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Here’s the thing, Chanyoung is well aware of his chronic dependency on the internet. A little something to spice up his endorphin receptors on the daily, so to speak. From doomscrolling on social media to falling into a military marine mammal Wikipedia rabbit hole at two in the morning. Perhaps unrestricted net access at six years old and trolls on Club Penguin did irreversible damage to his brain chemistry, but that’s an issue for another day. Or week. Or year.
It’s not all bad, though. He’d learned a thing or two from his long cyberspace rendezvous. Some are small, like how to retrieve a suspended Twitter account and how to make ‘Hello World’ using basic python. Then, there’s the big guns, like how to avoid getting doxxed online by a bitter Reddit user, to be mindful and double check every news or scandal that comes up online, and to not jump into every microtrend that shows up on his For You page.
Chanyoung considers himself as infinitely immune to trends. He didn’t buy bitcoin and NFTs when people were raving about it. He doesn’t have twenty mini figurines chilling on his shelf (he has exactly one. And even then, it was given by Shotaro because he said that it’s a double from a blind-box). He doesn’t collect colorful insulated water bottles and display them on a wall. Sure, he does have four giant headphones that he uses interchangeably, but it’s definitely not to feed into the whole Y2K emergence.
So yes, trends cannot touch both his mind and his wallet. Except for one.
Oranges.
The fruit, to be precise (and not the annoying anthropomorphic ones from the early 2010s). Chanyoung first saw heaps of oranges in his Tumblr homepage, followed by cutouts of poems and random lyrics in a post tagged ‘#web weaving ’. Then, in less than a week, his For You page and Twitter timeline are infected with fruits and the ‘#relationship ’ hashtag. And now, he has seven fresh oranges neatly stacked in a ceramic bowl on top of Sungchan’s kitchen counter.
Their kitchen counter, Chanyoung could hear Sungchan’s nagging in the back of his mind.
A sense of whiplash always hits him everytime he gets overly aware of the new, yet not so new, place. It feels like just yesterday that he found out about the existence of a Sungchan at Sohee’s birthday party. It feels like just yesterday that they shared their feelings and kissed in the parking lot of Chanyoung’s old apartment. It feels like just yesterday that he slept over at Sungchan’s place for the first time.
Their friends collectively cheered when Sungchan announced that Chanyoung’s moving in—either glad that their relationship is leveling up or relieved that Chanyoung had finally escaped his rowdy-neighbors-shitty-plumbing-hellhole of a flat. Nevertheless, the news didn’t put him in the same gleeful mood. At first.
Chanyoung likes solitude. He’s used to it. In anything. In everything. In life. He likes the sense of autonomy it gives him. To do whatever he wants, to think whatever he wants. To carve a road that he precisely knows where it branches and where it ends. Until Sungchan barged in and ruined that road with his heavily-modified old Honda Civic—something that even Chanyoung’s family could not even do past his eighteenth birthday.
For about six whole months, he would think of Sungchan in his solitude. Calm and controlled. How Sungchan would laugh at the lamest, most absurd jokes. Sungchan and his borderline obsession with Keroppi. How Sungchan seemingly regresses to being a five year-old child whenever he sees a dog on the street. Sungchan and his big bambi eyes that sparkle under the dim parking lot lights. Sungchan’s existence and how it never fails to make Chanyoung’s heart beat outside its predetermined rhythm.
He hated it. He longed for peace, yearning to the point he moved cross-country in attempt to relinquish the authority and the expectations that people forced upon his shoulders for most of his life. Yet now he loves so loudly, so unrestrained, so messy.
He hated the hypocrisy. His hypocrisy.
Sungchan, apparently, loves it. With a heart as wide as the sea, Sungchan loves a lot of things. He said that he loves Chanyoung the most, but sushi came as a close second. Sungchan loves bright and sunny days and would always torment Chanyoung in the morning by opening the blinds too wide. Sungchan loves sharing, mint chocolate ice cream, and sharing his mint chocolate ice cream with Chanyoung despite already having their own respective scoops. Sungchan loves to ski in the winter and play soccer in any other season. Sungchan loves spicy food and to wash it down with fruits, particularly oranges.
Ah, yes.
The seven oranges that seem to mock Chanyoung from the kitchen counter. He got them during a quick run to the grocery store this morning. His mind is still in a debate on whether or not he likes oranges. He thinks apples are better; the juice is immaculate, they’re crunchy, and far more efficient due to the edible, non-soap-tasting skin, therefore not requiring any peeling—the same exact reason for his citrus-centric distaste.
Which is funny considering how he sometimes still finds solace in peeling them. It was mostly tangerines back then, since his family often shy away from the tartness that comes with the normal, day-to-day citruses.
His mother was the one who taught him how to peel an orange as a fine-motor practice when he was a toddler—he failed miserably, but she would still smile and clap to congratulate his victory. His father was the first one that showed him the trick of spitting out the seeds while simultaneously eating the fruit—he could still remember the laughter that filled the room when his mother complained of how unsanitary it was. When doing their homework at the dining table after dinner, Chanyoung never forgot to remove the white pith before feeding the slice of orange into his baby brother’s mouth after knowing that the slight bitterness of it irks him sometimes—and his brother would always reply with a muffled ‘thank you’ after each bite.
And when his brother was too tired to do his own homework, Chanyoung would do it for him while his brother snacks on the tangerines, switching the roles as Chanyoung became the receiving end of the slices, piths still intact.
Even after he moved, oftentimes he finds himself doing the same to the people around him. Force of habit, perhaps. Peeling oranges, skinning mangoes, taking over a group project, planning group outings, proofreading and editing his friends’ essays, doing all the household chores. Happily serving the fruit of his labor.
Chanyoung finds solace in peeling oranges. Just not for himself.
He’s still unworthy of it.
The bowl of oranges might just start to shoot darts of insanity his way the longer he stares at them, as if they hold the answers to the questions he’s still reluctant to ask himself. So he shifts his attention to something less sour, something less nostalgic—and less painful —something more certain:
The opened cardboard box in front of him. His last box to unpack.
Inside it lies two unopened packages of LEGO flower bouquet sets, a finished piece of the LEGO Black Panther figure, and a leather jacket he forgot existed. Yet, Chanyoung feels hesitant. Afraid of the realization, the realness of everything. Afraid to finally bid goodbye to the comfort and protection seclusion has given him for years once the box collapsed.
Sungchan’s voice broke through his reverie.
“You okay, baby? Do you need help?”
Chanyoung glances up to the older. Sungchan’s deep subconscious pull towards the concept of comfort always reveals itself in everything he does, like today, where he’s cladded in a pair of pajama pants and a simple white shirt with a loosened collar due to its continual wear. He first thought that Sungchan’s mountain of hoodies was somewhat a form of hoarding, but Chanyoung always finds himself wearing half of them without a second thought. And Sungchan didn’t say anything either.
“No, no. It’s all good,” he mutters
Sungchan gives him a look. A look that Chanyoung knows so well, where Sungchan’s eyes would soften and droop just a little as he smiles. A look that he knows so well, yet still finds difficulty in pinpointing what it means. A look that, for some reason, heaved his chest with guilt.
“Okay.”
There’s a dip to his left when Sungchan sat himself on the couch, resting his head on the tip of Chanyoung’s shoulder, as if reluctant to cross an invisible boundary if he moved closer. It’s been more than a year since they made it official, so what is Sungchan so afraid of? He had seen Chanyoung bare, both in a figurative and literal sense. He had seen parts of Chanyoung that even he, himself, is still unwilling to take a peek on.
He could feel Sungchan watching him as he unloaded the contents of the box to the coffee table. Providing extra support by putting his hands a few inches below the board when Chanyoung’s grasp wobbles as he takes out the 2-year-old finished figure of Black Panther.
“Do you want to make this together someday?” Sungchan asks, pointing to the plastic and blocky flowers. It’s a bouquet of wildflowers that Chanyoung impulsively bought because it was on sale. “It would look nice in the kitchen.”
It would, Chanyoung doesn’t doubt that. He takes a mental note to stop by the thrift store for vases after his classes tomorrow. “Of course. Maybe this weekend?”
They could easily do it now, while the night is still young, and the slight confusion in Sungchan’s face indicates that he’s asking a similar question. But Chanyoung didn’t plan any lego-building for today, and he would rather die than step outside of his meticulously scheduled Thursday.
And, as if knowing that already, Sungchan’s knitted eyebrows eased. “Deal.”
After putting the leather jacket at the very back of his wardrobe and setting the figure on their new bookshelf—right beside Sungchan’s very creative rendition of Keroppi made from clay, the wave of realization hits him like a truck in a busy Monday morning highway. It doesn’t help that, within his hesitance of collapsing the box, Sungchan already did it for him. Putting it in a pile along with other folded cardboards beside their trash bin.
The last piece of thread that anchored him to the consolation of past solitude has been lifted. Not by him. But he knows that, deep inside, he doesn’t want it to be him.
Before him lies the uncharted waters of warm, shared spaces—of shared days, of shared things, of shared thoughts.
Maybe it won’t be that bad.
Chanyoung sighs deeply, dropping his body on top of Sungchan’s own. Sungchan didn’t budge, didn’t even let out a groan from the sudden added weight and intrusion of space. Sungchan, instead, just wrapped his arm around Chanyoung, still engrossed in whatever his phone is displaying, as if Chanyoung is physically a part of him, as if welcoming Chanyoung into his embrace already became a part of his modus vivendi.
“Do you know about this trend?”
The sudden mention of internet craze pulls Chanyoung back to reality. To the seven oranges in the kitchen. To Sungchan under him. “What trend?”
Sungchan turns his phone to face Chanyoung. It’s a bowl of pomegranates. Chanyoung is familiar with the concept, its rather grotesque depictions, and the countless Hannibal Lecter-Will Graham artwork that comes with it. He doesn’t pay a lot of mind to it. But anyone, including him, could catch the subtext hidden beneath every piece of seed.
“I don’t get it,” Sungchan absentmindedly adds in a hum, continuing to scroll. “And pomegranates are not that good anyways.”
Anyone except Sungchan, apparently.
It doesn’t bother Chanyoung in the slightest. Sungchan likes everything to be overt, open. From his actions to his feelings. He confessed first. He was the one that brought up the idea of moving in. He vocalizes his thoughts with ease, sometimes even before that thought has even fully formed. It’s something that Chanyoung is always so envious of.
He thinks it's unfair. Of life, to not favor him enough to give him the same sense of ease. For Sungchan, to open his doors for Chanyoung’s endless suitcases and to open his heart for the extra mental baggage that Chanyoung brings to the table with no questions asked.
“Love is never fair. Sometimes love makes you stupid, makes you do stupid things,” his father once said after telling both Chanyoung and his brother the story of how their father and mother met for the tenth time over dinner; met while Chanyoung’s father is pursuing his masters degree at NYU, they once broke up because of the frequent fights, then, five years later they reconciled, and after ten sessions in couples therapy plus a month in rehab, they got married.
Stupid is the farthest thing Chanyoung would describe his father’s love as. It is planned. Calculated. Large. Gentle. Sometimes cold to the touch, sometimes too warm that Chanyoung feels like he’s being boiled alive.
But not stupid.
Sungchan’s love is also not stupid. But it stands as the antithesis of love Chanyoung had evolved in. It’s open. So far-reaching to the point he doesn’t know when it ends. It’s evident. It’s clear. Their friends would often comment how Sungchan looks like he’s about to swallow Chanyoung whole whenever they look at each other.
Sungchan’s love is bright. Like shades of crimson reds and leafy greens for today. Tomorrow, it might be like the yellow Post-It notes or the purple lavender-scented candles. Or it might be the deep blue of their blanket or the flashing orange of, well, oranges.
Oranges. Oranges. Oranges. Seven oranges and one question that won’t answer itself.
It’s time to face it.
Chanyoung turns to his side before getting up, receiving a disapproving whine from the person that’s been holding him like a pillow for the past ten minutes.
“Where do you think you’re going?” Sungchan protests with stretched-out arms, hands making grabby motions as if he’s a kid begging for another piece of candy.
“Making dinner,” he answers. It was supposed to be a lie, but after taking a glimpse at the clock above Sungchan’s TV, it sounds more like a logical excuse and less like deception.
Chanyoung doesn’t know what he will make yet. He’s not a great cook and the contents of their fridge failed in its attempt to grind the gears of his creativity. There’s his stock of cold-brewed coffee, Sungchan’s five cartons of milk, blocks of tofu, side dishes that Sungchan’s mom sent yesterday, frozen chicken breasts for Sungchan’s meal prepping needs, and a couple slices of frozen salmon.
He turns, letting his gaze linger on the ceramic bowl housing the seven oranges, each one a vibrant hue against the marbled counter. His fingers drum lightly on the cold, metallic surface of the fridge, lips pursed in contemplation before he grabs the salmon.
He’ll think of something. A citrusy fish , he muses to himself, convincing his skeptical conscience that it's a practical idea. If Martha Stewart can make it, so can he.
The salmon is frozen solid, very very cold to the touch. It burns Chanyoung’s fingertips, and only dissipates when he drowns the whole bag into a vat of hot water. It would approximately take ten minutes for them to defrost and fit for cooking. Ten minutes to do other things. Ten minutes to prepare other ingredients.
Five minutes and one struggle to find the half remainder of a yellow bell pepper they used for lunch two days ago later, Chanyoung declares himself two-thirds triumphant in his quest of dinner-prepping. The seasonings he plans on using are neatly placed in a line to his right, the vegetables are chopped and mixed in a bowl, the broiler is pre-heating and he already lined the pan with baking paper so the food wouldn’t stick.
All that are left are the salmon—that still hasn’t completely thawed, and the oranges.
He takes one, holding it with his right hand while his left holds a metal grater. The subtle bright scent of citrus greets Chanyoung’s senses as he watches the zests fall into the bowl. Each tiny swirl lands so gently on top of the others, forming a tiny mound that would crumble with a single tap of a spoon, disappearing under a heap of vibrant yellows and greens.
And now, what was such an eye-catching color is reduced to the pale, rubbery fibers that were hidden within. Chanyoung thinks it’s depressing.
Will Sungchan think that way too? Will he no longer see Chanyoung in a vivid light after knowing all the ugliness and horror he hides? Will he someday leave Chanyoung alone and barren and pale and bitter?
The unspoken challenge remains, and as much as he denied it, the spark of curiosity overcame his resistance.
“Sungchan,” he calls, and not even a second has passed before regret fills the pit of his stomach to the brim. There’s scrambling from the living room, a loud ‘thud’ , and before Chanyoung knows it, Sungchan is standing before the kitchen island, hair messy with a few strands sticking up in multiple directions.
“Yes?”
“Um,” his lips are pursed in hesitation, in doubt. God , this is the dumbest thing ever. “I’m too lazy to peel these,” he continues, voice small and barely above a whisper, even for himself. He could feel his nails stabbing through the already feeble skin of the fruit in his hold. “Can you help me?”
He could see the faint widening of Sungchan’s eyes. He looks at the orange, then Chanyoung, then the orange again. All without a single word. Chanyoung wants to run away. He wants to pack his bags again and disappear forever. He wants to never look into Sungchan’s eyes ever again.
“Nevermind, it’s—”
His upcoming train of apologies is bluntly cut by the harsh collision of Sungchan’s body to his side, wholly disregarding the fact that there’s a sharp grater in Chanyoung’s hold and a knife placed dangerously close to the edge of the counter.
“Holy shit,” Sungchan says, almost shouting despite his words being muffled by Chanyoung’s clothes. “Did you just ask for help? Me? Asking for my help?”
Regardless of the hundreds of questions raiding his mind simultaneously, Chanyoung prioritizes answering Sungchan’s first. With a nod—slow, unsure, reluctant.
The older man holds Chanyoung’s face in his hands. It’s dry, and rather coarse, as a result of what Chanyoung could guess are the cold winter breeze and the friction from the weightlifting gear at the gym. But it’s warm. Cozy. Pleasant. It melts off the ice shards that pricked his sanity to shreds so easily that Chanyoung considers replacing his instant heat packs with Sungchan's body instead.
“Happily,” Sungchan declares, each syllable coated with honey, lips curling into a smile that Chanyoung has grown to be addicted to the point he’s willing to sacrifice anything to keep it on Sungchan’s face forever. “I would love to peel oranges for you, my Chanyoung.”
Chanyoung knows a lie when he sees one, but he couldn’t detect even one sign of it on Sungchan’s face, in Sungchan’s words—in Sungchan. He never encountered a hint of deceit since the first day they met. Frankly, he doesn’t even know if Sungchan can lie.
His eyes follow as Sungchan takes the round fruit from his already loosened grasp. Droplets of juice start to fall the moment Sungchan dips his thumb into the middle, inducing a tiny panic and hasty movements to reach upon the bowl of ingredients Chanyoung had set aside.
“How many do you need, love?” Sungchan’s brown eyes twinkle under the white fluorescent kitchen lights they planned to change into something warmer someday as he asked the question. And Chanyoung tries his best to not drown in them. “One? Three? Ten? Twenty? Do you need me to cultivate a field of oranges? Because I’ll do it.”
Chanyoung laughs. Sungchan spent his whole life in the city, and like most city-boys, his dream is to spend the last years of his life in the countryside. Chanyoung is not opposed to the idea. Maybe they could be gay farmers together later in life. Gay farmers that do nothing but happily pick the ripe sunkist oranges and complain about their deteriorating backs. Gay farmers that, even after so many years, still cuddle on the couch while watching campy rom-coms and bizarrely repetitive Hallmark Christmas movies. Gay farmers that spend their last breaths next to each other like that one scene from The Notebook that never failed to make Chanyoung weep like a newborn baby.
Chanyoung wants to be a gay farmer if it’s with Sungchan. Chanyoung prays that it will come true.
“One is enough,” he says, smile growing larger as Sungchan drops the orange slices into the bowl, completing the last bits of rainbow that were missing just moments before. “Thank you.”
The older still kept his attention on Chanyoung, juice-cladded fingers gently brushing Chanyoung’s newly-dyed black hair away, tucking it behind his ear. Chanyoung doesn't mind the stickiness, it’ll be gone with one shower. Sungchan’s touch doesn’t. It will stay in perpetual motion, as if engraved under Chanyoung’s skin. And he wants it to stay that way.
Sungchan’s kisses are sweet. But it tastes particularly sweeter today when he pulls Chanyoung in for one. It’s almost sickly. Again, he doesn’t mind. If given the opportunity, he would gladly bathe himself in candy if it meant he could always reminisce Sungchan’s lips against his. The tenderness of it, the familiarity, and the immense loss he always feels everytime Sungchan pulls away.
“No. Thank you ,” he whispers, mere inches away from Chanyoung’s face that he could recognize the peppermint scent of Sungchan’s lipbalm. “I am so proud of you.”
In that moment, time stands still, frozen in place. Chanyoung feels as if the metal screws that had tightened his body so rigidly just shattered into smithereens. In that moment, Chanyoung loses the map of a road he paved himself. It's as if he's being skinned alive—peeled so painfully yet so gently, forced to expose a layer of himself he never knew existed.
For the first time in a long while, Chanyoung finds it exceptionally hard to regain composure. And for the first time in a long while, he doesn’t want to.
His eyes are burning, lashes still wet from the welled-up tears despite the fact that his raging emotions could only be conveyed in constant sniffles. Perhaps his continuous drive to keep everything covert had rendered his biological coping mechanism immobile. Perhaps this is a sign that he should learn the correct way—the loud way—that he’s always too scared to try. Perhaps Sungchan, who’s now kissing the corners of his eyes with incomprehensible levels of fondness, is the best teacher for that.
“I’m sorry,” Chanyoung breaks the silence with a choked out giggle. He doesn’t know what’s funnier; his breakdown after a single sentence he hasn’t heard for most of his life, or the fact that it’s been ten minutes past the first ten he set to defrost the salmon. At this point, the fish might just reanimate back to life.
Sungchan shakes his head. “Don’t be, angel,” he pressed their foreheads together, leaving another gentle and fleeting kiss on the tip of Chanyoung’s nose. Chanyoung wants it smothered on every inch, on every nook and cranny that exists within him.
“I love you very much.”
Chanyoung remembers an article saying that ‘I love you’ s might lose its meaning if said too frequently. That might be the first time he concluded a theory is invalid without any tangible experiment and based on the butterflies in his stomach alone. Ever since Sungchan became the first to say it, he never stopped. Twice a day, at the very least, but it can quickly increase to twenty in a span of three minutes. Each time far deeper and lovelier than the last.
“I love you too, Sungchan. Very much.”
He says it back as if it’s the easiest thing in his life. Well, loving Sungchan is easy.
“I love you more, Chanyoung.” Sungchan bites back with a grin.
“Are you challenging me?”
“No, I already won. Anyways,” the older gazes over the kitchen counter. “What can I do next?”
Chanyoung points at the cuts of salmon that are still drowning in the bowl of now lukewarm water. Sungchan understands without any further instructions. Sungchan is a better cook than he is. He puts the pan into the broiler with ease, while Chanyoung still needs at least three layers of oven mitts in fear of accidentally burning himself. He knows that Chanyoung likes the salmon skin to be crisp, so he lets it broil for two extra minutes.
This goes on for a while, and in no time, the aroma of citrus blankets the tiny kitchen from corner to corner. Sungchan asks if he could set up the table while Chanyoung plates the dish—a task that, in Chanyoung’s opinion, incomparable in any sense because he’s already halfway done and Sungchan hasn’t even started.
He wants to say no. He wants to say that Sungchan had done more than enough and let him do the rest. But he doesn’t. He nodded, even though every fiber of his body fought against him. Sungchan beamed, pulling out his Princess and the Frog-themed cutlery that Chanyoung had never seen before. It was an impulsive buy when Sungchan decided to stroll into the thrift store without Chanyoung’s eagle gaze to warn him of the budget. It looks out of place beside their adult plates. Sungchan says that it’s worth it. Chanyoung thinks it’s worth it too.
Maybe Chanyoung is still learning how to ask for what he deserves without it sounding like an apology. Without punishing himself internally, over and over and over, until he could only see red. One thing he knows: Sungchan will be there every step of the way; holding his hand, kissing him bare, peeling his oranges until all the white piths are no longer there.