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Mortification is not a bucket of ice plunged down your head, but a mass of molten, heavy, suffocating magma.
Woojin learns this one freezing winter morning, shivering by the dining table and watching Gunwoo make seaweed soup. The sun has yet to make an appearance, casting azure and cobalt hues over the tiny apartment. It's dim. Woojin doesn't know why none of them thought to switch on the lights. Maybe it's better this way.
Their subpar heating system is sorely insufficient for days like this, when the temperature drops well below four degrees in the countryside and Woojin's sock-covered toes are numb from the cold. Woojin doesn't know why they haven't asked Mr. Oh to fix the heater despite having the funds to do so. Have they always been this dense? This tolerant and stubborn of all the hardships in their lives? The answer comes slow and painful to him.
Gunwoo has a ladle the size of his face shoved into his mouth as he tastes the soup, making loud slurping sounds that Woojin wouldn't have tolerated at this hour if it were to be anyone else. His bedhead is unruly even with the seemingly dashing undercut, built frame barely visible in his Pikachu-themed pajamas set, gifted by Damin for April Fool's.
The sight is, frankly speaking, atrocious. Comic, most definitely. It's also weirdly domestic. Horrifyingly intimate. Woojin has a bucket of magma thrown over the top of his head.
It seeps into his veins and weighs an invisible force onto his whole body, casts streaks of lightning down to his feet, slow and burning but not quite erupting. Realisation frays every nerve in him, pins him onto the chair, the weight of the universe stilling on his shoulders. It's somewhere between panic and terror and relief. He's supposed to feel chilly and frigid with the weather, not–not this. Not like he's simmering in the very core of the most active volcano in the world.
Woojin's not stupid.
He's inexperienced, naive, but certainly not unintelligent. He finds it more difficult to have zero understanding of what this feeling is at the ripe age of twenty-seven, albeit the unconfidence and doubt. It's not normal if your world gets hurled off its axis while watching your friend make soup for you at six-thirty in the morning, after all.
A satisfied groan from gunwoo pulls woojin out of his head. The ladle is out of his mouth, and he's looking at him with a gentle but brilliant shine in his eyes, conveying everything he wants to say. Woojin huffs a quiet laugh.
"Is it really that good?" He challenges. His voice is sandy from sleep. Gunwoo deflates for a moment, expression morphing into his kicked puppy look, then puffs his chest out with pride. It takes everything within Woojin to not blurt out regrettable words right then and there.
"You're going to cry."
"You punk, have you ever seen me cry before?" Woojin scoffs. "No matter how bad it tastes, hyung will hold it in and finish it like a pro. That's what marine pride is all about."
An impossible mix of a pout and a stink-eye etches its way onto Gunwoo's face. Woojin's stomach does somersaults. For all they've been through, some things really just don't change.
You're adorable.
He wants to scream the words in Gunwoo's face until his voice gives out. He wants to bolt and leave the country so that Gunwoo will never find out about his– whatever this is. How long have they been floating around the cavity of his chest before bubbling up to the forefront of his mind? Something about his affection has changed somewhere along the way—for the better and for the worse—and Woojin has no clue when. Years of being a bloodhound has taught him never to make a move until he's 100% certain of the outcome. Woojin feels like he's stumbling through a fog along the edge of a cliff.
"That's not what I meant." Gunwoo is still sulking. Woojin gives in.
"I know, I was just joking. You're a world class part-timer, remember? I only learn from the best." Gunwoo preens at the compliment, turning to scoop the contents into a bowl. Woojin rolls his eyes at the act, then feels the corners of his lips pull upwards. He doesn't try to fight it.
Gunwoo sets the bowl down on the table and waits, hands clasped nervously in front of him, anticipation on his face. Woojin brings a steaming spoonful to his lips and sips, and then almost–almost runs his mouth with praise and swoop gunwoo into a hug. He holds back instead, schools his expression into something carefully neutral, because gunwoo is fun to tease like that.
"How is it? How is it?" Gunwoo asks, shaking and buzzing like a child on Christmas morning. The boy's always been easy to read, easier to please. Melancholy washes over him, out of all things. Woojin will drench and destroy his bare hands with the blood of this universe's evil if it meant that Gunwoo will never have to shake from the sheer effort of holding his tears in again.
"As expected," he starts. Gunwoo's face cinches. Woojin drops the blank look right after. "Dude, this is insane. I'm going to be totally honest with ya, not even my mom makes seaweed soup as well as you. World class part-timer strikes again, holy cow. This is the greatest birthday soup ever, Gunwoo-ah, I swear on my life."
When gunwoo's smile takes over his whole face like the sun over the horizon, Woojin's hit with the blindly hopeful thought that maybe, just maybe, his feelings are mutual.
The magma's warmth comes easier this time.