Work Text:
Dialing 12-07-1985
Caller 280502, you have 299 seconds remaining.
Matthew blinks sunlight out of his eyes.
“Are you listening to me?”
Taerae lies starfished on the picnic blanket, cutting figures in the clouds with his pointer finger.
“I’m listening,” Matthew says. He isn’t, really. But he knows what Taerae said, has relived this moment enough times to remember the exact shape his mouth makes around the words. Some argument with Zhang Hao, how much he wants to make amends, how he doesn’t even remember what they fought about. Matthew doesn’t need to mediate. He knows what the outcome will be. Instead, he says what he always says when he returns to this moment. “I love you.”
“Suddenly?” Taerae laughs. “You can save your affection for my birthday. I’m expecting the princess treatment.”
“Always,” Matthew promises. Taerae doesn’t return his gaze, too absorbed in the clouds and the diamond shaped gaps between leaves. His cheek dips in a dimple when he smiles.
This is how he always remembers his Taerae. Lovely and warm and full of life. Smiling at the sky.
Taerae turns to him and suddenly sits up, alarmed. “Why are you crying?”
Oh. He hadn’t meant to.
“I just…” Matthew shuts his eyes and breathes in. “I miss you.”
“I’m right here.” Without preamble, Taerae gathers him in his arms. “I’ll always be right here.”
Dialing 21-05-1983
Caller 280502, you have 299 seconds remaining.
Taerae’s eyes are puffy when they meet his, quivering hands clutching a bouquet of daisies. He doesn’t cry often, and especially not in front of Matthew. Too prideful, too logical. Too early into their relationship to let the walls break.
But they break.
“Matt,” he starts, voice thick, “I’m sor—”
Matthew will travel time and again to this moment, to the worst fight they’ve had in the history of them, and cut Taerae off with all the love poured into his lips. Because nothing matters. Nothing matters except Taerae and Matthew, and Matthew and Taerae.
“I know,” Matthew whispers, bringing their foreheads together, letting their nose tips brush, “I’m sorry too. And I love you.”
“You’re too good to me,” Taerae laughs. “Too kind. Too forgiving.”
“Because it’s you.” Matthew tugs him by the arm into the warmth of his apartment. “It’s all worth it for you.”
Matthew knows the script well by now. The indomitable ‘Phonebooth Rules’. Dial a number to travel to a moment in your past. You cannot change or manipulate events of the past. You cannot stay for longer than your allocated time.
He pushes the boundaries every time. Slight variations — a few words amiss, a few seconds’ delay — don’t seem to alter the future, his present, no matter how hard he tries.
Early on, he’d dialed into that date. Suggesting they take a different route or a different turn hadn’t been enough to curb the inevitable. Nothing could stop the truck hurtling at them full speed, the screech of metal against metal, shattered glass slicing into his face.
The moment he feels Taerae’s pulse weaken against his fingertips.
Nothing could stop it.
Nothing.
Dialing 31-12-1982
Caller 280502, you have 299 seconds remaining.
New Years’ 1982 — standing in a circle amidst his new university friends, partyhat askew, cup half-empty. Matthew’s first year spent in his home away from home. The first time he meets Taerae.
His homesickness is now a distant memory, a lingering ache from a bruise long-gone. The ache of seeing Taerae again — bright, smiley — hurts so much more.
“I’m glad I could make it too!”
The voice cuts through the bass like an arrow bullseyeing his chest. Matthew has heard those words countless times before. There is no part of him that could ever tire of hearing them again and again and again.
It should take another forty-two seconds before Taerae manoeuvres to Matthew’s group of friends. But that’s forty-two precious seconds he wants to spend with his love.
So Matthew finds him. Runs to him.
“Hey. I’m Matthew.”
“Hanbin’s friend, yes?” Taerae offers him a genial smile, unbothered by Matthew’s huffing. “I remember seeing you at the library once. You were fast asleep, though.”
“You did?”
This is different. This is new. Taerae has never mentioned seeing him in the library. Not before they officially met, anyway.
“Do you remember when this was?”
Taerae’s eyebrows furrow. He doesn’t even question the urgency in Matthew’s voice. “Sorry, I don’t, exactly. Probably during finals? I was at the library every day.”
“You should have woken me up,” Matthew says when his heart slows its racing. “I wouldn’t have minded.”
“That’s awfully bold to say to someone you just met,” Taerae says. His flirty, confident Taerae.
Matthew can’t help but return his smile. He’s running out of time, feels it in the way the edges of his vision start to blur. “Maybe I can just tell you’re special.”
Dialing 10-11-1982
Caller 280502, you have 299 seconds remaining.
Sifting through his memories to find the exact date that coincided with Taerae’s account had been easy. Matthew didn’t visit the library often. He always struggled to concentrate outside his room. The handful of times he did go was to accompany Hanbin, who always reprimanded him for his snoring.
The library is quiet. Empty. The seconds pass and there’s no Taerae in sight. Had he been mistaken? Had they both been wrong?
He hears it then. That bright, distinctive laugh. Always loud and always lovely. Matthew chases it like a moth to a flame, a compass following his true North. He finds Taerae near an alcove, book in hand, smacking Zhang Hao on his shoulder as he laughs and laughs. Neither of them know Matthew yet.
“Hey,” he says, when there’s a lull in their conversation. “I’m Matthew.”
The weight of finals bears on him then. He’s in the library. He’s supposed to be studying. Yet he’s here, in front of this beautiful man he’s never met before. It feels more important, monumental, but he doesn’t know why.
“Hanbin’s friend, yes? I’m Taerae.”