Work Text:
The clock starts for Taerae between an end and a beginning.
Jeju is beautiful at sunset. He’s always wanted to visit, so it’s reward enough after the hell that was the six months prior, even if filming call times have only gotten earlier and he’s sore in places he didn’t know could ache. He breathes in seabreeze and imagines he’s someone else. Not Kim Taerae, but someone who gets to stay here long after the filming crews pack the last of their equipment into vans with tinted windows. Not Kim Taerae, but someone who could sink into damp soil without the fear of hovering hands that threaten to uproot him. He imagines what it would be like to live a life that never stretches beyond the coast.
The aftermath of winning the show isn’t at all what he pictured. It’s what he signed up for, and yet he feels unprepared for it now. Sitting in plastic waiting room chairs, one hand clasped tightly around Hanbin’s and the other in Jeonghyeon’s, everything looked different from this. He knew he’d be busy, but he didn’t anticipate how often he would be changing outfits in the car during the twenty minute ride between studio locations. He didn’t realize how much money he would waste on spoiled produce when he’s never back at the dorms long enough to cook. He thought he’d have the energy to call his sister more often. None of the fine print in his contract warned him about any of that.
He expected to get along with the other members eventually. He figured it would take longer, though there are still times where he feels like an imposter in his own skin and he’s slow to find the rhythm of their humor. He didn’t know it would be like this: sleeping in a pile on the floor because there’s too much to say to be apart at night; linking pinky fingers together before event staff usher them onstage; resting heads on shoulders on the couch outside of the recording booth; scarfing down late-night cup ramen and tracing constellations in the sky with their fingers by Han River; playing rock-paper-scissors to assign dishwashing duty and then doing them all together anyway because it’s quicker when they work as nine instead of one; stoically avoiding the mention of the end, like that’s all it would take to wake them up from this dream.
Taerae thought two and a half years would be long enough. Now, he’s not so sure. He’s staring down the barrel of a gun aimed at his chest, and he stamped ink into the paper that loaded it.
Now, he’s watching Matthew grip Ricky’s hand and lead him further out onto the rocks even as cold surf laps at their ankles and Ricky looks like he’d rather be anywhere else. A particularly fierce wave sprays them up to their waists and Ricky protests so loudly his voice cracks. Matthew darts in front of him with his arms outstretched as if he alone could stop a tsunami to protect a friend. Even from this distance, Matthew’s laugh is radiant and undeniable. Taerae can’t look away.
“He really must’ve been loved a lot as a child, huh?” Sung Hanbin muses at Taerae’s side, laughing quietly to himself. “He has so much of it to give.”
The comment lands heavy in Taerae’s stomach. He glances up at Sung Hanbin and recognizes the look on his face immediately. He’s seen it in the others often: Jiwoong, when Matthew whines for a bite of his lunch in the cafeteria; Hao, when Matthew comes to him asking for help on his Chinese homework; Ricky, when Matthew leans close to make sure he understood the words on a cue card; Gyuvin, when Matthew tugs his fingers into his sleeves to dab away tear tracks on Gyuvin’s cheeks; Gunwook, when Matthew smoothes one of his Pokémon band-aids over Gunwook’s knee after he skins it at practice; Yujin, when Matthew pouts at his teasing but still laughs along like Yujin can do no wrong.
Love, of the purest kind. That’s what Taerae sees.
It’s easy to forget they’re here for work. In another life, they might have met under different circumstances. Sung Hanbin might have been the one to book the flight tickets. They might have split the bill at dinner, or maybe Jiwoong would have paid the whole tab just to see Yujin’s eyes sparkle and have Matthew cooing his thanks at his arm. Maybe Hao and Ricky would have holed up in a café while the rest of them hike to a waterfall. Maybe Gyuvin would have forgotten to properly dry his hair after Gunwook dunked his head under the waves and caught a cold so they would have had to spoon-feed him samgyetang in bed.
Maybe it doesn’t matter one way or the other. They made it here in this life, didn’t they?
It’s Taerae’s turn for the individual interview portion. It reminds him of kneeling in the confessional. He stares straight ahead, says just what’s expected of him, and shows just enough vulnerability to appear human.
I was covetous, he would say to the priest, so I prayed for mercy.
I shared a bed with a man, he kept close to his chest, so I didn’t allow myself anything more than that.
I wanted to bond more with my members before our debut, he says to the camera, so I’m glad we could come here.
I just met these people and I already can’t imagine doing this without them, he holds under his tongue, so I’m counting down the days until they leave me.
Matthew is standing behind the director and looking at Taerae like he knows. A smile overtakes his face. Quietly, safely out of reach from all the cameras and expectant stares, Matthew burns brighter than a supernova.
No one else is looking his way. Taerae can’t believe how none of the nearby staff have noticed. The other members haven’t, either, still playing easily among the rocks and seafoam as if nothing has happened, as if Taerae’s chest hasn’t cracked open in one clean line, right down the middle. Now, there are two disparate halves of him: the Taerae from before who didn’t know how things would turn out (the one who hoped blindly), and the Taerae who has witnessed this sunset (the one who knows now what he’s running towards).
Matthew eclipses the sun as it bleeds out across the horizon. His smile is bathed in pink and gold and glows like the North Star. Taerae has never witnessed a solar eclipse before, but he heard that it’s dangerous to stare at one with the naked eye. He looks at Matthew and forgets that he should look away. He forgets that any more than a glance might change some fragile, inherent part of him for good. It would really be better if he didn’t look at all.
His face is wet. By the time he realizes what happened, it’s already too late.
Somewhere inside him, a clock starts ticking.
When it comes time to say it, say anything, the words jumble in his mouth. His tongue rests limp, knotted all the way down his throat. Everything he means to say instead comes out like this:
“Go and come back quickly.”
“What are you doing? Why are you like this?”
“One of those protein shakes you like is in the fridge, by the way. Yeah, top shelf.”
“How do you do that move? Do that again, I can’t seem to get it.”
“Tell your mother that I ate the snacks she sent well. Not too sweet.”
“You need to borrow my razor? I don’t know, I think you could get beards on idols trending. Ah, don’t whine, I’ll go get it.”
“Hey, Matthew-yah.”
Words intended to be biting and just mean enough come out far too soft. Words meant for tender moments don’t come out at all. Somehow, in between debut promotions and fansigns and comeback preparations, he finds time to struggle beneath the burden of his own emotions. As with everything else in his life, Taerae finds catharsis through music.
Wire strings bite grooves into the pads of his fingers. Maybe if he strikes hard enough, his fingerprints will split and smear into something new, something unfamiliar. Maybe he will forever be unidentifiable as Kim Taerae, the man who felt too much, not enough, never at the right time.
Curled in on himself, a hand on a neck, Taerae frets. He plays like he’s vomiting. The body of his guitar carves into his stomach and squeezes at his lungs until singing is no longer singing but wheezing, thinking more than saying, anything other than crying. He shed enough tears on that beach to last a lifetime, a pitiful one, two, then three, before he pursed his lips and chewed his tongue until copper washed away the taste of salt.
He plays, and plays, and keeps playing. He plays through the evening, long after the ambient noise of water from the shower running through pipes in the walls or utensils clinking in the kitchen has faded. After some time, he thinks that he should probably write the chords down somewhere so he doesn’t forget them. He should hide the lyrics behind a lock in his Notes app, too, like he usually does. He should do something, but the act of going from the simple production of sound to the much more tangible, undeniable fact of his own emotions staring back at him taunts him into inaction. He’s still working out the details of the song, anyway. It’s still too raw and unpolished. It still says too little and far too much. Maybe it would be better if he just forgot it in the morning.
Before he can decide between immortalizing the song and abandoning it entirely, there’s a trio of raps on the door to his room, so soft that Taerae swears he hallucinated them. When his fingers hang listless over the guitar strings, Sung Hanbin’s head peeks hesitantly through the door frame like he’s a trespasser in his own room.
“Sorry, I didn’t mean to interrupt. Is now a bad time?”
It’s the kind of thing Taerae would say, but without his accelerated pace, clipped words, and general unease. It’s humble, but confident. Perfectly polite. Taerae thinks he should be taking notes.
“Not at all,” Taerae assuages. “It’s your room, too, hyung. You can be in here.”
Sung Hanbin just smiles. “It seemed private. Don’t mind me, I’ll just grab a change of clothes and be out of your way.”
“Ah, no, it’s… I was just wrapping up. You can stay, hyung.”
He appreciates a lot about Sung Hanbin. He has the poise and knowhow of a senior performer with none of the ego. He’s good at taking care of the younger members while still treating them like equals. Taerae also appreciates that he’s ugly when he cries and that some nights he’ll fall into bed with a full face of makeup because he can’t spare the ten minutes it takes to complete his skincare routine.
He would be the perfect person to go to with words, Taerae thinks. The others go to him often, and it’s usually Taerae who makes himself scarce when he enters the room to see Sung Hanbin seated beside another member with his face softened by compassion. To Taerae, that look would just feel like pity.
Taerae stays silent. The only other words that night are the ones floating privately on a melody inside his head.
“What song were you playing all last night?” Matthew asks offhandedly in the waiting room the next day. “I really liked it, but I couldn't hear it that well so I couldn’t recognize it.”
Taerae goes rigid. He hadn’t thought anyone other than Sung Hanbin would have stopped to listen. It wasn’t the first night he spent holed up in his room on the guitar and it wouldn’t be the last. Whatever seeps under the crack beneath his door should be little more than white noise to the others by now.
“Just something I’m working on,” he says eventually. He says it like it’s unimportant. He almost convinces himself.
“You should play it for me sometime.”
Taerae doesn’t think he could stand it, having Matthew’s eyes on him, so bright and so goddamn earnest while Taerae's heart pours out of his chest. For him. Crying in front of him once was already bad enough.
“Hmm… I’ll think about it.”
“Come on,” Matthew wheedles, crowding into Taerae’s personal space. Leave it to Matthew to see his hesitancy and take it as permission to dig his heels in. “I already know it’s good. What are you so afraid of?”
What a question to ask Kim Taerae. He doesn’t have an answer that wouldn’t make Matthew frown or hold his hand or do any of the other horribly sincere things he does when he decides someone needs to be taken care of. Any one of those things would be too much for Taerae.
Matthew has never allowed him to hide behind polite distance or formality. He’d said, “Oh, so we're the same age, huh?” and that was that. On days when Taerae couldn’t even face himself, Matthew brought him up off his knees and forced Taerae to meet him at eye level. Matthew told him they were best friends before they had ever eaten a meal at the same table. He told him he loved him before Taerae had saved his contact in his phone.
Matthew had many best friends, to be fair. Conversely, Taerae had never called Hanbin by anything but his name. If not for Matthew’s forwardness and his unconscious, unstoppable need to carve out a spot for himself in the heart of every new acquaintance he meets, they might have wasted a lot more time getting to where they are now.
Time, which they have in a finite quantity. There’s a date highlighted on the calendar in his phone that floats behind his eyelids at times like these. It startles him enough to be brave, this time.
“I’ll play it for you when it’s finished,” he concedes, sealing his fate. Matthew wouldn’t have stopped pestering him until he agreed. In the end, he never stood a chance.
“I’ll expect a lot,” Matthew singsongs, his eyes betraying mischief, though the words themselves are genuine.
“I’ll write it well for you,” Taerae promises. He closes his eyes and kisses the air with exaggerated sweetness because he knows it’s the kind of thing that will make Matthew laugh.
A giggle, as expected, then the smacking of lips an inch away from his own. Taerae’s eyes fly open as he stumbles backwards into a chair stacked high with padded jackets. Matthew is laughing and his cheeks are flushed with life and his eyes glitter where they reflect the lights above the vanity mirrors. He leans in for another kiss attempt, but the smile won’t leave his face long enough for him to land one. Taerae cranes his head out of reach and winds fingers around Matthew’s biceps to get him to calm the fuck down.
“Think of me while you write it, jagi-yah,” are Matthew’s next words, deliberate in their breathiness. Whatever he’s trying to do, it’s working. Maybe it’s less that he’s trying and more that doesn’t know how else to be.
“I’ll think about whatever I want to think about.”
A lie by omission can still be the truth.
One day, Taerae wakes up and a year has passed without him realizing. In the bustle of daily interviews and salon visits and practice of all kinds, the song gets tucked away in the back of his consciousness. He doesn’t touch it again, but it doesn’t leave his mind, either. Matthew might have wanted to bother him about it more, but he either forgets or they become too busy for there to be any room to bring it up. Either case is equally likely. Taerae isn’t sure which is preferable.
Being an idol drains his soul as much as it breathes life into him. It wasn’t too long ago that he could go outside without fearing every glimpse of a smartphone, or that he could spend his evenings playing games and avoiding homework and cracking jokes with friends who don’t have pages dedicated to them on Namuwiki. Everything was so simple.
As much as he misses it, that Taerae from before, he’s also never felt so fulfilled. The cramped stage at school festivals was never big enough to bear the extent of his ambition. Now, waking up each day is like staring down at a meteorite crater and wondering how best to fill it. A year in, it’s a task that feels both endless and nearly within his grasp.
These days, he makes it a point to head to dance practice a couple hours early. It’s better than being the reason that everyone has to stay late, and Taerae appreciates solitude where he can find it. He’s already exhausted and sweaty and sick of his own reflection in the mirror by the time the others arrive. Jiwoong pushes a water bottle into his chest and Hanbin’s hand is firm yet gentle as it guides him to the benches in the back of the studio while the rest begin their warmup stretches. Group practice is even more grueling when he’s going into it weary and weak-limbed, but he can tell that the individual drills are paying off. He’s more sure of himself, his body moves to where it needs to be without him needing to visually track the path to his next spot, and the choreographer doesn’t single him out with corrections quite as often. Now, Gunwook whoops and says, “Shit, hyung, not bad!” just as often as he giggles when it’s Taerae’s turn for individual evaluations.
Taerae works hard and he’s ambitious just as the others are, but he’s also learned when to call it quits. He knows that practicing beyond the rigorous schedule drawn up for them by the company means toeing the line between self-improvement and a career-ending injury. So, he doesn’t linger in dressing rooms, he tries not to skip meals, and he takes it easy when his muscles start to convulse and his throat runs hoarse. He knows it’s a strength rather than a weakness to pull back before it becomes too much.
Some of the other members have a harder time finding that line.
It’s late when Taerae leaves the shower, even for someone like him who is most energized after the sun goes down. Hao went to bed an hour ago, and he’s usually still awake by the time Taerae falls asleep.
The light is on in Matthew’s room when he walks by it on the way to his own. On a whim, Taerae decides to bid him good night since they’re both still awake. His feet are carrying him to knock at the door and push it open before he can think twice.
Matthew’s in the middle of a one-armed push-up on the floor when he looks up to identify the intruder. He hovers there for a second, limbs bulging and quivering against the strain. His forehead and upper lip are beaded with sweat and the ends of his unstyled hair stick to his neck. He’s bright red and panting like he just ran a marathon. Taerae’s lungs choke on his next breath and his body floods with heat for one agonizing moment, but then he catches sight of Matthew’s expression and everything turns to ice.
“Oh, Matthew-yah…”
He’s not crying, but he doesn’t look far from it. There’s a disquieting tension throughout his body that Taerae has only seen a handful of times in the year and a half since first laying eyes on him. He looks dangerously weak despite the feat he just pulled. He meets Taerae’s scrutiny without a word, daring him to say something by the firm set of his jaw. It’s unsettling to see him look so severe anywhere other than the stage.
Taerae drops to his knees at Matthew’s side, maneuvering him by the elbow to sit him upright on his heels. Matthew’s nostrils flare as he catches his breath and avoids Taerae’s gaze.
“You stink, jagi-yah. What are you doing?”
Matthew sniffs. “Working out.”
“At five in the morning?”
Matthew brushes his hand away and makes an aborted move towards his bed. His legs shudder and buckle with the effort of standing up. He slumps back on the ground, defeated, with his head hung low.
“You look like shit.”
Matthew’s responding glare scathes like a sunburn. Taerae faces it head-on, ignoring the urge to curl hands over his ears as if he’s the one who deserves to be called out for anything right now.
Softer this time, Taerae says, “Let’s get you cleaned up, Matthew-yah.”
Taerae helps strip him of his clothes in the bathroom, still humid from his own shower. Two sets of hands are on the hem of his tank top when it gets yanked up and over his head, but no friendly banter passes between them. Matthew is never this quiet. If it were any other time, he would have made some less-than-platonic joke by now. Maybe two. Taerae misses the teetering cadence of his voice around a taunt like a bruise. He doesn’t realize how familiar it is until its absence becomes a phantom pain.
After turning on the faucet, he guides Matthew to sit on the edge of the tub with fingertips pressed to his chest so Taerae can finish peeling off his socks. He crouches at the side of the basin as Matthew settles into the water once it's done filling. Finally, he gets to work.
Taerae’s hands are sticky and methodical as they massage shampoo into Matthew’s scalp. He’s thorough with it. Clinical, even. He pins small strands between two fingers and coats them all root to tip, even if it begins to strain the tendons in his wrists, even if it takes much longer than it would if Matthew were doing it himself (carelessly, rushing through each step, too busy and too self-sacrificial to take proper care of himself). He doesn’t mention how previous bleachings have turned the ends of his hair brittle or how most of the water from the shower head drips off each strand rather than soaking in. He’s running his fingers along Matthew’s scalp for longer than they realistically have time for. Taerae ignores all of this.
He rakes down large handfuls of hair beginning at the crown of Matthew’s head in the motion of cracking an egg. Matthew sags against him, wet and limp as the towel Taerae used to wipe down his sweat earlier, as if Taerae really did split him open and his brain is now oozing out into the bathwater. Matthew seems to release a heavy breath, shoulder blades finally unlocking. Taerae allows himself to breathe, then, too.
When he’s done with the shampoo, he works knuckles into the baby hairs at the nape of Matthew’s neck, a little for Matthew’s sake, a little for his own. Thank you for letting me take care of you, his hands say. I’m sorry it had to go this far. Taerae’s mouth remains pursed and unmoving.
“Your hands are so soft, Taerae-yah,” Matthew mumbles. He doesn’t even bother to open his eyes, chin tucked into his sternum like a baby bird in the nest. “Who knew you could be so gentle?”
It has all the grammar of an insult, but this Matthew has been declawed and collared. There’s no bite to his words. There’s no anything, almost. But Taerae hears it, deep within him: the shuddering blink of an old lightbulb coming back to life. It’s small and barely there, but Taerae feels it. He’s wired to recognize it in the way a compass never forgets magnetic north, no matter how far away it moves. Taerae basks in it. He hopes it consumes him.
He tugs on Matthew’s earlobe. “This is how the human hand feels when it’s not forced to lift weights seven days a week.”
Matthew cracks open an eye just to scowl at him. Taerae bites down a smile. I win, he thinks.
“That’s not how it works.”
“Sure it is. You should try it sometime. Lotion, too. You can borrow some of mine if you want. Smells like apricots.”
“The lotion on your nightstand? Dude, ew. Who knows what you do with that stuff at night. I’ll pass.”
That beautiful, exhilarating look is back in Matthew’s eyes, the one that says I’m thinking of how to make you laugh. It’s the one that means he’s out of his head long enough to breathe, to focus on something beyond himself and his own shortcomings, to stop thinking long enough to smile. Matthew is meant to smile.
Taerae flicks a finger square on the tip of Matthew’s nose for his vulgarity. Matthew’s whole face scrunches up beneath his hand and Taerae kind of wants to die about it, but what he feels most then is pure, numbing relief. Humor has replaced the severity in his expression.
“Your loss,” Taerae replies airily, before he loses the plot entirely. “C’mon, let’s rinse you off.”
Matthew jolts with a hiss when the shower head propels fresh water into his scalp. “Too hot.”
“Baby,” Taerae accuses, even as he fiddles with the knob until it draws a relieved sigh from Matthew’s chapped lips. “You should be grateful I’m doing all the hard work for you.”
“I didn’t ask you to,” Matthew says. He still has enough energy to pout, apparently.
“I know you didn’t.”
Taerae allows his hand to follow the flow of water, over Matthew’s head and down along his shoulders. He drags a finger over the spot behind the outer shell of his ear and watches him shiver. It’s too intimate. It’s not intimate enough. Hunger pangs low in Taerae’s stomach.
“Thanks, Taerae-yah.” He’s so sincere despite his pouting that Taerae’s gums ache with it. Matthew keeps looking up at him with his hair dripping into his eyes, big and round and unguarded. He looks like a stray cat caught in the rain. Taerae wants to feed him yogurt from a tube.
Maybe he’ll get the chance later, when things are different. For now, he hands Matthew his bottle of body wash and a spare washcloth from the cabinet beneath the sink. With a hand at the crook of Matthew’s elbow, he asks, “Can you stand?”
Matthew nods. The flush in his cheeks has faded from vivid red to a subtle pink and the stark lines in his face have softened. Taerae takes him at his word.
“I’ll go get you clothes, so finish washing up while I’m gone,” Taerae instructs. “If you fall and break something, I’m not taking you to the hospital.”
At Matthew’s two-finger salute, Taerae exits the bathroom and pretends he doesn’t strain his ears for any sounds of distress. Matthew is still stable on his own two feet by the time he returns, but Taerae towels his hair dry for him and holds his hand for balance while he steps into the pair of boxers anyway.
“Do you want to talk about it?” It comes out as something between a cough and a whisper, rasping against his teeth as he says it. It might be the wrong thing to say. He has no clue what the right thing would be. Taerae isn’t usually the one to be in this position. The frantic, fearful side of him has half a mind to go wake up Hanbin, who has more than likely talked an even younger and more vulnerable Matthew down from a metaphorical ledge more than once and is therefore vastly more qualified than Taerae.
The greedy, tender part of Taerae, however, wants to cradle this gift of weakness close to himself away from prying eyes. Clumsy as he may be, he wants to be that kind of person for Matthew, too. He wants Matthew to come to him first. He wants the emotional give and take of a friendship that neither of them can easily let go of. He wants to get better at this kind of thing. He wants to learn what Matthew needs most when everything starts to boil over. He wants to be soft and sturdy and calming and exciting and himself and anyone but Kim Taerae.
“Not really,” is Matthew’s response.
It’s easier to play the role of a caretaker when Matthew’s eyes are frighteningly glazed over instead of clear and tracking his every move the way they are now. Taerae picks at lint on his sweatpants and chews on the inside of his cheek before finally admitting that he sucks at this and normalcy is probably all that Matthew needs, anyway. That’s fine. Taerae can do normal.
“Wanna go watch a movie?”
Matthew blinks at him. “We have to be up in, like, three hours.”
“Sounds like enough time to watch a movie, don’t you think?” Taerae lets his tone lilt into something just a few degrees away from teasing. There’s nothing to tease Matthew about right now, really, but Matthew comes to life the moment he hears a challenge in Taerae’s voice. However he can, Taerae will turn it into one if that’s what it takes to bring smile lines back to Matthew’s cheeks.
“You need sleep, Taerae-yah,” Matthew says even as he seems to be mulling it over. “What movie?”
Taerae pretends to contemplate it, sucking his teeth and crossing his arms as he sways from side to side. There’s only one movie that comes to mind, one that he knows Matthew can never say no to. He presses a thumb into Matthew’s bicep to drive the point home.
“Howl’s Moving Castle?” Taerae hopes his smile is light and inviting rather than the crazed and desperate that he feels.
Matthew groans and drops his face into his palms. “Dude, I’m for sure gonna cry. I haven’t watched it in ages.”
“That’s not a no,” Taerae points out.
“It’s not,” Matthew confirms, “but you gotta promise not to laugh if I start crying.”
“I promise.”
They watch the movie on Taerae’s laptop in Taerae’s bed. When the credits roll, they set an alarm for forty minutes later and cringe. Matthew does end up crying, and Taerae does end up laughing at him, but Matthew laughs, too. The universe rights itself.
Taerae doesn’t pet Matthew’s hair without the guise of protecting his hygiene, nor does he talk about his feelings for hours while laying face-to-face with Matthew in bed. He doesn’t do any of the things the others have known to do to comfort Matthew since day one. Instead, he falls asleep upright with Matthew’s elbow digging into his ribs and Matthew’s phone plugged into the cord next to his bed. Matthew pouts in his sleep and the worry lines are gone from his face now.
That has to count for something, Taerae thinks.
A week later, there’s a brand new race car LEGO kit sitting on his desk next to a bag of fruit gummies and a sticky note.
To. Our cool and mature Taerae
Thank you for always taking care of me, jagi-yah~ You’ve had your eye on this one for a while, right? Hyung knows you so well, hehe. Show me when you finish building it!
Thank you for being ZB1 and for being my best friend. I love you!
– Grateful Woohyunie
Some words are scribbled out and rewritten. One of them is misspelled. Below the message, Matthew doodled a fox and a duck with a heart floating between them.
It’s too earnest. The joking tone somehow makes it worse. The whole scene is so fully, utterly Matthew. It’s the kind of thing he wakes up and does every day without thinking. Taerae feels sick to his stomach. His eyes prickle with heat before he has the fortitude to stuff his emotions away for a moment when he’s had time to brace himself, when he isn’t such a coward. All he can do now is chew his lip and let out a wet, strangled laugh.
Taerae recalls the image of Matthew’s silhouette against the dying light of Jeju’s horizon when he awakens in their hotel room to the quiet rising of the sun over LA’s skyline.
He’s not wearing a shirt. His hair is dark and messy like he spent all night rolling around in his bedsheets. He has a man’s face and the body of someone who gives a fuck and teddy bear slippers on his feet. He’s so handsome. He looks like everything Taerae ever told himself he couldn’t have. He’s right here in front of him anyway.
Sunset is carefully dislodging and replacing decaying parts of himself, planks on the Ship of Theseus, blurring the line between the old and new Taerae. Somewhere on the coast of Jeju, thawing in sleepy sunlight, Taerae weathered death and rebirth.
Sunrise, however, is realizing something that always was, something he should have realized a lot sooner: Taerae is just Taerae. Matthew is just Matthew. Nothing about this life is what Taerae expected it to be. Everything has changed, and everything has stayed the same. Against all odds, all paths still led to here: tracing the ink in Matthew’s bare shoulder with his eyes, curling a fist into his duvet, shuddering out a breath, and freefalling into vulnerability.
“Matthew-yah,” he whispers into the dark, “you look beautiful like this.”
The least surprising realization of the past year is this: Taerae is in love.
In the end, he never stood a chance. Without thought and without intention, Taerae fell in love with Matthew. Somehow, that makes the most sense out of everything. Taerae, who outgrew simple late-night noraebang with friends from high school, dreamed of becoming an idol; Taerae, who systematically hid every one of his wants from his parents and his pastor and even his own prayers, fought for a seat on a silver chair and won; Taerae, who stood high on that stage and stared down at his closest friends as he left them all behind, stayed up all night on the bare floor of an unfamiliar apartment with eight functional strangers and laughed until tears bit at the corners of his eyes; Taerae, who knew that it would all end in time, fell in love with Matthew.
Matthew doesn’t react. He didn’t hear him at all, it seems; he has an AirPod leaking bass-heavy R&B music stuffed into each ear. He’s sipping coffee and staring out the window like he walked straight out of a romance film and he didn’t hear a thing Taerae just said.
Taerae falls back on his mattress with a huff. Any bravery he just had is now long gone. Helplessly, he wakes his phone from its resting place under his pillow and prays for anything else to think about. A text from Hanbinie hyung 🐹 informs him that the breakfast buffet will open in ten minutes, but they only have half an hour before they need to be in the cars. Taerae lets out another sigh. It’s a new day.
As much as Taerae feared it might, the world does not turn upside down and stop spinning after his realization. Matthew is loved. The sun rises and sets. Loving Matthew is logical and self-explanatory. Being in love with Matthew is no different in practice. It’s not necessarily a matter of reciprocation, either; he knows Matthew loves him. Matthew loves everyone. The real difference is that when Taerae gets up to brush his teeth, he sees himself in the mirror and doesn’t look away.
A flashing red light at the nightstand on Matthew’s side of the room draws Taerae’s attention—an alarm clock provided by the hotel, he realizes. Maybe Matthew replaced its spot in the outlet with his phone charger before bed. Maybe there was a power outage during the night. Maybe it was like that all along.
The clock has stopped.
“I don’t want it to end,” Matthew says suddenly.
They’re stretched out on Taerae’s bed back in Seoul the night before a rare day off. Taerae’s on his back with an arm propping his head up and Matthew is curved towards him on his side. Matthew’s bare toes press against Taerae’s ankles. The lights are off but the moon is full and it shines down through the window to bisect Matthew’s face along his cupid’s bow. Taerae’s running a lazy hand through Matthew’s hair and watching as his breathing slows more and more with each pass.
For Matthew, there’s no question about what happens after. He was born a star. Wherever he chooses to go, he will be loved. Whoever is lucky enough to be in his orbit will be loved in turn. Who’s to say if there will be room for Taerae then?
“I don’t think you have to worry,” Taerae says with a hum. “You’re definitely popular enough, and you have what it takes to go solo if you want to. You got a few offers to join some upcoming debut lineups recently, didn’t you? Have you been thinking about those?”
“Not that,” Matthew amends. “The guys. You. Us. I like the way things are now.”
It makes sense that Matthew would be happy as it is. Taerae knows he’s happy. Taerae just assumed that he would have wished for something more.
“I mean, there’s obviously a lot I would change,” Matthew continues. “I want more freedom and I don’t want to be working this hard this much, like, forever, but I want it to be, y’know… us. Forever.”
In a moment, Taerae is back on that beach, aching under the weight of Matthew’s stare and his own desire and tasting salt on his tongue.
He thought that if he just made it to the top of that stage, he would never wish for anything else. The future was a thirty-six-page legal document in his trainee file in a cabinet in the company basement. He couldn’t envision anything beyond that. So single-mindedly focused on winning and practicing and improving and winning and winning at all costs, he didn’t dare worry about after.
“I haven’t decided what I’ll do yet,” Taerae muses. Going for lighthearted, he continues by saying, “I bet Park Hanbin misses bossing me around in a dance studio. If the company doesn't let me go solo, maybe I’ll see if his group will take me.”
“You don’t think we’ll stay together?”
Taerae’s heart drops into his stomach. Matthew sounds genuinely hurt. Apparently, lighthearted was the wrong way to go. His tongue feels too big for his mouth with how little he knows how to say at the moment.
“I mean, it’s not like I don’t want to. I’m just being realistic.” With a wry smile and another desperate bid for any words that will loosen the furrow in Matthew’s brow, he tries, “Matthew-yah, won’t you be tired of me after two and a half years?”
It doesn’t work. Matthew looks at him like he’s sorry for him.
“I don’t know what you keep trying to run away for, Taerae-yah. I’m not going anywhere without you.”
The second time Taerae cries in front of Matthew, Matthew holds him through it. This time, Matthew’s crying, too.
“Fuck realistic.” Matthew’s voice wobbles but his hands are sure and steady as they draw patterns into the back of Taerae’s hoodie. “I’m picking the reality I want. Haven’t we been doing that from the start?”
When Taerae wakes up, the other side of the bed is empty. The tick-tick-tick of the gas range firing up alerts him to human activity in the kitchen. With a bone-deep yawn and a latent itchiness in his eyes, he slips on his glasses and follows the sound out of his room.
Once in the kitchen, he’s greeted by the sickly-sweet aroma of burning protein pancakes and the sight of Matthew’s broad shoulders at the stove.
“Hey, sleepyhead,” Matthew greets, sliding a plate stacked high with misshapen pancakes across the island towards him. “You’re up early.”
Taerae pulls up a chair, braves a bite of the food in front of him with nothing more than a wince (he’s been building up his tolerance recently), and watches Matthew work. He seems to be in high spirits, humming to himself and marking one of their new choreographies in small, contained movements with a spatula in hand while he waits for the pancakes to cook. When Matthew catches him staring, his eyes crinkle at the corners and he blows Taerae a kiss.
Abruptly, Taerae is called back to a music show waiting room from a year prior.
“Hey, do you remember that song you asked me to play for you? The one I was writing a while back?”
Recognition lights up Matthew’s face. “Of course I do! I kinda figured you gave up on it, to be honest.”
Taerae shakes his head. “I just haven’t found time to work on it since then. I thought I would change some parts of it, but now I’m realizing I like it how it is. It’s… more authentic this way, I think.”
“Is this your way of saying you’re ready for me to hear it now?”
Matthew has always been able to know him from a single glance. Taerae covers the tips of his ears with his hands and escapes from the kitchen. A few moments later, he’s back in the chair with his guitar balanced over a knee. A grin blossoms on Matthew’s face when he sees it.
“I haven’t played it in months.” Even now, after everything, he still manages to be shy in front of Matthew. “I might be a little rusty.”
Matthew’s gaze pins him to his seat. There’s no judgment there, only unwavering patience and a fondness so blatant that even Taerae can’t soften it with insecurity. Taerae feels stripped bare, just as he did all those months ago. If he closes his eyes, he might be able to mistake the cold tile flooring of their apartment for stone worn smooth by the tide.
Softly, quietly as he can to avoid rousing the other members, Taerae brings his fingers to the strings and plays. He doesn’t look away from his guitar until the last note rings in his ears. When he finally glances upwards, sunlight catches on the tears on Matthew’s cheeks. Taerae sees the entirety of the cosmos in his eyes.
“I really liked it. Thank you, Taerae-yah.”
“I’m sorry it took me so long.”
Here, in the dim light of the morning, Taerae learns what Matthew tastes like. He tastes like mint toothpaste and maple syrup. He tastes like salt. He tastes like a smile. He tastes like Matthew.
Most of all, Taerae tastes the dawn of a new day. He doesn’t think about clocks at all.