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The way it had sounded, when Taeyong had pitched the party to him in the campus cafe, was that Taeyong was just having a few friends over for a couple of drinks. It was to welcome the new Chinese students, he said, because Sicheng wished there had been a way to meet people when he first transferred. In Ten’s mind, he pictured getting giggly-tipsy in someone’s lap and then sitting back to watch the boys play Mario Kart, the dim light lulling him to sleep. It sounded like exactly what he needed, this far into his thesis.
Upon arrival at the apartment Taeyong shares with Jaehyun, where Jaehyun opens the door and let him in with a hearty laugh at nothing at all and almost spills his beer on Ten's shoes, Ten realizes he possibly misinterpreted what Taeyong had meant by ‘welcome party’.
It's crazy inside and Ten is only slightly fashionably late. There are people everywhere- some are his friends, some he recognises as Jaehyun’s friends, and others are strangers. They're playing Red Velvet as loudly as must be possible and for a brief, achy second it makes Ten think of Johnny. He squashes that feeling, mostly out of habit. It’s no good missing Johnny now.
“Taeyong said to come say hi when you get here!” Jaehyun yells over the music, almost stumbling into Taeil, who seems unaffected and just waves hello. Ten waves back. “He has a surprise for you!”
After struggling through the mass of partying drunks in the living room, Ten finds Taeyong in the kitchen, sitting on the countertop with a drink in each hand. He looks beautiful, glowing softly with tipsiness and his hair freshly cut and styled. He must have been for a haircut in preparation for this. Next to him is Yuta, who is regaling Taeyong and Johnny with a story he’s definitely too drunk to be telling. Luckily for him, his audience seems equally drunk, as they laugh at a punchline that he repeats three times to say it in all in just one language, Johnny covering his face as Yuta goes back and forth from Japanese to Korean.
Johnny.
Johnny .
Johnny’s wearing boots and jeans and that soft white sweater Doyoung gave him on his birthday two years ago, and the glimpses Ten gets from between Johnny’s fingers show the huge, goofy grin and the scrunchy, laughing eyes, and he’s also standing in Taeyong’s kitchen, in front of Ten, in person.
He wasn’t supposed to be back until Christmas.
“Ten!” Taeyong interrupts Yuta, hopping down off the counter. He stumbles only slightly, to his credit, always more coordinated than the rest of them, and gives Ten a tight hug. “I didn’t know if you would coooome.”
“Of course,” says Ten, as if it’s ‘of course’, when it completely wasn’t, even ten minutes ago. Now, with Johnny standing there, finally getting his breath, leaning on his knees now and looking up at Ten to smile big and only a little nervous over Taeyong’s shoulder, it seems obvious that he should be here.
He hasn’t seen Johnny in so long.
“Here,” says Taeyong, grabbing the bottles out of Ten’s hands, “I’ll put them in the freezer where the others won’t get to them. I’ll introduce you to the Chinese kids. They’re nice.”
“Jungwoo likes one of them,” Yuta chimes in, grinning.
“Jungwoo likes one of them?” Ten repeats, sort of helpless, still looking at Johnny. “Didn’t they just get here?”
“Jungwoo likes one of them,” Johnny affirms, the first thing he’s said. As Taeyong ducks down to open the freezer, Johnny steps over him easily, like he’s a small garden wall, and opens his arms to Ten. “Hey.”
“Hey,” Ten echoes, and tries to hug Johnny like it’s no big deal, like he hasn’t ached every day since Johnny left for the States more than a year ago. Tries to step back like that’s no big deal, either. “I didn’t - I thought you were coming back at Christmas.”
“It’s almost Christmas,” Johnny points out. He’s right. “My dad got called away on business, and there wasn’t any reason for me to stay longer. Plus, I missed you.”
Johnny’s always been like that. Heart on his sleeve. Ten doesn’t know how he does it. It’s not that Ten can’t be affectionate - he knows he is, gets mocked often enough for being clingy - but Johnny does it so simply, no need to justify or defend himself, and so clear to those around him. He’s always been like that.
It’s just, Ten has barely heard from him while he’s been gone. They texted a lot in the beginning, in the first few weeks, but Ten’s thesis started weighing on him and all of Johnny’s snapchats had American parties with American boys, and - Ten stopped watching them for his own sake.
Johnny’s hair looks so soft. Ten wants to scream.
“We thought we’d surprise you,” adds Yuta. He slings an arm around Johnny’s shoulders. “That’s sort of what the party’s for. It’s Johnny’s coming home party. But the Chinese kids are nice too.”
“Coming home?” echoes Ten. “For a little bit, or…?”
Johnny hadn’t known. He had been so evasive. Maybe he would do another year abroad, maybe he wouldn’t. Either way, Ten, I’ll be home for Christmas. I just don’t know what I’m doing next year.
“For good,” says Johnny, and smiles big. “I’ll tell you about it, okay?”
It sounds like a promise.
When Mark arrives, he steals Johnny away with excited laughter and fast-paced English even Ten struggles to keep up with, and he figures it’s good. He knows he has to share. Besides, Yuta demands on dragging Ten away to meet the new Chinese boys.
One of them is so young, Ten hopes he’s drinking apple juice instead of anything stronger. His name is Chenle and he’s very polite and giggly, though he doesn’t say much, stumbling over his strongly accented Korean. He’s attached at the hip to an older boy with a soft face named Kun, who knows more Korean than his younger friend, and explains that he moved here a while ago but hasn’t been to many big social events.
Yuta grins, a little villainously, always one step away from being a literal spirit of mischief, and says, “I promised I’d change that. So we’re his friends now.”
Finally, tall and broad with big, expressive eyes and wild octopus limbs, a boy who introduces himself as Lucas. Apparently, he’s one of Johnny’s friends, from overseas, has bounced all around the globe, indecisive about where to settle and live and study. He’s come to do a year here after hearing Johnny rave about how much he loves home. Johnny still calls Korea home, even though he’s Chicago born-and-bred. When Ten introduces himself, Lucas’s smile gets bigger. “Oh, you’re Ten ?” he says, emphatically, pointedly, and looks at Taeyong, who rejoined them a few minutes prior. Taeyong nods. Lucas shakes Ten’s hand in his own big bear paw and says, “It’s wonderful to meet you. Finally.” And he bounds off before Ten has a chance to question it.
“That’s the one Jungwoo likes,” says Taeyong softly, as they wander away through the throng of people, as if Ten can pay attention to anything except wondering where Johnny is, wondering what on earth is going on tonight, wondering how he’s supposed to do anything else when Johnny is finally home and he didn’t know.
As the night goes on, Ten has a little more to drink, and he starts to feel himself relax. Their friends arrive in greater numbers, along with people he doesn’t know. He talks a lot to Lucas, the new boy, and finds he really likes him. The younger one seems to be doing fine; on the way to the bathroom, Taeyong leading the way, Ten sees Chenle squished on the couch between Mark and Haechan as they take bets on which of the characters in the old Scooby-Doo re-run on TV is going to turn out to be the villain.
Haechan and Mark are doing well, right now. Ten has never really understood their dynamic. They go through phases, careening from bubbly and obsessed to furious and obsessed. In both, they’re so wrapped up in each other that for them to notice someone else is precious, and wonderful. Mark will have missed Johnny as well, but barring Haechan, Mark is pretty good at laughing and pretending that things don’t mean so much to him that they have the power to hurt him.
“Maybe that’s why Haechan makes him so mad,” Taeyong had mused, once, when they had spoken about it. Ten thinks he might be right.
Either way, Taeyong pauses and asks, “Have you all been drinking enough water?” and is met with groans of, “Yes, mom, ” that bring the comfort of familiarity to settle in Ten’s chest.
Haechan looks at them for a moment too long, though, and then says, “I need to pee, get off me,” pushing at Mark’s leg which is slung across his lap (and across Chenle, Ten notes, though the younger boy doesn’t seem to mind).
“It’s just down the hallway to the left,” Taeyong directs Haechan; Ten has been here plenty of times enough to know. “I’d better go check on the others.” He says it almost like a question, and Ten gives him a nod to let him know he’s okay.
As Taeyong leaves, Haechan puts his hands in his pockets. He clears his throat. “I didn’t know Johnny would be home.”
“Me either,” says Ten. “He pulled off the surprise pretty well. I’m surprised Yuta didn’t let the cat out of the bag.”
Haechan laughs. It’s a sparkly, sweet sound. Ten isn’t as successful as bringing it about as some of the others, but when he does, it’s just as rewarding. He turns serious again briefly afterward, and says, “Hyung, I know that you - I know that before he left -”
“I know you don’t need the bathroom, Haechan,” Ten interrupts, not wanting to hear whatever was coming next. “Go back to the others.”
Haechan’s jaw sets. “I’m just saying. I think you should talk to him. I think you both need to talk about it.”
“I’m going to let him at least put his suitcase down,” Ten snaps, and then, because he feels bad for being so harsh, “and besides, it’s been awhile. It might be best for everyone to just let it go.”
Haechan rolls his eyes, but hugs Ten at the same time, another rare occurrence, and then turns to go back down the corridor. As he disappears around the corner, Ten can hear the television, can hear the Scooby-Doo villain’s comically raspy voice screeching, you meddling kids!
Late into the night, or perhaps very early into the morning, Taeyong and Ten bump back into each other, and Taeyong puts an arm around Ten. “Come on,” he says, perhaps a little more sober than earlier, eyes somewhat clearer, “we’re catching up.”
They end up on the back deck, where Johnny and Jaehyun and Doyoung are sitting around a table with beers, playing some drinking game. Ten plonks down and says, “Peaceful out here,” like he cares anything about peaceful, like he can fathom ‘peaceful’ right now. Taeyong hesitates before he kisses the top of Doyoung’s head as a hello , and Jaehyun playfully slaps Taeyong’s ass has he goes to sit down. Doyoung gives Ten a long look over the table.
“The whole gang’s back together!” exclaims Jaehyun. He’s drunker than the rest of them. He’s resting his head back over his chair, pupils blown, and he keeps grabbing at Johnny’s hand until finally Johnny holds it. “I’m so happy.”
Jaehyun and Johnny have been friends for a long time, since before the others knew them. The three of them, Johnny, Jaehyun and Ten, had gone barhopping before Johnny's going away party and Jaehyun had been drunk after a whole three drinks, passing out shortly after they got back to the apartment and sleeping through everything that happened afterward. He's in the same post-grad cohort as Taeyong, but he's younger than Taeyong and Ten both. It’s good to see him relax.
They’re playing ride the bus, the world’s worst drinking game, but they’re having fun so Ten goes along with it. Doyoung is uncannily good at it: “black, red, black, black, red,” he guesses each card before it’s flipped, each time his grin getting bigger as the other boys begin to insist he’s cheating. Finally, he gets one wrong, takes a shot, and the deck moves to Jaehyun.
Doyoung kicks Ten’s ankle gently under the table and mouths, are you okay?
When Ten (admittedly poorly) feigns ignorance and makes a confused expression, Doyoung lets his eyes dart across the table. Ten is trying so desperately hard not to stare at Johnny, but he’s failing. Johnny’s hair is messier now, his fringe all in his eyes, and he’s holding Jaehyun’s hand still, his long sweater sleeves covering his fingers halfway up. His sleepy eyes are glossed over. He must be exhausted. The jetlag from the States is ruthless. Johnny meets Ten’s eyes, and offers him a tiny, private smile, with a tilt in it like a question.
Ten turns back to Doyoung, nods, and Doyoung doesn’t look convinced, which is fair. Ten isn’t really convinced either.
The others drop off one by one. Taeyong goes to check on whoever remains inside, and then doesn't come back. About an hour later, Doyoung stretches and yawns and takes his leave. Jaehyun falls asleep with his head on the table, quietly snoring.
“Out like a light.” Johnny grins. “Good to see things haven’t changed.”
“Yeah,” agrees Ten, pretending he sounds completely normal and not like he’s having the air slowly compressed out of his chest.
“It’s good to be home,” Johnny adds. So casually, too, but he looks over at Ten again and there’s something in his face Ten can’t handle, something like come on, this is your chance. Tell me the truth .
Ten downs the last four gulps of his drink in one, burning go and then says, “I’m going to bed.” As he heads inside, he worries he was too harsh, stops at the door and adds, “It’s good to see you.”
He thinks Johnny says, “You too,” but he doesn’t slow down enough to be sure.
Taeyong is kind enough, at least, to make sure Ten and Johnny aren’t sharing a room when they stay over. That would be too much. Instead, despite it being three in the morning, Ten curls up to Taeyong in Taeyong’s bed.
Ten says, “Thanks for the surprise.”
He means it to be sarcastic. Really, he does. He definitely thinks Taeyong should have given him some kind of warning, any kind of hint. But it comes out genuine, and he realises he means it.
“You were okay with it?” hums Taeyong, speaking around a yawn. “I thought you might - well, I thought maybe it would be easier if you didn’t know in advance.” He awkwardly lifts a hand to cup Ten’s shoulder, an uncertain attempt at cuddling. Even after all this time, Taeyong still hesitates to touch them. They’ve talked about it enough. Ten knows Taeyong never had friends like this, when he was younger. Knows Taeyong went through his life with that deer-in-the-headlights look on his face and a sharper tongue than he meant to have, with no one he felt he could really be close to.
Sometimes Ten feels like he could almost be in love with Taeyong instead. It’s the same feeling he gets when he stands on the edge of somewhere tall. The urge to throw himself off it, and the knowledge that he’d never actually do it, those two things coexisting. He’ll never be in love with Taeyong, but he wishes he was.
Ten tucks his face into Taeyong’s shoulder, and muffled, says again, “Thanks."
In the morning, Ten is the first to wake. He can estimate that he’s had perhaps three hours of sleep, but once he’s awake, that’s that. His head has a distant pounding, but besides that he doesn’t feel too rough. Taeyong from the night before, bless him, had remembered to bring a glass of water for the bedside table, and Ten downs it first thing. Then, he slips out from under the covers, careful not to disturb Taeyong, and pads out and downstairs to the kitchen.
As he goes, he glances into each open door, trying to keep track of how many people stayed, and who. Doyoung and Jungwoo are fast asleep on the couch in the upstairs hallway, and he can assume Jaehyun has slept in his own room. In the guest room, which used to be Johnny’s, so long ago, Yuta is fast asleep on the floor, and Sicheng has the single bed. Ten didn’t even see them together last night, and wonders when Sicheng arrived. Downstairs, Chenle, Mark, and Haechan are all asleep on the long couch, a tangled-up pile. Everyone else, he supposes, must have gone home.
Stepping over Mark’s discarded shirt and a few empty beer cans on the floor, Ten is reminded acutely of the last time they had such a large party here, the day before Johnny left for the States. He remembers standing right here, early in the morning, waiting with Taeyong to drive Johnny to the airport. He remembers Johnny stopping at the foot of the stairs, remembers how breathless he felt as they looked at each other. Remembers Johnny opening his mouth to speak, saying, Ten, listen, I - and remembers cutting him off with a loud question about his gate time.
In hindsight, Ten feels like a dick.
He’s regretted not letting Johnny finish that sentence for the whole past year. Regretted how the car ride went, silent and stiff, Ten sitting in the back as far from Johnny as possible, staring out the window, jaw set. Regretted seeing Johnny off with only the briefest of hugs and a promise to keep in touch, whatever that meant. Regretted seeing notifications from Johnny pop up late at night, and instead of opening them, flipping his phone over and only viewing them in the morning.
After awhile, Johnny stopped trying.
Ten has thrown himself into his dance practice over the last year, and that doesn’t stop now. As he gets further into his fine arts degree, their performances get more frequent and more intense, the bar raised higher and higher until he feels like he can’t see it any more, somewhere in the stratosphere. Today is no different. He has practice at 8am and he’s never late. He tip-toes back to Taeyong’s room to collect his phone charger and to leave the re-filled glass of water on the bedside table for Taeyong when he wakes, and then slips back out the door. He almost runs straight into Johnny, emerging from Jaehyun’s room across the hall, and then scrambles back, accidentally bumping his elbow on the wall.
“Ten - are you okay?” Johnny says, surprise and concern written on his features. He looks even sleepier than usual. He looks the way he did when Ten woke up on the day he left. He looks beautiful.
“Fine,” Ten gets out, offering what he knows to be a weak smile. “I’m on my way to dance now, so, um, I better get moving, it was nice to - I mean, I’m glad you’re - welcome back.”
Johnny smiles, but it doesn’t look happy. “I’m happy to be back. We’ll have to catch up, okay? You and me. We’ll go and take some photos.”
Ten wants to strangle him. “Yeah, maybe, I’m pretty busy but it sounds good, sometime, I guess.” He physically can’t stop talking. He laughs, a little hysterical, and then pushes his way down the hall.
He doesn’t see Johnny again for a few days. It doesn’t sound like long, except compared to how they were before, it’s bizarre. Sicheng texts him a simple, what the hell are you doing , and Ten replies with the middle finger emoji. He gets invited to something with all of them, just lunch, Jaehyun is organising, but Ten genuinely has dance practice that he can’t miss, and so he turns it down. Later, when he sees pictures on Mark and Jaehyun’s instagrams, he pretends it’s fine.
(He pretends it’s fine, and he totally doesn’t spend an hour going back through his phone gallery, looking at old photos of Johnny, ones he took, ones of Johnny sprawled out against his bed, soft and warm, in so many of them conspicuously trying not to smile).
He does other things. He occupies his time. He schemes with Taeil and the new boy Kun about how to get Lucas and Jungwoo together, works on his thesis, dances his heart out every night until he almost doesn’t think about Johnny on his way to sleep. Almost.
It’s one of these nights that he’s flopping into bed, limbs aching from the exertion of dance as he relaxes into his mattress, when his phone buzzes and he flips it over to check it. Johnny’s name flashes up on his screen.
Johnny: Hey, so maybe the photos idea was a bit much… did you want to just get lunch?
Ten lies there staring at it until his screen turns off on its own. And then he opens it.
Ten: Yeah, you think?
He deletes that.
Ten: Lunch sounds fine, I guess.
He deletes that too.
Ten: Sure, where do you want to go?
His finger hovers over the send button. He thinks of how Johnny looked at him in Taeyong’s apartment before he left that morning. He wonders, again, whether Johnny looked… apologetic? Wistful? Hopeful? Or whether he’s just reading into it whatever it is that he wants to see.
Johnny opens the message right away. Shit.
Johnny: You know how we always used to go to that Thai place when you missed your mom? Is that still there?
Ten: Yeah, it’s still there.
Johnny: Okie doke, see you tomorrow at 1! :)
Ten almost throws his phone through the fucking window.
The thing is, he thinks to himself the next morning, as he showers and soaps twice and spends twenty minutes trying to get his hair to look nice, he’s never been over Johnny. He’s wanted to be over Johnny since the moment he first saw him and it’s never, ever going to happen. He’s worked harder at being over Johnny than he has at anything else he’s ever done, and that’s no small statement. And it hasn’t worked. Every time he even thinks about Johnny’s face, as he brushes his teeth, his stomach knocks into several of his other organs as it somersaults around.
He rinses and spits. And flosses to be safe. Changes his shirt three times to make sure he looks as devastating as he knows that he can. He’s been not-over-Johnny for this long, he can handle it for awhile longer. He just doesn’t know if he can handle it forever.
Ten arrives exactly on time to the restaurant, because he arrived fifteen minutes early and spent that time pacing around the nextdoor block, frantically practising what exactly he’s going to say when he sees Johnny. It’s like this is his first time seeing him after he got home, rather than having seen him at Taeyong’s party. Maybe that was the point. Taeyong probably knew he’d react like this.
Well, take that, lovely and thoughtful Taeyong, he thinks to himself, I’m overreacting despite all your well-laid plans.
Finally, at 1pm on the dot, he breathes and pushes his way into the restaurant.
It’s moderately busy, quieter than he expected for a Sunday afternoon, but busier than it would be on a weekday. One of the waitresses shoots him a bright smile - Duanphen, one of the older daughters of the couple who own the place. He’s been coming here ever since he moved to Korea, and it always makes him a bittersweet mix of homesick and at-home.
Johnny is sitting at one of the corner tables, waiting. He’s not on his phone. He’s looking out the window, actually, bouncing his knee, hands clasped tightly on the table. And he’s biting his lip, not in a sexy way at all, but in that dorky way he does that always leaves his lips chapped and entices scoldings from Doyoung and Taeyong.
Ten realises all at once that Johnny’s nervous, too. Solid, calm Johnny, always Ten’s much-needed rock, never too fussed one way or another about anything that matters.
It only takes Ten three tries to speak, which is basically a personal best. “Hi, Johnny.”
Johnny whips his head around at the sound of his voice, and a big smile bursts out onto his face. “Ten! It’s so good to see you.” He stands up and opens his arms for a hug. Ten’s only human. This time, though, it doesn’t feel so much like he’s pretending things are fine. He feels, somehow, that they both know what they’re here for now, it’s just resting unspoken between them. He allows himself to feel small against Johnny’s chest and closes his eyes for a moment.
“Are you hungry?” Johnny asks, pulling back. “I’m starved, I’ve missed this place the whole time. They don’t have anything quite like it in the States, y’know?”
He gives Ten a look, and Ten laughs, for some reason. “Right.”
They wait for Duanphen to finish serving a group of friends a table over from them, who are ordering off a menu they’re all trying to hold at once. It makes Ten think of Mark and Haechan and whoever is unfortunate enough to go out to eat with them, and it makes him smile, briefly, the smallest respite from the intensity of all his other feelings.
Johnny clears his throat. Ten glances over at him and sees Johnny almost pouting. He fixes Ten with a much more pointed look. “You know what I mean, right? About how there’s nothing like it?”
“I mean, yeah,” says Ten slowly. “I miss Thai food too. It’s why I like this place.”
Johnny looks uncharacteristically frustrated. “No, not just that. It’s like... like, nothing in the States could ever compare to this. Because it’s the best. It’s what I always want, and I never get tired of it, and I think about it all the time. Nothing in the States could ever, ever replace this… restaurant.”
Suddenly, everything feels like butterflies. It’s not like Ten has butterflies in his tummy, it’s like his entire body - his arms and legs and the back of his neck - have turned into butterflies, all beating their wings and trying to fly in different directions. He felt like this the night before Johnny left, when they ran into each other outside the bathroom, when Johnny told Ten that he was going to miss him, when Johnny murmured, “You know I’m going to miss you, right? The most?” which was right before he backed Ten into the wall and kissed all the way down his neck, right before -
“Hi, are you guys ready to order?”
Johnny looks up and gives Duanphen a perfectly normal smile, somehow, like anything could ever be perfectly normal when Ten’s entire physical form is dissolving into a large flock of insects. “Hi, yeah, um… Could I get the fish cakes and a pad nummun hoi?”
Duanphen scribbles promptly on her notepad. “And Ten? The usual?”
Ten just nods. It’ll have to do until he can work out what happened to his voice box, until he can figure out where he misplaced it. Johnny is drawing a slow spiral on the table with the tip of his index finger. It’s making Ten motion-sick.
Once she’s gone, Johnny looks back over at Ten. “Sorry. If that was - I know it’s been a long time, yeah? If you like, we can just focus on being friends. I just didn’t feel like I could keep going being dishonest with you, especially after everything was so strange when I left home.”
Ten wants to grab him by the shoulders and shake him, wants to yell, I WILL NEVER BE OVER YOU AND YOU ARE ACTING LIKE THERE IS THE FAINTEST CHANCE IN HELL THAT I WILL BE, but instead he feels that awful burning in his nose and eyes and suddenly pretends the window over near the door is extremely interesting so that Johnny won’t see him blinking back tears.
“Ten…” Johnny sees anyway. Ten feels fingertips brush his wrist, and it sends a warmth through him that a shot of alcohol could never compete with, right down into his stomach. “You’re normally so good at talking,” he says, trying for a joke, Ten can tell, even though the timing’s off and it’s stiff, “just talk to me about this. If the answer’s no, that’s totally fine. Please, don’t be scared of hurting me or anything. I just want you to be honest. I’ll be okay.”
“That’s it,” Ten says, and it comes out snappy and wobbly at once. “If I say no, you’ll be okay. If you said no to me - John,” and he turns back, looks at Johnny properly, the beautiful, stupid crease between his eyebrows and all, “I’m so - I’ve kicked myself all year for being hung up on you, and trying to move on, and if this isn’t a big deal to you then I can’t do it. This is the biggest deal in the world to me, and I can make it work if we’re just friends, but if we might be serious and might not be, I’m going to lose my mind.”
There’s a long silence. Ten is glad nobody is sitting too close to their table. He’s mortified that he said any of that at all, let alone so fast and so shakily and so in public. Johnny won’t stop staring at him like he’s seeing Ten for the first time. He’s still got his fingers pressing into Ten’s wrist.
“I thought you regretted it,” Johnny admits. He’s very quiet. “I thought maybe that it was a mistake, on my part, to even try with you, I spent all this time thinking -” He stops. “I don’t know what I thought.” Taking a deep breath, he moves his hand to cover Ten’s instead, thumb swiping across Ten’s knuckles. “I promise, I take you very seriously.”
Ten takes his free hand to his eyes and dries the wetness there on his shirt sleeves. He feels stupid for wearing this sheer shirt, hoping to win Johnny over, make him see what he’s missing. Thinking back over the past few days, he sees Johnny’s words and actions in a new light. Ten had dodged him. He had been so frightened of hearing anything consolatory, any apologies. And yet Johnny thought Ten regretted his decision.
Ten had regretted it, to some degree. But only because he thought he’d tasted something he’d never get to have again.
“If you’re serious about it,” he says, much more hushed than he intends, but at least in a slightly steadier voice than before, “and so am I. Maybe we could try it.” Johnny lights up, but Ten continues. “We have to do it properly this time. Talk, and stuff. You have to take me out to ballets and nice dinners and walk me to my door, the whole lot.”
Johnny laughs, relief painted all over his face, and Ten cracks a smile too. The ice is broken. Everything feels bruised, still, and tender, but in the way that only hope can be bruised and tender.
“You don’t know how many times I lay awake, while I was away,” Johnny says, “Thinking to myself, I would give anything. Anything, to take Chittaphon to a ballet and then walk him to his door, if he’d let me.”
“He’ll let you,” Ten agrees. He flips his hand so that Johnny can hold it, sees Duanphen bringing their food out of the corner of his eye. “If you ask nicely, he’ll let you.”