Chapter Text
Jaehyun likes routines.
Habits, schedules, weekly reminders, you name it, he likes it. It’s easy to run on an automated routine that just repeats itself, just simple and nice and easy. He likes his uneventful life, out of the spotlight, working his auditor job until the wee hours of the morning and coming into the office just right after lunch. He usually has a wrap from that Mexican place right between his office and his apartment, and coffee from the little cart that was parked just a little down the road from his company. At about two a.m., he packs up his desk, turns off his computer, nods at Yeri who comes in to work the next shift dealing with the next round of companies, and leaves the office.
He doesn’t go home immediately. He doesn’t have to wake up until eleven the next day anyway. Jaehyun stops by the twenty-four-hour Starbucks just at the corner of the street, orders one mint-chocolate latte and ducks into the small alley. He slides through the doors of Doyoung’s diner with an easy smile, tie loosened, drink in his hand stretched towards the owner standing behind the counter. Doyoung serves him kimchi (he prefers napa cabbage, but he always eats whatever the other man gives him), and he sips at his beer while scrolling news idly on his phone until his usual order is placed in front of him.
Spicy stir-fried pork with rice.
Jaehyun is a man of habits. He likes being comfortable. He likes ordering the same thing all the time, simply because he doesn’t have much cravings. Doyoung had once called him boring, all bite but no spite, complaining about how he had to order more pork because Jaehyun had come in every single day for two weeks in a row and drained his pork supply. He apparently had plans to make nikujaga, Japanese beef and potatoes, but Jaehyun had apparently ruined it.
He wraps the spicy pork strips around clumps of rice, eats them like little rolls of sushi. It’s a habit he had picked up from his dad, who always ate stir-fried pork like that. Doyoung always silently tops up his beer, even on the days he has already drained one bottle. Sometimes, he chats with Doyoung, watches the shine of the other man’s hair as the chef-owner of the diner wipes down the bar counter and refills his empty kimchi plate. Other days, he stays on his phone, eyes reading words that bounce off his brain, tired and empty from a whole day of poring over numbers and documents. Doyoung never infringes, never invades, and Jaehyun is always grateful for that.
Today, he smiles at Doyoung as he slides into his usual chair, nodding quickly at the three university students opposite him. Doyoung looks at him, fridge already open, pan already oiled, stove already turned on medium heat.
“Do you want pickled radish today? I made some over the weekend. Thought it would be a nice refresher in this shit-ass humid weather.”
It is summer, and Jaehyun loathes it, loathes how he still has to wear a full suit to work simply because he works for a huge corporation. He slides the mint-chocolate latte across the counter, wipes his hand on his slacks.
“God, yes please, thank you hyung.”
He presses his cheek gratefully against the chilled glass of the beer bottle Doyoung sets down in front of him, eyes closing momentarily from exhaustion. Jaehyun is jerked out of his tiny slip into sleep when the other man sets down a small dish of pickled radish loudly in front of him, the clack of porcelain loud against the varnished wood top of his bar counter.
“If you’re tired, go home Jae. You look like you haven’t slept this entire week.”
“I’m fine,” he digs out a pair of chopsticks from the box on the table, brings a small slice of radish to his mouth. The crispness and freshness explodes onto his tongue, and he sighs contentedly.
He cracks open one eye to look at the dark-haired man standing in front of him, hands planted on his hips, dark eyebrows creased together. “I’m hungry, hyung, please feed me.”
It comes out in a whine, and Doyoung rolls his eyes, but turns his attention back to the stove.
The beer is cool down his throat, the pickles are crunchy. Jaehyun likes his routine of coming by Doyoung’s diner after he’s done with work every single day. It’s a habit he had started about a year ago, since he started working at his company. Doyoung’s diner, and Doyoung himself, is familiar, comfortable, and easy.
Jaehyun likes it easy. It doesn’t hurt when you don’t have to think much after all.
--
“How’s Naeun? Have you called her lately?”
Doyoung is watching him carefully, cigarette in between his slender fingers, one leg crossed over the other. It is five a.m., Jaehyun had asked for another beer. He has an off day tomorrow after all, and his only plans are to sleep until the sun is high in the sky and then go run around his neighbourhood until he vomits and then get some dinner from Burger King maybe. Right now, his cheek is pressed into the smooth surface of Doyoung’s counter, his vision slightly blurry because of the unexpected nap that he had taken.
“No,” he pushes himself off the counter, sees a glass of water placed in front of him. “She’s not free, anyways. She’s too busy with all her new gigs.”
Doyoung hums around his cigarette. “Drink your water. Where is she now anyways?”
Jaehyun squints at the clear liquid in the way, scrabbles drowsily through all the numbers and document headers in his brain to find the information to answer the question. “I honestly...don’t remember? Europe, I think? Spain?”
He downs the water in one shot, and Doyoung refills it for him with the pitcher he keeps on his side of the counter. He doesn’t say anything, but Jaehyun feels the weight of the words lingering on the tip of the older man’s tongue. He flicks his gaze up to lock eyes with Doyoung, fingers clinging loosely to the damp surface of the glass slick with condensation.
“Spit it out, Doyoung-hyung.”
Doyoung shifts in his seat, stares Jaehyun back down. It reminds him of when Jaehyun was still a lanky university student, up to his chin in accounting textbooks and past-year papers for his certification exam. Doyoung had been too thin in baggy cardigans and worn oversized tees, eyes permanently ringed with dark shadows, circling the question numbers that Jaehyun had gotten wrong in large dramatic red circles before shoving them back under his nose. He always just knew when Jaehyun was trying to get out of studying, stared at him with the intensity in his eyes that Jaehyun believed could fry an elephant into a crisp, bones and all. Jaehyun isn’t in college anymore, and Doyoung no longer touches exam papers, but the intensity in his eyes as he stares down at Jaehyun is still there, unflinching and hard.
Jaehyun himself is not too good at this whole staring game, so he ducks his head back down and stares morosely at the glass of water in his hand. He hears the crinkle of plastic opposite him as Doyoung picks up the drink that the younger had bought for him.
“If you don’t want to care anymore, break up with her. It’s easier for both of you.”
Jaehyun doesn’t think breaking up with someone is easy, especially when the person in question is his long-term girlfriend of five years. He holds his tongue, takes another gulp of water, tries to think about the last time he thought about Naeun. Her lips, her collarbones, her cheeks, the small curve of her waist. Everything is blurry, misshapen, in pieces; a jigsaw puzzle missing too many pieces and the remaining ones blurred and discoloured.
He downs the water in his glass and slams it down on the counter a little louder than necessary. He can feel Doyoung’s gaze burning holes into the top of his head, but the empty glass gets refilled with water. The bell tinkles, signaling the arrival of new customers, and Doyoung immediately turns around to greet them, easy smile on his face, cigarette flung deftly into the can under the sink.
Jaehyun presses his forehead into the counter, inhales deeply. He needs sleep.
--
He calls Naeun two nights later, on his smoke break after dinner in the pantry of his company after devouring two tuna triangle rice balls, washed down with the shitty thin coffee provided for all employees. He didn’t know what had compelled him to do it, but he had unconsciously pulled up her contact on his phone, gazing thoughtlessly at the selfie of both of them set as her contact picture. He sighs, lights his cigarette, and taps the call icon.
“Hello, Jaehyun-oppa?”
“Naeunnie,” the nickname slips out of him, easy, familiar. He takes a drag. “How are you doing over there? I’ve been keeping up with your Instagram. You look really lovely, by the way.”
He hasn’t really been keeping up. He keeps notifications for all social media applications turned off on his phone. It hadn’t been that way originally; Jaehyun used to have notifications alerts set in his phone for all of Naeun’s social media, eager to see what new product she was endorsing or an update on the new upcoming drama that she was starring in. He used to like all her posts, before texting her giddy message on how he was so excited that she was slowly achieving her dream of becoming a model and actress. She would send him back kissy faces, a slew of emojis and sometimes, sometimes pictures that made college student Jaehyun wish that he hadn’t opened her messages when he was up for a presentation in front of the entire lecture hall. That used to be easy for Jaehyun, he had never deliberately put in effort into keeping up with Naeun and her growing career before. It had been easy.
Now, it just feels weird. Jaehyun doesn’t want to think about messaging Naeun on most days, she no longer sends him pictures like before. They have settled into a different kind of easy, at least that is what Jaehyun thinks, just sending each other daily texts of “good morning” and “have a good day”. The old words come out of his mouth easily enough, by force of habit, left-over remains of when they were younger and excited and wrapped up in each other.
There is a shuffle on her side, some shouting in the background. She covers the mouthpiece for a while, replies to a question on her side. Jaehyun taps the ash falling off the end of his smoke into the ashtray, wedges his phone in between his ear and his shoulder before reaching for the plastic wrappers of his dinner crumpled on the table.
“Sorry, oppa,” he hears more shouting in the background, “things are very hectic here. But I missed you. Are you doing okay? Are you eating well? You’re not overworking are you?”
He throws the trash into the bin, walks to the coffee machine to get himself another mug of the pathetic coffee. Other nights he might have walked to the Starbucks to get himself a nice cold brew, but tonight is not one of these nights. “I’m fine, Naeunnie. Missed you too.”
The words are heavy on his tongue. They don’t mean anything, he doesn’t mean for them to mean anything. Naeun hums on the other end, and Jaehyun wonders if she knows.
“Feels so nice to listen to your voice again,” Jaehyun watches the thin coffee trickle slowly into his mug, “you should have called last week too, oppa. I wanted you to call.” There is a pout in her voice, and Jaehyun feels nothing in his chest. None of the gentle tugging of his heartstrings that the image of her pout used to cause, the corners of his lips remain in a straight line, and his cheeks are cold in the harsh air-conditioning of his office.
Break up with her, Doyoung’s face swims before him for a bit. He blinks.
“Sorry, work’s been busy,” the machine sputters out the last of the vile brown liquid that could barely pass for coffee into his cup. “You know, company cycles in America. I’ll try and call you this weekend, okay?”
“Alright, oppa,” he can hear the excitement in her voice on the other end, “I gotta get back to work now, my break is almost over. Love you.”
“Love you.”
The line is dead before he even says the two words. She must have really been a rush. Jaehyun stares at his phone, at the selfie of the two of them, and wonders vaguely why he doesn’t feel as excited as she does. He had been the one chasing after her, tall beautiful Naeun with her rosy cheeks and charming smile and clear voice. He had been enthralled by the way her face flushed when he said something cheeky to her, captivated by how she looked under the lights of the photography studio with red-stained lips and hooded eyes.
He digs the heel of his hand into his right eye. He doesn’t even remember how she last looked like before she had flown off to Europe. Was her hair brown? Or was it blonde. Jaehyun can’t bring himself to remember. Naeun is like a distant memory, flitting in and out of his head, lost and blurry amongst the numbers and documents filling up his brain and the image of his desktop covered in sticky notes with a million checkboxes scribbled onto yellow paper.
He takes his coffee, slides his phone into his pocket and walks back to his desk.
--
It is four a.m. on a Friday night, and his team had just finished that particular quarterly cycle of company auditing and reviews. For some reason, they wanted to go to a strip club. Jaehyun had just wanted to go home and sleep and wake up the next day and run until he vomited before he went to find food on whatever street he had ended up at. He doesn’t know why he hadn’t said no to his boisterous team, and had ended up in this dingy little strip club two streets down from Doyoung’s diner, pressed against older men dressed in cargo jackets and pants wolf-whistling and waving bills at the empty stage bathed in a cheap fluorescent orange light that reflects off the shiny floor and onto the walls of the small room.
As the rest of the lights dim and the orange glows, flashes once, twice, and a graceful lithe figure slinks onto the stage, slender and beautiful. The cheering and whistles around him rise in volume, adding to the slow dull thrum building in Jaehyun’s temples as he squints against the bright light, thinking if he should just leave his team and go to the diner. Some beer and kimchi sounds heavenly right now, and Jaehyun just wants Doyoung’s cooking.
“Yeah! Zeus! Come on!”
He blinks up into the bright lights, watching the slender silhouette undulate and curl against the backdrop of orange, like a shadow rising against the brilliant rising of the sun. A man steps out from the halo, falling onto his hands and knees before slowly crawling to the edge of the stage, every movement deliberate, seductive, soft. He is clad in a scanty outfit of brown leather straps criss-crossing across his bare chest and legs, smooth and hairless, white shorts barely covering his ass, a matching large white ribbon sitting at the base of his throat. His face is young, chubby cheeks caked dramatically with gold glitter and rosy pink blush, framed by soft orange curls with a golden circlet nestled amongst them. There are gold cuffs on his wrists and ankles, and the man smiles at the crowd, barely a turn of his full lips stained a dark pink, before he arches his back and throws his head back in a soundless moan.
The curve of his throat is absolutely beautiful, framed by the orange background lighting, slender and soft. Jaehyun can’t look away, headache forgotten, hunger pangs vanishing, as he watches the man slowly pull off each piece of clothing teasingly, tongue constantly toying with his plush lower lip as he flings each item towards the crowd. The roar around Jaehyun is muted in his ears, tunnel vision on the man on the stage as he is left with nothing by the comically large ribbon around his neck. Jaehyun’s eyes never drift towards the area between the stripper’s legs, locked on the other man’s face like a homing missile headed towards its programmed target. He is enraptured by the way the golden glitter on the man’s cheekbones catch the orange light and seemingly reflect off his honey skin, framing a faint halo almost around the soft orange locks tousled by the man’s own fingers and some playful hands from the crowd. The man is looking across the crowd slowly, the sweep of his head both gentle and sinful as he gazes across the crowd of his loyal customers waving their hands maniacally and desperately chanting his name like a prayer.
Zeus. Zeus Zeus. Zeus. Zeus.
The moment the warm, sultry eyes meet his, Jaehyun feels his heart thump in his chest before going off in an erratic staccato rhythm that makes the blood rush to his head and his palms sweat. In that moment, everything falls away, and it’s almost like a moment in a movie where one spotlight is on him and another is on the man on the stage, and all they can see is each other.
The man, Zeus, smiles at him, brown seductive eyes crinkling into crescents, and he raises a hand, curls his index finger, beckoning for Jaehyun to come to him. Jaehyun follows, like the children following the Pied Piper as he blew his melody that enchanted them on his pipe, his feet moving him forward as the crowd parted for him to approach the stage. He doesn’t know how he got there, but suddenly the golden face with rosy blush and wet lips is right in front of him, and the finger that had hypnotised him into moving is under his chin, warm against his clammy skin that is both too hot and too cold.
Jaehyun’s mind is blank as the hand leaves his chin, searching out his arm and he lifts it up willingly, cotton in his mouth as Zeus takes his hand, eyes still locked on Jaehyun’s. The gold glitter is even more brilliant up-close, and Jaehyun’s heart whirrs in his chest even faster when a tongue darts out, trapped between pink lush lips as his hand is guided towards the white ribbon still tied neatly at the base of the stripper’s throat.
There are a lot of cheers and whoops around him, but Jaehyun doesn’t hear any of them. He watches as Zeus guides one end of the ribbon between his thumb and index finger before reaching forward to boldly thumb Jaehyun’s lip. He mouths the words, soft and subtle, lips wet in the harsh cheap light, hooded eyes melted chocolate, dripping of iridescent fantasies and tempting promises, attention only focused on Jaehyun despite giving a show to the crowd packed into a small room tucked away in an unnamed street in Seoul.
Go on. Take what you want.
Jaehyun pulls at the ribbon, gives into the fantasies and promises of gold glitter and orange light. The white fabric slides off the slender neck and drapes over his knuckles, his body chained to that very spot purely by the weight of Zeus’ thumb on his lips.
--
“Hyung, I think I’m bisexual?”
Doyoung doesn’t seem surprised. He offers Jaehyun a cigarette, drags his stool to Jaehyun’s side of the diner so that they can talk without raising their voices. The diner is empty, the last customer having just left five minutes ago. Jaehyun takes one stick, pulls out his own lighter as Doyoung leans forward to let him light up his own smoke. The nicotine is welcome in his lungs, and he blows a stream of smoke up to the ceiling as Doyoung refills his glass of green tea and fetches his own mint-chocolate latte from where he had stored it in the fridge. He pulls out an ashtray, sets it in front of Jaehyun, and taps the ash off his own smoke before looking at the accountant and crossing his legs.
Doyoung’s gaze is carefully blank and neutral, and Jaehyun knows it’s an invitation to share. The elder always did this when he sensed that Jaehyun had wanted to say something, watching him carefully over the lit end of the Lucky Strikes he chose to smoke, legs crossed, one elbow resting on top of it, eyes deliberately vacant and emotionless. Somewhere along the way, in their many nights of tutoring in the tiny room in the university where they pulled all-nighters, Jaehyun had managed to muster up the courage to ask for a cigarette, and he had been given one. That’s how his impromptu advice sessions with Doyoung work.
“I, um, went to the gay strip club two streets down from here,” he chances a glance at Doyoung’s face as the elder swirls the straw in his drink to mix the sediments gathered at the bottom of the cup with the liquid. Still blank, still neutral. “I don’t know if you know it.”
“Welcome to my Playground,” Doyoung supplies, letting the smoke creep out of the corner of his mouth in a slow stream, “yeah, I know it. Some of the dancers and staff are regulars here.”
Jaehyun blinks. Doyoung snorts, sips his latte.
“My team wanted to go there, it was one of their ideas, I don’t remember who,” he swallows, eyes fixed on his glass of green tea because it was easier to look at than Doyoung and his cautiously vacant face. “But anyways, we went there, and we went to one of those shows in the rooms, the one where half of it is the stage and the audience stands in the other.”
Doyoung nods, lifts his smoke to his lips again. “And, whose show did you end up in?”
Jaehyun swallows. The ash on the end of his cigarette breaks off and falls gently into the ashtray that he had been leaning it against. The name is on the tip of his tongue.
The gentle chime of the diner’s bell snaps them both out of the conversation as a young man ducks into the diner, wrapped up in a denim jacket and a yellow shirt tucked into skinny jeans. Doyoung sighs, stands up, and reaches over to put his cigarette out in the ashtray.
“Welco--oh? Woo? It’s been a while!”
The man turns around to smile at Doyoung and Jaehyun suddenly feels like the ground is rushing up to consume him whole, his tongue swollen in his mouth, his pulse pounding in his throat, beating a loud echoey rhythm on the side of his head. He would never not recognise the crown of orange curls framing the delicate face, rosy cheeks rising with the bright smile directed at the chef-owner, and the slender neck that lead to sharp delicate collarbones partially covered by the loose yellow tank top that the person was wearing.
It must be some kind of cruel, cursed fate, Jaehyun thinks, as the man turns around to smile at him before recognition flashes through bright brown eyes and the man eagerly rounds the square counter to come to his side and crowd into his space. He is too close for Jaehyun’s comfort, and the sudden memory of staring into sultry brown eyes set into skin caked with golden glitter and pink blush with wet pink-stained lips flashes before his eyes.
“Oh hello, we meet again, Mister CEO.”
Doyoung snorts.
--
He takes a seat beside Jaehyun, cheerfully asks for a peach soda, and clinks his glass with Jaehyun’s before chugging down half the glass. He sighs contentedly, watches Doyoung patter around the kitchen for a bit before turning his full attention on Jaehyun and stretching out his hand with a grin.
“My name’s Jungwoo, but I think you know me as Zeus from Playground,” Jaehyun takes his hand dumbly out of reflex, registers how his skin is smooth and warm before Zeu- Jungwoo pulls away and rests his elbows on the counter. “I was not expecting to see you here.”
“He’s here all the time, Woo,” Doyoung supplies while stirring something over the stovetop. Jaehyun smells soy sauce and garlic. “He always leaves before you come in though, to go home to sleep. Today’s an anomaly because he was,” he looks at Jaehyun pointedly, “at a certain stripper’s show it seems.”
Jaehyun presses his lips together, tries not to let the mix of emotions wrecking havoc in his chest bubble to the surface. He looks at Jungwoo, trying to find the words to say before realising belatedly that he had not introduced himself yet.
“Uhm, I’m Jaehyun,” he nearly reaches for the business cards in his jacket by force of habit. “And I’m not a CEO. I’m just an accountant, hence the suit.”
“Mr Accountant then,” Jungwoo drawls, his eyes sliding over Jaehyun’s shoulders and arms in a blatant show of checking him out. Jaehyun doesn’t know why he feels self-conscious under the other man’s gaze. He works out regularly, runs on his off days, and he has paid good money for the expensive, custom-tailored suits that he wears to the office to impress his clients. He knows he looks good, he knows he’s attractive and that he is often the target of many girls and guys when he goes bar-hopping with Eunwoo and Mingyu. Yet, under Jungwoo’s eyes, he feels freakishly insecure, like he wants Jungwoo to be impressed by him, like how all the other people who had tried to pick him up before had.
He laughs, reaches for his green tea, eager for something for his hands to do. “Just Jaehyun.”
“Jaehyun,” Jungwoo says his name easily, and the smile that curls his lips is genuine and full, without any intent to seduce or tease.” Nice to meet you, Jaehyun.”
Jaehyun thinks that Jungwoo looks even more beautiful like this: without the heavy makeup, wrapped in an oversized jacket and a loose tank top, hair messy and unstyled, but with the cheeriest, most sincere smile on his face. There is no trace of Zeus, who is powerful, seductive, and commanded the attention of the room even with clothes on. This is just Jungwoo, soft brown hair, pink cheeks, sweet smile, curled up against the counter of Doyoung’s diner.
“Here you go,” Doyoung sets a steaming bowl of something and another bowl of rice in front of Jungwoo, “I made it yesterday and let it stew in the fridge overnight, so the flavors are a bit more intense and salty, just the way you like it.”
Jungwoo’s face lights up eagerly at the food before him. “You’re the best, hyung,” he blows a loud wet kiss in Doyoung’s direction, which the older man responds to with a snort, “this is why I love coming to your diner after my shift is done. You always feed me so well.”
Doyoung scoffs. “You and all my other regulars, including,” he nods at Jaehyun, refilling his glass of green tea for him, “this one. He always comes after work.”
Jungwoo looks at him, looks at the half-eaten plate of pork before him, and reaches for a pair of chopsticks and a spoon. Jaehyun blinks at his own food before sneaking a look at Jungwoo’s order. It’s jangjorim, he realises, beef, quail eggs and hard boiled eggs braised in soy sauce. Jungwoo catches him looking, nudges the bowl towards him as he picks up his rice.
“Want some?”
Jaehyun blinks. “You don’t mind?”
Jungwoo smiles at him, picking out three quail eggs and a slice of beef to set on his plate before spreading sauce over his rice. “Nah, food tastes better when it’s shared, no? That’s what Doyoung-ie-hyung always says.”
Doyoung sighs, but it is fond despite the attempted exasperation the chef manages to muster up. He nods at Jaehyun’s pork, cold and pathetic on the hotplate that it had been served in. “Do you want me to heat it up for you? I’ll just pop it over the stove and add some sauce.”
Jaehyun nods gratefully, eyes following Doyoung as he takes the hotplate back to the stove and sets it over a flame before the older man reaches into his fridge for some other things. He turns around to find Jungwoo looking at Doyoung’s back just as fondly, chopsticks breaking apart a hard-boiled egg.
“Doyoung-ie-hyung is so handsome, right?” Jungwoo sighs wistfully, picking up one of the halves of the egg and setting it on top of Jaehyun’s rice. The sauce clinging to the egg seeps through the remainder of Jaehyun’s rice, staining the white pearly morsels a light cool brown. “Men who can cook are so attractive.”
Jaehyun wants to tell Jungwoo that he can cook too. Some days when he’s too tired to go for a run, he stands in his apartment and makes a variety of foods. Sometimes he makes souffle pancakes for fun, other days he just makes a variety of kimbap which fillings that he had wanted to try, like lobster cream or torched salmon marinated in a wasabi-mayonnaise sauce. His ability and interest in cooking had been something Naeun had always fawned over aggressively, often demanding that he bake her the cheesecakes and macaroons that she loves so much.
He doesn’t remember the last time he cooked for her. He doesn’t remember the last time he cooked for himself either, honestly. Work, work, more work.
“Jaehyun can cook too, just so you know, Woo,” Doyoung is back, and his pork is steaming again, the sauce in the hotplate bubbling ever so slightly. “He’s just always burdened with work. Last time when he was a university student, he used to work with me at the lunchbox stall. He knows his way around the kitchen and he bakes the best macaroons.”
Jaehyun picks up a piece of pork, trying to push down the heat rising to his cheeks as Jungwoo twists around to look at him. He wraps the pork around a bit of the rice stained with soy sauce, makes a neat little wrap, and pops it in his mouth. The spiciness and saltiness explodes across his tongue, perfect harmonies contained with the tender strip of meat and the soft rice slightly dampened by the soy sauce.
Jungwoo presses against his shoulder, chopsticks reaching over to pick his own piece of pork off Jaehyun’s hotplate and smiles at him, all bright eyes and soft orange hair. “Is that so, Jaehyunnie?” The pork leaves a tiny red stain on his bottom lip, barely tinting, and Jaehyun is suddenly overcome with the urge to reach out and wipe it off with his thumb. Jungwoo licks it off carelessly, chewing the pork before his eyes light up and he turns to look at Doyoung.
“Hyung! This is really good!”
Doyoung’s tender laugh chimes with the gentle tinkle of the door bell. Jaehyun thinks Jungwoo is the most beautiful person he has ever met, with his soft cheeks and messy hair, and a smile so bright that it puts the sun to shame.
--
“Hey, Jaehyun?”
They are standing on the street outside of the diner, and Jaehyun is digging through his pockets for his phone, jacket slung over his shoulder and briefcase clasped awkwardly under his arm. Jungwoo had taken off his jacket too, his shoulders soft curves and his skin rosy under the delicate rays of the sun that was creeping up the horizon behind them.
Jaehyun doesn’t look up, he can’t remember where he put his fucking phone. “Yeah?”
He hears Jungwoo shift beside him, beat-up converse scraping along the gravel that lined the road. He finally finds his phone in the inside pocket of his jacket and pulls it out, his nails scraping the cheap plastic cover roughly. He really needs to replace it before it falls apart.
“Jaehyun.”
Jungwoo’s converses are directly in his line of sight, nearly touching his own expensive dress shoes (Balenciaga, a gift from Naeun after a shoot in America last year, he vaguely remembers), and he looks up into warm brown eyes and soft pink cheeks. Jaehyun forgets how breathing works for a bit, his heart going into overdrive so fast he’s pretty sure that if Jungwoo was any closer he would hear how it is betraying Jaehyun ever so rapidly. Jungwoo smells like cinnamon and roses, sweet and soft, but with an underlying edge that ever so slightly tugs at the fraying edges of Jaehyun’s sleep-deprived mind.
“Jungwoo.” He matches the other, glad that his voice came out alright and not shaky. Jungwoo searches his face for a bit, and Jaehyun sees that edge again, sharp prickly thorns hidden under a veneer of saccharine sweetness used as a shield, an underlying guardedness that made Jaehyun want to take Jungwoo’s hands in his own and rub away the hidden tension and distrust lurking behind the wall of flirtatiousness and false cheer.
“Will I see you again?”
The question catches him off guard, nearly makes him drop his phone. Above his crouched figure, where he had performed some elaborate upper body somersault to save his phone from being cracked open on the street (thankfully it worked, Jaehyun absolutely hated changing his phone), Jungwoo’s laughter is clear and bright, no falseness, no artificial sweetener. The sound works its way under Jaehyun’s skin, gentle, warm honey, and settles comfortably in his chest.
“Maybe? If I decide to stick around long enough one night to bother Doyoung-hyung into talking to me again,” he straightens up, takes in pink cheeks puffed up with laughter, eyes crinkled into soft crescents. God, Jungwoo is beautiful, framed by the pale yellow of the sun slowly spreading across the inky sky and turning it into a light blue. “Sorry, I’m not exactly the biggest fan of Playground, no offence to your job of course. I prefer somewhere quieter.”
“It’s fine,” Jungwoo smiles at him, hands tucked into the pockets of his tight ripped jeans. “I’d love to meet you here again, maybe share our orders too? Maybe a beer?”
Jaehyun nods, his head dizzy with so many emotions he can’t figure out. He senses, under the current of giddiness from knowing that he will see Jungwoo again, some dark shadows of guilt snaking their way through the cracks of orange warmth to grip around his heart and tug harshly at it.
Break up with her. Doyoung’s voice is a broken record he can’t find the off switch to.
Jungwoo reaches for his tie, loose around his unbuttoned collar, and pulls him forward. Jaehyun stumbles forward into cinnamon and rose, and there is something tucked into the breast pocket of his button up before Jungwoo presses a light kiss to his cheek. The fuzziness in Jaehyun’s head swells, vanquishes the shadows of doubt and amplifies to something like an explosion that sends sparks throughout his veins and makes his heart stutter in his chest.
“See you next Friday, Jaehyun.”
The words are murmured against his cheek, and Jungwoo is stepping back as Jaehyun’s tie falls limply back down his chest. Jungwoo smiles at, bright against the rising morning sun, and ducks back into Doyoung’s diner after turning the outside lamp off.
Back in the privacy of the bathroom of his bachelor’s pad, Jaehyun wonders whether he would still feel the ghost of Jungwoo’s kiss in a week while he unbuttons his shirt and turns his pockets inside out to make sure he doesn’t accidentally put his pen or phone into the washing machine. He finds smooth silk in the pocket of his shirt, blinks, toothbrush still in his mouth, but pinches it and pulls it out to examine the unknown object.
For the second time that day, Jaehyun finds the same white ribbon draped over his knuckles; except that he is standing only in his boxers in his bathroom and not in front of Zeus’ stage at Playground two streets down from the diner.
--
Jungwoo becomes a new habit in Jaehyun’s life.
They meet at Doyoung’s diner on Fridays, around five a.m. after Jungwoo finishes his shift at Playground and Jaehyun is done with all the paperwork and calculations for the week. Jaehyun is always early, one mint-chocolate latte and one peach sparkling green tea clutched in his hands as he pushes open the door with his shoulder. Jungwoo always rushes in, face scrubbed bare of makeup, pink and soft and smelling of cinnamon and rose, freshly dried hair messy and soft and falling into his eyes. They sit together on the left side of the counter, Jungwoo on Jaehyun’s left, their shoulders pressed together, and pick at their own orders while stealing off each other’s plates. Jungwoo laughs at the way Jaehyun wraps his rice in pork strips, but leans forward to bite the roll off his chopsticks anyways. He shoves quail eggs from his order into Jaehyun’s mouth whenever the accountant laughs too long at a funny story that he recounts, cheeks pink with indignation and full lips pursed in the cutest pout. He always thanks Jaehyun for the peach sparkling green tea, sips at it while they watch compilations of pomeranians videos on Jaehyun’s phone propped up against the beer bottle shared between them, Jungwoo’s head warm against the side of his own and his shoulder a welcome weight on Jaehyun’s own.
Doyoung corners him one day when he comes in earlier, having finished that week’s work the day before. “I don’t know why you are leading Jungwoo on, but fucking stop.”
Jaehyun frowns, hands Doyoung an iced latte. The chef-owner had been asking for those lately, and he had wondered briefly who was the person (the man, his brain supplies) that had gotten him into drinking caffeine again. Doyoung hasn’t touched caffeine since he had been hospitalised, afraid of anything that would keep him up later than necessary. There must be someone who has made him secure enough to ask for something caffeinated rather than the chocolate lattes that he was so fiercely loyal to.
“I’m not leading Jungwoo on,” he sets down the other drink on a coaster, puts his briefcase down under the counter. “We’re just hanging out. I like hanging out with him.”
“Liar,” Doyoung’s voice is steely, sharp, overprotective. “You’ve been texting him, he told me.”
“Friends text,” Jaehyun tries to think of a reason why Doyoung is so irritated with him, comes up empty. “I send him memes that he finds funny, he sends videos of corgis back. We call sometimes when an asshole tries to grope him while he’s dancing and I let him complain dramatically about it. That’s all.”
Doyoung’s eyebrows disappear into his fringe. “Oh, so you guys call too?”
“Sometimes, when we both can’t sleep,” Jaehyun frowns at the beer and glass still in Doyoung’s hands. “Come on, hyung, give me the beer. Why are you being so mean to me?”
“Jaehyun, you have a girlfriend.”
He doesn’t see the problem. “Yeah, Jungwoo knows? I told him.”
Doyoung stares at him, jaw slack in a mixture of disbelief and horror. He closes his mouth with a snap, sets the beer and glass down in front of Jaehyun with a loud thud.
“Jaehyun, listen, I actually don’t really care that you are flirting with Jungwoo. In fact, I actually quite like it. He hasn’t been so happy for so long. He always comes in, sits by himself, and picks at his food if I am busy cooking or serving other customers and can’t talk to him. He has found someone to spend time with, to eat a very very late dinner or a very very early breakfast with, and he loves being around you. It’s honestly so heartwarming, how he has opened up so fast with you. It took me months before he was even comfortable sharing his real name with me.”
Jaehyun waits, his heart in his throat, Doyoung’s eyes hard and steely boring into him.
“But you’re still attached, Jaehyun. It’s been what, three? Four? Months? Since I told you to break up with Naeun, but you haven’t fucking done it, have you? You probably just call her, she gets excited to hear from you, you can’t bear to make her unhappy, so you tell her you love her and she hangs up again. It happens, again and again, every single time you call her or when you pick up her calls.”
“I’ve been trying to find the right time,” Jaehyun defends himself, grabs the cold bottle of the beer, a chilled anchor to reality before he resists the urge to run out of Doyoung’s diner. He does not like where this conversation is going at all, he wants it to stop. Doyoung has never pushed, never intruded. Why is he doing this now?
“There is no right time, Jae,” Doyoung’s eyebrows are scrunched together, his voice low, and that is how Jaehyun knows that he’s actually angry and not exaggerating. “You can’t keep leading her on, you can’t keep leading Jungwoo on. You can’t keep them both.”
Why can’t I? Jaehyun wants to scream at Doyoung. It is easy, letting Naeun hang up the phone while she sounded so chirpy and happy after saying words that no longer mean anything. It is easy, hanging out with Jungwoo here after work, watching him laugh at samoyeds tumbling around in daisy fields on the phone screen. It is so easy, hearing Jungwoo whine about outfits not fitting right in the early mornings on the other end of the phone while he is dressed in sweatpants and curled up in his own cheap sheets, unlocking his phone at dinner break to a selfie of Jungwoo with his eyes pressed into soft crescents and his lips stretched into a smile.
It is so easy, and it makes Jaehyun’s heart stutter and thrum with emotions he thought he would never feel again. Not since- oh.
Oh. Not since his first year of dating Naeun.
Doyoung watches him make the connection by himself, his lips pressed together into a disapproving line as he chews on the straw of his iced latte. Jaehyun knows that look, seen it all the times when he fucks up a particularly easy question and loses twenty marks on an exam because of one tiny mistake in the first line. You should have checked, Doyoung always scolds him, red pen drilling crimson holes into Jaehyun’s exam paper, actually use your brain properly sometimes, Jae. Sometimes you just don’t fucking think.
It’s not an exam anymore, but Jaehyun knows in that moment, he has fucked up.
Doyoung watches him, scoffs and turns away to open his fridge.
“You’re such a fucking coward, Jae. Actually use your brain properly for fucking once, will you?”
--
Jungwoo senses the tension between him and Doyoung, but doesn’t ask any questions. He suggests that they watch some episodes of a random drama that Jaehyun doesn’t know, and Jaehyun just agrees because he doesn’t want to think. They eat quietly, the beer bottle untouched, but Jungwoo makes sure to occasionally steal a bite of his food and load generous servings of quail eggs onto Jaehyun’s plate. He sips at the drink Jaehyun bought him, eyes concentrated on the phone screen, his thigh pressed against Jaehyun’s, warm under the counter away from Doyoung’s scrutinising eyes.
He follows Jaehyun out as usual, but doesn’t say goodbye and duck back into the diner. He reaches for Jaehyun’s hand, asks him quietly with soft brown eyes if he wants to come back to Jungwoo’s place to have some cake together. Jaehyun agrees with a nod of his head, all of his thoughts and Doyoung’s face of disapproval swimming together with the numbers and words from work, a mess in his head. He lets Jungwoo tug him down a few alleys, his eyes locked on the other man as he weaves through the streets, the warmth of Jungwoo’s hand against his anchoring him to reality as he moves on autopilot, the handle of his his briefcase loose in his other hand.
Jungwoo’s apartment is small. It’s a tiny one-room studio with a large rack of fabrics pushed up against one wall and a sewing machine on a large table beside it. There’s a queen bed tucked into the corner beside a simple bedside table and an open wardrobe. Jungwoo leads him to the small coffee table in the middle of the space, seats him down on a cushion, and patters off to the fridge to fetch the cake and reach for some fork in the cupboards. Jaehyun sits there, in a room that smells so strongly of cinnamon and rose, with his thoughts all tangled into a bundle bouncing off the walls of his head.
Jungwoo returns with a large slice of strawberry shortcake and two forks, and they pick at it together in silence for a bit. Surprisingly, it is Jaehyun who decides to break the silence. Well, he didn’t really decide, the words just came out of his mouth.
“Jungwoo, am I leading you on?”
Jungwoo sets his fork down against the plate, turns brown eyes of melted chocolate onto Jaehyun. He watches Jaehyun carefully for a bit, lips pressed together in an unreadable expression that the accountant has never seen on his face.
“What answer do you want, Jaehyun?”
He blinks. “You have more than one answer?”
Jungwoo shrugs, the movement careless and pushing against the oversized sweater he is wearing now the weather is cooler. “Yes, and no. It depends on why you are asking the question, Jaehyun. It depends on what you want to do after I answer your question too.”
That’s just confusing. “What?”
“Tell me what answer do you want, Jaehyun,” Jungwoo looks at him, gaze level and his eyes cool. “Do you want me to say yes, so that it will boost your ego, but also call you a dirty cheater who flirts with other people despite having a long-term girlfriend? Or do you want me to say no, and admit that you were just too kind to say no to a stripper who flirts with you and had initially tried to seduce you until he found out that you were attached?”
“I-” the words are stuck in his throat, sticky, cloying, clogging. His heart hurts. “I don’t know.”
Jungwoo laughs, the sound empty and humourless as it echoes in the room. “You do know what you want, Jaehyun. Doyoung-hyung was right. You’re a fucking coward.”
Doyoung’s words coming out of Jungwoo’s mouth stab into his chest, a vicious thorn sinking into the soft cavity of his heart. The rose is lashing out, extending its thorns, moving the soft pink sweetness of comfort out of Jaehyun’s reach and putting up a wall of spiky greens. Great, now both his head and his heart hurt, and Jaehyun just wants it all to end. He wants to sink into warm cinnamon and sweet rose and forget everything, make all the hurt go away.
“Jungwoo, liste-”
“No, you listen, Jaehyun,” Jungwoo is sitting ramrod straight now. He hasn’t moved a bit, but he feels so far away from Jaehyun, like he could reach out and still not be able to touch the other even though he is within arms-reach. He is still beautiful, Jaehyun wonders amidst the raging ocean in his head and the uneven pulsations of his heart, so beautiful even with his brown eyes hardened to steel and his jaw tense with words ready on his tongue.
“I wanted to seduce you the next night, I really did. Why did you think I gave you that ribbon? But then, Doyoung-hyung told me that you were attached, that your girlfriend was overseas a lot, and suddenly I felt like an asshole taking advantage of your vulnerable, overworked state. I wanted a quick fuck, sure, and you looked like you needed a distraction, but I wasn’t going about to be a homewrecker.”
Jaehyun bites his lip. You’re not a homewrecker, he wants to tell Jungwoo, there isn’t anything between Naeun and I anymore. There hasn’t been anything for the past two years or so.
“I thought you wouldn’t turn up anymore, not at the diner, after Doyoung-hyung told me you had a girlfriend. Especially after you told me about her on the phone that one day when we were talking about perhaps going to Lotte World one weekend together. I didn’t know how to respond to that, Jaehyun. I thought if you didn’t bring it up yourself, I would just pretend that you didn’t actually have a girlfriend, and that I could keep flirting with you, keep enjoying our shared Fridays together, keep texting you silly selfies and calling you in the early mornings to complain about every single minor inconvenience at work and listen to you laugh over the phone.”
“I was going to break up with her,” the words fall out of his mouth, a bodily reaction. He just wants Jungwoo to stop talking; he doesn’t like where this is going. “I had thought about it, even before Doyoung-hyung told me to consider doing it. It hasn’t been a relationship for the last two years, especially not when she’s flying around the world for work and we sleep in separate apartments when she’s back in Seoul. I’ve been busy with work too, you know I work the shift dealing with American companies and I don’t exactly have a normal schedule.”
Jungwoo’s eyes are wet and shiny. “So have you? Have you broken up with her?”
Jaehyun swallows hard, the stone still stuck in his throat, his head still hurting.
“You haven’t.” Jungwoo isn’t surprised. He laughs again, the same empty laugh that wraps Jaehyun’s heart around in a blanket of ice and squeezes, not the normal soft warm honey that warms his veins and cradles it gently. He reaches for Jungwoo’s hands but the other man pulls them away, shaking his head.
“I’m in love with you, Jaehyun.”
Amidst the icy blanket that is cocooned in, Jaehyun’s heart thumps, stutters a bit.
“You’re just so easy to fall for, you know that? I think I fell for you already the first time we met, not at the diner, but at Playground. You were just standing there, lost in the crowd of my regulars and other horny young men who wanted something pretty to look at. You didn’t look at me like I was pretty, Jaehyun. Everyone looks at me like that, and I like it. That’s why I work as a stripper even though I could be working full-time in an engineering firm and earning more than just a consultant’s salary as my day job. I like how I feel so fucking pretty under the lights, because of the way they look at me and clamour for my attention while I dance on stage.”
Jaehyun shakes his head. “You’re not just pretty, Jungwoo. You’re fucking beautiful.”
Jungwoo falls silent. His lips are trembling, and there are tears perched precariously on the edge of his lower lashline. He folds his hands into his lap, blinks once, and Jaehyun wants to reach out and kiss away the tears that look like they are about to fall.
“See. Falling for you is so easy, Jaehyun. Especially when you say things like that.”
“I mean it.”
Jaehyun truly does. He clasps his hands together, holding back to urge to reach out for Jungwoo. To pull him into his arms and kiss his tears away and kiss the bitter expression of hurt and upset off his face. To pull him to Jungwoo’s own bed and kiss him and hold him and love him and fall asleep beside him until the sun is high in the sky and they both have to get ready to go to work.
Jungwoo laughs, the sound like glass shattering across the floor. “I know you do.”
The splinters ricochet off the floor and stick themselves into Jaehyun’s heart.
“You can’t have us both, Jaehyun. You can’t have me and Naeun together. I know you feel something for me too Jaehyun, and I know that you know too. Well, now that I told you that I’m in love with you, what are you going to do?”
Jaehyun blinks. “I don’t know.”
Jungwoo exhales through his nose in a sharp sound, turns his head away. “Liar.”
He looks back at Jaehyun, the unshed tears glittering like diamonds in the sunlight that peeks through his translucent curtains and is crawling across the warm brown of his floor.
“To answer your question, then, Jaehyun: have you been leading me on? No, because I fell for you not because you flirted with me or tried to seduce me or whatever. I fell for you because you are always there, because you are easy to talk to, because you make you feel safe even by just sending me a message to wish me a good day at work. Because you always remember whenever I mention that I want to try a new drink from Starbucks and it’s waiting for me on the counter after my shift. You didn’t intentionally flirt with me or seduce me, that I know. You just pay attention to me, share your food and your time and your day with me, and let me share mine with you. The sharing came so easily, so, of course, falling for you was so easy too.”
“But, also, yes. You did lead me on. You have a girlfriend, Jaehyun. A beautiful successful girlfriend who gifts you Balenciaga shoes and Gucci ties and looks picture perfect with you in photos. A girlfriend you already had memories with, memories of going to Lotte World on the weekends, memories of sleeping in together in the same bed until the sun is hot in the sky, memories of cooking together and eating together and watching stupid dog videos on your phone while you share a can of beer and drink without pouring it out into separate glasses.”
The tears finally spill over, running down Jungwoo’s cheeks, and he doesn’t bother wiping them away. His gaze on Jaehyun’s face never wavers, and Jaehyun can’t bring himself to look away. Everything hurts, everything is too fucking sharp, and everything is falling down too fast and Jaehyun doesn’t know which hole to tend to first as water fills the boat and sends ice through his veins and numbs his entire body. The boat is sinking, sinking fast, and Jungwoo is slipping out of his fingertips and into the dark inkinesss of the ocean, further and further away from Jaehyun’s lonely boat in the middle of a black nowhere.
“I want all those things with you Jaehyun. I want those memories you already have with her. I want to have them with you. If I was a bit more selfish I would have just made them already, but I don’t want to be a homewrecker. It’s one of those names I hate; it’s the name that petty old housewives call me when they see me on the corner of the street and they know that their husbands are regulars at my shows at Playground. I’m not a fucking homewrecker, they ruined their marriages themselves. It was already broken before their husbands decided to come see me for the first time. I don’t take kindly to being called something I’m not.”
“Jungwoo,” he’s surprised by how small his voice is. Jungwoo is too, he can see it in the way the other man blinks for a bit, a slight crack in the wall of thorns that has been constructed between the two of them, but it is gone just as fast. “You’re not a homewrecker.”
“I want to kiss you so badly, Jaehyun. Right now. Once I do that, I’m actually a homewrecker.”
The boat is sinking fast and the ocean has consumed all of Jungwoo. All Jaehyun can see are his brown eyes filled with anguish and pain, with hopelessness and heartache, and his own chest is twisted tight with tangled emotions and knots of words that he does not know where to start untangling.
He can’t cut any of them. If he does, whatever he has with Jungwoo will fall to bits, to broken useless threads, and he will lose it. He will lose Jungwoo the moment he decides to cut, to take the easy way out.
God, he will lose Jungwoo.
“Jae?” Jungwoo’s voice is softer, shaky, but still firm. “You’re crying.”
He doesn’t want to lose Jungwoo, he realises as he watches the tears drip down onto his fists clenched tightly around the material of his work slacks, staining the pale gray material and turning it into a dark grey that is almost black. Jungwoo’s face is the only part of him not consumed by the ocean, but Jaehyun belatedly realises that the boat is no longer under him. He’s in the ocean as well, up to his face in the black inky water, which runs cold tendrils over his face and breathes despair into his mouth and threatens to drag him down.
Down. Away from Jungwoo. Away. Where there is no Jungwoo.
There are warm hands cupping his cheek and Jungwoo pulls him out of the coldness of the ocean into the warmth of cinnamon and rose, into his arms, and Jaehyun can feel the hotness of the other man’s tears seeping into his hair. He reaches out, fingers finding the back of Jungwoo’s shirt, pulling him close, face buried into the softness of Jungwoo’s shoulder that smells of cinnamon and rose and wraps around him like a warm blanket and slides under his skin into his veins like warm honey. Jaehyun clings desperately, wanting, scared of the dark ocean, terrified of the coldness, absolutely petrified of just the thought of losing Jungwoo to the frigid blackness of the still ocean that has ripped his boat of sanity out from under him.
Jungwoo breathes quietly into his hair, his own chest shaking with silent sobs into Jaehyun’s hair, and Jaehyun wants to fix all of this. Fix it so that Jungwoo isn’t crying and that he isn’t crying and that the ocean isn’t all black and cold and all around them. They are a tiny island with the black waves lapping gently at the edges, putting their shared bubble of memories both made and yet to be made at stake as the waterline draws closer and closer.
But Jaehyun doesn’t know how to fix this. He can’t pretend that it’s okay when it’s absolutely fucking not. He’s a fucking asshole, Doyoung’s voice echoes in his head, and he has let a problem fester to a point where it is no longer just a tiny puddle beside his foot. He should have used his fucking head, like Doyoung said. He shouldn’t have taken easy for granted, should have realised that he is just being a horrible human being. To Doyoung, to Naeun.
To Jungwoo.
Jungwoo presses his face into Jaehyun’s hair, pulls him a bit closer, surrounds him with cinnamon and rose and honey and warmth from the sun, pulls him away from the frigid iciness of his thoughts and emotions and keeps him warm.
“It’s okay, Jae. It will be okay, I promise.”