Six Ways To Say I Love You

or

Five Times Hyukjae Couldn't Say I Love You and the One Time He Did

one.

He's taking his first gulps of air after a gruelling dance training session when the door opens and a big-eyed boy with hair falling messily over his forehead peeks in. Hyukjae is very, very used to the myriad of trainees parading in and out of SM's doors by now, all with varying degrees of good looks, swagger, talent and apprehension, so he merely gives the boy a cursory look (though it registers vaguely that the boy is very, very good-looking) before turning back to Junsu to joke about how he's so tired that he's not going to survive the rest of the day.

The next minute he feels a tap on his shoulder and turns around to see the boy smiling shyly at him with a sort of appeal in his eyes that Hyukjae can't look away from (and won't be able to resist, ever, for the next sixty or so years, though he doesn't know that yet).

"Hello, you are Hyukjae, right?" the boy says, ducking his head with some embarrassment. "The staff told me your name."

"Um, yeah," Hyukjae says, trying to be friendly, but really he's too stunned because now that he's looking at the boy full in the face, he realises that this is one good-looking kid who's going to turn out to be a beautiful male and is this what he's up against?

The boy shuffles his feet a bit, then finds courage from some hidden reserve and raises his eyes to Hyukjae's. "I'm Donghae. It's really nice to meet you!"

He reaches out to grab Hyukjae's hand in a hasty, awkward handshake. His palm is kind of really really soft and Hyukjae's thoughts sputter for a moment.

"Um, yeah," he says again, like an idiot, and then, like the bigger idiot that he is, "I'm Hyukjae." (He knows that already!)

Then Donghae smiles, and it is kind of hesitant and hopeful and all kinds of breath-taking. Hyukjae grips his hand, says loudly, "I'm Hyukjae! Nice to meet you! Welcome to SM!"

Donghae brightens up like the sun coming out (and Hyukjae will see that bright look many many times over the next sixty odd years, will come to depend on it like the sun itself, though he doesn't know that yet.

For now, he just tries very hard to ignore the pounding of his heart.)

two.

"Hyukjae," Donghae whispers one night when they're cuddled up in bed together (or, to put it more accurately, Donghae had barged in and insisted on sharing the bed just as Hyukjae was making himself comfortable. There is no excuse. Their trainee dorms are cramped, but not so cramped that they have to share beds. Still, it's Donghae, so Hyukjae can't be bothered to make a fuss.)

"What?" he asks patiently even though all he really wants to do is sleep until the next century.

"You can't freak out on me, okay? I have something important to tell you."

"What?"

Donghae takes in a deep breath and plunges forward. "I really, really like you. I am so happy that we met. And I want us to be a duo together, some day, performing on stage together. Just the two of us."

Hyukjae opens his mouth, and for a moment it seems that they're close enough, and the night is quiet enough, and the feelings are just right for him to say I really, really like you too, and I am so happy that we met, and I want us to be together for always.

But as always, common sense prevails.

"Maybe one day," he says, choosing his words carefully. "One day we'll perform together on stage."

He feels Donghae's smile against his chest.

"I'm glad you didn't freak out," Donghae says, his voice growing sleepy now that he's gotten it off his chest. "It's gonna be my dream. Performing with Hyukjae."

Hyukjae holds him as he falls asleep.

(One day. It becomes a sort of mantra within him.)

three.

It's cold. It's freezing. "And you're an idiot," he says to Donghae through numb lips.

Donghae just laughs at him, eyes sparkling in a way they really shouldn't when it's this early in the morning. He gets that it's New Year's morning and therefore a special occasion, but do they have to spend it outdoors? They've only been back in Seoul for maybe two hours; surely he deserves some rest.

"Take a tip from a country bumpkin," Donghae says. "This is worth it."

"Oh yes, because you left Mokpo like, eons ago, but you're still so in touch with nature, right?"

"I'm c-c-old," Junghoon stammers from behind them, and they pause to direct a few sympathetic thoughts in his direction because no matter how much Hyukjae hates being out here in the cold and how much Donghae wants to force them into this vigil with him, Junghoon is the genuine victim at the beck and call of their whims.

"Aha!" Donghae says suddenly. "Look!"

Hyukjae looks in the direction that Donghae's pointing and doesn't see anything at all. "What am I looking for? Spaceships? Stars? A heater?"

"The sunrise, you !"

And just as Donghae mentions it, a glimmer of sunlight does appear in the horizon. Hyukjae tucks his hands into his pockets and watches as the light spreads across the sky, slow and wondrous, as though it's doing it for the first time and is a little anxious of its reception. The golden streaks appear. The pinks. The glow of the clouds.

2013, he thinks. A new year. So many mornings to come. So many thousands of hours. So many words to be said, so many thoughts to be thought, so many emotions to be felt, so many moments to be remembered. And we're beginning with this…

He realises that Donghae has slipped his hand into his jacket pocket, and carefully he twines their fingers together as the last of sunrise give way to the first morning of the new year. Throughout the ages, the years, decades, millenniums of this ancient earth, countless people must have stood just like that, watching the sunrise and thinking about the year to come.

He turns to Donghae and sees the morning light reflected in his smiling eyes. "Let's make a wish," he says.

"Mmm," Donghae says, and scrunches his eyes shut, thinking. "My first wish of 2013 is…to release an album with Hyukjae and have a concert tour together."

Hyukjae looks at Donghae's face, smiling and hopeful, and loves him so much in that moment that he has to glance away to rearrange his thoughts.

"Come on," says Donghae, opening his eyes. "You wish it, too. Make it louder so God will hear."

Hyukjae laughs. "Fine," he says. "In that case, we should do a video too, so we can replay it constantly until God is sick of it and makes it come true."

(But they don't do the video just yet. They continue holding hands in his pocket, watching the now formless morning sky, thinking of dreaming dreams. Maybe they pray a little.

He caresses Donghae's hand with his thumb.)

four.

They're messing around as usual. They can't help it. They're so jubilant and excited and happy about finally being on stage together as a duo (finally, finally, finally, they're in that one day), that it's as though their happiness overflows and floods every single auditorium that they perform in. They've told the fans plenty of times already how happy and grateful they are to be holding this tour, but it isn't enough – the fans will understand, but not really; they won't know that the fulfilment of this dream has been more than ten years in the making, that the mantra in Hyukjae's heart has finally been silenced.

"What will we be doing ten years later?" Donghae muses. It's one of the subjects that they've planned on talking about now and then throughout the tour, because it's something they can goof around with. Get married (of course)! Surf the biggest waves in Hawaii! Climb Mount Everest! Learn to cook soondubu jiggae without mashing up the tofu!

"Maybe I'll have a child by then," Donghae says.

"I want your kids to look like me," Hyukjae returns, more jokingly than anything else, expecting Donghae to comment on how he doesn't want his kids to be ugly (though somehow, inside, a part of him thinks it would be so nice to have children who look like Donghae – like him and Donghae – with his own jawline, perhaps, and definitely with Donghae's eyes. Children who will laugh like the world has given them everything they could ever want. Who will do ridiculous things on impulse, cry in the middle of an argument, fight and love and live with passion. Who will be a little bit of Lee Hyukjae and a little bit of Lee Donghae.)

"I don't mind, actually," Donghae says, surprisingly. "It'll be good if my kids look like Eunhyuk, because then I can look at their faces and be happy always. Even if they don't resemble him, it'll still be okay, because I'll remember his face and be happy."

He smiles at Hyukjae against the bright concert lights and puts the microphone down. You make me happy, he mouths.

Hyukjae swallows hard. He doesn't know what exactly to say to that. They haven't rehearsed this conversation. Donghae wasn't supposed to give a reply like that; a reply that's all sorts of confusing and illogical and genuinely heartfelt. He doesn't know what's an appropriate response in a situation like this, when your best friend and colleague tells you that he wants his children to look like you because it'll be his constant source of happiness.

But he does know what he shouldn't say.

That is, what he actually wants to say.

(That is, I wouldn't mind if my children were a little bit of you, and a little bit of me.)

five.

"I bet everyone is waiting for the embarrassing pictures of Eunhyuk," says Donghae.

Hyukjae grimaces a little backstage as he changes his jacket and looks around for his change of shoes. Donghae had been running through his picture gallery on his phone the previous night, trying to decide between half a dozen photos, and a couple of them had been so unflattering that Hyukjae had scuffled with him trying to snatch his phone away. It isn't his fault that he isn't picture-perfect all the time, unlike freaky humanoids called Lee Donghae (he'd never realised how difficult it was to find unglamorous shots of Donghae until he started trying).

Donghae goes on talking, his voice echoing hollowly around the auditorium. "But tonight I'm only showing cool pictures of Eunhyuk."

Hyukjae cranes his head, along with the rest of the concert staff, to see a picture of Donghae with the red SMEG fridge that he'd bought him for his birthday reflected on the little TV monitor backstage.

"I asked him if he would buy me anything for my birthday, and he said yes, of course, anything. I said there was something I wanted badly, so we went to the departmental store together and he bought me this fridge."

He does remember buying the fridge, of course, it wasn't too long ago; just last year, in fact, wasn't it? When they'd hopped into the car and driven off to the huge Lotte outlets, and they'd been playing Busker Busker on the radio, Donghae's voice loud and high as he dragged out the notes in 'Cherry Blossom Ending' the way Jang Bum Joon did. They hadn't taken long to find the fridge and Hyukjae had ed about the price tag when he found out how much it cost, but he'd bought it eventually. ("You better put lots of strawberry milk in there for what this is costing me," he'd told Donghae, and Donghae had simply laughed and laughed, mostly because he was well aware that Hyukjae never did accounting for money that was spent on him.)

Hyukjae comes back to the present to hear Donghae saying, "…out of gratitude to Eunhyuk. Both of us are always together, we eat together, watch TV together…and he was the first person I met in SM."

"Idiot," he says, and the male staff members laugh, thinking the whole thing's a joke, but a couple of the female staff members look at him and smile. They seem to know better. They seem to know, with the envied instinct of their , what it's like to feel tenderness.

When he steps back onto the stage, the lights dazzle him for a moment and when they clear, he sees Donghae standing there looking at him with a somewhat tentative smile. They've spoken a lot about feelings over the last (countless) years. They've been sentimental, they've teased, they've talked a bunch of nonsense, they've made plenty of jokes. But they've never really reminisced before, not like this – this oddly personal, intimate way. Donghae's wondering if he has somehow overstepped the invisible boundaries.

"So," says Hyukjae, "my birthday is coming up soon. What are you getting for me?"

Donghae doesn't miss a beat. "You can take back the fridge, I've only used it for five months anyway."

Just like that, the slight layer of tension vanishes, and they're back to being just as they were again.

(Except, except. He holds onto Donghae just a little longer during the farewell bow that night. Nobody else will perceive it, but he knows Donghae will.)

six. / one.

Donghae comes crying into his room that night.

He's been privy to all sorts of Donghae-tears, so this one doesn't alarm him; it's the happy kind of crying. Though Donghae in happy-crying mood is sometimes more vulnerable than Donghae in sad-crying mood and needs a little more pampering.

Hyukjae deposits him on the bed and sits down to wait it out.

"Don't tell me," he says when Donghae's tears begin to quiet down. "You've been listening to our album again?"

"I should…should give up on being your friend," Donghae sniffs indignantly. "I come in peace, and you just make fun of me."

Hyukjae laughs comfortably, pats his arm. "Tell me."

"I've just been looking at our pictures, that's all," Donghae says, and begins to cry again. "It's been such a long time. So many things have happened. So many people have come and gone. And yet, here I still am. Beside you."

Hyukjae would normally say something funny to lighten the mood, but tonight he doesn't feel like it. Tonight he reaches out and pulls Donghae towards him, wraps him in his arms. Smells the lemon scent of his shampooed hair. Feels the smooth curve of his shoulder. And maybe, maybe, after so many years of common sense prevailing, of suppression, maybe this is finally the right time. Or maybe the right time has been there all along, right from that night long ago when Donghae had whispered I really really like you, and he just hasn't had the courage to reach out and grab it in his palms.

But if he missed that time – if he was too young that time – he isn't too young anymore. He knows his mind, and he trusts Donghae, implicitly, like he has never trusted anyone before and will never trust anyone else with this absolute, unerring confidence. If they've taken the long way in getting to this point, he'll make sure that they won't continue going around in circles. If he feels that all the sustenance he really needs in life is Donghae, he won't risk the chance of losing him because he didn't speak out.

"Donghae," he says, "you can't freak out on me, okay?"

Donghae looks up at him curiously, tears still clinging on to his eyelashes. "Freak out about what?"

Hyukjae smiles at the tears. Leans forward and presses his lips to Donghae's eyes, softly, gently, ignoring the shock that runs like an electric current through Donghae's body. "If I was to tell you that I love you, that I'm in love with you as much as anyone can be, and that all I want in life is you, partly because I'm a fool who can't see anyone else but you and mostly because you're more than anyone could ask for – would you accept it or leave me heartbroken…I wonder?"

Donghae stares silently at him, and for a moment, Hyukjae thinks this is it; he's going to throw the proposal straight back in his face, make fun of it or worse – make light of it – and it'll be shoved under the carpet of unwanted emotions and nothing will ever be the same.

Then Donghae smiles, small, like the first glimmer of the sun coming out, and says, "You can kiss me if you want."

"No, wait," Hyukjae says, his mind still vaguely panicky, picking through the words; "it's not so simple, really, not as simple as I've made out – I mean, if you don't want this, and you think I'm pressurising you in some way, then by all means – don't. Because this is a huge undertaking and it means everything, really, and if it doesn't work out, we'll…"

"Hyukjae," says Donghae, "I've loved you – wanted you – since I was a kid."

Hyukjae takes a deep breath and grips Donghae's arms to keep himself from falling, though really who is he kidding, there's nowhere further that he can fall.

"Alright then," he says. "I do want to kiss you."

(And this is the start of many, many beautiful years together, filled with love and companionship and trust, with laughter and tears and secret glances and exquisite pleasures.

With, at the end of the day, a kind of wonderful, enduring friendship that is stronger than any love story, more lasting than any relationship.

Though he doesn't know that yet. He only guesses.)

coda

"If you'll stop wearing those Mickey Mouse hats…," says Junghoon, "maybe we'll have a chance of actually not being humiliated."

They take off their shirts later on that day, shout and pose in the car park, just to victimise Junghoon a little bit more.

Hyukjae looks at Donghae, staunchly beside him, laughing and whooping, beautiful and brilliant and endearing in the way only Donghae can be, and thinks:

The next time I feel this way, I'll tell him that I want to kiss him.

end