Points of Intersection (2/2)
Points of Intersection (continued)
<< Part 1
The third Saturday Jongin crashes on his couch, Joonmyun is awoken in the middle of the night by someone shaking him gently and whispering his name. He jolts up, unused to being awoken by anything besides his alarm, and makes out a figure, backlit by the light of the never quite dark summer night streaming in through the window.
“Jongin?”
“I… I had a really bad dream,” Jongin stutters out, voice tired and barely above a whisper, “I’ve been trying to fall back asleep but I can’t.”
Joonmyun rubs at his eyes and kicks his covers back, swinging his feet over the edge of the bed. “Let’s go into the kitchen.”
They pad out quietly, Joonmyun flipping the lights on as they walk into the kitchen. He fills a kettle with water and sets it on the stove while Jongin stands in the doorway, leaning against the wall.
“What kind of tea would you like?”
Jongin shrugs, so Joonmyun just grabs two packets of mint out of the cabinet.
“Do you want to talk about your dream?”
It’s one of the first times Joonmyun’s asked Jongin to discuss something, but it doesn’t seem like the time to continue his previous hands-off approach. Jongin wouldn’t have come to him if he didn’t want to talk, at least a little.
Jongin doesn’t respond immediately, but he nods after a moment. “I was a bear again.”
Joonmyun finishes yanking two mugs out of one of the upper cabinets, then turns to face him. Jongin takes a shaky breath before continuing.
“You were hiking in the woods, but instead of letting you touch me… I killed you.”
Joonmyun doesn’t think before he acts this time, striding up to Jongin and pulling him down into a hug. He’s not sure if it’s the right thing to do-he doesn’t want to make him feel like a small child, but he does want to comfort him-but Jongin relaxes into his arms as soon as he does, his head falling into the dip between Joonmyun’s shoulder and neck.
“I don’t… I don’t know what it means. I don’t want to hurt you. You’ve been so good to me and-“
“Jongin, it’s just a dream. It’s not real. It might be your subconscious but that doesn’t mean you secretly want to kill me or are ungrateful or something. It’s just… a dream.”
“I’m sorry.”
“There’s nothing to be sorry for,” Joonmyun replies, pulling him tighter. “Nothing.”
The kettle whistles and Jongin looks up, moving away so that Joonmyun can prepare the tea. He pulls him into one last hug before stepping away and turning to pour the water into the mugs he has set out. He takes one and hands it to Jongin, picking the other up for himself.
“Do you want to go sit in the living room?”
“Sure.”
Jongin settles back into his bed, but as Joonmyun goes to sit in the armchair, he tells him to join him. They sit side my side, Joonmyun’s arm over Jongin’s shoulders, sipping their tea. Joonmyun wants to ask Jongin why he feels sorry, why he feels guilty about a nightmare, but he doesn’t want to make him feel any worse about it, or embarrassed.
“Is there anything else?”
“To the dream?”
“Yeah. Or anything else that’s bothering you that might have brought on the dream? Not like, about me, but in general, something bad or something that makes you feel guilty or angry or confused?”
Jongin doesn’t respond for a minute, looking straight ahead and biting his lip. “I don’t know. Not really, I guess.”
“Is there anything you want to get off your chest?”
He takes another sip of tea before answering, wrinkling his nose when it scalds his tongue. “Is it… ok that I’m still here? I don’t feel like I’m doing anything, I’m just taking up your time and eating your food and everything.”
“Jongin, you’re not wasting my time. If I didn’t want you to be here or had a problem with something, I would tell you. I like your company, and I’m very thankful for your help at the shop-which I’m not paying you for, so the least I can do is give you food and a place I hope is comfy enough to sleep.”
Jongin looks a little bewildered, but he’s also smiling slightly, head tilted down.
”Is there anything I do that… bothers you?”
Jongin looks up and shakes his head, then pauses. “Well, I guess maybe? You always seem like you want to ask me questions, and then you don’t.”
Joonmyun sighs. He’d hoped he’d been smoother than that, but while he likes to talk, he’s never been a master of conversation. “I’d be lying if I said I’m not curious about your life, Jongin. But I also don’t want to scare you or embarrass you or make you talk about anything you aren’t comfortable talking about. I want you to open up to me on your own terms, if you ever want to. So if you want to talk, I’ll be here, but until then, it’s fine for you to keep to yourself. I’m sorry if I’ve made you uncomfortable.”
Jongin shakes his head vigorously. “You haven’t. It’s just something I noticed.” He pauses, fingering the edge of his blanket, eyes trained out the window “You’re so… nice. Thank you. For everything.”
Joonmyun smiles and reaches a hand up to ruffle his hair, soft and warm under his fingers. This time he doesn’t have to think about it, doesn’t have to qualify like he did in the woods. “It’s no problem.”
Jongin turns to smile up at him, cuddling in closer, and Joonmyun squeezes his shoulders, warmth spreading through him.
The following Monday, Jongin is straightening the books at closing. Sehun doesn’t close on Mondays, and so it’s just the two of them.
“Joonmyun?”
Joonmyun looks up from the dustpan he’s sweeping dirt into. “Yes?”
“Do you think you could… teach me?”
“Like… school? Sure, probably. Is there something in particular that… brought this on?”
Joonmyun lets the question slip, because he’s trying to cut himself off more discreetly than he had previously, but he’s also determined to be more honest, and he doesn’t think this is a particularly invasive question.
Jongin shrugs. “I had a hard time reading a book today.”
Joonmyun nods. He’s watched Jongin read regularly at the shop, flying through children’s and young adult books and moving on to the adult ones much more quickly than Joonmyun had expected. Joonmyun, though, is quickly learning that his expectations are, more often than not, wrong. “Do you… do you know what year in school you were last in?”
“Seventh grade,” he replies, “I didn’t finish it though.”
“I have a friend who teaches at the middle school. I could find out from him what things seventh and eighth graders need to know.”
“Is there… you can go to high school not at high school, right? Like if you drop out?”
“Yeah, there’s night school.”
“So if I could get through eighth grade I could… do that? Maybe?”
“I don’t see why not. It might be complicated because you don’t have any school records… but I’m sure we could come up with something.”
“Teaching me really wouldn’t bother you?”
Joonmyun laughs, which Jongin looks confused by. “I was going to get my teaching certificate after I graduated college, maybe get a master’s in education. I was a literature major and wanted to teach high school.”
“Oh.”
“So it’s not a problem. I’d really like to, actually.”
Jongin smiles. “There are a lot of things I don’t know about you, even if you do talk a lot.”
That acknowledgement makes Joonmyun feel strangely warm. He’s glad to know that everything’s not entirely uneven, that there’s still more to learn about both of them. He smiles at Jongin, and Jongin smiles back.
Jongin almost always returns home with Joonmyun after work. Joonmyun teaches him, mostly, photocopies of some of Baekhyun and his peers’ lesson plans spread out across the dining room table, books scattered about. Jongin’s learns the material quickly, too, much like he had in the shop, breezing through exercises with ease and excitement.
But some nights are different. Joonmyun’s given him free reign over his old bike, and he goes out with Sehun and Zitao at least once a week, usually twice. Sometimes he comes back smelling a little like beer, sometimes he passes out on the couch before Joonmyun can offer to unfold the mattress. Joonmyun doesn’t mind, because he knows they’re young and he’s not much older than them, really. He remembers flying through the streets on half-broken bikes with Chanyeol and Baekhyun in the not-so-distant past, remembers drinking shitty beer on rooftops at college with Jongdae and Yixing, making out recklessly with boys whose names he knew at the time he wouldn’t remember, pushed up against walls that were probably too dirty to be touched. Jongin, when he’s sleeping on the couch at a weird angle, still wearing his clothes, half a glass of water on the table beside him, reminds him of those adventures. He makes him just a little nostalgic for the days when he wasn’t supposed to be anything but carefree, when responsibility was a concept tossed around and waiting just beyond a corner he was fast approaching, but still lurked just out of reach.
When Jongin approaches him, flanked by Sehun and Zitao, at the end of the day on a warm July Friday, Joonmyun doesn’t expect the question that he receives:
“Do you want to come biking with us tonight? We’re gonna go watch the sunset on the beach.”
Joonmyun considers the offer. He wants to go, of course, but he doesn’t want to impose. On the other hand, Jongin is, in fact, offering, and Sehun and Zitao are nodding along; none of them are the sort to act out of pity, to make offers they don’t actually stand by.
“Sure,” he says, before he can convince himself that turning them down would be the better choice, “I’ll make dinner beforehand if you want, I’m going to pick up some fresh fish today.”
Sehun and Zitao both nod, and after quick explanatory calls home they bike off towards Joonmyun’s house, while he and Jongin take the station wagon, detouring to Chanyeol’s before heading home to meet them.
Once they’ve eaten, Joonmyun digs his brother’s bike out of the garage, hidden behind dusty old painting supplies that haven’t been touched in years. He hasn’t ridden a bike since his first summer back from college, barely even remembers how to switch gears or brake properly. When he gets on, though, adjusting the seat down a couple of inches, he finds that it’s easy to ride, that everything comes back as if he’s been taking it out everyday. He circles around the driveway a few times, the three others watching him, bemused.
“You ready to go?” Jongin calls, and Joonmyun nods, braking a little too hard beside them.
They close up the garage and start off, Zitao leading the way and Joonmyun trailing far behind. They bike through town, half in the near-empty street and half on the sidewalk, then up over the bridge across the harbor. Its uphill slope slows Joonmyun down, but once he gets to the top, the others paused and staring out over the harbor, he thinks it’s worth the minor embarrassment he feels for being so out of shape. The sky fades into pink near the horizon, a blur of hazy orange denoting the sun itself. The town is painted blue, the sky almost cloudless, for once, masts of ships sticking out against the green of the mountains.
Joonmyun’s spent most of his life here. He knows everything is not as beautiful as it looks on the surface, that the town is mostly grey and a little run down, that it rains every other day, that the fish are being overharvested, that the other industries dried up years ago. He knows all these things, but he pushes them down, away, because tonight he feels young again, in love with possibility and the discomfort of bike seats and the way the night air stings the tips of his ears.
“Are you ready to go?” Zitao asks, and Joonmyun nods. They begin cycling again, Joonmyun adjusting his gears and letting go, the slope taking him effortlessly down the bridge.
Sehun, who has always, he thinks, been a bit of a troublemaker, spreads his arms out as he flies downhill, already far ahead of Joonmyun, even though they’d started at the same time. Zitao follows suit, but Jongin turns his head around to smile at Joonmyun, silhouetted against the setting sun.
“You doing ok?” he calls behind him.
“Yeah, fine. I haven’t done this in years.”
Jongin laughs and waves, dying sunlight catching in his hair and shimmering across his eyes as he turns back, and Joonmyun’s breath catches in his throat. He’s spent plenty of time around Jongin, let him cuddle against him on the couch and slung a comforting arm over his shoulder when he’s needed it, leaned over him to try and help with tricky math problems. He’s known, intuitively, that Jongin is good-looking, because he is, but he’s never noticed that he’s beautiful, that light plays off him in a different way than it does off anyone else, that the silhouette of his back is even more entrancing than the lights dotting the underside of the mountains that frame Joonmyun’s hometown.
Joonmyun’s glad he doesn’t have to pedal much, now, because he’s not sure he can make his feet move. He doesn’t know how he hasn’t noticed before. He’s sure the sudden well of emotions bubbling up in him has been there for a while, just subdued, but he supposes he’s gotten good at ignoring things the last few years, packing away his dreams and his restlessness in favor of practicality. Jongin has been slowly but surely unlocking him, though, ever since they met, and Joonmyun’s not sure what that will mean, now that he’s aware. He closes his eyes for a brief second, the slope of the hill flattening out, before adjusting the gears of his bike and forcing himself to pedal, Jongin’s smile still fresh in his minds, no different, really, than the ones he usually shoots him, but somehow infinitely more entrancing.
At the beach, when they’re all settled down on rocks, feet entangled with dried up seaweed, Zitao and Sehun each yank six-packs from their backpacks, glancing at Joonmyun as they do.
“You don’t mind, do you?” Sehun asks as he hands one to Jongin.
Joonmyun shakes his head.
“Do you want one, then?” Zitao asks, offering him a bottle.
He takes it. It’s been months since he’s had a drink-the last time was probably his brother’s wedding, where he’d had a couple of glasses of champagne-but it’s not because he’s opposed to alcohol. He’s just too busy, and too short on money, usually, to waste time and cash on anything non-essential. Jongin passes around a bottle opener-which, Joonmyun hopes, he at least marked out in the inventory if he lifted it from the store-and Joonmyun cracks his beer open. He takes a sip. It’s the local brewery’s Hefeweizen: crowd-pleasing and inoffensive. He tilts his head back farther, taking a longer drink, letting the cold fizz of the beer bubble against his tongue before he swallows.
Sehun and Zitao swap college stories, reminiscing long drunken nights and ridiculous hook-ups. Joonmyun interrupts them, sometimes, with stories from his younger days, which all of them seem amused and slightly bewildered by; he expects it because he’s their boss, and no one ever really assumes their boss had been as irresponsible as they are.
What he’s personally surprised to find is that Sehun and Zitao, from their stories, both seem to be into guys, that they don’t even blink an eye when he forgets to keep the pronouns in one of his tales generic. He’d been out in college, but he’s so used to hiding his sexuality from his hometown-Chanyeol and Baekhyun know, his mother had known, but they’ve always been the people closest to him, always had a right to that information-that it surprises him to even come across other gay men here. Jongin doesn’t bat an eye, either, just looks sort of shocked when Joonmyun recounts the time he had sex in his roommate’s bed freshman year (he was an awful roommate, he justifies, I promise it was mostly out of spite. That makes it even worse, Sehun replies, while Zitao giggles behind his hand).
Joonmyun accepts a second beer, and then a third, and by the time that one’s warming in his hand, the sun is a vague orange mass half-hidden behind the crest of a mountain and his face feels a little warm, even as the air cools around them. Everyone is quieter now, just watching the sun play on the horizon, occasionally pointing out boats or shapes in the clouds or silhouettes of eagles soaring overhead. Joonmyun’s world is just the slightest bit unfocused at the edges, but over bright in other spots, the contrasts dancing before his vision as he watches the world darken slowly. The harbor glitters, orange lining the dips of the otherwise blue ocean, and Joonmyun glances over at Jongin. He glitters a little, too, even if it’s getting darker where they are, now, even if Joonmyun’s a little tipsier than he ought to be off of two and a half beers and Jongin still looks sober with his fourth bottle of the night in his hand. He turns to Joonmyun and smiles.
“Are you having fun?”
“Yes,” Joonmyun replies, smiling back, “I am. Thanks for inviting me.”
Jongin’s grin gets wider, and he leans over to wrap Joonmyun into a hug.
“You’re great, you know that? I’m glad you came out with us. You… really surprised me with some of those stories. You seem too… old for that.”
Joonmyun laughs. “I’m only twenty-four! I’m not that old.” He pauses, watching Jongin’s chest pump up and down as his fingers play with the wrapper of his bottle. “You know, I’m glad I came, too.”
That’s not, he thinks as they bike home, entirely true. He’s aware of a lot of things he hadn’t realized before, things he knows he’ll never be able to push away again. He doesn’t regret it, but he knows things are about to get much, much more difficult for him, and the fear of screwing up and scaring Jongin away latches onto him, and stays.
That night marks the first time Joonmyun dreams of Jongin-or rather, he supposes, the second time, after the time with the bears and the mountains. But it’s the first time he dreams of him like this: they’re walking down the main strip in town, drinking milkshakes from the drug store that still sports an old-school soda fountain, holding hands. Jongin is telling him about himself, and Joonmyun says something to him and then Jongin bends down to kiss him. Joonmyun wakes up seconds into the kiss, no longer remembering what had been said to lead up to it.
The second time, and the second night in a row, he kisses Jongin.
The third time, two nights later, they jerk each other off in the woods, in the little cabin Joonmyun had been trying to run to when he’d first met him, and this time Joonmyun wakes up sweaty and turned on. This dream in particular, he finds, is hyper real, jolting from the beach (this time, Jongin kisses Joonmyun when he leans in to hug him, and Sehun and Zitao fade away) to the mountainside, the sensations of each locale etching themselves into his memory, Jongin’s warmth, the slick slide of his tongue and the rough movements of his hand so visceral that it almost feels as if it had happened.
But it hadn’t, he reminds himself as he jerks off in the shower. He comes hard against his stomach with Jongin’s name caught under his breath, anyway, the imagine of Jongin standing across from him, head thrown back and lips pursed, burned hot into his eyelids. He’d expected this, almost, from the moment he saw Jongin on the bike, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t make him want to sink to his knees in shame and let the water wash away all traces of his feelings. Jongin should, he knows, be off-limits. He shouldn’t be imposing himself on him, and he’s sure that, regardless of how much he tells himself he won’t, he’ll end up scaring him off.
Joonmyun doesn’t like the new dynamic he finds them shifting into. It’s not entirely different, but something’s changed, and even though he’s not sure Jongin notices, he’s overly aware of it. He also knows it’s his fault, know he’s the one who’s messing things up and unbalancing the easy equilibrium they’ve fallen into. Suddenly, everything about Jongin is beautiful to him. He can’t stop noticing new things that make him ache, make his dreams even more unbearable: the curves of his arms as he carries boxes of clothing around the shop, the deep creases between his eyebrows as he puzzles over a biology worksheet, the way he smiles at Joonmyun when they’re watching TV and Joonmyun is laughing too loudly at something that’s not all that funny. Joonmyun finds himself gravitating constantly closer before pulling away again, sudden and harsh, when he remembers what’s at stake. He doesn’t want to, but he knows he has to, because Jongin is still, mostly, a mystery to him, and he’s supposed to be the responsible one. He’s never had so much difficulty pushing away the things he wants, before. He’s made a living of hiding his feelings, of acting the way he needs to in order to get things done, of putting everything before himself. That’s what he really wants to do for Jongin, what he figures he owes him, but he finds himself constantly getting in the way.
Jongin, for his part, doesn’t shrink from his touches and doesn’t question his distance, either, just continues working, as hard as ever, absorbing curricula and knowledge of the shop as fast as he can. Sometimes Joonmyun sees questions in his eyes, feels hesitance in the way he leans into Joonmyun, but they dissolve quickly, fading into the relative normalcy Joonmyun’s managed to maintain, just the way the sun had faded into the blue of the sky that night on the beach.
Sehun and Zitao leave for school in August and the tourist traffic in the town begins to slow. Jongin’s passed seventh grade, in Joonmyun’s estimation, and has moved on to eighth grade material, flying through that almost as quickly as the previous coursework. Baekhyun now asks Joonmyun more pointed questions about why he needs photocopies, but Joonmyun brushes him aside and manages to make it all seem normal, even if it’s anything but.
Chanyeol calls Joonmyun at 4pm on a Wednesday, when the shop is open and Joonmyun is handing a customer her receipt. He beckons Jongin, who’s learned to be friendly and comfortable around strangers when he needs to be, to the register as he takes the call, darting into the backroom.
“You’re not going to believe me,” Chanyeol says, breathless, “but a sea lion hopped onto my boat and it was tiny and didn’t capsize it or anything but it came up to me and I just had to touch it and then it… it… it fucking turned into a dude. A real person. His name is Kyungsoo and he’s asleep on my couch and I know you’re going to think I’m crazy but I swear to god this is real and like can I borrow some clothes from you or something because he’s drowning in mine and I don’t fucking know what to do and it’s a person and-”
“It’s ok,” Joonmyun cuts him off, “I… that happened to me, too.”
There’s a long, long silence, before Chanyeol finally says, “I knew you were lying about Jongin. You never were very good at making up stories.”
Joonmyun laughs because he doesn’t know what else to do. He’s glad he’s finally said it, but he doesn’t feel the relief just yet, just a strange sort of tension.
“Can you come over? Or can we go out and get some drinks? When you’re done with work?” Chanyeol asks, and Joonmyun agrees.
“I think,” he says after his fourth mixed drink, Jongin at home and Chanyeol by his side in the bar, twice as far in but only a little drunker than himself, “I’m in love with Jongin.”
“You gotta fucking tell him, man,” Chanyeol slurs, “you gotta tell him. Can’t let that shit sit there for too long or you’ll drive yourself nuts.”
“What if we are nuts?”
“Because we make animals turn into people? I’ve got no fucking clue. At least we’re nuts together? Too fucking bad this magic touch didn’t work with Earl.”
Joonmyun nods. It’s a much more comforting thought than he expects it to be, that he’s not the only one who this has happened to. He’s done his best not to think much about it, because he doesn’t really know what to make of it, since Jongin hasn’t told him anything, but it’s on his mind, now, the strangeness of it all laid bare again. “But you’re not in love with Kyungsoo. He’s just… sleeping on your couch.”
“Isn’t that how Jongin started? What if it’s some fairy tale shit, you know, destiny or something? I don’t even like dudes!”
Joonmyun laughs and pats Chanyeol on the back. “You’ll probably be ok, then. Hopefully you two’ll at least get along, though.”
“Do you think Jongin likes you, at all?”
“I can’t tell… and even if he did, I’d worry it was some kind of Stockholm syndrome thing. I don’t want to hurt him.”
Chanyeol claps his hand on Joonmyun’s back. “You worry too much. Always have.”
“Probably always will.”
“You should fix that. Those lines don’t look good on your forehead.”
Joonmyun laughs and Chanyeol leaves his hand on his arm, flagging the bartender down for another round of drinks.
Joonmyun stumbles back home and collapses into his bed. He hasn’t dreamed of Jongin in weeks, because Jongin has been invading his senses every waking moment, instead, but tonight, he comes back with a vengeance. He dreams of fucking him on his fold-out mattress, of sucking him off on the beach, of their bodies intertwined, everything warm and sparkling and just how he wants, Jongin happy and sated and beautiful, ethereal in the glow of the sunlight, happiness and something that Joonmyun supposes could be love radiating off his skin.
The next morning, Joonmyun wanders into the kitchen with an obvious hangover and Jongin doesn’t ask questions. Jongin doesn’t glow, either, just looks like a normal human being, but it hurts Joonmyun anyway because he thinks this Jongin is even more beautiful than the hyper real version he gets to touch in dreams, just much farther from his reach.
Jongin has a steaming mug of coffee and a plate of cheese-covered scrambled eggs ready for him on the table. For a moment, he’s not sure if he’s still dreaming, but the pounding in his head assures him he’s most certainly awake.
“You know how to cook?”
Jongin looks down at the ground, smiling sheepishly, and Joonmyun is reminded of why he’s hungover in the first place. “You’ve made eggs a lot of times. I learned from watching you.”
“Are you feeling ok?” Jongin asks when Joonmyun grimaces halfway through the meal, the sensation of his stomach uncomfortably present in his body, as if its detached from him.
“A little hungover. I went out with Chanyeol last night,” he says, forcing himself to take another bite.
“I don’t think I’ve ever seen you drunk before.”
“I haven’t been drunk enough to get hungover since I graduated, I don’t think,” he replies, and Jongin laughs.
“What was the occasion? Is Chanyeol engaged or something?”
Joonmyun shakes his head. He considers whether or not he should tell Jongin the truth for a moment. “He… well a sea lion came on his boat when he was out fishing and it turns out it… wasn’t a sea lion after all.”
The egg on Jongin’s fork drops to his plate as his grip loosens a little. His mouth hangs open momentarily but he quickly shuts it.
“Like… me,” he whispers. Joonmyun nods. Jongin doesn’t respond.
“I was born farther north but we moved down here when I was older,” Jongin says quietly, three days later when they’re watching TV just before midnight, “my parents always knew what would happen, so they wanted me to be somewhere small, so I’d have a better chance of being saved. It’s a curse on my family, dating back ages. The first son always turns into a bear, freed only by willing human contact, but unable to return to his family after. They were so happy when my sister was born, because she would be safe. But then I happened.”
Joonmyun nods, as if he understands. “So you… you became a bear?”
“Yeah. And if I’d hurt any humans as one I would’ve been stuck like that forever.”
“Why?”
Jongin shrugs. “Something about respecting human life, I think, about remaining human even if we’re in a different form? So attacking a human would be like accepting myself as not a human anymore. I think it was something like that-it was all really vague. Mostly I just know that it’s been with my family for generations.”
Joonmyun nods, hands tapping absently at the side of the remote. The TV buzzes quietly in the background, but neither of them is paying attention anymore.
“I’m really glad you’ve taken such good care of me,” Jongin says after a minute, “thank you.”
“I’m happy to do it, Jongin. You’ve made my life a lot brighter.”
Jongin beams at that, and Joonmyun wishes it were for different reasons, but he knows he’s being greedy. He still doesn’t know all of Jongin’s story, of course, but he knows more of it than he has in the past, and he supposes that that ought to be good enough. He shouldn’t want to pull him closer and kiss him, too, shouldn’t want more out of him, should be grateful for what he has, but Jongin’s made it hard for him to accept that the logical way is the best one.
Joonmyun kisses Jongin on a Sunday afternoon in September. They’re sitting in his backyard, chairs pulled close together, and Jongin is recounting a story secondhand from Sehun, something about his crazy roommate. It’s the last of the warm days for the year, summer fading quickly into the tiny sliver of fall they receive before everything ices over for winter. It’s a rare sunny day, and Jongin’s hair looks almost brown in the light, his skin golden and inviting. He leans in to lay his head on Joonmyun’s shoulder, and Joonmyun turns his head and then Jongin turns his and their lips press together, light and gentle, almost as if by accident.
“I… I’m sorry,” Joonmyun whispers as they pull apart, “I… I… I shouldn’t have…”
Jongin presses a finger to Joonmyun’s lips and shushes him. “No. You should have. I… remember how you were really obvious, before? About wanting to know about me? But you stayed quiet because you wanted me to be comfortable? I noticed this, too. Maybe before you did, I don’t know. And I… this… this is what I want, too.”
Joonmyun barely has time to process that before Jongin cups his chin in his hand and leans forward, eyes shut and breath warm on his face. His nerves stand on end as their lips meet and Jongin slides his tongue in easily, Joonmyun’s body jolting to life as he does, every point of contact like a hot wire between them, burning and sensitive just below the surface of his skin.
“I’ve been waiting forever to do this,” Jongin says into his ear, tongue darting out to lick at the shell. Joonmyun shivers, a small “oh” escaping his lips. “But I was worried you’d feel guilty. You feel guilty really easily.”
Joonmyun pulls away and stares at him. His hair is slightly tousled from the breeze blowing in off the harbor, and his lips are redder than usual. Joonmyun wants to drag him closer, to hold him against his chest and breathe him in, to ask him to lick his ear again, but despite what Jongin’s just said, he still feels like he can’t.
“I… I’m taking care of you,” he says, “I… I didn’t know if… I don’t think that…”
Jongin shushes him again. “It’s ok. I want you to… to take care of me like this, too. And I want to take care of you.”
He smiles, and Joonmyun kisses him again, against all his better reasoning, hand falling at the base of his neck and pulling his head closer.
The real Jongin, the one who can do math in his head almost as quickly as Joonmyun can, who burns through books in a day, who breaks out a lot but smiles more brightly than anyone Joonmyun’s ever seen before, is much better than the dream one, Joonmyun thinks as they walk into his room. He can see the slight tenting in his jeans, can feel his own hard-on shifting as he walks. It’s too good to be true, a part of Joonmyun is whispering, but he brushes that aside. Everything about Jongin has always been too good to be true, has always veered closer to the side of fantasy than reality. But Jongin kissing him, Jongin stroking his hipbone, Jongin flicking soft fingertips across his nipples and moaning into his mouth as he bites his bottom lip, that’s all undeniably real, and Joonmyun doesn’t want to let it go, doesn’t want it to fade back into the quietness of his life. He wants to wrap his fingers around it and hold on, hold Jongin and everything he brings with him-the warmth and the happiness and the whispers of possibility-close to his chest and keep it there, cradled against his heart.
He sucks Jongin off, a hand wrapped around his own cock, and Jongin moans and rolls underneath him, body hot and pliant and ceaselessly energetic, stiffening only when he’s got his fingers laced tight in Joonmyun’s hair and a steady stream of “please please please”s are falling from his lips, moments before he comes. He slides a hand between their bodies, after, replacing Joonmyun’s own, and Joonmyun orgasms fast and hard, years of tension and worry easing out of his body as he does.
Joonmyun wakes up naked in his own bed with Jongin beside him. Worries flit through his mind, but they’re quieter than usual, easier to acknowledge and move beyond. Jongin had wanted this just as much as he had. He may be responsible for him, in a way, but he’s not a child, not at all. In fact, Joonmyun thinks a little wistfully, maybe Jongin is responsible for him, too, for making him feel like twenty-four years is still young, like there’s still possibility left in the world for him, for teaching him that bears and sea lions can turn into people instead of attacking them.
“Morning,” Jongin says when he opens his eyes, voice cracked and dry, hair a disaster.
“Good morning,” Joonmyun replies, and the smile that Jongin gives him before he kisses him is, undeniably, that of someone who just might be falling in love.
a bunch of author's notes:
check out the lovely artwork yoosujaehomin made for the fic. it's at the bottom of the page!
not-so ambiguously set in southeast alaska.
i'm sorry i suck at writing magical realism :3
the earl story is real, as is the sunset bike ride (although i did not fall in love with the guy who turned around to look at me).
thank you so much to rachel, anne, and everyone on twitter who listened to me complain obscurely about word counts for weeks on end!
<< Part 1
The third Saturday Jongin crashes on his couch, Joonmyun is awoken in the middle of the night by someone shaking him gently and whispering his name. He jolts up, unused to being awoken by anything besides his alarm, and makes out a figure, backlit by the light of the never quite dark summer night streaming in through the window.
“Jongin?”
“I… I had a really bad dream,” Jongin stutters out, voice tired and barely above a whisper, “I’ve been trying to fall back asleep but I can’t.”
Joonmyun rubs at his eyes and kicks his covers back, swinging his feet over the edge of the bed. “Let’s go into the kitchen.”
They pad out quietly, Joonmyun flipping the lights on as they walk into the kitchen. He fills a kettle with water and sets it on the stove while Jongin stands in the doorway, leaning against the wall.
“What kind of tea would you like?”
Jongin shrugs, so Joonmyun just grabs two packets of mint out of the cabinet.
“Do you want to talk about your dream?”
It’s one of the first times Joonmyun’s asked Jongin to discuss something, but it doesn’t seem like the time to continue his previous hands-off approach. Jongin wouldn’t have come to him if he didn’t want to talk, at least a little.
Jongin doesn’t respond immediately, but he nods after a moment. “I was a bear again.”
Joonmyun finishes yanking two mugs out of one of the upper cabinets, then turns to face him. Jongin takes a shaky breath before continuing.
“You were hiking in the woods, but instead of letting you touch me… I killed you.”
Joonmyun doesn’t think before he acts this time, striding up to Jongin and pulling him down into a hug. He’s not sure if it’s the right thing to do-he doesn’t want to make him feel like a small child, but he does want to comfort him-but Jongin relaxes into his arms as soon as he does, his head falling into the dip between Joonmyun’s shoulder and neck.
“I don’t… I don’t know what it means. I don’t want to hurt you. You’ve been so good to me and-“
“Jongin, it’s just a dream. It’s not real. It might be your subconscious but that doesn’t mean you secretly want to kill me or are ungrateful or something. It’s just… a dream.”
“I’m sorry.”
“There’s nothing to be sorry for,” Joonmyun replies, pulling him tighter. “Nothing.”
The kettle whistles and Jongin looks up, moving away so that Joonmyun can prepare the tea. He pulls him into one last hug before stepping away and turning to pour the water into the mugs he has set out. He takes one and hands it to Jongin, picking the other up for himself.
“Do you want to go sit in the living room?”
“Sure.”
Jongin settles back into his bed, but as Joonmyun goes to sit in the armchair, he tells him to join him. They sit side my side, Joonmyun’s arm over Jongin’s shoulders, sipping their tea. Joonmyun wants to ask Jongin why he feels sorry, why he feels guilty about a nightmare, but he doesn’t want to make him feel any worse about it, or embarrassed.
“Is there anything else?”
“To the dream?”
“Yeah. Or anything else that’s bothering you that might have brought on the dream? Not like, about me, but in general, something bad or something that makes you feel guilty or angry or confused?”
Jongin doesn’t respond for a minute, looking straight ahead and biting his lip. “I don’t know. Not really, I guess.”
“Is there anything you want to get off your chest?”
He takes another sip of tea before answering, wrinkling his nose when it scalds his tongue. “Is it… ok that I’m still here? I don’t feel like I’m doing anything, I’m just taking up your time and eating your food and everything.”
“Jongin, you’re not wasting my time. If I didn’t want you to be here or had a problem with something, I would tell you. I like your company, and I’m very thankful for your help at the shop-which I’m not paying you for, so the least I can do is give you food and a place I hope is comfy enough to sleep.”
Jongin looks a little bewildered, but he’s also smiling slightly, head tilted down.
”Is there anything I do that… bothers you?”
Jongin looks up and shakes his head, then pauses. “Well, I guess maybe? You always seem like you want to ask me questions, and then you don’t.”
Joonmyun sighs. He’d hoped he’d been smoother than that, but while he likes to talk, he’s never been a master of conversation. “I’d be lying if I said I’m not curious about your life, Jongin. But I also don’t want to scare you or embarrass you or make you talk about anything you aren’t comfortable talking about. I want you to open up to me on your own terms, if you ever want to. So if you want to talk, I’ll be here, but until then, it’s fine for you to keep to yourself. I’m sorry if I’ve made you uncomfortable.”
Jongin shakes his head vigorously. “You haven’t. It’s just something I noticed.” He pauses, fingering the edge of his blanket, eyes trained out the window “You’re so… nice. Thank you. For everything.”
Joonmyun smiles and reaches a hand up to ruffle his hair, soft and warm under his fingers. This time he doesn’t have to think about it, doesn’t have to qualify like he did in the woods. “It’s no problem.”
Jongin turns to smile up at him, cuddling in closer, and Joonmyun squeezes his shoulders, warmth spreading through him.
The following Monday, Jongin is straightening the books at closing. Sehun doesn’t close on Mondays, and so it’s just the two of them.
“Joonmyun?”
Joonmyun looks up from the dustpan he’s sweeping dirt into. “Yes?”
“Do you think you could… teach me?”
“Like… school? Sure, probably. Is there something in particular that… brought this on?”
Joonmyun lets the question slip, because he’s trying to cut himself off more discreetly than he had previously, but he’s also determined to be more honest, and he doesn’t think this is a particularly invasive question.
Jongin shrugs. “I had a hard time reading a book today.”
Joonmyun nods. He’s watched Jongin read regularly at the shop, flying through children’s and young adult books and moving on to the adult ones much more quickly than Joonmyun had expected. Joonmyun, though, is quickly learning that his expectations are, more often than not, wrong. “Do you… do you know what year in school you were last in?”
“Seventh grade,” he replies, “I didn’t finish it though.”
“I have a friend who teaches at the middle school. I could find out from him what things seventh and eighth graders need to know.”
“Is there… you can go to high school not at high school, right? Like if you drop out?”
“Yeah, there’s night school.”
“So if I could get through eighth grade I could… do that? Maybe?”
“I don’t see why not. It might be complicated because you don’t have any school records… but I’m sure we could come up with something.”
“Teaching me really wouldn’t bother you?”
Joonmyun laughs, which Jongin looks confused by. “I was going to get my teaching certificate after I graduated college, maybe get a master’s in education. I was a literature major and wanted to teach high school.”
“Oh.”
“So it’s not a problem. I’d really like to, actually.”
Jongin smiles. “There are a lot of things I don’t know about you, even if you do talk a lot.”
That acknowledgement makes Joonmyun feel strangely warm. He’s glad to know that everything’s not entirely uneven, that there’s still more to learn about both of them. He smiles at Jongin, and Jongin smiles back.
Jongin almost always returns home with Joonmyun after work. Joonmyun teaches him, mostly, photocopies of some of Baekhyun and his peers’ lesson plans spread out across the dining room table, books scattered about. Jongin’s learns the material quickly, too, much like he had in the shop, breezing through exercises with ease and excitement.
But some nights are different. Joonmyun’s given him free reign over his old bike, and he goes out with Sehun and Zitao at least once a week, usually twice. Sometimes he comes back smelling a little like beer, sometimes he passes out on the couch before Joonmyun can offer to unfold the mattress. Joonmyun doesn’t mind, because he knows they’re young and he’s not much older than them, really. He remembers flying through the streets on half-broken bikes with Chanyeol and Baekhyun in the not-so-distant past, remembers drinking shitty beer on rooftops at college with Jongdae and Yixing, making out recklessly with boys whose names he knew at the time he wouldn’t remember, pushed up against walls that were probably too dirty to be touched. Jongin, when he’s sleeping on the couch at a weird angle, still wearing his clothes, half a glass of water on the table beside him, reminds him of those adventures. He makes him just a little nostalgic for the days when he wasn’t supposed to be anything but carefree, when responsibility was a concept tossed around and waiting just beyond a corner he was fast approaching, but still lurked just out of reach.
When Jongin approaches him, flanked by Sehun and Zitao, at the end of the day on a warm July Friday, Joonmyun doesn’t expect the question that he receives:
“Do you want to come biking with us tonight? We’re gonna go watch the sunset on the beach.”
Joonmyun considers the offer. He wants to go, of course, but he doesn’t want to impose. On the other hand, Jongin is, in fact, offering, and Sehun and Zitao are nodding along; none of them are the sort to act out of pity, to make offers they don’t actually stand by.
“Sure,” he says, before he can convince himself that turning them down would be the better choice, “I’ll make dinner beforehand if you want, I’m going to pick up some fresh fish today.”
Sehun and Zitao both nod, and after quick explanatory calls home they bike off towards Joonmyun’s house, while he and Jongin take the station wagon, detouring to Chanyeol’s before heading home to meet them.
Once they’ve eaten, Joonmyun digs his brother’s bike out of the garage, hidden behind dusty old painting supplies that haven’t been touched in years. He hasn’t ridden a bike since his first summer back from college, barely even remembers how to switch gears or brake properly. When he gets on, though, adjusting the seat down a couple of inches, he finds that it’s easy to ride, that everything comes back as if he’s been taking it out everyday. He circles around the driveway a few times, the three others watching him, bemused.
“You ready to go?” Jongin calls, and Joonmyun nods, braking a little too hard beside them.
They close up the garage and start off, Zitao leading the way and Joonmyun trailing far behind. They bike through town, half in the near-empty street and half on the sidewalk, then up over the bridge across the harbor. Its uphill slope slows Joonmyun down, but once he gets to the top, the others paused and staring out over the harbor, he thinks it’s worth the minor embarrassment he feels for being so out of shape. The sky fades into pink near the horizon, a blur of hazy orange denoting the sun itself. The town is painted blue, the sky almost cloudless, for once, masts of ships sticking out against the green of the mountains.
Joonmyun’s spent most of his life here. He knows everything is not as beautiful as it looks on the surface, that the town is mostly grey and a little run down, that it rains every other day, that the fish are being overharvested, that the other industries dried up years ago. He knows all these things, but he pushes them down, away, because tonight he feels young again, in love with possibility and the discomfort of bike seats and the way the night air stings the tips of his ears.
“Are you ready to go?” Zitao asks, and Joonmyun nods. They begin cycling again, Joonmyun adjusting his gears and letting go, the slope taking him effortlessly down the bridge.
Sehun, who has always, he thinks, been a bit of a troublemaker, spreads his arms out as he flies downhill, already far ahead of Joonmyun, even though they’d started at the same time. Zitao follows suit, but Jongin turns his head around to smile at Joonmyun, silhouetted against the setting sun.
“You doing ok?” he calls behind him.
“Yeah, fine. I haven’t done this in years.”
Jongin laughs and waves, dying sunlight catching in his hair and shimmering across his eyes as he turns back, and Joonmyun’s breath catches in his throat. He’s spent plenty of time around Jongin, let him cuddle against him on the couch and slung a comforting arm over his shoulder when he’s needed it, leaned over him to try and help with tricky math problems. He’s known, intuitively, that Jongin is good-looking, because he is, but he’s never noticed that he’s beautiful, that light plays off him in a different way than it does off anyone else, that the silhouette of his back is even more entrancing than the lights dotting the underside of the mountains that frame Joonmyun’s hometown.
Joonmyun’s glad he doesn’t have to pedal much, now, because he’s not sure he can make his feet move. He doesn’t know how he hasn’t noticed before. He’s sure the sudden well of emotions bubbling up in him has been there for a while, just subdued, but he supposes he’s gotten good at ignoring things the last few years, packing away his dreams and his restlessness in favor of practicality. Jongin has been slowly but surely unlocking him, though, ever since they met, and Joonmyun’s not sure what that will mean, now that he’s aware. He closes his eyes for a brief second, the slope of the hill flattening out, before adjusting the gears of his bike and forcing himself to pedal, Jongin’s smile still fresh in his minds, no different, really, than the ones he usually shoots him, but somehow infinitely more entrancing.
At the beach, when they’re all settled down on rocks, feet entangled with dried up seaweed, Zitao and Sehun each yank six-packs from their backpacks, glancing at Joonmyun as they do.
“You don’t mind, do you?” Sehun asks as he hands one to Jongin.
Joonmyun shakes his head.
“Do you want one, then?” Zitao asks, offering him a bottle.
He takes it. It’s been months since he’s had a drink-the last time was probably his brother’s wedding, where he’d had a couple of glasses of champagne-but it’s not because he’s opposed to alcohol. He’s just too busy, and too short on money, usually, to waste time and cash on anything non-essential. Jongin passes around a bottle opener-which, Joonmyun hopes, he at least marked out in the inventory if he lifted it from the store-and Joonmyun cracks his beer open. He takes a sip. It’s the local brewery’s Hefeweizen: crowd-pleasing and inoffensive. He tilts his head back farther, taking a longer drink, letting the cold fizz of the beer bubble against his tongue before he swallows.
Sehun and Zitao swap college stories, reminiscing long drunken nights and ridiculous hook-ups. Joonmyun interrupts them, sometimes, with stories from his younger days, which all of them seem amused and slightly bewildered by; he expects it because he’s their boss, and no one ever really assumes their boss had been as irresponsible as they are.
What he’s personally surprised to find is that Sehun and Zitao, from their stories, both seem to be into guys, that they don’t even blink an eye when he forgets to keep the pronouns in one of his tales generic. He’d been out in college, but he’s so used to hiding his sexuality from his hometown-Chanyeol and Baekhyun know, his mother had known, but they’ve always been the people closest to him, always had a right to that information-that it surprises him to even come across other gay men here. Jongin doesn’t bat an eye, either, just looks sort of shocked when Joonmyun recounts the time he had sex in his roommate’s bed freshman year (he was an awful roommate, he justifies, I promise it was mostly out of spite. That makes it even worse, Sehun replies, while Zitao giggles behind his hand).
Joonmyun accepts a second beer, and then a third, and by the time that one’s warming in his hand, the sun is a vague orange mass half-hidden behind the crest of a mountain and his face feels a little warm, even as the air cools around them. Everyone is quieter now, just watching the sun play on the horizon, occasionally pointing out boats or shapes in the clouds or silhouettes of eagles soaring overhead. Joonmyun’s world is just the slightest bit unfocused at the edges, but over bright in other spots, the contrasts dancing before his vision as he watches the world darken slowly. The harbor glitters, orange lining the dips of the otherwise blue ocean, and Joonmyun glances over at Jongin. He glitters a little, too, even if it’s getting darker where they are, now, even if Joonmyun’s a little tipsier than he ought to be off of two and a half beers and Jongin still looks sober with his fourth bottle of the night in his hand. He turns to Joonmyun and smiles.
“Are you having fun?”
“Yes,” Joonmyun replies, smiling back, “I am. Thanks for inviting me.”
Jongin’s grin gets wider, and he leans over to wrap Joonmyun into a hug.
“You’re great, you know that? I’m glad you came out with us. You… really surprised me with some of those stories. You seem too… old for that.”
Joonmyun laughs. “I’m only twenty-four! I’m not that old.” He pauses, watching Jongin’s chest pump up and down as his fingers play with the wrapper of his bottle. “You know, I’m glad I came, too.”
That’s not, he thinks as they bike home, entirely true. He’s aware of a lot of things he hadn’t realized before, things he knows he’ll never be able to push away again. He doesn’t regret it, but he knows things are about to get much, much more difficult for him, and the fear of screwing up and scaring Jongin away latches onto him, and stays.
That night marks the first time Joonmyun dreams of Jongin-or rather, he supposes, the second time, after the time with the bears and the mountains. But it’s the first time he dreams of him like this: they’re walking down the main strip in town, drinking milkshakes from the drug store that still sports an old-school soda fountain, holding hands. Jongin is telling him about himself, and Joonmyun says something to him and then Jongin bends down to kiss him. Joonmyun wakes up seconds into the kiss, no longer remembering what had been said to lead up to it.
The second time, and the second night in a row, he kisses Jongin.
The third time, two nights later, they jerk each other off in the woods, in the little cabin Joonmyun had been trying to run to when he’d first met him, and this time Joonmyun wakes up sweaty and turned on. This dream in particular, he finds, is hyper real, jolting from the beach (this time, Jongin kisses Joonmyun when he leans in to hug him, and Sehun and Zitao fade away) to the mountainside, the sensations of each locale etching themselves into his memory, Jongin’s warmth, the slick slide of his tongue and the rough movements of his hand so visceral that it almost feels as if it had happened.
But it hadn’t, he reminds himself as he jerks off in the shower. He comes hard against his stomach with Jongin’s name caught under his breath, anyway, the imagine of Jongin standing across from him, head thrown back and lips pursed, burned hot into his eyelids. He’d expected this, almost, from the moment he saw Jongin on the bike, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t make him want to sink to his knees in shame and let the water wash away all traces of his feelings. Jongin should, he knows, be off-limits. He shouldn’t be imposing himself on him, and he’s sure that, regardless of how much he tells himself he won’t, he’ll end up scaring him off.
Joonmyun doesn’t like the new dynamic he finds them shifting into. It’s not entirely different, but something’s changed, and even though he’s not sure Jongin notices, he’s overly aware of it. He also knows it’s his fault, know he’s the one who’s messing things up and unbalancing the easy equilibrium they’ve fallen into. Suddenly, everything about Jongin is beautiful to him. He can’t stop noticing new things that make him ache, make his dreams even more unbearable: the curves of his arms as he carries boxes of clothing around the shop, the deep creases between his eyebrows as he puzzles over a biology worksheet, the way he smiles at Joonmyun when they’re watching TV and Joonmyun is laughing too loudly at something that’s not all that funny. Joonmyun finds himself gravitating constantly closer before pulling away again, sudden and harsh, when he remembers what’s at stake. He doesn’t want to, but he knows he has to, because Jongin is still, mostly, a mystery to him, and he’s supposed to be the responsible one. He’s never had so much difficulty pushing away the things he wants, before. He’s made a living of hiding his feelings, of acting the way he needs to in order to get things done, of putting everything before himself. That’s what he really wants to do for Jongin, what he figures he owes him, but he finds himself constantly getting in the way.
Jongin, for his part, doesn’t shrink from his touches and doesn’t question his distance, either, just continues working, as hard as ever, absorbing curricula and knowledge of the shop as fast as he can. Sometimes Joonmyun sees questions in his eyes, feels hesitance in the way he leans into Joonmyun, but they dissolve quickly, fading into the relative normalcy Joonmyun’s managed to maintain, just the way the sun had faded into the blue of the sky that night on the beach.
Sehun and Zitao leave for school in August and the tourist traffic in the town begins to slow. Jongin’s passed seventh grade, in Joonmyun’s estimation, and has moved on to eighth grade material, flying through that almost as quickly as the previous coursework. Baekhyun now asks Joonmyun more pointed questions about why he needs photocopies, but Joonmyun brushes him aside and manages to make it all seem normal, even if it’s anything but.
Chanyeol calls Joonmyun at 4pm on a Wednesday, when the shop is open and Joonmyun is handing a customer her receipt. He beckons Jongin, who’s learned to be friendly and comfortable around strangers when he needs to be, to the register as he takes the call, darting into the backroom.
“You’re not going to believe me,” Chanyeol says, breathless, “but a sea lion hopped onto my boat and it was tiny and didn’t capsize it or anything but it came up to me and I just had to touch it and then it… it… it fucking turned into a dude. A real person. His name is Kyungsoo and he’s asleep on my couch and I know you’re going to think I’m crazy but I swear to god this is real and like can I borrow some clothes from you or something because he’s drowning in mine and I don’t fucking know what to do and it’s a person and-”
“It’s ok,” Joonmyun cuts him off, “I… that happened to me, too.”
There’s a long, long silence, before Chanyeol finally says, “I knew you were lying about Jongin. You never were very good at making up stories.”
Joonmyun laughs because he doesn’t know what else to do. He’s glad he’s finally said it, but he doesn’t feel the relief just yet, just a strange sort of tension.
“Can you come over? Or can we go out and get some drinks? When you’re done with work?” Chanyeol asks, and Joonmyun agrees.
“I think,” he says after his fourth mixed drink, Jongin at home and Chanyeol by his side in the bar, twice as far in but only a little drunker than himself, “I’m in love with Jongin.”
“You gotta fucking tell him, man,” Chanyeol slurs, “you gotta tell him. Can’t let that shit sit there for too long or you’ll drive yourself nuts.”
“What if we are nuts?”
“Because we make animals turn into people? I’ve got no fucking clue. At least we’re nuts together? Too fucking bad this magic touch didn’t work with Earl.”
Joonmyun nods. It’s a much more comforting thought than he expects it to be, that he’s not the only one who this has happened to. He’s done his best not to think much about it, because he doesn’t really know what to make of it, since Jongin hasn’t told him anything, but it’s on his mind, now, the strangeness of it all laid bare again. “But you’re not in love with Kyungsoo. He’s just… sleeping on your couch.”
“Isn’t that how Jongin started? What if it’s some fairy tale shit, you know, destiny or something? I don’t even like dudes!”
Joonmyun laughs and pats Chanyeol on the back. “You’ll probably be ok, then. Hopefully you two’ll at least get along, though.”
“Do you think Jongin likes you, at all?”
“I can’t tell… and even if he did, I’d worry it was some kind of Stockholm syndrome thing. I don’t want to hurt him.”
Chanyeol claps his hand on Joonmyun’s back. “You worry too much. Always have.”
“Probably always will.”
“You should fix that. Those lines don’t look good on your forehead.”
Joonmyun laughs and Chanyeol leaves his hand on his arm, flagging the bartender down for another round of drinks.
Joonmyun stumbles back home and collapses into his bed. He hasn’t dreamed of Jongin in weeks, because Jongin has been invading his senses every waking moment, instead, but tonight, he comes back with a vengeance. He dreams of fucking him on his fold-out mattress, of sucking him off on the beach, of their bodies intertwined, everything warm and sparkling and just how he wants, Jongin happy and sated and beautiful, ethereal in the glow of the sunlight, happiness and something that Joonmyun supposes could be love radiating off his skin.
The next morning, Joonmyun wanders into the kitchen with an obvious hangover and Jongin doesn’t ask questions. Jongin doesn’t glow, either, just looks like a normal human being, but it hurts Joonmyun anyway because he thinks this Jongin is even more beautiful than the hyper real version he gets to touch in dreams, just much farther from his reach.
Jongin has a steaming mug of coffee and a plate of cheese-covered scrambled eggs ready for him on the table. For a moment, he’s not sure if he’s still dreaming, but the pounding in his head assures him he’s most certainly awake.
“You know how to cook?”
Jongin looks down at the ground, smiling sheepishly, and Joonmyun is reminded of why he’s hungover in the first place. “You’ve made eggs a lot of times. I learned from watching you.”
“Are you feeling ok?” Jongin asks when Joonmyun grimaces halfway through the meal, the sensation of his stomach uncomfortably present in his body, as if its detached from him.
“A little hungover. I went out with Chanyeol last night,” he says, forcing himself to take another bite.
“I don’t think I’ve ever seen you drunk before.”
“I haven’t been drunk enough to get hungover since I graduated, I don’t think,” he replies, and Jongin laughs.
“What was the occasion? Is Chanyeol engaged or something?”
Joonmyun shakes his head. He considers whether or not he should tell Jongin the truth for a moment. “He… well a sea lion came on his boat when he was out fishing and it turns out it… wasn’t a sea lion after all.”
The egg on Jongin’s fork drops to his plate as his grip loosens a little. His mouth hangs open momentarily but he quickly shuts it.
“Like… me,” he whispers. Joonmyun nods. Jongin doesn’t respond.
“I was born farther north but we moved down here when I was older,” Jongin says quietly, three days later when they’re watching TV just before midnight, “my parents always knew what would happen, so they wanted me to be somewhere small, so I’d have a better chance of being saved. It’s a curse on my family, dating back ages. The first son always turns into a bear, freed only by willing human contact, but unable to return to his family after. They were so happy when my sister was born, because she would be safe. But then I happened.”
Joonmyun nods, as if he understands. “So you… you became a bear?”
“Yeah. And if I’d hurt any humans as one I would’ve been stuck like that forever.”
“Why?”
Jongin shrugs. “Something about respecting human life, I think, about remaining human even if we’re in a different form? So attacking a human would be like accepting myself as not a human anymore. I think it was something like that-it was all really vague. Mostly I just know that it’s been with my family for generations.”
Joonmyun nods, hands tapping absently at the side of the remote. The TV buzzes quietly in the background, but neither of them is paying attention anymore.
“I’m really glad you’ve taken such good care of me,” Jongin says after a minute, “thank you.”
“I’m happy to do it, Jongin. You’ve made my life a lot brighter.”
Jongin beams at that, and Joonmyun wishes it were for different reasons, but he knows he’s being greedy. He still doesn’t know all of Jongin’s story, of course, but he knows more of it than he has in the past, and he supposes that that ought to be good enough. He shouldn’t want to pull him closer and kiss him, too, shouldn’t want more out of him, should be grateful for what he has, but Jongin’s made it hard for him to accept that the logical way is the best one.
Joonmyun kisses Jongin on a Sunday afternoon in September. They’re sitting in his backyard, chairs pulled close together, and Jongin is recounting a story secondhand from Sehun, something about his crazy roommate. It’s the last of the warm days for the year, summer fading quickly into the tiny sliver of fall they receive before everything ices over for winter. It’s a rare sunny day, and Jongin’s hair looks almost brown in the light, his skin golden and inviting. He leans in to lay his head on Joonmyun’s shoulder, and Joonmyun turns his head and then Jongin turns his and their lips press together, light and gentle, almost as if by accident.
“I… I’m sorry,” Joonmyun whispers as they pull apart, “I… I… I shouldn’t have…”
Jongin presses a finger to Joonmyun’s lips and shushes him. “No. You should have. I… remember how you were really obvious, before? About wanting to know about me? But you stayed quiet because you wanted me to be comfortable? I noticed this, too. Maybe before you did, I don’t know. And I… this… this is what I want, too.”
Joonmyun barely has time to process that before Jongin cups his chin in his hand and leans forward, eyes shut and breath warm on his face. His nerves stand on end as their lips meet and Jongin slides his tongue in easily, Joonmyun’s body jolting to life as he does, every point of contact like a hot wire between them, burning and sensitive just below the surface of his skin.
“I’ve been waiting forever to do this,” Jongin says into his ear, tongue darting out to lick at the shell. Joonmyun shivers, a small “oh” escaping his lips. “But I was worried you’d feel guilty. You feel guilty really easily.”
Joonmyun pulls away and stares at him. His hair is slightly tousled from the breeze blowing in off the harbor, and his lips are redder than usual. Joonmyun wants to drag him closer, to hold him against his chest and breathe him in, to ask him to lick his ear again, but despite what Jongin’s just said, he still feels like he can’t.
“I… I’m taking care of you,” he says, “I… I didn’t know if… I don’t think that…”
Jongin shushes him again. “It’s ok. I want you to… to take care of me like this, too. And I want to take care of you.”
He smiles, and Joonmyun kisses him again, against all his better reasoning, hand falling at the base of his neck and pulling his head closer.
The real Jongin, the one who can do math in his head almost as quickly as Joonmyun can, who burns through books in a day, who breaks out a lot but smiles more brightly than anyone Joonmyun’s ever seen before, is much better than the dream one, Joonmyun thinks as they walk into his room. He can see the slight tenting in his jeans, can feel his own hard-on shifting as he walks. It’s too good to be true, a part of Joonmyun is whispering, but he brushes that aside. Everything about Jongin has always been too good to be true, has always veered closer to the side of fantasy than reality. But Jongin kissing him, Jongin stroking his hipbone, Jongin flicking soft fingertips across his nipples and moaning into his mouth as he bites his bottom lip, that’s all undeniably real, and Joonmyun doesn’t want to let it go, doesn’t want it to fade back into the quietness of his life. He wants to wrap his fingers around it and hold on, hold Jongin and everything he brings with him-the warmth and the happiness and the whispers of possibility-close to his chest and keep it there, cradled against his heart.
He sucks Jongin off, a hand wrapped around his own cock, and Jongin moans and rolls underneath him, body hot and pliant and ceaselessly energetic, stiffening only when he’s got his fingers laced tight in Joonmyun’s hair and a steady stream of “please please please”s are falling from his lips, moments before he comes. He slides a hand between their bodies, after, replacing Joonmyun’s own, and Joonmyun orgasms fast and hard, years of tension and worry easing out of his body as he does.
Joonmyun wakes up naked in his own bed with Jongin beside him. Worries flit through his mind, but they’re quieter than usual, easier to acknowledge and move beyond. Jongin had wanted this just as much as he had. He may be responsible for him, in a way, but he’s not a child, not at all. In fact, Joonmyun thinks a little wistfully, maybe Jongin is responsible for him, too, for making him feel like twenty-four years is still young, like there’s still possibility left in the world for him, for teaching him that bears and sea lions can turn into people instead of attacking them.
“Morning,” Jongin says when he opens his eyes, voice cracked and dry, hair a disaster.
“Good morning,” Joonmyun replies, and the smile that Jongin gives him before he kisses him is, undeniably, that of someone who just might be falling in love.
a bunch of author's notes:
check out the lovely artwork yoosujaehomin made for the fic. it's at the bottom of the page!
not-so ambiguously set in southeast alaska.
i'm sorry i suck at writing magical realism :3
the earl story is real, as is the sunset bike ride (although i did not fall in love with the guy who turned around to look at me).
thank you so much to rachel, anne, and everyone on twitter who listened to me complain obscurely about word counts for weeks on end!