Work Text:
Where the waves meet the sand, where the surface turns into nothing but a vision, where the wind runs so strong it steals your hearing, where your head spins so hard you lose consciousness. Seungmin thinks about how to move, how to leave the water, how to breathe without breaking the thread that holds them together. Hyunjin only wants to scream, and he keeps swimming, swimming, swimming. He keeps crying. His tears blend with the salt water, and his body becomes ocean.
They don’t know how they ended up here, so far from the shore and from themselves. So quiet, so disunited, so lost. They are broken, so broken that fixing them, fixing themselves, feels impossible. An illusion. If only the sun didn’t sink into the sea, if only they were on the same planet, if only the stars aligned so that one of them could take the first step. If only, if only, if only.
If only they could say hello. Or bye.
Hyunjin tried, so alone, impatient, sensitive, otherworldly. He didn’t manage, by so little it was enough to weaken him, to make him cry beneath a willow that stopped doing so long ago. He always tries again, without results. And so he swims away. Far away. Farther and farther, waiting for Seungmin to reach him. But Seungmin never can, so alone, restless, gentle, and earthly. He tries, constantly. And he apologizes, endlessly. The apologies weaken him, make him kneel on wet concrete, make him vomit words that never reach anyone. He no longer knows how to swim, so he doesn’t.
If Hyunjin is the ocean, reaching upward, Seungmin is the sky, looking down. Eternally connected, eternally portrayed together, eternally destined to endure not being the same. Not being the same thing. Never truly able to touch. They know each other by heart, but can never cross the breath that separates them. They remain apart.
“I thought I had you. As in, I thought you were there. That we were there.” Hyunjin speaks in a low voice, the breath of a poet who has to hold himself back from letting everything spill out. His skin glows and burns beneath the sunlight slipping through the open window, and his arms wrap around the pillow as if it might leave him at any moment. Like Seungmin might. He doesn’t know what to expect from all of this, because the words sting his throat and he could start tearing up at any moment. It wasn’t supposed to go like this.
“You’ve always had me. You always do have me. There hasn’t been a single day, hour, minute, second where you weren’t there, too.” Seungmin’s voice is weak too, hoarse like someone who has just woken up, rough with something unspoken. His cheeks are flushed, warm with color, his lips even more so. His body feels like air, like it isn’t really there. Hyunjin watches him as if, at any moment, he might vanish.
They sit facing each other, both at opposite ends of the couch, and when their eyes meet, they don’t lie. They speak where words fail them.
“It doesn’t feel like it.”
Seungmin breaks the contact. He looks down, the way the sky does, and the floor seems to give way beneath his feet. If he could throw himself into it, he would. Maybe he would take flight, maybe he’d manage to let go of everything that haunts him. He pushes the tears back, and his eyes burn. It wasn’t supposed to go like this.
“We promised…” His voice cracks, “We promised we wouldn’t let it go like this.”
There was a time when maybe they weren’t this distant. This different. They knew each other well; same hands, same eyes, same lips. They fell asleep dreaming the same dreams, crossed each other’s silences, broke the war with a flag of peace. They didn’t drown in feeling. They didn’t choke on fog and dust. They didn’t resist. They didn’t pull. They were. They were there. They existed for each other like pieces of the same puzzle.
And if now they are ocean and sky, maybe it is because of that time too: always together, always bound. They could become anything, disappear from each other’s sight, and still they found themselves together once again. They watch each other, measure each other, collide endlessly. And yet it is their punishment. Because they are no longer who they were, forced not to understand, forced to remain so close and yet be so far apart. A trick of fate, a fault in love ready to tear them apart.
Hyunjin screamed. And cried. The sun drew closer, the moon did too. Seungmin watched from a distance, eyes heavy with tears he couldn’t let fall. Is this what it means to love, and lose, and die? Is this what happens when the heart breaks?
They don’t move. Time does. It always does, in ways it shouldn’t. Hyunjin lets his gaze rest on the sunlight, on the dust settled on the table, on the clock that hasn’t worked in a long while. He looks at everything except Seungmin’s eyes. And maybe that is what Seungmin wants too, because he knows they love in ways oh-so different, oh-so incompatible, that it hurts too much. Enough to pull them even farther apart.
“I waited for you to need me less,” Seungmin says, eventually. His voice is a whisper. “But I also waited for me to need you less. I really waited a long time. And I think I’m tired now. You must be tired too.”
Hyunjin doesn’t speak, because saying nothing is easier than choosing words he will never be sure are truly his. Words so heavy, so cold, so real.
Yes, they are both tired.
Seungmin knows Hyunjin’s silences all too well, and he carries them as if they were his own: always with care, always with respect, but also with a quiet, aching melancholy. He knows that Hyunjin, like him, wants to fall asleep and dream of something else. Something different from now. Something that could give him more, that could let him love forward, that could let him swim and be followed. Something that isn’t the two of them, as they are now.
Seungmin wants it too, even if his dreams are different, as everything is, now, from Hyunjin’s. He dreams of something that could calm him down, that could keep him alive, that could let him love by standing still.
And as silence wraps around their fragile figures, the sun sinks quickly, merging their shadows and holding them in a warm, gentle dark. With evening comes the moment when sky and ocean seem to connect, heavy, full, intense, and it makes them sway for an instant. It almost makes them cry.
Hyunjin shifts in his seat; Seungmin’s hand twitches. For a second, just one second, the distance between them feels smaller. And that is when they both stop. Hyunjin stills, Seungmin lets his hand fall back.
They could try, and that is exactly why they don’t.
They sit there as night settles, knowing that something — everything — has changed. Perhaps forever. The ocean does not rise; the sky does not fall. They don’t meet in the middle. They don’t touch. There is something between them, stronger than any other force, but now it no longer disturbs them. It is not anger. It is not regret. It is not lack of love. It is only distance. Tangible, but now gentle, almost light.
Just distance.
And they remain seated, five feet apart, floating, suspended, aware. Their eyes meet one last time, unlike any other time before, and they let the room grow still as moonlight settles over them, remembering when they first became ocean and sky. Water and air. When they first believed they had to collide in order to understand, accept, and embrace, the distance between them.