Work Text:
The human heart is bigger than the world.
—Carlos Bulosan
1996
This is how it goes: The ocean swallows human bodies whole and makes them immortal.
At the violent intersection of gray and green is Whidbey Island, where Jihoon works a drab job in a drab bunker with a drab schedule. He orders takeout on Tuesdays and Saturdays. He drives to work from his mundane apartment, keycard swinging from the chest pocket of his khaki uniform, every morning at half past eight.
Idly he enjoys the red cedar trees looming like bodyguards over the barbed wire fence of his workplace, their familiar dappling shadows and the patchy grass underneath that burrows into sand.
Beyond that—the sea.
It’s a nice view for a nice life. Routine. Dull. Quiet, but he doesn’t mind that.
Every once in a while, he’ll give Kim Mingyu a call. Mingyu will come over, his arms laden with grocery bags and his mouth running a mile a minute with post-grad adventure stories that Jihoon pretends to care about while he’s busy thinking of getting Mingyu’s cock in his mouth.
They kinda grew up together, in the way that a caterpillar might cling to the same leaf as an earthworm. Nowadays Jihoon only calls him for a good fuck.
And to feel badly about himself.
“Hyung,” Mingyu always sighs and fusses with his hair. “I don’t get why you stay holed up in that bunker listening to nothing. Do you like it? Honestly, do you feel fulfilled there?”
“Yeah. S’fine.”
“Is the pay good?”
“Not bad.”
“That doesn’t mean it’s good. C’mon, don’t waste your life like this.”
To avoid the cyclic conversation, Jihoon kisses him against the beige couch. Mingyu sinks into it, his generosity sloppy and warm until it isn’t. He pulls back and doesn’t meet Jihoon’s eyes. The rejection is expected but still stings, corroding the nostalgic soft parts of Jihoon’s heart.
“Sorry,” Mingyu says, and looks at Jihoon with pity. “I’ve sorta met someone again.”
God. That’s worse than anything else. That pity like acid in his stomach. Jihoon loses his temper. He’s not proud of it, but he kicks Mingyu out without returning his Tupperware and doesn’t call for weeks.
It wouldn’t be fair to say everything changes when the funding shifts. Whidbey Island remains in cheerful stasis, its fogs and bus routes following the same timely schedules that Jihoon appreciates.
But things do change.
Kwon Soonyoung comes in with the tide.
“I read your research,” is the first thing out of Soonyoung’s mouth, in the break room, with no preamble. He comes through the door smiling like a habit. His hair is a lightning bolt of white-blonde.
Jihoon is so surprised he forgets his manners, too. “Really? They told me you were an audio engineer.”
“I am! Fresh off assignment in the Philippines. I recorded the eruption of Taal volcano, did you hear about it?”
“Oh. Don’t think so.”
“Well that’s how Seungcheol found me, and now I’m headed back to school for biology. I remember your thesis! About cetacean and cephalopod migration. It was fascinating.”
Soonyoung plunks into the opposite chair like it was personally crafted with his ass in mind. He’s still smiling.
Jihoon, slowly, tries to smile back. It wouldn’t kill him to be polite. “Yeah. Thanks.”
Jihoon’s new coworker is like a summer downpour in the desert; shock overwhelms the relief of his arrival.
Kwon Soonyoung comes highly recommended from the research institute. He is energetic, honest to a fault, and prone to a sensitive curiosity that would make him eccentric in some circles. His work ethic is a stallion; he matches Jihoon toe to toe at the monitors. When Soonyoung moves, it’s with confidence. When he speaks, it’s with sincerity. He’s quick with laughter and quicker with numbers.
Soonyoung is also very beautiful.
Beautiful the way a sand dollar is beautiful; there are plenty hiding along the beach, but the one you find first becomes special by virtue of being yours. After only a few weeks of partnership, a weird, prideful possessiveness takes root in Jihoon’s chest.
He likes Soonyoung. He doesn’t often invite intimacy—but this time he wants to try.
On one of their first mornings together, Jihoon finds something.
An irregular line on the graph. The hydrophones, dotting the ocean floor like patches of wildflowers in a field, have started picking up a signal which is different from anything else. Something recurring multiple days in a row, moving from north to south along the coast.
“What is it?” Soonyoung holds the graph to his face, right up against his nose, like he can sniff out the culprit. “I’m gonna stretch this out and reprint. Be right back.”
Jihoon thinks it must be a machine. A submarine, some relic from the Cold War sneaking back into the Puget Sound. An awful daydream plays in his mind’s eye. He imagines the bunker stormed, he unable to save himself or Soonyoung. Blood and seawater sloshing on the tile floor. Dark, shattered windows.
What a cinematic end it would be. What a blue, blue horizon.
He’s trapped like that for a moment, in the imaginary trauma, feeling a nauseating thrill.
Then Soonyoung returns with a new sheet of paper. Jihoon physically gives his head a shake and blinks the images away. He focuses on Soonyoung’s ridiculous little cowlick, glossy under the fluorescent lights.
Soonyoung quietly studies the line for a long time. The sound is coming in at 52 Hertz. His fingers—smaller and more delicate than Jihoon had noticed before—tap the grouping of lines just below it.
“What are these?”
Jihoon leans over for a better look. His arm brushes against Soonyoung’s, and the surprise of warm skin freezes him cold. It’s been a while since he touched another person—accidental or not.
“Pods of whales travel along the west coast this time of year. Most likely, these are blue whales.” Hesitantly Jihoon lays his hand over Soonyoung’s and moves his pointer finger to a much higher grouping of lines. “And these are most likely humpback whales. See how their frequencies are all ‘bout the same? They’re singing to each other. But only to each other. Cross-species communication isn’t possible.”
“Okay. And this mystery line is the only sound in between these two groups?”
“Yeah.”
“Huh!” Soonyoung slams a palm onto the graph with excitement. His eyes light up. “This one in the middle. It must be a whale, too?”
Jihoon sits back in his chair and crosses his arms. He’s not sure if he’s relieved or disappointed by such an unexciting answer. Of course, that’s science. Always the Occam’s razor. He takes an investigative approach.
“What kinda whale?”
Soonyoung shrugs. “I dunno. That’s your expertise. Maybe a big blue whale, if I had to guess.”
“Why would it be so different from the others?”
“I don’t know.”
Soonyoung pauses and looks at the empty white space around that singular squiggly line. Whatever is making that noise—it’s the only one on its own frequency. A radio crooning into an empty room. Music that maybe no one else can hear.
Suddenly Jihoon doesn’t want an answer. He stands brusquely and heads for the main room. “Y’know what, wait. I’ll call Choi and ask him to come down here.”
“Okay,” Soonyoung says after a beat too long.
Choi Seungcheol is the kind of guy who might greet you at the gates of Heaven. That’s what Jihoon has always thought, anyway, and when Seungcheol comes down to the bunker a few days later he’s in typical good spirits. He slaps Jihoon on the back managerially, which Jihoon tolerates. He pulls Soonyoung into a chesty hug, which Soonyoung reciprocates with glee.
“Alright.” Seungcheol pulls up a wireframe chair and frowns at the piles of data haphazardly spread over the table. He picks up the closest spectrogram. “Show me what you’ve got.”
Jihoon and Soonyoung exchange a glance.
“Whatever it is,” Soonyoung says. “We’re calling it 52 Blue.”
The research facility is always interested in the new and unknown—after it’s been proven profitable. For now, 52 Blue is an anomaly that can’t make them any money, so no one is likely to care about the sound unless Soonyoung and Jihoon can prove who or why. This is what Seungcheol says.
Jihoon expected as much, but Soonyoung looks a little disappointed.
“I was hoping we could apply for a grant,” he admits. “Hire someone down in Monterey or Long Beach to come up and take my boat out whale-watching while we’re in the bunker.”
“Your boat?” Jihoon interjects.
Seungcheol shrugs. “You could always try for next summer. I wouldn’t count on it, though.”
He squeezes Soonyoung on the shoulder. Jihoon’s stomach swoops.
“Your boat?” Jihoon repeats, a little louder.
Soonyoung grins. “Huh. Guess I forgot to mention that. I own a sailboat, I’m staying in the harbor. She’s called The Highlight. Pretty cool, huh?”
Living on a sailboat is exactly the kind of deranged shit Jihoon expects from this Kwon Soonyoung guy, but it still takes a minute to sink in. It’s the 90’s, for God’s sake, why doesn’t he just buy a house?
“You’re insane,” Jihoon says.
The words come out wrong, they sound all hard and spiky, and Seungcheol’s face goes carefully neutral. But Soonyoung hears right through it—he laughs.
“Just say you want a tour, Jihoon-ah.”
“Don’t call me that.”
“Why not?”
“We’re—because it’s weird, I dunno. We’re speaking English right now.”
“So what?”
“You dumbass. ‘Cause it’s weird, I just said so—”
“I’m glad you guys are getting along well,” Seungcheol interjects.
Jihoon snorts, but he’s dead serious when he says, “Yeah. Just peachy.”
It wouldn’t have become a fight between he and Soonyoung—Jihoon is sure of that—but for the first time he wonders if his boss thinks he’s a nice person.
Seungcheol has never pressed his buttons. They’ve had one singular conversation that ventured outside of work-related business and it was solely because Seungcheol wandered in one morning drowsy and extra sentimental. He’d quoted his mother’s life advice.
“She told me the tide will never stop coming in,” he’d recited, to an awkward audience of Jihoon and the beeping printer. “Whatever you build will be ruined, so make it beautiful.”
Jihoon had contemplated the quote and nodded seriously. It was excellent advice. Seungcheol had looked a little disappointed, and Jihoon thought about the exchange for days afterward—was he supposed to have laughed? Cried? What did Seungcheol want from him and how did he fail to deliver?
Now, Jihoon wonders if Seungcheol even knows what he’s like underneath this veneer of gruff professionalism.
Jihoon might want him to know. He might want Soonyoung to know, too. He might be desperate for a shred of real recognition.
His thoughts spiral. Jihoon realizes he’s been zoning out on the folder in his hands like it holds all the secrets to 52 Blue. Dropping the folder, he makes accidental eye contact with Soonyoung across the table.
Soonyoung quickly looks away. A surreptitious little smile stays firmly on his face.
What’s that all about, anyway?
Months pass like this. Soonyoung invades his space like an overgrown vine, creeping closer day by day until their monitors are touching on the desk. Slowly, a warm seed begins to sprout within Jihoon, something he mistakes at first for simple infatuation. A precursor to love.
But it’s something much worse and much closer to love itself—
Hope.
They take the boat out.
In the strait, the water is rough. Waves crash like hundreds of hands slapping their palms against the bow rhythmically, a metronomic beat. Wind, cold and fresh, funnels through Jihoon’s thin coat. Soonyoung bounces between the jib sheet and the halyard. He controls their path with practiced ease, his smile a second sun in the sky.
Jihoon watches. This is Soonyoung in his natural habitat—there’s something warm and magnetic about it. He feasts his eyes.
By the time they break past Port Angeles, the roughest waters are behind them. Soonyoung leans against the gunwale and points out toward the Canadian shore. “Look!”
“Where?”
“Out there. See them?”
Jihoon shades his eyes. Three bobbing heads break the surface of the water a few meters closer to the green shore, where a red buoy sways back and forth. A sea lion flops ungracefully onto the buoy, her body wriggling into a comfortable position. From this distance Jihoon can just make out her whiskers trembling as she yawns.
God, it’s been years since he bothered to stop and admire the sea lions. Joy inflates his chest, unfamiliar and strong as a draught.
“There’s a baby!” Jihoon points at a much smaller, rounder body struggling to join the first sea lion on the buoy. “Ah, s’cute.”
When he drops his hand to look back at Soonyoung, Soonyoung is already looking at him. A weird sincerity rests on his face.
Jihoon tugs at his collar, self-conscious. “What?”
“Nothing. Just never seen you smile like that.”
A sudden breeze whips Jihoon’s hair into his face. He combs it back, grateful for the excuse to look away and say nothing. Soonyoung is undeterred; he sails them to a cozy spot along the coast, where the horizon line blurs into a swathe of gray. He unearths a metal tin of rice with slices of fried spam and garlic to share.
Jihoon’s mouth waters like a faucet. He works to keep his heart out of his eyes.
“How many times have you been on a boat?” Soonyoung asks, after watching Jihoon worm his way unsteadily into a seat in the cockpit.
“Few times.”
“You like the sea?”
“Eh.”
"Eh?" You’re a marine biologist!”
Jihoon grins wryly around a bite of rice. “Prefer the land.”
Soonyoung cackles. There’s something cinematic about a man who laughs with his whole body. There’s something romantic as hell about it, too.
On that boat ride, they sail from affectionate co-workers into the waters of serious friendship, full fucks given. Jihoon becomes an expert in Kwon Soonyoung. Could sketch him with his eyes closed. Could write a song about each angle of his face in the rich, buttery sunlight.
Jihoon commits him to memory like this: young and unafraid.
When the sun sets, smoldering through the cloud cover and setting the sky aflame in peaches and pinks, Jihoon spots something. A group of red boats are meeting between the waves, south of their location and further from shore. He points them out to Soonyoung. Soonyoung’s face goes bright with curiosity.
“That’s the Coast Guard. They’re rescuing someone—looks like the boat is going down.”
“Jesus. What happened?”
“Hell if I know.” Soonyoung shrugs. “But we should stay until it’s gone. Out of solidarity.”
“Did you know there are an estimated 3 million shipwrecks in the ocean?” Jihoon shades his eyes and watches trails of spume froth beneath the Coast Guard boats. Like sharks around a dying whale, they circle.
Soonyoung turns with eyes bulging wide. “I didn’t know! That’s sad. Really sad.”
“Yeah.”
So they stand at the gunwale as the ship sinks and the sun sets and Jihoon thinks, I could do this again every day of my life and be perfectly fucking happy. You’re the one I wanna watch the last ships go down with. It’s you.
Sometimes Jihoon hates the morbidity of 52 Blue and his endless, searching song. He tries not to think of the whale like that, as a creature with autonomy and soul, but it’s hard not to imagine the creature’s daily life after months and months of tracking.
Sometimes Jihoon thinks about leaning his face close to the surface of the water and saying, Sing something else, for Christ’s sake. We’re all sick of ballads.
Other times, he considers swimming out.
Singing back.
It becomes a routine: they sail together on the weekends, exploring the coves and crannies of the rocky coast. Jihoon brings cheap beer. Soonyoung brings store-bought kimchi dumplings that he tries to pass off as homemade. They discuss anything and everything under the sun: lychee, the Amazon rainforest, worst songs ever written, childhood dreams, the Mariners, ghosts, coffee, family.
It doesn’t feel like a fair trade, so one time Jihoon shows up with tickets to the cinema.
He starts sweating during the delivery. Soonyoung sits cross-legged an arm’s length away, a red pepper flake caught in the cornered crevice of his eyebrow—how in the hell did that happen?—and a grin on his face. Jihoon tosses the tickets onto the deck between them and crosses his arms, a barrier against any disappointing reaction.
“If you, uh.” Jihoon pauses when Soonyoung looks at him with those shiny eyes, shit. “If you wanna get outta town next weekend. There’s a nice theater in Seattle my folks used to like. S’just an action movie.”
Soonyoung gathers the tickets in hand like they’re printed with 14k gold.
“Okay!” He smiles. “I’d love to. Thanks.”
“Okay.”
They sit in a heavy, warm silence despite the breeze. Jihoon fidgets. “Another round of poker?”
Soonyoung quirks an eyebrow. “Ready to lose again?”
“Shut the fuck up. I know you’re cheating.”
“I’m not, God, promise, I’m just the bomb today. Call me Kwon-fire—”
It takes months. Years. 52 Blue disappears off the graph and Jihoon thinks the most joyous blip in his life might be ending. But.
Soonyoung finally, finally, is the one who says, “Do you like me? Jihoon, look at me. Do you like me?”
He’s the one who cups Jihoon’s face in his perfect little hands. He leans in first and kisses Jihoon, his face eclipsing the dull yellow bulb in the breakroom, his eyes shiny and warm.
But Jihoon is the one who says, I like you.
Again, in front of the white refrigerator in the basement where Soonyoung keeps a perpetually fermenting jar of gochujang: I like you. Again on the pebbly beach with sand collecting in his hoodie pocket: I like you. Again in the curve of Soonyoung’s cold cheek with the wind whispering by: I like you, I like you so much.
The confession stutters; it’s shy and uncertain. But Soonyoung hears it. He listens.
That’s what all the damn hope is about, Jihoon realizes. That’s what you hold out for—someone to hear you.
The following winter, 52 Blue returns victoriously to the spectrogram just weeks before a nasty storm brews over the Pacific Northwest. Jihoon stands at the bunker window and watches the sky duel with the sea. From this vantage point he can usually see the diner at the mouth of the pier, its purple neon lights blinking, but now the restaurant is dark with rain. The whole beach is gray, wet and smudgy through the glass. Gloomy.
It’s the first time he sees Soonyoung look afraid.
“I’ll have to find a motel for the night,” he’s saying as they pack up for the evening. “There’s no way I can stay on the boat—just in case.”
“What.” Jihoon almost drops a folder. “That’s stupid. Don’t stay in a motel. I have plenty of room.”
Soonyoung smacks his briefcase shut. “Would that be alright with you? Really?”
Jihoon can count on one hand the number of times Soonyoung has stayed the night at his apartment, despite their relationship’s progression. He was skittish about it at first—he used to stand at the head of the bed and look at Mingyu’s shoes until Mingyu got the hint and left, because otherwise Mingyu would nag and steamroll him in the morning. Lonesomeness became a habit.
But it’s not totally uncharted territory. A few weeks ago they lounged late in Jihoon’s bed on a Sunday, cradling a box of strawberries between their thighs, kissing whatever strips of skin they could discover on each other’s body in the foggy light. Jihoon is swiftly warming up to the reality of Soonyoung in his space.
Anyway, no fucking way will he let Soonyoung rock ‘n roll alone on that tiny vessel all night.
“Yeah,” he insists. “S’not a big deal.”
“Ah, Jihoon.” A smile blooms across Soonyoung’s face. “I’m your favorite coworker, right?”
“You’re my only coworker.”
“That’s not true. There’s Larry and Seungcheol and… uh. The mice in the basement cupboards.”
Jihoon opens the side door and hits the lights. Even sheltered by a ledge, the porch is soaked with water and thin, cresting patterns of mud.
“Larry’s the parcel delivery guy,” he says flatly. “You’re my boyfriend.”
Soonyoung tosses his keys up and catches them. His face goes smooth with satisfaction. “Well. Damn right about that.”
It’s stupidly, stupidly endearing and tremendously real. Ah, fuck. Jihoon’s heart is going to explode. Who knew it could feel like this? Who knew all the songs and movies and shit were about something true?
“Kwon Soonyoung,” Jihoon says, the words bursting at his lips. The use of his full name makes Soonyoung whip around. “You dug up all that’s good about me. You know that?”
Soonyoung freezes like he’s been slapped. He teeters backwards off the porch, his boots squelching on the muddy grass. Droplets shimmer once and melt into his newly-dyed dark hair.
“That’s not true,” he says. “You were good before, you’re good now, and you’ll be good after.”
“I mean—”
“Ah! No. Say it.” Soonyoung’s brows are furrowed. If Jihoon didn’t know better, he’d almost think—
Soonyoung looks hurt.
Caught a little off-guard, Jihoon relents. “‘Kay. Fine.”
“Say it. Say you’re good.”
Jihoon feels his ears burst into flames. He shifts his eyes across the parking lot, across the waterlogged yard and chain link fence. There’s no one around but the rain and the red cedars.
“M’good,” he mumbles.
“Louder.”
“I’m good! I get it.”
The tension in Soonyoung’s shoulders melts away. “Yeah, you are.” He sticks out a hand and wiggles his fingers. “Let’s get outta here.”
So they do. There’s a feeling in Jihoon’s chest taking root, disseminating itself throughout his cardiovascular system, entering his chest through some golden spiritual osmosis or whatever-the-fuck. Science doesn’t have the right vocabulary for this. He looks at Soonyoung and his whole body lights up. What did he ever do before, in the dark? In the quiet?
They’re making out on the couch when the phone rings.
To be specific, Soonyoung is carnation-pink, breathing hot and heavy, his tongue in Jihoon’s mouth, one hand splayed on Jihoon’s bare chest. The chest that Jihoon sculpts four days a week every week, specifically for the purpose of being groped by Soonyoung. An experience which he is now being denied.
Goddammit not tonight, please, is Jihoon’s first thought. Of course the phone is silent for weeks and weeks until now. The power's about to go out any minute. Does Kim Mingyu know how absurdly annoying he is? With an insurmountable sigh, he kisses farewell to Soonyoung’s exaggerated pout and rolls off the couch.
“Mr. Popularity, getting house calls,” Soonyoung cackles at his back.
Oh, hell. Embarrassing. Despite himself, he laughs.
Jihoon picks up the phone gruffly, angling his body away from Soonyoung. A cone of yellow light passes over his face through the window—his neighbor arriving home through the rain. It’s not Mingyu on the other line.
“It’s Seungcheol. I’m sorry to call so late.”
Annoyance melts into concern. “Everythin’ alright?”
“I can’t find Soonyoung,” he says, in a very calm and measured tone. “When the storm got bad I thought I’d come and bring him a space heater, but—”
“Soonyoung’s here. He’s with me.”
“Oh, thank God.” Seungcheol exhales hard.
Across the room, Jihoon senses Soonyoung perk up at the sound of his own name. Sure enough, he pads over and leans against the kitchen counter directly beside Jihoon, so close their elbows brush. Close enough to eavesdrop.
“Tell him I’m immortal,” Soonyoung whispers.
Jihoon covers the receiver and hisses, “Go.”
Soonyoung shuffles closer instead. Their shoulders brush.
“Where are you guys?” Seungcheol asks. “Are you safe?”
“We’re okay. We’re at my apartment.”
“Ask Soonyoung where he last docked.”
But Soonyoung hears the question and leans directly inside Jihoon’s personal space to yell his answer into the phone. He smells of laundry detergent and the steak they split for dinner. “Second pier, thirteenth row! On the left-hand side.”
There’s a pause. Jihoon can hear the storm better through the line than through his window; Seungcheol must be using the phone at the diner to make this call. He can imagine Kyungsoo’s bewildered concern upon finding a soaked Seungcheol on the diner’s front doorstep, the way he surely ushered him inside and handed him a steaming mug of coffee.
Seungcheol finally says, “That’s what I thought. Are you sure?”
“Yeah. Why?”
“Soonyoung, The Highlight is gone. The whole thing. That space is empty. The ropes—I can’t tell what happened, but they snapped.”
Jihoon watches a gradual apocalypse commence in Soonyoung’s eyes. Shock, then silence.
“Oh,” Soonyoung finally manages to say.
“Oh,” Jihoon echoes.
“Let me…” Seungcheol’s voice trails off. “Lemme come over?”
They drink a ferocious amount of beer. For some inexplicable reason, Seungcheol arrives carrying a boxy karaoke set with initials carved lightly into the side— PCY.
“They insisted I take it from the diner.” Seungcheol shrugs. His lips are pursed like he’s trying not to cry.
For lack of anything better to do, haunted by the awful silence radiating from Soonyoung’s corner of the couch, Jihoon sets up the karaoke set. It’s an older model with a short brown cord and a microphone stained with rings. It matches his television, choking under a thick layer of dust.
Wailing wind gathers the rain and pounds it against the window. Jihoon pours everyone a generous second round, then third. They drink in oppressive quiet.
Soonyoung’s voice cracks when he finally lifts his fist. “To The Highlight."
“To The Highlight." Seungcheol murmurs.
“To The Highlight," Jihoon echoes, but he’s thinking about how there’s 3 million and one shipwrecks in the ocean tonight. Imagine that.
He can recall with absurd clarity the first time he and Soonyoung fucked, syrup-slow, shaking and terrified in that narrow bed, the way he lost his balance when the boat rocked and almost kneed Soonyoung in the gut. The whole universe they built on those musty wooden floorboards—gone. It doesn’t feel real. There's nothing he can say to abbreviate this loss.
What he wouldn’t give to resurrect that boat like the second coming of Christ. What he wouldn’t give, to give Soonyoung his life back.
Soonyoung tips his glass all the back and downs the beer in one go. Startled, Jihoon does the same, and thin stream of liquid escapes the side of his glass so that he has to swallow quickly and wipe the bitter stickiness off his chin. Across the room, Seungcheol mops a spill on his shirt. Foam rings their empty glasses.
At random, Jihoon picks Lee Sun Hee’s debut song to play. His stomach is bloated and he just needs a distraction. Something happens to him when the first notes ring out—a surrender to the music, a reflexive closing of both eyes. He doesn’t need the lyrics. He just sings, loud and true.
When the song ends, Jihoon returns to himself and glances over at Soonyoung to see that—oh, he’s started crying. Tear tracks shine white on his cheeks.
Oh, no.
“I’ve never heard you sing before,” Seungcheol says, and to Jihoon’s astonishment he sees moisture gathering in Seungcheol’s eyes as well.
What’s he done, now? Gone and made it worse. Great. Jihoon sinks back into his seat, berating himself for choosing such a sad fucking song. He should’ve known better. He shouldn’t have sang anything at all. He swigs from his next beer and lets the fizz burn too long on his tongue, little embers in his mouth.
Soonyoung roughly wipes his eyes and sniffles. He’s wet under the nose. “Could you… could you do it again?”
Jihoon blinks. Swallows hard. “Y’wanna hear another?”
“Your voice is sexy as fuck and it’s kinda turning me on,” Soonyoung says, and Seungcheol bursts into shocked guffaws, and just like that Jihoon knows they’re gonna be okay.
“Fine,” he mumbles, on the edge of laughter, foggy with beer and love and mourning, as he queues up the next song. “For you.”
Soonyoung moves into Jihoon’s apartment. Permanently.
It’s a logistical nightmare. All he owns now are the clothes on his back and the envelope of cash he thought to grab before heading to Jihoon's. No land, no papers, nothing. It’s not an irreversible loss—he had insurance, thank god, and Seungcheol convinces the higher-ups at the institute to offer their support in the form of a scanty bonus.
Grief looks unnatural on Soonyoung’s body. A few weeks after the boat goes down, they sit in the bunker and pretend to look at spectrograms. 52 Blue’s signal abruptly cut off again during the same storm that felled The Highlight. They haven’t spoken about it. Jihoon doubts Soonyoung has even noticed.
Soonyoung slumps like the stump of an axed tree and drinks coffee until his eyes won’t focus.
Jihoon watches and aches.
“I’ve got this friend I met in Osaka,” Soonyoung says one day, apropos of nothing, lines of fatigue etched under his eyes. “His name’s Yoon Jeonghan. Crazy guy. Really funny, smartest person I’ve ever had a conversation with.” He smiles at someone far out of sight. “Well, he never watched movies or read newspapers or whatever, but every once in a while he’d throw out an insane quote off the top of his head. I made him teach me one.”
Jihoon raises his eyebrows. “Mmm.”
He’s expecting a quote from Calvin and Hobbes, or lyrics to a Seo Taiji song. Something easy to memorize. Something witty and fun for parties.
Soonyoung recites, in a quiet and reedy voice, “I want what I love to go on without me, and you whom I love and sang about above all else to continue to bloom, to be always in full flower.”
A hot fist of emotion clenches inside Jihoon’s chest. Rage, dread, terror, guilt. He can’t even explain his reaction to Soonyoung’s words, not properly; it feels like the phrase has possessed him briefly, the way a riptide might drag down a buoy.
Soonyoung looks across the table with his bright eyes and watches that reaction play across Jihoon’s face.
He smirks. “I know, right? Powerful shit.”
“I don’t like that,” Jihoon says forcefully. “I don’t like—that’s so depressing.”
“Nah, it’s not.” Soonyoung reshuffles the spectrograms and stands to retrieve the last hour’s automated report from the printer. “I think it’s sweet.”
Jihoon just shrugs. Wishes he had something meaningful to say. Wishes he’d never heard that string of words come out of Soonyoung’s mouth at all. How fucking lonely it would be, to go on alone. How blue.
Weeks later, Soonyoung bursts into the breakroom during Jihoon’s lunch of rice and spam and cries, “Look! He’s back!”
Jihoon’s fork clatters on the table. “52 Blue?”
“He’s coming in at 47 Herz, but—it’s the same guy. I know it is. I can feel it.”
Jihoon takes a look at the paper. It’s a familiar printout, could be the exact same one from a year ago when they first identified the creature. His heart squeezes.
“Our whale’s still out there,” Jihoon says in awe. “Headed south just like he should be.”
“I thought he was gone for sure.” Soonyoung sits in the opposite chair and beams. His shirt is rumpled and boyish, endearing in that hopeless way he gets. “I’m glad he’s okay.”
The atmosphere warms in a way it hasn’t in weeks. Jihoon offers Soonyoung rice, which he declines. He’s looking far too skinny and overworked recently—something that Jihoon will need to fix. Stress has started taking its insidious toll.
Not on their relationship, though. If anything, they’re stronger than ever. Jihoon reaches under the table and grabs Soonyoung’s hand. He laces their fingers together, a tender knot.
“Do you think he has any idea that we’re listening?” Soonyoung runs a cold thumb over the back of Jihoon’s hand. “Do you think he can, like, sense the hydrophones? Whales are supposed to be super intelligent.”
“Doubt it,” Jihoon says, because, again, it feels silly to personify a whale. Soonyoung’s face falls. “But—I hope so.”
Soonyoung chews on his pale lower lip, where there’s already a scab forming. “I hope so, too.”
There it is again, Jihoon realizes. That silly little word. Hope. He even said it first.
He leans across the table and kisses Soonyoung right there in the breakroom, soft and sweet and slow. Waves break against the shore beyond the window. Outside, the sky is gray-black and fresh. The horizon is birthing a storm in the distance.