{but if you're out there, here's where you belong} | kevin/kibum

Kevin gets the call Wednesday night, impossibly late and he almost ignores it. But he was already awake to begin with; excitement and adrenaline pumping through his veins making it impossible to fall asleep. So he reaches over his bed, slides his hand along the floor until he finds his phone and presses the answer button.

Before he can open his mouth to say hello, the voice on the other line whispers, “Seunghyun?”

Those two syllables immediately cause his heart to start pounding and he finds he is already choking back tears before he is even able to respond. Only one person calls him that. Only one person was ever allowed to call him that.

“Kibummie?” Kevin whispers back, before clearing his throat and saying, a bit louder this time, “Is something wrong?”

“No, noth— I— Why would something be wrong?”

“I don’t know,” Kevin laughs nervously. His expression then turns serious once again as he sits up in his bed, leaning against the headboard with his free hand clenching and unclenching the sheets below him. “I miss you.”

“I know,” Kibum responds and Kevin flinches. He always expects too much from the other boy, always expects his feelings to be recipro— “I miss you too.”

Kevin wants to be strong, doesn’t want to be weak, but those words open the proverbial floodgates and he can’t keep it in anymore. Kevin starts crying at that, unable to stop himself. “I— I can’t— Not anymore— Please,” Kevin babbles hysterically, unaware of what he was even saying and switching back and forth between Korean and his native tongue.

“Shh, Kevin, stop,” Kibum says gently, like he did when Kevin first picked up. He spends a few moments cooing at him over the line until Kevin is calm enough and he says, “I saw you guys on tv today.”

Kevin waits a moment, expecting him to continue. When that seems like all Kibum is going to say, Kevin lets out a tentative, “…And?”

Kibum takes a breath, Kevin can hear it over the phone, and says, “Amazing. Honestly.”

Kevin’s fingers start shaking where he is gripping on to his sheets.

“You’re all doing great, you’ve grown so much,” Kibum continues. As if realizing how cheesy he was being, he adds jokingly, “Don’t forget me when you win first place, okay?”

Kevin squeezes his eyes shut, almost picturing Kibum smiling and laughing in front of him, and breathes out, “Never.”

“Good. I jus— Good.” Kibum’s voice comes out shaky as well, and Kevin almost goes to comment on it when he hears another voice in the background, calling for Kibum.

“Kevinnie, I have to go now,” Kibum says and Kevin struggles to choke back a sob while making sure Kibum doesn’t hear. He does, of course, and he swallows his pride in order to comfort Kevin, whispering an “I love you” over the line.

Kevin finally lets go off the sheet and instead puts his hand over his heart, feels the blood rushing under his fingertips and says, “I love you, too.”

The is a brief pause, a million things running through Kevin’s head that he almost verbalizes, but then the line goes dead. Kevin stares at his phone blankly for a few minutes then quickly dials a familiar number, the hand still pressed against his heart now gripping his shirt. Kevin waits for the other person to pick up and knows he won’t be getting any sleep tonight.