txt tyunning - "modern love"
“I know it sucks,” Soobin says gently, “but when you’re confessing your feelings, just being simple and clear is best. Rejection is scary, but dragging it out doesn’t make it easier. And anyway, what if they say yes?”
“I understand that that’s very good advice,” Taehyun says. “But I would literally, actually rather die.”
Yeonjun and Beomgyu both laugh.
“No, Taehyunie’s right.” Yeonjun leans back, stretching his arms behind him, getting all big and sexy like he’s on stage instead of at their dinner table. “You don’t want to come on too heavy. You have to feel out the chemistry—”
“Don’t listen to him,” Beomgyu says. “99-liners were born when the world was supposed to be ending and now they’re all built wrong.”
“We just understand the occasional handie between friends doesn’t have to get weird,” Yeonjun says. “Actually, that’s a great place to start,” he adds to Taehyun. “Hand stuff.”
“Um,” Taehyun says.
“You can feel out the chemistry without being a freak,” Beomgyu says. “Do the big eyes. Bite them on the shoulder. That’s how I got hyung.”
“Actually, the biting was mostly annoying,” Soobin says. “You didn’t get me, I made this happen. By confessing.”
“After I got you to confess,” Beomgyu says, and turns to Taehyun. “That’s what you want, right? To get the confession?”
Taehyun’s mind goes blank, all loud static. “Is that what I want?”
“We could probably help better if you told us who this mystery person is,” Yeonjun says.
Taehyun shakes his head. “I would rather die than do that, too.”
Beomgyu blinks. “It sounds like your best option is to die.”
“Thanks, hyungs.” Taehyun stands and pushes his chair away from the table and dryly says, “This was very helpful.”
He leaves to the sound of more of their laughter. Kai is already in their room, lying upside-down on his bed with his feet up the wall and playing on his phone. The line of him is long and relaxed and inviting.
Taehyun can’t stay away. He moves closer like there’s a magnet drawing him in, and Kai scoots aside to make room for him without missing a beat in his phone game.
Taehyun can’t just say it, he can’t. And he can’t even really wrap his mind around what “hand stuff” means. So…
He turns his face to the side and presses his nose against the soft fabric of Kai’s sweatshirt at the seam of his shoulder. He breathes the scent in—cotton, detergent, familiar and beloved boy.
He tilts his chin up and closes his teeth around the muscle of Kai’s upper arm.
“AAH,” Kai says.
Taehyun lifts his face and finds Kai gawking at him.
“Why?” Kai asks.
“I don’t really know,” Taehyun says.
Kai blinks a few times. “Um, okay,” he says, and goes back to his phone.