At the eye of a hurricane, it's silent. Everything is calm and still. Even though you know that soon, in maybe an hour or so, or even minutes, the walls of the hurricane will come to you again, and possibly drown you.
When Sunghoon went to the ice rink, he saw the beginning of the eye, its colors were rainbow, just like his friend who passed on, who he often thought of when rainbows appeared to him. He saw the opening, the calm, the silence. He even experienced it for a moment, a brief moment. The turning point he called it, where he finally felt like something was going right. The eye was beautiful, and he wanted every part of it.
But when he actually put the first foot into the eye when he sat by a fire, hands molded together with another, the rest of his body still was in the wind of the storm around him. He told Jake that he felt a storm in his head, which was true, he couldn't seem to pull the rest of himself out of the storm and into the eye quite yet, it seemed too fast. He realized then that even though he hated the confinement of chaos that was the hurricane, he felt safe in it, he felt safe in the chasing of thoughts he had, cause it was all he has ever known. The Hurricane was his home.
Sunghoon remembers reading about a story once. It was the 'Allegory of the Cave' written by Plato. In it, it showed a story of how a group of prisoners being held in a cave, chained and not able to see themselves or their fellow prisoners, were only able to see the shadows cutting through the glow of a fire behind them on the cave wall. It described how one prisoner finally was able to leave the cave. He saw everything and was overwhelmed by what was actual reality.
Sunghoon felt like he could relate to it now, as his body moved further into the eye of his hurricane. He suddenly felt overwhelmed with how happy he was feeling, and how many new emotions were surfacing within him. He wanted to go back into the storm that he was used to. And hide away in his cave. And not feel the happiness. But the hurricane doesn't work like that. The hurricane has a mind of its own and doesn't listen to anyone, not even him. He didn't like the eye, no matter how calm it was.
With silence, and calm comes the abyss, or nothingness. He felt lost in the calm sea the hurricane once covered. It was vast and had endless possibilities. He didn't feel so grounded anymore. He felt lost and scared.
He knew the second he started feeling this. It's when Jake put his hand over his and moved closer. He realized that very moment that there was no logical reason for him to be afraid of affection, or uncomfortable with it. Especially since he knew Jake and how nice he was. It clicked in his head that he'd never actually been overwhelmed by the physical sensations, but by the sensations he couldn't see, the ones that were hard to read and differentiate. The ones that had no validity, and popped up whenever they wanted to, with no warning.
For most sensations, he could sort of tell what they were, minus the vagueness. When Jungwon touched him, he felt a painting full of colors, he felt peace and nervousness all at once. When Heeseung touches him, he feels an overbearing need to comfort, or to just be, he feels alive and free. When Jay touches him, all though rare in number, he feels confident, sturdy, and protected. But when he touches Jake he gets confused, he gets overwhelmed with thousands of different emotions, colors, and temperatures of mind. And all of them made him feel like he needed to lay himself out in front of him and give him his entire soul like he was handing it to him to judge. Which was possibly even scarier than the eye of the hurricane, even though it existed within it. Because he was never in a storm in the first place, he just convinced himself that he was, and all the people who rushed into his life all at once were trying to yank him out of it.
Even the new boy he met this morning, the one that Heeseung and Jay were friends with. The one that offered for them to stay at his house in Vietnam for however long they needed. Hanbin. He was quite talkative and shameless. He asked a lot of questions. Lots of personal ones. Which made Sunghoon feel like a spotlight was being shown on him. Exposed.
"I think you and Heeseung would make a good couple." He had said, before gulping down orange juice by his kitchen counter, as they all stood around talking when they first got to his. "No wait- Jake- no Jay- no actually I don't even know if you like guys, what am I saying? Jay is straight too, what? Have you ever dated anyone? Love at first sight ever?"
Sunghoon had blinked, trying to process everything he said. It was the first thing directed towards him and it was a lot. But everyone looked at him. He didn't like the spotlight, but he felt pressured to answer.
"I dated someone for like a few days? I didn't like her though. And I don't really get the love at first sight thing, it's kind of shallow."
"Oh, you know what I meant! Like you looked at someone and you just wanted to kiss them or like have their firstborn child or something."
"Still no."
"So hypothetically speaking you wouldn't have a one-night stand with someone you just met, like at a bar or something."
Sunghoon remembers hearing Jay choke on his water and Heeseung burst out laughing as he laughed at him. He also remembers his entire body cringing and his face burning with an embarrassed shade of heat.
Maybe the culture of Vietnam was more open to things like that than people back in Seoul, he didn't quite know. But either way, it didn't feel right being asked it.
"That's a bit of a weird question don't you think? He doesn't even go to bars." Jay had said, "He's kind of shy Hyung."
"Oh, I guess you're right! Sorry!"
Sunghoon then shook his head and rubbed his cheeks, trying to get rid of, or hide, the dark color. Of course, he wouldn't do that with a stranger. That was completely absurd. He was fine if other people wanted to, he just never felt the weird turn in his head that made him want to pursue anyone like that, even people he'd know for a long time, or thought were relatively attractive. It just didn't clique. But no one should have to apologize for him not understanding that feeling.
"No, no, It's fine. I'm just asexual or at least on the spectrum of it. So it just took me off guard? I guess?"
He had felt his chest-thumping with a nervous heartbeat. Maybe he had said too much. After all, everyone had given him weird looks then. It had gone quiet for a few moments, everyone just looked at each other. Then chaos broke out, making both him and Hanbin's cat jump in shock.
"So that's why you're weird with touch!" Yelled Jay, slapping a hand against his forehead. "I just thought you thought we were creepy."
"Hey! He holds my hand! I'm not involved in your creeper agenda. And asexual people can enjoy affection!"
"You're the one who started to call him baby! I'm not the creeper! We're just on a bro-to-bro non-physical contact agreement!"
"Bro-to-bro?? What are you twelve?"
"Even if I am, I'm still more mature than you."
"You literally gave Jake a wedgie two hours ago!"
"It was funny!"
"Geez, you two haven't changed at all," Hanbin said, eyes wide and reminiscent as he watched Heeseung and Jay get closer to each other, eyebrows raised and on the verge of laughing or hitting each other cause either was definitely a possibility.
Sunghoon had felt a little bad at that moment. He didn't mean to make them think like that. He never thought they were creepy.
That was the moment he stepped another foot into the eye of the hurricane, its pupil making his mouth move faster than his head. His actions not matching his motives.
"You were never creepy. I just have a problem with the general feeling of vulnerability and new emotions that affection gives me. Like it's kinda scary and uncomfortable for me?"
"....well we should change that. We just have to make you comfortable with it then! Simple!"
Jay's words brought him fully into the eye of the hurricane then. Like his hand had pulled his arm harshly and suddenly out of his head of storms and into reality, so he could see the newly clear skies around him, and the circle of dark clouds on the edges, that he would eventually have to be brought back to. Cause no one can stay in the calm eye forever. You always have to go back in eventually.
He felt scared. He didn't want to talk more. He didn't want to change anything. But Hanbin kept asking questions, and he kept replying, letting the others who knew barely anything about him up until this point to be hit with a truck filled with different facts about him, and all these different problems he had. The ones he hadn't even considered sharing yet. And he didn't know why they were being told.
With the question of 'how did your parents let you travel with strangers?' came the answer of him feeling so stressed with being a perfect kid that he dipped to his cousins until he had to leave. And with the question of 'what do you mean you guys don't know this stuff? You live together." Came the waterfall of a monologue that was Sunghoon saying he just didn't see the point in talking about little things about himself, much less the big, because he never stays with someone long enough to feel comfortable so he never told them, and the stream of apologizing that was 'I'm so sorry, I just keep talking."
The eye of the hurricane was silent yes. But for some reason it made the very person who wanted silence, try to break it with sudden talkativeness, to make up for the lack of noise. The clouds around him looked so jumbled, but it wasn't a part of him. And he was absolutely mortified by how much of his inner thoughts were falling out of him so fast that he couldn't keep track of them.
"You're cute when you are talkative."
"Oh am I? That's good. I'm glad I'm not being annoying to guys. Seriously I don't know what's up with me. I'm usually not like this. Well, you probably already know that. But I used to be like this when I was little and Soobin would always shove my mouth full of marshmallows to get me to shut up"
"Sunghoon!"
"Yes?"
"You need to breath."
That's where he was now. In the room, he was sharing with Jake until they took the train to Thailand in two days.
He stopped, the pillow he had been tossing up and down in the air dropped to the floor as an amusing set of eyes looked at him. They were Jake's, of course, they always were. Jake always looked at him like that.
He felt stillness buzz across him as he looked down. The boy had his hands full with his phone, and his back was pressed against the nightstand by one of the two beds and he sat on a messy pile of blankets and gazed up at him with that look. Sunghoon went quiet. He had deja vu from what happened last night. When he said too much about his thoughts. But it was different too. He felt like his vision was clear. His head wasn't screaming like it usually did. He felt like he did when that one song came on at the skating rink. Light.
Jake's hair was wet from the shower he just took. It looked pretty. His skin was tanned from all the time they spent outside. It also looked pretty. Sunghoon didn't know how to act. Jake was really really pretty right now.
Jake patted the ground next to him, pretty eyes smiling at him like they always did. It was like a repeat of the night before, when he had one foot in. The air was dense. He felt like he was in quicksand. Yet he still felt light at the same time.
"If I sit next to you then I feel like I definitely won't be able to shut up. You make me think too much on the regular."
"Okay good, I'll take it as a compliment. C'mon"
Sunghoon sighed and sat down, his head automatically falling onto the other's shoulder, but he trembled against it.
"It feels dense," he mumbled.
"...You know how most people like affection?"
"Yeah?"
"It's cause they don't put a meaning to it. When you touch me I just think of it as another experience. I like it yeah, you're always really endearing when you hold my hand or do what you are doing now, but if I overthink that endearment, I'll make it out to be something more important than it needs to be and I'll miss actually experiencing it. I think that's where you get lost. If you don't like the vulnerability or emotions, just remind yourself that you don't need to feel them so strongly. At least with me, you don't. I won't hurt you or anything."
Sunghoon felt the air leaving his lungs again, just like the last time they were close like this. It felt like too much.
"But what if that is scary? What if letting yourself just experience something that you aren't used to seems impossible? So every time you even attempt to do it, it makes you feel like you're in the center of the hurricane."
Jake hummed, showing he heard what he said, and moved his head so his nose hit the hair against his neck, smelling the scent of shampoo.
"You know the center of a hurricane is calm right?" he chuckled against the smell.
"Oh yeah, I forgot."
They stayed quiet for a moment longer. Then Sunghoon lifted his head up and stared at Jake like he was searching for some type of answer. It hurt to look at him for some reason, it made him sad. He didn't understand it at all. Nothing bad was happening to him, he wasn't dying, he wasn't crying or saying anything mean to him. He just felt sad. It made him swallow a lump in his throat.
"So just focus on the physical?"
"Exactly. Nothing else and you'll be fine."
"Okay."
Sunghoon then closed his eyes, and breathed in and out softly, letting his surroundings wash away. The air was clear and still, he pretended he wasn't scared for a moment, scared of the silence. And then he turned his body slightly, just barely enough for him to lean against Jake and put an arm against his stomach, with his head back on his shoulder, and legs folded to his side.
Don't think. Just feel.
He felt comfortable not thinking. It still made his heart race impossibly fast, but he was attempting to not let it bother him. And Jake's hand that pulled his leg over his lap, and the hand that went around to the bottom of his back, with the chin on his head. It was all soft in texture. But Sunghoon's heart hurt.
It wasn't really a bad hurt. But he didn't know what kind of hurt it really was. It was the hurt he got the day before Jungwon died. When he saw the two braids in his hair, and then red rocks that covered his room. The hurt made him want to lock Jake away and keep him safe from the outside world. But he didn't understand it one bit. Hurt is supposed to be bad.
"Why does it hurt?
"Hurt where?"
"Here." He said, confused and a little nervous and overwhelmed, like something was building up to the spot he was pointing to at the center of his chest.
"Oh. That's a good thing."
"Is it?"
"Yeah. Means you feel the same way as I do."
"How do you feel?"
Jake just smiled and shook his head, whispering 'nothing' before standing up, letting Sunghoon's body fall off his, leaving him cold.
"Where are you going?"
"I just need to talk to dumb and dumber for a bit Xiao."
"...who's Xiao??"
His body stopped in the doorway. His head turned like he was surprised or taken aback.
"I- well... I guess you."
"Huh?"
"Don't worry about it. Just try to sleep okay?"
"....will you come back and hold me again if I do?"
"If you want me to."
"I want you to."
"Okay, I'll hold you then. Just sleep and I'll be there soon."
Spoiler alert. Laying with your back against pillows was way different then someone actually holding you. It feels like if you were to meet the moon. And you don't have to overthink it when you are already asleep.