Chapter Text
all the days before
Choi Yeonjun first met Choi Soobin in one winter morning, under the gloomy grey sky that rained heavy snow. It was a strange day to move in, a 5 year-old Yeonjun thought, for it made the whole moving in process way messier than what it was, but being his usual curious self, he still made his way across the road, to the house that was now occupied after being emptied for a quite some time. Yeonjun couldn’t help feeling excited as he skipped over, and in no time, he found himself standing in front of the slightly opened door; his naturally pouty lips formed a tiny ‘o’ as he saw a couple tall men moving here and there with boxes in their arms.
Before he could even peek more, the door was pulled inwards, revealing another boy of his height—maybe 3cm shorter than he was—and he had a telescope under his arm, something that Yeonjun had seen many times on TV when he had a marathon of his favourite educational program, Backyard Science. Inquisitive, Yeonjun couldn’t help asking in both excitement and curiosity, his tiny index finger pointing to the instrument the other had on him.
“Is that real?”
The shorter smiled in delight at the question, his dimples popping on both sides of his cheeks and Yeonjun thought that he probably had lost the first spot of having the squishiest cheeks in their small neighbourhood. He felt a tad too competitive, but his amazement at that moment managed to conceal his competitiveness. The other stepped out to the porch, closing the door behind him before he turned his attention back to this boy who apparently had appeared out of nowhere, but judging by how he was still in his planets-printed pyjamas with a duck plushy hanging from his fingers, Soobin figured that he must be around here too.
“Of course it is!” Soobin answered, his voice matched Yeonjun’s excitement. “My dad got it for me for my birthday a few days ago! Would you like to try it?”
Yeonjun’s eyes lit up at the offer. “Can I?”
“Of course!” Soobin then pointed to the sky. “Let’s hope that it doesn’t snow tonight. Maybe we can see the moon at the very least.”
Yeonjun beamed a little too excitedly, extending out his hand in front both of them, smiling brightly his cheeks hurt. “I’m Yeonjun! Choi Yeonjun!”
His hand was shook almost immediately; his smile was just as wide and bright as Yeonjun’s. “I’m a Choi too,” a giggle followed—something that Yeonjun had grown to adore a little too much for his own good—and then the boy continued in a heartbeat. “Soobin. Choi Soobin.”
That night, when the snow had stopped falling, the two found themselves at the small attic in Yeonjun’s house, sitting before the huge window that was carved on the roof, looking at the endless night sky through Soobin’s precious telescope. There wasn’t a moon like how they hoped for, but they caught a sight of Eridanus, and it was just as equally as good—better, perhaps.
Yeonjun couldn’t thank Soobin enough for the opportunity—and maybe he really was thankful for the other—that Soobin left the house as the midnight approached with Yeonjun’s favourite duck plushy in his right hand and his telescope in his left. Yeonjun said that it was both a thank you and birthday gift for Soobin.
Yeonjun’s vocabulary wasn’t huge, but unlike how it was with the gloomy sky that day when he first met Soobin, the boy wasn’t that. He didn’t know the word back then, so he grew up describing how it felt instead of just pinpointing and fixing to just a word (Choi Yeonjun figured that Choi Soobin deserves more than just a word anyway). Hence, he wrote somewhere in his diary that Choi Soobin was that boy who turned his life into nothing like the sombre and sunless sky; he turned it into something less gloomy, something more lovely.
Something in the lines of that.
Yeonjun couldn’t remember all the days that existed before Soobin. It seemed as if they were almost non-existent; because what was Choi Yeonjun without Choi Soobin really? It took them only three days to really click, and a week to become the well-known duo in their small town. Yeonjun was an only child, and Soobin’s brother and sisters were already in universities and boarding school that they were rarely at home, so they had no other choice but each other.
It wasn’t a problem, honestly, because they had one other and that was all that mattered. Choi Yeonjun needed a companion—a playmate mostly and initially—and Choi Soobin was there, having the same need, too.
At 10, Yeonjun thought that in Soobin, he needn’t need anything else. Soobin was enough. He was enough. Soobin thought of the same thing.
A year passed, and another, and another.
Before they knew it, they literally grew up together, before each other’s eyes, hand-in-hand, step by step. Yeonjun was there for Soobin all along. Soobin was there for Yeonjun all along. Through the ups and the lows. Came hell or high water. Through it all. Not that there was a lot for a 13 year old to take in, to face on a daily basis, but perhaps it wasn’t a hell of a lot because over the years, Yeonjun made the world less suck for the other, and Soobin made it more bearable than what it really was.
At 15, they went to the Junior’s formal together just for the sake of wanting to know how it felt like—out of peer pressure mostly—and to see whether it was as huge as what people made it seemed to be; the two really didn’t and couldn’t understand the hype on such overrated things. Soobin turned down a girl from his class, who wasn’t just a girl because she was apparently his crush; the prettiest of their grade too, just so Yeonjun would have a date for the night. Yeonjun thought it was out of pity, but Soobin said that he’d really rather spend it with him than with anyone else, because he was... Choi Yeonjun. He knew Yeonjun through and through, and if there was anything he knew about the girl, it was that she was pretty, and just that. Yeonjun, Soobin remembered thinking, was way beyond pretty. He’d pick Yeonjun.
Choi Soobin would always pick Choi Yeonjun, in a heartbeat, in the brightest daylight and the darkest of dawn, under whatever circumstances.
As simple as that.
That night as they headed home, on the damp empty street because it was pouring heavily earlier, in the sleeping blue neighbourhood, under the dim streetlight and a billion of stars, Soobin asked Yeonjun for a dance. Yeonjun was too anxious to make a move when they were in the school hall where the prom took place earlier so they ended up munching on free food to their hearts’ contents instead. The thing is, Yeonjun was too pretty that night to leave without having him be swept off his feet (though his necktie had loosened and hair was dishevelled into a pretty mess), and Soobin thought it would be a waste if the night ended just like that. Hence, he asked for a dance.
Soobin offered his hand. Giggling like some lovesick fools, Yeonjun accepted, placing his hands on Soobin’s shoulders with the other’s hands on his waist. With Soobin’s terribly unstable singing began to accompany their steps, they moved. Left to right. Right to left. An awkward twirl. A step on the foot. Another step on the foot. A better twirl. Right to left. Another twirl and the best one yet. Left to right. A wince because Yeonjun really had to step on Soobin’s white Vans for the nth time. Soobin hitting the last note in a way Yeonjun was sure all the music agencies would reject. The last twirl. A soft tug to a one step closer to one another. A kiss on the forehead to end the night.
Yeonjun felt dizzy in a good kind of way, and he definitely was swept of his feet.
At 17, Soobin clumsily made his way to Yeonjun’s house with a huge tub of (disgusting but he would let it pass just for today) mint choco ice cream in his hands, stumbling on the front porch but he was quick to ignore the sharp pain on his shin and made his way upstairs to Yeonjun’s little safest haven (his, too), but not before tripping over the last step of stair. The loud crash caused Yeonjun to come out of his room, and with croak and hoarse voice from crying a little too much, he asked, “are you dumb?”
Yeonjun then helped Soobin to get up, thanking the other for the ice cream and aggressively eating the ice cream, all in while ugly crying at the same time. Soobin sat at the side, dabbing the other’s cheeks with tissues to dry the tears away, cursing the basketball captain of their grade for breaking Yeonjun’s heart as if he had many to begin with.
“That Jung Woo—“
“Don’t you dare say his name!”
“That son of a bitch, he’s about to catch these hands!”
Yeonjun thought how easy it would be to love Soobin instead of anyone else.
He wasn’t that heartbroken; he rated it with a 4 out of 10 when Soobin asked how much it hurt. He claimed that he cried because it was his pride that was hurt, not him (Yeonjun had asked Wooyoung to be his date for senior prom, but he was turned down rather cruelly). Soobin wanted to ask how it was different, but he didn’t. Hence, senior prom that year, the two spent the night in Yeonjun’s attic once again, sitting before the huge window that highlighted the whole sky, taking turns behind Soobin’s telescope. Thick astronomy book lied between the two as they tried to figure which constellations they spotted that night, and when Yeonjun looked up to Soobin with twinkling eyes and satisfied smile, Soobin found something that was more beautiful than the stars.
“This is way better than that stupid prom,” Yeonjun said, looking at the beauty before his eyes; the stars and moon seemed to appear way closer than usual that night. He had to wonder whether it was just him. “Thank you, Binnie.”
Soobin’s hand found its way through the dark to Yeonjun’s hand.
The forehead kiss from 2 years ago was upgraded to an eskimo kiss, and Yeonjun thought he’d have his first, real kiss right then and there as well because the timing was right and he was with the right person, but Soobin pulled back. It was close; the tension was undeniably strong, just as strong as the unseen attraction, and Yeonjun thought Soobin was really a breathtaking almost.
Things carried on as usual though the boys knew that something between them had indeed changed though they couldn’t put a finger on it; it was just something so subtle and unnoticed until they paid a closer attention to it, until that point of their lives.
Yeonjun wouldn’t deny that he felt a tad too disappointed, though he never brought it up because it was a line that he didn’t have the courage to cross just yet. What they had was good; he was afraid it’d turn into something lesser than good once he crossed the line. It was good; why would he change it? It was enough for Yeonjun, or so he thought, and he ended up bottling everything inside, more and more day by day, because Soobin had grown into a magnificent boy he ever laid his eyes on and Yeonjun’s vocabulary was still just as limited.
Yeonjun was determined to figure it out, though. He gave himself time until some times after high school graduation because he thought he had forever, and forever was one of the words that he had longed associated with Soobin.
He did have that forever; Soobin knew it too because damn, forever was nothing but Choi Yeonjun, but perhaps there was more that was going on within Choi Soobin beneath the surface that Yeonjun had failed to notice.
Until he did. Until his 18th summer.