reverberations [quaternary]
[BEFORE] [MASTERLIST]
- QUATERNARY
He is hiding somewhere quite small, cramped. It smells strongly of wheat gone bad, too damp, and the wooden corners cannot contain him comfortably. The box digs into his knees and against the curved knobs of his spine, compressing his chest until it’s painful to breathe.
It’s his breath, he thinks, that gives them direction to him- it’s too loud in the cramped space and they can hear it from outside.
When they pull open the lid of the grain box, for a moment he tries to curl further into it, instinctively, uselessly. But they grab his legs and arms and there must be a couple of them, must be Army in the way that they grab ruthlessly at his skin and dump him to the hard, dirt floor.
Jiho scrabbles to his feet, wondering if he can run past the soldiers and to the freedom and danger of the fields beyond, but there are three of them there, in their heavy black boots and muddy canvas pants, olive green under probably weeks worth of fighting grime.
There are probably more soldiers outside, too, waiting in the thick mud that rims the snow-covered fields, pissing or laughing or rounding up even more “commie spies” hidden in this sleepy, small town. Jiho wants to throw up at the sight of the heavy guns slung over their shoulders, though none are even pointed at him.
They are all foreigners, the closest one a short blonde with blue eyes that are startlingly clear in a dirt-smudged face.
The soldier says something-in English probably-to Jiho, but Jiho just shakes his head.
“No,” he pleads, throat dry. He doesn’t know if it’s the cold of the winter day or the fear that makes his hands shake. “No, please, no,“ he says, the only words he knows in English.
The blonde turns to the thickly-bearded one on his right, whose dark eyes seem bored into his face. He narrows his eyes at Jiho, distrust clear across his features. Jiho remembers that the last time he heard those words spoken in English, the soldier hadn’t listened to the girl who had screamed them. Fear sharpens over his skin like a current.
“No, no,” Jiho repeats, holding up his hands. He hasn’t had a proper meal in weeks, and his fingers have grown thin and the skin rough in the winter cold.
The blonde one grabs at Jiho’s wrists and drags him forward. Fear hitches high in Jiho’s throat and his feet can barely find traction on the muddy ground as they pull him from the room. Outside, midday sunlight glints off fields of fresh-fallen snow and the air is sharp. After hours in that small box, the world is too bright.
Jiho’s threadbare clothes are no match for the cold and he can already feel himself shivering as the soldier drags him by the scruff of the neck through the courtyard and out into the street. Villagers gather, close and curious, down the road. No one steps forward to them when Jiho is thrown to the ground.
The soldier yells something in English at them, and no one reacts. They all just stare. He switches to gruff, heavily accented Korean.
“Do you know him? Anyone know this scoundrel?” He uses a terrible word, but Jiho doesn’t care. The thought that he might understand- he crawls up on his knees and starts to plead in Korean.
The soldier ignores him. “No one?”
Jiho tries to calm down and speak more clearly, though fear tries to stop his mind. He hasn’t done anything wrong. “I’m not from here. I’m from a village nearby. I came- I came because there was no food, and I was trying to find some here. I’m not a spy. I’m just-”
The kick catches Jiho on the chin and sends him flying backwards. Pain explodes upwards into the top of his head and blackens his vision for a moment. He lands, hard, into a gutter of muddy, melted snow. Weakly, he tries to sit up, but the world tilts around him and he wants to throw up.
No one is saying anything. Dimly, he recognizes the word ‘kill’ from the soldier’s lips, and shakes his head, feeling blood drip from the corner of his mouth. He thinks he’s bitten his tongue. Pain makes the words slip from his mind.
Hands, rough but warm, press in on either side of his face. He blinks through the pain, until figures begin to form.
A man, with grey at the temples of his black hair, a Korean man, is looking at him. His face is lined with dirt that seems at odds with his kind bearing and the pads of his fingers are pressing across Jiho’s face.
“Are you alright?” Jaehyo asks, in Korean. There’s the slightest hint of Satoori in his voice.
Jiho’s throat is so dry. “It hurts.”
A smile cracks at the edge of Jaehyo’s lips but is quickly masked. He’s wearing a uniform just like the other soldiers, though it doesn’t fit him as well as it does them. “You just got kicked in the head,” he says, quietly. “I’m not surprised.”
The soldier says something, and Jaehyo turns and says something in English, quickly, over his shoulder. He turns back, face tense with something close to worry, though his voice is professional.
“Are you from here?” he asks.
“Yes,” Jiho whispers.
Something twists at the corner of Jaehyo’s mouth. “What’s the name of the village?”
Jiho’s head is hurting so badly he can’t concentrate. He can’t think of any names, not even where he is right now.
“It’s near?” Jaehyo prompts, his hands tightening over Jiho’s face and then dropping away. The loss of touch makes Jiho’s stomach swoop, like he’s lost an anchor and is floating away. Sickness rises in his throat.
“G-gyeongju,” he says, the only place he can think of that’s far enough south not to be suspicious.
“Are you affiliated with any army?” Jaehyo asks, that trace of Satoori accent in his voice again, as if a reminder.
Jiho’s mouth shuts and he shakes his head, ‘no.’ “I swear I’m not,” he says in a low voice, too low for the soldiers overhead to hear what he’s saying. “I’m just hungry.”
Jaehyo looks at him for long seconds, as if assessing him. Jiho wonders if he looks trustworthy, his winter-roughened face, chapped lips, thin hands. If he doesn’t- death is just one option.
It’s almost as if Jaehyo recognizes him, too, for a moment, before he hauls Jiho up by his forearms. He leans in close, mouth brushing against Jiho’s ear. Jiho can’t tell if it’s excitement or relief that travels down his spine, a shock, when Jaehyo whispers, “Just trust me. And don’t speak.”
-
They take Jiho to the UN encampment nearby. When they heave Jiho up into the back of the army-issue personnel carrier, he nearly balks. He knows that there were cars in Seoul, and trams, and other new things he has no name for, but he’s never ridden in one before.
Jaehyo, though, just grabs him by the arm and pulls him up beside him. They tied Jiho’s wrists together, though he has no intention or thoughts of escape. He falls into the seat next to Jaehyo and presses his thin knee to the canvas of his army uniform, the slight warmth that escapes calming him. Something tells him to stay close to Jaehyo, as though the army interpreter will be able to help him, keep him safe. The idea is almost hilarious when compared to the absolute chaos war has wrought during the past year.
The burly man with the beard hops in the back of the truck and sits down across from them. Though he leans forward and braces his hands on his knees calmly enough, something in his expression is still dangerous. The anchor of Jaehyo’s body seems less, almost insignificant, against his presence. The blonde jumps into the front of the jeep and indicates to the driver to go.
Jaehyo and the man talk quietly in English as Jiho watches the village disappear into the brightness of the snow, the white fields soon obscured by dark trees. Whatever illusion of safety he had has been left behind, and all he has is the man next to him and the warmth from where they’re pressed together from knee to hip.
-
The camp is small, obviously temporary, though the fighting has already been going on for months. There are a few tents set up in a ramshackle line through the trees, hastily constructed, though the thick mud that seals them to the ground seems weeks, if not months, old. As they wander along the line, deeper into the woods, the soldiers duck off into their various sagging tents until it’s only Jaehyo, Jiho, and the thickly bearded soldier who pulls Jiho forward by his wrists.
Jaehyo looks like he wants to protest, but can’t find the words. He puts a hand on Jiho’s shoulder as they head towards a large tent propped up under dark green camouflage. As Jiho is led up to a tree right before the entrance, he notes the names scrawled in dark marker near the entrance.
They’re in English, but Jiho understands, suddenly, why it’s only the three of them left.
Jiho looks over at Jaehyo, but he’s not looking back at him. His heart drops, like he’s tripped over something unexpectedly. For a moment, he wonders if maybe he shouldn’t have trusted Jaehyo.
The soldier makes Jiho kneel next to the tree and pulls his arms behind it, securing it with a long length of rope. Already, the position makes his shoulders burn and his fingers curl, trying to drag the stretch away.
Jaehyo stands in front not Jiho now, his expression impassive. There’s a nervous energy in him, though his eyes flicker to his companion and back to Jiho’s eyes. There’s something in him that Jiho wants, that impassive face that Jiho wants to break for all the warmth hiding underneath.
But it’s that wanting that got him kicked out of Seoul, running for his life from the soldiers who roamed the streets at night sometimes, hungry and watching. It’s dangerous, and Jaehyo is keeping him still him with that intent gaze, something more promised in his gaze.
A smile, secretive, curls the corner of Jaehyo’s mouth. Instinctively, the wanting pulls Jiho forward until he nearly strains against the rope now tied tightly around his wrists.
The soldier tightens Jiho’s cuffs with a yank that snaps Jiho’s head back against the tree. Irritation buzzes up his spine and over the arch of his skull, and he can’t stop the glare as the soldier rounds the tree.
He catches Jiho’s dark look and mutters something rude in English, a word that Jiho doesn’t know, before kicking at Jiho’s legs with a sharp foot. Jaehyo’s face is blank as he says something. The soldier just snorts in a dismissive way.
As the soldier wraps an arm around Jaehyo, steering him away, a flash of anger- of jealousy- churns Jiho’s stomach. His arms strain at the ropes holding his wrists together when the soldier’s hand slips from Jaehyo’s shoulder until it’s wrapped around the nape of Jaehyo’s neck, at the collar, like he’s holding a dog in place. Jaehyo’s head tilts down slightly, as if gone limp, as if in submission, and he doesn’t look back as the soldier leads him away.
Jiho’s heart strains hotly, beating triple time. He wants to protect Jaehyo, to pull him away from the soldier wrapped around him, but there’s nothing he can do.
Jaehyo said to trust him. That will have to be enough.
-
Darkness falls in a gradual slip from a short, grey afternoon into a suddenly sharp night. Jiho’s shivering has long ago become constant and he’s slipped from a crouch into a seat on the frozen ground. No one comes by with food, though he can smell the slight scent of it in the air, and eventually the hunger settles into the general ache of his body. Everyone seems to have forgotten him.
Occasionally, soldiers will walk by, but they give him very little recognition. Jaehyo and his soldier companion do not return for hours, until darkness has fully settled and the cold is so sharp to have taken the feeling from Jiho’s hands and feet.
They seem drunk at first, propping each other up as they traipse their way over to the tent. Jiho starts up but there’s no energy left in his limbs, and he falls back with a nearly inaudible groan.
The soldier ducks into the tent first, cheeks ruddy with drink, and Jaehyo goes in after. He looks like he’s forgotten all about Jiho, but the moment before he goes into the tent, his eyes flicker over to Jiho’s form. Then he’s gone.
There are muffled sounds in the tent, low words in English and the occasional spurt of something sharper, a command or something Jiho can’t discern. An odd sense of understanding makes a shock spread over the crown of his head and down his spine. He shifts in sudden discomfort, breath making small puffs of silvery water vapor in front of his nose. He hopes he’s wrong, he hopes-
The familiar groans and gasps of sex filter through the walls of the tent. They’re muted, but unmistakeable. Jiho’s heart pulses hotly in his chest, an angry jealousy filling him, sharp against the cold of the air and his limbs. The idea of that soldier, dark gaze and heavy hands, touching Jaehyo’s bare skin, putting his cruel mouth down the slope of Jaehyo’s stomach and causing that low groan that Jiho can tell is Jaehyo’s- Jiho pulls uselessly at his restraints again, chained in frustration. He can’t help but hear. Something is unsettled in him. Jaehyo shouldn’t-
But the reality is that Jaehyo owes him nothing, and it’s entirely possible that Jaehyo has already forgotten him, and the promise.
Jiho curls up until his head is between his knees and he can block out some of the sounds. Some still make it through, and he can tell when Jaehyo gasps- soft, and then a long, low groan that goes straight to Jiho’s dick. Heat gathers between Jiho’s thighs, a hot, shameful reaction to those soft moans. He groans into the press of his thighs, ready to scream in frustration.
The darkness deepens and the cold becomes so biting that every breath Jiho takes in burns at his lungs. Soon the area falls quiet, with only the soft susurration of the woods in the background. The heat in his groin flattens out, dissipates into the general cold of his body. Jiho relaxes, still not entirely at ease, but until he can rest his head on his knees. An hour must pass. He’s barely drifting in sleep when footsteps break the silence.
Slowly, Jiho raises his head. Jaehyo is picking his way quietly towards him. He’s fully dressed, but there’s something still disheveled about him, his lips too dark- cheeks too pink, even for the cold air.
Jiho stares at him, almost too weak to speak. Relief slips warmly into his stomach. He hasn’t forgotten me.
Jaehyo kneels down in front of him, and puts his hands on Jiho’s sharply-featured face. Jiho flinches back instinctively, but the grip is warm, almost hot, when he leans back into it.
Jaehyo’s eyes are an almost liquid black in the slight winter moon. He smells, so close, of himself and the sweat-heavy scent of recent sex. The way Jaehyo is looking at him, Jiho finds the jealousy loosen its vise grip on his heart.
Something of that secretive smile presses back onto Jaehyo’s lips, and Jiho stares at it hungrily, feeling like he could burst through the ropes by wanting. Jaehyo’s eyes flash in recognition and then he’s crawling behind Jiho, pulling the tightly wrapped ropes from Jiho’s wrists. There’s the cold touch of a knife at his wrist and Jiho holds himself still, waiting. Jaehyo cuts through the ropes with relative ease and then he’s back in front of Jiho, hoisting him up with one arm.
After hours crouched on the frozen ground, Jiho can’t even stand on his own. He can’t feel his own feet, or anywhere below his waist or lower than his elbows. Jaehyo wraps an arm around Jiho’s waist and pulls Jiho’s arm over his shoulder, until their sides are pressed together, Jiho’s cold body pressed up against the warmth of Jaehyo’s torso. There’s still that thrill under his skin at being pressed up against Jaehyo’s side that even the cold air can’t take from him.
Jaehyo leads him off into the darkness at the edge of camp, into the slight protection of the trees gone bare in winter. Jiho regains his feet, slowly, the ache under his skin now too far subsumed under the cold of the air for him to feel it.
“Where are we going?” he whispers, but Jaehyo just shakes his head and Jiho takes the cue to go silent.
Jaehyo takes him deep into the snow-laden woods, until the lights of the UN encampment have faded into the trees. Jaehyo is silent at his side, eyes focused on a far-off point that Jiho can’t parse through the wavering darkness. Occasionally, Jaehyo will look over with those dark eyes, and a flame of desire will lick down Jiho’s spine as though the depths of the winter cold have receded the tiniest bit.
They come to a stop at the far edge of a field. Moonlight glints off the snow and sets the small farmhouse in the middle of the expanse into shadow. Jaehyo turns to look at him, something resolved in his gaze.
He’s going to stay, Jiho knows. The thought doesn’t bother him as much as it should.
“This is as far as I go,” Jaehyo says, voice barely above a whisper. But he doesn’t let go of Jiho, not yet, his gloved hands dug into Jiho’s sides. “Follow the wood. Don’t go high into the mountains; we always seem to find refugees and spies hiding in the mountains. Go to Busan. There will be so many people that you can blend in. You’ll be safe in a big city.” He pauses, as if preparing to let go, and Jiho clutches a little closer. The touch seems to shake Jaehyo’s resolve loose. His eyes flicker down and he licks at his lips, as if nervous. “My mother- she can take care of you, if you tell her that you know me.”
He pauses again, and the darkness seems to set in deep into the lines under his eyes and around his mouth. Jiho wants to kiss him, that glimmering plush of his lip, and there’s no one around to see them, not now.
So he presses his lips up against Jaehyo’s, soft, and Jaehyo leans into him, hands in his rough army gloves curling around the nape of Jiho’s neck. It starts soft, more of a thank you, or a goodbye, until Jaehyo opens his mouth to Jiho and turns the kiss slick and warm, enticing them to press the lengths of their bodies together.
Jiho gasps, taken by the warmth and sudden heat of it. Up close, Jaehyo smells of sex, that scent of another human’s touch on his skin and Jiho is urgent to erase it, replace it with his own. Jaehyo urges him on with his hands and mouth, pulling at Jiho’s clothes and moaning when Jiho finally slips a hand past the badly-worn leather of Jaehyo’s uniform belt.
Jaehyo’s skin is burning hot under Jiho’s hands, still sticky with sweat. But he’s already hard and the thought charges through Jiho’s own excitement, the thought that Jaehyo must have been anticipating this, thinking of him even as they trudged through the woods together.
Jaehyo pushes him up against a tree, tripping slightly across the hardened snow and then crashing full-bodily into him. It’s hard to focus on Jaehyo, but hard to focus on anything else, with Jiho’s heartbeat pounding loudly in his ears and under his skin. They might get caught, there’s no guarantee that this way is perfectly safe, but Jaehyo is still biting at his lips and his hands fit around the hard length of Jiho and there’s nothing else Jiho can focus on but this.
He comes silently a minute later, shuddering against Jaehyo and his face pressed into his warm neck to muffle any sounds. Jaehyo presses against him more urgently then, tipping his head to fit their mouths together, sloppily, too close to do anything else.
Jiho kisses him with all the tenderness he has left in him, heat under his skin, thinking through the haze, I wish this wasn’t the end- I wish we had more time for this, without his lover, just us- but then Jaehyo is coming in his hands, slumping against him for a brief moment that fills Jiho with a sharp sense of pride, as if he’s made Jaehyo forget about his lover, and they’re the only two in this quiet night who have any right to be together. Jiho nuzzles his cold nose against the warmth of Jaehyo’s cheek, slipping his lips across the skin.
After a few moments slumped together, Jaehyo’s breath spreading wetly over his neck and his fingertips stroking the thin skin at Jiho’s hips, Jaehyo pulls himself up.
Feeling slightly untethered, Jiho straightens as well. The sense of security he felt before is fading now. The sharp smell of the snow breaks through the slight, sluggish warmth of his orgasm.
Jaehyo pulls away and reaches down to scoop up some snow, cleaning off his hands. He belts his uniform again and pulls his coat close around him before he looks back up at Jiho. He looks suddenly exhausted, and Jiho can’t bring himself to ask him for anything else. He cleans off his hands as well and adjusts his clothes, aware of how little the cold affects him now but his fingers still tremble with something else, some inner fear.
When he’s done, Jaehyo pulls him in by his elbow. His eyes flicker over his face for a moment before he pulls something from his pocket and fits it into Jiho’s hand.
It’s an old wooden name tag, like the one his ancestors used during the Joseon dynasty. It’s round and darkened with time, the name carved into it beginning to fade away.
“I can’t take this,” Jiho protests, trying to shove it back into Jaehyo’s hand, but Jaehyo refuses. It must be his grandfather’s, or from a relative even further back, and Jiho grasps at Jaehyo’s sleeve, trying to pull it back up so he can return it but Jaehyo shakes his head.
“No, no, you need it,” Jaehyo says, his fingers tightening around Jiho’s arm. His voice is low, and torn. “Bring it to my mother, in Busan. She’ll… she’ll want it back.”
Unease slips up Jiho’s spine at the words. “Then you bring it back to her; bring it to her when the war is over.” He grabs at Jaehyo’s arm but Jaehyo just reaches around him and pulls him tightly to his chest for a moment.
When he pulls back, his dark eyes are sad, as if he’s seeing something beyond Jiho, a future that hasn’t come to fruition yet. His breath is warm over Jiho’s face. “Bring it to her, please, for me.” His gaze focus in on Jiho’s eyes again, and he smiles.
Jiho wants to tell him not to be stupid, that he’ll make it back at the end of the war, loping down the muddy streets where he grew up, ducking into the warm house that’s gone ramshackle with time. His old mother will still be at the fire, making doenjang stew for herself, and at first she won’t believe her eyes, that her son who joined the invading forces to keep her safe, her quiet, kind, elementary school teacher son who never married, has come back to her, whole and alive and there, kissing her on the cheek like he used to do every day after school. But it’s not something he can promise, and Jaehyo leans in and kisses him instead, once more for luck, before pulling back.
“Go,” he says, and Jiho can still smell Jaehyo on him when he takes a deep breath. “Tell her I’ll see her soon,” he continues, but the smile that curls his face barely covers his disbelief.
Jiho nods, fingers curling tightly over the identification tile. It’s still warm from Jaehyo’s inner pocket. He wants to say something but he can’t think of any words.
Come with me.
“I’ll see you soon,” he manages, unable to believe it, hating it when the words make the corners of Jaehyo’s smile tremble slightly.
He turns and heads off into the snow. His heart aches, already, as if he’s doing something wrong. When he turns back to look at the woods, Jaehyo is gone.
Let us have another life together, after the war.
-
Jiho slips into Busan a few weeks later. The snow has thinned considerably, but the cold is still sharp. The city is full of UN troops and teeming with refugees who arrive daily in huge numbers. It’s easy to get lost in the crowd entering the city and he finds the old quarter listed on the identification tile.
It’s quieter here, slightly, not too close to the port where huge battleships and supply carriers dock and unload, load, every hour of the day and night. At the end of a sloping street, he finds the old house of Jaehyo’s mother, once grand but gone dilapidated with age.
An old lady welcomes him in at the sight of the ID tile, the tears drying when Jiho explains that Jaehyo hasn’t died but has saved his life. He doesn’t know if the first is true, but the latter outweighs his fear. The lady presses it back into his hands when Jiho tries to leave, his duty done, and urges him to stay.
She keeps him there for a few months, before the fighting changes direction and the UN forces start to push up past the 38th parallel and into North Korean territory. The possibility of Seoul being open again draws him north. He thanks Jaehyo’s mother for her kindness and promises to send her word when he makes it home, the tile worn around his neck on a long string.
Jiho makes it to Seoul while the city is still under UN command, but soon afterwards there’s a sudden reversal of fighting and he’s caught by a random patrol of Chinese and North Korean soldiers on the outskirts of the city. He’s killed that day, a few hours after being captured, and his body is buried in the woods, the ID tile folded carefully into an inner pocket, next to his cool skin.
- ONE
There are months of this. In the daytime he grits his teeth and practices dance moves that pull his hip flexors and spread aches down his spine, never complaining. He sees his cheeks go from convex to a barely-articulated slope, covered in sweat and various shades of makeup. He looks his age, then younger, then 30. He eats endless bowls of ramyun, beef kimbap from the restaurant down the street that’s the only one open all night, coffee bread from the convenience store, and nothing else for almost six months. He sleeps in a pre-debut dorm with the 6 other boys who can’t seem to keep a bathroom clean and almost never sees a hot shower, because they always go in age order (he thinks Kyung does it on purpose, sometimes). He goes to diction lessons and gym sessions and gets his teeth bleached and his hair cut and he stops being able to recognize himself in the mirror, before he becomes too tired to care.
Dealing with Jaehyo should be easier as time passes, but the tension that has stretched between them since their first meeting occasionally winds tighter, gritting teeth and muttering words, but it never snaps. Someone always comes in the middle, urging peace or making a joke, and Jiho feels like a wounded cat when he turns and leaves, and just as impotent.
His shoulders are always heavy with unbroken tension that presses down to curl in his groin, an accusing arousal that deepens the longer they know each other. That simmering annoyance marks the underside of his skin like prickling knives, and Jaehyo’s eyes seem reproachful.
You know me. You know this.
The urge to kiss him doesn’t fade with time, not like Jiho thought it would. He never follows through.
Do something.
But as much as Jiho can’t shake the feeling that he knows Jaehyo- from before, somewhere that Jiho can’t place, a recurring dream that he can’t quite remember- the words won’t form. He wants, and he knows he can’t, a double bind of silence.
Jiho’s losing energy that he can’t spare just to keep this pseudo-anger in place of something else. He doesn’t hold grudges, as a person, and now he knows why. So he tries to make Jaehyo happy, or at least something a little less like in hate, or whatever this has become.
Everyone else can make Jaehyo laugh, can make those broad shoulders bow with an inexhaustible exhilaration and make him slap his leg as he laughs, except Jiho. Even when he tries to make Jaehyo laugh, the words come out wrong, twisted and are followed by silence. Something might curl the corners of Jaehyo’s lips, as if he knows what Jiho is trying to say but can’t let himself react.
It’s not a laugh, but it feels like a shift, even slight, in their relationship.
When they speak, Jaehyo’s eyes always flick away before he responds, lashes covering the dark irises. It’s like he can’t even look Jiho in the face. Every time his eyes turn away, it’s a kick in the gut, an incitement to try harder.
It feels almost like they’re moving towards something as they circle around each other, ratcheted in towards each other with each step and unable to move away, unable to look to even where they’re going. It feels like they’re making progress, though they still hardly speak, and emotions run close the surface when they’re in the same room.
It’s exhausting, this constant pressure. Jaehyo must feel it too, but he smiles just the same and tells the same unfunny jokes and ignores Jiho when he grinds his teeth in annoyance.
-
There are nights he can’t sleep that Jiho spends in the studio, remastering tracks that he still can’t get right. When he finally sleeps, passed out on top of the keyboard, those dreams are the most shattered. Destroyed by distance and his exhaustion, he sees Jaehyo from across a small room thick with incense and the close scent of wet silks. Claustrophobia knocks against his heart like a spirit, until the loss of his sister knocks out his feet and sends him to the ground. He can’t take any comfort in the hand against his neck, knowing her husband’s- Jaehyo’s- grief must be worse.
We drove her to this.
Guilt makes him abruptly sick, even as his hand reaches up and presses over the one on his nape. It’s a shoddy connection, but all he has when the floor feel like water under his knees.
Just as suddenly, the dream dissolves and Jiho is left in sleep so heavy it keeps him facedown on the keyboard until a producer-nim comes in at 9 the next morning. He doesn’t remember anything but has a slight ache in his stomach that food can’t settle.
-
There are too many of those dreams. More numerous than the times that they find each other are they times when they don’t-or can’t.
If eternity is repetition and habits are easy to break but hard to keep, perhaps their failures are their proper endings. Perhaps there is nothing more. It shouldn’t be this hard, and Jiho wakes up with a lingering frustration that he can’t dispel. It’s easier to think he doesn’t have to try for something, that he just has to keep going and it will all fade and work itself out and become every other platitude people have told him about the life he’s chosen (this time).
It won’t matter that the few times after a performance Jaehyo falls asleep against him in the back of the van, slumped heavily against him, his heart swells and he thinks wildly that it would be worth it, if Jaehyo asked him to give everything up. It might be worth it, if Jaehyo knew.
But then he wonders what he would do to keep Jaehyo next to him like this, vulnerable and relaxed, his throat probably sore from singing, so full of his accomplished dream, and he knows. He knows, even as his skin burns with a pleased warmth. He knows and he wants to brush Jaehyo’s hair away from his face, but his fingers are clenched around his knees to keep himself from following through.
Instead of looking at Jaehyo, he turns and stares out the window at the passing lights of a sleeping Seoul. His heart thrums under his breastplate, and he tries to ignore it. It could be anyone, leaning up against him. It shouldn’t matter that it’s Jaehyo.
To do it, he knows he has to keep quiet on those words he’s beginning to find in the back of his throat. He can’t let the group fail, not for him and not for his selfish desires. He has to find the other words, lyrics and platitudinal answers for interviews and jokes for the fans, his mind whirring and his throat hurting from what he doesn’t want to want to say.
“Let’s be Block B for the rest of our lives!”
He knows it’s what Jaehyo wants to accomplish, his dream of becoming a singer already becoming true, and it sparks life in his eyes. And if it takes the rest of his life, and his silence, he’ll help.
Jiho closes his eyes and tries to sleep, the scent of Jaehyo’s skin so close, knowing. His heart feels heavy in his chest.
Not in this life, he reminds himself.
This time, it feels less like protection and more like a punishment.
[FORWARD]