Chapter Text
Blue never looked good on him, at least not when he was wearing it himself, Ten thinks, but it’s a color whose beauty he could always appreciate as a witness.
As he drives past the shimmering seascapes on the way from Seoul to his hometown, the hours melt away easily like this. Voice soft and silvery, he hums to the song from his playlist and tries not to think. It has been a while since he went home, so he is thankful for the waters that distract him from what awaits—not that things in his small town are ever eventful, just that barely visiting in more than two years put him at a farther distance than the few hours between the southern province and the city.
Ten gazes ahead like a stranger, perhaps tourist or visitor, but he doesn’t let this sentiment linger. Driving by his old high school and the cemetery where he and his friends held spontaneous Friday afternoon picnics back then, he almost allows the sentiment to go away on its own. Still, as the roads begin to narrow and the view out his car window closes in on residences lived in by the same people and their parents—and then, to be lived in by their children—for decades, he can’t shake off the feeling in its entirety. The feeling that he is crashing a wedding or a funeral, and everyone may just be too busy to ask him to leave. Or the feeling that his skin is blue and everyone in the crowd may just be too polite to point it out. Maybe.
When he arrives at the house he grew up in—a spacious enough two-storey with a rooftop he used to frequent like an extension of his room, the whole of it unchanged save for a few signs of wear and for the front garden currently adorned by summer cosmos and hydrangeas—his mother immediately wraps her arms around his waist, as if to point out how thin he is. And then, as if on cue, she rests her chin on his shoulder and says, “Haven’t you been eating well lately, sweetheart?”
He laughs and thinks maybe he is home somehow after all. If his sister Tern were here instead of stuck still completing her internship hours in some fashion company abroad—which of course became another talk of town—surely she would have expressed her own worry too by making fun of him. A joke about stick figures, mannequins, or something.
“I told you not to worry about it, mom, I’m healthy enough. But I do miss your cooking.”
“Well, in that case, sorry sweetheart, but—” His mother shoots a glance at his father who is standing by the living room and waiting for Ten to come in, having just risen from his comfortable seat at the sofa. “Once you’re all settled in with your stuff, can you run to the store for a few ingredients somebody here forgot to double-check from the grocery list yesterday? I can’t finish preparing your welcome home dinner without them.”
“No, mom, unfortunately I can’t. Not for free.” Ten teases. He hauls his medium-sized luggage inside and walks towards his father to greet him with a kiss on the cheek. “Just kidding. Free lodging’s enough.” He grins at his parents. “I’ll head out in a bit.” His father pats him on the back and tells him he can do the grocery run himself instead if he is too tired from the drive. Ten shakes his head and tells them to just give him a moment.
Already, the scent of chicken stew wafting from the kitchen and enveloping the whole house offers him an undeniable warmth. The lack of cat musk in the house begs notice from his sensitive nose though, and he suddenly misses his pets—or sometimes masters, or often sons, really—Louis and Leon a little, wonders how they are doing back in the city with Yangyang. They will all survive the next few days, won’t they? Everything will be okay.
Ten ventures into his bedroom and puts down his luggage plastered with colorful stickers that he had designed and printed on his own just after graduating from university. For some reason, it does not look out of place in the midst of his old sketches and idol posters still stuck on the wall, trophies and worn out textbooks still lining up on his shelf, and plaid sheets and pillowcases still adorning his bed. If anything, it’s like the luggage came in perfect condition without its owner, instead having been tasked to an acquaintance to be brought home, an acquaintance who now borrows the bean bag in the corner to rest for a while. Ten feels like he does know the person who lives here, at least enough to not feel like he is intruding.
He checks his phone for notifications, lies down on his bed for a few seconds, and closes his eyes. Everything will be okay.
A few minutes later, when he begins to be a little jittery, not used to the invitation of having no work responsibilities to fulfill for the next few hours or even days, he stands up and ties his flannel shirt around his denim-clad hips. For the first time in a long time, he is home during summer. And given the current temperature, going out with only his white sleeveless shirt exposed seems sensible—not that he ever let the weather stop him when he is intent. Ten asks his mother for the short grocery list and goes out for a drive.
At the store, he walks the aisles faux-aimlessly, pacing himself in the search for pine nuts, bok choy, and a couple other things. Something about grocery shopping is quite meditative, especially in Seoul where Ten either rides or resists the rush—or both—all the time. Here and now, the activity also lets him begin to sink into his week of leisure. He glances back and forth between the strip of paper in his hand and the shelves in front of him, makes sure he is not missing anything, and heads to the cashier. Although their fridge at home does not ever run out of some form of liquor, he takes a few cans of beer and a bottle of wine along with his basketful of ingredients and random snacks just to be sure. You never know how much alcohol you might need.
The line towards the cashier is not very long but the person ahead of him encounters issues with her payment. This might take a few more minutes. Ten looks away, not wanting to eavesdrop or seem meddlesome, and lets his eyes wander aimlessly again.
Until they can’t. At that moment, his eyes are suddenly forced to aim and catch a familiar dark brown gaze several aisles from where he is.
Even with this distance, he could sense those dark eyes widen the faintest bit. And for five seconds, everything is beautiful and horrible, and Ten does not know whether he would suffocate or breathe the clearest for the first time in a long time.
It is only when the owner of the gaze disappears from view that Ten gasps for a breath or two more, decides he is desperate for the way he used to breathe here in this town, like this, like every inhale is impossible and every exhale is impossibly easy, like every heave shatters him and yet somehow puts his body at peace. Ten needs to see him.
The conspicuous cough from behind him in line—courtesy of the middle-aged man with an overflowing trolly—jolts him back to what he actually needs to be doing. Ten rattles a quick apology at the cashier lady who has been waiting for him to place his groceries on the counter. Thankfully, his hands move faster than his thoughts could keep up with as they continue to struggle against what just happened. If it really was the boy who taught him how to breathe, then why did he avoid him so fast? That, or well, why meet his gaze at all? When he finally picks up the bag of groceries, the cashier lady has an incomprehensible expression on her face—worried? scared? curious?—as though she is peering at a pitiful ghost. Ten nods at her with an almost smile.
Maybe that’s it, Ten sighs, relieved for now. Maybe I just saw a ghost. Surely there are many ghosts meandering around supermarket aisles in dreary towns. Surely people like Ten leave a lot of ghosts behind.
---
Quite a bit of a wonderboy in his elementary years, Ten had learned to impress early in life.
While his parents always told him to do what he wanted as long as he did not have failing grades, the times he dazzled his teachers in elementary school locked him up to expectations of excellence—which he admittedly found quite enjoyable in the beginning as a small creature of the limelight, but eventually found suffocating as a teenager wanting to misbehave his way into his own person. Still, surviving his years through middle school and high school in this backdrop, a small consolation to the whole ordeal was that he was a unicorn, but he wasn’t the only unicorn.
There was another like him named Taeyong, and every busybody in town made sure both of them knew it.
Taeyong was short of a year older than Ten. But because of the younger boy’s precocious little kindergarten self, they let him enroll earlier into first grade. For many years, Ten has wondered a lot about how different his life would have been if his parents did not take up that offer out of convenience. But here we were.
Needless to say, Taeyong and Ten remained the smartest—by the Korean educational system’s standards, anyway—in their batch. At the end of every term, class rankings would be posted and Ten’s name would appear at the top of the list, second only to Taeyong, or vice versa. At first, this made him feel competitive, until he realized it did not even take much effort to remain at either position. So Ten stopped checking the lists when he finished 9th grade and began high school, only to be updated by eternally nosy friends like Haechan and Mark.
Whenever their class had to prepare skits or presentations for Korean class, the teacher acted on autopilot and always assigned Ten and Taeyong as leaders. Whenever the time of the year came around for a school trip, Ten ushered one line of students in and out of the bus, Taeyong the parallel. And whether it was basketball or football, their PE teachers no longer asked for volunteers, immediately asking Ten and Taeyong to rock-paper-scissors their way into dividing the class. Some classmates used to roll their eyes and complain. But nobody else could come close to them on any end, anyway.
Ten and Taeyong’s eyes always clashed in these moments, as if acknowledging some mutual responsibility to entertain.
If anybody cared to look more closely though, Ten was a little quicker at memorizing plant specimens in biology and Taeyong was a little quicker at solving algebra equations. Ten had a little more grace when they tried out ballet and Taeyong had a little more ease in picking up the pitch in music class. Ten’s experimental art stood out better and Taeyong’s technical drawing skills received slightly higher praise. Ten was a little more agile in the water and aced swimming, and Taeyong was a little more at home with the wind running through his face as he ran in track.
And so Ten understood it. He understood why people thought they were out for each other’s throats—even pushed them to be—as much and as often as he wondered why people didn’t rather think they made sense of each other like puzzle pieces that fit together.
Still, Ten was thankful for the way he was urged by teachers and classmates—or pretty much everyone he knew at school and their parents and their neighbors, save perhaps for the jealous few—to compete. While they did not have any serious intentions beyond a silly little rivalry to giggle at, it did make him more than ready to survive everything, including a cutthroat life in the city now. At the time, it also made him more than willing to participate in the school’s silly little game. It made him more than naïve about provocation.
While Ten caught no malice in the older boy’s eyes—they were children after all—at times their classmates hollered and wolfwhistled to pit them against each other—with Haechan being the most present of all—Taeyong still got to him. Whenever this happened, the blank, perhaps almost shy, expression in the older boy’s face frustrated him more.
And though Taeyong was some good inches taller than Ten even then, the younger would tap the other’s chest with a knuckle and tilt his head to the side in a dare during sports matches. He would throw lightning insults every so often when he won. He would argue to his death during debates and lift a finger in the other’s face to intimidate. And sometimes, when Taeyong recited in class discussions, even though it did not require any antagonistic participation from him, Ten still raised a cocky eyebrow or sneaked a snide remark.
As these things go, however, it came as no surprise that the collapse began through Ten himself. It was almost the end of junior year, a period simultaneously made busy by fatal exams—oh definitely fatal to the teenagers they were—and painted dull with the promise of an almost there summer. In the vivid orange of the late June sun piercing through windows and staining wet floors, Ten sat by the poolside, mouth shut for once.
Of all the things he lost to Taeyong, it had be the one thing he was sure to be his.
It was not that bad, not at all. Ten still beat his own record by a tiny bit and received an A for his final grade in swimming. But given his confidence that Taeyong always missed him by a few seconds in their races—the coach, at some point, tried his best to clarify that the final exams weren’t real races and their true competitors were only their previous selves, a speech which just sounded really dumb—Ten could not understand what happened. And given Ten's concentrated efforts in the last leg of the semester towards provoking Taeyong—who just remained calm and composed, was he a goddamned marble statue—losing to him in swimming hit like a huge fucking insult.
Ten eventually stood up from the poolside and seethed his way into the locker rooms. Good thing most students were still busy with their own turn in the exams, so only the first round finishers were there. And noticing how rigid Ten’s posture was, even those few ones moved away and gave him space. He didn’t know yet whether he was above shoving any of them or even denting a locker in this state, but he was thankful to find out he wasn’t that pathetic. Perhaps a different shade of pathetic, though, as he slumped on a bench and started crying.
Soon enough, an equally frail figure slumped beside him. Silence danced between the boys, hand-in-hand with their uncertainty, for a minute or two. Suddenly, Taeyong’s soft laugh.
For a moment, anger clouded over Ten’s face and pain pinched at somewhere near his ribs. Turning towards the boy beside him—who was now trying to hide his chuckle into a less invasive smile—Ten’s own eyebrows scrunched, clueless. When Taeyong’s eyes met his for the first time in close proximity, both of them exploded into laughter together.
“This isn’t very fun, is it?” Reluctant pause. “I’m tired.”
“Yeah, me too. And yeah, I guess it’s all fucking stupid.”
And when the boys talked openly for what felt like the first time, all the made up tension between them really did seem stupid. As apology and truce, they agreed not to run for student council in their final year, and to take things easy together, finally turning the joke on everyone else.
Ten doesn’t remember who spoke first that day they laughed together, not that it matters anymore, if it ever did.
---
If Ten is to be honest now in hindsight, all the attention from people in town made him feel like he belonged in it less. It did not ever have drastic consequences on him, but still, it was bothersome being watched for the many things he proved to be good at. And so, wanting to learn what he could love, the growing boy began to keep a few things to himself.
While it had sometimes been fun to give his all in all those sports, especially on field day with its vibrant colors and pulsating energy, he knew his athletic skills were not a definitive part of him or his future. And while he had his moments showing off in quiz bees and humblebragging about his exam results, they did not do much else but inflate his ego. The two things that Ten did not bare completely for his audience were dance and art, and so they also became the two things he enjoyed the most.
In dance class at school, students dipped their feet into various genres, if only to comply with the curriculum. But Ten loved the way his body could carry out the most exquisite of movements—sharp as daggers at times, fluid as satin at others—and he felt no need for many to witness it in its entirety. With his parents’ permission, he enrolled himself in hiphop and contemporary dance classes at a simple studio somewhere in Gwangju, which was an hour away by bus, and spent most Saturdays there.
With art, he was mostly self-taught. Plopping himself on the bean bag in his room, sketchbook at hand, he often let himself loose on the page. Of course, he did have to turn in some of his works for school, but mostly he reserved them for an anonymous online portfolio he set up. Sometimes, he would gift some of his drawings and tattoo studies to his friends on Christmases or their birthdays. This particularly delighted Mark though his own parents would never allow him to get a tattoo, maybe not even in old age.
When Ten danced or drew, it offered him a nameless pleasure that scared him sometimes too, with the dark turns his ink took or the dangerous ways his body flowed. Not that he could stop or look away.
Gaining a small bit of traction online, his art received regard from strangers. Under an overwhelming wall of inked eyes and rune-like figures posted with a caption of “last one for now!! will be on indefinite hiatus to review for the suneung (*o*)”, one comment said that he should apply to an art program for college.
The time did come for college applications, and the time did come for their results. And Ten acquired a fully paid scholarship to a prestigious university in Seoul. Several thoughts at once flashed in his mind, the first one being I can get out of here.
In his quietest moments, alone in his room and wide awake at mid-morning, Ten knew his deepest fears: not getting to see the world, maybe finishing an accounting or engineering degree, finding a lucrative enough office job somewhere, one he could commit to for fourty years, or maybe taking over his father’s business, not getting to experience effervescent cities, marrying a friend’s cousin whom he would meet at a blind date, in turn attending Tern’s wedding with one of his friends, bringing their children to playgrounds, having a car and a pretty enough house… and not ever getting out of this goddamned town.
Nothing was actually wrong with this life, it made for a good enough story, Ten knows now. But at the time he also knew it was just wrong for him.
And just like that, art became Ten’s one-way ticket out of a life that assured him stability and shook him to his core.
---
In those last Saturdays of the bus ride to Gwangju, the fragile boy wrapped his oversized jackets tighter around himself and tucked his chin between his knees, which he lifted on his bus seat. Trees passed like a picturesque blur and the wind often made him shiver. But nothing distracted Ten from the thought that he would finally graduate high school—which he looked forward to—and might have to give up dancing for good—which he did not. After all, he didn’t know what busy schedules laid ahead in his near future as a college student in Seoul. With a devotion one could insufficiently describe as religious, he still attended his dance classes, and danced better than he ever did every time.
Only that meant he danced far more intensely in those weekends, too, than he ever did before in his life. Five minutes in, his sweat would start as a drizzle then suddenly flow like a flood inevitable. A few moments later, he would start losing feeling in his limbs because of feeling too much, and all that would be left is an insane rhythm his body would not dare break.
His teacher warned him against this. She reiterated the importance of warming up and pacing yourself time and time again, but Ten’s stubbornness had proved inscrutable. One day in December, Ten’s nose bled in the middle of practicing a routine, which made his teacher both concerned and relieved as she could finally say I told you so.
But that was not the last I told you so Ten heard as he came back in the following Saturdays unconvinced. He still worked himself to the bone in the two or three-hour sessions he had in the studio, determined to make the most of the months he had left. It was late January, only a brief period after the nosebleed incident, when he put all his mortal strength in a complex sequence of plural pirouettes followed by a drop to prostrate position, and when he missed moving his feet by a half-beat. That was how he ended up with a knee injury. His teacher rushed him to the emergency room and called his parents.
With a mild fracture on his kneecap and a commitment to around two months of full rest and longer months of recovery, Ten did not know when else he would ever get to dance again. While the doctor assured that he would heal in time for the end of his senior year and his graduation, perhaps some time before finals so he could still enjoy what was left of his high school days, Ten knew he already lost the Saturdays he tried his best to hold onto.
In those weeks resting at home, Ten almost lost his mind at his body, a body forced to be still and idle. So he poured all his energy into drawing and studying, whatever helped him retain some semblance of a routine. When they first heard of what happened, Mark and Haechan hurriedly visited him, bringing with them a basket of fruits and the stuff Ten left at school.
“Don’t worry!” Mark immediately exclaimed at Ten’s suspicious face at the strawberries, apples, and oranges. “We just didn’t want to go empty-handed.”
“Yeah, Ten, who says you’re special. These are for uncle and auntie.” Haechan added with a grin before uncovering the chocolate they sneaked in underneath the fruits.
Mark and Haechan were also the ones who took it upon themselves to update Ten on what was happening at school, on what chapter to read or what assignment to accomplish, sometimes coercing him into working on them together and offering their notes. Mark’s notes were organized yet quite sparse, and some pages had more questions than useful information; Haechan’s messy pages and sunflower doodles, on the other hand, just reaffirmed to Ten how smart the boy was by nature when he scarcely tried yet could almost compete with the top students. And while they made him laugh more than they helped him study, their constant company was its own form of help. And so, Ten’s Saturdays did not have to be hollow, except maybe when he is alone again, heavy in his bed at daybreak or struggling to shower. Such moments were an invitation to remember what happened.
At around 10 am one Saturday, which was way too early for Ten in the stretch of time following the accident—especially since he did not usually have anything planned except to expect Mark and Haechan—his mom came to his door and called out that his friend was there.
Weird. Ten was used to his two friends coming after lunch. They knew full well about his recent discovery of the joy of sleeping in. At this point, Ten still had to wear his knee and leg cast, but he can already stand up and walk around a little with the help of crutches. Annoyed and barely awake, he washed his face in a hurry and put on a hoodie to look halfway decent. Ten jumped when he heard another knock. Already?
He nearly flinched again when he opened his door and found Taeyong. Needless to say, Ten was fully awake by now. Before he could think of anything beyond what the fuck, he was already letting his visitor in.
“Hi.”
“Hi hi?”
“I just thought maybe you would want to catch up on some school work?” Taeyong ran his hand through his hair and looked as though he was grasping at what to say next. The awkwardness was also palpable to Ten, perhaps more so, as they did not really hang out even after the swimming finals incident. When senior year started, they spoke at school several times, shared a joke or two, but never went past the usual small talk; their relationship became much easier and more relaxed, of course, though not necessarily any closer. Which was why Taeyong standing in the middle of Ten’s bedroom, with his casual clothes and teddy bear-printed socks, backpack slung on one shoulder, felt quite… strange. Plus, the other boy looked more put together than he did, which pained Ten a little.
“Not that you’re behind on school work or anything—I’m sure you aren’t. Sorry! Mark just told me that it would be nice to visit and that they have ugly school notes? Not sure how that’s relevant though. And Haechan told me maybe I could reach out and make myself useful, since I looked bored or something, but I couldn’t tell if he was being serious or just teasing me. And, um, I’m not entirely sure what to make of what they both said, which is why I’m here?”
“Haechan harassed you about missing your rival, didn’t he?”
“Guess that’s one way to put it, huh.” Taeyong returned Ten’s slight chuckle. “I did have the sense they’re just worried about you. With what happened, guess we’re all a little worried. Our classmates and teachers, I mean.”
“Thanks?” Ten was not sure what to feel, but he was sure it was making him talk in so many question marks.
Taeyong’s gaze was suddenly piercing in its earnestness. “Everything will be okay, right?”
Ten cut right through it with a self-induced cough. “Doctor said I’ll be alright in a couple more weeks. I’m recovering just fine. Maybe I’m the one a little bored is all, to be honest.”
“Then good thing I brought these.” Taeyong grinned, opened his bag, and held out his textbooks and notebooks to the boy standing through crutches.
“God, I haven’t even had breakfast yet. You’re really bringing the school vibe here. Which is to say congratulations, I already want to hurl myself out the window.”
“You’re not gonna fool me, I know you like studying.” Taeyong was then dead serious, smile almost invisible, the ghost of it only lacing the corners of his lips and mischieviously hiding in his big round eyes. “I’m your rival, remember?”
“So are we back to that years-long stint?” Ten rolled his eyes but took the notebooks from Taeyong’s hands. If he had a breath to catch, he would reflect about how fast it took to feel secure around each other in the midst of it all, but he was already preoccupied with inviting the other boy to sit on his bed or bean bag, who chose to sit on the floor with his legs crossed instead.
Surrounded by books and notebooks and pens and highlighters and bundles of paper, the boys shared effortless conversation with silence filling the in-betweens. A silence unguarded, uncomplicated.
When Ten’s mom brought them brunch, Taeyong looked so shy that Ten had to giggle. The afternoon came and exhaustion set in. A mutual agreement was born not to touch homework again for the day. And that’s how they ended up watching a movie while huddled under a blanket because the early spring air still came with a chill, knees brushing against each other’s. The ending credits started, and the conversation took a fervent turn as they debated about the protagonist’s decisions. When Ten’s mom knocked once again to tell their visitor to just stay for dinner, Taeyong smiled and thanked her, not quite as bashful anymore. It was already half past seven in the evening when he started to put his things away in his backpack.
“By the way, Ten, just so we’re clear?” As he was leaving, Taeyong’s hand patting Ten’s head was gentle. Too gentle that he didn’t have to say see you later. Still: “No more weird stints or tricks, but you knew that already. So… Friends?”
Ten nodded in a daze. A daze that lasted beyond sleep and until the next morning.
His Saturdays continued with a rhythm of fluctuating visitors—with Mark, Haechan, and Taeyong arriving alone, in pairs, or altogether—until he was almost fully recovered. At one point, Taeyong even managed to convince him to also have Yuta and Sicheng come over, a visit punctuated with Ten’s exclamation: “Oh my god, so loud. Why is there a goddamned party in my room?”
Ten resumed his weekdays with them at school, and his Saturdays then became hospital visits for his outpatient recovery. When it was finally time to remove his knee cast, everyone could not let it go without performing the quintessential ritual of doodling and signing, colorful permanent markers ready. Haechan, of course, had to put the biggest signature, thus granting Taeyong’s tiny hearts and “glad I’ll get to hang out with you outside your room now (but the past weeks were nice too!)” only a tiny space towards the edge.
For some reason, that day was a bit more monumental to Ten than graduation, which followed a month and a half later. The last weeks of his high school years were almost ironically forgettable, with an array of exams and random class photoshoots and sentimental bouts of tears from teachers. Perhaps that was why it may have seemed too clichéd for Ten to feel much at all.
The summer after, however, was an entirely different story. Everything reeked of how he and his friends, young and desperate, ached to know what’s next. And everything ached, vibrant and unbearable, with whether they wanted what’s next to hurry the fuck up or to stop it all from coming. Also determined to catch up on what he missed while holed up in his room, Ten put his college preparations on hold for a minute and lived every summer day without consequence.
---
Ten’s first piercing was made with a safety pin they stole from Taeyong’s sister.
Lazing around in Taeyong's room after getting tired of playing cards, the two of them decided to make a list of things they wanted to get over with during that summer. And when Ten wrote, a few seconds after they just began, that he wanted to pierce his ears, it also took Taeyong only a few seconds to jump out of bed and return with the weapon in question. “Really? Now?” Ten managed to mumble. The smirk he received meant that he had not much choice but to do this, to sit in front of the mirror and ready himself to check one item off—so far—his one-item bucket list.
Taeyong got tissues and alcohol from his drawer, smart enough to sanitize the things they needed. He also brought out a pretty black box with a tiny black ribbon. Inside it, a pair of stud earrings. Panic rose in Ten’s chest as he could not figure out whether to agree to this, especially since he did not know where the earrings came from or whom they were for.
Hundreds of thoughts pranced in his mind—did Taeyong have a girlfriend? How come I haven’t met her yet? Does he not trust me enough or does he just like to keep things private? Why is he giving this to me for a stupid bucket list thing then? Or is this for his mom or sister? So then why is he giving it to me—and his panic made itself obvious. Stealing a safety pin was one thing, stealing someone else’s gift seemed to be another.
Seeing the look in Ten's face, Taeyong rolled his eyes and said, “Oh, just take it. I also wanted to pierce my own ears but never had the time or courage to go through with it yet. Might as well throw you to the fire first, yeah?” Ten wanted to wipe the stupid grin off Taeyong’s face at that moment. “And don’t chicken out, we’ll have lots of stuff to cover for this summer, I’m sure. It’s only just begun.”
“Okay, fine.” He sighed, still unsure but more relieved. But before his thoughts could resume flickering about whatever Taeyong said and what it meant instead or how it changed anything, the taller boy was already leaning forward and wiping his left ear clean. And Ten watched it in the mirror, trying not to flinch. With the sudden contact of their skin and the cold of the alcohol, his breath hitched like a rusty machine getting started for the first time in a long while.
“I don’t know how this will go either, but trust me, the power of Youtube tutorials got my back.” Taeyong laughed and told Ten to hold his breath, unaware that the boy had already been doing so since forever ago. Holding the needle between his fingers, Taeyong counted 1… 2… 3… and pushed it in. While the sensation of the initial prick made Ten gasp, the dull throbbing afterwards was not so bad. It was more uncomfortable than painful, but Ten felt somehow pleased and proud at how it felt. Still, he was growing impatient as Taeyong took minutes to pierce all the way to the back.
“Is it… Is it supposed to take this long?”
“Clearly, I’m not gonna have a career in this, but I think it’s going in fine so far? Also, shut up, I’m doing this for you for free, babe.” If Ten’s attention wasn’t so commanded by the throbbing in the lobe of his right ear, that babe would’ve garnered a cheeky response. Or not. It also could’ve made him freeze and spiral like the idiot he was. As it turned out, they weren’t complete idiots after all as they managed to finish pushing the safety pin all the way through and replacing it with the stud earring after a few minutes of waiting. “So how was it? Did it hurt?”
“This is pretty.” Ten peered more closely at the mirror, taking in the way the clear stone decorated his ear. While the skin was a little sore and tainted by redness, the result was nothing he did not expect and everything he wanted. “And I was fine with how it hurt. I think I may have liked it?”
“The pain. You liked it.” Taeyong raised his eyebrows, incredulous. “I could hear your breathing, you know, so stop lying.”
“But I’m not? I swear I’m not.”
“Alright then, once you’re done appreciating how amazing I made you look, maybe we can scratch this thing off your list and add new things already. That okay?”
And so, when they spent the rest of the afternoon mocking all the stupid things the other would write down—such as Taeyong’s buy pet fish and name them after his friends, and Ten’s learn how to fry things without destroying them which would come in handy soon—Ten nearly forgot that the boy he was sitting with could control the way he breathed with only the slightest touch. The boy could, perhaps, control all the ways Ten would live his life with only the softest plea. If only he wanted to. On his way home, Ten realized he forgot to even thank Taeyong for the piercing. But they had time for that later. Or some of it. Whether it was enough time was a question he could not bother with.
---
Ten’s first kiss was their friend named Sicheng. Sicheng was a pretty boy who had the face of a young god—and at the tender age of eighteen, Ten was finding out exactly how and how much he liked pretty things.
Everyone was lazing around in his house again, one summer Wednesday after they went swimming, and while Mark had already gone home for the evening, Haechan single-handedly resolved he was sleeping over. With Yuta taking a family vacation in Japan, Taeyong only had Sicheng to drag with him in these hangouts, and both of them were persuaded by Haechan’s pouts and nauseously sweet voice to stay the night as well.
Morbid sounds of video games resonated in Ten’s room with Taeyong and Haechan’s ongoing competitive streak. In the middle of it, Sicheng asked the host to come with him to the convenience store for ice cream. And of course, despite their preoccupation with the computer screen, the other two shouted what they wanted including sausage, sweet potato chips, and ramyeon. On the way, the convenience store pair formulated a brilliant plan to prank the gamers by not coming back and bringing them their snacks.
“Let’s just go somewhere else we can hang out for a while. It’ll be fun!”
“You’re not just trying to murder me where no one can see, are you, hyung?”
“It’s also just my home, where you’ve been several times, and all those times I didn’t murder you, right?”
And that’s how Sicheng and Ten ended up in the latter’s rooftop, feet up on the daybed and eyes trained to the stars. Though they were in each other’s orbits in school, much like everyone involved with either Ten or Taeyong, the two of them never really got to spend long periods of time together until Ten’s injury, much less time alone. But here we were. They made sure to quiet down their jokes and laughter to not give away their location, which in itself was a peculiar sight, but Ten found himself genuinely enjoying Sicheng’s company.
At eighteen, Ten had not yet considered the idea of properly flirting with or dating anyone, whatever that looked like, the same way he always tended to flirt with just about everyone, and it wasn’t like he harbored a secret attraction to Sicheng, besides the fact that just about everyone found Sicheng attractive to some degree. But it was the summer of no consequence, perhaps his last teenage summer in this godforsaken town. And here was a beautiful boy who was stranger and acquaintance and too fucking close all at once.
So at a lull in the conversation, with not much better to do and a desperation to rush through what he could of growing up—a desperation washing over his body yet again—Ten told himself to stop thinking, damn it. He wiped the corner of Sicheng’s mouth with his thumb, the sticky drop of ice cream gone. He then replaced his thumb with his own lips, pressing on the edge of Sicheng’s with a hesitant softness, and slyly missing a perfect fit, so that the beautiful boy would do it himself. And a second later—much to Ten’s surprise and pleasure—Sicheng did, and even angled Ten’s face so that their tongues would meet perfectly. And for some careless minutes, that was that.
When they heard Haechan’s complaints and threats and footsteps, Ten and Sicheng broke away and smiled at each other, giddy at the prospect of a summer secret. And when they ran back to his room and Taeyong’s unreadable face, Ten knew what Sicheng knew too: that was that. Perhaps in the future, Ten would remember in fond rosiness the way Sicheng awkwardly placed a hand on his frail shoulder, perhaps he would hope the beautiful boy could remember him in a similar rosy light.
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What Ten did not foresee was the devious way his mind would use the boy who kissed him back that clear July night under the stars as an excuse. Because the first song Ten ever tried to write was for him, too.
In exchange for assistance in dyeing Taeyong’s hair an electric blue, Ten proposed that the other boy teach him how to write songs or help him write one, at least. By now, he has seen the worn guitar at Taeyong’s bedside countless times, even heard him play his own songs at rare moments of surrender when he would get tired of Ten’s nagging. And so, after hours of suffering together with the bleach and hair dye in Taeyong’s bathroom, Ten countered with an offer, mildly aware of what this could set in motion.
“So I was thinking, maybe I can get Sicheng to date me. Do you think you can help me write a song to, like, ask him out? It’s not a bad idea, right?” This was a long shot. Everyone knew he was leaving for Seoul in a very short while. And though he and Sicheng did continue talking to each other in private after that July night, nothing about it teased at any profound romantic feelings. A funny little romance during certain jokes, maybe, perhaps even an unpredictable friendship, but never anything meaningful enough to brave through a long distance relationship. And even thinking about the possibility of it made Ten chuckle, so why was he here, standing on blue-splattered bathroom tiles, propositioning another boy to write a song with him for Sicheng?
“Didn’t peg you as a romantic.” Why Taeyong’s tone sounded like a dare, Ten could not understand either.
“You’d be surprised at how you’re both right and wrong with that assumption.” Ten took the dare, anyway.
Two days later, they would sit together on Taeyong’s bedroom floor in search of phrases that made sense, counting syllables and humming endless melodies. Taeyong’s fingers would strum at his guitar, flawless and fragile, even with the lack of a lucid rhythm for the song yet. And the way the veins on his arms constantly captured Ten’s line of sight scared the younger boy to no end. As they scribbled lyrics about summer nights and swimming pools and rooftops and first kisses, scrapping lines every so often and passing his pocket sketchbook back and forth between their hands, the realization of why he needed this favor began to weigh on Ten. Whether he was allowed to say it even to himself, he didn’t know.
Somewhere between finishing the song’s chorus and letting Taeyong let him sing the half-finished draft by himself, Ten could no longer avoid the feeling that something was very wrong here. And the feeling was neither shame nor guilt, but in his chest, the constricting had no name. Just the pang of a pain impending. And as Ten finished singing what they have so far with a barely audible hum, this promise of pain made it difficult to even look at Taeyong.
“How come you don’t sing more? I, um, I think you should.” And then there it was, the tender utterance that Taeyong just could not resist in giving away. Well, how come you have to say things like this, Ten wanted to whisper.
Instead: “Well, I sang just enough in school to ace our tests. It’s just, I’m already breathtaking enough in sports, arts, dancing, you know?” He said this with a wink. In reality, he was diffusing the weight he did not want to bear, not at this point, by relying on the same narcissistic comebacks from their old rivalry. “Don’t want to show off more than I already do.”
“I know.” Taeyong mumbled in all seriousness.
“What?” ...the fuck. Ten finally peered at the other boy to express his confusion. There was no going back.
“But that’s not what I meant.” For some reason, it was then the blue-haired boy who would not meet Ten’s curious stare as he continued speaking. Ten could not blame him. He would also look away from Taeyong’s face if he could, but he couldn’t anymore. Not then. “I meant, it’s nice to hear your voice like this. It makes me feel like I am seeing you, as in seeing you—Okay, wait, that doesn’t make sense. But it makes me feel like you’re showing a different part of yourself. Like a version of you that’s a bit more raw than, like, when you do things you’re dead set on pursuing, or things you’re annoyingly confident at. I don’t know, okay? You just sound good when you sing like that. When you sing like… like it’s easy.” At this point, the older boy was rambling and Ten wanted so badly to shut him up.
“Are you saying you don’t like my dancing or my art because I try so hard?” If making comments like these could prevent him from being reckless with his friend, from throwing away months of their friendship to the goddamned fire, then he would just keep taunting him all night.
Somewhere along the way though, Ten could no longer deny he felt more for the boy he was writing the song with, than the boy he was writing the song for.
“What? No, not at all!” Taeyong’s denial sounded like he wanted to cry. Or to bolt out of his own room and maybe out of the other’s life. Or that’s how Ten’s dramatic self thought of it. When Taeyong reached across him to lean the guitar on the bedside, Ten’s breath hitched again. “God, you know sometimes you make it so fucking hard to compliment you?”
“Yeah, we’ve been rivals since forever, baby. Rivals don’t really practice complimenting each other.”
“See? That is exactly what I mean. I try—I try to, like, talk to you about how your singing makes me feel things and suddenly I don’t know what the fuck is happening—” His rant got cut off with his own sigh. And then there it was. Neither crying nor running away, Taeyong just lodged his forehead on the crook of Ten’s neck. His breath was so warm. Too warm. It burned.
“Have you considered maybe you should just stop talking?” Though his words were still sharp, Ten’s voice betrayed them with how small it came out. Call it perhaps the contagion of Taeyong’s tenderness. He even managed a laugh.
“Fine.” And as Taeyong exhaled that one syllable, the air from between his lips lingered on Ten’s collar. Despite the burning, Ten shivered. Unable to stop the bedroom walls from closing in around them and the bedroom floors from dropping beneath, the only thing Ten could do was move closer to Taeyong, the blue-haired boy silent now just like he asked for.
“Fine.” Ten echoed, his lips remaining slightly parted as though more words wanted to flow out any minute now. He cradled the other boy’s face with one hand, tilted it slightly upwards so that he would turn towards him with those brown eyes—bright, wonderstruck, perhaps relentlessly curious. Perhaps the prettiest. Though at present, they were nothing near what Ten was used to. Taeyong gazed at him with both intensity and resignation—a gaze moving from his eyes to his nose to his cheeks, down to his chin and jaw, and then stopping right where it was too much. Inch by slow torturous inch, Ten could no longer stop himself from closing their distance and leaning down until—
The guitar fell beside them. A cacophony of brass strings echoed in the air and stopped the room from caving in around Ten and Taeyong, which made both boys shift away from how they were sitting on the floor, faces too close together. Taeyong had been the first to cut through whatever fucking haze was causing his bedroom to collapse.
“Should we, um… Should we finish the song?” Taeyong asked. Ten pursed his lips and sat perfectly still, shoulders down and expression showing no signs that he planned to respond. Taeyong, worried now, followed up. “You’re okay, right? If you’re tired, we can just hang out and play cards or something?”
“Yeah, I’m—I just remembered I have to get started on packing my things, hopefully today, so I can’t stay here until late.”
“Oh.” Taeyong looked like he didn’t want to talk anymore either. But unlike Ten, he could never handle being cruel. Taeyong was kind, and so he would continue offering all that he can. “Then I can walk you home or—”
Ten just shook his head. Why do you have to be so good to me every fucking time.
“Yeah, that would be stupid, because I’m home. We’re in my bedroom.” The older boy laughed a hollow laugh, but then his face softened into a familiar smile. “I guess I’ll see you tomorrow and help you with whatever you have to do then.”
They did not speak of all the things they left unfinished afterwards. Not the song, not the almost touching of lips, not the conversation that did not go anywhere. Ten wondered the next day if the entirety of the previous one was just a figment of his fickle mind, almost gravely prayed that it was, but when he bared his sketchbook’s pages, his and Taeyong’s handwriting provided enough evidence, like scabs of razor thin scratches on delicate skin.
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In the days that followed, Taeyong helped Ten tidy up his room and pack his things for moving away to Seoul. They sifted through his wardrobe and decided what shirts or jackets or hats looked cool enough for a college boy, mocking each other and laughing despite themselves. Everything was how it was supposed to be, if only for those little afternoons.
Ten knew that Taeyong was also helping out Mark and Haechan plan his send-off party. They assigned Sicheng and Yuta—who was now back from his vacation—with menial tasks, and coordinated with his parents—who were too parental and thus too emotional to take over the preparations. This, despite being consoled by him that Seoul was only about four hours away by car and they could visit him instead if he was too busy to come home. And here in the midst of it all, again, Taeyong was offering all that he can.
The morning that Ten was finally set to leave town—if not forever, then at least for the bigger part of the next few years, save for inescapable holidays and birthday weekends—Taeyong appeared at the bus stop. Unnecessarily, Ten thought, if only to hold himself together. The older boy sneaked him a snack for the bus ride and removed the watch from his own wrist to slide onto Ten’s. Not having enough time to register that Taeyong was giving him a gift yet again, Ten said nothing more than thanks in return. Perhaps with a certain gravity, however, for the first time in their friendship.
And with the same piercing earnestness he brought that day he visited the injured boy, Taeyong said goodbye in the kindest, cruelest way. “Everything will be okay, right?”
This time, it wasn’t a bone, but another thing deeper inside Ten’s body breaking.