Archive of Our Own

– first love / late spring, mitski

Jeno falls in late spring. It’s a month of mawkish moss swamps and linen tablecloths. It’s a month of Donghyuck’s shoulders and fog haunting at Jeno’s windows.

The air is cloying with sweet rot. Tender petals fall from trees and decay into the marshy grass underfoot and Jeno finds himself lost in apple orchards and final exam preparations.

Donghyuck is elusive in this season. He’s never been an even push and pull of return and fly away but Jeno only now catches him in glimpses. He’s a foamy shadow at the edge of the forest, the snatch of a yellow hood around the corner at school, he’s bloody from nose to cheek in the second floor boy’s bathroom.

Jeno counts these sightings with quarters in his pockets. It’s been $2.50 since he’s last had a real conversation with Donghyuck.

The last time had been when Donghyuck announced that he was no longer going to church. He’d stood nearly nose to nose with Jeno and Jeno had been fixated on the scuffed tips of Donghyuck’s taped chuck taylors.

“I think i’m a sinner, Jeno. The permanent kind anyways. The pastor says that boys like me shan't bother with godly folk, so I think that I won’t.”

Jeno didn’t say anything at that.

“Are you going to say anything?”

Jeno didn’t.

“You won’t.”

And then Donghyuck was off with a quickness. Off with his battered shoes and yellow hoodie and his mouth that had kissed Na Jaemin behind the youth center last Sunday.

Jeno felt bad for not saying anything. For not asking Donghyuck to stay. For not doing anything. For never doing Anything. But what could he say? Hey Donghyuck, sorry that I’m not replying to you! It’s just that I’ve been thinking about Jung Jaehyun’s dick since that day in the basketball last year and have spent every other night secretly praying into my pillow for God to make me straight. I’ll get back to you on this later! So reasonably so, he shuts his trap and let’s Donghyuck hurtle away from him at the speed of light. Like a fucking comet.

Except he can’t say that because he’s not ready for this. He’s not ready for the way that the distinctive yellow of Donghyuck’s hoodie punches the air out of his lungs. He’s not ready for the way that spring doesn’t only rot in the woods but also in the pit of his stomach.

He’s used to Donghyuck next to him. He likes it even. He likes the way that Donghyuck is always looming dangerously close, the way his hot breath fans over Jeno’s neck, whispering obscenities during church. He likes how ice cream smears messily over the corner of Donghyuck’s mouth, and the sticky drool that seeps into Jeno’s shoulder on movie nights. He likes Donghyuck’s crooked pinky and how he cheats at monopoly. He likes that Donghyuck keeps him on his toes.

What he doesn’t like is the way that Eric Sohn passes by his living room window on Saturday afternoon, buttoned to the chin in his boy scout attire and Donghyuck isn’t there with Jeno to snicker at him. Donghyuck isn’t there to choke out, “scoutfit,” as if it’s the funniest damn thing he’s ever heard, with his laugh condensed into his open palm. What he doesn’t like is that when he’s on his morning run, Donghyuck is standing in the middle of the school baseball field, blood on his cleats and dirt rubbed into the front of his uniform. He doesn’t look at Jeno but slams his baseball bat into the home plate until dust mixes with the fog and Jeno can’t see him anymore.

When he’s walking home on Wednesday afternoon, Jeno tucks his thumb into his cheek and wonders faintly what Donghyuck is doing right now. He wonders if he’s with Na Jaemin again. Or rather if that’d been a one time thing. Something you only ruin your life with once.

That morning he’d been shouldering off the spring fog at the school gates when he’d overheard a conversation between Hwang Hyunjin and Lee Hyunjae.

(“Beat the– out of him, we should.”

“Serves him right. He’s a real creep yeah? Fucking worm.

The other boy snickers.

“Yeah, worm.”)

Jeno wonders if they were talking about Donghyuck. He wonders if that’s where the smattering of red coating Donghyuck’s white shirt front came from. Jeno feels uneasy.

That night Jeno takes his bible off of his bedside table and shoves it underneath his mattress.

He knows that Donghyuck has been getting into some sort of trouble. The kind of trouble that keeps him from coming home on Thursday night. He knows because Mrs. Lee comes knocking at Jeno’s door, hair frizzy and handkerchief knotted in her hands over her swollen stomach. The baby is due July.

“Have you seen my Boy?” She asks, pale and sweat stricken.

Jeno shakes his head deftly until his older sister is shoving him out of the way and rushing to console the woman. Donghyuck’s mother wails into Seulgi’s chest and her hands tremble over the back Seulgi’s school sweater.

Jeno sinks into the couch and prays.

When Jeno gets into bed that night he’s shivering. He’s a coward and he’s cold.  

Jeno has woken to this noise four times in his life. Once when Donghyuck broke Heejin’s arm on accident and ran away. Second when Donghyuck came to crawl into Jeno’s bed after his father left home. Third when his father came back. And Fourth, last week when he came to tell Jeno about how the reverend found him sucking faces with Na Jaemin.

Jeno nearly falls out of bed at the sound of knocks nettling at his bedroom window. He almost falls again when he sees a face nearly pressed against the glass.

Donghyuck looks… Well he looks, bad . There’s a blood stain from his temple, curved down to the edge of his jaw and his eyes are more droopy than usual. He looks grey.

Jeno scrambles to the window seal, heart in his throat.

The window swings in when Jeno flips the latch and Donghyuck climbs over the ledge wordlessly. Jeno can smell the fog on Donghyuck’s skin and he can tell that Donghyuck’s shirt is filthy. There’s mud and red caked to his shirtfront and Jeno feels lightheaded.

“What happened?” Jeno asks, stupidly. He already knows. He knew what was going to happen and he didn’t stop it.

“She was going to take me to the dentist.” Is all that Donghyuck says before slipping his shirt off and over his head.

Jeno is so lost.

“Hyuck, what? Where have you been. Do you have any idea how worried I- How worried your mom has been? Where have you been for the past week.” He means to sound accusing, to sound like he has any place to tell Donghyuck what for.

Donghyuck doesn’t answer him, instead he fishes around for a shirt from Jeno’s closet. He’s rifling through the mess and tangle of high school boy chaos when he twists his torso and Jeno sees it. Awful green-blue bruises painted into Donghyuck’s ribs like a disturbing artwork.

“Hyuck,” Jeno sighs, caving in.

Donghyuck doesn’t stop his search, his wrists are trembling, his nonchalance is cracking and Jeno latches onto that. Cruelly, he does, but he needs it. A fissure to break through, a narrow crack to strike Hyuck’s heart true and tender.

“Hyuck.”

Jeno tilts his head to the side in exasperation, stepping forward and clutching onto Donghyuck’s wrist, pulling him away from the closet.

“Stay here,” He tells him. “I’m going to run you a bath.”  

Donghyuck looks cornered, terrified. His face doesn’t say much but his eyes are on Fire and it scares something in Jeno bad.

His hand digs into Jeno’s forearm. It hurts but Jeno can’t find it in himself to say that.

“You can come with me.” He offers. “It’s just a bath.”

Donghyuck’s eyes seem to clear up at that. “I don’t need to follow you, dumbass.”

He lets go of Jeno’s arm though. Jeno lingers for a second but just accepts it and turns to enter his bathroom. Donghyuck follows.

Donghyuck makes himself comfortable on the counter top, swinging his socked feet while Jeno sits on his knees at the bathtub. He’s used to running baths for his mom’s nerves and he figures that manic homosexual and distressed middle age women’s tastes probably run parallel.

He’s right, because after Donghyuck gets over the hurdle of slipping out of his pants, leaving his boxers on, (not that Jeno’s complaining, he really doesn’t need to be dealing with that right now) he sighs openly and sinks down into the water with a contented noise until the water kisses the swell of his bottom lip.

The way his hair falls over his brow, sweet and precarious makes Jeno ache with guilt. Donghyuck is so precious in his true form, precious enough to protect. Jeno failed there, he was too scared to protect what he had, and now he’s picking up the pieces of his Donghyuck.

“What-” he tries, feelings odd and exposed at the amount that he’s talked tonight vs. Donghyuck. “What did you mean about the dentist?”

Donghyuck doesn’t answer right away. He never does. He takes his sweet time soaking up the lavender mist and dragging his thumb down the condensation on the shower wall.

“My tooth hurts,” He mumbles thickly, voice lowered a few more octaves than usual. It’s almost raspy. “My mom was going to force me to the dentist. Doctor Hwang.”

Oh.

Jeno remembers the morning he’d overheard Hyunjin and Hyunjae talking. He knew they were talking about Donghyuck, and yet, he’d done nothing.

It’s well known that Hyunjin spends his afternoons in his father’s office, observing his father’s practice. He brags about it enough, how he’s going to be the next big dentist. Big dreams.

“How’d you get this then?” Jeno asks, voice softer now, riper. He gestures towards Donghyuck’s ribs.

“Got into a fight with a bear.” He answers stolidly. His brow is creased and his lips are pulled into an impish pout.

“Donghyuck.” Jeno tries, he sounds so hopeless to his own ears.

You should see the other guy is all that Jeno gets before Donghyuck sinks down fully into the water, submerging his face fully.

He wants to hate Donghyuck. He wants to hate the way he leaves Jeno hanging. He wants to hate him for kissing Na Jaemin before he’s kissed Jeno. And he thinks he does, hate him that is. He hates him in a way that only makes everything else so much more unbearable because when he thinks about the feeling, he doesn’t Hate Donghyuck at all. Not really.

He’s drowning in Donghyuck, actually. He’s lost in him, tied up in him. Part of Jeno’s soul will always linger in the back pew with Donghyuck mumbling curse words under the roof of the Lord. Even if Donghyuck kissed Na Jaemin instead of Jeno, and even if he runs away from home, and even if he disappears when Jeno can’t find it in himself to choke out the words. He loves Donghyuck.

Donghyuck: 1

Jeno: 0

He’s snapped out of his thoughts when Donghyuck reappears from the water, hand on his cheek, like there’s something hurting him there.

“What’s wrong?”

Donghyuck bites down on his bottom lip definitely before sinking a little lower and opens his mouth again.

“My tooth.”

He slaps the water childishly, satisfied with the way it sloshes over the tub and soaks into Jeno’s knees.

“Hurts,” And the cadence of his voice shakes some of the cold out of Jeno’s lungs. The steam from the bath rises and clings to Jeno’s nape.

Dusty tears cling to the brush of Donghyuck’s lashes. There’s a double meaning there, Jeno knows there is. The steam condenses over Jeno’s brow and he feels cornered. His heart is palpitating in a vicious contemplation, something like Stockholm syndrome. Donghyuck has him trapped.

Jeno finds the orajel on the second shelf behind his older brother’s condoms. The ones he stole from Doyoung in the sixth grade to prove to Donghyuck that he was Too going through puberty. What exactly the condom proved, Jeno isn’t sure. But the impressed look from thirteen year old Donghyuck was enough for him.

Donghyuck is watching Jeno. He’s watching him in a way that makes Jeno want to hide or squirm. He doesn’t understand Donghyuck, he doesn’t understand the why’s or the when’s that come with him

The gel comes out sticky on Jeno’s finger, and Donghyuck’s stare coagulates between them. Everything feels thick and filmy.

Jeno eyes Donghyuck’s mouth suspiciously, wondering if Donghyuck would bite him. He has half a mind to whisper “good doggy.” but he’s sure that’ll get him bitten quicker than his current plan. So he stays content with taking his opposite hand and bringing it up to Donghyuck’s mouth.

It only takes a brush of his thumb for Donghyuck’s lips to part open. Jeno finds himself trapped in time for a second, suspended for a breath, eyes glued to the rounded teeth and pink tongue of the other boy’s mouth. Then he catches Donghyuck’s eyes for a moment and he snaps out of it. The devil on Jeno’s shoulder cackles at Jeno’s senseless fumbling.

The inside of Donghyuck’s mouth is warm, there’s the softness of the inside of his cheek and his teeth against Jeno’s forefinger.

He finds the tooth that hurts when Donghyuck whines, a muffled noise that makes odd shivering wings beat in Jeno’s chest.

Jeno makes quick work of it, desperately trying to avoid eye contact with Donghyuck while massaging the gel into the sore spot. It feels like spring when Donghyuck breathes short and clipped over Jeno’s knuckles, his tongue petal-soft.

Avoiding Donghyuck’s steady stare means averting his eyes downwards, which he learns is just as bad. Because then he’s looking at the mole that sits just below Donghyuck’s faint adam’s apple and it’s magnetic. Jeno’s never really cared for the stars, nor for comparing anyone’s face to the sky. It’s overdone he thinks, romance requires a sort of softer creative mouth. But the constellation of moles that adorn Donghyuck are something Jeno wouldn’t mind getting lost in.

His breath hitches minutely and when Jeno pulls away, a string of spit connects his hand to Donghyuck’s mouth, he’s transfixed.

He isn’t expecting the way that Donghyuck lunges forward at him, snapping the string that connects them. Then there’s lips on his and Jeno’s heart is in his throat.

It’s damp and he can hear the sound of Donghyuck breathing against him, can feel his heartbeat in his lips. It’s ash soft against his mouth and Jeno thinks that if he inhales he’ll choke.

Nonetheless when Donghyuck inhales against him it’s pleasant in a way that Jeno’s never experienced. It’s overwhelming and blooming, breezy.

Then Donghyuck’s hands shoot out greedily, pulling Jeno towards him. Their mouths are crushed together with fervor and the sound Jeno makes is wracking. His hand slips and after a second he’s soaking, and he doesn’t care. His palm lands in between Donghyuck’s knees, wrist cramped against the floor of the bath. Water laps against his shirt front and Donghyuck’s tongue does something that draws a shattered noise from Jeno’s throat.

Then something breaks inside him and he wants more.

He begins the second kiss halfway over the tub and halfway in, and ends the kiss with his knees over on either side of Donghyuck’s waist.

The ends of Donghyuck’s hair stick against the back of his neck and forehead, disheveled under Jeno’s hands when the older boy takes a handful and presses him against the wall and holding him still.

“You’re so unfair,” Jeno mouths against Donghyuck’s neck. He smells like lavender and something fainter, like blood. So unfair.

Donghyuck’s chest rises and falls rapidly gasping into the open air. It makes Jeno a little braver. He feels like he’s finally caught up to Donghyuck, like he’s finally one step ahead. It makes him want more, he feels a little feral when he bites into Donghyuck’s bare shoulder, hands flitting over his throat and jaw.

“Jen,” Donghyuck wheezes, “Jeno.”

Jeno hums in response detaching himself from Donghyuck’s skin to cup his face instead. He drags his thumb through the stream of blood on Donghyuck’s temple. The tip of his nose is rosy and Jeno has the urge to kiss it, so he does.

“I’m sorry,” Donghyuck says and Jeno doesn’t have to ask what for. He leans in to peck Jeno on the lips again, “I’m sorry.”

His words are peach sweet, lost in their kiss but Jeno doesn’t mind. He understands.