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sunwoo walks in with his heart on a string, on his sleeve, in his throat, whatever metaphor you want to use. it doesn’t matter because the placement of sunwoo’s heart is irrelevant to the story. sunwoo walks in with his heart wherever it may be. there is one thing of note to take from this: sunwoo walks in with his heart intact.
he’s always been gentle, and he’s never been particularly good at hiding that, but he knows his limits. he doesn’t let himself get hurt if he can help it. he collects details and memories and he puts them down when they get too heavy. sunwoo loves delicately. half-heartedly, tentatively. and that’s how it’s always been.
he’s been loved before. in quiet gaps within all else, pressed between whispers and shadowed corridors and liminal spaces that sunwoo never meant to find in the first place. he’s been kissed underneath peach trees and held under cotton blankets and other instances of love, love, and so on that do not matter here. there are two things of note to take from this: sunwoo has loved. sunwoo has been loved.
it’s typical to say jacob bae is any different. that doesn’t make it any less true.
sunwoo has spent countless nights attempting to come up with a cliche fitting enough to describe meeting jacob for the first time. deer in headlights, struck by lightning, stunned to silence. none of it fit. nothing quite described jacob bae, the boy whose voice sounded like plucked ukulele strings and whose hands felt like the petals in sunwoo’s mother’s rose garden and whose laughter left sunwoo’s throat dry. none of it fit, but none of it should have mattered. it shouldn’t have been different.
that doesn’t make it any less true.
--
jacob describes their first meeting as a ‘meek-mannered’ one, with both parties being slightly too shy to say anything of substance. jacob is still reeling from moving across the world for a dream he thought impossible, and sunwoo is still reeling from jacob, who looks like he should not be standing before him as ordinarily as he is.
jacob bae, in a grey sweater with loose threads poking out the ends and a pair of ill-fitting jeans that he is nervously tapping his fingers against. jacob, with eyebrows slightly furrowed together and his light brown hair falling into his eyes and his tongue darting out to lick his lips every few minutes, always on the verge of saying something.
in all of the worlds that sunwoo has tried to prepare himself for, one where he and jacob bae stood together, both trying desperately to think of something to say, has never been one of them.
they talk eventually. of course they do. and sunwoo waits for the feelings to subside, for his brain to finally take control again and return sunwoo’s life to normal. he waits for something to click and he can remember that no, of course he doesn’t like boys, and no, of course he wouldn’t be foolish enough to fall for one of his bandmates.
and he waits. and he waits. and he leans into jacob and lets the warm way he feels engulf sunwoo before he can even fully register it, and he fills the cracks in his armour that have thusfar gone unnoticed with jacob’s arms that wrap around him, and he threads himself into jacob’s life almost selfishly, tugging on his sleeve to beg for the endless love and patience that jacob will always have for him. every time, without fail.
and it’s in that realization - that no matter how loud, mean, angry or needy sunwoo may be, jacob will continue to love him all the same - that made sunwoo understand just how foolish he truly was.
--
boys don’t like boys, and boys like jacob don’t like boys that like boys, not in the same way that boys like him. sunwoo knows this. he knows this.
he knows the way he feels isn’t normal, that boys don’t feel like this. boys don’t look at other boys like this, and boys don’t feel themselves falling every time another boy touches their arm or brushes their hair out of their face or laughs so hard that he leans into their shoulder. boys aren’t sinking to the bottom of the sea, their lungs too flooded with water to let a confession pass through their blue lips, every time another boy tells them they love him in the most casual of manners. boys don’t do this.
and sunwoo has loved before, has felt his eardrums burst in empty spaces filled with no noise and had secrets slipped between his fingers and on to his lips and have found things he was never meant to find. he knows what it feels like.
but it’s this feeling of blood pulsing in your ears - the rush to the head that makes you dizzy before you even get a chance to stand - that confuses him so. it’s the kisses under peach trees that turn into kisses under pear trees that turn into standing under a cherry blossom tree and waiting for an answer that’ll never come. it’s the cotton blankets you hide under during thunderstorms that turn to fleece blankets like the one your mother tucked you under during winter months to wool blankets that scratch your cheeks when you pull them up over your head.
it’s the love, love, so on, so on. it’s fearful. it’s biting. it’s nothing like this; it’s nothing different.
there are three things of note to take from this: sunwoo has loved. sunwoo has been loved. neither has come close to feeling like this.
--
sunwoo knows jacob’s never going to feel the same way. sunwoo knows that his feelings are a noose around his neck that tightens with each passing day and his words are going to keep cutting on the inside of his throat like seaglass he used to collect because he was too scared to go into the water. he knows that he is three steps away from tipping off the edge of a cliffside to make jacob notice him. sunwoo knows this. he knows this.
but jacob wakes him up in the middle of the night after they all have a horror movie marathon and asks if sunwoo would mind staying up with him for a little bit, saying he can’t sleep and he doesn’t want to be awake alone and kevin is a heavy sleeper, and sunwoo finds himself closing the gap between himself and the cliffside.
jacob pours himself a glass of milk and a bowl of cereal and sits across from sunwoo at the kitchen table, chewing slowly, diligently. he does not notice the way sunwoo’s eyes are focused on how his eyelashes flutter gently and cast long dancing shadows against cheek. he does not notice the way sunwoo’s hands shake under the table. he does not notice the way that sunwoo is frozen, barely taking a breath, as if he was an unwanted guest and moving would alert jacob to his presence.
they sit like that in silence for some time before jacob looks up, and sunwoo feels caught all of a sudden. and he waits for jacob to ask why he’s staring, to tell sunwoo to leave, that this was a mistake and he should have known better than to invite some freak to watch him eat in the middle of the night.
but he just smiles warmly and says, “thanks, by the way. you’re a really good friend to me.”
and sunwoo supposes that’s better.
--
sunwoo feels their pity, feels it coming off of the others like body heat. the gentle way haknyeon rubs his back in small circles when they finish interviews. the quick looks chanhee throws at him that are almost quizzical in nature when he thinks sunwoo isn’t looking. the conversations kevin and changmin have in eye contact alone, asking if they should stop him and ultimately resigning to humouring him instead.
they worry about him. that’s one of the whispers sunwoo catches when he pretends to be asleep. they’re just worried about him, they don’t want him to get hurt. he’s so young, they say, and he’s lucky for now that jacob doesn’t know, but it’s not something that’s feasible enough to go on forever. they just want him to be okay.
sunwoo knows he’s obvious. he knows the way he pulls and prods and begs for jacob’s affection, the way he compliments him unabashedly and the way he clings to him, fingers curling around him, gentle and determined, his arm a life raft that will burst if held on to too tightly - he knows it shows.
he knows how he is, and he’s never been particularly good at hiding it, but he knows his limits, and he knows he has none. he collects details and memories and carries them dutifully for as long as they will let him. sunwoo loves jacob abrasively, conspiculously, pointedly, and that’s how it’s always been.
there is one thing of note to take from this: sunwoo loves jacob.
--
“i’m not, you know” sunwoo says, and even as he says it he can hear his voice tremble from underneath him.
“i know,” haknyeon says, rehearsed, too quickly. he’s lying next to sunwoo, his heads propped up on prayer hands pressed against his ear. even in the dim light, sunwoo can see the way haknyeon’s eyes scan his. “i know,” he tries again. and then: “but it’s okay if you are.”
sunwoo swallows in an attempt to regain the stability in his tone before he speaks again. “you don’t have to lie to me,” sunwoo says, and the tremor is gone, but somehow that makes him sound even more afraid. “i know people don’t care about people that...people like that. i know that if this got out, bad things would happen. i know they’d make me leave the group. i know they’d do worse than that.” sunwoo falters, unsure what else there to say.
“sunwoo-ah—”
“you don’t have to lie,” sunwoo says again. his voice is barely above a whisper.
“we would never...we would never think less of you.” every syllable tumbles out of haknyeon mouth in slow motion, emphasis placed on every word as if it were the start of a new sentence. he looks like he wants to say something else. sunwoo cuts him off before he gets the chance to start.
“it doesn’t matter,” he says, trying hard to keep his voice steady. “he doesn’t like me anyway.”
the air hangs between them, heavy, dark. haknyeon open and closes his mouth a few times, but resorts to inching forward and wordlessly wrapping his arms around sunwoo, embracing him as best as he can, rubbing his back in small circles. sunwoo fights the urge to cry into haknyeon’s shoulder, hot tears pooling in his eyes.
--
it’s gotten easier since then. haknyeon holds sunwoo’s hand when his gaze lingers too long and he kisses sunwoo’s temple when he looks like he’s about to cry and it’s shameful and scary and vulnerable to have someone know - but it’s better, too. objectively, it’s better.
and then days pass and weeks pass and showcases and fansigns go by in a flurry and jacob becomes a mere ache, pulling on heart strings in between dance practices and sleepless nights, and sunwoo thinks this might be the end.
but then they’re finishing up promotions and they’re having more and more off days and jacob comes back from an ice skating session with sangyeon, cheeks and lips blushed pink, and sunwoo looks up from his screen and stares at him for a touch too long. jacob seems to take this as an invitation, approaching sunwoo’s bed and lying down delicately as he angles the laptop so that they can both see.
and then they’re watching some drama that sunwoo had already forgotten the name of, getting more and more entangled in limbs as they both struggle to make themselves comfortable, and jacob’s hands drum against sunwoo’s thighs as he defrosts, jittery and looking for nervous energy to expel. the episode finishes, and jacob turns to him.
“what do you want to watch next?”
and sunwoo stops, his lips slightly parted, jacob’s eyes wide and bright and staring at him, and it was happening all over again. deer in headlights, struck by lightning, stunned to silence. it was happening all over again, and this time the words unlodged themselves from his throat before he could stop them.
“i love you.”
jacob blinks slow, his brown eyes wide and warm and darting across sunwoo’s face gently. it is from this look that his face melts into a bright one, beaming with contentment, and he wraps his arms around sunwoo’s middle in a half-formed hug.
“aw, sunwoo, I love you, too,” jacob says, resting his head on sunwoo’s chest before turning his attention back to the screen
and sunwoo wants to stop him, wants to say wait, no, that wasn’t what i meant - but jacob is lying on his chest with his arms around sunwoo’s waist, and sunwoo can’t expect himself to say anything else.
--
there are three things of note to take from this: sunwoo loves jacob. sunwoo loves jacob. sunwoo loves jacob.