Just after dusk, Yuta’s phone vibrates at the edge of his dresser where it’s charging. A new message from Taeyong reads:

T: I need your help with something

No other information is provided and Yuta could only wonder what the reason might be for his best friend to send such a message.

⎊

“Y’know, you didn’t have to make it sound like you killed someone and needed my help in burying the body,” Yuta says half an hour later, barefoot in Taeyong’s bathroom with gloves on and a bottle of developer in one hand.

Even though the sun has long since parted to make way for the moon, heat still seeps in from the open window and Taeyong’s cheeks glisten under the fluorescent light.

“I wasn’t trying to,” Taeyong responds back with a small huff of laughter, toeing his foot into the wooden floor. He was nestled against the side of the bathtub, rosy pink hair clipped back in twin barrettes decorated with plastic cherries gifted to him by Yuta one birthday ago, the phone in his hand lowly playing a song the two like. “I just said I needed your help.” The help in question being retouching his roots.

“And here I am, giving it,” Yuta said with a long-suffering sigh, approaching the sink. “At ten. On a work night. Because I am—”

“A good friend—the best, I know.” Taeyong interrupts. His posture loosening as Yuta the faucet, he repeats, unheard, “I know.”

It’s not Yuta’s first time dyeing hair—the platinum hair he’s currently sporting is proof of that—but it is his first time doing another person’s hair that isn’t his own, and the first time he has had a sufficiently reasonable excuse to fulfill his obnoxious and frequent desire to comb his fingers through Taeyong’s hair, root to tip. Taeyong dips his head back obligingly at Yuta’s touch, closing his eyes with a bare but content sigh that rings at Yuta’s heart. The wood is cool and smooth on his knees when he drops down to balance better, his thumb grazing the ridge of Taeyong’s ear and lingering for a moment just beside his jaw.

Yuta collects himself and paints the roots carefully. The brush that came with the dyeing kit is pretty cheap and the work is slow, but he makes do with it and is sure to run-through all the instructions in his head.

Taeyong doesn’t seem to care about the tedium, softly humming along to the current song playing. After a while his voice drifts off and Yuta wonders if he’s fallen asleep.

“Yuta,” Taeyong murmurs at last. Yuta jumps, hand tightening instinctively on the brush so it won’t fall on Taeyong.

“Don’t startle me like that,” he scolds him lightly. “You can’t just go quiet on me for like an hour and then suddenly say something.”

Taeyong glances at the time on his phone. “It’s only been ten minutes,” he snorts, lips quirking upward amusingly.

Yuta doesn’t reply and just aggressively swirls the brush in the pink-stained bowl. He’s getting down to the last of it, and the small plastic frog timer he’d set on the edge of the bathtub only has two minutes left. He knows it will take a few cycles if he wants to avoid frying Taeyong’s roots but he’s still concerned he’ll mess up.

He dabs some of it with one finger to spread it more evenly, and foolishly wishes for a second that he wasn’t wearing gloves, even if that would mean exposing his hands to bleach. The bathroom smells of chemicals and air freshener and Taeyong, the harsh with the familiar.

“What were you going to say?” Yuta asks, lowering his hand and settling the bowl on the floor.

Taeyong opens his eyes, settling them on the ceiling. His arms hang loosely at his sides, hands gathered between his crossed legs, his phone nearly on the floor by his knee. Yuta has become quite good at deciphering Taeyong’s assortment of pensive expressions, but this one he strangely cannot read.

“Umm…” Taeyong stalls. His gaze shifts, as though caught on something, a bug or a shadow, but there’s nothing there.

The timer goes off, a brisk little ring that bounces off the porcelain like rain, and whatever Taeyong would have said scatters at its interruption.

Taeyong reaches behind himself for the detachable showerhead in the bathtub, the stretched muscle in his sweat-damp neck casting a shadow in the dip of it when he moves. Yuta’s eyes follow the movement.

“Thanks again for doing this,” Taeyong tells him, bowing his head to the cold water.

“Anytime,” is Yuta’s reply, even as his heart says always. “And if it had turned out to be a dead body after all, I would’ve still helped. No questions asked.” He adds musingly as an afterthought.

The sound of Taeyong’s laughter and running water echo in the bathroom. Yuta grins proudly to himself. 

“That’s good to know, I’ll keep that in mind for next time.”  

A/N: there is a possibility that I might...actually write a yutae fic with them burying a body..who knows!