Chapter Text
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Beomgyu loves many things about the modern human world but museums are not one of them. It’s nothing personal; there’s just so many times one can walk through some over-glorified display of their own past, forgotten belongings kept behind glass cases with elaborate captions. More often than not, Beomgyu has to stifle his laughs when he sees something his old friends had made to pass the time being considered as artworks and poems that shaped their time period.
Unfortunately for him, Taehyun never seems to tire of dragging him along to all these new exhibits, no matter how many times Beomgyu draws glares from museum guides. (He’s very good at being annoying; three hundred years of practice does that to a person, apparently.) Instead, Taehyun delights in the idea of Beomgyu knowing trivial facts behind a seemingly unfinished portrait by a troubled artist (Jeongin got bored halfway through) or an abstract piece of poetry about despicable trees (Taehyung hyung fell from one the morning of his first date).
And the younger vampire is, for some reason, capable of literally dragging him out of his brand-new ready-to-mingle-with-this-generation’s-people apartment and into that car of his, so Beomgyu has no choice but to be pulled along into the wide corridors of the National Museum’s ‘Love Through The Ages’ exhibition. The autumn air clings to their clothes and in spite of himself, Beomgyu grows nostalgic as he sees calligraphy and paintings reminiscent of his own youth.
(Technically he’s always going to be the ripe young age of twenty-five, but technically, he was also born more than three centuries ago.)
“Hyung,” Taehyun asks him when they stop by a refreshment table. “Do none of your belongings ever make it to a museum?”
“Yah, Kang Taehyun!” Beomgyu waves his arms in the air for dramatic effect. “Do you know how good I am at keeping my things in order? I have been playing hide and seek with these annoying historians who think they can call dibs on anyone’s stuff for longer than you’ve been a- live !”
Taehyun raises his hands up in surrender. “I’m just saying, hyung. Every time I take you somewhere, you point at basically anything from Korea and say you know who made it. As if you knew every person who ever lived.”
Beomgyu sniffs petulantly. “I just have a lot of friends. You have a lot to learn, young padawan,” he says as Taehyun’s eyes crinkle in amusement.
“You latch onto every new word you find like the grandpa you are,” he teases, poking his tongue out. Beomgyu calls out in mock outrage, but the museum staff member closeby gestures at him to lower his voice so he settles for digging his fingers into Taehyun’s arms and threatening to make him pay for a week’s worth of iced americanos as they walk into a section dedicated to letters.
(Which, isn’t it an invasion of privacy to read someone else’s love letters? Beomgyu is really curious about how manners have evolved through the ages. He was clearly not paying enough attention.)
Beomgyu is almost done with his soda when Taehyun pulls him over to an old letter written on a long sheet of paper. “Beomgyu hyung, look! This one is addressed to someone with your name too!”
That piques the older vampire’s attention. The soda cup is quickly tossed into one of the bins and Beomgyu fiddles with his bangs as he skims over its contents. It’s so passionate and full of yearning, that Beomgyu loses himself in the odd familiarity of the words and the handwriting. He’s about to tell Taehyun how he wished it was him that the letter was written for, when he sees the name of the sender. Any and all words die in his throat and Beomgyu’s eyes widen like saucers. Vaguely, he can feel Taehyun nudging him, but none of that seems to matter in front of the three syllables inked at the edge of the long confession.
Choi Yeon-jun.
The one who slipped away before he was even Beomgyu’s. The one that Beomgyu has been trying to get over for like, two hundred whole years- apparently a whole century of thinking that the other vampire was well and truly gone from his life before this letter was even written. The metaphors in the letter become crystal-clear in Beomgyu’s mind, individual memories flooding his body as he re-reads each and every line again and again till the words are jumbled up.
“Hyung?”
Beomgyu turns to a very confused Taehyun, his fangs unconsciously lengthening as his mind whirs with confusion.
“What the fuck? What the fuck?” Beomgyu wonders how to move on from here. “Taehyun, why the fuck didn’t he say anything? For so many centuries?”
Taehyun blinks at him, then at the letter, and then back at him. “Who? Huh- what?”
Beomgyu smacks his hand against his head and sighs. “He didn’t even send it to me? Why, why would anyone write something so beautiful and then not even send it to the person they wrote it to?”
“Hyung, I have no i-”
“Actually, don’t answer that. That’s exactly the kind of thing that idiot would do. Why didn’t he tell me? God, he’s such a fool,” Beomgyu wails as Taehyun’s eyes widen even more in utter confusion.
“Oh my god,” Beomgyu cries out all of a sudden, suddenly considering another possibility. “What if he’s dead ? What if he’s with someone else now? Oh my god, Taehyunnie, do you think he never posted the godforsaken letter because he wrote in like, the heat of the moment or something?”
Taehyun shrugs, his mouth hanging in a shape that straddles the line between confusion and astonishment. “I don’t- I don’t know?”
Dramatically, Beomgyu collapses against Taehyun’s shoulder. “What do I do now?”
Once again, Taehyun shrugs. Then in typical Taehyun-fashion, he asks, “What do you want to do now?”
“Yah, if I knew I wouldn’t ask you, would I? He probably doesn’t even live here anymore, right? I’d have seen him around if he was even in Korea. What the fuck I’m going to punch him if he’s still alive; why the fuck did he leave if he loved me?”
“What if he’s not?”
“In love with me?” The idea is very, very unpleasant, but at the very least it would explain the lack of contact. Taehyun is thinking of much worse things apparently.
“I meant, what if he’s not alive?”
Unwittingly, tears rise to the corners of Beomgyu’s eyes, the usual stars in them clouded over with barely-suppressed heartache. The glass case glints in the light. “He- you- I don’t know what then,” he whispers. Taehyun purses his lips and wraps an arm around Beomgyu’s own.
“We can see the rest of the exhibit some other day, okay?” Beomgyu nods, a bit overwhelmed as he tries to make sense of the letter’s contents, and gives Taehyun a grateful pat on his hand. The night feels colder when they walk home, than all the windy winter nights Beomgyu has faced alone.
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Messaging: Taehyung hyung
—————————-
Hyung?
Do you have a second?
Beomgyu!!!!!
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Did you know that more punctuation marks and letters at the end of a message mean that you’re more excited?
🥳🤩😍😊
LOL
I will keep that in mind, hyung. I actually had a favour to ask of you.
Oh????? Tell me!!!!!!!!!!
Do you remember Choi Yeonjun from… somewhere around Seoul?
OMG!!!!!!! Your lover boy!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! How could I ever forget??????????????
Yoongi says he wants to forget but he can’t because every time you get drunk you ramble about his eyes and his smile.
Ignore him!!!!! What about Choi Yeonjun?????? 😮😮😮😮😮
Um, well, do you know where he is?
All of a sudden? Why do you want to know? 😮😮😮😮😮😮
I found… something that belonged to him.
Oooh! Are you finally cleaning your room?
My room is already clean! 😡😡😡😡 And no, I found… an old letter. It was… I suppose it would have been important to him.
So if there’s a chance he’s still alive, I think I should return it to him.
Oh… Well, I’ll have to ask around. I’m sure Seokjin hyung will know!
Okay, hyung. Let me know once you find out.
I will!!!!! Also, you have to come over soon!!! You will not believe what happened at the Vampire Council meeting last week!!!!!!
OMG! I will call you and come over!
Goodbye for now!!!!!
Goodbye, hyung.
—------------------------------------
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It takes approximately three days for Taehyung to get back to him with the details. He’s at Taehyun’s apartment, a few buildings down from his own, recounting the exact moment he discovered his long-lost-ex-love’s letter to him to Kai as Taehyun looks on with amusement. Kai is a good listener, ooh-ing and aah-ing at the right moments and also, genuinely curious to know why Beomgyu was so upset.
It’s probably a good thing that they’re there when Taehyung bounds into the small house with his usual flourish. Taehyun and Kai turn to him immediately, the two young vampires awed by his demeanour, as usual. Beomgyu pushes down a fond smile at the sight, leaning in to hug his friend.
“I have information,” Taehyung announces happily, making himself at home among the cushions on Taehyun’s sofa. Beomgyu purses his lips. He isn’t sure if he wants to know anymore, if he wants to know whether Yeonjun is still within reach or not.
“So, Choi Yeonjun of Seoul, born circa before Beomgyu but after me because both of those events were a long time ago, is in fact, still in Seoul. He never left.”
Beomgyu blinks, ignoring Taehyun and Kai’s teasing comments about his age. “Never?”
“Well,” Taehyung frowns. “He’s probably travelled for holidays and the like- vampires are rich people after all- but according to Jimin, he’s never left-left.”
“I- What? I’ve never left either. How have I never seen him around? Are you sure you have the right person, hyung?”
Taehyung smiles an apologetic smile, the kind he reserves for when he thinks the other person will be hurt by whatever it is that he has to say. Beomgyu feels like the blood in his body is curdling- which is weird since it's technically not even his blood.
“Jimin told me that was deliberate. He uh, didn’t want you to know he was still, you know, around.”
“Why on earth not? If it’s because he’s in love with someone else then, well, I hate to break it to him but I’ve been an adult for a really, really long time and I can act like it.”
“Actually, I think it was because he was embarrassed. Jin hyung told me that he just didn’t think you’d want to see him.”
Beomgyu wants to smack his head against a wall. Or maybe a pillow. He hasn’t gotten nearly enough sleep to process this well.
“So that means he’s here now too?” Taehyun asks.
Taehyung nods. “He lives on the other side of Seoul though. I have his address somewhere in this phone thing. Just a second.”
Beomgyu watches as Taehyung presses a lot of buttons on his sleek new phone, the latest model of some or the other brand. It takes a lot longer than a second, and more than a little help from the two youngest before Taehyung proudly shows them the address.
“That’s not very far from the museum,” Beomgyu observes. Taehyun taps his index finger against his chin multiple times like a cartoon character.
“He won’t be very easy to meet even then.”
Beomgyu scoffs. “I will literally wade through the Han river to get to him now if I have to.”
“Why the Han river?” Kai’s mouth is pinched into a small frown and briefly, Beomgyu wonders why that’s what he took away from his passionate monologue. Statement. Mono-line monologue.
“Nothing. He came to the arcade with me the other day and heard some middle schooler say it, and despite being older than calculus, Beomgyu hyung decided it was a very cool thing to say.”
Kai sniggers at the explanation as Beomgyu reaches over to tug at Taehyun’s ear. “Those middle schoolers beat you at every game, you know.”
Taehyun flushes. “We weren’t even playing with them!”
“Doesn’t matter. You were beaten by a bunch of literal thirteen year olds.”
“You are so lucky I was taught to respect my elders.”
“Alright, alright,” Taehyung interjects with a fond smile on his face. “Taehyun is right though, Gyu-ah. He won’t be easy to meet at all.”
The Taehyun in question sticks his tongue out at him. Beomgyu contorts his face into a variety of expressions, each one more annoying than the last, until Taehyun finally cringes away.
“He has had centuries of practice at evading you,” Kai ruminates in the background of their facial tussle.
“To be fair, he’s only been so good at it because I wasn’t actually looking for him because I didn’t think he was even alive . Or well, unalive. Whatever,” Beomgyu snaps and folds in on himself as much as he can a six foot tall man standing against the back of a chair. Taehyun allows him one single sympathetic expression before arguing back.
“Technically, isn’t that because he was good enough at avoiding you?”
Beomgyu sighs. He may be older than calculus or calculatus or whatever it is that kids these days study, but there isn’t a comeback he can think of that’s true. Yeonjun exists in the world out there, aware of Beomgyu’s immortality, aware of his own feelings for Beomgyu, (hopefully) aware of the fact that Beomgyu would have, at the very least, been gracious enough to hear him out for not contacting him for all these years, and in spite of all of this, has chosen to leave him in the dark.
For reasons he can’t quite express, Beomgyu feels like he’s been betrayed. It’s one thing to lose who you thought was The One for you to time and old age and a fulfilling life (for the seventeenth century), and live with the yearning for a life like it; but it is another, to discover that the one that got away has been a block away for three hundred years, completely up to date on your whereabouts, just unwilling to pursue it further. What a melancholy tale , Beomgyu thinks, so strife with misunderstanding that it might make a good script for one of these new dramas that become popular on that Netflix app .
Sometimes, Beomgyu can still hear Choi Yeonjun’s voice, so soft and lovely against the velvety night-air. He can hear him call out his name, voice growing louder and louder in his mind until-
Beomgyu frowns. No, that’s just Taehyung.
“You okay there?”
Taehyung looks concerned, his eyes all wide and curious in that way of his. Beomgyu’s mother used to look like that, and all of a sudden an overwhelming wave of nostalgia is threatening to wash over him. Instead, Beomgyu exhales.
“Yes, yes. I’m just… I need to figure out a way to meet him.”
Kai rubs his stomach comfortingly and Beomgyu leans into the feeling.
“I’ll ask around,” Taehyung reassures him and Taehyun even chimes in with a few ideas of his own.
Beomgyu smiles, a small thing, weighed down by his thoughts. “Don’t rush. We have all the time in the world. Quite literally.”
Taehyun huffs good-naturedly. Beomgyu rolls his eyes and throws a stray peanut at his forehead but of course, Taehyun skilfully catches it in his mouth.
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It takes around a week for Beomgyu to stop sulking and brewing coffee mournfully at four in the morning. Kai for his part is immensely kind and thoroughly amused because vampires can’t really taste non-blood food and Beomgyu’s nightclothes are very gay poet from Victorian-era England.
(In his words, not Beomgyu’s, because the latter has genuinely no idea what gay poets from Victorian-era England would wear, or why Kai would know it, but he never tells him so. It’s nice to be able to be gay, and to be called gay, if only in private. In the world Beomgyu was born into, that wouldn’t have been an option even when he was alone. In the world Beomgyu was born into, in rural Daegu before it was called Daegu, there was no such concept. All Beomgyu had known back then was that he was in love with Choi Yeonjun, and it felt so right that perhaps the rest of the world was wrong.)
But anyway , after the one week of doom has passed, Beomgyu is somewhat back to his bubbly, ingenious self, with a myriad of ideas as to how to get Yeonjun to meet him so they can discuss their… in all honesty, Beomgyu isn’t sure what they’re going to discuss but (!) spontaneity happens to be a forte of his, so he figures he’ll make it work when the time comes. Taehyun clearly disapproves of this, but it doesn’t matter. Beomgyu is older than him and therefore, smarter than him.
“How does being well-prepared have anything to do with smartness?” Taehyun cries out.
Beomgyu waves him away. “It has everything to do with it. You should listen to me, I’m your elder.”
“You told me last week that your personality felt younger than mine so I should be the one paying for ice cream.”
“I was going through a mid-life crisis.”
“How can you calculate your mid-life if you’re immortal?”
“Questions like these prove you’re a child. A baby. An infant, if you will.”
Kai falls off his chair laughing at them.
Taehyun sighs as he helps his friend back up. “Have it your way, hyung. Do you have any ideas on how to get him to meet you in the first place? Or is that up to fate as well?”
“So mean, Kang Taehyun,” Beomgyu whines. “But no, I have no ideas that don’t involve storming into his house and confronting him right there. And Taehyung hyung said to not do that so I’m back to square one.”
“Obviously,” Kai giggles. “That would be very rude and also an invasion of privacy.”
Beomgyu narrows his eyes at him. “A private letter he wrote in like eighteen hundred and something is hanging in a museum for the whole world to see and read, but me, the apparent love of his life, the apple of his eye, and according to said letter, the moon and the sun and the stars to his sky, cannot.”
Kai smiles brightly. “Absolutely. He’ll be so touched to know you respected his boundaries.”
Beomgyu stuffs three dumplings in his mouth to avoid screaming in frustration.
“Does he even know his letter is up there? Do we even know it’s his letter?”
Taehyun’s question is met with a look of askance.
“I don’t know if he knows it, but I definitely know his handwriting. Not to mention, that letter was dripping with his personality. I would know. I literally thought about him a minimum of once in three days for two hundred years.”
“That sounds really unhealthy actually. Now that you mention it, maybe you should see some kind of immortality therapist about how you were in love with someone who you thought was long gone.”
“Okay, first of all, that’s only half-true. I loved him the way you’d love someone you had lost. Not to mention, it was really, really, really complicated at the time. I just… I know, okay? I know his handwriting, I know who he was. And I understand that maybe he’s different now, but I need to know why he never told me.”
Silence drapes over them, quiet and sad, a harsh contrast to the usual banter that flows easily between the three of them. Beomgyu only remembers the plight of eternity in moments like these, when he remembers his youth is but an illusion, a mask for the pain of surviving time. Pressing his lips into a thin line, he wonders if it would have been easier with a certain someone by his side.
“Sorry hyung,” Taehyun murmurs. “I was only joking.”
“I know, it’s okay Taehyunnie. I’m sorry for dampening the mood as well.”
“No, no you’re right, hyung. If I discovered that someone I loved more than anyone else in the world loved me back because of a letter that I discovered in a museum because it was never sent to me, and then I discovered that the person was purposely avoiding me, I would probably not handle it well,” Kai says and he pats Beomgyu’s head with gentle fingers. Taehyun nods earnestly.
“Me neither!”
“Wah, I can’t believe all I needed to get you two to be nice to me was be sad. I should really do it more often,” Beomgyu teases.
“And the moment’s over,” Taehyun says, a mildly annoyed arch present in his eyebrows. Beomgyu only laughs as they try to come up with ideas to get Yeonjun in the same room as Beomgyu.
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In the end, none of their twenty-two-and-a-half extremely well-engineered plans, complete with a minimum of twelve steps each, matter because Beomgyu and Yeonjun bump into each other in the most maddeningly mundane way ever. If fate has a customer service helpline, Beomgyu would very much like to register a complaint about the utter lack of spectacularity in the way the major plot-twists of his life are executed. Zero out of five stars. He would not recommend.
It happens on a Wednesday evening at five, which is the most boring timeslot ever- because of which Beomgyu is completely not on his spontaneity guard. Kai really wants to see the letter and Taehyun wants to see the rest of the exhibit so they all pile up in Beomgyu’s newest car after Taehyun’s last class of the day to make an event out of it.
The museum is relatively empty today and Beomgyu is thankful for it. He really doesn’t need to panic in public for the second time this month because Yeonjun’s letter is out there on display with his name on it.
“Yah, Kai-ah,” he asks, lowly when they pass by one of the more crowded areas, “what if I’m not the Beomgyu the letter was for?”
Taehyun smacks from the other side with his infuriatingly strong arms. “How many vampire Beomgyus can one Choi Yeonjun be in love with?”
“Well… probably not that many since it’s not a common name in general and even rarer in the vampire community of Korea or anywhere else, but what if it’s written for a human Beomgyu?”
“I don’t know, hyung… I’m pretty sure there aren’t many options for Beomgyus that have a promised eternity to spend with a Yeonjun, only to be ripped apart by circumstances and the world at large.”
“Wait, he wrote that? That’s so sweet,” Kai wails as they make their way up a flight of stairs.
“I said the same thing!” Beomgyu cries out. “It was so beautiful, the whole letter was so lovely, just like Yeonjun hyung.”
“I can’t believe all we’ve talked about in the past two weeks has been Choi Yeonjun and we only found out, just now, that he’s older than you.”
“In my defence, I have none. It just didn’t come up.”
Taehyun’s about to retort when the sign for the new exhibit distracts him. “We’re here,” Kai cheers. Now that they’re here, Beomgyu wants to melt into the floor and disappear. He isn’t sure if he’s going to be able to deal with reading the letter again without knowing when he and Yeonjun might cross paths again.
He wants to ask him if he still remembers everything he wrote about, if the fire they made on that one stormy night is still as bright in his memories as it is in Beomgyu’s. If he still remembers that day they spent in the farthest fields, exchanging flower crowns under the diamond sunbursts of the summer sky.
“Hey, isn’t that Soobin hyung?”
Beomgyu looks at Kai upon hearing the new name. “Who’s Soobin hyung?”
“He’s one of our seniors at university! Taehyun and I even have lunch with him sometimes. I didn’t know he liked museums.”
Beomgyu takes note of the way Kai’s ears redden mildly, the way they do when he sees Taehyun exercising. Interesting, he thinks and files it away for later teasing.
“Do you eat actual human food, then?”
Taehyun shakes his head as Kai bends to examine one of the vases with a young noblewoman’s face on them.
“He was one of our first vampire friends, actually.”
Beomgyu waits for him to continue or do something but Taehyun just stares at Kai staring at the vase for a whole thirty seconds. The situation seems to be even more strife with oblivion than he had previously inferred.
“And?” He says, to further their conversation, like the picture of eloquence he is.
“And what?”
Beomgyu sighs, as slow as a meandering river. “ And aren’t you going to go and say hello? Or introduce us? Like humans are supposed to when they bump into each other?”
Taehyun blinks. “But we’re vampires?”
“Oh my God, Taehyun-ah,” Beomgyu whines. “We’re pretending to be humans, at least? In public? Since we’re technically not real? And also we have manners and we cannot pretend like we didn’t see him since we’re the only four people in this corridor and he’s standing right next to the infamous letter? With a capital I for infamous?”
Taehyun blinks a few more times. Briefly, Beomgyu wonders if he’s misunderstood the new-age slang again. He’s pretty adaptable to linguistic changes now but this generation’s slang is less predictable than the weather.
“Huh,” Taehyun says, breaking Beomgyu’s train of thought. “For a change, that does seem to make sense.”
“What are you talking about? I always make sense. I’m the immortal king of making sense.”
“What makes sense?” Kai asks, straightening up. “This is a very pretty vase, by the way. It’s older than Beomgyu hyung too.”
The vampire in question glares at him as Taehyun leads them towards the next exhibit and the very-tall Soobin hyung.
“It makes sense to say hi to Soobin hyung,” he tells Kai. And then, they chorus in perfect unison, “Hi, Soobin hyung.”
The Soobin hyung turns around, a little surprised, spectacles lopsided on the bridge of his nose, before his face breaks out into a big dimpled smile. “Taehyun-ah, Kai-ah, I didn’t expect to see you here!”
He gives them both big hugs and asks them if they’ve eaten before he registers Beomgyu’s presence. He smiles politely and Beomgyu waves back, as brightly as he can while he tries to ignore the Choi Yeon-Jun inked on the old paper in the glass case next to him.
“I don’t believe we’ve met before,” he tells Soobin, and then gestures to their mutual friends. “I’m Choi Beomgyu, the brightest spark of their lives.”
Kai actually laughs as soon as he says it, and Soobin’s eyes flash with recognition. “Ah, nice to meet you. I’m Choi Soobin, the uh- good friend in their lives?”
Beomgyu dismissed the last part of his greeting. “Don’t undersell yourself! I’m sure you’re the second brightest spark in their lives.”
“Okay, that’s enough ha ha,” Kai says, stepping in.
“Did you just say ha ha instead of laughing?”
Kai pointedly ignores him as he asks Soobin if he came to the museum alone.
“Ah no,” the taller man says sheepishly. “I came here with a friend. He uh- loves love, you know?”
“So like… a date?” Taehyun’s voice is softer than usual.
Soobin laughs. “Not at all, not at all. My friend has been pining over someone else for a really long time now.” Then after a moment he adds, “Are you all here for a date?”
Taehyun shakes his head, eyes all warm and bright like a vanilla-scented candle feels after a long day. Beomgyu turns away from them, tugging at Kai’s sleeve instead to show him the letter. He can barely read past the first few words, past the ‘ My dearest love, my Beomgyu ’ without tears pricking at his eyelids. Kai comes with him easily.
“This is the letter?” His voice is barely a whisper, so that Soobin doesn’t catch on to the more nuanced emotions that underscore their visit. Beomgyu nods, gulping down the ache that he’s been quelling for years.
Kai takes his time to read it through, occasionally pausing to look at Beomgyu. Taehyun is busy asking Soobin something about one of the classes they share. Normally, Beomgyu would join in and add his own two cents to the discussion, but today he lets everything fade into the background. He doesn’t focus on the letter, if only to avoid crying, instead fixing his gaze on a loose thread that sticks out from the sleeve of his cardigan. His mind is echoing with Yeonjun’s name, with the possibilities of what could have been, with the questions of why they weren’t.
“Hyung,” Kai says when he’s finished. “I think we should go find him, like, right now.” Beomgyu gives him a watery smile.
“I know right? I-”
“Soobin-ah,” a voice interrupts from behind them, vaguely familiar and definitely upset. “They won’t let me buy it back, they won’t return my letter to me and oh- hello, who are you?”
Beomgyu prepares himself for another round of introductions, seeing Kai look up and bow to the approaching person. He blinks away any moisture in his eyes and turns to greet the newcomer.
His heart jumps. Falls. Sways. Rocks? Beomgyu isn’t quite sure. It’s been two hundred years and clearly, it’s been a few different hair colours if the faded blue and silver is anything to go by, but Beomgyu would recognise Choi Yeonjun anywhere, in any form.
There’s something very disorienting about meeting someone you know almost too well, or rather, knew rather too well, when they’re in what seems like a completely new skin. Beomgyu recognises the arch of his cheekbones, where the sunsets they’d watched together still danced. Beomgyu recognises the curve of his fingers, how they still looked the same as when they’d be slotted in between his own.
But he has to look twice to confirm that the short-haired man in front of him is the same Yeonjun who’s locks would once get intertwined with the dry grass in the fields beyond his hovel. This Yeonjun wears mismatched silhouettes (which- Beomgyu would like to know how that combination of garments can even look good) and, like, five earrings in each ear instead of a simple hanbok . Just to be clear, Beomgyu isn’t complaining about seeing Yeonjun or about the very attractive clothes he chooses to wear on his even more attractive self.
For one, he’s happy that Yeonjun is alive and thriving, not just surviving. The twenty-whatever-is-now century has done him well. On the other hand, though, he’s annoyed that Yeonjun has not bothered to contact him even once in all these years and, judging by the surprise on his face, was not planning to in the near future either.
Damn it , he thinks. I really should have planned what I was going to say. Choi Beomgyu is many things, but rational is clearly not one of them.
“You,” he cries out, no longer caring about the one museum guard’s shushing, “have so much explaining to do.”
Yeonjun gulps, a myriad of emotions illuminating his face- emotions that Beomgyu hadn’t exactly imagined would be directed at him ever- and he takes a step back. His eyes flick between Beomgyu’s face and the letter next to him. Beomgyu narrows his eyes, daring him to take one more step away from their conversation. His fingers are trembling slightly, perhaps not even visible unless someone is hyperfocused on them.
“Don’t you- Don’t you dare,” Beomgyu practically wails once he can get the words out. “If- if you run away or disappear again, I will actually make you un-unalive just so that I can kill you.”
Yeonjun stiffens. Opens his mouth to say something but his voice doesn’t come out. He looks a little like a duckling at the moment, and if things had been different, Beomgyu probably would have teased him about it. One moment, he seems poised to take off, go somewhere far away. Beomgyu might actually scream if he does that. Or maybe he’ll go buy ice cream and cry like the people in those Hollywood movies in a blanket. Miraculously, Yeonjun does not run away. Instead he takes a small, tiny, miniscule step forward. Beomgyu can appreciate the character development.
So Beomgyu, like the big-hearted king of good spontaneity he is, walks till he’s close enough to the other to catch a mild whiff of his cologne and falls forward (or maybe Yeonjun does, or maybe they both do– actually, they both probably do at the same time) to wrap his arms around Yeonjun, around his back, pressing into his shoulder which still, after all these years, smells like jasmine tea and cotton.
But if he pulled them close, then Yeonjun pulls them impossibly closer, the warm weight of his palms presses into Beomgyu’s back and he murmurs, just for his ears, “Sorry darling, I won’t.”
(Or maybe everyone hears, Beomgyu doesn’t particularly care at the moment.)
When they finally pull apart, clothes slightly crumpled up (actually that’s just Beomgyu, Yeonjun somehow still looks like he stepped out of a fashion magazine), Beomgyu’s hands are slightly trembling. In the back of his mind, he registers Taehyun, Kai and Soobin standing to the side in various shades of awkwardness and confusion. In the front of his mind, though, Beomgyu registers Yeonjun’s expression go from a potent mixture of lovesick and shocked to flirtatious. He wonders if it is socially acceptable to punch someone after you have hugged them.
“Hi darling,” Yeonjun smiles widely. “It’s been a while.”
Beomgyu blinks. “It’s been a while? A while ? You call two hundred years a while ?”
Yeonjun cocks his head to the side. “I never said a short while.”
“I really hope you have something better to say because I will create silver out of the air if I have to, so help me god.”
“Taking the lord’s name in vain? You always were a rebel, weren’t you, cutie?”
“I’m sure I will be once I drive a stake into your heart!”
Yeonjun’s smile grows wider and Beomgyu’s heart skips a beat in perfect rhythm to it. “Not even that will stop it from beating for you.”
“Why did I have to find out that you still felt that way through a letter in the National Museum of all places?”
“I’ll answer that in a moment, Gyu-ah, but first, tell me-”
“Pick your next words very carefully-”
“-On a scale of one to ten, if I ask to hold your hand, how mad will you be?”
“Did you learn any maths while you were away? Because a 10 number scale is not enough.”
Yeonjun grins, about to retort when the museum guard from earlier taps on his shoulder. “Excuse me, you’re making a lot of noise. Please quieten down,” he says and walks away.
“Way to ruin their moment,” Kai complains once he’s out of earshot.
“What the fuck?” Soobin asks.
“What the fuck,” Taehyun agrees.
“Uh, maybe we should get some coffee?”
With how his head is aching with the fury of a thousand storms, if Beomgyu was some sort of deity he would’ve granted Kai immortality for that suggestion. Though in hindsight, that would probably not be of much use since Kai is a vampire and therefore, already immortal. Whatever. Beomgyu is old enough to proclaim that it is the intention that matters, not the result.
Yeonjun nods too. “Oh yeah, let’s get some coffee, something tells me we’re going to need it -yah, Beomgyu stop hitting me! I’ll explain everything, okay?”
“Like you have a choice, idiot!”
Beomgyu’s digital watch (New-age humans are so innovative!) chimes as the clock strikes six on a Wednesday evening.
┈┈┈┈․° ☣ °․┈┈┈┈
Technically, Beomgyu is aware that Yeonjun’s defence mechanism is to relapse into jokes and flirtatious remarks. Practically though, he can’t help the smaller tendrils of irritation from grasping at him. Beomgyu has always worn his heart on his sleeve, and there’s no doubt that the horrible concoctions of the feelings he’s, well, feeling , are clearly reflected on his face. Yeonjun on the other hand seems very calm, perfectly at ease with the whole situation.
If it was a mask for their company to catch on to his true condition, but since Taehyun, Kai, and Soobin lasted for all of three minutes in the coffee shop with them before making a run for it, there’s no need for it to be up on his face any longer. Silently, Beomgyu wonders if he’s actually just not all that bothered by the circumstances of their meeting, if this is just catching up with an old friend and going back to their very separate lives. Once you’ve been alive for long enough, it becomes commonplace to do that.
(There is also the alternative that Beomgyu is overthinking this but that alternative is for the reasonable. Beomgyu is a vampire of emotions, thank you very much.)
For all of his bravado in the corridor of the Love Through The Ages exhibit, Beomgyu can’t bring himself to say anything as they wait for their drinks to arrive. There’s so many thoughts in his head, so many questions, so many different possible answers he could get. Maybe this was a bad idea. Maybe they should’ve gone somewhere more private. Maybe Beomgyu shouldn’t have gone back to the museum at all. He could’ve called Taehyung, asked him to figure out a way to get Yeonjun to meet him through Jimin or something. He could’ve-
“So,” Yeonjun begins, breaking Beomgyu out of his reverie.
“So.”
“Hi.”
Beomgyu blinks. Inhales. Exhales. Blinks again. Yeonjun gives him a tentative smile. “Hello.”
“I uh- I’m not really sure what I should say, to be honest.”
“Taehyung hyung told me that you’ve been avoiding me for two centuries now. Maybe we can start with that?”
Damnit , Beomgyu thinks. Should’ve said ‘unpack that’ like the people on those shows on the television.
“It’s not- I wasn’t avoiding you, per se.”
Beomgyu raises an eyebrow. “No, Yeonjun hyung?”
“It was more of a… break, you know? A couple of centuries for clear skin and good health.”
“Hyung, that’s the default state of a vampire. Can you please be serious?”
Yeonjun sighs.
“You’re right,” he says. His eyes dart around, looking anywhere but at Beomgyu’s face. “I’m sorry. I’ve been trying to ignore the fact that we haven’t seen each other after we parted ways that night and… it was probably easier if we didn’t talk about it. It’s hard sometimes to remember what happened- or really, what we couldn’t let happen between us isn’t it?"
The thing is, if he could, Beomgyu would go back to the night Yeonjun walked away and forget how they… ended. Is that a fair word to call something that never really began? Neither of them put a name to what they shared, nor was it particularly surprising that they had to part ways. In some corner of Beomgyu’s young but not-beating heart back then, he’d feared it even. Perhaps, he thinks, it would have been less hurtful if the last moments they spent together weren’t as sweet.
If Yeonjun’s voice didn’t crack when he said goodbye, if Beomgyu’s chest had heaved with anger instead of sadness when he realised that the war between vampires and humankind could take Yeonjun away from him forever. If Yeonjun hadn’t looked at him with so much fondness and longing that Beomgyu couldn’t look away, couldn’t turn his gaze away for even a second.
Beomgyu doesn’t want to think about how Yeonjun left the battlefield with the entirety of his undead life stretched out in front of him, without a second word to anyone, without even looking back. He doesn’t want to think about how he never found a way to contact him again. He doesn’t want to think about how he stayed, waiting for the older to reappear, because Yeonjun promised he would come back for him. Because Yeonjun’s name was missing from the list of vampires they lost, even if no one Beomgyu knew back then remembered whether he was alive.
(Okay so maybe not alive per se but whatever, Beomgyu thinks. Technicalities are annoying.)
And if nothing else, Beomgyu wants this, wants the chance to finally get closure for all the times he’s waited. He wants to know why Yeonjun left him, if the letter was more than a spur of the moment venture, so easily forgotten that it made its way to a museum exhibit. doesn’t regret coming back to find Yeonjun again.
“Yeah,” he agrees after a long pause, and Yeonjun looks up at him.
Smiling awkwardly, Yeonjun glances down at the table, seemingly unsure of what to say next. Beomgyu takes another sip from his drink and waits for Yeonjun to gather his thoughts. When he does speak, Beomgyu can’t quite put a name to the look on his face.
“I’ve missed you.”
That catches Beomgyu off guard. He tries to hide his surprise but fails miserably; eyes widening almost comically as he stares at Yeonjun. The older’s cheeks are flushed pink and he fidgets uncomfortably under Beomgyu’s intense stare. Beomgyu would apologise for making him uncomfortable but then again, he isn’t sure how to approach the weight of those words. They hang between the two, like bubbles on boiling water, viciously poking and prodding at repressed memories and ugly feelings.
“I’m sorry for leaving so suddenly,” Yeonjun continues. “It wasn’t fair to you. I knew that when I left without a word in the middle of a war I was expected to fight in. I knew it when I stayed away for all the years after that too. I'm sorry."
He stops, bites his lip. Beomgyu watches as Yeonjun's expression twists in discomfort.
"Hyung," he sighs, softly and quietly. "Hyung, if you stayed away from me for all these years, you must have been aware of where I was to ensure you didn't bump into me, right?"
Yeonjun nods.
"Then you must have known, you must have, that I loved you, at least in some capacity. Even if we didn't quite understand what it was, you must have known that I would have hung the stars up in the sky for you, hyung, and only for you. I just want to know why you never said anything."
Silence falls between them, broken only by the sounds of the café around them as customers continue to rush through the room.
"I wanted to tell you," Yeonjun says after a while.
Beomgyu frowns. "Why didn't you?"
"Because I was afraid."
Beomgyu stares.
"Afraid of what, Hyung?"
"Of your rejection."
"What rejection?"
Yeonjun looks at him with big brown eyes that suddenly seem very fragile. "You were my best friend, Gyu, more so than everything else and I couldn't bear to lose you. To society. To anything"
It's silent in the café for a few seconds.
"I- You wouldn't have lost me hyung. Not then, not now, not ever. If you had just said something, we could have-"
"I didn't understand it, back then. Not the vampirism, not the non-straightness, none of it. I ran away from it at first, but by the time I grew into it, it was already too late."
Beomgyu traces the tense line of Yeonjun's shoulders. He wants to scream. Two hundred years of being ghosted-but-also-not because Yeonjun thought that it would ever be too late seems like a laughable idea. Anyone who spends enough time with Beomgyu knows that he's forgiving. Beomgyu works to make sure everyone knows, actually. Kindness is a virtue that truly lives on even after death. Or well, a technical death anyway. A technical unalive-ing.
"Wouldn't it have been easier to just face me? Tell me? At least try? We were so close, Yeonjun hyung. Even if you thought we couldn’t have been together, which, by the way, very unlikely– you should’ve clued in when I was feeding you strawberries right after they were picked in the middle of open fields– I would have been there for you while you were figuring things out."
Yeonjun turns away, hiding his expression behind his hand. "But I ruined everything the moment I began purposely avoiding you if I knew where you were. So it doesn't matter in the end, really."
"How does it not matter?" Beomgyu cries out.
"Does it? Had I stayed, someone would have found a reason to hurt us for our love, relationship, whatever the word is for what we were- hell, they could find a reason for it even now. But I left, and hurt us anyway. You tell me, Gyu-ah, does it matter anymore? When everything has been ruined?"
"You didn't ruin anything, hyung. You're here now, aren't you?" Beomgyu reaches across the table and grabs Yeonjun’s free hand. "You came back. That's the most important part."
Yeonjun squeezes Beomgyu’s fingers before letting go. "I did, didn’t I?"
There’s silence in the café for several moments until Beomgyu finally finds himself able to form words again.
"You should have told me."
"I tried, Gyu," Yeonjun whispers, tears forming in his eyes. "It took a few centuries, but I tried. I tried to tell you how I felt."
"Then why didn’t you?"
Yeonjun shrugs. "After the treaty was signed, after everyone assured me that vampires would be left alone and in turn, we'd leave humanity be, I went back to Daegu. You weren't there, but I thought you'd come back so I waited and waited, I wanted to make it clear that I am-was- in love with you. I wanted to show you that there was no one else, that there never would be. Gosh, I wrote so many letters like the one inside that I'm surprised they didn't find more."
"But then you didn't return, so I came to Seoul with Jimin hyung, and Wooyoung and the others. I saw you here in my first month, and you looked happy, Yeji said you looked happier than you had in years. I didn't know how to approach you, what I'd say if I did, even, and really, all I've ever wanted is for you to be happy too, even if it's not with me. So I stayed away. It was the least I could do."
He quickly wipes them away, blinking hard to keep himself from crying. Yeonjun watches him carefully, his lips pursed. Beomgyu doesn't trust himself enough to meet the other man's gaze. His heart hurts too much. He's missed him so badly, he can hardly even imagine it.
"And I'm so sorry, Beomgyu. Really. I shouldn't have done that to you."
For a second or two, Beomgyu doesn't respond, instead staring blankly ahead. His head begins to spin.
"You know... I remember, sometimes, when things got bad, when I couldn't think straight, the only thing I could focus on was how much I missed you. I was so fucking stupid to forget about everything else for just you. After all this time together, after all our years apart, when you finally came back, I forgot about everything else but how I needed you. How I wished I could take it all back and spend the rest of my life with you."
The air grows thicker and heavier. For a moment, there is nothing but the sound of Beomgyu’s own breath echoing in the quiet café. Yeonjun stays silent though, patiently waiting for Beomgyu to talk. And then he does.
"When I realized that we had lived within, what do you call it? Communicate-able distance? Let's call it that. When I realised that we had lived in communicate-able distance for so long and you knew about it, and yet, you had purposely avoided me, it hurt so much."
Beomgyu pauses, letting out a shaky breath.
"It was like losing you all over again. I didn't know what to think. I thought your feelings had changed, or you had someone else. Not in the sense that I held you to some invisible bond we'd had or a promise that we'd never actually made, but rather in the sense that you regretted writing that letter. That the meticulous Choi Yeonjun who remembered every single pebble his feet had touched had so deeply rued writing that letter that he had forgotten to keep track of it."
Yeonjun laughs wetly, wiping hastily at his cheeks with the sleeve of his sweater. "I don't hate you, Gyu. I love you, you idiot. I loved you back then, still do, even now. And it's like I said, I wrote so many of those letters that I did lose track of one of them, apparently. You know how these new age historians are about everything they see. Finders keepers or something."
Beomgyu sniffles. "I missed you, hyung. I love you too."
Yeonjun smiles weakly and shakes his head, smiling a little sadly.
"I wish I could take it all back. All the pain, all the distance."
"The bad decisions," Beomgyu adds saccharinely.
Yeonjun laughs at that, not particularly happily, but Beomgyu will take it.
"Do you think we ever could?" Yeonjun asks him.
"Huh? Ever could what?"
"Go back to how we used to be? Or you know, go forward to how we could have been?"
"I don't know."
Silence descends once again. The atmosphere isn't heavy nor is it comforting. Instead, it feels suffocating. Neither of them moves, simply stare at each other through their reflections in the coffee shop's glass windows.
"Do you think you'll stay this time, hyung? In my life? In some capacity?" Beomgyu wonders eventually.
Yeonjun nods.
Beomgyu sighs. "You mean it?"
Another nod.
Beomgyu closes his eyes, takes a deep breath. And smiles.
Yeonjun raises an eyebrow as Beomgyu reaches out and clasps his hands around Yeonjun's, pulling them closer to his chest. He brings Yeonjun's right hand up to his mouth and presses a kiss to the back of his knuckles. The older male's eyes widen slightly, but doesn't pull his hand away.
"Good," Beomgyu says softly, his voice barely above a whisper.
"Good?" Yeonjun repeats. Beomgyu hums, leans forward and gently pulls Yeonjun's hands toward his lap where he holds them with both of his hands.
Yeonjun blinks slowly as he stares down at the younger boy's hands. Something soft flickers inside of him, a feeling of relief perhaps or maybe hope. Perhaps both.
Whatever it is, Beomgyu notices the shift in Yeonjun's demeanor. His smile widens and he tightens his grip on Yeonjun's hands, looking at him intently.
"We're friends," Beomgyu whispers. "the kind of friendship that lasts forever, hyung. I can't promise you more than that, not when it's been so long."
"I understand."
"But I want to start here, start rebuilding this, bit by bit, until maybe we can get somewhere that makes both of us happy. Happier than we would've predicted before." Beomgyu lets out a breathless laugh. "How about that?"
"That sounds nice. To be honest, Gyu, I thought I wouldn't see you again after Daegu."
"Don't worry. I'll be here this time."
Then, Beomgyu grins cheekily. "You might get even more wrinkles if you wait for longer."
Yeonjun's eyes narrow at once, just like the old times. "Yah, Choi Beomgyu!"
┈┈┈┈․° ☣ °․┈┈┈┈
Beomgyu nearly jumps out of his skin, higher than the Lotte World Tower, leaving his body like five hundred times when Taehyun appears out of nowhere. Per usual, he looks unimpressed with a hint of amusement when Beomgyu screeches with shock, horror and all the bad things in the world.
“I am an old man,” Beomgyu yells. “You can’t just jump at me without warning! You shortened my life by five thousand years!”
“Hyung, we are literally immortal.”
“Well, I’m five thousand years less immortal now.”
“Infinity minus five thousand is still infinity.”
“Yah, Kang Taehyun, respect your elders.”
Taehyun just sighs, in a way that clearly does not show respect for his elders. Elders being just Beomgyu.
“Hyung,” he says matter-of-factly. “I came to ask you how things went. I’m guessing that was the Yeonjun from the letter.”
At once, Beomgyu realises he is practically bursting at the seams to tell someone how things went.
“Oh my god, Taehyunnie,” he wails. “I have so much to tell you.”
Taehyun only hums in response, wrapping his fingers around Beomgyu’s arm as the latter begins to recount his evening. When Beomgyu finally finishes, there is a thoughtful expression on Taehyun’s face.
“So you guys didn’t break up but also aren’t together?”
Beomgyu huffs. “It’s not like we were – what is the word you kids use these days? – official? Exclusive? Whatever it is, we weren’t that, so it’s not like we were together to begin with.”
Taehyun shoots him a very judgemental look and flicks Beomgyu’s forehead. “You know what I mean, hyung.”
“Okay, well, yeah. I just don’t want to lose our friendship, even if we’re not exactly compatible anymore.”
“Why would you not be?”
“I don’t know, Taehyunnie,” Beomgyu sighs. “Two hundred years is a long time. People change. Priorities change. I need to heal, need to know he won’t just– what was the damn word, again?– ghost me again if he gets scared.”
Taehyun nods. “Yeah, I think you made the right choice. Take it slow. You have all the time in the world, after all.”
‘All the time in the world,’ Beomgyu muses. He likes the sound of it, the weight of the words heavy like a weighted blanket over him. A corner of his heart protests against it, against waiting even longer to hold Yeonjun, to taste him, to know him as he had wanted to for so long. But Beomgyu clamps it down for the time being at least.
“Yep,” he says to Taehyun instead. “A literal eternity. Though, Yeonjun hyung is old -old, like he’s a whole few years older than I am, so we might have to hurry.”
Taehyun looks at him, eyes meeting, and then they both burst into laughter. It doesn’t stop till they’re tucked safely inside Beomgyu’s apartment.
For the first time in a long, long time, Beomgyu feels at home.
┈┈┈┈․° ☣ °․┈┈┈┈
Beomgyu is seriously reconsidering this whole I-don’t-want-us-to-not-be-friends thing he has going on with Yeonjun and it’s only the first time they’ve met after what Kai has dubbed their Conversation™. (Beomgyu has no idea what that means but he likes the sound of it.)
“Hyung,” he says, in true-blue-outraged-dismay. “How can you like mint chocolate?”
Yeonjun waves him away. “It’s a good ice cream flavour. Why would I not?”
Beomgyu screeches and flaps his arms around in an effort to get away from the spoon Yeonjun is offering him. “No, thank you, I have taste . I don’t eat toothpaste.”
Yeonjun gasps. “This is not toothpaste! How could you say that?”
“Hyung, how can you even look at that green monstrosity?”
“If you haven’t tasted it, you can’t say anything about it!”
“I have tasted it! That’s how I know it’s horrible!”
“Tasted it like you did tomatoes?”
Beomgyu shouts in realisation, mouth filled with vanilla ice cream. He stands up and points at Yeonjun. “Oh my god, that’s right! You’ve never had good taste, hyung! Tomatoes and mint chocolate ice cream– you are going two for two!”
Yeonjun makes an affronted noise before his eyes begin to twinkle. “Mustn’t be that bad if I lo-like you, no?”
Beomgyu blinks. Lets his hand fall to his side. Ignores the way his heart skips a beat and the way warmth blooms on his cheeks and the tips of his ears.
“Wh- That’s not fair! How am I supposed to counter that!”
Yeonjun only laughs in response, clapping Beomgyu’s back a little too hard.
“You can’t,” he sings. “And you shouldn’t either. Respect your elders, Beomgyu-yah.”
Beomgyu narrows his eyes. “The elders should put in a little more effort into making their taste palettes cultured,” he grumbles, sticking his tongue out at Yeonjun.
It takes barely a second for Beomgyu to realise his mistake but even a second is enough for Yeonjun to stuff a spoon filled with mint chocolate ice cream into his open mouth. Beomgyu screams, eyes shut in not-actual-horror as the green abomination takes over his taste buds.
“Hyung,” he begins, with all the subtlety of a red traffic light glaring at night, “how could you do this to me! My mouth, ah, I’m being tortured and I-”
“Beomgyu-yah,” Yeonjun murmurs, and it’s only then that Beomgyu realises just how close they are. Yeonjun’s lips are barely centimetres away from his, no they’re probably millimetres away, and his eyes sparkle at an obnoxiously close distance from Beomgyu’s face. “Don’t you think it tastes better than you thought?”
Beomgyu’s throat is dry. He isn’t sure if he can taste anything at the moment actually.
What the fuck, he thinks.
“What the fuck,” Beomgyu says, feeling like Taehyun, Kai and Soobin at the museum that day.
Yeonjun only laughs, all high-pitched and trying-to-be-effortless (he would have succeeded if Beomgyu hadn’t figured out how he sounds when he’s pretending to not be affected two hundred years ago), and pulls away, the tip of his nose brushing against Beomgyu’s own.
“You look cute when you’re surprised.”
Beomgyu stares for a few seconds, at Yeonjun walking ahead talking about the wonders of his toothpaste-flavoured ice cream. Vaguely he wonders if he should ask Taehyung how soon is too soon to kiss someone you’re trying to re-friend after two hundred years. Google probably does not know this. A pity, Beomgyu thinks. And then he shakes it off.
“Yah, hyung,” he screeches, attracting looks from all the children in the park for the second time in what’s probably been like one minute. “You’re going to pay for this! I want compensation for being mint-chocolate-ified like this!”
Really, Beomgyu only sounds fond even as he says that.
┈┈┈┈․° ☣ °․┈┈┈┈