Archive of Our Own ^beta

The ride to the post office is dead silent. Gyuvin’s little old shitter of a car needs four different attachments to connect a phone to play music, none of which he possesses, apparently. Which is fine. Ricky doesn’t need music for a car ride. It’s preferable, sure, but he and Gyuvin are more than capable of filling the silence with their banter and sideways glances.

At least, they usually are.

Not with Gyuvin’s little brother in the back seat.

Ricky’s spoken to Yujin maybe twice since he came to Gyuvin’s house for summer vacation; the first time was upon his arrival, when Yujin sat quietly at the bottom of the stairs until Gyuvin came to hug him, a gesture of affection that was avoided with all the violence his little sixteen-year-old self could muster. Actually, if Ricky thinks about it, he didn’t speak to Yujin at all then. He didn’t say anything. Yujin was the only one speaking, or rather, screaming, and what he was screaming was expletives and threats until he scampered out of Gyuvin’s hold.

This makes their now singular spoken interaction Ricky nervously asking, “Would you like to sit in the front?” And Yujin replying, “No, I’m good. Thanks though.” Mere moments before getting into the car together.

The engine car rattles as it climbs up the slope into the parking lot. The post office by Gyuvin’s house is in a mostly dead strip mall, sandwiched between a hot yoga studio and a drugstore. Gyuvin turns the key and kills the engine. “You guys wanna go into the drugstore and grab anything?” He asks. He turns back to look at Yujin, giving Ricky a quick crooked grin as he moves.

In the back, Yujin grunts. It sounds vaguely like a denial.

“I’ll give you cash,” Gyuvin prompts. He’s using the same tone that he uses whenever he’s trying to convince his stupid dog to go on a walk. Ricky has to physically bite back a grin at the gentle pleading in his voice. “You can take my card.”

Ricky glances in the rearview mirror just in time to see Yujin’s expression as he lifts his head. “What the fuck?” Yujin asks, blunt and dry. Gyuvin gasps sharply in horror. “No. I’m texting Ollie. We were supposed to hang out now. Hurry up so I can go home.”

Gyuvin sputters, offended and hurt. “The audacity…” he breathes. Ricky squeaks out a laugh despite his best efforts. “Oh, I’m glad you find this funny.”

“I do.” Ricky chokes out, still trying to keep from laughing too loud, but unable to stop it entirely. “I love this kid.”

Normally, Gyuvin would roll his eyes or snark back. Ricky says ‘this kid’ and watches Gyuvin’s entire expression melt on his face like an ice cream cone dropped onto the sidewalk. 

Quick as lightning, he reaches over and pinches Ricky’s cheek fondly. He doesn’t even to even react, much less smack his hand away, before Gyuvin scampers out of the car and into the post office. “I’ll be back in a minute,” Gyuvin promises, slamming the door shut behind him. “Be good, you two!” He yells over his shoulder, barely audible through the crack in the window.

Ears burning, Ricky turns back to anxiously glance at Yujin. Yujin’s already staring at him, expression pinched with something that makes Ricky’s heartbeat race with anxiety. “Uh,” Ricky coughs, and tries to arrange his features into something respectable. “Your brother is a shithead, haha.”

Yujin scoffs. It makes Ricky feel like shit. Why are teenagers so god damn powerful? “Please, you are not fooling me.” Yujin mumbles, looking out the window. He’s got one airpod in. Somehow, that's the part that stings the most.

It’s a sting that Ricky barely detects, his heart completely still in his chest. “Fooling you about what?” He chokes out.

There’s a beat. Yujin’s eyes shift away from the window to land incredulously on Ricky’s face. “The fact that you’re dating?” Yujin says slowly, and then his eyes blow wide. “Oh God. Are you not!?”

Ricky wets his lips. “Well,” he starts, and he doesn’t know where to go from there.

Because they aren’t dating. They had no plans to date. At the start of their freshman year of college, they were just Ricky and Gyuvin. Roommates in a too-small dorm who were put together entirely by chance. Gyuvin lived seven hours away by car. Ricky lived in the same city, but his parents encouraged him to live in the dorms for his independence, and also so they could travel.

“We’re stuck together, huh?” Gyuvin had laughed, his warm smile even brighter in the glow of the illicit candles that Ricky snuck into their room, and that was kind of it.

They weren’t dating, but Ricky dragged Gyuvin to the frat party he somehow got invited to and they both went completely unnoticed in the corner during a game of spin the bottle, and in the end, they stumbled back to their room way too drunk and fell asleep on the same bed together. They weren’t dating, but Gyuvin learned Ricky’s regular Starbucks order, and he learned how to read Ricky’s mood, and he started buying Ricky drinks on the harder days. They weren’t dating, but Gyuvin fell asleep on top of his Intro Psych notes and Ricky pushed the hair out of his forehead and felt like he could die from just how much he wanted.

They weren’t dating. They were just… Ricky and Gyuvin.

Ricky, in the middle of finals, complaining, “I don’t want to fly all the way to China, and then right back here, so I just have to hang around my empty house until they come home.”

Gyuvin, at the end of the semester, kneeling on his suitcase as Ricky helps him zip it shut, offering, “You can stay with me until your parents come back.” Clambering off and giving a lopsided grin. “It’s a bit of a shithole small town, but it’s quiet, and it’s close to the beach.”

I can’t remember ever talking about the beach, but he smiled at me like he knew, and it made me want to die, Ricky thinks but does not say, because Yujin is still looking at him like he wants the car to explode with both of them still inside it.

“We’re friends,” Ricky says eventually, and Yujin’s entire face puckers like he’s eaten sour candy.

He’s so angry that he takes out his airpod and jams it into his pocket, snapping, “He looks at you like that and he hasn’t even asked you out yet?”

Ricky’s heart leaps into his throat. “Looks at me like what?”

Yujin gags. “I am not spelling it out for you,” he retches emphatically. Whatever expression Ricky is making must be heartbroken, because Yujin stops and then sighs and then mumbles, begrudgingly, “You don’t have to ask for my blessing or anything. Just take him.”

He sounds absolutely resentful. Ricky finds himself so completely endeared. “Hey,” he turns a little more, twisting to face Yujin properly. “You really think he likes me?”

Ricky is an adult. Nineteen years old. He’s lived away from home for a year. He’s a university student. He sounds like a blushing schoolboy. 

But it’s summer, and the sun is setting, and they’re in a too-hot car in the parking lot of an empty strip mall. Tomorrow, they have plans to go to the beach. Ricky was originally going to ask if they could bring fireworks.

Maybe, just maybe, he might ask for something more.

Yujin looks at his face and his eyes go soft, the exact same way that Gyuvin does when Yujin asks him for anything. “Whenever he looks at you, I feel sick to my stomach.”

The driver’s door creaks open. Gyuvin throws himself in the seat and asks, craning his neck to look back at Yujin with concern, “You feel sick? Do you need me to get you anything?”

He’s flushed from the sun. The bridge of his nose is shiny with sweat. The set of his eyes is soft and worried; Gyuvin doesn’t even seem to be aware of the way that his messy brown hair is falling into his eyes as he reaches back to try and feel Yujin’s forehead.

Yujin tries to bite his hand. “I need you to get me home so I can be free of you and your dumb boyfriend.”

Gyuvin’s arm falls down limply. “Boyfri–” he splutters, looking at Ricky anxiously. He’s slowly getting redder and redder. If he was flushed before, then now he’s fully burning. “He’s not– Yujin–”

Ricky says, “Yujin, put your earbuds back in and look away,” and he doesn’t bother to make sure that he’s heard. He’s too busy taking Gyuvin’s face in his hands and kissing him on the lips.

The air in the car is stifling in the oppressive heat. Ricky can taste the sweat on Gyuvin’s upper lip. In the backseat, Yujin slams on the window with his open palms and wails, “Someone save me!”

When Ricky pulls away, Gyuvin is cherry red and beaming. He touches his lips, and then he touches Ricky’s. “I was going to do that at the beach tomorrow,” he mumbles, giggling breathlessly. “Under the fireworks.”

Ricky pinches his cheek. “You were too slow.”

Yujin shouts, “Can you please do this later!?”, and Gyuvin doesn’t even give him a second glance before he’s pulling Ricky in for a second kiss. It’s somehow even more sweaty than the first. It’s absolutely perfect.

When they get back home—Gyuvin and Yujin's home, and also, Ricky's home for the next few weeks—Yujin addresses Ricky directly for the second-third time. They get out of the car in the driveway because it’s a tight fit in the garage, and as they watch Gyuvin park, Yujin tugs at the sleeve of Ricky’s shirt.

“You can have him,” he says, awkwardly, looking at the ground. He’s still got an airpod in. “But he’s still my brother. Okay?”

Ricky blinks, and says, “Oh, this is why Gyuvin is like this about you,” and then puts Yujin into a headlock.

Unbeknownst to either of them, Gyuvin watches from the front seat of the car, folds himself over the steering wheel, and laughs; a sound louder and brighter than the screaming of the cicadas under the setting sun.