Chapter Text
“When your tired eyes are turning 83
I'll be there for you
Will you be there for me?
Forget me, let me down
Either way I'll always be around"
(Daniel Leggs, Crutches)
“I don’t even want to talk about it, Wooyoung.”
The simple fact that San referred to him by name meant he was on dangerous terrain.
“Well, yeah, I had guessed, but I deem to have given you enough space in the past weeks to now deserve an explanation as to why you’re ignoring me.”
“I’m not ignoring you.”
At first, he had thought San was only overwhelmed with work—commissions could get heavy on his back when he had trouble gaining inspiration for them. But then, after days of trying to ease the other’s stress, Wooyoung realized that his boyfriend wasn’t exactly stressed with his work, nor was he distant from anyone else than Wooyoung himself—which had obviously led him to the conclusion that if San was sighing with frustration right in front of him at that exact moment, it was because he was the cause for it. And San didn’t get frustrated with people—except for himself, maybe. Wooyoung raised an eyebrow, asking for more explanation.
“I’m giving us space.”
“I didn’t ask for space, though.”
The silence they were tossed into wasn’t as comfortable as the one they sometimes enjoyed wallowing in, and quickly enough, San’s eyes filled with tears.
“San-ah...”
“Yeah. Right. You didn’t ask for that,” he replied, so dryly that there wasn’t even an ounce of wry.
San wasn’t even arguing the way he usually did. He had given up the sarcasm and was admitting mirthlessly what he didn’t quite seem to believe. Wooyoung bit his tongue with the realization that what he had thought to be simple miscommunication had to be much more serious.
“What’s wrong?”
“I don’t know, tell me,” he replied, terse, expression neutral except for the tears’ tracks drying on his face. “Sorry,” he then muttered, shaking his head.
“Whatever it is, it’s eating you out.”
“Yeah, I noticed.”
“Are you angry at me? I can’t know what’s on your mind if you don’t tell me.”
San left the kitchen—though his cut-up vegetables and meat cubes hadn’t been cooked into a meal yet—and walked into the living room, followed by a pondering Wooyoung, and jumped on by his cat. He accepted her affection, holding her to his chest and receiving a few licks on the jaw in exchange.
“You really didn’t plan on telling me, right?” he then asked, turning to face his boyfriend.
The confusion Wooyoung was bearing didn’t go unnoticed. The other inhaled sharply, eyes looking away once again.
“I heard your conversation with Yeosang,” San admitted. “About three weeks ago.”
Frankly, Wooyoung couldn’t quite recall what he had been talking about with his best friend weeks earlier, and it wasn’t what was bothering him anyway.
“Three... You waited three weeks before...”
“No, you don’t get to tell me that I waited too long before communicating.”
“Why did you even listen to our conversation?”
“I didn’t mean to, I was in the bathroom, and I heard my name. And I heard too much, don’t worry, I wish I hadn’t either,” he said, and suddenly, he was full-on sobbing, sitting in a ball on the sofa, his cat rubbing her head against his chest as if to ease him. “Wooyoung, I love you, okay? Like, really, really hard. And we’re way past the honeymoon phase, but I think I love you more than I did then. I’d give absolutely everything up if it meant having you with me.”
The younger man’s mouth was hanging open as his mind was running miles to try to understand where the conversation was going. He had expected San to reproach him absolutely anything, but to confess? They were already in a solid relationship, why was he confessing all of a sudden? Desperation was leaking in his tone. San wasn’t like that.
“But you don’t seem to be on the same page as me.”
It’s his small sniffles that pulled Wooyoung out of his questioning and that sprung him into action. He sat, pulled his boyfriend against his chest, on his lap, and hugged him, and dried his tears, and rubbed his back straight because it had rounded and hunched.
San indeed wasn’t like that.
Not at all. And if he was acting like that, it meant Wooyoung had royally fucked up. And he searched, dug into his memory, tried to pluck out breaches of what he could’ve said or felt. And there was really only one thing he had recently felt that was worth San’s tears. And he wasn’t sure what he had told Yeosang about it—nor what his boyfriend had heard out of it—but he had an idea of what he needed to say either way.
“I love you,” he tried to repair.
“Wooyoung, I mean it, I would give everything up. And I know, and I can tell you, and I would bet my life that I’ll love you fifty years from now on. But you wouldn’t.”
“San-ah, it’s not like that.”
But a little. Just a little.
Wooyoung loved San. He really did. But they were young and Wooyoung had never been one of stability. He had never known such a long relationship. And he wasn’t sure if that was what he was looking for.
Wooyoung loved San deeply. Honestly. But he was young, and young people had doubts. And it was a tiny one. But it was there.
Wooyoung was in love with his boyfriend, and it felt horribly illegal to have doubts about their relationship. And he had tried to dig that feeling’s grave, he had tried to shut it up. But Wooyoung was still unsure of what such stability was going to bring him. He was still unsure of the responsibilities and commitment related to it. And he was still unsure of many, many things. Because Wooyoung was young and he was allowed doubts, though he didn’t want them to hold him back from the man he loved.
Wooyoung loved him, and he hadn’t been sure how to bring up the fact that he wasn’t as certain of their future as San was. He could see his boyfriend’s love through devotion and passion, and he didn’t know if he owned the same fire in himself. San wanted him in his life fifty years from then on. Wooyoung didn’t know what his seventy-six years old self wanted. It wasn’t out of lack of love, he knew that much, though he couldn’t put his finger on where the doubt came from.
“So, what is it like, Wooyoung? I waited for you to talk to me about it. Yeosang told you to, you said you’d try. I waited. I wanted you to bring it up first. I wanted it to come from you. I wanted you to be honest with me,” San muttered, words ending in somewhat of a whine as he tried to refrain from crying more.
Wooyoung felt like the biggest loser ever. More than every time he lost a bet against his older brother. More than when a boy had asked him out as a joke when he was a teen and he had accepted. More than when he had vomited on a ride at Lotte World.
Wooyoung stared at his boyfriend’s figure, curled up on his lap, and he felt sorry. He felt horribly sorry because he had broken rightful expectations—expectations he had created himself by promising to always verbalize to San what troubled him. He wanted to cry, too. He wanted to explain why he didn’t have the will to tell something to the man he loved, to the man who deserved to hear it. So, he did. He explained it. He tried to find the words, now that it was a bit too late, now that he had already fucked up.
“I just didn’t want to hurt you. I didn’t want you to doubt me either. I didn’t want you to think that I was going to break up. I still love you. I still want to give you hugs and kisses and... and I want to be with you. You’re still my favorite person, San-ah, that’s not about to change.”
“That’s not what you told Yeosang, Wooyoung,” San reminded him, looking at him with a pained frown.
“I don’t know what I told him, to be honest. I don’t remember.”
“You told him that sometimes you think about what it would be like to be single.”
Wooyoung’s eyes cast on the ground. The air seemed to have been punched out of him.
“You told him that sometimes you wondered what it would be like to go back to those days when you were out clubbing and free to let anyone flirt with you, kiss you, blow you.”
He was so ashamed that he couldn’t even look at San’s cat, maybe in fear to be scratched or bitten by her.
“You told him I’m maybe a bit too passionate.”
There was no excuse. He had said things that weren’t quite meant—if there was one thing he loved, it was basking in San’s attention—but there was no going back, now. So, he stayed silent. Because he couldn’t even remember where it came from. He couldn’t tell if there had been alcohol or fatigue, but he knew that whatever San had heard had not been earnest or thoughtful. Sure, he had doubts over how long they’d stay the perfect couple, but he didn’t truly think that being single was an option—not when he was so deep into a relationship that made him feel fulfilled if anything.
“So, yeah, I’m giving us space. Since you seem to have a hard time asking for space. Since I have a hard time figuring out how to feel about the fact that my boyfriend maybe won’t be my boyfriend for as long as I want him to be.”
“San-ah, I swear, I don’t... I’m sorry. I don’t know what to say. I never wanted to imply that I didn’t want to be with you. I never...”
“You know what, Wooyoung? Nevermind.”
Pain radiated from him. He pulled out of the embrace, got up, and walked to the kitchen to cook dinner. The cat hissed at both of them from the abrupt movement.
“I didn’t even want to talk about it.”