N/A: my never-ending war with the HTML code continues, he won again. I'm sorry.

 

 

 

 

Probably he should be home.

Or on a taxi heading to his apartment.

Or walking towards his apartment.

Given the amount of alcohol circulating into his system it's a given he hasn't already passed out on a street corner.

He has a headache that is pounding inside his brain like a ing drum set and the lady that just passed by looked too much like Scarlett Johansson to confide too much on his judgment right now.

But at least he's close to his destination.

Isn't he?

 

 

 

“Don't get me wrong, I'm not going to judge you or anything, but...” Kyung is too cautious, looks around like he's going to tell him a national secret or some like that and Minhyuk doesn't like it one bit. “Aren't you a little bit... in love with Yukwon?”

 

Minhyuk looks dumbfounded at his friend. Is it that obvious? Does Yukwon know? Does someone else know? He is ed. He feels ed. Betrayed, .

 

“Calm down. I... No one suspects anything, it was just a hunch I had, I didn't think...”

 

“You can't tell anyone, ok?”

 

Kyung looks at him straight in the eye. “I'm not the one that has to do the talking here”.

 

 

 

He thinks that he saw that very same market just five minutes ago when he thought that he was nearing his final destination, but he can't be too sure.

His headache is getting worst and he hates the feeling that is crawling into his stomach.

He feels sick.

He wants to throw up, but sober or drunk he is not going to empty his stomach on a dark alley like some random troubled movie character. Just not.

But he is close, yeah, he recognizes the ice-cream parlor where he buys too much ice-cream before heading... . His stomach is making somersaults, making him sick.

He probably looks like and would better go home, but he keeps walking anyway.

No backing off now.

He sounds unreasonably drunk even to his own drunk self.

 

 

 

“Since when?” Kyung asks few days later. They are watching a boring movie about a man looking for the perfect wave. Minhyuk got lost sometime after the man almost drowns trying to prove himself to the woman he loves. Pathetic, if you were to ask him.

So it's not surprising that Kyung isn't paying attention either and starts asking about Minhyuk's nonexistent love life.

 

“Long time ago, stopped keeping count. I forgot”

 

Kyung doesn't seem satisfied with his answer and purses his lips in a thin line. He's not about to let it go. Minhyuk prepares himself for a long set of really personal questions he'd rather not answer.

 

 

“Have you ever though about confessing?”

 

Of course he did think about confessing, and he almost did it twice, but never got to go through with it. Call him a coward, but he doesn't want to pull someone else down with him, let alone his best friend.

 

“Yeah, but I never did”

 

“Why?” Kyung asks. And he sounds so sincere, so convinced that Minhyuk might just see his feelings reciprocated if he actually found the courage to confess.

 

“Because it would ruin everything. I'm not a girl and... yeah, I'm not a girl”

 

It's hard because he and Yukwon fit so damn perfectly together.

 

 

 

From the ice cream parlor it's just a five minute walk.

He can do it, but walking is hard when your vision is blurring and every ing lamp post seems to want to blind you with its light.

So he sits down on a bench along the way.

There's no rush.

He's already late anyway.

 

 

 

“How can you do that? How can you keep everything bottled up like that?”

 

How? He doesn't, he takes everything he can and stuffs it inside his heart trying to fix that big leaking cut that slices it in two, he has yet to succeed, but everyday it seems a little bit better, a little bit less painful and so he keeps trying, he keeps pushing himself on the edge.

 

“I don't. I just take what I can get and make it enough” Kyung looks confused. “At the beginning I thought I'd go crazy, but then I got myself together and did my best not to screw everything up. It's not as hard as it looks” it's harder, but Kyung doesn't need to know that.

 

“This... Have you ever tried to move on?”

 

Move on? Move where when his heart would remain exactly where is right now, where it has been all his life?

 

“During college I tried, there was a guy, Jiho”

 

“What happened to him”

 

“He was a rapper, he wrote meaningful lyrics over meaningless beats, that's what he used to say all the time. He wrote me a song” Kyung waits for him to elaborate. “It was bout past love that you can't let go”

 

 

 

A couple looks at him pitifully.

She whispers something to the man's ear, he shakes his head and they move on, side by side, their fingers entwined.

Minhyuk closes his eyes and rubs his temples. He doesn't even know what time is it, how long he has been sitting there, but it's fine. He doesn't care.

Time is not important when it comes to love, he discovered that long time ago.

He should try to stand, he should keep walking. “You are just a lazy ” Yukwon would tell him then grab his hand and make him walk because “Hyung, you look like a crazy ahjusshi sitting there with your eyes closed”.

Wonderful, now he even hears voices inside his head.

 

 

 

Kyung is sitting on the kitchen counter while Minhyuk prepares omu-rice to go with some beer he dug out of his almost empty fridge.

 

“I think you should tell him”

 

Minhyuk freezes for a moment. Tell him? Him as in Kim Yukwon? Tell him what? That he has been helplessly in love with him for the longest time, that he has been stealing pieces of Yukwon, smiles, glances, caresses, words, twisting them to feed his forever broken heart?

 

“No”

 

Kyung gets on his feet and rests his hands on his hips while his features morph into a serious expression Minhyuk doesn't quite like.

 

“Minhyuk, you have to. At some point either it's either all or nothing!”

 

He grimaces because he knows, he knows that the exact moment he will tell Yukwon about his feelings it will either happily ever after or goodbye ever after and he isn't ready to give up on the little comfort he can get by being near Yukwon even if just as his best friend forever.

 

“I can't”

 

“You owe him that. He's your best friend and you are keeping from him your biggest secret”

 

Minhyuk flips the omelet and sighs.

 

 

 

Looking back he shouldn't have listened to Kyung, this... mission or task or whatever you want to call it was doomed from the beginning, but despite that while he drags himself on the stairs that lead to Yukwon's apartment he feels good. Blame it on the alcohol, blame it on the numbing pain he has been carrying for years, he feels like he is doing something right for once.

So when he knocks at the door he giggles to himself because he feels exhausted and exhaustion is exhilarating.

When Yukwon opens the door the giggling stops though.

 

“Hyung” Yukwon whines, because he can smell alcohol from where he stands on the threshold and he told Minhyuk not to get piss drunk and then come to him once too many times.

 

 

 

“He told me once”

 

They are sitting on a bench near Yukwon's house. Kyung is nursing his hot caramel mocha, while Yukwon holds his hot cocoa between his bare hands.

 

“But he forgot the morning after” Yukwon sipped his drink and sighed. “I didn't push it”

 

“Why?” Kyung asks furrowing his brows.

 

“You didn't see him. He was... terrified. I couldn't tell him”

 

Kyung looks far ahead and Yukwon keeps his eyes trained on the cup between his hands.

 

“He's stupid, isn't he? Too wrapped up in his own love to see mine”

 

“Someone should punch some sense into that brain of his” Kyung says with a playful smile on his lips.

 

Yukwon looks at his friend sideways and hides a grin behind his cup.

 

 

 

 

But the giggling comes back. Because Yukwon face is hilarious and wait until he tells him, just wait that it will be even more fun.

 

“I think...” he begins, but has to stop midway because, come on, it's too funny “I think I'm drunk...”

 

“I can see that” Yukwon says, slightly annoyed.

 

“No, I think I'm drunk on you” Minhyuk says and God, Yukwon face it's priceless.

 

He doesn't quite register Yukwon moving though. And he isn't quite ready for the punch that a moment after collides with his face and sends him on his in a second.

It hurts though. Yukwon works out, his brain supplies.

 

“What the ?” he says looking up at his best friend in disbelief. “What was that for?”

 

“It's for you to remember this tomorrow”

 

Minhyuk touches his offended cheek and winces.

 

“It hurts”

 

“It better hurt” Yukwon retorts. “Now come in, you need a shower, you smell”

 

Minhyuk watches as Yukwon disappears into his house leaving the door open and he remembers why being with Yukwon is easy, why it's Yukwon he loves and why he won't love anyone else for the rest of his life.

He starts laughing, harder and harder and harder. Until Yukwon has to come and get him inside because “ hyung I shouldn't have hit you with that frying-pan in sixth grade, I made you stupid”.

 

 

He imagined the morning after his drunken confession to be a lot more dramatic, with a lot of yelling and a lot of pain. Well there sure is pain since his cheek swelled and he looks like a hamster, and there is yelling since when Yukwon tries to put a ice pack on it he starts swearing, much to Yukwon's amusement. And there is drama since “Yukwon it ing hurts, you have already damaged my perfect face as it is no need to make it worst”.

But then Yukwon smiles and kisses his offended cheek, then his pursued lips and then Minhyuk is kissing back and all is well what ends well.

 

 

 

 

 

N/A: Lame ending I know. sorry.