Work Text:
It’s not often that Gyuvin opens his old photo albums back up.
He likes to tell himself that it’s because he’s content with his life.
That he has all that he could possibly want, even though he knows it’s mostly to avoid the pain— of seeing a certain dark-haired, doe-eyed boy staring back at him, smiling past the camera like he was the only person in the world.
And he had been once.
The summer that they spent together had been short, albeit filled with warm, lazy days and the sweetness of nectarines against their tongues.
Gyuvin had first met him on the way back from running an errand at the local convenience store— the tall, beautiful boy with the foreign name and dark curls against his forehead.
He had remembered thinking to himself that he had never met someone quite so beautiful— no man or woman or being in his entire life.
“Would you like one?” the boy had asked, holding out his bag of nectarines, his smile just as sweet and saccharine as the fruits themselves.
That had been the start of it.
Sitting by the convenience store together everyday, sharing laughter and trading stories between themselves under the hot summer sun, Gyuvin had found himself falling for the other, fast.
He hadn’t known why he had been so drawn to the other, whether it was because of their similarities despite their different backgrounds, or because of the way that the other often looked at him, as if memorising every inch of his face.
But after sharing one ill-timed look at each other one afternoon, mid-laughter, all of a sudden they were pressed up against each other, kissing, the nectarines long forgotten.
It had been sweaty and hot, worsened by the heat of the summer sun against their skin, but they hadn’t cared, Gyuvin’s arm around Jingxiang’s waist and the other hand pushing back his curly hair.
It was like that that they had spent the rest of the summer, trading kisses between nectarines and ice blocks, and taking pictures on Gyuvin’s polaroid camera.
But the last week into his summer break, Gyuvin had found Jingxiang gone from their usual spot.
Missing.
He had waited all afternoon, and the next, but to no avail.
A strange feeling had settled in the pit of stomach, planting questions of whether the other had finally come to regret the situation between them, or whether this was his way of letting Gyuvin down gently.
But an answer had arrived a few days later, from one of the sympathetic convenience store employees who had told him what she’d overheard.
The boy had gone back to China, it seemed.
Taken back after his father had caught wind of their activities together one afternoon, and had sent him on the first flight home.
Gyuvin hadn’t known how to react.
How was he supposed to find the other again?
He didn’t even know the other’s last name, much less his phone number, having taken their daily encounters for granted.
And so he doesn’t hear back from Jingxiang again.
Not within the week, or even the month, nor after five years, despite never moving from the same location.
Nor does he open the photo album again.
He doesn’t want to deal with it— the pain of revisiting the past.
As the years pass, he finds himself a few partners.
They’re nice, and he likes them well enough.
But they aren’t Jingxiang.
He doesn’t know why the boy had made such an impact on him, despite their time together being so short. In fact, if it weren’t for the photo album, he would surely have thought the other had been a hallucination, induced by the summer heat.
And yet when he opens it for the first time in five years, heart racing, the same face stares back at him, just as soft and beautiful as he had remembered.
He touches the page for a few seconds, at the golden smile plastered across the other’s face as he holds out a nectarine to the camera, before an amused voice interrupts his thoughts.
“You still have that?”
He looks up with a blink.
The boy from the pictures is beautiful. More than beautiful.
But the version standing across from Gyuvin now— dark curls grown out across his forehead, and doe-like features more mature— is even more beautiful, even more radiant than he had remembered, standing over his unpacked suitcase in the middle of Gyuvin’s living room.
“Jingxiang,” he breathes out with a smile, setting the photo album down.
The journey had been long and hard, but it had been worth it.
After years, following the passing of his over-vigilant father, the other had finally reached out again, hopeful that things hadn’t change irrevocably for Gyuvin yet, enough to refuse him.
And it hadn’t.
It couldn’t ever have.
They had then caught up— spending hours on the phone as if they had never left each other— as if the years passing from that one summer had never happened.
As if they still belonged to one another.
And it had felt like the clouds had finally parted, letting the sunshine through.
After an entire year of back and forth between the two, about the best way for them to continue seeing each other, Gyuvin had finally then suggested for Jingxiang to move in with him.
And when the other had smiled in agreement, it felt like everything was right in the world again.
“So?” Jingxiang prompts once more, a glint in his eyes as he stares at the photo album.
Gyuvin looks down, a slight flush of embarrassment across his cheeks.
“I didn’t want to forget you, even if you forgot me,” he finally admits.
Even if he had never opened it, the album’s continuing presence in his bookshelf was more than enough of a reminder of the time that they had shared together.
At that, the other only smiles at him, holding out his hand.
“Nonsense. I never forgot you. Not even once.”
Blinking, Gyuvin looks down, before finding a single, perfect nectarine in the centre of his palm.
With a smile, eyes crinkling at the edges, he picks up his polaroid camera— the very same one he had used all those years ago— and takes a picture.