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Ten makes it in 2013. It’s the Global Audition in Bangkok, which means thousands of bare-faced kids pressed together in line for the same dream, baking in muggy, thirty-something-degree April weather, Ten uncomfortably aware of the sweat rolling down his back. The sad reality is that they all know this isn’t something anyone can achieve; some are here just for the sake of having been, after all. But Ten still thinks it’s a testament to their willingness to cling onto whatever misplaced, misguided hope they have that no one has left hours into the event, joke audition or not.
There’s a Thai lady, their translator, who guides him and a handful of other audition hopefuls into a rather nondescript room: three bare walls, one mirror. The usual. Minutes later, they find themselves at her mercy when the judges at the front begin to speak in only Korean and Ten has to do that polite thing where he nods along blandly, even though he honest-to-god has no clue what the fuck they’re saying.
It goes like this. Ten sings (a Jesse McCartney song, he isn’t going to try charming anyone with his Korean any time soon); dances; hasn’t eaten anything more than a fruit bar since dinner early last night. He doesn’t go home until he’s finished with a meticulous process that involves two staff members documenting his face at every imaginable angle, and when he finally makes it to bed it’s past midnight, exhaustion racking his bones.
He forgets about it for a few days. Hangs out with friends at his favorite mall, writes up a last-minute English paper. It’s only when he gets the call, a week or so later, that Ten processes the fact that he got in.
The realization feels too large for him. He’s your typical Thai-Chinese kid from down the street; the one who doesn’t know a word of Korean past that time he performed Taeyang’s I Need a Girl—which was merely an act of meaningless phonetic memorization, really—and international school is a bubble of its own, completely at odds with whatever SM Entertainment could have in store for him.
Except Ten has always loved the unknown, and has always loved the potential that presents itself in mystery. The rush of performing runs thick in his blood, and it’s most likely why he can already sense his excitement bubbling at the surface, the feeling over-enthusiastic and pressing.
Ten knows he’ll miss his only home something crazy, but he still can’t seem to pack fast enough.
*
It’s a bleary-eyed sort of late when he makes it to the dorm and collapses onto the first acceptable surface in sight. He feels kind of pathetic about it, but his eyes are so bloodshot from lack of sleep they probably rival the bad dye job that is his red hair, and Ten finds he really can’t bring himself to care.
The facts: he’s seventeen, almost 4000 miles away from home, more worn out than he can ever remember being, and in Seoul, South Korea.
Ten has been here with Teen Superstar before, but it’s different now. Now, he knows that the paths he’d caught glimpses of before, bright-eyed and unbelieving, are irrefutably his, too. Something he can lay claim to if he’s willing to work hard enough.
The thought both comforts and shakes him.
A cough resonates from across the room. Ten snaps his head up, and it’s then that he realizes there’s another boy some feet away, brown hair and big eyes and dark circles that go on for days. When the boy opens his mouth to speak though, it’s a snap of syllables that Ten vaguely registers, sure, but can’t process meaningfully.
“Hi,” Ten says. He waves a hesitant hand. The Korean is halting, heavy on his tongue. “I’m Ten. Uh, I’m from Thailand.”
“No Korean?” The other boy asks, this time in English. When Ten shakes his head no, he breaks into a small smile, lazy and tired but understanding. “Hansol,” the boy returns, and points at himself.
Ten mouths it back, the lilt careful but agreeable. It feels like his first connection to… well, whatever it is he has here, and he’s still sounding it out to himself, keen on dedicating himself to the syllables, when the other boy falls asleep again.
It’s late. Ten is tired enough that he finds himself soon following suit, and he passes out without bothering to change clothes.
*
His first night is one instance, but it proves to be a microcosm of his next three months in Korea. Hansol is funny and warm, and he grows on Ten quickly (and vice versa, Ten hopes), but half of their interactions still involve too much miming and grabby hands. For the toothpaste, for a bottle of banana milk, for the extra pair of chopsticks lying on the other side of their dining table—the list goes on.
Hansol is almost two years his senior and Ten is still growing into the hyung thing, but he’s patient and the Korean lessons are grueling, grueling but worth it, to the point that Ten thinks he might be getting there. Soon the wordless gesturing is given a voice, and Ten can do more than just point hopelessly, praying his meaning gets across. But even then his proficiency is essentially nil in the face of the trainees’ fluent banter and quick-fire gossip around the practice rooms, and there’s that gap again, the one Ten fears he’ll never fill. Like he’s perched on the outer ring of something he can’t ever be truly privy to.
*
It’s not until the day he officially crosses paths with Johnny that it all changes.
Just as most things are, it’s entirely Hansol’s fault. His roommate manages to get their dance practice hours switched around so that the three of theirs sync perfectly. Maybe Ten has seen Johnny around before; they’re all crammed into the same dorm, after all. But it’s one thing to flit by someone at breakfast and another to be pressed up against the back wall, memorizing the fluid line of Johnny’s body moving in time with the staccato rhythm of some unrecognizable electronic beat. Ten has never taken him in like this before: Johnny resting the back of his head up against the mirror so that he can chug down three-quarters of his water bottle, cheeks flushed and neck bared in the process. His hair is an unattractive level of damp that makes it fall all into his eyes. It should be gross, really, but Ten’s throat is too dry for him to form any further rational thought, eyes fixated on the way Johnny’s Adam's apple bobs with every swallow. (Ugh.)
For all that Ten stares, it’s Johnny who approaches first. The purpose in his step is visible, and Ten—Ten can’t help it. He goes willingly, meeting him halfway, welcome relief already blossoming in his chest.
“Hey,” the taller boy tells him. “I’m Johnny.” It’s only three words, sure. But it’s three words in blessed, perfect English, and Ten decides that it’s enough when he sticks out a hand to shake.
*
Johnny is older, from Chicago, and Ten is kind of in awe.
The thing, the one thing Ten feels is imperative for everyone to understand, is: there are no other Thai trainees at SM. And Ten’s first language is Thai, so that’s sort of putting him at a disadvantage here.
It’s not like he came here expecting anything else. Or that he doesn’t appreciate everything he’s been given, yada yada. It’s more the little things, like wanting to tell someone a joke but realizing that the punchline gets lost in translation. More like his Korean ringing out too harsh, stumbling over the same syllable four times until he just gives up, embarrassed and frustrated. Or mixing up a word with something way, way off and getting funny looks before he manages to correct himself.
That being said, what Ten does have—hours into drilling a new dance routine to perfection, fat beads of sweat rolling down his temples and muscles screaming from the soreness—is Johnny.
Johnny, who has known the same shitty white-cloud, blue-sky walls of SM’s practice rooms since he was, like, twelve. Johnny, who never tires of being Ten’s unofficial Korean-to-English translator. Who sneaks packets of ramen into the dorm room to scarf down at 3AM when they should be getting their prescribed two-to-three hours of sleep instead. “Here,” Johnny will tell him, dangling noodles in front of Ten’s face with his chopsticks, his mouth all soft and sweet in a way he probably doesn’t even realize. “I know we’re dieting, but you still have to feed yourself,” he’ll say, and Ten will bite back whatever retort he has about the questionable health benefits of ramen because Johnny’s fingers are soft when they brush up against his cheeks, and Ten wants nothing more than to melt into his touch.
*
So, maybe Ten has a bit of a problem.
*
“Ugh,” he whines, dragging his hands down his face in despair. “I fucking hate you, Ji Hansol!”
Hansol, of course, is sitting at the other end of Ten’s mattress bed, legs stretched out so that his toes dig uncomfortably into the meat of Ten’s thigh. His mouth is a red mess of hot sauce; for all that Hansol acts cute, Ten thinks a more accurate descriptor would be disgusting, and it honestly just goes to reinforce Ten’s main point. Ji Hansol of Busan, South Korea, deserves the burden of divine retribution from deep within the furthest pits of hell.
“Did lover boy teach you how to curse like that?” Hansol demands. His mock gasp is perfectly reminiscent of the overbearing-mother look he constantly has going on for him. “I think Johnny is starting to become a bad influence on you, honestly.”
“Noooo,” Ten protests, holding back a shrill scream. “Stop!” He is nearly eighteen-years-old and has decided that he will no longer fall for his roommate’s ridicule. “Stop talking about him! Stop saying his name! This is all your fault!”
“Right,” Hansol says airily. He snorts into his bowl of rice, looking unbearably smug about the whole thing. “Care to enlighten me as to how, exactly?”
“Well, if you hadn’t gone and pissed off Minyoung-noona, we wouldn’t have been there in the first place. And then I wouldn’t have had to see him all, like—oh my God, hyung, you know. He’s so hot and this is your fault and I’m going to die, save me.”
“Don’t hold me accountable for your desires,” Hansol cackles. Except he does so while also trying to send Ten a suggestive eyebrow-waggle, and he mostly looks on the verge of experiencing a particularly aggressive eye spasm.
Ten very maturely does not comment.
“Okay, okay,” Hansol concedes. Setting his bowl aside, he pats the empty spot between them and motions for Ten to move closer. “Come here. I will counsel you on the ways of love and lust, and all the fun stuff in between. Tell me about your feelings.”
“It’s not—there’s nothing for me to tell." He stops for a moment to think. "He just makes me feel safe, I guess. And warm. Like, whenever he smiles, it’s so bright and… unreserved. And he’s just— he’s so—”
“Hot?” Hansol eggs. “Let-me-climb-you-like-a-tree-already kind of attractive?”
Ten rolls his eyes. “Well, yes. That too. But that’s not so important in the grand scheme of things. I like how the world fades away whenever he touches me, just like when I’m dancing. And how I never have to worry that he’ll mock me for my shit Korean because he’ll always speak to me in English first, and—hey, why are you looking at me like that!”
“How do you manage to be so sappy and like, completely serious about it? I’m not cut out for this. I’m sorry, but you’re on your own here.”
“Hyung.” Ten puffs out his cheeks. “I know I’m not fluent yet, but I don’t think that’s how you say, ‘I’m your best friend and will support you in everything you ever say or do.’”
“Don’t push it, kid,” Hansol tells him, knocking their shoulders together. He huffs out a laugh. “I love you, but there really is nothing I can do for you here. You’re like, completely gone for him. Past the point of salvation, as they say.”
And—
Ten already knew this, of course. But the vocal confirmation is what does it, is what pushes him to finally succumb to his more primitive urges. His finesse gone out the window, he lies all the way down on his mattress, buries his face into the sheets, and lets out a muffled scream of resignation.
Fuck Ji Hansol. And, more importantly: fuck Johnny Seo.
(You wish, says a niggling voice in his head. It sounds suspiciously like Hansol’s because Ten can never escape him, not even in his subconscious.)
*
A few weeks later, Ten finds himself awoken by Johnny’s persistent nudging, hand knocking against the flex of Ten’s shoulder muscles. Johnny gracefully doesn’t mention how he had been sleeping (facedown and limbs-sprawled, ugly snoring into the pillowcase and all), for which Ten likes him all that much more.
“Dude, get up,” Johnny is telling him. “We’re going out.” His voice is muffled by a foamy mouthful of toothpaste, which—okay. Gross. But the older boy is also wearing a white t-shirt that clings to his torso just right, and Ten kind of hates that this is the first thing he notices when getting unceremoniously roused from slumber.
“What?” Ten is not awake enough for this. It’s his one day off and he needs his ten hours of sleep, thank you very much. “Where? ‘M too tired.”
“It’s noon, Ten.” Johnny slips into the bathroom to rinse. He’s back at Ten’s side just as quickly, offering out an arm for him to take. If Ten clings on maybe just a little too tight getting up, no one has to know. “And—well, you’ll see. It’ll be worth it! When’s the last time you actually left the dorm, anyway?”
“Well... there was the time Jaehyun made me go on a midnight candy run? And a week ago Hansol-hyung asked me to buy him a bag o—”
“Sorry, let me reword. When’s the last time you saw more of Seoul than the snack aisle of GS25?”
Ten rolls over with a long-suffering whine. Johnny has that stupid and totally infuriating (read: beautiful) smirk on his face, and Ten is filled with an urgent need to let the other boy know just how much he hates him.
“I hate you, you know,” Ten asserts, forcing as much severity into his tone as he can manage. “You’re the worst thing that has ever happened to me.”
Johnny just laughs. His laugh is kind of everything, and Ten is both regretting and celebrating having managed to draw it out. “Don’t lie,” Johnny says. “It’s not a good look on you.” But his eyes are fond and he sticks unusually close to Ten as they make their way down the stairs, so Ten secretly begs to differ.
*
When Ten was newer to Korea, they started playing a game whenever they went out to help strengthen his vocabulary: Johnny would point, Ten would translate. Bird was to sae as cloud was to gureum, et cetera. They were always inconsequential words—mostly little things he’d already picked up from SM’s official lessons. But it still helped pass the time, and Ten liked how it got Johnny loose enough to rest an arm across his shoulders, their height difference more pronounced than ever.
Because Johnny is truly the terrible influence Hansol had warned Ten against, they also create a reward system as further incentive. It goes: Ten will get five in a row, and Johnny will teach him a new Korean swear word, and Ten will spend the next minute slipping it into conversation until they alarm the poor ahjumma making her way past them.
Ten finds it fun. It is, after all, what every language learner is expected to absorb when they first meet a native speaker. Except by now it’s gone on long enough that Johnny is beginning to run out (there are only so many ways to curse out someone’s mother, they reason), so Ten decides to turn the tables on him. He coaxes Thai syllables onto Johnny’s tongue, wondering if Johnny can tell how much they taste like home to him. Ten revels in how pliant Johnny becomes under his tutelage—how his teeth flash wide whenever Ten praises him for picking up a new phrase from strings of disjointed words and sentence fragments. Johnny seems to always be able to pinpoint a greater meaning among the disarray, and Ten finds himself wishing he knew how to do that with his own feelings, too.
His chest squeezes, just a little bit.
*
Their elusive destination turns out to be a family-owned noodle shop tucked into the back pocket of a quiet Gangnam alley.
“They have everything,” Johnny tells him, parting the plastic curtains for Ten to make his way through. “I, uh—don’t come here as often as I used to, but the last time was on Black Day.” His cheeks flush, and he rushes, “By myself, of course. Their jajangmyeon is just really good and it was a special menu.”
Johnny is unusually fidgety, shifting his weight from foot to foot when a man comes out to greet them. The man has typical restaurant wear on and appears to be in his early-twenties—probably a son of the owner, Ten assumes. When he catches sight of Johnny by the entrance, his mouth pulls into a grin and his face brightens immediately, like tree lights on Christmas Eve.
“Youngho!” The man exclaims. He claps Johnny’s back; there’s an unreserved, habitual feeling to it, and Ten thinks that the older boy must have come here at least enough if he’s on such familiar terms with the people working here. “We’ve missed you, kid. It feels like I haven’t seen you since Se—...oh, huh.” He trails off abruptly; blinks right at Ten, as if just registering his presence by the taller boy’s side, before his eyes skip back over to Johnny.
“And this is—?” He asks.
At a loss, Ten acts on impulse. “I’m Ten,” he supplies, sticking out his hand for the man to take. For some reason the introduction feels significant, and his words come out soft but punctual. A perfect snap of im-ni-da.
“Ten, huh?” Just as quickly as it had shadowed over, the man’s expression opens itself up again, and Ten feels the (weird, inexplicable) tension dissipate. “I’m Donghyun. Nice to meet you.”
Donghyun’s grip on Ten’s hand is firm but friendly—or at least, that’s what Ten likes to think it is. Brow furrowed, he shoots a furtive glance at Johnny, hoping that he’s managed to pass whatever test this was meant to be.
Their eyes meet, and the impassive look in Johnny’s gaze finally slips away. “Right, well,” he cuts in, much to Ten’s relief. He’d been starting to fear having to spend the rest of his lifetime in this handshake, awkwardly huddled by the shop’s doorframe. “Let’s eat already.”
Johnny grabs for Ten’s hand, and Ten can’t help but feel that he’s missing something here. Like, maybe he could have read between the lines better if they hadn’t all been in Korean. But the thought only processes as Johnny’s fingers are already tugging at his own and there is really nothing for Ten to do, now, except follow. And so follow he does.
*
One of these days, Johnny is going to drive Ten absolutely crazy. (Implying that he hasn’t already—it’s not something he wants to focus on, ever.) Johnny’s face sags the moment they press into the booth together, and Ten watches the tension bleed out with open fascination. Only then is the expression of consternation replaced with something bashful, apologetic, and Ten wants to shake him. Ask him why, already.
“I’m sorry about that,” Johnny mumbles. “Donghyun-hyung is just, uh, really protective of me? I wasn’t sure if he was going to be here today, or else…”
“You wouldn’t have taken me? I don’t mind, you know.” Ten’s brain is screaming, abort, you’re being too obvious, but he trudges on anyway. “I like meeting your friends. It’s important to me that there are people like that, who care about you.”
“Oh.” Johnny’s smile is blinding white porcelain, and Ten’s breath catches in his throat. The feeling pushes him over; he finds, suddenly, that he wants to know—the story behind this, behind Donghyun and this shop and how Johnny had stiffened at his friend’s words, so uncharacteristic of the boy Ten has come to know. It’s not in Johnny’s nature to be visibly affected by anything. To do so is to expose weaknesses meant to be clawed out by meticulous years in the trainee system, and Johnny has plenty of experience.
A waitress comes by to pour them barley tea, and her sudden appearance pushes the conversation into a comfortable suspension. Ten lets Johnny order. He’s never been here before, after all, and in the meantime he leans over to blow at his cup’s surface, letting the fumes curl up into his face. His palms cradle its warmth like a furnace.
When he looks up, Johnny has a knowing glint in his eyes.
“You’re curious about all of this, huh?” He asks. “You look like you’re dying to ask me something.”
“I mean—” Ten startles. “Uh. Curious is a word you could use, I guess.”
Johnny flashes him a quick smile. Then he shrugs, the movement noncommittal. “It’s okay. It’s not like, really serious or anything? Donghyun-hyung and I go way back. We met when I was thirteen and he was just turning seventeen. You could say he was, uh, endeared by me"—his cheeks take on an embarrassed flush—”especially because he had four sisters but no brothers. So he took me under his wing. I guess I was young and alone, and when the going got tough I’d hide out here and he would cook for me, and it was nice.”
Johnny’s eyelashes flutter downward. Ten’s head is bowed so close he can basically count them from where he’s seated.
“It was just my thing, at first.” Johnny’s words feel wooden. “But then I met met Sehun-hyung.”
Sehun-hyung. Suddenly Ten realizes who Donghyun had been about to mention before he’d caught himself, and the added honorific jars him. He often forgets that Johnny has been here long enough to befriend people important enough like Oh Sehun; it makes him feel startlingly young in comparison, like he once again doesn’t know enough to be able to avoid losing hold of the situation. Because—what do you even say to that? Oh yeah, my sister is more about SNSD, but Sehun is still her favorite? Don’t Go is my favorite track on XOXO?
Ten doesn’t think so.
(EXO is bigger and better than anything he could ever fathom becoming. Ten drinks in Johnny’s vice-like grip around his cup, tongue sticking out the way it does whenever he’s frustrated, and for a brief moment he entertains the notion that maybe the older boy feels this way, too.)
“So.” Ten finally manages, when he remembers the story hasn’t been concluded yet. “Were you two... close?”
“Well—close is a word you could use,” Johnny allows, mirroring Ten’s answer from before. His smile is a touch bitter. “Before the final cuts had been made for EXO, he and I were best friends. Mostly because of age proximity, but he was still older and I was ten different levels of in awe. And you know how he’s a dancer, right? I started taking him here whenever he got shit from the vocal trainers, and—” He cuts off, abrupt, and cocks his head at Ten. “You can’t tell anyone this, okay?”
“I won’t!” You can trust me, don’t worry, he doesn’t say, fearing that it will come off as presumptuous. Ten kind of hopes Johnny already knows this—that he’s just asking for the sake of doing so, but he gets where the apprehension comes from. He mimes zipping his lips shut, and Johnny laughs.
“I thought that the both of us were set, I guess. I always dreamed of debuting with him. The new SM boy group’s undefeatable maknaeline or whatever. But then—well, you already know.”
“You got cut, and he went on to debut as one of Korea’s most successful rookie acts without you?”
“Yep,” Johnny says agreeably, popping the “p.”
Then he runs a hand through his bangs, a nervous habit of his, and drops the bomb: “He debuted, and our maybe-thing went to not-thing like that.” Johnny snaps his fingers; Ten’s breath stutters. “I mean, it’s kind of hard to keep the spark going when your other half thinks he’s too good to even say hi to you in the halls.”
Well, shit.
So Johnny likes guys (or is Ten reading into things wrong, yet again?). Johnny had a maybe- to not-thing with Oh Sehun, and Ten’s brain can barely process thoughts anymore.
He’s about to open his mouth to say something, anything, to make sure Johnny doesn’t misinterpret his stunned stillness, but then the other boy is starting up again. “Don’t get me wrong, of course. I don’t have regrets about EXO anymore. It’s in the past, and I wouldn’t trade you guys for anything.” (Good, Ten’s brain betrays.) “That’s why it really isn’t anything serious in the long run, like I said. And I don’t mind that he went on without me, either. Just... somehow I find that being forgotten stings way, way more than being rejected.”
Ten hums in understanding. He gets the feeling that he’s not meant to bring up the whole—the whole maybe-gay thing, so he doesn’t. Instead, Ten feels the pressure of Johnny’s gaze and wrings his hands together nervously, feeling the need to get the words right. “I don’t know about the people before me,” he starts, “or how to make things better on you. But if it’s any consolation, then no matter what happens, I think that I won’t ever be able to forget you.”
Something flashes in Johnny’s eyes then. But as always, he schools the look of surprise on his face impressively quickly, urges Ten, “Don’t say things you don’t know for certain.” But Ten just shrugs because he does know he’s sure of it, and he’s rewarded moments later when he catches how Johnny has to duck his head to hide the smile tugging at his lips.
The waitress comes by again, this time with their food, and they devour the bowl of janchi guksu between the two of them. Afterward, Ten wipes soup off his upper lip with the back of his hand, only to nearly jump out of his seat when Johnny pushes it aside and reaches over to dab at his mouth with an unused napkin.
“Don’t startle me like that!” He glowers, trying valiantly not to fixate on the way Johnny’s fingers seems to linger on his skin, like a phantom’s touch.
“So cute,” Johnny coos. It’s an uncharacteristic sound: too sweet, too open for the way Johnny wants strangers to see him as, but good thing Ten is anything but. It makes Ten’s cheeks burn impossibly brighter, and he contorts his face into an exaggerated frown when Johnny brings up both hands to pinch at them.
“Sorry, sorry,” Johnny wheezes out, chuckling at Ten’s darkened expression. “I couldn’t help myself.” Then he looks down at their empty bowl, and says, a touch graver, "I hope you enjoyed yourself, though? I do actually like this place for its food. I'm just sorry it turned into so much emotional unloading."
"It was fine," Ten reassures, "really. Thank you, for—" trusting him? Letting him in? It all sounds too brazen again, like he's pretending to be more cognizant of the situation than Johnny has let on, so Ten settles on an unassuming, "for everything." The, we're fine goes without saying.
Johnny's expression eases again, and Ten brings up his own hands to feel at the heat of his cheeks. For the first time he wonders, heart lodged up in his throat, whether this is meant to be a maybe-thing, too.
*
The walk home is done in relative silence. Ten is too sated from good food and warm words to say much, and yet there’s still something unrelenting in his chest that he knows he needs to get out, having lost the chance to back at the restaurant.
“Hey, Johnny. About what I said before,” Ten starts, and he’s talking about how he’d told Johnny he would never forget him and had meant it, down to his bones. “I don’t care if you don’t believe me yet, hyung. As long as you know, I’m happy.”
Johnny is turned so that his eyes burn right into Ten’s, and this time his laugh is startled yet pleased, but he says nothing more. Ten doesn’t mind. He just absorbs the warm brush of Johnny’s fingertips above his wrist, and he’s so preoccupied with it that it takes him the whole walk back to realize it was his first time calling Johnny hyung. He’s a bit embarrassed for slipping into Korean so mindlessly when just minutes before Johnny had been calling him bro and dude, but Johnny had seemed to take it all in stride.
It’s so Johnny, Ten thinks, to always accept him this unequivocally. Suddenly Ten knows with absolute surety that he doesn’t need to be Johnny’s first anything, or one-up anyone in the process of knowing him; he’s just glad to be a part of his life to begin with. Glad that Johnny is willing to show him hidden parts of himself like this, to engage in chopstick wars over the last remaining piece of beef and giggle at how messy Ten gets when he eats, and Ten would do literally anything to hold onto those memories.
(Take that, Oh Sehun.)
*
The thing about, well, their maybe maybe-thing, maybe not-thing, is that the both of them get infuriatingly close and domestic about shit. And it’s all Ten could ever want, except for the fact that he still doesn’t know whether it’s supposed to mean anything.
Some days, Ten will be about to slip out the door when he’ll feel Johnny sneak an arm around his waist, pulling him back to chide him for forgetting his phone again. Or sometimes, when Ten isn’t able to reach something in the cupboard (and, seriously—who needs cupboards that high up?), Johnny will tease him about it while also grabbing whatever Ten needs for him at the same time. Ten will pout for all of five seconds before Johnny’s willingness to do him a service gets to him, and then he’ll spend another five pretending that the way he hugs Johnny in thanks is “totally bros, dude.”
“Get out of my sight,” Hansol will say, without skipping a beat, his nose wrinkled in disgust.
And whenever Johnny retorts something along the lines of: “Jealousy is an ugly, ugly thing, Ji Hansol. But don’t worry, some day you’ll find true love, too”, Ten thinks,
So it’s like that, huh.
*
No matter the variables, Ten’s favorite days will always be when his mother calls.
“How are you doing?” She’ll coo, and complain that he isn’t there to eat her cooking anymore. She’ll say, What makes my food special is this ingredient: your mother’s love, and, Please make sure you’re eating enough, okay?, and Ten will huff out an embarrassed laugh that they both know is teenage-boy speak for, I miss you more than anything. She loves to promise him things like another trip to Switzerland, snowboarding in the Alps and sightseeing in Indonesia. They’re grand promises that neither of them expect to happen—at least not any time soon—and Ten doesn’t say it, but he hopes that if things turn out the way he needs them to, it will finally be his turn to treat his mother to lavish vacationing in the Caribbean.
Calling is difficult. The fees are expensive overseas and Ten’s schedule is jam-packed, so it’s why every relayed detail suddenly seems to carry extra weight. His mother will recount her favorite recipes, nostalgic memories that become visceral reminders of what a comfortable life Ten gave up for this: her hearty tom yum goong and mango with sticky rice for prolonged paper-cup diets and muscle aches.
In return, there is a lot Ten will omit in his retellings of trainee life, which... isn’t his fault, okay? He just knows how prone she is to fussing over the lesser details, and he fears she’ll worry unnecessarily. So he stays tightlipped on how he went forty-eight hours without sleep last week, too busy training to be granted the usual satisfaction of his mattress bed pressing wrinkles into his skin. On how—even with cheat days—the diet is tough enough that the hunger has become so constant it’s just this giant mass of empty seething in his stomach, an ugly churning most trainees learn to grow to accept.
What Ten does tell her is enough, though, because—it’s not all bad. Because in the end, he’s certain that even with the sacrifices, nothing else will ever come close to being as worth it.
So when Ten’s mother asks him, “Are the trainees there treating you well?”, Ten thinks of precocious Mark, a few months shy of fifteen and Johnny’s unofficial favorite dongsaeng; of Yuta, who speaks near-perfect Korean but lets the tell-tale Osaka pitch slip through every now and then—who can’t put a good outfit together to save his life, whom Hansol watches with stars in his eyes; of Dongyoung and Taeil, voices sweeter than honey; of Jaehyun, a year Ten’s junior but the second to befriend him; of the rest of the kids, variety-funny Donghyuck and aegyo-natural Jaemin, sweet-faced and cherished by their hyungs, and Ten can come up with no better answer than yes, of course.
And maybe Ten doesn’t know how the hell they somehow all ended up here. They’re misplaced kids from Bangkok, from Chicago and Osaka and Vancouver and Busan all the way up to the Seoulites both at heart and in blood. But what Ten is sure of is that fate plays with a deck insensitive to geographical constraints. That it’s managed to find him an unspoken brotherhood at the very heart of South Korea’s vibrant pop industry, and that Ten has no reason to not be grateful for the cards he’s been dealt.
At night they cram together in the dorm’s TV room and take turns picking channels, packets of chips littered at their feet. Johnny will sneak an arm around his shoulder, and Ten will melt, just as always. Then the next time his mom calls Ten will tell her about how the kids watch too many cartoons, about how Taeil has a weird fixation with baseball. Recounting is a careful process, and he doesn’t think he can tell her about Johnny. Not yet, not beyond a casual yeah, he’s nice thrown into the mix every now and then.
But Ten didn’t spend seventeen years at home for her not to understand his heart as if it were her own, and they both know he doesn’t get this breathlessly happy over someone without being at least half in love.
At the end of the day, it’s not just the brotherhood that goes unspoken.
*
“You know… Ten, it’s not the end of the world if you tell him you like him, right?”
As with most things, because Ten’s life always has to come full circle, it’s Hansol who makes it all happen. It’s reminiscent of their first conversation, except this time Ten has skipped the foreplay and gone straight into despair mode, nose smashed with little dignity into his sheets.
“I don’t want to talk about it,” he grits out.
“Wait, okay! Hear me out. A), You’re kind of really obvious about it, and if he’s still hanging around you despite all of that then, B), he clearly likes you enough that it wouldn’t matter. So after running several calculations, I’ve come to the expert conclusion that you should go for it.”
“I—not that I think I’m any better at this or anything, but I’m pretty sure that’s not how it works.”
“Sure it is! You tell him you like him, he confesses that he’s liked you back this entire time, you make out a little bit, maybe do”—another harrowing eyebrow-waggle—”certain things while I’m not around, and then the rest of us can pretend that we didn’t see it coming the entire time. Win-win!”
“Hyuuung,” he whines. “I can’t.”
Hansol tsks at him. “Stop trying to act cute, Ten. Your charms don’t work on me.”
“Hey, my charms work on everyone,” Ten protests. Moments of distress be damned, he will not allow such blatant slander to go unchecked. “Even the company dogs like me!”
“Well, maybe,” Hansol admits, “but you clearly need someone to keep your ego in check. And—oh my God, stop pouting. You’re disgusting.”
Ten is grasping for leverage here, unwilling to be dragged down by Hansol's evil plotting. “Uh huh. And I’ll start listening to your criticism the day you stop blushing every time Yuta walks through the door, Ji Hansol.”
Hansol harrumphs. His eyes have a weird glint Ten swears wasn’t there before, and when he starts off with a grave, “Fine, if you reaaaally want to go there,” Ten begins to regret engaging in the first place. “Let me lay it out for you: Yuta and I are doing just fine, and you know why? It’s because some of us aren’t so dense we can’t recognize that whatever you and Johnny get up to every Sunday are actually poorly-disguised dates, and that Johnny stares at you so much because he wants nothing more than to kiss the living daylights out of you.” Hansol seems to get momentarily carried away with the thought, because for a moment his eyes drift away and he mumbles out, “Ah, young love” (as if he doesn’t have only a few months on Johnny), before they snap back to Ten again.
“And I’ll let it slide just this once because I understand your heart is hurting, but it’s hyung to you, you brat!” He admonishes, with a light tap to Ten’s cheek.
(Ten’s cheeks suffer a lot of abuse these days.)
“So—fine. Do I just. Do I tell him? Don’t I need to let the moment build?”
“Ten. Ten, Ten, Ten. What do you think these past arduous months have been, other than the longest ‘moment building’ I’ve ever had the misfortune of witnessing? Please, put your poor hyung out of his misery. I’m not getting younger and I can’t handle this back-and-forth any longer.”
And maybe—maybe Hansol doesn’t know about Sehun, and about fears of being forgotten. Hansol doesn’t know about how Johnny’s face turns all soft on Saturday mornings when Ten shakes him awake so that they can binge on ice cream cups from across the street, about how watching Johnny mouth at his spoon just about drives Ten to the very brink. (Which, yeah. Thank god he doesn't.)
But while Ten is loath to admit it, he recognizes that the older boy has been mostly reasonable in his points. That somewhere along the way, Hansol has offered him wisdom that Ten can’t refute, and that at least 80% of the time Hansol’s words come from care for Ten’s wellbeing and emotional security. It’s why their friendship works so well, after all.
So Ten rolls over with a resigned sigh and grabs around blindly for his phone, his mind still kind of stuck in a haze. After he finally gets his passcode punched in, he’s pretty sure it’s through sheer muscle memory alone that he manages to pull up Johnny’s contact without incident.
TO: JOHNNY
10:05 PM: meet me on the roof?
FROM: JOHNNY
10:07 PM: i gotcha :)
10:07 PM: is anything wrong???
TO: JOHNNY
10:08 PM: well
10:08 PM: we’ll see?
Ten feels shitty about leaving Johnny hanging like that, but he figures he’ll know soon enough. So he gets up, lets Hansol slap him on the back without reprimand, and sneaks into the back stairwell that leads to the roof, heart pounding so loudly he can barely hear himself think.
*
It’s ten degrees too cold when Ten surfaces, and he feels like a walking cliché as he stares down at the slow crawl of cars by his feet, hair falling into his eyes thanks to the buffeting of Seoul’s nighttime winds.
“Ten? Is that you?”
Ten turns around at the sound of Johnny’s voice, feeling his breath stutter out. The sound is tentative, and it tugs at his heartstrings because Johnny has always had that effect on him; even when his face is half-shadow Ten wants nothing more than to lose himself in the way his cheeks slope, in the way light catches in the crook of his pronounced Cupid's bow.
“Hey, you,” he manages.
“Are you—is everything okay?”
“Oh, uh. Yeah, I’m fine," he forces out, sounding very much not. "But I need to tell you something, and I—I don’t want you to hate me for it, but I figured. I figured you it was important enough. Because it’s not fair to keep this from you and have us keep going like this, you know?”
Johnny purses his lips. “I could never hate you, though. Well—” he amends, “unless you like, murdered my parents. Which I doubt you'd do! So you’re fine.” His grin stretches his cheeks wide, and—god. It’s obvious to Ten that Johnny is only laying it on thick to lighten up the atmosphere, soften him at the edges, but it’s just so incredibly dumb that it actually works, startles a low hah out of him.
“Okay. It’s just—I didn’t mean for it to get like this. But then you took me to see Donghyun-ssi, and you told me about Sehun and started acting like this was something it isn’t. And is that really my fault? Wait, no, I’m going about this all wrong. It’s not about—well, it is about you. But it’s mostly about me. And I’m sorry about that. But I guess—”
“Ten,” Johnny cuts in. It’s steady, and Ten has always liked how his name sounds in Johnny’s mouth. “What are you trying to say?”
“You ground me,” Ten breathes out. Slow and careful, like everything about this has been. “I’m kind of in love with you, Johnny Seo.”
So there it is.
His heart, laid out for Johnny to do with it as he sees fit.
And one moment Johnny’s mouth is hanging open, his lips parted in shock as Ten traces the line of his arms, down to the way his hands lie unnaturally stiff by his sides. Then—before Ten can even register it—Johnny moves in flash, and suddenly he’s flush up against Ten, their chests brushing. One hand is light on Ten’s hip, and the shorter boy finds himself lifting his chin to accommodate for the new angle, so that he can look right into the dark pools of Johnny’s eyes again.
“God, I—you have no idea how long I’ve—” Johnny’s eyes flutter down, and Ten is acutely aware of how they zero in on Ten’s own parted lips. “Can I?”
“Hyung,” Ten says, and it comes out like a whine. He exhales, a soft, star-struck sound, and then he’s leaning up to press his mouth to Johnny’s, brain turning to static.
Johnny’s grip on his side tightens, a gradual but unshakable thing. He brings his other hand to Ten’s face; the touch is gentle around his cheek, just an even little press so that Johnny can deepen the kiss, and Ten wants to cry at its tenderness, some unnamable emotion stuck in his lungs again. He shudders when Johnny’s thumb starts rubbing smooth circles into his side, inches above his hip bone, and it’s a full-body thing. Because this is the stuff of Ten’s dreams and they are finally, finally unfolding in front of him.
When they pull away, Johnny is staring down at him with a look of wonder. Ten can’t help the soft pants falling out of his lips, and he thinks he wouldn’t mind spending his entire life like this, warm in Johnny’s embrace as he presses kisses from his lips to his neck to places that remain unexplored to both of them.
“I like it when you call me that,” Johnny whispers into his hair, later. It’s just the two of them, the wind, and the periodic honk of a frustrated driver stories and stories below them, and—Ten thinks he couldn’t be happier. He doesn’t care where this takes them, that they still don’t have a definite handle on what this maybe-thing is yet, that the future of their debuts are uncertain and that SM Rookies is still a concept that lacks definition to it, because in this little bubble of theirs it feels like they have all the time in the world to figure it out.
In fact, Ten is so preoccupied with how cozy the crook of Johnny’s neck feels when he buries his face into it that he nearly misses Johnny talking to him, barely manages an off-beat, “Huh?”
“When you called me hyung. Just now, and the first time I took you out.”
“The first—oh. Was that—was that our first date?”
Ten is so close that he can feel Johnny’s shrug travel through him. Johnny tips Ten’s head up again, this time to press a feather-like kiss to his forehead, and then he starts peppering them in a trail, from the bridge of his nose down to the crown of his upper lip, sweet and patient. “It’s whatever you want it to be. Although I wouldn’t be opposed to another first official date in the near-future, if you’d like.”
Ten sighs: a stupid, contented noise. “Of course, hyung,” he says, and he’s pleased that even in the darkness he manages to catch the flush that rises high on Johnny’s cheeks.
(His charms really do work on everyone. Hansol's attempts to prove otherwise are futile.)
Johnny slips his hand down to grip at Ten’s. “I like making you feel safe,” he admits, when it’s getting a bit too cold and they both know they’ll have to go back down soon. “I hope I do.”
And Ten says, “Save some of the sweet talk for later, I already like you too much.” And beneath those words are an agreement, are a promise of I’ll never forget yous and something more than a maybe-thing.
Perhaps neither of them know what this really is yet, but Ten does like how much it feels like home.
*
(Later at night, when they’re on Ten’s bed and his roommate has mysteriously disappeared to other corners of their dorm, Johnny breaks into peals of laughter.
“Did you really have to drag me all the way to the roof, though?” He demands, and the only reason Ten doesn’t shriek at him is because the kids are sleeping and he is a kind, caring hyung.
So instead he goes, “Shut up and kiss me already, nerd,” and pulls Johnny back toward him so that they’re at just the right distance to do so again. He’s rewarded for his efforts by Johnny’s warm mouth on his, and he savors how Johnny’s hands trail under the fabric of his t-shirt, touch teasing and coy as his fingers linger over the ripples of Ten’s taut stomach muscle.
Yeah, Ten thinks, breathless and in love.
He could get used to this.)