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Donghyuck is the first person Jeno ever kisses.
He looks bored when Jeno asks him the question, raises his eyes over the screen of his phone and inclines his head to the side, gingersnap brown hair falling across his face. Rain splatters the windows outside, thick dollops of water that burst across the windowpane and wipe the crystallised smog from the glass. The city glistens, and Donghyuck repeats back to him: “You want to kiss me?”
His voice is so loud that Jeno wants to pick up the TV remote to hit rewind — start this conversation over again. Renjun and Jisung are in the next room, and Jeno knows they heard him. He’s positive half of Seoul heard him. He feels like his brain is a giant antenna, broadcasting to the world that yes, he, Lee Jeno, just asked Lee Donghyuck to kiss him.
“Maybe,” Jeno says. Donghyuck narrows his eyes and drops his phone on his chest. He wipes his hands on the dark green fabric of his sweater and gives Jeno a look , piercing through him.
“Don’t back out on me.”
He says it like it’s just a stupid game, an extended version of gay chicken. Maybe it is. Maybe it’s a joke to Donghyuck — who has been kissing boys since he was fourteen — Donghyuck who never does anything without his utmost confidence — or the utmost appearance of confidence, because Jeno isn’t stupid enough to miss when Donghyuck quivers and shakes, when his voice cracks and his hands grasp the air like it’s a lifeline. He has the enviable ability to plow face first into his problems and body his way through them, run bullheaded into life until it breaks and yields before him.
Jeno has no such luxury. It’s with a carefully measured strength he asks this of Donghyuck, pulls the bricks from the walls he’s built — and Jeno has so few walls around Donghyuck, so few walls around any of them these days — and allows him to gaze within. It’s just a kiss, but below the request is so much more, stacked like Russian dolls, a part of him he keeps so perfectly hidden. It’s nestled between the love carved into his bones and the matted veins that cushion his treacherous heart, and it hurts, digs into him as Donghyuck’s eyes trace the line of his body.
Jeno’s ears are aflame, but he nods. “Okay. I do.”
The corner of Donghyuck’s mouth pulls up and his lips are so, so pink.
Donghyuck stands, takes the single step to bring himself into Jeno’s space, his gaze overflowing with surety. He wishes he knew things in the intrinsic way Donghyuck seems to — wishes he knew what he wanted, what he felt, how to diffuse the energy that thrummed through every centimeter of his body. How to stop dwelling and start living.
Donghyuck cups his jaw and meets his eyes, the curve of his smile soft and fuzzy at the edges. Jeno responds with a hand in his hair, and when their lips meet his pulse pummels against his ribs, threatens to tear him in two. He finds no resolution, only fear that unfolds within him like an origami flower — carefully crafted to press its pointed petals against the hollow insides of his lungs and wound him with every breath he takes.
Donghyuck pats him when they part, searches his face as if he’s looking for some kind of sign.
“Better?” he asks. Jeno nods. His insides are an ocean, churning in a typhoon that will crush everything in its path. “Curiosity satisfied?”
“Sure,” Jeno says. He wishes it was that simple. He wishes Donghyuck had passed the answer through his sealed lips, wished that when he looked in the mirror and traced his fingers over where he’d touched him, that he would know what this desire means. Donghyuck has it figured out, he swears. He wants to ask him how, but it’s too much. A sworn secret that Jeno doesn’t believe he has the right to be privy to.
Donghyuck beams at him. Past the window, the rain clouds have cleared, and the sunlight dances off the blue glass of the skyscrapers like fish under the surface of a pond.
Jeno is a much a better liar than they give him credit for.
Donghyuck returns to his game and Jeno picks up his bag from the dining table, touches his fingers to his lips. He’s almost surprised when they don’t burn. He picks up his bike helmet from the coat rack and texts their manager that he’s going out without waiting for a reply.
Summer swelters and slides across his skin, digs into the tattooed whorls of the points Donghyuck had touched him, to where his muscles ache with the burn of hours upon hours of practice. He pedals slowly through the back roads, corners marked by bird nests of telephone poles, apartments with their street numbers rusting off, cars parked on roundabouts and cats that blink lazily in response to his coos. The air shimmers with heat like an out of focus photograph, and Jeno drowns himself in the humid air, allows it to smother him in kisses. He waits with pedestrians at the intersection, until he’s given the green light to slip into the jetstream of the cycleway, and instinct takes over. The cadence of his pedaling is automatic, the late afternoon sun’s touch gentle as a lover, and with every turn of the wheels his mind rearranges itself. With every turn of the wheels, his body loosens, tension falling from him like discarded clothes.
He knows, no matter what, that he can rely on this. On cycling, on the Han at his side where it glitters with a million sunbeams refracted in its depths, on the birdsong and the endorphins that cascade through his veins. He bikes until the sweat pours off his body in rivulets, until he burns with exertion, and then he bikes more, past all of Gangnam, towards Mapo bridge, under the great shadow of the highways that criss-cross the river like stitches.
Donghyuck’s kiss had been soft. Gentle. There was no hunger, no passion in it. It frustrates Jeno, because he thinks Donghyuck is holding back. It frustrates Jeno, because Jeno is holding back. He wants to throw himself into it, drown himself in it, let it smother him like the tides that run through Incheon harbour. Jeno burns with want, and it’s no foreign feeling but it still sears him from within.
He wanted his debut, wanted it more than anything in the world, was ready to fight the sun and stars for it, kick and scream until he stood on the stage. He wanted Jaemin’s return, prayed to the God he didn’t believe in anymore every day until he saw him standing in their dormitory again. He wanted comfort, companionship — to be known in a way so intimate it terrified him, wanted to be loved despite his flaws that gaped like bullet holes in his being.
And this. Jeno wants this. Despite the show of abandonment, he is not a coward. Jeno stands up to his feelings. It’s just — well. This is complex. This is trying to untangle the Gordian Knot in his stomach, one he’s spent years tying — like it is frayed ends of the rope that will lead him out of this maze. He can’t just cut through, or he’ll sever his arteries — though some days he thinks that might be the right answer, to carve out his heart and start again. This one is so treacherous, so open, so easily read. It betrays him at every opportunity, and Jeno is so tired of fighting it.
Sunset threatens the skyline with saturated beams of pink sunlight, colours the looming storm the shade of smashed peaches, and still he rides, faster than ever, lungs burning. He races past a couple on a tandem bike and thunder rumbles, tension thick. It only serves to spur him on. Seoul weeps and the sky breaks open, empties buckets of thick raindrops that burst and scatter across the pavement like shattered baubles.
Jeno drips in tears, droplets falling from the tip of his nose, hair flattened against his scalp, ink of lyrics already forgotten running down his fingers. The rain parts before him and he cuts through a puddle, flies past a group of schoolkids huddled under Hannam Bridge, their uniforms splattered with smudges of rain. He breaks the curtain of water pouring from the pavement above and bursts through to the other side, crosses the veil. Jeno flies through the summer evening, until the clouds crumble and the sun breaks across his back, the world painted golden.
He follows his heart. He doesn’t think. He just does.
Donghyuck kisses him gently, lips soft, eyelashes fluttering like butterfly wings. He doesn’t ask where Jeno had been (he can taste the water on his tongue, taste the fine mist of dirt that had evaporated into the churning sky, taste the oil slick on his skin). His fingertips swipe the leftover raindrops from Jeno’s shoulder, and Jeno doesn’t stop. He holds Donghyuck close against the wooden door of his room, lets his mouth fall open and the whines climb from his throat like survivors running from the fire in his lungs.
Jeno kisses him until their spit mingles, until his fingers are sore from digging into Donghyuck's shoulder blades, until they’re lying on Jeno’s bed, Jeno’s damp hair creating a wet spot on the pillow, Jeno’s shirt on the floor, Jeno’s shorts on the floor, Jeno —
Jeno.
Here's the thing.
Jeno doesn’t like boys.
This game he plays with Donghyuck doesn’t answer anything, just creates more questions. Questions that run around the expanse of his mind like stray cats, impossible to herd, impossible to plead to, liable to injure him if he finally does get his hands on them. They pounce from the dusty corners, slink through the dappled shadows on the roof of his dorm room, brush against his ankles in the early hours of the morning. He sits on his bedside and calls out to them, but they elude him, stare with green eyes of envy through the gloom.
Donghyuck kisses him, and Donghyuck kisses Jaemin. Bruises like roses on his collar bones that Jeno touches hesitantly. Donghyuck’s eyes, dark as midnight, his fingers encircling Jeno’s wrist.
“You don’t like it?” Donghyuck asks. Jeno bites his lip, and his face betrays him. “Why?”
He doesn’t know. He can’t place his finger on it. It’s like someone has handed him a pin and asked him to find the capital of the moon. He has no information, no map to guide him, just his trembling hands, just this thought that runs endlessly on the hamster wheel of his brain, just this jealousy that is so unbecoming on him, erodes him at the base of his being. He had thought opening his self up would solve it, but there’s so much more buried beneath the overgrown garden of his ribcage.
Envy at what? At Donghyuck being wanted? At someone sharing Donghyuck with him? At —
No , Jeno thinks. Never that .
Jeno dreams fever dreams, dreams in technicolour, dreams of falling through puddles and waking up in a parallel universe where no matter how much he yells, Donghyuck cannot hear his name. They’re performing at Dream Concert, and he’s struggling with his costume. The buckle of his belt won’t thread. His boots are both for a left foot. The rain falls in sheets across the stage and they begin to file out from behind the curtain, but Jeno cannot move. His legs don’t work, and he begins to turn to stone, becomes trapped in a photo frame filled with ground down dust. They climb on stage without him, and We Young thunders through his ears like a tropical storm.
Jeno's tongue turns to sand in his mouth.
The choreo was made for six, anyway.
Donghyuck kisses him. Donghyuck kisses him. Donghyuck kisses him. Coathangers dig into his back, sharp against the knobs of spine. A jacket hits the ground. Donghyuck kisses him, fumbles with his belt, fingers clumsy. Rattling, like coins in his pocket. Buttons that don’t cooperate.
“Jeno,” Donghyuck says, touch branded into him, mouth red like blood. They didn’t match his foundation to his skin tone — again — and Donghyuck’s face is ghostly, swims in and out of focus when he pulls back to pin Jeno with his gaze, like he’s a particularly pretty butterfly mounted under glass. A collector's item. “Jeno,” Donghyuck repeats, fingertips heated in the fire of his gut where they burn him.
“Jaemin,” Jeno gasps.
Donghyuck wasn’t the first person Jeno kissed.
Jaemin was. Fifteen. Stardust eyes. Pink cheeks. Ch-ch-ch-ch-chewing gum .
“You’re not in love with me, Jeno,” he says, lips the colour of cherry blossoms.
Jeno nods, so ready to believe him.
The thing is — how can anyone not be in love with Jaemin? It seems like a paradox. Jaemin is everything good in the world, bright lights and bubblegum kisses. He is the essence of summer, the essence of the lion’s heart — bold and strong — sweeps up everything in his wake, forges forward with a surety that Jeno is envious of. He pushes his strawberry tea into Jeno’s hand, the straw of Jeno’s own cup already halfway to his lips even as he begs to try it. He takes Jeno’s hand and twirls him around, lifts him from his feet, laughs with his body and soul. He sweeps Jeno in his arms like their life is a drama and draws him close, kisses him, kisses him, smiles like it’s the most wonderful thing in the world for them to be like this.
How can Jeno not be in love with him, because Jaemin is so in love with the whole world, so in love with everything it has to offer him. He’s in love with every person he’s ever met, and to return it is natural. To return it feels right.
The world is bright and new, filled with colours Jeno had never known to exist. Summer races by and the long nights where he dances until he collapses are punctuated by Jaemin's lips, by his laughter, by the shape of his body seared into his memory like a freshly developed Polaroid. He savours every moment, every stage, every time he flies off his hoverboard into Jaemin's arms. The crowd and the cheers, the sound of his name as he dances like he was always made to do. The seven of them are family, unbreakable, soaring high, and then —
It's like someone had peeled open the skin of Jaemin's spine and wedged knives between the bones, dug needles into his tightly wound nerves. He grimaces as he says Jeno's name, and Jeno's heart aches, freshly healed wounds pulled apart anew. Sweating, lying on the couch in their dormitory, fighting tears where they well in the corners of his eyes.
You're not in love with me, Jeno.
It's the same old injury as when they were trainees. It haunts him, will haunt him, inks itself across his skin to remind him that it's always waiting in the attic for the slightest moment of vulnerability to rear its ugly head.
Jeno lies in Jaemin's bed the night he leaves. It still smells like Jaemin, his generic deodorant, his hand moisturiser, his scent smeared across every surface of the room. He buries his face in the sheets and inhales, wants to shout at the unfairness of it all. Jeno knows he had to go, knows Jaemin was hurting himself, knows Jaemin was lying to them, hiding it from everyone, but he feels so fucking selfish, because he wishes he didn’t. He wishes he was still here, wishes he could press his face into his chest and feel Jaemin’s fingers trace the neckline of his shirt.
He wishes he could sleep, but it’s impossible, his stomach churning, his body wrung out like a wet t-shirt but his mind so wired. Jaemin is gone, and he’s taken a part of Jeno with him, a part he can only hope one day might be returned to him, slotted in like a missing puzzle piece, a golden stitch that shouldn’t matter but feels so fundamental to who he is.
The door cracks open, light spilling across his back, fractionated on the wall scratched with marks where Jaemin had taken down his posters.
“Hyung,” Jisung whispers. The door shuts. Darkness, again. “Jeno, hyung.”
The line of his body falls into the bed, presses against Jeno, tiny, fragile. Jeno feigns sleep and Jisung draws a shaky breath, grasps at the fabric of his shirt. His presses his cheek against the space between Jeno's shoulder blades, and the imprint it leaves is wet.
"You're taking this rather hard."
The wind that mourns on Jaemin’s end of the call is thin and keening, but in the dormitory — on Jeno’s side — there’s quiet, a deathly still like the morning before the war. It’s late February, and the snow banks settled in their courtyard have begun to melt. Chenle's snowman lost its nose yesterday, refroze come morning. He suspects it will be a puddle by the end of the week.
"Am I not supposed to?"
"I'm not dead, Jeno."
Jeno's tongue sticks to the roof of his mouth. He doesn't know what to say to that. What do you do when your best friend is gone, anyway? No-one taught him this. He's just a stupid teenager who only knows how to sing and dance. He's a boy stuck in a box, unable to deal with feelings, with loss, with this boy who he doesn't love but he feels has climbed into his heart nonetheless.
Jaemin sighs, as if he knows. "Don’t be like that. You're not in love with me."
"I know," Jeno snaps, and it's coarse, razor thin, the point of his tongue like the end of an estoc — sharp enough to cut the insides of his perfidious mouth. "You're my friend, Jaemin. I miss you. That's what friends do. It doesn't matter if we kissed, if we—”
He cuts himself off, breath harsh. He’s said too much, betrayed himself again, his soul too honest — especially to Jaemin, who turns him into a foolish creature with such ease.
“Okay,” Jaemin says, cold. Jeno swears he sees the frost creep up the windowpane. He grips his phone so tight he feels like it might break, has to force himself to peel his hand away and set it down on the dresser, switched to speaker.
“And you're my group mate, too,” Jeno says, quiet. Trying to reel himself in. “We have seven members."
"Start getting used to six."
There's defeat in his voice, like Jaemin has laid down his weapons. It lodges itself in Jeno's throat and forces him to acknowledge it, to fight for it, though Jeno isn’t sure this fight is even fair.
"Jaemin," he grits out, “you can’t—”
"I don't know if I'll get better, Jeno."
The ice cracks, Jaemin driving his fist through it like he’s a meteor crashing to Earth. Jeno grasps the sheet of his bed and tries to stop the world from coming tumbling down. “This isn’t coping.”
“What the fuck do you want me to do?”
The curse is sudden, harsh, coloured like carnage by Jaemin’s voice. It takes Jeno by surprise, and he flounders for a second too long, like he's lost the beat of the song he’s so blindly dancing to. It swims back to him as his heartbeat rises.
“Be hopeful, Jaemin.”
A flurry falls past the window, pinprick snowflakes scattering like wedding confetti. White noise in his ears, and leaking television static that turns the world monochrome — until Jaemin's voice breaks through, impossibly small.
“I don’t know if I can.”
Donghyuck still kisses him. Donghyuck undresses him. Donghyuck kisses Jaemin. This is a new arrangement. This is an old arrangement, but in a new order. Donghyuck's fingers press into the dip of his collarbone, where the light from the lamp pools in a golden sphere. Donghyuck's fingers dig into the muscles of his back. Donghyuck’s presence stands at the doors of his heart, but the guard tells him to go away. He can’t let him in like this. There’s no room.
Donghyuck takes him apart.
The world is gold. The world is silver. The world is Jaemin's favourite colour. Jeno dreams of standing on the surface of a lake, but the depths will never swallow him. Its surface is a mirror and his face is in shadow, unresponsive to the blinding light that radiates from every corner of the room. Jeno falls to his knees, presses his palms against the surface smooth as polished stone, looks for a sign, for an out, as dread mounts in his guts, as his bones threaten to unmake him, turn him to nothing.
Open your eyes .
He can't.
There's laughter in the distance, and the light rescinds, pulls him with it until he’s standing in the practice room, the one where they'd first danced Chewing Gum together, the one where Jaemin had fallen to the floor, twitching and crying, red hot pokers dug through his back. The one where —
Jaemin looks up at him. He’s sitting in the center, in his sweatpants and undershirt. There’s a hole at the back of the neck that Jeno always liked to poke his fingers through, a window to the warm expanse of his back. His eyes are the colour of obsidian, of pyroclastic flows cooled under the ocean waves, of the pendant Donghyuck had bought him back from Jeju.
“Jeno,” he says.
Jaemin turns to flowers, to snowflakes, to water, melts against the floor. Jeno tries to put him back together, gathers the blossom petals sticky with river water, crushes them between his clumsy fingers and heaps them in sodden piles, but he can’t. He can’t rebuild someone so complex. He can’t rebuild him without the piece of himself he gave to him, and Jaemin has taken it away, hidden it somewhere Jeno will never search.
The world blurs into brush strokes of errant wildfire — autumn leaves planted on tree branches struck gold and red like the flames that lick at his heels. The dying gasp of summer, grass still saturated with monsoon rain, the Han swollen at her banks. Magpies dip in and out of the jetstream, and Jeno bikes. His lungs burn, and he’s on ablaze, aching, pedalling, racing past children playing basketball, women and their teacup dogs, ahjummas that travel in packs, teenagers who barely give him a glance, even as noticeable as he is, only his helmet to cover his honey blonde hair. He thinks if he pedals fast enough he might escape this, might outrun his thoughts, might outrun his worries and this endless domino track he sets up to fall again and again. He blows across the crosswalk and the leaves scatter behind him, crunching like brittle bones.
Perpetual motion is all he has, the only way to carry himself into the future. He wonders if his heart will stop beating if he doesn’t move, if he’ll fall over and crumble, like this body has no permanence. The world is on fire and they tell him he is brilliant, but no — Jeno, Jeno is on fire.
When he comes home he finds Donghyuck. When he comes home he kisses Donghyuck. When he comes home he tells himself, again and again that this is not love. This is want. This is desire, this is crossed wires, this is—
Jeno forgets that he doesn’t like boys.
“You’re so transparent,” Donghyuck says. His sneakers squeak against the worn down surface of the basketball court. The ball hits the backboard and flies almost directly into his hands. A droplet of sweat rests in the bow of his lips, flies loose like an arrow as he shakes his hair from his eyes.
“What does that mean?” Jeno asks, catching the ball when Donghyuck passes it to him.
“Have you considered just talking to him?”
It crystallises in an instant, aligns itself with the words stuck behind his teeth. The response is preprogrammed.
“I’m not in love with him.”
His shot goes wide, hits the wall of the gym. “Who said anything about that, Jeno?”
"I—" he starts, staring at Donghyuck. The ball rolls into the corner and wedges itself under a bench.
No-one had mentioned that, but it's all Jeno ever thinks about anymore. Jaemin, how he feels about him, how complex love must be, how he just wants what he can't have. How he's struggled since Jaemin's return, how all their history seems to be erased with one swipe of his hand.
How, well. When he kisses Donghyuck, presses him into the wall of their dormitory bathroom, when he shuts his eyes and lets Donghyuck undress him, push him into the sheets, surrounds himself with him — well.
Jeno is a better liar than they think he is, but he's not good enough to convince himself that he wishes Donghyuck was anyone but Jaemin.
The Han river. Again. Late October, and the trees are shedding their garments like hypothermic patients. City lights swim in the water — red on gold on silver on a canvas of rippling black. Jeno can’t stop biking. There are no stars in the narrow throat of the sky, the strip bared between the building edges illuminated by the millions of apartment windows that glow like lightsticks at a concert — but Jeno still looks upwards, still hopes for some answer from beyond.
“Slow down!” Jaemin yells, and Jeno slams the brakes, skids to a stop as Jaemin whips past him to stops a few meters ahead. He laughs like a music box. “You’re too fast.”
“You’re too slow,” Jeno says. Jaemin grins, perfectly centered in the spotlight of a streetlamp, every part of him incandescent. Sweat glimmers like diamonds on his skin, and Jeno’s eyes follow the ridge of his collarbone, remember the feeling of his mouth against the same spot on Donghyuck’s body, the way he’d arched underneath him.
“You wanna take a break?” Jaemin asks, dismounting before he even gets an answer. He pulls his bottle from the bracket and drinks greedily, water spilling from the edges of his mouth, the line of his neck glistening. Jeno can’t stop staring. He never can.
“Sure,” he says, sluggish.
Jaemin is impossible, pink punch hair peeking out from under his helmet, million dollar smile painted across his face. They sit on the water’s edge and Jeno laughs, laughs so hard his aching lungs get no reprieve, his and Jaemin’s joy blooming and entwining like rose vines where he coughs out his words, cheeks sore, voice hoarse. Jaemin wraps their hands together, plays with his wrist, pulls at his fingers, taps against his palm, and Jeno stares at him, enthralled, like the world could fall away and he would never notice. It’s only them — only them and the frogs hidden amongst the reeds. Only them and the water where it laps at the dirt banks — eroding like the foundations Jeno has built around this lie he tells himself.
This lie that — when they walk back — Jaemin catches him staring, catches the treachery outlined across his face and says:
“You’re not in love with me, Jeno.”
It hangs in the air between them, the final note of a song. Jaemin turns his back and heads to his bike — goes to leave, again, again, over and over like he always has. Jeno has been running this entire time but he can never catch Jaemin, never make him stop and look at him, see him for who he is just for a second.
“Wait,” Jeno says, and the word fractures, broken glass syllables scattered across the footpath.
Jaemin stops, shoulders drawn tight, one hand on the railing that separates the path from the stamped down grass. He turns and faces Jeno, again, raises a carefully plucked eyebrow as if to challenge him, as if he wills Jeno to stand up for himself, just this once. Jeno closes the distance between them, pushes himself into Jaemin’s space and crowds in on him, the two of them twin strokes of fire, a fever in the cold autumn night. His fingers dig into Jaemin’s cheekbones and Jaemin stares at him, defiant, every edge of him keen and sharp.
Brown. His eyes are brown, dark brown, like coffee grounds, like polished wood, like dark chocolate, 70% cocoa, too bitter on his sweet loving tongue. They hold all the lights in the universe, refract them like a prism, and Jeno sees his face amongst the pinpoints of another galaxy, sees the part of himself he gave away so long ago.
“Jaemin,” Jeno says. His heart is swollen and bleeding, leaks in tremors through his fingers, and he wonders if he removed his hands from Jaemin’s face if he’d leave bloodied fingerprints. “I am.”