Are you strong enough to stand

Protecting both your heart and mine?

He never knew how annihilating it was to feel that he was the most burdensome person in Jinki’s life. The inadequacy punctuated behind every kiss, how he couldn’t, wouldn’t allow his lips to be firm against Jinki’s though the older clung tightly, desperately to his mouth as if it were his lifeline.

And Jinki wasn’t a glutton for punishment for leaning in again and again for those kisses; he just knew it was solely on his shoulders this time to pioneer what intimacies and understandings and sealed vows that came with sharing your heart with the one you love. It’s why he tried every day, any moment he could steal for the both of them. To more force himself into the feeble abrasion that was Jonghyun than to impulsively, instinctively pull the younger close to himself like he yearned to do.

It would be a trying process and he was willing to go through all the motions to see that Jonghyun realized that with him it seemed…Jinki could reach the stars with reckless hopes and dreams. When he could finally realize how essentially valuable he was, that he was what kept Jinki anchored to the planet and inspired his every endeavor. While the mere necessities of life sustained Jinki enough so that he survived, his Jonghyun was a fountain of the most powerful supplement in the universe; that kept him alive. That forever kept the entirety of who and what he was off the mark of E in the vehicle of existence. Truly, he had yet to comprehend that with him, Jinki found he could close his eyes to the world surrounding him…because the younger created the sweetest place he could ever be. If it were possible, he’d live off of Jonghyun, and Jonghyun alone…

Yet the hands that pushed at his chest when they kissed let Jinki know he wasn’t getting through. He felt the dull pain of the knife Jonghyun had embedded in his chest the day the younger man confessed that he felt he’d never be enough for Jinki and Jinki deserved better than the tainted affections of a lowlife drug slinger; a knife only had to sink seven inches to pierce the human heart and  the demon between them made sure the weapon was already halfway there. And the more Jonghyun  every part of him away , the more he assisted that demon, the knife slicing, twisting through Jinki’s numbing flesh.

Yet he refused to acknowledge the bleeding wound, because feeling sorry for himself, Jonghyun, or them both, in when he could have been fighting even harder to convince his beloved, was as weak as it was destructible. The high wall of Jinki’s  stubborn will, to preserve himself against the consequences of a dying, cracking romance, struggled and quaked against its chains, some of the stones crumbling to the ground. The pain he took in stride, because his unfathomable love was what made sure he held on that undying hope that one day, one day, Jonghyun would stop believing he was the iron ball wrapped around Jinki’s ankles that threw him over a waterfall. Maybe if Jonghyun did, he’d realize that the same, foolish insecurity possessing him and preventing him from surrendering into the best thing that had ever happened to him…was the same virus slowly conquering his other half. Monopolizing the older, turning his insides into the darkest lead.

And despite it all, Jinki would still teach, would show, would burn himself out to ash trying to help Jonghyun understand that it was okay for him to love Jinki just as much as Jinki loved him; if not more than Jinki loved him, because Jinki was a pitless creature, and by nature his need to be loved was the very black hole that refused to let him give up on Jonghyun. When Jinki was inside the younger, him, making him whimper into his fists as the older made an honest, quivering man out of him, that was, perhaps, one of the profound times the greatest care was invested into Jinki’s love “education.”

He’d never give up, no matter the many skeletons in Jonghyun’s closet-the shadows of the heinous phantoms in the younger’s past Jonghyun knew he’d bust hell’s gates open for. No matter if he thought Jinki’s life would be at stake the more he stayed by his side, no matter his outlook of the future-always on the run, always barely slipping the fingers of his enemies.

Jinki was a man of his word.

And the pledge was tested after the smoking car lay in a crumpled heap in the ravine. He was more battered, bloodied and scraped than he’d ever been…and he knew from the odd way his lover’s wide eyes stared straight ahead, the deepest red, almost black, pouring from his ears, his mouth, his temples, his nose…that he was gone. There wasn’t any feeling but the physical pain then,  and the illusion that Jonghyun had that faint smile played on his lips because he was grateful that they were fortunate enough to have lived. That tomorrow they’d hitchhike their way to safety, finally escaping the people who wanted him dead.

He just mechanically unstrapped himself as best he could in the upside down position, fumbling to unbuckle the body next to him that was tangled in the seatbelt. Heaving with the minute strength he had left, he pulled Jonghyun with him. Flames completely engulfed the metal wreck seconds after they were free, and Jinki slumped down before Jonghyun’s lying head several yards away. It was in the middle of the night, and they were miles and miles away from the nearest city.

Jinki calmly used two fingers to shut Jonghyun’s eyes. He didn’t still lose himself there, and perhaps it would never hit him. His scarred face was stoic as he watched the car burn, flame exhaust rising into an open sky that just wasn’t supposed meant to be so starry and bright and beautiful beyond words-or polluted with the aftermath of the cruelest tragedy.

He promised that he’d never give up on Jonghyun, and that went beyond every boundary threaded in life’s design.

It didn’t take long before he stood, picking the smaller body up with him bridal style. He’d walk that lone, infinite road until he reached the desired destination. A place, a person who’s healing hands would shake his beloved awake as if he were sleeping the whole time, tend to his wounds, and make him better for Jinki. Or he’d just keep walking and not stop at all. Just pass through every inhabited land, walking and walking and walking, lifting his concrete feet until they wore away from his legs. Till he was crawling, Jonghyun maneuvered to his back. To prove that Jonghyun was never a burden, and he’d never would be, that he could never be. If anything, this was Jinki’s truest opportunity to represent his need. Shed the ultimate light to Jonghyun’s worth, sacrifice his grief and the grueling ache to come when he came to with reality-to square his jaw and loyally trudge with his “burden”, even when his mortal body betrayed him, and blue skies and grey road transcended into that place where Jonghyun knew he was going once all of his sins caught up with him. Morbid as it was, Jinki would accept the honor of taking him there.

And wherever Jonghyun was, he’d be.

Until then, he’d walk.

So he did.

By day, the blistering sun beating into his back. By night, the crickets singing to the moon. Staggering, slipping, ignoring the aching hurt of the knife shoved all the way into his heart. Hunger and thirst elements of irrelevance, medical attention to where he stung all over to be damned. How the birds of nature’s disposal swirled around Jinki ominously, lusting after Jonghyun with beady eyed contempt directed at his carrier for being in the way.

At some point the tears came, washing and weathering away at the soot on Jinki’s cheeks. They came as a torrential downpour, out of the blue, dribbling salt into the slit of his blood encrusted lips. It did nothing to change the determined way his expression was set for all time, however. They just accompanied him, were normal like the wind and the sun. Dripping into the hallow of his lover’s scorched throat and pooling or running off his body, creating a trail with the set of rust red footsteps Jinki left behind.

Jonghyun thought his heart was too heavy for Jinki before.

But he couldn’t have been more far from the truth.

Because while he felt his weight was suffocating, he was light as his arms curled around Jinki’s neck, fingers lacing a crown. He was light with euphoria when, in those rare moments, he trusted when he and Jinki had. He was even light at his worst, those times he’d leave Jinki with the intent of never returning, whispering, sobbing torturously in the sleeping man’s ear before he took off that this was his last confession: that “I love you” never felt like any blessing. Fading out the door knowing deep down he would always come back, a pathological liar, to that man who embodied everything he considered his home. Jonghyun was light even when the “secret” uttered to condemn Jinki to misery and woe, to tear away from the temptation of going to seek the younger out, was potently effective for them both.

Now, Jonghyun was the heaviest he’d ever been.  For the first time, he was so heavy, so crippling heavy.

So heavy in his arms.

And Jinki was just as heavy as he, dragging his feet on that road with the weight of the world trembling his tired limbs; to be heavy in the arms of the unfortunate person who came along wanting to love him.

I was a heavy heart to carry

My beloved was weighed down

I was a heavy heart to carry

But he never let me down

When he held me in his arms

My feet never touched the ground.