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People don’t talk about how terrifying it is to fall in love.
Seungmin knows that if he asks his friends, he’ll get fond looks and soft sighs and lovestruck smiles as answers. That they’ll answer him happily, talk about how it’s the best thing to happen to them, how content they are. And that he’ll feel left out. Strange.
Changbin says falling in love with Chan was a slow process. Taking time and care and patience to fully develop, like wine ageing in the dark until it’s ready. He says it doesn’t matter how long it took for both of them to come together, to realise and understand the depth of their feelings because it was worth it in the end.
And Seungmin can’t stop thinking about the years spent in the dark of a cellar, of grapes being mashed up and spilling bloody red on rocky floors, of so much time for a quick moment of enjoyment. A glass that’s good for one evening, or maybe even less.
Hyunjin says that falling for Jeongin wasn’t a conscious thing. He saw him for the first time and just knew. And that the love he felt the second they made eye contact for the first time has just been growing ever since. Ever expanding – much like the universe — Hyunjin gestures at a cerulean sky and simply smiles because it’s just that easy for him.
Like the sky isn’t just this bright for them, a lonely people on a lonely planet, and what lies beyond is vast and empty and cold. Seungmin wonders, if the expanse of nothing that lies between the stars and galaxies the night sky holds, is only scary to those who don’t have anyone to hold onto when the time comes and they’re just atoms floating through space.
Jisung says falling in love with Minho is the easiest thing in the world to do. As a constant overthinker, Minho is the one who quiets his mind and eases his soul and makes him smile even on the bad days, and so he knows he’ll be safe at the bottom. Caught and unharmed and happy, with the person he knows fate made only for him.
But Seungmin doesn’t think that falling in love is really falling. It’s hurtling, without control or say, down and down and down towards an undefined end and he doesn’t feel safe at all. Doesn’t know if he was just made for other people, if anyone was made for him.
He feels like screaming, but the wind rips his voice away from him, making it its own as it hurtles down cliff sides and through rock. Leaves him shivering and weak at the knees, just feet away from a long, long drop.
Plunging down that still wouldn’t be as terrifying as falling in love is, he’s pretty sure. Because he knows what’s at the bottom — sand and seashells, the kelp and algae tide brings in every day. Little crabs and large seagulls, all scavenging for food.
He’d feed them well, he thinks.
On soft sand, exposed to the wind and the weather and the salt of the sea, as clouds race above.
White streaking across blue, sugary soft from the looks of them. Seungmin tries to see the shapes Felix points out but they evade him, ripped apart and reformed the second his eyes land on them, and he blinks away the brightness, the burn.
The sun is a cruel thing, really. Pretty and vital, the source of all life and love and yet too far to touch and burning, burning away at him. Blinding.
Sweet smiles and freckles, crinkling eyes and long lashes and Seungmin wonders how Icarus felt when he was plummeting. If he kept looking at a golden sun, blazing and kind and beautiful, or if he, cowardly, closed his eyes.
Seungmin is a coward. He doesn’t look and doesn’t linger because he knows he’ll go blind – go stupid – if he forgets himself. Will let himself get fooled by a warmth that turns scalding, by wings that melt, and that he’ll lose altitude quickly, wax on his arms and feathers in his hair and that the sea will shatter him on impact.
Fingers in his hair and a baritone humming with the sea. Caspia and daisies and purple clover woven into a crown delicately placed on blonde hair, bleached further by the days they spend outside.
Seungmin allows himself glimpses of him.
Takes what Felix gives greedily, and then stews in guilt for how hungry he is. How starving, for a touch and a smile just for him. For the undivided attention of a man or a god, or a celestial body. Whatever Felix is, it’s too good for Seungmin. Too kind and too bright and too deserving of something long-lasting.
Seungmin isn’t that. He’s not made for the forever type of things all their friends have. Not made to be a support system, a muse, a safe space. Not made to withstand the sun. He’s just him; a coward. Greedy.
In love.
The world keeps spinning, no matter what. Keeps going in circles around the sun the way he keeps close to Felix. Sunrise, sunset, tide bring in scraps. Rinse and repeat.
“You’re so pretty,” Felix hums, tucking a flower behind his ear. Seungmin smiles and says thanks and turns away because he has to.
“I told you you’d get sick going out in the rain,” Felix says, pressing a wet washcloth to his forehead and Seungmin closes his eyes against the fondness of his features.
“Let’s go swimming,” Felix pleads, pulling at him and Seungmin follows, even though it’s getting colder and they both shriek and shiver when the waves lap at their calves.
The world goes on and on and he keeps careening towards impact, and he finds a weird sense of calm in the fall, now. If he stays airborne, there won’t be a crash to break him apart.
“You’re cruel.” Felix turns away from him, and the world stops. “You have to know how I feel. I’ve never been good at subtlety. And sometimes I think you might like me too, but then you always just look away. Leave. It makes me sick, this constant hoping and waiting.”
And Seungmin thinks, maybe he’s not alone after all. Maybe other people get scared too, get worried and nauseous on the long way down. Sick of butterflies and certain uncertainty.
And Seungmin thinks, maybe it was worth it after all. He crashlands in a panic, a heap of limps struggling to coordinate, to hurry, to reach out and grab and hold. With a soft mmph , and a surprised gasp against his lips, and nimble fingers winding into the hair at the back of his neck.
It’s not as though he’s completely changed his opinion, though. He still thinks falling in love is one of the most terrifying things he’s done, even when the bed is warm and Felix is ever warmer against him. The sun is still too bright and too hot, wax still sticky from melting on his skin.
He’s just burning himself now, too. Infused with just a bit of the light that burns within Felix, he can withstand it. Look and look and engrave that summer-sweet smile into his retinas, map out the expanse of freckles on his body, memorise his taste.
And he thinks; maybe people don't talk about how terrifying it is to fall in love because it’d scare others away from letting go and giving in. From having that love right beneath their fingertips, in all his happy, sun-warmed glory.