Butterfly Kisses - KaiSoo
Title: Butterfly Kisses
Genre: Angst, romance
Pairing: Jongin/Kyungsoo (Kai/D.O)
Rating: pg-13
Length: Oneshot, 6,132 words
Warning: Minor and short explicit content, dissociation trigger, minor self harm?
Summary: Kyungsoo waits too long. Jongin has too many first encounters.
A/N: omg I’m sorry for writing this I swear it made sense in my head and it’s not in chronological order and it’s word vomit but at least I got it out of my head okay because I’ve been wanting to write this for a while. I like KaiSoo okay. *crawls back under rock* also it's called Butterfly Kisses because I had Butterfly by Rajaton on repeat basically the whole time I was writing it.
Love me, love me on the leaves
Before we say goodbye
Love me, kiss me with the breeze
You will be my lullaby
Tomorrow I'll die.
###
Don’t buy lunch (2016/7/15)! It’s in the fridge already!
And there is a lunch box in the fridge, serviette and chopsticks held onto the takeaway container by a rubber band, in a plastic bag with a drink. Jongin doesn’t remember writing the note, or making the food. But that’s nothing new by now, and it’s only a day until his appointment.
He takes the bag and it swings from his fingers as he locks his door behind him.
There are notes scattered around his apartment now. Some he remembers writing: Lock bathroom window before bed! Others, he doesn’t: Looks like rain so take umbrella and extra socks.
He doesn’t remember watching the weather report.
He remembers pulling the dry socks out of his backpack and putting them on, hanging the wet ones on Wu Fan’s chair as his client sits deadly still for his portrait.
He doesn’t remember the alarm on his phone that goes off at him as he drives away; Out of tea; buy more on way home.
And he sips on that tea as he sits on his sofa with the night breeze drifting through his open windows and the permeating darkness blurring the edges of reality, and he wonders what can seep through the indistinct corners in his sleep.
•
Why are you crying, Jongin-ah? Don’t cry… I’ll come right back, I promise.
***
Jongin dreams he’s asleep; dreams that he wakes up. Dreams that he’s faking sleep as the soft fingers caress his face and run through his hair, easing out the tangles, arranging it over his pillow. He dreams that he’s breathing out slowly and foreign eyelashes trail over his skin.
He can feel his wrists heavy against the sheets, unable to raise his hands, but he doesn’t care as long as the fingers stay, the lashes brush his cheeks, warm breath ghosts over his throat and ear.
Then he rolls over and wakes up from waking, and the air in the room is warm and thick, and he hugs his pillow back into slumber.
•
Don’t give up on your dreams.
+++
“Why are you so pale?”
“Why are you so tan?”
“Because I actually go out into the world. You should spend more time outside, Kyungsoo.”
“It wouldn’t help, Jongin.” Kyungsoo smiles and Jongin likes it when Kyungsoo smiles, but not like that. It’s a different smile and something about it makes Jongin uneasy.
“Come for a walk with me.” Jongin holds out his hand.
Kyungsoo only hesitates for a second. “Okay.” He takes the offered hand and his smile changes, but Jongin misses it. They leave the house and that afternoon outside was the happiest Kyungsoo had ever been.
“Jongin, I have to go soon,” Kyungsoo says as they draw close to Jongin’s bedroom door.
Jongin’s heart and stomach take a dive down to the ground and his hand tightens around Kyungsoo’s. “No, you don’t,” he says, and his declaration would have been firm if his voice hadn’t shaken so much.
“Jongin.” Kyungsoo’s voice is quiet and sad and it shouldn’t be a big deal but it is, and Jongin should be overreacting but Kyungsoo’s face is scaring him and he isn’t.
Jongin pulls him down onto the bed and takes both of his hands, gripping them tightly as though Kyungsoo will evaporate if he lets go.
Kyungsoo sinks down onto the mattress next to him and lowers his nose into Jongin’s bronze neck. “I had fun today.”
“Good.” Jongin says quickly, desperately. “I had fun too. We… we should do this more often, yeah?”
“Of course,” Kyungsoo nods against him. “When I get back we can… we can go on all the walks we want.”
“No, because you’re not leaving,” Jongin says, and Kyungsoo shouldn’t be as edgy as he is. He should be telling him to stop being so dramatic and possessive, it’s not a big deal, Jongin. But he doesn’t.
Kyungsoo leans in and presses his lips to Jongin’s cheek, eyelashes brushing his ear as his eyes flutter shut. They are teenagers and it feels like love and Jongin’s grip only tightens around Kyungsoo’s fingers.
“Stay.”
“Jongin, I have to go.”
“No, stay.”
“I’ll be right back. I promise.”
“No, you have to stay. Please, Kyungsoo.”
Kyungsoo searches his face for a long time and Jongin feels like he’s drowning, unable to breathe, unable to swim, sinking, heavy emptiness pressing on him from all sides.
“Alright.”
“What?”
“I’ll stay.”
Jongin lets go of Kyungsoo’s hands, but only to throw his arms around Kyungsoo’s thin waist and bury his face in his chest. “Promise?”
“Yes, Jongin, I promise.”
A whisper.
•
Because I’m not real.
####
“Jongin, Wu Fan loves the portrait you did for him. I’m not even kidding. This is fantastic! He’s very influential, you’ll get heaps of business. His circle, you know, all those high-nosed high-ups, if there’s one thing they love, it’s their own faces. Was I right, or was I right?”
Jongin rolls his eyes and pats Luhan’s cheek. “Manager of the year award to you, hyung. Really though, that’s great. But I have to run, I have an appointment with the neurologist.”
Luhan’s excitement dies almost instantly. “Huh? Neurologist? Are you alright?”
Jongin nods quickly. “I’m fine, it was just a checkup. I’m getting test results back today.”
“So… there might be something wrong?” Luhan asks in a quiet voice.
Jongin smiles and waves a hand. “Maybe, maybe not. Save your worrying for other things, hyung. Schrödinger’s cat.”
Luhan smiles uneasily. “Well… good luck, Jongin. Call me when you’re done.”
“I will, see you later, hyung.”
“Come in, Mr. Kim.”
Jongin dutifully enters and takes a seat.
“Mr. Kim… Jongin,” the doctor says, opening the folder and spreading the scans, graphs and documents out on his desk for Jongin to see. “Here we have your test results back.”
“And?” Jongin leans forward to look at the pages, but he understands nothing.
“And there is absolutely nothing wrong, physically, with your brain.”
Jongin blinks. “What?”
“You’re perfectly healthy and we cannot find anything wrong.”
“But-” Jongin frowns and leans back again, cocking his head at the doctor. “That can’t be right. I’m forgetting things, really big things. Either that or I’m hallucinating. A lot. How can I be fine? I’m not fine!”
The doctor shakes his head. “Jongin-ssi, even through your conviction that you have a problem you are showing that you are of reasonably sound mind. I can assure you that I have worked to the best of my ability, and indeed, your story when you first came in has intrigued me. All I can suggest now is you either find a second opinion, or invest in a decent security system and a psychiatrist. In my professional opinion, and to the absolute extent of my knowledge, this is a fact: your brain is fully-functional and unimpaired.”
•
Don’t worry about me.
+
“My name’s Jongin, and I’m six,” Jongin states the two most important facts about himself as he holds out his hand to the pale boy in front of him.
“I’m Kyungsoo,” the boy replies, taking the hand with cold fingers and shaking it.
“Are you here to help with the sandcastle?”
Kyungsoo nods. “If that’s okay.”
“Of course.” Jongin hands him a bucket and carries his own down to the wet sand near the tide.
They build a formidable fortress, six towers and six rampart walls, studded with seashells, seaweed banners flying freely. Kyungsoo digs a moat wide enough for the two of them to lie in side-by-side, and Jongin sculpts a sand water-dragon swimming along it.
Jongin can feel the sun beating down on his skin, and sure enough, it’s not long before his mother is calling him back to the shade to get his sunscreen redone.
“I’ll be right back,” he says, and Kyungsoo nods. Jongin runs back up the scorching sand, obediently standing still while his mother slathers him in white. He watches Kyungsoo pat turrets onto the battlements, the way his pale skin glows under the merciless sunlight.
“Shall I go offer some sunscreen to Kyungsoo, too?”
“Who?” his mother asks, her hands not pausing in their massaging the cream into Jongin’s arms.
“My new friend.” Jongin points at where Kyungsoo is sitting back and regarding their architectural masterpiece.
His mother chuckles. “I’m sure... Kyungsoo... has sunscreen of his own,” she says, capping the tube and patting her son on the back. “Don't worry. Now off you go, you don’t want to keep… Kyungsoo… waiting.”
“Okay.” Jongin’s mother is very particular about skin cancer. If she says Kyungsoo will be fine, he’ll probably be fine. Jongin runs back down the sand.
“Will you get burnt?” he double-checks anyway, as he sits back down to finish off his dragon.
Kyungsoo smiles happily, cheeks pinking as he looks up at Jongin. “No,” he says, and Jongin doesn’t understand the smile, but it looks nice, so he smiles back. “I’ll be fine, don’t worry. Shall we make another castle? They can be neighbours.”
“They can be warring nations!” Jongin adds excitedly, and Kyungsoo bites his grin.
•
Jongin, I have to go soon.
No, you don’t.
#
“Jongin!”
“Hyung, what’s up?” Jongin holds the phone a little way from his ear so that Luhan doesn’t deafen him before he’s twenty five.
“I have great news!”
“Mm-hmm,” Jongin says, doodling on a piece of paper while he waits for Luhan to continue. He doesn’t. “Well?” he says after a while.
“You didn’t sound very excited.”
“You haven’t told me anything yet!”
“But I said I had great news! Aren’t you filled with anticipation?”
“Hyung, the last time you said you had great news I had to listen to you gushing about how hot and cute my best friend is for two hours.”
Luhan sighs, crackling down the line. “Well this time the great news involves you. I’ve been talking to some of my friends and showing them some of your work-”
“You what? Luhan!”
“No, no listen! I showed them some of your work, and they were really impressed. One of them said that he’d mention you to someone who might be interested in subsidizing you. They’d pay you, Jongin! To paint! If you can put together a portfolio for me to-”
“Luhan,” Jongin rubbed his face, nestling the hand holding the phone against his shoulder. “I can’t make a living as an artist.”
Luhan’s voice goes quiet as he speaks again. “But you could, Jongin, if you tried. I’ll help you. I have a circle who are rich enough for this sort of thing. Word would get around, I promise. Don’t be so pessimistic. You can’t hold that dumb waiter job forever. Don’t give up on your dreams, Jongin-ah. Please.”
Jongin is quiet for a long time and Luhan holds his phone with two hands. “Think about it,” he says gently, and hangs up.
Jongin listens to the silence for a long while. He catches sight of something out the window. A brown-orange butterfly and a white cabbage moth, cavorting together by his pane. The moth waves its forelegs, flexes its wings and flies off, leaving the butterfly to follow.
Jongin looks down at his doodle paper.
Don’t give up on your dreams! is scrawled in one corner. His hand must have written it while he was distracted. He eyes the pencilled words for a moment more then sighs as he stands to collect works suitable for a portfolio.
•
And Jongin doesn’t believe in love at first sight, but if he did, he thinks this is what it would feel like.
#####
Jongin hesitates to follow the doctor’s advice. Admittedly, he changes all the locks on his windows and doors, but he’s not one to believe someone is sneaking into his apartment just to leave him notes. And possibly make him lunch. That sort of thing just doesn’t happen. Not in this world, not in any world. And it would be easy just to send off a text message and ask Baekhyun the name of his psychiatrist (because Baekhyun is much better lately; his doctor must be of some use) and get an appointment made. But his phone lies lonely in the other room and he feels no need to fetch it. Instead he makes himself tea and counts down the hours until he has to leave for his shift at the restaurant.
The apartment is quiet, and empty. Jongin wonders if he really can make a living painting the faces of rich people. Decorating canvases for their walls. He drags a clean sheet of paper from under a coaster and picks up one of the sketching pencils that seem to be lying around everywhere lately.
He draws a woman. A girl, more like, with pretty eyes and full lips.
And he’s not sure why he colours her eyebrows too thickly, why he changes his mind and takes the point out of her chin, squares off her jaw, makes her hair short and cropped instead of the flowing locks he had envisioned, shades the contours of her throat, and she’s not a woman anymore.
He bites his lip at the half-finished sketch and he doesn’t know who the man he’s just drawn is, yet he knows him too well.
And he has to stop, he has to stop this before he really does go crazy and not even the machines can lie.
He’s pretty sure he meant to tear up the drawing.
But he’s also pretty sure, as he boards the bus that will take him to work, that he had finished it and put it in the drawer with the others.
•
I never broke a promise to you yet.
+++++
“What are you doing up there?”
The boy nearly falls of his branch and looks down at Jongin, standing with his tie loose, blazer undone and shirt barely tucked in, staring right back up.
“Thinking,” he replies. “I’m Kyungsoo.”
“Jongin. I haven’t seen you around before. Are you new?”
“Sort of.”
Jongin grins. “What do you mean, sort of?”
Kyungsoo smiles shyly. “I came back.”
Jongin frowns slightly at the boy’s words coupled with his expression. “Do I know you?”
“I doubt it.” Kyungsoo drops to the ground, and Jongin isn’t surprised that Kyungsoo ends up shorter than him. He looks up with big eyes in a pale face and Jongin wants to pat him on the head. But he doesn’t, because they’ve just met.
“Aren’t you too old to be climbing trees?” Jongin asks instead.
Kyungsoo smirks and sticks out his tongue. “Aren’t you too young to be drinking?”
Jongin pauses. “How do you know about that?”
Kyungsoo’s smirk widens. “Are you skipping class?”
Kyungsoo doesn’t seem quite so cute anymore. “No, it’s last period and I have a free. Are you skipping?”
“In a manner of speaking.” Kyungsoo starts to walk off, throwing his words over his shoulder. “Want a lift anywhere?”
“Where would ‘anywhere’ be?” Jongin asks, and Kyungsoo beams. Jongin follows him to where his bike is parked and Kyungsoo gives him the helmet, his own head bare.
“Anywhere is where you want it to be,” he says, blinking with his large eyes and smiling with his full lips. Jongin doesn’t believe in love at first sight, but if he did, he thinks this is what it would feel like. He climbs on behind Kyungsoo and wraps his arms around his small frame.
“To anywhere, then,” he says, and Kyungsoo nods, sending them shooting down the street.
It doesn’t take long for Jongin to regret following. Kyungsoo drives like he’s immortal and impatient, zipping down the street lines between cars, up onto the pavement. He leaps over a fire hydrant and a roadwork sign, and Jongin almost screams. Almost. Kyungsoo doesn’t seem to know where he’s going and Jongin has his eyes closed too often to figure it out. He clings on for dear life until they skid to a stop and Jongin pries his fingers out of Kyungsoo’s jacket so that he can fall off the bike.
“You- are you- you’re fucking insane,” he gasps, leaning against a lamp post for support.
“Basically.” Kyungsoo takes his wrist gently and leads him into the pub outside of which they had parked. Jongin stumbles to the bar and Kyungsoo walks around it, pouring Jongin a shot. Jongin downs two before he can focus on Kyungsoo’s face.
“Are you one of those crazy bastards who gets off on suicidal thrills?”
“Aren’t you?” Kyungsoo asks innocently.
“Fuck you, no,” Jongin spits.
Kyungsoo smiles. There aren’t many people in the bar at this time, but no-one is paying them any mind. Jongin considers punching the shorter boy in the face. He doesn’t.
“Isn’t it fun, Jongin?” Kyungsoo sighs happily.
Jongin knocks his glass over with a finger and watches it roll in its tiny circle, pivoting on its base. “You’re crazy.”
Kyungsoo’s response is to lean over the bar and kiss him.
Jongin is frozen.
Kyungsoo retreats and Jongin is still frozen.
“What do you want from me?” he chokes out eventually.
Kyungsoo shrugs.
“I’m underage. I could have you arrested.”
“You’re only underage for a couple more days.” Kyungsoo smiles.
“Are you a stalker?”
“No.”
“I don’t know you.”
“We’ve met before.”
“I don’t remember.”
“I know.”
“Fuck you.”
“In two more days.”
Jongin feels his insides leap out of his body and splatter on the floor.
“Where are we?”
“A bar.”
“How do I get home?”
“I’ll take you home.”
“Like hell you will.”
Kyungsoo shrugs and Jongin weighs up his options, clenching his fist.
“Take me home now.”
“Okay.” Kyungsoo rounds the bar and trots outside to his bike. Jongin considers throwing the shot glass at him. He doesn’t. He follows instead.
Kyungsoo drives like a normal, non-suicidal person this time. Jongin wishes he could hold onto something else, while at the same time, he doesn’t.
“What if I don’t want to have sex with you?” he asks as Kyungsoo leaves him outside his apartment building.
“Don’t you?”
And it should be easy to reply as Kyungsoo takes back his helmet and fits it over his head, but the words stick in Jongin’s throat. It’s not like he’s never considered a hook-up before. He just didn’t picture a madman in his fantasies.
Kyungsoo smiles, and it's a sad smile. “I’ll see you in a couple of days, Jongin.”
Jongin watches him leave.
•
Yet he knows him too well.
✳ ✳
“Hey, Baek.”
Baekhyun looks up at the tentative interruption. “What’s up, Jongin?”
Jongin swallows before he opens his mouth to speak. “Can you give me the name and number of your psychiatrist?”
He wants to kiss Baekhyun for not asking questions as he scrawls down the details on a napkin and hands it across the table as their coffees and cakes arrive. He wants to thank him for not looking at him any differently as he tears the ends off sugar packets and stirs them into his drink. He has to swallow over a lump in his throat as Baekhyun happily asks after his next job, another one of Luhan’s friends who wants an artwork custom made for his beach house.
•
I’ll miss you.
You won’t miss me.
*****
Jongin busies himself in the kitchen while Luhan pries as usual, poking through the drawings scattered over Jongin’s living area.
“I wish I was as talented as you,” Luhan sighs as he picks up a bunch of sketches.
“You have a steady job, intelligence, a phonebook full of rich contacts, loving parents and a future,” Jongin says blandly. “I’ll slap you in the face if you say you envy me one more time.”
Luhan smiles and leafs through the paper. “Who’s this?”
Jongin looks at the portrait Luhan is inspecting. “I don’t know. Somebody.”
Luhan grins. “Is he your boyfriend?”
“No, hyung.” Jongin sighs. “He’s not real. Just a face.”
“Is he Korean?”
“I guess so? I don’t know, why?”
“You made his eyes really big.”
“It symbolizes innocence and the fact that he sees more than you’d expect,” Jongin spouts out, handing a beer to Luhan.
“Artists are deep,” Luhan says thoughtfully, still staring at the portrait as he takes it. Jongin rolls his eyes.
“I was bullshitting you, hyung. The eyes are big because I unintentionally made the lines curve more than usual.”
“I knew that.”
“Sure.”
Luhan rifles through the other drawings on and around the coffee table. “Here’s another one of the same guy, Jongin,” he says, and his smile turns sly. “Unintentionally large eyes again?”
“I considered turning him into an OC,” Jongin lies. Luhan doesn’t need to know that his hand draws that one face whenever he’s not paying it his full attention.
“An OC for what?”
“I don’t know,” Jongin whines. “Stop looking at my stuff now.” Jongin turns on the game but Luhan keeps searching the papers.
“Butterflies, Jongin?”
“The white one’s a moth.”
Luhan rolls his eyes. “Oh, what’s this? Hm, there seems to be yet another sketch of this guy,” Luhan crows and Jongin bats him on the head with the remote. “Ow! Are you sure he’s not your boyfriend?”
“He’s not a real person, hyung!”
“Is he the recurring Mr. Right in your dreams? Ow! Jongin! Violence is not the answer!”
“I’ll find a way to make it the answer if you don’t shut up and watch the fucking soccer.”
“Point for Luhan,” Luhan whispers as he settles back on the couch.
“Ouch,” he adds a second later.
•
You can’t keep me out with keys. I said I’d be back.
*
He’s two days eighteen and his parents are away, and he’s not as surprised as he should be when Kyungsoo chooses that night to knock on his door.
What if I don’t want this, he should say, what if I’m not ready, I don’t know you. But he has no trouble disregarding the unsaid words. Something in Kyungsoo’s eyes mirrors something in his own heart and he silently, blindly deadlocks the door around Kyungsoo’s head while he relearns the geography of Kyungsoo’s mouth.
They kiss and they touch, and they struggle up the stairs. They gasp, and they whisper, and no words are said. They pull at clothes and hair, and they fuck until Jongin burns and Kyungsoo’s back bleeds. Then they switch and Jongin’s pain is drowned in bliss and he bucks up and Kyungsoo screams.
Kyungsoo babbles as he clings to Jongin and Jongin can only hear a few words through the post-coital hum in his ears.
“I can’t believe…
It wouldn’t even feel like waiting to you…
Why, Jongin, why can’t I…
Waited so long, so long…”
Jongin falls asleep before he can ask, holding Kyungsoo gently under the sheets.
He’s too fragile to be left alone to throw himself around.
•
He makes himself tea and counts down the hours.
✳
“Good evening, sir. What can I get for you tonight?” Jongin asks, all friendly professionalism, and the customer sitting alone at the table looks up at him slowly.
Jongin’s breath catches because it’s him, pale skin, large eyes and short black hair, the face that he’s found himself drawing for years. There’s a drawer full of his portraits in Jongin’s apartment and he’s never met the man before. Yet here he is, in his restaurant, staring up at him blankly.
“Jongin,” the man breathes, and Jongin really really needs to get the number of Baekhyun’s psychiatrist because he doesn’t care what the neurologist says, there is something very, very wrong with him and he’s never been so scared in his life.
“Wh-who are you?” he whispers. He looks sick. Jongin imagined him pale. The man in front of him is almost translucent, like his presence is stretched thin over the air.
“Who am I?” the man echoes. He toys with the silverware. “I hoped you’d know,” he murmurs, and Jongin almost misses it.
“But you,” Jongin squeaks, hopes he wakes up, hopes he never dreams again, “You’re just… I mean… you’re not-”
The customer’s face snaps up and he stares at him with an unreadable expression. “You’re right,” he says, voice steady, soft. “I’m not real.”
He stands up slowly. His right hand is wrapped around the handle of a steak knife.
His left is wrapped around the blade.
Jongin wants, so badly, to look away. He wants to run, to close his eyes and ears, anything to not know what he knows is coming. As he tightens his grip with both hands and pulls. Jongin feels the shiver run down the length of his body but he can’t look away and he can never not have seen.
“Looks,” he says, hoarse, choked, scared, “real enough to me.”
The knife clatters noisily to the floor. He waves his hand and blood spatters against the pad Jongin’s fingers are clinging to like a lifeline.
“So, Jongin, why doesn’t anyone else care that a madman just cut himself open all over the tablecloth, silverware and waiter?”
Jongin looks around. No-one else has seen the display. No-one else does seem to care. A man a couple of tables down is impatiently waving for his attention.
Jongin turns around and marches stiffly back to the kitchen, to his supervisor.
“Sir.”
“Jongin, are you alright?”
“Can I go home. Please.”
He sounds pathetic even to his own ears. His supervisor nods quickly. “Yes, yes go home. You look terrible. Do you need me to call a cab?”
Jongin shakes his head. “Thank you. Goodnight.”
He returns to the restaurant. Grabs his sketch-man by the wrist. Drags him home on foot. Drops first aid all over the floor as he scrabbles for bandages. Wraps them around his hand.
“I’m Kyungsoo.”
“I’m fucking crazy.”
Kyungsoo smiles as he touches Jongin’s face with his good hand, as Jongin wraps his other.
“Are you scared?”
“Fucking scared.”
“I’m sorry.”
Jongin laughs; shaky, unstable. “I’ll be right back.” He walks to his phone. Sends a text. Can we meet for coffee tomorrow?
Kyungsoo is behind him, touching his hair, pressing his lips to Jongin’s face. Jongin doesn’t resist. He’s crazy anyway. What does it matter? Kyungsoo’s arms are around his waist, his face in his shoulder.
“You changed things.” Kyungsoo gestures at the new lock on the window.
Jongin thinks about the notes. About the things he forgot. “Was it you?”
Kyungsoo chuckles. “You can’t keep me out with keys, Jongin. I said I’d be back.”
Jongin stays quiet.
“You’re scared.”
“Yes.”
“It’s not the first time.”
“Oh.”
Kyungsoo holds him a little tighter, nuzzles a little deeper. “I got impatient. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry, Jongin.”
And it occurs to Jongin that he’s been in these arms before.
Sometime.
•
I waited so long for you, so long.
++
“It’s getting late,” says Kyungsoo to Jongin, as they sit on the beach and the sun is dipping low.
“No it’s not,” Jongin says quickly.
Kyungsoo gives him a smile. “I should be heading off soon.”
“No, stay,” Jongin insists, pulling Kyungsoo down to sit beside him. Their twin sandcastles are behind them, tide straying dangerously close. Kyungsoo sits.
“I can’t stay forever, Jongin.”
“I’ll take you home with me.”
Kyungsoo laughs at that. Jongin doesn’t. Kyungsoo gives him a hug. A brown butterfly and a white moth fly past and the boys watch them go. Kyungsoo tries to stand again and Jongin clings to his thin arm tight enough to bruise.
“Ouch, Jongin- why are you crying, Jongin-ah? Don’t cry…”
“Don’t go, Kyungsoo.”
“Jongin…”
The younger boy’s eyes are wide with a fear he can’t yet understand. Kyungsoo wipes away his tears. “Don’t cry. I’ll come right back. I promise. Just wait a little while, okay?”
Jongin’s grip loosens, just slightly. “You promise?”
“I promise.”
“Be quick,” Jongin orders.
Kyungsoo smiles. “You won’t even know I was gone.”
Jongin lets go.
He watches the sun and seagulls and horizon, alone on the sand. The tide rises, slowly, steadily, washing away twin sandcastles, their carefully sculpted turrets, the sandy moat-dragon. All that’s left is wet sand and a scattering of sea shells when Jongin’s mother comes out and calls her son back to the cabin, and Jongin forgets why he was waiting out there, anyway.
•
Isn’t it fun, Jongin?
You’re crazy.
**
It’s the night of their one-year anniversary and Jongin, at nineteen, smiles as Kyungsoo sleeps on the couch beside him. He snaps a photo. Digital memories. The recorded shutter sound stirs Kyungsoo awake. Jongin hides his phone.
Kyungsoo looks up with a sleepy smile. “Sorry,” he whispers, but nuzzles closer for a longer nap. Jongin chuckles.
“Hey, cutie.”
“I’m an adult, Jongin.”
“Doesn’t matter.” Jongin kisses his head. “I love you.”
“I love you too.”
Jongin works for hours, the photo maximized on his computer screen while he sketches painstakingly, making sure that every line of Kyungsoo’s face is perfect. He wants the portrait to remind him of his moment with Kyungsoo every day for the rest of forever.
And he sits back, spine aching, eyes watering, hand cramping, pleased with his result. And he tucks it away between his other sketches, where no-one will ever see.
“Aish, Jongin, what is this?” Kyungsoo complains, flicking through the photos on Jongin’s phone and coming across his own sleeping face. “When did you take this?”
“Last week,” Jongin says unashamedly.
Equally unashamed, Kyungsoo rolls his eyes and deletes the photograph.
“Hey!” Jongin yells, fighting to reclaim his phone.
“No photos,” Kyungsoo says seriously, and Jongin sighs.
“What if someday you leave, and I want something to remember you by?”
Kyungsoo narrows his eyes, and Jongin raises his hands in surrender, put off by the serious aura. “I’m just saying, I’ll miss you.”
“You won’t miss me.”
“Hey, that’s-”
“No photos, Jongin.”
“Okay. I love you.”
“I love you too.”
•
Do I know you?
I doubt it.
++++
“Kyungsoo, you look sick.”
“I said, I’m fine.”
“You don’t look fine, though,” Jongin kneels down next to his boyfriend, normally pale, now scarily white and gaunt. “Kyungsoo. You’re scaring me.”
“Jongin.” Kyungsoo lets out an exhausted laugh. “Don’t worry, I’m fine, I promise. Don’t think so much.”
Jongin touches his face, traces under one large eye. “But-”
“Jongin, don’t worry about me, seriously.” He looks up and smiles. “Trust me. I never broke a promise to you yet.”
Jongin bites his lip, slides his hands down to Kyungsoo’s fingers. “Really?”
“Really. I’m fine.”
•
It’s not the first time.
✳✳✳
Jongin returns home, where Kyungsoo is waiting, psychiatrist details tucked safely into his pocket.
Kyungsoo is beside an open drawer in a sea of paper and thin-spread graphite.
Jongin blinks.
Kyungsoo looks up from a sketch. Jongin doesn’t remember that sketch, but he recognizes it. And it’s so obviously Kyungsoo, albeit younger perhaps late teens, early twenties, tucked away in the depths of Jongin’s Kyungsoo drawer. Sleeping, head resting on his shoulder, lashes fanning over his pale cheeks.
“I don’t believe you,” Kyungsoo whispers, and he’s crying, and Jongin doesn’t know why he feels tears running down his own face as well. “I don’t fucking believe you, Kim Jongin.”
Jongin shuffles a way through the loose papers. A hundred flat grey Kyungsoos looking up at him. He kneels down next to the real Kyungsoo and holds him. The tears feel real enough against his shoulder.
“What were we?” he whispers.
“Everything,” Kyungsoo says.
•
I love you.
****
“You two,” Jongin eyes Sehun blearily from his position lying upside down with his knees hooked over the back of the couch, “Are disgusting.”
Sehun gives him a disgusting, lovesick smile right back. “Jealous?”
“Am I jealous,” Jongin says slowly, “Of my best friend having some old guy’s tongue shoved right down his throat. No.”
“I’m going to tell Luhan you called him old.”
“You do that.”
“He’ll tear your balls off.”
“He’s not patient enough to get revenge on me. He’ll tear the messenger’s balls off,” Jongin points out.
Sehun pouts, because he knows Jongin is right. “When are you going to find someone, Jongin?”
“Hopefully never.”
“You’re twenty-two and a virgin. That can’t be healthy.”
“Ugh.” Jongin slumps down, whacking his head on the floor. “Maybe I’m asexual, Sehun, did you think of that?”
“Are you asexual?”
“Maybe.”
“You need to get laid, Jongin.”
“Why am I friends with you?”
Sehun’s face appears in his direct line of vision, beaming obnoxiously. “Because I’m fucking adorable.”
“Did Luhan tell you that? Because you’re a demon child.”
“I don’t need Lulu to know that I’m lovable.”
“He did tell you that, didn’t he. Of course a demon child would be cute to a demon.”
“Get a boyfriend, Jongin.”
“I don’t want one.”
“Lulu and I are going to get you one anyway,” Sehun says brightly.
“Fuck my life,” says Jongin.
•
And it occurs to Jongin that he’s been in these arms before.
✳✳✳✳
“When I leave, you forget me,” Kyungsoo says.
“When you leave?” Jongin repeats, feet scuffing at the sidewalk as they sit on the park bench.
“Sometimes I stay for a while. The first time we met, I only stayed for a few hours. Then when you were eighteen, I stayed for over a year. When I’m around, you remember me, but when I leave, you forget.”
“Why?” Jongin palms his temples, wondering if he should have gone to the psychiatrist after all. He still has the number, safe somewhere.
“Because I’m not real, Jongin.”
“So you’re what? A hallucination?”
Kyungsoo smiles and takes his hand to squeeze it. “No.”
“Then what are you?”
“Not real.”
“You’re infuriating.”
“That too.”
Jongin sighs. “Did you explain this to me the other times as well?”
“No.” Kyungsoo toys with Jongin’s fingers. “I figured it didn’t matter, because every time we met it was like the first time all over again. We became friends all over again, loved each other all over again. But I got impatient. And you got scared.”
Jongin is quiet for a long time. “Did I love you?” he asks, and the eyes he turns to Kyungsoo are uncertain.
Kyungsoo’s breath ghosts over Jongin’s fingers. “So much,” he whispers, and Jongin wonders which way the love is going as he says the words.
“I didn’t realize,” Kyungsoo says into his knuckles, and Jongin realizes with a start that he’s holding back tears, “that you tried so hard to remember.”
“I didn’t realize I’d forgotten anything,” Jongin whispers.
“Yes, you did.” Kyungsoo smiles. “All those drawings. You’re unbelievable, Kim Jongin.”
“If I forgot you when you left, why did you leave?” Jongin asks.
That keeps Kyungsoo quiet. Jongin ticks off the seconds in the breeze. The air stretched thin over Kyungsoo’s presence.
“I get sick,” Kyungsoo finally answers, and his voice is so soft, so sad, that Jongin’s already forgiven him. “If I’m around for too long.”
“Sick?”
Kyungsoo laughs a tentative, shaky laugh. “I never told you. You used to worry about me when it happened.” He looks at his hands. “I start to fade.”
“You… what?”
Kyungsoo purses his lips. “I’m still solid. But kind of washed out. If you know what I mean.”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“Good.” Kyungsoo smiles. “I keep telling you, Jongin-ah. You shouldn’t worry about me. You don’t listen a whole lot.”
“You’re worry-about-able.”
It draws a laugh out of Kyungsoo, long, happy, and it has Jongin smiling. Kyungsoo’s eyes don't seem so big when he laughs, almost disappearing into crescents, obscured by his cheeks. And Jongin leans in instinctively to kiss him carefully.
Kyungsoo drops his forehead into the curve of Jongin’s neck when he falls back. “You’ll love me again, Jongin,” he says confidently. “I still love you so much.”
“We’ll find a way that I don’t forget about you again,” Jongin says with equal confidence, and Kyungsoo squeezes his hand.
“Okay.”
“In the meantime, you have to stay as long as you can. So I get to know you again. Promise?”
“Okay, Jongin.”
“Really, promise.”
“Jongin.” Kyungsoo raises his head to look at him. “I’ve never broken a promise to you.”
Jongin grins lopsidedly. “I wouldn’t know, so I guess I’ll have to trust you on that one. But I’d still like to hear you say it.”
Kyungsoo smiles back. “I’ll stay as long as I possibly can. I promise.”
“Good.”
And they kiss again, while a brown butterfly chases a cabbage moth by their heads.
•
We’ll find a way that I don’t forget about you again.
##
“Hi.” The seat at the bar next to Jongin suddenly becomes occupied and the gentle, cheerful greeting interrupts Jongin wallowing in self-pity while cursing Luhan, Sehun and their damned get-Jongin-laid plan.
Jongin blinks. The face next to him seems awfully familiar.
“Do I know you?” he blurts out.
The pale man smiles. “We’ve met before.”
A/N: Okay so if you read through the entirety of that thing I love you forever okay. It made sense in my head. Honest.
Also if you’re super extremely curious there is a code for what chronological order they go in:
+
++
+++
++++
+++++
*
**
***
****
*****
#
##
###
####
#####
✳
✳✳
✳✳✳
✳✳✳✳
By the paragraph AFTER the symbol.
Yeah basically don’t bother trying it’s too complicated just trust me that it makes sense okay.
Genre: Angst, romance
Pairing: Jongin/Kyungsoo (Kai/D.O)
Rating: pg-13
Length: Oneshot, 6,132 words
Warning: Minor and short explicit content, dissociation trigger, minor self harm?
Summary: Kyungsoo waits too long. Jongin has too many first encounters.
A/N: omg I’m sorry for writing this I swear it made sense in my head and it’s not in chronological order and it’s word vomit but at least I got it out of my head okay because I’ve been wanting to write this for a while. I like KaiSoo okay. *crawls back under rock* also it's called Butterfly Kisses because I had Butterfly by Rajaton on repeat basically the whole time I was writing it.
Love me, love me on the leaves
Before we say goodbye
Love me, kiss me with the breeze
You will be my lullaby
Tomorrow I'll die.
###
Don’t buy lunch (2016/7/15)! It’s in the fridge already!
And there is a lunch box in the fridge, serviette and chopsticks held onto the takeaway container by a rubber band, in a plastic bag with a drink. Jongin doesn’t remember writing the note, or making the food. But that’s nothing new by now, and it’s only a day until his appointment.
He takes the bag and it swings from his fingers as he locks his door behind him.
There are notes scattered around his apartment now. Some he remembers writing: Lock bathroom window before bed! Others, he doesn’t: Looks like rain so take umbrella and extra socks.
He doesn’t remember watching the weather report.
He remembers pulling the dry socks out of his backpack and putting them on, hanging the wet ones on Wu Fan’s chair as his client sits deadly still for his portrait.
He doesn’t remember the alarm on his phone that goes off at him as he drives away; Out of tea; buy more on way home.
And he sips on that tea as he sits on his sofa with the night breeze drifting through his open windows and the permeating darkness blurring the edges of reality, and he wonders what can seep through the indistinct corners in his sleep.
•
Why are you crying, Jongin-ah? Don’t cry… I’ll come right back, I promise.
***
Jongin dreams he’s asleep; dreams that he wakes up. Dreams that he’s faking sleep as the soft fingers caress his face and run through his hair, easing out the tangles, arranging it over his pillow. He dreams that he’s breathing out slowly and foreign eyelashes trail over his skin.
He can feel his wrists heavy against the sheets, unable to raise his hands, but he doesn’t care as long as the fingers stay, the lashes brush his cheeks, warm breath ghosts over his throat and ear.
Then he rolls over and wakes up from waking, and the air in the room is warm and thick, and he hugs his pillow back into slumber.
•
Don’t give up on your dreams.
+++
“Why are you so pale?”
“Why are you so tan?”
“Because I actually go out into the world. You should spend more time outside, Kyungsoo.”
“It wouldn’t help, Jongin.” Kyungsoo smiles and Jongin likes it when Kyungsoo smiles, but not like that. It’s a different smile and something about it makes Jongin uneasy.
“Come for a walk with me.” Jongin holds out his hand.
Kyungsoo only hesitates for a second. “Okay.” He takes the offered hand and his smile changes, but Jongin misses it. They leave the house and that afternoon outside was the happiest Kyungsoo had ever been.
“Jongin, I have to go soon,” Kyungsoo says as they draw close to Jongin’s bedroom door.
Jongin’s heart and stomach take a dive down to the ground and his hand tightens around Kyungsoo’s. “No, you don’t,” he says, and his declaration would have been firm if his voice hadn’t shaken so much.
“Jongin.” Kyungsoo’s voice is quiet and sad and it shouldn’t be a big deal but it is, and Jongin should be overreacting but Kyungsoo’s face is scaring him and he isn’t.
Jongin pulls him down onto the bed and takes both of his hands, gripping them tightly as though Kyungsoo will evaporate if he lets go.
Kyungsoo sinks down onto the mattress next to him and lowers his nose into Jongin’s bronze neck. “I had fun today.”
“Good.” Jongin says quickly, desperately. “I had fun too. We… we should do this more often, yeah?”
“Of course,” Kyungsoo nods against him. “When I get back we can… we can go on all the walks we want.”
“No, because you’re not leaving,” Jongin says, and Kyungsoo shouldn’t be as edgy as he is. He should be telling him to stop being so dramatic and possessive, it’s not a big deal, Jongin. But he doesn’t.
Kyungsoo leans in and presses his lips to Jongin’s cheek, eyelashes brushing his ear as his eyes flutter shut. They are teenagers and it feels like love and Jongin’s grip only tightens around Kyungsoo’s fingers.
“Stay.”
“Jongin, I have to go.”
“No, stay.”
“I’ll be right back. I promise.”
“No, you have to stay. Please, Kyungsoo.”
Kyungsoo searches his face for a long time and Jongin feels like he’s drowning, unable to breathe, unable to swim, sinking, heavy emptiness pressing on him from all sides.
“Alright.”
“What?”
“I’ll stay.”
Jongin lets go of Kyungsoo’s hands, but only to throw his arms around Kyungsoo’s thin waist and bury his face in his chest. “Promise?”
“Yes, Jongin, I promise.”
A whisper.
•
Because I’m not real.
####
“Jongin, Wu Fan loves the portrait you did for him. I’m not even kidding. This is fantastic! He’s very influential, you’ll get heaps of business. His circle, you know, all those high-nosed high-ups, if there’s one thing they love, it’s their own faces. Was I right, or was I right?”
Jongin rolls his eyes and pats Luhan’s cheek. “Manager of the year award to you, hyung. Really though, that’s great. But I have to run, I have an appointment with the neurologist.”
Luhan’s excitement dies almost instantly. “Huh? Neurologist? Are you alright?”
Jongin nods quickly. “I’m fine, it was just a checkup. I’m getting test results back today.”
“So… there might be something wrong?” Luhan asks in a quiet voice.
Jongin smiles and waves a hand. “Maybe, maybe not. Save your worrying for other things, hyung. Schrödinger’s cat.”
Luhan smiles uneasily. “Well… good luck, Jongin. Call me when you’re done.”
“I will, see you later, hyung.”
“Come in, Mr. Kim.”
Jongin dutifully enters and takes a seat.
“Mr. Kim… Jongin,” the doctor says, opening the folder and spreading the scans, graphs and documents out on his desk for Jongin to see. “Here we have your test results back.”
“And?” Jongin leans forward to look at the pages, but he understands nothing.
“And there is absolutely nothing wrong, physically, with your brain.”
Jongin blinks. “What?”
“You’re perfectly healthy and we cannot find anything wrong.”
“But-” Jongin frowns and leans back again, cocking his head at the doctor. “That can’t be right. I’m forgetting things, really big things. Either that or I’m hallucinating. A lot. How can I be fine? I’m not fine!”
The doctor shakes his head. “Jongin-ssi, even through your conviction that you have a problem you are showing that you are of reasonably sound mind. I can assure you that I have worked to the best of my ability, and indeed, your story when you first came in has intrigued me. All I can suggest now is you either find a second opinion, or invest in a decent security system and a psychiatrist. In my professional opinion, and to the absolute extent of my knowledge, this is a fact: your brain is fully-functional and unimpaired.”
•
Don’t worry about me.
+
“My name’s Jongin, and I’m six,” Jongin states the two most important facts about himself as he holds out his hand to the pale boy in front of him.
“I’m Kyungsoo,” the boy replies, taking the hand with cold fingers and shaking it.
“Are you here to help with the sandcastle?”
Kyungsoo nods. “If that’s okay.”
“Of course.” Jongin hands him a bucket and carries his own down to the wet sand near the tide.
They build a formidable fortress, six towers and six rampart walls, studded with seashells, seaweed banners flying freely. Kyungsoo digs a moat wide enough for the two of them to lie in side-by-side, and Jongin sculpts a sand water-dragon swimming along it.
Jongin can feel the sun beating down on his skin, and sure enough, it’s not long before his mother is calling him back to the shade to get his sunscreen redone.
“I’ll be right back,” he says, and Kyungsoo nods. Jongin runs back up the scorching sand, obediently standing still while his mother slathers him in white. He watches Kyungsoo pat turrets onto the battlements, the way his pale skin glows under the merciless sunlight.
“Shall I go offer some sunscreen to Kyungsoo, too?”
“Who?” his mother asks, her hands not pausing in their massaging the cream into Jongin’s arms.
“My new friend.” Jongin points at where Kyungsoo is sitting back and regarding their architectural masterpiece.
His mother chuckles. “I’m sure... Kyungsoo... has sunscreen of his own,” she says, capping the tube and patting her son on the back. “Don't worry. Now off you go, you don’t want to keep… Kyungsoo… waiting.”
“Okay.” Jongin’s mother is very particular about skin cancer. If she says Kyungsoo will be fine, he’ll probably be fine. Jongin runs back down the sand.
“Will you get burnt?” he double-checks anyway, as he sits back down to finish off his dragon.
Kyungsoo smiles happily, cheeks pinking as he looks up at Jongin. “No,” he says, and Jongin doesn’t understand the smile, but it looks nice, so he smiles back. “I’ll be fine, don’t worry. Shall we make another castle? They can be neighbours.”
“They can be warring nations!” Jongin adds excitedly, and Kyungsoo bites his grin.
•
Jongin, I have to go soon.
No, you don’t.
#
“Jongin!”
“Hyung, what’s up?” Jongin holds the phone a little way from his ear so that Luhan doesn’t deafen him before he’s twenty five.
“I have great news!”
“Mm-hmm,” Jongin says, doodling on a piece of paper while he waits for Luhan to continue. He doesn’t. “Well?” he says after a while.
“You didn’t sound very excited.”
“You haven’t told me anything yet!”
“But I said I had great news! Aren’t you filled with anticipation?”
“Hyung, the last time you said you had great news I had to listen to you gushing about how hot and cute my best friend is for two hours.”
Luhan sighs, crackling down the line. “Well this time the great news involves you. I’ve been talking to some of my friends and showing them some of your work-”
“You what? Luhan!”
“No, no listen! I showed them some of your work, and they were really impressed. One of them said that he’d mention you to someone who might be interested in subsidizing you. They’d pay you, Jongin! To paint! If you can put together a portfolio for me to-”
“Luhan,” Jongin rubbed his face, nestling the hand holding the phone against his shoulder. “I can’t make a living as an artist.”
Luhan’s voice goes quiet as he speaks again. “But you could, Jongin, if you tried. I’ll help you. I have a circle who are rich enough for this sort of thing. Word would get around, I promise. Don’t be so pessimistic. You can’t hold that dumb waiter job forever. Don’t give up on your dreams, Jongin-ah. Please.”
Jongin is quiet for a long time and Luhan holds his phone with two hands. “Think about it,” he says gently, and hangs up.
Jongin listens to the silence for a long while. He catches sight of something out the window. A brown-orange butterfly and a white cabbage moth, cavorting together by his pane. The moth waves its forelegs, flexes its wings and flies off, leaving the butterfly to follow.
Jongin looks down at his doodle paper.
Don’t give up on your dreams! is scrawled in one corner. His hand must have written it while he was distracted. He eyes the pencilled words for a moment more then sighs as he stands to collect works suitable for a portfolio.
•
And Jongin doesn’t believe in love at first sight, but if he did, he thinks this is what it would feel like.
#####
Jongin hesitates to follow the doctor’s advice. Admittedly, he changes all the locks on his windows and doors, but he’s not one to believe someone is sneaking into his apartment just to leave him notes. And possibly make him lunch. That sort of thing just doesn’t happen. Not in this world, not in any world. And it would be easy just to send off a text message and ask Baekhyun the name of his psychiatrist (because Baekhyun is much better lately; his doctor must be of some use) and get an appointment made. But his phone lies lonely in the other room and he feels no need to fetch it. Instead he makes himself tea and counts down the hours until he has to leave for his shift at the restaurant.
The apartment is quiet, and empty. Jongin wonders if he really can make a living painting the faces of rich people. Decorating canvases for their walls. He drags a clean sheet of paper from under a coaster and picks up one of the sketching pencils that seem to be lying around everywhere lately.
He draws a woman. A girl, more like, with pretty eyes and full lips.
And he’s not sure why he colours her eyebrows too thickly, why he changes his mind and takes the point out of her chin, squares off her jaw, makes her hair short and cropped instead of the flowing locks he had envisioned, shades the contours of her throat, and she’s not a woman anymore.
He bites his lip at the half-finished sketch and he doesn’t know who the man he’s just drawn is, yet he knows him too well.
And he has to stop, he has to stop this before he really does go crazy and not even the machines can lie.
He’s pretty sure he meant to tear up the drawing.
But he’s also pretty sure, as he boards the bus that will take him to work, that he had finished it and put it in the drawer with the others.
•
I never broke a promise to you yet.
+++++
“What are you doing up there?”
The boy nearly falls of his branch and looks down at Jongin, standing with his tie loose, blazer undone and shirt barely tucked in, staring right back up.
“Thinking,” he replies. “I’m Kyungsoo.”
“Jongin. I haven’t seen you around before. Are you new?”
“Sort of.”
Jongin grins. “What do you mean, sort of?”
Kyungsoo smiles shyly. “I came back.”
Jongin frowns slightly at the boy’s words coupled with his expression. “Do I know you?”
“I doubt it.” Kyungsoo drops to the ground, and Jongin isn’t surprised that Kyungsoo ends up shorter than him. He looks up with big eyes in a pale face and Jongin wants to pat him on the head. But he doesn’t, because they’ve just met.
“Aren’t you too old to be climbing trees?” Jongin asks instead.
Kyungsoo smirks and sticks out his tongue. “Aren’t you too young to be drinking?”
Jongin pauses. “How do you know about that?”
Kyungsoo’s smirk widens. “Are you skipping class?”
Kyungsoo doesn’t seem quite so cute anymore. “No, it’s last period and I have a free. Are you skipping?”
“In a manner of speaking.” Kyungsoo starts to walk off, throwing his words over his shoulder. “Want a lift anywhere?”
“Where would ‘anywhere’ be?” Jongin asks, and Kyungsoo beams. Jongin follows him to where his bike is parked and Kyungsoo gives him the helmet, his own head bare.
“Anywhere is where you want it to be,” he says, blinking with his large eyes and smiling with his full lips. Jongin doesn’t believe in love at first sight, but if he did, he thinks this is what it would feel like. He climbs on behind Kyungsoo and wraps his arms around his small frame.
“To anywhere, then,” he says, and Kyungsoo nods, sending them shooting down the street.
It doesn’t take long for Jongin to regret following. Kyungsoo drives like he’s immortal and impatient, zipping down the street lines between cars, up onto the pavement. He leaps over a fire hydrant and a roadwork sign, and Jongin almost screams. Almost. Kyungsoo doesn’t seem to know where he’s going and Jongin has his eyes closed too often to figure it out. He clings on for dear life until they skid to a stop and Jongin pries his fingers out of Kyungsoo’s jacket so that he can fall off the bike.
“You- are you- you’re fucking insane,” he gasps, leaning against a lamp post for support.
“Basically.” Kyungsoo takes his wrist gently and leads him into the pub outside of which they had parked. Jongin stumbles to the bar and Kyungsoo walks around it, pouring Jongin a shot. Jongin downs two before he can focus on Kyungsoo’s face.
“Are you one of those crazy bastards who gets off on suicidal thrills?”
“Aren’t you?” Kyungsoo asks innocently.
“Fuck you, no,” Jongin spits.
Kyungsoo smiles. There aren’t many people in the bar at this time, but no-one is paying them any mind. Jongin considers punching the shorter boy in the face. He doesn’t.
“Isn’t it fun, Jongin?” Kyungsoo sighs happily.
Jongin knocks his glass over with a finger and watches it roll in its tiny circle, pivoting on its base. “You’re crazy.”
Kyungsoo’s response is to lean over the bar and kiss him.
Jongin is frozen.
Kyungsoo retreats and Jongin is still frozen.
“What do you want from me?” he chokes out eventually.
Kyungsoo shrugs.
“I’m underage. I could have you arrested.”
“You’re only underage for a couple more days.” Kyungsoo smiles.
“Are you a stalker?”
“No.”
“I don’t know you.”
“We’ve met before.”
“I don’t remember.”
“I know.”
“Fuck you.”
“In two more days.”
Jongin feels his insides leap out of his body and splatter on the floor.
“Where are we?”
“A bar.”
“How do I get home?”
“I’ll take you home.”
“Like hell you will.”
Kyungsoo shrugs and Jongin weighs up his options, clenching his fist.
“Take me home now.”
“Okay.” Kyungsoo rounds the bar and trots outside to his bike. Jongin considers throwing the shot glass at him. He doesn’t. He follows instead.
Kyungsoo drives like a normal, non-suicidal person this time. Jongin wishes he could hold onto something else, while at the same time, he doesn’t.
“What if I don’t want to have sex with you?” he asks as Kyungsoo leaves him outside his apartment building.
“Don’t you?”
And it should be easy to reply as Kyungsoo takes back his helmet and fits it over his head, but the words stick in Jongin’s throat. It’s not like he’s never considered a hook-up before. He just didn’t picture a madman in his fantasies.
Kyungsoo smiles, and it's a sad smile. “I’ll see you in a couple of days, Jongin.”
Jongin watches him leave.
•
Yet he knows him too well.
✳ ✳
“Hey, Baek.”
Baekhyun looks up at the tentative interruption. “What’s up, Jongin?”
Jongin swallows before he opens his mouth to speak. “Can you give me the name and number of your psychiatrist?”
He wants to kiss Baekhyun for not asking questions as he scrawls down the details on a napkin and hands it across the table as their coffees and cakes arrive. He wants to thank him for not looking at him any differently as he tears the ends off sugar packets and stirs them into his drink. He has to swallow over a lump in his throat as Baekhyun happily asks after his next job, another one of Luhan’s friends who wants an artwork custom made for his beach house.
•
I’ll miss you.
You won’t miss me.
*****
Jongin busies himself in the kitchen while Luhan pries as usual, poking through the drawings scattered over Jongin’s living area.
“I wish I was as talented as you,” Luhan sighs as he picks up a bunch of sketches.
“You have a steady job, intelligence, a phonebook full of rich contacts, loving parents and a future,” Jongin says blandly. “I’ll slap you in the face if you say you envy me one more time.”
Luhan smiles and leafs through the paper. “Who’s this?”
Jongin looks at the portrait Luhan is inspecting. “I don’t know. Somebody.”
Luhan grins. “Is he your boyfriend?”
“No, hyung.” Jongin sighs. “He’s not real. Just a face.”
“Is he Korean?”
“I guess so? I don’t know, why?”
“You made his eyes really big.”
“It symbolizes innocence and the fact that he sees more than you’d expect,” Jongin spouts out, handing a beer to Luhan.
“Artists are deep,” Luhan says thoughtfully, still staring at the portrait as he takes it. Jongin rolls his eyes.
“I was bullshitting you, hyung. The eyes are big because I unintentionally made the lines curve more than usual.”
“I knew that.”
“Sure.”
Luhan rifles through the other drawings on and around the coffee table. “Here’s another one of the same guy, Jongin,” he says, and his smile turns sly. “Unintentionally large eyes again?”
“I considered turning him into an OC,” Jongin lies. Luhan doesn’t need to know that his hand draws that one face whenever he’s not paying it his full attention.
“An OC for what?”
“I don’t know,” Jongin whines. “Stop looking at my stuff now.” Jongin turns on the game but Luhan keeps searching the papers.
“Butterflies, Jongin?”
“The white one’s a moth.”
Luhan rolls his eyes. “Oh, what’s this? Hm, there seems to be yet another sketch of this guy,” Luhan crows and Jongin bats him on the head with the remote. “Ow! Are you sure he’s not your boyfriend?”
“He’s not a real person, hyung!”
“Is he the recurring Mr. Right in your dreams? Ow! Jongin! Violence is not the answer!”
“I’ll find a way to make it the answer if you don’t shut up and watch the fucking soccer.”
“Point for Luhan,” Luhan whispers as he settles back on the couch.
“Ouch,” he adds a second later.
•
You can’t keep me out with keys. I said I’d be back.
*
He’s two days eighteen and his parents are away, and he’s not as surprised as he should be when Kyungsoo chooses that night to knock on his door.
What if I don’t want this, he should say, what if I’m not ready, I don’t know you. But he has no trouble disregarding the unsaid words. Something in Kyungsoo’s eyes mirrors something in his own heart and he silently, blindly deadlocks the door around Kyungsoo’s head while he relearns the geography of Kyungsoo’s mouth.
They kiss and they touch, and they struggle up the stairs. They gasp, and they whisper, and no words are said. They pull at clothes and hair, and they fuck until Jongin burns and Kyungsoo’s back bleeds. Then they switch and Jongin’s pain is drowned in bliss and he bucks up and Kyungsoo screams.
Kyungsoo babbles as he clings to Jongin and Jongin can only hear a few words through the post-coital hum in his ears.
“I can’t believe…
It wouldn’t even feel like waiting to you…
Why, Jongin, why can’t I…
Waited so long, so long…”
Jongin falls asleep before he can ask, holding Kyungsoo gently under the sheets.
He’s too fragile to be left alone to throw himself around.
•
He makes himself tea and counts down the hours.
✳
“Good evening, sir. What can I get for you tonight?” Jongin asks, all friendly professionalism, and the customer sitting alone at the table looks up at him slowly.
Jongin’s breath catches because it’s him, pale skin, large eyes and short black hair, the face that he’s found himself drawing for years. There’s a drawer full of his portraits in Jongin’s apartment and he’s never met the man before. Yet here he is, in his restaurant, staring up at him blankly.
“Jongin,” the man breathes, and Jongin really really needs to get the number of Baekhyun’s psychiatrist because he doesn’t care what the neurologist says, there is something very, very wrong with him and he’s never been so scared in his life.
“Wh-who are you?” he whispers. He looks sick. Jongin imagined him pale. The man in front of him is almost translucent, like his presence is stretched thin over the air.
“Who am I?” the man echoes. He toys with the silverware. “I hoped you’d know,” he murmurs, and Jongin almost misses it.
“But you,” Jongin squeaks, hopes he wakes up, hopes he never dreams again, “You’re just… I mean… you’re not-”
The customer’s face snaps up and he stares at him with an unreadable expression. “You’re right,” he says, voice steady, soft. “I’m not real.”
He stands up slowly. His right hand is wrapped around the handle of a steak knife.
His left is wrapped around the blade.
Jongin wants, so badly, to look away. He wants to run, to close his eyes and ears, anything to not know what he knows is coming. As he tightens his grip with both hands and pulls. Jongin feels the shiver run down the length of his body but he can’t look away and he can never not have seen.
“Looks,” he says, hoarse, choked, scared, “real enough to me.”
The knife clatters noisily to the floor. He waves his hand and blood spatters against the pad Jongin’s fingers are clinging to like a lifeline.
“So, Jongin, why doesn’t anyone else care that a madman just cut himself open all over the tablecloth, silverware and waiter?”
Jongin looks around. No-one else has seen the display. No-one else does seem to care. A man a couple of tables down is impatiently waving for his attention.
Jongin turns around and marches stiffly back to the kitchen, to his supervisor.
“Sir.”
“Jongin, are you alright?”
“Can I go home. Please.”
He sounds pathetic even to his own ears. His supervisor nods quickly. “Yes, yes go home. You look terrible. Do you need me to call a cab?”
Jongin shakes his head. “Thank you. Goodnight.”
He returns to the restaurant. Grabs his sketch-man by the wrist. Drags him home on foot. Drops first aid all over the floor as he scrabbles for bandages. Wraps them around his hand.
“I’m Kyungsoo.”
“I’m fucking crazy.”
Kyungsoo smiles as he touches Jongin’s face with his good hand, as Jongin wraps his other.
“Are you scared?”
“Fucking scared.”
“I’m sorry.”
Jongin laughs; shaky, unstable. “I’ll be right back.” He walks to his phone. Sends a text. Can we meet for coffee tomorrow?
Kyungsoo is behind him, touching his hair, pressing his lips to Jongin’s face. Jongin doesn’t resist. He’s crazy anyway. What does it matter? Kyungsoo’s arms are around his waist, his face in his shoulder.
“You changed things.” Kyungsoo gestures at the new lock on the window.
Jongin thinks about the notes. About the things he forgot. “Was it you?”
Kyungsoo chuckles. “You can’t keep me out with keys, Jongin. I said I’d be back.”
Jongin stays quiet.
“You’re scared.”
“Yes.”
“It’s not the first time.”
“Oh.”
Kyungsoo holds him a little tighter, nuzzles a little deeper. “I got impatient. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry, Jongin.”
And it occurs to Jongin that he’s been in these arms before.
Sometime.
•
I waited so long for you, so long.
++
“It’s getting late,” says Kyungsoo to Jongin, as they sit on the beach and the sun is dipping low.
“No it’s not,” Jongin says quickly.
Kyungsoo gives him a smile. “I should be heading off soon.”
“No, stay,” Jongin insists, pulling Kyungsoo down to sit beside him. Their twin sandcastles are behind them, tide straying dangerously close. Kyungsoo sits.
“I can’t stay forever, Jongin.”
“I’ll take you home with me.”
Kyungsoo laughs at that. Jongin doesn’t. Kyungsoo gives him a hug. A brown butterfly and a white moth fly past and the boys watch them go. Kyungsoo tries to stand again and Jongin clings to his thin arm tight enough to bruise.
“Ouch, Jongin- why are you crying, Jongin-ah? Don’t cry…”
“Don’t go, Kyungsoo.”
“Jongin…”
The younger boy’s eyes are wide with a fear he can’t yet understand. Kyungsoo wipes away his tears. “Don’t cry. I’ll come right back. I promise. Just wait a little while, okay?”
Jongin’s grip loosens, just slightly. “You promise?”
“I promise.”
“Be quick,” Jongin orders.
Kyungsoo smiles. “You won’t even know I was gone.”
Jongin lets go.
He watches the sun and seagulls and horizon, alone on the sand. The tide rises, slowly, steadily, washing away twin sandcastles, their carefully sculpted turrets, the sandy moat-dragon. All that’s left is wet sand and a scattering of sea shells when Jongin’s mother comes out and calls her son back to the cabin, and Jongin forgets why he was waiting out there, anyway.
•
Isn’t it fun, Jongin?
You’re crazy.
**
It’s the night of their one-year anniversary and Jongin, at nineteen, smiles as Kyungsoo sleeps on the couch beside him. He snaps a photo. Digital memories. The recorded shutter sound stirs Kyungsoo awake. Jongin hides his phone.
Kyungsoo looks up with a sleepy smile. “Sorry,” he whispers, but nuzzles closer for a longer nap. Jongin chuckles.
“Hey, cutie.”
“I’m an adult, Jongin.”
“Doesn’t matter.” Jongin kisses his head. “I love you.”
“I love you too.”
Jongin works for hours, the photo maximized on his computer screen while he sketches painstakingly, making sure that every line of Kyungsoo’s face is perfect. He wants the portrait to remind him of his moment with Kyungsoo every day for the rest of forever.
And he sits back, spine aching, eyes watering, hand cramping, pleased with his result. And he tucks it away between his other sketches, where no-one will ever see.
“Aish, Jongin, what is this?” Kyungsoo complains, flicking through the photos on Jongin’s phone and coming across his own sleeping face. “When did you take this?”
“Last week,” Jongin says unashamedly.
Equally unashamed, Kyungsoo rolls his eyes and deletes the photograph.
“Hey!” Jongin yells, fighting to reclaim his phone.
“No photos,” Kyungsoo says seriously, and Jongin sighs.
“What if someday you leave, and I want something to remember you by?”
Kyungsoo narrows his eyes, and Jongin raises his hands in surrender, put off by the serious aura. “I’m just saying, I’ll miss you.”
“You won’t miss me.”
“Hey, that’s-”
“No photos, Jongin.”
“Okay. I love you.”
“I love you too.”
•
Do I know you?
I doubt it.
++++
“Kyungsoo, you look sick.”
“I said, I’m fine.”
“You don’t look fine, though,” Jongin kneels down next to his boyfriend, normally pale, now scarily white and gaunt. “Kyungsoo. You’re scaring me.”
“Jongin.” Kyungsoo lets out an exhausted laugh. “Don’t worry, I’m fine, I promise. Don’t think so much.”
Jongin touches his face, traces under one large eye. “But-”
“Jongin, don’t worry about me, seriously.” He looks up and smiles. “Trust me. I never broke a promise to you yet.”
Jongin bites his lip, slides his hands down to Kyungsoo’s fingers. “Really?”
“Really. I’m fine.”
•
It’s not the first time.
✳✳✳
Jongin returns home, where Kyungsoo is waiting, psychiatrist details tucked safely into his pocket.
Kyungsoo is beside an open drawer in a sea of paper and thin-spread graphite.
Jongin blinks.
Kyungsoo looks up from a sketch. Jongin doesn’t remember that sketch, but he recognizes it. And it’s so obviously Kyungsoo, albeit younger perhaps late teens, early twenties, tucked away in the depths of Jongin’s Kyungsoo drawer. Sleeping, head resting on his shoulder, lashes fanning over his pale cheeks.
“I don’t believe you,” Kyungsoo whispers, and he’s crying, and Jongin doesn’t know why he feels tears running down his own face as well. “I don’t fucking believe you, Kim Jongin.”
Jongin shuffles a way through the loose papers. A hundred flat grey Kyungsoos looking up at him. He kneels down next to the real Kyungsoo and holds him. The tears feel real enough against his shoulder.
“What were we?” he whispers.
“Everything,” Kyungsoo says.
•
I love you.
****
“You two,” Jongin eyes Sehun blearily from his position lying upside down with his knees hooked over the back of the couch, “Are disgusting.”
Sehun gives him a disgusting, lovesick smile right back. “Jealous?”
“Am I jealous,” Jongin says slowly, “Of my best friend having some old guy’s tongue shoved right down his throat. No.”
“I’m going to tell Luhan you called him old.”
“You do that.”
“He’ll tear your balls off.”
“He’s not patient enough to get revenge on me. He’ll tear the messenger’s balls off,” Jongin points out.
Sehun pouts, because he knows Jongin is right. “When are you going to find someone, Jongin?”
“Hopefully never.”
“You’re twenty-two and a virgin. That can’t be healthy.”
“Ugh.” Jongin slumps down, whacking his head on the floor. “Maybe I’m asexual, Sehun, did you think of that?”
“Are you asexual?”
“Maybe.”
“You need to get laid, Jongin.”
“Why am I friends with you?”
Sehun’s face appears in his direct line of vision, beaming obnoxiously. “Because I’m fucking adorable.”
“Did Luhan tell you that? Because you’re a demon child.”
“I don’t need Lulu to know that I’m lovable.”
“He did tell you that, didn’t he. Of course a demon child would be cute to a demon.”
“Get a boyfriend, Jongin.”
“I don’t want one.”
“Lulu and I are going to get you one anyway,” Sehun says brightly.
“Fuck my life,” says Jongin.
•
And it occurs to Jongin that he’s been in these arms before.
✳✳✳✳
“When I leave, you forget me,” Kyungsoo says.
“When you leave?” Jongin repeats, feet scuffing at the sidewalk as they sit on the park bench.
“Sometimes I stay for a while. The first time we met, I only stayed for a few hours. Then when you were eighteen, I stayed for over a year. When I’m around, you remember me, but when I leave, you forget.”
“Why?” Jongin palms his temples, wondering if he should have gone to the psychiatrist after all. He still has the number, safe somewhere.
“Because I’m not real, Jongin.”
“So you’re what? A hallucination?”
Kyungsoo smiles and takes his hand to squeeze it. “No.”
“Then what are you?”
“Not real.”
“You’re infuriating.”
“That too.”
Jongin sighs. “Did you explain this to me the other times as well?”
“No.” Kyungsoo toys with Jongin’s fingers. “I figured it didn’t matter, because every time we met it was like the first time all over again. We became friends all over again, loved each other all over again. But I got impatient. And you got scared.”
Jongin is quiet for a long time. “Did I love you?” he asks, and the eyes he turns to Kyungsoo are uncertain.
Kyungsoo’s breath ghosts over Jongin’s fingers. “So much,” he whispers, and Jongin wonders which way the love is going as he says the words.
“I didn’t realize,” Kyungsoo says into his knuckles, and Jongin realizes with a start that he’s holding back tears, “that you tried so hard to remember.”
“I didn’t realize I’d forgotten anything,” Jongin whispers.
“Yes, you did.” Kyungsoo smiles. “All those drawings. You’re unbelievable, Kim Jongin.”
“If I forgot you when you left, why did you leave?” Jongin asks.
That keeps Kyungsoo quiet. Jongin ticks off the seconds in the breeze. The air stretched thin over Kyungsoo’s presence.
“I get sick,” Kyungsoo finally answers, and his voice is so soft, so sad, that Jongin’s already forgiven him. “If I’m around for too long.”
“Sick?”
Kyungsoo laughs a tentative, shaky laugh. “I never told you. You used to worry about me when it happened.” He looks at his hands. “I start to fade.”
“You… what?”
Kyungsoo purses his lips. “I’m still solid. But kind of washed out. If you know what I mean.”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“Good.” Kyungsoo smiles. “I keep telling you, Jongin-ah. You shouldn’t worry about me. You don’t listen a whole lot.”
“You’re worry-about-able.”
It draws a laugh out of Kyungsoo, long, happy, and it has Jongin smiling. Kyungsoo’s eyes don't seem so big when he laughs, almost disappearing into crescents, obscured by his cheeks. And Jongin leans in instinctively to kiss him carefully.
Kyungsoo drops his forehead into the curve of Jongin’s neck when he falls back. “You’ll love me again, Jongin,” he says confidently. “I still love you so much.”
“We’ll find a way that I don’t forget about you again,” Jongin says with equal confidence, and Kyungsoo squeezes his hand.
“Okay.”
“In the meantime, you have to stay as long as you can. So I get to know you again. Promise?”
“Okay, Jongin.”
“Really, promise.”
“Jongin.” Kyungsoo raises his head to look at him. “I’ve never broken a promise to you.”
Jongin grins lopsidedly. “I wouldn’t know, so I guess I’ll have to trust you on that one. But I’d still like to hear you say it.”
Kyungsoo smiles back. “I’ll stay as long as I possibly can. I promise.”
“Good.”
And they kiss again, while a brown butterfly chases a cabbage moth by their heads.
•
We’ll find a way that I don’t forget about you again.
##
“Hi.” The seat at the bar next to Jongin suddenly becomes occupied and the gentle, cheerful greeting interrupts Jongin wallowing in self-pity while cursing Luhan, Sehun and their damned get-Jongin-laid plan.
Jongin blinks. The face next to him seems awfully familiar.
“Do I know you?” he blurts out.
The pale man smiles. “We’ve met before.”
A/N: Okay so if you read through the entirety of that thing I love you forever okay. It made sense in my head. Honest.
Also if you’re super extremely curious there is a code for what chronological order they go in:
+
++
+++
++++
+++++
*
**
***
****
*****
#
##
###
####
#####
✳
✳✳
✳✳✳
✳✳✳✳
By the paragraph AFTER the symbol.
Yeah basically don’t bother trying it’s too complicated just trust me that it makes sense okay.