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Hyunjin has never known what it’s like to be in love.
He knows passion. He knows endearment, and infatuation, and attraction, and yearning. He even knows how to love.
But, he’s never been in love.
It’s not really that he hasn’t found the right person, though, maybe if he’s lucky, then that’s the case. It’s more so that there’s something deep inside of him which is incapable of letting himself go.
He’s chased, and he’s chased and he’s chased, but he can’t feel the spark. Maybe it fills him with adrenaline, or craving or some other secret third thing. But it’ll never be love.
If he were a better person, he would say all of these things to Seungmin, now, as his head lies against his shoulder. But he isn’t, and he doesn’t, and honestly it feels like he can’t.
Sometimes, in moments like right now, he actually thinks that he may be feeling it.
Seungmin’s hair is soft, yet still spiky when it gets trapped under the neckline of Hyunjin’s shirt. He smells good, like that mysterious mixture of shampoos and hair perfumes Jeongin uses, and refuses to make Hyunjin privy to. But above all, he smells like Seungmin. Seungmin, who smells like he spilled coffee on his sleeves, and somehow never has. Seungmin, who smells clean all of the time, and whose breath miraculously has never stunk, even after eating gopchang and radish kimchi. Seungmin, who smells like citrus underneath all of it, because Hyunjin loves fruit, so why wouldn’t he?
And now, with his fingers carding through his hair, and Seungmin’s legs entangled with his own, he wonders briefly if this is what love feels like.
(It can’t be. He knows it isn’t, when it’s replaced by worry and fear every time he has this thought. But he hopes. He hopes with everything inside of his 180 something centimeters that this is what it feels like.)
Seungmin is either oblivious to it all, or chooses not to mention it. Hyunjin’s internal dilemma, as well as his (maybe) feelings.
So, they’re close, and Hyunjin rests his cheek against the crown of Seungmin’s head because he desperately craves the touch. Because he feels like he needs this more than anything right now, and all he can do is take, take, take. Even if it leaves Seungmin empty, at the end.
He doesn’t want to leave him empty. He doesn’t want to hurt him. He thinks he loves him. He wants to love him. He knows he doesn’t—can’t. But he’s trying.
And, yes, here is where any good person would admit that awareness equals responsibility. Where any good person would pull away, and put up the boundary, and say, ”I love you. I love you so much, but I can’t give you this. I don’t like you this way. We can’t act like this, because it’ll only break your heart. I’m sorry.”
Or, maybe a better person would phrase it better, too.
But, alas, Hyunjin is a bad, and selfish person, who takes and takes and takes until everyone else is left with nothing and somehow he has nothing, too. So maybe he doesn’t take, he just destroys. With his no good hands, who say ”I just want to love. I just want to love. I just want to love you.” And crush innocent heartbeats into silence under their fingertips.
That’s too hard on himself, thinking about it. He really does, genuinely, just want to love. He tries his hardest, and he really believes he feels it. Until it slips away from him, leaving him feeling like a monster.
Really, monster should be the only word out there for someone who knows he can’t love, and tries anyway, risking other people as well as himself.
Seungmin’s head lifts off his shoulder, and he’s immediately cold at the loss of contact. His face turns slowly to look over Hyunjin’s. “Jinnie?” He asks, his hands polite over Hyunjin’s knee, never too close, never reaching up to cup his cheek, but always itching too. Hyunjin knows this, and still, he indulges himself in him. “I can hear you thinking.” He jokes, sitting away now.
“It’s nothing.” He smiles reassuringly, meeting Seungmin’s eyes. They’re painfully honest, and painfully unassuming. Seungmin knows of his turmoil, of his struggles to feel romantically. And still, Hyunjin knows he’s wrong for treating him the way he does, like he’s the only man in the world. Because sometimes—most of the time—he is. He is, until he isn’t. Until he loves Hyunjin a little too hard, or the jokes about them being together turn a little too serious. Until Hyunjin feels his heart aching in his chest because he knows all he will ever be is poison, and Seungmin deserves an elixir.
Seungmin doesn’t push. He never pushes, because he cares enough to never hurt Hyunjin. The one person on earth he’s never been angry at. But he—He can’t. He doesn’t. He tries. He wants to. He can’t.
“I love you.” Hyunjin says. And he means it. Platonically. He thinks he’s beautiful, he would kiss him. Platonically. He would take, and he would take until he had his fill of him. Platonically.
Seungmin’s smile is heartwarming. If you’re not Hyunjin, who feels like he just kicked a puppy. Seungmin wouldn’t think he felt like this, he hopes. Or maybe he would. “I love you too.” His ears are tinged red.
They always do this.
There’s this tension, this thing between them, which dances inside Hyunjin’s chest and leaves the moment he thinks it could turn serious. Where time seems to still, and he thinks about marrying him. Of how Seungmin is the only one for him, the only one he’ll ever be attached to like this, the only one he’ll ever wish he was in love with so badly he convinced himself he was.
When they flirt, or see two cats in love on the street and share an “us.” When Seungmin holds his hand when he cries in complete silence, and Hyunjin knows his neck must be stiff, but he never complains. When Hyunjin looks at him like he hung the stars, and praises him—genuinely—as if he had, too. He means everything he says. He means nothing he feels.
Back to the present, the silence is comfortable. It always is between them, and it’s not really a choice, they just seem to accept each other regardless of their energy to talk or not. He doesn’t have to be in love with Seungmin, he knows. But he wonders. And he wishes, and he thinks that if it were anyone, it would be him. But every time it’s within his grasp, that hope runs away from him.
“I love you.” Hyunjin repeats. Because he does.
Seungmin doesn’t say it back. Also, because he does. He merely scans Hyunjin’s face for something more. He’s sorry to be unable to give him anything he looks for. He’s sorry all he knows how to do is take. He’s sorry for wanting him so badly, knowing it will hurt him when his feelings inevitably die. He’s sorry for feeling sorry for himself, and he’s sorry for feeling sorry to Seungmin, who doesn’t want it.
Seungmin reaches out a hopeful, comforting hand. It’s always nerve-wracking for him to make a move, he knows. He’s felt it so many times before. He should pull a way. He should put a stop. But he holds his hand, and he smiles at him, and the smile he gets in return is nothing if not radiant.
His eyes fall to his lips. He wants to kiss him. He always wants to kiss him, he always has. Even in the moments he’s coming down from the high of chasing him around, of poking and prodding until Seungmin finally admits he likes him, he wishes he was kissing him. He never does. He has, once. He never did again.
There’s something hesitant, between fear and hope in Seungmin’s eyes. It’s like all those stories, where the protagonist falls for some archetypically evil, but outwardly kind monster thing. The thought that something so ugly could actually be sweet. It’s that kind of fear, in the opposite scenario. Where Hyunjin is so sweet, he knows, but he sucks the life out of everything he touches.
Like a man in love, though, their joined hands seem to bring Seungmin to life, if only for this moment. Hyunjin is guilty. He loves him, right now. He thinks he wants him, right now. He’s going to kiss him.
When he leans forward, Seungmin meets him halfway, like he was anticipating it. He probably wouldn’t have been, if Hyunjin weren’t looking to his lips like he wanted to eat him alive. He kisses him, and he kisses him, and he kisses him.
Seungmin kisses back, and back, and back, and his hands drop to Hyunjin’s waist, and he squeezes his sides. It’s affectionate. It’s everything. It’s Seungmin.
It’s too much.
When he pulls away, he sees the stars in Seungmin’s eyes.
In that moment alone, Hyunjin feels like he’s crashed back down into his pit of nothing, and nearly pukes.