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The TV blipped out of life as Wooyoung vaguely aimed the remote at it. It cast the room into darkness, only the light from the panda nightlight on San’s bedside table. He settled back into San’s grip.
He was pretty all the time but he slept with such a childlike sweetness on his features. He pouted and frowned sometimes, whatever dreams he'd been having painting themselves on his face.
Wooyoung liked this quiet little indulgence of being awake while San snored softly. He had known for a while that San didn't feel like just a friend anymore. He never let stuff like this eat him alive with negativity but it was starting to grate that he couldn't just say it out loud. He said everything he thought. Why should this be different?
Until now he contented himself with these private moments to sit with the honesty of being in love with his best friend. Something had switched tonight though. Perhaps nothing particularly dramatic. Maybe it was the romantic drama they'd been watching or maybe his willpower just gave out.
For the first time he tested out the words on a sleeping San.
“What if I was in love with you?”
Wooyoung could have believed he'd imagined San’s arms tensing around him but it was harder to deny San's soft confused voice.
“Are you playing?”
Wooyoung recoiled, leaning back to look accusingly at San's face. He had watched San’s breathing slow and level out, he'd even let out a little snore. He had been out like a light. “You were asleep!”
“Nope. Why did you say that?” Reassuringly, San sweetly knitted brows and sleepy eyes weren't doing a very good job of hiding the faintest smile. Wooyoung had seen it before when San was delighting in teasing him but trying not to laugh or when he had nailed a particular choreo phrase that was evading him.
Not so reassuringly, Wooyoung felt his face becoming hot and his spirit becoming combative with embarrassment.
“Doesn't matter.” Wooyoung shifted, turning himself out of San’s arms and over to face away, hiding his rosy cheeked mortification in the pillow. “Doesn't count if you were pretending to be asleep!”
San's hand came to rest on his shoulder. He tugged slightly, a gentle insistence that Wooyoung look at him. He did not obey. “I wasn't pretending.”
“You snored!”
“I was a tiny bit asleep but not all the way asleep.”
Wooyoung shrugged, “Whatever. I was just joking anyway.”
“Even though you thought I was asleep?” San tugged the shoulder again and this time Wooyoung fell dramatically onto his back like a ragdoll. He continued to stare fiercely away.
“Yep.”
“You're so annoying.”
“Yeah well, I don't like you either.” Wooyoung made a show of smoothing the blankets out over only his side of the sleeping arrangement.
It wasn't true. For six years, there hadn't been a moment he hadn't at the very least liked him. They had been teens when they met. Puberty was still wreaking the last of it's havoc on their confidence and awkwardness which Wooyoung had attempted to fix with a faux nonchalance that barely resembled his insides. San's puppy enthusiasm for life and singing and dance had instantly cut through Wooyoung's façade. Instead of attempting to rebuild it, Wooyoung had submitted and very quickly became comfortably obsessed with being near San. He was happy with however this came, whether this meant bickering like kids on a playground or being a lap for San to fall asleep in. Any San was good San.
He could be brash with his thoughts sometimes and San could be overzealous with his teasing. San sometimes took a breather from him. A hands in the air moment of physical separation before he came back and made up. Wooyoung had learnt to leave things behind at that moment, closing the lid on their silly squabbles with the healing warmth of a good hug. He didn't try to bring them round for a rematch. San didn't like rehashing old battles for points so Wooyoung taught himself to move on. For his part, San learnt what truly troubled Wooyoung and didn't hit those buttons.
But he hated those minutes, even seconds, where he felt like San didn't like him. They made him feel bad and off-kilter, dragged down into the ground. Because he, never for a solitary second, disliked San. He was the warmest place in the world. His best person.
“I didn't say I didn't like you. I always like you. I said you were annoying.”
It was weird. San wasn't descending into a pouty sulk. That soft smile was only developing more. It made the situation a little hard to read and more than a little difficult to process. It was odd bickering when San was still halfway wrapped around him in his pyjamas and one of them had just confessed their love.
Wooyoung reached behind him, pulling a little tan plushie from behind his head and hit San gently with it.
“Sleep with Shiber then, I don't want to be your plushie now.”
“Stop it, Wooyoung.” San took Shiber and put her behind him. Wooyoung noted that he patted her head as if soothing her back to sleep. God, he truly loved every atom of him. Then he propped himself on his arm and fixed his gaze to Wooyoung's eyes. Wooyoung couldn't look away if he tried. “You're really not going to say it again?”
He was so soft. Soft eyes, soft smile, soft voice coaxing gentleness out of Wooyoung. It hadn't escaped his notice that San was worrying a bit of the duvet between his fingers, the only tell that he might have been nervous.
Wooyoung matched the action and shook his head. He could no more avoid it than he could stop breathing but he didn't have to embarrass himself. “Can't.”
“Ok,” San nodded, just as soft as everything else about him. “Well.”
Then, like a matinee idol in an old movie, San took Wooyoung’s chin between his fingers and leaned in to kiss him
Not on the cheek or forehead or idly in the top of the head as he fell into sleep. On the mouth. With intent. It was suave enough that Woo sucked in a breath that he couldn't remember letting out.
He was entirely capable of cutting his nose off to spite his face but he found his sense this time. For once, he didn’t reach for the shield of sarcasm. Not when San was kissing him like this. He couldn’t risk killing this moment in its tracks, no way.
San was tentative but in control, sending little butterflies around Wooyoung's tummy. He pushed into the kiss and wondered idly if San could feel how long Woo had been daydreaming about this. Kissing San had become a preoccupation and now a reality. Would San be able to tell?
He was not entirely sure he was enjoying it through the shock. His mind was too busy. Something had occurred to him. He knew, absolutely without a shadow of a doubt, that San wouldn't be doing this to make him feel better or to humour him. He knew San didn't have the cruelty in him for this to not mean anything to him. San would never play with Wooyoung's heart like that. Which meant- Did he-?
The kiss paused. San’s cheeks were flushed pink and his reliable eye contact had wandered to focus somewhere on Wooyoung's collarbone.
“Would you say it again if I felt the same?” he murmured. He looked like he regretted offering it as soon as it left his mouth, eyes darting to Wooyoung’s clavicle like it might give him an easier answer.
If he felt the same? If he had been as lost to Woo as Woo was to him? Would he say it again? He'd hire a plane with a message behind it. He'd stop ahjumma in the street to tell them. He'd climb Hallasan wearing one of those inflatable t-rex suits to shout it from the peak.
Wide eyed, Woo nodded. “Yes.”
“Ok.” San pecked at his lips again. He cleared his throat just a little. “I love you.”
Oh. Oh okay. His hand fluttered to his chest just to make sure his heart was still beating. Yeah, still alive, very much awake. Wooyoung pulled his lips together, hiding a grin that was threatening to break out. “Like you love Seonghwa-hyung? Kim Hongjoong? Yeosangie?”
San narrowed his eyes and said sternly, “Wooyoung.”
He couldn't play anymore. He moved into San’s space, laughing, pressing his relief into San's mouth. Oh this was more enjoyable. Pushing San to his back and kissing him until he was laughing too. Maybe the gravity of what they'd said would dawn on them any second but for now, Wooyoung wanted to just enjoy and indulge in his daydream made real. San was soft and pliable under him, responsive to Wooyoung's insistence. If he'd ever thought what he might be like to kiss, it hadn't ever felt as comfortable as this. This was a natural extension of the touches and looks that had punctuated their interactions for years.
Wooyoung kept wanting to talk. It was hard for him to be quiet at the best of times but when a roaring river of stuff was flooding his senses? He wanted to say every thought that crossed his mind. You're such a gentle kisser. You can be rougher if you want. Let's get breakfast tomorrow just us. I don't like that one pair of jeans you have, you know the ones. Will you be my boyfriend?
“I'm such a teenager about you,” Wooyoung blurted as San mouthed gently at Wooyoung's pulse point. “I like that, do that.”
“Teenager?” San laughed, obliging, sucking a little on his jawline.
“ Obsessed . Drawing hearts around your name. Oh… Sannie.”
Whether San had just hit a sweet spot on his throat, or his fingers had brushed a ticklish spot on his ribs, he couldn't be sure, but it was electric through his nerves and headed straight to his dick. It came out in a moan. San tensed and Wooyoung could feel the twitch of San’s cock against his thigh. Maybe they’d laugh about this later, but right now it was dizzyingly real and it brought them back to earth with a record scratch. Actually if San continued to do that, this was going to get more out of hand and something stupid would happen that probably shouldn't happen until they'd dealt with the logistics of this.
Thankfully San was on the same page.
“We should-” San pulled back, resting his forehead on Woo’s. “Just for now?”
J ust for now. They'd kissed and now there was a promise of something else in the future. When all they'd done was fall asleep watching a drama. Wooyoung kept wanting to laugh out loud, hysterical and disbelieving.
“Just for now.”
Wooyoung flopped back to the bed with a huff and tried to ignore San shifting uncomfortably and rearranging his pyjama bottoms. The frustration of making sensible decisions faded as they lay shoulder to shoulder, peacefully breathing the same air, contemplating the revelation.
Pondering the implications of just for now. Wooyoung could feel San's smile even if he wasn't looking.
Normally he fell asleep as San's cuddle buddy and woke up an hour later when San was in a deep sleep, some kind of clever body clock telling him to get up and go to his own bed. He usually stuck Shiber or a pillow under San’s arm so as not to disrupt his sleep.
He didn’t want to leave tonight.
“Can I stay?” Wooyoung said. “After you're asleep? Or is that too-”
“No! Stay. Please.” San opened his arms for Wooyoung who gratefully accepted the invitation, shuffling closer and giving San a peck on the lips.
“I'm in love with you,” he said to San’s very awake face. San nodded with a grin.
“Me too.”
“Great.” Wooyoung patted San’s hip. “Time to pretend to be sleeping, San-ah.”
San huffed but kissed him on the forehead. “Night, Wooyoungie.”
Wooyoung closed his eyes as he snuggled into his very best person, the most special warm place he knew. He’d waited six years. A few more hours of just existing together like this didn’t feel like waiting at all.