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Ten had his first kiss with a boy on the back of a bus at night, their heads hidden behind a towel and their teeth clacking together as the bus lurched over a pothole on the way home from Ko Samet. It was the last field trip of middle school. They’d kissed on a dare, their laughs barely suppressed behind tightly sealed lips while a group of their classmates hooted fondly at them.
Ten cannot for the life of him remember the boy’s name. Trying to recall this detail of this particular memory feels like trying to piece together a memory from someone else’s life – impossible and ultimately pointless, and strangely like an invasion of privacy.
Teenage Ten can keep the memory for himself, locked safely away from Adult Ten, because Adult Ten remembers the name of the boy who gave him the first real kiss that mattered.
///
The gravel crunches loudly under the tires of the taxi as it pulls up to the house. Ten feels the nerves start to blister in his stomach, unable to ignore the feeling any longer. He pulls his headphones out of his ears – he’d been playing a few song demos on repeat since he’d gotten off the plane, listening but not really hearing – wraps them into a loose tangle, and shoves them into his tote bag.
The house is set far back from the main road, so the driveway had taken the taxi through the sandy brush and past low, rocky hills for at least five minutes before they’d been within eyeshot of the house. Johnny had booked the place, and Ten had no idea what it looked like – at Johnny’s insistence, of course. All he’d been given was the address and Johnny’s assurance that “you’ll love it, trust me.”
Johnny is mostly right. After paying and thanking the driver, Ten stands with his tote and his suitcase at the base of the house, staring up at it in mild amusement. It’s modernist and boxy, with white stucco walls and wide, tinted windows, verging on the edge of garish but brought down to earth by the rustic wooden door and the overgrown succulent garden out front. It’s charming, in a surprising way. Very Johnny.
After the taxi drives away, Ten is left by himself with the sound of the wind stirring the grass, the seagulls jeering overhead, and the hum of the main road barely audible over the crash of ocean waves hidden beyond the far side of the house.
He checks his phone for the forwarded email from the house’s owner, providing bilingual instructions on how to find the lock box with the keys for the front door. Ten leaves his suitcase in the shade to poke around, eventually finding it beneath a lichen-covered rock a few steps from the front door. Still squatting down, he punches in the code, pops open the box, and pulls out a pair of keys dangling on a silver ring.
The door is heavier than it looks, and it opens finally with a shove and a curse. Ten drags his suitcase over the threshold into the quiet, shaded entryway. He toes off his sandals then slips his feet into one of the complementary pairs of guest slippers, leaving the keys on the hook by the door to make his way further inside.
Up a few steps, the front vestibule opens into a spacious inner area, with a modern kitchen to the right and a living area to the left, where the dark blue line of the ocean cuts across the view out the back door. Drawn to the sun, Ten makes his way through the living room, looking appraisingly at the trendy pastel-colored furniture and leafy plants lining the floor and shelves, to the glass door at the back of the house. The door slides open easily, and a gust of summer wind hits Ten’s face the moment he steps out onto the deck, bathing him in warmth and the familiar scent of salt. The ocean always makes him a little homesick, but the feeling isn’t unwelcome.
And the view – the view must have been why Johnny chose the house. The deck overlooks a small lawn, where the mown grass quickly gives way to greenish-grey sea grass and wild shrubs, and then to a wide expanse of dark, volcanic stone, littered with tide pools that yawn then get swallowed up as the waves gently surge and recede. There’s a resort down the beach to their right, but far enough away that it can be easily ignored by a tilt of the head. A fishing boat near the horizon blares its horn, and Ten smiles. Okay, Johnny was fully right. He does love it.
Right as Ten checks the time on his phone – it’s just past four in the afternoon, half an hour before Johnny’s estimated arrival time – it buzzes in his hand with a KaTalk message from the man himself.
Johnny hyung: about to leave the rental car place, be there soon!
Okay! Ten types back quickly, then slides his phone into the pocket of his shorts. He rests his palms on the smooth wood of the railing, stares at the dark shape of the fishing boat, and inhales. It’s nice to have fresh air after spending so much time in the gridlock heat of Seoul. He tightens his grip on the railing until his fingernails sink into the seaspray-softened wood, exhales slowly, then pushes himself back into the house, the rhythm of his heartbeat wild in comparison to the steady thrum of waves against the rocks below.
///
There are two bedrooms in the house, about equal in size. Ten chooses the one with its own deck on the second floor, leaving the bedroom with the ensuite bathroom on the ground floor for Johnny. He unpacks quickly, placing his clothes in the dresser and leaving his toiletries in the hallway bathroom, before opening all the windows in the house (the ones he can reach, at least) and settling into one of the Adirondack chairs on the main deck.
He’s still sitting on the deck, splitting his attention between his phone and the ocean, when he hears the car drive up to the house. It makes his stomach leap into his ribcage, and he almost laughs at himself for his reaction. There’s nothing to be nervous about. It’s just Johnny. Johnny, whom he hasn’t seen in months. Johnny, who still has the dizzying ability to make Ten feel completely at ease and precariously on edge at the same time.
A car door slams. Ten stands up from his chair and leans against the railing. He pulls off his baseball cap and shakes out his hair, then changes his mind and puts the hat back on his head, this time with the brim facing backwards. He hears the front door opening – he’d left it unlocked – and then the heavy thump of a suitcase on wood. Very faintly he hears, “Oh, nice,” in Korean, and then footsteps, and then –
Ten spins around just as Johnny steps through the open glass door and out onto the porch. He’s dressed casual in a patterned short sleeve button-up and Puma joggers, his hair dark and parted down the middle, a smile wide and comfortable on his face. He always seems taller than Ten remembers.
“I told you it was nice, right?” Johnny says in English.
“Yes, hyung, it’s very nice,” Ten responds, and Johnny laughs softly. Ten’s arms ache to capture Johnny in a hug, although they rarely do when they greet each other, but his limbs feel rigid, waiting for Johnny to step closer first. Johnny hesitates for a moment, like he’s waiting for Ten to give him a signal, his endless confidence and self-assuredness at war with this simple gesture. But then he laughs again and steps forward to pull Ten into a hug, squishing Ten’s face into the side of his neck. They pull apart after a breath, and Ten expects Johnny to step away, but Johnny doesn’t step away. Instead, Johnny leans down close to him, his index finger curved into a fish hook as he reaches towards the dangly blue earring in Ten’s right ear.
“These are pretty. Are they new?”
“Huh? No, they’re not,” Ten says, in shock at Johnny’s sudden closeness. He’s had the earrings for years.
“Oh,” Johnny says, straightening back up. “Anyway, I like them.”
“Thank you,” Ten replies, a little breathless.
Johnny rests his hands on his hips as he surveys the wide expanse of ocean before them. “Wow. It’s beautiful out today, isn’t it? I love this kind of weather.” His gaze slides back to Ten, and Ten nods. “How was your flight?”
“Not too bad,” Ten says honestly, grateful for Johnny taking the lead in the conversation. He leans back against the railing, facing away from the ocean, and flips his hat back around. The breeze stirs up the back of his shirt. “How was yours?”
“Can’t complain, can’t complain,” Johnny says. “Have you taken a look around the whole place yet?”
“The house? No, I mean, just quickly.”
“Mind giving me a tour?” Johnny is grinning from ear to ear. “Since you’re technically my guest house sunbaenim.”
“Ooh, I like the sound of that,” Ten says playfully, finding that his words with Johnny come as easily as sliding his feet into house slippers, even though his nerve-blistered stomach still sits, immovable, in his ribcage. “Guest house sunbaenim.”
Johnny chuckles, then gestures to the door. “Lead the way.”
So Ten does, feeling like a fourteen-year-old on the back of the bus instead of a twenty-nine-year-old sharing a Jeju Island pension for the weekend with his best friend of twelve years.
They walk together through the house, and Johnny opens the windows Ten couldn’t reach on his own. They peek into every cabinet and closet – Johnny opens every drawer in the house, just to be annoying and make Ten laugh – up into Ten’s bedroom and out onto his deck, and then back downstairs, ending in the kitchen. Johnny opens the door of the fridge and bends down to peer inside. “Damn, it’s empty. Ten, did you bring any food?”
“No, I didn’t think of it. Did you?” Ten says, looking up at Johnny from where he’d been checking out the appliances under the sink.
“No, but I drove past a mart on the way here.” Johnny checks his Rolex. “It’s only five, but I can drive over and pick up some stuff for dinner and the rest of the weekend. Get some beer, too, if you want.”
“Okay,” Ten says, standing up. “But I want to go with you.”
“You don’t have to,” Johnny says. “You can relax here, if you’re tired. You came here straight from the company, right?”
“I want to,” Ten says again. “And you don’t know what brand of beer I like.”
Johnny makes a face. “What? Yes I do!”
“Okay, which brand?”
Johnny opens his mouth, shuts it. “Wine?”
Against his better judgment, Ten laughs. “Close enough. Let’s go, hyung, I’m hungry.”
“Ye, sunbaenim.”
///
Johnny had rented a Jeep. It probably gets terrible mileage, and it’s a red so bright that it hurts, but Ten loves it. The top is down, because of course it is, and Johnny drives slowly with his left hand on the wheel and his right hand resting on the center console, his fingers tapping along to the radio. Ten hadn’t really been paying attention to his surroundings on the drive from the airport, but now he watches the island pass by with his cheek resting on his fist, his eyes snapping back and forth reflexively to take it all in. They’re not too far from town, only about twenty minutes, the short route inland taking them past hotels, guest houses, shops and eateries.
“That place looks good,” Ten says, half to himself, as they pass by a restaurant with a large digital sign advertising ocean-fresh jjamppong.
“Oh yeah,” Johnny says. “We should go for dinner one night.”
Ten hums in agreement, knowing they’ll never go, then settles deeper into the seat to snap pictures out the open window as they round a bend in the road and get another view of the ocean. Johnny slows down as they drive past a woman biking with a dog in the basket, then accelerates out of the turn.
As long as Ten has known him, he’s always been comfortable behind the wheel – a symptom of having been a teenager in America – and the drive is smooth, the asphalt like butter beneath their tires. Ten is lulled by it, rocked by the shifting momentum of the car over the winding road and the steady warmth of the early evening sun, by Johnny’s afterthought humming to the ballad on the radio. It’s nice, comfortable in a way that aches.
He is startled awake some time later – he’s not sure exactly how much later, but it can’t have been more than ten minutes – when Johnny ticks on the turning signal and swings the car easily into a parking space in front of the mart. Opening his eyes feels like stepping under a cold shower, and he blinks sheepishly when Johnny asks him if he’d fallen asleep.
Before entering, they both put on masks; Johnny keeps on his dark Ray-Bans, and Ten lowers the brim of his cap. Still, Johnny is almost comically recognizable, even with the disguise. He’s hard to miss.
They’ll be on the island for one full day, three including travel days – two nights total. It’s not very much time, but they get a lot of food anyway, bags of vegetables, ramyeon, pasta, frozen rice cakes, meat and charcoal for grilling. Johnny grabs a six-pack of German beer and a few bottles of soju, while Ten picks the wine.
“We need these, right?” Johnny says, holding up a bag of extra spicy shrimp chips on their way down the snack aisle.
“Sure, I like them.”
“Oh, we gotta get these,” Johnny says, reaching for the matcha-flavored gummy candies.
“Definitely, hyung,” Ten says, his mouth twitching into a smile.
“Are you kidding?” Johnny gasps, pulling the cart to a dramatic halt as he grabs a party-sized box of rainbow mini cupcakes from the bakery display. “We need these, Ten. Please. Ten.”
“We need them,” Ten agrees, helpless to play along, laughing when Johnny mouths thank you, thank you and sets the cupcakes carefully on top of their mountain of food with a self-satisfied grin.
///
It’s past six by the time they get back, the evening sun lighting up the western wall of the house. It takes two trips to get all the groceries into the house, even with Johnny carrying two heavy bags in each hand, and Ten is sweating a bit by the time they’re done. He peels off his sweatshirt then goes upstairs to change into a new shirt and check his work email, and when he pads back downstairs, Johnny is by the sink rinsing off the lettuce, alt R&B playing softly from his phone speaker. Johnny turns around and smiles when Ten enters the kitchen.
“Pass me the peppers?”
Ten fishes the peppers out of a plastic bag on the counter and hands them to Johnny as Johnny swaps the lettuce with him, then Ten dries the lettuce with a hand towel and sets it on a cutting board while Johnny rinses the peppers. “What are we making?”
“Well,” Johnny says, shaking the peppers into the sink to get rid of excess water. “I was thinking vegetable pasta and a salad to start, and then we can grill the pork on the deck later. Cupcakes for dessert, of course.”
“Of course,” Ten says, smiling down at the lettuce.
So they cook. Well – Johnny cooks, and Ten helps. Through the open windows, the breeze is cool and the sun is warm, their perspiring beers dripping onto the counters and their hands. Ten has way too much fun playing sous-chef for Johnny, the way they used to do it. Johnny still finds Ten’s mistakes endearing, somehow, laughing when he tries to cut an onion and half of it slips out from beneath the knife and skids onto the floor, even though they’d only bought one.
Ten is content to let Johnny take over most of the cooking once the prep work is done, handing him ingredients or utensils when he needs them, leaning back against the cabinet to sip his drink, watching the way the muscles beneath Johnny’s shirt flex as he stirs the pasta into the sauce. He’s only gotten more handsome with age, filling out the width of his shoulders with a new type of thickness that cushions the muscles around his biceps and above his beltline that Ten wants to bury his face into. The words “why are we here?” sit just beneath his tongue, restless and insistent, but he drowns them with a sip of ice-cold beer.
Johnny carries their two full plates onto the deck. Ten follows him with a wine bottle in one hand and two glasses in the other, his beer half-drunk and forgotten in the kitchen. It was too bitter for him, anyway.
It’s still light outside but nearing sunset, and the moon is already visible in the sky. The air is cooler now, making Ten’s skin prickle with goosebumps. “Cheers,” he says, clinking his wine with Johnny’s.
“Cheers,” Johnny says. The wine is bright and floral, the sweetness spreading across Ten’s tongue as he takes the first sip. “Oh, this is good. You have a good eye. What is it, a vintage?”
“Yes,” Ten says, widening his eyes and nodding like he knows what he’s talking about.
“You have no idea, do you?” Johnny says, his eyes twinkling with fondness.
“No,” Ten says, and Johnny laughs so hard that he leans his whole body into Ten, nearly spilling the wine out of the glass. Ten giggles into his own glass, even though it wasn’t that funny.
He crosses his legs on the chair and rests his plate on his knees as he eats, careful not to let the sauce spill over into his lap. “How long ago was the wedding?” Ten asks, between forkfuls of pasta.
“Mmh,” Johnny says, swallowing his food before answering. He cocks his head, thinking. “November, right? Actually, it was the same week Taeyongie left for his service, so yeah, definitely November. So that’s like … eight months ago?”
“Ah, okay okay,” Ten says.
“Why do you ask?”
Ten spears a piece of zucchini on his fork. “I was just trying to remember the last time we hung out, that’s all.” Their manager’s wedding. They’d all been invited, all twenty-something of them.
“Yeah.”
When Ten glances over, he finds Johnny watching him with an expression he doesn’t know how to read.
“We’re both busy,” Ten shrugs, going back for another bite of his salad, the tiny, spiteful part of his brain hoping that Johnny interprets his words as you’re too busy. “I guess that’s what happens.”
“No, it sucks,” Johnny says firmly. “It really, really does.”
“It sucks,” Ten says quietly after a moment, trying to hide his grimace as the lemon juice from the salad stings a canker sore on the inside of his cheek. I miss you. Idiot.
Johnny pours a modest amount of wine into his glass, placing his empty plate on the floor and leaning back in his chair. “By the way,” Johnny begins, a knowing look sliding across his face. He switches lanes of conversation so easily, so quickly, like the good driver he is. Ten still gets whiplash, despite the smooth turn. “Speaking of the wedding. Are you still with that guy you brought as your plus-one?”
“Aki?” Ten says, suddenly regretting bringing up the stupid wedding at all. He should have known the conversation would lead here. Or maybe he knew, and asked anyway. Because of it. Johnny nods.
“We were never really together,” Ten says quickly. Aki, the sculptor he’d met through a mutual friend of his manager. Tall, creative, and generous with his time, Ten had been dazzled by Aki, for a little while. Ten is glad that Aki and Johnny only shared a few words of greeting at the wedding. “Not, like, seriously.”
“Ah, that’s too bad,” Johnny says thoughtfully. “He seemed cool.”
“He is cool. Too cool. That was part of the problem.”
Johnny laughs. “I see.”
“What about you? Is Johnny Suh single?”
“Yep,” Johnny sighs. “Johnny Suh is single.”
“No way,” Ten says, keeping his tone light, teasing. “You? There’s no way you’re single. I don’t believe you.”
“It’s true!” Johnny insists, then pauses. “I mean, I’m single, but I’m not … you know. I’m seeing a few people.” He sighs. “My poor mother.”
This is a normal conversation for friends to have. Easily half of his conversations with Yangyang are about sex and dating, in some form or another. But Ten hates talking about it with Johnny. It’s always been uncomfortable, in the way it shouldn’t have been. It just makes him think of all the times when he was younger that he pretended to have a crush on someone else just so he could give a name that wasn’t Johnny’s when anyone asked. Or the times when his ex-boyfriends would want to hold hands during sex, raised above his head or pinned by side, and Ten would never squeeze back as hard as he could have.
Johnny sets up the tabletop grill while Ten goes inside for the bowl of marinating meat and a pair of metal tongs. The stars are visible now and all the houses and resorts along the shore are lit up, reflected in the dark ocean. From the kitchen, Ten can see Johnny’s wide shoulders silhouetted against the porchlight.
Back outside, Ten is mesmerized by the smoke rising from the grill as the meat sizzles over the charcoal heat, and he curls up in his chair, suddenly exhausted. The morning – busy at the company with concept meetings for his digital album, then a rush to the airport – feels like a lifetime ago. He could probably fall asleep right here, despite his hunger.
“Are you cold?”
Ten blinks over at Johnny, lit up by the lights from the house on one side and the embers from the fire on the other, his face angular and soft all at once. “A little,” Ten admits, realizing for the first time how much he’s shivering. Johnny must have noticed.
“I can go in and get you a sweater? Or some blankets.”
Ten’s chest hurts. “It’s okay,” he says, forcing his limbs out of their tangle. “I’ll get it.”
“You sure?”
Ten nods, pushing himself out of the chair. “Yes, you have to stay and make sure our dinner doesn’t catch on fire. That’s our only meat.”
Johnny cracks a smile. “True,” he says, never one to insist.
Ten steps through the door, then steps back out. “Do you need anything from inside?”
“I have a jean jacket in my suitcase. It’s next to my bed. And my cigarettes are in the front pocket of my backpack.” He smiles again. “Thanks.”
///
Ten flicks on the lights of Johnny’s room and sits lightly on the bed. Johnny hasn’t unpacked except to zip open his suitcase and leave it spread on the floor like a pried-open clamshell. His leather backpack is on a hook hanging from the back of the door, with an iPhone charger dangling from the open pocket.
Ten doesn’t know what’s wrong with himself. They’ve been here for hours, and it still feels so strange. They’re out of step with each other, once again, or maybe he’s just imagining it. Or maybe he’s just out of step with himself, like when he goes too long without dancing and forgets how to keep the weight off his bad knee. Or he’s tired, or dizzy off half a beer and a glass of too-sweet wine. Johnny’s probably fine, doesn’t notice anything strange. Ugh. Those cigarettes sound nice right about now.
He slides off the bed and crawls towards the suitcase, sitting on his shins in front of it. Johnny’s clothes are folded in stacks, not too neatly, just enough for everything to fit. Ten is honestly surprised he hasn’t already put his shirts and sweatshirts on hangers in the closet so they don’t wrinkle, which is what he usually does.
Ten thumbs through the stack of shirts, past Jil Sanders and Puma and JW Anderson and Carhartt until his fingers hit denim. He carefully pulls the jacket from the bottom of the suitcase and shakes it out, then grabs the Carhartt sweatshirt for himself. Easier than going all the way upstairs for his own.
///
“Special delivery,” Ten says, passing Johnny the jacket, cigarettes, and lighter.
“You’re the best,” Johnny says, dropping the tongs to reach for them, and Ten beams.
“I know. Is the meat ready?”
“It’s perfect,” Johnny says, slipping his arms into the sleeves and rolling his shoulders until the jacket hides his bulk. He nods towards the plate stacked high with charred pork belly, perilla leaves and grilled hot peppers beside it.
“Yum.” Ten climbs back into his chair and scoots it closer to the grill, closer to Johnny’s chair, and leans forward to catch the smell.
“Is that my sweatshirt?” Johnny asks, amusement coloring his voice.
“Yep.”
“It looks good on you. You should keep it.”
“I know,” Ten says, burrowing deeper into the fabric. It smells clean now, like detergent, though it will soon smell like smoke and cooked meat. “I already wrote my name on the tag.”
Johnny laughs. “Here,” he says, wrapping a piece of pork in the leaf and handing it to Ten, one hand cupped under it to catch any stray drippings. Ten opens his mouth for him, hums in surprise when it hits his tongue, heat and salt and fat, cooked a minute too long to be melt-in-your-mouth. His face burns as Johnny sits back in his chair, watching him expectantly. He nods, still chewing, and widens his eyes. Johnny grins.
“Good?”
“Mhmm,” Ten manages, mouth still full, then swallows it down. “Oh, that is good. Top chef.”
They pass the plate of perilla leaves back and forth for the rest of the meat, and Ten opens his mouth again when Johnny wants him to try one of the grilled peppers. Johnny talks to him while they eat, about his radio gigs, about the trip he took with his parents when they visited in April, about Mark and restaurants and their manager’s new baby. The plate of food and bottle of wine disappear quickly between them.
While he listens, Ten rests his head on Johnny’s shoulder, so tired that he barely notices the wooden arm of the chair digging into his side as they press closer and closer together, the grill no longer providing much warmth as the flame dies out. The spark of the lighter makes the profile of Johnny’s lips glow, and Ten can feel his shoulder moving as he inhales deeply. “What happened to your vape,” Ten says into Johnny’s arm. He can’t see the ocean now, but he can hear the quiet, steady roar of it far below.
“I still use it sometimes,” Johnny says on the exhale, then holds the cigarette up. “Want?”
Ten hums, reaching out for it. The paper is slightly damp from Johnny’s mouth, and Ten’s head starts to buzz pleasantly after his first inhale. He passes it back to Johnny’s waiting fingers, then pulls up his hood and leans into Johnny’s shoulder again, his heart rate picking up. Ten doesn’t smoke much anymore, so the nicotine always hits hard when he does.
Without thinking, Ten tilts his head and rubs his forehead into Johnny’s shoulder, just because it feels nice. Johnny chuckles softly and rests his hand on Ten’s knee, his thumb circling above the blanket that covers their legs. “I’m really glad we did this,” Johnny says. “I haven’t felt this calm in a while.”
“I know, we should smoke together more,” Ten mumbles sleepily.
“No,” Johnny laughs. “I mean yes, that too, but I meant this. Coming here, finally.” He gestures with the cigarette towards the ocean. “Do you remember whose idea it was first? Like, originally?”
Sometimes it hurts to think that far back, to the years before their debut, those rose-tinted memories of late-night practices and sneaking out, of studying and dancing too much and getting away with doing nothing. It doesn’t hurt right now, though, not with the pleasant buzzing in his head.
“I don’t remember,” Ten realizes. It’s true; they’ve had noncommittal plans to come here together for so many years that the idea has almost lost its meaning, so much so that Ten almost laughed out loud when Johnny first messaged him about the rental. “It seems like a you idea, though.”
“A me idea?” Johnny asks, sounding genuinely curious. “Why?”
“Because, hyung, you’re so …” Ten fumbles for an adjective. “Sentimental? You like things like this. Doing things that make memories.”
“So do you,” Johnny insists lightly. “I guess we just came up with the idea together.”
“You’re probably right,” Ten says.
“Great minds think alike, Ten,” Johnny says, and Ten laughs. Johnny takes his hand off Ten’s knee and wraps his arm around Ten’s shoulder instead. He taps the smoking end of his cigarette into the empty wine glass he’d been using as an ashtray, then starts rubbing Ten’s arm like a reflex, careless with his affection, like always. Ten closes his eyes against the darkness and listens to the waves, to Johnny’s soft, measured breathing, to the playlist coming quietly from the speakers inside the house. And Johnny is right, just like always. It is calm here.
///
Ten knows he had been far from Johnny’s first kiss – he’d heard all about it, pretending not to care while Johnny and Mark swapped stories about girls with American-sounding names. He was never as resentful of the girls as much as he resented the fact that Johnny could name them outright, because everyone expected to hear a girl’s name. Unlike Ten, who got so used to giving answers with veiled pronouns. Maybe that’s why he can’t remember the boy’s name.
Maybe it would have been worse if Johnny’s first kiss had been with a boy. Maybe it would have been better if Johnny’s first kiss had been with a unicorn, or Alicia Keys. It doesn’t matter much now, anyway. They’ve both had plenty of kisses since the first. And one shared together, among the thousands shared with others.
///
Johnny is nowhere to be found when Ten pads downstairs in the morning sometime before eleven, yawning into his hand and shivering from the cold floor beneath his bare feet. He peeks into Johnny’s room, just in case he’s still sleeping. The blankets are thrown to one side, one pillow at the top of the bed and one towards the middle – but no Johnny.
Ten closes the door carefully, then makes his way to the kitchen, hugging his – Johnny’s – sweatshirt tighter around himself and yawning again. He downs a glass of tap water, eats a cupcake on his way to the living room, then curls up on the couch and pulls the throw blanket over himself while he scrolls through his phone. Yangyang had sent him a picture of Louis and Leon poised on the windowsill of their flat, watching the birds in the tree outside the window.
“Hehe. Babies,” Ten says to himself, then sends back a sticker of a cartoon bear throwing hearts.
He’s in the middle of refreshing his Instagram feed – around seven this morning, Johnny had posted some of the sunset pictures he’d taken the night before – when he hears the car pulling up the drive. He’s still lying on the couch when Johnny opens the front door, balancing a tray with two iced coffees in one hand and holding a large paper bag in the other. Johnny’s face lights up in a smile when he spots Ten on the couch. Ten waves in sleepy greeting.
“Morning. You’re finally up,” Johnny says, pushing the front door closed with his foot. He makes his way into the living room, setting down the coffees and sitting in the space below Ten’s blanket-covered feet. Johnny is in his oversized denim jacket, paired with baby blue seersucker shorts that fall about mid-thigh. Ten sits up, looking in interest at the bag to distract himself from Johnny’s legs, long and tanned and covered in sun-bleached hair. “Morning.”
“I just got two iced Americanos, no milk no sugar, I hope that’s alright.” He rustles around in the bag, then pulls out two bagels, two croissants, and two cheese and jam danishes. “And I didn’t know what you’d want to eat, so I kind of went nuts at the bakery. You still like sweets, right?”
“Yes, Johnny, I do,” Ten says, smiling down at the pastries. “Thank you.”
“And I hope you’re hungry, because we have to eat all of this. I promised the bakery ajumma that we would.”
Ten laughs. “Now?”
“Yes, Ten,” Johnny says, frantically piling one of everything into his lap. “She’ll know if we don’t.”
“Stop,” Ten giggles, shoving Johnny lightly.
“Okay, okay,” Johnny concedes, putting the pastries back on the coffee table and wiping the crumbs off his lap. “What do you want? Croissant?”
“Uh huh,” Ten says, holding out his hands when Johnny gives him the larger one. Ten pulls his feet onto the sofa and stretches the sweatshirt over his knees, tearing flaky chunks from the croissant and eating it with his fingers.
“What do you want to do today?” Johnny asks, after getting comfortable next to Ten and helping himself to a bagel.
Ten thinks for a moment. “We could go surfing.”
“Oh! That’s a good idea,” Johnny says, mouth full of bread. “You just want to show off, though. I’ll embarrass myself.”
“I could teach you,” Ten says. “I’m a good teacher.”
“Only if I can teach you how to drive,” Johnny returns.
“Okay, then, nevermind,” Ten says, and Johnny cracks up. Ten steals Johnny’s remaining bagel quarter from his hand while he’s distracted.
“How about hiking Hallasan?” Johnny suggests, calmed down after a few sips of coffee. “We could get some good pictures from the top.”
Ten pulls his phone out of his sweatshirt pocket to look it up, then balks. “Hyung, it says it takes eight hours to get to the top.”
“Fuck off.” Ten holds out the phone for Johnny to see, chewing on a bite of Johnny’s bagel, his own croissant forgotten. “No kidding,” Johnny says. “Oh, you know what? There was a bike rental place not too far from the bakery I was just at. There’s tons of places to bike along the coast. So we can still, you know, get out and enjoy the nature. And I can finally use that huge lens I bought for my Nikon.”
Ten cocks his head to the side. “Which huge lens?”
Johnny’s eyes widen. “Dude. I never showed you?”
When Ten shakes his head no, Johnny immediately jumps up from the couch and swings over the back of it – show-off – then dashes to his room, returning a minute later with two large black camera bags. He unzips one of them, then carefully pulls out what looks like –
“Elephant penis,” Ten says reverently, half to himself, and Johnny bursts out laughing.
“You’re crazy,” he says between giggles, letting Ten hold the lens while he zips his camera out of the other bag. It’s heavy. Ten hands Johnny the lens when he gestures for it, watching curiously as Johnny mutters to himself for a moment before figuring out how to twist it onto the camera so it clicks into place.
“Awesome, right?” Johnny says, holding it up to his face so he can look through the viewfinder. “Now I just need to figure out how to use it.”
Ten poses, seductively dangling the bagel piece in front of his open mouth.
“Oh, yes, beautiful,” Johnny coos playfully. “You get the vibe.”
Everything feels lighter this morning somehow, like it’s supposed to feel with Johnny. It’s nice. Easy, how it should be. Warm, where their thighs press together. Meaningless, but warm.
///
After finishing about half the pastries, and after a conversation with more half-hearted suggestions for things to do, they end up going with Johnny’s bike idea.
And it is a good idea – the day is beautiful, warm and breezy but not too sunny, and the coastal cycling road is busy but not packed, taking them over cliffs, past beaches and lighthouses and farms. Ten bikes slowly behind Johnny, and they stop every once in a while for Johnny to pull out his camera to take pictures of the scenery.
They find a beachfront raw fish restaurant for a late lunch, their helmets resting on the seats beside them as they chug water and look through Johnny’s photos. Scattered among the landscape and nature shots are a few of Ten, mostly candid, as he stands by his bike and looks out at the water, or crouches down to pet a local stray.
“I like this one,” Johnny says, stopping at a picture of Ten seated at the base of a tree with his bike beside him, eyes closed and face tilted up towards the sun, an empty waterbottle by his feet. Ten likes it too.
They get back on the road after a quick stop for coffee, and it feels so, so nice, overwhelmingly nice, cruising downhill and watching the way Johnny’s shirt billows up behind him, the way he glances back every so often to make sure Ten is still following him. The way it’s just them.
The day slips away too quickly. After returning their bikes to the rental place, they walk for a while down a nearby beach, drinking lemonades and enjoying the breeze. But Johnny wants to shower and Ten feels like he might fall over, so they decide to call it for the day. Ten sits in the passenger seat massaging his jelly legs while Johnny drives them back home, traffic on the road slower with cars rushing for the final ferry to the mainland.
As they finally turn onto the long driveway leading back to the house, Johnny lowers the radio. “Actually,” he says. Ten glances over at him, but Johnny’s eyes are fixed on the road. “A friend of mine messaged me earlier today, he saw my Instagram post and it turns out that he and his girlfriend and a few of their friends are also renting a house on the island for the weekend.”
“Oh, really? That’s nice,” Ten says.
“Yeah, and he invited me out for dinner and drinks with them in Jeju City. When I told him I was here with a friend, he said the more the merrier, that you’re invited too, of course. Would you be up for going?”
Ten’s tongue sours. He and Johnny hadn’t talked about their dinner plans, but he just assumed that they would cook together again like last night, or maybe go out somewhere later, together. Just the two of them, because they never do. Because this is their last night here. Not that he has any claim over Johnny and his time, and Johnny has lots of friends so of course something like this would happen, and Johnny’s friend is right, the more the merrier, even if Ten would rather not spend his evening with a group of random straight people he doesn’t know, but –
But it still stings, in a petty, childish way. A familiar way. A way it shouldn’t anymore.
“We don’t have to,” Johnny says gently. “I have no problem telling him that I have other plans. It’s not a big deal, really.”
The car slows down to brace for a pothole. Of course it’s not a big deal. Nothing with Johnny is ever a big deal. “No, it sounds fun,” Ten hears himself saying. “We should go.”
“You’re sure?” Johnny asks, careful. The house comes into view as they round a hill. “I know this weekend was supposed to be, you know, just … are you sure?”
“Yes, hyung, I’m sure,” Ten says, hating how he has to insist, and now he’s the one staring at the road in front of them. “I want to meet your friends. I need to judge if they’re cool or not.”
Johnny laughs. They pull up in front of the house, and he puts the car in park. “Well, they’re not as cool as me, obviously.”
“Obviously.”
“But they’re good people. I think you’ll like them.”
“Good means boring,” Ten says, and he means it as a joke but it doesn’t come out sounding that way. Johnny waits a beat before responding.
“They’ll love you. I promise.”
“I know,” Ten says, even though he could care less in this moment what Johnny’s friends think about him. It isn’t about that. “They’re your friends, of course they will.” He smiles at Johnny – wide and self-assured, speaking Johnny’s own language – then waits for Johnny to shut off the engine before getting out of the car. His bike-sore legs wobble beneath him when he steps onto the gravel; it must have been harder on his muscles than he’d realized.
///
They call a taxi to Jeju City, since they’ll both be drinking. It’s a bit pricey as it’s Saturday night and their house is so out of the way, but Johnny probably doesn’t mind taking a break from playing chauffeur.
After they’d gotten back, Ten had quickly showered and blow-dried his hair, swiping on some eyeliner and lip balm before dressing in a loose black tee, cardigan, wide linen pants, and sandals. At the last minute he’d switched out his blue earrings for a set of gold hoops, ones that match his nose ring. He hadn’t packed anything much flashier than that, and besides, he and Johnny had already been recognized several times that day. Better to air on the side of subdued, at least for tonight. Johnny is in a white hoodie, oversized jeans, and low tops. He looks like an overgrown high school senior, and Ten hates how much he loves it.
The taxi drops them off near the city center, just at the edge of the pedestrian area. The streets are lively with music blaring from unseen speakers, couples and families strolling and enjoying the warm night. No one recognizes them as they make the short walk to the bar, following the navigation on Johnny’s phone until they turn down a quieter side-street.
The bar is unassuming from the outside, but it’s dark and crowded inside, the aircon working overtime with all the people so densely packed in one space. Ten stays close behind Johnny, in the wake of his body, as Johnny pushes through the raucous first floor towards the spiral staircase at the back of the room that leads them to the second tier.
The upstairs is only a bit quieter without the commotion from the bar and pool tables downstairs, though there is still music being piped through speakers on the ceiling. Ten follows Johnny past booths of people until they reach one of the screen doors at the very end of the hallway, where Ten can see the silhouettes of several people inside.
Ten feels Johnny’s hand drop to his lower back. His breath hitches, tight in his chest. He looks up at Johnny like a reflex, and then someone says loudly from inside, in English, “Yo, is that Johnny?” Before Johnny can say anything to Ten, the screen slides open, revealing a large table crowded with dishes and beer mugs and Johnny’s friends.
“This is Ten,” Johnny says, voice raised over the music and the chatter of side conversations as they squeeze into the booth, everyone laughing and scooting down to make room for them. Ten waves, leaning forward to listen when the friends introduce themselves, and ends up pressed thigh-to-thigh between Johnny and a stranger.
Johnny’s friends turn out to be two couples (both hetero, as expected), and two men and one woman, all apparently unattached. Most of them are in the industry – it turns out that Ten recognizes one of the guys, a producer who’d worked on one of WayV’s albums – and all of them are North American expats, like Johnny. They’re friendly and drunk and kind of loud, and Ten suddenly finds himself missing his members.
Someone buzzes for the server. “You guys want beer, right? They’ve got some pretty tight craft shit on tap,” says Charlie, who turns out to be the friend who’d originally messaged Johnny.
Charlie’s girlfriend – Ten already forgot her name, maybe it starts with an R – seems to be half-asleep, leaning her head against Charlie’s shoulder and smiling serenely at Ten. “Are you hungry, baby?” she – Rose? Ren? – asks from across the table, her voice barely audible over the sound of Charlie and the other woman arguing spiritedly with Johnny about which beer to get.
“Starving,” Ten says, smiling back at her. Johnny’s thigh is warm and solid against his.
She tugs on Charlie’s arm to get his attention. “Oppa, order another round of chicken. And the veggie samosas.”
“Anything for you, my darling angel empress butterfly,” Charlie says boisterously, kissing her – Ren, it was definitely Ren – on the forehead with a loud smack before turning to the newly arrived and slightly frazzled-looking server and placing their order.
“Do you want anything else?” Johnny asks quietly, leaning down so Ten can hear him. His smile is careful yet warm, his eyes searching. Searching for what, Ten isn’t sure – reassurance, maybe, confirmation that Ten is okay, that this whole thing is okay – or maybe Ten has just completely lost his ability to read Johnny at all, and Johnny isn’t searching for anything. But still, under Johnny’s gaze, Ten feels like he’s melting into the cracked leather of the booth.
“No,” he manages, blinking slowly up at Johnny, like he’s already drunk. “That seems like enough.”
“Alright,” Johnny says, still smiling, and then their orbits snap apart as they are pulled into two different conversational directions, Johnny by Charlie and Ren and the other woman (she’s really pretty, but Ten definitely doesn’t remember her name), Ten by the other couple and the two guys. Yujin, the man on Ten’s other side, asks Ten about their trip so far, about where he’s from (“No shit, I used to live in Bangkok!”), and they somehow end up deep in a conversation about water skiing which is cut short only by the arrival of the drinks and food.
One and a half beers down, and Ten’s head is already spinning. Maybe he hadn’t drunk enough water today – they had biked a lot, and coffee doesn’t count as hydration – or maybe it’s just the heat and closeness of the private booth, the clatter of silverware and glasses and the tornado of conversation, now flipping between English and Korean faster than Ten can process it. He shrugs off his cardigan and downs some ice water, then nibbles on another samosa in case he’s just still hungry. Yujin’s deep voice is vibrating in his ear, he’s saying something about monsoons and a backpacking trip he and his ex took through Vietnam, his body just a bit too close for comfort. Johnny is on Ten’s other side like a brick wall, unscalable. And it’s hot, and loud, and so fucking claustrophobic.
“Can you let me out?” Ten says, loud enough for Johnny to hear.
“Huh?” Johnny looks down at him, beer glass by his lips. “Oh! Sure, everything alright?”
“Yeah,” Ten mumbles, scooting out of the booth as Johnny immediately stands up to let him out. “Just – need the bathroom. And a smoke.”
“Oh. Okay,” Johnny says, and Ten can’t look at his face. He slips through the screen door and out into the hallway, dodging a server and making a beeline for the stairs. It’s only gotten louder and more crowded as it’s gotten later, and he has to physically push his way through raucous groups of people waiting for the bar or clustered around the pool tables.
It’s warm outside, but at least it’s quieter, and the moon is out. Ten walks deeper down the side street, slowly and carefully, one foot in front of the other like he’s taking a sobriety test. He rests his back against the poster-covered concrete wall of the alley, stares up at the darkened sky, then lets himself slide down the wall until he’s sitting on the curb, knees bent and thighs pressed against his stomach.
He feels so silly that he almost laughs. He does laugh, wishing he actually had something to smoke so he could have a legitimate reason for sitting in an alleyway by himself, a reason other than the one that is too painful to admit to anyone who would care to listen, too exhausting to explain, when he’s had to explain it and rationalize it to himself more times than he can count.
There’s no reason for it to hurt this much. If Ten could honestly say they were just friends, if his feelings for Johnny had gone away instead of burrowing into his skin and fossilizing themselves into the very core of his being like a blood-gorged tick in amber, then it wouldn’t hurt. If Ten could be certain that Johnny doesn’t feel the same way towards him, even a little bit, even if Johnny did once and doesn’t anymore, the wound would eventually scab and scar over with time. But none of that has happened, so it fucking hurts, the laceration as raw and open as the day all those years ago that Johnny kissed him, innocent and terrible, his tongue a double-bladed chainsaw.
Is it really so much to ask that he get Johnny all to himself, just this once?
“Ten?”
Ten continues staring at the band of stars visible above the alley, his neck bent back and his eyes trained upwards. For so much of his life, Ten had looked at Johnny like he hung the moon in the sky, even though sometimes it felt like Johnny was so tall that he blocked most of its light.
Something casts a shadow over Ten’s field of vision. And then Johnny is folding his body next to Ten’s, squatting on the curb beside him. The weight of the love that sits in Ten’s chest for Johnny is nearly suffocating, even now.
Johnny waits a while before speaking. “I missed you inside.”
“I haven’t been gone that long,” Ten says to the sky.
“I know, but …” Johnny trails off. “Ten, is something … you can talk to me.”
The urge to laugh bubbles once again in Ten’s throat, sour and nauseating. Can he, really? Maybe it is just that easy. “I’m just sad we’re leaving tomorrow, that’s all,” he says, a shed snakeskin of the truth.
“Yeah, a weekend is like. Nothing. It makes me sad, too.”
“Yeah.”
Ten’s neck is starting to hurt, so he brings it down, which means he has to see Johnny folded up beside him, his arms wrapped around his long legs and his bangs hanging into his face. And, despite everything, Ten just wants Johnny to kiss him.
But Johnny doesn’t kiss him. Instead, he says, “Do you want to get ice cream?”
Ten blinks at Johnny. “Ice cream?”
“Yeah. I’m craving something sweet.”
“You’re drunk.”
“No, I’m definitely not,” Johnny says, suddenly springing to his feet. “Let’s get ice cream.”
“What about your friends,” Ten says, raising an eyebrow up at Johnny, not really in the mood for whatever he’s trying to pull.
Johnny shrugs. “I don’t think they’ll want ice cream.”
“No, I mean, aren’t they expecting you back?”
“Oh. No, I already told them we’re leaving. Here,” Johnny says, and Ten sees for the first time the beige bundle of his cardigan in Johnny’s outstretched hand. Wordlessly, he takes it.
“And what if I wanted to stay?” Ten counters, trying to hang onto the last threads of frustration he feels towards Johnny.
“You left pretty suddenly,” Johnny says. His arm falls back to his side. “It didn’t seem like you wanted to stay.”
Johnny sighs, glances down the alleyway, then sits back down beside Ten with a loud oof, closer this time. “Listen,” he begins. He gently nudges Ten’s foot with his own, a tiny olive branch of affection. Ten nudges him back with the toe of his sandal, a familiar feeling prickling the back of his throat. “I shouldn’t have accepted Charlie’s invitation. I mean, I shouldn’t have even entertained it in the first place. And I definitely shouldn’t have asked you. I’m sorry.”
“It’s our last night here, hyung,” Ten says quietly.
“I know,” Johnny says immediately, his voice heavy. “I know. It’s just that … it’s just that our lives feel so separate these days, you know? Like, yeah, we still have all the members, but sometimes it feels like we’re all in these different bubbles. I thought it would be nice for me to introduce you to my friends to kind of –” He gestures forwards, making a fist and bringing it back towards his chest. “Pull you in. To my bubble. Or just pop the bubble, I don’t know where I’m going with this metaphor. The point is, I want you in my bubble, Ten. I want you to know the people I know, I want them to know you. And they love you, Ren could not stop talking about how sweet you are. She even said that she doesn’t want to hang out with me unless you’re there, too.”
Oh. “Oh,” Ten says, and the prickling feeling grows stronger.
“I know you were joking when you said you wanted to see if my friends are cool or not, but I actually do want you to think they’re cool.” Johnny laughs. “I was nervous about you meeting them, if you must know. What if you thought, like, ‘Wow, Johnny hangs out with a bunch of bozos all day’?”
“I don’t think that,” Ten mumbles. In any other context, he probably would have enjoyed himself around them.
“I’m glad,” Johnny says softly. “But we only have two nights here together, and you could meet my friends any other night in Seoul. I was just – being stupid. And selfish. And I’m sorry, again. You don’t have to accept my apology, but please, please let me buy you an ice cream.”
Ten rests his head back against the wall again, turning to face Johnny. Johnny does the same, tilting himself towards Ten until their heads almost brush together. “Okay,” Ten says quietly, too tired to hold onto his anger, and from this close up he can see the relief in Johnny’s eyes. Johnny smiles, then stands up again and reaches towards Ten with both hands.
Ten reaches out for Johnny. Johnny grunts as he pulls Ten to standing – Ten doesn’t do much to help lift his own weight – and they both stumble a bit when Johnny finally gets Ten upright. Ten quickly releases Johnny’s hands so he can put his cardigan back on.
“Where are we going?” he asks.
Johnny nods down the alley, back towards the main pedestrian thoroughfare. “Remember that market we passed on the way here? There’s got to be somewhere in there that sells ice cream. We’ll find something.”
The alley suddenly fills with noise as a large group from inside the bar spills out onto the street. Instinctively, Ten steps closer to Johnny. “Come on,” Johnny murmurs, resting his hand on the back of Ten’s arm as he starts walking. Ten follows, his heart thudding in his chest.
They quickly find the market, a high-ceilinged indoor atrium filled with food stalls and shops that lie beyond an arched entryway. It’s loud in here too, the din of music and fried food sizzling in oil and shopkeepers calling out to the people that pass by, but it’s a kind of controlled chaos that is more familiar to Ten. There are no less than twenty shops selling oranges, and stalls with vendors preparing eye-catching snacks at an almost alarming rate, knives flashing and fire erupting beneath pans. But they’re on a mission, and after about five minutes of walking they spot a kiosk with colorful ice cream cones on display. Ten gets a peanut soft serve – a specialty, apparently – and Johnny gets the same. The sweetness helps to get rid of some of the bitterness that lingers on his tongue. “Good?” Johnny asks, and Ten nods.
Ice creams in hand, they meander slowly back the way they came, stopping to watch the vendors’ theatrics while they eat. Ten sticks close to Johnny’s side in the crowd. Eventually, they make their way down a quieter side passage that takes them back outside.
The night is still warm, even though it’s cooler than inside the market, and Ten feels the exhaustion start to take over again. He passes his empty cup to Johnny when Johnny reaches out for it, then yawns into his arm.
“I can call a taxi,” Johnny says, amusement coloring his voice.
“Yes you should, please,” Ten says sleepily, his voice distorted by another yawn. “I might fall over, oh my god.”
“You can fall over when we get home,” Johnny laughs, pulling out his phone and pulling up the app. “The sugar didn’t wake you up at all?”
“Uh uh,” Ten says, shaking his head as he sits heavily on a nearby bench. Johnny sits next to him, resting his palm on Ten’s knee and giving it a reassuring squeeze.
“You’re very cute when you’re tired, you know that?” Johnny says, just as Ten closes his eyes. Ten nods, resting his head against Johnny’s shoulder. His head really should always be in this spot. Johnny laughs softly. He squeezes Ten’s knee again after a minute. “Ten, the car is here.” Ten makes a noise, clinging to Johnny as they stand and make their careful way towards the road where the taxi waits for them by the curb, door open. His head stays glued to Johnny’s shoulder the whole ride home.
///
“You don’t mind if I put on some music, do you?” Johnny says, looking over his shoulder from where he’s facing the sink.
“No,” Ten says, reaching out when Johnny hands him a glass of tap water.
Johnny uses his phone to put on something Ten doesn’t recognize, something Korean and alternative by the sound of it, and it’s nice. He pours his own water, then holds it out. “Cheers.”
“Cheers,” Ten says, laughing, and clinks glasses with him. It’s not that late – just after midnight – and despite Ten’s exhaustion, he really doesn’t want to fall asleep quite yet. As nice as a glass of wine sounds right now, it would definitely send him to a premature bedtime.
Johnny starts nodding his head along to the music, tapping his finger against the counter. Ten nods with him, and then Johnny gets his neck involved, and then his whole upper body, and then Ten is laughing at him for how ridiculous he looks, and Johnny is smiling but doesn’t stop dancing.
“What are you doing,” Ten says, deadpan between giggles.
“Dancing, what does it look like I’m doing?” Johnny says, spinning around with his arms above his head, absolutely shameless. “Oh, this is the good part of the song, come on.” He grabs Ten’s free hand, and suddenly they’re dancing together in the kitchen, Ten laughing uncontrollably, delirious as Johnny takes the glass from his hand and sets it on the counter.
“Stand on my feet,” Johnny says, still moving to the music. He doesn’t look that ridiculous anymore, though, a flush rising up Ten’s neck as Johnny steps in closer.
“Heh?” Ten says, looking up at Johnny like he’s crazy. Maybe he is.
“My feet,” Johnny repeats, looking down for emphasis.
Johnny is in socks, and Ten’s feet are bare beneath his house slippers. In complete disbelief at what he’s doing, Ten toes off the slippers. He rests his hands on Johnny’s wide shoulders for balance as he places his feet carefully on each of Johnny’s, bringing them even closer together, nearly chest to chest.
Ten yelps when Johnny takes a step forward, moving both of their bodies at the same time. Johnny’s hand falls to his lower back to keep him from falling off, his grip firm. A grin slides across Johnny’s face.
“We used to do this, remember?”
Ten’s blood is pounding in his ears and he can barely string a coherent thought together. He frowns up at Johnny in confusion, before the memory rushes back to him so quickly that it makes his head spin.
When they were trainees, Johnny used to practice with weights. His limbs were so long that he could never keep up with the other trainees, at least in the beginning, so one of their dance instructors had suggested it to help him better move his body through space. When Johnny practiced late into the night, drenched in sweat as the weights dragged at his ankles and wrists, Ten would sometimes sneak in to keep him company (or make fun of him, depending on his mood). Once, Ten had jokingly suggested that he grab onto Johnny’s ankles to increase the resistance training, which somehow ended up with Ten holding onto Johnny’s wrists instead, his socked feet on top of Johnny’s sneakers. They didn’t last long in that position as Ten was laughing to hard to keep his balance, but that didn’t stop him from jumping onto Johnny’s feet a few more times after that.
“Wow,” Ten says, his grip on Johnny’s shoulders tightening instinctively as Johnny takes a careful step backwards. “What was wrong with us?”
“Eh,” Johnny says. “I never minded it that much.”
The song ends, and something slower comes on. When Johnny starts to sway back and forth, Ten crosses his forearms behind Johnny’s neck to keep himself from falling off.
The weight of everything hits him once more, even now, when they are stepping in perfect sync with each other. Now, it’s heavy with the weight of years and years of wanting, of waiting for something to change, and things did change but not in the way he wanted them to. The weight of years of swallowing around nothing to fill his chest with air so there was no room for the heartbreak of misplaced longing. It’s heavy with the pain of how easy it seems now compared to then, how falling into Johnny’s arms feels like falling back into them.
Ten lets his face drop to Johnny’s shoulder. “I’m tired,” he whispers.
“I know,” Johnny whispers back. His grip on Ten’s lower back tightens.
“I don’t want to leave,” Ten says, his voice muffled by the fabric of Johnny’s sweatshirt.
“I know,” Johnny says. From this close, Ten can hear him swallow. “Neither do I.”
“And it’s so weird,” Ten says, his words tumbling out quicker than he can stop them. “It’s like … we’ve always said we wanted to come here together, right? But I never actually thought we would. Maybe in the beginning I did, but over time it was like, more than something real, Jeju was this nice thing to look forward to, this fantasy, that I could always keep in my back pocket. Like, ‘If I can’t see Johnny now, at least I’ll see him on Jeju.’ When I was in China, I thought about it all the time. And now that we’re here, that we’re actually here, and we’re almost leaving …”
Ten’s voice catches in his throat, so he closes his eyes to get the last of it out. Johnny has stopped dancing. “I’ll have nothing else that I can look forward to with you. I’ll just have to hope you’re not busy when I want to see you.”
Ten is certain he can hear Johnny’s heart pounding in his chest, or maybe it’s just his own. He unwinds his arms from around Johnny’s neck and steps carefully off of his feet, though Johnny doesn’t drop his hands from Ten’s lower back. Ten’s legs are shaking, and the expression on Johnny’s face is so pained that it breaks his heart.
“Ten, we … we can always come back. Whenever we want. Even for the day. Or we don’t have to come here, we can just hang out together in Seoul.”
“It’s not about that,” Ten says tiredly, but what can Johnny even say in response that would make it better? Some things are just painful, in a way that no amount of pretty words will change.
Johnny frowns, his eyes roaming up and down Ten’s face. He’s still so close. “So we’ll make new plans. For the future. Where should we go next? Paris? Hawaii? Japan? Japan sounds nice, I’ve always wanted to go to Okinawa. I’d love to go there with you.”
It’s not the right thing to say, not even close. Ten loves him so fucking much. “Okay,” he says, chewing on his lip to keep it from trembling. “Let’s go to Okinawa.”
“Promise?” Johnny says.
“Promise.”
When they hug, Ten doesn’t think he’ll ever be able to let go of Johnny again. He presses his face into Johnny’s chest and holds on tight, so tight he can barely breathe. But eventually he does let go, so exhausted that he’s nearly swaying where he stands. When Johnny says that they’re going to be okay, it feels so easy to believe him.
He makes it up the stairs to his bathroom, staring dazed at his own reflection as he brushes his teeth. It’s cold upstairs, with the wind from the sea blowing through the open windows.
Ten dresses in his pajamas, stares at his unmade bed. It’s cold in here too.
He turns around, walks out of his bedroom and back down the stairs.
When he opens Johnny’s door, Ten finds Johnny sitting on the edge of his bed, staring at his hands. Johnny looks up when he walks in, eyes widening in surprise. But Ten doesn’t say anything, just walks around to the other side of the bed, climbs on, and curls up wordlessly beneath Johnny’s blanket. He closes his eyes, the sound of Johnny’s breathing as loud as ocean waves.
Some time later, Ten feels the mattress rise as Johnny gets up and disappears into the bathroom. The water in the shower turns on; Johnny is in there for a while. When Johnny comes out, he dresses, turns off the lights, gets into bed on top of the blankets. The mattress dips as Johnny shifts towards him, and then Ten feels Johnny’s chest against his back, Johnny’s hand on his stomach, hugging him closer. Johnny’s wet hair tickles Ten’s neck, makes him shiver. Johnny hugs him tighter. “Goodnight,” Johnny whispers.
“Goodnight,” Ten whispers back.
He breathes slowly, feeling Johnny’s hand rise and fall with the movement of his body.
///
They had thrown a party to celebrate their debut. Well – it hadn’t been their debut yet, no one in the public knew, but the trainees knew, and the meeting in which the executives promised to release them from the seemingly endless purgatory of rookiedom had been one of the happiest moments of Ten’s life up to that point, even happier because it was at an age when everything seemed monumental.
There was a cake and balloons in the practice room. Taeyong couldn’t stop crying, and Doyoung never left his side. Ten called his mom and hugged Mark a lot. They were there for hours, long after the managers left, long enough for someone to order a ridiculous amount of delivery food. Someone else found colored strobe lights and a disco ball in a closet somewhere and turned on all the lights in all the basement practice rooms, and it was a blur of whooping and dancing and running up and down the hallways, being as obnoxious as they could possibly be while sober.
Ten ended up racing Johnny from the basement entrance to the emergency exit – he can’t remember whose idea it was first, but it was probably Johnny’s – and Ten had been winning by a hair until Johnny cheated by turning down a hallway that would take him on a shortcut through a conference room. “Hey!” Ten had yelled, skidding to a stop and spinning around as Johnny disappeared around the corner. He followed Johnny as best he could through the room, weaving around chairs and whiteboards until they burst through the door on the other side. Johnny shouted at the top of his lungs as he pulled ahead, almost crashing into the doorframe of the emergency exit as he rammed to a stop, beating Ten by a full five seconds.
“You cheated!” Ten panted, his lungs screaming for air.
“I won,” Johnny corrected smugly, his eyes wild and his face bright with sweat.
And then, just as Ten opened his mouth with a retort on the tip of his tongue, Johnny picked Ten up in a lung-crushing hug and planted a kiss on his lips.
To this day, Ten doesn’t even know if Johnny fully realized what he was doing. And at that moment, before Ten could even think to kiss him back, they heard the sound of running feet and a moment later Doyoung burst around the corner to see who was yelling so much, and Johnny set Ten down before Ten could process any of what was happening. Taeyong popped out from around the corner too, sprinting behind him. The pair started laughing and talking excitedly to them about something, while Ten was left feeling like a ceramic vase that had been dropped off a balcony.
After the party died down, Ten went back to the dorms and cried in the bathroom. He replayed the moment over and over and over, hating Johnny, loving him, and just wanting Johnny to do it again.
///
Ten blinks his eyes open, squinting against the pane of light that slants into the room from the window beside the bed. He grumbles sleepily and flips onto his side, coming face to face with a sleeping Johnny.
Johnny’s hair is in his eyes, tangled from sleeping with it wet. His mouth is open, his lips squished against the pillow beneath his face. He’s still on top of the blanket, dressed in a loose tee and boxers.
When Ten touches Johnny’s chin, the overnight stubble is rough against the pads of his fingertips. He runs his fingers lightly over Johnny’s face, following the line of his jaw all the way up to his ear, over to his nose, between his eyebrows. He traces the fine line of a wrinkle across Johnny’s forehead, brushes the hair from his face, and bursts into tears.
He curls up into Johnny’s body, his diaphragm contracting painfully as the sobs tear their way up his throat. It feels almost like grief, but that can’t be right. Johnny is stirring awake now, his body moving and his voice saying something that Ten doesn’t fully hear. His hands are moving up and down Ten’s back, winding around him, pulling him close. Ten tries to say something to Johnny between the hiccups – I’m fine, it’s fine, it’s not me it’s just my body – but all he can think about is the kiss, the first one that mattered to him. Johnny’s lips are blurry in his tear-wet vision, but Ten doesn’t need to see them. He just needs to feel them beneath his own, one more time, just once more, please, before we go.
Johnny’s lips are soft, because of course they are, and warm, frozen in place. Ten freezes then, too, tears running down his nose, before Johnny makes a noise into Ten’s mouth and starts kissing him back, tugging away the blanket and pulling their bodies together, closer, closer. Johnny licks the taste of salt from Ten’s tongue, says Ten’s name, over and over. Ten barely notices the clothing that still separates them, all he can feel is the warmth and strength of Johnny’s body, the aching familiarity of it.
Johnny kisses Ten’s forehead, his hair, runs his fingers over Ten’s scalp and breathes him in. They kiss until Ten stops crying, until he can inhale without trembling and look up at Johnny without bursting into tears again.
Johnny’s palm rests flat on Ten’s cheek, stroking circles with his thumb. He presses his lips to Ten’s nose, sighs quietly. Ten blinks back at him, completely wordless. Johnny smiles.
Ten wonders what Johnny sees when he looks at him. He wonders if Johnny still sees him as a teenager, the way Ten looks at Johnny and sometimes has trouble reconciling the man with the boy, the shadow of his younger face still visible beneath that of Johnny, the thirty-year-old man. But Johnny doesn’t grieve for the past; he moves on. Johnny, the optimist, rose-colored boy.
“When do we have to leave?” Ten asks, his voice hoarse and quiet.
Johnny waits a moment before responding, just stroking over Ten’s face and breathing softly against him. “For the airport?”
Ten nods.
“Well … we need to clean the house first, then pack, and return my car. Soon.”
“Oh,” Ten says.
“Ten,” Johnny says.
“What?” Ten whispers.
“We can stay here a bit longer.” Johnny squeezes his hand for emphasis. “Here, I mean.” Here, in this bed, with him.
“I know,” Ten says, not trusting himself to say more than that.
Their palms are pressed together, hidden carefully between them. Johnny leans down close, kisses Ten’s neck, brushes his lips higher like he’s whispering in his ear. The sun stretches out slowly across the bed, warped by the solid contours of their bodies beneath the blanket.
Ten can no longer count the number of kisses Johnny has given him. Fifteen since the first one, twenty, maybe thirty, and another, another, another.
Johnny kisses him again, pressed into his hair with a whispered promise.