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At first, Beomgyu assumed that it was going to work out just fine.
Not everyone was meant to stay for the rest of his life, anyway. And although it did cross his mind a few times that, perhaps, his (former) roommate—the guy whose height is a bit shorter than his, age almost a whole year younger than him, hobby of working out a little too intense Beomgyu worriedly thought it could become an obsession; who goes by the name of Kang Taehyun—would be a person special enough to be his close friend for a really long time in both their lives, he isn’t.
To say that he was disappointed would be an understatement. Beomgyu was hurt, it felt as though he was a clingy puppy abandoned by his owner for no palpable reason at all. Though, as much as he wanted to resent him for suddenly moving out without being able to be contacted after all the three years they had been through by living together in their shared apartment, he couldn’t.
Beomgyu doesn’t know what went wrong. Not even a single clue about why Taehyun would be there in front of their front door that night, full luggages ready by his side, apologizing with no reasoning and telling him that he needed some time for himself as he stared at Beomgyu with an expression he failed to read through. The older was about to find him to go to the convenience store that night, only to find the silver haired guy already standing still by the door as if he’d been waiting for him all night long—and maybe he had, and it was just yet another one of the biggest mysteries of that night.
“I’m sorry, hyung. I just… I need some time, for myself. Please understand.”
That was the last conversation they had—if it were even mutual enough to be called one—before Taehyun picked up his luggages and left their shared apartment in a flash. He mumbled a “take care, hyung” as he shot him the last glance a moment before he closed the door, but all Beomgyu saw was a reflection of pain in the younger’s teary eyes. It was Beomgyu whom he casted aside, but why did Taehyun look as if he was the one suffering instead?
Even the slightest recollection of that night would upset Beomgyu so much to the point he’d lose his appetite.
He thought it was the three years he spent with such a great friend that got him so hung up on this incident, but after the first whole week having been spent without him, he started to realize that maybe it was the said great friend that he had been so hung up on all along. Couple weeks later and he finally gives up on trying to move on from whatever uneasy feeling he has been experiencing.
Because, no, it isn’t getting any better on his side. In fact, each passing day drives him a little bit crazier, and tonight it becomes pretty much unbearable. It’s a little bit past midnight and the feeling of being alone that he’s supposed to already befriend by now gets him all frustrated and awake instead. He needs sleep, but he’s more desperate for some air to breathe.
Beomgyu puts on his hoodie and leaves his room to take a little walk outside, but the sight of their—his—living room prompts a random thought into his head, making himself frown. He knows he’s not supposed to feel this unnecessarily deep towards a roommate, but the thought of Taehyun curling up on a sofa with his new roommate, sticking close together as they laugh over nothing, just like he did every so often with Beomgyu, sends a really unpleasant pang to his chest. Beomgyu sighs, looking away from the sofa and proceeds to walk out the apartment. Has he always been this possessive before? Kang Taehyun is indeed the most special friend he has ever had, though he can’t really explain or understand why.
We used to be so much closer.
Under the same bluish moonlight and roughly at the same time of night around, only it won’t be today nor any day after, apparently; Taehyun would be craving for a quick midnight snack which, most of the times, led him to a midnight trip to the convenience store, and Beomgyu, who couldn’t handle being left alone at most of the nights, would whine and beg to be dragged along. Though, as much as a sleepyhead he would be at midnights, he was always more needy and couldn’t resort to having no company at those ungodly hours when there was actually one.
The convenience store itself was pretty much a 10 minutes short walk from their apartment building. At cold nights like this one, the rigid air would slap Beomgyu’s face fully awake from any sleep-deprived state as the two boys lightly raced up to the store on a random bet, messy laughter and unsteady breaths filling the air around them. Taehyun would often glare warningly at him when he, being the noisy neighborhood boy he had always been, got a little too loud with his occasional yelling and screaming as he competitively bolted down the street.
Beomgyu huffs a breath and shoves his hands into his hoodie pockets. He’s never on the best terms with cold, unlike Taehyun who would be perfectly fine walking around on cold spring nights in just a layer of his pajama t-shirt and shorts as if it were a nice and warm day on summer.
And unlike any other, tonight he has no one such as Taehyun to provide him a reason to run all the way to the store and fight the cold the way he likes. If sometimes, on the nights they were too tired to actually race, he could sneak his cold hands somewhere on Taehyun’s warmer ones, and cheekily grin as the younger either playfully slapped them away or slid them up to properly hold onto his arm instead with a soft smile on his lips, tonight he can’t.
He chuckles bitterly at the memory, realizing where his goddamn feet have taken him as they stop in front of a convenience store. This one hell of a convenience store was, well, the one he and Taehyun always went to, especially on their little midnight trips. Of course this isn’t the first time he has been to the store since Taehyun’s move, but tonight he’s just too drunk on his feelings that he can practically recall the memories lingering all over the place. And he does.
Taehyun’s favorite food wasn’t always consistent throughout the days, but there were quite obvious patterns to his preferences and Beomgyu can’t help but think of him even more as he walks past the drink that the silver head would typically have on the nights after exercises, the snack he would buy on the nights he missed dinner on, and the ones he would most likely get on their midnight trips.
Beomgyu can’t decide which will win in terms of bitterness; the hot americano he ends up buying or the endless memories of Kang Taehyun he has been haunted by for the last few weeks.
Taking a sip of his caffeine, the brown haired guy exits the convenience store and decides to stroll around along his way back to the apartment. He remembers that, at some nights, he would—for the fun of it—snatch away Taehyun’s plastic bag of snacks and beverages before storming off, leaving the poor younger guy no choice but to chase after him, face a balanced mixture of amusement and annoyance.
They would be exhausted by the time they arrived back home, but the crinkles around Taehyun’s eyes when his biggest smile and laughter were captured by the beautiful moonlight had always been more than worth having to be out of breath for Beomgyu. Of course, it would be because he didn’t want to see anything but happiness adorning the face of his most precious friend—right?
Beomgyu feels sorrow seeping in as his eyes trail along the sidewalks leading down to his once shared apartment, trying to ignore the vivid memories that have been profusely surfacing from a deep part of his mind, haunting him in every single step he takes, through every single object his somber glance sweeps by. It has never occurred to him before that a single alley will be able to torment him with this much of an overwhelming amount of memories, forcing his suppressed emotions to leak.
Seriously, what did go wrong?
He wants to go back to the apartment quickly to sleep or sing his absurd sorrow off, but he knows what a bad option it will be. If the sidewalks that he sometimes walked on alongside the younger already gets him lost on his thoughts this much, Beomgyu can’t imagine just how much more he’ll torture himself by reminiscing Taehyun within every inch and corner of the apartment room they used to live together in for three years.
Because, though it has already been a couple weeks since Taehyun moved to wherever the fuck he is and decided the older could neither contact nor find him even inside their campus, Beomgyu hasn’t been able to wash off the uneasy feeling about the absence of the yellow colored toothbrush next to his strawberry colored one in their bathroom. Nor can he not be reminded of their occasional trade of tomatoes and paprikas each time he sees any tomato in the food he ordered. And he had to bite the inside of his cheek the last time he went grocery shopping, which was last week, for almost buying extra amount of garlics just as he’d used to do for Taehyun, who’d frequently fried some garlics with oil for a snack.
Taehyun’s stuff weren’t that much from the start, as he was always one who liked to keep things conveniently neat and simple as possible, as opposed to Beomgyu who wouldn’t start tidying up the stuff he threw around across his room without first getting scolded at by the younger. To think of it, it has been over three weeks since Beomgyu last cleaned the whole apartment—simply because Taehyun isn’t there to remind him.
He knows he has no other choice, but going back to the apartment is a big mistake. Because everything is there. Everything is perfectly the same. Except for the absence of Kang Taehyun’s stuff and the latter himself. Everything else is perfectly where it was when Taehyun was also there and the notion tears him apart.
The apartment is silent, way too quiet for his liking. Taehyun was not necessarily loud or noisy, but all these three years he was always around to create any smallest sound and Beomgyu would take any opportunity to make the loudest noises anywhere within the area. The brunette was born to be that loud, yet when Taehyun voluntarily left, he might have also taken Beomgyu’s boisterous nature with him. Because, suddenly, he found no urge to be as lively anymore.
His heart clenches with a painful twist when he accidentally trains his eyes on his guitar, which is sprawled across the living room, long forgotten. He worked with the object just this evening for a music assignment from his major, but obviously wasn’t able to get any progress from the session due to the distraction his mind had played him with. Even now, he still unavoidably recalls the stable sound of Taehyun’s angelic voice that would sing along to the tune coming out of said guitar that Beomgyu strummed, a satisfied smile on his lips as he’d hum along in a lower note.
He storms off to his room, hoping the much more personal space will be off-limit to the merciless recollections of a certain silver haired boy with single dimple and clear brown eyes which sparkled upon certain topics. But no, it’s another—bigger—mistake.
Because he’s just about to shut his eyes as he lies on his bed, covering his frustrated face with a pillow after blasting up some loud music for him to somehow forget everything he’s feeling at the moment, when his mind comes across a vague image of Taehyun smiling down at him, yellowish dim lights from the night lamp being the only source of lighting to strike the sharp features of his handsome face as he sat at the far corner of Beomgyu’s bed. He pictures himself of that night lying down on his bed under the younger’s care, head a little too dizzy to think straight, and he was too drunk to remember a thing—until now.
“Sleep tight, Beomgyu hyung,” Taehyun’s soft-spoken voice resonated into his brain, barely registering as a whisper. The shorter guy was halfway standing, about to leave him for a good rest after many rounds of drinking, but somehow Beomgyu’s hand was quicker to grab ahold of some of his fingers.
Taehyun stared at him, and he noticed as his eyes fluttered open slowly to see those big doe eyes wordlessly questioning him. “Stay a bit,” he managed to form coherent words in between his slur which, fortunately, Taehyun quickly caught on. He sat back down and shifted his hand to intertwine Beomgyu’s which, after a couple seconds of contemplation from Taehyun’s side, didn’t move away from his. Taehyun had always been observant and considerate, to which Beomgyu always appreciated.
“Why did you drink so much anyway?” the younger inquired after a moment of silence without Beomgyu neither closing his eyes back to sleep nor striking up any conversation. Somehow, Beomgyu could tell Taehyun had noticed much earlier, actually, that all the brunette needed was just a moment of tranquility with him by his side. Yet, he couldn’t list any possible reason as to why Taehyun had grown restless on their little staring competition.
“Got a little carried away,” he struggled to properly pronounce each syllable amidst his drunken state, needy hand squeezing and tugging on Taehyun’s fidgety one which seemed to have frozen under his touch. Taehyun zoned out after humming to his response, looking down at whatever he must have deemed interesting amongst the older’s cream colored bedsheet. Beomgyu’s eyelids felt heavy, ready to collapse all the way down to his bottom lids, but he struggled to keep them halfway open—which was the most he could. He settled on a small smile, “What’s wrong, Taehyun-ah?”
“Uh, nothing,” the guy stammered a bit upon his call, and Beomgyu barely sensed the faintest twitch coming from Taehyun’s hand. He felt a wave of dizziness clouding his mind down to his vision, making him grimace and tighten his grip on the younger guy’s hand. Taehyun noticed and gently reciprocated the action, “You okay?”
He answered with a small whine, at which the younger scoffed in response, “And that’s why you should sleep right now. I’ll turn off the lights?” he offered, glancing at the small lamp atop the bedside table.
“Can’t you sleep here with me tonight?” Beomgyu blurted out with a small pout. It was pretty visible even to a halfway-to-sleep drunk like him that Taehyun nearly choked. “Aw, come on, we haven’t slept together for like years. And yes, turn them off, please,” he pulled Taehyun by the hand, patting the empty space of the bed, right beside him.
Taehyun rolled his eyes, yet his mouth let out a smile, content with amusement. He let go of Beomgyu’s hand and shifted over to the very space the older had just referred for him to sleep on. “It hasn’t even been a month since you last fell asleep on my bed, hyung,” he laid down beside Beomgyu, who grinned happily. Taehyun’s sweet smile didn’t falter a bit under the yellowish dim lights even after he slid under the blankets, serving Beomgyu’s eyes utmost beauty—well, he could never deny that Taehyun was, indeed, very very handsome—as the last sight they saw clearly before the younger lazily reached out his hand to turn off the night lamp.
Beomgyu was always even clingier than he would usually be (the fact spoke a lot, really) when he got quite too drunk, and that night was no exception as he reached for Taehyun’s hand again, holding it tight. The latter didn’t budge at first, but then his hand slowly shifted to requit the motion, gently intertwining the other’s. Silence then engulfed the room after Beomgyu turned his whole body over to face the younger.
Taehyun didn’t say anything although, through his half-lidded eyes, Beomgyu was aware of being under the watch of those big doe eyes amongst the total darkness. There was no telling what went inside the younger’s mind at the moment and Beomgyu was too devastated and drunk to actually try to comprehend the meaning behind his intense stare.
“Beomgyu hyung.”
It was obviously not the first time he called him, but the way his name trailed off Taehyun’s tongue somehow gave him a different feeling of which, again, Beomgyu wasn’t able to put his finger on. Same went with the look on his eyes, which reflected a series of emotions—Beomgyu identified confliction being one of them, despite the lack of lighting source—dancing through the glint across them. He held him under his cryptic expression and Beomgyu had to struggle to be, or at least, look, neither intimidated nor flustered.
He noticed the slightest way the younger’s hand fidgeted, as well as his hesitation. He had absolutely no idea why his usually confident roommate had been acting restlessly throughout the night, and his headache didn’t make it easier for him to find out either. So he settled on a reassuring smile and a comforting squeeze on his hand, “What’s wrong? It’s okay if you don’t wanna tell me, but if—”
“I like you.”
He watched Taehyun breathe out the abrupt confession as if it had been suffocating him all night long. The smallest remnants of hesitation he had shown vanished as he gently tightened his hold on Beomgyu’s hand. “I want to be able to look at you and hold your hand and hug you and sleep together with you without having to worry that you might notice my heart beating ridiculously faster than it should be. You’re an amazing friend as much as you’re an amazing person, but honestly, it hurts me being by your side all this time as just one of your many friends, and I don’t think I can keep hiding this feeling anymore. I love you, hyung, as so much more than a roommate or a friend.”
On the other hand, the last functioning gear that had been keeping Beomgyu’s brain on track seemed to have stopped upon the sincerity he effortlessly detected in Taehyun’s words. Obviously, the serious expression filled with tenderness and outburst of romantic affection the younger stroke him with didn’t help at all. Every word, every action became too much for his hazy mind to handle and he wasn’t able to completely take a grasp of the situation. Unsure of what to say to the talk he failed to process, he gave away a strained smile, struggling against his worsening headache and fast approaching drowsiness.
“Let’s be best friends forever, okay?”
The last thing he remembers of that night in the dark of his room is the way the younger’s eyes glistened even more as his face instantly contorted into a bitterly restrained expression Beomgyu wishes he never witnessed.
“As you wish, hyung.”
He heard the soothing voice come out nearly as a whisper as his eyes gave up on supporting his consciousness.
Beomgyu’s eyes snap open, wide as they can ever be upon the late realization of that night’s turn of events. It has been almost a month since the confession, and yet he has to remember it just now, which is, well, too late.
The memory suddenly makes everything fall into place; the painful look masked with a forced smile Taehyun shot him every time they exchanged glances and greetings, the way he spent most of his time outside their shared apartment and avoided any interaction with Beomgyu as much as possible, and the distant way he was acting around him for the whole week prior to his move.
Beomgyu’s stomach churns unpleasantly with guilt, and as if it’s not enough, another realization hits him. Taehyun likes him. No, he loves him. And maybe, just maybe, the fact may have opened up a path for Beomgyu to sort out his own feelings that linger around the existence of Kang Taehyun.
Suddenly, the longing he has been feeling towards every little thing about the younger guy arises from within. Taehyun’s messy bed hair and the way it looked adorable on his scrunched up morning face. His honey-like voice when he broke out into laughter or when he allowed Beomgyu’s blessed ears a song from his vocal cords. The soft, sweet smile he would throw his way as he let Beomgyu’s fingers find their way through his silver locks, and the way it sent euphoric butterflies down the older’s stomach.
He has had enough of the past few weeks. If, before, he didn’t know what he has been feeling throughout said torturous passage of time, he’s certainly sure now. He misses Taehyun. He misses the comforting presence of the younger guy around his living space. The laughter they used to share along the dark alley on midnights for a trip to the convenience store. The content, familiar looks they shared as they passed by each other at the campus. The reassuring pats on his back Taehyun often gave on the days he felt distressed and disappointed. The arguments they had over movies to watch as they curled up against each other on the sofa. Even the sight of his yellow colored toothbrush beside his strawberry colored one. He wants him back by his side, he wants all of the sweet memories relived and continued. Only, this time, perhaps, not because he’s a mere special friend of his anymore.
With a burst of emotions and the threat of being on the verge of tears, he springs up on his bed. His hand runs across his bedsheet to the bedside table, frantically searching for a rectangular metal object which has always felt familiar over his receptors. He hesitates as his thumb hovers over the green button on the middle bottom of his phone screen, a certain contact number being displayed a few inches above it. But one second is long enough for his desperation to take over any remaining logic and qualm which resided in his brain before he eventually presses the call button. Biting his bottom lip nervously, he waits with the phone pressed against his ear.
Please, please, pick it up.
Beomgyu pretty much expects that he’ll need one hell of a relentless effort, but to his surprise, he doesn’t have to pull many attempts on the button for his call to be picked up by the person on the other side.
“…Hello?”
He has thousands of words to say, but they stay right at the tip of his tongue and his brain can no longer process nor properly form the order of words and sentences for him to say out loud as the voice he longs to hear softly speaks from the other side of the call. There are so many things he wants to tell him, so many emotions to express, so many everything to deliver—yet, frustratingly, none of them dare to escape. He’s not sure what he’s supposed to say to the guy who left him with a broken heart, ready to let go and move on with a much more important future and life. So he stays there, frozen, internally cussing his brain to work faster, trying to do what he has to do—but then again, he is an impulsive guy with nothing close to a clue in his mind.
“Beomgyu hyung?”
So he grits his teeth and shuts his eyes as the moments they shared together for the past several years flash through his head, ending with Taehyun’s soft-spoken confession right in front of his face when he was too drunk, too dumb to remember. Silently wishing that it’s not too late, he lets a bitter smile escape,
“Hi, Taehyun-ah. I have something to talk about, let’s meet?”
Because he can finally see that, even when nothing has changed, even though everything stays exactly the way it's always been, if Taehyun isn’t there, then for him, nothing will ever be the same.