Archive of Our Own

Intak has know Taeyang for so long that trying to remember a version of his life without him feels a little pointless.

If he really tries, he can get as far back as elementary school. A classroom that smelled faintly of pencil shavings and those cartoon plastic lunchboxes everyone had back then. Taeyang had transferred in the middle of the year, standing awkwardly at the front while the homeroom teacher introduced him, his voice a little too quiet when he said his name. He had looked smaller than everyone else, somehow, even though he wasn't, hands tucked in his sleeves, like he didn't know what to do with them.

Intak remembers staring longer than necessary. Not because there was anything particularly special about him (that's a lie, Taeyang was already pretty) but because he could hear the others snickering and he knew that no one was going to sit next to him during lunch.

So he did. It hadn't been that meaningful for him, just a simple decision. Taeyang had blinked at him when he sat down, surprised in a way that made Intak briefly self-conscious, almost rethinking his decision, before offering him a small smile. Intak's heart started beating a little faster.

They shared snacks without really talking, sitting side by side in a silence that was already comfortable. By the end of the week it had turned into walking home together. By the end of the month, Intak was showing up at Taeyang's house like he had always been here, like he had always belonged here.

Somewhere along the way, without Intak ever noticing when, Taeyang became a constant. They became Intak and Taeyang, Taeyang and Intak.

Which is why this, whatever this is, feels so unfair.

Taeyang is sitting on Intak's bed now, years later, wearing one of his hoodies like it's still the most natural thing in the world, the sleeves swallow his hand like they used to. He complains about the cold with the same soft tone, nothing about him had changed at all.

"My hands are freezing," he says, already leaning forward.

Intak holds his hands out without thinking. It's automatic, something built over years of this easy closeness. Taeyang's fingers wrap around his, warm despite the complaining, and he starts rubbing their hands together with a small laugh, not looking up, not thinking about it.

Intak watches the way their fingers fit together. He's done this a hundred times, and somewhere between then and now, without any single moment he can point to, it stopped being nothing. That's the problem: there's no moment to blame, no clean before and after, just the same thing they've always done, except now Intak can't seem to stop noticing it.

It would be easier if this felt new, if he could point to a moment and say this is where it went wrong". Instead, it feels like something that was always there, waiting for him to look directly at it. Intak swallows, tries to ignore the warmth spreading in his chest. The word lingers, no matter how many times he tells himself it doesn't mean anything. "This is bad," he thinks, not for the first time, definitely not for the last, because Taeyang is still looking at him the same way he always has, like Intak is just Intak, like there's nothing here that could possibly change.

Later, after Taeyang has fallen asleep on his bed, one arm thrown across Intak's pillow, Intak sits at his desk and watches him in the low lamplight. He looks peaceful, like this, younger, almost closer to the boy Intak first met, standing too quietly at the front of a classroom with his hands tucked into his sleeves. Intak knows what people are supposed to do at this point: confess, create distance, change something before it gets worse. Instead, he reaches over, hesitates for just a second, and pulls the blanket up over Taeyang's shoulder. Taeyang stirs at the movement, instinctively shifting toward the warmth, his hand brushing against Intak's wrist, gripping it and then settling there. Intak goes still. He doesn't pull away. Moving would mean acknowledging it, and acknowledging it would make it real in a way he's not ready for. So he stays. His gaze drops to where Taeyang fingers rest loosely around his wrist, and tries not to think about how naturally this feels.

It's nothing, he tells himself, it has always been nothing, it will always be nothing.

When Taeyang is eight, his parents sit him down at the kitchen table.

His mother's hands are wrapped tight around a mug she isn't drinking from, and his father doesn't sit. He stands by the counter, arms crossed.

"Taeyang," his mother says carefully, "you're going to stay with Grandma for a little while."

"For how long?" He asks,

"Not long," she says, too quickly. "Just until things settle down."

His father exhales sharply, "We just need a bit of time."

Taeyang nods, Taeyang has heard them through the walls, shouting that doesn't stop , the sharp crash of something breaking, the silence afterwards that feels worse. He used to press his hands over his ears, and he tried not to cry, sometimes he didn't manage.

So he thinks he understands.

"It's temporary. You'll come back, we just have to figure things out first"

back where, he almost asks, but doesn't.

"You remember Grandma's house, right ?". She adds, smiling, like she wants him to smile back, "you'll be able to hear the ocean."

He does remember the sound of it at night through the window.

"And maybe," she says a little too bright now, "you can make some new friends."

Taeyang nods again. "Okay," he says.

you'll be able to hear the ocean. The thing about the ocean is that it sounds the same everywhere. Taeyang realizes that on the drive over, watching the coastline slip in and out of view between buildings from the back seat of his grandma's car. His backpack sits on his lap, his suitcase in the trunk, and everything else packed into boxes that were going into storage.

His grandma's house smells the same as it always has, something herbal and warm. The wood floors creak in the same places. In the afternoon, the light through the kitchen window illuminates the pots and pans Grandma always uses. He knows this house, he's spent time in this house, every other summers, some holidays, long weekends that blurred together in the best way . He likes it, it just wasn't supposed to be permanent.

His grandma doesn't make a fuss. She shows him to his room, the same one as always, with the window that almost faces the water if you press your face to the glass and lean a little left, and tells him dinner's at seven. That's it, no careful tone, no soft looks, just dinner at seven, and the door left open in case he wants to find her.

He finds her eventually, he sits in the kitchen while she cooks, she talks about the neighbors, the Saturday market, the cat that keeps showing up in the garden that she absolutely does not feed, Taeyang listens. The tightness in his chest, there since his mother hugged him too long at the door, loosens just a little. He can do this.

𖦹🐚⋆❀˖𓇼˖

The school is small enough that a new student is an event.

He knows it the second he walks in with his grandma and everyone turns to look at him. He stands beside her, holding both backpack straps, trying to look like this is normal for him, like his life hasn't been completely uprooted. He doesn't think he's convincing anyone, he's definitely not convincing himself.

His homeroom teacher has a kind face and a voice that carries too well, she introduces him with a little too much enthusiasm, she's trying to help but she is somehow  making it slightly harder for him. Taeyang stands at the front, twenty-something pairs of eyes on him, and says his name just clearly enough to be heard. He hopes that's enough.

He gets a desk, he can hear the whispers and the laughs and the snickering, but within ten minutes most people have lost interest. He copies the board, he doesn't raise his hand even when he knows the answer, he keeps his hands tucked into his sleeves.

Lunch is harder. He expected that. Everyone already belongs somewhere, and the empty spots are empty on purpose. He picks up his tray, scans the room, and tries to look calm. He sits at an empty table and hopes he made the right decision.

He's still hoping when someone sits next to him, just like that, no hesitation. A boy sets his tray down, settles in. Taeyang looks at him, the boy glances up once, big brown eyes that reminds Taeyang of a puppy, then starts eating his lunch as if the decision has already been made and doesn't need explaining. Taeyang doesn't know what to do with that. Usually people want something when they're kind, either they want to be thanked or they want you to notice that they've noticed. This boy doesn't seem to want anything at all. He just sits there eating, present. It's the easiest Taeyang has felt all day.

They eat in silence. Taeyang gets halfway through his rice before he speaks.

"Why did you sit here?"

The boy looks up, considers it properly. "You look like you could use a friend."

Taeyang blinks. "oh"

"I'm Intak" The boy adds, already looking back down.

"Taeyang"

Intak nods, just like that.

Later, they end up walking home together, somehow, without either of them deciding it. Taeyang thinks about the ocean, how it sounds the same no matter where you are. He thinks about his grandmother's kitchen, the not-fed cat, the window you have to lean toward to see the water. He thinks how some things feel familiar before they're supposed to. He doesn't say it. He's pretty sure Intak would think it's weird . At the corner where they split, Intak says "see you tomorrow" , in the same straightforward way he sat down at the table, and Taeyang's chest loosens a little more.

See you tomorrow, he thinks.

𖦹🐚⋆❀˖𓇼˖

The summer Taeyang turns eleven, he stops counting the days until he goes back. He's not sure exactly when it happens, somewhere between the end of one school year and the beginning of the next, the calculation just stops. He used to do it automatically, a quiet tally running in the background, weeks until the holidays, weeks until he'd see his parents, weeks until something that felt more like his real life, and then one day he realizes he hasn't counted in months and his real life is here, and has been for a while.

He mentions this to his grandmother one day while helping her fold laundry, and she hands him a pillowcase and says

"the ocean will do that to you", which is not really an answer, but also somehow is.

𖦹🐚⋆❀˖𓇼˖

Intak is at his house so often that his grandmother has started buying the specific brand of chips he likes without being asked. He notices this on a Tuesday afternoon, watching her unpack groceries while Intak's at the kitchen table doing homework that he definitely should have done the night before. She sets the chips down in front of him without comment, doesn't wait to be thanked, and moves on to the next thing. Intak reaches for it with the automatic ease of someone who has stopped being a guest. Taeyang looks at this and thinks, huh so thi is the way things are now.

He's not sure what he's noticing exactly, just that it happened gradually and now he can't quite remember the before of it. Intak's shoes by the door and Intak's jacket over the chair, and Intak at the kitchen table eating chips that were bought specifically for him, and his grandmother, moving around all of it like it's furniture she's always owned.

"What are you thinking about?" Intak says without looking up from his homework.

"Nothing important."

Intak looks up then, briefly, with the expression he makes when he thinks Taeyang is not telling the full truth, and then he looks back down. "Okay." He lets it go.

This, Taeyang thnks, is also just the way things are.

𖦹🐚⋆❀˖𓇼˖

In the afternoon they go to the water, because they almost always go to the water. They go to the water so often that his grandmother has started calling them "Shells on the shore".

It's a fifteen-minute walk from his grandmother's house, down the hill and through the narrow streets that smell like salt even when you're nowhere near the shore yet, and then suddenly the road opens up and there it is. Taeyang has stopped being surprised by it mostly, but there are still moments, the light at a certain angle, the sound of it on a quiet day, where it catches him off guard.

Today they sit on the low wall above the beach, not talking much, watching a dog try to herd the waves.

"Do you ever miss it?" Intak asks, he doesn't specify what but he doesn't need to.

Taeyang thinks about this genuinely. He misses his mother's cooking sometimes, he misses the particular sounds of the apartment he grew up in, the way the pipes knocked in winter, the neighbour's television through the war, he misses the version of his life where his parents were in the same room without the air going tight.

"Sometimes," he says, "not the way I used to."

Intak nods, accepting this without pushing further. This is one of the things Taeyang appreciates most about him, the way he asks real questions and then actually lets you answer them without filling in the silence with his own interpretation.

The dog gives up on the waves and sprints down the beach instead, ears flat, delighted by its own speed. They stay until the light starts going golden and his grandmother will have dinner ready, and then they walk back up the hill with their hands in their pockets and Taeyang listens to Intak talk about something that happened at dance practice, he thinks distantly about counting days, and he can't remember the last time he did.

That night after Intak has gone home and his grandmother has gone to bed, Taeyang sits at his window with his face pressed against the glass, angled slightly left, and watches the water catch the last of the light. It's just for a little while, his mother had said. He wonders if she's sad it didn't work out that way, he wonders if she minds. He decides quietly and without drama that he doesn't.

𖦹🐚⋆❀˖𓇼˖

The thing about being pretty, Taeyang has learned, is that people think it's something you do on purpose. It's fine, he doesn't think about it much. It's just a thing that's true, like being left-handed, like Intak is, or having a good memory for poems. He's been aware of it for a while, because of the way her grandmother's friends were cooing over his features when he was small, or strangers smiling at him slightly longer than necessary, a general sense that his face is doing something for people that he has no particular control over and didn't ask for.

But what he hasn't figured out yet is what you're supposed to do when someone decides to tell you about it directly. Her name is Sooyeon and she's in his class, and she tells him after school on a Wednesday . Taeyang can tell she's been preparing, the way she'd asked him to wait, the careful chosen moment, the folded piece of paper she's holding that she ultimately doesn't give him.

He waits because it seems like the least he can do, and she tells him she likes him, that she's liked him for most of the school year, that she thinks he's kind, and she thinks he's, and here she looks at the ground briefly, really pretty. Taeyang listens to all of this, then he stands there for a second, waiting to feel something that doesn't arrive. Not nothing exactly, he feels moved, in a way, by the fact that she's standing here, having clearly spent considerable emotional effort on this moment. He feels a specific tenderness toward her bravery that he recognizes as genuine. He feels, underneath both of those things, a mild but distinct puzzlement at his own mind and heart, which are not producing the response he would have expected,

"I'm really glad you told me," he says, which is true, "I don't think I feel that way, I'm sorry."

She nods quickly, already composing herself with a dignity he genuinely respects,

"I just wanted you to know," she says,

"I know," he says, "thank you."

It's awkward for about a week afterward and then it isn't, which he's grateful for.

What stays with him isn't the confession itself, it's the part where he stood there waiting for a feeling that didn't come. He thinks this over for a few days quietly in the background, the way he processes most things. He tries to be precise about it. It's not that he found her unpleasant; she's perfectly nice, he's always thought so. It's not nerves or surprise, because he'd had a few seconds to understand what was coming and the few seconds hadn't changed anything. It's something more fundamental than that. Then he thinks about the boys in his class. About big brown puppy eyes and confident smiles. oh he thinks, and then almost immediately, well, that explains quite a lot, actually.

He tells Intak on a Friday walking home from school because he tells Intak most things, and this is definitely a thing worth telling.

"Someone confessed to me", he says.

Intak glances at him "who?"

"Sooyeon"

"what did you say?"

"That I didn't feel that way." He pauses, considering how to continue,"And I've been thinking about why."

Intak is quiet, waiting, in that way he always does.

"I think," Taeyang says, 'That I'm not interested in girls. At all. Like, I really thought about it, if i could like girls, and I'm fairly sure the answer is just, no. I like boys."

Intak is quiet for a moment, the street is mostly empty, afternoon light coming through the trees at a low angle, and somewhere nearby someone is cooking something that smells like garlic and sesame.

"Okay," Intak says.

Taeyang looks at him, "that's it?"

Intak shrugs with the particular quality of a shrug that means obviously.

"Did you want me to make it into something bigger?"

"No," Taeyang says, slightly relieved, "Definitely not."

"Then, okay." a pause, "Are you… Does it feel okay for you?"

Taeyang considers this, genuinely, the feeling in his chest that's been quietly turning this over for days, feels, now that it's been said out loud, mostly just settled, like a question that's been sitting open has finally been answered.

"Yeah." he says.

Intak nods, they keep walking. They walk the rest of the way home, talking about something else entirely, and the conversation folds itself into the afternoon, the way their conversations always do, and Taeyang feels, underneath everything, quietly and solidly like himself.

𖦹🐚⋆❀˖𓇼˖

Taeyang has a theory about Intak, which is that he thinks too much before he speaks and not enough before he acts, and that these two tendencies balance each other out into something that mostly works. He's observed this over years of careful attention: the way Intak will go quiet for days, processing something someone said to him in passing, and then turn around and dive head-first off a cliff into whatever situation is directly in front of him without a second's hesitation. It's one of his more interesting qualities. Taeyang has catalogued many of Intak's qualities at this point, the way you catalogue the features of a place you know very well, not because you're studying it, but just because you've been paying attention for long enough that the details accumulate.

So when Intak goes quiet in a particular way on a Thursday afternoon, Taeyang notices.

Not his regular quiet, which is comfortable and easy and familiar. This one has a different texture to it, something slightly turned inward, a careful quality, like he's carrying something he's been arranging and rearranging without finding the right configuration. Taeyang doesn't push. He's learned over years of this friendship that Intak will arrive at things in his own time and that waiting is more useful than asking. He waits. It takes until Saturday.

They're at the water, sitting on their wall, which is how Taeyang has come to think of it: their wall, their beach, their fifteen minutes downhill through salt-smelling streets. Shells on the sore. The sun is doing something generous with the late afternoon light, on a day quiet and slightly golden, and Taeyang is eating convenience store chips and watching a child attempt to fly a kite.

"I have to tell you something." Intak starts.

He looks at him. The careful quality is still there, more concentrated now, and underneath it something that might be nervousness, which is unusual enough that Taeyang puts the chips down and gives him his full attention.

"Go On."

Intak looks at the water. A long pause, which means he's already decided to say it, but is taking one last second before it becomes real.

"I'm bisexual," he says.

Taeyang looks at him. Intak is still looking at the water, jaw slightly tight with the expression of someone bracing for an impact that may or may not come. There's something about it that makes Taeyang's chest feel full in a way he doesn't immediately have words for. Not because of what Intak has said, but because of that bracing, because of the fact that Intak, who has been walking in and out of his grandmother's house for years and eating chips that were bought specifically for him and existing in Taeyang's life like a feature of the landscape, was nervous to tell him this.

"Okay," Taeyang says.

Intak blinks, finally looking at him. "Okay?"

Taeyang picks his chips back up. "I'm gay, so …"

"I know you're gay." Intak says

"Then we're both informed, and nothing has changed, and that kite is about thirty seconds from taking out that elderly woman."

Intak looks at the kite, the child has lost control of it in a gust of wind, and it is indeed heading with some purpose toward an elderly woman who has not yet noticed. They watch this unfold.

"Taeyang." Intak says, after the crisis has been narrowly averted by a passing teenager, "That's … I was nervous to tell you that !"

Taeyang looks at him properly, then sets the chips down again, Intak is still watching the water, but the nervousness has gone out of him.

"I know," Taeyang says, "I could tell on Thursday, Intak."

Intak turns to look at him, "Thursday?"

"You go very quiet when you are thinking about something." Intak stares at him for a second with an expression that Taeyang has catalogued as baffled and slightly annoyed, which appears occasionally when Taeyang notices something Intak would have preferred to keep unnoticed.

"You're strange." Intak says.

"I know, that's why you love me. Intak, you were nervous for no reason",

Something moves across Intak's face then, quick and complicated, gone before Taeyang can read it properly. He doesn't say anything else.

They sit for a while longer. The light going golden around them, the kite child having been collected by a mortified parent. The water does what it always does, steady and unhurried, indifferent to everything happening on shore.

"Did you tell anyone else?" Taeyang asks after a while.

"No," Intak says "you first."

Taeyang nods and doesn't ask why, because he already knows he's always first, they're always first for each other, that's just the shape of things. He files this away with all the other Intak details, unremarkable and essential at once.

"Thank you for telling me," he says.

Intak makes a sound that's almost dismissive, like Taeyang is thanking him for something obvious. Maybe he is. The sun finishes its descent and the light goes from gold to something softer and they walk back up the hill in the easy silence that has never once in all the years of it felt like anything other than comfortable. Taeyang thinks nothing has changed. He's right, and also completely wrong, but he won't understand that for a long time yet.

When Taeyang he is eighteen, he and Intak separate for the first time in ten years.

They talked about it plenty in their final year of high school, the way it made sense, the way it was always going to go like this: Taeyang wanting to teach, wanting to understand how people learn and why some of them stop, Intak wanting to dance, choreograph, to make something with his body that couldn't be made any other way. Two different cities, two different lives, running parallel instead of together for the first time since a boy with a bright smile sat down next to the new kid at lunch without being asked.

It makes sense. They both said so many times.

It doesn't stop it from feeling like something being pulled loose when the end of summer arrives and it's actually real. His grandmother drives him to the bus station, which he had asked for specifically, not the train, not a taxi, just her, just the familiar route through the coastal streets, one more time. She doesn't make a fuss, she helps him with his bags, straightens his collar once, and says, "Call me when you arrive," in the tone of someone who knows he will.

His father had offered to come, Taeyang had said he was fine, thank you, and his father had seemed relieved in a way he didn't try very hard to hide, and had transferred money into his account instead, a number generous enough to carry some guilt in it. Taeyang had looked at the notification and didn't feel angry or hurt. This was just another acknowledgment of who his father is and has always been.

Intak is waiting for him at the bus station, which Taeyang is both suprised about and not.

He doesn't say much. He carries the heavier bag to the platform and stands there with his hands in his pockets while Taeyang checks his ticket for the third unnecessary time, and when the bus arrives and there's nothing left to do but go, Intak pulls him into a hug that lasts a second longer than usual.

"Text me when you get there," he says, which is similar to what his grandmother said, which is maybe why it makes Taeyang's chest pull tight in a way he doesn't examine too closely.

"You too."

He gets on the bus, and he doesn't look back because he knows himself well enough to know that looking back would make it harder, and he is eighteen years old and ready to start something new, and there is no reason for his eyes to be doing what they're currently doing.He watches the coastline disappear between buildings as the bus pulls away. He puts his headphones in and watches the city arrive.

The city sounds different than he expected, he'd known it would be louder, that was the point, almost the reason he'd chosen somewhere that felt like the opposite of a coastal town, with 15-minute walks to the water, he'd wanted the difference, he'd asked for it.

He just hadn't expected it to sound, underneath all the traffic and the distant construction and the particular hum of a place that never fully goes quiet, a little bit like the ocean. Not exactly the same, but something in the frequency of it, the way it's constant and layered and always present at the edge of things. He stands at his new window on the third floor of his new building and he listens and thinks, okay, I can work with this.

This room smells like fresh paint and someone else's fabric softener, and the view is a narrow strip of sky between buildings, and there is no one here but him. H'd half expected someone already settled in, the way Intak had always just materialized, but no: two bare beds, two empty desks, a window with a narrow strip of sky between buildings, and silence except for the city doing its constant thing outside.

He stands in the middle of it with his suitcase handle in his hand and takes stock of his feelings, which is somewhere between lonely and free and doesn't have a clean name. He thinks about his grandmother's house, which smells like something herbal and warm and always has, and he thinks about Intak's old hoodies.

He texts Intak arrived. room smells weird. How's yours?

The response comes in under a minute, which shouldn't be surprising, and isn't: Mine smells like old socks. I miss your room home already. You okay?

Taeyang looks at this for a second. Yeah he sends back. talk later.

He's in the middle of deciding which bed he wants to take when the door opens. His new roommate comes in, mid-sentence, talking with the complete confidence of someone who doesn't require an audience, gesturing slightly at nothing in particular, clearly in the middle of a thought that apparently couldn't wait until he was in the presence of another person.

He makes it three steps into the room before he registers that Taeyang is standing there and stops. A beat of silence, Taeyang looks at him, and he looks back.

Oh, the boy says, just that.

Taeyang waits, curious to see what comes after "oh". Nothing comes after "oh", and his new roommate is just standing there, looking at him with the expression of someone whose train of thought has been completely derailed and hasn't yet located the tracks.

Taeyang smile, and hesays, "Hi," because one of them has to, and the boy blinks, "Hi," which seems to cost him some effort.

Taeyang looks at him for a second, at the abandoned monologue, the slight derailment, the way he's still standing in the doorway, and feels quietly and with some certainty that he is going to like this person. He's not sure how he knows, he just does, the way he sometimes knows things before he has evidence for them, the way he'd known at eight years old that the silence at a lunch table wasn't going to be uncomfortable.

"I'm Taeyang," he says, "I got here first, so I took the bed by the window. You can have it if you want it,"

And that seems to restore something. His roommate steps fully into the room, drops his bag, and recovers himself with the speed of someone who doesn't stay derailed for long.

"Jiung," he says, "keep the bed. I talk a lot and stay up too late, and I've been told I'm a good roommate anyway."

"I'm quiet and I go to bed at a reasonable hour," Taeyang says, "we'll probably balance out,"

Jiung grins at him and starts looking around the room like he's already deciding where everything will go.

‧₊˚ 🐚 ✩ ₊˚ 🌊 ⊹ 𓇼

What he notices over the weeks that follow takes him a long time to name.

It's there in the way Jiung looks at him, warm, interested, with a quality of attention that goes a fraction beyond the normal register of a new friendship finding its footing.

Taeyang has learned over years of people responding to his face to recognize this, he's gotten better at it recently, though he can't entirely explain why. Something about being somewhere new, maybe something about having more space to look at things clearly when you're not standing too close to everything.

He notices it, he doesn't file it away untouched, this time he turns it over with more curiosity than he usually allows himself, examining it carefully, and without rushing thinks Jiung likes me.

He's not sure what to do with this, he picks up his phone

I think my roommate likes me, he sends Intak.

The response comes quickly. well, you're very likable.

Taeyang looks at this. no, I mean, I think he likes me

He puts his phone down and goes back to his reading. A minute passes than another, he glances at his phone, nothing, this is unusual, Intak is not a slow responder, not with him, not ever.

You still there?

The three dots appear, disappear, appear again, Taeyang watches this with mild curiosity, then:

do you like him back?

Taeyang reads this, puts his phone face down on the desk, looks at his notes without seeing them. He thinks about it genuinely, carefully, he looks at Jiung from across the room, at the easy way he exists in this space, the grin that doesn't seem to ever leave his face, the way he keeps talking to no one before he notices anyone is there. He waits for something to tell him yes, it doesn't come.

no, he sends back after a while, I don't think so, he's just easy to. be around.

okay,good. Intak replies, much faster this time.

Taeyang looks at the words for a second, then puts his phone away. Across the room, Jiung turns a page and the city hums outside, and Taeyang lets himself settle into this new version of things, unfamiliar and a little uncomfortable, and underneath both of those, tentatively good.

‧₊˚ 🐚 ✩ ₊˚ 🌊 ⊹ 𓇼

The first late night happens accidentally, the way most things between them seem to. It starts with Jiung asking a question about Taeyang's education theory class, whether he actually wants to teach, or whether it's one of those choices that made sense on paper and is currently revealing itself to be more complicated than expected. Taeyang considers this with the seriousness it deserves, because it's a real question and Jiung is looking at him like he actually wants a real answer.

"I think I do," he says, "I like understanding how people work, why some things land and some things don't. Teaching seemed like the most useful version of that."

Jiung is quiet for a second, which is unusual enough to be notable.

"That's a very specific way to end up in education theory."

"Most specific things come from somewhere specific," Taeyang says.

Jiung looks at him with the expression he makes when he suspects there's more to something and is deciding whether to ask, Taeyang waits to see which way it goes.

"Where did yours come from?"

Taeyang thinks about this, about his grandmother's kitchen and a classroom that smelled like pencil shavings and a boy that sat down next to him and never really left his side, about his mother's voice on the phone, careful and slightly distant, and his father's guilt money sitting in a savings account earning modest interest.

"I grew up with my grandmother," he finally answers. "My parents were not really around in the way that matters. She was." He says it evenly because it is even, because he made his peace with it a long time ago. "I think I learned early that the people who show up consistently are the ones who actually change things, and I want to be that for kids who maybe need someone to show up."

Jiung is quiet for a moment. "That makes sense." He says finally.

Taeyang nods. Outside the city hums low and constant.

"There's also a friend," he adds after a moment, because it's true and because it's late enough that things come out more honestly than usual. "He was the first person who was ever just easy to be around without it requiring anything. And I think I want to be that for people too."

"The friend who's at the other university ?" Jiung asks

Taeyang glances at him, he'd mention Intak in passing once, maybe twice, and hadn't realized Jung had held onto it.

"You talk about him like he's important"

"He is." he says simply, the way you'd say the sky is blue or the ocean is loud, just a fact about the world.

Jiung looks at him for a second with something thoughtful in his expression, then looks away.

"That's a good thing to have," he says.

They stay up another hour after that, talking about smaller things, Jiung's family, who are loud and numerous, and call too often, a professor, Jiung finds unbearable, the cafe, they should try on the weekend. The conversation keeps on, and at some point, Taeyang realizes he's been talking for longer than he usually does with someone he's known for less than a month. When Jiung finally falls asleep mid-sentence about something Taeyang will never know the end of, Taeyang sits in the quiet for a moment. He picks up his phone.

talked about you tonight, he sends Intak, told someone you were important, felt like telling you

He puts his phone down without waiting for a response, turns off his lamp, listens to the city doing its thing outside, he's asleep before he thinks to check if Intak replied.

‧₊˚ 🐚 ✩ ₊˚ 🌊 ⊹ 𓇼

The girl from his urban education seminar is called Minji, and she is perfectly nice. Taeyang has been aware for approximately three weeks that she looks at him in a way that is familiar by now. He's not sure what to do about it, which is also familiar.

He doesn't dislike her. She asked good questions in seminars, she lent him a pen once and didn't make a thing of it, she laughs genuinely at things that are actually funny rather than performing it. He thinks of her with some certainty as a good person, and he's just also thinking with equal certainty that whatever she feels when she looks at him is not something he can return, and that the gap between those two facts is going to require careful handling.

He's thinking about this obliquely on the afternoon she knocks on his door. He's talking to Jung about something that happened in seminar, when the knock comes. Jiung unfolds himself from the bed to answer it, and Taeyang continues his thought for a second before registering that the voice at the door is familiar.

He walks over. Minji's standing in the hallway with a small paper bag and the expression of someone who has been preparing for this specific moment and is now in it. Taeyang recognizes the preparation. He's seen it before in a different hallway, a different girl, when he was twelve years old and still figuring out what it meant that feelings weren't arriving when they were supposed to.

Oh, he thinks.

"You didn't have to do that," he says

"It's nothing," she says quickly. "You mentioned liking these once."

He looks at the bag. He probably did mention it — he mentions things without thinking, a habit he's aware of and not entirely sure how to moderate. He takes the bag, says something that he hopes lands as warm without being encouraging, and watches her leave looking flustered but pleased.

He closes the door. Turns the bag over in his hands. He feels the tenderness he always feels in these moments and the mild guilt that comes with it. This keeps happening, he thinks. He's not sure what to do with that as information. He's not sure it requires doing anything.

"What is it?" Jiung asks, from somewhere behind him.

"Just snacks," Taeyang says. "I mentioned liking them once."

He sets the bag on his desk. Moves on, because there isn't really anything else to do with it, because the moment doesn't need to be more than it is.

"You should eat them," Jiung says.

Taeyang glances at him. "Do you want some?"

"I'll take half."

"You're impossible," Taeyang says, and tosses one across without looking, trusting he'll catch it.

He does.

Taeyang sits back at his desk. Thinks, briefly, about Minji's prepared expression. About the gap between what people feel and what he can give back. Then he opens his notes and gets back to work

‧₊˚ 🐚 ✩ ₊˚ 🌊 ⊹ 𓇼

It's past midnight, a Tuesday, and Taeyang is doing the thing he does when he can't sleep: scrolling without really looking, the phone held loosely above his face, his brain too tired to do anything useful and too awake to stop. Jung is asleep on his side of the room, breathing slowly, one arm thrown over his face.

The photo appears without warning. It takes him a second to process it: a tagged image, not on Intak's page, but on someone else's, a girl he vaguely recognizes from the handful of times Intak had mentioned her. There's this girl in my programme, she's funny, she keeps stealing my notes, something like that, something that had registered as a detail and nothing more. Except in the photo, Intak is is laughing, his head tilted slightly, and she's leaning into him like he is hers, and the caption is something short and uncomplicated that makes the whole thing completely undeniably real.

Taeyang stills, he feels the blood leave his face before he understands why, a sudden cold spreading outward from somewhere in his chest, his body arriving at something he hasn't caught up to yet. He stares at the photo for a moment too long, then he puts his phone face down on his chest and looks at the ceiling.

The city hums outside. Jiung breathed slowly across the room. Everything is exactly as it was thirty seconds ago, and nothing is. He tries to identify what he's feeling the way he usually does, precisely working backward from the sensation to the source. He's good at this. He's always been good at this. He can't find the source. What he finds instead is this: a bitterness at the back of his throat that he doesn't know what to do with, and underneath it something that feels uncomfortably like loss, and underneath that, something he can't look at directly, like a light that's too bright to see clearly. He reaches for the thing he can hold. He didn't tell me.

That's real. That's solid. Intak only mention her, casually, like she was a detail. But then apparently she was more than a detail. Intak decided that without saying so, without calling, without even a text. Taeyang found out the way strangers find out; through someone else's social media at midnight on a Tuesday alone. That's the part that matters. He tells himself. That's the only part. He doesn't call. He thinks about it, lying there in the dark, phone still face down on his chest, and decides against it. It's midnight and he doesn't know what he would say, and the feeling in his chest is too raw to risk saying anything out loud.

He texts instead the next morning. Something short: saw you and the note-stealer. would have been nice to hear it from you

Intak response takes longer than usual. I was going to tell you, it happened fast.

Taeyang reads this, types and deletes several things, settles on it's fine.

It isn't fine, and Intak almost certainly knows it isn't fine, but neither of them says so, and that's how it starts: not with a fight, not with anything dramatic, just with a distance that opens quietly and doesn't close.

The weeks that follow have a specific feel that he'll later recognize as avoidance, though he doesn't call it that at the time. He's just busy: there's coursework, there are friends, there are things to do and places to be, and a city that doesn't run out of distractions if you don't want it to. He goes out more, he says yes to things he might have previously said no to, parties that run too late, people he doesn't know well enough yet, a boy from one of his classes who is perfectly nice and looks at him in that familiar way, and who he goes on two dates with before admitting to himself that he's not interested and ending it as kindly as he can. Then a boy from Jiung's friend group, briefly, then someone he meets at a party whose name he has to think about a beat too long when Jiung asks him about it afterward.

" You're collecting people." Jiung says one evening.

Taeyang looks up from his notes. "I'm not," he says.

"You are, You go out with them twice and then you lose interest and then you feel bad about losing interest. What are you looking for?"

Taeyang considers this. "I don't know," he says.

"That's the problem," Jiung says, not unkindly.

Taeayang looks down at his notes. He doesn't have an answer for that, or if he does, it's one he's not ready to look at directly, like a photo on someone else's Instagram .

He and Intak still talk, technically, shorter exchanges, longer gaps between them, the easy frequency of before replaced by something that requires more effort and therefore happens less. Taeyang tells himself it's just what happens when people are busy, when lives move in different directions, when university takes up more space than you expected. He doesn't let himself think about the fact that he misses him with a specific, persistent ache that none of the people he's been going on dates with has been able to heal.

‧₊˚ 🐚 ✩ ₊˚ 🌊 ⊹ 𓇼

Jiung notices everything, which Taeyang has known for a while, but the specific thing Jiung notices in February is that Taeyang has stopped mentioning Intak.

"What happened with your friend?" He asks one afternoon without preamble, and Taeyang keeps his eyes on his book.

"Nothing happened."

"Taeyang"

"It's fine, we're fine. People get busy."

Jiung is quiet for a moment, which means he's deciding how hard to push, and Taeyang waits, hoping he'll let it go. He doesn't.

"You talked about him constantly," Jiung says, "first week we lived together, you said he was important, and then somewhere in the last few months you just stopped. That's not nothing, Taeyang."

Taeyang doesn't say anything.

"I'm not asking what happened," Jiung continues, "I'm just saying whatever it is, I don't think you're actually fine."

Taeyang closes his book, looks at the ceiling, thinks about a photo he found at midnight, a bitterness he still hasn't properly examined, a silence that started as a grievance and became a habit.

"I don't know how to go back," he says after a moment, which is more than he intended to say, and also true.

Jiung looks at him for a second, then characteristically, "okay, so I'll help."

What Jiung does is not subtle, which Taeyang could have predicted: he gets Intak's number, Taeyang doesn't ask how, suspects it involved a degree of social confidence that would exhaust most people, and texts him something that Taeyang is not allowed to see, and reports back with the satisfaction of someone who has completed a mission.

"He's coming to visit next weekend," Jung says.

Taeyang stares at him, "You invited him here?"

"Someone had to."

"That's! you just can't." Taeyang stops, starts again, "What did you say to him?"

"That my roommate misses his best friend and is too stubborn to do anything about it, and that he should come visit before I lose my mind watching him be miserable"

Taeyang opens his mouth, closes it.

"He said yes immediately" Jiung ads, "which tells you something!"

Taeyang looks at him for a long moment, at the complete absence of apology in his expression, the easy confidence of someone who did a thing and would do it again, and feels beneath the exasperation something that is mostly just relief. Jiung grins, "you're welcome."

Intak arrives on the next Saturday, which is somehow both too soon and not soon enough. Taeyang has spent the intervening week not thinking about it, which has meant thinking about almost nothing else. He's cleaned his side of the room twice, which Jiung has noticed and commented on, and he's had three separate conversations in his head that he has no intention of actually having.

When the knock comes, he opens the door and there is Intak with his bag over one shoulder and his hands in his pockets, looking almost exactly the same as he always has, except for something slightly careful in his expression. Taeyang recognizes that as the same thing that's been in his chest for months. They look at each other for a second,

"Hi," Intak says,

"Hi," Taeyang says.

Then Intak exhales, like he had been holding out a breath, and Taeyang steps back to let him in, and the distance that had opened so quietly over the last few months closes a little again, not all at once, but enough. Jiung makes himself scarce with impressive efficiency, citing errands that Taeyang is fairly certain don't exist.

They sit on opposite beds, which is strange because it's Jiung's bed that Intak is sitting on in Taeyang's room, and not the rooms they grew up going between, and it takes a few minutes for the strangeness to settle into something more familiar.

After a while Intak says, "I should have told you,"

and Taeyang says, "You should have,"

"I know, I'm sorry."

Taeyang looks at him at the familiar shape of him in an unfamiliar room, the same hands he's known for so many years now folded loosely in his lap. The bitterness at the back of his throat, which has been sitting there for months, sweetened slightly.

"It's over anyway," Intak adds quietly, "we broke up a few weeks ago"

Taeyang absorbs this, he doesn't linger on the shift in his chest,

"I'm sorry," he says, because that's what you say, because he means it, because he cares about Intak, even when it's complicated.

Intak shrugs. "It wasn't right. I think I knew that pretty early."

They're quiet for a moment, outside the city hums, which Taeyang has stopped noticing, and suddenly notices again.

"I missed you," Taeyang says, because it's been months and Jiung already said it for him, and there's no point pretending otherwise. Intak looks at him and something in his expression does the thing it sometimes does, moves briefly in a way that Taeyang can't quite read, before settling back into his familiar smile.

"Me too."

And that's enough. Not everything, not an explanation of the months of distance or the bitterness, or the feeling Taeyang still hasn't looked at directly. Just enough to close the gap and stand on the other side of it and find that the thing between them is still there, steady and unchanged, the way it has always been.

Later, when Intak has gone and Jiung has returned from his invented errands and the room has settled back into its usual shape, Taeyang sits at his window and listens to the city. He thinks about the photo, about the bitterness he'd reached for because it was easier than the thing underneath, about the months of keeping himself busy and going on dates that never stuck, and missing something he didn't want to name. He doesn't name it now either, but he sits with it for a little longer than usual before he puts it away, which is for Taeyang, something like progress.

When Taeyang is twenty-four, he gets his first flat and his first job in the same week, which feels like either very good timing or a lot to handle at once.

The flat is small, one bedroom, a kitchen that is technically separate from the living room if you're generous about it, a bathroom with a window that looks out onto a wall. He loves it immediately and without reservation. He stands in the middle of it on the first day with his suitcase and his boxes, and he feels so happy that this place is entirely, completely, his.

He unpacks slowly over several days, not just filling the space, but deciding what kind of place it's going to be. He buys plants, two of them, and promptly looks up how often you're supposed to water plants because he has no idea. He finds a rug that is slightly too big for the living room and buys it anyway because the colour is right. He puts books on the shelf in an order that makes sense to him and probably no one else. And then he puts up the pictures.

Most of them are of him and Intak, fifteen years of the two of them documented in the slightly haphazard way of people who didn't think to take photos until suddenly they had a lot of them. Intak at his grandmother's kitchen table, maybe fourteen, frowning his brows in concentration over what seems to be a very complicated math problem. The two of them at the beach, the summer they were sixteen, squinting into the sun. A more recent one taken last year, both of them laughing at something off-camera that Taeyang can't remember now, but clearly found very funny at the time.

He puts them up without thinking about it too hard, they've known each other for fifteen years, which is most of his life, which is reason enough to cover a wall with someone. He tells himself this and moves on.

The last thing he hangs is a print of the ocean, not his ocean, specifically, just water and light and horizon, the kind of picture that could be anywhere and somehow still feels like home. He puts it above the small desk in the corner and looks at the whole room and thinks, yes, this is right.

He texts intak a photo of the finished wall. very you, Intak sends back almost immediately, the ocean print is very you.

it's very us, Taeyang replies, which is true, and sends the photo of the two of them at sixteen, squinting into the sun as evidence. IntaK sends back a single laughing emoji  which Taeyang has learned over fifteen years means he's smiling at his phone and doesn't have other words for it, Taeyang answers two shells emoji,  puts his phone down and looks at his flat, which is small and slightly too full of books and covered in evidence of one person, and feels for the first time in a long time completely settled.

‧₊˚ 🐚 ✩ ₊˚ 🌊 ⊹ 𓇼

The school is twenty minutes from his flat by bus, which he takes on the first day with the specific anxiety of someone who has prepared thoroughly and is still convinced they've forgotten something important. He hasn't forgotten anything. The day is fine, more than fine: the classroom is his, the children are eight years old and immediately collectively very interested in whether he has a dog, and by the end of the first week he has learned thirty names and developed strong opinions about the coffee of the staff room.

That's where he meets Keeho. He's aware of him before they're introduced: Keeho has a special type of presence, something that catches the eye without demanding it, and Keeho moves through the staff room like someone who belongs there, which Taeyang has learned to recognize as confidence rather than arrogance, only because the warmth underneath it is very visible.

He's also, and Taeyang clocks this with the clear-eyed practicality of someone who has known he was gay since he was twelve years old, extremely beautiful.

Hm, he thinks and goes back to his coffee.

Keeho introduces himself on a Wednesday, which is how Taeyang learns his name and his role, and the fact that he has apparently decided Taeyang is interesting, all within the same five minutes.

"Are you always this quiet?" Keeho asks, leaning against the counter.

Taeyang looks up. "Am I?"

"Yes, it's a little suspicious."

Taeyang considers him, the directness, the slight challenge in it, the warmth underneath that makes it land as playful rather than pointed. He feels ,somewhere in his chest, something shift slightly.

"I talk," he says.

"Not enough." Keeho replies, "but that's fine, I can compensate."

Taeyang, smiles into his coffee and thinks, yes, probably you can.

The lunches start without being decided, the way things do when two people keep ending up in the same place at the same time. Taeyang finds himself looking forward to them in a way that is new and slightly notable. He's used to people looking forward to him, to being the one someone adjusts their schedule around, the one someone gravitates toward. Being on the other side of it, feeling the slight forward lean of his own attention, is different.

He tells himself it's because Keeho is interesting. He's funny in a way that's quick and a little sharp, and always lands just short of unkind. He fills the space the way Jiung does with a kind of confidence, except where Jiung's energy is warm and slightly chaotic, Keeho is deliberate, precise, like he knows exactly what effect he's having. He is, Taeyang thinks, absolutely his type. He thinks this without examining it too closely, and goes back to listening to Keeho explain with great enthusiasm why the staffroom coffee machine is a personal insult to any coffee lovers.

‧₊˚ 🐚 ✩ ₊˚ 🌊 ⊹ 𓇼

He tells IntaK about Keeho in person, which was not the plan.

The plan is Intak's first show, a contemporary piece, small venue. Taeyang has had the date in his calendar for two months. He takes the train on a Friday evening, finds his seat, and watches Intak move across the stage in a way that makes something in his chest pull tight with a pride he doesn't have adequate words for.

This is what Intak has been working toward for years: the dancing, the choreography, the long practices, and the tired groans on Taeyang's bed and the singular focus of someone who has always known exactly what they want. And here it is, real and undeniable, and Taeyang sits in the dark of a small venue and watches his best friend exist in the most fully himself way possible, and thinks, he's amazing

Afterward, they find a place nearby, small and warm, and Intak is still flushed from the performance, still carrying the energy of someone who has just done the thing they love in front of people. Taeyang orders for both of them because Intak is too distracted to look at the menu properly, and this has been true since they were eight years old.

"You were incredible." Taeyang says, because he doesnt have other words for what he is feeling, and because Intak needs to hear it directly.

Intak makes a sound that is almost dismissive, but isn't quite, the way he receives compliments from Taeyang specifically, not deflecting, just holding them carefully.

"It went well." he says, which is his version of thank you.

They talk about the show for a while, about the choreography, about the other dancers, about the moment in the second piece where something went slightly wrong and Intak fixed it so smoothly that Taeyang hadn't noticed until Intak pointed it out. The conversation is easy and warm, and exactly what it has always been, the two of them in a small place talking about anything and everthing and then naturally, without thinking about the timing:

"There's someone at work", Taeyang says, "I think he might ask me out."

Intak looks at him, doesn't say anything.

"He's funny," Taeyang continues, turning his cup slightly in his hands, "very confident, a little overwhelming in a good way, I think I actually like him, which is," he pauses, "it's been a while since I felt that."

He looks up. Intak is smiling. It's the right shape, the right timing, the correct configuration of his face for, I'm happy for you, but something in it doesn't quite reach his eyes, and Taeyang knows intak's face well enough, fifteen years, every version of it, to notice the fraction of a second where something else was there before the smile arrived. He sees him go still, just slightly. he's tired, he thinks it was a big night, he just performed for the first time, of course, he's somewhere else.

"That's great," Intak says, his voice is warm, almost perfectly normal, "you deserve that."

"Thank you", Taeyang says, and lets it go, and hates himself slightly for letting it go, and picks up his cup and asks about the next piece Intak is working on, he puts it away in the same place he puts things he's not ready to look at. It's getting crowded in there.

‧₊˚ 🐚 ✩ ₊˚ 🌊 ⊹ 𓇼

Keeho asks him out during lunch, like it's obvious, like he already knows the answer, and the asking is just a formality. Taeyang says okay. Just like that.

Dating Keeho is, in many ways, genuinely good. He is exactly as advertised: attentive, funny, direct, in a way that Taeyang finds refreshing after years of implication and careful silence. He remembers things, he shows up when he says he will, and he fills the space in a way that should be overwhelming and somehow isn't, like he's calibrated to Taeyang's specific frequency without being told what it is. They go on dates that blur together pleasantly, late dinners, long walks, stolen moments between classes in empty hallways that make Taeyang feel like a teenager again in the best way. The first time Keeho kisses him at work, Taeyang's first thought is this is probably a bad idea, and his second thought is that he doesn't particularly care.

He tells Intak about the dates in messages shorter than he would have expected himself to write. Intak responds warmly, consistently, and if his messages are slightly more measured than usual, slightly more careful, Taeyang puts it down to them both being busy and doesn't press. He's good at not pressing, he's been doing it for years.

The thing he can't locate arrives slowly. It's there in small ways, present before he has a name for it. He's with Keeho and it's good and easy and warm, and he's paying attention genuinely, and yet there's something that doesn't quite settle, like an intrument that's almost out of tune, but not quite enough, you have to listen carefully to notice it's off. He doesn't bring it up because he doesn't know how to name it, and he doesn't know how to name it because every time he reaches for it, it moves. He thinks about it at his desk, sometimes late at night, the city humming outside, the ocean print above him, and the photos of him and Intak on the wall. He thinks this is good, Keeho is good, and he is happy, and then he looks at the photo of him and Intak at sixteen, squinting into the sun, and something he can't quite name sits in his chest for a moment before he puts it away and goes to bed.

‧₊˚ 🐚 ✩ ₊˚ 🌊 ⊹ 𓇼

"You're not in love with me," Keeho says one day, not accusingly, just stating something that has become too clear to ignore.

Taeyang looks at him confused "what?"

Keeho exhales softly, a hint of a smile at his lips, "it's funny, just how oblivious you are."

(A few days ago, Taeyang introduced Keeho to Jiung and Intak.

Keeho had suggested it casually, "you should meet my friends, I should meet yours. We've been together long enough." and Taeyang had agreed because it made sense, because it was the natural next step, because there was no reason not to.

Keeho was good at this, Taeyang had always known that, but watching him then, the way he drew people in, the way the conversation bent toward him, he thought,I should feel something about this, pride, maybe, that particular warmth of watching someone you love be exactly themselves. He tought I should feel the same way I did when I watche Intak dance.

He waited for it, it didn't quite arrive.He tried not to think too much about it, and reached for his drink.

Jiung and Keeho hit it off immediately, which Taeyang could have predicted, they had a similar energy when they talked, a quick and rhythmic humor landing without effort, their conversation looked effortless. They laugh together a lot, and Keeho touched Jiung way too much for someone he had just met. Taeyang watched them and felt genuinely glad. Jiung deserved a friend who could keep up with him, Keeho deserved a friend who found him as funny as he found himself.

He watched them together and waited again for something sharp and resistant at the sight of his boyfriend looking at someone else like that. He waited for the jealousy, distantly. Nothing came. Just a mild fond recognition, like watching two people find something they didn't know they were looking for. He thought, That's nice. He thought, I'm glad they like each other.

And then the door opened and Intak was there. Taeyang didn't decide to turn, he just did. The way a plant turns toward light without knowing it's doing it. Intak scanned the room, found him, and something in his expression shifted, that small, specific thing that Taeyang had been watching for fifteen years, the one that meant "there you are".

Taeyang raised his hand slightly, Intak crossed the room, "Hey," Intak said, sitting down beside him. And just like that the room reorganized itself, not dramatically, not in a way anyone else would notice, just. Intak was there now and Taeyang was aware of him, the way he had always been aware of him, that warmth that had been such a constant feature of his life that he had never thought to examine what it was. He didn't examine it then either, he just turned slightly toward him without thinking about it, and the evening continued.)

"What ?" Taeyang says again, even more confused.

Keeho watches him for a second, then shakes his head, more amused than anything else, "It's fine," he says, "really. I am not in love with you either, but you should really sit with your feelings."

A brief pause, Taeyang doesn't respond, he doesn't have to. Keeho steps back slightly, creating space where there had been something else, something that had worked for a while, but was never quite meant to last. It doesn't feel like a loss, more like a conclusion, the door closing in a way that makes sense.

"And for the record," Keeho adds lightly, already turning away, "I'm stealing Jiung."

That gets a reaction, Taeyang huffs out a quiet laugh, the tension breaking.

"You're unbelievable,"

"I know" Keeho replies. And just like that, they let it go.

‧₊˚ 🐚 ✩ ₊˚ 🌊 ⊹ 𓇼

He calls Intak on the way home, not because he planned to, he's braely been out of the building, coat half on, but because Intak is the first person he reaches for, always, and tonight is no different.

Intak picks up on the second ring, "Hey, how was Keeho?"

"we broke up," Taeyang says,

"Tonight?"

"Just now."

"Are you okay?"

Taeyang thinks about this, walking, his breath making small clouds in the cold air, and he finds, despite the mild shock of it being real now, something that is mostly just quiet, not grief or relief, but the impression that something has been resolved.

"Yeah, I think I actually am,"

Intak is quiet for a moment, "What happened?"

Taeyang opens his mouth, Keeho's voice arrives immediately clear and precise, you should really sit with your feelings, he closes his mouth, thinks about thesefeelings, the ones he's been standing next to for years without looking at directly, thinks about saying it out loud, what that would mean, what it would make real.

"It just wasn't right" he says instead, "I think we both knew"

It's true, it's just not complete. Intak accepts it because he accepts most things Tyang gives him without pushing for the rest.

"Okay", he says, "I'm sorry."

"Don't be." a breath 'How was rehearsal?'

Intak lets him change the subject, which is one of his best qualities, and they talk for forty minutes about nothing in particular, and by the time Taeyang gets home and locks his door and stands in his small flat with the ocean print above his desk and the photos of the two of them on the wall, he feels almost normal. Almost. He looks at all the photos of them. He puts his phone down and goes to bed without examining why his chest feels the way it does, which is getting harder and harder to do.

‧₊˚ 🐚 ✩ ₊˚ 🌊 ⊹ 𓇼

Jiung is predictably not subtle about the Keeho situation.

"so" he says approximately four days after the breakup when they meet up for coffee, "this is a little awkward."

Taeyang looks at him, "What is ?

"I like him" Jiung says, deciding that honesty is more efficient than dancing around something, "Keeho. I like him. We've been talking a lot, and I know you're supposed to wait or whatever - "

"Jiung"

"- and I completely understand if you need time or if this is weird-"

"Jiung"

"- because obviously you were together, and I respect that-"

"Jiung" Taeyang sets his coffee down, "it's fine."

Jiung stops, "really?"

"Really." he considers for a second, "he told me he was stealing you the night we broke up, I think he planned this."

Jiung blinks, then laughs a little, disbelievingly, "of course he did."

"He's very efficient", Tyang says, because he's been on the other side of it and also because it the most Keeho thing he can think of to say.

Jiung looks at him for a second with something warm in his expression, Taeyang recognizes this look and waits,

"Can I ask you something?", Jung says.

"You're going to regardless."

"What did Keeho actually say to you when you broke up?"

Taeyang looks at his coffee. "That I wasn't in love with him"

'I know that. What else did he say?"

"That I needed to sit with something" Taeyang says carefully.

Jiung, nods slowly, like this is confirming something rather than telling him something new. He's quiet for a moment.

"You know," he says finally, "that evening,when Keeho met us all of us, you changed entirely when Intak arrived, you didn't notice yourself, did you?"

It isn't really a question, Taeyang is very still.

"I don't know what you mean," he says, which is not entirely a lie and not entirely true either.

Jiung looks at him for a long moment, leaving the door open rather than pushing him through it, "Yeah, you do," he says simply. He picks up his coffee and stands, and that's that, no further pressure, just the words left in the air, like something Taeyang is allowed to pick up in his own time. Taeyang sits with them for a long time after he leaves.

‧₊˚ 🐚 ✩ ₊˚ 🌊 ⊹ 𓇼

Sitting with it, it turns out, is not a comfortable activity. He tries in the weeks that follow to do what Keeho asked, to turn his attention inward, the way he's always been able to turn it outward, to apply the same careful precision himself that he applies to everyone else. He gets close sometimes, late at night, he lets himself get almost close enough to look at it directly, and then something in his chest tightens, a quick rising panic, and he finds something else to think about.

It's like standing at the shore, which is funny because he has spent his whole life near the ocean and has never once been afraid of it, but this is different. He knows what's in there, he can feel the temperature of it from where he's standing, and some part of him is deeply, quietly terrified of what happens when he stops pretending the water isn't there.

He goes to work. He teaches his class of eight year olds who are still very interested in whether he has a dog. He has dinner with Jiung twice and Jiung doesn't bring it up again, just lets him exist in it at his own pace. He calls Intak on Tuesdays and sometimes Thursdays and the calls are easy and warm and exactly what they've always been, and afterward he sits in his flat and looks at the wall and doesn't examine why the calls make him feel both better and worse at the same time.

He is, he tells himself, sitting with it. He is ,more accurately, circling it at a safe distance, and calling that the same thing.

‧₊˚ 🐚 ✩ ₊˚ 🌊 ⊹ 𓇼

Intak sends the photo without context, which is normal. He documents rehearsals, occasionally sends things when he thinks of it, and doesn't always explain. Taeyang is in the middle of marking papers when his phone lights up. He picks it up.

Intak is post-rehearsal, which is visible in every detail of the image: slightly out of breath, hair pushed back, sweat making his skin shine, a black tank top that hugs his chest muscls. He's looking somewhere off-camera, not posing, just existing in the moment, unself-conscious, and completely natural.

Taeyang looks at this photo. His heart does something it has no business doing. He puts the phone face down on the desk, and stares at his marking for approximately thirty seconds without seeing any of it.

Then he picks the phone back up and looks at the photo again, as if checking whether his heart will do the same thing twice. It does. He puts the phone down again. He thinks, I have seen Intak shirtless. I have seen Intak in every possible state of dishevelment and exhaustion and post-practice wreckage for years. This is not new information. There is absolutely no reason for him to-

He look at the photo a third time. Oh, he thinks, not a small oh, not the oh of a minor realization or a detail, but a large, significant, slightly catastrophic oh that seems to rearrange something in his chest that has apparently been in the wrong configuration for a very long time. He sits very still for a moment, then he gets up, goes to the kitchen, drinks a glass of water, and stands at the window looking out at the city that sounds like the ocean if you listen to it a carefully.

Oh, he thinks again, quieter this time, like something that has been waiting a long time to be acknowledged has finally, finally, been seen. He doesn't panic, which surprises him. He'd expected the panic, the tightening, the flinch away, the reaching for something easier to think about. Instead there's just this, a feeling settling into place, something that has always been there and has simply finally been given its name.

He thinks about fifteen years, about a lunch table and a comfortable silence, and a boy who sat down without being asked, about the ocean, about a wall covered in photographs, about calls on Tuesdays and sometimes Thursdays and about in a smile that didn't quite reach eyes in a restaurant after a show.

He thinks of course not as a discovery, as a confirmation.

He goes back to his marking, which he does not finish, and texts Intak good rehearsal?

brutal, Intak sends back. but good. are you okay ?"

Taeyang looks at these three words, are you okay, always, every time, fifteen years of the same question, in the same register, and he feels something so large and so quiet that he has to remind himself to breathe again.

Yeah, he sends talk soon. He looks at the ocean print above his desk, he looks at all his pictures with Intak, like shells on the shore and he thinks, I have to go see him.

‧₊˚ 🐚 ✩ ₊˚ 🌊 ⊹ 𓇼

He takes the train on a Friday evening, he texted Intak that he was coming, kept it vague, "I need to see you, is that okay?" and Intak had said, of course, always with the speed of someone who doesn't need to think about it. That had made the thing in Taeyang's chest do the rearranging again.

The train moves through the city and then out of it, the buildings giving way to something more open, and Taeyang sits with his hands loose in his lap and watches the landscape change and thinks about the last time he made a journey like this, eight years old, his grandmother's neighbor's car, the coastline appearing and disappearing between buildings. It's just for a little while, sweetheart. Him nodding like he understood what that meant. He understands now what it means when things turn out to be permanent.

He's not scared exactly, or maybe he is, but it's a different kind of scare than the panic at the shore, it's the feeling of standing at the edge of something large and real and irreversible, and choosing to step forward anyway.

He watches the lights of the city disappear behind him, he thinks about what he's going to say and doesn't think about it, and thinks about it again. By the time the train arrives, he has decided on nothing except that he is going, and that's enough, and that it has always been enough with Intak, just showing up, just being there, just the two of them in a room together with the silence that has never once been uncomfortable.

Intak opens the door and there he is, just that, just Intak in his doorway.

"Hi," Intak says. "You sounded weird in your texts.

'I wasn't weird in my text."

"You were a little weird."

Taeyang steps inside and the flat is warm and slightly messy in a way that is completely and entirely Intak, and something about being here, in his space, in the specific atmosphere of him, makes the thing in Taeyang chest settle into something very calm and very certain.

He turns around, and Intak is watching him with that careful quality, the one Taeayang has been seeing and not seeing for years, something held very still, something waiting, something that has been patient for a very long time. And Taeyang sees it, truly for the first time, and it happens the way it does when you've been standing at the shore long enough, not a leap but the tide coming in and the distance closing and the water finally, finally around your feet, and the only surprising thing is that it's warm.

"I need to tell you something, and I need you to let me finish before you say anything."

Intak is very still, he nods, once.

"Keeho told me to sit with something when we broke up, and I tried, and it was - ", He pauses, finds the words, "' terrifying, honestly. Because I think I knew what I was going to find, and I didn't know what to do with it."

He looks at Intak, at the entirety of him , at his eyes, his dimple, at the hands he's known in every configuration.

"And then you sent me that photo on Wednesday, and I..." he stops.

Intak is looking at him with an expression Taeyang has never seen on him before, or maybe has always seen and never understood. Something open and warm and very, very still.

"I'm in love with you," Taeyang says as a fact, clear and quiet and certain. "I think I have been for a long time. I just didn't know that this was it."

The silence that follows is the same silence that has lived between them for all these years, comfortable and full, except now it has a different shape. Then, Intak laughs softly and slightly disbelieving, the way he laughs when something is too large to process immediately and runs a hand through his hair and Taeyang watches this with his heart doing the thing it has apparently always done around him, and only just admitted to.

"The photo?" Intak says

"The photo." Taeyang confirms.

"I looked terrible in that photo"

"you really don't".

Intak looks at him and the carefulness is gone and what's there instead is something Taeyang recognizes now that he's finally looking directly at it, something deep and patient, something that has been held carefully for a very long time.

"I've been in love with you," Intak says, "for so long that I genuinely cannot tell you when it started, I've tried to remember, there's no before."

The words land with the full weight of all their years together behind them. Taeyang feesl it all then, the almost moments that intak carried alone while Taeyang stood there, not looking.

He feels it spread in his heart, in his chest and he lets it. He doesn't deflect or diminish or move too quickly past it.

"I'm sorry," he says softly, "it took me so long."

Intak shakes his head immediately "Don't. You're here now"

Taeyang looks at him, at the boy who sat down at a lunch table without being asked, at the person who has been a constant for so long that trying to remember a version of his life without him feels a little pointless, and thinks, I'll always be here.

Taeyang nods, their hands find each other, fingers fitting together the way they always have, except this time he knows what it means. He closes the distance and when he kisses Intak, it feels less like arriving somewhere new and more like recognizing somewhere he's always been, and the only surprising thing really is how long it took him to find his way.

The thing about getting what you want, Intak is learning, is that it takes a while for the rest of you to catch up.

Not in a bad way. Just, his hands still move to hold back sometimes, still hesitate at the last second out of a habit that no longer has a reason to exist. He'll reach for Taeyang and pause, just briefly, before remembering that he's allowed to. That this is something he gets to do now.

Taeyang always sees. He doesn't say anything, just closes the distance himself, like he understands that some things take longer to unlearn than others.

It's been a few weeks. It still feels new in the way that good things do when you weren't sure you'd get to have them.

Today they're all at Jiung's, which also means Keeho's, because Keeho has been there so consistently since approximately five minutes after meeting Jiung that the distinction has stopped mattering to anyone.

Intak had found this development unreasonably funny at first. Now it just feels like the way things are — Keeho installed comfortably in the space, one leg thrown over Jiung's on the couch, talking too fast about something while Jiung watches him like he thinks Keeho is the most endearing person ever.

"You're staring," Taeyang says quietly beside him.

"I'm observing," Intak replies.

Taeyang follows his gaze toward the couch, where Keeho has just said something that made Jiung tip his head back laughing, bright and unguarded. Something warm moves through Taeyang's expression,fond, and maybe a little relieved, in a way Intak understands.

"Good," Taeyang says simply.

Intak glances at him. He has a small smile on his face, and the late afternoon light is making Taeyang look unreasonably beautiful . Intak looks away before he gets too distracted.

Later, after Jiung's has emptied out slowly, coats retrieved and goodbyes said, Intak and Taeyang walk back the way they always have. Side by side, not quite touching, and then touching, Taeyang's hand finding his, fingers fitting together in the way they always have. 

Intak looks at him, at the familiar lines of his face, the easy way he holds himself, the slight smile that's been there all evening. He thinks about all the years of reaching and stopping himself. All the times he'd pulled a blanket over Taeyang's shoulders in the dark and told himself it was nothing.

He thinks about how strange it is to be on this side of it. How he keeps catching himself surprised by the simplest things, the fact that Taeyang's hand is in his right now, that he didn't have to pretend not to want that, that wanting it was enough.

Taeyang squeezes his hand once,and they keep walking.

Suddenly, it is raining and it sounds a little like the ocean.