“Joongki,” Gwangsoo whined as soon as his best friend picked up the phone, throwing himself down on his bed.

“Gwangsoo,” Joongki answered back, mimicking his voice teasingly. “I’m filming, you know.”

Gwangsoo muttered something unintelligible before letting out an enormous sigh. He had actually forgotten his friend was working that day even if they had spoken about it just the night before. Which made him feel even more guilt than he already was feeling over the whole Jongkook thing.

Great.

“Hey,” Joongki said, suddenly serious when he heard the dejected sigh. “What’s wrong?”

“Nah, if you’re busy we can talk later,” Gwangsoo mumbled, feeling a lot more dispirited than he usually would. “I’m sorry I interrupted your filming.”

“Now wait just a minute!” Joongki said hastily before demanding: “Tell me what’s wrong. You don’t sound right.”

Gwangsoo pressed his lips together, contemplating on whether he should actually tell his friend or not. He was starting to second-guess himself on the matter, but he had always trusted Joongki with everything and the other had proven to be a good listener and had always given very helpful advice. He was very smart, if nothing else.

“I… ugh, I don’t know,” he complained. “Just about everything?”

There was a pause on the other side and some rustle of clothes.

“Is this still about Jongkook-Hyung? Did you not make up last night?” Joongki asked quietly and Gwangsoo could hear him tell someone – probably the director – he would need a five-minute break because of a small emergency away from the mouthpiece of the phone.

Gwangsoo grimaced up at the ceiling, feeling guiltier still.

“Yes… and no,” he answered hesitantly.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Joongki muttered and there was the sound of a heavy door creaking open before it fell closed with a loud ‘thud’.

“Well, I know why he’s been acting the way he has.” Gwangsoo rolled onto his stomach. “But I kinda made it worse,” he continued miserably before burying his face in his pillow.

“How the hell could you make it worse if he was the one who came to apologize?” Joongki asked incredulously. “It’s not like you were the one acting weird.”

Gwangsoo bit his lip, his stomach filling with nervous butterflies. He had never touched upon the subject of homouality with his friend and thus had no inclining of how Joongki would react. From what he knew, the other wasn’t particularly judgmental. Then again, you never truly knew what a person thought unless you actually had the raw facts in front of you.

He wasn’t about to lie to his best friend, though. Gwangsoo didn’t like lying in general – off screen that is – and he would very much like to keep his quite clean record. So he took a deep breath – as deep as one could with their face buried in a pillow – before mustering up enough courage to whisper:

“He confessed.”

“What was that?” Joongki asked. “Gwangsoo, your voice is all muffled. I can’t hear a thing.”

He cleared his throat and lifted his head slightly, swallowing before making a new attempt.

“He confessed.”

“Okay…?” the other sounded like he didn’t quite understand.

“To me,” Gwangsoo elaborated helpfully.

“When you say ‘confessed’, do you mean as in his crimes or as… in…” his voice died out.

Gwangsoo fiddled with the corner of his pillow anxiously, waiting for his friend to process the meaning of his words.

“Oh…” Joongki finally breathed after a long pause. “Oh.”

“A-are… you mad?” Gwangsoo dared to ask after another beat of silence. “I-I mean, like, we’re both men and, well, I never told him I liked him – not that I do – or well yes, I like him but not like that – but he said that, and that’s fine I think and he also said that was why things got weird, which I can understand now but I don’t know what – how I should behave since-”

“Gwangsoo,” Joongki interrupted his rambling. “You’re giving me a headache.”

He shut his mouth immediately, sitting up in bed and fidgeting nervously.

“To answer your question, no, I’m not mad at you,” Joongki continued. “That’s just absurd. I know South Korea has a long way to go when it comes to the LGBT community, but you’re my best friend and I would never hate you, nor anyone else for that matter, if you actually were homoual.”

Gwangsoo let out a small, relieved sigh. Although, why he was so relieved he had no idea. It wasn’t like he was the one who had confessed to Jongkook nor was he in love with the man. It was just that he was worried that there still was the possibility of Joongki saying horrible things about Jongkook especially and cutting off all contact with both of them.

“Do you understand, Gwangsoo?” the other asked. “I don’t hate you and I never will. Love is love, no matter what the gender is.”

“Thank you,” he murmured, a small smile finding its way to his lips. “But you do know I’m not gay, right?”

Joongki laughed. “Yeah, but you sounded so worried I thought I should just give you the speech now. I don’t hate Jongkook either, if that was what worries you.”

Gwangsoo chuckled a little.

“So what did you say? When he confessed,” Joongki asked.

“Oh, um…” Gwangsoo became nervous again. “At first I was shocked. I mean, the thought of Jongkook of all people falling in love with me was insane. Then I… kind of…” his voice grew smaller as he continued, once again feeling uncertain of what he was doing.

“Please tell me you didn’t say something along the lines of trying it out,” his friend groaned.

Gwangsoo remained quiet, which was answer enough, and Joongki let out a frustrated sound.

“Gwangsoo,” he sighed. “Do you understand that would actually hurt more than if you just rejected him? Think about it.”

“B-but I,” Gwangsoo spluttered. “I just don’t want to lose him as a friend! What if he never wants to see me again when I reject him! That would be horrible! I was already sad when we stopped talking over the past month, and now when we can spend time together again like we used to, I’m going to make an effort for him since he’s one of my best friends and I trust him! What els-”

“Stop,” Joongki interrupted sternly. “Let me ask you this, if you confessed to a girl who also happened to be a close friend, would you be happy if she said yes only because she still wanted to be friends with you? You’d always know her feelings aren’t genuine. Do you really think someone would be happy with that? That they would feel fine?”

Gwangsoo fell silent, feeling like an exemplary jerk at the moment. He grimaced down at his bed.

Of course no one would be happy in that situation, what had he been thinking? That everything would just work out in the end and their relationship would fade back into friendship? If Jongkook loved him, he loved him – there was nothing to do about it. The only thing was that there probably was a chance they wouldn’t be able to go back to being as close as they had been. And that kind of hurt really badly, because Gwangsoo cherished his friendship with the other and would hate to see it being destroyed because of this. Jongkook was a great friend; funny, intelligent, genuine-

Genuine. Jongkook was genuine.

And Gwangsoo had completely belittled that genuineness with his selfish behavior just because he was afraid of loosing the other as a friend.

A cold lump formed in his stomach.

He knew that if he truly wanted to be a good friend to Jongkook he would have to let him go if he said he wanted to cut ties with Gwangsoo because of his feelings. He would have to respect the other and his wishes, instead of pushing his own on him, and behave like the adult he was supposed to be. Even if he didn’t quite like it.

“Gwangsoo?” Joongki asked into the silence that had fallen.

“I understand,” he mumbled, feeling a small lump form in his throat. “I’ll apologize to Jongkook-Hyung when I see him next time.”

“Good,” Joongki said. “And about the ‘how you should behave’ part, just continue being you. That’s the person Jongkook-Hyung likes after all and I doubt he’d completely stop being your friend.”

Gwangsoo hoped he was right, because he certainly couldn’t deal with completely losing a friend over something so selfish.