amidst a nightmare, towards the shining stars | yeonbin

[2]

Soobin rolls over on his soft new mattress as filtered sunlight blared in through the open window blinds. Mumbling something incoherent into his pillow, he flipped over to hide from the sun.

He vaguely hears soft knocking on the door, but stays unmoving in bed. The door creaks open after a minute, and Yeonjun tiptoes over to Soobin, watching him sleep for a moment.

Yeonjun shakes his head quickly, snapping himself out of it. What was he doing, staring at Soobin sleep? Isn't that creep level behavior?

He looks at the time, debating waking Soobin up or not. Soobin was such an insomniac sometimes, Yeonjun felt at peace watching him finally get some deep sleep.

Yeonjun reached out, his fingers stopping millimeters from Soobin's hair, desperately trying to control his urge to brush it.

Yeonjun bit his lip and sighed, retracting his hand and instead opting to close the blinds so he could sleep in peace.

He didn't want to overstep his boundaries. He knew Soobin could get uncomfortable easily and Yeonjun didn't want to pry into his personal matters, even if they were friends.

He didn't think Soobin considered him close enough to tell him details about his past.

Yeonjun thought to himself, Has he told Beomgyu? They're pretty close. But even if he had, I don't think he would spill it to me, either.

He left Soobin's room after closing the blinds, knowing he'll come back to wake him up if he doesn't wake up in the next 20 minutes.

He silently shut the door to Soobin's room and went into his own, shoving things into his backpack and cleaning up piles of cloth on the floor from his fashion and design class assignments.

"Ow.." he muttered when he poked himself with a needle as he picked up a piece of shiny black cloth with a needle stuck in it.

Yeonjun sighed as he put everything back into its designated boxes in his closet, fingers tracing his favorite brown fur jacket before finally shutting the closet door.

The jacket had been a precious gift to him, from somebody he was no longer acquainted with. He didn't feel comfortable wearing the jacket now, it was such a shame. It was a gorgeous coat.

He took a glance at his phone, noticing a spam of notifications from Beomgyu. He'll admit that he was curious as to what Beomgyu was rambling on about this time, but he had more critical worries at the moment. And most of the time, Beomgyu's messages are something totally random and pointless, like when he sent 57 messages on how he spotted a squirrel that looked exactly like Taehyun. And Yeonjun actually read all of them. No wonder he keeps sending random shit like that.

As he was about to turn off the lights and leave the room, Yeonjun stood still for a moment, hands gripping the handles of his backpack as he dropped it back on the floor and threw open his closet again.

He slipped on the brown fur jacket he had admired earlier, and glanced at the pictures that hung above his desk. Smiling, happy faces. His high school days with Taehyun and his older buddies, he almost wished they had kept in contact. Perhaps it was for the better, he didn't want to know how the rest of them had all changed.

Yeonjun's eyes flitted to the next picture and the next and the next until he landed on a picture taken a year ago. It was just a little bit after the five of them had become friends, and it was the first time he had spent the day alone with Soobin.

They'd first only gone out to buy a gift for Beomgyu's birthday, but they ended up spending the day jumping from store to store, going to karaoke and arcades and in all seriousness spending the day being like middle or high schoolers.

They forgot to get Beomgyu's birthday gift.

It all panned out well enough in the end, but Soobin had freaked out when they got back to the dorms. Yeonjun softly laughed at the memory, pressing the photobooth strip back onto the wall.

He held eye contact with the photo strip for a moment longer, smile fading as he remembered the pure joy in Soobin's eyes when Yeonjun had asked him if he wanted to hang out after they got a present for Beomgyu.

His heart fell even deeper when he remembered that Soobin had never done any of those things before, that he'd never been with friends to an arcade or gone karaoking. Yeonjun hadn't pushed Soobin to answer why. He expected he would tell him when he was ready. Maybe he had strict parents or didn't like going out. But Yeonjun figured it went a lot deeper than that.

Yeonjun had promised himself from that moment on that he'd try to make Soobin smile. He jerked his head away from the photostrip finally as he heard his alarm go off again, signaling it was time to wake up Soobin.