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Realizing that you were in love with your best friend didn’t come like a shooting star or an unexpected meteor shower that smacked Taeyong in the head and said, hey, you’re pretty fucking in love with Jung Jaehyun.
Instead, it came slowly. Like monsoon rains and summer seasons, like winter snow turning into the orange leaves of autumn.
Seasons came and went as birthdays, basketball games, midterms and finals. Taeyong never missed a single milestone, especially when it involved Jung Jaehyun. They stayed up all night counting down on their birthdays, studying for their exams, and Jaehyun stressing out about his first game tomorrow, thinking he’s not ready.
“It’s not that easy, Taeyong, what if they realize that they made a mistake in choosing me? That I can’t work under pressure?” Jaehyun said, exasperated as Taeyong came out of the shower.
“I doubt that. You’re the youngest member of the playing team, you’ve barely even been on the team and you’re already the star player!”
“Exactly! I literally have no experience. How the hell am I gonna match with the fourth years.” Jaehyun groans, plopping his sweaty ass upside-down Taeyong’s headboard. Taeyong lies next to him, their heads towards opposite directions but facing each other. “If you don’t get over yourself, then all this time I spent waiting for you while you play basketball at Han river would be a waste of time.”
“Hey! I kept telling you to play against me if you were that bored!” Taeyong gives him a look and Jaehyun resigns. “Okay. Fine. This is just pre-game jitters.”
Jaehyun ends up doing great, Taeyong is not surprised. The student body cheers ‘Jung Jaehyun! Jung Jaehyun!’ and Taeyong figures it was the shrill that didn’t sit right with him. This ends up boosting Jaehyun’s popularity quite a bit, apparent in how Jaehyun had to get ready to catch falling letters every time he opened his locker. It didn’t bother Taeyong at all, they still got ice cream after every game and hung out after school in either one of their homes.
Jaehyun even convinces him to join a dance class outside school, enticing him with an: “It’s a new excuse to go out and get ice cream after!” Curse him for giving in. They spent the rest of their days as usual, stuck together, like magnets pulling at each other or two ends of a string superglued to him and Jaehyun, separating for short moments only to come back to each other.
A new season comes when they had to give out flyers to people passing by the plaza near town. “I’d bet you Ruby that I can give out this much flyers faster than you.” Taeyong proposed, raising up the stack of papers with a smug, confident look on his face. Jaehyun laughs menacingly, “Huh, okay. I think you’re forgetting my secret weapon,” he places a finger gun under his chin and wiggles his eyebrows, “you better prepare some extra dog food for Ruby when I beat your ass.”
Taeyong fake vomits and gives a fake shocked face, pointing somewhere far away behind Jaehyun, “Oh? What’s that?” The idiot (Jaehyun) turns around in curiosity, giving Taeyong the perfect escape for a head start and runs off with his set of flyers. “Come back here when you finish giving them out!” Taeyong shouts, just as Jaehyun realizes what was happening and exclaims a ‘hey!’
They both return, hands devoid of flyers, but holding onto a pink card confusingly. “You got one too?” Jaehyun said as he walked back to their spot at the same time as Taeyong. “Yeah…” They make eye contact and shrug, agreeing to go to the agency together this weekend, since they had nothing better to do.
Surprisingly for Taeyong, he got in, despite his lack of… anything really. And so did Jaehyun, not surprising since he’s always been the more charming, confident, more physically capable between the two, becoming an idol would be a breeze for him. Lucky enough, they were added to the same subgroup among the trainees. They stuck together, as they always did, for the most part. They introduced themselves as a pair to their fellow trainees, they ate lunch together while they were still unfamiliar with everyone else.
“Hi, I’m Jung Jaehyun, and this is Lee Taeyong.” Jaehyun, the ever-extroverted boy that he is, introduced them to the trainees. They smiled, shook their hands, and introduced themselves as well, individually, since not everyone was lucky enough to become a trainee with their best friends. They meet Mark, Johnny and Ten, amongst other people, and thankfully, they all got along in no time. Both Taeyong and Jaehyun find different friends in the trainees they met, sometimes Taeyong plays video games with a group that matched his level, and Jaehyun played basketball with another few.
Though, at the end of the day, they walk home together and still get ice cream together, not bothering inviting the others. The two also practice until late at night when everyone else has left the building. Their friendship was built on competitiveness, not just with each other, but also against themselves and the limit they can push to improve.
Taeyong pushes himself too far one day, after a trainer gave harsh comments on his dancing, something along the lines of ‘forget a debut, you won’t even last until monthly evaluations.’ All of a sudden, the last thing he remembers is seeing his face go red and lips go pale on the practice room mirror, until he wakes up to an alarmed Jaehyun shaking his shoulders.
“Taeyong? Taeyong!” Jaehyun screams, picking up his best friend's upper body to make him sit up and lean against a wall, force feeding him some water. “Jesus, Taeyong! I thought you died. You were all green and pale, you should’ve just told me you weren’t feeling well, we could’ve gone home with the rest of the boys!”
Taeyong smiles as he puts down the bottle of water, looks Jaehyun in the eye and– oh.
He looks beautiful, eyebrows furrowed in worry and all. There were no fireworks nor a heart-dropping eureka moment that gave him a sudden clarity. Like a math equation he’s been solving for years, he followed the pattern and it led him… here. Right at this moment, with Jaehyun looking at him like he’s going to drop and snap in half, wiping Taeyong’s sweat with his own sweaty towel ( gross) , and checking if he’s hurt anywhere.
“I’m fine,” Taeyong smiles at his best friend, if, in the emptiness of the dance practice room, someone said the smile was different– more loving , Taeyong would deny it, albeit in vain because as Jaehyun stands up and offers his hand to help Taeyong up, he says, “come on, let’s go home.”
Taeyong wished the cheesy line didn’t pop up in his brain.
Seasons grow colder when Jaehyun begins to cut their nightly practices short. Suddenly, his eyes were glued to his phone, always expecting the ‘ping’ of a message notification or the occasional call that he has to excuse himself to take. He didn’t have the time to grab ramen at Hangang with Taeyong anymore. He either used to be with Jaehyun, or he knew exactly where he was, making Taeyong decide not to do any extra practice at all. Sometimes, he still prepares two servings of whatever ramen was in the dorm at the moment, leaving the second serving to end up cold and soggy.
Cloudy skies clear one day when Jaehyun stumbles in the dorm, constantly glancing at the door he walked in from and glancing back at his phone. Taeyong was in the middle of watching a movie when he heard his best friend come in. He was alone in the common room while everyone else was in their own rooms doing their own things. They make eye contact and Jaehyun smiled his godforsaken bright dimpled smile, sitting next to Taeyong on the couch.
“Hey! Just the man I was looking for!” Jaehyun said, angling his body towards his best friend. Taeyong glanced at him once to smile but went back to the film he was watching. “You remember that girl? Yuri? She’s the one I’ve been meeting a lot recently…” He doesn’t know if it was impulsive or intentional, but he drowned out everything Jaehyun said. Taeyong knew where this was going, and he wasn’t sure if he wanted it to happen.
“I asked her to be my girlfriend,” Jaehyun smiles, squeezing Taeyong’s thigh, making Taeyong give his best friend his full attention. “She said yes and we walked back to the company,” he adds sheepishly, “she kissed my cheek and I froze like an idiot.”
Taeyong exhales, he imagines his breath would be visible like he would in winter, in spite of being indoors and it being the middle of June. “Oh.” Taeyong says, unintelligible. “That’s nice, Jaehyun.” He turned back to watch his film and hoped his best friend didn’t hear something crack, breaking in half. Taeyong didn’t have to worry, he was too distracted typing away on his phone anyway.
They debut together, and Taeyong can’t decide if that should be preceded with a fortunately or an unfortunately . They’re fine, they’re still best friends, he goofs off with him and the rest of the boys. But sometimes, when Jaehyun gets a little bit too close or shares his water bottle, Taeyong can’t help the weight that rests at the pit of his stomach.
He’s made leader, and Taeyong doesn’t know if he’s grateful or not. Maybe having eighteen kids to take care of could take his mind off of being in love with his bandmate? But the thought often comes with him not being able to handle his own feelings, how is he gonna have to listen to eighteen others’?
This escalates on a rather stormy season, comeback nearing and they have yet to perfect the choreography. Things got tough and, as much as Taeyong knew the other boys were going through their own shit too, he can barely handle the pressure. He’s exhausted and overworked, he’s dizzy and starving. But everytime he looks at the mirror in the middle of practice, like the magnets that they were, his eyes found a pale dimpled smile, directed at him, and it warms his heart in cold white snow.
Ending his extra extra practice, alone, he packs up his speaker and water bottle to get out of the building and onto his warm cheap bed the company so graciously provided him. As he daydreams of the dinner-slash-midnight snack awaiting him back at the dorm, he sees a light open from one of the practice rooms. “That’s weird,” he thought to himself, it’s usually dark and empty by now, nearing midnight.
He hears a door slam shut but the light is still on. His curiosity gets the better of him as he walks over to the seemingly empty practice room, he opens the door and a figure topples over, Taeyong catches it.
His breath hitched when all he could see was pale skin, botched red eyes, like frostbite.
“Hi.” Jaehyun croaks in his arms. Taeyong could only look at his best friend questioningly, tilting his head to side so as to ask him… well, why.
“I couldn’t kiss her.”
“Huh?” Taeyong gapes.
“I couldn’t kiss her,” Jaehyun repeats, “it’s just… that.”
Taeyong tried to understand, and in some way he could, but he still had a million questions buzzing in his head. Though, he gathers that this wasn’t the right time or the right place to do so. He nods and tells Jaehyun to come back to the dorm with him. They walk back, in the cold, and if Taeyong heard sniffling from beside him he blames it on the weather.
Weirdly enough, the skies clear the next day, but it wasn’t particularly sunny either. It was more of a neutral fog, an identity crisis, if you will, such as what Taeyong was going through at the moment while his best friend and crush was snuggling him on his bed. The warmth spreading throughout his body was definitely because of how cramped the small bed was, Taeyong would deny otherwise.
“Jae? Jaehyun?” Taeyong shook him awake, actually feeling the discomfort set in after all the butterflies, “Ya! Wake up, how’d you even get here?” Jaehyun only groans lightly, mumbling something about asking for five more minutes.
This isn’t the first time they’ve slept on the same bed, growing up together makes that inevitable. However, it is the first time they’ve slept on the same bed as crush-ee and crush-er . It’s been so long, though, and the dorm is so much more different than his room at home when they get home from school.
Taeyong decides to put matters into his own hands and pushes Jaehyun off the bed, his best friend faking breaking his back after falling a feet off the ground. Taeyong runs to the bathroom and hides for a bit longer than necessary, earning him a scolding from Doyoung about something along the lines of abuse of power.
The next few weeks went the same way, Jaehyun acting like how they were back in high school, as if he didn’t totally ditch Taeyong for his girlfriend the past few months. Though, Taeyong felt guilty for thinking that; it wasn’t Jaehyun’s fault he wanted to spend time with girls like a normal guy, and it definitely wasn’t his fault Taeyong ended up hopelessly in love with his best friend.
Jaehyun continued to, dare he say it, cling to Taeyong the next few weeks. Whenever the boys ate out together, Jaehyun made it a point to sit next to Taeyong all the time. He cuddles Taeyong and sleeps on his bed every once in a while; Taeyong doesn't know whether to be happy or scared that his best friend-slash-crush is back to him. He’s settled into a routine that accepts that Jaehyun chose a girl over Taeyong, but then suddenly, someone was there again to pass him a water bottle during his midnight practices, Taeyong felt both ecstatic and confused.
On a cloudy evening, Jaehyun was able to pull Taeyong out of his cave to get some ice cream (with a lot of pouting and ‘just like the old times’ ), Taeyong felt coldness crawl up his spine.
“Did you know Yuri left the company,” Jaehyun sighs, solemnly scooping the ice cream out of the cup. “Yuri? The girl you were seeing?” Taeyong asks.
“Yeah, she uh…” Jaehyun trails, he puts his hands on his face, “God, I feel so guilty.”
“I feel like I ruined her dream,” he continues, “she gave up on being an idol because of me.”
Taeyong stares, awkwardly, he really didn’t know what to do or how to comfort his best friend. “I’m sure it’s not that.”
“Of course it was.” Jaehyun said, his eyes looking far away, thinking. “Maybe… I should’ve just kissed her.”
“I wish I had, then maybe… then maybe she could still be motivated to be an idol.”
“You don’t owe anybody anything you’re uncomfortable to do.”
“And that’s exactly it!” Jaehyun cries, “I have no idea why I couldn’t. She’s pretty, funny, smart; and yet, whenever the moment came that I could kiss her, I chickened out.”
Taeyong takes a bite of his ice cream, “Well… maybe you’re gay.”
Both Jaehyun and Taeyong were taken aback from what he said. “What?” Jaehyun stuttered out, in shock.
“I mean! Like… it’s a possibility, you know. I mean… half the group is gay, anyway, hell, I’m gay.” Taeyong rambled on, trying to save his own ass. Where is the nearest wall he can bash his head in?
“Wait… you’re gay?” Jaehyun asked in genuine confusion. Taeyong stared back at him, “Dude, what? I told you in like third grade…”
“But you’ve never liked anyone!”
“Doesn’t make me any less gay!”
Taeyong thinks he said it a little too loud, too embarrassed to look around the ice cream shop to see if anyone heard. The clouds get darker and Taeyong takes it as an opportunity to escape. “Hey, let’s go it might rain soon.”
As the flowers bloom in spring, Jaehyun gets both warmer and colder. Taeyong feels as if his best friend has distanced himself from him, but he also feels as if Jaehyun has been paying close attention to him, as if observing him. He decides he preferred the clingy Jaehyun, but when he sees banana milk on his nightstand after he mentions his cravings to Donghyuck an hour ago, he grew even more confused and lost.
Taeyong was watching a film in the dorm’s common room alone when Jaehyun walked in and froze the moment they both made eye contact. Taeyong feels as if they’ve come full circle as he gives a weak smile to his best friend. Jaehyun looks like he was deciding whether or not to join Taeyong on the couch, and Taeyong turned back to the film before he saw Jaehyun make a decision.
A dip in the couch and a shadow in Taeyong’s peripheral vision revealed Jaehyun’s decision. Taeyong paid him no mind and stayed focused on the movie. “Taeyong?” The man in question exhales and turns his head to his best friend. “Yeah?”
“I think I’m gay.”
Taeyong, not expecting the statement coming out of his best friend’s mouth, almost choked on his own spit. “Oh,” he stuttered out, “that’s good for you.” Taeyong gives him a weak squeeze and a smile before attempting to go back to the film.
“But… that’s the thing, I, uh,” Jaehyun continues, “I’m not sure yet. I just think I am.”
As if Taeyong couldn’t have been more confused, Jaehyun proceeds to ask, “You’re my best friend right?”
Taeyong nods, Jaehyun exhales, “Can I try something… as your best friend.” Taeyong gulps.
Jaehyun leaned closer, and it was as if Taeyong was laying on the beach on a hot summer day, “Just… stop me if you don’t like it.”
Their lips met and Taeyong could feel his whole body on fire, but Jaehyun was cold and it melted into this beautiful thing, like ice cream melting and giggling playfully. He feels an eclipse, the heat of the sun meeting the cold of the moon, and yet, it feels right, like he was meant to be here at this moment, on this couch, on this very day.
They eventually separate and Jaehyun is the first to speak, eyes flickering from Taeyong’s lips to his eyes, “Good?”
“Yeah,” Taeyong smiles, hands combing through Jaehyun’s hair, “Yeah, I’m good.”
Inevitably, the boys come back to the dorm, only to be freaked out by Taeyong and Jaehyun’s faces stuck together on the couch, the film on the television long forgotten. They both laugh as the rest of the boys holler at them while running to their own rooms, fake gagging and hoots, to name a few of their reactions.
“I bet you I can guess what flavor of ice cream you’re eating from a kiss.”
“What do I get if you don't?” Taeyong smirks, Jaehyun gives him an unamused look.
They laugh before grabbing their coats and racing out to the ice cream shop. “Yeah,” Taeyong thought to himself, “I’d look forward to every season if it meant spending all of it with him.”