Chapter Text
San Choi comes into Jongho’s life like a firework. He’s honest, wants nothing more than to show people all the sides of himself, a little weird, sits in odd corners and bounces between extremes like a child, and he lights up the whole world. He’s a storm of high pitched laughter and self doubt, constantly flying with the wind to the next great destination, and somehow Jongho was lucky enough to get snagged on his sleeve and pulled along for the ride. Somehow, Jongho gets pulled along long enough to get to know him.
San, Jongho discovers, once the lights and noise have fizzled out, is much more like the ocean than a firework. He exists in a constant state of push and pull, hiding layers and layers of unknown beneath his sparkling surface, but it only makes him more beautiful because he’s so full of life, has so much to give, has so many parts to discover and love. On most days he’s mellow and forgiving, but terrifying when angry, fearsome in his determination. He’s freedom and humid nights, warm hugs and over energetic dance moves, he’s a guiding hand that doesn’t even realize it’s leading you somewhere. And, like the ocean, he has to be cared for so, without asking, Jongho slides himself into that little space in San’s life and does everything he can do to keep San glittering.
San could probably come up with a better comparison. Because he’s a writer. Because he’s cool like that.
On second thought, scratch the whole ocean metaphor. It’s terrible. The point is that San is beautiful. The point is that Jongho was content with just sometimes being the center of San’s day. The point is that Jongho spends a whole four months losing himself in San’s sunshine smiles and making him laugh and taking up as much of San’s time as he can until suddenly San has no time to give.
“You’re not with San today?” Yeosang asks, sliding into the chair next to him. It’s a friday so, besides the librarians, they’re the only one in the library.
Jongho shakes his head no. “He said he had something to do. I don’t know.”
Yeosang hums and lays his head on Jongho’s shoulder. Jongho shifts so that he can keep working without disrupting him. They settle into a comfortable silence, the heating and the scratching of Jongho’s pencil filling the space with gentle white noise. Yeosang chimes in every few minutes to correct Jongho’s calculations, his voice low and gravely, hardly there. It’s easy. Yeosang has always been easy.
San is easy too, but it’s different. Where Yeosang is a steady rhythm of quiet study sessions and smearing melted ice cream on each other’s cheeks, San pulls him along on endless sprints of roadside dance parties and too long vocal lessons before finally stopping to catch his breath with wordless trips to the grocery store and days shut up at home. And then there’s the feelings. No matter how easy it is to get swept up in San’s friendship, the little nagging voice in the back of his mind will never let Jongho forget how gone he is for the boy. Jongho wonders, briefly, if in some parallel universe he and Yeosang end up being something like highschool sweethearts.
Yeosang must be thinking something similar because he sighs and shifts off Jongho’s shoulder in favor of flopping onto the table.
“How’s Wooyoung?” Jongho asks, even though he already knows the answer.
“He’s still avoiding me,” Yeosang says into the wood.
“I’m sorry.”
“Thanks, I guess.”
Jongho’s not really sure what to say next, so he looks down at his worksheet and tells himself he’s working on the next problem even though his mind is full of fuzz. He’s never been good at comforting people.
Eventually, Yeosang says, “I just don’t understand.”
Jongho looks up. Yeosang is still laid out on the table, his face buried in his arms. “Understand what?”
Yeosang takes a while to respond, but eventually replies, “Why won’t he tell me what’s wrong? Or what I did? He just- who breaks up with someone over text? He couldn’t even call? What kind of asshole does that?” His voice cracks at the end, straining to keep steady. Jongho doesn’t have an answer for that. Instead he threads a hand through Yeosang’s hair, traces gentle circles behind his ear with his thumb, and pretends he can’t hear Yeosang crying.
After a few minutes, Yeosang pulls himself back up, wiping away the remnants of his tears. “Sorry,” he says quietly. Jongho just digs around in his pockets until he comes up with a pack of tissues that he hands to a grateful Yeosang.
“It’s fine,” he says.
“It’s really not,” Yeosang says, dabbing the corners of his eyes, which are somehow not red or puffy at all. “You signed up for a math tutor, not to be a relationship counselor.”
“I thought we were friends,” Jongho pouts.
Yeosang laughs, his voice still a little hoarse and watery. “I guess we are.”
Jongho leans back with exaggerated satisfaction. “Exactly. Which means it’s my duty to watch you Not Cry and punch Wooyoung if I ever see him.” Then, because he thinks it might make Yeosang laugh for real-”Besides, if it doesn’t work out you can always date me.”
Yeosang raises an eyebrow at that. “Did you hit your head?” he asks, sounding genuinely concerned.
Jongho squawks in indignation. “Stop sounding so insulted! You’ve never thought about it?”
“No.”
“Fair.” He’d rather think about kissing San, anyway.
Jongho starts to wonder if there’s something he did to make San avoid him.
The fourth time San rejects Jongho’s request for help with a song he doesn’t actually need, Jongho’s finally had enough. “I’m sorry,” he calls as San is walking away.
San turns to him, eyes narrowed in confusion. “For what?” Wrapped in his puffiest winter jacket, San looks a little like a marshmallow in jeans. His black hair is mussed from running his hands through it too many times, eyelids a little droopy from too many hours of sitting. It’s all so mundane it puts Jongho at ease.
“I don’t know,” he admits. “Just. I’m sorry for whatever I did to make you think you have to stay away from me.”
San’s lips part but he doesn’t say anything, just stares at Jongho with an indecipherable wide eyed expression. Jongho has to look away. He stuffs his hands in his pockets, rubs his fingers over the broken pencil he left there two weeks ago. The lull of normalcy starts to wear away. As the seconds tick by like minutes and San still doesn’t speak, Jongho stops being able to pretend this is just another argument about Jongho taking San’s rants too seriously or San not taking himself seriously enough. “It doesn’t mean anything if I don’t know what I’m apologizing for, I know, but-”
“You didn’t do anything,” San interrupts.
“Then-”
San presses his mouth into a thin line. He schools his expression into one of indifference. “Can we talk about this not in the hallway?” As he speaks his eyebrows lift pleadingly. When Jongho nods, San sighs a tiny breath of relief. San had never been very good at hiding his emotions.
Jongho follows silently as San retrieves his backpack, then follows him to a bench near the edge of campus. Somewhere in the distance, the track team is yelling about one more lap. Jongho wiggles his feet in the snow, making little snow butterflies while he waits for San to talk.
When he finally does, he says, “I think I need space.”
Jongho’s mind grinds to a halt. San isn’t looking at him, but the words sound even and rehearsed. “You need space? From me?”
San nods, pressing his lips together so hard they turn white.
“Why?”
“Can I tell you something?” San glances up at him and he looks scared. Jongho has to resist the urge to reach out and comfort him. He grips the bench, fingers going numb from the cold. He should probably say something, hopes he’ll say something, nod at least, tell San that he can tell him anything, anything at all, and Jongho will help him work through it. He doesn’t know if he moves at all, but eventually the corners of San’s mouth twitch up into a cruel smile and San says, “I like you.”
What?
“A lot.” San leans back, looking a little crazed, a lot lost. “Oh my god,” he whines. “There has to be a way to explain this without sounding like a third grader. Like, I wanna date you? And hold your hand? And-”
And Jongho laughs. He buries his face in his hands and laughs a full bodied uncontrolled laughter because he feels like he’s living the plot of a chick lit coming of age book and there’s no way this is actually happening.
“Are you laughing at me?”
Jongho shakes his head. “No. Maybe? I’m not sure.” There’s no way this is his real life. “This is all just so goddamn”-he lifts his head-”ridiculous.” And suddenly he’s an inch and a half away from San’s face and wow this really is something right out of a movie.
San’s eyes are fucking sparkling.
Jongho’s never been fond of skinship, reserves it for people he can’t think of any other way to help. He used to imagine that one day, when he had a girlfriend, he might hold her hand or let her lean into his chest while they watched movies. When he realized he liked boys too, those possibilities expanded to maybe straightening his boyfriend’s hair, maybe hooking his chin over their shoulder from behind. But it had never felt real to him. It felt like he was playing out a script in his mind - Things You’re Supposed to Do When You’re a Boyfriend. Now, though, his body moves without him telling it to, carefully wrapping his arms around San and pulling him closer until he can feel his warmth through the layers of winter clothes.
“I’m not giving you space,” he says. “I’m never giving you space.” And oh, the sparkling in San’s eyes must have been tears because he can feel where they’re falling on exposed skin above his collar. Jongho pulls San even closer, buries his face in the crook of his neck, whispers, “I’m never giving you space because I’m taking you on a date. We can- I don’t know where I want to take you yet but I’ll figure it out but I promise you’ll love it and I’ll take you on so many more and I’ll never make you cry again, I promise, and I’ll work so hard to make you so happy so you never have to feel lonely. And when it gets warmer we can go to the beach like you’ve always wanted to-” and fuck, because Jongho thinks now he might be crying, too.
Before he can completely break down, Jongho pulls away. He cups San’s cheeks in his hands, wipes away his tears with his thumbs, lets his hand fall down to San’s shoulders, rubbing them through his marshmallow coat.
“San, will you be my boyfriend?”
To be honest, neither of them really knows what they’re doing. Neither of them have dated anyone before (dating in middle school doesn’t count). It works out, though, because since neither of them have any expectations they can do whatever they want. A week after San’s confession, Jongho invites him over to his house and calls it a date. He kicks his parents out of the house, cooks dinner, plays guitar while San sings along. It’s nothing they didn’t do when they were friends, there’s just more kissing (and god does Jongho like kissing San. They haven’t gone further than lingering brushes of lips but every time they kiss something warm settles in Jongho’s chest and he feels like he could live with his mouth against San’s). Two days later, San tackles him during lunch and demands a turn at date hosting. They fill a box with overpriced macarons for San’s mother and spend an hour touring music stores, testing every piano. The next week, San emails him the story of their date.
The promises Jongho made on that first day are bogus. They both know it. It’s impossible to be happy all the time. They fight - about the days San still needs to shut himself in his room alone and how Jongho seems to have a single romantic bone in his whole body. Jongho twists his ankle, San loses his voice, they both still don’t know what they’re going to do when San graduates and Jongho is still stuck in Hamilton. Life happens and they fuck up, but Jongho thinks that, as long as San is there to hide his crutches on high shelves and draw trees on his cast, any amount of injury could be okay.
Sometime in early March, when Jongho has kicked his parents out of the house for probably the fiftieth time, San asks him a question he expected San to ask a long time ago.
“I don’t know,” he replies, lazily twisting the drawstrings on San’s sweatshirt around his finger. They’re sprawled out on the couch, San lying in Jongho’s lap with his sweatshirt bunched up so Jongho can see the smallest sliver of stomach. A few weeks into their relationship, Jongho realized that underneath all the oversized sweaters and button downs San was hiding an insanely toned body. Even with all his strength, Jongho couldn’t help but be a little jealous. He’d asked why San didn’t show it off more, to which San had just shrugged and said he likes feeling huggable. Not long after, though, San started adding more fitted outfits to his wardrobe, accentuating his small waist, his broad chest, the shape of his arms. Jongho wonders if he’s trying to tell him something.
“I think it’s hard to say when you start liking someone,” Jongho says. “But for a long time. I probably liked you the whole time.”
San jerks up and slaps him on the chest. “The whole time? And you just sat there and let me cry?”
“I’m sorry, I-”
“That’s not what I meant!” San huffs and flops back against Jongho, crossing his arms. “I guess maybe it’s not that big of a deal, but before we started dating you were probably hurting too. I never did anything to make you feel better.”
Jongho laughs. Sometimes when San is thinking too hard he starts talking with a pout and it’s one of the cutest things Jongho has ever seen in his life. “It’s fine,” Jongho says. He tucks some of San’s hair behind his ear. It’s getting long, probably long enough that Jongho could french braid the sides. He carefully measures out three bunches of hair. “Honestly, it was quieter for me. I think I just enjoyed being around you too much to worry.”
San worries at his lip. “Are you sure?”
Jongho abandons the braid and leans down to press a soft kiss to San’s forehead. “I’m sure.”
San shifts so that he’s sitting in Jongho’s lap. It’s a little awkward, painful when San accidentally pinches Jongho’s leg between his elbow and the couch, but once he gets there he leans in and whispers, “Kiss me properly?”
And what can Jongho say to that but yes?