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Riwoo lost Taesan about an hour ago.
Well, maybe lost isn’t the right word for it. He knows exactly where Taesan is.
In Leehan’s bed, probably. Or pushed against his door. Or being held in his arms like he’s something precious. He is.
They were supposed to leave thirty minutes ago. The sun sits as a ripening peach on the horizon, bruising and decaying in the summer heat as each new minute passes. Riwoo hates driving in the dark. Taesan knows he hates driving in the dark. They have almost two hours of driving ahead of them, and the later they leave, the later they’ll get home.
He’s sitting on the steps of Leehan’s dorm building, Sungho and Jaehyun huddled to his left, talking in hushed whispers that he can just about pick up but he’s drowning out anyway.
Is it lonely being the only one in their group not in a relationship? Not even just that — he’s also the only one not in a relationship within their group. There’s Woonhak, sure, but he’s barely sixteen, still in high school, and doesn’t think about anything past soccer and unused excuses for why he didn’t do his homework.
(If Riwoo is lonely, what does that make Woonhak? They have left him behind to move miles away for college. He is all alone in the town they barely look back on. Riwoo feels bad. How can he not? He tries to call Woonhak when he can. He misses him all the time.)
So, yeah. There’s Leehan and Taesan, like there has always been, and now there’s the freshly formed Sungho and Jaehyun. Then there’s Riwoo. Just Riwoo. Taesan is really taking his time, isn’t he? He just wants to go home. He has a quiz tomorrow. Fuck, can he just hurry up?
Taesan had said he was ‘just going to pick something up from Leehan’s room,’ but they all knew what he really meant. Leehan’s room isn’t that big. It doesn’t take that long to find a left behind sweater.
He’s just grateful that Sungho and Jaehyun didn’t do the same. That they stayed with him. They pity him — he can see it the way they look at him, even now, stealing glances at him, checking the time on their phones, the glow illuminating their faces in the quickening darkness. They think he’s annoyed at Taesan for taking so long. He’s annoyed at something far different. He’ll take it anyway.
They only came down for a day visit. If it was the weekend, they would have stayed the night. He doesn’t really like staying overnight anymore, not now that so many things have changed. If Taesan stays with Leehan and Jaehyun stays with Sungho, where is he supposed to fit? It’s not as bad as he makes it out to be. It can be lonely. It’s frustrating. It’s not so bad. Better this than to be on his own completely. He doesn’t mind sleeping on the floor sometimes.
Taesan comes down the stairs embraced in the glow of the dorm lights, sweaterless, but wrapped in the cardigan Leehan was wearing earlier. His hair is all out of place and it might be a trick of the light but there is a swell of purple in the junction of his jaw and throat. Even now, he’s beautiful, especially now. Riwoo wants to fix his hair, but he’s untouchable. He wants to tell him he forgot the sweater he left to find. He feels sick. He wants to go home.
“Ready to go?” he asks around the jagged rock in his throat. He looks away from Taesan. He can’t look at him. He’s held these feelings close to his chest for so long and one day he’s going to slip, he knows he is, he can’t hold it forever, but until then he will keep it as just that. A secret. His secret.
“Yeah, sorry for taking so long,” Taesan mumbles, an apology that he doesn’t mean.
Riwoo pretends not to see Taesan leaning down to kiss Leehan goodbye behind him, that Leehan’s arms aren’t around Taesan’s waist and there’s no secret exchange between them that Riwoo will never be part of.
It’s cruel, but he preferred it when they were too shy to be like this in front of the group. It’s selfish, but he wishes they wouldn’t do this. How are they supposed to know it tears Riwoo’s heart like it’s made of tissue?
Jaehyun says goodbye to Sungho, too, and Riwoo says goodbye to them both. He will miss them. He always does. These are his best friends and, despite what he feels, he loves them more than anything.
“Right,” Jaehyun exclaims, clapping his hands and bouncing to his feet. His eyes are glassy and wet — they need to leave now before he starts crying again like he did earlier when they first met up. “Let’s get moving. I’m exhausted.”
Riwoo couldn’t agree more. Thank god for Jaehyun, the center of their everything. They would get nothing done without him.
Another round of goodbyes, shorter this time, then they’re crossing the dark of Sungho and Leehan’s campus to the parking lot where Riwoo’s car is waiting. He only got his license so he could drive them all around, a promise he’s kept a hundred times by now.
He would be lying if he said it doesn’t feel nice to be relied on, to have something the others don’t. He would be lying if he said it didn’t feel good to hear Taesan ask, “Hyung, can you drive me to the store?” or “Hyung, can you come pick me up?” It shouldn’t feel this good to be called on. To be used. It does.
Taesan circles the car and slides into the passenger seat in the front. Jaehyun grumbles a quiet complaint but still flops into the backseat. If it weren’t so late and they had a little more energy, they’d be fighting about it, and Riwoo would have to break it up by saying, “well, you sat in the front on the way here, so technically it is Taesan’s turn now,” and Jaehyun would sulk in the back. It wouldn’t last long because he spends half the ride leaning forward between the seats anyway.
If Riwoo had it his way, Taesan would always be in the backseat. Away from him. It’s distracting having him so close, always a ghost in the corner of his vision, haunting his thoughts, his life. He can feel every time Taesan moves, every time he breathes, his fingers brushing against Taesan’s long legs every time Riwoo reaches to get something out of the glovebox. He wonders if it makes Taesan feel as sick as it does him.
By the looks of it, Jaehyun will be asleep before long. He’s already slouching in his seat, fighting to keep his eyes open. Taesan too, trying to stifle a yawn behind his hand. Riwoo doesn’t mind it, he likes the quiet while he drives, punctuated by a snore from Jaehyun or a sleep-drawn mumble from Taesan. Their company is irreplaceable, an inseparable piece of his life, but he enjoys his peace, too.
They get settled and Riwoo switches on the engine, the dull rumble of his car a familiar companion for the next few hours they’ll be in the car. He wishes they didn’t live so far away, so far apart. It would make things so much easier if they all went to the same college.
Taesan reaches for the radio first, fiddling with the dials until he finds the station he wants. Riwoo lets him take control. Better to let him choose their soundtrack than to hear him complain about every song that comes on for the rest of the journey. He’s often like that with Taesan. He’d let him get away with anything. He lets him get away with breaking his heart every day, after all.
Jaehyun falls asleep in the first ten minutes, as expected. Riwoo watches his head lull back and forth in the rear mirror, his open texts with Sungho slipping from his slack hand, a wall of unanswered blue messages sitting on a dim screen. He slouches further, further, until he finally falls against the arm he has propped against the window. It’s not comfortable, he’ll wake up complaining that his neck aches and he missed all the fun, but there’s not really any fun to be had.
Not this late. Not when there’s something very obviously up with Taesan.
He’s usually quiet, but not this quiet. They’ve long moved past the stage of awkwardness, left that in the past years ago. But Riwoo can tell something is wrong. He’s not humming along to the radio, he’s not twisting in his seat to snap an ugly photo of Jaehyun while he’s sleeping that will end up as the group chat icon later, or taking Jaehyun’s phone and texting something embarrassing to Sungho under Jaehyun’s disguise. He’s not even texting Leehan.
He’s curved away from Riwoo, subtly, but still noticeable to someone like Riwoo who notices everything. His pupils flick back and forth with every passing streetlight, falling stars in the dark of his eyes. Normally, Riwoo would scold him for having his feet propped on the seat like he’s doing now, but he leaves it this time. He has one arm tucked around his middle and the other is picking at the loose threads of his, Leehan’s, cardigan sleeve.
All he has left of Leehan. Is he imagining his arm as Leehan’s arm, too? Is he wishing it was Leehan holding him? That he were still with him, kicking the sheets off his college bed and legs tangled?
It’s always like this when they leave. It’s always Leehan. It’s always been Leehan.
“Everything okay?” Riwoo asks, voice echoing over the static hum of the radio. He wouldn’t ask if Jaehyun was still awake. He doesn’t like putting Taesan on the spot like that, putting all the attention on what he’s feeling when it takes so much for him to share it. But Jaehyun is still asleep, Taesan is stuck in his thoughts, and Riwoo is always one to listen.
Taesan nods, then, remembering Riwoo is supposed to keep his eyes on the road, says, “Yeah. Just… tired.”
It’s almost believable. It would be if Riwoo wasn’t so clued up on all of Taesan’s little cues. Chewing on his nails. Fixing his hair, twisting the long strands behind his ears around his fingers.
“Just tired?” Riwoo prompts, a gentle push, an invitation for Taesan to open up and let Riwoo in.
Taesan sighs, so full, splitting open and ready to spill. Riwoo waits for him to continue. Taesan reaches for the radio, but instead of turning the volume up like Riwoo expects him to, filling the car with noise so he doesn’t have to talk, he turns it all the way down.
The silence buzzes in Riwoo’s ears, and he can suddenly hear everything he was missing. Jaehyun’s soft snores in the back, the shaky breath rattling around in Taesan’s chest, his own waning and waxing heartbeat. Scratch his earlier thought, maybe this is awkward. The heat trapped in the car makes it worse, so thick it’s stifling. He can’t breathe. He needs to open a window but he can’t. It will drown out anything Taesan needs to say.
Taesan says, “I think I should break up with Leehan.”
“W-What?” Riwoo chokes, because out of everything he thought Taesan would say, out of all the things that could have been troubling him, he never, not once, thought that it would be this.
It must have been a trick on his ears. He must have misheard. There is no way Taesan would say that. That he could ever possibly think that. Taesan, who has loved Leehan since before he loved himself. Taesan and Leehan, who have been together for as long as he’s known them. Taesan and Leehan, who must have been together in their past lives, too, countless of them, and are still lucky enough to find each other again in this one, because they hold too much love for just one lifetime.
There’s a twist of something in his gut. Something ugly and cruel, sharp and painful. Hope. For himself. For all his wants and selfish desires. It’s disgusting. In the face of Taesan’s misery, how could he feel anything but sympathy? But he’s thought about this before, this scenario, the aftermath, what it could mean for him, for them. It’s kept him up at night more times than he can count. He’s gone over this a thousand times, on the premise that it could never happen. He hates himself for it. He hates himself for a lot of things.
“Leehan. I should break up with him,” Taesan repeats, and the twist digs deeper, ripping and tearing.
“You don’t mean that,” Riwoo sputters, stumbling over his words, trying to catch his own scrambled feelings at the same time as Taesan’s. He has never felt so wretched. “You can’t mean that. It’s… you’re… are you serious?”
Taesan’s grip tightens around himself, his fingers digging into the wool of Leehan’s cardigan, pulling, stretching, holding on for dear life. “I—” Taesan starts, then stops, swallows, exhales, looks at Riwoo, looks back out of the window. “I— Yes— I don’t know. I don’t know what to do.”
Riwoo steals a glance at him. He almost misses the next left turn. He doesn’t slow down enough in time and they swing around the corner a little too forcefully and Taesan winces, hand steadying himself on the door. Riwoo curses. He checks to make sure it didn’t wake Jaehyun, but he’s still sound asleep. He swears that boy can sleep through anything.
“Did something happen tonight?” Riwoo asks, doing nothing to hide the worry bleeding through his voice. It’s too late for that.
“No, nothing,” Taesan is quick to reassure, but it doesn’t help.
This is terrifying. It could shake everything that they’ve built, their group, their friendships and dynamics. It could change everything they’ve ever known, everything he relies on. All his stability. He’s thought about it, yes, but he never dreamed it could be real. Taesan isn’t shaking, but Riwoo is.
“Then— what? I don’t understand,” Riwoo says, barely breathing. He hopes Taesan can’t see how white his knuckles are from gripping the wheel so hard. He hopes he can’t see the way he’s trying to hide the tremors.
“I just don’t know how much longer I can keep doing this,” Taesan murmurs. This is Riwoo’s wildest dreams and his greatest nightmare. He wishes Jaehyun were awake. He doesn’t know how long he can go without saying something stupid, something ruinous, without him to help. It’s in times like this that he realises just how much they rely on Jaehyun. “It hurts. Leaving him like this every time. I don’t want to feel like this anymore.”
“Oh, Taesan,” Riwoo says.
So that’s what this is about. It was never about a waiver in Taesan’s feelings, or any problem between them. It’s because he loves too much. It’s because he’s loved so much. If only he knew how much he was loved.
This is a love Riwoo cannot fathom, that he could never beat. He’s stupid to think there could ever be a place carved for him.
There is a heart shaped black hole pulsing behind Riwoo’s ribcage, chewing his feelings up and spitting them out on the other side of the universe. Maybe it’s a good thing. It’s better this way. Put them somewhere so far away that they are unreachable, unable to hurt or be hurt. It hurts so much.
“Wouldn’t it be better to just end it now, feel this pain once, one big one, than to keep hurting like this?” Taesan asks, but Riwoo barely hears it. He feels numb. Empty. So empty he could float away. Would he be missed if he disappeared into the atmosphere?
“No,” Riwoo says, then pleads, “Please don’t say that. You know that’s not true.” He reaches blindly for Taesan, hand fumbling over the middle console until he finds somewhere he can touch; Taesan’s arm. He squeezes, lingers, rubs his thumb soothingly over the fabric separating them. A layer of Leehan between them. He hopes it helps. He hopes it doesn’t burn Taesan’s skin like it’s burning his. “But it’s worth it, right? It’s worth it when you get to see him again?”
Taesan hesitates. He frowns, sucks his bottom lip between his teeth and bites down hard. “Yeah,” he concedes, “Yeah, it is.”
“See,” Riwoo says, voice laced with desperation. “It’s not so bad, is it?”
If only Taesan knew what he was doing to Riwoo. The position he’s putting him in. Riwoo hopes he’ll never know. He hopes Taesan never finds out how much he has hurt Riwoo just by being happy. Riwoo wants him to be happy more than anything, more than he wants himself to be happy. He would give up anything and everything if it would mean Taesan would never be hurt.
He just wishes it were him making Taesan happy.
“I’m sorry,” Taesan says quietly. Riwoo takes it, pushes it into his chest and lets it be consumed. Taesan doesn’t know what he’s apologizing for. He doesn’t know what it means. It’s all Riwoo has.
As much as he longs to be selfish, to take what he wants for a change, he could never do that to Taesan. He could never be the cause of his pain just to soothe his own. He’d rather nurse his heart back to health over and over. It has to end soon, right? If his heart is already broken, how can it keep breaking? This can’t go on for much longer. He has wasted years on this, a huge part of his life, it has to end sooner or later. He’ll get over it. He will. He has to.
“It won’t last, this feeling,” Riwoo lies, swallowing his own and pushing it down into that black hole waiting hungrily in his chest.
“But what if it does?” Taesan says, all energy in his voice drained, his tone so down, so defeated. He has never heard Taesan so… hopeless. “What if it’s always like this? I don’t think I can survive four years of this.”
Riwoo almost snaps. If he’s survived forever of this, so can Taesan. It may be new for Taesan but for Riwoo it is an old wound.
But— it’s different. For Taesan he has what he wants and it’s being unfairly torn away from him again and again. For Riwoo he has never even been able to hold it. This difference, this rift between them, is something he will never be able to cross.
“You will,” Riwoo says, trying so hard to sound like he means it. “You know you will. Four years is nothing for you two. It’ll be over before you know it.”
“It hurts,” Taesan whispers, a rare admission for him, something that only Riwoo is able to hear. He wonders if Taesan tells Leehan this, too, or if he keeps it to himself so Leehan doesn’t have to worry. Riwoo has never felt so privileged in his worry. In the corner of his eye, Riwoo watches as Taesan curls himself further into a ball, head tipped towards the window.
“It only hurts because you love him,” Riwoo murmurs, ripped straight from himself. This, he means. “Which is why you’re going to work, you and him.”
There’s a wet sniffle from the other side of the car, muffled through the sleeve of Taesan’s cardigan sleeve. Fuck. He doesn’t know what he’ll do if Taesan cries. He can’t do anything. Not from the driver’s seat. Not as Taesan’s best friend. Not as someone who loves him in a way he shouldn’t.
He doesn’t cry, thankfully. Not fully, anyway. He catches the movement of Taesan scrubbing his sleeve across his eyes, hears him swallow, feels the whisper of a shaky exhale through slightly parted lips. He pretends he doesn’t. He doesn’t know if it’s for Taesan’s sake or his own.
“Thank you, hyung,” Taesan says, a slight wobble in his voice that only Riwoo would notice.
They all dropped formalities not long after they met. Riwoo doesn’t remember the last time Leehan or Woonhak called him hyung. Taesan, though, still clings to it, and Riwoo loves him a little more for it.
He almost says it. A slip of the tongue, a moment of soft weakness. He has rolled onto his back to soak in the warmth of Taesan’s tenderness, exposing the unarmoured flesh of his underbelly in the process. It could have been disastrous. It would have meant nothing to Taesan, not in the way it should.
He could say it. At least get it off his chest. Taesan will not understand his full meaning.
He says it. “I love you,” Riwoo says, years and years worth of feeling compressed into it, swollen to bursting. To Taesan, it’s but a sliver. Affection thrown around between friends.
That’s why it’s easy for Taesan to say, “I love you too,” back, and why it’s the hardest thing for Riwoo to ever hear.
It’s not the last time he’ll hear it. Every time rips the scab off fresh. It will hurt every time.
The black hole in his chest will consume him whole by the time Taesan means it in the way he wants to hear it.