Work Text:
“Hyung…” Beomgyu mumbled, and with his hair all messed up and his lips kiss-swollen, he looked like he’d stepped right out of Yeonjun’s dreams. In fact, he looked even better, somehow. “You…”
Yeonjun tightened his grip on Beomgyu’s hips, keeping him close, focusing on the unsteady rise and fall of his chest against Yeonjun’s. Beomgyu was trembling, held upright only by Yeonjun’s hold on him.
Yeonjun didn’t want to let go. He couldn’t. After all they’d sacrificed to get here, after everything he’d done to even have the chance to hold Beomgyu like this—
Their eyes met from under the curtain of Beomgyu’s fringe, his pretty lashes fluttering, crystallised tears ready to fall.
“What are we doing, hyung?” Beomgyu asked, quietly.
Yeonjun took a deep breath. He smelled the cologne Beomgyu always carried, the same rosey scent he’d worn since Yeonjun had met him. “I don’t know,” he answered, honest to a fault. He really didn’t.
All he knew was he wanted to hold Beomgyu, he wanted to kiss him and touch him and love him desperately. So much so that it consumed his entire being.
“We can either walk away and forget this ever happened, or… or we can face it,” Beomgyu said. For once, he didn’t sound judgmental. He wasn’t mocking Yeonjun. He was equally as vulnerable, bearing his soft insides for Yeonjun to either take care of or throw aside. Yeonjun’s chest was filled with butterflies. “It’s up to you, hyung.”
Yeonjun surveyed Beomgyu’s beautiful face, the slight, unconscious pout he gave as he waited for an answer, his lips still kiss, swollen; and he knew there was only one answer he could give. There was no other option for them. For him. “I’m not running away,” he said.
Beomgyu shuddered. “I like you so much that it’s driving me insane,” he admitted in a whisper. “I need you to tell me if you like me back before I lose my—”
“—my phone, hey, give it back, hyung!” Beomgyu shouted, pawing at Yeonjun’s side for his phone. Yeonjun held Beomgyu’s phone tight to his chest, crowding away from him. “Hey!”
“I was invested in that, you know,” Huening Kai whined.
Yeonjun rolled his eyes. There were three tabs open on Beomgyu’s phone, all of the exact same page. The title was written in English cursive at the top of one of them: say you like me.
How dramatic. It sounded like the title of a drama. Or worse, the title of a song from a drama. He closed out of all three tabs and then threw Beomgyu’s phone back at him. He missed and it just barely landed on the couch instead of the hardwood floor.
Beomgyu cried out, diving for it. “You almost broke it!”
“You have a rubber case,” Yeonjun said, flippantly. “It would’ve been fine.”
“It’s the principle of it,” Beomgyu sniffled. He clutched his phone and swiped it open, gasping dramatically when he saw the damage Yeonjun had done to his Safari tabs. “Why did you close it? Ugh, now I have to scroll all the way back down!”
“Or you can just not,” Yeonjun said, unamused. He wasn’t sure how much longer he could sit here and listen to Beomgyu and Huening Kai discuss fanfiction before he snapped for real. “Why are you even reading that stuff? And do you need to read it out loud?”
“It’s the number one trending story on postype, hyung,” Huening Kai said like it was obvious. Yeonjun shot him a blank look. “Do you even realise how big of a deal that is?”
“No,” Yeonjun said shortly. “And I don’t care.”
“Choi Yeonjun is stifling the creativity of our fans.” Beomgyu tsked and shook his head. Huening Kai nodded along with him in agreement. “Let it be known that Yeonjun hyung hates our fans being happy.”
“Oh my god,” Yeonjun muttered, covering his forehead with his palm. His skin was warm, so he could only imagine how red his face was. “I just—I just don’t want to hear it. It’s embarrassing. How are you not embarrassed?”
Beomgyu scoffed. “Why would I be embarrassed? Everyone knows it’s not real, hyung.”
“Mmhm.” Huening Kai nodded sagely.
“It’s a story about us aggressively making out,” Yeonjun muttered. He ran a hand through his hair. It felt sweatier than usual. “People don’t normally casually read stories about them making out with their friends.”
“Speak for yourself,” Huening Kai said. Yeonjun snorted. That said a lot more about Beomgyu and Huening Kai than it said about Yeonjun.
“It’s not about us ‘aggressively making out.’” Beomgyu made air quotes with his hands. “It’s an elaborate saga about the ups and downs of our relationship as academic rivals which ends with us forming a deep and mutual bond of respect and love.”
“And we aggressively make out at the end,” Yeonjun deadpanned.
“That’s not the point!” Beomgyu groaned. “Aren’t you supposed to be a romantic? It’s about the journey.”
“But you skipped straight to the end?” Yeonjun pointed out.
“Well, that was Huening’s idea, not mine. I wanted to enjoy the story, he wanted to skip to the so-called good stuff—”
“That’s not what I said! Hyung, you’re making me sound like a pervert!” Huening Kai gasped.
“Are you denying that you requested I scroll down to the end of the story because you, and I quote, wanted to know if it was worth reading because it’s boring if they don’t make out at the end—”
“I didn’t say it like that!”
Yeonjun tuned them out as they squabbled, groaning out loud. He could feel a headache coming on.
Beomgyu and Huening Kai did weird things all the time. Honestly, reading fanfiction about them wasn’t even close to being the weirdest thing Yeonjun had walked in on them doing. (That honour went to them and Taehyun playing an incredibly, uh, uncomfortable game of Twister.)
What was weird was that it involved Yeonjun. Beomgyu and Huening Kai reading fanfiction about Beomgyu and Huening Kai would be relatively normal in this context. But Beomgyu and Yeonjun? Him? Why him?
He eyed them suspiciously from across the room, settling into his spot on the other couch. Huening Kai had opted to tickle Beomgyu to get him to shut up, and so the room was filled with their laughter, Beomgyu’s low, raspy chokes of “oh my god, stop!” and Huening Kai giggling at him hysterically.
At least they’d stopped reading that story out loud. As long as they didn’t bring it up again, it wasn’t a big deal, he supposed. They’d move on to some other new thing to make fun of tomorrow and Yeonjun would return to a life of peace and blissful ignorance regarding their fandom’s fixations.
Except after that conversation, it felt like he couldn’t browse anything related to himself without that stupid story popping up. Beomgyu and Huening Kai hadn’t been kidding when they said it was extremely popular. Yeonjun didn’t—and tried actively not to—keep up with that part of the fandom, but he didn’t exactly have a choice when their fans were making references to it left and right.
Even the English side of the fandom was talking about it. A Korean story. How? Was some fictional hypothetical universe about him and Beomgyu really that interesting? Yeah, obviously, they looked good together, in the same way any objectively hot people did. But why not just go read a normal novel off the shelves?
Him and Beomgyu, as a couple... it wasn’t like it was an unpleasant concept, it just made him feel strange, for lack of a better word. He watched Beomgyu for the next few days, mused over the sound of his laughter and the observed the way he always went beet red whenever Yeonjun teased him.
He could sort of understand how people thought they were cute together. They were cute together. But that was mostly because Beomgyu was cute, not because of their relationship itself.
He managed to go a week ignoring the tug of curiosity within him before he caved and holed himself up in his room to investigate.
The story wasn’t number one on the site anymore, so it took some digging for Yeonjun to find it, but not as much as he’d hoped. In less than five minutes, he was staring down the same web page he’d closed on Beomgyu’s phone a few days earlier.
It had as many views as some of their more obscure variety shows. Which was to say that it had a lot. Did all the people who clicked this page really read it? Or did they click simply out of curiosity, like Yeonjun had?
He was tempted to skip to the end—and now he understood why Huening Kai had wanted to, because he was mostly curious about how the story ended more than anything—but withheld himself only because he could hear Beomgyu’s low voice nagging in his head and making fun of him for not being able to handle reading it in full.
It was just a story. It couldn’t hurt him. He curled into his bed on his side and buckled up to read.
Yeonjun had seen quite a few movies and TV shows in his lifetime, not to mention all the books he’d consumed as a kid, and yet the emotional rollercoaster this story sent him on held its own compared to many of those well-established franchises. Much to his chagrin, halfway through the story, he could acknowledge it: it was pretty fucking good.
It would’ve been better had it not used their names, but even so, it was scary how accurate some of the dialogue and reactions were to their personalities. Yeonjun paused every so often during the most intense parts and tried to imagine what he’d do in the same situation. Aside from a handful of times, the scene ended up going in the same direction he’d imagined.
He didn’t know whether to be freaked out or not by how well their fans could read them.
Before he knew it, it was six in the morning and he’d consumed all seventy-thousand words of say you like me (which, Yeonjun noted, was always carefully written in lowercase letters). And as much as he hated to admit it, he was glad he hadn’t skipped to the end, because the journey had turned out to be the highlight. The ending was sweeter because of the hardship.
But he would rather die than ever admit that to Beomgyu. The last thing he needed was the other boy to tease him over how invested he’d gotten in their tumultuous fictional relationship.
There was only half an hour until he had to ‘wake up’, so there was absolutely no way he was getting any sleep that night. Or morning now, rather. He opted to click on the author’s profile instead. Were all their stories about him and Beomgyu? Were they all so intense?
The answer was yes and yes, though the type of intenseness most of their stories carried was different from the ones Yeonjun had just read.
summer’s flame.
a fleeting touch.
collared and owned.
It didn’t take a genius to be able to tell what kind of stories these ones were.
Despite his better judgment, he clicked on one, and choked at the warning written at the top of the screen: This story has sexual content in it and should not be read by minors.
Did Beomgyu read these types of stories as well? He wasn’t sure he wanted to know.
He ended up only reading three lines before he was too freaked out to continue. Falling in love was one thing, making out was another, but having sex? It didn’t matter if it was clearly fiction, that’s where Yeonjun had to draw the line on reading about himself and one of his closest friends.
“Hyung, get up!” He heard Soobin yell.
Burying his face in his pillow, he reflected on his poor life decisions. Had he really sacrificed an entire night of sleep to read fanfiction?
Yes. Yes he had.
“Hyung!” Soobin knocked on his door. “Are you awake?”
“Oh my god,” Yeonjun muttered. “Yes, I’m awake, geez. You don’t need to yell twice,” he said, louder.
“Sorry,” Soobin said, sounding much more meek. “I just wanted to make sure. I had to literally drag Beomgyu out of bed and I think it was a little traumatising. Okay, come out by the end of the hour so we can have breakfast together!”
After he heard Soobin walk away, Yeonjun fished out his phone again and archived all of the tabs he had open. He’d deal with them later.
(In hindsight, he really should’ve just closed them, but some of the ones he’d seen hadn’t been too scary. Putting aside the fact they were about himself, the plots were interesting enough to warrant checking out.
Or at least that’s how he justified spending the rest of his free time that day consuming fanfiction.)
One thing which startled Yeonjun the most after burning through that person’s stories about him and Beomgyu—other than the blatantly salacious nature of them (despite Yeonjun having only read the safe for work ones) and the fact they had literally thousands of views each—was how astute their fans were at picking up the littlest interactions between them.
Being scrutinised was a part of being an idol, and having his every move affect the perception of their relationships wasn’t anything new. But honestly, Yeonjun hadn’t realised quite how deep people’s obsessions ran. Images and theories behind things Yeonjun would have never consciously thought about got hundreds of retweets from burner accounts, and dozens of stories were written off single seconds of interaction.
For example, the post he was currently squinting at was something which he’d barely registered when it had happened, but was instantly caught by their fans and apparently deserved over a thousand retweets.
yeonbam archive @ybakve · 3h
(kbs gayo behind the scenes)
🦊: your hair is caught in your collar
🐻: oh, thank you 😊
[twitter_video.mp4]
9 replies · 1073 retweets · 2771 likes
Yeonjun only had to scroll one page down on the Yeonbam search to find a very not safe for work story about it. All over him adjusting Beomgyu’s clothes for him. Something which he did basically every day in some capacity.
People were insane, he thought. Then he felt bad for thinking that, because a) those were their fans, and b) Yeonjun was now apparently a consumer of this content and therefore was included in the category of insane people.
Though he wasn’t reading them for fun. He was literally one of the stars of the show, the inspiration for the very existence of any of these stories. He had a right to know how his likeness was being used.
The fact he enjoyed some of them was irrelevant. It was only natural some of them would be interesting to read. It wasn’t like they were all poorly written. Yeonjun had always been proud of how innovative their fans were, and they weren’t an exception in this area.
He followed the Yeonbam archive on his burner account. It might be helpful to keep up more with what type of interactions their fans were most interested in, he justified it to himself with. (It was a lame excuse, but no one had to know but him, so it didn’t matter.)
The following day, they had a filming for their online show, and by pure chance, he and Beomgyu were paired together for the game against Taehyun and Huening Kai. The game, much to Yeonjun’s dismay, involved a lot of touching.
“Hyung, you need to hold on tighter or we’re going to fall,” Beomgyu said. He grabbed Yeonjun’s wrists and brought his hands to his waist. A bead of sweat rolled down Yeonjun’s temple. Beomgyu’s waist was tiny. Yeonjun never got to see it since Beomgyu tended to wear oversized clothing—which he now knew was for the best, because if he was forced to lay his eyes on this every day, he likely wouldn’t survive. “What’s wrong with you?” Beomgyu asked, hushed so that the microphones wouldn’t pick it up.
“Nothing, just,” Yeonjun scrambled for an excuse. They were tied together by the ankle and sent off to do a series of obstacles together; the staff were waiting for their go ahead so they could continue. “Don’t you find this weird?”
“What?” Beomgyu tilted his head. “This?” He waved his hand between them. “Not really. We’ve done way worse.”
Yeonjun snorted. “I don’t know why I even asked.” Beomgyu wasn’t exactly one for physical affection, but he also had no shame, so Yeonjun guessed it evened out.
Beomgyu pursed his lips, leaning in. Yeonjun made a noise of horror and startled back before he remembered they were tied together; instead he ended up wavering precariously, catching himself by gripping Beomgyu’s waist tighter (so in the end, Beomgyu had gotten what he wanted). “You’re blushing, hyung.”
Fuck. He was blushing. And Beomgyu pointing it out only made it worsen.
“This is all your fault,” Yeonjun snapped. He turned his head away, but considering they were almost the same height, it didn’t do much to shield his face from view.
“My fault?” Beomgyu echoed. He was still unreasonably close to Yeonjun’s face. “I’m just too cute for you to handle, huh?”
“That’s exactly it,” Yeonjun said sarcastically, making it clear that that was not it. Even though it actually was.
“Hehe.” Beomgyu finally stood up straight again. “Keep making that face when the cameras start again. It’s just as cute as I am. Maybe you’ll get real screen time for once.”
“Says the person who only ever gets screen time when he’s making a fool of himself,” Yeonjun retorted.
“We’re making fun of you right now, not me.” Beomgyu puffed out his cheeks. Yeonjun’s hands itched to pinch them.
“... We can make fun of Soobin instead?” Yeonjun suggested.
Beomgyu tapped his chin, contemplating this, before grinning, “Deal.”
1798 Comments on “say you like me” by Blue Mocha
it boy | 1 hour ago
i can’t stop thinking about this story... it’s so realistic and heartwarming. i started reading more fanfiction because of this, after a friend recommended it to me. thank you for writing it.
Reply | ♡ 1
“Hyung, are you reading?” Beomgyu gasped, scandalised, as he flopped onto the couch beside Yeonjun. He tried to crowd into Yeonjun’s side to sneak a glance at his phone screen. Yeonjun carefully angled his hand over his phone to block Beomgyu’s view.
“I read sometimes,” Yeonjun huffed defensively. He was mildly offended that Beomgyu sounded so shocked in the first place.
“Of course you do,” Beomgyu drawled. He settled down with his head on Yeonjun’s shoulder, knees tucked to his chest. “Well, whatever you’re doing, you aren’t allowed to move. I’m using you as a pillow.”
He didn’t give Yeonjun a chance to say ‘no’, and by the time he’d made himself comfortable, Yeonjun’s brain was too busy rebooting to be able to say anything.
Beomgyu dozed off unsurprisingly quickly. They’d had a long week, and the others had all gone to bed. He only wasn’t entirely sure why Beomgyu wanted to cuddle with him instead of simply going to his own room.
Not that Yeonjun was complaining. The slow and steady rise and fall of Beomgyu’s chest as he slept was nice and grounding. Yeonjun rested his own head on Beomgyu’s and breathed deeply.
Beomgyu smelled clean, like the aloe shampoo he used. Unwittingly, Yeonjun’s brain conjured up the memory of all those stories which described the same thing—most of them painted Beomgyu as smelling flowery and intense, but Beomgyu wasn’t like that at all in real life.
No matter how scarily accurate those stories about them got, there were some things their fans would never know. Like this.
Yeonjun nibbled on his lower lip, looking at Beomgyu out of the corner of his eye. He wasn’t stupid. He knew the way his heart fluttered every time he so much as looked at Beomgyu nowadays wasn’t normal.
He almost felt bad for finding him so cute, curled up beside Yeonjun, completely unaware of Yeonjun’s inner turmoil and feelings for him. Was he taking advantage of Beomgyu right now?
Brushing his fingers through Beomgyu’s messy hair, he flushed when Beomgyu shifted and mumbled sleepily, “Hyung. Feels nice.”
He pet Beomgyu absently, scrolling through another story on his phone, until Beomgyu began to wake up and Yeonjun hastily switched tabs. Thankfully, Beomgyu was too groggy to notice, and instead shot Yeonjun a soft smile.
Ah, fuck. Yeonjun was such a goner.
“I knew it!” He clapped his hands on Yeonjun’s shoulders, trying to scare him. Yeonjun was proud of himself for only flinching a little.
“Knew what?” Yeonjun asked, pretending to be annoyed at being interrupted. Beomgyu’s hair was all fluffed up though, and his eyes were twinkling with amusement. There was no way Yeonjun could actually be annoyed with him when the urge to kiss him was so overwhelming.
Well, at least until he heard Beomgyu’s next words. “You were reading the other stories from that author, weren’t you?”
“What?” he choked. “What the hell, Beomgyu?”
“No denial!” Beomgyu preened, stepping in front of him, hands in his hips. “You can’t hide anything from me, hyung. I see all.”
Yeonjun had been so sure he’d been careful enough around Beomgyu for the other boy not to know. His brows furrowed. “Stop making shit up.”
Beomgyu snickered, shoulders shaking as he laughed. “If you’re going to go on a bookmarking spree, you need to make sure you have the email on your profile set to private.” He shook his phone in front of Yeonjun’s face. It took a moment for Yeonjun’s vision to adjust and—ah. Fuck.
He hadn’t even thought about his email being public because nobody knew his email in the first place. Nobody except his friends.
He sighed. Beomgyu puffed out his chest, smugness radiating off of him in waves.
“Personally, I liked the one where we had animal ears and you got super flustered and then we—mmmmfff.”
Yeonjun slapped a hand over Beomgyu’s mouth, scowling. “Okay, yeah, very funny, that’s enough. I didn’t even read that one, I just bookmark all of them to be supportive.”
“Mmmmmff!”
He didn’t know how to deal with the information that Beomgyu had, in fact, read it.
yeonbam archive @ybakve · 7h
(to do x txt episode 63)
🐻: hyung has a new hobby lately
🦊: 😕😕😕??
🐻: he’s too shy to talk about it, but i’ll reveal it one day!
🦊: 🙄🙄🙄
[twitter_video.mp4]
21 replies · 1418 retweets · 3912 likes
Yeonjun wasn’t sure what part of their previous conversations implied he wanted to talk more about the fanfiction about them, but every time he glanced at his phone, he had a new message from Beomgyu.
TXT Beomgyu 17:32
Hyuuuuuung
TXT Beomgyu 17:32
Read this one it’s good unafantasia.postype.com/post/10138217
Me 17:58
no thank you
TXT Beomgyu 17:59
I’m serious, you’ll like it
TXT Beomgyu 17:59
We kiss in the snow~ it’s very romantic~
Me 18:00
i’ll read it if you promise to stop texting me about it
TXT Beomgyu 18:02
Okay 😊
Yeonjun read it. It was good, like Beomgyu had said it would be. And then he spent the rest of the night lying in bed, counting the dots on his ceiling, imagining kissing Beomgyu in the snow for real.
“Have you ever thought about, uh, how some people think we’re together? You know, all those people who think we’re dating,” Yeonjun asked one day, sitting in Soobin’s room watching him play video games. He didn’t understand any of it. He was just there for moral support and because everyone else had left the dorm for the weekend.
“Hm?” Soobin intoned, mashing buttons on his controller. “Why do you ask?”
Yeonjun shrugged, then felt dumb because he knew Soobin couldn’t see. “Beomgyu and Kai brought it up a few weeks ago. I guess I hadn’t thought about how common it was until then.”
“I mean, sometimes, yeah. It’s hard to avoid completely. But I don’t think it’s healthy to dwell on it.”
“Mm.” Yeonjun had failed step one, then.
“I don’t like the idea that it could affect our friendships with each other. I don’t want any of us to become awkward because of… you know.” Soobin gestured vaguely with his free hand.
“Uh-huh.”
“And besides, as long as you don’t acknowledge it, it doesn’t really—why are you making that face?” Yeonjun hadn’t noticed Soobin looking at him from over his shoulder, frowning back at him. Yeonjun quickly readjusted his expression, but it was too late. “Okay, fess up. What happened?”
“Nothing,” Yeonjun said feebly. Soobin rolled his eyes and threw aside his controller. It was never a good thing when Soobin decided to abandon his game. That meant he was serious.
“Did they make you uncomfortable?” Soobin asked. “If they did, you should—”
“No, no,” Yeonjun cut him off. He didn’t want them to get in trouble because of him. “It’s not them, it’s… ugh. There’s this… story they were reading, and I haven’t been able to stop thinking about it. It’s dumb.”
“It’s not dumb if it’s bothering you, hyung,” Soobin said. He shifted so he was sitting in front of Yeonjun. “I’m assuming it was a story about you and Beomgyu…?”
Yeonjun tried not to pout. “Why would you assume that?”
“... But I’m right, right?”
Coughing, Yeonjun nodded.
Soobin sighed. “I figured something was up between you guys, but I didn’t want to say anything until I was sure.”
“What? Nothing is up between us.”
“Hm.” Soobin raised his brows at him and didn’t say anything else. Yeonjun rested his chin on his fist, huffing.
“I’m serious.”
Soobin leaned against the wall by the bed, tilting his head up and looking at the ceiling. After thinking for a while, he said carefully, “I think the reason it bothers you is because it makes you think of things you don’t want to think about.”
“That’s—” true, “—obviously I don’t want to think about us like that,” he mumbled.
“Oh, please.” Soobin narrowed his eyes at him. “That’s not what I meant.”
“I have no idea what you mean, then.” Yeonjun faked innocence.
“Whatever you say, but… just know you’re really obvious, hyung. So if he didn’t want you to think about it… well, I doubt he would’ve brought up that story in the first place.”
Yeonjun sighed, rolling over onto Soobin’s bed and hiding his face in his pillow.
“... By the way,” Soobin added, “Can I know the name of the story? I’m curious now.”
“No!”
“It’s snowing!” Beomgyu said excitedly. He was already bounding towards the door, tugging on his jacket. “It’s snowing!”
“We heard you the first time,” Taehyun said. He, and everyone else, stayed firmly planted on their seats in the living room. “Are you going outside?”
“Duh,” Beomgyu said, exasperated. He fished through their hall closet to find a thick hat to cover his ears with. “Don’t you guys want to see the first snow?”
“It’s like eleven at night,” Huening Kai complained. “I’m tired. Can we pretend tomorrow is the first snow instead?”
Beomgyu crossed his arms. “No.”
“Then no, I’m not going out.” Huening Kai laid his head in his arms, yawning. “Sorry, hyung.”
Beomgyu looked towards Soobin, who shook his head sleepily, and then Taehyun, who was already focused on his phone again. Naturally, this led him to staring down Yeonjun instead.
“Yeonjun hyung…” Beomgyu clasped his hands together. “Let’s go for a walk. Please. Please?”
“Just go by yourself,” Yeonjun said feebly, but he pushed himself off his chair to grab his jacket, because there was no way he was going to be able to resist Beomgyu’s big eyes begging him to come along.
“I need someone to take pictures of me in the snow,” Beomgyu said. “Bring your camera!”
“Whipped,” Soobin coughed into his fist as Yeonjun walked by. Yeonjun glared at him. It didn’t do much to disprove Soobin’s accusation though, not when he didn’t put up any more of a fuss as Beomgyu grabbed his hand and tugged him out of the apartment.
Yeonjun was getting a sense of deja vu, which was extremely discomforting since he’d never been in this position before. Was it possible to get deja vu because of a fanfiction rather than real life?
“Is the angle good?” Beomgyu asked, holding the fluffy part of his hood up. With only the dim light of the street lamps illuminating his face, the shot was very dramatic.
“Yeah.” Yeonjun lifted the camera up to his eye so he could find the right focal point. “You look cute.”
“I don’t want to look cute, hyung. I want to look handsome.”
“Alright, my bad.” Yeonjun bit the inside of his cheek so he wouldn’t smile. “You look handsome,” he said, imitating Beomgyu’s voice.
They snapped a few pictures by the lamp, then continued walking down the street to find another backdrop. Beomgyu was catching the snowflakes in his hands, rambling on about how pretty the snow was.
Yeonjun wasn’t tuning him out intentionally. He was still half-paying attention to what Beomgyu was saying, but god, was Yeonjun’s heart going through something right now. He couldn’t stop staring at Beomgyu’s profile as he talked, looking over his sharp jaw and the way his cheeks and lips were pink from the cold.
Yeonjun knew that Soobin was right and he was very, very whipped, because the only silly, sappy thought his brain could compute was that Beomgyu was much prettier than the snow was.
“Here, maybe?” Yeonjun suggested, pointing at the path which led to a nature trail (which led towards the river). “The trees are nice.”
“Ah.” Beomgyu squinted in the direction Yeonjun was pointing at. “But there’s no light here. It’s like pitch black.”
“Here,” Yeonjun said, getting an idea. “We can use my phone flashlight.”
He dug around in his bag until he found his phone again. Flicking the flashlight on it on, he gestured for Beomgyu to stand in front of the trees.
Placing his phone on the ground, he nudged it out of the view of the camera so the light wasn’t too bright. With it settled a fair distance away from Beomgyu, it looked like he was giving off a soft glow. Yeonjun could already imagine the ecstatic reactions from their fans these pictures would get.
“This looks good.”
“Really?” Beomgyu perked up. “Then take it already!”
“Patience,” Yeonjun huffed. He held the camera up again and shut one eye to get a good angle. Snapping a few pictures in succession, Beomgyu did a few different poses, each increasingly less professional.
Once they were finished, Beomgyu picked Yeonjun’s phone off the ground for him and stumbled over, plastering himself to Yeonjun’s side. Yeonjun switched the view to the photos he just took and tilted the camera towards Beomgyu so he could see.
“Oh…” Beomgyu held his hands in front of his face to warm himself up. “They are good, hyung. Thank you.”
Yeonjun stared at the photo for a moment longer, brushing his thumb over the screen when snow began to fog it over. The Beomgyu in the picture stared back at him, a small smile on his lips. Standing in the dark like this with Beomgyu, alone as far as the eye could see, made the pictures feel more intimate. He almost didn’t want Beomgyu to post them.
Why was he getting choked up all of the sudden? He rubbed at his eyes.
“... Hyung,” Beomgyu said. Yeonjun hummed in response. “Do you seriously have eleven tabs of fanfiction open?”
“Wh—” Yeonjun looked up and saw Beomgyu squinting at Yeonjun’s phone. God damnit, he really shouldn’t have given his members his phone password.
“‘Set us free,’” Beomgyu read in that terrible, endearing English accent of his. “I read this one last night. It was just okay. It wasn’t very in character. They kept having me cry, which is stupid, because we all know you cry way more than me. The part at the end where we cuddled was pretty cute, though. I’ll give it that.”
Recently, when they’d bickered about this topic, Yeonjun would get annoyed and snap at him, or make a sarcastic comment, or something along those lines—but right now, his throat felt unusually dry and tight and all he could do was swallow, flustered.
How could Beomgyu be so calm about this? How was he not freaking out over the fact there were people out there obsessed with the concept of them together? How was he not weirded out about how much Yeonjun genuinely enjoyed reading about it?
Beomgyu looked at him when he didn’t respond, his smile falling into a small frown. “What? Did you like it or something? Sorry, I didn’t mean to offend—”
“No, Beomgyu, that’s not it,” Yeonjun groaned. He brushed his fringe back, fidgeting. “I just—sorry, nevermind. I’m not offended.”
“... Hm?” Beomgyu tilted his head, his hood nearly falling off. “You don’t need to look so upset, then...”
That didn’t help in the slightest. “You actually read it?”
“Yes?” Beomgyu stated, confused. “Why would I lie?”
“You aren’t just making fun of me?”
“If I made fun of you for reading it, I’d be a hypocrite,” Beomgyu said, lowering Yeonjun’s phone.
Yeonjun’s head throbbed. He didn’t know what to say to that. Or how to react. Or what to feel.
All he knew was that his heart was beating way faster than it should.
“Did you read the story I sent you the other day?” Beomgyu asked suddenly. “The one exactly like this.”
“It wasn’t exactly like this,” Yeonjun refuted weakly. It was pretty close, though. Him and Beomgyu standing in the snow, side by side, after having gone on what, in hindsight, was a date—the only thing missing was Beomgyu confessing to him. And then them aggressively making out, but that was par for course in all stories about them.
“Pretty damn close though,” Beomgyu said, echoing Yeonjun’s thoughts. “It’s scary how well they know us.”
“Yeah,” Yeonjun agreed. “It really is.”
Beomgyu licked his lips, chapped from the cold, Yeonjun’s eyes followed the movement closely.
“No, I mean it’s actually scary sometimes,” Beomgyu whispered, voice dropping. His lips were slightly parted as he spoke and Yeonjun was barely holding himself back from giving in to the urge to do something stupid like kiss him. “Sometimes, I feel like they know us better than we know ourselves.”
“... In what way?” Yeonjun questioned, holding his breath.
Beomgyu shifted slightly. He reached for the front of Yeonjun’s jacket, playing with the flaps. “You know how. Don’t make me say it.”
Yeonjun had a feeling he knew where Beomgyu was going with this, but— “I don’t want to assume, Gyu.”
“Ugh.” Beomgyu knocked his forehead against Yeonjun’s shoulder. His voice came out muffled as he spoke, “Why do you think I even looked at those stories in the first place?”
“Because you’re nosy?”
“Because I like you,” Beomgyu said, voice rising. “Because I like you so much that it’s driving me insane and I need you to tell me if you like me back before I lose my mind,” he blurted out all at once.
It took a second for Beomgyu’s words to register in his mind. He waited for the punchline, but Beomgyu was serious.
He was seriously quoting that stupid story in his real life confession.
Without thinking, Yeonjun burst into laughter.
“You’re ridiculous,” he said. Beomgyu tilted his head at him, and then hearing Yeonjun laugh, began to giggle as well. Yeonjun wasn’t blind to the way Beomgyu was teary-eyed. “Did you memorise that? Oh my god.” A weight had been lifted off his shoulders that he hadn’t even realised was there.
Yeonjun’s heart was doing somersaults in his chest. He liked him so much. It was almost unbearable.
It felt nice to be able to think that and not worry about making a fool of himself.
“I knew it’d make you laugh. That, or if I’d read you wrong and you rejected me, I could pass it off as a prank or something,” Beomgyu said, covering his grin with the back of his hand. His relief was palpable in the way he went lax, his eyes crinkling.
“Ridiculous,” Yeonjun repeated, so fond it hurt, and pulled Beomgyu in for a hug. “I knew nobody read fanfiction about kissing their best friends just for fun.”
“Obviously not, hyung. Don’t tell me you actually believed Kai when he said that?”
Beomgyu laughed loudly, wrapping his arms around Yeonjun in return. With how thick their coats were, they didn’t have much leeway in moving around. They probably looked like penguins huddling for warmth. Beomgyu’s hair tickled Yeonjun’s chin and Yeonjun shut his eyes, basking in the feeling of Beomgyu so close.
As pretty as the words in all the stories he read were, no prose could compare to how it actually felt to hold Beomgyu in his arms. And he was selfishly glad for that, because he didn’t want anybody else to experience this moment but them.
1823 Comments on “say you like me” by Blue Mocha
Byeom Byeom | 4 days ago
I don’t want to say too much because it’s a bit embarrassing.. but I found out my crush and I both read Mocha-nim’s stories and I ended up confessing using a line from this story.. I’m sorry I stole your hard work haha but maybe you’ll be happy to know we ended up together partly because of this fic~~ Thank you for writing such an amazing story hehe I bet Beomgyu and Yeonjunnie would love it!! I love you Mocha-nim!!!!
Reply | ♡ 1