Chapter Text
Euijoo tries to smile as he looks in the mirror one last time before leaving.
For the first time in months, he felt good about how he looked. He abandoned the sweats for the first time in months and put on an outfit that actually suited his body instead of just being comfortable. He was wearing the low-rise jeans Nicholas had lent him ages ago and a shirt just cropped enough to show off his waist. He had to admit he looked…for lack of a better word, hot. It wasn’t as if he would try and bring anyone home tonight, but at least he felt good about his appearance. That was step one.
Step two was meeting up with Maki, who’d been the one who insisted on this night out. Euijoo’s first in months, his first since that godforsaken night in late July. You need to get out of the house, Maki had begged. Do something that’s just for you. And so he’d relented. He’d finally let Maki take him to the club he’d been raving about for weeks.
Maki looks positively elated when Euijoo meets him on the sidewalk to walk to his car before heading downtown. Euijoo tries not to think too hard about how much he’s abandoned his friends lately as they finally reach Maki’s car, making small talk about classes and drama within their friend group. Jo and Yuma are apparently on again after nearly a month of being off, which Euijoo is embarrassed to find out from Maki but one hundred percent unsurprised to find out about. It makes Euijoo think – just ever so briefly, because everything comes crashing down around him when he thinks too deeply – about him and Nicholas. How he wishes it was a switch he could just turn back on.
Quickly he snaps himself out of it, though. Tonight is not a night for doom spiraling. Despite his reluctance to agree, he is excited to be here as he gets out of the car. He’s still young, after all, still young enough to get wasted on the weekends, even if he rarely takes advantage of that. Tonight, he feels good, he looks good, and he’s damn sure going to have a good time, even if it kills him. The thought lifts his mood, a little bounce in his steps as they step out of Maki’s car and head for the club. He knows he’ll feel better with at least two drinks in his system; his brain always leaves him alone for a bit when he drinks. It’s one of the reasons Euijoo avoids drinking too much – he’s scared of becoming addicted to the way his brain stops rapid firing with alcohol in his system. Tonight, it’s just what he needs to loosen up and let himself be selfish.
The music is already loud from outside the club as they flash their IDs to the bouncer, who steps aside to let them in. Maki explained to him earlier that they had a live band tonight, which was why he wanted to check it out – he had an obsession with live music, especially since music producing was his major. “Practice”, he called it, for scouting bands in the future that would be hits. Euijoo didn’t mind it either, the loud music numbing him a little as he went straight for the bar once they were inside. This kind of music was the kind that encouraged being casually intimate with strangers – leaning in close to talk, buying drinks for each other, sneaking off to back rooms to “talk”, slipping a hand under a shirt. None of which Euijoo wanted to participate in, but it was enough to make everything feel less careful, to make him a little less calculating.
He orders a strawberry daiquiri out of instinct and cringes internally. It stings how it’s still his first thought to immediately gravitate toward the strawberry flavor, a habit ingrained over years that doesn’t go away in a few months. He can’t help but wish it did as the bartender slides the pink drink over to him, the sliced strawberry on the rim an extra prick in Euijoo’s heart. He swallows it all down in the first sip. Tonight’s not a night for him to think; it’s a night to forget. Euijoo turns to find Maki, ready to scold him for abandoning him so soon to the dance floor –
Time screeches to a halt.
It’s as if there’s no one else in the room as Euijoo tries and fails to process. His first thought as his eyes land on the stage is that he must be hallucinating. There’s simply no way he’s onstage, so close to Euijoo, closer than he’s been in at least two months. There’s no way he’s not just a freakishly similar lookalike. And yet there is, because he’s there, the scar stretching across his arm confirming Euijoo’s worst fear.
Nicholas.
Euijoo’s ears ring, his blood pumping faster than is probably healthy as his eyes devour Nicholas onstage. He looks so in his element as he fingers fly over the strings of the electric guitar, his hair – dyed black with red streaks, like he’d been wanting to do, back then – sweaty and slightly sticking to his forehead and neck. His grin lights up his face as he throws his head back, the column of his throat exposed and glistening as he strums a riff on his guitar that Euijoo can’t really hear. Dark makeup lines his eyes, new piercings adorn his face. Nicholas looks like an entirely different person, and yet still – in a way that makes Euijoo endlessly heartsick – the exact same. Euijoo’s starting to get lightheaded with how long he’s been holding his breath; he’s almost scared that taking a breath would shatter the moment, that Nicholas will fall like water through his hands, just like the first time.
Euijoo’s poor heart is still beating too fast and loud and skipping too many beats to count as Euijoo stands there, stupidly frozen. He forces his eyes off of Nicholas for a few seconds to search for Maki in the crush of bodies, though a much larger piece of him stays there, on that stage; it always will, tethered in more ways than fate itself can count. Red string, soulmates, star-crossed lovers, whatever you want to call it, all of it ties him inextricably to Nicholas in ways he isn’t ready to admit on a random October night in the middle of a club. He’s not feeling it anymore; the atmosphere that had once afforded him the chance to forget and numb himself now pressed into him, making him panic as his eyes finally found Maki near the front of the stage. He wasn’t looking at the stage, too wrapped up in the bunny-like boy centimeters away from him to be paying attention. Euijoo hated to ruin his fun, but he had to leave. He had to leave now.
It feels like eternity passes as Euijoo reaches Maki. He avoids the stage like the plague as he yanks on Maki’s shoulder. Maki turns around, clearly not expecting it to be Euijoo pulling on him. His face quickly switches from anger to confusion. “Euijoo? What’s wrong?” He shouts over the music. Euijoo doesn’t speak; can’t speak as he’s reminded of the very glaring Nicholas shaped problem standing no more than ten feet away. His eyes find Nicholas like a magnet, the same they always have, no matter what room they’re in. In some distant other life, it might be addicting to see Nicholas like this; he looks so at home while performing, his biceps rippling with muscle as he plays a loud rock song, their lead singer pouring his heart into the mic. Now, though, it’s just painful, a thousand tiny needles piercing him in different ways.
When he looks at Maki again, Maki’s so pale it looks unhealthy. “Shit,” he says. “I had no idea it was Nicho’s band, why didn’t he tell me, he always tells me about his gigs – ” Maki cuts his rambling off with a sideways look at Euijoo, who’s barely managed to pull his eyes offstage to look back at Maki. He’s sure his face tells the whole story when their eyes meet, his brain too shellshocked to even attempt hiding his emotions. Not that he’d ever been good at that anyway; an open book, even to those he barely knew. “I’m gonna take the bus home,” Euijoo mouths to Maki. Before he can see Maki’s response, he turns on his heel and pushes through the crowd, not even bothering with apologies this time around. The only thought on his mind is that he needs to get out, and he needs to do it now.
Euijoo takes his first deep breath as he steps out of the club’s back doors, hyperventilation no longer looming over him quite so imminently. He decided in a split second to head for the back doors; the front seemed too overwhelming with new people trying to get in and people dancing in the way and all Euijoo wanted was to escape, in that moment. He needs to sit down for a second. Though he only had the one daiquiri, he feels dizzy with the mixture of alcohol and adrenaline. He spots a bench and quickly makes his home there. Euijoo’s not nearly drunk enough to sit and stare into space, and yet that’s exactly what he does, his eyes glued to the club’s doors, as if Nicholas will suddenly emerge. Ironic, because Euijoo had fled the scene in five seconds flat upon seeing him again. Not that it would matter if Nicholas saw him; in fact, the way it wouldn’t matter is what’s causing Euijoo’s dilemma in the first place. He doesn’t know what he’s waiting for as his eyes burn holes in the club doors, but he waits in the chilly October night anyway. Something in his chest compels him to stay until the hours turn the sky dark and streetlights flicker on, even when the chill of the nighttime is in his bones.
Euijoo’s beginning to give up on whatever he’s holding onto as time ticks by. Nicholas will probably be here late into the night, anyway; he doesn’t really know what he was thinking, waiting out here like Nicholas owed him anything, anyway. He definitely didn’t. What would Euijoo even do, faced with Nicholas’s presence again? Resigned, he leans back and slips his phone out of his pocket, scanning his notifications quickly to make sure he hadn’t missed anything too important, trying to ignore how cold he’s gotten, how stupid he feels for being out here. The only one of note was his official admission into the university’s tutoring program, making him smile slightly. Despite how sick to his stomach and confused he’d felt all night tonight, at least something was going right for him. Unfortunately, his focus on his phone meant he didn’t notice the other person on the bench until they were sitting on the other end. He looks up to apologize – after all, he’s not really sure he’s supposed to be out behind the club like this –
And his heart drops through his stomach, through the ground, sinking all the way down somewhere unreachable for Euijoo for the second time that night.
Nicholas is beside him on the bench.
Euijoo’s heart does something funny again, thrashing against his ribs like it’s trying to escape him. Maybe it is, Euijoo thinks faintly. He aches slightly with the notion of his heart still remembering, even now. In a way, Euijoo’s wishes are granted. Isn’t this what he’d been waiting for? Still his stomach twists violently with it. As expected, he has no idea what to do with Nicholas here, now. Conversations planned in dark nights when Euijoo couldn’t sleep were gone from his brain here, with Nicholas real and breathing and looking into his eyes like this, looking too damn good for him, if Euijoo was being honest with himself. He’d always been a little too far out of Euijoo’s league in a way that made Euijoo almost disbelieving, back then. Even now he has to remind himself that it really happened. How can he even begin to explain to Nicholas, though? The words don’t come no matter how hard he wracks his brain, and so they sit there in awkward silence until Nicholas breaks it.
“You okay?”
The question startles Euijoo. It’s so reminiscent he has to remind himself to breathe, to ground himself in the present. Before Euijoo can respond, Nicholas continues, “I saw you run out, earlier. You looked like you saw a ghost,” He says in an explanation Euijoo didn’t ask for. A ghost, Euijoo thinks. What a concept. He did, essentially, but he doesn’t have the right words or mental presence to even begin explaining that to Nicholas here. “Too much to drink, I guess,” he mumbles to the ground, even though he was only inside for ten minutes, max. He suppresses another shiver as Nicholas scans him. It really has gotten cold out here, and Euijoo wishes he’d thought that through before leaving his dorm. He didn’t think he’d be out this long, to be fair. Against his will, Nicholas’s perfume drifts over. It’s something distinctly orange, or maybe tangerine, smelling that makes Euijoo tingle strangely. It’s as if Nicholas’s habits drift toward him, too.
They’re still sitting in silence when Euijoo feels something warm drape over his shoulders. It takes him embarrassingly long to register it’s a flannel shirt, and also that it’s Nicholas’s. Nicholas has just draped his warm, worn flannel over Euijoo. His brain works overtime trying to compute the information, so much like the old Nicholas it punches the air from Euijoo’s ribs yet again. He supposes that’s how Nicholas has always been; even with those who were strangers to him, he was generous to a fault. Holding doors open for strangers and fixing stray hairs; it had drawn Euijoo in, his natural gentlemanly behaviors. It drew him in even now, even with all the complicated strings that spun around them. Not even them; around Euijoo, because the strings were blissfully detached from Nicholas.
At Euijoo’s staring in response, Nicholas says, “You looked cold. I overheat easily, anyway. Always have.” He glances over at Euijoo again, searching his face for a reaction, finding nothing but his shock. Euijoo’s too shocked to even try to give it back, tucking it gratefully around his shoulders as he still tries to process. Nicholas’s bare arms in the white wife beater are certainly not helping. “You can keep it,” Nicholas murmurs, just loud enough for Euijoo to hear. Just as Euijoo is finally about to bring himself to speak – say thank you, anything – Nicholas’s bandmate bursts through the back door, their other bandmates following closely behind.
“Nicholas, let’s go,” the one in front says. He’s strangely cat-like in a similar way to Nicholas, yet a little softer around the edges. Euijoo is willing to bet no one’s ever called him “mean-looking” before, unlike Nicholas. Briefly memories flash through Euijoo’s brain of walking side by side through shopping centers where Nicholas would get uneasy glances because of his deceivingly intimidating features, even though he had the personality of a warm kitten who’d never even thought of hissing at anyone before. Euijoo snaps out of it as Nicholas stands to leave with a small salute, turning towards what seemed to be their group van. “Dude, isn’t that your flannel?” A different bandmate says to Nicholas as they climb in, to which he responds with, “Shut up, Taki,” before slamming the door shut.
Euijoo doesn’t realize he only said six words to Nicholas until the van is far gone, the soft fabric of the flannel the only thing proving to him this was real life, as well as the citrusy scent lingering thick in the air.
-`✮´-
After that, Euijoo starts seeing Nicholas everywhere.
It’s not always Nicholas, necessarily; it’s strawberries and oranges right next to each other, it’s an orange tabby cat cuddled up to a black one, it’s Nicholas’s old favorite street food vendor to stop at. They all reveal themselves to Euijoo again, reaching for his attention, giving him strange symbols of hope he should definitely be ignoring. He can’t afford to buy into the maybe fate is on our side again thoughts again without inevitably being hurt.
So he ignores it. It’s not hard; he stops going to cafes that serve strawberry lattes and doesn’t hover in the produce section, where the strawberries and oranges have been displayed together for weeks. Back then it would’ve made Nicholas elated, and Euijoo as a result; now it just makes him sick to his stomach. He can’t deny that he’s worn Nicholas’s flannel every day. If he presses his face close enough to it, he can still smell the traces of a distinctly tangerine scent. Traces of himself, almost. Traces of them. Still. Euijoo does his best to avoid every other sign pushing him and Nicholas together.
For two weeks it works; a single day in the library crumbles what months have built.
Since that hot July night, Euijoo’s done a bang-up job of trying to heal. The closest comparison to his journey towards a whole heart Euijoo can think of is hastily glued together popsicle sticks. Attempted, but frantically rushed and pushed to the back of a closet, easy to break if you even look too close. Easy to snap if you’re a certain pair of warm brown eyes and a certain brand of cat-like dimples.
Easy to crumble because it’s Nicholas. It’s always been Nicholas.
Everything crashes to a halt exactly two weeks from when Euijoo first saw Nicholas again in the club. Specifically, his papers and notebooks crash to a halt, flying everywhere as he stumbles into someone in the hall. “Sorry, sorry,” he’s already mumbling as he kneels to pick his things up. “It’s okay, my fault,” an achingly familiar voice responds, far too close for comfort as Euijoo finally looks up. His eyes blink rapidly in disbelief at the figure kneeling beside him. There’s just no way.
Nichol.
The nickname rings loud in his head before Euijoo can stop it. He reminds himself quietly that this is Nicholas, not his Nichol or his Nicho or anything that’s Euijoo’s, really. He’s frozen as Nicholas smiles quietly, no sense of recognition lighting behind his eyes as he helps Euijoo gather the last of his things. Of course there wouldn’t be. That would be silly, and Euijoo doesn’t know why he was hoping for it. Well, he does know, but chooses to ignore it. He’s still unsure of what to say as Nicholas hands him the last of his papers and they both stand. “Linguistics tutor, huh? Guess that’ll make me your student,” Nicholas says. He’s smiling and it’s blinding and Euijoo can’t really think through his beauty to process his words but manages an, “Oh, yeah,”. It takes him a second to really notice what Nicholas has just said.
Linguistics tutor. His student. Nicholas. Euijoo. Euijoo thinks in choppy fragments, too strung out with Nicholas’s closeness, his realness, to really think straight. Still, he’s focused enough to realize the implications. For the rest of the semester, Euijoo will be seeing Nicholas three times a week. He’ll spend three hours a week in Nicholas’s present and have to stay quiet. It makes his stomach churn and lurch, his heart still racing in his chest. He has to blink a few times when he realizes Nicholas is still looking at him, and that he probably said something Euijoo missed. “Did you say something?” Euijoo asks, his cheeks pink in embarrassment. He pushes his glasses up his nose where they’ve slipped down; he wonders, for a moment, if Nicholas will even recognize him as the boy from behind the bar. He’d been dressed so different from his normal style, then. When Nicholas realizes Euijoo not only didn’t hear him but is also pretty much still frozen to the spot, his eyes flit down.
“Byun…Euijoo?”
Euijoo’s eyes snap to his. Is it possible? Is it really possible? His heart’s all the way in his throat throbbing like a wound as he searches Nicholas’s eyes. Recognize me, he pleads silently. Nicholas seems to misread his silence as confusion instead of…whatever it is Euijoo’s feeling (he could fill in the blank with a number of things: starstruck at Nicholas real and breathing in front of him, terrified to see him again, dread and excitement mixed at what’s to come for the next three months they’ll have to spend together. None of them are right, and none of them soothe the raging war of Euijoo’s emotions inside of him).
“Your name tag,” Nicholas says as an explanation, gesturing to the badge hanging from his neck. Right. Of course. Euijoo can’t help but draw parallels with the first time they met.
Six years ago
“Byun Euijoo? That doesn’t sound Japanese,” a boy who looks about the same age as him says, making Euijoo look up. In front of his desk, holding his paper tent name tag, is a boy that Euijoo would call beautiful – his hair is bleached blonde and curling around his ears, his eyes sharp and assessing (and to some, probably intimidating, but Nicholas never scared Euijoo, even then). He’s lanky and not quite grown into his long limbs yet, and his name tag – on the desk in front Euijoo, Euijoo notices – reads Wang Yixiang/Nicholas. In that second he decides he’ll learn to say Nicholas’s name properly and make sure everyone else does, too. He knows better than anyone how butchered a foreign name can get, and he’s determined not to let that happen to anyone else.
“Yixiang sounds foreign, too,” Euijoo replies. Nicholas looks up at him, surprised, eyes glinting with happiness that someone had gotten his name right. That Euijoo had. From then on, Euijoo vowed not to let anyone say it wrong ever again if it meant Nicholas would look at him like that.
Six years later
“Wang Yixiang, huh?” Euijoo says, swallowing back the turmoil of emotions before they can tumble out and betray him. Nicholas’s eyes gleam the same way they did when he was 14, and Euijoo’s heart aches intensely at the thought, how even after all these years no one says his name right, still. Euijoo makes that same vow to himself to make Nicholas’s eyes gleam like that as many times as he can, even at the cost of his own heart.
“Do you speak Mandarin?” Nicholas asks excitedly. For all his cat-like features, he gets to be so puppy-like with his excitement. “I speak Mandarin, Japanese, Korean and English,” Euijoo replies. In all honesty, he could get used to this, to living off Nicholas’s glow, to have this tiny sliver of him back. Even if it means the words he wants to say burn him like acid where they rest unsaid in his throat, the memories flitting through his brain at warped speed. More than anything Euijoo wants to tell Nicholas that he’s the entire reason for Euijoo’s learning Mandarin, that he inspired him to become a linguistics major, that he’s the reason Euijoo wants to become a language teacher. So badly he wants to remind Nicholas that he was once the center of Euijoo’s life. Still is, Euijoo thinks fleetingly, but pushes the thought down before it can take root. He can’t afford any extra heartache today.
“So I’ll see you in the morning?” Nicholas asks. Right. The presentation for the course; of course Euijoo will be there and so will Nicholas. Euijoo’s brain can’t really process the overload of information, but he still manages to reply, “Yeah, of course,”. With a tiny wave, Nicholas continues down the hallway, not looking back once. Not that he has a reason to. Once he finally turns down a corridor, Euijoo takes his first deep breath in probably too long, leaning against the wall for support.
He’s so unbelievably fucked.