Work Text:
"Smile."
"I am!" Jay laughed, squirming in his seat. He was perched on a wide tree stump, the coarse wood digging into his skin and making his tailbone ache. He didn't dare complain. Not because he feared Jungwon wouldn't let him go - but because he couldn't bring himself to interrupt whatever zone the other boy had gotten lost in.
The camera went off for the tenth time. A burst of light shot through Jay's vision, momentarily blinding him. When it faded into a smattering of multi-colored flecks floating away into the sky, Jungwon was smiling at him. Jay ignored the clumsy stumbling of his heart and leaned back onto his hands, trying to look nonchalant.
"When I bought you that camera, I did expect that it would leave your hands at some point," he giggled. It was an inexpensive camera, a plastic polaroid thing that he'd scooped up at the thrift store with what little spending money a middle schooler could manage to scrounge up. Sure, Jay could have asked his father for an allowance. But he had felt that doing so would have cheapened the gift.
“Aren’t gifts meant to be held onto?”
Jay couldn’t find in himself an argument for that. Automatically, he found himself reaching forward, looping his fingers around Jungwon’s wrist in a loose hold.
“Yeah,” he said. “I guess they are.”
𓆸
It became routine, those impromptu, amateur photoshoots. Jungwon would take his camera everywhere, snapping images of everyone and everything - intriguing patterns of clouds, scattered fall-hued leaves on the sidewalk, a rusted bike leaning against the side of Jay’s run down shed.
But most of all, Jungwon liked to take pictures of Jay. It puzzled him to no end. Because sure, maybe at first it would make sense for his practice subject to be his best friend— but Jungwon continued to take endless pictures of him, every single day, even though there was an infinite number of muses in the world around them.
"If you could take a picture of anything," Jay said one afternoon, feeling the direction of Jungwon's camera on him as he trailed his fingers along rows of petals, "What would you capture?"
They were standing in his mother’s garden, the sweet perfume of blossoms permeating the air. He walked slowly, his movements careful and precise as to not blur the photos. He brushed the back of his hand along a velvet rose.
"You," Jungwon answered simply. Click.
Jay shook his head impatiently, having expected such an answer.
"No," he repeated with emphasis. “I mean if you could photograph anything at all, anything you could possibly imagine." He tried to convey as much intention as possible into his words, in hopes of receiving as intentional of an answer.
There was a long silence. Jay held his breath. Then came the familiar sound; a single, solitary click. And then:
"I just did," Jungwon said, as the polaroid slid out onto his waiting palm. Jay stared at it, an empty black rectangle that slowly bloomed to life before his eyes. As he watched, his features took shape on that small piece of photo paper, a side profile that gazed pensively down at a bush of roses.
He looked back up at Jungwon in disbelief, his expression startled and curious; as if it were his first time ever seeing the other boy.
“How did you know when you loved dad?”
Jay was a child then, his shoulders just coming up above the counter as he teetered on a plastic footstool. His hands kneaded dough while his mother sliced and prepared ingredients, the smells of baking filling the warm kitchen.
Mrs. Park laughed, a light, bell-like sound that tickled his ears in its delight.
“Love is not like that,” she answered him. “There is no clear start and end point - it’s always there, an infinite string that runs alongside you your whole life, only waiting for you to grab ahold of it.”
Jay tried to search in vain all around him for such a string. But as he scrabbled around with his fingers, all that he could latch onto was the pillowy softness of warm dough.
“What are you doing?”
Jay blinked, abruptly snapped out of his train of thought.
“Huh? Oh.” Jungwon blinked up at him, his mouth slightly open, gaze drifting up towards where Jay had reached forward and taken a single strand of his hair between his fingers.
“What are you doing?” Jungwon repeated slowly, softly.
What was he doing? Jay wasn’t falling in love, he knew that.
With Jungwon, there was no memorable day, no grand “aha” moment. He didn’t wake up in the morning and suddenly have an epiphany. He didn’t look at Jungwon and think, I think I’m in love with him.
No. It wasn’t like that at all.
Instead, when he looked at Jungwon he had a more familiar, more comforting thought.
I have loved him.
Jay twirled the lock of silken hair between his thumb and index finger, feeling Jungwon’s curious eyes on his face.
I have loved him, he thought. It’s been there all along, and I’ve finally seized ahold of it.
“My lifeline,” he muttered, in response to Jungwon’s silent confusion. “You’re my lifeline.”
𓆸
Jay grew older. His love grew larger.
They were in high school now; Jungwon had lost some of the baby fat around his cheeks, and his shoulders had broadened slightly - something that Jay noticed whenever he put his arm around the other boy.
Peering at his own reflection, Jay thought that he looked the same as he had his entire life. But then again, it was hard to notice change in yourself. But in Jungwon, each and every shifting detail was as clear as day, and he was beginning to think that he knew his garden even better than he knew himself.
Change could be a frightening thing - but Jay would love Jungwon no matter how drastically his features evolved, no matter how his mannerisms and personality developed over time. Every Jungwon was a Jungwon that he loved; and yet, it was hard not to feel like life was passing him by in a blur.
“Did you ever feel that something was so precious, you wanted to stop time and live in that moment forever?”
They were sitting on the roof of the dance studio. Jay was looking out over the cityscape, and when he looked back, Jungwon was looking at him.
"I don't need to," Jungwon replied, holding up his camera with a smile. "I freeze time every day. My camera is full of frozen, precious things."
"Maybe not freeze it, then,” Jay mused. “Rewind it."
Jungwon just shook his head fondly and raised his camera up to his eye.
Click.
“Don’t be afraid of change. If you’re always living life in repeat, how will you reach all the good things that could be coming next?”
Live in the moment, Jay.
This was the lesson his mother had reiterated to him time and time again, gradually softening the once-solemn and pensive child that nobody knew he used to be.
Live in the moment. But what did it mean? Not to dwell on the past, maybe. Not to think too far ahead.
Jay looked at Jungwon. He didn't want to waste his days away by pondering what was to come. He didn't much care. Life could throw him whatever curveball it liked, and he would embrace his uncertain future with open arms - so long as it contained Jungwon.
Maybe living in the moment didn't mean freezing it in place. Jungwon made him want something more, made him even more greedy for precious moments.
Jay wanted to rewind time, to press replay on every second with Jungwon and savor it again and again and again. Did that count as living in the moment?
Maybe not.
But Jay liked to think there were loopholes to every rule and principle. And if one did not yet exist, he would simply have to forge it himself. And who was to say he couldn't live in the moment - again and again and again?
Still. Change was something he could welcome. If Jungwon played a part in all the good things that could be coming next, Jay would gladly reach for them.
“Change,” he said out loud. A small smile played on his lips.
That day, he went to the store and bought a box of bleach-blonde hair dye.
𓆸
It took far too long for Jay to realize. He had gotten distracted, caught up in the excitement of his own feelings, and in his distraction it slipped his mind that Jungwon was not yet privy to these feelings.
That was an important part, wasn’t it? How Jay was going to go about divulging this information was the next matter to consider.
He tried to write a letter. But he ended up hitting a block, a wall that prevented him from voicing the full extent of his heart.
Maybe one day, he would be able to say it all, and then the words would flow from the tip of his pen faster than the ink could pass from the nib. But for now, his hand would not move properly, and the words would not form gracefully.
Jay dropped the pen with a clatter. He wracked his brain.
Jungwon didn’t need to have a grand revelation either, did he? Love did not have a beginning or an end. Was it really necessary for Jay to make some elaborate gesture of a confession? Or was there a way he could simply convey to Jungwon what had been there all along, waiting to be picked up?
He looked over to the corner of his room where his backpack sagged wearily against the wall, a small daisy pinned to its strap. Waiting to be given away. It was a ritual that had always been there, and yet what he felt for his garden had outgrown the small cuttings that Jay could offer him.
Something brighter - something bigger, perhaps.
The first time Jay presented him with a bouquet, Jungwon eyed it with a feeling of familiarity, mingled with confusion.
“Flowers?” he asked uncertainly.
“Yes,” Jay answered confidently.
“This many?”
“I couldn’t get them all,” Jay answered with a hint of sarcasm and a twinkle in his eye, “so this many will have to do.”
The second time Jay presented him with a bouquet, Jungwon looked at him incredulously. Despite his skepticism, a wide grin stretched from cheek to cheek.
“What’s the occasion today?” he said playfully. “What is so special that it warrants a gift?”
“The same occasion as yesterday,” Jay said. “It’s a new day.”
The third time Jay presented him with a bouquet, Jungwon stared at him in exasperation.
"Are you going to give me flowers every day?"
Jungwon's cheeks were flushed nearly the same shade of petal pink as the rose buds in his hands, and amusement laced with shyness dripped from his voice like sweet nectar.
"Every day," Jay confirmed. "And again and again and again."
And so it continued.
It was enough to see the smile on Jungwon’s face. Jay didn’t even mind that the boy didn’t seem to realize yet. His love was not a gift to be reciprocated, but a promise, a promise that one day everything that needed to be said would be properly molded into pretty words.
A promise that a day would come when Jay would present himself and everything he had to give, and he would wait patiently for Jungwon’s answer.
For now, he would drive to the flower shop on the other side of town, a detour from his usual commute. He would step inside and pick up the most eye-catching bouquet he could find. He would rap his knuckles against Jungwon’s door with precise, determined strikes, and present the blossoms with his heart on his sleeve.
Jungwon would smile.
And he would repeat the same routine day by day, not a chore, but a habit, an integral part of his daily existence.
If he couldn’t rewind time to relive the most beautiful moments in life, Jay would just have to make sure that every day was one worth living in.
𓆸
It was a bit of a joke, wasn’t it? A cosmic prank that the universe was playing on him, laughing from somewhere beyond the stars at his misfortune.
He had been granted the thing he had always fantasized about - to rewind time, to live in the same moments over and over again. But these were not the most beautiful moments in his life.
The moments he was forced to repeat were twisted and horrific, bitterness and ugliness seeping into every passing second. Each day was painted with scarlet petals and rain-soaked earth, the taste of loss on his tongue every time he breathed air in.
How many times had he lived through Jungwon’s death? Not just Jungwon, but all of his friends?
Losing Sunoo felt like the dimming of a constant light, an energy that had suddenly been sapped from his life. Losing Sunghoon felt like losing his breath, the loss of a necessary function that was vital to keep himself running.
And losing Jungwon?
Losing Jungwon felt like nothing at all. It was something he couldn’t wrap his head around, something he simply refused to accept. That empty space, though it ached, was only temporary, and he told himself that it would soon be filled once more - or Jay would die trying.
If there was one thing his solitude brought out in him, it was the release of those abstract words floating around in his mind that he had never been able to put to paper.
Letter after letter, page after page, he wrote and he wrote, saying all the things he had always meant to say. All the things he never knew how to.
I’ve never been one to believe in the supernatural; but something in the way my heart slows down, lulled by the sound of his voice, leads me to wonder if I’m being enchanted.
I see him, even when I’m not looking at him, even when he is no longer there. His smile glows behind my eyelids when I sleep, like the lingering imprint of a blinding light. He is ethereal, incandescent, ineffable.
I once thought that there was no singular moment when I realized I was in love with him - and I still believe that to be true. But there came a moment, on the day that I first lost him, a day that keeps rewinding and that I keep experiencing on loop and coming to the same realization every time.
When I lost Jungwon, I didn’t realize that I loved him. But as I stared down at those red tulips, knowing that I would never see him again in that lifetime - I realized without a doubt, that I always would.
𓆸
He was dreaming. He had to be.
That was the thought that kept running through his mind as he lay with Jungwon in the shared bedroom of their new apartment. Every few minutes or so, he would tighten his grip ever so slightly, as if Jungwon would fade away if Jay didn’t reinstate his hold.
“I can hear you thinking,” Jungwon whispered, tentative in shattering the silence. Jay frowned, and Jungwon mirrored the expression in worry.
“Is it really over?” he asked. There was an unsettling lack of dread in his stomach, his shoulders suspiciously light, free from the burden of impending doom. It all felt a little off, a little unnatural after spending so long in constant darkness.
Do I deserve to be this happy?
Jungwon shifted slightly in his arms. “I guess only time will tell,” he said thoughtfully. “But I think so.”
Jay swallowed, the sound of which seemed to resonate loud and clear between their close proximity.
“Hey,” Jungwon said softly, noticing his lingering apprehension. “Don’t worry. You’ve done enough of that for the rest of us. Just live in the moment, yeah?”
Jay let out a breathless laugh. He shook his head - then pressed his lips to the other boy’s hair, planting his words there with his lips.
“You are my moment,” he murmured. He felt the younger boy’s small frame shiver against him. "I had to lose you," Jay said brokenly, memories suddenly rising up in his throat and choking him. "Over and over again. It was almost too much to bear. It nearly was, towards the end."
Jungwon’s eyes shone like glass as he pulled back to look at him directly. "I'm here now," he whispered. "You're here, we're all here."
Jay inhaled deeply and touched their foreheads together, bowing his head slightly to meet Jungwon's as if in prayer.
"Are you really?" he said reverently, focusing on the one point that connected the two of them, their skin pressed together, hair brushing over each other's eyes.
"I am," Jungwon said firmly. "I'm here, and I love you."
"Say it again."
"I love you."
"Again."
"I love you."
"Again."
Jungwon laughed, and the sound pierced Jay’s skin like warm sunlight, blooming flowers erupting in his chest in an infinitely expanding garden.
"I love you, Jay."
He felt something wet touch the softness of his cheek.
“Yeah?”
"I love you. Again and again and again."