Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

INTRO.

It's June when Taesan and his mother move out of their home and into a small dingy apartment in a backwater town Taesan has never heard of. 

On the ride there, his whole life packed into the boxes stuffed in the back seats and under his dangling feet, Taesan asks, “Why are we moving?” 

His mother, without turning to him, replies, “Dad doesn't love us anymore.” 

That's not true, Taesan thinks, because when they left, his father had pulled him into a bone crushing hug and told Taesan he loves him more than anything. He tries to argue but his mother insists. She tells him how trapped she was, how his father was a bad father, how it's better this way. 

Taesan misses him anyway.

He’s seven years old, his mother has just told him his father doesn’t love him anymore, and it’s the first time he’s realising that maybe the world is a bigger place than he thought.

He turns up the radio that’s playing some old timey pop song, rolls down the window, and watches cityscape bleed into unfamiliar countryside. The hot summer air is eating him alive, sticking his clothes to his back and his skin to the leather car seats and his mother doesn’t even notice. 

TRACK ONE.

“Where are you going?” his mother asks, phone balanced between her shoulder and ear. 

She's got an apron tied around her waist and a frying pan in one hand. She's been threatening breakfast for the past fifteen minutes but is too distracted talking on the phone. Her friends from home, probably. Her voice always takes a higher pitch when she talks to them, and her laughter is sharper, louder. 

“Going to play at the park,” Taesan says. He's in his favourite shirt (the one with the panther printed on the front), a pair of shorts to combat the summer heat, and grasping a wooden net close to his chest. 

“You can’t go on your own.” 

“Who am I meant to go with then?” Taesan retorts, frowning, because they've been here two weeks and he's yet to make a single friend.

His mother waves her hand, dismissive. “There's a boy living next door, right? Ask him.” 

Taesan huffs and kicks his feet. He'd much rather be on his own. He’s learned it’s easier that way. “What if I don’t like him?” 

She shoots him an uninterested glance. “Just ask him. Make some friends.” 

Then she turns away and presses the phone to the shell of her ear again, her laughter bouncing noisily around the room. Behind her back, Taesan rolls his eyes and sticks out his tongue. It’s not like he hasn’t been trying. She’s taken him down to the playground twice now, and both times he’s tried to talk to the other kids but they just don’t seem interested. The most he gets is a sideways look or a laugh stifled behind a hand. He’s really trying. 

He slips his shoes on at the door and takes one last look into the apartment before he leaves. It’s small. A lot smaller than his father’s house. It’s not nearly as nice, either. The wallpaper is yellowed and peeling and the hallways are thin and suffocating. There’s dubious stains where there shouldn’t be stains. He wishes they could go back.

Outside, he tries not to look at the railing because they're several floors up and it makes him dizzy to see so far below his feet - a painful reminder of just how small he is. 

He wonders if it will always feel this way, this overwhelming. 

He knocks on the metal door one apartment over and after a few seconds a woman answers. The features of her face are soft and round compared to his own mother’s sharp angles. Behind her, clinging to her skirt, a young boy around his age who’s looking at him with wide, curious eyes. 

“Do… Do you want to play?” Taesan asks, voice small, one hand tight around his net handle and the other fisted at his side. “I’m gonna catch bugs.”

The boy looks up at his mother, stars in his eyes, and she smiles at him. “Go and have fun,” she says, and the boy breaks out into a grin. He's missing a tooth but he wears his smile proudly. 

He turns to Taesan. “Wait there! I'll get my shoes.” 

“I’m Jaehyun,” the boy says when they’re outside. 

They’re at the park - if you could even call it that. It’s barely a field of grass with a fenced playground to one side and some broken goalposts on the other. In the playground is a set of swings, a metal slide that burns his skin when he touches it, some sort of spinning thing that makes him feel sick, and a climbing frame that's so tall it feels like a castle. 

“Shh,” Taesan hisses. He’s squatting in front of one of a handful of trees, eyes narrowed and net poised in his hands, ready to pounce. There’s a beetle on the trunk, climbing languidly up the bark, its shell shiny and black. 

He hears a sharp inhale and then silence as Jaehyun holds his breath. Taesan holds his, too. 

He shuffles closer, slowly. Then he raises his net and swings it down with as much precisioned accuracy as a seven year old can manage. The beetle gets caught up in the string, its wings batting feebly, and Taesan turns to Jaehyun with his lips stretched into a proud grin. “Look! I got it!” 

Jaehyun takes a step back. When Taesan moves towards him, Jaehyun does it again. Something inside him sinks a little. 

“D-Don’t bring that near me!”

“What? This?” Taesan waves the net in his direction and Jaehyun practically jumps out of his skin. 

“Gross,” Jaehyun shrieks and stumbles backwards. 

Taesan freezes.

“You knew we were catching bugs,” he says hesitantly. “Why did you come with me if you don’t like them?”

“I just wanted to be your friend.” Jaehyun frowns for a moment before his lips curve back into a hopeful smile. “I still don’t know your name.” 

“Oh.” Taesan blinks, confused, because this isn’t how it usually goes. No one has ever asked to be his friend before. “It’s… It’s Taesan. I moved here two weeks ago.” 

“I know,” Jaehyun says. “I watched you moving in. You and your mom.” Smile unfaltering, he adds, “I haven’t seen your dad yet, though.”

Taesan’s face drops, and he feels a horrible twist in his stomach that he’s never felt before. It hurts, but not physically. It’s something deeper, something more visceral. It’s new, confusing, and awful. “My dad isn’t here,” he says. “We don’t live with him anymore.”

“Oh…” Jaehyun winces. He scratches at the plaster that’s covering his nose. “Sorry, I should keep my big mouth shut like mom tells me to.” 

Taesan shakes his head and swallows the lump in his throat. He doesn’t feel like talking about it right now. “Come here,” he beckons. He turns the net inside out and tips the beetle onto his hand. It’s no longer flapping erratically, just sitting still on top of his hand. “It’s not scary, promise.”

Jaehyun approaches apprehensively and lets Taesan take his hand. He tips the bug into Jaehyun’s palm and he stills, hand rigid on top of Taesan’s. His eyes are blown wide and he looks just about ready to cry. Taesan looks up at him with a smile (at this point, Jaehyun is still taller).

“See, it’s not so bad.”

Jaehyun exhales slowly. “Y-Yeah.” He straightens, like he’s regained some of his confident composure. “Yeah! It’s not scary.” 

The beetle jolts, wings buzzing, and takes off into the air. Jaehyun yelps and Taesan laughs so hard his stomach hurts. Jaehyun pouts but it only makes him laugh harder, for what feels like the first time in forever.

“Your face,” Taesan says, out of breath, stifling his giggles behind his hand. 

“Shut up,” Jaehyhun whines, but it’s playful, friendly. “Let’s play something else. Something fun.” Jaehyun takes his hand but at that exact moment Taesan’s stomach chooses to rumble. Mortifyingly loud. Jaehyun pauses. Taesan can tell he’s trying not to laugh. “Are you hungry?”

Taesan looks down at his feet. He can feel his face warming in shame and he presses the back of his free hand to one cheek. “I… haven’t eaten today.”

Jaehyun squeezes his hand. “Mom will make us something,” he says and smiles, so bright and inviting. “C’mon, let’s go back to mine.” 

This summer, Taesan knocks on Jaehyun’s door more times than he can count. If anyone asked, he could tell them the exact shade of cerulean blue the paint is, the shape of the letterbox, the number of nicks and scratches that cover the door like scars. 

(Years - decades - in the future, he still can.)

This summer is hanging out in Jaehyun's bedroom, reading faded comics and eating cubes of diced watermelon his mom cuts for them until his fingers stick the pages together. It’s trekking through the woods behind their apartment building, mud splashing their clothes, twigs in their hair, and Jaehyun holding his hand to lead them out when they get lost even though he’s the one with tears cascading down his round cheeks. It’s Taesan complaining to his mother when she scrubs lotion over his sunburnt skin, red and raw and peeling because they’ve spent too much time under the blazing sun, and her hands are too harsh, too unforgiving.

As the last long days slip through his fingers faster than he can catch them, Jaehyun helps him write a letter to his father. He gives him a pen and a sheet of paper torn from his school notebook and helps him scribble the address on the envelope (he has to sneak through some of his mother’s old mail because he can’t remember). He seals it and Jaehyun digs out a stamp to stick in the corner. He holds Taesan's hand as they post it, keeps him distracted for the next week so he doesn't sit by the door sick with anticipation. 

Taesan never gets a letter back. 

TRACK TWO.

It's five years later when Taesan shoots past Jaehyun in height. He's losing the baby fat on his cheeks, his features are sharpening, and when he looks in the mirror he sees a little piece of his mother staring back. 

He's twelve, Jaehyun is thirteen, and they've traded the playground for the skatepark. Concrete instead of sand. Rusty chain link fences with shoes tied at the laces thrown over the top instead of white pickets. They haven’t been back there since his mother finally bought him a board for his birthday after he’d been begging for months (if only to shut him up). It’s a cheap thing, black with a white rocket sprayed on the underside. It’s flimsy and sometimes he thinks it’s going to break under his feet, but he loves it anyway. 

Jaehyun sits on the edge of the bowl, feet dangling over the edge and head thrown back to soak up the sun's rays. They’ve already kissed his skin, leaving their mark in red streaks over his cheeks and down his nose. Taesan doesn’t have those same marks, because he remembers to put sunscreen on now, but he does have a dusting of freckles on his face and his shoulders that only show face when it’s summer. 

He’s riding now, back and forth, up and down. Jaehyun watches, eyes trained on his lanky figure as he zips past him. Taesan’s shins are already raw with road rashes under his torn up jeans and his elbows are stained purple and black.  

He’s looking at Jaehyun when he misjudges his step. His board slips out from underneath him on the landing. He catches his foot on the upturn. 

He crashes.

He lands heavily on his arm and there's a sickening crunch as the bone snaps in three places.

And he doesn't cry, even though the pain is unbearable. The worst he's felt in his life. Laying on the concrete in the grit and the dirt, he grinds his teeth and bites his tongue until he tastes iron. His head is pounding and his arm is throbbing and the sky above him is so blindingly blue. 

Jaehyun does, though. Cry. He drops himself from the bowl and sprints over to Taesan’s prone form, and before he even knows what he’s done to himself, there's tears catching on his eyelashes. When he sees how Taesan's arm is jutting out in all the wrong places, they come wet and hot, streaming down his cheeks and dripping off his chin. They land on Taesan’s shirt and soak through the dirt stained fabric. Even though Taesan can barely think, can barely breathe past the searing pain, somehow it feels good that someone is there to cry for him. That someone is willing to feel for him.

"Call my mom," Taesan spits and Jaehyun scrambles to dig Taesan's phone from his back pocket. 

She doesn't answer, of course. She's probably out with another man she’ll never see again. 

So, Jaehyun scrapes him up from the ground, even though his cheeks are wet and his bottom lip is wobbling and broken from where he's biting it so hard. He grips Taesan's hand (the unbroken one) unrelentingly tight all the way to the local hospital. 

The doctors flitter around him in a flurry of white coats and cold metal instruments, poking and prodding and he really just wants to go home. He hates the brightness of the room, the antiseptic smell, the constant beeping. He hates the way people give him pitying looks because he’s just a kid and he’s on his own. 

They ask him if he's okay, if it hurts, but he keeps his mouth shut. His arm will fix itself. His bruises will fade. His cuts will scar over and his skin will come back thicker and stronger. Nothing hurts more than his mother not being here.

Jaehyun calls his own mother and she sits with them while the doctors x-ray his arm, wrap it up in a plaster cast, and hang a sling around his neck. She takes him home and Jaehyun sits with him in the back seat. 

Their building pierces the horizon like an ugly concrete mountain. It used to be intimidating when they first moved in. Tall and grey and foreboding. Now, though, it’s just painfully mundane. The dirt and the broken railings and the bikes on the walkways and the people smoking in the stairwells. It’s all the same. 

They make the slow ascent up to their floor because the elevator has been broken for months and Jaehyun helps Taesan unlock the door to his apartment. He offers to stay but Taesan declines because he knows what’s coming. 

When his mother finally returns, cheeks smeared with cheap drugstore blush and clouded with smoke and the same perfume she’s been wearing for years, she finds him sitting on his bed with his arm cradled across his chest. She spends an hour berating him, telling him he’s never getting his board back, that he’s ruined both of their summers. He sits through it and doesn’t say a word. He’s given up trying to talk to her. 

By now, he’s sent four more letters to his father, each without reply. He’s given up on that, too. 

“What do you wanna be? When we’re older?” Jaehyun asks, putting the finishing touches on the black cat he’s drawn in the last spot of plaster untouched by ink. 

Taesan snuck him in when his mother finally passed out on the couch. They’re sitting on his bed, room lit only by the warm glow of his bedside lamp, and Jaehyun has a pack of sharpies in his hand. He's covered Taesan's cast in doodles under the guise that he doesn't want the kids at school drawing dicks on it.

(The worst thing about not having a father in a small town is that everyone knows about it. Even the kids.)

Taesan, dosed up on painkillers from the hospital visit and having thought of nothing past the end of summer, says the first thing that comes to his mind. Something easy, simple, normal. A kid’s dream. “I don't know. Soccer player. Go to space, or something.” He turns to Jaehyun. “What about you?” 

“Something big,” Jaehyun says, impossibly hopeful, an entire universe’s worth of stars in his eyes. “I wanna do something that matters, y’know?”

Taesan thinks, then, that Jaehyun could do anything if he wanted. 

He spends this summer cooped up in his room, rereading old comics and watching movies he isn’t old enough to watch yet. Jaehyun visits almost every day. He brings snacks he stole from his kitchen cupboards and lets Taesan watch him play games on his handheld console (he would let him play, too, but that's hard to do with one hand). 

This summer is also the summer he discovers music. Sure, he listened to it before, but when you're stuck inside with only a barely functioning laptop and unsupervised internet access, you start finding worlds you never knew existed. When he hears that first note of Welcome to the Black Parade, it's almost like a religious awakening. He’d grown up with old pop songs and though he still loves those, still has his Beatles and Oasis CDs on repeat most days, this music feels like… his . 

Sometimes, his mother walks in and tells him to “turn that shit off” and it just makes him love it more. He turns the volume up. He sticks ripped out magazine pages of bands on the wall. He’s on the verge of teenagehood, still growing uncomfortably into his body, and filled with raw unbridled feelings that he doesn’t know how to process yet (that he still doesn’t know how to process now). 

She makes good on her promise of never giving his board back, too. She locks it in the boot of her car and in a couple of weeks when he looks out the window he sees the kid from two floors down riding it up the street.

TRACK THREE. 

A year later and he's almost completely forgotten about the break. He still gets a twinge of pain when he twists his arm too far or when something knocks against it too hard, but other than that the only times he remembers is when he wakes up from a vivid dream with the smell of bleach at the back of his throat.  

They're sitting on Jaehyun's bed, tub of cheap cardboardy popcorn between them, and a romcom Taesan stopped paying attention to thirty minutes ago playing on the screen. Every time his fingers brush Jaehyun's as they reach in at the same time, his heart jumps in a way he doesn't understand yet. 

Jaehyun isn't crying, but he's on the verge of it. Taesan can tell. He can always tell. He's learned by now that when Jaehyun’s eyes get glassy like that, when he starts sniffling, when his fists clench in his lap, he can expect tears soon. 

Taesan doesn't understand why he gets like that. It's just a movie - and it's not even a sad one. By the time the credits roll the happy ending is achieved, and somehow that makes Jaehyun more emotional than he would be at a tragic end. Taesan wants to understand, he really does. He's always had a hard time crying, even when he wants to. He’s not sure if that’s a good or bad thing. 

Jaehyun turns to him, eyes red and droplets in his eyelashes, and asks, “Do you think soulmates are real?” 

He knows the answer Jaehyun wants to hear, the answer he should give, but he can't say it. Because if soulmates were real then his parents would still be together, and he'd still be living with his father.

His mother has already brought home three separate men that Taesan doesn't bother remembering the names of, claiming each of them to be Taesan's new dad. They're always gone by the end of the week. 

So, Taesan says, “No. It’s a stupid fantasy.” 

“Why?” Jaehyun asks. He lays his head on Taesan's shoulder, and Taesan shifts a little so there's less height between them. 

“Because,” Taesan says, frowning. “It’s just not realistic. There’s so many people in the world. How can you expect to find one person in all of that?”

“I think it's kind of romantic,” Jaehyun says with a dramatic sigh. “That two people are linked like that. Like they're made for eachother.” He turns to look up at Taesan. “Don't you think? Wouldn't it be nice to love someone so much you want to spend the rest of your lives together?” 

Fingers sticky with sugar and with the weight of Jaehyun's head on his shoulder, he thinks he might want to spend the rest of his life like this, and that’s good enough for him. 

INTERLUDE.

He’s not sure when he starts looking at Jaehyun differently. It’s a subtle shift, like a small change in temperature. Barely noticeable, really.  

What Taesan does notice, though, is that he’s started to pay attention to Jaehyun in ways he’s never paid attention before. The curve of his nose and the shape of his lips and the way his eyes and mouth crease in the corners when he laughs. The smell of his cologne, how it lingers on pillows and clothes after he’s been over. The smooth skin of his stomach when he’s changing for bed when he stays the night, the way the muscles in his arms flex when he lifts his shirt over his head. 

He finds himself staring at Jaehyun a lot these days. 

Maybe it’s because they’re not together so much anymore. 

Jaehyun is sixteen now, has just started high school while Taesan is fifteen, still stuck in his last year of middle school. He doesn’t have any other friends. Not really. He’s always had Jaehyun and now that he has him a little less, there’s a loneliness there he hasn’t felt in a long time. Taesan looks at him like he’s trying to burn the image of him into his mind. As if he doesn’t know every one of his features better than he knows his own. 

Maybe it’s always been this way, and he’s just never known what to call it. 

TRACK FOUR. 

Jaehyun breaks his headphones during a fight with his father. He rips them off his head and snaps them clean in two. Taesan knows this because he can hear it through the wall. Their bedrooms are parallel to each other so that means he hears every time Jaehyun's father yells at him.  

They don't talk about it. They never do. Jaehyun never brings it up because Taesan doesn't have a father and he knows talking about it will upset him and he's right. Sometimes Taesan wants to tell him to suck it up and be grateful his father is there at all but that’s not fair. He sees the empty bottles in their trash, several on a good week and mountains on a bad. His father may not be here but at least when he was he was sober. 

Jaehyun turns up at Taesan’s door with a scarf wrapped tight around his neck, a patched up coat hugging his frame, and the two plastic pieces cradled in his hands. He begs Taesan to go down to the music store with him. He’s like Taesan in that respect - he can’t live without music. 

Jaehyun is frustrated. He feels stuck. Taesan knows he does, because sometimes he feels it too. But where Taesan withdraws, Jaehyun explodes. Taesan has got a little too good at hiding his pain and Jaehyun has got a little too good at letting it out. The hurricane inside him builds more and more with every argument and Taesan can only stand back and watch the destruction. 

They’re on the bus down to the music store now, squeezed into the back seats. The town is small enough that it’s only a ten minute ride to get from their apartment building to the ‘shopping district’, which is just a small handful of stores scattered across the seafront. The ocean had been a big reason his mother told him he’d like it here, but after the first few visits it lost its appeal quickly. Like everything else here, it’s small and unremarkable.

“I think I like boys,” Jaehyun says, so casually that Taesan almost brushes it off as a joke. Like he does when Jaehyun calls him pretty or tries to press a joking kiss to his cheek (he’s always been easily touchy in a way Taesan could never be). 

Taesan’s breath catches in his throat. His heart twists in a way that he’s starting to understand now, and his tongue sits heavy and dry in his mouth when he stutters, “W-What?”

“Yeah,” Jaehyun says. He shifts in his seat. When Taesan looks at him he’s staring out of the frost glazed windows at the empty fields they’re passing. It’s then he realises this is what he was arguing about with his father. “I don’t know if it’s just boys but… Yeah.” He sounds nervous and there’s a shake in his voice when he asks, “Is that bad?” 

“No,” Taesan blurts. He can feel his ears burning and he twists his fingers in his lap. “No. It’s not. I… I think I do too.” 

He’s not saying it just because he wants - no, needs - Jaehyun to feel accepted, he’s also saying it because it’s true. Of course, he’s seen the way Jaehyun looks at boys. The way he watches them in the school gym when he should be watching the game. Because while Jaehyun is watching them, Taesan is watching him. It’s only a couple of months before he joins Jaehyun in highschool and they have to do this all over again.

Jaehyun turns to him, shock clear on his face because, unlike Taesan, he probably didn’t expect it. He probably never saw it coming. He would, if he saw how Taesan looks at him when his eyes are elsewhere. And now they’re sitting at the back of the bus and Jaehyun’s knee keeps knocking against his thigh with every jolt and they both like boys and he’s pretty sure he likes Jaehyun in a way that friends don’t like friends. 

And that's terrifying. For a lot of reasons.

“Well, shit,” Jaehyun says shakily, and then he’s laughing, eyes creasing in the corners and surprisingly bright.  

Taesan exhales. “Yeah, shit.” 

“You can try it if you want.” 

Taesan snaps his head up at the sound of the store owner’s voice. He’s watching from behind the counter as Taesan stares down the midnight black electric guitar he has on display at the side of the store. Jaehyun is looking at the shelves of headphones on the other side, but Taesan had been distracted the moment they walked in.  

They’ve been here before, but never for more than a fleeting visit for a new release or to pick up a new pair of earphones, like now, after they’d been coiled up so tight in their pockets that the wires snapped. The walls are stacked with shelves of CDs, and tables with tubs filled with records sit along the middle of the store. Behind the counter, guitars hang on display on the wall. It’s small, cramped, but homely. 

They’ve only ever had acoustics on display before, but there’s something about the way this one is sitting on its stand, cord trailing to the amp by its side, that has Taesan’s heart racing. 

“Are… Are you sure?” Taesan asks tentatively. He runs his fingers up the side of the fretboard and over the dials on the head. 

“It’s already plugged in,” the store owner says. He’s got wrinkles around his eyes and at the corners of his mouth, and his hair is an ashy grey. “Go on, give it a go. That’s what it’s there for.” 

Taesan picks it up and slings the strap over his head. It’s heavier than he was expecting, somehow, and he has to take a second to get used to the weight of it and how it fits in his hands. He’s watched enough music videos to pick up a few chords now, and he twists his fingers in an imitation of what he’s seen. The strings press into the pads of his fingers uncomfortably but he forgets all about it the moment he strums his other hand down. 

The chord blares out into the store and he stops breathing because fuck , this feels good. His heart beats loud in his throat and a shiver wracks its way up his spine as he strums again. He feels like he’s shaking. He is shaking. 

It’s like something has just… clicked. Like something he’s been waiting for has just fallen into place. For a moment, there are no complicated feelings for his best friend, there are no missing fathers or distant mothers, and there are no fears of the future. For a moment, it's just him and the guitar in his hands and the sounds he's creating. 

As the vibrations fade out, he looks up to find Jaehyun staring at him from across the store, all wide eyed and slack jawed and Taesan can see the way he’s breathing shallower than normal. He’s got a soft wonder in his eyes that Taesan shies away from and has the tips of his ears feeling warm. 

“That was,” Jaehyun breathes, stare unrelenting. “That was so fucking cool. Holy shit.” Then, he’s at Taesan’s side in an instant, hands hovering over the guitar like he’s afraid to touch it. “Taesan, you have to get one of these.” 

Taesan takes a trembling breath. “I… I can’t.”

Jaehyun grips his arm. “I’m serious. You look so cool right now.” 

“I can’t,” he repeats, and he can feel himself shaking his head. “I could never afford something like this.”

Ever since the skateboarding, since he’d broken his arm, his mother hadn’t bought him anything and he’d never asked. The most he’d got for his birthday the past three years was a bar of chocolate and some loose change. There’s no way in hell she’d get him something like this. He doubts she’d even let him have one in the apartment. Too noisy, she’d say. Too annoying. 

He shrugs the strap off and places the guitar back on the stand. When he puts it down he feels like he’s put a little piece of himself down, too. Jaehyun watches with that pained look on his face he gets whenever Taesan does this. This thing where he doesn’t let himself dream, even for a second, because he’s scared of the soul crushing disappointment he’ll find at the other end. 

“We’ll figure something out,” Jaehyun says, because he’s always had that hope in him. “I don’t care if we have to start selling drugs on the street or some shit, we’re doing this.” 

Taesan laughs, despite himself. “Yeah? You’d do that for me?”

“Are you kidding? I’d make them myself if I had to.” 

That night they sit on Jaehyun’s bed with Taesan’s laptop balanced on one leg each. Jaehyun looks up stores and they scroll through pages and pages of different guitars. They find covers of their favourite songs on Youtube. They start watching beginners tutorials even though they have nothing to practise on yet. Taesan twists his fingers into chords in the air and Jaehyun copies him. 

They burn CD after CD of their favourite tracks and playlists and scratch stupid names into the plastic covers. 

“Promise you’ll keep it forever,” Jaehyun says as he hands Taesan half of a pair of matching CDs. “And when we’re old we’ll listen to it together and remember the good ‘ol days.”

Taesan laughs, his hand covering his mouth in the way he’s started doing ever since he realised he doesn’t like the look of his smile. He brushes Jaehyun off because it’s the only thing he knows how to do when he says stuff like that. “Who says we’re gonna make it that long?”

“You can’t escape me that easily,” Jaehyun says with a grin and pulls Taesan up onto his feet.

They dance on top of the bed until Jaehyun’s mother knocks and asks them to keep it down because the downstairs neighbours are complaining. Jaehyun falls to his knees in a mock guitar solo and strums his invisible strings and Taesan screams into a pretend mic and they don’t stop until they’ve both passed out on top of the covers. 

He doesn’t know it yet, but this is the night he falls in love with Jaehyun. 

TRACK FIVE.

At sixteen, Taesan lies to the owner of the music store about his age and begs for an after school job. He’s pretty sure the owner knows he’s lying - he’s been shopping there since he was twelve, after all - but he pretends to think Taesan is eighteen anyway. 

“I don't do staff discounts,” he says while showing Taesan how to use the cash register. Taesan thinks that’s fair. The store is small, and it’s out of the way enough that the customer traffic is slow. They need everything they can get. He doesn’t really need Taesan’s help, either, but Taesan thinks he’d got a bit of a soft spot for him after he’d picked up the guitar for the first time. “But you can use the display model to practise on if you want to play. Just don’t break it.”

Having a part time job is good. It gets him out of the apartment and away from his mother and her boyfriends. It gives him his own money to spend, a little independence, and a lot of responsibility. 

The only problem is: spending so much time at the store after school means spending less time with Jaehyun.

He thought it would be easier. He thought it would be better. He was hoping it would put a curve on the way his feelings are rising uncontrollably fast. The way his chest tightens every time he sees Jaehyun, the way he can no longer look him in the eye for more than a few seconds without looking away. 

It’s not easier, and it’s not better. It’s hard. So fucking hard. They’ve gone from being joined at the hip to having to actually organise hanging out - which is infinitely harder when you bring a job and studying into the equation. They’re both in high school now, the workload is heavier, and Jaehyun is starting to look at colleges (something Taesan hasn’t even considered yet). 

Days pass infinitely slower without Jaehyun around. When Taesan isn’t with him, he’s thinking about him. Or texting him. Or missing him. He hates it. It makes him feel stupid. Pathetic. 

This is also the year he steals his mother’s cigarettes for the first time. It’s a nasty habit to pick up, he knows that, but one night she pisses him off so badly that he goes digging through her purse for the half empty packet. He meant to throw them away. The only thing she gives a shit about. He was going to throw them away, to punish her.

He doesn’t. 

Instead, he leans out of his bedroom window and flicks a lighter under one and almost chokes on the first inhale. It gets easier after that. The third time he smokes, Jaehyun pokes his head out of his own window and glares him down. 

“That better not be what I think it is,” he says, and Taesan only shrugs because the evidence is pretty damning. “Han Taesan,” he warns. “I’m coming over there right now. You better open your fucking door.”  

Sometimes when they hang out now, there’s a third addition. Woonhak. He’s the son of the music store owner, had appeared out of hiding one day when there was a lull in activity and Taesan had been picking at the strings of the display guitar when he thought no one was watching.

He’s only thirteen, but he reminds Taesan so much of himself at that age - how invincible it feels to be young - that he has this unshakeable urge to take him under his wing. 

He’s loud, a little headstrong, a lot like Jaehyun in a lot of ways. Maybe that’s part of it. Maybe he’s like the little brother he never got. Either way, he starts tailing them around like a lost puppy whenever Jaehyun meets him after a shift. They let him tag along because Jaehyun has got a bit of a soft spot for him too. 

“Got no other friends?” Taesan asks him one day when they’re sitting in a cheap restaurant just down the road from the music store. He doesn’t mean it in a mocking way. It’s light, playful, and he knows Woonhak can take it. 

“Yeah,” Woonhak retorts, scrunching his face. His nose crinkles at the bridge. “But they don’t buy me stuff like you do.” 

Taesan eyes the huge steaming bowl of noodles in front of him and, yeah, that checks out. 

He knows Woonhak is lonely, knew it from the moment he stepped out into the store and sat curious at Taesan’s side, because he was at that age too. It would have been worse if he didn’t have Jaehyun. He wonders if Woonhak has someone like Jaehyun too. 

He makes sure to pile extra into Woonhak’s bowl when he can, makes sure to spoil him like he would a younger sibling. He helps him with his homework when the store is empty and kicks a soccer ball around with him after closing. 

Jaehyun laughs, his own bowl half empty, and slings an arm around Woonhak’s neck to drag him into a headlock. “We’re not even getting paid to babysit you,” he says, like Taesan didn’t pay for his dinner too.  

Woonhak groans and tries to fight him off but it’s impossible once Jaehyun gets a hold on you, Taesan is well versed in that. “That’s what happens when you get old like you two.”

“Old?” Jaehyun gapes. “Are you kidding? We’re three years older than you-- well, I’m four, but--”

“You’re sixteen?” Woonhak asks, narrowing his eyes at Taesan. “You told dad you were eighteen.”

Taesan flicks Woonhak’s forehead and smiles. “Yeah, and you won’t tell him if you want me to keep buying you food.” 

He buys the display guitar with his first paycheck and it tastes a little like freedom. 

TRACK SIX.

They’re at a house party but neither of them are drinking. Jaehyun because it reminds him of his father and Taesan because he’s scared of what he’ll say once his control is looser. He’s not sure why they came in the first place, but Jaehyun’s friends invited him and Taesan always follows him wherever he goes.

They’re laying on the grass in the backyard, faces turned towards the dark sky. One perk of living in a small town in the middle of nowhere is that there’s no city smog to cover the stars. Every so often Jaehyun’s hand brushes against his and each time it makes his heart skip a few essential beats. 

Taesan likes moments like these. Moments that feel dulled around the edges. They came outside because Taesan was tired of the noise and now the music and chatter is just a quiet whisper fading into the background. Now it feels like it’s just the two of them.

He slips a cigarette from the packet and flicks his lighter under it, the flame dancing in the space above him. He doesn’t really realise he’s done it - it’s just a force of habit by now - but before it even has a chance to catch alight, Jaehyun snatches it out of his fingers. 

“You told me you weren’t going to do that anymore.”

When Taesan just shrugs like he always does when he’s caught in the act (good habits are hard to keep but bad habits are even harder to break) Jaehyun sighs heavily and rummages in his own pocket. Taesan watches curiously as he pulls out a small ball with a stick through one end. A lollipop. Jaehyun undoes the wrapper with dexterous fingers and shoves it in Taesan’s direction. 

“Since when did you carry these around?”

“Since you started smoking,” Jaehyun says, like it should be obvious. Because, yeah, why wouldn’t it be? 

Taesan doesn’t say anything, but he takes the candy from Jaehyun and slips it past his lips, pushing it into one cheek. 

They’re quiet for a while. It’s comfortable. It always is with Jaehyun. When you’ve known someone for so long there’s going to be stretches of time without talking. They’re used to it by now. 

Taesan breaks it by saying, “I don’t want to live at home anymore.”

It’s not just to fill the silence - it’s the truth. He’s sick of it. Sick of his mother pretending he doesn’t exist. Sick of how small the apartment is, how it always smells of smoke and cheap perfume and sometimes there’s no hot water because his mother forgets to pay the bills. Sick of coming home to new faces every month. Sick of it all.

Jaehyun exhales, long and slow. “Me neither.” His little finger brushes up against Taesan’s, and Jaehyun links them together. It’s barely anything, they’ve held hands before, but it has Taesan’s chest seizing like he’s being touched for the first time in his life. “We can live together,” Jaehyun says without facing him. “After college. We could get our own place. Away from everything.”

“Sure,” Taesan says casually, even though his heart is stuck in his throat because this sounds a little too much like a commitment. A commitment to them . “I can live with you,” he says, like he’s doing Jaehyun a favour and he doesn’t actually want this more than anything in the world. At the end of the day, he’d do anything for Jaehyun. 

“You have to let me decorate how I want, though,” Jaehyun teases, and Taesan rolls his eyes fondly. He bites down on the lollipop and it cracks between his teeth. 

“No fucking way.”

Eventually, they go back to Taesan’s (they stopped staying at Jaehyun’s since his fight with his father) and sleep on his bed because even though they’re too big for it now, neither of them has ever mentioned that it might be more comfortable to set up an extra bed on the floor. 

Jaehyun falls asleep first, facing the wall. His hair is a stark black halo framing his head against the white pillow, and his silhouette is softly illuminated by the glow of the outside lights. He’s only wearing a pair of sweatpants. Taesan watches how his back muscles move beneath his skin every time he breaths. 

Unconsciously, he reaches out a hand and lays it gently, so gently, on the square of Jaehyun’s back. Right in the space between his shoulder blades. He’s warm, soft. Taesan lets it bleed into him and hopes he can absorb just a small bit of that warmth too. 

When Jaehyun shifts in his sleep, Taesan flinches and withdraws his hand. Guilt crashes into him like a tidal wave and it takes everything in him not to push himself away and curl up on the floor instead. What the fuck is he doing? What the fuck was he thinking? 

He wasn’t thinking. That’s the problem. Jaehyun makes him lose any semblance of a controlled mind and he fucking hates it. 

He wants to cry. He can’t cry. 

He doesn’t sleep that night. 

He's putting out stock for the next morning when the bell by the door jingles and a rush of cold air sweeps in. 

“We're about to close,” he calls, a little aggressive because he's honestly exhausted and he just wants to go home and crawl into bed. He's exhausted a lot these days. 

“Honey, I’m home,” a voice he could pick out of anywhere calls, and when Taesan turns he's met with Jaehyun's bright grin. He’s bundled up in an oversized hoodie and denim jacket, plastic bags hanging off his arm.

“We're about to close,” Taesan repeats, but he's smiling back because he can never help it. He gestures to the bags. “What’s in there?” 

“Wow, so cold,” Jaehyun winces in mock pain. “I just thought it’d be nice to pick you up from work.” He opens one bag towards Taesan so he can see the plastic containers sitting inside, wet with grease and condensation. “Got us some take out. I thought we could sit on the beach for a bit.” 

“It’s freezing,” Taesan states, but Jaehyun just scoffs and waves him off. 

He's already distracted flicking through the new record collection that came in an hour ago. Jaehyun dances his fingers over the top, every so often lingering on one he finds particularly interesting. Taesan watches him from the corner of his eye as he finishes stocking up. 

“That thing still work?” Jaehyun asks. Taesan looks at where he's pointing - the old listening booth nestled at the back of the store, a small room with a record player hidden behind a door. Nobody really uses it nowadays, except giggling teenagers thinking it’s a hidden spot to make out. 

“Yeah, I think so.” 

Jaehyun pulls out a record and smiles in a way that makes Taesan's heart flutter in his throat. “Let's try it.” 

“I'm trying to close up.” 

“Just once,” Jaehyun pleads, mouth set in a pout. “For me?” 

As always, he gives in easily. He always does when it's Jaehyun. “ Fine . Quickly.” 

Jaehyun grins triumphantly and tugs Taesan into the room. It's a tight fit - the store is small and the listening booth is even smaller. Jaehyun slips the record from its case and places it on the player, and Taesan presses in next to him as he lowers the needle down. 

He's close. Too close. Taesan can feel every time he inhales to take a breath. He can feel every time Jaehyun moves, even under his coat. If he really concentrates, he feels like he can feel his heartbeat, too. 

The song echoes into the room, soft and romantic. It’s a ballad, something neither of them typically listen to. He’s not sure why Jaehyun picked it out. Maybe it was the luck of the draw. Maybe it’s something else. 

When he glances down at Jaehyun, he’s mesmerised. His eyes are glued on the way the record spins in the player, the way the needle glides over the surface like an ice skater. His lips are slightly parted and his eyes are shining. Taesan can’t look away. 

Jaehyun turns to meet his gaze and Taesan’s heart stops dead. 

He wants to kiss him. He wants to kiss him so badly he aches with it. If he did, would Jaehyun let him? Would he kiss him back? It’s not the first time he’s thought this and it won’t be the last. Fuck, he needs to kiss him. 

Jaehyun opens his mouth and Taesan’s eyes flit down to his lips and then his whole world crumbles in front of him. 

“I'm going to Seoul,” Jaehyun blurts, and something in Taesan shatters. 

“What?” 

“Yeah,” Jaehyun says. His gaze drops down to his shoes like he's ashamed. “I got the offer letter today. I'm going to Seoul for college.” 

“Oh,” is all Taesan can say, because that's all he can think. 

He wishes he could feel something. Excitement, disappointment, anything . Instead he feels numb. Empty. Jaehyun is going to Seoul, miles away from their little town, and he'll still be stuck here. 

“I'm sorry,” Jaehyun says, and Taesan can tell he’s genuine. That he means it. It doesn’t make it any easier. “I was going to tell you later but… I wanted you to be the first person to know.” 

Taesan takes a miniscule step back to put some space between them. Jaehyun notices. His face twists and he opens his mouth to say something but thinks better of it. 

He’s been with Jaehyun every step of this process. He knows the places he’s applied to and he knows how hard he’s worked for this. But it’s only now that it's really hitting. 

“I’m happy for you,” Taesan says, but his voice falls flat. He hates himself a little for that. Because this is a big deal, this is Jaehyun’s dreams they’re talking about and he feels like he’s crushing them in real time. He tries to force a smile but it ends up as a grimace. He tries again, “Really, I am.” 

“Taesan--” Jaehyun tries but Taesan cuts him off. 

“ Please ,” Taesan says, and he doesn’t mean for it to sound so much like he’s pleading but it does. His fingers itch for the packet of cigarettes he has sitting heavy at the bottom of his bag. He hasn’t touched them for weeks. “It’s fine.”

“You sure?”

“Yeah,” Taesan says, then repeats again because maybe if he keeps saying it then it’ll come true, ”I’m happy for you.”

The song fades out, forgotten. 

Later, sitting on the beach after they’ve emptied their take out containers and Jaehyun is laying on his back on the sand, he looks up at Taesan and asks, “You’re coming with me, right?” He says, “I don’t think I can do it without you.” 

When he’s home, Taesan lays on his bed and tries to cry. 

He tries, so hard, because he wants to so badly but he can’t and the reality of that, the thought that there’s something broken inside of him, makes him want to cry even more. 

INTERLUDE PART TWO. 

The thing about Leehan is that he was always temporary. 

He appears just as the last days of the year are trickling out and the snow is settling in. Taesan is behind the counter when he shows up - they’ve been open for two hours and, so far, he’s the only person to walk in. By now, he recognises all their customers. He isn’t one of them. 

Taesan watches him. He can’t help it, not when he looks like that. His long hair frames his face, loose strands falling in front of his eyes, and his strong brows are set in a furrow as he flicks through the CDs on the shelf. He’s got a pair of thick rimmed glasses on his nose and a pair of square headphones hanging around his neck. 

When he finally puts a small stack of them on the counter and waits to be rung up, Taesan tries to pretend like he wasn’t staring and asks, “Just moved here?”

“Vacation with my parents for the holidays,” he replies. His voice is deeper than Taesan expected, smoother. It’s nice. He wants to hear more. 

“Not a very interesting place to vacation to.”

“It’s not so bad,” he says, gesturing to the windows. “The beach is nice. It’s pretty at night.”

“Kind of small, though.”

“I like it.” He smiles, eyes turning into crescents, and Taesan’s breath shallows in a way that’s not unlike how he feels with Jaehyun. “Cosy.” 

He comes to the store several times after then, under the pretence that the store has heaters and the place he’s staying in doesn’t. Taesan knows it’s an excuse but he likes the way Leehan looks at him sometimes, with a sort of tender interest in his eyes that he only wishes Jaehyun looked at him with. 

They hang out on the beach most nights, even though it’s winter and the sea breeze is razor-sharp. Leehan loves it, though. He stares out at the waves with a silent wonder that leaves a glimmer in his eyes as he tells Taesan all about the pet fish he has at home. Taesan listens quietly. Sometimes he’ll lean into Leehan a little heavier, and sometimes he’ll interlace their fingers when he’s distracted talking about the ocean. 

For a while, it fills that lonely Jaehyun shaped hole in his chest that’s there while Jaehyun is studying for his exams, which he’s been doing a lot lately. He’s got the offer but he still needs the grades. It’s important. Taesan knows that. It doesn’t hurt any less, though. 

Leehan is soft around the edges in a way that he and Jaehyun never managed. He listens to Taesan talk about his father in a way that Jaehyun never could because the pain is too fresh, too current. But with Leehan, he doesn’t feel like he needs to hold back. He doesn’t know what it is, but with him he lets it all out like an oil spill, dark and heavy. And Leehan listens. He nods his head and hums in all the right places and squeezes Taesan’s shoulder when his voice wavers. 

It’s on one of those nights at the beach that they’re sitting next to each other, Leehan’s thick coat wrapped around both of their shoulders. They’re passing a bottle of beer between them that he took from his mother’s stash. It’s not much, they’ve barely drank anything, but he’s got a dull buzzing under his skin that’s growing louder and louder. This is new, too. He doesn’t drink with Jaehyun. 

It’s on one of those nights that Leehan turns to him and takes the bottle from his hand. He places it in the sand next to them and runs his fingers along Taesan’s jaw and through his hair. Taesan leans into it, chases it like he needs it to live. When Leehan’s thumb strokes over his skin, he shivers, but not from the cold. Up close, he can see the mole on Leehan’s cheekbone and the one on the line of his neck. 

Leehan leans forward and presses his lips against Taesan’s and Taesan lets him. He lets Leehan lay him down on top of his coat on the sand, and slides one hand into Leehan’s hair and the other up his arm. He holds onto him, tight, like it will stop him from leaving. 

His lips are soft, thicker than Jaehyun’s, and warm. They move against Taesan’s with quiet intensity, gentle but unrelenting. Taesan doesn’t stop him. He doesn’t want him to stop. It’s the first time anyone has shown interest in him like this and he never wants it to end. Taesan kisses him back with just as much force, loops his arms around Leehan’s neck and drags him back when he pulls away. 

Leehan sneaks him into his family’s vacation home that night. They turn on the heater Leehan said they didn’t have and play one of the CDs he bought weeks ago and they kiss some more. After, they talk. Leehan tells him about his school, his friends, his favourite music and the movies he watches. Taesan talks about his guitar and the songs he’s writing, the books he likes, and how he hasn’t started looking at colleges yet because it all seems too big for him. Taesan falls asleep first and the next morning he slips out from the arm Leehan has around his waist and leaves before he wakes up. 

They don’t talk about that.

The thing about Leehan is that it could have happened if Taesan let it. 

In a few days, as his vacation comes to an end, Leehan leaves him his number scribbled on the bottom of a receipt. 

Leehan leaves.

Taesan never calls. 

He doesn’t tell Jaehyun about Leehan, either. Woonhak will spill it to him eventually, of course. He’d seen them together at the store - he’s a smart kid, albeit nosy, he probably figured out what was happening. 

Jaehyun will ask him why he didn’t call and Taesan will have to lie through his teeth and it will hurt . Because he can’t admit that though Leehan made him feel things he never thought he could feel, there was something holding him back. A tight unrelenting grip around his throat and his heart. 

It all comes down to this: he wasn’t Jaehyun. 

Taesan is seventeen years old and he’s in love. He understands that now.

Love is reserved for someone special. Jaehyun would say it’s reserved for your soulmate. If Jaehyun were to ask him now if he thought soulmates were real, he might say yes. 

Taesan expected love to be loud and fast. Like in the movies. He expected it to be bolts of electricity and explosions of fireworks. He expected it to be one solid moment. A significant change. He expected it to crash into him like a truck, leaving him breathless and gasping. Maybe that’s why he didn’t see it coming. 

In reality, loving Jaehyun is quiet and slow. In the ten years he’s known him, Taesan has probably loved him for at least half of those. It’s a gradual build up, a collection of moments, building blocks that fit into a bigger picture. Loving Jaehyun is having it eat away at him piece by piece, year after year, until he’s all he can think about. It’s Jaehyun weaving his way into every aspect of his life, every fibre of his being. Even when Taesan isn’t with him, even when he’s with Leehan. Jaehyun is all he can see and all he can breathe. 

To Taesan, loving Jaehyun is all-consuming, and yet still feeling empty. 

Jaehyun is stuck in him like a splinter under the skin that he can't dig out. He’s constant. Except, he’s not.

His father left, Leehan left, and now Jaehyun is leaving too. 

TRACK SEVEN. 

The worst thing about time is that it waits for no one. It's selfish. It takes and takes and leaves nothing behind and Taesan can do nothing to stop it.

Before he knows it, he’s helping Jaehyun pack for college. 

He’s barely talking, because every time he tries his throat closes in on itself and he can’t push the words out. If Jaehyun notices, he doesn’t mention it. He tries to keep the mood up, like he always does. They blast tracks they both love on his speaker and Jaehyun gives dramatic reenactments of music videos on his bed when he’s supposed to be helping Taesan fold clothes.

“C’mon,” Jaehyun says, bored of the silence. “It’s not gonna be that bad. It’s only a year and you’ll be coming with me.”

A year. A year without Jaehyun. It's nothing compared to how long they've been friends, but the longest they've gone without seeing each other is a couple of days at best. A year is like an eternity when you put it like that. 

Without thinking and with more force than he means, Taesan snaps, “You’re leaving me.” 

Jaehyun stops dead, his eyes blown wide and his mouth falling open into a perfect circle. His surprise is quickly wiped away and replaced with something softer, something more pitiful. “Taesan, I’m not leaving you.” 

“But you are,” he says. He feels like there’s a rock lodged in his throat. He’s clutching one of Jaehyun’s shirts in his balled fists. “You’re leaving me and I’m going to be stuck here alone.”

Jaehyun slides off the bed and sits beside him. He slips an arm around Taesan’s shoulder and tugs him closer. “You’re my best friend, Taesan. You can come and visit whenever you want. I’m not just gonna forget you.” 

“What if you do?” Taesan whispers hoarsely. He can’t look Jaehyun in the eye because he’s scared of what he’ll find there. His voice trembles with every word. “What if you go to college and make new friends and you forget about me?”

This is the first time, in the ten years he’s known Jaehyun, that he’s broken down like this in front of him. He’s never felt so helpless. Not just because he loves him, and he’s still getting used to that, but because he’s his best and only friend. They’ve been glued together for ten years. He’s never known life without him. 

He'd never ask Jaehyun not to go. That's not fair. But in his dreams he's on his knees pleading for him not to leave, not to abandon him here on his own. In his dreams he’s sobbing and begging for Jaehyun to stay.

“I’ll call you every day,” Jaehyun insists. He takes Taesan’s hand and seals their pinkies together in the way they did when they were kids. “I promise. Every day.” 

“It won’t be the same.”

“I know,” Jaehyun sighs. He cards a hand through his bangs and Taesan watches the dark strands fall around his fingers. “I’m going to miss you, too. Don’t think this isn’t just as hard for me.” 

That makes him feel bad. So bad he circles his arms around his knees and draws them to his chest and presses his face into them, even with Jaehyun’s arm still around his shoulder. He wishes he could disappear. 

This isn’t a fight. They’ve had fights before, over petty things like which movie to watch or when Jaehyun forgot to give back the CD Taesan lent him or that one time Taesan lost the plush doll keychain Jaehyun bought for him (it’s not his fault it fell off his bag). 

This is different. This has a lot of unpacked feelings behind it. Feelings that will remain unpacked for a long time.

“I’m sorry,” Taesan says, but he doesn’t really know what he’s apologising for. For snapping. For acting like a clingy child. For making Jaehyun feel guilty for leaving. For loving him. 

There’s a lot of things he could apologise for. 

Jaehyun squeezes his shoulder and wraps himself around Taesan in a way that’s a little awkward and a little uncomfortable but leaves him desperate for more. To feel him closer. He’s never craved contact so much and it digs into him like an old kind of hunger. He grips Jaehyun’s arm in his hands like it can stop him from drifting further and further away.  

“You have nothing to be sorry for,” Jaehyun whispers, his cheek resting on Taesan’s head. “I’m serious.” Then, softly, “I love you, okay? I could never forget you.”

It should make him happy to hear that. 

But Taesan knows he doesn’t mean it in the way that he wants it to mean. 

So Taesan pulls himself out of Jaehyun’s arms and away from him. “I know.” He tries not to let years worth of emotion seep it’s way into his words when he says, “I love you too.” It hurts to say and he has to force himself to keep talking, to keep going. “Come on, we need to finish packing.”

Jaehyun is still looking at Taesan with such gentle concern that it leaves him aching, but Taesan turns away from him so he doesn’t have to see it.

(It’s better than saying what he really wants to say, which is: Don’t go.)

TRACK EIGHT (SCRAPPED). 

They're laying side by side on Jaehyun's bed, shoulders and knees pressed together because they've long outgrown fitting comfortably into the same space for sleepovers. There's empty pizza boxes discarded on the floor, plain cheese, because pepperoni costs more and Jaehyun is on a student budget now (he refuses to let Taesan pay because he's the one visiting). 

The greasy smell lingers in the air, mixed with the acrid smell of smoke and something sour. Jaehyun's room is above the stairs that people use for smoking but it's too warm to close the window. The lights are dimmed, and there's a steady hum of muffled chatter and music seeping in from outside. 

He's full, content, and that kind of boneless sleepy that feels hazy. 

Jaehyun asks, “Do you like anyone?”

Taesan blinks up at the dark ceiling and his stomach does that fluttering thing it always does whenever they get a little too close to the truth. 

Taesan doesn't reply, “Yes.” Then, “You.” And, “I've liked you for as long as I remember. I think I might even love you.” 

Jaehyun doesn't roll over to face him. Taesan doesn't hold his breath because the way Jaehyun is looking at him is how he's always wanted him to look at him. Jaehyun doesn't cup Taesan’s face in his hands, his fingers aren't warm and tender on his jaw, and his touch doesn't stir something vulnerable inside him. 

“I like you too,” Jaehyun doesn’t whisper back, so gently it leaves Taesan shaking. “I always have.”

He doesn’t lean forward, and Taesan doesn’t let him press their lips together in a way that's better than he’s ever imagined. His hand doesn’t slide up Taesan’s waist and under his shirt and in the morning Jaehyun doesn’t ask him to cancel his ticket home and stay an extra day. 

TRACK EIGHT.  

They're laying side by side on Jaehyun's bed, shoulders and knees pressed together because they've long outgrown fitting comfortably into the same space for sleepovers. There's empty pizza boxes discarded on the floor, plain cheese, because pepperoni costs more and Jaehyun is on a student budget (he refuses to let Taesan pay because he's the one visiting). 

The greasy smell lingers in the air, mixed with the acrid smell of smoke and something sour. Jaehyun's room is above the stairs that people use for smoking but it's too warm to close the window. The lights are dimmed, and there's a steady hum of muffled chatter and music seeping in from outside. 

He's full, content, and that kind of boneless sleepy that feels hazy. 

Jaehyun asks, “Do you like anyone?”

Taesan blinks up at the dark ceiling and his stomach does that fluttering thing it always does whenever they get a little too close to the truth. 

Taesan replies, “No.” Then, “Not right now.” And, “What about you?” 

Because there's a reason Jaehyun is asking this. There's a reason he can hardly keep still on the bed. There's a reason Taesan's heart sinks a little bit further. 

“Yeah,” Jaehyun says, breathy, a little wonderstruck. “There's this boy in my class.” 

“You've only been here a couple of months,” Taesan interjects, and he doesn’t mean for the resentment to sneak its way in but it does anyway. 

Jaehyun shifts and Taesan feels every movement. He sighs. Taesan’s heart twists. These days, he can’t seem to stop hurting him. It’s not on purpose, obviously, but it happens. “I knew you were going to say that,” Jaehyun mumbles, disheartened. 

Taesan backpedals immediately, can't stand the disappointment in his tone. “Sorry,” he says, and, even though he doesn’t, “I want to hear about it.” 

“So there’s this boy in my class,” Jaehyun repeats, carefully, like he’s treading on ice. “Riwoo. He’s the same age as me. Blond. He dances and it’s really good. He tells these jokes sometimes that are so bad it’s funny, and, oh my god , he’s so fucking cute.” He laughs, giddy, and adds, “I think you’d really like him.” 

Each word grinds Taesan’s heart further and further into the dust until it’s a shrivelled and broken imitation of what it used to be. 

“He sounds really nice,” Taesan says, and he means it, even if it hurts something painful. This is the happiest he’s seen Jaehyun in a long time, and he wants him to be happy even at the expense of his own feelings.

“Yeah,” Jaehyun breathes. It’s too dark to see, but he knows Jaehyun is blushing. He can picture the way it spreads up his neck, catches in his cheeks and reaches the tips of his ears. “I think… I think I’m gonna ask him out.”

Taesan doesn’t say anything because he doesn’t trust himself to keep his voice steady. Jaehyun keeps talking but he tunes him out. Instead, he tries to listen to the conversations outside and tries to pick up the songs they’re playing, because anything is better than listening to Jaehyun talk about a boy in the way he wants Jaehyun to talk about him.  

TRACK NINE. 

A few weeks later, Jaehyun calls him. So far, he’s kept his promise to call Taesan every day. Sometimes it’s a quick chat between classes and sometimes Jaehyun leaves the call going while he’s working and Taesan will play him the newest song he’s working on. Sometimes Jaehyun will tell him he misses him and sometimes Taesan will say it back.

This time is different.

“Taesan,” he says, breathy and elated in a way he’s never sounded before. “You’ll never guess what. Holy shit .”

Taesan, who’s half asleep on his bed because he just got home from school, studying, and then a shift at the store, only answers with a muffled groan. 

“I asked him out,” Jaehyun continues without waiting. “Riwoo. I asked him out.” 

And suddenly, he’s awake again. He rubs a hand over his face and tries to pretend like the dizziness he’s feeling is because he’s so tired. “What-- Are you serious?”

“Serious. He’s… Taesan, he said he’ll be my boyfriend. I have a boyfriend.” 

He says it with so much pure unadulterated joy that Taesan feels so disgustingly guilty for feeling anything but happy for him.  

And just like that Taesan’s heart is ripped out of his chest and there’s only a gaping hole left where it should be, bleeding all over his hands and his sheets. He's left clasping a hand over his mouth, teeth dug into his bottom lip so Jaehyun can’t hear him gasping for air. 

He's been with Jaehyun through all his crushes. He listened when Jaehyun rambled for hours about how he thinks a boy in his class is cute. He's sat with Jaehyun through all the breakdowns over how he'll never find love. 

This is new, though. He should have seen this coming. He should have known this would happen eventually.

“No way,” he says, almost robotically, like it's programmed into him. “That's great, Jaehyun,” he says. “I'm happy for you.” 

And he listens, again, as Jaehyun talks about him. He listens to Jaehyun tell him about their first date and where they went and how it was. He listens to Jaehyun list off all the things he likes about Riwoo. He listens as Jaehyun unknowingly stomps his heart into the curb over and over. 

He's glad they're on the phone, because if they were in person he's not sure he'd be able to control the completely and utterly destroyed look on his face. 

When Jaehyun hangs up, he cries.

For the first time since they left his father's house. For the first time in ten years. He cries.

It's not quiet and it's not pretty. It comes out in great heaving sobs like those ten years have been building up and building up and are finally boiling over. It comes in tremors over his entire body, in tension in his muscles so tight he feels like they’ll snap. It comes in tears that won’t stop falling even when he squeezes his eyes shut so tight he sees white. 

(He'd hear Jaehyun crying through the paper thin wall between them sometimes. 

They'd developed this thing, this system, where if one of them needed the other, for company or help or anything, they'd knock on the wall three times. Right where the head of their beds are. 

Most of the time it was Jaehyun knocking. Taesan is good at dealing with his problems on his own, but Jaehyun-- Jaehyun needs people like he needs oxygen. He'd knock and Taesan would go. 

Now, when Taesan knocks, there's no answer.) 

When his shaky gasps finally even out and the shuddering in his lungs stabilises, he's left with this horrible hollow ache deep in his chest and all he can do is whimper and wrap his arms around himself and wish they were someone else’s. It’s times like these he wishes his mother gave a shit about him. 

He wakes up the next morning with swollen red eyes and a pounding in his head that’s almost as bad as when he broke his arm.

He starts dating after that. If a girl at school confesses to him he accepts even though half the time he doesn’t even know her name. It’ll all end inevitably anyway, when he breaks it off after two weeks because it gets too much too fast. 

He lets them hold his hand and he lets them kiss him even though a small part of him dies every time they do. He tries to pretend like their softness is Jaehyun’s softness but it’s not the same. He can’t stand the way they touch him, it makes him sick even though the truth is he craves touch more than anything. He wants someone to touch him in a way that makes him soft. He needs it so much he shakes with it. 

They call him cold, tell him he’s too distant, tell him his heart is somewhere else and it’s true. His heart, or what’s left of it, is entirely in Jaehyun’s hands. 

He doesn’t apply to colleges, and he doesn’t even think about it. He doesn’t want to go. Visiting Jaehyun made him realise that - seeing the size of the campus, the workload, the enormity of it all. Jaehyun has always been too big for their small town, but Taesan isn’t sure he can say the same about himself. He just wants to live, to make music, to create something that lasts. 

He doesn’t tell Jaehyun. 

Eventually, Jaehyun stops calling daily. The moments between when they speak stretch out longer and longer and he can’t do anything about it because he’d rather not call Jaehyun at all than call him and get no answer. He tries to pour these feelings into music instead, into the lyrics he writes and the songs he composes and for a while it helps until it inevitably comes crashing down again. 

(He thinks about calling Leehan, one night when he’s particularly lonely. He types the numbers into his phone and lets his thumb hover over the call button for several minutes before he clears the screen and tears the paper up into tiny pieces. He doubts Leehan would even remember him anymore.) 

TRACK TEN. 

During summer break, Riwoo comes to visit. He’s staying for a couple of weeks in one of the rentable vacation homes down on the beach because apparently his parents are pretty well off. Not that Taesan is complaining when it means they get to hang out there all day instead of in one of their shitty apartments. 

When Taesan first sees him, he’s a stark contrast to the rest of the people here. Bleach blond hair cut short at the edges, thin lensless glasses pushed onto his nose, and he’s got silver bracelets lining his wrists and piercings along both ears. He’s almost too bright for their dull little town.

Worst part is; he’s probably the nicest person Taesan has ever met. It would have been easier if he wasn’t - he could have hated him more, like he thought he would. But he can’t. Not when Riwoo lights up when they meet for the first time and grasps Taesan’s hands in his and tells him he’s heard so much about him. Not when he takes extra care to include Taesan in all of their conversations because he’s worried he’ll feel left out. Not when he’s such a genuinely warm and loving person and that’s exactly what Jaehyun deserves. 

Taesan watches them from afar. Jaehyun and Riwoo. He watches how they walk closer than friends should be, how they don’t hold hands but they may as well be with how often they brush together. Jaehyun looks at Riwoo in the way he’s never looked at anyone before, and it’s killing him. 

Summer lost its appeal years ago, when they ran out of things to do because there’s only a limited amount of activities you can do when the main population of your town is made up of old dying people. Back when he was a kid, it was all he lived for. The break from school, the heat, the way he could spend more time outside than in. He doesn’t get that same excitement anymore.

This summer is evenings on the beach as the sun’s touch turns the sky orange and pink. It’s blankets thrown over the sand and convenience store food and soda. It’s ice cream dripping down his fingers and making them sticky in the way that he hates. It’s swatting at the mosquitoes that pinch at his skin and slathering layers of greasy sunscreen on. It’s realising his freckles don’t show up anymore but maybe things aren’t so different from what they used to be. 

This summer is the salt of the ocean. It’s trying not to let his gaze linger too long when Jaehyun steps out of the water and his white shirt clings wet to his body in all the right places. It’s looking a little to the left and knowing Riwoo doesn’t have to look away because it’s okay between them. It’s watching Jaehyun drag Riwoo under the water kicking and laughing while he sits alone on the shore. 

This summer is watching how Jaehyun loves. It’s watching him and Riwoo together and thinking, oh, so this is what it would be like to be loved by Jaehyun. This is what it would be like to be the world in which he orbits. This is what it would be like to be completely and wholly his. 

Jaehyun and Riwoo visit the music store one day when he's on shift. They’re giggling and bumping each other’s shoulders, and Jaehyun wraps an arm around Riwoo’s waist while they’re browsing because Taesan is the only one here anyway, and he doesn’t care, right? 

He’s survived it so far, but sometimes he feels like he’s going to let the mask slip, like his smile will crack and he’ll fall apart in front of them. Like he’ll have to gather the broken pieces of himself and scurry home with his tail between his legs. 

They buy a CD and Taesan tries not to watch when Jaehyun presses a kiss to Riwoo’s cheek as he rings them up. 

They leave, and Taesan lets his face fall into his hands. He lets out a slow long breath. There’s a creak as something leans heavily on the counter, and then he hears Woonhak’s voice saying, “What’s your problem?”

“What?”

“What’s your problem?” Woonhak repeats. Taesan looks up at where he’s sitting on the edge of the counter. He’s quickly catching up to Taesan in height, has already grown several inches in the year he’s known him. “You’re miserable.” 

“I’m not,” Taesan says unconvincingly. Woonhak watches him with a look on his face that tells Taesan he knows he’s lying.

“Okay,” Woonhak says, eyeing him up with a raised brow. “Keep telling yourself that.” 

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Taesan says, a little forcefully, and he instantly feels bad when Woonhak throws his hands up defensively. 

He’s not sure if it’s because the heat this year is particularly aggressive, or if it’s because he’s watching his best friend drifting further and further away in front of his eyes, but he’s extra irritable lately. 

“It means,” Woonhak starts. He’s fourteen, naturally curious, and way too intuitive for his age. “You’re miserable. You look at Jaehyun like he’s just told you the world is ending.”

“Adult stuff,” Taesan dismisses him as casually as he can manage. “Don’t worry about it.”

“Bullshit,” Woonhak says, and when Taesan reaches over to pinch him, he swats his hand away with a laugh. He only gets away with swearing when he’s around them - his dad would kill him if he caught him. “You like him, don’t you? Even I can tell.”

“No,” Taesan denies immediately, but he’s convincing nobody. 

“Do something about it, will you? It’s annoying seeing you moping around.” 

Taesan grabs for him again, and this time he doesn’t miss. He drags Woonhak down into a tight hold, the younger boy squawking in his grasp. He digs his knuckles into the top of Woonhak’s head. “I’ll do something about it when you do your summer homework.” 

That evening, Taesan is sitting on top of his jacket on the sand, a lukewarm bottle of soda in one hand and a half read book in the other. He’s watching Jaehyun chase Woonhak around the shore with sparklers, the sticks glowing and spitting between his fingers. Woonhak is shouting, stumbling every time the waves wash over his bare feet. 

Summer break is coming to an end - Jaehyun and Riwoo only have another week here before they go back to college and Taesan back to highschool. He’s got half a year left before he’s finished. He still hasn’t told Jaehyun he’s not going to college. He feels guilty about it, obviously, but he can never find the right moment to bring it up. Not when he’s been so happy lately. 

He feels a shadow cast over him and when he looks up, Riwoo is settling in the space next to him. He smiles and Taesan offers a small one back. He tilts a bottle of soda in Riwoo’s direction and he takes it with a murmur of thanks.

“I wanted to talk to you,” Riwoo says, gently. “While they’re distracted.” He nods in Jaehyun and Woonhak’s direction, and Taesan catches the fondness in his gaze. 

“Okay,” Taesan replies, resting his chin on the arms around his knees. 

“I don’t want you to think I’m taking your best friend away from you,” Riwoo says, and Taesan closes his eyes. Is that what this looks like, from an outsider’s perspective? 

“I don’t think that.”

“Maybe you don’t,” Riwoo says. “But I want you to know I’m-- I’m not stealing him from you. I know how important you are to him.”

Taesan squeezes his arms around himself a little tighter and chews at his bottom lip. He doesn’t know what to say. It should feel good to hear but it doesn’t. 

“He talks about you a lot,” Taesan says instead, despite how much it pains him to admit it. “All the time. It’s annoying sometimes.”

“Really?” Riwoo asks, and he laughs, quiet and breathy, and it’s sweet. So sweet. He’s good for Jaehyun, Taesan thinks. Way better than he could ever be. 

“Yeah,” Taesan breathes. “He really likes you.”

Riwoo places a hand on Taesan’s arm softly. He starts to say something else but then Jaehyun is jogging up to them from the shore and he’s got the bottom of his shirt pulled up to wipe away the sweat on his brow and he’s laughing and it’s beautiful. He hates how both him and Riwoo can’t look away. 

“What are you talking about?” Jaehyun asks, trying to catch his breath. He drops himself onto the ground next to Riwoo and slings an arm around his shoulder. “Me, I hope?”

Taesan rolls his eyes and flops backwards onto the sand. “So big headed - not everything is about you, you know?”

Jaehyun pouts and throws a middle finger up at him behind Riwoo’s back and Taesan tries not to laugh. 

Jaehyun and Riwoo leave first, and Woonhak goes home shortly after. Taesan lingers for a moment, watching the waves gentle caress of the shoreline. He thinks, a lot, and when he’s had enough of thinking he leaves too. The house is dark when he opens the door. There’s hushed talking and quiet music coming from the sitting room, and Taesan follows the flow of Jaehyun’s voice all the way to the door. 

There, through the crack in the door; Riwoo and Jaehyun. Riwoo has his back pressed against the couch cushions, fingers tangled in Jaehyun’s hair. Jaehyun has one palm cupping Riwoo’s jaw, holding him in place while he kisses him, and the other softly grazes up his thigh where his shorts have ridden up. 

Taesan thinks he’s going to throw up. He should look away. He wants to. This is dangerous, so dangerous. But he can’t. He watches as Jaehyun smiles against Riwoo’s lips and Riwoo laughs. He watches as Jaehyun kisses a line down Riwoo’s jawline and across his throat. He watches as Riwoo tugs at the hem of Jaehyun’s shirt, up, up, and-- 

It’s then he tears his eyes off them. He stumbles back, hand clutched over his mouth, out of the door and onto the street as fast as he can. He walks and smokes and walks some more until his feet are numb and his legs ache and he feels like he’s crossed the entire town three times. 

He thinks it’ll clear his head but it doesn’t. The image of them, together, is burned into the back of his mind like a brand. What would it feel like to have Jaehyun’s hands on him like that? What would it feel like to have Jaehyun kiss him? On his neck, on his jaw, on his lips? 

Would things have been different if he hadn’t waited so long?

The next morning, he comes back to find Jaehyun already up. He’s in the kitchen emptying the fridge of ingredients when Taesan walks in. It’s a weird sight - he’s never been an early riser. 

“Where have you been?” he asks, lips pulled into a smile. This scene is too homely. Too domestic. It’s not his to be in and it’s too much and the nausea that’s been sitting heavy in his stomach since last night churns sickeningly. 

“Had to go home for something,” Taesan says as a way of excuse. Jaehyun sees right through it, narrows his eyes because Taesan is wearing the same exact clothes he was wearing last night. 

“Okay,” Jaehyun says simply, because he’s learned by now not to push for answers. “I’m gonna make breakfast, want anything?”

Taesan shakes his head because he’s not sure he can trust himself to keep anything down at the moment. He takes a seat at the table and watches Jaehyun move around the kitchen and for a second allows himself to imagine that this is what it could be like when they move in together after college. This is something he could wake up to every morning. 

Fuck. He needs to tell him. 

Heart pounding against his ribcage, Taesan shakily calls, “Jaehyun.”

Jaehyun turns to face him, pan in one hand and pack of eggs in the other. “What is it?”

He pauses. He knows this will hurt. Hurt for the both of them. He has to do it. He has to rip the bandaid off. 

“I’m not going to college.” 

Jaehyun drops the pan on top of the stove with a clatter and the eggs go crashing to the floor. His voice is quiet when he asks, “Are you joking?”

Taesan squeezes his eyes shut because he can’t bear to see the look on Jaehyun’s face right now. He knows the disappointment he’ll find there. “I’m not going.”

He hears Jaehyun moving, feels his presence over him and before he can open his eyes, Jaehyun’s hand is fisted in the front of his shirt and he’s being yanked to his feet. He meets Jaehyun’s gaze and sees nothing but anger looking back at him. 

“Why the fuck not?”

“I just don’t want to--”

“Is it me? Something I did?”

“It’s not you,” Taesan snaps, shoving Jaehyun away from him. He stumbles back, catching himself on the counter. It’s not true. Everything is about Jaehyun. Maybe that’s the problem. “I just… can’t . There’s nothing for me there.”

“So… what?” Jaehyun scowls. Taesan has never seen him so livid, not even after arguing with his father. Never at him. “You’re just gonna stay here? In this shitty place? Forever?”

“At least I’m not running away from my problems,” Taesan bites, and Jaehyun flinches. He regrets it the moment Jaehyun’s face falls from fury to hurt. 

“Fuck you,” Jaehyun breathes, and it’s like a straight punch to his gut. “I’m not running away. You know what it’s like for me here-- you know how much I hate it. And I know how much you hate it, too. At least I’m not too scared to do something about it--”

“You left me here.”

“You’re supposed to come with me.”

“You left me,” Taesan repeats, and he doesn’t realise he’s crying until something in Jaehyun’s face shifts and his eyes track the tears dripping down Taesan’s cheeks. When he lifts a hand to his face, his fingers come back wet. “You fucking left me,” he says, voice breaking into a half-sob. His hands are shaking. “And you came back with a boyfriend and you don’t fucking care about me anymore.”

“Don’t say that,” Jaehyun says, his voice barely above a whisper. Taesan has gone too far, he knows he has, and he can’t stop it. “That’s not fair. You can’t say that.” 

Jaehyun doesn’t know what to do, it’s obvious. He’s never seen Taesan cry before, he’s never had to deal with this and it’s new and terrifying. Jaehyun’s hands hang in the air like he wants to touch him but he’s scared he’ll break. Taesan feels at fault for that too, somehow. It’s not like he wants this. He doesn’t want to be separated from him. He doesn’t want Jaehyun to resent him for not going. He doesn’t know what the fuck he’s doing anymore. 

So, he does what he does best and pushes away. 

“Forget it,” Taesan says. He doesn’t have it in him to be angry anymore. He doesn’t have it in him to feel anything. He forces himself to turn away. “I don’t care anymore.” 

After three weeks of silence, Taesan will call him and Jaehyun will pick up on the second ring. 

“I’m sorry,” Taesan will say down the phone, praying that his voice doesn’t break. “I do care. I care so much.”

“It’s okay,” Jaehyun will say, because in the end he’ll always forgive Taesan for his flaws, the way Taesan will always forgive him for his. “It’s okay, Taesan. I know you do.” 

It’s not okay, and it never will be, but for now he’ll let himself believe it.