If you ever reached a stage in your life where you found yourself in a laundromat and had to wait for your load to finish, or if you ever were just curious to see the process of the washing machine at your own house as it tossed the clothes inside to all sides, creaked and groaned. If you ever ended up staying through the entire thing like Hansol had, watching as everything blended into rich white foam and water splashed around perpetually — then you might just have a pretty good understanding of what he is currently feeling like on the inside.

After all, love is the number one catalyst of heartache in the world and can make you feel like you need to bang your head repeatedly against a wall, and Hansol is more than inclined to believe such a statement.

How could he not see it before? It’s so obvious now, Seungkwan is the one who always keeps him at balance.

If he is the sky and the sun and everything that moves at once with a clamor, like the weather and the pouring rain, then Hansol is the earth and the soil and everything that grows over a long period of time, quietly, and without anyone ever taking notice.

If Seungkwan is rose quartz, Hansol is serenity. If Seungkwan is a Hufflepuff: caring, loyal and patient, Hansol is a Ravenclaw: creative, compassionate but distant.  

Seungkwan is an ENFP and Hansol’s an INFP; If they were to be elements, Seungkwan would be water and Hansol would be wind. If they were to be the times of day, Seungkwan would be the sunrise and Hansol would be dusk. And if by some odd, unlikely chance they happened to be articles of clothing, Seungkwan would be best described as a sock and Hansol would be his fellow sock that gets lost during laundry, lodged underneath the rubber water seal for many other washes that would cause it to fray.           

D-1



October 30th, 00:03 AM

Wet little dots appear on the fabric of Seungkwan’s costume one by one and bleed together into a single dark spot. Hansol's hair sticks to his scalp and his shirt drapes around him heavily, like he's just finished soaking in an hour-long ice-cold bath.

What the hell has he just done? Why can he never say the right thing? Why does he always have to blurt out the very first thought that goes through his head? But more importantly, why the hell can't he bring his feet to move, and why does it feel like he's about to crumble down and perish if he doesn't force himself to do so soon?

Hansol crumples the torn cloak in one of his rocky hands. The fabric wrinkles and collects around his knuckles in soggy heaps, streaks of water dripping to the ground, adding to the trenchant pour of rain that increases with every passing second. He has to do something now. He has to go after him. He has to make everything alright again.

If only he could reverse the clock just a few years back, to a time when things were a hell lot easier and he didn't feel as if he must walk on eggshells around his best friend.

Hansol has to move.

He glances down at the glaring crimson in his hand one more time; the big black frilly bow now hangs lifeless and heavy from the garment's front.

How appropriate.

The wind snatches Seungkwan's cloak and carries it to a nearby puddle when Hansol's shoes create a frantic trail of splashes across the ground. Stupid, stupid, stupid! his mind screams at him as he races down the slope, past a playground where a cat flees to find shelter from the hail, and through a bunch of familiar streets irritatingly weaving in and out of each other, making it harder for him to secure a foothold as he makes a turn every few seconds, his shoes fumbling clumsily across the slippery asphalt.   

When Hansol reaches the dorm building his heart thumps madly up in his throat, the little oxygen he has left in his body coming out in short and shallow breaths. He pushes the entrance doors wide open with his shoulder and staggers inside.

Hansol takes the steps two at a time, because right now, he can’t be bothered with waiting to the elevator, because even those three seconds are too crucial to be wasted.

“Hyung, you’re here!” Chan calls when Hansol reaches his target floor and enters the corridor, noting how Wonwoo and Minghao, who are standing next to Chan near their apartment door, have been profoundly whispering to each other prior to his arrival. “Quick, you have to do something about Seungkwan-hyung, he came back from your walk very upset! Oh no, wait, you are all wet, too. That’s no good, you’re gonna catch a cold and make things mess— ”

“Chan.” Wonwoo grips Chan’s shoulder, and the younger falls back in silence like a kicked puppy.

“Dude, don’t go in there.” Minghao grabs Hansol’s arm as he whizzes by them heedlessly, voice imploring. Hansol shakes him off with a scowl and quickens his step even more, because of course, of course he’s going to go in there. He’s going to go in there, drop to his knees, plead and bewail like he’s just assassinated the presidental family, and beg for forgiveness.

After Hansol barges in, Jeonghan is the first one he recognizes.

“How is he?” Jeonghan asks, thumbnail mercilessly jammed between his teeth as Mingyu treads to the front of the apartment from one of the bedrooms. “Seokmin’s still trying to calm him down, but I don’t really know how that’s gonna turn out, he won’t even let us six feet from him...” Mingyu responds, and Junhui squeezes Jeonghan’s shoulder right after.

Both Jeonghan and Mingyu fall silent when they, along with everybody else in the living room, turn to look at Hansol as he limps his way into view, drenched shoes squeaking loudly across the floor tile. “Vernon…” Jisoo murmurs and straightens up from his slouched sitting position against the wall.

Seungcheol is the next person Hansol recognizes. As soon as he sees Hansol rushing past the members in the direction of the bedrooms, Seungcheol’s face hardens into a seething expression, and he begins charging toward the flat entrance. “What the hell did you do this time, you ing bastard?!”

“Hyung!” Jihoon tries to hold him back, but Seungcheol easily frees himself from him, eyes red with rage. “You aren't going near that ing room even if it means I'll have to break every single one of your bones!” he barks at Hansol in warning.

“Hyung, please listen to me! this isn't the way t—”

“No, I won't listen! He made him cry again! That son of a made him cry again, Jihoon, what the am I supposed to do, huh?! How the can I not get mad, Jihoon?!”

Seungcheol’s words hit Hansol like a ton of bricks. He halts in his tracks, shaking his head fervently. No, this isn’t true. He’s lying. He's lying, the self-justifying side of him tries to argue with all of its might, but something in him knows. Knows that Seungcheol isn't the one who's lying.

“I didn't know, I didn’t know...”

“God damn it, Hansol! You never know anything, do you?!” Seungcheol bashes his fist against the wall, and it shakes, causing everyone else in the room to startle. “Who do ya’ think he always comes running to whenever you don't pay him enough attention, huh?! Who do ya’ think has to pick up the pieces each ing  time because you're too far up your own to notice how ty your behavior is?!”

The space around them floods with the animosity and anguish dripping from Seungcheol’s voice, and Jeonghan hides his face in Junhui’s shoulder with a sound frighteningly similar to a whimper. But the shouting only continues more harmful and venomous then before, “You know, I always tell him: ‘Don't take it to heart, Hansol is too dense for his own good, he's a nice guy. He doesn't mean anything by it.' But I'm ing sick and tired of backing you up! I can't make any more ty excuses, not when he's hurting so much!"

“He’s right, you know,” Mingyu interjects, glaring spitefully at Hansol from across the room. “You’ve been acting like a huge recently. Don’t let it surprise you if he doesn’t want to talk to you ever again.”  

“Mingyu, don’t, pleas—” Jihoon starts, but Seungcheol silences him with a sharp gesture. “No, he can say whatever he wants, he has a full right to do so!”

“Mingyu, please,” Jihoon asks again, regardless. “Just take the rest of the kids standing outside and get out of here.”

“No, Mingyu, go check on him.”

“Mingyu, take the rest of the kids and get out of here now. ”

“Why should we cater to him?” Mingyu directs his attention at the clashing pair, finger pointed at Hansol’s steadfast form, fixed to the floor opposite them. “He’s the one at fault here, he’s the one who should be leaving!”

“Shut up and do as I tell you once in your goddamn life, you brat! Do you want to make it harder for Seungkwan?!”

Mingyu pipes down effectively after that. He draws his mouth into a critical line, and tramps toward the entrance with a huff, not missing out on the opportunity of bumping shoulders with Hansol on his way out. “I hope he doesn’t forgive you so easily this time,” comes the acidic hiss, then he’s gone with a resounding bang.

Hansol feels like he’s just been run over by a truck and is slowly watching his entrails ooze out of his body into a gory mess at the side of the road. “Hyung, please let me go,” he tries to argue feebly.   

“Why should I?” Seungcheol snaps, bitter and imperious. “So you can make things even worse?”

“B-because,” Hansol braces himself in front of his incriminating gaze, palms all of a sudden slick with cold sweat and dreadfully jittery — restless. “Because I have to.” His hands settle in a determined vise around the air, stern yet relaxed at the same time. “I have to.”

“You don’t have to do anything, Hansol,” Seungcheol dictates, teeth ferally bared around his spat-out words. “Just stay put or get out of my sight!” The room seems to freeze at the thundering ultimatum, and everyone collectively hold in their breaths, anxiously waiting for someone to shatter the thick layer of ice.

On any other day, Hansol would choose to surrender — yield to the demands of his challenger, and back away instantly. He despises conflict above all else, and tries to avoid confrontation as much as possible. ‘Live and let live,’ is his motto. He’s the kind of guy to simply accept others’ decisions and never insult or judge them personally. That is, until one of his principles is being put in jeopardy. Until something he feels strongly about, something he truly and deeply cares for, is being disparaged, spit and stepped on — not even given a second thought.

Just because Hansol is generally a nice guy doesn't mean any short-tempered prick can withhold him from doing what’s right!

“No, you stay put all you want. I’m going in there.” Hansol glowers at everyone who’d so much as dare call his decree into question, his voice uncharacteristically commanding as he roughly shoves Seungcheol out of his way.

“I said to stay ing put, you little !”

Before Hansol can take another step, his arm is being yanked brutally backwards with enough force to dislocate his shoulder, and a heavy frame slams him against the nearest object, stealing all the oxygen from his lungs. The backrest of one of the sofa chairs crashes onto the living room floor with an echoing wham, and Hansol hears Seungcheol’s name being shouted out in barely distinguishable distress. His back screams at him in agony as Seungcheol throws his entire weight against his torso, forcing him into a grotesque angle: bended in two on the upturned legs of the couch, that keep on painfully jabbing into his spine while he struggles to free himself.

“Get the off!” Hansol rasps and reins in all of his power so he can fend off Seungcheol and flip him onto the ground. The chair gets pushed across the floor from the impact, and Seungcheol groans when his head hits the tile, tugging on Hansol’s collar ferociously. In a reckless, spur-of-the-moment kind of decision, the younger’s hands shoot around Seungcheol’s neck and fasten down firmly to cut his air supply short, thus keeping him in place.  

“You disrespectful… ing... punk…” Seungcheol wheezes, blunt nails digging into the back of Hansol’s hands and leaving furious trails of blood.

Hansol’s hold falters, and Seungcheol coughs out a juicy insult before kneeing him in the stomach, causing him to recoil into a crouching position less than three feet away. And that’s the last thing Hansol registers, because immediately after, something hard and callous collides with his jaw in exceeding force, and he’s sent flying to the coffee table at the centre of the room, some of the glass shards the blow creates breaking through his exposed skin and leaving dripping crimson slashes all across his face and neck.

For the second time this night, Hansol feels an agonizing pounding sensation taking residence in every last corner of his brain and rendering his vision muddy. Just this time, he also tastes the indisputable sharpness of iron on his tongue. He can faintly make out Seungcheol’s form looming above him like a vulture, preparing for the final assault, but then a third body enters his bleary view; knocking Seungcheol sideways before he can finish what he’s set out to do.  

“Stop!” Hansol hears an alien voice ringing hotly in his ears. At first he chalks it up to his tarnished receptiveness, but then the voice speaks up once more and he understands why it sounded so unfamiliar to him. “Seungcheol, stop it! Can’t you see that you’re the one making everything worse?! Just take a look around you and tell me what you see! Just look around you, for ’s sake! Look at what you’re ing doing, Goddamnit! look at what you’re doing to Jeonghan!”

There’s no questioning it, the faded signs of softness that still linger at the end of every snarled word, the rhotic accent which only seems to get stronger as the accusations grow more heated; this is Josh’s voice.

Hansol never heard him raising his tone before, nor did he ever hear him swearing so much. These unsettling thoughts only become scarier in his mind when he finally brings himself to take in his surroundings.

Jeonghan has completely curled up in Junhui’s embrace during the fight and is currently weeping uncontrollably into his chest. The two of them are sitting against the wall leading to the hallway, and Jihoon stands in front of them like a protective barrier, both arms spread out widely. Then there’s Jisoo and Seungcheol…

Jisoo and Seungcheol are lying rigidly on the floor only a few feet away from him, in a position very similar to the one he was holding Seungcheol in merely moments before. Only now it’s Jisoo who’s trapping Seungcheol down with one of the big couch cushions, knees digging into his thighs forcibly to prevent any chance of escape.      

“Just stop it! Just ing stop it!” With the fury spewing from deep within his veins like bubbling magma, with the vicious, scalding sparks of sheer frustration explosively shooting from his bloodshot eyes, with the heat and the thick, stifling smoke that hangs around the two of them like a heavy cloud — with all of those comes the lavid and liquidy barrage of English exclamations. Fiery words turning cold and hard in Jisoo’s mouth like at the end of a volcano eruption, when everything is nothing but pristine black stone and barren, wispy lands;

“ You should’ve talked to me! You should’ve let me know! You shouldn’t have lied, you should’ve said something... ” Jisoo mutters in a broken whisper, head held low, and in that moment, Hansol knows. Knows that these words — these sad, choked up words — are not meant for Seungcheol’s ears.

“Jisoo, let me go, or so help me God I’ll kill you both!”

“Cut it out!” A new voice booms throughout the room, and from the murky edges of Hansol’s wine-stained sight, Soonyoung steps out, instantly abandoning the grocery bag in one of his hands to the side and darting toward the brawling duo on the floor. “You two should feel ashamed of yourselves,” he says awfully grim as he tears Jisoo apart from Seungcheol and positions himself between them, eyes staring reproachfully down at the riled up leader. “Especially you, I expected much better from you. You’re supposed to play the responsible adult part, you should know better than this.”

Seungcheol only purses his lips harshly in return but doesn't get up from his place, and Jisoo ducks his gaze down at his shoes in guilt, hand bashfully rubbing at his upper arm.

“Jihoon, I’m taking him, would you and Junnie be alright?”

“Yeah, yeah, just do it already!”

“C’mon, get up.” Soonyoung reaches toward Hansol and grabs his elbow, and the fallen boy lets him pull him up, supporting one of his arms around his shoulders as they make their way outside the apartment and down to the ground floor.

They walk through a knitted cluster of small, sleeping neighborhoods and turn a corner to the main street. Everything is a haze; It’s only when Soonyoung instructs him not to move from his spot by the bindaetteok cart while he goes catch a cab, does Hansol realize his legs have been operating all this time by their own. People don’t make a noticeable effort to disguise their repulsion as they pass him by, and Hansol can’t blame them, what with the way his bangs stick to his forehead with fresh trickles of blood, and his sopping, half-torn shirt barely clings to his bruised torso with the help of some unbroken threads. Fortunately enough, Soonyoung returns and pushes him inside an awaiting taxi before the ahjussi managing the stall he’s leaning next to can shoo him off for disrupting his customer flow.

Next thing Hansol knows, they're at the company and Soonyoung swings the dance studio door wide open, rushing him inside. “Sit down. I’m gonna go see if I can find the first aid kit and bring you some towels.”

“Hyung, I have to talk to him! I got to tell him I didn't mean it, I didn't know it'll turn out this way! It was a big misunderstanding, hyung, I could never stop liking him, hyung, I—”

“The both of you are in no condition to have a proper conversation. You have to calm down first, Hansol, now you're just not in the right state of mind to be thinking things through. It wouldn't be smart to try talking with him before you figured out your own first. Also I'd hate to see you wind up at the hospital over a misunderstanding, so please, would you be so kind and sit down?”

Hansol clicks his mouth shut and flops down to the linoleum floor. “C'mon, dry yourself up before this entire room starts to reek of wet dog fur,” Soonyoung says when he returns from the locker room a few minutes later, chucking a towel at his direction. Hansol catches it in his hands but doesn’t bother budging from the sagging position he has assumed against the mirror.

“, hyung. I'm so... bad.”

“No, you're not. A little inconsiderate, maybe, but not bad.” Soonyoung gets on his knees in front of Hansol and s the first aid kit in his lap, placing the grocery bag he’s been carrying with him all this time near the mirror just beside them. Hansol shakes his head and buries it between his knees, arms instinctively wrapping around his shins to form a sheltering cocoon.

“It's all my fault, I hurt him so much, hyung. And now everyone's involved in this too and it's all my fault. I made him cry, hyung, and I chose to ignore it more than once. I'm so bad.”

“I already told you, you aren't bad.” Soonyoung grips Hansol’s shoulder, signaling him to sit straight up. “Just somewhat clueless, and that's,” he pauses for a moment when Hansol’s eyes meet his own, lips quirking up into half a smile, “that's fine.”

“Is it really?”

Soonyoung’s hand falls from Hansol’s shoulder to his feet, lifting the forgotten towel off the floor.  “People make mistakes all the time,” he starts off matter-of-factly, grabbing a mineral water bottle from the pile of essential medical items he chose to retrieve from the locker room. “Take it from me, doing dumb is the key to self-growth. It’s what allows guys like you and me to come face to face with our stupid wrongdoings and change for the better.”

While he talks, Soonyoung soaks the towel in water, and holds Hansol’s jaw firmly between a thumb and a forefinger so he can wipe the gunk off his face, occasionally turning his chin to different sides to get a new area dabbed down. “None of us are born martyrs, kid, even the ones who pray four times a day and abstain from anything that’s considered ‘sinful’. There are some people like that who harbor more hate than even the most depraved criminals out there, and they aren't even the least aware that their blind loathing is ed up and should probably be considered a sin in and of itself.”

After Hansol’s face has been thoroughly cleaned off, and the once white towel transforms into a light rosy rag, Soonyoung tosses it aside, and takes the rubbing alcohol from the first aid kit in one of his hands along with a packet of cotton balls.

“You make ty decisions, you own up to them — simple as that.”

Hansol winces when the burning liquid comes in contact with the wide gash on his brow bone, and an acrid smell fills up his nostrils, traveling all the way down his itchy throat toward his lungs. He remains mostly quiet while Soonyoung continues to carefully disinfect the wounds on his neck and left cheek, only letting mild noises of discomfort slip through his gritted teeth when the sting from the alcohol gets too much for him to simply brush off.

“But sometimes people make ty decisions that are impossible to fix...”

“Trust me, this isn’t the case here.” Soonyoung furrows his brow, clicking his tongue as he finishes tapping the last of Hansol’s cuts with a piece of alcohol-drenched cotton. “Alright, kid, you're all patched up now and ready to take on the world.” He smacks Hansol’s shoulder with a hearty laugh, and after some further thought drags the grocery bag he’s set aside earlier, reaching inside and laying out two ice cream containers across the floor.

“Want some? We ran out just before you came back and of course, who’s gonna be shipped off to the store in the middle of the night to restock on this crucial nutriment if not yours truly? It’s vanilla and choco mix, I think. Didn’t care to look, but I heard this combo is especially good for curing heartache. , you might just actually need it, that bruise of yours is kinda starting to turn a really nasty purple. Here, press it to your chin and like, keep pressing for the next few hours.”

“Hyung, what am I going to do?”

Soonyoung sighs and runs a hand through his hair. “Own up to your ty decision, reflect, learn a few things about yourself.”

Suddenly the air is too difficult to breath, it pierces through Hansol’s chest with countless tiny glowing knives. He thinks that if he doesn't die from a case of suffocation soon, than his rapidly beating heart would surely get the better of him in the end.

“Do you think I can really do that? Do you think the others will just forgive me like that? You think Seungkwan will? Do you think everything’s going to be just the same as before?”

“Hansol, I think — I think you think too much,” Soonyoung all but groans. He rubs his face tiredly with both hands, but ruffles Hansol’s hair fondly shortly after and shuffles to sit next to him against the mirror, elbows automatically settling on his knees as he stares into the other side of the room with some kind of dutiful resolve. “That’s actually why I brought you here. I can’t say I know exactly what’s going on between you and Seungkwan. Hell, half of the time it seems like the two of you aren't even living in the same existential space with the rest of us. What I do know, though, is that whatever you’re going through right now is anything but good, and a pretty big part of it is because you can’t seem to open your eyes to what’s going on around you.”

Soonyoung glances sideways at Hansol, his fingers still tangled up in the younger’s fringe, sweeping dirty bangs into huge and dark honey eyes, concealing them entirely under a frizzy mop of dyed hair.

“I know you don’t mean to push other people away. You just don’t know any other approach,” Soonyoung’s voice reverberates around the studio, familiar and forgiving — similar to the tone one would speak with to a wounded animal, but strangely enough Hansol doesn't find any sign of insult or patronization in it.

“I do it too, in a way. When I come here alone sometimes, I get totally consumed by this inexplicable drive for perfection to an almost unhealthy degree. There’s something about these walls, the fact I can see my reflection staring back at me from every corner. It has a good and a bad side. It gives me the ability to look at things from multiple angles, which is great, but sometimes if I’m not careful enough I just let myself get trapped in here, revising choreo for hours upon hours and never reaching satisfaction. I think — I think in a way, the same thing can be said about you. You get trapped in your head. And here’s the thing, I realized that unlike my case, it’s not a physical thing you can step out of whenever you feel like.”

The impassioned speech fades away momentarily and Hansol blinks, adjusting to regaining his sight after Soonyoung brushes his bangs away from his eyes. The older looks directly at him when he resumes talking, any hint of humor completely gone from his features, “Which is why I want you to stay the night looking at yourself from every possible angle, and step out of here first thing tomorrow morning. Step out of your head and don’t come back until your mind has been completely cleansed of useless thoughts. You’re the imaginative, eccentric type; I figured this sort of thing will speak to you.”

A minute of peaceful silence passes, then Soonyoung bursts into a mad fit of laughter, and punches Hansol’s shoulder — fast enough to create a small margin between the two of them on the floor. “I know, you never thought your hip hyung would turn out to be such a lame- romantic.” He laughs some more, and scratches his upper lip in an unusual display of fickleness. “This idea is kinda wacky, isn’t it?”     

“No, it isn’t.” Hansol shakes his head. “It makes a lot of sense, actually. It’s just that… you want me to skip practice and I can’t do that. We have a comeback coming up soon.”

Soonyoung smiles softly, mimicking the dismissing motions of Hansol’s head. “You can. You can and you will. One day without you isn't going to hurt our progress. Aside from performance team, you're probably the fastest learner. I trust you to pick things up straight from where we left off. Really, you’re fine. You’re better than you think, kid. Now, let’s go get us some blankets or something. We have a long night of sightseeing ahead of us.”

~

They bring over two dusty sleeping bags from the lounge and build a nest of comforters around them. Then they plummet onto the linoleum and sit against the mirror side by side, no margin; each with his own blanket armor. It’s quiet and warm and calming, but sort of weird — to say the least. Soonyoung jokes and says that if the atmosphere keeps on being like that, he’ll get up and dance and nothing can stop him. So Hansol stops him, pulls him straight back down and doesn't let go.

“What do you see?” Soonyoung jerks his chin toward the mirror facing them. “You don’t have to answer...”

A boy. Hansol sees a pale lanky boy with braces and a frizzy mop of brown hair on top of his head. At the moment, he might not look anything like that. His face might be longer, spattered with ugly crimson slits, jaw more defined, features chiseled — more mature. His shoulders may be broader, his chest and arms more muscular, and if he started talking the voice that would come out of his lips will surely be significantly deeper. But his eyes are still the same. And right now they're wide and questioning, staring at him with a sense of confusion and fear. Just as they were four years ago.

Hansol blinks and shifts to his side, planning on sharing his thoughts with Soonyoung. But it turns out he’s been locked in his head for a longer time than he realized, because just when he opens his mouth to speak he notices that the other’s back is completely slumped against the mirror, head lolled downwards, eyes cast with the shadows of his bangs, and chest rising and falling in a relaxed, even pace. Hansol closes his mouth and continues to stare ahead at his reflection. His face hurts him like hell, he wouldn’t mind a break from the pain. His eyelids are heavy, scleras marked by striking red lines of exhaustion. He wants nothing more than to allow them some rest.  

Hansol doesn't fall asleep, and keeps on staring instead.  

8:15 AM

Soonyoung sends him off in the morning before anyone else gets to work, but not before making sure to give him something proper to wear, and checking that his condition hasn’t worsened overnight and he’s fit to get by on his own.

Hansol is wearing one of the spare set of workout clothes Soonyoung keeps in the locker room for when he starts sweating too much. Although the pants end a little too high for his liking and the shirt doesn't have much arm space, stretching around his chest and shoulders when he shimmies into it, the hoodie is big and soft enough for him to forget all about those trivial discomforts. It’s crazy, he thinks as he adjusts his mouth mask, and tugs the beanie lower on his head so it covers up most of his overgrown hair. It’s crazy how he once used to be a lot shorter and smaller than Soonyoung, and now he’s stretching out his clothes.

Ridiculous as he may look, Hansol can’t bring himself to care if he’ll get stared at when he enters the coffee shop closest to the agency, on Soonyoung’s advice, and squeezes into an impatient line of office workers and universty students waiting to order the largest size available of the most caffeine-loaded option on the menu. He thanks the barista in English after she hands him his steaming cup of americano with a bright smile and a big thumbs up, ensuring him of its superior quality in a butchered valley girl accent:  “You like this — we coffee even better than America!”

He’s not even out the door and he can already hear her gossiping in poorly-whispered Korean with her coworker about the handsome white foreigner with the scary cuts on his face and horrible fashion sense. Once he exists the café he puts the mask back over his mouth and pulls his hoodie over his head, deciding to keep them that way for the rest of the day.

The hot beverage soon grows cold in Hansol’s grasp after he absentmindedly plays with the plastic cap, repeatedly taking it on and off and ending up dropping it on the sidewalk. He continues to wander aimlessly through random streets with the steadily cooling cup held stiffly in his right palm, not stopping to take a single sip from it all the while.

What can he say? Coffee just doesn’t strike him as particularly tempting at the moment.  

Eventually Hansol finds himself a nice chunk of wall to lean on, and stays standing against it for a long time, simply observing the busy pedestrians as they rush to and fro different places. One of the people crowding the area pushes an amateurly-designed leaflet into his hands promoting the newly-opened laundromat a couple streets away, and Hansol skims over it, slightly choking on his frozen americano after he brings the styrofoam cup to his lips without remembering to look first. He folds the paper into quarters and pockets it into his sweatshirt as he detaches himself from the wall, thinking that if he hadn’t become a singer he would probably be distributing flyers on the street right now, or working the cash register at a coffee shop. That, or he would more likely be dead in a ditch somewhere like Seungkwan predicted.

Maybe that’d be for the better — if he were indeed dead someplace in which no one could find him. It’d be better for the group, and it’d especially be better for Seungkwan...

Well, on second thought, maybe killing himself off wouldn't be the wisest decision he could make. It’d create more problems for their band than it would fix, and Seungkwan would just end up blaming himself for it like he always does when anything bad happens — and that knowledge is something Hansol just can't live with. Besides, he is pretty sure his family would still miss him if no one else did. So again, jumping off a building is something that he couldn’t ever attempt doing in good conscience.

, he wishes he could at least speak with his parents for a bit and ask for some kind of guidance —  but he doesn't have his cellphone on him, and he certainly doesn't have enough guts to go back and grab Soonyoung’s after the whole ordeal he had him go through this morning. Borrowing a phone from a stranger is obviously out of the question as well...

Perhaps it’s best if he can’t contact his family. What would they have to say about the huge mess he’s created? Would they be mad at him? He guesses not, but his mother would certainly sit him down for a long talk and scold him. She adores Seungkwan, after all. She actually told him once that only a very small percentage gets to meet someone like Seungkwan in their lifetime, and that he should cherish their relationship dearly and not things up unless he wants to get himself a big whopping — and he knows that she doesn't believe in physical punishment under any circumstances, so she must’ve been extremely serious about it.

Hansol supposes he deserves his big whopping right about now. He really did up majorly, didn’t it? He can’t even begin to imagine what he would say to Sofia if he were to see her after everything that’s happened. It was always important to him to act like someone she could look up to — but currently, he can’t think of a less moral example than himself. Seriously, what kind of role model is he? Worst older brother and son in history, that’s what he is. Not to mention the tiest best friend to ever exist...

Hansol tosses his barely finished coffee into the nearest trash can and crams his cold, shaky hands into the pockets of his sweatshirt, teeth chewing on his lower lip strenuously.

No, he shouldn’t encourage such depressing thoughts and think so lowly of himself. Soonyoung promised him yesterday that people make mistakes all the time. According to this philosophy, he isn’t different from any other human being on this planet, right? He should listen to Soonyoung and at least, for his sake, try to change his outlook somewhat. Maybe it’d help. Maybe if he’ll stop thinking so much everything wouldn't hurt as badly and he’ll finally find an answer to the total chaos rampaging in his head.

Maybe...  

Hansol’s fingers curl up inside his pocket, accidentally brushing against the folded flyer from earlier on their mission to dig anxious dents into his palm. He nearly gets a whiplash when he snaps his body around and begins pacing determinately in the other direction from where he was previously heading toward — to the newly-opened laundromat just four or five streets away.

It turns out that not thinking is harder than he imagined it to be. Even when focusing his entire attention on a brand-spanking-new line of spotless chrome washing machines. Maybe it’s because he has no clothes he can shove inside one of them to start up the process — or any money for that matter. And in any case, it’s pretty silly to seek out something like this every time he feels the need to lose himself to the world and all of its stressful, convoluted systems.

Maybe it’s more beneficial if he doesn’t have this kind of distraction, which is not really a distraction but more of a white noise to his thoughts.

Maybe that’s what Soonyoung meant when he said that he gets stuck in his head. He finds the easy way around his problems by spending too much time locked up in his thoughts, basically feeling sorry for himself while doing stuff that’ll divert his attention from the scary outside world — like looking at how washing machines operate, for example.

He does it because it’s ritualistic: safe, unchanging and doesn't require him to actually face the things that trouble him in real life.

Maybe he should really get out of his head and adopt a new perspective — that of a person who tends to see things more at face value and act upon social obstacles instead of complicate situations through endless pondering. Maybe overthinking, sometimes, can make you self absorbed and blind to the most obvious details.     

In the end, and probably by some mysterious force that the majority of Seoul's superstitious populace would come to call inevitable fate, Hansol’s legs carry him to his quiet place — one of the vast green banks of the Han River in Yongsan District, which people pay a visit to on bright, warm days along with family and friends to throw picnics and soak in the sun. October doesn’t have much of those days to offer, and it’s already starting to get dark by the time Hansol arrives, so the area is mostly vacant — save for a couple who’re cuddling happily with each other on top of a big colorful mat, just a few feet away from where he picks himself a dry patch of grass to sit on.  

Usually, Hansol would come to the river equipped with his trusty pair of earphones blaring music at the highest possible volume, and a notepad to scribble on all the fleeting thoughts he could later turn into lyrics. Sometimes, he’d even bring a special friend, someone whom he trusts enough to invite into his secret retreat, and whom he can simply lie back with while talking nonsense for hours.

Usually, he doesn't let his brain have a single quiet moment to itself.

But this time around it’s different. This time he has nothing to drown out the constant pelting of the outside with — like hard hitting hip hop beats or the casual chattering of a close friend. This time, the only company he can afford himself is the swishing sounds of water and the deafening vacancy of his own mind.

He watches the sun as it slowly inches towards the horizon, hiding its brilliant orange rays behind the intricate frame of Banpo Bridge — which will soon light up with its own set of magnificent colors.

The temperature gradually drops, and the air surrounding Hansol starts to feel like miniature icepicks pricking the tip of his nose and ears. Even then, the giggling and sweet, hushed murmurs of the couple beside him don’t die out for a second.

He concludes that it must be love.

It must be love that drives people crazy enough to go outside when it’s absolutely freezing and risk losing their toes just so they could talk with their object of affection.

Of course…

How could he not see it before? What else can it be if not love?  

Hansol stirs in alarm when the couple next to him get up from the grass and collect their belongings into a basket. He tries to move back into the protective shadows of an acer tree when they walk past him to stand at the very edge of the bank, and bathe in the glowing streams of liquefied rainbow erupting from both sides of the bridge. Neither of them pays him any attention, and Hansol starts to speculate that perhaps, they never noticed him to begin with. He thinks, once again, that it must be love.

The man brushes the woman’s hair behind her ear and leans down to whisper something into it, tone muffled yet clearly cheerful. His girlfriend immediately hits his arm and shouts something about how utterly stupid and erted he is, but still laughs and stretches up on her tiptoes to kiss his cheek. Hansol watches the two of them with a tinge of jealousy staining his heart when they retract from the verge of the bank and begin strolling away, interlocked hands swinging in a lazy manner between their bodies and the kaleidoscopic lights of Banpo Bridge following them like a floating cape as they slowly disappear out of his sight. He thinks it must be nice. To be able to hold hands with the one you love and not care if a stranger might see you.      

A sudden screech infiltrates Hansol’s musings, and he snaps his head to look at a lean figure straddled on a small vehicle, which wheels have just come to an abrupt stop eight feet away from him on the boardwalk. “Vernon, you’re here,”Jisoo pants as he dismounts his bike, gentle smile and cat-like eyes illuminated with an umbrella of shimmery blues and greens. “Thank God, I was looking for you. You weren't here when I was asking about you a few hours ago.” 

There’s something fundamentally shaking about hearing Josh’s soft-spoken English, seeing his face painted with so much relief, and realizing that it was concern and not pity or disgust that he was regarding him with all this time. Hansol can’t hold it in any longer; the dam in his chest finally collapses. His eyes flood with current after current of hot tears, and he begins sobbing loudly into his wobbling hands like a baby.     

“Oh, God, are you alright?” A radiating heat spreads along Hansol’s spine when Jisoo hurries to join him on the swampy grass and sling an arm around his quivering form, right hand brushing awkward, uncertain shapes into his upper back.  

“Is it wrong?” Hansol hiccups and turns to discover Jisoo’s wide eyes and cross helix piercing reflecting a myriad of radiant purples and pinks like little shiny mirrors.  

“What is?”

“This feeling — is it wrong for me to feel like this? Am I disgusting to you? Do you think—” Hansol’s breath hitches in his throat, and a new rush of fat, gross tears rolls down his slithery cheeks. “D-Do you think you’ll come to hate me?”

“Dude, I could never hate you, you’re like my actual brother,” Jisoo replies solemnly, his face clouding up as if the mere idea offends him to the very core. “Look, I know I may not agree with you on everything, or I might have a different worldview than you and less tolerance for certain stuff, but I would never think you’re disgusting or wrong for feeling something out of your control. I mean, we have our disagreements, right? Like, I like jjampong, you like jjajangmyeon. You like pork, I like beef. But in the end, we both prefer dipping over pouring.” Right after he draws his little analogy, Jisoo clicks his tongue and waves his hand about in a rejecting motion. “Sorry, I’m not the best motivational speaker,” he stammers. “My point is, I love you, man. We all do. Nothing can take away from that.”

“Wow, thanks,” Hansol sniffs, wiping dirty salt streaks off his cheeks with the back of his hand. “It actually really helps,” he admits through another pitiful string of hiccups. “Though I wish I’ve heard those things sooner…”   

Jisoo sighs in relief and pats the younger’s back encouragingly one last time before letting his arm fall into his lap. “It’s funny, y’know, ‘cause you’re probably the least judgmental person I know but you tend to be so hard on yourself,” he mutters, plucking a wilted blade of grass from the ground and twirling it between his fingers gingerly. “You shouldn’t bottle up your emotions like that and wait for them to explode. If something’s bothering you, you can come talk to me, or any of the guys —  even Seungcheol, I’m sure. Just wait a little bit until he cools down.”

After Jisoo’s words dissolve into the wind, Hansol presses his lips against his folded knees, a thin smile pulling at his cheeks. “Thanks, man. Seriously. I don’t know what I would’ve done without an awkward pep talk from my favorite embarrassing dad.”

Jisoo snorts. “You should be glad I didn’t use more food-related metaphors.” He nudges Hansol playfully, then looks beyond him toward the river, face all of a sudden taking on the melancholic black shadows of the night. “I was really worried about you, you know?”   

They remain quiet for a good couple of minutes, Hansol glancing through his bangs at Jisoo who’s drawing abstract shapes into the muddy ground with a small branch. He eventually tires of just watching and lets his back fall heavily against the wet grass, groaning an elongated series of ‘’s ’ into his palms on his hasty way down.

“You’re gonna be alright, kid, cheer up.” Jisoo pokes his stomach with the twig. "You two love each other far too much to let something this stupid come in between you.”

“Kid?” Hansol unveils his face from beneath his hands to quirk an eyebrow in half hearted offence.

“Yeah,” Jisoo laughs. “Look at you, you’re covered in snot, it only feels appropriate calling you that.”

“I do act like a kid, don’t I?”

“A kid with thoughts far more mature for his age.” Jisoo smiles and leans back onto the ground, bumping his elbow into Hansol’s ribs as if to say ‘scoot over’. “I always thought that about you, you know? Sometimes, I wish I could have your mind, but then I get reminded of dumb crap like this and feel happy simply being the dimwit I am.”

“Oh. I never knew you felt this way,” Hansol hums, clearing some more space beside him for Jisoo to lie on. “What else do you think about me that I don’t know of?”

“You're a very kind and considerate person even if you can’t see it yourself at the moment.”

“Really?”

“Really.” Jisoo nods. “It’s just that you tend to have these very high expectations — from yourself and from others. It’s sad to see you get so disheartened because the world can’t always be perfect. It’s another thing I like about you, actually — your idealism. Even though this quality can really bring you down sometimes, it’s very admirable in my opinion.”

“You know,” Hansol drones. “I’ve always really admired your strong mentality and patience. I mean, you rarely let things get to you — I think that’s amazing.”

“Really?”

“Really.”  

“Thanks, man.” 

“Hmm...”

“Are you gonna come back now?” Jisoo whispers after another long silence.

“I think I’m gonna stay here a little longer.”

“Okay...”

As Jisoo rides away from there on his bike, Hansol feels all very silly about himself and life in general. As a gust of wind creates ripples across the river surface a short distance away from his sitting spot, he thinks that it’s all very logical now.

If the wind blows violently, it creates rents in the water and causes it to crash onto the shore in large, dark waves. If the sky is gray and the weather is stormy, the soil gets soaked in rain, and everything that grows on it gets demolished. Because as much as the wind gives new direction for the water to flow in, and the sky and weather breath new life into the earth — as much as they balance each other out and help one another flourish and prosper, in the end they are capable of bringing upon each other the worst kind of destruction.

So far, October has been nothing but one vicious and unstoppable typhoon and Hansol wants his sun back. He rises up from the ground, rubbing the dirt off of his clothes and the cowardice off his heart. Instead of taking the train back to the dorms, he walks all the way to where he departed from that morning, and opens the dance studio door to discover the distinguished sun waiting for him, sitting limply against one of the mirrors.

Seungkwan lifts his drooping head from a filthy sleeping bag he hugs tightly to his chest, and Hansol feels like weeping again, because when their eyes meet he can clearly tell Seungkwan has been crying all day long, but all he does is cover his mouth in horror and look at him with such a sad, soft expression.

“Your face! Did Seungcheol-hyung do this to you? Oh, God, you’re completely dirty! Have you been out all day? Did you eat anything? Are you hurt anywhere else?”

While Seungkwan talks, Hansol notices how he stops to sniff after every question, and that he’s surrounded from all sides by piles of crumpled tissues. It can’t be just the crying, he concludes. He must’ve caught a cold yesterday… 

“I’m so sorry, I shouldn't have said those things to you last night!” Seungkwan sputters before Hansol can say or do anything. “You were right, I was treating you like a baby. I don’t know why I thought that was okay for me to do — I knew how it frustrates you when people don’t take you seriously or ignore what you have to say, but still I did those very same things to you! I didn’t consider your feelings, I didn’t even bother asking you to share them with me. And I know you sometimes struggle with being open about things like this, so I should have tried harder to make you talk! I’m the worst best friend ever, please forgive me — I acted without thinking yesterday!”

Seungkwan cuts his maniacal surge of words to release a heavily shaky breath. “B-but it’s all okay now.” He nods his head vigorously. “Because I w-won’t do it anymore! I’m not going to treat you like a baby anymore, so please, please just come back… I’m so sorry, Hansolie...”

Seungkwan chokes out the last sentence and glances up at Hansol apprehensively, his eyes and voice carrying so much desperation in them, the younger can’t help but want to somehow make it so they would’ve never met in the first place — because he’s the one who did this. He’s the one who made Seungkwan so broken.  

“Stop,” Hansol says, and before Seungkwan can ask him what he means, he continues in the most sincere and gentle tone he can manage. “Please stop apologizing for something that isn’t your fault. You always do that. Why? You always say sorry for things you didn’t even do. Please don't feel guilty, Seungkwan. Don't apologize because I was an who took you for granted. Don’t ever beat yourself up like that because of my ty decisions.”

Hansol inhales deeply and directs his eyes straight at Seungkwan’s, taking advantage of his astonished silence to get the thoughts that have been troubling him for the past month off his chest.

“I acted like a child,” he professes. “I thought that no matter what I do you’ll always be there. I thought I can just put you on the back burner until I came to some kind of understanding with myself, because I was confused. And somehow being around you, sleeping in the same bed, letting you touch me, going places like we usually do, even just talking to you, made me feel all the more confused and I didn’t know why — so I kinda decided that distancing myself would be what works things out, that that’s what’s gonna make my feelings less complicated. But I was wrong. It only made everything messier and harder to figure out, and the fact I couldn't tell you about what I was going through drove me even more insane. I was selfish when I chose to ignore you. I hurt you and I was too thick to realize that. It didn’t even cross my mind that you might get affected, all I cared for was my own misery. I was completely blind to anything besides it. And last night — last night finally made me realize what a ing jerk I was, and that I should’ve talked with you before anything else. Because relationships aren’t one-sided and you deserve to be treated with respect.”

Hansol allows himself a short rest in order to observe Seungkwan’s puzzled expression and make sure the whole information had sunk in. He takes another prolonged breath to relax himself before his next words, swallowing down the black knot of anxiety in the back of his mouth.

“Seungkwan, I was so scared I would lose you forever, last night,” he manages to finally utter in a steady tone. “I was so scared that I even considered living on the street from today on just so I wouldn't have to come back and see that you were still mad at me. But I came to the conclusion that I had to come back and face you even if you really wanted nothing to do with me anymore, because I owe you a huge apology. I care for you far too much to disappear without saying sorry first. So here it is: I’m so very sorry for neglecting our relationship and blaming you for the gap I myself created. I’m so, so sorry — really, I can’t stress this enough. I’ve learned my lesson and all I can do now is hope that you’ll be willing to take me back after all the bull I’ve put you through. ”

After another slight pause in his speech, Hansol adds: “Also, you probably don't want to hear this right now, but I want you to know that I’m not confused anymore.” He unravels his fists and lets them smooth out by his sides, thick emotion bubbling up in his throat, unable to be tamed any longer. “I like you, Boo Seungkwan.” His voice comes out surprisingly bold.

“I like you more than just a bandmate or a brother or even my best friend. I like you like I’ve never liked anyone else before, and I think I’m kinda starting to understand what my mom meant when she said I was extremely lucky to have met you, that one time. She was right, who else would’ve accepted me on the very first meeting like you did and never laugh at my weird ideas or my tendency to space out? Who else would stay up to talk to me for hours about how mold spots on walls are memories houses hold onto from their previous tenants, or that penguins in the Southern Pole most likely think they’re the rulers of the Earth? Who else would’ve been able to make me smile and laugh as much as you do? Who else would inspire me like you do, encourage me to be a better person and never push me to be someone I’m not? No one, Seungkwan. That’s why, I feel like you should know that you’re truly one of a kind, you’re the greatest person I ever had the fortune of meeting, I really really like you, and, yeah, um...” Hansol releases a graceless string of sounds poorly mimicking laughter. “I d-don’t really know what to say after that...”  

“I like you too,” Seungkwan mutters, his demeanor unconventionally sheepish as he slides up the mirror and holds his left bicep in his right hand to form a nervous cross at his front. “I’ve liked you since the moment I introduced myself to you four years ago and you were stammering so much I could barely understand a single word that was coming out of your mouth. Then you tried apologizing and almost killed yourself in the process by tripping over your own shoelaces, and I remember thinking you were the cutest and purest little thing I’ve ever laid my eyes on. Well, I still do.”   

“Cutest?” Hansol cracks a crooked smile, eyebrows raised all the way up to his hairline in disbelief. The corners of Seungkwan’s eyes curve upwards and his full cheeks adorn with little dimples, giving him the impression of a contented cat. “More than all the baby bunnies and newborn puppies in the world,” he croons.

“Purest?” Hansol questions a second time, because he’s having a really hard time believing those claims at the moment.

“Honest, thoughtful, kind hearted, quirky and so very transparent,” Seungkwan insists. “The embodiment of pure.”    

“You know me,” Hansol laughs out joylessly.

“Of course.”

Hansol’s whole body slumps in shame. His eyes, which are full of atonement, examine Seungkwan’s face carefully for any sign of remaining hurt. “I’m sorry...”

“I know. It’s alright, I forgive you. I can never stay mad at you for too long anyway.” Seungkwan smiles at him again, that little barely-even-there-smile that manages to color his entire face in warm hues.

That does it. Hansol can’t stay still any longer. His legs scurry hectically across the floor so he can wrap both arms around Seungkwan’s waist in a secure vise and hoist him up, capturing him mid-air with a bone-crushing hug. Seungkwan reciprocates the gesture right away, hands finding purchase at the back of Hansol’s sweatshirt, clutching the sullied fabric as though his life’s hanging on the line.

Hansol buries his face in Seungkwan’s neck, breathing as much as he can of that heady sweet scent into his lungs. He didn’t know how much he’s been craving this right up until now. He hadn't realized how much he needed to be able to feel Seugkwan close to him, to be able to smell him, to share with him all the million and one thoughts that swarm his head on a daily basis. Right now, though, only one thing occupies his mind. And so, he tells it precisely as it is; without holding back the longing sentiment from his voice, “I love you, Seugkwan. I love you, I love you, I love you.”

Once he says it, at last, he can’t help but say it a hundred times more, just in case the first ninety-nine times weren't clear enough. He only ceases murmuring admiring confessions into Seungkwan’s ear when a warm moisture starts spreading on his shoulder, and he senses the boy in his arms trembling against him.   

“Why are you crying??” Hansol whisks Seungkwan backward so he can have a better look at his face, hands frantically wiping the wet streams flowing down his cheeks.

“Because I’m h-happy!” Seungkwan exclaims in a whiny, wavery tone, eyes producing even more tears without any sign of stopping. “What are you g-grinning so much about?” He pouts at Hansol indignantly, sniffing something fierce.  

“Because I’m happy!” Hansol laughs when Seungkwan shoves his chest off in a half-assed attempt at protest, then immediately hides his puffy, snotty face in it, continuing to wail about how much Hansol means to him and that he thought he won't get to hear him say ‘I love you’ even in a thousand years — ‘cause Hansol’s the slowest person on Earth, and that’s how long he imagined it would take him to reach this realization.

All Hansol can do is laugh. He’s over the moon with the night’s recent developments, with having Seungkwan happy again and acting more like his usual lively self. Also, knowing the two of them share the same feelings is certainly an enormous mood boost all in its own right.

At some point, they find themselves swaying from side to side in a tight, intimate embrace, their foreheads touching and lips mere inches apart, and Hansol whispers a hopeful “Can I...?”

“I’m sick…”

“It doesn’t matter.”

“Of course it matters, stupid-head, you’re going to catch a cold!”

Hansol shakes his head stubbornly, detaching himself from Seungkwan so he can get on one knee before him and hold his left hand in his. “Boo Seungkwan, formal prince and representative child of Jeju Island, son of the lovely Madam Jwa and his Excellency, Sir Father Boo, would you be willing to grant me the grand honor of being the first person in history to ever capture your cute pouty lips?”  

“Pfttt, what are you saying? You’re ridiculous! This is ridiculou—”



D-00


October 31st, 00:00 AM  

“Seungkwan, may I kiss you?”

“Yes… yes, you may.”

Hansol’s heart threatens to beat out of his chest as he gets back up from the linoleum on his wobbly legs and positions his head directly in front of Seugkwan’s, staring intently at his lips with a mixed sense of excitement and fear. He first stretches his available arm to touch the mirror behind Seungkwan, then fumbles to grab his shoulder instead, not quite seeming to decide on how many degrees he should ideally tilt his head in, and if he just needs to go for it, or wait for a specific special moment, or like, a sign from some divine being that’ll confirm that it’s, in fact, one hundred percent okay to proceed.   

“Here’s an idea, you should probably consider quitting biting your lips. I’m supposed to be kissing those, remember?”

“Oh, r-right. Sorry, I’m just, um, uh — sorry.”

Seungkwan chuckles and grasps the back of Hansol’s neck gently, as to not brush any of his cuts. “C‘mere, doofus,” he instructs with a wide grin and guides Hansol’s head down with a light push.

The initial kiss is merely a brief and chaste graze of their lips, shy and experimental. The first thought that pops into Hansol’s head is that Seungkwan’s lips are just as soft as he imagined them to be, and his face up close just as beautiful — even after an entire day of hysterical crying. He keeps his eyes open so he can see the way in which Seugkwan’s eyelashes flutter prettily atop his blushed cheekbones, but shuts them close when a hand threads through his hair and brings their mouths harder against each other, pressing urgently. The fingers of their intertwined hands lock together more tightly, and after gaining some confidence, Hansol cups Seungkwan’s cheek with his free palm, his lips tentatively. The little sound that follows soon after certainly doesn’t escape his attention, and if it was ever in his plan to maintain some kind of composure, then he sure as hell does a stupendously terrible job in going through with it.

Seungkwan grants Hansol’s tongue permission to enter his mouth, and the younger doesn’t waste another second; he smashes their connected hands on the mirror above Seugkwan’s head, and angles his jaw sideways to get a better taste of every single inch of his mouth, and pulling on his plump lips interchangeably each time they part from one another in order to sneak in a ragged breath — an action which earns him plenty more delicious muffled noises. Not before long the two of them melt down to the floor in a heated and clumsy mess of limbs, one of Seugkwan’s arms, which isn’t completely laced around Hansol’s shoulders, traveling down the younger’s back to give his a firm squeeze.

“Sorry, I just couldn’t help myself,” he laughs into Hansol’s mouth when they take another break to restore the oxygen into their lungs. Hansol responds by pulling Seungkwan into his lap and reaching behind to grab a handful of his buttcheeks. The older's lips curve around a sharp, totally gasp, stirring something animalistic inside Hansol’s gut which drives him to attack Seungkwan’s mouth even more hungrily — maybe a tad bit too hungrily.            

“I’m pretty sure your nose isn’t supposed to go in there,” Seungkwan chastises and spits a wayward strand of hair out of his mouth.

“S-Sorry, I got too excited,” Hansol stutters out awkwardly. “Your teeth don’t smell too bad, though. Are you sure we’re using the same mouthwash?”

A second passes, then another, then the two of them burst into a deranged fit of giggles, sprawled together against the mirror in probably the least y position anyone could possibly imagine.

Seungkwan’s brow furrows as his eyes roam across Hansol’s face, his fingertips daring to flicker up the younger’s neck and ghost over the bruised skin ever-so-slightly. “I want you to sleep with me tonight, okay?”

“W-woah, isn’t it a little too early for that? Not that I have a problem with it if that’s what you really want, I’ll gladly do it with yo-”

“God damn it, Hansol! Sleep as in, lie horizontally on a bed together and snuggle! What the hell is even going on in your head?!”

“So... you don’t want to have with me?”

“Of course I want t— You know what?” Seungkwan detangles himself from Hansol’s form, scrambling to get himself out of his compromising position and standing up straight. “Forget I ever said anything!” He flares up, all disheveled hair, puckered lips and puffed out cheeks. “I’m leaving. You can stay here with your stupid sleeping-bag for the rest of eternity for all I care!” In his flurry, Seungkwan finds the said sleeping bag balled up somewhere at the corner of the room, and throws it at Hansol as a form of distraction while he tries to escape. Hansol’s vision fills with a screen of dust and polyester, but before he can remove the annoying fabric away from his face and chase after Seugkwan, the studio door slams shut, leaving him to fend a violent fit of coughs all by his own with a lovestruck smile on his face that stretches from ear to ear.  

“Sweet.”

Later that night, when Hansol is tucked safely between two stifling layers of wool, a tattered duvet from way back that he hasn’t been the least aware still exists, and Seungkwan’s soft, ever-caressing arms, he asks himself if he truly deserves all the good things in his life. Seungkwan silences his concerns with a single plush kiss, affirming him that yes, he is worthy enough, and that he should never even dare thinking otherwise if he doesn’t want Seungkwan to wage a personal vendetta against him. “Also”, Seungkwan adds as his thumbs make squiggly lines from Hansol’s cheeks to trace the dark outlines of his under-eye bags, “we should really stop talking for now.”

It doesn't hurt so badly anymore, Hansol realizes as Seungkwan's delicate fingers keep applying gentle pressure to his skin. The only thing that aches in pain now is his body. It's a good kind of pain, though — a pain that lets him know he's still alive and kicking after all.

“Goodnight, Vernonie.”

“Goodnight to you too, Prince Boo.”

“Believe me, you’re lucky I love you.”

When Hansol closes his eyes shortly after wishing his boyfriend sweet peaceful dreams, he doesn’t end up opening them for another full eight hours.