going nowhere
going nowhere / sekai, one-sided kaixing / t / 3945
those two people who are so right for each other and so blind to the fact.
those two people who are so right for each other and so blind to the fact.
p.1.,
Jongin closes his eyes, ignoring the sting of fatigue. It’s first light and he’s barely had six hours of sleep. His body aches, every muscle sore, but it’s a sweet sort of agony. The evidence of hard work, of effort put in towards a goal. There’s no time to be tired. Stretching before the frameless mirror set in the cramped living room, he lets the music rise to a crescendo of beats washing over him. Each thump of the bass sets him alight inside out and he starts to dance–
“What’re you doing up so early?” Jongin tugs his headphones down, panting.
Sehun scrubs the sleep from his eyes half-heartedly. “I’ve got a class.”
Jongin watches him open the refrigerator to find it half empty. “It’s only six. Did I wake you? I didn’t mean to.”
“No,” Sehun smiles crookedly. “We’re out of milk. And almost everything else.”
Jongin pulls a crumpled slip of paper – a yellow post-it covered in scribbles that sticks to itself – from his pocket. “I’ve got a list.”
The commute to the dance studio is short. He switches twice, and the whole trip is usually never longer than forty minutes. Unless he forgets to get off at the right stop. Sometimes, with his hands curled around the cold railing, cap slung low, music pulsing in his ears, he gets lost. There are a lot of things to think about: his next paycheck, giving up and going to university, how much he owes Sehun and how far he can go before it’s too far.
It’s a Sunday afternoon and the light is softly yellow, almost mellow – he feels like a pat of butter on a cold plate dissolving slowly, so very slowly. One of Sehun’s seniors from university, Chanyeol, is smoking cigarettes on the balcony. His curly hair looks almost golden brown and his lips around a cigarette are very pink and soft looking. His large glasses have distracting smudges all over them. When he smiles it’s a big and disarming expression.
Sehun laughs abruptly, loud and distracting. “That guy you have a huge crush on, what’s his name? Kris? Just texted me.”
“I don’t have a crush on him,” Chanyeol says calmly, his voice a deep, soothing bass. The tips of his ears redden and he twists his cigarette, exhaling deeply.
Jongin lets his head loll back as a slight breeze licks cool fingers through his sweat-dampened hair. The sky is so blue it hurts to look at. He shuts his eyes and the light filters red through his closed eyelids. He needs to get a part-time job. Some way to get paid.
As if from a great distance, Sehun whoops. “We’ve been invited to a party!”
Sehun is squirming into a pair of almost unreasonably tight jeans when he says, between grunts and tugs, “Rent’s due this week.”
Jongin freezes, his socked feet inches away from their small, incredibly old television set. He’d just been about to change the channel. Maybe he can pretend to be asleep. Sehun tosses a tangerine and it catches Jongin in the stomach; he lurches forward at the impact. It’s surprisingly painful.
“Eat,” Sehun instructs. “I’m just letting you know. Don’t start worrying already. I’ve got it.”
Feeling extremely pathetic, Jongin pulls his knees to his chin and peels the fruit. White, sticky threads come away from the orange flesh; a web of lies. “There’s this... audition.”
“That’s great,” Sehun says brightly without the slightest shred of sarcasm or contempt. “You work on that. Which company is it?”
“It’s not really that great.” Jongin mumbles. “Back-up dance group. Only luck in that is getting picked for a music video.”
Sehun sits down on the small lumpy couch, sighing heavily. Jongin passes him a piece of fruit and he accepts it. “Well, you have to start somewhere. By the way, it will please you to know that I’ve managed to pick up an extra shift at the store. We’re good for a while.”
“Thanks.” Trying to keep from shriveling with shame, Jongin presses a foot against Sehun’s thigh in gratitude. Sehun rests a hand on his ankle, warm and reassuring.
A few minutes later he turns to Jongin. “Hey, you know who else started out as a back-up dancer? Michael Jackson.”
“That’s not true.”
This guy– this friend of a friend – Yixing. He’s magnetic. For the first time Jongin feels he understands why people call it chemistry. It’s got a formula to it – dim lights + body heat + alcohol = attraction. He’s got features that the light loves and when Jongin touches an eyebrow, the fine line makes him think of music and the synesthetic translation to dance– of flesh molding to form.
“You’re a dancer,” Yixing breathes in his ear, his drink in one hand, Jongin’s hair wound in his other. “You’ve got the legs– the body for it.”
Jongin feels the last shreds of inhibition melting away as the music grows louder and the lights grow blurrier; a staccato of bass thumping in his gut and neons disappearing into the night. And Yixing is so close and so warm and so beautiful. Still, he tries. “I really. Should. I just want to be alone.”
“Oh yeah. Me too,” Yixing says and kisses him, slow and hard. It’s so nice that Jongin forgets why he was supposed to resist.
Four a.m. Jongin doesn’t think there has ever been a time when the flat has been so quiet in the year or so they’ve lived here. He stares wretchedly through their mirror as Sehun keeps rubbing his forehead. Sehun pours himself a glass of water. Jongin finds his hair is sticky and his fingers are stickier and that the taste at the back of his mouth is of sex.
p.2.,
Sometimes Sehun wonders if he’s the only one who sees Jongin. With his hunched shoulders when he sits down to eat and his various caps and t-shirts. The adolescence of how he slouches in chairs, the smallness of his body balled up in bed after a grueling day of practice. How he stupidly forgets to buy eggs and sleeps through his birthday and with every willing person he comes across.
Sometimes, unbidden Sehun conjures the image of Jongin like that – but no, the way he looks when he dances is infinitely better. It must be. (Sex is pornography is boring. Dance, however, especially the way Jongin lets the art flow through him, is all about something no one can touch, or reach– a mirage. And that elusive, evanescing beauty could whet the most discerning of libidos.)
No. That’s not it at all.
Sometimes Sehun wonders if Jongin sees him – plaid shirts and brown sweaters and pouring over books, burning the midnight oil – at all.
Sunset in Seoul isn’t much of a view from their apartment but Jongin makes it. He’s standing in the balcony in three-fourths of a suit. The jacket is slung over his right arm. Sehun stares and forgets to breathe, the same way he imagines surgeons do before slicing a heart open.
It’s a moment. Clarity, as if staring through a fog that is finally beginning to lift. Like blood draining slowly south.
Jongin undoes his tie, runs a hand carelessly through his hair and turns around.
The silence is alight with a sort of caged wildness and a look in Jongin’s eyes obscene as a black sea– before it flickers to blankness, taking everything charged and feverish about the moment with it. Should’ve known better. It passes.
Jongin laughs self-deprecatingly. “It was for a performance. I would’ve told you, but it’ll be on TV soon.”
Sehun nods, not trusting himself to speak.
“Let’s get out of here.” Jongin crosses the room, jostling Sehun along, keeping his fingers carefully tucked out of reach. No touching. “Dinner’s on me. We’ll go somewhere nice.”
That evening Jongin laughs, deep and throaty. His eyes look beautiful and when he bites his lip, Sehun thinks of every time they could’ve but haven’t. He reaches for the bill and Sehun feels his blood run through his fingers, screaming to just be able to feel Jongin’s skin against his. And he knows if he touches him, he'll know and once he knows, it'll all be over. So close, within touching distance, but a sea – an ocean, a galaxy – away.
That night Sehun’s bed feels emptier and colder than it ever has.
p.3.,
He’s on his way home when someone grabs Jongin by his elbow and with his momentum turned against him, he swings back around to face them. It’s Yixing, looking much plainer and tamer than Jongin remembers him being. No predatory prowl, no alcohol, no dim lights. No tight, black leather, no lack of personal space. Plain daylight. White t-shirt and jeans.
“Hey, you’re that guy,” Yixing grins. His cheek dimples. If there had ever been (never) any doubt that he was attractive, his smile wipes it clean. Beside him, Chanyeol shrugs awkwardly.
Jongin stares at the floor, nodding. “Yeah. Yep. That guy. Me.”
“What a coincidence!” Yixing slings an arm around Jongin’s shoulder. “I’ve actually been asking this dick here if he knows you – I mean, I wondered about you, you know. And he was so unhelpful about it. Said he’d only seen you hang around one of his juniors or something.”
Chanyeol glances at Jongin as they reach the impasse. He fidgets with his glasses, then shoulders his bag. “He lives with Sehun.”
Usually Jongin is the one up first in the morning, so breakfast is his. Most days he throws together rice and some pickled side dishes or the rare Sunday kimchi stew. Lunch is usually grocery store kimbap that Sehun divides for them. Dinner is almost always ramyun finished with the fruits that Junmyeon mothers them with.
“Do you remember that guy, Yixing?” Jongin asks carefully, as he’s tossing their empty plastic cups in the garbage. It’s late, well past the staple of evening varieties. There’s no canned laughter in the background, only a maudlin violin piece from a drama.
Sehun stares at the TV as though possessed. “I heard.”
“I’ve missed this,” Jongin says, making himself comfortable on the floor. His head hits the corner of the console but it doesn’t really hurt. He’s drunk enough.
“What?” Sehun asks from somewhere near his feet. “Drinking or beating me at stupid video games?”
Jongin smiles. He can just picture the scowl on Sehun’s face. “Remember that first bottle of soju?”
“I remember how we emptied it. I remember regretting it the next morning.”
“You’re so much better drunk than you are sober.” Jongin winces as Sehun elbows him in the side.
Sehun shifts until he’s sitting next to Jongin. “My judgment is never as badly impaired as yours.”
Jongin doesn’t reply. He does sit up though, knees drawn halfway close, elbows resting haplessly on them.
Sehun sighs. “Sorry. I wasn’t. Didn’t mean it like that.”
“Yeah you did.” Jongin squints through the dark. He has no idea where he’s going but it’s time to break the tension. Lighten the mood. It was time to stop keeping score. “You only think they’re stupid when you lose.”
Sehun thumbs the soft underside of his wrist, mapping the textures of his skin rippling with thin veins and when he does respond, it’s a whisper against a myriad other ambient sounds and Jongin is nearly half-asleep. “Then don’t play games with me.”
He pushes Jongin away slowly, until Jongin falls.
p.4.,
The kettle whistles. It’s a colour that Jongin remembers a magazine describing as ‘kelly green’. A housewarming gift from Sehun’s mother. The TV splutters in the background. The refrigerator hums. It’s early. Jongin stares at a hard-boiled egg, perfectly white, sitting in a blue eggcup. He drags his hands down his face. It’s a silent, melancholy, contemplative sort of morning. The balcony door is shut. Sehun has spent the night somewhere else. With someone else. And he’s not back yet.
“Why dance?” Yixing tosses a water bottle at him.
Jongin feels his heartbeat reverberate back through the floor. Someday, the shoes will kill him. Today, he wants to dance and they fit. The bottle rolls harmlessly over the polished wood towards him.
Finding the air in his burning lungs, Jongin sighs heavily and it costs him. “I really don’t know. Took classes as a kid. Then it became a thing. My thing.”
“Don’t tell me.” Yixing presses a finger to his lips, his eyes alight with teasing laughter. “Ballet?”
Jongin nods, smiling despite himself. He unscrews the bottle and his palms still feel too hot. “And Jazz.”
“Boring.” The sound Yixing’s lips make as he draws away from a deep gulp of water reminds Jongin of the sound of Yixing kissing his lips and his skin.
Jongin sits up; his legs are spread flat, a wide delta against the floor, as if in acceptance of the slithery backwaters, if Yixing chose to be it. He shrugs and tries not to study the dark sweat stains on Yixing’s grey shirt, to find where cloth pressed to skin, to bones, to something– someone beautiful. “That’s all I’ve got, man.”
Yixing smiles. “I don’t believe that. There’s more to you.”
Keys in the lock and Jongin can tell Sehun is home without having to open the door. He can hear his laughter through the walls. He’s with someone. Jongin debates leaving and then decides against it. The door swings inward, free from his grasp. And he stares at the slightly stained, stretched-to-shapelessness sleeves of his sweatshirt held fast to his wrists by his fingertips. Afraid to look up.
Abruptly Sehun stops laughing. The silence is like a knife in his side.
“I’ll call you back later,” Jongin hears him say quietly.
“Where were you?”
Sehun ignores the question for about ten seconds, seemingly engrossed in the book he’s paging through. “Oh. I had an exam.”
“Overnight?” Jongin wishes it hadn’t sounded as accusatory.
Sehun looks up sharply. “Excuse me?”
“I’m just.” Jongin ducks his head and fumbles with the frayed hems of his jeans. “I was worried.”
“You were worried,” Sehun echoes hollowly. Then a moment later, “What store is it?”
Jongin faces him for the first time, bewildered. “What?”
“The store I work at. The one that pays me. You know, money for rent. Which is how we live here. What is it a store for? What does it sell?” Sehun bites his lip, fists clenched at his sides, shoulders stiff. He's not shouting, but he is angry. “Don’t tell me you worry when you don’t know the first thing about anything that doesn’t concern you.”
He gets to his feet, walks into his room and back out of it– all in under thirty seconds. “You want to talk about worrying? I worry, too. But that’s irrelevant because it is so far beyond your field of vision – with your little blinkers on that block everything else out. Nothing else. You don’t see anything except your own goddamn reflection in that mirror. Not one inch of the rest of the world. Well, I have news for you: it’s going to keep turning and one day it will leave you behind.”
Sehun exhales shakily. Presses the heel of his palm to his left temple and runs the hand through his hair. “And then. I’m not going to be there.”
p.5.,
A note on the refrigerator, scrawled hastily says:
It is well on its way to winter when Yixing presses his hands to Jongin’s hips in the practice rooms. Jongin breathes, taking in their reflection – a black silhouette against the murky grey – staring back at him. The line of Yixing’s leg, a perfect angle against the wooden floor. His breath warm against Jongin’s neck. It’s cold outside, so very cold.
“Stay,” Yixing says, as the lights dim. The room turns to stone in the darkness. Everyone’s gone home and it’s getting late outside. There’s no one waiting for him, so Jongin stays. They dance until they’re tired. They chat until the sun starts to rise, red over the edges of the flat, uninspiring horizon.
Yixing kisses him goodbye, soft and almost safe. “Not half as boring as you misled me to believe you were, Kim Jongin.”
“Don’t be a stranger now.” Jongin shuts his eyes and takes the salve for what it is, throat burning from all the strings he’s trying to cut loose.
“What’s a good gift for a first anniversary?” Sehun breaks the uncomfortable silence. Jongin freezes mid-chew, scrambling to mute the TV.
“Flowers?” Jongin suggests, scratching his head.
Sehun nods reluctantly. “Well, that’s sort of boring, isn’t it? I want something that’s special but I don’t want it to seem like I put too much thought into it. I don’t want to come on too strong. I just want – him to know I was thinking of him so it’s not something generic. But not too much, I mean, it should seem like I have other things to do–” Sehun takes a breath, almost despairingly– “Do flowers really say that?”
Jongin stares at him and Sehun stares back until they both crack– dissolving in a fit of giggles and snorts.
“I think you should go for ties,” Jongin says, feigning seriousness. “Much more expressive for that sort of vague insanity.”
Yixing calls him one night, sounding drunk out of his mind. “What are you wearing?”
“What?” Jongin laughs before he can stop himself at the obvious proposition. It’s late, but not enough. The next day is a Thursday.
“I’ve got a friend here,” Yixing slurs over a rush of static, “Says I can’t get you to have phone sex with me right here right now ‘cuz you're too good to be true.”
Jongin glances at the door to Sehun’s room shut fast. The streetlights cast an orange pool over the still, lifeless living room. Shaking his head in disbelief, voice lowered, Jongin says, “Yixing, I am not going to have phone sex with you while a friend listens in.”
“Way to let a man down.” Yixing hangs up.
He calls back a minute later. “It’s that asshole roommate of yours, isn’t it? Knew it. You were so impossibly good. Too good to be true.”
p.6.,
Is a break-up, Sehun wonders idly, twenty-four days before Christmas, an indication of failure on part of the one coming to the conclusion or the one caught unawares?
He feels the mattress dip under Jongin's weight. The warmth of his palm against the bony ridges of Sehun's curved spine. Jongin shifts until he's spooning him, a small ledge of distance between thin cotton and flesh over cool sheets. Sehun imagines what it would feel like to have Jongin slide around him, lift a leg to allow him passage, a part of him burying itself deep within Sehun saying, you're not alone. In Sehun's head, Jongin's cock is wonderfully slick against the most private parts of his body - the places (his mouth and his fingers and the tender insides of his thighs and beyond) few else have felt him.
Instead Jongin traces the English alphabet with his fingertips between Sehun's shoulder blades.
"I didn't know that about you," Jongin says, voice sounding rough with disuse.
Sehun licks his dry lips. "Didn't know what?"
"That you're." Jongin falters. "Like me. That girls are not–"
"Girls have never been." Sehun falters when his stomach grumbles.
"Oh," Jongin says intelligently. A moment later, he slips an arm around Sehun's waist and shimmies closer. Mouth pressed to Sehun's neck, he mumbles, "Let's go have some cake. And then I promise, you're gonna be okay."
It's the dead of the night and Jongin is licking the salty remnants of fried chicken off his fingers with relish. They're sitting on the lumpy couch. Sehun presses his foot against Jongin's thigh. Jongin grins at him and rests his hand against Sehun's ankle. Fingers still slightly damp, he rubs circles along the jut of bone. Sehun curls his toes against Jongin.
"If we did," Sehun whispers, staring at Jongin's thumb drawing aimless patterns over his skin, "What would happen next?"
Jongin shrugs. "I don't know."
Sehun looks at him beseechingly. "What if it's a mistake? What if there's no going back?"
"Then it's our mistake to make."
Sehun draws away from him. "That's not an answer."
The flat smells like spicy fried chicken and not much else. It's not entirely unpleasant. Jongin presses him flat against the lumps, spreads him out until he's lying with his arms caught above his head and his legs wrapped around Jongin's hips. Jongin presses his forehead to Sehun's forehead, hair damp, breath hotter. "Do you want me to beg?"
Breakfast is a quiet, strained affair of solemn eggs. Sehun tries to smile when he says, "No. I want you to work for it."
"He says he can get your name on the list," Chanyeol smiles, pleased with the peace offering of chocolate milk. He smells addictively bitter, like tobacco. "Audition onwards though, you're on your own. It's a chance. And it'd be a mistake to throw it away."
Sehun's got Jongin's arm twisted behind his back– literally. Jongin laughs helplessly. "Tell him thanks, but I'll take the mistake."
Sehun releases him, clearly shocked and Jongin sprawls forward bonelessly. Chanyeol gapes at him. "But... you love dance."
"No," Jongin looks Sehun squarely in the eye and Sehun meets his gaze head-on – like a hot knife sinking through a pat of butter. Autumn feels like forever ago. "Well, yes, but. It was a dream. And I know it might be sixty-eighth time lucky but banking on chance was never part of that dream. And even if it was, I can't take that chance with everything."
Sehun doesn't smile.
"You guys," Chanyeol breaks into a big, watery grin, squeezing them together – and now, face smushed against Jongin's shoulder, he does smile. Reluctantly. "That is so sweet! And stupid. But sweet. Giving me cavities."
p.0.,
There is something unflinchingly vulnerable about Jongin half-naked. The backs of his knees and the veins that begin to disappear below a waistband slung too low and the smooth lines of his flat belly, the curve of his shoulder and the lick of dark hair that settles along the tender nape of his neck. That trickle of water, diamonds scattered along the velvet-bronze canvas stretched in the shape of his body. Sehun kisses them all away, drinking him in, secretive and unsharing in his joy.
The doorbell rings, the phones ring, the TV babbles away, the kettle whistles and the oven timer screeches – Jongin ignores them all, eyes closed, mouth open in a perfect circle, heart pounding in his throat. The world disappears, except for the music and. Sehun. Sehun moves as one with him, palm curved along his neck, hips pressed fast against his; a dance.
Jongin closes his eyes, ignoring the sting of fatigue. It’s first light and he’s barely had six hours of sleep. His body aches, every muscle sore, but it’s a sweet sort of agony. The evidence of hard work, of effort put in towards a goal. There’s no time to be tired. Stretching before the frameless mirror set in the cramped living room, he lets the music rise to a crescendo of beats washing over him. Each thump of the bass sets him alight inside out and he starts to dance–
“What’re you doing up so early?” Jongin tugs his headphones down, panting.
Sehun scrubs the sleep from his eyes half-heartedly. “I’ve got a class.”
Jongin watches him open the refrigerator to find it half empty. “It’s only six. Did I wake you? I didn’t mean to.”
“No,” Sehun smiles crookedly. “We’re out of milk. And almost everything else.”
Jongin pulls a crumpled slip of paper – a yellow post-it covered in scribbles that sticks to itself – from his pocket. “I’ve got a list.”
The commute to the dance studio is short. He switches twice, and the whole trip is usually never longer than forty minutes. Unless he forgets to get off at the right stop. Sometimes, with his hands curled around the cold railing, cap slung low, music pulsing in his ears, he gets lost. There are a lot of things to think about: his next paycheck, giving up and going to university, how much he owes Sehun and how far he can go before it’s too far.
It’s a Sunday afternoon and the light is softly yellow, almost mellow – he feels like a pat of butter on a cold plate dissolving slowly, so very slowly. One of Sehun’s seniors from university, Chanyeol, is smoking cigarettes on the balcony. His curly hair looks almost golden brown and his lips around a cigarette are very pink and soft looking. His large glasses have distracting smudges all over them. When he smiles it’s a big and disarming expression.
Sehun laughs abruptly, loud and distracting. “That guy you have a huge crush on, what’s his name? Kris? Just texted me.”
“I don’t have a crush on him,” Chanyeol says calmly, his voice a deep, soothing bass. The tips of his ears redden and he twists his cigarette, exhaling deeply.
Jongin lets his head loll back as a slight breeze licks cool fingers through his sweat-dampened hair. The sky is so blue it hurts to look at. He shuts his eyes and the light filters red through his closed eyelids. He needs to get a part-time job. Some way to get paid.
As if from a great distance, Sehun whoops. “We’ve been invited to a party!”
Sehun is squirming into a pair of almost unreasonably tight jeans when he says, between grunts and tugs, “Rent’s due this week.”
Jongin freezes, his socked feet inches away from their small, incredibly old television set. He’d just been about to change the channel. Maybe he can pretend to be asleep. Sehun tosses a tangerine and it catches Jongin in the stomach; he lurches forward at the impact. It’s surprisingly painful.
“Eat,” Sehun instructs. “I’m just letting you know. Don’t start worrying already. I’ve got it.”
Feeling extremely pathetic, Jongin pulls his knees to his chin and peels the fruit. White, sticky threads come away from the orange flesh; a web of lies. “There’s this... audition.”
“That’s great,” Sehun says brightly without the slightest shred of sarcasm or contempt. “You work on that. Which company is it?”
“It’s not really that great.” Jongin mumbles. “Back-up dance group. Only luck in that is getting picked for a music video.”
Sehun sits down on the small lumpy couch, sighing heavily. Jongin passes him a piece of fruit and he accepts it. “Well, you have to start somewhere. By the way, it will please you to know that I’ve managed to pick up an extra shift at the store. We’re good for a while.”
“Thanks.” Trying to keep from shriveling with shame, Jongin presses a foot against Sehun’s thigh in gratitude. Sehun rests a hand on his ankle, warm and reassuring.
A few minutes later he turns to Jongin. “Hey, you know who else started out as a back-up dancer? Michael Jackson.”
“That’s not true.”
This guy– this friend of a friend – Yixing. He’s magnetic. For the first time Jongin feels he understands why people call it chemistry. It’s got a formula to it – dim lights + body heat + alcohol = attraction. He’s got features that the light loves and when Jongin touches an eyebrow, the fine line makes him think of music and the synesthetic translation to dance– of flesh molding to form.
“You’re a dancer,” Yixing breathes in his ear, his drink in one hand, Jongin’s hair wound in his other. “You’ve got the legs– the body for it.”
Jongin feels the last shreds of inhibition melting away as the music grows louder and the lights grow blurrier; a staccato of bass thumping in his gut and neons disappearing into the night. And Yixing is so close and so warm and so beautiful. Still, he tries. “I really. Should. I just want to be alone.”
“Oh yeah. Me too,” Yixing says and kisses him, slow and hard. It’s so nice that Jongin forgets why he was supposed to resist.
Four a.m. Jongin doesn’t think there has ever been a time when the flat has been so quiet in the year or so they’ve lived here. He stares wretchedly through their mirror as Sehun keeps rubbing his forehead. Sehun pours himself a glass of water. Jongin finds his hair is sticky and his fingers are stickier and that the taste at the back of his mouth is of sex.
p.2.,
Sometimes Sehun wonders if he’s the only one who sees Jongin. With his hunched shoulders when he sits down to eat and his various caps and t-shirts. The adolescence of how he slouches in chairs, the smallness of his body balled up in bed after a grueling day of practice. How he stupidly forgets to buy eggs and sleeps through his birthday and with every willing person he comes across.
Sometimes, unbidden Sehun conjures the image of Jongin like that – but no, the way he looks when he dances is infinitely better. It must be. (Sex is pornography is boring. Dance, however, especially the way Jongin lets the art flow through him, is all about something no one can touch, or reach– a mirage. And that elusive, evanescing beauty could whet the most discerning of libidos.)
No. That’s not it at all.
Sometimes Sehun wonders if Jongin sees him – plaid shirts and brown sweaters and pouring over books, burning the midnight oil – at all.
Sunset in Seoul isn’t much of a view from their apartment but Jongin makes it. He’s standing in the balcony in three-fourths of a suit. The jacket is slung over his right arm. Sehun stares and forgets to breathe, the same way he imagines surgeons do before slicing a heart open.
It’s a moment. Clarity, as if staring through a fog that is finally beginning to lift. Like blood draining slowly south.
Jongin undoes his tie, runs a hand carelessly through his hair and turns around.
The silence is alight with a sort of caged wildness and a look in Jongin’s eyes obscene as a black sea– before it flickers to blankness, taking everything charged and feverish about the moment with it. Should’ve known better. It passes.
Jongin laughs self-deprecatingly. “It was for a performance. I would’ve told you, but it’ll be on TV soon.”
Sehun nods, not trusting himself to speak.
“Let’s get out of here.” Jongin crosses the room, jostling Sehun along, keeping his fingers carefully tucked out of reach. No touching. “Dinner’s on me. We’ll go somewhere nice.”
That evening Jongin laughs, deep and throaty. His eyes look beautiful and when he bites his lip, Sehun thinks of every time they could’ve but haven’t. He reaches for the bill and Sehun feels his blood run through his fingers, screaming to just be able to feel Jongin’s skin against his. And he knows if he touches him, he'll know and once he knows, it'll all be over. So close, within touching distance, but a sea – an ocean, a galaxy – away.
That night Sehun’s bed feels emptier and colder than it ever has.
p.3.,
He’s on his way home when someone grabs Jongin by his elbow and with his momentum turned against him, he swings back around to face them. It’s Yixing, looking much plainer and tamer than Jongin remembers him being. No predatory prowl, no alcohol, no dim lights. No tight, black leather, no lack of personal space. Plain daylight. White t-shirt and jeans.
“Hey, you’re that guy,” Yixing grins. His cheek dimples. If there had ever been (never) any doubt that he was attractive, his smile wipes it clean. Beside him, Chanyeol shrugs awkwardly.
Jongin stares at the floor, nodding. “Yeah. Yep. That guy. Me.”
“What a coincidence!” Yixing slings an arm around Jongin’s shoulder. “I’ve actually been asking this dick here if he knows you – I mean, I wondered about you, you know. And he was so unhelpful about it. Said he’d only seen you hang around one of his juniors or something.”
Chanyeol glances at Jongin as they reach the impasse. He fidgets with his glasses, then shoulders his bag. “He lives with Sehun.”
Usually Jongin is the one up first in the morning, so breakfast is his. Most days he throws together rice and some pickled side dishes or the rare Sunday kimchi stew. Lunch is usually grocery store kimbap that Sehun divides for them. Dinner is almost always ramyun finished with the fruits that Junmyeon mothers them with.
“Do you remember that guy, Yixing?” Jongin asks carefully, as he’s tossing their empty plastic cups in the garbage. It’s late, well past the staple of evening varieties. There’s no canned laughter in the background, only a maudlin violin piece from a drama.
Sehun stares at the TV as though possessed. “I heard.”
“I’ve missed this,” Jongin says, making himself comfortable on the floor. His head hits the corner of the console but it doesn’t really hurt. He’s drunk enough.
“What?” Sehun asks from somewhere near his feet. “Drinking or beating me at stupid video games?”
Jongin smiles. He can just picture the scowl on Sehun’s face. “Remember that first bottle of soju?”
“I remember how we emptied it. I remember regretting it the next morning.”
“You’re so much better drunk than you are sober.” Jongin winces as Sehun elbows him in the side.
Sehun shifts until he’s sitting next to Jongin. “My judgment is never as badly impaired as yours.”
Jongin doesn’t reply. He does sit up though, knees drawn halfway close, elbows resting haplessly on them.
Sehun sighs. “Sorry. I wasn’t. Didn’t mean it like that.”
“Yeah you did.” Jongin squints through the dark. He has no idea where he’s going but it’s time to break the tension. Lighten the mood. It was time to stop keeping score. “You only think they’re stupid when you lose.”
Sehun thumbs the soft underside of his wrist, mapping the textures of his skin rippling with thin veins and when he does respond, it’s a whisper against a myriad other ambient sounds and Jongin is nearly half-asleep. “Then don’t play games with me.”
He pushes Jongin away slowly, until Jongin falls.
p.4.,
The kettle whistles. It’s a colour that Jongin remembers a magazine describing as ‘kelly green’. A housewarming gift from Sehun’s mother. The TV splutters in the background. The refrigerator hums. It’s early. Jongin stares at a hard-boiled egg, perfectly white, sitting in a blue eggcup. He drags his hands down his face. It’s a silent, melancholy, contemplative sort of morning. The balcony door is shut. Sehun has spent the night somewhere else. With someone else. And he’s not back yet.
“Why dance?” Yixing tosses a water bottle at him.
Jongin feels his heartbeat reverberate back through the floor. Someday, the shoes will kill him. Today, he wants to dance and they fit. The bottle rolls harmlessly over the polished wood towards him.
Finding the air in his burning lungs, Jongin sighs heavily and it costs him. “I really don’t know. Took classes as a kid. Then it became a thing. My thing.”
“Don’t tell me.” Yixing presses a finger to his lips, his eyes alight with teasing laughter. “Ballet?”
Jongin nods, smiling despite himself. He unscrews the bottle and his palms still feel too hot. “And Jazz.”
“Boring.” The sound Yixing’s lips make as he draws away from a deep gulp of water reminds Jongin of the sound of Yixing kissing his lips and his skin.
Jongin sits up; his legs are spread flat, a wide delta against the floor, as if in acceptance of the slithery backwaters, if Yixing chose to be it. He shrugs and tries not to study the dark sweat stains on Yixing’s grey shirt, to find where cloth pressed to skin, to bones, to something– someone beautiful. “That’s all I’ve got, man.”
Yixing smiles. “I don’t believe that. There’s more to you.”
Keys in the lock and Jongin can tell Sehun is home without having to open the door. He can hear his laughter through the walls. He’s with someone. Jongin debates leaving and then decides against it. The door swings inward, free from his grasp. And he stares at the slightly stained, stretched-to-shapelessness sleeves of his sweatshirt held fast to his wrists by his fingertips. Afraid to look up.
Abruptly Sehun stops laughing. The silence is like a knife in his side.
“I’ll call you back later,” Jongin hears him say quietly.
“Where were you?”
Sehun ignores the question for about ten seconds, seemingly engrossed in the book he’s paging through. “Oh. I had an exam.”
“Overnight?” Jongin wishes it hadn’t sounded as accusatory.
Sehun looks up sharply. “Excuse me?”
“I’m just.” Jongin ducks his head and fumbles with the frayed hems of his jeans. “I was worried.”
“You were worried,” Sehun echoes hollowly. Then a moment later, “What store is it?”
Jongin faces him for the first time, bewildered. “What?”
“The store I work at. The one that pays me. You know, money for rent. Which is how we live here. What is it a store for? What does it sell?” Sehun bites his lip, fists clenched at his sides, shoulders stiff. He's not shouting, but he is angry. “Don’t tell me you worry when you don’t know the first thing about anything that doesn’t concern you.”
He gets to his feet, walks into his room and back out of it– all in under thirty seconds. “You want to talk about worrying? I worry, too. But that’s irrelevant because it is so far beyond your field of vision – with your little blinkers on that block everything else out. Nothing else. You don’t see anything except your own goddamn reflection in that mirror. Not one inch of the rest of the world. Well, I have news for you: it’s going to keep turning and one day it will leave you behind.”
Sehun exhales shakily. Presses the heel of his palm to his left temple and runs the hand through his hair. “And then. I’m not going to be there.”
p.5.,
A note on the refrigerator, scrawled hastily says:
gift store called ‘wish’
there is ice cream in the freezerbuy banana milk
It is well on its way to winter when Yixing presses his hands to Jongin’s hips in the practice rooms. Jongin breathes, taking in their reflection – a black silhouette against the murky grey – staring back at him. The line of Yixing’s leg, a perfect angle against the wooden floor. His breath warm against Jongin’s neck. It’s cold outside, so very cold.
“Stay,” Yixing says, as the lights dim. The room turns to stone in the darkness. Everyone’s gone home and it’s getting late outside. There’s no one waiting for him, so Jongin stays. They dance until they’re tired. They chat until the sun starts to rise, red over the edges of the flat, uninspiring horizon.
Yixing kisses him goodbye, soft and almost safe. “Not half as boring as you misled me to believe you were, Kim Jongin.”
“Don’t be a stranger now.” Jongin shuts his eyes and takes the salve for what it is, throat burning from all the strings he’s trying to cut loose.
“What’s a good gift for a first anniversary?” Sehun breaks the uncomfortable silence. Jongin freezes mid-chew, scrambling to mute the TV.
“Flowers?” Jongin suggests, scratching his head.
Sehun nods reluctantly. “Well, that’s sort of boring, isn’t it? I want something that’s special but I don’t want it to seem like I put too much thought into it. I don’t want to come on too strong. I just want – him to know I was thinking of him so it’s not something generic. But not too much, I mean, it should seem like I have other things to do–” Sehun takes a breath, almost despairingly– “Do flowers really say that?”
Jongin stares at him and Sehun stares back until they both crack– dissolving in a fit of giggles and snorts.
“I think you should go for ties,” Jongin says, feigning seriousness. “Much more expressive for that sort of vague insanity.”
Yixing calls him one night, sounding drunk out of his mind. “What are you wearing?”
“What?” Jongin laughs before he can stop himself at the obvious proposition. It’s late, but not enough. The next day is a Thursday.
“I’ve got a friend here,” Yixing slurs over a rush of static, “Says I can’t get you to have phone sex with me right here right now ‘cuz you're too good to be true.”
Jongin glances at the door to Sehun’s room shut fast. The streetlights cast an orange pool over the still, lifeless living room. Shaking his head in disbelief, voice lowered, Jongin says, “Yixing, I am not going to have phone sex with you while a friend listens in.”
“Way to let a man down.” Yixing hangs up.
He calls back a minute later. “It’s that asshole roommate of yours, isn’t it? Knew it. You were so impossibly good. Too good to be true.”
p.6.,
Is a break-up, Sehun wonders idly, twenty-four days before Christmas, an indication of failure on part of the one coming to the conclusion or the one caught unawares?
He feels the mattress dip under Jongin's weight. The warmth of his palm against the bony ridges of Sehun's curved spine. Jongin shifts until he's spooning him, a small ledge of distance between thin cotton and flesh over cool sheets. Sehun imagines what it would feel like to have Jongin slide around him, lift a leg to allow him passage, a part of him burying itself deep within Sehun saying, you're not alone. In Sehun's head, Jongin's cock is wonderfully slick against the most private parts of his body - the places (his mouth and his fingers and the tender insides of his thighs and beyond) few else have felt him.
Instead Jongin traces the English alphabet with his fingertips between Sehun's shoulder blades.
"I didn't know that about you," Jongin says, voice sounding rough with disuse.
Sehun licks his dry lips. "Didn't know what?"
"That you're." Jongin falters. "Like me. That girls are not–"
"Girls have never been." Sehun falters when his stomach grumbles.
"Oh," Jongin says intelligently. A moment later, he slips an arm around Sehun's waist and shimmies closer. Mouth pressed to Sehun's neck, he mumbles, "Let's go have some cake. And then I promise, you're gonna be okay."
It's the dead of the night and Jongin is licking the salty remnants of fried chicken off his fingers with relish. They're sitting on the lumpy couch. Sehun presses his foot against Jongin's thigh. Jongin grins at him and rests his hand against Sehun's ankle. Fingers still slightly damp, he rubs circles along the jut of bone. Sehun curls his toes against Jongin.
"If we did," Sehun whispers, staring at Jongin's thumb drawing aimless patterns over his skin, "What would happen next?"
Jongin shrugs. "I don't know."
Sehun looks at him beseechingly. "What if it's a mistake? What if there's no going back?"
"Then it's our mistake to make."
Sehun draws away from him. "That's not an answer."
The flat smells like spicy fried chicken and not much else. It's not entirely unpleasant. Jongin presses him flat against the lumps, spreads him out until he's lying with his arms caught above his head and his legs wrapped around Jongin's hips. Jongin presses his forehead to Sehun's forehead, hair damp, breath hotter. "Do you want me to beg?"
Breakfast is a quiet, strained affair of solemn eggs. Sehun tries to smile when he says, "No. I want you to work for it."
"He says he can get your name on the list," Chanyeol smiles, pleased with the peace offering of chocolate milk. He smells addictively bitter, like tobacco. "Audition onwards though, you're on your own. It's a chance. And it'd be a mistake to throw it away."
Sehun's got Jongin's arm twisted behind his back– literally. Jongin laughs helplessly. "Tell him thanks, but I'll take the mistake."
Sehun releases him, clearly shocked and Jongin sprawls forward bonelessly. Chanyeol gapes at him. "But... you love dance."
"No," Jongin looks Sehun squarely in the eye and Sehun meets his gaze head-on – like a hot knife sinking through a pat of butter. Autumn feels like forever ago. "Well, yes, but. It was a dream. And I know it might be sixty-eighth time lucky but banking on chance was never part of that dream. And even if it was, I can't take that chance with everything."
Sehun doesn't smile.
"You guys," Chanyeol breaks into a big, watery grin, squeezing them together – and now, face smushed against Jongin's shoulder, he does smile. Reluctantly. "That is so sweet! And stupid. But sweet. Giving me cavities."
p.0.,
There is something unflinchingly vulnerable about Jongin half-naked. The backs of his knees and the veins that begin to disappear below a waistband slung too low and the smooth lines of his flat belly, the curve of his shoulder and the lick of dark hair that settles along the tender nape of his neck. That trickle of water, diamonds scattered along the velvet-bronze canvas stretched in the shape of his body. Sehun kisses them all away, drinking him in, secretive and unsharing in his joy.
The doorbell rings, the phones ring, the TV babbles away, the kettle whistles and the oven timer screeches – Jongin ignores them all, eyes closed, mouth open in a perfect circle, heart pounding in his throat. The world disappears, except for the music and. Sehun. Sehun moves as one with him, palm curved along his neck, hips pressed fast against his; a dance.