Chapter Text
Despite his brain's best efforts to erase everything from his memory, Soobin still remembers the first time he'd seen Hueningkai.
He'd noticed him immediately---he hadn't quite fit in, standing a head above everyone else in the orientation line. He's a little Western, a little mixed, here-and-there melding his features into international beauty the world would fall on its knees for. His nose is slim, straight, long, but he doesn't seem like the type of person who'd make a hobby out of looking down it. Wavy dark locks grace his head, dyed golden-brown to the root.
The newcomer seems around Soobin's age, older than most of the kids who frequent the halls on Orientation Day. Maybe he looks old for his age. Or maybe he's a new teacher, and he looks a little younger. It's really none of Soobin's business, but he can't help wondering.
Taehyun notices his curious gaze, and Soobin doesn't miss the way he perks up a little. "Kai made it!" he exclaims, familiarity drowning his words in a molten storm.
"You know him?" Soobin knows he shouldn't pry---it's really not a good habit---but there's something in the boy's bright smile that makes his thoughts falter, diamond and platinum and gold. A fantasy brought to life. A dream come true.
"Yeah. His name's Hueningkai. He lives on my street---just moved in a while back. He's from Hawaii, but he's already pretty fluent in Korean. His dad's a Chinese actor. Well, not a Chinese actor, per say, but he's some white guy doing acting in Chinese shows, so I suppose he qualifies as a Chinese actor, so---"
"Oh, that's Hueningkai?" Beomgyu butts in, and Soobin wonders if he should be offended that Taehyun told Beomgyu but not him, and that Beomgyu didn't tell him either. "Isn't he..."
"I told him he could join the orientation tour despite being in our grade." Taehyun shrugs nonchalantly, as if the prettiest boy Soobin's ever seen is no big deal. "Thought it would be good for him to at least know how to find the canteen. Not that it matters. He'll probably get lost anyway."
"Does he need a guide?" Soobin pipes up, and he's not exactly sure what's possessed him to speak up. Maybe it's because even though he's simply watching from afar, he can already feel the warmth in the newcomer's mirth-filled, chocolate-brown eyes.
Hueningkai. The name suits him. It's as lovely as he is. Like the shiver of pebbles on a cerulean lake, or the rosy bloom of a spring rose, or the quiet rustling of snow-feathered angel wings.
In typical best friend fashion, Beomgyu bursts out laughing. Taehyun punches Soobin's arm playfully. "Slow down, cowboy. I know he's pretty, but he just arrived. There'll be plenty of time for you to make a move later."
"I'm not---I'm not making a move," Soobin protests. "I'm just trying to be helpful." And because his friends know Soobin and his origami heart and the way he falls like a stone whenever anyone remotely hot crosses his path, they reply with extremely unsure Sures and grin knowingly.
To their credit, they don't continue teasing him about it---although Taehyun's dark eyes are a little too sharp for his liking. So Soobin stares until a teacher chases them back to class, and the matter of Hueningkai isn't brought up again until lunchtime.
"Football tryouts," Beomgyu says, not looking up from his sandwich.
Soobin glances up. In the glaring sunlight streaking through the cafeteria, he's a little lazy, a little distracted, a little too likely to let his thoughts wander. It's a little too easy to let the things he wants to know eat his mind alive. He hasn't touched his food. "Hmm?"
"That guy." Beomgyu takes another bite of his sandwich and starts chewing with his mouth open, obviously aware of how much that pisses Soobin off. Soobin cringes, switching his gaze to the nearest wall in order to avoid the avalanche of ground-up meat and cheese weaving between the tiny gaps in Beomgyu's teeth. "You know, the Chinese actor."
"His dad's the Chinese actor, not him."
"Same difference. He's good-looking enough to be one, anyway." Beomgyu's tone is casual, as casual as his stance and his expression and the literal sound bites chomping raggedly in his mouth. Soobin reminds himself that it means nothing, that Beomgyu---very obviously---has eyes, just like him, and that's all it is. "He's going to be at the football tryouts."
Soobin pauses instantly, brain stopping short in its tracks. Because suddenly, Hueningkai feels less like a fantasy, less like an unattainable dream. Something a little more real. "How do you know that?"
Beomgyu laughs, small flecks of lettuce spraying everywhere. Soobin resists the urge to kick him in the shin. "I'm the team captain, Soob. Of course I know."
Soobin stares at the undisturbed food in front of him, heart already racing. Something cracks in the space behind his ribs. "Why are you telling me this? You know I'm not interested in sports."
There's a twinkle in Beomgyu's brown eyes, a smile curving over his lips. "I know. Just thought you might want to know."
And that's how Soobin finds himself at the yearly football tryouts, staring at a black-and-white ball he's only ever seen on television. The sun is too bright, his peers are too loud, and there's no sign of Hueningkai anywhere---which really had been the only reason why Soobin came, because as much as he tells himself he came to support Beomgyu, every cell in his body knows he's lying.
Before he can start looking around or make a sheepish escape, Beomgyu spots him. "Soob! You came!" he shouts, and Soobin's glad his friend's gracious enough to feign a hint of surprise. He'd like to pretend his firecracker feelings haven't made him more predictable than he'd prefer to be.
And then the ball, the dreaded ball, is in front of him, right before his completely-inappropriate-for-sports sneakers. The world seems to melt, suspended in gelatin silence, and all the eyes in the field turn to him.
"Give it a kick!" Beomgyu encourages.
So Soobin does.
What follows is blinding pain and soil in his face.
He's not sure what he'd done wrong. Maybe he hadn't calculated the trajectory---or whatever the hell people who are actually good at maths call it---properly. Maybe it had been the fact that his foot had swung backwards instead of forward, and the fact that the ball hadn't even moved. Or maybe it's just because Soobin is completely and utterly hopeless at sports.
A pair of warm hands lock themselves onto Soobin's back, yanking him into a sitting position. There's grass in his mouth and his nose feels like someone sawed it off with a chainsaw, but everything is suddenly worth it when Soobin finds himself staring into dark brown eyes flooded with concern. Because Hueningkai is here, and he's kneeling over him like a whimsical vagary come to life, expression haloed with worry. Worry for him.
"Hey," Soobin manages to get out through the scorching pain, trying his best not to throw up. "I fell for you."
Hueningkai's laugh is nothing like Soobin had been expecting it to be. He'd expected something delicate, light, pretty, like Hueningkai himself. The noise that bursts from his heart-shaped lips is nothing like that. It's loud, raucous, almost dolphin-like, packed to the brim with freedom and youth. It makes Soobin's skin burn, makes him prickle with the uncontrollable urge to chuckle too. And it only makes him like Hueningkai more.
Three things happen that day. One, Soobin breaks his nose for the first time. Two, Soobin doesn't make the football team, and neither does Hueningkai, although Soobin highly suspects Hueningkai throws the tryouts after Soobin's epic wipeout. And three, through shitty pickup lines exactly like the ones that had sparked their first conversation and starlight smiles too good to be true, Hueningkai rapidly steals Beomgyu's spot as Soobin's best friend.
It should be enough. And it is, for a very long time. Almost too long. But eventually, the ice cracks, the dam breaks, and Soobin finds himself staring at Hueningkai in ways best friends shouldn't look at each other. He finds himself entangled in the flash of his heart, in the sear of the moment, in the way glitter always seems to twist and turn its serpentine way up Hueningkai's defined jaw.
He realises it on a regular Monday in the rain, when they both, like the birds-of-a-feather dumbasses they are, forget to bring their umbrellas to school, despite the weather forecast spelling out heavy thunderstorms in glaring grey letters. He realises it when they're running through the rain like headless chickens, and instead of focusing on keeping himself as dry as possible, all Soobin can focus on is how even with soggy hair sticking to his forehead and panic turning his giant smile slightly maniacal, Hueningkai's still the most beautiful person he's ever seen.
"Come on!" Hueningkai yells, skipping through every puddle he sees, clear droplets fluttering around his long legs like liquid diamonds. Soobin thinks about how he'd give him the world, and how he wouldn't need to, because Hueningkai already owns the world---and even if he didn't, he wouldn't want it anyway. The rain pelts his face in shuddering bullets, and Soobin knows he doesn't look half as graceful as Hueningkai does dancing through the deluge, but that's okay. He's okay.
"There's a bus stop up ahead, right?" Soobin asks, and he'd usually raise his hand to stop the rain from getting into his eyes, but there's something ethereal about the way Hueningkai dodges hapless droplets and laughs like a child, something luminescent in the lunisolar glow of how he twirls and spins and blurs into white, silver, pearl, gold, red like the thump-thump-thump of Soobin's pliant heart.
"Yeah!" Hueningkai shouts back, and just like that, the bus stop is in front of them, a haven in the storm. They huddle under its metal roof like penguins shielding themselves from the cold, and Soobin hopes lightning won't randomly decide to strike them.
Moisture's beginning to chill on his skin, freezing him to the bone. Against his will, Soobin shudders ever so slightly.
He's suddenly aware of Hueningkai's long fingers trailing their way up his arm. "You're freezing," Hueningkai hums, more of an observation than a reprimand. Almost curiously, he presses little diamond indents into Soobin's icy skin, and his touch sets Soobin's fragile heart aflame. "You're going to catch a cold."
Soobin opens his mouth to tell Hueningkai that he might catch a cold too, but he's cut off by his best friend wrapping his arms around him. It's quick, sudden, catches Soobin off-guard, and they've hugged before, but not like this---not when Soobin's feelings are a sunset-orange bonfire behind the frozen ivory of his ribcage, not when the dripping onslaught raging around them's long stripped him of his clockwork defenses.
"Sorry," Hueningkai says, resting his head on Soobin's shoulder, and it's a little awkward, because he's only about two centimetres shorter than Soobin himself, but he makes it work. He always makes it work. And now, water silhouetting his hair in streaks of blonde and golden-brown, forlorn rivulets hanging off his fluttering lashes, the steady sha-sha-sha of the pouring rain echoing around their personal bubble, he still makes it work, and Soobin can't help falling into the blaze. "Thought you'd warm up a bit if I hugged you."
It works. Probably not in the way Hueningkai had intended it to work, but it does work, because Hueningkai's embrace is so warm Soobin doesn't know how he could ever feel cold again. And in that moment, Soobin realises it, embraces the sensation, lets the gun pressed to his head slip and slide and blow.
Because damn it, he's in love with his best friend.