Work Text:
It’s Friday evening when Jaehyun texts Juyeon from the living room.
LJH: Can you bleach my hair tomorrow? (30s)
The thought of Jaehyun hunched over his textbooks and essays with beach blonde hair is almost enough to make him laugh, so he shoots back a reply almost immediately. He doesn’t dwell on how lamp light and the sound of Jaehyun’s anthropology lecture spill so easily through the doorway.
LJY: Sure (Sent)
He hears Jaehyun’s phone chime from beyond the bedroom, and goes back to Kafka.
--
“Why the sudden blonde hair?”
He’s in the bathroom, negotiating bleach and developer into tiny bowls, and Jaehyun is by their mirror changing into an old shirt. Two scoops of thirty volume plus one scoop of lightener, and he mixes the two into a creamy paste with the tail end of an old toothbrush.
“I just wanted to try something different. Since classes are out for the summer, and all.” Jaehyun peeks into the bathroom, shoulders tight through a Class of 2019 shirt that Juyeon’s seen stretched over his back more than once during paper checking sprints and thesis reviews. He wonders, quietly, if it still smells like the chamomile tea Jaehyun associates with stress and productivity.
“Straight to blonde, though? You sure you don’t want to try something more… lowkey?” Dark curls spill over Jaehyun’s ears as he leans on the bathroom counter and runs a hand through his hair. He normally wears his hair straightened, pressed flat to his skull with the curling iron that Juyeon had taught him how to use, but today he looks sleep-soft, a cowlick at the back of his neck where the sofa pillow had cushioned him. “Maybe light brown first, or a darker fashion color?”
Jaehyun shakes his head, and Juyeon supposes that’s that. He’d never have pegged him for a blonde kind of person, Jaehyun, with his perpetually broken glasses and approaching anthropology dissertation. His own hair has been through red, blue, green, purple, even pure white, but Jaehyun’s never done anything more than straighten his hair in the morning, using a bit of gel to press his sideburns flat before brushing his teeth. It’s something constant about him, something that remains even when Juyeon misses the bus to the salon in the morning, or forgets to do the dishes in time for Jaehyun’s 10AM class on Wednesdays.
The bleach has finally combined in the bowl, and he pulls Jaehyun out into the bedroom and seats him in the scratched swivel chair that had inexplicably come with the flat. His nose winces, as always, at the smell of peroxide that begins to fill the room. He considers opening the lone window above their bed, but then Jaehyun scoots away from him when he leans over to arrange his brushes, swivels towards the mirror and away from Juyeon to fix his hair. They’ll be fine like this, he decides.
Even as he lays the towel across the back of the swivel chair, he thinks of the succulents that Jaehyun had brought with him when they’d moved in together. Their window has been open almost every morning then, Jaehyun’s knees heavy on the space next to him as he’d reached up to unlatch the clasp, welcoming in the smell of summer and pork cutlets from the convenience store across the road.
He’d convinced Juyeon to water the plants with him every morning, and he hadn’t minded waking up at 8AM instead of 10AM, not when it meant watching Jaehyun’s curls slowly bounce as he pulled the curtain back down. He hadn’t minded their fingers overlapping on the tiny watering can, Jaehyun scolding him with a laugh whenever he’d overwater by accident.
The succulents are all dead now, so maybe the windows stay shut for a reason.
--
Changmin raises an eyebrow at him when he clocks in late on a Wednesday morning, and he just sighs as he tries to shake the water out of his shower-wet hair. Jiwoo looks on with pity when he accidentally collides with the radiator.
“You literally work as a hairdresser. You couldn’t have run the hairdryer for five minutes before coming in?”
He sighs at Changmin’s jab and puts down his bag. For someone mere months his junior, he seems so much older sometimes.
“I was in a rush. Jae teaches a morning class and I was supposed to drive him, but I woke up late.” A finger catches at the knots in his hair, and he winces before trying to unsnarl them. “I forgot to do the dishes too.”
Jiwoo tuts and looks up from the colors she’s mixing. “Isn’t Jaehyun’s university like an hour away?”
“He ended up taking the bus. Gone by the time I woke up.” He doesn’t mention the eggs and toast that Jaehyun had left him, or the neatly loaded dishwasher. There’s another matted clump of hair near the base of his neck, and he opts to tug weakly at it instead of reaching for the combs by Changmin’s workstation.
“At least he got there on time, right? You on the other hand, are late.” Changmin recaps the shampoo with a cheery click, before recanting and squeezing Juyeon with one arm. “It’s fine, Ju, we all have bad days. Just text him and apologize or something.”
“Do it during lunch, please. We’re opening soon.” Jiwoo hands him a towel for his hair and stashes his bag in the locker. Before he drops his phone in, he brings up Jaehyun’s chat history and stares, tries to tug at the words like he’s unsnarling tangles and knots and nothing else.
LJH: ill sleep on the couch (2 weeks)
--
Parting Jaehyun’s hair is almost impossible with how sensitive he is to each tap of the comb, and Juyeon flinches himself every time Jaehyun jolts at the touch of finger and plastic. The chair is groaning under their combined weight, and after a particularly nasty crack, Juyeon leans back and sighs.
“Can you sit up a little bit, Jae? It’s hard to part your hair when this chair is about to give out.” He tries to curl up the end of the sentence, tries to fluff it full of volume so that the sharp edges peter out. An absurd, mildly bleach-poisoned part of him thinks that Jaehyun’s hair looks the same way, wavy around the mids and curled at the edges, spilling all over his comb and the elastics he has wound around each finger.
Jaehyun’s locks had always been so soft to the touch, healthy and voluminous and nothing like his own color stained hair. It’s kind of like hay, Jaehyun had laughed after a movie night, pressing patterns and entire stories into Juyeon’s scalp with gentle fingers. He almost wants to call the whole thing off, to stop them from damaging Jaehyun with harsh chemicals and lightener. Maybe he can spend the afternoon combing through Jaehyun’s hair instead, abandoning the bright elastics around his middle and ring fingers in favor of dark brown silk, shadow-light whispers over high cheekbones.
Jaehyun adjusts his position, and Juyeon gets back to sectioning. They’re sitting up straight, and he can finally see the places where Jaehyun’s hair naturally gives way, where it softly splits down the middle, streaks off in directions that he’d once found familiar. It’s mahogany and oak, sun-lightened at the ends and shot through with unfamiliar grey, foreign silvers and whites. In a way, it’s color that Jaehyun has earned, color he’s poured himself into lecturing for hours on end, or grading papers at 3AM with a cold cup of tea beside him. He realizes that he doesn’t quite recognize the way Jaehyun’s head looks from above anymore.
He traces his comb up the center of the scalp, ties off the right half with great difficulty, and Jaehyun shudders at the sensation. It’s a bit funny, paradoxical even, how Jaehyun’s hair is the one part of him that won’t seem to cooperate. He has to straighten it in the morning, force it into submission under beanies and caps while Juyeon drives him to the university every other day. Compartmentalization is something Jaehyun excels at, something he breathes, something that almost terrifies Juyeon everytime he sees him file away a moment for reexamination, an emotion for safekeeping or evaluation.
There are moments when Jaehyun won’t let himself feel, and Juyeon has to coax him back out, has to let him know that there are times when life doesn’t quite make sense. There isn’t a box that neatly describes Jaehyun’s struggle with his classes, his need to somehow write a paper that means something, anything, in the grand scheme of things. He won’t be able to place a label on how they flinch away from each other at the most appropriate of times, or how fingers on his scalp and neck feel more foreign now than familiar. Sometimes, Juyeon wishes that he could run the tail end of a comb through it all, halve and halve and halve until nothing is left but neat sections of hair, clean and cordoned off and understandable .
The elastic on the very first section snaps.
--
From the moment he gets home, he feels that something is somewhat wrong.
Jaehyun’s tea kettle isn’t whistling like it usually does at 7PM, for one, and the apartment smells like dust and old Glade instead of fresh chamomile. Jaehyun’s shoes aren’t by the door either, but his bag is draped half-hazardly over the couch.
There’s a strange urge in his gut that tells him to head back out the door, to go back to the salon and clock in an extra hour, an extra night, maybe an extra week. Mixing color into neat batches, canceling out brassy yellows and oranges with cool purples and blues, dividing hair into neat sections with quick and clean movements, it all makes perfect sense.
But the darkness, the quietness, the sense of absence that coils in the belly of their apartment? It does not, and Juyeon is terrified.
Jaehyun?
He’s sitting quietly on the couch when Juyeon finally enters the apartment, work shoes leaving dust marks on the faux leather that he always whines about keeping clean. Juyeon notices that his hair is starting to curl again at the very ends, that the effects of the curling iron are wearing off, and it doesn’t seem to make sense until Jaehyun sniffles and he understands, with terror and confusion bubbling up hot and fast.
He sets his things down by the door and takes his place next to Jaehyun on the sofa, stays exactly one throw pillow away as Jaehyun shakes silently. “Do you want to talk about it?”
“I don’t… why,” Jaehyun almost spits the word out, somehow shifts heavier, angrier. “Why did I throw away two years of my life doing this degree? I don’t even know if whatever I’m writing means anything, if I’m going to just graduate and leave it all behind and end up somewhere that it doesn’t matter-”
His voice breaks at the end of the sentence, and Juyeon sees boxes and neatly labeled drawers and folders tumbling to the ground somewhere dark and quiet.
“I know I love my work. I love my students, I love writing and learning and everything but-” Jaehyun leans forward, runs his hands through his hair and almost knocks his glasses off his nose. “Why does it always feel like I have to achieve something? Can’t I be enough?”
He turns to Juyeon, and his eyes are hidden behind hair that has fallen out of place, behind things that no longer seem to align properly. All he can do is hold his gaze, try to uncurl and claw at words that seem to be falling deeper and deeper into the cavity of his chest.
When Jaehyun presses his head into his lap, it’s tentative, almost like he’s searching for a new way to understand the places where polyester and denim meet flesh. It strikes him then, how unfamiliar this is for the both of them, how the cheek against his upper thigh is damp and Jaehyun is crying, and he’s sitting with his hands at his side digging fingers into faux leather that they used to whine about keeping pristine.
It feels appropriate, required even, that he reach out to run his fingers through Jaehyun’s hair. To count the grays and the whites that give his work meaning, to trace comfort into the skin of his skull and the planes of his face. To just be there.
It feels awfully appropriate, and he doesn’t do it, keeps his hands glued to the sofa until Jaehyun finally sits up. The skin under his eyes is puffy and red, and the line between pale alabaster and angry pink blurs as he quietly kicks off his shoes, fluffs up the throw pillow on the other end of the sofa.
Juyeon retreats to the bedroom.
--
Jaehyun’s hair is finally sectioned off, and he starts with the back of his head, does small portions with quick methodical strokes as Jaehyun holds still, almost too still. They’re still in front of the mirror, Juyeon realizes, and the afternoon sun glints off the glass as he wraps the section in foil and moves on, reflective, blinding.
“Do you think you’ll color it or something once you get bored of blonde?” Jaehyun cocks his head a little bit at that, and Juyeon adjusts his wrist to compensate. A bit of lightener gets on his arm, and it tickles, burns bright, then fizzles out quickly before he can complain. “I have a lot of spare dye back at the salon. I could mix you something if you want.”
Red might suit him, fading from wine into cherry into over sweetened cotton candy as Jaehyun works at the dinner table, night after night, even when he’s gone to bed in the room they no longer share. Or maybe jewel purple, rich and metallic and regal, vibrant and bold enough to cover up any mistakes they might make. It’ll look good around Jaehyun’s strong brow and sharp nose, he thinks, gloss over the imperfections and make things okay again. Make everything normal.
“I think blonde is fine for me.” His voice is quiet as Juyeon starts moving up the back of his head. “I don’t want it to be too eye catching.” Jaehyun bows his head even before the sentence finishes, and he follows the up down motion again, tries to keep everything steady, tries to smooth over the patches that have strayed and flicked onto Jaehyun’s shirt and his gloves. He tries to catch Jaehyun’s eyes in the mirror, tries to draw up a mental image of what he might look like once they’re done.
Jaehyun in blonde, with gold falling over his eyes as he makes coffee across the room from Juyeon on Saturday mornings. Jaehyun in platinum, hair a halo as he sleeps on the couch when Juyeon comes back from his 6AM jog. Jaehyun in clean, colorless white, reading across the table from him once the dishes are done and dinner has been disposed of in the trash can down the hallway.
Would it look good on him? Compliment the lines of his face, draw out the smile that Juyeon had once memorized? Would it bring color to his cheeks, brighten up his eyes, accentuate the slopes of his profile like fresh love and something like devotion? He’s almost done with the back of Jaehyun’s head, and he still can’t estimate what might happen when they’re finished, what he might have to deal with.
He peeks over the crown of Jaehyun’s head again, and finally catches his eye in the mirror. It burns like peroxide, sharp and bright and gone in an instant, when Jaehyun looks away quickly, ducks his head and splatters Juyeon’s gloves.
--
He’s in the bathroom, thumbing at the roots of his hair, when Jaehyun comes in. It’s almost whisper soft, how he presses his chin into Juyeon’s collar bone, sighs into the small of his neck. He tracks, almost reaches for his gaze in the mirror, and they watch each other interconnected, Jaehyun’s hands locked around his waist.
“Do you think I should change the color? The purple faded a lot quicker than I thought it would.” Jaehyun hums into his neck, and he can’t help the breathless laugh that passes his lips. The royal purple has diluted into something more like lavender now, soft and weathered and without intensity. There are vaguely brassy patches in his hair that the dye had once smoothed over, now visible with the growing root.
“You mentioned before that bright colors fade quickly, right?” It still surprises him, how perceptive Jaehyun is of some things. How he’ll listen and pick up on the things that Juyeon murmurs while brushing his teeth, or making coffee for the both of them on a Saturday morning. How he seems to remember more about the salon that Juyeon does at times, buying him extra brushes or mixing bowls or packs of lightener whenever he’s just about to forget.
“Yeah, it does. I’m going to have to bleach it again soon.” He sighs, tugs softly at the edge of black that undercuts the faded color. “Can’t wait to get lightener on the back of my neck and end up with patches of dead skin again.”
Jaehyun laughs softly, and it seems otherworldly bouncing off the bathroom tiles and mirror. “Can’t you just ask someone from the salon to do it?”
“Well, yeah, but it’s always easier when I just do it on my own, you know?” Jaehyun gently untangles them, pulls Juyeon’s hands out of the lavender and into his own. His eyes still search Juyeon’s in the mirror, still connected despite the edges of their bodies that no longer meet, and Juyeon wonders if this is a moment, a snapshot, that they can both file away for later.
“But you get bleach everywhere, and end up with dry skin and flaky fingers that I have to buy hand cream for-” He cuts Jaehyun off with a groan in complaint and his boyfriend tuts playfully. “And we both know that your dexterity has its limits.”
“I just… it’s just something I usually do, and besides, Changmin and Jiwoo are busy enough on their own. They have clients and stuff, and I don’t want to take up any of their time with hair I can do myself.” He pulls away again to take a lock of hair between two fingers. Would his hand come away purple if he rubbed hard enough? Would color just bleed like that, with enough force?
“Or maybe,” Jaehyun is a lot gentler now, quieter. “Maybe I could help you do it?”
The sound of their breathing is bouncing off the bathroom tiles and mirror, low and deep and almost on the edge of something that scares him, something like faces too close and fingers at the base of his skull. It feels like he’s uncapped a bottle of full strength developer and inhaled, deep, suffocating. He doesn’t want to reply, doesn’t want to open his mouth and choke.
“If it’s just the roots, I’m sure I could get it done without missing any spots.” Jaehyun tries again, holds his gaze in the mirror, tries to hold the links that hands and words and affection form in the most vulnerable of moments. “You could give me directions? Just so that you don’t end up with red patches all over your arms again, right?”
Juyeon looks away from the mirror and thinks about royal purple, smooths over the imperfections, covers them up with dye so thick and cloying that he can barely see, barely feel. There are thumbs rubbing at his wrists, warmth around his hipbone from where bare skin meets old pajamas, and he glosses it over and prays that it doesn’t fade to lavender.
Then he’s alone in the bathroom again, reaches, gently, for a lock of his hair, and tugs. Almost hopes that his hand will come away stained with purple, that the color will rush out all at once.
He wonders, with something heavy in the pit of his stomach, if love is anything like royal purples and lavenders. If it slips out of the cuticle, fades during the quiet moments, when washing with too-warm water or jogging under the morning sun, when sitting over dinner for two and running out of things to say, things that he feels safe saying. If it dilutes to lavender like pale skin and sleep-soft basketball shorts slipping out a bathroom door, with silence and dread and all the absences of intimacy he thought he could handle.
When he brings his hand back down to the counter, it is perfectly clean.
--
The longer Juyeon works, the worse the smell of peroxide gets. It’s cloying now, too much for the humidity of the afternoon and lack of ventilation. He’s already on the second batch of lightener, working his way up the side of Jaehyun’s face, and he hopes that they’ll finish soon.
“Is the smell getting too strong for you?”
He can almost hear the shift under Jaehyun’s skin as he speaks, the way his neck tightens beneath the towel they’ve wrapped around it. When he shakes his head quickly, the brush slips and leaves lines across the gentle slope of his cheekbone. “We’re almost done anyway, just the front of your hair and we…” He maps out a path across Jaehyun’s forehead, over eyes that he’s watched too many times, like a favorite movie, past the plane of his nose and soft brow. “And we should be okay.”
He only nods again, and there’s something different about it that causes his hand to slip, almost upsets the mixing bowl balanced on his leg. Juyeon knows that he isn’t a man of many words: when they’d first had Jiwoo and her girlfriend over for dinner, Jaehyun had pulled him into the bathroom to apologize for being tongue tied, and he’d rubbed soothing circles into his palms until they both understand that it was okay, that it would always be okay. Warm breakfast even when they’d both run late, fabric conditioner that smelled like lilies and freshly laundered sheets every weekend; those were the things through which he spoke loudest. Conversations in Juyeon’s favorite chocolate that he used to keep in the refrigerator, something that flows like a sonnet when he’d check the night stand and find his medicine already prepared.
This, though, this is different. It isn’t a careful selection of words, or even an absence of it. Steadying the bowl in his lap and pressing the brush to the skin beside Jaehyun’s ear, all he can feel is shirking, avoidance and the strange numbness before skin meets skin.
“Tell me if the bleach starts to burn or something, alright? So that we can wash it out immediately.” He doubts that Jaehyun’s scalp is burning, or even itching at all. The back of his head is lightening evenly, the pink flush of skin underneath the hair healthy and supple, and he isn’t picking at his hair or scratching. It’s for formality, he decides, for safety reasons and precaution and in the name of his training. It’s for protocol’s sake, like he’s back in the salon and not in the corner of their once-bedroom, for good practice and the chance that Jaehyun will answer in any way at all.
Maybe, just maybe, it’s so that he can stick Jaehyun in the shower, tell him to wash off the bleach as fast as he can, and hide in the living room where he can breathe air untainted with peroxide and uneasy silence.
Jaehyun winces under his touch as the last patch of lightener lands, and he puts down the brush almost frantically and checks his ear. Thumbs across the surface for chemical burns and wounds and scars that lie under the surface of the skin. “Sorry, sorry. Is that okay?”
Three months after they’d started dating, Jaehyun had gone out drinking with his supervisor, fallen down the stairs at 3AM while trying to unlock their apartment door. Two hairline fractures, a cast for six weeks, and numb fingers scrabbling for his cup of coffee at breakfast. They’d dragged stools into the bathroom every other morning, and he’d allowed Juyeon to run a disposable razor up and down his jaw, secure and calm and almost overwhelmed with the closeness of it all, the smell of minty aftershave on their skin. One cloudy Thursday, his hand had slipped, nicked a small line into Jaehyun’s chin, and even then he’d stayed perfectly still. Moved only to bring Juyeon’s quivering hand closer to the swell of his cupid’s bow, running soft lips over callused knuckles.
It’s nearly comical, Juyeon thinks, how neither of them responds, how he has to lean in and grab the brush from under the chair, forehead against Jaehyun’s hip. How he has to shift closer still, has to move between smooth thighs and polyester basketball shorts, sit back on his haunches to get a look at his hairline. What else is he supposed to do? What else is left to say?
He doesn’t miss the sharp exhale of breath when he moves to lift the brush to Jaehyun’s forehead, leans in at eye level with the day old stubble on the curve of his jaw. It’s so hard to breathe, even harder to lift his arm, to cut through the thickness of words that hide in the cavities of their chests, the sluggish syrup of movements that preempt movements. Juyeon marvels at it, at the intimacy and slow creep of what must be asphyxiation. He takes a deep breath.
“Jae, can you lift your head, please? I need to do the front of your hairline.”
The pause that follows is wretched, like the air has been stolen from the room, shuttered out by the tiny window that mocks him from above their bed.
“Just look at me, please?”
And when Jaehyun finally starts moving, when Juyeon finally feels the breath he can’t believe he’s been holding begin to pass his lips and make its way back into the tainted atmosphere, it’s somehow worse. He lifts his head until he’s eye level with the crown of Juyeon’s fading hair, stares over and past it out the door and into the living room. Lips pressed into a line that he cannot read, the slope of his neck and shoulder somewhere between open tension and things under the surface of the skin.
His nose stings as he begins, and it’s because of the peroxide in the air. It has to be.
--
Incoming call: Jae
"Hey," It's almost 10PM, and he's still at the salon. Changmin and Jiwoo had both left at 7, but he's still counting their earnings for the day, arranging the bookings for tomorrow and trying to arrange things into orderly lines, neat rows that make sense.
"Ju, are you okay? It's pretty late." Jaehyun's voice is tinny over the sound of static, but he can't miss the edge that lies under his words, the worry and concern that threatens to steal the breath from his chest. He rubs his eyes with the back of his hand.
"Yeah, it's just the salon. I have to get everything in order for tomorrow, but Jiwoo and Changmin had to leave early so..." The pen slips from his hand and clatters to the floor, and he winces at the sound. "I decided to finish up on my own."
"Is there anything I can do to help?" The dishwasher is running in the background of the call, and he knows that it's the pots and pans from this morning.
"No, it's fine. I'm almost done anyway."
There's a soft thump as Jaehyun presumably sits on the couch, and he can almost picture him sorting through papers with his newly healed arm, the skin still pale and sickly fresh out of the cast. The pen has begun to leave an angry, red welt on the side of his index finger, and he wants to take a long, warm shower to ease away the knots in his back. Hold Jaehyun's hand properly for the first time in six weeks.
"Jae?"
"Hm?" He stumbles over the interjection, at the way it passes Jaehyun's lips and seems to stir up something in his chest.
"Thank you. For calling."
"You don't have to thank me. Ever. I'm here to help as long as you'll have me, okay?" The light bulb in the corner of the salon flickers, and Juyeon thinks about how he'll have to replace it again. Thinks about the small burn on his right arm because of an accident with the curling iron, about the customer he'd almost mischarged earlier in the morning, about the laundry Jaehyun had done for him without a word when he'd fallen asleep the night before. It throttles his windpipe, slots something ugly and helpless and filled with reluctant gratitude into the narrow passageway of his throat and sinuses.
When Juyeon finally gets into the car at half past eleven, he realizes that the tank is empty.
He sits there for who knows how long, bakes in the late night humidity and stares at the blinking dials until they begin to blur together and he's swiping at the side of his face. His phone begins to ring in time to the dashboard lights at some point, and he doesn't answer it, just sits and stares and waits for everything to come together again, for oxygen to flow back into the car, or run out.
And then someone is unlocking the passenger's side, and there is a hand holding his on top of the beaten stick shift.
Neither of them speak while Juyeon tries to catch his breath, while the world slowly comes back into focus and he can begin to understand, with strange clarity, how the moon aligns with the stoplight down the road, how Jaehyun's breathing slots perfectly into the spaces between his own. It's a feeling of insignificance, of shrinking and needing to be held, and Juyeon almost hates it, the sensation of falling and being caught, of crying in a stranded car until someone has unlocked the doors for him.
"I borrowed Younghoon's car to come and get you." The edge is still there, under Jaehyun's voice, under Juyeon's skin. "I'm here, okay?"
He falls asleep in the backseat of Younghoon's minivan on the way home, and dreams about suffocating.
--
He’s just finished washing the bleach off of Jaehyun’s head when it dawns on him, just how light his hair is. It makes his pale fingers look tan in comparison, the pristine color glimmering in the meager light of their bathroom, almost refracting off the tiled walls and mirror. Jaehyun is still bent over the sink, locks still wet under the rush and crackle of the faucet, and Juyeon is thankful, so thankful, that he can’t see his face. That Jaehyun's eyes are hidden under soaked bangs and slow tension, that his neck is craning over the white basin and Juyeon won’t be able to trace the hollow between his jawbone and ear.
It would break him, he realizes, staring change in the face like this.
Cautiously, he traces his fingers through the base of Jaehyun’s scalp, through the softness given life like first snowfall, blanketed over flesh and bone. Jaehyun freezes when his fingers first make contact, but Juyeon continues anyway, remembers a time when the nape of Jaehyun’s neck had been shrouded in shadow and the softness of 4 AM lamplight, fingers intertwined and their apartment dim. Curls falling in loose tangles over the tops of starched collars, lips pressed to knuckles, and darkness, soft chocolate and charcoal that he’d begun to forget. Does Jaehyun remember? Would he want to remember?
He moves higher up the back of Jaehyun’s skull as the water finally begins to run clear, lets himself marvel at the tones of champagne between his fingers, sandy whites and pale yellows twisting between his fingers. Softly, he lets himself admit, maybe marvel, at how he wants to see the roots slowly come in, edges of chocolate peeking through the paleness like regrowth and forgiveness. Slowly, he maps out the curls that have begun to return, tangles and knots that have remained through blonde and chocolate and silence in the bathroom each morning. Would Jaehyun allow him to relearn the crests and shallows of his hair, the softness of it, the places where it parts and refuses to cooperate? Card open fingers through it again, with all the knowing silence and intimacy of home?
The faucet shuts off, and Juyeon hands him a towel, averts his eyes from the mirror. He leaves through the bathroom door before Jaehyun can straighten up.
There are plates in the sink, he realizes, the remains of breakfast and Jaehyun’s midday bowl of cereal. It’s a weekend, so he lets the water run, loads up the dishwasher with detergent and scrubs until his fingers begin to turn pink. Juyeon turns the faucet off when the basin is close to overflowing, lets himself stare down at the basin as water keeps dripping, dripping, dripping, ripples in the water and the sponge slowly tearing in his grasp.
The bedroom door opens behind him.
--
He's just finished boiling a pot of tea for Jaehyun's inevitable hangover when he hears a crash from the hallway outside, followed by a groan that's a little bit too familiar for comfort. When he's finally outside, the door hastily unlocked and hallway lights switched to maximum, Jaehyun is staring back at him from the fourth step of the stairwell with a queasy smile.
"Hi."
Juyeon's eyes immediately go to the way he's cradling his arm, the way he's hiding it behind a book bag stuffed with manuscripts, and Jaehyun chews on his bottom lip as he puts the pieces together.
"It'll be fine, really, it's just a bit bruised and we have some ice in the refrigerator-" The strap of the bag slips and slides languidly down Jaehyun's forearm, and his knees almost buckle underneath him. Before Jaehyun can sit back down on the step, he's leaping down the stairs two at a time, wedging an arm under his shoulder and gently lowering him to the floor.
"You kinda smell like chamomile. Did you buy more chamomile for me?" He's still drunk, Juyeon realizes as Jaehyun slurs the words around in his mouth, lets his tongue get in the way of the syllables. "I was supposed to come home a little bit earlier, but we had another round and I got really dizzy for a bit."
"Can you stand on your own?" Jaehyun leans into him softly when he tries to lift them, and beneath the soju is the smell of fabric conditioner and their apartment. Even furthest from his usual demeanor, limbs heavy in the darkening stairwell of their apartment building, he still feels like home.
They lock eyes when he tries to hoist them both up, and it stops the breath clean in his chest, how Jaehyun sighs softly and presses his forehead closer. The tip of his nose is warm against Juyeon's cheek, even as he pushes with his back and inches them closer to the apartment, and it almost feels like a sin when he has to break away and unlock the door with his free hand.
In ten minutes, Jaehyun is finally on the couch, head propped up and cradling a cup of tea with his good arm. The alcohol's begun to make its way out of his system, the flush in his cheeks receding and his eyes beginning to droop. He shuffles to make room as Juyeon sinks down beside him, lets his head loll back so that he can run fingers smelling of dish soap through his hair. In the dim light of their single lamp, Juyeon can make out the way his eyelashes flutter with each breath, the mole under his eye that almost glimmers like a lone star.
"Ju?" He shifts to face Jaehyun, and the corners of his mouth rise by sheer instinct.
"What's that?"
"Thanks for picking me up." It makes him breathless, how they mold to each other's touch, how the skin of his palm against the nape of Jaehyun's neck seems to come alive in the silence of the room. Jaehyun’s hair is longer than it’s ever been, Juyeon realizes, dark waves cresting over his knuckles and wrist bone.
"You don't have to thank me. It's just you."
He's on the cusp of sleep, deep breaths and dreamy inhalation, when Jaehyun takes his hand and presses it to his lips, murmurs softly into the rough skin.
"The same goes for you, okay?" He keeps completely still, doesn't flinch, lets Jaehyun continue, "I worry sometimes, that you're always still awake when I get home, that it's always you making me tea and driving me to work and just..." His hand drops back down to his side, heavy, as Jaehyun sighs. "Let me take care of you too."
And even as Jaehyun falls asleep, inhales and exhales sweet and warm onto the top of his shoulder, the words make a home in his chest, unearth something primal and small and scared of things that hide in the walls of apartments, between couch cushions and interlocked hands, maybe in the crevices of bone and marrow, bruised from a fall.
He lies awake until morning, until it's time to bring Jaehyun to the hospital.
--
“Ju?”
Jaehyun is in the living room, a towel around his neck, hair drying slowly. He doesn’t dare turn away from the sink, tries to keep himself focused on the dripping sound, on his fingers around the sponge, on anything but the soft padding of Jaehyun’s slippers as he moves across the room, tentative.
There is a hand on his arm. He’s being turned around slowly, and then Jaehyun’s eyes are meeting his.
The stillness is almost unbearable, but neither of them flinch. Juyeon remembers a cloudy Thursday, a small cut the size of his fingernail, and now Jaehyun’s thumb is ghosting over his cheek, swiping away a wetness he hadn’t noticed. He thinks at first that it’s bleach, or maybe runaway soap from the dishwasher.
Then the sob rends itself free from his chest like a pained, winged creature, and Jaehyun bites his lip and grabs his hand, soap and all. The world seems to tear away from Juyeon’s grasp.
He slumps onto Jaehyun’s shoulder, suffocates and drowns in it all until he can finally breathe, until bleach and longing and hurt and regret have finally been expelled from his system, and he gasps for air, drinks in the quiet set of Jaehyun’s mouth and the gentle lines of his eyes and brow. Jaehyun helps him to the table, pulls out a chair, and Juyeon watches as he prepares dinner, sniffles in time to the crackling of eggs over the stovetop. He makes coffee even though it’s 6PM, enough for two instead of one. It’s nearly enough to break the fragile dam in Juyeon’s chest.
Later that evening, when the dishwasher is loaded and the living room smells like fabric conditioner, he sits down gently next to Jaehyun, feels him tense up and relax as he works on a lecture for the following week. Jaehyun’s hair is soft, damp under his fingers, and he tilts his head ever so slightly, lets the curls spill over onto Juyeon’s shoulder as he works.
It feels like a breath of fresh air, when he runs the wide toothed comb through the tangles, gently unsnarls the drying hair with tentative flicks of his wrist. It feels like hope.
--
He manages to get up before Jaehyun for once, leaves him sleeping on the right side of their bed as he stretches, clumsily scrambles upright. The sun is gently streaming through the window above their bed, and he cranks it open just to smell the edge that autumn has lent to the air, a frigid undertone beneath the smoke and street food.
When he’s done, he glances down, checks to make sure that he hasn’t woken Jaehyun up, and stops. Takes a deep breath, inhales, exhales.
There, overlooking the soft curve of Jaehyun’s nose and slightly parted lips, beneath the new familiarity of his blonde curls, is an inch of dark hair, sprouting gently from the scalp.