Archive of Our Own

It takes exactly sixteen words to knock Keeho off balance.

“You know, there are people here who’ll be shocked it’s not you walking down the aisle,” Taeyang says without looking up.

He’s too busy adjusting the white peony on his chest pocket, frowning down at it like it’s the only thing in the room that requires his attention.

Like he hasn’t just said that.

They’re the only ones in the room, so there’s no alternative, really. No way to pretend the you is anyone but Keeho. He glances at the door anyway.

It’s still closed. Still just the two of them.

It should’ve been a harmless comment. A light, funny thing to say, groom to best man. Keeho’s sure the same joke’s been told a million times, from other grooms to other best men, and it probably landed every single time. It’s perfectly tuned, funny brushing warm, warm brushing cheesy.

Best friends joking about getting married, it’s classy. Best friends joking about getting married just half an hour before one of them actually gets married, it’s classy and hilarious.

Keeho would laugh. Keeho should laugh. That’s basically the whole job description.

Best friends joking about getting married when one of them is getting married and the other’s been hopelessly in love with him for years, well.

There’s nothing classy about it.

Some would argue it’s kind of hilarious, in a very twisted way. Those people wouldn’t be wrong. It’d just depend on which side of the joke you’re standing.

Keeho is definitely in the wrong one.

The “I’m in love with my best friend who is getting married today” one.

The “I’ve been able to hide my feelings for years without anyone noticing but something’s just slipped” one.

Because something slipped.

Keeho doesn’t even know what. Maybe a look he held a second too long, or a laugh half a beat late. Whatever it was, Taeyang’s noticed it. Of course he has. In the mirror, over the peony, Taeyang’s eyes find Keeho’s for a second, and that’s all it takes for Keeho to know he’s been caught.

Soulmatism has its perks, but also a darker side. Taeyang reads Keeho like a children’s book, barely a few words per page, with big helpful pictures.

It’s dead on, most of the time.

It’s a miracle Keeho’s made it this far.

His mouth is dry. His heart is doing something undignified. Keeho chuckles anyway, shrugs, pushes off the wall he’s been holding up for the past ten minutes.

This is salvageable, he tells himself. Everything’s salvageable if you talk fast enough.

“Yeah,” Keeho says, “your cousin asked me why I’m not wearing white.”

“Hyejin?” Taeyang asks, peony already forgotten. His attention lands on Keeho, all of it, all at once. Crushing doesn’t even begin to cover it.

“Who else?” Keeho says, and braces himself for what’s coming.

Soulmatism has its perks. Keeho can see the cogs in Taeyang’s head turning, working, lining up the right questions to get the right answers. Or, well. The honest ones. Right isn’t a word Keeho would use to describe them.

“She keeps saying you’re in love with me,” Taeyang throws out there, with too much lightness for a man lobbing a grenade.

It’s not a question. It’s bait. Keeho takes it, nice and easy. It’s less suspicious than rejecting it straight away.

“Does she?” Keeho asks, with all the interest he’d give a weather update.

“Yes,” Taeyang’s eyes narrow. “Kihyun too.”

“Kihyun? What the fuck.”

That one lands different, and Keeho lets it show, because pretending it didn’t would be a tell on its own.

Hyejin is harmless.

She’s just Taeyang’s teenage cousin, who Keeho’s known since she was all missing teeth and juice boxes, and who, the moment she learned a man can love another man, decided Taeyang and Keeho should marry.

It’s been their inside joke for years. Innocent, and childish, and easy to laugh off despite the tightness in Keeho’s chest.

Hyejin is harmless.

Kihyun isn’t.

Kihyun is the man Taeyang is marrying today. Five years together, one of them engaged. Keeho knows the math by heart, he’s had a front-row seat for all of it.

He and Keeho got off on the wrong foot, so to speak. Enough years have passed for Keeho to admit that it was entirely his own doing, because he wanted, desperately, for something to be wrong with Kihyun. Just the tiniest reason, the smallest red flag. Anything he could bring to Taeyang, gift-wrapped: Here’s why you should break up with him.

Nothing came up.

Kihyun remembered birthdays, anniversaries, dental appointments. He didn’t flinch away when Taeyang laughed hard enough to start swinging.

It all backfired, really quickly. It made Keeho restless, bitchier than usual, and the least supportive friend on the planet. He couldn’t find anything wrong with Kihyun, so he started nitpicking.

He’s too short for you, don’t you think?

I couldn’t date someone who’d wear that shirt.

He texts back too fast. It looks desperate.

Taeyang got fed up, really quickly too. He and Keeho had a fight, a big one. Jongseob had to meddle. Jiung too, that’s how big it was. And then it resolved, and everything fell back into place. Last year Kihyun proposed, Taeyang said yes, and they’re getting married today.

Except.

“What the fuck?” Keeho repeats, pride still untouched. “What do you mean? When did he say that?”

“Not recently, obviously. When we started dating. He used to think it.”

“And he told you,” Keeho states, though that part is obvious. “You guys talked about it.”

“A couple of times, yeah. He said you were waiting for him to slip. The whole first year, apparently.”

“That was years ago,” Keeho says, keeping it together even though he’d rather have a SWAT team kick the door down and haul him off.

“I know exactly when it was,” Taeyang says it lightly. He always does, when it isn’t light at all.

“Okay,” Keeho needs a second. He needs several, actually, but there’s only so much silence he can afford right now. “Well. If I were in love with you, don’t you think it’d be a bit late to bring it up?”

Something raw flickers across Taeyang’s face, but it’s gone before Keeho can name it, packed away with the urgency of someone who’s painfully aware that the person in front of him is able to read him just as well.

“Keeho.”

“I’m joking. Jesus, I’m obviously joking.”

“Are you?”

Someone raises their voice somewhere down the hall. They both glance toward the door for a moment, until the voice fades. Any interruption would feel like a blessing now, and Keeho prays to every deity he doesn’t believe in.

Unsurprisingly, none of them are listening.

He takes a deep, slow breath.

“Are you serious?”

“Yes,” Taeyang holds his gaze, steady. Keeho meets it for about a second before everything else in the room starts demanding his attention more.

“You’re getting married in like, thirty minutes.”

“So?”

So. Like there’s a version of this conversation that fits in thirty minutes.

“So why are we having this conversation,” Keeho gestures at the room, at their suits, at the peony poking from Taeyang’s chest pocket, “at your wedding.”

“Because you keep doing that.”

“What.”

“That,” Taeyang steps closer, and Keeho takes a step back. His spine finds the wall behind him. “You can’t even look at me for more than a second, and you think I don’t notice.”

Keeho tries to swallow. It doesn’t go down.

So he looks. Holds Taeyang’s gaze. Called out, Keeho has to, that’s how it works. And the room tilts a little, because Taeyang looks beautiful today, with his light makeup, hair done, every good thing about his face turned up a notch for the occasion.

The most special day of his life.

Keeho thinks Taeyang looks even more breathtaking with none of that.

Fresh from the shower, cheeks pink because he keeps the water a breath short of scalding, one droplet tracing the line of his throat slowly, down to the shoulder. Laughing at something stupid Keeho just said. Laughing like Keeho’s the funniest person he knows.

Shit.

Keeho can feel his throat closing. His eyes are starting to sting, no tears yet, but close.

He can’t allow that. Keeho can talk his way out of a confession, but if Taeyang sees him crack, if he sees Keeho’s tears, there’s no lie in the world good enough to cover that.

It’d be over.

Keeho needs to gather whatever courage he has left and say something clean. Something like, Taeyang. I’m not in love with you. I don’t like you. It’ll take five seconds tops, one final decent lie.

What comes out of his mouth instead is, “I’m seeing someone.”

He’s not.

“What?”

“I have a boyfriend.”

He doesn’t have a boyfriend.

“Bullshit.”

“It’s true.”

“No, it’s not.” Taeyang has the nerve to laugh. Loud. “You don’t have a boyfriend. I would’ve known.”

He totally would have.

A lie only works if you outrun it, so. A smile tugs at the corner of Keeho’s mouth.

“It’s true,” he doubles down.

“Then why isn’t your boyfriend here?”

“It’s very recent—”

“You don’t have a boyfriend.”

“—You didn’t let me finish. It’s very recent, but he is here. Just, nobody knows. About us.”

The lie is building itself now, brick by brick, and Keeho is only laying them where they need to go. It’s so easy. Maybe that should frighten Keeho more than it does.

“Your boyfriend is here,” Taeyang deadpans.

“Yes.”

“At my wedding.”

Keeho nods.

Somewhere far away, in some kinder universe, there’s a version of him that made better choices and is having a lovely, uneventful morning.

“So I know him,” Taeyang concludes. Keeho nods again. He knew Taeyang would take the loose thread and pull, and now there has to be a name at the end of it. Keeho has a breath to decide whose.

It can’t be a stranger. Keeho’s already said the man is here, in the building, which means it has to be someone Taeyang knows, someone he could point to. Someone Taeyang would find believable, but also someone Keeho could possibly have had reasons to keep quiet about.

“It’s Jiung.”

The name is out before he’s finished weighing it, and only after that does Keeho understand that he’s chosen the one person who’s most likely to walk through that door and end him.

Taeyang’s eyes widen, comically so.

“Jiung?” he repeats, and then, because it’s so absurd and so far past believing, he goes full government name. “Choi Jiung?”

Yes. That one. The only Jiung at the wedding.

“Yes.”

Taeyang doesn’t blow up. He looks like he wants to scream, though, and the only reason he hasn’t yet is that a screaming groom on his wedding day is not a good look. He tilts his head, studying Keeho like a chessboard. Taeyang isn’t dumb, he knows nothing about what Keeho just said adds up.

“You want me to believe that you and Jiung are dating,” he says, and Keeho can’t tell whether he’s been given the benefit of the doubt or not.

“Why is it so hard to believe?” Keeho asks, knowing damn well that there are flat-earthers with stronger arguments.

“I could give you a list,” Taeyang says kindly, which is way worse. “Who else knows?”

“No one.”

Not even Jiung himself, Keeho’s conscience yells from the back of his mind.

“No one,” Taeyang lets that sit, then turns it over. “So Intak doesn’t know that you’re dating Jiung.”

Oof.

Keeho has to give it to him, mentioning Intak is going straight for his throat.

Because Intak and Jiung have always been their own thing. People who’ve known them for way less time than Keeho has still ask about it, sort of carefully, like they’re not sure they’re allowed to pry: Are those two dating, or just friends?

And the answer has always been the same. Friends. Just friends. Soulmates, sure, the way Keeho and Taeyang are supposed to be soulmates. The kind who don’t date each other and definitely don’t marry each other.

But if Keeho and Jiung were actually, really dating, Intak would’ve known before anyone else. That’s just how it works between them.

Which means Intak is another loose thread that Keeho needs to tie off before today ends.

“We were going to wait until after the wedding to tell everyone,” Keeho says, and he can hear himself getting comfortable in his words, winning his rhythm back. “Like, it’s a weird one. I’m aware. But it’s your day, so I didn’t want to be like, Congratulations! Oh, by the way, Jiung and I are dating.”

Taeyang doesn’t immediately refute it, which, good. It’s working.

It sounds absurd enough to be true, and Keeho has a long list of absurd situations to his name. Most of them, he admits, are direct consequences of his own actions.

“So if we go find Jiung,” Taeyang says slowly, “he’ll tell me the same thing.”

“Yeah,” Keeho lies, with absolute confidence.

“Well then,” Taeyang wastes no time reaching for the door. “Lead the way.”

“Wait. You mean right now?”

Keeho starts running scenarios, all of them the same scene: Taeyang asks Jiung dead-on if he’s dating Keeho. Jiung laughs and says Are you out of your damn mind in 99,9% of them. In the remaining 0,1% Jiung chokes on his drink first.

It’s bad. It’s really bad.

“Of course right now. I’ll be busy later, don’t you think?”

Keeho gives the universe one last chance to intervene. Anything will do. A knock on the door, someone calling Taeyang away at the last second. Someone tripping and pulling the fire alarm by mistake. A heart attack, if it has to come to that.

Nothing happens. He’ll have to cling to that 0,1% instead.

“Fine,” Keeho rolls his eyes, trying his hardest to look annoyed rather than terrified.

Taeyang holds the door open, letting Keeho walk through first before following. Keeho doesn’t look back. He doesn’t need to. He can feel Taeyang’s presence behind him, the weight of Taeyang’s eyes directly on his nape as they walk through the hotel corridors.

On the 12th floor, where the venue is located, the walls are huge glass panels and the ceiling matches the floor in ornaments and decorations. It has nothing to do with the ugly carpet of the rest of the floors, the fluorescent lights that make it look like a crime scene, the cheap and generic art trying and failing to bring some life to the walls.

Keeho presses the button for the elevator.

By now, his heart has relocated. It’s in his ears, in his palms, and high enough in his throat that one wrong swallow might hand him over to a better life. Jiung’s room is one floor down. According to Keeho’s mental gymnastics, and considering how busy hotel elevators get, that gives him at least two minutes before doom.

Two minutes to solve the whole thing.

Okay.

He’s been in more dire situations. Kind of.

Because doom has a very specific shape this time. Jiung’s eyebrows going up, followed by a look of pure disgust at the sole mention of being romantically involved with Keeho. Then some laughing, and some questioning, leaving Keeho with nowhere else to hide, twenty-something minutes before Taeyang says I do.

Half a life of friendship, reshaped in an ugly hotel room.

The panel above the elevator doors shows the car crawling down to them. 17, 16, 15…

Keeho makes the mistake of looking away, catching Taeyang’s eyes.

“So, Jiung?” Taeyang asks, and something in his voice tells Keeho that the idea has started to settle, which is deeply unsettling in its own way.

He understands what Taeyang is asking. Keeho and Jiung don’t have the best record. They aren’t soulmates, not even something close to it.

“I don’t know,” Keeho replies, which he genuinely thinks would be his honest answer if he ever had to explain how and why he was dating Jiung for real. “He still gets on my nerves every two days, and I refuse to go camping in a tent.”

Keeho smiles, unconsciously, at his own words.

“Like I said, it’s fairly new,” Keeho makes a face, “He’s not going to like that you’ve found out.”

“I didn’t find out, you straight-up told me.”

“Only because you think I’m in love with you.”

“Everyone would believe that before believing you’re in love with Jiung.”

The panel blinks above them, and the elevator door opens.

“You know how I hate being predictable,” Keeho says before stepping in. “And I’m not in love with Jiung. It’s way too soon.”

“How romantic.”

Keeho gives him a look.

During the short elevator ride Keeho comes up with two plans, and one of them is not feasible.

Okay, Plan #1. He makes eye contact with Jiung and uses the five to ten seconds before Taeyang asks if they’re together to send a Morse-coded message via rapid blinking. It’s not feasible because Keeho doesn’t know Morse code, but it was a spectacular, well-thought-out plan for a brief moment.

He also doesn’t know for sure whether Jiung knows Morse code or not, but it’s such a Jiung thing that Keeho would be surprised if he didn’t. It’s exactly the kind of niche, trivia-winning knowledge Jiung possesses. The kind that makes you go, Awww, what a do—

Focus, Keeho.

Plan #2. It’s the fire alarm again, except this time Keeho pulls it on purpose, watches it wreak havoc, delays the wedding, probably, and makes Taeyang hate him, definitely. He could then say he saw smoke coming from one of the rooms. He could say he panicked. It won’t solve the Jiung situation, and it won’t magically make him fall out of love with Taeyang, but it’ll buy him enough time to sort things out, come up with a better plan.

The elevator dings, again.

Jiung choking on a drink he may or may not be holding is still the best-case scenario.

Okay. It’s decided then. Plan #2 it is. God, let one of the firefighters called to the scene be super hot, and super gay, and Keeho’s future husband.

“Is it room 917 or 916?” Taeyang asks as he steps out.

“917, I think,” Keeho turns left, looking for the nearest fire alarm on the wall, and just in case he doesn’t find one, the closest window to jump from.

His eyes land on something much, much better.

On someone.

Shota.

Every cell in Keeho’s brain starts chanting his name at once: Shota!! Shota!! Shota!! Shota!!

Okay, Plan #3 then.

Shota spots them walking out of the elevator, smiles broadly, and starts heading their way. One of the deities Keeho prayed to earlier might’ve actually answered because Shota is exactly who Keeho needs in a situation like this. He commits to every bit that Keeho starts without asking questions, and he always sees it through to the bitter end.

Keeho glances back, confirms that Taeyang is squinting at the door plaques. 909. 910. 911. It gives Keeho a couple of unwatched seconds, exactly what he needs.

He makes eye contact with Shota, who locks in just as fast. Keeho widens his eyes then, signalling urgency, and gives a two-millimetre head-tilt in Taeyang’s direction.

No Morse code required.

Shota’s expression doesn’t change at all. That’s how Keeho knows he’s understood. Their eyes hold for half a second longer, long enough for them to have a silent conversation. There will be a price to be named, one that’s being pre-approved right in this moment. Keeho will give him anything. Any anime figurine. The most expensive item in a vintage store. A kidney, if he asks for it.

Keeho nods.

Then Shota nods back, reaches up, and yanks his own tie loose.

Keeho could cry.

“Taeyang,” Shota says, planting himself directly in Taeyang’s path. “My tie. It’s impossible.”

That’s it. That’s the whole performance. Blank face, dead voice, absolute commitment.

And it works, because Keeho’s soft spot for Shota might be the biggest soft spot known to the universe, but everyone else in their friend group has a similar one, just slightly smaller.

Taeyang stops, looks at the tie, then at Keeho. He does so with the specific look of someone who knows he’s being played and can’t prove it. Then Shota moves, drops the ends of his tie in Taeyang’s hands, and makes a sound. Not even a word.

Taeyang looks at Shota, then back at Keeho, “Don’t move,” he says, and takes the tie ends.

He says it like it’s ever worked.

Unless Shota pulls another unexpected move from his enormous repertoire, this gives Keeho between forty and fifty extra seconds. Room 917 is eight steps away. Keeho covers the distance in four, and knocks on the door like the building’s on fire.

Nothing.

He knocks again.

Come on, Keeho almost prays again. The deities might be tired of listening to him by now, so he broadens his audience. Mother Nature, Santa, the Universe, anything goes. Please be in there. Please be dressed. Please be in a listening mood—

The door opens. Jiung stands there, with one cufflink on and a very understandably concerned look on his face.

“What happened? Is something wr—”

“Okay, listen very carefully,” Keeho whispers, stepping in and forcing Jiung to take a couple of hurried steps back, “because I have no time and it’s going to sound insane.”

“Okay?”

“We’re dating.”

Jiung’s face does several things in a row. None of them is an agreement.

“Since when—”

“Since five minutes ago, when Taeyang asked me if I was in love with him and I couldn’t exactly say yes, so I said No, I have a boyfriend. You’re the boyfriend. Congratulations, it’s going great.”

Keeho understands, a beat too late, that he’s basically just confessed. Right here, right now, in a hotel room that reeks of Jiung’s floral perfume, the one he always uses on special occasions. The weight of it doesn’t fully settle until Jiung’s eyes widen even further, which Keeho didn’t think was physically possible.

Then, his face does something new. Or maybe not new. Just unfamiliar, directed at Keeho.

It’s pity.

It’s written all over Jiung’s face. In his downturned eyebrows, his slightly parted mouth. In his hand, stalled halfway toward Keeho, like he’d started to reach out and then remembered who they are, where they are.

Keeho would rather be laughed at.

“You’re in love with Taeyang?” Jiung asks, merely a whisper.

Keeho parts his lips to say Yes, but it lodges in his throat, too real to be laid between them like that.

Down the hall, far too soon, Taeyang’s voice is loud enough, “There. Done.”

“What—” Jiung starts, but Keeho beats him to it. He literally doesn’t have any more time.

“I will never ask anything of you ever again,” desperation seeps into his voice. Keeho hates the sound of it. Hates himself a little, for making Jiung pay the price of his cowardice. “Jiung, please.”

Jiung just stares at him.

Then Taeyang appears at the door, barely one breath behind Keeho’s last word.

For three seconds Keeho is certain that life as he knows it is over.

Three seconds is enough to see the whole thing. Jiung’s face betraying their little play. Taeyang doing the math, easy and quick. The ceremony upstairs starting eleven minutes late because the best man had to be walked out of the building.

Then Jiung’s hand finds his.

Keeho’s heart jumps into his throat.

It takes everything in him not to flinch, not to look down or look surprised. Keeho follows Taeyang’s gaze instead. It moves between the two of them, first their faces, then lower, to their hands.

Jiung laces their fingers together for a second, then draws his hand back. He makes it seem like a slip, something he didn’t mean for Taeyang to see. Keeho understands the performance to the beat. He turns to Jiung, pitches his voice into something apologetic, and pairs it with an awkward smile.

One that says Sorry, I tried my best and still failed.

“He knows,” Keeho says.

“He knows?” Jiung’s expression changes. “What do you mean he knows? How does he—” he looks at Taeyang, then back at Keeho, then lets everything click into place. “Did you tell him?”

He sounds genuinely annoyed. Which is probably because he is. Keeho’s heard that tone from him enough.

“It came up,” Keeho gives the smallest shrug.

“It came up,” Jiung repeats, knowing damn well that it didn’t.

“You,” Taeyang’s voice pulls them both back. Keeho looks over, but Taeyang isn’t looking at him. His eyes are on Jiung, only on him, like he’s never quite seen him before. “You are dating him.”

Jiung purses his lips. Keeho’s noticed he tends to do that a lot, always unconsciously. When he’s mad, or when he’s sorry. Usually, when it’s directed at Keeho, it’s a mix of both.

“Someone has to,” Jiung says, and looks at Keeho like everything that’s ever gone wrong in his life traces back to him.

“You make it sound like dating me is a public service,” Keeho says, pouting right back.

It pulls a smile out of Jiung. Genuine, and also a little evil. Keeho’s surprised he can still tell the difference, considering his life is about one bad lie away from collapsing.

“It kind of is,” Jiung says, and the smile settles in.

“How long has this been going on?” Taeyang asks.

“A while,” Keeho replies at the exact moment Jiung says, “Not long.”

Taeyang’s eyebrow goes up. Jiung backtracks immediately.

“I mean, it depends on what you mean by this?” He gestures between the two of them, “The relationship’s fairly new, but… Uh,” he glances at Keeho, clearly deciding how much fake detail he’s about to throw into the mix. “There was stuff happening. Before.”

Oh? Okay.

So we’re adding casual pre-relationship sex to the script.

That’s good, that’s fine. Believable, at least, which is all the story needs. Keeho’s done the whole friends-with-benefits thing a bunch of times, just… never with close friends.

“Stuff?” Taeyang raises one of his eyebrows.

“We were fucking,” Keeho supplies, instantly.

Out of the corner of his eye, he catches Jiung having a physical reaction. A full-body flinch, the kind you can’t fake. Keeho almost snorts. Jiung doesn’t have the right to look mortified when he’s the one who implied it first.

At least Taeyang looks worse.

You know what? Good. Let them both suffer, it’s the closest thing to fairness that Keeho’s getting today.

“Why didn’t you say anything?” Taeyang asks, voice getting sharper.

“Because it’s him,” Jiung says, nodding at Keeho.

“Should I be offended?” Keeho looks at him, leaning in a bit just because he knows it annoys Jiung.

Jiung rolls his eyes and ignores him.

“It’s a weird one to drop in the group chat. We were trying to find a way to tell you, but we’ve all been busy and then your wedding kept getting closer and closer and… I don’t know. It seemed like a better option to wait until this was all over.”

Keeho finds himself nodding along. Jiung’s explanation is almost identical to the one he’d fed Taeyang earlier, which shouldn’t even be possible considering they’d had maybe thirty seconds to throw a whole relationship together.

Except maybe it makes perfect sense. Maybe, if they were actually dating, they would’ve had this exact conversation about the group chat. Keeho can picture it so easily that for a second he has to remind himself that they didn’t.

“So Intak doesn’t know?” Taeyang asks, question loaded like a gun.

“Intak especially doesn’t know,” Jiung says, and that sells it.

Keeho turns to look at him.

Jiung seems calm, comfortable even. He’s not shaken in the slightest by the question, almost as if bringing Intak into the conversation has always been a matter of time, something inevitable.

That should be it, Keeho thinks. Because Taeyang has gone quiet, and their story tracks, and Intak is out of the equation. That should be it, because Taeyang is getting married in less than what, twenty minutes? Fifteen? And whether Keeho is in love with him or not shouldn’t be part of the conversation. Of any conversation.

It shouldn’t matter at all.

“I don’t buy it,” Taeyang says, finally.

He looks between them once again, and Keeho sees it, the way he’s trying to find the cracks, no matter how small.

“It’s a lot to take in,” Jiung tries to help. “Especially on a day like this.”

“Kiss.”

What. The. Fuck.

“What?” Keeho blurts before he can stop himself.

“Kiss. You two. Right now,” Taeyang crosses his arms. “I’ll believe it when I see it.”

Has Taeyang lost his damn mind? Has getting married made him crazy?

“No,” Jiung says.

Keeho’s stomach drops through the ugly hotel carpet.

“No?” Taeyang echoes, almost delighted.

“I don’t kiss people in front of an audience,” Jiung says flatly, like one of his house rules, because it probably is.

“I’ve seen Kyo kiss lots of people.”

“Exactly, you’ve seen Keeho do it. Not me. I don’t do that.”

“Why?”

“I just don’t.”

“Not even your boyfriend?”

Jiung opens his mouth, closes it. For the first time since Taeyang walked through the door, he has nothing.

Taeyang smirks. It’s subtle. Just enough to say Got you.

Keeho feels the ground disintegrating under him. He looks at Jiung, but doesn’t dare say please. He’s already used his one and only please. He has nothing else to bargain with.

Jiung won’t kiss him. There’s no universe in which Jiung kisses him.

This is it.

Jiung lets out a long breath through his nose then, rolls his eyes.

“One.”

Keeho barely has time to understand what he means before Jiung steps into his space and presses a quick kiss to his lips.

“Happy?” Jiung asks, pulling back just as quickly.

“That was a peck,” Taeyang says, making a face.

“That was a kiss,” Jiung retorts, and Keeho can almost hear his patience thinning, “unless you want us to like, make out or something.”

Taeyang raises one of his eyebrows.

“You’re not serious,” he hears Jiung say.

Keeho should say something now. Shit, he should’ve said something ages ago but for the first time in a very, very long time, he can’t think of anything. His mind is filled with static and distant screams. Nothing makes any sense.

Taeyang is getting married in minutes and Jiung just kissed him.

He’s gotta be asleep. That’s the only reasonable explanation. Keeho is dreaming, having a nightmare he’ll tell the others about the next time they’re having a couple of drinks.

That’s gotta be it.

Keeho parts his lips, making a sound without meaning to. Taeyang’s eyes shift, from Jiung to him. He looks… Hurt?

Sad?

What?

“Fine,” Jiung suddenly says, sounding more annoyed than anything else.

Keeho has half a heartbeat to brace for it, which is somehow worse than no warning at all.

Jiung kissing him makes absolutely no sense, and yet, that’s exactly what happens next. Keeho’s eyes fall closed on instinct when their noses bump, just barely, and Jiung huffs the faintest laugh through his nose before tilting his head to the left, correcting the angle.

He kisses Keeho unbearably slow and gentle.

Somewhere between the third and fourth kiss, the panic gets shoved further back.

Taeyang is getting married in less than twenty minutes. Jiung is kissing him. Taeyang looked sad. Why did Taeyang look sad? Those thoughts are still there, still moving frantically around the edge of Keeho’s mind, but they’re getting harder to hold onto.

Jiung is really kissing him. And Keeho is kissing him back.

Not because he’s thinking about it. That’s the worst part. There’s no moment in which Keeho decides to do it, no conscious choice to play along, no surgical calculation about whether it looks convincing enough. His mouth just moves with Jiung’s, like it already knows what to do.

Who would’ve thought that kissing Jiung would be the easiest part of doom.

Jiung’s lips are plump, softer than they look, and they taste faintly of the cherry balm Jiung always carries, the one Keeho borrowed exactly once and complained about being too sweet.

Keeho doesn’t feel like complaining about it now. He almost changes his mind when Jiung pulls back first though. Keeho opens his eyes then, and he doesn’t realise that he’s chasing after Jiung’s lips until Jiung’s hand lands softly against his chest, stopping him before the distance disappears.

Oh.

Jiung smiles, small and apologetic, but goes for another quick peck anyway. It looks natural. It feels natural. That’s going to be something weird to dissect later.

But at least they’ve sold it, right?

Keeho can still feel Jiung’s breath against his lips when he finally looks at Taeyang, who’s barely moved a millimetre and is looking at them with an expression Keeho can’t even begin to untangle. It was sadness a moment ago. Now, it’s entirely something else.

Behind Taeyang, Jongseob looks like he’s about to throw up.

“What the fuck,” Jongseob half-whispers, half-screams.

Reality resumes.

Keeho tenses up. So does Jiung, lingering in Keeho’s space for a moment before taking a step back. Taeyang moves last, blinking once, twice, again, as though Jongseob’s voice has pulled him back into the room.

“Well,” Keeho starts, because apparently his survival instincts have finally clocked back in, “I’m done explaining myself today.”

Taeyang visibly flinches. Nobody calls him out on it.

“Uh…” Jongseob looks like he has a million things to say. Half of them questions, the other half complaints, none of them appropriate. He clears his throat. “Taeyang…” he points vaguely down the hall. “I… Your mom is asking for you upstairs. And… Keeho too. I think the whole thing is about to start, so… yeah. They need you both upstairs.”

Understatement of the century.

“I’ll be up in a second,” Keeho says, nodding, stepping back until he’s standing beside Jiung again. “You guys can go ahead.”

Jiung glances at him. Nobody else moves.

“Taeyang?” Jongseob calls.

“Yeah, yeah. Coming,” Taeyang says, still looking between Keeho and Jiung. He’s got things to say. Keeho can see it in the crease of his brows. “We’ll talk later.”

“Sure,” Jiung says.

Keeho nods once.

Twelve more seconds, and then Taeyang and Jongseob are gone, the door clicking shut behind them.

Jiung slaps him on the arm, instantly. Then, he starts laughing. Maniacally.

“Dude,” Jiung has the decency to whisper, because hotel walls are famously useless, “dude, what the fuck was that. Like, what the actual fuck.”

“I wish I knew,” Keeho says, taking a few steps back until the backs of his knees find the bed frame. He lets himself drop onto it, and he’s a bit disappointed when the mattress doesn’t swallow him whole. He’d be fine with a little disappearing act right now.

“Taeyang thinks we’re dating now,” Jiung says, moving around him. Keeho doesn’t register his movements. He’s far too preoccupied looking at his legs. At the way they’re shaking a bit.

Fuck.

“We’ve kissed,” Jiung continues. He sounds like he’s also lost it a bit, which is weirdly reassuring. “Oh my God. Jongseob saw us.”

Another loose thread. Jongseob is going to ask as many questions as Taeyang, if not more. Keeho needs answers that are more than decent enough, believable enough so that Jongseob can’t find a single hole in their web of lies. It’s going to be hard.

He shouldn’t have said Jiung’s name. But then again, Jiung’s the only name that made sense.

They’ve kissed. Jesus, he’s almost made out with Jiung in front of Taeyang.

Keeho lets out a single laugh, then buries his face in his hands. He feels like screaming. Nothing makes sense. Keeho keeps replaying the moment in his mind, Jiung’s lips on him, Taeyang’s expression when they pulled apart.

Keeho can’t read it. That’s not—Does Taeyang hate him? Is that it? He wouldn’t, not for something like this, right? He could feel betrayed, sure, he could be mad at Keeho for “hiding” a relationship with Jiung, and he could be mad at Jiung too, because they’ve technically been lying to his face for weeks, if not months.

They lied to his face just a moment ago. For real. God, the situation isn’t salvageable, from any angle. Keeho doesn’t see an exit. Even a made-up relationship with Jiung and a pre-arranged break-up three weeks from now leaves him in the wrong spot.

And that’s assuming Taeyang is mad, which he didn’t look like. Mad isn’t the word. Sad doesn’t make sense. Then what—

“Keeho,” Jiung pulls him out of it.

“Mhm?”

“You’re not breathing.”

Oh. Ah, Jiung’s right. He isn’t.

“Here, let me,” he hears Jiung say, and then Jiung’s hands are helping him sit up straight, pulling Keeho’s hands away from his own face. “Breathe with me, okay?”

Okay. Keeho doesn’t say it out loud, but he nods, tiny as he can.

“Okay, inhale through your nose, then exhale through your mouth. Like this,” Jiung makes a point of taking a deep breath in through his nose. Keeho finally looks at him. Jiung is kneeling on the floor, in front of him. He’s managing to look calm somehow, which Keeho finds mildly offensive considering the circumstances. “One, two, three… then exhale,” he says, exaggerating the way he lets the air go through his lips.

Keeho parts his mouth.

“First through your nose,” Jiung reminds him.

Right. Keeho takes a deep breath at the same time as him. He holds it as Jiung counts, one, two, three. Then he exhales through his mouth.

“Good, perfect,” Jiung says, and Keeho gets whiplash from how warm his voice is. “Let’s do it together a few more times.”

Keeho tries to concentrate. Really tries. Inhale, one, two, three, exhale. It feels good doing it. Or, well, it feels better than whatever was going on inside him minutes ago.

Inhale.

Keeho watches the way Jiung is doing it, guiding him through the steps, and oh, he’s holding Keeho’s hands in place over his lap. Jiung’s thumb is softly caressing the back of Keeho’s hand. It’s soothing.

Exhale.

They do it again, and again, and again until the last breath unlocks whatever had been lodged in Keeho’s throat.

“That’s it,” Jiung whispers. His thumb keeps moving slow over his knuckles, like he forgot to stop. “You’re fine.”

Keeho is not. But he is breathing, which is definitely an upgrade.

He looks down, at their still-intertwined hands, then up. Jiung’s eyes make the same trip, down and back, and something crosses his face. He takes his hands back and clears his throat, like that covers anything.

It doesn’t. The sound is too loud in the quiet room, obvious and a little desperate, and it startles a smile out of Keeho before he can stop it.

Then Jiung gets up. He sits back down beside Keeho on the bed, closer than he needs to. Closer than he ever does. Keeho knows Jiung’s usual distances by heart, and this isn’t one of them. Their knees touch, and Keeho doesn’t say anything about it. Neither of them moves away.

“Well,” Keeho starts, steering their attention somewhere else, “that was a shit-show.”

“Which part?” Jiung asks, so sincere it only makes Keeho’s smile grow wider.

“Does my hair look okay?” Keeho asks.

Jiung stares at him for a second, then laughs. Loudly, and stupidly high-pitched. His real laugh.

“That’s your concern?”

“My main one, yes.”

“You look good,” Jiung says, no joke tucked at the end of it, no eye-roll to make it easier.

Keeho stares at him.

Jiung has always been weirdly stingy with compliments. Not because he doesn’t notice things, Keeho suspects, but because he knows exactly how much Keeho will hold onto it once he has it.

“Thank you,” Keeho says, because if Jiung can say complicated things out loud, so can he. The words come out quieter than he means them to. “For everything.”

“It’s fine,” Jiung checks his phone. “You really need to be up there right now, or someone’s going to come looking for you again,” he hesitates. “Do you… think you can do it? Or… I don’t know. I can tell them you’re throwing up.”

“God, no.”

“Or having diarrhea.”

“Absolutely not.”

“I wouldn’t blame you for not wanting to sit through that,” Jiung says. He lays it out gently, calling it that, and not wedding.

“But I would,” Keeho says, getting to his feet before the thought can sink its teeth in. “I can’t miss my best friend’s wedding.”

And there it is. Keeho can say it. He’s been repeating the word wedding in his head for more than a year. He’s played this day out so many times he knows exactly how it goes. Taeyang stands at the end of an aisle looking unreal, looking happy, and declares his love to someone who isn’t Keeho.

Keeho watches. He claps. He smiles at the same time that everybody else does.

Best man. Best friend. There’s nothing complicated about it.

At least, there wasn’t supposed to be. That was always the plan, long before Keeho opened his mouth and made everything so much more complicated.

Jiung doesn’t reply right away, because he knows it’s true. He makes a sound instead, one that Keeho recognises easily. The sound means Jiung doesn’t fully agree with him, even if he knows better than to argue.

Keeho gives him a look.

“What?” Jiung asks, getting up as well and smoothing his suit down with his hands.

“Nothing.”

“I’ll find you as soon as the ceremony ends, okay?” Jiung says, pocketing his wallet and his phone. “We have… a lot to talk about.”

A lot is an understatement. They have to put together timelines, and scenarios, and excuses. They need a backstory. A reason for this to have happened, and a reason they’d kept it a secret. Something under the tagline Opposites attract, maybe, that could pass for the plot of some cheap B-movie.

“Yeah,” Keeho sighs. The headache hasn’t gone away. “Especially before Intak finds out and corners us.”

Jiung shakes his head, with a full-body shiver that he doesn’t bother hiding. “I don’t even want to think about it.”

“Sorry, babe,” Keeho says, because the Intak situation isn’t looking pretty. He doesn’t miss the way Jiung’s face twists, though. “What?”

“No pet names,” Jiung makes a face.

“What do you mean, no pet names?”

“Not in public.”

But we don’t need them in private, Keeho thinks.

Keeho raises an eyebrow. “So no kissing in public, and no pet names in public? This relationship is horrible.”

“I’ll tell you my other non-negotiables later,” Jiung says, already heading for the door.

“Unbelievable,” Keeho mutters, following him anyway.

Jiung opens the door, steps out, and looks back.

“Are you ready?”

“Not at all.”

Jiung doesn’t laugh this time.

He looks at Keeho, then holds out his hand.

Not joking. Not because Taeyang is watching. There’s nobody to convince anymore.

Keeho looks at it for a moment. There’s something familiar about it, despite the fact that it isn’t. He’s held hands with Jiung in plenty of ways that mattered less than this one: dragging him somewhere he doesn’t want to be, pulling him off a couch, yanking him away from a stupid argument.

But never like this.

Jiung gives his hand a tiny impatient shake.

“Come on.”

Keeho smiles despite himself and takes it.

Jiung smiles, and pulls him through.