Work Text:
We could leave the Christmas lights up ‘til January.
+×+
Here’s the thing: Soobin is quiet. He’s the type to smile when others laugh, the person whispering under the shouts, a caress to the push. A safety net to fall back into when the world is tugged out from behind your feet, a cornerstone. The pivotal Fortunata, helping Jordan find himself, and fading back into the waters of time.
Soobin is quiet. Just… not when it comes to Yeonjun.
Beomgyu calls it disgusting, the way Soobin lights up like a kid whenever he sees Yeonjun. Kai places a hand on his shoulder and tells him to shush. Taehyun rolls his eyes and ignores all of them. Yeonjun blushes that inexplicable shade of red to the roots of his hair and doesn’t reply. (Just a typical Wednesday night at theirs.)
And to that, well. Of course Soobin lights up like a little kid. If that’s what makes Yeonjun’s scent so sweet, he’s going to light up like a fucking Christmas tree for him. Like a little kid under a blanket fort, fascinated by the way the torchlight hits the fabric. Like a kid on a rusty swing, watching the golden light of the sun light up his own skin. Because here’s the actual thing, isn’t it?
Soobin isn’t scared of the dark, has never been. But Yeonjun is still light and all the things that drive the shadows away. And Soobin seeks, because what else can he do?
As he watches Yeonjun prancing across the sidewalk, one gloved hand tucked inside Soobin’s own—well. No, fuck all of that. Here’s the actual actual thing: Soobin is in love, baby. He’s loved for so long that moss has grown over that niche inside his chest, the one where he keeps all his love. That empty, aching space where Yeonjun placed his eyes and his hands and his lips for safekeeping. Soobin will keep him safe, will be the best mate Yeonjun could’ve ever asked for. Soobin will be a home and a sanctuary.
“You’re being awfully quiet today,” Yeonjun says, sending him a sideways glance. His nose is the pink of molten lollies. Liquid summer cupped in Soobin’s winter palms.
Soobin shrugs, tugging him closer. “I’m just thinking.”
“That’s very dangerous for you. Don’t overdo it.”
Soobin pinches his side. Yeonjun dances away, laughing.
Soobin swings an arm around his shoulders, grinning. In the sea of all things, this singular, anomalous shipwreck of two hearts sewn together. “What? Why shouldn’t I think about you when you’re the best thing to ever happen to me?”
Yeonjun chokes on air, cherry red seeping into his cheeks right to the tips of his ears. “What the fuck?” he squawks, slapping incessantly at Soobin’s hand until he lets go of his shoulders. “What the fuck, Choi Soobin? This is a Wendy’s?”
The rush of adoration that sweeps through Soobin’s bones might be apocalyptic. Might be something crushing. “Your speech patterns are fascinating,” he says, ignoring the root of Yeonjun’s agitation. “It’s always this and this. You’re a fucking cartoon, hyung.”
Yeonjun blinks. “What the— We’re just ignoring everything you just said?”
“Why?” Soobin knows he’s being “mean”. But he’ll be the cruellest thing on this planet if it means Yeonjun looks at him like that. Ever and ever. An image of a miracle superimposed on top of a heart diagram. “I can say more. I will say more. You’re the light of my life. The apple of my eye, the entire orange orchard for all it’s worth. My honeybun, 375-degrees-in-the-oven, watch you spin round and round and then eat you in two bites. You’re the—”
Yeonjun claps a hand over his mouth, hissing at him like a cat in water. His scent is sour with embarrassment but Soobin knows he’s okay, really. “What is wrong with you.”
Soobin cackles and pulls him into the completely dolled-up skating rink, beelining for the counter. The spectacled woman behind it has little wreaths of holly printed on her sweater, her smile the same as it ever is. Soobin and Yeonjun have been coming here for a long time. Soobin is endlessly familiar with those decorations strung up around all sides, the flashing lights falling on Yeonjun’s face.
Soobin kneels and does up Yeonjun’s skate, huffing in amusement when Yeonjun bats at him, cursing. It does nothing to hide the way his scent spikes up, happy but stubborn as they come. “You curse. You menace. You blockheaded hunk of muscle. What are you trying to prove here?”
Soobin looks up, hands going still. Yeonjun might be blushing, but the lights make it hard to see. “Hyung, what do I have to prove? I’m doing this because—well, I love you.”
Seeing Yeonjun smile is like sitting on the windowsill at dawn, watching the sun rise though the treetops. The first second when his eyes light up like seeing the sky lighten in layers. Then the slow upward curl of his lips like searching for that source of pink-gold light through the boughs ringing with birdsong. The full face of his happiness like feeling the sun warm your skin after so long spent in the cold. The stars tucked into the pores of his orange-peel laughter and then that lingering, quiet joy in his face even when his smile has dimmed away, settled back into a horizon line.
Soobin loves him so. He lets Yeonjun spin him around in circles, letting go once to avoid flattening a child. (Yeonjun bursts out laughing then, so maybe it’s all worth it.)
It’s peaceful, for a while. Gliding around, hand in hand. Yeonjun watches the lights and Soobin watches Yeonjun. It’s nothing that hasn’t happened before.
“Did you—” Yeonjun inhales in one short, punched breath, like he wants to stop but it’d kill him to do so. “Did you mean it?”
Soobin slows to a stop, holding onto the guardrail with one hand. His heart strikes up something slow, like it knew before his head ever did. “Yeonjun, love, of course I meant it.” He pauses, ghosting a hand over Yeonjun’s cheek. “I mean it every time when I say I love you. You can’t have doubted that.”
Yeonjun sighs, rubbing a hand over his face. “I don’t. I’ve never doubted that, Soobin. It’s just… Sometimes, you say things that I—I find really hard to believe you mean.”
“Eh?” Soobin’s eyebrows rise up in utter surprise. “... What?”
Yeonjun’s face reddens. “... The way you’re looking at me is making me realise I’m stupid.”
Soobin shakes his head. “No, no, you’re not. I’m just—taken aback, maybe. Oh, hyung. What did you think I didn’t mean?”
Yeonjun swallows, his face closing off. “Let’s not. I’m sorry.”
Soobin catches Yeonjun’s wrist, rubs soothing circles over his scent gland. “Whatever it was, I meant it. As long as it was something that made you happy.”
“I believe you,” Yeonjun replies simply. “You would never mean to hurt me.”
They start moving again, one end to the other. Yeonjun tucks his middle and pointer fingers into Soobin’s palm, hides them away. Soobin curls his hand over Yeonjun’s knuckles, settling into the dips like a puzzle piece.
He breathes it in, for once. The jarred feeling. The pang in his chest, I’ve done something wrong. Then the simple forgiveness. Just a pin on it, a reminder to resolve it later.
“I mean it all,” Soobin promises again. Yeonjun’s face is all he sees and they are alone and they are free and they are doves. They are a river of stars and they are the ash of a home burnt down. They are all they’ve ever been. “Each and every single thing.”
Yeonjun’s sweet mouth falls open in one sharp exhale. Soobin leans in and kisses it closed.
(“You have to talk to me, okay?” Soobin says, when they’re back home. “We have to talk to each other.”
Yeonjun nods, settling into his left side with ease. Soobin feels him grin against his own skin. “I don’t know, I’d say you already talk really well.”
A simple thanks turns into What would I do without you? The normal woah turns into You’re so pretty my soul wants to explode out the back of my head. The I love yous stay the same because that’s nothing Yeonjun doesn’t believe. The stagnant silences go from empty space to points of light, saying I know how hard it’s been. Come here and rest awhile.)
+×+
“No, no, babe,” Yeonjun insists, holding up a string of stars in one hand and a string of tiny Christmas trees in the other. “Which one looks better?”
Soobin rolls his eyes, leaning his head against the shelves. “You ask my opinion, then disregard it and go do your own thing anyway, hyung.” He squints. “The stars are cuter.”
“Oh, liar, that’s just not true.” Yeonjun twists his head at different angles, scrutinising the decorations like his life depends on it. “Eh, I like the trees better. Let’s get these.”
Soobin snorts, endlessly, helplessly fond. “As you wish.”
Here’s how it goes, each and every year, without fail:
Yeonjun walks back and forth between the different aisles, picking decorations up and putting them back down, nostrils flared and lips pursed in utter concentration. (Soobin lowkey wants to bite him. Not even in a sexy, mating bond way, no, he just wants to sink his teeth into the apples of Yeonjun’s cheeks, like, chomp-chomp.) The omega in question stopped asking for Soobin’s opinion five shelves ago, and by extension, stopped pretending like he actually cared. And that’s completely fine by Soobin, really. He sneakily places the things he finds pretty in the cart anyway, because, well, he’s the one pushing it.
Arguing over the star is an entirely different thing.
“That is horrendous,” Yeonjun gapes at the perfectly respectable neon glow-in-the-dark, 75%-off star in Soobin’s hands, mouth open in sheer horror.
Soobin scoffs, taking full offence on behalf of his star. “Why ask my opinion then?”
Yeonjun takes in the short breath he always inhales before he’s about to yap. “Because spoilers: the star is like, a big thing. And I know you let me do my own thing most of the time and you’re so very darling for that, but I thought you’d, I dunno, like it if you had a say in it but my God. I can’t believe you’ve done this. It’s… Soobin, it’s neon green.”
“It’s 75% off, is what it is,” Soobin argues.
“Everything is 75% off!” Yeonjun cries, eyes wide. “They’re literally having a Christmas sale!”
They battle it out. Yeonjun wins, because when has Soobin ever stood in his path?
Here’s what Soobin would say, really: Yeonjun is an absolute hurricane. A glittering dreamscape left in his wake. Soobin, collecting dust motes and points of light and fireflies for him, never a half-step behind. Equals, Soobin would call them. Subgenders be damned. Equals. Maybe Soobin has felt a lightning strike’s soft caress against his cheek. Maybe the zing of sulphur in the air gives way to the sharp tang of off-season oranges.
So yes, they get the glittery silver star Yeonjun picks. Yeonjun sticks his tongue out at him, his summery scent spiking the air. And Soobin can’t be too mad about it; though really, what is all that bad about a highlighter green Christmas tree star? It has character.
(Whatever Yeonjun says, Soobin doesn’t pout. He sulks in a manly way, thank you very much.)
Yeonjun’s sudden, bright laugh snaps Soobin out of his manly bout of sulking.
“Oh, Soobinnie, look,” he says, smile perhaps brighter than the sun, “Aha, here!”
… Soobin gets the very distinct feeling that Yeonjun has just clipped a bauble into his hair.
“Oh, you look so cute,” Yeonjun squeals, hands over his face. A few other customers send him dirty looks, though the kids eye him with interest. Like they’ve decided exactly what they’re going to be when they’re older.
“I’m not cute,” Soobin grumbles with a fucking Christmas bauble on his head, “I’m a threat.”
Yeonjun keels over laughing, supernovae distilled into pockets of laughter. (And maybe it’s worth it. Maybe it’s all worth it.) He pats Soobin’s cheek, unclips the bauble, which Soobin now sees is bright and glittery and most definitely printed with… reindeers? “You’re never a threat to me, darling.”
Soobin grins, that odd rush of affection back. “No, no, I’m just your enabler, aren’t I?”
Yeonjun makes finger guns. And Soobin wants to kiss him silly, but that’s not really an appropriate reaction to finger guns, so he keeps his hands far away.
“Oh, Lord above,” Yeonjun curses suddenly, whirling a 180° and stalking back whence they came, “Soobin, we forgot about presents. Oh, Christ. How many nephews do you have again? How many friends do we have?”
“Forget about our friends for a sec here, I think Beomgyu’s organising a Secret Santa. I mean, he keeps sneaking around staring at our faces and giggling, which I think equates to a rigged Secret Santa, but still. Oh, love, don’t look at me like that, you’re the one who taught me to yap—” Yeonjun hits him with the shopping bags. “Ow! I have one nephew, you’ve literally met him more times than I have, and I’m his uncle!”
Yeonjun rolls his eyes, beelining towards the toys. “It’s common knowledge that kids like their aunts better than their uncles.”
Soobin stops right there. “You married me and I didn’t know?”
Yeonjun gives him that sly, sideways smile. That one that has Soobin folding like a lawn-chair and perhaps squealing like a schoolgirl. “When it’s legal, baby, I’ll marry the shit out of you.”
Maybe Soobin’s heart explodes. “I’m going to need a ring, by the way. Ugh, should we get him clothes or toys?”
Yeonjun laughs. “Toys will make him happy, but clothes will make his parents happy.”
Soobin shakes his head. “Eh, get him a toy. You probably know what he likes better than I do, which, sad, but— I’ve already bought that book noona was eyeing for her.”
“And your brother-in-law?” Yeonjun asks, crouching down because the best toys are always hidden away behind the shit ones.
“Don’t talk about other men,” Soobin snaps, purely out of habit. It’s an on-going joke they have, that Soobin is territorial as fuck. (... At least Soobin thinks it’s a joke?) “Oh my God, I’ll get him one of those Hawaiian beach shirts. He’ll love it.”
Soobin can hear the smile in Yeonjun’s voice. “You’re the most jealous man I know.”
Soobin gasps exaggeratedly, looking down at Yeonjun with eyes wide in faux-betrayal. “You know other men?” he pronounces slowly, like it’s the worst crime on earth.
Yeonjun stares up at him, one huge ass Lego set in his hands, completely speechless. They crack up so hard that by the end of it, Soobin has tears in his eyes and Yeonjun can’t quite catch his breath.
Shaking his head, Soobin offers Yeonjun a hand and pulls him right up, closer and closer.
(Decorating their tiny apartment is okay, because it’s tiny. Soobin lets Yeonjun go ham, because the threat is very much implied in the sugary tone the omega uses to say Now, you don’t mind, do you? But then decorating the fucking tree is the worst thing Soobin has ever found himself in the middle of. They argue over everything. Yeonjun nearly throws hands and Soobin nearly storms off, but of course they don’t, of course they’re standing right there in their living room, unable to leave because that’s not the point.
Soobin could do everything if he does it with Yeonjun. Never one without the other.
“Do you want to put up the star?” Yeonjun asks quietly, something warm in his eyes lingering after all these years. Soobin wants to be the reason it stays forever.
That sharp starburst of affection nearly puts him down. “No, you do it, it’s okay.”
“Never trust a man over 185. The blood doesn’t reach the brain.” Yeonjun rolls his eyes, before placing Soobin’s hand over his own. His skin is always warm. Soobin sometimes stops himself from touching him, just because his hands are always so cold. He never wants to see Yeonjun flinch away from him, like that time the evening they got together. That wounded look in his eyes still haunts him. “Wasn’t a choice, idiot. It was an invitation you can’t refuse.”
Yeonjun leans up on his tiptoes and places the star where it should be, holding Soobin’s hand fast to his own. There is an old ache in the ridges of his knuckles, scars from broken bottles. Soobin reels the wave back, strokes circles over the soft skin on the back of his hand.
“Aren’t my hands cold?” he can’t help but ask.
“As balls. Seriously, we should get this checked.” Yeonjun shrugs at the look on Soobin’s face, whatever it is. “I’m warm, though. I can be warm enough for both of us.”
Soobin doesn’t think they’re talking about hands anymore.
“I love you,” he breathes. Over and over. “I love you.”
Yeonjun turns his head and presses one soft kiss to his cheek. There’s nothing else to say.)
+×+
Yeonjun is by the window, watching the snow pile up on the trees.
He’s only in an oversized tee—it’s his, Soobin realises, a pleased feeling bubbling up in his heart—and these cat-printed pants he wears whenever it’s a Big Sad. Yeonjun has these episodes sometimes, weeks of being sad without knowing why. It hurts here, right here, he’d whispered to Soobin once, when all was quiet and everyone was blind. He’d taken Soobin’s hand and pressed his palm to his chest. Right here.
Soobin walks over and drapes himself across Yeonjun’s back, wrapping his arms around his middle. He watches the snow with Yeonjun, glances down at his face and knows they’re seeing completely different things. There’s something quivering in Yeonjun’s face, like the still surface of a frozen lake in early spring, one misstep away from shattering.
But Soobin has been with him for years and years.
He presses his pursed lips to the nape of Yeonjun’s neck, skin fever-hot under his parched lips. “Hyung, aren’t you cold?”
Yeonjun shrugs in Soobin’s hold, hands coming up to rest on Soobin’s forearms. How gentle he is, touch light as dragonfly wings cascading down your cheek. He leans back, settling in like he’s a cat on a blanket. “Hey, you’re warm, for once.”
You’ve made me warm, Soobin doesn’t say. “No, hyung, really. Let me get you a sweater.”
Yeonjun tightens his grip on Soobin’s arm, the hair on the back of his neck rising. “No, wait. Just—just for a little while. Let’s just stay like this.”
“Okay,” Soobin whispers, tucking his face into the cradle of Yeonjun’s shoulder. Right below where imprints of teeth lay, stark against skin. “Okay, love.”
Yeonjun brings a hand up to touch the falling snow, meeting the windowpane. He startles, like he’d not expected an intrusion. His hand slowly starts to withdraw. There’s something sharp splintered inside Soobin’s throat. He reaches up and tangles their fingers together, bringing Yeonjun’s hand back to his side.
Soobin’s about to speak, but there’s a short inhale from Yeonjun. The alpha stops, leaning forward and to the side to get a look at his face. Yeonjun doesn’t meet his eyes when he says, “Why love? Why that name specifically?”
Soobin doesn’t even have to think about it. He curls his arms tighter around Yeonjun, hoping to keep him warm. “Once, there was a boy whose soul had always felt too tiny for his own body. He was just twelve, he wanted to know why he wasn’t a frog or a butterfly or something. Then his father got a new job and they all had to move. In this new, unfamiliar city, he met another boy. This boy had eyes like that of a fox’s, an absolutely horrid undercut and the sweetest, sunshine-y smile. The first boy was too afraid to approach him—”
“And so he walked thirty minutes the wrong way with the sweetest sunshine-y smile boy in complete silence,” Yeonjun interrupts, snorting. “For months.”
Soobin squeezes him in warning. “Hey, no interrupting. But yes. It was his complex mating ritual, don’t judge him.” Yeonjun giggles. Pressed up against his chest like this, the sound flutters up between two pairs of lungs like fireflies. “Somehow, by some stroke of luck, the two became friends. The two became best friends, actually. They were there for each other through it all because it was them against the world. The first boy was just watching his best friend one afternoon on a sunny street, as he crouched down and cooed at a cat. It was when he realised how much love was bottled up inside his Yeo—his friend—hey, don’t laugh, I won’t finish my story, I actually won’t. Anyways. He just stood there because he couldn’t leave until his friend stopped crying over the cat. It was prime retrospection-slash-introspection time. And he realised, out of all the loves he’d been taught, he’d been given… it was yours I wanted to make stay. It was yours that I knew I wanted with me. I call you love and that’s exactly how I believe in it.”
Yeonjun doesn’t say anything for a long time. Then he simply turns around and throws his arms around Soobin’s neck, pressing himself onto him as if trying to set his imprint on his skin. Soobin blinks, a bit shocked, before rubbing gentle circles over the expanse of his back.
“You—” Yeonjun pauses to wipe his nose with the heel of his hand and then wipe his hand on Soobin’s hoodie. Soobin yelps in distress and smacks the back of his head. “Oh God, sorry, sorry. Next laundry cycle is on me, I’m actually sorry. I was trying to say, you forgot the incident when they were told alphas and omegas couldn’t stay just friends and then they fucked themselves over for nine more years out of spite.”
Soobin laughs. “And then one snowy day in December they had to come to the horrible realisation that they were terribly, disastrously, clinically cliché.”
“Hey,” Yeonjun points out, letting go of Soobin, “we stayed friends for… fourteen years, was it?”
“You can’t count from when we were twelve, that’s just weird.”
“You had a crush on me when you were thirteen!”
“I—” Soobin opens and closes his mouth, realises he’s been cornered. “Fine, fine, you win.”
Yeonjun grins at him, settling back by the window. The angles of his face are incomprehensible to Soobin. The snow looks like little stars falling down to say hello to the star Soobin knows.
“Will you tell me now?” he says, thumbing over Yeonjun’s wrist.
“I just…” Yeonjun looks away. “We couldn’t make it home for Christmas and I know why but I mean, it’s just the first one I’ve spent without my mother. It’s just… odd. I miss her.”
“Oh,” Soobin breathes. The crest of adoration might actually knock him down this time. “Oh, hyung. Why didn’t you say anything? We could have made it work, silly.”
Yeonjun blinks rapidly. “I didn’t—well, I didn’t really want to trouble you. I know you have that huge ass annual fest at the school and well, the timing was never right and I didn’t want to just up and leave—”
Soobin takes the fool’s face in his hands and squishes his cheeks together. “Stop talking. Like, immediately. You… you bottled up missing your mother… because you didn’t want to trouble me… your, like, I dunno, what’s-it-called, mate?” He lets go of Yeonjun’s face, sinking down until their foreheads knock together, breathing the same air. “I don’t know if I should kiss you or sit down to weep.”
Yeonjun pouts, eyes reflecting all the fucking fairy-lights he insisted Soobin help put up. He’s beautiful. “Excuse me for being considerate.”
Soobin shakes his head, jostling Yeonjun’s unkempt hair in the process. “Being considerate literally caused you a Big Sad. Yeah, no, fuck the fucking Snowball or whatever the fuck it’s called, we’re going home tomorrow. You’re not refusing. I’m taking you. I’ll bundle you up in that goddamn car myself. … Also, hyung, the annual fest is in January. What logic did you use to determine I’d be stressed for it now? That’s 2025 Soobin’s problem.”
“You’re so hot when you swear at me.” Yeonjun smiles benignly at him through his lashes as Soobin chokes. “I’d still take that kiss, though.”
Soobin sighs and shakes his head with a smile, before tilting his chin forward and letting their lips slot together. God, he never wants to move. He wants to suck the breath from Yeonjun’s open mouth. He wants to be the one Yeonjun spins circles around. He wants to be Yeonjun’s anchor amidst this sea of uncertainty.
“I’m sorry, I don’t want to move,” he says into Yeonjun’s lips, “Now, about the sweater, one of yours or one of mine?”
Yeonjun sucks in a sharp breath through the opening Soobin lets him. “One of yours, please.”
If Soobin were to bleed now, he would bleed love.
(“Is it a hot chocolate evening?” Yeonjun whispers, a sweet echo of a winter passed.
Yeonjun smells like him, Soobin realises. Coffee. A few kilos of sugar and a few sprinkles of sadness.
Yeonjun doesn’t wear scent blockers at home anymore, not after they got together. Soobin leans forward and presses one sweet kiss to the raised skin of his scent gland and breathes in the resulting burst of joy. Yeonjun shrieks at him, batting him away, but that’s okay.
That familiar scent of oranges settles over Soobin’s skin. It still smells like home.)