He can see Hansol’s face through the steam rising from his coffee cup. It’s a little blurry at times and the colour of his skin and hair is funny, though that might be just as much because of the ty café lights, but mostly it has no effect other than to dampen his own face. Hansol is looking at him over the top of his own coffee cup and Yuta smiles brilliantly and slurps loudly from his overfull cup without lifting it from the table.

Hansol furrows his eyebrows and then smiles a moment later and slurps just as loudly from his coffee. It’s childish, but they giggle quietly together at the disgruntled looks they get from the barista and that old couple sitting by the window.
Hansol places his cup gently in front of him and stretches his hand across the table to tangle fingers with Yuta and in turn Yuta stretches his legs out under the table and hooks both feet around Hansol’s ankles. It’s quiet in the coffee shop and despite their earlier childish antics, it seems wrong to break it with words. Instead they smile at each other, stupidly in love. Hansol taps a beat on the top of Yuta’s hand and his fingers around his wrist to the soft string music playing in the shop and it makes Yuta’s whole arm tingle pleasantly.

He feels his cheeks heat up under Hansol’s unmoving gaze and his eyelids flutter and he breaths in and out shakily a couple times before hiding behind his coffee cup. Even fourteen months and sixteen days of being in a relationship Hansol can still pull Yuta completely off-balance with a simple touch or a loving look, and even if it feels slightly unsettling the warmth it spreads through his body is only comforting. 
Sometimes he envies Hansol for his composure. Most of the time even he has no idea what goes through the man’s mind, and he certainly never gets as flustered from something so small like a quiet look across a café table.

Two tugs on his middle finger snaps Yuta out of his thoughts and when he looks up at Hansol again the other is laughing quietly at him, his sparkling eyes moving from Yuta’s own to what Yuta realises with a start, is his empty cup that he was just about to drink from. He flushes at his absentmindedness, but hides it by reaching for Hansol’s still half-full cup and taking a long sip from it instead, and then another until he is draining the last of it too and then he takes Hansol’s hand in his and drags him out of the café and onto the sidewalk. It was getting far too stuffy sitting inside. 
Yuta raises their joined hands over his head so Hansol’s arm rest over his shoulders and their fingers remain tangled as they walk at a leisurely pace down the sidewalk, talking about innocuous things like the new collection of manga Yuta bought the other day and the colour of Hansol’s photography tutor’s hair that was now a bright green and which was cuter, the Labrador puppy that young boy was walking or the Shi Tzu sitting on that woman’s lap. It’s comfortable and easy, so far from what it was only that morning when they could barely say a word to each other with their minds still stuck on the fight from the night before. It’s comforting though, to see that they can still be so in love even as anger and disagreements simmer under the surface.

When they reach the river and the street opens up around them, Hansol leads them down the stairs to their right and they walk along the river bank for another minute before Hansol stops and pushes Yuta in front of him. Yuta raises an eyebrow at him in question and then sighs loudly when he sees Hansol pulling his camera out of his bag and backing away from him a few paces.

“No sighing” he admonishes and lifts the camera in front of his face. “Look out at the river.” “Turn a little towards me.” “Tilt your head back.” Hansol orders him around and snaps picture after picture with the sun shining on both of them and leaving Yuta as little more than a silhouette, but the lighting is perfect, the background is empty and in Yuta’s opinion, Hansol really takes the best pictures. 
They continue walking, hands now clasped together between them and Hansol swings them lightly back and forth as they walk.

“Which one should I frame?” he wonders out loud and Yuta socks him gently in the shoulder, “none of them!” he protests and pouts when Hansol only laughs. He knows he’s going to walk into their home one day soon and find at least one of the pictures Hansol took in a frame on the wall. There is a small collage already, artfully tacked to the wall above the sofa, and Yuta feels a little embarrassed about it every time they have friends visiting. Hansol, however, keeps putting up more. And he has a knack for always finding them easy whenever Yuta takes them down and hides them away.

They are getting closer to their apartment now, the stairs that will take them back up to street level is just ahead and from there it’s just a matter of walking one block and then take a left into a narrow alley, another left in between two brown buildings and up the metal stairs to the second level of the one on the right, and Hansol’s fingers tighten more and more around Yuta’s the closer they get. By the time they are walking through the front door however, they are no longer holding hands. Hansol walks straight to the kitchen nook and dumps his bag on the counter, opens the fridge and pulls out a bottle of water.

“You want one?” he asks, but Yuta only mumbles a negative and shuffles into the sleeping area. 
Their apartment is really only one big room, actually not that big, with a tiny bathroom attached to it and the only thing separating the bedroom from the rest of the apartment is a thick, off-white curtain. Hansol hears it clearly when Yuta slumps onto their bed as the springs creak loudly enough to cover his own sigh. He puts the water bottle down on the counter and leans on it with both hands, his head sinking low between his shoulders. 
All the joy from their day out has been out of the both of them and Yuta’s sudden coldness weighs heavier on him now then it did before.

A tear falls from the corner of his eye and Hansol hastily wipes it away. Without even seeing him, he knows Yuta is crying again, and when Yuta cries so will inevitably he as well. He swirls quickly on his feet in a fit of anger and his lower back bumps harshly against the counter when he falls back against it. 
If he could only find the words to explain himself in a way Yuta would believe. The stumbling, halting speech he had given last night was not the least convincing, but at least Yuta understood that he hadn’t meant to yell at him and that he was not angry at him, but rather himself. If only he could explain his reasons in a way Yuta would understand as well, he knows this would all be over.

With that in mind, he takes some time to think out exactly what he wants to say before walking to their bedroom. He slips past the curtain and then stops to look over Yuta who is lying on his back in the middle of their bed, his eyes closed and with tears falling steadily down his cheeks. He is completely quiet, but the sight of his tear-streaked cheeks breaks Hansol’s heart more than if he was sobbing out loud.
He sits carefully at the side of the bed and lays a hand on Yuta’s knee and for several moments it seems as if Yuta is unaware of his presence, until suddenly he speaks.
“Why won’t you tell your parents about us?” he asks and his voice is raspy and quiet. Hansol takes a deep breath and then starts off exactly how he has rehearsed it in his mind.

“Because I know how they’ll react. I haven’t even told them about me yet, and it is because I have grown up around their conservative, homophobic attitudes. I know what they think about people like us, relationships like ours, and I don’t want to expose you to that kind of disgust and dislike. “
He stops talking when Yuta sits up in the bed and scoots backwards to lean against the metal headboard, but when Yuta opens his mouth to speak he holds a hand up between them, “please, let me finish.”

“It’s not for any kind of self-preservation or anything like that, that I don’t want to tell them. I know that no matter their opinion on homouality, and no matter how angry and disappointed they will be with me, I am still their son. You don’t have that protection.” He can see Yuta starting to understand by the look in his eyes and how his shoulders drop and even though he had several more lines prepared, he instead shuffles closer to Yuta on the bed and rests his hands on either side of Yuta’s hips. Their eyes meet and for once Hansol is the first to tear up as their fingers entwine and the rest of his speech is not something he prepared, but rather what being with Yuta makes him want to say.

“I love you and I am not ashamed of you. I only want you to be happy and safe and for me, that means keeping you away from my parents as well. And I am so sorry I yelled at you last night, I was frustrated with myself and I pushed that frustration onto you. I should not have done that.” Yuta shushes him with a finger against his lips and Hansol presses a kiss against it and when Yuta asks him how much of that he rehearsed, they both laugh quietly.
Yuta sighs deeply when they quiet down and leans forward to rest his forehead against Hansol’s. He suddenly feels embarrassed at how he reacted last night, and regrets not letting Hansol take the time he needed to explain himself. 
Hansol tilts his head to reach Yuta’s lips, but Yuta pushes him away before they can meet and smiles a small, regretful smile at Hansol. “Will you give me a minute?” he asks, and no matter how much Hansol wants to stay and get lost in Yuta, he adheres to his wishes and leaves for the sofa in the corner of the living room area.

He stops to take in the picture collage on the wall in front of him, mostly pictures of Yuta, but some are of the both of them and some are the two of them and their friends. He takes one particular picture down off the wall and drops into the sofa with it in his hands. 
It’s of the two of them taken on a normal day out. Yuta is standing with his back against Hansol’s chest, a bag of roasted almonds in his hands and the Tower Bridge can just be seen in the background.

He faintly remembers the day, it was four months after they met and they had taken the underground into Central London and then walked around for hours and hours. They had bought crêpes along The Queen’s Walk and gone on the Merry-Go-Round and then they had gone window shopping down the length of Oxford Street. Even then, so new to their relationship, being with Yuta had been the most comfortable he had ever felt. And now, ten months later, Hansol is sure that he never wants to live without Yuta, ever again.

He is shaken from his reverie by the sound of bare feet on the wooden floor and he looks up to see Yuta standing in the middle of the room and looking at him with complete love and fondness in his eyes.
“Hey” he says and Hansol puts the picture aside and smiles back at him. “Hey” he says back and Yuta takes a few steps closer before stopping again. He has changed into pyjama pants and one of Hansol’s sweatshirts and he looks gorgeous in the low light of the setting sun shining through their windows. He breaths in deep behind a shaky smile and then pulls the sweatshirt over his head and walks quickly over to Hansol. 
Hansol catches him when Yuta falls into his lap and their lips meet in a desperate kiss. He his palms up Yuta’s and Yuta’s fingers tangle in his blonde hair and they moan softly into the kiss as their bodies push together and neither of them care that they don’t even make it off the sofa.

Later, when the sky is dark and they have cleaned up and fallen into bed, they lie on their sides facing each other, foreheads pressed gently together. They share soft kisses in between even softer whispers of love and when Yuta’s eyes close and Hansol feels himself close to sleep he presses one last kiss to Yuta’s lips and whispers against his mouth.
“I hope one day you’ll understand Yuta, that I always think of you first.”