Work Text:
“Hyung, I think the lights are haunted.”
Yeosang still doesn’t know why he agreed to let Yunho install smart lights in their home, but he’s definitely starting to regret it. Not only is Yeosang certain that the lights are haunted, but they’re following him.
“Yeosangie, can we get smart lights?” Yunho had asked at the beginning of the year. Yeosang had insistently denied the request, refusing to give in to Yunho’s pleas and cries because smart technology freaked him out. He hates the Google Homes and the Alexas of the world and refuses to have one in his apartment. He barely even likes when Siri acknowledges his presence, especially when he doesn’t summon her; just says something similar and prompts the phone to respond to him to tell him she’s looking it up.
Yunho begged and pleaded, giving him his best puppy dog eyes until Yeosang reluctantly added a set of smart home lights to his cart to surprise Yunho with for Valentine’s Day. He didn’t even wrap them up or anything, just left them sitting on the entryway cabinet with a shoddy attempt at a bow on top for Yunho to find when he came home from work. His cry of excitement had nearly burst Yeosang’s eardrums, but the sex that night had made it absolutely worth it.
The next day, Yunho had gone through and replaced the lightbulbs in all of the main rooms. Yeosang drew the line at their bathroom, but Yunho put up a good fight.
“I’m not having the lights accidentally go off because of a Wi-Fi glitch when I’m in the middle of a shower,” Yeosang insisted when Yunho pouted at him. “Plus, who knows if those things are safe for the bathroom? It might start a fire!”
Yeosang won that argument, thankfully, but now the lights are in every room of his house, and he barely has any idea how they work. There’s an app on his phone, and he can tell Siri to turn the lights on and off, but that’s about as far as he’s willing to figure them out. They’re Yunho’s pet project, not his, and he’s fine with that.
Well, he was fine with that until they started haunting him.
The first time the lights change red, he’s in the middle of working on a project for work. He’d just been wrapping up the scene for his newest short story when the lights in his office flickered from their normal white to a glowing red. Yeosang practically jolts out of his seat and stares at them for a terrifying minute, his heart pounding in his chest before his phone rings, Yunho’s face lighting up on his screen.
“Hyung,” he breathes out, obviously rattled as he answers the phone. “There’s something wrong with the lights.”
“Oh?” Yunho’s voice’s voice is light and happy, but confused. “Let me fix them, hang on.” Yeosang waits a minute while Yunho hums on the other end of the line, then the lights suddenly flick back to the normal cool white that he’d had it set to and Yeosang breathes normally again. “That’s weird,” Yunho says as he draws the phone back to his ear. “I wonder why that happened.”
“Me too,” Yeosang says with a frown, glaring up at the lights. “I hope it doesn't happen again. It scared me.”
“Sorry about that, Sangie,” Yunho tells him on the line. “I wonder if there was a preset change in there or something. I’ll fiddle with the app, see if I can figure out what’s going on with them.”
“It’s not your fault,” Yeosang assures him gently, sinking back down into his chair now that he’s no longer about to have another panic attack. “When are you coming home? Should we go out for dinner today?”
“Oh, we should!” Yunho insists, and Yeosang can practically picture his eyes lighting up as he daydreams about the food options that they can pick from. “Where should we go?”
They discuss their options for a while before deciding on a Thai place a few blocks away from them. It’s not snowing today, so the weather will be tolerable enough to walk there. By the time they hang up, Yeosang’s forgotten about the lights, and he gets back to his work, closing out of his short story and moving back to his novel so he can try and work through the kinks of the chapter he’s been rereading.
-
It happens again a week later. Yeosang’s in the kitchen making a cup of tea so he can settle in to work when the lights turn red. He bites back the urge to hiss at the lights as he shoots a glare up at them, eyes narrowed, before he calls his boyfriend to tell him that they’re glitching again.
“Here we go,” Yunho comments after Yeosang rambles about how the lights are evil and are trying to traumatise him. They flick back to white, and Yeosang sighs, relieved, before he goes back to making his tea and talking to Yunho until he’s dragged away by a work call. Yeosang still doesn’t like the smart lights, and he has absolutely no idea why they’re only targeting him.
By the fifth time it happens, Yeosang’s ready to replace them with regular light bulbs again. He does an internet search to try and figure out what’s wrong with his lights, types in ‘why do my smart lights keep turning red?’ and ‘are smart lights haunted?’ but the results involve pranks and stupid, unrealistic questions instead of the results that he’s looking for.
He has a tiny inkling that it’s Yunho’s fault, but he squashes that almost immediately. He’s told Yunho how much it freaks him out that the lights turn red. Yunho wouldn’t do that to him. His boyfriend is energetic and chaotic, especially when he spends time with Yeosang’s best friend, but he’s not willingly trying to give Yeosang a heart attack. He wouldn’t do that.
So, Yeosang brings it up during dinner. He’s picking at his bulgogi before he stops and looks at Yunho, frowning a bit.
“What’s wrong?” Yunho asks him curiously, tilting his head as he gives Yeosang a smile.
“Hyung, I think the lights are haunted.”
Yunho chokes on his bite of food and he coughs, leaning forward and pounding a fist into his chest a few times until he can breathe again. Yeosang’s halfway out of his seat to help when Yunho waves him back down, assuring him that he’s fine.
“What do you mean?” Yunho asks as he reaches for his glass, chugging down a gulp of water to clear his throat.
“You know what I mean,” Yeosang pouts petulantly. “The lights keep turning red, but it only happens when I’m home, and we haven’t figured out why. You said you checked your app, you checked my app, there’s nothing in there that should be messing with them, so they’re haunted. I bet they’re trying to let me know because of my hair.”
Yunho can’t help the soft chuckle that escapes his lips before he reaches across the table and curls a strand of Yeosang’s muted red hair around his finger. “Red does look good on you, Sangie,” he assures him with a smile. “But I doubt that the lights agree.”
“They do!” Yeosang sets his food down, shifting in his chair to look at Yunho. “I already checked with the manufacturer. They said if there’s any defects, we can return them and get replacements. Maybe we can do that, so that we don’t have to deal with the lights haunting me anymore and-”
“Yeosang-ah.” Yeosang stops and he blinks as Yunho looks at him seriously. He doesn’t like it when Yunho’s face gets serious like that. It makes him want to kiss it away so that he’s smiling again. “You’re…really not joking, are you?”
“No?” Yeosang’s brows furrow together as he looks at Yunho. “Why would I be joking? The lights are haunted, and they keep following me around the house!”
Yunho scoots his chair around the edge of the table, and he reaches for Yeosang’s hands, taking them both in his own. “Sangie, the lights aren’t haunted,” he assures him as he squeezes his hands. “I’ve been changing them. I thought you were just joking when you kept saying they’re haunted.”
Yeosang blinks at him, staring at Yunho as he looks for any sign of joking or teasing, but there’s only seriousness there. “Why would you…”
“You call me,” Yunho tells him. “Every time I change the lights, it’s because I’m thinking about you, and then you call me and we get to talk. It makes me miss you a little less while I’m gone for work.”
Yeosang had a lot of theories about the lights, from a vengeful spirit who wanted to seek revenge to a cute child ghost that liked matching with Yeosang when they had enough energy to do so, but he never once thought that it was Yunho doing this because he missed him. He could’ve imagined a one-off prank from his boyfriend, just to show him how cool the lights are and how glad he was to have them, but he never once thought Yunho was switching the lights to red because he missed him.
“Really?” he asks in a soft voice, his chest warm as he grips tight to Yunho’s hands.
“Yeah.” Yunho’s smile turns dopey and fond, and Yeosang can’t resist the urge to lean in and kiss the smile off of his face, practically climbing into his lap as he does so.
He’s hanging off of Yunho by the time he pulls back, arms intertwined behind his neck as he settles into his lap and looks at him. “You’re cute,” he tells his boyfriend fondly. “But if you ever scare me like that again, we’re breaking up.”
Yunho lets out a startled laugh. “As if you would,” he tells him fondly. “Wooyoungie would kill you.”
“He can try,” he says vaguely. “But he’d never succeed. He loves me too much.”
Yunho beams. “That makes two of us.”
-
The next time the lights turn red, Yeosang’s sitting at his desk, staring tiredly through his reading glasses as he makes edits on his chapter. He just has a few more pages to go and then he can take a break. Despite the fact that his eyes are blurring, he’s powering through it because his editor will kick his front door in if he doesn’t get the corrections to him this week.
Above him, the lights change colours, and Yeosang’s suddenly bathed in red. He sighs for a moment, leaning back in his seat before he grabs his phone off the desk and dials Yunho’s number.
The moment Yunho picks up, Yeosang’s smiling. He can’t even see his face, but he knows that Yunho’s entire expression is bright and happy just because he called.
“I missed you too.”