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The lights are blinding, the crowd is roaring, and Yeonjun is calling Beomgyu his girlfriend in front of thousands of people. He’s pulling Beomgyu close, close enough for their breaths to mingle and their lips to touch if they were brave enough to turn their heads just so, and he’s calling Beomgyu his girlfriend.
It’s not as though this is a completely unexpected turn for the fanlive to take – they’re supposed to be leaning into their dynamic tonight, supposed to play around a little for the audience, supposed to dance on the razor thin and ever-wavering edge between fan service and true flirting. They’re supposed to dance around each other just enough to get the fans excited, but never enough to seem truly suspicious. Most of the time, it’s exhausting, especially when all Yeonjun and Beomgyu want to do is love each other loudly and openly without being scrutinized for it. But tonight the lights are blinding and the crowd is roaring, and they’ve decided to have fun with it. And besides, Yeonjun is wearing a skirt and a shirt that drapes perfectly to reveal flashes of muscle, the picture of temptation, and Beomgyu doesn’t think he could act normally if he tried.
And he has tried. He kept it tame during the run through, joking around and quoting lines from his favorite dramas and fooling around with the members, like he was supposed to do. That was the purpose of this whole segment, before he and Yeonjun started to lose the plot completely – fanservice under the guise of acting like they were in a drama. Up until now, he thinks he’s been relatively well behaved. It’s not his fault that Yeonjun seems determined to get under his skin in the best of ways, with fleeting touches and saccharine compliments and a devilish gleam in his eyes that’s only enhanced by his dark makeup. Yeonjun is the devil with the hand outstretched, leading him into temptation, and all Beomgyu did was stumble after him, a blush on his cheeks and a stutter in his words. It’s probably a little too dramatic to compare Yeonjun to the devil, but visions of his Guilty stage are still burned into the backs of Beomgyu’s eyelids, so Yeonjun being personified temptation shrouded in the most gorgeous of humanly disguises doesn’t seem as far fetched as it should.
When Soobin will later turn what Beomgyu thinks of as his “leader stare” onto him and Yeonjun, eyes unimpressed but mouth twitching with mild amusement, and ask them to explain what exactly they were trying to accomplish by declaring their infatuation live on stage in front of thousands of their fans, Beomgyu will insist that it was all Yeonjun’s fault. Yeonjun was the one calling him his girlfriend and calling him beautiful and tugging him up against his body, their limbs colliding in a moment of shared warmth. All Beomgyu did was go along with it, and the fans were loving it besides, so what did it really matter (it matters, because of course it does, because Yeonjun and Beomgyu are constantly conscious of their every action, even when it seems they are not, because they’ve learned over the years that they have to be). Isn’t MOA enjoying themselves the most important thing of all?
Soobin will sigh, the corners of his mouth still turned up (because he likes it when the company squirms, just a little, just enough that they can’t really scold Yeonjun and Beomgyu for enthusiastically going along with the script, but enough that they aren’t happy about it), and tell them to tone it down next time. They’ll nod and share a secret smile, because they know they’ve gotten away with it.
But right now, Beomgyu isn’t thinking about Soobin, or Taehyun, or Kai, or the thousands of fans screaming their names. Beomgyu is surrounded by the feel of Yeonjun as he yanks him forward to tuck him into his shoulder, and he cannot possibly focus on anything else. How could he, when he has his everything in his arms? Of course, he does play along, and play it up, because when he’s on stage he’s an idol before he is anything else – before he’s a human being, before he’s a human being with a body that feels and aches and yearns, before he’s a human being named Choi Beomgyu who is in love with Choi Yeonjun. Right now he’s Choi Beomgyu from Tomorrow X Together, and TXT’s Choi Beomgyu isn’t a skin he has the luxury of shedding off at will.
So he’s hyperaware in a lot of ways all at once, something that doesn’t seem as strange as it should after so many years of the idol life. He’s the most aware of Yeonjun, of the heat of his body and the faint smell of his sweat, the way they lean against each other for just a moment before pulling away. But he’s also aware of the other three members, of the way they giggle into their mics like children on the playground, and he’s also aware of how the fans erupt into screams and cheers, something that brings a smile to his face (because how could he be overstepping the line when the fans are begging for it, he thinks in the company’s direction).
All of these awarenesses coalesce together in a disorienting wave – the immediacy of Yeonjun crashing against the bright and blurry lights of all their fans, one faceless mass of cheers. It’s disorienting, sometimes, but today it’s exhilarating. This is what he fought for, after all, what all of them fought for – this stage, these lights, these cheers. And when that dream, that hope that used to be his singular purpose, intertwines with his other dream, the one he had once thought himself so selfish for even hoping for – someone who loves him enough to claim him in front of all these people, to call him beautiful, to call him his – Beomgyu feels the world tilt on its axis.
He glances between Yeonjun and the crowd, and feels his heart swell impossibly large in his chest. He often spends sleepless nights tracing waterstains on his ceiling and marveling at just how many things had to fit into place for him to end up where he is. Sometimes it’s a melancholy thought, when the days are long and the nights are longer, burnout wrapping its fingers around his ribcage and squeezing. But more often than not, it’s a soft wondering, a fascination with just how many things had to go right for Beomgyu to be surrounded by the life he never thought he’d get.
Beomgyu has a life and a love that he used to only dream of, when he would watch the sorts of dramas that he’s meant to be emulating today, fantasizing about someday having a relationship that might echo what he saw as the epitome of romance. And while he’s learned over the years that life is rarely like the dramas, he has been lucky enough to find a love that exceeds even his wildest dreams – one that’s worthy of all the tropes of a drama and then some.
~~~
The crush
Beomgyu wouldn’t consider himself a drama expert, one of those fanatics who somehow has time to watch and form an opinion on every new show while still living some semblance of a normal life, but he has watched enough to know the tropes and standard plot points, the ones that you can watch over and over again without finding them stale. Perhaps the most important of these tropes is the age old question – who fell first and who fell harder? When applied to the drama that is his own love life, Beomgyu finds it a question that’s almost laughably easy to answer.
Before he was Choi Beomgyu the idol he was Choi Beomgyu the trainee – young and unsteady, with big eyes filled with hesitation and too-long limbs that he was still growing into and constantly tripping over. All he knew was that he loved music enough to want to pursue it forever, even though he’d been told by so many people (and by himself, late at night when his conviction faltered) that he would never be one of the very few who are lucky enough to make it big.
Yes, he had doubts, so many doubts, doubts that piled up behind his ribcage and strained against it so that on many occasions he ended up breathless with his head between his knees, trying his best to see through the dark clouds of doubt that swarmed his vision. But music was Beomgyu’s first love, the force that could drive him through these dark moments, the light at the end of the impossibly long tunnel. Beomgyu clung to his love of music with chipped fingernails and a bleeding heart, and it ferried him through all the trainee days that went so late they trudged into the early morning, through all the heartbreak and hardship and moments where he thought he might collapse from the weight of his exhaustion. His unfaltering love of music carried him through it all.
It makes sense, then, that Beomgyu fell a little bit in love with Yeonjun the moment he set eyes on him, because Yeonjun was music. He became a conduit for music when he danced, the rhythm flowing through him, a physical manifestation of everything Beomgyu loved. He was BigHit’s legendary trainee, the name Choi Yeonjun already a synonym with the idyllic, practically a shoe-in for the debut line up, and yet he worked just as hard as the rest of them. Beomgyu doesn’t think he would have fallen for him so hard if he was skating by on sheer talent, even though he had a right to do so. Yeonjun was talented, so talented, the sort of talented that doesn’t need to justify itself, the sort of talented that makes you glow from the inside out, but he was also passionate. He loved music, he lived for it, just as much as Beomgyu did, and that was what drew Beomgyu to him in the first place.
He would follow him around like a puppy in those early days, clinging to his Yeonjun-hyung with stars in his eyes. It’s a miracle he didn’t get brushed off, that Yeonjun chose to treat Beomgyu’s obvious idolization of him with fondness rather than the annoyance that it probably deserved. Of course, this only served to make Beomgyu more infatuated, and he used to get funny looks from the other members when he would hover a little too closely to Yeonjun, once the five of them were solidified as a the debut unit and the other trainees that they had shared their blood, sweat, and tears with faded away, once their souls had begun to tangle in a knot that would never be undone. But it wasn’t strange enough for anyone to say anything, since it was an unspoken truth that everyone looked up to Yeonjun, even the trainees who had seen his skills and decided to hate him for it used him as a goal – everyone wanted to be like Yeonjun, to befriend Yeonjun, to be with Yeonjun. Beomgyu just got lucky enough to worm his way in close.
That idolization changed forms once they debuted, once they got to see more of the people behind the trainee personas, to learn what each other were like once they weren’t fighting to survive every day (even though every day was still a fight, a never ending slew of battles against themselves, against the company, against the world). The forced proximity made Yeonjun more tangible, made him less of a force of nature and more of a human being, but Beomgyu still looked up to him, still sought him out first for approval, even when he probably should have been getting that approval from their staff or from Soobin, their newly appointed leader. But the dreamy sort of fanaticism that Beomgyu had looked at Yeonjun with eventually turned into something softer, something sweeter, and something much more dangerous.
So if Beomgyu were to answer that question – who fell first and who fell harder – he would have to honestly say that it was him on both accounts. He had fallen for Yeonjun before he even realized it, had turned an artist’s idolization into a romantic’s crush, and he hadn’t even realized just how hard he’d fallen until he tried to climb his way out of it and looked up to see just how much distance he’d already crossed.
~~~
The pining
In the dramas there’s typically a clear moment where the main character realizes that they’ve fallen for the love interest. There’s the moment of “oh. oh.” typically followed by a few episodes of pining and miscommunication and avoiding the love interest. But since life isn’t really like the dramas, Beomgyu can’t recall the exact moment that he realized he had a crush on his group mate, but he can remember the feeling, remember the sleepless nights in which he agonized over it, logically hoping that they would magically dissipate but fantasizing over what might happen if Yeonjun could ever return even a fraction of his adoration. And unlike the dramas, Beomgyu couldn’t avoid seeing Yeonjun every day.
It would have been incredibly suspicious if Beomgyu had tried to avoid Yeonjun entirely, but he still managed as best as he could. He and Yeonjun had always teased each other, their dynamic lending itself to a playful back and forth that left them both giggling and short of breath. But as Beomgyu grappled with his feelings, he turned teasing into a defense mechanism. His comments came out too loud and too harsh, overly mean to disguise the truth of his heart. He would go after Yeonjun in a way that was so different from the way he used to shyly prod at his hyung. At first the other members chalked it up to some sort of late teenage rebellion and let him get away with it, but eventually it became too obvious that there was some sort of underlying tension behind Beomgyu’s barbed words.
It got so bad that Soobin pulled him aside in the dorm, anxiously tugging at the sleeve of his sweater, the moniker of leader still ill-fitting on shoulders that were already so weighed with concerns. “Is there something going on between you and Yeonjun?” he asked, his eyes wide and so full of concern. “You can always talk to me, you know. About anything.”
Beomgyu stared for a long moment into those eyes, shying away from what he found there – openness and kindness, a true desire to understand and help. It was too much too soon for a young Beomgyu who was still floundering through his feelings for Yeonjun in the midst of all the tumult that came with debuting. But he wanted so badly, for just a moment, to tell Soobin everything, to confess to his hyung, his leader, who was always so reliable and who would hold him as he cried. You can talk to me about anything he had said, and Beomgyu wanted so badly to believe him. But not this, Beomgyu decided, anything but this.
So he looked Soobin in the eyes and said, “There’s nothing going on between me and Yeonjun.” And Soobin, too young and still too unsure of what exactly his new responsibilities meant, let it slide.
Beomgyu was left to deal with his feelings alone. And he did, for a time, although he tried to pull back on the teasing, hamming it up for the cameras but falling into silence once the red recording lights went off. All of the members picked up on his strange shift in mood and handled it in different ways. Kai was overly affectionate, Soobin would eye him with concern, Taehyun would draw him into conversation so that he didn’t sit alone.
Yeonjun was the worst of all, because he was the most attentive. He would wrap an arm around Beomgyu’s shoulders and pull him close, and it was never anything more than a friendly grasp but it burned through Beomgyu’s skin and straight through to his heart. When they were in front of the staff and the members, he would gently prod at Beomgyu verbally and physically until he got some sort of response out of the other, usually a sort of soft half-smile that betrayed the way his stomach flipped over itself anytime Yeonjun’s attention was focused solely on him. When they were alone, his approach was more gentle. He would tuck himself into Beomgyu’s bunk without speaking and rest his head on Beomgyu’s shoulder, breathing steadily in and out. Once Beomgyu matched his breathing to the rhythm he would smile softly up at him, all without speaking, offering strength with his presence alone. It helped him as much as it pained him, having him so near, so attentive, so eager to try and ease every one of Beomgyu’s hurts.
“It’s so hard,” he said on one such night, Beomgyu tucked into his side, Yeonjun’s cheek resting on top of his hair, a gentle pressure. “I always thought that once we debuted it would get easier, that all of our concerns would ease, but debuting is just a different sort of beast. It’s so hard, Gyu-yah, but you’re doing so well.”
Beomgyu’s eyes burned and he tucked himself further into Yeonjun’s shoulder to hide the way he trembled. Yeonjun was hurting just as much as any of them, but he tried so hard to hide it, to be the pillar that they could lean on, the oldest member carrying the weight of so many people’s expectations that it was a wonder he didn’t buckle under the pressure. He was hurting but he was still there to comfort Beomgyu, to hold him as he silently shook and tell him that he was doing well, even when he wasn’t. It was so difficult, in moments like these, where he couldn’t hide from Yeonjun’s kindness, to want to confess, to want to spill every poisonous thought in his mind, to make himself unburdened. It was excruciating to have the source of so much of his worry also be the only one capable of soothing it.
He was too weak to confess but too weak to shun Yeonjun completely for both of their sakes, and so this routine continued, where Beomgyu would pretend that everything was fine only for Yeonjun to call him out on it with a gentleness that he didn’t deserve. He would send Beomgyu concerned glances during schedules that Beomgyu would determinedly avoid, only to break down in his arms at night when they were alone (or as alone as you could be in a dorm full of your groupmates and your managers). He would cry into Yeonjun’s shoulder without speaking a word, and let the older think that it was the newly discovered pressures of idol life that were breaking him apart piece-by-piece while Yeonjun tried in vain to hold him together. It was entirely selfish, to let himself lavish in the weight of Yeonjun’s arm around his shoulders, to let himself pretend that one day this embrace might be out of love and not brotherly concern. When he would fall asleep in Yeonjun’s arms that same embrace would follow him into his dreams, the vice grip of his arms growing tighter and tighter around his ribcage until he suffocated from a weight that was never quite what he wanted.
It all sounds incredibly dramatic, to think back on it now, but Beomgyu was still fighting his way out of teenage angst and his sleep schedule was abhorrent at best and abusive at worst, when he had achieved his dream and yet he still had to fight every step of the way to prove that he’d earned it. And when all he wanted was to pass out in bed at the end of the day and tear off the permanent idol smile that made his jaw ache, he was plagued by feelings that crawled up his throat and brought uncomfortable heat to his skin. So yes, it sounds dramatic, now that Beomgyu is peaceful and happy and Yeonjun’s arms feel more like home than anywhere else, but at the time it felt like life or death, because so did everything, then.
If whether or not he had time to nap in the music show waiting room was life or death, then whether or not he chose to act on his feelings for Yeonjun was a world ending decision, one that weighed upon him for almost two years after their debut. He pulled himself further and further away from Yeonjun in order to avoid it, as far as he dared without risking some sort of intervention from the other members or from their staff. He would stay silent when Yeonjun would slip into his bed at night, eyes angled away so that Yeonjun couldn’t see the pain and longing that lingered in their depths (because it was obvious, so obvious, if you were looking for it, so obvious that sometimes Beomgyu would look back at their old content and wince at how many stars were gathered in his eyes whenever he would look Yeonjun’s way). Eventually, Yeonjun stopped coming, stuck to his own bed and left Beomgyu alone. Beomgyu tried his best to pretend it didn’t feel like a knife through his ribs.
And thus he fell into a pattern that broke him apart bit by bit, day after day, an endless cycle of yearning and avoidance that piled emotional baggage on top of all the weight he was already carrying. He would avoid Yeonjun during schedules as much as possible and be either too cold or too aggressive when he couldn’t avoid him, over correcting love with anger. He would avoid the concerned glances of the other members, telling them that he was just tired, or that he was hungry, or that he was sore from the endless days of dance practice. They didn’t push, because they were young and fragile and still unsure of just how their unstable little star system functioned as a unit. But they still let him know the strength of their disapproval through concerned eyes and hard stares. So Beomgyu avoided until he couldn’t anymore, until he hit a wall and his heart shattered and he bled cursed adoration all over the floor.
It was towards the end of Blue Hour promotions where it all came crashing down around him, when he reached towards the sun and fell in a blaze of glory, all burning feathers and suffocating love. The tension between him and Yeonjun had been building throughout the comeback cycle, a fissure straight through the soul of their team. Beomgyu’s avoidance had done nothing but make the love at the center of his heart turn from an innocent affection to a rotting monster with teeth and claws that fed upon his blood and unsteadied his heartbeat. Every time he looked at Yeonjun – beautiful Yeonjun with his long pink hair and his plush lips and his waist that begged to be held – he would feel a twist at his core, a pulse at his temples, a weight crushing his sternum, begging him to do something, anything that wasn’t just staring and avoiding and avoiding some more.
It was this weight, this pulse, this twist that led him to lash out after a particularly grueling day of practice, one of those days where Beomgyu couldn’t seem to put his feet in the right places at the right times even though they’d done this choreography a million times over and they had a music show performance the next day. Soobin had scolded him gently, one hand hovering over his shoulder, terrified that he’d break if he applied too much pressure, but Yeonjun had started needling at him and he wouldn’t give it up. Once practice was over they all piled into the manager’s car, Kai and Taehyun in the back and Soobin, Beomgyu, and Yeonjun in the middle, exhausted and bone-weary in a way that they shouldn’t be at their age. Beomgyu let his head droop onto Soobin’s shoulder and prepared to drift off into a tumultuous sleep, but he was jolted by the press of Yeonjun’s hand on his knee.
“What was going on with you today?” he asks, his gaze maddeningly unreadable. “You’ve done this choreography perfectly so many times, it felt like you were backsliding.” Beomgyu allows himself a selfish moment of scanning Yeonjun’s features, of taking in the beauty that he tries so often to ignore. It was unfair that he was still so beautiful with his skin sweaty and his hair pulled back, with dark circles under his eyes and a tremor in his overworked muscles.
“I don’t know, hyung. I’m just especially tired today,” Beomgyu replies, perhaps a touch too icily considering that it was perfectly normal for Yeonjun to give feedback after practice, to sharpen them all into weapons of beauty and grace, shaping their endless effort into a performance that could read as effortless.
“We’re all tired, Gyu-yah,” Yeonjun says, tone thin with exasperation. “We’re all pushing hard all the time, it’s not an excuse.”
“Don’t you think it should be?” Beomgyu says, voice rising, earning a worried look from Soobin who was choosing to stay wisely silent next to him. “We’re being worked half to death, don’t you think it makes sense that I would mess up my footwork sometimes?”
“Gyu…” Yeonjun says softly, slightly panicked, losing control of the situation. “I didn’t mean to say that you can’t make mistakes. I’m just worried, that’s all. We have a performance tomorrow, I want to make sure you’ll be alright.”
“It won’t happen again,” Beomgyu says tonelessly, pushing his body up against Soobin’s in vain, trying to move away from Yeonjun, as if that would lessen the force of his concern.
“If you’re worried I can go over some of the footwork with you once we’re back at the dorms,” Yeonjun offers, and all at once his eyes are too kind, too soft, too open for Beomgyu to handle. The twisted affection that fills his heart incircles his lungs in thorns and squeezes until he’s forced to speak, until the intense passion of his love spirals into anger.
“I said it won’t happen again!” he exclaims, far too loud in the quiet of the car, the silence only broken by his voice and the quiet hum of the engine. “Sorry I’m not perfect like you.”
“Gyu, I’m just trying to help,” Yeonjun says, rearing back as far as he can until he’s pressed up against the car door, hurt evident in the way he curls in on himself, his tall frame condensed, trying so hard to seem nonthreatening even as Beomgyu’s tornado of emotions rears its ugly head.
“I don’t need your help,” Beomgyu says. “I told you I would be fine, you don’t need to baby me.”
“You used to want my help,” Yeonjun says, so quiet, so broken. “Lately it seems like everything I do just makes you hate me. Tell me what I did wrong so I can fix it, please.” He sounds so desperate, and the softest part of Beomgyu’s heart, the part that he’s tried so hard to conceal, begs him to apologize, to offer his soul up for forgiveness, to plead mercy to the only being he’s ever truly worshipped. But to do that would be to spill his biggest and ugliest secret, and Beomgyu would rather have Yeonjun hate him for being cold and strange and avoidant than hate him for having loved him too much. “You didn’t do anything wrong other than push me when I’m already tired and fed up. I don’t need your help, I don’t need your criticism, I just need a fucking nap,” he snaps, and the car is silent. Even their manager, driving in the front seat, doesn’t intervene. Soobin does though, because he’s grown well into his position as leader, even though sometimes it still feels like an infinite void to fill, especially when Beomgyu hasn’t done very well at making it easy for him.
“Beomgyu, that’s enough. It’s Yeonjun’s job as a member of this team to help with our dancing. He’s just trying to make us better,” Soobin says. Pinned between the disapproval of his best friend and leader and the confused hurt that leaks from Yeonjun, Beomgyu feels the world tilt beneath his feet.
“I’m sorry,” he says softly. “I’m just so tired.” It’s true, it’s always true. He’s tired of being judged and tired of working so hard and never being praised for it, tired of sleeping too little and eating too little and killing himself for his dream. But more importantly, he’s tired of hiding his bleeding heart and his sparkling eyes and the part of himself that is so in awe of Yeonjun, the part that wants his help and his praise and his adoration, the part that wants to tuck into the older’s side and hear him whisper, “You’re doing well, Gyu-yah” like he used to.
Soobin’s gaze softens slightly, and he gives Beomgyu’s knee a quick squeeze. It’s a brand through the fabric of his sweatpants, and he feels the oily slick of guilt coil in his gut. “We’ll talk when we get home,” is all Soobin says in reply. “I know you’re tired, but you can’t use it as an excuse to lash out.”
“I know,” says Beomgyu in reply. He turns to Yeonjun, silent but so repentant. It’s a ridiculous notion to say that he hates him, when the reason he’s so cold is that he loves him too much to contain it, and he feels so immensely distraught that it has to be said out loud, but still he says it. “I don’t hate you, hyung. I could never hate you.”
Yeonjun doesn’t respond. The rest of the car ride is silent, but Beomgyu can feel pressure from all sides. The maknaes’ gazes bore into the back of his skull, Soobin keeps shooting him piercing glances from the left and Yeonjun’s stony quiet is suffocating to his right. Even the manager up front is somehow radiating disapproval. It makes for a deeply uncomfortable ride, and the moment Soobin slides out of the seat when they’re back at the dorm, Beomgyu is hot on his heels, almost tripping over himself in his haste to escape the vehicle.
He knows he’s not off the hook, not with Soobin tailing him like a puppy and not with Yeonjun fleeing to the bathroom to gain a hint of privacy with hurt still swimming in his eyes. But at least he’s no longer trapped in a ticking time bomb, poised to explode. He allows himself one deep breath, one inhale and exhale that rattle his ribcage and fill his lungs with pressure, and then he follows Soobin into the bedroom. Kai and Taehyun are noticeably absent, wisely choosing to lurk somewhere else for the moment.
Soobin sits on the bottom bunk and Beomgyu perches lightly beside him, not allowing himself to sink into comfort, muscles tensed and ready to flee. It only adds to his exhaustion, but he can’t bring himself to relax.
“What happened back there, Gyu-yah?” Soobin asks softly.
Beomgyu stiffens, swallows around the lump in his throat, and finds that he’s powerless to resist Soobin’s gentle prodding. Perhaps his outburst had sapped the last of his strength, had left him incapable of fighting anymore. The truth is acrid where it claws its way up his throat. “I don’t know how to act around Yeonjun-hyung anymore,” he says softly.
“I can tell. We all can,” Soobin responds. “What I don’t understand is why. You used to follow him around like a duckling and now you can’t even look him in the eye. What changed? I don’t believe that you’re jealous of him, or that you think he’s perfect, not when you know him so well, when you used to look at him like he hung the stars just for you. You couldn’t possibly hate him, not when I still catch you staring at him like he’s the most beautiful thing you ever saw when you think nobody’s looking.”
It hits too close to the truth, slotting right between the bones of Beomgyu’s ribcage to jab at the monster in his heart. “Hyung,” Beomgyu says, broken and plaintive. It hurts to be seen, to have his carefully constructed fragile layers peeled back with simple kindness, to have his soul bared in front of him without his permission.
“You can tell me, Gyu. You can tell me what’s wrong, I promise. Whatever it is, I won’t judge you for it,” Soobin responds.
Even now, looking back, Beomgyu isn’t sure what does it, what breaks him open completely. If he had to guess, he would say it was the desperation in Soobin’s voice, the helplessness, so different from his firm facade as a leader, so full of uncertainty. He sounded so scared and so young, and Beomgyu couldn’t be the cause of that fear any longer.
“I love him,” he whispers, so softly that he isn’t sure it can be heard outside of how deafeningly it echoes inside of his skull. “I love him and it’s wrong and it’s killing me but I can’t stop no matter what I do because he’s always beautiful and always gentle and all I do is hurt him.”
The words come out choked, followed by a barrage of tears, enough to drown in. They fill his lungs and leave him heaving for air, spluttering out apologies into Soobin’s shoulder, soaking the fabric of his t-shirt.
Soobin doesn’t speak for a long while, letting Beomgyu cry and cry until he’s worn himself out. He just rubs a gentle hand up and down Beomgyu’s back, steady and soothing as he always is. Beomgyu wonders when he started taking that steadiness for granted, wonders just how much it costs him to stand firm in the middle of the storm.
Once the tempest has eased, Soobin speaks. “You should tell him, Gyu. You can’t let it eat you alive like this.”
“He’ll hate me,” Beomgyu says through the hiccuping remains of his sobs. “He’ll hate me for it and I can’t live if he hates me.”
“He wouldn’t,” Soobin says, and there’s no trace of doubt in his voice. “He loves you so much, Beomgyu. He couldn’t hate you if he tried.”
“But what if he couldn’t love me anymore,” Beomgyu whispers softly, face still half-buried in Soobin’s shoulder.
“Trust me when I say that would never happen,” Soobin says, and Beomgyu does. He lets himself, for the first time, imagine a world in which he spills his soul on the floor, lets the twisted creature of his heart crawl up his throat and out his mouth and form the words I love you, a world where it doesn’t ruin everything. He fights the urge to start sobbing again, because the image is so beautiful it hurts.
“If you won’t confess, I understand. But you at least have to stop ignoring him and pretending that it isn’t harming you both,” Soobin says, his hand stilling on Beomgyu’s back but not leaving, still so steady, the anchor that Beomgyu clings to.
“I will,” Beomgyu says, “I will.”
And he does. Later that night once the redness has faded from his eyes and he’s so tired that his words are slurring he crawls into Yeonjun’s bed for the first time and lets his heart do the talking. He curls into his hyung’s side and says so many of the things that he was so afraid to say – Idon’thateyouIcouldneverhateyouI’llalwaysneedyoupleasealwaysneedmeyou’llalwaysbemyhyungIalwaysneedyourhelpI’llneverstoplovingyou. over and over again until his throat is sore and he’s drifting off to sleep, safe and warm in Yeonjun’s arms like he was always meant to be.
~~~
The confession
Slowly, so slowly, Beomgyu and Yeonjun find their place. They fuse back together into the unit that they used to be, before Beomgyu lost his heart and his mind and had to piece himself back together. They learn when to tease and when to soften, when to be gentle and when to push back. Beomgyu accepts Yeonjun’s help when he offers it, knows it for what it truly is – a gesture of love and a modicum of control in a world that is almost always out of their hands. What sort of love it is is a question that eats at him from the inside out, gnawing on the flesh of his heart, a vicious rotting monster at its core even though the thorns around his lungs and ribcage have loosened ever so slightly.
Beomgyu lets his eyes sparkle a little more when he looks in Yeonjun’s direction, and sometimes he tricks himself into thinking that that spark is returned in his direction. He lets himself get touchier, using playground fighting as an excuse to feel the realness of Yeonjun under his fingertips. He slumps over onto Yeonjun’s shoulder in music show waiting rooms, on the floor of the practice room, in his bed late at night with only the stars to bear witness. He’s tired as always but he’s also lighter than he’s ever been, full of hope and tenderness and a love that doesn’t feel like so much of a weight anymore.
He tries to turn adoration into subtle affection, into shoulder bumps and quirked smiles and a shoulder to cry on. He gets good at the art of friendship, the art of skirting around the words “I love you”, lest they come out too sincere. His hair grows long and Yeonjun’s gets shorter but he’s still always so beautiful, and they’re doing a concept that they all love, and Beomgyu’s heart is so full that the creature that lurks within it is momentarily put to sleep.
Idol life is hard as it always is, but it’s a routine he’s used to. Pain and exhaustion are old friends, and they help distract him from the pining that is just another thing that he’s grown used to over time. It still spikes in his heart, when Yeonjun brushes up against him during practice or shoots him a tired smile at the dorm or even looks at him in just the right way, but he’s long learned how to not react to it.
The dance they do around one another has long since been choreographed, polished to perfection while they pretend like it doesn’t eat them alive, just a little, but not enough to rot at the core of their relationship, not anymore. Count one, eye contact that bores through the sockets to the soul. Count two, a brush of fingertips that lingers just too long. Count three, slumped over onto each other’s shoulders in the car back from a music show promotion, faces still sticky with the remnants of makeup and ears still ringing with phantom cheers. Count four, collapse into bed together, no not in that way, not in the way they yearn too, but rather like kittens, curled on top of one another, breathing synced. Count five, pretend it doesn’t hurt. Count six, pretend you don’t want more. Count seven, pretend like it won’t kill you to do this forever. Count eight, brace for repeat. Catch your breath. What a dance.
It’s the end of promotions again when the steady trickle turns into a flood that bursts the dam. There’s something about the end of a comeback cycle that lends itself towards breakage, towards destruction and rebirth. Soobin, Taehyun, and Kai are out with the managers for a celebratory dinner and Yeonjun and Beomgyu have stayed back, not feigning exhaustion per say, because it never truly needs to be faked, but using it as an excuse to bask in each other’s company, now that they’re mature enough to be left without managerial supervision (or so they thought).
They’re curled up in Yeonjun’s bed, the bed that Beomgyu thinks of as his second home, although he wouldn’t admit it out loud, watching some drama that they’re not really paying attention to. Beomgyu has his head pillowed on Yeonjun’s arm and he’s listening to the rhythm of his breathing, more entrancing than any collection of tropes in the show. Yeonjun is running a casual hand through the ends of Beomgyu’s hair, a habit that Beomgyu has grown used to, well aware of Yeonjun’s need to fidget, but one that makes his heart race just the same.
“I like your hair like this,” Yeonjun says, and it’s startling to hear his voice overpower the sound of his breathing and the dialogue of the drama after an episode’s worth of quiet. “It’s pretty.”
Beomgyu smiles and glances up from his place tucked away on Yeonjun’s shoulder. He tries not to look too pleased, but he’s sure there’s a light flush on his cheeks anyway. “So you think I’m pretty, huh?” He asks coyly, even as his stomach twists in anticipation of the response. The flirting is new, so new, so fragile, but somehow it makes the ache in heart hurt less, even if it’s all pretend.
“Of course I do,” Yeonjun responds, and it’s serious, too serious to just be flirtatious. “I always think you’re pretty, Gyu-yah.” He turns sideways so that they’re laying face-to-face and brings up one shaking hand to cup Beomgyu’s jaw. “Always so pretty, my beautiful Beomie.”
“Hyung,” whispers Beomgyu, and it’s pleading, a prayer, even though he doesn’t know what he’s begging for.
He gets his answer when Yeonjun pulls him in for a kiss, and he implodes, a firework inside of him, a monster turned to shrapnel and scorched thorns, a comet streaking across his body from his head to his feet. Yeonjun is gentle, and soft, and warm, and he’s so achingly hesitant as he tangles his fingers lightly in Beomgyu’s hair, drawing a gasp out of him. Beomgyu loses himself in the moment, drowns in Yeonjun. He could die in this love, could suffocate in adoration and die in peace. But Yeonjun would never let that happen, and he pulls back with a gasp after far too short a time.
For an agonizing moment, there’s quiet. The sound of the drama is deafening and the sound of their panting breaths is even more so. In a rare moment of bravery, Beomgyu is the one who speaks. “What did that mean?” he asks, voice trembling.
“You know,” Yeonjun says softly, his hand still cradling Beomgyu’s face, his lips red and glistening. I did that Beomgyu thinks, and it’s dizzying. “Surely you know.”
Beomgyu’s battered and bruised heart flips over in his chest. He doesn’t think he’s breathing. He doesn’t think he remembers how. “Don’t be vague, hyung, please,” he begs. “Not about this.”
“My pretty Beomie,” says Yeonjun with tears in his eyes. “Surely you know that I love you.”
Beomgyu shakes his head, beyond words, his throat sealed and his heart racing dangerously. “I hoped,” he says, soft and cracking. “But I still can’t believe it.”
“I’ll keep telling you,” Yeonjun says. “I’ll tell you until you believe it, until you can’t remember what it was like to not know how much I love you.”
And so he does. Again and again, in between kisses and sobs and laughter, they learn just how much they’d left unsaid for all these years, just how many times they’d missed out on having all this joy to themselves by such a small margin.
Beomgyu learns that Yeonjun had almost confessed right before Blue Hour promotions, but then Beomgyu had begun pulling away and he’d thought it was all ruined. Beomgyu cries then, and apologies over and over, until Yeonjun quiets him with a kiss and tells him that it’s more than alright, that he wouldn’t trade this moment for the world.
It might seem like too soft of a confession for all of the tumult that they put themselves through to get there, but it's a perfect one all the same, and Beomgyu wouldn't change it for anything, not when he gets to have his hyung, his love, here in his arms where he belongs. Though they’ve long since forgotten it, the drama is still playing and the leads are kissing on screen, but they’re far too preoccupied with their own life and their own love to notice.
~~~
The aftermath
Aftermath is perhaps too dramatic of a term, since, after all, this is not a drama. It’s another period of learning, a time to rediscover each other over and over, to learn each other’s bodies, minds, hearts, and souls. It’s a wonderful thing, to discover more of someone who you thought you knew everything about, to learn what it looks like when they’re in love, to have that love directed at you.
It’s not a smooth road, of course, because they’re idols and they aren’t supposed to date anyone, let alone date their other group members, but they tell Soobin and he’s overjoyed that they’ve finally figured it out after all this time of him having to play the mediator between them, and he tells them that he’ll sort it out, that he’ll do anything to ensure that they’re happy. Kai and Taehyun react with over-the-top joy underlaid by a strange melancholy that they won’t dissect until much later, until they look a little bit too closely and have to have the do you think they’re like us conversation. It’s Soobin who takes the bullet of telling their closest managers, who are distraught but somehow accept that they can either lose two of their idols or accept that those two move as a unit now, in all ways.
And so things settle, truly this time. They settle into love and it fits them better than anything else ever has, better than Yeonjun and Beomgyu the trainees, the worshiped and the worshipper, both so young and so naive and so unsure of their future. It fits them better than Yeonjun and Beomgyu just debuted, curled into one bed and finding solace and warmth in each other’s arms that they could never find anywhere else. It fits them better than Yeonjun and Beomgyu avoidant, trying so hard not to explode with bottled up feelings and enough angst to fill a million dramas. It even fits them better than Yeonjun and Beomgyu freshly confessed, when they were still so unsure and terrified that this new beautiful thing would erupt at any moment.
They settle into love and it charges everything they do, every glance, every gesture, every performance. They are shaped and made better by it, made whole even as they fuse, and Beomgyu thinks he finally understands the idea of a soulmate, of someone who you is so deeply intertwined with every fragment of yourself that to lose them would be to lose yourself too.
He knows it sounds cliche, sounds like something out of a show that he would watch with tears slowly sliding down his face despite having seen it done a million times before, but it’s his cliche, it’s his love, and he treasures it more than anything in the world.
~~~
The finale (for now)
Yeonjun is always radiant under the stage lights, but today he is especially beautiful. He is gorgeous as he pulls Beomgyu flush against him, breath against his ear and heartbeat pressed into his side, Beomgyu’s heart skipping a pulse so that they can match. He is calling Beomgyu pretty, calling Beomgyu his girlfriend, as close to claiming as he could possibly get, and Beomgyu doesn’t think he’ll ever get over this feeling, this knowledge that he is so unbelievably loved.
He wishes he could go back and speak to those endless versions of his younger self who were so sure that this dream would never come true, the versions of himself that were so entangled in self-loathing and certainty of his demise. He would laugh, gently so they knew it wasn’t mocking, and he would tell them of this moment, and of all the precious moments before it, the moments that make up the collage of his love, the moments that have shaped this life that he dreamed of.