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Woobin kisses girls.
This is a fact that made itself known in Jungmo’s mind when the nine of them were sitting around one night passing bottles of soju around, spilling secrets that could ruin their careers if anyone other than them were to know. The stuff of idol scandals.
Jungmo doesn’t kiss girls.
In practice, he doesn’t kiss anyone; in theory, in an ideal world, in his dreams, he kisses boys. But this is a secret he will keep to himself because the world would sooner accept an idol who goes clubbing and smokes and has a girlfriend than an idol like Jungmo.
The fact that Woobin kisses girls was always an abstract idea that Jungmo tucked away into the corner of his mind, filed under things he can never bring up on camera like their showering habits and the disgusting state of their kitchen. But Jungmo is reminded of it when he’s leaning over, presenting his cheek for Woobin to peck on camera. It’s just skinship, it’s just for the fans, but the way Woobin puts one hand on his shoulder and the other hand on his neck to pull him closer teaches Jungmo two things: that this is how Woobin kisses girls, and that Jungmo wants this.
The kiss itself is short, an appropriate little kiss on the cheek, and Woobin releases him. Jungmo is a professional; he can play it off and laugh about it on camera, but the shuddering feeling that ripples over his skin, the way his cheek seems to tingle from the kiss— they’re all too real.
That night, Jungmo dreams of Woobin. Blonde hair falls into his eyes as he leans in, one hand on Jungmo’s shoulder and the other on the back of his neck, his touch warm and grounding as he pulls Jungmo in. Woobin wants this; he whispers it as his lips meet Jungmo’s own, as his hand grips him tighter, as he pushes Jungmo down. Jungmo. His name through Woobin’s lips. Jungmo’s body shakes, trembling from the way he wants to be wanted like this, rattling all over—
“Jungmo, wake up.”
When Jungmo opens his eyes with a groan, Woobin is the one hovering over him, head tilted with unbrushed blonde hair and an early morning squinty expression on his face. He has a hand on Jungmo’s shoulder, shaking him awake.
“We have to go.”
They don’t give Jungmo enough credit for how normal he manages to act in the following days, especially around Woobin. Especially when Woobin decides, for some reason, that he should work out more often and comes home three times a week in compression shirts, shiny and smelling of sweat. Jungmo tries not to let his eyes linger— he’ll never say it but he’s jealous of the way Allen can stare at Woobin’s biceps under the guise of admiring his gym gains, or how Hyeongjun can touch Woobin’s chest because they all let Hyeongjun get away with anything. Jungmo isn’t allowed the same luxuries.
Jungmo smiles and takes it. That’s all he’s ever done. There are things he isn’t supposed to do, to say, to be, and despite it all, he is. So Jungmo keeps it to himself and sits there doing the thing he knows best: smiling and taking it like a champ.
If he ends up dreaming about Woobin again, one of his closest friends and groupmate, he’ll be the only one to know.
Something changes. The signs are only apparent in hindsight; Woobin was working out more, Woobin would be out longer and longer over the weekend, Woobin smelled faintly of scents that he didn’t use— Woobin is kissing girls, present tense, actively, currently.
Serim is the one who breaks the news to him, in the most Serim fashion possible; by accident. “Do you know who Woobin has been hanging out with lately?” Serim asks over breakfast in their quiet little dorm. “Every time I try to eat with him or invite him to do something over the weekend, he always says he’s busy meeting someone.”
Jungmo swallows the realization down with his coffee. It burns on his tongue and sinks into his stomach with an unpleasantly hot sensation. The coffee is too hot.
Serim even looks sad. Seongmin rolls his eyes. “I’m sure he’s busy.” He shoots Jungmo a knowing look. Jungmo hates that he knows.
“But he’d rather hang out with the other guys over me, every weekend this month? Maybe he’s just getting sick of me asking—”
“He’s dating someone,” Jungmo says the quiet part out loud. Mostly because he can’t stand the pitiful look on Serim’s face, in his voice. Seongmin snorts.
Later, Jungmo thinks about what she might be like. Does she have long hair, or short? Is she a sweet, girly girl, or is she a diva, a princess that Woobin dotes on? When Woobin kisses her, does he pull her in by the back of her neck?
Does she feel the same way Jungmo does when Woobin kisses her, like it’s the birth of an obsession?
They don’t talk about it. Obviously, they don’t talk about it.
When they meet up for dinner or to hang out, they don’t talk about it. Woobin tells him about new song ideas and Jungmo tells him about clothes he’s been eyeing online. They laugh about some stupid shit Hyeongjun said earlier that day and everything is fine, everything is normal, everything is as it’s supposed to be. Just Jungmo and Woobin.
There are fleeting moments. Some days Jungmo stares at the back of Woobin’s head and hopes he’d turn around to smile at him. Some days Woobin’s hand grazes against Jungmo’s and Jungmo wonders what would happen if he reached and held his hand. Jungmo always picks the seat closest to Woobin; Woobin doesn’t ever seem to notice.
When Woobin looks down at his phone and smiles, Jungmo wonders if it’s her. She’s always nearby in Jungmo’s mind, the next room over or just down the hall, just out of sight but present still. Nameless, faceless.
One night, they’re all in the car together on the way home and Jungmo picks the seat next to Woobin. Five minutes in, Woobin dozes off and they take a sharp turn, his head tilting towards Jungmo at a funny, uncomfortable angle.
He shouldn’t. But friends would do this right? Jungmo reaches over, his hand shaking for what he’s about to do, and gently touches Woobin’s cheek in the dark, in the back. His fingers slide down his soft skin toward his jaw, so lightly he hopes Woobin would never feel it, and shifts Woobin’s head closer so that he’s resting on Jungmo’s shoulder.
He’d do this for any of the others. That’s what Jungmo has to tell himself with each inhale of Woobin’s scent; smoky, sharp, and woody. That’s what he has to tell himself with the weight of Woobin on his shoulder and how much Jungmo wants more of it, Woobin leaning into him, so close to him, skin on skin.
But Jungmo doesn’t let himself get down about it. He treats this as a mild nuisance, a temporary fever that will fade away soon when he snaps out of it. He waits patiently for the day he wakes up and realizes all his romantic feelings for Seo Woobin have disappeared. If he believes it hard enough, the day might come.
Then things change.
Hyeongjun yanks him while he’s on the way to the practice room and around the corner. It’s like one of those kidnapping scenarios Jungmo’s mom used to scare him with so he’d stay away from strangers.
“Hey!” Jungmo yelps. At first, Jungmo thinks this is a prank, but then he sees the way Hyeongjun is looking at him, all serious. “Is something wrong?” Jungmo furrows his brows.
Hyeongjun shushes him, then takes a deep breath. “Ruby-hyung got dumped,” he says solemnly.
This is how Jungmo knows the day he’s been waiting for will never come; the first thing he feels is a secret joy. Followed by guilt for feeling any joy, then a sinking dread when he realizes he still likes Woobin as much as he did the first day he noticed it. Maybe more.
“Don’t bring it up. Just be normal.” Hyeongjun pouts. “Poor Ruby-hyung…”
Being normal is the one thing Jungmo knows how to do. He’s a professional at it now. “Poor Ruby,” Jungmo echoes, feeling none of the pity Hyeongjun seems to.
Hyeongjun must have told everyone. Most of them don’t act too differently, but some of them clearly aren’t actors for a reason. Serim has been pausing after everything he says, worrying whether anything came out wrong. But Woobin doesn’t seem particularly down either, putting his best work into practice and carrying on as usual, laughing at Hyeongjun’s jokes. When he meets Woobin’s eyes, Woobin holds his gaze a second longer than he has to.
When Jungmo settles in for a regular call with his mom and accidentally hits Woobin’s number again, he’s surprised when Woobin picks up.
“Jungmo?” The word comes out smoothly through Woobin’s mouth, said in a question.
“Oh sorry,” Jungmo mumbles. “Sorry. I was trying to call my mom.” This happens more often than he’d like to admit, when he’d fumble up and press Woobin’s number, but Woobin has gotten used to ignoring it.
There’s a pause. “Do you want to get dinner together?” His voice is soft, more tender than usual. Is Jungmo imagining it? “Tonight?”
Jungmo nods, before realizing Woobin can’t see him. “Yeah.”
“You know the place with the red plastic chairs?” They used to go there often as trainees for a snack because it would be the only place open late near the company building.
“Mhm,” Jungmo hums.
“Let’s meet there at eight-thirty.”
Jungmo tries to think nothing of it.
There are two empty bottles of soju and a half-empty one on the table when Jungmo finds Woobin at eight-thirty on the dot. Jungmo makes a point not to look at it.
“Hey,” Jungmo says as he sits. “What did you order?” Woobin takes a piece of the sundae in the middle of the table, only glancing up briefly to acknowledge Jungmo.
“The usual.”
“I’m craving pajeon,” Jungmo mutters, because it’s the only thing he can say normally.
Woobin swallows his bite of sundae and sets down his chopsticks. “Then order it.” He grabs the half-empty bottle and refills his shot glass with strawberry soju, then fills up a second shot glass.
“Are you paying?” Jungmo tries to joke, tries to laugh, because he doesn’t know what the alternative is.
“I will if you drink with me.” Woobin picks up his shot glass and raises his head to finally look at Jungmo, his expression expectant.
Jungmo doesn’t want the hangover but the way Woobin is looking at him, a glint of something desperate in his eyes, makes it impossible to turn him down. He picks up the glass meant for him and clinks it against Woobin’s.
“I thought it was going well. Really.”
They’ve gone through two more bottles together. Jungmo is starting to feel warm everywhere but not drunk yet. It takes a lot more than that and he knows it’s the same for Woobin too, but Woobin is starting to slur some of his words, his cheeks pink.
“I don’t know what I did. If I even did anything.”
Woobin doesn’t ever get really drunk— if he has, Jungmo has never seen it. Jungmo is trying to listen, he really is, but the way Woobin’s head tilts from side to side as he speaks, as if he’s in a car going down a road of curves, is distracting. The way Woobin’s cheeks and ears are blushing, the shine of his red-tinted lips. It doesn’t seem like he needs Jungmo to respond anyway; what he needed was for Jungmo to listen.
“It’s like one day, she woke up and decided she didn’t like me anymore.”
Now that’s something Jungmo could be jealous of. To wake up one day and feel nothing for Seo Woobin. But all Jungmo feels is anger.
Woobin sniffs, not like he’s about to cry but like there’s an itch in his nose. “I should’ve known better than to get attached,” Woobin says it nonchalantly, but Jungmo knows better too, because Woobin doesn’t look at him when he says this. Woobin never looks at him when he’s lying.
Did this girl not know how much Woobin liked her? How could she see the way Woobin liked her, see Woobin, and decide she doesn’t want him?
“But well, it’s over.” This time, Woobin looks up.
When Jungmo looks into Woobin’s eyes and the sadness in them, all Jungmo can think is, did this girl know that she had everything Jungmo ever wanted?
They walk home together. Woobin paid for their meal. Leaving the restaurant and walking the way home together is sobering— not that either of them had really gotten drunk.
“Thanks for eating with me,” Woobin says quietly, amidst the faint hums of the buildings they pass by. They can always get more honest with each other like this; with alcohol in them, when it’s just them, when they’re out of the dorms. When they can pretend they’re normal.
“Thanks for buying,” Jungmo responds. He feels Woobin turn to look at him, snort, then look away.
They’re walking side by side, close so they don’t take up the whole road but not close enough for them to bump into each other. It’s late enough that there’s almost nobody else out on the streets but them. There’s a space between them, where their secrets are. Woobin has many secrets; Jungmo only has one. It bubbles up, bigger and bigger, taking up space, ready to pop at any moment. Sometimes it scares Jungmo— but not tonight. It won’t pop tonight.
They’re two blocks away from home when Woobin stops. Jungmo stops too, turning around. Under the streetlight, the lights and shadows of Woobin’s face look distorted.
“Jungmo.” He says Jungmo’s name like a confession.
Jungmo opens his mouth. “Yeah?” It comes out cracked and dry.
Woobin is looking at him. That’s how Jungmo knows he isn’t lying. “Sometimes, you’re the only one I can talk to.” It’s too vulnerable, too real. Jungmo knows Woobin, knows that he can never say this, knows that he needs to hold these feelings close.
“We’re friends.” Jungmo nods. “That’s what friends are for.” If he keeps saying the word friends, maybe he can chalk up the shift in Woobin’s gaze as something friendly, an intense burst of friendship.
“Isn’t that what you always say?” Woobin says, lowly. “That I’m your only friend?”
Jungmo swallows thickly, all of the alcohol in his system suddenly gone. “Yeah.” His only real friend, his only friend that counts.
Woobin licks his lips. “Can I ask you for a favor?”
Anything, Jungmo thinks, please. Jungmo nods.
Woobin puts one hand on Jungmo’s shoulder. This happens in slow motion. He puts his other hand on the back of Jungmo’s neck like it belongs there. Jungmo knows what’s about to happen before it happens. He knows because he has spent weeks reliving this, imagining how it would happen. Woobin holds Jungmo like that for a long second, before pulling him in and kissing him on the lips.
In the background somewhere, Jungmo swears he can hear a balloon pop.