Chapter Text
“Sunghoon, I’m home!”
Heeseung waltzed into Sunghoon’s apartment as if he owned the place, humming as he shed his heavy outer layers and hung his spare keys on the hook by the door. Sunghoon blinked at him owlishly, looking up from his dinner prep.
“I gave you that key for emergencies,” he said blandly. “And I was going to come over later.”
“Hello to you too,” Heeseung replied breezily. “What’s for dinner?”
Sunghoon rolled his eyes to disguise the smile threatening to break through, turning back to the ingredients sprawled across his counter. “I’m making army stew. Do you want to help or do you think you’ll burn the soup again?”
“That was one time,” Heeseung grumbled, padding over. “Let it go, already. Where do you need me?”
“Kimchi, sauce, and stock are in the fridge, ramyeon’s in the second cabinet, rice cakes are defrosting in the sink.” They lapsed into comfortable silence for a little bit as they bustled around the kitchen. Heeseung didn’t even say anything when Sunghoon struggled with opening the cans of luncheon meat and sausages, simply taking them out of his hands before he could smash them open, peeling back the tabs patiently. As he always did. Sunghoon ignored the skip and stutter of his heart when their fingers overlapped; he wondered if it was only in his imagination that Heeseung’s touch seemed to linger.
They dumped everything into the pot to let it simmer and as Sunghoon set the timer, Heeseung said, “Actually, I came here because I wanted to talk.”
Sunghoon raised an eyebrow, putting the timer down. “Sure. Did something bad happen?”
“No, but maybe we should sit down.” They moved out of the kitchen and into the living area, Heeseung looking around contemplatively. It’d been a while since he’d come over, actually — they were always at his place, and Sunghoon’s apartment was getting sparser by the day. Most of his clothes were either folded into Heeseung’s drawers or hanging in his closet. Heeseung’s clothes now smelled of Sunghoon’s laundry detergent, and his bathroom countertop housed more of Sunghoon’s skincare than it did his own. The plush throw that used to belong to Sunghoon’s couch was now draped over Heeseung’s—their—bed.
Sunghoon fought back the flush rising to his face. “I know it seems kind of bare and dusty in here, but I swear I’m—”
“I don’t wanna sit anywhere you and Jongseong had sex,” Heeseung announced, wrinkling his nose.
Sunghoon blinked. “Okay, well. That’s a lot of places.”
“The couch is probably off-limits, but what about the dining chairs? Or your desk chair, at least?” Sunghoon shook his head. “The ottoman? The table?” Sunghoon continued shaking his head. Heeseung’s voice rose with incredulity, “The shoe alcove? The fucking windowsill?” Sunghoon stopped deigning to respond, simply leveling a look at his best friend. “You guys are fucking disgusting. You live on the third floor! Anyone could look up and fucking see!”
“Look,” Sunghoon threw his hands up. “You’re just gonna have to pick a spot and be okay with it. Just—ignore whatever’s happened there.”
“At this point, I’m gonna have to sit on the toilet to talk to you.”
“Well…”
“Ew! Ew ew ew, what the fuck!”
“Heeseung, just take a seat,” Sunghoon scrubbed a hand down his face. “Now.”
“I hate you,” Heeseung mumbled, shuddering. “You’re depraved and vile and I hope—”
“Yes yes, I’m a freak,” Sunghoon waved the sentiment away. “We’ve already agreed that those two months were a horrific lapse in judgement. What did you want to talk about?”
Heeseung sighed, long-suffering, as he gingerly lowered himself onto a couch arm. “Well, we just finished finals.”
“Yes,” Sunghoon said slowly, wondering where this was going.
“Winter break started yesterday.”
“Yes.”
“And Christmas is ten days away.”
“Is there a point to this? Or are we just playing the ‘state something obvious’ game?”
Heeseung fixed him with a hard look. “When are you going to return your parents’ calls?”
Sunghoon’s blood went cold. “I don’t know what you mean,” he lied. “I had no clue they’d been calling me at all.”
His best friend frowned at him, “Hoon, I already told you. You can lie to everyone else but you can’t lie to me. I know you’ve been ignoring them on purpose.”
Sunghoon folded his arms, feeling his hackles rise, “How do you know that they’ve been calling me? Have they been calling you?”
“No, they’ve been calling my parents, who told me they haven’t heard from you since mid-August. Hoon, you need to at least let them know that you’re alive.”
“They know I’m alive,” Sunghoon stared down at the ground so he didn’t have to look at Heeseung’s disapproving face. “I leave fresh dahlias at Yeji’s grave every time I visit. They know that no one else would know to bring dahlias.”
As usual, Heeseung immediately softened upon hearing Yeji’s name. “Don’t forget to bring me next time,” he murmured, “I miss that little nugget.” He exhaled sharply, “I suppose your parents do know you’re alive, but it wouldn’t hurt to send a text every now and then, just to appease them. They worry, that’s all.”
“I just—I can’t,” Sunghoon shook his head. “It gets harder to think about them the closer we get to the holidays. Having to look at them is just… it’s unbearable. How can I, when I—”
“It’s hard for them too,” Heeseung whispered. “They don’t blame you, Hoon, they never have. They just miss you.” He stood, crossing the space to tug at Sunghoon’s wrists until he unfolded his arms. His hands encapsulated Sunghoon’s, squeezing hard. Their eyes met, and something shuddered through Sunghoon, unfurling behind his navel. “Just talk to them for five minutes? Please?”
“Okay,” Sunghoon said numbly. Damn Heeseung. Why couldn’t he just leave Sunghoon to barricade himself into isolation during the holidays? He always had to come in with his doe eyes and soft voice like silver bells and wreck all of Sunghoon’s terrible plans. “Okay. You’ll sit with me while I call them, right?”
“Of course I will.” Heeseung’s smile was like the sun coming up and Sunghoon would be damned if he didn’t do everything just for a glimpse of it. Fucking hell. When had his life come to this? He sighed, turning his hands over so he could lace his fingers through his best friend’s.
“Should I call them now?” he asked, a lump growing in his throat. He really didn’t want to; he hated crossing bridges that he’d tried to burn. If he called his parents, he wasn’t sure how he’d explain his distance — whether if it was for their good, or his own. And with every day that passed, that question became a steeper and steeper mountain to climb. There was too much to conquer within this tangled thicket. “I mean—I could.” Heeseung’s eyes flickered over his face.
“Maybe after we eat,” he said gently, reading what Sunghoon couldn’t say, as always. He gripped Sunghoon’s hands a little tighter, an anchor. A lifeline. “Let’s finish dinner first, and then we’ll see. Okay?”
Sunghoon nodded, relief punching the air out of his lungs. Even if it was an extra hour, it was a balm, albeit temporary. Sunghoon held onto it almost as desperately as he held onto Heeseung.
✵✵
Sunghoon’s knee wouldn’t stop bouncing under the table as they ate, so much so that Heeseung had to hook his ankle around Sunghoon’s in an effort to keep him still. He refused to let Sunghoon clean up, banishing him to the bathroom as he gathered everything to put in the sink. “Go and take a shower,” his best friend instructed, batting Sunghoon’s hands away from the dishes. “You reek of anxiety. Go and stand under the hot water until you’re ready to come out, I’ll be right here. Also, where’s your dishwasher?”
“I am the dishwasher.”
Heeseung rolled his eyes and shooed Sunghoon away. The scalding hot shower helped to ease some of his nerves, but his hands were still finely trembling when he settled next to Heeseung on the couch, phone in his white-knuckled clutch. Heeseung set a hand on his thigh, a troubled shine in his eyes.
“Why don’t I call them first,” he suggested. “You can jump in any way or time you want, but you’ll have to at least say hi, okay? Hoon?” Sunghoon made a brief affirmative noise, his tongue like lead in his mouth. Heeseung hesitated. “Or why don’t we do this another day? It won’t hurt to call tomorrow.”
“No,” Sunghoon croaked. “You’re right, I should get this over with. I’m gonna have to—to talk to them at some point.”
Heeseung nodded, still studying Sunghoon’s expression closely. “If you’re sure. Let’s use my phone?” Sunghoon made another noise of assent, clenching and unclenching his fists. Heeseung moved to pull Sunghoon further into his side, his free hand pressing four on speed dial for Sunghoon’s mother. Sunghoon clung to him, feeling foolishly small.
His mother picked up almost immediately, and her familiar voice coming through the speakers made him grateful he was sitting down. His knees were so weak he would’ve keeled over if he’d been standing up.
“Heeseung, sweetheart,” she greeted warmly. She and Yeji had the same tinkling timbre; Sunghoon half-closed his eyes, misery lancing through him like a serrated knife. “How’ve you been? I haven’t heard from you all week. Finals kept you busy?” All week? Sunghoon mouthed at his best friend, brow furrowing. I thought they don’t call you? His best friend had the grace to look a little sheepish.
“Hey, Mom,” he replied. “Yeah, finals just ended a couple of days ago, it was hell. I’ve missed you.”
“I’ve missed you too,” Sunghoon could hear the smile in her voice. “I’m sure you did great on your exams. Do you know if…” she cleared her throat. “How were Sunghoon’s?”
“He did just fine,” Heeseung said, looking over at Sunghoon cautiously. Sunghoon kept quiet. “We’re still together every day, I make sure he eats well and sleeps enough.”
“That’s good,” she said brightly. “Thank you, darling. I assume I’ll be seeing you soon? Your parents mentioned that you’re coming back here for the Christmas week? I missed you two during Chuseok.”
“Yeah, I’ll be back. Sorry we couldn’t come around for Chuseok this year, we had… things to take care of here,” Heeseung and Sunghoon exchanged a glance, grimacing simultaneously. Things to take care of. Yeah, the broken heart Sunghoon had to nurse after a failed friends-with-benefits situation.
“I see,” his mother hummed. “Will it just be you this time? Or do you think you could bring Sunghoon home with you too?” No. He couldn’t go back.
“No,” Sunghoon blurted without thinking. Heeseung winced; his fingers were pressing into Sunghoon’s waist so hard, they would probably leave bruises. The other end of the line was dead silent for a long moment.
Finally, his mother’s tremulous, tentative voice asked, “Hoonie? Is that you?” Sunghoon cursed himself internally.
“Yes,” he said warily. “Hi, Mom.”
“Hi, honey. How long have you been there?”
“The whole time.”
“Oh. Okay.” They were both silent again. Then his mother piped up carefully, “How are you?”
“I’m fine,” he said curtly, feeling the dismay roll off Heeseung in waves. “Hope you and Dad are all good too. Listen, I have to go, so—”
“Honey, wait,” she pleaded, just as Heeseung’s arm wrapped around him like a straitjacket, pinning him in place and preventing his escape. Damn it. “Your father and I miss you. We’d… really like it if you came home for Christmas.”
Sunghoon pressed his lips into a thin line. They really didn’t have to do this. They didn’t have to pretend they still wanted him around. And he didn’t want to have to pretend he could still call that house home. “Look, Mom, I’m gonna be picking up extra shifts at work over the break, so I don’t think—”
“What if I came with you?” Heeseung said abruptly. Sunghoon stared at his best friend, who only met his steely gaze with an impenetrable calm. “Back to your house. I could stay with you over Christmas.”
As Sunghoon opened his mouth to decline, his mother said delightedly, “We’d love to have you here, Heeseung. You know you’re always welcome to stay as long as you like.”
Heeseung nodded, even though she couldn’t see him. “Sunghoon?”
“I… I don’t know.”
Heeseung said into the receiver, “Give us a minute, Mom,” then he quickly pressed the mute button and turned back to Sunghoon. “Hoon. I think it’d be good for you to go back.”
“Why?” Sunghoon muttered, picking at nonexistent lint on his sweatpants. “You’ll only be gone for a week. I can survive on my own for that long.”
“It’s not about that. You haven’t been back even once, not since the day we left. The holidays are for family, and you keep denying yourself the family you have left. Why?”
Sunghoon didn’t want to answer. He’d never told Heeseung, hadn’t wanted his best friend to think he had to choose between him and the people he saw as second parents.
And maybe deep down, he’d been afraid Heeseung would choose them.
The memory floated to the surface, scorching him behind the eyes, still as smarting as the day it’d happened: reaching for his mother’s hand after the funeral, her snatching it back the second his fingers brushed hers. His father shaking his head at him over her sobbing, hunched form. The grief burning in their eyes as they refused to look at him. Sunghoon felt like he was swallowing acid. “I just don’t like going where I’m not wanted,” he heard himself reply monotonously.
Heeseung frowned, setting his phone aside to cup Sunghoon’s face. His touch was so warm. “Of course they want you,” he insisted. “They’re your parents. They’ve never stopped thinking about or loving you. No one who’s loved you once could ever stop.” He paused, the twist of his mouth wry. “I would know.”
Sunghoon’s heartbeat was thunderous in his ears; he could feel it everywhere, under his skin like a drumming song. “Heeseung, I…” What corner of heaven did his best friend fall from? Who was the god that had allowed him to be loved by someone like Heeseung? And why was a sharp desperation sweeping through him like a storm, greedy for something more?
“Ultimately, it’s up to you,” Heeseung said, firm but soft. “Whether you want to go back. I won’t force you. We’ll do whatever you want, okay?”
Sunghoon’s mouth was dry. “We?”
“Yeah, I go where you go, remember?” Heeseung smiled. “I can just go on the 25th for Christmas and come right back. My family won’t mind.”
Sunghoon thought of Heeseung’s family — his mother’s gentle chiding, his father’s quiet encouragement, his brother’s boisterous laugh. The music that was always playing from an old turntable, washing the house with a golden ambience. “No,” he shook his head, vehement. “You should be with them. Don’t—don’t give anything up for my sake.”
“You’ve never asked me to, and I’m not,” Heeseung said dryly. “I want to stay with you. Is that so bad?”
“It’s more than I deserve.”
“Never,” Heeseung’s frown was so deep, it contorted his entire face. “What could I possibly give that you wouldn’t deserve? There’s nothing,” he stressed, when Sunghoon opened his mouth to interject. “Just tell me what you need.”
“I need you to be happy,” Sunghoon muttered.
“I’m already happy,” Heeseung said resolutely, his eyes flashing. “Sunghoon, look at me. If you wanna know what I think, I think you should give your parents a chance to show you that they don’t blame you. For anything that’s happened. I don’t want you to spend the rest of your life hiding from them in misplaced guilt. But, we won’t go back if you’re not ready.”
Sunghoon didn’t say anything for a long moment. He contemplated telling Heeseung about the incident, but decided against it. I need you to be happy. Heeseung could pretend all he wanted, but Sunghoon knew his family was the most precious thing to him in the world. He’d be the happiest spending the holidays with them. Sunghoon didn’t want to go home, but it was important to him that Heeseung did. “If we go back… I don’t think I could do a full week. Maybe a few days.”
As he expected, Heeseung’s face lit up, a miniature sun in the dark winter night. “Sounds perfect,” he agreed easily. “Do you want me to stay with you? Would that make it easier?”
Sunghoon worried at his bottom lip. Being alone in his parents’ house with them sounded like a nightmare of epic proportions. If Heeseung was there, with him… “It would, but—what about your family?”
Heeseung flapped a hand dismissively, “I’ll go see them every day. My house is literally one street away.”
“Okay,” Sunghoon said quietly. “If you’re sure.”
“I’m sure,” Heeseung grinned. He pulled his hand back from Sunghoon’s face to pick his phone back up and unmute the call; Sunghoon felt ridiculously mournful at the loss. “Mom? We’re back. What do you think about us coming to stay for a few days?”
His mother’s enthusiastic reply was lost on him as he tuned out, letting Heeseung handle the rest of the conversation. He stared out the window into the empty street. It rarely ever got cold enough in Seattle to snow, and he hoped the weather kept up this year. Yeji used to love snow. Back when they lived in Seoul, she would pray for a white Christmas all December, excitedly dragging him out the door the minute the snowflakes started to fall from the sky, not even giving it a chance to blanket the earth first. He’d remind her not to run, and catch her when she didn’t listen and inevitably slipped on the wet ground. He’d always caught her.
He hoped he never saw snow again for as long as he lived.
✵✵
A week later, Heeseung sat behind the wheel on the half-hour drive down to Des Moines, claiming that he liked cruising down the Pacific Highway. Liar. He hated the traffic on the Pacific Highway: and true enough, as soon as they turned out of the thoroughfares, he took the ramp up onto the I-5. Sunghoon snorted, leaning back in his seat as he fiddled with the aux cord. He couldn’t even play bad music to torment his best friend — all of the songs in his library were poached from Heeseung’s playlists first.
Maybe they did spend too much time together. He voiced this thought out loud.
“Bad time to come to this conclusion,” Heeseung said lightly, not taking his eyes off the road. “Seeing as to how we’re gonna be spending yet another three days potentially joined at the hip 24/7.”
“We’ll be catching codependent allegations all week,” Sunghoon droned.
Heeseung shrugged, “Nothing we haven’t heard before.”
“True,” Sunghoon muttered. Growing up, they’d been relentlessly teased about how inseparable they were by every single person possible. “Is it too late to go to—”
“Waterfront Park?” Heeseung interrupted, slanting a look at Sunghoon out of the corner of his eye. “I knew you’d try to hijack the car and turn us towards the pier. And yes, it’s too late. Hands where I can see ‘em, Park.”
“Ugh,” Sunghoon said grumpily, raising his hands in surrender. “You’re no fun. What’s the plan for the next few days, sergeant?”
“My family is coming to your place for Eve, and yours is going over to mine on Christmas. Boxing Day is free, I guess. We can do whatever we want.”
Sunghoon hummed, looking out the window to watch Portage Bay fly by. He picked at a hole in his jeans absentmindedly.
“Penny for your thoughts?”
“My thoughts are worth more than a penny, excuse you,” Sunghoon sniffed.
“Fine,” Heeseung amended, “dime for your thoughts?”
Sunghoon rolled his eyes, smiling. “It’s nothing, just… thanks, for coming back home with me. I definitely couldn’t have done it alone.”
“You’re acting like this is some big favour, but we literally live in the same neighbourhood, and I grew up in your house as much as I grew up in mine,” Heeseung pointed out. “If we weren’t staying at your place, I would’ve shoved you into the trunk like a sack of rice and brought you back to mine anyway.”
“Wow.” Sunghoon turned away from the window to bat his eyelashes at his best friend. “You love me.”
“That’s what you got from all of that?”
Sunghoon smiled triumphantly, “You can’t live without me, can you? I’m your favourite person in the world and even the thought of being without me for one day is so unbearable that you—”
“Never mind,” Heeseung grumbled. “I should’ve left your ass in your cold, unfestive apartment while I had the chance.”
“You like me way too much. You would never,” Sunghoon drawled, going back to the window. He nearly missed Heeseung’s reply, mumbled under his breath like he didn’t mean for Sunghoon to hear.
“Yeah. I would never.”
Thank God Heeseung was focused on the road and Sunghoon was facing away from him, so he couldn’t see the scarlet flush bleeding over Sunghoon’s cheeks.
✵✵
Sunghoon’s knee was bouncing again by the time they pulled up in front of his parents’ house, the hole in his jeans almost twice as wide as it had been when they’d set off. Heeseung let the engine idle, laying his hand over Sunghoon’s in an attempt to calm his jitters.
“Hey,” he said lowly. “I wasn’t serious earlier, you know? We can totally turn right around and spend the whole evening at Waterfront if you’re not ready to be here.”
“I know,” Sunghoon replied shakily. “But your parents—and my—”
“I’ll just tell them an emergency came up, they’ll be none-the-wiser.”
Sunghoon shook his head, even as the temptation rose within him, spiking like a tide. “I don’t want to make you lie to them—”
“You’re really not making me do anything,” Heeseung reminded him. “Just tell me what you need. I’ll drive straight into Lake Union if that’s what you really want.” He winced when Sunghoon glanced up sharply, belatedly remembering that Sunghoon avoided lakes as a general rule. “Sorry, bad example. How about right onto Pier 62? Or we can hide out in a boathouse for the rest of winter.”
Sunghoon gave him a small, begrudging smile. “You and your rom-coms. Every year, Meg Ryan gets 86 dollars deposited into her account from the royalties of your Sleepless in Seattle rewatches.”
“I’d hope it’s more than 86 dollars, that woman deserves to live like a queen,” Heeseung sniffed. “Hoon, come on. What’s the plan? Do you wanna stay or go?”
“I don’t wanna make you miss out on—”
Heeseung held up a hand, scowling. “If you insinuate that you’re forcing me to do anything one more time, I’m gonna start taking it as an insult.”
“Heeseung, seriously.”
“Sunghoon. Seriously.”
Sunghoon took a deep, stabilizing breath. He had to remember why he came back here. He wouldn’t be the reason for Heeseung missing out on Christmas with his family. He refused to be the causation behind another casualty. He reached over the console and turned the engine off. “No. You got us all the way here, let’s just go inside.”
“It was a 30-minute drive.”
“Let’s go inside,” Sunghoon repeated dryly, clambering out of the car on trembling limbs. He retrieved their bags from the backseat, trying to think of anything else but the dread precipitating at the bottom of his stomach. Heeseung joined him on the curb, wordlessly taking his bag from Sunghoon’s hand and intertwining their fingers. Sunghoon mentally thanked himself for remembering to wear gloves, so his best friend couldn’t feel how clammy his palms were.
“Remember, any time you wanna go, just let me know and we’ll make a break for it,” Heeseung said, his voice soothing, a signal fire through the dark. “We can sprint through town looking like we just escaped the psych ward.” Sunghoon managed a smile.
“Don’t threaten me with a good time, Lee.”
Heeseung’s brow creased, one last askance. Sunghoon only nodded and gripped his hand tighter, starting towards his house.
The front door was painted white now, the doorknob a new, shining gold. Sunghoon hadn’t known that his parents had made any changes to the house at all. They hadn’t mentioned it, and he hadn’t asked. He steadfastly ignored the twinge in his chest and the elegant pine wreath decorating the door as he knocked.
Immediately, it swung open, like his parents had been waiting just behind it, twin smiles splitting their faces. “Sunghoon. Heeseung,” his mother breathed.
“Hi Mom, hi Dad,” Heeseung said warmly. He gave Sunghoon’s fingers an almost imperceptible squeeze, and Sunghoon sighed inwardly.
“Hi,” he said rigidly. His parents’ smiles faltered, and he debated between slapping or throttling himself.
“Come in, you two must be freezing out there,” his mother ushered them inside, where their gas fireplace was roaring and keeping the living area at a cozy temperature. Ironically, Sunghoon felt colder in here. “How was the drive?”
“Not too bad,” Heeseung piped up when Sunghoon didn’t respond. “I took the I-5 instead of the Pacific Highway, so traffic was minimal.”
“That’s good,” Sunghoon’s father rumbled. “I hope you’ve both brought enough clothes, the weather forecast says it’ll get colder over the next few days.”
“Ah, yes!” Sunghoon’s mother brightened. “Hopefully La Niña’s cold front will bring us a white Christmas.” Sunghoon’s hold on Heeseung’s hand was so taut he was sure he heard his best friend’s knuckles crunch. “Hoonie, wouldn’t it be nice to see some snow this year?”
“No,” he clipped out. “I don’t want snow.”
“Oh,” his mother deflated. “I just thought, since you and your sister used to love snow, we could—”
“I don’t want snow,” Sunghoon said again. He unlaced his fingers from Heeseung’s so he could fold his arms, glaring at the crackling fire. His best friend didn’t say anything, but Sunghoon could feel the weight of his gaze drilling holes into the side of Sunghoon’s head.
“Right, well,” Heeseung finally piped up to cut through the thick atmosphere, “we’ll probably get rain as usual. Washington winters.”
“Yes, probably,” Sunghoon’s mother agreed, her eyes still on Sunghoon. He determinedly did not look at her back.
“Thanks for letting me stay here. Heedo brought his family back to town, so my niece and nephew have occupied my old room and I would’ve been relegated to the couch for the whole holiday.”
“Poor thing,” Sunghoon’s mother smiled sympathetically. “Heejin told me as much. This is only a given, sweetie, don’t need to thank us. This is your home too.”
“And we definitely won’t relegate you to the couch,” Sunghoon’s father added.
“Yes,” his mother laughed, “you can take Yeji’s—” she caught herself, pausing for a second. No one spoke. Sunghoon’s eyes burned. “You can take the other bedroom, if you want.”
Sunghoon turned and headed up the stairs without another word, faintly hearing Heeseung tell his parents that he would stay in Sunghoon’s room with him. Sunghoon stalked down the hall to his childhood bedroom, blindly flinging the door open and tossing his bag into a corner. His cheeks were damp, he realized, and he angrily swiped the tears that had escaped away. You and your sister? The other bedroom? Was saying Yeji’s name so unbearable? Was it better to discard the traces of her like she hadn’t been important, like she’d never existed at all? Or was it because of him, because they thought he wasn’t worthy of hearing her name ever again? Did it kill them to think of her and have to look at him? Did they know it was killing him as much as it was killing them?
Heeseung burst into the room, closing the door behind him. The skin around his soft mouth was blanched white. “Sunghoon—” he began, but Sunghoon cut him off.
“I know, I know,” he said, scrubbing a hand down his face, ignoring how hoarse his voice sounded even to his own ears. “My behaviour was appalling, sorry. I’m working on it.”
“Sunghoon,” Heeseung said again, sterner. “Tell me how I can make it better.”
“You can’t,” Sunghoon shook his head, whirling around to face his best friend. “Not this. I’m sorry Hee, I’m already ruining your Christmas—”
“Stop that,” Heeseung frowned, crossing the little space to set his hands on Sunghoon’s shoulders. “I wasn’t even thinking about that. I knew you and your parents had grown distant, but what I just saw? You guys have never been that way before. What’s changed?”
“College, maybe,” Sunghoon said flatly. “I suppose absence doesn’t make the heart grow fonder.”
“Don’t joke with me right now,” Heeseung scowled. “There’s something you haven’t told me. What is it?”
Sunghoon swallowed, his mouth a scorched desert of feeling. “Nothing. I tell you everything.”
Heeseung’s hands seized him harder. “Stop lying to me. Tell me. Did they do or say something to you that—”
“It was a long time ago, okay?” Sunghoon muttered. “It was almost four years ago.”
Heeseung’s laser-sharp eyes bore into him. “What happened almost four years ago?”
“I…” Sunghoon hesitated. Time was up, he supposed. He doubted he had anything to lose — only Heeseung, and Sunghoon had taken so much from him, his hands were heavy with having. If he had to stop holding onto Heeseung, maybe it was for Heeseung’s own good. He sighed and led Heeseung over to his bed, sitting them both down with a thump. He couldn’t be standing for this. “The weeks after we got the news weren’t good. You remember how I was the one who did all the arrangements for the wake, the funeral, everything.”
“I remember.”
“They could barely function, and they couldn’t look at me. They couldn’t stand to. But I was breaking and right after the funeral, when it was just the three of us left, I tried taking my mom’s hand. Just for some comfort, you know? But she pulled away like I was some kind of disease, and then she was crying and saying she didn’t want to see anyone anymore and just wanted to be left alone. But Dad took her into his arms and held her and she didn’t pull away. She just didn’t want to be anywhere I was. He shook his head at me and told me to go somewhere else.”
Heeseung stared at him, the grip he had on Sunghoon’s shoulders slackening. His face was crumpled into something aghast. “What? Why didn’t you come to me? Why—”
“I couldn’t even face myself. There was just so much shame I didn’t know how to deal with. The house was so silent every single day for months, that’s why I always insisted we go to your place. Nobody wanted me to be here, and I didn’t want to be here either.”
“You don’t want to go where you’re not wanted,” Heeseung said hollowly, a spark of realization in his eye as he echoed Sunghoon’s words from last week.
“Yeah. I felt like they almost saw me as the murderer himself. I’d wait until they fell asleep before I’d go into Yeji’s room and cry. I kept it clean, made sure the things she loved most stayed in good condition, the way she would’ve wanted.” He hadn’t wanted to cry in his own room, so he’d searched the house for a place good enough for him to do that. He’d wished for a room big enough to carry his grief, and had only come away with even more grief. Nothing in this house was untouched by the palpability of it. There wasn’t a space he could make that loss wouldn’t occupy. “I think they knew I was doing it, but they pretended not to. Then they started pretending everything was fine and nothing had happened. They just treated me like normal again one day and expected me to pretend too. But I couldn’t.”
“Hoon,” Heeseung said, his eyes welling with tears. “Oh God. Why didn’t you tell me?”
Sunghoon straightened, clenching his jaw so hard his teeth hurt. “You know I don’t want anyone’s pity.”
“You still shouldn’t have had to do any of this alone,” Heeseung insisted. The watery remains of dying daylight canoeing into the room sparked off his wet lashes. He was beautiful and it was terrible. He should’ve been shoving Sunghoon away by now. “In fact, you shouldn’t have needed to tell me at all, I should’ve guessed, I should’ve known—”
“Heeseung, no.” Sunghoon grabbed his wrists, halting his rambling. “How would you have? Anyway, I’m not telling you so you’ll feel guilty. In a way, they’re right. I uprooted us, made us come here.”
Heeseung sniffled. “How the hell are you responsible for that? We were kids when we moved here.”
“I actually went home and threw a huge tantrum when you told me your parents were thinking of bringing you to America with them,” Sunghoon said wryly. “I begged them to let me follow you, said I’d run away and pack myself into your suitcase if they refused me. I went on and on about it so much they had to start looking at options.”
Heeseung blinked. “Wh—as cute as that is, we were nine. If they really didn’t want to move at all, you couldn’t have strong-armed them into it. They wouldn’t even have entertained the idea.”
“You should’ve seen me. I was a nutcase and very determined to crawl into a hole until I got my way.”
“I believe that,” Heeseung smiled for a second. “But I really don’t believe it was your fault.”
“There’s something else too, actually.” Sunghoon let go of Heeseung and clenched his hands in his lap, staring down at the gaping hole in his jeans. “The day Yeji disappeared and was—you know—I was supposed to pick her up from school and just bring her home. Mom and Dad both had meetings they couldn’t get out of, and they passed a note along to our school to get me out of sixth period so I could be there at 2.30 sharp. But I forgot, and Miss Hutchinson got halfway through her lesson before she noticed I was still there. I ran to the school, but I guess Yeji had… wandered off, or something. Her teachers all said they saw her leave last period but by the time I got there it was so late and honestly shit can change from one second to the next and I gave the bastard more than enough time to do whatever he did and I did this to her I’m the one who—”
“Sunghoon. Sunghoon,” Heeseung’s touch clamped down on him again. “You’re hyperventilating a little. Breathe. Breathe with me, come on.”
Sunghoon hadn’t even realized how choppy his speech had gotten, his chest stuttering with uneven breaths. He shakily inhaled as his best friend did. “Why are you still here? You can hate me too. I wouldn’t blame you if you did.”
“I’m here because I want to be, and because you need to be kinder to yourself. You forgot one thing, it doesn’t make you the villain and it doesn’t mean you killed your sister.”
“But I never forget things,” Sunghoon said gloomily. “And the one thing I did forget cost my sister her life. I should have to feel bad about that. It should keep me awake at night.”
“What you should do is forgive yourself,” Heeseung said. “You’ve beaten yourself up about this long enough.”
“I should be beating myself up about this for the rest of my life,” Sunghoon said monotonously.
“I think Yeji would want you to forgive yourself.”
“I think Yeji knows I haven’t done anything to begin to earn forgiveness,” Sunghoon countered, smiling humourlessly. “I talk to God and the sky is empty. No one’s listening. No one should bother.”
“I’m listening,” Heeseung pointed out, frowning.
“You shouldn’t.”
Heeseung was silent for a long time. Finally, he stood, his hands sliding off Sunghoon’s shoulders, leaving them cold. Sunghoon couldn’t breathe; his throat was closing, collapsing, caving in. He’d known this was going to happen, knew it was only what he deserved, but it was Heeseung and Sunghoon needed him more than gills needed water and lungs needed air, he loved him like coals tended fire and his heart was already swelling with an egregiously obese new grief because how was he going to exist in a reality that was lacking Heeseung—
“Get up,” Heeseung said gently, tugging at one of Sunghoon’s hands. Sunghoon looked up, vision hazy. “Hoon, let’s go.”
“What? Go where?” Sunghoon asked blearily. Was Heeseung not leaving him?
“Do you trust me?” At Sunghoon’s immediate nod, Heeseung pulled him up, staring straight into his eyes and reading what was on his mind, as always. “I won’t leave you,” Heeseung said lowly, more certain than Sunghoon had ever heard him. “Never. You’re kind of stuck with me, if you haven’t noticed by now.”
“Where I go, you go?” Sunghoon asked tremulously, the cracks in his bones still knitting back together from the hard crush of panic.
Heeseung’s touch was a mending fracture. “Where you go, I go,” he confirmed. “Now come with me.”
✵✵
“Heeseung, what are we doing? Are we actually going back to Seattle?” Sunghoon’s best friend had refused to disclose his plans, simply dragging Sunghoon outside and bundling him into the passenger seat of his car, which at this point, was Heeseung’s as much as it was Sunghoon’s. So he supposed it was their car now. Just another thing that blurred the lines between what belonged to whom.
“No.” Heeseung slowed to a stop. “We’re already here.”
“What? Where—” Sunghoon craned his neck to look at their surroundings, and his voice immediately died in his throat. He knew exactly where they were. “The cemetery. Really?”
“Yes,” Heeseung killed the engine and unbuckled his seat belt. “I have a feeling this is where you need to be today.”
“I—after what I just told you?” Sunghoon’s tongue felt like sandpaper. “Maybe not your best judgement call.”
“I think the one you really want to talk to today is her,” Heeseung said evenly. “So let’s go pay her a visit.”
“But… but I didn’t bring dahlias.”
Heeseung shrugged, “I’m sure she doesn’t need the flowers. She’d be happy with you just bringing yourself.”
“And you.”
“And me,” Heeseung agreed lightly.
Sunghoon didn’t exactly have any more excuses lined up in his arsenal. He had no choice but to follow Heeseung out of the car, shoving his hands into his pockets as he trudged along beside his best friend, head hung low. He didn’t have to look where he was going; he would know the way to his sister’s headstone blind. His feet knew how far to walk and when to turn. The study in muscle memory would’ve been fascinating, if it weren’t so morbid. He felt like throwing up blood.
His feet came to a stop. He raised his head, staring listlessly at Yeji’s grave, the dahlias lying at the foot of the stone wilted from how long it’d been since he’d last visited. Yeji deserved better than dead flowers. She deserved to have bouquets bursting with all the life that had been stolen from her too soon.
“It’s been a while since you’ve come back, hasn’t it?” Heeseung asked quietly. Sunghoon only nodded, mute. He knelt robotically and tugged one of his gloves off, a substitute for a proper cloth as he carefully wiped down her headstone. It wasn’t soap and water, but it’d do for now.
“Hey, little goose,” he muttered, his heart aching. Their mother had laughingly called her that when they were children, because of how Yeji used to toddle after Sunghoon wherever he went, and the nickname stuck with the whole family. What he wouldn’t give to turn time back to those golden moments. “I’m sorry I haven’t come by, it’s been pretty busy the last few weeks. I meant to visit on my birthday, but I… I wasn’t sure if you wanted to see me.” I didn’t think you wanted to see me live the life I stole from you, coming into an age you will never reach, he didn’t say. Sunghoon vaguely registered Heeseung coming to sit a little ways behind him, just by his elbow.
“Tell her how you’ve been feeling,” he murmured. “How you’ve really been feeling. Everything.” Sunghoon swallowed.
“I’m back for Christmas to be with Mom and Dad this year. I got out of it last year by telling everyone I was taking a trip to Mount Rainier with a bunch of friends, but I didn’t. I just sat outside the cemetery for half the day.”
“Oh, Hoon,” Heeseung sighed under his breath, sounding more sad than Sunghoon had ever heard him. He fucking hated himself.
“It’s still strange, living there without you. You’ve been gone for four years, and I still—it never gets easier. Christmas was your favourite.” Yeji was born at the end of the year, right after the holidays. When she’d been alive, it had made the season extra special, and their house would be decked in red and green and gold for weeks, to her sheer delight. “It used to be my favourite too. But it doesn’t feel right celebrating anything without you.”
Heeseung stayed silent, but shifted closer to lay a hand between Sunghoon’s shoulder blades, petting him slowly. Grounding him, keeping the words spilling forth.
“Nothing feels right,” Sunghoon said through gritted teeth, a storm swirling beneath his sternum. “You’re gone, and Mom and Dad don’t want to see me, but they’re obligated to pretend that they want to for the sake of your memory. It’s so stupid, isn’t it? It’s so fucking ridiculous,” he gasped, struggling to breathe. “You should still be here, and I should be the one who’s—” Sunghoon cut himself off before he could say the word, but he knew Heeseung had heard what went unspoken too: Dead. I should be the one who’s dead. Heeseung’s gentle patting motions abruptly ceased, his hand frozen on Sunghoon’s back.
Still, he didn’t say a word. He always knew when Sunghoon wasn’t done talking yet.
“None of this is fair. I’m just so—I’m so—” Sunghoon faltered as he finally realized what the screaming, hollow ache in his chest was called. As he finally gave the abyss a name. “I’m so mad at you. I’m mad at myself too, but I’m mad at you for leaving too soon. And that’s the most unfair part, because you didn’t choose any of this. But I wish I’d gotten the chance to choose to save you, to take your place. Then you’d still have dahlias and white Christmases, and I would be able to live with myself.”
“But then she wouldn’t have you,” Heeseung finally broke his silence to say.
“What does that matter?”
“You know it matters,” Heeseung said fiercely. “It matters. Your life isn’t worth less than hers. She’d kick your ass if she heard you talking like that.”
“She’s not around to kick my ass anymore,” Sunghoon said dully. “So I suppose we’ll never know.”
“Fine,” Heeseung’s breath left him in a gust. “Then I’ll kick your fucking ass. Your life matters to me. Your life is precious to me. And I know without a doubt that Yeji would’ve chosen to save you too, if she could.”
Sunghoon shook his head, “She shouldn’t. You know someone told me that grief is a chasm we learn to grow around? Well. I haven’t grown into anything to be proud of.”
“That’s not true.” Heeseung’s tone brooked no argument. “And it wouldn’t have mattered to her. She thought the sun rose and set on you. No matter what you think about yourself, you’re still her brother.”
“She should’ve had a brother who could protect her, then. Or she should’ve put all that faith in someone better.”
“Like who?” Heeseung challenged. “You did the best you possibly could. It’s all any of us can do. You didn’t stand back and let someone kill her. It was a horrible thing that happened to her, and a horrible thing that happened to you.”
“The cost of a single error should never be someone’s life. But somehow, it was the cost of mine. Who—who fucking does that?” Sunghoon choked. “Who gets their kid sister to pay for their mistakes?”
“There’s someone to blame here, Hoon, and it isn’t you. It was one miscalculation, which usually would’ve ended up in her tattling on you to Mom that you were late and you getting your PS4 taken away for a week. Those are normal circumstances. Nothing about this is normal. You can’t keep making yourself a monster for something that was out of your control.”
“I want—I wanted to be better for her,” Sunghoon said raggedly. “Both then and now.”
“You can’t do anything about the past. And right now, you’re here and you’re surviving. It’s enough. Anyone who says otherwise is a fucking piece of shit who can eat my shoe.”
Sunghoon laughed. It was garbled and watery and paper-thin, but a laugh nonetheless. He didn’t think he’d ever laughed in front of his sister’s grave before. But of course, it was just like Heeseung to do miraculous things. He reached out to trace Yeji’s name where it was carved into the headstone, reliving the finality of those hammered letters. “I wish she was here.”
“I know. Me too.”
“I…” Sunghoon turned to face Heeseung, breath hitching when he saw the tears swimming in his best friend’s eyes. He’d always thought he wanted to be alone in his grief, until Heeseung came waltzing in as usual, and took his hand, as usual. He never wanted to be alone when he was with Heeseung. “I just wanted more time with her,” he finished quietly.
“Then we’ll stay,” Heeseung said resolutely. “We’ll stay until you want to go back. Okay?”
“You won’t be cold?” Sunghoon asked skeptically, letting his hand drop back to his side.
Heeseung shuffled forward until he was squarely next to Sunghoon, taking his hand off Sunghoon’s back to wrap it around his ungloved fingers. If Sunghoon concentrated hard enough, he’d be able to feel the smooth skin of his best friend’s palm even under the wool. “No, I’m with you. How could I ever be cold?”
As if it wasn’t him but Sunghoon who brought the warmth. Sunghoon closed his eyes, resting his head on Heeseung’s shoulder. “Okay,” he whispered, imagining a timeline where they were always entwined like this and his sister sat in front of them, starry eyes scrunched into crescent moons from the breadth of her smile. “Okay. Let’s stay a little longer.”
✵✵
They got home just in time for dinner, which was a silent, awkward affair. Heeseung tried volleying the conversation between Sunghoon and his parents for the first ten minutes, but he eventually gave up and let Sunghoon push his food around on his plate as much as he wanted.
They took care of the dishes in silence too. The quietude lasted until they trudged back to Sunghoon’s room to retire for the night. Sunghoon was brushing his teeth and about to take a shower to scrub the graveyard grime off him when Heeseung dropped his bag with a loud whine. “No!”
“What? What happened?” Sunghoon rushed out of the bathroom, toothbrush dangling from his mouth. Heeseung lay sprawled face-down on the floor, but Sunghoon could tell he was pouting. He took his toothbrush out of his mouth, “I don’t think my floor is clean enough for you to be doing that.”
“I forgot my chargers,” Heeseung bemoaned, his voice muffled. “I’m gonna have to drive back to Seattle at peak airport hour—”
Sunghoon rolled his eyes. “I knew you’d forget. I packed my extra ones for you, they’re in my front pocket.”
“I forgot my face wash too.”
“Just use mine.”
“I also forgot socks.”
“I brought extra. Can I go shower now?”
“How do you have extra of everything?” Heeseung grumbled, sitting up. “Chronic overpacker.”
“Because I know you, and you always forget to bring at least three things when you walk out the door. I brought an extra razor too, in case you also forgot that,” Sunghoon said dryly, and ducked back into the bathroom. From Heeseung’s belated exclamation, it seemed like he had indeed forgotten his razor too. Typical. Sunghoon rolled his eyes again, smiling faintly. He desperately needed a scalding hot shower. He left the door ajar as he stripped, listening to Heeseung retrieve whatever he needed from Sunghoon’s things. He wrenched the tap up to the highest possible temperature, closing his eyes under the cascade of water and letting it wash the day down the drain.
Heeseung had just finished brushing his teeth when Sunghoon finally emerged in a cloud of steam, handing him his towel without sparing him a glance.
“Took you long enough, princess,” Heeseung mumbled through his flossing, still determinedly not meeting Sunghoon’s eyes. “I thought I’d be standing here until I too started pruning via osmosis.” His cheeks and ears were flushed an enticing pink, probably from the humidity in the room. Sunghoon swallowed and patted himself dry, fumbling to wrap the towel around his waist.
“In case you haven’t noticed, the shower’s free now,” he quipped, trying for casual as he slicked his wet hair back. Heeseung finally set his floss down and met Sunghoon’s eyes in the mirror, looking thoroughly unimpressed. Still, his gaze was lambent with an unfathomable, dark fire. “Everybody say, ‘Thank you Sunghoon, for your generosity of spirit and hospitality.’” If his voice was throaty, that was not his fault. They invaded each other’s personal space just fine most of the time, but they didn’t wash up together often enough for Sunghoon to be used to such intimate proximity. He was keenly aware of how naked he was, his best friend’s lashes lowered like a veil over his smouldering irises. Sunghoon’s heart caught and snagged on something planetary.
Heeseung had always been good-looking, of course Sunghoon knew that. But had he always been gorgeous in such a heartwrenching way, in a way that tore at Sunghoon like teeth? He found himself inexplicably shredded apart by a sudden wave of wanting, a desire like torment. For a moment, time ceased to move, and it was only Heeseung and Sunghoon, existing in this untouchable space, this alien realm. Their breathing was the only sound. A caustic, incendiary sensation slithered under Sunghoon’s skin, setting his nerves on edge, scorching him to the bone. Was he the only one ensnared within this inferno, or was Heeseung experiencing the same electric glow? Did he burn too? Were they burning together? If he reached out, would he cut himself on the curve of Heeseung’s mouth, would the bow of his lower lip give under his touch? Would—
Heeseung broke the trance, bending to throw his floss away. As he resurfaced, he declared, “I hate you.” If this was a normal situation, Sunghoon would’ve laughed and made a similar quip, but he was still stomping out the residual sparks, hoping it didn’t leave any visible marks. Hoping it didn’t scar him for the rest of his life. Heeseung shuffled past him, fatal inches from bare skin, yanking his clothes off with little finesse, and Sunghoon’s brain arrested. His neck almost snapped as he looked away from the endless miles of taut torso and lean legs.
He fumbled through his skincare routine and made his escape just as Heeseung’s light humming started to echo through the hollow rush of water.
He dived into bed and pulled the covers over his head, goggling at himself. What was he doing, thinking about the softness of his best friend’s mouth? Hungering for his touch, something so familiar it was like a birthright? He wondered if anyone ever came out of feeling a yearning like that — a catastrophic kind of desperation — alive. He doubted it.
This had been happening a lot recently: Sunghoon stealing a minute of rapture to relearn the lines of something he’d known his whole life. He’d never even entertained the thought of a world without Heeseung before, and yet here he was, drinking down the shape of his best friend like it was a foreign wine, Bacchus to a grapevine. Like every single time would be the last time. Was he too greedy? Trip and fall into the sky with me, he’d nearly begged more than once. Turn me out empty and pour me full of you. What I want is not separate entities, neither a you nor an I. Only an inextricable, indisputable us. It didn’t make sense. It was like being a spectator of a new dynasty or diorama, where all his walls were still painted the same hue but his burgeoning want burst from his abdomen like an apple tree, its canopy stretching across the ceiling, all the ripening fruit just out of reach. Leaving barely any room for him.
He shouldn’t have let it fester to this point. Heeseung was better and purer than anything Sunghoon had ever held, and he was tarnishing him, tarnishing them. What would he even call this absurdity? How much of this could he show Heeseung without making him turn and flee?
The gurgling of the shower stopped. Sunghoon cursed and slammed his eyes shut, arranging himself into a position that he hoped looked nonchalant and restful. He forced his breathing to even out as Heeseung rustled around in the bathroom.
But of course, it was useless. Heeseung pattered into the room and paused next to the bed. “I know you’re still awake,” he remarked.
Sunghoon adamantly kept his eyes closed. “Be quiet, I’m meditating.”
“Meditating?” Heeseung snorted, climbing under the covers. The warmth of his shower curled off his skin as he settled in next to Sunghoon, their bodies almost touching. He smelled like lilies and jasmine tea, like sweet dreams and moonbeams. Sunghoon was inebriated again. He wrestled down a shudder. “The only way your brain could shut up long enough for that to be possible is if you fell into a coma,” Heeseung deadpanned, lightly rapping his knuckles against Sunghoon’s head.
Sunghoon pried his eyes open with a sigh, fixing the other boy with a half-hearted glare. “You are extremely demoralizing. And my head is not a drum.”
Heeseung smiled teasingly, “I don’t know about that, I’m pretty sure I heard an echo.”
“So is my brain overactive or not there at all? Pick a side, Lee.”
“It can be multiple things at once. It’s part of your mystery, you know, like the Loch Ness monster.”
“That’s it.” Sunghoon went for his best friend’s throat; Heeseung fought him off, giggling all the while. “Sleep on the floor. Go. You’re not welcome in my bed.”
“But then you’d have no one to kick in the middle of the night,” Heeseung pointed out, still laughing.
“I’m telling you, I don’t kick!”
“You’re not the one who sleeps with you every night, how would you know?” Heeseung’s eyes glinted in the dim light. Sunghoon fervently hoped it was too dark for Heeseung to see the hot blush creeping up his neck.
“I know because I’m omniscient,” he grumbled. “Anyway, you’re the one who sleeps with me willingly. You only have yourself to thank.”
“Sounds like victim blaming.”
“Sounds like I’m gonna give you a DIY lobotomy.”
Heeseung grinned, a spell of starlight in the dark, “I know you love me.” He sank back onto the pillows, making a contented sound in the back of his throat. Sunghoon’s chest hurt. If only you knew how much, he wanted to say. Heeseung glanced at him, expression suddenly serious, “Are you feeling better?”
“Yeah, actually,” Sunghoon admitted. “I don’t think I’ve ever been that honest with Yeji before.”
Heeseung nodded. “You should make a habit of it. I think she’d be happy to hear anything you had to say.”
“Oh, wait ‘til I tell her about Jongseong,” Sunghoon muttered. “I bet she’ll be thrilled.” Heeseung went unnaturally still. Sunghoon could see the arrhythmic tempo of his pulse beating in the column of his throat.
“What about Jongseong?” Heeseung said stiffly.
“You know, what a dumpster fire that entire summer was. I was out of my mind to think that was love.”
Heeseung raised an eyebrow, “You don’t think you were in love with him? Really?”
“No, I definitely was,” Sunghoon amended. Heeseung went even more rigid, if possible. Jongseong really was not his favourite topic. “But I don’t think it was the right kind of love. It was like…” He shook his head. “Jongseong said something once about how the parts of other people that we take on are the parts we want them to be most remembered for.”
“Right,” Heeseung drawled. “And..?”
“And it wasn’t really like that for me,” Sunghoon shrugged. “I was just replacing the things I needed with the things he wanted. Nobody was remembering it except for me. Only I knew what I was martyring myself for, and I tried to make it okay by just replacing more of myself. I don’t think that’s love, not anymore.”
“I remember it,” Heeseung said softly, some of the tension bleeding out of his posture. “So what do you think love is now?”
You. “I’m not sure,” Sunghoon lied. “I’m still figuring it out. What about you, what’s love to you?”
Heeseung tilted his head, gazing into the blue of Sunghoon’s soul. As if he was trying to tell him that it was obvious. Sunghoon gazed back, lost. Was he missing something? “I think it’s simple,” Heeseung finally said after a long pause. “It’s when you see the best and worst of someone and stay through it all. It’s when imperfect becomes perfect for you. It’s wanting to share your life with someone because they make everything in it better.”
Sunghoon was dizzy. Whoever Heeseung fell in love with was going to be the luckiest person in the universe. Sunghoon already hated them. “That makes sense,” he croaked. “You really don’t think it should be complicated at all?”
“Life is complicated enough. Why should love be too?”
“I think,” Sunghoon said abruptly, something spasmodic seizing his tongue, “maybe love is just finding the light in the dark with someone.” He met his best friend’s wide eyes as a sudden calm crested over him, tentatively giving a voice to the thought that had been rattling around in his head for months. “I think you bring the light.”
And when Heeseung’s face transformed with his smile, sacred and solar like something pious, like he’d been touched by Midas — Sunghoon knew for sure that it was true.
✵✵
Heeseung had to be pushed out the door after lunch. Literally. He’d initially insisted on staying with Sunghoon so he wouldn’t feel lonely, and to that, Sunghoon had only rolled his eyes, “I can survive an afternoon without you. Seriously, this is why people think we’re codependent.”
“I don’t think you’ll die without me,” Heeseung had protested against Sunghoon’s shoving. “I’m just saying now that I know why you didn’t want to come back, I should probably—”
“The whole point of me coming back was so you get to spend time with your family. Now go and fulfill my purpose.”
“What?” Heeseung had demanded. “You did this for me? Hoon, I really—”
“Just shush and go spend a few hours with your mother, or she’ll have both of our heads,” Sunghoon had grumbled one last time, before bodily picking Heeseung up and depositing him at the front door, running back upstairs before Heeseung could utter another word of protest.
And now he was bored. And hungry. Or maybe he was hungry because he was bored. He’d taken a nap and scrolled through TikTok and powered through half of his home workout routine, and he had nothing else left to do. He paced in the shower wondering if he could slip into the kitchen and grab a snack completely undetected. He psyched himself out of it twice before thinking about what his best friends would do in this situation. Heeseung would most likely offer to get it for him, so never mind. What would Wonyoung say? Probably something along the lines of there are people dying and you’re too anxious to walk a few paces and fetch yourself a can of Pringles? Because lesbians were mean like that. But she was never wrong.
Right then. He dragged himself out of the shower and into clean clothes, tiptoeing downstairs. The house seemed quiet enough. Sunghoon’s parents had probably gone to do some last-minute groceries or Christmas shopping before their guests arrived for the night. He’d only just managed to victoriously snag a bag of cookies before he turned around and came face to face with his mother’s inquisitive expression. Fuck.
“Mom!” he yelped, dropping the cookies back onto the counter. “You can’t sneak up on people like that.”
“I didn’t sneak up on you,” she raised an eyebrow. “You just didn’t hear me. Are you hungry? I can make you something, I was just about to get started on dinner anyway.”
Sunghoon stiffened. Growing up, he hadn’t been allowed to indulge in snacks and sweet treats like the other kids because he’d had to watch his weight as a figure skater; so his mother would set him on the kitchen counter and let him watch as she made him danpatjuk, smiling as he tried to mash down the red beans as smoothly as possible. Those were days long gone by. “I’m fine,” he said.
“Do you want to help me with dinner?” she ventured tentatively. “Or you can just stay and watch. I’d like the company.”
“Maybe another time,” he replied robotically, making to skirt around her. But she moved to block his way, eyes flashing with an anger he hadn’t seen in a long time.
“Park Sunghoon,” she started, voice low in warning, and Sunghoon winced. “Sit down. It’s time we had a talk about your attitude.”
“I’m sorry,” he grumbled. “I know I’m being rude. I understand I’m in the wrong, it won’t happen again.”
“It will happen again, because I’ve been letting it happen for years,” she said sharply. “Don’t think you can get out of this with a rehearsed script.” Damn it.
“I’m sorry,” Sunghoon repeated.
“If you’re sorry, you’ll sit down.”
“Mom, is this scolding thing really necessary? I’m an adult now—”
“Not in my house, you’re not.” Her eyes gleamed dangerously. “Now sit. Down.”
Sunghoon sighed inwardly as he lowered himself onto one of the stools around the kitchen island. “I’ll behave in front of the guests later, if that’s what you want to lecture me about.”
“Heeseung has been here and you haven’t been civil in his presence,” she set her hands on her hips, expression thunderous.
“It’s Heeseung. He isn’t a guest, he’s like—” As children, Sunghoon would’ve said Heeseung was like family, but he couldn’t say it now without feeling vaguely ill. “He’s Heeseung,” he finished lamely.
“Fine, I get your point. Now explain why you’ve been acting like a spoiled brat when your father and I never raised you that way.”
“Maybe I’ve mixed with the wrong company in college who’ve been bad influences on me,” Sunghoon offered nonchalantly. He needed a way out of this conversation. “I’ll get new friends.” Sorry Sunoo, Jungwon and Riki. No one has to know you’re perfectly pleasant to your parents.
“Don’t lie to me. You’ve been this way since high school. I thought it was a puberty thing and it’d blow over eventually, but—”
“Really?” Sunghoon snapped, unable to help himself. His blood was boiling, pushing anger like hot vapour up into his head. “You thought it was because of puberty? Are you fucking serious?”
“Don’t raise your voice at me, Park Sunghoon,” his mother scowled, her voice rising in volume too. “And mind your language. Where did you learn such manners—”
“You don’t remember what happened when I was in high school? You can’t think of anything at all that would’ve made me start acting differently?” Sunghoon was trying not to yell, really, because she was still his mother and he’d rather not get attacked by a slipper but his patience was worn thin. “Is it really that easy for you to act like Yeji never existed?”
“I…” his mother stared at him, eyes blown wide. Her hands dropped to her sides, limp. “She’s my daughter. I’m her mother. I’ve never acted like she never existed, never. I remember every day, I think of her every night. Be careful what you say to me, Sunghoon.”
“Who are you trying to convince?” Sunghoon asked coldly. “You can’t even say her name. Or do you just not want to say it in front of me?”
“What?” his mother’s brow furrowed. “What are you talking about?”
“I know you blame me, Mom.” The words left him in an exhaled rush. Finally. After years of turning the words over and around in his head like a morbid mantra, he’d said them out loud to the person they mattered the most to. It should’ve been freeing, like a weight off his chest maybe, but all he felt was bile in his throat. “I know Dad does too. I know deep down, you wish it’d been me instead.”
His mother gaped at him, all the colour drained from her face. “Hoonie, no, I never—”
“And I know it’s my fault, I know it too. I’m sorry. But I needed you to make me feel like one day you could forgive me. I needed you.” And he didn’t want to need people anymore, but it seemed like it’d never stop. “But you couldn’t look at me for months, and then one day you just decided to pretend everything was fine when we were all still shattered, when there was a hole we couldn’t recover. You wanted to keep playing happy family for outsiders when you still couldn’t look me in the eye. How can you tell me you really don’t know why I started being different?”
“I couldn’t…” she blinked back tears. “Your father and I couldn’t just continue to break. We had to work, keep a roof over our heads, food on the table, put you through school. The world wasn’t stopping for us, no matter how much I wanted it to. You don’t know what being a mother is, Sunghoon. I birthed her, nursed her, held her, protected her. I loved her all her life.”
“But so did I!” Sunghoon’s voice cracked. “I got to hold her when she was born too. I loved her all her life too.”
“Hoonie,” his mother said, face ashen. “Listen to me. I never blamed you. No,” she asserted, when Sunghoon shook his head dubiously, “I never did, and I never wanted you to blame yourself either. I’ll admit there was a lot I could’ve done better after Yeji passed. I know, that I wasn’t thinking about your pain, that I was failing to consider you. But I didn’t blame you, I promise. And I never wished it’d been you instead. I’ve only ever wanted to keep you safe.”
“You pushed me away,” Sunghoon reminded her bitterly. “When I wanted to hold your hand. Like I was the one with blood on my hands.”
“I—don’t remember.”
“Of course you don’t,” he muttered. “You and Dad were in your bubble together, you had each other. You could afford to forget about me.”
“We didn’t forget about you.” She surged forward and caught Sunghoon’s hands in hers. He startled, looking down at their joined hands. He’d never forgotten how roughened her palms were after years of housework, cool from the frigid temperature she liked setting her room at, but her touch felt unfamiliar anyway. It’d been so long since she’d last held his hand. And maybe nearly as long since he’d last let her. “I’m sorry, honey. We—I did retreat from you for a while, I do remember that. And when I came out of it, you were distant and all I did was ask myself why it seemed like I’d lost two children instead of just one. I should’ve asked you instead of simply trying to go back to the way things were before. I’m sorry.”
“Oh,” Sunghoon said, struck dumb. He didn’t know how to respond. He didn’t think he’d ever heard his mother apologize to him before. “Um, it’s—”
“Don’t say it’s okay,” she held him tighter, squeezing his fingers so hard he was pretty sure the circulation in them got cut off. He didn’t mind. “At the time, it was easier, I think, for me to just be around your father. We’re partners together and adults who brought Yeji into the world together, it was just… easier. But we should’ve seen it was hard for you and you needed someone too.”
“I understand,” Sunghoon said quietly. To be honest, he’d only been thinking of himself too. He couldn’t imagine creating a life and then having to watch it disappear. He’d only ever had to love things that had been given to him. “I’m sorry too, Mom.”
“Oh honey, don’t be sorry.” His mother crushed him into her arms, holding him close like he was still a child who hadn’t grown up to be taller than her. Like she was still a giant cradling a bundle of new hope to her chest, dreaming of the man it could be. Sunghoon wrapped around her, trembling, like he wasn’t that man. Like he was being born again from the strength of her embrace. She spoke into his hair, voice muffled, “I should’ve been keeping you safe. I shouldn’t have left you all alone—”
“It’s okay now,” he told her collarbone, patting her back slowly. “I wasn’t completely alone, anyway. I had Heeseung. And Wonyoung, but mainly Heeseung. Wonyoung was busy being an overachiever.”
“Yes, I suppose you did.” She pulled back, sniffling. “I’m glad you had your friends. I’m just sorry they had to do my job.”
“I wouldn’t worry too much,” Sunghoon flapped a hand awkwardly. “Wonyo seems to enjoy lecturing me and Heeseung seems to enjoy keeping me fed. The rest of the job description is still open for you.”
His mother smiled, touching the side of his face for a brief moment. “They’re good friends. You could’ve brought Wonyoung over this time too, you know.”
“Nah, I like to keep my best friends separate. I do gossip and shopping and political stuff with Wonyoung and—well, everything else with Heeseung, I guess.”
“I see,” she said, eyes gleaming. “You two have always been inseparable. I didn’t think you could get any closer, but I’ve been watching the two of you and…”
“And?” Sunghoon leaned forward in his seat, heart pounding, but his mom just shrugged and rounded the island to start grabbing the pots and pans she needed from the cupboards.
“You seem different,” was all she offered. “You clung to him before, but you’re always touching him now, somehow. I saw you two earlier, you know, when you were carrying him through the house.”
Sunghoon’s face felt aflame, and if the amused look his mother gave him was any indication, he was probably red to the tips of his ears. “He was being stubborn. Auntie Heejin would’ve killed me if I kept him all to myself all Christmas.”
“Definitely,” his mom agreed. “You have him all to yourself for the rest of the year, you have to let her have a few hours during the holidays at least.”
“I don’t have him all to myself,” Sunghoon denied, even though something poisonously possessive curled in the pit of his stomach at the thought, like a satisfied snake. Get a grip, he barked at it. “We just live together, sometimes.”
“How do you live together sometimes?” she asked dryly, resting her elbows on the countertop. “You either live together or not at all.”
“I mean… I usually eat and sleep at his place. Then I drive home to shower and go back to pick him up to go to school together.” At her raised eyebrows, he continued, “But we don’t spend every waking hour together, seriously! We both have other friends and our schedules happen to align.”
“Sounds like something codependent people say to not sound codependent,” she hummed.
“I knew someone would accuse us of this again this time round,” Sunghoon griped. “Mom, we’re still just best friends.”
“I don’t know why you’re being so defensive, honey. All I said is that you seem different around him now. Is it because you feel different around him?”
“I—” Sunghoon flailed, tossing the words around in his head like a hot potato. In truth, he’d been feeling different around Heeseung for a while now. He wasn’t even sure when it’d started. Last night had been a particularly enormous presentation of his germinating want, but it wasn’t new. It’d just knocked him a little more askew. “I don’t know.”
“You don’t know, or you don’t want to tell me?”
“It’s not that I don’t want to tell you, I just…” Sunghoon hesitated. If he said it out loud, it’d become ten times more real. “I think I’m in love with him.”
“Okay,” his mom blinked at him, perfectly serene. “And?”
“What do you mean, ‘and?’” Sunghoon spluttered, affronted. Her reaction was so utterly lacklustre: no gasps, no tears, no clutching of any pearls. It felt like he was missing something. “That’s it? Why aren’t you more surprised? This is a pretty big deal!”
“Honey, you’ve been in love with him since the moment you found out what love was. This isn’t a recent development,” she said like it was obvious.
“What—” Sunghoon gaped at her. “I have not! I’m pretty sure I would’ve known if I was.”
“I watched you grow up, you know,” she drummed her nails against the counter. “You have other friends, Hoonie, but there’s just some part of you that you reserve for Heeseung.”
“He’s my best friend,” Sunghoon enunciated. “If I treated him the way I treated everyone else, he wouldn’t exactly be my best friend now, would he?”
She shook her head, “It’s not really the way you treat him. I can’t describe it, it’s like—when you look at him, it’s like nothing else exists. You have such a big heart, you love so much and so deeply and yet, I’ve never seen you love anything like you love Heeseung. You even smile at him differently, like he—”
“Brings the light,” Sunghoon finished hoarsely. “Like he brings the sun up every day.” His mother’s eyes locked on his, sharp and soft and knowing.
“Yes,” she concluded. “Exactly like that.”
“Still, it’s kind of hard to believe I could’ve been in love with him for so long and just not known,” Sunghoon mumbled. “How could anyone else know before me?”
“I think everyone knew before you,” his mom snorted. “Don’t you remember when I used to come and pick you up after playdates, and you’d be in tears and begging me for ten more minutes with Heeseung?”
“I was a kid, what kid likes having playtime interrupted—”
“Most of the time, you two were just sitting in silence,” she reminded him. “Heeseung would be organizing his books or toys or laying his Lego out everywhere and you’d just be curled next to him, watching.”
“Okay, I’m pretty sure those instances were rare,” Sunghoon rolled his eyes. “It was impossible to get Heeseung to keep still for more than a minute when we were younger. He was usually all over the damn place stressing Auntie Heejin out.”
“Oh, yes. Heejin was most grateful for you,” his mom smiled. “Said you kept her son calm. You’ve always been good for each other.”
“Well,” Sunghoon muttered, shifting in his seat as his cheeks warmed again. “He’s the one keeping me calm now. I get anxious about everything and he’s annoyingly put together.”
“I suspect because you need him to be,” she remarked. “You made a man out of him, Sunghoon.”
“And now he’s made me a pining idiot. Great.” Sunghoon dropped his head into his hands, groaning. “This is going to ruin our friendship. He’s going to hate me.”
“I wouldn’t count on that if I were you.” He heard his mom’s footsteps circle back around the island and come to a stop next to him, and then her fingers were running through his hair soothingly. “Don’t you remember, when we finally agreed to move to Seattle? You pulled me down the street to Heeseung’s house so you could tell him immediately.”
“So?”
“You don’t remember his face when you said the two of you wouldn’t have to be separated? That you could continue to stay together forever?”
“Sure, he seemed happy.”
“He looked like you’d just handed him the moon, like a dying man in the desert who’d been given water. Pretty intense for a nine-year-old. I suspect you’re on more similar wavelengths than you think.”
“That’s different,” Sunghoon grunted into his palms. “And a long time ago.”
“Is it really? He’s never let you two be separated since,” his mom said. “He goes wherever you go.”
Sunghoon blinked, raising his head to stare at her. Had she been secretly listening in on their conversations? But it couldn’t have been possible. “I—he’s said that, yeah.”
“When people tell you where their heart lies, you should believe them,” she advised, eyes sparkling. “Especially if they haven’t given you a reason to believe otherwise.”
“Going where I go doesn’t signify that he’s in love with me, Mom.”
“But you go where he goes,” she pointed out, “and doesn’t it signify that you’re in love with him?”
Yes, Sunghoon realized, meeting his own skin, making his own flesh a metaphor. Traveling miles to arrive at this embankment, marooned like a wave upon this shore. There was only enough language in his mouth to bear the weight of the prophet, the shape of love, to translate what had always been closed into the closet of his teeth: Yes, it does. Yes, it makes sense now.
It must’ve been Heeseung, all along.
✵✵
When Heeseung and his family walked through the door later that evening, Sunghoon and his mother were bustling around in a whirl of controlled chaos. Their talk had ended up being longer than they’d realized, which meant they’d fallen behind in dinner prep. She roped him into helping her cook and Sunghoon found that he didn’t feel the need to come up with an excuse to escape again. They greeted their guests together breathlessly, setting out cold plates of banchan for them to pinch on while they finished dinner. Sunghoon’s father watched them with a quiet smile, and Sunghoon met Heeseung’s baffled but delighted gaze. The epitome of home, or happiness.
“Sorry it took so long,” his mom announced when dinner was finally spread across the table, a feast of grilled meat, palbochae, claypot braised chicken and rice cake soup. Everyone waved the sentiment away and heaped her with praise for the food, most of which she redirected to Sunghoon. Sunghoon ducked his head to hide the heat blooming across his cheeks, finding Heeseung’s hand under the table easily. Like his best friend had already anticipated that Sunghoon would reach for him. Sunghoon snuck a glance at him as they began eating, but Heeseung seemed perfectly content with only having one working hand, his smile broad and bright as he talked to Sunghoon’s dad about soccer. A different kind of heat bloomed within Sunghoon, spun gold falling in filaments from Rumpelstiltskin’s straw wheel. Heavenstruck, desire-drunk. Empyreal.
His gaze drifted over the table, to the empty spot where Yeji had usually sat. The house was still emptier without her, but this room glowed like it’d never been warmer. She would’ve loved it. Sunghoon tightened his grip on Heeseung’s fingers, and only let his eyes linger for an extra second before he rejoined the conversation.
✵✵
As the night wound down, Sunghoon tiptoed out to lay on the grass in his backyard, ignoring the damp chill seeping in through his thick sweater and jeans. He stared up at the blank sky, devoid of stars. Was Yeji up there as one of them, looking down upon him? Could she see him better than he could see her?
“Thought I’d find you out here.” Sunghoon didn’t need to look back to know it was Heeseung. He kept his gaze skywards, listening to his best friend’s padding footsteps rustle through the grass, before he too lay down next to Sunghoon, their bodies scant millimeters apart. “Do you want a jacket? Are you cold?”
“No, it’s okay.” Neither of them got cold easily; that was what growing up on the ice did to you. Besides, Heeseung’s body heat was radiating off him in waves, keeping them both warm. “Just thinking.”
Heeseung sighed, “Take this, or you’re gonna complain my ear off later.” When Sunghoon glanced at him, he was unwinding his scarf from his neck and folding it into a makeshift pillow, carefully tucking it under Sunghoon’s head. Sunghoon barely managed to stifle a soft sound — something about the tenderness of the gesture, about Heeseung remembering how much he hated getting his hair dirty, struck a chord deep within him. It shouldn’t have been a surprise, but it made him want to cry all the same.
“Thanks,” he whispered, averting his eyes. Looking at his best friend right now felt like pressing down on a fresh bruise. Heeseung waved it away, and they lapsed into a comfortable silence. Sunghoon lost track of how long they’d been lying there when a distant rumble reverberated through the air, making the trees tremble. They watched as the steady light of a plane soared into the sky, rapidly ascending into the heavens. Sunghoon envied it a little. It was closer to his sister than he could ever manage.
“There’s our shooting star,” Heeseung remarked lightly. “Make a wish.”
“Are we twelve again?” Sunghoon shook his head, but the corners of his mouth twitched. “We were so devastated when your dad told us that our stars were planes and we lived 20 minutes away from the damn airport.”
“Honestly, it didn’t matter all that much to me,” Heeseung pondered out loud, his voice solemn. “Humans already assign objects that the universe never meant for us to take seriously value. Nothing is ever born poetic, we just make poetry out of it. So I figured, what was the harm in wanting to believe they were stars?”
“Wow, someone’s been listening in their philosophy class,” Sunghoon teased, but peered at Heeseung in concern. “Are you okay?”
“Just thinking,” Heeseung parroted his earlier response back at him, his eyes alight with their usual spark again. Sunghoon exhaled a quiet laugh.
“Touché,” he smiled wryly. “Feel like sharing?”
“Only if you tell me what you’re thinking about first.”
Sunghoon’s mouth twisted down into a grimace. “You know… Yeji. I talked to my mom earlier and, I don’t know, we ironed some stuff out. Everything feels weird now.”
“Weird in what sense?” Heeseung frowned.
“Like, lighter. Better than I let myself imagine or hope for.”
“Well, you better get used to it. This is the way it’s supposed to be,” Heeseung smiled gently. “I’m glad, Hoon. Really, really glad. You never deserved to feel responsible for the things that happened.”
Sunghoon’s throat was too tight. “Mom said she didn’t blame me, and she didn’t want me to blame myself either. But it feels—wrong, somehow. To absolve myself. To let go.”
“You’re not betraying Yeji or her memory by forgiving yourself for something you didn’t do, or grieving any less,” Heeseung said quietly. “It doesn’t mean you don’t love her anymore.”
“Isn’t grief the way you love someone after they’re gone?” Sunghoon grunted. “Isn’t it the only way to remember what you’ve lost? What is grief if not love persevering, and all that.”
“Are you quoting WandaVision at me right now? Really?” Heeseung asked, his expression caught between a smile and a frown. “I don’t think it’s the only way. I think when grief knocks, you have to let it in and let it sit with you for a while. But when happiness knocks, you have to let that in too. You can remember her and be happy. You’re allowed to.”
Sunghoon sighed, wrapping his arms around himself. “Life is divided by periods, right? Kind of like eras. There was life before I met you, which was basically nothing at all, and then life after I met you. There was life when I was a figure skater, and after. And then Yeji died, and for a long time, life felt like it was just before I lost her and after. How do I… how do I redefine what the world looks like to me now?”
“No one ever said you have to do it overnight. It can come to you in pieces, and then you can rebuild from there. Rome wasn’t built in a day, or whatever that saying is.”
Sunghoon looked at his best friend closely. “Didn’t know you were such an expert on grief. If I’d known, I would’ve talked about this a lot earlier.”
Heeseung snorted, “You should’ve talked to me about this earlier anyway, because we’re best friends and we’re supposed to share our burdens. And I don’t think anyone’s ever an expert on grief, you just—pick some stuff up along the way, while watching yourself and watching others. Wanting what’s best for them, even if it’s unbearable, even if it means moving on.”
“You’re right,” Sunghoon smiled begrudgingly, unfolding his arms. “Hate it when you’re right.”
“Aren’t I always, though?”
Sunghoon arched an eyebrow, the compression against his sternum lifting, “Not really.”
“Oh yeah? Name one time.”
“I can name lots of times. I can think of ten different examples off the top of my head.” Heeseung opened his mouth to doubtlessly argue, so Sunghoon rushed ahead to interject, grinning, “Enough about me. What about you, what were you thinking about?”
Heeseung pouted, but went along with the change of subject. “I suppose just… all the things I wished for that didn’t come true.”
Sunghoon blinked. “What did you wish for?”
“Well, I can’t tell you,” Heeseung said haughtily, with the same imperious air he had when they were kids sweating out the sticky summer on a playground, squabbling over who got to be the ruler of the monkey bars. “See, the thing about wishes is that you can’t tell people what they are or they’ll never ever come true.”
“You’re five years old,” Sunghoon grumbled in reply, rolling his eyes. “Seriously, none of your wishes have come true yet?”
“The little ones have,” Heeseung acquiesced. “I tried not to wish for big things, you know? The universe can’t turn itself inside out for you. Sometimes I’d wish for a little less rain, or for my brother to come home to play with me on the weekend, or for that one cafeteria lady we had to learn what seasoning was. But I learned that there are some things you just can’t wish for.”
“Like what?”
Heeseung’s answering smile was mirthless, a bittersweet slash across his face. “Like for your best friend in the world’s sister to come back to life. Or for someone to fall in love with you overnight. Like I said, the universe works in mysterious ways, but some ways aren’t so mysterious. Some things are just impossible.”
Sunghoon fell silent for a moment, when something else piqued his attention. “Wait. Who did you want to fall in love with you?”
Heeseung stiffened. “No one. It’s nothing.”
“What? It’s not nothing,” Sunghoon wheedled, a little affronted. “You just said we’re best friends and meant to share. Come on, I tell you everything.” Not everything, a voice drawled in the back of his head. Shut up, shut up, he hissed at it, crushing it back into its cage fiercely. Now is not the time.
“It was a long time ago. It doesn’t matter anymore,” Heeseung said tersely. Sunghoon supposed that was true; he’d had his own fair share of crushes as a teenager, and one particularly disastrous romantic pursuit only recently. But the need to know was burning in him, insistent and incinerating. Longing only compelled him.
“It matters to me. Was it your ex from junior year? Because honestly, you could do better than that cheating bastard. I fucking hated that guy.”
“No, I—Hoon, just forget it. Please.”
“Okay, okay.” Sunghoon subsided reluctantly, forcing himself to douse the flames of curiosity. “You wanna know something I never told you?”
Heeseung tilted his head, almost wary. “What..?”
Sunghoon hesitated. The words were being regurgitated up his throat, tripping onto the tip of his tongue. What if I told you that you’re the one I’m wishing for every night now? But he couldn’t. He pulled something else out of the reserves, grasping onto the first flimsy thought. “When you were avoiding school ‘cause you didn’t know how to dump that idiot, he came barreling in here like a panicked hurricane while I was sitting out here in the hammock—”
“Really? I thought we got too big for that thing when we turned 15,” Heeseung smiled.
“We did, but it could hold my weight just fine when your huge ogre ass wasn’t with me.”
“You’re just jealous I got my growth spurt before you,” Heeseung said smugly.
“I was not,” Sunghoon sniffed. “You were like the giant Jack finds at the top of the beanstalk. I called you fee-fi-fo-fum in my head for months.”
Heeseung tutted, “Jealousy really isn’t a good look on you, Hoon.”
“Oh, fuck you. I caught up anyway, we’re the same height now.”
“I’m half an inch taller, actually.”
“I’m gonna ignore you now,” Sunghoon announced. “Anyway, your butthole ex came storming in here like he owned the place and started sobbing about how he was convinced that you’d skipped town and stowed away across the border to Mexico to start a new life as Heemberto.”
“Heem—what?”
“Yeah. I had to break up with him for you. Why do you think he stopped coming around?”
Heeseung shrugged a shoulder, “I figured I lucked out and he realized I just wanted to be left alone.”
“No,” Sunghoon scowled. “I couldn’t come out here for over a month because every time I looked at my hammock, I just saw his pathetic snotty face begging me to chase you down and convince you to give him another chance. I also got a pretty horrific story about his erectile dysfunction that I did not fucking need to know. Apparently, he’d caught gonorrhea and chlamydia from the bitch he cheated on you with, and he was saying that was his penance.”
“Wow.”
“Real ‘wow’ is when he tried pulling down his pants to show me the sores. I narrowly escaped with my vision and sanity intact. You better count yourself lucky that I was willing to do anything for you and didn’t bill you for my eyeball replacement surgery.”
Heeseung threw his head back as he laughed, his perfect teeth glinting in the moonlight. Sunghoon couldn’t help but stare. He suddenly remembered a metaphor from a book he’d read once — coup de foudre, French for ‘a bolt of lightning’. It was commonly used to describe love at first sight, but nobody ever talked about how it felt to be thunderstruck by something you’d known your whole life. Nobody had an idiom for what happened when you saw something familiar morph into an entirely new shape. A flood, a fatality. When the compasses swung and the clocks spun, being proven wrong again and again. It was hot and sharp and stunning, a feeling that was like nothing and everything all at once.
He hadn’t been kidding when he said he’d have done anything for Heeseung. He still would. Heeseung’s eyes glimmered like fallen stars, and oh, Sunghoon thought hazily, maybe that’s why they aren’t in the sky. This is where they all went.
“Remember the first time we laid out here?” Heeseung’s musing cut through his reverie. “We accidentally fell asleep and woke up to your mom shouting that we were gonna get skin cancer.”
Sunghoon snorted, batting the remnants of the fog away. “She still says that every time I don’t leave the house completely lathered in sunscreen.”
“So that’s why you can’t tan one bit,” Heeseung grinned. “You know, in senior year, someone came up to me to ask if you were secretly from Transylvania.”
“They thought I was Count fucking Dracula?” Sunghoon’s mouth dropped open. “I’m not that pale!”
“When you look in the mirror, are you seeing yourself or do you see someone else entirely?” Heeseung asked dryly.
“I see someone who should get a new best friend. Preferably, one who doesn’t fuel rumours about me being a fictional vampire lord.”
“Oh, come on.” Heeseung sat up; for a moment, Sunghoon thought he was going to leave, but his best friend only shuffled around to plop his head into Sunghoon’s lap. “I told them that you weren’t Transylvanian.” He paused. “I said we have vampires in Korea, too.”
“Wonderful,” Sunghoon deadpanned. “Thank you for that. Now I know why a whole bunch of kids would scatter every time I walked past them. This is my payment for doing all your breakups for you?”
“Your teeth certainly helped my case,” Heeseung rolled onto his side and tapped Sunghoon’s mouth. Sunghoon’s breath hitched. “They look like they were made to puncture throats.”
“I’m gonna puncture your throat,” Sunghoon grumbled. “I vaguely remember asking one of those girls in the group to move away from my locker once, and she fell on her face running away from me.”
Heeseung hummed. “Oh, that must’ve been the one who had a crush on you.”
Sunghoon blinked down at his best friend, who was studying his hands with practiced nonchalance. “Who had a what on me?”
Heeseung shrugged. “Yeah, everyone knew it. She followed you around the halls all the time like a puppy. Told everyone you were going to ask her to prom and that you guys were gonna get married and have half-Korean babies. I’m pretty sure she had yellow fever.”
“What?” Sunghoon’s eyebrows jumped. “I—honestly had no idea.”
“You didn’t notice a lot back then,” Heeseung looked up, his eyes glinted with something unreadable. “There were people lining up around the block for you. There still are, you just don’t see them. But they’re there.”
Sunghoon wasn’t sure how to respond to this. What was the correct answer here? He decided to go with the most honest one. “I think,” he began slowly, “I didn’t need to notice them. I already had you. I wasn’t wanting for anything else.”
Several emotions flashed across Heeseung’s expression all in the span of a second: surprise, melancholy, tenderness, and finally satisfaction. He made a noncommittal sound as he flopped back down, turning back to the night sky. “I valiantly fought off all of your delusional admirers. I only let the normal ones come near you. You should feel lucky to have me.”
“I do,” Sunghoon said quietly. A content smile spread over his best friend’s face as he closed his eyes. Like this, he looked like a sleeping angel, a Botticelli painting brought to life. Yanked into this world by the tether of Sunghoon’s love, kept here on the ground by the weight of Sunghoon’s arms. As if he’d been breathed into being by Sunghoon’s want. He was cosmic. Something prickled in Sunghoon’s veins, compelling his tongue again. “Heeseung?”
His best friend cracked an eye open lazily, “Yes?”
Sunghoon didn’t know how to articulate all the feelings blooming like starbursts in his chest, coming one after another so rapidly his brain couldn’t keep up. Heeseung, I think I’m falling for you. I think I’ve been falling for you all my life, and I don’t think I’ll ever slow down. I think the one thing I’ve been searching for all this time is you. Heeseung, I think I burn for you. I think you deserve better than to be loved by something like me, but I think we could be so good at being more than best friends, if you give me a chance. I think one day, you could love me the way I love you.
He opened his mouth, and all that came out was, “We should head back inside before we fall asleep out here again. Or we’ll catch hypothermia.” He was a fucking coward. Twice in one night. He was on his way to setting records.
Heeseung groaned, nuzzling into Sunghoon’s thigh, “You’re right, but I’m so comfortable. I don’t wanna get up.”
Sunghoon exhaled, watching his breath form a cloud of condensation in the air. Winter was a cruel goddess, gripping the earth in her firm, frigid fist — but Heeseung kept everything warm. “Maybe five more minutes,” Sunghoon murmured, carding his fingers through Heeseung’s hair.
Heeseung practically purred, leaning into Sunghoon’s touch. “Five more minutes,” he agreed easily.
And maybe tomorrow, Sunghoon thought. Tomorrow, I’ll be brave enough to tell you.