Kikwang doesn't know much about love.

He's had a great number of boyfriends, all tall, handsome, friendly. He's been in many relationships, some short, some long. He knows about love, but he doesn't know love.

He's tried his hand at love time and time (and time and time) again, but he's never really found it. There was nothing really wrong with the guys he had dated, but there was a problem with his emotions, because Kikwang just couldn't fall in love.

As time passed by, it became less about finding love and more about finding company. Because even though he's never really loved any of them, when they broke up, the following loneliness that followed would be too overwhelming and suffocating for him than the heartbreak would ever be.

Because for Kikwang, the loneliness was scarier than never loving.

On Thursdays, he likes to go to the cafe below his apartment building.

It's owned by a coffee fanatic named Lee Sungyeol whose boyfriend is this mysterious, good-looking anime character called Kim Myungsoo. They're in love in the way Kikwang never really has been.

The cafe smells of fresh coffee and sounds like friends and lovers and laughter. It looks homey, comfortably, happy, and those are all reasons why Kikwang likes it. Besides, staying in his apartment all the time gets boring, and the cafe is never too far.

He slips into a booth next to the windows that look out onto the street, and the coffee and pastries he has ordered arrives not long after. He's brought along his laptop because he has a paper to write for literature class that he's kind of put off for far too long. He's planning to stay until the late afternoon at the most.

Everything has just been set up when he hears someone simply slide into the seat across from him. Kikwang looks up in surprise and meets the eyes of a handsome, probably foreign man. He holds a professional-looking camera in his hands and wears a crisp white dress shirt.

"Hello," the man greets in (surprisingly) perfect Korean. Kikwang thinks that maybe he's lived in Korea for a long time or something. His theory gets shattered with the stranger's next words. "I'm Son Dongwoon."

"Hi," Kikwang replies, puzzled. "I'm Lee Kikwang." He's wondering what Son Dongwoon wants- after all, no one has ever came up to Kikwang just to strike up a conversation without wanting something more.

"I'm a photographer," Son Dongwoon tells him with a polite smile. He gestures to the camera in his hands. "I like to take pictures of beautiful things."

Kikwang feels the startings of something in his stomach, but squashes it before it gets too hopeful and identifiable.  "That's nice," he says with a hesitant smile. He looks down at his blank laptop screen and swipes a finger on the mouse pad.

"So," Son Dongwoon continues, looking at his camera, "I'd like to take some of you."

His breath stalls in his throat and he swallows hard. It's hard to not get hopeful when there's so much to hope about (but Kikwang's pretty sure he's given up on finding love). "That's a bit stalkerish," he jokes. He tends to joke a lot, but they more or less come out awkward.

But Son Dongwoon laughs anyway. "Maybe," he says. "You'll never know if I'll creep into your bedroom tonight and take pictures of you sleeping."

Kikwang can't help but laugh a bit at this. Son Dongwoon takes the chance to quickly snap a picture and smiles at him from behind the camera. Kikwang blinks, surprised, and automatically peers over the table to see how the picture came out. Son Dongwoon turns it up to him with a confusingly soft smile.

"You look nice when you laugh like that," he tells him.

"Everyone tends to look nice when they laugh," Kikwang says, because whether Son Dongwoon really means it or not, he's heard that line too many times already.

(Although Son Dongwoon says it in a way that makes hearing it feel different.)

Son Dongwoon looks at him with something in his eyes that Kikwang can't really identify. He opens his mouth to say something, but gets cut off when his cell phone rings. He gives Kikwang an apologetic look, but he only smile politely in return.

He turns back to what is supposed to be his literature paper, which is really just an empty Word document, trying not to listen in on Son Dongwoon's conversation. The thing that really sticks in his mind is the ringtone though.

"Will You Be Alright?" he asks when Son Dongwoon hangs up. The other man blinks, looking confused. "Your ringtone," Kikwang clarifies, "it's a song called Will You Be Alright, right?"

Son Dongwoon's face lights up with a sincerely excited grin. "You know of it?" he asks, and they launch into a conversation that starts with the woes of having no friends even slightly interested in music beyond SM, YG, and JYP (who really aren't that bad, but there's more music out there, seriously, stop playing Sorry Sorry all the time) and spirals off from there.

Kikwang never really gets around to even starting on his paper, but he's feeling so light and happy by the end of the afternoon that he's pretty okay with it.

Only the fact that he feels a bit sad to see Dongwoon go surprises him.

In the back of his mind, he knows what this is starting to become, but he's too scared to hope for it.

They meet there the next day and Kikwang catches Sungyeol watching them with a grin on his face.

"He's really handsome," Sungyeol tells him as he slips into the seat Dongwoon had just vacated when he left for the bathroom. "Like, almost as handsome as Myungsoo." Sungyeol's eyes have this excited spark in them that's rarely there outside of Myungsoo and coffee.

"I guess?" Kikwang replies unsurely. It's not like he hasn't noticed; who couldn't? But he knows what Sungyeol is thinking and even if he's not done looking for love, he doesn't want to get into something like that with Dongwoon. Not when they've all ended the same way. "I don't- I mean- I don't really think of him in that way."

Sungyeol eyes him. "Denial," he says and slips out of the seat just as Dongwoon emerges from the restroom. "At least he knows what he wants."

Kikwang would retort, but Sungyeol is already walking away and Dongwoon's smile as he slides into his seat has his stomach fluttering and his tongue tying itself into a knot.

They meet there a lot over the space of the new few weeks. College and other things prevent them from meeting every day, but they see each other for the better part of their week. Some meetings are longer than others, but they all leave Kikwang with this feeling in his chest of maybe there could have been something more.

It's not that he doesn't want to possibly love Dongwoon. After all, Dongwoon is everything anyone could ever want in a lover- tall, handsome, kind, polite, patient, attentive, funny. He's everyone's type.

It's not that he doesn't know if Dongwoon even wants to possibly love him. Kikwang isn't dumb, despite all appearances, and he's not blind either. He knows how Dongwoon looks at him with that inexplicable softness, smiles at him with that unrestrained fondness.

Kikwang's just not sure if he can even love Dongwoon as much as Dongwoon seems to love him.

Kikwang doesn't know much about love, but he does know one thing. He knows that when you fall in love with someone who doesn't love you back the same way, it can break you and make you infixable for a long time. So it's better, he thinks, to let Dongwoon have hope and hold onto that hope than to just smash it all.

Because as much as it hurts to know that a person could never love you, it'll hurt more to know that they tried and still couldn't, and he doesn't want to break Dongwoon like that. Not Dongwoon.

(When Kikwang had been a first year in high school, new to romance and ready to fall in love like the movies and the books, he fell in love with a sunbae of his.

Maybe it wasn't really love, but at least he thought so.

The sunbae was tall, handsome, kind- everything Dongwoon happens to be. The sunbae was really kind, too kind, and when Kikwang eventually confessed to him, he suggested that they try, because he didn't want to shoot Kikwang down just like that.

But the sunbae couldn't fall in love with Kikwang the way Kikwang had fallen in love with him, and no matter how many times he'd say sorry, how tightly he'd hug him, how brightly Kikwang had smiled, it still hurt.

It had hurt more than it would when Kikwang thought he'd just get rejected, because watching a person try and force themselves to love you just because you love them is unexpectedly heartbreaking.)

One day after a meeting at the cafe, Dongwoon catches his hand in his as they're taking a walk around the block.

Kikwang nearly jumps in surprise but quickly calms himself down. Dongwoon's hand is slightly larger than his, a bit sweaty but a bit cold at the same time. He looks up at Dongwoon who's staring straight ahead in front of him with his nervousness on his face that's just so-

so-

"Adorable," Kikwang breathes and Dongwoon looks down at him. He grins and knocks Kikwang slightly with his shoulder.

"I'm glad you finally realized that about yourself," Dongwoon smiles down at him, and Kikwang's heart kind of flutters and soars and then proceeds to combust.

They stop there in the middle of the sidewalk, Dongwoon with his unexplainably soft eyes and unrestrained fond smiles, Kikwang with his wide eyes and a balloon in his chest that keeps growing by the second, their hands joined together, kind of sweaty, kind of warm.

He's pretty sure he's already fallen in love with Son Dongwoon though.

(Once, back in high school, around Kikwang's second year and third boyfriend, they had a project in literature. Their subject was supposed to be the word that they pulled out of the hat the teacher had, and he had gotten love by some of luck.

It had taken him days, but finally, he had compared love to a balloon. It fills you up like air and it makes you feel like you're floating enough to touch the sky. But the reality of it is that when a balloon goes too high, too far, it pops. It breaks and falls into pieces and crashes back down to Earth where it belongs, where it was supposed to have been in the first place.

He'd gotten an A on the assignment, but he thinks that it was mostly due to the dried tear drops on the paper, because when Kikwang had finally managed to get somewhere on the essay, he was single again.)

Dongwoon tightens his grip on Kikwang's hands and leans down until they can feel each other's breaths. Kikwang's heart is pounding loud in his own ears and he wonders if Dongwoon is afraid of having Kikwang hear his heart beat like he is.

"Thank you, Kikwang," Dongwoon breathes, like he understands, like he knows, and Kikwang can't breathe for a moment. "Thank you."

He doesn't know exactly why Dongwoon is thanking him, but the balloon in his chest hasn't popped yet and he's not exactly floating yet, so he inches forward and Dongwoon inches forward and they meet somewhere halfway in the middle.

And when the balloon pops, for the first time, it doesn't hurt.

Author's Note: started listening to ra.d's thank you halfway lol. anyways, i hope you liked it. :) it's kind of embarrassing though orz ;;