Yewook: kpop_prompts o12: Fool in love
Rated R, 6090 words.
Yesung didn’t want to be written off as a man foolishly and hopelessly in love. But if that’s what it took to accept the fact that he, truly, was gone for the man Ryeowook, then so be it.
This was how it was supposed to be: A bursting beam of sunlight, piercing the room through nearly shut blinds, shining brightly and radiating warmth onto Yesung’s face.
“Time to wake up,” it would say, and Yesung would ignore it-until he realized it was Ryeowook, not the morning rays of sunshine, urging him from his bed.
He would rise to a seated position, albeit slowly, smile at Ryeowook’s bubbly expression, and withhold the bitterness he’d had from having been awoken. He’d nod in appreciation as Ryeowook set breakfast before hi, and he’d eat it in silence, not because he had nothing to say to his roommate, but because he was too busy enjoying the fine cooking.
Afterwards they’d take a walk to the park. If Yesung felt no one he knew was watching, he would dare himself to entwine his fingers in Ryeowook’s, though it would never last long. And what was not spoken would still be communicated in those fleeting moments, because his intentions and feelings would still flow through his fingers and find their way to Ryeowook’s heart.
If they were lucky, they would run into Eunhyuk-and if they were making particular good time, they’d even help him in his game of Hide and Seek with Donghae. In those moments, it was always Ryeowook who found him, and he’d always find him in the most peculiar of places. “He tends to hide where I’d hide,” Ryeowook would offer if someone asked, and Donghae would pout and insist Ryeowook never play Hide and Seek with him.
Afterwards, Yesung would take Ryeowook to the streets. He let the latter browse through the different vendors-clothing garments, toys, and snacks alike-and when Ryeowook found one he liked Yesung would pay for it. “My treat,” Yesung would say, arguing that it was the least he could do to show his appreciation for Ryeowook. And of course, Ryeowook would protest, but the man never won.
The afternoons would vary on the day. Most days Yesung returned home alone, after having walked Ryeowook to the studio where he taught little kids the basics in playing piano. Every so often Ryeowook would come home with him, but even on those days Yesung would be alone, because he respected Ryeowook’s want to have some time for himself, too.
Ryeowook would make dinner for the both of them. On the days Ryeowook taught, Ryeowook would spend the time telling Yesung about his students’ progress. “Shin Eun Hye,” he’d say, “is really getting better with her improvisations,” and Yesung would nod to it all, not because he was uninterested, but because he was too busy eating.
After dinner varied on interests. Sometimes they would watch a movie together; Ryeowook always picked musicals, because he liked it best when he could sing along, and sometimes Yesung would join him (“Don’t sing like that, you’re ruining the song!” Ryeowook would whine, which always resulted in Ryeowook assuring Yesung that his voice was amazing, just not meant for musicals with female leads). Sometimes they’d read a book alone; other times they’d go to the apartment’s balcony to watch the stars. And of course every so often they made love, though Ryeowook was usually too embarrassed to talk about it afterwards.
It would always end with Ryeowook snuggled in his embrace, in any circumstance. Sometimes he’d stay awake just to see and live the moment, because Ryeowook always managed to somehow wake up before him to make breakfast. Ryeowook would pout and blush every time Yesung shared this with him, arguing that it was somewhat creepy to watch him sleep, but Yesung kept it up anyway, because it was in these moments that he’d had his affirmation of happiness.
That was how it was supposed to be, and if it had truly been his reality then Yesung would have lived contently to the end of his days.
It wasn’t quite like that, though. Yesung always awoke after ten smashes of the snooze button, because the sunlight never really made it past the blinds. No breakfast ever found its way to his bed-Ryeowook always said that the scent of the food was what really drove Yesung out of his bed and into the kitchen-and certainly no Ryeowook was grinning into his face.
At the breakfast table they usually ate in silence, save the occasional “Thanks again for making breakfast” from Yesung, and their silence was not because their mouths were full but because nothing worth talking about happened in the five minutes Yesung had been awake-and the topic of academics had died months before because, being older, Yesung already knew about everything Ryeowook was going through.
Afterwards they went to the library, where they would sometimes run into Kyuhyun and Kibum studying together. Ryeowook usually joined them, as they took many similar classes together, which always left Yesung to study alone somewhere in the corner of the library. And though most of the time he forced himself to eye the textbook before him and not his roommate on the other side of the library, most times he failed.
Yesung and Ryeowook never ate lunch together, nor did they spend the rest of the afternoon near each other. But Ryeowook was always there when Yesung arrived, outfitted perfectly with a solid blue apron and a ladle in his right hand. Over dinner they caught up, whenever applicable, and though after dinner they did their own things they did so in each other’s company.
At about ten in the evening, Ryeowook would leave Yesung be, yet he never really left. Physically he did, and the footsteps away from their common space and toward the man’s bedroom proved it. But mentally, Ryeowook was written all over Yesung’s head, in permanent marker, because he never truly left him, even in his absence.
It was all too usual for Yesung, to be frank, even though his ideal way of things was by no means any less so. Sometimes he reminded himself that it was merely a longing for the unattainable desired, a frustration over what he currently had. He disliked consistency, and it was what he had-and he wanted that to change.
Yesung didn’t know what to think. Sometimes the clues were all there. Sometimes, whenever Ryeowook would serve him breakfast and dinner, he’d spy an unrecognizable glint within his eye, but even if it’d meant something it’d always disappear before Yesung dared a second glance. Sometimes, after dinner, Yesung would look up from his book to dare a stray glance at his roommate, only to find Ryeowook already doing the same-and in the moments of met eye contact there’d be an intensity Yesung could not understand….
But then, the way Ryeowook left Yesung for the night without so much as a goodnight, the way Ryeowook was quick in leaving Yesung’s side at the library, the awkwardness and silence each morning brought… all of it brought down Yesung’s spirits, labeled as false hopes. Because Ryeowook was only his roommate, Yesung had to remind himself, and he shouldn’t have been anything more, because Ryeowook probably saw him under that same light.
Really, though, Yesung didn’t want to be written off as a man foolishly and hopelessly in love. But if that’s what it took to accept the fact that he, truly, was gone for the man Ryeowook, then so be it.
“You look tired,” Eunhyuk remarked once, giving Yesung a slight wave as the man took a seat next to him on the park bench.
“Ryeowook keeps me up at night,” Yesung explained, and he allowed himself to slump into the bench. Indeed, the night before, Ryeowook had unexpectedly arrived in Yesung’s doorway, textbook in hand as he asked for help in studying for an exam. Even if Yesung hadn’t been particularly strong in the subject material, he knew he’d probably have said yes anyway-and as a result he’d gone to bed almost three hours later than he usually did.
Yesung frowned, questioning the silence, but when he turned to Eunhyuk curiously he didn’t quite expect to find a goofy face in near laughter peering at him.
“Keeps you up,” Eunhyuk repeated when Yesung had interrogated. “He keeps you up?”
“You know what I meant,” Yesung snapped with furtive eyes, once he’d realized the insinuation, even though Eunhyuk was somewhat right in that regard too.
Eunhyuk sighed, turning his own gaze to the pond before them, and after a few moments Yesung followed suit. He smiled at the sight of Donghae crouched at its side, one hand extended to the water, more than likely in an attempt to feed the fish. But it was mostly because of Donghae’s happiness within the moment that made Yesung smile, and after a stray glance at Eunhyuk he realized it made Eunhyuk happy also.
“He sure is happy,” Yesung remarked, and Eunhyuk only nodded and sighed.
“He’s so goofy. You know, the other day, he was telling me not to feed the fish as directed on the fish food labels. You know why?-because it was the aliens’ subtle attempts at making his fish obese. And the day before that, he was telling me how unfair the world was, all because his favorite actor’s page on Wikipedia wasn’t very in-depth compared to some of the other pages there.”
“He couldn’t just add to it himself?”
“I don’t know, I told him that someone was just in the process of adding on to it, that’s all.” Eunhyuk shrugged. “Ya, we’re hopeless, aren’t we?”
“We’re not hopeless,” Yesung muttered, though Eunhyuk remained unconvinced; “just foolish.”
But when Eunhyuk asked Yesung to explain the difference, Yesung had nothing to offer.
Yesung had expected it from Eunhyuk, yes, but never from his innocent Ryeowook.
“I passed the exam with full marks!” were the first words out of Ryeowook’s mouth when Yesung had returned from the park.
“Congratulations, Wookie.”
“Thanks hyung,” Ryeowook replied, and Yesung could almost melt from the warm smile on his face. “But yeah, sorry for keeping you up last night, but in the end it was worth it, right?-or, maybe, is that something I shouldn’t be… apologizing for?”
He’d heard the exact same insinuation from Eunhyuk, and Yesung had been glad he’d heard it from Eunhyuk first, because that was all that was keeping him from spitting out his dinner across the table in utter shock. But it was all there-Ryeowook’s smirk, the innocent yet knowing glint in his eyes, the tone of his voice… but why?
“…No… not particularly.”
Later, after desperate strokes, muffled groans, and a little too many minutes in the shower, Yesung decided that, no, it really wasn’t something Ryeowook should be apologizing for.
Once, in bed, Yesung spent the entire night pondering over his crush over Ryeowook, because he desperately wanted an answer to his stray and cruel thoughts, because he wanted a justification to his hopelessness in denial, because he just wanted to know.
He asked himself why he liked another man, even though he’d spent his growing years clearly wanting his own children-but no answer came to him.
He asked himself why that man had to be Ryeowook, even though he’d spent his recent years trying to establish a line between friendship and something more, perhaps not clearly enough-but no answer came to him.
But when he asked why he liked Ryeowook, the list went on for pages on end, or at least, such would be the case if he bothered to right every reason down. Because he made him smile, because he had a nice voice, because he was so amusingly short, because he insisted on making him breakfast and dinner, because he was a mystery, because he reminded him of his brother, because he often left him hard and soaked in the mornings, because of his peculiar yet unique laugh, because of….
This was how Yesung defined cowardice and hopelessness, not in that he had gigantic list of rather invalid yet acceptable reasons for liking Ryeowook, but because that list never made it to his tongue, let alone to the man in question.
Yesung knew he was supposed to feel happy when Eunhyuk came to him, almost bouncing, to inform him of his good news with Donghae, but perhaps in a wave of jealousy Yesung instead brushed him a cold shoulder.
“Don’t be like that,” Eunhyuk pouted. “I’m sure Ryeowook really likes you, too.”
“He doesn’t,” Yesung replied reassuringly, though mostly to himself.
“You don’t know that until you’ve heard it from him.”
“Yeah, whatever.” Yesung sighed, allowing himself to turn to Eunhyuk, and it was then that he realized the presence of Eunhyuk’s toothy grin and the absence of Donghae himself.
“He’s at the library,” Eunhyuk answered quickly, catching Yesung’s curious expression. “He’s tutoring this kid. I think his name was Kim Kibum.”
“Ah, I think he’s in Ryeowook’s year.” A pause. “So tell me about how you did it?”
And so Yesung learned, at that moment, how incredibly sappy Eunhyuk had gone about admitting his feelings toward Donghae. Over ice cream, had apparently been when it’d happened, and Eunhyuk hadn’t even finished his sentence, because Donghae had finished the train of thought for him….
“So basically, you had it easy.”
“If you want to call it that, sure.”
Yesung smiled externally before turning away. “Well, I’m happy for you both, you know. Possibly jealous, but definitely happy.”
“Thanks,” Eunhyuk said with a nod, “and I hope things go well with you, too.”
“Yeah… we’ll see.”
Ryeowook has a mystery at best, because he always seemed to be at both ends of the spectrum at the same time. Reverberation was how Yesung best described it, as according to a previous Physics class (or had that been oscillation?), but no explanation of the phenomenon made the phenomenon itself any worse, anyway.
It usually wasn’t so bad. Sometimes Yesung could avoid it. For instance, if Yesung ever (accidentally) walked in on Ryeowook stepping out of the shower, it only took a simple half turn and several steps out of the bathroom to solve the problem (and perhaps some hours staring at not-so-arousing photos). Similarly, if Ryeowook was standing too close for his liking, all Yesung needed to do was to take a step away (though he didn’t always do so).
Some things, though, he could not avoid so discreetly. For instance, Ryeowook spoke with a decently high-pitched voice (well, at any rate, it wasn’t low-pitched), but occasionally he’d end up saying the word “hyung” in an almost alluring and teasing tone, and whether it was because of the contrast or because it was simply arousing (“Imagine how hot it’d be having him under me, whispering that as I…” Yesung thought to himself quite often, and he almost never finished that thought because by then he’d given into lust and his hand) Yesung really didn’t know. And then there was the way Ryeowook looked at him occasionally-but that was a whole other story in itself.
The signs were really all there, Yesung convinced himself of it. Once upon a time, he was sure there’d been signs leading away from his desired conclusion-but if they ever really existed they certainly weren’t present now. Sometimes, as Yesung thought about it in the silence of his room dead at night, he wondered why he was holding his feelings back from Ryeowook, because unless the man was toying with him there was no way Ryeowook wouldn’t return at least a fraction of those feelings back to him.
In the end, Yesung passed it off as cowardice, a fear of the truth, a fear of rejection. And maybe that was what it really was, too-but if anything, Yesung knew it also served as an excuse to not have to tell Ryeowook.
As much as he hated things as they currently were, he was much more content with holding onto his security than throwing it away from the unknown, even if the unknown was ultimately what he desired.
He’d had Yesung’s stapler, which he’d borrowed the night before in order to put together the pages to his research paper.
Yesung had only entered Ryeowook’s room to retrieve it. He’d expected to walk in, apologize for the intrusion, ask for the stapler, and to walk out of the room with it.
Yesung only managed one of these, though he wished he hadn’t done even that, because all he’d heard was a “Hyung…” in a ridiculously lustful and needy voice before he’d walked in on Ryeowook with his hands down his pants.
He stood still for an entire second in shock before realizing what he’d walked into, and in the exact moment realization hit him he walked right out of the room to hide the red in his face. He spent another second in the hallway, cursing himself for having left without the stapler, but it wasn’t long before lust took its toll; one thought of what he’d just walked into caused him to race back to his own room.
Ironically enough, he’d been so needy that he’d forgotten to lock his door-and almost in a wave of déjà vu, Ryeowook found himself walking in on the exact same thing Yesung had walked in on, earlier.
“Fuck,” Yesung cursed, but before he could remove his hands from his pants Ryeowook had marched toward him and had gotten to his knees.
Yesung’s initial reaction was to push Ryeowook away, though this time he fought that urge. Instead he turned away, because he was much too embarrassed to watch the man he liked get him off. Even if he had been looking in Ryeowook’s direction, he wouldn’t have watched anyway, because he’d spent the majority of the time with his eyes behind his eyelids, Ryeowook’s strokes shooting pure, hot bliss through his veins, leaving him in an utter and melting mess on his mattress.
When Yesung came, he collapsed back onto his bed, but it was only for a moment. When he’d realized what’d just happened he shot himself back up to a seated position, and he blushed immensely when he found Ryeowook wiping his mess off his hands.
“No, I’m fine,” Ryeowook muttered quietly when Yesung offered to help, and in that moment Yesung realized that Ryeowook, too, was not making eye contact with him. And hell, if it’d been hard enough before, this would certainly make living together more difficult.
But for the moment, neither man thought much of it, because their embarrassment had masked rational thought and even the slightest care for the future.
“Think of it as my apology for you having walked in on that,” Ryeowook spat out rather quickly, and before Yesung could manage an entire sentence Ryeowook had scurried out of the room.
Well fuck, some apology that’d been, Yesung thought to himself. That logic didn’t even make sense, now that Yesung was bothered to actually think about it. And now Ryeowook had left him in a useless mess-he didn’t even know what he was supposed to feel, elated, hopeful, discouraged?-and the last thing he really wanted to do was to think about which direction he was supposed to in next, even though that frankly was what he ended up doing anyway.
But hell, if that wasn’t one hell of a reassurance that Yesung’s crush wasn’t too hopeless. Yet even under this newly found light, Yesung was still unsure as to why he was still scared to admit himself to Ryeowook.
He was simply afraid of the truth, Yesung decided. Even if the truth pointed in the right direction, he was too scared to find out.
The wind was strong that day, and though Yesung’s hair was decently long it wasn’t so in that it blew carelessly in the wind.
“I envy you,” Donghae remarked over Eunhyuk’s head, nodding to his own, whipping hair, and Yesung only returned a smile as his response. Eunhyuk had said it himself, that Yesung had grown quieter recently, though Yesung had argued he’d always been that way. But even Donghae, who’d only really met Yesung in passing, had said the same thing.
He wasn’t going to let Ryeowook deter him from his studies-not now, not in his final year of studies, not after having made it this far. But Ryeowook was more than just a name in permanent marker now. He was a picture, glued permanently in several pages of his scrapbook of memories. He was the postage stamp, on an envelope containing his conscience postmarked to a world beyond hopelessness. He was the painted sky, the narrator of his dreams… the list went on.
Yet he was only a man, a man Yesung happened to love-no, rather, he happened to be in love with. Ryeowook was just a young man who spontaneously gave him a hand job with little to ridiculous justification.
He was just Ryeowook.
Right?
“You should tell him,” Donghae said suddenly, causing Yesung to snap his head in his direction.
“…what?”
“You should tell him,” Donghae repeated mechanically, and the facial expression he gave Yesung remained unchanged from his first. “As in, go up to him, sit on his lap if you have to, and tell the damn guy you-”
“All right, all right, no need to get snappy.” But Donghae only laughed and shook his head, all before gazing down at the resting Eunhyuk on his shoulder.
“Worst that can happen is that he says no, right?”
“Yeah…” but what troubled Yesung most was not that he actually disagreed with Donghae, but that Donghae had it said it so carelessly, as if losing someone over a friendship was only another part of life. And maybe when Yesung thought about it, yeah, it really was just another chapter of life, even though Yesung disliked the idea of segmenting life into chapters, because life was more continuous and not a conglomeration of boxed time frames.
Because it bothered him otherwise, Yesung kept his perspective, continued to strive towards having Ryeowook for himself. And all the while, perhaps foolishly, he held a blind eye to the prospect of losing him instead.
If this had been his downfall, Yesung had indeed not known it then.
Ryeowook had shown his not-so-innocent side one last time, bringing him to three times total, two of which involving sexual conduct.
It wasn’t really anything near a hand job, really, though if Yesung hadn’t listen to his slightly and inconveniently moralistic conscience then maybe it could have been. But the effect was the same: images and a conscience that would no longer leave him alone.
He still remembered when Kyuhyun had handed the drunken Ryeowook over to him, passing it off as having had a little too much to drink; he remembered when he’d seated Ryeowook into his bed, having then been told that Ryeowook was, in fact, sober and perfectly all right; he remembered when Ryeowook had pulled himself back up, having somehow seated Yesung onto the bed, declaring he prove to Yesung that he was in fact not inebriated….
If there was any guilt at all, it had certainly panged afterwards and not during Ryeowook’s clumsy attempts at a strip tease. At first Yesung did nothing, because he’d half-expected Ryeowook to collapse halfway through. But when Ryeowook had kept a decent rhythmic motion with his hips, Yesung wasn’t so convinced.
He knew he was probably the only person in the world who would actually enjoy watching this, though he hadn’t been sure if that was supposed to be an encouraging or sickening thought. But attraction worked in its odd ways, and Yesung couldn’t be fucked to figure it all out anyway.
Ryeowook had basically been on Yesung’s lap by then, gyrating his hips in circular motions, teasing Yesung with pressure. Yesung had growled; he’d felt both embarrassed and empowered, because he knew Ryeowook knew of his hardness, his supposed inebriety willing, but he’d felt enraged that he couldn’t see if he was-
When the hemline of Ryeowook’s shirt began to ride up his midriff, Yesung hesitated to reach up and pull it back down or perhaps, better yet, push him off completely. But the moment he decided to take action, Ryeowook had grasped his extended hands.
Yesung’s eyes widened but did not look up to meet Ryeowook’s, because he was much too scared for what he’d find there. But he watched silently, as Ryeowook had moved his hands to his midriff, rubbing his knuckles onto the soft skin found there (Yesung hadn’t dared to use his fingertips), all before guiding them lower….
…and that was when Ryeowook’s body had decided he’d been having too much fun, and before Yesung could voice out a protest the younger man had slumped forward into Yesung’s seated form.
They’d remained like that for some time, mostly because Yesung had been left in utter shock to even think of moving Ryeowook. He felt confused, perhaps more than ever, because his lustful and secret longings were never actually supposed to work out. Yet here it all was, the evidence all pointing in his favor, and he simply didn’t have a clue what to do about it.
Tell him, Yesung’s conscience told him. And moments later, Donghae’s words were reminding him the same thing.
And though he wasn’t sure what exactly was driving his actions at that time, be it lust, desire, confusion, or an actual want for Kim Ryeowook, Yesung knew what he had to do. And only then, half an hour later, when he lifted Ryeowook off of him and to tuck him properly under the covers, Yesung decided, perhaps long overdue, that it was time to take matters into his own hands.
It vaguely reminded Yesung of a conversation he’d heard Eunhyuk and Donghae having a few days back.
“I did it because I love you!”
“Right, of course you did. Now tell me why you really did it?”
“Fine, I lied. I did it because-”
“Actually, don’t bother. I think I’d rather make myself believe that’s why you did it.”
And though, of course, the context had been slightly different, the effect was the same.
“I don’t want to hear the truth,” were the words Ryeowook had actually used, when Yesung had informed the man they needed to talk. “I… I have the strange feeling I know what this is about, and I… I’d rather not know the answer.”
“Answer?” Yesung asked. “What answer? You don’t even know the question!-you don’t even know if there is a question!”
His frustration stemmed from the courage it’d taken to get this far, only to be slapped back down to the ground to begin the ascent once more-and it truly was a crushing feeling. But for Ryeowook, because Yesung believed he really was worth it, he willed himself to wait.
Not that Yesung was particularly surprised, but that resolve didn’t last for long.
It was to the point where a fucking banner, spelling the words “I’m madly in love with you, Kim Ryeowook,” was draped over their common space, and if such a banner really did exist, Yesung was sure that a “I love you too” was scribbled in small letters somewhere, in a corner he hadn’t yet looked in.
The answers were there, Yesung was sure. That, or he’d done a damn good job fabricating their presence. But that couldn’t be it, because they really were there.
He could see the changes, though perhaps only because he’d gotten so used to the consistency of life before Ryeowook was in the picture-or at least, before Ryeowook was the focus of such a picture, because Ryeowook had always been in the picture from the day they’d met. But he could tell, from the way Ryeowook’s gazes lingered, from that empty yet longing look in his eyes, from the way their physical contact lingered seconds too long, from how Ryeowook would stay up with Yesung later and later each night, that something was indeed changing, and not against his favor.
But each time he tried to bring it up, and even the one time in which he’d apparently looked like he was about to bring it up, Ryeowook closed himself off and shot Yesung down.
And it was indeed a crushing feeling.
After a week of what Eunhyuk had described as “mind games,” Yesung decided he’d had enough (for real, this time, Yesung told his nagging conscience). And perhaps on a slight tailwind provided by Eunhyuk’s advice, Yesung began to formulate his plans within his mind.
He didn’t quite follow any of those plans, really. In fact, he’d have gone off to bed that evening unsuccessful, if it hadn’t been his act of impulse in what would’ve been his last five minutes spent with Ryeowook. But instead of letting Ryeowook brush past him, Yesung grabbed a hold of his arm, as well as all the failed attempts of the day, and did not let go.
“Hyung?”
Yesung shuddered. “First, don’t call me that. You… you’re close enough to me to not have to bother with stupid honorifics like that.” And of course that reasoning was a lie, let alone having been conjured on the spot, and so naturally Ryeowook had seen through it.
“All right, hyung, what do you want?”
It was only after several more attempts when Yesung finally gave up, because if their conversation consisted only of arguments over nicknames, he just might lose this chance like the ones before.
“I want an honest answer,” Yesung said, inadvertently tightening his grip on Ryeowook’s wrist. “How much do you like me?”
Ryeowook’s answer came much faster than Yesung had anticipated. “You want an honest answer, hyung?”
“Yeah.”
“I like you a lot.” And as Yesung sighed to himself in relief Ryeowook continued, having missed the sign himself. “I like you a lot, hyung, perhaps to a fault. Like, Kyuhyun scolds me all the time, telling me that I might be a little too deep into desperation, but I… I spend nights thinking about you sometimes, and-”
“Ryeowook,” Yesung whispered, “it’s okay. Me too.”
And without bothering to hear Ryeowook out Yesung pulled on Ryeowook’s arm, catching the man as he fell into his arms.
“You… what?” but the question remained unanswered, and with one soft kiss Ryeowook was silenced.
They should have talked about it first, Yesung thought to himself, somewhere in the disarray of the night. But instead, driven perhaps by raw lust, activated by a lack of need of restraint, they’d spent their first night in Yesung’s bed, where sleeping was completely out of the question.
It was like a fantasy painted true, in Yesung’s eyes. The whimpering, mixed with his own grunts-every thrust granted a throaty “hyung” from the man beneath him, and it fueled his lust, his need….
And when he’d looked at Ryeowook Yesung found the helplessness in his face, the fact that he himself was the reason for the facial expressions….
It was perfect.
Yet not everything was how it was supposed to be, or at least in comparison to his own standards. Ryeowook was still in bed with him when he’d woken up, and as a result there’d been no breakfast. His doubting conscience had prevented any hand-holding to the park, and in the end no one had found the hiding Donghae.
The only thing that seemed right was Ryeowook’s dinner, but that’d always been something he’d had from the start. None of his dreamed reality had come true.
And instead of answering Ryeowook’s I Love You’s, Yesung found himself answering his What Are We’s. And though he, too, wanted the answer, it pained him to learn the true reality of it all.
Life with Ryeowook was not at all like what he’d supposed it should’ve been. He’d prepared himself for the ideal Ryeowook. He’d prepared himself for the sex. But he hadn’t prepared himself for the emotional baggage Ryeowook had brought with him.
“What are we?”
“We’re boyfriends… right?”
“…all right.”
“What are we?”
“I… I don’t know, you already asked me that.”
“I know, but… what are we?”
Yesung didn’t really want to see it as anything more than a fuck, because it’d hardly been his intention at all. But maybe, somewhere down the road, it really had changed into a mere lust-driven crush.
He knew, somewhere within him, that he really did want Ryeowook in more ways than just sex. But his lust was too far ahead of him, and at this rate it would cross the finish line before the rest of him had even started the race….
And so, as quickly as it had started, it ended.
Things never returned to the way they were-they simply couldn’t. And though Yesung secretly did wish his relationship with Ryeowook could return to the mysterious, unknowingly dangerous bond that it had been before, hadn’t a change in consistency been what he’d wanted all along?
Ryeowook had had his questions, naturally. What were we? Why had we only lasted a weekend? Where did I go wrong?-and to all of these Yesung had given vague, uninformative answers, not because he didn’t know the answers, but because he didn’t want to answer him.
Looking at his face was the worst, because he never did quite figure out if the burning passion he’d thought he had had also been in Ryeowook’s. Sure, the sudden disconnection had brought him emotional pain and a flood of guilt, but somehow Yesung assured himself that, in the end, this would be the better of two options.
But until then, Yesung refused to look at Ryeowook, for the exact same reason as why he longed to look at Ryeowook’s face while he’d fucked him, because the waves the emotions that rippled across his face were entirely Yesung’s doing. And if once upon a time that’d aroused him to no end, now it opened a void of remorse.
“A fool in love,” Eunhyuk repeated with a flat tone, and Yesung nodded.
“Or maybe just a fool, who thought he was in love….” Yesung bit his lip, sighed, and shook his head. “Eunhyuk, I’m sorry, I-”
“Not me,” his friend said, “Ryeowook. Apologize to him, not me.”
And Yesung only nodded.
He didn’t realize it until after the words had left his mouth. He’d explained to Ryeowook exactly as his conscience had so harshly spat it into his hands, that his lust had gotten ahead of him, that he wasn’t ready to support Ryeowook emotionally, that he should’ve waited, that he deserved someone better….
“But what if I’m ready for this?” Ryeowook challenged, which had caught Yesung at a loss of words. “What if I don’t want someone better?”
“I’m sorry,” had been the only words Yesung could offer. But whether it was because he was truly sorry or because Eunhyuk had told him to, Yesung didn’t even know for himself.
He was simply a mess of feelings, who could no longer tell himself what he wanted anymore. And now he was asking Ryeowook to wait for him, so that his emotions and intentions could catch up to the rest of him, because he’d lived on the assumption that he could always get Ryeowook, that there was no option of losing him either.
It was now no different from their beginning, when Ryeowook had asked Yesung to wait, to hold off on the truth, until he himself could bear it. And even then Yesung had not waited, not entirely, having instead hurried the closure of the gap between them. But the fact that Yesung had cursed Ryeowook for brushing it off made him hypocritical, because now he was doing no less the same. There was no difference.
Yet there was a world of a difference, because when Yesung had finally stopped at the finish line, permanent marker had faded, glue had worn off, postage stamps had been lost in the clutter, the sun had stopped illuminating the sky….
The finish line had already been broken. Ryeowook had crossed without him.
Every morning, when Yesung forces himself to get out of bed several minutes earlier to make himself breakfast, he reminds himself that life hadn’t always been this way, all because of his unhappiness for being content with what already was. And if the act of making breakfast doesn’t set him straight in the end, the taste of his concoctions most certainly do.
Even in the simplest of ways, Yesung is reminded just how much of a fool he is.
Both in love, and out.
END
Dedicated to: kpoppin, because she still likes Yewook (though perhaps not this story in particular, given its ending, haha).
Written for: kpop_prompts challenge, option 4, prompt 012: "Fool in love." Archive ( here)
Yesung didn’t want to be written off as a man foolishly and hopelessly in love. But if that’s what it took to accept the fact that he, truly, was gone for the man Ryeowook, then so be it.
This was how it was supposed to be: A bursting beam of sunlight, piercing the room through nearly shut blinds, shining brightly and radiating warmth onto Yesung’s face.
“Time to wake up,” it would say, and Yesung would ignore it-until he realized it was Ryeowook, not the morning rays of sunshine, urging him from his bed.
He would rise to a seated position, albeit slowly, smile at Ryeowook’s bubbly expression, and withhold the bitterness he’d had from having been awoken. He’d nod in appreciation as Ryeowook set breakfast before hi, and he’d eat it in silence, not because he had nothing to say to his roommate, but because he was too busy enjoying the fine cooking.
Afterwards they’d take a walk to the park. If Yesung felt no one he knew was watching, he would dare himself to entwine his fingers in Ryeowook’s, though it would never last long. And what was not spoken would still be communicated in those fleeting moments, because his intentions and feelings would still flow through his fingers and find their way to Ryeowook’s heart.
If they were lucky, they would run into Eunhyuk-and if they were making particular good time, they’d even help him in his game of Hide and Seek with Donghae. In those moments, it was always Ryeowook who found him, and he’d always find him in the most peculiar of places. “He tends to hide where I’d hide,” Ryeowook would offer if someone asked, and Donghae would pout and insist Ryeowook never play Hide and Seek with him.
Afterwards, Yesung would take Ryeowook to the streets. He let the latter browse through the different vendors-clothing garments, toys, and snacks alike-and when Ryeowook found one he liked Yesung would pay for it. “My treat,” Yesung would say, arguing that it was the least he could do to show his appreciation for Ryeowook. And of course, Ryeowook would protest, but the man never won.
The afternoons would vary on the day. Most days Yesung returned home alone, after having walked Ryeowook to the studio where he taught little kids the basics in playing piano. Every so often Ryeowook would come home with him, but even on those days Yesung would be alone, because he respected Ryeowook’s want to have some time for himself, too.
Ryeowook would make dinner for the both of them. On the days Ryeowook taught, Ryeowook would spend the time telling Yesung about his students’ progress. “Shin Eun Hye,” he’d say, “is really getting better with her improvisations,” and Yesung would nod to it all, not because he was uninterested, but because he was too busy eating.
After dinner varied on interests. Sometimes they would watch a movie together; Ryeowook always picked musicals, because he liked it best when he could sing along, and sometimes Yesung would join him (“Don’t sing like that, you’re ruining the song!” Ryeowook would whine, which always resulted in Ryeowook assuring Yesung that his voice was amazing, just not meant for musicals with female leads). Sometimes they’d read a book alone; other times they’d go to the apartment’s balcony to watch the stars. And of course every so often they made love, though Ryeowook was usually too embarrassed to talk about it afterwards.
It would always end with Ryeowook snuggled in his embrace, in any circumstance. Sometimes he’d stay awake just to see and live the moment, because Ryeowook always managed to somehow wake up before him to make breakfast. Ryeowook would pout and blush every time Yesung shared this with him, arguing that it was somewhat creepy to watch him sleep, but Yesung kept it up anyway, because it was in these moments that he’d had his affirmation of happiness.
That was how it was supposed to be, and if it had truly been his reality then Yesung would have lived contently to the end of his days.
It wasn’t quite like that, though. Yesung always awoke after ten smashes of the snooze button, because the sunlight never really made it past the blinds. No breakfast ever found its way to his bed-Ryeowook always said that the scent of the food was what really drove Yesung out of his bed and into the kitchen-and certainly no Ryeowook was grinning into his face.
At the breakfast table they usually ate in silence, save the occasional “Thanks again for making breakfast” from Yesung, and their silence was not because their mouths were full but because nothing worth talking about happened in the five minutes Yesung had been awake-and the topic of academics had died months before because, being older, Yesung already knew about everything Ryeowook was going through.
Afterwards they went to the library, where they would sometimes run into Kyuhyun and Kibum studying together. Ryeowook usually joined them, as they took many similar classes together, which always left Yesung to study alone somewhere in the corner of the library. And though most of the time he forced himself to eye the textbook before him and not his roommate on the other side of the library, most times he failed.
Yesung and Ryeowook never ate lunch together, nor did they spend the rest of the afternoon near each other. But Ryeowook was always there when Yesung arrived, outfitted perfectly with a solid blue apron and a ladle in his right hand. Over dinner they caught up, whenever applicable, and though after dinner they did their own things they did so in each other’s company.
At about ten in the evening, Ryeowook would leave Yesung be, yet he never really left. Physically he did, and the footsteps away from their common space and toward the man’s bedroom proved it. But mentally, Ryeowook was written all over Yesung’s head, in permanent marker, because he never truly left him, even in his absence.
It was all too usual for Yesung, to be frank, even though his ideal way of things was by no means any less so. Sometimes he reminded himself that it was merely a longing for the unattainable desired, a frustration over what he currently had. He disliked consistency, and it was what he had-and he wanted that to change.
Yesung didn’t know what to think. Sometimes the clues were all there. Sometimes, whenever Ryeowook would serve him breakfast and dinner, he’d spy an unrecognizable glint within his eye, but even if it’d meant something it’d always disappear before Yesung dared a second glance. Sometimes, after dinner, Yesung would look up from his book to dare a stray glance at his roommate, only to find Ryeowook already doing the same-and in the moments of met eye contact there’d be an intensity Yesung could not understand….
But then, the way Ryeowook left Yesung for the night without so much as a goodnight, the way Ryeowook was quick in leaving Yesung’s side at the library, the awkwardness and silence each morning brought… all of it brought down Yesung’s spirits, labeled as false hopes. Because Ryeowook was only his roommate, Yesung had to remind himself, and he shouldn’t have been anything more, because Ryeowook probably saw him under that same light.
Really, though, Yesung didn’t want to be written off as a man foolishly and hopelessly in love. But if that’s what it took to accept the fact that he, truly, was gone for the man Ryeowook, then so be it.
“You look tired,” Eunhyuk remarked once, giving Yesung a slight wave as the man took a seat next to him on the park bench.
“Ryeowook keeps me up at night,” Yesung explained, and he allowed himself to slump into the bench. Indeed, the night before, Ryeowook had unexpectedly arrived in Yesung’s doorway, textbook in hand as he asked for help in studying for an exam. Even if Yesung hadn’t been particularly strong in the subject material, he knew he’d probably have said yes anyway-and as a result he’d gone to bed almost three hours later than he usually did.
Yesung frowned, questioning the silence, but when he turned to Eunhyuk curiously he didn’t quite expect to find a goofy face in near laughter peering at him.
“Keeps you up,” Eunhyuk repeated when Yesung had interrogated. “He keeps you up?”
“You know what I meant,” Yesung snapped with furtive eyes, once he’d realized the insinuation, even though Eunhyuk was somewhat right in that regard too.
Eunhyuk sighed, turning his own gaze to the pond before them, and after a few moments Yesung followed suit. He smiled at the sight of Donghae crouched at its side, one hand extended to the water, more than likely in an attempt to feed the fish. But it was mostly because of Donghae’s happiness within the moment that made Yesung smile, and after a stray glance at Eunhyuk he realized it made Eunhyuk happy also.
“He sure is happy,” Yesung remarked, and Eunhyuk only nodded and sighed.
“He’s so goofy. You know, the other day, he was telling me not to feed the fish as directed on the fish food labels. You know why?-because it was the aliens’ subtle attempts at making his fish obese. And the day before that, he was telling me how unfair the world was, all because his favorite actor’s page on Wikipedia wasn’t very in-depth compared to some of the other pages there.”
“He couldn’t just add to it himself?”
“I don’t know, I told him that someone was just in the process of adding on to it, that’s all.” Eunhyuk shrugged. “Ya, we’re hopeless, aren’t we?”
“We’re not hopeless,” Yesung muttered, though Eunhyuk remained unconvinced; “just foolish.”
But when Eunhyuk asked Yesung to explain the difference, Yesung had nothing to offer.
Yesung had expected it from Eunhyuk, yes, but never from his innocent Ryeowook.
“I passed the exam with full marks!” were the first words out of Ryeowook’s mouth when Yesung had returned from the park.
“Congratulations, Wookie.”
“Thanks hyung,” Ryeowook replied, and Yesung could almost melt from the warm smile on his face. “But yeah, sorry for keeping you up last night, but in the end it was worth it, right?-or, maybe, is that something I shouldn’t be… apologizing for?”
He’d heard the exact same insinuation from Eunhyuk, and Yesung had been glad he’d heard it from Eunhyuk first, because that was all that was keeping him from spitting out his dinner across the table in utter shock. But it was all there-Ryeowook’s smirk, the innocent yet knowing glint in his eyes, the tone of his voice… but why?
“…No… not particularly.”
Later, after desperate strokes, muffled groans, and a little too many minutes in the shower, Yesung decided that, no, it really wasn’t something Ryeowook should be apologizing for.
Once, in bed, Yesung spent the entire night pondering over his crush over Ryeowook, because he desperately wanted an answer to his stray and cruel thoughts, because he wanted a justification to his hopelessness in denial, because he just wanted to know.
He asked himself why he liked another man, even though he’d spent his growing years clearly wanting his own children-but no answer came to him.
He asked himself why that man had to be Ryeowook, even though he’d spent his recent years trying to establish a line between friendship and something more, perhaps not clearly enough-but no answer came to him.
But when he asked why he liked Ryeowook, the list went on for pages on end, or at least, such would be the case if he bothered to right every reason down. Because he made him smile, because he had a nice voice, because he was so amusingly short, because he insisted on making him breakfast and dinner, because he was a mystery, because he reminded him of his brother, because he often left him hard and soaked in the mornings, because of his peculiar yet unique laugh, because of….
This was how Yesung defined cowardice and hopelessness, not in that he had gigantic list of rather invalid yet acceptable reasons for liking Ryeowook, but because that list never made it to his tongue, let alone to the man in question.
Yesung knew he was supposed to feel happy when Eunhyuk came to him, almost bouncing, to inform him of his good news with Donghae, but perhaps in a wave of jealousy Yesung instead brushed him a cold shoulder.
“Don’t be like that,” Eunhyuk pouted. “I’m sure Ryeowook really likes you, too.”
“He doesn’t,” Yesung replied reassuringly, though mostly to himself.
“You don’t know that until you’ve heard it from him.”
“Yeah, whatever.” Yesung sighed, allowing himself to turn to Eunhyuk, and it was then that he realized the presence of Eunhyuk’s toothy grin and the absence of Donghae himself.
“He’s at the library,” Eunhyuk answered quickly, catching Yesung’s curious expression. “He’s tutoring this kid. I think his name was Kim Kibum.”
“Ah, I think he’s in Ryeowook’s year.” A pause. “So tell me about how you did it?”
And so Yesung learned, at that moment, how incredibly sappy Eunhyuk had gone about admitting his feelings toward Donghae. Over ice cream, had apparently been when it’d happened, and Eunhyuk hadn’t even finished his sentence, because Donghae had finished the train of thought for him….
“So basically, you had it easy.”
“If you want to call it that, sure.”
Yesung smiled externally before turning away. “Well, I’m happy for you both, you know. Possibly jealous, but definitely happy.”
“Thanks,” Eunhyuk said with a nod, “and I hope things go well with you, too.”
“Yeah… we’ll see.”
Ryeowook has a mystery at best, because he always seemed to be at both ends of the spectrum at the same time. Reverberation was how Yesung best described it, as according to a previous Physics class (or had that been oscillation?), but no explanation of the phenomenon made the phenomenon itself any worse, anyway.
It usually wasn’t so bad. Sometimes Yesung could avoid it. For instance, if Yesung ever (accidentally) walked in on Ryeowook stepping out of the shower, it only took a simple half turn and several steps out of the bathroom to solve the problem (and perhaps some hours staring at not-so-arousing photos). Similarly, if Ryeowook was standing too close for his liking, all Yesung needed to do was to take a step away (though he didn’t always do so).
Some things, though, he could not avoid so discreetly. For instance, Ryeowook spoke with a decently high-pitched voice (well, at any rate, it wasn’t low-pitched), but occasionally he’d end up saying the word “hyung” in an almost alluring and teasing tone, and whether it was because of the contrast or because it was simply arousing (“Imagine how hot it’d be having him under me, whispering that as I…” Yesung thought to himself quite often, and he almost never finished that thought because by then he’d given into lust and his hand) Yesung really didn’t know. And then there was the way Ryeowook looked at him occasionally-but that was a whole other story in itself.
The signs were really all there, Yesung convinced himself of it. Once upon a time, he was sure there’d been signs leading away from his desired conclusion-but if they ever really existed they certainly weren’t present now. Sometimes, as Yesung thought about it in the silence of his room dead at night, he wondered why he was holding his feelings back from Ryeowook, because unless the man was toying with him there was no way Ryeowook wouldn’t return at least a fraction of those feelings back to him.
In the end, Yesung passed it off as cowardice, a fear of the truth, a fear of rejection. And maybe that was what it really was, too-but if anything, Yesung knew it also served as an excuse to not have to tell Ryeowook.
As much as he hated things as they currently were, he was much more content with holding onto his security than throwing it away from the unknown, even if the unknown was ultimately what he desired.
He’d had Yesung’s stapler, which he’d borrowed the night before in order to put together the pages to his research paper.
Yesung had only entered Ryeowook’s room to retrieve it. He’d expected to walk in, apologize for the intrusion, ask for the stapler, and to walk out of the room with it.
Yesung only managed one of these, though he wished he hadn’t done even that, because all he’d heard was a “Hyung…” in a ridiculously lustful and needy voice before he’d walked in on Ryeowook with his hands down his pants.
He stood still for an entire second in shock before realizing what he’d walked into, and in the exact moment realization hit him he walked right out of the room to hide the red in his face. He spent another second in the hallway, cursing himself for having left without the stapler, but it wasn’t long before lust took its toll; one thought of what he’d just walked into caused him to race back to his own room.
Ironically enough, he’d been so needy that he’d forgotten to lock his door-and almost in a wave of déjà vu, Ryeowook found himself walking in on the exact same thing Yesung had walked in on, earlier.
“Fuck,” Yesung cursed, but before he could remove his hands from his pants Ryeowook had marched toward him and had gotten to his knees.
Yesung’s initial reaction was to push Ryeowook away, though this time he fought that urge. Instead he turned away, because he was much too embarrassed to watch the man he liked get him off. Even if he had been looking in Ryeowook’s direction, he wouldn’t have watched anyway, because he’d spent the majority of the time with his eyes behind his eyelids, Ryeowook’s strokes shooting pure, hot bliss through his veins, leaving him in an utter and melting mess on his mattress.
When Yesung came, he collapsed back onto his bed, but it was only for a moment. When he’d realized what’d just happened he shot himself back up to a seated position, and he blushed immensely when he found Ryeowook wiping his mess off his hands.
“No, I’m fine,” Ryeowook muttered quietly when Yesung offered to help, and in that moment Yesung realized that Ryeowook, too, was not making eye contact with him. And hell, if it’d been hard enough before, this would certainly make living together more difficult.
But for the moment, neither man thought much of it, because their embarrassment had masked rational thought and even the slightest care for the future.
“Think of it as my apology for you having walked in on that,” Ryeowook spat out rather quickly, and before Yesung could manage an entire sentence Ryeowook had scurried out of the room.
Well fuck, some apology that’d been, Yesung thought to himself. That logic didn’t even make sense, now that Yesung was bothered to actually think about it. And now Ryeowook had left him in a useless mess-he didn’t even know what he was supposed to feel, elated, hopeful, discouraged?-and the last thing he really wanted to do was to think about which direction he was supposed to in next, even though that frankly was what he ended up doing anyway.
But hell, if that wasn’t one hell of a reassurance that Yesung’s crush wasn’t too hopeless. Yet even under this newly found light, Yesung was still unsure as to why he was still scared to admit himself to Ryeowook.
He was simply afraid of the truth, Yesung decided. Even if the truth pointed in the right direction, he was too scared to find out.
The wind was strong that day, and though Yesung’s hair was decently long it wasn’t so in that it blew carelessly in the wind.
“I envy you,” Donghae remarked over Eunhyuk’s head, nodding to his own, whipping hair, and Yesung only returned a smile as his response. Eunhyuk had said it himself, that Yesung had grown quieter recently, though Yesung had argued he’d always been that way. But even Donghae, who’d only really met Yesung in passing, had said the same thing.
He wasn’t going to let Ryeowook deter him from his studies-not now, not in his final year of studies, not after having made it this far. But Ryeowook was more than just a name in permanent marker now. He was a picture, glued permanently in several pages of his scrapbook of memories. He was the postage stamp, on an envelope containing his conscience postmarked to a world beyond hopelessness. He was the painted sky, the narrator of his dreams… the list went on.
Yet he was only a man, a man Yesung happened to love-no, rather, he happened to be in love with. Ryeowook was just a young man who spontaneously gave him a hand job with little to ridiculous justification.
He was just Ryeowook.
Right?
“You should tell him,” Donghae said suddenly, causing Yesung to snap his head in his direction.
“…what?”
“You should tell him,” Donghae repeated mechanically, and the facial expression he gave Yesung remained unchanged from his first. “As in, go up to him, sit on his lap if you have to, and tell the damn guy you-”
“All right, all right, no need to get snappy.” But Donghae only laughed and shook his head, all before gazing down at the resting Eunhyuk on his shoulder.
“Worst that can happen is that he says no, right?”
“Yeah…” but what troubled Yesung most was not that he actually disagreed with Donghae, but that Donghae had it said it so carelessly, as if losing someone over a friendship was only another part of life. And maybe when Yesung thought about it, yeah, it really was just another chapter of life, even though Yesung disliked the idea of segmenting life into chapters, because life was more continuous and not a conglomeration of boxed time frames.
Because it bothered him otherwise, Yesung kept his perspective, continued to strive towards having Ryeowook for himself. And all the while, perhaps foolishly, he held a blind eye to the prospect of losing him instead.
If this had been his downfall, Yesung had indeed not known it then.
Ryeowook had shown his not-so-innocent side one last time, bringing him to three times total, two of which involving sexual conduct.
It wasn’t really anything near a hand job, really, though if Yesung hadn’t listen to his slightly and inconveniently moralistic conscience then maybe it could have been. But the effect was the same: images and a conscience that would no longer leave him alone.
He still remembered when Kyuhyun had handed the drunken Ryeowook over to him, passing it off as having had a little too much to drink; he remembered when he’d seated Ryeowook into his bed, having then been told that Ryeowook was, in fact, sober and perfectly all right; he remembered when Ryeowook had pulled himself back up, having somehow seated Yesung onto the bed, declaring he prove to Yesung that he was in fact not inebriated….
If there was any guilt at all, it had certainly panged afterwards and not during Ryeowook’s clumsy attempts at a strip tease. At first Yesung did nothing, because he’d half-expected Ryeowook to collapse halfway through. But when Ryeowook had kept a decent rhythmic motion with his hips, Yesung wasn’t so convinced.
He knew he was probably the only person in the world who would actually enjoy watching this, though he hadn’t been sure if that was supposed to be an encouraging or sickening thought. But attraction worked in its odd ways, and Yesung couldn’t be fucked to figure it all out anyway.
Ryeowook had basically been on Yesung’s lap by then, gyrating his hips in circular motions, teasing Yesung with pressure. Yesung had growled; he’d felt both embarrassed and empowered, because he knew Ryeowook knew of his hardness, his supposed inebriety willing, but he’d felt enraged that he couldn’t see if he was-
When the hemline of Ryeowook’s shirt began to ride up his midriff, Yesung hesitated to reach up and pull it back down or perhaps, better yet, push him off completely. But the moment he decided to take action, Ryeowook had grasped his extended hands.
Yesung’s eyes widened but did not look up to meet Ryeowook’s, because he was much too scared for what he’d find there. But he watched silently, as Ryeowook had moved his hands to his midriff, rubbing his knuckles onto the soft skin found there (Yesung hadn’t dared to use his fingertips), all before guiding them lower….
…and that was when Ryeowook’s body had decided he’d been having too much fun, and before Yesung could voice out a protest the younger man had slumped forward into Yesung’s seated form.
They’d remained like that for some time, mostly because Yesung had been left in utter shock to even think of moving Ryeowook. He felt confused, perhaps more than ever, because his lustful and secret longings were never actually supposed to work out. Yet here it all was, the evidence all pointing in his favor, and he simply didn’t have a clue what to do about it.
Tell him, Yesung’s conscience told him. And moments later, Donghae’s words were reminding him the same thing.
And though he wasn’t sure what exactly was driving his actions at that time, be it lust, desire, confusion, or an actual want for Kim Ryeowook, Yesung knew what he had to do. And only then, half an hour later, when he lifted Ryeowook off of him and to tuck him properly under the covers, Yesung decided, perhaps long overdue, that it was time to take matters into his own hands.
It vaguely reminded Yesung of a conversation he’d heard Eunhyuk and Donghae having a few days back.
“I did it because I love you!”
“Right, of course you did. Now tell me why you really did it?”
“Fine, I lied. I did it because-”
“Actually, don’t bother. I think I’d rather make myself believe that’s why you did it.”
And though, of course, the context had been slightly different, the effect was the same.
“I don’t want to hear the truth,” were the words Ryeowook had actually used, when Yesung had informed the man they needed to talk. “I… I have the strange feeling I know what this is about, and I… I’d rather not know the answer.”
“Answer?” Yesung asked. “What answer? You don’t even know the question!-you don’t even know if there is a question!”
His frustration stemmed from the courage it’d taken to get this far, only to be slapped back down to the ground to begin the ascent once more-and it truly was a crushing feeling. But for Ryeowook, because Yesung believed he really was worth it, he willed himself to wait.
Not that Yesung was particularly surprised, but that resolve didn’t last for long.
It was to the point where a fucking banner, spelling the words “I’m madly in love with you, Kim Ryeowook,” was draped over their common space, and if such a banner really did exist, Yesung was sure that a “I love you too” was scribbled in small letters somewhere, in a corner he hadn’t yet looked in.
The answers were there, Yesung was sure. That, or he’d done a damn good job fabricating their presence. But that couldn’t be it, because they really were there.
He could see the changes, though perhaps only because he’d gotten so used to the consistency of life before Ryeowook was in the picture-or at least, before Ryeowook was the focus of such a picture, because Ryeowook had always been in the picture from the day they’d met. But he could tell, from the way Ryeowook’s gazes lingered, from that empty yet longing look in his eyes, from the way their physical contact lingered seconds too long, from how Ryeowook would stay up with Yesung later and later each night, that something was indeed changing, and not against his favor.
But each time he tried to bring it up, and even the one time in which he’d apparently looked like he was about to bring it up, Ryeowook closed himself off and shot Yesung down.
And it was indeed a crushing feeling.
After a week of what Eunhyuk had described as “mind games,” Yesung decided he’d had enough (for real, this time, Yesung told his nagging conscience). And perhaps on a slight tailwind provided by Eunhyuk’s advice, Yesung began to formulate his plans within his mind.
He didn’t quite follow any of those plans, really. In fact, he’d have gone off to bed that evening unsuccessful, if it hadn’t been his act of impulse in what would’ve been his last five minutes spent with Ryeowook. But instead of letting Ryeowook brush past him, Yesung grabbed a hold of his arm, as well as all the failed attempts of the day, and did not let go.
“Hyung?”
Yesung shuddered. “First, don’t call me that. You… you’re close enough to me to not have to bother with stupid honorifics like that.” And of course that reasoning was a lie, let alone having been conjured on the spot, and so naturally Ryeowook had seen through it.
“All right, hyung, what do you want?”
It was only after several more attempts when Yesung finally gave up, because if their conversation consisted only of arguments over nicknames, he just might lose this chance like the ones before.
“I want an honest answer,” Yesung said, inadvertently tightening his grip on Ryeowook’s wrist. “How much do you like me?”
Ryeowook’s answer came much faster than Yesung had anticipated. “You want an honest answer, hyung?”
“Yeah.”
“I like you a lot.” And as Yesung sighed to himself in relief Ryeowook continued, having missed the sign himself. “I like you a lot, hyung, perhaps to a fault. Like, Kyuhyun scolds me all the time, telling me that I might be a little too deep into desperation, but I… I spend nights thinking about you sometimes, and-”
“Ryeowook,” Yesung whispered, “it’s okay. Me too.”
And without bothering to hear Ryeowook out Yesung pulled on Ryeowook’s arm, catching the man as he fell into his arms.
“You… what?” but the question remained unanswered, and with one soft kiss Ryeowook was silenced.
They should have talked about it first, Yesung thought to himself, somewhere in the disarray of the night. But instead, driven perhaps by raw lust, activated by a lack of need of restraint, they’d spent their first night in Yesung’s bed, where sleeping was completely out of the question.
It was like a fantasy painted true, in Yesung’s eyes. The whimpering, mixed with his own grunts-every thrust granted a throaty “hyung” from the man beneath him, and it fueled his lust, his need….
And when he’d looked at Ryeowook Yesung found the helplessness in his face, the fact that he himself was the reason for the facial expressions….
It was perfect.
Yet not everything was how it was supposed to be, or at least in comparison to his own standards. Ryeowook was still in bed with him when he’d woken up, and as a result there’d been no breakfast. His doubting conscience had prevented any hand-holding to the park, and in the end no one had found the hiding Donghae.
The only thing that seemed right was Ryeowook’s dinner, but that’d always been something he’d had from the start. None of his dreamed reality had come true.
And instead of answering Ryeowook’s I Love You’s, Yesung found himself answering his What Are We’s. And though he, too, wanted the answer, it pained him to learn the true reality of it all.
Life with Ryeowook was not at all like what he’d supposed it should’ve been. He’d prepared himself for the ideal Ryeowook. He’d prepared himself for the sex. But he hadn’t prepared himself for the emotional baggage Ryeowook had brought with him.
“What are we?”
“We’re boyfriends… right?”
“…all right.”
“What are we?”
“I… I don’t know, you already asked me that.”
“I know, but… what are we?”
Yesung didn’t really want to see it as anything more than a fuck, because it’d hardly been his intention at all. But maybe, somewhere down the road, it really had changed into a mere lust-driven crush.
He knew, somewhere within him, that he really did want Ryeowook in more ways than just sex. But his lust was too far ahead of him, and at this rate it would cross the finish line before the rest of him had even started the race….
And so, as quickly as it had started, it ended.
Things never returned to the way they were-they simply couldn’t. And though Yesung secretly did wish his relationship with Ryeowook could return to the mysterious, unknowingly dangerous bond that it had been before, hadn’t a change in consistency been what he’d wanted all along?
Ryeowook had had his questions, naturally. What were we? Why had we only lasted a weekend? Where did I go wrong?-and to all of these Yesung had given vague, uninformative answers, not because he didn’t know the answers, but because he didn’t want to answer him.
Looking at his face was the worst, because he never did quite figure out if the burning passion he’d thought he had had also been in Ryeowook’s. Sure, the sudden disconnection had brought him emotional pain and a flood of guilt, but somehow Yesung assured himself that, in the end, this would be the better of two options.
But until then, Yesung refused to look at Ryeowook, for the exact same reason as why he longed to look at Ryeowook’s face while he’d fucked him, because the waves the emotions that rippled across his face were entirely Yesung’s doing. And if once upon a time that’d aroused him to no end, now it opened a void of remorse.
“A fool in love,” Eunhyuk repeated with a flat tone, and Yesung nodded.
“Or maybe just a fool, who thought he was in love….” Yesung bit his lip, sighed, and shook his head. “Eunhyuk, I’m sorry, I-”
“Not me,” his friend said, “Ryeowook. Apologize to him, not me.”
And Yesung only nodded.
He didn’t realize it until after the words had left his mouth. He’d explained to Ryeowook exactly as his conscience had so harshly spat it into his hands, that his lust had gotten ahead of him, that he wasn’t ready to support Ryeowook emotionally, that he should’ve waited, that he deserved someone better….
“But what if I’m ready for this?” Ryeowook challenged, which had caught Yesung at a loss of words. “What if I don’t want someone better?”
“I’m sorry,” had been the only words Yesung could offer. But whether it was because he was truly sorry or because Eunhyuk had told him to, Yesung didn’t even know for himself.
He was simply a mess of feelings, who could no longer tell himself what he wanted anymore. And now he was asking Ryeowook to wait for him, so that his emotions and intentions could catch up to the rest of him, because he’d lived on the assumption that he could always get Ryeowook, that there was no option of losing him either.
It was now no different from their beginning, when Ryeowook had asked Yesung to wait, to hold off on the truth, until he himself could bear it. And even then Yesung had not waited, not entirely, having instead hurried the closure of the gap between them. But the fact that Yesung had cursed Ryeowook for brushing it off made him hypocritical, because now he was doing no less the same. There was no difference.
Yet there was a world of a difference, because when Yesung had finally stopped at the finish line, permanent marker had faded, glue had worn off, postage stamps had been lost in the clutter, the sun had stopped illuminating the sky….
The finish line had already been broken. Ryeowook had crossed without him.
Every morning, when Yesung forces himself to get out of bed several minutes earlier to make himself breakfast, he reminds himself that life hadn’t always been this way, all because of his unhappiness for being content with what already was. And if the act of making breakfast doesn’t set him straight in the end, the taste of his concoctions most certainly do.
Even in the simplest of ways, Yesung is reminded just how much of a fool he is.
Both in love, and out.
END
Dedicated to: kpoppin, because she still likes Yewook (though perhaps not this story in particular, given its ending, haha).
Written for: kpop_prompts challenge, option 4, prompt 012: "Fool in love." Archive ( here)