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Seungcheol's world had disintegrated like ash on the glorious evening of his 27th birthday at an exclusive lounge in Seoul, the catastrophic force of a metaphorical fire leaving him breathlessly alive and baffled for the most part.
"May I have your attention please?" Jeonghan, maudlin and self-pityingly sentimental, had announced, putting the celebratory gabfest inside the bar to a halt. A fond grin had cautiously crawled its way on Seungcheol's face as he watched the man trudge up a nearby table in a series of ungraceful movements, tightly clutching a decanter of scotch on one hand, a plastic toy sword on the other. It was a sight notably rare that Joshua had his camera on, filming the entire scene—you do not get to see an intoxicated Yoon Jeonghan every day. It was very reminiscent of that one time Seungkwan had hosted a spelling bee with a cockeyed Jeonghan, Junhui and Jihoon as the only participants, competing for a measly peck on the cheek from a mortified Wonwoo. The youngest of the three had snagged the victory with a whopping thirteen-point gap from the second placer (a resentful Junhui), much to the man of the hour's overt delight ("Jihoon spelling radioimmunoelectrophoresis without a hitch got me oddly horny," Wonwoo had murmured, dumbstruck).
"Excellent!" His friend had remarked, albeit slurred, equipped with an air of gravitas that commanded regard. Jeonghan had spotted him from the equally inebriated throng with ease, lean arms flailing up in the air with peerless gusto. "Happy birthday, Choi Seungcheol!"
And the crowd cheered, chanting his name on repeat like he was a baseball prodigy who had three career home runs, but an irate Jeonghan had immediately shushed them, hissing and sending daggers to anyone who opened their mouth, "Silence, mortals! Stop stealing the spotlight! I'm about to deliver my gift!"
Wonwoo had lightly nudged him, face marred with apprehension. "Hyung, are you not doing anything about this?"
"Nah, let the man have his fun," he replied with a shrug.
"Seungcheolie, I was supposed to get you a new perfume—I'm not saying you need it! In actual fact, you don't smell awful! But your scent choices are very…questionable. I just don't want you reeking like a toxic spill every time we hang out!" Jeonghan had rambled, animated, eliciting a round of guffaws from the flock. The birthday celebrant could only duck his head in embarrassment, cheeks and ears tinted pink. Wonwoo had snorted, thoroughly amused. "Forgive me, my dearest, but I ended up spending the money on a secondhand bookshelf from a vintage shop right across your favorite Ediya branch! Well, my decrepit, centuries old shelf had to go anyway. I was rendered weak in the face of temptation. Now, here I am! Standing in front of these hammered savages to recite a wonderful poem written by a wonderful man as a present instead! Poetry! Yay!"
The people surrounding the table had dispersed at full throttle, not wanting to deal with an overeager literature professor, his grueling lectures about ruthless modernity and the social turmoil brought about by capitalism, and his unbounded literary ambitions. It was not the first time his friend had disrupted a shindig to drunkenly chronicle an essay or a metrical composition he was obsessed with at the moment, turning these hell-raising keggers into uneventful book club meetings (to be fair, he had successfully converted some of them into actual bibliophiles, meeting up on Saturday evenings to read a book by Ursula K. Le Guin or another author he could not pronounce the name of over pastries and tea, sporadically, a bucket of chicken and a glass of beer). Jeonghan had always been a decidedly funky but articulate drunk and Seungcheol was very, very endeared, discernibly so.
"Ya! Where are you going? I haven't said a single line yet! I promise not to talk about Anne Carson again!" Jeonghan had bellowed, forthright in his discontent, childishly stomping his feet on the table. Said man already had his lips pursed and arms crossed in petulant indignation. His heart should have not done multitudinous somersaults at the sight of his friend's adorable hijinks.
"Now that's your cue to appease the devil." Wonwoo had said as he left a mocking pat on his hyung's back, sauntering to a corner where his boyfriend was sitting (or sleeping rather—Jihoon's ability to nap anywhere was noteworthy, like a cat). Seungcheol might as well heed the younger's advice before Jeonghan instigates disorder, making a beeline to where the other is currently sulking.
"Hanie," Seungcheol had called, soft and placating, calloused palms reaching for the man's waist to coax him close, "let's get you down before you injure yourself."
"But I haven't even given you my gift! Do you not want to hear it?" He had asked, tone accusing and gaze inquisitive, a bit skeptical, pointing the tip of the plastic toy sword under his chin. "It's not from Anne Carson nor Ada Limón, I swear on my favorite knife!"
Seungcheol had released an airy chuckle, rubbing the man's hip. Under the dim lights, Jeonghan had looked more celestial than ever, face considerably flushed, make-up a little smudged but breathtakingly handsome, nonetheless. No wonder he was popular amongst the university body. They would obligingly pen numerous billets-doux at his behest (not that they haven't done it yet). "I wouldn't miss it for the world, baby. Now sit on this table and let me hear it."
"Okay!" His friend had chirped, clumsily plopping down the table with a thud, the sword and scotch forgotten.
He watched as Jeonghan spread his legs, his long, dainty fingers unhurriedly twining through his belt loops, tugging it hard enough that he had lurched forward. The man's arms had then found a home around his shoulders, not expecting the gesture in the slightest. He reeked of booze, sweat and a woody perfume that was definitely not his. Seungcheol swallowed, unable to protest nor form a coherent sentence. They were close, too close. Their proximity alone had Seungcheol feeling the impulse to spontaneously combust—or eliminate the remaining space between their bodies thrumming with desire and kiss this man with newfangled urgency like tomorrow was not bound to come. But he held himself back, careful not to fray, the enormity of the moment lingering still.
Jeonghan was a friend. You do not and cannot kiss friends.
"Better, don't you think?" Jeonghan drawled, smile crooked in one corner—a calculated twist of the lips. He was unspeakably charming like this, eyes gleaming with traces of mischief and something else entirely. Seungcheol could not look away—he had to or the ache for a temporary contact would follow him home. "Are you ready, my favorite attorney?"
He had found a sense of calm at the inquiry and at his friend swaying their bodies slightly to the music. "I'm the only lawyer you know, Mr. Yoon."
"Wrong! I know a few. Kwon Jung Rok, Yang Jong Hoon, Jung Jae Chan—"
"Woo Young Woo?"
"Right! And Woo Young Woo!" Jeonghan exclaimed, giggling like a little kid. "Now, now, can you please stop distracting me, Attorney Choi? If this is a ploy to dissuade me from delivering such superb composition, I'm chomping your cheeks off! This party wouldn't end without you hearing this."
"Preposterous! I refuse to get my cheeks eaten by you!" Seungcheol had jokingly held his left cheek as if he was protecting it. Jeonghan could only roll his eyes. "Kidding aside, Jeonghan-ah, you really don't have to give me anything. We talked about this. You even gave me a bone of a chicken drumstick you ate for dinner last year!"
"Well," he had begun, a feeble tremor in his voice that had sounded a lot like sheepishness and insecurity that hadn't been there from the start, "this year is different. I may be poor but I'm exerting an effort!"
You don't have to, Seungcheol wanted to say but the sentence had lingered in the air, decidedly clamping his mouth shut. He cannot bear to watch the clear-cut uncertainty adorn his features. An arm hanging awkwardly on his side that very moment had slithered around Jeonghan's waist instead, drawing him closer, unhurriedly, tenderly, as if to say it's okay, you are enough.
"Seungcheol-ah? Can I begin now?"
Seungcheol could feel the rise and fall of the man's breathing. It had left him a tad bit woozy, giddy like a seventeen-year-old boy experiencing infatuation for the first time. If only he could keep him near like this for eternity. "I'm listening."
"You are like me, you will die too, but not today:
you, incommensurate, therefore the hours shine:
if I say to you “To you I say,” you have not been
set to music, or broadcast live on the ghost
radio, may never be an oil painting or
Old Master’s charcoal sketch: you are
a concordance of person, number, voice,
and place, strawberries spread through your name
as if it were budding shrubs, how you remind me
of some spring, the waters as cool and clear
(late rain clings to your leaves, shaken by light wind),
which is where you occur in grassy moonlight:"
Every word the other man had uttered was repeatedly ringing inside his ear, his voice, although gravelly from a night of fun, still rich in timbre. The piece was unabashedly romantic and familiarly saccharine, but it had sounded rueful, oppressively so, a trace of pathos that was difficult to shrug off. Seungcheol had spent years listening to Jeonghan, sometimes begrudgingly, oftentimes voluntarily, drone about his hyperfixations to know that he was reciting his favorite poem. A poem he had not heard since Jeonghan had sworn, with unrivaled vehemence, to not intone verses of ardor after his first heartbreak back in college. He had thousands of pieces to choose from, it could have been a campy limerick or a villanelle about friendship, but why this?
"and you are a lily, an aster, white trillium
or viburnum, by all rights mine, white star
in the meadow sky, the snow still arriving
from its earthwards journeys, here where there is
no snow (I dreamed the snow was you,
when there was snow), you are my right,
have come to be my night (your body takes on
the dimensions of sleep, the shape of sleep
becomes you): and you fall from the sky
with several flowers, words spill from your mouth
in waves, your lips taste like the sea, salt-sweet (trees
and seas have flown away, I call it
loving you):"
He was abruptly hauled away from his tempestuous thoughts when a cold finger had meekly brushed the skin of the back of his neck. There was something in the way Jeonghan was looking at him, eyes burning darker like wildfire. Seungcheol had stared back evenly as he searched for an answer, for proof that the man whose company he relished the most wanted the same thing. The unveiled fondness present in Jeonghan's gaze as if he was besotted by devotion had him thinking—hoping even—that it could be an echo of his own frantic yearning.
"home is nowhere, therefore you,
a kind of dwell and welcome, song after all,
and free of any eden we can name"1
Jeonghan let out a short exhale afterwards, ruffling the short strands of his fringe. He looked down, not precisely apologetic, but almost timid. There was a haunting sensation coiling beneath his stomach, goading him to move, and the ever-impatient Seungcheol could not bear it anymore, overtaken by a flurry of emotions he could not control, pulling the man into an embrace so tight it had knocked the air out of Jeonghan's lungs. He let out a steadying breath, heart constricting inside his chest, filled with so much adoration.
In the mayhem of perplexity, brassy partygoers and sudden poetic declarations of love, Seungcheol had plenty of words he would have professed in the heat of the moment, thousands of things his mouth was clamoring to speak but couldn't, but for now, he let his body do the talking, hugging his beloved tighter than he was allowed to all these years. Tomorrow, he could tell him, and the day after that, and the next, maybe not through doting cantos or cheesy rhymes but through a language he knew well—touch.
"Happy birthday, my love." Jeonghan had whispered, voice raspy and quite vulnerable, chapped lips pressed against the shell of his ear. "I hope you are in it for more poems of love in the future."
Seungcheol's world had disintegrated like ash on the glorious evening of his 27th birthday at an exclusive lounge in Seoul, the crushing weight of the realization that he was helplessly in love with Jeonghan after a myriad of excuses that he was not leaving him sapped and astronomically content all at once.