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Suae couldn’t stop looking at him.
The large display screen before them had shifted from mixed hues of blue and red city lights to the cold raging sea. The film room’s atmosphere felt like a charged storm waiting to break, the kind that hummed with the tension of everything left unsaid. Every breath, every heartbeat, felt like they were teetering on the edge of a confession — especially when Dohwa’s hand had interlocked with hers and Suae could feel his warmth tenfold.
She was taken by surprise at first, but slipped comfortably into the moment, like her body had been waiting years to remember the shape of his touch. What caught her surprise even more though, was Dohwa’s frozen disposition beside her, gazing longingly into the sea.
She caught the way his wispy dark blonde locks fanned his forehead, the way the blue light emanated from the screen perfectly framed his side profile, the way his lips were agape just slightly and the way his eyes gleamed with an unspoken sadness.
She was certain. She had never seen Dohwa like this before.
And she was even more certain that a man as beautiful as him shouldn’t have eyes that lonely.
She felt a stirring climb up her spine then. Something she couldn’t find a name for just yet. It was chilling.
He was chilling to look at.
“Why…do you have that expression?”
The question left her lips so easily, so breathlessly. Suae found that a common occurrence ever since she and Dohwa had reunited. Around him, it was almost like her heart was comfortable. Honest. As if every wall she’d built around herself crumbled in his presence. There was no need to think or to second guess anything.
With Dohwa Baek, there was no room for confusion. There never had been.
He faced her with a pained expression, “...Because it brings back a sad memory.”
And for a sliver of a moment, Suae couldn’t read him. And she wanted nothing more than to read his mind right there and then, dig through the chamber of his innermost thoughts, his heart, until she could unearth whatever wretched thing it was that carved that grief into his voice.
Her Dohwa.
Her best friend.
The man that knew her. Knows her. He who knew her anxieties and neuroses, and he who knew that this volatile, trembling, quiet force between them inside this room, was enough to make her world tilt off of its own axis.
He continued, his gaze never leaving hers, “It was raining at the sea that day, too.”
Rain. The sea. A promise of forever. A phantom memory surged like the crashing of waves on the shore and the crackle of lightning, and it crushed her like a mallet to the chest, her lungs deflating.
Suae had kissed Go Eunhyuk by the sea once.
But that’s all it was. And that’s all he will ever be. An ex-boyfriend. An ex-something. An incomplete sentence or chapter in a book that someone put down halfway through and never picked up again, finished without an ending.
Now though, hearing the drop in Dohwa’s voice, it was almost as though he had laid out a bleeding, open palm towards her, vulnerable and willing for her to take it.
To pick up the pen again and forge a story of their own.
“Back then, I also stared at your face just like this,” His voice came out softer, warmth visibly spread across his cheeks, yet his eyes hardened with resolve before a gentle finger reached to tuck a stray strand of her hair behind her ear, “and brushed your hair back—”
“And like this…”
Suae caught it, the exact moment his eyes fell to her mouth. The air shifted, gravity tightened. Her heart skipped a beat, anticipating, remembering. The way her pulse raced when he once applied her makeup just days ago, his focus steady, his touch impossibly tender. How, even then, with her eyes closed and vision dark, all she could feel was love — pure, unwavering, unspeakable love.
Time slowed around her the more she thought of him, of them, the more her heart opened to the possibility she had spent years burying under fear and logic and loss.
Maybe she could love again.
Maybe the best kind of love didn’t come in the form of carnival dates and kisses by the beach. Maybe it was found discreetly tucked in the folds of everyday life. In engaging conversations about the story she was rewriting, in bickering and laughter, in tears that were wiped away in a dark cinema, in tension-filled dressing rooms, in the click of a toy gun at an arcade, in the harmony of song that bounced off the walls in a shared karaoke room and in the intimate air inside a sports car after getting picked up to avoid the chances of having to walk home in slippers.
The best love doesn’t always come in grand gestures. It hides in small, unspoken little actions — in the ways you make someone’s world gentler without ever needing to say it.
Maybe the best kind of love was from Baek Dohwa.
“Ah,” He leaned down, and he was suddenly close, so impossibly close to her with how his unsteady breath already fanned the tip of her nose, “I guess I didn’t actually touch you back then.”
The moment that followed was short and fleeting. In the absence of Suae’s words, their eyes spoke volumes. And Dohwa’s were full of yearning, inviting, vulnerable, like he was sending her a message that he had walked into this date clad in armor, his weapons sharpened, but he could only do so much to harness his self-control when Suae’s hands intertwined with his is the equivalent of making him falter and drop his sword to his feet.
Game over: you lose.
And when Dohwa finally seemed to get her consent, hand on her chin to bring her face even closer to his, only one thought surfaced in Suae's mind.
I guess we both lost.
Without another excruciating second to spare, Dohwa tipped down his head and kissed her.
A warm, long and soft press of his lips greeted Suae, and before she could even comprehend it, she melted into his kiss. Her legs lost their bones, and all she could think was that she was kissing him back and it felt like the great unraveling of what was inevitable from the beginning. She’s stunned by how right, how natural, kissing Dohwa feels.
Kissing Dohwa felt like coming home.
It felt like a nice summer day, it felt like green lights on a night drive, it felt like relearning the lyrics of an old song you forgot about but used to love.
It felt destined to happen.
Because somewhere between their teenage and adult years, between her thinking that love was a risk and him thinking that his biggest act of love was letting her go, she had fallen for him without even realizing it.
And now, she wanted nothing more than to sink even deeper into Dohwa’s touch, to pull him even closer, to loosen his shirt and feel the pulse of his throat against her lips.
Dohwa’s hand moved away from her face to cradle her head, fingers treading through her hair as the kiss got more heated, mouths more desperate, urgent and reckless. She reciprocated by clutching onto the lapel of his coat, tiptoeing to meet him halfway.
He dragged his tongue across her bottom lip, and she must've elicited a small noise that only made Dohwa hold her tighter, almost like he was grounding himself from wanting more, from taking his fill of her.
And Suae could feel his and her own heartbeat match at a pace akin to their unsteady breathing when she pressed herself against his chest to truly feel all of him — and she wanted nothing more than to bury herself in his embrace for the rest of her life, the one real thing she’s ever known.
But without warning, he pulled away first.
His one arm immediately went to grasp her by the shoulder to position her towards him as he stepped backwards, almost as if to shield them both from something. Before Suae could question anything about it, she’s taken aback by the absence of his lips on top of hers and how much she already missed it like how she missed the sun during winter.
“Why…did you stop?”
Suae scanned the look on his face for an answer. He looked dazed, breathless. His eyes flicked to the space across from them, and so she craned her neck towards the film room’s entrance where she realized the light seeped its way in because someone must have opened the door only to see that two guests inside were…busy.
Right, she thought, It hasn’t even been two weeks since Dohwa's dating scandal broke out.
Earlier, she might have reprimanded him for being too casual about the fact that he was going to be sighted with a woman in a public (although small-scale) event after being the subject of baseless dating rumours. Still, it touched her a little that despite his initial reluctance at first, Dohwa really was careful with her.
“Ah, someone opened the door,” He muttered. rubbing the back of his neck, “They left after spotting us though. It’s a good thing the kiss covered both our faces, more or less.”
When Dohwa finished his answer, his stare returned to her lips.
He might have looked the slightest bit shaken, or hungry. Suae couldn’t tell what he was feeling until he addressed exactly what just transpired between them.
“Suae, I—” He said. But he didn’t just say anything. His voice was deep and hot, and he spoke her name like it was a curse or exaltation, something that moved him, for better or for worse, “I’m sorry. I got caught in the moment and I must have overstepp—”
“What are you apologizing for?”
Suae’s question came sharp. Dohwa felt his breath hitch.
Suae boldly stepped closer, gazing up at him, “Are you apologizing for kissing me?”
Dohwa felt cornered, backed to an invisible wall where he could no longer run away from the feelings and the self-control he had long tried so hard not to obliterate every time Suae so much as stood near him. Years of self-control, of pretending not to want her, dissolved in the air between them.
“I’m apologizing for wanting you. For wanting you more than a friend should, “ the confession left his lips, its weight heavy, his voice cracking at the last word, “I want you more than my heart can physically handle.”
His words felt like a wrench in her plans. A twist in a fairytale. Only Baek Dohwa had the power to make her feel that loving her was as easy as breathing.
Suae doesn’t even realize how much Dohwa has emboldened her. How willing she was to ruin their friendship, right here, right now, despite the fall that might (or might not) eventually come.
“Then show me,” the command came out as a whisper, and her stare never left his, “Show me how much you want me.”
“You have no idea, do you?” His gaze dropped to her lips, and he moved downwards until his hot breath fanned the side of her neck, one arm on her shoulder and the other on her waist, “When you’re in the room, every single cell in my body, every nerve, every muscle, every breath—is lost in you.”
Like his words weren’t enough to undo her already, Suae felt him peppering wet kisses there, and she clutched onto him like a lifeline.
Only Dohwa can make her resolve oh so fragile like this.
“I want more,” she finally whispered, breathless and aching at his touch, “I want your love. I want you, Baek Dohwa.”
Dohwa froze.
He shot up, arms still attached to her because he needed to be anchored to the ground. Because he needed to process the weight of her words, words he’d once heard only in his wildest dreams, words that shook him to his very core.
He didn’t realize tears began to pool at the corner of his eyes.
Suae’s demeanor shifted to pure concern when she pointed it out. She panicked softly, “Dohwa! You know I mean it, right? Sorry, I didn’t mean to make you sad, I just—”
And Dohwa tilted his head back slightly, stifling a chuckle, because how on earth could this beautiful woman before him switch from bold goddess of love to an adorable rambling mess? He knew it must have been because she recalled that night when they were eighteen, when he heartbreakingly confessed the feelings that were eating him alive, because he knew she didn’t want him back.
It seemed the tables turned in their favor anyway.
“Don’t worry. These are tears of joy,” He wiped a stray tear that rolled down his face before paying full attention to the woman before him, cupping her cheeks, “because when the love of your life wants you back, you’re going to want to spend the rest of your life making up for lost time.”
And Suae shot him a smile. Wide, and real, and radiant — before grabbing him by the collar and crashing her lips on top of his, giving him exactly what he’s missed all these years.