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It was a great day, Beomgyu decided as he swung from building to building, feeling the wind whipping against his mask. He aced his physics test, finally got around to replacing his guitar strings, and went out to a quiet night with no criminals around to ruin his mood.
On any other day, the peace would’ve made Beomgyu wary especially since he lived in the business (and ergo, crime) capital that was Seoul, but he had been swinging around the city for almost three hours now. If somebody planned to maim or harm in anyway, Beomgyu was sure it would’ve happened by now.
And if this was just a part in some long-term plan to get him, well, he’ll cross that bridge when he gets there.
So tonight he rewards himself the chance to sit on top of the building across Wang-Gwan Café, legs swinging idly and hands eagerly stuffing fries in his mouth while he listens to the singer currently performing to a mellow piano accompaniment inside.
In times like these, he’s really thankful for the spider that bit him 3 years ago and gave him his powers. His amplified hearing makes the singers voice just as clear to him as it would be if he were inside Wang-Gwan. Beomgyu is too far from the café to see through the tinted windows and identify the performer, but he doesn’t need to.
After all he hears the same melodious voice in school; in classes when teachers call on him, in the hallway when he passes, and in school performances he participates in. Beomgyu is familiar enough with the twinkling voice who responds when “Kang Taehyun” is called in the roll call.
Too familiar, he hears a voice sounding too much like his roommate Soobin say in his head. To his embarrassment, Beomgyu feels his skin flush at mind-Soobin’s comment.
He knows his crush on the younger boy is reaching alarmingly embarrassing levels considering that he’s known Taehyun since they were 12 and had been (in Soobin’s words) agonizingly pining since then, but he can’t help but chicken out every time he decides to actually express his feelings.
With the universal fear of rejection over his head, Beomgyu likes to think that he’s perfectly okay with never telling Taehyun about how his heart does little flips whenever he smiles at him in class, or links arms with him when they walk together.
He thinks it’s a little like not joining PE after a rough scuffle with bad guys the night before—it’s better to endure a prick of pain for a long time, than do something that could hurt you even more.
Beomgyu is immerses himself in Taehyun’s voice pouring from inside the café, singing a mellow jazz song about love, or rather the want to get away from it.
“I’m through with love,” he hears Taehyun sing. The lyrics sound so melancholic but ironically, his voice just makes Beomgyu’s heart swell a little more in his chest.
It’s embarrassing, but he really can’t help but be so endeared by everything Taehyun does. How can anyone?
The song is too short in Beomgyu’s opinion, and the sooner-than-expected round of applause makes Beomgyu sigh, knowing it’s his cue to leave for his dorm before Soobin gets annoyed and shuts the window on him again.
He stands up on the building’s edge and carefully picks up the long-empty fast food wrappers before swinging down to the street and throwing it in the bin in the alleyway.
It’s risky to stand on the street in plain sight with his guard down but it’s late and again, if somebody wanted to pull one on him, they would’ve done it by now.
He does duck out of sight in the dark alley when people rush out the café, Taehyun’s performance apparently being the last before it closed. Their hushed whispers as they walk out into the night are almost the last thing Beomgyu hears when he prepares to swing himself up again and out in the direction of his dorm, but his ears pick up on someone else before he could shoot a web.
“You did well, Taehyun!” an older voice that Beomgyu identifies as one of the café owners calls, accompanied by lone footsteps walking into the street.
“Thanks for having me, Jungkook-ssi.”
Beomgyu’s body reacts to the voice by flushing again, the now-familiar feel of a blush creeping on his neck. His eyes widen under the mask and he lowers his arms to take his first look at the younger boy.
Still hiding in the alley, Beomgyu observes as Taehyun pulls a phone out of the pockets of his jeans and dial a number. He’s wearing a green sweater that looked huge on him and contrasted with the red of his hair. The sleeves were rolled to his elbows, but Beomgyu knew it was a habit of his to only wear sweaters with sleeves that went below his knuckles.
He’s unaware of how long he’d been staring until Taehyun lets out a frustrated grunt, his call not having been picked up. The younger boy anxiously bites his lip and looks left and right along the street, unease unmistakably radiating off of him.
Beomgyu realizes he’s stranded, infers that Taehyun was probably trying to call someone to pick him up. He can understand the wariness—it’s past 10 after all, and the dorms are far from this part of the city. Commuting, given the circumstances, is dangerous and risky.
He perfectly understands how Taehyun must feel, which is why his body acts on its own and swings out the alleyway to a fire escape on the café building. The loud clang he makes as he lands on the metal railing startles the other boy, who immediately puts his hands up in defense.
“Um, hi!” Beomgyu tries to make his voice sound as less-threatening as he could, and he deems his attempt a success when Taehyun lets out a sigh of relief and puts down his arms once he recognizes the red and blue figure.
“Oh, it’s you,” he says breathily.
“Yep,” Beomgyu says cheerily back. He doesn’t know if Taehyun will take the squinting of the eyes in his mask as suspicion, or that the person under it is grinning like it actually is, but he can’t fight the smile from his face as he sees the glitter on Taehyun’s cheekbones now that he’s nearer. “Just your friendly neighborhood Spider-Man.”
The silence that follows makes Beomgyu cringe, especially as Taehyun takes another wary look around them to see if a fight was going on nearby.
“I’m sorry but what are you doing here?” he finally asks, looking pointedly at him.
“I, um, was just swinging around. Ya know, on patrol like every other day—I mean, night!” As if Beomgyu’s rambling wasn’t bad enough, his hands gesture everywhere blindly, forgetting that they were gripping onto the railing and making him nearly slip off.
At this point, Beomgyu just wants to go home, cringe for a solid hour, and repress the memory so that it never resurfaces in his brain again.
But he hears a giggle and he turns his head to see Taehyun covering his mouth with his hand, trying and failing to suppress his laugh.
“Are you always like this?” Taehyun asks, a smile gracing his face.
Beomgyu rubs the back of his neck as he feels his face turn red for the third time that night. “Um, not really I think.”
In a rare moment of bravery, he adds, “Just around cute people.”
The compliment makes Taehyun laugh freely this time and he buries his head in his hands before the hero in front of him could catch the blossoming pink on his cheeks.
“I was just passing by, swear, and I couldn't help but notice you seem to be in a pickle?” Beomgyu says. “It’s really late, and you looked really nervous being out here.”
Taehyun picks his head up and sighs. “My roommate was supposed to pick me up, but I’m guessing he fell asleep. Can’t blame him though, my bit ended later than we thought.”
Before he could overthink and chicken out, Beomgyu blurts out, “I could take you home.”
At this, Taehyun stares at him with wide eyes and Beomgyu suddenly wants nothing more than a real-life backspace button. He almost takes his words back, but then Taehyun asks “What?”
“I meant,” Beomgyu says, calmly this time and with his eyes looking anywhere but at Taehyun, “I can take you to your dorm… o-or house! I don’t know where you live, I just assumed it’s in the dorms ‘cause you’re a student and—“
Beomgyu sighs again and finally turns his head to the other, who is looking at him with an eyebrow slightly raised. “It’s really dark and you look really young, and as someone who wants to keep people safe, I think it’s safer if I take you to wherever you’re going.”
“Aren’t you supposed to be fighting evil overlords right now or something?”
At this, Beomgyu perks up. “Shift ends in a while, anyway. I’ve got time, Taehyun.”
He swings down to the street and stands right in front of Taehyun, who’s still watching him curiously.
“If it’s okay with you of course,” Beomgyu adds.
Taehyun eyes him up and down before sighing and stepping closer to the masked vigilante. He swings his arms around Beomgyu’s neck and whispers a “You better not drop me.” quietly in the crook of his neck.
If you had asked Beomgyu how he was in that moment, he probably wouldn’t have been able to tell you due to the fact that his brain was turning to mush and his skin where Taehyun’s arms were was pricking under his suit. He feels his heart drumming so loud in his chest that he’s afraid it’ll explode and blow up the both of them.
But he manages to compose himself enough to wrap an arm around Taehyun’s waist securely and squeak out an “Okay.”
And before they know it, they’re both swinging across Seoul, the added weight of Taehyun clinging onto him barely bothering Beomgyu, who cheered and laughed as they flew high above the street just like he does every night. Taehyun, for his part, didn’t lift his head from where it sat in the crook of Beomgyu’s neck and stayed silent.
Until the part in their trip where Beomgyu’s too exhilarated to notice a bird heading towards them until the last second and he ducks his head just seconds before he crashes with the airborne animal. Taehyun is a witness to the whole thing and after a brief second of silence, he snorts and lets out the twinkling laugh that green-lights Beomgyu’s own.
They’re still laughing when Beomgyu lands on the fire escape outside Taehyun’s dorm, knowing the place by heart. Taehyun doesn’t drop his hands from his neck even when they’re standing on their own, eyes still closed as his laugh slowly dies down.
When they do, Taehyun looks up at Beomgyu with a smile and eyes that crinkle to crescent moons and with his arms still around Spider-Man’s neck, he says thank you.
Taehyun releases him and Beomgyu leaps away to hang upside down from the railing above them. His position makes the younger boy roll his eyes good-naturedly.
“Showing off, are you?” he says with a smile.
Beomgyu hums before carefully saying, “Is it working?”
Taehyun shyly looks away as he steps closer and closer to Beomgyu, whose skin is now prickling all over and whose heart is now drumming faster with each step the younger boy takes.
He stops when he’s inches from Beomgyu’s face. Beomgyu stares at him, his red hair falling to his eyelashes, cheeks pink and soft eyes observing him.
“You’re ridiculous,” is the last thing Beomgyu hears him mutter before he feels hands reaching to pull the bottom of his mask. His instinct is to panic and freeze up as he feels the cold air on his mouth and jaw, but Taehyun doesn’t pull the mask further than the bridge of his nose.
The younger boy sighs and mutters again, “Absolutely ridiculous.” before cupping the sides of Beomgyu’s head and closing the gap between them.
Taehyun’s lips on his send Beomgyu’s brain into overdrive and now, it’s like everything is amplified. His heart is cheering so loudly he’s afraid Taehyun can hear it as well. He can smell the cologne on Taehyun’s neck and feel the softness of his lips so much it makes him want to explode like fireworks on New Year.
All Beomgyu’s brain is doing is going Taehyun Taehyun Taehyun TaehyunTaehyunTaehyunTaehyunTAEHYUNTAEHYUNTAEHYUN over and over again, and it makes him smile against said boy’s lips.
Even when they break off and Taehyun steps back, cheeks now as red as his hair, Beomgyu can still feel his heart going off in fireworks, each beat another loud boom of light and colors in the dark.
His mouth deems itself broken, because Beomgyu can’t seem to get a word out even when his mouth opens. He realizes he probably looks like a codfish, because Taehyun laughs at him again.
“Just like I said,” he says, shaking his head before opening the window and moving to go inside. He gives Beomgyu one last glance before saying softly, “You’re ridiculous, Choi Beomgyu.”
He shuts the window swiftly behind him, leaving Beomgyu to gape and wonder how the hell did he know?
He stays there, upside down outside Taehyun’s window before laughing to himself and concluding that he was an idiot for thinking he could hide anything from amazing, smart, and extraordinary Kang Taehyun.
Amazing, smart, and extraordinary Kang Taehyun who just kissed him.
Beomgyu shakes his head and swings back out into the night in the direction in his dorm, feeling warm and giddy inside as he did.
A great day indeed.
—+—
The next day, he decides to treat Soobin by having a pizza delivered to their dorm as they watch a movie of Soobin's choice.
It's an apology for making the older boy stay up until 1AM just to make sure he came home last night. None of them are paying attention to The Bee Movie on their screen, but they let it go on as background noise for Beomgyu's retelling of last night's events, everything from the café to you-know-what.
"...and then I came home-"
"At ass-crack in the morning."
"-yes, then I came home late to find you and your worried ass sitting on my bed with your nails half-eaten."
Soobin's reply comes in the form of a pillow thrown in Beomgyu's direction, who easily ducks before it comes into contact with his face.
"Stupid spidey sense," Soobin mutters under his breath.
Beomgyu sticks his tongue out at him before settling into his place on the couch. He lets the sounds from the movie pass for a second before saying, "I really don't understand how he knew it was me though."
Soobin looks at him incredulously and rolls his eyes. Except, unlike Taehyun's, it was void of affection and was instead of exasperation.
"Taehyun's right, you are absolutely ridiculous."