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Just because Seungyoun was a mind reader, it did not mean he could ever understand what the hell was up with Hangyul's.
They met the first time at a summer camp. Seungyoun was a volunteer who assisted the teamwork challenges, and Hangyul was a teenager that looked way too old to be attending a survival camp for primary school children. It wasn't his look that caught Seungyoun's attention, though. Then 18-year-old Seungyoun was watching the camp leader, Seungwoo, give out instructions on sleeping arrangements to the young campers when a throaty voice interrupted his concentration.
"That hyung looks like an airplane."
"What?" Seungyoun said out loud, startled by the sudden sound.
The whole common room turned toward him, Seungwoo included. The man quirked a curious eyebrow at Seungyoun. "Did I miss something?"
Belatedly, Seungyoun realized the strange comment wasn't verbal, but yet another runaway thought by someone that happened to filter past his guard. He put on an apologetic smile and gestured at Seungwoo to go on, meanwhile casting a furtive glance around the room to find the source of his distraction.
Not like it was a demanding task at all. Strange things occurred at summer camps, but Seungyoun wouldn't expect any eleven-year-old to have such a gravelly voice, inner or not. His eyes zoomed in on the tall boy with choppy bangs at the back, who wore an amused expression as he focused on the instructor.
Before Seungyoun could wonder any longer, his mind was bombarded with several pictures of an airplane head in various stages of opening, followed by images of Seungwoo's smiles, which admittedly bore several similarities. He burst into laughter at the comparison and earned himself another inquiring glance from his senior and the roomful of children. He couldn't stop, though, even when the strange teenager turned his focus to Seungyoun instead.
"That hyung has a funny laugh."
Seungwoo threw a balloon at his head later when they were preparing the first round of ice-breaking games.
"What was that about?"
Seungyoun looked at his hyung and could only imagine what a grumpy airplane would look like. He laughed some more and received another balloon to his face.
"It's only the first hour and the children already know one of their instructors is a clown. How do you expect them to take me seriously for one whole month?" Seungwoo whined in that dramatic voice he reserved especially to berate the younger for his antics. Seungyoun shrugged, even though he couldn't hide his glee.
"I don't know how to explain this, hyung, but I think your favorite gagman has found his match."
And match they did, in so many more ways than just their shared silly humor. Hangyul turned out to be there as a full-time comedian and part-time babysitter for his cousin, Dohyon, who quickly won over Seungyoun with his awkward yet adorable demeanor. The pair of them charmed the whole camp attendees in a matter of days, campers and staff alike. They were well-mannered, eager to help, and their natural sibling chemistry made the kids laugh. It was supposedly Seungyoun's job, but he was pleased to have someone else playing along with his (sometimes not easily well-received) puns.
The age gap should have made their gag trio appear a little mismatched, Seungyoun had thought. Still, they grew so attached during that one month of camp that Dohyon made him promise to keep in touch even after the two cousins went back to Incheon. Not that the "keep in touch" part was easy at all, their only frequent interaction being an online game room where they played together every few weeks or so.
Dohyon returned to the summer camp the next year without Hangyul, who was occupied with his high school entrance exam. Seungyoun was happy to see his favorite little guy, albeit a little deflated.
He received his first text message from Hangyul on the second week of camp.
wish i were there :(
When they finally met again, after another two years of gaming and random texts and the very occasional video calls, it was on Seungyoun's doorstep. Hangyul was moving to Seoul for his dance training, and Seungyoun had spent the past two months offering the guest room in the huge apartment where he lived with his mom. However, Hangyul insisted he would only stay until he could find a part-time job near his academy and a roommate to share rent with.
"Hey, Seungyoun-hyung."
It was embarrassing how Seungyoun froze for five whole seconds at his own doorstep. He knew puberty could do a lot to a person, himself included, but the boy standing outside his front door looked way too different from the choppy-haired teenager he had met in camp. Hangyul had grown, maybe not so much vertically, but there was a certain sharpness to all his angles that made Seungyoun gape like a fish for a moment before raising his brows.
"You're sure you're Lee Hangyul? When did you go back to calling me hyung again?"
Hangyul put on a boyish grin that Seungyoun recognized. "I thought your mom might be home. Should at least try to make a good first impression."
"Right, right, as if she hadn't already considered you her second son without ever seeing you in person," Seungyoun picked up Hangyul's bag from the floor and walked inside, expecting his guest to follow. "Mom usually only comes home after 7, and we have late dinner together. I would suggest you cook for her whenever you have time but I'm afraid she will replace me."
Hangyul's laugh was familiar. Seungyoun wasn't sure if it made all his funny feelings disappear or further complicate them.
"You're as cool as I remember."
"Wha-?" Seungyoun whipped his head around. Hangyul just frowned at him.
"I didn't say anything?"
"That alarmed expression looks like that shiba dog on Tik Tok."
Three years apart had made Seungyoun forget how Hangyul's thought could mysteriously bypass his mental guards and activated his odd telepathic brain. Seungyoun usually managed to keep it under control in a quiet setting, but Hangyul's voice in his head was always clear as day.
"Right. Just thought I heard something," Seungyoun said. This is gonna be interesting.
The thing about Seungyoun's telepathy was that: his feelings dictated the reach of his ability. In a quiet setting, where he often felt calm and rested, he could rarely ever hear anyone's thoughts, be it the living room with his mom or a public café with others. He only "heard voices" when the thought was extremely intense, or when he himself was experiencing strong feelings, happiness, anxiety, fear. It was also easier to read a thought that was directed at himself. He considered it a natural protective mechanism his brain provided him with, and most of the time it didn't give him a hard time like one would expect a telepath to have.
With Hangyul, though, Seungyoun's mind would conjure up Hangyul's mental images in the most random situations. They just needed to be within a twenty-meter radius for Seungyoun's brain to feel tickled. From time to time, he would receive Hangyul's stray thoughts about this and that, like a casual reference to a video he had seen, or a "what if" situation his curious brain came up with.
That being said, Seungyoun very soon realized his mind-reading gift proved rather useless when it came to Hangyul: the guy didn't think that much. He didn't dwell too long on worries, and he especially didn't need to form a thought before committing a questionable act.
Which he did, frequently, without warnings. Dohyon had told him Hangyul tasted sand at the beach, just because. It wasn't exactly unexpected that his first reaction to strange things that appeared in the kitchen cupboard was to put them in his mouth, either. The kid did whatever "trick shots" his brain randomly suggested, possibly an after effect of his addiction to Tik Tok. They were walking home one night after a late grocery run and Seungyoun watched him dashing ahead to headbutt an inflatable tube man, completely unprovoked. Seungyoun himself was a man of several, several questionable (stupid) behaviors, but once in a while, Hangyul still managed to surprise him.
A few months after Hangyul moved out, Seungyoun brought him to his exclusive membership gym to try out a new machine. Hangyul was going for the second set when he said, with a dubious look on his face, "Come touch my chest."
Seungyoun let the weight on his legs drop with a loud bang. "Huh?"
"My chest. Come here and touch it."
"...Okay?" Seungyount said, because by now he should have stopped reacting this way to Hangyul's occasional absurd ideas. He placed his palm in the middle of Hangyul's chest and frowned, "What is it?"
Hangyul moved his hand to grab the left side of his thinly covered, noticeably muscled chest, before picking up the weight bar again. Seungyoun's face heated up without his permission.
"Do you feel anything there?"
"Your heart beating for me?" Seungyoun joked, with a smirk that was visibly lopsided. What the fuck, Seungyoun?
"Cute," Cute?? "But no, I mean, I don't think my muscles are contracting the way you said they would? Or is it supposed to be like that?"
Seungyoun hoped his response didn't sound as miserable as he felt. "How can I feel it the way you do, man... But yeah, looks fine to me."
He abandoned his leg machine and switched to the treadmill, not to exercise anymore, but it was a good excuse to face away from Hangyul. His cheeks still felt warm, and he ignored how his hand did, too.
"He was blushing." A voice sounded, with a glint of amusement. Seungyoun didn't need to guess who it belonged to.
Ah, fuck.
Unexpected as it seemed, nothing really happened. Seungyoun managed another year or so of keeping his funny feelings under the radar, mostly because they rarely got to meet now that they no longer lived together. Sometimes they hung out at the arcades and Hangyul came over for dinner with him and his mom every few months. Dohyon joined them after he decided to pursue music and moved into Hangyul's shared apartment. His mom loved that kid, and to be honest, Seungyoun felt like he owed Dohyon the extra doting. He was the reason the three of them could meet more often after all.
"Why are you two not dating?" Dohyon asked him, sprawled out on his sofa with empty takeout boxes after the kid's Saturday vocal lesson.
Seungyoun choked on the last chicken piece he just shoved into his mouth. Dohyon ignored him.
"Isn't that what people who like each other do? Why am I cursed with having to witness this back-and-forth thing you guys have going on on the daily and never see its end?"
He rolled around dramatically, the late-night series he got hooked on getting to him. Seungyoun could do nothing but watch in awe.
"Aside from nagging me for not eating vegetables, the only thing he talks about is you, hyung. I mean that's less nagging for me, but, like," he mimed a gag, "-lovesick, yuck."
"Oh really? How exactly does he talk about me again?" Seungyoun raised a questioning brow, faking nonchalance.
Dohyon shrugged half-heartedly. "I don't know. Seungyoun-hyung is sooo cuteee. Seungyoun-hyung is sooo handsomeee."
"He doesn't talk like that."
"Yeah, he doesn't, but my point stands. Like, whenever he sees me do something, like, dumb, cute, I don't know, he would say, oh you're really Seungyoun's son, huh? with this foolishly fond smile he has, you know? Makes me wonder if I should feel flattered or creeped out." The kid gave a visible shiver. "And he's put your favorite Jeff Bernat on loop for the past week. Jeff. Bernat."
"Hey, it's good music." Seungyoun pouted, receiving an unimpressed scowl in return.
"That's not what I meant and you know it."
Even as a mind reader, when it came to Hangyul, Seungyoun wasn't sure he could say he knew anything at all.
He spent the next few months figuring out that he, in fact, did know.
Seungyoun knew that Hangyul liked smelling clothes. The guy wasn't a big fan of perfumes or colognes, but he loved the softener they used in Seungyoun's home. Whenever Hangyul took over laundry for the weekend, he never passed a chance to sniff the clothes fresh out of the dryer. He wouldn't discriminate even if the clothes were on Seungyoun's body right then either. He would enter the car, take a whiff with a slight frown on his face, and just went straight for Seungyoun's collar. He would inhale slowly, nose almost touching Seungyoun's neck, and say, "Ah, I miss this, I should get my own bottle soon," and then never bought one. Hangyul always smelled the same, plain detergent, the blue package kind from the convenience store next to his academy.
Seungyoun knew that Hangyul liked touching people's cheeks. Maybe not any person's cheeks, but he had seen it often enough to know. Hangyul loved doing it to Dohyon to annoy him, and to Hyeongjun, his cute little junior from the academy, as a affectionate habit. He had never touched Seungyoun's cheek like that until the day they tried to make gummy bears in Seungyoun's kitchen (the younger's idea, of course). He had swiped off a red mark from the corner of Seungyoun's lips with his thumb and put it in his own mouth (because of course he would do that).
"Your skin is almost as soft as Hyeongjunie's. Are you sure you're hitting 24?" he said, and gave Seungyoun's cheek a slight pinch. "If you do this too often, will this part get saggy faster? I think it's Dohyon's number one worry."
"Oh, to be sixteen and worry about having saggy cheeks again," Seungyoun lamented in the same dramatic fashion Dohyon would. Hangyul stared at him for a moment before the two of them broke into giggles, continuing to debate the silly topic for way longer than they were supposed to.
When the group of them went for a camping trip, just for old time's sake, Hangyul disappeared from his sleeping spot in the middle of the night. Seungyoun knew exactly where to find him.
"Shh, you're gonna alert them," Hangyul shushed him without turning around. He was crouching next to a crowded bush, head bent over to examine something underneath. Seungyoun let out an exasperated sigh and copied the posture, squatting down next to him.
"Next time take someone with you. It's not a secured area like the camp used to be in, you know," Seungyoun said in between yawns.
"I knew you would come," Hangyul said, like it was obvious. Maybe it was.
"Uh huh, I wonder why," Seungyoun groused, "So, what strange bugs are we looking at today? Or is it more frogs?"
He could hear a quiet sniffle, Hangyul holding back his chuckle. "I'd like to believe fireflies are more interesting than strange bugs, but you do hate bugs. How did they let you become a camp leader again?"
Seungyoun was about to retort when a tiny spark floated up from the shrub and caught him by surprise. He let out a squeal on instinct as the spark headed in the direction of his face, but it diverted from its course halfway and drifted away. As Seungyoun followed its path and looked up, he finally noticed the dozens of blinking lights hovering in the darkness of the forest, moving sluggishly through the air like fire embers. For a second, it felt as if he had entered the world inside a drawing, where every object was fixed in place yet appeared to be in slow, suspended motion. And if he were to let out an exhale too strong, it would break through the illusion.
"No way," Seungyoun wanted to bounce on his feet, unable to hide his delight, "We have fireflies here?" His voice came out in an awed whisper. Hangyul didn't say anything in response, as if he was quietly admiring the scene himself. But when Seungyoun turned around, Hangyul was looking at him. His face was soft and fond, and Seungyoun understood just why the younger said he knew Seungyoun would come.
"You really are easily fascinated," Hangyul grinned.
"Isn't that the point?" Seungyoun said with a lofty tone, "So you can keep showing me other different strange bugs? And toads, and lizards, and snails, and-"
He continued with his list until he realized how Hangyul's face had edged closer to his own. He trailed off and drew in a shaky breath.
"I want to kiss y-"
"Can I kiss you?" Hangyul said, before Seungyoun could even start to process the thought that entered his mind. His voice was gentle but persistent, his eyes round and bright, his nose only an inch away, and Seungyoun was stupid about him.
He knew a lot, like, everything he wanted to know, and none of it needed him to read Hangyul's mind.