Tracks That Lead Us {Part Two}
Tracks That Lead Us
donghae/eunhyuk
high school au
pg-13
8244 words
These are the paths we follow, these are the paths we create. Most of us have our fates set from the moment our feet brush the road. Donghae thinks he has to be the first to cross the finishing line; Hyukjae knows he has the race won from the start. It's not about the race at all. It's about the run.
tracks that lead us
They start over on a Saturday.
It’s nearing the end of September and the temperature is just starting to dip, cooler winds blowing the leaves Donghae kicks up on his walk to school.
The sky is clear, beginnings of light spreading across blue and Donghae deems today their first real training session. The ones before don’t count, too many unclear motives and confusing feelings tangling the lines between them. Unclearness and confusion remains, palpable between that night and today and yet. Today is a blank slate for them, a back to point a if you will. Possibly the arrival at it but either way Donghae wants to see if he can run with Hyukjae in the daylight as easily as he could in the lack of light.
Hyukjae arrives before Donghae, not surprising taking into consideration Donghae had paused along the way to gather mountains of leaves only to jump and send them flying in the air, and he openly complains about it for five minutes while they stretch. Hyukjae’s toes point like a ballerina’s and Donghae teases him about it until it stops being funny.
When their hands are pressed to clay, chalk dusting their palms, the jokes and the complaining stop all together.
Hyukjae’s speed is deceiving, Donghae can see that clearly now. He doesn’t look like he’s running away from something but somewhere, his strides are steady and slow before his legs seem to turn on the power boost and he’s practically gliding across the track. His stamina needs a little work but a couple of hours a week at the gym will fix that; if his arms are stronger he’ll have better control, if his legs are more powerful he could handle longer distances without having to push himself or rely on just his speed.
It’s surreal. They go round and round, horizontal lines marking the meters they cover and claim beneath their feet, and all the while Donghae is in a constant yes but no, heart banging against his ribcage each time Hyukjae gains or loses speeds. Relief mixes with disappointment because he’s seen what Hyukjae has in him, not all that different from Donghae with one minor detail. Nature’s grace. Donghae could train for a thousand years, burn his skin under a million suns, and Hyukjae would always be just that bit faster than him. Milliseconds. Milliseconds and they mean everything and set apart the greats from the best. If he closes his eyes he sees Hyukjae blazing past him even faster than he can already. Donghae tells himself to suck it up and make his roots proud by helping train one of the possible best.
“Keep your hips straight. Parallel with your toes. Parallel. I thought you were supposed to be a math genius or whatever. Do you not understand parallel? It means aligned side by side.”
Hyukjae wipes the sweat off his forehead with the back of his palm and grunts something delightful under his breath.
Donghae wants to debone Hyukjae’s body and give him a new skeleton. Maybe that will help.
“Okay.” Donghae sighs deciding manual labor might be the only scientifically possible way to do this. He stands behind Hyukjae, turns and jostles him until Hyukjae’s back forms a straight line. It takes a couple of kicks and slides for Hyukjae’s feet to get the message and when Donghae deems Hyukjae in the right position with his elbows lined with but not tucked into his body, he places his right hand on Hyukjae’s stomach, his left on Hyukjae’s lower back.
“Walk,” he instructs.
“Like this?” Hyukjae questions skeptically.
“Just move it, Hyukjae.”
Hyukjae does. They make it halfway to the hundred meter line before Hyukjae stops. Donghae’s hands are hot and damp with Hyukjae’s body heat and sweat. He’d dry them off on Hyukjae’s shirt but it would be rather pointless.
“Uhmm. I don’t really see how this is helping.”
Donghae sighs. His breath exhales over Hyukjae’s nape and he feels Hyukjae shiver beneath his hands. The same effect of stepping into an air conditioned room after being in the sun all day Donghae tells himself. His palms feel electric against Hyukjae anyways.
“I want you do something for me,” Donghae stars, trying to paint the visual in his mind into words. “Picture yourself on a track with a bunch of hills. Each time you go up a hill you see the finish line. You always know it’s there but when you’re at the bottom of a hill it’s hidden from you. But,” Donghae pauses, his hand on Hyukjae’s stomach rising to grab his chin so Hyukjae looks straight forward, “if you keep your head up and your body straight, you’ll never forget it’s there no matter how far the distance is.”
Donghae steps back, his hands lingering for a few moments before falling away. Hyukjae nods slowly and Donghae sees his words almost literally sinking into Hyukjae’s bones and the cat’s out of the bag. His motivational tactic, the thing that keeps him running when his legs are about to give out on him and his lungs are about to implode, and he gave it away for free. Didn’t think twice about it. He waits for the realization to sink in waiting for that sense of dread or wanting to take back even though life doesn’t offer do overs. It never comes. Donghae is just left standing, both feet rooted in place held on a pause. There is a fire in Hyukjae’s eyes now and Donghae thinks, with something akin to pride, he’ll go down in history as the one who took one of the greats and stretched and spun him into the best.
“Ready to try it again?” Donghae asks, hands back in their original position and Hyukjae’s body is even warmer now.
Hyukjae may not need that new skeleton after all.
*
“Can I ask you a question?”
It’s become a bit of a habit. Skip extra hours of running and sweating, chalk dusted off their hands on the edges of their t-shirts, in favor of heading to the park for melted ice cream trailing between their fingers. Donghae finds he likes Hyukjae with a strawberry stained mouth and wind tussled hair a little more than usual.
“Shoot.” Donghae bites into his ice cream bar and frowns when his teeth crack into the chocolate coating and half of it drops on the grass at his feet.
“Why is winning so important to you?”
Donghae diverts his gaze from his lost to chocolate to give Hyukjae a blank stare. “You do know that’s a stupid question, right?”
“Yes,” Hyukjae concedes; despite the purse of his lips he pushes on. “I’m still going to wait for an answer anyways.”
“It’s not just about winning. It’s about being the best.” Tugging on the end’s of his hair, Donghae searches for the right words. He could brush the question off, twist the conversation in his favor but there’d be no point. Hyukjae is already a little under his skin and keeping up pretenses isn’t really Donghae thing.
So. Winning. It is more than about winning. But being the best? Donghae knows the male ego is involved in there somewhere but he also knows he doesn’t have to explain that to Hyukjae. Hyukjae’s slight nod and the fact that Donghae has seen Hyukjae naked on occasion tells Donghae Hyukjae knows plenty about the male ego for himself. “I guess you could say I’m used to being the best and I’m not used to not being the best.”
A tough lesson to learn. (Donghae knew he’d learn it someday. He would have rather it’d been later than sooner.)
“And you’re saying I’m the best?”
Donghae rolls his eyes at Hyukjae’s apprehensive eyes. He wonders if it’s an act. A part of him wants to get pissed off. He’s so full of ice cream he can’t really stomach the effort. “Yeah well. Don’t go and get a big head about it.”
“No. It’s just.” Hyukjae seems to struggle with the words, voice faltering and eyes wandering about the park. His ice cream is completely melted by now, a sea of strawberry in his plastic cup. He looks back at Donghae, frustration knotting his eyebrows. Donghae is a bit taken a back. “So I’m a little faster than you? That doesn’t make me better. You said it yourself. My posture sucks. I can’t run long distances. I- What are you doing?”
Donghae tries to fight his smile at Hyukjae’s stilled form. He leans in anyways and wipes away a strawberry stain off Hyukjae’s chin. Yesung has dubbed Donghae the personal bubble invader. It’s about time he popped Hyukjae’s.
He looks up at Hyukjae and lets himself smile. “You have ice cream all over your face.”
“Oh shit,” Hyukjae says and starts wiping his face. Donghae grins, smug and right in Hyukjae’s face. “Well, you’ve got cherry stuck between your teeth.”
Donghae’s laughter dies, abrupt. They stare at one another, Donghae tight lipped as he tries picking out the cherry with his tongue and Hyukjae rubbing at his cheek. And then Donghae laughs. He laughs, long and hard, because here they are, discussing things they’ll never find answers to somehow trying to understand one another, and all along they’ve been making fools of themselves while the other kids in the playground have started to stare at the two big kids covered in ice cream.
“What are you laughing at?” Hyukjae asks even though he’s started to laugh too.
Drying fake tears, Donghae throws his head back realizing he dropped the rest of his ice cream at some point. “You. Me.”
“As long as you’re laughing at yourself too.”
When they leave the park, both composed and slightly cleaner, Hyukjae smiles. “So you admit it.”
“What?”
“You think I’m a good runner.”
Hyukjae’s smile is all gums and smugness; his statement arrogant. There is, however, a bit of a question lingering in his voice, in his eyes, and Donghae only halfheartedly trips him as they cross the park gates. “I liked you better when you were self doubting and dirty.”
Strawberry still decorates the corners of Hyukjae’s mouth and his smile loses all and any questions.
*
“Let’s run off track today,” Hyukjae suggests on their sixth day of training together. It’s a national holiday and the school is deserted. Every sane highschooler is sleeping in until noon.
Donghae isn’t sure if Hyukjae is ready for the run Hyukjae’s legs outline, if he handle the speed, the pace, the outcome, but he lets Hyukjae make that decision.
“Don’t focus on speed,” Donghae tells him as they stand at the beginning of the back road by the highway. The childish part of him knows it’s because he doesn’t want to take the chance to have Hyukjae fly by him. The mature part of him knows it’s because Hyukjae has to work on running at a constant pace for longer. They both battle within him but they have the same goal. “You’re fast. We get it. But you need to be able to run for long periods of time and I’ve seen you lag after you pass the two mile mark and that’s no good. Speed isn’t everything,” he finishes with and he knows that last bit wasn’t just for Hyukjae.
Donghae isn’t used to running with someone away from the race track. Practice and running a few laps with Yesung doesn’t count and challenging himself to match his footprints with Hyukjae is a new discovery, each meter they cover finds Donghae embracing the challenge, the push. The harmony of someone’s breathing creating a symphony battling his own.
Running is the time when Donghae allows himself to lose his mind fully and wholeheartedly. Donghae goes and goes, he doesn’t feel his body, doesn’t feel the burn in every muscle. Everything narrows down to the road. The road and Donghae.
Not today.
Today, everything narrows down to Hyukjae.
Hyukjae’s breathing. The sound of his sneakers hitting the pavement. Hyukjae’s elbows and fists blinking in and out of Donghae’s peripheral vision every few seconds.
They are three quarters of a mile in when Donghae notices this isn’t a race. He isn’t trying to blaze past Hyukjae. Hyukjae seems too preoccupied with keeping his body in check, making sure he isn’t leaning forward or resting his weight on his toes or heels, to leave Donghae in the dust. If there were a line moving each time they did, it wouldn’t be crooked or slouched. It would go straight as it glided at inches from the tips of their feet.
Loose gravel wedges in the rifts of his sneakers. His lungs expand and contract inside his chest and the air feels lush and heavy. Maybe his heart rate is a little fast, maybe it’s about to fall out of his chest and topple onto the road but all Donghae can feel is calm at the high of running with someone else and realizing he doesn’t have to push himself. He doesn’t push at all.
All Donghae does is run.
When they stop Donghae throws himself onto the pavement, Hyukjae doubled over and trying to catch his breath, every muscle and bone in Donghae’s body screams.
He’s never felt quite so weightless.
*
“So, you’re friends now?”
“Sort of?”
“I ask because I need to keep up with who we’re hating.”
“Uhh. I’m sitting right here.”
Donghae and Yesung turn to look at Hyukjae, a small frown on his face and the game controller in his lap.
They’re sitting in Donghae’s living room, a plate of freshly baked cookies Donghae’s mother made now empty on the coffee table littered with empty soda bottles and every Super Mario Bros. and Grand Theft Auto game ever made. The classic boys’ initiation ritual meaning hey, you’re cool enough to hang with us as we shit around and don’t do our homework. Donghae wonders how girls do this. When girls are nine, it’s probably allowing another girl to touch your favorite doll. At sixteen, Donghae figures they probably go shopping together and help each other pick out bras. Once you get underneath a girl’s bra, you’re in.
Hyukjae drives virtual cars almost as badly as Donghae does real ones. Yesung’s Luigi never makes it past the haunted house and Donghae always loses Yoshi.
“I think it’s time to call it a night,” Hyukjae says around eight. Yesung is passed out, his forehead pushing the coffee table forward. Hyukjae grabs the empty plate before it falls.
“Homework?” Donghae asks, his face disgusted at the thought.
Swinging his bag over one of his shoulders, Hyukjae shakes his head laughing at Donghae’s expression. “No. It’s time for my nightly run.”
Donghae gets up from the couch, stretches his legs out and he can already feel his soles ache in hunger for the pavement.
“Do you-“ Hyukjae stops, scratches his head like the right words will fall from his hair to his mouth. Donghae has to bite back a grin. “Do you want to come with me? I usually run alone at night but I’d like the company tonight.”
Since the eighth grade, Donghae has run at nine o’clock, three hours after the sun goes down in winter and one in the summer.
“Sure.”
A smile starts spreading on Hyukjae’s face but then he seems to remember Yesung. His snores are kind of hard to ignore. “Wait. What about Yesung?”
Donghae slips into his sneakers by the door and grabs the sweater he keeps on the coat rack. “My mom will make sure he doesn’t drive half asleep and give him my bed. He won’t be happy about sleeping on the floor but I’ll make sure to put a pillow down before I shove him off.”
Hyukjae’s laugh is the countdown of 1, 2, 3 as they make their way down the sidewalk, a slow build up of steps before they take off and touch the night sky with the bottoms of their feet.
*
Seven a.m. is the best time to use the school’s weight training room.
Five minutes past seven is the time when Hyukjae is probably wishing Donghae a slow painful death.
“Ten more reps.”
Lying on the bench press, Hyukjae’s arms wobble but he manages to try and burn a hole through Donghae’s skull. This time, Donghae just laughs down at Hyukjae. Getting Hyukjae to lift weights isn’t the issue, it’s getting him to understand why he has to do it. (I’ve seen scrawny kids run fast. Why are you so obsessed with my arms?) Hyukjae has never belonged to a track team before. His old school didn’t have a team. Says one day he just started running and he hasn’t been able to stop. (If you want to make sure you never do, Donghae tells him shoving Hyukjae towards the pull-down machine, you have to strengthen your body so it can work with your speed, not against it.) Donghae can tell Hyukjae still doesn’t get it but his complaints decrease considerably after that.
Math tutoring goes slightly different. Hyukjae talks in tangents and angles. He doesn’t use triangles and cosines as methods of torture; he draws out pictures Donghae can understand. The slope of a line is the ratio of the rise divided by the run between two points; if Donghae were to run up a hill, point a is the bottom, point b is the top, and the distance of the run up the hill is the slope.
“Wow. This crap actually makes sense,” Donghae smiles at his paper, no longer abstract concepts of sine and cosine and the hypotenuse that keeps them from falling off the triangle’s edge. He frowns at Hyukjae. “It’s kind of unfair you’re smart too.”
“I’m not really that smart,” Hyukjae says. He crushes the foil wrapper of the granola bar he just finished and tosses it in the nearby trashcan. He misses by at least a foot. Hyukjae sighs and taps his pencil against Donghae’s compass. “I’m good at math but I don’t do as well in my other classes. If it weren’t for math I’d be pretty dumb.”
Finishing off his water, Donghae caps it and shoots for the same trash can. It sails in with a whoosh. He turns towards Hyukjae in his chair, still frowning. “You do that a lot.”
“Do what?”
“Put yourself down.”
Hyukjae’s mouth falls open. His cheeks pale and Donghae almost wants to take his words back.
“Force of habit,” Hyukjae finally says. He rotates his desk chair, his arm rest knocks up against Donghae’s. His shoulders curve in, guarded. Self preservation, Donghae thinks and he guesses Hyukjae has never admitted his insecurities before. At least not out loud.
Donghae rolls his chair a bit and his left knee brushes Hyukjae’s right one.
Donghae isn’t sure but he thinks it makes Hyukjae smile.
“You do that a lot don’t you?”
“What?”
“Be honest.”
Donghae grins. Finally, someone who sees it as honesty and not him being a douche. “I can’t help it.” The wheels on Hyukjae’s chair swivel. Donghae is sure their knees are brushing and Hyukjae smiles for real this time. “It’s a force of habit.”
*
Progress is a steep drive up hill. Acceptance is a hard pill to swallow, but once you do, it’s over and done with and you can finally breathe.
The more Donghae runs with Hyukjae, the easier it is to breathe around him, with him.
Hyukjae is easy like that. He is that kid Donghae usually wants to dismiss, not give a second glance to but once he does, once he really looks, it’s uncovering a secret not a lot of people see. In the face of digging his nails into something he can’t change and letting go, Donghae chooses the later. He builds a bridge, and quite literally, jumps over it.
“Ouch! There’s a person attached to those legs you just trampled over in case you didn’t notice.”
Ignoring Hyukjae’s complaints, Donghae proceeds to plop down next to him on the bench, the towel tossed across his neck whipping Hyukjae in the face. The locker room is crowded but there’s enough space so Donghae doesn’t have to press up to Hyukjae with his wet knees. Donghae just likes the faces Hyukjae’s makes when he pretends to be annoyed at him, eyebrow arched but repressed smiles in the corners of his wrinkled eyes.
“Toughen up, Hyukjae. I expect you here tomorrow at seven sharp.”
“What? Why? Coach told us to take it easy this weekend,” Hyukjae points out, jabbing Donghae sharply in the chest.
Pouting, Donghae rubs the offended spot. Hyukjae is all bones mostly, if this friendship is going to work out Donghae is going to need Hyukjae insurance. “Not you. We still have work to do.” He wags his finger for emphases and Hyukjae snorts a laugh, followed by Donghae’s own and their chuckles rise above the locker room chatter and rings.
“Mhmmmm.”
Yesung clears his throat obnoxiously loud enough to be heard over the ringing of their laughter, leaning against a row of lockers and watching them with furrowed brows. “I know you two are getting along now or whatever but you’re creeping me out right now. Knock it off.”
“Awww. Is someone jealous I’m not paying attention to them?”
“Eww. No. Hyukjae can have you.”
“Who says I want him?”
Yesung bursts out laughing but Donghae turns to Hyukjae, eyes trained on his careful grin.
He decides to indulge in teasing Hyukjae because Hyukjae did set himself up for it. “Do you?” he asks with a sharp smile, pushing Hyukjae’s buttons because it’s all a joke, no big deal, and everyone wants Donghae. Don’t they?
Hyukjae’s mouth twists for a second as if he’s taken a back by either Donghae’s proximity or his words, the dark walls of the locker room making the lights dim and close in around his face. When his smile finally comes out it is tight, shoulders straight as he sits up, eyes averted. It takes Donghae back to that first day, Hyukjae running careless and free except for his elbows tucked into his chest, and one word: self preservation.
It turns out Hyukjae is as quick on his tongue as he is on his feet and he recovers quickly, sharing a mocking smile with Yesung. “Who wouldn’t want you, Donghae?”
By now Yesung is howling. Donghae frowns because okay, it’s funny but not that much. No one notices Donghae going strangely quiet after that, drowning in the wheeze inducing laughter and the last of the showers being turned off and one of the freshmen getting pulled out of his stall and forced to shuffle in nothing except his towel. Who wouldn’t want Donghae? Hyukjae laughs louder than anyone and Donghae thinks, that is a very good question.
*
Their first official track meet is on a Friday.
Donghae wakes up that morning and runs an eight minute mile in six minutes and twenty-nine seconds.
They’re going to win.
He can feel it in his bones. He tells Hyukjae as much during the pre-match pep talk the coach gives them during last period. Yesung nods his agreement. You can always trust Donghae’s bones. Hyukjae looks at them like they are crazy but he smiles. Another sign.
It’s a home meet and the bleachers are full with their classmates and the usual. Donghae ignores them. His victory won’t be for them.
During the first relay, Hyukjae grows restless. He balances on the balls of his feet, crushes his half empty water bottle and gets one of the seniors all wet. Donghae pulls him away from the bench toward the row of vending machines by the bathrooms on the other side of the bleachers to save him from murder.
“Hey. Relax okay?” Donghae grins unknowingly. He tries to keep his voice as soothing as possible. Hyukjae is the spinning image of Donghae before his first big race in the seventh grade. He didn’t have someone to tell him everything was going to be okay so he wants to be that someone for somebody else. “Remember.” Donghae guides Hyukjae to turn around, his hands keeping him straight at the back and abdomen. “Chin high. Don’t lean forward. And the finish line is always ahead of you.”
He swears he feels Hyukjae relax in his hold, all the tension expelling in a wistful sigh. “Thanks,” Hyukjae says with a smile when he turns around.
“Don’t think about the race. Just run.”
“You too,” Hyukjae shoots back and for once, Donghae takes someone else’s advice.
Hyukjae wins first place of the 1500 meters race.
Donghae lines up for the mile race and when the whistle goes off, he just runs.
The medal feels good around his neck, but seeing the six minute twenty eight seconds on the coach’s stats board feels even better.
*
“Thanks for the ride.”
“No problem. It’s on the way.”
“It is? I thought you lived on the other side of school.”
“Yeah. Well. The town is small. Everything is on the way.”
Hyukjae’s car is smaller than Yesung’s, the poor illumination of the streetlights filter in through the windows and paint his cheeks orange. Donghae laughs. Hyukjae is kind of weird but it’s a good kind of weird. He’s real. Donghae doesn’t know a lot of people who are just themselves.
“You were amazing today,” Hyukjae says quickly. So abrupt, Donghae is a hundred percent certain he was embarrassed. “Though you did rest your weight on your toes a bit toward the end.”
“Well looks who’s finally learned something about posture.”
“Had to happen sometime.”
By the time Donghae goes inside his house, Hyukjae’s tank is almost empty from running for so long, Donghae’s older brother hollering that the sound of the cat dying Hyukjae’s car makes doesn’t let him sleep. All Donghae can do is smile and bask if the warm glow of orange street lights.
*
“You were right. This is way better than spending lunch in the cafeteria.”
“I beg to differ.”
“Oh, Yesung. You’re still here?”
“Ha. Fuck you.”
“Thanks but no thanks. I don’t think I’d like my own fingers up my ass.”
“…”
“Are you offering to do it instead?”
“You’d like that, wouldn’t you?”
“Nah. Your fingers are kind of stubby. I don’t think they’d reach very far. Is this your subtle way of telling me you’d like me to do it to you?”
Hyukjae has adapted so quickly to their oddness he doesn’t even spare them a glance, finishes the last lap with comfortable strides and sits down to stretch. By the time Donghae and Yesung reach him, Yesung with Donghae in a headlock and Donghae trying to pull down Yesung’s pants, he’s cooled off and eating a banana to keep his energy up.
Yesung stops giving Donghae a noogie and Donghae looks up from Yesung’s stomach. “Now here’s a sex joke waiting to happen.”
Hyukjae promptly flips him off.
Laughing, Donghae throws himself down next to Hyukjae. He’s perpendicular with the finish line and parallel to Hyukjae. The sun at noon is so hot it’s almost freezing, Hyukjae provides shade but Donghae lifts his arms and tries to grab its ray in his hands anyways.
“What are you doing?” Hyukjae asks, peering down at him. He looks at Donghae strangely but he smiles and the pieces of sun in Donghae’s fists get caught in Hyukjae’s eyes.
Shaking head, Donghae shifts and rests his head in Hyukjae’s lap. Hyukjae’s shorts have run halfway up his thighs, a nice balance of soft skin and worked muscle pillowing Donghae’s head. “Taking a nap.”
“Oh yeah, Hyukjae.” Yesung, and this time Donghae did honestly forget he was still here, sits next to them and takes the banana Hyukjae silently offers him. “Be warned. Donghae is clingy. I wouldn’t give him too much confidence if I were you.”
Leaning on his palms, Hyukjae’s body shifts and his stomach presses against Donghae’s head lightly. “I don’t mind.”
They jogged six laps around the track. Donghae’s heart rate won’t come down. It seems to go even faster now.
Yesung rolls his eyes. “You’ve been warned,” he sing says.
Donghae would kick him if he weren’t so comfortable.
“Okay. Get up. I have a test in ten minutes.”
“Can’t it wait?”
“Told you.”
Hyukjae sees an opening, Donghae getting up to attack Yesung, and runs for it. With his pillow gone Donghae doesn’t see the point in taking a nap and decides they should go to class too.
“Shit,” Donghae curses when they’re walking towards the main building and half his things spill out his half open backpack. Yesung helps him until something seems to catch his eye, paper clutched in his hand.
“Looks like the math tutoring is helping.”
“Mhhhm,” Donghae agrees, zipping his bag closed.
“Wait.” Yesung frowns. “Didn’t Hyukjae start tutoring you a month ago?”
“Yeah. So?” Donghae asks, not getting it until Yesung shows him the test and he sees the date. Eyes widening, Donghae rips the test from Yesung’s hands.
“Oh.”
“What oh?”
“Oh. Ohhhh.”
Fed up, Donghae grabs him by the collar of his t-shirt. “Yesung, I swear-“
Yesung just laughs, eyes wild with mockery. “This is Kim Hyoyeon all over again, isn’t it? Back in eighth grade you asked her to teach you salsa dancing for that report you had to do on Latin American history even though you’ve been taking salsa since you were nine and you were better than her.” Smiling, Yesung raises his eyebrows. “You like him, don’t you?”
Abruptly, Donghae lets him go and steps back. His face feels unbearably hot. “That’s not. I don’t.”
“Donghae, it’s okay,” Yesung reminds him, goes to grab Donghae’s shoulder.
Donghae shrugs him off. “I don’t like him that way. Not him. I couldn’t just help him for free, okay? That’s the only reason.” He balls the test up and stuffs it in his pocket before walking off.
“Wait! Donghae! Come on,” he hears Yesung call after him, concern and worry layering his voice but Donghae doesn’t hear him. He’s walking but in Donghae’s mind, he’s ran so far down the path, Yesung is nothing but the blurry start of point a. Donghae can’t see what point b is and he doesn’t want to.
*
For the first time in his life, running is not Donghae’s solace. It’s a reminder. Running makes him think about Hyukjae and right now, Donghae doesn’t want to think about him.
He withers the afternoon away on his bed staring at his ceiling. He looks past the posters taped up on his ceiling, sees the shadow of the sky his father hand painted there years ago, bits of clouds and stars peaking out in between Usain Bolts’s ankles and Keisuke Honda’s power strike that Maria Sharapova back hands out of the stratosphere to land swiftly at Christina Yamaguchi’s feet.
Donghae wonders if one day, some kid will have his poster taped up to his ceiling and he’ll be someone’s inspiration for tomorrow’s big race. Or maybe Hyukjae’s.
Donghae scoffs. Hyukjae. It’s as if he’s the center of the universe or something and Donghae’s own conscious betrays him.
Yesung’s words are still fresh in his mind, the way he’d tiptoed around it at the end but that’s not the issue here. Donghae knows he is attracted to boys. (Boys too, the stubborn part of him says. Donghae still wakes up with wet sheets some mornings and he’d been thinking about soft breasts in his dreams.) Yesung knows. He doesn’t care.
The problem is that the boy is Hyukjae.
It can’t be Hyukjae.
*
It is Hyukjae.
It makes no sense in the world at the same time it makes the most perfect sense in the scope of the universe.
It’s the way Hyukjae runs. It’s the way he smiles. Closing his eyes, all of his inspirations staring down at him with the kind of fire in their eyes that chills Donghae to his bones, Donghae admits it quietly to himself. In the middle of the darkness, Hyukjae’s eyes are light beneath Donghae’s eyelids.
Hyukjae, in the simplest of terms, is the slope to point b.
*
Yesung picks up after three rings.
“I think I like him.” Donghae sighs into the phone because he has to admit it to Yesung too. “No, that was a lie. I know I do.”
“Took you less time than I calculated. I was expecting your call at eight. It’s seven twenty. You’re interrupting Glee.”
“What do I do Yesung?” Donghae asks quietly, his heart still hammering in his chest. It hasn’t stopped once since lunch.
Yesung thinks it over. “Well. Do you want to be the guy or the girl in the relationship?”
Donghae hangs up.
*
It all seems so different now.
He helps Hyukjae with his arm placement during their training sessions and his hand burns at the contact of their skin. Hyukjae wastes thirty minutes explaining cotangent lines when Donghae can figure them out by just looking at their graph; Donghae spends twenty-nine minutes and forty one seconds staring at the way Hyukjae’s mouth moves. Every smile, every word has a different meaning, an ulterior motive.
Hyukjae has no idea. He doesn’t even know what Donghae is thinking and it makes Donghae sick with guilt but he doesn’t stop.
*
“He’s gay.”
“How do you possibly know that?’ Donghae asks around a mouthful of hamburger. His last fast food meal was two weeks ago. Donghae is allowed to indulge.
“I don’t know. I knew you were gay. I must have an awesome gaydar.”
“I’m not gay. I’m bi. And when I told you I thought I liked that lifeguard during summer camp you screeched, fell off your bike, and scraped your knee.”
“Yeah. But after that I thought about it and it made perfect sense.” Dabbing a fistful of onion rings in some barbeque sauce, Yesung takes a sip of coke. His eyes are squinting and his brow is knotted like Donghae’s sneakers after his mom tosses them in the washer. “I don’t know why I know. I just do. He’s gay.”
*
It turns out, Yesung does know why.
“Remember Lee Sungmin?” Yesung whispers during study hall, failing at being discreet.
“The freak with the pink hair?”
“The very one. I ran into him and I remembered he goes to private school in the town over. I asked a bit and it turns out he knows Hyukjae.”
Donghae stops doodling in his notebook, eyes piqued with interest.
Yesung smiles. “Turns out our Hyukjae used to date Sungmin’s junior class president.”
“So?” Donghae asks bored, going back to his drawing.
“Sungmin goes to an all boys school.”
The tip of Donghae’s pencil breaks. Yesung waggles his eyebrows suggestively, loving the feeling of being right.
Donghae has to control the urge to wipe the stupid smile off Yesung’s face but deep down, he feels the tiniest sliver of something.
Hope.
*
“Race you!” Hyukjae yells as soon as Donghae shows up seven thirty on the dot that Saturday.
Donghae catches up to him in five seconds flat.
The sound of their sneakers hitting the pavement is music to Donghae’s ears. He feels completely relaxed around Hyukjae for the first time in days, nothing but the line his body forms and his breathing ebbing and flowing around his own. Setting the track on fire, they turn the ashes to sand, the field in the middle of the track becomes the ocean and their feet never touch the shoreline. Donghae’s sweat smells like sea foam, it runs like a wave down his temples and froths at his neck all the way to his toes. He takes an inhale of air on their tenth lap and Hyukjae smells exactly the same.
They stop after what feels like forever, their skin wrinkled by the spray of ocean water, sea kelp tangled in their fingers. Hyukjae asks if he wants to go sit on the bleachers after they stretch out. Donghae declines, stays where he is spread out in the last lane, right by the shoreline where it’s safe.
“You seem happy today,” Hyukjae comments. He douses his face in the last couple drops of his water, legs stretched out and toes pointed like a ballet dancer’s.
With a suddenness that almost startles him, Donghae wants to see Hyukjae dance.
What he says is, “I usually look depressed?”
“No. I don’t know. You just look different,” Hyukjae amends. His hair is drenched in sand and Donghae watches the way he absentmindedly runs his hands through it with careful fingers, cautious. Donghae wants to see Hyukjae lose that caution, rack his hands through his hair, lose himself to that abandon Donghae feels is trapped somewhere inside Hyukjae and dance across the shoreline and dare Donghae to get lost in the sea.
“I feel different today.”
The salt tastes bitter in his mouth now.
Hyukjae isn’t the slope to point b.
Hyukjae is point b and Donghae is going to have to reach it by himself.
*
Donghae has his Trigonometry midterm in a week. Hyukjae offers to help him study. Donghae doesn’t say no.
“Your house is nice,” Donghae observes cream colored walls and nice furnishes. Expensive, the back of Donghae’s mind thinks.
Hyukjae’s fridge is full when he opens it to offer Donghae a drink. Donghae is glad Hyukjae’s family doesn’t have to live on food stamps.
Hyukjae’s room is like Hyukjae. Clean. Organized. It looks plain at first glance, boring for the lesser kind, but taking a deeper look, there is color and life everywhere. Fingering the books on the shelves and gliding across the photo frames, Donghae takes in every bit, all these little things that unknowingly or not make up who Hyukjae is. He takes a special interest in Hyukjae’s music collection, flips over his records and trying to read what he recognizes in English and Japanese.
“Do you want to see my vinyl player?” Hyukjae asks excitedly, his eyes lit up into the most ridiculous smile Donghae has ever seen. Hyukjae is a total geek and Donghae realizes, somewhere down the line, he might be able to fall a little in love with him.
“Wait,” Hyukjae stops, the record in his hands halfway to the turntable. “You have to study.”
No, I don’t. I got an A+ on my last test, Donghae almost says. He bites his tongue just in time. “I understand this material a lot better than the first stuff. I don’t need to study right now.” The excuse is good enough for Hyukjae.
Hyukjae’s bed is soft like the skin on the inside of Hyukjae’s elbows. The acoustics in his room are perfect for the first chords, Donghae doesn’t really listen to the lyrics until his favorite part comes up, the only one that makes sense to Donghae. He listens to Hyukjae sing along that The highway's jammed with broken heroes on a last chance power drive. Everybody's out on the run tonight but there's no place left to hide and on the ceiling, white and nude, Donghae paints Hyukjae dancing along to every word.
*
“I prefer running at night,” Hyukjae says, stretching at the waist. He is silver in the moonlight and his shoe prints are invisible against the red clay of the track. They had their third meet yesterday. They should be resting not getting ready to run four miles in the dark.
Donghae ties his shoelaces securely, double knots them to avoid having to run with them flapping in the wind. Autumn nights are cold, they chill Donghae’s back and make him always look over his shoulder for shadows and whatever is hiding in the dark. Donghae prefers seeing his sneakers in the dirt during summer.
He says nothing and lets Hyukjae think he likes running at night too.
“Tired?” Donghae teases when they’re halfway through the fourth mile, smiling at the way Hyukjae huffs a breath, pushes himself just that bit more. To not lose to Donghae. (For Donghae, he thinks for a millisecond before he pushes the thought away.)
They finish the fifth mile side by side, speeding up until the finish line where they lose all their energy, feet skidding to stay upright. After the cool down, Hyukjae pulls out two water bottles from his bag and hands Donghae one. Donghae makes their fingers brush so lightly it almost looks like an accident.
“How many do you think are up there?”
“Stars?” Hyukjae asks, a wonder in his voice that makes Donghae sit up and look at him. He’s straddling the bench they are sitting on and his knees would brush Hyukjae’s skin where his shorts end if Donghae weren’t wearing track pants. Hyukjae tilts his head up towards the sky. “Billions. Probably more. We barely know how big the universe is and-“
Smiling, Donghae covers Hyukjae’s mouth with his hand. “That was a rhetorical question, Hyukjae.”
Hyukjae’s eyes flicker from Donghae’s hand to his eyes. Donghae doesn’t get the chance to pull it away, Hyukjae already lowering it in his grasping hand. “I know,” he says with a grin.
Donghae really, really, wants to pull his hand away, the heat from Hyukjae’s suffocating him but Hyukjae keeps him pinned in place with his stare. Donghae’s heart hammers in his chest so harshly it hurts because he feels it right before it happens but it catches him so off guard the only reason he’s still upright is Hyukjae’s hold on his hand.
The breath Hyukjae inhales is so small, the inch he moves is so miniscule, Donghae hadn’t even noticed they were sitting this close to begin with. Hyukjae’s eyes flicker again, this time from Donghae’s eyes to his mouth and this is not how it was supposed to happen. Donghae was supposed to be an idiot and blurt out that Hyukjae had had a boyfriend, that Hyukjae was gay and Donghae knew and then he’d kiss Hyukjae and Hyukjae would punch Donghae square in the jaw.
Hyukjae is not supposed to bite his lip slightly, an asking in his eyes that makes Donghae’s stomach lurch forward with such intensity it almost throws him off balance. Hyukjae isn’t supposed to want to kiss Donghae.
Cutting the distance is easier than it looks and when their lips press together, teeth clicking a little but not enough to hurt just enough to make this real, Donghae can’t think of anything Hyukjae should be doing other than kissing him right now.
In the real world, the kiss lasted mere seconds.
In Donghae’s, it never ended.
Hyukjae pushes against his mouth more intently for a moment in a sudden impulse to maybe deepen it, but then his lips slide off Donghae’s, land on his cheek where they press quietly. Donghae thinks he feels a smile but he’s too overwhelmed by his heart trying to beat out of his chest to notice.
“Night,” Hyukjae says against his skin, his voice tight and muted. He doesn’t look at Donghae as he gets off the bench.
Donghae watches him walk away trying to get his feet to listen and follow him. At the moment, Donghae can’t even feel his legs.
Right before Hyukjae disappears at the corner of the bleachers, he looks over his shoulder. He is smiling.
Donghae falls back on the bench. He can’t see himself but he knows he is wearing the stupidest smile in existence. Nothing can wipe it off. Not the cold. Not his father’s outraged call of why Donghae is out until midnight on a school night. Nothing.
These are the truths Donghae has attested to in the last five minutes:
Running at night isn’t so scary if you have someone else with you. There is a little bit of grey in Hyukjae’s eyes. That thing they say about your heart pounding in your ears, your blood rushing till it deafens and blocks out the world; that every time you kiss someone new, it feels like the first all over again.
*
Donghae doesn’t fall off cloud nine until the next day.
He’s getting his books for his first class, a smile he can’t keep off his face, when it finally sinks in.
He kissed Hyukjae.
Donghae.
Kissed.
Hyukjae.
Gripping his Chemistry book in his hand, a sort of dread finds home in the pit of his stomach. What if Donghae only imagined Hyukjae wanted to kiss him? What if that smile wasn’t a real smile? What if everything was just in Donghae’s head?”
Ignoring the freshman asking Donghae if he’s okay and needs the school psychologist, Donghae bangs his head against his locker until the bell rings.
*
Donghae goes through this series of thoughts throughout the morning class period:
Of course Hyukjae wanted to kiss me. I’m Donghae. I’m awesome. Wait. What if Hyukjae doesn’t think I’m awesome? Then he’s crazy. I’m Donghae. I am awesome.
After concluding his awesome is not the problem they divert into:
Maybe my breath stunk. Maybe I accidentally bit his lip. I don’t remember doing that. But maybe I did. Did he smile after he said goodnight or before? After? Man, what time was it? What time is it now? I’m hungry.
In the end, Donghae can’t give himself the answers.
*
“What are you doing here?”
“I didn’t do anything,” Donghae spits out, gripping the edge of the lunch table with such force he almost dents the plastic.
Yesung chews slowly, taking his plastic knife and keeping it as far away from Donghae as possible. “Okay. What I meant was, why are you here and not in the weight room?”
Donghae frowns.
“Hyukjae said you two were going to work on weight training today since you skipped it earlier this week because of the meet.”
Relaxing, Donghae unclenches the table. “I forgot you two take English together.”
“Weird how I never noticed him until he joined team. Especially since he sits right next to me.” Yesung shrugs and points toward the door. “You’re fifteen minutes late. Go.”
When Donghae doesn’t move, it’s Yesung’s turn to frown. “I thought you’d be out of your pants to spend time with him in a gym. He’s all sweaty and hot and bothered and you get to touch him-“
Donghae bolts from the cafeteria so fast he knocks over the bin with dirty trays. All the lunch ladies curse his existence.
Yesung smirks and goes back to his sandwich.
*
The walk to the weight room is the shortest of his life but when he gets there he just stands by the door, his feet itching to move inside.
Hyukjae stands at the far side of the room, watching himself in the mirror. His arms flex with each lift and bend of the dumbbells in his hands. Donghae never thought veins were particularly attractive but the way Hyukjae’s protrude from his skin, Hyukjae’s strength and vitality on display, does things to the pit of Donghae’s stomach and lower.
“Hey you.”
Startled, Donghae realizes Hyukjae has noticed him. He’s smiling at him. Donghae finally walks in the room.
“Sorry I’m late,” he says lamely.
Hyukjae does one last arm flex and sets the dumbbells down. “It’s okay. Did you eat?”
“No,” Donghae answers. What he really wants to do is ask, is it really okay?
Hyukjae doesn’t give him the chance. He wipes the sweat off his forehead and asks Donghae to spot him and Donghae complies like an automat, kneeling and holding Hyukjae’s ankles while Hyukjae lies back and works his abs. Usually, Donghae reminds Hyukjae not to strain his neck, to tense his stomach and stare at a focus point. Donghae’s tongue is lead in his throat and he doesn’t say a word today and it’s not because Hyukjae does all of those things now without the reminder.
“Are you okay?” Hyukjae sits up, his chest brushing his knees and placing his hands over Donghae’s.
Donghae tries to clear his throat but it comes out like an almost desperate groan because Donghae can’t take this. He can’t take not knowing that Hyukjae wanted to kiss him too.
“I,” Donghae starts but his tongue stays stuck to the bottom of his mouth. He shifts his position on his knees, grip intensifying on Hyukjae’s ankles and he looks at Hyukjae with what he knows is desperation and Donghae does not care. Somehow he has to get answers.
Donghae doesn’t have to wait long and this time he remembers everything. Hyukjae blinks once right before his eyes narrow, close in on Donghae and he pushes himself that last bit so their noses touch. He angles his face, grunting lowly and he kisses Donghae.
Hyukjae.
Kisses.
Donghae.
The kiss is exactly the same and completely different than last night’s. It still feels like the first one, Donghae hears so many heartbeats drumming away he swears he’s about to go deaf. But if last night felt like a cooling chill, something sweet and soothing, today, Donghae melts in Hyukjae’s mouth. He slides his hands up Hyukjae’s legs, digs his fingers into the muscles of his calves and entices Hyukjae to lean back just a bit. Hyukjae does, threading his hands through Donghae’s hair as they kiss and he is all warmth.
Hyukjae is summer in autumn and as he places his hands on either side of Hyukjae for some sort of leverage before he falls into Hyukjae’s mouth and can’t climb out, Donghae would like to stay at the beach year round.
*
donghae/eunhyuk
high school au
pg-13
8244 words
These are the paths we follow, these are the paths we create. Most of us have our fates set from the moment our feet brush the road. Donghae thinks he has to be the first to cross the finishing line; Hyukjae knows he has the race won from the start. It's not about the race at all. It's about the run.
tracks that lead us
They start over on a Saturday.
It’s nearing the end of September and the temperature is just starting to dip, cooler winds blowing the leaves Donghae kicks up on his walk to school.
The sky is clear, beginnings of light spreading across blue and Donghae deems today their first real training session. The ones before don’t count, too many unclear motives and confusing feelings tangling the lines between them. Unclearness and confusion remains, palpable between that night and today and yet. Today is a blank slate for them, a back to point a if you will. Possibly the arrival at it but either way Donghae wants to see if he can run with Hyukjae in the daylight as easily as he could in the lack of light.
Hyukjae arrives before Donghae, not surprising taking into consideration Donghae had paused along the way to gather mountains of leaves only to jump and send them flying in the air, and he openly complains about it for five minutes while they stretch. Hyukjae’s toes point like a ballerina’s and Donghae teases him about it until it stops being funny.
When their hands are pressed to clay, chalk dusting their palms, the jokes and the complaining stop all together.
Hyukjae’s speed is deceiving, Donghae can see that clearly now. He doesn’t look like he’s running away from something but somewhere, his strides are steady and slow before his legs seem to turn on the power boost and he’s practically gliding across the track. His stamina needs a little work but a couple of hours a week at the gym will fix that; if his arms are stronger he’ll have better control, if his legs are more powerful he could handle longer distances without having to push himself or rely on just his speed.
It’s surreal. They go round and round, horizontal lines marking the meters they cover and claim beneath their feet, and all the while Donghae is in a constant yes but no, heart banging against his ribcage each time Hyukjae gains or loses speeds. Relief mixes with disappointment because he’s seen what Hyukjae has in him, not all that different from Donghae with one minor detail. Nature’s grace. Donghae could train for a thousand years, burn his skin under a million suns, and Hyukjae would always be just that bit faster than him. Milliseconds. Milliseconds and they mean everything and set apart the greats from the best. If he closes his eyes he sees Hyukjae blazing past him even faster than he can already. Donghae tells himself to suck it up and make his roots proud by helping train one of the possible best.
“Keep your hips straight. Parallel with your toes. Parallel. I thought you were supposed to be a math genius or whatever. Do you not understand parallel? It means aligned side by side.”
Hyukjae wipes the sweat off his forehead with the back of his palm and grunts something delightful under his breath.
Donghae wants to debone Hyukjae’s body and give him a new skeleton. Maybe that will help.
“Okay.” Donghae sighs deciding manual labor might be the only scientifically possible way to do this. He stands behind Hyukjae, turns and jostles him until Hyukjae’s back forms a straight line. It takes a couple of kicks and slides for Hyukjae’s feet to get the message and when Donghae deems Hyukjae in the right position with his elbows lined with but not tucked into his body, he places his right hand on Hyukjae’s stomach, his left on Hyukjae’s lower back.
“Walk,” he instructs.
“Like this?” Hyukjae questions skeptically.
“Just move it, Hyukjae.”
Hyukjae does. They make it halfway to the hundred meter line before Hyukjae stops. Donghae’s hands are hot and damp with Hyukjae’s body heat and sweat. He’d dry them off on Hyukjae’s shirt but it would be rather pointless.
“Uhmm. I don’t really see how this is helping.”
Donghae sighs. His breath exhales over Hyukjae’s nape and he feels Hyukjae shiver beneath his hands. The same effect of stepping into an air conditioned room after being in the sun all day Donghae tells himself. His palms feel electric against Hyukjae anyways.
“I want you do something for me,” Donghae stars, trying to paint the visual in his mind into words. “Picture yourself on a track with a bunch of hills. Each time you go up a hill you see the finish line. You always know it’s there but when you’re at the bottom of a hill it’s hidden from you. But,” Donghae pauses, his hand on Hyukjae’s stomach rising to grab his chin so Hyukjae looks straight forward, “if you keep your head up and your body straight, you’ll never forget it’s there no matter how far the distance is.”
Donghae steps back, his hands lingering for a few moments before falling away. Hyukjae nods slowly and Donghae sees his words almost literally sinking into Hyukjae’s bones and the cat’s out of the bag. His motivational tactic, the thing that keeps him running when his legs are about to give out on him and his lungs are about to implode, and he gave it away for free. Didn’t think twice about it. He waits for the realization to sink in waiting for that sense of dread or wanting to take back even though life doesn’t offer do overs. It never comes. Donghae is just left standing, both feet rooted in place held on a pause. There is a fire in Hyukjae’s eyes now and Donghae thinks, with something akin to pride, he’ll go down in history as the one who took one of the greats and stretched and spun him into the best.
“Ready to try it again?” Donghae asks, hands back in their original position and Hyukjae’s body is even warmer now.
Hyukjae may not need that new skeleton after all.
*
“Can I ask you a question?”
It’s become a bit of a habit. Skip extra hours of running and sweating, chalk dusted off their hands on the edges of their t-shirts, in favor of heading to the park for melted ice cream trailing between their fingers. Donghae finds he likes Hyukjae with a strawberry stained mouth and wind tussled hair a little more than usual.
“Shoot.” Donghae bites into his ice cream bar and frowns when his teeth crack into the chocolate coating and half of it drops on the grass at his feet.
“Why is winning so important to you?”
Donghae diverts his gaze from his lost to chocolate to give Hyukjae a blank stare. “You do know that’s a stupid question, right?”
“Yes,” Hyukjae concedes; despite the purse of his lips he pushes on. “I’m still going to wait for an answer anyways.”
“It’s not just about winning. It’s about being the best.” Tugging on the end’s of his hair, Donghae searches for the right words. He could brush the question off, twist the conversation in his favor but there’d be no point. Hyukjae is already a little under his skin and keeping up pretenses isn’t really Donghae thing.
So. Winning. It is more than about winning. But being the best? Donghae knows the male ego is involved in there somewhere but he also knows he doesn’t have to explain that to Hyukjae. Hyukjae’s slight nod and the fact that Donghae has seen Hyukjae naked on occasion tells Donghae Hyukjae knows plenty about the male ego for himself. “I guess you could say I’m used to being the best and I’m not used to not being the best.”
A tough lesson to learn. (Donghae knew he’d learn it someday. He would have rather it’d been later than sooner.)
“And you’re saying I’m the best?”
Donghae rolls his eyes at Hyukjae’s apprehensive eyes. He wonders if it’s an act. A part of him wants to get pissed off. He’s so full of ice cream he can’t really stomach the effort. “Yeah well. Don’t go and get a big head about it.”
“No. It’s just.” Hyukjae seems to struggle with the words, voice faltering and eyes wandering about the park. His ice cream is completely melted by now, a sea of strawberry in his plastic cup. He looks back at Donghae, frustration knotting his eyebrows. Donghae is a bit taken a back. “So I’m a little faster than you? That doesn’t make me better. You said it yourself. My posture sucks. I can’t run long distances. I- What are you doing?”
Donghae tries to fight his smile at Hyukjae’s stilled form. He leans in anyways and wipes away a strawberry stain off Hyukjae’s chin. Yesung has dubbed Donghae the personal bubble invader. It’s about time he popped Hyukjae’s.
He looks up at Hyukjae and lets himself smile. “You have ice cream all over your face.”
“Oh shit,” Hyukjae says and starts wiping his face. Donghae grins, smug and right in Hyukjae’s face. “Well, you’ve got cherry stuck between your teeth.”
Donghae’s laughter dies, abrupt. They stare at one another, Donghae tight lipped as he tries picking out the cherry with his tongue and Hyukjae rubbing at his cheek. And then Donghae laughs. He laughs, long and hard, because here they are, discussing things they’ll never find answers to somehow trying to understand one another, and all along they’ve been making fools of themselves while the other kids in the playground have started to stare at the two big kids covered in ice cream.
“What are you laughing at?” Hyukjae asks even though he’s started to laugh too.
Drying fake tears, Donghae throws his head back realizing he dropped the rest of his ice cream at some point. “You. Me.”
“As long as you’re laughing at yourself too.”
When they leave the park, both composed and slightly cleaner, Hyukjae smiles. “So you admit it.”
“What?”
“You think I’m a good runner.”
Hyukjae’s smile is all gums and smugness; his statement arrogant. There is, however, a bit of a question lingering in his voice, in his eyes, and Donghae only halfheartedly trips him as they cross the park gates. “I liked you better when you were self doubting and dirty.”
Strawberry still decorates the corners of Hyukjae’s mouth and his smile loses all and any questions.
*
“Let’s run off track today,” Hyukjae suggests on their sixth day of training together. It’s a national holiday and the school is deserted. Every sane highschooler is sleeping in until noon.
Donghae isn’t sure if Hyukjae is ready for the run Hyukjae’s legs outline, if he handle the speed, the pace, the outcome, but he lets Hyukjae make that decision.
“Don’t focus on speed,” Donghae tells him as they stand at the beginning of the back road by the highway. The childish part of him knows it’s because he doesn’t want to take the chance to have Hyukjae fly by him. The mature part of him knows it’s because Hyukjae has to work on running at a constant pace for longer. They both battle within him but they have the same goal. “You’re fast. We get it. But you need to be able to run for long periods of time and I’ve seen you lag after you pass the two mile mark and that’s no good. Speed isn’t everything,” he finishes with and he knows that last bit wasn’t just for Hyukjae.
Donghae isn’t used to running with someone away from the race track. Practice and running a few laps with Yesung doesn’t count and challenging himself to match his footprints with Hyukjae is a new discovery, each meter they cover finds Donghae embracing the challenge, the push. The harmony of someone’s breathing creating a symphony battling his own.
Running is the time when Donghae allows himself to lose his mind fully and wholeheartedly. Donghae goes and goes, he doesn’t feel his body, doesn’t feel the burn in every muscle. Everything narrows down to the road. The road and Donghae.
Not today.
Today, everything narrows down to Hyukjae.
Hyukjae’s breathing. The sound of his sneakers hitting the pavement. Hyukjae’s elbows and fists blinking in and out of Donghae’s peripheral vision every few seconds.
They are three quarters of a mile in when Donghae notices this isn’t a race. He isn’t trying to blaze past Hyukjae. Hyukjae seems too preoccupied with keeping his body in check, making sure he isn’t leaning forward or resting his weight on his toes or heels, to leave Donghae in the dust. If there were a line moving each time they did, it wouldn’t be crooked or slouched. It would go straight as it glided at inches from the tips of their feet.
Loose gravel wedges in the rifts of his sneakers. His lungs expand and contract inside his chest and the air feels lush and heavy. Maybe his heart rate is a little fast, maybe it’s about to fall out of his chest and topple onto the road but all Donghae can feel is calm at the high of running with someone else and realizing he doesn’t have to push himself. He doesn’t push at all.
All Donghae does is run.
When they stop Donghae throws himself onto the pavement, Hyukjae doubled over and trying to catch his breath, every muscle and bone in Donghae’s body screams.
He’s never felt quite so weightless.
*
“So, you’re friends now?”
“Sort of?”
“I ask because I need to keep up with who we’re hating.”
“Uhh. I’m sitting right here.”
Donghae and Yesung turn to look at Hyukjae, a small frown on his face and the game controller in his lap.
They’re sitting in Donghae’s living room, a plate of freshly baked cookies Donghae’s mother made now empty on the coffee table littered with empty soda bottles and every Super Mario Bros. and Grand Theft Auto game ever made. The classic boys’ initiation ritual meaning hey, you’re cool enough to hang with us as we shit around and don’t do our homework. Donghae wonders how girls do this. When girls are nine, it’s probably allowing another girl to touch your favorite doll. At sixteen, Donghae figures they probably go shopping together and help each other pick out bras. Once you get underneath a girl’s bra, you’re in.
Hyukjae drives virtual cars almost as badly as Donghae does real ones. Yesung’s Luigi never makes it past the haunted house and Donghae always loses Yoshi.
“I think it’s time to call it a night,” Hyukjae says around eight. Yesung is passed out, his forehead pushing the coffee table forward. Hyukjae grabs the empty plate before it falls.
“Homework?” Donghae asks, his face disgusted at the thought.
Swinging his bag over one of his shoulders, Hyukjae shakes his head laughing at Donghae’s expression. “No. It’s time for my nightly run.”
Donghae gets up from the couch, stretches his legs out and he can already feel his soles ache in hunger for the pavement.
“Do you-“ Hyukjae stops, scratches his head like the right words will fall from his hair to his mouth. Donghae has to bite back a grin. “Do you want to come with me? I usually run alone at night but I’d like the company tonight.”
Since the eighth grade, Donghae has run at nine o’clock, three hours after the sun goes down in winter and one in the summer.
“Sure.”
A smile starts spreading on Hyukjae’s face but then he seems to remember Yesung. His snores are kind of hard to ignore. “Wait. What about Yesung?”
Donghae slips into his sneakers by the door and grabs the sweater he keeps on the coat rack. “My mom will make sure he doesn’t drive half asleep and give him my bed. He won’t be happy about sleeping on the floor but I’ll make sure to put a pillow down before I shove him off.”
Hyukjae’s laugh is the countdown of 1, 2, 3 as they make their way down the sidewalk, a slow build up of steps before they take off and touch the night sky with the bottoms of their feet.
*
Seven a.m. is the best time to use the school’s weight training room.
Five minutes past seven is the time when Hyukjae is probably wishing Donghae a slow painful death.
“Ten more reps.”
Lying on the bench press, Hyukjae’s arms wobble but he manages to try and burn a hole through Donghae’s skull. This time, Donghae just laughs down at Hyukjae. Getting Hyukjae to lift weights isn’t the issue, it’s getting him to understand why he has to do it. (I’ve seen scrawny kids run fast. Why are you so obsessed with my arms?) Hyukjae has never belonged to a track team before. His old school didn’t have a team. Says one day he just started running and he hasn’t been able to stop. (If you want to make sure you never do, Donghae tells him shoving Hyukjae towards the pull-down machine, you have to strengthen your body so it can work with your speed, not against it.) Donghae can tell Hyukjae still doesn’t get it but his complaints decrease considerably after that.
Math tutoring goes slightly different. Hyukjae talks in tangents and angles. He doesn’t use triangles and cosines as methods of torture; he draws out pictures Donghae can understand. The slope of a line is the ratio of the rise divided by the run between two points; if Donghae were to run up a hill, point a is the bottom, point b is the top, and the distance of the run up the hill is the slope.
“Wow. This crap actually makes sense,” Donghae smiles at his paper, no longer abstract concepts of sine and cosine and the hypotenuse that keeps them from falling off the triangle’s edge. He frowns at Hyukjae. “It’s kind of unfair you’re smart too.”
“I’m not really that smart,” Hyukjae says. He crushes the foil wrapper of the granola bar he just finished and tosses it in the nearby trashcan. He misses by at least a foot. Hyukjae sighs and taps his pencil against Donghae’s compass. “I’m good at math but I don’t do as well in my other classes. If it weren’t for math I’d be pretty dumb.”
Finishing off his water, Donghae caps it and shoots for the same trash can. It sails in with a whoosh. He turns towards Hyukjae in his chair, still frowning. “You do that a lot.”
“Do what?”
“Put yourself down.”
Hyukjae’s mouth falls open. His cheeks pale and Donghae almost wants to take his words back.
“Force of habit,” Hyukjae finally says. He rotates his desk chair, his arm rest knocks up against Donghae’s. His shoulders curve in, guarded. Self preservation, Donghae thinks and he guesses Hyukjae has never admitted his insecurities before. At least not out loud.
Donghae rolls his chair a bit and his left knee brushes Hyukjae’s right one.
Donghae isn’t sure but he thinks it makes Hyukjae smile.
“You do that a lot don’t you?”
“What?”
“Be honest.”
Donghae grins. Finally, someone who sees it as honesty and not him being a douche. “I can’t help it.” The wheels on Hyukjae’s chair swivel. Donghae is sure their knees are brushing and Hyukjae smiles for real this time. “It’s a force of habit.”
*
Progress is a steep drive up hill. Acceptance is a hard pill to swallow, but once you do, it’s over and done with and you can finally breathe.
The more Donghae runs with Hyukjae, the easier it is to breathe around him, with him.
Hyukjae is easy like that. He is that kid Donghae usually wants to dismiss, not give a second glance to but once he does, once he really looks, it’s uncovering a secret not a lot of people see. In the face of digging his nails into something he can’t change and letting go, Donghae chooses the later. He builds a bridge, and quite literally, jumps over it.
“Ouch! There’s a person attached to those legs you just trampled over in case you didn’t notice.”
Ignoring Hyukjae’s complaints, Donghae proceeds to plop down next to him on the bench, the towel tossed across his neck whipping Hyukjae in the face. The locker room is crowded but there’s enough space so Donghae doesn’t have to press up to Hyukjae with his wet knees. Donghae just likes the faces Hyukjae’s makes when he pretends to be annoyed at him, eyebrow arched but repressed smiles in the corners of his wrinkled eyes.
“Toughen up, Hyukjae. I expect you here tomorrow at seven sharp.”
“What? Why? Coach told us to take it easy this weekend,” Hyukjae points out, jabbing Donghae sharply in the chest.
Pouting, Donghae rubs the offended spot. Hyukjae is all bones mostly, if this friendship is going to work out Donghae is going to need Hyukjae insurance. “Not you. We still have work to do.” He wags his finger for emphases and Hyukjae snorts a laugh, followed by Donghae’s own and their chuckles rise above the locker room chatter and rings.
“Mhmmmm.”
Yesung clears his throat obnoxiously loud enough to be heard over the ringing of their laughter, leaning against a row of lockers and watching them with furrowed brows. “I know you two are getting along now or whatever but you’re creeping me out right now. Knock it off.”
“Awww. Is someone jealous I’m not paying attention to them?”
“Eww. No. Hyukjae can have you.”
“Who says I want him?”
Yesung bursts out laughing but Donghae turns to Hyukjae, eyes trained on his careful grin.
He decides to indulge in teasing Hyukjae because Hyukjae did set himself up for it. “Do you?” he asks with a sharp smile, pushing Hyukjae’s buttons because it’s all a joke, no big deal, and everyone wants Donghae. Don’t they?
Hyukjae’s mouth twists for a second as if he’s taken a back by either Donghae’s proximity or his words, the dark walls of the locker room making the lights dim and close in around his face. When his smile finally comes out it is tight, shoulders straight as he sits up, eyes averted. It takes Donghae back to that first day, Hyukjae running careless and free except for his elbows tucked into his chest, and one word: self preservation.
It turns out Hyukjae is as quick on his tongue as he is on his feet and he recovers quickly, sharing a mocking smile with Yesung. “Who wouldn’t want you, Donghae?”
By now Yesung is howling. Donghae frowns because okay, it’s funny but not that much. No one notices Donghae going strangely quiet after that, drowning in the wheeze inducing laughter and the last of the showers being turned off and one of the freshmen getting pulled out of his stall and forced to shuffle in nothing except his towel. Who wouldn’t want Donghae? Hyukjae laughs louder than anyone and Donghae thinks, that is a very good question.
*
Their first official track meet is on a Friday.
Donghae wakes up that morning and runs an eight minute mile in six minutes and twenty-nine seconds.
They’re going to win.
He can feel it in his bones. He tells Hyukjae as much during the pre-match pep talk the coach gives them during last period. Yesung nods his agreement. You can always trust Donghae’s bones. Hyukjae looks at them like they are crazy but he smiles. Another sign.
It’s a home meet and the bleachers are full with their classmates and the usual. Donghae ignores them. His victory won’t be for them.
During the first relay, Hyukjae grows restless. He balances on the balls of his feet, crushes his half empty water bottle and gets one of the seniors all wet. Donghae pulls him away from the bench toward the row of vending machines by the bathrooms on the other side of the bleachers to save him from murder.
“Hey. Relax okay?” Donghae grins unknowingly. He tries to keep his voice as soothing as possible. Hyukjae is the spinning image of Donghae before his first big race in the seventh grade. He didn’t have someone to tell him everything was going to be okay so he wants to be that someone for somebody else. “Remember.” Donghae guides Hyukjae to turn around, his hands keeping him straight at the back and abdomen. “Chin high. Don’t lean forward. And the finish line is always ahead of you.”
He swears he feels Hyukjae relax in his hold, all the tension expelling in a wistful sigh. “Thanks,” Hyukjae says with a smile when he turns around.
“Don’t think about the race. Just run.”
“You too,” Hyukjae shoots back and for once, Donghae takes someone else’s advice.
Hyukjae wins first place of the 1500 meters race.
Donghae lines up for the mile race and when the whistle goes off, he just runs.
The medal feels good around his neck, but seeing the six minute twenty eight seconds on the coach’s stats board feels even better.
*
“Thanks for the ride.”
“No problem. It’s on the way.”
“It is? I thought you lived on the other side of school.”
“Yeah. Well. The town is small. Everything is on the way.”
Hyukjae’s car is smaller than Yesung’s, the poor illumination of the streetlights filter in through the windows and paint his cheeks orange. Donghae laughs. Hyukjae is kind of weird but it’s a good kind of weird. He’s real. Donghae doesn’t know a lot of people who are just themselves.
“You were amazing today,” Hyukjae says quickly. So abrupt, Donghae is a hundred percent certain he was embarrassed. “Though you did rest your weight on your toes a bit toward the end.”
“Well looks who’s finally learned something about posture.”
“Had to happen sometime.”
By the time Donghae goes inside his house, Hyukjae’s tank is almost empty from running for so long, Donghae’s older brother hollering that the sound of the cat dying Hyukjae’s car makes doesn’t let him sleep. All Donghae can do is smile and bask if the warm glow of orange street lights.
*
“You were right. This is way better than spending lunch in the cafeteria.”
“I beg to differ.”
“Oh, Yesung. You’re still here?”
“Ha. Fuck you.”
“Thanks but no thanks. I don’t think I’d like my own fingers up my ass.”
“…”
“Are you offering to do it instead?”
“You’d like that, wouldn’t you?”
“Nah. Your fingers are kind of stubby. I don’t think they’d reach very far. Is this your subtle way of telling me you’d like me to do it to you?”
Hyukjae has adapted so quickly to their oddness he doesn’t even spare them a glance, finishes the last lap with comfortable strides and sits down to stretch. By the time Donghae and Yesung reach him, Yesung with Donghae in a headlock and Donghae trying to pull down Yesung’s pants, he’s cooled off and eating a banana to keep his energy up.
Yesung stops giving Donghae a noogie and Donghae looks up from Yesung’s stomach. “Now here’s a sex joke waiting to happen.”
Hyukjae promptly flips him off.
Laughing, Donghae throws himself down next to Hyukjae. He’s perpendicular with the finish line and parallel to Hyukjae. The sun at noon is so hot it’s almost freezing, Hyukjae provides shade but Donghae lifts his arms and tries to grab its ray in his hands anyways.
“What are you doing?” Hyukjae asks, peering down at him. He looks at Donghae strangely but he smiles and the pieces of sun in Donghae’s fists get caught in Hyukjae’s eyes.
Shaking head, Donghae shifts and rests his head in Hyukjae’s lap. Hyukjae’s shorts have run halfway up his thighs, a nice balance of soft skin and worked muscle pillowing Donghae’s head. “Taking a nap.”
“Oh yeah, Hyukjae.” Yesung, and this time Donghae did honestly forget he was still here, sits next to them and takes the banana Hyukjae silently offers him. “Be warned. Donghae is clingy. I wouldn’t give him too much confidence if I were you.”
Leaning on his palms, Hyukjae’s body shifts and his stomach presses against Donghae’s head lightly. “I don’t mind.”
They jogged six laps around the track. Donghae’s heart rate won’t come down. It seems to go even faster now.
Yesung rolls his eyes. “You’ve been warned,” he sing says.
Donghae would kick him if he weren’t so comfortable.
“Okay. Get up. I have a test in ten minutes.”
“Can’t it wait?”
“Told you.”
Hyukjae sees an opening, Donghae getting up to attack Yesung, and runs for it. With his pillow gone Donghae doesn’t see the point in taking a nap and decides they should go to class too.
“Shit,” Donghae curses when they’re walking towards the main building and half his things spill out his half open backpack. Yesung helps him until something seems to catch his eye, paper clutched in his hand.
“Looks like the math tutoring is helping.”
“Mhhhm,” Donghae agrees, zipping his bag closed.
“Wait.” Yesung frowns. “Didn’t Hyukjae start tutoring you a month ago?”
“Yeah. So?” Donghae asks, not getting it until Yesung shows him the test and he sees the date. Eyes widening, Donghae rips the test from Yesung’s hands.
“Oh.”
“What oh?”
“Oh. Ohhhh.”
Fed up, Donghae grabs him by the collar of his t-shirt. “Yesung, I swear-“
Yesung just laughs, eyes wild with mockery. “This is Kim Hyoyeon all over again, isn’t it? Back in eighth grade you asked her to teach you salsa dancing for that report you had to do on Latin American history even though you’ve been taking salsa since you were nine and you were better than her.” Smiling, Yesung raises his eyebrows. “You like him, don’t you?”
Abruptly, Donghae lets him go and steps back. His face feels unbearably hot. “That’s not. I don’t.”
“Donghae, it’s okay,” Yesung reminds him, goes to grab Donghae’s shoulder.
Donghae shrugs him off. “I don’t like him that way. Not him. I couldn’t just help him for free, okay? That’s the only reason.” He balls the test up and stuffs it in his pocket before walking off.
“Wait! Donghae! Come on,” he hears Yesung call after him, concern and worry layering his voice but Donghae doesn’t hear him. He’s walking but in Donghae’s mind, he’s ran so far down the path, Yesung is nothing but the blurry start of point a. Donghae can’t see what point b is and he doesn’t want to.
*
For the first time in his life, running is not Donghae’s solace. It’s a reminder. Running makes him think about Hyukjae and right now, Donghae doesn’t want to think about him.
He withers the afternoon away on his bed staring at his ceiling. He looks past the posters taped up on his ceiling, sees the shadow of the sky his father hand painted there years ago, bits of clouds and stars peaking out in between Usain Bolts’s ankles and Keisuke Honda’s power strike that Maria Sharapova back hands out of the stratosphere to land swiftly at Christina Yamaguchi’s feet.
Donghae wonders if one day, some kid will have his poster taped up to his ceiling and he’ll be someone’s inspiration for tomorrow’s big race. Or maybe Hyukjae’s.
Donghae scoffs. Hyukjae. It’s as if he’s the center of the universe or something and Donghae’s own conscious betrays him.
Yesung’s words are still fresh in his mind, the way he’d tiptoed around it at the end but that’s not the issue here. Donghae knows he is attracted to boys. (Boys too, the stubborn part of him says. Donghae still wakes up with wet sheets some mornings and he’d been thinking about soft breasts in his dreams.) Yesung knows. He doesn’t care.
The problem is that the boy is Hyukjae.
It can’t be Hyukjae.
*
It is Hyukjae.
It makes no sense in the world at the same time it makes the most perfect sense in the scope of the universe.
It’s the way Hyukjae runs. It’s the way he smiles. Closing his eyes, all of his inspirations staring down at him with the kind of fire in their eyes that chills Donghae to his bones, Donghae admits it quietly to himself. In the middle of the darkness, Hyukjae’s eyes are light beneath Donghae’s eyelids.
Hyukjae, in the simplest of terms, is the slope to point b.
*
Yesung picks up after three rings.
“I think I like him.” Donghae sighs into the phone because he has to admit it to Yesung too. “No, that was a lie. I know I do.”
“Took you less time than I calculated. I was expecting your call at eight. It’s seven twenty. You’re interrupting Glee.”
“What do I do Yesung?” Donghae asks quietly, his heart still hammering in his chest. It hasn’t stopped once since lunch.
Yesung thinks it over. “Well. Do you want to be the guy or the girl in the relationship?”
Donghae hangs up.
*
It all seems so different now.
He helps Hyukjae with his arm placement during their training sessions and his hand burns at the contact of their skin. Hyukjae wastes thirty minutes explaining cotangent lines when Donghae can figure them out by just looking at their graph; Donghae spends twenty-nine minutes and forty one seconds staring at the way Hyukjae’s mouth moves. Every smile, every word has a different meaning, an ulterior motive.
Hyukjae has no idea. He doesn’t even know what Donghae is thinking and it makes Donghae sick with guilt but he doesn’t stop.
*
“He’s gay.”
“How do you possibly know that?’ Donghae asks around a mouthful of hamburger. His last fast food meal was two weeks ago. Donghae is allowed to indulge.
“I don’t know. I knew you were gay. I must have an awesome gaydar.”
“I’m not gay. I’m bi. And when I told you I thought I liked that lifeguard during summer camp you screeched, fell off your bike, and scraped your knee.”
“Yeah. But after that I thought about it and it made perfect sense.” Dabbing a fistful of onion rings in some barbeque sauce, Yesung takes a sip of coke. His eyes are squinting and his brow is knotted like Donghae’s sneakers after his mom tosses them in the washer. “I don’t know why I know. I just do. He’s gay.”
*
It turns out, Yesung does know why.
“Remember Lee Sungmin?” Yesung whispers during study hall, failing at being discreet.
“The freak with the pink hair?”
“The very one. I ran into him and I remembered he goes to private school in the town over. I asked a bit and it turns out he knows Hyukjae.”
Donghae stops doodling in his notebook, eyes piqued with interest.
Yesung smiles. “Turns out our Hyukjae used to date Sungmin’s junior class president.”
“So?” Donghae asks bored, going back to his drawing.
“Sungmin goes to an all boys school.”
The tip of Donghae’s pencil breaks. Yesung waggles his eyebrows suggestively, loving the feeling of being right.
Donghae has to control the urge to wipe the stupid smile off Yesung’s face but deep down, he feels the tiniest sliver of something.
Hope.
*
“Race you!” Hyukjae yells as soon as Donghae shows up seven thirty on the dot that Saturday.
Donghae catches up to him in five seconds flat.
The sound of their sneakers hitting the pavement is music to Donghae’s ears. He feels completely relaxed around Hyukjae for the first time in days, nothing but the line his body forms and his breathing ebbing and flowing around his own. Setting the track on fire, they turn the ashes to sand, the field in the middle of the track becomes the ocean and their feet never touch the shoreline. Donghae’s sweat smells like sea foam, it runs like a wave down his temples and froths at his neck all the way to his toes. He takes an inhale of air on their tenth lap and Hyukjae smells exactly the same.
They stop after what feels like forever, their skin wrinkled by the spray of ocean water, sea kelp tangled in their fingers. Hyukjae asks if he wants to go sit on the bleachers after they stretch out. Donghae declines, stays where he is spread out in the last lane, right by the shoreline where it’s safe.
“You seem happy today,” Hyukjae comments. He douses his face in the last couple drops of his water, legs stretched out and toes pointed like a ballet dancer’s.
With a suddenness that almost startles him, Donghae wants to see Hyukjae dance.
What he says is, “I usually look depressed?”
“No. I don’t know. You just look different,” Hyukjae amends. His hair is drenched in sand and Donghae watches the way he absentmindedly runs his hands through it with careful fingers, cautious. Donghae wants to see Hyukjae lose that caution, rack his hands through his hair, lose himself to that abandon Donghae feels is trapped somewhere inside Hyukjae and dance across the shoreline and dare Donghae to get lost in the sea.
“I feel different today.”
The salt tastes bitter in his mouth now.
Hyukjae isn’t the slope to point b.
Hyukjae is point b and Donghae is going to have to reach it by himself.
*
Donghae has his Trigonometry midterm in a week. Hyukjae offers to help him study. Donghae doesn’t say no.
“Your house is nice,” Donghae observes cream colored walls and nice furnishes. Expensive, the back of Donghae’s mind thinks.
Hyukjae’s fridge is full when he opens it to offer Donghae a drink. Donghae is glad Hyukjae’s family doesn’t have to live on food stamps.
Hyukjae’s room is like Hyukjae. Clean. Organized. It looks plain at first glance, boring for the lesser kind, but taking a deeper look, there is color and life everywhere. Fingering the books on the shelves and gliding across the photo frames, Donghae takes in every bit, all these little things that unknowingly or not make up who Hyukjae is. He takes a special interest in Hyukjae’s music collection, flips over his records and trying to read what he recognizes in English and Japanese.
“Do you want to see my vinyl player?” Hyukjae asks excitedly, his eyes lit up into the most ridiculous smile Donghae has ever seen. Hyukjae is a total geek and Donghae realizes, somewhere down the line, he might be able to fall a little in love with him.
“Wait,” Hyukjae stops, the record in his hands halfway to the turntable. “You have to study.”
No, I don’t. I got an A+ on my last test, Donghae almost says. He bites his tongue just in time. “I understand this material a lot better than the first stuff. I don’t need to study right now.” The excuse is good enough for Hyukjae.
Hyukjae’s bed is soft like the skin on the inside of Hyukjae’s elbows. The acoustics in his room are perfect for the first chords, Donghae doesn’t really listen to the lyrics until his favorite part comes up, the only one that makes sense to Donghae. He listens to Hyukjae sing along that The highway's jammed with broken heroes on a last chance power drive. Everybody's out on the run tonight but there's no place left to hide and on the ceiling, white and nude, Donghae paints Hyukjae dancing along to every word.
*
“I prefer running at night,” Hyukjae says, stretching at the waist. He is silver in the moonlight and his shoe prints are invisible against the red clay of the track. They had their third meet yesterday. They should be resting not getting ready to run four miles in the dark.
Donghae ties his shoelaces securely, double knots them to avoid having to run with them flapping in the wind. Autumn nights are cold, they chill Donghae’s back and make him always look over his shoulder for shadows and whatever is hiding in the dark. Donghae prefers seeing his sneakers in the dirt during summer.
He says nothing and lets Hyukjae think he likes running at night too.
“Tired?” Donghae teases when they’re halfway through the fourth mile, smiling at the way Hyukjae huffs a breath, pushes himself just that bit more. To not lose to Donghae. (For Donghae, he thinks for a millisecond before he pushes the thought away.)
They finish the fifth mile side by side, speeding up until the finish line where they lose all their energy, feet skidding to stay upright. After the cool down, Hyukjae pulls out two water bottles from his bag and hands Donghae one. Donghae makes their fingers brush so lightly it almost looks like an accident.
“How many do you think are up there?”
“Stars?” Hyukjae asks, a wonder in his voice that makes Donghae sit up and look at him. He’s straddling the bench they are sitting on and his knees would brush Hyukjae’s skin where his shorts end if Donghae weren’t wearing track pants. Hyukjae tilts his head up towards the sky. “Billions. Probably more. We barely know how big the universe is and-“
Smiling, Donghae covers Hyukjae’s mouth with his hand. “That was a rhetorical question, Hyukjae.”
Hyukjae’s eyes flicker from Donghae’s hand to his eyes. Donghae doesn’t get the chance to pull it away, Hyukjae already lowering it in his grasping hand. “I know,” he says with a grin.
Donghae really, really, wants to pull his hand away, the heat from Hyukjae’s suffocating him but Hyukjae keeps him pinned in place with his stare. Donghae’s heart hammers in his chest so harshly it hurts because he feels it right before it happens but it catches him so off guard the only reason he’s still upright is Hyukjae’s hold on his hand.
The breath Hyukjae inhales is so small, the inch he moves is so miniscule, Donghae hadn’t even noticed they were sitting this close to begin with. Hyukjae’s eyes flicker again, this time from Donghae’s eyes to his mouth and this is not how it was supposed to happen. Donghae was supposed to be an idiot and blurt out that Hyukjae had had a boyfriend, that Hyukjae was gay and Donghae knew and then he’d kiss Hyukjae and Hyukjae would punch Donghae square in the jaw.
Hyukjae is not supposed to bite his lip slightly, an asking in his eyes that makes Donghae’s stomach lurch forward with such intensity it almost throws him off balance. Hyukjae isn’t supposed to want to kiss Donghae.
Cutting the distance is easier than it looks and when their lips press together, teeth clicking a little but not enough to hurt just enough to make this real, Donghae can’t think of anything Hyukjae should be doing other than kissing him right now.
In the real world, the kiss lasted mere seconds.
In Donghae’s, it never ended.
Hyukjae pushes against his mouth more intently for a moment in a sudden impulse to maybe deepen it, but then his lips slide off Donghae’s, land on his cheek where they press quietly. Donghae thinks he feels a smile but he’s too overwhelmed by his heart trying to beat out of his chest to notice.
“Night,” Hyukjae says against his skin, his voice tight and muted. He doesn’t look at Donghae as he gets off the bench.
Donghae watches him walk away trying to get his feet to listen and follow him. At the moment, Donghae can’t even feel his legs.
Right before Hyukjae disappears at the corner of the bleachers, he looks over his shoulder. He is smiling.
Donghae falls back on the bench. He can’t see himself but he knows he is wearing the stupidest smile in existence. Nothing can wipe it off. Not the cold. Not his father’s outraged call of why Donghae is out until midnight on a school night. Nothing.
These are the truths Donghae has attested to in the last five minutes:
Running at night isn’t so scary if you have someone else with you. There is a little bit of grey in Hyukjae’s eyes. That thing they say about your heart pounding in your ears, your blood rushing till it deafens and blocks out the world; that every time you kiss someone new, it feels like the first all over again.
*
Donghae doesn’t fall off cloud nine until the next day.
He’s getting his books for his first class, a smile he can’t keep off his face, when it finally sinks in.
He kissed Hyukjae.
Donghae.
Kissed.
Hyukjae.
Gripping his Chemistry book in his hand, a sort of dread finds home in the pit of his stomach. What if Donghae only imagined Hyukjae wanted to kiss him? What if that smile wasn’t a real smile? What if everything was just in Donghae’s head?”
Ignoring the freshman asking Donghae if he’s okay and needs the school psychologist, Donghae bangs his head against his locker until the bell rings.
*
Donghae goes through this series of thoughts throughout the morning class period:
Of course Hyukjae wanted to kiss me. I’m Donghae. I’m awesome. Wait. What if Hyukjae doesn’t think I’m awesome? Then he’s crazy. I’m Donghae. I am awesome.
After concluding his awesome is not the problem they divert into:
Maybe my breath stunk. Maybe I accidentally bit his lip. I don’t remember doing that. But maybe I did. Did he smile after he said goodnight or before? After? Man, what time was it? What time is it now? I’m hungry.
In the end, Donghae can’t give himself the answers.
*
“What are you doing here?”
“I didn’t do anything,” Donghae spits out, gripping the edge of the lunch table with such force he almost dents the plastic.
Yesung chews slowly, taking his plastic knife and keeping it as far away from Donghae as possible. “Okay. What I meant was, why are you here and not in the weight room?”
Donghae frowns.
“Hyukjae said you two were going to work on weight training today since you skipped it earlier this week because of the meet.”
Relaxing, Donghae unclenches the table. “I forgot you two take English together.”
“Weird how I never noticed him until he joined team. Especially since he sits right next to me.” Yesung shrugs and points toward the door. “You’re fifteen minutes late. Go.”
When Donghae doesn’t move, it’s Yesung’s turn to frown. “I thought you’d be out of your pants to spend time with him in a gym. He’s all sweaty and hot and bothered and you get to touch him-“
Donghae bolts from the cafeteria so fast he knocks over the bin with dirty trays. All the lunch ladies curse his existence.
Yesung smirks and goes back to his sandwich.
*
The walk to the weight room is the shortest of his life but when he gets there he just stands by the door, his feet itching to move inside.
Hyukjae stands at the far side of the room, watching himself in the mirror. His arms flex with each lift and bend of the dumbbells in his hands. Donghae never thought veins were particularly attractive but the way Hyukjae’s protrude from his skin, Hyukjae’s strength and vitality on display, does things to the pit of Donghae’s stomach and lower.
“Hey you.”
Startled, Donghae realizes Hyukjae has noticed him. He’s smiling at him. Donghae finally walks in the room.
“Sorry I’m late,” he says lamely.
Hyukjae does one last arm flex and sets the dumbbells down. “It’s okay. Did you eat?”
“No,” Donghae answers. What he really wants to do is ask, is it really okay?
Hyukjae doesn’t give him the chance. He wipes the sweat off his forehead and asks Donghae to spot him and Donghae complies like an automat, kneeling and holding Hyukjae’s ankles while Hyukjae lies back and works his abs. Usually, Donghae reminds Hyukjae not to strain his neck, to tense his stomach and stare at a focus point. Donghae’s tongue is lead in his throat and he doesn’t say a word today and it’s not because Hyukjae does all of those things now without the reminder.
“Are you okay?” Hyukjae sits up, his chest brushing his knees and placing his hands over Donghae’s.
Donghae tries to clear his throat but it comes out like an almost desperate groan because Donghae can’t take this. He can’t take not knowing that Hyukjae wanted to kiss him too.
“I,” Donghae starts but his tongue stays stuck to the bottom of his mouth. He shifts his position on his knees, grip intensifying on Hyukjae’s ankles and he looks at Hyukjae with what he knows is desperation and Donghae does not care. Somehow he has to get answers.
Donghae doesn’t have to wait long and this time he remembers everything. Hyukjae blinks once right before his eyes narrow, close in on Donghae and he pushes himself that last bit so their noses touch. He angles his face, grunting lowly and he kisses Donghae.
Hyukjae.
Kisses.
Donghae.
The kiss is exactly the same and completely different than last night’s. It still feels like the first one, Donghae hears so many heartbeats drumming away he swears he’s about to go deaf. But if last night felt like a cooling chill, something sweet and soothing, today, Donghae melts in Hyukjae’s mouth. He slides his hands up Hyukjae’s legs, digs his fingers into the muscles of his calves and entices Hyukjae to lean back just a bit. Hyukjae does, threading his hands through Donghae’s hair as they kiss and he is all warmth.
Hyukjae is summer in autumn and as he places his hands on either side of Hyukjae for some sort of leverage before he falls into Hyukjae’s mouth and can’t climb out, Donghae would like to stay at the beach year round.
*