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Jaebeom sees him every morning. He always wears a variation of the same thing regardless of the weather - grey running shorts and a white sweatshirt with sleeves long enough to cover his hands. Jaebeom wonders if he buys oversized shirts on purpose because they make him look 10x cuter, or if he steals them from his larger-built boyfriend.
“How do we know he has a boyfriend?” Bambam asks.
“Of course he has,” Jackson shoots back. “Look at that. Someone snapped that up a long time ago.”
“Okay, but how do we know he’s gay?”
“Everyone’s gay unless they say otherwise,” explains Jackson, poking Bambam in the ribs. “The real question is, why are we talking about his sweatshirt when he’s drinking from the fountain like that?”
Ah, the water fountain.
For a park this size, Jaebeom wonders why there’s only one functioning water fountain around, and why it’s much lower than any regular-sized fountain he’s seen outside of an elementary school. Jaebeom isn’t complaining, though, because the kid-sized water fountain means that Park Guy has to bend a little lower to be able to drink, and his backside isn’t anything to scoff at.
.
Jaebeom runs at the park every morning. He rolled his eyes at his therapist when he first suggested it (something about clearing his head). But, after getting his first solid night of sleep the day of his first run, running became part of his routine.
He noticed Park Guy about a week into his route. The first week, Jaebeom had not been paying much attention because he was hyper aware of his own self - he was never much for traditional exercise, let alone something outdoors.
A week later, he was still not into traditional exercise, but he had started to notice other things - like Jackson, who runs in a black tank top and the loudest headphones Jaebeom’s ever encountered, and Bambam, who has pink hair and walks the smallest bear Jaebeom’s ever seen. (“It’s a dog,” Bambam explains later on. A bear-dog.)
And he had noticed him. Grey shorts, sensible running shoes, and a large white sweatshirt that stops right above the curve of his ass when he bends down by the water fountain. He doesn’t listen to loud music like Jackson does, or take selfies on the bench like Bambam does. He also doesn’t bring his own water bottle like the rest of them do. Instead, he stops for a drink at the water fountain halfway through his run every morning.
This times perfectly with the end of Jaebeom’s run, so he lingers in the park to watch him bend down and drink from the water fountain every morning. Of course, no one can prove this except Jackson, who he also sees everyday. He’s about as subtle as a brick, too. He does his after-run stretches near the bench Jaebeom collapses on, and they try to watch Park Guy without watching him.
Some mornings, Jackson sighs loudly. One time, Jaebeom may have whimpered a little (seriously, who the fuck bends like that in public?), and he got a commiserative nod from Jackson in return.
Jaebeom starts chatting with Jackson shortly after. Jackson is training for his 3rd (4th?) marathon, and offered to teach Jaebeom some after-run stretches so his legs don't feel like lead in the afternoons.
They meet Bambam a little later, after his bear-dog mistakes Jackson’s bright yellow shoes for a chew toy. Bambam had lost a bet to his best friend, and now has to walk his bear-dog every morning.
“Maybe bear-dog can instigate a meet-cute for you and Park Guy,” Jackson commented once.
Jaebeom shut down this comment easily. (He’s become a pro at it after the 100th time Jackson made a comment about his shoulders or his nose.)
Besides, he’s happy to watch Park Guy from afar.
.
Jackson leaves the park at the same time every morning - something about wanting to shower before video chatting with his boyfriend, who’s on a long-term assignment in the US. Sometimes, Bambam sweet talks him into giving him and the bear-dog a ride back to his dorm.
Today is one of those times.
Without Jackson’s loud headphones or Bambam’s running commentary, he can actually hear the birds chirping. What a nice day, Jaebeom thinks.
As he walks towards the park exit, two things happen almost simultaneously:
First, he notices fresh bird poop on the back of his right hand. (Fuck the birds.)
Second, he hears a soft “excuse me” and feels a tap on his shoulder.
“The launcher,” someone says. Jaebeom turns around and there he is, Park Guy, holding out a stick, and looking cute and glorious and not the least bit tired from his run.
“Huh?” Jaebeom manages, eloquently as ever.
Park Guy blushes, a soft pink that looks oddly innocent on his pale skin. “Sorry, I mean… this ball launcher, I think your friend left it behind.”
“Right.” Jaebeom says. Fucking peachy. His first conversation with the cutest guy he’s ever seen and he’s covered in bird poop. Well, maybe not covered, but that’s what it feels like. (“Tragedising,” his therapist’s voice is loud in his head. They’re working on it.)
Jaebeom reaches out his clean hand to take the stick. He’s seen Bambam use it with the bear-dog enough times to know that it’s his.
“Thank you,” he says, at the same time Park Guy says: “He’s got a cute dog.”
And maybe Jaebeom should have paused before saying in a hurry: “I like cats.”
“Oh. Cute. Um, cats. I mean…” Park Guy says, words tripping over themselves. “Cats. Cats are cute.”
Then Jaebeom nods, smiles like he hopes the earth would swallow him up, and jogs towards the exit.
.
The next day, Jaebeom returns the launcher to Bambam. This triggers a long monologue of thanks but also of how he went back to the park to try and find it, how upset Yugyeom was at him for losing it, and how Yugyeom’s classes must really be stressing him out because he never gets upset that easily.
Jaebeom is only half listening when Jackson interrupts, “Who’s Yugyeom?”
“My best friend.”
“Your best friend is that bear-dog?”
“What? No! Come on, man. Yugyeom is my friend. This,” Bambam says, pointing to the little bear-dog beside him. “This is Dalkyum. He belongs to Yugyeom.”
Jackson shrugs, not nearly as invested in the bear-dog’s family tree as Bambam is. This triggers another monologue from Bambam, which Jaebeom tunes out - his full attention on the other side of the path.
Park Guy is bending down by the water fountain, arching his back more dramatically than usual (something Jaebeom wouldn’t mind seeing in the bedroom), and then finally straightening up.
Jaebeom tunes back into Bambam’s monologue as it ends, “...besides, I already have four cats.”
Cats. So Bambam likes cats, too. Jaebeom groans and this catches Bambam’s attention.
“Jaebeom hyung, do you have any pets?”
He does not tell them about the encounter with Park Guy.
.
Sometimes, he wonders if it’s a good idea to chat with Jackson and Bambam at the park. Does it defeat the purpose of his morning runs? Is he opening himself up to too many people at once? Is he sharing too much about himself? He did mention to Bambam that he has five cats.
“How did the topic of your cats come up?” His therapist asks.
He tells him about Bambam’s cats, the little bear-dog, the ball launcher… and Park Guy. He has never mentioned Park Guy before. He doesn’t like to think that his therapist would read much into his crush.
“I thought about introducing myself and shaking his hand,” he says. “But I had the launcher in one hand and bird poop on another.”
“Hmm?” says Youngjae, not writing anything down. “So what happened?”
“I said I like cats and ran off,” he grumbles, still embarrassed about how he acted in front of Park Guy.
Youngjae smiles at him. “What did you have for breakfast this morning?” he asks, going back to his notes, Park Guy removed from the conversation completely.
.
As the son of farmers, Jaebeom is a morning person. It has less to do with popular science about ‘why being a morning person will make you more successful’, and more to do with the special sort of peace he gets in the mornings. Even after moving out of his parents’ house, he still loves waking up just a little before the rest of the world.
Over the last year or two, waking up in the morning has become an issue. Some mornings are better than others, but on difficult mornings, everything blurs together, and Jaebeom wants nothing more than to sink back into bed and disappear. For a long time, he chalked this up to laziness, and beat himself up for being whiny and unproductive.
Youngjae helped. Told him that it could be depression, that it was different from sadness or the occasional bouts of laziness. He didn’t present things in black and white. He acknowledged the grey areas. He didn’t tell him to “just lighten up”, prescribe him with meds five minutes into their first session, or all the other bullshit his first four therapists tried to ram down his throat.
Youngjae listened. And Jaebeom likes him the most.
.
After The Encounter - as Jaebeom now thinks of his first and only conversation with Park Guy - he still sees him every morning. Sometimes, he would blush at Jaebeom as he ran past, but Jaebeom never allows himself to dwell on this new development.
.
One morning, the rain picks up as soon as he arrives at the park, and Jaebeom spends most of his run squelching. Jackson is away visiting his boyfriend in the US, and Bambam is busy with his finals. Jaebeom doesn’t linger to watch Park Guy bend down by the water fountain then, feeling too wet to be standing around, and too much of a creeper to be watching by himself.
That day, he leaves the park immediately after his run, not bothering with any of the stretches Jackson has taught him.
.
The next day, the weather feels ten degrees hotter, but Park Guy still wears his big-ass sweatshirt (which Jaebeom concludes must be Park Guy’s boyfriend’s). He also does not stop for a drink at the fountain mid-run.
Instead, he changes his route and runs counter clockwise to Jaebeom. Before, Jaebeom could check out his ass when Park Guy overtook him. He can’t now, but he can check out the vague outline of Park Guy’s dick when he runs towards him.
Creeper or not, Jaebeom takes his small victories where he can.
.
“What about the other friend at the park? The one who found the ball launcher? Have you talked to him again since?” Youngjae asks when Jaebeom finishes complaining about his friend, also a Youngjae, and his inability to be punctual.
“No?”
“Hmm,” is all Youngjae says.
“He doesn’t really talk to anyone at the park,” Jaebeom finds himself offering, which is way too much information for him to know about a guy he’s only ever mentioned once.
“He doesn’t?”
“No. He arrives at the same time every morning and runs the same route,” he rattles off. “He stops for a drink at the water fountain about halfway through his run, except he doesn’t now and he also runs his route from the opposite direction, and I really don’t want to talk about how I shouldn’t notice these things, but he’s cute and it’s hard not to notice, okay?”
“Okay.”
“Jackson notices him, too.” He tries to defend himself.
“Who?”
“Loud Jackson, with the boyfriend in the US. He says having a boyfriend doesn’t make him immune from noticing other cute guys.”
Youngjae smiles then nods to the photo album he tasked Jaebeom with bringing. “Do you want to talk about the photos you've chosen?”
See, this is why Jaebeom likes Youngjae the most.
.
Because the world is not entirely terrible, Park Guy starts drinking from the water fountain again. He’s bending down low, and Jaebeom gives up any pretence of not watching. He’s not the only one. Jackson is back from the US, and he buys them coffee from the stand that’s set up in the park.
Bambam is back, too. His finals are over, and he brought his friend Yugyeom.
“What are we even watching?” Yugyeom asks while cradling the bear-dog in his arms like it’s an infant.
As if on cue, Park Guy straightens up and wipes the invisible beads of sweat off his forehead with his long-ass sleeve. Despite punctuating his every sentence with “Mark’s coming home next week”, Jackson still gives a low whistle of appreciation at this.
Yugyeom makes a face. “You know, this is really pervy,” he advises, ignoring the sight on the other side of the path - the actual work art, who was far enough that he would not hear them, but close enough that they could make out the curve of his ass.
“And I thought you had a boyfriend?”
“Look,” Jackson says, looking at Yugyeom over the rim of his paper cup. “It’s like this, kid: even when you have the most amazing boyfriend ever - which I do - there are some things in this world that demand our appreciation.”
Like that ass, Jaebeom adds in his head, at the same time Jackson says: “Like Jaebeom hyung’s nose.”
“What?”
“Shut up, hyung. Your nose is literally perfect.”
.
Somehow, between the first commiserative nod from Jackson and their now-ritual morning coffee, Jaebeom started thinking of Jackson and Bambam as his friends. Yugyeom is a new addition to their little group, so Jaebeom isn’t as comfortable with him yet. But he’s so much like a human version of the little bear-dog that Jaebeom’s sure he’ll warm up to him eventually.
“I’ve met Mark a few times now, too,” he tells Youngjae. “But he doesn’t join us at the park.”
“Mark?”
“Jackson’s boyfriend. He was on loan to their US office for the longest time, but now he’s back. Jackson says he hates waking up early.”
Jaebeom is aware that he’s talking too much about his little friend group from the park, but today, Youngjae tasked him with talking about something he’s proud of. A year ago, he would have cringed at this, but today, Jaebeom is proud about his progress with his routine and with his social life.
“Mark seems cool, though. He and Jackson finally got a dog together.”
At this, Youngjae’s eyes sparkle. “They did?”
Jaebeom remembers his first session with Youngjae - how tired he was from another sleepless night, and how awkward he felt being older than his new therapist. Youngjae smiled at him and asked him about his day then, and Jaebeom remembers avoiding his eyes and instead focusing on the framed photo of a dog on his desk. He’s made a lot of progress with Youngjae since then, and he thinks that maybe, in a world where Youngjae is not his therapist, Jaebeom would be proud to call Youngjae his friend, too.
.
“Have you ever considered yoga?”
“Uh,” he says, because it’s a little out of left field, even for Jackson. “No?”
“They have free classes at Mark’s office after work. He said he can get you a visitor pass if you’re interested.”
If Bambam and Yugyeom weren’t busy running around the park, looking for bear-dog’s rubber duck, Jaebeom wonders if they, too, would think Jackson is up to something.
“What are you plotting?”
“Murder, obviously,” Jackson deadpans before taking a sip of his coffee. “Look, we just thought that maybe you’d appreciate a room full of downward-facing dogs.”
It speaks to the strength of his newly acknowledged friendship with Jackson that Jaebeom doesn’t wish the earth would swallow him up at that moment.
.
Despite a hold up at reception, Jaebeom arrives at yoga five minutes early. The yoga room is dim but welcoming, with a buffet of unlit tea candles at the front. A few people are already in the room, throwing their mats down on the ground, and chatting quietly or stretching.
He’s unrolling his mat near the back of the room when the teacher comes up to him and introduces herself as Mina.
“It’s a mixed-level class,” she explains, then talks about how the class is smaller today than usual - something about a networking event happening on the 6th floor. Jaebeom doesn’t care, really. All he wants is to get this class over with so he can get Jackson and Mark off his back.
Just before the class is due to start, the door opens, and a guy pads in with a yoga mat tucked under his arm.
“Ah, Jinyoung. Nice of you to join us! Come set up your mat up front,” Mina greets the new guy, who starts unrolling his mat in front of Jaebeom.
He looks familiar, Jaebeom thinks in passing, and it takes a solid minute and a view of his sweater paws for things to click in his head.
Fuck. If Jaebeom thought Park Guy in grey running shorts was peak devastation, Park Guy in yoga pants is an absolute revelation.
.
“Eventually, this pose - the downward-facing dog - is going to be a resting pose for all of you,” Mina says breezily, guiding a woman’s hand so it’s directly in line with the rest of her arm. “Right now, it might not feel that way for some, but let’s try to hold, breathe, and enjoy the stretch.”
Jaebeom looks up a few times while in position to sneak a peek at Park Guy. He’s no yoga master, but he thinks Park Guy’s downward-facing dog is perfect. And if Mina notices him peeking, she doesn’t say anything about it.
Instead, he hears her tell another student, “spread out your legs and feet so you're not as top heavy,” and damn, if that doesn’t fill his head with thoughts that are wildly inappropriate in an office yoga class.
.
As Mina ends the hour-long practice with their hands in prayer position, Jaebeom decides that he will talk to Park Guy after class. After all, Youngjae tasked him with starting one conversation with a stranger per week. Given how The Encounter went, he concludes that Park Guy still counts as a stranger.
Before he can think of what to say, the lights pick back up, and Park Guy looks over at him. He looks like he just took a nap. “How did you find the class?”
“Um, it was pretty good. Relaxing,” Jaebeom admits. Plus the view didn’t hurt either, he thinks to himself, watching Park Guy roll up his mat.
“Jaebeom?”
Jaebeom jerks himself away from his thoughts and meets Mina’s amused gaze. “Yeah, sorry. Head’s a little fluffy.”
“Ah, the after-yoga fluff,” she says with an easy smile. “Happens to the best of us. Hope that doesn’t turn you off from coming to another class!”
He gives her a tentative smile before rolling up his own mat.
“I noticed you don’t have your own water bottle. You should bring one next time, especially for when we try a more vigorous flow.”
“Yeah, sounds great,” he says vaguely.
Mina just smiles again, and motions over to Park Guy, who’s putting away the yoga blocks that other students left behind. “Jinyoung here might have some recommendations about a good water bottle. You know, the kind that keeps your drink cool for hours? This guy never goes anywhere without one. Right, Jinyoung?”
When Jaebeom turns to Park Guy, he finds his cheeks flushed and his lips parted in surprise. He looks like he wants to protest against Mina’s comment, but she’s already moved on to saying goodbye to another student.
And maybe Jaebeom should have let Mina’s words stew in his mind before introducing himself: “I’m Jaebeom, by the way. We met at the park, once?”
“Yes,” he says softly. “I’m Jinyoung. Park Jinyoung.”
“Park Jinyoung from the park,” he whispers, loud enough for Park Guy (Jinyoung) to hear.
The long, slow smile that spreads across Jinyoung’s face is like honey over perfect toast. And are those eye whiskers?
Jaebeom steps forward, emboldened by how he hasn’t made fun of him for The Encounter yet. “Do you want to get some coffee? Or beer?”
He is hyper aware of how hopeful he sounds, so he immediately adds, “If you’re sure your boyfriend won’t mind?”
“I don’t have a boyfriend?”
And maybe Jaebeom’s been hanging around Bambam and Yugyeom too much that the snark comes out naturally then, “You’re not sure?”
Jinyoung glares at him a little, and Jaebeom might be a little in love.
“I don’t have a boyfriend. I’m sure.” So that settles that.
“And beer. Beer sounds good.”