Wonshik’s hand is locked tightly with Hakyeon’s. Though, maybe that’s a modification of the truth, because Hakyeon’s fingers are wrapped so tightly around Wonshik’s that his nails are pressing into his skin a little bit, but Wonshik works hard and hangs on for dear life as they run together.

They’re in a place Wonshik has never seen before; somewhere on an old abandoned road in a forest he’s never visited. The trees around them are carrying autumn’s every color, and it’s like a palette that consists of Wonshik’s favorite colors only, spreading out in their surroundings and sending his emotions scattering in every direction. Somewhere ahead, momentarily hidden behind the trees, the sun is beaming down at them, somehow a lot brighter and more concentrated than it has been all summer. If the place they’re running towards is as beautiful as this, then he doesn’t mind not knowing where they’re heading, or why.

Still, just to hear the other man’s voice, he calls out: “Where are we going?”

Hakyeon pulls tighter on his hand. “You’ll see when we get there!” he yells back, not turning around to look at Wonshik even for a second. Wonshik is surprised to hear his voice completely unstrained, as if their tempo doesn’t have any effect on his breathing. He frowns, takes a deep breath and realizes how easy it is for him to breathe – he isn’t the best runner the world has ever seen, and neither is Hakyeon, but somehow the earth is allowing them space to breathe today.

“Hakyeon,” Wonshik breathes, “where are we going?”

They round a sharp turn to the left, only to be met with a steep hill. Wonshik feels like he loses his breath just by looking at it, because he’s definitely not up for running up any hills, but then again, things don’t seem to be working the way they normally do today. For a second he catches the sound of Hakyeon’s snickers before the other picks up the speed and races up, up, up, and Wonshik laughs too, gasping and stumbling as he fights to stay on his feet. The joy that fills his heart is overpowering, even when the air starts to feel a little too cool for them to be out there running, even when it starts to claw its way down his throat and into his lungs. Hakyeon holds his hand tighter when he laughs.

Halfway up the hill, realization dawns in Wonshik’s heart. With his eyes fixed on all the colors around them, he slows down gradually in order not to fall, and then he pulls them both to a stop. Hakyeon turns to him with his heart in his throat, a big, questioning smile spreading on his face. “What?” he asks, without releasing his grip on Wonshik’s hand.

“We’re not going anywhere, are we?” Wonshik asks. Hakyeon stares back at him for a few silent seconds, and then his face does a complete transformation from innocently happy to guiltily satisfied.

“No,” he says. He’s standing just in front of Wonshik, the slope making him stand a few centimeters taller than him. A wind gushes through the trees as his smile widens. “I just wanted to see how far you would run with me. Think of it as an… experiment. A trick question. Except it wasn’t a question, so a trick answer.”

Wonshik smiles and shakes his head. “So basically just a trick, then?”

Hakyeon laughs and nods as he leans forward, carefully wrapping his arms around Wonshik’s neck. Wonshik struggles to keep them both standing, sways for a second, feels a helpful wind in his side, and steadies. Hakyeon laughs louder, and his hand finds the side of Wonshik’s face, his skin carefully. Wonshik thinks he’s going to kiss him, but he pulls back, apparently investigating every inch of his face.

“What would you have done if I never figured it out?” Wonshik asks.

Hakyeon shows him a tilted smile as he considers it. “We’d have kept on running forever. And I don’t know where this road ends.”

Wonshik tears his eyes away from the man in front of him, the one who keeps his blood pumping, and watches the sun as it prepares to set. “It seems like winter’s coming, though,” he says thoughtfully. “Could get cold out here.” He imagines the snow that will be here in a couple of months’ time, the way it’ll be hanging off the branches and covering every trace of life on the ground. He remembers Hakyeon’s first confession, his first warning, and his heart swells again.

“Oh, I wouldn’t worry about that,” Hakyeon says. “I’d make us some sunshine.”

His hand combs through the short hair just above Wonshik’s ear, and Wonshik remains silent with his arms wrapped around the other’s waist for a few seconds. Then he smiles, laughs, with so many words fighting their way to his lips, aching to be said, but then Hakyeon kisses him and kills both words and laughter.

He doesn’t feel like he’s about to explode anymore. Nor does he feel like he can’t breathe. Instead a deafening happiness fills him, complete and overwhelming, and he marvels for a second at how much the sensation feels like sadness. He expects tears to well up, but they never come, because there’s nothing to cry out. His hands are trembling, and if anyone would have told him a year ago that there was a kind of happiness so powerful that it would cause him to shake, he would have laughed in their faces. But he’s not laughing anymore.

He realizes it then: that maybe love is nothing but passion that has chosen a place to settle down, passion that no longer threatens to break out of the shell of your body and run to the closest, warmest object it can find. Passion is strangely like obsession, intense but only for a fleeting moment, and love, then? Perhaps it’s only a mix of the two, passion and obsession, settled down in the one place that suits you the best. For years there has never been a day when Wonshik has woken up and not felt the physical presence of love and the thought of Hakyeon filling up his mind, and now he suspects that will never change.  

They break the kiss but Wonshik doesn’t want to pull away. He suspects he might never want to. So his lips linger near Hakyeon’s skin, Hakyeon’s cheek, and he doesn’t know if he’ll ever be able to explain this feeling, this feeling of having found exactly the place he wants to stay for the rest of his life.

Maybe it’s better if he doesn’t. He pulls back and looks into Hakyeon’s eyes, and he wonders if it’s possible for two people to share such an intense feeling without voicing it out loud. Looking over Hakyeon’s shoulder, he realizes the sun has changed direction and is slowly moving up through the sky again. He looks down to his shoes and clears his throat. “So, how about this experiment?” he asks. “What did you find out?”

Hakyeon looks at him knowingly. What it is that he knows, Wonshik doesn’t want to think of, but he has nothing to hide. “Lots of things,” Hakyeon replies slowly. He treads his fingers in the hair at the back of Wonshik’s head before he continues: “I learned… that you’re possibly the best thing that could have ever happened to me.” He leans in and presses a fleeting peck to Wonshik’s cheek, and Wonshik is sure he can feel a small buzzing of electricity again. “That it doesn’t matter where we are or how I feel. I’m always hopelessly in love with you.” He moves to the other side and places a peck to his other cheek as well, and Wonshik holds his breath. “And… that I wouldn’t have minded if we kept on running forever. That I wouldn’t mind making sunshine just to keep you warm.”

He pulls back, and Wonshik has to fight to keep his gaze steady as he looks into his eyes. He thinks that he won’t be able to keep his voice from breaking if he speaks, but something inside him still urges him to say something, to do something, anything that can help Hakyeon see how unbelievably loved he is. “You got all that from that one experiment?” he says.

Hakyeon smiles again when he nods. “Oh, it was a very complicated experiment, trust me. Maybe you didn’t notice, but there were lots of things happening. Very high-tech. Much too complicated for a simple human mind.”

Wonshik raises an eyebrow, but he can’t help but smile. “Is that so?”

Hakyeon nods. “And there’s more to come.” Wonshik feels his stomach churn in excitement, because if this is what happens when Hakyeon tries his ground, he wants it to happen more. Hakyeon hesitates for a second, but then he cups both of Wonshik’s cheeks in his hands, spreading his fingers out all over Wonshik’s skin. His hands are cold while the air around them is colder, but Hakyeon’s eyes never leave Wonshik’s own, and that warms him up. Hakyeon’s smile falters after a few seconds, and Wonshik feels heavier.

“What?” he asks.

Hakyeon tilts his head. “You’re not afraid of me.” Wonshik stares back at him. “How can you not be afraid of me?”

“You’re the least dangerous person I’ve ever met,” Wonshik replies, feeling speechless at the question.

The serious expression that threatened to take over Hakyeon’s face melts away. “Would you still have said that if I’d simply taken a gun and shot you?”

Wonshik bites his lip to stop his laughter. “No, probably not.” Hakyeon nods, eyes wide. “But you didn’t, so it doesn’t matter,” Wonshik continues.

“The difference isn’t all that big,” Hakyeon mutters. The wind stills.

Wonshik agrees, to a certain extent. But the more time passes, the less likely it seems that he could have died of Hakyeon’s thunder that day. “You know what I think,” he says, though he’s said it so many times before. “You’re not a bad person.” The wind breathes again.

“I know,” Hakyeon agrees. “And I’ve been doing a lot better, haven’t I?”

The sun feels warmer, the wind a little less biting. Wonshik wonders if maybe they’re heading back for summer again instead of continuing on towards winter. He misses Hakyeon’s snow. “You have,” he agrees. “Although, there is the occasional cloud you think I don’t see…” Hakyeon’s mouth falls open in outrage at the words, and Wonshik stifles another laugh. “And, you know, the rain –“

“Is sort of hard to miss, especially the puddles, I know,” Hakyeon cuts him off. “But still. No snow, no thunder, no hail or anything like that for two months,” he continues, proudly. Wonshik smiles despite himself.

“Indeed,” he says. “It’s calmer at home nowadays, I’ll admit that.”

“Hm,” is Hakyeon’s only reply. He leans his head on Wonshik’s shoulder, embracing him and holding him tightly while warmth spreads between them. Though Hakyeon has become a lot better at concealing his displeasure with things, Wonshik can still tell he’s not completely satisfied with his reply. Instead of changing it, instead of trying to turn back time, he wraps his arm around the other man tighter and closes his eyes, hoping that winter will be allowed to come and run its course. “Do you remember when I said you’re the thickest man on the planet?” Hakyeon says then, his voice not apologetic in the slightest.

Wonshik laughs. “Which of the times?”

Hakyeon huffs and pulls away from the hug. “So you remember one of them at least. That’s good.” Wonshik raises an eyebrow at him. Hakyeon smiles then, looking down at their feet. “The point is… I take it back. I don’t think you’re the thickest man on the planet. I think I deserve that title a lot more by now.”

Wonshik takes a deep breath and places his hands on the other man’s shoulders. “What are you on about now?”

The sun starts changing directions again and prepares to set when Hakyeon looks into Wonshik’s eyes. “Ever since I fell in love with you, I’ve been wrong about everything. Every single damn little thing.” Wonshik doesn’t say anything, but meets his gaze as well as he can without letting the other man know just how proud the statement makes him feel. And, just as he thought, Hakyeon isn’t finished. “It should make me scared… that you make everything different. But it doesn’t. I feel safer than ever now, because every time I think everything’s about to fall apart, every time I think I’m becoming someone I don’t want to be, you stop it. You change it.” Wonshik lets his hands slip from Hakyeon’s shoulders down over his arms and holds them tightly. “It’s a relief…” Hakyeon continues, “that for once, things don’t end just because I’m scared they will.”

Wonshik wants to say something, but the years of keeping everything inside makes it hard for the words to come out. Suddenly he remembers Hakyeon hissing at him, you’d better have something damn wise to say right now, Wonshik, and it’s okay. They have time. Just like he’s coaxed Hakyeon out of his constant storms, Hakyeon will bring out the words that are still trapped and kept hidden in Wonshik’s heart. And either way, it’s not like Hakyeon doesn’t know what he isn’t saying. That knowing look on his face can only mean one thing.

“So,” he says instead, “how about your next… premonition?” He smiles, anticipating the answer. “What’s next?”

Hakyeon shakes Wonshik’s hands off his arms as he considers it, and then he holds them in his own hands. He gives a tilted smile, one that makes Wonshik realize the air isn’t all that cold anymore. “I seem to recall a certain someone requesting some sunshine, right?”

Wonshik chuckles in reply. “I wasn’t exactly talking about the weather.”

Somewhere, Hakyeon crosses a line, and he is without a shadow of a doubt the love of Wonshik’s life as he smiles. “Neither was I.”

They continue along the road without destination, simply for the sake of walking. And despite the impending heat, the setting sun tells Wonshik that winter is on its way. He’s relieved, because he wouldn’t want to spend a life without all four season of life. Perhaps there’s a lot to worry about still; Wonshik isn’t one to fool himself that he knows what’s going to happen in the future. What waits around the corner. Hakyeon has proven to him that even if he thinks he knows what awaits them, the knowledge can only stretch for about five minutes into the future, if that. And maybe, just maybe, he should worry that Hakyeon’s lack of storms means that his passion, and by extension, love for Wonshik is dying down, too.

He considers it for a moment, but then he blows the thought out of his mind. Snow, rain and thunder is wondrous in its own way, and Wonshik loves it, but whenever he looks at the other man all fear is instantly dismissed. The storms have stopped, sure. But Wonshik takes everything he needs to know from the fact that nowadays, the sun shines out of Hakyeon’s eyes.

A/N: Alright. Did you vomit from the excessive fluff? I hope not~
So, this is the end. It makes me sad in a way cause even though it wasn't very long, only 10k words-ish, I loved writing it so much. There was a few things I wanted to do with this fic:
A lot of the time I feel so much love towards someone, or just feel so unbelievably strongly about something that I can't express it, and if I don't let the words out it ends up coming out in other ways. Maybe, like this fic, haha. But that's one of the things I wanted to do: express that sense of "I have so much inside of me, I don't know what I'll do if I can't get it out."
Secondly, I wanted to write a little about loving somebody who has issues with their temper. I have loved somebody who sometimes turned to me and said "what about when we live together? won't you be scared of me, that i'm going to hurt you?" and so I wanted to express how much I still love that person regardless of things that have happened in the past, and no matter how she saw herself.
Thirdly, in terms of pure writing, I wanted to practice building an atmosphere of pure love without making them say it out loud, say the words "i love you". I'm proud of this fic and I'd love it if you could tell me how I did ^_^
thanks to those who read and commented, and silent readers, it's time for you to come out now ;o (please?)
till next time, guys~ (coughhintsatakeoficthatmightbecomingsooncoughcough)