Archive of Our Own ^beta

If anyone asked, Soobin would say that he was an average Christmas enjoyer. It was a nice holiday with everything that came with it, but he wouldn’t call himself a fanatic. Choi Yeonjun, however, he would. In fact, Soobin could call him a bunch of things. Annoying. The bane of his existence. An arrogant show off. Sex on legs (although Soobin would never speak this part out loud as long as he was still alive). And also, the reason why Soobin had grown to despise the holiday season at school. 

To start off, Yeonjun was the type of guy that started listening to Christmas music in September. SEPTEMBER. In Soobin’s book, that was absolutely forbidden. No one except Christmas fanatics enjoyed hearing a bad rendition of Last Christmas when strolling through the cafeteria during their lunch break, especially not when it wasn’t even December yet.

That was also part of the problem, that Yeonjun liked to sing everywhere, and from September on, it was almost only Christmas music. Joy to the world on the days when the song he hummed under his breath was not Christmas themed.

And of course, after Soobin complained about it once, Yeonjun made sure to sing even more often than before.

The most annoying aspect of Yeonjun was that he seemed to live for making Soobin’s life miserable. Ever since that cursed day one month into their first year at uni, when Soobin had gossipped to his friends about Yeonjun—the guy he had ran into on his way to roll call on the first day and hadn’t been able to forget about since then—only to be confronted with the guy in question, Yeonjun seemed to have taken it upon himself to make Soobin regret it. He had yet to succeed with that, though. Because every day, he proved to Soobin that he had been right about Yeonjun all along.

At this point, their friends were used to their constant bickering. Emphasis on constant, because unfortunately, Soobin had the insanely bad luck of all his friends bonding with Yeonjun before their little dispute happened, and after that it was too late to make them unfriend the guy. Trust him; Soobin had tried.

So that was the thing. Even though Soobin thought all those things about Yeonjun, he couldn’t escape seeing him almost every day. It was a downright nightmare.

Now, where was he? Christmas, right. Their school had some traditions surrounding Christmas, like how every student was encouraged to decorate their assigned locker, or how the school board organized craft evenings and Christmas choir practice for anyone interested. And, like any sane person would plan, it wasn’t put into place until the start of December. Even Yeonjun had to abide by that. It did not, however, stop him from going crazy on his own outside of school.

On the 16th of November, a Sunday where Soobin’s only plans had been to sleep and watch anime, Soobin had been woken up by a loud commotion taking place in the living room of his apartment that he shared with his best friend Beomgyu. It was only ten in the morning, but the sounds were too disturbing for him to simply roll around and go back to sleep. 

Coming into the living room, rubbing the sleep from his eyes, Soobin had found Beomgyu and Yeonjun on the floor, ripping apart a huge carton box. He had found out quickly that the box contained a fake Christmas tree that Yeonjun had apparently dragged over to their place. In addition to that, he’d also brought another huge box filled with all kinds of Christmas decorations. 

Sadly, Soobin had been unsuccessful in getting Beomgyu on his side that day. Which meant that Yeonjun had won… and half of his Sunday was spent reluctantly helping his roommate and kind-of-nemesis put up decorations all throughout Soobin’s living space. At least he managed to draw the line in his own bedroom.

That was November. When December finally arrived, Soobin could maybe start to see the beauty in the decorations, and he was kind of getting used to the weird stuff that Yeonjun had put in their—fake—tree. 

The Christmas spirit was starting to awaken in him, and when the time came, he diligently decorated his locker in the cutest wrapping paper he had been able to find, adding some Christmas lights and glitter to give it some character. It turned out pretty cute, he thought. 

He tried not to care, then, when he walked down the corridor and found Yeonjun surrounded by a bunch of girls, fawning over his locker decorating skills. His was a stark red color, with an expensive looking paper as base. On top, there was a golden bow, and a golden ribbon tied in a cross over the locker. To top it off, it looked like he had stamped golden santas all over the paper on his own. 

Soobin grinded his teeth, but tried to keep his face neutral as he walked by. It didn’t bother him that Yeonjun had outdone him in locker decorations—surely he’d been planning for this for months—or that Yeonjun’s fanclub was growing. 

Of course not.

❆

On December 10th, a Wednesday, Soobin was enjoying his lunch with his friends in school. He was sharing a bucket of fried chicken with Kai, and Taehyun was occasionally stealing from them without even caring to act like he wasn’t. Meanwhile, they were discussing upcoming events, with Beomgyu and Hao arguing about what bar they should go to tonight, when all of a sudden the conversation fell silent.

Soobin looked up just in time to see Yeonjun slip into the only empty seat at the table, dripping with confidence that Soobin found revolting considering the outfit he was wearing. 

A red, glittery and slitted skirt covered most of his long legs—Soobin was sat on the same side and couldn’t miss the way the slit opened up as Yeonjun lifted one leg to cross it over his other—and an oversized, light grey sweater, covered in fuzzy santas. It was not a bad look, per se, it was just so… eyecatching, that Soobin knew every single person in the cafeteria must be looking at them right now. 

Yeonjun’s arrival had once again ruined his day. 

“So,” Yeonjun said as he pulled out his own food—a sandwich of some kind–and unwrapped it. “What were you guys talking about?”

One thing about Yeonjun that always got on Soobin’s nerves was that he was so obviously aware of the attention he was getting—and loving it—while acting like he was completely unaware of people’s reaction to him. As if he was just a humble, normal guy.

When Yeonjun took a bite out of his sandwich, looking all innocent, Soobin couldn’t help it when the words spilled out of him. “I think the better question is; what are you wearing?”

“Oh this?” Yeonjun turned to Soobin, speaking with food in his mouth like he knew Soobin hated, and gave him a mischievous look. “It’s the outfit your imaginary girlfriend was wearing last night in your dreams.”

When the others laughed, Soobin just rolled his eyes. Jabs like that were child’s play between them. “Those santas look like goblins,” he shot back at Yeonjun. 

“Please, we all know you aren’t looking at the santas.” Yeonjun quipped. His gaze, never wavering as he looked at Soobin, turned into that furiously flirting look that Soobin absolutely hated. “Tell me what you really think about my bottom.”

Soobin choked on his spit. “Your what?!”

Next to him, Kai gently patted Soobin on the back as he coughed slightly. There was an amused, albeit slightly uncomfortable look on his face—a very normal reaction for  someone sitting between Soobin and Yeonjun. “He means the skirt, hyung.”

Across from him, Taehyun, Beomgyu and Hao’s eyes bore heavily into Soobin. He knew that was because he started it this time, so by law it was his obligation to end it. 

“The color’s nice, I guess,” he grumbled, wiping his mouth and very distinctly not looking at Yeonjun. Grabbing a piece of chicken, he started to frantically chew to avoid having to speak. In his head, though, he griped about how Yeonjun clearly won this time. 

His friends were so used to their constant bickering that they slipped back into their previous conversation seamlessly. Soobin, however, was left trying to sew together his wounded pride and thus wasn’t listening much. 

Only when Kai turned to him with the most puppy-eyed, pleading look on his face, grabbing his arm and shaking him while crying “can we? pleaaaaaaaaseeee,” did Soobin forcefully get dragged back into the conversation. 

“Uhh, can we what?” he wondered, glancing around at the others for help. 

“Huening wants to go to this Christmas market thing in town later,” Beomgyu supplied, taking pity on him. 

“And I said we’ll go if he can convince Mr Grinch over there,” Yeonjun filled in. “That’s you, by the way.”

Rolling his eyes was a permanent condition for Soobin at this point. “I know, smartass. And I’m not a Grinch.”

He quite literally wasn’t. He loved Christmas. If anything, he was a Yeonjun-grinch. A Yeonjun hater. A—ah, he’d work out the semantics later. 

Yeonjun lifted a questioning eyebrow that Soobin promptly ignored. Instead, he looked to Huening Kai. “What’s this Christmas market thing, then?”

Kai proceeded to explain that there was a market happening in the city centre, where there’d be hot chocolate and stands to buy candy and crafts from. “Have you heard about those famous Christmas markets in Germany? This is like that, but the South Korean version.”

While it sounded nice enough, Soobin wasn’t the most excited about the idea of walking around outside at a market for hours. Looking around at his friends, he could guess that Beomgyu was on the same page as him, seeing as he was an even bigger hater of the cold than Soobin. Taehyun, on the other hand, loved everything coming out of Kai’s mouth, and he looked like he was prepared to put on some mittens and walk out right then and there if Kai just said the words. Hao didn’t care either way, and Yeonjun—well, Soobin didn’t care what Yeonjun thought, anyways. 

When his gaze returned to Kai, he considered saying no and suggesting some nicer, inside activity instead—but then the puppy eyes hit him. And the pout. Oh gosh. Maybe it wasn’t just Taehyun that was weak for Kai.

And so, the Christmas market became a part of their after-school-plans of that day. After lunch, they went their separate ways to attend their classes, deciding to meet up again after everyone was finished. Soobin and Beomgyu went together, since they were in the same program.

“So,” Beomgyu nudged him in the side as they walked down the corridor towards their next lecture, “what did you really think about Yeonjun’s outfit?”

Soobin groaned. “Don’t start.”

“You were trying real hard not to look at his legs earlier.”

“I didn’t.” Soobin felt heat rise up the back of his neck, and probably lighting up his ears like Rudolf's nose. He prayed that Beomgyu wouldn’t notice.

Beomgyu let out a snort. “Bin, I know you well enough to say that you wouldn’t have commented on his outfit if you weren’t in any way affected by it.” He wiggled his eyebrows at Soobin suggestively. When Soobin didn’t react, he huffed and added, “Anyways. At least I can admit to myself that he looked hot in that skirt.” 

Soobin’s heart didn’t calm down for the next two hour lecture they had to sit through.

❆

After school, they met up outside on the school grounds. At that point, they were all bundled up, scarfs and hats on to protect them from the cold. Yeonjun was wearing a coat that went all the way past his knees, covering most of his outfit. 

Not that Soobin looked that closely, or anything.

They took a train to the city center, during which Kai was talking animatedly about the stands he wanted to visit. He made the rest of them promise to try mulled wine should there be someone selling it, and gushed about memories he had of going to Christmas markets in Germany with his family. 

When they finally entered the long passage where the market was taking place, Soobin understood why Kai liked it so much. There was a huge mass of people walking around, but none of them seemed affected by the usual Christmas stress. They were passing by the stands at a slow pace, clearly taking the time to check out the assortment of stuff that were being displayed.

“Let’s start going this way,” Kai suggested, acting as the guide. 

The first stand they passed was selling cheese; the second one, scented candles. The further down the line they got, the more different kinds of products they found. It was either food or homemade crafts of some sort, and most—if not all of it—was Christmas themed.

As a group of six moving through the market, it was relatively easy for Soobin to ignore the presence of one Choi Yeonjun. However, he still managed to catch Yeonjun’s eyes whenever he was looking around at the crowd, as if Yeonjun was trying to rile him up by looking at him all the time. That tiny detail irked him, but he wasn’t going to let Yeonjun ruin the experience.

Lights were hanging above as they walked along the street, lighting up the already dark early evening in a warm yellow glow. Further down the street, there was a huge Christmas tree towering over all the stands, lit up by strings of lights and decorated with tasteful red and golden baubles. If Soobin didn’t have the Christmas feeling before, now he definitely felt the magical sense of wonder and excitement that he thought Christmas was all about. 

Close to the end of the street, there were several games stands, offering an assortment of prizes for the lucky ones. Knowing he was too competitive, Soobin opted out of playing, and instead watched as Taehyun walked up to one of the game stands and paid to play. The game involved tossing a hoop onto a set of reindeer antlers, which seemed simple enough. However, Soobin had seen Taehyun throw balls unsuccessfully before, so he didn’t have much faith in him.

It came as a surprise, then when Taehyun hit the antlers not only once, but twice, only missing his last shot. Two hits apparently gave him the star prize: a teddy bear that was more than half the size of Taehyun himself.

“Here,” Taehyun said after returning to the group’s side. He was looking at Kai when he spoke, with a shy smile on his lips. “I got this for you.”

“For me?” Kai looked genuinely stunned for a moment as he accepted the teddy bear. Then, a huge grin spread on his face, and he threw an arm around Taehyun, hugging him from the side while squealing in gratitude.

While the teddy bear was a gift for Kai, Taehyun insisted he carry it as they continued towards the end of the market. Its size made it look ridiculous in Taehyun’s arms, Soobin thought. Even though they were reaching the end, they had really only seen half of the stands, since they had only passed the ones on one side of the path.

When it was time to turn around and go the other direction, a few members of their group—Kai and Hao—announced that they needed to find a toilet. The other four decided to stay where they were as they waited for them.

Barely two minutes had passed before that was broken, however. Beomgyu caught sight of a stand further down the line that sold the mulled wine Kai had been talking about, so he suggested that they buy some for the whole group while they waited.

“How about you two stay here, in case they come back before us,” Beomgyu said as he laid out his ‘plan’, pointing at Soobin and Yeonjun, “and Taehyun comes with me to help me carry.”

Both Soobin and Yeonjun were ready to protest, but after a prompt look from Beomgyu, Taehyun jumped in first. “Sounds good! Here,” he held out the teddy bear to Soobin, using his big eyes against him as he asked, “would you mind holding this while you wait?”

There was nothing Soobin could do but accept the teddy bear into his arms.

“Let’s go, Taehyunnie!” Beomgyu exclaimed, linking his arm with Taehyun before rushing him away.

Internally, Soobin sighed. It was just like Beomgyu trying to make Soobin and Yeonjun get along by leaving them alone whenever he got the chance. 

When left alone, Soobin and Yeonjun were always one of two things: bickering like hell, or suffering the awkward silence. Right now it was the latter, and Soobin did his best to act like he wasn’t so acutely aware of it by looking at the space around them, taking in the many people walking past them, some of which were throwing glances at the huge bear in his arms. 

Embarrassed, Soobin shoved the bear into Yeonjun’s hands. “You hold this,” he said, not even looking Yeonjun in the eyes as he did so. 

Yeonjun grabbed it, probably mostly out of reflex. “Hey,” he grumbled, “why should I hold it? Taehyun gave it to you.”

“Yeah, and now I gave it to you,” Soobin retorted matter of factly, rolling his eyes. 

Ignoring any looks coming from Yeonjun, Soobin continued looking around. On the other side of the path, there was a long line of predominantly kids (accompanied by their parents), leading up to a man clad like Santa sat upon a huge chair. Soobin had noticed it earlier, but hadn’t given it much attention as they walked past it. Now that he had time to spare, he noticed how some children were excited, jumping up and down and talking about what they would say to Santa, while others were the opposite, with sour faces looking like they would rather be anywhere else. 

“You know it’s rude to ignore people, right?”

Soobin glanced sideways at Yeonjun, giving him a judgeful look. Ignore? Since when did Yeonjun care that Soobin wasn’t talking to him? Usually when they hung out in the group, Yeonjun did exactly the same to Soobin. 

After years of dealing with Yeonjun, Soobin was quick to come up with a retort. “Cute of you to assume I see you as ‘people’,” he said, smirking when he saw how it landed, succeeding in annoying Yeonjun. 

“I don’t know why I even try,” Yeonjun said, sucking in a short breath before letting out a frustrated exhale. 

“That’s what you call ‘trying’? Since when have you ever cared about my opinion?”

“No, you’re right.” Yeonjun glared at him. “I don’t care. That doesn’t mean I can’t notice that you’re an insatiable asshole. It’s a shame the guys don’t see what I see.”

Okay, Soobin didn’t often let Yeonjun rile him up, but he simply couldn’t let that stand. “Says the guy who knocked me over with his bike on the first day of uni and didn’t even say sorry.”

Soobin knew that Yeonjun knew he still held a grudge about their first meeting. It was over three years ago now, and Soobin still hadn’t let it go—mainly because Yeonjun never apologized for it. 

“I was late to Orientation day—”

“You still should’ve been careful not to run people over—”

“You could have watched where you were going—”

“Ahem!”

Both of them jumped at the sound of a voice not so far behind them. They turned instantly, and found a woman standing behind a table on which a bunch of items were laid out. She was perhaps in her sixties as well as about two heads shorter than them, and she looked at them with a studious gaze. 

“Are you looking to buy some jewelry, boys?” she asked gently. Soobin followed her gaze to the table, taking in the large assortment of bracelets, rings, and necklaces. He hadn’t noticed any of that when they’d walked here earlier, but maybe he had been distracted. 

Dumbfounded, Soobin found himself answering, “Um, I don’t think so…”

Yeonjun, on the other hand, reached down to pick up a pair of earrings that he then studied closer. They were studs with red—probably fake—diamonds shaped like hearts. Soobin’s mind shamelessly supplied him with the thought that the red color matched perfectly with the skirt Yeonjun was currently wearing. 

“Should I get these,” Yeonjun mumbled, most likely to himself. That didn’t prevent Soobin from answering, 

“I think you’d look stupid in them.”

“I wasn’t asking you,” Yeonjun spat back without even looking at him.

Behind their backs, the sounds increased as some of the children screamed at each other. Soobin simply ignored it in favor of checking out the bracelets. Maybe he could find something nice to give to his mom or his sister for Christmas.

“It’s a shame,” said the lady suddenly, making Soobin glance up from the table, “that kids can’t get along these days.” Soobin frowned, only to realize that she was looking at the queue to sit in Santa’s lap. When her gaze returned to Soobin, he found himself fascinated by her long eyelashes and the way they moved as she blinked slowly. Her eyes were a light brown color and larger than the average person’s, a beautiful feature in an otherwise wrinkly face. 

“Yeah, I guess,” Soobin answered to avoid it getting awkward. Her eyes turned on him, then, and the way they bore into him made him feel like she was scrutinizing his soul. 

“How about an amulet, boys? For good luck?”

Between one blink and the next, she had pulled out a tiny box, revealing what looked to be a shiny rock. It was red—again, the same color as Yeonjun’s skirt, why did Soobin’s brain have to fixate on that?—and gleamed in the weak light from a distant streetlamp.

Something pulled Soobin in. It wasn’t necessarily that he wanted to buy it, but he felt a strong need to touch it. To feel the glossy surface and experience the weight of it in his hand. The woman didn’t seem opposed, so when he, without thinking, held out his hand, she simply placed it in his palm. 

He must be imagining things, but the stone felt warm in his palm. Calming, yet also like it was buzzing with energy. Maybe she’d held it in her hand, and the warmth was simply left over body heat. 

It was a pretty stone. But not pretty enough for him to spend his money on. What would he do with a large stone like that, anyways?

He handed it back to the lady. She seemed more pleased than dissatisfied, and gave him a smug smile as if she’d just shared a secret with him. 

“What about you?” she asked then, turning to Yeonjun. Soobin blinked, feeling slightly off kilter as her attention disappeared from him. 

“No thank you,” Soobin heard Yeonjun respond by his side. The woman kept holding out the stone, however, not seeming very satisfied with the answer. 

“Are you sure? An amulet like this might be just what you need to solve all your problems.”

Soobin glanced sideways at Yeonjun as he muttered, “what problems?” under his breath. But then he surprised Soobin again when his eyes flickered over to Soobin for a brief moment, before he chuckled to himself and reached out to take the stone from her. 

Less than two seconds passed before Yeonjun gave it back. He looked almost spooked, like he’d been zapped by electricity just now. The lady, however, looked pleased. 

“Not buying anything then?” she asked, showing her crooked teeth. Soobin was caught in her gaze once more, and he felt like he couldn’t breathe until she looked away. 

Again, some of the kids behind them started screaming at each other. This time, Soobin heard it better, and he guessed that one kid had ‘borrowed’ the toy of another, which caused a screaming match to ensue. The lady just shook her head in disappointment. 

“You know, if they’d just chained those two together, they’d be friends in half an hour.”

It took a moment for Soobin to recognize what exactly it was that she had said. Once he did, he scowled, sending a judgemental look Yeonjun’s way to see if he had heard the same thing. It was a strange occurrence, to meet eyes with Yeonjun and agree on something, but when he saw Yeonjun’s similarly horrified face, he felt reassured. It wasn’t just him that thought that was messed up. 

“Um, sure,” Yeonjun said, dragging out the last syllable. “Thank you, but we’ll be going now.”

“Okay. Thank you boys.” They started turning away, Soobin already prepared to forget about her and her weird comments, but then she called out, “Don’t forget that love is the key to Christmas magic!”

Just another weird thing that came out of her mouth, Soobin thought as he followed Yeonjun away from her stand. 

“That was weird,” he said when they came to a stop a few stands down, decidingly standing in a place where no sellers would try to talk to them. 

“Yeah,” Yeonjun agreed, and then that was that. Funnily enough, it was less awkward between them after that, even though they didn’t speak a word to each other until Beomgyu and Taehyun returned. Soobin supposed it was some sort of light trauma bonding and left it at that.

When Beomgyu and Taehyun did return, it was with the other two in tow. Together, they were carrying six cups of a steaming liquid that Soobin guessed was that mulled wine thing. He happily accepted it into his hands, because frankly, he was freezing and he loved the sound of something warm to heat him up.

Kai was delighted to hear Soobin tell him that he liked the taste. They continued walking down the street, passing the weird lady’s stand once again—although she wasn’t there when Soobin glanced suspiciously in her direction—and then some. Soobin ended up buying a homemade ornament to hang in their ugly Christmas tree at home, and a bees wax candle for his mom. 

After maybe an hour or two spent at the market, they returned to where they had started. Soobin half feared that Kai would make them go through it all again, but thankfully his friend seemed as tired of the cold as he was.

“Let’s get some drinks!” Beomgyu exclaimed when they had all agreed that it was time to leave the market. They had already settled on the plans of going out drinking afterwards, so they walked confidently to the bar they always went to. 

It was darkly lit as they stepped in. Christmas music was playing in the background, and a majority of the people inside were their age or younger. It was perfect for a Wednesday, not too crowded and not too spacious. 

Hao and Beomgyu led them over to a booth—at which Beomgyu made sure that he got to sit in between Kai and Taehyun, kinda sus if you asked Soobin—where they ordered a round of drinks that were quickly emptied. 

They were halfway through their second drink when Yeonjun caught sight of some other friends of his and suddenly disappeared into the crowd to greet them. 

“That’s the last we’ll see of him tonight,” Kai commented with a heartful laugh, at which Soobin rolled his eyes in annoyance. 

“Kinda rude of him to always disappear on us, makes you wonder who he sees as his real friends here.”

His friends were used to comments like that, so they weren’t phased whatsoever. Beomgyu, though, seized the opportunity to wiggle his eyebrows and say,

“So, you see yourself as his friend, huh?”

Soobin threw his napkin across the table at him. It would have been more intimidating had it not fluttered in the air and landed on top of Taehyun’s whiskey glass. 

The night sped up after that. 

It was a weekday, so all of them had classes tomorrow. That didn’t prevent them from having fun and ordering a third and fourth round of drinks. Soobin wasn’t particularly fond of going to class in the morning hungover, so he took it slow and tried to drink as much water as he could. And he had a fun time. Getting drinks and simply sitting and talking with his friends was one of his favorite pastimes. The fact that Yeonjun wasn’t there most of the time also elevated his night. 

Eventually, though, the older man returned to the group. 

Soobin really hated the way he took his friends for granted, arriving with their group only to escape to his ‘other friends’ the moment he’d gotten some alcohol in him. It happened so often that Soobin was more surprised when it didn’t happen, nowadays. And yet, when he was wasted and in need of a ride home, he would always come back to Soobin and the gang, expecting them to take care of him. 

Since Yeonjun left, Soobin had been preparing the same speech as he always gave Yeonjun when he returned. Disappointment and repulsion. He knew that Yeonjun would just ignore it, but what was even a night out without the two of them arguing and diligently ignoring the other’s jabs?

It backfired, however, after Beomgyu managed to sneak a shot into Soobin’s system. For once, Soobin was too drunk to complain about Yeonjun. 

Head spinning, he ended up in the backseat of a car he didn’t really care enough to check whose it was. Maybe it was a taxi. Oh well, the seats were comfortable, and the cold window was nice to lean his head against. He spent most of the ride back to his apartment with his eyes closed, and once they had arrived, it didn’t take long before he found himself horizontal and drifting off to sleep. 

❆

Soobin’s head hurt terribly when he awoke the next morning. He hadn’t really had that much to drink, had he? Maybe this was what he got for not drinking alcohol very often and then following his friends’ pace. 

The more awake he became, the more aware of his body he became; or more like, his bodily aches. His back was killing him—had he accidentally fallen asleep on the ground again? Opening his eyes to a blurry world, Soobin reached up to rub his eyes—

His arm was abruptly held back, incapable of moving more than a foot or so. It startled him right into clearheadedness, and he focused his eyes on where his arm was seemingly being held down. 

“What the—” 

There was a piece of metal stuck around his wrist, shining in silver where it sat coldly. A handcuff. Following the chain that was attached to it, he found it connected to another cuff, sitting around the wrist of a person sleeping peacefully on the incredibly hard sofa bed that Soobin now recognized belonged to his and Beomgyu’s apartment. Reluctantly, his eyes raked slowly along the naked arm, until they fell on a begrudgingly familiar sleeping face. 

“Hey!” He exclaimed, pulling his hand towards himself reactively, already forgetting that his movements were constricted by the cuffs. The action drew a painful line across his wrist as the metal cut into his skin, and awakened the other party rapidly. 

“Ouch, what are you doing~” Yeonjun pouted, lifting his head and showing off his puffy eyes and his bed head. His expression turned from confusion into a scowl as he started to realize who the person sitting right next to him was. “Huh?” Yeonjun tried to scoot back, but before he did, he looked down at his left arm. When he noticed the handcuff he stared at it for several long seconds—during which Soobin wondered if one of his loose screws had finally fallen out—before he turned his angry gaze onto Soobin. 

“What the fuck is this?” he asked, lifting his arm in the air and forcefully pulling Soobin’s arm with him, making the younger man huff in annoyance. 

“Hey!” Soobin responded, pulling his arm right back. 

“Ow!” Yeonjun exclaimed, returning the favor once more. 

Soobin feared his annoyance with Yeonjun was reaching a new level. “Will you stop that?” he said with finality, glaring at Yeonjun seriously. 

“You’re the one who started it,” Yeonjun muttered. Soobin was about to answer that, no he wasn’t, but Yeonjun didn’t let him start. “What the fuck is this, anyways? Is this some kind of prank from your side?”

Deadpanned, Soobin answered. “Do you seriously think I’d ever willingly tie myself to your side for a prank?”

For three seconds, Yeonjun studied Soobin’s face. “I guess you’re right. You wouldn’t have succeeded with something like this, anyway.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

Yeonjun ignored Soobin in favor of pushing to his feet, inevitably pulling Soobin along and forcing him to either comply or torture his tendons once more. Automatically, Soobin’s eyes raked over Yeonjun’s body, realizing that he wasn’t wearing that eye-catching outfit from yesterday any longer. Instead he was in a pair of black sweatpants—were they Beomgyu’s?—and a white shirt.

“Where’s Gyu?” Yeonjun started down the hallway, not caring to let Soobin regain his bearings. “He’s gotta be behind this, he’s always talking about how ‘we should get along’, as if it’s his greatest wish.”

Soobin pulled his arm back to make Yeonjun slow down enough for him to walk normally, making Yeonjun huff in annoyance at him. “He’ll have to do more than wish for that to come true,” Soobin said, scowling at the back of Yeonjun’s head. 

Thinking back to last night, Soobin remembered returning home with all of his friends—except Hao, who had gone to sleep at his boyfriend, Hanbin’s place—but his memory was blurry after getting into the car. Taxi. Whatever. Had he and Yeonjun really gone to sleep on the couch together? That didn’t make a whole lot of sense; it had to be their friends’ fault. 

“Hey!” Yeonjun started banging on the door to Beomgyu’s bedroom angrily. “Choi Beomgyu! Come out here right now, or we’re coming in!”

They listened for approximately 5 seconds. When no sounds could be heard from the other side, Yeonjun stormed inside, pulling Soobin along. 

The sight they were welcomed with was no surprise to Soobin. Only Taehyun seemed to have woken up from Yeonjun’s banging and screaming. He was lying on his side, closest to the wall, while Beomgyu was at the other edge of the bed, and Kai in the middle. Kai was snuggled up against Taehyun’s shoulder, using his bicep as a pillow, while Beomgyu was spooning Kai from behind, his arms wrapped around his midpart. Soobin just shook his head. Everyone was so greedy when it came to the maknae. Like, he got it, but still. They should keep their hands to themselves. 

“Wake up!” Yeonjun yelled, making Soobin flinch in surprise and earning him a scowl from Taehyun, who rubbed his eyes once before sitting up, inevitably shaking Kai awake from the movement as well. 

“What are you yelling about?” Taehyun wondered, looking Yeonjun up and down once. Soobin felt a bit sorry for his friends, because he too was a little scared of Yeonjun right now. He had never seen him like this before. 

“I don’t know if you guys thought this would be funny or something, but it’s really not! Get out of there and fix this now!”

Soobin had to follow Yeonjun as he ran up to the bed and pulled the covers from the bed. He sent a helpless look in Taehyun’s direction, whose eyebrows were raised high as he had obviously noticed the metal chain that connected the two of them. 

“Ughhh,” Beomgyu groaned. “Stop.”

“Gyu,” Soobin croaked before Yeonjun could yell again. “Please, this is serious.”

Reluctantly, Beomgyu opened his eyes. He released Kai slowly, and the two of them followed Taehyun into a sitting position. 

“Okay, perfect, you’re awake,” Yeonjun said, sounding almost a little manic. “Now will you tell me whose great idea this was?” He lifted his left arm with the cuff connected to Soobin’s right. “Because ha ha, very funny. You got us. Now give me the key.”

“What the fuck?” Beomgyu rubbed a hand across his face tiredly. “Why are you cuffed together? You think that was me?” He looked at Kai and Taehyun, baffled. “Last time I saw you two, you were fighting about who got to sleep on the couch.”

Kai nodded along, looking up at Soobin and Yeonjun then. “That’s right. I had to remind you guys it’s a sofa bed and you didn’t need to fight over it.”

Soobin glared at the back of Yeonjun’s head. “As if I would willingly agree to sleep on the sofa bed together with him,” he muttered, rolling his eyes and forcing Yeonjun to lower his hand; his muscles were starting to ache at this point. 

Yeonjun turned his head to return his glare, opening his mouth to retort. But then something happened that Soobin thought he’d never see. Yeonjun closed his mouth again, letting it go. He released a frustrated breath, saying, “I don’t have time for this,” and turning back to face the others. 

Soobin shared a surprised look with Beomgyu, before the latter’s attention was pulled back to Yeonjun by the angry sound made by said man. 

“Come on, we don’t have all day,” Yeonjun said. “Which one of you has it? I’ve got classes in the morning that I can’t miss.”

When all three remained silent, Soobin grimaced and stepped in. “I don’t know if you think it’s funny to see us suffer, but we seriously can’t go out like this.”

Taehyun looked apprehensive as he said, “It wasn’t me.”

“Not me either,” Kai said, sending a pleading look Soobin’s way. He looked serious, so Soobin was inclined to believe him. 

Four pairs of eyes turned towards Beomgyu. “What? It wasn’t me either! I swear!”

“Well if it wasn’t either of you, who could it be?” Yeonjun asked sarcastically. 

Silence wrapped around them for several seconds. It was clear that none of them were going to budge, and if he was being honest, Soobin didn’t think that either of them would be able to hold it in for this long if it truly were them. At least they would have laughed about the prank, even if they refused to give them the key. 

“Maybe there’s a logical explanation to this,” Soobin said, breaking the silence. Instantly, he got Yeonjun’s attention—his fury—turned fully onto him. 

“What, like a burglar entering your apartment in the middle of the night only to not steal anything, but to handcuff the two of us together, just for shits and giggles?”

Rolling his eyes, Soobin said, “Well no, but you don’t have to be so snappy about it.”

Before their argument could fully start, Taehyun spoke. “Hey, can I see those cuffs? Maybe I can try to pick the lock if we can’t find the key?”

That was as good a suggestion as any. Soobin suggested they all go out to the living room, and after they had sat down on the still pulled out sofa bed Taehyun made them hold out their linked wrists. 

“Uhh,” he said after approximately three seconds of looking and turning their wrists around. Soobin’s eyes followed his gaze, curious of what he was seeing. 

“What–”

Somehow he had failed to notice it earlier, but the cuffs were entirely smooth on both sides. Shining silver with no breaks or visible holes where a key could be inserted. 

“Huh?” Yeonjun let out at the same time. He pulled at his cuff with his free hand, checking every part of it for any hidden surprise. “What the—that doesn’t make any sense.”

“There’s no keyhole,” Taehyun explained to Kai and Beomgyu in case they weren’t following. 

“How can there be no keyhole?” Yeonjun growled, eyes still searching. “That’s impossible—how are we supposed to get them off then?” He started jerking on the chain, as if it was some kind of joke contraption that would break with a little force. As Soobin had expected, it did nothing. 

Suddenly, Kai let out a gasp that made everyone whip their heads around. “What if it’s magic?”

Soobin’s shoulders fell in disappointment. He had thought maybe Kai had been onto something. 

“What?” Kai frowned. “You said it yourself, that it’s impossible.”

“Yeah, I did,” Yeonjun said. “Just as impossible as magic is.”

“Hey, just because you’ve never seen it doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist.”

Soobin rubbed his left hand—his free hand—across his face in a frustrated motion. “Kai,” he said. Before he could continue, Kai cut in, ignoring Soobin’s slightly judging look. 

“Well, if it’s not magic, what’s your explanation then? Because it wasn’t any of us, and I swear I saw Beomgyu-hyung lock the door last night, so it can’t be a stranger playing a prank—as improbable as that is by itself.” Kai’s eyes searched Soobin’s, then Yeonjun’s face as they both sat in silence. “See, you don’t even have a better answer!”

“Okay,” Taehyun jumped in. “Say that Hyuka is right for a moment and that magic is real… could you have pissed someone off that made someone, like, curse you with those?”

“Curse?” Soobin sputtered. 

“Yeah, sounds about right,” Yeonjun muttered next to him, at which Soobin elbowed him in the side in response. 

When Taehyun gave them a look that said ‘just answer the question,’ Soobin thought about it. “I don’t think I’ve pissed someone off lately.” He looked at Yeonjun, refusing to speak directly to him but hoping that he still understood the meaning of Soobin’s gaze on him. 

“Me neither,” Yeonjun said, lifting his hands in an innocent gesture and jolting Soobin’s arm at the same time. 

“Well, maybe something happened yesterday—at the bar maybe, when you were drunk and didn’t notice, or I guess at the market, but I’d say it’s more likely to have been when you were drunk and—”

“Wait.” Yeonjun turned to look at Soobin, for once doing so without a look of distaste. “That old woman. Next to the line to Santa’s lap.”

A gasp escaped Soobin. “Oh my god.” He blinked stupidly a couple of times, only to realize their other friends were looking at them questioningly. “Uh, we uh. When you went to get some mulled wine we were by this stand, and I don’t know, we started arguing about something and—”

“And there was this lady,” Yeonjun interrupted seamlessly. “She said…”

Soobin’s head was hurting just thinking about it. “The key to Christmas is magic, or something like that.” 

A hand hit the back of his head softly. “No, stupid. Didn’t she say something about chaining kids together?”

“What!?” Kai exclaimed, his face the picture of alarm. 

“Uhh, not like that,” Yeonjun reassured, waving his hand in front of him. “She said like, if you chained two kids together, they would be friends in half an hour.”

“Which sounds kind of suspicious now that you say it,” Soobin said, trying to ignore the fact that he was agreeing with Yeonjun. 

“Oh my god,” Beomgyu said, holding a hand in front of his mouth. “Did you really get cursed by a crazy witch?”

Beomgyu’s words started up a chaotic argument between the five of them for approximately twenty seconds. Taehyun was rolling his eyes, saying it was rude to call someone a ‘crazy witch’, Kai was clapping excitedly about having been right, and Soobin and Yeonjun was arguing that they couldn’t have known she was a witch and they didn’t exactly do anything wrong and it didn’t even make sense that she would—

“Anyways!” Taehyun said, the first one to grow tired of the assortment of voices speaking at the same time. When the rest of them grew silent, he sucked in a breath and continued. “So, let’s say that the woman you met really put a curse on you. Now what?”

“We should go back to the market,” Beomgyu suggested, holding up a finger as if he just came up with an incredible idea. 

Soobin rolled his eyes. He still didn’t know if he fully trusted this idea that they had been cursed with ‘magical handcuffs’, but sure. Okay. He could humor his friends about this.

Even Yeonjun agreed with Beomgyu’s idea. They ended up settling on going back to the market as soon as possible, all five of them together (they agreed that Soobin and Yeonjun together couldn’t be trusted to make it to the market without getting cursed by another witch—an argument that Soobin found utterly insulting). 

So that’s what they did. They took the train back to the same place they’d been yesterday, only to realize that they were way too early. It was only 8 in the morning, and one Naver search told them the market wouldn’t open until 3 in the afternoon. 

“Are you kidding me?” Yeonjun said with an attitude that Soobin didn’t appreciate. He had his right arm wrapped around himself, since they were only able to wear their coats on one arm thanks to the handcuffs, and seemed to be shaking from the cold. Soobin was the same, though he tried to hide it.

Beomgyu and the other two stood a few steps away, discussing something amongst themselves that Soobin was curious to find out. When Yeonjun spoke again, though, he forgot all about his other friends’ presence. 

“So we need to go to school like this!?”

“Hey, I don’t exactly like being stuck like this either.”

Yeonjun gave him a nasty side-eye.“You do realize that we don’t share the same classes, right? We can’t go our separate ways and attend our lectures at the same time.”

Oh. Soobin hadn’t thought about that. 

“Dibs on going to my lectures first!”

❆

With Taehyun acting as the mediator, they managed to settle on some ‘fair agreements’, namely that they would go to half of Soobin’s lectures and half of Yeonjun’s. Neither of them were happy about it, but seeing as they didn’t really have a choice, they could both (begrudgingly) agree that it was the most fair settlement. 

So, they went to school like that. Or, Soobin and Yeonjun did. The other three were all lucky enough to not have any morning lectures, so they ended up taking the train back to the apartment where Soobin could guess they would fall right into the same formation as earlier on the bed. 

Being stuck to Yeonjun was a strange experience for more than one reason. Soobin had never actually cared enough to take notice of Yeonjun’s habits, or his studies. He knew that Yeonjun was a chemistry major but… other than that, he knew nothing. Maybe it wasn’t the best trait of his, but he had to admit that he kind of tuned out every time the topic of Yeonjun’s classes came up in conversation. 

One thing Soobin did know, however, was that Yeonjun took his studies seriously. After hearing Yeonjun bragging about his scores on his exams or the praise he’d gotten from his teachers, Soobin was very much aware that Yeonjun did well in school. If he hadn’t known it before, the way Yeonjun made Soobin rush through the corridor so they wouldn’t be late, or the way he took notes would probably have given him away. 

The lecture was some advanced level chemistry so Soobin understood very little. As a literature major, the nature sciences had always been an abstract, complicated wisdom to him. He wouldn’t admit it in front of Yeonjun, but he found it quite boring. 

Maybe that was how he ended up spending most of Yeonjun’s lecture studying the man that he was currently chained together with. Speaking of which, Yeonjun had insisted that none of his classmates could see the cuffs, so he ended up forcing Soobin to sit close to him and pretend like they were holding hands, hiding the cuffs and chain in their long sleeved shirts. As if holding hands with your nemesis was any worse than unwillingly being chained together…

Anyways. Soobin was studying Yeonjun. He tried to do it discretely, but honestly, Yeonjun was so focused on his lecture that he probably wouldn’t have noticed Soobin’s staring had he had a burning laser vision (like Cyclops from X-men, get it?).

From simply looking at Yeonjun, Soobin wouldn’t clock him as a good student. Not that you had to look a certain way to be good in school but… well, maybe it was just Soobin’s Anti-Yeonjun bias that was speaking when he thought he didn’t look like the type to focus on his studies. 

The lecture was so long that Soobin ended up slouching on the table in front of him after the midpart break. With his right hand stuck close to Yeonjun’s (he was NOT holding Yeonjun’s hand, even if Yeonjun made sure that it would look like it by keeping his and Soobin’s hand stuck between them), he couldn’t doodle as an outlet of his boredom, so he found himself getting sleepy instead. 

He was woken up by a harsh movement that made him jerk in surprise. Blinking, he realized the lecture was finished, and the people around them were packing up. 

Yeonjun’s head was turned away from him, obviously ignoring him. 

Someone blew a whistle behind Soobin that made him turn to look at the person with interest. 

There he saw Choi San, one of Yeonjun’s friends that Soobin wished he hadn’t learnt the name of. With strong cheekbones and sharp eyebrows, he was definitely a looker. Not Soobin’s type, though. 

Said man was currently looking at Soobin with humor in his eyes. He was standing in their row, having just reached them since he and the rest of Yeonjun’s friends had been sitting in a different row the entire lecture (since Yeonjun had made sure to avoid them as soon as they entered the room). 

“So,” San said, dragging out the word. “You two finally made up, huh? It took you long enough, Jun-ah, I was starting to think you’d never—”

Yeonjun whipped around like a whirlwind. “Shut UP,” he hissed, giving San the type of poisonous look that Soobin was used to getting. 

San only laughed, holding up his hands in defense. “Okay, okay, I won’t embarrass you in front of your new baby.” He smiled so widely that his eyes turned into slits and his dimples became starkly visible. Then, he leaned closer to Soobin, pretending like he was whispering to him, “I’ll save the juicy stuff for later in the relationship.” He ended it by sending a little wink at Soobin, before he wiggled his eyebrows at Yeonjun and walked away to join the rest of Yeonjun’s friends at the door. 

Relationship!?

Soobin’s brain short-circuited for a moment. 

“Ignore anything he just said,” Yeonjun groaned, grimacing at the sound of his friends laughing. One look told Soobin they were still by the door, looking at them. Maybe they were waiting for Yeonjun to join them? “He’s a douchebag. Just wants to torture me.”

“Sure,” Soobin said, his eyes returning to Yeonjun. It came out less confidently than he had intended. He couldn’t help but notice that Yeonjun was pointedly avoiding Soobin’s eyes. 

After a couple of seconds, he seemed to notice the same thing as Soobin had, and he called out to his friends that they could leave before him. 

And then, when they left the lecture hall to go over to Soobin’s lecture, Soobin noticed another strange thing. 

Yeonjun’s ears were bright as a red light. 

❆

The market looked very different in the daylight. Soobin could guess that not much had changed since yesterday, but it was just something about the dark that made everything much cosier. 

Being men on a mission, it didn’t take them long to find their way back to the jewelry stand, not thanks to Soobin, though. They only bickered a little bit on the way, with Soobin arguing that Yeonjun was walking too fast and making the cuffs sting against his skin, while Yeonjun complained that Soobin had the memory of a goldfish. 

When they finally made it to the stand, however, there was a young girl manning the table. She must’ve been fifteen or something like that, Soobin thought. And nowhere in sight was the old lady from yesterday.

“Um, hello?” Soobin ignored the way he could feel Yeonjun’s eyes boring into the side of his head at his awkwardness. The girl looked up at him, opening her mouth most likely to try and sell some stuff to him, so Soobin hurried to cut her off. “We’re actually looking for the woman who was keeping the stand last night, do you know when she’ll be back?”

“Hm?” The girl tilted her head in confusion. “What woman?”

“The… old lady who was here selling jewelry?" Soobin glanced at Yeonjun, who was sporting a likewise confused look. 

“Um, I don’t know,” the girl said, “I think you might be mixing stuff up. It’s just me and my dad that are in charge of this stand. I can assure you there’s no old lady; in that case, she was lying to you.”

“Oh.” Soobin didn’t know what to make of that. The woman had clearly been there, and she had looked like she knew what she was doing when she held out that amulet… 

As he remembered it, Soobin’s eyes searched the table for the red amulet. He quickly noticed that he couldn’t see anything even particularly similar to it. Realization, along with dread, started to trickle in. Shit. The girl must be telling the truth. The woman had fooled them. 

“Thank you,” he said to the girl with a bow of his head, remembering his manners. “Sorry for disturbing you.”

He left the stand, then, dragging Yeonjun along without a word. They walked away, silently agreeing that they needed to put that stand far behind them, and only came to a stop when they reached the end of the market. 

“Okay, what now?” Yeonjun asked, sighing deeply as he leaned against a streetlight, scowling as he looked at Soobin. 

Soobin was kind of freaking out. Only, he didn’t want Yeonjun to see that, so he bit down his anxieties and hoped that his voice came out strong. “I think Kai was right. The woman, she—she must’ve been some kind of witch.”

“Oh, so now you’re suddenly believing in all that?”

Blinking, Soobin ignored the way the harsh tone stung. “I don’t want to believe it, but what other explanation is there? Did you notice that they didn’t even sell that amulet-thing that she made us touch? Oh my god, what if it was like a magical amulet, and that’s how she cursed us?”

Okay, so now he was really freaking out, breaths coming in shorter and shorter each time. He tried not to look at Yeonjun, and instead focused on clenching and unclenching his fists. 

“Hey, Soobin.” Suddenly, Yeonjun stepped closer. Soobin abruptly thought that Yeonjun shouldn’t touch him, and thankfully, Yeonjun didn’t even try. He stood close, but a safe enough distance away. What he did, however, was lean down until he caught Soobin’s eyes, forcing Soobin to look at him. “Hey. Stop that. We need to figure out how to solve this, and you crying in the middle of the street isn’t helping.”

Crying? He wasn’t cry—oh, maybe he was. Tears had formed in his eyes without him realizing. They hadn’t poured over yet, though. 

And actually, Soobin didn’t appreciate Yeonjun’s tone. Here he was freaking out, like any sane person would do in a similar situation, and Yeonjun basically insinuated that he was being pathetic for losing his cool. 

“Fuck you,” Soobin said, wiping at his eyes as discreetly as he could manage. He pulled his hat a little tighter on his head and pushed his bangs forward so they would hide part of his eyes. 

Yeonjun huffed and looked away, but said nothing more about Soobin’s state. “There’s one thing I’ve been thinking about,” Yeonjun said then, taking out his phone to type something out. Soobin glared at him as he typed in silence, without saying anything more. He didn’t want to prod and ask Yeonjun to tell him more, because he was being petty. 

“There’s this ironwork shop just a few blocks away. It’s open right now; we could go and ask them to cut these off.”

Soobin looked sideways at Yeonjun. He sucked in a deep breath, then huffed with dignity. “That might be the first smart thing you’ve said all day.”

Walking away with Yeonjun in tow, Soobin smirked as he heard Yeonjun muttering curse words under his breath.

One point to Soobin.

❆

“So, your friends pranked you with handcuffs without a key, and now you want me to cut them off?” said the guy in the metal shop, looking between the two of them with a partly confused, partly amused expression on his face. “Sure, I guess I can help you.”

He was a big guy, even taller than Soobin and built like a bull, with muscles that made Soobin feel like a stick figure in comparison. His biceps must be as big as Soobin’s head. Thankfully, he wasn’t as intimidating as he looked, with the tattoos that covered his arms and reached high up his neck. He beckoned them closer so he could take a look at the cuffs, and hummed thoughtfully as he studied the piece.

“Looks like titanium,” he mumbled, nodding to himself. Then he looked up at Yeonjun, saying, “That’s a tough one. Must’ve been expensive.” His eyes moved over to Soobin now. “What did you do to piss off your friends enough to stick you with these?”

Soobin gulped under the guy’s gaze. By his side, he could practically feel Yeonjun roll his eyes, but that didn’t make it easier for him to answer. He didn’t work well under pressure, okay?

In his stead, Yeonjun ended up answering the guy. “Making us get along, or some shit like that.”

“Ah.” The amusement only grew on the guy’s face. “I see. Well, lucky for you I have just the right tools for this. Come along.”

They were led into the back of the shop. As they walked, Yeonjun stared straight at Soobin, as if there was something he wanted to say but he was holding back. Soobin made a face at him, an angry depiction of the phrase ‘what?’, but he only got an eyeroll back.

“In here,” the guy said, leading them through a door and into what looked like a workshop, with benches lining the walls filled with tools and clutter. As Soobin looked around, he noticed a few machines that looked old enough that they could belong in a museum.

“Okay, let’s put you on here.” The guy showed them to a table that was mostly empty, and looked to be reinforced with steel to make the top sturdy. He waited for Yeonjun and Soobin to place their arms there, and then he brought out two large plexi glass pieces, handing them one each. Next, they were given ear covers, before it was time for business.

Soobin kept his eyes shut as the guy turned on his machine—a carbide tipped blade cutter, he had called it—and put it to work against the cuffs. With his ears covered, the muffled sounds of metal screeching against metal were the only thing he could hear, and so he assumed it was working.

It must’ve gone on for one, maybe two minutes before the sounds finally tuned out. At that, Soobin sucked in a breath and opened his eyes.

Only to see that the cuffs were still there, intact and in mint condition.

“It didn’t work?” Yeonjun asked the guy, who looked like his world had been turned upside down.

Shaking his head, the guy said, “It doesn’t make sense. It should work.” He leaned closer, narrowing his eyes as he looked at the chain between their cuffs. “It at least should’ve left a mark but… it looks completely untouched.”

A lump formed in Soobin’s throat, making it hard for him to swallow.

“Do you have any other machines that we could try?” Yeonjun asked. Soobin kind of hated that he was being so calm right now, when Soobin felt like the world was starting to tilt sideways.

At Yeonjun’s suggestion, they tried another machine. And a third one. Yet the result remained the same.

“I don’t know what kind of metal this is, guys, but it looks like I can’t help you.”

So, after spending more than half an hour at that metal shop, they walked out of there no luckier than they walked in.

When they arrived back at the apartment later, they were both in a horrendous mood after having fought for half the way back, and then given each other the silent treatment for the other half.

Beomgyu was lounging on the couch as they entered, Yeonjun slamming the door hard enough to reveal his current mood. Soobin met Beomgyu’s gaze as soon as the younger man turned around. No words had to be spoken between them for Beomgyu to know how stressed Soobin was feeling, so Beomgyu jumped to his feet and approached them.

“I see your market visit was unsuccessful,” he said in a pretend cheery tone.

“Yeah, that woman probably wasn’t even working there,” Soobin replied in a small, tired voice. He didn’t want to look back at Yeonjun, who had straightened after removing his shoes and was simply standing there, looking angry. “Then we went to a metal workshop to try and cut it off, but nothing was working…”

“Really?” Beomgyu frowned. “What does that mean, then?”

Yeonjun let out one of the heaviest sighs Soobin had heard. “It means that Kai was probably right, and now we are stuck. There’s no getting out of this one so easily.”

Yeah. They really were stuck. The whole day had passed, and it was only now fully settling in for Soobin. 

“Well, you could look at the bright side,” Beomgyu started, only to fall silent as they both gave him murderous glares. 

“If you say ‘this is an opportunity for us to try to get along’,” Yeonjun growled, “I will literally strangle you.”

“But you would get along so well!” Beomgyu whined in response, taking a step back when Yeonjun narrowed his eyes at him. “You’re literally the sweetest guys separately, but together you’re like two venomous snakes fighting for dominance. It’s getting tiring to see.”

“Yeah, well, your opinion doesn’t really matter,” Yeonjun snapped. 

“Hey,” Soobin clenched his jaw, facing Yeonjun. “Don’t talk to him like that.”

Whenever they ended up in this same position, squaring up against each other, Soobin always took pride in the fact that he was taller than Yeonjun. He could tell that it bothered Yeonjun that he had to look up at him, even if their height difference wasn’t that big. 

Yeonjun’s eyes bore into Soobin, but he didn’t respond. Instead, he took his time studying Soobin’s face, perhaps searching for something there. When he didn’t seem to find it, he looked away with a bored look on his face, saying, “Whatever. We have another problem, anyways.”

Frowning, Soobin asked, “Huh? What problem?”

“I need to pee.”

❆

“Actually, this is really funny,” Beomgyu cackled outside the door which Soobin had locked to prevent him from coming inside. 

“Shut the fuck up,” Soobin called back. He and Yeonjun were both just standing in the middle of the bathroom, looking at each other hopelessly.

“Ah, I wish Taehyun and Kai were here,” they heard Beomgyu say to himself, before it sounded like he walked away, which was for his own good. 

“Uh, how do we do this?” Soobin ended up being the first to voice their predicament. It wasn’t like he had never been in the bathroom at the same time as a friend, it was just that… he’d never thought he would have to experience it with Yeonjun. 

“I’ll go first,” Yeonjun said. They had both held it all day just for the purpose of preventing having to do this, but it seemed like Yeonjun really couldn’t keep it in much longer. “Just… turn your back, and then I’ll go. And don’t you dare sneak a peak.”

With a disgusted look on his face, Soobin snarled. “As if I want to know what’s in your pants. No thank you.”

Yeonjun’s eyes lit up with a flirtatious fire that Soobin loathed to see. “Considering what I’ve heard about your history of hookups, I think you’d be more than interested in what’s in my pants, actually.”

“Ugh,” Soobin said as he rapidly turned his back to Yeonjun, ignoring the way Yeonjun laughed at him. His cheeks blazed hot at the mere thought of Yeonjun hearing about Soobin’s history… who had even told him—

Beomgyu. It had to be. 

It didn’t take long for Yeonjun to finish, and then it was Soobin’s turn. He did his business quickly, choosing not to say a word to Yeonjun in fear of growing speechless once more. After he was done, they left the bathroom, only to find Beomgyu outside the door, putting his phone in their faces. 

“Say hi to Taehyunnie and Kai,” he exclaimed, announcing that the younger two were apparently on a facetime call with him. 

Five minutes later, the three of them were seated in the living room in front of Beomgyu’s phone, which had been prompted up on the table. On the screen, Taehyun and Kai were visible, and they were listening intently as Soobin and Yeonjun explained what was going on. Soobin was secretly hoping that one of their friends would come up with a brilliant plan that would solve this whole thing, because the more he thought about it himself, the less hope he had about getting out of this smoothly. 

“I can’t really think of any other reasonable solution,” Taehyun ended up saying in a defeated tone. And oh no. If Taehyun didn’t see a solution, it really meant they were screwed.

“I guess you two just have to learn to live together for now,” Kai said. 

A loud cackle escaped Beomgyu. “And you’ll need to sleep in the same bed.”

Soobin couldn’t stop the pout that formed on his lips, and when his friends all laughed he looked to the side and realized that Yeonjun was sporting a similar looking expression. For a moment they looked at each other, and an agreed discomfort passed between them. Last night they had slept next to each other, but it had been unwillingly—unknowingly. And now they would have to sleep next to each other for an unknown period of time…

Soobin wanted to scream. 

But at the same time, he thought, sleeping next to Yeonjun was not the worst part of his predicament. Being next to Yeonjun all his waking hours was much worse. 

Looking away from Yeonjun, Soobin attempted to cross his arms over his chest, only to be restricted by the handcuffs–again. He grunted in frustration, muttering, “I hate this,” under his breath. Judging by the hateful glare he could feel burning into his skin, Yeonjun must have heard him. 

“You think this is so fun for me?” Yeonjun snapped. “I have dance class twice per week that I can’t go to—one of which is, like, right now—because I’m chained to a bumbling buffoon with two left feet. Not to mention; my classmates were having a good laugh at seeing us in class together, and that was just today.”

“I couldn’t care less what your classmates think,” Soobin said with a roll of his eyes. 

“Well, maybe you should—”

“Guys.” Beomgyu let out a tired sigh. He sounded like he always did when the three of them were together and Yeonjun and Soobin inevitably started fighting. When the whole group was there, they would just ignore them and let them come to an end on their own—because their bickering would always end with one of them winning—but when they were just three, it was a different situation. 

“Actually there’s something I’ve been thinking of,” said Taehyun on the screen, pulling their attention over to him. Soobin blushed, having forgotten that he and Kai were there for a moment. “With the handcuffs, how are you going to change clothes? You wore your jackets on only one side earlier today, so are you going to have to keep the same shirts on indefinitely?”

Soobin gulped. He had briefly thought about that too, but since he had hoped they would solve it all by going back to the market, he had stopped thinking about it. 

“I don’t know, it’s not like we can—”

“Let me try something.” Yeonjun spoke in a low voice at the same time as Soobin answered Taehyun. When Soobin looked to the side, he nearly got jumpscared by the sight of Yeonjun pulling his shirt over his head. 

“Why are you even—what?”

All five of them were watching Yeonjun, so an audible gasp sounded in the room as they saw Yeonjun bunch the T-shirt together over his left arm, as he was probably planning to keep it there, only to see the chain go straight through the fabric. Suddenly, Yeonjun was sitting there, bare-chested and his t-shirt in his hands, completely free. 

“How the fuck…” Even Yeonjun was surprised, not having anticipated this result. 

At the same time, Soobin was having a hard time keeping his eyes away from Yeonjun’s naked chest. He might have seen Yeonjun without a shirt a couple of times over the years—they had gone to the beach at some point, for example—but he had never seen it like this. Up close and so… defined. Had he started working out more recently?

Unfortunately, Yeonjun noticed Soobin’s flickering and flustered gaze. “Like what you see?”

“Ugh,” Soobin answered, slapping Yeonjun on the arm with his free hand. He glanced at the others, wondering if they too were as perplexed by Yeonjun’s chest, but they seemed more interested in discussing what had just happened with the handcuffs. Which was… Fair. 

Beomgyu leaned over and grabbed the chain, trying to push one of his hands through it multiple times. It didn’t seem to give. “Okay, this is really weird.”

“See, I was right,” Kai was saying on the screen, and when Soobin looked at him, he saw he was sitting extremely close to the camera, trying to see better. Taking pity on him, Soobin grabbed the phone and held it up closer to the cuffs. “Thanks. But it must be magic, right? We should try it again just to make sure—Soobin, take off your shirt.”

Aghast, Soobin looked around. “I’m not taking off my shirt in the middle of the living room just like that!”

“Why not, scared we’re gonna judge?” 

Soobin fully ignored Yeonjun’s teasing and looked only at the screen. “Do we really need to see it again, anyways?”

Glancing up, he saw Beomgyu whisper something in Yeonjun’s ear, which prompted him to move. Soobin narrowed his eyes, but when he realized what he was doing, he made sure to point the camera to him so that the other two could see. 

They all watched in interest as Yeonjun pulled his shirt over his head. Once again, the chain passed right through it. Now that he was looking closer, Soobin could swear he saw the metal flicker, as if it momentarily turned into air as the fabric passed it. 

“I’m sorry guys, but that’s so cool,” Kai exclaimed with a clap.

“How could the metal just…” Taehyun leaned back in his seat, letting out a defeated sigh. “Yeah, I guess it has to be magic, there’s no other explanation.”

“That’s why it didn’t work to cut them off,” Soobin said, thinking out loud. He looked at Taehyun—the smart one—as he spoke his theory, “it’s like the magic makes sure the chain is still there to do what it needs to do, but when it comes to stuff like our clothes, it doesn’t care to let it through.”

“You’re speaking as if ‘it’ has a mind of its own,” Yeonjun said in an annoyed tone. “And what do you mean the chain ‘needs to do’?”

“Isn’t it obvious?” Soobin said, matching his tone. “It’s there to keep the two of us together.” A mind-blowing idea hit him, and suddenly he realized that the woman must have been talking about them at the market. 

“You know, if they’d just chained those two together, they’d be friends in half an hour.”

He gasped, and the other four looked at him expectantly, waiting for him to reveal what he just realized. 

“I think she chained us together to make us get along.”

❆

Beomgyu gloated at the fact that the Witch—as they all now called her—had met them for all but five seconds and came to the same conclusion as him: that they needed to get over themselves and make up. 

It wasn’t like Beomgyu was the only one of their friends who had ever suggested that they just sit down and talk about their differences so that they could put it behind them. Taehyun had literally tried to have an intervention with them once. And Kai resorted to lots of pouting and sad faces whenever either of them refused to agree to hang out with the other. Even Hao and Hanbin—of which Soobin was closer with the former, and Yeonjun with the latter—had attempted to invite them out, only the two of them, to try and make them see that the other wasn’t so bad. 

But Beomgyu was the most insistent one. Soobin swore that his best friend mentioned Yeonjun and how they would be good friends if they just ‘talked to each other like normal people’ at least once per day, in some way. He had no idea how often he said the same thing to Yeonjun, though. 

Even Yeonjun’s friends, one of whom Soobin had met in his classes today—it wasn’t the first time he ever saw them, but it was the first time he formally met and interacted with one of them—had seemed well aware of their indifferences. 

Though, now that Soobin thought about it, San hadn’t seemed weirded out by the fact that Soobin was there. He seemed to be more like Beomgyu, excited about the prospect of them finally getting along. 

“So, the only way to break the chain is to get the two of you to get along?” Taehyun asked, voicing what they were all thinking. 

Beomgyu laughed. “I think they might be chained together forever, then.”

Soobin slapped him on the arm, giving him an angry look. “That’s not funny.”

“It is,” Beomgyu argued. “Cuz’ I’ve been trying to get the two of you to get along for years, and you both literally refuse to even try.” A devilish gleam came into his eyes then. “Now you have no choice, though. Ah, why didn’t I think of this.”

Soobin glared at him for several seconds. Then, he breathed out in frustration and looked at Yeonjun. 

So, if they wanted to get out of this, they needed to make up and get along? Fine. Okay. Soobin could do that. How hard could it be? 

It wasn’t like they needed to be friends or anything, right?

❆

Later that night, Soobin realized that it was, in fact, hard to get along with Yeonjun. Just because he had said “okay, let’s get along from now on,” and shook his hand didn’t mean that all the tension and arguments and anger between them had been erased. 

He wished it had been that simple. 

First of all, Yeonjun whined about the fact that they would stay at Soobin and Beomgyu’s apartment, because it meant he had none of his clothes at hand, nor all of his beauty products or the protein powder that he apparently used every morning—Soobin literally couldn’t care less. He was about to tell him so, but he held back, knowing it wasn’t exactly helping their cause. It became increasingly hard to stay quiet, though, the more Yeonjun kept talking. 

“You know it’s annoying for me too, you don’t have to mention every single thing that you hate about this,” Soobin said when they accidentally pulled on the chain as Soobin bent down to grab a spare tooth brush while Yeonjun wanted to brush his hair. It hurt every single time it happened, and Soobin was sure that they both were bound to have bruises around their wrists tomorrow. 

Yeonjun just rolled his eyes in response to Soobin’s comment, taking the toothbrush from his hands silently. 

No thanks huh? Soobin thought, once again keeping it in his head when he normally would have said it out loud.

They brushed their teeth in silence, occasionally meeting eyes and glaring at each other in the mirror before looking away quickly. Soobin wanted to sigh heavily at the mere thought of trying to work together with Yeonjun to get along. 

When it came the time to creep into bed, they undressed and did their best not to disturb each other. Because of the chain, they decided it was easiest that they did it one at a time.

Soobin handed Yeonjun a pair of pajama pants that he could use that should fit him, ignoring the face Yeonjun was making as he took them. 

Once they were in bed—Soobin’s bed that thankfully was big enough that they didn’t need to lay on top of each other—they tried staying as far from each other as possible. Still, they couldn’t roll around to avoid facing each other, since their hands with the cuffs had to stay in the middle between them.

“This is uncomfortable,” Yeonjun mumbled, though this time it was without any malice towards Soobin, just a general voicing of how he felt.

“Yeah, I know,” Soobin agreed softly. “Goodnight Yeonjun.”

A short pause.

“Night.”

Closing his eyes, Soobin hoped that sleep would come easily.

❆

Soobin slept like shit that night. Because of that, he was in a terrible mood from the moment Yeonjun dragged him out of bed.

A sleeping Yeonjun was an absolute menace. He hadn’t stayed still for more than five minutes while he was asleep, which meant that he kept waking Soobin whenever he would throw his arm out to one side, or try to roll over only to drag the chain and make Soobin’s wrist hurt once more. 

So, it was only natural that Soobin glared at him as they sat down to eat breakfast together. Maybe if he focused real hard, he could get his hatred to turn into magic that would blast Yeonjun right in his ugly—pretty—face.

“Stop staring and eat your sandwich, please,” Yeonjun said without taking his eyes off the plate in front of him. Without saying much, he had dragged Soobin to the kitchen and started making a pair of sandwiches for the both of them. It ticked Soobin off immensely that Yeonjun hadn’t asked, but still he managed to make the right choices of sandwich toppings. How did he know that Soobin liked to have one sandwich with cheese and one with only butter? 

“I’m not staring, I’m glaring. There’s a difference.”

“If you say so,” Yeonjun sassed back. “We’re going to your lecture first today, so I don’t care if we’re late.”

As much as it bothered Soobin to have to miss half of his lectures, he appreciated that Yeonjun respected the schedule. That didn’t make him forget about Yeonjun keeping him awake all night, however. 

Soobin ate his sandwich, but he didn’t stop glaring. 

Beomgyu joined them in the kitchen when they were done, looking like he had the best sleep of his life, the little shit. 

“Sleep well?” he asked, looking at Soobin in amusement. 

Finally, Soobin had a chance to complain. “No,” he said with a side-eye glance at Yeonjun. “He kept slapping and kicking me all night, I couldn’t sleep at all.”

“I didn’t slap and kick you, you’re exaggerating.”

“Then what do you call it when someone rolls around and throws their arm in someone else’s face? And you literally kicked at the covers, but maybe you forgot that I was also there because that meant you kicked me right in the shins!”

“Maybe my subconscious remembered you were there and wanted to give you what you deserve for being such an asshole.”

“I’m the asshole here?” 

At some point, Soobin seemed to have turned to face Yeonjun, because suddenly they were straightening their backs with the most venomous looks in their eyes. 

Beomgyu just sighed as he walked past them and opened the fridge. “What did I say yesterday? At this pace, you might actually be chained up forever.” He closed the fridge, holding a carton of eggs in one hand and other toppings in his other. “You guys are hopeless.”

Soobin’s resolve fell away at that. He huffed out a breath of air and stepped back, not looking at Yeonjun at all. 

They went back to Soobin’s bedroom to get dressed and ready for the day. Again, Soobin had to lend Yeonjun some clothes to wear, and he didn’t look very happy with Soobin’s choices. Soobin just sighed and said, “Just take it for now, and we can go by your apartment to get your stuff later.”

A few minutes later, they stood in the bathroom side by side, Yeonjun fixing his hair while Soobin picked which perfume to use today. There was one that he didn’t use often which he knew Yeonjun wasn’t very fond of. He was tempted to use it. Maybe he shouldn’t, because it was true that they needed to put in some effort to get along. 

But Yeonjun had kept Soobin up all night while he slept perfectly well. He could be petty, just this last time. 

“Ugh, smells like a candyshop,” Yeonjun complained one moment after Soobin had sprayed himself with his chosen perfume. Soobin had to force down the smirk that threatened to come out as he saw Yeonjun scrunch his nose up in the mirror. “Way too sweet.”

He was still complaining about it ten minutes later when they walked out of the apartment with Beomgyu.

❆

“My class starts in ten minutes,” Soobin complained when Yeonjun started dragging him in a direction that was opposite of the lecture hall he was going to. 

“Let me just grab a few things from my locker first,” Yeonjun said, trying to walk when Soobin promptly stopped. “Come on, I need something to do when I’m in your class, or do you want me to die out of boredom?”

“Yes.”

Yeonjun just rolled his eyes. “It’s just a two minute detour. Tell him it’s fine, Gyu.”

Beomgyu lifted his hands in the air. “He never listens to me, anyways.”

“Come on,” Yeonjun whined, turning to Soobin again. “I’ll buy you a coffee or something later.”

“I don’t drink coffee,” Soobin answered deadpanned. He was sure Yeonjun was aware of that fact. 

“A hot chocolate then. Christmas latte. I don’t care.”

There were people passing them where they were standing in the middle of the corridor that looked at them strangely. That and the way both Beomgyu and Yeonjun were looking at him as if he was the problem made him sigh in defeat. “Fine.”

Yeonjun grinned, and Beomgyu laughed fondly. “I’ll go ahead. Don’t be late.”

They had about 7 minutes before class started. Soobin raised his eyebrows at Yeonjun, who took that as his cue and started leading the way to his locker. 

Seeing Yeonjun’s locker again, Soobin sighed internally. It really was well-decorated, with the little bow and the glittery red paper. It looked like a gift that could be displayed in the window of a very fancy boutique. 

With the little time they had, Yeonjun was kind enough not to linger. He simply opened his locker, pulled out a thick note book and a pencil case, then threw the door shut and turned to Soobin. 

As they walked towards Soobin’s lecture hall now, Yeonjun kept looking at the other lockers that they passed. “It’s a shame,” he said when they passed a section where there were a bunch of undecorated lockers. “It looks sad when they’re not all decorated, don’t you think? I was considering getting some cheap paper and decorating those myself.”

Soobin wondered why Yeonjun was telling him that. “Why? Does it really bother you that much?”

“Well, kind of?”

“Ugh,” Soobin said as they rounded a corner, the lockers not being in their sight any longer. “You’re such a perfectionist. People can do whatever they want with their lockers.”

“Yeah but it’s a Christmas tradition!” Yeonjun argued. “It looks tacky if everyone doesn’t do it!”

“You know some people don’t even celebrate Christmas, right?”

Yeonjun huffed. “What, like you?”

“No. I decorated my locker. I’m just saying, it’s rude of you to assume people are simply being lazy for not decorating their lockers.”

It was a stupid thing to argue about, Soobin thought. Thankfully, they reached the lecture hall just then, and there was no chance for Yeonjun to retort, though Soobin could tell he wanted to from the look on his face. 

They found Beomgyu, who had kindly chosen a seat at the back of the hall, and joined him after Soobin waved to a few of his other friends in the class. So far, they were trying to keep the handcuff thing a secret, so they had to avoid sitting with others unless they wanted to do like yesterday at Yeonjun’s class and pretend to hold hands the whole time, which Soobin would rather not. He needed his right hand to write his notes. 

As the lecture proceeded, Soobin tried to focus solely on what his professor was talking about. In the beginning, it was easy, until he accidentally glanced at what Yeonjun was doing and realized he was drawing something in his notebook that wasn’t a notebook at all, but a drawing book. 

The longer time that passed, the more curious Soobin became about what Yeonjun was drawing. It was a person, he could tell from the initial shapes, but he couldn’t make out who from the bad angle he was sneaking a peek from. 

He kept trying to remind himself that he didn’t care and that he should focus on the lecture, but he couldn’t stop thinking about it. But then, around halfway through the lecture, Yeonjun touched his arm to get his attention. When Soobin turned his head, Yeonjun slid the book over and showed him what he’d been working on. 

It was a drawing of Soobin. Okay, maybe he should have expected that. In it, his eyebrows were turned down, making him look angry, but otherwise he looked fully normal. He would have assumed Yeonjun would make him look uglier just to spite him, but Soobin actually thought it was a pretty flattering depiction of him, if he could say so himself. Yeonjun was quite talented in drawing.

He didn’t really know how to react to that, though. Yeonjun had never looked at him with a face like that, as if anticipating him to respond to him. 

So, he simply nodded and turned his head back around to look at the powerpoint at the front. He heard Yeonjun huff in disappointment next to him, and felt a little bad. Maybe he should have said it looked nice or something but… he wasn’t exactly used to giving Yeonjun compliments. 

After Soobin’s lecture finished, they had to bid Beomgyu goodbye and hurry over to Yeonjun’s lecture. Yeonjun carried his notebook with him, having closed it so that the drawing of Soobin was hidden. Still, Soobin kept thinking about it, wondering if maybe he should say something after all. 

It was too late, though. He had missed his chance. When they reached the lecture hall, this one being bigger since Yeonjun’s class was bigger than Soobin’s, Yeonjun turned to him outside the door and held out his hand. 

“What?” Soobin asked, eyeing the hand reluctantly. 

“Just take it,” Yeonjun said, frowning. “My friends are gonna think something’s up if I don’t sit with them today. This is the easiest way to hide the chains.” He sighed when Soobin refused to move, grabbing Soobin’s hand roughly. “They already think we’re dating, so let’s just go with it. I’d rather skip having to explain the handcuffs to them.”

“So them thinking we’re dating is better than them knowing we’re handcuffed together?” Soobin sputtered as Yeonjun pulled their sleeves down to cover most of the cuffs and chain. 

Yeonjun looked way more put together than Soobin felt was reasonable after admitting that. Did he not care that his friends thought that about them? Did he not feel disgusted at the thought of dating Soobin? 

“Better than trying to explain the existence of magic,” he said, pulling Soobin towards the door now. Before entering, he turned back quickly and added “If they say something embarrassing, just ignore it.”

Soobin’s ear burned with heat as Yeonjun pulled him into the lecture hall. When they went to sit with Yeonjun’s friends, he understood what the smug looks and teasing jokes meant. He did his best to take Yeonjun’s advice and just ignore it. 

Holding Yeonjun’s hand for two hours was… strange. He wondered what Yeonjun was thinking about it, because Soobin couldn’t help but think about it every other minute and he wasn’t the one that needed to focus on what the professor was saying. 

It was strangely… no, he would not call holding Yeonjun’s hand nice. But it was comfortable. Soobin was quite fond of physical touch, and he always enjoyed when his friends would hold his hand. It never went on for this long, though. And Yeonjun wasn’t his friend, so… yeah, he didn’t know what he felt about it. He kind of wished he had hated it, because that would make it easier to deal with.

After the class finished, Yeonjun’s friends tried to convince them to come with them for lunch. 

“Come on, Jun, stop gatekeeping Soobin,” Wooyoung was saying as they walked out into the corridor. 

“I’m not gatekeeping,” Yeonjun answered, rolling his eyes. Soobin felt kind of really awkward being in the middle of this conversation when he didn’t really know these guys at all. He knew their names—Wooyung, San, and Yeosang were the guys from Yeonjun’s program that he hung out with, but he also had other friends that would sometimes show up in his insta stories, like Changbin and Chan—but he had never really spoken with them. 

He also found it weird that all of them seemed to know him well, and that they kept acting like they were close when Soobin felt overwhelmed. 

“You are though,” Yeosang said, giving a kind smile to Soobin when he looked up at him. “You talk about him all the time, but you never brought him around until now.”

“Just one lunch?” San begged, pouting at Yeonjun with puppy eyes that made him look even cuter than before. 

Soobin didn’t know how anyone could say no to those people. But Yeonjun must be used to this kind of behaviour, because he simply said, “Sorry, we have to talk to Beomgyu about something, see you guys later,” and pulled Soobin away from the three of them. They could hear their groans all the way down the corridor.

Yeonjun didn’t let go of Soobin’s hand until they reached the cafeteria where they would meet Beomgyu and the guys. It was only then that Soobin’s brain started working again, and he cleared his throat before saying, “You, uh, talk about me all the time?” He couldn’t quite get that part out of his head. 

“Yeah, I tell them how much you annoy me every day,” Yeonjun answered, his tone more clipped than Soobin had expected. It sounded fake somehow to Soobin’s ears. 

After buying lunch—they settled on simple wraps, since both of them were limited to eating with one hand unless they wanted another fight to start during the meal—they claimed a table and waited for their friends to arrive. Not many words were spoken between them during their time alone, so instead, Soobin kept going over what Yeonjun and his friends had said earlier. 

“Hey Gays,” a sudden voice said behind them, “you can quite your moping, your favorite person just arrived.”

Beomgyu dropped into the seat right next to Soobin, a shiteating grin on his face. He was proud of that one, wasn’t he?

Keeping up the jest, Soobin looked around in confusion. “But I don’t see Kai anywhere?” 

A punch landed on his bicep, pulling a laugh out of Soobin. Next to him, he swore he could hear Yeonjun snorting, though when he looked at him, his face was blank.

“Mean,” Beomgyu said, rolling his eyes before moving on quickly. “Anyways, how’s your two person lifestyle treating you?”

“I just met Yeonjun’s friends,” Soobin answered before Yeonjun could say anything. 

“You’ve met them before,” Yeonjun commented, giving him a strange look. 

“I’ve seen them before,” Soobin said, looking at Yeonjun now. “You always disappear with them, so it’s not like I’ve ever got the chance to talk to them.”

“Who was it?” Beomgyu asked, jumping in to stop them. “Wooyoung and San?”

Yeonjun dragged his gaze over to Beomgyu, slowly. “And Yeosang,” he said with a nod. 

“Right. Woosansang.” Beomgyu nodded satisfactorily. Then he looked at Soobin. “Were they nice?”

It was a bit hard for Soobin to admit it, especially in front of Yeonjun. But he wasn’t a liar, so he ended up mumbling, “They seemed nice, at least.”

Thankfully for Soobin, the rest of their friends arrived at that moment, sparing him any questions about Yeonjun and his friends. Still, he was sure that Yeonjun was not going to forget about it so easily. 

Hao had brought Hanbin with him, so one part of lunch was spent on explaining the magic handcuffs and the whole ‘cursed by a witch’ thing to them, mainly because Soobin couldn’t stand holding hands with Yeonjun throughout lunch as well. 

Several conversations started around the table, and Soobin ended up nagging Beomgyu for notes from his missed classes. There were two lectures from yesterday and so far one today that he had missed—already way too much, in his opinion. 

“Today’s lecture was literally so boring,” Beomgyu told him when Soobin asked about it. “You didn’t miss much.”

Even so, Soobin still needed to go through the lecture notes. He didn’t stand the thought of potentially having missed something important being said because of something stupid like being handcuffed to your nemesis. 

I wonder if that’s a reasonable excuse for sitting out of the exam, he thought to himself, before shaking his head and returning to the conversation at hand. 

“Still, can you send me your notes later?” he asked Beomgyu. 

Next to him, Yeonjun was talking to Taehyun about something, and was being way too animated, using both hands as he spoke. Soobin clenched his jaw, doing his best to ignore that his hand was being ripped back and forth because of Yeonjun’s thoughtless mannerisms.

“Sure,” Beomgyu answered, “but I think you’ll be just as well off from looking at the powerpoints.”

After lunch, there was one more lecture for them to go to; thankfully, Soobin’s. 

It wasn’t that Soobin disliked Yeonjun’s friends or hated the thought of meeting them again, he was just… not mentally prepared. If they, according to Yeonjun, thought the two of them were dating, they might start asking Soobin embarrassing questions. 

He assumed that Yeonjun would want to go to his apartment once the lecture was over, so when Yeonjun told him, “let’s pass by my locker again and then we can go home,” he thought he meant home to him. As it turned out, however, Yeonjun had asked a friend to pass by his apartment, who had left a bag of clothes in his locker for him to grab. That whole thing sounded more complicated than the two of them simply heading over to Yeonjun’s apartment together, but he wasn’t about to complain.

They headed back to the apartment, and not much was said between them on the way. It might not be huge progress, but at least it meant they weren’t arguing, so Soobin decided to see it as such.

When they arrived, they found Beomgyu—who had gone ahead without them since he was, apparently, in a hurry somewhere tonight—blow-drying his hair in the middle of the living room while watching something on the TV. Other than the sounds coming from the TV, there was also music playing at a high volume, seemingly coming from a speaker in Beomgyu’s room.

It was playing Last Christmas, Soobin realized with great annoyance, because of course it was. 

“What are you getting yourself ready for?” Soobin asked as they came inside. “Going out tonight?”

“Maybe on a date?” Yeonjun asked, wiggling his eyebrows when Beomgyu turned to look at them.

He turned off the blow dryer and picked up a brush that he instantly started pulling through his hair. “Nope. I’m just hanging out with Kai and Taehyun; we’re gonna go to a restaurant and have a fancy dinner together.”

“Huh? Why didn’t we get invited then?” Soobin asked.

Beomgyu rolled his eyes at him. “Well, you’re not exactly in the perfect position to go out right now, are you?” Soobin opened his mouth to retort, but Beomgyu stopped him. “It’s not about you, anyways. Hao’s also not invited.” When they both gave him strange looks, he added, “Sue me for wanting to hang out with the maknaes alone for once.”

“Oooh, okay,” Yeonjun said, letting out a whistle. “I see how it is.”

Beomgyu glared at him, before returning his attention onto fixing his hair again. 

As Beomgyu’s attention was elsewhere, Soobin and Yeonjun went to the bathroom together. They had recently realized that showering was a real pain in the ass—worse than going to the bathroom together—but they had no choice but to do it. It had been two days already, and surely things were not going to get better if they both started stinking. 

So, Soobin was forced to stand with his arm extended behind the shower curtain, allowing it to whip up and down whenever Yeonjun lathered himself. He kept his eyes closed and did his best to keep his mind blank, but as time went on, it got increasingly hard to ignore how close his hand was to Yeonjun’s naked body. 

After some time—way too much time, in Soobin’s mind—Yeonjun was done. Soobin had to hand him a towel before he could step out, and then it was Soobin’s turn.

A while later, they emerged from Soobin’s room, newly dressed and with wet hair. At that point, they found Beomgyu sitting on the couch with his phone in his hand, one leg shaking. 

“You nervous?” Soobin asked him, frowning as they stepped into the room. 

“Huh, what?” Beomgyu seemed to realize his leg was moving, and quickly he stopped it. 

“You look worse than when you went on a first date with that guy a few months ago,” Soobin continued, his tone a mix between accusing and teasing. 

Beomgyu stuck out his tongue at him. “I’m not nervous. Why would I be nervous to go out with Kai and Taehyun?”

That was what Soobin wanted to know. He opened his mouth to continue nagging him, when Yeonjun pulled on the chain. Hard. 

The look in Yeonjun’s eyes was clear. ‘Don’t’. Why he wanted Soobin to stop pushing Beomgyu about this, however, was beyond Soobin. 

“Oh!” Beomgyu suddenly exclaimed after a few seconds passed with Yeonjun and Soobin glaring at each other. “They’re here. See you later guys!”

Hearing that, Yeonjun broke into a smile as he watched Beomgyu run for the door. “Say hi to the maknaes from us!” he called after him. 

When the door closed after Beomgyu, Soobin returned his gaze to Yeonjun. “What was that about, before?”

“What?” Yeonjun started towards the couch, and like an obedient puppy on a leash, Soobin had no choice but to follow. 

“That look earlier,” Soobin continued. 

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

Soobin gave Yeonjun a deadpanned look, and Yeonjun grinned while ignoring Soobin entirely. 

Ugh, so annoying. 

Without Beomgyu as a buffer between them, it turned awkward real fast. At least they were both doing their best not to argue, but like on their way home, that meant they were simply not speaking to each other at all. Not that Soobin was complaining. He didn’t want to talk to Yeonjun, it was just… he didn’t enjoy tense silences. 

After an hour had passed since Beomgyu left, during which they had sat on the couch watching a stupid dating show without as much as one word spoken between them, Yeonjun suggested that they order food. Soobin’s stomach instantly growled after it was brought up, so he nodded his agreement. A minute later, Yeonjun asked him what dish he wanted from the restaurant he had chosen, and Soobin answered. 

That was the most of the conversation that passed between them for that entire Friday night. 

❆

The third day of Soobin being chained together with Choi Yeonjun was Saturday. If someone asked Soobin what the most ridiculous thing that happened in his life was, he would say it was this, because it felt like a plot from a bad hallmark movie. Except this was not a feel good movie about romance or family drama; this was Soobin’s nightmare come true. 

They had made it through the morning without killing each other, and had even managed to agree upon what to do today. Since they were both forced to miss half of their classes the past two days, they had a few lectures to go through and catch up on, not to mention a couple of assignments with approaching deadlines. Therefore, they left the apartment at 10 am sharp, heading to the school library. 

None of their other friends agreed to join them today, because studying on a Saturday was for losers—Beomgyu’s words, not Soobin’s. 

So, it was only Soobin and Yeonjun. There were, of course, a few other ‘losers’ at the library, but it was not nearly crowded enough for them to have to think about being quiet where they were sitting. Not that they were exactly talking to each other as they studied, but still. 

Maybe two hours passed undisturbed before Yeonjun started getting on Soobin’s nerves. 

Soobin was in the middle of taking notes, copying what was said on a powerpoint into his handwritten notes, when he heard a humming sound coming from Yeonjun. It was quite low in volume, so while he had noticed it, he had no problem ignoring it as he continued working. 

A few minutes later, he realized that the humming had increased in volume. Still, he couldn’t make out a specific rhythm, and told himself it was fine. It could be worse. 

Then, as the minutes ticked by, Soobin started to recognize the melody. It had to be a Christmas song, he was sure, and after he thought that, he quickly figured it out. 

All I want for Christmas. Yeonjun was humming that song under his breath, but loud enough for Soobin to hear it clearly. And, what was worse, he kept humming the same part—the first line of the chorus—over and over again. 

We need to get along, Soobin reminded himself. If we want to get out of these chains, we need to stop fighting. 

But Yeonjun was making it increasingly harder for him. The more time that passed, the harder it became for Soobin to focus, until he finally couldn’t hold it in any longer. 

“Can you please stop doing that?” he finally said, putting down his pen forcefully on the table in front of him while turning to look at Yeonjun. 

“What?” Yeonjun said, raising an eyebrow in Soobin’s direction. 

“Singing! Can you stop singing under your breath, it keeps distracting me.”

“Oh.” Yeonjun glanced around for a moment before meeting Soobin’s eyes again. “I didn’t realize I was doing that.”

Bullshit, Soobin thought to himself. 

“Why are you so anti-Christmas, anyways?” Yeonjun questioned, leaning back in his seat. 

“Huh? I’m not ‘anti’ Christmas.”

I’m anti-Yeonjun, Soobin thought smugly, though he refrained from saying so out loud. They needed to get along, after all.

“Um, you seem like you are,” Yeonjun argued. “You always get mad when I sing Christmas songs, you looked like you wanted to murder me when me and Beomgyu decorated your apartment, and you were totally against me helping out to decorate the lockers!”

Soobin rubbed his free hand across his temple. “Have you noticed that you are the common denominator in all of those examples?” He let out a sigh before continuing. “I don’t hate Christmas, I just think it’s annoying when people take it so seriously and start talking about it months in advance.”

“That’s so strange to me,” Yeonjun said. “Christmas is a tradition full of love; why wouldn’t you want to take it seriously? Why wouldn’t you think it’s nice to bring out the Christmas joy early?”

“Because it’s a December holiday! People don’t start talking about Easter in February, do they?”

“First of all, Christmas and Easter are not the same thing. Second of all, that’s such a grinch thing to say! If people keep talking like that, Christmas is gonna become smaller and smaller, until all of our traditions die out!”

Soobin rolled his eyes. “So you’re saying that you were going around singing ‘Last Christmas’ everywhere in September just to make sure Christmas doesn’t die?”

“Exactly,” Yeonjun said, grinning. 

They went back to studying then. After Soobin had pointed it out, Yeonjun stopped singing under his breath, at least for a good while. Soobin did catch him humming a couple of times, but each time he stopped when he noticed Soobin’s glare. 

Time ticked by fast in the library. They had brought all the snacks and drinks they could need, so they didn’t really need to take a break for lunch; they did, however, have to go to the bathroom together whenever one of them was in need. 

“Your bladder is miniscule,” Soobin commented when Yeonjun forced him to take a break again. It was the third time he had to go since they arrived, and in that time Soobin hadn’t even felt the need to go once. 

“You are miniscule,” Yeonjun retorted behind him where he was doing his business. 

Snorting, Soobin said over his shoulder, “middle school comeback huh? I clearly won that one.”

There came the smacking sound of the toilet lid being shut before Yeonjun flushed the toilet. Then, as he turned around, he pulled on the chain, but before Soobin could complain about it, he heard the unmistakable sound of a zipper being pulled up. 

“That was not a win,” Yeonjun argued, frowning at Soobin as they moved towards the sink. He started washing his hands as he continued, saying, “but anyways, it’s just ‘cuz I drink coffee. Didn’t you know coffee is a diuretic?”

Soobin didn’t even know what that word meant, but he guessed it had to do with the fact that coffee made you pee more. “I don’t think you drank that much coffee today.”

“Aww,” Yeonjun said in a mock touched voice, “are you keeping a check on how much coffee I drink?” He finished washing his hands, shaking them off over the sink, then turned so that he was facing Soobin. The grin on his face was mischievous, the sort of look that Soobin knew meant he was messing with him. “That’s so sweet of you.”

Rolling his eyes, Soobin just said, “Kinda hard not to notice when I’m literally next to you at all hours of the day.”

So, as the hours passed at the library, they shifted between studying effectively in comfortable silence to bickering relentlessly, and then back to studying several times. It was normal for them. 

The light outside the library was disappearing, bringing on the evening, when Yeonjun’s phone rang, interrupting Soobin’s reading. He was wearing earphones and trying to read an article his professor had listed as recommended reading, but still the sound of Yeonjun’s voice reached him.   

“Hey Young-ah,” Yeonjun answered cheerfully. Soobin glanced up at him angrily, raising the volume of his music to try and drown him out. He didn’t have noise cancelling, however, so he could still make out Yeonjun’s voice, enough to pick up most of the words. 

“Oh, um, I’m at the library, trying to catch up on some stuff that I’ve missed. Oh. Uh huh. Um, no, tonight is not really great for me.” 

Without thinking, Yeonjun lifted his left hand to assumingly scratch at his neck, which disturbed Soobin just as he was writing his notes, making him draw a long line across the entire paper. Sighing, he dropped one earphone and looked up. “Yeonjun,” he said, trying to catch his attention. 

“Oh. Sorry,” Yeonjun mumbled to him distractedly before going back to his conversation. He put his left hand down again, giving Soobin a regretful look. Okay, so maybe he hadn’t done that on purpose. 

“Uhh, that was no one,” Yeonjun suddenly hurried to say, and Soobin realized that his voice must have been caught over the phone. Suddenly curious, he put his ear phone back on but turned off the music, pretending to read while listening. 

“Oh my god Wooyoung, stop,” Yeonjun said, avoiding looking in Soobin’s direction entirely. “It’s not like that, I told you.” Pause. “No, we’re just studying.” Pause. “So what? I can come out with you another time. No, I will not; stop even suggesting that. And tell San I can hear him, and that he’s being ridiculous.”

Soobin couldn’t help but glance up at Yeonjun then. He kept acting like he wasn’t listening, giving him an innocent look before looking down at his book. What he saw then was a red-faced Yeonjun who looked moments away from cursing out his friends, which was a surprise. It was very seldom that Soobin saw Yeonjun losing his cool. When the two of them were arguing, he never looked like that. 

“Okay. Yeah, I know, I’m not bailing on tomorrow. I’m bringing Soobin, if that’s okay.”

The response on the other side was so loud that even Soobin could hear it, “HE’S BRINGING LOVER BOY TOMORROW GUYS!” and after that, he too struggled not to show how flustered it made him. 

So, Yeonjun really hadn’t joked when he said his friends thought they were dating, huh?

Yeonjun let out a loud groan. “Goodbye!” he promptly said, hanging up on Wooyoung before anything else could be said. Then, his gaze inevitably found Soobin’s, and they sat in silence looking at each other for a few moments. 

“So…” Soobin said, breaking the silence. There was no point in hiding that he hadn’t heard all of that now. “Tomorrow?”

“Mm,” Yeonjun said, scratching at the back of his neck with his right hand. “My friends and I have this, like, Christmas tradition we do every year. I can’t really skip it. Will you come with me?”

Soobin hummed, pretending to think about it. “Maybe if you say please.” 

“Please.” 

Blinking in surprise, Soobin said, “What?”

“Please come with me tomorrow.”

“Oh.” Soobin swallowed. He hadn't been serious, but now he understood that tomorrow was important to Yeonjun. He had no idea what their ‘Christmas tradition’ entailed, but if Yeonjun really wanted to go, Soobin supposed he could do it. “Okay. Fine.”

“Thank you. Sorry for not mentioning it earlier, I just. I didn’t think we’d be stuck for more than a few days.”

“No it’s… it’s fine.” 

They both seemed surprised that they had managed to have a normal, actually kind of nice little conversation for once. It was weird, but nice, in a way. But also kind of embarrassing. Soobin ended up retreating his gaze, biting his lip as he tried to focus on his notes again. Next to him, Yeonjun did the same. 

❆

Soobin was slowly starting to get used to sleeping with Yeonjun. As in sleeping next to Yeonjun. The trick was falling asleep first. He also assumed that his subconscious mind was starting to learn that a few nudges from Yeonjun here and there didn’t mean danger, so he managed to sleep through them the third night. 

The morning passed relatively calmly between them. Soobin was kind of on edge, since he didn’t know what the plans today entailed. The only thing Yeonjun had said was ‘Christmas traditions with his friends’, which could mean anything. Maybe he should have asked Yeonjun what those traditions were. Or he could do so now. It was still morning, with hours left before they needed to go, he assumed. 

It came as a surprise, then, when Yeonjun told him after breakfast that they needed to go shopping in preparation for later. 

“Shopping for what?” Soobin asked, completely dumbfounded.

“Well, I didn’t really plan for you to be there today, so we need to get you some stuff that fits the theme. You also need to bring a gift, and sorry to say it, but I don’t think anything that you have at home works.”

“I’m so confused,” Soobin mumbled to himself as he let Yeonjun guide him into dressing for going out. He could have been more insistent on getting an answer out of Yeonjun, but he decided that he couldn’t be bothered.

The shopping spree only made Soobin more confused than before. They started in a clothes shop, where Yeonjun searched for a specific item that he wouldn’t tell Soobin what it was until they found it.

“What’s your size?” he asked Soobin as he picked up a set of pajamas.

“My size… why—”

“Don’t ask questions, it’s just part of the traditions that we wear pajamas okay? So, size?”

“L is fine, I guess,” Soobin said with a shrug. He watched as Yeonjun nodded and searched through the stack until he found the right size, pulling out a pink set with bells on them. Of course they had to be Christmas themed pajamas, of course.

Soobin was surprised when Yeonjun whipped out his card and ended up paying for the pajamas that were clearly for Soobin, but he appreciated it.

Next stop was a gift shop, because they needed to find something small that was Christmas themed apparently. Considering he didn’t really know what he was supposed to look for, since Yeonjun refused to tell him, Soobin let Yeonjun make all the decisions. He was surprised to see the attention to detail Yeonjun had, turning items over in his hands, sometimes even smelling them. It was amusing and annoying at the same time, because while he looked kind of ridiculous moving his nose between a long row of scented candles, it took so much time. How could this man get anything done if he was this much of a perfectionist when it came to simple Christmas gifts?

Soobin didn’t even want to know how much time they had spent inside that store when they finally walked out of there. They had settled on buying a set of two cute Christmas inspired mugs, one of which said ‘naughty’ and the other saying ‘nice’. A bit much, in Soobin’s eyes, but who knew, maybe it fit the theme perfectly. 

Their next stop came as an even bigger surprise to Soobin. Instead of continuing into the city, Yeonjun took him to a bus station and made him jump on a bus without answering where they were going. The area was slightly familiar to Soobin, however, and it soon became obvious to him where they were going. 

Still, he waited until they had walked inside a building and rode an elevator and were standing outside an apartment door when Soobin finally said, “so… this is where you live?”

“Yup,” Yeonjun answered shortly. He typed in his door code (which Soobin made sure not to look at), and then stomped inside.

As they took off their shoes, Soobin’s curiosity was piqued. He had never been at Yeonjun’s place—obviously—and now he wondered if this place was going to match the idea of Yeonjun that he had in his head.

For someone who had whined a lot about not being able to go home, Yeonjun rushed their visit to his apartment a lot. The moment Soobin straightened his back, Yeonjun pushed inside, nearly running through the living room and into another room. Soobin barely had the time to take in the living room area before he was suddenly faced with the mess that was Yeonjun’s bedroom.

It was almost a shock for him to see the bed sheets thrown off and several piles of clothes laying around on the floor. School books were laying on top of the wardrobe as well as on the bedside table.

Soobin would have thought Yeonjun was a neat freak. If anyone asked, he might not be able to explain it but it was just… the way Yeonjun acted. He was a perfectionist, and always seemed to care how he presented himself. Not that he necessarily cared about how people viewed him—considering the number of daring outfits Soobin had seen him in at school over the years—but he always seemed very collected and put together, in a freakish way.

So to see his home being a downright mess was a delightful surprise. It was perfect material to hold over Yeonjun, and something he was sure he could tease him about endlessly.

When he saw Soobin looking, Yeonjun just muttered a short “ignore the mess,” before dragging Soobin over to his closet. There, Soobin expected him to take his time and search for an outfit, so he was once again surprised to see Yeonjun push some clothes to the side before quickly pulling a red piece of clothing out.

From seemingly out of nowhere, Yeonjun procured a plastic bag that immediately swallowed the item from Yeonjun’s hands before Soobin had the chance to take a closer look. Then, the door to the wardrobe was shut, and Soobin had to rush to follow Yeonjun to the other side of the room.

“What are you—”

Soobin shook his head when he was forced to bend his knees as Yeonjun went down on all four to grab something from under his bed. He had to feel around for it for a couple of seconds before he finally did, letting out an ‘aha!’ before pulling it out.

‘It’ was a tiny item, wrapped neatly in christmas paper that matched the one Yeonjun had at his locker.  

“Okay, let’s go,” Yeonjun said after he’d gotten back on his feet and put the item in the bag.

“That’s it?”

“Yeah,” Yeonjun shrugged, starting towards the door. “That’s all we need.”

It wasn’t until they were going down in the elevator that Soobin voiced the thoughts he’d been mulling over since yesterday at the library. “What are we actually doing today?”

“I told you already,” Yeonjun said, meeting Soobin’s eyes in the mirror for a brief moment before glancing away. Why was he doing that so often, nowadays? Was Soobin just imagining things, or did Yeonjun think he was above looking Soobin in the eyes?

“No,” Soobin answered in a clipped tone. “You just said you guys have some ‘Christmas traditions’, but you never said what that means.”

The ping of the elevator announced their arrival at the bottom floor. As they moved out, Soobin stared at the side of Yeonjun’s head, waiting for a response.

“It’s just some silly stuff, really. You’ll see when we get there.”

Weird. Why did Yeonjun not want to tell him? Was he hiding something? Were their traditions really strange and off putting?

“You know, if you don’t tell me, I’m gonna make my own assumptions.”

Yeonjun huffed in fake amusement. “You do that. We’ll be there in less than thirty minutes, anyways.”

Ugh. Soobin couldn’t help the annoyed grunt that he voiced, which made Yeonjun snicker in satisfaction.

So annoying.

❆

Yeonjun’s annoyingly smug demeanor remained as they jumped on a bus and all the way up until they found themselves by a door donned by the nameplate ‘Choi S’. There, Yeonjun halted, suddenly looking uncharacteristically nervous as he turned to face Soobin. 

“Um, so,” he started, glancing between the door and Soobin’s eyes multiple times. “If they say something weird just… don’t think too much about it, okay?”

Soobin raised an eyebrow. “You’ve already said that lots of times.”

Yeonjun looked sheepish, an expression Soobin didn’t recognize on his face. “I know, it’s just… They can be kind of, you know, too much sometimes, and I didn’t really give them much of a heads up about you joining, so they’re probably gonna be worse than usual. That’s fine, I hope?”

Soobin blanked for a moment. “I don’t even know what that means. Worse than usual?”

Shrugging, Yeonjun just said, “you know, like how friends bring up embarrassing stuff you’ve done or exaggerate about certain stuff to embarrass you.”

“I guess?” Thinking about it, Soobin supposed he could see Beomgyu or Hao doing that kind of thing, but they usually weren’t that bad, at least not in Soobin’s mind.

“Yeah great. So just, don’t think too much if they say something weird about me, okay?”

What kind of weird things could they say that I don’t already know? Soobin wondered, but said nothing. Instead he just nodded, agreeing despite his confusion just so that they could finally go inside. Once he did, Yeonjun nodded as well, mumbling ‘good’ under his breath a couple of times before going to open the door.

As soon as they stepped inside, a bunch of scents hit them at once. It was like they had just stepped inside a bakery early in the morning, and it wholly surprised Soobin.

Just moments after they shut the door behind them, Yeonjun grabbed Soobin’s hand and hid the chain, giving him a pointed look. Okay, so they were still hiding that. Got it. He wondered how long they were going to make it before any of Yeonjun’s friends found out the truth behind why they were holding hands.

“Hey, was that the door?” Soobin heard someone say in another room, and then a few moments later San appeared in the doorway. “Oh, hey guys!” He stepped further into the hallway, surprising them with the red and green apron he was wearing. It was partly white with  flour. 

“Hey, did you start without us?” Yeonjun asked, his tone pretending to be disappointed.

“We just started on the dough!” San said, holding up his hands in the air. “It needs to rest for a little bit, so we thought we could get a heads start.” Dropping his hands, he flashed a bright smile in Soobin’s direction then. “Nice that you could come, Soobin. Did Yeonjun tell you what we’re doing?”

“Uhh,” Soobin glanced at Yeonjun. “Not really.”

San clicked his tongue a couple of times. “That’s bad, Jun. You wanted it to be a surprise, huh?”

Yeonjun just shrugged, once again avoiding Soobin’s eyes. Soobin was starting to find this whole thing weird; why was Yeonjun acting so differently in front of his friends?

San chuckled at him. “Well, take off your coats and we’ll let Soobin in on the secret once you’re inside.” He smiled before leaving them alone, going back inside what had to be the kitchen.

“I’m so confused,” Soobin told Yeonjun as they pulled their coats off, the fabric sliding smoothly through the chain without problem.

Yeonjun sighed, freezing for a moment as he hung up his coat. “It’s not as weird as it might seem,” he said, then let his hand fall down as he turned to look at Soobin. “We started doing this in our first year, so it’s a tradition that we keep between the six of us, just… it kind of spiralled.” Someone called Yeonjun’s name from the kitchen. “Um, you’ll see what I mean.”

“Uhh, okay,” Soobin said. Since they had both removed their shoes and coats, Yeonjun nodded for Soobin to follow him. Before entering the kitchen, he reached out and took Soobin’s hand in his.

It looked like a bomb had exploded in the kitchen, with utensils and ingredients spread out and flour everywhere. It for sure looked like someone had been going crazy on the baking.

“Um,” Yeonjun said when they came to a stop, looking around at the mess and his two friends that were in the middle of it.

Wooyoung was just covering a bowl with some plastic and putting it in the fridge as they stepped inside. He was wearing the same type of apron as San was, a red and green one with a bunch of mistletoes on it. When he was done, he turned to greet them, only to narrow his eyes as he caught sight of them. “Choi Yeonjun, what did we say about the dress code?”

Soobin frowned in utter confusion as he looked at Yeonjun, who just rolled his eyes in annoyance. “We have the outfits with us, don’t be such a bully.”

“Then go and get dressed! Me and San-ah are already in full attire, see!”

It was only as Wooyoung spun around that Soobin realized that under the aprons they were wearing a matching set of silk pink Christmas pajamas, with santas on. The same went for San, though his was green with a bunch of different candies on it.

“Yeah, yeah, we'll change in a minute,” Yeonjun said, though he was smiling at his friends’ antics. “The others aren’t here yet?”

“Sangie is here,” San said with a sappy smile on his lips. “The others will probably be here any minute.”

“Okay.” Yeonjun turned to Soobin, nodding towards the living room. “Let’s go say hi to Yeosang and then we’ll get dressed.”

“Yeah, let’s,” Soobin said in a bit of a daze, feeling like he was barely aware of what he was agreeing on.

“We’re so happy you joined today, Soobinnie!” Wooyoung called after them as they walked out of the kitchen. “We’ve tried to make Yeonjun invite you for years now!”

Soobin looked back just as Yeonjun quickly dragged him out of the kitchen.

“What did he mean by that?” he asked Yeonjun. “‘For years’, what did he mean with that?”

“It’s nothing,” Yeonjun said quickly as he continued dragging Soobin along into the next room. “I told you earlier, didn’t I? Just ignore all the stupid things they say today.”

“Okay…”

They came into the living room, where they found another one of Yeonjun’s friends sitting at a table. It looked like he was fixing some Christmas decorations or something, but when he noticed their arrival, his hands quickly stopped moving.

“Oh, hi!” Yeosang said, going to stand to greet them. He gave Yeonjun a quick hug and then a wave to Soobin. “So nice to see you again, Soobin.”

“Same to you,” Soobin said, smiling gratefully. He glanced down and saw that like the other two, Yeosang was also wearing his own christmas inspired pajama set. His wasn’t the same as the others’ though, instead of shining silk his was made of cotton, and it had a regular red and white Christmas checkered pattern.

“We’re just gonna go ahead and change,” Yeonjun told Yeosang before practically dragging Soobin along to the bathroom.

“Okay, let’s just get this over with fast,” Yeonjun said, pulling out the pajamas out of the bag he’d brought. Soobin took the one he was handed, only to pause when he saw Yeonjun pull out a similar looking one.

“Wait. Did you buy us matching pajamas?”

“I…” Yeonjun froze for a moment, only to continue undressing the next. “I figured we had to be in character, you know?”

“In character?” Soobin had to lean down to accommodate Yeonjun as he put his pants on. “What, you mean like, acting like we’re a couple?”

“Put your pajamas on,” Yeonjun told him when he was done getting dressed and Soobin refused to move. “What’s the matter? My friends already think we’re dating, so it’s fine.”

Soobin stared at him, flabbergasted. “It’s fine? What do you mean ‘it’s fine’? How can lying to your friends be fine!?”

“Shhh,” Yeonjun said, stepping closer and putting his hand over Soobin’s mouth. He looked desperate for a moment, and it gave Soobin pause. “Can you just… do as I ask, for once? I promise I’ll make it up for you. I’ll do anything you want.”

Blinking, Soobin waited for Yeonjun to remove his hand from his mouth. It took several seconds before Yeonjun realized that he should do so, and at that point his eyes widened and he quickly stepped back, his face reddening.

Everything about this situation was a big confusing mess. Soobin couldn’t for the life of him understand why Yeonjun wanted him to feed into the lie that the two of them were dating when it would’ve been so much easier to just show them the chain and tell the truth. Sure, the ‘magic’ thing wouldn’t be the simplest thing in the world to explain, but surely it would be better than pretending like they were boyfriends?

Then there was also the question: why did Yeonjun’s friends assume they were dating in the first place? Did Yeonjun always announce his new boyfriends by arriving into class, holding their hands? No, that couldn’t be it, could it? Thinking back to the last time Soobin heard of Yeonjun having a boyfriend, their friend group had all been informed by a giddy Yeonjun passing around a picture of his new babe on his phone, way before they got to meet him.

It didn't make any sense. But Soobin could see how he was probably missing some essential information here. He decided that maybe it was just better if he didn’t ask. It was enough of a mess already, as it was.

“Okay,” Soobin found himself saying in response to Yeonjun’s begging. “I’ll go along with it. Just don’t get mad if I say something wrong.”

Yeonjun’s face broke into a smile that kind of left Soobin starstuck, simply because he had never seen such a look directed at him before. Not from Yeonjun, at least.

“Thanks,” he said, and that was another first for Soobin; being thanked by Yeonjun. “And don’t worry about what to say, I’ll handle them. Now, will you get dressed?”

❆

They emerged from the bathroom a couple of minutes after they had entered, this time wearing a matching set of red pajamas. It turned out that while they had been in there, the remaining two members of the friend group, Chan and Changbin, had arrived and joined Yeosang in the living room. Therefore, they were met by a loud assortment of greetings the moment they stepped out into the room.

“Oh my god, Young-ah wasn’t lying,” Changbin exclaimed after taking a good look at them. Soobin was confused for a whole second before he realized Changbin was looking at their interlocked hands. “Can’t keep your hands off each other for a single moment, huh?”

“Ah, shut up,” Yeonjun groaned in embarrassment. Meanwhile, Soobin bit his lip, trying not to laugh at Yeonjun’s reaction. 

“It’s cute, isn’t it,” Chan said with a laugh. “The only time we get to see Yeonjun this red is when he’s around Soobin,” he added, nudging Changbin with a grin on his face. 

“Or when he’s talking about Soobin.”

“Or thinking about Soobin.”

At that, Soobin chuckled, scratching at the back of his neck nervously. 

That’s just because Yeonjun hates me, he thought to himself, glancing at Yeonjun for a moment to see that he really was quite red in the face. He was eyeing his friends with narrowed eyes, clearly annoyed but trying to hide it for the sake of ‘staying in character’. If they hadn’t been tied together by these handcuffs, Soobin wouldn’t even be there right now, and Yeonjun would be able to answer their teasing jabs with the truth: that he didn’t like Soobin, and never would.

Ugh. Soobin was already kind of hating this. 

Yeonjun’s hand was warm in his, and it was quickly getting clammy in an uncomfortable way. Soobin wished he could just let go and take a step back, getting some long overdue personal space. But that was the thing; with these damn handcuffs, he couldn’t even do that. 

“Anyways,” Yeonjun said suddenly to his friends, “aren’t we going to start baking?”

A round of laughter passed between them, but after that, it was all business. Soobin was kind of surprised how seriously they took this whole thing, with San coming into the room and delegating tasks, making sure everyone had something to do. Soobin was still lost, since no one had told him what it was they were doing exactly. 

Yeonjun volunteered them to take care of rolling out the gingerbread dough and cutting the cookies—so that was one thing they were doing, okay—and so they ended up seated next to each other at the table, opposite Yeosang and Chan. Changbin joined San and Wooyoung in the kitchen, taking care of the ‘other stuff’ that they were baking that was apparently a secret. When Soobin asked about that part, Yeosang just smiled and told him that “they take this sort of thing really seriously, so they like to surprise us with new recipes all the time.”

It turned out that rolling out a dough while having one hand partly incapacitated due to being stuck to another person was hard, to say the least. Since they were sitting in front of two of Yeonjun’s friends, they couldn’t exactly discuss what to do without gaining suspicion, so they simply had to work together silently.

Soobin looked Yeonjun in the eye and carefully opened his right hand, releasing Yeonjun from his grip. Then, he made sure to wrap up the chain before lifting his hand, begging Yeonjun with his eyes to do the same. Strangely, Yeonjun understood, and then they both placed their hands on the left side of the roller. Yeonjun then placed his right hand on the other side, and they were ready.

With the chain carefully hidden from sight in the sleeves of their pajama shirts and behind the dough roller, Soobin and Yeonjun started rolling out the dough slowly. It was tricky at first, but they quickly got the hang of it.

At first, Yeosang and Chan sent them weird looks, and also shared a few smug looks between the two of them, but after some time, they too got used to it. Conversation rolled easily between them as they worked, and it was perhaps the first time ever that Soobin and Yeonjun talked together in a group without attempting to start a verbal fight.

It was… odd. Bickering came naturally to them, and so when Soobin had to remind himself not to say the comments that popped up in his head, he started to realize just how mean some of those thoughts were.

After rolling the dough and cutting out the shapes for what Soobin realized would turn into a gingerbread house, as well as a large assortment of Christmas inspired cookies, into the oven they all went. Wooyoung was kind enough to come out to get the baking trays, because they were still not allowed to enter the kitchen. “We’re still working our magic,” Wooyoung said while wiggling his eyebrows, backing out of the room with the gingerbread cookie trays in hand.

While they waited for the cookies to bake and then cool down, they helped Yeosang and Chan make some Christmas decorations to put up around the apartment. Soobin thought it was a little excessive, considering the whole place was already filled with red and green decorations, glitter hanging in the windows, and tiny santas peeking out from every corner. But, as Yeonjun said, “there can never be too much Christmas”.

Soobin swore he wasn’t a grinch, but he still held strong that he thought Yeonjun’s idea of Christmas was too much.

At some point, Christmas music started playing around them. Soobin was working together with Yeonjun, trying to fold pieces of red and green paper into a heart, when he noticed Yeonjun humming along. Just like at the library, he got the urge to roll his eyes and tell him to stop, but when he looked at Yeonjun, he paused.

Completely focused on the task at hand, Yeonjun didn’t seem to notice his attention. That made it even more interesting for Soobin to study him, and the way he looked when he was completely unguarded. He had of course noticed Yeonjun’s propensity to pout all the time, but he had never been so close to him that he could see just how plush and pink his lips were.

He was, perhaps, staring at Yeonjun’s lips for a bit too long without realizing it, because he totally missed that he was being spoken to until Yeonjun turned his face and looked at him strangely.

“Uh, what?”

“I said, what do you think about this?”

It’s ugly, was his first thought before he’d even seen what Yeonjun was talking about. Then, he looked down at his creation, and realized that Yeonjun had somehow figured out how to fold the heart together with only the use of one hand, because his left hand was currently holding Soobin’s under the table again. When did that happen?

He realized Yeonjun was still waiting for a response when he saw Yeonjun’s eyebrows go up in a very expressive way that was very typical for Yeonjun. The movements made his eyes widen just slightly, and oh, Soobin had never seen just how pretty Yeonjun’s eyes were.

Panicking at his own thoughts, Soobin retreated his eyes quickly and spit out a “it looks cute,” to a startled Yeonjun.

It was Soobin’s turn to avoid looking Yeonjun in the eye after that. Not that they needed to look at each other so much, since they were sitting side by side, but still.

Soon after that, San entered the room carrying a bunch of now cooled down gingerbread cookies. He put the tray down in the middle of the table, announcing that whatever it was they were working on in the kitchen was close to done now. “But before we get to that,” he continued, “let’s put together this house!”

Apparently, San wasn’t needed in the kitchen any longer, because he pulled up a chair on Soobin’s side of the table and started working with them to assemble the gingerbread house. Soobin decided to keep his hands (hand) away from that, both to prevent the chain from being seen but also to prevent breaking anything. Rolling a dough and putting sprinkles on cookies was something he could do, but when it came to assembling and gluing stuff together, he preferred staying out of it. Instead, he and Yeonjun grabbed a bunch of the other cookies and started carefully decorating them with icing.

“So, Soobin,” San said not long after he had sat down. Soobin had a feeling that he’d chosen to sit next to him in order to question him, and now that it was confirmed, his heart sped up in his chest.“I’m sure the others already told you, but we’re super happy to have you here. It came as a bit of a shock for us, since Yeonjun told us about it only yesterday, but it was a happy surprise, obviously.”

“Uh yeah,” Soobin licked his lips nervously, returning San’s smile shyly. “Thank you for having me.”

“Of course.” San’s smile was so big and radiant that Soobin felt like something melted inside of him from simply being near such pure happiness. “But now, we’re all very curious about how this thing,” he pointed at the two of them, “happened.”

Soobin stiffened, while he felt Yeonjun sag into his seat. Maybe he had dreaded this exact question just as much as Soobin had.

Before either of them had the chance to answer, a voice shouted from the kitchen, “are you questioning Soobinnie? Without me?” And then, Wooyoung came rushing into the room, sliding right up to the table between where San and Soobin were sitting. “Scooch,” he said, and to Soobin’s stark surprise, San pushed his chair back and let Wooyoung dump himself right into San’s lap.

“So~” Wooyoung turned his attention back to Soobin. “Tell us; how did Yeonjun finally manage to win you over?”

“Win me over?” Soobin glanced at Yeonjun for some help. Just like earlier, it was startling to see Yeonjun, who usually acted so cool when Soobin was around, suddenly at a loss for words.

Well then. If Yeonjun wasn’t going to jump in and save him, Soobin supposed he would just have to bullshit his way through this.

“I wouldn’t say he’s the one who won me over,” he started saying, dragging his gaze slowly away from Yeonjun and over to the ones who were waiting for his answer. “More like I was the one that took the first step.”

“Really?” Wooyoung and the others all shared looks between them before they turned their eyes on Yeonjun and him. “So you just confessed?”

Soobin opened his mouth, only for Yeonjun to jump in before him. “No, no,” Yeonjun was saying, and it seemed his confidence was now back in full, “he didn’t confess. At least, not with words.”

Oh no. Soobin knew what Yeonjun was doing now. He was trying to one-up him. Oh well. He just had to roll with whatever Yeonjun would say.

Yeonjun’s eyes sparkled with what Soobin knew as mischief when their eyes met, moments before Yeonjun continued. “It was during one of our usual fights, so to say, when we were over at Soobin and Beomgyu’s apartment. Beomgyu left us alone for a moment, and I guess our argument got more heated, because then suddenly, instead of screaming back at me, Soobin grabbed me by the neck and kissed me.”

Okay. Soobin had had a feeling that Yeonjun was leading up towards that, but the way he ended it still made Soobin’s face flush. It became even worse when all of Yeonjun’s friends reacted vocally, cheering and clapping in delight.

“Wow, Soobinnie,” Wooyoung said, smirking. “Didn’t know you had it in you.”

“Actually, I did,” Yeosang said, which made Soobin raise his eyebrows in surprise. “The way the both of them have been acting towards each other the last three years, one of them was bound to explode eventually.”

“Yeahh, totally,” Chan chimed in, nodding. “The sexual tension was over the moon.”

Sexual tension… Was that what people thought when they saw the two of them arguing? Soobin couldn’t even remember when Yeonjun’s friends could have seen them arguing… Although when he thought about it, Soobin had seen them at the bar a couple of times, and they had passed by the lunch table a few times, so even if Soobin never talked to them directly, it made sense that they had overheard some of their bickering over the years. 

With a kind smile, Yeosang leaned over the table to clap Soobin gently on his left hand, which was laying as a fist on top of the table. “We were rooting for you two the entire time, though.”

“You were?” Soobin found himself asking, his gaze swiping over the four of them.

“Well, yeah?” Wooyoung said, as if it was obvious. “Like Chan said, the sexual tension was palpable, and also the two of you always seemed too compatible to not fall for each other, eventually.”

Funny thing for you to say, Soobin thought bitterly, when you guys don’t know me at all.

Though, wasn’t that what Beomgyu had been telling Soobin all along, that he was sure they’d be friends, if they’d only get over their differences?

“But anyways,” San said, interrupting Soobin’s rapid thinking, “Soobin, tell us what it was about Yeonjun that made you fall for him.”

Soobin tried to swallow as discreetly as he could. It was hard to come up with a lie for that one, so after some quick thinking, he decided that maybe the best and simplest thing was to just go with the truth.

“Well, he’s the most attractive man I’ve ever met.”

He felt rather than saw Yeonjun’s eyes bore into him from the side. With a raging blush taking over his face, he refused to meet those eyes, settling on looking at the table in front of him.

“And I guess,” Soobin continued, without really knowing where he was going with it, “that the way he always knew how to rile me up was a perfect way to catch my attention.”

It was silent for a handful of seconds, during which Soobin felt like his heart would beat its way out of his chest and slap him in the face for being so damn honest. Then, thankfully, Wooyoung snorted and said, “yeah, sounds about right,” and the tension was broken.

Only, Yeonjun had to go and make it even worse for Soobin by saying, “great, are you finished berating my boyfriend now? Can we go back to decorating in peace?”

The answer turned out to be yes, since Yeonjun’s friends seemed more than satisfied with the answers they’d gotten. So, they went right back to business, continuing where they’d left off. Soobin, however, had a hard time moving on, as he kept repeating what Yeonjun had said in his head.

Boyfriend.

Soobin knew it was all fake, so why did that word affect him so much?

While he was distracted, he wasn’t of much help to Yeonjun, but the older man didn’t seem to mind. Maybe he was also a little shaken after that conversation.

Ten minutes at most passed by before Changbin announced his arrival into the room, grabbing their attention to make sure they looked at him as he entered. In his hands was a huge, white cake that had to be the ‘magic’ they had been working on in the kitchen this whole time. 

With a whole lot of pizzazz, Changbin stalked around the room before finally putting down the cake in the middle of the table. He then introduced their masterpiece as a “Fresh Cream Cake”, sounding like a chef at the royal palace, before finding a chair for himself and joining the table next to Yeonjun and Chan. On the other side, Wooyoung was still happily residing on San’s lap, and the latter didn’t seem to mind at all.

“Oh my god it looks great!” Yeonjun said, eyeing the cake with childlike wonder. Soobin had to agree, the decorations on the cake was like something made by a professional. There was a whole lot of frosting on it, and at the top they had made a nice Christmas tree with some mistletoes and Christmas presents surrounding it. 

The arrival of the cake apparently meant a break in the decorating session. Changbin sent Chan and Yeosang to get some plates and spoons, and then they all dug into the pretty thing.

Soobin nearly choked on his first bite when right next to his ear, Yeonjun moaned almost sinfully. He turned his head by reflex to check what was going on, only to see Yeonjun enjoying his own bite of the cake. His eyes were closed and there was a blissful look on his face that Soobin somehow still managed to interpret as sexy rather than innocent.

Fuck, Soobin thought. Focus on the cake. The cake. 

It was a good cake, Soobin could say that much. Well done. Very… tasty.

“What?” Yeonjun mumbled, frowning at the constant attention from Soobin, who hadn’t been able to look away. His lips shone from the sugar in a way that made it look like he’d used lipgloss.

There was a piece of frosting stuck to the side of Yeonjun’s mouth that he didn’t seem aware of. Before Soobin knew what he was doing, and without answering Yeonjun’s question, he raised his left hand and thumbed away the frosting. Only when Yeonjun let out a small puff of air in clear surprise did Soobin realize what he had done.

Somehow, his brain decided that the best way to salvage the situation was to simply double down. Be confident in what he was doing. So, he put his thumb in his mouth and sucked up the frosting that had just been on Yeonjun’s lips.

The look in Yeonjun’s eyes as he followed the movement was unfamiliar to Soobin. When their gazes met, Yeonjun’s pupils were slightly dilated and his eyelids half closed. For a moment, he wondered if Yeonjun was feeling the same heat as him.

But then someone cleared their throat, and the moment was broken. Soobin shook his head and leaned as far away from Yeonjun as his seat accepted. He kept his gaze far away from Yeonjun out of embarrassment; as much as he wished he could have seen just what emotions were passing over Yeonjun’s face at that moment.

Despite Soobin’s conflicted—and confused—mind, time still passed like normal around him. The guys continued decorating and talking around him, occasionally breaking out in song when a particularly famous Christmas song played in the background, and occasionally gossiping about someone that Soobin had no idea who they might be.

The gingerbread house was assembled, and before Soobin knew it it had been decorated in all sorts of colors. Someone was really talented with the icing, making it look like droplets of ice and snow were hanging down from the roof in a neat way. Additionally, cotton was spread around where the house was standing on a tray, making the thing look like it was in the middle of a winter wonderland.

“Put your santa cookies here, Soobinnie,” Wooyoung instructed, which Soobin was grateful for because he included him without forcing him to say something when he was still flustered. He did as Wooyoung said, placing two of the santas next to each other, making it look like they were standing in the snow outside the house.

“Aww, it’s Yeonjun and Soobin,” Changbin joked. At first he was simply smiling, but when Yeonjun swatted his arm it turned into a smirk.

“Maybe it’s them when they’re old,” Yeosang suggested in a less teasing tone than Changbin. He looked up at Soobin with a genuinely kind expression on his face, which made something settle inside Soobin. If he’d felt breathless earlier, he felt more at ease now.

Actually, he suddenly felt comfortable and confident all over again. Turning to Yeonjun, he smiled and said, “Do you think we’ll be living in a house like that one when we grow old?”

If Yeonjun was startled by his change in behavior, he hid it smoothly. “Maybe we will,” he said. “I think I’d like that.”

While he was less shaken this time, Soobin’s traitorous heart still beat so hard in his chest that he was sure everyone around him could hear it. That was the effect Yeonjun was having on him, which was genuinely concerning. How did this happen?

Not long thereafter, it was time for the next point on the schedule: the gift game. Everyone had apparently brought gifts of their own, similar to Yeonjun and Soobin. They were all wrapped, some neater than others.

Soobin had never played such a game before, so the others had to explain the rules to him. You throw a dice, and if you get a 1 or a 6, you get to take a gift from someone. The dice moved from one person to the next in a ring, and there was a time limit. That was basically it. Simple rules, but still enough to make Soobin nervous of messing up.

In the end, the game itself turned out to be the most chaotic thing ever. Whenever someone got a 1 or a 6, they screamed in triumph as they stole a gift from someone, and the others would stress the person with the dice to make it come to them faster.

The annoying part was that a certain someone kept stealing his gift. Whenever he got it back, Yeonjun was next in line and would somehow also score and steal it right back from under Soobin’s nose. At one point, Yeonjun had three whole gifts in his arms while Soobin had none.

Thankfully, in the end it turned around a little bit. Soobin ended up with a gift, although not the one he had been gunning for. When he opened it and found a pair of pink, fluffy earmuffs, he still felt pretty satisfied with the result. 

After the game was finished, and they had discussed the different gifts everyone ended up with, it was time for Yeonjun to go to the bathroom again. When Soobin stood together with him, and they once again revealed that they were holding hands, all five of Yeonjun’s friends hollered at them. Soobin just bit his lip and followed Yeonjun to the bathroom in silence.

Once the door was locked and Yeonjun had quickly done his business, Soobin found himself watching Yeonjun in the mirror while he was washing his hands.

After a few seconds, Yeonjun glanced up and met Soobin’s gaze. “You okay?” he asked, startling Soobin completely.

“Uhh yeah,” he answered, sort of on autopilot.

“You sure? Just, you know, let me know if it’s too much. If they’re too much. They’ll stop if I ask them to stop.”

“Oh.” Soobin blinked a couple of times as he took those words in. “Thank you, but I’m alright. What about you?”

Yeonjun closed the tap and turned slightly to the side to dry his hands on the nearest towel. “Yeah, I’m good.” He paused for a moment, his movements freezing as well, before he braved on. “It was kinda fun, wasn’t it? To make up stuff on the go like that.”

Soobin snorted. “Of course you’d think that. But yeah. It kinda was.”

For a moment, they looked at each other with matching grins. It was weird, mostly because it didn’t feel weird at all. It felt like they were two friends, laughing about an inside joke.

“They’re probably preparing for the movie now,” Yeonjun said, the first one to break their shared look.

“The movie? You didn’t tell me about that part.”

“Ah right,” Yeonjun said, still smiling. “It’s part of the tradition; we watch two Christmas movies none of us have seen before, and then we rate which one was the worst.”

“The worst? Not which one was the best?”

Yeonjun snorted. “No, you’ll see why.”

Just like Yeonjun had said, when they exited the bathroom everyone had already moved from the dining table over to the living room couch. Said couch was big, but unless they wanted to sit on each other it really only fit five of them. Thankfully, there was an armchair next to it, so none of them would have to take the floor. 

And of course, the five others had already claimed the couch, leaving the armchair for them. 

Soobin’s nerves spiked up once again, and he felt a strange sort of dizziness as Yeonjun huffed as he realized the same thing as him, before he marched to the armchair.

Thankfully, there was no need for a pause to think about how they should sit in it, because Yeonjun made the decision for him. He simply sat down comfortably and patted his lap, pulling Soobin down in one go. It was all he could do to slow his fall so that he didn’t crush Yeonjun one his way down.

Someone turned on the movie. Soobin was still feeling kind of dizzy even when sitting comfortably on Yeonjun—that was the part that was making his mind go fuzzy, the fact that he was sitting on Yeonjun’s lap, perfectly perched on his muscular thighs and awfully close to his crotch—

Anyways, the movie. It was a regular hallmark movie, about a girl and a guy and some Christmas dilemma that was awfully regular. It wasn’t the best movie to hold his attention when he was struggling to focus, but he managed to catch most of the important scenes and happenings in order to understand the plot.

At one point, near the ending, Yeonjun asked Soobin to grab him a cookie from the small table in front of them. Acting as the lawful fake boyfriend, he obeyed the best he could while holding Yeonjun’s hand. Unfortunately, that meant leaning forward while still perched on Yeonjun’s lap, and once he leaned back again, he slid slightly downwards. The movement had him jerking, because he swore he could feel the distinct shape of Yeonjun’s dic—NO, he was not thinking about it! He simply jumped forward again, ignoring the fact that the new position strained the muscles in his back.

He sat like that until the movie finished and through the discussion that followed. When everyone seemed to settle on an opinion about the movie, however, Soobin was ready to move out of this damn chair, pushing his feet forward so that he could jump to the floor, only for Yeonjun to lean into his ear and whisper, “we’re not done yet. There’s two movies, remember?”

And damn. Yeonjun’s breath against his ear and the side of his neck had goosebumps erupting on his skin and sending a shiver down his spine. What was worse was the information Yeonjun just gave him: the fact that he would have to stay there on Yeonjun’s lap for another hour and a half.

“Just get comfortable, will you?” Yeonjun whispered again, this time even quieter to make sure no one heard.

Easier said than done, he wanted to bite back, but he didn’t dare to voice it. 

Perhaps to make it easier for Soobin—or to torture him even harder, who knew—Yeonjun wrapped his free hand around Soobin’s waist and simply pulled him back into place.

It was such a simple, innocent thing, sitting in someone’s lap, but somehow it had Soobin’s entire system going haywire throughout the second movie.

When they asked for his opinion afterwards, he literally couldn’t recall more than the faces of the protagonists and the fact that they had kissed in the end, so he ended up just agreeing with Yeonjun that the first movie was the worst one. 

It was long since dark outside when they left San’s place. At that point, it felt like they were leaving an alternative reality behind and returning to real life. 

The cold hit Soobin like a punch to the face. It still hadn’t snowed yet, but Soobin was sure that it was more than cold enough for it. Hopefully, they would get some before Christmas.

“The ear muffs are cute on you.”

Soobin thought he heard it wrong, because when he turned his head while walking to look at Yeonjun, the other man was promptly looking at the road in front of them.

“What did you say?” he asked, because he really needed to know if Yeonjun really had said what he thought he had said. And more importantly: had he meant it?

“I said the earmuffs are cute,” Yeonjun said, glancing at him sideways a couple of times. The light above them was strong, but when they moved between the streetlights it dimmed, shrouding them in darkness for a couple of moments before they returned to the light.

“Didn’t you say they were cute on me?” Soobin tried.

“I don’t know where you got that from,” Yeonjun responded, though Soobin could swear he could hear the smile in his voice.

They barely spoke on the way home, but this time Soobin wasn’t bothered by the silence. The tension that had always been there between them seemed to have lessened, somehow.

Coming back to the apartment, they were met with Beomgyu standing around in the kitchen, looking like he was hungry but didn’t know what to make of himself.

“Where the hell have you been all day?” Beomgyu asked after they’d called out in greeting. He looked them up and down, clearly judging the way they were still wearing matching pajamas.

“We’ve just been out, doing some stuff,” Yeonjun answered. Soobin looked at him, wondering why he didn’t just tell Beomgyu they’d been with his friends. Did he think Beomgyu would mind? Or that he would feel left out?

“Out? Doing some stuff?” Beomgyu tsked, turning his attention to Soobin instead. “Did you at least have fun?”

“Uhh, yeah,” Soobin said, his gaze flicking back and forth, struggling to hold Beomgyu’s eyes. Maybe that only cemented whatever idea Beomgyu already had, because he let out a snort.

“So, would you say you’re getting along better now, then?”

“Huh?” Yeonjun seemed startled by Beomgyu’s question. “Who said that we did?”

“No one did,” Beomgyu said, amusement clearly spreading on his face. Looking at Soobin, he asked, “It’s a no, then?”

Soobin only hesitated for a split second, but he was sure Beomgyu caught it. “Yeah.”

“Okay.” Beomgyu turned on his heel and started walking out of the kitchen. Before he reached the doorway, though, he came to a stop and looked over his shoulder. “Maybe you should ask yourselves why you’re still holding hands, then.”

As if a spring had been released, they jumped away from each other, instantly letting go of the firm grip they’d kept the whole way home.

A firm, embarrassed blush reached Soobin’s ears, making them blaze uncomfortably hot.

“I was just, I mean, I didn’t—” Yeonjun stumbled on his words in an uncharacteristic way before he cleared his throat and started over. “I didn’t realize. If I did, I wouldn’t have—”

“Sure,” Soobin interrupted him. The blush was reaching his cheeks now, and he wished he could just disappear. “Me too.”

Nothing more was said after that. They went to the living room, with the idea of watching some TV before bed, but then Yeonjun ended up glued to his phone, frantically texting someone the entire time. And Soobin… he felt rather hollow. If he thought too much about it, he felt unreasonably angry and disappointed. So he decided to not do that. No thinking about Yeonjun or whoever he was texting.

That was easier said than done, though. Later, when they had climbed into bed together, Soobin ended up mulling on the day’s events, and a whole bunch of other things that had to do with his and Yeonjun’s rivalry.

It took him a long time to fall asleep that night.

❆

“Oh! I think I’ve read this book, actually.”

Soobin threw a strange look in Yeonjun’s direction after the other man had just whispered in his ear. They were in the middle of their second lecture of Monday morning, which happened to be Soobin’s literature studies. His professor had just monologued for fifteen minutes about a specific book that was part of the required reading for this course.

“Why do you look so surprised?” Yeonjun said, frowning right back at Soobin.

“I didn’t know you read,” was the first thing that came to Soobin’s tired mind. His brain-to-mouth-filter was usually turned off around Yeonjun, but it was worse today. He had only managed to get a few short hours of sleep during the night, and it was seriously affecting his brain power.

Yeonjun just huffed in response to that, clearly miffed, but there was no space for Soobin to do anything about it in the middle of the lecture. Not that he wanted to apologize, or anything. Just… he didn’t want Yeonjun to think he meant it in a condescending way.

After the lecture, lunch with the guys passed quickly, and then they both had a free period. They had already agreed upon hitting the library to catch up with the material they kept missing, so they went there as soon as everyone had finished their lunch. Taehyun and Hao joined them, stating that they had some assignments to work on as well.

It was all going well, nothing particularly annoying or spectacular happened, other than Soobin actually making some progress on his reading, until a sudden foreign presence invaded their space. 

”Hi Yeonjun!”

Soobin looked up in surprise along with Yeonjun when an unknown voice spoke behind them. There stood a girl who Soobin didn’t recognize at all, who was at Yeonjun like he was the only person in the room. 

“Hi Yuna,” Yeonjun said, smiling at her. 

Okay, so they knew each other, then it was fine. Soobin looked down at his computer again.

“I haven’t seen you in a few days, have you been sick? You look great today, by the way.”

Today, Yeonjun was wearing a red sweater, paired with white costume pants. It was an outfit he had, without Soobin noticing it, stuffed into the bag when he and Soobin went to his apartment yesterday. Soobin hated to admit that he thought he looked elegant and cute in it.

“Oh, I had some stuff come up so I couldn’t come to class, sorry. And thanks, you too. Did you cut your hair?”

“I did! Thank you for noticing, I hope you like how it looks now. I think I remember you saying you like curtain bangs.”

“Oh definitely! It looks great on you.”

Soobin hated that he couldn’t ignore their conversation even a little bit. When the girl, Yuna, giggled at Yeonjun’s response, he couldn’t help but look up grumpily. Who was this girl, anyways?

“Thank you. Anyways, I won’t disturb you, I’m sure you’re busy. I just wanted to give you this, I hope you’ll like it!”

She had been keeping one hand behind her back, so now she revealed it, in which she was holding a box with a red bow tied around it. Chocolates, Soobin deduced.

“Oh!” Yeonjun looked genuinely surprised when he accepted the gift. Soobin took a closer look, and read the words “orange-flavor” underneath the brand name. “That’s perfect. Thank you so much, that’s so kind of you.”

“You’re welcome.” Yuna smiled big and flirtily at him. “I’ll see you around, Yeonjun.”

“Yeah. See you!”

Soobin waited until she had disappeared before frowning and turning to Yeonjun. “Who was she?”

“Oh?” Yeonjun looked surprised by the attention. “Yuna, she’s a member of my dance group. She must’ve been surprised that I missed class last week.”

“Why did you accept that?” Soobin couldn’t stop himself from asking. “You hate orange flavored chocolate.”

“I—what?”

Even Taehyun and Hao seemed startled by Soobin’s question, putting down their pens to look at them.

“You always whine about how you hate chocolate that tastes like oranges. Doesn’t he?” Soobin asked the other two.

“I mean, yeah,” Yeonjun answered before they had the chance to say anything, “I don’t like it. I just didn’t think you’d noticed.”

“I-it’s impossible not to notice,” Soobin muttered, feeling put on the spot all of a sudden.

He stayed quiet for the rest of the studying session, and when they walked with the guys down the hallway to the next lesson. It was a math lesson, during which the class was apparently supposed to work on a bunch of math equations on their own. Soobin ended up laying with his head on the bench, staring into the wall in pure boredom while Yeonjun and Yeosang diligently discussed the equations at hand.

At one point, Wooyoung—who was seated with San in the row in front of them—turned on his chair and asked him what he was doing there when he was a literature major.

Thankfully, Soobin was prepared for the question; after yesterday, he knew exactly the right thing to say. “I don’t have class, so I’m just here because I want to be with Yeonjun,” he simply said, lifting his head from the bench as he did so. At that, Wooyoung rolled his eyes and turned back around; as annoyed as he seemed by that answer, at least he bought it.

❆

“Hey, Soobin, your phone.”

Soobin turned his head around, watching Beomgyu enter the kitchen where he and Yeonjun were busy trying to cook dinner together. It was Tuesday evening, and they had had a conversation earlier about how it wasn’t sustainable to live on take out for as long as they were handcuffed together, hence the cooking.

Beomgyu was carrying Soobin’s phone in one hand, which was vibrating with an incoming call. “Who is it?”

“It’s your mom,” Beomgyu answered, rushing towards him.

“Aha, just answer and hit the speaker, it’s fine.” His hands were kind of busy, anyways.

Doing as he was told, Beomgyu was the first to greet Soobin’s mom. “Hi Soobin’s mom,” he called, laughing when the woman on the other side answered, “Hi Soobin’s Beomgyu.”

Soobin rolled his eyes, used to it by now. “Hi mom,” he said, breaking their joint laughter.

“Hi Honey. How are you doing?”

Soobin was very close with his family, even if he wasn’t the best at calling or answering the messages in their group chat. It had been over a week since he talked to his parents now, though that was mainly because he’d been dealing with the Yeonjun-situation recently.

Speaking of Yeonjun, he was of course by Soobin’s side, busy cutting vegetables and putting them in the pan that Soobin was in charge of stirring. One glance revealed that Yeonjun was acting very nonchalant, but he obviously was listening to every word as Soobin told his mom what he had been up to lately. He decidedly avoided mentioning Yeonjun and their current proximity, not wanting to go into all that.

After filling each other in on their past week, Soobin’s mom asked if he was excited for Christmas. At that, Yeonjun looked up, giving Soobin a pointed look that reminded him about Yeonjun accusing him of being anti-Christmas at the library.

While rolling his eyes at Yeonjun, he told his mom, “Of course I’m excited. It’s Christmas after all.” He paused for a moment before adding. “I’m looking forward to going on walks with Tori. We’re gonna have so much fun.”

Yeonjun tilted his head. Tori? He mouthed in question.

My parents’ dog, Soobin mouthed back.

“Ah yeah,” his mom said with a laugh. “Tori misses you. But hey, are you only excited to see the dog?”

“Of course not~” Soobin answered, smiling despite himself. “I miss my nephews as well,” he added, making his mom laugh. 

“Hey,” Beomgyu suddenly said, sliding up to Soobin’s side suddenly. Soobin was sure he had left the room earlier, but now he was back, rejoining the conversation smoothly. “What if Soobin wants to bring a boy home for Christmas this year?”

Eyes wide, Soobin sent him a deadly glare. Why would he say that!?

“A boy?” Soobin’s mom inquired, sounding very intrigued. “There’s a new boy in the picture? Soobinnie, you didn’t tell me!”

“Oh, it’s very new,” Beomgyu answered for him, ignoring any looks that Soobin and Yeonjun were currently sending his way. “I’m sure he’s just too shy to ask you, but I know he wants to bring him home.”

“Oh my gosh. Of course you should bring him, Soobinnie! Who is he? How long have you known him? Is he nice? Is he good to you?”

Soobin sputtered at the sudden onslaught of questions. “Mom,” he whined.

“What? Can’t I be curious about who my baby boy is dating? If you’re bringing him home for Christmas, you must be serious about him, right?”

I wasn’t even the one suggesting bringing him for Christmas, Soobin thought, sending another glare in Beomgyu’s direction. Said boy was sporting a delighted grin; clearly he was very amused by Soobin’s suffering.

“Ugh, it’s not that,” he said to his mom, not wanting her to get the idea that he didn’t want to share anything with her. “It’s just…” He didn’t like the thought of lying to her, but he couldn’t tell her the truth either, so he racked his brain for the best possible explanation he could come up with. “It’s like Beomgyu said, it’s very new, and he loves Christmas, so I thought it would be nice to spend it together, you know?”

“That’s sweet of you, honey. Will you at least tell me his name?”

Soobin sucked in a breath, eyes drifting over to Yeonjun unconsciously. They shared a look, and Soobin wished that they had had time to talk this over before his mom was involved.

“It’s Yeonjun,” Beomgyu answered, not giving Soobin the chance to do it on his own. At this point, Soobin considered taking the spatula out of the pan and swatting Beomgyu with it, but the pan was sizzling too much—needing constant stirring—for him to justify it.

“Yeonjun? That Yeonjun?” Soobin closed his eyes, recalling all the times he had talked about ‘the most annoying guy ever’ to his parents after some of the biggest fights he’d had with Yeonjun.

The memories were bitter in his mouth, but he didn’t regret or feel guilty about it. He had just spoken his truth, which was that Yeonjun was the most annoying guy in his life. He had never said something mean that wasn’t true.

“Yeah,” he said tiredly. “That Yeonjun.”

“Oh. Well, I’m glad to hear you two finally made up! He’s still more than welcome into our house on Christmas.”

“Yeah…” Soobin cleared his throat, taking the phone into his hand so that he could speak closer to it. “Look mom, can we talk more about this later? I need to talk to… Yeonjun, and then we can decide about Christmas, yeah?”

“Sure thing!” his mom answered cheerfully. “Tell him we’re happy to have him.”

Feeling like a headache was creeping up on him, Soobin let out a heavy sigh. “Yeah, sure, I will. Talk to you later, mom.”

“Bye Honey. Love you.”

“Love you too.”

Soobin hung up. For a handful of seconds, the only sound in the room was that of the sizzling vegetables on the verge of burning.

“So, should we talk about what just happened?”

Soobin let out the loudest groan, glancing at Yeonjun as he considered what to answer him. But then he heard slow footsteps behind him; Beomgyu was trying to escape. Whipping around while trying his best to avoid justling the chain between them, Soobin called out, “Where do you think you’re going?”

Beomgyu froze. “Uhh, to my room?”

“So you think you can just escape, when you’re the one who put us in this mess?”

Turning around, Beomgyu shot him an unimpressed look. “Actually, I was trying to help you. You’re obviously not getting out of those cuffs any time soon, which means you’re gonna have to spend Christmas together. I was just making it easier for you two to break those news to your families.”

Soobin hated that he was sort of right. “Well, you didn’t have to make it sound like we’re dating.”

“How else would you have explained it? By telling the truth? ‘Hey mom, I got magically handcuffed to the guy I hate and we are probably going to be stuck for the rest of eternity so it’s best if you get used to it’—”

It was good for Beomgyu that there were no loose objects lying around that Soobin could throw at him. “Shut up.”

“What? It’s true.” He turned his gaze on Yeonjun then. “You can at least admit that I was doing you guys a favor.”

Yeonjun sighed heavily. “A favor is stretching it.”

“I was helping.”

“Doesn’t really matter what you thought you were doing,” Yeonjun said. “Now we gotta deal with it.” He pulled on the chain, dragging Soobin’s arm closer to himself and making him look at him. “I’m sure we’ve both been thinking about it, anyways.”

Soobin had, but he didn’t want to admit to it, because that would mean that he didn’t have any faith in them getting out of this situation any time soon. Which would mean that Beomgyu had a point.

They looked at each other without saying anything for long enough that Beomgyu had to clear his throat to make them look away. “Can I go..?”

Soobin just shrugged. It wasn’t like they needed Beomgyu to be there during this conversation anyways.

Yeonjun must have nodded, because Beomgyu looked at him and then smiled. To Soobin, he gave a thumbs up, before quickly disappearing down the hall. Soobin stayed frozen looking after him until the sound of his bedroom door shutting reached him.

Remembering the food on the stove, they turned back around to finish what they had started. As Soobin stirred and Yeonjun added the spices, Yeonjun started speaking.

“Ignoring the fact that Beomgyu is right about all this... I guess we have to talk about Christmas. It’s next week, after all.”

“Yeah, I know.” Soobin stared at Yeonjun’s hand as he poured some teriyaki sauce over the vegetables. He fought off the urge to tell him off for putting too much, and instead focused on the matter at hand. “If we’re still stuck by then, we have to spend Christmas together.”

“Considering your mom already knows, I guess we have to spend Christmas Day with your family.” Putting down the bottle on the counter, Yeonjun ran his free hand through his hair and held it there for a few seconds. In Soobin’s mind, that meant he was thinking, and he partly expected Yeonjun to argue that it was totally unfair.

Instead of doing that, however, Yeonjun just nodded to himself and said, “I have to talk to my mom about it, but I think it’ll be fine. Maybe we can even visit my family on Christmas Eve.”

“Really?” Soobin couldn’t hide his surprise.

“What?” Yeonjun’s eyebrows furrowed. “You don’t like that idea?”

“No no,” Soobin hurried to put his hands up in defense, accidentally making Yeonjun’s left arm fly up with his. “I mean, I like it. I just didn't expect you to be so forthcoming.”

Yeonjun rubbed his wrist a little, where he just like Soobin had a never disappearing bruise. Shrugging, he said, “well it’s only fair, don’t you think?”

And somehow, that was that. Decision made, without either of them feeling the need to argue or feeling put down by the other.

“Your mom seems sweet, by the way,” Yeonjun said suddenly after a momentary silence. He startled Soobin into looking at him, smiling with his eyes when he said, “You have the same laugh. It’s cute.”

For the rest of the night, Soobin felt like his whole world had turned upside down. 

❆

The next day, Soobin found himself regretting everything he had ever said to anyone. He shouldn’t have told Beomgyu to go ahead and answer his phone, he shouldn’t have told his mom about his fights with Yeonjun, and he never should have told his siblings how much he couldn’t stand Yeonjun.

They were in the middle of a lecture—Yeonjun’s lecture, thankfully, so he didn’t have to put an effort into listening—when Soobin felt his phone vibrating like crazy in his pocket. 

It turned out the messages were in his group chat with his two older siblings, who it seemed like had just gotten the wind of the news Soobin had told his mom yesterday.

Sis

Soobin

SOOBIN

You’re bringing a guy home for Christmas for the first time ever?!

And it’s YEONJUN???

The guy you HATE?

Big bro

What the hell is going on man, last thing we heard you couldn’t stand the guy

Did you hit your head?

Did Yeonjun kidnap you and force you to say that to mom?

Sis

We can see you reading the messages Soobin

Lil bro

Omg can you stop blowing up my phone in the middle of class?

Yes I’m bringing him, and no he didn’t kidnap me wth??

Sis

okay then explain what’s going on?

Did you and yeonjun have hate sex that turned into making sweet love to each other or how the hell did this happen?

Soobin felt a little ill at the thought of having this kind of conversation with his siblings.

Lil bro

No……

Sis

You’re being awfully quiet. It’s weird

Lil bro

I’m not, it’s just hard to explain

We’ve… been making an effort to get along lately. And it’s not like we’re dating dating, like it’s not super serious

Big bro

Yet?

Lil bro

Um, well we’ll see I guess

Sis

I still can’t believe this

Every time you came home you’d rant about how annoying he was

WAIT

Big bro

Are we thinking the same thing?

Sis

I think we are

Lil bro

What are you talking about?

Big bro

You’ve had a crush on yeonjun this whole time

Sis

Now everything is making so much more sense

Soobin stared at the chat, stupefied. No, he wanted to tell them. I never had a crush on Yeonjun. But his thumbs stayed still, as if his subconscious was keeping him from telling a lie. But it was true, wasn’t it? He used to hate Yeonjun, the mere sight of him used to make his blood boil. It didn’t matter that he’d always found Yeonjun attractive, or that his eyes kept dragging themselves to Yeonjun whenever they were in the same room. He still despised him.

His siblings were trying to convince him otherwise, but what did they know? They never had a nemesis, so of course they didn’t know what he felt.

He glanced sideways at Yeonjun, who was looking forward and listening intently to what his professor was saying. Swallowing, he couldn’t help but run his gaze over Yeonjun’s side profile.

Soobin could admit to himself that there was no flaw in sight. Yeonjun looked delectable from every angle. His jaw was so sharp, drawing a straight line down to his perfect chin. An intrusive thought told Soobin he should lick it, to drag his tongue across that flawless skin, and he had to immediately look away.

What the hell did that come from?

He felt heat creep up on his cheeks, and had to hide his face from Yeonjun by leaning on the table in front of him and looking in the other direction. However, that meant that he was instead looking at San, who he was seated next to, who gave him a knowing smile and made Soobin squeak.

When they met up with their friends for lunch, Soobin could feel Yeonjun looking at him with a questioning look, so he did his best to act normal.

About halfway through the lunchtime, they started noticing how their friends were giving them strange looks. When Yeonjun—the first to grow curious about it—asked them what they were doing that for, Beomgyu told them that they found it weird to see the two of them sitting next to each other and not arguing over something. Kai then added that he thought it was cute how they had grown accustomed to the cuffs and were helping each other out without having to say anything about it.

The only thing Soobin could think of responding to that was “I don’t think we do that,” and then ignore any other comments thrown back at him.

❆

It was already dark when they walked out of their last lecture of the day, and Soobin was not looking forward to going out into the dark. It was getting colder with every passing day, and Soobin wasn’t a fan. He preferred to get cosy under the blankets at home than doing anything out in the darkness.

Still, Yeonjun managed to convince him to walk all the way home, stating that they needed the fresh air. Which was easy for him to say, with his long ass coat that covered him perfectly from the cold. Soobin ought to go shopping for a better one himself if he was going to survive this winter.

“So,” Yeonjun said as they walked, “Christmas is next week.”

Soobin had his thick scarf wrapped tightly around his neck and the lower part of his face, so he wiggled his chin free so that he could respond. “Yeah. Did you talk to your parents about it?”

Since they were literally by each other’s side 24/7, Soobin was well aware that Yeonjun hadn’t called his parents since they got handcuffed, but that didn’t mean he couldn’t have sent them a text. Judging from what he’d seen this last week, Yeonjun was an avid texter. Even with only one hand available, he could sit and converse with his friends or who knew who (Soobin was never able to see his screen while he did it) for hours.

“I did,” Yeonjun confirmed. “They said you’re more than welcome on the 24th; actually, they said we could come even earlier since school ends on Friday.”

“Oh.”

“I just told them we’ll see, because, like, that’s not something you have to do, you know.”

Soobin pursed his mouth. “Do you usually go home to stay with your parents early?”

“Yeah of course. Don’t you?”

He did. Every year, he used to go out and celebrate the break with his friends on the last day of school, and then he’d take the first bus back to his parents’ place. This year, he didn’t know what the exact plan was.

Soobin knew that Yeonjun’s family lived further away than his did, so it was harder for him to just come and go. Probably, Yeonjun was reluctant to go home early now that he had to drag Soobin along with him, which meant that he would miss out on precious time that he could be spending with his family.

“I can see the wheels turning behind your eyes,” Yeonjun said, lifting his hand to push a glove-clad finger into Soobin’s forehead, “don’t sweat it. Since we’re stuck together, this year’s Christmas will be different, but that’s okay. It’s not our fault.”

Yeonjun was right. They couldn’t have predicted this happening. The blame didn’t lay with them, but the witch, who they would probably never see again. Even if Soobin didn’t have much hope of getting out of the handcuffs before Christmas, he just hoped that this curse of theirs wouldn’t be forevermore.

“Come on!” Yeonjun suddenly exclaimed, dragging Soobin out of his thoughts as he rushed forward, quickening his steps.

“Huh? Where are we going?”

“Don’t you smell it?” Yeonjun said, looking over his shoulder and grinning at him. “Let’s get some Christmas treats!”

Now that Yeonjun mentioned it, Soobin did smell the sweet scent of Christmas spices wafting out of a bakery.

Yeonjun was like a kid in a candy-shop. Soobin already knew that he had a sweet tooth and that he loved Christmas, so he really should have expected Yeonjun to want to buy one of every single Christmas themed treat in there, just to have a taste of it. And of course; what Yeonjun wanted, Yeonjun got.

“Don’t give me that look,” Yeonjun said as they walked out of there with a bag full of sweets. Soobin didn’t think there was ‘a look’ but maybe he was not schooling his face well enough. “Taehyun texted me saying he and Kai went home with Beomgyu after school, so there will be five mouths to feed.”

Soobin snorted. “Okay, that’s a little better, I suppose.”

They continued walking all the way home, which took another 30 minutes. Soobin had offered to carry the bag about halfway through, though he kind of regretted it as they were nearing the apartment. His naked hand was aching from the cold by then.

“We should try those gingerbread cream pies first,” Yeonjun suggested when they stepped out of the elevator and onto Soobin’s floor.

“I thought those sweet saffron buns looked amazing,” Soobin argued. He could kind of still smell those from the bag he was holding as he lifted his hand higher to punch in the door code.

“Hmm yeah, sure,” Yeonjun said, thinking out loud as Soobin got the door open and they stepped inside. As they took off their shoes and coats, the sound of the TV being on reached them. “I still think gingerbread is the superior taste, though.”

Soobin snorted. Hanging up his coat, he turned to face Yeonjun. “That’s the most basic answer, though,” he said with a grin as they started heading into the apartment, rounding the corner to the living room. “It’s like saying—”

The sound of the bag dropping onto the floor rang loudly through the apartment as Soobin trailed off mid-sentence, stunned by what they just walked in on.

There was a movie playing on the TV, but the sound had been turned down so it was mainly used as background noise. On the couch was Beomgyu, sitting in the middle of Taehyun and Kai. That much Soobin had expected.

What he hadn’t expected was for them to walk in and see Taehyun kissing Beomgyu’s neck intimately, while Beomgyu’s head was leaned back and resting on Kai’s shoulder, and Kai’s hands was deep underneath Beomgyu’s shirt.

Thankfully, the sound of the bag hitting the floor alerted them of their arrival, so Soobin didn’t have to think of a way to get them to stop. Immediately, they jumped apart and turned their heads towards them.

“I—I can explain,” Beomgyu started, the first to dare say anything when the tension in the air was suffocating. Soobin couldn’t help but glance at his lips, then Taehyun’s, then Kai’s. He narrowed his eyes when he saw that all three were pink and wet, clear evidence of what had taken place before they arrived.

“No need,” Soobin said. He looked at Yeonjun, and some sort of consensus passed between them without any words being spoken. Yeonjun nodded his head to the side, motioning for Soobin to follow, and he did.

When they were in Soobin’s bedroom, the door closed behind them, they both released a heavy breath. “Okay, I didn’t expect that,” Soobin said.

“I mean I was kind of waiting for it to happen,” Yeonjun admitted, pulling Soobin along towards his wardrobe.

“Really?” Soobin asked. When Yeonjun opened the wardrobe door and looked at him, he understood it as a signal for him to bring some clothes, and so he pulled out a couple of outfit options quickly.

“Yeah,” Yeonjun said as Soobin did so. “The way they act around each other, it was bound to turn out this way.”

They reemerged from Soobin’s room not long thereafter, having put a bunch of Soobin’s clothes, his toothbrush and some other necessities in a bag.

“We’re gonna sleep at my place,” Yeonjun announced to their friends, who were still sitting stiffly and far away from each other on the couch.

“Um, you don’t have to do that,” Taehyun said, looking extremely guilty.

Soobin wanted to reach out and ruffle his hair, but he didn’t think it was the best idea at the moment. Instead, he said, “It’s fine. I’m almost positive we’ll manage to not kill each other.”

On the other side of the couch, Kai pouted miserably at his response. “You really don’t have to go. We’re not gonna do anything in front of you guys.”

At that, Soobin kind of wanted to snort. “I know. But it’s better, I think. Then you guys will get some privacy and we can work on getting these things off.” He shook his right hand a little to point out the handcuffs.

They didn’t let them protest any more than that, announcing their departure and leaving, not without telling them to ‘be careful’ and ‘use protection’, which earned them a whole lot of groaning in disgust as they left the apartment behind. 

This time as they arrived at Yeonjun’s apartment, they were in no rush, so Soobin finally had the chance to take in the space.

Knowing that Yeonjun hadn’t been able to come here since they were here last, he expected the mess this time. Interestingly, it wasn’t all that bad in the living room area, and the kitchen was clean and tidy.

The living room was spacious, with a desktop table in one corner of the room, and the couch and tv setup in the other corner. Soobin thought the couch was huge for a one person apartment, but at least it looked comfy with its large assortment of pillows and blankets.

There were little to no decorations on the walls, only a clock and a triple-tier shelf with a bunch of framed pictures on display.

Yeonjun let Soobin explore the apartment without any complaints. He followed along, and even stood silently watching as Soobin looked at all the pictures on there. One was a family picture, with Yeonjun standing between his smiling parents. Another showed Yeonjun with Wooyoung and the other guys, their picture taken on the beach with a bright sky and sun behind them. They were all shirtless, and Soobin forced himself not to linger on Yeonjun’s bare chest for more than a second. With Yeonjun watching him, though, even that felt too long.

Then, to Soobin’s astonishment, his eyes found himself in the next picture.

It wasn’t just a picture of him, of course, but of their friend group. He immediately recognized the setting; they had been celebrating Beomgyu’s birthday, and after a long tiring day of playing laserdome and spending hours at the arcade they had ended up at a restaurant. Someone had asked the waiter to take their picture, and of course Beomgyu was the main highlight, sitting at the short side of the table, in the middle of them all. Yeonjun was sitting to the left, in between Taehyun and Hao. His hair was darker back then than it was now; it must have been before he decided to bleach it and went through an assortment of colors over the summer, before landing on the gray he currently had.

The most startling thing about the picture was that Soobin himself was sitting on the right, being the closest to the camera. Why would Yeonjun choose to display this picture, where Soobin was one of the first people you noticed in it?

Glancing sideways to try and look for any answers in Yeonjun’s eyes, he found that Yeonjun had stepped back and was staring at his phone. Texting someone, Soobin realized when Yeonjun started typing. Why did that sort of bum him out?

When Yeonjun realized that Soobin seemed done with his short tour around, he suggested they turn on the tv to watch something.

They ended up choosing a marvel movie—Avengers, more specifically—because Yeonjun didn’t want any romance after what they had just barged into back at Soobin’s apartment. Soobin had laughed at him but ultimately he agreed.

Getting ready for bed a few hours later, Soobin thought it would feel the same as the last few days, considering they had fallen into a simple routine together. Doing it all at a new place however, turned everything upside down. Now Soobin was the stranger in this house, and he had to follow Yeonjun’s lead.

Yeonjun’s bed was smaller than Soobin’s. It became obvious as soon as they lay down next to each other, and there was no space for Soobin to pull away and put distance between them.

As he tried getting comfortable, his right hand brushed against Yeonjun’s, sending a jolt of electricity up his arm. Soobin stilled, forcing himself to not make a big deal out of it. He had touched Yeonjun multiple times, had held his hand over and over again these last few days, one quick touch shouldn’t startle him like that.

Against his better judgement, he turned his head to the side, his eyes open ever so slightly. He found Yeonjun looking right back at him, and his heart skipped a beat in his chest.

Their gazes held for multiple long seconds. It was like time was suspended, and Soobin couldn’t move or breathe or think. Something in his chest dislodged, creating a hollow, aching space that had him fluttering his eyelashes before quickly turning his head to face the ceiling.

What the hell was that?

❆

Soobin had to admit that he was still feeling kind of off kilter the next day, especially after waking up with his face just inches away from Yeonjun’s. Their noses were almost touching, and when Soobin quickly jerked away, he managed to wake Yeonjun up.

“Morning,” Yeonjun said in that morning voice of his that always made Soobin’s breath hitch even if he wouldn’t admit it did. Soobin wished he could just roll out of bed and lock himself in the bathroom without Yeonjun by his side, so he could scream his feelings away.

Not that he had any. Feelings, that was.

He muttered a short ‘good morning’ back, then turned around as much as he could and reached for his phone. There was a text from Taehyun that he quickly opened, only to snort out loud.

At Yeonjun’s inquiring look, he explained, “Taehyun says he’s sorry for what happened yesterday and that they hadn’t planned for that to happen.”

“Pfft.” Yeonjun snorted. “What an angel. None of the others sent any apologies, did they?”

“Nope,” Soobin said with a chuckle. “Though they did look pretty guilty about it yesterday.”

He looked at Yeonjun then, only to look away nervously when he realized Yeonjun was already watching him. “It’s, uh.” Fuck. He paused. Why was he getting so flustered from a simple look from Yeonjun? He started over. “It’s their own fault. Beomgyu should have known better.”

“I mean, maybe they’re into that kind of stuff.”

“What?”

Yeonjun rolled over onto his back and pushed up into a sitting position. There was a mischievous smile on his lips as he leaned closer to Soobin and said, “You know, like exhibitionism. Just because they’re younger doesn’t mean they can’t still be freaky.”

Soobin’s eyes widened, and for a moment he thought Yeonjun was being serious. Then, when the older man cracked up, laughing at his own joke, Soobin deflated in relief. 

“You’re so annoying,” Soobin said, though there was little bite in his voice. In fact, he was fighting down a smile himself.

“Don’t you know it,” Yeonjun said right before he leaned a little too close into Soobin’s space and giggled. Before Soobin had a chance to react, Yeonjun rolled away and pulled on the chain, forcing Soobin to get out of the bed with him. 

❆

Later that same day during a free period, Soobin and Yeonjun were back in the library, once again doing their best to keep up with their schoolwork. Yeonjun was sipping on a coffee; more specifically it was a Christmas frappucino—he hadn’t been able to resist it when they passed by the school cafe on their way there—while Soobin had simply gotten a Milkis drink from the vending machine. 

Soobin was in the middle of watching a video essay about literacy narratives, when his phone started going off like crazy next to him. He would have ignored it, if it wasn’t for the way Yeonjun side eyed him when it kept vibrating on and off continuously. 

It turned out it was his friends sending messages in their group chat. Most of Soobin’s friends were the ones he saw in school every day, but then he had a few old classmates he still kept in touch with, and some guys that he sometimes played games with. Beomgyu and Kai were both included in the game-playing friend group, and it was that group chat that was going crazy right now. Soobin saw them both responding quickly to one of the other’s suggestions to meet up and game together.

“Hey, my friends want to hang out tonight at mine and Beomgyu’s place,” Soobin told Yeonjun without looking up from his phone.

“Okay?” Yeonjun answered, taking another sip from his sugar bomb of a drink. “And?”

“And, I want to hang out with them.” Soobin looked up from the phone at him. “You okay with that?”

Very nonchalantly, Yeonjun shrugged. “Yeah. It’s fine, I guess.”

“We’re probably gonna play some games,” Soobin found himself blurting out when Yeonjun’s gaze left him. 

“Okay, sounds good.”

Soobin tried not to pout as he returned his focus to the video essay, but he couldn’t help but feel miffed that Yeonjun didn’t seem to care enough to ask more. He told himself it was silly, and that it didn’t matter if Yeonjun cared or not. Soobin had indulged him when he went over to San’s place, so it was only fair that Yeonjun would do the same. 

❆

Soobin and Yeonjun went home with Beomgyu, preparing the apartment before the rest of the guys would arrive. Thankfully, it was already tidy, so all they had to do was prepare some snacks and make sure the consoles and everything was working. 

Standing in the living room, Soobin couldn’t help but remember what they had walked in on yesterday. He shared a look with Yeonjun that told him the older man was thinking the same, and in that exact moment, Beomgyu entered the room with two bowls in his hands. 

Beomgyu came to a halt as the two of them stared at him. “What?” he asked, although the look on his face told Soobin he knew exactly what they were thinking. 

“You didn’t get up to any funny business on the couch after we left, I hope?” Yeonjun said, amusement suddenly taking over his features. 

A blush spread slowly on Beomgyu’s face, although he pretended to be unaffected. “Not that it’s any of your business, but no,” he said, glancing at Soobin for a moment before looking away. Soobin could tell the shyness in his eyes meant he was nervous and looking for their approval. 

To ease his nerves, Soobin let out a chuckle. “Good to hear that you didn’t defile the couch while we were gone,” he teased, smirking when Beomgyu looked at him. 

“Ugh, you are both so annoying,” Beomgyu grunted, rolling his eyes, although he was smiling at the same time. 

Soobin let Beomgyu put down the bowls on the sofa table before saying anything else. “It’s new?” he asked, voice sincere now. “This… thing between you guys?”

“Yeah.” Beomgyu said, sounding a little breathless. Soobin nodded, understanding that Beomgyu wasn’t ready to talk about it just yet. Which was fine. They had a fun night ahead of them, they could talk about more serious stuff another day. 

It didn’t take long after that conversation before the others arrived. Kai entered with Heesung and Chaemin in tow, carrying bags of food that he had been tasked to bring. 

Soobin had already told his friends about the situation with Yeonjun, but it seemed like neither Heesung nor Chaemin had bought it, judging by the way their eyes bulged when they finally saw the handcuffs. He had to force himself not to roll his eyes when they came up to them and started pulling on the cuffs, turning them around to check if it was true that there truly was no keyhole. 

It was only after they’d done that that Soobin reprimanded them for not introducing themselves, and they all laughed before greeting Yeonjun. 

“It’s nice to finally meet you.” Chaemin glanced sneakily at Soobin as he said it. “We’ve heard a lot about you.”

“I don’t doubt that,” Yeonjun said with a tense chuckle, before shaking his and Heesung’s hands. 

Someone turned on the TV as they started eating. Soobin tried to ignore the way his friends looked at him when he and Yeonjun ate together, knowing it probably looked funny the way they moved in tandem. 

Conversation flowed between them all, and Soobin was surprised by how easily Yeonjun fit into it all without problem. That was one thing about him that used to annoy Soobin, that he was so annoyingly social, but today it was nice. 

After everyone was done eating, they packed everything away and got ready to start gaming. They argued for a minute or two about what game to start with, before landing on Smash bros. When the five of them picked out their characters, Soobin tried to convince Yeonjun to pick up a console and join them. 

“It’s fine,” Yeonjun just said in response, “I prefer to watch you guys play, actually.”

“You sure?” Soobin insisted. “I can tell you how the game works if you want?”

At that, Yeonjun smiled fondly, patting Soobin’s thigh gently. “It’s okay, Soobin. And besides, it will be hard for us to play at the same time with these.” He pointed at the handcuffs. 

If Soobin’s brain hadn’t completely frozen at the feeling of Yeonjun touching his thigh, he might’ve argued against him. As it was, he barely managed to force out an “Okay,” before turning away from Yeonjun, praying that his face wouldn’t heat up and let his friends know the effect Yeonjun had on him. 

Instead of Yeonjun, Soobin’s eyes fell on a smirking Beomgyu, who looked like he was having the time of his life. Discreetly, Soobin made a face at him, before turning his attention back to the screen.

❆

They played for at least two hours, moving from one game to another, without Yeonjun joining in once. At that point, Soobin was starting to wonder if he was bored, or if he was too nervous to join them. The five of them tended to be a bit loud as they played, constantly yelling back and forth, and it didn’t leave much space for Yeonjun to keep a conversation with them.

“Are you sure you don’t want to play, Yeonjun?” Soobin found himself asking again during a pause between games. 

“Oh no, I’m good,” Yeonjun said, though Soobin could swear that he didn’t look completely sincere. His right hand was fiddling in his lap, and the expression on his face was polite more than anything.

“Come on, Yeonjun,” Beomgyu said, throwing a controller at him. “You’re such a bummer, just try it once.”

“Yeah, this game isn’t that hard,” Kai chimed in, nodding excitedly next to Beomgyu. “I swear you’ll like it!” 

Yeonjun glanced at Soobin for a brief moment before he grabbed the controller with a sigh. “Okay. But just once.”

❆

“No!” Yeonjun threw the controller down at his lap, huffing when he once again ended up killed in the game. Next to him, Soobin was grinning, which Yeonjun apparently took huge offense from. “What are you laughing about? It’s not funny.”

They were playing Party animals, a game where they were basically running around as clumsy animals kicking and hitting each other, trying to push the others off the board. It was the third round Yeonjun was playing in Soobin’s stead, and also the third round where he ended up dying immediately. 

“You’re kinda bad at this,” Soobin said, only laughing at Yeonjun’s angry expression he was giving him.

“Rude,” Yeonjun hissed, rolling his eyes. He glanced at the rest of the guys in the room and perhaps seemed to realize he was overreacting, because he then huffed and took his hold around the controller once again. “Again. Let me redeem myself.”

Like Yeonjun had said, it was easiest for them to play only one at a time, so Soobin ended up watching Yeonjun as he played. It was fascinating to him to see his focused expression and the way he grew more frustrated with every passing second, only for his face to fall when he inevitably died. Then, when they started another game, he lit up with determination once again.

Soobin didn’t realize it at first, but he couldn’t look away for a second. He was glad that Yeonjun was so focused on playing the game that he wouldn’t notice him staring. The rest of the guys, however, seemed to notice.

Beomgyu nudged Kai and wiggled his eyebrows, which in turn made Kai let out one of his loud laughs that made both Soobin and Yeonjun jump.

“What?” Soobin said, turning his gaze on his friends, only for Yeonjun to elbow him in the side the moment after.

“Stop talking, you’re distracting me.”

“What? I just said one word, how is that distracting you?”

“Your entire presence distracts me, shut up,” Yeonjun said, eyes still focused on the screen. 

When Yeonjun eventually ended up being killed, he threw a similar tantrum as the first time, turning to look at Soobin with an annoyed look on his face.

“Didn’t know you were such a sore loser,” Soobin told him, smirking. Yeonjun huffed and rolled his eyes. Exhilarated, Soobin couldn’t stop himself from continuing; he had missed rallying up Yeonjun. “I did know, however, that you’d be terrible at games.”

Somewhere behind him, Soobin could hear his friends talking. He could hear Beomgyu telling Heesung and Chaemin that this was normal for them, and to just let them go on.

“What, as if you’re such a big shot yourself,” Yeonjun shot right back at Soobin, making him forget about their friends and focus on him once more. 

“I am. Didn’t you see me win earlier?”

“That was a totally different game though.”

“Oh, so you think gaming skills don't transfer between games?” Soobin held out his hand, motioning for Yeonjun to give him the controller. “Let me show you, then.”

Yeonjun looked at him for several seconds before giving in and handing the controller over. He rolled his eyes when Soobin smirked at him and told the other guys to start up the game once more.

It wasn’t long before Soobin had taken out his opponents and was the last one standing.

“Ugh, you’re so annoying,” Yeonjun muttered when Soobin put down the controller and gestured for his friends to give him a round of applause.

“What? I’m the best and you were wrong? Was that what you said?”

Yeonjun groaned again. When he looked at Soobin, there was a satisfied grin on Soobin’s face, which made Yeonjun’s annoyed expression falter for a moment. Then he rolled his eyes and said, “You’re lucky you’re cute,” before he reached out to take back the controller.

Cute.

Wait. Cute!?

Soobin had a hard time reverting back to the teasing, annoying behavior after that. He was sure that Yeonjun could tell that the comment had flustered him, and so could probably the rest of his friends. Thankfully, no one said anything about it, nor the fact that Soobin was mostly quiet for the rest of the time that they gamed. Only Beomgyu gave him a few knowing looks here and there.

It turned out that Yeonjun was just as terrible at all the other games they played, and after losing a couple more times he ended up choosing not to play. It was more fun for him to watch them play, he said, and after having just watched Yeonjun, Soobin finally understood what he meant. 

On the way home to Yeonjun’s apartment later, Soobin asked Yeonjun if he’d had fun tonight. 

Yeonjun answered surprisingly truthfully. “I did. It was fun. And Heesung and Chaemin seemed nice.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

Their eyes met, and some sort of understanding passed between them.

“If you hadn’t been so terrible, maybe I would invite you to join us next time.”

Yeonjun laughed, and pushed him in the arm, making him stumble a step to the side—which ended up being a stupid move because the chain dragged Yeonjun along with Soobin and made him stumble into Soobin’s side.

Grabbing Soobin’s bicep to hold himself steady, Yeonjun looked away shyly as he took a step back.

They continued walking all the way home, enjoying the quiet night despite that it was cold and dark out. Few words were spoken between them, but occasionally, their eyes would meet. And when they did, they both smiled timidly and glanced away. 

❆

Come Friday, Soobin felt like he blinked, and suddenly the last day of the school year was over. Now, they only had exams left to worry about; but those were weeks away, anyways. 

After school, their friend group made plans to celebrate having finished another semester by going out tonight. But before that, Soobin and Yeonjun went home to relax for a few hours. Or so Soobin thought. 

Soobin had just finished showering and wrapping a towel around his waist before Yeonjun pulled him by the chain into the bedroom and started mumbling about outfits. 

“What are you doing?” Soobin asked when Yeonjun had been staring into his open wardrobe for over a minute without moving. It was kind of cold, standing there in only a towel. The heating of Yeonjun’s apartment wasn’t the best, and the bedroom was especially cold unless you were snuggled up under the covers in bed. 

“I’m planning our outfits,” Yeonjun said, sounding thoughtful and serious. 

“Our outfits?”

“Yes, our,” Yeonjun said, turning his head to look at him. For a split second, Yeonjun’s eyes flickered down to Soobin’s naked chest, before he looked away rapidly. “We come as a pair nowadays, so we need to look the part.”

“What, to sell the whole ‘fake dating’ scheme to your friends?” Soobin said, raising his eyebrows when Yeonjun turned around and reached his arm into the wardrobe.

“It’s not a scheme,” Yeonjun argued, pulling out a few items and looking at them for a moment before dropping them on the chair next to the wardrobe. “They just came to that conclusion on their own.”

“Isn’t it weird that none of them have noticed? I’m actually surprised they haven’t seen the chain or heard any rumors.”

Yeonjun turned around again, pushing a clothes item into Soobin’s chest. “Yeosang knows,” he just said, turning back around to continue his search. 

“He does?”

Now with his entire arm in the wardrobe, Yeonjun hummed. “Yeah, he texted me after we went home from San’s. He didn’t see the chain but I… I ended up telling him about it.”

“And what, you asked him to not tell the others?”

What seemed to be a shirt was pushed into Soobin’s arms then. “Actually, I told him to do whatever he wanted,” Yeonjun said, “and he decided it would be funnier to play along.”

“Did you know your friends are kinda weird?” 

Yeonjun snorted. “No weirder than you, bunny boy,” he said, flicking Soobin on the forehead with little force. He looked down at the clothes in Soobin’s arms, his gaze lingering on Soobin’s chest this time before he dragged his gaze upwards. “Are you gonna put those on or what?”

❆

Half an hour later, a huge portion of Yeonjun’s wardrobe was draped over the chair; some had even made it into a pile on the floor. Some of them, Yeonjun had rejected immediately, others he had made Soobin try on before rejecting them. After what felt like the tenth outfit switch, Yeonjun finally seemed satisfied. Soobin had stopped caring somewhere around five outfits ago, but when Yeonjun made him turn to look at himself in the mirror, he couldn’t help but nod in satisfaction. 

Yeonjun had put him in a pair of dark pants that sat snugly around his butt, paired with a regular black shirt on top of a long sleeved mesh shirt. Initially, Soobin had been skeptical about that part, since he didn’t think he’d ever worn something like that in his life, but now he saw the vision. Last but not least, Yeonjun had added a black, leather belt with stiff leather suspenders. It was similar to a corset, and a bit tight around his waist, but according to Yeonjun it elevated the entire outfit. 

“Everyone’s gonna be floored when we walk in—because of me, of course,” Yeonjun teased, grinning at the sight of Soobin watching himself in the mirror. “But I’m sure you’re gonna turn some heads too, now that you look like a hottie.”

“A hottie?” Soobin looked at him over his shoulder. 

“Oh, wait, my bad,” Yeonjun backtracked, grinning. “I meant a baddie.”

Soobin rolled his eyes and turned his back to Yeonjun to hide the fact that he was blushing. 

Next was Yeonjun. It didn’t take him nearly as much time to decide upon an outfit for himself, which made Soobin suspect that he had already planned it out way in advance. In fact, it seemed like he had an exact outfit in mind when he went back into the wardrobe.

Yeonjun’s outfit was simpler than Soobin, consisting of a white shirt—that was tastefully open, revealing his chest—and black pants. He looked cool, and elegant in a way that didn’t really fit with the scenery of going to a bar. The way he looked, he could be on his way to a fashion show.

But maybe that was just the Yeonjun effect. He looked good in everything. 

After outfits were done and picked, Yeonjun pulled Soobin into the bathroom, making him stand in front of the mirror. 

“It’s criminal how you literally never let anyone see your forehead.”

Soobin blinked, surprised by the way Yeonjun was looking at him. “Why does it matter if people see my forehead?” Soobin asked, frowning at Yeonjun’s reflection.

“Why does it—?” Yeonjun shook his head, flabbergasted. He turned to Soobin, raising his free hand and putting it against his forehead for just a moment, before he dragged the hand upward and pushed away Soobin’s bangs. Then, he turned to look in the mirror again. “See!” he exclaimed, as if he had just had a spectacular revelation. “That’s why.”

Soobin pushed Yeonjun’s hand away. “What does that even mean?”

Yeonjun clapped Soobin on the shoulder. “Soobin,” he said, shaking his head at him. “Don’t you know? Your hair looks sexy pushed back.”

“I—” Soobin’s brain short-circuited for a moment. “Did you just call me sexy?” He was pretty sure that had never happened before.

“I don’t know, did I?” Yeonjun wiggled his eyebrows.  

“You definitely did!” Soobin exclaimed, his voice coming out higher than intended and revealing the effect Yeonjun was having on him. 

“Yeah?” Yeonjun tilted his head, smirking lopsidedly at Soobin. “Where’s your proof?”

Soobin was done for. He couldn’t figure out a single word to say in response to that, so instead he pushed Yeonjun away and turned to face the mirror instead. In the reflection, he noticed Yeonjun’s amused grin and tried to ignore the way his heart suddenly sped up in his chest. 

Despite the fact that they had lots of time to waste before they needed to hit the road, Yeonjun insisted on fixing Soobin’s hair immediately, pulling out a hairdryer and a brush and a bunch of hair products Soobin didn’t even recognize. Since Yeonjun was so determined, and seemed to know what he was doing, Soobin let him do whatever he wanted. Getting his hair blown dry by Yeonjun was much nicer than he’d expected, and he ended up nearly dozing off. 

When Yeonjun was done with him, he started fixing his own hair. Soobin ended up putting on some Christmas music in the background as he scrolled on his phone, waiting patiently. The music seemed to surprise Yeonjun, and he happily sang along whenever his favorite parts came. Without thinking much about it, Soobin found himself singing along as well. 

Time passed quickly like that, and Soobin didn’t get bored even when Yeonjun took ages to do his makeup. Before he knew it, it was seven o’clock, and it was time to head out. 

On their way to the door, Yeonjun pulled Soobin in front of a mirror, saying, “Look at that. We look good.”

For some reason, Soobin expected him to add ‘together’ at the end there. He gulped at the realization, ignoring the disappointment he felt. 

“We look like we’re going to two different places,” he joked, looking solely at Yeonjun’s reflection now. If he looked down, he could see the chain glinting in the light, hanging loosely between their arms now that they were standing so close. 

Yeonjun chuckled. He considered Soobin for a moment, then reached up to open another button on his shirt, revealing more of his bare chest. Like that, Soobin could see part of his perfectly sculpted pectoral muscles. He gulped at the sight. “How about now?” Yeonjun asked, a hint of a smirk on his face when Soobin’s eyes were drawn to the naked skin. “Do I live up to your level of sexiness now?”

Huh?

Sputtering, Soobin quickly retreated his eyes, looking at Yeonjun’s face instead. That was a mistake. Yeonjun’s eyes on him were heavy, carrying a new meaning that Soobin struggled to interpret. 

“Should we, uh, go?” Soobin asked nervously, biting his lip and looking towards the door.

A tiny chuckle was heard from Yeonjun. “Yeah, let’s go. Can’t wait to get this party started!”

❆

The bar was more crowded than usual, probably because it was a Friday and the last day of uni. Still, it didn’t take them long to find a table fitting for their group; a u-shaped booth with sofa seating. Soobin ended up sitting with Yeonjun at the edge of the booth, with Taehyun on his left side and the others facing them. 

With their first round of drinks on the table, they started talking about the semester they had behind them, their upcoming exams, and Christmas holiday plans, among other things. If the place hadn’t been so dimly lit, and they hadn’t all been dressed up, Soobin would have said this felt exactly the same as hanging out in school. 

Sitting next to Yeonjun made it near impossible to talk to the others without including him, but at this point Soobin had gotten used to it. In fact, he didn’t mind it at all. Yeonjun was… fun to talk to, as much as it pained him to say it, and even more so around the rest of their friends.

Soobin found himself studying Yeonjun as they conversed, intrigued by the way his expressions changed as he talked. He couldn’t tell if Yeonjun noticed or not, but even if he did, Soobin was too entranced to pull his gaze away. 

Because of his intensive focus on Yeonjun, he noticed the exact moment when Yeonjun’s attention was drawn outside of their friend group’s circle. Following Yeonjun’s gaze, Soobin’s heart dropped when he saw Wooyoung and the rest of Yeonjun’s friend group having just walked into the bar. 

Looking down at his nearly empty glass, a bitter thought hit Soobin. If it had been two weeks ago, Yeonjun wouldn’t have hesitated to leave their group for them, only coming back later in the night when it was time to leave. And now he couldn’t do that, simply because he was tied to Soobin. 

Soobin let out a shaky breath, trying not to think too much about Yeonjun and his reaction to seeing his friends arrive. His eyes landed on Taehyun, then, who met his look with a calm smile.  

“Tyun,” Soobin said in an attempt to start a conversation that would distract him. He glanced to the side, where Kai, Beomgyu and Hao were currently talking animatedly about something.  “I’ve been meaning to ask you; how are things with, you know, Gyu and Kai?”

Taehyun’s eyes shifted over to said men for a brief moment—perhaps to check that they weren’t listening—before returning to Soobin. “It’s been good, recently,” he said with a small smile. “Making progress.”

“I didn’t know you guys were–” Soobin drifted off, not knowing how to describe it. Together? A thing? In love?

“I know; I’m sorry for not telling you.” He looked down, pulling his half empty glass into his hands without attempting to drink from it. “It’s very new. I just…” he lowered his voice even more then. “Until recently, I didn’t know they liked me back.”

Soobin smiled, affection blossoming in his chest. He had a huge soft spot for Taehyun, so even when he was the most bossy or annoying, Soobin couldn’t help but find him cute. Not that he was bossy or annoying right now. No, right now he was sweet, eyes a little wider than normal—a result of the alcohol and their current conversation—and his cheeks a tiny bit flushed. 

“Both of them?” Soobin asked kindly, even though he basically knew, considering what they had walked in on at the apartment. 

“Yeah.” A goofy smile spread on Taehyun’s lips then, and the look in his eyes when he glanced at Beomgyu and Kai again told Soobin everything he needed to know. 

Soobin nudged him with his elbow, smiling back as he said, “I’m happy for you.”

They were dragged back into the conversation with the rest of the group before Taehyun had the chance to answer, but that was alright with Soobin. He leaned back in his seat, chuckling at what Kai had just said.

Soobin didn’t know who asked for it, but at one point, he and Yeonjun were sent to get another round of drinks. He kind of expected Yeonjun to pull him along to pass by the table where his friends were sitting, so it surprised him when Yeonjun made his way to the bar immediately. Soobin realized that it was probably because their current outfits didn’t allow for the handcuffs to be hidden very easily, and Yeonjun probably didn’t want to risk his friends finding out. 

Approaching the bar, they found an empty spot close to the register. The bartender was further down the line, pouring up some drinks for a bunch of girls Soobin didn’t recognize. 

“What should we get?” he started asking, looking at Yeonjun. “Six more beers, or what do you—”

Soobin was cut off by the sound of someone clearing their throat right next to them, so loudly that it couldn’t be directed at someone else. Looking to the right, Soobin saw a woman looking up at them. She was more than a head shorter than both him and Yeonjun, with long, shiny black hair tied up in a braid at the back of her head. 

“Hi,” the woman said, and Soobin only had to look at her once to tell that she was talking to Yeonjun, not the both of them. Her eyes moved down Yeonjun’s body, clearly checking him out. 

Soobin frowned when Yeonjun pulled their hands under the bar, obviously attempting to hide the handcuffs from view, just before he answered her. 

“Hi to you too. I’m Yeonjun.”

“I’m Ga-hyun,” she said, “nice to meet you.”

Soobin waited for Yeonjun to say something about him, to perhaps introduce him or at least acknowledge his presence. They were there together, after all. But instead of doing that, Yeonjun turned his body away from Soobin to face her, partly hiding Soobin from view. Discouraged, Soobin turned so that he wasn’t facing them, but the bar. Still, even if he couldn’t see them, he heard their conversation loud and clear. 

It was quite obvious that the woman was flirting with Yeonjun, and Soobin didn’t know why that particular fact made him feel so numb.

Before long, Soobin decided to tune out their conversation, as well as he could. They weren’t talking with him, so why should he listen? Instead, he pulled a couple of napkins out of the holder standing on the bar and started folding them. With only one hand available, it was quite tricky, and it only led to him growing annoyed at the fact that Yeonjun kept forcing him to keep his hand under the bar.

The conversation went on for so long that Soobin was getting bored. He contemplated just pulling out his right hand and ignoring whatever reaction that would get him, just so that he could fold this stupid napkin without struggling so much. Or maybe he should just go back to the table, forcing Yeonjun to stop talking to her so that he could—

“Can I get your number?”

Soobin looked up as those words filtered into his brain. Without looking at them, staring intently at the wall full of glass bottles opposite him, he ended up listening intently for Yeonjun’s response. 

“Oh,” Yeonjun sounded surprised, as if he hadn’t been flirting with her the past fifteen minutes. Soobin wanted to snort. “I’m very flattered, but I should tell you that I’m unavailable right now.”

What? He said no?

“Oh,” she echoed, and when Soobin turned his head minutely to glance at her face, he saw her smile fading. “Of course, I understand.”

This was so awkward. 

Soobin fiddled with the napkin in front of him again, barely listening to the rest of their conversation after that. He simply didn’t care any longer. The only thing on his mind now was confusion, and a question begging to come out. 

A sigh sounded next to him, and when Yeonjun pulled his left hand out of the hiding space, automatically pulling Soobin’s hand along, Soobin’s attention returned to him. The woman had disappeared from his side already.

Soobin turned to look at Yeonjun head on. He didn’t wait for Yeonjun to look back; the question just slipped out of him. “Why did you turn her down?”

“What?” Yeonjun’s eyebrows were downturned, as if the question was absolutely incomprehensible. 

“And what did you mean, that you are unavailable right now?” Soobin continued, pushing on despite feeling like he was losing control over the situation. “Are you dating someone?”

Yeonjun looked put on the spot, blinking stiffly several times before he managed to gather his wits. “I’m not dating anyone,” he said, and suddenly the clip in his voice sounded like the way he used to talk to Soobin, before the handcuffs. “But, I mean, I am unavailable, considering I’m tied to you 24/7.”

A feeling akin to being doused in ice water washed over Soobin. “Oh.” He tried to fight against the strong emotions that suddenly warred inside him, choosing to focus on his anger instead of the anguish. “So what, would you have said yes to her if you hadn’t been stuck with me?”

Yeonjun's frown deepened. “I–I don’t know. Maybe, I suppose.”

An unfamiliar sort of pain jabbed Soobin in the chest, so cold and jarring that he had to look away from Yeonjun. Instead, he turned to the bar, looking at the bartender who was currently wiping the counter.

“Can I have two tequila shots?” Soobin asked, gaining her attention most likely due to the desperation in his voice. She answered with a nod and a ‘sure thing’, turning around to grab a bottle and two glasses.

Yeonjun huffed out a breath of frustration. “Soobin?” Suddenly, he entered Soobin’s peripheral view as he leaned sideways on the bar, trying to look at his face.

But Soobin refused to answer. He refused to even look at him. Something very close to panic was rising in his throat, and the only other way he knew how to deal with it was to scream at Yeonjun, but he didn’t want to do that. Not anymore. It had been, what, a week of being tied together, and the days of gladly yelling mean things at Yeonjun were already behind him.

The bartender was quick to pour him the shots and hand him the lemon and salt. Soobin didn’t hesitate to pay for it, then he grabbed one of the glasses and downed it just like that. No salt or lemon would help keep the bile down anyways.

He glanced at Yeonjun, pointedly avoiding looking him in the eyes, and offered the shot to him wordlessly. But Yeonjun was just looking at him, perhaps with a concerned look in his eyes now; not that Soobin would know. Not that Soobin cared.

“You don’t want it? Fine.”

He couldn’t help notice Yeonjun’s hand shooting forward, as if to try and stop him. Well, it was too late. Soobin had already downed the second shot. It burned on the way down his throat and the taste made his face contort by reflex. Ugh. He hated tequila, but at least it was effective.

“What are you doing?” Yeonjun asked, the concern clear in his voice now. “Are you upset by what I said? Soobin, I didn’t even—”

“I’m not upset,” Soobin interrupted coldly, facing the bartender again. “Sorry, can I order—”

It was Yeonjun’s time to interrupt. He grabbed Soobin’s wrist and forced him to turn his head back around to look at him. “No. You’ve had enough.”

Erasing his momentarily surprised expression, Soobin scoffed. “Who are you to tell me what to do?”

“I’m the guy who’s seen you get drunk off of one beer multiple times over the years,” Yeonjun said sternly. He still hadn’t removed his hand from around Soobin’s wrist, and the touch was starting to burn against Soobin’s skin.

Soobin tsked. “I’m not drunk.”

“No? You will be, then.”

He met Yeonjun’s eyes then. There was a challenge in his eyes that was very familiar to Soobin. A few weeks ago, he would have gladly returned it. This time, seeing it made him deflate internally.

“Fuck off,” he said with little fire, turning to bolt away. Unfortunately—though not unexpectedly—the chain pulled Yeonjun along with him, and he didn’t get the privacy he so desperately needed.

When they returned to the table, Soobin was sure that everyone was staring at them. At him, more specifically. He kept his gaze down, ignoring any of their inquisitive looks and just slid into his seat next to Taehyun.

Someone asked “where are the drinks?”, reminding Soobin that they’d gone to the bar with a mission.

Sitting down next to him, Yeonjun gave a shrug as the only explanation. Surely their friends were suspicious, but none of them asked any further questions. Instead, Hao and Gyu left their seats to go and get the drinks instead.

The worst part about sitting in a booth was that there was no escaping Yeonjun. No matter how much Soobin pushed himself into Taehyun’s side, Yeonjun was still there, a breath away to his right. It was impossible to ignore him; though Soobin sure did try. 

When the guys returned with their drinks, Soobin could feel Yeonjun’s burning gaze at the side of his head as he quickly grabbed one for himself and started gulping it down. At that point, he had to admit that he was starting to feel the alcohol, but not nearly enough for it to kill the feeling in his chest.

Taehyun must’ve noticed something was off with him—and if he was being honest, everyone around the table probably noticed—because he leaned into Soobin and held his left hand, caressing it under the table and acting like everything was normal as the conversation continued around them. It helped keep Soobin away from his drink—since he had to use the hand tied to Yeonjun if he wanted to take another sip—which was probably a good idea. Soobin appreciated the silent support, thankful that Taehyun didn’t ask him to explain what was wrong.

Some time passed; how much exactly, Soobin couldn’t tell. He was basing it on the amount of drink left in the glasses around him. Kai was usually the slowest to finish his, but this time, it was Yeonjun who had a nearly full glass still standing on the table when the rest of them were finished.

It was almost ironic that Soobin had to be the one to drag Yeonjun to the toilet this time, when the least thing he wanted was to be alone with Yeonjun.

The air in the bathroom was starkly different to the rest of the bar. As soon as the door closed behind them, all the sounds were muffled, leaving them in a tense awkward silence.

He was allowed to do his business and flush the toilet before Yeonjun turned his questions on him.

“Soobin,” he said, the tone of his voice different from what Soobin was used to. He sounded almost desperate. “Will you tell me what’s wrong? Was it something that I said?”

Soobin glanced at himself in the mirror as he washed his hands. Did he look as drunk as he felt right now? He hoped not.

“Bold of you to assume everything is about you,” he found himself commenting. It sounded mean. He hadn’t meant to be mean, but now that it was out, it felt good. He was hurting, so it was only right that Yeonjun felt some of the same hurt back.

Yeonjun let out a humorless snort. “Right. Is that how you want to do this?” He suddenly placed his hand on the stone that the sink was placed upon, leaning forward into Soobin’s space. “I don’t believe you.”

Soobin’s eyes found Yeonjun’s face without him meaning to look, and then he couldn’t look away. Yeonjun was pretty, especially tonight with the lipgloss and hair gel he’d used, and he was close. Soobin could smell his perfume.

No. Soobin was mad at him. Stupid horny brain, he couldn’t afford thinking about how attractive Yeonjun was right now.

Looking away, he realized he had forgotten to turn off the stream of water, and quickly put his hand on the faucet. His breath hitched when Yeonjun’s right hand landed on top of it before he could remove it.

“Soobin,” Yeonjun said again, sounding less hostile now.

Soobin swallowed thickly. He looked up from their hands touching, only for his gaze to land on the chain and the handcuffs in the mirror.

“Do you wish you were free of me right now?”

Yeonjun’s face scrunched up in confusion. “Don’t you? Being tied to someone 24 hours a day isn’t exactly ideal.”

That’s not what I’m asking, Soobin wanted to say. I’m asking about you and me.

But he couldn’t say it. Something got stuck in his throat, preventing him from speaking if he didn’t want it to come out as a sob.

With his heart beating horribly hard in his chest, Soobin pulled his hand out from under Yeonjun’s and started towards the door. He could feel Yeonjun’s frustration as they went, but he didn’t do anything about it. He just went back outside, being hit by the loud music and buzz of voices and kept going until they were back at the table with their friends. 

Someone had ordered more drinks; a mistake on their part. As soon as Soobin was seated, glued to Taehyun’s side once more, he stole a big gulp out of the nearest glass. No one really cared anyways, except maybe Yeonjun, whose eyes Soobin could feel boring into him constantly after that. 

The night sped up, and Soobin had to admit that he had overdone the drinking part by a mile. He was the drunkest amongst them; it was so bad that he ended up dozing off on someone’s shoulder, until a soft voice awoke him an unknown amount of time later.

“I’ll just take him home.” 

Soobin was mildly aware of what was going on around him. An arm wrapped around his waist, and suddenly he was pulled to his feet. 

“Make sure he drinks water before sleeping.”

The second voice speaking was further away than the first one. It sounded worried. 

“Yeah, I know.” The first voice came very close to Soobin’s face. He recognized it well, and if he opened his eyes he was sure he’d see Yeonjun’s face. “Come on, Soobinnie,” he heard again, this time a whisper against his skin. “Let’s go home.”

Home, Soobin thought. Going home with Yeonjun? Okay. He had been mad at him, he thought, but at this point he couldn’t really recall why. 

Then, before Soobin knew it, he was sitting on the edge of Yeonjun’s bed, looking down at Yeonjun who was struggling to pull Soobin’s socks off. It was a strange sight, but also touching. Yeonjun would do that for him?

His shirt and pants were exchanged for his pajamas—the one that he had worn when visiting Yeonjun’s friends last weekend—and then after a visit to the toilet, Yeonjun tucked Soobin in under the covers. At this point, a headache was forming at Soobin’s temple, and his stomach was a tiny bit queasy. 

It’ll be fun to deal with this tomorrow, he thought bitterly. 

“Soobin?”

Eyes fluttering open, Soobin startled when he saw how close Yeonjun was. 

“What happened today?” Yeonjun asked. His voice was quiet, a soft whisper even though they were alone with no one to eavesdrop on them. “Did I do something wrong?”

Looking at Yeonjun now, Soobin saw not just the Yeonjun of today, but the man he’d met the first day of school, the man he had chosen to hate not just because he had nearly ran him over with his motorbike, but also because he was too perfect. Too pretty. Too flirty. Too popular. Too nice.

Except, he hadn’t been nice, not after Soobin was mean to him first. Soobin was the one who talked shit about him to their friends, not realizing that Yeonjun would hear it. If he hadn’t done that—

“Do you think we could have been friends?”

Surprise bloomed on Yeonjun’s face at Soobin’s unsolicited question. His eyes flickered around Soobin’s before settling on meeting his gaze. He didn’t say anything though, and the silence was killing Soobin.

“Like,” he continued stupidly, “if we hadn’t gotten on the wrong foot at the start of uni, do you think we could have been friends this whole time?”

Again, Yeonjun took his time, likely thinking about it before finding his answer. “I—I don’t know how to answer that. You’re drunk, maybe we should talk about this in the morning—”

“No, it’s okay,” Soobin said, turning so that he was lying on his back, staring up at the ceiling. His chest ached like a fist had been punched into it, crushing his lungs and pulling his heart out with it.

Soobin recognized the rejection when he heard it.

“Goodnight, Yeonjun,” he pushed out, feigning normalcy.

He closed his eyes, forcing down the emotions that were threatening to burst out of him.

Yeonjun didn’t say goodnight back. 

❆

In the morning, Soobin awoke to an intense pain stabbing into his brain. It felt like someone was poking the inside of his skull, and when he opened his eyes and saw the sun peaking out through the window it only worsened. He closed his eyes immediately, pulling his free hand up to rub at his aching temple. 

Ugh, why did he have to drink so much last night?

Oh, right. 

Soobin opened his eyes just the slightest, tilting his head to the side despite how it ached from the movement. There he was. Soobin didn’t know why he was surprised, as if he expected Yeonjun to have found the key and disappeared on him in his sleep. 

Well, after last night, he suspected that Yeonjun probably wanted to disappear on him right now. 

Looking at Yeonjun now and remembering yesterday’s events, the ache spread from his head to his chest. 

“Would you have said yes to her if you hadn’t been stuck with me?”

“I don’t know. Maybe, I suppose.”

He could have just said yes, and ripped Soobin’s heart clean out of his chest, instead of stabbing it and leaving him bleeding and hurting.

What did Yeonjun think about his reaction last night? How well could he read Soobin? Maybe Soobin was the only one who thought they had grown closer these last few days, and maybe Yeonjun didn’t look closely enough to see through Soobin’s exterior and realize what he was feeling yesterday. But what if Yeonjun had understood it perfectly, and Soobin’s anger and behaviour yesterday had made him uncomfortable?

Ugh, now his headache stabbed at the back of his head, forcing a whine out of him. Overthinking never did him any good. 

Trying not to wake Yeonjun, Soobin turned his upper body to reach for his phone, which had been placed neatly on the bedside table, likely by Yeonjun. 

A sharp memory of Yeonjun helping him out of his clothes last night suddenly made Soobin pause, mortified. If Yeonjun hadn’t been sleeping right next to him, he would have released his anguish vocally, but now all he did was swallow down his embarrassment and grab his phone. 

It was only 7:35, which was—considering it was a Saturday—an unacceptable time to get up. But Soobin could already tell that he wouldn’t be able to go back to sleep, so he resigned himself to an hour or two of scrolling on his phone before Yeonjun would wake up. He liked that idea better than the thought of facing Yeonjun right now. 

When he scrolled through his notifications, he realized that he had gotten several messages from his friends after they had left last night. Honestly, Soobin didn’t even remember when or why they had left; he just remembered being angry at Yeonjun, and somewhere along the line his anger had turned into sleepiness. 

Beomgyu

did you get home safe?

im gonna assume you did and that you just fell asleep immediately, and not that you got kidnapped on the way home

about tonight btw, you never get that drunk, man, did something happen?

i’m here if you wanna talk about it

let me know you’re still alive when you see this

Kai

Soobin, are you okay? did you and yeonjun fight again? I thought you were starting to get along now?

Taehyun

Soobin I know something happened between you tonight. Yeonjun wouldn’t tell me what it was, but if you wanna talk about it when he’s not listening, you can always text me. sleep well

Hao had sent a couple of funny reels, but nothing more than that. Soobin went through them, and a bunch of other reels that kept on coming, before he went back to answer his other friends’ messages. He was grateful that they cared, he just didn’t know what to say about last night. It was always embarrassing being the most drunk person of the group, even if he knew they would never judge him. He just… didn’t even understand it fully himself. The only thing he knew was that he was upset, and even if he felt better now without alcohol in his veins, the feeling still stayed with him. 

After answering them something vague, not really answering their questions but not not answering them either, Soobin went back to scrolling on instagram. 

His headache didn’t relent, but at this point, Soobin felt like he deserved the pain. 

It wasn’t until he went through the stories at the top that he halted his insistent scrolling, pausing the screen with his thumb. 

What?

Beomgyu had shared Yeonjun’s story, a picture from the start of the night when the six of them had just spread out around the table and started chattering. Soobin hadn’t noticed he had taken the picture, but he wasn’t entirely in it anyways. 

Curiosity made him click on Yeonjun’s profile and took him to the start of Yeonjun’s story. The first picture of his story made his breath catch in his throat. It was taken when they were getting ready together, when Soobin was waiting for Yeonjun to finish his makeup. He had looked up from his phone, wondering what was taking so long and seen Yeonjun with his phone in his hand, but he hadn’t realized his picture had been taken. 

At the bottom of the screen, Yeonjun had added the text: “school’s out letsgoooo, party with this cutie”.

Why would he post that!?

Cutie.

What did that even mean???

Okay, maybe he was just posing, acting in front of his other friends who still thought they were dating. Yeah, that was probably it. 

Why did that conclusion fill Soobin with dread rather than relief?

Shaking his head, he checked the rest of the pictures on Yeonjun’s story. One was of their first round of drinks, then one where Kai whispered something in Taehyun’s ear, making him blush. There were some more pictures of the scenery around them, and lastly, a candid picture of Soobin swiping the last of his drink, before they’d gone to the bar together. 

To think that little over one week ago, they hated each other’s guts, and now Yeonjun was taking pictures of Soobin for his story as if he was one of his closest friends.

On autopilot, Soobin went to Yeonjun’s profile to simply check it out. 

Yawnzzn. Kinda cool name, Soobin had to admit, even if he liked his own better. And oh wow, was Yeonjun kind of instagram famous? How did he have 15 thousand followers?

Maybe it was the hangover, or maybe it was fate that suddenly made his thumb slip.

He started following Yeonjun. 

Shit!

No no no no no no no.

Okay fuck. Would the notification show up on Yeonjun’s phone even if he unfollowed him now? It probably would. Okay. Well, nothing to do but to swallow down the shame and act like there was nothing wrong with him doing that. Even if Yeonjun might think he was wrong in the head after pulling that shit yesterday, only to go and follow him in the morning…

Well, Soobin was already screwed, anyways. 

Absentmindedly, he started scrolling down Yeonjun’s profile, looking at pictures he’d never seen and never been interested in before. Now, however, the more pictures he saw, the more entranced he became. 

Wow, Yeonjun was so… he looked so… 

Um, he was really good at taking pictures, was what Soobin meant. 

He was very careful not to like any pictures by mistake as he kept scrolling through Yeonjun’s page. That would only make his case worse. Most of the pictures, he looked at very shortly, passing it by almost robotically. 

Until suddenly, his thumb stopped at the sight of a certain picture, dated about a year ago. 

It was a picture of Yeonjun with San and Wooyoung, one on either side of him. There was nothing special about it—the lighting was bad, and the slight blurriness hinted at the photographer’s hands shaking while taking the picture—except the fact that Yeonjun was smiling brighter than the sun while his friends kissed his cheeks. 

Soobin’s stomach lurched at the sight. It didn’t make any sense, but the longer he looked at the picture, the worse he felt, until he finally clicked out of the app and locked his phone. Still, the image of Yeonjun shining so brightly while being kissed was stuck in his mind, and it was only his friends giving him cheek kisses. 

Laying there on his back, staring up at the ceiling while listening to Yeonjun’s soft breaths, a dreadful realization crept up on him. 

No, he thought, sucking in a long breath as his thoughts ran wild. 

He couldn’t like Yeonjun. It was absurd to think that he could fall for someone he had despised for years. But then again, had he ever truly despised him? He had hated him basically out of principle, and as much as he didn’t want to admit it, he envied Yeonjun sometimes. But still… could his feelings for someone really shift that quickly? That easily?

Soobin turned his head, facing Yeonjun’s sleeping face. He was lying on his side, cheek slightly puffed up by the pillow, his mouth just a little bit open. There was no sign of the frown or eyeroll he used to direct at Soobin, nor the small smile Soobin had gotten to know only recently. Like this, his face was serene, a blank slate. Still, Soobin thought he was prettier when he was awake, since his face was so expressive, and his eyes were shining with happiness and determination. 

Wait. 

Oh.

Soobin retreated his eyes rapidly, gulping as his heart suddenly sped up. Fuck. Since when did he think such sappy things about Yeonjun? Eyes shining with happiness????

Okay so… say that he liked Yeonjun. Hypothetically. It was mostly about attraction, right? Because Yeonjun was pretty, anyone could see that. Hell, even a blind person would know, because he had that pretty voice to match. He obviously knew he was hot, but he wasn’t the type to flaunt it or use it to his advantage. And he was confident, without being too cocky. 

Shit. 

Suddenly breathless, Soobin reached for his phone with jittery fingers, pulling up the first contact he could think of. 

Soobin

I have a huge problem

I think I like Yeonjun

Having written it and sent it didn’t make him panic any less. In fact, as he stared at the chat he instantly regretted it and cursed at himself for sending such a thing out of nowhere. 

To his surprise, the answer came not more than two minutes later.

Beomgyu

You only realized it just now?

Soobin

Beomgyu im seriously freaking out about this

what do i do???

Beomgyu

okay sorry it’s a bit of a surprise for me too

let’s backtrack a bit

something happened yesterday, right? that’s why you were upset, and now it led you to realize your feelings…?

Soobin

something like that

it’s embarrassing to write, but I guess I was jealous

and now he’s sleeping next to me and i’m freaking out because i can’t tell him this

Beomgyu

it’s not embarrassing, soobin

i know i tease you and make fun of you for always checking yeonjun out, but i don’t think you’re embarrassing at all

and why can’t you tell him?

Soobin

he’ll reject me and then we’ll still be stuck together and i’ll die of shame

Beomgyu

why would he reject you????

Soobin

why would he not???

are you saying he likes me back? because idk where you’re getting that from

Beomgyu

Choi Soobin.

Have you ever stopped to think about what kind of person Yeonjun is?

Soobin

what does that even mean?

Beomgyu

Yeonjun is a simple guy, honestly

he doesn’t like someone? he doesn’t give them a second thought, not an ounce of his attention

but you?

it’s been three years, and he always humors you, he even thinks it’s fun to rile you up just so that he can have your attention

Soobin

you don’t know that it’s because he likes me

Beomgyu

he looks at you first whenever he says something to see what your reaction will be

Soobin

he just likes to annoy me, that’s all

Beomgyu

he made you hold his hand for hours, several times, and told his friends you two were dating

AND you told me he talks about you with them

Soobin regretted telling Beomgyu about all of that. 

Beomgyu

come on Soobin, if you don’t believe it even after that, just trust me

I’ve known you’ve liked Yeonjun for a long time now

Soobin

I told you I just figured out I like him

Beomgyu 

doesn’t mean you haven’t liked him for a while 

just think about it

and then confess

Soobin groaned, locking the phone so that he didn’t have to see Beomgyu’s stupid texts. He could imagine Beomgyu’s shit eating grin on the other side. 

The sound must have been louder than Soobin thought, and his heart nearly jumped out of his chest when he heard movement coming from Yeonjun. Panicking, Soobin closed his eyes and tried to look like he was sleeping, while listening to Yeonjun as he slowly woke up.

Without realizing it, Yeonjun stretched his arms out in front of him, which pulled the chain away from Soobin and made his arm twist in an unexpected way. He sucked in a sharp breath as the movement sent a short wave of pain up his arm until he moved it closer to Yeonjun’s. 

“Oh, sorry,” Yeonjun mumbled in that morning voice of his that had plagued Soobin every morning for the past week. Right now, it was worse than usual, as those simple two words made Soobin’s heartbeat spike for a moment. 

A finger poked him in the arm, hard, and made Soobin’s whole body flinch. 

“I know you’re awake,” Yeonjun said, sounding annoyed. “There’s no point trying to fake it.”

Slowly, Soobin opened his eyes. “I wasn’t faking it.”

“Sure.”

Silence settled between them for several seconds, and the dread in Soobin’s chest only grew.

“How’s your head?”

Soobin blinked, surprised by Yeonjun’s sudden question. The tone of his voice was emotionless; it was impossible to deduce what he was thinking. 

“Peachy,” Soobin answered.

After another couple of seconds, Yeonjun let out a nasal exhale. “Let’s get out of bed.”

Like every morning before this, they moved in tandem, getting changed and passing the toilet in complete silence. The light in the bathroom stabbed Soobin's eyes, but if Yeonjun noticed, he didn’t seem to care. When they brushed their teeth, Soobin refused to meet Yeonjun’s eyes, his heart beating like crazy at just the thought of him noticing his inner conflict. 

They came to a stop in the middle of the kitchen. Despite not looking at him, Soobin could sense the way Yeonjun turned his whole body, his gaze searching Soobin’s face for something. 

He expected Yeonjun to question him about yesterday. If the roles were reversed, Soobin probably would have given him shit for getting so pissed and for acting like a brat the whole night. But Yeonjun said nothing as he looked at him. 

His breath was stolen from him when he felt Yeonjun suddenly grab his hand firmly. He just had time to whip his head up and look at Yeonjun before he was being pulled towards the door. 

“Let’s go out for breakfast,” he said. Soobin felt like he’d left his brain behind somewhere in the bedroom, because he struggled to keep up. Why was Yeonjun ordering him around this morning? Why did he want to go out? 

Why wasn’t he asking any questions?

Yeonjun seemed determined, so Soobin simply followed his lead, putting on his coat when Yeonjun held it out for him. Then his hat. Then his scarf. In the end, Soobin was so wrapped up, one could think he was heading to the north pole to visit Santa. 

Soobin realized the reason for that the moment they stepped out of the building. A cold wind hit him straight in the face, and he instinctively burrowed further into his thick scarf. He could feel Yeonjun looking at him and shyly met his eyes before glancing down. Neither of them were wearing gloves, and with the short chain between them, only one of them would be able to use their pocket to warm their cuffed hand. 

It seemed like Yeonjun had thought about the same thing as Soobin, but he had come to another conclusion. He grabbed Soobin’s hand once again and pulled it along with his own hand into his large coat pocket. Soobin’s eyes widened as he met Yeonjun’s gaze this time, only to find Yeonjun giving him a look that said ‘what?’ as if what he’d just done was completely normal. 

They stayed silent as they walked to get breakfast; Soobin had no idea what their destination was, but he let Yeonjun take the lead, just following along mindlessly. It was best that way, because with Yeonjun holding his hand so firmly, Soobin couldn’t focus on anything else.

It must have been colder today than the previous days, because Soobin felt it into his bones despite being so bundled up today. Looking up, the clouds were heavy, darkening the morning sky.

The café they ended up at was a fifteen minute walk away, one that Soobin wasn’t familiar with but Yeonjun seemed to know well. He walked inside without hesitation, pulling his and Soobin’s hand out of the pocket but keeping the grip steady. Why did he always do that?

“Merry Christmas,” said the girl behind the counter cheerily. 

“Merry Christmas,” Yeonjun echoed, sounding light and happy all of a sudden. “Can I have one hot frosty latte and one spiced hot chocolate?” Apparently Soobin wasn’t getting a say in what he wanted to order. “Then I’ll have a Cheese Toast, and a chicken salad, please.”

The girl punched in their order and Yeonjun paid without question. The entire time, Soobin stood there, feeling like a bystander.

“Come on.” Yeonjun nodded his head to the left, and started walking towards a table in the corner. Soobin had no choice but to follow. 

It was still early, so most of the café was empty, except for an old couple sitting as far from the door as possible, and a girl who looked like a stressed university student at another table.

“I–” Soobin was still struck dumb as they went to sit down, so much that Yeonjun helped him take off his hat and scarf before his body jump started so he could take off his coat by himself. 

“You don’t need to thank me,” Yeonjun said, having somehow read Soobin’s scattered brain. “You must be hungry; the only thing you ingested last night was alcohol.”

Soobin bit his lip and retreated his gaze, ashamed. 

When Yeonjun spoke again, his voice was softer, less accusing. “What happened last night, Soobin?”

Focusing on the table in front of him, Soobin answered, “I don’t know what you mean.”

“I know that’s bullshit.” 

Soobin lifted his gaze just to see Yeonjun drag his hand through his hair, pushing the strands off his forehead for a moment only to have them fall right back again. It reminded him of yesterday, when Yeonju had told him he looked sexy showing his forehead. He swallowed thickly. 

“I’ve never seen you like that in the three years I’ve known you, Soobin.” Yeonjun let out a sigh, placing his free hand on the table in front of him now. Just then, the girl from behind the counter came up to their table, placing a tray filled with their orders in front of them. After thanking her, Yeonjun turned his attention back to Soobin. “If it was something I did, or something I said, then I’m sorry. But I would prefer to know what I’m apologizing for, so I’ll know not to do it again.”

Soobin sighed heavily. Why was Yeonjun being reasonable when Soobin literally couldn’t explain himself? Sure, he could say that he was being jealous about Yeonjun and the girl he spoke to for like ten minutes, but was that even all of it? It was the instigating event, sure, but the more Soobin thought about it, the more complicated it seemed. If it had simply been jealousy, he thought he could’ve gotten over it after an hour. 

“I… I don’t really know,” Soobin said after thinking for a while.

“Don’t give me that again, I—”

“No,” Soobin interrupted. “I don’t mean it like that, I just… I don’t know what it was, exactly. I was a dick, and I’m sorry, but I can’t really explain why.”

Yeonjun blinked slowly, staring at him. “You don’t know? What, so you just started ignoring me and acted like I was the dirt under your shoe for the fun of it? That doesn’t make sense, Soobin.”

A handful of seconds passed with them just looking at each other. Soobin didn’t know what else he could say, if he didn’t want to reveal the truth about his jealousy.

When staring into Yeonjun’s eyes became too intense, Soobin shifted his focus to the drink in front of him. It smelled nicely and chocolatey, and with a big whip of cream and marshmallows on top it looked heavenly. His headache had lessened since their walk in the cold earlier, but he still felt like his stomach might turn inside out the moment he put something in it. The hot chocolate did make his mouth water, though, so he was ready to risk it.

Yeonjun sighed again when Soobin started drinking and later carefully nibbled on the salad in front of him. It didn’t take long before Yeonjun started eating too; his toast was harder to get through with one hand than Soobin’s salad, so Soobin instinctively leaned forward to keep his arm close to Yeonjun’s plate.

Wow, they really had created a routine that came automatically to them, hadn’t they?

They were about halfway through their food—or, Yeonjun was, but Soobin was halfway through his drink at least—when Yeonjun dared to start a conversation again.

“I, uh, talked to my mom again,” he said, surprising Soobin by changing the topic completely, even though he was sure Yeonjun hadn’t dropped the earlier topic yet. “She suggested we take the train tomorrow, and then on Wednesday for Christmas eve, we can take it back to meet your family.”

“Oh. Yeah, sure, sounds good. I can text my parents later.”

“Great.”

Soobin wanted to cry when the conversation died once more, and the tension between them grew stronger. He contemplated topics to talk about, but his brain only supplied him with useless questions like

“You know, I really thought we’d be out of these cuffs by now,” Yeonjun said, sounding a bit thoughtful as he stared into his cup in front of him. “But it feels like we’re taking one step forward, one step back, never getting anywhere. Before yesterday, I thought we were getting along, but the cuffs are still here.”

We are getting along, Soobin wanted to say, but he realized it might only ignite Yeonjun’s anger once more.

“We don’t know if getting along is actually the solution,” was what he said instead.

“Is that why you acted shitty last night, then? You thought getting along doesn’t matter, and stopped trying?”

His words stabbed like needles into Soobin’s chest. “Is that really what you think about me? What, you think I’ve been acting this whole time?”

“I don’t know what to think because you refuse to tell me anything!”

Soobin got to his feet, looking down at Yeonjun as he said through gritted teeth, “Not everything is so easy to just say, Yeonjun!”

He didn’t know what he was thinking, or what his plan was, he just acted on impulse, grabbing Yeonjun by the shirt and hauling him to his feet. Next, he balled up his coat, putting it on as fast as he possibly could before bolting towards the exit. He assumed Yeonjun had put on his coat as well.

When they stepped out from the warm interior of the café, Soobin stopped in his tracks, staring in surprise at the world around them.

It was snowing. The first snow; how ironic that it happened to fall just as he and Yeonjun were fighting.

The sight nearly made his resolve die completely, as he couldn’t stop looking at the tiny flakes falling in almost slow motion. Above them, the grey clouds had grown lighter, brightening their surroundings. The snow was far from settling on the ground yet, but it still painted the most beautiful, peaceful picture around them.

“Soobin,” Yeonjun said, sounding tired now. Looking to his right, Soobin saw that the fire seemed to have died in him as well as he reached out his right hand, catching a few snowflakes. “What are we doing? Why are we… acting like we did before? It’s not like that between us anymore; at least I thought so.”

Soobin sighed. “I thought so too.”

Their gazes met. Something in Yeonjun’s eyes made Soobin’s heart jump in his chest. 

“Can I tell you what I think happened yesterday, instead?” Yeonjun asked, turning so that he was facing Soobin now. They walked a few steps away to not stand directly at the entrance.

“Okay.”

“I think,” Yeonjun started, “that you were scared. Scared of how everything has changed so quickly, and of what’s going on inside your brain. Am I on the right track?”

Soobin nodded. Why was everything so hot all of a sudden? It was snowing, so shouldn’t it be cold?

“Good.” Suddenly, Yeonjun took a step closer, breaking into Soobin’s personal space. “And I think that you were mad at me because I flirted with that woman.” Soobin opened his mouth, perhaps to refute, but Yeonjun made him stop. “You couldn’t have been more obvious, Soobin.”

Now, Soobin’s face was hot, flaming despite the cold air. “Then why did you ask me to tell you about yesterday?”

“Because,” Yeonjun said, reaching out to tuck a lock of Soobin’s hair underneath his beanie. “I wanted you to tell me. Even if I could tell that you were jealous, I can’t read your mind.” His gaze shifted between Soobin’s eyes, searching for something. “I’m sorry for yelling at you before.”

Yeonjun was so close that Soobin had a hard time focusing on anything but how attractive he was. He realized a second too late that Yeonjun had apologized, and quickly looked up at Yeonjun’s eyes. “Oh. I mean, I yelled at you too. That’s normal for us, right?”

It seemed Yeonjun had noticed Soobin’s slip in focus, because his face suddenly lit up in a smirk. “It doesn’t have to be,” he said, and then he took another step, coming so close that their chests were almost touching. 

When Yeonjun’s right hand reached out to grab Soobin’s waist, Soobin was sure that his soul left his body. 

“I have to say, Soobin, I’ve been waiting for you to say it, but maybe it’s unfair of me to expect you to do it first.”

Soobin blinked, dumbfounded. Either his brain had stopped functioning, or Yeonjun was speaking in riddles. “What do you mea—”

“It's pretty perfect timing, don’t you think? The first snow.” Yeonjun looked up into the sky, and in his confusion, Soobin did the same. “Perfect timing for me to do this.”

Soobin was just going to ask what ‘this’ meant, when a pair of lips crashed against his own. His eyes popped wide open in shock, seeing Yeonjun’s nose right in front of him. He was about to freak out, completely overwhelmed by what was happening, when Yeonjun’s hand cupped his cheek, instantly making him melt. His eyes fell shut, and he kissed Yeonjun back with all his might. 

He hadn’t expected that kissing someone could feel like that. So… soft, and so hot at the same time. Every part of his body felt like tiny explosions were erupting, especially in his chest. A desperate need to get even closer to Yeonjun grew within him, so he lifted his left hand and wrapped his arm around Yeonjun’s back, keeping him firmly in place.

When they had to pause to take a breath, Soobin found himself needing the closeness, leaning his forehead against Yeonjun’s. With his eyes still closed, he prepared himself, gathering all the confidence he could muster, to finally say, 

“Yeonjun, I like you.”

Before Yeonjun had the chance to react, a strange sensation started around Soobin’s wrist that made him suck in a sharp breath. Yeonjun did the same, and they both looked down at their wrists just in time to see the handcuffs flicker out of existence. They were there one moment, and gone the next. 

“Oh my God!”

“Holy shit!” 

They said at the same time, looking up at each other. Soobin lifted his wrist, looking at it with awed eyes as if it was some precious artifact and not his own damn arm. It felt so weird, being able to move his arm without having the cuffs pulling at his skin and restricting his movements. 

Unlike Soobin, Yeonjun wasn’t looking at his own wrist at all. He was looking at Soobin. 

“You did it,” he said, grinning like a fool. “Holy shit Soobin!” Letting out a laugh that made Soobin look at him, Yeonjun’s both hands landed on each side of Soobin’s face as Yeonjun pulled him down into another kiss. This one was brief, just a quick meeting of their lips before Yeonjun pulled back and looked Soobin in the eyes, saying,

“I like you too, if that wasn’t obvious.”

Soobin thought that he must be shocked, because he failed to completely understand what was going on right now. Was he dreaming? Why did he feel like his brain had been filled with cotton candy?

“Uh huh,” he said, his voice coming out breathless. 

Yeonjun slapped him playfully in the arm for that lackluster response. “Soobin,” he said, laughing again, and oh. Soobin didn’t think he had heard this kind of laugh from Yeonjun before. It was so cute, so happy, that Soobin wanted to just squeeze him like a teddy bear. 

His body moved on its own accord, and before Soobin knew it, he was hugging Yeonjun. 

Yeonjun let out a small sound of surprise. “Oh.” He wrapped his own arms around Soobin as well. “This is nice.”

They had never hugged before, so it was a foreign feeling for both of them. Still, it was nice. So nice that Soobin was surprised by himself, because he would have thought that there’d be some conflicting emotions left in him, but no. His animosity for Yeonjun was long gone, had been for a while now, and so was the annoyance. Instead of being the bane of his existence, suddenly Soobin could see how easily Yeonjun would become his main source of joy. 

“As nice as it is, though,” Yeonjun said then, turning his head on Soobin’s shoulder to speak into his ear, “I think the wind is getting worse. We should go home.”

Reluctantly, Soobin released Yeonjun and took a step back. On instinct, he held his right hand out, expecting the chain to pull him back, only to remember that it wasn’t there anymore. Suddenly, he was reminded that he and Yeonjun weren’t stuck together any longer, so they technically didn’t have to go anywhere together from now on. 

Looking at Yeonjun, Soobin’s worries died before they had the chance to blossom. The way he was looking at Soobin, so open and excited, told Soobin everything he needed to know about Yeonjun’s thoughts. Of course they would head home together. It wouldn’t make sense to part now, when they had so much to talk about. 

“Home?” Soobin asked, stepping to the side to stand next to Yeonjun. He held out his hand, the same one he had grown used to holding Yeonjun’s in, and looked at Yeonjun expectantly. 

With a huge grin on his face, Yeonjun grabbed his hand, interlocking their fingers, and said, “Home.”

♡