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There’s a slight tremble in the hand passing the glass across the table, enough to make the water inside slosh around with crystalline delicacy. Ricky’s voice is soft when he thanks the server—shy, almost, cheeks pink with what Gyuvin doesn’t think is just the late hour. His hair looks even lighter than it already is in the harsh yellow light and the tattoo curling up his neck gleams like a snake ready to strike, dappling amber over the blocky black writing.
Gyuvin drums his fingers on the edge of the table, always unable to keep still for long. Ricky teases him about that sometimes—how Gyuvin can’t seem to stay in his seat for more than five minutes before he’s slouching down to the floor, how he’ll be writhing around in class like he’s some new species of worm, how he once absolutely bungled a first date because the girl insisted on going to a fancy restaurant and Gyuvin fidgeted so much he spilled his orange juice into both their laps. He does his best to brush away the fact that Ricky won’t be around to tease him about that for much longer.
“I’ll call, you know.” Ricky arches one eyebrow up at him. Gyuvin’s gaze trails the outline of his slender fingers, where they take a chicken drumstick apart with meticulous precision, the same elegancy that floods every inch of Ricky’s veins and keeps his hair picture-perfect, his eyeliner constantly flawless. He sees it now, the little dark wings that ring the corners of Ricky’s lashes like twin swallowtails ready to take flight, and Gyuvin can’t help wondering if they’d meet Ricky in the sky, if they’d keep him safe in the clouds. The way Gyuvin won’t be able to anymore. “It’s not like I’m…you know, dying or anything.”
His voice is calm as always, burrowing somewhere deep into Gyuvin’s bones like a weighted blanket. The hand wrapped around Ricky’s glass of water trembles anyway. It’s the kind of shudder that doesn’t come with the cold, the kind of shudder that Gyuvin knows he won’t be able to wish away no matter how badly he wants to, the kind of shudder that lets Gyuvin know Ricky will miss him just as much as he already does. Maybe even more.
Gyuvin is not half as graceful as he tears into his own chicken, starving despite the tight coil wound up in his stomach like a spring ready to pop. Rips into the skin until his teeth kiss the bone the same way he wishes he could rip all his emotions away. “It won’t be the same.” It comes out whiny, more petulant than Gyuvin would prefer. Like a child. He can’t help it. He hasn’t been away from Ricky for longer than two weeks since they’d first met, when one or other of their families would go away on their fancy vacations and Gyuvin would find Ricky waiting at the airport when he’d get back and vice versa. Then they’d gotten old enough to go on holiday by themselves and the two weeks of distance had dwindled to nothing, joined at the hip, lost in the salt-woven tumble of the sea and the sand and the scenery. Gyuvin loves those trips—craves them, almost, when he gets to curl up in sheets scratchy and soft all at the same time, Ricky pressed into his side, blazing like a supernova, nothing but their own skin separating them. It feels like an ocean, sometimes, cast adrift in the feelings swelling up in his chest like the rise of the tides, but Gyuvin would gladly drown if it means he gets to keep Ricky next to him.
The thing is, Gyuvin’s always been good with change. He’s—adaptable, to say the least, bending to the tune of everyone else’s breeze, shifting like the crash of the waves as he washes all his own sandcastle dreams away. Watches the little golden grains trickle down the shore until his hands are clean once more. But Ricky—Ricky is constant. He keeps his hair the same shade of blonde and has taken the same electives since they were kids and goes to the same places every year. Ricky’s become an anchor, the one steady thing in Gyuvin’s revolving life, the sun in the middle of his solar system.
He supposes he never thought Ricky would be the one to change first.
Ricky brings his glass to his lips with the hand not slick with grease and takes a delicate sip, almost like a cat. Gyuvin watches the bob of his throat as the liquid travels downwards, a soft bulge in his neck before disappearing fully. Wonders if everything they’ve ever had will disappear the same way—there one second, gone the next. Wonders if they’ve ever really had anything at all. He reaches for the stack of tissues in front of them, dabbing at his hands and mouth gently. It’s one of the many things Gyuvin loves about his best friend—how graceful he is, everything kept neat and clean, shirt perfectly tucked until he’s sprawled across the mattress he’d shared with Gyuvin back in Paris, in Japan, in Shanghai. Back then, when they’d been nothing but two boys with too much money against the rest of the world, he’d left his shirt untucked, let it drape over his hipbones and stomach, fine cloth dripping over finer skin. Gyuvin would be lying if he said he hasn’t considered leaning over far too many times, hasn’t considered pressing their lips together and letting his hand find the curve of Ricky’s waist. “They keep saying we’re going back home.”
“Don’t you want to go home?” Ricky wasn’t exactly born in Los Angeles, where the plane taking him away from Gyuvin will bring him tomorrow morning, but Gyuvin knows enough about his best friend to know that he’s lived there for the majority of his life. Long enough for his family to consider it home. Gyuvin doesn’t know whether Ricky feels the same. Doesn’t know what Ricky thinks is home anymore.
“Going home,” Ricky snorts incredulously, the syllables in flippantly pronounced English, because he knows Gyuvin understands; he’d studied abroad too. Australia for high school, London for college. Gyuvin likes to joke about it sometimes— Between us, we’ve got half the world covered. And he knows Ricky, ever-predictable, will retort with: And we’re going to finish travelling the other half soon. “Fuck that. I’m already home.”
The four walls of the restaurant suddenly seem a little too small, closing in on Gyuvin until he feels a little suffocated, the grainy wood of the table beneath his elbows blurring into a haze. The pale amber lights above their heads flicker, buzzing with one a.m. silence. Gyuvin had worried at first, back when Ricky had called him earlier in the night: Want to go out?
Aren’t you leaving tomorrow? Don’t you need to pack? Or sleep?
Fuck that. I want to see you.
Gyuvin would follow Ricky anywhere. He thinks Ricky knows that too.
Sometimes, Gyuvin wonders if Ricky knows. If he spots the trail of Gyuvin’s gaze out of the corner of his eye when Gyuvin stares for a beat too long. If he notices how Gyuvin never seems to have any other plans whenever Ricky wants to hang out. If he feels the way Gyuvin’s hands linger just a second longer when they land on his skin, tattoo his flesh with all the words Gyuvin’s never been able to say, never quite been brave enough to. Gyuvin’s no coward—everyone he knows says as much, but it’s never changed the fact that he isn’t courageous enough to tell Ricky how he feels about him. He’s never been. It’s better that way, he thinks. For both of them. When they are nothing but two friends in a bed and Gyuvin’s wildest fantasies (his hands in Ricky’s hair, his hands circling Ricky’s waist, him over Ricky, under him, inside him) are nothing but pipe dreams sweet enough to put him to sleep.
Ricky gestures to Gyuvin’s empty plate, the paper lining on it coated with grease. He hadn’t realised he’d finished eating. It’s a regular occurrence when he’s around Ricky—the rest of the world dissolves away until Gyuvin can barely even remember his own name and all he sees in his mind’s eye is Ricky, Ricky, Ricky. Ricky is the supernova in the middle of Gyuvin’s universe and everything else is nothing but a black hole, a void of endless nothing. Oil drips off his own fingers and he suddenly feels a little inadequate, next to Ricky who is so pretty and perfect and put together while Gyuvin is…Gyuvin.
But Ricky doesn’t seem to care about any of that. He just tosses Gyuvin a handful of the tissues in the middle of the table and rises to his feet—graceful as always, like he’s walking on air. “Take your time. I’m going to go pay first.”
“It’s your last day here,” Gyuvin protests, scrambling up from his seat too. “I should be paying.”
Ricky’s card gleams between his fingers like the edge of a knife, blindingly fast. Almost seems to cut into his flawlessly-manicured nails the same way Gyuvin’s feelings slice him apart. “You can pay next time.” Gyuvin can’t help staring. Doesn’t think he could stop himself even if he wanted to. “When I get back.” Rosy cheeks, scarlet lips, dark dark dark eyes. A suffusion of screaming colour flung against the blank white walls of the restaurant. The stars glitter in his veins. “It’ll give you an excuse to take me out.”
Gyuvin jolts like he’s just been shot. And then Ricky smiles—slow, soft, sweet, as if he’s known all along.
He sees Ricky off at their cars, where they’d left them in the parking lot. There’s a lone streetlight above their heads, and it flickers along to the beat of Gyuvin’s heart. Ricky’s face hovers in front of him, lit up in strobing pulses of amber and gold. It makes everything pale about him paler and everything dark about him darker. His eyes burn like hot coals where they pierce through Gyuvin’s skin and the tattoo criss-crossing itself over his neck seems like a brand now, like the permanence personified it has always been promised to be, even though Gyuvin knows nothing is permanent. That this will fade away into the wind and sink into the ground one day—and until then, Gyuvin will hold Ricky close and keep him from the clawing fingers of the stars. Selfish, they’d say. So be it. Ricky makes Gyuvin selfish. He makes him want to wake up with Ricky’s body in his arms and Ricky’s mouth pressed against his own and Ricky’s heart in his hands, because Gyuvin knows he won’t drop it.
For a moment, nothing but the faint chirping of crickets in the distance and the buzzing of the streetlamp echoes in Gyuvin’s ears. Ricky breaks the silence first.
“It’s a shame we couldn’t go bowling,” he mumbles, looking ever so slightly sheepish. His ears burn pink at the tips. “I could’ve sworn they closed at twelve, not ten.”
“It’s okay. It’s not your fault.” Gyuvin reaches over to give his best friend’s hand a squeeze. Ricky’s palm is soft and warm against his own, and Gyuvin is suddenly hyperaware of how clammy his own hands are, how ragged his fingernails are, how Ricky’s everything and he’s just…Gyuvin. What he doesn’t say is: just being with you is enough for me.
“It kind of is,” Ricky mumbles with a small pout, ever the perfectionist.
Gyuvin squeezes his hand a little tighter. “I had a really good time, anyway.” The familiar sting of tears burn his eyes, as they seem to so often when he’s alone in his room nowadays, ever since Ricky had perched himself on his bed and confessed that he was going back to LA. Gyuvin still remembers how Ricky had looked back then—dark eyes glassy in the quiet of Gyuvin’s bedroom, fingers fidgeting themselves together in his lap, bottom lip crimson from the bite of worrying teeth. He’d looked fragile, even though Gyuvin’s known him long enough to know that he’s far from it. Like he’d been about to shatter into a million pieces any second. Like he’d about to cry, the same way Gyuvin lets himself do now as he wraps his best friend in the tightest hug he can manage. “I’m going to miss you so much.”
“I’m moving, not dying,” Ricky protests, words muffled in Gyuvin’s chest, but the slight dampness that soaks through Gyuvin’s t-shirt and the arms that hug Gyuvin back just as tightly let him know that he’s going to miss him too.
They stay like that for what seems like hours even though Gyuvin knows it’s only really minutes. Gyuvin’s legs feel like they’ll give out under him when he lets go, and through his tears, he manages to choke out a chuckle. “Bet you’ll really miss Korea and everything too. I didn’t know you thought of this place as your home, you know? Since you haven’t really lived here all that long.”
A momentary flicker of confusion passes over Ricky’s face, but his expression quickly clears. “Oh. I wasn’t—” His ears are bright pink. The eyeliner at the side of his right eye is just the tiniest bit smudged, glistening wetly with tears that haven’t quite had the chance to fall yet. “When I said I was already home, I wasn’t talking about Korea.”
It should make sense. It really should. Ricky’s holding up a sign but Gyuvin can’t quite read what it says and it should make sense but it just doesn’t. He squints at his best friend and mumbles ever so eloquently: “What?”
Ricky smiles at him, soft and sweet and—shy . His cheeks are pink now too. Gyuvin wants to bottle him up like liquid sunshine and keep him in the space between his ribs, right next to his heart. He watches the bob of Ricky’s throat as he swallows, sees the damp flutter of his lashes under the halcyon glow, feels his chest shatter open as his feelings swallow him whole. “Korea’s not home, Gyuvin. You are. You’re home to me.”
The world implodes. Gyuvin suddenly feels very small. “Oh,” and it’s all he can say, gravity pulling his vocal chords into his lungs and his lungs into his heart until he can’t tell what is what anymore. Like a reverse hurricane, tunnelling itself down his throat and caving his ribs in.
He doesn’t know who moves first. Maybe it doesn’t matter. All that matters is that under the streetlight, Gyuvin pulls Ricky close the way he has always wanted to and lets their lips collide beneath the stars, twin mouths a spark lighting up the night. Ricky kisses with the hesitancy of someone who’s never done this before and the eagerness of someone who’s been waiting a very long time, teeth grazing over Gyuvin’s bottom lip. His mouth is as soft as Gyuvin has always dreamed it would be, warmth curling in the bottom of Gyuvin’s stomach until he almost thinks he might burst. His hand finds the curve of Ricky’s waist and for a moment, Gyuvin thinks he could die right now, lost in the arms of the boy he loves. But he doesn’t die, and Gyuvin’s never felt more alive as he kisses Ricky until he can taste the dampness of Ricky’s tears on his own tongue.
When they finally break apart, there’s a flush rising high in Ricky’s cheeks, cutting through his tears. The warmth rapidly spreading over Gyuvin’s entire face lets him know he’s no better off. His lips feel swollen when he runs his tongue over them, and he’s never loved the sting more.
“I’ll be back in December,” Ricky says. He sounds a little breathless. Pride swells in Gyuvin’s chest at that—he did that. He took ever-flawless Ricky Shen apart and made him sound like that. “For two weeks. Maybe we can take that trip to Tokyo we’ve been talking about.”
Gyuvin grins indulgently at him. His own words feel airless in his own throat, like the oxygen’s been punched out of his lungs. They taste like the air after a storm. “Maybe we can share a bed again? Like always?”
Ricky’s hand finds Gyuvin’s own, thumb digging into his palm until Gyuvin swears the universe explodes behind his eyes. “You want to do more than just share a bed, right?”
A sheepish grin is the only response Gyuvin can offer him.
Ricky rolls his eyes at him playfully, accompanies the gesture with a shy little smile. “We’ll see,” his mouth says. Definitely, his eyes promise instead. He leans over to press a chaste little kiss to Gyuvin’s lips, nothing like their first but just as sweet. It bleeds deep into Gyuvin’s veins and buries itself into the marrow of his bones and makes him feel like he could get high just off kissing Ricky alone. “See you around?”
Gyuvin is change. Ricky is constant. But tomorrow, Ricky will be in the clouds, where he has always belonged, scattered among the stars. And Gyuvin will stay on the ground, steady for once, standing in place until the floor beneath his feet finally stops trembling. He will place his heart in Ricky’s open hands and trust him not to break it, and he will wait. He will wait for the day that Ricky comes back to him, and he will greet him with open arms at the airport and kiss him the way he has wanted to for so long, knowing that Ricky wants it too. He will leave his hand in Ricky’s palm and curl up with him under sheets that aren’t theirs and whisper in his ear: I love you, I love you, I love you, and he will say it until the stars go out and the world fades to black—a world that isn’t theirs, for their personal universe could never darken, forever golden in the gaps between their interlocked fingers.
He feels his grin widen, so much that he swears it splits his face in two. Gyuvin’s never been good at waiting, never been good at keeping still, never been good at staying in one place at a time. But for Ricky, he will. He will wait until the hours turn into days and the days turn into weeks and the weeks turn into months and he can finally, finally hold Ricky like this again. Until Ricky comes home—comes back to Gyuvin, because Gyuvin’s home to him.
Ricky's home to him, too.
“Yeah,” he replies, and he lets his hand stay in Ricky’s for just a second longer. “See you around.”