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The evening autumn winds greet Taesan’s skin with the gentlest of kisses as he trudges along the sidewalk, not harsh at all but still cold enough for him to feel it on the very tip of his nose now that winter is coming their way. It should be chilly when he’s wearing a mere cotton hoodie, when the sun is nowhere to be found with the moon in its place, but warmth envelops him where his sleeping boyfriend wearing his coat is draped over his shoulders.
A sleeping and very drunk boyfriend.
Leehan’s cheek is pressed against Taesan’s right shoulder, arms loosely wrapped around his neck. He’s snoozing soundly on his back after he had way more drinks than he can even handle at their high school reunion party. The steady ins and outs of his breathing make Taesan feel drowsy himself.
Taesan’s not much of a drinker, especially when he goes to an event with Leehan because at least one of them has to make sure they both get home without a hitch. It’s not that he doesn’t trust Leehan, but his alcohol tolerance gives out after an average of four glasses, and Taesan’s not about to risk finding Leehan passed out somewhere on the busy streets of Seoul.
Leehan started to hiccup with the buzz of alcohol rushing to his head back at the restaurant, so Taesan had excused themselves early after paying their split of the bill, just a couple hours before midnight. As it goes, their former schoolmates just assumed the two of them stayed close after graduation. Close enough to take each other home, apparently. Taesan chooses not to dwell on it as much as Leehan would’ve.
They’re still distances away from their shared apartment when Taesan feels the dead weight on his back shift slightly. He turns his head to see Leehan’s eyelids fluttering open, watching him as he processes his surroundings. His gaze lands somewhere on Taesan’s face, but he’s not sure if Leehan’s seeing him at all with the way his face shows nothing to decipher.
“Morning, Donghyunie,” Taesan greets softly, careful not to startle Leehan when he’s clearly delirious. He doesn’t hear a greeting back, instead he feels Leehan shifting around behind him, getting more comfortable before laying his head on Taesan’s shoulder again, but now facing the road instead of him. All he can see is his blond head of hair, but Taesan doesn’t need to see his face to know Leehan isn’t back to sleep at all.
A few seconds pass through their silence as Taesan walks, then Leehan speaks up. “You should’ve hailed a taxi or something,” he says, voice rough from the booze and sleep still in his system. His words slur as they escape his lips, still not awake enough to articulate properly.
“I spent all my money for tonight on both our shares of the food,” Taesan replies, eyes trailing the cracks along the concrete sidewalk. The white lie feels oddly natural on his tongue.
It’s a flimsy excuse. He knows he could’ve just paid for the taxi fare with whatever money’s left in Leehan’s wallet. But this kind of chance doesn’t come by often, a chance for them to just take a walk (or just Taesan for that matter), when they have time to spend together outside of the house for once. They may live under the same roof, between the same four walls, but their commitments only allow them to come home to fall asleep next to each other. All he needs is a reason to be with Leehan under the night sky for a little while longer tonight.
He feels Leehan’s head turn back to him again, his warm breathing fanning down Taesan’s neck. From this angle he can see Leehan’s slightly flushed face much clearer, and he’s grinning up at him all dopey as if he just cracked the lamest joke ever. Taesan feels like he’s been figured out.
Admission is embarrassing. Leehan knows what he means even without it. Maybe it’s why they work.
“Stop looking at me like that,” Taesan murmurs, looking for the floor again to latch his gaze on anything besides those pair of glassy eyes that can see right through him. Even when he’s bared his soul to this man, some things can’t help but stay making him the same amount of flustered.
“Mm, I’m not looking at you like anything,” Leehan’s legs start to swing a little in his hold as he says it, an obvious sign he’s delighted to have read Taesan like an open book. Hums of contentment escape Leehan’s throat at the same time he presses his cheek to Taesan’s own. He naturally leans into it without much thought, even when the sharp scent of cheap soju stings his nostrils a little.
“You seem real energetic. Think you can walk by yourself now?” Taesan asks, head slightly turned just to make sure Leehan hears him. The legs in his hold stop moving, and he feels Leehan shake his head with a disagreeing noise, his hair softly tickling the side of Taesan’s face. He doesn’t know why he even asked when Leehan would never pass up a chance to make Taesan dote on him.
The quiet of the night lingers around them as Taesan walks, the only sound he can hear being Leehan’s steady breathing. Suddenly, one of the arms wrapped around his neck lifts, along with a finger directed somewhere above them.
“Look, there’s a star.”
Taesan follows where Leehan’s finger points to find a bright light twinkling in the cloudless night sky. It’s not easy to see stars in the city, where all the lights glow brighter as if to compete. If Taesan’s being honest, he doesn’t find himself to be the type of person who still sees the charm in stars. He’s moved past that a long time ago. Yet he hears himself whistle in genuine interest when Leehan points it out.
“It’s pretty,” Taesan says absentmindedly as he continues to gaze up at it, still being mindful of where he’s walking. He makes it a few more steps before Leehan points to somewhere else in the sky. “There’s another star near it,” he says, and Taesan sees it. Another star, a little dimmer than the other, but still shining bright on its own.
“The bright one is Alcor. The brighter one is Mizar. They’re called binary stars, or are they twin stars? I don’t remember,” he tells him, words melting together like honey, before explaining further, “did you know? They’re the brightest stars we can see right now, part of the Big Dipper.” Leehan’s words come out more like a string of mumbles near Taesan’s ears, but he’s coherent enough for him to understand.
Taesan always finds it amusing how Leehan just knows random things like these. Sometimes it’s more amusing than the fun facts themselves. “What else do you know about them?”
Leehan takes a few seconds to recall, melting further into Taesan’s hoodie as he racks his brains for an answer. Half a minute passes, and he almost thinks Leehan’s somehow dozed off again, but then he whips his head up so fast they almost bump against one another. Taesan nearly trips over nothing.
“Sometimes, they’re used as a metaphor for relationships, often romantic. I read this somewhere once,” Leehan says, and he sounds so excited about it Taesan has to try his hardest to bite back the enamoured smile threatening to appear. It doesn’t work as well as he’d hoped, resulting in a huff of a laugh escaping his lips. Taesan gives an encouraging hum, prodding Leehan to tell him more.
“There’re a lot of aspects, like, the way they’re linked together forever, and whatever happens to one star will affect the other, too. It reflects how changes in an individual also affect their partner, whether they’re good or bad,” he drones on, fiddling with his fingers where his hands are crossed over Taesan’s chest.
“Even through thick and thin, they’re both stuck to each other anyway because they’re naturally drawn to each other just like the stars, because it’s how they work,” Leehan huffs it all out in one breath, making small puffs of white in the air, catching it again before he does anything else. He sinks back down into Taesan’s shoulder, tightening his hold around his neck a little more. Not enough to hurt, but just enough to make Taesan feel tightly secured in his arms.
“I think soulmates exist, prewritten in the stars,” a brief pause makes it feel as if the air is holding its breath. “We exist, after all,” Leehan mumbles that last part into Taesan’s hoodie, like he’s admitting to the shyest of confessions. Even then, it’s as clear as a summer afternoon in Taesan’s ears as the tips of them start to warm despite the crisp near-winter winds.
The silence stretches longer where he didn’t verbalise a response to Leehan’s small admission. Taesan chances a glance towards his lover, and blinks hard enough to see spots, because Leehan’s peering up at him ever so slightly from behind the safety of the dark blue cotton and he thinks he sees stars brighter than both Mizar and Alcor’s glows combined in Leehan’s eyes under tonight’s sky.
He looks away as fast as he can, afraid of being blinded. Suddenly, the air feels suffocating everywhere around him.
“Soulmates…” Taesan repeats to himself, just to test out how the word feels on his tongue. It’s not a foreign concept, but it’s a concept he decidedly doesn’t have much faith in. Taesan likes to believe that he pursued Leehan on his own terms without any interference from the universe. He likes it that way, the feeling of being in control, but he decides to indulge Leehan this time like he did all the other times just to keep being in his favour.
“You don’t think so?” he hears Leehan say from beside him, and he can almost hear the pout in his voice.
“No, I do,” Taesan simply replies, gently quelling the wave of sulkiness he could feel coming from a mile away. A drunk Leehan is easier to coax than a sober one, he’s learned.
The steps he takes become a little narrower when he realises their building isn’t so far anymore. They’re already near the lobby of their apartment complex, just a few feet away from the main entrance. Taesan doesn’t feel like going up yet, but Leehan needs to rest soon for the awaiting hangover the next morning.
“Help press the buttons for me,” Taesan says once they’re in front of the elevator doors. Leehan follows, but not before being a tease by whining and saying he doesn’t want to. Taesan rolls his eyes in annoyance and affection at his antics, and soft giggles fill the air on the way up as Leehan takes pride in successfully pushing Taesan’s buttons more than he did the elevator’s.
They reach their front door where Leehan helps with punching in the code, or at least he tries to, completely missing the combination twice before he finally gets it right with Taesan steadying his arm.
091028, 084050, 081020, both their birthdates meeting in the middle. Taesan pulls the door open with his foot as soon as it clicks, though it’s a little difficult when he has a 6-foot-tall man’s weight laying on his back.
He sets Leehan down once they’re back inside, taking off both his and Leehan’s shoes for him as the door shuts automatically behind them. The insulation of the place is a much welcome warmth after being in near-18-degree weather. He takes his eyes off Leehan to put their shoes away, and suddenly he’s gone from where he left him sitting on the floor just a second ago.
Taesan looks up and sees Leehan trudging over to the living room, plopping down on the couch while still wearing his (Taesan’s) coat. He looks like he’s going to fall back asleep right there in all his outdoor clothes. Taesan knows he’d be complaining about how stuffy he feels as soon as he wakes up tomorrow morning if he lets him.
“Donghyun-ah, at least change your clothes first,” Taesan nags as he pads over to where Leehan is nearly toppled off the couch, then kneels on the carpet in front of him. His lover’s eyes are shut tight, like he’s trying his best to ignore everything else around him. Taesan brings a hand up to slide his fingers through his hair and push the long bangs away from his face, feeling the slightly warm flush of skin on his forehead. His heart swells at the sight of Leehan’s face relaxing under his touch.
Taesan didn’t think to switch on the overhead lights, so the only way he can see Leehan right now is due to the moonlight spilling through the sliding doors separating them from the balcony outside. It’s a soft kind of glow that somehow accentuates all of his features and take the edge off of them at the same time, like they’ve been shaved down to be blunter just so Taesan can touch him all he wants.
Soulmates…
Then, with minimal hesitation, he presses his lips to the crown of Leehan’s head. It’s a short peck, but it quickly turns into two more, then three, and then Taesan’s cupping his cheeks and stamping the shape of his lips anywhere he can reach on that carefully sculpted face. Leehan’s eyes flutter open as he squirms, and he’s grinning up at Taesan so sweetly he regrets kissing him so much, in case he somehow gets cavities from it later.
“What’s up? You’re rarely ever this needy,” he points out in a groggy, tipsy kind of voice as he pulls Taesan closer by the neck, bringing them nose-to-nose with each other. The night air feels charged in a way, but it’s nothing out of the ordinary.
“Yeah? Should I stop?” Taesan lightly teases as he brushes Leehan’s cheek with his thumb, and relishes in the way his eyes turn into thin crescents as he laughs. Taesan doesn’t know what’s so amusing, but he supposes that it doesn’t really matter if it’s making his boyfriend so giddy.
“No, it’s cute of you,” he says once his giggles die down for a second, letting the soft hums of the city take over. Then, he tilts his head up just enough for Taesan to feel his lips against his own, just for a brief moment.
And yeah, Leehan’s right. Taesan does feel needier than usual. That thought runs through his head as he dives in for another kiss, tasting soju and sugar and unscented lip balm all at once. It’s a taste he’s gotten accustomed to, but the rush that comes with it has never faded no matter how much time’s passed. Leehan returns the kiss with just as much passion, and Taesan can feel the smile against his lips as he’s being pulled even closer into Leehan’s orbit, something he didn’t even realise was still possible at this point.
Leehan reminds him of late nights like these, when they’re unapologetically lost in each other in the safety of their shared home, long fingers raking through his hair and love filling up his lungs to the brim. Leehan reminds him of sunsets, when they used to skip evening supplementary lessons together in high school so they could sneak off to the rooftop, staying there long enough to watch the orange daylight bleed into blue. Now, Leehan reminds him of binary stars and the possible existence of fate, dancing around the two of them like it’s always been there even before they were born.
Things like stars and sunsets used to have no meaning to Taesan. Sure, he could say they were pretty, but they used to be just what they were; mere stars and sunsets with nothing worth taking note of. But tonight, he has Leehan, and everything under the sky and above it is worth making poems about when they serve as reminders of everything they were, are, and will be.