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In Hansol’s opinion, spending every free moment trying to solidify details about this wedding was counterproductive, but he also valued his life, so he kept his mouth shut.
“Look,” Seungkwan said, shoving his laptop into Hansol’s face where he sat on their couch on his phone. There was a website open with photos of elegant round tables of different colors. “We have to choose a color for the tablecloths. What do you think?”
Truthfully, when Hansol had proposed three months ago, he hadn’t given a ton of thought to the whole wedding part of all of this. He sort of assumed it would just…come together. He knew now — because he has been informed by his sister, Seungkwan’s sisters, and Mingyu — that this had been a very naive, boyish way to think.
He’d gotten his first wakeup call when, not long after they’d officially announced their engagement, Seungkwan immediately started looking at venues. They visited four in the space of a week. Seungkwan had said that they had to act fast or they’d all get booked up. Spring weddings were like that.
Hansol’s sister had laughed at him when he’d met her for lunch a few days after he and Seungkwan had visited the fourth venue. “Were you just going to leave it all to Seungkwan because he’s better at planning things and has more opinions than you?” she’d said, teasing, but also serious.
“No,” Hansol had said, even though Seungkwan was better at planning things, and while he didn’t have more opinions than Hansol, he did have more opinions about this kind of stuff. “Seungkwan just…” Hansol was smarter than to say cares more. Hansol cared. He cared a lot, of course he did. He wanted their wedding to be fun, he wanted it to have a good vibe. He wanted it to be romantic. But Seungkwan cared about perfection. “He’ll be more upset if things are wrong.”
His sister looked at him for a moment before she shrugged. “Then make sure things are right.”
Easier said than done.
They’d visited a total of eight venues and researched dozens more. From the start, Hansol had preferred the second one they had visited. It was all dark wood and big windows and it struck him as romantic, moody, and especially picturesque. His opinion stayed the same every time Seungkwan asked him which one he preferred. This, unfortunately, evolved into the wrong answer as they looked at more venues.
“What’s the point of looking at all of these if you’re not even swayed by anything else?” Seungkwan had said after they’d finished visiting the eighth venue and Hansol had said it was nice, but he still liked the second one.
They were in a coffee shop because looking at venues always made Hansol famished. He looked up at Seungkwan over his chocolate croissant. “I thought you still wanted to look,” he said. Seungkwan wasn’t quite as clean cut in his decisions as Hansol was, and he had lists of pros and cons for each venue. That said, Hansol has been able to tell Seungkwan preferred the fourth one they visited. He’d been watching Seungkwan’s face as they toured it. He watched Seungkwan’s face during all of the tours, which is how he knew Seungkwan liked this one best. It was light and airy and Seungkwan’s eyes had glowed as he’d taken it in. It had a garden full of trees that would be in blossom by the time their wedding came, and the hall would look sweet filled with flowers. Hansol had even told him that. He’d told Seungkwan he’d liked the fourth one. Still, Seungkwan had gone into his usual pros and cons about it, and the glow had been replaced with logistics and ‘what if's’ and ‘maybe we should look at a few more, just in case.’
“But how am I supposed to choose when you only like the second one?” Seungkwan said irritatedly, taking a long sip of his Americano.
“I don’t only like the second one,” Hansol said. “I liked all of them, except the farm one.” He wasn’t a farm guy.
“I liked that one!” Seungkwan whined, slamming his plastic cup down. Now he was just being difficult. Hansol was certain Seungkwan would never choose that one. It was pretty but it smelled too much like animals.
Hansol didn’t even bother acknowledging it. “I’m being serious, Seungkwan. I liked most of them. The second one is just my taste, you know that. I also told you I really liked the fourth one, with the big hall and the garden outside.”
Hansol wasn’t expecting the way Seungkwan’s eyes grew suddenly misty.
Seungkwan looked away and picked up his Americano again. Then he set it back down. He said, finally, “I’d look terrible in pictures in the dark one.”
“What?” Hansol said, thrown. That made no sense. “You’d look beautiful in all of them.” It was true; he’d seen Seungkwan in all of them already. And Seungkwan was always beautiful, anywhere.
Seungkwan took a deep breath, then wiped at his face and glanced around, like he was afraid people were watching him. And Hansol realized then that Seungkwan must have private lists of cons he wasn’t sharing with him, and that was just a glimpse of one of them. It was devastating to Hansol.
He leaned forward over the table. “Seungkwannie,” he said gently, and waited until Seungkwan looked him in the eyes. “I liked the fourth one.”
“You’re only saying that because you know I liked it,” Seungkwan sniffed.
“I did like it,” Hansol said. How did he say that he only liked it more because Seungkwan liked it?
Well, maybe he just said it like that. He could see Seungkwan already sucking in a breath, preparing some new argument, so Hansol beat him to it. “I liked it already, but I liked it more because you liked it. Your eyes were really bright, Seungkwan-ah.” There were no cons when it came to Seungkwan’s happiness. “I want to be where you’ll be happiest, because then I’ll be happiest. Let’s do that one.”
The breath wooshed out of Seungkwan’s lungs. He didn’t glance around this time as he wiped at the bottom of his eyes, looking only at Hansol.
They went with the fourth venue.
Unfortunately, as soon as one problem was solved, a new one arose. And today it was tablecloths.
Seungkwan stood in front of him, laptop out, waiting impatiently for Hansol’s opinion on the color of tablecloths. Hansol was pretty certain he’d never devoted a single thought to tablecloths in his life. This whole process was really expanding his brain.
“Um,” he said, and he took a second to think about it because he wasn’t a fool anymore. “White.”
Seungkwan pursed his lips. Wrong answer. But Hansol expected this. Seungkwan said, “Black might look classier, though.”
Hansol knew Seungkwan didn’t want black tablecloths. The venue was light and airy and pretty, and the flowers were going to be pretty blues and yellows and oranges, and Seungkwan didn’t want black tablecloths.
“Everything is already going to be beautiful, it doesn’t need to be classy like that,” Hansol said.
Seungkwan frowned, even though there was really no reason for him to be frowning. “Maybe a dark blue-”
“You don’t want that.”
“You can’t tell me what I want!”
“I don’t want that.”
“Now you’re just trying to appease me by saying what you think I want you to say-”
They had been around this block a million times by now. Hansol always tried to stay patient. He wasn’t bad at being patient, was actually quite good at it, but it was hard sometimes. He loved Seungkwan with his entire heart but he was only human.
“Seungkwan-ah,” he cut him off. “I want the white tablecloths.”
He was telling the truth. White would look pretty with the flowers and the light wood tones of the venue. He was telling the truth, but now Seungkwan only looked more upset.
“Kwannie,” Hansol said, because Seungkwan got so stressed so easily about all of this, and he knew why Seungkwan was fighting for black tablecloths even though he didn't actually want them. Still, he said, “Talk to me.”
Luckily, Seungkwan wasn’t stubborn about holding back his emotions on this. Or anything with Hansol, really. So he said immediately, “It looks like my wedding.”
Hansol didn’t understand. “It is your wedding.”
Seungkwan looked even more upset, eyes distressed. “It’s our wedding. But everything is to my taste because you’ve been letting me make all the decisions because it makes me happy!”
Hansol didn’t really have an argument for that. Was he supposed to argue?
“You like dark tones,” said Seungkwan firmly. “We can go with black tablecloths. I like your taste.”
“Black won’t look good,” Hansol said. “And I know you like my taste.” Half of their apartment was to his taste. “But I also like your taste, and sometimes our taste is the same.”
Seungkwan groaned. “This isn’t some sort of riddle, Hansol!”
“I know!” said Hansol. He tried to grab for Seungkwan’s hips, but he stepped backward. Now it was Hansol’s turn to frown. “Hey, I’m in charge of the music, aren’t I? That’s more important to me than tablecloths.” Extremely true.
But Seungkwan’s frown persisted.
“Hansollie, come on,” he said, like everything Hansol had said up until now had only been to humor him. “What do you want? What do you really want?”
Hansol frowned. That was an easy question. “To marry you.”
Seungkwan’s mouth opened, like a fish. Like Hansol’s answer was completely unexpected.
That didn’t sit right with him.
“Is that not obvious?” Hansol said, because if it wasn’t, he needed to work on some things.
To Hansol’s distress, Seungkwan’s eyes filled with tears. Real tears, gleaming tears.
Then he snapped his laptop shut and stomped his foot.
“Wha- Seungkwan-”
“You’re not supposed to say things like that and get yourself out of all the hard decisions!” he said, and then tossed his laptop on the couch and climbed into Hansol’s lap. Hansol put his hands on his hips to steady him as Seungkwan buried his face in Hansol’s neck.
“I didn’t say that to get out of making decisions,” Hansol said.
“I know,” Seungkwan said, voice muffled. He wrapped his arms around Hansol’s shoulders.
“I’m trying to make this easier for you,” Hansol said.
“I know,” Seungkwan whined. “You are.”
Hansol bit his tongue to keep from smiling. He squeezed Seungkwan’s hips. “Baby. What’s the problem, then?”
Seungkwan sighed into his neck, quiet for a moment before he said, “I just want to make sure you’re happy, too.” Before Hansol could respond to that, Seungkwan gently pulled back and cupped Hansol’s face with his hands. His eyes were a little red and wet, but he wasn’t crying. One of his hands curved around the shell of Hansol’s ear. “But I know you’re happy. You’d tell me if there was anything you truly weren’t satisfied with.”
Stress that Hansol hadn’t entirely realized had been weighing on him so heavily began to dissipate at Seungkwan’s words. They were on the same page, then.
“As long as I end the day married to you, I’ll be satisfied,” Hansol said.
Seungkwan’s fingers on his ear turned into a tug. A sharp, flustered tug that Hansol knew meant he said the right thing. He still remembered the way Seungkwan had done it on their first date when Hansol had told him his eyes had looked pretty in the lights of the street food cart. It had sounded way more romantic when he was twenty, but hey, it worked. Still, he liked to think his game had increased a little since then.
It definitely had, because Seungkwan huffed, a pleased flush to his cheeks. “Why are you already such a good husband?”
It wasn’t something Hansol expected him to say, and hearing Seungkwan call him husband did an unbearably sweet, ticklish thing to his heart. His ear heated under Seungkwan’s touch, words stuck in his throat for a second.
He managed to swallow. He said, “I’m not your husband yet.”
Seungkwan huffed again, through his nose this time, and looked him in the eye. “This is all a waste of time. Let’s ditch the wedding and go elope right now.”
Hansol’s heart jolted a little at that. It was a tempting offer, and honestly, Hansol would have done that the day he proposed if Seungkwan had suggested it. But he knew that Seungkwan wanted this wedding. Hansol wanted this wedding. It really was shaping up to be good. He stroked his thumb down the side of Seungkwan’s neck. “That’s tempting, but I know you want your wedding.”
“Our wedding.” Seungkwan poked him in the chest as Hansol grinned. “You’re so annoying.”
“You wanted to marry me five seconds ago.”
Seungkwan groaned, then buried his face in Hansol’s chest. “I’ve always wanted to marry you."
Hansol’s heart somersaulted a little crazily. He tightened his arms around Seungkwan’s waist, a buoyant feeling in his chest, weightless as air. He got to have this man for the rest of his life.
“Hey,” he said after a few minutes of holding Seungkwan and Seungkwan content to be held. An idea had suddenly entered his head after the talk about the music earlier. “What if we got LED laser strobe lights for the reception?”
Seungkwan sighed into his shirt.
Hansol squeezed his waist. “You said you wanted my ideas.”
“And this one is very you,” Seungkwan said, pulling back and kissing him lightly. His eyes were fond. “Yes, you can have your colorful party lights. You can have your wedding reception rave.”
“We can have colorful party lights,” corrected Hansol pointedly. “It’s our wedding reception rave.”
Seungkwan whined in protest, because the reception was really starting to shape up according to Hansol’s tastes, but Hansol knew he was pleased.