[eunhyuk/donghae] tides we swam against
tides we swam against by catskilt
eunhyuk/donghae
r; 3379 words
donghae says something, and hyukjae hears it.
for midnightcolor because it was her prompt that led to this ♥
tides we swam against
Jungsu leaves them on the night of the second day, and finally they are alone. Not that they have anything against Jungsu; he's good to have on a trip because he somehow knows how to get the best deals in hotel room rates and car rentals. Hyukjae says that Jungsu was born knowing how to read and write and speculate in the stock market. Donghae agrees; Jungsu hyung is the best thing that ever happened to them, he's the best leader anyone could hope for, they'd follow him into the mouth of a river, the heart of a fire, certain death. But they want to be alone.
There's something strange about being entirely, absolutely alone; not simply alone in a bedroom together and then going out to find Ryeowook peeling fruits in the kitchen or Sungmin watching TV, but alone with each other in a hotel room facing the sea and surrounded by a multitude of strangers who don't matter. Inwardly they wonder if being so alone will make any difference, if they might feel awkward, but they don't voice it out because they're alone and this is what they've always wanted and never got.
Hyukjae wakes up first, climbs over the bundle of Donghae and goes out onto the balcony. It's autumn, and cold still. He feels himself coming awake. The sea stretches before him blue, blue, blue, and far as the eye can see, dotted with green islets and white vacation cruises; he thinks of the warmth of the sea in Hong Kong one month ago, waves lapping at the sides of the yacht, Donghae's skin glowing in the sunlight. If only they had been alone then, he thinks; but then he'd learned four years ago that there's no point being too greedy about these things.
Everything around him is quiet, bathed in early morning sleep, and he might have fallen asleep on his feet, some kind of awake-yet-not stupor, when a chin comes down on his shoulder and he jumps.
"You'll catch a cold," Donghae says behind him. He doesn't have time to respond before Donghae presses up against his back and wraps Hyukjae in the folds of the big bathrobe he's wearing. It's cold still, but Donghae is warm, and Hyukjae links his fingers with Donghae's.
It'll be okay, he thinks. This isn't the first time, not really. Somehow, they've always found a way to be alone.
… …
They make love before breakfast, slow and lazy in the shower, suffused with the deliciousness of having time to spare. Donghae kisses the hollow at Hyukjae's throat, follows a trail of water down Hyukjae's chest and stomach and navel with his mouth. Kisses his inner thighs, strokes the back of his knees, and Hyukjae closes his eyes, gives himself up to Donghae, to the love they've kept half-hidden for most part of the past five years. He feels the emancipation in Donghae's every thrust, every fevered bite, every lingering whisper of I love you that falls readily from Donghae's lips this morning, as though he can't say those three words enough - and why should he ever have to reach enough? Hyukjae curls a hand on Donghae's cheek and breathes into his skin and they're kissing when they come.
After the water runs cold and they've toweled each other, Donghae wiping fingers over the steam on the mirror so that they can look at themselves, they order room service and indulge in the luxury of a Western breakfast.
"Let's get some tangerines to bring home tomorrow," Donghae says over his mushroom omelette. He's fallen in love with the sweet juiciness of the famous Jeju Island tangerines, with, actually, most of the food they've had so far; the black pig, the baked fish, the abalone porridge. In love with the winding mountain roads and ubiquitous advertising of tourism packages and orange orchards and everything, in fact, about Jeju Island, because he knows that in future visits, everything he sees will have a sense of Hyukjae in it.
"I'll make a guess," Hyukjae says irrelevantly, switching their plates so Donghae gets the pancakes and he gets what's left of the omelette. "You'll destroy the car by tonight."
"That's unfair," Donghae says. "I drive as well as you! It's just that you're always driving, or someone else, so I don't get to show off how good I am at the wheel."
Hyukjae scoffs. "If you drove as much as I did, we'd all be dead by now. Super Junior gone with the wind, killed unwittingly by one of their own."
Donghae kicks him under the table and Hyukjae's glad that Donghae's stuck between the table and the cabinet because it means he'll get to finish his breakfast before getting attacked. And with hope, and precision, and plenty of experience, he'll be able to alter Donghae's mode of attack before the end of breakfast.
He lifts his foot and presses it directly onto Donghae's crotch. Donghae drops his fork and almost chokes on his pancake, and Hyukjae laughs in satisfaction at a job well done.
They don't leave the hotel room until the sun is high.
… …
Autumn in Jeju Island means a sky of such clear, flawless brilliance that you could drown just by looking up at it; deep, boneless, unending blue, uninterrupted by city haze. Hyukjae loves the contrast it casts against the reddening hues of the mountains and stark whites of the clouds; nature's play of colours.
"Stop spacing," Donghae complains, when Hyukjae's so engrossed in staring out of the window that the map is slack in his hands. "Do you remember if I have to turn right here? Lee Hyukjae!"
"Oh, um?" Hyukjae says intelligently. It takes him five seconds of looking blankly and smilingly at Donghae before he wakes up to the realization that Donghae is driving and Donghae is lost. "Next traffic light! And slow down! Don't filter yet at this…"
He collapses into the seat in a shuddering mess as Donghae narrowly avoids smashing the rear bumper of a car on their right. "You're going to kill me," he moans. "I'm going to die on some road in Jeju and I'll be on the headlines for being the unluckiest man in the world to die during a holiday for no good reason but bad driving and they'll have to fly me back to Seoul for the cremation and I won't get to be involved in the fourth album."
"Could you get anymore morbid?" Donghae says, manipulating the car into a parking lot on a side road. "I pity your poor future wife who'll have to put up with you."
"I only get morbid when faced with death," Hyukjae says. He wants to sit and frown for a few more minutes, at the previously white clouds looking slightly grayish and the near fatal right turn and the reminder that there's a world and a society out there, after all, it doesn't go away…; but then Donghae's opening his door and attempting to drag him out.
"What's wrong with you today, spacing out all over the place? If you haven't noticed, we're parked and there isn't a queue at the restaurant yet. I'm starving."
He reaches out and tugs at Donghae so sharply that Donghae almost falls headlong into the car. Donghae yelps and Hyukjae pulls him up, puts both hands on the sides of Donghae's face and kisses him so hard that they're breathless.
"It's just you and me today," he says. "Don't talk about anything else, okay?"
Donghae looks at him for a long moment, then smiles. "Come on. Let's get lunch. I'm starving."
"You said that already," Hyukjae says, releasing him and getting out of the car.
He follows Donghae's dash across the road. It'll be okay, he thinks, and grins at Donghae flirting engagingly with the middle-aged waitress.
… …
They've always talked of wives and women with a casualness that could be mistaken for indifference. They talk of future families, nice condominium apartments, the number of children they'd like to have. They've promised each other on at least five different occasions that they'll stand as godfather to each other's kids. And yet Hyukjae knows acutely that Donghae hates the thought of him being married, hates it as much as Hyukjae does the thought of Donghae being married, and the only reason why they talk of it at all is to keep some modicum of a hold on reality. A constant reminder that one day all this is going to end and they're going to go their separate ways, because this is what life is and shit happens and even if you fight against it, the shit is going to fall back on you anyway.
"And you think talking about it is going to help you bear it easier when the day comes?" Jungsu asked once, incredulous at the way they plan their separate futures, and Hyukjae said yes, it's dangerous to indulge in fantasies.
It's easy to pretend here, though, with nobody to remind them of who they are. Honeymooning couples take up most of the seats around them and Donghae grins at him over his bowl of bibimbap, motions with his head at the couple at the table beside them staring so lovingly into each other's eyes that everything else apparently fades into insignificance, even the food on their table.
"Do you think they'd notice if I went up and took a rice cake?" Donghae asks.
"No," Hyukjae says. "Why don't you try?"
Donghae observes the couple's neglected kimchi jigae yearningly. "No," he decides at last. "I won't spoil their honeymoon by stealing their food."
"It's probably cold already, anyway. They might have been there for an hour."
"People on Jeju Island are so nice, aren't they?" Donghae says wistfully. "They wouldn't be able to sit in a restaurant in Seoul for an hour just staring at each other. They'd get kicked out. Hyukjae! Let's move here when we're thirty."
Hyukjae blinks inquiringly at him.
"We can buy a house," Donghae ruminates. "What do you think? A nice small house facing the sea, with a little plot of land for a garden…"
"Are you going to tend to the garden? I don't want to break my back watering plants and pulling out weeds."
"Open your mind a bit, Hyukjae. We'll just hire a gardener."
"Oh," Hyukjae says. "I thought you wanted it to be more, you know, personalized."
"We can't have it all. There has to be give and take with some things," Donghae says wisely. "Anyway, we'll paint our room brown, and have pictures of the members on the walls…"
"Are you sure?" Hyukjae interrupts.
Donghae looks confused. "Why not?"
"Do you really want Jungsu hyung or Heechul hyung looking at us when we have sex?"
"Oh." Donghae thinks for a moment. "You're right. No pictures of the members on the walls, then. Anyway, the toilet will be black and white, and the study will have this big mahogany desk and we'll have a library that neither of us will step into for years because we'll be too busy having fun to read until we're old."
"So the library will be there for our bored old age."
"Yes. It's good to plan in advance. We'll take turns making breakfast every morning, and I'll put on your tie and send you to work. What will you work as? Quick, Hyukjae. Think of something."
"I'll create the first ever Jeju Dance Club," Hyukjae says. "It'll become world-famous and my trainees will be invited to every international dance festival to showcase their amazing dancing skills, and eventually I'll set up my own entertainment company."
"Good one," Donghae says approvingly. "A successful life partner. I'll do something, I suppose. Something grand and successful too. But I'll always be back at six o' clock to make your dinner and loosen your tie when you get back from work. And then you'll eat my food and you'll be amazed at how well I can cook, and then we'll watch a movie, and sit out on the balcony looking at the stars and listening to jazz. And fighting, probably, because we always do. But we'll make up, and have mind-blowing sex, and during the weekends we'll hike or swim or stay indoors and play chess. And we'll travel the world together, and climb lots of mountains, and eats lots of strange food. And you'll probably get a stomachache, because you always do, but it'll be okay, you won't die of it. When we're old we'll dodder around the house and play with our flowers and read the dusty books. We'll still sit together under the stars and we'll probably fall asleep mid-sentence, and maybe you'll have a big fat belly, but it's okay because I won't care how you look like by then."
He pauses and looks at Hyukjae. Both of them feel the strangeness of this conversation, a speculation of the future without any breakups involved. They feel the strangeness and they think about it, about how beautiful the future sounds for once, and there are tears in Donghae's eyes when he says, "What do you think? Doesn't it sound great?"
"It does," Hyukjae says, "the greatest thing ever." And he wants to say that they shouldn't have done it, it's dangerous to indulge in fantasies, but he can't because he's happier than he's ever been in his life before and there's nothing more that he wants now, nothing but this island and this hour and the feel, the sense, of the potentiality of this beautiful shared future with Donghae.
… …
They're quiet as Hyukjae winds the car around the roads. They'd spent the day wandering around the famous Seopjikoji and Donghae had insisted on using Hyukjae as the model for all his photographs. "Put on your contemplative idol face," he'd trilled, oblivious to all the tourists pressing around them, and Hyukjae posed in constant terror that somebody would scream and he and Donghae would have to run for their lives to the safety of the car.
Nothing happened, though, greatly to his relief and slight disappointment, and they're quiet now, tired possibly, watching the sunset stretch itself across the sky.
"Do you think we can make it to tomorrow's sunrise on Sunrise Peak?" Donghae says. They'd missed the sunrise on their previous two mornings in Jeju Island; the first time because Donghae had gotten the directions messed up, the second time because Jungsu had, most determinedly, overslept.
"We could try," Hyukjae says.
"Let's not sleep tonight then," Donghae suggests. "That eliminates any possibility of oversleeping."
"We could try," Hyukjae repeats, with a lot more doubt.
Donghae presses his finger against the window and then lifts it, watching the imprint fading away. "Hyukjae."
"Yeah?" Hyukjae says, navigating a turn.
"I love you."
Hyukjae doesn't say anything for a while. They say it often enough to each other and practically everyone else; in interviews, in variety shows, on the radio, in concerts, in moments of heated passion; and yet Donghae has never quite said it like this before, with pronounced clarity in every syllable, as though it holds more meaning than simply the impulse of the moment.
He doesn't say anything until they've reached a red light and stopped. Then he reaches over and takes Donghae's hand in his. "I love you too."
Donghae's fingers close around his tightly. "That should be enough, shouldn't it?" he says. "Just that."
It isn't enough, Hyukjae should say. Just loving each other isn't enough. And up till tonight, that's what he's been saying.
But tonight he says, "Yes." Holds onto Donghae's hand until the light turns green.
… …
Donghae sings in the shower while Hyukjae packs up everything for their flight home the next day. His manager has texted him with tomorrow's schedule, and he feels tired just thinking of it; Dream Team filming in the afternoon, stretching until evening, possibly, because that's what always happens; Sukira at night, and after that, a meeting about the fourth album. It's only slightly less intensive than the schedule he'd gotten when he returned from Paris, but that's not saying much considering he almost collapsed of exhaustion that time.
Jungsu sends a text shortly after, a happy-sounding text saying Sleep well tonight, see you two tomorrow!
"In bed already?" Donghae says, nonplussed to see Hyukjae tucked up in bed at eleven o' clock. "We're supposed to play cards."
Hyukjae turns over and gestures at his handphone. "I need to sleep tonight, apparently."
Donghae crosses the room, picks up the handphone and reads the messages. He sighs and his shoulders sag a little under his bathrobe. "I see."
"We can download pictures of the sunrise from the internet," Hyukjae says. "They'll probably be better than what we can take, anyway."
"There'll be sunrises everywhere," Donghae says. "Even in Seoul, though it's blocked by buildings."
He removes his bathrobe and climbs naked into bed beside Hyukjae, flinging arms and legs around him. Hyukjae remembers the first time they slept like that, way back in the days just before their debut; how Donghae had said that he needed someone to hold and Hyukjae had agreed to be that someone. He'd nearly suffocated as a result.
After so many years, though, they've learned to fit themselves in a way that there's no risk of suffocation or invasion. When they've settled down with Donghae's head on Hyukjae's chest and his fingers running in idle circles on the small of Hyukjae's back, Hyukjae thinks that in all the lovemaking they've done, all the passion, this sexless clinging together could possibly be the most intimate contact that they have.
He realises now, in this sleep-quieted island, that it's something he wants to hold on to for a long time, a long, long, time, longer than that hypothetical 'one day'.
"You want to say something," Donghae says, shifting his head on Hyukjae's chest. "I can feel it."
Hyukjae laughs. "Stop doing that creepy best friend thing. It's creepy."
"I'm more than your best friend," Donghae says. "I'm your one and only, ever after, fated to be, undying love."
"Not really the one and only. I fell in love with someone else when I was eight."
"You can't even use the word 'love' for that. It's only an infatuation."
"So you're my one and only love, then?"
"Yes," Donghae says, suddenly serious. "Like you're mine, ever since we were eighteen and I knew I couldn't ever fall in love with anyone else."
Hyukjae looks into Donghae's eyes and doesn't know what to say.
"It's about time that you said 'me too'," Donghae says. "Because it's true, you know. You'll never love anyone else too, and you might as well face it already."
At that, Hyukjae smiles. "Deciding my future for me already, I see."
"Forget about the future wife and children," Donghae says. "You'll never bring yourself to do it."
"Because I'm a one-man man."
"Right."
"And that one-man is you."
"Right."
"Donghae," he says, and he's aware that this is possibly the most lucid thing he's ever said, "let's stay together for the rest of our lives. Despite what anyone says."
Donghae smiles back, smiles and smiles, and then he rests his head on Hyukjae's arm and Hyukjae feels the heat of his tears. "That's what I've been saying all along."
"I heard it," Hyukjae says.
… …
Sometime that night, they fall asleep. They don't dream, as young lovers do, of romance and sunny days and honeymoons. They hold each other and sleep deeply, dreamlessly.
It's a sleep that they never forget.
… …
They're half an hour away from Jeju, thirty-five minutes to Seoul, flying above endless cloud banks.
Neither of them question if being in Seoul and seeing the other members, rejoining the frenetic and public lives of idols, will change their minds about the decision made last night. They've learned not to question too much. Questioning brings things into existence that would otherwise not exist.
Donghae says that he doesn't like how most commercial airplanes don't leave trails behind. He would have liked to leave a trail behind in Jeju, a something-something of themselves.
Hyukjae says it isn't necessary. Trails are overrated anyway.
He realises afresh how much he loves seeing Donghae smile.
end
I know little about Jeju Island's landscape, so please forgive any inaccuracies :)
eunhyuk/donghae
r; 3379 words
donghae says something, and hyukjae hears it.
for midnightcolor because it was her prompt that led to this ♥
tides we swam against
Jungsu leaves them on the night of the second day, and finally they are alone. Not that they have anything against Jungsu; he's good to have on a trip because he somehow knows how to get the best deals in hotel room rates and car rentals. Hyukjae says that Jungsu was born knowing how to read and write and speculate in the stock market. Donghae agrees; Jungsu hyung is the best thing that ever happened to them, he's the best leader anyone could hope for, they'd follow him into the mouth of a river, the heart of a fire, certain death. But they want to be alone.
There's something strange about being entirely, absolutely alone; not simply alone in a bedroom together and then going out to find Ryeowook peeling fruits in the kitchen or Sungmin watching TV, but alone with each other in a hotel room facing the sea and surrounded by a multitude of strangers who don't matter. Inwardly they wonder if being so alone will make any difference, if they might feel awkward, but they don't voice it out because they're alone and this is what they've always wanted and never got.
Hyukjae wakes up first, climbs over the bundle of Donghae and goes out onto the balcony. It's autumn, and cold still. He feels himself coming awake. The sea stretches before him blue, blue, blue, and far as the eye can see, dotted with green islets and white vacation cruises; he thinks of the warmth of the sea in Hong Kong one month ago, waves lapping at the sides of the yacht, Donghae's skin glowing in the sunlight. If only they had been alone then, he thinks; but then he'd learned four years ago that there's no point being too greedy about these things.
Everything around him is quiet, bathed in early morning sleep, and he might have fallen asleep on his feet, some kind of awake-yet-not stupor, when a chin comes down on his shoulder and he jumps.
"You'll catch a cold," Donghae says behind him. He doesn't have time to respond before Donghae presses up against his back and wraps Hyukjae in the folds of the big bathrobe he's wearing. It's cold still, but Donghae is warm, and Hyukjae links his fingers with Donghae's.
It'll be okay, he thinks. This isn't the first time, not really. Somehow, they've always found a way to be alone.
… …
They make love before breakfast, slow and lazy in the shower, suffused with the deliciousness of having time to spare. Donghae kisses the hollow at Hyukjae's throat, follows a trail of water down Hyukjae's chest and stomach and navel with his mouth. Kisses his inner thighs, strokes the back of his knees, and Hyukjae closes his eyes, gives himself up to Donghae, to the love they've kept half-hidden for most part of the past five years. He feels the emancipation in Donghae's every thrust, every fevered bite, every lingering whisper of I love you that falls readily from Donghae's lips this morning, as though he can't say those three words enough - and why should he ever have to reach enough? Hyukjae curls a hand on Donghae's cheek and breathes into his skin and they're kissing when they come.
After the water runs cold and they've toweled each other, Donghae wiping fingers over the steam on the mirror so that they can look at themselves, they order room service and indulge in the luxury of a Western breakfast.
"Let's get some tangerines to bring home tomorrow," Donghae says over his mushroom omelette. He's fallen in love with the sweet juiciness of the famous Jeju Island tangerines, with, actually, most of the food they've had so far; the black pig, the baked fish, the abalone porridge. In love with the winding mountain roads and ubiquitous advertising of tourism packages and orange orchards and everything, in fact, about Jeju Island, because he knows that in future visits, everything he sees will have a sense of Hyukjae in it.
"I'll make a guess," Hyukjae says irrelevantly, switching their plates so Donghae gets the pancakes and he gets what's left of the omelette. "You'll destroy the car by tonight."
"That's unfair," Donghae says. "I drive as well as you! It's just that you're always driving, or someone else, so I don't get to show off how good I am at the wheel."
Hyukjae scoffs. "If you drove as much as I did, we'd all be dead by now. Super Junior gone with the wind, killed unwittingly by one of their own."
Donghae kicks him under the table and Hyukjae's glad that Donghae's stuck between the table and the cabinet because it means he'll get to finish his breakfast before getting attacked. And with hope, and precision, and plenty of experience, he'll be able to alter Donghae's mode of attack before the end of breakfast.
He lifts his foot and presses it directly onto Donghae's crotch. Donghae drops his fork and almost chokes on his pancake, and Hyukjae laughs in satisfaction at a job well done.
They don't leave the hotel room until the sun is high.
… …
Autumn in Jeju Island means a sky of such clear, flawless brilliance that you could drown just by looking up at it; deep, boneless, unending blue, uninterrupted by city haze. Hyukjae loves the contrast it casts against the reddening hues of the mountains and stark whites of the clouds; nature's play of colours.
"Stop spacing," Donghae complains, when Hyukjae's so engrossed in staring out of the window that the map is slack in his hands. "Do you remember if I have to turn right here? Lee Hyukjae!"
"Oh, um?" Hyukjae says intelligently. It takes him five seconds of looking blankly and smilingly at Donghae before he wakes up to the realization that Donghae is driving and Donghae is lost. "Next traffic light! And slow down! Don't filter yet at this…"
He collapses into the seat in a shuddering mess as Donghae narrowly avoids smashing the rear bumper of a car on their right. "You're going to kill me," he moans. "I'm going to die on some road in Jeju and I'll be on the headlines for being the unluckiest man in the world to die during a holiday for no good reason but bad driving and they'll have to fly me back to Seoul for the cremation and I won't get to be involved in the fourth album."
"Could you get anymore morbid?" Donghae says, manipulating the car into a parking lot on a side road. "I pity your poor future wife who'll have to put up with you."
"I only get morbid when faced with death," Hyukjae says. He wants to sit and frown for a few more minutes, at the previously white clouds looking slightly grayish and the near fatal right turn and the reminder that there's a world and a society out there, after all, it doesn't go away…; but then Donghae's opening his door and attempting to drag him out.
"What's wrong with you today, spacing out all over the place? If you haven't noticed, we're parked and there isn't a queue at the restaurant yet. I'm starving."
He reaches out and tugs at Donghae so sharply that Donghae almost falls headlong into the car. Donghae yelps and Hyukjae pulls him up, puts both hands on the sides of Donghae's face and kisses him so hard that they're breathless.
"It's just you and me today," he says. "Don't talk about anything else, okay?"
Donghae looks at him for a long moment, then smiles. "Come on. Let's get lunch. I'm starving."
"You said that already," Hyukjae says, releasing him and getting out of the car.
He follows Donghae's dash across the road. It'll be okay, he thinks, and grins at Donghae flirting engagingly with the middle-aged waitress.
… …
They've always talked of wives and women with a casualness that could be mistaken for indifference. They talk of future families, nice condominium apartments, the number of children they'd like to have. They've promised each other on at least five different occasions that they'll stand as godfather to each other's kids. And yet Hyukjae knows acutely that Donghae hates the thought of him being married, hates it as much as Hyukjae does the thought of Donghae being married, and the only reason why they talk of it at all is to keep some modicum of a hold on reality. A constant reminder that one day all this is going to end and they're going to go their separate ways, because this is what life is and shit happens and even if you fight against it, the shit is going to fall back on you anyway.
"And you think talking about it is going to help you bear it easier when the day comes?" Jungsu asked once, incredulous at the way they plan their separate futures, and Hyukjae said yes, it's dangerous to indulge in fantasies.
It's easy to pretend here, though, with nobody to remind them of who they are. Honeymooning couples take up most of the seats around them and Donghae grins at him over his bowl of bibimbap, motions with his head at the couple at the table beside them staring so lovingly into each other's eyes that everything else apparently fades into insignificance, even the food on their table.
"Do you think they'd notice if I went up and took a rice cake?" Donghae asks.
"No," Hyukjae says. "Why don't you try?"
Donghae observes the couple's neglected kimchi jigae yearningly. "No," he decides at last. "I won't spoil their honeymoon by stealing their food."
"It's probably cold already, anyway. They might have been there for an hour."
"People on Jeju Island are so nice, aren't they?" Donghae says wistfully. "They wouldn't be able to sit in a restaurant in Seoul for an hour just staring at each other. They'd get kicked out. Hyukjae! Let's move here when we're thirty."
Hyukjae blinks inquiringly at him.
"We can buy a house," Donghae ruminates. "What do you think? A nice small house facing the sea, with a little plot of land for a garden…"
"Are you going to tend to the garden? I don't want to break my back watering plants and pulling out weeds."
"Open your mind a bit, Hyukjae. We'll just hire a gardener."
"Oh," Hyukjae says. "I thought you wanted it to be more, you know, personalized."
"We can't have it all. There has to be give and take with some things," Donghae says wisely. "Anyway, we'll paint our room brown, and have pictures of the members on the walls…"
"Are you sure?" Hyukjae interrupts.
Donghae looks confused. "Why not?"
"Do you really want Jungsu hyung or Heechul hyung looking at us when we have sex?"
"Oh." Donghae thinks for a moment. "You're right. No pictures of the members on the walls, then. Anyway, the toilet will be black and white, and the study will have this big mahogany desk and we'll have a library that neither of us will step into for years because we'll be too busy having fun to read until we're old."
"So the library will be there for our bored old age."
"Yes. It's good to plan in advance. We'll take turns making breakfast every morning, and I'll put on your tie and send you to work. What will you work as? Quick, Hyukjae. Think of something."
"I'll create the first ever Jeju Dance Club," Hyukjae says. "It'll become world-famous and my trainees will be invited to every international dance festival to showcase their amazing dancing skills, and eventually I'll set up my own entertainment company."
"Good one," Donghae says approvingly. "A successful life partner. I'll do something, I suppose. Something grand and successful too. But I'll always be back at six o' clock to make your dinner and loosen your tie when you get back from work. And then you'll eat my food and you'll be amazed at how well I can cook, and then we'll watch a movie, and sit out on the balcony looking at the stars and listening to jazz. And fighting, probably, because we always do. But we'll make up, and have mind-blowing sex, and during the weekends we'll hike or swim or stay indoors and play chess. And we'll travel the world together, and climb lots of mountains, and eats lots of strange food. And you'll probably get a stomachache, because you always do, but it'll be okay, you won't die of it. When we're old we'll dodder around the house and play with our flowers and read the dusty books. We'll still sit together under the stars and we'll probably fall asleep mid-sentence, and maybe you'll have a big fat belly, but it's okay because I won't care how you look like by then."
He pauses and looks at Hyukjae. Both of them feel the strangeness of this conversation, a speculation of the future without any breakups involved. They feel the strangeness and they think about it, about how beautiful the future sounds for once, and there are tears in Donghae's eyes when he says, "What do you think? Doesn't it sound great?"
"It does," Hyukjae says, "the greatest thing ever." And he wants to say that they shouldn't have done it, it's dangerous to indulge in fantasies, but he can't because he's happier than he's ever been in his life before and there's nothing more that he wants now, nothing but this island and this hour and the feel, the sense, of the potentiality of this beautiful shared future with Donghae.
… …
They're quiet as Hyukjae winds the car around the roads. They'd spent the day wandering around the famous Seopjikoji and Donghae had insisted on using Hyukjae as the model for all his photographs. "Put on your contemplative idol face," he'd trilled, oblivious to all the tourists pressing around them, and Hyukjae posed in constant terror that somebody would scream and he and Donghae would have to run for their lives to the safety of the car.
Nothing happened, though, greatly to his relief and slight disappointment, and they're quiet now, tired possibly, watching the sunset stretch itself across the sky.
"Do you think we can make it to tomorrow's sunrise on Sunrise Peak?" Donghae says. They'd missed the sunrise on their previous two mornings in Jeju Island; the first time because Donghae had gotten the directions messed up, the second time because Jungsu had, most determinedly, overslept.
"We could try," Hyukjae says.
"Let's not sleep tonight then," Donghae suggests. "That eliminates any possibility of oversleeping."
"We could try," Hyukjae repeats, with a lot more doubt.
Donghae presses his finger against the window and then lifts it, watching the imprint fading away. "Hyukjae."
"Yeah?" Hyukjae says, navigating a turn.
"I love you."
Hyukjae doesn't say anything for a while. They say it often enough to each other and practically everyone else; in interviews, in variety shows, on the radio, in concerts, in moments of heated passion; and yet Donghae has never quite said it like this before, with pronounced clarity in every syllable, as though it holds more meaning than simply the impulse of the moment.
He doesn't say anything until they've reached a red light and stopped. Then he reaches over and takes Donghae's hand in his. "I love you too."
Donghae's fingers close around his tightly. "That should be enough, shouldn't it?" he says. "Just that."
It isn't enough, Hyukjae should say. Just loving each other isn't enough. And up till tonight, that's what he's been saying.
But tonight he says, "Yes." Holds onto Donghae's hand until the light turns green.
… …
Donghae sings in the shower while Hyukjae packs up everything for their flight home the next day. His manager has texted him with tomorrow's schedule, and he feels tired just thinking of it; Dream Team filming in the afternoon, stretching until evening, possibly, because that's what always happens; Sukira at night, and after that, a meeting about the fourth album. It's only slightly less intensive than the schedule he'd gotten when he returned from Paris, but that's not saying much considering he almost collapsed of exhaustion that time.
Jungsu sends a text shortly after, a happy-sounding text saying Sleep well tonight, see you two tomorrow!
"In bed already?" Donghae says, nonplussed to see Hyukjae tucked up in bed at eleven o' clock. "We're supposed to play cards."
Hyukjae turns over and gestures at his handphone. "I need to sleep tonight, apparently."
Donghae crosses the room, picks up the handphone and reads the messages. He sighs and his shoulders sag a little under his bathrobe. "I see."
"We can download pictures of the sunrise from the internet," Hyukjae says. "They'll probably be better than what we can take, anyway."
"There'll be sunrises everywhere," Donghae says. "Even in Seoul, though it's blocked by buildings."
He removes his bathrobe and climbs naked into bed beside Hyukjae, flinging arms and legs around him. Hyukjae remembers the first time they slept like that, way back in the days just before their debut; how Donghae had said that he needed someone to hold and Hyukjae had agreed to be that someone. He'd nearly suffocated as a result.
After so many years, though, they've learned to fit themselves in a way that there's no risk of suffocation or invasion. When they've settled down with Donghae's head on Hyukjae's chest and his fingers running in idle circles on the small of Hyukjae's back, Hyukjae thinks that in all the lovemaking they've done, all the passion, this sexless clinging together could possibly be the most intimate contact that they have.
He realises now, in this sleep-quieted island, that it's something he wants to hold on to for a long time, a long, long, time, longer than that hypothetical 'one day'.
"You want to say something," Donghae says, shifting his head on Hyukjae's chest. "I can feel it."
Hyukjae laughs. "Stop doing that creepy best friend thing. It's creepy."
"I'm more than your best friend," Donghae says. "I'm your one and only, ever after, fated to be, undying love."
"Not really the one and only. I fell in love with someone else when I was eight."
"You can't even use the word 'love' for that. It's only an infatuation."
"So you're my one and only love, then?"
"Yes," Donghae says, suddenly serious. "Like you're mine, ever since we were eighteen and I knew I couldn't ever fall in love with anyone else."
Hyukjae looks into Donghae's eyes and doesn't know what to say.
"It's about time that you said 'me too'," Donghae says. "Because it's true, you know. You'll never love anyone else too, and you might as well face it already."
At that, Hyukjae smiles. "Deciding my future for me already, I see."
"Forget about the future wife and children," Donghae says. "You'll never bring yourself to do it."
"Because I'm a one-man man."
"Right."
"And that one-man is you."
"Right."
"Donghae," he says, and he's aware that this is possibly the most lucid thing he's ever said, "let's stay together for the rest of our lives. Despite what anyone says."
Donghae smiles back, smiles and smiles, and then he rests his head on Hyukjae's arm and Hyukjae feels the heat of his tears. "That's what I've been saying all along."
"I heard it," Hyukjae says.
… …
Sometime that night, they fall asleep. They don't dream, as young lovers do, of romance and sunny days and honeymoons. They hold each other and sleep deeply, dreamlessly.
It's a sleep that they never forget.
… …
They're half an hour away from Jeju, thirty-five minutes to Seoul, flying above endless cloud banks.
Neither of them question if being in Seoul and seeing the other members, rejoining the frenetic and public lives of idols, will change their minds about the decision made last night. They've learned not to question too much. Questioning brings things into existence that would otherwise not exist.
Donghae says that he doesn't like how most commercial airplanes don't leave trails behind. He would have liked to leave a trail behind in Jeju, a something-something of themselves.
Hyukjae says it isn't necessary. Trails are overrated anyway.
He realises afresh how much he loves seeing Donghae smile.
end
I know little about Jeju Island's landscape, so please forgive any inaccuracies :)