illicitly | (Reply)

From:

[Huaisang understands the urgency. They had wasted so many years focusing on their schemes, other people, and avoiding facing the truth of their own feelings, and now they're both living together on borrowed time. Will these developments ever lose that strange, surreal feeling? He just doesn't know. But knows he wants to spend his life here with those he cannot be with back home on the off-chance that he wakes up again in that world all alone.

His arms are aching to hold his lover but with him elsewhere on the island, he satisfies himself with the pillow on the sofa.]

I love you, too, A-Yao. I feel the same way. I never expected any of this. I'm a grown man yet I'm fumbling my way through all of this like a teenager. I can't help but laugh at myself for being so unprepared for any of this.

[Everything had been so compartmentalized. Now everything is overturned, their contents scattered everywhere, and he's only begun to start putting things back in their proper places.]

But I'll tell you when it's too much and I need space to catch my breath again. Everything's moved so fast... Yet it's been nearly twenty years we met! Does that count as taking it slow?