Athena [Jinyoung/Sandeul]

[nephre]

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



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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Dongwoo laughed. “Why?”

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

“He’s older than you, you know.”

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

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

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

And that afternoon, Jinyoung kissed him on the cheek.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“I’m not even in choir.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Jinyoung shrugged. “Okay.”

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

“Neither do I.”

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

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

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

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

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

“Cool,” said the roommate.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“You were my tutor who ate strange-”

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

“Who?” Junghwan said.

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

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

“Yeah, that was before you left.”

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

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

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

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

Months passed, and Junghwan dropped out of college.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The phone call had a lot of pauses.

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

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

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

“Yes,” murmured Jinyoung.

Another pause. “Do you have a clue?”

“No,” said Jinyoung.

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

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

“Starting university again,” Junghwan answered.

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

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

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

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

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

“A university student,” Junghwan said.

“Right.”

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

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

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

The shuttle came, and neither of them got on.

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

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