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An uneasy breath escaped from between Jumin’s thin lips as he ruggedly shoved open his penthouse’s front door, physically feeling his shoulders slump from their prim-and-proper posture to sunken now that he was alone. Or at least, thought he was alone.
“Relieved to be home?” A familiar and warm voice hit his ears, and he tensed from the shock and relaxed from the comfort of it all within the span of a second. “Sorry,” he heard the chuckle ring in his ears, almost like the bells dangling from the slew of different toys he’d purchased for Elizabeth over the years. “I didn’t mean to startle you.”
Jumin didn’t even bother to look at the voice’s owner, not yet, and allowed himself to shrug out of his suit jacket haphazardly, even going so far as to just improperly tossing it onto the back of the lounge chair closest to his entryway, snapping off his cufflinks and biting open the snap buttons of his dress shirt before even so much as musing attention his way. “And to what do I owe this pleasure, Jihyun…?”
The teal haired man’s lips quirked up into a crooked half-smile at the feigned distaste, when in reality he could tell very much so that Jumin’s pretense was nothing more than a ruse, and he was in fact happy to see him. He always was. Jihyun’s sunglasses were long-ditched, having no need for them around Jumin anyways. “Rough night, I took it,” he explained, and gestured in his best friend’s general state of disarray, noting the already-kicked-off black oxfords and sleeves now rolled up to his elbows. Jumin would never be caught dead looking this informal around ANYONE besides Jihyun, and he knew it. The fact made him giddy inside, and he could’ve sworn he caught the ghost of a smile adorning his raven-haired friend’s lips as well, despite the overwhelming dread that was practically palpable around him on the topic of where he’d just come from. “This girl wasn’t exactly a home run, huh?”
The lanky CEO-in-line practically collapsed into the couch cushion next to his best friend, his landing so clumsy and close that Jihyun had to shift just to avoid being caught between a couch and a hard place, per se, and even then Jumin still clipped his knee upon impact. He let out a long exhale as he crumpled into himself on the cushion, blowing some of the stringy strands that had fallen into his face more than usual from the commotion as he did so. “It was terrible, Jihyun,” he said honestly, and without even thinking twice, the teal-haired man’s long fingers were deftly swiping those rogue locks back and away from his best friend’s eyes, his lips puckered in concentration as he listened intently. He could tell the entire debacle had frustrated and bothered Jumin, and Jumin let Jihyun dote on him, because he could tell this venting upset him to hear. “But I didn’t exactly have high hopes, either. You know how much it bothers me when my father tries to set me up with a pretty little wife,” he groaned, eyes closing at the thought of all the women the C&R Chairman had tried to play cupid with in the past. “I had hoped with my growing age he would give up, but instead it’s only seemed to make him more desperate. Plus, it’s not like I felt anything with her, you know? I mean, she was disappointed with me, that was clear by the second course, but its not that I could. Sense that or anything… So what was even the point of staying any longer?”
“You know,” the ex-photographer interjected, and he knew damn well he was playing devil’s advocate with this one, but couldn’t help but bring it up. “You don’t have to marry your soulmate. It’s not like, a requirement or anything, nice cherry on top, sure, but- stop glaring at me- not a total necessity.”
Jumin did not, in fact, stop glaring at him: his eyes actually narrowed further in spite. “I don’t even have one. We’ve been over this hundreds of times, you know this. And I don’t care, I-”
“Just because I don’t have one either, doesn’t mean I’ve closed every door before I’ve even opened it.” Jihyun stopped his affectionate petting, instead removing himself entirely from Jumin’s side by standing and giving a languid stretch like a cat. “Come on now, pouty pants. A bottle of house red for your troubles?” He grinned lopsidedly, joking, and held his hand out in the direction he knew the couch to be. Jumin had been reduced to a fuzzy form in his eyes now, since he was far better at seeing things clearly when he was up close, but he was still able to pick out his friend’s outline well enough.
The dark-haired man took his hand and just barely pulled, clearly uneeding of the help as he rose to his feet as well. “Oh, that would be excellent right about now,” Jumin agreed, dropping Jihyun’s fingers from his own and crossing over into his expansive kitchen, opening his small annex cellar of favorites he kept on hand. “What’s striking your palate? Sassicaia from Tuscany, a Spanish Bodegas Roda Cirsion, oh, I even have an American Cabernet Sauvignon here. Napa Valley,” he clarified the region, looking over his shoulder for input only to see Jihyun grappling at his wineglass rack, clearly attempting to be cool about it despite the clinging of them together when he missed the stems. Jumin said nothing, he simply watched so quietly, even when Jihyun’s inability to discern transparent things led to one of his champagne flutes shattering on the marble countertop. He didn’t say a word; Jihyun’s pride was worth a million times the cost of the flute in his eyes. If that was the price he had to pay to allow his best friend to still feel capable and not like a burden, so be it. He’d happily pay it, over and over.
He tucked the Cabernet under the crook of his arm, closing the case to his mini cellar and crossing the kitchen to his friend, gingerly brushing the broken glass out of Jihyun’s arm’s length to ensure he wouldn’t cut himself on it, taking care to keep his own skin intact as he did so. He shook any shards that had stuck to the sides of his fingers off and carefully assisted in the removal of two red wine glasses with exceptionally flared bowls so they wouldn’t have to even aerate when they decanted it from the bottle. Jumin smiled outright, and this close, Jihyun could see it almost clearly. “Thanks,” he whispered, but it was brushed away as nothing, Jumin sneakily trading the neck of the bottle into Jihyun’s grip in exchange for the glassware since it was easier to keep hold of.
There was a pause of silence, but the hard-of-seeing man could just tell Jumin was itching to fill it. “What?”
Sheepishly, like a kid caught with their hand in the cookie jar, Jumin flushed, averting Jihyun’s eyes. “Can we go upstairs? I think I need a breath of fresh air- of course, I understand that it is no different composition of the air in here, but I simply have an urge to sit in the garden right now. Drinking wine. Far away from Seoul’s most eligible bachelorettes.”
Jihyun downright laughed at his prattling, a toothy grin on his lips. “You don’t need to justify going to your own garden for me, Jumin,” he chastised, even though he had an equally ridiculous and unspoken follow-up question to his friend’s. “Of course we can go up there. Just,” He held out his hand, weakly, because he wasn’t exactly the best with stairs, and still tended to need some help with them, especially when they were winding like he knew the penthouse’s to be. Jumin took it, without so much as a second of hesitation, holding the stems of the glasses hooked in the fingers of his other. Together, they worked their way up the carpeted staircase, Jihyun’s footing only unsure a handful of times on the way up as Jumin guided him. He only let go once they’d reached the glass doors, and held it open for the lanky photographer to pass through as well. They settled along the concrete decorative bench amongst the flora, bottle and glasses between them as Jumin poured them both out a hearty first serving. They always enjoyed drinking together; for some reason, every drink felt like two and the buzz arrived much faster with each other than with any other company, and neither of the men complained on a night like tonight, when alcohol was needed to soothe the soul. By the time their glasses were nothing more than streaks of sugar legs the red wine left behind, both of them were already interchangeably slipping into other languages in which they were fluent from their shared formal schooling, minds too boggled to discern only Korean thoughts. “The sky is really clear tonight,” Jumin explained in Italian for his best friend, who had his eyes closed, imagining the photo Jumin was painting. “Very beautiful, too, a deep deep indigo, not quite black, and only the Northern star is persistent enough to push its way through the light pollution, even at this hour.” He switched to Mandarin without even realizing, despite the completely different mouthfeel of the words sliding off his tongue. “The moon is a bit shy of a half crescent, to the right side. Waning.”
Jihyun sighed, and splayed his fingers a few times on the bench, finding the bottle by feel and not even bothering with the fancy glass or the aeration or any of that as he brought the rim to his lips and took a sip straight from it. He gulped the sour red down with a few swigs, completely disrespecting the wine’s history and flavor profile any connoisseur would kill to have the opportunity to audit. And quite frankly, he didn’t care, roughly passing the bottle into his best friend’s hands and able to watch as Jumin did the same. He giggled, just a little, as Jumin had the decorative bottle bottoms-up, finishing off the last of it and grumbling as he dropped it to their feet probably a little harder than he should’ve. It didn’t break, but did make a loud clattering as it toppled onto its side and rolled beneath their legs. Neither bothered to pick it up.
The teal-haired man leapt to his feet suddenly after a beat of silence, and Jumin downright grinned, able to feel the excitement washing over him in waves out of Jihyun. “You dolt,” Jumin insulted, but there was affection instead of malice behind it, as he practically read Jihyun’s mind and rose to stand as well, taking one of the nearly-blind man’s hands and holding it up to the side in the space between them as he wrapped the other around Jihyun’s back, and the teal-haired man did the same, swaying in a sloppy mess of a dance. “There’s no music,” Jumin mused, half teasing, but also the other half was fairly just as drunk, and caused his words to rumble off of a low chuckle. And boy, should he have bit his tongue, because Jihyun simply took that as the incentive to make his own music, and began to hum, followed by singing.
“Like a river flows, surely to the sea~,” of course, drunken Jihyun hadn’t started at the start of a song, and wasn’t even singing it in the native language. His slurred singing was in French, not English, and while we’re at it: why Elvis, per se? Jumin would never know. But it elicited a laugh nonetheless, such a haughty laugh that Jumin even threw his head back, eyes only cracked open enough to see the moon smiling sideways down on the two inebriated idiots. “Darling, so it goes~” Jihyun whipped him back upright by turning on a dime, stumbling himself as a warning of what was to come if they were left unchecked. “Some things, aren’t meant to be~.”
“Take my hand,” Jumin dared to join, his arm on Jihyun’s back tightening its grip mostly so the photographer’s legs wouldn’t get tangled amongst themselves. Mostly. Jihyun giggled in surprise as Jumin’s deep voice chimes in, but simply shook his head and took another step. “Take my whole heart, too~”
“For I,” they both grinned widely at each other, drinking in the intoxication of the night air, the alcohol, and each other all at once.
“Can’t~” Free, that was how Jumin finally felt. It was always like this, Jihyun was the only one who could ever make him feel this way, so seen, so heard, so understood to where he could do the stupidest things like this and never be held even an ounce of judgement for it.
“Help~” Another giggle as they listed particularly far to the right, and both scrambled to right themselves, “falling in-oh, OH!” And finally, the crash that had been impending all this time arrived, Jumin losing his footing as he’d gone to step back, and landing square on his back in the soil of a wide and expansive planter. Don’t worry, Jihyun had gone down too, and landed somewhere much more graceful: on Jumin, like a pile of bricks, no less. Both of them groaned, before erupting into fits of uninterrupted laughter, only spliced by the occasional wheeze, and it had become impossible by this point to even know who it came from. It was like they fed off of each other, and each time the breathing even so much as teetered into normal territory, hearing the other’s snicker sent them tumbling back into more chuckles until they finally were just too out of breath and had to settle for toothy grins instead. Suddenly, like a wave crashing over his head and pulling him down into an ocean of gratitude, Jihyun felt nothing but thankfulness to be where he was now. Stupidly drunk, with his best friend in the entire world, and even as he rolled off and nestled into the dirt beside Jumin, he was still close enough to capture minute details that were otherwise lost to his eyes, and he couldn’t possibly feel better than he did lying here right now. Before he got the chance to express that, though, Jumin beat him to it, on the very same wavelength.
“God,” he breathed, turning his head and downright beaming at the teal-haired man beside him. “See, this is why I don’t care about dates and all that bullshit,” Jumin propped himself up on one elbow, on his side now. “I don’t care that I don’t have a soulmate,” and he really didn’t. “I don’t care that I’ve never felt any random emotions, God, sounds like a fucking nightmare,” he was swearing, that’s how Jihyun knew he was drunk drunk. “I don’t need anyone else to understand me, you already understand me SOOOOOOOOOO much better than any dumbass stranger would. You practically ARE my soulmate, I don’t need them, I have you, Jihyun.”
Jihyun’s mind was whirring, and Jumin could feel a realization coming, but dammit, he was too drunk to know what it was, that must be it, that must be why he could feel it and yet not know what it was. But Jihyun knew. He could tell. “What? What did I say?!”
A half beat of quiet passed between them, and an absolutely overwhelming feeling of love surged within the two of them, only amplified by each other’s as it ricocheted. It was platonic and romantic and found-familial all at the same time, and before anything more could be said, Jihyun’s lips were fitted to his, noses crashing together as they both missed their mark at first thanks to the alcohol buzzing in their blood and electricity stinging everywhere that fingertips gripped chins and cheeks and necks, frenzied almost, in the downright NEED to meet in the middle of the air between them.
“I am,” Jihyun whispered, almost more in a gasp of disbelief as they broke apart to speak, but never stayed more than an inch’s breadth from each other’s face. This close, Jihyun could see everything: the exact shade of grey of Jumin’s irises, how his cheeks flushed brightly from the alcohol or the kiss or maybe a bit of both, how his thin eyebrows knitted down when he pouted, even if he was trying to hide it, and the amount of detail was breathtaking for an artist who’d been deprived of it for so long now. He sucked in another deep breath of air, shaky on the exhale as he almost refused to allow himself to believe his own words. “I am, Jumin. All this time, I,” he skimmed his thumb over Jumin’s warm and emanating cheek, feeling it burn the pad of his finger as he did so and loving the sensation anyways. “I am your soulmate.”
Jumin was quiet for a minute, just staring into Jihyun’s cloudy eyes, before he felt tears beginning to well up. And Jihyun wept, too- of course he did, of course his soulmate shared that need to cry with him. “W-We never thought we had any,” Jumin hiccupped, his hold on Jihyun’s jaw seizing a little in attempt to verify this was all real. “Idiots,” Jumin spat out, before kissing him again. And again. And perhaps forever, if all went well.
Jihyun sniveled, tipping his head down to break their lips apart and rest his forehead on his best friend’s, eyes falling shut as he drank in the feeling. His feelings, Jumin’s feelings- what was the difference between them, anyways? At the end of the day, were they not simply two halves of one whole?
“Idiots,” he agreed with his long time unrecognized love, tenderly pushing some of the dark hair out of his face again, much like he had earlier on the couch, but this time he let his hand nestle into Jumin’s hair freely, feeling no need to remove it. “But each other’s idiots, hmm? And that’s what matters.”