Chapter Text
Yeon-oh wasn’t this nervous even before he filmed his first ever kissing scene.
When he signed the contract he’d known he would have to kiss Kwon Jaehyuk at some point, multiple times even, according to the script, but his dislike for him at that point hadn’t seemed such an insurmountable hurdle and it all had seemed so distant into the future. Even a few weeks ago, when he really started warming up to the man, he hadn’t thought too deeply of it.
However, now, in the light of his newly discovered feelings and with Yeonjun’s words still lingering in his mind, the restlessness in his heart is becoming unbearable.
“Did you not sleep well last night?”
Yeon-oh looks at his manager’s concerned face and tries to sketch a smile. “Yeah… But I’m fine, don’t worry, it won’t affect filming.”
“I know it won’t, it was your health I was worried about…”
Thankfully, the man doesn’t argue further and simply hands him a cup of coffee. Usually, Jaehyuk is the one bringing him something to drink or eat in between takes and, as much as Yeon-oh is relieved that he’s not on set today, he also kind of… misses him.
He dismisses the useless thought and takes the coffee with him to a quiet corner of the set.
Since Jaehyuk had to skip in order to shoot for a magazine instead, it’s mostly Yeon-oh filming today. There are only a few moments of respite where he can take a break while the crew takes background shots and a few secondary characters film their scenes. So when the day finally ends, he breathes out a relieved sigh.
Kwon Jaehyuk: Are you still on set?
Kwon Jaehyuk: It’s on my way, should I pick you up?
Yeon-oh freezes. Having filmed for so many hours, only now does he remember that they had agreed on meeting this evening to rehearse together. His heart, which had quieted down for a while, jumps right back in his throat. He considers lying and saying he has already left but lies always have a way to come around and bite you back.
Me: Yes. Sorry to trouble you.
The reply arrives immediately.
Kwon Jaehyuk: No trouble.
“Hyung, you can go on ahead. Ah, I’m rehearsing with Jaehyuk sunbaenim again today. He’s picking me up.”
“Ah...”
Soon enough, a very familiar car stops a few meters away and Yeon-oh bids farewell to his manager and hurries over.
“Hello,” Yeon-oh breathes as he jumps into the backseat. Suddenly, when the door closes, he realizes that Jaehyuk has barely moved over and they’re sitting so close to one another that he might as well be sitting on his lap.
“Hi,” Jaehyuk replies, his voice so near that Yeon-oh can sense it on his skin. “How was today?”
As he poses the question, he puts some distance between them and signals to his manager to drive them home.
“Uh… tiring.”
“Would you rather I take you home? We can reschedule.”
The urge to say yes overwhelms Yeon-oh at first, but he’s already here now, and maybe it’ll help ease off his nerves for tomorrow. Even if he went home, he would only toss around restlessly in bed.
“No, it’s fine. How about you? How was the shoot?”
“It was alright. Nothing special.”
“Ah.” Yeon-oh can’t think of anything else to say.
“What did your brother say about yesterday?”
For some reason, all of Yeon-oh’s thoughts drift back to the conversation he had with Yeonjun in the car about the very man next to him, the probing questions and the reminder that Yeon-oh should think about his dating life. He hopes Jaehyuk doesn’t notice his burning ears.
“He really liked it and said it was ‘still cool’ even though I warned him it would be boring. Haha, I think he would’ve said it was cool even if we didn’t film at all.”
“He seemed pretty enthusiastic.”
“Yeah. I mean they also got a free day from school for it so it must have been nice.”
Jaehyuk laughs silently along with him and the drive ends faster than Yeon-oh expected. The cold hits his face in full force as he steps out of the warm interior of the car and Yeon-oh can’t contain the shiver that passes through him. Jaehyuk sends his manager off and rounds the car in big strides.
“Let’s go in, it’s freezing.”
“You’re the one wearing only a blazer. Are you not cold too?” Yeon-oh asks incredulously.
Jaehyuk’s place seems warmer than the last couple of times Yeon-oh was here. The heat must have been turned up some in the meantime, or it might simply be that Yeon-oh doesn’t find the house so desolate and strange anymore. He hangs his coat and slips into the slippers that Jaehyuk leaves out for him with familiarity, then heads towards the living room.
“Do you want some tea to warm up before we start?”
“It’s alright, just water will do.”
Jaehyuk returns with both water and some orange juice, which Yeon-oh accepts gladly. The anxiety he was feeling in the morning is gone but, in its place, the steady electric current that he has grown accustomed to feeling around Jaehyuk settles swiftly all throughout his body. The buzzing is not unpleasant, just like the few moments before drunkenness, after the first couple sips of alcohol.
“What do you think of the reunion?”
“It’s very… emotional.”
“Yeah…” Yeon-oh lets the silence settle and takes a sip of the juice. “Do you want to go through Hyun-woo’s thoughts and emotions during it?”
There’s no reply as Jaehyuk flips through the script back and forth, like he expects an answer to jump out on its own from between the pages.
“I think I got it mostly but… I do have a question.”
“Yeah?”
“Could we rehearse the kiss too beforehand?”
The glass that Yeon-oh was about to place down carefully slips through his fingers and clinks loudly as it abruptly meets the coffee table. Yeon-oh barely registers the sound against the thumping of his own heart.
“It’s actually my first time kissing a man and I wouldn’t want to slow everyone down tomorrow if I mess up too many takes,” he explains.
“It… feels all the same,” Yeon-oh mumbles unthinkingly, struggling to keep his voice steady.
The other man watches him with an odd look on his face and it’s impossible for Yeon-oh to even begin to guess what’s going on in his mind. “I wouldn’t know that,” he comments.
There is a battle that goes on within Yeon-oh. If he refuses, he needs a good enough reason for it, which he doesn’t have, otherwise, he would certainly raise the other man’s suspicion. But if he doesn’t refuse… what if he crosses a line he can’t uncross? It’s one thing to kiss on set and another one to do it in Jaehyuk’s homely living room where it’s just the two of them.
“Alright.”
“Alright,” Jaehyuk echoes, feeling uncharacteristically nervous. It seems childish, all of a sudden, and pathetic. He’s never kissed a man before but Yeon-oh must be right that it feels the same as kissing a woman. It’s just kissing, isn’t it?
But it’s not just that, as much as he’s trying to convince them both.
There is an itch in his heart that he hasn’t been able to scratch no matter what he’s done and that itch always intensifies when he’s near Yeon-oh.
After reading the script on his own and imagining this scene, he was struck with the crazy thought that this kiss might get him the answer that has been evading him. But if it does, that can’t happen under dozens of watchful eyes.
“Should uhm… should I start from the line about the gallery?”
He nods, cowardly avoiding Yeon-oh’s eyes, instead noticing the blush spreading from his neck to the tip of his ears. The room temperature must be quite high because his face heats up slightly as well. He’s so distracted by it that he doesn’t properly process what Yeon-oh is saying, only reading his lines out based on pure instinct and memory.
The script is stingy with directions when it comes to the most climactic moment of the scene. After the tense argument, it simply states that Jeonghun and Hyun-woo are supposed to kiss but there is no part of Jaehyuk’s brain that can think of what the characters should be feeling and how he should act.
The only thing he knows is that Seo Yeon-oh is sitting awfully silent and lovely only a palm’s width away from him, flushed cheeks and warm brown eyes opened wide in something more than just nervousness. But as soon as Jaehyuk leans in and cups his face in his hand, Yeon-oh’s eyelashes tremble, falling down in anticipation.
The first touch of their lips is soft, like a petal falling on the clear surface of a lake. It ripples on Jaehyuk’s heart. He presses closer, eager yet unwilling to scare Yeon-oh off, brushing his thumb along his cheekbone. The younger man follows his lead, angling his head upwards. It’s chaste and tentative to the point of awkwardness but it tastes like an answer.
As it turns out, Yeon-oh lied to him when he said that it feels all the same. But it’s not that it’s a man he’s kissing, Jaehyuk discovers with vivid clarity, it’s that it’s Seo Yeon-oh.
Kisses in the past have never been so warm, have never felt like coming home.
It startles Jaehyuk enough to remind him that it’s not real and they’re just practicing. How long is it even appropriate to keep this going before Yeon-oh sees right through his selfishness?
After Jaehyuk puts a little distance between them, they just stare at each other for seconds that feel like hours.
“The- uhm, the vibes weren’t right,” Yeon-oh croaks, face aflame.
Jaehyuk clears his voice. It takes him a while to put together a coherent string of words. “You mean it was not passionate enough?”
“Uhm, yes… Their relationship has always felt very intense and- and at this point they both carry a lot of grudges against each other.”
“I thought Hyun-woo would be relieved after finally finding him.”
“I think so too, but he was getting more and more desperate because he couldn’t find him for so long and he’s still hurt because he was abandoned. He wouldn’t be…”
Yeon-oh lets his voice trail off. Jaehyuk waits for him to finish what he wanted to say but the end of that sentence never comes.
“Alright. Should we try again?”
Yeon-oh nods. Gulping softly, he recites the first line again, and Jaehyuk forces himself to take his gaze off his Adam’s apple and look instead at the script in his hands.
Impatience, he thinks at some point in their line exchange, and yet again he finds his own emotions entangled with Hyun-woo’s. He’s only a few centimeters away from Yeon-oh and knows exactly how much longer the dialogue will last and yet he can’t wait any longer.
Hyun-woo hasn’t seen this man he loves in months.
So, before Yeon-oh gets the chance to finish his sentence, Jaehyuk grabs his face and steals the rest of it right out of his mouth.
The young man stiffens at the first contact, then very quickly assesses the situation and opens his lips, meeting Jaehyuk in a proper kiss. The taste of orange is cloyingly sweet on Jaehyuk’s tongue as it parts Yeon-oh’s lips and licks inside hungrily.
Yeon-oh surrenders himself readily and Jaehyuk’s arms tighten around him as he draws closer, lower. His fingers find their way into Jaehyuk’s hair, making a mess out of it and sending shivers down Jaehyuk’s spine when they accidentally scratch his scalp. His entire body feels alert like it hasn’t been in ages. It would take only one swift movement to grab the younger man and take him onto his lap, then they would be even closer. But he resists the temptation, although not easily.
A tiny sound between a moan and a squeak escapes Yeon-oh and Jaehyuk remembers to give him a second to breathe. His own lungs feel a bit heavy but the sensation is weirdly addicting.
He brushes his lips against Yeon-oh’s for one last time before letting go of him and for a while, the only sound in the room is their heavy breathing.
“Was that better?”
“Y-yeah, I think so.” The words stumble out of Yeon-oh’s mouth in a stuttering mess.
Jaehyuk clears his throat again and wills himself to move a little further away on the couch so he won’t succumb to the urge to kiss him again. He scrambles instead for something to break the quiet with. “I apologize for startling you earlier.”
Yeon-oh furrows his brows in confusion. When understanding dawns, he quickly averts his eyes. “It’s… don’t worry about it-”
“I just thought about what you said, how Hyun-woo was desperate and upset, it just seemed like he wouldn’t wait.”
“I- I understand… You should do it tomorrow too. I’m sure the director will appreciate it.”
“Okay. Well, I’ll tell you in advance next time, I’m sorry.”
Yeon-oh waves it off and slips back into his professional teacher mode. He goes through the scenes with Jaehyuk patiently but he never says anything about the kiss again. Jaehyuk can only do the same and call a driver to send Yeon-oh back to his house when he notices how late it’s gotten.
“Text me when you get home, see you tomorrow.”
“See you tomorrow.”
Tomorrow, he’ll have to be more careful.