There are certain things - certain sensations - which cannot be captured by any words of any language. Things like forest fires or hurricanes of emotion, those feelings that ram into one with all the force in the world and then some and leave no survivors in their wake, only carnage (the sort that one could get drunk off of, though; the sort of total destruction that one goes back for again and again). These are the purest kind of feelings, the ones which cannot be tabled or curtailed but simply felt in their entirety as they come about. This is, of course, not to question the validity of others, but rather to emphasize the earnesty of these emotions experienced like natural disasters. Excitement hits like a tornado, hatred like a blizzard, and disappointment, a tsunami, each strong enough to flip one’s world completely around.

Nakamoto Yuta has found himself amid an earthquake he swears is large enough to shake the very foundations of the universe. He felt it coming for a while before the onset. He felt the slightest of tremors running through him where he stood, but he did not move, did not try to take cover - it was, after all, only a slight disturbance, small enough that he could continue on in his day as if nothing was different. He felt the watchful eyes of those around him, but those, too, were disregarded. They were making something out of nothing, jumping to conclusions he swore were baseless. After all, how could such little movements evolve into anything worth noting?

Very easily, he knows now, is the answer to that question. In the blink of an eye, in the beat of a heart, little movements can very easily become forces which shake the ground so harshly that he can’t even dream of standing on his own two feet any longer.

Nakamoto Yuta is in love and there’s not a damn thing that he can do about it but let it all rush over him and shake him to his very core.

He got the text a few hours ago, a sweet, “Can you come over? I’m bored,”, adorned with what Yuta swore was every emoji his phone was capable of sending and all the simple spelling errors expected of a foreigner (Yuta knows this because he, too, still makes these very mistakes in his own messages from time to time). It doesn’t take much more convincing than that for him to don his coat and be out the door - it’s a quiet night, one which he’s spent doing nothing but scrolling through various social media accounts thus far, so the invitation to do something, anything, is welcomed with open arms.

He arrives at the other’s doorstep in a mere matter of minutes, the walk being a rather brief one. There’s a certain sense of familiarity in the way that he knocks on the door, something almost akin to comfort, as if it’s his own apartment that he wants to enter. A small smile plays at his lips at the thought - as if it’s his own apartment, huh? He doesn’t mind the idea of it (nor the underlying premise).

Shake.

When the door opens, he’s not greeted by the one that he’s made this little excursion for, but rather by his roommate, who welcomes him with a warm smile nonetheless. “Hey, what’s up?”

Yuta returns with a smile of his own. “Not much at all, just kind of hanging around my place until Sicheng asked me to stop by,” he says, making small talk, unaware of the way his own voice softens as he says ‘Sicheng’. “What’s new with you, Kun? I don’t think I’ve seen you in a while.”

“The usual,” Kun begins, branching off into a more specific explanation of what ‘the usual’ entails, but everything that he says after the first few words is lost on Yuta’s ears. He really hadn’t noticed the way that he was scanning the room since he entered, but he grows aware of it when he locks onto Sicheng the instant the boy comes out from his room.

If ‘purity’ could take on a physical form, it would, without a doubt, be Dong Sicheng. With his eyes round and wondering like that of a doll’s and his full, red lips, it really doesn’t take much imagination at all to think that maybe he isn’t human at all - maybe he was delicately carved by some masterful artist those nineteen years back. His skin is almost like a child’s, unbelievably soft and never marred by a blemish or imperfection of any sort, and his long, slender limbs make it easy to guess that he’s a dancer. To top it all off, Yuta swears that at least some part of the very sun must’ve taken up residence within his heart. It shines through when he smiles that characteristically radiant smile of his, when he gets that wondering look on his face when he can’t quite come up with the Korean word to express himself, when he speaks in that charmingly low voice which absolutely does not match his sweet appearance… when he does anything at all, really, it’s not hard for anyone to see the way that he glows.

Shake.

A grin spreads across Yuta’s face the very moment that he sees him, and the younger mirrors the expression once they lock eyes.

“Ah, here’s poor Sicheng,” Yuta teases. “Are you doing alright, or has the boredom totally consumed you?”

“I thought I might die,” confesses Sicheng, playing right along with his smile not faltering for so much as a second. “I’m glad you’re here.”

Yuta’s heart swells - leave it to Sicheng to already say something absolutely precious before even twenty seconds have passed. He doesn’t even notice Kun slipping back into his own room as he crosses over to where Sicheng stands, pulling him in for a tight hug which manages to drag out some laughs. “I came just in time, huh?” He asks. “Thank God. I don’t know what I would’ve done without my Sichengie.”

The younger giggles as he pulls away from the hug, and Yuta is acutely aware of the absence of his delicate frame against his own. “Come on,” Sicheng invites, starting towards his bedroom. “I want to watch a movie.”

He absolutely does not have to ask twice for Yuta to follow right along behind him.

Sicheng’s room is so very much like him that it’s not at all difficult to tell that it’s his. The walls and furniture are all soft, pale colors, various little knick knacks and what Yuta assumes to be mementos from home lining his shelves. Everything seems to be more or less in order (save for the closet which Yuta knows from experience is a black hole which never returns anything which enters), yet there’s a homey feel to it even with the tidiness. The most distinctive feature of all, Yuta thinks, has to be the fairy lights which are strung all across the ceiling, basking everything in a warm glow which gives every object it touches a sort of ethereal quality.

Specifically, Sicheng.

The boy was ahead of Yuta as they entered, so he’s already laying on his bed by the time Yuta steps into the room, spindly legs kicking about as he tries to get beneath the covers. It’s comical, the way he squirms about, but Yuta doesn’t even notice. All he can see is the way Sicheng glows - literally glows - beneath the strings of lights, eyes twinkling and skin taking on a warm tone. He’s like a fairy, an angel - something far much more beautiful than ‘human’ could ever hope to explain.

Shake.

He beckons Yuta over as he places his laptop beside him (he’s still wearing that smile of his, and Yuta is almost expecting a halo to start shining above his head or wings to sprout from his back), and the Japanese man has no choice but to join him, his legs almost seeming to work of their own accord as he heads toward the bed, crawling beneath the covers and making a point of scooting close enough that their legs are touching.

He doesn’t even have a chance to ask Sicheng what movie he’d like to watch before the boy is already pressing play (it’s adorable, Yuta thinks, that he already had the movie ready to go before he arrived), wide eyes fixated on the screen.

Yuta has to stifle a laugh as the opening credits begin to play - just when he thinks that Sicheng can’t get any cuter, he always manages to. Leave it to the cutest boy to choose the cutest movie, he thinks as the telltale music of Ghibli’s ‘Totoro’ fills the room. Even cuter yet, he discovers as they begin to speak, it’s the original Japanese version of the film, Chinese subtitles rolling across the bottom of the screen.

“Did you choose this for me?” Yuta asks softly, and Sicheng just smiles - all the answer that he needs, really. He reaches over and ruffles the younger’s hair, eliciting a giggle (he really needs to stop doing that - he’s going to give Yuta a heart attack at this rate). “Thank you, Sicheng.”

They’re quiet after that, eyes on the film before them - that says nothing of their minds, though, and Yuta’s is most certainly not concentrated on the movie. Instead, he thinks of the way Sicheng’s legs seem to have become more tangled with his own at some point, of the way he’s listening more closely to Sicheng’s soft breathing beside him than to what the characters are saying. He doesn’t realize the way that time is passing while he’s so concentrated, and he’s shocked when he notices that the screen has turned black.

“Already over...?” He mutters, truthfully not recalling most of the movie passing by. “Want to watch another one?”

When he doesn’t receive an answer after a few seconds, he turns to Sicheng, and the breath is snatched straight from his lungs the very second that he does so.

He’s fallen asleep, which, in itself, isn’t that noteworthy, considering the fact that it was hardly early when he first invited Yuta over. What is noteworthy, though, is the way he looks a million times more beautiful than any of the world’s renowned works of art.

Yuta doesn’t know how he hasn’t noticed how long Sicheng’s eyelashes are before, but he sees it clearly now. They brush softly against his cheeks, long and dark and curled just right, the way people spend money to get their own to do.

Shake.

The blankets are bunched up in his fists and pulled right up to his chin, but if Yuta watches closely, he can see the gentle way his chest rises and falls with each breath, a slow yet steady rhythm to it that Yuta finds some strange sense of peace in.

Shake.

His lips are as bright and cherry red as ever, a stark juxtaposition against his skin which is as white as snow in the middle of February. They’re parted just so, just enough for Yuta to faintly hear those steady breaths of his amid the silence of his bedroom, and holy hell, Yuta has never seen anyone look more kissable in his whole life.

Shake shake shake shake shake shake shake shake shake shake.

It hits all at once, and Yuta is suddenly dizzy under the force of it all. Oh, , Sicheng is the most beautiful man that Yuta has ever seen, and oh, , Yuta is so unbelievably head over heels in love with him. When just the pattern of his breaths is enough to send Yuta’s heart racing in his chest, he thinks it’s time to use that word - love.

Nakamoto Yuta loves Dong Sicheng.

He loves him, loves him like all of the earthquakes in the world across all of the years of history all rolled into one, and when the boy in question opens his eyes slowly, Yuta’s about ready to whip out a megaphone and scream it out at the top of his lungs before the feeling drives him absolutely nuts.

He doesn’t, though.

He looks at Sicheng, looks at the soft, sleepy way the boy looks up at him, and he speaks in a voice so gentle it seems that he’s almost afraid of scaring him off. “Sicheng.”

“Hm?” The boy answers, tired voice matching the look in his eyes that has Yuta’s heart right on the verge of melting.

Yuta gulps, his lips, and then the words are out of his mouth before his mind can catch up with him. “Can I… can I kiss you?”

If Sicheng’s caught off guard in his sleepy state, he doesn’t show it. His eyes meet Yuta’s, flicker to his lips, then right back to his eyes again, and he nods, pink dusting his already glowing cheeks.

Yuta doesn’t waste a second in closing the distance between them, meeting Sicheng’s plush lips with his own, every pent up feeling making itself known as he does.

The world’s shaking so violently that Yuta can’t even see straight, but so long as Sicheng’s shaking with him, he doesn’t think he minds.