Chapter Text
curiosity blooms (at the first strike of the season)
jackson sees the moving truck stop at the house that has been empty and looming quiet ever since dance-graduate suzy decided to move back to new york over three months ago, and he decides he should say hello first.
imagine his pleasant surprise, when he’s tangled up in figuring out lunch along with the garage-shed buried set of lights he needs to ship overseas for a project, that a knock makes itself known without fanfare at his door.
“hello, i’m park jinyoung. we just moved in next door.” between two people, the slighter asian man introduces himself with a neat, curling smile. “please, call me jinyoung.”
jinyoung nudges at his taller partner, standing slightly behind his shoulder, and a flickering glance seems to pass between them.
“hey - i’m jaebeom.” tall and handsome smiles, a fleeting thing, but jackson notices it as instantly as he would from behind the lens of his camera. jaebeom, with his haphazardly long hair, seems like he might turn and reveal another side of him before the surprise of a flash shot.
jinyoung and jaebeom, huh? jackson takes a chance and steps past his propped door. “wang jackson,” he bows slightly, offering a hand, “it’s nice to meet you.”
the two share another wordless look at the unexpected korean, before jinyoung takes his hand first. then, it’s jinyoung who bows first, jaebeom following gently, and jinyoung who speaks again with a sweet, wrinkled eye-smile:
“so, what year were you born?”
this, of course, age follows formality. jackson replies smartly, “i’m 26 as of march.”
“oh, 94-liner,” jinyoung joins him with a smooth switch to korean. a dip in his voice and the sound settles, murmured easily at the back of the throat. jackson wonders if there’s the thick hint of an accent too. or if it’s just satoori that he’s long forgotten. “so, we’re the same age.”
“then— “ jackson’s stare flickers over to jaebeom.
it’s the first time since they’ve met that jaebeom speaks to him without some kind of prompt from jinyoung. “i’m your hyung,” he says to jackson with a sudden boldness, but a practiced stubbornness too, an adamant insistence on something so minute it’s not a problem unless you make it one.
jaebeom, despite his silent demeanor, seems the type to get stuck on this detail.
but jackson has never truly gotten around to the nuances of the korean age system, so. no, he understands it, but he doesn’t get it. maybe he’s the type to be stubborn as well.
“it’s because hyung was a ‘fast birth’,” jinyoung interjects helpfully, with much practice and slightly weary patience, between their silent stares. “january 1994,” he nods at jackson, as if hoping this is enough to explain, to placate him.
“but, why,” jackson gestures, decidedly looking now to jinyoung as the sympathetic one to side with, “come on, we’re only two months apart.”
“because.” jinyoung starts with a sigh and a pause, an aching familiarity in this roundabout talk, “because technically he would’ve been able to start school a year earlier than either of us-“
“but obviously, i didn’t go to the same school as you guys—also, does that even apply in the states-“
jaebeom interjects firmly, leaning over jinyoung’s shoulder. “yah, jackson just call me hyung.”
and because jackson senses that he and his new neighbor could go on, back-and-forth, belaboring the technicalities of korean age with the other new neighbor as their ever-suffering mediator, he gives. but not without his own concession.
“fine. jb-hyung.” he crosses his arms with a ready pout.
the disbelieving huff that settles into a smile, soft and a little surprised, over jaebeom’s lips is entirely worth it.
-
jinyoung, with the sleeves of his knit black shirt rolled up to his elbows, paints quite the professional picture of a capable man.
jackson is surprised to find him digging his bare fingers into the dirt, physically settling the little white roots of some leafy plant as he transfers it out from a pot. between his legs, clumped behind his back, are another assortment of tiny pots with flowering patterns of various shapes and sizes.
jackson lays over the line of their shared fence, close enough to fix his stare casually on the side of jinyoung’s head.
“you garden?”
jinyoung smears the back of his wrist across his cheek. his round glasses sit, lopsided, on his nose. “sure, it’s a hobby,”
he tosses a glance towards the miniature greenhouse, jutting out from the side of the house like a makeshift sunroom. “but, it helps the business too.”
jackson had noticed the new life too, how the empty glass was suddenly filled with fresh blooms. pink, orange, white, a spectrum of summer colors to catch the light shimmering through glass.
“huh,” jackson’s surprise slips out audibly, an exhale, an unaware judgment.
it’s not that flower shops are uncommon. but with the subject of flowers in mind, it’s more comparable to leaning across dinner, hiding a morbid whisper from the waiter as he slips the check beneath your bowed heads – thank you and hey, i’m so sorry, tell me more-. park jinyoung’s flowers make apparent the awareness of that strange thing they all share, but remains barely spoken of. park jinyoung casually planting tiny sprouts with his steady fingers makes jackson want to ask-
does it ever hurt? how many times have you seen someone’s heart break at your hands?
jackson asks anyway, bright curiosity sparking on his tongue. “have you ever had to, you know, help someone match a flower?” to the ones growing inside them.
jinyoung pauses with his fingers in the soil. then, he lifts them out, brushing away the wet flecks. “yes, a few times.”
his face closes gently in a smile. not a topic he’s exactly grown used to, but he bears the pain of such a reminder without faltering.
“it’s a little strange right?” he turns to jackson, guessing at his blunt interest. his glasses flash under the sunlight, and the rest of him softens through the refracted beams, soaking it up. “people come asking for flowers, for presents, for goodbyes, despite everything they do to us.”
“despite everything—they love them so much.” jinyoung lips tilt, like he’s giving a portion of himself away in his sun-softened, earth-stained domesticity, so vulnerable and spilling open jackson almost wants to ask again:
the flowers or the people? but then that’s already one question too far.
jaebeom’s distant call comes through the yard, “jinyoung-!”
-distantly from inside the house, and jinyoung returns it, shifting on his haunches instantly towards the sound.
“out here!”
when jaebeom steps onto the grass, jackson automatically draws up a frame with even grids mapped across his irises. the light on high contrast towards the left here and high saturation of color all along the bottom half there.
jinyoung, with his somehow neat hair and stained trousers, surprisingly at home in the humid bloom of summer, and jaebeom in his white slippers and a thin jacket that reveals a pale hint of his jaw above the popped collar, more out of place than ever when he is not at jinyoung’s side.
out of place, not in the way that someone might make faces and shudder at simple exposure to nature. instead, he hunches tight at jinyoung’s shoulder, resting his palms on his knees, holding himself there at the joint as if to keep from sinking further into the grass. he is out of place because he is fragile and rendered breathless by the open light. by the line of jackson’s stare.
the dirt, already rough in the natural tenseness of jinyoung’s bare forearms grows stark against the slim dip and bump of jaebeom’s wrist as it disappears beneath his clean sleeve. there’s a contrast in the exchange, jackson can’t define it, but he thinks a still photo could let him linger on it longer.
jaebeom hands jinyoung his phone, and it must be jinyoung’s phone because a swipe of his muddy fingerprint opens up the screen with a snap.
jinyoung scrolls through an email, tilting his head back and forth between jaebeom and the phone, and jaebeom’s mouth moves softly in a conversation jackson can’t catch in his obvious eavesdropping. yet, their hands remain intertwined, adjacent, touching, overlapping, the entire time.
jinyoung props up the phone with part of his palm, his thumb on the screen, and jaebeom’s fingers fold around the back. jinyoung continues to scroll, holding jaebeom in place, cradling his knuckles, their thumbs pressing in the same spots, prints smearing over one another even though jinyoung is really the only one who can see the screen.
and jaebeom stays, crouched over jinyoung in the garden, so careful and out of place in the searing, living brightness.
for something as simple as this, they do it together, not in the way of needing each other, but as if they’re simply too used to touching rather than being apart. this is the only way they can fit, in the space of immediate proximity.
jaebeom tosses his hair out of the way, and by accident seemingly, meets jackson’s stare across the fence. he pulls at his collar, and ducks away, tucking his neck entirely behind it.
for the first time the question comes clearly to jackson’s mind, searing sunlight clarity: are they together?
flax with which we weave our golden domesticity
if jaebeom and jinyoung, jinyoung and jaebeom, seem to exist in a state of co-entanglement, a together-ness so natural they are beyond co-dependence, then it’s odd how often jackson manages to catch one neighbor on his own.
jinyoung has a habit of coming into the yard right at dusk, before the sky hits the full brunt of a burning sunset. jackson knows it’s a special sight, no matter whether you’ve seen the span of a city from a hong kong skyscraper or the expanse of open fields down an empty midwestern drive – california is dry and overpriced, but the heat is a glorious still-fire in the sky. indeed, jinyoung stands like an idle father above his small plot, crossing his arms, turning his face up to the glow, soaking it in as a desert plant would.
jackson grabs his medium-sized, landscape camera and joins jinyoung at the boundary of their fence.
jinyoung glances over the thin line between them, mottled clouds reflected in his glasses. “you do photography?”
“sure,” jackson sets up the tripod, a little snap and click as he tests the first shot. “just a hobby.”
then, click, a second cheeky shot of jinyoung: the even points of the fence forming the bottom frame, his peach-pink lips rounded in a slightly off-center ‘o’ to the left, and the raw haze of red fading like spilled watercolor into the horizon of his shoulder. save for the pop of pink to jinyoung’s face, the picture is cast in a soft glowing shadow beneath a sky of brilliant fire.
not bad for a surprise shot. no intense blurs or indignant customers. jackson scoots the tripod around to show jinyoung: “that, and you know, business.”
jinyoung laughs, a startled, breathy chuckle, and he smacks a hand lightly across jackson’s shoulder. the tripod rattles against the fence, and leaning over it like two opposing weathervanes, they come close to forgetting the border entirely.
“i am not paying for that, just so you know,” jinyoung draws back, an odd strictness to his posture, imperious, yet it fits him anyway. his eyes linger on the screen, considering for a moment more.
jackson waits a beat, and when jinyoung only leans into himself, a beat too long and contemplative, he asks jinyoung to tell him about his tiny garden instead. out of the two neighbors, it seems jinyoung is the one who is willing to talk to him, the one willing to stand barefoot in the tall grass and look to the sky when jackson points out an elephant on a spot and string of pink.
still, jackson can’t forget the tight, breathless way jaebeom had held himself. close to jinyoung and away from everything else.
“you have to plant onions around your main crop,” jinyoung gestures to the higher tufts of wispy greens surrounding the lattice of sprouts in the center of his corner plot.
“that way,” he holds up a finger, pausing with a light touch in the air, and jackson nods along, “the rabbits won’t get in.”
jackson oohs, and jinyoung’s eyes glint beneath his sunset-spread glasses, playful with secrets of the trade.
jackson thinks he could get along with jinyoung, at the very least.
.
the other neighbor leans out tentatively beneath the sheen of curling, morning mist.
intense summers, blazing hot days, humid-laden nights that leave you gasping in relief from your own sweat, and mornings that seem to creep in from strange worlds, they’re so distant, so cool.
in some ways, the sight of jaebeom now as jackson pulls into their parallel driveway gives him the same double-take and slow, blinking whiplash.
he is coming off the high of a beach shoot, lasting the duration of hazy night to the glittering crest of sunrise on the first wave. 4 am is when the pink hints saturate the most brilliantly, and after the drive back, 5 am is when most people should be asleep.
not for jaebeom apparently.
he startles in a flash of light, lurid yellow in a cut of blue shadow. crouched, tucked into himself on the bare driveway, interrupted somehow even though he’s alone. his eyes, his face seem so uncovered, a new softness beyond the brusque handsomeness jackson remembers.
jackson cuts the engine, and the high beams snap off. jaebeom startles again, jerking up to his feet. still, without locking the car, the low undertone of the headlights remain, flooding between them.
—atop the car, jackson rests his arm, then his pounding coffee-heavy head. “hey, morning,”
jaebeom only watches him, something disgruntled closing over the previous vulnerability of surprise. he pulls at the loose edge of his turtleneck, tucking it against his chin.
“morning.”
ah, was it the banmal? jackson stands, slouches, a little straighter, but he’s still gazing at jaebeom curiously. “you’re awake so early hyung, are you…” his gaze trails to the empty slot of the driveway, glowing adjacently to his. “waiting for someone?”
“no, i—” jaebeom’s eyes avoid him, but it’s as if he’s been caught. caught waiting, huddled over his knees, unmoving, yet reaching in the bare light.
“i should be going.” and as sudden as it was, their barely there exchange of meaningless pleasantries, that jaebeom was there, a jumpy fire-bug who stayed out too long after night passed to be trapped in the hollow amber of jackson’s headlights, he’s gone.
the tension holds, buzzing in the humid morning air, until the diagonal slant of jaebeom’s front door eases horizontal into the frame, but jackson stubbornly stares after it, willing jaebeom to step out in reverse. to come out into the open again.
jackson is stubborn. so, a likely fault of his own, or perhaps, it’s his spontaneous chats with jinyoung over their shared fence, but he doesn’t think the stilted distance between them is so simple as dislike or a difference in personalities.
after all, jaebeom had slipped into a smile the first time they met.
an evening primrose for your wonderful inconstancy
jackson seems to catch jaebeom off-guard every time, and he hopes it’s not because of something on his face. or perpetually, his face.
he rubs his chin self-consciously as he steps up to the intersecting corner of the fence, where the garden is—where jinyoung usually stands on the other side, basking under his crown of flowering apricots
california grown heaven, jackson remembers, jinyoung’s eyes laughing in heavy-set sweetness as jackson had hissed at the first sour bite. the half-bitten core had been tossed over a second later, and jinyoung had the audacity to kick it back through the gap.
now, it’s jaebeom, holding himself beneath the dappled veil at sunset. he still seems at odds, out-of-place, but this time, he looks over the fence with something expectant set in his closed crossed arms.
jackson idly admires the strong curve of jaebeom’s jaw and thinks about how it would look on a black-and-white spread. layers of shadow that cut at a bold border.
he doesn’t expect jaebeom to speak first, but he does, shifting in place with an avoidant gaze.
“look, i’m not a morning person.”
jackson’s elbow slips clean off the edge of the fence, and he ends up knocking his chin against his knuckles on the slight way down. he catches himself with only the most eloquent: “—uh?”
jaebeom steps slightly, not towards jackson, but almost leaving that restrained spot he seems to have found under the apricot’s tall shadow.
in the clean grass, it’s not rushed slippers but sneakers this time. white and well-worn, worn this time with purpose.
“just—sorry about the morning, you know,” jaebeom eyes flick over to him again, this time catching for a stilted beat longer, and jackson is still sprawled over the fence as if he might tumble to the other side in a moment.
jaebeom’s lip twitches, a thin line of satisfaction, and – ah, even being laughed at, jackson is endeared at this new side of his 2nd neighbor.
“you caught me off guard is all,” and now it’s another side, jaebeom’s cheeks shifting into a rigid defense as he stares down his nose at jackson. haughty and completely in the right.
“yep, no worries, i get it hyung.” jackson hauls himself up, wood dragging imprints into his arms, and the fence re-asserts the respectful distance between them again. “i’m definitely a morning person though.”
jaebeom rolls his eyes. he doesn’t say it, but the little smirk on his face makes it clear: of course, you would be.
the moment passes and then, the sunset casting hot, waiting silence over them. in some way, jackson enjoys it, the in-between space where neither he nor jaebeom know what to say to one another, if one of them should leave first, or just pretend like they aren’t both here, waiting out a non-existent conversation. it’s really the forced awkwardness of it all.
in the end, they interrupt the buzz of summer heat together:
“so, is jinyoung—“
“jinyoung said—“
jackson gestures for jaebeom to go first as jaebeom forges on anyway with something like blustering stubbornness.
“when jinyoung gets back, he said he’ll show you around the greenhouse,” jaebeom says, a careful warning with the way he minces each word, that if jackson isn’t listening now, he’s definitely not going to get another invitation.
jackson blinks, “why can’t you, hyung?”
“i—“ and there’s that clear light from jackson’s headlights again, shot through jaebeom’s seemingly stunned doe eyes.
jackson’s seems to have a habit of catching jaebeom in his moments of the strangest, most hidden vulnerabilities.
“i don’t really know much about plants. that’s all…jinyoung,” he mumbles jinyoung as if an afterthought, a secret confession quiet enough to avoid jackson’s stare.
“anyway,” jaebeom draws into himself, away from the ticklish grass, hanging apricots, the flowering plot of tiny vegetables. he presses a smile at jackson, and clearly, he’s reached whatever limit it was he set for himself, here in the fading sunset.
“come over some time.”
jaebeom strides back through the vivid evening, dark blue now, and honestly, it’s the most non-inviting invitation jackson has ever received.
jackson props himself up fully against the fence now, turning over the impressions of summer heat beneath his lids.
hyung is, jinyoung had said with a hesitant breath, then personal revelation with soft laughter, don’t take his attitude seriously. he’s just being himself.
and jackson wonders, wonders with more curiosity than he should, what exactly it is that’s between them.
and whether he’s got himself caught up in the same thing.
-
“come on in,” jinyoung hums, already settling a breadth broader and blooming full into his usually neat, pointed shoulders as he steps after jackson into the miniature greenhouse.
it takes a flash of glass and sunlight before jackson can really take in everything— and it’s a lot of everything indeed.
larger brush plants, tall with different names and flowering leaves that jackson has never learned, line the edges, fill in and obscure corners. in the middle of the glass mirage sits a table with pots, half-assembled with cut stalks and still flowers, lips pursed, still frozen towards the faraway oasis of sun.
for such a small place, jinyoung has somehow made it seem decadent, an illusion of lavish life spilling over.
he’s very aware of it too, settling back against the counter as jackson wanders and gapes. dignified, haughty, and well within his rights to revel in jackson’s amazement.
“and you take care of all this?” jackson stumbles in place to turn upon a cluster of pure summer vibrance. pink pointsettia edges and yellow centers greet him.
“well, jaebeom hyung does his part too.” jinyoung steps up next to him, cocking his head up to the house, where, surely, jaebeom is avoiding jackson at all costs.
jackson automatically sulks. jinyoung cheerily grasps him by the elbow, pulling him to another section.
“this one,” he tickles his fingers under a loose branch of drooping blue-bells, “is a campanula bellflower. i’ve had to sprout it from the same stalk every spring, so despite the trouble it’s given me, i’ve been able to keep it going for quite a while now.”
jackson bends dutifully to the shy flowers, snapping the downturned edge of the outermost bell. he checks the rough shot afterward, and it shows through starkly, an oddly vibrant hue.
jinyoung guides him to a puff of azaleas, the rare white orchid that he hurriedly bats jackson’s clammy fingers away from, and finally, a lone dahlia that he holds to his chest with two careful hands.
curling his fingers around its base, he looks at it with something. something tentative, as the micelle of pink bobs before the place of his heart.
“your favorite?” jackson lets his arms go limp, a quiet admission to jinyoung’s own hesitance.
jinyoung’s expression flutters, that unsaid tender, gentle pause that means perhaps it was long ago, and yet enough still to hurt. he nods, partly, a motion to fill the space rather than an answer. jackson wishes he could ask, but it’s almost the same for jaebeom, for when it seems hard to even reciprocate a good morning without the reply being caught on something that’s not dislike, but – hesitation.
instead, jinyoung sets it onto the counter and steps back. he holds his empty hand carefully as jackson captures a series of the fresh dahlia in a rapid shutter-burst.
when jackson leaves, feeling as if his shoulders were now soaked through with pungent heat, tangible fragrance, he tells jinyoung, “i think that one’s going to turn out the best.”
jinyoung closes the door behind them, touches his fingers lightly to jackson’s back. he seems have gotten over whatever dahlia-induced sadness that seems to plague florists like him, because he asks:
“could you send me the prints for them when you’re finished?” his smile turns into that gentle, curling expression again. “i think jaebeom hyung would…love them too.”
“sure,” jackson replies eagerly, no hesitation, “free of charge.”
“you’re free to visit any time,” jinyoung offers, quickly smiling, and leaves the glass door unlocked.
scintilla bursts, nettle flashes – and the shadow of dreams left in between
and again, that is not the last time that jackson thinks, an interrupting daydream at this point: are they together?
it twines around his fingertips, the same itch that pulls him to his camera when there are sunsets shifted an inch over from how they were in the afternoon before. the itch that knows only the moment, captured as it is in the single shot, could described perfectly without words.
the question lingers in the most irrational way. should he assume anything between two men who just happen to lease a house together with a blooming greenhouse in their backyard. roommates? very close post-college roommates. but well, most roommates don’t talk with their eyes the way jinyoung and jaebeom do.
jinyoung has told him before, a noncommittal, non-answer: “we’ve been friends for a long time now.”
jackson had believed him, of course. it was the closest he had come to some sort of definition to the buzzing helium and hot air expanding his wandering mind, dazed sky-high.
but the impulse remains, and it nags, dragging his gaze to the waiting distance between their overlapping mornings. mailboxes, shuffled envelops for one, and even more shared between two.
“hey,” he calls across the short spread of their driveways. “let me take a shoot of you two?”
they look at each other again, because jinyoung was already turned into the crook of jaebeom’s shoulder, jaebeom’s loose hair overlapping with his cheek.
they pass that wordless lingering between them, and when jinyoung meets jackson’s eyes first, the pull of it – he’s looking at jackson, but the corner of his gaze seems to wrinkle, stuck on jaebeom.
“they’ll be good move-in decorations, something to put on your walls,” jackson pushes, swallowing down the clean heat in the air, the indelible something of jaebeom and jinyoung.
he wheedles, in the way he does to convince clients to book two follow-up shoots instead of one, to advocate for an entire album versus memory, because how good will a hazy memory look in comparison to a glossy 60x50 spread of black and white shutter bursts against any bare wall. in the end, he can only prompt, begging, “same time, same place tomorrow? i swear, 15 minutes max.”
jaebeom makes to grumble, jinyoung taps two envelopes against his arm, and there they go again: lashes pausing in a whisper, slight lip-curl, and the ever-subtle shift of two people turning into the space of one another.
jackson gets his answer soon enough:
jinyoung’s smile says he won the argument. “sounds good jackson.”
-
without a doubt, jackson watches the frames flit by on his display, and with each minute, with the ever so slight change in motion, he is so in love with the idea of them being in love with each other.
jaebeom is a work of angles, all different, with certain edges to form the frame for the next quick shot. if his jaw juts out too far when he’s turned away from jinyoung, the next second, his face is settling into a hollow curve. and yet, there’s the implication of full cheeks if he so much as pouted. a scintilla smile reserved for the moments the rolling shutter can’t seem to catch up to.
“scintilla flowers spark,” jinyoung had explained, lighting his fingers to each pinched bud, like firebugs in the sun. “they bloom quick and rare, and by the next season, they’re gone.”
from the back, jinyoung is soft, softer everywhere when jackson looks through his lens. curved cheek, plush lips, the thick slope of his eyebrows. but he holds himself steady. the crisp cut of his sleeves, his nice, pressed shirtsleeves, rolled up and ready to wrinkle in the sunset garden. the steadiness and strength of him, as he looks at jaebeom now.
in the empty point between them, jackson catches all these intersecting lines of motion. their magnitudes, the immensity of such tiny head-tilts, the frame of shoulders shifting to deflect the flash, all of it changes, inconstant and inconsequential. they dash each other into opposing neutrality.
shots should follow the natural lines of motion, so jackson, he waits behind the lens, waiting for jinyoung and jaebeom’s guidance.
but from jinyoung’s gaze to jaebeom, it is a constant vector, pointing in one direction, one intense measurable magnitude only – as if to say, directly to the camera, through to jackson’s eye – here, here is the focus of the shot.
jackson is dutiful and obsessively compelled at the same time. pulled in by some rapid downfall of gravitational acceleration, but in truth, it’s the force of jinyoung’s stare alone.
he sees jaebeom through the lens, and perhaps, he falls a little in love with the image there too.
-
what was lingering before, the compulsive itch, the dream scratch of a thought to flick away by the tip of a nail, it turns his idle fingers over the phone, reaching from his barely settled afternoon to an unusually early hong kong morning and the cheery voice on the other end.
“yuqi,” the impulse, the itch is spilling, from what feels like a drowsy midday dream into an irrational need for confirmation somehow, shuddering in his chest, “hey—”
jia ge! barely morning here, but aren’t you lucky i’m always awake.
“yeah, i thought you’d be,” he laughs, voice jittering into the speaker, across the span of a sea and a time difference he has memorized by heart. 3 pm, 6 am to the same sun and stars. “listen, have you had a chance to look at the spreads?”
----a pause, and the distant echo of city traffic makes jackson imagine himself back in hong kong again. she hums moments later, muffled cotton and consideration. she’s bordering on deliberate, teasing patience.
mm, have now.
he had sent her the proofs, barely any touch-ups, save for some slight tweaks to blurred edges and off-center compositions.
“so, what do you think?”
she laughs lightly, the sudden brush and whisper of her breath drawing close and disappearing. oh, so you’re doing engagement shots for free now?
jackson, for whatever reason, finds himself blushing and his mouth jumping with odd defensiveness. “no! they’re not engaged—"
she laughs again in her deep, delighted voice, a slight coffee rasp ruining the richness of it. of course, of course, this just screams domesticity. you never told me your neighbors were married.
fwip---there’s the slick slide of cheap polaroid sheets exchanging places with one another. next time ask them how long they’ve been together and get them to do a series of commemoration shots instead. you know how wedding anniversary albums sell the best; you’ll keep them coming back every year.
he sighs into the phone as she finishes with a smug little exclamation: bam! money moves.
“thank you, yuqi,” he says, exasperated, exceedingly fond. her easy assumption stands uncorrected, still stuttering around inside him, forcing his leg into an old bouncing tick. he needs it to settle somehow.
ge, you’re gonna have them wrapped around your finger in no time~
they hang up with the promise to catch coffee across more than a day’s time difference and a tentative refusal of a second copy of the finished spreads. yuqi pleas for them because surely, their portfolio page could use a new header and at least this, just this one, it would be so perfect, come on-
this jackson agrees on, even as he turns her down. it’s the same picture pulled up on the monitor now, when he had scrolled through every other sequence in the shot, only to leave this one open.
he doesn’t know if it’s exhaustive relief, that yuqi sees what is most obvious, just as he does, or if he’s done something foolish again. in the end, when he sags against his chair he can see the exact outline behind his eyelids.
jinyoung and jaebeom at the mailbox. black and white, but he’s turned up the stained coffee-type saturation over it to blur with jaebeom’s coat. perhaps jinyoung had said something, something funny, something startling. something, whatever it was, doesn’t matter because the shutter had managed to cut into the exact pause between them. not the reaching, the movement leading from before to the then, but the exact moment of the then now where jinyoung’s hand had cupped jaebeom’s elbow and jaebeom’s face, turned, had looked upon jinyoung. now, paused for an eternity after.
ah. jackson can’t describe it, not the absolute clarity of it behind his closed eyes, but he did manage to capture it perfectly.
the feeling it gives him; yearning with no end.
-
jackson is convinced, but still—it’s the need for his impulse to be realized. made solid in someone else’s eyes so he can say see, shaking his evidence with a gentle fist, it’s not an obsession, tell me this doesn’t make your heart ache like mine does.
he would like to stop thinking about it. truly, he would.
mark is not someone he would call a close friend, or really friend at all. the first memory jackson has of him is just two people loitering in a 4 am lone line. mark with two twelve packs of monster drinks and jackson, the most heavy-duty duct tape he could find for a last-ditch effort to salvage a broken tripod.
uh, wow – you busy with something?
mark had accepted the slight with an oddly impressionable grin. awkward naturally at 4 am, but no offense taken.
nah man i game. just need that one last push to get through the run you know? plus, chat was getting slow anyway…
jackson wasn’t sure he did, but mark had slid his puffy eyes over to jackson’s single item.
so, the duct tape?
broken tripod, jackson had supplied to mark’s raised brow, whatever assumptions he had about another stranger buying one hyper-specific item at 4 am. i really had no idea how else to fix it okay, i swear i’m not some dark web dealer ready to snatch away random shoppers in my van.
mark had laughed him off, jackson had almost asked about his gaming? streaming? channel, but then they had passed each other without another greeting in the night.
so they lurk at the same hours, the same store. mark knows he’s a photographer (and not some suspicious black-market figure), and jackson pretends like he knows what it is exactly that mark does with his internet career.
they get along well enough in passing moments, in adjacent spaces before a shelf of protein bars. well enough that the buzzing impulse that has been in jackson’s ears, bones, synapses turns him again to a friendly stranger.
“mark, hey, what’s up.”
“yo, trying to figure out the merits of sustaining myself for three hours off of only lara bars and gatorade, you?”
their conversation blurs with exchanges of quick pleasantries, words directed at the choice of raisin grain or the cheap ones with fake chocolate.
“—mm, got some new neighbors.” “oh, they nice?” “yeah, they’re great, totally…just, great.”
jackson’s tone leads, fades with a hint, an interest that has mark pausing in his cursory examination of a bottle of shockingly blue juice.
“so a couple?” he poses so quickly, nonchalantly, and if jackson knew him, might actually like to get to know him, perhaps he would say mark is someone extremely discerning under his lax grin and bed-swept hair. but in the end, there’s still that age old question, and it’s like everybody from every distant edge of his life is intruding to ask him to make this clear because he sure as hell can’t figure it out on his own.
“um, don’t know. they’re both guys—"
mark picks up another assorted can of energy drink, examining it with bland regret as he finishes jackson’s thought with a sudden burst of smooth, rambling awareness— “which means they’re either close enough to be college roommates or they’re years deep into married domesticity.”
at jackson’s slack-jawed surprise, he smirks with the tip of a sharp canine. “so i’m right, huh?”
so naturally, it felt like i was a camellia blooming in your hot, shaking hands
jinyoung greets him, one misty morning with an undercurrent of hot air, as usual. car keys in one hand, a nice opaque blue button-up, glasses, and for some reason, as always, a pressed coat draped over the other.
“greenhouse is open if you want to visit.” his eyes glint, the same silver key jackson recognizes from his first tour catching that pointed light. “of course, business reasons only.”
business reasons is jackson trying out an old nikon, experimenting with the way he can shoot still flowers like he does with people. their dappled edges take in color and saturation much more easily, but when he turns, the sun will manage to catch a different side. a shadow flickering tentatively beneath petals. fleeting movement that can’t be defined otherwise.
it becomes apparent then, and now with jinyoung smiling like he does when he’s caught in his own space in the glow of clear glass, how vividly alive they are.
“you sure jaebeom won’t mind?” jackson tone betrays him because it just slips out, as it has been for the past week, the impulse pulsing continuously at the forefront of his skull.
jinyoung’s eyes catch, and jackson regrets it immediately because he never means to push. not this time nor the few but distinctly hesitant times before.
(but how can he not let himself slip up, when they’re so naturally jinyoung&jaebeom, jaebeom&jinyoung. and every time he so much as nudges an elbow into that space, it’s like they have to recoil in tender shock from what seems so blatantly obvious).
jinyoung steadies himself, a slight press of lips, curling resolve from the whiskers of his eyes. apologetic almost. “one day, i’ll get hyung down there when you’re doing a shoot— then you’ll see, he’s very gentle with the flowers.”
“i believe you,” jackson offers hastily, if only to brush away the tangible awkwardness into the morning heat. “thing is, i’m also pretty sure he’d kick me out immediately.”
jinyoung is, beyond the odd hesitation and unanswered questions, someone who opens his greenhouse door willingly to jackson. a neighbor whose laugh will overlap with the sunset when he leans over their shared fence. friend, if jackson could wheedle more than a business number out of him.
jaebeom is, well, not any of that.
still, jinyoung laughs, bouncing chuckles high in his throat, not at jackson, but because of him. “just come over, you’ll see,” his eyes turn gentle, so gentle and seeing something jackson can’t, “he would love your company.”
-
despite his promise, his plans, the shoot with a fresh arrangement of primroses is delayed when he receives a last-minute booking that forces him to spend the rest of the morning trashing his schedule for the rest of the month.
then, by the time he closes the multicolored eye-strain of a calendar, it’s noon. lunchtime. jackson sits down on his backyard porch, angled towards the clear light of his neighbors’ greenhouse, and treats himself to a slow hour of chicken salad.
two minutes to 1, and the piercing sound of something shattering breaks the heat-haze lull. jackson’s bare feet scratch as he slides off the wood edge, as he bumps into the fence, then stock still in the grass, waiting for an echo.
no voices, no rush, nothing follows. it’s like he’s watching the pristine shape of the greenhouse, expecting a fracture, a break—when clearly, it was something from within.
jinyoung had left the thin metal-frame door unlocked this morning.
jackson makes a split-second decision before he vaults over the fence. his legs barely catch on the high posts, and there’s that old fencing burn through his thighs reminding him that perhaps he shouldn’t be doing something like this again in his late 20s.
it must be extremely suspicious, seeing him climb his neighbor’s fence, sprint across their lawn to directly yank open their glass backdoor—but jackson finds jaebeom curled up on the floor, and it’s enough.
amidst scattered dirt, the rolling fractures of a shattered pot spilling over with traces of deep roots, is jaebeom with his foot bloodied above the edge of his black slip-on loafers. the pink dahlia, the loudest most adoring one that seems to be jinyoung’s favorite, and perhaps jaebeom’s too, lays limply beneath the pristine glass.
barely clinging to a clump of dirt, its color is lifeless now in the shaded sunlight.
jaebeom looks up at him, and it’s the first time he isn’t guarded or glaring. instead, he’s seeing through jackson, completely beyond him, with a strange look of loss that offers a clarity jackson isn’t meant to understand.
jaebeom looks up at him with that shaking vulnerability and confesses: “i dropped youngjae.”
“i—" jackson pauses in his reach. his hand stutters, almost touching jaebeom’s arm. “youngjae?”
jaebeom blinks, breathing heavy in a haze, frail, shaken, and finally coming back to himself. “sorry, sometimes, we - i name them.” he curls his leg tentatively, a scene of slight devastation, pale skin and blood smearing the open gash everywhere from the ankle down. he immediately winces.
jackson rushes again, grabbing him under the arms. “wait hyung, let me, jesus,”
jaebeom struggles, tilting backwards, and jackson’s not sure whether it’s because he’s trying to stand up or if he’s avoiding jackson’s grip. jackson hesitates and loosens his hold anyway, cupping the impression of jaebeom’s sleeves instead.
“please, hyung,” he stands there, half-crouched and pleading with jaebeom’s tenuous stare, “we need to get your foot checked out.”
his palms are hot with the feeling of jaebeom almost pressed to him, skin-to-skin. they pulse, urgent, pleading let me help, please, let me reach out again.
this time jaebeom does take his hand. his lashes flutter erratically, a drawn-out wince, shuddering breath as he sways in place for a moment longer, clutching jackson’s hand in his, leaning around jackson’s shoulders beneath his arm.
in the few moments that jackson sees him, with or without jinyoung, jaebeom soaks in the california summer sun with closed eyes, pale cheeks, as if he was always too tired to be awake, where the reminder of the day only served to make him ache that much more, made intensely tender to the bone.
it’s like this that jackson realizes the perpetual frailty to him.
up-close, jaebeom is more than brusque edges, a blunt jaw, and sharp eyes. up-close, he wears jean shorts and a loose, coffee brown tank-top, but the heavy-knit cardigan falls away around his broad shoulders, the shadow of his chest beneath his shirt.
jackson can’t help but stare.
with jaebeom eventually hobbled over and seated on the kitchen counter, jackson kneeled gently at his foot, he looks up again to see the white scar cleaving jaebeom’s throat in two. a knot, beginning at the center, where the hollow midpoint of his trachea sits, the clean line tears down his skin, disappearing far below his shirt, into him.
jaebeom swallows, and the white jagged line shifts viscerally in motion.
jackson feels himself staring so blatantly, sees himself reflected in jaebeom’s eyes, the odd position they’re in. it’s—compromising to say the least.
“jinyoung,” he chokes out, ducking down to focus on jaebeom’s foot on his knee, a paper towel blooming red beneath his palm, “we should call jinyoung—or actually, where’s your first aid kit, i could get mine too,”
“jackson,” jaebeom says, quiet, almost a whisper, as if he was just repeating jackson’s name to himself. “don’t tell jinyoung.”
jackson gapes dumbly. “don’t tell him what?”
“that—about youngjae,” jaebeom’s foot twitches against his hand, the delicate push of his arch over his knee, and jackson lets up with the paper towel. it’s soaked through anyway, a lurid spread on his palms to incriminate him of exactly where he touched jaebeom.
“jinyoung doesn’t like the names,” he says, leaning over, and where his cardigan has fallen, fallen low around his arms, where his tank-top hangs, jackson can’t look away from the bisected cross in the low shadow of his bare chest.
he understands and yet he doesn’t; he wants to know more, and yet he doesn’t think he’ll ever understand. jaebeom’s stilted breathlessness, the space again that’s always jinyoung&jaebeom even when one of them isn’t here. the dizziness before his own eyes as if he were still in the greenhouse, trying to pick up the pieces of a shattered pot, strewn petals, and a bleeding jaebeom all under the glass-filtered sun.
the oddly distinct sensation of being caught with someone else’s husband as jinyoung steps past the door with a wide stare.
“jinyoung—"
there are no misunderstandings because they are not married and jinyoung rushes over anyway, immediately settling his hands on jaebeom’s bare shoulders. behind and below his tense back, jackson can only see jaebeom’s face. the way it gives, softening, but wistful, as if jinyoung, here, clutching at his shoulders, could be gone in the next minute.
“you’re okay,” jinyoung is quiet and shaking in resolve, in murmurs of repeated reassurance. “you’re okay.”
jaebeom takes his hands, loosens them so that they slide down and rest, pressed thumb to pulse, hovering over his lap instead. “i’m okay. jackson found me,”
and for the first time, two stares are on him. jinyoung, caught in a panic jackson could never imagine behind his calm glasses, the composure that seems to just be, and jaebeom—
jaebeom tilts his head, pleading silently.
“i heard something from the greenhouse, and i,” jaebeom’s eyes flicker, the line of his lashes tangling with his raw stare. jackson exhales the rest of his words, rattling, the shakiness of his half-lie,
“i found jaebeom hyung, but i was so worried, i just flailed everywhere and i accidentally knocked over the pink flower.”
jinyoung still has one hand curled, raised, in the cradle of jaebeom’s grip, but he turns fully to jackson now. “the dahlia?”
jackson flushes a messy pink as he mumbles out another fabrication. “yeah that one, i’m so sorry guys.”
“—no, no.” whatever might have passed beneath jinyoung’s glasses is gone as he earnestly breathes a sigh of relief jackson’s way. easy gratitude, as he literally talks down to him. “thank you so much for helping. seriously, thank you. the dahlia, it, it’s no big deal.”
behind him, jaebeom seems stunned, as if he hadn’t expected jackson to simply lie for him. then, he turns his mouth up into a trembling line, a paradigm of a smile if it got caught up in old aches along the way and between something like a thank you and i’m sorry instead.
as it is, it feels like the first time jaebeom has truly looked at him, and jackson is, he is—he flushes, summer-shy, hot just enough to make his head spin with lovestruck guilt.
-
strange then that, still flushed with that intense, insensible guilt and attractive pull, jackson is treated to the same sight of jinyoung stepping up to their fence at sunset, a warm constancy that seems out of place now.
he meets the other man anyway, overlapping across the line out of habit because they often talk like this, two weathervanes tuned by the same wind at slightly different angles.
“hyung had to get stitches for the laceration,” jinyoung says, his usual tone, the ebb and flow of patience coming out as a terse exhale instead. “nothing too deep, but still, stitches, god he needed to go to the hospital—"
he cuts himself off, and jackson wants to dig into that pause because he can almost hear it, —again. a repeat of some painful past that has jinyoung clutching the sharp point of the fence, chest wrapping around the tightness of his breath.
jackson wants to ask, push for it to be said aloud, for his buzzing impulse and now the insensible, pounding guilt-flush to culminate in this one truth. but he can’t continue to play the fool, a casual interloper with passing interest, when he already knows.
jinyoung says it anyway: “jaebeom hyung had his flowers removed.”
he becomes saddened suddenly, indescribably so, and even as the confirmation rings through his ears, jackson will never understand just how deep the ache between jaebeom and jinyoung seems to go.
beneath the sunset, the pink burning into a haze of red today, the fire spills from the sky over their heads in an intense glow that trembles, holds.
despite that, a cool breeze weaves through the fire, and jinyoung switches arms, ruffling his hair with the other hand. he’s relaxing, gentle again even in the last blazing moments of the day, but his next words are strange, striking, surely a warning.
“—so be careful.”
he stares, adjacent, overlapping, at jackson, and it’s not unlike the way jaebeom had looked at him with a bleeding foot, pleading eyes, and smashed pottery. but behind his glasses, jinyoung is exact, directing those three succinct words into jackson.
jackson opens his mouth and only one thing comes out: “so—you guys aren’t together?”
jinyoung expression curls, a slow spread of his lips that doesn’t seem pained at all. not surprised at all. “no, no we’re not.”
he doesn’t say anything more after that (not flustered denial, we’re just friends, or a teasing avoidance, i’m not into jaebeom like that, or most realistically, what jackson had expected to a point of fixation, we tried and it wasn’t working out) but it’s so definite, so sure, jackson is left confused at its simplicity.
jinyoung just stays leaned against their shared border, the slow fading burn of the sunset reflected in his glasses as he watches jackson with a careful warning. with something like inevitability.
and then, the odd moment is gone. “anyway.” jinyoung pushes back from the fence, turning to glance at the greenhouse. dark now, but the glass is translucent in the shadow, moonlit and pristine even after the minuscule disaster that had shattered within its walls.
“since hyung hurt his foot, and you knocked over the dahlia, come over tomorrow and help him with the potting.”
his smile says he knows jackson won’t refuse. perhaps, it’s his neat brand of approval, the go ahead for jackson to get close to someone so intimately contained in the space of his own life.
jackson’s face hurts, tight with the summer sun and that last burning flush. this time, it is a simple burn, hot and tingling without the numbing edge of guilt, all the way from his cheeks to the flashpoint pulse in the center of his chest. the beat of it a succinct careful, careful, careful, be - careful, but jackson almost can’t breathe with the blooming, overwhelming feeling spreading through him.
something about you ties my head up with roses-red vined lattices in the summertime
jackson understands now, why, beneath the gentle slope of his shoulders and the handsome kind of lingering baby fat to his cheeks, jinyoung always seems stronger, fuller when he crosses his arms in his half-sleeved black shirts.
the effort of filling up empty pots, in sifting through soft sinking dirt until it’s compact enough to push back against his palm leaves him with an aching inflammation in his wrist. he weighs it against the perpetual crick of cradling a mounted zoom-lens on top of his camera and decides this is harsher work by far.
jaebeom sifts through his pile without any acknowledgment of jackson, besides the occasional gesture for the soil bag, hunched and spilling from its lumpy stomach. the crime scene of yesterday is completely gone, leaving only the stiff white bandage of jaebeom’s propped foot as evidence between them.
jaebeom’s eyes are stained. not swollen in the way of a bad night’s sleep, an indication of puffy bags that eventually fade green and mottled purple, but a patchy stain of skin in the very hollow and curve of his stare. perpetual, heavy in the glass light, and jackson’s heart unknowingly aches for him.
“did jinyoung tell you, or did you figure it out?” despite his sudden question, jaebeom does not face him. his covered neck and shoulders invite no apparent answers.
“i—” jackson lingers on the space of his chest, “i saw yesterday, and i thought,”
and he has never met anyone who has had the flowers take root, actually grow from inside and then lose them completely with only a tight scar in the aftermath, but “i’m sorry” is already the wrong thing to say by the time it’s left his mouth.
jaebeom looks at him sharply, with a distant hurt. this isn’t the first time for him either, and it’s not jackson’s fault, as it hasn’t been for every other apology he’s heard in the past, but still.
still, it’s a loss all the same.
jackson leans close, as much as he can with his feet trapped in the curving in-and-out clutter of pots, as much as he can with the wary way jaebeom folds his leg back. an awkward diagonal between them.
it might still be the wrong thing to say (and maybe even worse) but jackson thinks with the motion of his heart in his chest, and he can’t stop the same raw impulse from spilling out: “hyung, i hope that you fall in love again.”
jaebeom’s hands fumble with the pot, déjà vu, almost, but this time jackson catches it by the base and presses it gently back into jaebeom’s lap.
jaebeom’s palms slide, slow and grating around the lip, and neither of them had worn gloves, so jackson watches now, the way his small pinky perks slightly up, then back, knuckle swallowed by the edge of his sleeve.
he curls, curls in sequence, every part of him, stilted leg and bare, bandaged foot, the rigid bone of his ankle, his fingers that seem too thick, too stunted to grasp the pot in the entirety of its curved breadth. he holds himself carefully and speaks with a lovely, aching give to his lips.
“that’s—thank you, jackson.”
it’s the first time that he thanks jackson, truly, with those stained eyes and some heavy sadness that is inexplicable, inevitable when jaebeom stares at him with that half-smile.
this time, it’s jaebeom who comes closer. a breath, a whisper as he falls lax, almost asleep with his slitted stare in the sunlight, cheek pillowed over his hands, over the fresh earth of the pot. “i hope so too.”
and jackson’s heart pounds, a staccato, two, four, then six-beat rhythm — hope-so, me-too, me-too.
-
afternoon walks are meandering, slow, and dragged out into the fading summer by jackson’s wheedling and jaebeom’s eventual give.
jackson likes it when jaebeom brushes past him, a touch of fragile balance against his arm, and he likes it even better when he catches jaebeom and jaebeom lets his hand rest, lets it stay in the crook of a proffered elbow.
silly, but jackson can’t help it. he loves looking at people, he loves photographing them, and with jaebeom, he can’t stop each blink from being a shutter-click because he can’t stop himself from looking, looking and wanting.
jinyoung is always waiting for them by the time they return, like the odd parody of a chaperone. it should be awkward but jinyoung only folds his fingers over jaebeom’s wrist like a gentle warning when he takes jaebeom from jackson, and jackson is still careful, so careful when he lets go.
these days, jinyoung leaves them to watch the sunset alone.
today, the fading colors are mild. more clear blue through the lilac wisps than the burning heat from any previous summers. however, beyond the horizon is a creeping glow, slipping, dimming already—but it is in this moment that its light clings and grows. golden, aching tangerine-sweet, the light that has long passed flashes once in its full brilliance, and then, its last remnants weave into the clouds.
jackson takes a picture, then two more. then three. finally, he’s caught gaping up at the wide, humming silence and suddenly, he’s embarrassed.
“i’m sorry,” he apologizes lamely, “i…just love taking pictures of the sky.”
he loves one too many things, and the soft curl of jaebeom’s mouth around a soft exhale makes him want to spill more, blazing light in the sky, a wayward confession on his lips.
“really?” jaebeom’s mouth gentles into a smile now, his eyes melting into a soft squint, “tell me about it.” the dry wind carries a hint of desert sweetness with it, ruffling jaebeom’s hair, and watching him, failing to untangle black strands from dusty cheeks, jackson can’t help but spill over.
he tells jaebeom that because he loves photographing people, he indulges in the sky even more. for the very reason that people are the perfect definition of a single moment in time, people are also the most difficult, with edges and curves and gazes that can immediately shift between one shutter to the next. it’s hard to get the right thing exactly when he sees something else in a downcast shadow, lashes upon a cheek, and it’s gone with the tilt of a jaw.
so then, skies are easy. flat and drifting and almost still. almost is the trick – imperceptibly, the whole sun and stars are moving with them. they’re his guilty pleasure, but really, he’s barely guilty when he could take a whole album from one spot on the street alone. it’s the immensity of it all, the universe beyond him, fate spanning a reach that fades into eternity.
he finishes telling jaebeom all this with a slightly cheeky laugh; he’s made them pause again just so he can get the way yellow blends into blue at this angle.
“that’s beautiful, jackson.” jaebeom tells him so, and his eyes are glazed over with the clouds. brimming full from above, he could be crying. “that’s--” he repeats, coughing out his words with a tremor, “beautiful.”
you are. jackson pauses, hovering at his side, and yet his fingers are already turning around his camera. you are more than anything else in this moment.
he wants to say it then kiss the sweet shock from jaebeom’s lips after.
instead he asks: “can i take a picture of you?”
jaebeom’s stunning surprise is a fever flash beneath the melting sunset, and jackson catches it before it can pass.
as he thought, ever since the first day they met, jaebeom’s smile is a completely different thing to see from behind the eyes of the lens.
i don’t want to hold you back ( i want to taste you, your twinge of raspberry sadness sweetened, just this once)
jaebeom shows him the pressed flowers, brilliant on white cardstock, behind eggshell-thin frames that are hung up in his hallways.
jackson has never been in his (and jinyoung’s) home like this, where he is standing, aware, of the very space of their intimacy. he can’t help but notice the clean light spilling from one open bedroom and the slight shadow from another through its propped door.
two bedrooms, of course, he scolds himself. even his house has the same layout, narrow second floor with a bathroom tucked into an alcove and bedrooms on either side of the wall, facing and overlapping only slightly.
jinyoung isn’t home now, and jackson tries, tries not to let that odd, guilty flush steal through him again.
jaebeom pauses in the middle of the hall, touches his fingers to the frame of a blue flower with thin, plucking petals. larkspur, jackson realizes after some mental categorization of his pictures.
jaebeom lingers as if the glass covering wasn’t there, fingers curled over the surface, willing for some kind of hesitation to pass.
in the end, he turns to jackson instead. “jinyoung takes care of them so well, but they never last. i have nothing better to do so…” his gaze skates down the hallway, past each single stalk of dried, almost-powder touch of fragrance on a wide cream background. something jaebeom fills his idle time with, dead flowers and cut cardstock.
he looks at them with such sadness.
jackson reaches out, touches jaebeom, fingers resting on his pulse, and jaebeom does not shake him away.
“hyung, do you want to learn how to shoot flowers?”
jaebeom’s wrist stays in the open circle of his grip. he nods, and even as they turn to leave and jackson’s hand drops, jaebeom presses forward into his palm, asking for a moment more, please, wait.
jackson doesn’t look back, doesn’t see the way jaebeom might be looking at him, but he fumbles, grazing over jaebeom’s knuckles until it seems right to stay, touching in the delicate space between them.
-
jackson shows jaebeom the best way to get the closest shot of a flower, how to capture a naturally still thing with a remaining sense of motion. turns out the answer after weeks of trial-and-error at jinyoung’s greenhouse is just his best set of long-focus lenses.
jaebeom crouches at his shoulder, and they exchange glances behind the viewfinder as jackson ducks in and out of the way.
“it’s not the same though,” jaebeom mumbles, pushing further into the space between them. jackson can smell the lingering shampoo in his long hair, something suitably floral.
“how do you get it so – so sharp, the way the prints look?”
and because jaebeom is asking, and because it means jaebeom has seen the free little cuts jackson has slipped into his and jinyoung’s mailbox, jackson runs through everything he knows.
it’s twilight by the time that he realizes, pauses in the middle of a story concerning duct tape and friendly strangers. jaebeom’s laughter spills easy across from him on the couch as he fiddles absentmindedly with the old fuji analog jackson had pressed into his hands earlier.
the night is hazy, and so is some part of jackson, blinking at the sight of jaebeom curled onto his couch, sweet and sleepy with his hair stuck to his cheek.
“you really like the analog, huh?” jackson asks, if only to wake jaebeom a bit, turn the situation into something more definite, into words that might say out loud i’ll see you, good night or stay?
“i used to be a film studies major,” jaebeom offers, and it’s so vulnerable, the simple fact of him. jackson is nervous, paused with bated breath, sure that jaebeom will stop there, but he fiddles with the click-click-click of the zoom and continues.
“i don’t really remember all the technical parts, equipment and practical lighting and such—but i think the analog,” he presses harder around the square corners, as if he could mold a meaning from its solid shape alone, “i think there’s something about the analog that just lasts longer, like those old black and whites, you know? it’s, it’s that feeling of age-old longing but made real,”
in truth, analogs are troublesome these days, having to purchase and process actual film in a darkroom. there’s no real purpose to them, unless you’re chasing after a certain aesthetic. jackson readily agrees with this—and yet.
“yeah,” he breathes out, shaking on the verge of a camera shutter that sounds so much louder in his ear because that’s just how analogs are, analogs clutched in jaebeom’s short fingers, “yeah i think i get it.”
jaebeom plays with the camera for a moment more, before he smiles at jackson. a wry crook to his lip, his black eyes slits, everything about him that jackson would otherwise soak in for the moment if it wasn’t for the flash, cli-click.
jaebeom lowers the camera and jackson doesn’t have to take out the film, soak it in the garish wash of the darkroom’s red lighting and scrutinize it on a tense clothesline to know exactly what his expression was.
in his own fading afterimage, he doesn’t have to plead can i kiss you? because jaebeom is the one who kisses him first.
jaebeom whispers, somewhere between the third and fifth touch of lips, tentative and soft with the way they’re just breathing each other in, the taste, the flustered touch, everything that had built up to this moment falling inevitably into place—“is this okay?”
“yes,” jackson groans, and there is the first hint of jaebeom’s mouth opening, the hot swipe of his bottom lip. he hauls jaebeom in by the back of his coat in the middle of summer, rough fists, dragging friction, blotchy cheeks. “yes.”
the analog is digging somewhere into the side of jackson’s thigh and jaebeom is a wash of heat over him, intimacy so sudden jackson can’t breathe with the way jaebeom is crowding him into the couch.
jaebeom pulls back, “is it okay? is it okay for me to stay?”
why the first thing that comes to his mind as jaebeom is in his lap, pleading for a night with him, is about the entirely wrong person in this situation, jackson doesn’t know. he heaves with empty fumes, with the taunting tease of his thigh pressed between the straddle of jaebeom’s open legs, and this is still the only thing that slips out: “what about jinyoung?”
jaebeom strains forward, touches the lasting ache of jackson’s mouth on his. swollen, tentative, he reaches, pleas, “jackson, i want to stay with you.”
jackson pulls him back down, kisses him deep enough that it lasts until morning, where he’s left to wake and watch the blue light filter in from the living room window. fade or brighten, he’s not sure, but jaebeom lays against his chest, his lips moving in silent time with his heart, and that at least, is because jaebeom himself had asked to stay.
-
one impulsive kiss on a lingering night is simple. and so is every peck, every awkward brush of laughter, the hints of deeper quiet and caught moans between their open yards after that.
jaebeom’s foot is healed by the time jinyoung trades in lush bursts of summer pink for the delicate whites and sleepy amber blossoms of fall. the greenhouse shines clearly, if only slightly more muted.
there is no longer the same excuse for jackson to invite himself over and soak in the heat, the occasional glance of jaebeom’s lips. his sd card is filled now with jaebeom caught looking at him and blinking away in turn, square edges bordered on both sides by sunsets and some deeper twilight blurs.
in fall, jaebeom straddles the worn fence beneath jinyoung’s flowering apricot tree and visits him first.
things with jinyoung are not awkward. they can’t be because jaebeom is the one who waits at the worn fence beneath jinyoung’s flowering apricot tree and goes to visit jackson instead. jinyoung is not someone who smiles with tight, selfish lines that ask jackson to give up what he has no right to take back in the first place.
but things with jinyoung are at least, distant. distant in the stretch of space of jaebeom and jinyoung’s yard to his, distance in how jackson thinks of jaebeom’s bedroom in the house next to his, almost as close and easy to reach as his own when jaebeom is still dozing there, against his chest. a distance that is non-existent, but jackson always has to ask whether jaebeom will stay or not, so he thinks of it now, more apparent than ever when jaebeom is tucked perfectly in the crook of his shoulder.
he rouses in the silence of the movie, in the gentle brush of jaebeom’s hair under his chin, cheeks warm and soaking into his collarbone.
“hyung,” he breathes out, a reluctant sound, “do you want to stay over?”
jaebeom is a still weight, and jackson could go numb with the feeling of him draped half-over his side. he thinks that maybe jaebeom has fallen asleep and that no answer is better than anything else at this moment.
instead, jaebeom blinks upright. in the dark, the white glowing light, sleep presses hollows into the fabric imprints on his cheeks. he reaches over and turns jackson’s mouth to his, a hand touching his nape.
“not tonight sseunie.”
“s’ok, i’ll dream of you,” jackson huffs, still attempting to trace the lingering corner of jaebeom’s lips. he pouts and he can taste jaebeom’s quirked amusement.
“tomorrow, tomorrow i promise,” jaebeom laces his fingers deeper, holds jackson there by his messy hair and wrinkled shirt in the dark, and kisses him once more, goodnight.
if i can love you just as good, then there’s no one else to blame
september is quiet in the sudden flash of summer to autumn, but california heat lingers like a hot ache after soaking rain, worn deep to the bone. jaebeom stays with him in the seeping chills of first fall, pressed bare and gentle against the window jackson keeps uncovered beside his bed.
today started with rain, and it continues with grey shadows on wet glass. they fell into bed earlier this afternoon, where jaebeom had also stayed the morning before, and it’s with soaked lethargy that jackson peels off the jacket, stretches the worn turtleneck past clammy skin. he holds jaebeom as he is now, made soft and naked by the rain.
and even then, in his languor, even as his lips stutter over jaebeom’s nape and they grow numb curled into one another, he is dizzy and falling. he is so in love, the essence of it practically spilling through his eyes, from his mouth, and he feels debilitated by it — every part of him that latches onto jaebeom’s bare skin is a flower’s face turned to the touch of sun.
they lay in the rain and its lingering aftermath. even in the cold, he thinks this must be what summer love is.
there are still whispers of aches, frail breaths that never leave jaebeom entirely. jackson doesn’t pretend like he could be the one to erase the scars (when jaebeom had spent years living with jinyoung and they were there long before even that), but he does learn to trace over them with a gentle mouth. he learns that when jaebeom’s chest jumps, the grooves of his ribcage shifting something tender and bruised, it’s to press jackson down further between his pale thighs and ask him to wrap around him with hands, lips, words, tight enough to force him to remember to breathe again.
he learns that it’s the most delicate kisses, the ones to indulge in during a post-climax haze that is already fading, that make jaebeom cry out again.
he turns jaebeom to him now, and despite the silken chill of their bodies that makes it hard to cling, to stay, he kisses the jagged hollow of jaebeom’s throat, right there, like that.
“——did it hurt?”
jaebeom groans, already wrapping around him, a slight pressure, as if in threat, but doused so completely in needy warmth. “i swear if you say from heaven,”
“no, no, your flowers,” jackson breathes against his chest, the marred constellation of freckles, the white ruptured scar, and he closes his eyes to the heavy spill of rain. “did it hurt, when,”
jaebeom goes lax, a complete release as jackson feels the shudder roll through him, through them. then, he buries himself into jackson, completely, hiding an already closed wound.
“it was the most painful thing.” he sounds raw and wet in his throat, as if filled with condensation. “i can’t remember how it felt, but i don’t know if I could take it again—if they bloomed, i wouldn’t-“
jaebeom is breaking, heaving the words through the emptiness of his chest, with jackson there, still held against his heartbeat. jackson’s head pounds in response, and he hugs jaebeom fiercely.
“i wouldn’t let myself fall in love ever again,” jaebeom concludes hoarsely, and jackson clings tighter, closes his eyes, as tight as he can.
his hands, the space beneath his ribs is going to bruise with the way they’re clinging to one another like this, but he knows – he presses his bare chest to jaebeom’s, nothing but the fluttering heat filling beneath skin, flooding love, all he could give and more, if only. if only.
-
“late at night, i think of you,“ goes the chorus as jackson sways in jaebeom’s arms. jaebeom guides him, taller, steadier, but he lays over jackson too, like he might fall into him, sink down together to the floor on their knees like this.
the night is a world of muffled sound, both the scratchiness of jaebeom’s old cd and jackson’s face buried against his shoulder. jackson breathes him in, a half-dream, and imagines the way they must look, stumbling in increments, not quite a dance, but their bodies seeming to move, to be reminded of the quiet satisfaction of growing exhausted together.
unhurried but assured, jackson angles his chin and kisses jaebeom’s neck. smooth skin, the whisper-tickle of loose hair, and the uncovered expanse of broad shoulders raises sensitive gooseflesh over his cheeks.
“killing me softly. oh mm, mm,” jaebeom hums, even lower, more intimate than the faraway distortion of the indie singer. the lovely echo of a deep bass rings out, a simple sound turning the night into filmy air.
jackson’s eyes close so slowly,“when I feel so lonely~,” because he’s still awake, but he thinks jaebeom’s voice is filling him, molding him in place. his fingers touch jaebeom’s waist, the supple give beneath warm cotton. he soaks in the weight of jaebeom’s chest, and jackson practically blooms to the touch of jaebeom’s hands turning his face.
when jaebeom cradles him with this touch, his soft palms always a slight tremor on jackson’s cheeks, jackson is sure that the scratchy whisper he sings in means he can love jackson back as well.
“so, let me love you baby.”
jaebeom kisses him, tasting of the muffled way they moved against one another, and when he breaks back to breathe, he folds jackson to his heaving chest. jackson sighs and the feeling of it reaches his throat, a fuzzy heat, the entirety of his love and all the wonderful empty space that remains for it to expand into.
maybe it was all a scattering of anemones, lost at sea, waiting for the false storm start
summer fever at the beginning of autumn is a common enough tickle in jackson’s throat that the whispers (only bare whispers for the moment) make him pause in slight deliberation, just shy of breathless. the tickles leave, fluttering up his throat and teasing once more against his lips as he breathes them out.
because it’s still summer to him, and because the heat in his throat pulses deep with love, he drives jaebeom out to sea.
the day has been forecasted for weeks as absolute perfection. for slow waters that lull, enough sea-song and rhythm to pull you in for a nap and not get washed away with the next low undertow.
neither of them brought swim trunks, but jaebeom dips his bare skin into the water, the fragile, aching part of him, the new little scar on his foot now, that’s always too sensitive to the cold, and his cheeks flush pink with sunburn.
jackson stands calf-deep, swaying and yet, he feels like he could drown. he had promised jaebeom before, wholeheartedly, that they would visit the beach before the kind of permanent grey reflection of winter sky-to-sea sets in.
now, jaebeom’s laughter is a fragile, wondrous thing. jackson holds him up, props his hands around his waist, and wonders, if jaebeom is truly the one that needs to be held back from the ocean’s depths like this, when he himself feels closer to falling headfirst into the water.
another wave looms, crashes upon itself, and its gentle aftershock reaches them with a last warm hush. jackson buries himself tighter into jaebeom—his head is spinning, there’s salt coating his lips, thick in his nose, and he’s dizzy enough that i love you is more than just a phantom twitch caught in his mouth.
here, with a half-cloud at the still water around their legs, jaebeom shakes and folds his salt-clammy hands over jackson’s own.
“jackson,” his eyes are tilted to the sky, but jackson can hear it, the trembling breath already seeping back in, the part of him that had laughed at the shock of waves beneath open sun shuddering closed and tired. “let’s head back.”
jackson’s throat hurts something tender, and everything else must be momentarily left unsaid.
jackson aches down to the arches of his feet, but he drives carefully. when he looks over, often, at each silent traffic light, he watches the way jaebeom’s hands absentmindedly trace his clean scar, pale toes curled against the car seat. with each pause, his throat seems to start again, the minute hurt there scraped raw with leftover sea-salt.
when he kisses jaebeom, one last unspoken impulse in him reaches, pushing on his tongue, and he has to pull away early from the sudden bitterness. he almost gags on his own choked breath.
jaebeom asks a silent question, eyes gentle, and he cups jackson’s cheek, confused, but no less adoring. no less painful either, the feeling of him finally brushing his lips along jackson’s brow, of his murmured “thank you” so tender jackson swears he’s starting to bleed somewhere deep inside.
“tomorrow?”
(i love you)
jackson bumps their noses together, humming to cover up the raw salt tracks in his throat, “can’t wait, hyung.”
-
when his knees hit the bathroom tile, he misses the toilet by a bare, swaying inch. the lid is wrenched open, but he’s already retching past the tears, the burning salt, until it’s clear: there are flowers mixed in with the spit and stomach acid splattered across the linoleum floor.
strong orange blossoms, those are his own. then, soggy, a little wilted from his churning insides, but they are sweet and tacky, pursed bunches of purple-violet and faded lilac. they, delicate, unnamed, unrecognizable, must be jaebeom’s flowers.
jackson sorts through the mix of grand white petals to pick up the tiny sprouts. they are so thin, dark veins standing out from the inside of pale flower-skin, jackson almost can’t believe they grew from inside him.
his finger hurts sharply. he squeezes the filament, and pale blood springs from the cut, stained purple. on their weak green stems, weak enough that they snap open at the slightest touch, the little flowers are hiding thorns.
when he hurls all over again, pulling chest-deep, the blood and phlegm mix with the salt stuck to his face, and all he can do is let himself be filled with that cloying perfume. inside, from the salt-laced lacerations of his throat, the thorns only hook into ready-made scratches.
it stings, the tears, the tears, and jackson can no longer tell whether the heat in his throat is still the unspoken i love you or another fresh bout of blooms.
the pain of choking down wet bits of himself leaves him tasting blood for days.
how could I do what I did to you
“hey man—oh, damn.”
jackson looks over, peeling the edge of his face mask past his lips. his swollen, perpetually scraped-raw lips that have been holding back the blooming mess of his heart inside his mouth.
mark’s hand is still paused in the air, and he winces, awkwardly setting it behind his head. they both flinch minutely, catching the other’s immediate reaction.
“mark, hey.” he coughs, the usual casual formality, but he knows how he looks. the stains beneath his eyes reach bone-deep, and his chest is beginning to go numb from the soft, coiling internal pressure.
they are meaningless acquaintances, but mark meets his eye in front of the chips aisle and asks anyway: “are you sick?”
jackson’s laugh accidentally catches on another cough, another raw edge inside his throat, and when the words eventually settle, it sounds so weak. “just some last-minute summer fever, you know?”
mark’s thin eyes, pressed lips, says he knows all too well with that strange sense of his. “you should be careful,” he says, and his discerning disapproval merges with jinyoung’s image beneath the sunset, a warning flash of inevitability in the last light.
if they were close friends, and really, jackson feels an odd amount of fondness for mark now, he would leave mark his first nikon, a cheap technicolor little thing that probably still holds a roll of amateur pictures taken in front of his primary school in hong kong.
as it is, jackson can only step past him. he brushes his hand across mark’s shoulder, thanks, and he can feel mark’s stare lingering on his back.
jackson leaves, chasing shadows into the grocery parking lot.
eventually, another cough breaks free, and this time, he catches it, full brunt, against his palm. one wet petal, a purple vivid enough to stain his skin. he swallows, and there are the remaining thorns still lodged inside his throat.
when you did all you could do to be by my side
inevitably, endlessly, jackson falls further in love, with chapped lips pressing into jaebeom’s jaw under a raw sunset, and every returning touch to his cheek that makes his chest bloom.
when he is with jaebeom, he looks up into his face, the open gentle lines there, and he knows—he cannot say it out loud. he wishes, instead, for the very weight of the words to slowly wrap around his heart and crush it lovingly.
instead, he allows himself moments of whispers, weak hushed sounds that blend behind the snap of the camera.
“hyung, please just look this way—"
jaebeom plays at being obstinate, but he turns anyway, and he is pink-cheeked and beautiful from the evening sun. he smiles wide, and he does not look away from the viewfinder.
i love you, i love you so much
jackson is quiet, quick, but the echoes of muffled words keep spilling out of him. he lowers the camera, and jaebeom is still staring at him as he must have been this entire time. looking at jackson like he might truly want him.
“i love you,” he admits, finally weak, because it was futile to think he could ever hold back and survive the immensity of overgrown feelings. inside, the blooms peek eagerly to attention.
“oh----jackson,” the beautiful expression on jaebeom’s face twists, something even more tragic than jackson’s confession. he hesitates, the flutter of lashes indecipherable, a readying breath.
“i love you too,” jaebeom utters, and it’s not even a moment after his words fall that the flowers burst. abundant, fully alive in their joyous sorrow, they shoot right past his esophagus, past boundaries of soft tissue and bone, until they wind fully around his tongue.
jackson cannot even cry out. he falls to his knees, coughing back the worst bout of choking tears. eventually, and he is forced into this through the nauseating pressure of his heartache alone, he opens his mouth and the hot torrent of flowers spills free at jaebeom’s feet. ivory orange blossoms and little purple kisses all blooming from the red iron in his heart.
jaebeom wraps around him, the harsh gasps from his own mouth cutting through the heaving, gagging sounds that jackson can no longer hold back.
“jackson, please, i love you, i really do, i love you, i love you,”
jackson takes one look at him, at his begging, desperate eyes, and he throws up the rest of his heart into jaebeom’s slick, shaking palms.
I had hoped you would find that somebody
in the amber burst of a rare, light sunset, jinyoung meets him again. a sole weathervane’s sharp shadow indicating a passing wind in his direction.
“jaebeom hyung’s favorite flower is raspberry blooms.”
of course he would know. by this point, jackson has long run out of guesses, his desperate back-and-forth over every kind of flower, but in the end, it comes back to jinyoung.
jinyoung’s eyes flash in the dark night spanning their shared yards. the air has grown still in the past days, and with it, jackson finds himself equally breathless.
“you should stop. you need to.”
“i can’t.” as much as jackson tries, jaebeom’s earnestness is the same twinge of pain from the tiny thorns in his throat—and he can’t, can’t stop himself from chasing that affection when it is real, real and feeding the blooming growth from inside him.
jinyoung turns away for the moment. like he can’t look at jackson, like this was something he expected all along.
jackson coughs, a weak sound that shakes his body. he’s used to it now. “maybe, maybe, you should stop me.” and jinyoung could—it’s within anyone’s rights to make the decision for him at this point, when the blooms have become intimately tied from head to heart. they could drag him to the hospital, frothing at the mouth with new vines and flowers, and nothing he says would matter.
jinyoung steps away from the fence, the autumn-dried grass a hush beneath his feet. he simply looks at jackson with defeat. as if he’s done this so many times before, re-lived the futile realization of pulling someone out of love with jaebeom.
and jackson can’t help but wonder. was it you? did you cut the flowers from his open chest? or was it yours that withered first?
“jinyoung,” he whispers, a harsh sound finally breaking through the dark, “what is your favorite flower?”
jinyoung closes his eyes. inevitably, his glasses slip from his nose as he meets jackson with a single glance before he covers his face with a palm. “the same as jaebeom’s.”
just until today, just like this
at this point, jackson is almost incapable of forming words around the thick infestation of raspberry and orange blossoms crowding his mouth. they push insistently against his teeth, and jaebeom’s flowers taste sweet, as if they might be truly flowering into fruit.
he had woken up this morning in a daze to a bed of flowers, his lungs burning with a long-exhaled breath. had he done this all night? couldn’t he have simply coughed up one last bunch of purple and white and stopped the shaking of his chest in his sleep?
pressed limply into the cradle of jaebeom’s shaking palms, jackson thinks of jinyoung. thinks of jinyoung telling him to be careful, of jinyoung watching him crash headlong into the course of falling in love with jaebeom with only a warning of inevitability in his gaze.
he thinks of how jinyoung has been there, at jaebeom’s side all along, and the thick petals in his mouth flutter lovingly on his tongue.
jaebeom is crying, “i’m sorry, i love you, i’m trying -- please” — has been ever since jackson refused to remove the flowers.
he apologizes again and again, meeting every word with a kiss that makes it hard for jackson to open his swollen throat and speak.
he is still so deeply in love, and he just wants to know one thing.
“but you love jinyoung, right?”
jaebeom sobs, those delicate, crystal stars of crocodile tears, and jackson can almost believe him when he says, “i tried too jackson, you weren’t just a replacement – you made me feel again, i swear, i could, i really could love you,”
the space of his bruised ribs expands with one last push, and jackson thinks now of the sky, the wash of pink singing the edges of the blue, a flicker of light that is perhaps a dream of the sun in the grey ocean, and all these images do not compare now to every frame, every shot flitting over jaebeom’s blotchy face.
it’s okay, he could say, i love you. but he can no longer close his mouth around the pushing stems enough to form the words. he presses his eyes into jaebeom’s wrist, watching, feeling the hot, erratic pulse sear behind his lids. his cheek is wet and numb, but for a moment, he feels jaebeom’s warmth soak entirely into him.
if jaebeom would let him shoot one last roll beneath the fading sunset, the open sky, jackson might look through the viewfinder and see such an expression. it would be an expression with pained eyes, but nonetheless so tender that he would know—
the flowers burst, ripened, sweet, finally free.
—and even if he had never been the one jaebeom truly loved, when he looks at jackson, it is as though he could have been. as though he was, still is, in some way.
baby sit, stay at my side without saying anything more
jinyoung cradles jaebeom’s broad, shaking shoulders as best he can with his entire body. softly, gently, he drapes over him.
he soothes the sobs along jaebeom’s spine with one hand and carefully clips the brightest orange blossom from jackson’s open exhale with shears in the other. iron, earth, and the deepest perfumes saturate the air, the tears around them adding another organic layer, more raw, more human.
the flower’s pale, tender petals flutter and he soothes them down, five-star points with the scent of citrus blooming from the center. he tucks the fresh bud into a pressed plastic sheet. for safekeeping, for later planting perhaps.
the sharp orange blossom mixes with the tang of raspberry, whose miniature purple buds are shearing away at the middle. just so, flowers on the edge of fruition.
but jinyoung knows, their flowers are never meant to bear fruit.
this, jaebeom twisting, clutching at him, “again, jinyoung, it happened again—i couldn’t even make him take them out--,” this is the only kind of love that could result from such empty yearning, an imitation of the ghosting past in the end.
“it’s okay,” he wraps his arms around jaebeom’s shoulders, lays himself against that fragile, trembling warmth. “it’s okay,” he repeats, running a hand through the hair at jaebeom’s flushed nape, settling it there on clammy skin when jaebeom only shakes harder.
jackson’s orange blossoms are loud and stunning. the white sheen of the petals makes them seem already everlasting. there will be a place for them, next to the sole sunflower, a bold streak of red tiger-lily, and what was once the starburst pink dahlia. jackson deserves that at the very least.
as for the raspberry blossoms, he leaves them to wilt.
jinyoung has seen enough of jaebeom’s tiny lilac bunches to last this lifetime and then, bloom into another. in another life, perhaps jaebeom would fall in love over and over again, spill out with the same flowers too.
beyond the obscure promise of another lifetime, another love, jinyoung stays here, with jaebeom now, because he knows, jaebeom had once loved him too in this lifetime, in his aching entirety, nameless raspberry blossoms and all.