Work Text:
We dream and dream of being seen as we really are and then finally someone looks at us and sees us truly and we fail to measure up.
— Richard Siken, The Long and Short of It
Wonwoo was in the car again. The road stretched out before him, a long unblemished tongue of asphalt unfurling as he drove and drove and drove.
A secret was a strange thing, especially if you already knew it. He took his eyes off the road to adjust the rearview mirror and then Mingyu was in the passenger seat, looking at him with a resigned expression on his face.
“What did you do?” he asked.
Wonwoo tightened his grip on the steering wheel, took a deep breath, said—
Like his mother before him, Wonwoo was a dreamer.
As a young child he had been prone to nightmares, would tiptoe into her room from his own after waking up from a bad dream and nudge her awake, seeking reassurance. One night he’d done just that, except when he got there she was already waking up. Her breathing grew more and more shallow as her shoulders rose and fell rapidly. Then, in the space between two breaths, the world stuttered, skipped a frame—
One moment his mother was lying on her side, asleep. The next she was sitting up with a gasp and there were flowers everywhere, a flood of them, on her shoulders, clinging to her clothes, blanketing the covers. They were violently purple, dark and vibrant as a bruise; curious, he picked one up and saw its centre was a white spark of light, luminescent.
Moonlight filtered through the space between the curtains, cast a wide slant of silver across the sheets. His mother turned to her left and saw him, wide awake, a flower stem pinched between his fingers. Her expression softened into something gentle. “Wonwoo-ya,” she said.
There was blood in her hair. There were petals in her hair, too, sticky with red. He scooted closer and reached up tentatively, meaning to take them out. She caught his hand gently on its way up and lowered it down to his side, scooping up a handful of flowers in her free hand.
As he watched, flowers bloomed like an explosion in her cupped palms. He kept his eyes on one green bud as it unfurled its petals and blossomed at a frightening speed. What took days to occur was happening in a matter of seconds, a whole cycle of life and death compressed down into a single object. It struck him then, the scope of what she’d brought out of her head. The violence of it. The beauty.
His mother pressed a finger to her lips. There was dirt under her nails, like she’d had to claw her way free of the dream. “Shh,” she said, quietly, her eyes very bright, and Wonwoo nodded.
He didn’t start taking things out of his own dreams until she died several years later. It had been a freak accident, a car at a busy junction, a red light wilfully ignored. At the funeral all he remembered was how much he’d hated the flowers used for the arrangements: their cloyingly sweet scent, the muted, dull shades of their petals.
That night he dreamt of earth. He was lying curled up on his side, cheek pressed gently against the cool, soft dirt. His mother’s voice was faint, as if he was several feet underwater. Exhausted, already sick of the terrible sense of loss threatening to carve open his chest, he let himself sink into the ground and came out on the other side, blinking sleep from his eyes, sitting up as the soil fell away.
For a moment he hoped, irrationally, that he’d brought her back out of the dream, that her voice had been a real, tangible thing, but the room remained silent. There were only the same violet flowers she’d brought back the first time he’d seen her dream, covering the sheets like a shroud, looking exactly the same as he remembered. He picked one up, considered it.
Later he would shut it away in his drawer, where it would eventually be joined by many, many other dream objects, where it would remain fresh and fiercely brilliant for years on end. For now he carefully closed his fist over it and longed, desperately, for—
A week later, Kim Mingyu moved into town.
Wonwoo’s first encounter with Kim Mingyu happened back in high school. There had been a photography exhibit in the hallways; Mingyu had stepped up next to him. They’d looked at the photographs on the walls in companionable silence before Mingyu had started to talk about composition and lighting, delighted to discover Wonwoo, too, dabbled in photography.
The real kicker had been this: “We should go shoot together sometime, Wonwoo-ya.”
Wonwoo blinked. It was hard to believe they were the same age. “When were you born?”
Mingyu paused, reading that question for what Wonwoo meant rather than what it was. He cocked his head to the side as a considering look crossed his face, followed swiftly by an easy, newfound delight. “Hyung,” he said, teasing, and Wonwoo flushed despite himself. It was practically a confirmation.
Someone was calling Mingyu’s name. He backed down the corridor towards the source of the voice, still staring at Wonwoo. “Hyung,” he said again. His eyes crinkled at the corners when he smiled. “See you around.”
The day after that Wonwoo had dreamt about Mingyu, because he was only human and he certainly wasn’t blind. He’d woken up the next day terrified that there would be a version of Mingyu that he’d dreamt up, standing at the foot of his bed. There wasn’t.
After that he kept dreaming about Mingyu. He wanted someone to talk to in his dreams, someone to confront, and his mind had snagged on the first face it remembered. In reality they were less than friends and more than strangers, an amicable acquaintance you’d make small talk and not much else with. In his head Mingyu was keeping him company as he struggled to create an object from scratch, whittle it down. It was easy to bring back objects. It was less easy to bring back a specific thing made to the requirements you wanted.
So Mingyu became a regular fixture in the dreams, and Wonwoo had to keep reminding himself that he didn’t know the real Mingyu half as well as he thought he did. Yoon Jeonghan, on the other hand, was a different matter entirely, because Wonwoo—
Wonwoo refused to dream about Jeonghan at all. Jeonghan was different. Both of them were universally beloved, but the key difference was that of the two Mingyu was the one who felt attainable, only ever a step or two away. Jeonghan was respected and admired and generally elevated to the reputation level of an urban myth by half the student population. What did you call it, when you didn’t know someone but loved them anyway?
Wonwoo held him at such a distance it often felt like a barrier, a necessary protection against any potential disappointment. The flame of his want simmered; he pressed his palms against the glass. In sleep or in waking, he kept Jeonghan at viewing distance, across the lecture hall, the library, the tennis court. He had been afraid of what might happen if he brought Jeonghan closer.
“I didn’t know you learnt how to play the piano,” Junhui said, leaning against the door jamb.
“I didn’t.”
Junhui raised an eyebrow, but said nothing as he entered the room and circled the piano, trailed his fingers along the smooth ebony of the lid. He sat down at the bench, positioned his fingers over a chord, and pressed down.
The sound was resonant, full and deep. Junhui laughed in startled delight, played the chord again just to hear it, shot Wonwoo an incredulous look.
“Wonwoo-ya,” he said in disbelief. He opened his mouth to say something. Closed it.
The stare lasted bare moments before Junhui smiled slightly and shook his head. “Alright,” he said. “Alright.”
He took a breath before he set his fingers on the keys and began to play for real. The piece was a familiar one, a Chinese ballad Junhui had sung enough times that Wonwoo could recognise it even in its instrumental form.
Wonwoo watched the line of his shoulders rise and fall, the way his face went calm as he lost himself in the piece. He liked that about Junhui—his willingness to let sleeping dogs lie, to accept things at face value and sense that Wonwoo didn’t want to elaborate. Junhui didn’t ask, so Wonwoo didn’t tell.
Wonwoo didn’t ask, either. It was nice, sometimes, to share the company of someone who wanted the same things you did, to exist without being perceived so keenly. To keep your own secrets.
His first real interaction with Jeonghan came when they were assigned as partners for a project. The lecturer called both their names out at the end of the lesson and Wonwoo was processing it when he turned and Jeonghan was standing there, bag slung over his shoulder, head tilted slightly to the side, smiling. “Jeon Wonwoo,” he said. “Hi.”
“Hi,” Wonwoo said. It was more difficult to stare at Jeonghan up close.
“Can we work at your place?” Jeonghan asked apologetically.
They could. Of course they could. On the way home Jeonghan began to talk. They’d never really had a proper conversation before this, but Jeonghan was witty and so engaging that Wonwoo found himself responding in equal measure, matching Jeonghan beat for beat.
Inside the room Jeonghan gravitated, like Junhui had, to the piano. He played a lilting tune or two before he huffed. It might have been Wonwoo’s imagination, but he had almost sounded fond.
“You’re supposed to open the lid so the sound comes out better, you know,” Jeonghan said wryly. He heard the piano bench scrape across the floor as Jeonghan stood up. “Did no one tell you?”
“I don’t play,” Wonwoo replied absent-mindedly. “Someone came over to play it, but he didn’t open the lid. If it really makes the sound better, you should, though.”
Wood creaked.
“Wonwoo,” Jeonghan finally said, his voice strangely tense. He’d propped up the lid and was now staring down into the open piano. “Where did you get this?”
“Hm?” Wonwoo shut the laptop and crossed the room to join Jeonghan, putting the piano between them.
The bottom dropped out of his stomach. With the smooth ebony lid held open, he could see the insides of the piano—if there had been any. Instead the piano was completely empty inside, the hollow of its wooden body devoid of pins or hammers or strings. The soundboard, too, was missing; on impulse Wonwoo reached into the empty shell and ran his fingers over the grain of the wood. Solid. Real.
This shouldn’t have been able to produce any sound at all, let alone the perfectly tuned melody Jeonghan had been playing earlier. Wonwoo dug his nail into the bare wood and tried to regain a vice grip on the instinctual panic that surged up his throat.
“Where did you get this?” Jeonghan repeated.
“I don’t know,” Wonwoo said reflexively.
Jeonghan stared into the empty shell for a long moment. Then he looked back up. Across the short distance between them, Wonwoo felt the weight of his gaze like a physical thing, a piercing pin-sharp curiosity. “Don’t lie to me.”
“There’s a difference between a lie and a secret, hyung.”
“I know what the difference is.” Jeonghan made a small, impatient noise in the back of his throat. “Wonwoo-ya, I’m not stupid. Will you tell me or not?”
This was one thing Jeonghan did extraordinarily well: he made it so remarkably easy for you to want to share things with him, whether it was out of the desire to keep his attention or the fear that he might slip out of your grasp otherwise. The gravitational pull of it was so strong that he only realised much later on that Jeonghan, in return, had never really told him anything at all.
But back then Wonwoo had only wanted, like everyone else, to be known. It was the allure of being known by someone that everyone else was so desperate to understand, as if volunteering his secrets would encourage Jeonghan to reveal his own, as if by offering himself up Jeonghan would be obligated to bare his own heart in return. A predator emerging at the prolonged display of vulnerability. Friendship didn’t work like that, Wonwoo thought. But maybe love did.
“Hyung,” he said, slowly. The words came unexpectedly easy. “Have you ever had a dream that felt too real?”
Junhui didn’t ask, so Wonwoo didn’t tell. Jeonghan didn’t have to ask. Wonwoo would have told him anyway.
“Prove it,” Jeonghan said.
Wonwoo blinked. “What?”
“Prove it.” Jeonghan’s mouth had a thoughtful twist to it; Wonwoo had never seen him so focused.
"Fine.” Wonwoo sprawled backwards onto the bed and closed his eyes, willing his heartbeat to slow. “This is going to take even longer if you keep looking at me,” he said, and Jeonghan huffed a laugh. He began to say something, but already his voice sounded like it was coming from the end of a very long tunnel, wrung thin and hollow, echoing in the darkness, and Wonwoo—
When he came to in the dream he was in the driver’s seat of Mingyu’s car and Jeonghan was waiting expectantly beside him, elbow propped on the window ledge, his hair a halo of sunlight.
“You shouldn’t be here,” Wonwoo said. His grip tightened on the steering wheel. He’d tried so hard not to dream about Jeonghan, afraid of what—of who—he might bring with him when he woke up. The proximity must have drifted into his subconsciousness, loosened his grip. He glanced around for something, anything, but the glove compartment was empty, and in the cupholders there was only a single cup of coffee, black, with the brown paper packaging from the shop down the street he’d never told anyone he liked—
“Relax,” a new voice said, and when Wonwoo looked back up Kim Mingyu was sitting there, arms crossed, making a face at him. “He’s not here. And stop searching for a weapon. If you keep going like that Jeonghan-hyung’s going to end up with a Molotov.”
“I’m not giving him a Molotov,” Wonwoo said, exasperated, and in the next second Mingyu was reaching over to pluck the glass bottle of gasoline out of the empty cup holder. Both eyebrows raised, he tossed it gingerly out of the window. In the empty air behind him fire blossomed, a rose in bloom. The gasoline hadn’t even been ignited.
This was how it was around Jeonghan: untethered, unsteady. Wonwoo felt his control slipping out from under him and tried valiantly not to think of anything at all. Mingyu’s presence in the other seat was alarmingly steadying.
“Just give him the coffee.” Mingyu huffed. “You’ve been thinking about it for so long.”
Wonwoo opened his mouth to refute him and shut it again as he realised he knew next to nothing about Jeonghan’s food preferences.
“He doesn’t like black coffee,” Mingyu added, rather belatedly.
Both of them looked at the cup. Mingyu reacted faster: he reached out and snatched it from its holder as Wonwoo’s fingers brushed its surface. “Don’t replace it,” he said, frowning at Wonwoo.
“Why not?” He felt—not reprimanded exactly, but like he’d been chastised. By Kim Mingyu, of all people. It was an odd feeling.
“It’s what you like.” Mingyu’s brow creased; he was pouting slightly now.
“There’s nothing wrong with wanting to give him things he likes.”
“But you want to give him the things you like,” Mingyu said. “You want him to like them.”
“I’m not trying to impress him,” Wonwoo said sharply.
“Aren’t you?” Mingyu’s smile was wry. “Aren’t we all?”
Wonwoo refused to dignify that with a response. Instead he reached for the ignition, meaning to get out of the car entirely, and when his hand closed on the cold metal of the keyring Mingyu laughed, a short, bright sound, helplessly genuine. “That works too,” he said.
“You want me to give him access to your car?” He’d never managed to kick the habit of talking to dream-Mingyu like it was the real Mingyu.
“It’s not like I mind.” Mingyu shrugged. “It’s not like he’ll know what they’re for, either, unless you tell him. Which I don’t think you will. Will you?”
In answer Wonwoo weighed the keys in his palm, committed the feel of them to memory, jagged-tooth edges, smooth fob. He ran the pad of his thumb over the notches in the metal.
Dream to reality. The engine purred.
When he woke up the keys were still warm with sunlight. He was clutching them to his chest, body still frozen the way it was in the moments after he emerged into waking. Footsteps padded across the floor as Jeonghan took the keys from his hands.
“Car keys,” Jeonghan said, curious, and Wonwoo knew without looking that they would be a perfect copy of Mingyu’s. He heard the jingle of metal as Jeonghan swung them around his fingers. “Do they drive anything?”
“I don’t know,” Wonwoo said, which was a lie. “It was the first thing I thought of,” he added, which was also a lie. These days he was dishonest everywhere, especially inside his own head.
Jeonghan hummed. “So you weren’t lying,” he said. He fell quiet; Wonwoo heard a brief metallic sound. “What about people? Can you bring people out?”
“I haven’t tried.” This, at least, was the truth.
“You should,” Jeonghan said playfully. Wonwoo wondered if he talked to everyone like that. “Try, that is. Maybe you should dream of me. Then I could be one of your dreams.”
“I didn’t dream you,” Wonwoo said. He kept his eyes shut, his tone flat. Felt the air shift as Jeonghan came to stand over him.
When he next spoke Wonwoo could hear the smile in his voice. “How do you know?”
I want you, Wonwoo thought. “You’d be nicer,” he said.
Jeonghan laughed, delighted. “You already like me enough,” he answered, and Wonwoo opened his eyes.
Under the afternoon sun the surface of the tennis court gleamed, vivid blue and green. Junhui sat down on the sideline between the courts and Wonwoo followed, stretching his legs out, trying to catch his breath. He had barely recovered before Junhui threw a towel straight at his face and he snatched it out of the air on pure instinct, mopping the sweat from his face before lowering it to glare at Junhui, who snickered.
“You could’ve killed me.”
“If I do decide to kill you one day I won’t do it in such an obvious way,” Junhui responded, and nodded towards the baseline. “Who’s after this pair?”
“Jeonghan-hyung and Mingyu.”
Wonwoo lifted a hand to shade his eyes against the light. Junhui leaned forward. “Yoon Jeonghan,” he mused. It wasn’t a question.
The doubles pair on court wound down into the final games of their practice match. Behind them Mingyu wrapped Jeonghan in a back hug, hooked his chin over Jeonghan’s shoulder. Jeonghan let him. It should have looked ridiculous, given their height difference, but somehow it didn’t, and even from where he was sitting Wonwoo could see the pleased expression darting across Jeonghan’s face.
There were two kinds of people who were easy to love: the first because they gave you so much, the second because they gave you so little. He was staring at both of them now.
Junhui stood up. Wonwoo leaned back onto his hands, looked up at the gorgeously sharp lines of his silhouette. In the sun his hair was very brown; he gave the racket an experimental swing, the motions of his wrist fluid as water. “Come on,” he said, melodic, and offered Wonwoo his hand.
“I think,” Wonwoo said, “Jeonghan-hyung respects me now.”
It was an oppressively hot afternoon: the leaves too bright to even look at, waves of heat rolling along the yard his window overlooked. Luckily he’d had the sense to switch the air-conditioning on; in the room the air was still and cool. Junhui was playing the beginning of a familiar song on the piano, Wonwoo sprawled across the bed. Three days ago he’d been lying in this same position as Jeonghan leaned over him and plucked the keys from his hands.
He’d never asked for them back before Jeonghan had left. Who knew what he had done with them; faintly Wonwoo tried to imagine how he’d explain them to Kim Mingyu and immediately shut the train of thought down. Jeonghan wouldn’t do that, but his own conspicuous lack of alarm at Jeonghan’s possession of the keys told him something about himself more than it did about Jeonghan.
“That’s good, isn’t it?” Even with Junhui’s back to him Wonwoo could hear the dry tone of his voice. “There are worse things to be than respected, Wonwoo-ya.”
“Better things too,” Wonwoo said, and Junhui’s hands tripped over the piano as he laughed. The melody stuttered momentarily, resumed.
Wonwoo rolled over onto his back, stared out of the window. Behind the glass the sunlight blazed, white-hot, brilliant.
He startled awake with a gasp.
There was something barking enthusiastically in the corner of his room. Wonwoo dragged a hand down his face to rub the sleep away and peeked through his fingers to confirm what he’d brought back from his dream. The clock read, in stark red numbers, six a.m in the morning.
He didn’t—hate dogs. But cats were a far more appealing option. Wonwoo scooped up the powder-puff-looking bundle of white fur into his arms and let himself out of the door to set it down on the grass outside, watched as it rolled over onto its feet only to run back and forth in front of him. The sky was lightening: despite the dimness, Wonwoo could see the bright gleam of its black-button eyes. It pawed at his shin.
He crouched down, extended his hand. The puppy stared at it before putting its paw on Wonwoo’s palm, whining happily. It withdrew its paw after a brief moment and began to circle him, buzzing with energy.
Helplessly, he began to laugh. This was his first dream object in years that had given him such simple joy.
He’d barely taken his eyes off it when it streaked down the sidewalk towards a running figure that was rapidly approaching. The two silhouettes collided; there was a yelp of surprise, then a muffled curse.
Wonwoo jogged over. Mingyu was sitting on the pavement in sweatpants and a too-big shirt, hair plastered to his forehead with sweat, his palms bleeding from where he’d presumably caught himself before he could fall face-first onto the concrete. He was laughing at the puppy, which was now running circles around him, barking excitedly and leaping in and out of his lap.
He looked up as Wonwoo came closer. “Hyung,” he said, grinning. “Is this your dog?”
Was it his? It had been born of a fleeting thought—he didn’t even remember why he’d wanted a dog—and all he’d done was bring it out of his head. He hadn’t even tried. “Yes,” Wonwoo said, sounding far too hesitant for any self-respecting pet owner.
Realisation dawned on Mingyu’s face. “Now that I think about it,” he said knowingly, scratching the puppy’s ears, “you’re exactly the kind of person who would pick up strays.”
“What is that supposed to mean?” The conclusion he’d come to was hilariously inaccurate. “Also, you’re bleeding.”
Mingyu looked down at his palms and grimaced. “It’ll be fine.”
“No, it won’t.” Wonwoo sighed. “Wait here.”
He ran back into the house and searched the kitchen drawers for medical supplies. Mingyu was wincing as he stepped back out onto the sidewalk—the pain must have been registering now.
He sat opposite Mingyu on the concrete and poured water over his outstretched palms. Mingyu hissed like a cat and Wonwoo tried to fight back a smile as he wiped the remaining blood away, gently cleaned bits of dirt out of the cuts. The puppy had put both its front paws on Mingyu’s knee and was now watching Wonwoo dry the wound with wide, dark eyes. Around them, the street had yet to wake up; the world was quiet and still. This was, Wonwoo thought slightly hysterically, a rather surreal experience.
Carefully, he unpeeled the bandage from its packaging and pressed it to Mingyu’s skin. Mingyu shot him a grateful look, flexing his hand tentatively. “Thanks, hyung.”
He stood up, stepped back. The stillness of the earlier moment faded as the puppy yipped in delight and jumped into Mingyu’s lap again, tried to lick his face, all motion, sound.
The sun was beginning to rise. The heavy grey clouds were parting to reveal the rose-pink of the morning skies, all the light forgiving. “Mingyu,” Wonwoo said.
Mingyu looked up. The puppy settled down in his lap, snuffling contentedly. “What?”
Again that flicker of recognition. An old friend, a neighbour Wonwoo had only ever seen in his peripheral vision disappearing around the corner as he opened the door. A dream and a dream. Wonwoo had brought the puppy out of his head and now it was sitting in Mingyu’s lap like it belonged. A dream and a dream. Something was scratching insistently at the back of his throat.
He was wide awake. “Nothing,” Wonwoo said, and swallowed. “Nothing.”
“Apparently Jeonghan plans on asking Mingyu out,” Junhui said, sitting up on the bed.
“Where did you hear that?”
“Oh, you know.” Junhui waved airily. Wonwoo glanced over the top of the piano and caught the way his expression went clear-eyed and keen, like a hawk. “Do you care?”
“I don’t know anything about your sources of information and I’d like to keep it that way,” Wonwoo said dryly. He turned his face away to compose his expression.
Junhui crossed the room, leaned his elbows on the edge of the piano. Wonwoo dropped his gaze, staring at the black-and-white ivory, the melody he’d been trying to pluck out for the better part of ten minutes. He pressed one of the keys, and then another, and another. The sound that echoed was unpleasantly discordant.
Absent-mindedly, Junhui swatted his hand away. “You’re not answering the question.”
In the ensuing silence, Junhui reached down and pressed a single key. The note rang out.
“I,” Wonwoo said, once the sound had faded, “am not responsible for what Mingyu decides.”
Junhui was watching him. “No,” he said, and hummed, considering. “No, you’re not.”
July, in the heart of summer. He was lying flat on his back in a field, the grass tall enough that it rose up into his peripheral vision despite the smell of freshly-cut grass in the air. Wonwoo turned his head to the side and pressed his cheek into the sun-warmed soil, took in Mingyu’s side profile, the line of his nose and jaw, the white collar of his shirt against the tan of his skin.
“What do you want?” Wonwoo asked.
Mingyu stayed silent, but the answer struck Wonwoo as if he had spoken the words aloud, clear as the sky above them. To love. To love. He turned his head and looked at Wonwoo, eyes bright. “What do you want?”
Wonwoo dug his fingers into the soil and said—
What do you want, Wonwoo?
He snapped awake. His pulse was steady, a one-two beat at his wrist. He could taste the ghost of heat in the air; there had been no flowers, but when he rubbed his fingers together they were sticky with pollen. Saffron-yellow dust on his fingertips. Soil under his nails.
What do you want, Wonwoo?
To be seen. To be loved.
The car was waiting at the end of the road. Wonwoo rounded the front of it and got into the passenger seat, shut the door behind him.
Mingyu had both his hands on the steering wheel. The air-conditioning whirred.
A secret was a strange thing. “Mingyu,” Wonwoo started.
“I know what you are.”
A secret was a strange thing. There were always two kinds: the ones you didn’t know, and the ones you already did. Wonwoo inhaled, unsteady. “I’m sorry.”
“It’s not my fault he wants me more, you know,” Mingyu said, and even with his gaze trained on the road ahead Wonwoo could hear the petulance in his voice, the sharp little blade of hurt.
“Yeah,” Wonwoo agreed. He was looking out of the window and seeing nothing at all. “It’s mine.”
If he tried hard enough, he could probably find at least a little irony here. He had only ever wanted someone spilling over with love to give, so much so that they’d have enough for him ten times over. He had only ever wanted. It wasn’t Mingyu’s fault that the dream was so much more lovely than the dreamer.
“I want him,” Mingyu said, so sincere that Wonwoo had to dig his fingers into the window ledge. He only had himself to blame. Mingyu’s earnestness was his own desire refracted back at him through several sheets of glass, through the surface of a lake. “I want him, but—”
“Well, you’re here, aren’t you?” Wonwoo said, clear and cold. Mingyu flinched; Wonwoo felt the immediate sting of regret.
“You’re here,” he repeated, quieter. All the anger drained out of him, a body bleeding out on the street. “Doesn’t matter that I dreamt you. You’re here. That makes you real.”
For a long moment there was silence. The car hummed under Mingyu’s hands.
“I don’t want you to hate me,” he said at last.
“I don’t,” Wonwoo said, exhausted. “I really don’t.” Of all people, not Mingyu; never Mingyu. It was impossible to hate someone like him. Who, then, did Wonwoo hate? Jeonghan? Junhui? Himself, maybe, for wanting something so terribly that he’d done such a desperate thing to have it, resenting himself for the consequences when they were made real.
The road was still endless, but through the windshield Wonwoo could at least see the markings on the asphalt. He slumped back into the seat. “Kim Mingyu,” he said, and trailed off as Mingyu glanced over at him. There was so much he wanted to say and no way to say it in a manner that would preserve any of his original intentions, even in fractured pieces. Mostly this felt like the beginning of an awful joke: a dreamer and a dream and the object of desire. Mostly this felt like a game he’d just realised he had set himself up to lose.
In the driver’s seat, Mingyu pressed the pedal to the floor. The car stretched awake.
Wonwoo closed his eyes.