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Someone had once told Jisung you never forget your first love.
He doesn’t remember who. It was probably one of those things he’d heard from a movie, or in a dream, or a lyric to some dreadful song on the radio that his sister liked to sing along to. Or maybe it was one of those things he’d always known.
Someone had also once told him that you only had one person that you'd truly love for the rest of your life. He didn't have to attribute that one to some mysterious voice, because he knows who told him that. Chenle, head pillowed on his arms, leaning on the granite counter as they sat amongst the messy aftermath of one of his cousin's parties. The room smells like strawberry vodka, and the linoleum below Jisung's bare feet is sticky.
The two statements seem to be at odds with each other. If you only have one person you’d love, shouldn't that be your first love?
"One true love," Chenle corrects him. He's seen The Notebook three times. Apparently he knows about these things.
"What’s the difference?"
“What’s the difference?” Chenle repeats, the tone of his voice ironclad, a belief held tight within him. He knows things. He always tells Jisung that: ‘I know things.’ “It’s true love, Jisung. The person that’s made for you. The person that you will always love, no matter what. That’s the difference.”
Jisung doesn’t get it — not really — but he trusts Chenle, something bone deep, intrinsic and woven into him, so he nods, and goes back to eating the leftover nacho chips from the bowl. It’s early morning. The sky is so pale it's almost white and Chenle’s cousin’s cat is sitting at the bottom of Jisung’s chair, staring up at him with unnerving blue eyes. He dangles a chip down towards it and it stands up on its hind legs, paws darting out to bat at his hand.
Jisung figures when it happens, he’ll know. That’s how love is, right?
Jisung kneels in the mud, palms flat against the earth, grass crushed under his boots. His umbrella rests against his shoulder, and he’s watching the worms slide around in the mud, slimy and languid as the rain hammers down around him. Water dripping from the tips of the foliage, green, grey, brown, concrete wet, his own reflection wounded by the droplets where they break the mirror of the puddle. He doesn’t have a raincoat, and his hair is chlorine stiff, humidity still stuck somewhere in the back of his sinuses, cold wind scattering across the open road.
It’s the end of winter. Still too cold for him to be out here, but Jisung’s logic is that it’s always better to be here than to be there — wherever there might be — and here boasts a whole world in front of him. Tiny, muddy and damp, burrowing into the earth. He might be a little jealous.
“Are you okay?”
There’s a boy standing on the footpath beside him, too. Bag held over his head, eyes wide. He’s wearing a rain jacket but his sneakers look soaked and his hair is plastered to his face, raindrops running down his nose.
“Huh?” Jisung says, because it’s the only thing that seems appropriate.
“Are you okay? You’re sitting in the dirt.”
“Oh,” Jisung says, and he straightens up, almost slipping over in the mud, regaining his balance and scrambling as his umbrella drops onto the ground. He picks it up and shakes his hair from his eyes. The boy is shorter than him. Thin, delicate wrists, hands white-turning-blue where they grip his book. “No, I’m okay.”
“Why were you sitting in the dirt?”
Jisung hesitates for a second before he answers, because the last time someone caught him sitting in the mud it earned him the nickname ‘worm boy’.
“I like looking at the puddles,” he says. And then: “Lots of bugs come out during the rain. They’re cool.”
“You like bugs?” the boy asks. There’s no mockery. Just curiosity. Jisung nods. They’re both still standing on opposite sides of the puddle, and the rain is only getting stronger, wind lashing down the street, sheets of water hitting the both of them. Jisung isn’t dressed warm, and he’s starting to shiver.
“I love bugs,” Jisung says.
The boy smiles at him. A good smile — shy, small, and very pretty on his face. He has a snaggletooth, bent slightly, hanging out from the front row, like a shoulder turned the wrong direction, the way an out of time dancer looks — except it’s not improper on him. Just nice. He’s still holding his books above his head. The rain must be dripping down his sleeves.
“Yeah? That’s cool,” he says. “ You’re Jisung, right?”
Jisung nods. “Yeah.”
The boy sticks out a hand. “I’m Renjun.”
The rain doesn’t stop. If anything, it gets worse — slamming into them, scattering across the road, wind howling, trees trembling. They walk together, and Renjun sticks close to him, shoulders bumping, soaked books back in his backpack, hair dripping. There’s a point in the streets where Jisung should turn left, up into the suburbs, all detached houses and white picket fences, but Renjun turns right into chain links and overgrown berms, and Jisung doesn’t mention it’s wrong. Renjun doesn't have an umbrella, and Jisung does, so a detour seems in order. It’s only wrong for him, anyway.
Not for Renjun. He’s new. The rain washes dead leaves down the choked drains and Jisung holds the umbrella above their heads, nodding with what he hopes is matched enthusiasm as Renjun talks to him. He has a thick accent and curses a lot, and there’s something about him that Jisung finds magnetic. Something sticky, hands shaking where he unwraps a chocolate bar and splits it in half.
It tastes wet — the rain is hammering around them. A few shards of thunder, lightning, painting everything white. Someone’s dog is running out on the road, leash running bright red behind it like a trail of blood, and there’s stones kicked up everywhere, loose tarseal broken by car wheels.
Jisung hasn’t been to this side of town in a while, but ‘this town’ is not a big place, so he’s been everywhere at some point or another.
He likes exploring. Chenle does too. Used to, before his mom made him do after school classes, and now Jisung doesn’t see him as much, only when he logs on to League after he’s supposed to be in bed, and sometimes he’ll disconnect for no reason and smile half heartedly at Jisung when he sees him at school the next day.
This — this is still exploring though, even if he’s been here before. He's been here, at this point, on this footpath before, but he hasn't been here.
“I’d invite you in, but my mom doesn’t like visitors,” Renjun says, when they stop outside his house. The front yard is muddy and his door is red, but it’s not bright. It’s faded, peeling, more sun bleached bricks than firetruck. There’s no doormat. Renjun’s sneakers are scuffed. “She’s not home, but she always knows.”
He gives Jisung a smile, tight lipped, and Jisung understands. His mom always knows, too. Like some sixth sense, so Jisung just doesn’t come home half the time.
“It was nice to meet you,” Jisung says. The umbrella feels heavy in his hands, like a weight, an anvil, a half formed promise. Caught on the tip of his tongue, and Jisung closes his mouth before something tumbles out.
“Yeah,” Renjun says, and he pauses for a second, looking Jisung up and down, before he unzips his jacket and shrugs it off, shaking the raindrops from it and holding it out for Jisung.
“You’re shivering,” he says, by way of explanation.
Jisung is, but he’s more shocked at just how thin Renjun is, the knobs of his collarbones and elbows obvious when he’s standing there in just his t-shirt. He looks like he might fade away, like his skin is draped over his skeleton, nothing else left, pale and blue. Ghost boy. A hallucination.
“I’m not taking your jacket,” Jisung says. “I have one at home.”
“But that’s at home, and you’re the one standing out here. You’re only here because of me, anyway. You can give it back tomorrow.”
It’s a little damp, but he shrugs it on. The water trickles down the back of his neck, and his shirt is a second skin, but it’s better than his bare arms being exposed to the wind, and the smile Renjun gives him could almost make it worth it, so Jisung doesn’t complain.
“Thank you,” he says, and he wishes he could give him something else. He already feels like he owes Renjun.
"No problem," Renjun says. "It was nice to meet you."
"You too," Jisung says. There's a miniature waterfall coming from the overflowing drain and a river washed across the driveway, and Renjun gives him a smile before he turns away. He unlocks the door and cracks it open with a gap so small Jisung can’t see inside, slipping through, skinny frame somehow compressed even more until he’s paper thin.
The lock clicks.
Thunder booms again, rumbling, shaking through Jisung. He stands on the doorstep for a few seconds longer, and then he starts to walk back home, sneakers squelching.
It’s been raining for a week, and it’s still raining when the doorbell rings. Flickering between downpour and drizzle, and the roads are starting to flood, and normally Jisung would sit out on the back porch and watch the rain fall — but Jisung hadn’t been at school today, because he has a fucking cold and his nose is running a million miles an hour and he feels so congested it’s like his head is going to fucking explode.
So he’s on the couch instead. His bedsheets pulled up to his chin, drinking orange juice, TV droning on and set to a channel so if his mom comes home he can pretend he’d been watching it instead of playing on his phone. Rain hammering down, background noise, and Jisung sniffs and feels his sinuses re-align.
The doorbell rings and it’s still raining, and Jisung has to get it. Blanket trailing behind him like a behemoth, running all over the cold tiles.
The frustrating thing is he doesn’t know how he got sick. It rains a lot — he’s been out in the rain a lot. It’s chilly and cold and it could have been any time, but he’d arrived just before sunset after walking home with Renjun, and he knows his mom will blame it on that.
Not that Jisung had told her he’d gone there. She doesn’t like him heading down that side of town — it’s dangerous, she says. Better for him to go to Chenle’s house, where everyone has a pool in their backyard and three floors and two cars and electronic gates and fancy attachments on the tap in their kitchen sink.
Jisung doesn’t get it, so he just lies to her instead, and says he’d got caught up talking to someone at school.
He pulls open the door, and on his doorstep is Renjun, holding a sodden paper bag in his hand. He’s dripping in rain, and he still doesn’t have an umbrella, and when he sees Jisung he smiles.
“Thank god,” he says. “I was worried I’d gotten the wrong house.”
Jisung blinks. “You know where I live?”
“I asked the guy you sit beside in English—”
“You asked Chenle?”
“Yeah,” Renjun says. He doesn’t offer anything more.
“I can’t believe he gave my address to a stranger.”
“I’m not a stranger,” Renjun says, frowning. A gust of wind barrels through, cold slicing against Jisung’s bare legs.
“No,” Jisung says. “But he didn’t know that.”
Renjun shrugs. He holds up the bag. “I bought you some medicine. I think you got sick walking home with me.”
“My mom thinks so too,” Jisung says, and then he steps aside. “Did you really walk here? You should come inside.”
Renjun blinks and then glances around, as if he expects to see cameras on him, like this is some great cosmic joke. “Am I allowed?”
“Sure,” Jisung says. He sniffs. He’s pretty sure he’s going to sneeze soon. “No-one’s home, anyway.”
There’s already cough medicine in the cupboard, but Jisung doesn’t tell Renjun that. Renjun stands on the tiles in the kitchen and Jisung brings him a towel, and when he starts to take off his dishrag soaked shirt, Jisung just leads him into the bathroom instead and brings him some of his dry clothes.
Renjun stands in the bathroom for a second, dripping, bare ribs like a tally underneath his skin, and then he holds out a hand and takes the clothes from Jisung. A promise, Jisung thinks. A debt — something invisible, something he’s yet to understand. Their hands brush, and Renjun’s skin is cold.
“Take all the time you want,” Jisung says. He wants to lay his hands on him. He wants to wrap him up, hold him close. Renjun clutches the clothes close to his body, and he almost disappears. A raindrop running down the perfect line of his nose, beading on the end.
Jisung has never felt like this before.
Jisung stands in the doorway for a second longer, then he turns away, and just as he goes to close the door he looks back to find that Renjun is still staring at him; fire in his eyes, water drop rolling off the tip of his nose, falling down, down, down.
“Thank you,” Renjun says.
Thunder rolls outside. The droplet hits the tile and shatters.
Jisung doesn’t know when the debt will be called. He doesn’t know who did what to owe who anything. He just goes into the cupboard and pulls out two packets of instant noodles and boils the kettle. He just leaves the pot on the stove and makes himself more lemon and honey tea, rain dripping down the windows, inhaling the steam, inhaling the arid air of the AC, fake, sharp, scratchy at his sore throat.
Renjun, coming out of the shower, drying off his hair, all skin and bone, his gaze something sharp that bursts the membrane around Jisung’s lungs, and for a terrifying second Jisung can’t breathe.
It's not cosmic, but it's something else. The give and take of the universe. Chenle has AP classes that Jisung falls asleep in. Jisung doesn't have to get a tutor, not like Chenle, though Chenle shouldn't need a tutor either. Chenle is way too smart for any of them, and his mom wants him to be a doctor, but he wants to be an artist.
The give and take of the universe. Chenle disappears under a mountain of paperwork. Renjun shows up on his doorstep. His sister is home, this time.
"Some weird short kid on the doorstep looking for you. He kinda smells."
"He does not smell," Jisung says. He takes the steps two at a time, pulling on his jacket. The earth seems to reverberate when he hits the tiles, shaking beneath his bare feet. He realises he forgot his socks, and then pulls on his sneakers without them anyway, because he doesn't want to keep Renjun waiting.
His sister already isn't paying attention.
"Whatever."
For his birthday, Renjun gives him a cake. One of those ones from the supermarket — can’t be more than five dollars, pink frosting and strawberry jam and all. It’s squashed from being in Renjun’s bag and the plastic box is cracked and warped and after Renjun puts it on Jisung’s desk he pulls out a handful of half melted candles and carefully arranges them on the top.
There’s exactly sixteen. The sun has set and Renjun just got in here by climbing through the window, which is really ridiculous because he could just text Jisung to let him in, but Renjun never does anything in half measure anyway.
When he gets out his lighter his entire face turns gold, a single flame flickering in the dark, skin and bone, push and pull, hard lines, soft flesh, shadow and fire. Something precious, smoke trailing as he lights the candles, and some of them sputter and spark, and soon the whole room is painted in the long lines of their shadows. Renjun sets the lighter down, red plastic glowing against the wood like a meteorite, trapped in the confines of this room, glow in the dark stars on the ceiling, all the universe at their fingertips.
“I haven’t made a wish since I was nine,” Jisung says. Not strictly true, but it was always half hearted. Wishing for good grades, or to get a new PlayStation. Nothing serious, not anymore.
“You’re never too old to dream,” Renjun says. His hand fits in the gap between Jisung’s shoulder blades, warmth radiating through the cotton, and a few sparks fall onto the cheap icing.
Jisung takes a breath. The light goes out.
"My dad got in trouble," Renjun says, by the way of any explanation otherwise. They're lying on Jisung's bed together, and it's finally stopped raining. Winter has yielded, and on the end of the road a single blossom blooms, branches heavy with wedding bouquet bunches of petals.
Jisung is on his side. Renjun is on his back. He's wearing another one of Jisung's shirts, one he leant to him and never asked to be returned. When it rides up Jisung can't see the jut of his hip bones, and it makes him less inclined to give him half his food, too. Preventative measures, because clothes become food, and food becomes his heart, and then that's a mess to clean up. He’s not a heart surgeon. He doesn’t know if he’s supposed to give that one away, or how to do it safely.
He's only sixteen. Old enough. Chenle would be with his tutor right now, except his tutor is just Lee Jeno, who’s a year older and should be studying for his own exams, and neither of them study anything except the way their bodies move together.
Jisung studies what it means when it feels like the entire ocean has been poured into your chest.
"I'm sorry," he says. It almost overflows. His ribs hurt.
Renjun shrugs. He rolls onto his side so he's facing Jisung, and their knees knock together. His face is blurry up close, tiny pits and flecks from acne scars, splotchy skin, mouth a thin line.
"It doesn't matter,” he says. He reaches out and tugs at the shoulder of Jisung’s shirt, fixing it from where it had been slipping down his shoulder. “Not anymore."
Jisung learns this. What it is like to be possessive. What it is like to desire, to want something only for yourself. To wish to sink your teeth into it and say: mine, mine, mine.
He wonders what Renjun's blood would taste like in his mouth. They go skateboarding on the empty roads, tar seal melting under their wheels, birdsong in the oak trees, and Renjun hits the sidewalk, splitting his lip and thankfully retaining all his teeth. The blood beads on his bottom lip and all the worry leaves Jisung’s mouth, replaced with something single minded.
What if I kissed him right now? What if the world was ending? What if it didn't feel like the world was ending — because when you're sixteen the world is always ending. It's always waiting around the corner: doomsday signs, every time Renjun takes his hand in his and paints his nails black. Blood on his lips, bloodied knees, scrapes and bruises, rough calluses, whispered words as the curtains flutter in the breeze.
“Sit still,” he says, and Jisung doesn’t hear it. He’s staring at Renjun’s hands, the slim jut of his wrist, the deft way his fingers work. The end is near. He knows this well. The end is so near he could reach out and touch it, and then he does, the hand that isn’t in Renjun’s grip, lifting up to brush his fingertips against his cheek.
The thing about the end of the world is that it makes you do desperate things. It makes you do stupid things.
Jisung fails his first ever mock exam, and he gets so nervous about telling his mom that he ends up throwing up in the bushes near the park, upending his stomach while Renjun rubs soothing circles on his back.
“It doesn’t even count for anything,” Jisung whines, lying on his back in the shade of the willow trees, river trickling beside them, quack of the ducks as they wander past. Everything is brilliant green and Renjun’s elbow bumps against his, summer looming over their heads.
“It still mattered to you, right?”
“No,” Jisung says, because it didn’t. He doesn’t care that he failed. He hates physics, anyway. He cares because he knows his mom will be disappointed, and so will Chenle’s aunt, and probably half the other adults in his life. He cares because he feels like he needs to impress Renjun, or impress Chenle, or everyone else who’d said they’d believed in him.
Renjun hums. “Well okay,” he says. “Then what?”
“Then what, what?”
“It doesn’t matter, right?”
“You know that’s not true.”
“You just said it didn’t matter.”
“It doesn’t matter to me, but it does to my mom. Or like, the teachers.”
“But you don’t have to tell them. You don’t have to tell anyone. It’s a practice exam. It’s not even the real thing. You don’t owe anyone anything.”
Jisung turns his head to the side, and Renjun is facing him, grass blades jutting up in front of his face like he’s a sleeping giant over a forest. There’s a daisy blooming over his nose, and Jisung reaches out to pick it from the dirt — stem, roots and all. “But I failed,” he says, twirling the daisy around.
“And? You’ll fail plenty more.”
“You don’t get it,” Jisung says. “It feels like…”
“Like the world is ending?” Renjun offers.
The world is ending, but it’s not in the way Renjun thinks it is. The world is ending because Jisung looks at Renjun and it’s like someone has poured clean sunshine into his mouth — it’s like he’s a helium balloon, hitting the roof as he tries to float away. It’s like he’s afflicted, because this is all he can think about: Renjun’s smile, Renjun’s mouth, when he’s going to see Renjun next, and Chenle elbows him and tells him he hopes he isn’t replacing him.
(Renjun isn’t like Chenle, and Chenle isn’t like Renjun. He doesn’t want Chenle to climb on top of him right now. He doesn’t daydream about Chenle, not like he dreams about the scar on the junction of Renjun’s shoulder, or the one time Jisung had fallen over trying to do a trick on his skateboard and Renjun had cleaned the scrape on his hip, alcohol thick in the air, tears beading in Jisung’s eyes at the sting of it. The tenderness of his touch, the way his fingers had pressed into his thigh as he’d swiped the cotton pad against the blood. Pink in the drain, Renjun’s eyes soft.)
“No,” Jisung says. “Not that.”
Because how could Renjun understand?
“High school isn’t the world,” Renjun says, and they’re still lying face to face. The insects drone and the stream gurgles and the sunshine surrounds them, willow branches swaying in the dry breeze. “In two years it won’t matter. At least that’s what I tell myself.”
“But how can you know that? If I fail then I can’t get into college, and if I can’t get into college…” Jisung trails off, because it doesn’t seem possible. Whenever his mom used to drive past the people doing roadworks she used to point to the workers and tell him that if he didn’t do well in school, that’s what he’d amount to: working in the hot sun for minimum wage.
The rest of the implication was there: if you didn’t do well in school, then you weren’t worth anything.
Renjun reaches out and takes the daisy from him. “Then what?” He picks a petal off the daisy — loves me. “There’s more ways than just going straight to college from high school. There’s more to life than exams.”
Another petal. Cast into nothingness. Loves me not.
“What?”
"It doesn’t matter," he says, and Jisung still doesn't follow. Loves me.
(Wish he'd kiss me.)
"Are you going to college?" Jisung asks, tentative. Maybe they could go together. He'd promised Chenle he'd go to college with him, he knew that was unlikely. Chenle would probably go to Princeton, or something prestigious, and his aunt would be very proud of him, and he'd call Jisung up every weekend to whine about how much he hated it and show him the pages of the comic he'd been working on since he was twelve.
Chenle was a really good artist, but what's that in the face of the real world? In the face of everyone telling you to grow up, you can't draw superheroes forever.
Renjun shrugs, still lying in the grass, still emerald green, his eyes aglow. “Probably." Loves me not. "Let’s go get ice cream," he says. "Or a cake, or something. Do something better than this.”
And then he's on his feet. And then he's pushing the daisy into Jisung's hands again, and half the petals are missing, and the wind curls around him and Renjun's palm is sweaty as he helps him up.
"You look dreadful," he says. He reaches out to lay the back of his hand against Jisung's cheek, and Jisung's eyes flutter shut. "Maybe we should go home."
"To my home?"
Eyes still closed. Daisy in his hand, chlorophyll on his knees.
"Yeah," Renjun says. He takes his hand off Jisung's face, but the imprint lingers. "Your home."
He loses the daisy in the wind. There's too many petals left to know if Renjun loves him or not, and maybe it doesn't matter. Maybe none of this matters. They stop at the corner store and Renjun pays for their ice cream with his card, and once they're back out on the bubblegum stained sidewalk he takes a bite from Jisung's chocolate ice cream, teeth first, absolutely barbaric. It dribbles down his chin, and he smiles.
Jisung reaches out to press his thumb against his jaw, cleaning up the melted smear of ice cream and sucking it into his mouth. Renjun bats him away weakly, and the sun beats down. Jisung has never wanted anything so much.
Sophomore year ends just like this — Jisung and Chenle on the sidewalk, sunshine bright, no wind, only SUVs jamming up the road and dogs barking in the back of pickup trucks and the hum of chatter and celebration. Chenle smacking Jeno’s ass when he walks past and giving him a grin that’s all tooth, winking to Jisung when he pulls Jeno down with his hands fisted in the collar of his shirt and presses a filthy kiss to his mouth.
“If your aunt saw that she’d kill you,” Jisung says. The two of them walk over to sit in the shade of an oak tree, Chenle taking off his bag and putting it on front to back so he can rifle through it while they wait for one of his cousins to come pick the two of them up. He's not sure which one is coming — probably Kun, maybe Sicheng, hopefully not Yangyang, who always makes them listen to the 'next big thing' he's discovered on SoundCloud, someone that will without fail lack any musical talent.
At least Kun kept candy in his car.
Renjun has already gone home — i’ll start walking now lol — and Jisung fiddles with this phone, wondering if he should invite him to the party that’s happening next week.
Wondering if he even wants to go.
“Ah, but she won’t,” Chenle says, so utterly sure of it that Jisung envies him.
“What if someone tells her?”
“No-one’s gonna tell her.”
“But what if they do?”
“Then whatever,” Chenle says with a shrug. He tosses his hair back from his face and gives Jisung a grin, mischief, hellfire, something dangerous on the tip of his tongue. “Why? Are you jealous?”
“Of you and Jeno?” Jisung asks.
Chenle wiggles his eyebrows. Jisung mimes throwing up, and receives a palm to the shoulder in return, a smack that resonates through him.
“Ow," Jisung mumbles. "I am not."
Which is a lie. Chenle lost his virginity two months ago. Apparently he got his dick inside Jeno's ass and came immediately, which isn't much to envy, but it's the way Chenle talks about it that gets him. It's the part about having someone who wants you — the whole kissing him and being able to touch him.
It's when Chenle lies on the floor in his room that night and stares up at the ceiling and says sex is the best feeling he's ever had — not just in his dick but in his heart. Jisung thinks that's gross as hell, and yet he wants it so bad it fucking hurts.
(He’s not sure it’s a sex thing. More just a Renjun thing.)
“I got in trouble for giving you my jacket,” Renjun says.
Everything is blue and bright, slow and languid, concrete warm, dirt dry. Chenle lies on his back on the grass beside them, sunglasses on, pale legs exposed to the sun, and Renjun and Jisung are in the pool. Inside the house Chenle’s aunt has her friends over.
Equivalent exchange — or something.
“Oh,” Jisung says, because he’d almost forgotten about that. “I’m sorry.”
“I mean, I get in trouble for everything, so…” he trails off. Jisung stares at him for a second longer, chlorinated hair plastered to his forehead, and then Renjun shrugs and dives under, a great rush of breath, droplets everywhere, surfacing a second later and shaking the water off.
His whole life is like this. Broken into fragments, like someone tore up a scripture and Jisung’s left to grab each piece, glue it together. Try work out what the fuck it all means. Something in the sharp tip of his tooth, in the slope of his smile, in the way his slim fingers feel wrapped around Jisung’s wrist, tugging him along, until Renjun can barely touch the bottom of the pool and Chenle is probably asleep, and they both float there, high noon sky and not a single cloud overhead.
“How long can you hold your breath for?” Renjun asks, and Jisung blinks, because it’s such a violent left turn it gives him whiplash, little dots breaking out in front of his vision like paint drops.
“I don’t know,” Jisung says. He glances at Chenle, who hasn’t moved at all — not even a twitch of his leg. He wonders if he’s listening. He wonders why he cares — because Chenle knows about this, too. Late nights between the two of them, secrets shared. Chenle tells Jisung he hasn't studied at all — that every time he walks to Jeno's house they lock the door and end up in bed, clothes off, skin on skin.
(Jisung shuts his eyes tight, trying not to think about what Renjun would look like if it were the two of them instead, then failing miserably. This is how his brain works, now. Everything is about Renjun. He feels delirious; sick.)
(To want is a terrible disease.)
"Bet it's not as long as I can."
Renjun's smile is playful, water droplets gleaming on his collarbones.
"Game on," Jisung says. He doesn't tell Renjun that he thinks he's been holding his breath for months, and by default he's already won.
Summer passes by in a flurry. Passes by in days with the three of them. Sometimes four. Sometimes two, when Chenle drags Jeno upstairs and locks his door, leaving Renjun and Jisung alone in his oversized all granite kitchen.
The first time it happens Renjun starts to panic when Jisung opens the fridge, asking him if he's allowed to do that.
Jisung has learned this is like a codeword. Not the secret language of furtive glances and caresses of the wrist that makes up their days spent together, but something else. Something Renjun only shares when Jisung can't see his face, when they sleep jammed into his bed together, Jisung's large frame dwarfing Renjun's smaller one.
'Are you allowed to do that?' he asks, and Jisung pauses, fingers an inch from a can of soda.
He glances back at Renjun. Chenle's aunt is on holiday — it's only the three of them in the house.
(If I did that at home, it tells him, bad things would happen.)
"Chenle's aunt lets us have whatever we want," Jisung says. And then: "Come here. Let's pick out drinks."
Renjun stands beside him, bony elbows, all radiant, wearing one of Chenle's shirts. He peers into the depths of the fridge like they're the bottom of a scrying pool, like he might work out the future from the rows of soft drinks and half eaten leftovers stuffed on the shelves.
"You're putting a lot of pressure on me here," Renjun says, reaching out for a can of Coke and then pausing for a second, retracting his hand ever so slightly.
"Do you want me to pick for you?" Jisung asks. Renjun glances at him, meeting his eyes, then chews on his bottom lip for a second.
"No," Renjun says. "I think I can choose my own drink." He reaches out and picks up a can of root beer. “See. Easy.”
Nothing about this is ever easy.
Still. Jisung learns. He has to. He who does not learn from history is doomed to repeat it — though Jisung thinks maybe he wants to repeat it. He wants to be sixteen forever. He wants to spend every day with Renjun, and not worry about the fact Renjun is talking about going to college halfway across the country, or that his mom might move; and what the fuck is Jisung supposed to do with that. A year and a half, maximum. One summer, two winters, a headcold and a hundred nights under the blankets. Sitting on the roof of Jisung's house — because Renjun taught him how to climb up there — and the two of them ignore the chill of winter and stare at the puncture marks of the stars in the sky.
There's a whole world out there. What if it swallows Renjun up? What if he never comes back?
What if — hands cold like a corpse, grasping tight at Jisung's wrists. There's no-one home, and he's playing Bonnie Tyler on the stereo. The moon is full and bright, and they're dancing in the silvered moonlight.
What if this is it?
Jisung never asks the question. He just commits to remembering Renjun as he is. Believing in the power of the universe; in his absolute knowledge that they were meant to be. Believing that Renjun is still owed his pound of flesh, and one day he will come to collect.
The end falls upon him on a Friday afternoon — the two of them sitting in Renjun's bedroom, one of the few times Jisung is ever allowed in his house. The curtains are drawn and the air is sticky and outside the cicadas drone on, some kind of lament. The radio is playing, but there's not much else here. Just scratchy bedsheets no-one ever sleeps in and threadbare carpet.
Just Jisung. Just Renjun.
“I don’t want you to go,” Jisung says, because it’s true, it’s so true, and he thinks if he repeats it enough then maybe he can turn back time — he can steal another moment. Another day, another week, even another hour. He can’t leave him like this. There’s so much left to say. So much left to do, and he didn’t realise time was running out until the clock hit zero.
“I don’t want to either,” Renjun says. “But I have to. I’ll see you again, okay?”
But what if you don’t? Jisung wants to ask, but he’s scared of turning the thought into a fact, and so he holds his tongue. He holds his tongue and Renjun holds his gaze, and there's a second suspended between them — fine and pointed, like the tip of a knife, everything sharpened by the hazy summer day.
There’s a moment, and then Renjun breaks it. He reaches out, delicate, and cups Jisung’s jaw in his hands. He searches his face, and then — heart of flames, touch of the earth, warm and gentle — he leans in and kisses Jisung.
It’s a long kiss. Mouths sliding together, Jisung’s heart like a drum — dum-dum-dum. Renjun’s lips are unbearably soft and Jisung reaches up to grip at his arms and he feels like he’s slipping into nothingness. The world tumbling away, everything tumbling away until only they remain.
He’s wanted this for so long, in the way that you can only want someone when you’re seventeen. When it consumes your everything; when it becomes a part of you, and it’s all you can think about. Just one kiss, please.
He slides his hand up Renjun’s arm to grip at his bicep, and someone knocks on the door, and the moment breaks. A fragmented second, stitches shaky, the two of them panting, and then Renjun reaches out and presses a thumb to the corner of his lips. He gives Jisung a sad smile, and Jisung forgets the words that have been sitting on the tip of his tongue. He forgets the words that are caught flat behind his teeth, written into his blood and his bones.
He forgets to say: ‘I love you.’
Renjun leaves. Jisung stays. He stares off into space during class, awoken only from his haze by Chenle tugging at his sleeve and reminding him the teacher is asking for the answer to the question, but Jisung doesn't know it. He doesn't know anything; he doesn't fucking remember anything. Except for the burn of Renjun's lips on his, except for the brand of his touch. Except for this chant in his head: that this can't possibly be it. It all can't slide away.
Jisung learns that sometimes things only exist for a moment. A flash of brilliance, like a firework that blooms in the midnight black, leaving you only with spots of colour against the back of your eyelids and gunpowder in your mouth.
He learns he should have captured it. Savoured it. Instead he graduates only with Chenle. Instead Renjun doesn’t come back for the summer, and Jisung drives past his house and knocks on the door and there’s a new family there.
They’re in Renjun’s house. Not his house — not really, because Renjun spent more nights at Jisung’s or Chenle’s — but his house in spirit. They're in a space that was once his, and all the parts of him are being erased, little by little, smoothed over and forgotten.
Jisung wishes he'd savoured the moments. He wishes he'd taken more photos. He wishes he'd told him so many things.
Chenle doesn't go to Princeton. Chenle goes with Jisung. Chenle sits on a dorm bed opposite him with a smile on his face, watching as Jisung sticks his posters on the wall. Chenle tells him there's a party. Chenle leaves Jisung on the couch at the party, and Jisung slides his hand up the thigh of a boy so pretty he swears he can't be real, and when he feels the heat of him against his skin he turns his head to the side and kisses him, and he wishes he was Renjun. He wishes everyone was Renjun.
He should have made enough wishes to know they don't come true, but it's like he begins to believe again.
He loses Renjun's number, and for a while Jisung searches. For a while he's so far from home, and he still shops at the Chinese grocers instead of the Korean one, hoping he'll somehow find Renjun.
Remembering Renjun liked Korean food more than he liked Chinese, and then remembering Renjun is so far away from him it shouldn't matter, and it's one am now and he's staring at the radioactive orange water in his cup of Shin Ramen and wondering what the fuck he's supposed to do.
It was never supposed to be like this. Renjun had promised him. Hand in hand, sitting on his bed together. It was them against the world. They would always be together. Nothing would stop it.
Time, he learns, is an inevitable force.
Life, as it is wont to do, goes on.
Jisung grows up. Jisung graduates. He gets a job. He moves halfway across the country, to where the winters are white and dry and the summers are humid and fetid. He meets a boy, and one year later they move in together, and when he's unpacking the boxes he finds a rain jacket that's far too small for him. There's a hole in the sleeve and he picks it up and presses it against his face, and — though it's been twelve years and it smells like the recesses of his cupboard — he thinks he can smell the dollar store laundry powder scent anyway.
Jisung has never seen the fiancé of whatever one of Chenle's cousins is hosting this party in his life; he's just here for the food. Stuffing his face full of tiny pieces of salmon and camembert and other French cheeses he can't pronounce, sitting at a table and trying not to make eye contact with anyone who might attempt to engage him in conversation. Avoiding even his boyfriend; dismissed him with a wave of the wrist when he came over and asked if Jisung wanted anything.
Now Sungchan is talking to Jeno beside the fireplace, and the flames rise in the bubbles of Sungchan's champagne. On his middle finger sits a heavy signet ring, and the elegant cut of his suit makes his shoulders a mile wide.
Sungchan is beautiful, and he’s kind, and he wakes Jisung up with kisses and Jisung could love him — he swears. He does love him, in whatever way that might come to him. He's grown up now. Love is this. Love is the stars in the sky. Love is having someone safe to come home to.
When they make eye contact Sungchan gives him a smile, and Jisung returns it, something strange caught in the pit of his stomach.
(Love was made in a promise when he was sixteen, and Jisung has sixty years to break it, still.)
"Why are you here?" Jisung asks.
Renjun stands defiant against all the glitz and glam, shadowed cutout, slope of his nose, ghost of blood on his lip. Jisung still doesn’t believe he’s real. A ghost become corporeal, hauled out of the darkness by Chenle’s hand when he tapped Jisung on the shoulder and said: ‘I think there’s someone here who wants to see you.’ Ballroom lights brilliant around them, and Jisung instantly felt like he was suffocating. Had asked to go outside for fresh air, and drank it in.
"Why am I here? Mark was invited,” Renjun says.
"Who's Mark?"
"My boyfriend."
Like cut glass, slicing clean through; as if the night air wasn't bad enough. As if it wasn’t cold enough. As if the wine in Jisung’s stomach does nothing to keep him warm, and Renjun smiles, the gesture never quite perfected.
"Oh," Jisung says. Lungs empty, a fish out of water. Except he's been out of the water since he was seventeen, and he only just learned how to breathe, and in an instant Renjun takes that all away. "Congratulations."
"For what? It's not my engagement."
"I don't know."
Renjun searches him. The city is sparkling and bright and warm light spills out from the hall, music and chatter floating through, and the shadow of the bricks must shield them, because someone comes to shut the door, and when Jisung looks back Renjun is staring at him.
He's smaller — or maybe Jisung is bigger — but there's still a wildfire swirl in his eyes, and Jisung thinks he's been imagining it, but maybe that isn't the worst thing to imagine.
Maybe the way Renjun reaches out to adjust his collar isn't the worst thing either. Straightening his bowtie, fingers lingering on his neck for a second. He looks up and the whole world locks into place, and Jisung doesn't know who moves first. Only that he leans in, and Renjun leans in, and the parapet is cold against the small of his back and Renjun's lips are warm, warm, warm.
Renjun's lips are warm and Jisung clutches at his face, this time. This time he brings him close and parts his lips and tastes champagne and old promises, a thousand things he never said, and his boyfriend is in the next room and Jisung could be sixteen again right now, birthday cake glow, meteorite heart. Nothing else matters. Nothing else has ever mattered; except Renjun.
Bitter wind. His fingers tightening in the fabric of his suit jacket. Nothing else ever will matter.
The wind whips around them and Jisung grasps at Renjun and Renjun grasps at him and he can’t stop kissing him. He knows he shouldn’t. Anyone could come out. Anyone could find them. God, what would Sungchan think?
That draws something sick up in his stomach, but Jisung swallows it. He pushes against Renjun. Open mouthed, so very desperate. This time he won’t forget. He won’t let Renjun leave, not without something more than a single promise. Not with a kiss that never resolved.
Not —
Drinking in the night air. A flush on his cheeks, eyes dark.
“Don’t you have a boyfriend?” Jisung asks. That sick feeling floods through, but then he looks at Renjun. Honest-to-god, real Renjun. City lights on his skin. His hair is longer and falls over his face, and Jisung has messed it up with the ruck of his hands, left it sticking up like trees after a storm. The way Jisung had always liked it. Chlorine thick, lying on a twin sized mattress together. Morning light that spilled through the window because he always forgot to pull the curtains properly.
“I don’t love him,” Renjun says. He turns his face away for a second, then looks back. "I wish I did. But I don't. Not enough, anyway."
“Then why are you dating him?”
“Why are you dating Sungchan?”
“Why are you here?”
And everything about Renjun cracks in that moment. His hands are still on Jisung’s face and his pointer digs into Jisung’s cheekbone, and the light spills out from the seam of his lips, just for a moment.
“Do you really love him?” Renjun asks.
“I do,” Jisung says. He doesn’t mention the thought in front of the fire. He doesn’t mention their imperfections. He doesn’t mention how sometimes he’ll sit on the fire escape with a can of root beer and close his eyes and pretend there’s someone beside him. He doesn’t think he can, because if he did it would be admitting that after all this time he still wants to spill his guts to Renjun.
“But you kissed me.”
“He loves me,” Jisung tries, and he knows it's the truth. That much is certain. He can learn everything else.
“But you'll break up with him in a year, won't you? Just like you broke up with all your other boyfriends?"
"No," Jisung says, because Renjun is wrong. He has to be wrong. He can't be here. Why here? Why now? It's been so fucking long. He has a life now. Renjun can't come back like this. He can't walk into this world Jisung has worked so hard to fit into and make it his own again, just like he did when he was sixteen.
"You feel like there's something always stopping you," Renjun says, and it sticks in Jisung's throat.
"Don't do this," Jisung says.
Renjun gives him a smile. Faded, drawn tight. "I’m only saying it because I understand”
He wakes up to a sky pale grey, a forecast for rain, and Renjun sitting on the couch of the cramped hotel room, blankets swallowing his slim frame. Both their suits are crumpled on the floor, and Jisung doesn’t leave the bed. He just sits up and pulls the sheets around himself, air cool on the bare skin of his shoulders. Renjun glances over at him.
They should talk about this, he knows, but instead Jisung doesn’t say anything. Instead he feels like he’s in high school again, wanting for every part of Renjun.
He keeps his mouth a line. Renjun stands, and the blankets drop to the floor, every inch of his skin on display, but they never break eye contact. Renjun climbs on top of him, and he cups Jisung’s jaw in his hands and tilts his face up, and Jisung’s fingertips nearly touch where he circles his hands around Renjun’s waist.
Jisung got taller, but Renjun stayed the same. Some things always stay the same. The outside might change. He might be older. But at his core there is something that was always there, and it flashes through him. Brilliant, a circuit closed after so many years apart. Jisung shuts his eyes and kisses Renjun, and he lets go of the words stuck to the roof of his mouth like hardened tar. Words he should have said so many years ago, but the second best time to say them is now; breathed into the dry morning air, the city already roaring to life outside their tiny window.
"You don't really love him, do you?" Renjun asks. He has a can of root beer in his hand. In this lighting — not a muddied mess of shadow and gold, not the city fading around them, not the hotel room when Jisung had looked up at him through his lashes — he looks beautiful. He’s soft and gentle, and time has only been kind to him, because there is still that spark of youth, but it’s like someone has let it grow to a flame. Flickering, bold. No-one could ever contain him.
"I'm still learning," Jisung says. "We all have to."
Jisung has a lot to face when he gets home. He still doesn't know what he's going to do. This is learning, too.
"Some people don't have to learn. It's easy for them."
"It's never been easy for me. Not since—"
He cuts himself off, and Renjun stares at him in silence, as if he's weighing up the answer. Head tilted slightly to the side, and then judgement is passed. Feather light; satisfactory, and Renjun doesn't comment on it. Instead he says:
"I'm sorry I left you."
Renjun with his heart of glass, with the wildfire in his eyes.
"I looked for you everywhere," Jisung says. "Literally everywhere. What happened?"
"I moved overseas," Renjun says. He doesn't offer anything more.
"Why are you back here, then?"
Renjun shrugs. "Why do any of us do what we do?"
Love, Jisung thinks, and then he says it. Renjun gives him a smile — less bitter, more resigned.
"You've never done anything this bad in your life, have you?” It’s phrased like a question, but it’s really more a statement. “You've never cheated on your boyfriend. Have you ever even cheated on a test? You always freaked out when I used to steal gum for you.”
“You’ve always done crazy things to me,” Jisung says. He sidesteps the rest.
“Have I?”
Eyebrow raised. The can is still shut. Renjun sets it down on the countertop and slides off his seat, and here in the sunlight everything coalesces.
Renjun steps across the tiles and onto the soft carpet, still barefoot, only a few steps to stand in front of Jisung where he sits on the tiny couch.
Instinct takes over, and Jisung reaches out and places his hands on Renjun’s waist, and it’s like the contact is the catalyst that allows it all to become real. Renjun is no longer a shaded cutout, no longer washed in grey. He’s full of life and full of colour, warm beneath Jisung’s touch, eyes glittering; and the morning is long gone — it’s mid afternoon — but Jisung knows in that instant he wants to see him every light there is. Sunset orange, fluorescent blue like when they used to swim in Chenle’s pool after dark. Fireworks and midnight, restaurant, waiting room, snowed in, heat wave.
“You have,” Jisung says, and he leans forward, resting his cheek against Renjun’s chest and breathing in the smell of the hotel soap. Breathing out, looking up. A kiss that feels so right it’s like he’s been doing it his entire life. Like he was made to fit with Renjun.
(And maybe he was.)
Renjun falls asleep afterwards, and it takes Jisung a while to extract himself from the sheets. A while longer to find his phone — discarded face down on the floor, somewhere between his boxers and Renjun’s undershirt. He checks his notifications, ignores them, takes a shower, and comes back to sit down on the edge of the bed and stare at the screen at his missed calls.
One from Chenle. One from Sungchan. He can’t even remember the excuse he’d made to exit the party. Catching up with an old friend, maybe; or had he just left?
Beside him, Renjun stirs. Rolling over, blinking sleepily, and Jisung realises this could be the rest of his life. He could wake up to this every day; this boy who has somehow become more beautiful with time. This boy who smiles at him like he’s seeing sunshine for the first time in his life, like he’s found him kneeling in the mud, raindrops dripping down his sleeves. Knocking on his front door and handing him medicine.
Like:
Renjun reaches a hand out and lays it on top of Jisung’s. He squeezes at his fingers, and shuts his eyes.
"Come back to bed," Renjun says. "I like it better when you're here."
And Jisung looks back at his phone.
“Hold up,” he says, opening his contact list, hovering his finger over Sungchan’s name. “I need to make a call.”