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Falling in love again, and again, and again.
There is a dam waiting to be broken open, a body of water drowning one teen and then another. There are schedules and unspoken promises nobody is eager to keep, the haunting of the crowd presses them down until they are skin and bone. But it is the most whole they will ever be. The warmth of touches on each other’s flesh reeks of hormones and adulterous curiosity, and their hearts harden under the unbearable lightness of what it all meant. Of what it is and what of it will be. Would be. Should be. Will never be.
“You don’t have to hold back,” what Dongmin meant to say was he never wanted anything less. That they are allowed to be greedy. For once.
“You don’t like it rough,” Donghyun replies, although it is meant mostly for himself. He must have remembered what Dongmin said four years ago, under a different roof. Smaller than this one, but still with the same blue LED lights because Jaehyun was weird and liked to gift even weirder things. Because he himself was bored to death and Sungho wasn’t at all ready. Because Jaehyun didn’t even know Sungho’s favorite color yet and he was late to practice most of the time but acted like he knew they would always make it — if only they put their hearts in the right place.
He didn’t even know Sungho liked green better. It made him feel alive and not just another missed opportunity. A star that dims a hundred light years away without any of them knowing. Jaehyun didn’t, and likely still doesn’t, know Sungho’s favorite color, or his favorite food, but he is Sungho’s favorite person. So they kept the blue light. They kept whatever they could, and Dongmin was the first to bear the wisdom of knowing effort makes a difference.
Now it is him under the same blue lights. And he feels grateful for the glows softening his expression, the one he wears when he can’t have something and hasn’t figured out how to get it.
He wonders how they do it, sometimes. Jaehyun and Sungho. How they made it seem like love is enough.
Dongmin would have been so grateful if it was enough. But it never is. Love is never enough for him and Donghyun, and Dongmin doesn’t know how to stop trying.
“Don’t frown,” Donghyun puts a finger in the middle of his forehead, and Dongmin feels a source of strength he didn’t know he was capable of, enough to bat the hand away.
“Don’t tell me what to do,” he huffs, his little breath turning to steam. Maybe they have forgotten to close out the winter.
It is so cold now, the mild itch of fall has etched away, and there will be snow in two days. They will be put into costumes and ushered onto the stage in two days. Jaehyun will rehearse like crazy, sweating off his expressions until he is sure he can be the mischievous boy they expect him to be. Sungho will look into the mirror every day and wonder when he went wrong with a step that nobody is even aware of. Sanghyuk will scold Woonhak when he plays around too much at dance practice but will buy him ice cream later when they both stay late into the night to crush their bones some more.
And Donghyun will—
He will,
“You’re unfair, do you know that?”
Donghyun will be stuck at his side wondering why Dongmin was never enough. Or why he himself was never enough.
Why are they here, he would ask. Why can’t they just close their eyes and pretend that they still love each other so, so much? Why can’t they go back to when the dorm was small, and the crowd was silent, and Dongmin didn’t have so many things to worry about that he stopped worrying about them? When they didn’t have to say “I don’t like you” on camera just because.
When they meant what they said.
“Just shut up,” Dongmin puts a hand over Donghyun’s mouth, perhaps because he knows the other will lick between his fingers. Donghyun looks up at him with tired eyes, his eyelashes just the right shade to accentuate the depth of his irises. His tongue is wet between Dongmin’s fingers, and his teeth are white as bones — bones that Dongmin would not mind clanking against his phalanges.
He cups Dongmin’s cheeks, careful not to let his trembling hands harden into a fist. Or a slap. Against Dongmin’s pale skin that has somehow faded to the grey of dust.
“If you really want to,” Donghyun mutters, and it almost seems like they are going in for a kiss. But Dongmin knows they don’t do that anymore, so he listens carefully, drowning out the mushy sensation that has long filled his head. “If you really want to, I will be rough.”
“I will leave marks on you, bite you in the thighs and hit you in the face. I will choke you and maybe won’t even prep you. I wil— I will say that I don’t love you and we are nothing but a fleeting thing. And that no one would ever be able to satisfy you the way I did— the way I do.”
A deep inhale, like it hurts to say so. As if nothing in Donghyun wants to say these things aloud, even though some of them should be true, shouldn’t they? Because Donghyun has said them, has spoken them into existence, and carved them into Dongmin’s skin like nothing has ever done. The way Dongmin has never let anything touch him so voraciously that he forgot to remind himself it was all worth it.
So they must be true then.
Dongmin knows that they are true. And that these things are reason enough for them to stop trying.
“But— But,” Donghyun’s eyes are locked onto his now. The darkness in them comforts Dongmin’s golden brown — or the golden brown Donghyun remembers, before their room became nothing but a blue archive. A faded hem of blue that washes away everything that might still be said or done, everything it could have been for them.
“Not today. Let me be gentle with you today.”
Fall in love again.
He is falling in love again, and again, and again.
La flor de la vida.
That if he ever died, the love in him would not fade. It would seep into the palm of a lemon tree by the roadside. It would find the water drained from the rivers in Donghyun’s hometown. It would hide in the darkness of his eyes when the sun was high, or in the silk of his shirt. It would carry what it was all worth, and somehow find its way back again and again — until he learns how to make it right. Until he learns that there is never a reason enough to stop trying.
Until he can kiss those lips and fill them with those three words. Again.
“Alright,” his eyes are rimmed red. There is no other life left to yearn for, only this one they have chosen to fall in love within.
He blinks, and Donghyun’s hands are tangled in the hem of his shirt, silk bunched in tides.
He blinks again, and Donghyun is touching him properly, flares spreading from the pit of his stomach to the point of his chest. Hands rubbing everywhere, never staying long enough to leave marks.
Dongmin thinks he means it. That he will be gentle. But now Dongmin cannot breathe, and it is all his fault. Now he must keep trying for them, knowing love is never enough. Knowing that if he is reborn, there will be no this-Donghyun for him to savor. That he will have to keep trying again, chasing a love they could not make right in this lifetime.
What a sad thought.
How blue it all is for them.
“Where did you put the lube?” Donghyun asks, stroking Dongmin’s limp length, having worked their clothes off while Dongmin was distracted by the small bald spot on his head from bleaching. It would almost be funny, if anyone ever found out how bad the damage was. But maybe no one ever will. Not even Donghyun himself. Only Dongmin knows, for now. Because he stares too much, and maybe he is dying inside, just enough to find this all funny.
“Same place as before, second drawer.” He rubs his hips against the cold air, a little desperate when Donghyun pulls his hand away. It makes his stomach twist with an ugly thought — Donghyun has forgotten. As if this act between them isn’t enough to be remembered. “That was a stupid question.”
“Just to make sure.” Donghyun looks at him with those tired eyes again. It must be a ritual by now — asking what he already knows, like repeating it might give it meaning. Maybe they are both losing the thread, Donghyun too obsessed with what they were, Dongmin too afraid of what they could become.
Everything just to make sure. Even if it doesn't worth any meaning.
So Dongmin kicks him in the shin, and takes the lube himself.
He drenches two fingers to the base and pushes them in. The stretch hurts, like most things do now. His fingers overused, his body never quite used enough. He moves recklessly, trying to make up for lost time. The wet squelch offends Donghyun. He thinks he should be the one doing it. Being gentle, like he promised.
Dongmin hisses through blurred eyes, twisting his body into odd angles, clicking his tongue when he can’t find the spot he’s looking for.
“Let me.” Another finger slides in, slick and frustratingly slower, gentler. Whatever protest Dongmin has dies in his throat as his walls pull tight, breathing the digit in and out. The faint scratch of a nail catches on every ridge, every nerve.
“Breathe. Come on.” A kiss lands on the tip of his nose. Donghyun kneels in front of him, sweat shining on his forehead, blond hair sticking to his ears. The Donghyun he knows is here, searching inside him for the same thing he is searching for. Dongmin feels himself swell with it, as if his stomach will burst and he will drown in its acid.
The body of water, somewhere, rushes through his veins, waiting to be cut open and mulled over. The dam, somewhere, once broken, has stitched itself into a fragile, miserable thing — waiting only to be torn apart again.
The crowd is silent, but Donghyun’s breath is loud, and Dongmin’s even louder. The blue lights no longer soften their expressions but gleam back at them in the thin film of tears, Dongmin’s from anticipation, Donghyun’s from waiting.
God, he has been waiting so long, hasn’t he?
For Dongmin to let him in again — like the day they shared a single cup of ramen. Four years ago, when Dongmin didn’t know it yet, but love had already found him in the form of a boy from a town by the sea.
When, amor de mi vida.
Donghyun blows a raspberry against his ear before pulling his finger out. Dongmin doesn’t realize how close he was, how easily he might have come, if only Donghyun had kept going. He doesn’t realize anything except the truths he already knows, the ones he’ll never let the other hear.
A cock enters him, and Dongmin cries.
It hurts. It tears him open like a spear splitting a skull. Tears stream down his cheeks, and Donghyun does his best to kiss them away — everywhere but the mouth.
Donghyun has been crying too. The skin beneath his eyes is swollen, and Dongmin wishes desperately to turn off the blue lights, to touch him in darkness, to feel the thickness of his flesh beneath his fingertips. To trace it into forgiveness, to let Donghyun rest from this endless chase. The chase Dongmin forced them into, once it was no longer just Dongmin and Donghyun, but Taesan and Leehan too. Once they became someone else. Names as familiar as their own.
It is freedom, wrapped like a home. A home, built like a cage.
Two birds, neck to neck, limb to limb — under eyes that are not of themselves.
Donghyun thrusts faster, forcing Dongmin’s mouth open with two clean fingers. There is no reason to be quiet — but Dongmin isn’t sure if Donghyun even wants to hear him scream, or just a stubborn habit. He isn’t sure of anything at all, not anymore. Everything now feels like memories buried four years deep.
His tongue darts out, mimicking the other earlier, licking between fingers, tasting the stickiness that exists nowhere else — except under these blue lights, for once.
It feels good, after that. Maybe because he stops thinking. Because Donghyun hauls him up from the bed, buries his blond hair into the hollow of his shoulder. Because Dongmin is expected to move with the rhythm, but he is too tired to. So instead, he closes his eyes, clings to the sweat-soaked back, digs his nails in deep.
And lets himself remember love again.
A fleeting sensation. A sheer force witnessed by no one but themselves.
A love that refuses to stay the same, reborn in fragments. And that is all they have now. Whether they keep trying or not. Whether they are right or not. Four years of everything that amounted to nothing.
Guarda recuerdos. Dongmin is here, on top of Donghyun, meeting him each time he drives in. Each time he drives home.
Because despite everything,
despite, despite, despite—
There is still a love waiting to be buried and unearthed. Over and over.
A drowning teen and another. Again, again and again.