soft - woosan

chapter 38

for multistanqueen11

san wooyoung

time dragged cluelessly on, the number of days he was without san piling up and spilling over until there were too many and somehow along the way he just lost count.

he continued living his life patient and unmade, quietly existing without feeling like he was really there at all. the only reassurance any of it was real was the steady rise and fall of his chest, the sole clue that he was alive amongst blurry occurrences he couldn't seem to hold onto.

alive. existing. but not living.

in between his numb acceptance, wooyoung selfishly craved for the boy he let go, aching for his presence as his body sang for his touch, his words, his smile.

he prayed that the spiral of time moving him forever would take him home again, home to san, to his refuge with whom he felt safe, loved and whole.

but no, he would continue to remind himself that it was his love for san that kept him at arm's length. it was his stark, passionately uncontrollable adoration that drove him to stay away.

it was his whole, beautiful feelings as real as you or i or the word itself that grounded him to respect and let be the boy who he was not good enough for. would never be good enough for. who no one would ever be good enough for in wooyoung's eyes.

he had grown to love him so much that the only thing that mattered was san's happiness, security and wellbeing. and if those things were not present with wooyoung as his lover, than he did not deserve to be with him. it was simple as that.

but love is never simple, missing him a physical endearment that ached throughout his entire being, with all that he was, is and will be. loneliness a suffocation of awareness and enclosing grey.

seeing him was an unavoidable torture, but always from afar, observing the paleness of his skin and darkness around his eyes. analysing his sluggish movements and fallen face.

that was in the first days. they were the hardest ones, when he couldn't run to him, enclose him in his shielding arms and lay him down and kiss his hair and help him sleep.

it became easier, though. he looked happier, his smiles less forced. seeing him became less painful in the fact that he looked more at peace but so much harder because wooyoung knew he wasn't the reason.

in turn, san made little effort to speak to him again, accepting an idle conversation as an exchange was inevitable. these moments were awkward, brief and abrupt, neither being able to stay in the other's presence for too long.

wooyoung's reasoning was not being able to trust himself to stop, not being able to control when he broke and spilled the songs fastened in his chest, their chains becoming looser ever second spent in san's company.

san's reasoning was unknown to the once lilac haired male, and he could only guess and fantasise that the other had the same difficulties, wanting him just as much.

they had not spoken for weeks at most on that day, when wooyoung was so lost in his thoughts he collided head on with someone unknown, to whom he began to mutter and apology, not raising his head.

"watch where you're-" an annoyed response left the lips of his victim, a voice which he recognised immediately and had his head snapping up so he could drink in the sight of who was magically before him.

"wooyoung?" san's voice became smaller, softer, his whole demeanour changing from walled spunk to unsure vulnerability that melted wooyoung's heart.