Chapter Text
“Where is he?” Jaehyun asks as soon as he steps inside Jungwoo’s floral-scented house. The midday sun is splattered all over the floor-to-ceiling windows, the sunflowers and poppies Jungwoo grows turning towards the warmed golden rays.
“Where he always is.” Jungwoo’s tone is soft like morning sea breeze, but Jaehyun takes it like a storming wind. It forms hurricanes in his soul. He nods in gratitude and swings on his heels, jumping down the few wooden steps from the door and burying his expensive Italian shoes in the cold sand.
The thought crosses his mind briefly but he doesn’t let it linger lest it turns sour in his mouth – that when his girlfriend used to call him when he was at the restaurant he rarely picked up, but one text from Jungwoo telling him Doyoung was having one of those days made him leave the vegetables half-sliced on the chopping board.
He runs across the empty beach until he’s almost out of breath, sight blurred and heart aching. But he doesn’t need his glasses to pick out Doyoung’s lonely silhouette amidst the dunes, shoulders hunched forward as he stares at an ocean that is nothing but treacherous, for it is as placid as Doyoung is in turmoil.
Jaehyun doesn’t say hi, doesn’t ask him what it is, what he’s thinking. He simply sits in silence next to him, draws an arm around his quivering shoulders – their friendship was built in moments like this, in the quiet between words.
From the first day Jaehyun found Doyoung hiding in the school’s storage room after being beaten up, he’s never left him alone. That day he didn’t ask what happened – it was obvious, from the way Doyoung was hugging himself, silently rocking back and forth. Instead he offered him Kleenex for his tears and his fresh-from-the-oven cupcakes for the void in his stomach and promised him no one would ever hurt him like that again, and even if Jaehyun kept that promise throughout their school years he still failed to protect him from the worst pain of all – heartache. Jaehyun still feels the shards of a broken heart every time Doyoung speaks, feels them more than his own. Because Jaehyun’s heart is broken as well, but somehow Doyoung’s pain cuts him deeper.
“Jungwoo saw me here, right?” Doyoung asks at last, voice so brittle the wind could have carried it away was it any stronger. “Did he ask you to come?”
“He told me you were here.” Jaehyun watches as the waves ebb and flow around the shoreline, how they inch closer to him only to pull back at the last second, and swallows the lump in his throat. His feelings are like that sometimes. He doesn’t know what to make of them, can’t catch them fast enough to know what they’re really like, so they slip through his fingers like salt water, leaving only the sting behind. “But I came on my own.”
At that Doyoung snaps his head to him, and for a second Jaehyun is without lungs, taken aback and unable to breathe. The soft breeze tousles Doyoung’s raven-black hair like a caress, rogue strands falling over his eyes but never dimming their gentle glint. Jaehyun likes to think that glint is for him only, though he knows it’s not. Doyoung is like that to everyone – gives away too much of himself and then becomes hollow when people don’t give him back as much. Jaehyun has seen it through the years – what people give him is never enough. Which makes him want to give Doyoung everything, but he doesn’t know how. Maybe he’s too empty for that.
So for now he simply wraps Doyoung in his black fleece jacket, smiling when Doyoung instinctively snuggles closer. Then Doyoung gives him the tender curve of his smile, and Jaehyun feels too whole at once.
“You always do.”
“But is it enough that I’m here?” Jaehyun asks, hoarse voice barely a whisper. He hopes the rustle of the waves has drown it away. He doesn’t want his fragility to be known, though it’s useless – Doyoung knows parts of him that not even Jaehyun does. “Don’t you need… something more?”
He still has an arm around Doyoung’s shoulders. They stopped shivering. And Jaehyun’s fingers stop before they can bury into the hair on Doyoung’s nape. Someone else?
“You’re here.” Doyoung shrugs, as if it’s that simple. As if what they have is simple, and perhaps it is and it’s Jaehyun and his messed up feelings that is making it all complicated. “What more could I need?”
“Her,” Jaehyun says before he can help himself. He doesn’t want to deliver this blow; he never wants to hurt Doyoung like that, so he moves his gaze from Doyoung’s sculpture-like face and into the sea just so he doesn’t see which emotion crosses his eyes. In a way he thinks he could handle the sorrow better than the longing. “Isn’t it always her?”
Jaehyun remembers when they met. He was there – at the school festival, when stunning photos of Doyoung were put up on the wall and no one knew who’d taken them. Until finally a shy girl stepped forward, and Jaehyun saw how Doyoung smiled at her – he’d never seen that smile on him before, and it made him smile too. It makes him want to cry now.
Doyoung shakes his head. His hands are clawed over a clump of sand, but then he lets the grains slip through his svelte fingers, as if he’s letting something go. Jaehyun hopes it’s her, and all the memories and heartbreak that came along.
“It stopped being about her a long time ago.”
Slowly, as if not to scare him, Jaehyun draws his arm back from Doyoung’s shoulders, not missing the way Doyoung shivers, as if a layer of clothing is suddenly missing. It makes him warm inside. It burrows a hungry beast in his stomach he doesn’t know how to satiate.
“Has it really?” Jaehyun doesn’t want to pour more salt into the wounds, doesn’t want to poke the skin until it’s raw and bleeding once more, but he can’t help it. He hates that his own fiancée has left him for London and yet all he agonizes about is the man next to him and whether or not he’s still hung up on his first and only love. “You keep coming here. This was your place. You still have the perfume you made for her and you… you stare at the ocean as if you’re yearning for it to give you something back.”
Doyoung takes a long time to answer, and no matter how hard he fights against it, Jaehyun’s stare is drawn to him when he hears him sigh. Somehow the coat has fallen down his back and the breeze makes his loose white shirt flutter around him like angel wings. With the sun shining down on him that’s what he looks like – so angelic he cannot possibly be real. Something inside Jaehyun’s ribcage clenches, and he doesn’t think it’s the lungs this time, but something far more dangerous.
Jaehyun gulps. His gaze slides down Doyoung’s graceful features, to the swanlike curve of his neck, then his exposed collarbones. It’s too much. The sea is a far safer thing to gawk at, even if it’s not nearly as pretty.
“She was my first love and it still hurts sometimes, but that’s not what’s been bothering me lately.” Then what is? The words remain unsaid. So do the feelings. “What about you? Have you gotten over…?” Doyoung trails off, gaze stuck on Jaehyun’s naked finger – where a black engagement ring used to be. They don’t say their names. Maybe that way the memories will dim in their minds, and the pain will be easier to bear.
“I got over her the day she made me choose between her and my love for food.” Jaehyun tugs his turtleneck tighter against his neck, as if to protect himself from the cold that seeps from his bones as he thinks back to that fatidic night, when she told him he’d die alone amongst his fancy dishes if he always put them above her. Now he sleeps in a half-empty apartment and spends too much on take-away because he can’t bother to cook. “She never understood that being a Chef, cooking… it isn’t what I do, it’s—”
“What you are.” Doyoung smiles at him, and it’s blinding. It’s maddening. It makes him want to do silly things, like write their names on the sand and pray to the heavens it doesn’t get washed away. When everything else has changed, Doyoung has always stayed. Doyoung once told him about fragrance notes. He’d said Jaehyun was the base note, the one that causes a lasting impression. But it’s Doyoung who lingers, and Jaehyun can only hope he always will. “I know.”
Slowly, he drops the sand he’d been holding onto Jaehyun’s hand, so gently Jaehyun can’t help but shiver, spine curling and fingers wanting to reach closer. The world has treated Jaehyun roughly, but Doyoung treats him like he’s precious, something to behold. Somewhere along the way he got addicted to that feeling, and now he can’t stop himself from craving more.
“You haven’t cooked for me in a long time.”
Jaehyun risks a glance at him, has the sudden wish to bathe in the sun that slants across Doyoung’s jaw. His lips are tinted rose, and the breeze although mild is unforgiving, for it keeps bringing Doyoung’s scent back to Jaehyun. It’s the scent that defines his childhood, that throws him back into his memories so easily – a clean, crisp fragrance that smells like freshly washed cotton. He wishes he could bottle it up, wishes he could drown in it. Most of all, he wishes it’ll always feel like this – like morning dew, like the weather from February to April, like home. Deep down he knows – that this is the scent he looks for in his dishes.
“I… haven’t had much inspiration for new dishes lately. Have you made any new perfumes?”
Doyoung’s teeth dig into his lip and Jaehyun tries not to stare too much. Then he brings his knees to his chest and Jaehyun fights the urge to be the one hugging him instead.
“No, I haven’t made one in a while.” He bites his lip hard, and Jaehyun swallows. Stop staring. It’s like begging for the sun to stop existing. “There’s a fragrance I’m trying to catch, but it’s hard to replicate. The feeling it gives me, I haven’t figured out how to put that together in a bottle yet.”
“That’s a pity. Your perfumes are my biggest inspiration for new dishes.”
Doyoung’s eyebrows raise, disappearing behind his unruly locks. Then his eyes narrow, he gets sharp – a blade wrought from steel that only softens in contact with Jaehyun’s skin.
“I didn’t know that. When did that start?”
Jaehyun shrugs, counts the seagulls circling in the air just so he doesn’t have to face him; he knows his ears will betray him. “Probably in my first year of culinary school, when you used to bring me oils and blends to smell. They sort of… started to mix in my head, painted a picture. I started associating every aroma with an ingredient, with a feeling, and then dishes just came together naturally like that.”
Doyoung stares at him for so long Jaehyun fears he fell asleep with his eyes open. He fears that he would just stare back, wide awake but dreaming all the same.
“So we’ve both been having creative blocks because we feed off each other’s creations and they’ve been stale.” Doyoung chuckles, leans into Jaehyun, too close, not nearly close enough – Jaehyun can see himself in his dark eyes, wide-eyed and a little scared. “That’s easy to solve then. Make us dinner. I’ll bring the samples I’ve been working on. Maybe we can stimulate each other and… Jaehyun? Why are you all red?”
“I’m not!” He whips his head to the side, brings his turtleneck up until it covers his burning ears. He doesn’t dare to look at Doyoung anymore, not when his laugh sounds like the first song Jaehyun would put on his favorite playlist. Slowly, against his will, a smile blooms in his lips as well, like the first rosebud after a harsh winter.
“Fine, we’ll do that! Just… just don’t use that word again, for the love of God!”
“Ah, Jaehyun-ah…” Doyoung throws an arm around him, pinches his cheek. His scent is intoxicating now. It makes Jaehyun dizzy. “Sometimes I forget you’re still just a big baby.”
Jaehyun stills, looks him straight in the eye. He grabs his wrist, not to push him away but to keep him in place. “I’m a renowned Chef with 3 Michelin stars. Don’t call me a baby.”
“But you are.” Doyoung giggles, pinching his nose and then his dimples. “My baby.”
And that’s what hurts the most, in the end – knowing that Doyoung doesn’t mean it like Jaehyun wants him to, doesn’t mean it the way Jaehyun hears it.
Later that day, when they’re all gathered in Jungwoo’s house, Jungwoo pulls him away for a moment.
“I don’t know how you do it, but I’m so grateful you do it. Every time he comes here moody and restless, sits on the beach for hours, and then you come and stay with him and when he comes back he’s all soft smiles and shiny eyes.”
“I don’t do anything,” Jaehyun mumbles, glancing at the frames on Jungwoo’s hallway. He sees the three of them in high school uniforms, awkward and lanky and with grins too big for their faces. It was probably taken by Doyoung’s girlfriend – the one who cheated on him and accused him of being too clingy, too emotional, too sensitive, the one who makes him stare at the ocean for hours on end. “Just keep him company.”
“Maybe that’s all he needs.” Jungwoo nods, smiling fondly at his girlfriend when she passes by with a bottle of wine. They met in high school – she’s the girl for whom Jaehyun had to lend his phone to Jungwoo so he could text her, the one who always took ages to answer, but in the end always did. Jungwoo’s the only one out of the three who was lucky at love; maybe that’s why sometimes he says things Jaehyun doesn’t understand. “But when it’s me keeping him company he just gets even moodier.”
“That’s because you try to cheer him up, and those things can’t be forced.”
“Maybe.” Jungwoo stops by his sunflowers, caressing the leaves gently. “You know how sunflowers turn to the sun, following it everywhere? You’ve always sort of done that with Doyoung. There’s a reason why in school, whenever I wanted to meet you I looked for Doyoung first. You were always where he was. You’re his sunflower, Jaehyun. One that hasn’t realized how much he needs the sun.”