fleurissons: 96z <3 (0)
vee ([personal profile] fleurissons) wrote in [community profile] 17hols 2022-01-28 02:01 pm (UTC)

[FILL] for both are infinite

Ship/Member: Mingyu/Hansol
Major Tags: N/A
Additional Tags: modern-day Romeos, pining when you're already together, forbidden relationship, thinking about those French toast and gallery dates
Permission to remix: Please ask

***

Halfway through the chairman's speech, Hansol steps out into the balcony. He unbuttons his waistcoat to give his lungs more room to expand. The cool air greets his face, a sensory wake-up call. You should have known better, Hansol-ah, he hears his mother's reproaching voice, the inevitable earful he's to receive from her before the night ends. The Kim son is perfect. We cannot afford you being anything less.

"What are you doing?" Mingyu asks, joining him in ruin.

Hansol casts a glance to the lively ballroom behind them. The gala attendees pay them no attention, but Hansol knows better than to let his guard down. There are people assigned to watch him and Mingyu, seekers from both sides of the family, eager to exploit the mistakes they make.

"What are you doing?"

"We're allowed to talk."

"Did you come here to exchange abrasive remarks?" Hansol counters with a raised brow. "Because that is the only talk they allow."

He leans against the balustrade, tightening his grip around the blackened steel. Mingyu shuffles closer, just enough to conceal what he's about to do from prying eyes. He rests his hand atop Hansol's.

In four suffocating syllables, he teaches Hansol how to breathe: "I have missed you."

"I know."

"Say you've missed me too."

"That goes without saying."

"No," Mingyu says. "It doesn't."

"I've missed you," he confesses, bloody heart beating on his sleeve. "Even right now, standing right next to you, scarcely an inch between us, I miss you."

Mingyu accepts Hansol's humble surrender by squeezing his hand in reassurance before he steps away. Hansol wants to pull him back in, even if it means condemning them both.

"What if it erodes?" Hansol asks quietly. "Your love for me."

Days when Hansol eludes his surveillance team to meet Mingyu in a busy district, face obscured but feelings exposed—they are a breeze to live through. But for every day like those, there are thirty nights like tonight. Nights when they can stand in the same room but not touch, look at each other but only in animosity, drink from the same cup as long as it means poisoning the other.

Holding out hope feels impossible. Worse, it feels futile.

"Have I not shown you how sure I am of you?" The undercurrent of hurt in Mingyu's voice slices through Hansol's heart. "Say the word and I will kiss you right here. Right now."

In a happier world, Hansol would say the word. In this one, he stares at the scintillating skyline and blinks away the mist clouding his eyes.

"Thus with a kiss I die," Mingyu adds earnestly.

He clears his throat. "I want you alive."

Mingyu wouldn't meet his demise at the edge of a blade for kissing him—Hansol imagines he would have, had they been born five centuries ago—but they could still take him away. They could send him someplace Hansol can never reach.

That is a death truer than most.

"You should go, hyung."

He takes Hansol's suggestion, but not without bridging the distance between them once more to bid him farewell. Hansol closes his eyes.

"I’m kissing you," Mingyu paints with his words. "My hand cups your jaw, strokes the prominent bone of your cheek. The other arm wraps around your waist, fits you in an embrace shaped to hold you and you alone."

Behind Hansol's lids, the picture Mingyu draws come alive. He sees them kissing in a dim-lighted gallery in the early morning, behind the kitchen of a hole-in-the-wall restaurant as orange bleeds into blue above them, on the rooftop of a planetarium long past twilight.

"I never let go," he finishes; a promise.

"I’d never want you to."

His breath hits the soft cartilage of Hansol's ear, and it is the most intimate of kisses. "Until then, my love."

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