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“Why do they make it top shelf?” Yechan whines from no more than a pint high on the ground. With a sigh, he reaches for the ladder perched at the end of the beer aisle at some family-owned grocery store a couple of blocks from where Sangyeop and Gwangil room together. Sangyeop says that this place carries the best liquor in the world. Wonsang, who is browsing Christmas cookies in the bakery aisle, can’t be bothered to help Yechan test that theory.
The shelf is high and the ladder is uncooperative, wobbling like it has stilts for legs and tree branches for steps even with the non-burden that is Yechan’s weight. As a muffled 1950s version of “Let It Snow” narrates the white noise in the parts of his brain that aren’t saying fuck fuck fuck fuck , Yechan tiptoes up from his timid spot in the middle of the ladder in a quiet, calculated, courageous move for the bottle. He strains, not quite there yet, kicking his fingers off from his palms in a grabby motion toward the expensive-ass prize that damn Yeop swears is ambrosia in a tacky glass bottle, but Yechan doesn’t even like wine that much, so why bother, dammit? Sangyeop can come and get his wine himself, right? For sure. Sangyeop can eat his own ass.
Fate, however, decided this sooner than Yechan did, and he wobbles for just a second before plummeting to his —
— death?
And then he blinks a couple of times, blinded by the raging fluorescent light that assumes one of the rectangular ceiling tiles directly in his line of sight, because this is not what he was expecting on the other side of his fall. A tilt of his head to the right reveals an unimpressed Wonsang, whose lips are bunched up parallel to his eyebrows as he reads the label on a box of cookies he’s holding with one hand. The other, Yechan realizes, is being used to encircle his waist.
“Ahem,” he says without actually clearing his throat, jumping out of Wonsang’s electric grasp and hoping the blush that he felt flicker across his face isn’t sticking around the way the heat is. “Uh, thank you.”
“No problem,” Wonsang answers airily, dismissively. His eyes are trained on the box. “It says these are sugar-free. Do you want to try sugar-free? I’m not so sure, but if we’re drinking tonight, I don’t want more sugar than necessary.”
Yechan, patting his hair down because he’s pretty sure he has stray antennae, stares at the genuine immersion etched on Wonsang’s narrow eyes and inquisitive lips, and he can’t believe he was ever in a flustered frenzy over this bright-eyed, six-foot toddler. Granted, this toddler eats like an old man and has big, warm hands that span the length of his itty bitty torso, but that’s not something he wants to think too hard about right now.
“Might as well get the ones with sugar. I’m not buying wine for Yeop,” he says decisively, crossing his arms with a huff.
Wonsang looks up. “I can grab the bottle, if you want.”
“Nah. Nothing alcoholic is worth falling for.”
To this, Wonsang taps his chin.
“What is worth falling for?”
“We can ponder these questions later. Let’s go.”
Yechan drags him by the (hot, calloused) hand to the counter, where he checks out the delightfully sugary cookies he swapped for the ones he considered earlier, and they jet from the store because they don’t want to linger for too long in the cold. As soon as Yechan pushes the door open, he’s slapped in the face by a gust of the blue forecast, his face and hands itching for warmth. He turns his head to look at Wonsang, who would be the perfect candidate for hand-holding or face-cradling, and has to hold back a sigh whenever the response he gets is a raise of the eyebrows. Clueless.
The day is dark. It’s only mid-afternoon, an hour before they said they’d show up at Gwangil’s and Sangyeop’s place, but the gloom outside makes it look like evening threatens an early visit. They run to the car on careful tiptoes because melted snow litters the wide streets, and Yechan doesn’t want to push his luck with a second fall. This is probably the least romantic snapshot of his winter thus far, he thinks, but he doesn’t really mind; he was never sentimental. It’s not the weather’s job to please him.
There’s a jiggle outside that alarms him after he slips in. Wonsang is on the driver’s side of the car, locked out in the bitter cold with his beady eyes dead as ever and his neighbor zoned out in the passenger seat. Yechan lets out a groan at Wonsang’s stupidity and taps the unlock button, effectively rescuing the big boy from frostbite.
“Woof,” he begins (a quirk Yechan doesn’t understand but finds unusually endearing nonetheless), throwing the grocery bag in the backseat. “A little cold out there.”
Watching him unzip his jacket and place his hand on the back of his seat to look around and back out, Yechan can’t help but wonder how he got himself here in spite of his people-pleasing disposition. One week before Christmas with zero shopping done. Bailing on wine for Sangyeop. Hopelessly in love with a guy who doesn’t give a shit. None of it makes sense.
All of yesterday’s snow has long been melted in his heart, overcast with the same grey that paints the sky today. His row house feels more stuffy than usual these days, and the cat’s been acting more like a bear than usual. Winter blues are an easy scapegoat for the light that refuses to shine on him, sure, but there’s an obvious sickness at play here that gets harder and harder to run from as each day of their two-year relationship passes: Christmas just reminds him that he doesn’t have Wonsang.
“So, you didn’t get anything for Yeop,” the object of his cold-ridden, lovelorn desire remarks, driving his tongue across his top lip while he focuses on the road.
Yechan nods, laboredly, like he’s tired of saying yes to things. He pushes his head back against his seat and looks up to the ceiling at nothing in particular. “Correct.”
Red light.
“That’s good.” The driver’s head rolls over to Yechan, his lower lip jutted out. He hums something that sounds like approval in that sweet, warm register of his that Yechan always adored. “You do too much for that bastard.”
A few dry chuckles pass between them before Yechan slumps in resignation, knowing the short drive from the grocery store to home is abridged given that there’s no traffic at such an awkward time of day. Still, time moves just as slowly as the drive is fast, and the snow melts their trip away.
The car stills when they get there. They’re in front of their two row houses, perched neatly on top of each other, but they remain locked in their seats wordlessly. Yechan notices the way rain pokes at the clouds’ bladders up above; he can tell because they’ve darkened to a metallic blue-grey. There’s a weird beauty in the blue.
Wonsang’s chair automatically relaxes when they park, but he’s surprised by the sinking every time it happens. He pushes down lightly on the seatbelt buckle as if to try to quietly unbuckle, only the strap goes flying on its axis across his body with a royal slam against the side of the car. They both pretend not to notice.
“I don’t feel like seeing Yeop and Gwangil tonight,” Yechan tells his neighbor, his voice small, like it will fall through the cracks if it moves any further.
Wonsang juts his bottom lip out again. Signature approval face. Yechan wonders if he loves it so much because it belongs to Wonsang or if he loves the feeling of not being rejected. Maybe it’s a little bit of both.
“Me neither, really,” he agrees as if to extend a longer statement, nodding slowly. It’s on the tip of his tongue, but hesitation settles in his face as he subconsciously begins to wring his hands together. Yechan is close to urging him on until he clears his throat.
“Do you want to have the cookies with me instead?”
He refuses to direct the question at Yechan, opting to keep his eyes on the nothing in front of him. His lips work into a frown as he looks out the window at the at all the car tires dribbling past each other. They eclipse some of the Christmas lights across the street, and it’s the tiniest bit satisfying. Fuck you, Christmas. Fuck you and cuffing season and sadness. Fuck snow and hot chocolate and red and green.
He turns his head back toward the big kid sitting next to him, somewhat decisively.
“Do you want me to have the cookies with you?” he asks like he’s tired. It’s tedious, having to try to look past pleasantries and politeness in peoples’ code, because although Wonsang is a friend, his feelings are a stranger. Nothing feels more distant than obligatory invitations.
Wonsang just bites his lip and stares ahead. This is where he lets Yechan down gently and they just forget it and Yechan spends this day a week before Christmas alone in front of the fireplace while his cat marinates in the heat. This is where he’s reminded of what he can’t have, this is where he returns to his perpetual state of—
“I mean, I was hoping you did, yeah.”
And then, with pink dusting the apples of Yechan’s cheeks, they climb out of the car at the speed of old men on walkers, because that’s the rate at which life moves anyway. A moment at Wonsang’s cobalt blue door between the passage of his keys from Yechan’s hands to his is unreasonably teenagery, with some fumbling around at the accidental hand contact, but they both recover quickly so as not to have to discuss it.
Wandering along behind Wonsang, Yechan knows the layout of this house like his own, but today feels different. Maybe it was the tense air in the car, but he’s beginning to regret this when he sees his neighbor stop right in front of his island with his back facing him. A weird, unnecessarily pregnant pause ensues, doing nothing to dispel the weather thick with not one, but two types of gloom, and Wonsang scratches his head without turning around.
“I, uh, forgot the cookies in the car.”
And then he does turn around, but apparently his height doesn’t warrant a clear line of sight, because he smacks right into poor Yechan with one step forward. He comes in contact with a chest wider than his head and knows for a fact that if the hit were not as abrasive as it was, he would not be able to stop himself from clinging to the gloriously big man in front of him.
There’s a hiccup. Neither of them moves.
“S-sorry.”
“No, it’s okay.”
“I am just a, a ridiculous...piece of person, aren’t I?”
Still no movement, not even a stutter. The only thing between them is their craning necks, one up and one down, and Yechan isn’t sure what would happen if their heights were more equal. The air grows thicker. It’s suffocating, like smoke, and his worn-down lungs feel milked of what little might they have left with each second that ticks by. It’s hot, even though the shitty heating system here doesn’t do the weather justice. It’s unbearable.
Yechan tugs the ridiculous piece of person in front of him down by the collar, his little fingers desperate, so that he’s eye-level with him. The boy is visibly shocked, eyes bugging out of their sockets, but he tries not to think about that before he ruins his bold streak. “Please kiss me, Wonsang,” he whispers, pleading extra with his own pair of wide eyes. “Please.”
The man in front of him has flushed a color redder than Yechan’s Christmas tree skirt, and contriteness consumes his chest at the thought of a potential misreading until Wonsang presses a peck to his lips. It’s over in an instant, but Yechan is so taken aback, it takes several blinks to register that there was even any contact.
Wonsang remains at the whim of his fingers, curled tightly around his sweater, that he could choose to evade simply by standing up. He doesn’t, though. He remains just as wide-eyes as the boy still trying to recover from whatever just happened, hanging at nearly a ninety-degree angle with his lanky arms swinging beneath him at the pace of his shallow breaths.
“Was that okay?” he asks, eyebrows furrowing.
Yechan narrows his eyes. They’re drawn to the wisp of fading blue hair resting on Wonsang’s forehead, to the pores on his nose dotted by blackheads, to the uncertainty throwing a fit in his delicate eyes, down to his pink lips painted sweetly on his face and to the lines in his cheeks and the curve of his chin. And then instead of his physical features, he starts to see the things that make him Wonsang; the way the lines in his cheeks crease when he smiles, the stupid thing his eyes do in one of his frequent bouts of confusion, the lips that pout with his approval.
“Only if you wanted to do it,” he sighs against him, refusing to meet his eyes until after he answers.
He can feel Wonsang stay on him, searching for something in his eyes. Anything. And since he knows exactly where Yechan stands on his feelings about him now but he doesn’t know how Wonsang feels, his jitters are through the roof, and he silently begins to question his existence and this situation and everything until he’s cut off by the quiet sound of this giant man’s voice, a rasp.
“Did you want me to do it?”
Yechan feels his eyes glaze over and his face crumble off. He’s not sure how he actually reacts, but he imagines the exhaustion he’s undergone for the past two years rising to the surface and making his papery cheeks droop. This, he realizes, is ridiculous. Because established longtime friendship, physical proximity, a literal fucking kiss and all, they’re still playing emotional cat and mouse.
Dragging his eyes back up to meet Wonsang’s, he lets out a long, drawn-out sigh right against his lips. The other boy swipes his tongue against them with the same quiet panic distributed across his eyes as before, and Yechan can’t believe he has to spell this out again, any more than he already has.
Another deep breath. He owns Wonsang’s eyes now, claiming them with a confident amount of certainty that makes up for everything both of them lack, and puffs his chest out. “I want you to fucking kiss me,” he asserts, his voice reaching a strident single level above a whisper. And Wonsang finally takes the hint.
Their lips meet again, softly this time, devoid of any adolescent earnest but rather completely full of recognition . They’re somewhere between the unfamiliarity of a handshake and the warmth of a reuniting embrace. Wonsang finally rises from his awkward position, albeit a little more awkward on the way up because Yechan has to chase him, but he gets there, and it’s okay because Yechan feels his dainty pink lips turn upward against him before he pulls away for air.
He’s not sure what his face looks like, but he hopes it’s half as beautiful as Wonsang’s. For the first time, he looks comfortable. There’s only peace and — what’s that? — what looks unmistakably like fondness balancing out the roughness of his face, and it makes Yechan nervous. The bigger boy wraps his hands around him and pulls him in for another kiss, so Yechan fists the chest of his sweater while he stands on his toes to give himself some edge.
It’s not soft like a first meeting anymore. It’s slow, loud, and languid (the side on the slow spectrum opposite of old men on walkers), with frequent staccatos for breaks and more time to focus on the way Wonsang’s lips feel like velvet as they melt into Yechan’s. Space doesn’t exist between them, but it feels like too much of it does, so to compensate for every hair of separation, Wonsang pulls the littler man closer to him and Yechan’s hands slither up to the nape of his new lover’s neck to guide him further down. This is what two years have culminated in: unspoken, unbridled, maturely handled hunger.
Something bubbles in Yechan’s tummy. Wonsang comes in a new color now, knowing what he now knows about him, like how he apparently likes him back and the way he kisses him and how he likes to hold onto his waist. He can tell because even when they’re interrupted by a buzzing phone vibrating between them in Wonsang’s front pocket and the big man presses it to his ear quickly to a confused and waiting Gwangil, his arms never slide away from Yechan. The little man just stands there, able to admire from a safe distance while his red-lipped beau is faraway in a phone conversation in which he has to lie to one of his best friends about the reason he bailed without saying anything. It’s shitty, Yechan thinks, but they both have room for an excuse. They’re tired. They’re tired of it all—
but now they have something new. Yechan smiles again, the same way he did when he felt Wonsang smile against him, watching the way his swollen mouth moves and not listening to a words that he says. He did that. That’s his fault.
As Wonsang clicks his phone off and throws it to the counter, Yechan smiles bigger, if that’s even possible, because life may be slow, but he’s starting to speed up on his own. They kiss again, forgetting about cookies and alcohol and people-pleasing and bullshit commercial holidays and all things manmade. There’s no hurry.
It’s them against life now.
Wonsang breaks the kiss suddenly, and Yechan’s cheeks heat up because he thinks it’s because he took his lips in between his teeth and maybe bit a little too hard. He’s comforted, though, by the way Wonsang rubs his thumbs against his sides.
“Should I grab the cookies? Before they freeze?”
Yechan is about to say If you want to, but he stops himself. He’s not going to do that anymore. There’s no time for that, not as fast as he’s going, not as over it as he is.
“No,” he decides with newfound confidence, his face possessed by some triumphant ghost. “Stay here and kiss me.”
The big boy’s lips swing up into a goofy smile as he lets out one of his ridiculously loud laughs. And then he swoops down for yet another kiss.