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“Happy birthday,” Taehyun nudges Sungwoon’s lax form on the couch. His roommate sighs and rolls over so his back is to the cushions, staring depressedly into the television.
“I can’t believe you forgot,” he moans, and Taehyun rolls his eyes.
“I didn’t forget—” he begins, but Sungwoon cuts him off with a snarl.
“‘Hi Sungwoon,’” he chirps in a faux enthusiastic voice, “‘your party is next Friday so clear up your schedule!’”
“We’re just celebrating it late,” Taehyun rolls his eyes once again, and Sungwoon sits up straight, shoving him from his perch on the arm of the couch.
“You sent this to me today,” Sungwoon looks down at him, and Taehyun tries to disentangle himself from the blanket he had wrapped himself in. “If you didn’t forget—”
“Fine, I forgot, okay?” Taehyun snaps, and Sungwoon bites his lip, looking hurt. He smacks his forehead with his palm and wishes he didn’t say anything. His friend leaps off the couch and shoves on a pair of shoes, then storms out of the house.
Immediately, Taehyun retrieves his phone from the depths of the couch and tells everyone to watch out for an angry Sungwoon. Quickly, he clears up the living room and waits for the knocking on the door. Sure enough, Minhyun comes round from next door to help pack up their apartment. Seongwoo and Daniel have an off day today, so they bring around the alcohol and junk food. Taehyun purses his lips when he sees the packets of chips they have brought; Jisung’d have a heart attack.
“Pretty much set,” Minhyun places a hand on his hip and surveys the state of the apartment. Taehyun checks his watch—Sungwoon’s been out for an hour and a half, which means he’ll be back within the next half an hour. The guests trickle in from the front door, and Minki brings Sungwoon through just in time.
Sungwoon has a black scarf tied around his eyes, and there’s a confused half snarl, half smile on his face. Taehyun sighs and leads the procession, holding the cake in his hands. It’s strawberry shortcake, with an enlarged print out of Sungwoon’s face pasted onto the fondant on the top. Hyunbin had presented it with a shit eating grin, to which everyone had burst out into laughter and then complimented him on his sense.
Minki holds on to Sungwoon’s hand, then shouts, “One, two, three!”
“HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO YOU,” the entire party screams into Sungwoon’s face. The birthday boy’s knees buckle under the sheer force of their voices.
Sungwoon is laughing, reaching up to undo the black silk around his eyes and letting the fabric crumple around his neck. Taehyun walks forward with the cake and hands it over to him, cupping his free hand around the candles to prevent them from going out.
“HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO YOU, HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO—”
Taehyun lets go of the cake, and Sungwoon balances it in his hands. Hyunbin is moving to the front of the procession, and Taehyun checks the front door. He doesn’t need the neighbours calling the police for noise pollution for what is coming next.
“SUNGWOO-OOOOOOON—”
Hyunbin reaches Sungwoon, and the shorter’s smile fades and is replaced by one of dread. With a chuckle, the younger slides his hand under Sungwoon’s on the cake and puts the other hand on Sungwoon’s neck.
“HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO YOU!”
Sungwoon’s face meets the cake, and he effectively kisses his own picture. Hyunbin dances away with a howl of, “I did it!”, while Sungwoon makes a sputtering noise. Taehyun eyes the cake with disappointment—he had wanted to have a bite of it before it was destroyed. Minhyun leans forward from above him—damn him and his height—and nudges the cake a little more into Sungwoon’s face.
Sungwoon manages to remove himself from the mass of cream and vanilla sponge, swiping at his face with his fingers and moaning about the effects of a skincare routine they have apparently destroyed. Seongwoo cackles at that, then proceeds to dump a handful of flour into his hair.
“Why do you do this to me?” Sungwoon stumbles, holding on to the side of the shoe cabinet. Several hands reach out to steady him, but he takes Taehyun’s. Taehyun grins.
“Be careful of what you wish for,” he advises, and Sungwoon frowns at him. He giggles a bit—he can’t take him seriously with all the cake and flour on his face.
“What about my present?” Sungwoon demands, and Daniel comes forward with the large box. Minki begins to shuffle everyone away so he can get more air instead of breathing in the scent of nearly a dozen couch potatoes in one room. “What is this?”
“It’s a karaoke machine,” Taehyun says as Sungwoon descends onto the wrapping paper like a wild animal. He steps back and Sungwoon catches a peek of the box the machine came with, then grins and springs towards him with a large grin on his face.
“I CAN’T BELIEVE YOU GOT ME AN ION!” he cheers, wrapping his arms around him. Taehyun sighs and pats his back, trying to calm him down. “An Ion Audio Tailgater, oh my God!”
“You are too excited,” he murmurs, and his friend’s arms tighten before letting go. Taehyun watches fondly when Sungwoon disappears into the mass of people surrounding the table, smiling a little to himself. Sungwoon is always a little bit like a child—
“You have that look on your face,” Hyunbin’s deep voice resounds from behind him. Taehyun looks up in surprise at the gangly youth who managed to sneak up on him.
“What look?”
“The I-Am-A-Little-In-Love-With-Ha-Sungwoon-But-I-Have-No-Balls-To-Tell-Him look,” Hyunbin murmurs drily, easily dodging the slap Taehyun aims in his direction. “Hyung. Seriously…”
“Shut up, Kwon Hyunbin,” Taehyun mutters. If there is a little too much bitterness in his voice, so be it. “What do you know about love?”
Hyunbin frowns and punches his shoulder weakly, then walks past him to get to the remaining slices of pizza left on the dining table.
It is nearly eleven at night when everyone clears out. Minhyun takes the opportunity to clean up and throws out the trash on his way home, and Taehyun wipes down the tables and chairs before tossing the cloth into the washing machine. Sungwoon is red in the face and babbling to himself as he opens up the box to the karaoke machine.
“The night when I'm thinking about having a shot of soju/ I feel like I'm with you,” Sungwoon sings under his breath. Taehyun watches him turn on the machine and hook it up to his phone.
“It’s eleven,” he points out. Sungwoon turns to face him, smiling dizzily. He just frowns back, and Sungwoon pouts a little bit.
“It’s my birthday,” he whines, and Taehyun sighs, going to sit beside him on the couch. They have all the windows closed already, so he leans forward and turns down the volume dial on the little black box sitting on the floor.
He knows he’s in trouble when the Sungwoon turns on the ballad version of Into The New World. Sungwoon is, half the time, an emo drunk. The other half of the time? A giddy drunk. The ballad version of Into The New World is sure to bring tears. Sure enough, by the bridge of the song, his voice is already wavering. Sungwoon shoves the microphone into his face in the middle of the chorus, and he hesitantly finishes the song before the microphone is snatched away.
“That’s enough,” he tries, but Sungwoon slaps at his hand when he tries to turn off the machine.
“Don’t touch my things,” he snaps, and Taehyun retracts his hand with trained precision. Sungwoon immediately follows up with BEAST’s Fiction, which is another tearjerker for him. He vividly remembers Sungwoon sobbing in a karaoke room while singing this song. Somehow, his voice had managed to stay relatively on pitch throughout the entire song.
“I’m so sorry but I love you. It was all lies,” Sungwoon bellows, bopping his entire body sadly to the backing track of Big Bang’s Lies. Taehyun closes his eyes and tries valiantly to fight the building panic. He’s got the morning class with the lecturer that is really anal about punctuality, and he’s five seconds away from passing out.
“Sungwoon,” he begins. His friend glances over and grins tearfully. “I need to sleep.”
“It’s my birthday,” Sungwoon howls to the tune of Taeyang’s backing vocals. He sighs once more and glances at his lockscreen.
“It’s three in the morning,” he says gently, “and not your birthday anymore.”
Sungwoon presses his lips together.
“You’re drunk and we both have classes tomorrow,” he advices. Sungwoon makes a vague sort of pleading face. Taehyun suspects that he’s trying to imitate Seongwoo’s, but he’s making an extraordinary spectacle of himself. “Sungwoon.”
By the time Taehyun drags Sungwoon into bed and unplugs the machine, his housemate is making little puffing noises as he breathes. He tucks his blanket under his chin and searches in the little bedside cabinet to find the spare painkillers he knows he stores. He finds it next to a little bottle cap ring and flushes.
“Taehyun-ie,” Sungwoon slurs, and he jumps, dropping the ring back into the drawer. He places the pill on the table, next to the waterbottle, then turns to attend to the drunk boy. “Taehyun-ie, are we getting married?”
“Maybe,” he says lightly. Sungwoon has his eyes screwed shut, as if trying to block himself from seeing something he doesn’t want to see. “You might fall in love with someone else. I’m just the backup, ain’t I?”
“Nah,” Sungwoon murmurs. “You’re the best.”
Taehyun swallows. There’s something in his throat—maybe the beginnings of a throat infection, or the sudden influx of uncontrollable emotion. He’s not quite sure which one is worse.
Six hours later, it’s twelve minutes into the lecture when his head begins to throb.
The Sungwoon voice in his head has mysteriously managed to overpower the droning of the lecturer’s voice, and Taehyun is now treated to six minutes (and counting!) of Sungwoon’s easy trill.
“Shut up,” he hisses under his breath, smiling apologetically when the person in front of him turns to glance at him in surprise. Damn Sungwoon and his voice. His lecture ends in another forty minutes, and if he listens to one more rendition of Sungwoon’s sloppy, sad ‘Despacito’, he might run out of the lecture hall screaming. He takes a quick glance to his left and to his right. His classmates seem to have passed out, heads resting on the little foldaway tables. There’s no chance of a distraction from them, so he bites the end of his pencil in irritation and tries his best to focus and pen down notes.
He’ll make it through.
Briefly, he registers through the Chemistry-muddled haze his brain seems to have descended into that everything started when he suggested to buy a karaoke machine for Sungwoon’s birthday. It's been nearly thirteen hours since Sungwoon's first use of the karoke machine and he still has his voice stuck in his head.
“Please, bro,” Taehyun begs pitifully. Minhyun stares down at him disapprovingly, lips pressed together.
“My place is packed,” Minhyun shakes his head, leaning to the side so he can take a peek. From the doorway, he can smell the scent of vanilla candles and classical music, as well as the fallen forms of four people on the floor. One of them seem to have a face pack on, while the one closest to the doorway has a book on his face. “Sorry.”
Taehyun gives a weak half-smile and edges back to his own apartment, sighing when he can hear Sungwoon warbling into the microphone.
“Is he drunk?” Minhyun asks in distaste. Taehyun shrugs his shoulders.
“Possibly,” he murmurs back, steeling his nerves before entering the house. Sungwoon breaks off mid-verse, beams at him, waves the hand holding a bottle of wine by the neck, then continues the rest of the song smoothly. “Can you play a song that I actually like?”
Sungwoon grins at him and engages in some aggressive head banging, which makes him cringe.
“Let’s do ‘Rewrite the Stars’ then.” Sungwoon says once he’s done, out of breath. Taehyun picks up the spare microphone Sungwoon lobs over to him, plucking it out of its flight path towards his face.
“You know I want you,” Sungwoon begins, glancing over to make sure that he is holding on to the microphone. Taehyun rolls his eyes and swallows again. There’s that uncomfortable feeling in his throat. “It's not a secret I try to hide/ I know you want me,” at this point, Taehyun coughs a little bit. Sungwoon turns to face him again, and Taehyun can feel the hot trail of his gaze as it makes its way towards his face. “So don't keep saying our hands are tied/You claim it's not in the cards/And fate is pulling you miles away/And out of reach from me.”
Taehyun brings the microphone up to his lips, breaking the eye contact uneasily.
“But you're here in my heart/So who can stop me if I decide/That you're my destiny?” he continues, voice evening out. By all means, he isn’t as good as a singer as Sungwoon is, but he can hold his own in a karaoke battle.
“What if we rewrite the stars?/Say you were made to be mine/Nothing could keep us apart/You'd be the one I was meant to find,” Sungwoon chimes in, building up the melody easily.
“It's up to you, and it's up to me/No one can say what we get to be/So why don't we rewrite the stars?/Maybe the world could be ours/Tonight,” they sing together. Taehyun brings the microphone away from his mouth and puts it on the dining table. There’s a strange look in Sungwoon’s eyes—something a little too alert to be drunk. His eyes flash when he turns his head to switch the bluetooth speaker off, and the music comes to an abrupt halt.
“You’re not the backup,” Sungwoon murmurs. “You’ve always been the most important option. You always have been.”
Taehyun glances up, aware of the light flush spreading across his cheeks. Sungwoon is looking at him with an impossibly soft look in his eyes, something warm, something that speaks of family. Taehyun blinks slowly and reaches a hand out to touch Sungwoon’s wrist, wrapping his fingers around the limb easily. He opens his mouth and—
Sungwoon places his index finger at his lips, halting the flood of words that threaten to overflow his lips.
“It’s okay,” Sungwoon smiles, a little tipsily. “No need for words, hyung.”
Taehyun looks deep into his eyes; there’s that flash of alertness, that flash of knowing, that makes him understand. It’s not another murmured childhood oath or a drunken, mistaken mumble of words that were never meant to be heard.
It’s a promise.