Chapter Text
A sigh escaped Yeonjun; a tiny sound full of fondness as he placed his head in his hand and smiled at the pretty boy seated in front of him.
Said pretty boy was Soobin, Yeonjun’s best friend practically since birth, who had had the audacity to arrive at their study session at the library looking godlike with freshly dyed hair. His previously black hair was now a stark red colour, shining even in the dull light of the library. The fiery red made him look like the main character of a superhero movie, cool and confident and, dare he say it, sexy. It suited him so well, Yeonjun didn’t know what to do with himself.
He realized he must be looking like a lovestruck fool only when Taehyun, who was sitting next to him, pushed his elbow out from under him, causing Yeonjun to drop his head and nearly hit his face on the table. The movement alerted Soobin and Kai on the other side of the table, making them look up from their books. Soobin raised his eyebrows as he noticed Yeonjun rubbing his elbow and glaring at Taehyun, while Kai gave a knowing snort and tried to keep his smile hidden as he continued reading.
As he sent a side-eyed stink eye at Taehyun, Yeonjun felt his phone buzz in his pocket.
Tyunnie
Sorry, but you were a bit too obvious.
I can basically smell the awe on you, you should be happy Soobin’s on the other side of the table
Yeonjun’s veins froze to ice in an instance at the prospect of being caught. He really was the worst at keeping his emotions hidden.
Grumpy hyung
Fuck, you’re right, I zoned out
Do you think he won’t notice?
Despite having grown up with them, Yeonjun was a master at forgetting the fact that two of his best friends were not of the same species as him. It still surprised him when the two alphas brought up any aspect of their non-humanness, such as the fact that they were much more sensitive to sounds and smells than humans.
Tyunnie
If he didn’t notice yet I don’t think he will
Grumpy hyung
Good
You can’t blame me for staring though
The red hair??? He looks so good wtf
Tyunnie
You should tell him that, not me
Yeonjun looked up to meet Taehyun’s eyes, dramatically rolling his own in response, before turning his attention over to Soobin.
“Hey Bin-ah,” he said, pausing to wait for Soobin to look at him. “I love what you did to your hair. You didn’t tell me you would dye it.”
And considering Yeonjun and Soobin spent most of their days together and told each other everything, he thought it was a bit weird that he hadn’t know about Soobin’s change of hair colour beforehand.
“Ah,” Soobin said, a small blush creeping up his neck. “It was a spur of the moment kind of thing. I wanted to surprise you, anyways, that’s why I didn’t say anything.”
Yeonjun hummed in understanding. He noticed Soobin’s blush and couldn’t help smiling. Soobin liked to convince himself and others around him that he was a big, matcho alpha, tall and broad enough to intimidate people on sight, but Yeonjun knew better. In his eyes, Soobin would always be cute.
“Does it look good?” Soobin touched his hair self consciously, waiting for Yeonjun’s praise that he probably knew was going to come. Yeonjun was predictable like that.
“Is the sky blue?” Yeonjun joked. “You look great. I’m actually a bit jealous, you’re gonna steal all the attention away from me now.”
He could sense Taehyun and Kai sharing a look and pretending to gag in their seats, but since Soobin ignored them, he chose to do the same.
“I don’t know about that,” Soobin mumbled, looking away.
It would always flabbergast Yeonjun that Soobin kept refusing to take his compliments at face value. No matter how many times Yeonjun had told him that he was pretty, handsome, gorgeous, the depiction of his ideal style, Soobin never accepted a compliment without protesting. Maybe he saw it as Yeonjun being the supportive best friend, giving compliments just for the sake of Soobin’s confidence, when the truth was that Yeonjun was just incapable of keeping his attraction to Soobin silent.
They stayed in the library trying to study for maybe half an hour more before it became too obvious that none of them were being productive. Kai had been playing a game on his phone for the last ten minutes, while Yeonjun and Taehyun had been throwing small paper balls and trying to get them to stick in Soobin’s hair. The funniest part was that Soobin was doing his best to ignore them, while at the same time allowing it to happen as he kept on reading his book.
At some point, though, Soobin seemed to have had enough. “Okay guys,” he said, straightening in his seat and closing his book in one go. He leaned his head forward and shook his hair out, causing at least ten paper balls to fall onto the table. Raising his head, he sent an amused look Yeonjun’s way. “It’s almost seven, we should head out before it gets too late.”
As always, what Soobin said became law, and the three of them quickly packed up their things to follow Soobin’s lead. When they stood, Yeonjun and Taehyun giggled as Soobin turned around and still had a few balls stuck in his hair.
A few minutes later, the group walked into their favourite restaurant, which also happened to be the closest one to their campus.
While Taehyun and Kai discussed what they should get, Soobin offered to order for Yeonjun.
“Oh, yeah sure,” he answered. “I want—”
“I know,” Soobin said with a smirk, leaving them to find a table as he approached the counter to order. Yeonjun watched him, gaping. It shouldn’t come as a surprise that Soobin knew his order; with how often they came there, and with Yeonjun always ordering the same thing – a bowl of tonkotsu ramen – probably all his friends knew his preferred order here. Still, Soobin was the only who offered to order for him, and that made that familiar sparkling feeling erupt in his chest.
Yeonjun didn’t even realize he was staring at Soobin once again until Kai cleared his throat very indiscreetly to catch his attention.
“What?” he asked, turning his head only to frown as he caught sight of his two friends smirking at him.
“You should fix your face before Soobin-hyung comes back, your pining is showing,” Kai teased.
Yeonjun slapped Kai on the shoulder before turning around to make sure Soobin hadn’t heard him. Being the only other human of their group, Kai also tended to forget that alphas and omegas not only had better sense of smell than humans, but also better hearing. Thankfully, Soobin showed no sign of having overheard Kai.
Out of his two other best friends, Kai was more adamant on teasing Yeonjun about his crush on Soobin. It was mostly small things, like sending knowing looks Yeonjun’s way when Soobin did something fairly attractive. When Soobin was not in the room, however, he could get more vocal about it. Yeonjun wouldn’t say he loved it, but since he knew that Kai had no malicious intent with his teasing, he tolerated it.
Yeonjun’s slap led Kai to try to get back at him and ended with Yeonjun shrieking and running out of the way as Kai tried to hit his butt. Taehyun watched them with a shake of his head, doing nothing to stop them and instead going to grab a table.
A moment later, Yeonjun and Kai called truce and followed Taehyun. With a sigh, Yeonjun relaxed in his seat. He glanced over at the queue, where Soobin seemed to have reached the front to order and was hit by another wave of affection for his best friend.
“Hyung, you’re doing it again.” This time it was Taehyun who reminded him.
Pouting, Yeonjun dragged his eyes over to his younger friends and let out a longing sigh. “I just can’t help it; he looks so good in that colour.”
Taehyun and Kai shared a look of disgust, before Taehyun snorted. “Sure,” he said, which would have earned him a glare from Yeonjun due to his sarcastic tone, if he hadn’t continued. “In fact, he looks so good it seems the new cashier is flirting with him.”
“What?!”
Yeonjun straightened in his seat, alerted. When he looked Soobin’s way Soobin earlier, he hadn’t bothered to notice the way the girl behind the counter was batting her eyes at him, her smile much bigger than her job required.
“Wanna bet if she’s going to give him her number?” Kai asked as all of them stared at the encounter several meters away.
“I bet ten thousand won that he accepts it without even realising what it is,” Taehyun said confidently.
“That’s what I was gonna say,” Kai whined. Yeonjun ignored their continued playful bickering, his eyes glued to Soobin’s back.
He knew he was being ridiculous, caring so much about who Soobin was talking to and if he was being flirted with. Despite knowing that, he couldn’t help the ball of jealousy growing in his stomach, and his stare quickly turned into a glare directed at the cashier.
Soobin handed over the money, finally paying for their order, and Yeonjun assumed he would come back to the table then. To his surmise, however, Soobin just took a sidestep and followed the girl as she relayed the order to the chefs.
Did Soobin enjoy talking to her? Why couldn’t he just come back to the table and wait for their food like a normal person?
The worst thing was, there wasn’t any other customer in sight, the queue painfully non-existent, leading to Soobin and the pretty cashier’s conversation to be undisturbed for far too long.
An idea popped up in Yeonjun’s head that he immediately acted on. “Hey, what are you guys ordering?” he asked his friends, barely glancing at them as he asked. They stopped bickering about their bet and gave Yeonjun funny looks which he did not notice.
“I haven’t decided, but I might go with the ribs—” Taehyun said, and before he could finish Yeonjun cut him off.
“Great! Kai?”
“Uh, I was thinking the ramen soup, I guess…”
“Perfect! I’ll order for you.”
He ignored their stares that turned into knowing looks as he jumped to his feet and approached his red-haired friend by the cashier.
“-yeah, it’s definitely one of my favourites,” he heard the girl –Yeji, her name tag said– say as he came up to Soobin’s side. They were clearly in the middle of the conversation, but Yeonjun couldn’t care less if it was rude of him to interrupt. He just wanted Soobin away from her flirtatious gaze.
“I want to order,” he said, catching both by surprise and successfully interrupting the conversation.
Soobin sent him a confused look, “Hyung, I already ordered for you—” he began, but Yeonjun was too occupied staring the girl down to listen.
“One Ramen soup and one Ribs,” he said, glaring at her as she nodded with wide eyes and wrote it down on a piece of paper.
“What would you like to drink?” she asked, her smile a bit less sweet than previously as she glanced from Soobin to Yeonjun. For a moment, Yeonjun fought his instincts to pull Soobin to his side to show her who he belonged to.
Soobin doesn’t belong to you, a voice in his head reminded him.
“One cola and one sprite,” he answered simply, ignoring how Soobin kept looking at him questioningly from the side.
“Is that all?” Yeji asked, her expression a bit uncomfortable now. Part of Yeonjun felt bad for it – he wasn’t a total asshole, after all – but the other, more substantial part was glad he got her to stop flirting with Soobin.
“Yes, that’s all.” When she nodded and punched in the order in the register, telling him the amount, he added a “thank you,” just to show he did still have his manners.
Once he had paid and they got their drinks, he caught Soobin’s eyes on him as they went to grab utensils and napkins.
“What?” he asked, knowing Soobin tended to keep quiet when he was bothered by something.
“What got you in such a sour mood?” Soobin asked, glancing back at Yeji who was looking sideways at them as she walked to the kitchen.
“I don’t know what you mean,” Yeonjun said, faking nonchalance. He was still a bit riled up, and as usual, he had trouble coming back down.
“Sure,” Soobin said, dragging out the syllable. “But you were a bit… curt with her, don’t you think?”
Well, yeah, he knew that. But… he couldn’t exactly admit that without explaining why that was.
“Ah,” he said, biting his lips as he avoided Soobin’s eyes. He grabbed four pairs of chopsticks, then turned around to face him. “Was I? I didn’t mean to.” Wow, he was such a liar. “Kai just said something that annoyed me.”
“Oh,” Soobin looked less wary now, a small smile creeping up on his face. “Really? What’d he say?”
Waving his hand, Yeonjun said, “It was stupid, really.” And just because Soobin looked back at the girl a bit guiltily, he added, “should I apologise?”
He really didn’t want to apologise. But, well, if Soobin wanted him to, then…
Soobin chuckled, shrugging. “I don’t think it was that bad. But you did kind of interrupt our conversation.”
“Really? What were you talking about?”
Pointing at his hair, Soobin explained. “She commented on my hair, said I reminded her of a character in an anime she liked. And, you know I love anime, so we just talked about that until you came up.”
“Oh.” Yeonjun felt stupid now. Maybe she hadn’t been flirting with him after all. “That’s nice.” He gave a small smile, but when Soobin looked away, he shifted his gaze back to the girl. She wasn’t looking at them, but he could tell from the way she was faced that she was keeping an eye on them at the edge of her vision. “Let’s head back to the table, the food will probably take a while.”
Soobin agreed, and followed Yeonjun’s lead when the girl’s voice reached them.
“Wait!” she called, and when the two turned to look back, it was obvious she was talking to Soobin.
As Soobin made to walk back to her, he motioned for Yeonjun to just go back to their friends. Despite not wanting to leave Soobin with her again, he reluctantly did so.
“You ordered for us?” Taehyun asked when he sat back down in his seat, his eyes still glued to Soobin. He hummed in response. “And you paid?” Another hum.
“I didn’t know jealous-Yeonjun-Hyung was this generous,” Kai said, grinning at the thought of not having to pay for his food.
“Oh shut it, or I’ll make you pay me back,” Yeonjun spat, turning his head to glare at them when they laughed at him.
Taehyun leaned forward to pat Yeonjun’s hand, his evil grin turning gentle. “Sorry, Hyung, you’re just too easy to rile up, we can’t help it.” He then leaned back, and Yeonjun was grateful when he changed the subject. It was only then he had time to realize his cheeks were burning, against his will. He hoped it wasn’t noticeable.
“You wanna hear what our professor did when Kai fell asleep in his class today?”
Yeonjun very much wanted to hear about that, considering Taehyun often had fun stories to tell about Kai getting into trouble in class. Kai tended to be a bit of a slouch, never taking his classes or professors seriously. It was honestly baffling to Yeonjun how someone like Kai, who hated all things school related, was studying physics, one of the school’s hardest programs. But when he had asked Taehyun how Kai was going to pass the first year with how much he hated studying, he had shrugged and said Kai that was just that smart.
Despite them being only a few weeks into this semester, it seemed like Kai had already gotten in his professor’s bad book. Taehyun dived into a dramatic retelling of how their professor had caught Kai sleeping and proceeded to stare at him for a minute until Taehyun nudged Kai awake, which was followed by a long rant about disrespectful students and how anyone that lacked the decency to stay awake during lectures were bound to fail in life.
In the end, Yeonjun was crying with laughter, and he didn’t even notice it had been a while since he left Soobin behind at the counter before his tall friend reappeared by their table.
“Ah, Binnie!” he exclaimed, smiling up at his friend who slowly sat down in the seat next to him. His sour mood from earlier was gone with the wind, and all he felt when looking at Soobin was fondness.
Always in need of closeness, he scooted closer and linked his arm with Soobin’s as soon as Soobin’s butt hit the chair. Then, he noticed the sheepish look on Soobin’s face, and squinted at him. “Something wrong?”
He followed Soobin’s eyes down to the receipt in his hand. His first thought was that it came out more expensive than Soobin had thought, but it didn’t make sense since he knew Soobin was never one to complain about money. Then, his eyes fell on the little hand scribbled note at the bottom of the paper, which caused him to suck in a loud breath (he did not gasp) that alerted their other friends.
Kai was quick to grab the receipt from Soobin’s hand, letting out a cheer when he saw what it was.
“The cashier gave you her number?” Taehyun asked, eyebrows shooting up in a mix between surprise and delight. But that was before he saw the pouty look on Yeonjun’s face.
Disgruntled, Yeonjun leaned away, letting his arm slip out from Soobin’s. He tried to not make it noticeable how displeased (one might even say jealous) he was, he really did. Thankfully, Soobin was looking down at the receipt, unlikely to notice Yeonjun’s expression.
“Yeah, she did,” Soobin said, sounding like he didn’t believe it. “It was a bit of a surprise, I thought she just wanted to talk more about anime… but she said I forgot this and asked me to text her.”
Taehyun snorted and pointed at Kai. “You owe me ten thousand won,” he said, triumphantly. Kai groaned and tried arguing that it wasn’t fair, while Soobin looked at them with confused eyes.
“So, are you?” Yeonjun heard himself say, bringing Soobin’s attention to him as the younger two once again started bickering.
“Am I what?” Soobin asked, now glancing at Yeonjun with wide eyes.
“Are you gonna text her?”
“Oh.” Soobin looked down at his hands for a moment. He carefully glanced towards the counter, where the girl seemed to have disappeared into the kitchen. “I mean, I don’t think so.”
“Why not? She’s pretty, isn’t she?” Yeonjun didn’t know why he was pushing him, making it sound like he thought Soobin should do it. He just… he was a bit upset, jealousy and sadness brewing in his stomach and making him act harshly.
“Y-yeah, she is. But I don’t know. I’ll think about it, I guess.” Soobin shrugged, his eyes flickering away from Yeonjun’s face almost nonchalantly.
Yeonjun didn’t push, didn’t even know why he asked in the first place since the mere thought of hearing Soobin talking about that girl made his chest hurt. Dating and emotions was something he and Soobin almost never talked about with each other, perhaps for that exact reason. On his own end, it was pretty clear why he never talked about his feelings. Soobin on the other hand was a bit of a mystery sometimes. He wasn’t necessarily uncomfortable talking about it, it was just that he never did. At least not with Yeonjun.
He wished he knew why. But he also never knew how to bring it up, so he just let it keep on going as it was.
Sometimes it saddened him that there were things he couldn’t talk to his best friend about. At the same time, he wasn’t nearly brave enough to confess, and he had long ago come to terms with Soobin not feeling the same way.
Thankfully, he had Taehyun and Kai to rant about his feelings whenever he needed to.
Speaking of Taehyun, Yeonjun could tell that he was watching them with calculating eyes. He always had a good eye when it came to Yeonjun’s bad moods, making sure to always check that Yeonjun was alright whenever stuff like this seemed to affect him.
A raised eyebrow from Taehyun was question enough, and Yeonjun nodded tiredly in response. He was fine. Not much worse than usual, at least.
A waiter – not the girl from before, thankfully – arrived with their food. As they ate their food, the conversation shifted to something less anxiety inducing for Yeonjun, and he managed to keep his mood up for the entire meal. He of course couldn’t forget about the number that was still sitting on the piece of paper that Soobin had pushed into his pocket, or the words Soobin had said, but he decided not to dwell on it for now.
Later that night, after they went their separate ways, Yeonjun found himself staring up at his bedroom ceiling, mind too awake and buzzing to fall asleep.
The entire scene from earlier kept replaying in his mind, the way he reacted to Soobin being hit on making him cringe in shame. Why did he have to get so angry and sensitive every time someone showed interest in Soobin?
Well, it wasn’t like he didn’t know the answer to that one. It was obvious that he wanted soobin’s attention to be on him and only him.
He hated that his feelings got him behaving like this. Poor Soobin. And poor girl behind the register. Yeonjun hadn’t even memorized her name. Shit, he felt like such a douchebag.
There was nothing to do but push the shame down and move on, though. What’s done is done, and all that. He just… had to try not to do the same thing the next time someone hit on Soobin. But as he saw today, he has little control over himself when the jealousy takes over.
Fuck, he just hoped Soobin didn’t catch onto why Yeonjun was behaving like that. It didn’t seem like he did. It was like Taehyun said about his scent that morning: if Soobin hadn’t noticed it yet, he was probably not going to figure it out.
He could be dense like that sometimes, Choi Soobin. Never the one to understand other people’s advancements unless they literally spelled it out to him. It was one of the most endearing and frustrating things about him, how he always seemed so surprised when learning that someone liked him.
That was something Yeonjun truly would never understand. Soobin was such a catch, literally his dream partner, and he struggled to see why people would be interested in him?
Well, maybe Yeonjun shouldn’t complain too much. So far, Soobin hadn’t accepted any of the advances he’d been given, always turning down the ones that asked him out. But one of these days, he might. In fact, Yeonjun couldn’t know for sure that Soobin wasn’t going to text the girl from today.
Sure, he’d said he didn’t think he would, but what if he changed his mind?
The mere thought of Soobin sending her a text and it leading to them going on a date had Yeonjun’s anxiety boiling up inside him. Because even though Yeonjun hated the thought, and his mind immediately tried to think of ways to prevent that from happening, deep down he knew that he didn’t have any claim over Soobin. If his best friend wanted to date her, if he really was interested in her, then it wasn’t Yeonjun’s business
Rationally, he knew that. But his body didn’t care about rationality. He was still filled with jealousy when other people looked at Soobin with interest.
Like many nights before, he ran over his mental list of reasons why he and Soobin would never become a thing. Was it to torture himself? Maybe. But he liked to think that if he kept telling himself that he was crushing on someone unobtainable, then maybe one day his feelings would fade away.
So far, it hadn’t worked very well.
The first and most obvious reason why he never expected anything to happen between them was also the simplest one: Soobin just didn’t like him that way.
Now, there had been a time where he had dared to hope that he might’ve had a chance. That even if Soobin didn’t like him, he could come to do so in the future. But that was years ago, when they were not in uni and they were young and innocent, before Yeonjun realized just how serious his crush was.
Soobin had always been the most comfortable around him, growing confident and open as long as Yeonjun was by his side. He was also much more lenient on Yeonjun than any of their other friends, letting him play pranks and do whatever he did as long as it made Yeonjun happy.
Soobin used to be extremely shy, but somehow he blossomed out around Yeonjun. He avoided hugs and rarely initiated any close touch unless he was forced into it.
Only, with Yeonjun he was different. Somehow, Yeonjun was the only exception. Where he might’ve pushed Taehyun off, Yeonjun could hang and cling onto Soobin without a word of protest being uttered from the tall boy. Thus, Yeonjun’s hopes of Soobin feeling the same type of affection for him grew the more he was noticing it.
It took one conversation about sexuality to squash Yeonjun’s hopes and dreams.
They had been at Soobin’s parents’ house for a sleepover, the two of them and Taehyun. Yeonjun had been maybe 14 years old at that time. He couldn’t remember how they had come upon this topic, but he knew it started when Tae admitted he liked guys more than girls. Perhaps he had had a crush on someone and couldn’t help telling them, or something. The details weren’t important. However, it led them onto the path of talking about their sexuality, during which Yeonjun admitted to mainly liking guys. That’s when Soobin said he liked girls. Period.
Okay, he didn’t say period. He said, “I like girls. Haven’t thought much about my sexuality, really.” The fact that he said that immediately after Yeonjun admitted to being gay was like a punch to the throat, a hard wake up call for his hopeful heart.
He used to think about it a lot, back then. How Soobin said it so easily, that he didn’t seem to have struggled like he and Taehyun had with coming to terms with their sexuality.
Since then, he’d had to accept that Soobin was straight and thus incapable of falling for him. Still he couldn’t get himself to stop loving his best friend like that. He tried dating other people, going on a few dates here and there and even being in a long-term relationship with a guy his first year of university. It sufficed to say, it didn’t last long, because he could never give as much of his affection to his then boyfriend as he did to Soobin.
So that was the second reason, the devastating truth that should have made Yeonjun accept his fate and move on.
The third point on the list was this: Yeonjun was a human, Soobin was a werewolf.
“That’s a stupid, old-school argument,” Taehyun would argue whenever Yeonjun brought it up. And he knew that the fact that they were of different species shouldn’t really matter. It had been years and years since interspecies relationships were viewed in an unnatural light, and it wasn’t like they were less common than queer relationships nowadays either.
Deep down, Yeonjun could admit that he knew that Soobin didn’t care much about the species of the person he would end up with. He had basically said so outright to Yeonjun once. It was just that… his family did care. A lot. His parents were very sold on having Soobin, their only son – and an alpha, on top of that – mate an omega that could carry on their bloodline.
“Soobin’s parents love you,” would be Taehyun’s next argument. “They wouldn’t care if he was with you.”
No, Yeonjun knew they wouldn’t hate him. If Soobin somehow miraculously started liking guys and by extent fell in love with Yeonjun, they wouldn’t turn Soobin away for being with him. But they would be disappointed. Never truly satisfied. They would probably never get over Soobin not mating and forming a family with an omega. And Soobin would constantly feel their disappointment, which would affect him for the rest of his life.
Not only that, Yeonjun also knew that a relationship between alpha and omega was special in a way interspecies relationship never could be. Creating a mating bond with another werewolf was like creating a soul link, like becoming one with the person you were in love with. That was something precious, something that Soobin deserved the chance to experience. He always felt extremely guilty every time he wished Soobin would fall in love with him because he knew it meant he would rob Soobin of that connection.
Rolling around in bed, Yeonjun threw his arm over his head and tried to force his mind to quiet down. This was not helping. He could almost hear his own heart breaking, the anxiety in his chest making it feel like something inside of him was trying to claw its way out.
This was the problem with trying to be realistic. It had the consequence of making himself feel like shit, most of the time.
And the worst part about trying to convince himself that he and Soobin didn't work with his little list was that for every argument they wouldn’t work, there was a thousand ones for why they would. There was a reason why Yeonjun had fallen so deeply in love with his best friend, after all.
“Ah shit,” Yeonjun muttered up at the dark ceiling above him after having rolled around, an unsatiated sadness brewing in his chest preventing him from falling asleep. He hated nights like these, where he’d toss and tumble as he tried to distract his mind from these types of thoughts.
It seemed like he wasn’t going to get much sleep tonight. It sucked, but it wasn’t like this was the first night he lay awake thinking about Soobin. It sure wouldn’t be the last.
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