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"Hyung, it's raining so heavily outside…what should I do?" the rosy-cheeked boy cries, voice laced with undeniable panic.
It's pouring; the rooftop and gutters are clanking, the weather is relentlessly inclement.
Impatient as any boy his age and ever brimming with the same, wide-eyed, undisciplined curiosity, he tugs at the sleeve of the older boy, who sets his forehead against the window still, still zoning out with his mind nothing more like black television screen. An outline of mist contours the portion of his warm skin that's against the glass, almost as if they’re the traces of his thoughts emanating.
"Hyung... my plants, they're going to get hurt from the rain, I don't want them to die!!!" his voice cracks at the end, a fresh, steady stream of tears already pouring down his face.
Jiyong had planted a few seeds in the garden a few days ago, and on sight of the first few seedlings, he’s became so excited he still hasn’t stopped talking about them . He doesn’t know what they’ll grow out to be like – not that he’s actually seen a flower on bloom before, let alone recognize one.
"Hu--oh." the older boy turns around, face to face with a bleary eyed Jiyong. He's features are plastered with fear, helplessness and confusion. And something about his state of vulnerability makes Seunghyun’s heart plummet as well. Seunghyun reaches out pull the younger boy into a hug. He's body is stiff, almost limp at first.
"Okay," he rubs the slowest, most soothing circles around the back of the younger boy.
"It's okay." he says, feeling Jiyong's tears beginning to soak up that part of the fabric lying right above his shoulder blades.
“Wh-what’s going to happen to my seeds…” he says in between sobs, delving his head into the crook of Seunghyun’s neck. His tears are staining Seunghyun’s shirt, but he doesn’t mind. He smiles, patting Jiyong gently and hearteningly on his shoulders.
“Don’t worry, I’ll take care of them.” Seunghyun says it like a declaration, and there’s this saturated amount of reassurance in his voice that captures Jiyong’s trust, and like a dandelion in the wind, he’s able to just go with the direction of flow that Seunghyun had pinpointed. There was no one time, no problems that were unresolved, no sense of relief that had them grinning like the world was in their hands because all these things happened. All these things happened, and it had been more than once. He had placed his trust in the older man so long before he’s finding difficulty even naming one time when Seunghyun didn’t live up to his promise.
His trust in Seunghyun works in an unexplainable sort of way. It’s like an exchange, a trade. No rules, no conditions – just his reassurance in exchange for the younger boy’s trust. And maybe that’s the beauty of it all, the beauty of childlike believe, as long as they’re innocent, gay and free - there’s no need for more than a few minutes of coaxing to get them to believe.
Jiyong doesn’t probe, doesn’t even ask him what he’s about to do – he simply stands still by the window, calmer now, and more at ease. He looks out, squinting at the faint outline of his backyard in attempt to locate the flowerbed. He’s so sure that with Seunghyun’s promise, they’ll be okay he doesn’t even pray, let alone wish, because there’s no need to wish when there’s certainty.
He’s that certain.
So he doesn’t realize that Seunghyun’s gone until he hears the monstrous cracking of the thunder and feels need to seek solace in the other boy’s arms.
+
Seunghyun trudges out of the house, and it’s bucketing so heavily it’s like he’s listening to the loud muffled applauses recorded in an old cassette tape on repeat. His sneakers are entirely soaked, and his clothes, already wet by the time he reaches the blurry outline of the flowerbed.
Seunghyun crouches down, setting his knees against the muddy ground as he hunches over the flowerbed, arms laid out halfway - cradling the flowerbed like it’s the most precious thing on earth.
He feels his skin crying out in agony, crawling even, as the rain continues to platter down. Seunghyun’s fingers are paralysed from the cold. He tries to curl them in and out, but they’re so stoned it’s like they’ve been buried under the avalanche since ice age.
Even when he's under the crazy pouring rain, even when he’s this drenched and shivering like a lost fawn stuck in a single, insular iceberg, he doesn’t know why deep down in his heart it’s so warm – like it’s been housing firecrackers, and they’re on the verge to igniting the fire and the sparks that are suddenly bursting of his chest like fireworks.
He stays under the icy shower, for almost another quarter of an hour, until he sees a tear-sodden Jiyong heading his way.
“Hyung! What are you doing?”
“Protecting them!” Seunghyun shouts over the rain
“Hyung… you’re going to get sick out there! Come in… now!”
“No, I’m going to protect them like I’ve promised you!!!”
Jiyong folds his arms, sucking on his bottom lip stubbornly as he plops down beside Seunghyun’s arching form. They stay within each other’s vision, for a while, beneath the gloomy thunderclouds that are tearing relentlessly, accompanied by the occasional sound of the explosive thunder.
Even amidst the sound of the cackling rain he hears, the clacking sound of teeth battering against teeth – it’s the chattering of Seunghyun’s teeth.
“Hyung… please promise me you’re not going to fall ill…” Jiyong reaches out for his head, circling an arm protectively around his neck as he brings Seunghyun’s head into his chest. He entangles his fingers in Seunghyun’s clumped locks, humming a soothing melody.
The smell of soaked plants and thee muddy earth. The air is stale, still and almost lifeless. And Jiyong thinks that flowers would have ended up being so too, had it not been for Seunghyun. And he sort of ponders over how maybe it’s okay to be under these raindrops that feel like hammers in miniature, maybe it’s okay to be hearing nothing but the tirade of the sky's teardrops because there’s something that’s worth doing all this for.
Jiyong’s incredibly aware, almost too aware, of the fact that these flowers are going to be the most beautiful things he’ll see when in bloom, and the bizarre thing is that he isn’t even supposed to be feeling like it’s the truth – he isn’t even psychic – it’s like he’s overestimating Seunghyun, the things he can do. He knows very well that there’s this faint line dividing the deluded thoughts from the realistic ones, and he wonders - if it’s the fact that his heart spins like a bicycle wheel tearing downhill – that he sees that line slowly dissipating without a trace, almost like it doesn’t even exist.
Seunghyun feels and knows it too, and he blames it on the fact that there’s something about this moment that’s a little out of this world, something along the lines of being protected. He feels almost untouchable, godly even, because not even the weather – something that’s entirely outside the control of mankind – can stop him (or rather his plants) from growing, and his hopes from soaring along with it. There’s nothing more he can expect right now, than the impervious-ness of the both of them – Jiyong and himself.
He wonders if Jiyong feels the same way during moments like this - whenever it’s the both of them, together.
The both of them, he thinks. It’s as if they’re always moving – like the gentle push and pull of the waves – always shifting. Because whenever Seunghyun thinks they’re one thing, they’re something else. They’ve been strangers to brothers to best friends and sometimes Seunghyun wonders if they were any of those because Jiyong has never felt quite like a brother nor had he even ever come close to being a stranger.
He’s positive, a hundred and one percent, that he hasn’t quite felt this way before. He’s aware that the steady staccato of his heartbeat speeds a little more out of control, his tummy dips a little bit longer than usual and that his already watted smile shines brighter a little, he’s still too impervious to what that pumping, molten core of his entire being is trying to relay. It’s like this rare unearthly disease that doesn’t have an anecdote. It’s the sort of thing people wrote books and sang songs about.
All these things he’s been feeling.
They're all so frustrating and complicating at the same time. He can’t quite pinpoint what exactly they are. And he figures that he probably never will, because that’s like waiting for the rain falls upwards – so no, it’s that sort of impossible. That sort of farfetched, surreal reality that has him drifting from his consciousness back to sleep, that has him wondering if it’s possible for humans to feel these emotions that are so overpowering, too overwhelming to even be within the scope of emotions itself.
Seeking for the answers to these bizarre feelings – it’s like he’s trying to scratch for the itch he can’t reach.
He wonders if it’s normal for a boy, to be feel this way.
To feel like that.
Because he’s pretty sure as hell that a boy he isn’t supposed to have such worries. He isn’t supposed to be caring about whether or not it’s okay to love another boy in a non-platonic way. He isn’t even supposed to get paranoid of how others would perceive them, to question himself that if there’s anything that would go wrong (according to Murphy’s Law) and that even if they do grow apart someday, if everything he’s done for the younger boy will be worth it.
He finds himself, sometimes staring at the ceiling with the younger boy sleeping soundly by his side and still he doesn’t find an answer that isn’t yes. He doesn’t see anything beyond a wholehearted yes and he thinks that – yes everything’s worth it, to have even been acquainted with you at a tender age is a far far, better thing he’s ever done.
And that’s how he falls asleep - to the steady rhythm of this assurance. Despite being subconsciously aware, even as a kid his age, that its metamorphosis of life. Friends come and go (even the very best ones). People change. They all become butterflies one day. Some sooner than the others. They are never kids forever.
Despite all the impotence he has been feeling as a child, he dismisses the thought of even growing up. He hates going up. Hates how the absurd everyone is to actually feel excited for it.
He needs to keep Jiyong by his side while he can. He refocuses his vision onto the muddy ground. Right now he’s with Jiyong. He just wants to enjoy the moment, throw all the stupid daunting thoughts away.
“Ji?” He speaks up, his voice slightly rougher at the edge.
“Y-yeah hyung?”
“Promise me something.” Seunghyun pauses for a second, and then he goes on, “Grow up with me.”
“What? We are growing up now, aren’t we?” Jiyong fights against the sound of the pattering raindrops.
“I know.” He yells against the rain.
“Just promise me.”
“Okay, I PROMISE!” Jiyong shouts back the words that he’s been itching to hear and he smiles, lifting his head – for the first time since Jiyong’s arrival – to look at him.
And that childlike glitter in Jiyong’s eyes is enough to make have him feeling the rays of the warm, gone summer sun soaking against his skin, even under the frosty late summer rain.
Seunghyun’s doubts steer clear at the speed of lights.
And in the moment, an imbalance in the universe corrects itself.