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“A forget-me-not.”
“Wrong,” it comes out with a laugh, more of a delighted one than a mocking one. Calling him adorable without actually saying the word. The dainty blue flower taps against his nose in a playful gesture and he huffs.
“A hydrangea,” he tries again, voice almost whiny now.
“No,” Taehyun's eyes are sparkling with amusement, and maybe with fondness as well, but Kai is too disgruntled at the moment to be able to tell. “But I’m happy to know you remember that word.”
When Kai swipes at him, Taehyun just catches his hand and smiles at him.
“Are you giving up?”
Kai frees his hand with a frown and a pout. “No.”
It’s a matter of his pride now; maybe it started as a playful challenge, but Kai can't fathom losing now, in the face of Taehyun's teasing eyes.
“Then try again,” he says, raising the blue flower between them, twirling it this way and that in front of his eyes. “What kind of a flower is it?”
Kai bites his lip, no words coming to his mind at all. His mind is busy trying to catalogue every single thing about how Taehyun looks right now, bathed in golden sunlight, surrounded by flowers, happy and warm and beautiful and frustrating, so close yet keeping his lips that awful blue flower away.
“One that is nowhere as pretty as you.”
It makes Taehyun narrow his eyes playfully, but Kai doesn’t back down, staring back fearlessly. A delicate tension curls in between them.
“I won’t let you win just because you called me pretty,” Taehyun informs him in the end. Kai wonders if he should be bothered by Taehyun putting aside his desire to kiss Kai in favour of keeping his pride so easily; but then again, that is part of why Kai wants to kiss him so badly.
Not to mention that he himself could have tackled Taehyun into the grass ages ago if he really wanted to, if he set aside his own pride just so he could express physically the painfully sweet swelling in his chest that increases every moment they spend under the sun together, every time Taehyun smiles, or his eyes soften in a way that makes Kai’s heart attempt to beat out of its confines.
“It’s a marigold,” he says, a little desperately, and Taehyun laughs again before falling onto his back, laying the tall yellow flowers behind him flat, the petals fanning around his head like a bright halo.
“Marigolds aren’t blue.”
With determination setting his jaw, he climbs over Taehyun, kneeling over him while he lays there basking in the sun.
“It’s a rose.”
Taehyun's entire face scrunches up in the widest smile yet. “Kai.”
He puts his hands next to Taehyun's head, leans over him. “It’s a sunflower.”
This time, he just narrows his eyes at Kai, like he knows where this is going - it wouldn't surprise Kai if he did.
Kai drops himself further down, raises one hand to touch the side of Taehyun's neck, caresses his throat with the pad of his thumb. “It’s a poppy.”
He watches as the playfulness drains out of Taehyun's face slowly, replaced by fond wonder. Everything about him is still so painfully beautiful.
“A lily. A daisy. A dandelion. A carnation,” he mumbles the names one by one, as he leans closer and closer to Taehyun's lips. He’s almost arrived at his destination by the time Taehyun reaches out a hand to press against his chest to stop him. He tries not to let the sting of disappointment hurt him too much.
Then Taehyun's other hand comes up again, to tap the flower against his nose again.
“It’s a violet, you dummy,” he says softly, fondly, then grabs him by the chin, the flower still in his hand, fragrant now that its petals are crushed against his skin, but it doesn’t matter, because Taehyun pulls him down to kiss him while he rises to meet him, and his skin is sun-kissed and warm, his lips are soft, and he tastes like summer. He tastes like every single one of the laughs he has let out, heady and sweet like honey, and he kisses like patience and indulgence.
Taehyun kisses like he belongs here, like a mirage in a field of flowers on a sunny day. Kai feels like he’s holding gently onto a dream.
⁂🌼🌼🌼⁂
Taehyun's lying in the grass again. The sun is warm and the wind is cold, but he doesn't mind; the sunlight on his skin is like gentle kisses during winter, warming him despite the chill in the air. It's peaceful out here – in the quiet that's only broken by the cries of birds and rustle of tall grass, he can allow his mind to wander; he could leave his body behind completely, if he wanted to, and go anywhere. The thought brings him incredible peace, even as he doesn't give into the urge this time.
He doesn't need to get away today – on this day, his limbs and his mind rest easily. There's this dormant happiness lingering under his skin, in the corners of his mouth; like an itch, almost subconscious but demanding his attention in short, blissful bursts. Taehyun knows where it comes from; doesn't think he could hide its origin from himself if he tried anymore.
Kai. It comes on his heels, he carries it in his fingertips, it rests on his lips, staining Taehyun's skin like lipstick with every brush. Just the promise of him can awaken it, rippling Taehyun's blood into little waves that come before the large, swelling tide.
Then he hears him, footsteps soft but loud in the silence, Taehyun's heart picking up more the closer he gets; he keeps his eyes shut, mouth resting in a not-quite smile. Maybe Kai won't be fooled into thinking he is sleeping, but him pretending to be is teasing enough in itself – it’s one of his favourite things to do; messing with Kai, making him fight to keep his pride, to regain it. They are both prideful people after all, for better or for worse – and Kai never fails to try and make him flounder right back, although their methods are quite different.
Kai comes all the way up to him, then pauses; Taehyun fights the urge to open his eyes and check if he’s managed to fool him. He can be patient – especially if his reward for doing so will be seeing his lover flustered.
After a long, quiet moment, Kai drops into the grass next to him before leaning over him – a chill enters Taehyun’s body where he blocks the sun with his shadow, but he stubbornly refuses to acknowledge it. Soon enough, he’ll be able to pull Kai down on top of him, replace the warmth of the sun with the warmth of his body, and in some ways, he knows that it will feel even sweeter.
Soon enough.
His resolve crumbles when a strange softness tickles his nose, startling him, his eyes flying open, making Kai laugh out loud at his expression. Taehyun frowns, both because of the sunlight hitting his eyes and the clear glee on his lover’s face. Ignoring his sour expression, Kai leans down to kiss him, brief but gentle.
“Did I wake you?” he asks, and his voice is so painfully tender Taehyun can’t help himself, reaching up to hold his face in his hands so he can pull him down into another kiss.
“Yes,” Taehyun lies once they part, narrowing his eyes at Kai. “I was having the sweetest dream.”
Clearly aware Taehyun is lying, Kai hums, indulging him, stroking Taehyun’s wrist with his thumb. “Was I in it?”
“No,” but he can’t help the grin that grows on his face, giving the game away.
Kai pouts at him, childish and exaggerated; Taheyun has to swallow back a laugh, press his lips together to keep those swelling tides of joy locked inside his chest; for now. “No? Haven’t I done enough to earn your heart yet? I even brought you a gift today!”
His mouth falling open a little, Taehyun lets go of his face, eyes wide with curiosity. “A gift? What is it?”
With the widest grin Taehyun has ever seen him sport, Kai lifts his hand, which is holding a bundle of small, delicate blue flowers. He brings the bundle between them, tapping them against Taehyun’s nose, causing that same ticklish sensation from earlier.
The dots connect, and Taehyun grabs Kai’s wrist with both his hands, drawing it away to the right distance for him to inspect the flowers, the five tiny petals surrounding a yellow centre. Taehyun wants to touch the petals, but he’s too afraid he’d crush them, so he rubs the pad of his thumb over Kai’s pulse instead. In a way, it feels just as delicate as the flowers.
“Are those-”
“Forget-me-nots.”
A smirk curls Taehyun’s mouth. “You know what those look like?”
“I do,” Kai replies with this iron-clad confidence that melts the smirk into a smile immediately. “I stole your almanach from the porch seat to make sure I got it right.”
That gives Taehyun pause; not the fact that Kai stole his book – he does not doubt that the next time he goes to sit outside, he’ll find it back in its place under the hand-embroidered cushion – but the fact that Kai cared; that Kai bothered. He could have picked up any wildflowers he found on his way to Taehyun and presented him with those, not knowing a single one of their names, and Taehyun would probably be touched by it all the same, but Kai went one step further to learn about something that is important to him, that he himself cares about enough to study it.
Every time he feels trapped, alone or upset, Taehyun goes outside to the porch seat and leafs through the almanach, tracing the illustrations with his fingers, learning the names until it gets too dark and his eyes get too tired to continue. It’s never quite as peaceful as being out here, among the flowers, with his lover by his side, but it’s the closest he can get.
He looks into Kai’s eyes – they’re not as vivid; not as blue as the flowers, but they’re bright in their own right, although he can clearly read the hesitation in them. Kai’s worried, unsure whether Taehyun will appreciate his gift or not.
“Why forget-me-nots?” Taehyun asks first – he wants to reassure Kai, but his hesitance is also adorable; and he’s genuinely curious.
A shadow passes over Kai’s face; his gentle smile tightens at the corners of his mouth. When Taehyun’s hands don’t stop his own from moving, he brings the flowers down again, dragging them over Taehyun’s nose, over his lips; his eyes trace the path of them like he’s committing it to memory. It feels like a moment they should both remember for a long time, somehow, and Taehyun is afraid to breathe.
“In the almanach, it said…” Kai starts, and Taehyun knows where this is going. It’s one of his favourite pages in the entire book, after all – he can’t help but wonder if Kai knows, if he somehow saw how worn the page was when compared to the others.
“True love,” he interrupts, quietly, not daring to say it any louder, even in the privacy nature provides – them. “They’re a symbol of true love.”
Kai doesn’t react or answer; just watches Taehyun’s lips, the flowers resting beneath them. Taehyun doesn’t blame him, all words escaping him as well. Cold wind wraps around them, a cloud temporarily blocking the sun. It feels symbolic, in a way, but the chill shocks Taehyun back into motion.
He reaches for the flowers, pulling some of them out and tucking them behind his ear, then doing the same to Kai. The entire time, his lover’s eyes are imploring, but Taehyun doesn’t know how to answer them in any other way. He secures the flowers in Kai’s hair, then holds his face again, not even having to pull to bring him into a kiss. This one’s slower, deliberate, and lasts all the way until the sun peeks back out from behind its cover. The warm glow bathes Kai’s whole face in gold when he pulls back; he looks perfect like this, like the embodiment of sunshine. Like Taehyun could capture this moment in a painting and call him the sun itself. Helios in Love, watercolour.
A smile grows on his face even though the vision of Kai’s face blurs as his eyes fill with tears.
⁂🌼🌼🌼⁂
Summer is a little like love. It’s warm and full of life; it can be scorching, leaving the land dried out and aching in its wake; it brings sunshine as well as storms and brisk showers, but even those are sweet. Even thunder and pelting rain are more beautiful in summer; even anger, even sadness feels different when you’re in love – when there’s always the promise of another sunny day on the horizon.
Taehyun gets quiet some days, and his laughs don’t ring like bells in the air between them and he doesn’t speak about his passions like a man possessed and he doesn’t kiss like there’s honey permanently lingering in Kai’s mouth and he’s crazed with hunger, addicted to the sweetness.
And it hurts every time; even though the pain bringing the silence about isn’t Kai’s own. He feels it in the press of Taehyun’s palm against his. In the reluctant press of his lips against Kai’s. If he could, he’d touch him for hours, kiss him until he sucked all of it out like it’s snake venom coursing through Taehyun’s veins, poisoning his mood; but he knows Taehyun doesn’t want him to. That hurts as well.
They’re lying in the shade of a tree today, Kai’s head in Taehyun’s lap while he holds his hand and traces shapes into his palm. Kai thinks maybe they’re words, and maybe if he paid enough attention, maybe if he knew enough learned words he’d be able to make them all out and figure out what Taehyun needs from him. As it is right now, all he can do is try to read the too-still expression on his face.
“Have you spoken to your father?”
Taehyun’s finger stills, dead-centre of Kai’s palm. He swallows, then shakes his head. Kai believes him. “He hasn’t returned home yet.”
That’s just as well; his presence always makes these moods so frequent, and Kai is fumbling in the face of them as is. He takes hold of Taehyun’s fingers, then brings his hand down to his mouth to press a kiss to it.
“Good.”
He can see Taehyun try and fail to smile. His hand cups Kai’s face, strokes over his cheekbone, then leaves him completely as Taeyhun leans back against the tree, looking up at the sky through the canopy of leaves.
“Good,” he repeats in a barely-there voice.
The air fills with nothing but the rustling of leaves and singing of birds. Kai wishes it was a peaceful quiet, but to him it just feels filled with everything that’s kept unspoken between the two of them; and there’s much, there’s always so much he’d want to say to Taehyun, that he’d have liked to hear him say in return. Staying quiet in a moment like this, with hurt clearly lodged in Taehyun’s chest, feels like the last nail in the coffin, like they’re crossing a boundary – betraying their love with their silence.
“What is it, then?”
There’s a bundle of pressed forget-me-nots between the pages of Taehyun’s notebook, the one laying in the grass by his hip. They mean more than Kai would ever dare to say, and he knows he cannot bring himself to betray them, not today.
Taehyun hums, sounding a little confused, blinking down at him – he was far away again, probably, the way he sometimes gets, more often than not in moments like these. When he registers the concern in Kai’s eyes, his expression ripples strangely before settling back into its peaceful, rigid stillness.
“Nothing, really,” and Kai can hear the lie in the lightness of his tone. His fingers find their way into Kai’s hair, stroking it back away from his face, restless and trembling slightly.
Kai refuses to respond; refuses to budge until Taehyun gives him a proper answer.
With a sigh, Taehyun speaks up again. “I’ve just been having… some useless thoughts again.” He presses his lips together, and glances at his notebook. “I was writing again; there’s a song that won’t leave my head, so I’ve been trying to put it on paper the past few days.” Once again, he tries to smile, and this time he’s a bit more successful. “You know how I get.”
He fights against his own face not to react – as talented as Taehyun is with his words, with his art, whether it’s a poem or a song or a letter he slips into the pocket of Kai’s jacket to say things they could never say out loud, Kai can’t help but resent his strokes of muse a little; they always come on the tide of dark moods, of silence and Taehyun leaving him even in their rare moments alone together to let his mind wander who knows where. They come with ‘useless thoughts’, as Taehyun calls them, the ones he dismisses with admirable vehemence once his dark moods pass but that clearly suffocate him with their weight while they linger.
Maybe Taehyun knows how much Kai hates when the muses embrace him; maybe that’s why he was so reluctant to tell him.
“What’s the song about?”
Instead of answering, Taehyun watches him for a torturously long moment before picking up his notebook, opening it but not angling it so that Kai can read it or handing it to him. He thumbs through it instead, the pages rustling like the trees overhead. Eventually, he clearly finds what he’s looking for, and he traces something on the page with a careful finger before taking a deep breath.
“It’s about the sunrise on the last day,” he says then, to the pages of his notebook instead of to Kai, and Kai frowns.
“Last day of what?”
“Everything good.”
They look at each other; Taeyhun’s eyes are heavy and sad, his grip on his notebook a little too tight. He looks like he hasn’t been sleeping well, maybe up all night writing lines and crossing them out.
Kai sits up and peers into the notebook, feeling that Taehyun not snapping it shut immediately is enough of a permission for him to look. He can scarcely read what he’s written down, his handwriting messy and full of scratched out words, additions in the margins and shreds of melodies. What he can recognize clearly is the flower pressed between the pages the notebook is open on. It’s blue, but it’s not the forget-me-nots Kai gifted him, or the violet Taehyun teased him with – he might not be a skilled herbalist, but he can tell that much.
“It’s beautiful.”
“The song?” Taehyun sounds confused; Kai shakes his head.
“The flower.”
“Oh,” Taehyun traces it with his index finger, the same gesture he made earlier.
“What is it?”
Kai almost expects Taehyun to ask him to guess, but instead he looks up to look him straight in the eye. “It’s a hyacinth. My mother brought me a bundle of them the other day.”
“Does it mean something, too? Or did you just like it?”
“Of course it means something,” Taehyun retorts, but it’s much weaker than it would usually be. “They all mean something. But I just liked this one. It inspired me to write the song.”
Kai’s eyes drop down to the flower. It’s delicate, and beautiful, yet he resents it all of a sudden, knowing it probably triggered all of this – or maybe it was just the last straw, and Taehyun’s descent into the darkness was once again inevitable. Even then, it was the harbinger of it, and Kai now can’t help but regard it with bitterness.
“I wanted to gift it to you, once I was done with the song,” Taehyun adds, now looking down at it too; his eyes are the gentlest they’ve been all day. “You could put it in your journal.”
“Why?” He can’t help the furrow in his brow then; he wants nothing to do with the hyacinth.
“To remind you of me.” Taehyun gives him the smallest of smiles. “I have your flowers in my book - will you have mine in yours?”
Some part of him wants to refuse, to ask him to give him any flower but the hyacinth, but the biggest part of him knows that he cannot say no – that it would be selfish of him not to accept it, just because it brought with itself this terrible melancholy. It was a part of Taehyun, too, and maybe he could use a reminder of that. Taehyun is beautiful, and sometimes he’s delicate, and sometimes he’s blue.
“Of course.”
Taehyun smiles, genuinely smiles, and it’s worth it. Kai’s breath catches in his throat, but he fights through it.
“Will you let me hold you?”
That makes Taehyun’s eyes widen, but he nods slowly, and moves away from the tree. Before he can ask, Kai slips behind him and gathers him up into his arms, guiding the both of them to lay back. He’s always loved this; feeling all of Taehyun against him, being able to wrap him up in his arms, let Taehyun’s warmth seep into his bones, memorise the shape of him, the rhythm of his breaths.
He wants to say it, more than anything – how much he loves him; how much he’d do, just to bring a shred of happiness, of sunlight into his world that is so often plagued by storms.
Symbolic yet unwelcome, thunder rolls in the distance and Taehyun huddles closer despite how close they already are.
“Do you want to go home?” Kai asks into his hair.
“Not yet,” Taehyun replies, barely audible under the rumble of the coming storm.
⁂🌼🌼🌼⁂
They’re taking a walk; Taehyun’s in front of Kai, telling him about his studies, about the poems he’s read in the time they haven’t seen each other, while Kai hangs back, looking out at the garden.
It’s not an unfamiliar situation for them, as rare as them choosing the garden over the open fields is. Taehyun loves the garden behind Kai’s house, and Kai minds hanging around his home less than Taehyun does. Every now and then, especially when Taehyun’s favourite flowers are in bloom, Kai sneaks Taehyun through the side gate and they just walk through it together until they get too tired to stay on their feet.
Taehyun finishes retelling Kai the story of Orpheus and Eurydice the way Ovid described it in his Metamorphoses, then pauses, halting his steps as well to reach out and brush his fingers over the dahlia blossoms in full bloom. Kai looks surprised by his sudden distraction, and Taehyun feels a little guilty knowing that Kai will probably never understand why he needs to take a deep breath before saying his next words.
“He wrote about Apollo and Hyacinthus, too.”
“Hyacinthus?” Kai tilts his head at him. They’re close, but not close enough to be inappropriate. Taehyun wants to hold his hand but caresses the dahlias instead. “Like the flower?”
He nods. “According to the myth, they’re named after him. He was dear to Apollo – in one way or another,” they exchange soft smiles, and Taehyun looks down at the flowers again. “But one day, when they’re competing in throwing the discus, the one Apollo throws bounces back and strikes Hyacinthus in the head, and Apollo is unable to save him.” He doesn’t look up to Kai’s face; keeps a placid smile on his face. It’s just a story like any other. “And from where his blood soaked into the ground blooms a flower.”
“The hyacinth.”
Kai’s voice is unreadable; Taehyun hums in agreement.
“I knew I didn’t like it for a reason.”
Taehyun laughs, taken aback by the comment, finally looking up at Kai, who has an adorably unhappy pout on his face. Unable to help himself, he reaches up to his shoulders to rest his hands on them – it’s an innocent gesture. It’s appropriate. “Did you?” Kai shrugs and Taehyun smiles; he still took it – because Taehyun felt kinship with it, with the beauty and love and tragedy it represents. “Did it remind you of the old times then, my Apollo? Did it bring back memories of an old, late lover?”
It fills him with a strange swelling everywhere under his skin to call him that; a god, the sun, the one who leads the muses, who fills Taehyun with sunlight and inspiration, beautiful, tangible yet barely reachable. A man whose love spells magic and tragedy.
Kai’s hands twitch visibly with the need to wrap themselves around him but he resists. “I have never looked at anyone but you.”
There’s a burning itch in every single one of his muscles to wrap his arms around Kai’s neck, bring their faces close; to have this conversation the way they should – like lovers, breathing in the air from each other’s lungs.
“Am I your Hyacinthus, then?” Does Kai see it the same way Taehyun does? Is he aware that loving him will inevitably prove to be fatal one day?
Kai’s eyes are worried again; Taehyun doesn’t like it when they look like that. He lets his hands fall off Kai’s shoulders and turns around to keep walking – Kai’s hands brush his, like they want to hold onto them but don’t ever grip them.
He’s walking closer now, clearly focused on Taehyun and not the flowers. “I’ve always,” he speaks almost desperately, like he wants to fix a mistake he hasn’t made. “Imagined you more like a princess of the ancient times; like an Ariadne – like Helen of Troy.”
It makes him laugh, and he glances at Kai over his shoulder. “Me? Really?”
Kai nods quickly. “Something about you just… makes me think of you standing on a cliff above a sea while your beloved’s ships sail forth to conquer.”
Taehyun laughs more; it’s a delirious vision, yet one that’s all too easy to imagine – him having to say goodbye, him having to watch his beloved leave for greater things, for glorious conquests. Knowing they’re going to be the whole length of seas away and may never return.
“Am I your Penelope then? The always faithful wife? Dozens of suitors in her house but still waiting for her husband to return, hoping he’ll come back to her?”
Kai is strangely quiet; they come to the shade of a tree, and he does tug at Taehyun’s hand, then, keeping them partially obscured from the windows of the house by its branches. His hand is so warm around Taehyun’s, like a hot brand after so long of him not being able to hold it.
“Would you?”
Taehyun swallows. “Would I what?”
“Be that loyal to me.” Kai’s eyes are solemn; serious. A sudden fear constricts Taehyun’s chest. “Wait.”
With his face covered with the shadow, Kai doesn’t look like Helios; doesn’t look like Apollo. He looks older; more tired. More wary of the answer he’s about to receive.
“Why? Are you planning to leave me?” His voice is steady, but he can’t keep the accusatory edge out of it. It hurts too much; cuts too deep for him to not cut right back.
Kai shakes his head, twists his lying mouth. “No; never.” He squeezes Taehyun’s hand.
Months, or maybe something over a year ago, Taehyun went to visit Beomgyu; he’ll never forget how pale his friend was, curled in his wingback chair with a cup of tea that had gone cold hours before. He barely spoke; there was nothing for either of them to say, really. Beomgyu’s own lover had left for the military, and his return was less than certain, if he even meant to come back to Beomgyu’s arms.
“They never mean to leave,” he told Taehyun right before the door closed behind him, voice bitter and resentful.
Taehyun can see it in Kai’s eyes. He can see he doesn’t mean his words when he says them; can tell that he wishes he could.
But since our destinies prevent us you shall always be with me, and you shall dwell upon my care-filled lips. The lyre struck by my hand, and my true songs will always celebrate you.
He can feel the tears stinging his eyes, and he knows it’s the only reason why Kai risks leaning down to kiss him, why he dares to pull him into a hug. Taehyun buries his face in his shoulder.
Every poem he writes, every song he sings, it will always be for this; to capture at least a fraction of the sunlight he feels when he’s resting in Kai’s arms. The abandoned Ariadne, the longing Penelope. Hyacinthus, sentenced to death by a cruel twist of fate.
⁂🌼🌼🌼⁂
Taehyun sits on his porch with his almanach open on his lap. Kai’s hands are full of flowers.
“I love you.”
Neither of them moves; the inside of Kai’s mouth feels sticky with the words he just let out, but sweet, like his tongue is coated with honey, with the sweet nectar of relief. He said it. He finally, finally said it. With his words; not his actions, or bunches of flowers – though his haphazard bouquet still rests in his hands. His chest buzzes with it; with how true it is, how deep into the marrow of his bones it’s managed to seep. He loves Taehyun with every single breath he takes and Taehyun finally knows.
Ever so slowly, Taehyun closes the almanach, then glances at the front door of his house. All the lights inside are off, but his hands still wring together on top of the book cover when he looks back at Kai. His eyes are big, but they’re neither happy, nor surprised. They’re strangely empty, like vast night skies.
“Are you leaving me?” He speaks quietly, calmly. He sounds resigned.
And Kai knows, has known since their talk in the garden, that Taehyun will never trust him to stay, not after what happened to their friends, especially not while he’s still gripped by the muses; while his home is enough of a prison to exile him to the porch again. So he isn’t surprised, and tries his best not to be hurt, even as a heavy weight settles in his stomach.
“Taehyun, I said I love you.”
“I heard.” Taehyun’s voice is curt, biting.
“Don’t you love me, too?” He just wants to hear it; just once. Even if Taehyun’s father bursts through the door right afterwards and they never see each other again; he wants to hear those words come out of Taehyun’s mouth.
But Taehyun doesn’t do it; he puts the almanach to the side, not even bothering to cover it with the usual pillow, preparing to stand. “I can’t do it, Kai. I can’t be your Penelope. I can’t love you and lose you. It would kill me; I’d rather you killed me than left me after promising to love me.”
He stands up then, and in that instant, he is not a princess or a mortal companion to a god, he’s something formidable; something that hurts to look at. Something so powerful, Kai was maybe foolish to try to hold it in his two all too human hands. A force of nature, hidden under soft skin and pretty smiles, under pearly laughter and a penchant for flowers.
Yet he hesitates; Kai expects him to walk through the door without looking back, but he hesitates – his eyes fall on the flowers in Kai’s hands, and Kai hands them over when he reaches for them without second thought. Taehyun inspects them, the roses, a sunflower and a primrose. Passion, adoration, and desperation.
‘I can’t live without you’ were the words next to the primrose in the almanach. Young yet devoted love.
Taehyun plucks the primrose out, twirling it between two fingers, then staring right into Kai’s eyes. He stares back; he knows his eyes are begging – his entire body is begging, every ounce of blood in his veins calling out to him, asking Taehyun to reconsider.
“Please keep my flowers,” Taehyun says then, quiety. “I will keep yours.”
And he can do nothing but nod in the face of this storm; one that doesn’t feel like a summer shower, one that doesn’t promise sunshine at its end.
Not once; not a single time.
Taehyun has never said he loved him.
⁂🌼🌼🌼⁂
Beomgyu keeps flowers on his windowsill. They’re pretty pansies, always well cared for – Taehyun suspects he takes better care of them than himself. They’re at Beomgyu’s house in the drawing room and neither of them is speaking. The cup of tea by Taehyun’s hand is cold, having been untouched for hours. His notebook is opened to a page framed by a dried primrose, but he isn’t writing.
They’re true Romantics now, Beomgyu says in his rare fits of liveliness that come over him around midnight. Rotting away from the inside, sick with their own emotions; their own hearts eating away at their chests from within. It’s idle and painful, but moving. That’s the thought they must take refuge in.
Between the two of them, in the stillness of the drawing room, they’re creating true art while keeping each other company as they waste away, helpless and sullen. Taehyun’s growing roots into the floor, laurel leaves sprouting from his hair, Daphne having escaped Apollo’s unwanted love; Beomgyu having his insides torn out by eagles he’s created in his own mind, Prometheus bound by promises his Zeus offered him before leaving him behind to suffer.
“He wrote to me,” Beomgyu confesses, once the clock strikes midnight again and that mad glint finds its way back into his eyes.
Taehyun doesn’t have to ask who. He nods, tired head barely moving.
“He said he still loves me; that he’ll come back for me.” There’s a smile on Beomgyu’s face but his eyes are just as empty, bright with pain. “He said he thinks about me every day, that every time he faces death he thinks of me and his only comfort is knowing that if he fails me and leaves me too soon he’ll be able to beg me for my forgiveness one day when I follow him to the other side.”
Taehyun swallows. Beomgyu laughs, drinks his ice cold tea.
“His father said he’d make a good soldier – he was right.”
Kai would make a good soldier too; or a good husband – he’d do well, no matter what he did; he seemed so perfect some days, Taehyun was inclined to believe that gods walked among men – that he had, for a brief, blissful time, rested in the arms of the sun itself.
“Maybe I should enlist as well,” Taehyun says.
“And leave your fellow artist behind?” Beomgyu clicks his tongue. “Battlefields weren’t made for men like us. We were put on this earth to write about these battles,” he pauses, then smiles a smile that shows his teeth. “And about the men who fight them.”
“Do you really think we’re different from them? That it’s meant to be this way?” Them, at home and suffering, and their lovers, out there, facing their Odysseys.
“I believe so,” Beomgyu nods without hesitation. “But maybe that is my fault; maybe that’s why he left me – he knew I wouldn’t fight fate, wouldn’t fight to keep him, so he didn’t fight to stay.”
The words cut deep, even though they’re not intended to – he knows Beomgyu is just lamenting his own fate, his own choices; the problem is, in the matters of love they are, in many ways, one and the same.
“Do you think I should have fought?”
To his surprise, Beomgyu levels him with a curious look. “Why the past tense? He hasn’t left yet.”
But he surely won’t be returning; not after Taehyun’s rejection. “It’s a matter of time now.”
Beomgyu’s eyes stray to the side, to the pansies on the window. “I suppose without you there’s nothing keeping him tethered here.” A little smile grows on his face again. “I imagine life without you is quite unexciting for him.”
Taehyun watches him in confusion. “Are you trying to be uplifting?”
“I’m trying to be optimistic.” Beomgyu directs his smile towards Taehyun. It’s not a pretty one, as handsome as his face still is while twisted by it. “If Soobin dies, he’ll die knowing I may never forgive him. If Kai dies, he’ll pass peacefully, knowing you’ve said your piece to each other.”
“We don’t know if he dies if he enlists. If either of them are going to die. They could come back, safe and sound.” Taehyun does believe his own words; has to – for Beomgyu’s sake if not for any other.
“Isn’t that what you’re scared of? Him leaving and never coming back?”
“No,” and it doesn’t surprise him that the look in Beomgyu’s eyes is understanding. “I’m scared of his love for me staying behind on some battlefield while the rest of him makes it back home. It’s hard to carry flowers when your hands are full of weapons.” Whatever mark he’s left on him, his pressed hyacinth and the impressions of his kisses on Kai’s skin – the blood may wash all that away and leave someone Taehyun might hardly recognize when he comes back.
“It’s hard to carry flowers when someone tears them out of your hands,” Beomgyu remarks.
Taehyun stares at him. “Do you want me to go and beg for his forgiveness?”
His friend shrugs. “I’m tired of being lonely for so long, but I don’t want you to suffer just so you could keep me company. You’re hurting for a man who’s still here and in love with you, commiserating with someone whose love is miles and miles away. Which one of us is worse, Taehyun? Tell me.”
“I’ll hurt anyway; he’ll leave, they always do.”
Beomgyu leans over the table; eyes still manic, but serious at the same time. “Then stuff his pockets with flowers before he leaves. Feed them to him, cover him in them from head to toe. Love him, Taehyun. For as long as you’ll have him, for as long as he’ll have you – and if he leaves you, come back to me. And we’ll rot for them together. But bite your share of happiness off, first. It’ll feed the illness, anyway, when the time comes.”
Taehyun watches him as his eyes fill with tears, refusing to blink and let them and the vision of his friend, dizzy with exhaustion and pain but desperately sincere, escape them.
“He’ll always love you,” he rasps out, voice barely there.
Beomgyu smiles. “He thinks so, too.”
⁂🌼🌼🌼⁂
Dear Ulysses, your Penelope sends this epistle to you, so slow in your return home; write not any answer, but come yourself.
Kai stares at the piece of paper; his sister found it tied to a branch of a tree in their garden, along with a bunch of primroses – the same tree under which Kai questioned Taehyun’s loyalty, and started on the path of losing him for good. The message couldn’t be clearer – even his sister, upon seeing the Greek names on the paper and the flowers, knew immediately to show it to Kai and no one else. It has Taehyun’s signature, his message, written boldly across it despite him not having signed it at all.
I’m waiting. I can’t live without you; come to me.
He reads it about a hundred times that day; keeps the flowers on his desk next to his journal, open on the dried petals of the hyacinth. Kai remembers the story – has always remembered stories better than what flowers look like, or words in foreign languages like Taehyun did. Apollo kills his lover by his own hand while enjoying his company. He doesn’t mean to, but he does; something about his nature makes the tragedy inevitable. Some people’s futures are drawn in blood, the more special they are, the more assured it is, and the best they can do is stay away from those who might get hurt once that crimson future comes.
Sometimes, he would sit by his writing desk, studying the hyacinth, and he wondered which one of them Taehyun truly felt a kinship with – did he decide to inflict the wound to save his own life, or did he strike out due to a sense of fatalism, choosing rather to kill their love purposefully than do it by accident?
Most days, he didn’t allow himself to wonder – just wished for the muses to relinquish their grip on his lover so he would return to him again, trying to live his life in the grey his absence left behind. It wasn’t easy, but at least it wasn’t hopeless; didn’t torture his mind with unanswered questions.
Now, with that unassuming piece of paper, the questions returned. Does he mean it? Will he pull him close just to push him back away? Will he ever trust him, truly trust him, to always keep his love tied securely around his heart? To wear their joined hearts on his sleeve, in his hair like flowers, wherever he goes?
All Kai wants is the chance to prove it to him.
So he takes another leap, just to hope to end up somewhere close to Taehyun’s heart – he gathers his journal, the flowers Taehyun gifted him; cuts a single white rose in their garden, and sits on the porch seat in front of Taehyun’s house.
Taehyun joins him at dawn, sitting next to him, his notebook in his lap, quiet as they both watch the sky streak with blushing pinks. They remind Kai of pink roses, of the dahlias in their garden.
“I couldn’t sleep,” Taehyun confesses, fingers tracing the edges of his notebook. “I was plagued by the sweetest dreams, and I always woke up in tears.”
Kai looks at him. The small amount of distance between them feels vast, insurmountable. “Was I in them?”
Taehyun nods, and Kai nods back before looking up at the sky again. There are so many words for him to say, so many confessions and promises to weave a bridge across that gap with – but his throat is closed up, by the beauty of the sky, by how close his lover is, again, after so long.
“I love you.” The sky lights up with gold on the horizon; Kai can’t take his eyes off of it. “More than you know. More than I could ever make you understand.” He sounds sorrowful saying it; like it hurts him that he couldn’t convey the whole breadth of his emotion to Kai even if he tried.
It’s silly to Kai, when just the words themselves are enough to move him, from melancholy to the brink of madness in the blink of an eye.
He should say it back; but there’s something he needs Taehyun to hear first.
“Do you know why I’d want to be the Odysseus to your Penelope?”
With a breath that sounds like a sniffle, Taehyun looks down at his lap. “Because you know that you’ll leave one day.”
“Because I know that if I did, I’d always make it back to you; whatever stood between me and my way back home; I’d spend years at sea just to return into your arms; and it would kill me if I made it back just to find you in the arms of someone else. I’d rather die than survive my Odyssey just to have to live the rest of my life without you.”
The confession rests heavy in his throat, and he doesn’t look Taehyun’s way even when he hears him wetly gasping for breath. Crying, barely an arm’s length away.
“You doubted me – you doubted my loyalty to you.”
“Do you blame me?” He does look at Taehyun, then – he’s looking at Kai, tears running down his cheeks; once again, he looks like he barely slept a wink, tortured by his passions, suffering in the dark. “You doubted me, too. And you’d have so much more to live for; so much more love to give. And who wouldn’t want to hold summer in their arms?”
Taehyun frowns at him. “Who wouldn’t want to touch the sun? At least once, before it burnt them to ash?”
And all he can do is blink at his lover in confusion. He doesn’t understand, but maybe he doesn’t need to – maybe all he needs to know is that this is how Taehyun feels. This is how Taehyun sees him. He’s Taehyun’s sun and Taehyun is his summer. There’s something romantic in that, in how intrinsically they’re both tied to each other, how they’re the sweetest when together.
Instead of answering, Kai hands him the white rose. After all, there’s nothing he can really say; at the end, what they need is to have trust in each other – to allow themselves to love each other and prove their devotion with their actions, instead of empty promises. They can start over, or pick up where they left off, with a newfound determination – now with so many unspoken truths resting between them in the form of words he hopes to never forget.
Taehyun takes his hand instead of the flower, presses it to his chest. “You’ll still be here. Ten or twenty years from now. Toppling the walls of Troy or resting in my arms. I am yours, and must be called yours; Penelope will ever remain the wife of Ulysses.”
Kai presses his lips together, trying to push back the emotion growing in his chest, filling it to bursting. He pulls their hands back to press them to his own chest. “I have no pretty words to answer you with.”
Taehyun smiles. “Just say you’re mine, then.”
“I’m yours; from coast to coast, everywhere between the ground and the sky. In summer and in winter. From the ruins of Troy to the shores of Ithaca.”
And Taehyun laughs, that pretty laugh like bells, golden sunrise catching the curves of his face and lighting them on fire, making him barely look real to Kai’s tired, longing eyes. “You tried for pretty words, anyway.”
He shrugs, letting their fingers slot between each other until they’re holding the rose together. “Did you like them?” He can feel himself smiling back – too wide, maybe, but he doesn’t mind.
With his free hand, Taehyun reaches up to caress his cheek. “I like all your words, because they come from you.”
“I’m no Ovid, or Homer,” his voice is light, teasing, mouth spilling the sunshine he feels in his chest.
Taehyun pinches the cheek he’s touching. “Neither of them are men I love.”
“You love me, then.”
He earns a roll of Taehyun’s pretty eyes for his trouble, but it’s worth every second of it. For his smile, for the words that come next. “I love you.”
Overcome with joy, he leans forward, to kiss his response into Taehyun’s mouth, stamping his lips with it before he says it out loud. “I love you, too.”