Archive of Our Own

Jaemin avoids airplanes, but there’s not much he can do when one finds its way to him.

The envelope is stamped in the corner with a pink logo he hasn’t come face to face with in a little over a decade, and the letter inside has clearly suffered under fingers that couldn’t keep up with an origami tutorial. An uncommon one, too, because while Jaemin has always folded his this way, he doesn’t remember ever meeting anyone else who did too.

When he buries his nose in it, it smells faintly of himself—a rich, earthy cedarwood.

The telltale aborted flourish of a signature has been messily scribbled out right before Jisung’s printed name, and a fist of fine dust slams into Jaemin’s chest, an itchy explosion that leaves cracks of red in his eyes. Jisung’s handwriting is just as god-awful as it was when they were kids.

Stella walks up behind him, chin sweetly settling onto his shoulder. Jaemin shifts his thumb on instinct so it covers the I want you even though she reads in Korean only half as well as she speaks it.

“So?” She asks, initial excitement at the sender still not fully waned.

Jaemin sighs, pressing a soft kiss to her temple. “So, how many airmiles do we have?”

Seoul is still Seoul ten years later, the healthy heart of Korea despite its clogged arteries. With time, he’s grown used to the kaleidoscopic crowds in Toronto, so much so that it’s a touch jarring to walk through the streets here. Everywhere he looks he sees reflections of himself, holograms of all the people he could’ve been.

Not that he looks around for long.

A part of it is ego—the same thing that had him hooking a mask around his ears five seconds after he stepped foot out of the airplane, hyperaware of his identity in a different way than he was back home. The other part is the sting of unfamiliarity, Hangul assaulting his eyes and ears from every possible angle.

It hasn’t been long enough for Jaemin to forget the language altogether, of course, nor the culture, but having both things thrust at him with such force after abandoning them with finality all those years ago is… a lot.

The outstretched hand of potential he’d had to glue himself to when he first moved to Seoul doesn’t recognize him anymore, he can tell by the way it closes around his neck.

A suit with furious salt and pepper eyebrows accidentally shoulders into him and immediately turns back to give a short bow. They both say sorry at the same time, except Jaemin’s apology comes out in English.

The man only takes a moment to blink in surprise, then he’s gone before Jaemin can even think to bow back, get a re-do so the ground finds its way back under his feet. Unfortunately, he doesn’t have time to self-reflect on a busy street at rush hour, so he tears his eyes away from the man’s retreating figure and commands his legs to do what they’ve always done best: walk away.

On their fifth wedding anniversary, Jaemin had gifted Stella a wooden coin. It was delicately crafted with a picture of them carved in the center, and she’d been overjoyed, slotting it in with the rest of her ever-growing collection before turning sparkling eyes onto him. I’ve got a surprise, too.

She’d taken them to a hole-in-the-wall whiskey bar downtown to do a tasting, insisting through fits of laughter in the cab ride over that she’d put on some muscle every time Jaemin reminded her cheekily of what happened the last time she’d had akin to a spoonful of alcohol.

(Jaemin hadn’t known there were so many polite, articulate ways to say fuck you, you’re shit at your job. He also learned that day that Stella had her publicist’s contact pinned above his own, which was convenient for all instances except that particular one, maybe.)

Two-thirds of the way into the night they were still pressed arm to arm with five empty glasses each littering the bar, the last two sitting patiently between their fingers. Stella had slowly melted into a slouch, leaning on one hand with flushed cheeks and hazy eyes as she ran a lone finger up and down Jaemin’s whiskey-straight spine.

“What are you thinking about?” He’d asked, amused that some things never changed. She’d been looking at him with a small, inscrutable smile since they’d finished their fourth glass.

“How sometimes it feels like I’m talking to a caricature of you instead of the real thing.”

Stella never was the wild and crazy kind of drunk—she leaned more towards brutal honesty, sprinkled into conversation with an air of genuine nonchalance and delivered like a diplomat so you couldn’t argue with her even if you wanted to.

(It had been the thing Jaemin liked most about her when they’d started dating, the way she’d clumsily break free of her at times sloppy, colloquial Korean and start speaking the language of truth. He couldn’t understand a lick of what she said, but he knew he liked how she said it with certainty.) 

She’d said caricature in English, among a few other words, and Jaemin had coaxed an explanation out of her, tongue shaping the sound imprecisely. Ten years does not a native speaker make—his accent didn’t bother him often, but sometimes he’d see the subtle spark of surprise in someone’s eyes when he said more than two short words at a time, the instant, nerve-deep recognition of other.

After she’d vacantly painted a hyperbolic picture for him, Jaemin had taken a sip of his Bowmore 12 and attempted to keep an easy smile on his face, waiting for her to continue like he knew she would.

Washed by the incandescent hot-blue of the bar, Stella’s eyes were aglow even unfocused, a concentrated inkling of interest slowly eating away at the fog of alcohol. At times like this Jaemin couldn’t stand to look at her, to be wrapped up in that stifling, watchful gaze most writers eventually cast on you, like you’re a story waiting to be fished out.

“When we go out to places like these, it doesn’t feel like it’s enough that I’m the only one looking at you,” she’d confessed, cheek pushed into her palm, the heel of which had smudged some of her lipstick. Jaemin directed all his attention to that corner of her mouth, her finger skittering down his back like it was feeling for a zipper. “You shrink.”

He’d counted ten breaths before finishing his last glass in one shot, mouth unpleasantly warm and bitter. With a muted clink, he’d sat the glass down and felt himself shuttering, staring numbly at the bottles lining the wall.

What do you say when someone you love thinks you’re not loving them with everything you’ve got? (What does it mean that they might be right?)

Stella had flipped his hand on the bar and lowered her cheek into it like a child, but when Jaemin looked at her he saw a wan smile twice her years, wet eyes that knew so much.

“I think parts of you were made to be consumed,” she’d whispered like it was a secret, the skin around her eyes crinkling with forced humour, “but they never were, and now you’ve got all this extra weight and I can only reach for some of it.”

Jaemin’s throat had knotted up and he’d caught her wrist mid-air as it mimicked plucking fruit, leaning into her hand so it could playfully pinch his nose, caress his cheek, pull on the end of his eyebrow. You have all of me. Can’t you feel it? One of us has to feel it.

His palm was wet but she was still smiling sideways atop it.

He’d found it in himself to part his lips, but no sound wanted to follow, and she’d looked at him with every ounce of pity in her body, expression crumpling in on itself with a sudden, heaving force.

Closing her eyes, she’d buried him under two feeble, cracking words. “I’m sorry.”

When Jisung opens the door, Jaemin is expecting something big, something a little uncomfortable, something to draw attention to the time spent apart, the years unknown.

What he doesn’t expect is for Jisung to light up and say, with no preamble, “Oh good! Come in, I was just about to shower.”

And then walk off to go do just that.

A little stunned, Jaemin stands awkwardly in the foyer for a handful of seconds, wondering who, if anyone, had been delegated the role of teaching Jisung how to be a normal person with manners befitting one. Then, figuring it isn’t his place to know, he toes off his shoes and rolls his bag to the nearest available corner. 

Jisung’s house is, simply put, a taxidermied giant. It’s filled with meaningless fluff that would make it look lovely in a catalogue but sterile for a family dinner, which leads Jaemin to believe he either didn’t care or didn’t have the time to actually decorate himself.

He can’t find it in himself to sit after spending so many hours on a plane, so he opts to search for signs of life, spotting a half-eaten apple on the coffee table, comically large speakers that no interior designer would’ve ever picked out flanking the TV, and a half-used, half-open bottle of perfume on the console table that Jaemin instantly recognizes as the one he himself has been using since he was seventeen years old.

His most interesting find, however, is the book-shaped object lying next to the perfume that, upon further inspection, is completely wrapped in plastic and has Jisung’s eyes on it.

“No way, you’re here!”

Jaemin’s fingers freeze atop the cover of the album; he knows that voice—he’d memorized its every nuance when he was fourteen and particularly susceptible to boys with shy laughs and fiery eyes.

Mark brightens almost identically to the way Jisung had when he finally turns around, crossing the space between them in three strides to grab his hand and pull him into a half-hug, complete with a pat on the back that instantly relaxes him. A lot of his trainee days have dissipated into thin air the further they get from him, but if there’s one thing his body could never forget it’s the shape and weight of Mark’s hand, the one and only universal antidote to a bad day.

Jaemin wasn’t big on letting people in on how he felt even back then, but Mark seemed to either see right through him or be really good at faking it, because he’d be the first to sit next to Jaemin on an off day and squeeze his shoulder, smiling crookedly whenever Jaemin looked at him funny.

“Jisung said you’d come but none of us were buying it. It’s so good to see you! How’s Toronto treating you, man? Or have you moved?”

“Still Toronto,” Jaemin confirms, rolling his ‘r’ and omitting the second ‘t’ the way he learned to minutes after he landed in the city all those years ago.

It gets the reaction he was aiming for, Mark’s eyes widening for a fraction of a second before his whole face scrunches up into a laugh. “Damn, we’re dealing with a local! All that worrying about your English was for nothing, then, huh?”

Not quite, but Jaemin won’t tell Mark that, of all people. The sole reason Jaemin ever acquired English at all was because he had no other choice, it was learn or fail to go on with his life in any meaningful capacity.

He still remembers the conversation he’d had with Mark a week before he told the company he wanted to terminate his contract. Mark had asked him a hundred and one questions with a serious furrow between his brow that didn’t complement his age, ensuring Jaemin wasn’t being backed into a corner. You’d have a home with us, Mark had stressed, you’d still have a family.

Eventually, Mark fell silent, looking at Jaemin curiously for a few beats before saying, It’s okay to go if you’re scared, you know. It doesn’t matter what you’re scared of, I still think it’s okay. I mean I could be totally off here but I just… wanted you to know that.

At that point in time Jaemin had a tendency to implode when it came to big emotions, so he’d had no clue how to unstick his lips and tell Mark how afraid he really was of leaving everything he’d ever known behind, how every day the future trickled down his lungs and made it hard to breathe. (He certainly didn’t have the capacity to explain that touching his knee to Jisung’s made him dream of lives he kept having to bury, that he was tired of waking up in mourning.)

But Mark had been so kind even if he didn’t know half of it. That’s who he’d always been.

“I guess.” Jaemin shrugs floppily, giving Mark a half-sincere, half-awkward smile. His brain flips through an endless list of questions he wants to ask but all of them are too oddly shaped for who they are to each other now—which, he falters at the thought of, is nothing.

Nothing important, at least.

“What brings you here?” He finally decides to ask, as if of the two of them Mark is the one out of place.

“Oh, I’m picking that up actually.” He juts his chin out at the album Jaemin hadn’t even gotten the chance to open. “He’s finally okay with us listening to it as long as he’s not there, and we had a day off so I thought we could swing by.”

“You haven’t heard it yet?” Not that Jaemin’s all that surprised, but the launch party is supposed to be in three days—surely, it’s out of the ordinary to wait this long to let your members listen to your work. Then again, what does he know?

“Jisung is super private with his stuff,” Mark laughs, scratching the back of his beck. “Worse than me, probably, and that’s really saying something. You could say I’ve been a bad influence.”

I’d never, Jaemin thinks immediately, uncaring of how little he knows to back the thought up. Calling Mark Lee a bad influence would be a crime in any universe, any timeline.

“Still as chatty as ever, huh?” Mark laughs, reaching past him to grab the album. He looks down at the cover for a few moments, deliberating, then he sucks in a breath and smiles at Jaemin, glamour dialled down to a more human degree. “You know, there have been times when I wo—”

“Do I really have to do everything myself, he said it was under—”

They both turn their heads at the same time towards the door, and Jaemin has just enough time to catch Donghyuck’s eyes go cold when they land on him before they very deliberately return to Mark. He slips his shoes back on when he spots the album securely in Mark’s hand, heels falling flat to the ground again.

“How long were you planning on making me wait?”

For a second, the mask Jaemin hadn’t realized Mark was wearing drops as he pierces Donghyuck with a stern, hard look. “Jisung clearly has a guest.”

Jaemin resists the impulse to spot the so-called guest, gut twisting at the recognition that it’s him.

Neither of them budge, a silent conversation taking place before the furrow between Donghyuck’s brows finally smooths out to indifference. He mumbles something under his breath and walks right back out the door without sparing Jaemin so much as a word.

Mark’s smile returns, though it’s tinged with irritation. “Sorry, he hasn’t had lunch. Do you mind cutting this short? We’ll catch up later this week. You’re here until…”

“Friday.”

“Sweet, okay, that works. I’ll see you Wednesday?”

Jaemin nods, brain still stuck on the cool, detached look on Donghyuck’s face. He manages to get out a proper goodbye as Mark leaves, waving half-heartedly even though Mark slips out without looking back. There’s no time to dissect that look or revisit the fragile state of his relationship with Donghyuck even before he’d up and left without a warning, not when the water shuts off and Jisung walks out a minute later, tilting his head at the sight of Jaemin frozen in the middle of the room.

“I’ve got a couch, you know,” he informs him in earnest, as if somehow Jaemin had completely overlooked the ugly hunk of leather pushed against one of the walls.

Jaemin snorts and, for the first time in ten years, says, “Go get dressed, Jisung.”

Despite Jisung’s very loud, very apparent celebrity status, they decide to take a walk.

Three buses pass by with Jisung’s face plastered across them, clearly some fan-made promotional tactics for his upcoming album, but Jisung turns his head away from them every time, rubbing his nose in embarrassment.

“It’s a red light, I can take a picture of you with it,” Jaemin offers innocently when the third one pulls up right next to them, already pulling out his phone.

Jisung just groans and takes Jaemin by the shoulders, pushing him away with increasing urgency as Jaemin continues to insist it would be a disservice to the fans, grin wide and satisfied.

“I thought you’d be less weird now,” Jisung grouses once they’re in the clear. For someone so big, he’s really perfected the art of shrinking into himself. If it weren’t for the facemask, Jaemin would probably see his nose scrunching up, less than pleased.

“That does sound like something you’d think.”

Jisung shoots him an unimpressed look at the non-reply. Jaemin privately preens.

It’s all too easy to fall back into step with Jisung, especially when they’ve both stripped themselves of as much context as possible. There are no external pressures to explain their lives to one another, not in the way there would definitely be had Jisung visited him instead. It’s impossible to avoid the fame factor entirely over here, of course, but it’s not like he’s meeting Jisung backstage at a concert or in the middle of a practice room.

Maybe his lifestyle has taught him some modicum of tact, because they’d met very carefully outside of his universe in a house that had both the charm and personality of a middle school cafeteria. There hadn’t been anything to be overwhelmed by, nothing to question or make conversation over that would dig up the past under their feet and destabilize them.

On the way to the park, Jaemin talks about the weather, the flight, and how much he’d missed the fast internet. Jisung talks about the weather, the new flavour of ramen he’d had for breakfast, and his concerns over the dwindling population of pigeons he’s noticed lately.

It works—and then it doesn’t.

They meet a fan in the park.

The more accurate statement would be that they meet a lot of fans in a lot of places, but the one they meet in the park recognizes Jaemin before Jisung, which is all kinds of strange and exhilarating.

She’s pretty inconspicuous—long black hair, glasses, formal attire like she’s a corporate employee on her lunch break. Early thirties, probably. It shouldn’t come as a surprise, after all anyone who knows of him had to have been following NCT long before they’d become leaders by any means, but after seeing several balls of energy in school uniforms freak out over Jisung it does give him pause. 

“I was crushed when you left the company, of course,” she’s recalling now with a small, nostalgic smile even as Jaemin tenses. “But you must’ve had your reasons. I never thought I’d run into you so suddenly considering how little is known about you now!”

For a moment, no one says anything. Then, Jisung pulls his mask to his chin and shows off one of those half-sweet, half-self-conscious smiles he’s always been so good at, and Jaemin relaxes, not quite sure what he was bracing himself for.

“I’m actually releasing an album soon,” he relays like it’s a small indie project no one’s ever heard of, scratching his cheek disarmingly. “Somehow, I convinced hyung to fly across the world to celebrate.”

The woman is obviously far enough removed from the idol world to react without the usual theatrics, nodding in understanding. “I see, so then this is just a right place right time sort of scenario! Actually, in light of that…”

She rummages around in her handbag for something, too distracted to notice the way Jisung’s hand wraps quickly but quietly around Jaemin’s forearm. In the blink of an eye, a large man with a buzzcut and oval glasses is standing right next to them. Jaemin doesn’t even get the chance to ask what’s going on, Jisung’s fingers dropping back down to his side right as the woman pulls out a pen and what looks like a business card.

The man exchanges a glance with Jisung and brushes past them as if he were just any old passerby and not—not a security detail. Because Jisung is famous. And always has to be aware, always has to be careful.

In the stretch of a few context-free hours, Jaemin had managed to forget that fame and fortune are a package deal, sure, but fame and danger is the whole package. There is no one without the other.

“Could I trouble you to sign this?”

“He’d love to,” Jisung answers for him when he doesn’t reply right away, squeezing his shoulder briefly to bring him back to attention.

Jaemin shakes off the discomfort of not having been in the know and smiles, the muscles on his face pulling in a way they haven’t in years.

“And who do I have the pleasure of making this out to?” Jaemin hasn’t been known to be an overly saccharine lover, but Stella used to flail at the oddest things when they were dating. It’s your voice, she’d huff, you make everything sound so… suggestive. It doesn’t help that you’re always looking at me like I’m a baby bird resting in your palms. He can see the effects of it now, pink seeping into this young lady’s cheeks as if she’s reverted back to her teenage years.

The sweet tinkle of her shy laugh loosens his muscles, flows through him like oxygen. When she tucks her hair behind one ear and gives him her name, he calls it suitably gorgeous and revels in her newfound hesitation to keep eye contact. It’s a slow, intoxicating build: the light banter, the realization that his hand still remembers the signature he’d worked out with the company, the quiet murmurs of interest growing around them with the recognition of something more than a run-in with an acquaintance.

They go through the motions like he’s an old hand at this kind of stuff, completely undeterred by the fact that he isn’t, that his celebrity resume has an inexcusable gap on it that would render him worthless to anyone in the entertainment industry today.

It doesn’t really matter, though. From day one, the thing Jaemin had looked forward to most wasn’t the critical acclaim or sold out shows—it was the people, the way joy could rush through them like a forest fire as long as a match was lit at the right time under the right conditions.

When she eventually walks back off to her life, Jaemin sees the grass grow greener in her wake, the sky tint a sharper blue.

“That was crazy.” Jisung shakes his head in disbelief, stupid smile vanishing under his mask again. Nothing can wipe the excitement from his eyes, though. “For someone who never actually wanted to be an idol, you really—you would’ve killed it.”

Jaemin shrugs like it doesn’t matter, but the way his blood sings tells a different story. “Maybe.”

They’re about as close as they’re going to get to the heart of the matter, Jaemin can tell that Jisung won’t toe the line more than this, and he’s not keen on rehashing the past either, so he clears his throat and starts walking again. “I’m glad you wrote to me.”

Jisung hums, eyes sparkling in the sun with mirth. “I nearly asked Mark hyung to write it for me in English.”

“I left when I was eighteen, not eight,” Jaemin scoffs, though he’s remembering how some of the words had slowed him down, Hangul all tight and blurry. “You can’t just forget things like that.”

Jisung shoots Jaemin a pointed look. He doesn’t say it, but he doesn’t have to.

“I didn’t forget you.” It’s an uncharacteristically weak defense. He hates the meekness of his own voice. “I just…”

But what is there to say beyond that, really? Jaemin didn’t forget.

Jaemin has spent his whole life trying to gain control of all the things that happen to him by calling them choices. If anyone asked, he’s got the key to every pair of handcuffs that adorn his wrists—he knows exactly where they are and exactly how they match up, it’s just a matter of whether or not he wants to be free.

He’s far too used to morphing limitations as conscious decisions, well aware that if he didn’t he’d lose his mind thinking of the future that slipped out of his fingers.

His mom had called him out for it once while they were cooking, voice projected and always speaking in plurals despite having retired years ago.

“I don’t do it that way,” he’d uttered distractedly, smashing cloves of garlic with his knife to peel them instead of treating them like grapes. “This is faster.”

“Oh, let’s not do that,” she’d replied, peeling hers slow and meticulously, “we both know you can’t do it this way. You’ve got your dad’s fingers.”

Jaemin had frowned at his thick fingers before grabbing another clove, but his mom had gently taken it out of his hands, urging him to just watch her if he wasn’t going to at least try to follow along.

“People can taste when you’ve taken time and care with what you cook, Nana, trust me.”

Jaemin had just laughed, “Even when it’s this small?”

She’d winked, delicate fingers reaching for more. “Especially when it’s this small.”

The launch party is bloated with bodies, deafening music, and a decidedly unpleasant sense of dampness.

Jaemin hadn’t even gotten the chance to inquire about the sheer number of people, a wave of strangers sweeping Jisung away the second they’d walked into the room. They couldn’t have all been his friends, but then again, maybe they didn’t have to be. Maybe it was common courtesy to invite anyone you’ve ever laid your eyes on to these things—it certainly feels like that’s what happened.

Confidence has always come naturally to Jaemin, even before he’d joined SM, so he doesn’t exactly have a breakdown over being abandoned not ten seconds into the night. It’s impossible not to feel a little self-conscious in the presence of South Korea’s finest, though. The black dress shirt and slacks he reserves for weddings and parent-teacher nights feel drastically out of place in a sea of flashy cuts and colours.

If he’d known he’d be walking into a zoo he’d have at least tried to get his hands on the appropriate furs. Alas, Park Jisung and his tiny, tight-lipped mouth had in no way prepared him for anything of this scale.

Snagging a drink from the bar, Jaemin maneuvers his way through the crowd. He nearly drops his glass twice, gets roped into larger-than-life small talk thrice, and spots five celebrities Stella would go crazy for before finally claiming one of the standing tables lining the perimeter of the room, already exhausted to the core.

Honestly, he’d take a classroom full of thirty or so screaming kids over this any day.

Three sips and the telltale tension of an oncoming headache later, Mark appears before him like some sort of angel, decked out in markedly less luxurious attire than the rest of the crowd—at least, Jaemin thinks it is. There’s no telling what the receipts might have to say.

Instantly, he’s pulled into a hug that unknots his spine and burns his eyes, cologne a few spritzes past sharp.

“You look great!” Mark yells into his ear.

“You look drunk!” Jaemin yells back, grin unfurling when he pulls back to see Mark’s whole face screwed up in a laugh.

His neck is unbelievably red and he’s about half as sweaty as he used to get after dance practices, except he has that unmistakable glowy quality about him that all drunk people seem to develop eventually, thereby cancelling out how grossed Jaemin was planning to be about patting an uncomfortably wet back.

Seriously, the guy’s dress shirt is sticking to his skin in dark, wrinkly patches. It’s a normal occurrence in crowded places like these, sure, but Jaemin hasn’t seen any celebrity look quite as ruffled as Mark does so far. He wonders how often Mark gets to let loose like this.

“How long have you been here?” Jaemin asks, leaning in to repeat himself when Mark doesn’t catch it the first time, but someone grips the back of Mark’s neck and pulls him away before Jaemin can finish.

A familiar face with striking features manages to “whisper” something in Mark’s ear that makes him break out into another laugh, and Jaemin’s tongue is still refusing to unstick from the first syllable of this almost-stranger’s name (Tae—Tae—Tae—) when Mark’s hand wraps around his wrist. Before he can even grab his drink he’s being jerked along with the two of them, and then he’s thirteen and inadequate all over again, surrounded by a bunch of people he vaguely remembers who are infinitely more talented than him, more dedicated than him.

A quick shake of the head brings him back to the present, where he’s an adult with an established life and career of his own. It doesn’t make any sense to feel less than, especially not when he knows he’s happy where he is—or, at the very least, happier than if he’d stayed.

Some of the faces bobbing around him he can name easily while others he has to reach very, very deep to remember, but it’s certainly nice not to be on his own anymore. Doyoung spots him first, eyes widening comically before engulfing him in a hug that is, against all odds, warm in an un-damp, pleasant way.

“Look at you!” He exclaims, grabbing him by the shoulders to look him over. “You’re a grown-up!”

“So are you,” Jaemin replies, amused.

Doyoung grins, spinning around to quickly introduce him to some people Jaemin has absolutely no recollection of, which either has to mean that Jaemin’s aging far faster than he’d thought, or that they’d joined the company after him.

A few pleasantries are exchanged here and there but the music really is all too loud, so he gets swept up into dancing with the guys, someone shoving a drink into his hand that he barely glimpses the colour of before deciding it will under no costs be entering his mouth.

He has to admit, it’s fun.

Getting to dance with sort-of-friends without the pressure of having to talk to them like they still know each other intimately is the ideal situation. Twice, women dressed in sparkles bump into him and try to steal a dance, but he politely extricates himself from the situation and pushes deeper into what he assumes is the amorphous blob of NCT on the dancefloor.

“Stick with me,” Jeno yells in his ear at some point, the first words he’s said to him all night, “or they’ll keep finding you.”

It’s touching, almost, to be taken under Jeno’s reliable wing again after so many years, but even if Jaemin wanted to convey this he wouldn’t know how, so he just nods gratefully and tries not to stray too far from his former keeper, dancing along to a mix of songs he recognizes and others he hopes he can ask Jisung about later to add to his own playlist.

Losing track of time is easy, especially after Jeno catches him scanning the room more than once and explains Jisung’s little disappearing act. (“You’re not gonna see much of him. He’s pretty comfortable neglecting us to take care of everyone else.”) The music starts tapering off around midnight, though, and the crowd automatically cheers when a spotlight flips onto the small stage at the head of the room.

Jaemin, a little breathless, claps along, pride blooming in his chest when Jisung all but scampers up on stage, sweaty and disheveled like he’s been running around from corner to corner.

”So,” he huffs into the mic, sweeping his hair back with a hand that could upturn planets, “it’s time.”

The room explodes into cheers, that familiar bashful grin stretching across Jisung’s face in response, soft laugh crunching into the mic.

“Okay, alright, yeah, so… um, I started out in this industry not knowing a lot besides the fact that I wanted to dance, and I wanted the whole world to watch as I did. Luckily, SM thought that was good enough and took a chance on me.”

As fast as they could, Jaemin thinks a little snidely amongst scattered laughter. Jisung may be taller and bulkier than he used to be, but his face remains miraculously untouched by the passage of time.

“It was lucky,” Jisung continues with a shaky laugh, skin gleaming under the shifting lights. “I was lucky. I was surrounded by people who were a lot more passionate than me and it pushed me to be better and think further ahead. Even today, I don’t think there’s anyone who inspires me more than my members.”

Mark and the tall man—Johnny, Jaemin thinks—let out a series of obnoxious hoots, only shutting up when Doyoung physically slaps a hand over each of their mouths. It takes no time at all for Doyoung to let his arm hang loose, fingers shifting to play with Mark’s earlobe. Jaemin takes in a small breath, bringing his gaze back to Jisung.

“This album did not, and probably could’ve never, come entirely from me.” Jisung’s hand balls into an awkward fist at his side, but he pushes through it, staying sincere. “Every bar of every song belongs in part to my members. I hear them everywhere, even in my own voice, and uh, I wouldn’t trade that for anything.

“So, um, this album is kind of for them in a way. For showing me just how far dedication can get you, and for promising to see this thing through to the very end. You guys are my—heart.”

At this, the crowd breaks into an awww, but a couple of the Dream members mime throwing up. Donghyuck is the first to give it up, lips pressed tight together in a wobbly smile. None of them say a thing, but the way they turn to Jisung needs no explanation.

For promising to see this thing through to the very end, huh? Jaemin ignores the stuttering of his chest and smiles up at the stage, startling faintly when he finds Jisung looking straight through everyone else and right at him.

“Thank you,” he says in earnest, “for loving me when you did, how you did.”

Jaemin inhales deeply and doesn’t let it out until Jisung’s eyes have moved on, mouth still forming words he can barely hear over the sound of his own heartbeat. Guilt and alcohol slosh around uncomfortably in his stomach.

He doesn’t like that, being ashamed of having loved Jisung, once.

For the next few moments, he keeps his eyes on the clock projected behind Jisung.

The first track of the album starts playing at 12:16 am. Jaemin slips out the back door before he’s heard a word of it.

"Hey, stranger, I was wondering when you’d call.”

Jaemin laughs, a quick, fragile thing that expels all the panic out of his chest and into the night sky. Rubbing his eyes, he huddles into himself as if experiencing less of the world will bring Stella closer.

“I’ve been busy trying to outrun jetlag,” he lies, staring at the ground. “What are you up to?”

“Making some coffin coffee, I was writing until… god, I can’t even—like, 4 in the morning?”

He smiles, fond. Stella’s always had an ultra-expressive voice, even through the grainy static and metallic clinks he can tell she’s more wired than she is exhausted. Writing, she’d told him on their third date, is a marathon. (And he, she’d told him on their wedding day, was her pacemaker.)

“That sounds promising, you’re finally feeling it again. Make sure you’re—”

“—eating real food, I know,” she finishes for him, busy sounds finally coming to a halt. He can faintly hearing the espresso machine working overtime in the background. “Devon’s been bringing me food, but I don’t think he realizes how much having kids has messed with his ability to season things. If I were two or four I’m sure I’d be more grateful.”

Jaemin laughs. Always so honest.

“I miss your cooking more than I miss you,” she says matter-of-factly before laughing softly to herself and letting out a wistful sigh. “That’s a lie. I miss you more. How’re things over there?”

For a moment, he considers telling her the truth: that he feels like he’s lost his way in his childhood home, that he didn’t realize Seoul would be an open wound, a gaping chasm with his past on the other side that he thought had been stitched up years ago, that everyone’s he’s met simultaneously exists as a body two feet away from him and a disembodied echo he no longer understands.

For a moment, he considers it, and in the next he remembers what it feels like to be picked apart by his wife and settles on, “Strange, but good. I’ll be back before you know it.”

“God, I hope. I’m waiting to watch the next episode of Grey’s with you but Suzy keeps asking me how far I’ve gotten and hinting at things that I’m afraid I’m starting to figure out. Remember how we thought…”

They go back and forth for a while like that, talking about mundane little nothings that anyone else would grow tired of within the first minute, but it’s good for him.

It’s so easy to cement himself in the real world like this, so easy to remember he has a wife and neighbours they’re actually friends with and a stack of things that need to be graded sitting on his desk and a favourite coffeeshop where three of the baristas know his parents’ names and ask how they’re doing. All of that is his life, quiet and appropriately unglamorous, not whatever he’s doing here in Seoul.

(Playing pretend? Badly?)

“…anyway, coffee’s done, I’m gonna go stare at my laptop for a few hours.”

“Take it slow,” Jaemin cautions, “eight shots always wind you up.”

“I think you’re the only person in the world they don’t wind up, babe,” she laughs. “Call whenever you want, okay? Don’t think I can’t hear that thing in your voice.”

Jaemin winces. “What thing?”

“You know what thing. Love you, talk soon.”

“Love you.”

He hangs up with a sigh. It’s not like he didn’t know she’d figure it out eventually. He doesn’t need much of an expressive voice for Stella to pick up when something’s off, he’s found.

“Girlfriend?”

“Wife.” The response is automatic, tumbling out of him before he can process where the question actually came from.

(It didn’t used to be—after they got married he had to look in the mirror every morning and whisper Stella, my wife, for a few months before it became instinct. Second nature. Proof that they were fused together forevermore.)

Behind him, Jisung leans against the door with flushed cheeks and a clumsy air of indifference. Even inky black and half-hidden, though, his eyes betray a glimmer of surprise.

“Oh.”

In retrospect, Jaemin should’ve planned this out, but it’s not like he thought it’d be a hard pill to swallow. Maybe that was unfair considering everyone in his immediate circle had long since given up seeing him and Stella as two separate entities, and everyone here knew his name, what his favourite ice-cream flavour was a decade ago, and not much else.

They don’t owe each other anything, really, but Jaemin can’t help feeling like he’s let Jisung down somehow by not telling him sooner. Not that it’d change anything.

Not that there’s anything to change.

Slowly, Jisung stumbles his way over to drop down next to Jaemin, air audibly knocking out of him on impact. Their shoulders brush. Jaemin leans away.

“No ring,” Jisung observes quietly, bangs obscuring the upper half of his face.

Jaemin pulls out the necklace from under his shirt, holding the pendant between his fingers. "Stella’s not big on rings.”

It’s nothing special, just a flat disc of silver identical to Stella’s gold. Small, tasteful, and mostly impersonal if it weren’t for the way she loved looking at him through it, telling him she was taking a picture that would stay with her forever—if it weren’t for the way she loved bringing magic into the mundane.

Before he can explain this though, Jisung blurts out, “What’s she like?”

Jaemin presses the warm disc to his bottom lip, speaks through it like it’s a direct line. “Safe.”

A few beats pass. Someone yells something incoherent from the party, loud enough to be heard over the thumping music. A gust of wind dances by, and Jaemin takes it all into his lungs.

“And you love her,” Jisung mumbles, almost to himself.

Jaemin drops the necklace, breathes out. “And I love her.”

He does.

It’s just that sometimes that doesn’t feel like enough for either of them.

Half an hour later, Jaemin is waiting by the door, picking at the skin of his thumb every time he hears Jisung retch around the corner. Don’ wanna—don’ see—go wait— is the crystal clear messaging he’d gotten before a large, bony hand had bid his chest goodbye with an awkward push.

Jaemin didn’t demand to stay, nor did he stop a few feet behind Jisung where he likely wouldn’t have noticed him—it just wasn’t his place, really. When friends don’t listen to pleas for space it’s breaking a rule or two for the greater good, when strangers don’t it’s crossing a line, ignoring a boundary, asking for trouble. In the fuzzy in-between, Jaemin wasn’t about to take any chances.

Still, it takes the presence of another body to pull his thoughts entirely away from Jisung.

Jeno looks almost too sober when he walks through the door, smiling politely upon noticing Jaemin. He says a few flimsy nothings about how rowdy the party’s getting, how he’d tried to, maybe a little selfishly, convince Jisung to keep it just between the members (and got stuck with DD for his troubles), how he didn’t think Jaemin would come.

“Well, he wrote a letter, which I didn’t think he knew how to do.” Jisung had hated anything that didn’t make him sweat back then. “And he packaged it up pretty nicely, it would’ve felt wrong to refuse.”

“Oh, that wasn’t him,” Jeno cuts in with a small smile, hands melting into his pockets. When Jaemin was younger, he used to see the shape of Jeno’s jaw in every puddle, the happy hunch of his shoulders in every drop of rain that bounced off the ground. So liquid in essence, SM’s token solvent. “I took over after he messed up the fourth time. You taught me to fold paper planes like that, remember?”

A memory under lock and key sparks erratically to life, melting through the metal entirely.

Their first week as trainees culminating in a day off. Jaemin sprawled across the practice rooms floors like a particularly stubborn stain, nails scratching the varnish off the wood as he made constellations of the dried gum on the ceiling. Jeno’s face suddenly popping into view, hair so long it nearly flopped halfway down his nose (which Jaemin remembers thinking was a shame when they’d first met).

“We’re having a paper plane competition outside, wanna come?”

Jaemin hadn’t cared much about competition then—which should’ve flagged him as an anomaly much, much earlier than it actually did—but he’d cared about this boy with the sheltered kind eyes despite not knowing him past a perfunctory bow and a few tired smiles.

He had also seen the aerodynamic nightmare Jeno had kept carefully pinched between his fingers and immediately known he needed to be educated. “That isn’t gonna get you anywhere. Gimme a piece, I’ll show you the best way to make one.”

Jaemin hadn’t gone to watch, but when Jeno bounced into the room half an hour later with a grin that could power all of Seoul, he’d snuck him out of the building without a chaperone to celebrate with ice-cream. They’d been inseparable after that, two amorphous kids that kneaded each other into something more refined, more worthy of being shaped by baby pink cookie cutters.

Until, of course.

“Right,” Jaemin blinks, the man standing before him flickering into a much younger, much softer boy for half a heartbeat before he’s gone. He blinks a few more times for good measure, but Jeno is still Jeno, older and more solid than Jaemin ever dreamed he could be. “I forgot. You still do it like that?”

Jeno shrugs, relaxed. “It was so different, you know? I guess it keeps you close too.”

There’s an air of nonchalance about him, but the way he scuffs his shoe on the ground tells a different, age-inappropriate story of mild petulance. Jaemin softens. “I should’ve called.”

Jeno shakes his head but doesn’t look up, laughing quietly. “I knew you wouldn’t but I still—I don’t know. When I saw you in there I thought, I wish we’d grown up together, which is so weird because I don’t even know you anymore.”

“Not much to know,” Jaemin only half-jokes, slipping through the thin curtain of hurt. Avoid, avoid, avoid. “I teach, I garden, and sometimes I feed the stray cats in our neighbourhood even though St—my wife tells me not to.”

Jeno perks up at this, finally gracing Jaemin with a genuine smile. “So now I know you?”

Jaemin wonders how many words it would take to wring out even the abridged version of Jeno’s life, how many pages it would take to detail even a week in his shoes. His own life seems so small in comparison, so suffocatingly normal that he doesn’t have the courage to ask—but it’s real, isn’t it? It’s honest, so the corners of his mouth lift like a shrug as he admits, “Now you know me.”

A dream. A conversation. A world where Jisung looks through him, not at him, and says, Will you stay with me?

You wouldn’t be caught dead saying things like that when I—knew you? Loved you? Same thing—was still there. You’ve changed so much.

You haven’t. I keep thinking about how good you would’ve been at all this. I wanted you to be different, I didn’t want to think that.

Why not?

Because it upsets me, I think. Or, makes me angry?

Silence, but everything is silent. They’re not even talking, not really. Jisung’s voice is a warm breeze tickling his ears, curling in until it’s seeped into his brain.

It couldn’t be helped, me leaving. Please remember that.

I know all about the things that couldn’t be helped. A caress, a brush of air against his ribs that shouldn’t feel so electric.

Jisung doesn’t push it, he never was the type to poke and prod. Jaemin liked that the most about him.

I’m so proud of you, Jisung-ah. He means it, he does. Whether or not it means anything to Jisung is no concern of his. (It isn’t.)

A spasm. The sound of the ceiling fan. Jisung’s soft snores in the room next to his.

Jaemin presses cool fingers to his eyes until sleep takes him again.

“Thanks for coming, hyung, I mean it,” Jisung says, a small smile on his face. He’s dressed in a zip-up and cotton shorts, hood pulled over his rough, unwashed hair. He looks sixteen, but maybe he’ll always look sixteen to Jaemin.

“Thanks for the invite,” he replies perfunctorily, hand flexing around the handle of his carry-on. Jisung opens his mouth ever so slightly, chest filling with air, but then he just laughs and shakes his head, casting his warm gaze onto Jaemin.

A quiet falls over them only punctuated by Seoul’s distant chatter, lively as ever even under a dark sky. Ten years apart and they hadn’t had one real conversation in the time they’d been together, but maybe this makes up for it—looking at each other under the same stars that watched over them as teenagers, taking note of everything that changed and everything that didn’t.

“I don’t really have the right to miss you, do I?” Jisung wonders aloud, watching him with genuine curiosity.

Miss me, anyway, Jaemin almost says.

Twenty-eight years of life and he’s spent exactly four of them with Jisung, none of which had any lasting impact on his life in the long run (most of which he struggles to recall, even), and yet—

Nothing changes. It’s why Jaemin doesn’t bother thinking about it, because what good would it honestly do? Besides, it’s not like the whole idol thing was his dream, not really.

Some stalker at SM had decided his face, not him, had potential, and at fourteen with no clear future in sight his parents had reluctantly agreed and handed over more money than he could fathom so that someday, maybe, hopefully, he’d be a star.

Half the trainees would tell him that he’d learn to love it while the other half steered clear altogether, never daring to waste an unproductive breath on listless kids like him. Jisung—Jisung’s heart knew how to pump blood in 4/4 time since he was born, he could hear songs in the rain and his fingers danced even when the rest of him was perfectly still; he’d never been there to chase after a dream, he’d been fulfilling a prophecy.

That wasn’t Jaemin. Isn’t Jaemin.

In a way, this is what was always going to happen: Jaemin, married to Stella. Jisung, married to his work.

It changes nothing to keep ruminating over what ifs. The fact is, plain and simple, that Jaemin walked away and Jisung didn’t, and now Jisung is better friends with all the people he knew first while none of them have reached out to him in a decade. Jisung is tall, confident, nothing like the kid Jaemin saw on that first day and immediately wanted to protect. He’s got love coming at him from every corner of the planet.

If Jaemin still loved him, what would it matter?

It’s a good thing, then, that he doesn’t.

The cab pulls up and Jaemin unfreezes, letting his body do the work of opening the trunk, throwing his bag inside, closing the trunk, opening the door, turning around, looking at Jisung—looking at Jisung—ripping his eyes away, getting into the car, rolling the window down.

So much to say. So little of it important.

“I’ll see you around, Jisung-ah,” Jaemin says softly, feeling like he’s yanked a chain out of his gut. He thinks he can see it slipping out through the window, red with rust and blood. He thinks Jisung can, too.

Jisung cocks his head to the side with a knowing smile, the lustrous traces of longing and disappointment swirling placidly in his eyes. It feels awfully similar to the look he’d given Jaemin in the park.

When the driver pulls away, Jaemin rolls the window up with a white finger and gently pulls out his necklace, holding it up to the rearview mirror until his arm hurts.

Toronto is a mask-free breath of fresh air.

At baggage claim, Jaemin watches his suitcase journey around the conveyor belt thrice before finally grabbing it and heading out. No one bumps into him. No one stops him. No one looks at him.

Stella is parked by one of the pillars right at the front, probably glaring at the side mirror daring security to call her out for idling. As he walks up, though, she leaps out without a care and throws her arms around his neck with a scream that definitely turns a few heads, but he can’t bring himself to care.

“Hey, my love,” he laughs, breathing her in. There are notes of lemon and something a little spicy that he doesn’t remember being there before.

“Traffic was so shit,” Stella groans against his throat. “If I was any meaner, I’d make you drive back.”

She wouldn’t, he knows this. He knows her.

Sliding into the passenger seat, he crinkles his nose curiously. “Did I forget what everything smells like?”

“Oh, right!” Stella reaches back for a paper bag, pulling out two bottles of perfume with a smile that doesn’t quite sit right on her face. “I bought these on the way! I was just testing yours out in the car. Nice, right? Figured it was time for a change, you’ve used that cedar one forever.”

“Hm.” The bottle sits awkwardly in his hand. He runs his fingers over the glass ridges, abolishes every unwelcome thought flooding into his mind. “It’s pretty sweet, but it’s nice.”

When the car doesn’t move, Jaemin looks up to find Stella’s steady gaze on him, expectant.

“Yeah?” It’s a question, it’s a gentle prod with a sharp, sharp stick.

Jaemin smiles and leans in for a kiss, thumb swiping fondly across her cheek. “Yeah.”

They inch across the highway to the beat of Stella’s fingers against the steering wheel, and Jaemin looks out the window and tries to slot himself back into Toronto. His collar smells like daisies, the radio croons lowly in English, and there will only ever be one person looking at him in bars.

When he has to cover his mouth and crane his neck as far right as he can, Stella just turns up the radio and slips her warm fingers through his.

“I know,” she soothes softly like it doesn’t break her heart just to say it, to mean it. “I know.”

They don’t speak until Stella pulls into the driveway and finally takes her hand back to park the car.

“It’s good to be home,” Jaemin croaks, clearing his throat a few times before turning his head. He means it, he hopes she can hear it, see it, feel it.

Stella looks at him for a heavy heartbeat, then pulls a chain out from her shirt, holding up a disc to his face with one eye closed and a gorgeous, honest smile.

“It’s good to have you back.”