Work Text:
Present Day
🍊
Euijoo has been ignoring Nicholas.
He knows he has, knows Nicholas’s ego is probably pretty bruised. Still, he just…every time he tries, he gets the silliest feeling that his voice will spill out all wibbly and fragile, watercolour on tissue paper. He deals with that feeling enough when he’s speaking on behalf of the group, Japanese vowels he’s practised 200 times the same morning coming out jumbled and clumsy, earning him gratingly kind and understanding smiles. He’s accustomed to his inadequacy now, wears it like holey socks.
So, yeah. He’s ignoring him, but perhaps that wording is a little misleading. Sure, he’s spoken to Nicholas. He’s told him to hurry up in the mornings when they’re thirty seconds away from being late. He’s given him tight-lipped praise when he nails the choreography faster than anyone else. But that’s about as far as their ‘conversations’ have gotten, despite Nicholas’s obvious attempts at prolonging them. Euijoo’s a bastard, he knows. If he had the slightest idea of how else to navigate this, he’d obviously be doing it.
The song ends for the nth time and a collective exhale resounds from the members. The mirrors are beginning to fog around the edges with their sweat.
“Shall we go again?” Euijoo forces out between gasping breaths and Kei, of all people, gives him a sidelong glance.
“...Sure,” He replies, eyes still on him. So they do. Euijoo stares at his bedraggled reflection in the mirror; knows he should be looking at the group as a whole for gaps in formation, for any hint of inconsistency. But he keeps his gaze trained on himself, on his empty eyes. Ignores the familiar weight of others.
-
“Can you please slow down?”
Euijoo reluctantly slows his pace until he’s standing still, chewing on his lip.
When they’d finished practice—when the chorus of groans outnumbered those who wanted to continue (just Euijoo, unsurprisingly)—he’d flashed a half-convincing smile at Kei and made a show of needing to get some air. He hadn’t realised he’d been followed. He should have.
He’s reached an avenue of cherry trees, no longer full of blossom but heavy with summer foliage. The evening sun casts shallow shadows against them, like vertebrae of a great green spine. He hasn’t been here since they were in flower a few months before. The temperature is just beginning to drop. The air feels charged.
Euijoo sits on one of the nearby benches, stretching his arms up until something twinges in his ribs. Tomorrow he’ll regret going too hard, but he’ll probably do it again. It’s the only thing that quietens his mind: pushing his body until he’s starved enough of oxygen that it seems to cut the airflow to his thoughts too, dulls their edges enough to mute their sting.
He looks to his right, to Nicholas walking towards him. His nails dig into the rough wood and paint of the bench beneath him.
A Few Weeks Ago
🍓
“You’re serious?”
“Mm.” Euijoo replies, smile smug and pretty infuriating. Pretty. Infuriating.
“Just us?”
“Mm.”
“You’re certain?”
“Yes!” Eujoo laughs. “Why do you sound so unsure?” He gives Nicholas a gentle shove, the corners of his mouth twitching.
Nicholas finds himself laughing too, giddy and incredulous. He stares at the printed-out screenshot, studies it like he’s missing some major part, eyes skipping past some vital information in their feverish scanning. Reads it again and again. He isn’t missing anything, he’s fairly certain. Euijoo has booked them a getaway for a few days, over Nicholas’s birthday. Just the two of them.
Nicholas looks up at him, eyes still erratic, scared to look Euijoo in the eye but also desperate to parse through the emotions on his friend’s face. It’s blank—of course it is.
“Are you sure we’ll be able to do this? What about our schedules?” Nicholas can’t help but ask. He feels stupidly desperate to quash the feeling that’s surging up through his ribcage, flooding it with starlight.
Euijoo sets him with a look, a sigh, a half-roll of his eyes. “Yes, I’m sure, believe it or not, I did check this with our managers.”
“What about the others?”
“Seems like they were all busy with their own work or personal stuff.” Euijoo looks away. “I did check.” He adds. “Are…are you not happy?”
“What?! Are you kidding?” Nicholas laughs again, nearing on hysterical to his ears. He needs to calm down. “Of course I’m happy, I just can’t believe it. Juju, thank you.” He says, and he can practically see the words leaving his mouth as he speaks them, and they’re bursting at the seams with his sincerity, dragging across the floor under the weight of it. It’s mortifying.
He again tries to subtly search Euijoo’s face. Euijoo smiles at him, all gentle crescents, but it’s like he’s looking through him. Like he’s smiling at the space Nicholas occupies, not Nicholas himself. Or he might just be painfully paranoid.
🍊
Two days before Nicholas’s birthday, they set off. When Euijoo had originally posed his idea to their managers, they’d offered to arrange the accommodation, but Euijoo had insisted he wanted to do it himself. It was in a section of eastern countryside, no big towns nearby—nothing crazy, nothing too fancy. But that was sort of the point.
Nicholas insists on taking a detour on their drive over, despite it being an area neither are remotely familiar with, and Euijoo’s trepidation only seems to bolster him further. They appear to be in the middle of nowhere, the road snaking around hairpin bend after hairpin bend. Nicholas tries to drive with one hand on the wheel, all blasé, until they almost veer into a hedge and his other hand has to fly up to grip it. It’s so silly, so painfully him that Euijoo has to force his gaze away, focusing it instead on the dashboard which flickers as ripples of moonlight filter through the branches overhead, muted silvery blue light dancing across Nicholas’s fingers; his rings. Somehow Euijoo’s gaze has drifted back to him again.
🍓
After a scenic evening drive, they reach the Airbnb in one piece and before long they’re sitting on the sofa, a K-drama playing on the TV that Euijoo had insisted he’d heard good things about. He sits to Nicholas’s right in a tank top and shorts, skin shining golden; summer incarnate. His shoulders scrunch up before drooping in a drawn-out yawn. He looks at Nicholas then, eyes simultaneously bone-deep tired and wide awake. Nicholas smiles at him, unthinking and overthinking.
Euijoo’s tilting suddenly, head coming to rest on Nicholas’s legs.
“You’re hogging the fan,” He mutters in explanation. “And I know you won’t give it up, so, I might as well put myself in its path too.”
Nicholas could reply that of course he’d share the fan, they can set it to oscillate; that really, getting closer will probably make him warmer, not cooler. But he doesn’t.
From his view of Euijoo’s side profile, Nicholas can see that he’s still watching the TV. He could so easily make a joke about how Euijoo’s view must be sideways now, how there’s no way he can see the screen clearly, but there’s also not a chance in hell that Nicholas is going to risk this moment ending prematurely. Nicholas’s blood is running so, so cold, and Euijoo is so warm, he’s going to sink into Nicholas’s legs, melt them like popsicles. There’s going to be a sodden divet where his cheek presses against the ice of Nicholas’s bare thigh.
Nicholas knows Euijoo doesn’t generally mind his habit of forgetting about the concept of personal space, and yet still never seems to have a particular inclination for it, never instigates it. Usually. Nicholas is frozen, convinced he’ll startle Euijoo away with the slightest movement.
Nonetheless, within a few minutes the needlessly twisting plot of the K-drama drags him back in, quite against his will. Suddenly half an hour has passed, and the episode is coming to some sort of emotional climax—Nicholas thinks he maybe didn’t pay enough attention a couple of episodes back because he isn’t grasping enough of what’s going on for it to affect him.
He hears Euijoo sniff and looks down at him. He’s still fixedly watching the TV screen. A single teardrop runs across the bridge of his nose, down over the cheek smushed against Nicholas’s leg to settle on Nicholas’s skin.
Nicholas feels like he should tear his gaze away; seeing Euijoo cry like this is far too intimate for him to be permitted. It’s different to tears shed over uncertain futures, screaming muscles from overexertion. Those can be swept under the thick rug of contractual employment, or rather, that’s what Nicholas tries to do with them. Outside of that, though? It feels like too much. Nicholas isn’t sure if he’s earned that yet. Every time it happens—which is rare—Nicholas finds himself with the following options: pretend he doesn’t notice at all, joke about it loudly in front of everyone, or both.
Maybe that sounds childish. Mean-spirited, even. His reasoning? If he can convince Euijoo that he doesn’t think of it as a big deal, then perhaps Euijoo won’t cotton on to just how much of a physical blow it feels to Nicholas every time. Because he knows that as soon as Euijoo realises, he’ll no longer allow himself to be vulnerable like that around him. That might sound paradoxical for most other people—in the context of Euijoo, it makes perfect sense. There isn’t much Euijoo despises more than being a hindrance to others. Nicholas knows he’s sick to the teeth of it. But he’s unfortunately lumped together any form of emotion that isn’t what he deems ‘desirable’ as impermissible; keeps them all clutched tightly to his chest. But sometimes…sometimes they wrestle free, like wild animals, unused to being handled, or maybe Euijoo loosens his grip. Whatever it may be, Nicholas treasures those moments above all else.
This is one of those times. Euijoo looks up at him from the awkward angle as the episode ends. Nicholas should laugh, but his sun-soaked brain is running ten seconds behind, so he just stares at Euijoo as he cries. Euijoo smiles sheepishly, like now that he knows Nicholas has seen him, he’s just waiting for the teasing to begin.
Pretty, is all Nicholas’s brain manages to provide. He’s had the fan pointing right at him for about an hour now, flesh close to breaking out in goosebumps, but his palms are beginning to sweat.
“My turn!” He announces, manhandling a bemused Euijoo to sitting before taking his position and placing his own head on Euijoo’s narrow thighs. The next episode isn’t autoplaying for some reason, maybe Euijoo paused it. He didn’t notice him pick up the remote. But as there’s no point for him to face the TV, Nicholas lies on his back, looking straight up at Euijoo. This was supposed to ease the tension his mind was beginning to conjure up. It might be doing the exact opposite.
Euijoo was laughing; a sweet, breathless sound. But as it peters out, Nicholas realises his expression isn’t as guarded as he’d usually expect it to be. His bangs are being gently parted by the jet of the fan. He holds Nicholas’s gaze, steady and warm. So warm.
A person’s eyes are often described as something you can fall into—a chasm, or maybe a pool of water. Looking up at Euijoo in this moment, Nicholas doesn’t quite understand that comparison.
When he was a child, maybe 6 or 7, Nicholas’s father told him never to look directly at the sun. They were in the car, driving home from a relative’s house, mid-evening. The sun was still sitting fat on the horizon, following their car between trees and buildings and other cars. Nicholas stared at it until his retinas burned and he had to scrunch his eyes shut. But there it still was—branded on the backs of his eyelids, and then again on his lap when he opened his eyes.
That’s the sensation he’s reminded of now.
🍊
Nicholas’s chest heaves from exertion as he settles. Euijoo’s brain feels sticky and electric. His cheek on Nicholas’s thigh. Nicholas’s firm hands on him as he hoists him upright, giggling, eyes glazed. Those same eyes on him as he takes Euijoo’s position. They’re tightly closed now.
It feels surreal, being so close to him. Both physically and otherwise. It probably shouldn’t at this point—they spend close to 24 hours a day in each other’s company, orbiting one another. Or more, Euijoo orbits Nicholas, unable to get too close, but ever-present regardless. But too frequently he forgets that there’s an entire solar system of others in their own rings of orbit around him. Nicholas always had that sort of magnetism to him, even back when they hardly knew each other, Euijoo would feel his nervous system kickstart when they’d pass each other in the hall. He assumed it was because Nicholas was pretty intimidating from first appearances, something he likes to tease Euijoo about as often as he can. But, truly? Even once Euijoo managed to find an excuse to speak to him, to get to know him, and realised he wasn’t intimidating at all—that he was full of easy laughter and sweetness and insecurities and warmth, that feeling never went away. It only grew, and Euijoo only got better at ignoring it. At shielding his eyes from the gently searing rays of the sun.
Euijoo watches Nicholas’s ribcage as it rises and falls, slowing in momentum. After what feels like hours but is probably seconds, Nicholas reopens his eyes, and it feels as if he’s just planted his pointer finger on the fabric of Euijoo’s shirt, right over his heart, pressing down into the sinew and bone. There’s a rawness in them that stings Euijoo like alcohol over grazes. Euijoo needs it to wash the grit from his wounds. But God, it hurts.
🍓
Nicholas traipses upstairs with their bags, fully taking in the accommodation for the first time. It isn’t a big place but it’s certainly charming. Airy, simple decor, lots of potted plants. He can see why Euijoo chose it.
He sighs, shaken from whatever the hell just happened between them on the sofa, but that’s so typical of him. Always looking for meaning where there isn’t any. Making everything all poetic in his head, when it isn’t. It isn’t. He can’t ruin this trip. He can’t get too comfortable. He can’t get carried away.
The bedroom is a modest space that’s framed by a huge window. They’re bordered on all sides by the undulating crests of mountains, though it’s too dark out to see them now.
And…one double bed.
Nicholas backtracks into the hall and checks the number of doors on this floor. One cupboard. One bathroom. And one bedroom. Okay.
Euijoo comes upstairs then. Nicholas feels his cowardly heart pick up speed like it’s trying to leg it out of there. Too bad, he thinks. You’re caged. And so am I.
He joins Nicholas in the doorway, expression equal parts amused and confused. “Something wrong? Why are you loitering like that?”
Nicholas laughs, an ugly, jagged thing; it bounces off the walls and right back into him. “Did you check all of the information when you booked this place? There’s only one bed.”
Euijoo’s face wipes clean of emotion, and his eyes move to the bed, then the floor. “I did, yeah. I didn’t think it would matter.”
Nicholas feels his own face dramatically drop in realisation. Euijoo’s bag slips off his shoulder and he catches the strap in the crook of his elbow.
He huffs another quiet laugh, and Euijoo’s wide eyes dart back up to him.
“No, I mean, obviously. Just…hands to yourself, yeah? If I wake up to you attached to me like a koala again…”
“That never happened.” Euijoo rolls his eyes, but Nicholas is relieved to see some lightness seeping back into them.
🍊
Euijoo stands at the bedroom window as Nicholas brushes his teeth in the other room. He’s opened it as far as it can go, can’t help but lean out of it slightly. Sheets of rain fall past, the closest drops illuminated by the bedroom light. The rest he can only hear and smell. The scent of a world scrubbed clean, invigorated, replenished. He tilts his head up to the clouds, closes his eyes against it. Let it scrub him clean. Let it wash him as blank as a slate.
He hears Nicholas pad across the wooden floorboards.
“Damn, it’s really coming down, huh.”
“Mm.”
“Hey.” A laugh. “Juju, you’re gonna get a cold sticking your head out into it like that! You’re soaked!”
“How? It’s so warm out.” He mumbles, the rain cool on his lips.
He hears Nicholas huff behind him, can feel the warmth of him so close, though they aren’t even touching.
What’s it called when electricity jumps from one thing to another through thin air? Arcing, right? Eujoo feels like he could power a whole city.
Somewhat reluctantly, Euijoo turns to face him. Nicholas smiles at him lopsidedly. Euijoo can smell the mint of the toothpaste. He stomps that thought down quickly.
“People think you’re normal, you know?”
Euijoo scoffs. “What do you mean by that?”
“Well. Imagine if they knew what you were really like.”
“And what exactly am I ‘really like’?”
Nicholas looks at him, into him. Euijoo hopes he doesn’t look too close.
Eventually, Nicholas drops his eyes and laughs to himself quietly, smile fading.
“Like this.” He gestures vaguely towards the window.
Euijoo shakes his wet hair at him like a dog, and Nicholas yelps and splutters and laughs and Ah. Why would it matter how much Euijoo gets rained on. There’s enough warmth in Nicholas’s smile to get him through an Arctic winter.
🍓
Nicholas wakes in the middle of the night and darts a hand out to tap at his phone screen. 3:43am.
He stiffens when he realises there’s a pair of arms wrapped around him. He exhales slowly through his nose. There’s no way he’s getting back to sleep any time soon.
This is enough. This is enough. This is enough.
He repeats the words like a mantra in his head over and over again, all the while knowing, deep down, that he’ll never believe it.
🍊
They head out early the next morning, before it can get too hot. Nicholas hadn’t wanted to, had tried to convince Euijoo to let him stay in bed for a few more hours. Euijoo had attempted to ply him with coffee, and when that hadn’t worked, he’d pulled the “I booked this getaway for you, don’t waste it” card. Nicholas argued that it was his birthday treat, so he should be the one to decide how to spend it, but even as he spoke he was reluctantly pushing back the duvet and rolling out of bed.
They walk along a quiet country lane in dappled shade. Euijoo looks to his side. Nicholas’s face is always stuck in a flat line for the first hour or so after waking, like he has to soak in some sunshine before he can glow. He’s about 80% thawed by now. He looks back at Euijoo, and Euijoo mimics his dead-eyed expression, and Nicholas cracks into a grin. And it’s like Euijoo is feeling the sun on his bare skin for the first time in his life. It’s like that every single time.
“Do you know where we’re going?” Nicholas asks after a few minutes.
“Well, it said on the Airbnb description that this road leads to the closest village.”
“And how far is that?”
“About half an hour?”
“You don’t sound so sure.”
“You drove along here yesterday, do you not remember?”
“I was too busy following the GPS.”
“Not looking at the road? That’s dangerous driving.”
“Sorry, who of us has actually passed their driving test?”
“Definitely a fluke.”
“I can’t believe I’m getting bullied on my birthday-eve.”
“Your birthday-eve.” Euijoo deadpans.
“Exactly.”
Euijoo was right—the road leads them to a quaint village with a handful of stalls and one convenience store. He can’t resist shooting Nicholas a smug grin. Nicholas sighs and shrugs in defeat, unnervingly fond.
His face lights up further still as they make their way over to the first stall, a fruit vendor. Euijoo would buy him the entire stand’s worth if he wanted it.
He doesn’t quite ask for that, but Euijoo insists on paying regardless. They meander, take photos of each other beneath a trellis of mugunghwa. Nicholas poses, and Euijoo realises the pink of the flowers matches the delicate shade of his lips perfectly. Euijoo has always loved flowers. It feels fitting.
He looks at Nicholas through the phone camera. It’s one of the rare occasions he’s able to stare at him in real time unabashedly, without having to worry about being caught. Nicholas looks back at him, smiles teasingly at him. No, Euijoo has to remind himself. At the camera.
They walk back, the morning wanes; the temperature creeps into uncomfortable territory. There’s a creek by their accommodation that they’re grateful to find, with a forked tree growing at the water’s edge, the lower limb stretching out across the water like it was put there on purpose. Euijoo sits in the natural seat-like curve of it as Nicholas wades into the slow-moving water below. He pulls his t-shirt off absentmindedly, and Euijoo stares at the light dancing on the water’s surface, trying to think back to a time when this didn’t affect him.
Part of Euijoo wants to blame Nicholas for it all, for being so easy to like, so easy for Euijoo to slip past that. It’s like the sensation of opening something that’s vacuum-sealed and then trying to stuff it back into its packaging. Not happening.
🍓
It’s deeper than he initially thought, maybe even swimming depth. He looks up at Euijoo, his expression vacant as he sweeps his toes through the water. They’d bought a bag of raspberries from the fruit stall and had shared them on the walk back. Nicholas looks at his fingers, stained red from the raspberry juice even as he runs them through the river. It makes him think about the sensation of digging his own fingers into his chest. Maybe if he could do that, he could hold his heart. He could still it, reprimand it, console it when he confuses his foolish daydreams with reality.
He looks at Euijoo’s fingers then, stained the same red.
He plunges the rest of his torso under the water, followed by his head. The shuddering shock of the cold blooms through him, aching so good. His heart stutters in his chest as he rises back above the surface. His eyes are drawn to the brightest thing here—muscle memory. The air smells of wet soil and sun-hot leaves. Euijoo looks fucking beautiful.
Perhaps the water is cooling his brain to the point of recklessness. He grasps one of Euijoo’s dangling feet with a sodden hand and tugs it.
Euijoo’s eyes go all big and alarmed and pseudo-affronted, but he doesn’t put up much of a fight, almost seems to let himself slip from the branch’s divot and into the water.
“My t-shirt!!” He exclaims, spluttering and splashing and grinning grinning grinning. “My shorts!”
“Your shorts will be fine,” Nicholas manages around the giggles bubbling up into his mouth, so sweet. “But maybe take your shirt off.”
“Why?”
“Because I have? Should I be the only shirtless one here?”
“Don’t say that like you don’t leap at the chance to wear the skimpiest outfits possible recently.”
“What!” Nicholas barks, flicking some water at Euijoo. “That isn’t true.”
“Yeah, sure, and all those t-shirts you own have become cropped completely at their own accord. Must be magic.”
🍊
“Must be,” Nicholas says, and shoves Euijoo so he loses his footing and stumbles backwards with a splash, arms pinwheeling. Nicholas swims over to him, grinning in that insufferable way of his. “Come on, your shirt really isn’t serving much of a purpose now.”
“Why are you so desperate for me to be shirtless?” Euijoo retorts without thinking. He feels the blood rush to his cheeks despite the chill of the water.
Nicholas’s face takes on a cutely stricken cast. “You don’t have to be.”
Euijoo rolls his eyes and yanks his sodden shirt over his head before he can change his mind. Still, it makes him feel stupidly exposed, considering how frequently they cross paths in various states of undress: towels slung around hips at the dorm, hurried backstage costume changes, hell, even in bed last night. This really shouldn’t be any different. But…why does it feel like Nicholas is avoiding his gaze, too?
Even without looking Nicholas in the eye, he’s hard to ignore. He kneels in the water, just about shallow enough for his shoulders to breach the surface. Rivulets of water trace his collarbones, glistening like nitid scales. If Euijoo avoids looking at his face, the face of his colleague; his teammate; his friend, maybe he can convince himself it’s someone else, someone he’s allowed to want. His gaze snags on the scar on his arm as he lifts it out of the water. He can’t convince himself of anything.
🍓
Nicholas wakes to the scent of something cooking. Baking? He isn’t sure. Sleep blankets him, a heavy weight, and their time in the sun the previous day has exhausted him to his very core. Exhausted, but also sated. Perhaps because he’d woken to Euijoo’s arms unwittingly wrapping around him again during the night.
This time, Nicholas had turned onto his other side before realising what had woke him. So as his eyes adjusted to the darkness, he felt the warmth of Euijoo’s arms at the same time he was presented with his face, serene and unburdened with sleep. Nicholas had watched him like that for longer than was perhaps acceptable. But the thrill of being able to take in Euijoo in his entirety was too intoxicating to resist.
The pleasant aroma drifting in from downstairs combined with the hum of the AC begins to lull Nicholas back to sleep, and he does little to fight it, until he hears the door creak open.
He opens his gritty eyes to the sight of Euijoo tiptoeing into the room holding a plate, which upon closer inspection seems to hold a stack of pancakes. There’s a single candle on top, its flame shielded by Euijoo’s slender fingers.
Then Euijoo breaks into a jarringly enthusiastic rendition of Happy Birthday, and Nicholas groans and pulls a pillow to cover his face. Mostly because he’s grinning so hard he feels he might split at the seams. Euijoo only ratchets up the volume and starts to tug at the edge of the pillow with his free hand. Nicholas lets him pull it away once he’s sure he has a handle on the pure giddiness and affection that’s threatening to spill out of him.
Their gazes lock, and it’s almost blinding. Euijoo’s face breaks into a mirroring grin as he sings, and as it ends, he looks down at the plate. Nicholas is grateful for the reprieve.
On his exhale, as the candle dims and begins to smoulder, Nicholas makes his wish.
Please, don’t let me ruin this. Let this be enough for me.
Eujoo looks at him again, eyes sparkling, and Nicholas knows his wish isn’t going to come true.
🍊
Nicholas is standing over the kitchen counter, paring one of the mangos they bought from the fruit stall yesterday and eating the slices of flesh from the blade of the knife. The juice is dripping all over the marble of the countertop, down his arms, corded with muscle and tanned from their time in the sun.
Down to his fingers. Euijoo wants to taste them.
Sheesh. Euijoo shakes his head to clear it, flexes his hand at his side. He opens the fridge and lingers in the hope that the frigid air can cool his thoughts; sterilise them.
Thinking like that about his own friend…Euijoo hates himself for it. But without anything to distract him, it’s like a bee in a glass jar: the longer he ignores it, the more insistent it gets.
Nicholas turns then, spotting Euijoo standing awkwardly at the open fridge.
“Wanna try some? It’s so good.” He holds the golden fruit out to Euijoo in a sticky hand.
“Uhhh no, I’m okay.” Euijoo wills himself to be normal, to smile unaffectedly.
🍓
“Suit yourself.” Nicholas shrugs.
Euijoo tracks his movements as Nicholas finishes the mango. He looks sort of pissed off. Nicholas decides against attacking the pit like a rabid dog like he was planning to.
He has the distant thought that he’s been far too relaxed on this trip. Has been far too blatant about his feelings, despite not voicing them at all.
But the thing is, he can’t quite find it in himself to care. Not being around the rest of the members, no one to witness his idiocy other than Euijoo, has lulled him into a state of false security—a state of thickheaded hopefulness. He can’t help it. It’s always there, a current of perpetual thrumming beneath his skin, pulling him towards Euijoo. His own gravitational pull.
🍊
“So, my sister tried to convince me to bleach my hair.”
“What?” Nicholas almost shouts, incredulous. “And what did you reply?”
“I told her it was funny she’d say that because it’s also something I’ve been contemplating.”
“WHAT?!” Nicholas's voice pitches up a further octave and Euijoo has to bite the inside of his cheek to stop himself from breaking into a grin.
Not that Nicholas would be able to see it anyway. He’s half-starfished across his legs, head resting just to the right of Euijoo’s hip. They’d turned the AC on full blast and were both now nearing on uncomfortably cold but couldn’t be bothered to switch it off. So Nicholas is pressed up against and across him, basking in Euijoo’s body heat like a cat in a sunbeam.
“Do you have a problem with that?” Euijoo tries to keep his voice as indignant as possible, enjoying this more than he probably should.
“...No, I just…I would appreciate a heads-up before you decide to do that. That’s all.”
Euijoo scoffs. “I can’t tell if that’s because you think it would be really good or really bad.”
“I’ll leave that up to your imagination.”
“I think I’d suit blonde hair better than you do.”
Nicholas lifts his head from where it’s nestled at Euijoo’s side to scowl at him, but his lips seem to struggle to remain in a straight line, pulling up at the corner just so. It reminds Euijoo of when he’d have to underline the date in his exercise books at school. From time to time he’d risk trying it without a ruler, and the line would always end up slightly curved.
He loses himself in relaying the phone call with his sister to Nicholas. He’s long gotten into the habit of updating him on his family, and Nicholas with his own too. But he pauses mid-sentence as soon as he realises that Nicholas is gently stroking his thumb over Euijoo’s knee. The action is so sweet, so tender, that Euijoo has to muster all of his energy to not twitch his leg away like a large part of him wants to do. Not because he doesn’t like it. Because he does.
He does, and he knows that Nicholas likely thinks nothing of it at all, things like that are second nature to him. Euijoo isn’t sure if Nicholas’s family are just especially touchy-feely, or if his own family especially aren’t.
He’s gotten better at expecting it, sure. But then there are times like this, where Nicholas pushes their intimacy into a realm that makes Euijoo think Should I know this? Should this feel normal to me?
But he doesn’t. It doesn’t.
He wonders if Nicholas can feel the shiny skin of scars he earned in childhood playgrounds. He thinks of Nicholas’s more often than he probably should. He thinks of running his own fingers along the edges of it.
He can see it now, actually, on the arm that Nicholas has draped across him. His hairs are raised from the cold just like Euijoo’s, obvious even from here, but the scar is a simultaneously smooth and jagged expanse.
Nicholas’s thumb stills and Euijoo realises he’s gone silent. Has it been seconds, minutes? Was he mid-sentence? He has no idea.
“And…so…”
“So…you were saying your parents’ anniversary is coming up…” Nicholas prompts. Euijoo can hear the smile in his voice, and it’s an immediate balm on his trembling psyche.
“So,” Euijoo tries again, finding his footing this time. He launches back into his inane monologue.
Nicholas has an eerie habit of lulling him into a sense of safety that has Euijoo spilling his thoughts out unbidden. When Euijoo is performing his ‘Leader duties’, being the spokesperson for the group in a language that has only just begun to feel somewhat familiar, it goes one of two ways: he speaks for himself, having to choose his words with extreme care, or he reads from a script. Both have all of his unspoken words piling up inside him, snowflakes against a door, until they’ve compacted into something closer to ice. And he knows how it makes him come across. Quiet, reserved, sometimes even cold. But how do you thread a needle if your spool is a knotted clump?
Nicholas has come the closest to untangling him, to tunnelling through.
He makes quiet noises of agreement at appropriate intervals as Euijoo speaks. His thumb starts moving again, and Euijoo thinks about the old TV his family had when he was younger, a heaping black cube of a thing. Five-year-old him brushing his hand across the screen, feeling the ticklish zap of static. If he had to imagine what magic felt like, it would be that.
“My sister told…”
“Mm?” Nicholas replies when Euijoo begins to trail off again. He scrambles to remember where he was. His knee is practically vibrating.
“My sister told me…she’s started seeing a guy.”
“No way! Is it serious?”
“What?”
“The guy she’s seeing. Is it serious?” Nicholas lifts his head, craning his neck around to look at Euijoo directly. His eyebrows are raised in question, his mouth quirked to the side in amusement.
Nicholas’s gaze feels…grounding, which itself is quite a contradictory word. In electrical terms, it prevents electricity from reaching unsafe levels, allowing it to discharge safely. Isn’t it funny then, Euijoo thinks, that standing on the ground near live electricity can force us to become a conductor, for the electrical current to pass right through, scorching from the inside out?
“Whaaaat?” Nicholas asks, but his expression is more of someone who knows the punchline to a joke Euijoo’s never heard.
“I–I don’t know if it’s serious.” Euijoo relents to himself and moves his knee to the side. Nicholas’s hand stills, face quieting to something close to blankness.
“I see.”
🍊
The Airbnb has a decently sized garden which they end up spending the majority of the afternoon in. The sun drags itself lazily towards the horizon, shadows against the house deepening, blanketing them both in welcome coolness.
Euijoo watches Nicholas as he flicks through his phone, squinting at the screen. He suddenly holds it up to take a photo of Euijoo. Grinning, Nicholas rotates the phone to show him.
The Euijoo that stares back at him looks startlingly unguarded. “I look so stupid.”
“What?” Nicholas replies, indignant. He turns the phone back to himself, frowning. “You don’t at all. You look c— oh, the Twitter birthday posts came out when we were sleeping. I completely forgot to check.” Nicholas scoffs and turns his phone around again. It shows Yuma’s post wishing Nicholas a Happy Birthday, with two of the three photos being of Euijoo and Nicholas. Euijoo tries not to think about how that must look. He tries not to think about what Nicholas might be thinking about it, too.
Instead, he says:
“Someone definitely has a crush.”
Nicholas, who was also uncharacteristically quiet, snorts. “What, Yuma? Are you kidding? The guy teases me in every spare minute we have.”
“Exactly.”
A smirk. “I mean, who can blame him.”
Euijoo’s responding silence has the other boy sitting up abruptly and peering over Euijoo where he lies on the grass, expression mock-offended.
“Oh? Do I not charm you?”
“Do you ‘charm’ me? I’m sorry, who are you?”
Euijoo is quietly amazed at his own confidence. Nicholas’s arms bracket him on either side as he leans over him. He moves his face closer, one eyebrow raised, mirth dancing across his features.
“Say that again.”
Euijoo’s traitorous blood rushes to his face. His timid heart is like a bird close to fledging, feathers still fuzzy with down, catching on the wind more than he’d like: more than he’d like and less than he needs to leap without plummeting.
“Who are you?” He repeats feebly.
A breeze snakes through the grass, making the blades quiver as if with anticipation: a drum roll; a pulse. Nicholas hovers above him. Euijoo wants to shove him away with all of his might. He wants to crash into him with even more of it. Nicholas’s gaze wavers, so fast that Euijoo would’ve missed it if he wasn’t so close. But he is, and he sees that millisecond when his eyes dip, there’s no way he could have imagined it, is there? And Euijoo feels his arms tremble as he tries to push himself up onto his elbows, like a newborn fawn on fresh legs. His heart starts to thunder. His ears begin to roar. His face prickles. The distance is so short. Euijoo holds his breath.
And Nicholas pulls back, his eyebrows deeply furrowed like crumpled paper. He presses the heels of his palms against his eyes; his mouth drags down into a bow as if weighted hooks attach at either side. He clears his throat but doesn’t say anything.
Confusion, resentment, shame: they slam into Euijoo, one after the other until a yawning pit begins to carve out inside him, filling to the brim with the icy ache of disappointment. Of course he’d imagined it. And Nicholas will have realised what Euijoo was expecting—what Nicholas had no intention of providing.
A familiar sensation, rising in him like a wintry tide; seafoam in his trachea, the salt of it stinging him. Because that’s all he’s been doing recently. Drowning. It’s all he knows how to do. He can’t stomach any more of it.
🍓
Nicholas reopens his eyes. He feels sick and off-kilter from the adrenaline churning through him. Euijoo stares into the mid-distance, expression flatlining.
What the fuck was Nicholas thinking.
He sits back on his heels. The options he’s presented with on how to navigate this spin behind his eyes like a reel on a slot machine. Laugh it off. Pretend nothing happened. Blame it on Euijoo. Act like it was part of a joke. Try it again.
He almost scoffs aloud at that last thought. Almost—but then Euijoo is getting up and walking away, and Nicholas sits and watches him go.
-
And somehow, they make it through the rest of the trip. They tiptoe around each other and laugh at the right moments and Nicholas could almost make himself believe nothing had changed. But that night, Euijoo sleeps with his back to Nicholas. He’d always assumed that the way Euijoo hugs him in his sleep was something he did unintentionally.
They drive back the next morning, the air thick and heavy, the sky hanging over them like a mattress of grey. Even with the car AC on max, Nicholas feels sweltering. Suffocated.
Present Day
🍓
Euijoo is ignoring him. Nicholas isn’t an idiot.
“Hey. Euijoo. Please, tell me what I’ve done wrong.”
Euijoo shakes his head, eyes scrunched shut like he’s in pain. “You haven’t done anything wrong. I’m sorry, it’s honestly nothing. I’m just stressed about work.”
Nicholas leans forward on the bench and towards Euijoo so he can see his face clearly. Euijoo’s eyes reopen, but he still refuses to meet his gaze. Nicholas wants to shake him. He wants to hug him. He just wants to touch him.
He collars his thoughts. Leashes them choking tight.
And yet, to his disdain, his hand reaches out of its own accord, seeking Euijoo’s own as it sits limply in his lap.
Nicholas knows. He knows what he’s done wrong. He almost kissed him, and Euijoo knows it, and it’s ruined everything. But some stupid part of him is clinging to the feeble hope that it isn’t that, that it has nothing to do with him. That this isn’t all his fault.
Euijoo tucks his hand into his pocket, and maybe Nicholas should think nothing of it—unfortunate timing, perhaps, but he might as well have Nicholas’s heart in his hand, might as well be shoving that to the bottom of his pocket too, to live between the loose change and lip balm. At least those things are of use to Euijoo.
Suddenly, Euijoo stands, breathing out a near-silent sigh. His eyes sit like blunt stones, heavy and dull. Nicholas feels the weight of them on his chest, crushing the breath out of him.
And then he’s on his feet too, grabbing Euijoo’s other hand as he takes a step, and it strikes him as so painfully cliché that he lets go of it before panicking and idiotically taking hold of it again. He hadn’t noticed that Euijoo had already stilled. His eyes rotate like millstones to Nicholas again, and Euijoo looks like he wants to rebuke Nicholas for something, that same look he gets when Nicholas is late getting ready and Euijoo has to take the brunt of it, that disappointment that reads to Nicholas like ‘I know you’re better than this. Please stop doing this to me.’ without Euijoo having to say a word aloud.
“Juju, I’m sorry. Please talk to me.”
His words seem to have the opposite of their intended effect. Nicholas likes to think he speaks Euijoo’s body language now, and the other boy’s suppressed wince, just a minute twitch of his eyebrows, a pursing of his lips, might as well be a slap in the face.
But the fact that Euijoo hasn’t wrenched his hand out of his grip is reason enough to keep trying. Even if he had, it would still be reason for him to keep trying. Everything is.
“Euijoo.” Nicholas says finally, flat and brittle.
“Mm?” Euijoo replies, quiet, halfhearted, eyes elsewhere now. Nicholas squeezes his hand.
“Please.”
Euijoo swallows, his eyes fluttering closed. “I can’t do this anymore.”
“...Can’t do what?”
He opens his eyes again, and Nicholas sees it: flints struck; sparks flying.
Euijoo tries to pull his hand away, but Nicholas, foolish, selfish, desperate, only grips it tighter.
“Euijoo, can’t do what?” Nicholas urges, voice trembling.
Euijoo stares at their joined hands. He takes hold of Nicholas’s wrist and gently wrenches his hand out of Nicholas’s grip. And by God does it hurt, and Nicholas feels bloodied and raw, but it’s eclipsed by his growing fear that Euijoo isn't going to speak another word to him.
“This…this is because of what happened on the trip, right?” He feels the panic pooling in his nerves, his words tumbling out desperately before Euijoo decides to walk away again and he’s forced to watch. “I’m so sorry, I—I was hoping you hadn’t noticed. But of course you did. I’m too fucking obvious. Or you’re too fucking perceptive.” He laughs, and it’s veering on bitter but he can’t really help it. He can’t seem to help anything, it seems. Nicholas. Wang Yixiang. Heart on sleeve; brain on back-burner.
“But I can’t keep this up any longer. I can’t. I can’t lose you as a friend, but I can’t keep pretending I’m okay with it being only that. I don’t have a choice though, do I?”
By this point, he isn’t expecting an answer. He’s expecting a back turned to him and for all of this to be brushed under the rug, and maybe things will be awkward between them for a few more weeks, but he’ll get over it—he has to. For the group’s sake. For his sake. For Euijoo’s sake.
But then, Euijoo looks up at him, eyes wide and glassy. “On your birthday.” He says.
“Yeah.”
“I thought you were going to kiss me.”
Hearing it from Euijoo’s lips is expectedly excruciating. “Yeah.” Nicholas grits out, mortified. “I was.”
“Why didn’t you?”
And Nicholas’s eyes, screwed half-shut in a grimace, fly back open. A fat raindrop lands on his forehead.
“Because you di— because I— what?” Nicholas’s heart seems to comprehend Euijoo’s reply before the rest of him, picking up to a gallop in seconds. Another raindrop lands on his eyebrow, he feels the coolness of it travel down his face. “What?” He weakly repeats.
“Why didn’t you?” Euijoo says again, so softly. A raindrop collects on his lashes before running down his cheek, or perhaps it’s a tear. Nicholas’s hand itches to wipe it away.
Another lands on Euijoo’s cupid’s bow. Marking the target for him, Nicholas’s brain provides. Euijoo’s face is completely unreadable, at first because it’s schooled into blankness, and then because his features blur as he moves closer—until he’s pressing his lips against Nicholas’s.
It’s painstakingly hesitant on both sides at first: Nicholas forgets to close his eyes from sheer shock so he sees the way Euijoo pulls back, emotion flooding his expression like a summer storm, like the one that saturates them now. Nicholas finally gives into the current, and it has his hand flying up to swipe the raindrop tears from Euijoo’s cheek, to cup it in the way he’s imagined doing countless times. It has him surging forward and picking up the kiss where Euijoo dropped it, just like he’d do with anything else, the next line in an interview; the next step in a dance.
Thunder rolls in the distance and the rain calms as quickly as it began, and Nicholas realises then. That’s what Euijoo is—the eye of the storm.
🍊
Euijoo kisses Nicholas greedily, desperately, giddy on his feet from the whiplash of the last few minutes. He breathes a laugh against Nicholas’s lips. “Someone might see us.”
He’d taken a cursory glance before kissing him, of course. There wasn’t a soul around—like time had been suspended for them, for that perfect moment.
Reality begins to seep back in, and he lets it. Nicholas grins at him as he takes a step backwards. Euijoo feels himself smiling back. Absence, but not. He can feel it now, glowing like a star in his ribcage, like golden rope. A completed circuit. A shared orbit.