nephre

Sentiments [CNU/Sandeul]

nephre — Wed, 30 Jul 2014 17:46:49 GMT

Corporate!AU
Installment II.
with established relationships
non-chronological
(previous installments: I.)

Sentiments | CNU/Sandeul, hinted CNU/Jinyoung | R | 1700w.

Jinyoung let Dongwoo have Junghwan on Fridays.

Theirs was the relationship that couldn’t possibly be described in a word (complicated, perhaps) or a chronology without seriously calling their moral standards into question. Theirs was the relationship that depended on mistakes so that they could be mended, that depended on impulse so that they could move forward.

Fridays would eventually devolve into what they’d like to call “group therapy” days; Sunwoo and Chansik eventually joined them for casual meals and nights on the town, lost in the dazzling lights and impetuous attitude of the urban streets, but before that, it was Dongwoo and Junghwan, ironically, who initiated the tradition. And in between it all, before everyone had enjoyed their fill of each other, the sex also began with Dongwoo and Junghwan.

Junghwan enjoyed sex with Dongwoo. It was slow, languid, messy, and a mix of everything that Dongwoo both demonstrated and repressed in the office. They usually migrated from the bar to Dongwoo’s apartment and stood on opposite sides of the elevator on the ride up, being careful not to touch each other until Dongwoo managed to get the door open (he fumbled with the key sometimes when Junghwan stood particularly close behind him). More often than not, Junghwan was the one who pushed Dongwoo against the door and tugged his tie loose, breathing down Dongwoo’s neck and grinding their hips together. He enjoyed the challenge of testing Dongwoo, wondering how long Dongwoo could keep it together before he’d finally make use of those broad shoulders of his and grab Junghwan by the forearms, backing him into the couch. When Junghwan gasped and tangled his hands into Dongwoo’s hair, messing the slicked style he usually had going on, it would occasionally remind Junghwan of the Dongwoo he’d first met in his office, hair wavy and tangled, falling over his face and hinting and the indiscernible relationship they’d develop over the months, years.

It had begun on Junghwan’s first day, when Jinyoung asked him to deliver coffee to Dongwoo’s office. “Why can’t you do it yourself?” Junghwan made the mistake of asking.

“First rule in the business world: don’t question your boss,” Jinyoung said, handing two K-cup cartridges to Junghwan and patting the back of his hand. Junghwan’s juvenile way of talking back was what endeared him to Jinyoung, though, and when Junghwan stepped out of his office, Jinyoung leaned his head on his elbow and smiled fondly.

Junghwan found Dongwoo in the office down the hall—which looked a lot like Jinyoung’s but with less pictures and more unfinished paperwork—turning back and forth in his chair, legs crossed, and texting someone on his phone. Dongwoo had worn his hair down and shaggy that day, appearing a bit disheveled, and this, fortunately, made Dongwoo seem a lot more approachable than the rest of the employees at the office. Junghwan had been introduced to Chansik earlier that day by one Cha Sunwoo, who looked Junghwan up and down condescendingly and with an air of importance. Sunwoo’s voice was low and commanding, and Chansik, who stood some 180cm tall next to him, hadn’t said a word. Chansik had the body of a gangly college student, but seemed professionally fit and somewhat unreadable, and Junghwan subconsciously found himself squinting at Chansik, who held a leather briefcase and was wearing an important-looking watch.

“From Jinyoung,” Junghwan said, shifting some of the paperwork on Dongwoo’s desk and setting the coffee down in the empty spot he’d made. Dongwoo kept his desk organized but teeming, and Junghwan struggled to keep the stacks of paper in their proper upright position. Dongwoo glanced at him but didn’t say anything, giving Junghwan the impression that he might’ve been mistaken in his initial assessment of Dongwoo’s personality. “Um,” Junghwan said. He glanced at Dongwoo’s phone. “Is that your friend you’re texting?”

Dongwoo raised an eyebrow and looked up at Junghwan again. “It’s actually Jinyoung. I guess you could say he’s a friend.”

Junghwan, at that point, began stalling. Despite its minimalist decor, Dongwoo’s office exuded a less intimidating air than Jinyoung’s, perhaps because it was smaller and lacked the windows that overlooked the rest of the city and reminded one of how high they’d have to climb to become a blip in the corner of Jinyoung’s eye. That was how Junghwan interpreted things in the beginning, anyway. “How do you make friends in the corporate world, anyway?” asked Junghwan.

Dongwoo set down his phone and rested his hands on his knees. “Uh, I guess you go out to bars and stuff. Make connections. It’s not as easy as in college, that’s for sure. Are you the new intern here or something?”

“Full time,” Junghwan replied.

Dongwoo laughed. “It’s just like Jinyoung to make an actual employee start by delivering coffee.”

Junghwan smiled hesitantly back at Dongwoo.

Three weeks later, loyal to his word, Dongwoo invited Junghwan out with him after work in more of a house-warming type of initiation. The news floated around the office rather quickly, with Jinyoung not too keen on the invitation, but his curiosity about Dongwoo’s uncharacteristic initiative winning out in the end. Dongwoo and Junghwan took public transportation directly from the office to a nearby bar and started off with a rather banal conversation about weather patterns for the next few days and whether or not Jinyoung would start giving Junghwan tasks more engaging than delivering coffee and shredding paper.

Alcohol made Dongwoo a lot more talkative, Junghwan found. “He’s a character,” Dongwoo said, referring to Jinyoung. “We go way back. To college days.”

At the time, Junghwan’s curiosity about Dongwoo and Jinyoung’s relationship hadn’t quite developed into its full-fledged intensity yet. (After delivering several cups of coffee complimented by sealed notes and various office supplies to Dongwoo’s office, though, Junghwan would start questioning. Eventually, upon Junghwan’s request, many of the post-sex conversations between Dongwoo and Junghwan would turn out to be about Jinyoung. For a while, Junghwan found out more about Jinyoung from Dongwoo than he did from Jinyoung himself.) “He’s certainly demanding,” Junghwan mumbled.

Dongwoo stirred his drink and stared down into it. “He’s always been like that.” Dongwoo then smiled up at Junghwan, half of his mouth upturned, as if testing the waters. “But isn’t that what makes him kind of attractive?”

Dongwoo offered to drive Junghwan home that night. Junghwan had been living with his parents for the past couple of years after graduating from college, and he’d spent most of that time debating with them in which direction he should attempt to guide his life (and simultaneously depending on them for monetary support). And thus, he began to reason that if he were to come home late one Friday evening smelling of alcohol and dubious decisions, they wouldn’t let him see the light of day. Conveniently, Junghwan also had absolutely no conception of office politics and the etiquette of the business world.

Instead, the feeling he got when he stood up and the world shifted below his feet reminded him of college, the stench of alcohol and hookah bars, musk mixed with odors, rooms darkened and crowded with human bodies. He closed his eyes, and for a moment, he was taken back to that time.

So Junghwan asked, eyes still closed and face tinged with red, “Um, can I come over to your place?”

(Dongwoo was still sober enough to raise an eyebrow at the suggestion. But Junghwan was leaning on his shoulder, breath reeking of alcohol and something else, something hot and remarkably irresistible, and Dongwoo had been the one who’d bought Junghwan one too many drinks for the night.)

It began as a series of coincidences. Dongwoo’s apartment wasn’t dirty, but hadn’t been thoroughly cleaned in a while; it still smelled strongly of Dongwoo’s cologne. It wasn’t often that Dongwoo had guests over, so he poured them both a glass of wine, which Junghwan hesitantly accepted. Dongwoo turned on the stereo, which began by playing a slow-jazz song. He quickly then switched to the television, which flickered on a sex scene of some obscure late-night movie. Dongwoo didn’t notice this until he’d already slipped out of his jacket and turned to Junghwan, who flushed and was somewhere in between staring at Dongwoo and turning away.

It began as a series of coincidences, being in certain places when moments intersected them, past experiences and situations that eventually unfolded into the picture of Junghwan tangling his hands in Dongwoo’s hair as they moved against each other on the couch, still fully dressed and panting into each other’s necks, pleading desperately for release in each hiss of breath. Dongwoo palmed Junghwan through his slacks against his better judgment, and Junghwan let out a long, drawn-out moan that sent blood shooting straight to Dongwoo’s cock. It’d been a while since he’d been this turned on. (There had also been alcohol involved last time, alcohol and the taste of Jung Jinyoung.) The world spun and Junghwan’s breathless noises slipped inside Dongwoo’s button-down shirt, leaving a fiery trail against Dongwoo’s skin.

For Junghwan, the intensity of everything was magnified tenfold. He leaned up to kiss Dongwoo on the mouth and sucked harshly on his tongue, clinging to Dongwoo’s shoulders, his legs wrapped around Dongwoo’s hips. “Fuck,” he breathed, and Dongwoo seemed turned on by that, growling into Junghwan’s lips. When Junghwan came, he arched into Dongwoo, letting out a choked cry.

It could’ve been a casual thing if they’d left it at that. What Dongwoo didn’t account for when he slumped against the couch, still hard, was Junghwan slipping between his legs, unzipping his pants, tugging down his briefs, nuzzling his face into Dongwoo’s crotch. He didn’t account for Junghwan, in his clouded state, sucking him off and making obscene noises that drove Dongwoo crazy. He didn’t account for his own hand reaching to grasp Junghwan’s hair, his own hips thrusting shallowly as he fucked Junghwan’s mouth. He didn’t account for the come that trickled down the sides of Junghwan’s mouth as Junghwan looked up at him through his disheveled fringe.

(And then, they were in Dongwoo’s bed, sheets bunched up around tangled legs. Junghwan was curled up against Dongwoo’s broad chest, breathing into his skin. “He kissed me,” Junghwan hummed. “Jinyoung did. A couple weeks ago. I’d just begun reporting to him full time.”

Dongwoo silently wrapped an arm around Junghwan and hugged Junghwan to his chest.)

Six Degrees of Separation [Gongchan/Sandeul]

nephre — Mon, 14 Jul 2014 21:24:45 GMT

Title: Six Degrees of Separation
Pairing: Gongchan/Sandeul
Rating: PG-13
Summary: Chansik and Junghwan are stranded in New York City. Set before the filming of Solo Day. Canon.

Newark was an airport that did not beget its notorious status.

After disembarking the flight that left him stranded in an unkempt, private section of the supposedly comprehensive international airport, Lee Junghwan stood on the jetway and passed time watching grounds people wheel his luggage off the empty runway. He immediately decided that he couldn’t quite tolerate redeye flights as well as his bandmates could, but it had all been because of an emergency scheduling conflict. Junghwan had to record for a feature on Kim Bohyung’s solo album that couldn’t be rescheduled, so the manager booked a later flight for him, leaving him in New York City to fend for himself for a few hours before meeting up with his bandmates in Los Angeles for the filming of their next music video.

The customs teemed with visitors and immigrants rocking from foot to foot with children on hand, strollers, pets, and everything in between. Most of the passengers on the flight that had transferred in Tokyo were Asian and mumbled to each other in an assortment of languages that Junghwan didn’t understand. He sat on his luggage, rocking his feet and waving his phone to get data access. Ruffling his newly bleached bangs under a black snapback, he shifted his facemask back and forth and singlehandedly built up his anxiety for the cab ride to the hotel.

When he miraculously got signal, Junghwan dialed the number that was already entered in his phone, and the familiar voice sounded undeniably comforting.

“I’ll come get you. Wait by the exit,” Chansik said.

Gong Chansik, being the little shit he was, had volunteered to accompany him to New York, and as miffed as Junghwan was over that fact at the moment, he was grateful for Chansik’s partial presence. “That’s vague,” Junghwan replied, and Chansik laughed.

“Look, I have no idea what I’m doing, either.”

Junghwan rummaged through his bag for his camera. He figured he might as well capture his first experiences of America privately before Chansik arrived and ruined his cover. “I don’t understand why our company planned an all-inclusive to America right before—”

“Listen,” Chansik said. “I’d just be grateful. They’re doing all they can for us.”

Junghwan groaned. “There you go again with your grateful shit, and I’m going to have to call BS on this one, because—”

The pause was partly because Junghwan didn’t have any sound reasoning, and partly because Chansik’s familiar face appeared in front of him past the security desk. Junghwan spotted Chansik’s lean arm waving calmly at him.

Junghwan, despite himself, started laughing; the laugh came out as a choked sob in a sort of relief. “How the hell did you get here so quickly?”

Chansik grinned that cheeky smile that Junghwan loved, his thin lips pressed together in a line that curled up at one corner. “I’ve been waiting for you,” said Chansik. “A few minutes,” he added quickly.

“Alone?”

“Didn’t want to attract attention.”

Junghwan knocked Chansik’s cap into his eyes, smiling. “You attract enough attention as it is, silly.”

Chansik put a hand on Junghwan’s elbow and led him through the airport, and Junghwan stopped to marvel at the underwhelming essence of it all, the airport itself sterile and hospital-like in its décor. “We can take a taxi into Manhattan and go out for breakfast, if you’d like,” Chansik said. Chansik’s hand was soft, and Junghwan leaned into it, unintentionally pulling Chansik down with him as they tripped over Junghwan’s duffle bags. They looked at each other and laughed.

“This is awkward,” Junghwan said.

“I guess—we haven’t really been alone together much,” Chansik replied. “I honestly just really wanted to see New York.”

Part of Junghwan was disappointed that it hadn’t been I just really wanted to see you.

The taxi queue wasn’t long, and the clouds looked dense on the horizon where a hint of sunrise peaked through the summer morning haze. The taxi smelled like vanilla and old car, that familiar taxi smell, and something in it was comforting to Junghwan, though he knew Chansik would be eager to try the public transportation once they got into Manhattan and settled into their hotel, which was located on 32nd, between Madison and Park Avenue. Junghwan had tried to study a map of Manhattan on his flight between naps and meals, but he got as far as pronouncing the names of the nearby streets that weren’t numbers, and that was about it.

“Take the Holland Tunnel,” Chansik said in discernable English to the taxi driver, and Junghwan raised an eyebrow.

“Look at you, Mr. New York,” Junghwan said, and Chansik laughed.

“I was staring out the window the whole time on the way here. There shouldn’t be much traffic.”

“Thank God I have you,” Junghwan said.

“My English isn’t much better than yours,” admitted Chansik, and Junghwan shrugged.

“Well, I meant thank God it’s you and not Jinyoung,” Junghwan said.

Something just short of a crestfallen expression appeared on Chansik’s face, but Junghwan was turned toward the taxi window, watching what he could of the sunrise, so he did not see this.

“I mean, Jinyoung is really bad with directions,” Junghwan added arbitrarily.

In truth, Chansik had not been waiting a few minutes.

Chansik had waited in a deserted subway station nearly 45 minutes for the first train to come by to take him to Penn Station, then another hour or so to catch the train to the airport, where he arrived about two hours before Junghwan’s arrival. It had been a whole ordeal. He had not taken the taxi there; he’d studied maps of New York in those two hours over a coffee in the airport’s Starbucks, and Chansik found out that he was frighteningly capable of lying through his teeth. And Chansik, in the taxi window, watched his reflection and the dewdrops rolling across the windshield instead of the lights of New York City, blinking on at him through the early morning fog. Chansik had arrived to New York a day before Junghwan due to another scheduling conflict and the inability to fit both of them on the same last minute flight. Getting Chansik on board was a challenge in itself, but because Chansik pleaded that he so badly wanted to see New York, the managers had gone out of their way. Chansik reminded himself to treat them to a nice dinner once the five of them got back.

In truth, New York was secondary on Chansik’s list of Things to See.

Chansik liked to think he was an incredibly curious and attentive young man. He wouldn’t be incorrect in thinking that. Between the years of working together with four males mostly his age, he’d taken a backseat as an observer, listening to conversations and popping a statement in when one member of the group argued incongruently with what that member had said several months ago. In other words, Chansik called out the members who were hypocritical or did not think before they spoke. Everyone had been called out at least once. The members liked to call this action Chansik’s tendency to “wrecking ball” them.

On this trip to New York, then, Chansik’s main goal was to “wrecking ball” one unsuspecting Lee Junghwan.

The hotel was indeed located southeast of Midtown. After the taxi driver departed and Chansik and Junghwan were left on the curb staring up at skyscrapers in the northern distance and a not so discernable sunrise, Chansik realized that they were indeed alone in New York City, the Big Apple, the city that never sleeps. Secondly, when Junghwan looked up at him from under the snapback and fringe with this lost expression through a bitten lower lip and scrunched shoulders, Chansik realized that he had been assigned, whether he liked it or not, as the Responsible One, and suddenly, all he wanted to do was sleep.

The front door to the hotel was decorated with an unnecessarily ornate archway that contrasted with the plainly striped façade. A small café was attached to the hotel, and Junghwan and Chansik stood between two No Parking signs that stood glaringly red against the dull backdrop. The hotel’s lobby was about the size of their dorm’s living room, and the only elevator took them up to a narrow hallway that led to their room.

Chansik tried a couple times to get the key card to work. He could hear Junghwan holding his breath behind him.

The room itself was sizeable and clean barring a few small stains on the dark green rug. It was split into two sections by a wide doorway, one section housing a couch and the other a single king-sized bed. The lights that hung from the ceiling shone yellow and old, giving the room a warm, antique sort of feel, as if they’d just stepped from real life into an old screenplay, and Chansik felt oddly out of place. He’d stayed in a different hotel for the first night for various reasons that he probably wouldn’t understand even if the managers had told him, and the executive atmosphere of the previous hotel had been stripped from under his feet as he walked into this unsuspectingly charming hole in the wall.

“I guess they figured we could share the bed,” Junghwan said.

“Like we haven’t a hundred times before,” Chansik replied.

“Something about it’s different with just the two of us, you know,” said Junghwan, and Chansik glanced at him. From his expression, Chansik noticed that Junghwan immediately regretted what he’d said, and Chansik laughed.

“Breakfast?”

Junghwan gave Chansik a grateful and sheepish smile.

While Junghwan showered, Chansik fell on the bed and stared at the ceiling. The mattress barely sunk underneath him, but the comforters pillowed around him and mussed his hair. They really hadn’t been alone together often, with schedules dragging Junghwan from filming to musical to interview, leaving Chansik in the dorm most of the time. Chansik used that time to call his parents, trying to desensitize himself to the emotions that it brought up, but he could never shake off shedding a tear or two at his younger brother’s voice. The other members arrived back at the dorm at various times of night, so rarely did they get much of a meal together.

Junghwan walked out of the bathroom accompanied by rolling billows of steam and a towel wrapped around his waist. As he made his way to his suitcase, Chansik couldn’t help but stare at his retreating back. Junghwan’s arms looked soft, and Chansik reached forward to put a hand on Junghwan’s shoulder.

“What?” Junghwan said with a start, turning around and holding a t-shirt to his chest.

Chansik let his hand slide down Junghwan’s arm. It was more forgiving than the hotel pillows that lied scrunched up at the head of the bed.

“I don’t know,” Chansik said honestly. “You have nice skin.”

“Um, thanks,” Junghwan replied, sounding sincere. He brought the shirt up to cover the lower half of his face and turned around and slipped the shirt over his head. Chansik only pulled his hand away when the shirtsleeves graced his fingertips, and Junghwan didn’t seem to mind it.

Breakfast was warm and very American; Junghwan ordered pancakes, and Chansik French toast, and they picked at their food in an uncomfortable silence until the sound of a shutter broke Chansik’s trance. When he looked up, Junghwan was smiling at him from behind his camera, his eyes forming half-moons above the lens.

“Hey,” Junghwan said.

Chansik didn’t really know what he meant, but replied, “Hi,” anyway.

“Is this what boys our age normally do? Sit in diners in silence over comfort food?” Junghwan said, and Chansik laughed.

“I think the city that never sleeps is actually asleep.” And Chansik was correct; on weekends before ten in the morning, most of New York barring the joggers and early-morning cyclists rose and fell with the simultaneous waves of slumber, either resting from a demanding work week or from a night on the town, when people from parts of the city went to visit other parts of the city, and the people who lived in those visited parts gawked in annoyance from their overpriced studio apartments. Chansik and Junghwan realized that they were eating at one of those 24-hour places, and Junghwan wiped his hands on his pants. “It’s kind of an awkward time of day,” Chansik continued.

“And I’m jet-lagged as hell,” Junghwan finished. “So I’m, like, wide awake right now and will probably fall asleep at like eight.”

“Did you want to go somewhere to take pictures?” Chansik asked.

Junghwan shrugged. “I’ll find the time.”

They continued to pick at their food, and Chansik pretended to be incredibly absorbed in cutting the crust off his French toast and thereby slicing said crust into small pieces. Was that it, then? Was that where their conversation would end?

Junghwan’s fork jolted Chansik back into alertness. “Hey, you okay?” Junghwan said. “Are we doing something super tourist-y today?”

“I don’t know,” Chansik replied.

Junghwan leaned on his elbow. “I mean, we could just, like, walk around.”

There was something that vaguely annoyed Chansik about the people he loved. He tended to gravitate toward observant people, and it was the power of their conclusiveness that bothered Chansik, because that made it all the more difficult for him to hide things from them. Chansik was convinced that a part of him wanted to live in a world collapsed from view, minimized into a cubbyhole on a large screen that only popped up when he desperately needed it to. Yet a part of him unconsciously tended toward the people that could open that cubbyhole whenever they wanted to and take a look deep inside it. Junghwan was one of those people.

“Walking sounds nice,” Chansik said, giving in. Junghwan smiled at him and took a sip of his coffee.

Love is a strong word. It is also a word that means different things to different people.

Junghwan would be one to find this out firsthand.

While walking across town, Junghwan marveled at the crowded candor of it all. A Sunday morning in New York City along 32nd Street left something to be desired, yet drew out all of the city’s more frequent residents in the form of shop owners and managers, doing their time cleaning up the sidewalk in front of their shops or quality checking whatever opening rituals their employees had performed. And from the grounds within the city, the skyline seemed rather ordinary, or even nonexistent. As they traipsed by the Empire State Building, Junghwan would not have noticed it if Chansik hadn’t pointed the landmark out, and the perspective from directly underneath it made its stature seem more conceptually complex yet strangely insignificant.

New York City reminded Junghwan of Chansik. And perhaps Chansik felt a part of that, too, which was perhaps why he’d wanted to visit it so badly. (Little did Junghwan know, it actually had been a form of I just really wanted to see you.)

Love is a strong word. And it first bore its fangs toward adult Junghwan from a direction that seemed vaguely B1A4, one member in particular, then another, then another. Despite Junghwan’s sensitivity toward the word, for him, love unconsciously manifested itself in moments.

Junghwan thought he loved Jinyoung when Jinyoung gave Junghwan’s face a minor compliment that had something to do with his cheeks. Then, Junghwan realized that love was more complicated than that. He thought he loved Sunwoo when Sunwoo punched him in the stomach after an argument and then pushed him down on his bunk, breathing hard. Then, Junghwan realized that love had a little more going for it than that. He thought he loved Dongwoo when Dongwoo had kissed him square on the lips in a bar, drunk as hell. Then, Junghwan realized that love had more sides to it than that.

Koreatown bore little resemblance to Seoul, but the familiar letters and readable signs comforted Junghwan despite himself. The sun had since risen high in the sky yet the haze spread the light into a blanket that seemed to fall down into the city like powdered sugar, piece by fine piece. What few shadows there were appeared blurred in the nondescript light, and Junghwan stared at the buildings, distinct borders between substandard yet somewhat glitzy hotels and hip cafes that tried a little too hard. A bus and a small crowd of white tourists stood eternally under the awning of the Radisson, and the W 32nd St painted on the street appeared faded.

“Did you see that?” Chansik murmured quietly in Junghwan’s ear and nudged him in the arm. Junghwan shivered involuntarily as Chansik’s breath traveled down the back of his neck.

“See what?”

Chansik pointed to a brightly lit bookstore that shared a front with a somewhat Americanized Face Shop, and in the window were plastered posters of SHINee, Girls’ Generation, and Big Bang. On the second window in the far corner, its edges crinkled and corners a little worn, was B1A4’s iconic What’s Happening poster. It looked like it was left there simply because someone had forgotten to take it down, but Junghwan smiled a half-smile under his snapback anyway.

“We’re famous,” Chansik said, and Junghwan shrugged.

It seemed a little obvious, now, that Chansik would be the final member to test Junghwan’s definition of love in a completely foreign country.

As they made their way farther and farther west, past a Paris Baguette, past a Citibank, Junghwan watched the signs fade back into English and the scaffolding switch sides of the street and back again, creating an inconsistent shadow over the two of them that didn’t make the air feel much cooler due to the humidity. Chansik held onto Junghwan’s elbow again.

“Did you want to take some pictures?” Chansik repeated quietly.

Junghwan had nearly forgotten the large, expensive lump hanging from around his neck. “Right,” Junghwan said, but when he took the lens cap off of the camera and squinted into the viewfinder, he couldn’t quite get a good composition. The problem was, there was nothing to take pictures of, yet everything to take in. The feeling of Chansik’s hand on his elbow was one of those things. “Chansik.”

Chansik jolted. As close as they all were, it was rare for Junghwan to call any one of them by their given names except for Sunwoo. “Yeah?”

“Why did you come here?”

“I wanted to see the city,” Chansik lied.

Junghwan raised his camera to the sky. “Then shouldn’t we be actually doing something?”

“You’re the one who suggested walking around.”

“I thought you weren’t feeling well. You seemed kind of out of it this morning.”

Junghwan and Chansik were walking in time. The streets were becoming a little more populated with people walking their dogs and the crosstown bus heading opposite them. The streets seemed narrower, too, as the trucks parked on each side of the road tunneled them in until Chansik and Junghwan stood shoulder to shoulder in front of the Manhattan Mall.

Chansik said, “I was just thinking about some things.”

“You can’t just say that and not expect me to ask what things,” said Junghwan, and Chansik laughed.

“You. Me. Us—the group, I mean,” Chansik replied. “Where are we going?”

“West,” said Junghwan. “Literally?”

Chansik rolled his eyes. “This wasn’t what I expected.”

“What wasn’t?”

The smell of smoked pretzels drifted through the air. Chansik pulled Junghwan against the wall of the mall, away from the intersection so that people could pass them. Chansik then paused for a moment. “Friendship? I didn’t expect to, you know, care about you—you guys, as much as I do.”

Madison Square Garden loomed in front of them like a long-time impractical levy, stacked between the two of them and a lucid view of that thin line where the blank, gray sky met the bridged horizon.

It was the conversation that wasn’t going how Chansik expected it to go. Stating the obvious first, Junghwan was the one who had wrecking balled Chansik, in a sense, even if he didn’t mean to. Junghwan was right, though unconscious of it—it was Chansik who had gotten the ball rolling.

With the two of them alone in a foreign city, they suddenly became hyperaware of the other’s presence, body language, word choice. And Chansik could feel himself constructing his own sciences and limitations around Junghwan on this one-day trip; why was that? He felt his words mold around Junghwan’s, he felt his hand coming to rest on Junghwan’s elbow, he felt them walking together as if the ground were shifting underneath their weight, conforming to meet their steps. He felt the city curl around them, wrapping around 32nd Street and passing them by; it was how New York made one feel: as if one was infinitesimally small in a great world, yet standing awkwardly still as that world slipped past you in thousands of directions.

It was why Chansik had deigned to come with Junghwan alone to the city: he’d wanted to test the two of them; he’d wanted to test if they could hold on to each other as the city passed them by.

Junghwan and Chansik made their way around Madison Square Garden, choosing 33rd Street in order to avoid the mess that was Penn Station.

Their love story didn’t exist yet. It was more a story of incessant push and pull from the day they’d met. Junghwan was the one who ran, who pulled, who darted from person to place to concept, eager to fit into a niche he couldn’t quite find. And it was Chansik who held him back by a thread, waiting with a concerned yet impatient sort of glare, wondering when Junghwan would stop and finally follow the almost invisible string that tied him to Chansik from the moment they’d shaken hands in front of the rest of the group and Chansik gave that smirk that Junghwan loved and Junghwan replied him with a bright, cheeky smile.

Things had happened since then. They’d grown older; tears had been shed. Chansik had developed an injury; Junghwan had felt the meaning of failure. Chansik had felt what it meant to have someone (Junghwan) as angry as hell with you because they cared about you; Junghwan had felt what it meant to have someone (Chansik) comfort you out of love instead of obligation. Junghwan had felt what it meant to shy away from something you knew you had, and Chansik had felt what it meant to wait for something you might never be able to have. Their love story was under construction, much like the south side of 33rd Street, where the sidewalk was blocked off and Junghwan and Chansik held hands as they crossed the street.

They reached Eighth Avenue in an exhilarating sort of rush. Hundreds of blue, clunky bikes were lined up along 33rd Street. Then, they reached Ninth, Tenth Avenues, walking the long avenue blocks in quick, hurried steps. It had taken them about 45 minutes to walk, with stops, to the Hudson River from their hotel, yet it felt like an entire day had passed.

The Hudson River Greenway was as green as you could get in Manhattan, barring Central Park and a couple of the other, more spacious parks on the Upper West Side. It was also as far west as you could go without throwing yourself headfirst into the river itself. A median divided the path from the freeway, and the occasional traffic light allowed pedestrians to cross, though most of the Greenway’s residents were casual bikers.

Chansik ran up against the fence that walled the path from the river, and Junghwan approached the space next to him.

“So this is it,” Chansik said. “This is Manhattan.”

Junghwan took off his cap and let the wind blow his hair back. “I thought it was a pretty nice walk.”

The metal bars felt cool against Chansik’s fingers, and he slid his hand down over Junghwan’s.

The Hudson River Greenway was where they kissed, the two of them, without a word spoken. Junghwan seemed to know what to do. They’d walked downtown about 10 blocks in silence before Chansik stopped and took Junghwan by the shoulders. And Junghwan seemed to know what to do, leaning in toward Chansik and giving him a peck on the lips.

“Hey,” Junghwan breathed, and Chansik could feel Junghwan’s shoulders trembling beneath his hands.

“Hi,” replied Chansik.

Junghwan leaned his head against Chansik’s shoulder. “So, why did you come here? To New York?”

“I wanted to confirm something,” Chansik said. Junghwan smiled into his neck.

They took a taxi back to the hotel. The taxi driver asked if they’d walked crosstown and where they were from, and Junghwan left Chansik to answer the questions, though Chansik had only replied to the first one correctly because he’d learnt in America to say yes to everything he didn’t quite understand—Americans didn’t care whether the yes would actually be followed through or not.

It was only noon.

“I’m not skipping lunch for you,” Junghwan murmured as Chansik opened the door to their hotel room and closed it behind them, pushing Junghwan up against it.

Chansik grinned into Junghwan’s lips. “Just let me do this.”

The trip could have gone two ways.

They could have gone out to dinner at some glitzy American restaurant somewhere in Midtown that was vastly overpriced and to which they’d have shown up vastly underdressed. Instead, they ordered room service in the small hotel and received catering from the 24-hour café downstairs. Dinner was paninis and club sandwiches and sodas and cheesecake. Junghwan slipped into his pajamas and sprawled on the couch, and Chansik joined him, shifting Junghwan until his legs were spread across Chansik’s lap. And that was how they dined.

They could have gone clubbing, Chansik mildly passing for a 21-year old; they could’ve gotten girls, or grinded up against each other, the sexual tension surmounting until one of them was forced to jerk off in the bathroom of the club and the other in the shower of their hotel room. Instead, they had American sitcoms playing in the background on their television as they put off making love for some other time but still moaned into each other’s clothes as their kisses became breathier and more demanding.

Junghwan could’ve passed out on the couch, Chansik on the floor, reeking of alcohol and a mild disgust for themselves clouded by the weightlessness of their transient decisions. Instead, they shared the bed, Junghwan wrapped around Chansik, the satiny fabric of their pajamas sliding against each other underneath the comforter. Chansik liked to keep the room frigid, which in turn caused Chansik to become Junghwan’s personal space heater. They left the bedside lamps on as Chansik played with his phone and Junghwan breathed evenly into Chansik’s chest.

Jinyoung called them early in the morning to wake them up for their flight. “What did you guys end up doing? MoMA? Zoo?”

In a sleep-ridden voice, Chansik replied, “Eh, not much.” Junghwan yawned and stretched and accidentally smacked Chansik in the chin. Somehow, their shirts had been discarded through the night, and Chansik spooned up against Junghwan’s back and pressed lazy kisses down his spine.

It could’ve been America. But instead, it was so characteristically New York, shaping itself around the moments and memories of its beholders.

Not big whatsoever [and other corporate!AU drabbles]

nephre — Tue, 03 Jun 2014 00:30:40 GMT

Corporate!AU
Installment I.
with established relationships
non-chronological

Wager | Jinyoung & Baro | pg | 600w.

When Junghwan applied for the company, he was fresh out of college with a Bachelor’s of Fine Arts and had none of the qualifications listed on the recruitment website. Jinyoung was the general manager who interviewed him, of course.

“Do you think this is some sort of joke?” was Jinyoung’s first question.

“I wish it were,” Junghwan said miserably, and that shut Jinyoung up for the next few seconds as he wondered what to inquire, and whether he should dig deeper, or if he should simple go on with the planned questions. Junghwan, in his button-down baby blue shirt and thick-framed glasses, looked more like a young assistant professor than an art student. He sat with his legs crossed, hands folded across his lap and foot bouncing nervously. The more Jinyoung looked at Junghwan, with his black coffee sitting unobtrusively on Jinyoung’s paperwork and watch sliding up and down his wrist as his leg jittered, the more curious Jinyoung got about this—this child, who looked not a day older than fifteen.

Fittingly, Jinyoung chose to dig deeper. “What do you mean?”

“My father wants me to get real world experience,” Junghwan explained, “before I run off and do whatever art majors do.”

He was honest—Jinyoung had to give that to him. As an innate trait, honesty tended neither to survive nor breed in the corporate world, but instead of dismissing Junghwan completely, Jinyoung rested his head on his hands and looked at Junghwan’s muddled expression, a childish pout clearly visible on his features, yet it was accompanied by a distinctly inquisitive gaze, searching Jinyoung for—for what Jinyoung thought he wanted to hear, and what he really wanted to hear. For every skilled, sharp-witted intern Jinyoung hired, there was another interviewee who ought to have been more than his appearance dictated. Jinyoung glanced down at his last interviewee: Gong Chansik was on board for sure; the overqualified college grad likely had fifteen other job offers waiting for him.

“Looks like,” Jinyoung started, “You . . . have some sort of mastery over audio recording devices, yet you’re not really, um, into graphing and word processing.”

“That would be correct,” Junghwan replied quickly with his lips pressed together in a thin line.

“Don’t hire him,” Sunwoo advised later when Jinyoung told him what had ensued in his office a couple of hours prior to their meeting. “He’s not qualified, he doesn’t seem dedicated. Why are you even—”

“I don’t know, sometimes variety is good,” Jinyoung said. “Especially creative people. You haven’t even met the guy.”

“Jung Jinyoung, you’re my manager. I report directly to you. And I swear, if I have to work with this joke of an intern, I will rip your eyelashes out.”

Jinyoung subconsciously batted his eyelashes. “I’ll just have him working with Chansik, then,” said Jinyoung. “They can learn together.”

Sunwoo crossed his arms. “How about this, then. Here’s a compromise. I take Chansik, you take Junghwan. Mister Art Major can intern for you.”

“That means he’ll be starting on your level.”

Sunwoo shrugged. “I don’t particularly care. As long as he isn’t working for me.”

“You have a deal then,” Jinyoung said, and Sunwoo looked rather pleased with himself.

(“Want to make this a bet?” Jinyoung asked as he held the door open for Sunwoo about four minutes later.

“Try me.”

Jinyoung snorted. “I bet you he’ll stay.”

“I bet you he’s out of here once we show him what this so-called ‘real world’ is like,” Sunwoo said.

“Three months.”

“You have yourself a wager.”)

Wager [part 2.] | Jinyoung/Sandeul | pg | 800w.

Junghwan would soon be involved in a triangle that, at least in the beginning, largely had nothing to do with him. Jinyoung and Sunwoo’s equally competitive natures were what had helped them work their respective ways up in the field, and this bet would conspire no differently than the last couple of bets they’d placed, on whether or not Dongwoo had a girlfriend (which Sunwoo won when Dongwoo kissed Jinyoung in the hallway three weeks prior), on Chansik’s taking the offer, on Sunwoo’s lottery ticket, on a variety of inoffensive concerns. This bet, then, would end up being different in that regard, though neither Jinyoung nor Sunwoo knew this at the time.

The way Jinyoung began seducing Junghwan was overt and lacked any sort of discretion in relation to the corporate world. But since Jinyoung managed his entire branch of employees, no one had much to say to him about it. “You’ll be reporting directly to me,” Jinyoung said to Junghwan on his first day. “And as soon as a permanent position opens up, I’ll probably offer you a full-time job. What do you say to that?”

Junghwan shrugged. “Great?”

The space between Jinyoung’s desk and the wall was barely room enough to fit two chairs for meetings in Jinyoung’s office. Junghwan was seated in one, and his leather briefcase in the other, and Jinyoung looked up from his desk sharply at Junghwan. Leaning in, he murmured, “A thanks would be nice,” the last syllable of which he blew onto Junghwan’s face, minty breath cascading over Junghwan’s smooth cheeks and wide-open eyes. Jinyoung offered Junghwan a smile in reconciliation.

Jinyoung had Junghwan running coffee from the Keurig cup machine in the lounge over to Jinyoung’s office two times a day while Junghwan was finding his way around the third floor, where Jinyoung, Dongwoo, and Sunwoo’s offices all were conveniently placed. Whether or not that positioning was what had spiraled the three of them into whatever tangle of a relationship they’d gotten themselves into or not was also unknown to any one of them.

“Sit for a moment,” would be Jinyoung’s first demand from Junghwan as Junghwan was rushing out of Jinyoung’s office in something not quite as heavy as fear, but definitely close to apprehension during Junghwan’s first couple of weeks on the job. Junghwan had accustomed himself to a steady stream of smirks from Chansik, quick nudges in the hallways and a series of difficult but doable obligations from Sunwoo, and a couple of vacant looks from behind the glasses of Dongwoo, yet Jinyoung was the one who intimidated Junghwan the most, despite being the person Junghwan would later spend the most time with on an occasionally overly intimate level. The apprehension might have had something to do with the way Jinyoung touched him, bordering on inappropriate for the workplace, yet a touch that Junghwan found himself yearning for. “You make good coffee,” Jinyoung said when Junghwan sidled into the second chair.

“Uh, thanks,” Junghwan replied. “It’s just the French Vanilla with two creamers, like you asked. And a touch of sugar.”

Jinyoung smiled at him and patted his cheek. “You’d do well here.”

Junghwan laughed nervously. “It’s a lot of pressure.”

“Is it Sunwoo?” said Jinyoung. “Don’t worry about him. He’s just jealous because you started out on the same level as him. I see potential in you.” Jinyoung was lying through his teeth, though at that point, it’d become more of exaggerating the truth than lying straight up—Junghwan was no technical genius, but he learned quickly and was earnest about his work.

“Why do you care about me?” Junghwan blurted out, and Jinyoung raised an eyebrow.

Jinyoung stood up, walked over to the door, and shut it with excruciating diligence. “Would you like me to stop?”

This stunned Junghwan into a cogent silence. “I, uh—no,” Junghwan replied after a moment.

Jinyoung settled himself in the chair next to Junghwan and glanced over the other side of his desk. He’d never seen his office from that angle before, the photographs magneted on the file cabinet appearing far more significant, more intimidating than they really were. To Junghwan, who found himself falling in a shallow love with Jinyoung more and more each passing day, they signified times and people past that remained more important to Jinyoung than a quick intern, an employee, a pleasure to tease.

Junghwan was contemplating this when Jinyoung kissed him.

It was light and inconsequential, yet it sent Junghwan’s eyelids fluttering closed. “Great,” Jinyoung whispered against Junghwan’s cheek. “Welcome.”

(Sunwoo, bitter at the results of the bet, wouldn’t treat them to rounds at the bar until Junghwan officially signed the paperwork for the full-time position.

“But aren’t you glad he stayed?” Jinyoung mused to a tipsy Sunwoo on the deserted subway platform later that evening.

“He’s kind of cute,” Sunwoo replied.)

Dialectic | CNU/Gongchan | pg-13 | 400w.

The idle paperwork piling up on Dongwoo’s desk was getting out of hand.

Of course, those were words right out of Chansik’s mouth; “I can’t sit on your desk anymore, hyung,” complained Chansik, dropping unhappily into one of the chairs in Dongwoo’s office with an immature frown plastered on his face, almost leering at Dongwoo.

“Why do you need to sit on my desk,” said Dongwoo, not really expecting a reply. “I can’t get work done with you around.”

Chansik laughed. “Would you like me to bring in Junghwan inst—”

“No.”

And Chansik hauled himself like a petulant child onto Dongwoo’s desk anyway, right on top of that week’s presentation handouts. For a grown man, Chansik wasn’t particularly mature. But for a twenty-year-old intern, Chansik was manipulative beyond his years. That was the dialectic.

Chansik’s kisses were soft and steady; the way they tugged Dongwoo along, pulling him out of his office chair and in a half-standing position just to chase after them, intoxicating but chaste. Chansik’s kisses were manipulative beyond his years, and Dongwoo found himself wrapping his hands around Chansik’s shoulders, leaning into him. Dongwoo told himself he was miserable like this: that this wasn’t how he’d imagined spending his twenties, juggling relationships between four different men at once, yet when Chansik grabbed Dongwoo’s tie and jerked it softly toward him, the difficulty Dongwoo was having turning his mind increased tenfold.

He’d imagined most of his twenties being preoccupied with work (which it was); he’d imagined settling in with a nice woman, maybe preparing for a wedding and later some children. He’d imagined a composed world, a world that revolved around a small and immutable number of people (which it was, in a sense).

But he couldn’t say for sure whether or not he was miserable.

“What are you thinking about?” Chansik murmured against Dongwoo’s lips.

“My presentation,” Dongwoo lied, pushing Chansik away gently. “Due tomorrow.”

Chansik slid off the desk, leaving the handouts in disarray. “I—I really should let you get back to your work,” he said in an incomprehensible tone.

Dongwoo had to remind himself that Chansik was just a kid. Chansik was only two years younger than he was, but still just a child in the corporate world—yet, he walked around like he was dragging life by the fingertips as it knelt down before him. “Hey,” said Dongwoo just as Chansik turned into the doorway. Dongwoo stood up, walked over to Chansik, and held the door open for him. “I—I like you.”

There was a pregnant pause. Then, Chansik replied, “I know,” with a small smile.

Not big whatsoever | Jinyoung/Sandeul | pg | 550w.

On his off days, Junghwan came home early to an empty flat that he routinely shared with Jinyoung, when Jinyoung wasn’t working late at the office filing away paperwork that didn’t need to be filed. Junghwan knew; he’d seen him do it, yet he couldn’t seem to comprehend Jinyoung’s unobstructed addiction to work and overwork.

The apartment had grown into a confused state of mess, the kind that common neglect couldn’t quite recreate without some sort of true intention. The sink was clear of dishes – one of Junghwan’s few conditions was to wash used dishes in at least 24 hours – but laundry lied clean but unfolded almost purposefully littered around couches, guitars, desks, and end tables. It was a two-bedroom that they could barely afford, yet pretended to own it grandiosely with all its glory and overt pretention. And it smelled only faintly of ghosts: overused air freshener and fried pork, burnt eggs and toast, toilet bowl cleaner and permanent markers used to label boxes full of clutter from college that Jinyoung’s parents lugged over a few months ago and demanded he keep in his place from then on.

Jinyoung came home later, then, to Junghwan curled up on the couch with the television still on and takeout growing cold at the coffee table. It was Jinyoung’s responsibility to finish anything Junghwan hadn’t eaten, which usually meant heating something else up in the microwave because there were never enough leftovers.

Junghwan’s posture resembled that of a stuffed animal someone had balled up in their fists and tucked into a snug alcove on the shelf. He curled up tightly, as if he were trying to fit himself on one leather couch cushion even though there were three. And Junghwan usually made a pillow out of the clean laundry; the scent of Jinyoung’s fabric softener cascading from his sweaters intoxicated Junghwan into a deep, needed sleep.

Grabbing a can of iced coffee from the refrigerator, Jinyoung usually settled with his laptop and headphones on the other side of the couch, tie, jacket, and belt tossed over the kitchen chair, and shirt untucked, pants unbuttoned, and feet pressing against Junghwan’s calves. Jinyoung anticipated a long night’s date with performance reviews due the next day and caffeine, and Junghwan possibly waking up at some point and nagging him to sleep. It wasn’t that Jinyoung was a procrastinator by any stretch of the imagination, but Dongwoo, who reported to him, worked slowly and, albeit, too cautiously, and Jinyoung didn’t have the heart to hurry him when he’d turn in his analyses the day they were due, leaving Jinyoung without much time to go over them and forward corrections to the engineers. A small company incurred fast-paced work that lacked orientation, as long as it was completed by the deadline.

Around 3am, Junghwan would wake up. Jinyoung hovered over him in foresight and kissed him before his eyes adjusted to the bright blare of Jinyoung’s laptop screen against the black backdrop of the apartment. This in itself rested between the skies faded with light pollution and the billboards and four or five hundred apartment and office lights that always remained on.

So Junghwan couldn’t see Jinyoung, could only feel his calloused hand rubbing his arm with compassionate apathy, his fingers trailing up and down Junghwan’s bare skin.

The off days culled a kind of slow beauty that Junghwan never could imagine. The off days were when Junghwan’s world revolved around Jung Jinyoung in an expensive yet failing two bedroom apartment, just getting by.

Synergy [Jinyoung/Sandeul]

nephre — Sun, 11 May 2014 20:42:56 GMT

Title: Synergy
Pairing: Jinyoung/Sandeul
Rating: pg-13
Summary: Pseudo-composer and college dropout Jung Jinyoung gives Junghwan piano lessons in an old Victorian-style mansion. AU.

The path that wound through the world of music was long and convoluted, and Lee Junghwan was not familiar with any of it.

He could sing three measure runs, but when it came to picking a half note from a quarter note on a sheet of music, he was absolutely clueless. It was his choir teacher who suggested that Junghwan start by taking beginner piano lessons, which was how he ended up in front of an old Victorian style house sequestered in pines on a thickly forested hill, spires peaking through the trees like robins. The foundation was made of a muddy reddish stone that faded to gray, and on top of it sat a baby blue-sided, white molded house with a roofed porch decorated with intricate, florally-carved railings and the occasional hanging basket houseplant.

Junghwan had spotted the previous student, much younger than him, leaving the house with a bit of a sniffle and a downcast expression, as if he’d just been told to sit in time-out. Junghwan frowned stiffly.

He reached to knock, but the door swung open prematurely. Junghwan met the gaze of a boy not much older than he was.

“You’re an oddly proportioned child,” said the boy.

“I’m eighteen,” Junghwan replied.

“Oh, so then you must be the babysitter.”

Junghwan struggled to remember the name of the instructor – “Jinyoung?”

“Yeah, where’s the kid?” Jinyoung said, swinging the door back and forth with his hand. He wore a black t-shirt that clashed rather innocently with his pair of straight-legged jeans. “Afraid?”

“I’m here for piano lessons,” said Junghwan through his teeth, and Jinyoung raised an eyebrow, then laughed.

“Oh, so you must not have seen the thing on the flyer,” Jinyoung replied, propping the door open with his foot and turning toward the living room. Junghwan peeked inside the house, which was decorated rather sparsely for such an outwardly ostentatious place. Long-boarded wood floors met white carpet, and the walls ran an old-fashioned green. To the left, two grand pianos sat back to back on the carpet, sheets of music littered carelessly across the floor under the back piano. Jinyoung returned to the doorway, and Junghwan jumped back and bit his lip. “The part where it says fourteen and under?”

Junghwan sighed. “Look, I’m a beginner and I’m not here because I want to be. My—”

“Parents?” guessed Jinyoung.

“Choir teacher,” Junghwan said. “She wants me to come. Because I can’t read music. So if you—”

Jinyoung laughed, interrupting Junghwan. “You’re not fourteen and under, but you sound like the typical reluctant child. Good enough for me. I’ll take you.”

Junghwan didn’t know if that was a compliment or not.

Jinyoung set him up with copies from books and a shopping list for later that evening, and Junghwan barged into the music store and made a beeline for the piano section. The books he’d been assigned were brightly colored and printed on thick, sturdy construction paper, he noticed sadly.

“Can’t you teach me out of beginner adult books?” Junghwan asked Jinyoung the next week as Jinyoung waited for him to clip his nails.

“My lessons, my rules,” said Jinyoung patiently. He trailed his hand across the top of the front piano, where Junghwan would take lessons for the next couple of months.

Jinyoung already had the melody established.

The one line of lyrics he’d penned flowed along an upbeat tune that said absolutely nothing: he was aiming for somewhat hackneyed prose to fill in the rest of the song. There was music, and there was music that was accessible to the general public, and Jinyoung found it more mentally taxing to write the latter as opposed to the former, possibly because of the dismal psychological level it required him to stoop to.

Since graduating high school, Jinyoung had found inspiration to be both addled and fleeting, the most frustrating kind of inspiration – he’d rather have no inspiration so that at least he’d be goaded to find his own. But instead, he perched lazily against the two pianos in his living room and let the Top 40 hits come to him via an outdated radio, and swallowed as they bled his ears like leeches.

“You don’t think professional songwriters write with some sort of legit purpose?” said Dongwoo over the phone, thousands of miles away on a study abroad in Europe. Dongwoo provided a different yet frustratingly stubborn perspective because he understood absolutely nothing about music yet had been Jinyoung’s neighbor and only friend since elementary school.

“Selling is purpose,” Jinyoung replied.

“No one writes to sell.”

“Want to bet?”

“No,” Dongwoo said. “But you can’t sell a song by trying to make it sound stupid. Isn’t that kind of arrogant?”

“I was born arrogant.” Jinyoung flipped through dog-eared magazines and let the fan blow his hair into a style cemented in one particular direction. “Got a new student, by the way.”

“You’re always getting new students.”

“No, this one’s, like, old. Like 18.”

Dongwoo paused for a moment. “I thought you didn’t teach kids over 14.”

“It’s okay, he’s a beginner. A singer. Can’t read music. Can you believe that?”

“Yes,” said Dongwoo. “Some people are born naturally talented. And arrogant. Sounds like you two will be a perfect match.”

After six failed G scales (Junghwan had somehow mastered the C scale, but after introducing a black key, he was once again lost), Junghwan gave a shout of frustration, which startled Jinyoung.

“That’s a loud voice,” Jinyoung noted, and Junghwan shrugged.

“I told you my choir teacher made me come here. I’m in choir.”

Jinyoung frowned and nodded slowly. “I’m a composer.”

Junghwan let his hands slide down the keys. “I thought you were a piano teacher.”

“Saving up some money to fund it,” explained Jinyoung. “Marketing and stuff. Ads. Want to hear some?”

“Not really,” replied Junghwan, but Jinyoung was already on his way to the back piano, where Junghwan reluctantly trotted after realizing that Jinyoung was going to show him regardless. There were a lot more things Junghwan would rather be doing than taking lessons, though, so he stood beside the back piano and glanced at the sheet music which, he noted, was filled with pencil-written notes and markings scrawled in disheveled handwriting.

The song was about love and something else painfully trite, and Junghwan barely held in a snort when Jinyoung started singing in a voice that sounded so gooey it could congest rivers. But Junghwan had to give him credit for spending what seemed like hours on the few measures he had written down.

“Your face,” Jinyoung said, and only then did Junghwan notice that Jinyoung had stopped playing.

“I wear my heart on my sleeve,” Junghwan replied sheepishly. “Sorry about that.”

Jinyoung sighed and gave Junghwan a half-smile in return. “Well, I guess that means I still have stuff to work on.”

A steady silence fell over the two of them, and Junghwan shifted his feet on the floor uncomfortably, staring down at the patterns his toes made in the carpet. He watched Jinyoung’s long, gaunt fingers tap against the leather piano seat as if he were expecting some sort of answer, or an offer, as if waiting under a streetlight for Junghwan to try the impossible task of catching up with Jinyoung’s pace. But when Junghwan looked up at Jinyoung’s face, Jinyoung had his eyes cast down on the music, eyebrows scrunched together in concentration.

“I’ll help,” Junghwan blurted out in the same loud voice.

Jinyoung looked at him.

“Record your guides, I mean,” he added. “Not, like. Compose or anything.”

“You can’t even tell an E from a C, how could I expect you to compose,” Jinyoung snorted, and Junghwan gave him a pout. Jinyoung pulled down the lid over the keys and leaned his elbows on it, looking up at Junghwan who was still standing there, feet planted together on the ground and hands stiff at his sides. Jinyoung laughed. “I’m free Thursday afternoons.”

Junghwan, nearing the end of his voyage through high school, was eager to dive into the music-filled world that college offered him without the by-products of math, sciences, histories. “You’re still going to have to take basic math in college,” his mother told him; how was it that the excess fat could never quite be trimmed off, Junghwan wondered grimly. Still, though – studio classes, recording, learning more about melodies and acoustics than formulas and integers, it all amassed into one wave of exciting things to come, having Junghwan more often than not wishing away the present moment and living in a capricious, imagined future.

“Give me that G scale again,” snapped Jinyoung from the other side of the room. “No, the one with the F sharp. Do you think this part would sound better if I raised the key?”

“I don’t even know what language you’re speaking,” Junghwan replied, struggling to contort his hand so that his thumb could somehow miraculously fit under his middle finger.

Of course, his choir teacher had to break it to him that he’d need to know how to read music if he wanted to study music in university – raw talent wouldn’t cut it. And Jinyoung somehow presumed that since Junghwan was nearly an adult, Jinyoung could berate him like one. “Do you treat all your students like this?”

Jinyoung poked his head out from behind the piano. “Only the ones with potential,” he said, winking.

Junghwan stuck his tongue out and smashed the keys down with a subdued vigor, laced with frustration.

Jinyoung remained stoic. “Raise the key or no?”

“What does that even mean.”

Jinyoung played what Junghwan assumed was a chord, then played some different notes, sounding similarly vibrant, but with a hint of – “Higher. At the end of a song. Sometimes the composers raise the key signature higher. So everything is shifted a little bit up.”

Junghwan moved his finger from a G to an A. “Oh, so like how those songs do that thing at the end.”

“I’m going to assume you know what I’m talking about,” said Jinyoung, walking over to Junghwan’s piano. “How’s that G scale coming along?”

“I don’t understand why the fingering is so important. As long as I know the notes, I’m fine, right?”

Jinyoung sat down beside Junghwan, their thighs touching. The blistering summer heat had them clad in khaki shorts, waves of sunlight torching through the window and beating down on their backs like an oppressively incessant wind, the kind that sinks into your skin and runs through your bones, even after you’ve escaped to the calm indoors. Junghwan felt Jinyoung’s knobby knee poke into the upper part of Junghwan’s calf. From the sound of the air conditioning rattling through the vents, Jinyoung had the thermostat turned to the coolest setting, but it wasn’t near enough. Salty drops of perspiration cling to Junghwan’s forehead and ran down his nose, and Jinyoung’s presence right beside him certainly didn’t help.

“The fingers are important because instead of sounding like this,” Jinyoung said, bouncing his index fingers on a few arbitrary notes, making a choppy almost-melody, “you can sound like this.”

Jinyoung’s clammy hands touched Junghwan’s wrists lightly before sliding down over his fingers. Junghwan jerked his hands back and felt Jinyoung smile against the side of Junghwan’s face, against his cheek, and the melody that swelled from Jinyoung’s fingers circulated miraculously into the still air of June. It seemed to get the air moving, a kind of elegance that stunned Junghwan into a gentle stillness that reclined against the placid summer air. Jinyoung reached behind him and around his waist to hit a lower note, and Junghwan tensed, feeling blood rush into his face.

“Like that,” Jinyoung murmured, his hand lingering hooked around Junghwan’s waist for a moment too long.

Junghwan let out a choked laugh, and Jinyoung pinched Junghwan’s cheek. “You’re really talented,” said Junghwan.

“I’ve been at it since I was nine. I wouldn’t call that talent anymore, just hard work.” Jinyoung stood, and Junghwan let his shoulders sink as he leaned his head back to look at Jinyoung. “What you have is talent. Can’t read a note of music but you can sing like that.”

Junghwan wasn’t sure if that was supposed to be a compliment, either, but he beamed like a proud schoolboy.

What surprised Jinyoung about Junghwan, aside from his not being able to read music, was that he was neither particularly childish nor was he arrogant, just clueless. He seemed eager enough to learn, outright practicing his chords and arpeggios at Jinyoung’s house for far longer than his allotted lesson time, but Jinyoung never had the heart to charge him extra.

The melody at this point had some jumps in it. It rolled along in a major key until a slight dip in the road dropped it down to a minor chord here and there for flavor.

He’d never thought about it before.

Jinyoung had never consciously composed music this way, deliberately modeling the tune after thousands of dead chord patterns and used and recycled arrangements. He remembered sessions in the studio being far more invigorating and – he looked at his watch: 11:26, two minutes since he’d last checked it – the time tended to pass far more quickly. He’d generate hundreds of songs per session, thousands of couplets and half-rhymes, and hundreds more thrown away tunes that piled around the trash can under his desk, Jinyoung being too lazy (or too concentrated, depending on how he looked at it) to empty the poor bin.

He didn’t remember ever thinking about music until he began teaching piano, and even then, the thinking that he did was diminutive and something like a break from falling freeform through lines and lines of lyrics without an anchor.

The structure he felt now, though, wasn’t an anchor, wasn’t useful. It was more like an anvil, a considerable weight pressing his shoulders down into a slumped position over the guitar, from which the chords and runs came out more and more lifeless with every passing session.

“Your fingers are off again, it’s 1-2-3, 1-2-3-4-5 for almost every white key scale,” Jinyoung said, and Junghwan pulled his hands into wrinkly little fists. “Let’s wait another week before adding the left hand in.”

“I’m getting nowhere,” wailed Junghwan, and Jinyoung rubbed his back tentatively. Junghwan tensed his spine and turned to Jinyoung. “Let’s work on your song.”

“Ah, um,” Jinyoung mumbled. “It’s not exactly coming along as planned, either.”

Junghwan swung his feet against the carpeted floor. “I feel like I’ve driven us both into a rut.”

Jinyoung laughed. “Actually, it’s nice having you here. The rest of my friends are off in college, and everyone else I interact with is either under six or older than 35.”

“Then why aren’t you in college? Studying music or something?”

“Waste of money.”

“Who knows, it might look good on your resume.”

Jinyoung shook his head. “I don’t want to work for anyone but myself.” He trotted through two quick arpeggios on the piano, then leaned his elbow onto the piano and depressed the keys slowly. “Music used to come so easily to me, but I’m trying to make a hit rather than the indie stuff I keep pouring out, and it’s not really… working. I don’t know what happened.”

“You know, you might be trying too hard,” suggested Junghwan. “Like, when I try to headvoice too hard it just comes out sounding like I have laryngitis. You need some inspiration.”

Leave it to Jinyoung to break it to Junghwan after a month of arduous lessons all attended for the purpose of seeing—helping Jinyoung with his composition and pleasing Junghwan’s choir teacher. “I’ve decided. It’s for the person I like. The song, I mean,” said Jinyoung with a straight-faced smile.

“Oh,” replied Junghwan. He couldn’t help but add, then, “Well, the lyrics are really cheesy. And the song is. The melody is boring. And bad.”

“Wow, you have absolutely no filter, do you.”

Junghwan pressed his bare feet down onto the pedals and watched the keys shift, feeling cool metal sink onto the pads of his toes. The weather was cooler that day, yet Jinyoung still had the fan turned on and rotating so that the breeze hit just about every corner of the room. Junghwan would let out an involuntary shiver every time he met Jinyoung’s gaze, and he wasn’t sure if it was because the fan’s innocuous chill predictably reached him right then, or if the intensity in Jinyoung’s eyes shook him down to the veins in his wrists. “I’m just telling it as it is,” said Junghwan. “You need a better inspiration. Everything’s about love.”

“That’s the point,” Jinyoung said. “To be like everything else. Play the clock song again, you didn’t hit the last chord right last time.”

Junghwan stuck his tongue out at Jinyoung, and he watched Jinyoung struggle to hold back a smile, making that endearing scrunched expression dotted with dimples. As Junghwan’s fingers stumbled through Tick Tock Goes the Clock and his eyebrows furrowed at the brightly outlined juvenile images and excessively large notes (that still had their respective letters written in them; that was how far he’d gotten in a month), Junghwan wondered what she was like (why?), the type of person Jinyoung regarded so highly as to write a song for her.

“The point is to sell,” said Jinyoung, “by going with the flow.”

Junghwan stopped before the last chord. “I thought the point was to make music. You told me you were a composer, not a businessman.”

Of course, Junghwan had exaggerated slightly. The lyrics were elementary, but the melody itself was actually quite catchy, and Junghwan found himself tapping his feet along to the string of notes that danced in excruciatingly childish and wordy circles around him.

“I lied,” Jinyoung said after a moment.

“What?”

Jinyoung gave Junghwan a wry smile, the corners of his mouth curving down in startling amusement. “I don’t really like anyone. That might be the problem.”

Somehow, Junghwan felt sourly relieved (why?). He let out a bark of a laugh. “Why?”

“Why what?”

“Why did you make that up? To see my reaction?”

“No,” said Jinyoung. Junghwan’s laugh dissolved and he choked down a gulp of cold air. “I figured love is the easiest inspiration, right?”

“Yeah, but,” Junghwan said. The lyrics were trite but not uninspired; Jinyoung definitely felt love on a basic level. It was coming up with something he could be more realistically enthusiastic about that was the difficulty – and Junghwan had no problem thinking of what he wanted Jinyoung to be enthusiastic about (why?).

But instead, Junghwan murmured, “I guess it doesn’t have to be a person. Right?”

Jinyoung hadn’t taken a proper walk in the past three years or more.

The sidewalk curved around a painfully out of place asphalt road that stunk of burning rubber and was streaked with tire marks that slid into the muddy shoulders. It was moist, humid during the daytime in the dense forest where Jinyoung lived, and in the evenings mosquitoes buzzed in thick swarms around the front deck, eating at the new window screens and pushing insistently at the stale air inside the house. Despite all this, Jinyoung loved the house he and his mother occupied with disarmingly great presence.

Loved. Love. It didn’t have to be a person? “I’m going to write about my house,” Jinyoung said to himself, fingers pressing nail marks into his palms. “What a wonderful house. With mosquitoes and greenery—aplenty.” It was possibly the worse line he’d ever come up with, but Jinyoung chuckled.

He walked past a runner who baptized him with a hefty glare. Jinyoung snorted. If that was what he got for walking the neighborhood, then fuck it.

“I love life,” said Jinyoung. He loved people who loved life.

His headphones hung around his neck, and Jinyoung could hear the Rachmaninoff blasting with renewed vigor from his iPod, stopping only for the tri-tone of a new text message: come home before dinner.

Jinyoung had a habit of listening to the songs he was working on until he grew tired of their repetitive ache – until they grew weary of him and begged to be relieved of their tedious duties. But Jinyoung wouldn’t let up. The scaly piece roared into the flora, and Jinyoung could feel the slippery ivory piano keys at his fingertips.

Jinyoung loved people who loved life.

Junghwan hated his life.

Cha Sunwoo wouldn’t stop teasing him about Jinyoung, and Junghwan, in want of time, and space, to think about his own feelings regarding the Jinyoung matter, felt ready to stab Sunwoo with a kitchen fork for his harmless wrongdoings.

He wanted to kiss Jinyoung – that much had already been established. He wanted to kiss Jinyoung and hold him around the shoulders with Chopin (not Tick Tock Goes the Clock) playing in the background, he wanted Jinyoung to lean down and place his hands over Junghwan’s again as Junghwan struggled to get through simple pieces, just for the cool yet passionate presence that Jinyoung embodied.

As Junghwan trudged up the driveway to Jinyoung’s front door (Junghwan always parked at the end of the drive as if protecting himself, as if anticipating Jinyoung’s rejection before it even happened), he heard loud acoustic guitar resonating through the open windows.

He reached to knock, but the door swung open prematurely.

“Junghwan, just the person I was looking for,” Jinyoung said.

Junghwan raised an eyebrow. “You know my lessons are on Thursdays.”

“You tend to lose track of time when you’re having fun.”

“Why are you going on and having fun without me and these extraordinarily fun piano lessons,” Junghwan said in a flat tone, and Jinyoung laughed.

“Not that, the song.”

“I’m paying you to teach me, not to use me,” Junghwan mumbled.

Jinyoung ushered him in by the small of his back, and Junghwan flinched again. “What’s with you? You’re the one who offered.”

Junghwan tried to shoot Jinyoung the most condescending, nondescript look he could manage, holding his lips down into a thin frown and peering up through the hoods of his eyelids. It must’ve worked, because Jinyoung stepped back, retracting his arm.

“Look, just hear me out, and then we can move to your piano,” Jinyoung said.

The melody, at this point, ran alongside the lyrics with rushed fervor.

Jinyoung felt his way along the guitar for the right notes, closing his eyes and seeing his own handwriting scrawled across the backs of his eyelids. It came and left in a hurried font, chicken scratch, yet it was written deliberately, purposefully, almost as if the sloppiness were carefully calculated, each trail measured and each scratch intended.

Halfway through the song he’d opened his eyes to watch Junghwan, which, for someone so impressionable, had an alarming lack of reaction. The melody slowed down then, and Jinyoung had felt his hands going through the motions again, and he’d looked down at the music in front of him multiple times, though on his own he’d had it memorized front to back.

“Flat,” Junghwan said. “It sounds flat.”

Ouch. Jinyoung felt the sting right where he knew it would hit – his heart.

“I mean, the first half sounded good.”

Jinyoung had sung about music and life, things he’d really loved, yet there seemed to be a piece missing in it all, a stylistic passion for that bridge line, the one that would give the audience the genuine meaning of the metaphor, the one that he’d been getting at the whole time.

“We get it, you love music,” said Junghwan, waving his hand back and forth, a blasé motion that blew his hair into cute little tufts. He opened his eyes and crossed his arms and added, “Better than a fake person, I’ll have to admit. Am I right?”

Ah.

Jinyoung beckoned Junghwan over to where he was sitting with his hand. So that was what this had been all about. Jinyoung told him something impossibly corny, something along the lines of teaching him a new lesson about piano, or music, or life, or walks around the neighborhood featuring miffed runners and allergies. Then, Jinyoung kissed him.

Junghwan’s lips were plush and moist, and one kiss turned into two, which turned into Junghwan on his back under the piano and Jinyoung hovering over him and kneeling between his bent legs.

God, Jinyoung was sexy.

Junghwan had first noticed this when he’d watched Jinyoung’s lithe fingers dance across the piano keys with quick, sharp movements that had no elegance yet had a sort of grace to them. The way he played piano was sexy. The way his hands gripped the neck of the guitar as it perched on his faded jeans was sexy.

And now, Jinyoung’s lips were moving against his, Jinyoung was pushing him back into the carpet, Jinyoung’s fingers were playing him, trailing down his sides and dipping into his jeans.

Junghwan breathed hard against Jinyoung’s lips, and Jinyoung murmured, “My mom’s home.”

“Do I still have to pay for lessons,” Junghwan tried.

And by taking small steps forward and bickering arguments back, they familiarized each other with the world of music.

“So, metaphorically speaking, is the song about me?” Junghwan said, partly hoping the answer would be –

“No,” Jinyoung said, which was good, because Jinyoung wrote somewhere about how life could be stodgy as the endlessly winding asphalt roads in Jinyoung’s neighborhood, but that it was the mosquitos that lit up the nighttime air. Junghwan wasn’t in the particular mood to be compared to a mosquito. “It’s still about life and music. Alright, so if you want to record the guide, you’re going to have to be able to read the key of B flat major, which has E and B flats.”

“I still don’t know what language you’re speaking,” said Junghwan.

“It’s the language of love.”

“Please don’t write that one down.”

Athena [Jinyoung/Sandeul]

nephre — Sun, 04 May 2014 22:45:52 GMT

Title: Athena
Pairing: Jinyoung/Sandeul
Rating: R
Summary: Junghwan meets Jinyoung in elementary school and learns that love develops in nonlinear and inexplicably extraordinary ways.

When Junghwan was young, he believed he was a goddess.

It was the part of his brain that knew he was ostensibly special – that whatever happened to him was a result of his belief in a more than noteworthy previous life (or something). If he woke up with a cowlick, it was because the world needed goddesses to compensate for their otherwise overwhelmingly good looks. If he stepped in a puddle, it was because goddesses had to endure trials and tribulations to prepare them for battle in a next life (or something). If he met a special character (named Jung Jinyoung) who would later come in and out of his life unexpectedly, much like heavy, drenching rains in summer, it was because that was the particular trial he had prepared for all those childhood years.

It must’ve been fate that Junghwan had been born on March 20th, missing the cutoff but being accepted into the higher grade (Jinyoung’s grade) anyway – he was special, after all. And when class president Shin Dongwoo asked him what he was interested in, it must’ve been fate that he blurted out, “Music,” instead of mythology, red in the face and looking down at his untied shoelaces.

“Excellent,” Dongwoo said, resembling an old piano teacher in his heavy glasses and holding a clipboard that was too big for his fourth grade hands. “You can join the Virtuosos.”

Gong Chansik was his neighbor who ate dirt from the garden (and would later deny everything). But he consumed it in such a mannered way that Junghwan thought he must’ve mistaken it for some bizarre Western dish. When Junghwan thought the kid might benefit from eating chips or shrimp crackers or something and offered him some, Chansik swallowed his entire bite slowly before mumbling, “This is delicious!” in wonder.

“Haven’t you ever had chips before?” Junghwan said, and Chansik shook his head.

“We eat all natural,” he replied, and Junghwan nearly choked on his hot chocolate.

Cha Sunwoo, who lived at the end of the cul-de-sac, was a kid who appeared occasionally, most of the time being toted from one soccer game to the next and would only play with Chansik and Junghwan if there was some sort of running involved. He always won those games, but Chansik, being an older brother (much to Junghwan’s surprise) tolerated it, and Junghwan was a goddess, so it didn’t matter to him whether he won or lost these petty earthly games.

“Why a goddess?” Sunwoo asked. Junghwan picked up the childish judgment in his voice as easily as a bucket. He stuck his tongue out at Sunwoo.

“Goddesses are cooler,” Junghwan replied smartly. “Flowing hair. Cooler names. Goddess of the Hunt. And wisdom. And stuff.”

But that encounter, coupled with some other minor ridiculing from his parents, closed Junghwan’s secret off to the rest of the world. Goddesses just weren’t meant to be known by all.

Jinyoung, then, Junghwan wouldn’t meet until fifth grade, when the new kid tripped over the threshold into the music room for the first Virtuosos meeting of the school year. Junghwan instinctively laughed, more because Jinyoung reminded him of himself than anything else at that moment, another goddess (or god, Junghwan corrected, because Junghwan was the only goddess, and goddesses were cooler). Jinyoung, though, shot him a conspicuous glare and purposely sat on the far side of the room.

“And there you have it, boys and girls,” their teacher said. “The Virtuosos in a nutshell.”

Known for being astonishingly uncoordinated, the Virtuosos were made up of kids who either had no interest in sports or failed at every sport. Their school hadn’t had funding for an art club, but was sponsored by the music store next door that offered discount music lessons to anyone who attended their school district.

“Junghwan, our president, did that on his first day, too,” the teacher continued, and Jinyoung, as if he’d known, turned around to look at Junghwan.

“How did you know it was me?” Junghwan said later, when they were sharing a keyboard together during free-play time. A snare drum beat sounded repetitively from the speakers, drowning out most other noises.

Jinyoung shrugged. “No one else would have the guts to laugh at the new kid. You seem like a stuck-up sort of guy. The president, huh.”

“I’m not just the president, I’m a goddess,” Junghwan blurted out, and Jinyoung looked up at him.

Junghwan knew then that he was in for the long haul.

“Well, Jinyoung has that sort of effect on people,” Dongwoo would later say in seventh grade, still the class president, still with the same thick glasses and the same clipboard stuck to his hands, which were now large and sturdy. “Making you want to say the first thing you think of.” Dongwoo was an uncomfortable class president who evidently didn’t really fit the leader type, but arrived at the top by merit and was urged by his parents into the role. The older he got, though, the less he put up the act. One thing he did do well, though, was to analyze everyone in the class, observe and describe, and exploit his ability to sort out whether people were shitheads or not.

Junghwan let go of the goddess thing by then, so he was able to talk about it freely with a little endearment in his attitude. He changed one thing in the story, though—“I wasn’t just the president, but a god,” he mimicked, and Dongwoo grinned.

They’d become friends slowly and cautiously, much like everything else Dongwoo did, from attending student board meetings together and being stuck in the same homeroom class for five years straight, just out of luck. Fate, Junghwan would think, and smile to himself a little sadly.

Dongwoo spent more time at Junghwan’s house than Junghwan’s older sister did, most of the time working on projects and thinking of fundraising ideas for their student body. “You’re the most creative,” Dongwoo said, “out of all the presidents,” because kids who weren’t presidents weren’t allowed in on the elusive secrets of the young executive board.

Together they exhausted cookie sales and car washes, raffles and charity games. “I’m still kind of stuck on why Jinyoung joined the Virtuosos anyway,” Junghwan said, when Jinyoung belted out his first nasally note in October of that year.

Dongwoo laughed. “Why?”

“Kid can’t hit a note for his life,” Junghwan mumbled with a glue stick in his mouth, making a poster for their sixth fund-raising concert.

“He’s older than you, you know.”

“Fine, hyung can’t hit a note to save his life.” Junghwan made a box with his fingers and closed one eye, framing the poster and nodding in approval.

It was the next day that Jinyoung brought in a rented violin from the music store and drew out another horrid-sounding note that was somehow nasally despite it not even coming from his mouth.

It took about four instruments and three months and countless music lessons for Jinyoung to finally pick up a guitar and strum out a somewhat twangy yet still comprehensible G chord. “Took long enough,” Junghwan breathed, his clammy fingers holding Jinyoung’s in the correct position.

And that afternoon, Jinyoung kissed him on the cheek.

Junghwan had honestly started to entertain the idea of holing up in a closet with Dongwoo and kissing him at the beginning of seventh grade. It was a little bit perverse, the way Junghwan imagined it, Dongwoo pushing him up against the wall in the dark with his large and sturdy hands and pressing his body against Junghwan’s, and Junghwan wasn’t sure if it was because he liked Dongwoo, admired him, or just wanted to surprise him – to break that uncomfortable composure Dongwoo always had when he spent time at Junghwan’s house and Junghwan’s mom called him That Nice Boy Whose Glasses Actually Look Good on Him. Junghwan wasn’t sure if it was because of the way Dongwoo flushed when Junghwan’s mother complimented him, or if it was because Dongwoo did look good in glasses. Junghwan wasn’t sure if it was his first crush or a his first crush.

“Your cheeks are so cute, though,” Jinyoung said when Junghwan flinched.

“Yeah, but that doesn’t mean you kiss them!” Junghwan complained, and Jinyoung laughed.

“I kiss what I think is cute,” Jinyoung replied, as if it were the simplest concept in the world.

Junghwan was spontaneous, and at the same time not particularly open to change. So the things that comforted him in his life were things that stayed constant, like the fact that he spotted Chansik still secretly eating dirt from time to time by the creek that ran across their backyards. Like Sunwoo always having somewhere to be, having a new girlfriend every week, grinning at Junghwan in the hallways in a friendly yet sort of condescending way, and that was why Junghwan liked Sunwoo and Chansik – they were things he could count on, things that would balance out his own spontaneity.

So when Jinyoung kissed his cheek, he might have flinched, but his gut feeling told him to kiss Jinyoung back, so he did.

They were in one of the abandoned lesson rooms in the back of the music store by the elementary school, where they still led the Junior Virtuosos. Jinyoung turned his head and met Junghwan’s lips with his own, and Junghwan flinched again, but Jinyoung held him by the shoulders and slid his hands down Junghwan’s arms tentatively. They were both shaking, and Junghwan crossed his legs, fisting his hands. He laughed nervously when Jinyoung pulled away.

“Um,” said Junghwan, but other than that, they spoke nothing of the incident.

Jinyoung led the Virtuosos and Junior Virtuosos to a performance orchestra, filling dozens of rows of seats for their charity concerts and organizing discounted private lessons for everyone in the music program. He composed entry-level music and conducted orchestra meetings, fitting himself in a little tuxedo for the concerts and strumming his guitar leisurely on off-days. He was still an amateur vocally and at any particular instrument, but he somehow had the qualities to compensate – leadership, spontaneity, confidence, and a vision.

And Junghwan, in the middle of it all, was still stuck to that kiss.

And he felt left behind, in a sense, because no Virtuoso choir ever formed, nor did Jinyoung ever consider creating one. Junghwan telling him bitterly that his voice sounded like rotted eggshells probably didn’t help, though.

Junghwan entertained the idea of holing up in a closet with Dongwoo, but Jinyoung beat Dongwoo to it – and at the same time pretended it had never happened.

Fast-forward two years, and Jinyoung had finally relieved Dongwoo of the position of student body president. Everyone had seen it coming – even Dongwoo himself, who was tired of his own floundering presence and waited somewhat urgently for Jinyoung to actually take the initiative to run for the position.

And when Jinyoung won that, Dongwoo stopped coming to Junghwan’s house, and Chansik stopped eating dirt, and the Virtuosos disbanded after Jinyoung and Junghwan went to high school.

Instead, Chansik tutored Junghwan in math, and they developed a strange sort of relationship hovering somewhere between brothers and neighbors, but never friends.

“I have no friends,” Junghwan realized out loud when they were working on the basics of trigonometry.

“Maybe the fact that you don’t consider anyone your friend makes no one want to be friends with you,” Chansik suggested, a little miffed. “And what happened to that glasses dude?”

“Oh, we were just coworkers,” Junghwan said, waving it off, and Chansik raised an eyebrow. Junghwan himself was a little miffed at the Dongwoo thing – though in his reasonable mind, he realized that Dongwoo probably didn’t say hello to him in the hallways because he was socially awkward. “I guess Jinyoung, but—”

“Who’s Jinyoung?” Chansik asked, which made Junghwan realize the even stranger sort of relationship floating there.

The only room Jinyoung entered when Junghwan showed him around his house for the first time was Junghwan’s bedroom. “Thanks for inviting me over,” Jinyoung said.

“Just for choir things,” Junghwan replied, and Jinyoung chuckled.

“I’m not even in choir.”

“Yeah, but you can compose,” Junghwan said.

Jinyoung sat down on Junghwan’s bed like he owned it. “So, you must want something from me, right?” He traced letters into the soft surface of Junghwan’s blanket, adding, “Considering that we’re not really friends but you invited me over.”

It felt like he was being stabbed with a butter knife – a dull pain that only worsened the more he thought about it. “Uh, yeah,” Junghwan stuttered. “Compose my audition song.” It was the second time he’d been forced into impromptu answers regarding Jinyoung, and Junghwan couldn’t say that he appreciated it. Everything with Jinyoung opposed normal Junghwan-type customs – if Junghwan was spontaneous, with Jinyoung, he was cautious. If Junghwan was the type to lead, with Jinyoung, he followed.

“Oh,” Jinyoung said, looking up with a stunned glint in his eyes, which widened – and that reaction in and of itself surprised Junghwan, who was used to Jinyoung just accepting the waves as they came and went, remaining otherwise calm. Jinyoung patted the space next to him.

“This isn’t your bed, you know,” Junghwan retorted, and Jinyoung laughed.

Afternoon light filtered lazily into the room, filling it with a distinct haze that fell over Junghwan’s piles of clean laundry and sheets of music strewn across his desk. Junghwan had posters of dramas tacked all over his walls, some from his older sister just to fill the space, and the piano keyboard’s wire snaked neatly around the dresser to the outlet on the other side of the room. A bookshelf housed more embarrassing childhood pictures (one of Junghwan as a child on a dock in nothing but a life jacket and a towel) than books, but that was what made the room cozy rather than uncharacteristically ordinary.

Junghwan caught Jinyoung leaning in before Jinyoung could catch himself, and Junghwan pressed a hand into Jinyoung’s face, the heel of his hand pushing Jinyoung’s chin up. “Not this time,” Junghwan said. “Not if you’re going to pretend nothing happened again.”

Jinyoung shrugged. “Okay.”

The back end of a skewer joined the butter knife in goading Junghwan to kiss Jinyoung that time. Jinyoung laughed and returned the kiss, moving his hand down to Junghwan’s waist, then hip. “I don’t know why I’m doing this,” Junghwan breathed, and he could feel Jinyoung smile against his lips.

“Neither do I.”

While Junghwan was in bed that night looking up at the rafters that ran across his ceiling, he wondered if he and Jinyoung qualified as friends now.

Junghwan bleached his hair to a white-blonde immediately after graduating high school, symbolizing alternate rebellion and escape. Jinyoung crimped his hair into a frizzy nest that was so fried it bounced in one whole piece as he walked. And together they traveled the universe.

That year the trees flowered late and April ran surprisingly cold, temperatures hovering just above freezing and pedestrians bundled up in thick early-March jackets. Jinyoung buried himself in a barely functional yellow parka, and Junghwan wore shorts as they skateboarded through the neighborhood over to the old music store and elementary school, skinning their knees while picking up new strings for Jinyoung’s guitar. Junghwan would always pick up a little something extra, a pick, a composition notebook, a page of indie sheet music that he’d bundle up at the end of the season and give Jinyoung as a graduation present or something.

They greeted each other with stale how-are-you’s, and almost spent too much time together, but something in Junghwan clung to Jinyoung as if Jinyoung’s existence itself depended on Junghwan’s inviting him to coffee, to dinner. And Jinyoung always agreed.

“My best friend Jinyoung,” Junghwan introduced him as to his college roommate, “is working on his music right now. So he’s not in school.”

“Cool,” said the roommate.

And Junghwan realized he didn’t have much else to talk about.

“Quit school,” Jinyoung whispered when he had sex with Junghwan in the dim light of Jinyoung’s studio apartment, and the moan that came from Junghwan brushed past Jinyoung’s ear into the stale summer air, splitting through the white noise of the fan humming in the background. “Live with me.” And Jinyoung forced his own sounds into Junghwan’s neck, keening into the pillow as Junghwan’s hands came up to grip Jinyoung’s shoulders hard.

Sex with Jinyoung was amazing. If it wasn’t Jinyoung leading him, fucking him into the mattress as the bedsprings groaned underneath them, it was Jinyoung sprawled on the couch lazily as Junghwan moved up and down on him, nails biting into Jinyoung’s forearms while Jinyoung pushed Junghwan’s head down into his shoulder to muffle his moans.

“A goddess needs her weapon,” Jinyoung murmured, and Junghwan came with an uncontrolled shout.

The part of Junghwan lingering in that studio apartment wanted to do exactly that – to drop out of college and forget about all the obligations holding him to such a barren place, and to wait for Jinyoung under an awning in front of a small café with an Americano in hand as Jinyoung rushed down the sidewalk under the rain with his guitar strapped to his back.

And the part of him that rushed through his own veins pulled him back.

He’d grown far too attached to Jinyoung – that he felt an almost tangible piece of him still swirling around the apartment’s stagnant air proved that.

Chansik called him from his house still on the street that Junghwan grew up several months later. “How are things going with this Jinyoung guy I still haven’t met yet?”

“Chansik, you’re not even my friend,” Junghwan replied, shoving the door of the school library open to get some air. He welcomed Chansik’s call regardless of his nagging.

“Ouch, that hurts,” Chansik drawled. “You said we were like brothers.”

“You were my tutor who ate strange—”

“All right, so we’re not friends,” said Chansik. “How’s glasses dude?”

“Who?” Junghwan said.

Chansik paused for a moment. “Heard from Sunwoo lately?”

Junghwan sat down on the curb and began picking at his nails. “Nope. Heard from his mom that he’s attending some place on full scholarship, though.”

“Yeah, that was before you left.”

“What?” Junghwan said. “I swear you called last—”

“I haven’t called since you left, Junghwan,” Chansik said.

When one’s life gets wrapped in a world of two, it becomes simultaneously seductive and alienating. It leaves you wanting more, yet warns you that something’s cutting against the grain. The danger in and of itself could have been the seductive part, in Junghwan’s case.

As if by coincidence, not yet a week later, Jinyoung failed to answer his phone.

Months passed, and Junghwan dropped out of college.

For the two days that it took Junghwan to move his things back from his dorm room to his home, Chansik dropped by for several hours at a time to help Junghwan rearrange his furniture. The posters had left paint holes in the wall, and Junghwan covered them up with panoramas of old sheet music composed by Jinyoung.

“Are you sure that’s a good idea?” Chansik asked.

“He’ll be back,” said Junghwan with a shrug.

“He always comes back,” Chansik mocked, and Junghwan punched him lightly in the shoulder. “Probably misses you. Why haven’t you given him a call?”

Junghwan didn’t know Jinyoung’s phone number. His recollection of it was always jinyoung on the screen of his phone – Jinyoung had entered himself in Junghwan’s contact list, much like how he’d sailed into Junghwan’s life without much of an entrance speech or any sort of warning other than the threshold of that old music room. He visited it once after returning home, but most of the old teachers at the music store had left, which felt oddly cathartic to Junghwan in a way, as if an old virulent part of him had been swept away with any trace of Jinyoung.

Junghwan received an invitation to Sunwoo’s graduation party. On that chilly March day, he stood in the corner for a while before Sunwoo introduced him to some girls who thought he was cute, and Junghwan gave a sheepish smile in return. Sunwoo had set up a karaoke machine and Junghwan tried his hand at belting out a few notes, and he realized how painfully yet comfortingly ordinary his life had become without the surging of Jinyoung’s tides. It was only then when he really fell into believing that he wasn’t in fact inexplicably special at all.

Nearly two months after Junghwan came to his revelation, the school year started for Chansik and Sunwoo, and Junghwan received a call from Jinyoung. It was a long number, foreign – American, Junghwan would later find out – and Jinyoung’s voice sounded incredibly distant over the call lag.

The phone call had a lot of pauses.

“How have you been?” Junghwan said with a lull to his voice.

“Working through some things,” Jinyoung replied. He sounded distant, but stronger.

“You mind telling me what those things are?” Junghwan said.

“Yes,” murmured Jinyoung.

Another pause. “Do you have a clue?”

“No,” said Jinyoung.

The flight to Los Angeles was long, cramped, and everything Junghwan expected it to be. When he stepped off the plane with wobbly legs and a stiff neck, he stumbled past customs and attempted to rub his eyes only to hit himself square in the face with his thick glasses. Jinyoung waited for him at the terminal.

They didn’t hug. “Why are you here?” Jinyoung said, though he’d been expecting Junghwan – though they’d planned this out through a series of sparse emails that mostly had Sent from my iPhone tacked to the end of them like a cruel, spiteful joke.

“Starting university again,” Junghwan answered.

They began walking toward the bus transportation area, letting the luggage carrier drift through the aisles as Jinyoung helped Junghwan wheel his bags. “Oh, you quit?”

Junghwan laughed, and after some thought, said, “Just like you asked me to.”

And with that, it was as if Junghwan had broken through some sort of dam that held back the past – the nostalgia, with all its underlying hurt and pretense. “I never asked,” Jinyoung whispered. “I demanded.”

“And I quit after you stopped demanding,” Junghwan said.

“And you came here,” Jinyoung continued. “To be—”

“A university student,” Junghwan said.

“Right.”

Los Angeles weather was tepid, underwhelming, and astonishingly brown. Small shrubs dotted the spaces between buildings, and the sky ran hazy, a mixture of blue and sand, and a cream in the clouds that never quite reached white.

“Can we start over?” Jinyoung said, and his voice seemed to idle in the still, dry air that battered at Junghwan’s skin.

“I don’t know.” And it wasn’t that Junghwan didn’t know if he wanted to start over with Jinyoung; it was that he wasn’t sure if he, if they even could start over. Jinyoung lowered his gaze respectfully anyway.

The shuttle came, and neither of them got on.

“I’m Lee Junghwan,” Junghwan said without looking at Jinyoung.

“I’m hungry,” Jinyoung replied, and Junghwan laughed, standing in off-white days.