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Taeyong hasn’t been able to stop giggling for at least the last hour. It would grate on Doyoung’s nerves, except he too almost can’t believe their situation. He’s been wandering around the master bathroom of their ‘couples retreat vacation suite’ in awe, touching the door handles and opening cabinets. This place has everything they could possibly need. Complimentary everything, and they do mean everything . The bathtub could fit three people. There’s also a fully stocked kitchen, stove, microwave, and dinette table. Of course, the thing Taeyong keeps giggling out is the lurid red bedsheets on the four-poster king-size bed only a step away from the floor-to-ceiling patio doors. The view is incredible. It’s an island paradise resort, why shouldn’t it be. Teal green waves rushing into an immaculate beach mere feet from their room. Doyoung thinks the view is almost worth it.
“Look, Doyoung!” Taeyong is cackling.
Doyoung grits his teeth and turns around to look. Taeyong is holding up the plushest, fluffiest of bathrobes.
“Do I look sexy? Doyoung. Doyoung?”
He flings one of the robes around his back like a cape and strikes a pose.
“Perfect.”
Taeyong is definitely attractive, objectively speaking. Doyoung gives him that. But then… Doyoung stops to stand before a massive floor-length mirror and runs a hand along his chin… Doyoung thinks he looks pretty good too.
“Give me one.”
Taeyong throws him the twin bathrobe and pulls out his phone while Doyoung fits it around his neck. They stand before the mirror and Taeyong swipes a selfie. Then he spends another minute staring at it and giving it cute edits before posting it somewhere to Instagram. So that’ll definitely be enough for some interesting comments later.
“Are you done?” Doyoung asks, “Cool. So when do we break out of this place?”
Taeyong whines. “Ahh, so soon?”
Doyoung smirks. “What, you want to christen the bed in our love nest first? Come on, I heard there was free dinner at the resort HQ tonight.”
“Ah, right, good thought. Hang on, just let me put on a swimsuit first. Maybe we can check out the waves afterward?”
Doyoung freezes. And oh, right, that’s the second main reason he’s moody right now. It has almost nothing to do with the fact Taeyong accidentally won tickets for a romantic weekend getaway and, not being in a relationship himself, asked his best friend Doyoung to come along and pretend they’re a couple. Doyoung can do that. He can pretend all anyone wants in order to have a relaxing time away from work, stress, family, and all the other real-life struggles.
But did the resort just have to be on a beach? Doyoung hates the beach.
There’s also the teeny tiny unimportant matter that he’s just a little bit (but not too much, please ) in love with his best friend. And nobody knows that but himself.
It’s clear they’re not the only ‘couples’ present here this weekend. At least three other partners won tickets like themselves. Doyoung meets them briefly as they roam the resort’s central courtyard while picking up delicate cakes and bizarre fruit kabobs. The decor here is decidedly ‘kitch beachy’. But at least the food is good. There’s an elderly retired couple wearing Hawaiian shirts and sandals, a middle-aged female couple who are apparently having the time of their lives at the buffet which, valid. Then there’s a young couple Doyoung has already had the misfortune of meeting. One of the guys calls himself Ten. The other is Sicheng.
Taeyong and Doyoung were waylaid by the couple the moment they arrived. At least Taeyong is happy enough to keep the conversation going. Doyoung is perfectly content to snack on anything he sets his sights on and pray no one realizes A) he and Taeyong aren’t a real couple and B)... well, no need to go there now.
“Y’all flew in this afternoon too?” Ten is saying to Taeyong.
“Hmm. Yeah, flight was amazing! How about y’all?”
“Late this morning. Sichengie here though doesn't really like flying.”
Doyoung sneaks a peek. The man called Sicheng looks half dead, if not downright unresponsive. Ten snakes his arm around the back of Sicheng’s waist.
Doyoung catches Taeyong watching them as if he’s taking notes. Then he cringes as belatedly, Taeyong does the same with Doyoung. Doyoung tries not to flinch, repeating in his head, They’re a couple. They’re a couple. They’re supposed to be a couple . He smiles.
Unfortunately, the small chat continues, lead mostly by Ten who only pauses once to feed Sicheng a piece of pineapple right out of his hand. Doyoung almost throws up. But so fixated is he on the cringe, he doesn’t realize Taeyong has his hand up to also feed Doyoung a piece of fruit too.
“Doyoung! Oh, shit, Are you alright?! Doyoung?”
Doyoung is doubled over choking on that blasted bite and cursing everything in existence, but he doesn’t want to frighten the other people so he holds up a hand to assure them he’ll be fine. After he hacks out his lung.
Taeyong, inexplicably, is apologizing to the other guys.
“Sorry, I should have warned him first.”
The man called Ten beams down at them. “Ahh, you guys are cute. How long have you been together?”
Doyoung would answer, but he’s still not able to talk.
It’s Taeyong that says, “Since high school?”
Ten exclaims loudly. “What!? But that means it’s been almost a decade!? That’s so sweet. Sicheng and I have only been together for three years.” Then he turns to his partner. “Aww, baby, don’t be sad. One day we’ll be like them.”
Doyoung’s face is inflamed, partly from embarrassment, partly because he almost died just now. He’s never eating pineapple again. He meets Taeyong’s eyes for a bare second, in which he smiles and telepathically says you’re a dead man . Taeyong doesn’t flinch. Then he meets Sicheng’s gaze. Sicheng looks as dead inside as Doyoung feels. As unenthused as Ten is over the moon.
“Sorry for that,” says Doyoung. Why is he even apologizing?
“You okay?” Taeyong’s hand thumps a couple times across his back. He looks genuinely sorry, but beyond that there’s no taking away Taeyong’s joy over winning tickets to this ridiculous couple’s beach retreat. Not even Doyoung wants to take that from him. That’s why he’s here after all, right? Right?
“I’m good.” Doyoung changes the subject fast. “So what about you guys? Any plans for the weekend?”
Ten’s eyes light up. “Oh, yes! Did you read the board over there! Apparently, there are snorkeling and scuba diving classes in the morning, followed by a boat ride out of the harbor. We are definitely doing one of those, right babe? And then there’s a barbecue lunch on the west side of the beach. Dance classes in the afternoon. Hookah tables. The bar opens at three, plus a sunset cruise up and down the length of the island. Fireworks start just after dusk. And the day after that… Ahh, it’s too bad this isn’t the season for whale watching or we could take a day cruise…”
Doyoung politely follows his spiel and grows more exhausted the longer it drones.
“That’s all so cool,” Taeyong is saying. “Think we might just take it easy tomorrow and sit on the beach, right Doyoung?”
Doyoung meets his smile with a grin of his own. “Yeah. I love sitting on the beach!”
They don’t, in fact, spend the day just sitting at the beach.
“I think I’m sunburned.”
Taeyong is agonizing over his complexion in the hallway mirror. His skin looks reddish but that’s because he hasn’t turned on the overhead light. Doyoung comes up behind him and flips the switch.
“Whhat? Wait, I’m not sunburned?” Taeyong gasps.
Doyoung indicates behind them, where the setting sun is filtering through the red bed curtains and giving Taeyong a decidedly reddish glow.
“Doyoung, you saved me,” says Taeyong, utterly beaming at him.
So yeah, that’s the expression Doyoung just can’t take from Taeyong right now. All day, all fucking day, he trailed after Taeyong doing everything in Taeyong’s itinerary--which was incidentally pretty much the entire Ten and Sicheng Adventure Playbook. Doyoung has never been exhausted in his life. And this is technically a vacation.
But for the look of joy on Taeyong’s face, it wouldn’t be worth it at all.
“Not me. Blame your immaculate genes.”
He turns away and faceplants on the bed. They shared it last night. Of course, it was big enough for two. And comfy.
Doyoung can still kind of see Taeyong though, even if he’s pretending he can’t.
Taeyong is just looking at him with this fond expression Doyoung can’t handle. It does too many things to him. Makes his heart thud and his skin tingle. Completely worse than the experience of almost drowning three meters under the surface of the water when he forgot how to breathe through his scuba mouthpiece for precisely three seconds. Taeyong had been there through that too. Looking at him fondly even underwater.
“I mean it, Doyoung. You came all this way, just for me.”
Doyoung whines then buries his face completely in the sheets. “Yeah. I’m a great friend. Tell me more.”
There’s silence for a few seconds, a few agonizingly too long seconds. Then, the bed dips to the side and Taeyong is crawling toward him. Doyoung freezes. Once again, he almost forgets to breathe.
“Doie?”
“Hhuhhhg,” he grunts into the bed.
“Today was really, really fun.”
Doyoung doesn’t have anything to add to it. Would he have called it fun. Not particularly. But honestly, being here with Taeyong, he’s kind of enjoyed himself. Just a little bit.
Taeyong sounds like he wants to say something else. Instead, he tells Doyoung a secret.
“So while you were getting back in the boat earlier, Sicheng told me something interesting.”
Doyoung rolls onto his side now, the better to hold what he hopes is going to be a normal conversation. “What?”
“Did you know he and Ten are just like us?”
“What do you mean?”
Taeyong laughs. “They’re just pretending to be a couple. Exactly , the same as us. Oh, except I think Sicheng actually likes Ten more than Ten realizes. But he didn’t say it in so many words.”
Doyoung slams his eyelids shut. The pain is too real.
“So, really , exactly like us.”
For a moment, Doyoung imagines that he’s spoken out loud. That finally, his thoughts have run away from him and vocalized his worst fears and biggest secrets.
Then, he realizes, it wasn’t him who spoke. It was Taeyong.
“What?” Doyoung sits up lightning fast. “What? Did you… say?”
Taeyong isn’t looking at him anymore. He looks rather like he’s in pain . “I…”
“Taeyong, what’s wrong. What do you mean?”
Because Doyoung’s internalizing too many mean things right now, the worst of which is that Taeyong knows Doyoung likes him, but there’s another possibility here too and that one is almost scarier.
“Doyoung… I mean, that I kind of lured you here under false pretenses. I… I know we’re friends, but also I kind of like you. Really like you.”
The shy gaze he sets upon Doyoung is almost the worst of all. That Taeyong is afraid of this thing. Was he really so stupid? Did he never realize Doyoung had feelings for him in return? Wait, was Doyoung also that dumb?
He must have started grinning stupidly because all of a sudden Taeyong is looking less shy and anxious and more… befuddled. “Doyoung? What... “
Taeyong doesn’t get to finish that question. Because Doyoung has tackled him to the bed with his lips upon his and the fiendishly ridiculous, “Taeyong… I can’t believe we were both so, so stupid.”
Just seconds later Taeyong is sighing, somehow smiling as he wrests his hands from underneath to card them through Doyoung's hair. "Based on that kiss just now, I'm guessing you feel you same."
At least they have one more day to enjoy being a not-so-pretend couple at their holiday beach vacation resort.