You're in a car with a beautiful boy, and he won't tell you that he loves you, but he loves you. And you feel like you've done something terrible, like robbed a liquor store, or swallowed pills, or shoveled yourself a grave in the dirt, and you're tired. You're in a car with a beautiful boy, and you're trying not to tell him that you love him, and you're trying to choke down the feeling, and you're trembling, but he reaches over and he touches you, like a prayer for which no words exist, and you feel your heart taking root in your body, like you've discovered something you didn't even have a name for.

"There are two reasons as to why one can't look into the eyes of another: he is either hiding something he has done wrong, or hiding untold affection."

Sunggyu can't breathe. The chilly air of jeju island permeates his lungs, coats his skin in a bioluminescent layer of sunshine, and he feels an inexplicable fullness reach deep into his pores, one that chokes him up, leaving him unable to do anything but stare out of the window into the distant coastline silently. Michael Jackson's playing softly from the radio, and Woohyun is humming, drumming his fingers in a little dance across the steering wheel. Sunggyu sits stiffly, painfully aware of the space between them, and his fingers itch. 

They haven't seen each other in two years, and it's exactly this foreign feeling that Sunggyu fears. So many things have become different - Woohyun's hair, Woohyun's eyes, Woohyun's laugh - and he can't keep up with it. They don't speak, and the silence is suffocating. Words swirl within him. It's been two years, a huge gap of avoidance, of denial, and he still can't look into Woohyun's eyes. He glances over, then slides his eyes shut. They used to know each other so well - but all that is gone with the wind, gone with infinite - and all he has left are his damned feelings, ones that should be buried deep. Sunggyu's exhausted, winded up from hiding that simple fact. If only he had known how hard this would be.

He feels worse than when he had stolen their manager's credit card to buy Dongwoo a birthday present, worse than when he had lied to his parents about getting wasted at a party, worse than he had first met Woohyun at a high school indie rock festival and felt a sinking in his stomach then - something he had blamed on a bad bit of dumpling. He knows better now. It takes more than just nervous energy to swallow this, to pretend like everything is okay, when he is combusting from inside out, consumed by unspoken emotions, intensified only by the distance. 

He turns, and stares at Woohyun's side profile for a long, long time. The soft music resonates in his brain, along with the gentle singing from the boy. Sunggyu just stares, but the details escape his mind and his vision swims. All he sees is a strange outline, an undefined sketch of the old Woohyun he used to know. The words almost escape him then, an almost desperate attempt to close the distance between them. He's shaking, the unwarranted confession at the tip of his tongue, and it overwhelms him.

Woohyun turns, then, and catches Sunggyu's eyes, grinning like he's been waiting for this all along.

His breath hitches in his throat, and he swallows, wrenching his gaze away when the world feels like it is burning up in slow, luminous flames.

Woohyun's hand is on his chin in a flash, tilting it upwards to meet his gaze. Sunggyu feels an odd tingle, a weird jump-start in his heart. He tries to move away, but Woohyun's eyes are molten gold, curving perfectly and looking straight into his. It hurts in the most perfect way.

Woohyun pulls over.

Slender fingers hook around his shoulder and tug. It's a familiar embrace, one that makes Sunggyu greedy. He craves so much more than these simple touches, craves so much more than bodily connection. He wants Woohyun's very essence, the core of his soul to be bared to him, in a bond that he quite possibly thinks may be love, only more intense, and he doesn't know how to describe such an emotion, because words will never be enough.

"It's been so long," Woohyun whispers in his ear, voice raspy and low. Sunggyu just grips onto the back of his leather jacket, tightly, and doesn't let go. His mind goes into overdrive. Should he take this risk and set the consequences ablaze?

His heart eventually wins over his head, and the words are stumbling out his mouth before he can catch them.

"I think," he has to pause midway, because his throat is dry and he can't seem to phrase anything other than conjuncted verbs and nouns. "Woohyun, I think I love you."

Silence hangs heavily, and Sunggyu slides his eyes shut. He doesn't need to know the verdict, because Woohyun is a sky full of stars, and he would gladly die in his arms.

Another warm arm slides around his waist.

Woohyun doesn't seem surprised, just purely elated.

"I, I think I do, too," he whispers half a minute later, hushed, in awe.

"How long - "

"If I were a greaseball I'd say right from the start. And I am one."

That lazy grin that Sunggyu loves is on his face again, and his heart explodes. It feels like fleeting starbursts of light, illuminating his soul, filling him to the brim with a blinding glow of warmth. He smiles, wider than ever, eyes thinning, because he has been waiting for this, since the forever in their numbered days began.

Perhaps his scrambled, incoherent prayer had been answered, after Sunggyu had lost himself in a myriad of dreams and hypothesised scenarios that had squeezed the blood in his heart out like a sponge, draining him, with the only source of repair being Woohyun. What should he place this under? Too strong for simple attraction, too intense for affection, too far gone for love. He can't pinpoint this feeling, one that makes him feel like he's alive all over again, his heart grounding itself firmly in his chest, beating rapidly. He chokes up anyway, and smiles through tears in Woohyun's embrace.

They're cruising, listening to a Michael Jackson song, just like they had been ages ago, when they were just two blissfully oblivious boys in love with each other.

For the first time in two years, Sunggyu can finally breathe.