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Sometimes loving Beomgyu is a bit like trying to catch snow.
At least that's the feeling Kai gets at that moment— his hands on the steering wheel, under a snowstorm, driving down a lost road somewhere in the north to pick up his husband from the place where he's been shooting a new commercial.
It's sweet like things that only happen once in a while, like things that only some people are lucky enough to experience. Unexpected magic on the way home, kisses of air and ice landing on his cheeks, a wish that can be made only once a year.
It is also difficult.
Difficult like catching the snowflakes without them melting, difficult like being the ground on which the snowflakes land, difficult like trying to see all the snowflakes at once as they fall.
It's not Beomgyu's fault, but his own.
Sometimes, Kai feels lost inside himself. As if the corridors of his thoughts are too big and long, with everything too far away. Perhaps, lost as if he is too tired.
He has learned to love Beomgyu as if his love were a natural and unexpected phenomenon, something beautiful that he receives without knowing why, something he enjoys with the certainty that it will end sooner or later. It's not perfect, perhaps, but when Beomgyu is around, it feels very close to being perfect. For a moment, his mind is filled with that magic and the possibility of it disappearing seems far away— almost impossible.
When Beomgyu is near, Kai feels like he has a home.
When Beomgyu is near, all the disjointed pieces that make him up make sense.
When Beomgyu is near, Kai is seven again and the world is not broken and love is a promise that stretches into the future unconditionally.
But that is only when Beomgyu is near.
On days like today and the days before, however, everything is different — old snow sitting on the edge of the street, the fading memory of magic, the realization that snow is just water.
It had been worse those last two weeks.
Much worse.
So much worse that Yunjin had kicked him out of the studio insisting he needed a vacation. If Kai is being truthful, it was nearly debilitating, considering how the artists he had worked with ended up asking for another producer to be present.
He sighs.
Starlings fly overhead, drawing dark monsters in the air.
They are not too different from him.
Kai hasn't seen Beomgyu for two weeks, and the last thing he had said to him was that it was all his fault.
He doesn't remember what he had been referring to, nor what exactly it was that Beomgyu had said to him immediately before. The door had closed and the thud, quiet yet deafening, had shattered the reasons he had had for saying what he had said— too meaningless, too irrelevant to justify the pain he had caused.
Kai had been left alone, and he had realized at that moment that the monster that had made him say those things were just like starlings— fragile little birds fleeing from their predator.
Fleeing from him.
From the permanent feeling that he doesn't deserve a home. From the certainty that there is no place where he belongs.
Sometimes loving Beomgyu is scary.
It's scary because it means his home is someone who can abandon him. It's scary because Kai knows that people disappear, that relationships break— Kai is mistletoe growing on a tree, drinking from its sap, sinking his roots into another person's body because he has learned that he has no land.
That day Kai had been especially irascible because he had read a poem while tidying their room. A poem. A fragment that his eyes had found by chance while picking up a book from the floor, one of many that Beomgyu had forgotten on his bedside table— the spine open and tortured so as not to forget where it had been left, so that his thoughts could return to the place from which they had taken flight.
He hadn't even read it all the way through. Just enough.
The poem spoke of the world being full of sun children and moon children, of New Year's children and New Year's Eve children, and Kai had understood it perfectly.
He understands it perfectly even now, as the dawn of a new year threatens to illuminate the fog surrounding his car, as the promise of light burns the horizon and begins turning the landscape into a snow-white dream.
Beomgyu is a sun child, and Kai is a moon child. Beomgyu is the new year and he is the new year's eve.
Kai is a rock revolving around something more important, his light barely an echo. Kai is what others had left behind, what is left after turning a page.
He has love because Beomgyu loves him.
So simple, so direct, so fragile.
So painful.
Painful like the slam of the door against the frame. Painful as the absence of a goodbye. Painful as Beomgyu's sigh had been— so small, so broken, so muffled.
Painful like the silence he had left behind.
Maybe that's why Kai is driving in the middle of nowhere on January 1st at 6 am. Maybe that's why he had rushed out of their house during yet another sleepless night, fireworks still reverberating between the buildings, champagne and countdowns that were meaningless without Beomgyu.
Sometimes Kai wonders if the boy will still love him after not seeing him for a while.
Sometimes Kai wonders if loving him isn't useless, if his love has something to offer, if there is something he can give Beomgyu in return for his love.
Sometimes, during one of those work trips of Beomgyu's, Kai realizes that the boy might stop loving him at any moment, that he might abandon him— as if that small absence is a simulacrum of what is to come.
He has already lived it.
His family, his friends, his love— everything comes and vanishes over time, all the people who embraced him at some point tend to disappear.
The thought isn't new. A few years ago, Kai had seen in a documentary that there were cultures in the world that saw constellations not as sets of stars, but as the dark space between them; and the idea had resonated with him so strongly that he hadn't spoken to anyone for a week.
The love Kai has felt throughout his life does not form constellations on his body. The love Kai has felt throughout his life feels like absences . Like voids, ghosts and shadows that cover his soul with cold.
Time has passed and Kai is still the same scared little boy he has always been. The same one who had seen his parents split up, the same one who had seen his group separate as they entered their military service, the same one who had been left alone, a person made of the love of others who were now too far away.
He'd waited for Beomgyu through his military service, waited dutifully as he turned weather-beaten and exhausted through the grueling 21 months. Absence makes the heart grow fonder, they say— but it was during that absence did fear settle into his bones, aching and whining as the idea of not actually being near Beomgyu turned tangible .
It was during that absence that the ghost of Beomgyu’s embrace had curled over his body for the first time.
They'd spent over ten tough years together, moving as one unit with the rest of the boys . Ten years in which the boys had reminded him what a family was. Ten years in which happiness was covered in sweat and effort, in which love was little details and talking about how they felt, in which security and comfort were the bodies of four boys, the warmth of their jokes, sleeping on each other in waiting rooms during shoots, pats on the shoulders, hugs, dreams.
Ten years in which, as if it were an impossible illusion, hundreds of thousands of people around the world had given him exactly what he had never had— love. People who didn't even know him had assured him that he deserved love.
And then there was him. Beomgyu.
Beomgyu and his smile, Beomgyu and his walks at night, Beomgyu and the soft lights that adorned his room.
Beomgyu who shone in front of the world as Kai did not always manage to do. Beomgyu who always found a way to make everyone laugh even though Kai was able to see the fading light in his eyes.
Kai had found refuge in him. Someone who was more than anyone saw, who seemed to dance in the shadows with a different sadness. But most of all, someone who Kai wanted to pour his love to without him having asked for it.
Beomgyu was the one who had inadvertently taught him that he could also love in that way. Not because he should but because his heart sang when he was near. Not because the bond between them had been imposed by someone else, but because he wanted to make him happy and he wanted him to be happy because of him.
During those ten years, Kai had forgotten the dark constellations, the embraces of absences and the fragments of guilt.
But then all of it had come back to him as if it had never left. Being apart from Beomgyu for nearly two years showed him how a life without him could be reality — how everything he had felt was not something he had built, but something he had been given.
Something that could be taken away from him.
Oddly enough, it was also then that hope had also generously slipped into the crevices of insecurity. He had managed to convince himself that his loneliness and sadness were a temporary ailment— a small wound, a passing cold. Among his weary bones had blossomed the hope that things would be better after Beomgyu finished his military service.
Now, that same hope is slowly creeping away.
Trees spread their branches over the car, wooden fingers curling in the fog, arms waving in the blizzard.
Kai leaves them behind, mile after mile, letting their farewell be eternal, their dark bodies abandoned like his own.
The reunion between Beomgyu and him after his military service had been beautiful for an instant. A valley opening its arms in the mountain, fertile land and smoke rising from the houses with the promise of home — and then it had slowly faded, its novelty wore down as they fell back into routine, as their life bloomed with new small things and new small instants, but also with the looming presence of a new absence.
Because, even when they're together at last, living together, Kai still feels alone somehow. He's locked in his studio and Beomgyu's flying far and wide pursuing his modeling career . Even when they are close, there's some distance between them— the distance between the Sun and the Moon, the distance between New Year and New Year's Eve.
Things may be better after Taehyun's return from his own military service. Perhaps when all five of them reunite once again and start promoting like they used to.
But what comes after?
Is their love always relying on a fallback? Is their love always waiting for something more?
Maybe this is still love. Maybe it is love even if nothing can promise him that it'll last forever. A love that will never have any certainty— a sort of passion that only ignites when they're lucky enough to be together.
Or maybe this is just Kai's way of loving. Maybe this is the only way he knows.
Maybe he is the one who waits for something more, for something else.
Maybe he is the one who believes it takes brilliant moments to feel the constellations of love on his body.
Sometimes Kai wonders if the problem is that he has never learned to love— to love well .
Usually, the idea disappears among the small things in their life. All the countries he's lived in, all the arguments he's heard, the little shards of guilt that no one has taken care to extirpate— all of it disappears between shopping lists and vacation plans, between detergent brands and electricity bills, between walks and moments stolen from their jobs.
It is a soothing warmth, a blanket made of Beomgyu's light that is comforting enough to forget everything. One that reminds him of this moment— the way the winter is beautiful from the car, the way the snow covers the trees and lights up the road, the way the wind draws spirals of time in front of the windshield. In their day-to-day life, all those little things make up something like a safe warmth, a refuge from which he observes himself as if it were a memory, a place from which loneliness is something that happens to a Kai that is not him.
A Kai that only exists in moments like this. In moments when Beomgyu's sigh trembles over the leaves of his memories, braiding ‘what ifs' and doubts with the certainty that everything is about to end.
As if the shelter had vanished all at once and he was once again in front of himself.
Cold.
Wounded.
His heart only grows colder as his GPS breaks the horrifying news to him.
He's arrived.
He has arrived but he is not yet ready. A part of him has remained on the road, as if his essence had become entangled among the branches of the trees, as if he had come to that place naked, his skin raw and exposed to the inclemency of the weather, to the inclemency of his fears.
Kai stares at the glowing numbers swallowing hard.
Beyond his windshield, the first fingers of dawn flutter between the streets— between the low houses and their black shingles, between hay bales and crop fields.
Light pierces the frozen water of a fountain, time forever stopped in a past unknown, in the muted silence of the place, so different from the hubbub of the city, so different from the broken New Year’s promises on street corners, the wishes asked to neon stars.
Peace blankets the town like snow does. Only Kai interrupts the silence. Only the car's engine cuts through the cold like an insatiable creature. Only he seems nervous, the miles traveled vibrating on his body, his thoughts tense like the strings of a voiceless guitar.
There is something in that moment that makes him aware of himself— of the taut wires that pull his body into rigid movements, of the chains of history that hold him to a past he has not even fully experienced.
Kai is not a child anymore. Kai is not who he was. Kai is not his parents.
It is a delicate and fragile truth. A beautiful truth that makes him want to cry.
He inhales shakily and exhales trying to braid his emotions over the air; then he opens the car door and lets them go.
Maybe that's what he should have been doing all along.
The cold bites into his cheeks, ethereal and wild. It hurts like only reality hurts, like only the realization that he exists beyond what he can consider home hurts. It hurts like recognizing himself beyond love, beyond the black birds that draw his fears in the sky, beyond the idea of not being enough.
Kai exists in spite of everything.
If he turns around, the car seems overwhelmingly small. A heavy metal armor, a warm poison, an oasis. It is a hiding place where he has forgotten to look out for himself, softened by unshed tears.
Winter hurts but brings with it feathers of snow. Brings with it the certainty of himself.
And it all has a strange effect on him— a feeling as if he can take flight, a feeling as if he is rising from himself.
In the distance, smoke from a building curls up a chimney. Kai follows its broken drawing, its whisper disappearing into the still-dark clouds. He paces up and down awkwardly the rocky pathway circling the entrance of Beomgyu's hotel as his body trembles.
He's a leaf hesitating on a branch.
He feels nervous. He feels naked. He feels relieved.
His phone reminds him that the moment has come— that at any moment Beomgyu will come out and see him.
Kai wonders what he will see.
Maybe he should have warned him. Maybe he should have let things take their course. But for some reason, Kai had gotten the feeling that this was the place he needed to be. That this was the person he was meant to be. That letting this New Year’s Day go by like this was a mistake that could break everything.
Kai loves Beomgyu. Really. Deeply. With all his heart.
He doesn't know anything else— how to make things right, not even what's going to happen.
Only that he loves him and that Beomgyu doesn't deserve to feel guilty.
Only that he doesn't want the year to change without being with him.
And all those things are him . Kai.
Bell chimes tinkle over the still air, interrupting his thoughts. It's almost ironic that it sounds like the laughter of the man he loves. Almost ironic that the sound bounces between the mountains when he's frozen.
Almost ironic that it dances freely between them when Beomgyu stops at the door, duffel in one hand; also when Beomgyu steps toward him hesitantly, stopping only a few feet away— close enough for Kai to make out the way he's squinting curiously as uncertainty flits across his features, morphing into surprise.
The sound, light and bright, contrasts with the thud that echoes when Beomgyu drops his duffel bag, deafening.
For a moment, all Kai can do is stare, breath hitching as their eyes meet.
Two weeks.
Two weeks since he last saw Beomgyu and let him leave after hearing Kai blame him for something that wasn't his fault.
He has no idea what to expect, simply standing there and drinking in the sight of someone he'd missed— someone he was sure he could trust his life with.
Silence snakes between them like an ambiguous path. An edge of time on which anything can happen.
Beomgyu's expression crumples, and before the alarm bells even go off in Kai's head, he's leaping forward, bravely tearing through the distance between them, insurmountable mere seconds ago. Kai catches a whiff of lavender— a memory of spring, a butterfly of home, warmth enveloping his entire body the moment Beomgyu's collides into his own with a muffled thump.
All Kai can do is wrap his own arms around Beomgyu's torso on autopilot, suddenly smaller even despite the layers he's decked in. Suddenly fragile, as vulnerable as he feels.
"What... What the fuck."
It's barely an appropriate response given his own turmoil, and yet Kai finds himself huffing out a laugh as he tries to pull Beomgyu impossibly closer. As he tries to wrap his arms around his husband even tighter. As he tries to pick up and glue the fragments of their love even if it's not broken.
Even if nothing has changed.
Even if everything has.
"No seriously. What the fuck. I didn't want to fucking see you," Beomgyu mumbles, voice muffled against Kai's shoulder, though he doesn't let go.
"Then should I leave?"
The question is soft as the promise it hides— as the absolute certainty that he never would, as the tenderness that warms their bodies, the soft link that is their limbs, their synchronized heartbeats.
He tangles his fingers in Beomgyu's hair, smoothing the remnants of gel in the damp clumps, melting the snowflakes clinging to his head.
"I meant I didn't want to see you like this. What the- What the fuck are you doing here? I was rushing out... I'm ugly."
"You're never ugly. You're always the most beautiful to me."
"No, you don't... You don't get it. I'm ugly ," the word tugs at his lips, too heavy to escape unscathed, too laden with meaning. Kai's stomach flips when he realizes what Beomgyu's implying.
"It didn't feel right to start the year without you," he whispers instead. Confesses. "I didn't want to start the year without you."
Beomgyu pulls away, and the sudden loss of warmth breaks Kai's heart a little— the pain suddenly too obvious to ignore, terrifying because it isn't his.
It's theirs.
It's Beomgyu's.
The other man seems to figure that out easily, gently planting his hands on Kai's cheeks, thumb rubbing little circles to warm him up, a feather-like touch of hope.
Of forgiveness. Maybe. Hopefully.
"You're freezing. Let's go."
It is Beomgyu's hand that guides him to the car, it is his hand that opens and closes the doors, that stores his luggage inside as if Kai were his home too, that enters his home address on the GPS and turns on the heat.
And the instant relief from the cold leaves Kai wondering if things could always be as simple as warming your hands near the heater when you're freezing.
If things have always been so simple.
The town disappears in the rearview mirror, getting smaller and smaller— as if it had only been a pop-up story and they had turned the page, as if it had been a dream fading from their memory.
And yet, Kai is certain that it is in that seemingly inconsequential place where a part of him has begun to detach, and where, perhaps, the snow has given him wings.
It is almost eight in the morning, and the dawn paints the world white. Its grayish light kisses the fog and makes the snow glitter on the trees, turns the flakes into magic.
As he drives, there's something in the atmosphere— something in the way they can't see more than a few feet away, something in the way they always seem to be heading toward the light— that makes Kai's mind float away.
Float away beyond himself and his story, beyond Beomgyu's body cowering against the door, beyond his husband's blank stare and the sadness that curls into the space of the car.
It is an elusive sensation, a set of impressions escaping between his fingers, tinting the silence with invisible colors.
Something like being able to see time, something like being able to appreciate the impossible set of little things that has brought them to that moment, something like the certainty that everything will continue, that everything will keep flowing, that he will continue to exist despite everything. Or maybe because of everything.
But he will exist.
"You're doing that thing."
He snaps out of his reverie, clearing his throat as he blinks hurriedly, as his mind returns to the enclosed space of the car, to the drying quality of the AC, to the delicate knot of his husband's body.
"What thing?"
"The thing where you get sad," Beomgyu looks down at his hands, "and I feel useless because I can't do anything."
Sad is hardly enough to encapsulate the complex, insidious emotions that have gnawed at his heart for years. It's barely a whisper compared to the roar of his thoughts at the moment, the brightness of the realization.
"I'm not sad." He sighs, mindlessly reaching to wrap his fingers around Beomgyu's hand, raw and icy from the unrelenting cold they'd just escaped from. "It's not sadness." Beomgyu looks up slowly. "And you're not useless. You never are."
"I am," Beomgyu says quietly, his voice small, almost broken. "If I weren't, you'd be happier."
So simple, so direct, so fragile.
So painful.
So incredibly untrue.
Kai takes a second to collect his thoughts, a second to let go of the guilt, a second to understand.
He's known it all along, and yet somehow the idea had somehow faded over time, buried by other things, by other fears, by himself.
He should have remembered it before he let those stupid words escape his mouth thoughtlessly.
He should have remembered that, deep inside, there was a part of Beomgyu that believed that people only loved him when he was perfect. That he only deserved the love of others when he managed to make them happy, when he managed to hide his own fears, when his laughter was loud enough to make him go unnoticed.
He should have remembered that, if Beomgyu is a sun-child, it is only because he believes he owes everyone his light.
The forest canopy stretches its fingers skyward, driving them out of the mist and abandoning them on a plain— open land, raised land, land wounded to bring in new crops.
"It's fear," he says at last.
"Huh?"
"I'm scared, not sad. Sometimes I fear..." He swallows tightly. "You're the reason I'm happy. I found a home in you and I fear... Sometimes I fear I'll lose all of that."
Beomgyu doesn't respond for a long time, and there's this change in the silence of the car. This new quality that's so Beomgyu-like, as if his thoughts were blooming quietly, timidly. Slowly but surely reappearing before him.
And even though his heart's caught in his throat, Kai feels the warmth of it all.
He has missed this.
He had been distracted from this glaring fact until this very moment, but it rings truer and louder than ever. He had missed Beomgyu.
Not because they hadn't seen each other for two weeks, but because he's realizing now that Beomgyu, the real Beomgyu, the one he loved, had disappeared to give him space, to give space for Kai's fears and self-doubt, to try and be what he thought he needed.
But perhaps Kai had only needed Beomgyu.
The real one.
Not the one that's patient and caring and forgiving, but the one that feels deeply... deeper than anybody else. The one who gets hurt too, the one who's scared too, the one who's not perfect for everybody else but for himself.
So he lets him grow in that silence, he waters him with patience, with time. He lets him think.
Reflect.
Let his thoughts unfold like Kai had done during his drive up the mountain, even if it had been laced with trepidation and self-doubt.
"I felt hurt."
The words break the silence like a footprint through fresh snow, transforming everything, marking the moment.
It's much like ripping a bandaid, the edges of pain clear over their bodies.
"I felt hurt when you said it was my fault you were getting gloomier. Was that... is this what you meant?"
It stews in his head. The very moment Beomgyu had tried to get Kai to cheer up a little before he had to leave.
They had a free afternoon before Beomgyu had to inevitably leave for his shoot at the other end of the country. Yet all Kai had done was squander it uncharacteristically silent, bothered by the fact that he was about to be left alone with his thoughts again, much to Beomgyu's dismay.
All he had done when his husband had tried to comfort him to no avail, was comment mindlessly that maybe it was Beomgyu's fault.
"Yes but... I shouldn't have said that at all. I wasn't thinking."
Beomgyu hums, turning to gaze out the car window. Soft and quiet as he watches snowflakes cascade relentlessly outside.
The memory tinkles, small among them— a younger, smaller Beomgyu, looking out the window soon after arriving in their group, when he was not yet the mood maker, nor the loud one, nor any of the cages in which life had imprisoned him.
Kai smiles to himself, afraid to break the moment.
Everything has changed and nothing has changed, and Beomgyu still looks like that little puppy excited by the snow, by the magic of a winter he wasn't used to.
Maybe that was the moment when Kai began to fall in love with him.
Maybe that was the moment when he began to fall like snow, amazed by the way Beomgyu's gaze seemed to make the world sparkle, by the way his soul sang against the icy window, by the way the snow —that ordinary event that the news had been announcing for days— turned into magic in front of him.
Perhaps that had been the beginning of it all.
Kai remembers the murmur of his heart trembling in his chest, the silence of the building, the tenderness warming his body. He remembers the sweet tension of his smile, the way time had stopped as he watched him, the certainty that he wanted to protect that moment, that he wanted to protect this boy who was older than him, to wrap him in the same love that seemed to radiate from him.
The click of a camera slips into his memories, bringing him back to the present, and Kai looks back at his husband— at his small hands shaking a polaroid film , the image blurred as he tries to capture the winter, to stop time.
So Kai stops the car, parking it by the side of the road.
He says nothing when Beomgyu looks at him, confused. Nor when he gets out and opens the door for him, giving him a smile. Nor when Beomgyu returns it, understanding, closing his coat and running through the trees, his body half-sunken in the snow as he stretches out his arms and lets the winter fall on him.
And there is a small certainty in all that.
In the way Kai has passed this same place on the way out, but not seen it as he sees it now, on the way back. In the way life tends to have these moments— these knots of time where one finds oneself again but always differently.
Beomgyu's laughter tinkles in the air along with the snowflakes, and the light of dawn tints the white ground with pastels and iridescent colors.
And Kai falls in love again. He falls again and again. He falls in love with the Beomgyu who had never seen snow in Seoul, with his fingers stretched out on the glass of the building.
He falls in love with the Beomgyu he had grown up with in the group, the Beomgyu with whom he had sneaked out for makeout sessions between breaks, stifling giggles as they struggled to look presentable the moment they had to run back.
He falls in love with the shaven Beomgyu, his serious face in the military service photo.
He falls in love with the Beomgyu of small moments, the Beomgyu in a suit on his wedding day, the Beomgyu with eyes wet with sleep every morning.
He falls in love with the imperfect Beomgyu, and the Beomgyu who runs even though it is -11 degrees, just so he can capture memories of the world he's seeing.
He falls as Beomgyu’s laughter falls, as the snow falls.
His love springs in the dour landscape, beautiful in spite of everything. Beautiful as change is, as uncertainty is.
"It happens," Beomgyu comments, smiling melancholically as he approaches him.
"What does?"
"This. How sometimes we can't see what lies behind our emotions. Like now in this… snowstorm," Beomgyu closes his eyes, the wind caressing his face, biting his cheeks, pulling back his hair. "'I'm upset, so why can't you see it?' or 'I'm upset but I don't know how to tell you I'm upset'... Things like that."
Beomgyu reaches out a hand and cups it, collecting snowflakes.
"This thing here," he points to his head with his free hand, "it isn't very kind to us, isn't it?"
Kai smiles softly, letting Beomgyu continue.
"I... I fear, too. I tend to... I tend to put my self-worth all on you. On the people around me."
Kai knows this. They've been through this countless times. Years back when they had been young and fresh-faced, Beomgyu had his profile developed to encompass being the mood maker of the band.
It wasn't easy smiling for the camera even on the worst days. But it was even harder to constantly make people laugh even when he was anxious and exhausted. Even when he missed home for months on end. Years later, they aren't chained to those carefully crafted personalities anymore— yet that duty followed Beomgyu, haunted him like a ghost.
"What you said... It hurt because I knew it was true. And it hurt because I can't heal your pain when I am the one causing it."
"But you're not," Kai whispers hurriedly, grabbing his frost-bitten hand. "You're not."
Beomgyu smiles warmly, taking a small polaroid from his pocket.
" This ," he says, showing it to him. "This is how I see you."
Kai's breath hitches.
It's a little hazy, not yet fully developed, but he sees it.
In the photo, Kai is a slender figure in the middle of the snowy landscape, his black coat blending in with the trees, his blond hair shining in the light of dawn. He is almost winter personified— his gaze lost on the snow, an open smile as his love scatters into space, the warmth of the emotion shielding him from the cold and binding him to the world at the same time.
He can see it.
Perhaps for the first time, Kai can see himself.
He can see the way he too gives off light, the way he too bathes the world in magic— so similar and yet so different from how he sees Beomgyu. But still beautiful. Still worthy.
"This is how I see you,” Beomgyu repeats. “Like light capable of piercing the branches of trees, like snowdrops breaking through the thick layer of snow, like trees rising little by little, centimeter by centimeter, changing with the world. This is how I see you every day, in every moment." Beomgyu inches closer and Kai's world stops. "And I… I can't promise you that everything will always be the same. I don't want everything to always be the same. I want us to keep growing together. I want to decide every day to grow together with you. I want to choose you everyday and I want these moments with you— the small ones and the big ones. I want even the pain, the hurt, everything."
Love is a journey, not a destination.
He leans against Kai, sharing his warmth for drawn-out seconds.
It’s moments like this where Kai finds that no one will probably understand him as much as Beomgyu does. Because in this very second, he finds it easier to breathe when he realizes he doesn’t need Beomgyu to tell him he isn’t going to leave. He doesn’t need Beomgyu to assure him that he’ll stay by his side.
He knows Beomgyu, trusts him with his heart even if fear creeps up on him constantly. His husband has never failed to show him that through his actions. Actions as simple as the way he’s now intertwining their fingers while their quiet breaths fill up the pockets of silence in the little world they’ve created in here.
What Kai probably needs is for Beomgyu to simply remind him that it’s human to have emotions and he isn’t alone in learning to love and be loved, regardless how tumultuous it may seem.
Maybe their love will always be a work in progress.
But it doesn’t make each day mean any less.
“Yeah,” he breathes, resting his head against Beomgyu, tense muscles finally finding relief. “We should get home. It’s a long drive back.”
Beomgyu lets out a mournful whine.
“I’ll make you pancakes.”
“Blegh. You can’t cook.”
“Are you declining the offer?”
Beomgyu tears himself away reluctantly, turning to the parked car with a loud sigh. Pouting exaggeratedly with his arms crossed, he only relaxes after Kai leans in for a peck on his lips.
“Forgiven. Let’s go home.”
The way the word rolls off Beomgyu’s tongue stirs something in his chest, and Kai can only nod dumbly as he pulls out of the lot, stuffing the weird tingle down as he focuses on the road.
Sometimes loving Beomgyu is a bit like trying to catch snow.
It's sweet like things that only some people are lucky enough to experience. It is also difficult. Difficult like catching the snowflakes without them melting, difficult like trying to see all the snowflakes at once as they fall.
Difficult as everything that’s worth it.
Like them.