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It isn’t raining when they step out of the car, but—judging by the flashes of lightning and persistent bouts of thunder—it’s about to be. Very soon.
“Can you check if it’s locked, Kev?” Jacob calls out, softly in the quiet street. It’s an afterthought, his feet having already taken him a decent few steps away from the driver’s side of the car, but Kevin still seems glued to where he’d gotten out the passenger door.
Kevin just pulls on the handle wordlessly, the door unyielding to the action. Jacob is satisfied with that, and Kevin hasn’t been much in the mood to talk tonight, so he simply shrugs his shoulders and walks to where Jacob is.
“You think we’ll need an umbrella?” Jacob tries to ask, virtually useless as he’s already leading them both up the stairs of the dimly lit building they’d parked in front of. Kevin sighs, probably thinking the same thing, but not having the energy to complain about Jacob’s lack of foresight.
“You said we wouldn’t be here long, right?” Kevin asks, just the most subtle hint of snark in his tone.
“Well…” Jacob huffs nervously, because he knows that that was a lie. And then, because he knows that Kevin probably knew that that was a lie, too, “Do you have somewhere to be?”
Jacob looks back tentatively, and Kevin is staring up at him from a couple steps below with his best attempt at a glare. Eventually, though, Kevin just lets out a deep exhale. “Go inside, Jacob.”
That’s fine for now, so Jacob does as he’s told.
The place is familiar to Jacob even after only coming here a handful of times in the past few months. It’s a fairly hidden traditional Korean restaurant, hidden away on the second floor of this old, not exactly shiny building. The tarp bearing the place’s name is old, too, worn down and weathered in a way that makes it difficult to find unless one had the full intention to do so, and Jacob considers it his own secret haven away from his normal world of prying eyes. And Jacob, being himself, knows that it would only be a matter of time before he ended up wanting to share it with Kevin, too, because that’s just the way that things go. Kevin has changed the way that Jacob thinks of the words secret and solitude—they’re no longer words for just one. Alone never means just Jacob by himself anymore; Kevin has just been by his side for the longest time, too.
“Junyung, you’re back!” The restaurant owner says with a smile, just as Kevin is closing the door behind them, cheery but quiet in the ambient, orange light of the space. She’s a few inches shorter than Kevin, with a slight frame and gray hair tied up into a haphazard bun. “Who’s your friend?”
Jacob doesn’t speak for him, just looks expectantly at Kevin until he answers for himself. They didn’t actually talk much on the car ride here, so all that Kevin knows is that Jacob wanted to go here to eat soup at 2:30 AM, not that the owner knows Jacob but doesn’t know they’re famous or that they don’t actually have to keep their masks and bucket hats on if they don’t want to. Kevin picks up on nuance well enough, bowing as he makes his own introduction to the old woman.
“My name is… Hyungseo,” he says curtly, and Jacob smiles. “Thank you for having us.”
After formalities are over, the owner instructs them to sit wherever they want. Jacob chooses his usual table by the window, both himself and Kevin avoiding the gazes of the other people alone at their own tables this late at night, sparse as they may be. They sit across from each other, Jacob facing the window and Kevin facing him. Not a word is said, and Kevin only stares down at his hands in his lap when they’re settled in.
“I love the hangover soup here,” Jacob says with a giggle, attempting to start a conversation. Kevin tilts his head when Jacob goes to take his mask off, but eventually looks down at his hands again.
“Mm,” Kevin simply hums, eyes darting around the room before he declares, “You can take your time. I’m gonna wait in the car.”
Jacob pouts. “Kevin.”
“It’s really okay,” Kevin answers, his tone robotic. “I’ll bring an umbrella up for you if it starts to rain. Just text me when you’re done.”
Kevin is about to get up and out of his chair, but Jacob only pouts further. “Kevin. Sit down.”
And unsurprisingly, Kevin does. It’s not even stern, or cold, or anything of the sort—Jacob keeps his tone gentle as it always is—but Kevin still follows without a word. There’s an annoyed huff, maybe, and Kevin crosses his arms in front of his chest, but he stays nonetheless. And Jacob—Jacob smiles at him despite all that, too.
Jacob is patient. He always has been. It doesn’t really change even in times like this, when Kevin’s been giving him and everyone else some attitude lately, for some reason that no one can really pinpoint. Not until Kevin opens up by himself. It’s mostly the reason that Jacob even asked Kevin to go out at this ungodly hour, and Kevin’s disinterested façade is completely overridden by the fact that, for all intents and purposes, he did say yes. Kevin is here, with him, and Jacob knows there is a reason for that. No matter how much Kevin pretends he’d rather be anywhere else.
“Your usual, hangover soup!” comes the chipper voice of the same woman from earlier, and she sets down not one, but two bowls of soup on the table, one in front of each of them.
Jacob speaks up before Kevin can make a fuss. “Oh, um, he didn’t order one—”
“There’s two of you, so you get two bowls of soup, no?”
“Oh, Ma’am, I’ll be the only one eating—”
“That doesn’t make sense. Enjoy the food!”
Neither of them get to say anything before the woman walks away with the last word, and Jacob doesn’t try to push. He’s only a little apologetic when he gives Kevin a sheepish smile, not-so-secretly happy to have Kevin eat something actually enjoyable for once — and thankfully enough, Kevin still knows how to keep his manners.
“Try it,” Jacob says as he picks up his spoon, ready to taste some of the warm broth. “It’s really good.”
Even under the mask he’s still wearing, Jacob can immediately tell that Kevin is making a face— somewhere between obedience and defeat. Kevin’s eyes dart around the room again, reluctance evident in the way he has no idea what to do with his hands—and it takes a moment, but Jacob picks up on it soon enough.
“You can eat comfortably here,” Jacob reassures, tone kept gentle, placating. “No one’s around.”
Kevin nods, but otherwise remains frozen in place. It’s clear enough to Jacob that Kevin is way too in his head right now to push past all the walls they have to put up in public on a regular basis, but that’s the last thing that they both need right now. Jacob gets up from his chair, then, deciding to take matters into his own hands.
“Come here,” Jacob says softly, switching to Korean, grabbing Kevin firmly by the elbow and then depositing him into the chair Jacob had just been sitting in. Kevin looks fairly confused, watching as Jacob takes what used to be Kevin’s bowl of soup and then sits in the chair beside him instead of across, both of them now staring out the window. “No one can see our faces now. Okay?”
Kevin still looks reluctant, looking anywhere except into Jacob’s eyes. Jacob is about to give up and just start eating on his own at this point—but eventually, Kevin takes off the mask and the bucket hat on his head, setting them down onto his lap.
“Okay.”
They start eating soon enough.
Jacob is focused on the flavor of the broth as he takes spoonfuls into his mouth, chewing on the small pieces of pork and letting the comfort of it all seep into his bones, under his skin. He glances over at Kevin from time to time, the other man slurping on spoonfuls of soup with a solemn expression that barely hides how much he’s enjoying it—not from Jacob, at least. It doesn’t take long for a drizzle to start, slow pitter-patter before it turns into steady rain, blurring the orange from the street lamps outside. It’s soft enough to fade into a calm lull, but steady enough to have both of them silently hoping it doesn’t progress into something torrential.
“This is why I like this place,” Jacob utters mindlessly, glancing briefly at Kevin for acknowledgment in between bites. “Great hangover soup, great atmosphere.”
Kevin’s expression doesn’t shift, but he humors him anyway. “When do you even come here? You don’t drink.”
“Hey, I did, that one time. With Sangyeon-hyung.” Jacob retorts. Kevin only nods shallowly. “Every other time, though, I just want the soup. Don’t have to be drunk for it.”
“Okay. I guess.”
“It’s like hangover soup for the soul,” Jacob muses, trying his best to lighten the mood. “Feels fitting, after the week we’ve had.”
They fall into silence after Kevin decides not to respond, and Jacob tries his hardest not to let out the heavy breath that’s been accumulating in his lungs since Kevin asked if he could stay in the car. He’s really trying— and he knows that he can’t get through to Kevin with just an impromptu midnight snack—but it’s difficult whenever Kevin gives him three words at most as an answer to every question, a contrast to his usual abundance of nonsense ramblings and publicized inner monologues.
“Besides, we rarely get to go to places like this,” Jacob tries again, just so they don’t fall into tension-filled silence for too long. “There’s something different about it. It actually makes me feel like I’m Korean.”
“We are Korean,” Kevin mutters under his breath.
“Okay, but, I mean,” Jacob purses his lips, “it’s exhausting to feel like so many things at once sometimes, right?”
“Mm.” Kevin sighs. “Right.”
“It just feels like somewhere I can get away from it all for a while. Sucks that it has to be at 2 AM, but, well. You know. We can get away with just facing the window.”
“Do you normally get away with stealing manager-nim’s car?”
“Hey, I asked him,” Jacob rolls his eyes, disproportionately relieved at the fact that Kevin had said something that even warranted an answer. “I think we deserve something slow and easy after so much work. Don’t you?”
Kevin lets out the heaviest sigh of the night—which is saying a lot, considering how huffy he’s been the whole day. “Who put you up to this? Sangyeon-hyung?”
Jacob pouts, just a little hurt by the implication, but he pushes it down in favor of his same, patient voice. “What are you talking about?”
“Changmin? Was it Changmin, ‘cause I kept messing up during dance practice this week?”
“Kev.”
“Jacob,” Kevin laughs. It sounds a little too tired. “…Actually, never mind.”
Jacob bites back the urge to click his tongue—but it does a different thing entirely instead.
“Look, I know you didn’t ask me to take you here,” Jacob says, subtle hurt clear in his voice, “but I’m actually getting a little upset. Just… honestly.”
For some reason, that’s what seems to cause a shift in Kevin’s demeanor, his body automatically shifting all the degrees it takes to be facing in Jacob’s direction. Kevin’s shoulders relax, the furrow in his brow eases, the snark in his expression is replaced by careful concern.
“Sorry,” is what Kevin says, a little too quiet for Jacob’s liking, but he knows it’s sincere. “I didn’t mean to upset you.”
“I didn’t mean to say that, either,” Jacob tries to wave it off, putting his spoon down to rest a reassuring hand on Kevin’s shoulder, over the thick fabric of his best friend’s jacket. Pressing his lips into a thin line, Jacob looks away, back at his bowl of now-lukewarm soup. “I’ll finish eating quickly, then we can go home. I’m sorry.”
To Jacob’s surprise, Kevin is the one who makes a move this time, tapping Jacob on the wrist before he can pick up his spoon. Kevin purses his lips, his display of nerves a complete 180 from earlier’s uncharacteristic, standoffish irreverence.
“You have nothing to be sorry for,” he starts, hand moving down from Jacob’s wrist to his palm, fingers, fingertips. Only when Jacob’s hand is snugly in Kevin’s hold does he continue, voice solemn and kind. “The soup is delicious. The atmosphere’s nice. I haven’t felt this… okay in a long time,” Kevin sighs, eyes fixated on their clasped hands, “Thank you. And I’m sorry. I guess with everything happening lately I’ve just been… I don’t know. All over the place.”
Jacob knows that he doesn’t stop pouting, but the way that his hand closes around Kevin’s gives away what truly lies in his too-soft, too-loving heart. He knows it’s true—they’ve all been under a lot of stress doing a lot of things, and not getting a lot of sleep or good food or time to themselves. For Kevin, that usually comes with the side effect of his too many thoughts, plaguing his mind like a broken record of senseless murmurs underscoring the already-exhausting demands of daily life.
“You know you can tell me if anything’s wrong, right?” Jacob tells him. “‘Cause if you’re unhappy—”
“I’m not,” Kevin shakes his head furiously, a real smile on his face for the first time tonight, small as it may be. “I’m—not unhappy, Jacob. I guess I’ve just been, like… thinking too much, and this— tonight— you were right. I haven’t enjoyed life in this way in a while. That makes me a little sad, I guess.”
Jacob chuckles. “Is that not another word for unhappy?”
“No— I mean, yes—” Kevin shakes his head. “You know what I mean.”
“I do?” Jacob teases, though he backs down easily when Kevin just glares, unimpressed. “Yeah. I do.”
Jacob does. It’s a thing that Kevin’s been trying to do lately—living fully in the moments when his heart feels at ease—saying it out loud instead of living constantly in the web of his thoughts.
“I’m having a nice time,” Kevin says shortly after, as if reading Jacob’s thoughts. “It’s raining outside, but I feel safe. I have food in front of me that I can actually taste. I’m with someone who refuses to get mad at me even if I’m being… for lack of better words, a bitch.”
“You’re not being a—” Jacob clicks his tongue, shaking his head fondly, “— that. You’re just tired. I can’t be mad at you for that.”
Kevin lets go of Jacob’s hand then, setting it back down gently on the table, beside his spoon.
“You should eat now,” Kevin says, an apologetic smile still on his face. “And tell me about your day. I don’t feel like talking much, but I’ll listen. No one forced me to come here. I hope you don’t think I don’t want to be here.”
Jacob smiles at the honesty, and nods in understanding. Of course he does.
“I’m glad you’re here, Kev.” Jacob says—along with all its unspoken meanings. Whether it means in this room, in this country, or in this life. Jacob is glad that they are everything, together.
“Do you think we can do this more often?” Kevin asks with a small smile, picking up his spoon to drag it across the surface of his soup, staring out at the gentle downpour against the pitch black sky.
“Probably not,” Jacob answers honestly, turning to glance at Kevin with a smile. So much of what makes Jacob who he is—he only ever sees in one other person, too. “But we can certainly try.”
Kevin smiles back. He knows it means much more than just the soup.