tidal wave;

It begins to rain as he's about to leave the house; the air is tepid and the wind blows slowly. It's nearing eight P.M., but the coming of spring has made the day longer, the night shorter, and the sunset floods the sky with tents of warm red. Looking carefully, it almost looks like waves of fire crashing against the shore. The strong smell of cold rain washing away the dust on the asphalt gets inhaled by his nostrils, lazily, as if Sungmin tries compressing the entire universe in his small being. He stretches his hand in front of him, and the droplets falling from the eaves press against his skin.

He falls back on a chair, hands hanging over the handles, head thrown awkwardly on the backrest. Without knowing how, Sungmin falls asleep.

He opens his eyes again in a blinding haze that stops him from taking steps. The place is deserted and Sungmin sees nothing much, except for a veil of white mist that makes him blink frequently. He takes his shoes off and places them near a wall, walking carefully on the sharp rocks while supporting a hand against the rough bricks. Some of them crumble under the pressure of his fingers, falling to the ground as fast as Sungmin moves on.

"Hyung", a voice shouts, "Hyung!"

At first, Sungmin stops for a moment from breathing because the tone of that voice sounds so familiar, so intimate that it pushes a little at his ribcage. He opens his mouth to shout back, but a boy's reflection fills up his sight and Sungmin chokes on his own spit. He trembles from his knees and his lips, pale and full, are chapped. Sungmin notices blood on the lower one. The wound is still open. He thinks if the boy feels the pain, if the wind cuts through it even more. He walks to Sungmin and then stops.

"Hyung!" he says again, right in his face, and Sungmin has to grab him by his sides to keep him from falling on the rocks. "I've found you, hyung."

Sungmin frowns because who's this boy and what does he want from him, but he's too heavy to keep him in place for more then ten seconds and Sungmin attenuates his fall with his own body. The rocks are pointed, one of them piercing right through the flesh, and Sungmin struggles a little with the boy's body thrown over his own.

"I've ran after you for so long, hyung, and I've finally found you," he mutters.

Without knowing why, the boy's eyes shine a little, like a spark is born right now and only Sungmin is allowed to see it. Though he's quiet whn Sungmin pushes him and places him on the small spot of green grass, putting his jacket under his head, Sungmin almost wishes for him to speak a little more. He knows him, he's sure he does just like he's sure that sun will rise up on the sky tomorrow morning, it's just that the face is too white, the fog too thick and Sungmin doesn't know from where to take him. His hand is cold when Sungmin takes it between his own to rub on it a bit.

The boy opens his eyes a bit and looks at Sungmin with the corner of his eyes. "Forgive me", he says.

Sungmin blinks at him. He realizes that the hand is not really cold, that the fog is not that thick.

"For what?"

"For loving you."

For some reason, the voice doesn't reach to him anymore. He thinks he reads on the boy's lips an 'I love you' after that, but he raises his eyes to the sky before he has the chance to speak again and when he looks back down to see the boy, he notices that he has his eyes close. He stretches a hand to his face to touch it, caressing the soft skin with the tip of his fingers. With half open eyes, Sungmin falls on the grass and puts his head on the jacket.

It's tiring, he thinks. His joints ache and he's not even that old. He imagines the boy throwing at him a smile so deep that Sungmin's heart beats faster. A name plays on his tongue, but Sungmin has no force to let it out. It sounds pretty in his head, like an old melody wrapped in the loneliness of the days that will come. He turns on his side and gazes at the profile of the boy.

"Who are you?" he asks, wondering if there's any reason at all for which he should know the boy's name. He's waiting for the letters to come out, something like a Jinwoo or Chinho or Daehyun, in any case not-

"Kyuhyun. My name's Kyuhyun," and his eyes open, slowly without asking Sungmin's to look back at him. He just stays, stays like he waits for something important to happen, Sungmin can tell after the small shiver crossing his spine, but the boy looks dissapointed when Sungmin just frowns.

"Why are you being like this? Why don't you remember me?"

Sungmin looks at him and for a moment he thinks that it would be okay if he said a small lie, something to make this boy breath properly again. But he doesn't. He thinks about a book he's read years ago, a book that said that one's mind blocks ugly memories and bad people so Sungmin thinks that his mind is like any other man's. Thinks that this Kyuhyun has hurt him in a way that he's found so hard to accept that he's forgotten him.

He gets up, patting his blouse so that the dust will go away. "I don't know who you are," he simply says, and he can swear he sees a certain change in the shape of the boy's face. Like he's about to cry. He grips on the fabric of Sungmin's pants and tries pulling him back. 

"You don't have to," he mutters. "Just stay a bit more."

Sungmin closes his eyes again. This boy really gets on his nerves. "I don't know you, seriously now. And I don't even--I--"

His throat closes up. He stares at Kyuhyun with eyes wide open and blinks in shock because the one pulling him down isn't a stranger, he knows this boy, and the gaze runs up and down his body. Begs him to take him back, take me back, Kyuhyun, because I don't know how to live without you.

He looks in the small puddle and sees the reflection of a man with warm brown hair and plump lips and pale skin; it isn't him. Sungmin realizes that Kyuhyun isn't really Kyuhyun, just a side of himself; that he isn't Sungmin either, just an illusion of what he wants, the dream he wants to live in.

The boy's loud scream flies past the density of the air, crashing into his ears with a loud 'bang' and Sungmin slips on the grass, falling in the mud.

He wakes up little after that with tears waiting to wet his lips. He brushes the hair from his forehead; the skin is sweaty, makes him wonder what has he dreamt about. For some reason, he doesn't remember a thing.

*

Her name is Sunkyu but friends call her Sunrise, Sunhine, Sunny or something like that; at first, when she stretches his hand to meet his own, Sungmin stutters.

"Nice to meet you--"

An awkward silence fills up the air though the place is over-crowded. Next to him Sooyoung starts laughing clumsily, all of a sudden pushing him by his shoulder, and Sungmin almost falls over Sunny. 

"Sunny! Sunny bunny, Sungmin," Sooyoung tells him, delight written all over her face.

Sungmin tries to grin but the action means efort, and he doesn't even like this Sunny that much. He smiles though, when Sooyoung eyes him strangely, gesturing with her hands in question. The hand stretches again.

"Sooyoung's told me about you."

Her face lightens up a bit at the touch and Sungmin swears he sees a shy blush creeping up , making her even prettier. Her hair is blonde and long and curly, gives Sungmin the impression of silk when it probably feels like cotton, and it smells like vanilla when Sooyoung bumps into him and he bumps into Sunny.

"Oh! Be careful," she tells him, helping him to stay straight.

"I'm okay," Sungmin says, trying to slip his hand away from hers. There's a slight skin in her step as she moves through the people, grabbing him by his hand and taking him with her at a table in a corner of the bar. Sungmin gulps, looking back to see if Sooyoung is still there but the girl disappears with a blink of an eye and a wave of a hand, and Sungmin gets scared. He doesn't know how things work with girls. The last date he's been at with a girl was when he was in the tenth grade, and she left him waiting in the rain with a bouquet of white flowers in front of her house for two hours before coming out. Sungmin smiles when he thinks about that, still the chill is there, slipping under his skin every time outside gets a little cold.

"Let's dance," she says, hastily grabbing him by the sleeve of his blouse.

"But it's mid day. Nobody dances--"

"We do."

"Guess we're not wasting time, are we," he mutters low so she can't hear him and almost stumbles in his own foot when they climb a step.

The air is dry and the heat drives him crazy, and the way she moves her body against his own, pressing flesh on spots she shouldn't because in any other place than this one Sungmin wouldn't even allow her to glance at him, doesn't help him a lot. She her lips when she turns around, gazing at him from under her long eyelashes.

Their foreheads bump. She carefully reaches for his cheek and caresses it for a bare moment.

"I'm happy."

"For?"

She smiles at him, losing her fingers through his hair. "Because you're here with me." 

Sungmin looks at her, truly, for the first time that nigh and he almost, almost kisses her. The scent of vanilla, a stronger one, invades his being in a second. His breath stops and she obviously notices that something's wrong with him because he pushes him away, asking him if he's okay. 

"We shouldn't--" is all he manages to say before a strong hand pulls him through the crowd, and the last thing Sungmin sees before closing his eyes is the way uncertainty darkens Sunny's small face.

*

It's four in the morning, the Big Bang states it quietly as the hour hand moves mechanically for about an inch before it stops. Sungmin looks around the the darkness that surrounds him, at the lights shining at him from the amusement park. There's no one with him there, and it's strange being on a rooftop at such an hour. He doesn't know why the shadow watching him keeps shifting places. He realizes he's been crying all this time when a warm hand reaches for his face and the tears dry in the fabric of his jacket.

"I wanted to hate you, I really did. But I couldn't," he states quietly as Kyuhyun wraps his fingers around the wrist of his right hand.

"You tremble," he says. He takes off the jacket and throws it over Sungmin's shoulders.

"But I'm not cold," Sungmin tells him, but he still pulls at it, covering his neck because it smells of Kyuhyun and he missed Kyuhyun so much. The shy smile on Kyuhyun's face starts to shine, just a little, and the tears stop from falling.

"It doesn't matter. Just keep it, okay?"

And darkness hides the redness of his cheek, the heat of his skin when Kyuhyun leans in and kisses him for what seems to be the first time in centuries. The press is timid, and dreamy, and Sungmin doesn't want it to end. 

He tries keeping his eyes open at first, even though they're watery, because Kyuhyun's white face is so beautiful that his heart breaks a little. It doesn't matter that he feels like an idiot when Kyuhyun pulls away and sees him staring at the way his eyelashes move, the way his pupils darken.

"Why did you left?"

The rustle of material breaks the silence. Kyuhyun is only two breaths away from him, a touch of a hand, a stretch of a finger, but he can't move not even an inch.

"It's something personal," Kyuhyun says, getting up. His jeans are dirty, if he comes closer Sungmin would brush them a little and the dirt would be gone, but Kyuhyun doesn't.

"Why don't you-- Why can't you trust me?"

Kyuhyun stuffs his hands inside his pockets and says, more to himself, " I can't even trust myself, hyung. Why would you expect me to trust you?"

"Because I love you," Sungmin whispers, but Kyuhyun's heard him, he has, maybe even understood the meaning of those three words better than Sungmin ever would. And he thinks, I won't regret if tomorrow doesn't come because right now I feel so relieved, so light that I don't even understand this state of happiness, this joy that floods my veins, this sweetness lingering on my tongue.

"Even if you don't believe me. Even if you don't love me back. I love you, do you hear me?" he yells at Kyuhyun while standing up. The jacket falls down.

He indulges himself a smile as he walks past Kyuhyun. He doesn't even look at him in those moments, but it doesn't matter anymore. He knows now.

"I love you! I love you! I love you!" he screams again, walking on the edge of the rooftop and the wind caresses his face in a way Kyuhyun's never had. He closes his eyes and the next second he stares Kyuhyun in the eyes, noses bumping into each other.

"I love you to the point I want to sneak in your room and suffocate myself with your scent."

He grabs Kyuhyun by his hand and blinks again. 

A cherry flower gets stuck in Kyuhyun's hair, and Sungmin takes it slowly, giving it a kiss before whispering in his ear, " As much as the sun loves the grass."

The third time he closes his eyes and opens them again, Kyuhyun loses balance and falls over him. For some reason Sungmin feels wet all over his body and the sound of waves crashing against the rocks brings a dreamy smile on his face.

"Like the ocean loves the shore."

At that, Kyuhyun lets all his body weight to press against Sungmin's frame, and their mouths meet.

His face, reflected in Kyuhyun's black orbits, holds an ecstatic glint.