Caught a falling star (it had your name)

Posted originally on the Archive of Our Own at http://archiveofourown.org/works/41388990.

Rating: Teen And Up Audiences

Archive Warning: No Archive Warnings Apply
Category: M/M
Fandom: ENHYPEN (Band)
Relationship: Kim Sunoo/Lee Heeseung
Character: Kim Sunoo (ENHYPEN), Lee Heeseung, Sim Jaeyun | Jake, Park
Jongseong | Jay, Yang Jungwon, Nishimura Riki | Ni-ki, Park Sunghoon
(ENHYPEN)
Additional Tags: Hanahaki Disease, Post-Break Up, Pining, Fix-It, Canon Compliant,
Exes to Lovers, everyone is bad at feelings, Angst with a Happy Ending
Language: English
Collections: K-Pop Ficmix 2022
Stats: Published: 2022-10-03 Words: 8356

Caught a falling star (it had your name)

by gemxblossom

Summary

“Do you believe in second chances?”

Heeseung smiles. “Depends who’s asking.”

“What if it was me, hyung?” Sunoo is staring at him intently now, hope
brimming in his eyes and clinging to his lashes. Heeseung would give him
anything, anything in the world. “What if I was asking?”

Post Hanahaki operation, Heeseung struggles to determine whether his feelings have truly
been removed without a trace. Meanwhile, Sunoo has to deal with his own guilt after
discovering what he's done. But maybe love, against all odds, can bloom again once it's
been uprooted.

Inspired by You're the sunflower by justarandomnobody

His first mistake, Heeseung figures, was transferring those sunflower petals to a glass jar. Maybe it
had been a stupid idea to keep them in the first place, but sometimes he can be surprisingly
sentimental like that.

After all that he went through, he at least thought that he could cling to this last remnant, this
vestigial proof that he had loved and lost. There aren’t many days that go by without Heeseung
taking the jar out and looking at the petals.

They still look bright and fresh, as colorful as they had when they’d first bloomed from his aching
lungs. He half expects the sight of them to hurt, but it never does. A stupid, masochistic voice
inside of his head almost wishes for it to hurt, wishes for the pain to return at full force and drown
out the echoing emptiness that has been left in its wake.

Things changed after the surgery. The pain was gone, of course, as well as the hopeless longing
that had unrelentingly consumed every cell of his body. His body, which had loved Kim Sunoo so
much, it was beginning to devour itself from the inside out.

The flowers had taken root in his lungs, petals clogging vital arteries. A flower which had once
represented all things good and full of light, had come that close to extinguishing his own.
Beautiful things cut the deepest once they begin to kill you.

But all that pain is now a distant memory, along with the feelings he’d once shared. He no longer
has to suffer in silence at least, but things haven’t returned to complete normalcy either. How could
they?

Sunoo and him can never be the same anymore. They’re amicable, they get along, but there’s a
tension there that wasn’t present before. It’s rare that they speak to each other these days
unprompted, so it’s all the more surprising when Sunoo pops his head into Heeseung’s room with a
hesitant smile on his face.

“Hi hyung,” he says timidly.

Heeseung slowly blinks, and even does a double take to make sure he hasn’t mistaken the boy with
one of the other members.

“Hey Sunoo,” he replies carefully. “What’s up?”

At the greeting, Sunoo finally musters up the courage to step inside, closing the door behind him.

“Can I borrow one of your beanies?” he asks hopefully. “The green one? I’m about to go live,
and…” he gestures towards his freshly dyed head.

It’s a soft lavender, a color Heeseung used to imagine on him while running his fingers through his
hair. Now he’s finally getting to see it in real life, the silky strands looking softer than ever. Except
now he can only look, but not touch. Not in the way he wants to.

“Yeah, go ahead,” he says. Sunoo continues to stand there expectantly, and Heeseung realizes what
he’s waiting for.

“Oh, uh—” he sits up halfway in his bed, glancing around. “It should be in one of those drawers,”
he gestures towards the dresser, “if you just shuffle some stuff around.”

He turns away as Sunoo rummages through his things. It doesn’t hurt to be around him anymore—
at least not in the way that pricks the inside of his throat and lungs with thorns. No more fits of
bloodied coughing, no more waves of pain that would wrack his entire body.

No, it doesn’t hurt to look at Sunoo anymore. But at the same time, he’s left with a feeling that’s
worse than pain. Even with the removal of the flowers, even after he was cured of both the physical
symptoms as well as the emotional ones, there’s still a lingering something.

It’s like an ache that should be there, but isn’t. A phantom pain that doesn’t manifest in his body,
but in his soul.
Heeseung figures it’s just his mind needing time to catch up to the facts. The fact of the matter is
simply that Heeseung is no longer in love. He opted for the surgery, he chose himself.

And despite knowing this, he still prefers to turn away in Sunoo’s presence. Over the last few
months, he’s maintained a very careful distance between the two of them. He knows people are
starting to catch on, but he doesn’t care.

It’s easier this way.

But of course, Heeseung just had to leave the evidence of his downfall lying around in plain sight.
Things very quickly turn sideways.

He’s able to pinpoint it, down to the exact second, when Sunoo finds it. Something shifts in the air,
and the rustling sound of clothes being rifled through gives way to an unbearable silence. The
room is so still, every movement feels like a wave.

When Heeseung finally brings himself to look at him, Sunoo is holding the jar up to the light. His
face is unreadable, but Heeseung can see the slight tremor in his hand.

It feels wrong, seeing the two things side by side: the boy he loved, holding his petals. It doesn’t
seem real, like watching a bullet spinning through the air in slow motion before piercing through a
heart; then waiting for the director to yell, “Cut.”

“No,” Sunoo says softly. And in that instant, Heeseung knows that he knows. Sunoo turns to him
slowly, hope dying in his eyes. “This isn’t what I think it is, right?”

He goes cold. “You weren’t supposed to find out.”

Heeseung sees the exact moment all the light leaves him.

“How bad?”

“Sunoo—“

“How bad was it, hyung?” He doesn’t even raise his voice, and somehow that just makes it all the
more bone chilling.

Sunoo’s eyes look dull— it’s frighteningly reminiscent of the way Heeseung had stared back at
himself in the mirror that day, when he’d stood in the bathroom and finally accepted that Sunoo
didn’t love him anymore. It looks like giving up.

Heeseung forces himself to answer, even though it’s something neither of them want to hear. “That
time that I took a while off, before I opted for surgery… I had a month to live.” Heeseung tries to
crack a smile. The whole situation is so dramatically devastating, he can almost see some humor in
it. “Two at the most.”

Sunoo sucks in a sharp breath, then narrows his eyes. “ Before ?”

Heeseung flinches back, immediately conscious of his slip-up.

“Please,” is all he can say. Please what? He doesn’t know. Please don’t ask. Please don’t make me
tell you.

“Heeseung hyung,” Sunoo says, his voice shrill, “were you going to let yourself die ?”
Die. The word is sharp, accusing. It slices through his chest, reopening the wound, bleeding guilt
and regret and anger.

“I think in the end, my choice would’ve ended up the same, either way,” Heeeung says quietly.
“But I can’t say I didn’t seriously consider it.”

Sunoo visibly shudders. His face is contorted, his expression wretched.

The last thing Heeseung had ever wanted was for his own pain to spread onto anyone other than
him. But maybe it’s impossible to color inside the lines in a picture like this. And maybe it is
possible for two people to hurt in the breaking of one heart.

“Show me,” Sunoo says determinedly.

Heeseung blinks. “What?”

Sunoo simply looks from the jar of petals, then back to Heeseung, and he understands. His hand
migrates towards his chest on its own, hovering over the area of incision.

It had been bad enough for Jake and Jay to share the burden of his secret, since there had been no
other choice. But none of the others were ever supposed to find out, and definitely not Sunoo. Not
Sunoo.

“I don’t want to hurt you,” he tries to say firmly, but his voice wavers. The boy across from him
looks shrunken and fragile, hunched in on himself like the lightest touch will send him cascading
into dust.

“Hyung,” Sunoo chokes, his eyes red. “Neither did I.”

Heeseung knows him well enough to be able to tell when he’s resolved himself against backing
down. With a sigh, he rises from the bed, his legs feeling like lead. He reaches for the bottom of
his collar.

It’s an act of intimacy that feels foreign now, so far removed from the present. There’s nothing
romantic about it, nothing provocative. Heeseung slips the buttons from their slots with a
mechanical efficiency, like he’s baring himself for a doctor’s appointment.

Except Sunoo isn’t his doctor, and he’s not inspecting his exposed chest with objectivity, but with
horror.

It had been ten stitches in total, down the center of his sternum. The incision has healed nicely,
leaving him with nothing more than a thin line of silvery skin. It might not even be noticeable
unless someone is specifically looking for it.

But Sunoo is looking.

Heeseung can only imagine— if he were in Sunoo’s shoes, knowing that he was the cause of it all
— how that neat little scar would appear to him as a gaping wound.

He jolts at the feeling of Sunoo’s fingers tracing the mark. They’re surprisingly warm, nonabrasive
against the tender skin. Heeseung feels something stir beneath the surface.

“Was it painful?” Sunoo whispers, unable to meet his eyes. Heeseung’s not sure what he’s
referring to. The illness, or the surgery— or something else.
“It doesn’t hurt anymore,” he chooses to say quietly. And it doesn’t.

It really doesn’t.

The shift doesn’t happen overnight, but it’s unmistakable. The distance between them gradually
shrinks. Sunoo starts seeking him out more, both for trivial things and also whenever he needs
someone to confide in. Heeseung becomes more receptive, less closed off.

It’s dangerous territory he’s tip-toeing into, Heeseung knows. Especially when his heart begins to
pick up speed every time their hands happen to brush. How his entire body feels lighter when he
catches Sunoo’s eye from across the room.

He recognizes them, these telltale signs. They’re all too familiar.

Because he’s experienced them all before, right down to the goosebumps on the back of his neck
when Sunoo’s smile reaches all the way up to his eyes. It’s hard to forget the first time you fall
hopelessly in love with someone.

He’s not an idiot, either. He’s well aware that the recent revelation is what’s been nudging Sunoo
closer and closer, and Heeseung isn’t ruling out guilt as the predominant motivation. But even if
Sunoo is drifting back to him out of pity, he can’t bring himself to pull away.

Heeseung waits for the pain to return, for his throat to itch with that telltale prickle. He waits and
he waits, and still it doesn’t come. Maybe he was mistaken. Maybe the rush he’s been feeling is
nothing more than the relief of having Sunoo back by his side.

At least, that’s what he tries to convince himself of, and he almost manages it until Jake confronts
him. It takes him by surprise, because they’re only doing what they’ve always done. With
everything and everyone around him constantly shifting, Jake is one of the only things that has
stayed constant.

Indulging their maybe slightly unhealthy ramen obsession together— that hasn’t changed. Late
night talks, allowing themselves to be a bit more vulnerable than they would during the day,
without anybody else around— that’s still the same too.

Heeseung just hadn’t anticipated his friend cornering him into being this vulnerable.

“You’ve seemed distracted lately,” Jake begins. “Everything all right with you?”

“As all right as it’s ever been,” he laughs, trying to act casual.

Jake nods, but looks unconvinced. “I wanted to talk to you about something, actually.”
Heeseung freezes. “What is it?”

“I like you.”

Jake says it so simply. The confession is blunt and straightforward, so direct that Heeseung doesn’t
even have time to process it.

“I’ve liked you for a while now, but you were always looking somewhere else. I know that things
have been messy lately—” he purses his mouth, a beat of hesitance interrupting his sentence—
“but I thought that if there was even the slightest chance now, then I would tell you.”

Heeseung’s mouth has fallen open. “Jake…”

It would be a lie to say he hasn’t seen it coming at all. It would also be blatantly untruthful to say
he’s in any way prepared for it.

If Heeseung thinks about it objectively, he and Jake could be perfect. They’re already close, and
they already spend most of their free time together. Jake knows him inside and out, and he knows
what Heeseung has been through. He would be gentle with his heart, and he would be good to him.

It’s not like there’s no chemistry there either. Heeseung is aware that Jake is attractive, and they
have a light, playful dynamic that could easily give way into something romantic.

There shouldn’t be anything holding him back, but there is. And Heeseung knows exactly what—
no, who that obstacle is.

“Don’t look at me like that,” Jake laughs, reading his expression. “I’m not in love with you or
anything. That’s why I’m asking you to tell me now, so I don’t have the chance to get there.”

Heeseung’s teeth worry at his lip. “I’m sorry, Jaeyun-ah.”

“I figured,” the boy shrugs. He looks a bit disappointed, but not distraught. Heeseung takes it as a
sign that their friendship hasn’t been tainted in any way.

“It’s not you, it’s—”

“Hyung,” Jake huffs, “you don’t have to hit me with a breakup line when we weren’t even close to
being together.”

“It’s not a breakup line,” he insists, because it’s really not. It’s really not Jake, and it really is all
Heeseung. He tells Jake as much.

“What is it then?” He cocks his head to the side, narrowing his eyes. “Don’t tell me it’s him?”

“I…” the word dies in his throat.

“Still?” Jake asks incredulously. “Even after they removed all the flowers?”

His friend looks shocked, concerned, while all Heeseung can do is let out a bitter, hopeless laugh.
There’s no use running away from it. No matter how many times he tries to flee, the truth will
always catch up and haunt him.

“I think they could pry my heart right out of my chest,” Heeseung says wistfully, “and I would still
love him with it.”
 ༻❁༺

Sunoo was just a child when his older sister fell sick. He wasn’t old enough for the adults to be
forthcoming about what was going on, but he wasn’t so young that he couldn’t tell that something
was very, very wrong.

It started innocuously, just light coughing fits at the dinner table that didn’t rouse much suspicion.
But they grew in frequency, his sister’s complexion growing more dim by the day, and once, when
the napkin was pulled away from her mouth, he saw a single golden dandelion peaking out from
between the folds.

She’ll be okay, everyone reassured him. It’s an easy problem to fix.

A problem. That was the way it had always been presented to him, even before he was allowed to
know what it was. The problem, as he later found out of course, was love.

The surgery was completed without a hitch, and his sister was discharged from the hospital
without much fanfare. The symptoms disappeared, the flush returned to her cheeks. Sunoo wished
he could have said his sister returned back to normal after that, but it wouldn’t be the complete
truth.

Something had changed. Something beneath the surface.

He felt like he barely saw her anymore, and even when she was present, she was quiet and
withdrawn. After yet another day of holing herself up in her bedroom, Sunoo crept in to see her.

“Noona,” he whispered, peering over the edge of the bed. “Why don’t you smile anymore? Are
you sad?”

“No, Sunoo-yah,” she told him softly, sitting up to pet his hair. He leaned in, chasing the touch. “I
just don’t have a reason to anymore.”

Sunoo frowned, trying to understand. “Is it because of the thing that made you sick?”

Her face immediately transformed, and Sunoo knew that he had said the wrong thing— or the right
one. She continued her gentle caresses, smoothing his bangs back from his forehead instead of
answering.

“Promise me something, darling,” she finally said. Her face was solemn, more serious than Sunoo
had ever seen her be. “Never lose your smile. It’s okay to fall in love, but… but don’t lose yourself
in it.”

Sunoo nodded hesitantly, still confused. When she saw the worried expression that still remained
on his face, she smiled at him.
“Come with me,” she said, pulling the blankets aside. She led him by the hand out the back door
and into their yard, where the garden was in full bloom.

It was the height of spring, the air perfect and balmy. Their lawn was dotted with yellow, clusters
of dandelions sprinkled amongst the grass like patches of sun. Here and there, some of the flowers
had gone to seed, the golden petals transformed into little puffs of snow.

She pulled him down to kneel beside her, taking the stem of one of the feathery spheres between
two fingers and uprooting it from the ground.

“Do you want to know a secret?” she asked. Sunoo nodded vigorously.

“This is how stars are born,” she told him conspiratorially, a glimmer in her eye. “You scatter them
into the sky, like this.”

She demonstrated, blowing on the flower and sending the seeds bursting into the air. Then she held
her palm out, waiting. “Most of them fly away, towards the sun. But sometimes, if you’re lucky,
you’ll catch a falling star. That’s when you can make a wish on it.”

Almost like magic, a single tuft slowly floated down onto her open hand. It lay there unmoving,
gleaming against her skin like a flare of light.

“What did you wish for?” Sunoo breathed, entranced.

“Happiness,” she answered simply. “Yours, and maybe someday, mine.”

Sunoo can’t stop thinking about Heeseung’s chest.

Not in any sensual way, but in a way that haunts him every time he closes his eyes. The luminous
scar, bisecting his sternum; the site of extraction.

His stomach turns at the thought that the thing that had been removed was Heeseung’s love for
him. As if it were cancerous, a thing that would multiply and spread throughout his entire body
until it killed him. Only it would have— and it was all because of Sunoo.

He’d believed that he had done the right thing, distancing himself from his own feelings.
Subconsciously floating away, seizing the rope that would pull him out of the water.

Sunoo hadn’t fully realized what he was doing in the moment. It was an attempt at self
preservation, an ingrained defense mechanism. He’d been wading in too deep, and it had come time
to catch his breath before he drowned. But Heeseung was never supposed to have been hurt— not
like this.

Sunoo hadn’t known that Heeseung loved him enough for it to kill him. It changes everything,
casts the whole sequence of their relationship in a different light. No matter what Sunoo’s
intentions had been, this wasn’t supposed to be the outcome. He’d thought their breakup had been
amicable, especially after how well Heeseung seemed to have taken it.
If anything, Sunoo thought that he had gone through more misery. He’d found love, and had let it
slip out of his own grasp. The self-preserving part of him felt relieved, but everything else in him
screamed that this was all wrong.

Sunoo had tried to distract himself afterwards, talking to new people, tentatively curious about
whether he would ever be able to fall easily again.

It hadn’t worked. His heart had fluttered once or twice, then stilled.

Meanwhile, Heeseung had never displayed anything but understanding and calm acceptance.
Sunoo had even thought that maybe he’d made the right decision, if the boy was able to move on
so easily. Clearly that had been the farthest thing from the truth.

And now he wishes he could take it all back. He would cut his own heart open, let it bleed, let it
love without abandon. And if Heeseung then wanted to break it, he would probably even let him.
Sunoo has always preferred to be wronged than to wrong somebody else.

Now that he knows, he can’t help but act differently. After the breakup, they’d still been friends,
but an unmistakable chasm had opened up without a bridge to cross it. Now, Sunoo finds himself
stacking those planks one by one, taking tentative steps forward.

He begins seeking Heeseung out more often, finding excuses to start conversations or attach
himself to his side. If any of the others notice, they don’t say anything. Sometimes though, he can
feel Jungwon’s eyes trained on him.

They don’t talk about it again, not for a while. Until one day, Heeseung asks if anyone wants to
come with him to the convenience store, and Sunoo is the first to voice his eagerness. It’s on the
way there that Heeseung asks him an unexpected question.

“Why are you here, Sunoo?”

It’s so sudden, so out of the blue, that he halts in his tracks. He turns to the older boy, puzzled.
“Here… like walking with you?”

He suddenly notices how exhausted Heeseung looks, shadows blooming under his eyes. He aches
at the sight, and can’t help but remember how sometimes the only thing that could lull the boy to
sleep was the pressure of Sunoo’s head on his chest.

“You’ve been acting strange lately,” Heeseung says, looking conflicted. “You haven’t been this
clingy in months.”

Not since you stopped loving me . Heeseung doesn’t say it, possibly doesn’t even think it, but
Sunoo’s mind leaps in eagerly to fill in the gaps. He kicks his foot agitatedly, the sole of his shoe
scuffing against the pavement.

“You know that I love you, hyung. Right?” It feels like the right thing to say, but it sounds wrong
once it’s left his mouth.

Heeseung sighs. “This is exactly what I didn’t want.”

“What?” Sunoo feels slightly defensive, though he’s not even sure what he’s being accused of.

“After everything happened with the surgery and the breakup, I just wanted you to be Sunoo,”
Heeseung says. “Even if we weren’t us anymore, I didn’t want you to change. I didn’t want you to
be influenced by guilt.”

Sunoo’s stomach sinks. “Do you think I’m being influenced by guilt?” he asks quietly.

“I don’t know.” Heeseung’s eyes are roaming over Sunoo’s face. He looks desperate, a little lost. “I
don’t know if you know, either.”

He flinches, like Heeseung’s words have physically struck him. Does he know for sure? Has he
only been seeking Heeseung out lately for one reason— guilt? There’s another question that’s been
weighing on his mind too, one he’s even more afraid to hear the answer to.

“Can you…” Sunoo gulps, averting his eyes. “Can you tell me more about the surgery?”

“What about it?” Heeseung purses his lips. “It didn’t hurt, if that’s what you’re asking. Not
physically.”

“What did it feel like,” he mutters, “after? The… the feelings part.”

He’s not making much sense, his words strung together sloppily in his fit of nerves, but Heeseung
seems to understand what he’s asking.

“It was like a weight had been lifted off my chest.” Sunoo’s heart falls, but Heeseung isn’t
finished. “But there was no relief. I felt healthier obviously, lighter, but it was almost too light.
Like I’d had all the important things scraped out of me and was left with just a hollow shell.”

Sunoo anxiously combs his hair down over his eyes, peering at Heeseung through the gaps in his
bangs. “Did it disappear right away?”

“If you’re asking whether I woke up and immediately knew I didn’t love you anymore, the answer
is, I don’t know,” Heeseung shrugs. “My body didn’t love you anymore, but I didn’t know that. All
I knew was that I was no longer hurting.” He licked his lips, looking lost in thought. “Waiting for
my mind to catch up… that was the trickier part.”

Sunoo holds his breath. “And what about now?”

Heeseung turns away instead of answering and starts to walk forward again. Sunoo hesitantly
follows, keeping pace beside him. A long, heavy silence settles between them.

“Do you remember our first kiss?” Heeseung asks suddenly, after a few minutes have elapsed.
He’s still not looking at him.

Sunoo’s head snaps up, startled. “Of course I do.”

It had been about a week after they’d made things official— surprisingly, it had been Sunoo to ask
Heeseung to be his boyfriend. They’d both been shy at first, not quite sure how to navigate a
relationship in the environment they were in.

Sunoo had solidified their feelings with words, but it was Heeseung who leaned in first. He’d
paused, a breath away from Sunoo’s lips as if waiting for something, before finally closing the
distance.

Thinking back on it now, he can’t help but wonder if Heeseung had been waiting for Sunoo to
meet him halfway.
“It was my first kiss too, you know,” Heeseung says casually. Sunoo hadn’t known that. He’d
never said. “I thought my mind would go blank, that the world would disappear around me and all
that. But no, my thoughts were screaming, and they were saying one thing, and one thing only.”

Sunoo gazes up at him, the distance between their faces an infinite gulf. They’re inches away from
each other, and yet they’ve never been further apart. “And what was that?”

“You haven’t figured it out yet?” Heeseung laughs quietly. “It hasn’t changed, Sunoo-yah. It’s still
the same exact thing.”

A few weeks later, Jungwon finally asks him what’s wrong. Their leader is ever the perceptive
one, the first to notice when something is on Sunoo’s mind.

“Wonie,” he replies solemnly. “Have you ever… done something to hurt someone else? And then
regretted it? Not the hurting part, because obviously you wouldn’t intentionally hurt someone else,
but like, regretted doing it at all?”

Jungwon’s eyes are searching, contemplative. “Did you do something you regret, hyung?”

“I did.” He takes a deep breath. “And now it’s hurting me, and I don’t feel like I even deserve to
complain about being wounded too, when I’m the one who held the knife.”

“It’s a bit dangerous to start talking about what you do or don’t deserve,” Jungwon tells him
sternly. “I don’t like that. And first of all, this… this metaphorical knife. Did you aim for the other
person with the intent to kill?”

A little puff of laughter escapes his nose at the ridiculousness of the phrasing. “No,” he says
quietly. “I did it to protect myself— at least, I thought I was. But now he’s safe, and I’m not.”

“So you stabbed him, he was able to heal, and then you fell on your own blade,” Jungwon sums
up. “In this situation, hyung, I think the answer is that neither of you deserved it.”

“I guess,” Sunoo blinks rapidly. “That doesn’t really make it much better, does it?”

“I think it’s up to the two of you to do that— to make amends.”

Sunoo knows that Jungwon is right in theory, but there isn’t anything he can do. He’s already
ruined it all, possibly the best thing he’ll ever have. In his pathetic attempts to deflect whatever
potential blows might come his way, all he had done was sink the blade deeper into Heeseung’s
body.

And now, whatever chance he may have had to make things right is completely, utterly gone.
Vanquished.

Just the thought of Heeseung’s love for him having been very literally dug up and uprooted from
his body makes him sick. But how can he grieve for something he let go of first?
Maybe he deserves to grieve. Maybe he doesn’t. In the end, it doesn’t really matter. Sunoo has
already lost.

“I’ve thought about it, you know. But I still can’t figure it out,” Sunoo says to Heeseung. He can’t
get the boy’s words from that day out of his head, about their first kiss. He’s spent days dwelling
on it, before finally crumbling under the weight of his curiosity. “I want to know what you were
thinking.”

He knows he has no right to demand anything of Heeseung. Not his time, not his attention, and
certainly not for any answers. But in a way, this is his form of repentance. Sunoo has a feeling that
hearing Heeseung’s answer will only cut him deeper, and maybe the other boy deserves a chance
to twist that knife for once.

Heeseung looks at him, his face unreadable. “You really want me to tell you?”

Sunoo thinks back to that kiss: the softness of Heeseung’s lips on his, the way his hand had rested
on Sunoo’s cheek like he’d needed to hold him for it to be real. The glimmer in his eyes as he’d
pulled back, brimming with something that couldn’t yet be said out loud.

“Yes.” Sunoo hums in affirmation, even as his mind is screaming at him to run, to not stick around
to hear this, to save himself before it’s too late. “I want to know.”

Heeseung’s breath escapes him in a weary, hollow sound. “Just three words,” he begins, and Sunoo
starts to think no, that can’t be it, that’s too cliché for Heeseung, and then— “This is it.”

“What?” He blanks, not quite processing.

“That’s what I thought when I kissed you for the first time, Sunoo-yah.” Heeseung’s laugh is
something fragile, almost self-deprecating. “I held you in my hands and I thought, ‘This is it.’”

Sunoo feels the room closing in on him, his breaths splintering like he’s breathing in pulverized
glass. He’s really gone ahead and done it, hammered the final nail in his coffin.

This is it, indeed, he thinks bitterly. This is it.

Something blooms in his lungs, in his heart. He patiently waits for it to kill him.

༻❁༺
If someone had told Heeseung before that there was any chance he would fall for someone at first
sight, he would’ve laughed in their face.

He simply wasn’t the type . It wasn’t in his nature to immediately become infatuated at first
glance, nor the second, nor the third or the fourth.

Thinking back on it later, this was probably a gross mischaracterization of himself. Maybe. It was
hard to say after all, with what little data that he had. Heeseung had never been in love before him .

The first time they met, Heeseung had been instructed not to interact with any of the other trainees.
That part at least was wholly true, and it was also the excuse he later gave Sunoo when the boy
confronted him.

I don’t know why you don’t like me, he’d said, but was it something I did?

Heeseung remembered the sinking feeling in his chest upon hearing those words. No matter what
others said of him, he was certainly no angel— nor was he a stranger to holding grudges and
feelings of dislike towards other people.

But he would never intend to inadvertently give somebody that impression. Especially when he
hadn’t actually been repelled at all, but rather captivated. The truth was, Sunoo made him nervous.

It was the way he opened his mouth to speak and then just didn’t stop, the way he latched onto
everything and everyone, from the other boys to the producers to the crew.

Heeseung’s defense mechanism was not a set of walls, but a game of tug-of-war. He pulled with all
his strength, holding back the things that threatened to spill over and reveal himself. All of his
effort, all of his energy was poured in, nothing done halfway.

That’s why if his resolve finally snapped, and he ended up letting go of the rope, it wouldn’t just be
a small stumble. His entire self would be flung forward, head-first, heart flailing. With most
people, the rope was never taut. They didn’t take too much, nor did they even try.

Sunoo was another story. Even without speaking to him directly, Heeseung knew that this boy
would be a potential threat to that careful balance. He didn’t even want to give him the opportunity
to grab hold of the other end.

The distance worked, for a while. The way things played out, they didn’t see very much of each
other at first anyway. But then their paths finally crossed once more; Sunoo was stepping into the
room, and Heeseung moved without thinking, arms falling open like he was reaching out for
something he had forgotten he’d lost.

Then the confrontation. The misunderstanding. The falling sensation in the pit of Heeseung’s
stomach.

Let me explain, he’d said, and he had. Sunoo’s smile flowed easily back onto his face, water under
the bridge.

So yes, he’d been told not to talk to Sunoo in the beginning, but that was only part of the reason.
Because he had felt something shift inside of him from that very first interaction, and he didn’t
want to give it the chance to gain momentum.

Avoiding someone’s eyes is easier than accepting that the game was never meant to be won.
Little by little though, his control started slipping. Being around Sunoo was like a breath of fresh
air, sweet and invigorating. Heeseung was accustomed to praise, but something about the way
Sunoo talked about him felt different.

You’re like an angel, the boy would say, and an overwhelming urge would swell in Heeseung’s
chest, the urge to take him under his wing and never let him go. As they grew closer and closer,
and the end drew nearer, Heeseung found himself simply surrendering. If it was Sunoo, maybe it
would be okay.

Then it came, the ending of the phrase. The diminuendo into the resolution. It didn’t happen with a
bang, nor with fireworks, not even with the resonating voice announcing Sunoo as the final
member of the debut line-up.

Heeseung didn’t process any of it until Sunoo was right there in front of him, enveloped in
Jungwon’s arms. Reaching forward, he swiped a tear from Sunoo’s cheek and felt the ground
disappear beneath his feet.

The rest of their story came only later— these things have to go both ways after all, and Sunoo was
surprisingly the most guarded out of anyone— but Heeseung realized in that moment that his fate
had been sealed from day one.

Maybe that’s all love at first sight is: retrospection. Not being all-in from the very first moment—
rather, after it’s already happened, after your heart has been given away and the air you breathe is
no longer just yours, looking back on that initial, fleeting glance and realizing that it could never
have gone any other way.

Everything seems obvious with the gift of hindsight: the way his mind would go quiet to listen to
Sunoo speak; the way everything in him opened up at the sight of his smile, despite everything else
making him want to fold in on himself; the way he had felt the words deeply, fully, long before he
ever had the courage to say them.

But now he knows. This is how Heeseung falls in love.

Quietly, with everything that he has.

Heeseung needs to talk to someone. He knows that, knows better than to keep everything to himself
yet again. He doesn’t feel right going to Jake about this though— not that the boy is being weird
about it, but… still.

It shouldn’t surprise him that Jay is the one who seeks him out, but it still does. It’s still odd having
someone who knows him that well, who can see without words everything that’s going on inside
his head.

It doesn’t take long for Heeseung to spill everything to him— the moment the coughing had
started, his internal conflict, his decision to get the surgery. The confused emptiness he’d felt at
first, and the strange tugging now blossoming in his chest once more.
Jay had already known about his illness, since he and Jake had been the ones to find him and bring
him to the hospital. He’d heard the diagnosis, been sworn to secrecy as Heeseung had taken a small
hiatus to heal. But he hadn’t heard all the details yet, and Heeseung hadn’t been ready to talk about
it.

It feels refreshing, to confess everything. He wants to know what Jay thinks; as one of the people
who knows him better than anyone, maybe he can make sense of Heeseung’s feelings where even
he himself cannot.

“I’m going to be honest with you,” Jay says slowly, once he’s finished. “When you and Sunoo first
started dating, I was kind of worried.”

“For me or for him?” Heeseung snorts.

“Both of you.” Jay shakes his head. “I seriously thought that you had no idea what you were doing,
hyung. On the contrary, I also thought that Sunoo knew exactly what he was doing.”

Heeseung frowns. “What are you trying to say?”

“I don’t mean anything by it,” he shrugs. “Sometimes, it can be a good thing— Sunoo’s always
struck me as someone who knows how to guard his heart, contrary to what people might believe.
The two of you are funny in that sense.”

“I also contradict my image?” Heeseung asks in amusement.

“Yup,” Jay says easily. “Well, partially. You look like someone who has walls up, and you do.
You know how to guard your heart too, hyung, but the problem with you is that once you let
someone in, you let them all the way in. And then they’re there to stay.”

“You’re annoying when you psychoanalyze me.” Heeseung pauses. “But you’re pretty spot on, I
think.”

“I never asked what happened,” Jay says thoughtfully. “You know, why you ended things. We all
had a rough idea, but none of the specifics. I’m not prying, or anything. Just— if you want to tell
me, I’m here to listen.”

And Heeseung does. He does want to talk about it, because now that he’s started to unpack
everything, he’s not quite sure how to stop.

“He was my first love,” Heeseung admits, taking a shuddering breath. “And he never said it, but
I’m pretty sure I was his. Even with the way things ended, we did love each other.” His heart twists
painfully at the reminder of what they had once been.

“It was more than we’d ever allowed ourselves to feel before. So what happened?” He looks at Jay
desperately, willing him to have the answers. “How can something like that just disintegrate like it
was nothing?”

“I don’t think it disintegrated, hyung.” Jay’s eyes glaze over, lost in thought. “It just got eclipsed by
something slightly stronger.”

“What are you talking about?”

The corner of Jay’s mouth pulls up into a humorless smile. “What do you think is the most
powerful emotion in the world?”
Heeseung wrinkles his nose, bracing himself for whatever sappy onslaught Jay is about to deliver.
“Love?”

To his surprise, his friend shakes his head. “That’s the obvious answer, isn’t it? Love trumps hate,
evil, et cetera. Rock beats scissors. But something beats even the strong and sturdy rock,
something that may seem unassuming. Something that’s as thin and brittle as paper, but that can
envelop you so completely that you’re blinded to everything else. It consumes you. It suffocates
even the purest love.”

Heeseung can feel that same feeling rising in his throat now: it’s a sharp, acrid taste of foreboding,
the churning of anticipation. And so it comes as no surprise to him when Jay says,

“It’s fear.”

It happens out of nowhere. One moment, Sunoo’s leaning over the dining table, stealing a bite of
Jay’s ramen, and the next, he freezes. The chopsticks clatter to the table as he claps a hand over his
mouth, eyes wide.

“You good?” Jay asks.

Sunoo’s chest convulses once, twice, swallowing back a cough that’s threatening to escape.
Without another word, he bolts down the hallway, beelining for the bathroom and slamming the
door shut behind him.

Jay turns to Heeseung stunned, who feels every bit as frozen in shock.

“You should go check on him.”

“Me?” Heeseung says weakly. Jay gives him a look.

“Yes, you. You know it has to be you.”

It has to be me, Heeseung repeats to himself as he stands up shakily. Something’s happened, and he
needs me.

“Sunoo?” Heeseung knocks hesitantly. He can hear the boy’s heavy breathing, even through the
door. “Are you alright? Can I see you?”

The door opens a moment later, revealing a red eyed Sunoo. Heeseung quickly steps inside, closing
the door behind him.

“Hyung,” Sunoo says, his voice hoarse.

“What happened. Tell me what happened.” His frantic gaze roams over Sunoo, trying to find the
source of the hurt, the source of that pained expression on his face.

“Nothing, it’s nothing, I was just being stupid,” Sunoo croaks, his eyes welling up.
He’s about to move forward but Sunoo holds his hand out, shaking his head. “You probably
shouldn’t come any closer.”

Heeseung freezes. “Why?”

“I have a sore throat, probably a cold.” Sunoo looks down at the floor, looking ashamed. “I felt
myself needing to cough, and so I ran here.”

“Okay,” Heeseung says hesitantly. From what Sunoo is saying, it doesn’t seem like such a big
deal. And sprinting to the bathroom just for a bit of a cough… “There’s something else though,
isn’t there?”

“I just thought…” Sunoo shakes his head, as if to clear his thoughts. “It’s nothing. I just got scared
for a moment.”

Heeseung stares at him for a moment longer, before reaching forward and wrapping his fingers
around Sunoo’s wrist. “Come on,” he says determinedly. “Let’s get out of here.”

Sunoo looks hesitant, but allows himself to be pulled along. Heeseung drags them out of the
bathroom, down the hall and into his room. He can feel eyes on his back, but he doesn’t turn
around.

He sits Sunoo down on his bed, looking at him expectantly.

“Tell me what’s on your mind. You can talk to me about anything, you know.”

“I know that, hyung.” Sunoo leans his elbows onto his knees, burying his face in his hands. His
voice comes out all weak and muffled. “And there’s so much I want to say to you. That I need to
say to you. There’s just too much, and I don’t even know where to start.”

Heeseung takes a seat beside him, not too close, not too far. “Start from the beginning,” he says
gently, pulling the boy’s hands away and twining them with his own.

Sunoo closes his eyes, his face twisting like he’s struggling to sort everything inside into the
proper order.

“When I was five years old,” he begins shakily, “my sister became sick. We knew about it as soon
as it happened, because she can’t keep a secret to save her life. Not like you, hyung.” Sunoo smiles
at him weakly, before continuing.

“When we realized what was going on, noona didn’t even hesitate. She’s always been decisive like
that, going with her first instinct. She wasn’t about to die for someone who didn’t love her back.”

Heeseung listens with rapt attention, soaking in all the information he had never heard until now.
“She had the surgery?”

“She did,” Sunoo nods. “And for the first time in her life, she regretted being so impulsive. She
became apathetic towards everything, like all her energy had been drained away. Of course, she
realized that there had been no better option. But she regretted the circumstances that led to her
having to make the choice in the first place.”

“She regretted falling in love?”

“Not falling in love,” Sunoo says with a slow shake of his head. “Being consumed by that love.
Loving so much, that she couldn’t live in peace without it.”
Heeseung sits there for a minute, soaking it all in. “You were afraid,” he realizes with a jolt. Sunoo
having to see someone so close to him go through that, and at such a young age must have left a
lasting impression.

He thinks back to his own experience— walking in on his uncle lying motionless in the bed,
consumed by the flowers bursting out of him. How the man had chosen love, knowing that that
love would mean his demise. How that was the image that had been burned into the back of his
eyelids when he’d first met Sunoo, the boy whose face was like the sun and whose smile was
bright enough to make flowers grow from the sight of it alone.

Heeseung had turned away from him, then. He hadn’t wanted to end up like his uncle, he’d known
that much. But he’d never given much thought to the other side of it— to the people who chose to
live, who chose to let go of something that had been so precious to them. But Sunoo had seen that
side, and it had probably never left him either.

Jay’s words echo back to him: It’s fear.

“I was hellbent on controlling my feelings, to ensure I’d never get hurt like that,” Sunoo explains.
His head is bowed, like he can’t bear to look at Heeseung. “I wanted to love you just enough ,” he
laughs bitterly, “and I managed it. Only I managed it too well, and then it wasn’t enough at all.”

“It’s okay,” Heeseung says. “You did what you thought was best for yourself. We all do.”

Of course he doesn’t blame Sunoo. How can he? What else can any of them do, but look out for
themselves? Everything else is collateral damage. Regrets come later.

Sunoo lifts his head. He’s crying now, tears flowing freely down his face. “I never meant to hurt
you.”

“It’s okay,” Heeseung repeats insistently. It’s the only thing he knows how to say. He reflexively
rubs his thumb against the back of Sunoo’s hand, both to comfort him and to soothe himself.

“It’s not,” Sunoo cries. “It’s not okay, hyung, because I had a little tickle in my throat and panicked
thinking that I was about to start coughing up those stupid fucking flowers. It’s not okay, because
I’m the one who broke your heart. It’s not okay—” his voice cracks— “because why am I more in
love with you than ever?”

Heeseung’s hand goes still. “What?”

“Don’t,” Sunoo whispers, screwing his eyes shut. He pulls his hands away, leaving Heeseung
hanging on to nothing. “Please don’t say it. I know. No— I don’t know,” he rambles, tugging at
his hair. “I don’t know . Is love so fickle that it can come and go like this? I can’t imagine what you
must think of me right now.”

Heeseung’s thoughts are racing, his heart pounding in his chest. There are so many things he needs
to process, so many things he needs to say. But first, he needs to make the most important thing
clear.

“Love isn’t fickle, Sunoo-yah,” he tells the other boy softly. “If it was, I wouldn’t have had to
carve you out of my body. If it was, we wouldn’t be having this conversation right now.”

Sunoo’s shoulders are trembling. He looks at Heeseung straight in the face. “Do you believe in
second chances?”

Heeseung smiles. “Depends who’s asking.”

“What if it was me, hyung?” Sunoo is staring at him intently now, hope brimming in his eyes and
clinging to his lashes. Heeseung would give him anything. Anything in the world. “What if I was
asking?”

“Then I’d tell you that you don’t need chances, Sunoo,” he breathes. “I’ve always been yours.”

Sunoo’s eyes widen in relief, in disbelief, in unconfined joy. “I’ve broken your heart once,” he
can’t help but remind Heeseung. “It’s only fair that you break mine too.”

He scoffs. “What kind of nonsense is that?”

“You loved me,” Sunoo says quietly. “You loved me so much, and I threw it all away.”

Reaching forward, Heeseung swipes a tear from Sunoo’s cheek— and feels the ground disappear
beneath his feet.

“And I’ll fall in love with you again and again,” he promises. “As many times as I need to.”

They take things slowly, one day at a time. Nothing can be redone overnight, and it’s a special
thing just to learn each other inside and out all over again. No more secrets, no more hidden fears.
It’s just Heeseung and Sunoo, with nothing in between.

One morning, Sunoo comes bursting into his room, looking brighter than ever. He’s holding
something in his hands, a cluster of stems crowned with orbs of white.

“What’s this?” Heeseung asks amusedly, beckoning him over. “A bouquet?”

“I picked them up outside,” Sunoo says cheerfully. “Look, they’re in their seeds stage, like little
clouds. Can you believe these adorable things are considered weeds?”

Heeseung hums indulgently. Dandelions are considered weeds, but not because they’re hideous, or
an unsightly thing that needs to be destroyed. They’re weeds because of how rapidly they grow,
how they spread like untamed wildfire.

They’re weeds because you can uproot them again and again, and still they’ll continue to grow.
They’ll continue to return, each and every time.

Sunoo places a single dandelion cloud into his hand. Heeseung pulls the boy into his lap, and he
falls into place easily, giggling.

“This is how stars are born,” Sunoo whispers into his ear. “Send them away, and think of the thing
you want most in the entire world. If one of them comes back to you, your dream will come true.”
Heeseung turns towards his open window, angling his breath. The sky is bright and blue outside, a
light breeze drifting throughout the room.

With only a single word seared into his brain, he closes his eyes, and scatters the stars.

Palm upwards he waits, hoping, then— there. A telltale tickle, brushing against the groove running
between his forefinger and thumb.

He closes his fist around it, holding the wish close against his chest. With his other arm, he pulls
Sunoo in closer.

“What did you wish for?”

Heeseung opens his eyes into the sun, and grins.

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