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Junhyeon hates how two of his friends have fallen in love with each other. Without him.
Junhyeon knows he shouldn’t care.
He knows he shouldn’t care about the way that makes him feel invisible. Some kind of appalled.
He knows he shouldn’t care about how Hanbin has less and less time for him now.
He knows he shouldn’t care about how all Taerae ever seems to talk to him about is Hanbin. When it used to be just the three of them, three friends against the entire world, it was now Hanbin and Taerae. And then Junhyeon. Junhyeon always comes in last. That’s what it feels like at least.
He knows he shouldn’t care about any of it because they’re not bad friends and they deserve the happiness they’re giving each other. He knows it all but he can’t help it, not when it's so hard to bear to see them holding hands and sharing ice cream and kissing the top of each other's noses when Junhyeon feels so out of place next to them, at the place that was supposed to be his. The place that was supposed to feel like home.
He just doesn’t like it, the two of them together. If he was being honest and possible a tad dramatic, he would say he'd prefer to use a time machine for something as silly and unimportant as this.
Junhyeon doesn’t know what it is exactly, either, but ever since Taerae had gone up to him, lips stretching into an impossible bright smile, and had told him Hanbin had confessed to him, Junhyeon didn’t look forward to seeing either of them anymore. Not alone and definitely not together.
It hadn’t played out well last time.
They’d come over at Junhyeon’s house, still freshly dating, Junhyeon still unaware just how much he hated being around two people who were disgustingly in love, who could now be open about it. He’d-
Junhyeon shakes the memory off his mind, all tense now.
He has an appointment with Hanbin in a few minutes, to talk things through about a school project. He’d considered calling it off, using the ‘I’m sick’ excuse but he figured he shouldn’t keep avoiding them. He has to rip the bandaid off. Tell them he can’t see them anymore.
When he opens the door for Hanbin, Taerae, not so surprisingly, stands on his front porch as well. The two honestly couldn’t be away from the other for a second. And to think Junhyeon thought they were tied to the hip before they started dating…
He tells them what he’s been wanting to say as soon as they step foot in his bedroom. “We should stop being friends.”
Taerae’s eyes widen but not with shock. Sadness, maybe disappointment, that comes closer.
Junhyeon’s lucky he always makes sure he never misses as much as a word or a syllable of what Taerae says, because what he says is barely above a broken whisper. “Why?”
“Because it feels so wrong to be with you two when you’re always so lovey-dovey with each other. It’s terrible.”
Taerae then, also not very surprisingly, offers him insight into himself, except he doesn’t seem certain about it himself. “Are you homophobic, maybe?”
Junhyeon hadn’t even thought of that. Now that Taerae says it like that, maybe he is . He never considered himself a hateful person — he isn’t —but perhaps he’s less accepting than he prides himself on being.
“I don’t know,” Junhyeon replies, honestly. He lets the thought sit for a moment while Hanbin starts to talk, keeps the conversation going. Filling the silence.
“What do you mean you don’t know? I’m pretty sure that’s something you’d know.” He says intelligently . He’s right. He’d know, right? Then Hanbin says, less intelligently, “You’re not homophobic, dummy.”
“Hey, don’t be mean to Jun.” Taerae softly hits Hanbin’s head. Then he turns to Junhyeon. “Do you miss us, maybe?”
It’s a question that feels too serious, too sudden, for Junhyeon to be able to answer it truthfully. Earnestly. “Always,” he laughs, the sound a tad too high to sound natural. The others luckily don’t comment on it.
The project they are here for is quickly forgotten, as is Junhyeon’s idiotic wish to never see them again.
The feelings and thoughts linger, however. And even after they’re gone, Junhyeon can’t let them go.
When he tries to fall asleep later that night, he keeps going back to it.
What exactly is the reason he feels so terrible when he sees them together?
Most people at least grimace at the sight of their friends kissing and would indeed prefer to put bananas in their ears when they hear their friend call their other partner sickeningly sweet nicknames, yes, but Junhyeon—
Junhyeon feels his entire body burn whenever he sees Hanbin look at Taerae with the brightest, sparkling stars in his eyes. The happiness that drips off his tongue whenever Taerae holds Hanbin’s name in his mouth. His heart aches whenever they are together, and even at the rare moments when they are alone. When they are apart and somehow still appear together. Never alone. The exact opposite of how Junhyeon feels.
Maybe Junhyeon is just lonely and sick of other people’s happiness, but in the darkness of his room, the curtains he draws around his bed, the safety of the night surrounding him, taking him in, he can admit what he thinks fits him better.
That it’s surely jealousy, yeah, that’s undoubtedly true, but entirely different from the way he feels when his friends get the phone he wanted or when his rival basketball team wins a match against him.
Junhyeon likes them, both of them, the way he isn’t supposed to. He likes Taerae the way Hanbin likes him, likes Hanbin the way Taerae likes him, and the realization weighs on him as if it’s the weight of the world crushing him, holding him down. It’s suffocating but somehow it’s also freeing.
He just hopes he'll be able to hide it well enough from them, because if there's one thing about this he's completely sure about, it's that it's not a mutual feeling, what's blooming in his chest, restricting his movements wherever he goes.