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In the alley behind the company, Taeyong smoked three cigarettes in a row, more than he usually smoked on any regular week, more than he smoked during the entire month before a comeback, just because he knew it was the kind of thing that Kim Doyoung hated. It was petty, it was self-destructive and needlessly impulsive, but he had always been those kinds of things when it came to Doyoung, then and now, now and then. He waited until he knew that Jaehyun would be long gone, until the building would be almost entirely empty, until he knew that Johnny would be the last man standing between him and Doyoung. He waited outside with the stubbed out ends of half-finished cigarettes beneath his boots until he was pale enough from the cold that there was no way to blush prettily in front of someone who didn’t deserve his reds and pinks.
He went to the tiny little room that had been given to him after his first all-kill and took his toothbrush to the bathroom at the end of the hallway, the one that was abandoned even at the best time of day, let alone late enough that only those with no one waiting for them at home were still lingering somewhere on the seven floors of XX Entertaiment. He brushed his teeth and tried not to ask himself why, telling himself it was for Johnny, who was standing outside of the studio where Taeyong had left him two hours ago, as handsome as he had been when they had first met, still an aspiring idol, long before he had traded the indignities of never quite making it for the pleasure of managing as Doyoung’s shadow.
“Is he still at it?” Taeyong asked, skipping the pleasantries that weren’t needed when you had once shared everything down to socks and underwear with someone, joining Johnny in leaning against the wall that divided him from Doyoung.
“You know it.” Johnny smiled and nodded, the heel of his boot knocking against the baseboards in a rhythm that Taeyong couldn’t quite place, but one that he guessed was from Doyoung’s upcoming title track. He knew how it was to become so familiar with a song that it felt like it was fused into your bones, repeated and practiced and labored over for so long that the notes became reflex, instinctual and inescapable.
“How does it sound? The new song.”
“Oh, you know,” Johnny said, laughing a little as he knocked his elbow against Taeyong’s arm. “Like it’s been touched by an angel. A really particular, perfectionist angel.”
“Mmm. Of course.” Taeyong wrapped his arms around his waist and looked at Johnny out of the corner of his eye, grateful that Johnny had somehow always been able to straddle the line between the two of them, poking fun at Doyoung, but never poking at spots that were forever raw, forever sore. “I wouldn’t expect anything less.”
“I think he knows that.” Johnny caught his gaze, the easiness of his expression sliding into something more serious, more knowing. “What you expect out of him.”
“I wasn’t being serious.” Taeyong rocked back and forth on his heels, picking anxiously at his shirt sleeve and craving a fourth cigarette. “I don’t expect anything from him at all.”
“Sure, of course you don’t.” Johnny pushed off the wall and put his hand on top of Taeyong’s head, smoothing down the strands of hair that had been picked up and misplaced by the late autumn wind. “Why would you? You’re not even friends, right?”
“That’s right,” Taeyong said, trying not to back down when the fight had just begun, when Johnny was only the first line of defense. “Doyoungie and I haven’t been friends in a very long time.” Taeyong smiled prettily, peering through his lashes as Johnny continued to put him back together. “Unlike you and me.”
“You and I are nothing like you and Doyoung. Never have been, never will be.” Johnny tucked the last piece back into place, grinning like Cheshire Cat. “No matter how gorgeous you are, there are some lines I won’t cross.” Johnny murmured, leaning down close enough that Taeyong could see a tiny smudge of pen ink on his cheek. “It’s going to drive him crazy that you smoked, you know.”
“I know,” Taeyong said, wondering how much Doyoung would hate it if he pushed up on his toes and kissed Johnny, if he would hate the taste of another man on Taeyong’s lips as much as Taeyong polluting his precious, rarefied air with his dirty habits.
“You’re terrible,” Johnny laughed, sounding very much like he meant it as a compliment as he stepped away and put his careful hands in his pockets.
“So they all say. Terrible, bad boy, Lee Taeyong,” Taeyong said, trying to sound very much like that kind of thing had long since stopped hurting him.
“Terribly sexy, very talented, nice guy, Lee Taeyong,” Johnny countered, but the pity in the soft curve of Johnny’s smile was almost more than he could stand.
Taeyong shook his head, six years of comment threads and rumors and cruel assumptions about a past he couldn’t have helped and image that had been given to him by a company who knew what to do with the ratty kid from the rough side of town, rattling around in the empty places where his self-esteem probably should have been.
“I should go,” Taeyong murmured, forcing his spine straight, ignoring the way Johnny was looking at him like he was afraid Taeyong might break. He was going to, of course, but not here in the hallway, not yet, not before he could look down and see the glittering pieces of a glass heart at Doyoung’s feet.
“Sure,” Johnny said softly, stepping back and standing down, surrendering as he had always done to the inevitable. “He’s waiting for you.”
“Yeah?” Taeyong asked, wishing it still didn’t thrill him a little, the idea of Kim Doyoung waiting for him late at night in some tucked away corner of the company.
Once, then, it had all been so exciting, to wait until Doyoung was alone, flush-faced and tired from working hard towards his debut, to slip into the studio and lock the door, knowing that Doyoung was going to nervously play his songs for Taeyong and then confidently kiss him goodnight, Taeyong’s back against the wall and Doyoung’s mouth hot and wet beneath his ear. Now, it filled him with dread, knowing that he had waited to find Doyoung alone, stone-faced and tired from working to surpass Taeyong in whatever way he possibly could, knowing that Doyoung was going to cut him up and bruisingly kiss him goodbye, Taeyong’s back against the wall and Doyoung’s teeth on his throat.
“Always.” Johnny took his hand back out of his pocket, taking Taeyong’s still frigid fingers and curling them around the handle of the studio door. “Even if there’s nothing between you, if you’re not even friends,“ Johnny said, looking through Taeyong, “it’s your opinion that matters to him the most.”
“That has never once been true.” Taeyong shook his head, the weight of the last three years in the palm pressing down until the door was cracked, Doyoung’s voice filtering out and filling the empty spaces inside of him. “Come back in an hour,” Taeyong murmured, looking over his shoulder at Johnny with one last, faint smile. “I’ll give him back to you.”
Johnny sighed, the weight of the last three years and more written all over his face. “In one piece?”
“Sorry,” Taeyong said, smile now entirely gone. “I don’t make promises any more.”
Taeyong opened the door wider. Doyoung’s singing came to a halt. Taeyong stepped inside and tried to quiet the anxious fluttering of what was still an inexperienced heart. Doyoung turned his attention from the soundboard and stared at him like he was an apparition, still managing to pull-off wide-eyed shock like some daytime drama ingenue, even though there was nothing innocent about this, not any more.
Once, Taeyong would have fallen for it, fallen to his knees for the way Doyoung always seemed so surprised to see him, as if Taeyong was always some unexpected delight, but now he knew better. Doyoung was wearing the pants Taeyong had never liked, but also a shirt in Taeyong’s favorite color. Doyoung had waited for him, waited for Taeyong to smoke three cigarettes and flirt with Johnny and find the courage to come back into the studio that Doyoung had chased him out of hours earlier.
Doyoung had waited and knew what he was waiting for. Doyong was so full of shit, Taeyong thought, even if it wasn’t entirely his fault, not when he had been trained almost as immaculately as Taeyong in the art of pretending. Doyoung had been taught well, how to smile, how to laugh, how to look at someone and make them feel like they were appreciated but never quite adored – always just enough distant affection to keep the fans coming back for more.
Before he had been taught, when he was the new trainee, years older than most, freshly plucked from a university festival for his golden voice and good guy visuals, Doyoung had been too expressive, too easy to read – a walking target or a potential liability depending on who in the company was asked. Taeyong had been around the block more than once by then, even though he was barely older, one mini-album under his belt and a comeback on the horizon. Management had dumped Doyoung on his doorstep, pleading with Taeyong to take him under his wing, even though Doyoung looked like he didn’t want anyone to help him fly, asking Taeyong to help Doyoung learn the ropes.
One soloist to another , the CEO had said, smiling at Taeyong across the expanse of her desk as if she was asking instead of telling. You never know, you could end up as lifelong friends.
They had ended up as something, Taeyong thought, staring somewhere over Doyoung’s shoulder because he had never been good at looking Doyoung in the eyes without giving himself away. They had been friends, even though Taeyong hadn’t expected to like the guy with the choir-boy looks and the cross hanging around his neck. He got the distinct impression that Doyoung hadn’t expected to like him either, had noticed the way Doyoung stared at Taeyong’s tattoos, the way he scoffed at the cigarettes shoved in the bottom of Taeyong’s bag. Taeyong wanted to keep him at arm’s length, the same distance that he kept everyone who ever tried to come close enough to touch, close enough to see him for who he was and judge.
But Doyoung was also beautiful, and painfully real, present and insistent with Taeyong in a way that no one had been since he had made his debut, not knowing enough to know that there were dangers in being seen together at cafes, in laughing over a drink or taking a walk by the Han, like two people who maybe had feelings for one another. Doyoung had come from that world. Taeyong learned that despite the cross around his throat, Doyoung had dated. He had been pretty and popular at university, no stranger to attraction. It was Doyoung who had all the experience that the tabloids presumed came along with Taeyong’s tattooed skin, dyed hair, and lyrics that came out of a mouth that had never done half of the the things that Taeyong sung.
Once In Taeyong’s world, the world of idol’s curated and carefully managed, Doyoung either didn’t know better or Doyoung didn’t care. He looked at Taeyong like he wanted him and Taeyong had been swept away, caught up in the undertow of Doyoung’s forthrightness, the way he didn’t hesitate, the way he made it so clear what he liked and what he didn’t. Taeyong had been in the game for so long, he had forgotten what it was like to be close to someone who didn’t hide how they felt, who didn’t school their expressions or curb their tongue.
“I want to kiss you, hyung,” Doyoung had said to him, beyond late at night, as if it was nothing at all to say something like that to Lee Taeyong, who hadn’t been kissed in years.
“Please,” Taeyong answered, closing his eyes and hoping that no one would walk through the recording studio door before he had the chance to know what it was to have Doyoung smile against his lips and know it was for him, because of him, because Doyoung liked him enough to take such chance.
“Ah.” Doyoung shook his head like a dog shaking off water, his expression clearing into something strained and and infinitely realer than the flicker of warmth that had lurked behind his feigned surprise. “Did you need something, sunbae?”
“I do.” Taeyong closed the door behind him, hiding his shaking hands beneath sleeves that were too long, stretched out and worn by hours of anxious pulling. “You know why I’m here,” Taeyong said, trying to hold Doyoung’s gaze. “The same reason you’re here.”
“And what’s that?” Doyoung asked, leaning against the soundboard with his arms crossed, nose wrinkling as Taeyong shuffled by, feeling like his knees were going to give out if he had to stand up and bear the weight of Doyoung’s stare.
Taeyong helped himself to the seat in the back of the room, the one that he had been in before Jungwoo had shown up, before Jaehyun had made him feel ill with envy. Years ago, he would have turned the chair around and draped his legs on either side, smiling at Doyoung over the fold of his arms as he listened to the songs that would make up Doyoung’s debut album, feeling like he was going to crazy from loving someone so much. He wondered if Doyoung had ever felt the same way, listening to Taeyong sing, watching him behind the glass, pouring his heart out through lyrics that had never been about anyone before Doyoung.
“I want to hear the new title track,” Taeyong murmured, pulling his legs up onto the chair and wrapping his arms around them, a little wall of flesh and bone between him and Doyoung’s awful regard. Taeyong shrugged his shoulders, hunching deeper into himself. “Let me know what I’m up against.”
“It’s not a competition.” Doyoung sighed, rolling his neck back and forth before tipping his head towards the ceiling. “You’re not up against anything.”
“Please.” Taeyong laughed, his throat aching from trying too hard earlier to match the tenor of Jaehyun’s new love, from smoking too many cigarettes trying to forget the melody of Kim Doyoung. “Everything is a competition, you know that,” Taeyong said, looking at Doyoung from behind his knees. “This isn’t art. It’s business.”
Doyoung looked stung. Taeyong wondered if he remembered what he had said to Taeyong that night one month before his debut, when he had told Taeyong that they couldn’t be seen together any more, that the company thought it would be better for Doyoung – better for his album sales, better for his image – if he and Taeyong had a falling out, if the outside world believed they were no longer friends but rivals.
“It’s just business,” Doyoung had said, pale-faced and wide-eyed, grasping at Taeyong’s wrist, looking like he might cry. “It has nothing to do with how I really feel about you.”
Doyoung, sweet, self-righteous, steadfast Doyoung, who had come into the company as someone who had never once aspired to idoldom, who had fought the company for better treatment of the trainees who were just kids, who laughed off Taeyong’s warnings about not making too many waves if he wanted to debut and once said, “I was happy with my life before XX Entertainment, I could be happy again if it all went away.”
Taeyong had learned the hard way that it turned out there was something that made Doyoung loved more than he loved anything else, that made him willing to turn his back on everything he had said before, all of the promises he had made to Taeyong before Taeyong had been deemed not good enough for XX Entertainment's golden boy.
“If it helps, I don’t blame you,” Taeyong muttered, rubbing his cheek on his jeans. “I know the company plans for our comebacks to happen together.” He thought about the lecture he had received, devastated and furious, the CEO painting pictures of a rosy, cash-flush future that had only cost Taeyong his heart. “The bad boy versus Korea’s sweetheart, battling for the top of the charts.”
“At least you don’t blame me for something,” Doyoung said, bitter in a way that Taeyong felt was unearned. “But, fine, if that’s what you want.” Doyoung turned away, queuing up the track on the recording board. “If that’s what you came here for, I’ll play you the song.”
Taeyong bit back all of the things that he wanted, knowing that it had never really made a difference, not compared to the things Doyoung had decided to give up.
The music started. Doyoung sat next to him, ramrod straight in a chair that was still so near because Jaehyun felt the way about Jungwoo that Doyoung had once felt about him, that inexorable need to be close in all circumstances. If Taeyong dangled his hand in the space between them, Doyoung could have held his hand without even needing to reach. Taeyong kept his hands pressed between his knees, in no danger of touching anyone at all.
Doyoung’s voice filtered through the speakers, crystal clear and more beautiful than ever, confident, rich and assured. Taeyong closed his eyes and listened, wishing he didn’t find Doyoung’s singing so moving, so undeniably good. It was no wonder – had never been any wonder – that everyone loved him, filling stadiums from floor to ceiling with people from all walks of life. He was bright, he was shining, he was easy and full of hope, he was born to sing and be adored. Sometimes, when Taeyong really listened, he could almost understand why Doyoung made the choices that he had made, why he felt like had to do the things he needed to do to have this – to sing, to make music, to share himself with the world.
Taeyong was a small price to pay for the kind of fame Doyoung enjoyed.
Taeyong had known it was over when Doyoung turned his cheek and dodged Taeyong’s kiss for the first time, wincing and trying to laugh it off as if it was nothing, but Doyoung hadn’t yet learned how to act.
“We need to put some distance between us. The company thinks it will be better for both of us if we aren’t friends. We’re just so different,” Doyoung told him, “You’re…you,” Doyoung said, and everything nasty thing Taeyong had ever heard and thought about himself was there to be found in Doyoung’s awkward pause. “And I’m…me.”
The song ended. The studio was quiet to the point that Taeyong felt claustrophobic, his foot starting to tap on the chair as he turned his cheek and tried to wipe away the wetness at the corner of his eyes before Doyoung could notice.
“Hyung,” Doyoung murmured, and Taeyong knew that he had been caught. Doyoung had always paid attention at all the wrong moments. “What did you think?”
Taeyong put down his legs and let out a long, slow breath. “The same thing I’ve always thought. It’s perfect.” Taeyong glanced at Doyoung, at the worried, pinched corner of his mouth, at the bags underneath his eyes and the reddish bumps that came with the make-up people like them wore, day-in and day-out, their real skin dying to breathe. Doyoung was gorgeous on stage, but he was even better like this – bare-faced and wrung out by his art, sharing the late night shadows with Taeyong. “You’re perfect,” Taeyong said, biting his lip and turning away. “You’ve always been too perfect.”
Doyoung still wasn’t skilled enough at keeping his expressions entirely at bay. Or perhaps Taeyong was just too skilled at reading the little twitches and tremors. He watched as Doyoung went from pleased to unhappy in the span of a breath.
“You of all people know that’s not true.”
Taeyong twisted the ring on his thumb. “I know,” Taeyong said, remembering how Doyoung had tasted when he came in Taeyong’s mouth, coaxing him through his first blow job, petting his hair and holding onto his jaw. “But who would believe me if I told them?” Taeyong thought about the endless articles, the tweets and the comments and the fan wars that had followed when Doyoung went through with the company’s plan of separation and sacrifice. “Everyone loves you.”
“Not everyone.” This time, Doyoung didn’t bother to hide his anger, his high cheekbones flushed a pretty red. “And I’m sick of it, you know,” Doyoung spat, turning in his chair and crowding into Taeyong’s space, “the way you act as if no one loves you.”
Do you? Taeyong wanted to ask, had always wanted to ask. “Plenty of people love me,” Taeyong said, trying not to look at Doyoung’s mouth, which was so close now that he could see that his lips were chapped and dry from too many hours spent singing. “There will always be an audience for the artsy bad boy,” Taeyong said, remembering what the CEO had said to him after Doyoung broke his heart. “But never as big of one as there is for the boy next door.”
“Are you jealous, sunbae?” Doyoung asked, sharp and pointed in a way that never failed to prickle beneath Taeyong’s skin.
“No,” Taeyong whispered, meaning it just as he had always meant it. In another reality, he would have been so proud, bursting with it. “After all, you are who you are, and I am who I am.”
Doyoung’s anger crumbled into dust, replaced by the same sort of exhausted devastation Taeyong felt every time they played this game. Every time since the first time, when Doyoung had broken his promises and broken Taeyong’s heart.
“It’s not forever, hyung,” Doyoung said to him that night, wringing his hands and looking like he was two seconds away from getting on his knees for all the wrong reasons, to beg, to plead for understanding that Taeyong couldn’t give. “It’s just until I debut, until my career —
“Sunbae,” Taeyong said, his throat rough and his eyes aching with the need to cry tears that he didn’t want Doyoung to have the satisfaction of seeing.
“What?”
Doyoung’s skin turned paler than it already was, his voice smaller than Taeyong had ever heard it and Taeyong had a thrilling, sick moment of hope that maybe Doyoung’s heart could be broken, too, that maybe he wouldn’t be alone in the pain.
Taeyong summoned every last lesson he had ever been taught in how not to feel and said, “Call me sunbae, I wouldn’t want to give anyone the impression we’re close.”
“We are who we are,” Doyoung murmured, reaching out with hands that were steady to cup Taeyong’s cheek, taking the next step in what had become a familiar dance. Every comeback, they found each other, hurt one another and then kissed nothing better. Taeyong closed his eyes and leaned into Doyoung’s soft palm and hated him a little when he said, “That much has always been true.”
Doyoung had always been confident when it came to touching Taeyong. Taeyong had once marveled at it, the ease with which Doyoung could steal a kiss or how he knew just how to curl his fingers around Taeyong to make him feel weak. Taeyong had never been good at it, hiding the little tremors of anticipation. Doyoung’s shock at discovering Taeyong’s inexperience had been an embarrassment that had turned so sweet, once upon a time. Doyoung’s obvious, badly disguised pleasure at being so many of Taeyong’s first had made Taeyong happy, had made him feel for the first time in a long time that the realest parts of himself weren’t a burden to be ignored or repackaged for maximum public consumption.
Doyoung had liked him so much, once. Even if his hands had never shook when they touched.
“Sunbae.” Doyoung stroked Taeyong’s cheek and down the bridge of his nose, stopping on the top of Taeyong’s lip, his thumb resting in his Cupid’s bow. “You still tremble every time like it’s the first time, like no one has touched you in months,” Doyoung said, not knowing how true it was, that no one else ever touched Taeyong, that Doyoung was the only one who was allowed to come close enough to kiss.
Taeyong locked his knees to keep them from shaking and turned his cheek, not ready to kiss Doyoung, not yet, not when he was still breaking out into goosebumps that chased after Doyoung’s fingertips, his skin embarrassingly more honest than he was when it came to how badly he still wanted Kim Doyoung.
Doyoung sighed, his breath shaky against Taeyong’s throat. “How many?”
“How many what?” Taeyong clenched his hands in his lap, determined for once not to be the one who wanted more, who loved more.
“How many albums do I have to sell before you’ll forgive me?” Doyoung asked, his mouth moving wetly over Taeyong’s jaw.
Taeyong pulled away sharply, stung that Doyoung would break the unspoken rules by speaking the past into the present. This wasn’t what they did, this wasn’t how it was supposed to go. Doyoung was supposed to kiss him until his mouth felt swollen and thick, maybe put his hands in Taeyong’s pants and touch him until he was spent and too exhausted to fight the arms that wrapped around his waist and held him close. Doyoung wasn’t supposed to ask questions that Taeyong didn’t know how to answer, not when Doyoung had so many unanswered issues of his own.
“I don’t know.” Taeyong smiled thinly, the way he did when an interviewer tried to ask him prying, awful questions. “How many do you have to sell before you’ll stop being terrified that being near me will ruin it all for you?”
“What?” Doyoung’s eyes went wide but there was guilt in a gaze that couldn’t quite stay on Taeyong’s face. “I’m not terrified—“
Taeyong’s laughter was bitter. He didn’t know which possibility was worse. That Doyoung was lying to his face or that Doyoung believed it, that he still didn’t know himself well enough to know what he would and wouldn’t do to stand on a stage and be adored.
“Be seen with me outside of the company,” Taeyong said, putting his hand on Doyoung’s knee and coming in as close as he dared, as close as he could go without falling apart.
“I’ve seen you outside,” Doyoung protested, immediately covering Taeyong’s hand with his own and moving it to rest atop his pounding heart.
“Music and award shows don’t count,” Taeyong said, curling his fingers into Doyoung’s shirt and thinking about how many times he had nodded backstage at Doyoung like Doyoung was nothing more to him than a colleague, thinking about the inevitable explosion of internet gossip every time a camera caught Taeyong looking in Doyoung’s direction.
“Drink coffee with me,” Taeyong murmured, leaning forward to rest his head on their hands, listening to the rhythm of Doyoung’s heart. He wanted such simple things. This sound beneath his ear. Someone who understood the loneliness and the struggles of this life but who would smile at him in a cafe and love him through it. “Buy me a piece of cake like you used to.”
“Hyung,” Doyoung said, so softly that Taeyong thought for a second that he might get his wish, that Doyoung was going to kiss him and then take him down the elevator to the only coffee-shop still open in this part of town. “Wouldn’t that be risky for you? So close to your comeback?”
Taeyong left his pointless daydreams in Doyoung’s lap, but took back his hand and took back the distance he needed to keep himself safe. “To be seen with Korea’s favorite son?” Taeyong shrugged, picking at a hangnail, digging his thumb into his cuticle to keep from crying. “Don’t be ridiculous, I’d chart better than I have in years.”
“So you want me to go out with you so you can chart on Melon?” Doyoung snapped, standing up and pacing around the room, as discomposed as Taeyong had seen him in years, maybe since the night it had all gone wrong. Then, Doyoung begged. Now, he picked at old wounds, as if he wanted to peel back the scars and see Taeyong bleed. “Sunbae, I had no idea it had gotten this dire.”
“You broke my heart for the chance at charting on Melon, it’s always been this dire, Doyoung-ah.” Taeyong murmured, his resolve to be above it all cracking, the glass case of his feelings over-tempered and rendered fragile by the way Doyoung still sometimes looked at him with such heat. Taeyong’s cheeks felt as wet and Doyoung’s suddenly looked.
Doyoung crouched down in front of him, slowly, warily, like he thought Taeyong might bolt if he moved too fast. Taeyong thought he probably wasn’t wrong. He had run from Doyoung that night, too, sunbae slamming the door shut on a shellshocked hoobae, who was shouting after him to wait, to try and understand. That had always been the problem. Taeyong did understand. He understood then and he understood now but he had always wanted to be loved beyond understanding.
“Hyung,” Doyoung said, resting his head on Taeyong’s lap, getting on his knees in the last way Taeyong had ever wanted. “It wasn’t like that.”
Taeyong stroked his hair with shaking fingers and remembered how he had saved up enough money to get them a hotel, so they could be together outside of cramped company dorms, so Doyoung could put his head on Taeyong’s chest and use him as a pillow all night, if that’s what he had wanted.
“Baby,” Taeyong said, winding Doyoung’s soft, undamaged hair through his fingers, feeling all of the fight drain out of him when Doyoung grabbed at his legs like Taeyong was the last tree standing in a windstorm. “It’s still like that.”
~~
Taeyong’s touch was gentle, but it did nothing to soften the blow of Taeyong’s accusation. Doyoung closed his eyes and wished he could melt into Taeyong’s thighs or turn to stone in front of Taeyong’s knees.
“What do you mean?” Doyoung whispered, even though he knew that a better question would have been what do you want from me? He didn’t ask because he knew the answer would inevitably be no.
“You know what I mean,” Taeyong whispered in return, both of them hushed for no reason at all, locked inside a room that had been designed to be soundproof, alone in the basement of the building of the company that had raised them up and could still tear them down. “You’re afraid I’ll ruin your career.”
“I’m not,” Doyoung said, curling his hands around Taeyong’s calves and holding on to his truth.
He wasn’t afraid of Taeyong, not exactly. Not the man currently shivering beneath his fingertips, trying so hard to pretend that he didn’t want Doyoung to touch him. This wasn’t how it had gone before – never once in the years since their relationship had fallen apart had Taeyong ever pushed. He’d always been angry and hurt, lashing out until Doyoung reeled him in and kissed him until he was sweaty and red-faced, but he’d never been so honest about the things that he believed about Doyoung. Something had changed in the months they had been apart, since the last comeback, since the last time Doyoung had barrelled his way into Taeyong’s life, using any flimsy excuse to try and find his way back to Taeyong.
“You are,” Taeyong said, stubborn to the last.
“I’m not,” Doyoung said again, stubborn beyond even Taeyong.
“Fine.” Taeyong made a wounded, dismissive noise, the same hurt that had been there for years bleeding into his voice. “Then have coffee with me tomorrow.” Taeyong tugged on his hair until Doyoung raised his eyes to meet the challenge in Taeyong’s gaze. A chance, Doyoung thought, to try again, if he were brave enough to take it. “Not here. Outside.”
Doyoung sighed and sat back on his heels, his hair falling out of Taeyong’s grasp and into his eyes, the salon’s hard work ruined by Taeyong’s hands. Doyoung left it where it was, even though the curl of his bangs over his lashes was annoying. He wanted to go home with some evidence that Taeyong had been there, even if it only lasted as long as his next shower. Taeyong never left marks. Doyoung wouldn’t allow it – couldn’t allow it, not when he knew if he slipped up and let it happen, he’d be too greedy to let the stylists cover it up. He’d want to look at it and know that for at least a moment, he had belonged to Taeyong again.
A long time ago, before he knew better – or worse – Doyoung left kiss shaped bruises over Taeyong’s heart, proud of the way Taeyong sounded when Doyoung touched him, pleased to be the only one who had been let in close enough to take his time with Taeyong’s body. Taeyong knew the music business, knew his way around the company and the industry. He had taken Doyoung by the hand and helped him find his way. Doyoung had taken Taeyong in his hand and helped him find his pleasure. Doyoung had thought it incredible that not only had the universe seen fit to give him a chance to sing but that it had also given him Lee Taeyong, who seemed so hardened but who was so soft for Doyoung, who looked at him with wide, wanting eyes and gave himself to Doyoung like he had been waiting his entire life for Doyoung to take him.
He’d been greedy back then, too, but too naive to know it.
Taeyong had warned him, over and over, that it would never be easy, that even secret relationships were hard when two people didn’t entirely belong to themselves, but Doyoung had been arrogant and innocent enough not to listen, to believe that if push came to shove, he would be able to fight a war for Taeyong. He had meant it, when they first met, when he had told Taeyong that he could go back to his old life, the one he had fully expected to lead before a talent scout had stumbled into his senior recital.
But then he had heard his debut album for the first time and he knew what it was to feel truly terrified. Push came to shove. The company pushed and told him to shove.
Debut or friendship.
The CEO had said friendship like she knew that they were more than friends. Like she knew everything they were to one another and still wanted to push. Doyoung stared at his feet and knew that he should have protested. He should have said that Taeyong was sweet, wholesome and lovely, that he knew the CEO and her team were the ones who had taken Taeyong’s childhood poverty and adolescent rebellions and made him into fandom’s bad boy. He should have said that anyone would be lucky to take Taeyong home to their parents, that maybe one day he would take Taeyong home to his mother.
He had said nothing. He walked out of her office and into the studio where Taeyong was waiting, looked anywhere but at Taeyong’s beautiful face, turned his cheek to the last happy kiss Taeyong would want to give and shoved.
Hyung became sunbae and Doyoung became famous.
“That’s what I thought,” Taeyong sighed, turning away from Doyoung, the gauntlet he had thrown down left unpicked up.
Stung by the dismissal, never capable of being fully rational in the face of Taeyong’s disappointment, Doyoung stood up on knees that ached too much for someone who wasn’t yet thirty and said, “Taeyong. You can’t possibly expect me to date you publicly.”
“Dating?” Taeyong’s laughter was an ugly thing that made Doyoung’s skin crawl. “That’s some pride you have, Kim Doyoung, to assume that’s what I want from you after all this time.”
“Isn’t it?”
In his daydreams, Taeyong wanted to hold his hand while they walked down the street. Wanted Doyoung to feed him cake and wipe his lips clean with his thumb like they were the main characters of a different story. The idea terrified and delighted him all at once. In another lifetime, if he had met Taeyong at some party or in a class, he would have done all of it and more.
Taeyong stood up and put his arms around Doyoung’s neck, his dark eyes wide and his mouth so close that Doyoung could smell smoke beneath toothpaste. He hated it, hated the way that Taeyong would so willingly ruin the most precious parts of himself. Doyoung put his hands on Taeyong’s waist and moved to kiss the lips that had been wrapped around cigarettes when they should have always been wrapped around him.
“I don’t dream about things like that any more.” Taeyong murmured. The tip of his nose against Doyoung’s cheek was cold, but his words were colder. “I’d settle for you not being ashamed of me.”
“I have never once been ashamed of you,” Doyoung said, and he meant it, but meaning it meant nothing when Taeyong had felt it.
When Taeyong was still feeling it because Doyoung was too greedy to really let him go, to really make the choice he had made years ago. He kept coming back around, waiting for Taeyong to listen to his songs and then climb into his lap with his sad eyes and angry mouth. He liked that Taeyong broke out into goosebumps everywhere that Doyoung touched. It made him feel powerful, it made him feel like there was still a chance he could do everything he wanted, but now he only felt weak and ashamed of his own selfishness.
“I admire you,” Doyoung tried, but it wasn’t the entire truth. It didn’t come close to the way he felt when he thought about Taeyong, when he watched him perform like it was his last day on earth, when he looked at Taeyong with his eyes closed and his lips parted waiting for Doyoung to kiss him. “Sometimes I think I worship you.”
“Don’t say things like that. Don’t lie to me. Not you, of all people.”
Doyoung hadn’t been the first person to make Taeyong feel like he was less than enough, but he was the person doing it to him now, when he should have been the one to make Taeyong feel like he was everything.
It needed to stop. He needed to stop. Taeyong would never do it. Taeyong would go on waiting for him, his heart half-broken, love kept alive by anger and hope. Taeyong said he didn’t have dreams about him any longer, but Doyoung knew he needed to love him enough to want more for him than this.
“Hyung,” Doyoung swallowed, tightening his hold and pressing his lips to hair that was brittle from too much dye, the victim of Taeyong’s endless, beautiful creativity. “I am so sorry. For everything.”
“I know,” Taeyong murmured, clutching at the back of Doyoung’s shirt. “I know. You were sorry then, you’re sorry now.” Taeyong shivered within the curl of Doyoung’s arms, something wet and awful caught in his throat. “But there still won’t be any cake, will there?”
Doyoung thought about the comeback that was a month away. He thought about the world tour that was to be announced at the end of promotions. He thought about the brand deals and the people that depended on him, now, for their livelihoods. He held Taeyong in his arms and felt the same creeping terror, the fear that everything he had was ephemeral. He wished he could ask Taeyong to stay in the shadows, to hide that they meant anything to one another so they could steal moments together in the dark even if they could never touch or talk in the light.
More than anything, he wished that he were brave enough to stop pushing and shoving, to choose instead to pull in close and hold on tight, trusting that love and friendship would be enough.
One day, maybe, when he was older and wiser, it would be. For now, he would stop. He would let Taeyong go.
“No,” Doyoung said, tipping up Taeyong’s chin and kissing him for the last time, the taste of cigarette smoke and tears between his lips as he finally went for a clean break. “There won’t be.”