this skin we're in is ours to keep
this skin we're in is ours to keep
donghae/eunhyuk
r
5976 words
Breakable doesn't mean unrepairable. Hyukjae is more than a little broken. Donghae is too.
This fic contains cross dressing and gender issues. I tried dealing with both topics in what I hope is a respectful way.
this skin we’re in is ours to keep
Early on, Donghae realizes he is meant to live in a glass house.
Always too in love with the light, the openness, that sense of being protected from the world but not hidden away from its warmth. It’s probably why out of all the rooms in the house Eunhyuk’s mother’s room had been his favorite. He’d always found a second home here and Mrs. Lee kept the room dusty, not enough to pick out the filth but enough so it was lived in. Early Saturday mornings are still the best, when the sun filters into the room and the dust in the air lit up like crystals he’d make dance with his fingertips, bits of star shavings and snowflakes led by his direction.
She’d let them play on her carpet for hours while she attended guests in the guest house, burly men with tailored suits and flannel shirts on odd days. The Mrs. was a courtesy title. She wasn’t a mama like Donghae’s was, homemade school lunches and making sure Donghae’s sneakers were clean, but she’d been there when Eunhyuk’s dad had skipped town and she was a mother all the same.
Donghae still remembers the day he’d helped Eunhyuk move into her room after she’d died. They’d packed all of her things in boxes and turned her mattress over, all of her sheets tossed in the trash and made the bed with simple white linens. If Eunhyuk had the money he’d have burned it along with the guest house, a pile of fire licked wood chips and melted metal springs in the backyard, smoke swirling in the sky for hours.
“Donghae?”
A pair of legs fill his vision and Donghae’s stare lingers on the paleness of Eunhyuk’s thighs, the hint of leather visible from the end of his t-shirt. Sunset is starting to break over the horizon and Donghae is the first to admit he’s nothing but selfish in wanting Eunhyuk just like this, with the sun painting his naked skin kept out of darkness.
“Do you mind taking a break from day dreaming and helping me look for my boots?”
Donghae doesn’t indulge in selfishness long and he complies, sitting up and searching beneath the bed where Eunhyuk always kicks his boots under. He hands them over with a petulant smile matching Eunhyuk’s own. He watches Eunhyuk finish getting dressed, the slide of his jeans over the lace of the garter belt on his thighs and it’s kind of like watching Eunhyuk conceal and break himself open at the same time but Donghae is used to this. They both are; Monday through Saturday and sometimes Sundays.
He drops Eunhyuk off in front of the run down club after a fifteen minute drive filled with a fight over the radio and a quick stop at the gas station for Red Bull while Donghae fills up the tank.
Eunhyuk wears that half smile that’s become a habit once the car stops, one hand gripping the door handle the other crushing the Red Bull can with white knuckles.
“I’ll be here at one.”
Cue the polite refusal, the you don’t have to I can take the bus but it only makes Donghae’s promise come back feral, his smile cutting off some of the edge. Eunhyuk nods, he always nods and accepts because people may swear by small town hospitality and good natured hearts but both of them trust this town as far as they can throw it.
Eunhyuk tosses him a small wave when he’s at the front door, the neon sign disintegrates his smile as if he’s some kid dropped off at his last day of school or his first of college. It’s mid June and school’s been out of session for weeks and won’t be back for months.
Donghae drives away after the door sways shut behind Eunhyuk, neon lights dancing in his vision and it’s not just selfishness.
*
It’s nearing two in the morning when Donghae pulls over on the highway, a tired Eunhyuk as his copilot. Donghae likes taking the long way home, likes the way the highway lights illuminate the smear of red on Eunhyuk’s lip and the thickness leftover mascara creates on his eyelashes. Eunhyuk never seems to notice he didn’t remove his make up properly and Donghae never says anything, always mindful to wash his hands thoroughly so Eunhyuk doesn’t find smudges of red, black, or brown on Donghae’s hands in the morning.
They lie on the back of Donghae’s truck and wait for sunrise, counting stars and tracing constellations, imagining galaxies that are brighter and better than theirs.
“What’s that one over there?”
“That clutter in the middle with the ring around it? Oh, that’s Orion,” Donghae says even though he has no idea if it is or not but he says it with confidence. He takes Eunhyuk’s hand in his and lines their index fingers together so they outline the mess of stars from their little corner of their world as if he paid attention in Astronomy class and knows the planets and stars as well as he does the lines in Eunhyuk’s palms. And Eunhyuk doesn’t question him because he’s the one who dropped out of school while Donghae’s diploma is framed sitting proudly on the mantle in his living room.
By the time they climb inside the cab of the truck, the temperature drops. Donghae turns on the heater even though it’ll eat up the gas and draw a bigger whole in his already empty wallet. They shiver while the heat fills the air and sit huddled close, arms touching. Donghae warm his hands on Eunhyuk’s cold face, he lets Donghae sharpen his soft thumbs on his cheekbones and trace the corner of his lip until exhaustion but Eunhyuk never lets Donghae kiss his mouth, never lets Donghae taste the smoke or the smell of liquor trapped inside Eunhyuk’s lungs. Donghae never pushes on it though he wants to. He wants to taste the intoxication on Eunhyuk’s tongue, feel the caress of neon lights.
More than anything Donghae wants to understand.
More than anything, Eunhyuk doesn’t want Donghae to understand.
So they go home with mouths untouched just as the first rays start spreading across the sky tainting the darkness of dusk in light and hiding away the possibility of a better world.
*
Eunhyuk only let Donghae see her once.
Donghae had always known, whispers as he and Eunhyuk played with action figures and miniature cars, the ribbons tied in Eunhyuk’s hair that was almost too long for a boy on Sunday afternoons and the small dresses in the hallway closet Donghae found in his hunt for the Chinese checkers set when it rained.
Sooyoung had always wanted a little girl. She’d married the most beautiful man she could find in this town, the kind with a smile that stops you in your tracts and catches you so off guard you’d do anything to make him smile again. It was perfect, kind of like a fairy tale almost. They fell in love, got married and pregnant all within the same year and Sooyoung would have the beautiful girl she never was.
But Sooyoung didn’t get her little girl. Eunhyuk was a healthy seven pound six ounce baby boy with wide eyes and a healthy appetite. All the nurses cooed at him but his own mother couldn’t look at him for days.
Something changed along the coming home and the fights, the I’ve had enough damn it and the packed suitcases, the weeping toddler who sat on his front porch waiting for his papa to come back home and the broken tearless boy who never waited for anyone. It started to settle in because Sooyoung decided that if she’d never been that girl, if she hadn’t had her, Sooyoung would create that beautiful girl at the mere expense of her son’s skin and soul and a monthly stipend at the local beauty shop.
They’d been fifteen.
Almost a year to the day of the car accident and maybe it’s a cosmic joke it had been something out of her grasp what had caused Sooyoung’s death, a drunk driver colliding into her from the side and taking her life in the instant a scream tore from her throat followed by the first prayer she’d said in years.
Eunhyuk had already decided he was quitting school. He wasn’t smart enough and even if he was he didn’t have the money to go to college. This was what he was going to do and there was nothing Donghae could do about it and Donghae didn’t even try, an Eunhyuk with his mind made up is almost as stubborn as a Donghae with a plan, both unrelenting and unwilling to budge or bend.
He’d seen Eunhyuk in the dresses before, years ago when Sooyoung was careless and didn’t see any harm in Eunhyuk getting mud in his pink lace and white frills because the pageant had been long and exhausting but rewarding with the second place trophy to set up on the shelf. They’d win first next time for sure. She’d make sure of that.
But this. It was hard to conceive the truth staring him in the face. That the girl standing in front of Donghae and his best friend-the boy he’d busted his front tooth with, the boy he went swimming in the lake during summer and spent hours catching tadpoles in their small hands- were one and the same, two halves of a broken whole.
It was early morning and Eunhyuk had stood in the bathroom doorway refusing to meet Donghae’s eyes. The wig’s bangs framed Eunhyuk’s face strangely, brushing past his eyebrows and sweeping to the right while the ends had cascaded down his back. His lips were red like cherries and shiny like the wet fruit, his bottom lip fuller and caught between his teeth. Donghae can’t remember the outfit except it was tight in all the wrong places, the shirt cut off above Eunhyuk’s navel and the skirt strangling his hips so tightly Donghae could see Eunhyuk’s bones jutting out sickly from his skin.
And then Eunhyuk was in front of him, looking into Donghae’s eyes with this rawness, this desperate fear that Donghae wanted to extinguish, make Eunhyuk feel nothing except secure and safe for the rest of their lives and at that point Donghae knew he was already in love with Eunhyuk.
“How do I look?” The question came with a stutter, Eunhyuk’s hands tugging at his shirt and hip cocking to the side. The dip of his body outlined his faint muscles and curves and it had Donghae’s heart rate speeding, eyes watching the dance of Eunhyuk’s skin, all of it culminating in the blush heating Donghae’s cheeks and the hardness in his jeans.
Red had overtaken Eunhyuk’s face in succession but he’d tried for a smile. They’d had accidents before, sleepovers in each others beds had ended with their legs tangled, mornings of waking up with adolescent erections neither had thought too much about except that the warmth felt good and it felt right to have someone pressed close while sleep still clung to their minds.
On impulse Donghae had pulled Eunhyuk next to him on the bed. He’d stared at Eunhyuk’s pink cheeks and his smooth skin. Thought about how he was looking at Eunhyuk and not, but how his mouth was undeniably Eunhyuk’s mouth, pretty and full, lower lip jutted with teeth marks encrusted and how much Donghae wanted to fill the gap with his own skin. How Eunhyuk’s mouth was the just about the most beautiful mouth he’d ever seen and how badly he wanted to kiss it.
They don’t have their first kiss that day and when Eunhyuk’s mouth is left raw and abused from furiously wiping his make up away, Donghae is glad.
Their first kiss a month later was salty and wet from Eunhyuk’s tears. Donghae has a bruise on his jaw from his first fist fight. It’s an impulsive kiss, harsh and slightly biting but Eunhyuk’s face is clean and pure, Donghae’s hands unblemished from holding Eunhyuk’s cheeks between his shaking palms.
*
Opposites attract, they say.
They’re not opposites but they are creatures of a different kind; Eunhyuk works the night shift while Donghae starts work an hour after sunrise.
The day he graduates high school Donghae goes straight to work for his uncle’s handyman company doing odd jobs from painting to repairing sinks and learning to rewire electric systems and cleaning out gutters. It is the closest Donghae is ever get to his dream, half done sketches of glass houses and garden layouts forgotten in his school notebooks and in the margins of his favorite books. If Donghae can’t design or build houses he’d repair old ones, help bring out their luster and shine and make them run like the well oiled ships they’d been once.
Eunhyuk likes to come on the job sometimes but only when Donghae gets sent on small jobs by himself, calls out to Mrs. Kim’s house to unclog her toilet or re-varnish old man Jaesuk’s patio. He knows well Donghae’s uncle doesn’t like him and why should he like the good for nothing boy who quit school, probably sells drugs as far as the town is concerned because no one’s seem him work a day in his life, and on top of that is the son of a whore?
“He’s an old bat and he doesn’t know what he’s talking about,” Donghae affirms, shoving any apprehension Eunhyuk might have.
Eunhyuk leans against the side of Donghae’s truck and thumbs the corner of his eye. He does that, an itch of residue and his hands fly to his face to rub away like a haunting that won’t leave. “I just don’t want to make trouble for you.”
Donghae adjusts his tool belt on his hip, regarding Eunhyuk with a half smile. “Maybe I like trouble,” he says even though Eunhyuk is like the calmest water slipping through Donghae’s fingers, easy to fall for him even easier to want to catch him and keep cupped in his palms.
His uncle is the only blood family Donghae has after his parents had packed up their things and bought a mobile home to tour the country once Donghae graduated. Donghae tries not label it abandonment. His parents had been there for eighteen years and Donghae is an adult now. Eunhyuk has survived on his own since he was fourteen. Donghae will survive too.
Eunhyuk sits on countertops and patio railings, picking out tools from tool box and handing them to Donghae which Donghae always shake his head telling him wrong tool and making Eunhyuk dig in the box again. They go on like that until Eunhyuk gets exasperated and his laughter rings from his mouth like a song. It pulls Donghae’s smile on his sweat kissed lips because that had been his intention from the start.
“How am I supposed to know the difference between a sock wrench and a Phillips screwdriver?”
“They’re not the same type of tool for one,” Donghae responds smartly. Eunhyuk sticks his tongue out at him childishly and Donghae replies in the same way feeling like they’re back to being seven and their biggest problem is who is growing the fastest and how the other can catch up.
Sometimes Eunhyuk brings the paper with him and reads the national news and last weekend’s cartoons, skips over the obituaries and gloats over his football team winning over Donghae’s again.
“We’ll see who’s laughing when I beat you this Wednesday,” Donghae threatens, twisting into his kindest grin when Mrs. Cho comes out with lemonade for both of them, smiles at them like she means it and the afternoon sun positively glows on her aged skin.
They sit on the bench and sip their lemonade, Donghae reading over Eunhyuk’s shoulder at this week’s horoscope and the mayor’s latest scandal.
“This one looks interesting.” Eunhyuk points to a section in the want adds.
Donghae reads it over quickly, going back to his lemonade after skimming the first line. “It’s three cities over.”
“I know,” is Eunhyuk’s blunt reply. His stare drives into the side of Donghae’s face, intense and almost cutting.
“We’ve talked about this. I’m staying here.”
Eunhyuk’s answer is one Donghae expects but it isn’t the one Donghae wants, the one he’s wanted since he was fifteen and saw Eunhyuk falling at the seams and wanted nothing more than to take build him back together with gentle hands and take him far, far away.
“There’s nothing for you here, Donghae. We both know that.”
Donghae laughs. It sounds burnt and far too bitter to be called a laugh but maybe that’s just the acid from the lemonade or another fissure in his heart.
Eunhyuk’s hands are on his face then, sweeping fingers wiping away the dirt stain on Donghae’s cheek. His skin is cool and it chills Donghae all the way down to his bones but he turns to smile at Eunhyuk and finds Eunhyuk frowning, a deep knot in the skin stretched across his brows. Donghae leans in and presses their lips together, doesn’t care if Mrs. Cho or that couple that just crossed the street sees them and tastes the bitter sun from Eunhyuk’s lips. He pulls away and there is a bit of a smile in the corner of Eunhyuk’s mouth and the fissure repairs itself a little.
Donghae never met him but he guesses Eunhyuk must have his father’s smile.
*
They play soccer on Saturdays. The field is green and vast and it’s early enough so the sun beats down on their skin and makes them work for it. Their team mates are a couple of guys from their old high school and a few boys from the construction site. Local boys who secretly hold onto their dreams of being sport stars and hall of fame legends.
Eunhyuk out runs them all, his cleats kicking up patches of grass and the wind rustling his shorts. He blocks most of Donghae’s passes, flies past him with a teasing skip to his pace and Donghae jogs in place just to watch the joy straining his every muscle and smile.
After, they go back to Eunhyuk’s house, the sweat bathing their skin as they press into the mattress with their mouths clinging. Sometimes Donghae wonders what she would think, if Sooyoung would have done anything different had she known one day her son would be fucking him on her bed. It’s a perverse thought but then again, Donghae never tied his hair in pink ribbons or painted his lips in red and here he is, pinning down another boy’s hips and kissing trails down a firm chest all the way down to his navel and leaving the tattoo of his lips on sharp hips.
“I’m going to rebuild this house one day,” Donghae says and Eunhyuk hums against his throat in silent question. The day light pours into the room and Donghae carves it into Eunhyuk’s back in feathery strokes, careful to engrave the light in his spine and the curve marked with Donghae’s thumbs.
“The entire front made out of glass. From the floor to the ceiling.”
Donghae demonstrates with his fingers, tip toeing up the back of Eunhyuk’s thighs, dragging his fingers up the dips and slopes of Eunhyuk’s body until he reaches his nape. He tangles his fingers in the hair sweat stuck to the back of Eunhyuk’s neck and tilts his head towards him.
“And who are you rebuilding this for?” Eunhyuk asks. His eyes hold amusement and quietly concealed trust and this is when Eunhyuk lets Donghae talk like this. This is when Eunhyuk actually listens and lets them both dream wide awake and never shut out the affection and blatant adoration in Donghae’s hands and eyes.
“For you.” Donghae rolls onto his back and Eunhyuk follows, their weight sinking into the bed. Eunhyuk smiles and rests half his weight on Donghae and draws on Donghae’s chest with his index finger. He traces the contours of Donghae’s muscles and wanders up Donghae’s neck. When he reaches his mouth, Donghae feels the sun’s warmth on his dry lips. “And me.”
Eunhyuk’s smile doesn’t falter or fade. It obliterates the sun for a blinking moment before he kisses Donghae, their lips brushing when he says, “For us,” and this is when Eunhyuk lets them love each other without roadblocks or the shadow of a broken boy between them.
*
Eunhyuk is twenty minutes late and Donghae starts to worry. Not fretting but enough to make him consider getting out of the car and ask the hostess if she knows how much longer Eunhyuk will be. He pushes the thought away when he imagines Eunhyuk’s face, the tight lipped promise Donghae had made once.
Finally the car door opens and Eunhyuk slips in, the neck of his jacket up to his jaw and the leather shielding his skin.
He grunts a curt greeting and there is something unsettling about the set of his mouth and the erratic flutter of the neon lights dashing across his skin. It’s a wave of tension that flows from Eunhyuk and crashes over Donghae, a daunting preface that one of them is about to land face first into coral and break their skull open.
Eunhyuk turns to toss his bag in the back seat and the movement shifts his collar and Donghae sees it. On the underside of Eunhyuk’s jaw, big and reddish purple, the mark of someone’s fingers, wide and vicious in their intent.
“Who?” Donghae’s voice slices through the quiet. It’s barely a whisper but in the small truck it sounds like a scream.
“Donghae,”
“Who the fuck was it?”
“I don’t know. It was someone from out of town probably. I didn’t recognize him and he wasn’t a regular customer. Just forget about it.”
A dry laugh slips past Donghae’s throat, ugly and hoarse. He’s out of the car and around the front by the time Eunhyuk stops him, his hands pushing Donghae back.
“Donghae. Fuck, Donghae, stop and get back in the car. There isn’t anything you can do.”
It startles Donghae how Eunhyuk makes him feel sometimes, like Donghae holds the key to the universe and is the one thing worth watching the world spin for and yet he crumbles Donghae with such ease making no more than two inches tall.
Donghae shoves Eunhyuk out of the way, finally noticing the black lace beneath Eunhyuk’s half zipped jacket and he imagines Eunhyuk getting dressed in a haste, his trembling hands washing his make up away and the thought turns the anger swelling in Donghae’s body into rage.
“Nothing I can do?” he scoffs, his mouth an ugly snarl. “I’m going to rip his fucking face off.”
The neon lights swim in Donghae’s eyes but the determination in his steps is enough to rip the concrete from the parking lot and burn this place to the ground.
“Damn it! Donghae, you can’t,”
“I can’t what?” Donghae demands, facing Eunhyuk and watching Eunhyuk cower slightly. “You’re not some two dollar whore, Eunhyuk. You’re a man. And look at yourself. Just look at yourself.”
“I do,” Eunhyuk yells and it shatters a part of Donghae so deep inside it feels like bleeding. “Don’t you get it? I’m not much more than a whore to them. And I look at myself, Donghae. Every single day and I don’t think they’re that wrong.”
Eunhyuk pulls him back roughly and he grips Donghae by the arms, so much force in his hold Donghae succumbs to it, to Eunhyuk and the plead in his eyes.
“So please. Let’s just go home,” Eunhyuk says, his voice soft and frail but Donghae thinks he’s asking for something else, something Donghae can’t give him and those who could are long gone.
Donghae forces himself to look Eunhyuk in the eye, the wetness brimming in them intensified by left over eye liner and Donghae knows he’s never going to understand. “I just want to go home.”
Donghae nods, defeated. The drive back is quiet and dry. There are no stars tonight, no other galaxies with better worlds. They don’t exist. All they have is the bruise on Eunhyuk’s skin and the one deep set into Donghae, his heart or his ego he can’t tell.
Tonight, however, there is the press of their mouths, fast and insistent. Back seat leather sticks to Eunhyuk’s back as Donghae rocks between his thighs with firm hands gripping Eunhyuk’s knees. Everything from his movements to his hold is furious and violent but Donghae cries as he comes inside of him and it’s Eunhyuk who whispers broken promises, swearing better worlds into the curve of Donghae’s neck as he paints all the constellations he’s learned from Donghae’s midnight sun voice with assured fingers across Donghae’s back.
*
Another lawn to pave, another day to soak his sun in. Donghae is only nineteen but he’s seen so much sun in this past year alone he thinks the wrinkles will start to age him quicker than they did his father.
The Lee’s lawn is big and it’ll take more than two hands to get all the work done but Donghae’s gaze lingers from soil and grass cutters to the house across the street, to that one bedroom with all the windows and the man sitting on his front porch beneath it.
Eunhyuk openly stares, his knees in the crooks of his arms as he watches Donghae work. His body looks thin in his t-shirt and tattered jeans but there isn’t trace of her in Eunhyuk when he’s like this. He’s just Eunhyuk, just a boy who maybe isn’t done waiting, still hopes and longs with invisibly tear tracked cheeks.
Donghae digs his hands into the wet soil, the earth seeping into his skin and he wonders if Eunhyuk knows he’s been waiting too.
When the work is done, Donghae shakes the soil from his hands and he’s sick of waiting.
*
From the moment the doors close, Donghae thinks he’s lost his sense of gravity. The lights are dim inside but neon swirls in electric colors, bright and damaging.
He manages a smile for the hostess and finds a seat at the bar, secluded but open. He can see people but they can’t really see him.
“What’s your poison?” the bartender asks. She’s dressed like the waitresses, tight leather and long acrylic lashes. Donghae strips her of her wig and lipstick, sees broad shoulders and a deep timber to her voice.
Donghae’s mouth morphs in a smirk though it’s all for pretense. Kind of like hers. “I don’t think I can handle any more poison.”
“Kid,” she says, and Donghae wonders who she is when she isn’t here. If she wipes off her mask and lives the life she wants. “That’s the reason anyone comes in here in the first place.”
She walks away and Donghae leans against the counter, waiting. He watches each girl step on stage, hips rotating and their clutching fingers grasping the poll like it’s their only life line in this sea of loss, a mix of dread and anticipation churning in his stomach. The music is a loud drone, speakers blaring a beat for seduction, for allure and it’s the same men who come here every night and somehow seeing the degradation of a soul never loses its appeal to them.
He doesn’t have to wait long for the real show to start, for him at least. It’s not too late, Donghae thinks as the lights turn red and darken. And he wants to. He wants to make a break for it and never look back, run away to the end of it all where it’s safe with the lingering promise of a better place.
The lights hit skin that Donghae has kissed and pressed his own naked heart too and there isn’t any other place for Donghae to be except here.
It’s been a blurry image in Donghae’s memory for the last four years but she’s exactly like Donghae remembers her. The wig is different and the clothes are tighter, shorter and she’s different like this, with all these lights crushing her skin but Donghae still wants her. It makes Donghae sick to his stomach and had he drunk any liquor he’d probably be on hands and knees and retching his heart through his mouth.
But it isn’t about her at all.
If it weren’t for the boy trapped beneath her skin, Donghae wouldn’t fight the struggle to pull her off the stage and the desire, the need, to watch her dance beneath lights Donghae has been tortured by for years.
She follows the beat with a grace Donghae hadn’t pictured, because he has pictured it countless times in darkness and light alike. It’s obscenely beautiful and Donghae’s stomach twists furiously when the layers start to fall away and he’s always seen Eunhyuk as this damaged boy but watching him break himself open makes all the innocence left in Donghae harden, cracked concrete and a thing of the past.
Eventually the lights dim again and it’s done. Show’s over and everyone can go home now, thanks for coming don’t let the door hit your soulless corpse on your way out.
Donghae stands dizzy, tries to pass unnoticed as he makes his way to the back and in a chance, slips past a half asleep bouncer and heads to the dressing rooms. It takes a couple hits and misses but he finds what he’s looking for.
He has his back to Donghae and here he’s Eunhyuk even with the wig and the clothes still on. It’s Eunhyuk Donghae has been waiting for, not her.
“If you’re looking for your wig I don’t have it.”
“I’m not looking for any wig.”
It doesn’t take long for Eunhyuk to realize. One second he’s turning around in angry shock, the next his lips are a menacing smile that would scare anyone else to the bones.
“Did you enjoy the show?”
“If by enjoy you mean I felt so sick to my stomach I was about to throw up, then yeah. I enjoyed it.”
That’s all it takes for Eunhyuk’s smile to crumble, his whole face destroyed, and it’s the second time Donghae watches Eunhyuk break in one day but seeing it done from his own hands ceases the air flow in his lungs with a sting.
“Just go, Donghae,” Eunhyuk says tiredly as he turns away again, rummaging through his bag and busying his hands with his clothes, his real clothes.
“I,”
“I said go! I don’t want to look at you now.”
Eunhyuk gasps in surprise when Donghae forces him around, he staggers on his heels and almost crashes but Donghae holds him in place, and all the anger that should be there, the hate, the disgust, the want, is washed out and all that’s left is Donghae. “Don’t you get it, Eunhyuk? I do. I want to look at you.”
Eunhyuk doesn’t shrug off Donghae’s hands, comforting on his shoulders, but his eyes fall to Donghae’s chin, anywhere but Donghae’s eyes. “But I don’t want you to see her,” he mutters.
“Why?” The question Donghae has wanted to ask for years but never has, too scared to push Eunhyuk into something neither of them wanted always holding him back.
“Because she’s not me. But I am her and I’ve never wanted to be her. I never wanted to be her,” Eunhyuk trails off and Donghae pieces the rest of the puzzle together with craft glue and star dust tucked away in the lines of his childhood memories.
His grip on Eunhyuk’s shoulders increases until Eunhyuk looks at him, lips dark red and his eyes shaded in black and he’s beautiful but Donghae wipes it all away, strips each and every layer off so all he sees is the naked boy Donghae loved long before she ever came around. “I don’t care about her. If she’s you or she isn’t. I don’t care. I just want you. I’ve always just wanted you.”
Eunhyuk’s chin quivers, the tension from repression distorts his face. If he finally breaks Donghae’s hands are ready to start carving him back together with the fractures in his chest if he has to. “But she exists. And whether I want to or not, she’s a part of me. And I hate her.” I hate myself, Donghae hears and maybe a part of Donghae wants her but he hates her more.
Eunhyuk pushes at Donghae gently and Donghae backs off. Eunhyuk sinks into the battered couch against the wall with a sigh, wistful and small. He sits with his legs spread and his elbows resting on his thighs, all the refined elegance gone, and every bit the man he is.
Helplessness installs itself in Donghae’s chest. He’s helpless and as small as Eunhyuk’s voice, the weight of someone else’s world he’s forced upon his shoulders he has no idea how to carry.
Donghae can’t handle it much longer so he’s going to settle the score, find some sort of balance between them so they can both breathe and be strangled. He steadies himself on the arm of the couch and straddles Eunhyuk’s hips, weaves his hands in Eunhyuk’s wig, her hair, and kisses him. Eunhyuk tries to shove him off, he fights and struggles against Donghae. Donghae only presses his body closer to Eunhyuk’s but his lips slide soft, this desperate honesty that makes Eunhyuk stop and give in
For once Donghae tastes the smell of smoke and alcohol from Eunhyuk’s lungs and he inhales it and keeps it to himself, hides it away in the crevice of his tongue. Their hands move deft, skin touching where Donghae’s pants have been kicked off and Eunhyuk’s shirt peeled away and on the floor.
Eunhyuk’s hands grip Donghae’s hips and Eunhyuk relinquishes control and does the one thing he swore them both he wouldn’t; he lets her have Donghae.
They both melt within him as Donghae wraps himself around Eunhyuk’s body, urgent whispers of “I only want her if she’s you,” and “I just want you, Eunhyuk. You,” breathed into Eunhyuk’s ear in Donghae’s broken voice, Donghae hopes with every crush of stars swimming in his blood stream that Eunhyuk already knew that.
*
Donghae starts tracing again.
On paper not skin and he goes through countless sheets of designs. Landscapes and plans, all of them with wooden frames but filled in with glass. The house looks somehow bigger on paper but the lawn looks laid out with the lack of a guest house and instead, all that space for the sun to shadow and roam in the backyard.
“Do you really think you could do it?” Eunhyuk asks one day. Summer nights are warm and the wind rustles his hair up and away from his neck. The bruises is practically faded now. Spring holds the promise of new beginnings but summer holds the promise of change.
Donghae shuts his notepad closed and rests it on his thigh. The porch lights source enough light but his eyes are beginning to strain. He’s always preferred to draw in the day light. He looks at Eunhyuk, possibly falling a little more just by the way sunset touches Eunhyuk’s eyelashes.
Eunhyuk leans into his touch when Donghae brushes his knuckles against his cheek, his skin soft and clean without a trace of anything that isn’t his.
“One day. I promise,” Donghae says and maybe he can’t keep his promise of a better world or a different galaxy for the both of them but, this promise. The burning down of old sins and the repair of broken boys and the rebuilding of a home that’s always been theirs, Donghae swears he’ll keep.
***
donghae/eunhyuk
r
5976 words
Breakable doesn't mean unrepairable. Hyukjae is more than a little broken. Donghae is too.
This fic contains cross dressing and gender issues. I tried dealing with both topics in what I hope is a respectful way.
this skin we’re in is ours to keep
Early on, Donghae realizes he is meant to live in a glass house.
Always too in love with the light, the openness, that sense of being protected from the world but not hidden away from its warmth. It’s probably why out of all the rooms in the house Eunhyuk’s mother’s room had been his favorite. He’d always found a second home here and Mrs. Lee kept the room dusty, not enough to pick out the filth but enough so it was lived in. Early Saturday mornings are still the best, when the sun filters into the room and the dust in the air lit up like crystals he’d make dance with his fingertips, bits of star shavings and snowflakes led by his direction.
She’d let them play on her carpet for hours while she attended guests in the guest house, burly men with tailored suits and flannel shirts on odd days. The Mrs. was a courtesy title. She wasn’t a mama like Donghae’s was, homemade school lunches and making sure Donghae’s sneakers were clean, but she’d been there when Eunhyuk’s dad had skipped town and she was a mother all the same.
Donghae still remembers the day he’d helped Eunhyuk move into her room after she’d died. They’d packed all of her things in boxes and turned her mattress over, all of her sheets tossed in the trash and made the bed with simple white linens. If Eunhyuk had the money he’d have burned it along with the guest house, a pile of fire licked wood chips and melted metal springs in the backyard, smoke swirling in the sky for hours.
“Donghae?”
A pair of legs fill his vision and Donghae’s stare lingers on the paleness of Eunhyuk’s thighs, the hint of leather visible from the end of his t-shirt. Sunset is starting to break over the horizon and Donghae is the first to admit he’s nothing but selfish in wanting Eunhyuk just like this, with the sun painting his naked skin kept out of darkness.
“Do you mind taking a break from day dreaming and helping me look for my boots?”
Donghae doesn’t indulge in selfishness long and he complies, sitting up and searching beneath the bed where Eunhyuk always kicks his boots under. He hands them over with a petulant smile matching Eunhyuk’s own. He watches Eunhyuk finish getting dressed, the slide of his jeans over the lace of the garter belt on his thighs and it’s kind of like watching Eunhyuk conceal and break himself open at the same time but Donghae is used to this. They both are; Monday through Saturday and sometimes Sundays.
He drops Eunhyuk off in front of the run down club after a fifteen minute drive filled with a fight over the radio and a quick stop at the gas station for Red Bull while Donghae fills up the tank.
Eunhyuk wears that half smile that’s become a habit once the car stops, one hand gripping the door handle the other crushing the Red Bull can with white knuckles.
“I’ll be here at one.”
Cue the polite refusal, the you don’t have to I can take the bus but it only makes Donghae’s promise come back feral, his smile cutting off some of the edge. Eunhyuk nods, he always nods and accepts because people may swear by small town hospitality and good natured hearts but both of them trust this town as far as they can throw it.
Eunhyuk tosses him a small wave when he’s at the front door, the neon sign disintegrates his smile as if he’s some kid dropped off at his last day of school or his first of college. It’s mid June and school’s been out of session for weeks and won’t be back for months.
Donghae drives away after the door sways shut behind Eunhyuk, neon lights dancing in his vision and it’s not just selfishness.
*
It’s nearing two in the morning when Donghae pulls over on the highway, a tired Eunhyuk as his copilot. Donghae likes taking the long way home, likes the way the highway lights illuminate the smear of red on Eunhyuk’s lip and the thickness leftover mascara creates on his eyelashes. Eunhyuk never seems to notice he didn’t remove his make up properly and Donghae never says anything, always mindful to wash his hands thoroughly so Eunhyuk doesn’t find smudges of red, black, or brown on Donghae’s hands in the morning.
They lie on the back of Donghae’s truck and wait for sunrise, counting stars and tracing constellations, imagining galaxies that are brighter and better than theirs.
“What’s that one over there?”
“That clutter in the middle with the ring around it? Oh, that’s Orion,” Donghae says even though he has no idea if it is or not but he says it with confidence. He takes Eunhyuk’s hand in his and lines their index fingers together so they outline the mess of stars from their little corner of their world as if he paid attention in Astronomy class and knows the planets and stars as well as he does the lines in Eunhyuk’s palms. And Eunhyuk doesn’t question him because he’s the one who dropped out of school while Donghae’s diploma is framed sitting proudly on the mantle in his living room.
By the time they climb inside the cab of the truck, the temperature drops. Donghae turns on the heater even though it’ll eat up the gas and draw a bigger whole in his already empty wallet. They shiver while the heat fills the air and sit huddled close, arms touching. Donghae warm his hands on Eunhyuk’s cold face, he lets Donghae sharpen his soft thumbs on his cheekbones and trace the corner of his lip until exhaustion but Eunhyuk never lets Donghae kiss his mouth, never lets Donghae taste the smoke or the smell of liquor trapped inside Eunhyuk’s lungs. Donghae never pushes on it though he wants to. He wants to taste the intoxication on Eunhyuk’s tongue, feel the caress of neon lights.
More than anything Donghae wants to understand.
More than anything, Eunhyuk doesn’t want Donghae to understand.
So they go home with mouths untouched just as the first rays start spreading across the sky tainting the darkness of dusk in light and hiding away the possibility of a better world.
*
Eunhyuk only let Donghae see her once.
Donghae had always known, whispers as he and Eunhyuk played with action figures and miniature cars, the ribbons tied in Eunhyuk’s hair that was almost too long for a boy on Sunday afternoons and the small dresses in the hallway closet Donghae found in his hunt for the Chinese checkers set when it rained.
Sooyoung had always wanted a little girl. She’d married the most beautiful man she could find in this town, the kind with a smile that stops you in your tracts and catches you so off guard you’d do anything to make him smile again. It was perfect, kind of like a fairy tale almost. They fell in love, got married and pregnant all within the same year and Sooyoung would have the beautiful girl she never was.
But Sooyoung didn’t get her little girl. Eunhyuk was a healthy seven pound six ounce baby boy with wide eyes and a healthy appetite. All the nurses cooed at him but his own mother couldn’t look at him for days.
Something changed along the coming home and the fights, the I’ve had enough damn it and the packed suitcases, the weeping toddler who sat on his front porch waiting for his papa to come back home and the broken tearless boy who never waited for anyone. It started to settle in because Sooyoung decided that if she’d never been that girl, if she hadn’t had her, Sooyoung would create that beautiful girl at the mere expense of her son’s skin and soul and a monthly stipend at the local beauty shop.
They’d been fifteen.
Almost a year to the day of the car accident and maybe it’s a cosmic joke it had been something out of her grasp what had caused Sooyoung’s death, a drunk driver colliding into her from the side and taking her life in the instant a scream tore from her throat followed by the first prayer she’d said in years.
Eunhyuk had already decided he was quitting school. He wasn’t smart enough and even if he was he didn’t have the money to go to college. This was what he was going to do and there was nothing Donghae could do about it and Donghae didn’t even try, an Eunhyuk with his mind made up is almost as stubborn as a Donghae with a plan, both unrelenting and unwilling to budge or bend.
He’d seen Eunhyuk in the dresses before, years ago when Sooyoung was careless and didn’t see any harm in Eunhyuk getting mud in his pink lace and white frills because the pageant had been long and exhausting but rewarding with the second place trophy to set up on the shelf. They’d win first next time for sure. She’d make sure of that.
But this. It was hard to conceive the truth staring him in the face. That the girl standing in front of Donghae and his best friend-the boy he’d busted his front tooth with, the boy he went swimming in the lake during summer and spent hours catching tadpoles in their small hands- were one and the same, two halves of a broken whole.
It was early morning and Eunhyuk had stood in the bathroom doorway refusing to meet Donghae’s eyes. The wig’s bangs framed Eunhyuk’s face strangely, brushing past his eyebrows and sweeping to the right while the ends had cascaded down his back. His lips were red like cherries and shiny like the wet fruit, his bottom lip fuller and caught between his teeth. Donghae can’t remember the outfit except it was tight in all the wrong places, the shirt cut off above Eunhyuk’s navel and the skirt strangling his hips so tightly Donghae could see Eunhyuk’s bones jutting out sickly from his skin.
And then Eunhyuk was in front of him, looking into Donghae’s eyes with this rawness, this desperate fear that Donghae wanted to extinguish, make Eunhyuk feel nothing except secure and safe for the rest of their lives and at that point Donghae knew he was already in love with Eunhyuk.
“How do I look?” The question came with a stutter, Eunhyuk’s hands tugging at his shirt and hip cocking to the side. The dip of his body outlined his faint muscles and curves and it had Donghae’s heart rate speeding, eyes watching the dance of Eunhyuk’s skin, all of it culminating in the blush heating Donghae’s cheeks and the hardness in his jeans.
Red had overtaken Eunhyuk’s face in succession but he’d tried for a smile. They’d had accidents before, sleepovers in each others beds had ended with their legs tangled, mornings of waking up with adolescent erections neither had thought too much about except that the warmth felt good and it felt right to have someone pressed close while sleep still clung to their minds.
On impulse Donghae had pulled Eunhyuk next to him on the bed. He’d stared at Eunhyuk’s pink cheeks and his smooth skin. Thought about how he was looking at Eunhyuk and not, but how his mouth was undeniably Eunhyuk’s mouth, pretty and full, lower lip jutted with teeth marks encrusted and how much Donghae wanted to fill the gap with his own skin. How Eunhyuk’s mouth was the just about the most beautiful mouth he’d ever seen and how badly he wanted to kiss it.
They don’t have their first kiss that day and when Eunhyuk’s mouth is left raw and abused from furiously wiping his make up away, Donghae is glad.
Their first kiss a month later was salty and wet from Eunhyuk’s tears. Donghae has a bruise on his jaw from his first fist fight. It’s an impulsive kiss, harsh and slightly biting but Eunhyuk’s face is clean and pure, Donghae’s hands unblemished from holding Eunhyuk’s cheeks between his shaking palms.
*
Opposites attract, they say.
They’re not opposites but they are creatures of a different kind; Eunhyuk works the night shift while Donghae starts work an hour after sunrise.
The day he graduates high school Donghae goes straight to work for his uncle’s handyman company doing odd jobs from painting to repairing sinks and learning to rewire electric systems and cleaning out gutters. It is the closest Donghae is ever get to his dream, half done sketches of glass houses and garden layouts forgotten in his school notebooks and in the margins of his favorite books. If Donghae can’t design or build houses he’d repair old ones, help bring out their luster and shine and make them run like the well oiled ships they’d been once.
Eunhyuk likes to come on the job sometimes but only when Donghae gets sent on small jobs by himself, calls out to Mrs. Kim’s house to unclog her toilet or re-varnish old man Jaesuk’s patio. He knows well Donghae’s uncle doesn’t like him and why should he like the good for nothing boy who quit school, probably sells drugs as far as the town is concerned because no one’s seem him work a day in his life, and on top of that is the son of a whore?
“He’s an old bat and he doesn’t know what he’s talking about,” Donghae affirms, shoving any apprehension Eunhyuk might have.
Eunhyuk leans against the side of Donghae’s truck and thumbs the corner of his eye. He does that, an itch of residue and his hands fly to his face to rub away like a haunting that won’t leave. “I just don’t want to make trouble for you.”
Donghae adjusts his tool belt on his hip, regarding Eunhyuk with a half smile. “Maybe I like trouble,” he says even though Eunhyuk is like the calmest water slipping through Donghae’s fingers, easy to fall for him even easier to want to catch him and keep cupped in his palms.
His uncle is the only blood family Donghae has after his parents had packed up their things and bought a mobile home to tour the country once Donghae graduated. Donghae tries not label it abandonment. His parents had been there for eighteen years and Donghae is an adult now. Eunhyuk has survived on his own since he was fourteen. Donghae will survive too.
Eunhyuk sits on countertops and patio railings, picking out tools from tool box and handing them to Donghae which Donghae always shake his head telling him wrong tool and making Eunhyuk dig in the box again. They go on like that until Eunhyuk gets exasperated and his laughter rings from his mouth like a song. It pulls Donghae’s smile on his sweat kissed lips because that had been his intention from the start.
“How am I supposed to know the difference between a sock wrench and a Phillips screwdriver?”
“They’re not the same type of tool for one,” Donghae responds smartly. Eunhyuk sticks his tongue out at him childishly and Donghae replies in the same way feeling like they’re back to being seven and their biggest problem is who is growing the fastest and how the other can catch up.
Sometimes Eunhyuk brings the paper with him and reads the national news and last weekend’s cartoons, skips over the obituaries and gloats over his football team winning over Donghae’s again.
“We’ll see who’s laughing when I beat you this Wednesday,” Donghae threatens, twisting into his kindest grin when Mrs. Cho comes out with lemonade for both of them, smiles at them like she means it and the afternoon sun positively glows on her aged skin.
They sit on the bench and sip their lemonade, Donghae reading over Eunhyuk’s shoulder at this week’s horoscope and the mayor’s latest scandal.
“This one looks interesting.” Eunhyuk points to a section in the want adds.
Donghae reads it over quickly, going back to his lemonade after skimming the first line. “It’s three cities over.”
“I know,” is Eunhyuk’s blunt reply. His stare drives into the side of Donghae’s face, intense and almost cutting.
“We’ve talked about this. I’m staying here.”
Eunhyuk’s answer is one Donghae expects but it isn’t the one Donghae wants, the one he’s wanted since he was fifteen and saw Eunhyuk falling at the seams and wanted nothing more than to take build him back together with gentle hands and take him far, far away.
“There’s nothing for you here, Donghae. We both know that.”
Donghae laughs. It sounds burnt and far too bitter to be called a laugh but maybe that’s just the acid from the lemonade or another fissure in his heart.
Eunhyuk’s hands are on his face then, sweeping fingers wiping away the dirt stain on Donghae’s cheek. His skin is cool and it chills Donghae all the way down to his bones but he turns to smile at Eunhyuk and finds Eunhyuk frowning, a deep knot in the skin stretched across his brows. Donghae leans in and presses their lips together, doesn’t care if Mrs. Cho or that couple that just crossed the street sees them and tastes the bitter sun from Eunhyuk’s lips. He pulls away and there is a bit of a smile in the corner of Eunhyuk’s mouth and the fissure repairs itself a little.
Donghae never met him but he guesses Eunhyuk must have his father’s smile.
*
They play soccer on Saturdays. The field is green and vast and it’s early enough so the sun beats down on their skin and makes them work for it. Their team mates are a couple of guys from their old high school and a few boys from the construction site. Local boys who secretly hold onto their dreams of being sport stars and hall of fame legends.
Eunhyuk out runs them all, his cleats kicking up patches of grass and the wind rustling his shorts. He blocks most of Donghae’s passes, flies past him with a teasing skip to his pace and Donghae jogs in place just to watch the joy straining his every muscle and smile.
After, they go back to Eunhyuk’s house, the sweat bathing their skin as they press into the mattress with their mouths clinging. Sometimes Donghae wonders what she would think, if Sooyoung would have done anything different had she known one day her son would be fucking him on her bed. It’s a perverse thought but then again, Donghae never tied his hair in pink ribbons or painted his lips in red and here he is, pinning down another boy’s hips and kissing trails down a firm chest all the way down to his navel and leaving the tattoo of his lips on sharp hips.
“I’m going to rebuild this house one day,” Donghae says and Eunhyuk hums against his throat in silent question. The day light pours into the room and Donghae carves it into Eunhyuk’s back in feathery strokes, careful to engrave the light in his spine and the curve marked with Donghae’s thumbs.
“The entire front made out of glass. From the floor to the ceiling.”
Donghae demonstrates with his fingers, tip toeing up the back of Eunhyuk’s thighs, dragging his fingers up the dips and slopes of Eunhyuk’s body until he reaches his nape. He tangles his fingers in the hair sweat stuck to the back of Eunhyuk’s neck and tilts his head towards him.
“And who are you rebuilding this for?” Eunhyuk asks. His eyes hold amusement and quietly concealed trust and this is when Eunhyuk lets Donghae talk like this. This is when Eunhyuk actually listens and lets them both dream wide awake and never shut out the affection and blatant adoration in Donghae’s hands and eyes.
“For you.” Donghae rolls onto his back and Eunhyuk follows, their weight sinking into the bed. Eunhyuk smiles and rests half his weight on Donghae and draws on Donghae’s chest with his index finger. He traces the contours of Donghae’s muscles and wanders up Donghae’s neck. When he reaches his mouth, Donghae feels the sun’s warmth on his dry lips. “And me.”
Eunhyuk’s smile doesn’t falter or fade. It obliterates the sun for a blinking moment before he kisses Donghae, their lips brushing when he says, “For us,” and this is when Eunhyuk lets them love each other without roadblocks or the shadow of a broken boy between them.
*
Eunhyuk is twenty minutes late and Donghae starts to worry. Not fretting but enough to make him consider getting out of the car and ask the hostess if she knows how much longer Eunhyuk will be. He pushes the thought away when he imagines Eunhyuk’s face, the tight lipped promise Donghae had made once.
Finally the car door opens and Eunhyuk slips in, the neck of his jacket up to his jaw and the leather shielding his skin.
He grunts a curt greeting and there is something unsettling about the set of his mouth and the erratic flutter of the neon lights dashing across his skin. It’s a wave of tension that flows from Eunhyuk and crashes over Donghae, a daunting preface that one of them is about to land face first into coral and break their skull open.
Eunhyuk turns to toss his bag in the back seat and the movement shifts his collar and Donghae sees it. On the underside of Eunhyuk’s jaw, big and reddish purple, the mark of someone’s fingers, wide and vicious in their intent.
“Who?” Donghae’s voice slices through the quiet. It’s barely a whisper but in the small truck it sounds like a scream.
“Donghae,”
“Who the fuck was it?”
“I don’t know. It was someone from out of town probably. I didn’t recognize him and he wasn’t a regular customer. Just forget about it.”
A dry laugh slips past Donghae’s throat, ugly and hoarse. He’s out of the car and around the front by the time Eunhyuk stops him, his hands pushing Donghae back.
“Donghae. Fuck, Donghae, stop and get back in the car. There isn’t anything you can do.”
It startles Donghae how Eunhyuk makes him feel sometimes, like Donghae holds the key to the universe and is the one thing worth watching the world spin for and yet he crumbles Donghae with such ease making no more than two inches tall.
Donghae shoves Eunhyuk out of the way, finally noticing the black lace beneath Eunhyuk’s half zipped jacket and he imagines Eunhyuk getting dressed in a haste, his trembling hands washing his make up away and the thought turns the anger swelling in Donghae’s body into rage.
“Nothing I can do?” he scoffs, his mouth an ugly snarl. “I’m going to rip his fucking face off.”
The neon lights swim in Donghae’s eyes but the determination in his steps is enough to rip the concrete from the parking lot and burn this place to the ground.
“Damn it! Donghae, you can’t,”
“I can’t what?” Donghae demands, facing Eunhyuk and watching Eunhyuk cower slightly. “You’re not some two dollar whore, Eunhyuk. You’re a man. And look at yourself. Just look at yourself.”
“I do,” Eunhyuk yells and it shatters a part of Donghae so deep inside it feels like bleeding. “Don’t you get it? I’m not much more than a whore to them. And I look at myself, Donghae. Every single day and I don’t think they’re that wrong.”
Eunhyuk pulls him back roughly and he grips Donghae by the arms, so much force in his hold Donghae succumbs to it, to Eunhyuk and the plead in his eyes.
“So please. Let’s just go home,” Eunhyuk says, his voice soft and frail but Donghae thinks he’s asking for something else, something Donghae can’t give him and those who could are long gone.
Donghae forces himself to look Eunhyuk in the eye, the wetness brimming in them intensified by left over eye liner and Donghae knows he’s never going to understand. “I just want to go home.”
Donghae nods, defeated. The drive back is quiet and dry. There are no stars tonight, no other galaxies with better worlds. They don’t exist. All they have is the bruise on Eunhyuk’s skin and the one deep set into Donghae, his heart or his ego he can’t tell.
Tonight, however, there is the press of their mouths, fast and insistent. Back seat leather sticks to Eunhyuk’s back as Donghae rocks between his thighs with firm hands gripping Eunhyuk’s knees. Everything from his movements to his hold is furious and violent but Donghae cries as he comes inside of him and it’s Eunhyuk who whispers broken promises, swearing better worlds into the curve of Donghae’s neck as he paints all the constellations he’s learned from Donghae’s midnight sun voice with assured fingers across Donghae’s back.
*
Another lawn to pave, another day to soak his sun in. Donghae is only nineteen but he’s seen so much sun in this past year alone he thinks the wrinkles will start to age him quicker than they did his father.
The Lee’s lawn is big and it’ll take more than two hands to get all the work done but Donghae’s gaze lingers from soil and grass cutters to the house across the street, to that one bedroom with all the windows and the man sitting on his front porch beneath it.
Eunhyuk openly stares, his knees in the crooks of his arms as he watches Donghae work. His body looks thin in his t-shirt and tattered jeans but there isn’t trace of her in Eunhyuk when he’s like this. He’s just Eunhyuk, just a boy who maybe isn’t done waiting, still hopes and longs with invisibly tear tracked cheeks.
Donghae digs his hands into the wet soil, the earth seeping into his skin and he wonders if Eunhyuk knows he’s been waiting too.
When the work is done, Donghae shakes the soil from his hands and he’s sick of waiting.
*
From the moment the doors close, Donghae thinks he’s lost his sense of gravity. The lights are dim inside but neon swirls in electric colors, bright and damaging.
He manages a smile for the hostess and finds a seat at the bar, secluded but open. He can see people but they can’t really see him.
“What’s your poison?” the bartender asks. She’s dressed like the waitresses, tight leather and long acrylic lashes. Donghae strips her of her wig and lipstick, sees broad shoulders and a deep timber to her voice.
Donghae’s mouth morphs in a smirk though it’s all for pretense. Kind of like hers. “I don’t think I can handle any more poison.”
“Kid,” she says, and Donghae wonders who she is when she isn’t here. If she wipes off her mask and lives the life she wants. “That’s the reason anyone comes in here in the first place.”
She walks away and Donghae leans against the counter, waiting. He watches each girl step on stage, hips rotating and their clutching fingers grasping the poll like it’s their only life line in this sea of loss, a mix of dread and anticipation churning in his stomach. The music is a loud drone, speakers blaring a beat for seduction, for allure and it’s the same men who come here every night and somehow seeing the degradation of a soul never loses its appeal to them.
He doesn’t have to wait long for the real show to start, for him at least. It’s not too late, Donghae thinks as the lights turn red and darken. And he wants to. He wants to make a break for it and never look back, run away to the end of it all where it’s safe with the lingering promise of a better place.
The lights hit skin that Donghae has kissed and pressed his own naked heart too and there isn’t any other place for Donghae to be except here.
It’s been a blurry image in Donghae’s memory for the last four years but she’s exactly like Donghae remembers her. The wig is different and the clothes are tighter, shorter and she’s different like this, with all these lights crushing her skin but Donghae still wants her. It makes Donghae sick to his stomach and had he drunk any liquor he’d probably be on hands and knees and retching his heart through his mouth.
But it isn’t about her at all.
If it weren’t for the boy trapped beneath her skin, Donghae wouldn’t fight the struggle to pull her off the stage and the desire, the need, to watch her dance beneath lights Donghae has been tortured by for years.
She follows the beat with a grace Donghae hadn’t pictured, because he has pictured it countless times in darkness and light alike. It’s obscenely beautiful and Donghae’s stomach twists furiously when the layers start to fall away and he’s always seen Eunhyuk as this damaged boy but watching him break himself open makes all the innocence left in Donghae harden, cracked concrete and a thing of the past.
Eventually the lights dim again and it’s done. Show’s over and everyone can go home now, thanks for coming don’t let the door hit your soulless corpse on your way out.
Donghae stands dizzy, tries to pass unnoticed as he makes his way to the back and in a chance, slips past a half asleep bouncer and heads to the dressing rooms. It takes a couple hits and misses but he finds what he’s looking for.
He has his back to Donghae and here he’s Eunhyuk even with the wig and the clothes still on. It’s Eunhyuk Donghae has been waiting for, not her.
“If you’re looking for your wig I don’t have it.”
“I’m not looking for any wig.”
It doesn’t take long for Eunhyuk to realize. One second he’s turning around in angry shock, the next his lips are a menacing smile that would scare anyone else to the bones.
“Did you enjoy the show?”
“If by enjoy you mean I felt so sick to my stomach I was about to throw up, then yeah. I enjoyed it.”
That’s all it takes for Eunhyuk’s smile to crumble, his whole face destroyed, and it’s the second time Donghae watches Eunhyuk break in one day but seeing it done from his own hands ceases the air flow in his lungs with a sting.
“Just go, Donghae,” Eunhyuk says tiredly as he turns away again, rummaging through his bag and busying his hands with his clothes, his real clothes.
“I,”
“I said go! I don’t want to look at you now.”
Eunhyuk gasps in surprise when Donghae forces him around, he staggers on his heels and almost crashes but Donghae holds him in place, and all the anger that should be there, the hate, the disgust, the want, is washed out and all that’s left is Donghae. “Don’t you get it, Eunhyuk? I do. I want to look at you.”
Eunhyuk doesn’t shrug off Donghae’s hands, comforting on his shoulders, but his eyes fall to Donghae’s chin, anywhere but Donghae’s eyes. “But I don’t want you to see her,” he mutters.
“Why?” The question Donghae has wanted to ask for years but never has, too scared to push Eunhyuk into something neither of them wanted always holding him back.
“Because she’s not me. But I am her and I’ve never wanted to be her. I never wanted to be her,” Eunhyuk trails off and Donghae pieces the rest of the puzzle together with craft glue and star dust tucked away in the lines of his childhood memories.
His grip on Eunhyuk’s shoulders increases until Eunhyuk looks at him, lips dark red and his eyes shaded in black and he’s beautiful but Donghae wipes it all away, strips each and every layer off so all he sees is the naked boy Donghae loved long before she ever came around. “I don’t care about her. If she’s you or she isn’t. I don’t care. I just want you. I’ve always just wanted you.”
Eunhyuk’s chin quivers, the tension from repression distorts his face. If he finally breaks Donghae’s hands are ready to start carving him back together with the fractures in his chest if he has to. “But she exists. And whether I want to or not, she’s a part of me. And I hate her.” I hate myself, Donghae hears and maybe a part of Donghae wants her but he hates her more.
Eunhyuk pushes at Donghae gently and Donghae backs off. Eunhyuk sinks into the battered couch against the wall with a sigh, wistful and small. He sits with his legs spread and his elbows resting on his thighs, all the refined elegance gone, and every bit the man he is.
Helplessness installs itself in Donghae’s chest. He’s helpless and as small as Eunhyuk’s voice, the weight of someone else’s world he’s forced upon his shoulders he has no idea how to carry.
Donghae can’t handle it much longer so he’s going to settle the score, find some sort of balance between them so they can both breathe and be strangled. He steadies himself on the arm of the couch and straddles Eunhyuk’s hips, weaves his hands in Eunhyuk’s wig, her hair, and kisses him. Eunhyuk tries to shove him off, he fights and struggles against Donghae. Donghae only presses his body closer to Eunhyuk’s but his lips slide soft, this desperate honesty that makes Eunhyuk stop and give in
For once Donghae tastes the smell of smoke and alcohol from Eunhyuk’s lungs and he inhales it and keeps it to himself, hides it away in the crevice of his tongue. Their hands move deft, skin touching where Donghae’s pants have been kicked off and Eunhyuk’s shirt peeled away and on the floor.
Eunhyuk’s hands grip Donghae’s hips and Eunhyuk relinquishes control and does the one thing he swore them both he wouldn’t; he lets her have Donghae.
They both melt within him as Donghae wraps himself around Eunhyuk’s body, urgent whispers of “I only want her if she’s you,” and “I just want you, Eunhyuk. You,” breathed into Eunhyuk’s ear in Donghae’s broken voice, Donghae hopes with every crush of stars swimming in his blood stream that Eunhyuk already knew that.
*
Donghae starts tracing again.
On paper not skin and he goes through countless sheets of designs. Landscapes and plans, all of them with wooden frames but filled in with glass. The house looks somehow bigger on paper but the lawn looks laid out with the lack of a guest house and instead, all that space for the sun to shadow and roam in the backyard.
“Do you really think you could do it?” Eunhyuk asks one day. Summer nights are warm and the wind rustles his hair up and away from his neck. The bruises is practically faded now. Spring holds the promise of new beginnings but summer holds the promise of change.
Donghae shuts his notepad closed and rests it on his thigh. The porch lights source enough light but his eyes are beginning to strain. He’s always preferred to draw in the day light. He looks at Eunhyuk, possibly falling a little more just by the way sunset touches Eunhyuk’s eyelashes.
Eunhyuk leans into his touch when Donghae brushes his knuckles against his cheek, his skin soft and clean without a trace of anything that isn’t his.
“One day. I promise,” Donghae says and maybe he can’t keep his promise of a better world or a different galaxy for the both of them but, this promise. The burning down of old sins and the repair of broken boys and the rebuilding of a home that’s always been theirs, Donghae swears he’ll keep.
***