Work Text:
The longer Jaehyun laid there, the more he wondered how long he could stretch out a single moment. Stay nestled inside it, with the details of the world around him looping over and over, functionally endless. A song on repeat. From the warmth of the morning sun on his face to the sound of the breeze rustling the curtains, the salt of it soothing - the scent of summer, the promise of only good memories. Listening closely, he could make out the rhythms of the ocean, the distant call of waves cascading into sea-foam that lapped at white sand. It faded if he focused on nearer measured breathing, his and Sicheng’s, deep and ever so slightly out of sync. All comfort and constance, Jaehyun’s skin against his skin, his forearm having found its dream home draped across the dip of the dancer’s waist, wrist dangling over the edge. On each inhale, Sicheng’s stomach pressed lightly into his palm. A fleeting touch, receding with each exhale until only his fingertips were left grazing the sensitive skin. Cyclic, sure as the rising and setting of the sun, Jaehyun was sure nothing had ever been so beautiful.
He tried to resist the urge to open his eyes and prove himself wrong. On the other side of the long and stolen moment between sleeping and waking, paradise waited to start slipping through his fingers like the sands of time. The luxury of their legs tangled together under the white satin sheets that had slid down from Sicheng’s bony shoulders and fallen to his hip sometime in the night, the bed-head like you wouldn’t believe, the puddle of drool on the pillow that he’d finally stopped smearing in an effort to hide. One after the other the details Jaehyun had spent the summer discovering ran through his mind. All of the beauty in privacy, in Sicheng and the safety of the space between them.
The connection that took hold between them from the instant their eyes met, like a scene described in a script Jaehyun might have rolled his eyes at if he hadn’t felt it himself. He’d watched the waves wash away their footprints made in the sand, wondering how such a tangible feeling could ever be transient, even knowing the moment it would come crashing to a close was fixed firm in their calendar from the first time they kissed. The end of summer, wheels lifting off the tarmac with one of them flung far across an ocean and landing on the other side of the world.
Before Sicheng, Jaehyun always found comfort in playing out stories knowing the ending was already written. When acting from a script, he’d learned to hollow himself; feel himself fill with the dreams and ideas of the writers until he transformed from a dreamer to part of the dreaming itself. The camera caught him as the perfect dream-projection the same way his previous partners did. He couldn’t fault them for finding the emptiness he’d created in himself and doing the same thing the writers and directors did. He’d been complicit, after all, in letting it happen, in choosing to play out someone else’s dream of a boyfriend until they wanted to wake up. The ending was set in stone the same way a final and finished script was, never a chance for too much pain.
This time around, Jaehyun wished more than anything for printer-warm paper slipped into his hands the second before their final scene. Or the real-life equivalent of last minute rewrites, proving he had the ending wrong all along. There was no comfort in the inevitable closing of this door, leaving Sicheng and their glorious summer as little more than memory. He’d trade their seemingly immutable ending for the human horror of a million unknown outcomes and the potential for terrible pain in a heartbeat. This time, for the first time, the dreams that brought him to life were homegrown. Dreams of his own. Dreams of Sicheng, stretching far beyond the reality he didn't want to face.
How could he? How could he face the fact it was all about to end? He let out a soft sigh as his eyes fluttered open, blinking a few times to adjust to the morning light, the gentle cream of the walls, the soft blues of the villa’s décor. The blur of a body beside him came into focus slowly. Sicheng was lying on his side, his soft, the smooth skin of his torso bared. Jaehyun watched as the touch of the breeze raised goosebumps on his arms, fascinated.
Sunlight spilled out from over the edges of his silhouette, lighting a swathe of his broad back golden. Jaehyun imagined any number of moment-shattering acts to start the day, the shadow his hand would cast tracing the shape of his shoulder blades, the warmth of the skin against his lips if he kissed the lone freckle between them; murmuring something that made Sicheng wrinkle his nose and huff that little one-syllable laugh, or simply pulling him closer until skin met skin. Really, anything would have worked. It was always so easy between them, he could have rolled backwards off the bed and onto the floor and the morning would still be a wonder. But was it wrong to want perfection, just this once?
A perfect true beginning to the last day of summer, one they’d both play over in their minds. That’s what he told himself. (Easier to acknowledge than tiny, nagging hope that the right choice would lead to the change he wanted. An outcome beyond the inevitable long kiss goodbye.)
“I hate to interrupt your very loud thinking,” Sicheng announced, sounding very calm and rational. “But you better get up.” He didn’t roll over or look over his shoulder, but it was easy to imagine the look on his fey-like face. Eyes wide awake, lucid and lips drawn in a logical line as he continued, “Check in’s in an hour.”
“’s not,” Jaehyun said, a low rumble of morning voice. “Changed my flight.”
The turn of Sicheng’s head was slow and stiff and not unlike the clockwork doll he’d danced for the autumn season; a steady reveal that gave Jaehyun plenty of time to admire the sharpness of his jaw against the softness of his features, the rounded tip of his nose and the sharp tip of his one elf-ear. Jaehyun’s eyes lingered on his lips, still somehow kiss-swollen, before finally meeting his eyes. The arch of his eyebrow had the potency of a thousand ‘whys’, despite the obvious answers to every question.
Because I love you.
Jaehyun squinted, pretending to be more half-asleep than he was. “I’ll just go straight from the airport to the studio, ‘s fine. Not important.”
“Don’t give me that. It’s Netflix.” Sicheng sighed, brows furrowed and lips turned down in a small, cute frown.“You really haven’t thought this through. What if the flight gets delayed?”
“What if…” Jaehyun echoes, trailing off into nothing. With the weight of those two little words on his tongue, he wanted to respond with any number of reassurances, words to cut away at the anxieties building up. But he didn’t. He was stuck, circular inside the world of what if. In a moment of what felt like enlightenment, like something from one of his dramas, he saw all the ways the conversation could play out in his head like branches in time. Alternate universes, all the what ifs of the conversation, paths that could lead to places better and worse.
In one, Jaehyun would say, ‘so what if I miss it? It’s just a bunch of people sitting around a table reading out a script .’ And Sicheng would counter ‘ A table read for Netflix. It’s still Netflix.’, knowing each time he said the company’s name brought with it the weight of another stone in Jaehyun’s stomach, pinning the dread down. Sicheng was right, after all. The table read was the precipice, the beginning of the biggest break he’d ever had in his career. He shouldn’t have been willing to risk it, not for friends or family or the end of the world.
The person he’d been before the summer was a sharp-edged voice in the back of his mind. That Jaehyun would already be in LA. But that Jaehyun, for all of his romanticism, every love he’d experienced was a pale imitation of the real thing. He didn’t know what he was missing. He’d never met Sicheng.
He would have led with a kiss, another branch in time, distracting his lover with his hands and his mouth to avoid justifications; leaving all the questions hanging over them, unanswered, a current running behind their tender touches. A tension that would linger behind like a bad taste in their mouths, a chronic avoidance of curiosity.
In another scenario, Jaehyun brushed it all off with ‘Don’t worry about it, I’ll sleep on the plane.’ Which had worked in the past, on lovers and partners who weren’t Sicheng. The double-sided blade of kindred spirits, the platitude would make Sicheng turn around slow enough that he felt every dip in the mattress, slow enough that he felt the withering glare coming before he saw it. The accusation Sicheng’s eyes would read something like, Hypocrite. How would you feel if I said that? Fair. Understandable. The image of jet-lagged Sicheng stepping off a twelve hour flight straight into rehearsals or worse, behind the velvet curtain of a stage - the kind of visual that had guilt stabbing low in his abdomen. The silent glare would be more than deserved.
He’d never dream of standing in the way of Sicheng’s career. Maybe the opposite. The videos he’d watched since they met just weren’t enough. The idea of seeing the spotlight shine down on Sicheng gnawed at him, the fantasy that was gazing up from the front row as the string section swelled and the curtains rose. The way his graceful body became a conduit for the music, control and precision colliding with pure abandon, the act of throwing everything he is into his movements. And the stories of ages past playing out in resonant emotion, Sicheng’s stoic face come to life with vivid expressions.
The summer had to end, or he’d never get to see it. Neither smiling with flowers and waiting in the wings, nor anonymous in the front few rows and leaving before the house lights sweep on at the end of the show.
Somewhere here there was a choice Jaehyun had to make. With no real knowing or control of the outcome. But direct honesty was a non-option, a road to nowhere. When he tried to imagine what it would look like, anything after his confession was white noise. Bringing attention to the feelings built up between them, the fruits of an idyllic summer spent in perfect company; pinkies linked as they walked along the beach, lit by the glow of sunset. Speaking its name was as good as taking a sledgehammer to Sicheng’s boundaries. ‘No feelings, no drama.’
Failing at one, the least he could do was uphold the other. Anything else would be wrong. He didn’t want to fight, or to waste even a second of their time.
“It’d suck,” Jaehyun finally admitted, with a somewhat of a sheepish smile. “It’d suck if the flight got delayed. But if that happens, well, I made this bed, I’ll lie in it.”
It really was that easy. Underneath all the swirling around in his head, after he shut down the branching timelines and took a breath.
You’re worth the risk. He didn’t say it, but he was somehow sure Sicheng read it in his eyes. Something in the way he flexed his jaw, still tense, but his frown softened into a thoughtful expression. And the longer Sicheng stewed in the silence between them, the more a dusting of pink showed on his cheeks.
Running on instinct, Jaehyun moved to close the distance between them. Graceless, he shuffled forwards until his chest was flush with the dancer’s back and tightened the arm around his waist.
“Just let us have this,” he murmured, pressing a soft kiss to Sicheng’s shoulder in the pause. “You don’t want me to go yet either.”
“You’re not supposed to say that out loud,” Sicheng grumbled, without a trace of bite.
“Oh?” Jaehyun pressed his sly smile into soft skin. One kiss, two. “Is it a secret?”
He felt a slow nod in response, bed-wild hair tickling at his cheek.
“That’s fine,” Jaehyun hummed, low and deep, and burned Sicheng’s soft shudder and sharp exhale into his memory. “I’ll keep it.”
The silence that followed didn’t hang heavy, not when Sicheng shifted onto his back revealing the curve of a pleased half-smile on his face, eyes fluttering closed in a catlike contentment. Jaehyun shuffled down until his head rested comfortably on his lover’s chest, soaking up the comfort, contentment contagious. He basked in the gentle sunlight warming his face, and in the gentler fingers threading through his hair.
“Pretty,” Sicheng murmured, after a while. Jaehyun arched his neck to better drink in the expression framing those quiet words, one of focused and studious intent. He wondered how long he'd been watched, with something close to stomach butterflies shattering his calm and making his ears burn red.
“You are, always, but your eyes like this," he continued, slow and steadily fishing for just the right words. Always so particular and vexed when Korean left him wanting. Jaehyun could almost taste the frustration with what was found, an undertone he might have missed even weeks ago. He loved to notice it just as much as he wished he could ease it, but all he had to offer was patience.
Patience was enough.
"So pretty in the light," Sicheng sighed, stilted and still searching for some better way to say it. He paused - lips parted, first in silence and soon with the melodic tones of Mandarin. Even without understanding, it was among the most beautiful set of sounds Jaehyun had ever heard; a beauty to match the sweet sincerity in those dark and dreamlike eyes. He was certain his own eyes could not be so lovely as all Sicheng's earnestness spoke of, even in the sunlight.
Sudden as a change in the wind, the fingers anchored softly in his hair tugged a little. The slightest pull was enough to make Jaehyun yield, to shift and move until he was where he was wanted; where he was meant to be, a moment’s impulse away from a kiss.
In those fragile moments, he felt a flicker of hope. There was a world in which, when the time came, Jaehyun would find the courage to lean in for one more kiss and a lingering whisper. A world in which he found the courage to say the quiet part out loud, to leave the door open behind him, and his heart in someone else’s hands - ready to be cradled or crushed.
Do you want that world? Whatever question, yet unasked, played out across his face - Sicheng opened his mouth as if to answer. Words never followed, only a sharp intake of breath and the flutter of his closing eyes.
Their noses brushed together as Jaehyun tilted his head, pliant and waiting for an answer.
Sicheng kissed him like he wanted to convince him of the meaning of words he couldn’t find, urgent but gentle, coaxing his mouth open with clear intent. His tongue skirted across Jaehyun’s bottom lip and suddenly, questions and answers seemed of little consequence. From the blunt scrape of nails against the back of his neck to the way Sicheng held himself hovered above him, leaving space between their bodies for breath - Jaehyun felt fragile but furiously wanted. Sore and spent as he was, he still arced up into this kiss, hoping Sicheng felt the way his whole body reoriented under him, like he’d been given a new centre of gravity. They fell into a natural rhythm, slowing down until their kisses were languid and lazy, wanting to pretend they had all the time in the world.
And when the room around them stopped spinning and Sicheng reluctantly, finally showed the terrible mercy of pulling away long enough to bring back conscious thought, Jaehyun' flicker of hope had turned into something a little lighter and brighter.
A glimpse of a chance there could be more to the story than the ending of their one, perfect scene.