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VII. lucky
he’s only five when he learns what the meaning of a best friend is. he’s also five years old when he loses a potential best friend that he could have had; someone who could have made his lunch, went to the park with him, watch him enter talent shows, send him on dates, celebrate his graduations, and even walk him down the wedding aisle later on in life.
instead, he’s five and oh so incredibly young and lucky, when he meets a kid who would grow up to be a man and become his best friend for this life and an eternity to come.
and this is how it all came to be.
=
there’s muffled sounds coming from somewhere. music? no… no, someone was speaking. many people were speaking, little felix thinks as he climbs out of bed after twenty minutes of restless on and off sleeping after his bedtime.
his tiny eyes kept shutting close, but whenever he thought he had finally caughten sleep, his body would wake him up again. it was as if it were trying to tell felix something. ‘don’t go to sleep now little one, something very important is about to happen in your life.’
frustration building up in his little head though, felix pouts and stumbles off his bed, the white quilt he had been wearing, sliding down to the floor as he did so. maybe talking to his parent about his problem would help him fall asleep.
clutching his teddy bear in one hand and the other hand tugging at his white pajama sleeves with tiny clenched fists, he makes his way down the staircase of his house, the padding of socks softly pounding on the wooden floorboards.
though as he gets closer and closer to the first floor, he can hear stifled giggles as well as loud shrieking and squealing. his mind is still in a fuzzy state from wanting sleep, so felix’s eyebrows knit, nose scrunching as he tries to figure out why there were such loud noises in his house this late at night.
he doesn’t have to question any further when a door opens on the first floor, and his mother stumbles out, an arm slung over another girl’s shoulders. both women looked really pink, and they were each holding a funny looking green bottle in their hands.
rubbing at his eyes, he softly asks, “mommy?” trying to grab his mother’s attention.
the woman in question who had been boomingly laughing not only a second ago, pauses, the wide smile on her face immediately disappearing at the sight of her son. an uncomfortable silence stretches over the three people as the other female companion lowers her eyes to stare down at the little boy who stood in front of them.
quirking an eyebrow, the other woman gives felix a scary glare and an equally terrifying smile, making him cower back in fear.
“yoojin?” she said, referring to felix’s mom, “what is this?”
his head turns to look at his mother for an answer, but said woman gives him a scathing look that unintentionally sends a hurtful pang through his heart, and she reluctantly tells the other, “he’s the kid i conceived with that asshole.”
flinching at the bad word, felix wants to tell his mommy not to curse because it was bad to do so, but for some reason his mouth felt like it had been screwed shut by an invisible force.
at the mention of the awful word, both women immediately make gagging noises, and the other girl pulls felix’s mother past him, shoving him onto the floor in the process.
“well no need to pretend he’s there then.”
by now, felix’s little head was getting very confused and irritated, and he really didn’t appreciate the mean tone in the other woman’s voice. biting his lips to stop himself from crying, he watches from the floor as his mother and the other meanie start walking towards the front door, leaving him all alone on the floor behind them.
“mommy?” he calls out again, trying his best to get her attention. please, he thinks, please listen to me.
i need you.
it’s not his mother who stops this time though, it’s the other woman. she turns and glares down at him, opening her mouth to say something, but his mother holds a hand out as if to pause her and then turns around too, looking at the son she never wanted.
“felix-ah, i’m not going to be coming home for the next two days.”
the little boy pouts at the information and is further disappointed as his mother continues speaking, “you know what to do right? you should also be in bed right now, what are you doing up?”
a tear slides down the little boy’s cheeks.
not seeing how his mother noticed the water roll down, consequently, giving him a disgusted look, he thinks about how he would have to spend two nights all alone when he came back from school.
he didn’t even think cereal was a proper dinner to be eating. didn’t people usually have that for breakfast and not for both meals?
“i couldn’t sleep…” he whispers in response to his mom’s previous question.
he expects another laugh, but this time all the little boy receives is a roll of the eyes and a snort.
“so? you think i’ve been able to sleep for the past five years having to deal with what he left behind?” a pause and then, “please felix- anyways, i’m finally learning to break free without you holding me down. i already have so many plans to let loose,” his mother says jabbing a finger at the other woman’s chest, making them both giggle. “and that all starts with spending a night out with my best friend.”
felix doesn’t understand a single thing his mother had just spoken, but one thing gets him curious.
best friend? what's a best friend?, he thinks, and he doesn’t realize that he has voiced that exact question out loud until his mother’s companion lets out another shrill and loud laugh.
this time it’s the woman who answers, “a best friend is someone you do everything in your life with-”
everything? felix thinks. why would you want to do everything with this person?
“-because they make everything fun and feel better,” his mother finishes off the sentence, and for the first time in months, he thinks her tone of voice is different. a little warmer, as she stared at the girl beside her. but then, just as quick, that feeling goes away as she coldly looks back at him.
“we’ll be going now. see yourself to bed.”
“but-” he starts to protest, trying to quickly get up from the floor, but as soon as he skids over to the front door, it slams on his face with a resounding loud boom, leaving a small felix all alone in a vacant and empty house.
his lower lip trembles as he looks back at the empty and now scarier, dark hallway.
clutching his teddy bear to his chest, he runs up the stairs and all the way back up to his room, tears letting loose as his little feet hurried to get to safety. once felix enters his room, he closes the door behind him but decides to keep the lights on, too scared of what might happen if he dares closes them.
jumping straight into bed, he pulls the white quilt over his head, engulfing himself in a more comforting darkness. he then turns to his side, and looks at his teddy bear which he laid down to rest right next to him.
after continuously crying so much, his eyes were starting to get all heavy and tired. he was just so annoyed and confused with everything. he wished he had someone to tell all of this to or even just to cry and hug him so that he could feel better.
he liked hugs.
the little boy then blinks at the teddy bear next to him.
“can you be my best friend teddy?” he asks, bringing a tiny hand up to his face to wipe a tear away.
“i want a best friend too, like mommy has. so that i can sleep with them, and cry with them, and do everything with them, just like they said.” he pauses to shift the pillow under his head so that the fluffy soft material was pressed against his own tender cheeks.
“i also want to have a best friend,” he whispers, “so i wouldn’t be lonely anymore.”
“i want to find a best friend...” he starts,
and just as he murmurs, “... to love.”, sleep touches the little boy’s eyelids.
felix gently trails off muttering a bunch of incomprehensible syllables before his eyes fall shut, and his chest slowly falls into a steady rhythm of ups and downs.
and that’s when the stars start to slowly turn and change their alignment, the universe deciding to be merciful just this once and answer to little felix’s pleas out of sympathy for the little boy’s pitiful life thus far.
the universe went against the fates and did the impossible.
=
impossible.
the place he was in right now was impossible. there was no way it existed in real life.
painted against the sky was an unimaginably squeaky clean blue with a shining yellow ball colored onto the farthest corner, burning bright, as it illuminated the incoming waves crashing ashore on the sandy beach front. the waters sparkled a pretty bluish-green hue, straight out of one of those advertising brochures of some place like the bahamas. on the coastline, which sadly didn’t run very far, was an endless scope of dusty white sand, littered with seashells of every shade, every one or two feet of walking distance.
the scenery was so different from what little felix was used to seeing in real life that he knew he had to be in a dream. the place wasn’t anything like he saw in the cartoons he watched on television shows — it was so much better.
curious about the bright and alluring place, he decides to venture in farther. while the open sea was to his left, to his right, there was an endless landscape of sand with palm trees popping up here and there. if he were to squint at the distance he could probably see the other side of the island, proving that the piece of land he was on was very small. however, whatever it lacked in size, it made up with the fruity and flowery produce nestled in the bushes that surrounded the trees.
he gasps when he sees the hill of sand at a distance — it was a decent size, definitely taller than felix’s three feet, two inches of height.
so torn between standing where he was and staring in awe at the place around him or doing whatever the heck he wanted in a place where no one was there to scold him, felix obviously chose the more logical and reasonable decision.
squealing wildly, the little boy runs at full speed towards the hill of sand, understandably tripping a few times due to the slippery texture of the smooth sand slopes under his soft, socked feet. one time, he even had to come to a full stop because he was about to trample on a snail.
gasping out loud, felix squats down and with tiny fingers, he removes the small snail from his path, instead placing it nearer to the crawling inches of water sifting onto the sand. “there, there little snaily. you need to watch where you’re going~” he whispers to it as it curled back into its shell, “you have to watch out for those who are bigger than you because they can forget that little people are there too. this way you can stay safe.” he’s not sure if the tiny animal hears him, but a grin still spreads out on his face seeing the squishy little thing poke its eyes out at him.
“cuuutee~”
a large wave crashes onto the shore right then, sweeping over the snail and taking it away. shocked by the sudden intrudance, he stares wide eyed into the sea until he’s shaken out of his stupor by a voice.
“you’re cute too.”
little felix looks up from his crouching position on the ground to see who had said the statement, but his eyes get blinded by the beaming sunlight, so he has to quickly look away.
“here,” he hears.
the little boy looks back once again, but thankfully, this time a small shadow had covered up the big sun for him and was mysteriously holding his hand out to him.
legs getting cramped from crouching down on the sand for so long anyways and curious as to who this new person was, he allows himself to place his hand on the other’s soft, baby skinned palm before lifting himself up.
“wow,” he whispers to himself, “so soft.”
“just like your heart,” he hears.
and felix is finally able to tear his wide brown eyes from their enveloped hands to the owner of the arm and is pleasantly surprised when he makes eye contact with another little boy.
this boy seemed to be his age… and korean too, but he really couldn’t be too sure. what felix was sure about though, was that the little boy had a tiny smile on his face, and his eyes were kind of small too. his black hair looked so soft to the touch that felix has a sudden urge to pat the other boy’s head, and because the kid looked friendly enough, that’s exactly what he does.
eyes never leaving the other boy’s face, he reaches his hand out and gently touches the soft strands of hairs on the other’s head. since they were similar in height, it made it easier for felix to do so, and the latter seemed to be enjoying it as well, because his eyes start to crinkle up, the corners of his lips ever so slowly turning up.
“let’s be best friends.” the boy suddenly says, as if it were the most natural thing in the world — as if it were something he wanted to say from the beginning but never had the chance to, until now.
upon registering these four words, felix is so shocked that his hand freezes up, finger muscles slowly stiffening on top of the boy’s hair. he looks at the other’s face in surprise and for some reason, the words can’t come out as easily anymore. how could a random stranger just offer to be his best friend out of nowhere? and so sudden at that too — right after his encounter with his mommy.
not knowing what to say, he accidentally tugs a little too hard on a hair strand. but instead of flinching away like any normal person would do, the kid suddenly giggles.
“what are you doing to my haiirr~” he sing songs, apparently haven already forgotten about his demand for a best friend already.
and just like that, felix also forgets all about the request as well, his thoughts getting distracted by the smile being offered to him. he shows off one of his own toothy smiles and sings back, “i’m touchinggg your hairr~ it’s so sofft~”
he lets his fingers fall back to his side, and they both look into each other’s eyes for a moment before bursting out into loud laughter as if the two five-year olds had made the funniest revelation in all of history.
as short as their attention span is, soon they even forget about what they’re laughing about, and their laughter immediately dies down, quieting so that only the sea could be heard.
“my mommy will yell at me if i have messy hair.” the boy in front of felix finally says, hands immediately coming up to pat his hair down, but instead the attempt makes the mass of strands stand and end up even more ruffled than before.
felix stares at it, but thinks it looks fine. his own hair was even crazier when he first woke up in the morning. he also says something random back because he doesn’t know what else to do.
“well my mommy yells at me all the time.”
the little boy in front of him lets his hands fall from his hair as his mouth drops open. “really? aren’t mommies supposed to be nice and caring and loving and huggable?”
felix frowns, unable to understand what the other boy was saying. so instead, he looks down at the sand underneath them and shovels up some of the grains with his socked right feet. “well… i guess… but you said your mommy yells at you too.” and the other kid nods seriously, agreeing to this fact.
suddenly, felix remembers something more important and the confused feeling instantly goes away, being replaced with excitement as he lifts up a hand that was holding his teddy bear. woah, where had that come from?! ... he hadn’t even noticed he had been carrying the stuffed animal this whole time.
“but meet teddy!” he shouts, waving the bear at the boy. “he’s very nice and caring and loving and huggable too!”
the little boy nods at felix and then turns to greet teddy, shaking the bear’s little hand. “it’s nice to meet you teddy.”
felix giggles again. “and what’s your name silly boy?”
“silly boy?” the boy asks, nose scrunching as if he didn’t like those words, but neither did felix, so he understood the reaction.
“my name’s hyunjin hwang.”
the other boy seems a little shy after saying this, so felix takes the other’s hand again and shakes it, saying, “hi hyunjin hwang, my name is lee felix.”
“lee is a nice name!”
felix snorts. “no silly! my name is felix!”
hyunjin’s lips form into an ‘o’ shape as he thinks this over. then after coming to an agreement in his mind, he grins again. “felix is a nice name!”
felix nods in agreement, but still he can't help but feel a little flattered as the other boy, now having a name called hyunjin, says it. he doesn’t know why, but he likes the fact that hyunjin thinks his name is nice.
they finally release their hands after a minute and nervously stare at each other again. not knowing what else to say, felix asks, “so where’s your mommy?”
hyunjin shrugs his little shoulders, looking at the sea and then turning his head to look back at the island as if his mother would appear out of nowhere.
“i don’t know actually.” and for some reason none of them cared. they felt like they should have though since they were all alone on an island with no supervision.
“do you think we should find them?” felix asks to the other boy.
hyunjin gives him a weird look. “are you kidding? no!”, but felix is confused as to why not.
“because that means we could do whatever we want! a whole island with nobody but us!” the other boy yells out loud, pumping a little fist into the air.
and well felix is a little surprised and taken aback. he doesn’t feel like it was right to be celebrating with no adults, but hyunjin looked so happy at the moment, he couldn’t help but feel the same way.
“no adults!” he hesitantly yells, pumping a tiny fist into the air as well.
he doesn’t know where the kid came from, or the beach, or why he was there so late at night, but all felix did know is that he had found a best friend, just like he had wished for! and he wanted to have fun with him.
so he tells hyunjin what he’s heard other kids say in the playground when he was left alone to watch them play. now he had someone to tell it to as well. “race you to the sand pile!”
a bright smile stretches across hyunjin’s face as he hears these words come out from felix’s mouth. they turn and start sprinting as fast as their little feet could carry them across the vast sand, sometimes spontaneously screaming, “no adults!” along the way.
and there they went, not a care in the world, because they weren’t even in the world really. they were just with each other, running young, wild, and free.
but most importantly, both of their wishes had been granted. they had found themselves a best friend.
=
it seemed that little felix had accidentally tinkered with the fates when he had asked for his wish.
what was supposed to be a one time thing, became an occasional coincidence. they would find themselves basking in the same glamorous daylight, on the same beach, where not a single thing had been touched or changed from the very first time they met. there was really no time, date, or sense to when they dreamed of each other; they just did .
when they were six, hyunjin broke his left arm in the playground after a failed attempt to catch a scary spider crawling on top of the solid blue slide that had been freaking all the little kids out. that night, after being casted up at the hospital bed, he had fallen asleep and found himself at the beach.
when they were seven, felix had been running home from a couple of older kids who had been chasing him, and as a result of his hurriedness, he had tripped on his shoe and fell onto the concrete pavement, a huge scab forming on his right leg. that night, after he had poorly bandaged himself up with the small first-aid kit at home, he had soon fallen asleep to find himself at the beach again.
so it was only logical that being the curious child that he was, felix came to a conclusion.
“i think we only come into this dream when we get hurt.”
a now eight year old hyunjin pauses from his tree twig drawing, and he looks down at felix who had been perfecting the same sand castle for the past two hours with an odd concoction of seashells and mushy wet sand.
“what do you mean?”
felix lathers more sand up onto the fort around the bucket sized castle he had created before looking up at hyunjin, eyes squinting from the shining sunlight beating down on the two kids.
“i mean— think about it silly . i only have this dream with you in it when i get hurt, but other times i don’t dream at all or i have a nightmare or something else.”
hyunjin narrows his eyes in thought, but then he shakes his head in disagreement.
“i don’t think so.”
felix pouts. “why?”
hyunjin drags the twig in his hand, crushing a lump of sand into broken pieces in the process, before slumping down and sitting in a criss cross position across from felix.
“because when i get hurt, i don’t come here all the time. only sometimes i do— like today, my step-dad pushed me to the floor. . .” he trails off, biting his lower lip.
felix drops the clump of sand he was holding and looks at hyunjin in surprise. “why would he do that to you?”
hyunjin looks at him for a moment then turns his head to briefly look at the ocean, a hurting feeling filling his chest. “i don’t know. . . maybe because i’m not good? he’s always yelling at me and saying that i’m bad.”
then the little boy with a black mole under his left eye looks back at the other kid with a hint of brown dots scattered over his nose, and when the kid looks back at him, suddenly the tightness in his heart goes away. he feels better. safer. and calmer.
“i don’t know how anyone can see you as a bad kid. you’re so good that you can’t even kill a spider.”
hyunjin is about to smile and say “thank you” from the kind words when he realizes that felix was talking about his broken arm incident.
“hey! that was just one time!” he glares at the other boy who had started laughing, “and you’re right! i don’t think it’s okay to be killing spiders.”
felix pokes a hole straight through the narrowing part of the castle, his tiny index finger barely wiggling out to show the tippy top of his fingernail on the other side. then he lowers his head to peek out at the other boy through the hole.
hyunjin had however already caught on, lowering his head as well so that his eye met the level of the sand castle’s window. felix giggles at the sight of their two irises filling up the tiny, little hole.
“well it doesn’t matter anyways, because you’re not real!” felix shouts, shooting back up into a straight sitting position, a wide toothy smile on his face.
hyunjin frowned, backing away from the sand castle as well. he pointed the narrow arrow point of his twig at felix’s chest and indignantly shouted, “i am real! you’re the one who isn’t real!”
felix stands up so that the twig in hyunjin’s hand falls away, and then he smirks down at the smaller boy. with one eyebrow raised, he crosses his arms to look intimidating.
“oh yeah? says who? i live in sydney, australiaaa.” he says. with a hint of mockery in his tone, he then asks, “and where do you live?”
hyunjin’s mouth falls open and closed for a good couple of seconds like a fish gasping for fresh air.
“what’s the matter hmmm” felix says, turning to face the ocean, arms still crossed and a smug smile on his lips. he felt like he had just won a game of rock, paper, and scissors three times in a row and no one could stop him from feeling good.
hyunjin ignores the hurting feeling that comes back in his chest and stands up as well. he’s slightly disappointed when he does, because he’s a few inches shorter than felix who kept growing like a beanstalk every time they saw each other. if he had just been a bit taller, he could have looked the other in the eye properly and intimidated him back. but for now, he was stuck like this.
“i live in seoul. in korea.”
felix’s arms fall to his sides, and then he turns to look at hyunjin in surprise.
“oh. . .”
the eight year old scan’s the shorter boy’s face and sees sadness written all over it. but why?
not sure if he should ask and push further because he didn’t want his friend to hurt more or get even more sad, felix thinks of a quick way he could save the situation.
he sticks out his tongue at the other kid.
however, hyunjin just stares at him, unimpressed, before sadly looking away and picking up the twig that had fallen onto the sand. then he starts tracing letters onto the floor all over again.
felix’s lips tilt downwards as he watches his friend ignore him. did he accidentally say or do something wrong?
abandoning his sand castle, he follows hyunjin as he traces along the sandy coastline of the beach. “jinnie? what are you doing?”
there’s silence for a bit, and felix is just about to resort to just pushing the other onto the ground and tickling him until he starts laughing again, but then hyunjin finally answers.
“i’m testing something.”
“ooooh like a mad scientist— ani” felix slaps his hand over his mouth and shakes his head, not wanting to say something else that was wrong. “what are you testing?”
the lightly freckled boy thinks he sees a hint of a smile on the shorter boy, but it goes away just as quickly so he can’t be too sure.
“testing if this will go away after i draw it.”
felix takes a hard look at the letters that the other had traced into the sand and gasps when he realizes the words that they formed. “you wrote our names in hangul!”
hyunjin finally pays attention to him, surprised that he knew what he had written at all. “you know how to spell your name in. . ?”
“only my korean name: yongbok lee. i’ve learned it from the amount of times mother writes it on papers as if i’m the one who’s in charge of the house. i never liked it, but seeing it on here. . .it’s so pretty like that, next to each other.” felix cooes in awe, not noticing the look the other kid was giving him.
“don’t worry jinnie, it won’t disappear,” felix continues, “remember the sand pile from when we first met? it’s still crushed from the time we jumped on it!” he laughs as they both look towards the direction of the misshaped sand pile. “everything here is like magic . . .”
the lightly freckled male slowly backs away after saying that, eyes on hyunjin who had neglected his twig to stare back at felix with mild interest.
“what are you planning, lixie?” hyunjin warily asks.
“ever read the magic tree house books?”
hyunjin’s gaze turns confused and then the light bulb switches. “felix, what now—”
the taller eight year old snaps his fingers and starts jogging backwards, “let’s build a treehouse hyunjin!! a magic treehouse!!!”
“we can go anywhere in the world! i promise! just the two of us, you and i~”
and like the silly, little naive kid hyunjin was, he lets himself be free of worries and laughs while running after the other on an island that was somewhere but at the same time, in the middle of nowhere. to build a magic treehouse that would allow him to travel with felix, anywhere on the planet without a single care in the world.
=
hyunjin had forgotten that the magic treehouse was only a storybook, just like their dreams.
it was all made-up, make-believe, playing pretend, etc. but still, even then. . . he really liked the imagination his mind could conjure up — sending him to a place where the sun never failed to shine, both the real one and . . .
felix was nine when he got beat up at school for not looking like the other kids. it was late in the afternoon, at the back of the lunch building. the usual fifth graders were at it again, belittling him for the now prominent dark freckles that scattered his small face, his dirty school clothes that he barely got the chance to wash properly since he had only one set of them, and the numerous holes of all shapes and sizes in his book bag and shoes. they kept punching and beating down on him while he kept silent, knowing that no one would be able to save him if he had tried to fight back and scream anyways. he stayed the night in the parking lot, never making a move to go home, and instead wrapping his arms around himself and falling asleep on the pavement until a school counselor shrieked out in horror after spotting him the next morning.
but by then, he was okay. because felix had hyunjin. hyunjin who had worried and cried like a baby over him that night, making him feel so much better than he had in the past days. and while the pain on top of his body still lingered, hyunjin had made the pain on the inside go away. even if it was just temporarily, that was enough.
it would always be enough for him to keep on going.
felix was ten and hyunjin was eleven, when they were both on summer break, and that’s when something shifted for the younger boy. he wasn’t sure if it was him, the dream, or hyunjin himself who was changing though.
“felix, we are not building a boat.”
the freckled boy looks up from where he was crouched on the palm tree shaded floor, at the boy who was standing, facing away from him.
“but whyyy.” he whines, taking out the crumpled piece of paper he had hastily shoved into the back pocket of his jeans so he could take it with him into his dream.
after years of doing the same thing, felix had learnt a couple of things from the dreams. the first was that any item they fell asleep holding on to or with, came along into the dream, so much so that they had unintentionally created a whole fort of just blankets and pillows that were never to return back to their former household. most of them were hyunjin’s anyways because felix couldn’t afford to lose his collection of donation stuffed animals.
the second realization felix had was that it was kind of like he was growing up with hyunjin in a way. they had been seeing each other since they were both kids, five years old in age. they had effortlessly moved past building sand castles and playing tag on the island filled with flowers, blue skies, and sandy beaches, and onto weird stuff that the older elementary school kids did.
except maybe, eleven year old hyunjin didn’t even want to do that anymore, which made felix want to pout.
“take a look at my list before you say no!”
hyunjin turns around, and felix feels something weird boiling inside of him, as he takes in the other’s black, soft, fluffy, messy, astray hair on top of his head. felix thought hyunjin looked good , especially in the red polo shirt and khaki shorts he was wearing. he kind of looked like those child models on the posters hung up at the mall. but that’s all there was to it. his best friend was just a good looking kid, that was all.
the older boy snatches the piece of paper out of his hand and squints at felix’s barely legible handwriting, making the latter roll his eyes and stand up, knowing what overexaggerated statement would come out next from his best friend’s mouth.
“rocks, seaweed, hardened sand, flowe—” hyunjin pauses from listing off the materials that felix had written down on the piece of paper to look directly up at the boy who was now the same height as him. hyunjin had finally caught up to felix in length, and he wasn’t planning on stopping any time soon.
“okay maybe i get the hardened sand, but why would we need flowers and seaweed to build a boat felix?”
the ten year old rubs at his neck and scrunches his nose, before giving the other boy a smitten look. “to decorate the boat maybe?”
hyunjin stares in judgement for a moment and then drops the paper from his clutches while turning around again. “absolutely not.” he says as he walks away.
felix stomps his right foot in annoyance, knowing he looked like a baby doing so, but he really wanted to do this with hyunjin. not only had he written down every single material they would need, but he had even done some research and written down measurements and all the other necessary details google and youtube could provide him for the planning of their journey (whether the numbers were accurate or not, the boys would have to find out later after figuring out how to build the boat first).
“jinnie!” he whines, calling out to the older boy. he picks up the piece of paper and angrily stomps up from behind him on the sandy surface. “we can use this chance to escape! to run away!—”
“the two of us! just you and i!” hyunjin finishes off. “yeah, yeah, i know. but felix we already tried that last time, and look how that ended up.”
“the magic tree house didn’t work because you weren't tall enough to place it up in the tree!” he refutes making hyunjin turn around, a shocked expression feigned on his face.
“ me? i wasn’t tall enough?”
felix smugly nods, purposefully pushing his shoulder against the other boy’s just to mess with hyunjin as he walks past him. “yep. admit it. you just weren’t tall enough.”
hyunjin scoffs, “ha! speak for yourself. apparently, you were tall enough, but look at how much you were able to do.”
“i made it pretty!” felix protested, and they both look at a distance to where a fairly well put together wooden crate stood, like a private box, with leaves adorned in every corner to fill up the spaces.
“yeah, you made a pretty tropical private bathroom for the poor survivors on a stranded island to use.”
felix turns around and reaches his hand out to smack hyunjin’s shoulder, but the other boy laughs and dodges the hit just in time.
“hmph, whatever.” he relents. “also that probably didn’t work because there was no magic. it was supposed to be a magic treehouse!”
the eleven year old pretends to think about it, and then shrugs his shoulders. “before it was a treehouse, and now it’s a magic boat. i really don’t see the difference.”
the freckled male’s eyebrows twitch and knit together before he finally decides to give up. it was obvious that hyunjin didn’t want to cooperate, so he would just have to do this all by himself.
“fine, suit yourself. hyung. ”
hyunjin splutters, not having heard that term from anyone in his life yet, and especially not expecting it to come out of his best friend’s mouth, who was only younger than him by half a year. he decides to ignore it though, it’s not like it should be made into a bigger deal than it already was.
“and where will you get all the tools from?!” the eleven year old shouts out at him.
however, felix just shakes his head in disappointment at how loud and obnoxious the other was being as he walked back over to the large palm trees. there were always shedded layers of wood and huge, fallen and hard sloped leaves laying underneath it. he was sure he could start making the base of the boat with just those alone.
picking up as much as his skinny arms could carry, he lifted the pieces up and walked back to hyunjin, aware of the piercing stare the other was giving him, but he refused to look up and meet the other’s gaze.
so he dumps the natural contrivances onto the sand, while doing the same with his own bum, landing on the soft surface with a thump.
“ah i’ll have to do all of this hard work by myself.” felix loudly sighs, pretending to look at the sea in sadness, and then back at the stuff in front of him. he sighs again.
while a part of his mind was waiting to see what hyunjin would do, the other part had already busied his hands with pulling a string of leaf off and sewing it into the existing holes of the hard board.
it feels like he’s been sitting there for hours when finally, a voice sounds from near him.
“you’re doing it all wrong.”
felix looks up just as hyunjin’s fingers touch his own to pull the leaf away, and two things happen at once. one is that a breeze blows in between them, lifting up hyunjin’s fluffy hair to show off his glorious forehead. and the second is. . .their eyes.
their eyes meet, and felix can’t find it in himself to look away. he doesn’t get why, but he thinks hyunjin just looks so good in the moment, that he can’t force himself to look at anything else even if he wanted to. it was just in human nature to have their attention drawn to and captivated by good looking things, wasn’t it ?
“you look good today.” felix whispers without a second thought.
hyunjin, on the other hand, doesn’t understand if it’s because of their six month age gap or the fact that he was just older and probably way less innocent than felix, but he finds himself in a distraught situation. his eyebrows furrow as felix continues to look into his eyes, as if they were holding a staring contest. who would back down first?
“thanks?” he whispers, not sure if he was asking the question to himself or felix.
“your ears are red.” the ten year old states, offering a small grin, before finally looking down and away from a flustered hyunjin.
the older boy consciously reaches out to touch his warming ears, and he coughs before looking away as well. this was just little felix giving him a compliment— that’s all there really is to it hyunjin, don’t think too much about it . and so he didn’t. instead, he sneaks a glance at the younger boy’s face again which was peacefully concentrated on the task at hand. felix’s freckles had gotten more prominent with the summer and the harsh uv rays of the sun, but they just made him look even more prettier. hyunjin just wanted to reach out and—
“silly boy!”
he’s thankfully shaken out of his misleading thoughts by felix’s mean words to see that he had been undoing everything felix was working on in the boat.
“oh shit.” he accidentally curses, causing felix to give him a stern look. “i mean, i’m sorry.” he quickly corrects himself again.
the ten year old just sighs, and drops his hands away. “it’s so obvious you don’t want to do this jinnie, and it’s really okay. i just thought you would like it and still be believing in magic since you’re of age to go to hogwarts.”
hyunjin coughs out loud. “to where?”
to be honest, he had heard felix right the first time, but he just wondered how the other could be so random and forgetful at times. he was always called the silly one out of them two, but if they were to be honest with themselves, felix was the silliest one of them all.
“you’re eleven, so you get to go to hogwarts! you should be getting your invitation any day now!” felix happily chirps, looking to their side where the sun suddenly looked as if it were setting, but that was all just an illusion anyways.
in their dream, the sun always burned bright and high in the sky as if it were noon at every hour of the day, but in reality it was usually night outside of the dreams.
hyunjin just shakes his head at the other boy, lips not exposing anything, but eyes filled with laughter at the other’s kiddish jokes.
“for real though jinnie. . .what happened today?” felix asks, staring at the older boy’s side profile.
hyunjin bites the insides of his cheeks before letting out a sigh he didn’t know he had been holding the whole time they were in the dream.
“my mom and the— excuse me for cursing felix, but —the stupid man got married.”
felix gasps at the sudden news. he doesn’t interrupt, wanting hyunjin to say everything he had to, first.
“and you know where the man had the audacity to marry? the reason why i’m also dressed like this, all fancy and beach clothes or whatever?” felix shakes his head, knowing that hyunjn would continue anyways, “at the beach felix. he married at a beach, where my mom had first met dad— my real and only dad. he married at a beach on purpose, knowing that—” and felix thinks the other had said a curse word again from how he paused and each word came out with bitter resentment in hyunjin’s voice.
“he married at a beach, where you and i met.” the boy says this part looked at the freckled male sitting next to him, as if to challenge the other to say otherwise. felix, however, just nods his head sympathetically, and speaks his honest thoughts, “that sucks.”
he had said those two words so frankly that hyunjin has to laugh at the candidness and truth in the other’s response. he vigorously nodded his head, “yeah bro, it does suck.”
that was also another thing he liked about felix. he knew how to cheer up and distract hyunjin from his worries, without even having to try hard.
“and you. . ?” hyunjin asks, looking over to the ten year old next to him. his heart is instantly crushed, as he sees the former expression of happiness dissipate into one of sadness right before his eyes.
“mom” felix mumbles, and hyunjin doesn’t prod for anymore information. he knew what felix’s mom was like. it made the eleven year old boy hate her as much as he hated his stepdad. honestly, he couldn’t understand how anyone would harm a little kid like felix like that. his felix was so kind and funny and precious— it made the older boy want to protect the younger from the cruel and evil world.
but what could he do?
hyunjin scoffs out loud.
because he would never know felix in real life, all he would ever know of felix, is a dream.
“is there something wrong?”, felix asks, eyes filled with worry again as he looks up at him.
and there he goes again, caring for others instead of himself, hyunjin thinks in exasperation.“yes, i’ll tell you what’s wrong lixie.” he starts, but then stops himself by biting at his lips. should he really be saying the next few words he wanted to say? was it okay for a boy to be saying that to another boy?
felix looks at him expectantly, and hyunjin chickens out. and it certainly wouldn’t be the last time that he does.
“you’re doing it all wrong.” the older boy says, changing the subject. he snatches whatever was in felix’s hands away from him and busies himself with the boat. “if you want to build a boat, you have to work quicker and faster. and you’ll need my help since i’m stronger than you.”
felix giggles, smiling at the fact that hyunjin had finally given in, even though he was pretty sure that he was the stronger one, he would save that obvious proven argument with the latter for another day. for now, he was just thankful.
“thank you jinnie~” he sing songs, smiling brightly at the black haired boy in front of him, who had crouched down onto the sand, pretending like he knew what he was doing.
what felix doesn’t notice though is how hyunjin’s ears turn red for the nth time that day at his words.
no.
thank you, felix, he thinks.
=
thank you—
is what felix tells the deities when he is twelve years old, for taking his mother away from him. that’s all they both ever wanted anyways, and her drunk driving and the accident just accelerated all of that.
that year, he rarely dreamt of hyunjin— perhaps thrice a month, and felix honestly didn’t know what to make of it. maybe it was because of all the stress and busywork from having to move from his previous house into a foster home, with thankfully , a family who seemed to care (many homes weren’t like that as he heard from the other kids, and he was ever so grateful that he had gotten lucky).
the family had two kids who were close in age and almost the same age as felix too, but he was older. their names were yang jeongin and kim seungmin. they were going to attend middle school just like he was.
and so there felix went, a fresh new start, with a kind new korean family, and friends who didn’t judge him about every single thing like the kids did when he was younger.
finally, felix felt like he was getting a breather, a breath of fresh air from the years of suffocation he had to suffer. he could be a normal teenager, just like the other kids. not having only hyunjin for comfort now, he lets himself be freer and more open, leaning on other people. . . which eventually leads to. . .dating.
he’s thirteen years old, a fresh and new, hatched chickling into the teenage years, when he comes into terms with what he had realized and felt along. he liked both boys and girls.
despite coming out as bisexual, felix found himself still flirting around more with the girls. well to say he “flirted” would be incorrect because he was still shy and awkward when it came to social interactions, but there was slow improvement being made. however, it was the girls who always fawned over him, telling him he was cute, and he just went along with it, not really thinking he was, but if they liked him, then hey, whatever. the more company, the better.
he doesn’t even realize the mistake he was making until one outing at the bowling center downtown. felix had been invited by seungmin and jeongin to meet up with their friend from a different school, han jisung. he wasn’t sure if it was because of their close age or something else (they were literally only just born a day apart), but he immediately clicks with the other teen.
currently, he was sitting with seungmin at one of the tables at the café while watching jeongin and jisung mess around from a distance at the bowling lanes, purposefully trying to make the other land their ball in the gutter.
a couple of girls who always hung around with them at school had joined them in their bowling outing as well this time. they kept giggling and looking over at their table, but felix paid them no mind.
“i have a feeling you’re going to get asked out today.” seungmin smirks, silently sipping on his tall order of vanilla milkshake. he glances over at the three girls, and then back at felix, “back at it again, cutie boy.”
felix scoffs and rolls his eyes. “cutie boy my butt, seungmin. i don’t even know what they see in me.”
the other boy shrugs. “hey, look on the bright side. if they do ask you out, you can finally stop complaining about being lonely all the time—” felix cuts in and protests, “i do not do that.” “— and i would finally have some peace from hearing you whine all the time. especially every night lix, when you’re in bed whining ‘please’ ‘please’ ‘please let me go there’, ‘please let it be him/her’, i can never tell who you’re mumbling about, but it’s freaky.”
felix ears turn a bright flaming red. this was definitely news to him. he didn’t think he would be doing that out of all things, but maybe it was because he was so used to being in pain and slipping into the dreams from before, that made him say those types of things.
the next words seungmin says, has the red from the cartilage of his ears, migrate to and plaster all over his face. felix hides himself in shame, well aware that the girls are watching, but he doesn’t care about how he looks at the moment.
“if i hadn’t known better , i would have thought you were masturbating.”
felix chokes, and seungmin sends him an innocent look in the eyes with the most devilish smirk playing on his lips. the devil’s reincarnation, truly. “turns out you were probably just sleep talking .”
“i will end you.” felix mutters, playfully making a cutting motion at the throat, and seungmin laughs, but it dies down just as he notices something.
“oh you know that girl, samantha? the one you’ve been hanging around with a lot lately, more than the other girls?”
felix nods in affirmation, while swirling the straw in his oreo milkshake. “yeah, what about her?”
“she likes you, and she’s coming over here to ask you out.”
“she’s pretty, but you can date her.” felix immediately responds unfazed, eliciting a gasp from the other teenager.
“felix, you do know you will be rejecting the most popular girl in our grade right? think about it again before you make up your mind and give her your final answer.” seungmin presses.
the freckled thirteen year old, doesn’t understand why it’s any of seungmin’s concern on who he dated or not, but then he remembers that seungmin was harboring a crush on samantha’s friend, becky. and if felix dated samantha, then it would automatically give the younger boy an immediate free pass to hanging around with becky.
life was so unnecessarily complicated. he sighs.
the three girls walk over, immediately drawing the attention of the boys at a distance, who hurried over to watch the drama unfold. jisung sits down next to seungmin, and jeongin snatches a nearby chair. as a result, the four boys were now sitting in an arc formation, watching as samantha flipped her hair and made her way over to the table.
since there were no more available seats, the girls remained standing in front of them.
“hey fefe ~”
felix sighs and looks up from his milkshake to the girl standing in front of them. she was really pretty, there was no denying it. face shaped like a doll’s, every feature on her face was small but pretty and sharp. they made her come off strong, the natural dark eye shadow, the straight eyebrows, the mole on the cheek, the shiny black mid-waist length hair— she was like a female version of. . .
felix slightly panics and flinches as one name comes to mind.
hyunjin.
samantha was like hyunjin in many ways.
the black haired boy in his dreams had beautiful shiny black hair, porcelain white skin, straight and thick black eyebrows, sharp eyes that had a natural dark eyeshadow undertone to them, and a beautiful tiny black mole that fit perfectly under his left eye. what they matched in appearance tho, samantha lacked in personality.
if she lacks in personality but looks like the boy you’ve been missing in your dreams, then why were you hanging around with her? , a curious voice in his head nudges him.
and a part of him knew the answer, but it irritated and agitated him that the question was being brought up now. ‘ shut up.’ he thinks back to it, nudging the thought away to a trash pile at the corner of his mind, saving it to ponder over later. . .or maybe never .
felix raises an eyebrow as the girl leans forward, purposefully showing off her cleavage to him and the rest of the boys. she snatches the cup in front of felix— which he hadn’t fished by the way — and takes a sip before clearing her throat.
“fefe—”
and there was that darn nickname again. a simple ‘lixie’ would have done, but he’s thankful that she doesn’t say it, since that nickname was only reserved for one person. “i’m not the type to beat around the bush”
“i would sure hope not.” jisung interrupts, snickering, and felix can’t help but crack a smile with the other boys.
the girls huff, and samantha rolls her eyes, “no one asked for your opinion squirrel face.”
felix shoots a look to seungmin, telepathically saying ‘ see? this is why.’
seungmin pouts back, probably thinking back, ‘but becky :(’
samantha looks at felix once again, batting her eyelashes at him. “do you wanna go on a date with me felix? yes or no? i know you like me, and my answer is, yes. i like you a lot too.”
the freckled boy feels a little sad and embarrassed for the thirteen year old girl at the moment. he doesn’t want to humiliate or scar her on purpose, so he takes a moment to think before he speaks the next few sentences.
“samantha, you’re a really pretty person.” he starts off and said girl gives him a smile, but felix can’t smile back as he looks into her eyes, wanting so badly at the moment for. . . someone else. . .to be the one confessing and asking him out on a date.
“but... i just don’t feel the same way, and i really hope you find someone who likes you back like that, because you deserve that.”
“whatever.” samantha spits back at him, despite sending her the kindest rejection he could, and then she grabs her friends and runs out the door in tears, leaving all the boys flabbergasted. he would probably get roasted by everyone at school for turning her down, but if they knew felix, they would know that he honestly couldn’t care less. no, not because he was heartless, it was because he had a heart, but it belonged to someone else.
“was it something to seriously cry about?”, jisung says, mocking the thirteen year old girl’s face, and they all laugh, but felix still tells the other to stop, because people were sensitive when it came to feelings. he knew that feeling all too well, more than any one of them sitting at the table at the moment.
afterwards when they were back at home, jeongin asks felix why he had done it, like what was the real, real reason he had turned down samantha. felix had grabbed jeongin into a headlock then and ruffled his hair saying, “my cutie boy, i just did .”
“but why? is it because you like someone else?”
felix makes the mistake of catching seungmin’s eyes right then which were glaring at him with suspicion at that exact moment.
“probably.” he breathes out.
=
he probably should have ran away from his house when he was younger.
hyunjin is fourteen when the puppy he’s had since he was a kid, dies.
when he tells the disheartening news to his mom and his step-dad, who had unfortunately just happened to be there at the moment, he gets laughed at in the face. on top of that, the old geezer goes further into insulting the precious pup that hyunjin had grown up with.
his mom tried to cool him down and comfort his fury as much as she could afterwards by secretly going with him to bury the tiny thing the next day and giving it all the appropriate rituals it deserved.
after its funeral, hyunjin can’t help but thinking his mother’s words were nice and all, but all he wanted at the moment was to see felix and be with the younger boy. he wanted to hear the freckled boy’s comforting voice, he wanted to feel the other’s warmth and sweetness, he just wanted to hug—
why hadn’t they ever hugged?
it was an odd question that was even harder to act upon now that both boys were growing up and already in their first year of high school. something kept changing quick and fast, but the black haired boy couldn’t pinpoint what it was exactly. whatever it was, it had pulled them into a dance that wouldn’t stop anytime soon.
they’re both fifteen and sitting in the stupid treehouse they built as kids when hyunjin realizes what it was.
“so. . .”
hyunjin looks over to his left, at felix with his lavender dyed hair.
he still remembers when he first saw the other with the hair color— he had nearly gotten a shock and kicked the other out of defense, thinking some impostor had entered their dream. felix had laughed about it for days to come and still wouldn’t let it go, but hyunjin forgave him anyway, because the color suited him well. he felt like if felix really tried, he could probably pull off any hair color, no matter how odd the hue was.
“so?” he prods.
“so” felix clears his throat. “how’s school?”
hyunjin gives the other a dead ass look, and felix turns his head to catch it just on time, laughing at the ridiculity of the question.
“really lix?” the older boy asks, shaking his head, making a black fringe fall on top of his forehead.
felix stares at the hair strand, feeling the urge to move it away from the other’s face, but he resists, not wanting to weird the other boy out. “sorry.” he breathlessly laughs.
“since you’re being quite lame today, let me ask you how you got your voice to be so deep mr. lee felix shi.”
an eyebrow quirks at that, and felix laughs, coyly replying back, “if you’re looking for a secret recipe, you’ve come to the wrong place mr. hwang hyunjin shi.”
hyunjin stares for a moment, before going out on an impulse and pushing his shoulder against the other boy. “aww, please? please tell me lixie?” he leans his face forward into the other’s warm space, placing a pout onto his face, not sure of how ridiculous he looked, but wanting to try something new and different with felix.
and new and different it certainly was, almost giving the freckled male a heart attack from just sitting there and watching his best friend come up close to him, scrunching his face up cutely and giving him the softest puppy eyes. he almost even curses, and he’s vowed to never do that.
“what are you doing?” he says with a humorous lilt in his words, trying not to let the other’s close proximity get to him.
hyunjin sighs and reluctantly backs away from felix. “i knew aegyo wouldn’t work.”
“agi?” felix misinterprets, “like baby?”
hyunjin snorts at felix’s response, “no you silly boy—”
“that’s your nickname, not mine silly boy. ” felix cuts him off, sticking out his tongue.
the black haired older boy sticks his tongue out back at the younger before explaining with an exaggerated roll of his eyes, “aegyo is basically cute acts that one does, sometimes it’s on purpose and other times it’s unintentional. like right now—” felix watches as the other boy pauses to make duck lips and heart eyes at him, a finger poking at his cheek.
felix almost feels his heart clench at how cute the other was being, and he’s about to squish the other’s cheeks without thinking, when hyunjin ruins it himself, by making a weird noise.
“hnng!”
he snorts, looking away from a hyunjin who was turning pink from his failed aegyo.
“you good bro?”
“oh shut up. why don’t you try it then?”
felix shakes his head in rebuttal, making his voice go an octave lower as he says in all seriousness, “it’ll be too dangerous if i did.”
at this hyunjin looks at the other with interest, eyebrow raised and tongue poking at the inside of his left cheek. “oh yeah mr. big shot? try me.”
felix heaves a fake sigh. “are you sure?” he asks again, glancing at hyunjin with mock worry who just gives an affirmative, concernless nod in return.
a little annoyed with the unresponsiveness from the other, the freckled boy sing songs, “well. . .okay, don’t say i didn’t warn you~” before covering his face and then turning to sit facing towards hyunjin. when he does this, he feels the wood under them sway a little on the tree, so hyunjin extends his arm to the wall behind felix’s head to help them get sturdy again. what they both don’t realize though is that this would cause hyunjin’s face to come into close proximity with felix’s as the younger boy opened his hands to have his cheeks all puffed out, lips puckered on display.
it’s only when the silence feels like it’s been dragging out for more than a couple of minutes, that felix finally opens his eyes and realizes how close hyunjin’s face was to his own. he’s so startled, that he’s definitely sure the other boy hadn’t been staring at his lips right before he had burst the bubble in his cheeks, and let on a onslaught of windy air onto the older boy’s face.
hyunjin immediately leans away, exaggeratedly coughing and waving his hands in front of his face as if to hint at the fact that felix’s breath stank.
the younger pouts and smacks the other on the shoulder. “what are you doing that for?!”
the black haired boy smirks, catching a fly that had happened to be buzzing right past the freckled male’s head at the moment with one hand, all of the tension from before now absent. “you know why.”
“meanie.” felix mumbles, still pouting as he looked out at the sea in the distance, a weird feeling taking over his chest. hyunjin stares at the other boy with the same exact feeling.
a sudden urge of confidence surges over him as he watches felix’s pretty and pouty side profile.
“don’t get all mad just because your breath stinks, and no one wants to kiss you.”
kiss.
kiss?! felix thinks, turning his head slightly away from the older boy so that he wouldn’t see his distraught face. where in the world had that word come from?! why were they even on that subject in the first place!
“pft, as if! i’ll have you know that all the girls die to kiss me hyunjin,” the lavender haired boy stammers without thinking about the meaning behind his words. he was just beyond flustered and wanted to change the subject in a rush, but he realizes how cringe his answer is when the black haired boy doesn’t choose to reply.
hyunjin felt like something sour had settled into his mouth; like he had just been forced to chug down some acetic milk. he was sure if he had opened his mouth now, it would stink and let out a god awful smell that he accused felix of having not only a couple minutes ago.
all the girls would die to kiss me hyunj—
the black haired boy rolls his eyes and drops down from the treehouse so quickly, it leaves felix stumbling in the wooden box, hands flailing to desperately grab onto something. “jinnie—” the other gasps in surprise, confusion written all over his face by his best friend’s sudden and weird behavior change.
hyunjin doesn’t look back up at felix, knowing that he needed some time alone before he did, or else his heart would keep breaking in two.
“i’m bored, i’ll be out near the sandpile.”
saying this, he walks away just like that, leaving felix all alone behind him. felix was just always getting left behind, wasn’t he?
=
he’s sixteen and bored out of his mind one day, when he realizes.
it’s a summer night, the start of school just on the horizon, but hyunjin still had a handful of weeks before he returned to hell. for today, he’s just decided to lay down and lounge around in his bed, enjoying his alone time in the house but still he ends up feeling bored out of his mind.
his mom had gone out with his step-dad for a dinner date, and with the whole place to himself, there was honestly so many things he could do. he could have been gaming, reading a book, finishing his stupid summer work for a math class, eating his heart out from their pantry, watching a drama, jacking off to some porn— okay maybe not that part — he didn’t want to get caught —but honestly the possibilities were endless .
instead the black haired male chooses to do none of the above and sticks around like a lazy bum instead. he almost feels synonymous to the grasshoppers which sat still on the long bladed leaves outside and chirped the sticky and warm summer nights away.
but in fact, hyunjin couldn’t even do that much. he had no one to chirp with, or at least the friends that he had were all his older hyungs who went on a trip to lord knows where to celebrate their graduation earlier that year. so there he was, laying on top of his pillows, longing for someone to talk to. longing for a certain freckled male—
just imagine if they had known each other in real life, better yet. . . what if they had been neighbors?! or even lived in the same district?? that way with just one phone call, they would have been at each other’s doors, bothering the shit out of each other.
they could have gone to the same school, ate lunch together, complained about homework together, hung out afterwards at the vendors market to eat some tteokbokki— no, not the spicy ones, because he couldn’t tolerate spicy food and neither could felix —and just.
‘stop your useless thinking jin,’ his brain tells him, and the black haired boy sighs, slightly sweating now from his restless thoughts and the heat seeping into the room. sighing in defeat, he turns his head to look out the high window next to his bed.
hyunjin was in seoul, korea staring at the big white full moon. . . he wondered if somewhere in sydney, australia, in the safety of a house, felix was doing the same exact thing. . . looking at the same white moon that shone on this earth every night.
it was times when he thought like this, that he really felt like felix was real, but other times, that’s all the younger boy felt like to hyunjin.
a dream. something so desirable but also so un reachable and un obtainable.
at the thought of dreams, his mind went to how it had been almost a whole month since hyunjin had dreamed of the australian, and the days were becoming really unbearable. sure, he’s gone months before without seeing felix, but he would always blame that on school and go about his days despite the longing in his soul to see the other. however, now that summer break was in full swing, there was really no other excuse and hyunjin couldn’t help but think about how much of a constant the other boy was— whether it be in his thoughts, words, actions. . .he hadn’t realized how much he depended on the other, telling the boy secrets he would never even tell his in real life hyungs whom he trusted with his life. the bond he and felix shared was special .
imaginary?
no. never.
there was a reason behind everything, sixteen-year old hyunjin believed.
there was a reason why the universe had brought them together.
there was a reason why felix was the warmest person living on this planet and other universes too.
there was a reason why the black haired boy’s heart beat.
there was a reason why he came to the realization that night— that he liked boys.
there was a reason hyunjin was gay, and he knew he liked
=
it took him another year to come out to his friends, and it honestly wasn’t planned out or anything like that.
one minute hyunjin had been sitting with minho and getting his life threatened once again by the older boy at the mall food court— wait, now one might think, how many times does the poor seventeen year old boy get threatened and why ?
his answer is a solemn and grave one. he wasn’t all too sure why his hyung hated him, but there were too many times to count— first it was the hand sanitizer in the mouth, and then the tissues in the mouth, and when he finally thought it was over, lee minho had reached a all new high by saying he wanted to cook hyunjin in an air fryer for twenty minutes at precisely a 180 degrees.
to say the boy has been through some things in his life would be an understatement. he’s been through a lot of things, but nothing would have ever prepared him for what was to come.
“we’re here guys!” a loud and friendly voice calls out, causing the seventeen-year old and twenty-year old males to turn their heads around.
approaching the pair was a shy bangchan hyung and confident, smirking changbin hyung. hyunjin’s momentarily confused by their facial expressions until he sees their linked hands.
“oh.” he says at the same time his minho hyung does, but the older doesn’t even mind, too engrossed with what was about to play out.
when they reach the table, the men don’t sit down and instead stay standing. they all awkwardly stare at each other, until finally changbin nudges chan who was tightly gripping onto the younger’s hand causing both of their skins to turn red.
“i, i’m—” chan finally breathes out, “we’re dating.”
minho makes a noise in his throat and hyunjin freezes up, an uncomfortable feeling rising up in his throat. but it wasn’t because of them.
the oldest of the two raises his and changbin’s hands up, and minho’s the first one to get up and greet them with a laugh, pulling both boys into a group hug. “congrats idiots.” hyunjin hears, but he can’t think properly, so he isn’t too sure.
all he sees is how his hyungs were smiling, while his whole body had started to shake in the chair he was sitting on. noticing something amiss from their warm embrace, the older boys turn to fetch hyunjin only to see how pale he’s become.
changbin’s the first to rush up to the teen, rubbing his hand on the younger’s back in hopes to help him calm down. “jin? hyunjin, talk to us. what’s going on?”
the black haired boy keeps shaking, and he shuts his eyes close, stuttering out, “i-it’s n-not-thin-ng.”
chan’s previous shy demeanor had immediately changed when seeing his dongsaeng in an anxious state to that of a serious one. his doctor and caregiver side jumped out as he rushed over to kneel down in front of hyunjin, holding the younger boy’s hand and rubbing small circles into his palms.
“breathe for us hyunjin, take deep breaths hyunjin.” he says while he keeps on slowly rubbing at the boy’s hands as the latter tries to calm his breathing down and slowly lower his chest. “yes jin, just like that. nice and slow. deep breaths on the count of five okay? first, in. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. now, out. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5… good .”
hyunjin bit his lips as the tension in his body starts to slowly fade, but now tears were threatening to fall and escape from his eyes. he hears chan hyung calling out to his minho hyung and is pleasantly surprised when he hears the worried tone of the other’s voice.
“hyunjin, you can trust us. listen to my voice speaking right now and don’t think about anything else. yes, just like that.”
the hands on his back and hands slowly remove themselves, and minho continues, “you’re going to be okay. everything is fine. okay, hyunjin? you can trust us. open your eyes for us baby.”
upon hearing the word ‘baby’, his eyes flutter open to make eye contact with all three of his hyungs sitting in a circle around him, worry etched on every inch of their faces, and suddenly, everything’s okay again.
it was only them. it was just them. the boys he grew up with, that’s all changbin, minho, and chan hyung were.
“i’m gay.” he whispers, not backing down or cowering away this time, but also not wanting to be too loud because he was still a little scared. . .
“that’s wonderful.” minho says, a smile making its way onto his face. “that might have been the best thing you’ve said all day, and it also just docked you a free pass from not having to get cooked in the air fryer. for now.”
chan chokes at the statement, giving the other a look like, ‘ you threatened to do what? ’.
minho just shrugs in response, and chan shakes his head in dismay before looking back up at hyunjin with a soft smile on his face.
“i am so proud of you hyunjin.”
“proud?” he asks in confusion. “why?”
“yeah baby, i’m proud. good job for finding this special part about yourself out and a very good job to you for being courageous enough to tell us, it means the world to us,” chan says, and now the tears want to spill out from hyunjin for a whole different reason.
“hyung-” his voice cracks, and he’s embraced into a hug right after. fighting to keep his eyes open, his teary eyes blinks at his changbin hyung who just smiles at him too, giving him a prideful thumbs up.
“all the boys are lucky to have you.”
they all laugh as hyunjin blushes, the tears rolling down his cheeks in cool small blobs now. he was so grateful to have his hyungs.
“thank you.” he sniffs.
thank you for accepting the mess that i am.
= t/w: name calling, homophobia, minor violence !you may skip this part if you feel uncomfortable with any of these! =
mess.
that’s what hyunjin is reduced into once again when his parents find out what he wasn’t ready to tell them yet.
he had just become confident enough to walk around telling people his sexuality if they asked, without shying away, and there were a few scrap letters he wrote trying to explain himself too— sort of like journal entries or diary stuff —in order to sort out of his feelings, but he never once expected his step-dad to barge in when hyunjin wasn’t home one day and look through his stuff without permission.
when the 18 year old senior walks in from a long school day, all he was expecting to be doing was taking a shower and hitting the sack for a couple of hours and then maybe waking up for dinner to study and complete his homework for the next day after that.
instead, his plans are changed, when the first thing hyunjin’s met with when he steps into the living room is a quiet, eerie silence. upon hearing his footsteps, his mother lowered her head into her hands, and his step-dad’s face turned beet red.
“mom?” he tentatively asks, ignoring the other man in the room and wondering what had happened for the two of them to be sitting on the sofa like that all tense with each other.
right as the words come out of his mouth though, hyunjin’s reflexes slow to look at his step-dad in surprise, and it takes him a minute to register the smacking sound in the room and the sting of a slap imprint that had been left on his face.
his head automatically turns to the right, and his jaw clenches.
what the actual fuck.
he slowly brings his hand up to his cheek, shocked that he had just gotten hit, and that too by a man who had taken his real father’s place.
“seok eul nyun!” his mother shouted the name in shock, getting up from the sofa to intervene between her son and the fake ass she married.
the glare that his step-dad sends to his mother right then has the 18 year old seething.
“why did you have to go marry that stupid man who left you to go overseas then huh? why did you have to give birth to this fucking son of a bitch”
hyunjin pushes his mother to the side, anger burning through every part of his body. it was one thing to lay his hand on a kid that wasn’t even his, but insulting his father?
“motherfucker, what did you just call my dad?”
all sense of decency and respect leaves him, having dealt with this man for years and being so done with the bull-shit the other put him through; since hyunjin was just as easily as tall as the other man, it made it easier for him to grab the other by the collar and growl in his face.
“say that again.” he grits out, every inch of his face turning red and pulsing with anger.
the man still has the nerve to mockingly laugh in his face, looking into both of hyunjin’s eyes making the black haired male want to use a pitchfork to take the other’s eyes out.
“what are you looking at fag? huh? why?” the man says, a dirty and stupid grin on his face. “you like males right, where did you just come from right now?” hyunjin revulses in horror at the other’s words as the man turns his head to face his mother who was just standing at the side, looking at the two of them in shock, “where do you think your pretty little gay son came from, hye? school? no he was probably at some afterschool gay club. people like him— aniyo, scum like him. they deserve to—”
“fucking die you piece of shit.” hyunjin cuts him off, feeling the need to throw up as his ears keep filling with the slimy maggots that came out of the other’s rotten mouth.
“what did you say gay boy?” the other man asks, narrowing his eyes at the other as if to dare him to speak any further.
“i said: go. to. hell.”
“why you—” the other man snarls and kicks him down to the floor before his mother could even intervene. his mom, shrieks as she finds her son holding his stomach in pain on the floor.
tears flood her eyes as she looks at the man next to her, “what did you just do. do you understand what you just did—”
it wasn’t the first time his step-dad did that mom, he silently thinks.
hyunjin hisses from the floor, wincing as he moved to sit up, not having finished talking with the other man. if abuse and violence was what he was going to recieve, hyunjin didn’t care. he would never back down.
“mom,” he breathes out, his words coming out a little labored. “mom tell him it’s fine that i’m gay. tell him it’s okay that i like boys—” he pauses, to adjust himself on the floor and he lifts himself up slowly. “—prove him wrong eomma.”
the black haired male flits his pleading eyes towards his mother, but his heart is broken and shattered beyond a million pieces when he sees his mom with her eyes screwed shut, still clinging onto the shirt of a man who had just beat up her own son.
“i’m sorry.” he hears, and nothing could have hurt him more than those two words alone.
now who was left for him to trust if his own mother didn’t even understand him and was instead, blindly protecting a monster?
the world falls away when he reaches his room upstairs and hits the floor with a loud thud. it’s not like the world had anything good in store for him anyways, he thinks as his head makes contact with the hard tiles underneath, and his eyes close shut. a sharp pain fills his head. . ., and then he blacks out.
= end of t/w =
hyunjin had been wrong about one thing. there was still one good thing left in the world and that was the angel calling out to him as his cheeks rubbed against a rough texture, heat knocking him in the head and effectively waking him up.
“hyunjin!”
“jinnie! oh my god, please wake up!”
“jinnie!” felix shouts again, worry etched all over his face, mingling with the frantic tears that were sliding down his cheeks as he kneels beside the black haired boy.
“jinnie please, please wake up. what’s going on? oh my god, what do i even do—” the freckled male brokenly sobs as he further turns his best friend’s head to see that it was colored with an angry looking bruise.
gasping at the sight on his face and then at hyunjin’s hands which were curled up tightly into balled fists, he tries to calm himself down, knowing that panicking would only make things worse. but how could he not worry? this was the first time that he entered the dream where hyunjin was unconscious and just laying down pitifully on the sand, all hurt and everything, as he must have been in real life.
when felix had seen him like that...it felt like the world had been dropped onto his skull.
gently running his hands through the other’s hair, felix whispers as another tear rolls down his cheek, “ oh my god , who did this to you. . .my love”
the last word slips out of his mouth without a second thought and although felix hadn’t noticed, hyunjin certainly had as the rest of his mind woke and his eyes opened to meet the clear blue skies.
“hyun-” felix whispers in shock, seeing that the older boy had finally woken up.
hyunjin lays there, not wanting to move as his eyes find felix’s beautiful face, looking down on at him with all the love and worry in the world. he feels at peace as he stares at the other, head resting on the freckled male’s tiny lap, the warmth of their comfort place slowly bringing him back to his senses.
“silly boy,” they both whisper at the same time, and immediately soft smiles are cracked after that but they also disappear all too soon.
“what happened hyunjin?”
he winces as felix’s soft fingers touch the side of his face.
“who did this to you?”
hyunjin stares at the other for a bit longer before answering, “you wouldn’t want to know.”
a tear slips down his face, and felix catches it with wide eyes, hurting on the inside now. who had done this to hyunjin? who had made this wonderful boy cry? it was making him so angry.
“try me.” he says, giving the other a stern gaze.
and so hyunjin does try. he tries the best that he can to tell felix about what had happened and to finally confess to the other boy that he was gay. it takes him a good while as some parts made him super emotional and he would start to choke up, but then felix would just tell him everything’s okay, and hold his hand, and everything became a little better. a little easier. because felix actually wanted to listen to him.
when hyunjin finally reaches the part with his mother, felix pulls him further into his arms, not quite giving him a hug but something like that. he cradles the 18 year old as if he were his baby.
“you did so well hyunjin. so well, jinnie.” the younger’s deep voice rumbles, and it reminds the older boy how fascinating it was that such a small body held that sort of voice. it was unique just like its owner. “thank you for telling me all of this, it’s a testament to how strong you are, and how deserving you are of all the love and support in the world…but here’s the thing jinnie, sometimes it’s hard for people to be open and accepting to situations that they’re not used to, but no matter what they say, it’s never your fault. it’s theirs for not understanding or not being willing to change themselves. it’s a terrible quality, and it’s a them problem. not a you problem. and it might take them forever to accept, so you can’t just keep waiting for them, you can’t put your own precious life on hold just because others can’t see the real you. as long as you see the real you, then that’s all you need.”
hyunjin’s jaw falls slightly slack as he hears felix talk from above him, the sun shining on his head making the freckled male’s head look as though it were glowing.
it makes him think back to the times that he used to reach out to felix, blocking the sun from the younger with his shadow, so that he wouldn’t get hurt, and now that the younger was doing the same for him, he came to a revelation.
felix had grown up.
they both had, and they were still growing.
“lix” he whispers just as he feels something being pressed onto his hair, and hyunjin freezes when he realizes it was felix’s lips.
the gentle presence stays on top of his mass of black hair, and the older boy stiffens even more as all his mind could do now was focus on the feeling of the other’s mouth leaving him a warm kiss on his hair. it has a weird sensation running over his chest— the same exact feeling that he had felt in that treehouse when they were fifteen.
“did you just—” hyunjin asks, clearing his voice and not wanting to seem too affected by what had happened.
it was clear though that felix had no intention of hiding how he had been affected, and a blush sparkles onto the other’s cheeks as he looked down at hyunjin with wide eyes. “i’m so sorry—” he mumbles in horror, covering his mouth and then looking at the spot he had kissed hyunjin to show how much he cared for the other.
“it’s okay.” hyunjin breathes out, figuring it was his turn to reassure the younger boy. he slowly lifts himself up from the other’s lap, and felix has to gulp when hyunjin turns his handsome face to him, staring at him in some sort of weird way that he really couldn’t place a name to. the other’s messy black hair did nothing to stop his heart from beating really fast.
“okay.” felix uneasily says, staring back into the other’s eyes.
okay.
=
nineteen. he’s nineteen, okay?
felix knew what he was doing amidst all the protests and complaining, telling him not to leave. he wasn’t leaving because of them. he was leaving because he had a dream to chase.
seungmin and jeongin tell him they hate him and never to contact them again, and their parents aren’t any better but deep down, felix knows that they don’t really mean it. they were the first real family he’s ever had, and they’ve always cared for him, making sure to keep his needs in their mind for his best interest.
but felix had to go, and maybe his stubbornness and greed led to the terrible things that happened afterwards.
“you’re going where?!” hyunjin asks, the twenty year old now a good couple of inches taller than felix, and it would permanently stay that way for the rest of their lives.
felix sighs for what seemed like the hundredth time in the dream. “i’m moving to the states. you know am-er-i-ca?” he asks the last part slowly as if hyunjin couldn’t understand what he was saying which just pisses off the older male even more.
“yeah i got that felix.” he states, shooting a dirty look at the younger boy who receives it with a confused expression.
“o-kayy… if you got it, then why are you making such a big deal out of it? it’s not like i’m leaving the planet?”
hyunjin scoffs in shock. “big deal felix? am i the only person who cares about the other in this friendship?” he turns to glare at felix, “you’re literally going to be moving across the ocean. i don’t care if it’s in california or whatever bullshit. you’re going to be leaving from the same time zone as me felix. why aren’t you understanding? this could mess up everything !”
felix blinks, trying to keep up with and understand the point the older male was trying to get across, “so...you’re saying that the dreams might become weird?”
“if it wasn’t that obvious for the past hour or so, yes felix. why are you even going there?” hyunjin huffs, squinting at the younger boy who just pouted back at him with his arms crossed.
felix opens his mouth to reply but gets cut off. “and don’t give me that university bullshit.”
he glares up at the taller male. “what do you mean bullshit? first of all, stop cursing so much around me, and second of all, i don’t know okay? i was happy and all, but something is bothering me about sydney and i just want to get away okay? i want some adventure.”
hyunjin gives him a dead-ass look, but before the older male could keep bothering him about it, felix says something completely random and off script, “stop trying to use me to get to your dad.” catching the black haired male off guard for a good minute.
hyunjin splutters for a good minute, trying to recuperate with his brain jumbled in pieces trying to understand why his real father had been brought up to the conversation.
running a hand through his hair, he looks up towards the sun, trying to shake the thoughts out of his head, and felix...tries his best not to stare for too long at the other’s side profile, already regretting what he had said and nervous for the other boy’s response.
“how did you know?” comes the tight response and it has felix’s heart dropping.
the freckled male bites his lower lip and says, “well it was obvious wasn’t it? every time i talked about australia, you would stiffen up and get all weird about it. and then i made the connection when you told me about how they got wedded at the beach…and just—”
hyunjin cuts him off, staring at him. “and so what? you think i kept talking to you since we were five just so that i could chase after my father who’s just as bad as the dog living in my house right now?”
now normally felix would have been alarmed to hear those words come out of the other’s mouth, but he knew hyunjin wasn’t hurt from the tone of his voice. he doesn’t really get what type of game they were playing right now, but he would just play along.
“i mean yeah..,” the younger says, feigning innocence and timidly looking away.
hyunjin squints down at felix in disbelief.
“some adventure, you say?” hyunjin finally breathes out, and then he marches straight up to felix, surprising the latter as he latches his hand around the freckled male’s thin wrist.
“hyunjin what—” felix says, already trying to pry off the taller male’s grasp on him.
“if it’s an adventure you want, felix.” hyunjin shouts as he drags the younger to the terrible looking raft they had made when they were both ten and eleven, which sat floating at bay. “let’s do just that. i can give you that too.”
“hyunjin what?!!” felix confusedly shouts again because the taller male had apparently gone deaf.
“i’m sorry, i can’t hear you felix.” hyunjin says, smirking as he tugged the helpless smaller male towards their makeshift raft. “i’ll tell you what. why do we always have to stay on this island? this is a dream right? so there shouldn’t be a problem in finding other places to go…we just have to create it for ourselves.” the other finishes unsurely, and felix is honestly just concerned and scared with how the other was acting.
he tries his best to pry the long fingers stuck like a vice grip on him, and while he appreciates the long held skin contact, he would rather be doing it a different way and not when they were both obviously walking to their imminent death.
“JINNIE!” felix finally screams, giving in.
the other stops in his tracks, the raft-boat like structure only a couple of feet away from him, and turns around to look at the angry freckled male behind him.
“what are you doing right now?” felix incredulously asks, his free hand going to his hip while the other hand was still trapped in hyunjin’s grip.
now it was hyunjin’s turn to feign innocence. he tilts his head questioning, “what’s wrong felix? didn’t you say you were moving across the ocean to look for adventure?” he then throws his thumb back to point at the pathetic looking wood thing in the water behind him. “let’s go on an adventure.” then just for jokes, he adds, “just you and i .”
felix raises a disinterested eyebrow at him. “are you really being serious right now?”
when hyunjin nods, felix rolls his eyes and huffs, looking over to his side. “hyunjin, we aren’t kids anymore. we shouldn’t be fighting like this. let’s try to be sensible here yeah?”
at that, the taller male lets go of felix who rubs at his wrist harshly and then holds his hand protectively against his chest, glaring up at hyunjin.
“i am being sensible here felix. you’re the one who isn’t. aren’t you ever curious as to what’s outside of here? why are we in this dream? why this island? what if you’re not real and i’m the only one who is?”
“what? woah there buddy, you’re seriously putting yourself up on a high pedestal right there.”
“do you not care about how i feel??”
“this isn’t about you!”
hyunjin growls. yeah, like he literally growls and then pushes felix back, causing the smaller to stumble back in shock. the taller boy eagerly watches how the pretty pink hair resting on top of the smaller boy ruffles with the wind as felix tries to get a hold of himself.
he was just having too much fun with this. first he got away with touching the other, and now he gets to see a flustered and angry felix.
“did you just—” the pink haired male starts, looking up at hyunjin with hurt in his eyes.
“did i just?” hyunjin asks, quirking an eyebrow up as if to show that he was disinterested.
“did you just push me hwang hyunjin!” felix angrily yells, and hyunjin smugly thinks, yeah, i won this time. “you take that back right now!” the other continues, stomping his feet as if he were an upset kid who wasn’t getting what they wanted.
hyunjin rolls his eyes, “how does that even work silly, and why are you even stomping? i thought you said we were adults now, but you’re still acting like you’re two silly.”
the freckled male’s face turns as pink as his hair and the other angrily yells, “i am not two, and i can stomp if i want to, and you’re the one who’s silly! you’ve been being an arse to me all— well whatever time of day it is right now —and i already have enough stress with moving, and you’re making it harder than it already is. of course i think about this dream and why we’re here and why this island was chosen and what’s outside of this place for us all the time, and i care about you so fucking much you arsehole like what the hell you’re making me curse right now, you’re so mean hwang hyunjin. you’re a big fat meanie, and i hate you, you’re supposed to be happy for me and the fact that i’m going to a university and trying to create a life for myself, it’s been so hard for me all these years—”
the other cuts himself off with a sob, but before he could continue, a panicked hyunjin pulls the now crying boy into his arms. he slowly wraps his arms around tightly around the other’s back, both of his hands meeting at the curve of felix’s waist, the rest of the younger boy’s body pressing up against his own torso and legs.
he knows his shirt was probably filled with wet tears and snot by now by the way felix was uncontrollably sobbing into his chest, but hyunjin honestly couldn’t care since he was the cause of this mess which meant he would just have to take responsibility for it.
he didn’t actually think felix was going to take him this seriously, and it honestly made the older boy feel like crap.
“shit lix, i’m—” he starts off, leaning down to place his head on the other’s shoulders. “no cursing!” felix manages to hiss in his ears in between broken whimpers now, and hyunjin just nods in worry. “my, lixie i’m so sorry, i didn’t mean to hurt you like that, i was only joking. i do understand what you’ve been going throug,h and i know you really want this, but i’m also a little selfish because i don’t want you to go anywhere, i don’t want you to go anywhere if you aren’t going to be by my side all the time, and i am so so so so sorry for hurting you. please don’t cry anymore,” hyunjin whispers into felix’s ears, one hand placed on the small of the younger’s back, and the other hand softly patting through felix’s pink hair.
another sob wracks through the small body he was holding in his embrace and then felix finally pulls away with a red nose, eyes all watery and puppy eyes at him. the tiny, freckled boy looks so pretty it has hyunjin almost slipping up.
“you’re so silly, hwang hyunjin. of course i’ll never leave you. how could you even say or think that?”
“i don’t know.” hyunjin admits, starting to feel a little emotional but relieved as he stares at the vulnerable felix in his arms. “but i do know for a fact that this would be the first time we’re hugging.” and he offers a wobbly smile to felix as he says this, whose eyes widen in realization. he probably should have kept quiet, but he couldn’t pass up on the opportunity when felix was just standing right there in his arms. and now that he got a taste of what it felt like to hug the younger boy, hyunjin doesn’t think he can ever go back on his words. he wanted to hug all the time now, basking in the other’s coziness and warmth.
“why haven’t we done this before?” felix says, staying where he was— only a few inches apart from hyunjin —much to his relief and satisfaction. then he goes to rest his head on the taller’s chest, causing his heart to beat sporadically. he hopes the younger can’t hear, but he tries to cover himself up with a cough anyways.
“it’s because i’ve never pushed you, and you’ve never asked me to ‘take it back’.”
a deep rumble vibrates against hyunjin’s chest and it has him smiling. “excuse me?” felix chortles, shooting playful eyes up at him.
“anyways, i like it here, and i’m never going to pass up on this chance again because it feels like home here.” felix says, smiling up at him before diving his small body into hyunjin’s arms and the taller swears he feels something wobble.
whether it was his heart or his legs though, he couldn’t be too sure.
were they seriously going to be like this now? as adults? they were seriously going to touch each other freely like this and pretend like they were just doing because it felt good and not because of the excitement or rush or the blush that both of them would sport after? they weren’t going to address the hidden feelings, longing looks, stolen glances… nothing?
“i already miss you best friend.”
nothing indeed.
they were only best friends after all, hyunjin thinks as he leans down to fit his head into the smaller boy’s neck, feeling how felix melted against him. he pulls him a little tighter, a little closer, for now.
if this was as all he was going to get it… if this was all they were going to be…
felix nuzzles his tear stained face closer.
he would have to gladly take it, like a humble man, thanking the universe for what he had been gifted.
“i missed you too.” hyunjin hears himself say, the strawberry scent of felix’s pink hair clouding his thoughts.
missed.
=
after felix hits twenty, that’s what all their dreams become: missed.
maybe hyunjin had been right, maybe it was all felix’s fault that once he moved across the pacific ocean and started attending university in california, their once irregular dreams became even more spaced out.
they didn’t get to see each other often and when they did, they never had the chance to speak about the leisurely things they did before like the beautiful island and how it got created and all those pressing questions that stayed in the back of their heads all the time.
things just kept changing, and felix was starting to feel like it was all his fault.
while they did make up for most of the short time they hung around each other by really enjoying each other’s presences, it was evident that even hyunjin himself was getting busier with life, opening up to more people and building more connections; he had also left home to ‘chase his dreams’.
felix had jokingly told him that he was following in the younger’s footsteps and was deeply surprised when the other had looked at him with dead seriousness in the eyes and had agreed.
so yeah, the freckled male really had screwed things over.
was that the reason they also didn’t sit closer to each other anymore? before a couple of inches between them was nothing, but now they couldn’t sit or stand any closer than six feet apart from each other as if something would happen if they even attempted or tried getting closer to one another.
when they’re twenty-five, already in the midst of their twenties and burdened by the responsibilities of adulthood, felix realizes they both have really screwed over.
=
hyunjin stares at the beautiful woman in front of him and sighs. his eyes slowly travel away from the sculptous lady to the fancy wine glasses and tablecloth decorated on the table next to them to the drapery of the thick red curtains covering the windows of the high class restaurant.
what in the name of tarnation was he doing here?
the red roses in his hand are brand new and fresh from a florist shop down the street, and so was the deep blue tuxedo suit he was wearing and his black hair parted hairstyle. he looked like one of those poster males advertising for valentine’s day.
“who set you up to this?,” hyunjin asks, turning his face back towards the girl who looked like she didn’t want to be there at the moment either.
“i can’t say.” the woman replies, shooting him an apologetic look. “i was told not to say anything.”
he grits his teeth and closes his eyes, feeling very aggravated by the situation. he already knew the answer to his own question anyways. it was obviously his doing. it was always his doing.
“don’t tell me you aren’t into men as well…”
“i’m not.” the lady replies, thoroughly surprised by his insightfulness. he scoffs.
he looks into her brown eyes, and says, “you can leave now, you don’t have to follow through this date with me. i’ll deal with it.”
she doubtfully scans him over and says, “are you sure? i don’t want to lose money because of your incompetence.”
hyunjin quirks an eyebrow at her straightforwardness. “speak for yourself.”
she hums, thinking it over, and then leaving right after giving him a nod. “i will leave it to you then.”
the black haired male nods back, feeling a headache starting to form now. he takes out his phone and opens his contacts to call the bastard and tell him to stop fucking interfering with his life when he had already cut off all ties with them, but he hesitates, pressing his mother’s contact instead.
“hello?” the voice comes, and he sighs, eyes clouding with frustrated tears.
“eomma, can’t you please tell him to stop? i don’t care if you both don’t fucking like it. i don’t care if you can’t accept my sexuality because i have a working job now and i’m doing well and i’m living off fine without your help.”
there’s a pause and then before his mother speaks, he speaks again, drawing all the venom he could with his voice, “i’ve had enough. stop this child play.” then he ends the phone call, not knowing if his mom would take that as the final warning and still keep going regardless of her son’s frustrated pleas.
sighing, he gives an apologetic gesture towards the waitress and turns around only to find something weird had happened.
he blinks once, and then again.
felix?
=
the twenty-five year old freckled male bit his lips as he stared down at his resume. maybe just one more time, if he pleaded—
“ma’am, if you’ll just allow me to show you my experience with—”
“mister felix lee, we’ve already told you that your goals and values do not align with this company’s mission, so if you can kindly please leave so that i can call the next applicant in, that would be greatly appreciated.” when she saw that felix wouldn’t budge from the chair in front of her, she added, “please and thank you .”
“thank you my foot.”
the woman looks away from the papers she was holding in her hand and sends him a questioning glare. “excuse me?”
felix gets up, and pushes the chair forward hard so that the table could shake. “i said, all you fuckers care about is getting money and more revenue in, but might i remind you, this isn’t for your own benefit, this should be about people, therapy is caring for other people, not extorting money from them and leaving them emotionally worse than they already are.”
the woman stands up, and he raises a hand. “no. don’t speak. you all know, every person in this office knows how you guys are playing dirty, yet no one is doing anything because of their greed right? well i have news, i’m going to report this to management and hr, and then i’ld like to see where your loud mouths go running to then.”
he finishes off his loud, rushed sentence angrily making sure that everyone had heard him, and then he turns to leave. as he makes his way outside, he tries holding his head up high despite the tears that threatened to fall down his face.
just endure this moment, felix. just endure this one moment, and hold your head high . . .and then you can cry after when you’re all alone.
the freckled male is barely able to make it to the door, before a sob wracks through him, and he pushes through, only to fall onto
. . . sand?
his watery eyes scan the surface to see the familiar looking stones and types of shells studded on the floor. momentarily distracted from his sadness, he looks with wide eyes to his side to find the korean letters that had stayed intact for so long.
hyunjin hwang and yongbok lee.
“felix?” he hears, and his heart nearly stops beating.
confused out of his mind, felix looks up to see his man right before him in broad daylight. how was this even possible? he hadn’t even gone to sleep— had he passed out onto the street?!
as the alarming thought crosses his head, he finally stands up to look at hyunjin who was looking equally surprised as he was.
the other was dressed fancily in a dark suit that made him look devilishly handsome. felix trailed his tired eyes from hyunjin’s beautiful thick black hair to the shocked expression on his face, down to the tight fit around his torso which suited him all too well, all the way down to the bright red rose bouquet that was being held in both of the other’s hands.
well, even if everything in the world wasn’t going his way, at least something was going right .
but why the roses, felix wonders as he finishes his feast upon the other delectable look. was hyunjin..perhaps...on a date..? had felix interrupted something by getting all sad and shit?
“why are you here?” he hears hyunjin whisper so quietly that it almost mingles with the roar of the sea.
“what do you mean?” felix asks, voice hoarse as he steps closer to look at the older man clearly. “why are you here?”
hyunjin takes a step forward as well and says, “well, i was. . .somewhere, and then i turned and suddenly, i found myself here.”
“where’s somewhere?” felix asks, already knowing the answer as he takes another slow step forward again.
hyunjin pauses now that they were close enough for him to see felix’s face clearly. had the younger cried before he came here? why were his eyes looking so sorrowful?
he worriedly takes another step closer, deciding to be honest with felix. “a date.” the other’s face falls, and hyunjin quickly adds, “it was against my will and with a person who didn’t want to be with me either which is why i was leaving and then suddenly,” he pauses to wave the bouquet around to their surroundings, “i ended up here.”
felix accepted hyunjin’s explanation, although he still felt a little weird that the other had been on a date and dressed up all nice for another person, but there were other pressing concerns and matters at hand.
“how did we end up here then?,” he sniffs, wondering out loud.
“what were you doing though?”
hyunjin winces right after he asks the question because he sees felix’s facial expression turn from normal to something in between a mixture of angry and sad.
“you don’t have to—”
“i got rejected from another job.” felix cuts him off. “but it wasn’t the rejection that hurt me the most this time though, it was how they acted towards me. every single person in that place just tore through my dignity, and so, yes hyunjin i was crying, and no hyunjin, you don’t have to worry about me.”
“so you were hurting?” hyunjin whispers, looking into the other’s face with worried eyebrows.
felix sighs and nods up at the other, and he’s about to tell the taller man not to worry when hyunjin starts smiling all of a sudden. and then his lips part to let out a peal of bright laughter.
a bit concerned, he worries, “hyunjin? are you okay?”
the older man shakes his head as if to agree that he wasn’t okay in the head and then he proceeds to throw the bouquet up and away from them, causing the flowers to fly out from their previous neat and organized assembly and reducing them into broken petals of all shapes and sizes slowly falling around them in a cinematic way.
with wide eyes, he watches as hyunjin throws his hands wide, facing his head towards the sky and shouting, “i’m the luckiest man in the world!”
felix raises an eyebrow, the other’s happiness becoming infectious and affecting him too as a wide smile spreads across his face.
“silly boy, it’s not like you’re getting married or something! i told you i was hurting, and this is how you react? like a lunatic?” felix shaked his head, pretending to act all annoyed, “you’ve changed hyunjin, before when i was sad, you would actually care, and take care of me but now you just—”
he squeals when he suddenly feels two large hands wrap around his thin waist, holding him up so that the ground fell away from his two dangling feet.
gasping, felix realizes that hyunjin had picked him up a couple feet into the air, and in order to ground himself onto something, his hands flail out to reach the black haired man’s sturdy shoulders. a little breathless, he asks, “ hyunjin , what are you—”
he’s cut off right then as hyunjin smiles up at him in the widest and purest way possible, spinning him around in the air. felix squeals again as he feels the wind rush around them, and he really doesn’t understand what has gotten into the guy but he decides to enjoy the moment and let himself go, laughing and closing his eyes as he does so.
hyunjin on the other hand was having the time of his life as well, watching felix’s pretty face all blissed out in delight as if they had no worries in the world, no responsibilities, nothing to mourn about, it was just them. just them two in their own element, and that’s when life felt like it was at its best.
“i love you” he fondly whispers, forgetting that felix was still present in the moment. a few spins after, he panics realizing he’s said the three words he’s been holding back for the longest time, out loud . fearing that the other boy heard, hyunjin scans the other’s face, but felix gives no indication of anything and was still innocently smiling up at the sun as he slowed them down to a stop.
a sunshine smiling upon another sunshine;
hyunjin truly felt like he was the luckiest man in the world to be witnessing the sight.
the freckled male opens his eyes as they slow to a stop and the taller male sets him back gently onto his feet. he then looks up at hyunjin to see that the other was already gazing down at him with one of those unreadable expressions that he would always use to give in the past as well.
“what did you do that for?” felix quietly asks, blinking up at him. “could you tell me now?”
hyunjin tilts his head in response and questions back, “do you feel better?”
“yeah.” he nods, smiling a little at what had just happened. he had never been spun around like that in his life before, and it was so much fun, it felt like nothing could come and rain on their happiness, because they were just young, wild, and free. not to mention, the wind rushing through their hairs as they rotated and the sun smiling down on them, everything had just felt so perfect and delightful in the moment, and so. . .
“yes, yes i do feel better.” felix says, eyes crinkling with joy.
“then mission accomplished.” hyunjin says and they stop to pause for a moment, just staring at each other for being in this close proximity and enjoying each other’s presence.
“jinnie…” felix whispers, quietly calling out the other’s childhood nickname, and his eyes can’t help it when they drop down towards the taller’s lips wondering if they would finally get to kiss a the atmosphere and the whole uplifting mood changes into something more intimate as hyunjin draws himself closer to the shorter boy.
but instead of leaning into the younger’s face, felix feels plump lips pressing onto the top of his head, just like felix had when hyunjin was 18— seven years ago. a warm sensation drips down his body and fills every nick and corner as if though someone were dropping scented honey candle wax onto him.
he blushes red as the rose petals around them, wondering what all of this meant and if they were finally going to be honest with their feelings and confess, but just as soon as he reaches out to hold hyunjin’s honey skin, the other disappears out of his hold.
he shrieks in surprise and panics with wide eyes as looks around him to see that every part of the dream was falling apart into darkness including the very place where he was standing, all into dust particles. down went the sand pile, the palm trees, the treehouse. . . crashing into an open void. there went the ocean next to him turning into a deep black color and overturning the raft they had made when they were kids, leaving nothing but a pitch black night sky and a felix surrounded by a broken bouquet of roses.
the last thing the freckled male remembers doing was screaming out hyunjin’s name, desperately looking around for his best friend, but the efforts were made all in all vain for their dream was now gone.
=
for the next few months, hyunjin can’t really say what state he was in. it ranged from straight out anxiety to what had happened to breaking into fits of hysteria some days in the middle of nowhere.
one minute, he was holding felix in his arms, and the next minute he was just gone .
how was that even possible? at first, he had figured it was just a daydream in the middle of the day and that he had been pulled out of it randomly. but then, it became too obvious as he spent month after month, day after day, trying to find restless sleep, trying to slip into dreams to find felix again, that their dreams had been stopped. he wasn’t even having any dreams anymore— it was as if his brain knew what he was trying to do, and it was purposefully preventing him from doing just what he wanted.
it made him cry out and break stuff sometimes from the frustration of knowing what was happening. what if whatever they had had was just a childhood thing? something that would stop when they reached adulthood which explained the irregularities in their dreams once they hit their twenties. why had felix and him never talked about it? why had they been stupid enough to not think about the phenomenon, not doing research about it, not asking for each other’s numbers like fools so this wouldn’t happen?
why the fuck did they think they were guaranteed their happy ending?
his heart felt like it had been drilled through when he finally came into terms with the fact a few years later. he was never going to see the love of his life again, and it broke him apart into a million pieces.
he stopped doing the things that made him happy and started living that monotonous office life. his friends constantly tried to check up on him, but he pushed them away. if he didn’t have felix, then he didn’t have happiness . there was no way he could ever be happy again…
he only hoped that the younger boy, wherever he was… was hurting a thousand times less than he was. he couldn’t imagine what the other male was going through… and maybe it was better if he had forgotten hyunjin.
altogether.
=
forget, his ass.
hyunjin would be the only person he had loved and would ever continue to love no matter how many times his friends tried to pull him out onto dates.
there was a parallel of time where felix had done the same exact thing, he quit looking for jobs in california and moved back to australia where the others were, and he had locked himself inside his room in the house. he became sleep crazy, trying to fall into a state of unconsciousness all the time to the point where jeongin and seungmin— whose parents had left the house to them as they moved elsewhere —had to call the police to break down his door and they found him in his bed, unmoving and suffering from severe weight loss barely having eaten.
in a crazed and fearful rush, they had taken him to the hospital where he had stayed for three whole weeks to recover to a somewhat healthy state. the doctor introduced himself as christopher bang chan and immediately recommended that felix check with the same therapist that someone in his life was going to because he was also suffering from an extreme emotional loss.
jisung had eagerly suggested to the younger boy that he should go and get some help, but felix had gotten angry and lashed out at him and the rest of them. they didn’t and they would never understand the loss of having to watch someone you loved disappear from right in between your fingertips. they didn’t get to watch everything that you and someone else had built up, a safe place for you most of your life, get destroyed just like that, and who was he to blame?
his brain or the universe?
what had happened to them was worse than death, how could things ever get back to being right again?
still, he decides to hold onto whatever little hope there was and continue on with his life after getting pressured by everyone around him. they didn’t know or understand what had happened, but they told him to move on.
and so, he pretends like he would.
little did they know.
=
the universe had only one answer to their questions: it was too soon.
if fate decided to forgive the universe for its grave mistake, then destiny would allow them to meet again.
=
5 years later
=
the thirty year old man really felt like he had already hit his mid-life crisis, and he had barely just made it out of the twenties. and damn, what a wild ride that had been. how in the world did his life turn out like this?
hwang hyunjin, the dashing looking heartthrob, and still good looking man from the younger days, worked a meager job that did its job with paying the bills and nothing else.
he bitterly sighed as he looked out into the sea.
then again, life could seriously be worse. his step-dad had died a few years ago in a drunk driving car accident just like— anyway, his mother was finally free from the other’s traps and she’s currently traveling around the country now with her friends from back in high school. oh and get this— she had immediately come into terms with his sexuality right after the bastard died. oh, the irony.
“hyunjin will you stop staring out at the ocean like a nostalgic ahjussi and get your ass over here so you could help me put up this tent.”
the blond haired male— he had grown out his hair to shoulder length mainly because he was too lazy to cut it no matter how many times his hyungs teased him that he was probably trying out a rough and sexy style, and he had also dyed it just for a change when he hit thirty. he was tired of the same old black which held a lot of tragic stories in it. anyway, so the blonde haired male turns to look at his changbin hyung struggling to hold up the base of the tent alone.
i probably should go and help , he thinks to himself.
“ah ahjussi! what are you waiting for?!” comes another whine.
on a second thought — nah nevermind, i’m good. he takes a swing of alcohol from the bottle in his hands and smirks when he hears a handful of curse words come out from his hyung’s mouth.
“i’m older yet the ungrateful ass still doesn’t respect me.”
despite the complain, he thinks he’s safe as he watches the sun start to slowly set, and he smiles, turning his face up towards the incoming salty and breezy smell. this was the life .
it reminded him so much of the only place he had ever gotten attached to and fond of…
a familiar voice thankfully cuts through his thoughts.
“hyunjin-ah”
immediately his blissful mood changes and the hair on the back of his neck stands up. he swallows back in fear, turning to face his minho hyung with goosebumps ridden all over his body.
“yes hyung?”
minho tilts his head and gives him a wide smile. to anybody else, he would have looked adorable, but hyunjin was well aware of the creepy and murderous thoughts that laid behind that facade.
“you might have reached adulthood hyunjin-ah, but don’t forget we are still and will always be your hyungs.”
“yes hyung.” he timidly agrees.
minho tilts his head back upright. “great! then go and help out changbin—”
“nah, trust me min , binnie doesn’t need any help, he’s got it all by himself. don’t you baby?”
and hyunjin pumps his fist in the air in triumph seeing that his saviour, channie hyung, had finally arrived to the party— and with more drinks too! that guy was seriously the man .
“hey! you’re supposed to be on my side!” changbin protests, finally getting one pin into the ground.
“yeah, but it was your idea to go camping my love.” chan smirks, enjoying seeing his boyfriend struggling for some reason. then he turns to look at the youngest out of all of them and gestures him over to the fire burning bright in the middle ground.
“come here jin! have a drink with min and i, will you?”
hyunjin happily obliges and daringly throws a wink towards his minho hyung who had a disgusted expression written all over his face. his eyes said, next time hwang, next time.
chan hands him a new bottle and grabs the one in hyunjin’s hand which was empty anyways, throwing it out. then he sits on a tree stump and pats the one next to him for hyunjin to sit down on.
minho sighs, grabbing a bottle and also taking a seat with them. changbin follows and when they all stare at him, he looks at them with comical eyes and shrugs. “what? i need a break too.”
they sit in silence like that for a while, drinking away as the sky darkens, and the ambers of the fire dimmed and then relit by itself.
“what do you think is beyond the sea?” chan finally asks, breaking the silence.
“what do you mean?” minho questions. “there’s probably just a country.”
“just a country?” changbin mocks, snorting at minho’s response.
“you come up with something better crack ass.”
changbin shoots him a thumbs up, and then says, “america.”
freckles, hyunjin drunkenly thinks.
minho rolls his eyes, but chan hyung nods, “i mean yeah, true . he really isn’t wrong though min.”
“how many times must i remind that you’re my boyfriend, and you are supposed to be on my side??”
they laugh, and chan shoots him an half assed apology, now that they were all drunk out of their minds.
“today’s a special day.”
it really was, his brain tells him. but why?
“and that’s because we’re all gathered here after a long while—” chan starts, but minho says, “that’s because you had gone to australia for a couple of years of course.” and the oldest man sighs.
“yeah, binnie and i had to go to australia for a bit, but what matters is that we’re all here together on this beach… camping… drinking and talking… like how we used to back in the day. and i hope we continue on doing this in the future—”
minho cuts him off again, “are you done with your speech ahjussi, i’m about to fall asleep any second now…” to exaggerate his point, he yawns right after making hyunjin wince away from the terrible breath that his hyung lets out.
“jeesh, get some mouthwash for—” he pauses in his tracks when minho raises a hand as if he were going to hit him, and he gets sent a warning look.
sighing he shuts up and looks to chan for help.
“i would appreciate it if you wouldn’t interrupt my speech minho-ssi,” chan says, making said male huff, “because i was planning on giving us all a gift as an apology and also just for fun for us to hang out in the future.”
changbin pauses his random drunken muted gibberish that he had been invested in to look up at his boyfriend with interest. “what gift?”
in fact, minho and hyunjin already knew what the gift was about because chan had tipped them on it before. it was about how him and changbin had been dating for a long ass time now, but because of college and other job responsibilities they were never able to make a long term settlement or commitment, but with the cruise tickets he had received, he was planning on throwing a big proposal for the other male so that they could finally get bonded together for life. and he had planned on inviting hyunjin and minho, free of charge.
now that they were in the know, both males smirk over at their poor, clueless binnie.
chan smiles at the younger man with so much love, it almost has hyunjin’s own heart aching.
be happy for them , he thinks as chan continues, “i can’t tell you love, but what i can say is that finally hyunjin has something to say to us to finish all this cheesiness off on this fine day of september fifteenth.”
he’s flustered by the callout for a good minute and is about to open his mouth to speak some random shit and call it a day, when he processes the date chan hyung had just said.
“september fifteenth?” he whispers, a painful strike going through his head as he spoke the words in a daze.
how could he have forgotten? how could he be so stupid to forget? and he said he loved him? he didn’t even fucking deserve to.
“jin?” changbin questions.
“yeah, hold on.” he says, eyes starting to tear up a bit. “fuck.” he breathes out.
“no one told me hyunjin was an emotional drunk.” minho tries to joke, but it falls on deaf ears, and chan shakes his head at him, sensing something was off.
“jin, you don’t have to say anything if you don’t want to or can’t.” the eldest out of the four says and hyunjin slowly shakes his head to reject the idea, the sober part of him struggling to wake up and take his body over.
“today’s a special day.” he finally speaks, and the rest of the boys stare at him.
“chan already said that.”
“today is a special day.” he says again, looking around at them, while they stare back with half concerned gazes.
“today is a special day.” changbin finally repeats, getting minho and chan to chant it along with him.
hyunjin’s head felt fuzzy. he had to stop this quickly, and end it before he lost his mind.
“let’s make a toast.”
“already?” minho asks, raising an eyebrow in question.
“yeah.” he says, already holding out his bottle on top of the campfire. the other three men uneasily look amongst themselves and after finally coming to a silent agreement, they also reach their bottles out to meet with hyunjin’s in the middle.
“who are we toasting this to?” chan asks with curiosity as they all watched him stare in concentration at the bottle for him.
“the sun.” he simply says.
“the sun?” changbin asks incredulously, snorting at the ridiculousness, but when he realizes that the youngest was being serious, he solemnly states, “of course, the sun.”
“to the sun!” they all shout and take a swig after cheering out loud, but although he was the one to bring it up, hyunjin stays silent as he tips the rest of his alcohol onto the burnt grass next to the fire.
happy birthday to the only sun in the world.
my sunshine.
this one’s for you, my love.
then he finally whispers a name he hadn’t spoken in a long time but had thought so often, it might have as well became his own name,
“felix.”
=
“did you hear that?!”
jeongin curiously turns to look around them right after jisung shouts the question out loud, but he frowns when he doesn’t see or hear anything out of the ordinary.
felix has a half a mind to tell the younger that there wasn’t anything really and jisung had just been playing a prank on him as usual, but at the same time, he can’t really be bothered.
he hadn’t wanted to go on this birthday outing in the first place, especially to a restaurant near the beach , but since his friends from australia had finally made it to california for a visit for a couple of months, he’s decided to indulge them because he also didn’t want them to feel bad.
however, ‘not wanting to make them feel bad’, meant having to listen to and follow every single one of jisung’s— who just so happened to be jeongin’s boyfriend —demands. when the two of them had announced they were dating, their relationship came as a surprise but at the same time not really. they’ve literally been annoying each other since middle school, so there really wasn’t any other possible pairing. those two were definitely a fated pair.
“i don’t see or hear anything.”
jisung smirks, placing a hand behind jeongin’s chair. “i know babe.”
“yah!” the youngest shouts in annoyance, smacking the other boy’s shoulder who just cackled in response.
“anyways, how are you liking your birthday lix hyung?”
at the obvious question directed to him, felix looks up from his phone screen to make eye contact with a puppy eyed jeongin who was trying his best to ignore his annoying boyfriend who kept on pawing at him like a puppy.
“hmm let me think.” felix says, turning off his phone. “ welll it would be going much better if seungmin came back with our food a little faster.”
jeongin nods in agreement, while his boyfriend fake pouts and asks, “aw is our little lixie feeling hungry?”
the newly turned 29 year old freckled male is about to voice his concern for jisung’s well-being when finally, finally kim seungmin makes his appearance with their appetizer.
“food’s here!”
the smell of edibles instantly uplifts their mood as they all turn their heads like baby birds towards an angel looking seungmin who was carrying their food. it even gets felix to finally smile and the jeongsung couple to cheer.
as they all start to talk and eat, felix thinks about how far he’s come to be spending time like this with his friends and treating them to breakfast, lunch, dinner, whatever. he was now a successful relationship counselor for couples going through tough times and numerous troubles, and his success rate had only been growing and increasing with every year. after attending his counseling, people always praised him about how he’s so good with the topic of love and how well versed he was with the feelings and strings attached to the emotional state.
oh, little did they know that whatever magic he worked on them was purely based on intuition and luck. it was all in the couples themselves to figure it out, he was just their guide in a way to push them in the right direction.
and they always asked him the same darn question, “ have you ever been in love? how many times?! ”
has he? he laughs humorlessly.
oh, little did they know. that he’s been in love since he was a kid, and he would never know or understand the meaning of what it feels like to fall out of love. every year, his love just kept growing for one boy in the world that made him feel like he was flying on clouds whenever they were together.
oh, little did they know. that they were never supposed to fall from the clouds that hard. felix wasn’t supposed to lose the love of his life at a young age, instead of growing old with the other and then leaving each other on this earth.
but knowing that they were both alive on the same planet at the same time? that’s what pained him the most.
wait...what if hyunjin wasn’t ali…
never.
“lix?”
he is shaken out of his thoughts to see the rest of his friends looking at him in worry.
“are you okay?” seungmin asks from beside him. “you really haven’t eaten that much.”
felix looks down at his half eaten fried chicken and the fries that were sticking out of a little ketchup container. uneasily laughing, he blows off their worry and says, “yeah, just coming to the beach and all…it reminds me of some things.”
“what things hmm , maybe a lover ?” jisung teases, smirking to see if he could try and get a rise out of felix.
however the younger boy just looks up at him in surprise. he doesn’t remember ever telling him or anyone else in the world about the dreams or...about him .
seeing the shocked expression on the freckled male’s face, jeongin rolls his eyes and elbows jisung. “what he means to ask is if you’re planning on dating someone anytime soon. i know we left you alone before because you said you were trying to focus on your career and all, but you’ve settled down and are successful now, hyung! and we really are so proud of you for accomplishing what you have thus far...but don’t you think you should also start looking for someone? jisung and i are dating and seungmin is also engaged to someone he’s been dating for a while online, so—”
at the mention of the younger’s apparent spicy love life, the older boy turns to look at a blushing seungmin in surprise. “wait are you serious man?”
“i- uh- um” seungmin stutters, looking very flustered. “he’s someone i met on a dating app, but he’s really cool, i swear—”
felix knocks his shoulder against the other and laughs, genuinely happy for the other. “you don’t have to explain yourself seungs! oh my god, that’s great!”
seungmin blushes a thank you, and it’s felix’s first time seeing his friend lose composure like that so it makes him curious. “where does the lucky man live?”
“south korea! he’s korean too.”
felix freezes at this information, the smile on his face slowly fading away. jisung whistles, “damn, seungmin out here snatching all them korean men.”
jeongin rolls his eyes, “what am i then? rotten meat?”
jisung cooes and grabs the other into an awkward back hug from the chairs they were sitting in, “of course not babe, you’re my australian fennec fox.”
felix thinks he hears a “and you’re a dead squirrel when we get back home” as a response but he couldn’t be too sure as he looks at seungmin with apprehension.
“what’s his name?”
seungmin bites his lips. “it’s a secret.”
his heart drops, and he tries not to whine. “why?” sending a pout to the other boy, he tries his best to appeal with the other male, but seungmin refuses.
“i can’t tell you!”
“but why?”
“because we agreed to meet each other on the cruise trip we’re going in two months. we’ve known each for six years now, so we thought this would be a nice way to finally get together and since we’re all engaged and all, maybe take everything a step further”
at the mention of the time period, felix breathes a sigh of relief. there were so many korean men out there, there was no way that the one seungmin had been talking to was him when felix had lost him five years ago, not six. and at that time, they still had each other, and his parents were also homophobes, there was no way they would be letting him date seungmin.
a smile slowly appearing on his face, he genuinely means it this time when he says, “that’s really awesome.”
seungmin nods in agreement, staring at him in a weird way as if he could read into all his secrets. “and you’re coming with us hyung.”
this catches felix totally off guard. “i’m sorry, i’m going where?”
“on the cruise hyung,” jeongin says, “jisung and i are going too!”
“but—” he starts, completely flabbergasted by the sudden surprise.
“no buts hyung! it’s our birthday gift to you and you can’t say no this time! it will be in december, and you can schedule a week off from work and they’ll understand because you’re a hard worker anyways, and it’s all paid hyung. it’s paid for!”
felix mouth falls open and shut for a couple of seconds, still processing their words. “but how did you guys—”
“why, seungmin’s fiance’s friend of course!” jisung says, taking a sip of the drink in his hands.
“and get this, it was the same guy who treated you when you were in the hospital so many years ago at australia.”
felix’s eyebrows raise at this information. “that’s crazy.”
“it is crazy because it’s a small world lix, you’ll never know who you find and meet at any moment.”
again, he feels like seungmin knew something that he didn’t, but the older boy shakes the thought away and nods in agreement. “i guess there’s no harm in going.”
jisung nods, “and it would be better if you had a date to join you, don’t ya think lix?” he winks at the freckled male who just shifts uncomfortably.
“why do i need to have someone? i am doing perfectly fine, all by myself, and i have you guys too.”
“well we can see that, but you also need someone to lean back and fall onto sometimes when we’re not there, don’t you? someone that feels like home.”
felix sighs, his mood turning a bit sour. “can we please stop talking about this?”
you guys don’t know the half of it. i already have someone i love, someone who is like home to me, even if i don’t know where he is or what he’s doing right now. and no one else could ever replace him.
“we’re sorry hyung, we didn’t mean to make you feel uncomfortable.” jeongin says, and felix sighs again knowing that they were all just looking out for him and not trying to intentionally inflict harm on him.
“i know, you guys don’t know any better of course, but if we’re all done eating, i kind of want to go home now and watch reruns of some show playing on netflix please.”
“deal.” jisung says, chugging the rest of his drink down as the rest of them leave their tip and get up from their chairs.
about twenty feet away from where they were was the beach, and although it wasn’t a perfect clear sky day, more filled with clouds and gray waters, felix still thought the scenery looked nice. serene and calm and healing.
he sighs, giving one last look towards the pacific ocean, and then he turns to face a seungmin that was already looking at him when he hears it.
he hears his voice.
“ felix. ”
the freckled male freezes in his tracks.
that voice... it sounded just like him , a call out barely something above a whisper.
ignoring seungmin’s curious gaze on him, he whips his body towards the sea with wide eyes, but disappointingly he doesn’t spot a tall figure waiting for him and just emptiness as usual.
but...he had definitely not been hearing things. that had to be hyunjin.
his name spoken from the other’s voice was still ringing loud and clear in his ears, and the sound reassured him. hyunjin was real. they were real. and felix was in love with someone no one else knew about.
it seemed delusional, but it felt right. . .that somewhere from across the ocean, hyunjin was thinking about him. saying his name out loud.
“felix?”
“did you hear that?” he asks excitedly, turning to look at seungmin with hope.
the younger boy scans him and then looks at the waters behind them. “...no? hear what?”
felix face falls and bites his lower lip, shaking his head, “it’s nothing then…”
he moves past seungmin a bit dejected at his mind for jumping to his own assumptions and conclusions. sadly, it had become a habit of his to look for hyunjin in the smallest of things and hold onto the things the other liked so that he would never forget him. he would never let himself live if he were to.
the 29 year old walks towards where jeongin and jisung were waiting for them, and when they’re all finally altogether in the car, felix rolls down the window on the passenger side, eyes glued on the ocean that is slowly going farther and farther away from them.
“you guys were wrong about one thing.” he finally says after a good couple minutes of air conditioned silence.
“and what was that?” jisung asks, since the rest of the boys were still keeping quiet.
“i don’t have to go looking for a home because i already have one.” he breathes out as he looks in front of him, towards the windshield of the car.
“i just have to wait for it to find me.”
and he trusted the universe would help him this time, just like it had 25 years ago .
=
december.
freezing. bleak. dreary. slushy.
those were just a couple of the numerous words felix would use to describe winter, and especially visiting any place in the season, that’s precisely what felix had been expecting to be going into— a snow-in of wet weather.
he’s pleasantly surprised though when the temperatures and sights he’s met with is anything but. it’s cold, but pleasantly so, with soft gusts of winds carrying the smell of scented native tropical flowers. it’s wet, but nicely so, with beautiful dark turquoise waters washing up onto the snowy white beach front— and no , there wasn’t any snow falling, and instead just the spontaneous leaves that fell from the trees from time to time.
it was as if the island was forever stuck in the autumn season and while he wasn’t complaining, he does think that his winter clothes packed in the suitcase have now gone to a waste.
their cruise ship had arrived earlier in the day, giving them plenty of time to check out in their villa. the place they were staying at, coincidentally had eight rooms, and it wasn’t only just for their party of four— him, jisung, jeongin, and seungmin.
when they had arrived, they were welcomed by the host of the trip himself, christopher bang chan. he had introduced himself as an australian and korean, and as well as a trustworthy hyung. while he was speaking, felix had noticed the three other suitcases, and chan had noticed his straying eyes, clarifying by saying that he had brought friends along with him as well and they were all currently washing up.
now, the freckled male wasn’t really down for socializing and all, but he certainly wanted to be respectful towards the host who had paid for all expenses to the trip to this beautiful island, so it only seemed courteous that he accepted whatever the other had to offer. he did have to admit, despite his uptightness at first, the island was proving itself to be very charming and he couldn’t wait to explore the land despite the bad memories that could possibly surface.
he was hardly the only one with the same thoughts though because jeongin and jisung had went out right after lunch to check out places they all could hang out in the night bringing someone else from chan’s party with, but felix didn’t find out until later in the afternoon when he had finally come out of his room to find seungmin, chan, chan’s boyfriend, changbin, and another stranger— a handsome one of course —sitting at the patio. it was a bit weird seeing the doctor who had saved him in the same house as him, but chan had told him not to worry about it and that he was glad felix was healthy. here, “they were just friends who have come to have fun”.
wondering if he should intrude or not, the male is saved when seungmin gestures him over. “lix hyung!”
the other three men look over at him as he approaches, and felix instantly feels at ease and comfort with how chan and changbin shoot him warm smiles. the stranger also gives him a smile, pulling an excited looking seungmin closer to him.
it takes a minute of the short male standing and staring at his friend’s and the stranger’s close proximity and then another couple minutes of quick analysis from his brain of the latter’s loving gaze towards seungmin and the hyperness and bright smile of seungmin and the way they really couldn’t keep their hands off of each other for felix to make the connection.
and when he does, it must have looked like a light bulb had switched on his head, since all of them started laughing.
he gasps and hesitantly questions, “minho. . .?” not wanting to have gotten the person or the name wrong.
said man stands up with a charming smile, and felix admires how handsome the man is. seungmin had really gotten lucky.
“that’s me, seungmin’s fiance.” then minho tilts his head in slight question. “and you must be. . .felix?”
felix vigorously nods his head and then speaks in excitement, “yes! oh my gosh yes, it’s such a pleasure to meet you! seungmin has talked so much about you, and i’m really happy for you both and glad you guys are together!” he holds out his hand right after, and minho lets out a warm laugh, taking his hand as well to shake it.
“why thank you felix, i’ve also heard many good things about you .”
felix shoots seungmin a bashful look reading, ‘ you shouldn’t have ’ and the other just happily shrugs.
“why don’t you sit down and have some biscuits with us felix? seungmin has been sharing my favorite aussie cookies, and we have some nice ones from korea too— might as well eat and talk and get to know each other to warm up on this fine december day, am i right?”
and who is the freckled male to say no? he happily obliges, by taking a seat in the middle sofa, just heartwarmed by the sight of his friend like brother finally meeting with the love of his life of six years, in person. they must have waited so long, felix thinks. he couldn’t imagine the pain they went through knowing that they were so far apart. they began talking and talking about random things and just enjoying each other’s company— just strangers coming together to have fun.
and so that’s how they spend the rest of their afternoon until the waning sunlight started dimming down the lighting of their room, making them feel very sleepy. they all get up once this happens deciding to have some time alone to themselves and parting their ways— the newly met couple going to talk the night away felix was sure, chan and changbin heading to their room, and felix also heading to his own so that he could finally catch up on some sleep.
once he enters the place he would be staying, he admires the dark leaf print painted on the cream colored walls, making the room look cosy, and it was exemplified by the need for his eyes to close as he yawned and it made to his bed in one piece, falling apart onto the white bedsheets in a blissful nap.
felix is woken from his sleep a couple of hours later he thinks, as his eyes blink into darkness with a faint light coming from the hallway, to the sound of loud voices.
it takes him a handful of minutes of blinking up at the ceiling and shaking the fuzziness out and away from his head, to be finally able to reorient himself and stand up with decent balance on the ground.
grabbing a soft cardigan as he went, felix tip-toes into the hallway quietly, trying not to stumble as he had just woken up and his balance was still a little off. the voices get a little louder for a second, and he realizes that seungmin and jeongin had returned.
a bright smile makes its way onto his face as he slowly approaches the hall where the rest of the men were standing, until he hears jeongin say, “we actually just found out that there’s a party going on! the island natives have invited everyone from the cruise ship to join them as they usually do on the first night.”
“yeah we heard it’s going to be a lot of just stress-relieving stuff, music, you know all the good shit .”
felix rolls his eyes from behind the foyer as he hears jisung speak, and the rest of the men also find his talk a bit hilarious because they laugh after he finishes.
“good shit” seungmin mimics and then rolls his eyes in exasperation, “don’t mind him, he’s just like that.”
“it’s interesting…,” felix hears minho reply, and he inwardly snorts. interesting was definitely an understatement for a word to describe han jisung.
“anyways! who’s down?”
“well i don’t see why not. a little stress-relieving would do us all no harm, especially after that long trip on the ocean.” chan says, and felix hears changbin agree, “yeah, hold on... let me check if my keys are where i left them, and then i’m down to go.”
minho and seungmin also agree, and jeongin says, “perfect! where’s felix hyung by the way?”
“oh he should be in his room, sleeping—” chan starts to say, and felix is about to show his face to everyone and join the party when jisung cuts them all off and says, “no need! lix seriously needs his sleep, but i’m planning on coming for him later on if he stays in for too long.”
and again, felix is about to protest and jump out from behind the wall and surprise everyone when he himself gets shocked by jeongin’s next words.
“i agree, he does need his sleep. if anything, hyunjin could just come and wake him up to bring him over.”
the excitement in his body suddenly turns into one of nausea.
hyunjin?
hyunjin?
he had to have heard wrong. right??
quickly pressing his ears to the wall, he tries to hear better as jisung speaks again, “yeah, hyunjin’s quite the guy...he was acting all weird when we were walking by the ocean and he stood there for like, the two hours that innie and i walked around, until we finally went back to him and he told us to go ahead and fetch you guys because he wanted to stay there for a while longer.”
his body starts to turn cold and clammy despite the soft sweater he had on him. there was absolutely no fucking way. no fucking way.
felix brings his fingers up to his mouth and starts to persistently worry away at his nails as he hears changbin laugh, “yeah that’s hyunjin for you.”
chan adds, “what bin means is that he does that a lot— hyunjin, we mean. he just stands in front of the ocean and into the sea whenever we’ve visited for the past couple of years with the most solemn expression ever.”
“it’s as if he has a long lost love across the sea somewhere.” minho laughs, and jeongin, seungmin, and jisung all simultaneously say “ahhh” in understanding.
“well we should get going then, shouldn’t we?”
there’s a chorus of agreements and then a bit of rustling as all six men walked out the passageway, slamming the door shut a couple of minutes later finally allowing felix to let out a choked sound in between something of a cry and screech.
his whole body had started to shake. there was just no way that his hyunjin was the hyunjin who had come on this trip. there was just no way that his hyunjin would be the korean man traveling with his friends on a cruise ship to an island. there was just no way that his hyunjin was walking on the same piece of real land that he was standing on. there was just no way that his hyunjin was the same hyunjin who had been staring out into the sea as if he had a long lost love somewhere. no.
felix refused to believe. there was no way.
“no way.” he whispers, repeating the words from his thoughts, still feeling a bit dazed and shaken. eyes shot-wide now and fingers a clammy and deadly cold, he starts to feel like his bones were getting all shaky and hurting so that he couldn’t even walk anymore.
he stumbles into the wall to keep his balance, his mind occupied by only one name. “hyu- hyu- hyu-” he stutters as he suddenly collapses to the floor.
he wouldn’t believe it. he just couldn’t.
no.
this wasn’t the same hyunjin.
no.
he wouldn’t accept it. he just couldn’t give himself false hope again.
‘but what if you’re right this time?’ a thought in his head presses.
a feeling of thrill runs through his body at that notion, giving him enough energy to sit into a crawling position.
what if i’m right this time? what if he —
well, he should give it a try shouldn’t he? he should see if his gut feeling was telling him right.
felix’s eyes open wide again, but this time it’s for a completely different reason, and he desperately starts making his way to each door, the farthest his legs and arms could take him without giving out from a lack of energy.
first door.
no, kitchen.
second door.
no, bathroom.
third door.
no , empty.
fourth door.
no, play room!
where the fuck did all the bedrooms go, the small male desperately thinks as he breathlessly pushes into the fifth door in the passageway which finally led into a bedroom.
with a sense of urgency he looks through a couple of clothes and then items on the desk before realizing it was jeongin’s and jisung’s room from the name tag on the suitcase which they never unpacked.
slowly bringing his creaky legs up to a standing position, he goes through the rest of the doors: the sixth was another bedroom, but that belonged to chan and changbin, the next door was a janitor’s closet, the following one was minho’s and seungmin’s and it had felix thinking honestly how rich chan was. the villa was such an enormous place, and it was only supposed to be for tourists and visitors.
finally, he enters a room which seemed to be occupied by the one person he hadn’t met yet. this hyunjin person. who was. . . definitely not the hyunjin he knew.
felix gulps as he hesitantly walks in, not feeling as bold as he had when he had intruded and salvaged through the other rooms.
“hello?” he whispers, as if he didn’t already know that no one was waiting for him in the darkness. the only lighting in the room came from the moonlight seeping through the windows.
slowly, he moves to the desk where some papers were layed out, but he doesn’t see anything where it could indicate that it was the best friend he fell in love with who was residing in this room.
dejected he starts to walk out, when his foot bumps into a hard belonging.
“ow!” he winces out loud in pain, before looking down at a box like structure— a. . . suitcase!
of course! why hadn’t he thought of that from before?!
that would have definitely saved him so much time.
after a whole minute of sorting through the jumbled nerves in the pit of his stomach, felix finally leans down to feel all over the suitcase.
it takes him a while of just staring at the thing, a cocoon in his throat as he finally turns over the name tag, and suddenly those butterflies spiral out of control and flutter to every inch of the male’s body without his consent.
they buzzed the strongest near his heart, and felix feels the rest of his body give away as his fingers held onto the name tag reading ‘ hyunjin hwang ’.
there was only one person who wrote their name like that.
there was only worse person felix knew in this world with weird ups and curves in their letters when writing in english and not hangul.
and that person just so happened to be his best friend.
=
a phone call wakes him up from a restless sleep that had certainly not been planned out, and felix startles against the bed to find that his phone was buzzing, seungmin’s picture showing up on full screen. the time showed him that an hour had passed from when felix had last woken up.
he lazily swipes the green button on his phone, and waits for his friend’s voice to see what the other wanted. “lix hyung?! you finally picked up!”
“of course i did, why wouldn’t i?” he whispers groggily into the call, holding the bed next to him to help himself stand up and stretch out his pulled muscles.
“well you kind of just slept the whole afternoon away, and the party over here is already in full swing!”
felix picks up some muffled music and voices from the other side of the line and gives a tired smile to no one in particular, “i can hear that.” he starts the walk to the doorway, confused as to why he was still in a bedroom when he had been planning on going out all along.
“lix!” another voice cuts in— jisung of course —“are you coming, or do i have to send hyunjin to drag you over here?”
at the mention of the name, everything comes rushing at him at once, and it feels like someone knocked a cool harmless huge ball at his gut.
“fuck. no” felix says, forgetting that he was on speaker.
“uh lix?”
“yes!” he shouts, “yes i’m coming! please don’t tell whoever that person is to come for me, please just stay wherever you are! i’m coming, i swear !”
there’s a pause and then some laughter. he hears a ‘is he always like this after he wakes up from a nap’ and then a chorus of replies after, but felix can’t find it in himself to care too much as he picks up the first article of clothing he sees a— red scarf —and skids towards the front door so that he could reach wherever his friends without having to bump into anyone.
it’s chillier than it was in the morning outside, and after asking a fellow returning tourist where the party was, felix is thankful that he’s wearing a cardigan and a scarf to save him from the cold of the sea.
despite the frigidness of the dark place he leaves, as he gets closer and closer to the warmth, music, light, and laughter of the party near the beach, felix notices the gentle breezes running through the trees which were much warmer and felt much better than the previous cold gusts of winds.
he imagined that the trees which were dimly decorated in pink flowers, looked a thousand times better in daylight, but he would have to fact check that tomorrow. for now, he slowly strolled through the sand, eyes wide, and taking in every little piece of fact as if it was the last time he would be seeing the darling island.
it reminded him of his own island, where in one corner there would be a sandpile, and stuck in between some trees and flowers would be their treehouse, and near the waters would be that god darn failure of a raft. just the thought of that alone has a soft smile gracing his face.
as the freckled male approaches closer, he sees thousands of fairy lights strung up from branch to branch, tree to tree, and table to table to his utmost delight.
there was a vast open space of sand which acted as a dance floor for couples, and various types of people stood around the circle, enjoying foods and drinks, and for a second, just for a second, felix forgets and starts to admire the homely and cosy nature of the get together, with just random people enjoying their time next to the cool incoming breezes of the trees.
pulling the scarf which he had wrapped like a shawl around him closer, felix walked around these couples to the bare end of the sea, closer to the waters themselves where not many souls lingered.
he stares into the darkness where the stars were slowly starting to make their appearance on their huge canvas. the waters below them, greet the little balls of light, and they do the same. it almost feels as if though one was welcoming felix as well. that specific star twinkles at him, and on an impulse, felix brings his hands together to wish for something.
and then he turns to walk away, but his mind prevents him from doing so as he freezes in his tracks when he sees an all too familiar back facing away from him at a distance.
his previous thoughts come rushing back to him, there was no way —
the whole world seems to stop as he finally processes the familiar stature of a man and confirms it as being the back of someone he used to know. a man he used to like and he still did. a man who understood him like nobody else in the world. his best friend.
and as if the universe had finally decided to grant his wishes, tired of the jokes that the other forces were playing on them, that same person in his dreams. . .just so happened to be talking to the people they were living with in the villa.
without even knowing it, tears start to silently fall and leisurely make its way down his cheeks. fingers now gripped into fists at his sides, he just stands there, staring at the back of a man he knew. a man he knew all too well to have been mistaken in the first place.
so the name on the suitcase had been right.
it really was him.
as if having heard felix’s thoughts on cue and knowing that the younger was finally in his presence— which felix honestly didn’t doubt since the rest of the men were making it pretty obvious that he was present by widely and loudly waving at him to come over — but none of that mattered, as hwang hyunjin, his best friend and the person he fell in love with every single day since he was five years old turns around like a ballerina, every movement of his graceful , as he slowly turns to face felix.
obscuring their views for a second is a drunk and dancing couple that come in between them, but then they’re gone with the wind in the next second, and the whole world really does feel like it has stopped spinning when both men lock eyes with each other.
everything falls away from around them again, but it’s not in the terrifying way that their world had disappeared last time. no, this time the only remnants left were the jazz music slowly and softly playing in the air, traveling and twisting in between them, entering into their bodies— into their hearts .
every single person with them quietly disappears one by one until it’s just them left in the island, standing only a couple of feet apart from each other. it was just them, the night sky, sandy beach, fairy lit palm trees, and open sea with them now.
they stand there for what seems like an eternity, pondering over the idea of this all being an illusion— another one of those dreams which had stopped for them. they considered that were just being delusional again, imagining and conjuring up an image that was too good to be true.
but why did felix look so real then?
why was a thirty year old hyunjin currently viewing a gorgeous lee felix, with his hair slightly grown out— not as long as his own of course —but long enough to look like a mullet. why was his hair colored a platinum blonde making the other look like he had a halo surrounding his pretty, pretty face.
tell him. tell him why he was watching a person he hadn’t seen in nearly five years cry his heart out as if someone had just shown him the saddest undertaking of all time. why was it that felix’s brown eyes still shone as beautifully as ever, so full of expression and life . and why with trembling lips, the cutest button nose, and freckled cheeks, why was the younger male looking so adorable and huggable in warm winter clothes which he had never seen the other wear in the times that were younger — and fuck. . .was, that hyunjin’s red scarf wrapped around the other’s neck?
and why did hyunjin look so real then?
why was a twenty-nine year old felix currently viewing a grown and still remarkably handsome hwang hyunjin, with his hair all blonde and grown out. it fell gracefully around his beautiful face, every feature still positively looking extraordinary, but oh fuck— how felix had missed his eyes. when people had said that the eyes were the window to the soul, they weren’t kidding, they knew what they were talking about. they had one definition in mind and that was the attractive mind of hwang hyunjin.
tell him. tell him why he was watching a person he hadn’t seen in five years looking all heartbroken and sorrowful as if he had been carrying the weight of the world for such a long time and had finally been able to let it all go when he saw felix. why was the other wearing such casual clothing like him, made of the softest and fluttery cotton, yet still managing to look beautiful with the night as a backdrop to his glory.
it had been such a long time that they had seen each other, swallowing up each other’s appearances in living flesh was the only thing their poor brains could think of doing.
they finally take a step forward synchronously as if every move they made were matched, and in an abrupt motion, everything around them falls back into place, the glow of the fairy lights brightens, the music thrumming softly in the background gets a bit louder— now humming a more familiar tune —, and most especially their friends and a now parted crowd of strangers who were watching them with intrigue, as if they were the most fascinating and curious beings in the world.
they stand there for what feels like an hour, legs aching and getting tired, but eyes never leaving each other as if they feared that when they looked away, the other would disappear. their words were choked up in their throats, hearts frozen in time.
how was it possible that the person they dreamed of for so long, was living and breathing in front of them in reality? or was this all a dream too , felix desperately thinks, the tears on his cheeks now falling down faster than he could stop them.
as time starts speeding into motion around them, someone accidentally pushes felix from behind causing the smaller male to trip forward and he ends up falling forward.
“felix!” hyunjin shouts, and the rest of the six men raise their eyebrows, faces filled with surprise . they knew each other? how? and when? why? what had happened?
all their questions are surprisingly answered when the taller and older male surges forward gathering felix up in his arms before he hit the ground, and suddenly, all those years missed, all those years they didn’t see each other are gone as felix looks up at hyunjin like he was the only being in the world — no, the universe .
they stare at each other like that for a moment, before felix finally opens his mouth. instead of a proper sentence though, all that comes out is a choked cry which sounded nothing like he had wanted to sound— graceful and pretty for the other. he sputters and coughs in hyunjin’s arms as a deep seated blush appears on his cheeks.
a melody rings out in his ears again, but felix realizes that it isn’t the music this time, but hyunjin’s laugh— a small chuckle —but still a melodious sound regardless, and it warms felix right down to the core.
he feels the other’s finger brush up to his hair and a pink flower that hyunjin had picked up from the island’s beautiful trees earlier, is placed in the crook between the soft cartilage of his ear and felix’s silky platinum blonde trees.
“silly boy.” hyunjin says, biting his lips hard as if he was trying to hold himself back from saying something else, and felix is about to protest out of all old habits when he realizes that there were unshedded tears gathering in the taller male’s eyes.
“jinnie.” he whispers with sadness, just as a sob wracks through his lover’s body and his heart feels like it was cracked in two.
hyunjin starts full out crying, letting out loud wails, despite knowing that other people were around them, watching them, and felix is so shocked that he doesn’t give it a second thought when he wraps his arms around the other so that they were standing in the spotlight of the moonlight, hugging and just finally being in each other’s embrace.
there’s slight wetness forming onto the freckled male’s clothes, he’s sure, but he also doesn’t care as he pats hyunjin’s back slowly, trying to sooth the older male down. “it’s okay, it’s okay jinnie. it’s okay baby. lixie is here .” as he does this, felix thinks about how hard it must have been for hyunjin all these years, not knowing where felix had disappeared to, not knowing if he was even alive. sure it had been hard for felix, but for hyunjin??
tears well into his eyes as well. he starts softly sobbing into the older male’s shoulders and incoherently mumbling, “it’s okay jinnie.” to reassure the other male. “it’s okay, i’m here. ”
seungmin, who was standing back with minho and the others, now reflects on his own relationship as he watches the two supposed strangers at the beginning who were now crying in each other’s arms as if they had known each other for the longest time but were only able to freely be together, until now.
and maybe that was true. he himself had felt bad enough for his own relationship, for not being able to see minho for six years although they were long distance dating the whole time, but seeing hyunjin and felix together like this. . .it made him think. . . god damn . how long did they have to wait for each other? how long were they not able to speak to or see each other for them to act like this?
how long were they waiting for a love like this?
“long enough.” chan says, answering the pressing question in all of their minds, and they’re all shocked when they realize that he was crying as well. to be honest, they all were. what they were seeing in the moon litten couple was just emotional beyond words. something bigger than what those two were, was going on here.
“now the withdrawal and emotional distress that they were going through five years ago makes so much more sense.” he continues, and everyone looks at each other in realization and shock as it all suddenly clicks together for seungmin. this has been going on longer than everyone thinked, it had most likely started from middle school, when he had caught felix whispering hyunjin’s name while he was sleeping but didn’t give much thought to it, and it probably could have been happening from even before that too and he just hadn’t known .
wow.
the crowd around the two men are heartbroken and sad, but they’re also in a good mood as well. they’re in a good mood because they’re together. it’s with a sort of sad happiness that they realize that it was cool that they were all together and all, but the couple standing under the moonlight? they were the ones who were really lucky here.
they were lucky .
hyunjin finally pulls away, his hands going up to first grip at felix’s skinny arms, and then further up to hold his best friend’s face.
spreading his palms apart around felix’s cheeks, he looks into the younger male’s brown eyes and says, “this is real right? please tell me this isn’t a dream felix. please tell me that you’re with me, right here, right now . i swear i won’t accept any other answer.”
“hyunjin,” the shorter male’s voice cracks as he looks into his best friend’s eyes. his voice is still a little hoarse from crying, but he has to reassure the other, “yes, jinnie. i told you i would never leave you. i told you i would never forget you. i am not going anywhere baby, i’m here, and i will always be by and at your side for as long as we live because we’re best friends, and best friends do just that.”
a sudden memory pops into felix’s head, and he’s suddenly thrown back to five year old him on the cold tile floors of his first home with his mother looking down on him. he remembered having asked, “what’s a best friend?” and his mother had replied with, “a best friend is someone you do everything with, because they make everything feel fun and better.”
wrong.
you were wrong yoonjin.
a best friend is home. a best friend doesn’t always have to be with you to make everything feel fun and better, they could be miles apart or even gone for days, but they’re still your home, a safety net, a strong support you could fall into for years and never have to worry about hurting yourself, because they accept every single little piece of you. every part of you becomes a part of them…
and that’s why it becomes so easy for felix when he looks up at hyunjin once again, this time with a small smile on his face, “i hadn’t realized all along that you were the home i was looking for jinnie. and you finally found me. you found me .”
the tall male leans down to kiss the smaller’s forehead. “we both found each other lixie, you’re my home just as much as i’m yours…all i’m just wondering now… is how we got so lucky.”
felix wraps his arms around hyunjin’s neck.
“we are lucky, aren’t we?” felix says, looking up into the sky just for once to send a silent and grateful thank you, and then he looks down towards his best friend.
“hyunjin, i love you .”
and it feels like the whole world has exhaled when the freckled male finally confesses to his best friend the words he’s been holding back for such a long and suppressing time. the sea behind them, picks up with bigger waves, allowing a cool, salty, and sweet breeze to filter into the air around them. the fairy lights dim, and hyunjin’s heart is finally content.
they don’t feel a rush of excitement or any of those sparks as the older boy places a hand behind felix’s neck, fingers threading through the younger boy’s hair. they just feel warmth and the feeling of wholesome love as hyunjin breathes out, “i love you a thousand times more felix.”
then the taller male lets out a tiny laugh as he looks into the younger boy’s sparkly eyes, “i guess it’s long overdue that i do this, huh?”
felix lets out a breathless giggle as he silently nods, whispering “silly boy”, just as the two best friends finally, finally tilt their heads so that their lips met in a melting and searing dance, a sultry kiss of longing, desire, want, content, and most importantly, happiness.
they were lucky to be in love with each other, and they were lucky to have been where they had been, but most importantly, they were lucky to finally be together and not just in dreams, but alive and present, in the real world.
=
from above, the universe and destiny shake their hands, smiling upon the two beautiful best friends who were so in love with each other.
the universe then turns to speak to a very startled fates, “dear one, you should know from experience, that i only guide and grant some wishes that i feel were destined to be from the start. the rest of the journey is left to the mortals, it is their test to see if they have enough faith, enough strength, enough love —”
the fates narrows their eyes at the universe. “this shouldn’t have happened in the first place. it’s impossible .”
the universe laughs a booming and loud sound, quoting, “it always seems impossible until it's done, doesn’t it?”
the fates take this answer into consideration, and all three forces turn once again to look upon the two best friends who had done the impossible and made it possible.
“let’s just say that they got lucky then. they were lucky because those two were meant to be.”
and so they were.
and so they were.
static.