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Sometimes, Gyuvin wishes he is anything but himself.
It’s not a self-hatred kind of thing nor is it anything related to a midlife crisis. He just (sometimes!) wishes he is anyone but himself—it’s just as simple as that.
Now, that, he also wishes is true because deep down, he knows that it isn’t as simple as that.
He knows that this wishful thinking of his stems from something much deeper—knows that it stems from the very personification of love itself; in the form of a sharp pair of feline eyes and a gentle voice that never fails to lull him to sleep, he knows that his futile desire is rooted in the person of love whom he knows he isn’t allowed to love, at least not in the way he wants to.
Sometimes, Gyuvin wishes he can just love freely, and to love freely is to be anyone—anything but himself.
He looks at the back of the man who’s causing his internal dilemma, stares at it rather, and lets out a deep sigh.
There’s so much that Gyuvin would give for him to be able to love him freely, out in the open—loudly, until it echoes through the ears of the nation’s citizens.
But he knows that loving him loud means subjecting the object of his affection to painful music. Speakers that ring out words with each letter grating against the soft flesh of his ears. Violins played with broken strings. A sandbox submerged in his ears.
Gyuvin wants to love him selfishly, but most of all, he wants to love him selflessly.
Because there’s nothing louder than a love that is endured.
Perhaps, his love for him transcends its traditional meaning, possibly bordering the fences of devotion. Actually, scratch that, he’s aware that he’s devoted himself to him fully and wholeheartedly. He’s known this since the day the blond man entered their company’s cramped practice room, with his hair neat and his features unrefined with a softness that only teenage youth can provide. His five hundred won shaped eyes strike him the moment they land on his figure, with time slowing down as his gaze meets his own.
At the time, he had not a single idea in his little head about what the fluttering feeling in his chest could possibly mean. However, he did decide from that moment on that he would do whatever it takes to keep the man beside him for as long as time allows him.
Now, he thinks that the current predicament that he is in is completely inevitable. He was always meant to fall for Shen Quanrui. There’s no need for scientific data to back it up; no need for religious scriptures to negate the passionate thoughts that are fired up in his head. Gyuvin is in love with Ricky, always was and always will be. Sometimes, things are just as simple as that.
Unfortunately for Gyuvin, most of the time, things just aren’t as simple as that. Even after he’s figured out his undying affection for Ricky, his circumstances only become more complicated for him. Aside from the fact that he is in love with his best friend, his line of work leaves no room for romantic relationships to blossom.
So, Gyuvin opted to stay. To stay as himself, the person who knows Ricky best; to stay beside him, his feet grounded on the same surface, not an inch forward but his feet are on guard just in case he needs to take a step backward to shield him, to catch him, to curl his fingers around the back of his neck and pepper the side of it with gentle kisses. Gyuvin stays because he should and because he wants to. He can’t take a step forward lest it ruins everything they’ve built up to but he also can’t take a step backwards, primarily for selfish reasons because Gyuvin is an honest man and honestly, he thinks he’ll die without the warmth that Ricky’s body emanates, both physically and emotionally.
His body and heart are bound to Ricky. His whole self is bound to him. And it’s wrong because he should cut himself up in tiny little pieces and distribute it to the millions of fans who support him until those tiny little pieces become shattered fragments in miniscule sizes and until those miniscule fragments fade into nothingness—ashes of what he once was. But his love does not work like that and he is not a liar. He might love his fans but he can never truly divide his heart the way he’s supposed to, let alone shatter himself just to be distributed to people who can either make or break his career and his life.
“What has you so burdened that you’re sighing so much?” Ricky asks, turning around to face the younger man. His eyes wrinkling in concern.
“The usual…” Gyuvin says, sighing once again. He’s an honest person but he’s also as vague as he can get when he wants to be, and right now, he’s not sure if he’s comfortable releasing his worries to the person who is at the center of it all.
“Gyuvin, what’s the usual? You know there’s many and as much as I know you, I would rather hear it come from your mouth.” Ricky is all round eyes and downturned lips as he says this, and Gyuvin is only a man. A man who folds at the sight of anything adorable. And Ricky is as adorable as one gets with his features painted in worry and his lips slightly jutted out in a pout. The dark haired man might be a dog lover but he won’t even begin to deny the first accusation of him loving someone so feline it makes him question whether or not he is a true dog lover or if he actually has a preference for cats, particularly the one in front of him sitting at his desk.
So Gyuvin folds. “You,” the blond looks confused as he says this one word then his face contorts into that of hurt and before Gyuvin’s mind becomes a jumbled mess of words at the sight of Ricky looking offended at his answer, he starts rambling about what he’s actually been carrying recently that’s so heavy it’s almost enough to break his back. “You’re my problem. Don’t look at me like that please, I’m a weak man when it comes to you and I would never say anything to hurt you. You’re not my problem in the way you think you are. You’re my problem because I want to love you so deeply and so openly that it’s starting to kill me. But I know I can’t. I want to show the world how much I love you, but the moment I do that, you will be caught in a crossfire right away.” Ricky’s eyes soften upon hearing his words, his expression shifting from hurt to pondering.
When Ricky thinks deeply, his eyes zone out a little, slight enough for the untrained eye not to notice but obvious enough for Gyuvin who has claimed the title of ‘Ricky encyclopedia.’ He also bites his lower lip, chewing it in an attempt to ground himself and Gyuvin can’t help but watch the motion and he ends up licking the skin of his bottom lip unconsciously, only then does he realize that his lips are quite dry, thankfully not dry enough to be chapped but dry enough for him to feel the cracks and harsh lines of his lips.
“Gyuvin… Qubing-ah, you’re afraid of loving me?” Ricky questions him with a tone of palpable confusion and a hint of fascination lacing it.
Gyuvin panics. “Ricky-ah, I’m not afraid of loving you because why should I be? You’re the loveliest person ever and loving you is a privilege that I am enjoying the luxury of having but I love loud, Ricky. The problem is that I want to love you out loud. So loud in fact that I feel like screaming out your name isn’t enough for me. I want to be so loud about my love for you that people hear each beat of my heart. I want to be so loud that the sound of the roll of my tongue whenever I mention your name is imprinted in the walls of their ears. I want to be so loud that—”
“Gyuvin… Qubing. I love you.” It’s the way only Ricky can calm the storm causing chaos in his mind, like the rainbow after a heavy rain. He’s mentioned before that Shim Ricky is his dopamine, but what he didn’t say is that he’s also his serotonin, his oxytocin, his endorphins—the only painkiller that could calm every brewing hurricane in his mind and in his heart. Nothing else and no one else can quiet down all the loud voices in his head the same way Ricky’s soft voice can.
“You don’t have to explain to me anymore because I understand. And all I ever need to know is that you love me too, more than I can think of.” And Ricky is soft and gentle when he speaks, it should leave no room for doubt and he’s perfectly certain that Ricky means what he says but the radical part of his brain can hardly process anything and so he begins to speak once again, his lips trembling in barely suppressed fear and his eyes watering in deep, deep devotion. “Is it okay for me to say this out loud? Okay for me to tell you this despite you knowing? Tell me, Ricky, is it okay for me to love you like this?”
And Ricky, God bless Ricky, is faster than the flash when it comes to reassuring him. All he ever needs from the blond is a one liner to make his heart do backflips and his throat parch from the lack of explicitly delivered affection he wants to project, to give, to surrender to him. “More than okay,” he says with stars in his eyes.
“But doesn’t this make everything more real? How can I love you silently when you now know my heart?” His love for him is real, so so real that it also renders his fears solid and real.
“You don’t have to love me in silence, Qubing. Please just love me. Love me in the way that is you.” Ricky’s fingers are now all up in the spaces between his own and his palm feels so soft against his that he can’t help but think that this is the place he wants to be in most.
“My way of loving you is loud… and real. I want to put a label on us and I want to push it further and further with you. I want us to reach paradise together in each other’s arms. It’s all too much.” Gyuvin’s fears spill like liquid mercury, scalding and dangerous and yet Ricky isn’t afraid of clasping their hands together.
“Then do just that.” He says like it's the easiest thing to do in the world, and maybe it is, because loving Ricky has never been difficult. In fact, it’s so easy, too easy that his brain conjured up so many scenarios of things going wrong because of how easy it is to love him.
“But then everything will be real. And real is too loud for the people outside our relationship, for the public.”
“Qubing-ah, it’s always been real. You’ve always loved me and I’ve always been yours.”
And Gyuvin, after hearing those words, has no reason to doubt anymore. He realizes that he doesn’t need to be anyone else, to be anything else just to love the man in front of him with his whole heart and body. He just needs to be Gyuvin to love Ricky wholeheartedly because there’s nothing else—no one else in this world who knows how to love Ricky better than Gyuvin knows how to, better than Gyuvin can, better than Gyuvin does.
And so when they finally crash their lips together, all the words at the tip of his tongue die out as if they were never originally there, instead melding into the action of soft lips moving against each other as if they were one. With his free hand coming up to cup the blond’s cheek and his other being embraced tightly by the man’s delicate hand, he realizes that labels and volume can never and will never tame the intensity of his love for him and the love Ricky has for him. They’ve always known that one way or another, they’ll end up in each other’s arms. There is just no other position for them to end up in that would feel as right as this position does.
And with his heart pounding in his chest and Ricky’s own heartbeat vibrating in his ears with each press of their lips, he thinks that loving Ricky can never be too loud.