Chapter Text
Jaebum’s secondhand Hyundai, driven by Jinyoung, glides almost smoothly through the night. It’s raining, though, so Jinyoung is staring straight ahead down the open road, concentrating. Jaebum doesn’t say anything about it being a bad day for a road trip, and Jinyoung doesn’t say it was his idea to begin with. It’s kind of peaceful, really. The rain outside seals the car into a vacuum of sorts, that reminds Jaebum oddly of limbo, of time capsules. The rhythmic waving of the windshield wipers is hypnotic.
Like this, the radio is muffled behind the rain sounds, white noise playing in the background, but then Jaebum hears the unmistakable opening chords of a familiar song, the piano melody achingly sweet.
It’s been almost ten years now since he first heard this song, and he’d changed so much, between. Almost so beyond recognition that the song is more friendly than his past self.
Jaebum reaches to turn the volume knob up, till the music fills the small space of the car. Jinyoung looks over at him, then, and smiles faintly. He turns the heater dial up.
Jaebum smiles back, then looks at the raindrops tracking determinedly down the windowpane, in dotted lines. He can sense Jinyoung continuing to look at him as they idle at a traffic light. Blurred car headlights in the distance shimmer in and out, pretty red and yellow. It’s 4am, so Jinyoung doesn’t really need to pay so much attention to the virtually deserted roads until they take the exit to the highway.
Even not looking at him, Jaebum can feel Jinyoung’s presence, quietly solid, steady, self-possessed. When they were younger and the band was just debuting, fans used to comment on how Jinyoung idolised him and mimicked his every habit, every hobby.
What they — and he — hadn’t realised was that Jinyoung is like a chameleon: he does observe and acquire the best traits of people around him through osmosis, but there’s an invisible core inside him wholly his own, and decidedly unknowable. When Jaebum peeled back the layers he found that.
But Jinyoung hadn’t hesitated to open that threshold up to him too, fearlessly, wholeheartedly. In fact, he faced life and its myriad challenges with this selfsame temerity — for instance, Jaebum had battled the discovery of his sexuality with much less grace. There was this unshakable inner calm about Jinyoung that drew Jaebum in. When he saw it, he recognised without a doubt that he himself possessed no such quality.
It seldom mattered because Jinyoung is strong enough for them both. He’s frequently Jaebum’s anchor in storms, both literally and figuratively.
It’s only in these random, nothing moments when it occurs to Jaebum that they may ultimately be like cars in the night, only able to pass each other, never to peer in. He wonders then, questions — why where Jinyoung has that core of warmth Jaebum has buried within him a hollow void of loneliness that seems to grow with each year, despite Jinyoung, despite their bandmates, despite his career.
Possibly, he thinks too much about such things — but the cogs and gears of his mind never feel like they’re moving to him, just automatically spinning in the background of quotidian life.
Is it stupid to worry that this abyss will one day grow big enough to swallow him — yes, he decides, that’s too dramatic.
But there’s still that vague unease in the peripheral, lurking.
The song has ended, and the radio station is now playing one he doesn’t like. If only people still did things like making road trip playlists.
"It wasn’t a waste of time.” Jinyoung’s voice breaks into his thoughts abruptly, unexpected.
"Huh?” Jaebum finally turns to stare at him, a little surprised.
Jinyoung just smiles, that mysterious way he does, and repeats patiently, “None of it was a waste of time."
None of what, Jaebum wants to ask. Instead he stammers, “How did you know what I was thinking?"
Jinyoung grins then, flashing teeth.
"Read your mind.” He sounds smug.
Jaebum can’t help his smile, still a little flustered, and another song he knows is creeping in. One of those unabashedly romantic ones.
Jinyoung is looking back at the front, his hands gripping the wheel. Jaebum lets the rich emotion of the singer’s voice fill the space between them, and thinks of how he both craves and feels frighteningly apathetic about these things in equal measure: singing, and Jinyoung. The way he feels about life itself.
"Love you, hyung,” Jinyoung says, expression serious now. He’s still facing the road carefully, voice slightly gruff, and in a rush, the feeling floods back — the almost painful yearning, almost too much to bear. Jaebum relaxes; and allows the full intensity to suffuse his being.
Jinyoung moves a hand to the gearshift, and Jaebum hesitates, throat dry, before gently covering it. Jinyoung looks over again, his eyes dark in the glow of the streetlamps. The rain is lighter now, but shows no signs of ending.
"We’re going to be okay,” Jaebum says, hoarsely. He tightens his hand over Jinyoung’s knuckles, his warm skin.
"Yes,” Jinyoung whispers, their eyes locking, then leans over and kisses him.