End of The World; PG-13; Myungsoo/Sungyeol
End of The World
Myungsoo/Sungyeol; PG-13; ~2,600w
They are lucky Myungsoo has just come back from Japan and is too lazy to unpack his belongings, because to escape, he thinks, they need to hurry.
A/N: slightly inspired by this. a pretty old fic (two months ago?) that i just need to put out here. you know. get it out of my system. besides, i miss myungyeol ;_; beta'd by the ever-so-lovely aurelynn ♥
It’s during the recording of their first album that Myungsoo doesn’t feel like staying in the dorm. Not in a ‘I’m-tired-I-want-to go-and-play’ way, but more of a ‘I’m-sick-of-this-all-I-want-is-to-escape-reality’ sense. It strikes him like lightning, and he suddenly wakes up from his nap and throws Sungyeol, who is sleeping with his head against his stomach, away. "What in the-," Sungyeol glares at him with sleepy eyes, not really there, and Myungsoo turns off the fan.
"Let’s get away from here," he says. Sungyeol rubs his eyes and yawns.
"Sure," he shrugs, "where do you want to go?"
Myungsoo shakes his head, his heart firm. "No," he tells him, "not like that. Let’s get away from here."
This time, Sungyeol blinks, his movements slow and unsure. "You mean like, go, go?"
"Like go, go," he answers, "to the end of the world."
Just as Sungyeol is about to say how ridiculous he is, that the heat must have been messing with his head, Myungsoo takes his wrist and drags him to his feet, snatching the keys on top of the refrigerator.
They are lucky Myungsoo has just come back from Japan and is too lazy to unpack his belongings, because to escape, he thinks, they need to hurry, and a luggage full of clothes and one toothbrush is more than enough already. Sungyeol nags at him during the first half an hour, telling him the consequences and the reasons why they shouldn’t be doing it, but as Myungsoo speeds up towards the driveway, he rolls the car’s window down and keeps quiet, enjoying the wind against his face. He wears his sunglasses ("Just in case," he says when Myungsoo rolls his eyes) and a beanie, one hand stretched out with his head leaning against it. His cheeks look uneven, and Myungsoo occasionally laughs at how weird he looks.
"Your laugh is weird," Sungyeol always retorts, half-asleep. Myungsoo smiles at the road in front of him, his hand itching to reach out and touch Sungyeol’s face.
"We need a gas station," Myungsoo voices out three hours into their journey. Sungyeol rolls his eyes, but he sits straight and keeps an eye out.
It’s one and a half hour later, the line nearing the red E sign, that Sungyeol points at something. "It looks like a gas station for me," he says, so Myungsoo speeds up because at this rate, they might need to push their own car.
Turns out Sungyeol has good eyes, because the old man sleeping on the chair beside the petrol tank laughs loudly as he mentions how rare it is to have two good-looking guys pull over at that place. He keeps patting Myungsoo’s shoulder, his rotten teeth gleaming under the sunset, and he wonders what Sungyeol buys at the convenient store that he takes that much time.
Sungyeol throws two bags of snacks into the back seat and laughs his high-pitched laugh at the old man jokes. He grins widely as the old man hands Myungsoo their change, not letting go before a long and tight handshake. "You make a good couple," the old man raises his eyebrow playfully, and Myungsoo frowns.
"Hey, Sungyeol," Myungsoo calls, and Sungyeol, busy with his orange popsicle in one hand and steering wheel on the other, hums. "That old man just now-"
"What about him?" Sungyeol turns to face him, and Myungsoo hits his arm because he’s not looking at the road, eyes on the road, please.
"He said," Myungsoo says, and he turns to look at Sungyeol under the ray of sun, right across the horizon they're headed for, bright and yellow and kind of orange and, just, breathtaking. Gorgeous? You make a good couple, he recalls, and he smiles inwardly because people from the countryside are surprisingly wittier than he expected. "I don’t know. I forgot."
Sungyeol snorts. "You’re an idiot."
"He told us to come again though," Myungsoo says again, turning to reach for the bag of chips in the plastic bag.
"I doubt we will ever be allowed to touch a car again when we get home," Sungyeol chuckles, and Myungsoo laughs loudly because that might be true.
They don’t manage to find a hotel, but they find yet another convenience store. It looks old and dusty and scary as hell, but at least the clerk there says that they are open 24 hours and there will always be someone on shift. Myungsoo thinks it’s funny because they don’t find a single house, let alone a city near there, so where do these people who work there come from? Sungyeol, however, tells him not to ask something he doesn’t want an answer to because it’s creepy.
They sleep with their legs folded in the car, Myungsoo in the front and Sungyeol at the back. The older keeps whining that it’s cold, that he misses blankets, so Myungsoo throws him his jacket and goes to buy cigarettes from the convenient store, along with a lighter.
"I didn’t know you smoke," Sungyeol eyes him like he is a clown, and Myungsoo takes a deep breath.
"I didn’t, but it’s too cold," he answers, blowing a smoke and the tar feels like it’s clawing at his throat, stabbing his lungs. "Fuck," he coughs, his eyes teary, "and now, I swear I won’t do this again. Remind me not to do this again."
Sungyeol’s laugh is softer than usual, three seconds away from the tempting realm of sleep. "Don’t do that again." Myungsoo almost throws his box of cigarette to the back, but from the corner of his eyes he sees Sungyeol breathing slowly, in sync with his heartbeat, with the croaking of frogs somewhere near their car, with the sound of crickets. Myungsoo breathes through his nose, without a sound, and he reaches out to touch Sungyeol’s skin.
It’s cold. He pulls back like he is burnt, and his eyes are wide before he jumps out of the car, a stick of cigarette in hand.
Myungsoo doesn’t sleep all night, and he keeps his mouth shut as Sungyeol whines because he has to drive again. He can see the older eyeing the now half-empty box on the dashboard, but neither of them brings it up.
where are you, Sungjong asks.
do you have any problems, Woohyun wonders.
let’s talk about this, Dongwoo pleads.
if you don’t come back right this second, Hoya threatens.
please, just come back, Sunggyu tells them tiredly, and Myungsoo switches his phone off. Sungyeol replies to each of them, three lines of laughter in a text, but he rejects all the phone calls that come. "This is all your fault," he accuses, but he’s smiling, and Myungsoo smiles back.
Their manager leaves sixty-seven messages on the first day, and it reaches eighty-five messages halfway through the second. "Just tell us when you are coming back, and we will deal with you two later," the last message says, and Sungyeol looks horrified.
"We are in trouble," Sungyeol groans, but Myungsoo flips his phone and throws it into the plastic bag, along with the garbage.
"Please," he says, "we’ve finished all of our parts in the album and have no schedule in two weeks. They have asked the producers of our dramas to give us a long holiday because of our album preparations too, so there isn't a problem."
Sungyeol doesn’t sound convinced though. "We’re going to get fired," he fake-sobs.
"Don’t be a drama queen," he mumbles, and Sungyeol hits him hard on the head.
South Korea has a lot of gas stations and small stores, Myungsoo muses. It’s convenient for people who are going nowhere like them, and the people there are always fascinating. Only one girl out of the eight he has talked to recognizes them, and even she doesn’t chirp loudly like their fans in the city; her face turns a shade redder when they come in, and she quietly giggles a yes when Sungyeol jokingly asks if she wants their autograph. They pay half-price, and Sungyeol tells her that he thinks she is cute, which only makes her look like she is about to faint.
The journey becomes quieter, and their phones only ring once or twice a day ("Sungjong tells us to take a picture for him," Sungyeol laughs, and Myungsoo secretly snaps one, of Sungyeol singing loudly to the music blasting from the radio Myungsoo accidentally found on day four, when he was bored out of his mind. Sungjong replies that he's jealous, but Myungsoo doesn’t tell Sungyeol). It’s calming, he thinks.
Myungsoo doesn’t miss home.
It’s on day eight (eight days already?) that Sungyeol’s cellphone vibrates against the dashboard. Myungsoo is the only one who notices it because the older one is singing at the top of his lungs, Myungsoo’s freshly-charged-at-the-last-store-they-visit iPod plugged into his ears. The younger cracks up until he can’t breathe, but he sees the light flashing from the phone screen, and he takes it because Sungyeol won’t mind anyway.
It’s his mom. Myungsoo’s laughter dies down, and he ignores Sungyeol’s loud protests as he pauses the song. "It’s your mom," he tells him, and Sungyeol’s frown is identical to his as he takes the call.
Myungsoo can’t hear most of the conversation, but he catches some phrases like ‘sick’ and ‘dad’ and ‘home’ and he feels like throwing up. He waits after Sungyeol turns off the phone and tosses it onto the dashboard, but he doesn’t say anything, so Myungsoo keeps driving.
(his eyes are hard his eyes are teary he’s almost crying don’t cry what’s wrong are you okay)
On the afternoon of day nine, Sungyeol breaks.
They run out of gas before they find another gas station, and it moves and freezes repeatedly before coming to a complete stop. They moan in frustration (and Myungsoo’s the one who gets out of the car because, "I’m driving," the older grinned, so). He lets out a long sigh as the sun burns his skin, sweat already collecting on his neck.
Fuck this, he thinks, and he bends down to say this to Sungyeol, but when he is about to tell him that they can just look for a gas station by feet rather than pushing the car, Sungyeol is crying. It’s not one or two drops that you can pretend you never saw, tears that you can dodge as being a result of yawning. Sungyeol is crying, his face red and his body curved as if it’s about to break, and if he knows that Myungsoo is staring, he doesn’t show it.
The car is quiet. Myungsoo doesn’t move as Sungyeol cries at the driver seat, and none of them say anything as night comes and the moon is seen again. Sungyeol slips into the backseat, silent, and Myungsoo doesn’t give him his jacket. They sleep under a lamp post, dim, and Myungsoo sleeps a dreamless sleep.
The gloomy morning doesn’t come. It’s all sunshine when Myungsoo opens his eyes, bright and hurting, and Myungsoo just knows that it’s the middle of the day. Sungyeol is driving again, big sunglasses hiding his eyes.
He looks around, and realizes that they don’t know the road. "We’re not going back," he breaks the silence, a statement rather than a question. Sungyeol snorts, speeding up.
"Almost too late to give up the end of the world," Sungyeol says, and Myungsoo doesn’t want to admit that he feels relieved.
They both know it’s not the end of the world.
Somehow, they come to an end, and there’s no way they are continuing their journey, at least not by car. It seems like someone's cut the dusty road all of a sudden and just threw a carpet of grass on the hill, and no matter how far they see, it’s all green. Myungsoo stomps on the brake in shock when the road ends, and Sungyeol wakes up from his nap, startled. "What," he yawns, and Myungsoo shrugs, because it’s the end.
It’s the end. "We can’t go further?" Myungsoo shrugs again.
"Seems like it," he answers, just as confused, because it’s kind of anti-climatic. "Maybe we took a wrong turn or something."
Sungyeol opens the door and jumps out, running towards the hill of grass like a child, arms stretched out as if he is an airplane, his scream loud and carefree and just, Sungyeol. Myungsoo turns off the car before he, too, steps out, feels the wind dancing and messing with his hair. The sun is right on top of them, but somehow he can’t feel the heat that usually sets his skin on fire. It’s cool and comfortable, and Myungsoo chuckles when he sees the older trip over nothing, rolling down the hill like a snowball.
There’s a river behind the hill, and Sungyeol, half of his body inside the water, looks dumbfounded. He’s drenched from bottom to top, and he blinks blankly at Myungsoo, who slowly makes his way down the hill, laughing all the way.
"Yah," Sungyeol whines, embarrassed, but Myungsoo laughs harder as he squats down in front of him.
"Cute," he wipes his tear away, and Sungyeol rolls his eyes, splashes him with the ice cold water. "Hey!"
"Cute," Sungyeol grins, with teeth and chubby cheeks and all that, and Myungsoo doesn’t have it in him to be angry. Sungyeol looks like he is sparkling, like a stupid goddamn creature from another world or something, and the crystalline droplets running down his face and his neck and his skin are so beautiful that he can feel his throat drying. Myungsoo feels his brain going into overdrive as he bends down and lifts Sungyeol's chin with two fingers, eyes to eyes, nose to nose, lips against lips.
Sungyeol’s lips are wet. It tastes salty, maybe because they had chips for lunch, maybe because the river is near the sea and the water has salt, or maybe Myungsoo’s ability to taste is gone, along with his ability to breathe. It tastes salty, but he doesn’t dislike it. His ears are numb from how loud his heart is beating, blood rushing through his veins, and his tongue feels hot.
When he opens his eyes, slightly, he can see Sungyeol, with his eyes scrunched close, and there are fireworks under the skin his hands are trailing. He concentrates on breathing; inhale and exhale and inhale; but Sungyeol is gorgeous and beautiful and he is kissing him and it makes him stop.
He regrets it almost immediately. Sungyeol moves forward, following, but Myungsoo touches his cheeks and kisses his eyelids. Sungyeol opens his eyes, dark but bright and satisfied but hungry, and Myungsoo wants to holds him forever.
"That’s-," Sungyeol starts, and Myungsoo starts giggling like an idiot. Like a girl, he thinks, terrified, but he can’t stop, and somehow Sungyeol joins him. In the end, he wonders how trying to get to the end of the world ends up there, at the river, laughing with half their body in the water, not a single care in the world, forehead pressed against each other.
"You are an idiot," Sungyeol touches the side of his neck, so Myungsoo tilts his head to kiss his lips again. "God, I can’t believe you need to be this far from the others to do this," and he pecks the tip of his nose, smiling, because it’s kind of true, in some ways.
They both know it’s not the end of the world, but it feels good enough; Myungsoo won’t change it for anything anyway.
Myungsoo is already in the driver seat once their clothes are dry, and Sungyeol turns on his cellphone (a text: your dad is fine, come back soon). "Home?" Sungyeol asks, his grin cannot be wiped off his face, and Myungsoo intertwines their fingers together on his lap.
"Home is where your heart is," he says, feeling cheesy as fuck, "but yeah. Let’s go home."
Myungsoo/Sungyeol; PG-13; ~2,600w
They are lucky Myungsoo has just come back from Japan and is too lazy to unpack his belongings, because to escape, he thinks, they need to hurry.
A/N: slightly inspired by this. a pretty old fic (two months ago?) that i just need to put out here. you know. get it out of my system. besides, i miss myungyeol ;_; beta'd by the ever-so-lovely aurelynn ♥
It’s during the recording of their first album that Myungsoo doesn’t feel like staying in the dorm. Not in a ‘I’m-tired-I-want-to go-and-play’ way, but more of a ‘I’m-sick-of-this-all-I-want-is-to-escape-reality’ sense. It strikes him like lightning, and he suddenly wakes up from his nap and throws Sungyeol, who is sleeping with his head against his stomach, away. "What in the-," Sungyeol glares at him with sleepy eyes, not really there, and Myungsoo turns off the fan.
"Let’s get away from here," he says. Sungyeol rubs his eyes and yawns.
"Sure," he shrugs, "where do you want to go?"
Myungsoo shakes his head, his heart firm. "No," he tells him, "not like that. Let’s get away from here."
This time, Sungyeol blinks, his movements slow and unsure. "You mean like, go, go?"
"Like go, go," he answers, "to the end of the world."
Just as Sungyeol is about to say how ridiculous he is, that the heat must have been messing with his head, Myungsoo takes his wrist and drags him to his feet, snatching the keys on top of the refrigerator.
They are lucky Myungsoo has just come back from Japan and is too lazy to unpack his belongings, because to escape, he thinks, they need to hurry, and a luggage full of clothes and one toothbrush is more than enough already. Sungyeol nags at him during the first half an hour, telling him the consequences and the reasons why they shouldn’t be doing it, but as Myungsoo speeds up towards the driveway, he rolls the car’s window down and keeps quiet, enjoying the wind against his face. He wears his sunglasses ("Just in case," he says when Myungsoo rolls his eyes) and a beanie, one hand stretched out with his head leaning against it. His cheeks look uneven, and Myungsoo occasionally laughs at how weird he looks.
"Your laugh is weird," Sungyeol always retorts, half-asleep. Myungsoo smiles at the road in front of him, his hand itching to reach out and touch Sungyeol’s face.
"We need a gas station," Myungsoo voices out three hours into their journey. Sungyeol rolls his eyes, but he sits straight and keeps an eye out.
It’s one and a half hour later, the line nearing the red E sign, that Sungyeol points at something. "It looks like a gas station for me," he says, so Myungsoo speeds up because at this rate, they might need to push their own car.
Turns out Sungyeol has good eyes, because the old man sleeping on the chair beside the petrol tank laughs loudly as he mentions how rare it is to have two good-looking guys pull over at that place. He keeps patting Myungsoo’s shoulder, his rotten teeth gleaming under the sunset, and he wonders what Sungyeol buys at the convenient store that he takes that much time.
Sungyeol throws two bags of snacks into the back seat and laughs his high-pitched laugh at the old man jokes. He grins widely as the old man hands Myungsoo their change, not letting go before a long and tight handshake. "You make a good couple," the old man raises his eyebrow playfully, and Myungsoo frowns.
"Hey, Sungyeol," Myungsoo calls, and Sungyeol, busy with his orange popsicle in one hand and steering wheel on the other, hums. "That old man just now-"
"What about him?" Sungyeol turns to face him, and Myungsoo hits his arm because he’s not looking at the road, eyes on the road, please.
"He said," Myungsoo says, and he turns to look at Sungyeol under the ray of sun, right across the horizon they're headed for, bright and yellow and kind of orange and, just, breathtaking. Gorgeous? You make a good couple, he recalls, and he smiles inwardly because people from the countryside are surprisingly wittier than he expected. "I don’t know. I forgot."
Sungyeol snorts. "You’re an idiot."
"He told us to come again though," Myungsoo says again, turning to reach for the bag of chips in the plastic bag.
"I doubt we will ever be allowed to touch a car again when we get home," Sungyeol chuckles, and Myungsoo laughs loudly because that might be true.
They don’t manage to find a hotel, but they find yet another convenience store. It looks old and dusty and scary as hell, but at least the clerk there says that they are open 24 hours and there will always be someone on shift. Myungsoo thinks it’s funny because they don’t find a single house, let alone a city near there, so where do these people who work there come from? Sungyeol, however, tells him not to ask something he doesn’t want an answer to because it’s creepy.
They sleep with their legs folded in the car, Myungsoo in the front and Sungyeol at the back. The older keeps whining that it’s cold, that he misses blankets, so Myungsoo throws him his jacket and goes to buy cigarettes from the convenient store, along with a lighter.
"I didn’t know you smoke," Sungyeol eyes him like he is a clown, and Myungsoo takes a deep breath.
"I didn’t, but it’s too cold," he answers, blowing a smoke and the tar feels like it’s clawing at his throat, stabbing his lungs. "Fuck," he coughs, his eyes teary, "and now, I swear I won’t do this again. Remind me not to do this again."
Sungyeol’s laugh is softer than usual, three seconds away from the tempting realm of sleep. "Don’t do that again." Myungsoo almost throws his box of cigarette to the back, but from the corner of his eyes he sees Sungyeol breathing slowly, in sync with his heartbeat, with the croaking of frogs somewhere near their car, with the sound of crickets. Myungsoo breathes through his nose, without a sound, and he reaches out to touch Sungyeol’s skin.
It’s cold. He pulls back like he is burnt, and his eyes are wide before he jumps out of the car, a stick of cigarette in hand.
Myungsoo doesn’t sleep all night, and he keeps his mouth shut as Sungyeol whines because he has to drive again. He can see the older eyeing the now half-empty box on the dashboard, but neither of them brings it up.
where are you, Sungjong asks.
do you have any problems, Woohyun wonders.
let’s talk about this, Dongwoo pleads.
if you don’t come back right this second, Hoya threatens.
please, just come back, Sunggyu tells them tiredly, and Myungsoo switches his phone off. Sungyeol replies to each of them, three lines of laughter in a text, but he rejects all the phone calls that come. "This is all your fault," he accuses, but he’s smiling, and Myungsoo smiles back.
Their manager leaves sixty-seven messages on the first day, and it reaches eighty-five messages halfway through the second. "Just tell us when you are coming back, and we will deal with you two later," the last message says, and Sungyeol looks horrified.
"We are in trouble," Sungyeol groans, but Myungsoo flips his phone and throws it into the plastic bag, along with the garbage.
"Please," he says, "we’ve finished all of our parts in the album and have no schedule in two weeks. They have asked the producers of our dramas to give us a long holiday because of our album preparations too, so there isn't a problem."
Sungyeol doesn’t sound convinced though. "We’re going to get fired," he fake-sobs.
"Don’t be a drama queen," he mumbles, and Sungyeol hits him hard on the head.
South Korea has a lot of gas stations and small stores, Myungsoo muses. It’s convenient for people who are going nowhere like them, and the people there are always fascinating. Only one girl out of the eight he has talked to recognizes them, and even she doesn’t chirp loudly like their fans in the city; her face turns a shade redder when they come in, and she quietly giggles a yes when Sungyeol jokingly asks if she wants their autograph. They pay half-price, and Sungyeol tells her that he thinks she is cute, which only makes her look like she is about to faint.
The journey becomes quieter, and their phones only ring once or twice a day ("Sungjong tells us to take a picture for him," Sungyeol laughs, and Myungsoo secretly snaps one, of Sungyeol singing loudly to the music blasting from the radio Myungsoo accidentally found on day four, when he was bored out of his mind. Sungjong replies that he's jealous, but Myungsoo doesn’t tell Sungyeol). It’s calming, he thinks.
Myungsoo doesn’t miss home.
It’s on day eight (eight days already?) that Sungyeol’s cellphone vibrates against the dashboard. Myungsoo is the only one who notices it because the older one is singing at the top of his lungs, Myungsoo’s freshly-charged-at-the-last-store-they-visit iPod plugged into his ears. The younger cracks up until he can’t breathe, but he sees the light flashing from the phone screen, and he takes it because Sungyeol won’t mind anyway.
It’s his mom. Myungsoo’s laughter dies down, and he ignores Sungyeol’s loud protests as he pauses the song. "It’s your mom," he tells him, and Sungyeol’s frown is identical to his as he takes the call.
Myungsoo can’t hear most of the conversation, but he catches some phrases like ‘sick’ and ‘dad’ and ‘home’ and he feels like throwing up. He waits after Sungyeol turns off the phone and tosses it onto the dashboard, but he doesn’t say anything, so Myungsoo keeps driving.
(his eyes are hard his eyes are teary he’s almost crying don’t cry what’s wrong are you okay)
On the afternoon of day nine, Sungyeol breaks.
They run out of gas before they find another gas station, and it moves and freezes repeatedly before coming to a complete stop. They moan in frustration (and Myungsoo’s the one who gets out of the car because, "I’m driving," the older grinned, so). He lets out a long sigh as the sun burns his skin, sweat already collecting on his neck.
Fuck this, he thinks, and he bends down to say this to Sungyeol, but when he is about to tell him that they can just look for a gas station by feet rather than pushing the car, Sungyeol is crying. It’s not one or two drops that you can pretend you never saw, tears that you can dodge as being a result of yawning. Sungyeol is crying, his face red and his body curved as if it’s about to break, and if he knows that Myungsoo is staring, he doesn’t show it.
The car is quiet. Myungsoo doesn’t move as Sungyeol cries at the driver seat, and none of them say anything as night comes and the moon is seen again. Sungyeol slips into the backseat, silent, and Myungsoo doesn’t give him his jacket. They sleep under a lamp post, dim, and Myungsoo sleeps a dreamless sleep.
The gloomy morning doesn’t come. It’s all sunshine when Myungsoo opens his eyes, bright and hurting, and Myungsoo just knows that it’s the middle of the day. Sungyeol is driving again, big sunglasses hiding his eyes.
He looks around, and realizes that they don’t know the road. "We’re not going back," he breaks the silence, a statement rather than a question. Sungyeol snorts, speeding up.
"Almost too late to give up the end of the world," Sungyeol says, and Myungsoo doesn’t want to admit that he feels relieved.
They both know it’s not the end of the world.
Somehow, they come to an end, and there’s no way they are continuing their journey, at least not by car. It seems like someone's cut the dusty road all of a sudden and just threw a carpet of grass on the hill, and no matter how far they see, it’s all green. Myungsoo stomps on the brake in shock when the road ends, and Sungyeol wakes up from his nap, startled. "What," he yawns, and Myungsoo shrugs, because it’s the end.
It’s the end. "We can’t go further?" Myungsoo shrugs again.
"Seems like it," he answers, just as confused, because it’s kind of anti-climatic. "Maybe we took a wrong turn or something."
Sungyeol opens the door and jumps out, running towards the hill of grass like a child, arms stretched out as if he is an airplane, his scream loud and carefree and just, Sungyeol. Myungsoo turns off the car before he, too, steps out, feels the wind dancing and messing with his hair. The sun is right on top of them, but somehow he can’t feel the heat that usually sets his skin on fire. It’s cool and comfortable, and Myungsoo chuckles when he sees the older trip over nothing, rolling down the hill like a snowball.
There’s a river behind the hill, and Sungyeol, half of his body inside the water, looks dumbfounded. He’s drenched from bottom to top, and he blinks blankly at Myungsoo, who slowly makes his way down the hill, laughing all the way.
"Yah," Sungyeol whines, embarrassed, but Myungsoo laughs harder as he squats down in front of him.
"Cute," he wipes his tear away, and Sungyeol rolls his eyes, splashes him with the ice cold water. "Hey!"
"Cute," Sungyeol grins, with teeth and chubby cheeks and all that, and Myungsoo doesn’t have it in him to be angry. Sungyeol looks like he is sparkling, like a stupid goddamn creature from another world or something, and the crystalline droplets running down his face and his neck and his skin are so beautiful that he can feel his throat drying. Myungsoo feels his brain going into overdrive as he bends down and lifts Sungyeol's chin with two fingers, eyes to eyes, nose to nose, lips against lips.
Sungyeol’s lips are wet. It tastes salty, maybe because they had chips for lunch, maybe because the river is near the sea and the water has salt, or maybe Myungsoo’s ability to taste is gone, along with his ability to breathe. It tastes salty, but he doesn’t dislike it. His ears are numb from how loud his heart is beating, blood rushing through his veins, and his tongue feels hot.
When he opens his eyes, slightly, he can see Sungyeol, with his eyes scrunched close, and there are fireworks under the skin his hands are trailing. He concentrates on breathing; inhale and exhale and inhale; but Sungyeol is gorgeous and beautiful and he is kissing him and it makes him stop.
He regrets it almost immediately. Sungyeol moves forward, following, but Myungsoo touches his cheeks and kisses his eyelids. Sungyeol opens his eyes, dark but bright and satisfied but hungry, and Myungsoo wants to holds him forever.
"That’s-," Sungyeol starts, and Myungsoo starts giggling like an idiot. Like a girl, he thinks, terrified, but he can’t stop, and somehow Sungyeol joins him. In the end, he wonders how trying to get to the end of the world ends up there, at the river, laughing with half their body in the water, not a single care in the world, forehead pressed against each other.
"You are an idiot," Sungyeol touches the side of his neck, so Myungsoo tilts his head to kiss his lips again. "God, I can’t believe you need to be this far from the others to do this," and he pecks the tip of his nose, smiling, because it’s kind of true, in some ways.
They both know it’s not the end of the world, but it feels good enough; Myungsoo won’t change it for anything anyway.
Myungsoo is already in the driver seat once their clothes are dry, and Sungyeol turns on his cellphone (a text: your dad is fine, come back soon). "Home?" Sungyeol asks, his grin cannot be wiped off his face, and Myungsoo intertwines their fingers together on his lap.
"Home is where your heart is," he says, feeling cheesy as fuck, "but yeah. Let’s go home."