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It was a Wednesday, Doyoung thinks.
He still has the blue t-shirt and the track pants he wore that day actually, the day he was called aside and told that from now on he'd be practicing in dance studio number two. He remembers the initial excitement and how it died when he walked into the room, saw groups of trainees scattered in different corners, and caught the look they gave him when the instructor introduced him as the newest addition.
Doyoung wasn’t dumb.
He knew what a newbie who was just signed two months ago being introduced to this class of senior trainees meant, for him and for everyone else in the room. Getting eliminated or replaced at the very last minute wasn't uncommon after all, and if even Doyoung knew it then there was no way all the trainees who'd spent years here didn't. For the most part the tension was explainable with a sense of rivalry if he thinks about it now, but it most definitely wasn't entirely just that - especially whatever it was that the strikingly beautiful leader in the gray tracksuit was emitting.
"You're around Jaehyun's age huh," gray tracksuit said while nibbling on a sweet potato half the size of his face, "you guys could be friends."
Only if that guy would be more open to the idea of befriending a newcomer than gray tracksuit - Taeyong as Doyoung later learned - apparently was. Or wasn’t. Doyoung knew better than to question why Taeyong wasn’t welcoming him with a hug and kisses on both cheeks though, because he knew a dismissal when he heard one. He was pretty sure he just did.
The Jaehyun in Taeyong’s words showed up barely five minutes before practice started, just about enough time for him to high-five half the room and none for any proper acknowledgment of Doyoung’s existence. It was only when their dance teacher already walked in and everyone was already standing in formation that he finally spotted the odd one out.
Hang in there, Jaehyun mouthed.
Doyoung remembers the snapback Jaehyun wore that day, he’s pretty sure Jaehyun still has it somewhere. The threadbare practice t-shirt with literal holes in it too, but mostly the snapback.
It made him look kind of silly in a Justin Bieber in the Baby MV way and Doyoung made sure to tell him that at a much later point in time, but he kept wearing it anyway. Even took a selfie with it on Doyoung’s new iPhone and made it his lockscreen just because he could. The lesson here was to never doze off when there was a wide awake eleventh-grader right next to you, but they’d practiced for five hours straight and Jaehyun’s shoulder was, apparently, very comfortable.
“You should just go home and sleep,” Jaehyun’d said when Doyoung asked him to wake him up in twenty minutes, “you’ll be fine, hyung.”
“I wouldn’t be able to sleep at home anyway,” Doyoung yawned. “I’m too nervous.”
“You shouldn’t need to be,” Jaehyun sighed, but still scooted closer to let Doyoung lean on his shoulder. “You’re doing much better than you think.”
If bone-deep exhaustion wasn’t making him drift off to sleep the moment he closed his eyes, maybe Doyoung would remember to ask why Jaehyun himself wasn’t going home when practice for the day was already over and he was pretty sure Jaehyun still had school tomorrow. After all it was Doyoung’s first evaluation but Jaehyun’d gone through countless, and seeing how he was doing during both vocal and dance classes, there’d be no reason for him to fret and stay for extra practice at all.
But well, Doyoung was too tired. He still was - very much so, when he woke up half an hour later with a snapback covering his face, blocking the obnoxiously bright light in the studio from his eyes.
He kind of just forgot.
The last two months before debut still come back to haunt Doyoung in his dreams sometimes, like a monster under his bed.
“What do you mean no,” Jaehyun huffed, and it’d be way easier to take him seriously if he didn’t have his arms crossed in front of his chest and both his dimples pop out from how hard he was pursing his lips. “We always get donuts after evaluations. Or churros. We kind of must.”
“I just don’t feel like sweets today,” Doyoung said, trying to focus on packing his stuff.
“Liar,” Jaehyun accused. He was more right than he’d think. “You survived on those mini chocolate breads for like a month straight. I was also there when you buy them every morning, hyung.”
See, there was this thing called correction consultation for trainees.
Which, in hindsight, was a creative and very nice way to call it for what it was. No one would suspect from the name alone that that was where they called trainees into a room for a panel of advisors to judge and point out what needed to be fixed about them - nose and eyes, sometimes even jaws, were the most common. At least they were humane enough to consult each trainee individually, and Doyoung was more than glad that it seemed like Jaehyun was never called in for a session.
But he was. And Doyoung had absolutely no intention to tell Jaehyun that by this time next week, he was supposed to have shaven three kilos off of his body.
“I’m just tired,” he remembers the doubtful look in Jaehyun’s eyes when he told him so. He should have looked away if he was going to lie, Doyoung realized belatedly. “Next time, I promise.”
Yes it’s very fucked up, but it’s not like he had a choice back then when that’s what this job literally entails. It doesn’t necessarily mean he could ever or has ever managed to get used to it, but Doyoung knew it then and still knows it now. Unfortunately before next time rolled around: Jaehyun also knew.
It would be kind of hard not to, Doyoung figured, when he’d nearly tripped over his own foot and had to sit down from dizziness twice during practice. Even their drill sergeant of an instructor had to call for a break and asked if he was okay, so his diet of ten almonds for breakfast, lunch and dinner combined probably wasn’t going as unnoticed as Doyoung hoped it’d be. It also did - or didn’t help that Jaehyun had always been more observant than most nineteen-year-old boys were.
“I want to cook for my mom on her birthday,” he said as he took a lunch box out from his backpack, “I was practicing and uh, I want your opinion. I guess.”
Still bad at making up white lies, though. Jaehyun’s mom’s birthday was four months ago and they went to the mall to find a present together. Well at least it was better than yesterday, when he said he had to cook in a home econ class and accidentally made too much.
It was Sunday yesterday. No schools were opened.
Doyoung barely managed to hold back a chuckle when he saw Jaehyun holding out the lunch box with both hands, his ears getting bright red for some reason. Someone who didn’t know better might even think it was a bouquet of flowers, not a lunch box, and that Jaehyun was confessing to Doyoung or something. Also the whole room smelled like food now and everyone was flocking over like sharks at the smell of blood, and Jaehyun looked adorable standing in front of him as though to guard his lunch box.
Or him.
The thoughts sank in late, and startled him a little.
And maybe he should laugh at such dumb, dangerous thoughts and maybe remember to be more cautious next time of whatever it was that he needed to be cautious about, but the lunch box was warm in his hands and Jaehyun’s spicy stir fried pork tasted almost as good as Doyoung’s mom's.
He had good reasons to forget, see. So he did.
Doyoung doesn’t get upset at most jokes the kids throw around about him, certainly not at that particular one.
If anything, he kind of agreed. It was weird, he was weird, and the more he rewatched their MV or monitored live performances, the more it stuck out to him like a sore thumb. And out of all things, Doyoung didn’t want his everlasting first impression as an artist to be the way his eyebrows moved whenever he sang. But hours and hours of replaying his own fancams under the blanket - only after Mark had started snoring lightly - were starting to convince him that it was, indeed.
“It’s cute,” Taeyong pinched his nose and told him once the laughter in the room had subsided, and the kids were distracted away from where they were. “Don’t worry about it, okay?”
Taeyong’s cold hand felt warm against his skin, but it wasn’t enough to yank the thought away from the back of Doyoung’s mind. At a later point in time he’d look back and realize it wasn’t something worth being paranoid about, but he was in a team that the whole world had their prying eyes on since the first news about their debut was reported, so to a certain extent Doyoung believed he couldn’t help it.
But he also believed there was a solution to it, because nothing can’t be fixed with a little - or a lot of practice, and willpower. Even an unconscious habit.
“Your storage is full, hyung,” Jaehyun called and waved Doyoung’s phone from the other end of the couch, “I can’t download the song demo. Is there anything you could delete?”
Doyoung couldn’t bear to look away from the TV, not when Steve Rogers was on the screen: “Delete all the videos from yesterday.”
“Okay but why do you have seventy-seven videos of yourself singing,” Jaehyun sounded genuinely in disbelief. “You know we only need to submit one right.”
“I already submitted mine since Monday,” he mumbled around a mouthful of popcorn, still focused mostly on the screen. “These were for the eyebrow thing.”
“The eyebrow thing?”
“You know, the weird thing I do when I sing,” Doyoung rushed through his words, impatient. Cap and Iron Man were about to tear each other apart, he really couldn’t afford a conversation now, okay? “‘m trying to fix it.”
Doyoung nearly jumped out of his seat when Jaehyun grabbed the remote, and promptly pressed Pause. “The hell?”
He didn’t get an answer but a pair of big, warm hands cupping either side of his face a second later, and Doyoung felt a breath hitch in his throat on its way out. As if their faces weren’t already close enough after Jaehyun sat up straight, he leaned his forehead against Doyoung’s like he wanted to make sure Doyoung couldn’t so much as look away, let alone run to hide elsewhere.
“Hey, look at me,” it was kind of a weird timing to notice how much lower Jaehyun’s voice had become, but Doyoung couldn’t help it. And Jaehyun continued: “You don’t need fixing, hyung. And I’m sorry for making fun of you.”
Doyoung couldn’t recall having ever been speechless prior to this moment, but here he was. It felt tight inside his chest like someone’d been grabbing his heart and squeezing the poor thing without him even realizing, but then it was freed this very moment and he could feel the rush of oxygen filling his lungs again.
He felt like crying, for some odd reason. Over fucking eyebrows, no less.
“Don’t worry about it,” Doyoung gulped, trying to swallow the lump in his throat and the tears that were threatening to well up in his eyes at the same time. “I know it’s just a joke.”
“Yeah, but it shouldn’t have been,” Jaehyun rubbed his thumbs on his cheekbones, and Doyoung wondered if he could feel the heat rising underneath his skin. Because Doyoung certainly could. “I know that now. I’m sorry, hyung.”
Doyoung knew then, and still knows now that it’s kind of his job to strive for perfection because at the end of the day - harsh as it might sound - it’s what the world thinks of him that matters most. Maybe he should get a grip and remember to never let himself feel this way ever again, but Jaehyun’s eyes were as warm as his palms on Doyoung’s cheeks and all of sudden, it felt as though that world that mattered so much, didn’t even exist in the first place.
He forgot, but just for a moment, a moment only.
The truth is, being on stage is only a minor part of this occupation.
The bigger part is either spent in the waiting lounge of an airport somewhere or like Doyoung right now, holed up in a studio recording songs he, personally as a person, would never listen to even if someone was paying him. But when he’s in the recording booth, he’s not personally a person - he’s singer Kim Doyoung, and singer Kim Doyoung has learned the way to sing well in which his feelings or emotions didn’t matter in the very least.
“I’ll do the second verse again,” he says into the mic. “I feel like the intonation was a bit off, like a little flat.”
“You’re more nitpicky than me,” their producer laughs and even the sound engineer next to him is cracking up, “and don’t you have another recording after this?”
“It’s fine, this could be my warm-up.”
“Who the hell warms up for four hours!” The director deadpans, but gives him green for another go nonetheless. “But don’t overdo it, okay?”
It’s not like it’d matter if he does, Doyoung vaguely thinks. There’s a thin line between him overdoing it for technical perfection and him being way past the point of caring to treat singing as anything more than technicalities, but no one needs to know that. He will sing well and he will get a green pass from directors, because he knows how to sing to get greens now, so he will sing more and get more greens. That’s it, isn’t it? Taeyong has been trying to convince him that he’s burnt out for a while now, but things are just that simple.
He does his job well and then goes home, like everyone in this world does.
It doesn’t matter if he comes home at two in the morning, throat so painful it’s hard to even swallow his saliva. Doyoung intends to wash up and goes to sleep before having to be up in three hours to continue singing, getting more greens, because it’s what singer Kim Doyoung does. He sings.
He doesn’t expect to see Jaehyun in the living room when he pushes the door open.
“What are you doing here?” Doyoung lowers his voice more out of consideration for their neighbors than Taeyong, Johnny and Donghyuck - it’s prime active time for those gamers anyway, “don’t you have to go to Taiwan tomorrow?”
Jaehyun turns to wave at Doyoung, the light from their big TV reflecting on his glasses. Doyoung once asked if he wanted to get lasik, because he’d done it before and could refer Jaehyun to the hospital he went to, but Jaehyun said no.
“I don’t want anyone to do anything to my eyeballs. Ever.” He remembers Jaehyun saying. “Besides, I know you like me with glasses.”
Doyoung remembers not denying.
“I have something to show you, hyung.” Jaehyun’s eyes sparkle, and it Doyoung’s heart does that annoying thing where it falls to his ankles, pinning him dead still where he’s standing. “Should we go to your room or here is fine?”
There’s something entirely unsettling about Jaehyun in a comfortable black tank top and sweatpants, with his soft hair growing a bit too long now brushing past his brows, asking Doyoung that. Doyoung brings a hand up to brush his hair and hopefully the thought out from his brain, and barely manages to utter a hoarse My room.
It’s a good thing that Doyoung only ever turns on very dim light in his room, because who knows what color is displaying on his face right now. It’s not the first time Jaehyun’s been in his room, but the sight is one of the things for whatever reason one can never get used to. Doyoung certainly can’t.
“What are you doing?” Jaehyun looks up from where he’s sitting on the edge of Doyoung’s bed, “come sit down.”
Jaehyun still uses wired earphones for some mysterious reasons, so Doyoung has no choice but to sit so close to him their knees are brushing against each other. He’s pretty sure if he breathes a little loud Jaehyun would be able to hear it too. Again, thank God for the very dim light in his room.
“Ready?”
Doyoung is about to ask why he must be ready, and ready for what, when the video plays on Jaehyun’s phone and well, nothing could have prepared him for what he’s seeing right now.
“We were so young,” Jaehyun giggles, and maybe it’s because they’re sitting really close but Doyoung can almost feel the air around him shift when Jaehyun’s laughter echoes from the deep of his chest. “Like, eighteen? Seventeen?”
It’s a video of them in their practice room from way before their debut, back when Jaehyun still wore snapbacks and Doyoung still wore braces, next to each other, singing. It was probably an assignment for their vocal class, or maybe they just filmed it like they very often did, for no apparent reason. Jaehyun was playing the guitar, and Doyoung was trying hard to harmonize, eyebrows looking like they were about to bounce off his forehead. It’s ridiculous, really.
God, he sounded terrible. He’s pretty sure he was at least half a tone off and Jaehyun was fumbling some suspicious chords there, but there was something there he hasn't seen, and maybe has even lost a long time ago that the current Doyoung would trade everything to find back.
Before singer Kim Doyoung, there was a boy in this world with nothing but a terrible haircut, a lisp because of his braces and very insufficient knowledge in music theory, singing. It’s kind of funny to watch this back after six years, they looked so lame there - but somehow his eyes are stinging with tears and Doyoung has never felt so goddamn jealous.
“I went home today and found my old iPod,” Jaehyun says once the video is over, “and we really filmed a lot, hyung. I think I have a video of you rapping too.”
Doyoung chokes out an airy laugh, vaguely relieved that his voice is hoarse from singing all day now or else Jaehyun would definitely catch on that he’s like, embarrassingly close to tears. “Please, don’t ever lose that iPod.”
“I would never,” Jaehyun chuckles, and the contrast of his voice right now with the boy in the video is making Doyoung a bit lightheaded. “This is blackmail material.”
They both laugh, and Doyoung’s chest feels light. They go through some more videos and before they know it, Jaehyun’s alarm goes off two whole hours later.
“I have to get ready now,” Jaehyun takes off his earphones and rolls them into a bunch before shoving them into his pocket. “I haven’t even packed.”
“What’s the shoot for?” Doyoung feels a little apologetic that Jaehyun couldn’t get a blink of sleep when he has to board a flight the next day, but Jaehyun already reassured him that he has the whole morning after arrival free. “Prada?”
“A magazine, but I’m wearing Prada.”
Doyoung nods and follows him out of his room, until they’re standing in front of the door of their apartment. Again, there’s something entirely unsettling about this setting and Doyoung swears he can’t quite put a finger on it, but maybe he will try to later, after he’s gotten some sleep in. For now, he looks at his feet, and fidgets.
“Hyung?” Jaehyun tugs at Doyoung’s elbow, forcing him to look up and into his eyes.
And then, he pulls Doyoung into a hug.
“When you love singing again, let’s sing together,” Jaehyun says.
Doyoung doesn’t know if he’s freezing or melting, but he doesn’t hate it. They don’t hug, not anymore since a long time ago, so he’s not sure if he’s allowed to bring his arms up and around Jaehyun or rest his chin on Jaehyun’s shoulder, nuzzle into the warmth of his neck, but he does anyway.
And maybe he shouldn’t have forgotten how this felt, but he did. How fortunate that he can still learn to remember it again.
“Also, there’s this.” Jaehyun pushes something into his hand once they pull away and apart. Doyoung looks down and sees a heavy tumbler. “It’s lemon, ginger and honey. I, uh, my mom made some.”
Jaehyun’s ears are bright red.
And Doyoung laughs out loud.
The thing about Jaehyun, is that he’s just a boy.
Doyoung struggles to see that sometimes because he’s, well, he’s a man now. But out of everyone Doyoung should know the best, that Jaehyun is just a boy.
He’s a little clumsy at times, like the time he gave Doyoung a lunch box his uh, his grandma made with a bandage wrapped snug around his index finger. He’s shy sometimes too, like when he told Doyoung that he had a very pretty smile because he’d noticed Doyoung kept covering his mouth whenever he laughed. He’s even embarrassing at times, like the time they snuck out in Tokyo to get ramen and he downright choked on his noodles when a fan recognized them and approached for a signature.
Take right now for example.
Doyoung nearly thought it was a scam when he got a call from the post office, saying he had to pay nearly fifty US dollars of custom fees for an international package. Thank God the guy on the other line managed to say it’s a package from Taiwan before Doyoung hung up.
He stares into the gigantic carton box of probably every type of Taiwanese sweets and delicacies he’d just dragged all the way into the elevator, into their apartment then into his room, and sighs. Not to mention another equally just as big of a box full of presumably unreleased products from Prada’s newest collection his manager just drove over from their company, that’s for some mysterious reasons not addressed to the Prada ambassador, but him.
Doyoung sighs again when his phone rings.
“Did you get it?” Jaehyun’s face is a tad too close to the camera, Doyoung’s not sure he wants to stare that closely into someone's nostrils.
“Move away from the phone, I can hear you.” Doyoung sits down on his bed first before continuing, “and yes, I did. You owe me fifty bucks of custom fees now.”
Jaehyun has the audacity to laugh. “Okay, I’ll make sure to pay with interest.”
“Why the hell did you buy so much?” Doyoung deadpans, “I nearly broke my back trying to carry that box inside.”
“You like sweets,” well maybe asking Jaehyun to move further from the camera is a mistake, because Doyoung sees the tips of his ears gradually getting red in real time now. And it’s kind of doing things to him. “Don’t you?”
Doyoung sighs again. He must have sighed more within today than the last twenty seven years of his life combined, but he sighs again. “When are you home?”
“In fifteen minutes. I’m in the car now.”
“Then why the hell did you have to EMS the thing,” he’s about to cry. He’s sure he’s going to cry. “You could have just brought it back with you.”
“I could send it straight from the shop, so I did,” Jaehyun laughs, full-bodied and rich. It’s fascinating that Doyoung can hear the rumble of his laughter through the phone. “Couldn’t be bothered to drag it back to my hotel and then to the airport again.”
Doyoung inhales. Okay, that sounds like a legitimate, reasonable reason. He tells Jaehyun to come see him before hanging up, and after he hangs up, Doyoung can’t help but sigh again.
See, the thing is that Jaehyun is a boy, but so is Doyoung.
Doyoung knows what it means when a boy buys a boy gift, wants to take care of a boy, making sure a boy is warm and full and happy and never has a single doubt that he’s the best, most beautiful person in the world. He knew it then and still knows it now, because boys are simple and will still be simple even when in love.
Especially when in love.
He may forget at times when he’s tired, when he’s not feeling good about himself, when he’s busy, or busy feeling not so good about himself, but he knew it then and he knows it now. What it means when a boy cares. For a really, really long time.
“Hi,” he says only when they’re safe behind the closed door of his room, because boys are dumb when in love, but Doyoung’s still capable of remembering that he has flatmates. Besides, Donghyuck would never let him live this down. “You’re home.”
Jaehyun probably can sense something not quite right in the air, because he’s not sitting down on Doyoung’s bed like he always naturally would. Doyoung had nagged him countless times about not sitting or lying on his bed if he just comes back from outside, but Jaehyun never obeys anyway.
“I am.”
They stand there, in the middle of Doyoung’s room, with Taiwanese snacks and sweets scattered on the floor around their feet because Doyoung hasn’t managed to unpack and sort out everything yet. There’s no way he could, maybe he’ll have to ask Taeyong to help later. But for now, they stand there in silence and Doyoung hates how embarrassingly loud his heartbeat is that he can literally hear it thumping in his eardrums, because it’s just a boy standing in front of him and yet.
And yet, he’s so, so in love, as much as he’s so, so loved. Has been for a long, long time. And if he decides to remember it only now, totally unprompted, on a random Thursday afternoon seven whole years later, then, well.
“I’m sorry for making you wait so long,” he says, and it feels unexpectedly natural. Freeing, almost. “I love you, too.”
Jaehyun stares, wide eyed, for what feels like forever.
And then he runs to kiss Doyoung square on the lips, nearly tripping over a box of pineapple cakes on his way.
It was worth it, sacrificing their precious free afternoon to climb up the mountain and be here now, in this very moment, instead of catching up on sleep before they had to go back to practice the next day. And Doyoung absolutely despised hiking, so that was saying something. Besides, it was crunch time before debut, who knew how long it’d take until they’d get to hear the word free time again.
“Say, what would you do if a boy told you he loves you?” He remembers hearing Jaehyun suddenly ask once they finally made it to the observation deck, looking down at Seoul at night where the city lights looked like stars woven into the night sky.
“I don’t know,” Doyoung looked away. He could still feel Jaehyun’s gaze latch on the side of his face though, its weight pressing heavy and burning against his skin, filling his stomach with the same liquefied warmth.
It was the first time silence didn’t feel entirely comfortable between them. Doyoung wondered why.
“Would you ever give him an answer?” Jaehyun said after a while. Then paused. “When you know?”
Doyoung’s heart clenched.
“If he can wait.”