Jonghyun stared at the billion blades of grass around him, stared at the grains of soil it grew out of, dried up from the summer heat. He stared at the path of a lethargic earthworm, tracing his eyes along its slow progress beside his little finger, lifting his palm away and making a tunnel for the insect. Just like he used to as a kid.

He stared at time tick and tick and tick on his wrist like that’s all it could do, that’s all it was capable of. But no, he corrected himself. Time does more than just tick. The sun began to set before him. Children were called back by worried parents, picnic blankets were folded away, cars were reversed carefully out of the parking lot, ready to make their way downhill and back to the city. Time does so much more than just pass.

"It’s been three months," he said to amber light as it slid down the front of his knees, bringing velvet night in its trail. And really, the back of his mind tells him it’s been more than just three months. Kibum calling his name behind him says it’s been more than just three months, twelve days, nineteen hours and a few minutes since Jonghyun told his best friend he loved him.

Three months, twelve days, nineteen hours and a few minutes since he had his heart handed back to him with the packaging still unopened.

Wisps of blonde danced with the soft breeze, glowing like a halo against the setting sun. Kibum sighed, peering at Jonghyun from behind the oak tree. He wanted to brush his hand through the newly dyed hair, to caress his smooth skin, to kiss away the worry he read in the other’s eyes.

No Kibum, he’s a boy. A man. You can’t kiss a man. It’s abnormal, unnatural. His breath hitched and locked in his throat, his heart thudded in his chest, and he could feel his soul dissipate into the void, into the madness.

The graceful, verdant park lost its life and darkness overtook it, much like his own life, and Kibum took a step back, to leave. To never come back. He should not be here, he should not contaminate Jonghyun with his…abnormality. He could still hear the whispered confession in the wind, taunting him, breaking him. That day, as the train departed and when Jonghyun had vanished from his sight, he realised that a crisis had come in his life. No, it is his life. The man had stirred his volcanic, untamed heart to its very core, stolen it away.

"Jonghyun," his voice was not his own. It seemed distant, foreign. He repeated the syllables, stifling an inadvertent smile. The blonde, usually so genial, was strangely reserved as Kibum sat next to him, his nerve endings tingling with the nearness of the boy, of the man he loved. He was in love with.

"Jonghyun," Kibum breathed, caressing the other’s limp hand, lacing them together. "I’m sorry," he wanted to be selfish, just this once.

The other, big eyes swimming in a deep sea, sniffled, moving away from Kibum, and he knew that pang in his chest was not only his own. His heart was no longer his own.

The fact that Kibum often read his thoughts like that had stopped amazing Jonghyun a long time ago. Long before he’d opened his mouth and ruined everything good and clean and right between them. They were two halves of one whole, they always had been, but it didn’t sound special or unique anymore. A stupid little speck of feeling had set in like a rot in what they’d always had.

There had been a hundred identical apologies since that drunken night in the subway, and this was just another entry in a list of meaningless guilt. Jonghyun played off the liquid salt below his eyes as just dust, rubbing it away with the heels of his palms, letting out a silly incongruent laugh at himself. He got up and jangled the keys in his pocket. “It’s OK, man,” he chuckled and shrugged it away, not looking at Kibum but dearly hoping he’d follow. “We’re friends. happens,” he reasoned with a smile.

It was painful being a reject.

Jonghyun walked up the hill slowly in measured, carefully placed footsteps. Like he was trying to avoid waking the earth up. It was better off asleep anyway, there was nothing left to see above ground. “Shall we go?” he pointed to the car and coaxed verbally. Kibum wasn’t moving from his place. “It’s… getting late. We should head back, man. You have to get back to work, remember? And heh… the mosquitoes’ll drink you dry,” he joked. The other still didn’t respond.

He frowned at Kibum’s back, at the steadily dimming light around it. “Bummie, let’s go,” he insisted. His phone vibrated, probably Jinki informing him about another important meeting at work tomorrow, but it could wait. Everything in the universe could wait when counted against Kibum. “Bummie…?”

"Why can’t you leave me alone, Jjong?"

Jonghyun sighed at the question, shaking his head at his own feet and smiling ruefully. His tongue prepared the answer he always gave to the inquiry, swirling the words in his mouth before spitting them out. “Because no one else will hold you,” he whispered softly, knowing the wind would carry it to Kibum.

The soft murmur caressed his tensed shoulders, tingled down his hunched frame. Kibum smiled ruefully, his fingers grazing the delicate petals of the yellow flower. It reminded him of the blonde; vivid, beautiful, mesmeric.

No one could holding him the way Jonghyun did. No one could be Jonghyun.

He was a poet whose effusions entranced his soul, a beam of light in what had become a dark abyss. Something inside him throbbed and ached and he knew it was not just the urge to be beside his best friend. It was something much stronger, something he had been too afraid to admit to anyone.

Kibum shook his head, as if it would dispel his wayward thoughts, and walked towards the boy with what he hoped to be an encouraging smile. He was a disgrace, a stigma, an outcast in the society, tainting Jonghyun with every breath he took and every beat of his heart.

Why do you love me? I’m not worth it.

"Make a wish, Kibum," the blonde chuckled, his eyes following the trails of the falling star. His feelings grew in wild profusion, and he craved for the exaltation only Jonghyun could provide him. Kibum was holding forth the hopes of succour and life through the other.

I am in love with you, Jonghyun.

I wish I can be with you.

"Wishes never come true. Let’s go."

Jonghyun smiled a little and Kibum nodded. “Hey,” he said, patting the other on the back momentarily before taking his hand away lest it be thought as too forward a gesture. “Sometimes we’re allowed to be stupid, right?”

I wish I could keep looking at you,
I wish I could keep laughing at your silly jokes,
I wish I could keep making a fool of myself,
Just so you keep looking at me,
Just so you keep laughing at me.