Work Text:
It would be easier if Kai hated Beomgyu. He probably should, at this point. It’s not as if Beomgyu hasn’t given him reason enough, over the past five years.
They’ve been together since they were in high school and Beomgyu helped Kai with his geopolitics final, having taken the class the previous year. It started with them meeting in empty classrooms after school ended, then they started hanging out at Beomgyu’s house, and one thing led to another and now they’re adults, and Beomgyu has just finished his degree and Kai is a few short months away from getting his own diploma, and they’ve been together so long that it’s difficult for Kai not to remember a time where they weren’t. It feels like Beomgyu has always been there, even before they met. Kai looks at Beomgyu and sees his whole life reflected back at him.
Beomgyu frequently works from home, which means he’s usually available for Kai to go bother after he finishes his own classes. It’s possible that Kai won’t be welcome, but such an instance is rare; Kai is always allowed to stay when he turns up at Beomgyu’s door. He’d resigned himself to the fate of arriving unannounced because there was no other way he would find time to visit his boyfriend. Beomgyu was a horrible texter, and was prone to being noncommittal even when he did respond to Kai’s inquiries about being busy. When asked, he assured Kai that he did want him around, he just didn’t want Kai to feel like he needed to come over just because Beomgyu asked him to. So instead, Kai made the decision for them both. If it was a bad time, Kai could always leave. But Beomgyu was always excited to see him. His eyes lit up when he opened the door, like Christmas had come early. With a welcome like that, it was easy for Kai not to mind.
Despite being together for five years, they didn’t live together. They attended the same university, but after his graduation, Beomgyu moved in with his older friend, Yeonjun, who works for an advertising firm further into the city. Kai had hoped that Beomgyu would suggest that they move in together themselves, but no such conversation ever arose. It wasn’t until Beomgyu brought up moving in with Yeonjun that Kai gathered the nerve to ask.
“I know I still have a year left, but I thought it might be nice to get a place of our own,” Kai said. “Somewhere we can grow into.”
Beomgyu hummed, considering. “I thought about it, but since you still have a year left to graduate and you don’t know where you’ll be working, I thought it would make sense that you weren’t tied down somewhere. What if you end up working in another part of the city? Or we leave Seoul altogether?”
“I’m not really looking outside of Seoul,” Kai admitted. “I like it here.”
“Are you sure? What if you wanted to move to Incheon? Or back to America?”
Kai had nearly flinched with how surprised he was. “America? Why would I want to go back to America?”
“You liked it there, I thought.”
“I like it a lot of places. And I also like wherever you are, and you want to stay here.”
“Do I?” Beomgyu asked, more to himself than Kai. “There’s really not much for me here.”
Not much encapsulated all of Beomgyu’s friends and family, and his job, and his apartment and his roommate and his roommate’s dog, and Kai. Not much, he’d said, like there was no reason to stay in Seoul at all. Like everything he currently had was replaceable, Kai included.
“Your whole life is here,” Kai reminded him, too anxious to say any more than that.
Beomgyu shrugged. “You left home young.”
“That’s different.”
“You don’t think I could handle it?”
“That’s not what I said. Of course, you can handle it. I just meant that moving countries for school was different than trying to start a new life somewhere else. It wasn’t as big of a decision.”
Beomgyu sighed. “If you want to stay here we can stay here. I don’t want to make you do things you don’t want to do. I just thought it might be nice to try something new for once.”
“If you want to go to America, you can go.”
“But you won’t come with me?”
“Hyung, I don’t know what I’m going to do a year from now. I’ll graduate and I’ll get a job and I’ll figure it out. But if there’s something you want, you need to tell me, so that I can make sure I can be there with you.”
Kai had no idea what his face had looked like in that moment, but it was enough to get Beomgyu to stop ruminating on his own internal turmoil and reach over to pull Kai into a hug.
“Of course you’ll be there with me. Hyung is sorry. I’m stressing you out just because I’m stressed.”
“It’s okay,” Kai said. “I forgive you.”
“We can talk about this later, when we’re calmer.”
And so the topic was dropped. Beomgyu moved in with Yeonjun, and Kai stayed in his own university apartment. They hadn’t brought up living arrangements since, even as Kai drew closer and closer to his own graduation date. But that was fine. Beomgyu was busy, as was Kai, between tests and interviews and graduation preparations. Apartment viewings should have been something on his to-do list, but he kept brushing it off, unable to bring himself to go see an agent on his own, but similarly unable to burden Beomgyu with the question of that they were going to do come January. It isn’t until his mother calls to ask him if she should plan on him moving back home to regroup that Kai realizes he can’t put it off any longer.
“Have you considered,” Taehyun asks at one point, tone measured and casual in a way that belies the following words, “that he hasn’t mentioned it because he doesn’t want to live with you?”
“Don’t say that,” Kai says.
“I’m asking honestly. Have you asked him that?”
No, he hasn’t. He hasn’t asked because he’s pretty sure he already knows the answer. From the look on Taehyun’s face, he knows Kai knows the answer.
“There’s just a lot going on right now,” Kai mutters halfheartedly. “We haven’t had time for serious discussions.”
“He should make time,” Taehyun insists. “This is an issue with a time limit. You have to move out in January, with or without him.”
Kai met Taehyun on the very first day of university in one of his mandatory math classes. His first thought to describe the other boy was “intense.” Taehyun had always been focused on his life goals, on his “five-year-plan” and rising to his own expectations. Unlike Beomgyu, however, Taehyun isn’t a perfectionist. He was economical. He wanted to get things done the way they needed to get done, no more and no less. This included, beyond school and work, general management of his quality of life and relationships. Taehyun had always been a good friend to Kai, but care for the other meant that he had his own opinions on ways that Kai was holding himself back, or potentially shooting himself in the foot. That is to say, Taehyun absolutely hates Beomgyu.
“In my defense,” Taehyun said once, when Kai was feeling overly defensive and pushed the issue to the brink of an argument. “One of us has to, and unfortunately I don’t think it’s going to be you.”
Kai had left Taehyun’s apartment posthaste, and refused to answer either his or Beomgyu’s texts until he could get his head on straight. But in the end, nothing had come of it, because nothing ever comes of conversations about or with Beomgyu. Their state of affairs is static, immutable.
In the present, the topic of Beomgyu rarely arises. Taehyun is not one to belabor points he’s already made clear, and Kai is not one to complain about recurring issues, both out of consideration for those forced to listen to him, and also a certain depth of shame that he even has recurring issues to be complaining about. He’s gotten fairly good by now at not letting Beomgyu’s quirks of personality do him actual harm, and even better at staying in his own body when they do. He’s also gotten better at giving Beomgyu space and trusting that he’ll come to Kai when he’s ready. They’d worked hard to build that kind of trust with each other, and Kai isn’t keen on destroying all that progress by accusing Beomgyu of being avoidant.
He explains this to Taehyun and receives nothing but a pointed stare in return.
“What?” Kai asks.
“I just don’t understand how you can take it,” Taehyun says. “He’s been stringing you along for years now.”
“He’s not stringing me along. We’re dating. Our sixth anniversary is coming up.”
“Could’ve fooled me,” Taehyun says. Kai wants to get defensive, but he doesn’t have much of a leg to stand on.
“Don’t you get tired of talking about this?”
“Don’t you get tired of being treated this way? When was the last time he even spoke to you?”
“I spoke to him yesterday.”
“In person?”
“I called him yesterday. If you’re going to be annoying about it.”
“Kai.”
“What do you want me to do about it?” he asked finally, abandoning all pretense of focusing on the cold food in front of him. “I can’t control when he does or doesn’t pay attention to me. When he has the energy, and the time, he is there for me. What else could I ask him for when he’s doing his best?”
“How do you know it’s his best if it’s all he’s ever given you?”
“Then I have to assume it’s his best,” Kai grit out. “He loves me. I know that’s so hard for you to believe for some reason, but he does.”
Taehyun sags, relenting. “I didn’t mean it like that.”
“Of course not.”
“I didn’t. And I do believe Beomgyu loves you. But it’s possible for someone to love you and not like you that much anyway. I like you as a person who exists outside of me, not as some inevitable puzzle piece in the grand plan of my life.”
Kai thought he wouldn’t mind if Beomgyu thought of him as inevitable, because that would at least mean he’d still be around. He could make do with being inevitable, because inevitable was only a few small steps away from wanted. And that was good enough. It really was.
He doesn’t say that to Taehyun. Again, he can tell from his face that he already knows.