slow and steady

⋆𐙚₊˚⊹

SLOW && STEADY.

some souls breathe despair the way others breathe air, pulling its threads so deeply into their lungs that it becomes part of the very rhythm of their existence, weaving through every quiet, pulsing nerve. choi soobin, dear and fragile, is one of them — a soul born from fragments, held together by a tenuous thread of yearning, barely enough to contain all that he is. he wears his neediness like a second skin, something porous and inescapable; it clings to him, a soft, oppressive weight, wrapping tighter with each breath he takes. for him, loneliness isn't an absence but a presence, a shadow that follows, echoes of emptiness reverberating within him in waves. and as each echo stretches out, filling the room, it comes back to him warped and hollow, never sounding quite the same, as if even his loneliness were a thing that could abandon him.

for soobin, to be seen is to be saved. his whole self is a vessel with walls so thin that he can feel every thrum, every ache, every inch of the emptiness inside him pressing against his skin, ready to shatter him into pieces that no one would care to gather. he is a soul that craves more than the world can offer, yet he is only ever handed fragments — bits of reassurance, fleeting glimpses of closeness that fade the second his hands close around them. his life is a series of nearly-satiated hungers, moments that almost fill the void but never do. and in this landscape of half-felt moments, choi yeonjun appears like a promise half-kept — a balm for his restlessness, a whisper of comfort that soothes but never fills. love, he is learning, was never designed to fill the kind of voids that soobin keeps. yet he reaches anyway, each time like it is the first and the last, hoping that maybe, just maybe, yeonjun can quiet the emptiness that pulses within him.

yeonjun contends with these voids, battles against them like a swimmer fighting an endless tide, forever uncertain whether he is drawn to soobin out of love or out of a strange, unyielding attachment to the ache he feels for him. soobin is a symphony of longing, a concerto of unfulfilled needs; he exists in a state of ceaseless expectation, as if love itself were a covenant that could only be upheld by constant affirmation, by unending attention. to be seen, to be felt, to be held as the center of another's world — anything less feels like abandonment. to yeonjun, sometimes, soobin's love is not a fire but a ravenous blaze, a consuming hunger that begins as a gentle warmth but soon becomes an inferno, demanding everything it touches. and in those moments, he wonders if he is a lover or merely kindling, caught in a flame that will consume him piece by piece. he questions, in the quiet spaces of his mind, if love, for soobin, is ever just love or if it is a hunger that gnaws and grasps, an endless hand reaching, taking until there is nothing left to give.

when soobin whispers, "don't leave me," in the dark, yeonjun wonders if it is a plea or a threat. the words are a whisper, and yet they carry the weight of stone. soobin's voice is like silk around his wrist, binding, soft yet unyielding. and yeonjun, with his own heart throbbing in his chest, feels that weight press into him, feels it seep into his veins.

each time he considers turning away, soobin's eyes meet his, empty but filled with a devastation so quiet it feels like it could shatter the silence. there is something in that gaze, something beyond words, that compels him to stay, a silent plea that no one else can answer, one that touches a place within yeonjun that he can't quite name. his own heart seems to recognize soobin's silence, to answer it with a response that doesn't need words, one that teeters on the edge between love and something dangerously close to its end. what he feels for soobin is a quiet ache, a devotion tangled with resignation, a loyalty that feels heavy and inescapable, as though his heart has been tethered to soobin's sadness, unable to pull free.

this love feels like drowning, like being pulled under by waves of a need so deep that no shore can satisfy it. and yet, he cannot bring himself to leave, cannot turn away from the empty spaces in soobin's eyes, from the way soobin's hands tremble when he holds him, afraid to let go. because he knows that for soobin, love is not merely a feeling but a lifeline, a fragile thread that he clings to, hoping that it will anchor him, keep him from shattering in the vast emptiness he carries within.

so they stay, locked in this delicate dance of need and resignation, of love that feels like both salvation and suffocation. and as yeonjun holds him close, feeling soobin's heartbeat against his own, he wonders if love was meant to be so heavy, so consuming, or if it has simply become that way under the weight of soobin's unspoken fears.