Work Text:
When Jung Hwan is fifteen, his heart beats faster for the first time.
Still pimply and gangly, he isn’t quite equipped to deal with the sudden pit in his stomach or the heat in his cheeks when a surprisingly large hand rests on his shoulder as he lies on Taek’s lap with a packet of shrimp chips in his hands.
He isn’t touching Jung Hwan, not really, his hands on his own lap brushing against his body unthinkingly.
Jung Hwan looks around Taek’s room at Dong Ryong sitting across him, feet casually touching his own while Sun Woo lies on his lap. He looks at Deok Sun sitting flushed next to Taek, all of them busy watching the movie playing on the television and he thinks that the touching is quite normal for all of them.
They hug and touch and he has seen all of the boys change more than once and maybe the intimacy is odd to outsiders but he knows it as just something right.
But his body is changing and it makes sense for touches to change for him too.
He ignores the niggling realisation that only Taek and the brush of his hand set his heart off.
Deok Sun sighs against Jung Hwan and he is suddenly aware that she is a living, breathing girl.
The curves of her body are pressed up right against him and the next thing he knows is that he is pressed hard against her hip and he thanks all of his lucky stars that she does not freak out and scream.
If he apologises then it will be out in the open and so he backs away as much as the alley allows and keeps mum, hoping that she knows that he means no offence.
The Dean catches them soon enough and his voice is enough to to make him soft and Jung Hwan is mortified at the implications if he was still hard when caught.
Later that night, the writhing, faceless body he has dreamt of since he was fourteen is a little more solid and the face a lot more familiar and now the whines sound like her annoyed ones and he has a hard time looking at Deok Sun for weeks after.
Soon, the embarrassment doesn’t stem from the incident anymore.
Deok Sun grows prettier by the day and he finds himself sneaking glances at her when no one can see.
The contrast is sharp and striking when he looks at her bright smile and when he actually speaks to her and he remembers who she is - loud and excitable and more than a little silly - and the two seem far too discordant.
Aren’t pretty girls supposed to be demure and shy and certainly not the kind to engage in antics and mimes? Aren’t they supposed to be effortless and elegant without trying and not like her scrambles to look beautiful with odd tools and loud calls for attention? Aren’t they supposed to exist in movies and magazines and not the half-basement below his home?
But Deok Sun is Deok Sun and Deok Sun is becoming beautiful and Deok Sun is also brash and Deok Sun seems to be the only name that runs through his mind and Jung Hwan thinks he is fucked because it is Deok Sun of all people.
She is everywhere and one would think that a blessing but it is torture and he cannot believe himself and his stupid heart for falling for her out of all of the people in the world.
And hearts are confusing creatures because he now smiles even at her bad dancing - smiles and not laughs - and that should be a sign.
Deok Sun is his first love and Jung Hwan does not know how.
How much more explicit does he have to be?
He has taken her face in his hands and scrunched up her pretty lips and honestly, that should be more than enough for her to at least guess that he likes her.
When her call came, his heart filled with an unfamiliar urge to rush to her.
The two of them alone in a restaurant seemed too good to be true and his heart hammered all through the bus ride at the prospect of something like a date on Christmas Eve.
Of course her friends were there too.
But the ride home was nice and Deok Sun liked Lee Moon Sae too and that simple fact felt like a bond.
He taps the wrapped present as the memories of the day fill him up. Pink gloves, just like the ones Lee Mi Yeon wears on the television and maybe they will be even prettier on Deok Sun.
He hopes he’ll find out soon.
Something about Deok Sun’s name makes him blush.
It’s not the prettiest of names, it doesn’t roll off his tongue like a song and it doesn’t invoke any beautiful images. Traditional and formal, the name Deok Sun boasts not of beauty or gentleness but of virtue and as a teenage boy that means little.
But it is her name and somehow, saying her name to her face makes him red in the face and so he resorts to nicknames.
Cruel ones at times but she has to know he doesn’t mean it that way, right? That them (him) teasing her about her grades and her clumsiness and her foolishness is the same as them (him) teasing the rest for their trait?
Taek is too quiet and too trusting. Dong Ryong does not know when to draw the line before he becomes annoying. Sun Woo is stubborn to a fault. Jung Hwan is grumpy.
Idiot. IWESS. Clumsy. Kukudas. Aurora.
Sometimes he thinks it hurts her but really, it is Sung Deok Sun and she is strong enough that anything he says bounces off.
He cannot say her name or she will know and that will be mortifying.
So, her name remains only at the tip of his tongue.
Jung Hwan runs into a returning Taek as he fetches a videotape to watch with his brother.
Something warm blooms inside of him at the sleepy smile Taek graces him with and he ignores how it is familiar to the bloom when a certain girl smiles too.
But that is inconsequential and impossible and he is glad for the company on the walk home.
Slowing his pace to Taek’s shuffle, Jung Hwan takes in the cold air and the moonlight and how it turns their skin into something a little like a freshly developed negative.
The conversation is quiet out of a lack of needing words to fill the space and he finds the idea of more walks like this rather pleasant.
It isn’t until they reach a busy street and Jung Hwan grabs Taek’s wrist on instinct as they cross the striped lines that a seed is sown deep inside him.
When they part hands once the crossing is complete (because what sort of teenage boys hold hands anyways?) his fingers feel strangely empty. It is the feeling that one gets when they hold something for too long and the imprint is left even as you drop it.
The seed sprouts when he ponders why that feeling persisted for such a brief holding of hands.
Jung Hwan is acutely aware of Deok Sun’s pout as the stranger before them counts down from 3.
He tries to ignore it in favour of the fact that she is close and for once, they are alone and the night really wasn’t that bad. Running his hand up and down her arm as the flash goes off, Jung Hwan smiles wide.
Later, when he goes to get the film roll developed, he asks hesitantly for a smaller copy of that one image, perfect for hiding in his wallet for his eyes only.
It becomes his rabbit’s foot, a bit of her to carry with him.
He thumbs it out every now and then, tracing the almost petulant look on her face with a small smile. He likes her, he likes her a lot and something may actually come out of it with her.
Maybe he should ask her out after all.
“I like her.”
Something ugly twists Jung Hwan’s stomach as he looks at Taek and his frank expression.
Their friends are in fits of laughter at the very idea and he joins in half heartedly as Taek grins with the kind of embarrassed look he thought boys only ever wore in movies. Smiling in that moment is one of the hardest things he ever does.
But he does it because it is Taek, precious Taek whom Deok Sun treats with a gentleness befitting his own nature and how could he not smile for him?
Later, he wonders what hurt, the fact that Taek likes Deok Sun too or the fact that Taek likes Deok Sun.
He wonders what it says about him when the answer is both.
Deok Sun’s hand is smaller than Taek’s.
Almost delicate in the bone, her chore roughened fingers curl around his palm as he guides her away from the concert hall on her sprained foot.
Jung Hwan has never intertwined his fingers with anyone but he thinks that if he did so with Deok Sun then it would be nice, small fingers slipping through his even if there remains space to spare.
If it was Taek then it would be different, large fingers pushing his hands apart but filling them in too and that would also be nice.
Maybe that’s why he has two hands and that thought makes him warm.
Soon, he realises the pointlessness of it when he sees Deok Sun drag Taek by the hand again and again and again with such nonchalance that he wants to laugh at his fantasy of holding two hands.
They don’t need him.
He knows this on his birthday when he flips open Taek’s pocketbook and their smiles greet him, soft and shy and something to look back on with a belated realisation that the love was always there.
They have each other.
For a while he thinks it is only Taek.
He knows that he likes girls, he always has. He likes their laughs and their smiles and their voices like bells and the way their hair seems to be half-wind. Liking Deok Sun, odd as she may be, fits in with that.
But the only boy he has liked for a long time is Taek and Taek alone and he begs that that be true because it is Taek. Their Taek, clumsy and kind and smiling like sunlight and who could not love him?
If he likes boys that are not Taek then that could mean a life very different from the one his family thinks he will have (not maliciously but in the way of his father and his father before him and his father before that) and that idea terrifies him.
He does though. There is a boy on the bus with high cheekbones and a grin like a cat and his heart does a funny little lurch when their arms brush in the madness to get off and he looks nothing like Taek for him to cling to the hope it is a one time thing and Kim Jung Hwan is fucked.
He notices actors as much as actresses and Lee Moon Sae’s voice is so deliciously low to the angelic notes of Nami and this is who he is now.
Just someone who likes men and women both and his heart aches with the realisation that he may just become the person whispered about.
It does not stop him from sneaking glances.
Jung Hwan is filled with a heady mix of hopeless hope and excruciating guilt.
Taek cancels his movie date with an almost heartbroken Deok Sun and the thing is, he knows that Taek knows a little something about his heart (always the black horse that one, in baduk and in life) and he knows that he stopped himself from confessing because of him.
Which is completely and utterly impossible because Taek loves Deok Sun.
It isn’t a boyish crush or a fluttering first love. He is in love with her in the steady way his mother loves his father and everyone would see it if they just looked.
If Jung Hwan is important enough for him to give it up, then maybe he has a shot too.
(He had messed it up with Deok Sun and the pink shirt and so he doesn’t even go there again.)
The bastard is a bloody smoker.
For all his act of being grown and mature, Jung Hwan knows his worldview can be childish sometimes but smoking is bad and thus smokers are bad too.
But he can’t say that now.
Taek is a smoker and he looks good as it, strangely elegant and alien in the cloudy moonlight, almost like something from a movie.
Taek who falls asleep sitting.
The world is fucking strange.
He wonders if the other boys know. He wonders if Deok Sun does. He wonders if her worldview will flip like his on seeing the most innocent one of them casually flick the end of a cigarette when she does (because of course she will) and he wonders if he knows his friend at all.
They lock eyes and that elegance he was admiring fades into a stiff awkwardness and that is only worse because somehow that is even more endearing.
Not for the first time, Jung Hwan has an urge to pull him close.
The television in the supermarket is playing one of Taek’s matches and Jung Hwan finds himself transfixed.
That feeling is back, where their sweet Taek has become this man with sharp eyes. Jung Hwan has only ever seen him like this from afar and he wonders now what he would be like up close.
“He looks different, doesn’t he?” Jung Hwan turns ans Deok Sun is holding a basket full of dish soap and scrubs beside him as she looks at Taek with the kind of wistfulness that he knows from his mirror. “He almost doesn’t feel like the same person sometimes.”
Jung Hwan turns to the television and to the sure and graceful placement of stones by hands he thought clumsy. “No, he does.” The defining characteristic of Taek is his calm and that remains.
His voice is heavy, too heavy and even if they tease Deok Sun for being obtuse, she must have noticed. She doesn’t show it if she did, grabbing one of the packets of chips he bought and fighting him over it childishly. He almost questions why he likes her until he sees her slip the snacks only BoRa Noona likes into her basket.
Her thoughtfulness is always a surprise.
They bicker on the walk home and Jung Hwan feels alive as her cute nose scrunches up in frustration. Musicians and movies and school, she parries in kind through an increasingly red face and for that moment he is happy.
Deok Sun is his first love after all.
The pink shirt hangs on his wall almost permanently.
He stuffs it into his drawers when his mother wants to inspect the room or his friends are home. His brother knows and he looks at it forlornly, thinking about his own pink shirt hanging on his bedroom wall.
Deok Sun and the slip of her bright smile into a frown haunt him every time he looks at it.
“That’s a nice shirt,” Taek says one day, sitting cross legged on his floor with a bag full of fruits he brought out of the blue. “I’ve never seen you wear it.”
Heat blooms inside Jung Hwan at the thought of being observed. “It’s pink.”
“So? I used to have a pink sweater.”
He wonders why he does not just wear it.
Deok Sun seems long over the incident but maybe she will be a little happy to know that he liked her gift. And the colour isn’t all that terrible, nice and light and it might be a good change. He has even seen some actors wear something similar.
But he has seen what happens to boys who don’t live in the shadows like him and he would rather not join them, cowardly as it may be.
He buys one in dark green that looks just like it instead.
Of all of the careers Kim Jung Hwan could have taken, it is the airforce he chooses.
Jung Hwan does not really mind not having a passion. For him, work had always been just work and work needs to be done well. He loves to run around and play but not to the point of pursuit.
On nights when he wonders what he will be, Jung Hwan just wants to be sitting quietly by his happy family.
But the image of a pilot appeals to him, the uniform and the discipline and strength a little like superhero from the movies. He has always loved the idea of breaking free for a bit and what would be better than going supersonic?
He hopes it makes his brother happy too, living a little vicariously through him even as he denies why he chose the sky.
(He pushes away the hurt when someone spots the pink shirt among the clothes in his bunk and it is only when he hints at a girl home that the mocking turns into teasing.)
He loves his plane a little bit though.
His first kiss is with a pretty waitress from the family-run restaurant by the base.
She goes to a college in the city at night and helps her family by day and she has the prettiest hair he has ever seen, long and dark strands hanging heavy down her back. He asks her out on a whim after a call with a laughing Dong Ryong who regaled him with tales of Deok Sun’s boyfriends and Taek’s blind dates.
He nearly ruins it.
He has no idea what to say and she looks shy too and he ends up nearly interrogating her on her studies. Her small questions about his life on the base meet smaller answers and by the end of the night he wonders if they know each other less.
But she holds his hand as he walks her home and when she stops by the alley near her house instead of the front door, he kisses her knuckles and says thank you anyway
The next time they go to the movie theatre and that is good because they can talk about it. He kisses her after, soft and sweet and warm and he thinks kisses can be wonderful even when you are not in love.
It lasts for a few months and it is honestly quite nice before his time is eaten up by drills and they see each other less and less until a relationship half liked doesn’t seem worth it.
He does not bother to try again very often.
One of his colleagues looks at him with the eyes of someone who knows and luckily, Jung Hwan knows too.
The thing is, they don’t actually like each other all that much.
If he were a girl then he would be someone he went on a blind date with and parted ways amicably. Nice person but no real spark. But he is a guy and his shoulders are broad (unlike their lanky Taek) and he is someone he can trust and that is rare where they are.
Relationship between men don’t legally exist in the military and they both know what is at stake. A label of sexual harassment is waiting to be slapped on and he feels silly for risking it with someone he isn’t absolutely in love with.
But it feels good to kiss him in the strange hotels halfway between Sacheon and Seoul that they enter in civilian clothes and pretend they are there for a business trip in twin bedded rooms. It feels good to touch someone and it feels good to be touched and Jung Hwan thinks those brief encounters are enough for that time.
“It was the overly-respectful showers, wasn’t it,” he asks over the rickety television of the room.
“The overly-respectful shirtless volleyball matches too.” He smiles at him - Joon Ki, he forces himself to think - and he wonders later when he will stop omitting his partners’ names.
In the moment though, with someone a little like him, Jung Hwan just laughs.
“You like girls too, right?”
Joon Ki is smoking a cigarette and that makes Jung Hwan frown at the smell filling up the car. They are driving up to Seoul after a stop near Daejeon and it feels odd to discuss this outside of hotel rooms.
“You like girls the way I like only guys.”
“I do,” he says, “I like both.”
“I envy you a little,” says Joon Ki, lolling his head back as he takes a puff, “You still have a chance at a happy ending.”
The image of Joon Ki smoking just annoys him and he wonders what made Taek look so endearing like that years before.
“A happy ending?”
“The biggest love of your life could be a girl.” Joon Ki puts out the cigarette. “You could marry her and have kids and everyone can know you love her and no one will want you dead for it.”
Jung Hwan frowns. “You know that it is not the same as me only liking girls, right?”
“I know. It’s who we are and all that and it hurts to hide. Still. I envy you.”
There is something forlorn in his voice and Jung Hwan wants him to smile. “Times are changing you know. Maybe we can have it all anyway.” Not with each other, god forbid, but with someone, a man Joon Ki can trust even more and a miraculous someone Jung Hwan can tell his soul to.
“My father is in the Army, Second Lieutenant Kim. He curses people like us at dinner. I know I’m not telling him.”
He thinks of his own family, chaotic and loud and loving and he knows that at the end of the day, he will always have a home.
“I’m sorry.”
This thing about love can be harder beyond love sometimes.
Eventually, they stop too.
Joon Ki transfers to Daegu and it isn’t as if they are in love that they need a special goodbye. He says farewell with the rest of their squadron over cheap beer, short hugs and false promises to call. It was four months of sneaking around and Jung Hwan is grateful for the time they spent but the only hurt is that there is no one to talk to about loving men.
Joon Ki was once a lover and a colleague but this isn’t a movie which ends in a confession and he is now just a distant friend he wishes well.
“I thought of just giving you my ring,” he says hushed as he helps him load his bags, “But honestly, I think we both deserve to give it to the right person.”
Jung Hwan agrees without a heartbeat lost at being deemed the wrong person.
The coldness surprises him and for the first time in years he lies on his narrow bed and pushes up the picture in his wallet to know he isn’t broken and he can still love.
Deok Sun’s pout looks a little like a smile in his head.
He goes on a few blind dates with girls his coworkers set him up with and while it is nice, it never lasts longer than a few nights together and some short conversations spread out over a few months before his limited time and tongue cut it short.
Jung Hwan knows why it does not work out but he cares little.
The saying ‘time heals everything’ is only half true.
Sometimes, time only ebbs the pain as you go about your daily routine only for it to flare up unexpectedly. One of his lieutenants tears his ligament once and even months of rest and physical therapy never take away the odd bout of pain. It just comes when pressed and leaves when left alone.
Going home is painful that way.
The conversations between them stilt sometimes, falling back to old jokes and reminiscences when they can no longer relate to each other’s daily lives. They talk small talk, films and sports and news and it feels bittersweet.
Their paths have diverged and it is only memories that bind them.
But he has another pain.
Jung Hwan never really had much hope of fulfilling the love he bore.
He is not a fool and he knows that even if he won’t meet a rejection, there will not be any reciprocation. No, if the answer is a yes then the love will be slow to come on the other end.
It does not matter if it is Deok Sun (something he broke but still a little more likely) or Taek (impossible and he isn’t about to ruin their relationship over an impossible.)
But it hurts a little less to know that they see each other whenever they are home and he is in Sacheon with someone new.
He wonders when it will stop, if at all.
He just wants some sort of a resolution.
Jung Hwan runs his fingers along the neat stack of tapes on the desk.
There is a lot of Lee Seung Hwan on it and Jung Hwan ought to be surprised that his Deulgukhwa loving friend has any of them. But Deok Sun likes Lee Seung Hwan and it makes a little more sense to have those tapes there on Taek’s desk.
There is a distinct lack of Lee Moon Sae.
He stops at “Empty Heart,” flicking it as he remembers the lyrics.
“Without regret, I let you go. But my heart,
Why does it feel so empty today?
I cannot figure it out.“
It feels apt.
As everyone else slips into sleep, he looks at Deok Sun (now long haired) and Taek (now broad shouldered) and he feels emptier than ever.
Jung Hwan loves them still.
The worst part is that he loves them equally and hates them equally too, Deok Sun for being the only one Taek has ever had eyes for and Taek for being the only one Deok Sun finds her comfort in.
But none of them are together and in that moment they are all teenagers still figuring out their place in their world under adult clothes and alcohol. Sleep calls at him and he finally gives in.
Jung Hwan closes his eyes to a picture of the five of them.
Jung Hwan slams the steering wheel at the third red light.
Something about the day tells him to finally just let go and grab what he wants and Jung Hwan wants to love. He wants to be there for Deok Sun and he wants to make up for all the times he pulled away. It feels a little bit like being in an action film, racing against time itself.
But of course, he is not the hero of this movie.
Taek is there, red-cheeked and breathless, smiling at Deok Sun as if he has found heaven and Deok Sun looks at Taek as if he is a revelation and Jung Hwan is left to turn away because it is too late.
Taek left a fucking match for Deok Sun.
There is no place for him there and he knows it.
As tears slip down his eyes for the first time in years (boys don’t cry unless there is something wrong with them are the whispers he has heard,) the flimsy hope he carried is long gone.
For the first time, Jung Hwan is truly heartbroken.
A broken bone heals strong but a torn ligament is an injury for life.
Jung Hwan just wants a clean break, a sharp rip and his feelings laid bare for once. Desperation makes him want to just say what he feels for once in his life and there is that silly ring in his bag.
Honestly, he has no idea why they call it the Fiancée Ring. The blood red stone and the engravings in gold are not the kind of delicate and graceful jewellery someone would place on a woman’s finger. It seems better for a man but that thought is almost laughable in the military.
His friends cajole him and tease him and maybe this is it.
This is the climax.
Taek isn’t there and it is better that way. He will have a conversation with him later. Right now, it is time to say goodbye to the waiting Deok Sun.
He thinks back to the years he spent looking at the embodiment of sunshine in Ssangmun Dong and he can’t stop his heart from slowing down.
He thinks of her antics and her laughs and the persistent sincerity beneath it all. He thinks of the worry and the hurt and he wonders how much of it she felt too. If all goes to plan, he will never know but she will.
Kim Jung Hwan, coward until the very end.
“Deok Sun-ah,” he finally says as he places the ring box before her.
Deok Sun might have looked at him only briefly but Jung Hwan has been looking for years.
Her hesitant smiles betray everything she feels (an apology and a rejection and a little nostalgic joy) and he cannot hear them explained in a way that hurts when he can translate them to what he wants.
So you did like me, she says in his mind, I was right. We missed our chance, she says, And now I have moved on. The memories are there, she says, And they will always be.
They will.
The umbrellas and the buses and the concerts and the nights walking to the same home. The ridiculous faces and the bickering and the sleepless nights. The lost alcohol and the pink gloves and the pink shirt. The precious photograph in his wallet.
Her gentle breathing on his pillow and her small voice when she woke up.
He will remember her crying on the staircase and he will remember how he did not walk up to her right away. He will remember how he never gave her his jacket when she was cold. He will remember her hand, small and delicate with fingers he never intertwined with his own. He will remember the smile he never kissed and he will remember all the chances he missed.
He will remember every little thing forever but it will never hurt as much as it does in that moment when he plays it off as a joke.
The curtains close for Jung Hwan and Deok Sun when they rise from the tables and while the not-confession is still hanging in the air, his laughs are genuine for once.
Nothing feels as freeing as leaving the ring behind.
In all he said that night, one lie remained.
“I thought of nothing but you, just you.”
That is not entirely true.
He thought of another with less frequency and a little more shame but he thought of him nonetheless.
As a boy, Jung Hwan was not prepared to dissect the difference between his love for Taek the person and his love for Taek the boy but he is older now and he knows that you can love someone in many ways and all of those can weigh the same.
Taek is a friend, a rival and a want and the time has come to take down two of those banners.
He will talk to him soon and tell him how much he means to him and maybe one day he will understand how much love he bears.
Until then, his blessings will have to suffice.
Taek is waiting for him and it feels a little like a dream.
He knows why he is there but he stalls anyway, begging for some of the quiet company he misses desperately in Sacheon. Six hours away from any place he can call home, this little ray of warmth is welcome.
Taek is his friend as much as he is someone he once wanted and on that day, with bowls of steaming stew and all of his men surrounding them, he speaks to the friend alone.
They have never talked much, he realises, and maybe that is for the best.
Taek brings it up in the smallest way possible and Jung Hwan doesn’t know whether to laugh at his foolishness or at his hesitation.
So he does what he knows best and brushes it off.
Deok Sun is already there and Taek just needs to make the final push before their film has a happy ending. Jung Hwan is more than happy to shove.
He is happy for them, he truly is. They are going to be foolishly gleeful for forever and everyone else is going to shake their head at how much they adore one another. Jung Hwan knows that he will be one of them soon enough and nothing will hurt him if he starts smiling from now.
The look of Taek’s face right then, grateful and a little heartbroken (heartbroken for him) is enough to tide him through. Taek knows now how much he means to him and he knows how much Deok Sun means too even if he has the dynamics a little wrong.
It’s an easy enough mistake when they are all that close.
Jung Hwan does not fold a thousand paper cranes and ask for a wish.
However, he has learnt how to make a little more than planes now and when he thumbs out the photograph in his wallet for the last time, he does not feel like burning it or throwing it into the garbage.
This is his friend and his neighbour, this is someone who loves him in her own way and this is someone he will always love in some way.
He folds it into a wonky little bird, cursing the thickness of the photograph for not working as well as craft paper. The wings are askew and the beak is a mess but is is definitely a bird with her face on the left wing.
It is only one bird but there were a thousand wishes in that photograph and that might be fair compensation. He wishes for someone for himself the way Sun Woo has Noona and Deok Sun and Taek have each other.
Immediately, Jung Hwan feels very silly.
Sighing, he sips on his drink as the music in the bar changes to an old Lee Moon Sae song. As he leans over to grab the peanuts to snack on, his hand knocks over the bird.
Unfamiliar hands pick it up before he can and Jung Hwan looks up to meet the darkest eyes he has ever seen.
When Jung Hwan is twenty five, for the first time his heart stops almost entirely.