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Quiet. The pressing kind, settled all around, both heavy and light, draped across everything he knew. Covering familiar hollows, coating familiar branches, dips and divots he once called home. Everything slept now. Burrowed, buried, belaying fears he endured in the waking world while below they dozed unbothered.
Hard rested the ground beneath him. Not so much frostbitten as intensely resilient. Braced for the onset of silence long before even the chipmunks and rabbits shut themselves in. The bark against his back stood not as sturdy. Even the oldest oak could not brace itself for the quiet, and the way it seeped into its bones, a coldness with an intent to kill. Thus came the cycle, however, as only in death could the oak be born anew, giving life to blankets of leaves that would inevitably turn brittle and brown in the next season's shadow. Those leaves would feed the earth. The earth would feed the oak.
And they would all feed the winter.
Except for the few immune to that numbness, unable to have their life sapped by the cold. Two herons stood by the pond in perfect poise, feathers blue and grey, primed for takeoff. They looked at each other, at the frozen water, at the sky. One leaned down to peck at the pond's icy surface. Then again, and again, until its beak broke through and freed the water beneath. The two of them drank in silence before resuming their quiet sentry, surveying the barren land through a curtain of tall brittle grasses.
Together, in a language unknown to his simple human tongue, the two shared agreement and took flight in a sudden flap of heavy wings, riding the wind low and steady as one. The sound echoed across snow, felt loud enough to leave prints, and Kai watched the sky long after they had disappeared from view.
The following silence settled more impressively, embedded not only across the snow, and earth, and trees, but in his body as well. He could feel it when he lifted his arms to grip his knees, when he finally shut his eyes and allowed the weak wood of the frozen oak to hold the weight of his head.
Winter had the strangest light. Filtered through a veil of cold, watery and incandescent. It should not be strong enough to pierce, yet it blazed behind his eyelids. Not the sun, but the greyness of it all. The sun had altogether disappeared, leaving behind that mask of haze, the lid on the top of the jar filled with ice, trapping him inside, isolated from the rest of the world. The herons could take flight and break past the grey lid. The rabbits could dig burrows and hide themselves away beneath the frozen floor of splintered ice. Leaving only Kai, and the silence, and the cold. Him and the dead things. The things the ice could claim as its own. If it spread over the dirt, and the pond, and the trees, sentencing them all to wakeless sleep, and he was left among them, then it was only a matter of time before the ice claimed him as well, enveloping him in a bitter cold cocoon.
"Kai?" a voice broke over winter like the first spring rain, so refreshing and clear, momentarily dowsing his frozen paralyzed fear and all its wicked cold claws of inevitability.
He glanced towards it as though he was a new bud burst forth from the dirt seeking sun.
And as the sun shone, so too did Yeonjun. The cold dusted his cheeks with two perfect cherry petals brought on from ducking out the door, and thus the warmth of their temporary home in search of him. As soon as he spotted Kai by the old oak, he called out, "Hold on," and slipped back into the warmth.
Kai watched him go but could not gather the strength to stand, embedded in winter as he was. He tried to convince himself that it wouldn't matter, whether Yeonjun returned to him or not. He belonged out there among the cold and the dead and the heavy loneliness of it all. The aching stood as a testament to all his failures, both that of his back and of the black inside.
And Yeonjun, his one precious thing and his most obvious failure, belonged in the cabin among the fire and the radiance and the passionate joy burst forth from his smile. He was music and light and all the things Kai could not be for him, no matter how hard he tried. What a piteous piece of poetry to have written himself into without discernment.
He desperately wanted that to be his story. The one with the light, and the music, and the guy he cared for more than anything. And he would chase that story to the ends of the earth, only to trip over his own feet and scrawl out yet another unfulfilling end. So many chapters written between this place, between the two of them, between Kai and his inner demons, yet still a cascade of blank pages remained.
Bookends could not be forced, nor could he promise an end in the right place at the right time.
Kai set his sights again on the frozen pond, and this time could not stir when the echo of the cabin door disturbed the snow.
But it wasn't just the door disturbing the snow. Heavy steps pressed powder into packed, winter giving way for the boots of spring's muse, and Kai wished his heart would move the way he knew it could to anticipate his arrival.
"Hey," Yeonjun murmured without dramatics, and it was so simple but so him, knowing the exact dial Kai needed him to be on to meet his energy. "Your butt is soaked."
Kai finally glanced his way, only to see Yeonjun hovering by his side, fur-trimmed black boots on his feet, a padded jacket twice his size zipped up his body. In his hands he held two of the thick afghans that came with the cabin.
Without really saying anything, Kai used the trunk of the oak to bear his weight and stand, letting Yeonjun put both blankets down on the snow. It was a very Yeonjun solution- a good gesture, maybe not the most practical in the long run, but a kindness and a quick fix nonetheless.
As soon as they were down, Kai resumed his spot on the ground, now provided a layer between him and the cold.
Yeonjun plopped down beside him. It took a few minutes of silence. Both of them sitting in the heart of winter, Yeonjun contemplating him, and Kai contemplating why it didn't beat, but eventually, there was a movement of hands and the distinct sound of a zipper, and Yeonjun's heavy coat descended around Kai's shoulders. The fabric held his warmth. Some of that was the heat of inside, but most of it was Yeonjun, burning at a thousand degrees of life.
When he wore it, he felt like clumps of ice were being brushed from his back. Weights slung off and cast back into winter where they belonged.
"You've been out here a while," he said quietly. Even he didn't want to disrupt everything within the grey jar.
Kai gave him a short nod, and dipped a finger into the powdered snow at his feet. Its bite was bitter, and crawled quickly, white turning red, inciting blood without breaking skin. He dragged his finger through, not much of an artist but an abstractionist, and beside him Yeonjun let out a sneeze, then a sniff.
The cold didn't spare any haste for him, either.
"I got the stuff to make mitarashi dango. From that anime you like." It was another nice gesture. Yeonjun was full of them, and what a waste, lost on a victim of the season. Kai nodded again. "We can make it together," Yeonjun went on. "Or if you're tired, I can make it for you. I don't mind. I just thought it might be nice to take the edge off this chill by cooking something."
Kai didn't have the words to say that his heart and mind wanted to stand up right then and there to go cook with him but the essence of his human condition forbade him from doing so. There wasn't any term for it. Just the winter and the blackness and the way it all made him feel.
He exhaled, and the cold got to his breath faster than the sound itself, crystallized and broken into the air around them. "Thanks, hyung," were the two words he managed, and it felt like a monumental feat, putting his own words to winter.
Yeonjun picked at the laces of his boots for a while, then said, "You know, I'm never going to tell you how to feel. I don't really know what to say, honestly, or if saying something makes it worse. But I'm here. Silently or not, whatever is better for you. I just worry. I-" He paused, a sigh slipping past his lips, before switching directions, "I don't want you to get sick, sitting out here all by yourself."
Kai found his hand and squeezed it, selfishly claiming more of that warmth for his own. "I'll come in soon."
Yeonjun squeezed back. "As soon as you can, okay? I'm getting lonely in there."
Kai knew he was teasing, but it still sent a pang through his chest, one that only had a knife hooked in it and tore wider, deeper, as Yeonjun stood and left him. Immediately, the cold flooded to take his place, a miserable excuse for a companion, but one Kai felt he earned. He didn't watch him go. He couldn't bear it, knowing all he did was drive his closest person away.
I'm getting lonely.
He must be, spending all that time waiting on a love that couldn't bloom, perpetually stagnant. Not with Kai embedded so deep in the frigid earth. A bulb wasted, left to rot, yet Yeonjun cultivated it nonetheless. With gentle words and an unwavering faith -either in him or what they shared- he put in the work every season.
It wasn't fair for Kai to do the same only three quarters of the time.
It was a testament to love, the way it withstands and weathers. Yet an even stronger testament to lassitude, in how it overpowered love and turned restful into resentment. Listless, Kai drifted around their periodic perfect paradise, a season swept away and safely tucked aside just for them two. A place they returned to every winter.
Kai knew Yeonjun did it in anticipation of the change in seasons. Of the change in him. And he couldn't say whether it helped or harmed them in the long run.
The idea was to get him away from the city, and for that Kai loved him. In winter, the city became too loud, too bustling, too much. It baffled him, how everyone continued to run through snow and watery streetlights with smiles on their faces while he only wanted to waste away in one place at all times, reminded of the time trickling between his fingers and how little his existence truly mattered in the end. He could rage, and rage, and rage with effervescence, but in the end, what would he accomplish? Yet another life, born and died and wasted?
Of course, maybe it would help to be surrounded by all that noise and activity, if only to feel longing for what he was missing. But Yeonjun's energy was enough. A quiet space lit up entirely in the radiance of a loved one helped infinitely more than the ceaseless twisting guilt of missing out on a dozen sleepless city nights.
But the feeling was akin to that of cupping a tiny flickering flame in his pale frozen palms. Expecting the warmth and life of that small fire to be enough to both thaw and ignite. Placing too much weight and expectation on its ability to burn. And underneath all that pressure, it would eventually suffocate and snuff out.
There was a sensation in his chest then. A sense of urgency. He needed to change. For Yeonjun, or for himself, he couldn’t say, yet undoubtedly he needed change.
It took work to stagger to his feet, and when he stood, he shut his eyes for a moment and let his head fall back against the oak. Every breath of crystalized air filled his lungs with a numb sort of clarity.
Kai shook the blankets out and folded them over his arm, taking one last look around the winter landscape. Soft hills, sparse trees, and dead leaves all painted over in the same snow hue. There were other cabins. Far from theirs, down the road, but even that too lay under a thick icy cover.
Clouds of smoke rose in the slowly darkening sky, though, exhales from woodstoves all taking collective winter breaths, and it reminded him that even all the way out here, he wasn’t alone.
Conflicted, he turned back towards the driveway of their own cabin and trekked inside, leaving the footprints of anthropomorphized turmoil in his wake. Winter torment given human form. It was so bleakly humorous to him, the way they were all design, reflection, and doubt. Deeply flawed and painfully beautiful. Sometimes it felt as though, if he were to split himself in half, it would not be blood that spilled out but crystals, cold and hard, formed from the pressure of sentience itself.
Yeonjun, too, would bleed crystals. But not the cold clear kind of Kai’s blood. His would be every color of the rainbow, and glowing with the warmth of the world’s core that formed him.
When he pulled the door open, that warmth enveloped him, brushed across his cheeks and lifted the chill from his bones. They had only been at the cabin for a couple of days, but already it smelled like Yeonjun, cinnamon and sweet. It smelled like home.
Immediately, Yeonjun glanced at the door from where he stood by the kitchen counter, and smiled, little lines forming around crescent eyes. “There you are,” he greeted him cheerfully, without any of the accusation or lingering hurt that Kai felt he should harbor. “You can just leave the blankets by the washing machine, I’ll run them through later.”
Kai tried his best to return that smile, and said, “I can put them in.”
“Okay,” Yeonjun agreed, and there was the pause where he always weighed whether or not to give him instructions. Kai supposed that was one disagreement they had often- he told Yeonjun he nagged too much, and Yeonjun told him he wouldn’t if Kai would just listen the first time he told him things. And then his Virgo won out because, despite the conflicted look on his face, he followed up with, “Do you mind putting them in one at a time? And just double check the washer is on delicate?”
Sometimes it got on his nerves, but today, Kai was contemplative. He had the capacity to understand that details mattered to Yeonjun, and he wasn’t trying to be overbearing, he just wanted things done in the best way possible.
“Sure,” he replied in a soft voice, and Yeonjun’s features relaxed into careful graciousness.
“Thanks,” Yeonjun said, before turning back to the counter.
Kai let him be, allowing himself a brief moment to imagine a world where this was their normal. Laundry, cooking, exchanging words that were delicate but genuine in the grace of an everyday breath. Inhaling and exhaling in a space that was only theirs, that they created and nurtured together. They didn’t live together, at least not now. There was a brief time in their early university years when they shared an apartment with a few other people, but had decided it wasn’t conducive to their relationship to constantly be in each other’s space. Dating was hard sometimes. There wasn’t really another way to put it. Sometimes they were perfect, sometimes contradictory, and on a few difficult occasions completely destructive.
Couples always said with happy smiles and linked hands that they had been together for such an important definite amount of time. Six months, two years, seven-years-nine-months-and-fourteen-days. They all knew. They boasted about it so proudly.
But Kai couldn’t really say how long he and Yeonjun had been together. They weren’t and then they were, and then sometimes they weren’t again. It was complicated. He liked to think they were together now. And he thought Yeonjun felt the same way.
When he came back from the laundry room, he hovered in the doorframe and watched Yeonjun for a moment. His shape was so familiar to him, long and lithe and keen. Like lightning, he was fast and fluid and full of energy. Even his hands moved quickly now, never stalling as he scrolled through the instructions on his phone and tapped his fingertips against the counter to the rhythm in his head. His feet shuffled, then adjusted, tucking one ankle behind the other, then switching their places.
Yeonjun was Kai’s genie in a bottle, ready to grant his every wish, and Kai was terrified of the moment he realized he was being kept captive. They were tethered to one another, but lately, Kai felt like he was the one holding the rope, preventing Yeonjun from breaking free and discovering the world outside of what they shared.
"Do you want to put on some music?" Yeonjun called out, maybe thinking Kai was still down the hall.
Sound and noise; he couldn't yet tell why one overwhelmed him, or even why his mind felt so insistent on separating the two. He loved sounds. The clinking of cookware against the hard countertops and each other. The crackling of the woodstove that served as their cabin's beating heart. The croon of Yeonjun's voice, all the promises it could make and Kai couldn't be kept to.
Kai nodded even though Yeonjun didn’t turn to see, and picked up his phone from where he abandoned it on the couch another lifetime ago that morning. As he did, Yeonjun pressed the button on their bluetooth speaker, and even though Kai braced himself for the familiar startup sound, he still felt the built up anxiety and subsequent release of it, once the sound came, wash through his collarbones and down his shoulders, finally out his fingertips.
He put on the playlist that Yeonjun had heard a thousand times, and would probably tolerate a thousand times more before he eventually found the wherewithal to tell Kai he was sick of it. The playlist itself wasn't anything distinct or special. Just music that put Kai at ease. The same eight hours of it over and over again. Music that reminded him of his parents, of Seoul, of high school, reckoning with his youth and the process of coming to terms with his demons. A long, difficult process that no one really prepared him for, or told him he would have to endure on his own.
Yeonjun had no reaction to his selection other than to start humming along to the first song under his breath as he mixed ingredients.
But for the first time in a while, Kai felt the rush of something warm. The opposite of the winter splintering through his chest. Something that thawed the ice, leaving him with a lingering glow and the hopeful drip, drip, drip of his fear.
However lonely his journey up through adulthood felt, he had Yeonjun, and they returned to this place every year. Together, without fail, since they were children. First in the arms of their parents, then running to the cabin on thick snow boot soles, then in Yeonjun's first car in high school, and even now.
Their last year of university, they came back. Together.
Nothing Kai could ever have would be as certain and beautiful as that. All the countless times Yeonjun could have picked up his own scattered efforts to keep the two of them as one and left shouldn't be wasted, nor taken for granted.
It was a complicated balance act, this thing they had, and the tightrope grew thinner in the wake of the cold winter tide. Yeonjun knew, Kai knew that Yeonjun knew, and still they walked it hand in hand. Kai didn't want to draw attention to it. Yeonjun didn't want to coddle him, but Kai could always tell that Yeonjun still wanted him to understand he cared. And so they endured, with Kai feeling as though he was the broken link in their fragile bonded chain, and oscillating between blaming himself for the burden he had become and desperately wishing he could just be the best version of himself all the time.
He never wanted to ask too much of Yeonjun. And to tolerate Kai in the dead of winter was to tolerate a silent blizzard tearing the door off the hinges of the only place one felt safe.
So for the briefest second, when he felt that warmth spread through his chest, the thawing left him with tears pricking behind his eyes, and he smiled.
Yeonjun turned to glance at him just as the expression cracked his glacial mask, and he was beautiful. Black hair flat and shining from the snow that had settled in it, and that powdering of pink spread across his cheeks and nose. He was everything wonderful about winter. His thick cream cable-knit sweater he wore half as comforting as his presence in a room. His stud earrings of snowflakes and gingerbread people. His smile as he returned Kai's thawing him out more than the woodstove ever could.
"Can I help?" Kai asked, and even though his voice cracked a bit, Yeonjun nodded enthusiastically.
It was fun, sharing a kitchen with Yeonjun. Another one of those little domestic paradises that he craved now and again. They were simple, and sometimes simple was exactly what he needed. Today, he didn’t have it in him to talk much, but Yeonjun understood. He talked for both of them, in that sweet honey voice Kai loved being encased in, as if tucking him into a sweater of his own. Occasionally, he made a joke that broke through the cold and Kai laughed half as loud as he usually would, still a small victory. He even told Kai he watched a few episodes of Demon Slayer just to see why Kai got so obsessed with the snack they were making.
The cooking process itself wasn’t hard, and within the hour, they were tasting the fruits of their labor, sticky dumplings that were the perfect combination of salty and sweet. But more than just being a self-indulgent meal, it was the love language Yeonjun exemplified that meant so much. Acts of service wasn’t one of Kai’s love languages, not really. But performing them was Yeonjun’s, and it took a long time for Kai to understand how to receive without feeling like a burden.
“Thanks for doing that,” Kai said while they cleaned up, and Yeonjun ruffled his hair.
“It was fun. You know I like cooking with you. You’re a good kitchen partner.”
“Better than Beomgyu?” Kai found it in him to tease, and Yeonjun pulled a face at the mention of his current roommate.
“Much better than Beomgyu.”
For a while, they lived together with three other people, which was nice at first. They meshed well. But everything grew complicated with the ups and downs of Kai and Yeonjun’s relationship, and eventually, they split off in groups. It was the only solution that made sense at the time. Yeonjun went with Choi Beomgyu into a studio flat; with both of them being in the same photography department on a small budget, it was the logical choice. And Kai stuck with their other two roommates in the large apartment they had originally all shared. Third-wheeling was hard, though. Kang Taehyun and Choi Soobin were a subtle couple for the most part, but it was as though their honeymoon phase never ended, and Kai was stuck perpetually watching two people be unquestionably in love with one another without ever faltering, always on the outside looking in, tormenting himself over why he couldn’t replicate the same with Yeonjun.
Just as he thought it, Yeonjun ducked his head into Kai’s periphery, curiously taking a peek at his expression. “What’s on your mind now?”
Kai shook his head and finished washing the plate in his hands. “Nothing,” he automatically mumbled.
It would have been a good opportunity to be vulnerable. To let Yeonjun in and admit that he missed living with him. But he just couldn’t do it. Not with everything else swirling around in his mind, and especially not with the constant terrible knowledge that what they had couldn’t continue.
So, when the dishes were washed and the kitchen clean, he retreated. A shell of silence enveloped him once more, and he allowed himself to project it onto a blanket wrapped around his shoulders, seeking refuge on the rug in front of the woodstove.
He sat for a while by himself, simply watching the flickering firelight. He could hear Yeonjun moving around behind him, arranging dishes, boiling water, but it all faded into the background behind the white noise of his inner monologue which never truly ceased.
"Hey," Yeonjun murmured, settling into a seat on the floor next to him. The addition of his body made the rug incomparably comfortable. "I made hot cocoa."
Kai felt their shoulders brush together and accepted the warm mug that was pressed into his hands. It was a deep forest green, snowflake patterns stenciled into the clay. The one Yeonjun made during that pottery class they took together in their first semester of university. In Yeonjun's hands was a grey mug with whimsical pine tree designs. The one Kai had made.
"How are you doing?" Yeonjun eventually asked, the shadows of flames from the fireplace flickering across his face.
Kai took a sip of his hot cocoa as he contemplated how to answer, burning his tongue in the process. Never the sweetness without the pain. "I've been thinking a lot," he admitted quietly, not sure what else to say.
Of course, Yeonjun probably already knew that, but instead of saying so, he just asked, "About what?"
Taking one last scalding sip, he swallowed his fear. "About how it's not fair. Our relationship, I mean. I don't want you to keep waiting for me."
Exactly as he expected, the room fell silent apart from the crackling of the fire. Yeonjun's hands froze in place around his mug, and Kai didn't want to risk checking his expression.
It was the right thing to do. Kai was broken. He couldn't keep wasting time, asking Yeonjun to fix him. He didn't want Yeonjun to think it was his responsibility to fix him. This was something he should figure out alone, without the crutch of the person he cared about the most.
"What exactly do you think I'm waiting for?" Yeonjun's voice finally sounded through the room, painfully delicate.
"For me to have my shit figured out," Kai murmured. "For me to know who I am. For me to not do this every single time."
He did, without fail, fall victim to winter. Every spring, summer, autumn, he swore he would be better. That he wouldn't let the bitterness of the cold creep into his bones, and yet it consumed him every single time, until he was one with it. Until the cold was him, and the way he shut Yeonjun out, sentencing him to his own frigid loneliness. Forcing his pain upon him, making him share a burden he didn't deserve.
"Kai-" Yeonjun tried, but now that he had started talking, he couldn't stop. It wasn't so much that the ice had thawed, but splintering cracks had begun to form in the glacier and he needed to break them with his desperate fists before they froze over once more.
"I love you," he stated, the truest fact in his heart and one he would never be afraid to confess. "Plain and simple. You know that. You know I love you more than anything, and that's why it hurts so much to not be able to reciprocate everything you do for me. You shouldn't have to put up with my mood swings, and my cold spells, and my inability to tell you how I really feel. You're a saint for enduring it, but it's not right. I don't want to do that to you, and I hate that I've done it so much that you just accept it blindly. That you're willing to go out here with me every year just to sit in the mountains in silence because you know I hate the city. That you pretend like you don't care if I won't say three words to you for the entire winter break, even though I know it hurts. It’s not fair. I take, and you give, and there’s never any change. And I-” He winced, wishing he could cry again if only to get his point across, but now that he needed them, the tears wouldn’t come, dammed up by the clay of his contrition. “I’m sorry,” he finished lamely, even though he felt that as truly as he felt his love for the person beside him.
The fire crackled, and outside, wind whistled through barren branches as even the night paused for a heavy breath. They could hear lumps of snow stirred and disturbed cascade to the ground below, and Yeonjun’s silence stretched for so long, that Kai began to wonder if the rattling trees were his only companions.
And then, "Kai..." Yeonjun quietly started. "Your ego is huge."
His attention snapped to him, and a frown broke out over his face. Yeonjun just sat there blinking back with wide eyes. "Huh?"
Circling a finger around the rim of his mug, he went on, "I mean, really, the nerve to chalk every single one of my actions and feelings up to how you impact my life is...crazy. I love you, but that's actually wild if you think about it."
"But-"
Yeonjun continued over his interruption, claiming his turn to talk over the fire, the wind, and Kai. "Have you ever considered that I have this amazing thing called autonomy, and I choose to do things? Have you considered that maybe I book this cabin every winter because I like spending my break with you? That I like the way it reminds me of when we were kids and all the good memories we have? And that I understand the winter is when your depression hits its lowest point, and I like being there for you during that time? And that I would tell you if I thought our relationship was unbalanced, or that you weren't doing your part? You're the center of my world, but that's a choice. I choose to have you stand there next to me, because you're everything to me. And if that changed, -god forbid it doesn't, but you know what I mean- if I no longer felt that way, I wouldn't tiptoe around you. I'm never going through a day with you walking on broken glass. You know I don't work like that. If this somehow stopped being everything I wanted, I would tell you. But that's not the case. The seasons aren't going to change the way I feel about you, no matter the light they paint you in, as long as I can tell you still love me. And right now, I can. I see it all the time. So, I'm not worried. I worry about you sometimes, but I don't worry about us. Does that make sense?"
A lump had grown in his throat while Yeonjun spoke, but not like those of ice outside, which were hard and cold and unforgiving. This felt entirely human, and Kai was terrified of the way it made him want to break, yet he couldn’t fight the tidal wave of relief that washed over him and toppled that lump down in the process.
Words were impossible; a small cry cut past his shut lips and he simply threw himself at Yeonjun, wrapping his arms around his shoulders and burying his face in the crook of his neck.
“I don’t ever want to lose you,” he whispered through his trembling mouth, and Yeonjun let out a soft sound of heartbreak, returning his hug twice as tight and reassuring.
“Oh, Kai,” he murmured, “You aren’t ever going to lose me. Why would you think that?”
“I-I’ve been pushing you away,” he struggled to confess, finding his skin easier to talk to than his eyes. “I know you can tell, and I’m not doing it on purpose, but I’m just…scared. I’m scared that I’m not enough anymore, and sometimes I think- I think you deserve better.”
“But I want you,” Yeonjun answered in a small voice, allowing his own rare bit of insecurity to peek through, and it only made Kai hold him tighter. “It’s always been you…”
“That’s exactly what scares me,” Kai whispered into the dark, safe corner where Yeonjun’s neck met his shoulder. “It’s always been us. What if you only think you want me because that’s all you know?”
Yeonjun’s hand cupped the back of Kai’s head, threading his hair through his fingers in slow, comforting repetitions. “I’m not that naive, Kai. If I was so desperate for change, I would’ve gone out and found it. But I like what I have. I’m grateful for it. Not everyone has the bond that we do, you know that? And you and I have drifted apart before, and still found our way back to each other. Don’t you think that means something?”
For a few heartbeats, Kai was silent, contemplating the implications of his words. It was true. They had grown apart, and then grown together again. Still, they grew, and still, they wanted each other in the end. It wasn’t just him dragging Yeonjun through his periods of manic highs and desperate lows. Yeonjun gravitated towards him on his own, and Kai held onto him through his own emotional storms. They grounded one another.
Perhaps he really had been too focused on himself, putting all the blame on his own shoulders while not seeing the good in everything they shared.
He nodded, and for the first time, let out a long sigh, allowing the emotion to roll through his body and dissipate into the air like the last ice crystals of winter. And then he placed a delicate kiss on Yeonjun’s collarbone before turning his head to look up at the log rafters. Yeonjun still held him, one arm wrapped over their waists like a safety belt, the other supporting his head, fingers combing through Kai’s hair.
“I love you,” Kai whispered again into the firelight and gathering night, and beside him, Yeonjun let out his own exhale of relief. Perhaps he had been battling his own frigid demon all this time.
“I love you, too,” he replied simply, and turned Kai’s head for him, pressing their lips together in a promise. “You’re not doing this alone,” Yeonjun murmured. “You know that, right?”
Kai pulled back just enough to meet his soft brown gaze, and when he nodded, it was true. “I know.” He kissed again, just so Yeonjun knew his words were sealed.
And against the backdrop of the crackling fire, they picked their mugs back up, seeking refuge in the warmth of the chocolate, their sweaters, and each other, a picturesque scene washed alight with amber. A perfect holiday card, showing only the best parts of winter.
“You want to go snowboarding tomorrow?” Kai asked, and when he glanced at Yeonjun, he saw him smile.
“Yeah,” he answered right away. “I’d love to.”
Content, Kai felt a smile growing on his own lips, and he rested his head on Yeonjun’s shoulder again for just a moment. “You’re my favorite part of winter.”
Yeonjun kissed the top of his head, and replied, “You’re my favorite part of every day.”
Curled together on the carpet, cocooned in a soft glow and protected from the cold, Kai could say without a doubt, he felt the same.
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