Chapter Text
Hyunjin is just surprised that he didn’t scream. Not that he normally screamed or anything, but it just was quite the disconcerting event to happen upon a body, facedown and half submerged in salty sea water and bobbing there in a very much lifeless manner. That wasn’t the reason why Hyunjin had nearly and gracelessly fallen back onto the white sand of the Australian seaside (yes, he did need to emphasize the fact that it was Australian); the real reason was because the body moved. Moved. Dead people were not supposed to move unless this was some kind of horror movie, and Hyunjin did not do horror movies.
When the body doesn’t move any more than that, Hyunjin gathers his senses enough to realize that if the person is still alive, there’s probably a reason why they were in the water, and Hyunjin really didn’t want to see anyone die today, so he does the first thing that comes to mind and wades into the water. It doesn’t take too long before he has to begin to swim, and he grabs hold of the body, hefting it with him as he swims to shore.
When he lugs the body onto its back on the sand, he belatedly realizes that one, the young man is very much naked. And...well, he was hot. Hyunjin would’ve gone into gay panic mode if it weren’t for the fact that hot-and-naked was also passed out and probably half-drowned and was that blood on his neck?!, so he readies himself to do CPR. Before he can even touch hot-and-naked (Hyunjin really had to find out what his name was), the young man coughs and spews out salty water with a groan, rolling over on the sand. “S’hot…” the boy mutters.
You’re hot, Hyunjin thinks.
And he just stares dumbly, because damn. If that wasn’t the most angelic voice he had ever heard, his ears were liars. Hot-naked-angel-voice sits up slowly and rubs at his large, almond eyes before squinting at Hyunjin and if Hyujin wasn’t whipped by then, he definitely was now because no one should look that cute when scrutinizing someone else. It just wasn’t allowed.
The young man’s eyes widen as he looks Hyunjin up and down and he gasps. “Who are you?” he asks, his gaze suddenly growing cold as he scrambles to his feet and backs away from Hyunjin, who was both shocked and a little more than disappointed that hot-naked-angel voice had shied away from him almost immediately. In hindsight, he couldn’t really blame him, considering it wasn’t exactly normal to be publicly hovering over a naked unconscious body, but Hyunjin had only wanted to help…
“I am Hyunjin,” he responds in his limited English, heat rising to his cheeks as he realizes just how awkward his voice sounds in comparison to angel-voice’s.
“You are a human,” Hot-naked-angel-voice says slowly, eyeing him up and down again mistrustfully.
“...you are too,” Hyunjin points out, trying to not let his eyes drift away from the young man’s face although it was easier said than done because, again, Mr. Naked was also hot. The man’s eyes widen, however, and then immediately narrow.
“No,” he spits. “I don’t know what you want with me, but I don’t want to be associated with you.”
Hyunjin just stares blankly at him, not understanding what he was saying. It wasn’t his fault he was a tourist with a limited English vocabulary. The man huffs and turns around, wading back into the water and Hyunjin really really tries to keep his eyes up. He’s left staring dumbfounded at the man’s back as hot-naked-angel-voice dives into the water.
Well. That was certainly interesting.
“I’m telling you, Lix,” Hyunjin whines. “I saw a naked boy and he was drowning and I saved him, and he goes back into the ocean but that's not the point, I think I'm in love.” And as soon as the words leave Hyunjin’s lips, he cringes, as though he can’t quite believe that those words had left his mouth. It was almost humiliating to admit it, especially since he was notorious for turning people down. It wasn’t his fault he just...didn’t find anyone interesting enough. Not that he didn’t find his friends interesting, but they were his friends and that was kind of weird to him, dating one of them. Besides, it wasn’t often that one picked up naked boys on the beach. Much less hot naked boys.
Felix, their (very rich) host (and best friend, but that wasn’t as important as the fact that he was rich™), who had rented out the seaside bungalow in a gorgeous cove for their vacation glances up from his phone and cocks an eyebrow, his sunglasses falling off his brow at the small movement and toppling over his nose comically. He reaches up to push the shades back into his blonde hair and stares at Hyunjin with such a judgmental look on his face that Hyunjin can’t help but blush. Felix nearly chokes on his spit. “Holy- you really are whipped.”
Hyunjin’s face reddens even more and Felix grins evilly at him and Hyunjin decides that he’s been spending too much time with Jeongin. He coughs and sits up straighter, throwing a book at Felix who yelps and dives off the couch and onto the polished wood flooring with a thump. The sound would be enough to alert anyone’s mum senses, and it did because in no time, a head of dark, wavy hair pops out from the kitchen and Felix is quick to jerk his arm up, thumb and forefinger curled into an ‘ok’. “I’m fine, Chris!” he yells at the man who purses his lips and raises a disapproving eyebrow at them.
“I don’t care how rich you are Felicia,” he calls back dryly. “I’ll be the one having an aneurysm if you put a dent in that floor.”
“No fair! Don't blame me!” Felix whines. “Hyunjin was the one that attacked me!”
“It was in an act of self-preservation!” Hyunjin defends.
“Self-preservation my ass!” Felix yowls and Hyunjin grabs another book from the side table. Felix stares at him challengingly, a smirk playing on the corner of his lips. “Our Hyunjinnie is just in loooove,” he croons, his voice skyrocketing a few octaves. Hyunjin cringes yet again at that and halfheartedly throws the book at Felix. It’s caught easily and set aside.
Hyunjin hugs a pillow against his chest and pouts. “Never use that voice on me. Use it on...Binnie or something. Please.”
Felix’s eyes shift to something deceptively innocent and widen as he puffs out his cheeks slightly. “You don’t like it?” A pillow hits him in the face.
“No, no, Felicia, no,” Hyunjin sighs. “I don’t like it.”
Felix yelps and sets the pillow in his lap. “Only Chan can call me that!” he complains. Hyunjin shrugs, still a little salty that his so-called supportive friends were actually backstabbers. He needed new friends. Preferably in the form of hot and naked. No wait that sounded weird. Hyunjin groans and grabs another pillow from the couch, planting his face in it and just staying there like that, inhaling all the loose fibres and dust and whatnot (Chan would have complained). But he didn’t care.
“...hey, why does Hyunjin look like he’s trying to suffocate himself?”
Hyunjin’s head shoots up and he throws himself at the shorter man, who halfheartedly tries to shake him off, disgruntled, but all too easily gives up. Hyunjin whines and drapes himself over Changbin, pointing accusingly at Felix. “Felix is being mean to me.”
Changbin glances over at Felix who only smiles sweetly at him and pats the empty spot beside himself on the couch. “No, we were just talking about Hyunjin’s nonexistent love life and how he’s whipped for a naked boy that he found on the beach,” Felix counters without missing a beat, and Hyunjin takes back everything nice he’s ever said about Felix because that boy has definitely been spending too much time with Jeongin and was now the devil-incarnate.
“Hey, if he liked naked boys that he finds on the beach, we might need to call the police,” Changbin deadpans and Hyunjin gasps because how could his beloved Binnie Binnie Changbinnie betray him like that. He pulls away from the shorter man, offended. Felix’s dying-seal laughter echoes in his ears and he silently curses life for being cruel to him and giving him the most unsupportive friends.
He topples back onto the unoccupied couch and whines, staring up at the ceiling. “You don’t understand, it was...weird. He didn’t seem to care about the fact that he was naked-”
“Maybe he’s just a pervert,” Changbin suggests unhelpfully.
Hyunjin glares at him. “Put a lid on it, shorty.”
“I’m your hyung!”
“You’re all dead to me.”
Felix snorts. “No need to be so salty because you have a thing for stray naked boys on the beach.”
“For the last time, I thought he was drowning! And his neck was bloody, if I might add.” Hyunjin huffs. “But anyway, where was I. It wasn’t the pervy kind of naked...he just acted like it was normal to walk around naked you know. Like he didn’t know that it wasn’t normal.”
“Since when do you ever talk about anyone like you care about people?” Felix teases, but before Hyunjin can snap at him again, he purses his lips. “So all this really happened?”
“I’m telling you it did!” Hyunjin insists. “And did I mention that he has the nicest voice…”
“Hyung, he’s going starry-eyed, someone get me a bucket I think I’m going to toss my breakfast.”
Hyunjin flips Felix the bird. “I hope you die a slow and painful death, Lee Yongbok. ”
“Yah!”
Hyunjin doesn’t know what it is that makes him roll out of the (extremely comfortable and luxurious and damn, Felix was really out here living the good life) bed, unable to sleep. He rubs his eyes and throws on an oversized grey hoodie, slipping on his sandals and padding quietly through the corridor until he’s at the door of their bungalow, staring out over the sea.
A breeze blows over him and he shivers, not moving away from the doorway, just watching. It wasn’t like the city at all; here, he could see the stars clearly, like freckles that dusted the face of the sky. Freckles remind Hyunjin of Felix, and he absently wonders why the boy always seemed so self-conscious about his freckles. Hyunjin always found them charming.
He closes his eyes and takes a deep breath, inhaling the salty air. He feels himself relax, and decides that maybe a walk by the shore wouldn’t be so bad. He pads off down the small pathway that led to the beach, his footsteps muffled by the sand. The waves lapped gently at the shore, and Hyunjin finds himself drawn to the water, the white foam licking at his sandals as he spans the shore.
It’s when he hears it; a faint but haunting melody. It was beautiful to the point where Hyunjin wonders if his ears were deceiving him. It definitely wasn’t in Korean, but it certainly wasn’t in English either. Hyunjin had never heard anything like it, a mournful, lonely cry, lilting and soft. It was bewitching, almost, and Hyunjin naturally finds himself following it.
He circles around the cove and peeks around the corner of the rocky outcrop nearing the east and his eyes widen. He’s only seen that silhouette once, but he knows it well. Perched atop a lone rock protruding from the water a small distance away from the shore is the figure of a boy, illuminated by the moonlight which casts off his brown hair and highlights the gentle slopes and delicate edges of his face. His lips move, and Hyunjin just stares, caught up in the song that transcended language itself and tugged at his heart, bringing tears to his eyes and down his cheeks.
His fingertips dig slightly into the rough rocky outcrop that he hid himself behind as he listens, watches. The darkness didn’t allow him to see much more, but when the boy’s head tilts, when the pale moonlight catches just right, Hyunjin sees a kind of melancholic frustration shining in his eyes, so vehement that Hyunjin is taken aback. He tenses when the boy’s eyes seem to meet his own for a moment, but relaxes when he looks in the other direction. If he had been caught staring, the boy certainly gave no sign.
Hyunjin decides that this is enough for the night and he turns, prepared to head off when he hears a familiar and familiarly alluring voice. “I know you’re there.”
He swears he short-circuited at that, his mind temporarily ceasing to function as he turns around almost robotically to meet almond shaped doe eyes. And he swallows down a grossly large lump of saliva as he finds that he can’t look away. The boy stares at him in silence for a few moments before diving gracefully off the rock and swimming towards the shore. Hyunjin is rooted to the spot, staring at him less than subtly.
When the boy pulls himself to his feet on the sand, Hyunjin realizes that he’s still practically naked and yes, still hot. Unlike before, where he had plainly been stark naked, this time there’s body jewellery hanging off his frame like lace, the thin chains and delicate jewels glimmering in the dim moonlight. But this time, it’s as though Hyunjin can’t physically look away from his eyes. They were large and beautiful and reflected the stars in the sky as though his eyes were the galaxies themselves and the sky was merely a reflection of him and yeah...maybe Hyunjin was whipped.
“You’re beautiful,” Hyunjin says in Korean, and immediately slaps a hand over his mouth, his ears reddening because he did not mean to say that. Sure he thought it, multiple times even, but after what had happened earlier that day, the boy probably thought he was a creep. Although to be fair, he wasn’t the one traipsing around in the nude, but that wasn’t really the point at the moment.
The boy’s eyes narrow again, and Hyunjin winces, wondering if he had offended him again. After a few moments of silence, however, the boy just sighs and scratches his cheek with his finger. “...thanks for earlier today,” he says after a moment’s hesitation, and Hyunjin’s eyes must have bugged out because he hadn’t expected to hear the boy talk to him in his native tongue.
“I- Oh, um, I th-thank you,” Hyunjin stammers in a decidedly un-Hyunjin-like manner, and he silently curses himself because he really can’t do anything without making a fool of himself. Could anyone really blame him though? His pulse was threatening to make his veins burst and he finally understands what Felix means when he claims that he’s having a gay-panic moment because Hyunjin is very sure that this is a gay panic moment.
To say the least, the boy doesn’t look too impressed by his efforts to articulate, and so he distracts himself by tearing his eyes away from those of the other in order to look down at his neck which had looked terribly bloody earlier. To Hyunjin’s shock, he isn’t met with scars or anything of the like, but somewhat odd looking flaps of skin on either side of his neck that should’ve looked grotesque, but somehow don’t. He finds himself staring rudely again, and only snaps out of it when the boy clears his throat.
“Could you not stare at my neck?” the boy asks bluntly and Hyunjin’s face turns crimson with embarrassment.
“I- sorry,” he mumbles, looking down.
For a few moments the boy is silent again, and Hyunjin can’t help but feel terribly uncomfortable which was also very unlike him, but he couldn’t help but feel terribly self-conscious, like he was doing everything wrong. He looks down at the white sand and can’t bring himself to look up again.
“Seungmin.”
Hyunjin’s head snaps up in surprise and he stares at the boy in confusion. He’s met with a sigh.
“My name is Seungmin,” the boy, Seungmin, states again.
“Seungmin,” Hyunjin echoes, his voice echoing through the empty cove despite the fact that the name left his lips as barely a whisper. He stares at Seungmin, the name repeating itself in his mind until he finally realizes that he should probably introduce himself. His face reddens yet again. “I’m Hyunjin.”
“I know,” Seungmin states, and Hyunjin is about to joke about stalkers, but then Seungmin purses his lips judgmentally. "You told me earlier...Hyunjin." and Hyunjin wants to cry because his name had never sounded so beautiful before. To his embarrassment, he really does end up with a few tears escaping his eyes and coursing down his face in thin rivulets. The shock in Seungmin’s eyes makes his face turn even redder, if at all possible. “Why are you crying?” Seungmin asks him, looking rather taken aback.
He’s quick to wipe his eyes, laughing softly, embarrassed. “My friends always made fun of me for crying too easily,” he says honestly, meeting Seungmin’s eyes after a moment of hesitation. “And I-” he feels himself flush down to the neck. “Your voice makes me emotional.” When he said it like that, it sounded pretty stupid, so he’s surprised when Seungmin doesn’t laugh in his face.
“Don’t get too emotional,” Seungmin states, his voice ringing clearly over the quiet expanse and sounding almost..amused? Hyunjin feels something cold against his face and just stares as Seungmin wipes the tears off his face. He feels his heart stutter and he lets out a breathless giggle.
“Yeah...yeah, I’ll try not to.”
This time, Seungmin smiles, a small, amused little thing, but Hyunjin wants to see it again. Unfortunately, as soon as he sees it, it disappears. He watches as Seungmin’s eyes dart to their side and the boy squints at the distance. “...I should go now,” he says, taking a few steps back until he’s up to his calves in the water.
Hyunjin finds himself raising his hand for the boy to wait. “Will I be able to see you again?” he asks him in a sudden bout of braveness.
Seungmin stares at him, and Hyunjin swears that the boy’s eyes seem to glow, but it’s probably just the moon. Seungmin finally bows his head in a half-nod of sorts. “Call my name if you want to see me,” he says simply before ducking under the water. Hyunjin just watches him go until he’s out of sight.
“Hyunjin? What are you doing out here so late?”
Hyunjin glances back to see Chan, a presumably empty coffee cup in one hand and a notebook tucked into the crook of his elbow. He shrugs and just offers Chan a lax smile, not daring to raise his voice lest it decimate the serene atmosphere. “..I couldn’t sleep, so I thought I’d go for a walk.” He yawns, tiredness suddenly flowing over him as the buzzing energy of his meeting with Seungmin faded.
“You look plenty tired now though,” Chan remarks with a fond look in his eyes. “Come on, let’s go back.” He throws an arm around Hyunjin and turns to head back to the bungalow. On the way there, he side-glances at Hyunjin, who looks somewhat dazed. “I thought I saw someone else here,” he hums. “Were you talking to someone?”
Hyunjin blinks owlishly and then just shrugs noncommittally, feeling warm inside. “You must have been seeing things, hyung,” he insists with a yawn, heading straight to his bedroom once they make it back.