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Jaebeom hasn’t seen Jinyoung since September.
It’s difficult now, to get the seven of them in one room at the same time. They try to get together for birthdays but that year Yugyeom’s birthday had fallen through the cracks of scheduling. After Jackson, Jinyoung is always the hardest to track down.
But they had managed in September, for their three birthdays. Alone, Jaebeom likes to think he’s mellowed with age. Among the boys again, it washes away. They met Mark’s newborn for the first time. They told Jaebeom how sorry they were to hear of his divorce. They teased Jinyoung about the rumours involving him and his latest attractive female co-star. They drank, they laughed, and Jaebeom went back to an empty apartment feeling a dizzying combination of empty and full.
Of course they message each other, meet up in smaller groups. But Jaebeom hasn’t seen Jinyoung since September.
This year was the first Christmas Jaebeom’s ever spent alone. Before, there was always someone. Parents. Friends. Cats. Jisoo. Christmas this year was suddenly upon Jaebeom, and now it’s already over, leaving only the twinkling strings of lights strung up between the trees.
The cold bites at Jaebeom’s exposed skin, and the heavy snow banks slow his steps.
And he’s getting old.
Friends of his, older still, laugh when Jaebeom speaks the thought aloud, but it doesn’t make it feel less true. Pulling all-nighters is nearly impossible now, and when he does sleep, he can only manage a few hours at a time. The cold seems to settle into his core until he can’t shake it. When he sits down he almost always feels a pinch of tension in his spine. Not pain, but the ghost of it.
Maybe it’s his past idolhood, full of marketable youth and vigour, that makes him feel so withered and past-it now. Maybe it’s the divorce. Or maybe it’s just his personality. For actors like Jinyoung, this is the prime of life. But for Jaebeom, churning out two lovesick pop songs a week for waves of energetic boys in trendy clothes, 40 seems like a death knell.
Every lyric he writes about first love and enduring love and love seems disgracefully foolish in the ruins of his marriage. Perhaps “ruins” might be a bit dramatic. What remains of his marriage is more like an empty apartment, pristine and sterile, white walls bare of photos, sleek furniture bare of homely clutter. The lease expiring at the end of the month. Which is in a few days. Unsure and unwelcome, Jaebeom went for a walk and got on a train, and is now walking again, body moving inexorably closer to its destination without his mind’s control.
Huddling deeper into his coat, Jaebeom knows it isn’t just the cold carving into his bones. He feels this deep, hollow yearning. More cavernous than simple loneliness. It’s something like regret, something like nostalgia. Something like homesickness.
He finds himself standing before the gate of Jinyoung’s house. It’s a place Jaebeom’s only been to a handful of times, even though Jinyoung’s lived there for almost five years now. Jinyoung is a private person, as he always was. Yugyeom and Mark had teased Jinyoung about his move from apartment to modest house. Big enough for two, they’d said.
But even after all this time, Jinyoung’s house is a home for one.
“Jaebeom?” Jinyoung’s staticky incredulous voice comes through the speaker beside the gate before Jaebeom even realizes he’s pressed the bell.
“Hey,” Jaebeom greets the speaker, unsure of where to look for the camera. He grasps for a reason for him to be here, a supplicant on Jinyoung’s doorstep, but a mechanical buzz unlocks the gate, and his body moves inside without another word.
As it stands in Jaebeom’s memory, Jinyoung’s front garden is small but charming. Now it seems alien and unnatural, cloaked in thick layers of snow, softening familiar shapes into strange shadows in the night. A beam of welcoming yellow light spills across the snow as the front door opens, revealing Jinyoung. His warm face shines like a star, pulling at the spinning needle of Jaebeom’s directionless heart.
“Jaebeom,” Jinyoung greets him again in breathless surprise, a smile lighting up his face until it’s blinding. “What are you doing here?”
Silently, Jaebeom crosses the yard, drinking in the familiar sight of Jinyoung until his eyes water from not blinking. Jinyoung looks a little rumpled, only one sleeve of his brown sweater rolled up over an unironed shirt, hair ruffled like he’s been running a hand through it. He looks so at home, it warms Jaebeom like a hot meal.
“Just thought I’d drop by,” Jaebeom answers finally, letting Jinyoung pull him into a hug in the doorway. The soft weight of Jinyoung’s arms around his shoulders chases away what was left of the cold homesickness gnawing at Jaebeom's heart.
“Come in,” Jinyoung says when he pulls away, leaving an arm curled around Jaebeom’s shoulder to beckon him into the house. As if Jaebeom needs coaxing into the buttery warmth of Jinyoung’s home.
“Sorry I don’t have any slippers for you,” Jinyoung continues, gesturing at the jumbled shoe rack in the entryway. “I only have ones that fit Marie.”
Jaebeom eyes the little flowery slip-ons for Mark’s eldest as he’s taking his shoes and coat off.
“I’m sorry we didn’t get to talk very much last time we saw each other. How are you?” Jinyoung asks, and Jaebeom knows he means the divorce because of the way his lips are tight with delicacy and concern.
“I miss you,” Jaebeom blurts out instead, and Jinyoung’s eyes widen in shock, hand slipping off Jaebeom’s arm. It means so much, those three words, and they can both sense it. “I… didn’t mean to say that.”
Jinyoung’s lips purse, eyes dropping away, and even after all these years, Jaebeom can read the cues his body is giving. They’re still standing in the cramped entryway, bodies too close to think clearly, but Jaebeom feels rooted to the spot. He can’t take another step into Jinyoung’s home without baring his quivering heart.
“But that doesn’t mean it’s not the truth,” Jaebeom amends finally.
“You miss me?” Jinyoung asks, voice low and private in the tight space, gaze flitting up to Jaebeom’s eyes but not staying. “Or anyone?”
Are you just lonely? Are you only here because I’m the one who always lets you in?
“You,” Jaebeom says, with conviction this time, and suddenly words are tumbling from his mouth. Truth after truth that he never thought to examine. “Whenever we see each other it hurts that I can’t see you again the next day. That I’ll have to wait months to be that close to you again. Whenever we message each other I never want to stop. When I type out goodnight I wish I was saying it to your face. When you reply you always add that little red heart and I stare at it until I can’t see anything else. And I wish I had the courage to send it back.”
Jinyoung’s gaze is on him now, brown eyes wide and startled.
“We don’t have to meet up so infrequently,” Jinyoung says, tentatively, like a fawn taking its first steps. “I know I’m bad at reaching out. But you could have reached out too.”
“I know. I didn’t because… I thought I was going in the right direction.”
Hurt flashes in Jinyoung’s eyes and in the pinch of his eyebrows. “Away from me?”
Jaebeom pauses to think. When he was younger he might have wanted to blurt out a no, stop Jinyoung from pulling away. But now he knows Jinyoung deserves the truth, so he seeks that truth out in his mind. “Just… away. From things. And you. But I finally realized it’s not the way I want to go.”
Jinyoung holds Jaebeom’s gaze now, and it feels like a tangible thread strung between their bodies. “We should go inside,” Jinyoung says softly, like another door opening.
Turning, Jinyoung leads Jaebeom into the front room, cradled in dim warm light spilling out of the open kitchen. Jaebeom eyes the old ricecooker chugging away on the kitchen counter, the excess of blankets piled on the sofa.
“Do you want to stay for dinner? I’m afraid I wasn’t going to have anything exciting-” Jinyoung stops, turning sharply to peer into the shadows of the front room. An oddly familiar noise reaches them, like fabric being torn by blunt scissors.
When Jinyoung doesn’t continue, Jaebeom shuffles his feet awkwardly. “Were you in the middle of something?”
“No,” Jinyoung insists, turning back to Jaebeom with a hassled smile, before switching on a lamp, illuminating the front room further. “I’m just… I have a guest. Sort of.”
Jaebeom’s heart sinks, feeling small and foolish for showing up on Jinyoung’s doorstep without warning. For all those confessions. Expecting Jinyoung to let him in, as he always has. “Should I leave?”
“No!” Jinyoung says hastily, marching around the sofa and gasping at what he sees.
Hurrying to follow, Jaebeom rounds the sofa and catches sight of Jinyoung’s other guest. A handsomely coloured tortoiseshell cat, scratching contentedly at the side of the sofa.
“No!” Jinyoung barks again, although the marks on the sofa show this is not the first incident, and Jaebeom blurts out a shocked laugh.
Crouching down to greet the cat, Jaebeom smiles when she unhooks her claws to stride over confidently, tail up in the air. “Who’s this?”
“Iris,” Jinyoung says, frowning down at his ravaged sofa with his hands on his hips.
Clearly unrepentant, Iris meows, pressing her face into Jaebeom’s careful hand. Her fur is mostly black, mottled with golden orange in places, and she has pretty yellow-green eyes. She’s not a kitten, but she looks a bit too gangly to be fully grown.
“She’s from a local shelter. They were overcrowded,” Jinyoung continues, as if trying to justify her presence to Jaebeom. “I’m just looking after her for a little while.”
Hand stilling on Iris’ back, Jaebeom casts his eye around the front room, now that it’s properly lit. Besides the sofa, chair, two side tables piled high with Jinyoung clutter, Jaebeom catches sight of several cat toys strewn over the floor, a short cat tower, and two pristine scratching posts.
“Just for a little while,” Jaebeom repeats with a sage nod. “That’s what you’re telling yourself, huh?”
Iris meows demandingly, and Jaebeom sits down on the floor entirely to resume his petting, smiling at the cat’s bold personality. Just met him, and already she’s bossing him about.
“What about your allergies?” Jaebeom asks Jinyoung, sure to continue petting Iris this time.
“They cleared up a few years ago. I even went to the doctor to ask, apparently it’s quite common,” Jinyoung explains, running a hand mournfully over the tears in the sofa fabric. He moves an untouched scratching post to stand in front of the damage, but his frown tells Jaebeom he’s tried that tactic before, to no avail. “Did you want to stay for dinner? Sorry, did I ask that already?”
Jaebeom bites back a comment about old age, and smiles privately down at Iris. “I’d love to.”
“The rice is on,” Jinyoung says, sitting down on the sofa and watching Jaebeom scrunch a toy at Iris on the floor.
“Hyung,” Jinyoung continues after the silence stretches on. It’s something he so rarely calls Jaebeom anymore, and he makes himself small to do so, shoulders curling inwards uncertainly. “Did you mean everything you said earlier?”
Looking over at Jinyoung, Jaebeom sees how his shoulders bow, how his neat fingers tangle in worry. He flicks Iris’ toy across the floor and she bounds after it, leaving Jaebeom free to reach over and put a comforting hand on Jinyoung’s knee. Though he hopes it comforts Jinyoung too, feeling the solid warmth of Jinyoung through his jeans, feeling the hard line of bone along the edge of his knee, grounds Jaebeom in this dreamlike reality.
“I did. I wish I had thought over what I was going to say more carefully but… I suddenly felt it was time to tell you. I thought being alone would scare me, and it did at first. Then I got used to it, and I realized I don’t mind being alone.” Staring up at Jinyoung, Jaebeom tries to communicate the same devotion in his gaze as in his words. “But I also realized that I’d rather be with you.”
“Being with me won’t be easy,” Jinyoung says, sensible and hesitant, and Jaebeom’s first instinct is to disagree. Being with Jinyoung brings the same comfort as home, comes as naturally as breathing. But that isn’t what Jinyoung means.
He means being private and careful. He means lying in interviews and smiling wanly through rumours involving attractive female co-stars. He means it won’t be like being with Jisoo, or any other woman. No holding hands or kissing in public. No marriage.
“It would be worth it. Marrying Jisoo was easy. It was too easy, like a path already set out for me to walk along. Not the path I chose for myself. Not the direction I wanted to go. I don’t want something easy anymore. I want something I have to work for.”
“Don’t pat yourself on the back too much,” Jinyoung finally says, a teasing lilt in his voice, eyes dancing with laughter as he looks down at Jaebeom on the floor by his slippered feet. “You don’t have to work that hard to get me.”
“But I had to work hard to deserve you.”
“Don’t put me on a pedestal Jaebeom.”
“Then help me up.”
“Old man,” Jinyoung scoffs, but he takes Jaebeom’s hand and pulls him up.
Following the momentum, Jaebeom doesn’t stop until he’s braced a hand against the back of the sofa, covering Jinyoung. Hiding him away from the rest of the world, caught up in Jaebeom’s shadow. Flustered, Jinyoung’s hand slips out of Jaebeom’s to fold politely in his lap. Smiling devilishly, Jaebeom brings his newly freed hand to cradle Jinyoung’s jaw, fingers curling around the back of his neck.
And Jinyoung doesn’t move, waiting for Jaebeom.
So Jaebeom catches up, chasing away the last wisps of distance between them as he leans down to kiss Jinyoung gently. His desire still feels like a fire, but it’s not the raging destructive force he tried to run from all those years ago. It flickers in his chest like a cozy fireplace, enduring and intimate and sheltered from the wind.
And as for Jinyoung, he blossoms like a new spring flower under Jaebeom’s lips, pressing back desperately, trying to push all the yearning of so many years into one kiss. He cups his hands around Jaebeom’s cheeks, fingers anchored behind Jaebeom’s ears to keep him there.
Then Jinyoung’s crying, and Jaebeom pulls away slowly to see his watery eyes and wet cheeks, still as round and rosy as his baby pictures. Jinyoung doesn’t excuse the tears, even as they continue to fall, face open and vulnerable. Passing him a tissue from the cluttered side table, Jaebeom twists to sit down beside Jinyoung, tucking him under his arm.
They sink into the soft embrace of being so close to each other, and Jinyoung blows his nose delicately. From the kitchen, the ricecooker plays out a little tune as the rice finishes.
“You’ll stay?” Jinyoung asks, and they both know he isn’t asking about dinner this time.
“I have nowhere else to go.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean…” Jaebeom shrugs sheepishly, not wanting to ask outright how long he’s welcome to stay, “my apartment lease ends soon.”
“You could get another apartment, if you wanted.” Jinyoung says airily, a convenient escape for Jaebeom weaving in between the words. “You don’t have to stay here.”
Jaebeom doesn’t want to escape, but he doesn’t want to encroach upon Jinyoung’s space either. “What if me staying here would be a mistake? What if we don’t… work together anymore?”
“I think… at our age, one has to take risks when it comes to… important things. Things you care about.” Jinyoung’s gaze is piercing Jaebeom deep now, reading his heart and taking precise notes. “And I have a spare room, if you snore too loudly now. If we want to take things slow.”
Torn between arguing that he does not snore and pointing out they can’t take things much slower, Jaebeom simply smiles fondly at Jinyoung’s familiar teasing. “If you’ll have me, I’ll stay.”
“I’ll have you,” Jinyoung agrees imperiously, standing up from the sofa. “Besides, I could really use your expertise with her majesty over there.”
Across the room, they watch Iris for a moment, leaping around her little tower excitedly, batting at the air as she chases nothing.
“My expertise dealing with little brats that try to boss me around? Yeah, I have some of that,” Jaebeom grumbles, grunting as he stands up.
“Come on Hyung, you’re not forty yet,” Jinyoung teases, those familiar whiskers fanning out under his mirthful eyes.
“I’m sorry. I’m sorry it took me so long,” Jaebeom says, regret coming to him like a cold gust of winter air. He stands in the warm embrace of home, and thinks how long he struggled out in the snow. “All the time I wasted, when we could have been together.”
Jinyoung’s smile slips away into a thoughtful expression, brown eyes so deep and knowing they pull Jaebeom in like the gravity of tiny planets. And beneath Jinyoung’s eyes, the whiskers take longer to fade. “You’re home now.”