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It wasn't akin to epiphany, not at all. Nothing coming close to a shock to the system, a dread, or a stupor. Maybe, that was the essence of life, after all. Coming to a slow realization about simple truths at a godawful hour, the only time window of the day when his overstimulated brain urgently needs a red button to slam into to enter the "Do Not Disturb" mode. It was not rocket science either. How could it be when he knew it all along yet never felt the sweet honey glaze of honesty sticking to his larynx the way he suddenly felt now?
Something must be wrong with him, Chan reckons.
"Go the fuck to sleep and stop yelling," a seemingly faraway muffled mumbling is swiftly followed by a pillow flying into his face. He barely even feels its contact to his face, head still in the thickest clouds of his musings, lips sealed the way they had been for the past hours of the night.
"Okay."
"Wrong! It's actually not okay." In the left corner of his eye, the covers shake, a disheveled crown of soft brown hair emerging with the trembling of the Loch Ness Monster coming up for air for the first time in thirty-seven centuries. A soft scoff buries itself in the crook of his neck, and his lips stretch in a smile before his brain even registers the move of the muscles. A lean body lifts itself up with a pinch of soft rustling. Big eyes, luminescing from a hair-thin distance between them, stare him down with a concoction of reproach and amusement brewing behind them.
When the remark is not followed with a comeback, Minho says:
“You look stupid with a pillow lying just like that on your face.”
“Well, you threw it in my face, so what am I supposed to do with it?”
“You know what, you’re right. Let me smother you with it if you like it that much. And maybe choke you a bit too so that you’d stop yelling.”
“I didn’t even- Isn’t it too early for such romantic gestures?” Chan tries (or maybe he doesn’t) to sound somewhat broody and sulky, and he knows the charade is to no success when Minho flops on top of him dramatically, forcing the pillow to slide sadly on the floor.
“That’s what I’ve been saying to you!”
Chan sighs. Something inside his chest feels heavy like lead. Minho’s gimlet eyes continue to glow in the dark.
“Talk to me,” his soft tone parts the fog of silence in half, and Chan knows it’s time to cut the crap.
“I might say something stupid. I’m sorry, I don’t know how to say it.”
Minho blinks. The flood of things he dare not say inches closer to Chan’s lips, threatening to slam its way through.
“At this point in our lives, I really don’t think your silliness can surprise me anymo-”
“Okay, stop!” Chan exclaims, and Minho giggles in delight. The stray patch of moonlight kisses his naked shoulder, sprints through the hill of rippling muscles, pours a rain over the corner of his mouth. The inexplicable longing, sharp and spear-like, makes him feel sick.
“Did you know that 99% of fish breathe through their ass?”
“Baby, I’m pretty sure that’s not true.”
“See? I just said something stupid and the world didn’t crumble. You should follow my lead.”
“...damn it, you got me.”
Minho snickers again. He barely needs any light to see his nose scrunching and lips puckering just a tiny little bit. His chest contracts in the sweetest flick of ache.
Minho eventually gets exhausted from keeping the weight of his upper body in a crooked position and falls flat on his back, half-disappearing under the blankets. He turns his face to him, shadows grazing the contours of his sharp cheekbones. A black panther, sleek and lithe, with a myriad of thoughts behind those slits, ready to pounce on him or curl up against him at any second. He doesn’t know which one it will be. He doesn’t know which one he wants it to be. He’s so sick in the head.
“I might be coming up with something.”
Minho pounces, only to press his palm flat against his forehead. A single persistent wrinkle forms on his own, and Chan is obsessed.
“Your skin isn’t much warmer than it usually is so it’s hard to te- ya!”
An unformidable beast as well, Chan snakes a hand towards his forearm and tugs his body towards him until their unclothed chests are sliding against one another. Minho is wide-eyed, mouth parting open, flush high on his cheeks. He is so, so, so sick.
Chan dives in, slams all brakes down the floor to keep the pace slow and steady. Presses their lips together sweetly, keeps the kiss close-mouthed, enjoying the soft caresses and tender bumps of their noses when they fumble with the angle in the pitch dark. Wills his hand on Minho's back to freeze, denies himself even the tiniest brush of skin.
Minho sighs in the space between, and all hell breaks loose.
He plunges on his back deep into the bed when Chan gets closer, so close there is barely a gulp of air to swallow, one calloused hand spreading on the column of his neck, another one disappearing into his bird nest of hair, lips sliding, pleasing, begging to open and be opened; a warm tongue slipping in. The muffled throaty moan is sugar on Chan's tongue. Minho digs nails into his biceps, pulls him in with the intensity of a man dying of thirst in the middle of the desert, and Chan is drowning. However many days, months and years have passed, this -- gravitational attraction, magic, eternal hunger -- nothing will ever be enough for them. In the light of day or in the darkness of the night, surrounded with thousands of blurry faces or simply nobody at all - nothing will ever be enough. Not in the way to make them stop wanting, over and over again.
Minho squeezes his waist, slides nimble fingers down his chest and pushes him slightly away. Their lips are now untangled, a string of spit an invisible bond between them.
"Pretending to be sick for a makeout session? Why?" His voice is even, borderline flat, yet the quiet panting and the wild glint in his eyes cannot mask the traces of events of the past couple of minutes.
Chan is not faring much better, so it takes a few moments for Minho's words to register in his mind. His eyes widen in realization, and he quickly scrambles to sit on his heels, putting his weight off his boyfriend.
"No, I- that's not how I meant to go about it!"
"Did you even mean to go about it in any way, though? Whatever that 'it' is." Minho smirks and sits across him, knees tugged to his chest, hands framing his face. Chan heaves a sigh. "And now you're lost inside your head again. All," he drags the syllable in an endearingly annoying way, rolling the sounds off his tongue, "because of that evil little 'it'!"
Chan takes one of Minho's hands off his face. Minho keeps looking at him, his gaze unreadable, as Chan starts fiddling with his tiny fingers. Feeling his eyes on him, all the time, every time, brings so much dopamine and rush to his system. His bloodstream becomes a car race when his boyfriend takes him apart just like this - with a long stare, two bright orbs glued onto him and only him, spoon-feeding him his undivided attention.
There must be a new level to his madness.
"Chan-ah."
"No-ya."
For that, he receives a wet smooch to his temple and a bright smile, adorable front teeth proudly put on display.
"What if-" his bravery is a rapidly deflating balloon in the way it takes him this long to blurt two words and shut his mouth immediately after. Minho plants another cute kiss on his cheekbone, and his tongue falls untied. "What if what I'm about to say is very, very embarrassing?"
Minho makes a low pensive hum.
"When I was in second grade, these guys bet me to go up the stairs with my eyes closed. I thought I was so cool up until the second step, and then I tripped and fell on my face and busted my lip."
"What?!" Chan is so caught off guard that laugher bursts out of him in heaps and breathy squeaks. He turns his head to his boyfriend, who is busy grinning from ear to ear. "Why would you even do that? Did your mom whoop your ass after you came back home?"
"Oh she did, but first we went to the hospital for some stitches. There was so much blood, mom thought I brought a fountain to the Lee household."
"Baby, what the fuck."
"Yeah! And as for why I did it... I don't know! I guess they wanted to do something silly and embarrassing, and I felt... benevolent."
"Benevolent?!" Chan laughs so hard tears are starting to stick to his lashes. A small hand that is caught between his two large ones receives a play-doh treatment, but Minho doesn't seem to mind it much, his soft snickering accompanying Chan's squeaks.
"Well, we all have to do something silly and embarrassing at least once! That's one of the fundamental truths in life!"
"And so that's the only silly and embarrassing thing you've ever done?"
"Of course it is!"
Chan loses it in another fit of laughter, clings to Minho's shoulders, shakes him like a tiny little rag doll.
"You are so silly."
"Not embarrassing though."
"Well... remember our date when we went to the movies and your hands were shaking so bad you ended up dumping the whole bucket of popcorn onto that elderly lady's head-"
Minho leans over and bites his shoulder. Chan can only blush like a loser and gently pat his head in a semblance of composure.
"Like I said! Nothing, and by that I mean nothing embarrassing has ever happened to me! Ever!"
Chan tilts his head back and giggles.
"But it's okay if it has with you," Minho caresses his hands in a placating manner and brushes his nose against Chan's. "Not everyone can be all perfect like me." He almost muses to himself, a black cat purring in the bliss of the night. And his prying eyes never stop glowing, piercing him, not even for a second. "So...?"
"I love you."
Chan only notices that he let go of Minho's hands and put them on the small of his back once he feels his form turning rigid and stone-like. He keeps his head slightly down, slightly turned to the side, keeps his eyes slightly unfocused, slightly unseeing of anything he dares not read on Minho's face. The flood, this bloody tsunami of senseless words wets his lips, sticks to the roof of his mouth, cuts his breath short. Shame vaults over him. And the body in his arms is still so mute, so cold to the touch.
A moment of a small eternity passes before Minho dryly utters:
"What?"
When Chan keeps silent, Minho, not unkindly, sneaks his hand towards his defenseless torso and pinches his nipple. Chan yelps, raising his head and immediately meeting up with the gaze that keeps haunting him.
"Welcome back to earth, kangaroo boy. Now repeat yourself." And when Minho's hand looms threateningly over his other innocent nipple, he whines:
"Okay, okay, I said I love you."
"And that is the silly and shameful thing you wanted to bring up?"
"I didn't say shameful-"
"You said embarrassing!"
"No! Fuck- no, that's not what I meant, I-"
Minho waits. Deep in the chambers of his mind palace, Chan imagines him as a meme with a fluffy kitty pointing a gun.
"I love you, and I will never be ashamed or bothered by it. What I'm trying to say is... I just woke up in the middle of the night and watched you sleep and I-"
"Creep."
"Stop, I'm trying to explain myself here," Chan whines. "And so I watched you sleep and then I started thinking and then I started thinking some more and..." He stumbles, trips on his own words and goes down in a freefall.
It gets quiet.
"I'm just trying to understand here," Minho's unexpectedly soft tone cuts through Chan's defeated sighs. "You love me though. You've confessed to me a million times already. The first time you did, we were two dumbasses who thought going to Osaka during the monsoon season would be a totally awesome idea-"
"Until we weren't-"
"And then we got stranded in that cottage house we rented only for one night because the roads got flooded-"
"Had to call the landlord and explain how dumb we were-"
"He did cackle like a maniac when we rang him up-"
"And you spoke to him in such fluent Japanese, I got a bit weak in the knees-"
"And you!" Minho rises up slightly and points a finger at him. "You lit up a bunch of candles, put them down onto every surface of the living room overlooking the torrent, invited me for a dance, swayed me in your arms until my legs went numb, and you said, you said!" His voice suddenly rattles like a broken string of a guitar, but he quickly shifts in his seat and continues as if nothing of the sort occured, "you said that you love me, loved me in the past and will love me in the future, love me the way even you don't understand sometimes but you promise to always make me understand. Always make me see, always make me know."
Chan stares, bewitched with the fire of the blush spreading to the apples of Minho's cheeks and tips of his ears, and feels similar warmth within his chest.
"So!" Minho swerves in a U-turn on the road of memories and clears his throat a bit awkwardly. "I heard you the first time, I heard you all the times after that, and I get it. Why are you so devastated about it, Chan-ah? Hey, Chan-ah?... Hyung!"
When he lands a featherlight touch on Chan's chin in a silent gentle ask to look back up at him, he sees tears clouding his eyes, never falling down. Chan sniffs with a heart-sinking noise.
"And that's the thing, yeah? What I told you back then, the first time... about loving you the way I don't even understand. It was true then and it is true now."
Minho is silent. He might barely notice the way his palms keep brushing Chan's face, his shoulders, his back, never content with one particular spot. Restless in the way he is when his impatient nature is getting the best of him yet he tries to hold the reins over it.
"And when I woke up and saw you close to me, sleeping so serenely, like you were exactly where you have always wanted to be, seeking for my hand in the dark, mumbling something about my stinky cologne and sexy hairstyle at Changbin's birthday party... I think I'm stupid. I might be going nuts. I might be insane. But I felt so... flooded with love. It's like planting seeds for years and one day waking up to a blooming garden. Like waiting for the spring to come and coming face to face with all the birds of passage pirouetting above. Like wandering into a bed of flowers, talking a nap and opening your eyes to all these butterflies around you. You should know it was happening, you did what you did to make it happen, but the moment it does..." Chan gulps and sprints off the metaphorical pier, "...it's a flood."
The darkness swallows all. The rustle of the long abandoned sheets, the harsh rush of air out of clenched teeth and tightly pressed lips. When faced with the wild light in Minho's eyes, so calm it screams danger to those who stand on his way, the darkness acquiesces.
Now it is Minho's turn to search for words, Chan believes. Still, as always, his love does it so well, facing his feelings with grace, joy, and respect. Contrary to Chan who earns millions by turning human turmoil into lyrics yet currently feels like a kid digging for seashells on a dump site, Minho might never pick a pen and spill poetry about the things that simply make sense in his head, just like that. This beautiful mind of his might be a chamber of secrets to the others and occasionally a poorly lit room with a couple of bulbs busted and broken on the floor to Chan, but for Minho, the cogs in Chan's brain system have been nothing but polished sides of his Rubik's cube, and it would always take him barely a blink of an eye to twist it into perfection. These cogs were never broken or damaged, he would say. A mind is a room that needs tidying from time to time, and there is nothing shameful about it at all.
So it only makes sense when Minho finally opens his mouth and says the only thing that Chan needs to hear:
"Do you like cilantro?"
Even if he doesn't quite know it yet. "Uh... yes?"
"Hmm. Do you think I like cilantro?"
"No, of course you don't. Nobody hates cilantro more than you do, baby."
"Well, yes! And do you remember that one time you had to travel to New York to meet some execs for your songwriting things-"
"Yeah."
"-And I took my leave and tagged along with you, and every day after your meetings ended, we would go outside, walk until our feet almost buckled, take pictures of every building that glowed in the sunset lights." He chuckles. "Times Square was crazy, no matter what time of day you get there, it's filled to the brim with people. All the time!"
"Yeah."
"And one day we just got too tired and ordered in and stayed all night watching stupid Netflix movies. And you're like, 'Let's do Mexican, Mexican must be so good around here,' and I say 'Okay,' and then we get those ginormous chipotle bowls and I open the lid and it's-!"
"-cilantro everywhere."
"Cilantro everywhere, Chan-ah!" Minho exclaims as if the wounds from such betrayal still ache to this very moment. He even throws his hands up in such a cartoonish way that it makes Chan snicker, tears slowly drying.
"That's awful."
"Truly horrible!" he wails. "And then I started whining and whining and whining, and you kept laughing and replacing all the visible cilantro out of my bowl into your own, and I asked you, 'There's no way you like this demonic ass herb,' and you laughed in my face and whispered, 'I fucking love cilantro.' And then you kissed me and then you gave me pieces of your chicken when yours was too hot for you, and then you cuddled me so tightly all night, and I just kept looking and looking at you and the only thing I could think of was, 'I wish I could stay here in this moment with you forever. I wish this moment could stretch until the ends of our lives. I want you to never stop scratching my food off that damn cilantro and kiss me like I'm your dream come true. Because you're mine.' That's what I thought."
A sob tears through Chan's body with an incomprehensible force. With last shreds of composure slipping through his fingers, he accepts defeat and hides his face in his palms. Through the rush of blood in his ears and his ugly snuffling, he recognizes a warm hand travelling up and down his back and a warm voice that keeps speaking.
"So when you say that it's embarrassing... to feel this much, so suddenly, in the most mundane moments, when I have crust in my eyes and pillow creases all across my face, or when you smell like this stupid cilantro and gas from the New York traffic no matter how many times you washed your hair... I need you to know that whenever you fall just a bit more, I fall right beside you. And when it happens, I don't want you to lose sleep over it or feel like you're silly or you're out of your mind. I need you to kiss me and tell me why. Explain it to me in simple terms, draw a manhwa, prepare a PowerPoint presentation, I don't care."
"Okay."
"And it's rich coming from me because I didn't say anything either. But I will do my best too, if only to see you weep like this again," he smirks while Chan struggles to wipe his tears with a pyjama pant. "But you told me you would make me understand your love even when you didn't fully get it yourself. I need it." He squeezes his eyes, bravado seeping out of him with last words. "I need you."
Chan doesn't care anymore. He tugs Minho towards him, the sudden force making them fall back into bed. Limbs shaky and devoid of energy under the black sky that refuses to brighten up, not yet, not until they've settled all their differences. Not until they are done with this... rediscovering, whatever it is.
Chan hopes for the sunset yet never wishes to stop rediscovering.
"Is this what it is?"
"Uhm?"
"Did we..." he muffles into the crook of Minho's neck. Laying his head on his chest feels like home. Arms around him feel like home. Soft humming in his ears feels like home, and he will never leave.
"Did we revisit love? Rediscover it? Reboot it?"
"Big words for a man who took half a night to confess his undying love for me."
Chan bites his clavicle.
"Ya!" Soft giggles in his ears, a bonfire between his ribs.
"Well, how would you call it, my muse?"
"God forbid, you write too much about crazy situationships from those dating shows," he cringed. "How about research? Something about," he yawns sleepily like a cat who found a patch of sunlight on a summer afternoon, and Chan is so hopelessly, irrevocably in love with him, "some search, you know. Or maybe! Maybe it's like one of those things that have a name in some other language in the world but not in ours. So maybe it's okay if we cannot name it."
Something stirs in Chan's chest again. Something sinks just a bit deeper.
So he lifts himself up on his elbows, kisses the lips underneath him and says, "It's like an elevator. I just went a floor below you."
Minho beams.
"I will follow you now."