Here we are, nearly 5 months later, at the final chapter! Sorry about the wait but life has been Incredibly Busy. In this chapter, Donghae and Hyukjae finally get what they deserve: each other (i meant this as a compliment). Hope you enjoy :)

If there exists a list consisting of the worst ways to make your best friend sad, whatever just happened must have topped it.

They sit in silence now, and Donghae’s typing a random string of words onto his document and it’s starting to look a lot like Hyukjae is sad and I made Hyukjae sad. Oh my god. What do I do?

Maybe it’s the way they know each other inside out, or maybe it’s the way Donghae can see Hyukjae’s shoulders slumping from the corner of his eyes. Or maybe it’s because it doesn’t take a genius to figure out that bringing up Greek philosophy was definitely not the right response to someone basically just admitting they feel something for you. 

Despite the sinking feeling he feels in the pit of the stomach, the idea that he’s the one making Hyukjae sad still doesn’t sit right with him, and despite everything, his first instinct is to make Hyukjae feel better. 

But he doesn’t know how, and now Hyukjae won’t even look his way. 

He’s made Hyukjae sad a lot when they were younger. Maybe over a broken toy or furniture (Donghae is, till this day, still incredibly sorry about Hyukjae’s family vase), but never really over a broken heart, so what is he supposed to do? He can’t exactly flash his puppy eyes and hold onto Hyukjae’s pinky and say ‘Hyukjae, I promise to replace it with my pocket money’, can he?

He would never have thought of this as a viable option, but he suddenly feels like the only thing that would help now is if they both got some space. For the first time ever, it’s a little unbearable for the two of them to be in the same room.

So he closes his laptop and packs a bag, as quietly as he can, all while Hyukjae keeps his gaze firmly on his own laptop screen.

“I’m going to go to the library to finish up my essay,” he says into the quiet room and receives a nod from Hyukjae as acknowledgment. 

“Thanks for helping, by the way,” he adds, still feeling a little awkward. “You’re the best,” he says, and means it.

Hyukjae merely nods again. 

He shuffles towards the door, but right before he steps out he finds himself turning back and asking, “Will you wait for me?”

Hyukjae looks his way now, and there’s a small, sad smile on his lips as he says, “Sure.” And then, very softly and barely audible: “Even forever.”

Donghae’s not sure he’s referring to his trip to the library, and he can’t be sure that was what he himself was initially referring to when he raised the question either. 

Still, it’s comforting to hear that Hyukjae would wait. Maybe for him to return, or maybe for him to tell him the exact confession, just worded differently.

“Good to know,” he says. “But not that long.” 

—

The library is quiet, save for a couple of students typing away on their laptops at another corner of the place. 

Donghae finds a seat and for a long time, he just lets himself stare at the document looking back at him. 

Hyukjae all but just told him he feels the way about Donghae the way Donghae has always felt about him — and isn’t that just the greatest thing in the world? But a moment of cowardice has scarred what was supposed to be special, sacred even, between the two of them, and he only has himself to blame for it.

He lets out a frustrated groan, which earns him a glare from the librarian unfortunately on duty during what must be the worst shift. At this hour, there are only two types of students: those who are desperately hoping they can meet their next-day deadline, and those who pretend to be here to study but are really just here to fool around.

Donghae mumbles his apology and turns his attention back to the screen petulantly. There’s literally a couple to his left necking like they’re goddamn teenagers, but somehow the librarian finds fault with him? 

He glares at them anyway, and feels a little vindicated when they at least look ashamed to have drawn attention to themselves.

He glances at the clock, and realises he has about 2 hours before the library closes. So he sighs, takes a sip of water, and forces himself to write.

He focuses on the paragraphs he’s already written. A part of him argues it’s because he wants to substantiate them better, but he knows it’s because he doesn’t want to touch on what Hyukjae had said. At least not yet.

The words come easy when he reminisces his childhood — finishing his homework sloppily and then running downstairs to tell his father he’s ready to head out and play basketball, and then the two of them coming home all sweaty and stinky to his mother’s home-cooked dinner. He goes on and on about being too excited to sleep come weekends because his parents always brought him out on adventures, and about the way his parents stayed in bed with him one weekend when he caught the flu bug and was too tired to head out. 

The words come easy, for a while, and then they don’t, when he wraps up the paragraph on familial love. Now he has to write about the thing he escaped from his dorm room to write about. Well. 

It’s not as though he has no idea what to say. There are plenty of things to talk about when it’s related to Hyukjae, actually, and he’s sure every single love song was dedicated to Hyukjae and the way Hyukjae sets his heart aflame with every little thing he does. He’s just afraid putting pen to paper will… set it in stone and make it realer than it already is? At least if it’s all in his head he can pretend this is another one of his little fantasies that he’ll grow out of. Writing it down feels like a different matter. 

But he thinks about the forlorn look in Hyukjae’s eyes when he left him in their room after the conversation, and the grief he feels—both for his best friend and the things he hadn’t quite had the courage to say there and then—is so overwhelming, he finds his fingers moving across the keyboard before he even manages another shaky breath. 

Turns out he does have a lot to say, anyway. And it also turns out all the words in the world aren’t enough for him to express how he truly feels. 

(There’s a part of his brain that’s wondering if it’s acceptable to insert something not unlike a confession letter into his essay, but he tells that nagging part to shut up, because processing your feelings through academic writing may not be a valid thing right now, but surely humans will evolve to that stage eventually; and even if they don’t, at least his therapist will be proud of him for not bottling up his feelings like he’s about to go on a trip to the Sahara dessert and can only bring along one bottle of water.)

He dozes off as he finishes up the essay, and as he makes his way back to the dorm room after the librarian woke him up, he finds he doesn’t even need to reread the essay for the details to still be vivid in his head. Even in his sleep-induced haze he still remembers everything he’s written about Hyukjae, and isn’t that something?

He unlocks the door as gently as he can when he reaches their room, and true to his suspicions, Hyukjae has already fallen asleep. Sitting up on his bed, no less, and Donghae finds a smile making its way up his face because of course Hyukjae would make good on his promise of waiting for him to return, and of course he would fall asleep keeping the promise. 

He moves closer and tries to ease Hyukjae into a more comfortable position, and the movement stirs Hyukjae up. His eyes barely opened and his voice heavy with sleep, he slurs, “Hey, you came back.” 

Donghae pulls his blanket up to his chin for him, and lets his fingers linger this time round. “Of course I did,” he replies, because it’s true.

—

But familial love is the kind of love you are born into, if you’re lucky enough, that is. And there is another kind of love—the kind they make movies and write songs about, the kind that makes you feel like you’re finally whole, now that you’ve found your person. The kind that feels warm like sunlight against your cheeks and soft like moonlight against your sheets. 

Truth be told I’m not quite sure what that kind of love is, or what it even feels like. Some say it’s a bit like coming home, some say it’s like finding paradise on earth. Some say it’s burning red, and some say it’s black and white.

The closest I’ve ever been to the garden of Eden is when I say something that makes my best friend laugh and he turns to smile at me like I’m all that he can see in the world—it makes my heart flutter for a bit and then settle nicely and rightly in my chest—and it’s so exhilarating and terrifying and romantic, I think I’ll be contented and fulfilled if that was the only thing I heard and saw for the rest of my life. Sometimes I catch myself thinking: what wouldn’t I do, for him to keep looking at me like I hung the moon. A part of me feels like if he’d asked me for the moon I would have tried my damn hardest to make it happen, even if I know it’s impossible. The fact that it’s something he wants, and that he came to me for it, is reason enough for me to want to try. When I’m with him I feel like I’m invincible, like I can swallow the world whole, and even all the gods in the universe would have nothing on us. 

I would give up the world for him, I think. Nothing the world can offer me will ever compare to the way he makes me feel. 

Do you think that’s what love is? Because if it isn’t, then I’m unsure love is worthy of all the praise humankind speaks of it. 

I know Greek philosophy says there are many different kinds of love, and surely there must be, but when I look at him all the philosophical terms and their definitions fade away because all I can think is: who cares what the philosophers have to say? I love him in all the possible ways. And that is not to say Plato or Aristotle didn’t know anything about love. It is only to illustrate that when I look at him I feel like I’m inventing something and like I want to be all the poets and take their places, so that every time love is written between the lines and spilled across the pages he would know it’s for him.  

And of course love is all that and more, but mostly I think love is about taking heart and having courage, even if I don’t quite know yet how to be brave. It scares me to the bones, the way he makes me feel. Yet I can’t help but wonder if one day I’ll be brave enough to see it through, and find out if this is what he feels too. 

Wouldn’t that be nice? Because now I kind of get the movies and the songs. Art is just love made public. I too would want the whole world to know that loving him was the realest thing I’d ever known, and that he’s my favourite part of myself. 

So, I don’t know… Is that what love is?

I think love is all the colours in the world all at once, but especially gold, because when I think about him I only ever see daylight. 

—

Donghae went to bed that night worried their friendship would have taken a turn, and not for the better. But the next morning Hyukjae throws a pillow at his face to wake him up and groggy and grouchy as he may be, he’s also thankful. At least this is Hyukjae’s own way of telling him that in spite of everything, they’re still okay.

And every day after that Hyukjae still wakes him up with either a kick to his legs or a pillow to his face, he still argues with him about who should wash the dishes—“if I cooked, you should do the dishes!” “No, if you cooked, you should finish the job by washing them yourself!”—and he still fights to use the shower before Donghae. 

So while a part of him may feel like everything has changed, the reality is most of the important things have stayed the same. And he’s grateful for that. And for the way Hyukjae smiles and says goodbye to him before he enters his tutorial room every morning. 

—

He still thinks about the essay even after he’s submitted it. 

It not being graded definitely helps, because he’s not sure how his professor would react to being handed a confession that isn’t quite meant for him at the end of the day. 

But the trepidation is less about his professor reading it than about Hyukjae finding it. A part of him wants Hyukjae to see it, because he’s basically condensed all his love for him into words, but the other, bigger part is worried, because he always is worried, especially when it comes to Hyukjae. 

You know how they say the more you overthink something, chances are it’ll haunt you in your dreams too?

Of all the things that could happen to him, Donghae had never expected to find his answer in a dream. 

— 

Donghae is thinking of all the time travel movies he’s seen—he won’t rank them, though if he had to, Avengers: Endgame would be second to last, but only if ‘the home movie he made with his parents when he was 5’ was one of the options, because that would definitely be last—when he realises he can fly. Like he’s literally standing on a cloud right now. So this is probably less I’m-in-a-time-travelling-movie and more I-am-asleep-and-dreaming-like-a-normal-boring-person. 

He’s wondering if there are monsters he has to slay before he gets to wake up from the dream, but he sees a little boy swinging on one of the clouds near him, and because this is a dream and nothing bad can happen that will hurt him in any substantial way, he heads over to him. 

“Um…” he mumbles when he realises that that little boy is actually a younger version of himself. Oh hey, look how cute he was as a kid. 

“What’s up?” He asks, feeling compelled to interact with what must be the dream equivalent of a NPC. He’s waving awkwardly at little Donghae while he just… stares at him. 

“I’m you, but older, by the way. Like, a lot older. I’m you as an adult,” he adds, just in case little Donghae is averse to strangers (as he should be, considering how cute he is).

“Cool,” little Donghae responds, and pays hi