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Sometimes there are moments in Jaehyun's life that are near-perfect coincidences. An improbability meeting another improbability. Something that couldn’t possibly have been predicted. There’s a hand that shaves and caresses his bald head when he’s barely an infant, then rarely touches him again, and that’s a coincidence. Jaehyun meets Sungho during the coldest winter of his life, a winter so cold that it pains him to think about. That might be a coincidence, but it’s probably not. There’s something about how easy it is to work with him, how they rarely clash or disagree about the things that matter, that’s too perfect to ascribe to mere chance.
He meets Woonhak that same winter, baby-faced and always smiling and following him everywhere with a wagging tail and bright eyes. That’s more of a coincidence, because they don’t get each other, not really, but they make it work. They laugh at the same jokes, and enjoy the same music, and sometimes Jaehyun takes Woonhak’s hand in his, when they’re performing in front of hundreds of fans, and Woonhak doesn’t pull away. They don’t fight, because Jaehyun never wants to fight his family, or anything close to his family, and Woonhak never wants to fight Jaehyun. They’re two puzzle pieces from the same puzzle that should fit, probably similar-looking parts of the same cloudy blue sky, that should be beside one another, but aren’t. But that’s okay. They get along.
Jaehyun gets along with the rest of the group. He gets along with Zico and all the other KOZ staff, he gets along with his parents, he gets along with his brother. He gets along with his friends from high school, even when they meet up for drinks and they beg him to pay because they’re between jobs or they’ll get it next time or, rarely, when they’re drunk enough to not feel the need to lie, you’re famous anyways, so why should we have to pay? Jaehyun usually throws up in the bathroom, wipes his mouth with the back of his hand, then returns to the group and opens his wallet to pay for them all. It’s a small price to pay, really, to stay on good terms with them. To stay on good terms with his entire high school population, with all thirty five thousand people living in Daebang-dong, all nine million people living in Seoul.
When he’s a trainee it’s easy not to cry—when he gets the urge, he looks at all the young YG trainees, the ones who aren’t nearly as talented as him but put their all into everything they do, the ones who have probably been rapping and singing and dancing for as long as they can remember, who barely even have hair on their arms, whose faces are made up of baby fat and childish dreams, and the tears don’t come. It’s easy not to cry when there’s nothing to cry about. When everything’s fine, and will be fine, because he might be a vocalist now but if that doesn’t work out he can always rap, and if that doesn’t work out he can always dance, and he’ll always be able to write lyrics, and so he’ll never fail.
He cries more, though, after he debuts. At their debut showcase, and their first fansign. When they decide on their fandom name, and it's clear to him now that he’s made it. Really made it. Every day feels like the first day of his life after he debuts—he’s raw and unfiltered and unable to cope and he’s the leader. He’s the leader of a group of boys who are more collected than he’s ever been. But he can make up for it, because he’s kind and friendly and easy to get along with, and he’s a great leader and a great friend and everybody agrees, and, and, and. And he’s happy. He’s so happy that when he cries he doesn’t stop, can’t stop, and his days, his weeks, are tainted by his uncontrollable emotions.
So when Sungho comforts him the first time he catches him crying, and the only time he cries before debut, it shouldn’t be anything important. Anything significant. It’s a coincidence that he’s the one who catches him, it’s a coincidence that he goes about helping him the way he does, and it’s a coincidence that it works. That Jaehyun stops crying afterwards. That he’s able to continue with his week like nothing had happened.
And of course he’s grateful. He’s never been anything but.
Miles away from home, away from his mother’s comforting coos and his father’s critiques of his sensitivity, because a boy should not cry that much, it’s unbecoming, Jaehyun shreds his skin on a treadmill. It’s a stupid mistake that only occurs because of his distant mind, but it happens and he cries because it hurts really bad. And also he’s going to debut soon. He’s just joined a new company and he’s already been chosen for the debut group and he’s just met his members who he’s going to be spending the rest of his life with, if everything goes to plan, and there’s no time for this. There’s no time for him to have no skin on his forearm—only pink flesh and scarlet, nauseating blood. The pain is comparable to a million live wires. A bush of poisonous nettles.
Sungho finds him because Jaehyun’s nothing if not loud.
“It’s just a scrape,” Sungho says, as if it’s objective fact, and Jaehyun looks down and it is. It’s just a scrape. There’s barely any blood.
Jaehyun hums, or it might be a whimper, or a cry for help, and Sungho cradles his injured arm in his hands, gently, then wraps his large, pale fingers around Jaehyun’s wrist and drags him to his room. He’s never been in there before because they’ve only just met. They’d met when Jaehyun had turned nineteen, and then auditioned for KOZ, or it might have been the other way around. It doesn’t necessarily matter anymore—that whole period of time is a blur. Even this is a blur, or will be a blur, when Jaehyun’s too busy to think about blood and bandages and kind, gentle hands, and soothing fingers, and mindless, melodic hums.
He’s not crying anymore, but Sungho still wipes at his tears with the pads of his thumbs. Below his eyes, then further down, where they curve onto his lips, down under his chin. He kisses his eyelids, the apples of his cheeks and, finally, when his lips meet Jaehyun’s, he thinks okay. He thinks that’s never happened to me before. He thinks is that weird—that I’m nineteen and that’s never happened to me before. Am I weird. Is this weird.
“Stop crying,” Sungho says, and he’s not even laughing, not even smiling, and Jaehyun doesn’t understand him because he’s not crying. He hasn’t been crying for the past ten minutes. The tears he’d just kissed had long since died. He didn’t need to do that. He hadn’t even asked him to.
“Okay,” he forces out, because there’s nothing else to say. And he leaves the room Sungho shares with a trainee who’s leaving soon. He wasn’t chosen to debut. And Jaehyun returns to the room he shares with a trainee who’s also leaving soon, who he hasn’t spoken to once, but who looks at him with such scorn it aches. He resists the urge to apologise, I’m sorry, I don’t know why they chose me and not you, I’m sorry, but that would be a lie. He knows. He knows he’s better. He wouldn’t be chosen if he wasn’t, but it doesn’t matter.
Jaehyun thinks it’s because he’s born on the wrong side of winter, when the aftermath of autumn means the snow is weak and wet and muddy, but the air is still cold enough that it hurts to breathe, that he is the way he is. So very sentimental. So very afraid. He’s chosen to be the leader by the others, all five of them, unanimously, and so despite him being the third oldest in the group, technically, and the youngest in his family, he can’t deny them. He’ll live up to their expectations if it kills him.
They’ve had comeback after comeback, won award after award, and he hasn’t died yet, so he thinks he must be overdramatic. Sungho hasn’t touched him since the first time. Jaehyun holds Woonhak as tightly as he can because he knows he won’t deny him but they don’t fit and they won’t fit and even when they kiss it doesn’t feel right, so they don’t do it again. Nothing changes between them.
Jaehyun had been born with heightened photosensitivity, his skin weak and freckled and pale, and that was his first ever failure. His head was shaved because all baby boy’s heads are shaved in his family—it’s a tradition—so, from head to toe, his entire skin would shed and tear and rip below the poisonous glare of the sun. He couldn’t touch its beautiful glow without it hurting, unbearably. His scalp was red and itchy and when he scratched it hard enough it’d bleed. He wondered if he kept scratching he’d make his way through bone to his brain, and he could fix whichever part of it made him the way he is.
Time fixed it. Because he loved soccer, he was exposed to the sun often and it hurt slightly less minute by minute, day by day, year by year.
It’s a coincidence he was born in winter, of course, but it’s also an unforgivable mistake.
It’s not a mistake and it’s not a coincidence and it’s unsurprising but shameful nonetheless when he asks Sungho to kiss him again, like he did the first time. All those years ago. They’re in the middle of a photoshoot for their newest concept, and the photos are to be taken on the sunniest day of the year. Because it makes sense. Jaehyun’s skin doesn’t burn under the heat of summer, especially when he reapplies sunscreen every two hours like he should, but he’s so afraid. Terrified.
He’s terrified, and so during their ten minute break, when everyone else is busy fanning themselves or taking huge swigs of water or sitting below shade or talking about whatever, Jaehyun drags Sungho by his wrist into a nearby alleyway and begs him to touch him. To kiss him. To—anything. And he can only watch as his eyebrows raise, slightly, before falling back to their usual height on his perfectly proportionate face. On his gorgeous face. Above his luminous eyes.
Like he’d been expecting it.
And when he finally kisses him, in the shadowy recesses of the alleyway they’d stuffed themselves into, limbs overlapping with limbs, it’s just the same as it was the first time, when Jaehyun was nineteen and scared even though he wasn’t allowed to be. And now he’s almost twenty-three and he’s still not allowed to be but he’s just as scared, maybe even more scared, and he’s still crying.
Sungho pulls his lips away from Jaehyun’s and they look red and bruised and soft. And Jaehyun doesn’t know he’s crying until he starts kissing away his tears. Although there’s nothing to cry about. The sun doesn’t hurt anymore, and Sungho’s nothing like the sun, and he’s born in autumn so they’re practically the same, the two of them, when you think about it. But Sungho’s born in the earliest days of autumn, and sunlight runs through his veins, below his skin, and it hurts Jaehyun to touch him but, but, but. But it feels incredible.
He’s almost twenty-three and he’s still the one and only person to ever touch him like that and there might be something wrong with him. But they’re kissing and they can’t stop kissing and Jaehyun tastes sunlight on his lips and he’s only growing more sensitive because of it. He’s whining and whimpering into Sungho’s mouth and he’s shushing him back and their sounds are getting mixed in the space between their mouths, so Jaehyun doesn’t even know if he’s the one crying or the one placating.
Sungho’s hair is bright and blonde like the sun and Jaehyun’s hands find their way there and he remembers scratching his scalp as a child, so he scratches Sungho’s, but he stops when he winces. Of course he stops. He’s his leader. He can’t hurt him.
A black-naped oriole, glistening gold and beautiful, sings somewhere above them, melodic and sweet, and it reminds Jaehyun of Sungho’s voice.
In between kisses, he mentions that, and Sungho’s laugh tastes syrupy sweet. He swallows it whole.