehyo tells him, because it honestly does. Admitting that he likes Taeil isn't a big deal to him, nothing revolutionary at all, just like how his own realisation of feelings came with minimal worries and damage to his understanding of himself. Then again, he was partially inebriated at the time, but Jaehyo figures that if he woke up with the same feelings, then his heart must be set on the idea of Taeil being more than just a friend to Jaehyo.
Kyung doesn't seem all that convinced. "Well, I'm worried for you," he says, picking the croutons out of Jaehyo's salad with his chopsticks and dipping them into a mixture of Dijon mustard and gochujang that he'd piled onto their shared condiment dish. Jaehyo wrinkles his nose, and Kyung continues, "You remember what happened the last time you were 'openly and honestly in love'."
He taps Jaehyo's left wrist with the back-ends of his chopsticks, and Jaehyo flexes his hand and fingers self-consciously. His tattoo, though faded, is still as noticeable and eye-catching as the day he got it done-a reminder of his foolishness for rushing into a relationship and commitments he had no idea how to handle when he was in college. The jut of his wrist tingles from where Kyung pokes at him, and Jaehyo scratches at the slight space between the K and R.
“Hmm,” Jaehyo’s hum is non-committal, “I wouldn’t consider the way I like Taeil to be the same as what I felt for her, though.”
He knows that he’s matured since that time with his old girlfriend, and his feelings for Taeil are different from the whirlwind romance he’d attempted to have once upon a highschool fantasy. When he looks up, Kyung raises an
eyebrow at him slowly before he rolls his eyes and dumps some of the hotsauce-soaked croutons onto Jaehyo’s plate. They’ve turned an orange-copper color from the sauces, not unlike the color Kyung’s hair had been last summer, and Jaehyo snorts before picking one up and popping it into his mouth for a taste.
Trying it out turns out to be an extremely bad idea. Jaehyo sputters at the spiciness of the tiny piece of bread and Kyung laughs at him, one hand clutched to his face as Jaehyo scrambles for his iced-tea to soothe his tongue and throat.
He finishes the drink quickly and flicks his bendy-straw at Kyung. “What the hell, Kyung, how did you even eat that.”
Kyung grins at him. “You forget that I don’t eat spicy food. And besides, you were too busy thinking about your new feelings for Taeil-hyung to pay attention to me to notice that I didn’t actually eat your food.”
Jaehyo lets out a whine at him and proceeds to crunch on the ice at the bottom of his glass. “Why would you sabotage me like that,” he grumbles, and his teeth chatter from the temporary Ice Age in his mouth, “I think my lips are on fire.”
“You’ll live.” Kyung deadpans, and he picks at the cheese bits in Jaehyo’s salad, and Jaehyo notes that he actually eats the flakes this time. “Besides, a simple remedy to get rid of spiciness taking over your mouth is to counter it with something sweet.”
Jaehyo stares at him incredulously at that, but he’s at least happy that Kyung seems to have temporarily let his newfound feelings slide. “Kyung, you know this place doesn’t sell dessert.”
“You know what you should do,” Kyung says, and Jaehyo is a little bit wary of the way his brows tilt down just the slightest bit, “You should ask Taeil to help you out.”
“What.” Jaehyo is definitely wary now.
“You should go up to him and ask him to ‘give you some sugar’. He is your neighbour!” Kyung pitches his voice up high and finishes his sentence with a flourish of his hand in the air, chopsticks brandished, and Jaehyo feels inclined to punch Kyung to get the mischievous smile off of his face.
“That was the cheesiest thing you have ever told me to do, and I mean ever.” Jaehyo says, and Kyung’s smile only gets wider.
“Well actually one of the best remedies is to drink some milk but I thought that you asking Taeil for some of his ‘milk’ would be a little too much now-”
“Ugh.” Jaehyo lets his head fall to the table-top with a groan, too used to Kyung’s considerably useless advice and innuendos he probably hasn’t stopped using since middle school.
Kyung chuckles, and Jaehyo pulls himself upright to finish what’s left of his salad, taking care to avoid his ruined croutons. “Really though, Hyo-hyung,” Kyung says then, and Jaehyo can tell from his tone that he’s ready to be serious. “Be careful ok? Don’t get yourself hurt, or hurt yourself worrying about what to do.”
The look in Kyung’s eyes in sincere, and Jaehyo gives him a smile after swallowing a slice of tomato. “It’s not as if I’m going to really do anything about this, Kyung, it’s honestly no big deal.”
“Yeah well, just don’t get a tattoo of Taeil-hyung’s motorcycle on your arm, alright-”
“Kyung.”
--
Taeil asks him out on a date the on a dreary Sunday morning.
Except that it’s not actually a date, because who in the world would ask someone out on an overcast, grey-skied day, let alone a date to the laundromat.
Taeil had walked across their corridor that morning to bang on Jaehyo’s door, and Jaehyo had done a good enough job trying to smother himself with his pillow and ignore the insistent thumps and shouts until his mind registered that it was actually Taeil trying to barge into his apartment.
He looks out of his peephole to see Taeil with a laundry bag slung over his shoulder and a beanie squashed over his hair, and if it were anyone else Jaehyo would think they’d look ridiculous. Instead, when Jaehyo lets his door creak open and allows Taeil to shuffle into his apartment, all Jaehyo manages to think about is how soft Taeil’s hair looks curled and unstyled around his eyes, the glint of his eyebrow piercing bright in the lowlight of Jaehyo’s entryway.
This is how Jaehyo finds himself stumbling about his apartment with his laundry basket early one Sunday morning clad in only his pyjama bottoms, picking up socks and underpants from around his living area and bedroom. His mind is still hazy from sleep and he’s looking at the world through bleary, sleep-crusted eyes, but Taeil is standing in his doorway with his own bag of laundry, wry smile upon his face, and Jaehyo promptly fails at his attempt to make it through the morning without tripping over his furniture.
“Are you always up this early?” Jaehyo mumbles from his place on the floor after tripping over one of his coffee-table’s legs. He stretches his arms out when he spies a stray sock hidden among the dust bunnies under his couch, using one hand to drag himself forwards when he snags the sock with the other. Taeil had come in all sly smiles and chirpy greetings, and the harsh beating of his heart even minutes after Taeil’s early-morning appearance makes Jaehyo considerably glad that he literally can’t face Taeil right now.
He looks up when Taeil laughs, choked out and almost out of breath, the usual sharp sound fading into softer chuckles. Jaehyo has no idea why he’s laughing, but the laughter genuine amusement on his face have Jaehyo smiling to himself as he pulls himself upright to sit crossed-legged on the floor. He’s always been forgetful and somewhat clumsy, not to mention too talkative for his own good, but Jaehyo has never minded being the brunt of Taeil’s jokes and always revels in the delight of hearing Taeil’s laugh.
“No,” Taeil says, and Jaehyo almost forgets the question he’d asked, mind preoccupied with more of his feelings for Taeil. He’s sitting at Jaehyo’s kitchen table now, and it’s almost as if he belongs there. Jaehyo shakes the thought out of his mind when Taeil continues, “I woke up too early and couldn’t go back to bed, so I decided to drag someone else with me to the laundromat so I won’t be bored.”
Jaehyo presses his face into the seat of his couch. It still smells a little like pizza sauce from his last party a few weeks back, when Taeil had sat on a pie-slice as a result of a tickle fight with Jihoon. “So you just barged into my apartment, at some godforsaken hour on a Sunday, just because you don’t have to go to the laundromat alone.”
“Yup.”
“Because you’re bored.”
“Basically.”
“...I’m going back to bed.” Jaehyo says, and he hauls the upper-half of his body up onto his couch. He flings the dusty sock at Taeil, who evades it easily, the sock coming to land next to his box of muesli on the table. Jaehyo can’t help but let out a frustrated whine at the back of his throat then rolls onto the couch to stuff his head under a cushion. It’s been a month since Jaehyo’s moment of realization in Taeil’s apartment, and while he’s usually accepting and happy with his increasingly frequent daydreams of how a first date with Taeil would be, he’s seriously questioning his taste now.
He’s blowing a hot stream of air out through his nose into the synthetic-leather of his couch when he hears a chair scrape across his parquet, and the next thing he knows, Taeil is sitting sprawled across his legs. When Jaehyo twists to look back at him, he sees Taeil idly clicking away at his smartphone.
“Come on,” Taeil says, and when he leans forwards over Jaehyo’s back,
Jaehyo huffs and twists back to wallow into his cushions. He hopes he comes off as petulant instead of embarrassed, because his cheeks feel hot just from having Taeil this close, and Jaehyo silently curses himself because this proximity isn’t even close to other times they’ve huddled together to stare into laptop and iPad screens, not as if he and Taeil have never sprawled over each other before during movie nights at Minhyuk’s either.
Jaehyo presses himself deeper into the couch. “It’s too early, go away,” he grumbles, and shoves a cushion in the general direction of Taeil’s face.
“I’m going to sneeze.” Taeil says, deadpan, and Jaehyo snorts.
“Is that the best you can come up with?” he retorts, at the same time Taeil says, “I’m going to sneeze on you.”
“Taeil what the fuck-” is all Jaehyo gets out before Taeil inhales shakily and lets out a great sneeze onto Jaehyo’s bare back.
Jaehyo stills. His back feels damp.
“Did you really just-”
“Yup.”
“Oh my god,” Jaehyo says, mortified, and he’s lifted his head out of his cushions at this point, ready to shake Taeil off his legs and bemoan his life. Taeil hasn’t left from his seat on the backs of Jaehyo’s calves, and Jaehyo hears him sniff. He’s probably scrunching up his face as he does it, adorable and charming and ridiculous and Jaehyo wants to punch himself in the face because here he is: lying flat on his couch pining over his neighbor who’s also one of his closest friends. Lee Taeil, the one with a love for small animals and a soft spot for most people younger than him, the man he’s lived across from for years now and the very same jackass who’s just blown out the entire contents of his nose onto his bare back.
Jaehyo lets his head drop forward into his cushions again, and the crocheted cushion cover probably presses patterns into his cheeks. In a moment he’ll get up and rage and shout at Taeil, who will probably smile at him toothily and sling an arm over his shoulders, and Jaehyo will seethe for a moment before going to wipe himself off with a towel and change into a t-shirt. He’ll most likely let Taeil drag him to the laundromat too, and somehow end up paying for both of their breakfasts at a coffee shop later.
Jaehyo wonders briefly what his life has come to.
-
“Your feelings just make it such that Taeil can’t do anything wrong in your eyes,” Minhyuk says, when Jaehyo runs into him at the hypermarket when he’s doing his grocery shopping.
“Yeah well, I don’t get it.” They are standing in the fresh vegetable section staring at bell peppers. Minhyuk picks a few loose ones up from the crate and inspects them carefully, but Jaehyo just grabs a shrink-wrapped pack of green peppers and drops it into his shopping cart hastily, mind too preoccupied to spend too much time musing over vegetables that come in two colors too many.
“It’s not that hard to understand.” Minhyuk places his three carefully chosen peppers into a sheer plastic bag, all different sizes and each a different color . He puts them into his basket before he turns to Jaehyo. “Not to mention you’ve always let Taeil get away with things even before you realized the true extent of your feelings anyway.”
Jaehyo chews on his lip at Minhyuk’s words. Ever since that Sunday when he had let himself be dragged around the block barely after sunrise, he’s been extra careful to monitor the way he reacts to Taeil, only to discover that he is particularly lenient when it comes to bitching at Taeil and physically assaulting him. Jaehyo sat at his table the weekend before and let his forehead hit it’s surface when he realized that he’d pick Taeil up and swing him around more times than he would punch him in the arm like he does with his other friends.
Jaehyo lets out a sigh when he and Minhyuk look over yogurt brands at the dairy section. “I know that, but this way I have no way of knowing how long I’ve actually liked Taeil-for all I know it could have been something that happened on the spot when we met all those years ago, and my feelings have just been lying there dormant at the back of my brain.”
“I wouldn’t say they’re dormant, really,” Minhyuk says, and Jaehyo watches him pick up two cups of flavored yogurt drink, supposedly infused with the benefits of collagen. Jaehyo wrinkles his nose at Minhyuk’s odd taste, and Minhyuk continues, “Your feelings have been pretty active this entire time, it’s just that you’ve never taken the time to sit down and notice them.”
“What, and you’ve known all this while?” Jaehyo asks warily, and Minhyuk looks up at him. His cheek dimples as his face turns thoughtful, and Jaehyo suddenly worries that he’s been living his whole life in pure oblivion.
Minhyuk rolls his eyes at him. “Jaehyo, I think even Taeil probably knows he’s always being let off easy by you. You might not be doing it consciously, but to the rest of us, you’re not exactly being subtle about it.”
Jaehyo stops in his tracks, hand hovering in the air above a stack of greek yogurt. “Do you really think he knows?” he asks, and the tone of his voice is serious. He’s never even attempted to think about how Taeil would react to his feelings, to a confession, and the thought sinks down his from his mind to rest unsettled at the pit of his stomach. His past girlfriends had been the ones to confess to him, handwritten letters on cute stationery and secret meet ups after school. The last time he’d had to woo someone was with Karyeong, and that relationship had ended up rather disastrously.
“Maybe not that you love him,” Minhyuk says slowly, and Jaehyo finds it funny because it’s usually him that has to spell things out for Minhyuk, but the tables are turned this time. “But he definitely knows you treat him differently as compared to the rest of us.”
“Okay,” Jaehyo starts, but his voice is lost when his phone blasts out a loud jingle. Minhyuk steps forward to take control of his shopping cart, and Jaehyo nods at him in thanks. He fumbles for his pocket and taps ‘Accept Call’ without looking at the caller ID.
“Jaehyo?” Taeil’s asks him on the line, and Jaehyo doesn’t know how his voice still manages to flood his chest with warmth even through the static.
“Taeil!” Jaehyo half-shouts half-replies, and he winces at what his feelings are doing to make him even more socially awkward than usual. Minhyuk stifles a laugh from where he’s supposedly looking at bottles of ketchup, but Jaehyo knows he’s keeping his eyes and ears open for dirt to use against Jaehyo and tease him with later. Jaehyo narrows his eyes at Minhyuk, smoothing a his free hand down his sideburns.
Taeil is still on the line. “God, Jaehyo, are you trying to make me deaf or something?”
“No, sorry,” Jaehyo says sheepishly, and he watches Minhyuk mimic squirting ketchup onto a six-pack of hotdog buns further down the aisle. “It’s just loud in the hypermarket. I’m grocery shopping with Minhyuk.”
“Yeah, I know,” Taeil says, “Minhyuk texted me to tell me you guys met up-”
“-he what?” Jaehyo sputters, and Minhyuk choose that time to make a quick getaway, leaving Jaehyo’s shopping cart in the middle of the aisle as he quick-walks to disappear around another row of shelves.
“Mmhmm,” Taeil says, and Jaehyo can see almost see it, Taeil biting at the corner of his lips as he hums, and Jaehyo thinks he’s really screwed if he can imagine Taeil this clearly in his mind. “He told me to call you if I needed anything, so here I am calling you!”
“Sure,” Jaehyo breathes out a sigh of relief. He’s going to douse Minhyuk in ketchup at their next movie night. “What do you need?”
“Actually, I don’t need anything from the grocer’s.” Taeil lets out a little breathless laugh after the line, and Jaehyo’s heart thumps. “But I do need you to be my plus-one at a wedding in about three months.”
*
Jaehyo finds himself on another ‘date’ the next month. “Why do you need me here at the tailor’s again?”
“I need your help looking at cuts and styles and things like that,” Taeil answers, standing at the counter and looking over a few swatches of fabric the tailor has laid out for him. His glasses slip down his nose a little, and when he pushed them up, Jaehyo lets his eyes linger on Taeil’s fingers just for a moment longer before looking down at the rolls of pinstripes and tweed alining the shop’s walls.
“Well, of course, I can help you pick out a suit,” Jaehyo says, and if there’s anything he’s proud of in life, it’s his ability to look well groomed and chic at any given time. “I mean, I was a popular uljjang in highschool and all, style is a must-have when you have thousands of followers on your Cyworld.”
Taeil picks out a cool, dark grey swatch and hands it to the tailor, then looks at Jaehyo cooly, raising an eyebrow. “You do know that ‘best face’ doesn’t necessarily mean ‘best dressed’ right.”
Jaehyo’s jaw drops. He scoffs and shoves at Taeil’s shoulder, bumping Taeil’s hip into the counter. “Have you even seen my photos from my old blog?”
“Of course I have. It’s not that easy to forget the intense bowl-cut you were sporting.”
“Are you insulting my style.” That’s a blow to Jaehyo’s ego right there. He’d had thousands of loyal followers on his Cyworld when he was a teenager, and the fact that the one object of his affections a few years later would jab at him about his sense of style is a little too much to bear.
“... Jaehyo, I’m not asking for an entire new wardrobe or anything I just need your help to pick out a suit for a wedding.”
“Fine,” Jaehyo says, wounded, he crosses the room to take a seat on a stool. “You don’t have any other suit that you could use? Getting one specifically for a wedding that isn’t yours seems a bit much.”
“Not all of us strived to win regional pretty-boy competitions in our adolescence, Jaehyo,” Taeil says, sarcastic. “I’ve never had a need to buy a formal suit before. So I’m getting mine today and you can use whatever you have in your closet.”
“Why do you need me to go with you again?” Jaehyo asks, and the reason why Taeil had asked him to be his date-his plus-one, Jaehyo reminds himself-is still lost to him. They’ve had countless dinners and gatherings together as friends, days and nights spent together in their respective apartments and out on the town, but Jaehyo has never been to a formal event with Taeil before, at least, not alone at a formal event with Taeil.
“There’s an empty seat at the table I’m supposed to be sitting at.” Taeil tells him simply, and the tailor takes Taeil’s measurements silently, Taeil spreading his legs and lifting his arms when prompted to. He looks like he’s imitating Da Vinci’s Vitruvian Man, but instead of finding his stance hilarious, Jaehyo just finds Taeil ridiculously endearing.
Jaehyo sits up straighter on his stool in the corner of the shop. “I’ll be sitting with you?”
“No,” Taeil says, and he scratches at the back of his neck, “You’ll be taking my seat because I’ll be singing as a part of the wedding band throughout dinner.”
Jaehyo takes a moment to let that sink in, and his hands are lying useless in his lap, so he starts picking at his cuticles. “So you’re just going to leave me alone at a table of people for the night while you belt your heart out on stage.”
“I’ll be back to join you during breaks! But...Pretty much, yeah.” Jaehyo narrows his eyes at Taeil’s answer. This really isn’t the kind of night Jaehyo has been hoping for, but with Taeil...
Jaehyo looks up from his hands, and Taeil is standing there looking slightly sheepish, fabric stretched across his chest with pins holding unfinished sleeves to his shoulders, and Jaehyo knows that when it comes to Taeil, he can’t say no.
Jaehyo sighs, and his heart clenches at the sight of Taeil’s toothy smile. “Well. Okay.”
*
On the day of the wedding, Jaehyo puts on his best suit-a cream jacket and vest set with black buttons over black slacks. When he looks into the mirror, he looks sharp and composed, even though his insides are squirming something awful. Taeil is due to get him from his apartment in just a moment, but Jaehyo sits at the corner of his bed, careful not to crease his jacket, and thinks.
It’s been awhile since he’s come to terms with how he honestly loves Taeil, in a more than brotherly way, but there haven’t been any developments in their relationship. They still go through their usual routines of drinking at each other’s houses, meeting up with the others at Minhyuk’s place for movie night, and maybe they’ve started going to the laundromat more frequently with each other, but apart from that, nothing much has changed.
Jaehyo has been leaving hints about his feelings, tiny breadcrumbs on a trail he’s trying to lead Taeil on, one that leads to his heart, but he’s read Taeil as a friend for so long he has no idea how Taeil is really responding to his minute romantic advances. Jaehyo has tried to play hard to get by refusing when Taeil has asked him out to dinner, whined about footing the bill at the movies, declined when Taeil has called to ask him if he needs anything from the hypermarket. Taeil reacts the same way he always has, and Jaehyo just can’t tell whether anything is going to happen without him saying anything.
Now he’s sitting at the end of his bed feeling sorry for himself, and it’s not as if he’s going to Yumi’s wedding as Taeil’s date either, just someone to take his place at the table, and Jaehyo tries not to feel sorry for himself. He picks at some stray lint on the shoulders of his coat. Hopefully the food at the wedding will be good.
The doorbell rings, and Jaehyo shakes his thoughts away and makes his way out of his bedroom. He leaves his thoughts behind, but his feelings follow him wherever he goes, and when he opens the door to Taeil, the warmth in his chest spreads throughout him.
Two hours later, Jaehyo has to say that the wedding really is a beautiful affair. He’s said his congratulations to Yumi and her beau already, having been introduced to Yumi by Taeil as a senior from Taeil’s highschool who he’s been in choir together with, and now he’s sitting at the table with Jihoon, thankfully there because his father is somehow a second cousin to the bridegroom.
Taeil had left him there with Jihoon to set up on stage before the dinner started, and he’s been wonderful in the hour that’s passed, voice rich and mellow, carrying melodies of realized love and longing, and while the food is as delicious as Jaehyo had hoped, he finds himself more engrossed in watching Taeil sing into the microphone than he is in the softshell-crab salad placed before him.
“You know, hyung,” Jihoon’s voice snaps Jaehyo out of his reverie, “You’re being painfully obvious.”
Jaehyo steels himself mentally before looking at Jihoon, and he stabs at his piece of crab with his chopsticks. “Hmm?” is all he manages to get out, and out of the corner of his eye, he can see Jihoon’s face scrunches up in amusement.
“Your feelings, hyung. You’re not really doing a good job of hiding them, if that’s what you’re actually trying to do,” Jihoon continues, and Jaehyo stops attacking his food to look up at him. He’s watching Taeil, still singing on stage, and the look on his face is fond. Jihoon has always adored Taeil, and for the longest time Jaehyo didn’t understand the kind of infatuation Jihoon had for Taeil, not until he figured out the truth of his own feelings.
“Have you been talking to Minhyuk,” Jaehyo states more than asks, and he narrows his eyes at Jihoon, who only smiles back at him, immune to Jaehyo’s blatant scrutiny.
“Kyung-hyung, actually,” Jihoon replies, and Jaehyo knows whose drink to mix with hot sauce the next time they’re over at Minhyuk’s. “But we already knew you’d figure things out eventually!”
Jaehyo takes a bite out of his crab before responding. “I don’t actually have
anything figured out, Jihoon. I don’t even know what I’m doing here tonight, let alone how to let Taeil know how I feel.” He sounds whiny as he says it, even he himself can hear the lilt to his words, but Jaehyo is grateful that Jihoon knows to not tease him when he’s feeling particularly down or conflicted.
“I don’t think it’s that hard to choose what to do next, hyung,” Jihoon says, and he’s tapping his fingers along the base of his wine glass in time to the song the band is playing. “What did you want to do when you first realized your feelings for Taeil-hyung were different from what you thought they were?”
There’s a split second then when Jaehyo feels a weight lift from his chest, and it’s as if the phantom hand around his heart loosens its grip when Jaehyo recalls the first night he’d wanted to kiss Taeil. It had been a simple thought back then, accompanied by an oh, but even though he’s entirely comfortable with his feelings, the thought of confessing and making Taeil uncomfortable makes everything a lot more complicated. A kiss would be a simple enough gesture, but still an action that would require an explanation, and Jaehyo isn’t ready to plant one on Taeil out of the blue and face plausible negative repercussions after.
“I wanted to kiss him,” Jaehyo tells Jihoon, and Jihoon nods, “We were drinking, and I kept staring at his lips. Things were simple, and all I wanted to do was kiss him.”
“And what about now?”
“I’m not going to just lay one on him, Jihoon,” Jaehyo starts, and Taeil has finished the last song of the first half of his set now. “Sure, I still want to kiss him, but I can’t just go up to him and say ‘let me kiss you, Taeil’ then kiss him and make a run for it.”
Jihoon uses a moment to take that in, and he leans back in his chair to wave at Taeil, who’s slowly making his way to their table. “You’re telling me a lot of things, hyung, but I think that instead of just stating things, you should start asking some questions instead. Taeil-hyung might get pissed if you suddenly smash your lips against his, but asking is a good way to go about things.”
Jaehyo is left with that then, because Jihoon gets up from his seat to walk over to Taeil at another table, poking at his cheeks and most likely blabbering about how cute he is and how well he’d performed. Taeil looks calm and satisfied with himself, comfortable with Jihoon’s arm over his shoulders and leaning into him, and when he looks over at Jaehyo, his smile is wide and unabashed.
It’s only later when the wedding is close to over and Taeil is finishing his set that Jihoon speaks to him about Taeil again. Jaehyo is watching him perform, all ease and minimal effort, and there’s a long moment in the chorus of the song when Taeil angles his body Jaehyo’s way and catches his eye. His song is unfaltering and neither is his gaze, but Jaehyo feels like someone has lit a bonfire underneath his chair and at the same time dumped a bucket of ice over his head. Taeil looks straight at him, eyes warm, and Jaehyo feels another oh settle deep inside his bones just as Jihoon leans over to whisper in his ear: “Don’t complicate the simplest of things, Jaehyo-hyung. And besides, you ought to know by now that the solution to this is easier than what it seems.”
*
The next morning, Jaehyo wakes up an hour before he usually does on a Sunday. He’d shared a cab with Taeil the night before to get home from the hotel where the wedding was held, and the atmosphere between them had been different, to Jaehyo at least, and something tells him that it didn’t have to do with the glasses of wine he’d consumed during the reception.
He’ll be seeing Taeil in another hour or so when Taeil threatens to knock his door down and go to the laundromat with him, but for once, Jaehyo doesn’t feel like lazing about and waiting for Taeil to appear and force him out the door. He wants to think about things seriously, about what Kyung and Minhyuk and even Jihoon have advised him:to not overthink things.
This is how he ends up sticking a Pororo post-it on his door with a hastily scribbled ur too slow. meet u there! :) as a message before heading out, and he’s at the laundromat in record time.
The whir of the many washing machines and dryers is familiar to Jaehyo, having spent most of his weekends idly wasting his time with Taeil, watching their laundry tumble-dry and talking about everything under the sun. It’s comforting, almost, like being under the covers in bed on a rainy day, and Jaehyo crosses his arms and pulls his jacket tighter around himself in the morning chill. He’s thinking about love and ease and simplifications when his eyes start to droop, and a familiar smile when his vision finally fades to welcoming black.
Jaehyo wakes up, and the first thing he sees when he opens his eyes is a very familiar chin. He’s fallen asleep many a time on other people, most frequently on Taeil, and Jaehyo has gotten very accustomed to what the bottom of Taeil’s head looks like.
His heart gradually picks up speed at the realization that he’s lying across Taeil’s lap, and Jaehyo turns his head and lets out a sigh into Taeil’s thigh.
“Good morning,” Taeil greets him, “Your bedhead is atrocious, just so you know.”
Jaehyo doesn’t move from his position on his back. “Technically, this isn’t a bed”
“True.” Taeil says, and he doesn’t say anything else. Jaehyo itches to say something, but he keeps his mouth shut, even though Taeil is looking down at him almost expectantly. They’re both waiting for the other to say something, but still, the words don’t come, and Jaehyo twists to press his cheek against Taeil’s thighs instead so he won’t have to look at him directly.
Things are quiet for the rest of the morning, but the pounding of Jaehyo’s heart in his ears as he feigns sleep is as clear as the feeling of a lost chance deep in his gut.
They walk back to their apartments in silence later, and Jaehyo looks straight ahead as he walks, though he knows that Taeil is watching him. He wants to say something, maybe even take Jihoon’s advice and ask if he could kiss Taeil, but before he knows it, the two of them have bid their goodbyes and gone into their respective apartments.
Jaehyo drops his basket of clothes on the floor and kicks it over, frustrated with himself. A flash of hot pink catches his eye, and Jaehyo bends down to pick out a bring pink ankle-sock from underneath his pile of fresh underwear. It’s most definitely not his, but he’s seen the color peek out from Taeil’s sneakers more than a few times before.
He’s about to send Taeil a text when the doorbell rings, and Jaehyo tries to keep his cool in case it’s just a door-to-door salesman and not the person he wants to see most.
A quick look through the peephole confirms that it is Taeil standing on his doorstep, and when Jaehyo gets the door open, Taeil pulls him out into the hall, then sits them down cross-legged in the corridor.
“This corridor is neutral ground or something, okay?” Taeil tells him, “Concerning what we’re going to discuss.”
Jaehyo nods and it’s a little bit awkward between the two of them. Jaehyo leans back against the wall and bumps at Taeil’s knee with his own.
He watches Taeil’s brow furrow, and he lick his lips twice before he speaks: “Firstly, are you ever going to ask me out?”
“Wh-what?” Jaehyo asks, and he’s confused and surprised and ridiculously hopeful all rolled into one.
Taeil stretches his lips out into a thin line. “You can’t have been waiting for me to make another move or something okay, Jaehyo, I’ve been asking you over, to the movies, to go shopping, for something like the past two years or something, there is no way you can tell me that you can’t have noticed how much time I like to spend with you.”
Jaehyo feels his heart swell. Two years? he thinks, and his mouth must be open and he probably looks like a gaping fish right now, though it’s most likely fitting considering how his mind is swimming in countless memories of Taeil seeking him out to spend time together. “Those were dates to you?” is all he can manage to say in return.
“I genuinely like you. They were chances for the two of us to hang out alone, not with the others,” Taeil says, and he looks as sheepish as Jaehyo feels, but there’s a hint of a smile lurking at the backs of his teeth. “You were just too oblivious to notice.”
“I only realized how I felt for you when your lips were stained with my pink drink mix. I wanted to kiss you,” Jaehyo admits.
Taeil rolls his eyes at him. “Well,” he says, “You always have been pretty slow on the uptake. I knew you liked me from ages ago, what with the way you coddle me sometimes.”
A smile makes it way onto Jaehyo’s face because he can’t hold it in anymore. It’s like his heart is having a party in his chest cavity, and all he wants to do is kiss-
Kiss Taeil.
“Can I kiss you?” Jaehyo asks, and he settles his hand on top of Taeil’s closest knee.
Taeil shifts closer. “It’s taken a while for both of us to get on the same page, but you ought to know by now that the answer to that question is yes.”
Taeil’s lips are chapped, and they might not be the same shade of obnoxious pink that they were the first time Jaehyo wanted to kiss him, but he smells like fresh laundry and his smile has always remained the same.
“Hey,” Jaehyo says, and Taeil laces their fingers together between them. “I really like you.”
Taeil’s smile widens. “Great,” he says, and he pushes his glasses out of the way to rest on top of his head. “Now wasn’t that simple?”
This time Jaehyo really has no answer, and he huffs out a laugh before he leans in to kiss Taeil. It’s just a simple press of lips, but it has Jaehyo’s heart soaring.
It ends up being the first out of many kisses to come.