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Taesan for all his abrasiveness is really tender at his core. The tenderness of his marrow reveals itself in the form of teasing and deflecting, smiling and laughing as Leehan nudges himself into Riwoo’s arms and they both end up on the floor in a pile of long limbs and juvenile joy.
Taesan is not all that older to be using words like that but he has always felt this way — he has always been watching others find happiness in small corners while he stood at the threshold, one foot in, one foot out, hesitating, lingering, haunting.
Jaehyun finds him skulking in a corner, the paper straw Sungho had dumped in his soda now more pulp than anything else. He still tries to drink from it.
Taesan raises his eyebrows at the action. “You’re just swallowing pulp and not the fruit kind,” he snorts, shaking his head. A few of the longer strands fall into his eyes.
He should have gone to a barber instead of chopping his hair with blunt kitchen scissors but Taesan had been angry and tired and he wanted to excise control over something, ruin himself just to stop feeling so much. His anger later faded into overwhelming sadness and he had cried on the floor of his bathroom, still surrounded by his cut hair, until it was dark outside. Then he cleaned the hair and took a twenty minute shower with the water hot enough to burn. The sun had never been more unkind than it was on that day.
Jaehyun laughs, he laughs a lot, he laughs at everything and nothing, eyes curving into crescents of the moon, teeth glinting, catching light and transforming into something crystalline and sturdy. Taesan resents him almost just as much as he admires him. He wants to be like Jaehyun, he wants Jaehyun. His desire to be with him and be him both stem from similar places. He refuses to water that thought and keeps burying it.
“This is my third refill,” he says, as if it is supposed to make Taesan reconsider his words. As if that can undo the mushy paper straw back into its slightly sturdy, drier self. As if his words can turn back the last two hours and a half.
Taesan could have watched a movie. He could have watched two episodes of a k-drama. He could have taken a nap. Instead, he is sitting sullenly in a corner of Riwoo’s basement, watching Woonhak and Sungho arm wrestle — they are rolling on the floor and laughing and Taesan is not so jaded to not feel even a little bit of warmth spring in his chest at the sight of his friends swaddled in everything light and airy.
“I could have been watching a movie,” he says, voicing the first part of his thoughts aloud to Jaehyun.
Jaehyun, without missing a beat, replies, “We can watch a movie now.”
Taesan chews on the inside of his cheek. He forgot he had a heat sore there and ends up with a mouthful of stinging pain.
“I don’t think they’re ready to get off the floor,” he points out, jerking his thumb at Riwoo who is starfished on the floor and Leehan who is curled up right by Sungho and Woonhak. Jaehyun should be there, Taesan should also be there, among them, cut himself a slice of easy earned happiness.
Jaehyun smiles, head tilting to the side, the corners of his smile show a tinge of confusion. “I am though. Do you want to watch a movie with all of them?”
Taesan thinks of the time it takes for all of them to settle on a movie and it’ll probably end up being another hour before they could even begin a movie. He definitely does not want to keep thinking or stay decomposing in his corner of the room.
“Why?” he asks, stepping into Jaehyun’s space, inhaling the faint notes of citrus and something woody. He should ask Jaehyun to come along with him the next time he goes shopping for cologne.
The smile doesn’t fall off his face even at the almost accusing edge to his question.
“Why what?”
Taesan blinks at him. Jaehyun has to crane his neck up to meet his eye. “Why would you watch a movie with me instead of, y’know, laughing and rolling across the room with them.”
Jaehyun curls an arm around Taesan’s shoulders. It makes him hot all over. Jaehyun’s touch feels like sitting out on the porch at the peak of summer. It burns burns burns like everything horribly addicting.
“Taesan-ah,” he says, his name coloured with endearment. “We’re friends too.”
Taesan thinks he could kiss Jaehyun if only his mouth wasn’t sour with fear. It means nothing, it means everything.
“Okay. Let’s go then,” he mutters. His legs ache, there’s a twelve percent chance he’s gonna get a cramp in his calf but Jaehyun chugs the rest of his drink and leaves the disintegrating straw in it and Taesan thinks of the tenderness at his core and the molten planet of need that swirls around in his blood.
Taesan’s disillusionment with his life and purpose seem to quieten for a bit. Jaehyun uncoils his arm from around his shoulders. Taesan holds still, waiting for a touch to come. He wants, maybe his mouth is finally becoming larger, hunger turning itself to starvation, bone-white and bile yellow.
The sun is sinking into the horizon. They should probably at least text the others to tell them of their whereabouts. Jaehyun doesn’t pull his phone so Taesan doesn’t either.
“I biked here,” Jaehyun says. Taesan nods. Jaehyun does look like the type to do that.
“I thought you didn’t like working out,” he huffs, kicking at a pebble.
“I don’t. Do you want to come over?”
The sky is darkening rapidly. He wants to watch a damn movie and stay in his bed till the clock strikes three and his eyes burn from staring at his screen for too long.
“Hyung,” he says, the honorific tasting like rust in his teeth. “I want to watch a movie and then lie down in my bed.”
Jaehyun flinches at the sudden abrasiveness. “We can go to yours then.”
Taesan nods and swallows the saliva pooling in his mouth even though his sinuses sting with an apology at the tip of his tongue.
They walk back to his place isn’t dreadful. Jaehyun whistles all the way back and Taesan counts the number of steps they take. He ends up forgetting them.
Jaehyun stares at the side of his face as he fits the lock into the key. His bike is parked in Taesan’s alloted parking space. It makes a butterfly flap its wings for no reason. Taesan refuses to let it fly.
“Stop staring,” he snaps but Jaehyun doesn’t stop.
Taesan toes his shoes off at the entrance. Jaehyun follows through the motions perfectly. He toes his shoes off the exact way Taesan had done and folds the hem of his pants as he steps in.
“I’m just gonna change out of these jeans,” Taesan says, awkwardly clearing his throat. He wants out, he wants to melt into the floorboards. There is so much he wants to do, vaporise and disappear, turn invisible, become a speck of dust in the air.
Jaehyun plops down on his worn out armchair and shrugs, his shoulders rippling like light on a lake’s surface. “It’s your place,” he says, stroking the surface of the velvet holstered arm-rest.
Taesan knows that Jaehyun is all boy and sinew and warmth. He knows so much about Jaehyun despite his mulish refusal to learn about him. He’d seen Jaehyun naked only once, on accident, his body still wet and winter pale, as he rushed out to grab a towel.
He came down with a fever the next day. For Taesan, it is one of the most humiliating days of his life. For Jaehyun, it was just another Wednesday.
“You can pick out a film,” he offers, a compromise, an olive branch. Jaehyun smiles at him, sufficiently mollified. Taesan feels his core twist and turn.
The tenderness, he thinks. It is turning him to goo, he is going to end up melting into the floor and leave a stain that won’t leave. His sheets are faded and saffron now. They used to be bright orange when he first brought them from his mother’s closet. He must be fading too without any comfortable corners.
There’s noise erupting from the TV already so Taesan makes quick work of shedding his clothes and slipping into something softer, something that won’t chafe and leave a red mark behind.
Jaehyun is watching the trailer of Spirited Away. Taesan just lingers at the door, watching the contours of Jaehyun’s face as they are washed by the colours from the TV screen. A kaleidoscope of colours, a hexagon filled with honey, Jaehyun in his space, Taesan hesitating like a ghost.
“Taesan-ah,” he murmurs again, the endearment back in his voice, staining it like sunlight. Taesan could cry, he could choke on all the bitterness he keeps between his rotting molars. “Have you watched this film?” he asks.
Taesan snorts. Of course he has. He’s watched it a hundred times before. “Have you?” he counters.
Jaehyun shakes his head. Taesan gapes at him in disbelief. “Really? We need to watch it.”
Jaehyun shifts on the armchair, making space for Taesan. He could sit on the other chair or on the floor or literally anywhere else and yet, yet, the bird and butterfly in his sternum lead him to the space Jaehyun has just made for him to stay close.
“This is such a great movie,” he emphasises, pressing the play button. Jaehyun hums, half intrigued, half indulgent.
Taesan allows himself to melt into Jaehyun’s side rather than the floor and keeps his eyes on the TV, watching the colours as they float past him in his sleepy haze.
“Sleep,” Jaehyun softly says, curling an arm around him, just like he had done a while ago. Taesan still burns but it doesn’t hurt. It mellows out into a pleasant warmth, clouded at the edges with exhaustion and drowsiness.
Jaehyun tucks one of the longer strands of hair behind his ear. Taesan thinks of the pink lenses of romance.
“I’ll be here when you wake up,” he adds, as though Taesan needed another reason for the cavity in his chest to become a black hole.
Taesan has a protest on his tongue, waiting to be slipped out and pierce something soft and vital. Something about no one truly staying but Jaehyun is a warm weight by his side, his body firm in all the right places, voice kind and hair sweet smelling.
Taesan allows himself this small happiness. He doesn’t try and keep himself up thinking about paper straws and grass stains on the knees of his denim and the wheels on Jaehyun’s bike going round and round and round and how it is in a space that has Taesan’s name on it. He is thinking of blue waters and stepping into a house lit up with joy and a body full of light.
When he wakes up, the sky is completely dark and Jaehyun is still there. They don’t kiss but Taesan knows the taste of his kindness. It’s better. It’s more than anything he can ever want.
“I’m still here with you, Taesan-ah,” Jaehyun says and Taesan agrees. He is still there, with Taesan.