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It’s an open secret that Choi Yeonjun was made to be adored.
This, as Huening Kai learns again and again, is a simple fact. If he were to get up right now and look hard enough, he could read about it in a lexicon. A few decades from now, he could go and find it in a history book. The universe expanded from a state of high density and temperature. The Roman Empire fell. Humans first landed on the moon in the year 1969. And Choi Yeonjun was made to be adored.
It’s not something Yeonjun says himself or would ever even agree to. Kai has learned that he’s modest and humble before anything else, because his mother taught him to be. Back when they debuted, Kai barely noticed how he started collecting all these little snippets of information about him, like they were something sacred. Stored them all into an imaginary treasure chest, with the lid sealed so tightly, they would never escape him.
He only gradually realized that this is not the usual way to go about friendships, because you see, Huening Kai has always cared a little too much. His parents had scolded him with barely concealed laughter when he cried about plushies falling off his bed, and he doesn’t dare to tell them that sometimes, he still gets the urge to do so even now. When he went through a friendship break-up with someone he had spent almost every single minute of his life with, he refused to properly leave his room for weeks.
All of this led to him struggling with understanding what the normal amount of “caring” is. Or loving.
So when Yeonjun hugged him after their first music show win and Huening Kai had felt his heart flutter in a way it never had before, he simply wrote it off as nerves and that big part of his brain labeled “caring” doing too much again. He knew Yeonjun, being the oldest and all, always felt and still feels a sense of responsibility for their success. So back then, he simply figured that this was the usual, Kai-enhanced way of feeling.
Then Run Away came around and Yeonjun dyed his hair blue. It’s the first time he had seemed even cooler to Kai than before. Later, when they did Puma, and they put him in all these cool outfits, Kai had not been able to stop thinking about just how well every concept seemed to suit him. Yeonjun had put his all into them, his facial expressions so strong, his growling and snarling, and all Kai was able to do was wishing that one day, he would be just like him. He idolized Yeonjun and told himself that that’s all there is.
It’s the Blue Hour era that rang in his downfall like an alarm blaring the start of the apocalypse. The last months before their minisode comeback had been hard on all of them, with their fans having being replaced by empty chairs, the speakers crackling with the same repetitive screams that haunted them even in their sleep. Kai didn’t only have to deal with his own suffocating lack of motivation, but he also received a front row ticket to some twisted film about Yeonjun losing everything that had built him up from the inside.
With every empty performance, he was forced to watch his smile turn a little faker, his eyes losing a little more of their spark. And it happened to all of them, but somehow, seeing it on Yeonjun hurt him the most. He told himself it’s because Yeonjun truly lived to perform and everyone around him loved to tell everyone they knew about it, too.
Now, in retrospect, he should have known better.
He should have known when his hying’s pink hair sent him into a spiral of questioning himself and when the return of his chopped black hair did nothing to change what had evolved inside of him during that time, shooting all his excuses with it. When Huening Kai watched him play a troubled man, dancing inside his living room with his already-dead (were they dead?) friends watching him, or when he sent them all over the edge in his car.
Really, it should have all come clear for him when he kept pushing down his feelings at every smile, every touch of his stomach, every “Yeonjun noona”, every hand kiss, every simple hug. How he told himself to not care so much when Yeonjun crawled into bed with him during the tour to keep him close, to share the adrenaline after Lollapalooza, his body thrumming with excitement.
Only later he realized that he didn’t realize because if there’s one thing he likes to do besides caring, it’s running. Not in the actual sense, because hell, he hates working out, but he’s mastered the art of simply running away from his problems when they start growing into something so much bigger than him again. It’s a simple habit he had picked up from his role in the group, because while Beomgyu is the mood maker, Kai had become his second in command in keeping the energy light and funny. He laughs loudly, always has, it’s not fake, but he also acts cute and sweet when he doesn’t feel like it. He laughs and lets the sound drown out the fact that he would rather push his face into a pillow and scream right now. It’s become his very own brand of running away.
But even he gets exhausted and one day, Soobin had sat him down and told him that it’s okay to have down days too. How he doesn’t always expect him to push himself to be happy. And somehow, this had led to him absolutely breaking and spilling everything to him.
Quite literally, because the situation had evolved from Soobin saying “Don’t overexert yourself, yeah? It will only wear you down in the long run” to, “Hyung, I think I’m in love with Yeonjun hyung.”
But because it had always been there, just slightly out of reach, he had come to terms with it quite quickly. Maybe it’s also because Soobin had told him it’s okay, though he did not give him any advice or even a glimpse of what he thought about actually confessing. Or it’s simply because the earth is round, water is wet and Yeonjun is made to be adored.
Months later, Yeonjun is dressed in a bright red sweater and there are tears running down his face. Kai has his hand on his back and their fans are cheering for their first ever Inkigayo win. He watches as his hyung tries to keep the sobbing out of his voice so he can say his thanks, and his eyes catch the way a single perfect tear drips from his chin. It’s the most ridiculous thing in the world: they just managed to earn one of their biggest achievements of their career, but all Kai can think about is how pretty Yeonjun looks even when he cries.
He risks a single look at Soobin, who he knew would confirm it for him if he had the capacity to think about Kai’s feelings right now.
It’s simple, really, the realization.
He can’t run from this anymore.
Yeonjun was made to be adored, and who is Kai to defy the laws of the universe?