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It’s been raining for three straight days now, and Doyoung is starting to take it personally.
In thirteen hours, it will officially be Yuta’s birthday. Doyoung pulls the sleeves of his sweater almost absent-mindedly, making his hands disappear inside them as he stares up at the sky through his window. There’s not a single blue in sight.
He worries.
That seems to be the only thing he’s doing these days: he worries about Yuta, and worries about his own heart. Worries about the sky, and worries that the rain won’t stop in time for what he plans to do. Turning the dark Seoul sky into a lighter blue, the shade of a nice summer day, at midnight is already quite a task on its own, but with rain-heavy clouds literally standing in his way… Doyoung worries.
It’s okay, he tells himself, even though it’s probably not. It’s okay, because it has to be. He swore he’d give Yuta a clear blue sky for his birthday, and give it to him he would.
If only the rain would stop.
🌧🌧🌧
Much has already been said and written about falling in love with your best friend, and Doyoung frankly thinks he has nothing new to add to the literature.
He wouldn’t be able to tell you how it happened, or how it started. But sometimes, he thinks everything can be traced back to that very first day — when he stepped out of the campus gate and the rain suddenly cleared and he looked up to the sky and saw blue, the prettiest blue, and looked back down again and saw red, the prettiest red. Doyoung tries to avoid the metaphor as much as he could because Taeil absolutely hates (and somehow always knows) whenever anyone talks about his kind, but that day, seeing Yuta in front of him with his bright red hair the color of cherries and childhood heart drawings, Doyoung can’t help but think that it’s the heavens parting and sending him an angel.
Yuta brought with him the blue sky into Doyoung’s life, and Doyoung has been trying to give it back to him since.
Other times, when he’s feeling particularly poetic even more than usual, he imagines that actually, maybe, possibly, it all started in another life. In the beginning of the universe, when Doyoung was a lonely planet and Yuta was a falling star no one was around to wish upon yet. In the beginning of the world when Doyoung was the endless sky and Yuta was the bottomless sea, and the horizon was more than a trick for the wistful eye. In the beginning of a summer when Doyoung was a tired traveller closing his eyes in front of a beach sunset and whispering words that get carried away by the wind as soon as they leave his lips, waiting for the ocean to talk back. In the beginning of a winter when Yuta was a stubborn soul with torn up gloves on a cold rooftop, trying to find answers from the night sky.
Which is all just to say — Doyoung knows he’s done this before. It’s his first time falling in love in this life, but it’s not his first time loving Yuta.
How he has come to the realization, though, is a different story.
It had been building up for months, starting from the morning he woke up to insistent knocking on his apartment door that sounded a lot like a melody from a music box. Yuta was on the other side of it, his hair still the unwavering bright shade of red that he gets from Taeyong’s roses. He smiled at Doyoung, and the melody has never stopped playing since.
Doyoung brought it up to Taeyong, one day. “Yuta’s becoming a better witch, no?” he’d said, and Taeyong nodded, but still he asked, “What do you mean?”
He shrugged, staring at Yuta who was walking ahead of them in the garden. There were yellow tulips along the path, and every single one was bending to follow him. “Everything’s brighter when he’s around,” he had explained. If he’d heard the words from his own lips, he would have known right then, but of course Taeyong still had to spell it out for him. “The world is always a nice pastel yellow when I’m with him. And the wind likes to caress his hair and the sun likes to personally warm his cheeks. He’s really learning how to control his elements,” Doyoung continued, then watched as Yuta stopped walking, looking back at them to make sure they were following. Then he scrunched his nose, like he always did whenever he would let out his roguish smile. It always reminded Doyoung of a mischievous house cat.
Doyoung returned it with his own reserved smile and turned to Taeyong. “I think the world would stop for him, if he asked.”
Taeyong stared at him for a moment, lips pulling up on one corner in a teasing smile. “Silly,” Taeyong had said then, shaking his head as he laughed at him. “You’re just in love.”
🌧🌧🌧
Doyoung hears Yuta’s familiar heartbeat, and then his voice, softly calling out Dons? before he actually sees him. He’s standing by the door to Doyoung’s bedroom, wet hair sticking to his face and slowly dripping to his already soaked shirt. He’s wearing a bright smile and a bright yellow shirt and Doyoung thinks — my personal sun.
“Why do you look so happy?” he fake-grunts at his best friend. No one, Doyoung decides, is allowed to be happy on a rainy day. Least of all this one.
“Hmm,” Yuta just shrugs, making his way into the room and leaving a wet trail on the floor. He walks straight to Doyoung’s closet, throwing it open and grabbing for the nearest shirt, which is an oversized white tee among a dozen other oversized white tees.
Doyoung sees him give a side-eye to the book on his lap — which he has completely forgotten was there in the first place — before he takes off his shirt and tries to dry his hair with it. The book was flipped open to chapter eighteen three minutes ago, before the rain started pouring hard and it got so loud that Doyoung couldn’t think, before he got distracted by a single raindrop slowly making its way down the glass window right by the reading nook he has tucked himself in for the morning. Now the pages have fluttered back to the middle of chapter seventeen, but Yuta pouts at it and the book rightfully flips itself back to eighteen.
“Stop doing that,” Doyoung chides, but with no real heat in his voice. “The spine gets bent.”
Yuta rolls his eyes and flicks his fingers, the natural creases in the spine of Doyoung’s book straightening out along with it. “Happy?” he teases.
In love, Doyoung thinks. “Show-off.”
Yuta laughs, and the ever-present melody he brings with him starts up again. “Why do you look so sad?” he asks once he’s changed himself into Doyoung’s shirt. Doyoung doesn’t bother asking why he’s out in the rain. For all he knows, the raindrops just decided to follow Yuta, too.
“It’s raining,” he answers simply, turning back to stare at his window. The single raindrop that he was staring at earlier still hangs suspended from his glare. Doyoung sighs and lets it go.
“And?” Yuta asks.
“And I don’t want it to. I hope it stops before your birthday.”
“Oh,” Yuta breathes out, obvious disappointment dripping from that one syllable that Doyoung has to turn and look at him again. “You do?”
“Yeah…?” Doyoung says, sounding unsure now. Yuta seems to be taking the matter of the rain as personally as he is. “It’s… gloomy,” he explains, because he feels like he has to.
“Well, I hope it doesn’t stop,” Yuta whispers so softly that Doyoung almost doesn’t hear it. And then the smile is just as quickly back on his face again. “I guess we’ll see!” he announces cryptically and leaves Doyoung in his room, wondering.
🌧🌧🌧
In the grand scheme of things, a blue sky is not the most out-of-this-world gift Doyoung has ever attempted. There is, after all, that one time he named a star after Jeno (and no, not through that website where you can get a framed certificate that a star is in your name — this one involved a lot more exchanged favors and celestial bargaining and cost Doyoung one happy memory, but it was well worth it).
But something about the whole thing seems… otherworldly stupid, now that he thinks about it. He can no longer see the rain here in the kitchen, but he can still clearly hear the pitter-patter of raindrops on the roof. Yuta is sitting across from him, happily munching on his late breakfast cereal. He looks so strangely happy, way brighter than usual, that Doyoung can’t even sulk at what this rain that really looks like it doesn’t have any plan on letting up soon means for his birthday gift.
“Wharr?” Yuta says around a mouthful of soggy cinnamon toast not-so-crunch when he notices Doyoung staring.
“Nothing,” Doyoung replies automatically, then — “What do you want for your birthday?”
A teasing smile instantly takes over Yuta’s face. “It’s a little too late to ask, don’t you think? Haven’t you gotten me a gift yet?”
Doyoung frowns. “Was I supposed to?”
Yuta flicks his spoon at him, sending milk droplets to his face. Doyoung disgustingly wipes it away with the back of his hand and sends a glare back. “Now I really won’t get you one.”
Yuta just hmms under his breath. “As if you can resist me.”
Doyoung says nothing, because they both know it’s true. He’s trying to give him a goddamn blue sky, after all. He watches Yuta go back to his cereal again, picking up his phone once in a while to mindlessly scroll through his social media, and then he allows himself to stare once more.
Now, the blue sky, Doyoung thinks to himself. And then the love he deserves.
🌧🌧🌧
It’s close to midnight now, and rain is still falling all over Seoul.
Doyoung had originally wanted to invite Yuta to celebrate together on the roof, but that’s out of the options now. The rain has gradually faded from the raging downpour that it was earlier, turning softer throughout the night until it’s now more akin to a whisper, almost lulling them to sleep as they sit by the living room window, looking out at nothing in particular in the street beyond.
Doyoung has a knuckle grip on his phone, turning it on every few seconds whenever it locks to keep track of the time. He’s been so excited for Yuta’s birthday ever since he thought of this gift — has been so excited for it, period, feeling lucky that he gets to celebrate it with him, that he gets to sit next to his side and count down to his special day together.
But now—
Now he’s worried. He told himself he was going to tell Yuta how he feels when his phone clock tells him it’s 00:00, but the rain not letting up throughout the day is starting to feel like a bad omen.
“Do you really want to make the rain stop?” Yuta asks from beside him. There’s a faint melancholy undertone to his voice that tugs at Doyoung’s heartstrings and makes him loosen his hold on his phone.
“What?”
“You’ve been looking so sad the whole day,” Yuta says.
Doyoung instantly melts at the words, scooting closer to Yuta’s side and wrapping his arms around him. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to look so down on your birthday Yu, I just…” he trails off, worrying his bottom lip. Then he thinks better of it, shaking his head instead. “It’s really nothing, I’ve accepted the rain now.” He smiles, and finds that he means it.
He can give him the blue sky any other time. He can wait.
Yuta leans into his embrace, snuggling deeper. “Can you wait after midnight?”
“Huh?”
“The rain. I’ll make it stop. But after midnight.”
Doyoung leans away slightly to stare at Yuta’s face, a confused knit in his brows. His phone lights up from a random notification, letting him know that it’s 11:59 now. “What do you mean?”
Yuta sits up straight and faces him, an uncharacteristically shy smile on his face.
“Three days ago, I promised myself something.” He looks out the window and stares up at the sky, and the rain starts pouring harder. “If I’m strong enough to make it rain for three straight days until my birthday, then I’m strong enough to finally tell you how I feel.”
Doyoung looks up at the dark night sky. There’s not a single star in sight, and the moon is largely obscured by rain clouds. But in a way, it’s blue.
His phone suddenly starts ringing, his alarm for midnight going off. Doyoung just stares at it for a moment, a little dazed, before Yuta gently pries it away from his hands and turns it off himself. Then he takes Doyoung’s hand and laces their fingers together and Doyoung just knows — he’s done this before.
In another life, the falling star has grazed the planet on its descent, and the ocean has kissed the blue sky. In this life, they hold hands all the time but it took Doyoung a while to realize just how perfect of a fit they are.
“I love you, Kim Doyoung.”
Doyoung slaps Yuta’s arm, because it’s the only thing he can manage at the moment as a tear escapes his eye — as the rain finally dries up, and a clear blue sky appears at midnight.
🌧🌧🌧
“Heh, I made it rain.”
Yuta is grinning smugly at him in the morning, his red hair fanning the cream-colored pillow. The color of a heart that has found his home. Faintly, Doyoung realizes it doesn’t make sense. But then again, it doesn’t have to.
“For three straight days,” Yuta continues. “Does that mean I’m the better witch between the two of us?” he teases.
“I still gave you the blue sky, didn’t I?”
“After I stopped the rain.”
“Hmm.” Doyoung boops his nose. “Maybe your will is just stronger, which means you’re more whipped than I am.”
Yuta’s grin grows wider at that, not retaliating for once. “I won’t deny that.”
Doyoung grins back and reaches out to tuck his hair behind his ears and lets his hand linger there. Behind Yuta is his open window, daylight and a clear blue sky. If it’s up to him, he’ll never let the sky be any other shade again.
Well — unless Yuta makes it rain.
Now, the blue sky, he thinks to himself as he stares into Yuta’s eyes. And then the love he deserves.