Work Text:
fata organa
n. a flash of real emotion glimpsed in someone sitting across the room, idly locked in the middle of some group conversation, their eyes glinting with vulnerability or quiet anticipation or cosmic boredom—as if you could see backstage through a gap in the curtains, watching stagehands holding their ropes at the ready, actors in costume mouthing their lines, fragments of bizarre sets waiting for some other production.
Jaehwan has fallen many times.
Life is full of falling, he thinks. Falling in love with ideas, with dreams, with people. He has had his share of all of them, ideas of idol grandeur passing to the even greater plummet that was his discovery of music, of singing. He’ll even admit to his few pitfalls in love in his short time spent aware of its true consequences.
But he’s rather sure he falls and hits rock bottom when he meets Hongbin.
Well, not really a fall so much as a very rocky tumble off a cliff that Jaehwan is rather sure he’s never going to be able to climb back up. Not if Hongbin keeps smiling at him like he’s the very sun in the sky.
Hongbin is about as handsome as they come, and Jaehwan is sure he knows it with how often everyone tells him, but Jaehwan wonders if Hongbin even knows how breathtaking he is. Not only for his looks, but the way his brows crease when he can’t find that certain note he needs to hit, Jaehwan able to see the gears turning in his mind. The way Hongbin’s dimples still show when he’s smiling after practicing for the entire day, when he talks to Jaehwan about life and the universe and everything else once it’s too late to even string together coherent thought.
Jaehwan falls for everything he can see in Hongbin’s eyes, when they’re laid bare for no one but him, showing every fear and insecurity, every confidence and every bit of strength that Hongbin has. Moments like those Jaehwan feels like he’s spinning in space and hitting every single star as he falls back down to earth, Hongbin shooting him that same smile when he comes back into himself. It makes him wonder if Hongbin has already figured out how he feels, how hard he’s fallen.
Jaehwan thinks he may spend more time thinking about this than is really healthy.
“Well, nothing is ever going to happen if you don’t do something about it,” Hakyeon chides him after one particularly bad word vomit that is mostly muddled thoughts about Hongbin, singing, Hongbin, falling off a cliff, and the stars in Hongbin’s eyes. “Try your luck, you never know what might happen.”
“But the stars,” Jaehwan whines, and Hakyeon looks like he very much wants to hit him. Jaehwan thinks that is how most people look at him when he talks, but he really can’t imagine why.
“Then look him dead in those big doe star filled eyes and tell him what you feel,” Hakyeon sighs and Jaehwan simply frowns, because that is such an obvious solution, why would one even consider it. “If one of you doesn’t take initiative then he’s just going to keep staring at you like that and you’re going to keep telling me these starry eyed stories, Jaehwan.”
Jaehwan throws his water bottle at his head, Hakyeon pushes him over, and their relationship stays much the same.
Confessions are tricky business.
Jaehwan decides this quickly after letting the idea even enter his mind. For all that he is good at talking, he lacks the thoughts to even form the words for this. This seems to be an undertaking of epic proportions, and he thinks it should not be because that is not what he and Hongbin are and simplicity is often best for these things.
Therefore, he prepares a mental speech that is bound to be understandable to no one but himself, and waits. For the perfect moment where the stars align and the sky is alight and everything is as dramatic and spectacular as possible, all the things that are warranted for such a spectacular reveal.
In reality, he blurts out I like you when they’re both covered in sweat and nearly passed out on the dorm floor, Hongbin’s eyes having been particularly open and distracting at that moment as the words bounce around his mouth and slip past his lips.
“I know,” Hongbin laughs, and Jaehwan frowns because Hongbin makes it seem like it should have been the most obvious thing in the world. Maybe, he thinks, his eyes are the same way. “I was wondering if you were ever going to do anything about it.”
“Well now I’m certainly not,” Jaehwan grumbles, and Hongbin only laughs harder. Jaehwan finds himself suddenly hating how his eyes crinkle and his teeth flash when he laughs with his mouth open. He doesn’t think this is how these things are supposed to go. “I think you’re ruining a very pivotal moment in our relationship.”
Hongbin just smiles that dangerous smile that tears away at all of Jaehwan’s defenses and rolls himself over, with some effort, to be half lying on Jaehwan, breath tickling Jaehwan’s hair as he gropes for Jaehwan's hand breathes a playful just be quiet.
Jaehwan huffs but says no more, letting Hongbin simply hang on him until they’re both asleep, and there’s no grand speech or confession that makes any change in their relationship. Honestly, there isn’t much of a change at all, and Jaehwan still can’t think of the words to explain it when Hakyeon asks him about it in passing.
He could tell him more about the secrets in Hongbin’s eyes, or Hongbin’s hand in his when no one is looking. He could mention soft stolen kisses in hidden nooks and crannies, Hongbin’s warm skin and breath against the side of his neck in mornings where he genuinely wishes he wasn’t an idol if simply to lay for five more minutes and appreciate this work of art that has chosen him of all people. He could talk about the small bite marks on his shoulder that Hongbin just grins about instead of apologizing for, but he doesn’t think he will. He just smiles instead.
“It was in your eyes, you know,” Hongbin tells him once, and only once, under the safe cover of darkness and no one around. “When you look at me sometimes I feel like I can see everything behind them. It’s like you were waiting for something, so I tried to show you.”
Jaehwan grins, and he thinks that sometimes simply falling is much nicer than trying to get up.