Cinnamon kisses~

Ryeowook eyed Henry with no small amount of amusement as he walked from the bedroom with sleeves that were too short for his arms and the sliver of midriff that was bared when Henry even so much as moved. 

“I think you’re a little too big to be stealing my clothes now,” said Ryeowook, earning himself a raspberry from Henry, “and I would rather my shirts not get all stretched out.”

“Never,” said Henry, “I’ll just have to make a new fashion statement called ‘Ryeowook-esque: so tight I can’t breathe,’” and Ryeowook choked on his coffee.

Too little, too late; the world reminded him that he was still unwelcome amongst the ranks of the normal, that he was still the other, and that no matter where he turned things would always be the same. 

So Ryeowook suppressed it, shied away from anyone and everyone who got too close, too intimate, desperate though he was for the contact, and kept pushing and pushing until they stopped pushing back.

It hurt, watching Henry slowly fall for someone else, but this was for the best; Henry had courage where he did not, and he didn’t have the strength for the world to know he was the other.

There aren’t words enough to express the despair at a failed relationship, and even fewer to express the despair of having to let go. 

Jongwoon wonders where they went wrong as he packs his things, his brother waiting patiently downstairs with the truck; Ryeowook, he couldn’t even stomach being around him, having left a note to remind him to leave the key when he was done. 

Maybe he was being selfish, Jongwoon thought, but he wanted to hold on with everything he had and prove that things weren’t over yet, that they could still fix this, even though he’d seen the end coming for a long, long time.

Wherever he was, Ryeowook is there with him; a thigh pressed against his on the couch, ankles rubbing up his legs in the van, hogging the blankets in bed.

Heck, even at the dinner table, Ryeowook scoots into his personal space and takes up half the chair, even when there are other seats open, and steals his fries.

But Henry wouldn’t have it any other way.

There were too many little disturbances that kept him from sleep; the sound of Donghae’s soft snoring, how Kyuhyun shifts in his sleep every fifteen minutes, and Siwon’s murmured prayers for a solid thirty minutes while everyone else had settled down.

Ryeowook had settled into the furthest corner of the room with his pillow and duvet, and tried fruitlessly to drift off to sleep tucked into as small of a ball as he could. 

Then, an outstretched hand offered a pair of earplugs, and Ryeowook looked up to see Henry grinning over at him before he scooted in and clung to Ryeowook like a burr; after that, they both slept easy.

He laid in bed in the dark, the covers pulled up all the way over his head as his body trembled with the strain of holding back the tears that had come for no reason at all. 

But then he felt the bed shift behind him, and the mattress sank with the weight of another, and an arm slipped around his waist and pulled him flush to his chest with a whipsered, it’s okay to cry.

And so Ryeowook cried, cried until he had no more tears to shed, cried there in the shelter of Henry’s arms where it was safe to let his walls down.