i wrote most of this at like 4am please excuse everything OTL I am alive though! OTL in lapslock bc mobile and lazy.

title is from 3kim’s predebut track beautiful 

in which junhoe and jinhwan go to jeju and angsty things happen (set during their post-win vacation)

it's quiet.

too quiet. 

junhoe sighs from his bed (not really his, but the one he's currently occupying, shared with kim jinhwan, which is something he’s trying not to think about but also something he’s thinking way too much about) and turns to stare at the ceiling. it's painted white, completely unremarkable, the whole boring nine yards. 

junhoe hears jinhwan shift in the bed, then feels a soft prod to the arm. “can't sleep either?” jinhwan asks, voice soft in the dark..

junhoe nods. he wonders if jinhwan can actually see him. jinhwan looks so vulnerable like this, small and curled into junhoe's side. junhoe wishes he could stay like this forever.

“wanna go out?” jinhwan suggests. 

“where?”

“just out.”

junhoe has no better answer, following jinhwan as they silently slip out of bed and pull hoodies on over their pajamas. the winters in jeju aren't as bad as they are in seoul, but still nothing anyone would consider warm. jinhwan grabs a blanket under one arm, junhoe's hand in the other, and they tiptoe out the side door. 

“hyung?” junhoe asks, “where are we going?” 

“you'll see,” jinhwan says, looking up at junhoe and sticking his tongue out. junhoe's glad it's too dark to see him blush. 

eventually they arrive at the beach. jinhwan leads junhoe to some flat rocks lying some ways away from the actual ocean, spreading out the blanket and sitting down. junhoe follows suit, tucking his legs under himself. he still doesn't really know what's going on.

“it's been hard, hasn't it,” jinhwan says, staring out across the water. the moon, about half-round, quivers on the surface of the water.

“yeah.” junhoe feels like he should come up with a better answer, but he’s still so bad with words.

“i wish,” jinhwan says, and junhoe tenses, because this is always when jinhwan gets self-sacrificing, “i wish things could have been different.”

“why?”

“it's,” he sighs, “everything.”

despite the fact that jinhwan generally looks younger than the rest of them by about five years, there’s something about him that seems far too tired for his nineteen-year-old shoulders. “why? i wish we won. i wish we didn't. i wish we were famous, i wish we were normal. i wish for everything and nothing. there’s no reason for it. but i just wonder how everything would be if it were different.” 

jinhwan sighs again, eyes closed. the next words are so soft that junhoe’s almost certain he imagined them: “i wish i could love you the way i want to.”

“you can, though,” junhoe says.

“june-yah,” jinhwan sighs, in that way that junhoe knows is setup for another but you're too young junhoe you'll understand it later lecture, but damn it if he's sixteen and all he knows is how not to think. “it’s not that simple.”

“why can’t it be?” junhoe’s been through the logistics a million times. what if it doesn’t work out, what if it affects them later, what if one of them changes their mind because they’re both still young, what if someone else finds out. sometimes junhoe wishes that they’d met under different circumstances, were different people but still the same. maybe they’d have met in high school, college, at some other job, bumping into each other in the street.

(maybe they’d never have met at all.)

“can we pretend?” jinhwan asks, looking at the water again, “that we're just normal people? just for now.”

“well, we're not aliens,” junhoe says, pulling jinhwan in to lean on his shoulder, “so, sure.”

jinhwan curls into the fabric of junhoe's hoodie, small fists grasping the cotton polyester blend as his shoulders shake. “i'm sorry,” jinhwan cries. junhoe doesn't think there's anything for him to be sorry for. he tells him so.

“you deserve better than this, junhoe,” jinhwan says, “you deserve to fall in love with someone you can actually fall in love with, and get married, and have socially awkward children with really long legs.”

junhoe rolls his eyes. “don’t be stupid, hyung. if i didn’t like you then i wouldn’t be doing this with you, would i?”

“i just don’t want this to come between us later,” jinhwan sighs. “who knows what’ll happen to us?”

“no one knows. except yg’s hat.”

“junhoe!”

“well, it’s true. so we have to just... go with it. nothing ventured, nothing gained, right?”

jinhwan doesn’t reply, but he releases his hold on junhoe’s jacket.

the conversation is far from over, but junhoe hopes it’ll never have to end. he knows that he’s sixteen and stupid and prone to making poor life choices, but he just wants to be happy for once. he’ll deal with the consequences later.

for now, he just wants to freeze in the middle of the night with one of his favorite people in the world and pretend that everything is fine.