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It was no secret to everyone in T1 that Gumayusi had the biggest crush on Keria. Except for Keria himself of course.
The tall ADC had liked his support ever since Keria first joined the team at the start of the year. Everything he did just seemed so adorable and precious that Gumayusi couldn’t help but fall in love. He loved how Keria was way shorter than him which made post-victory hugs feel a lot better. After every win he would always look forward to hugging his small support. It was motivating for Gumayusi.
The first person to notice Gumayusi’s crush was of course Faker. The mid-laner, being a very attentive person, caught Gumayusi staring at Keria multiple times and just assumed he had a crush on his lane partner. One day, Faker and Gumayusi were getting lunch in the T1 cafeteria together. They were the first people to get there as the others were still playing solo queue and Faker just decided to drop the bomb and ask ‘You like Minseok don’t you?’ Gumayusi’s face was so surprised it looked like his eyes could’ve popped from his skull.
‘Wait, how do you know about it?!’ Gumayusi whispered in a frantic tone, ‘I never told anyone about it!’ .
‘Because I’ve seen your face turn red when you look at him. It’s really obvious’ Faker just said nonchalantly and Gumayusi could feel his soul coming out of his body.
The next day, Gumayusi came to the office and was immediately greeted by Teddy who just pulled him aside and asked ‘You like Minseok?!’ .
‘Not you too! Did hyung tell you?’ Gumayusi responded. He assumed Faker told Teddy. ‘Yeah. You should tell him. Or else someone else might take him,’ Teddy grinned with his cheeky smile. Gumayusi really didn’t feel like refuting the older ADC so he just agreed and begged him not to tell anyone else.
Of course Teddy wasn’t going to not tell everyone else on the team.
Soon enough everyone was asking Gumayusi about it, Canna, Cuzz, Ellim, Clozer, and even Oner. And after only 2 weeks of his crush being first known, everyone on the team knew about it already excluding Keria. The shortest on the team was oblivious to everything happening around him. He couldn’t tell that his lane partner was basically melting everytime he hugged him or everytime they duo queued together in ranked games. Or that the entire team was shipping them together and slowly pushing Gumayusi to confess. He noticed them occasionally doing weird things such as ‘accidentally’ pushing Gumayusi so that he would hit Keria. Accidentally as in Keria could definitely tell it was on purpose. But he just brushed it off as his team wanting to piss off the ADC.
Until one day, Teddy brought up how Gumayusi and Keria looked like a married couple in the post-game photoshoot. Keria with one of his hands on the taller’s shoulder and the other on the stomach; as well as Gumayusi, who looked to be holding Keria’s waist. It looked like one of those couple pictures happy couples would take on a vacation and post it to Instagram.
“Oh my god they do look like a married couple,” Canna said in reply to Teddy showing the image to the team.
‘So cute, you guys should get married,‘ Oner added. Keria was still in a solo queue game but he could see from the corner of his eye the man in the seat next to him with rosy red cheeks and a shy smile on his face.
----
Even after Keria went back to the dormitory and to his room, he still couldn’t get the image of his ADC out of his head. Min-hyeong? Liking me? No way. It’s impossible. He’s tall and handsome, he can find a pretty girlfriend. Why would I think he likes me? They’re just joking around Keria thought to himself. He decided to try to sleep it off but his eyes stayed wide awake when he laid down on the bed. So he booted up his PC and opened the league client looking to play some late night solo queue. On the side of his screen he could see Deft online and decided to ditch the solo queue and call his old lane partner. He figured Deft would have experience with relationships between players considering Pyosik would always tease Deft about playing with Meiko back in 2020. Keria texted Deft on the league client several times but got no answer and decided screw it I’ll just ring him up.
‘Hello?’ Deft said, his voice obviously sounding very tired.
‘Ah, hyung I’m sorry to bother you this late at night but I have a question.’
‘What is it?’
‘It’s about my lane partner y'know..’
‘Teddy?’
‘Nonono my other lane partner Gumayusi’ Keria explained.
‘Hyukkyu-hyung do you think he likes me?’ Keria asked on the phone to Deft.
‘What would make you think that?’ Deft replied.
Keria explained the situation and Deft couldn’t help but be proud that the young support found someone that would love and appreciate him.
‘I think he likes you Minseok. If you like him back you should just tell him,’ Deft explains. The ADC hopes Keria would get the idea that they should just get together already because everything Keria just said was not some normal bromance between players. It was something more, something that had a spark of romance in it.
‘Are you sure hyung? I don’t believe you. I’ll trust in your words when I see him make a move on me with my own eyes,’ Keria said stubbornly before closing the call, setting his alarm and drifting off to sleep. Deft sighed before shutting down his phone and making a note to himself to tease Keria when he ends up getting together with Gumayusi.
---
The next morning Keria woke up 30 minutes before scrims. It was weird because Keria had remembered setting his alarm 1 hour before but ignored it and just got up to get ready. The gaming house felt oddly quiet so he assumed that everyone had left to go to the office already but when Keria went to the living room to get breakfast after showering he saw Gumayusi chilling on his phone on the couch.
‘Why are you still here? Did everyone else leave already?’ Keria asks while getting cereal out of the pantry.
‘Everyone else already left when I woke up and I didn’t wanna walk to the office alone so I waited for you’ Gumayusi replied, looking up from his phone momentarily to see Keria eating a bowl of cereal.
Keria thought to himself he was waiting for me? I guess he’s just scared to go alone. What Keria doesn’t know however is that Gumayusi’s heart is going 200mph and he is basically breaking a cold sweat. The taller may seem calm and collected and was just waiting for a friend to go to the office together but actually his team set him up and only informed him this morning when they all went out quietly to avoid waking up Keria. Gumayusi wishes they could’ve told him sooner so he could’ve at least prepared himself. But hey, what can he do now. He’s been forced into a situation with the man he’s been secretly in love with for the past few months and has to face it no matter what.
---
The rest of the team are already at the T1 office and getting ready for scrims.
‘How badly do you think Min-hyeong is gonna be blushing when he gets here?’ Cuzz asks nonchalantly.
‘You wanna bet on it?’ Teddy says as he gets up from his seat pulling out his wallet from his pockets.
Canna pulls out a 5,000 KRW bill and puts it on the table, ‘I bet he’ll be as red as our jerseys.’ Ellim joins him, sliding another 5,000 KRW bill to the pile.
‘I'm saying he’ll be as red as this Coca Cola label’ Oner follows up, putting another 5,000 KRW bill down. Clozer and Teddy put down 5,000 KRW bills each hoping that Gumayusi would be red enough to match a vibrant printed red on the label.
‘I bet he won’t have a single hint of red on his face’ Faker says pulling out a 10,000 KRW bill, ‘I’m confident he’ll have played it calm and collected and when Jin-seong pulls Min-seok to the side for a 1-on-1 he’ll start melting by then.’
‘Deal’ the others say in unison.
Before anyone could say anything else both Gumayusi and Keria arrived in the training room. And exactly as Faker expected Gumayusi looks perfectly fine with absolutely no tint of even a slight pink on his cheeks. Faker shoots a smile at the others gathered around the table and stuffs the money into his pockets before the two oblivious to the situation could question why there were a bunch of money bills stacked on the table. After scrims as promised, Teddy pulled Keria aside and as if it was planned Gumayusi melted and turned awfully red, just as Faker himself predicted.
The entire team had no idea what happened on their little walk. So of course they had to interview them in order to get information. Teddy pulled Keria aside under the pretense of ‘discussing about laning’ and proceeded to ask ‘So why’d you arrive so late with Min-hyeong?’
Keria, caught off guard, snapped his glance away from the older ADC and said ‘My alarm went off late and we walked to the office together because he was the only one left in the gaming house. Why?’
‘Nothing, it was just your face seemed like it was blushing when you arrived here. I thought something must’ve happened’ Teddy lied.
‘We-’ Keria stuttered and hesitated. The ADC looked back at him in curiosity. He was right, something happened.
‘We just talked a bit.. nothing else,’ Keria very obviously lied. Teddy didn’t wanna push too far and just leave it at that. They return to the training room following a brief discussion on why Keria should’ve hit that minion creep during the laning phase. The bot laners came back to a totally normal training room. Keria couldn’t tell something happened in the very room he was standing in and just got in his chair, loading up a practice match. However, Teddy could and he could also tell that Gumayusi is trying his best not to burst into full simp mode by the way he’s fidgeting in his chair and pursing his lips.
Teddy walked past him and sat next to Faker, he leaned in and whispered ‘Min-seok wouldn’t tell me shit. What did Min-hyeong tell you?’
Faker shifted in his seat to face Teddy and then leaned into his ear, ‘He said pulled a pick-up line on Min-seok and then pecked him on the cheek.’
Before a single sound could escape Teddy, Faker put his hand over his mouth. They looked at each other seemingly communicating the same thing: holy shit they kissed.
---
It was a break day for the T1 players but even though they had the option to rest and do what they pleased. Keria didn’t feel like it and started up a stream in the T1 streaming rooms. While loading up a game he scrolled through his chat looking for any interesting topics of discussion or questions from the fans. However the text-to-speech bot caught him off guard.
‘hollowknightlover123 has donated 25,000 KRW. What kind of person is your type?’
‘Hmm.. what kind of person is my type..’ Keria’s sentence drags off, he’s never really thought of what kind of person he would like to spend the rest of his life with. ‘Maybe someone who’s confident?’ he tells chat while loading into the League client. Is confident too vague? Maybe I should add more, he thought to himself. ‘Confident and cuddly. Cuddles are definitely important. Oh and someone who’s optimistic. I need someone who will cheer me up when I feel sad.’ he says checking chat in momentary glances. In the midst of all the emotes, random comments, and hello’s, one message really stood out to him. It was from the exact same person that had donated the original question.
hollowknightlover123: ‘Aren’t you just describing Gumayusi?’
Keria’s brain short-circuited before being forcibly snapped back to reality by the sound from loading into the Summoner’s Rift. His focus is completely lost now. He kept thinking to himself and questioning whether he really just described his type or described his ADC. On one-hand, the anonymous twitch viewer wasn’t wrong. Keria did say confident, cuddly and optimistic which is exactly how he would describe Gumayusi. But on the other hand, he doesn’t like Gumayusi like that. Or at least doesn’t think so. Yes he got a peck once. But it felt more like one of those things friends do as a joke. Or was it?
---
The rest of the stream went by pretty uneventfully. Just like that 2 hours pass and Keria still couldn’t get it out of the back of his head. He decided to just head to the lounge room and look at some VODs from past weeks on his phone. From what Keria remembered no one else was streaming at the T1 Office because everyone else should either be taking a rest at their respective homes or going with Cuzz to a dog cafe but for some reason Gumayusi is just in the T1 lounge room, watching an LPL VOD on the TV.
‘Min-hyeong, what are you doing here? Today’s an off day.’ Keria asks plopping over on the couch next to Gumayusi. The message he saw on twitch chat is still freshly engraved on his mind.
‘Look at Gala’s Kai’sa. He’s so good with it.’ Gumayusi watches in awe, the Chinese ADC playing for RNG was on one of his signature champions, dashing into opponents with no fear. Keria didn’t pay much attention to the flashy marksman plays and was more focused on Ming’s Alistar, looking for the perfect engage flank on the opponents. Even though Keria was invested in the match playing on the screen the thought of his type couldn't get out of his head. Should I just ask him? I won’t be able to sleep tonight like this if I don’t let it out. Maybe he’ll think of it as just bromance? But he kissed me.. Keria felt embarrassed to be even thinking about liking his own teammate. The match on the TV screen looked like it was gonna last a while and so Keria decided to just screw it and ask ‘Min-hyeong do you think you are an optimistic person?’
Gumayusi took his eyes off the screen to look at his support. ‘Yeah I guess so? Why’re you asking so suddenly?’
‘Well um, someone asked me on stream what my type was and then there was a message in chat saying that the type I described also applied to you..’ Keria’s eyes were obviously avoiding eye contact darting from one corner of the room to another.
‘Then does that mean you like me?’ Gumayusi said with no shame, putting a finger up to point at himself. The taller one only realized what he said when Keria looked at him with wide eyes and proceeded to turn red. Both Gumayusi and Keria were flustered to the point that maintaining eye contact felt so difficult. The room is awkwardly silent; the only noises were the sounds of clothes shuffling and the match on the screen.
‘Yes. I think I might like you,’ the silence broken by Keria’s quiet remark. It was quiet enough to only be heard by the two of them even though it did not matter as no one else was in the lounge, but it was loud enough to immediately register in Gumayusi's mind. Gumayusi gulps with nervousness, his hands twiddling with each other clearly out of anxiety.
‘You kissed me on the cheek on that day. How can I not like you? You're cuddly and confident, my ideal type. Min-hyeong, I like you,’ Keria could care less about how the other felt about his teammate confessing his feelings to him.
Gumayusi reorganized his mind and shuffled in his seat, ‘To be honest Min-seok, I’ve liked you since we met.’
Their eyes met, Gumayusi leaning close into the support. Keria felt it was impossible not to sway in Gumayusi’s direction. Their lips brushed against each other, noses barely touching. Keria pushed his lips up against the ADC and the caster’s voice on the TV never felt so quiet before.