Chapter Text
Sunoo has no idea what he’s doing.
Well, he knows what he’s doing this second, which is trying desperately to distract himself. He’s not one to party, doesn’t even drink in the way that Sunghoon and Jay do, but it’s a special occasion.
The special occasion is that he can’t figure out how to move forward from this tangled mess that he’s created, and maybe a few cups of jungle juice that’s one parts pink lemonade, two parts vodka will magically reveal the answer.
Usually when there’s a problem that involves a cluster of people, at least one person in the party has to have some clue what’s going on.
It’s been established that Sunoo has no idea what he’s doing. Sunghoon thinks that Sunoo knows what he’s doing, and Heeseung is just… waiting to see how everything falls into place. The combination of these parts does not amount to a very strategic team of three.
Sunoo contemplates the conversation he’d had today while sipping on a drink he knows he’ll still taste in his mouth in the morning.
Sunghoon had come the closest to figuring it out. And just when Sunoo thought that the last piece would slide into the empty notch, the other boy had turned his mouth away with a sigh.
“It doesn’t make sense,” he’d murmured. “You and him— that makes perfect sense. “You and me, that could make sense too. But this… everything, all together…”
“Isn’t that the best way to love?” Sunoo wondered aloud. “Everything, all together, all at once?”
Sunoo groans now, head thumping against the wall. Not the craziest of nights, sitting on the floor of a stranger’s living room distractedly observing a game of beer pong with dulled interest. More than once, the ball flies off the table and leaps towards him, and much to the annoyance of the players, he makes no move to catch it for them.
He could be home right now in the comfort of his own bed. Instead he’s wallowing.
Sunoo has always been the most starry eyed of all of them, a sappy romantic since childhood. Heeseung lets things fall into his lap, takes chances as they come. Sunghoon will meet them halfway.
But Sunoo. It’s Sunoo who has always dreamt of that earth shattering, fairytale romance. He’s been conditioned to want, to chase after love and grab it with his own two hands.
It’s not fair. It’s not fair to be taught to dream, but not to live. To yearn, but not to act.
After years of stumbling, tripping, spinning like dogs after their tails in search for true love, what the hell are they supposed to do with it once they have it?
“Hey,” someone says. Sunoo looks up to greet a pair of knees. “Are you okay?”
The concerned person bends down to look at him from eye-level, obviously trying to assess his level of sobriety.
“I’m in love with two people,” Sunoo slurs.
The stranger’s eyes widen in surprise and mild alarm, which he thinks is unwarranted since he is essentially fully coherent. He raises his cup to his lips, only for a single drop to slowly make its way onto his tongue.
It’s bitter.
“Are you here alone?” the person asks again. Sunoo tries to keep his annoyance at bay, since they clearly have good intentions. Though he would prefer to be coddled by his friends than some rando.
“Heeseung,” he blurts, the first name that pops into his mind. “Y-yes, I’m alone,” he adds with a stutter, trying to remember what the question was. “Let me call Heeseung.”
He pulls his phone out from his left back pocket, after a moment of deliberation as he tried to remember where he’d placed it.
His fingers don’t cooperate, nor do his eyes, nor do the numbers on the screen. They swim around and blur together, one floating on top of the next. After the third try, his phone still rattles with a mini vibration as the password is declined.
“Hm,” he says. “That usually works.”
“Do you know their number?” the person asks, pulling out their own phone. “I can call them for you.”
“Sure,” Sunoo smiles lazily, his cheek falling against his own shoulder. He realizes that he feels relaxed, more relaxed than he’s felt in weeks. “That’s so nice of you.”
The digits glow behind his eyelids. He feels his lips moving, but doesn’t hear any sound coming out. Music thrums through his bones, migrating into his body via the floorboards.
Just a moment later, he hears someone call for him.
“Sunoo?”
Sunoo frowns, figuring that the helpful stranger is trying to ask him yet another question. But something feels strange.
“Hm?” he replies drowsily, his eyes fluttering open. “How do you know my name?”
“Sunoo.” Heeseung’s face swims before him, creased and worried.
What is he doing here? Had Sunoo called him? He must have called him. Hadn’t that just been a second ago?
“I’m aight,” he assures his materialized friend as eloquently as he can. “Just a little drunk.”
“How much did you drink?”
“What?”
Heeseung repeats the question, pressing his mouth close to his ear in order to be heard over the music and laughter.
“Five,” Sunoo gestures vaguely.
“Alright,” Heeseung says with a sigh. “I’m taking you home.”
“Home? Where’s home?”
“Your apartment.”
“I don’t want to go there,” he immediately protests. “S’ lonely.”
He’s been lonely all night; he came here alone to think, and grew even lonelier as the space filled in around him with people dancing and laughing, and in love or falling in love, or whatever their hearts were set on, and not at war with themselves about it.
“Where do you want to go then?”
Sunoo only has to think for a brief moment before deciding. “Yours.”
No sooner has the request left his mouth than he feels himself being hoisted up, his arms slung around Heeseung’s neck. He holds on tightly as the world disappears from beneath his feet.
Closing his eyes as they shuffle through the crowd, he tucks his elbows in to avoid bumping arms with bystanders, not opening them until cool air hits his face and he can hear the click of a door and the subsequent dimming of noise.
He rests his head against the back of Heeseung’s shoulder, looking upwards as they descend the front steps and turn into the sidewalk. Goosebumps raise on his bare arms, his short sleeved blouse doing nothing to protect him from the night’s chill.
But he doesn’t say anything, doesn’t complain. The house party had just been on the periphery of campus anyway, so the walk back shouldn’t exceed twenty minutes. Little by little, he can feel Heeseung’s warmth bleeding into him, and he presses into it greedily.
“Fireflies,” he mumbles happily. The pinpricks of light smear together into happy little swarms. If he extends his arm just the slightest, he might be able to touch them. But then he’d have to let go of Heeseung, which he would never do.
“Those are stars.” From his perch, Sunoo can see just the corner of Heeseung’s frown.
He makes a noise of complaint deep in his throat, something between a pleading whine and the sound of contempt. Stars. What’s the difference?
They’re both made of light. One is a light that can be followed, chased after. A light that dances and sways, a light that can be reached within a lifetime.
The other is eternities away, locked into place. Never moving, yet unattainable. It’s something that can never be touched, something silent and lonely. One is a light that burns with secrets.
The other is a light that speaks.
Sunoo is broken out of his musings as the shoulders beneath him shake slightly. Heeseung’s voice is breathless with amusement, like he’s holding back a laugh.
“Okay,” he agrees easily. “They’re fireflies.”
And this is what Sunoo loves about him. Not that he lies— that’s too blunt, too flat of a word for what it is. Heeseung tells him what he wants to hear, not out of deception, but out of an innocent desire.
Heeseung would rewrite objective truth, would unwind the laws of nature if it would bring a smile to his face. He doesn’t dwell on the small, meaningless things; the shallower shows of affection.
His love is on a grander scale, more big-picture than that. If people aren’t watching carefully they might miss it completely, too focused on the finer details.
But whether fireflies are stars, or stars are fireflies, Heeseung simply wants to give Sunoo the world, exactly as he wants it to be.
“I caught one once,” Sunoo says sleepily. “And then twice.”
“A firefly?”
He shakes his head, nuzzling his face into that spot where Heeseung’s hair starts to slightly curl at the base of his neck. He inhales deeply; for a moment, he feels so perfectly content that he wants to cry.
This is where he’s meant to be. This is where he’s meant to be moving toward.
“A true love,” he whispers. “An earth-shattering, fairytale love.”
***
It had been Sunghoon and Heeseung’s idea, and Sunoo who had needed convincing before he agreed. Now here they were, and all of his reservations had dissipated.
It wasn’t that they had never seen the stars before, but honestly, they might as well haven’t. The light pollution of the city made it so that the sky was only lightly dotted at night, like the speckles of an egg.
Now, through the unzipped roof of their tent, they could see the sky for what it truly was: an endless, roiling sea of light. The sight should have made them feel small, like little sprinkles of nothing in the grand scheme of the universe. Instead, they felt grander than they ever had.
It was already late, but the air was still balmy, a quilt of humidity draping over them. Sleeping bags had been foregone with no layers of separation between them and the rest of the world.
“Isn’t it nice,” Sunoo sighed, “being together like this?”
The loose threads in the blanket they were lying on had been itching his neck, and so he was now pillowed upon two interlocked arms. The two people he cared for most, one on each side.
“It’s always nice having a day off,” Sunghoon replied. “And you were the one who was so against camping.”
“I was against the lack of plumbing and the dirt and the bugs. Anyway, that’s not what I meant.” Sunoo pursed his lips, trying to search the constellations for ways to string his words together. “I mean like— like the three of us, being friends. Being a group.”
Heeseung looked at him in amusement. “Well it’s all thanks to you, isn’t it? You’re the one that brought us together.”
“Did I?” Sunoo asked innocently. Inwardly, he glowed with satisfaction. It was nice to be credited for something, even nicer when that thing was one of his greatest sources of happiness. He liked the idea of it— the knowledge that he was the common factor, the glue, the needle that pulled the thread.
“You know you did,” the boy laughed. “If it had been up to me to charm Sunghoon back then, he would have been lost to us forever.”
“I don’t know about that,” Sunghoon said playfully. “You’re not too bad yourself, Lee Heeseung. Though admittedly, it was Sunoo whose charm I couldn’t resist.”
Sunoo pretend swooned, pressing the back of his hand to his forehead. “What about me won you over? My smile? The stars in my eyes?”
Sunghoon snorted. “You wish,” he said. “It wasn’t any special quality of yours, I’ll tell you that.”
Sunoo pouted, looking slightly disappointed. “No?”
He felt one of the arms beneath him quiver slightly, heard the soft whispering of laughter sneaking past Heeseung’s pressed lips. On the other side: silence.
After some time had passed where the boy continued not to reply, Sunoo concluded that he was simply going to leave it at that.
He closed his eyes. Despite his insect-related protests, he gladly welcomed the soothing song of crickets, letting it wash over him. Layered over top, the quieter instruments of soft breathing. And weaving between the two melodies, echoing nowhere other than within his own skull, the thud of his heartbeat.
It was a symphony of the night, an orchestra of trees and tents and stars and sky. It was the music of things left unspoken; things hidden in the dark, waiting for the right dawn to shine through.
Over and over again, Sunoo played it out in his head, the harmony of yearning and trepidation.
So engrossed in the envelope of senses he had conjured up around himself, he almost missed it when Sunghoon finally spoke, his answer ringing all the way up to the galaxies to find its place amongst the stardust.
“Everything,” he muttered. “It was everything.”
***
Sunoo slumps onto the floor, exhausted from the long trip of being carried. He must have drifted off somewhere along the way, because he finds himself completely disoriented (even more so than he was before).
He knows it’s not his own floor he’s lying on, because his arm is slung across a hoodie which smells distinctly of Sunghoon’s cologne. He therefore concludes that he is in somebody else’s room based upon the following pieces of evidence:
1) He had asked Heeseung to bring him to their room instead, and Heeseung almost always complies with his wishes.
2) If there’s a hoodie that smells of Sunghoon, then the hoodie must belong to Sunghoon and therefore be resting upon Sunghoon’s floor. And anyway,
3) Sunoo never leaves his clothing lying around.
“Sunoo,” he hears a voice say bemusedly. His head snaps towards the source, a familiar face peering down at him from the top bunk.
“Sunghoon,” he exclaims in delight, his previous deductions fleeing his mind. “What are you doing here?”
“I live here.”
“So you do,” he says with a contented sigh. “Isn’t it nice being together like this? You two should come lie down with me.”
Muddled as he is, he still catches the look that passes between the two other boys.
“Sunoo,” Heeseung says. “Come up onto my bed instead, you can sleep there.”
“But how will Sunghoon fit?”
“Sunghoon will sleep soundly without two blanket bandits,” the person in question laughs.
Sunoo doesn’t know what face he’s making, but he must be making a face that persuades Sunghoon to climb the ladder down and Heeseung to settle himself on the rug next to him. There’s a great shuffling of limbs as the trio orient themselves in the most efficient use of their rather cramped space.
When everyone is more or less comfortable, Sunoo stares up at the ceiling, suddenly wishing they could be outside again. Maybe camping. The three of them should really go camping again.
He hears Sunghoon and Heeseung exchange words about the sequence of events leading up to the present, but doesn’t really process any of them, until:
“Sunoo… is everything okay?”
He doesn’t register who the question comes from, but he knows that both are wondering the same thing. He can hear the worry, the myriad of further questions simmering beneath the surface, just waiting to bubble over. Questions like:
Why were you drinking alone tonight?
Why have you been acting so rash lately?
To what end are you leading us both towards?
Exactly what has been going on, Kim Sunoo?
All at once, he’s far too sober. The safety net of inebriation falls away, leaving him bare and vulnerable. His throat closes up, but no tears come. He forces air in, then out.
They’re here now, all at once. No more running, no more dodging. He started the game, and played his moves, and now he’ll lay all his cards out on the table and wait for the outcome.
“You two,” Sunoo says slowly. “Have you figured it out yet?”
Figured what out? What are you talking about? There’s nothing to figure out.
These are the things he partially expects to hear.
Heeseung only sighs. “Yes,” he admits quietly. “I don’t know what to do about it.”
Sunghoon purses his lips in silent agreement. He can see them looking at each other, over him, through him, into him. Their hips are touching, chests rising in unison, three bodies lying in a row like strands of string waiting to be braided together.
The ball is in their court, and he thinks they know it too. He’s done everything he can, nudged them towards this final moment, the culmination of his blind scheming.
“Tell me something, Hee,” Sunoo breathes.
“I can’t.” There’s a crack, a voice splintering beneath the weight of the words it carries. “You already know everything.”
He turns. “Sunghoon?”
“You,” the boy replies hoarsely. “You tell us something.”
“Okay,” Sunoo inhales. Everything on the table. “Okay, then. I’m in love with you.”
He expects to feel lighter after the confession, but he doesn’t. He expects for something like magic to happen, for angels to start singing (metaphorically), for his fairytale moment to play out the way it would in a movie or a book.
It does, and it doesn’t.
He doesn’t feel lighter, because there’s never been anything to hide. There’s no magical moment, because it’s been a series of those all throughout. The truth unfolds, but it’s something they’ve known all along— an ending they’ve guessed, but have just been mustering up the courage to turn the final page to.
Heeseung doesn’t need to say anything. He’s never had to say anything for Sunoo to just understand. There’s a press of a hand against his palm, two links in a chain looping together.
“We love you too,” Sunghoon says quietly. “But you already knew that.”
His mind is suddenly, impossibly clear. He can see Heeseung and Sunghoon in their entirety— can see how they both see each other.
There’s a thumb on his cheek, brushing against his skin and when he turns there’s a mouth on his, warm and soft.
They’re complete. And it works.
“Yes,” he says, pulling away with a smile. “I know everything.”
***
There are an infinite amount of ways for a love story to begin.
One of these many beginnings could be a boy asking his best friend to show him what it’s like to be kissed for the first time.
Until very recently, Sunoo had thought that there were only two ways for that story to end. Either in separation, or in union; a conjoining of two parts.
But this story plays out in not two parts, but three:
1) A series of kisses.
2) A series of confessions.
3) Three boys, hiking up a mountain to camp for the night (despite the lack of plumbing and the dirt and the bugs).
“I’m curious,” Sunghoon begins, in that tone of voice which indicates that whatever he’s about to say will end in at least one eye roll. His words are directed at Heeseung. “When exactly did you fall for me? Was it the moment you first laid eyes on me or when I gave you the best kiss of your life?”
“Hey,” Sunoo protests in a lackluster voice (he’s prioritizing the climb up the steep trail over paying much attention to his boyfriends’ shenanigans).
“What do you mean ‘exactly?’” Heeseung scoffs. “There’s never a way to pinpoint that, and maybe I’m still falling, you jerk.” He makes a halfhearted attempt to swing the weight of his backpack against the other boy.
“For me it was your way with words,” Sunghoon answers his own question dreamily, easily dodging the attack. “You really know how to make a man’s heart flutter.”
“What about you?” Heeseung turns to Sunoo with a grin. “Aren’t you curious?”
Sunoo stops short, wiping his brow of sweat with a frown. “What, about that?” he asks in disbelief. “As if I don’t already know. How could anyone not fall for me?”
Sunghoon can’t hold back his shocked laugh. “Hard to argue with this one.”
It’s only after they get to the camp site, after they set up the tent, after darkness falls and Sunghoon is sound asleep, that Heeseung sets the question upon Sunoo.
“Why did you fall in love with me?” he whispers into the boy’s ear, his voice blazing with lighthearted curiosity. “Was it the stars in my eyes?”
Sunoo turns, away from the sky, away from the unreachable, and reaches for what he knows. The light that’s always hovered beside him; the light that leaps and flickers but always stays; the light that flashes from a window at 2 a.m. saying— come here, I’m here.
“No,” Sunoo says, surrounded by his happy endings. “It was the fireflies.”