In retrospect, it might really have been better if Beomgyu had said FUCK YEAH I WANNA MAKE IT WEIRD.

Because the morning has somehow become a morning after without even the satisfaction of sex.

"Hi," Yeonjun says, blearily, in the middle of Beomgyu's efforts to use spotty hotel Wi-Fi to send Taehyun pictures. Then he doesn't say anything for the longest fucking time, just watches Beomgyu sit there with his bed-head and loose pajama top. It's weird. It's probably the longest Yeonjun's gone without either a) teasing, or b) insulting him in some way, and Beomgyu doesn't know what to do with this. Stripped off the night, Beomgyu feels oddly vulnerable. Like he both wants to cuddle closer to Yeonjun and run far, far away.

"Hi," he says back, after the long, sticky silence, which only makes everything weirder.

Yeonjun groans as he turns over, trying to find warmth. He seems half-asleep still. "Your hair looks so soft always. It's so unfair."

For some reason, Beomgyu finds Yeonjun tremendously endearing at this moment. Maybe it's the soft, rumpled shape of him, so different from his wakeful self. Maybe it's the way he looks at Beomgyu, eyes wide and mouth in a pout, like maybe Beomgyu's genuinely offended him by having pretty hair. Whatever it is, Beomgyu wants more of this.

"Hyung..."

"Pretty," Yeonjun mutters, curls into a ball under their shared blanket, and goes back to sleep.

When he finally wakes up at nine, he acts like he doesn't remember. Beomgyu decides to remind him by twirling in front of Yeonjun, fully dressed and groomed in his blue tweed jacket and dress pants, shaking his head a little to set the long silver earring in one ear swinging. "Is this pretty, hyung?" he asks, and feels smugly satisfied at the slow horror dawning on Yeonjun's face.

He doesn't expect any answer, busying himself instead with polishing his shoes. But then Yeonjun says, "Yeah. Pretty," in this gruff, weirdly honest voice that does something to Beomgyu's insides.

Well, he thinks. Well.

But this well has no water. From there on it's like they both dry up when they think of conversing. Beomgyu moves around the room, texting Taehyun while Yeonjun tries to get ready. The silence feels slightly smothering. In a way, this has never been a problem between them. There had always been grievances to air, comebacks to think of, clarifications to be made. They don't know how to do quiet. It hadn't been weird to tease with the lights off and the slight buzz of alcohol in their system but now it's morning and they have to wear their business faces and it's...off. Like there's something stuck between them, unresolved. (Beomgyu wonders if Taehyun and Kai have some sort of bet going on the hate-bang thing. Had it been that obvious?)

"Um," Beomgyu says, the third time Yeonjun asks him if business casual is okay for an auction. "I think I'll go wait at the restaurant. Eat breakfast. Do some work."

Yeonjun nods violently. "Yeah. Yeah, sounds cool. I'll just-shower."

"Yeah."

"Okay."

Beomgyu feels like some dense idiot in a teen novel. "Okay."

The day proceeds like this: awkwardly.

Yeonjun barely finds time to grab a breakfast croissant before they have to be in the ballroom for the auction. Beomgyu's set up the laptop and got Taehyun on call by then, and he has callsheets and appraisal bids for his favorite lots spread all over the desk.

"So, we need evening dresses and accessories the most, and a lot of the in-house bidders aren't looking for those," Beomgyu's telling Taehyun, when Yeonjun drops to the seat next to him. "But the proxies and the online bidders might want those, so I don't know...Also there's a crazy lot of burlesque stuff we could possibly sell online?"

Yeonjun picks the bid paddle off Beomgyu's lap to play with. "Cool, you're lucky number 13."

Taehyun makes a little cooing noise on the phone. "Is that Yeonjun hyung? How're you two doing?"

"Focus," Beomgyu says, because he's never really been able to lie to Taehyun. Lying by omission, sure. But if Taehyun asks him about what he and Yeonjun have been doing, he's just going to have to bring up the ridiculous blue-balling.

"Do we want the sexy burlesque or not?"

"We always want the sexy burlesque," Taehyun says, and Beomgyu can hear Soobin in the background, snickering. "Wait. I just reached the airport. Kai wants to talk."

"Did he pick you up?" Beomgyu prods. "Are you guys all boyfriends now?"

Beomgyu can hear Soobin just giggling somewhere in the back like an idiot.

Kai comes on. "Hi, Beommie. How's hyung treating you?"

Beomgyu looks at Yeonjun and is met with a hitched eyebrow. It's clear the voice-bleed is loud enough that he can hear; but he offers no response, seeming to be content to watch Beomgyu handle it.

"Um. We're fine."

Kai chuckles affectionately. Beomgyu hears Taehyun tell Soobin, in a loud whisper that carries right through the phone: "He's being evasive."

"I'm not!" Beomgyu protests. "We're... you know. The same."

"Really?" Kai purrs, "Because you put in your work email on those funny photo booth machines."

Taehyun's snickering is loud. Beomgyu slaps a palm to his face. Next to him, Yeonjun stiffens a bit.

"Don't worry," Kai continues, happily. "The idiots wanted to post it on your Insta, but I got your back. Tell Yeonjun he's taking cute pictures with me next time, though. He owes me."

There's a scuffle on the other end then, Taehyun loudly going, "Ask him if they're at third base yet," and Soobin whining something about being hungry.

"Tell Yeonjun hyung he looks cute with anime eyes!" Kai giggles, at which all three of them seem to become completely dysfunctional. Beomgyu hears Yeonjun inhale sharply next to him. He groans and hangs up.

"You," Yeonjun says, mildly, "are such a fucking idiot."

And then he barely says anything through the first half of the auction. His eyes bug out when the numbers go crazy high for the patchwork Sant' Angelo, a brocade 1800s coat, and the 1883 floral gown. Beomgyu bids for and wins the Givenchy lot, and then concedes the Missoni dress to the Taiwanese couple. It's a bloodbath, just like he'd told Yeonjun: bids rise to mountainous prices, a single custom-made Parisian court-gown going for as much as one-hundred thousand dollars.

"This is insane," Yeonjun says, just as the auctioneer announces a Gucci lot. His voice is theatrically shocked. "Who's got such deep pockets?"

Beomgyu smiles, slow. "Watch me be a lunatic now."

"What do you-"

The starting price is six hundred dollars. Beomgyu competes against an in-house bidder and an on-line bidder until it goes to three-thousand, and then it's just him and the on-line guy.

"Four-thousand!" the auctioneer says. "Do I have four thousand-"

"How badly do you want this thing?" Yeonjun whispers, as Beomgyu raises the paddle again for four-thousand.

"I know someone that'll buy it from me for twelve. It's Gucci."

"Six-thousand!" the auctioneer calls out. "Do I see six-thousand? Six five-hundred. Six five-hundred-Seven thousand! Seven thousand, going once. Seven thousand, going twice. Sold at seven thousand to number 13!"

"Serious money," Yeonjun says, sounding a little awed as Beomgyu happily puts his paddle down. "It's oddly sexy, watching you throw away money."

"Yeah?"

He says it lightly, grinning a bit, treating it as a little joke. Yeonjun's gaze on him, though, is serious. "Yeah."

When the auction ends-way past lunchtime and hedging towards evening-they go around to the back to meet the auctioneer. Lucas is from Hong Kong and recognizes both Beomgyu and Yeonjun. They grab quick sandwiches with him, talking business, and by the time they go back up to change to comfortable clothes and head out, night has already fallen.

This time Beomgyu drags them to the Sensoji temple in Asakusa. They don't go to the temple complex, hanging out instead at the shops and food stalls surrounding it, eating meat skewers and tempura. The lanterns strung above cast a red glow, and the liveliness of the atmosphere thaws the ice again. Yeonjun tells him a story about a set they'd once built, for some action movie, involving a temple they'd constructed in a giant warehouse and an earthquake that rips it apart, drawing a little model for Beomgyu on the edge of a greasy napkin.

"And then one of the actors-we've got him all harnessed and stuff-just slips right through a crack. It's crazy. So Kai-who's just standing on the side watching-does this insane little somersault and grabs him by the collar. You had to see it to believe it. I didn't really take him seriously about his flexibility until that day."

"Kai is awesome," Beomgyu says, dipping his prawn tempura in dark sauce. "He's so nice."

"He's a really good guy."

"You should tell him that," Beomgyu says, taking a sip of Yeonjun's beer and wincing at the bitterness. "He thinks you only keep him around because he doesn't ask too many questions."

"Maybe I do."

"Ha ha. Keep fooling yourself, hyung. You're so soft for him."

Everything winds down early around these parts. 9 30 is last orders, and Beomgyu is telling Yeonjun the laundromat story by then, smiling as he reminisces how confused he and Taehyun had been. Yeonjun has been quiet for the most part, glancing up at Beomgyu through his bangs every once in a while, humming attentively as he listens. Beomgyu thinks he's distracted, but not in a way that suggests disinterest. It's hard to describe, but somehow this hour, this night-with the soft, warm lights, the murmur of the quieting crowd above the hiss of grilling meat-Yeonjun feels warmer than he usually does, walls down and foregoing his usual acid sarcasm, his gaze soft and open.

Somehow, it doesn't make Beomgyu braver as much as it does to make him more vulnerable.

"I might have been in love with him," Beomgyu mumbles. "I haven't even thought about this in a long while, but I might have been."

"Jimin hyung said he got that vibe too," Yeonjun says, eyes flickering up to Beomgyu's face before he looks back down at his rice bowl. "I asked if you two were...He said you weren't, but he thought it was a could have been. You know?"

Beomgyu shrugs one shoulder. "Eh. I didn't let it grow into anything big enough that it could hurt me."

"Meaning you didn't try," Yeonjun probes, his gaze piercing. "Because you thought you might get rejected."

Beomgyu squirms and looks away. There's something hot and sour surging in his chest, and he wants to laugh at Yeonjun, make a joke out of this, shake his head and smile and say that Yeonjun is just being crazy. It wasn't even a big thing, he wants to say, but now that he's brought it back up from the swamp he'd pushed it into, he realizes it was big.

Big as his whole heart.

His throat feels tight. This is stupid.

"I didn't-I knew he doesn't like me like that," he mumbles instead, dredging up a grin. "Would have been a disaster. Maybe it's lucky that we met Soobin when we did."

Yeonjun scoffs. "Lucky."

"Everything works out for the best in the end."

Yeonjun shoots him a look. "God, what are you, a fortune cookie?"

"Don't sound so bitter," Beomgyu says, with a cheery laugh. "We'd have been fine, you know. Even if I fell in love with Taehyun and got my heart broken-our friendship would've been fine. It's just that everyone's happier this way. Have you seen them? They're disgustingly cute, those two."

"You don't feel bitter?"

"At Soobin?" Beomgyu snorts. "I think I have better chances being bitter towards my dog, and I missed him so much today afternoon that I texted Kai to send me videos of him chewing a rubber bone."

"Better not to fall in love anyway. It's like dousing yourself in gasoline and handing someone else a lit match," Yeonjun mutters, pushing his hair off his forehead. His cheeks are dusted light with pink from the beer and the cold, but his eyes burn with some old hurt. "Why are people so stupid? At the end of the day everyone just fucks everyone else over."

"Sure," Beomgyu shrugs. "Or they find their perfect person, and get their happily ever after."

"You really believe that."

"I'm magic. The universe gave me Taehyun, didn't it? I'll trust it to give me my HEA."

Yeonjun stays quiet for a few minutes. Then he says, so soft that Beomgyu nearly misses him, "The universe gave you Taehyun and then you didn't even try with him. And you can laugh it off and call it luck or choice or whatever you want, but which one of us has really got the walls up around here, Beomgyu-ah?"

I just chose happiness, Beomgyu wants to say. I just took the easy way out.

He downs his beer and decides that he doesn't like this feeling. Doesn't like that Yeonjun keeps reminding him that maybe they aren't so different after all. That while Yeonjun uses authority and coldness to keep people out of what really matters, Beomgyu just uses his cheerful, optimistic front to hide beneath.

Two means to the same end.

Not true, a part of Beomgyu still protests. The cheery, happy part of him that just wants to pretend like everything is always fine. The part of him that only gives as much of himself as is necessary; the part of him that still whispers how he's an inconvenience when his friends try to help him.

I'm not like you, Beomgyu wants to say, but it sticks in his throat.

(I'm just like you.)

They walk in silence to the temple after, the complex deserted at this time of the night, all the shop-fronts having closed and most of the lights off. The elaborate gateway with the three large lanterns are lit up, though, and the five-storied pagoda lends a sort of storied red-and-gold light to the empty courtyards. Beomgyu likes it like this, quiet and desolate, the normally thrumming crowds far off in Roppongi or Shibuya partying. He likes this quiet, and he likes the way everyone walking through the complex falls automatically into murmuring, as though in tacit acknowledgment of some sort of otherworldly presence. They check out the main temple and he teaches Yeonjun how to ring the bells and pray, and there's a little incense dispenser from which they buy incense to light.

"I thought you were a witch," Yeonjun says, one eye open and glancing at Beomgyu as he pretends to pray.

"That's precisely why I pray here," Beomgyu says, sticking his incense in a holder. Yeonjun looks at him quizzically. "Hyung, think about it. If hundreds of thousands of people all come here to focus their energies on this one place, every day, that's a lot of good energy flowing here."

"How does it work?" Yeonjun asks. "Do you power up?"

"Ha ha."

"Maybe you need some, yeah?" Yeonjun's voice is soft. "You really scared me last afternoon, Beomgyu-ah. I'm so used to you being larger than life. To see you quiet like that..."

"I'm sorry."

"Don't be. Just. Stay happy, Beommie. It suits you best."

Beomgyu's body is a riot of gentle shivers.

"This place is lucky," he says, after a while, a lump in his throat. "You should probably make a wish, hyung."

Yeonjun's stare is like a steadying hand in the dark. The pretty light bleeds red into his skin, turns his eyes darker and envelops him in lovely warmth. He closes his eyes, as if to genuinely makes a wish, and instead of doing the same, Beomgyu just stands there, looking at him. At his smooth cheekbones and the slight annoyance in the furrow of his eyebrows, his beautiful fingers, everything accentuated in the weird light.

He wonders how they got here. Why it is that every conversation with Yeonjun is an ice-pick chipping away at his heart. How it is that they started from a place of misunderstanding and reached here, somehow uniquely poised to see through each other's bullshit. What even is this?

Choi Yeonjun is the only person Beomgyu hasn't been able to dazzle. The only person who he seems to pay no heed to the sparkle and the layers and the expensive tags he's layered atop himself, cutting through the clutter and straight to his weedy, earth-hidden heart.

It hurts. It had hurt since the very beginning. And now that Yeonjun does not look at him with hate but understanding and curiosity, it hurts more.

Knowing that it's never going to be more than this-some gentle teasing in the dark, the wink-and-smile game of soft flirting-hurts too. How can it be any more than this? This is Yeonjun and Beomgyu-two wildly opposite sides of the same emotionally sequestered coin. Neither of them will reach. Neither of them will take. There's nothing to it but disaster.

He wishes, though.

There 's my heart, doused in gasoline. Here's a lit match. Wanna try holding it a while, hyung?

Yeonjun peeks at him. "Did you make a wish, Beomgyu-ah?"

"Yeah."

"What'd you wish for?"

Beomgyu pulls up a grin. "Ice-cream," he lies. "I know a place that stays open all night. It's right next to the Skytree. Wanna go?"

***

The biting wind is turning Beomgyu's nose pink but he doesn't care.

It's their last night in Tokyo, and somehow, during the short metro ride to the Skytree, he starts feeling bright and dreamy and imaginary again. Might be all the lights, flashing through the windows and constellating in spots on Yeonjun's face, gone before Beomgyu deludes himself into trying to wipe them off. Might be the little omikuji fortune Yeonjun got from the box at the temple in the last minute, that read something like a joke: in the matters of the heart, be brave, hold tight. A ship tossed at stormy sea only requires one able captain.

"That makes no sense," he says, laughing over the rumble of the train and the cheery murmuring of ads on the screen above the doors. "At least it's poetic. Mine just says be careful of empty vessels. I feel like this scroll is meant for Taehyung hyung."

Yeonjun seems to not have heard him. He looks at the omikuji like it holds some answer, eyebrows knit and the tips of his ears a bright red. There seems to be some silent storm within him, and Beomgyu understands those well, so he presses his lips together and looks out instead.

"I want a selfie!" he crows, when they're out of the train and in front of the lit up Skytree. "Hyung, come on!"

A loose smile curls Yeonjun's mouth. He acquiesces, gentle enough, crowding close as Beomgyu clicks, blurry but alive, the two of them throwing up peace signs and smiling wide into the camera.

Beomgyu looks at it and abruptly wants to cry.

The roads are nearly empty and so he leaves Yeonjun a little behind and runs, both because he feels alive and because of some soft terror pooling in his heart. It's a weird feeling-frightful and incendiary, like his control over his body has slipped, and now Beomgyu's afraid he's going to kiss Yeonjun.

This is not like the fun, chaotic possibility of the what ifs. This is something else. This is a what if without the performance, a raw, frightening thing. This is a what if that requires him to put his heart on the line, and Beomgyu's never, ever put his heart on the line-not really. This is a what if that feels sharp as razor-wire, and he thinks it works a lot like a landslide-slowly, and then all at once.

It goes like this: What if he fell in love.

It's not a solid thing, not fully-formed yet. Just a bite of possibility. A little shock to the system. A baby what if.

What if.

And he knows. Knows it cannot end well.

(Better not to fall in love anyway, Yeonjun had said. Better not to. Why are people so stupid? Better not to fall in love.)

"Beomgyu!" Yeonjun calls, from a little distance away. "Beomgyu-ah, what are you doing?"

"Nothing," he laughs, and skips backward. "I'm just happy, hyung."

Yeonjun shakes his head. "You crazy kid."

Beomgyu comes to an abrupt stop. "Ah-here's the ice-cream shop!"

He doesn't really want ice-cream. He needs the cold comfort of the bathroom tiles though, when he excuses himself to go in there and lean his forehead against the wall for a minute. Yeonjun's still out there contemplating cotton candy vs mint in terms of ice-cream flavors. He says he's had both hair colors, and imagining that makes Beomgyu feel soft and angsty enough that he thinks he might cry into his very berry strawberry scoop. He needs to stand here, locked up in this tiny bathroom without even the option of musical commodes, and take control of his own self. Make sure of his mental barricades, think happy thoughts. He needs the ice-cold water he splashes on his face, the inhale-exhale routine of calm, the fist he clenches against his side and against that fucking landslide of sudden feelings.

And then he opens the bathroom door and there's Yeonjun. Waiting.

"Ah," Yeonjun says, expression complicated, voice quiet and broken-in as he looks up at a bewildered Beomgyu. "I'm sorry, Beomgyu-ah, I don't know what the fuck I'm doing..."

The door closes again behind him. Beomgyu's head is full of white, fuzzy light. He presses himself back against the tiles. There's very little space here, nowhere to go, and the way Yeonjun is looking at him, lashes low over his eyes, is dangerous.

"Hyung-" he starts, throat tight, but then Yeonjun is kissing him.

His lips are cold but his mouth is warm, the slide of his tongue a gentle plunder. Beomgyu gasps and tries to surge forward, thinks he might want to ask Yeonjun if he's sure, if this is just a joke. But judging by the hand Yeonjun splays to his chest to hold him back, this kiss is everything but that.

This kiss is hard and rushed and ungentle. This kiss is starved and seeking, sweet and rough, Yeonjun's mouth on his again and again, stealing his breath. This kiss is having to stop, but only for seconds, and even then only to rush back into it twice as hard.

This kiss is Beomgyu's hips slamming into the sink; his ribs under the cold tips of Yeonjun's fingers; his fingers tangling in Yeonjun's hair.

This kiss is the rush of wind through an open car window, the hiss of water on a newly torn scrape, the hard relief of first rain after a hard summer.

Beomgyu's afraid of this kiss. He's afraid of his wandering fingers, the jagged flashes of emotion he catches on Yeonjun's face every time they pull apart, the sharp pressure of Yeonjun's thumbs where they're somehow jammed up under Beomgyu's collarbones. He's afraid of this image of Yeonjun, searing permanent into his memory: his burning eyes and kiss-slick lips, color in his cheeks like helpless anger. He fits his palm to the line of Beomgyu's jaw and opens his mouth against his, and Beomgyu follows his lead, tipping sideways to press in closer. He tastes like ice-cream and snow and Beomgyu wants more.

More than the hot hand splayed against the bare skin of his stomach. More than the thick-lidded gaze that Yeonjun gives him when they pendulum again only to crash back, lips and tongue and teeth. More than the way Yeonjun says his name then, like a dirty fucking curse, the heat of it making Beomgyu jolt with surprise.

He wants so, so much more.

(He's so, so afraid.)

"Hyung," he gets out, finally, a desperate whine in his voice. "W-what are we doing?"

That breaks the spell, sort of.

Yeonjun pulls away from him and blinks, breathing heavy. "Weird," he says, swiping a hand at his lips, watching Beomgyu with something bordering suspicion. "Why'd I do that?"

He clings to that for a while, looking desperate, a scowl on his mouth like he wants to think up something cruel. It slides under Beomgyu's skin, scrapes raw against soft places.

"If you kiss me again," Beomgyu says, his voice all jammed up, "you fucking better mean it, hyung."

Yeonjun's fingers tap against his sides like nervous spiders. A strange, tight expression takes up residence on his face. For a moment there's silence, the drip-drip loop of a leaky tap the only soundtrack to their inner maelstroms.

Then Yeonjun steps forward again, and his fingers come up to pat at Beomgyu's cheek, nervously. "You're, uh. You're okay with this."

"Yeah."

Yeonjun presses a kiss to the tip of his nose. "With this," he says, and Beomgyu nods again, heart going wildly fast. Yeonjun nods too, and sucks a little kiss on his jaw. "With this."

His palm snags hard in Beomgyu's hair. His hips press down hard against Beomgyu, a slow grind that makes him go shivery, a dull, wanting ache in the pit of his stomach.

"What else are you okay with?" Yeonjun asks, his mouth searing against a spot just under Beomgyu's jaw.

In answer, Beomgyu arches into him, a soft, stuttering gasp escaping his throat, long fingers unworking the fly of Yeonjun's jeans to slide his hand inside. Yeonjun nips at his neck absently, just a quick scrape of teeth, and then bites him hard when Beomgyu gets his hand working on him, tight and fast.

"Shit. You demonic little thing, you," he says, tipping his head back, a moan catching in his throat, "So fucking beautiful," he leans forward again to fuse their mouths together, then draws back and says, almost angry, "drove me nuts from the first time I saw you."

Beomgyu's having a bit of trouble remembering things. Like words, for example. "T-thought I was annoying."

"Your face isn't." Yeonjun says, and Beomgyu bears down on his cock through his boxers, hard enough to make him hiss again, "Fucking-Do that again."

Beomgyu does. And it's in the middle of him attempting to see if he can coax another moan out of Yeonjun when someone raps at the door.

They freeze, but just for an instant. Beomgyu suppresses the hysterical urge to giggle. They pull away, and for a moment Yeonjun is far from him, at the other end of the tiny box of this bathroom trying to catch his breath. For a moment he feels far and unreachable again, and Beomgyu feels wildly distraught, deer in some fucking headlights, like some heavy, terrible weight is barreling towards him and he's unable to stop it.

But then Yeonjun comes back, to lace the fingers of one hand with Beomgyu's, and kiss the corner of his mouth. "Look what you did, now," he says, soft and gruff, fire kindling in his gaze.

Beomgyu smiles. Yeonjun's face is angled down, but he flicks his eyes up, catches that smile, and gives a slow grin in return.

Then he unlocks the door. Beomgyu only catches a glimpse of a shocked, pale face before Yeonjun drags him out of there, fingers locked tight around his own.