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In retrospect, Jeno should have left his parent’s house a couple of hours earlier. If only he’d done that, he would’ve safely driven back to his place. Yet, the only reason this story comes to be is that, like the true main character that he is, Jeno doesn’t make the wisest choice that day.
You see, Jeno lives alone in a small town on the outskirts of an extensive desert, and his parents live all the way on the other side. Once in a while, when he has some days off work, Jeno drives across the desert to meet them. Each of these trips is a precious gift to him that he has a very hard time parting ways with. And that is why, despite his mother’s continuous warnings that driving back home at night could be dangerous, Jeno waits until the last possible moment to leave.
He’s not the reckless type. It’s only that he’s built up confidence in the journey itself, after having done it so many times by now. Driving across the desert at night is indeed objectively more dangerous than doing it during the day, but nothing’s ever happened before, so why should he worry about it this time?
Around two hours into the drive, when his car dies out on him in the middle of the highway, Jeno learns the hard way that confidence can be misleading.
--
So, there he is, sitting in a broken car on the side of the road at 11:00 PM, in the middle of the desert. All he has to keep him company are the echoes of his mother’s earlier warnings in his head, absolute darkness outside, and a phone that’s run out of battery in his pocket.
Cold chills run up his spine while he tries to keep himself together and think of a solution to his predicament. Cursing himself out into oblivion, as it turns out, doesn’t get him anywhere closer to fixing his situation. He’s gripping the steering wheel for dear life and staring into the black pool of nothingness in the horizon when he miraculously spots a flashing green light. It’s too far away for him to discern it with certainty, and he doesn’t want to raise his expectations too high, but the green light looks like a.. payphone cabinet?
He all but jumps out of the car and runs for it. Could this be his own little miracle?
The few coins he’d dropped into the pockets of his jeans jingle with his every stride. The closer he gets the surer he is that he’s seen it correctly. He’s thoroughly convinced he’s saved by this random payphone in the middle of the desert, elated when the green light washes over him and he steps into the metallic box, until he realizes: he has no idea who to call.
He runs through his mind over and over again, but after minutes of this, he concludes that there are only two phone numbers he’s memorized: his own phone number, and… Jaemin’s.
A vivid image of Jaemin as he’d last seen him comes to the forefront of Jeno’s mind. It’s him looking at Jeno with a bright blossoming smile, brushing strands of platinum blonde hair away from his face. It’s a distant memory that creeps up on Jeno uninvited from time to time.
What if… he starts wondering.
No, another opposing voice echoes in Jeno’s head.
He can’t call Jaemin.
For one, he hasn’t dialed that number in over two years or even spoken to Jaemin at all in that time. And on top of that, they parted ways in such a bitter way that even if Jaemin still used the number, the most likely outcome of calling him would be that Jaemin would hang up as soon as he recognized the voice on the other side as Jeno’s.
Another 10 minutes go by. Jeno’s lost count of how many times he’s cursed himself by now. He contemplates calling 911 instead, but some part of him feels guilty for using the emergency number when he still has another option to try first.
Eventually, resigned, he decides to silence his conflicting thoughts and just dial the number.
His heart threatens to burst out of his ribcage. His fingers shake as he presses each button. Half of him hopes Jaemin will not pick up, or that he lets the call go to voicemail.
(Secretly, Jeno prefers the latter, just so he can hear Jaemin’s voice as he tells him to leave a message after the ring)
But today is not Jeno’s lucky day. Jaemin answers after the first couple of rings.
“Hello?”
The greeting knocks the air out of Jeno’s lungs. The sound of Jaemin’s voice in his ear, albeit distorted from the poor quality of the phone line, is both a relief and a stab of pain at the same time.
“Hello? Who is this?”
Instead of replying, Jeno swallows his own saliva and grips the phone in his hand for dear life. He opens his mouth in an attempt to speak.
“I can hear you breathing, freak,” Jaemin says before Jeno can bring himself to form any sort of word.
Not a second later, he hangs up the call.
Alright, fine. Jeno deserved that one.
--
“You better say something in the next 2 seconds or I will block this number,” is what Jaemin says when Jeno finds the courage to dial his number for the second time.
Feeling drops of sweat dripping down the sides of his face and the back of his neck, Jeno’s desperation causes him to enter some type of autopilot, flight-or-fight mode.
“H-hi,” he says. Even such a short word comes out in a stutter.
A beat of silence.
“Jeno?”
Another, longer, beat of silence.
“Yeah, it’s me, Jaemin. It’s Jeno.”
“It’s been a long time.”
Jeno finds some type of exhilaration in the fact that, after everything they’ve been through, Jaemin still listens to him.
--
About an hour later, Jaemin is pulling up on the side of the road. It’s the longest hour of Jeno’s life, both because there’s something quite terrifying about being alone inside a broken car in the middle of the desert, and because the prospect of seeing Jaemin again chills him to the bone.
Jaemin arrives in a vintage Chevrolet car, a million years before Jeno’s had time to prepare for this moment. The car door on the driver’s side opens and Jeno’s heart stops beating. He sucks in a breath, watching Jaemin climbing out of his car as if in slow motion.
He’s so, so different from last time. Is that really him? Jeno wonders.
Curiosity and wonder pull Jeno out of his car, just so he can see Jaemin better. It’s like meeting him all over again. Jaemin resembles an older version of the boy Jeno had first met in 10th grade: hair as dark as the night sky above him falling over his poignant cat-like eyes, lips pursed in a straight line, checked cardigan buttoned in the middle. Jaemin is peering at Jeno with a raised chin, his elbow propped on the top of the open car door. As Jeno comes closer, he feels just like that 14-year-old boy who’d first fallen in love with Jaemin, whose knees would become weak just from having the other boy’s eyes on him.
Jaemin, on the other hand, looks unimpressed to see him - as if this is nothing but a slightly bothersome stop he has to do in the middle of his day. That’s something about him that has not changed, he supposes. Jaemin always had this charmingly bored look about him that had everyone fighting to get his attention. The more unimpressed he seemed to be, the more you craved to be the one to catch his attention. Having Jaemin’s interest was so hard, that once you managed to obtain it, you truly felt special.
What everyone failed to understand was how special Jaemin was - is -, too.
Jeno regrets not having taken a bit of extra time getting ready that morning. Why didn’t he put something decent on? Or even attempted to style his hair? He had pictured how this moment would go an embarrassing amount of times, and in none of them, he’d been wearing his most washed-out pair of jeans and this old grey sweater that was way overdue for washing.
When Jeno gets close enough, Jaemin gives him a last once over before tapping the hood of his car.
“Get in loser, you’re coming with me,” he declares.
“No, I’m not.”
“Yes, you are. I didn’t come all the way here to leave you on the side of the road.”
Jeno grips the car door, staring at Jaemin straight in the eyes.
“I can’t just leave my car here. Let me call the tow truck service, please.”
“Nobody’s gonna answer. Everything in this place stops working after 8 PM.”
Still, Jaemin takes his phone out of his pocket and hands it over to Jeno.
“Don’t snoop around my phone like you used to,” Jaemin warns.
Jeno opens his mouth to object, but snaps it closed quickly after. Jaemin is right, he did use to do it. It’s one of the many things he regrets every time he’s awake in bed at night alone with his thoughts.
--
Just like Jaemin said, no one answers the phone. Jeno is forced to leave his car behind and pray that it will still be here when he comes back for it tomorrow morning.
He takes his belongings and slides into the passenger’s seat of Jaemin’s car.
“You’re staring,” Jaemin remarks once they’ve been on the road for a while.
Jeno has the decency to blush.
“Sorry,” he murmurs to the window. “You’re just… different.”
Jeno focuses on the white noise of the car engine when his words fall into silence. Why is he so nervous? He’s known Jaemin for a long time. Realistically, he can’t have become that much of a stranger.
“Not you,” Jaemin’s voice is rough and low. It matches the darkness and emptiness of the world outside. “You’re just like I remember. As if you walked out of our home this morning.”
Jeno doesn’t know what to say to that. They’re back to a deafening silence. Until Jeno starts to pay attention to the road signs they’re passing and puts two and two together.
“You’re not driving back to town.”
“I’m not.”
“I thought you were taking me home?” Jeno’s tone is a bit more hysterical than he’d like.
“Unfortunately, I can’t. I’m late for work, so you’re coming with me.”
--
Turns out, Jaemin’s place of work is a hotel in the middle of the desert.
Welcome to Tranquility Desert Hotel & Casino, where each stay is unforgettable!
Despite being situated, quite literally, in the middle of the freaking desert, the hotel itself is a majestic building, at least ten stories high. Each window shines like an auburn diamond reflecting warm rays of light into the night.
Jaemin gives him the keys to a room on the first floor, a charger for his phone, and a room service menu, before disappearing behind a door reserved for members of staff. He doesn’t even look back at Jeno before he’s gone, and that keeps Jeno awake in bed, hour after hour, wondering if Jaemin doesn’t care anymore.
Is Jeno the only one who still wonders if someone else has managed to grab Jaemin’s attention these days? If someone else gets to hear his soft voice that only Jeno ever got to hear before? If someone else gets to love him like Jeno...used...to…
Sleepless in a foreign bed, Jeno ruminates on the past.
They loved each other like lungs love the air we breathe. They were everything to one another. At least, that’s how Jeno felt. They were two boys who met at the age of fifteen, when the whole school (at the time, what seemed like the whole universe to Jeno) thought they would never get along. Captain of the Lacrosse team and head of the debate club, somehow meeting in the middle and realizing they were exactly the right type of crazy for one another.
On the day Jaemin turned eighteen, they got married.
Two years later, Jeno was walking out of their home on a cold Sunday morning, divorce papers in hand.
--
Jeno feels a bit guilty to be ordering room service at four in the morning. Guilty for ruining his healthy diet, and for the poor person who’s in the kitchen in the middle of the night cooking him a hamburger.
He’s staring up at the ceiling as he waits, trying to focus on the odd curvature of the shadows the bedside lamp light is casting in the room instead of Jaemin.
But as fate would have it, room service arrives with Jaemin himself.
“You ordered the dinner for two menu, monsieur?” he asks, one eyebrow raised and a smirk on his lips. He’s holding onto a fancy utility cart, a few dishes covered in stainless steel cloches, a bottle of wine dipped in a bucket of ice.
Jeno’s eyes linger on Jaemin first, adjusting to the sight of him out of his casual clothes. He’s dressed in his hotel staff uniform, a neatly tucked and form-fitting white dress shirt over a black vest and auburn tie. The vest matches the color of his hair, the tie matches the hint of eyeshadow over his hooded eyes.
“Monsieur Lee?” Jaemin repeats once a few moments pass without an answer.
“Oh--hm, no? I…” Jeno stutters. He means to say I ordered a burger, but that sounds so incredibly stupid and uncool even in his mind that it gets stuck in his throat.
“Are you expecting someone? I could swear you were here alone…” Jaemin makes a show of peeking inside the room, as if expecting to find someone else inside.
“I am,” Jeno is quick to clarify. “You brought me here as a hostage, remember?”
Jaemin scoffs.
“Well then I guess you won’t mind sharing with me. I’m on my break and I’m starving!”
--
For the second time that night, Jeno feels completely inappropriate and underdressed. Jaemin sets the table for them on the balcony and even lights up a candle between them. As they sit across from each other under a blanket of stars, Jeno doesn’t know what to do with himself. He only knows that Jaemin is breathtaking.
Jeno clears his throat, drying his sweaty hands on his basketball shorts. “Should I go put on something else?”
Jaemin shakes his head.
“How come you look just the same as you did two years ago, Jeno Lee?” Jaemin asks, tilting his head like a curious cat.
“I’m not the same, though,” Jeno is quick to say, tone deadly serious “How could I be, when I’ve already been through a divorce?”
This makes Jaemin chuckle.
“Right! Don’t you feel like this is your party trick?”
“Our divorce?”
“Yeah. Whenever I meet new people and the conversation is becoming boring I can just say ‘hi, I’m Jaemin, I’m 23 and I’m a divorcee’ and we have a conversation topic for the rest of the night.”
Have you been meeting a lot of new people?
“Do you tell those people about me?”
Jaemin wiggles his eyebrows, a smirk on his lips that reaches his eyes.
“Oh, wouldn’t you like to know,” he teases.
Jeno tries to control the smile on his face, just so he doesn’t get too obvious about how happy he is right now. How happy this teasing banter makes him. How can something so simple fill his chest with so much warmth and content? They’re under a blanket of stars, in a beautiful hotel, with expensive wine on the table, but all that really matters is Jaemin.
“You’re never boring, though. You don’t have to worry about that,” Jeno says.
Jaemin’s smile after that is brighter than the stars.
--
Jaemin stumbles over to the bed, with a dazed Jeno on his tail. His thin auburn tie came undone after the second glass of wine, and now he’s pulling at the top buttons of his dress shirt as if they have offended him.
He falls on the floor next to the bed, pushing his knees up to his chest.
Jeno can’t do much but admire the disheveled mess of his hair, and how much it reminds him of the times when Jaemin was the first thing he saw in the morning.
“I have something to confess. This room is actually reserved for me,” Jeno quirks an eyebrow, so Jaemin explains: “I found my boss cheating on his wife and made a deal with him. So, now this is mine.” He opens his arms to showcase the room.
“You blackmailed your boss?”
Jaemin giggles, then drops his head on the mattress. The new position leaves his neck on full display. Jeno licks his lips only because he’s a little thirsty, not because of the sight. Not at all.
The room is everything a five-star hotel room should be. Big comfy bed with pearly white sheets, pillows that feel like clouds, soft carpeted floor, and tall windows overlooking the balcony where they’d just had dinner. The room is on the first floor facing the pool, so the emerald light of the pool lights reflects on the windows.
“Do you mind if I sleep here with you for a few hours?”
“Shouldn’t you be working?”
“I have a weird double shift this weekend,” Jaemin states. Although Jeno doesn’t understand what that means, he doesn’t press any further. The truth is, he would very much like to sleep next to Jaemin again, even if only once, only for a few hours.
“It’s your room, of course you can sleep here.”
Jaemin smiles at him. He all but drags himself onto the bed and under the sheets, without bothering to remove his uniform. They end up lying on opposite sides of the bed, facing each other. It’s a king-size bed, so the distance between them is so big that two other people could fit in between them. Jeno wants to come closer, but he’s too scared that asking for too much too soon might just push Jaemin farther away from him. Back to the bitter nothingness that he had just yesterday.
Jaemin is lying down on his side, head resting over his intertwined hands on the pillow. His eyes are closed when he asks in a whisper:
“Why did you call me?”
Jeno hesitates.
“After all this time, your number is still the only one I ever memorized.”
The way Jaemin opens his eyes is like the batting of butterfly wings.
“I didn’t think you would answer,” Jeno continues. “I thought maybe you still hated me. Or worse, maybe you’d forgotten about me.”
“Jeno,” Jaemin says his name like a plea. “How could I ever forget you? I wanted to spend the rest of my life with you.”
Hearing those words sends a chill up Jeno’s spine. Oh, how he wishes Jaemin would say them using the present tense again.
“I’m sorry I was such a horrible husband,” Jeno says, lifting a weight from his shoulders by finally saying what’s been eating at him for years.
Jaemin comes a little closer to him on the bed. Only room for one person between them now. Like this, Jeno can trace the curves of his lips.
“Remember when you asked if I tell people about you?” Jeno hums in answer. “I do. And you know what? When I think back on our years together, it’s always the nice parts that I remember first. The times you made me feel like I was the only person in the world that ever mattered, the way you would lace your fingers with mine when I was sad or upset and I would instantly feel a hundred times better. All I care to remember are the reasons why I wanted to spend my life with you.”
“I wanted it too.”
Jaemin sighs.
I still do.
“Do you want to stay the weekend? I’ll take you home on Sunday when I go back.”
Jeno prays that the hopeful tone in Jaemin’s voice is not a hallucination. He holds onto the flimsiest chance that it’s real, clings onto it for dear life. Unconsciously, he moves closer to Jaemin on the bed, too. Until their pillows are touching ever so slightly, just like Jeno when he had first dared to reach for Jaemin’s hand on their first date.
Jeno stays.
--
Why do our bodies require sleep? That’s what Jeno is wondering when his eyes become too heavy to remain open. He doesn’t want to sleep, he just wants to live every single second of this moment lying down beside Jaemin, trace the lines of his figure and commit to memory every single detail he’d somehow forgotten.
Yet, no matter how hard he fights, eventually sleep wins over him. And when he wakes up it’s to an empty hotel bed. Jaemin’s left crumpled sheets in his wake, and Jeno only hesitates for a second before he cozies up to his side of the bed, breathing in the smell of Jaemin’s cologne.
These past two years were a process. At the time of their breakup, Jeno had been too frustrated and angry to miss Jaemin. After that, there came a time when he could barely get out of bed because the pain of Jaemin’s absence was so crippling. Eventually, he’d moved on by pretending he was fine. That he’d moved on. Someone once told him that if you lie enough times, your lie becomes the truth.
Lying there with his lungs full of Jaemin, Jeno knows he’s just where he’s always been - where he belongs. Completely, unmistakenly, in love with Na Jaemin.
There’s no way of knowing for sure if his ex’s heart is still in sync with his, only the faint flame of hope that Jaemin’s invitation last night might be a sign. Whatever the answer may be, Jeno is committed to make the most out of this weekend.
That is why it drives Jeno up the wall that despite his efforts to get Jaemin’s attention throughout the day, he has barely managed to receive a smile by the late afternoon. He’s even gone through great lengths in his efforts, very obviously finding Jaemin’s location at the hotel and hovering in his vicinity doing nothing. He’s also taken great care to put on the nicest pair of clothing he had in his bag, and even apply a bit of styling cream to his hair, brushing the dark brown locks to the sides of his face, because whenever he did that Jaemin would always compliment him.
But Jaemin has barely noticed him all day. Granted, he seems to be very busy most of the time, but not always. Sometimes he’s just otherwise preoccupied conversing with a hotel guest, or a coworker, giving away beautiful smiles that Jeno craves for himself.
At half-past five in the afternoon, after countless obvious attempts, Jeno is quite desperate. So when he spots Jaemin serving by the pool, he has a pretty dumb idea. After all, if getting half-naked won’t get Jaemin’s attention, then he might as well just have to spell it out for him.
Jeno doesn’t have any swimming shorts to wear, so he puts on the ones he wore to sleep last night and finds a vacant pool lounge chair for himself. Looking over his shoulder, he spots Jaemin by the bar counter, waiting as the short boy behind it prepares the next order. He’s still wearing his hotel uniform, but now his shirt sleeves are rolled up to his elbows. Under the blazing sunlight, Jeno feels as if he’s seeing Jaemin in a suit for the first time, and when his breath hitches just from admiring from afar, he knows he’s done for.
He waits (im)patiently until that perfect moment between when Jaemin finally turns around in his direction, but before their eyes meet. Right then, he slips out of his shirt, putting extra effort in the motion so the muscles he’s worked for endless hours at the gym can be shown off to their full potential.
He manages to catch a glimpse of Jaemin averting his eyes from him once the shirt comes off. He’s on the opposite side of the pool, a tray of drinks in hand, and he’s for sure noticed the one-man show Jeno’s put on for him.
Jeno contemplates ordering himself a drink too. But he never gets the opportunity to do it, because what happens next distracts him completely.
It starts off with Jaemin getting jumped on by a group of little kids. He’s still carrying the tray with drinks in his hand, looking both amused and a little winded at the little guys running around him with excitement. Jeno finds the image quite endearing, as he knows Jaemin’s always loved to play with children.
His beaming smile dies when he spots the man coming up from behind Jaemin.
The situation is almost comical, and no one involved in it gets the full picture. Only Jeno, standing on the opposite side like a spectator at a theatre, gets to see it and predict the outcome before it happens: Jaemin is too close to the pool while trying to evade the kids jumping on him, and he’s just at the right place, at the right angle, that if the man running in his direction continues to so while looking over his shoulder like he is now, he’s going to run right into Jaemin.
And Jaemin, he will--
Jeno jumps to his feet, but everything happens faster than he can call out Jaemin’s name to prevent it. He only has time to inhale once, before Jaemin’s sent splashing into the pool, and Jeno’s diving right after him.
The next breath Jeno takes is in tandem with Jaemin, holding him in his arms as they come up to the surface together. Jeno immediately brushes the wet locks of his hair away from his face, his touch tender, and lingering.
“Are you okay?” He asks in urgency, assessing Jaemin’s features for any cause for concern. Jaemin coughs a few times before switching his attention to Jeno. There are little drops of water at the tip of his long eyelashes that Jeno wants to kiss. Because he can’t, he settles for cupping Jaemin’s face with one hand.
To his surprise, Jaemin leans into the touch. His eyes close for a moment, as if he’s delighting in Jeno’s touch, or seeking more of it.
“I’m okay,” he says, lips an inch away from the palm of Jeno’s hand.
This is the closest they’ve been in years. The wet fabric of Jaemin’s white shirt is brushing over Jeno’s chest and arms, his shallow breath fanning at Jeno’s skin from time to time.
“Why did you jump in?” Jaemin asks.
“You don’t know how to swim, Jaeminie.”
Jaemin opens his mouth to speak but closes it again, caught by surprise at the mention of his nickname. Jeno can tell he’s fighting against a smile.
“But…” he trails off, the smile growing on his lips as he speaks. “The pool is not that deep.”
Oh
It’s only then that Jeno registers the fact that he’s standing with his feet on the floor of the pool, the water stopping just below his collarbone. Jaemin is right, there was no need to jump after him. But--
“I didn’t think of that. I saw you fall and had to…”
Jaemin sighs with his whole body, falling limp in Jeno’s arms. “What am I going to do with you, Jeno Lee?”
Love me again, Jeno thinks. Kiss me until I can’t feel anything but you.
Jaemin’s clothes cling to his body in all the right ways as he jumps out of the pool. The wet fabric of his shirt is now transparent instead of white, showing off the beautiful line of his spine that leads to his slim waist, laced with a black leather belt.
As he walks out for a change of clothes before getting back to work, Jeno decides he can’t wait any longer. So he all but runs after him, dripping water into the slippery marble floor of the hotel, walking into the staff-only corridor until he has a snake grip around Jaemin’s waist.
“Jeno, what are--”
Jaemin never gets to finish his question. Jeno has him pinned against the wall before that, which makes him lose the ability to form sentences completely. In that deafening moment where time stops and they just stare at each other’s lust-filled eyes, Jeno thinks of a hundred things he wants to say to Jaemin - all the apologies, regrets, compliments, and confessions of love he has kept buried deep in his heart. And maybe Jaemin knows just what is going through his mind because he gives him that moment without prying or pushing. It all just makes Jeno love him more.
Want him more.
It’s Jaemin who kisses him first. As soon as Jeno’s eyes fall closed, he sees entire galaxies behind his eyes, tastes that familiar cherry sweetness of Jaemin’s mouth again. It’s a mess, the way they cling to every inch of each other like the starving man who’s finally having a bite, seeking familiar places left untouched for too long. If Jeno could, he would melt into Jaemin completely, he would breathe him in. If Jeno could, he would make this moment last forever.
That’s what they always wanted. To be each other’s forever.
“I still do,” Jeno mumbles against Jaemin’s wanting lips.
“Hmm?”
“I still want,” a pause to taste the length of Jaemin’s neck. “To be with you.”
“Good,” Jaemin breathes out, hands tightening around Jeno’s waist. It’s like he sobers up for a moment, pulls away from Jeno just enough to pin him in place with his eyes. “Because letting you walk out of that door 2 years ago was the biggest mistake of my life.”
“It was?”
“Yes, baby,” Jaemin smiles as if the endearment is a naughty word. Jeno devours the smile, greedy to feel the taste of Jaemin’s happiness. “I promised you forever, remember?”
Jeno giggles into the curve of Jeno’s neck. “Cheesy,” he teases. Jaemin sinks his hand in Jeno’s hair, and Jeno feels like he’s floating.
“You make me cheesy. The things you do to me.”