Work Text:
Call Jisung stereotypical, but he likes to code his moods with songs. It easiest for him to identify what he’s feeling when he can put someone else’s words into his mouth, someone else’s chords into his heart. In that way, he never has to say what he himself is feeling and can let the artist do the talking for him. It might be avoidant – he has long since accepted that – but it works and that’s all that matters, isn’t it?
His therapist reluctantly agreed after a session’s worth of convincing that it was just a really effective coping strategy and not at all a means of dismissing his emotions.
After all these years, it’s also lead him to self-diagnosing why he’s always wanted to make music. He wants to do for others what his own favourite artists have done for him. His own tiny way of giving back to the universe, a karmic duty paid back. He wants to believe he can write lyrics that people can use to describe their emotions in the same way that he does.
It’s a work-in-progress dream but he’s happy enough that he’s in the process, really.
He’s deviating from the point.
For Jisung, music is a mode of communicating with himself, of introspection and self-reflection.
Right now, he’s introspecting with Twice’s ‘What is Love’ playing in a loop through his chunky red headphones as he procrastinates on contacting his partner for the senior collaboration project. Substituting one anxiety for another. A more pressing, urgent, looming type for a duller, more constant state. (His therapist would once again debate the efficiency of this technique but it’s not like he’s choosing to do it this time. It happens without his explicit permission, as his brain often tends to do.)
More than forty minutes into the hour loop of the song, Jisung is well past memorising the lyrics. If there was a gun to his head and someone told him to recite them he’d likely come out of the altercation having saved not only himself but a litter of kittens too on account of his remembrance of all the ad-libs and riffs as well. His brain is mush and yet it still talks to him.
Why is he listening to this song?
Probably because of the same flavour of breakdown that he had after Jisu confessed to him behind the school gym in eighth grade during study hall and he’d ran away without giving her an answer and proceeded to avoid her for three days despite being in the same homeroom. Or the same type as continuing to be disgusted by kissing scenes in the climax of movies well into young adulthood while his friends started to get frustrated by their lack of realism. Or like when he panicked and told the same friends that he had a crush on Yeji in Class 3 in high school when they were just music buddies who shared the same taste.
That distinct unease that’s followed him from the moment his parents even mentioned the birds and the bees.
He’s close to an hour of listening because as much as the lyrics hit home, the chords are too vibrant, the tone too optimistic to truly relay the sort of dread that lances through his body at the contemplation of it all.
He wants to love too.
He wants it like the movies. Like the books and songs and poems. Like the flurried, ardent paintings and the soft-spoken confessions.
The chorus rings out again, flowing through the stereo of his headphones and getting trapped in a cycle in his head. That it’s as sweet as candy, freeing as flying through the sky, that it keeps you smiling all day and turns the world beautiful.
Jisung wants it too. To love and be loved like that.
He doesn’t know if it’s his fault or the world’s that he can’t.
♤ ♡ ♢ ♧
Jisung has successfully procrastinated his entire day away (through a masterful combination of stress-induced music-looping, tidying his room for the first time in a month, painting his nails the shade of black that he just bought from the chemist and calling back home, not in that exact order) when he finally decides it’s time to text his partner for the collab project. If he’s being honest, he wasted away most of the day hoping that said partner would text him first and do the treacherous work of breaking the ice – in and amongst ignoring the growing pile of assignments from other subjects – but alas the duty has fallen on him.
His partner. The famed Bang Chan of the music department, god of the senior year and angel of the entire university. Not only is he a straight A’s honour student but he is also well-beloved by the student body. Always the centre of attention at parties and always with a friend or ten in the courtyard and inevitably the star at showcases. Not that Jisung’s ever met him but rumours fly and Chan is the leading role in many, though few have anything bad to say about him.
Jisung could ignore him for another week in similar hopes but at that point they might start falling behind and despite how Jisung looks he cares about his grades, okay? And anyone who has a reason to text Chan but doesn’t is a fool. (Good thing Jisung is certified dumb of ass.)
So he texts him.
He texts him.
Come on fingers, move. You’ve been texting your whole life. It’s your master’s preferred method of communication. Would you rather press the button for a call and leave him fumbling to get a sound out of his mouth.
His fingers move. Except they are only twirling in the air.
They are not sure which buttons to press.
Sure, he has the chatroom open and the number keyed in from the little spreadsheet of contact information that his professor sent but he doesn’t know what to say. Actually wait, what if it’s the wrong number. He checked it at least ten times before typing it in but he didn’t highlight the row to confirm his eyes weren’t malfunctioning like he usually did so what if he accidently put in the number from a row above or below.
He abandons his phone somewhere on his bed and pulls up the emailed spreadsheet on his laptop again, scrolling down until he sees the name. It’s not hard; one of the first names.
Bang Chan.
And next to him Jisung’s own name to indicate that they were paired up. Scroll right, past the specifications of their specific project and other details until he gets to the contact details at the end of the row, cursor shaky as it follows the line. He studies the number over and over and picks up his phone and studies it again.
Even still he highlights the row, in his favourite shade of legible and slightly translucent red, and confirms it again until there’s no denying he’s had the right number all along and that there’s very little for him to do to procrastinate further.
He could always spiral his way down a social media rabbit hole for a few hours but the self-loathing might get a bit too strong after that method.
The intermittently blinking cursor of the text bubble stares at him and he stares back.
‘Hi’ should be an acceptable starter, right?
Surely.
Wait no, maybe he should save the number first so that he doesn’t get confused when he gets a reply. Not that anyone else would be texting him but.
He saves the contact as ‘Bang Chan Sunbae’ and reopens the text page.
Back at square one.
But he’s adjust the piece so it’s slightly closer to the edge.
This cursor is his mortal enemy, as is the little inscription in the box that says ‘Send a Message…’ as if he isn’t keenly aware that that is where the message should be.
As his therapist may or may not have said (some sessions from years ago get fuzzy), “If looking at it drives you crazy, just don’t look.”
He closes his eyes and types out a message.
New Chat: Bang Chan Sunbae
Me: Hi subae rhis js jisunf im your paetner tor the cross yeae dollaborwrion prijedt in the musixbeepqrtn3ment what did you wanr to do
Peeling open his eyes to peep at it, it’s not as much a travesty as it could be. If he just blocks off the passage between his brain and his hands for twenty seconds to fix up the horrendous spelling–
His finger slips.
The message slips out of the type box and becomes backgrounded in blue.
It sent.
Jisung’s life is officially over. He’s moving to a Pacific island that no one knows the name or location of to live an unassuming life working at a local grocery store at minimum wage and a quaint board room preferably near a beach where he doesn’t need money to appreciate the small miracles of nature and a friendly neighbour who offers to make him food besides the cup ramen he smuggles from his day job.
That life is sounding real good right now. Actually it sounds really good anytime and good job he’s successfully distracted himself from the crashing and burning of his social life- oh wait no he’s thinking about it again and now there’s no way to distract himself because he’ll be self-aware that every thought he has henceforth will be an attempt to distract himself and yep he’s thinking about that catastrophe of a text again.
A ringtone sounds from his phone. And then some more.
There’s not many people it could be but it’s the one person he can’t handle yet.
[Bang Chan Sunbae + Me]
Me: Hi subae rhis js jisunf im your paetner tor the cross yeae dollaborwrion prijedt in the musixbeepqrtn3ment what did you wanr to do
Bang Chan Sunbae: Hi Jisung!
Bang Chan Sunbae: Hyung is fine
Bang Chan Sunbae: Glad to be working with you for the project! Your performance for the showcase last year was amazing!
Bang Chan Sunbae: I’m not sure what I want to do yet but do you wanna meet up sometime this week to discuss?
Me: oh my god sunbae. i’m so sorry about the typos
Me: yes of course i’ll be okay to discuss things
Bang Chan Sunbae: Haha don’t worry about it
Bang Chan Sunbae: And great! When are you free?
Oh fuck no.
A nice person?
Jisung is done for.
♤ ♡ ♢ ♧
Remember how Jisung said Chan was a nice person? Maybe a few sentences ago, or a few days depending on which plane of existence you’re observing this from.
Well, multiply that by ten. Then square it, then cube it, then put it to the power of infinity because Chan may as well the epitome of nice and every synonym that exists for it. Despite the million and one mental blocks that Jisung had on when and where and how to meet, he was accommodating of them all. Maybe that’s a standard that should have worked it’s way into hell by now but for Jisung and his specific set of life experiences it may as well be in Jupiter’s stratosphere, a little bit beyond heaven.
Here, in Chan’s studio that he booked extra time for just so that they didn’t have to meet up in a café that would make Jisung nervous and awkwardly sweaty and perhaps a tad too anxious to breathe right, and fifteen minutes through a conversation that only teeters on the awkwardness of small talk but leans far heavier onto the side of bantering, Jisung is the most comfortable he ever has with a stranger. Or just a friend in general. How is that possible when he’s only known Chan personally for those aforementioned fifteen minutes and a few days over text?
They haven’t even started talking about the project yet. The first thing Chan asked Jisung about was how he was doing and then about the pin on Jisung’s bag which he recognised as a reference to one of his favourite anime. Which, none so coincidentally as the owner of said pin, is also Jisung’s favourite anime.
In summary they’ve been talking about Mob Psycho 100 for ten minutes and bubble tea orders the next five and Jisung is saying way too much and elucidating too vividly on the intricate balance of his regular boba order but Chan has not told him to shut up yet nor has his interest wavered once.
“- and I know the pearls are like half or probably more like three quarters or seven eighths of the reason most people get tea from places like Gongcha but I don’t really like the texture of it in a lot of shops so unless it’s at the store across town I never get them. And even then, only the standard black pearls because the jelly ones just don’t belong in tea, you know?”
Chan nods solemnly from his office chair, swinging from side to side but keeping his gaze on Jisung so his neck is working overtime from the isolation. He doesn’t seem to mind all that much and the consistent motion is good for Jisung’s flickering eyes so it’s a win-win. “I definitely get that. I like the pearls myself, but some places have a fucking awful consistency and I find myself wishing I hadn’t gotten them. Maybe I should try it without sometime.”
Did he just… take Jisung’s suggestion?
Wait he was listening to the whole thing in the first place?
Jisung’s head spins.
“We should get some after we finish up today,” Chan says. “It’d be a good excuse for me to get out of here for once as well. Oh which speaking of, should we get started?”
“Oh my god, sorry- I shouldn’t have-” The words tumble out of Jisung’s lips and the room gets hotter with the weight of his embarrassment. No one asked for his thoughts on bubble tea – he was here for a collab project and the project only. “I talked for so long when we could have been getting started and you haven’t been able to take a break. I’m sorry for distracting you.”
“Hey. It’s okay. I’m the one who asked about your pin. If anything I’m the one who distracted you,” Chan says, retrieving the mini notebook of ideas and lyric drafts and mind-maps that Jisung had handed to him first thing when the door to the studio opened, hoping to get through the interaction without having to explain his thought processes and opening up the possibility of stumbling over his articulation of his ideas when they’d already been written down so concisely. It had been set aside when Chan noticed the merch but it’s dramatic reappearance makes Jisung calm down a little bit. “I cut you off when you gave me this but what is it?”
“I -uh. I wrote up a bunch of ideas and concepts for the project ‘cos if I tried to explain it right now I’d probably fuck up the explanation,” Jisung explains. “There’s also some lyric drafts in there and general plans on how we could divide up the work too- but we don’t have to do any of it like that if you don’t want to! You’re the sunbae so you should probably take control of how this is going to go…”
Chan stops leafing through the pages to look up at Jisung in silence. Shit, it’s all wrong isn’t it. His ideas are amateur and Chan’s mad that he assumed he’d get to dictate what they did. That was the whole point of this session. And Jisung just decided to ignore all that and try it on his own. He’s gonna get chewed out. Chan’s nice but the nice thing to do would be to instruct Jisung on the proper etiquette so he doesn’t fuck shit up like this again. He braces for the scolding of a lifetime, drawing his shoulders up to his ears to cower from the volume of it like the coward he is.
“Whoa this is amazing! Literally all of these concepts are super polished. When did you do all of this? God I can’t pick my favourite!”
What?
“Were these all brainstormed for this project in particular?” When Jisung dips his head in affirmation, Chan’s smile double in size and he buries himself in the remaining pages of the notebook. Jisung’s ears burn and face and body like he’s stood in front of a bonfire for too long. “Holy shit, I knew you were good when I saw you singing and rapping at the showcase last year but this is- holy fucking shit! I’m so excited to do this with you. I really hit the jackpot, huh?”
His words dissolve into senseless enthusiasm and cheering as he reads and rereads Jisung’s notes, flipping back and forth through the pages and constantly picking out bits he likes in the middle of his rambling and quoting them to Jisung.
Jisung, who hasn’t moved except to nod his head since Chan opened the book. Legs stuck to each other from him to the tips of his toes to where they meet his hips, or as much as they can touch from inside his pants and sneakers, hands laid flat across his laps to prevent him from wanting to pick at his nail beds and shoulders squared to appear more confident in his own thoughts on those pages. His brain is milk and Chan’s exuberant comments are the cereal floating in and amongst it.
Chan looks up at him once more and Jisung melts at the inexplicable glee filling his face, all the tension flowing out of him.
♤ ♡ ♢ ♧
They get bubble tea across town. Chan, being in his final year, lives off campus and has a car – one that he says he never uses but nevertheless does use to take Jisung there from his apartment.
The briefing for the assignment stipulates that a senior and freshmen student must collaborate to produce a setlist of at least three piece with a consistent thematic through-line, as submit the completed collection along with an explanation of stylistic, musical, and lyrical choices that totals at least three thousand words. Frankly, it’s a demanding workload on top of preparing for weekly quizzes, smaller assignments, and the looming threat of finals but that is partially why it was introduced at the start of the semester and why they were delegated a sunbae to help them along the way.
A few days after Jisung’s kidnapping(?) to the boba shop, Chan texts him saying he’s been blessed with holy inspiration from the books of notes he stole from Jisung, picking out the ideas he likes best and expanding how he would go about bringing them to life. One session at the studio the next day turns into multiple sessions a week, turns into Jisung dropping by everyday after his lectures are over, turns into coaxing Chan into going home with puppy dog eyes and a pout after finding out he’s been at his studio basically overnight tinkering away at his senior project.
It becomes a routine quickly; Jisung’s classes wrap up, he collects his stuff and heads over to the personal rooms in the music department’s second, much newer building and drags Chan to his off campus apartment to get some rest. Much later in the night, after Chan has gotten recharged with a few hours of sleep, they work at the lyrics and the parts of the instrumentals that can be configured on Chan’s laptop without any of the studio equipment.
As difficult as Jisung thought it would be to fall into this pattern, it comes too easily. There are still hard parts to it, don’t get him wrong – for the first days of nudging Chan into taking a power nap before working he had no idea what to do when he was asleep and just zoned out on the couch staring into the wall for a few hours talking himself into a nervous loop of whether he was expected to leave because he was an intruder or stay because otherwise he’d be dumping the workload on Chan all over again – but as soon as he shows a single sign of discomfort in front of Chan, he’s bending his back to smooth it over or talk him through it.
Finding someone who can accommodate for Jisung’s anxiety doesn’t mean the anxiety itself goes away but it certainly dulls. It has no choice but to under Chan’s bombard of praises every time he cautiously suggests a change in percussion in a new section of the song or his gentle check-in’s when they leave the apartment to get food.
More than anything, it was nice to have someone to talk to outside his therapist and parents.
One day, several weeks later Chan makes dinner while Jisung occupies himself with brainstorming lyrics and forces him to eat together while they watch music shows on his tiny TV that sits atop a coffee table instead of a proper entertainment unit. That becomes a habit too.
No one tells you how half of lyric writing is just searching up synonyms of the same word you’ve used ten times and only just realised you’ve overused, asking websites for rhymes of that same word, and trying to invent new metaphors when you’ve run yourself into a wall of cliches. Mostly it’s the first one but the other two happen often enough to be allocated a section of the pie chart of the lyricist experience.
One that Jisung is very acutely living through as he grinds his teeth into the top end of his pencil on Chan’s lumpy but weirdly comfortable couch, forgetting that he bought one with an eraser attached to prevent the very habit.
He’s got a turn of phrase that sounds oh so lovely within his head but as soon as he’d written it down he noticed that he’s already used ‘dark’ thrice in the song so now he needs to go back and replace those with some other word and then change the rhymes that correlate to them and check if the metre still fits and shit the smell of whatever Chan’s cooking is really distracting.
Throwing his notebook and pencil onto the floor, he flips himself in the sofa, dangling himself over the back, to see what Chan is doing. It’s amazing, both the practiced motions of Chan’s hands as he slices up the sticks of spring onion and his quiet but soft presence that has Jisung feeling comfortable showing up to his place even if he didn’t have classes, dressed in nothing fancier than his favourite pair of sweatpants and comfiest hoodie that he had been wearing while he lounged at home. And it says something. Jisung decides on his outfits the night before he visits his therapist.
“What are you making?” he asks, keeping his voice low for no other reason than that it might break the mood, his own comfort. It’s a night made out of slow-crackling fires, and the warmth of a freshly cooked meal and whispered voices, though sadly Chan, broke college student that he is, doesn’t have a fireplace. His stove will have to suffice.
Chan looks over after sprinkling the rings of spring onion into the pot, twisting the stove knob so that whatever is inside is on sim and doesn’t burn or boil over. Which it had been doing just seconds before, if the sound of bubbling was any indication.
“Just kimchi-jjigae. It’s one of the only things I can make on my own and I didn’t want to seem like an idiot while cooking,” he says, laughing. It sounds like it should be self-deprecating, out of Jisung’s mouth it definitely would have been, but he laughs in a way that doesn’t demean himself to make fun and it’s not awkward at all. Jisung doesn’t have to guess whether he’s allowed to laugh as well or not, so he does, shuffling the lower half of his face into his arms where they’re folded on the back of the sofa. “Also the kimchi that my grandma packed for me last week is starting to go bad because I left it out so now I have to use it all in the next few days.”
His grandma, because he is a faithful grandson who visit each time he can, because his parents are back in Australia in the same way Jisung’s are in Malaysia. Without explanation because Jisung knows these things about him already, because Chan shares things about himself without any fear of vulnerability or expectation for reciprocation even though Jisung does want to give back. Usually he does, albeit lesser than Chan but Chan appreciates it regardless, smiling gently or pulling him in for a side hug or just patting his cheek.
That’s another thing. Chan loves physical contact. It’s a bit hard to pinpoint what his love language is since he uses them all in spadefuls and accepts any in return but physical touch is definitely up there as a contender. Jisung didn’t even know it was up there for himself until he received it in the way Chan liked to dole out. Sitting side by side as they edited sections of the song they’d put together. Wiping Jisung’s face with a napkin when they have a snack out before coming home.
And it’s never forceful or sudden. Always slow, giving time for Jisung to see it coming and reject it if he wants to. Always able to tell when Jisung wants to be asked and when he wants the independence and agency to be able to reject it on his own. Chan is perfect in every way possible.
“We need to let it sim for a few minutes,” he says as he shuts off the lights in the kitchen except for the ones above the stove, wipes his hands on a kitchen towel and walks out into the living. His hand reaches out before him, hovering over Jisung’s head in question. Jisung smiles into his forearms, giving an infinitesimal nod and relishes how Chan ruffles his hair before he rounds the couch and settles beside him.
They’re close but they have no option but to be with how small the couch is. Chan says it wasn’t advertised as a loveseat when he bought it online and only found out when it was delivered but didn’t mind when he didn’t have many guests over. Jisung wondered then how the hell Chan doesn’t have guests over when he’s friends with everyone on campus. He wonders now why it’s called a loveseat when any two people could be sitting on it.
Chan picks the tv remote off the floor since, again, he doesn’t have a coffee table because the coffee table is being used in lieu of an entertainment unit, and navigates through Netflix, trying to find a show they both agree on and the kimchi jjigae finishes marinating. That’s possibly the wrong word to use but don’t come at Jisung, he doesn’t know the first thing about cooking. That’s Chan’s business.
Jisung lets his head rest on Chan’s shoulder as they scroll through the options, heady with how warm Chan is next to him. Jisung didn’t even realise his heart was frozen with years of anxiety and self-imposed isolation until Chan thawed it. He’s melting, figuratively and literally and his body melds into Chan’s side, eyelids drooping.
They pick Gurren Lagann, an semi-classic anime that shamefully neither of them have watched and Chan has to pull Jisung off like he’s a leech in order to get the food. Mom-and-pop stores have their own charm – trust Jisung he’s been to plenty when he isn’t trying to survive off cup noodles – it’s been so long since he had genuine home-cooked food like this. The steam coming off it flushes his face and strangely he adores that he has to blow on his spoon a few times before he can even put it in his mouth, that even then it burns a corner of his tongue.
They eat in relative silence, the blasts of the fights scenes muted lest Chan’s grumpy middle-aged neighbour give them a talking to about late-night noise disturbance, as they balance the hot bowls between their laps and hands.
Chan collects the bowls when they finish and urges Jisung to stay the night, that the security in the university rarely check who sneaks out when they aren’t supposed to, that it’ll be easier to sleep over if he’s already so tired. And he is tired. So he doesn’t put up much of a fight. Why would he?
That’s a lie, he puts up a fight in his head with himself, with his own anxiety that screams a million things about how he shouldn’t stay since he’d be a nuisance even though Chan is the one who offered, or about the possible backlash of not following dorm rules or that he’d miss his morning meds despite the fact that he doesn’t take them anymore or that Chan’s offer was only made out of courtesy and the simultaneous panic that if he refused, Chan would hate him forever.
But he doesn’t fight with Chan. Instead he says every thought it his mind as it comes, every ugly truth of it, because Chan asked him to say everything, and true to his word, Chan dismantles all of them before bringing out blankets and pillows and returning to the couch to play the next episode.
Jisung doesn’t remember when he falls asleep but when he wakes up he’s toasty under a blanket on the couch and Chan’s asleep on the carpet next to him and everything is perfect, from the sun streaking in from the window to the realisation that Chan gave Jisung the comfier blanket.
Butterflies explode in his stomach.
♤ ♡ ♢ ♧
They get an A+ on their project.
Jisung goes into a brief hiccup in his security with their friendship. And by brief, he means he spends a good few days in his dorm room, not leaving bed and letting his phone remain dead, ruminating over and over again on whether he has the right to hang out with Chan anymore if he isn’t his assignment partner. Every time he went to Chan’s apartment was when they had to do something to a song, add lyrics, take away an instrument. Even if sometimes he went under the pretence of having ideas for edits, it was a rule he’d always protected to ensure he wasn’t assuming more out of Chan than he had intended to give when he’d invited Jisung into his life.
Maybe he should have pushed the bounds a bit more when he had the chance. Because there is no way he can test it now, when Chan would reject him without a second thought. If he’d tried during the semester, Chan would have been a bit more hesitant to push him away so hard since they had to finish the project or at least pretended to like him for the rest of the term. But isn’t it incredibly manipulative to do that: put someone in a situation where they are forced to entertain you and give you their friendship. Good thing Jisung didn’t do that. But he thought about it.
Is thinking about it just as bad? Could Jisung have manipulated Chan? Had he already manipulated him in another way, accidentally? Is that why Chan was letting him into his apartment despite being so tired time and time again, because Jisung had manipulated him?
All the dinners and movies and banter fall away until Jisung can finally see the cold hard truth of it. Chan was exhausted and overworked and made offers out of courtesy that although he assured otherwise, never meant for Jisung to accept. Jisung’s mind blooms with memories of all the times Chan had to sacrifice his own desires or convenience to make Jisung comfortable, giving up the couch to sleep on, letting him have the only serve of seconds, waiting until Jisung was ready to leave a familiar setting into an uncertain one, changing plans for Jisung’s anxious mind, and it’s impossible to prove that Jisung’s brain is imagining the harsh strikes of disappointment on Chan’s face each time.
Chan probably hated him. Chan probably never wanted to see him again.
Well he won’t have to see Jisung at all if he never tells him about the grade. If he never goes outside and just stays in his room. Chan will never again have to face the weird, creepy kid who held him hostage in a friendship he didn’t want.
Jisung will be alone but that’s okay. Jisung is meant to be alone.
There’s a knock on his door. It’s a faint thing. Jisung has no idea who it could be, since the RA on their floor never does his rounds and Jisung doesn’t have any friends or dormmates who would seek him out and security never checks who’s sleeping in their dorms or not, just like Chan said.
It hurts to think about Chan.
He has no idea who the knocking could be but the errant noise has him peeking his head out from under the covers for the first time in several hours, only having moved in the past two days to sip water from a cup he left on his nightstand and relieve his bladder of the same water when the time came. His bones creak with the fatigue of the tiniest movement as he unravels himself from his tightly curled position.
It’s a wonder that, given he hasn’t so much as moved, his room still manages to be a mess. Clothes all over the floor that he threw off the day he saw the mark of their assignment and never fixed, a garbage bag he meant to throw out that same day, filled with ramen cups and the residual soup. Something in his minifridge had gone off yesterday and is stinking up the room now that his head’s out of the covers.
His skin is disgusting; he hasn’t showered since he laid down, hair greasy for the same reason. His mouth tastes putrid, a nauseous, thick coating on his tongue; he hasn’t brushed for as many days as he’s been in his bed. His stomach cramps with pain, from the assault of anxiety or the missed meals he can’t tell. He’s been wearing the same ratty high school sport uniform as pyjamas for three days.
Jisung isn’t confident in himself on an average day, would rather people avert their eyes from him than stare head on, but he especially doesn’t not want anybody to see him like this. In his worst state, mentally and physically.
It’s a self-feeding positive feedback loop. He hides and gives himself more reason to hide. His anxious habits create more reasons for him to be anxious.
That is exactly why his therapist has long been trying to convince him out of using this as a coping mechanism, and why he himself hasn’t used it in a long time. Not that his brain gave him a choice this time. Self-isolation isn’t a coping mechanism anymore. He isn’t coping with anything by cowering under his blankets for days on end. Jisung knows this but he can’t stop himself.
Not when it takes a monumental scope of energy just get his arm to pull down the covers a centimetre more, to be able to stare at the door. When even the most basic of hygiene and self-care seem unimportant under the realisation that no one cares about him. That there is no reason to care about himself.
The knocks ring out once more and it’s definitely on his door, the sound too direct and clear to be anyone across the hall but he doesn’t understand.
No one care about Jisung.
Jisung is meant to be alone.
If Jisung wrenches himself out of his bed to open the door and it’s someone with the wrong number dorm or just a building manager, he’s never going to leave him room again.
He’s not sure who he’s hoping for it to be.
That’s a complete and utter lie. He knows exactly who he’s hoping for and that’s the bit that hurts the most. That it almost definitely isn’t him.
His arms are like lead, like if he were dropped in a lake he would defy the physics of human buoyancy and would sink to the ground. He sinks into his bed.
The knocking turns desperate, louder, panicked.
If it was inaudible before, he can hear it clearly now.
“Jisung! Can you let me in please?”
Chan.
Chan is close to yelling. Why hadn’t Jisung been able to hear it? It sounds like there are tears in his eyes but Jisung doesn’t want to be so presumptuous as to think that Chan cares enough. That he cares at all.
He scans the filth of his room. The side of himself that he had partially bared to Chan but never wanted to show him fully. The reality of his anxiety. It isn’t just preferring quieter settings and an inflated self-consciousness of his actions towards other. It is that, but it’s also spirals of worry so intense he forgets the real world exists, stomach-aches at the thought of being perceived that are so strong he can hardly differentiate them from the time he got an ulcer from not eating his dinners, and bone deep fatigue that makes it hard to do literally anything.
His anxiety isn’t cute nervousness when ordering at a restaurant – though he can’t do that either – it’s the wreckage that is his room and his body and himself and it takes years to make even a single thing about it better.
Jisung doesn’t just feel repulsive. He is.
He’ll open the door to tell Chan that he doesn’t need to worry. There is no universe in which Jisung would be able to shut the door on Chan’s face and it rips his heart out to even think about watching as Chan easily accepts and walks away but it’s better if his is the heart that is broken.
Pain flares in his stomach when he plants his feet on the floor. His feet are freezing where they meet with the floorboards but he walks.
“Jisung, is that you? I can hear you walking, can you open the door? Please,” Chan begs. There’s no need to beg. Jisung would give him anything he asked for. This is nothing compared to what he would be willing to do but Chan won’t want to see him regardless.
The beds of his nails ache from getting too long. He meant to cut it a week ago but it figures that he forgot amongst the storms.
He flicks the lock open.
The door isn’t even fully open before there are arms shoving it out of the way and wrapping around Jisung.
“God, you scared me,” Chan says into his hair, arms tightening around him as he talked as if to assure himself that Jisung was real. “You haven’t popped by in ages, no texts, none of the calls went through and when I dropped by one of your classes the professor said you hadn’t been in for days. I had to ask the lady at the lobby which floor and room number you were.”
He noticed all that? He was expecting to come by the studio even if he had nothing to do there anymore?
Chan takes a deep breath, face still buried in his hair, and it is a striking reminder of his squalor. His hair probably reeks from all the oil build-up. He tries to squirm away from Chan’s vice grip to spare him from the nasty smell, from the general grime of himself. It doesn’t take much effort. As soon as he brings his arms up, placing them on Chan’s side and, well not even pushing but putting the tiniest bit of pressure, the arms on him fly back and hang in the air on either side of Chan’s own head.
“Sorry, I should have asked before I touched you,” Chan says. His hands stay like that, awkward and likely strained where they stay elevated as if Jisung is a cop ordering him to keep his hands where he can see them. Slowly, they fall to rub at his neck, sheepishness flooding his expression. “I just- are you okay?”
There’s so much Jisung wants to say but the words stick in his throat, thick like molasses. The sight of Chan alone is enough to bring tears to his eyes, tears he’s been holding back ever since he sunk into his bed and he can’t hold it back any longer. They spill onto his cheeks without his permission.
“I’m not okay. I’m sorry I’m not okay,” he sobs, closing his eyes against the onslaught of his tears and bringing his hands to cover his face. Shame courses through him at the realisation that Chan is in his room. He can see everything; the clothes exploded over the floor, the desk, the cup ramen in the garbage bag, the dust coating his sink and the rank emanating from his fridge.
“Jisung, what can I do? How do I help?” Chan sounds panicked. He’s panicked because of Jisung. Why does he always fuck shit up? “Can I- Do you want a hug?”
“Please.”
Chan’s arms around him are simultaneously the best and the worst thing he could ask for.
After thirty minutes of trying to regulate his breathing and stifle his sobbing, with Chan’s hand stroking a pattern down his back and whispering reassurances into his greasy hair, Jisung finally feels like half of a real human being, instead of a shadow that fades without the presence of light.
Half because he is still wading in a cavernous pool of self-pity and self-hatred and self-consciousness and literally every other negative word you can attach to ‘self’ as he becomes increasingly aware of the state of his room and Chan’s presence in it when he comes back to himself. There’s a reason why dissociation is a coping mechanism.
Chan informs him that it’s three in the afternoon on Friday and they spend the rest of the night cleaning up Jisung’s dorm.
Jisung fails at hiding his sniffling as he watches Chan lug the overfull garbage bags, now doubly full with the excess waste found under the bed. Chan drops the bags and offers him another hug, which while he accepts, does little to make him feel better about the fact that Chan has to clean up after his own messes on a night he had probably intended to spend out with friends clubbing or partying or what not.
Chan actually has a life and that life, all sparkly with the golden studs of companions and adventures and happiness, does not deserve to be corrupted by the slew of troubles that Jisung’s very existence necessitates.
When he says that to Chan, he doesn’t agree but rather asks when the last time Jisung went to his therapist was.
And maybe that hurts most of all. Not that he isn’t trusted with himself. That, while it aches on some level, he can understand, especially in the wake of this disaster. It’s not that. It’s the fact that he’s been going to therapy for ages, since he was in middle school, and yet a few weeks off still fucks him up this bad. Like he hasn’t made any progress at all. Like all those years and all that effort has been worthless. It’s too easy to sink in this pond, the quicksand of deprecation, as he forces himself to go through the motions of changing his sweated-up sheets under Chan’s cautious eye.
At ten, Chan forces him to sit on his bed, and pins his there with a bowl of soup he cooked up with groceries he bought while Jisung wiped down his bathroom. And then he talks about himself.
How he went through, goes through depression himself. How it brought on his insomnia from a young age, his people-pleasing attitude. How it’s a constant struggle and just because he doesn’t need the therapy anymore, it doesn’t discredit how Jisung still relies on it.
“People cope in different ways. There’s nothing wrong with needing meds or not needing meds, or going to therapy every week and or not going to therapy,” Chan says, closing his hands around Jisung’s where they fumble with the spoon. “Whatever you need to be okay, don’t be ashamed in doing it.”
Jisung is sorry for diluting Chan’s soup with his millionth tears of the day but he can’t help being grateful that the soup is there anyway.
♤ ♡ ♢ ♧
When Jisu confessed to him behind the school gym in eighth grade, blush high on her cheeks and hands clasped nervously behind her back, and his heart had plummeted into the ground instead of leaping into his throat in excitement, Jisung knew there was something wrong with him.
It had come completely out of left-field, was the thing. The confession, that is. In the eighth grade, Jisung was all skin and bones and limbs that fit awkwardly and even his friends, hypervigilant as they were about the attentions and crushes of the girls in their class, didn’t catch on. It was a surprise of astronomical proportions that no one knew before that day, given that the love lives of fourteen-year-olds’ aren’t particularly private escapades. If someone so much as looked at another of the opposite sex, rumours flew on their possible dating, and don’t even imagine it being a secret if you tell your friends.
Jisu must have had pretty good friends because she’d told Jisung a year later, when they were back on speaking terms, that she actually had divulged the news to two of them before confessing, asking for advice on whether he was interested back. Apparently neither of them had known what to say and had resorted to blind encouragement.
Though, as much as Jisu’s crush came as a surprise, nothing could top the incredulity of Jisung turning her down. Jisung, the nerd, the loser, the kid that was always either a little too angry or a little too sad and could barely keep the comradery of his own best friends, turning down Choi Jisu, the princess of the year level, with more friends than she could probably count and too many crushing on herself to keep track of. It was absurd.
Jisung knew it too when the words left his lips.
He spent the rest of that day, a collage of restless hours, obsessing over whether or not that meant he was gay. It was possible he’d taken over twenty quizzes on the internet to ascertain an answer and then promptly deleted all traces of it from his search history before his parents found out.
Over the next few weeks, he brainstormed at least a hundred reasons why it could not be counted as conclusive evidence, with the first being that maybe she just wasn’t the right girl. A close second was that maybe puberty hadn’t hit him yet and he just hasn’t grasped the concept of liking anyone the way his classmates had. If you even needed puberty to develop a crush, that is.
He wasn’t homophobic, he didn’t think his parents were either but it was another layer of complexity to his life that he didn’t want to handle. Couldn’t handle. So he’d taken that memory, that entire experience, and packaged it away in box, neatly wrapped up with the ribbon of denial and imminent explosion and hidden it away in a corner of his mind, not to be touched until it became absolutely imperative. Like having a panic attack or on the verge of death or in immediate danger of hurting someone else’s feelings. Luckily, he’d never had a panic attack over the fact.
Despite his impeccable compartmentalisation skills, he avoided Jisu for a week, from her face and didn’t talk to her for the whole year. Just looking at her gave him the sensation of his stomach falling out like he was in a rollercoaster and it wasn’t her fault but he’d never been a fan of heights or adrenaline rushes. He preferred to stay on the ground, where the societal truths of his life didn’t have to be tested and there wasn’t an identity crisis looming around the next drop. (After a year, he’d finally apologised for how horribly he’d handled all of it and they texted once every few months now. It was her who he sat next two at the most recent middle school reunion.)
Through it all, he’d never touched the thought again.
Besides, it didn’t even matter yet. He hadn’t liked a guy, he’d just not liked a girl.
♤ ♡ ♢ ♧
Jisung thinks a lot about kissing Chan.
He doesn’t know when it started or what to do about it, but somewhere in the months after the great debacle of Jisung’s mental breakdown and the subsequent arduous road to rebuilding their friendship, the very unwelcome thought of his uncertain gayness comes traipsing back into his mind, broken free of that box prison he had put it into.
Chan in his studio, chipping away at his senior project in a loose tank top and curly haired, looks very kissable. Or so Jisung imagines people would say. He’s tried out going to the gym (and failed in his commitment to the activity) enough times to know Chan’s arm muscles, on full display from his blatant lack of sleeves and gaping armscye, are difficult to achieve and distinctly admirable. If the broad shoulders didn’t speak for themselves.
The lips though are a whole different category that Jisung is ill-equipped to rank. What is he even supposed to be looking for? His vantage point is a bit insufficient for the investigation – he’s half lounged in the couch behind Chan and his eyes being bleary and red from sleep deprivation due to comic reading – and he doesn’t have the vernacular to properly describe how Chan’s lips look.
He’s heard of a cupid’s bow before, the ideal shape of the top lip with defined and noticeable curves, and if he looks hard enough from the side and dredges up memories of Chan, face on, it’s true that he does have a defined dip in all the desires positions, symmetrically placed as to maximise aesthetic appeal. Chan’s lips don’t look too plump or slim on the scale off possible lip thickness but then again Jisung has never been one to pay that much attention to lips in general on anyone so he wouldn’t be able to tell you what most people’s are like, let alone the beauty standard for them.
In fact, if anything, Jisung avoids eye contact with lips as much as he can. More like eye-to-lip contact (though said that way it sounds a lot more gruesome than expected). He’s never understood the obsession with lips. They’re just kind of… there. Objectively speaking, eyes are a lot prettier of a facial feature to focus on, are they not?
Describing them is a much simpler task too. You’ve got downturned, feline, sparkly, doe-eyed, wide, close-set, hooded and all their opposites. The specific vocabulary is quite intuitive too, unlike the phrase ‘cupid’s bow’ which is almost as stupid as Achilles tendon on the list of body part words. One shouldn’t have to access deeply specific cultural knowledge in order to name a section of their own skin bag.
Unlike Chan’s lips, Jisung is very well-acquainted with the visual appeal of Chan’s eyes. The way they light up when he has a new idea he’s bursting to add to a piece or the way he blinks slowly when he’s content like a cat or how they almost disappear altogether as he grows tired, squinting through his puffy eyelids.
They’re pretty. Chan is pretty.
For some reason, despite all the beauty of Chan’s features and Jisung’s erupting fondness, he still doesn’t want to kiss him.
He thinks about kissing Chan, but only in that strange detached way that a child fantasizes about getting married and having kids. Like imagining a fantasy, tracing out the scope of your life to someone else’s narration. It’s a cruel carousel. He starts with a weight and strength of infatuation that must be love but when he thinks of the next step, the logical next thing he should want beyond reciprocation, even the tiniest touch tinged with the intention of romance, it all comes crumbling down. But he’s trapped in a loop that ends up carrying him through the same thoughts on repeat.
So like any stupid concern that gets confined in his head for so long it gets tired out from all the running, he airs it out with some else. This time it doesn’t have to be his therapist because there’s someone else he can trust with the tenderness of his heart and know it won’t be crushed and stamped and broken. It feels like a privilege even though it shouldn’t.
“Hyung, I don’t want to kiss you,” he says, point blank.
Chan has one headphone on, one off and as he spins his desk chair around, his brows are so furrowed with confusion it looks like he’s pitched a tent. “I’m sorry? Wait no, why am I being rejected before I even get a chance?”
It’s Jisung’s turn to be confused, underlined by incredulity. “You like me?”
“What! No!”
“Wow, didn’t need to be so quick to deny it.”
Chan facepalms. “I don’t ‘like’ you but it stings to be told that someone doesn’t want to kiss you out of nowhere. You’re making me insecure about my kissing game.”
“It’s got nothing to do with your kissing game,” Jisung placates, feeling ridiculous for having to do so. He remembers that he’s laying down on the couch, legs bent to fit it’s length, and the ridiculousness heightens. Maybe he should sit up. “Why would I know anything about your kissing game? Or even close enough to make a judgement. I’ve never even seen you kiss anyone.”
“Fine, whatever,” Chan says, throwing his hands up in mock frustration. “What brough this up anyway?”
“I thought I was gay but maybe not.”
A foolishly large smirk winds its way onto Chan’s face. “Was I your gay awakening, Jisungie?”
“I just said I wasn’t gay.”
“You said maybe. So even if you aren’t and even if I’m not your gay awakening, I’m still the cause of your sexuality crisis.”
The grin on Chan’s face is frankly absurd. Does it even matter? He’s not even wrong, technically speaking; Jisung has spent more time thinking about his sexuality in the past few months than he ever has since eighth grade and obviously that’s all due to Chan but the haughty expression makes him willing to die on a hill he’s not even standing on. He’ll call up someone to bury him on the wrong hill, just to preserve the illusion of his ensuing lie.
“Don’t give yourself too much credit. That honour belongs to the esteemed Choi Jisu of Class 2B, Shinsong Middle.”
At least he’s visited this other hill before. Glad to be entombed in a familiar place. Half lies are always better than a complete one. Jisu had played a major role.
Jisung feels accomplished at the heaving sigh that elicits from Chan.
“So then why bring up the kissing?” he asks, thoroughly defeated and sounding wary that the answer may destroy whatever dignity he had left. “And don’t think I won’t ask about Jisu. I’m curious about that too.”
Jisung shrugs. “It’s not that interesting. She was popular. I was a loser. She confessed to me and I turned her down. We’re friends now but everyone thought I was an idiot for doing it so I seriously thought something was wrong with me. For like, two hours and then I resolved to never think about it again.”
That’s downplaying his panic a lot, but hey, it’s his sexuality crisis and he gets to glam it up however he wants, okay?
Chan bursts out into laughter but the remaining smile indicates he knows that Jisung’s lying.
“Okay, then. Still haven’t explain the kissing.”
Dammit he thought he’d quit his habit of picking at the skin of his lips when he was nervous.
“I like you…,” he begins and stubbornly ignores the way Chan’s face falls. Literally. The smile drops of and the pity in his eyes is palpable despite Jisung not looking at him head-on. He would be offended if that wasn’t what he was trying to articulate at all. “No like, I like you but I don’t want to kiss you. That’s what I wanted to say.”
“Jisung.” His voice is glass. No, his voice is a blanket, warm and safe and encompassing as if Jisung was something that would break if he was dropped. Jisung is the glass. “Jisungie, do you think you’re asexual?”
Okay.
Right off the bat, different to what Jisung was expecting to hear.
Which was rejection, first and foremost.
Secondly, what the fuck is that?
“What is that?”
When did Chan remove his headphones completely? When did he close his laptop? Has the drum-pad been off this whole time? What does asexual mean?
Why does Chan look so pained?
“It means you’re not sexually attracted to anyone. Men or women or otherwise.” He lets the words churn in the air for a stretch of weighted moments. “Does that sound right?”
Jisung doesn’t trust himself to speak so he nods.
“Do you want a hug?”
Another nod.
Chan opens up his arms in invitation, allowing Jisung to accept the offer on his own terms, and it takes him less than a second to pick himself off the couch and drop into Chan’s lap, letting his head fall onto Chan’s shoulder. Chan’s hugs could heal the sick, could end world hunger, could bring around world peace and Jisung is appropriately selfish to demand it for his own comfort. He’s not sorry.
The words come haltingly but he whispers them into Chan’s neck; he doesn’t need to be loud to be heard here.
“I don’t really want to be your boyfriend either. Or anyone’s boyfriend. I just really, really like you, I love you – as a friend. Is there a word for that too?”
Jisung loves how he can feel the vibration of Chan’s response when he speaks into his hair.
“Yeah. It’s aromantic. If you don’t like the idea of romantic relationships, that’s aromantic. It’s completely normal, Jisungie.”
Asexual. Aromantic.
Jisung didn’t realise having labels was this nice. Almost as nice as Chan’s hugs.
♤ ♡ ♢ ♧
Having a word changes everything.
Everything but nothing, as the cliché goes. It’s nothing monumental. It’s not like fireworks go off and he gets a trumpeting welcome into his newfound community, evidenced by the very fact that he doesn’t know a single other person in it.
He knew the label fit as soon as Chan had defined it but he didn’t realise how it would explain so many things in his life, some obvious, many that he thought were unrelated.
It solves his sexuality crisis, first off. What’s his sexuality? Easy, he doesn’t have one. But that’s a bit too on the nose.
Jisu makes sense, though he supposes that made sense even when he thought he was ambiguously gay. The detachment and general disinterest in talks of crushes and kissing in middle school, the creeping disgust of sex in high school – those make sense.
When those memories float to the surface, it gives him cause to go digging for more. On a rare night of staying in his own dorm room, he hooks up the Bluetooth on his headphones, blasts a playlist of his favourite pieces off the Your Name instrumental soundtrack and tries to remember what else could have been flags of his non-existent sexual attraction.
A million answers come bursting to the seams of a hidden compartment in his brain, as if it had been stacking up evidence for this exact moment.
He remembers vividly in eighth grade that he was watching a movie with his friends and the sharp spike of confusion that none of them were revolted at the kiss scenes like they had been all throughout primary school. At the time, it had looked like a prank. That they were pretending not to be disgusted so that when he followed their lead and masked his disgust they’d all come out of their roles and laugh at him for playing along. It never happened. He just kept playing along and they never called the joke off.
Clearly it hadn’t been a joke to them. Kissing as a concept had lost all it’s distastefulness to them, now that they had hit puberty and appreciated the act for it’s pleasure. Jisung just didn’t have the same software update in his system, a dud model that could be progressed no further.
Fuck.
He’d promised Chan that he wouldn’t be self-deprecating over it.
It’s horrendous but it offers some sort of relief that he’s asexual and not gay. He feels like he’s failed as a human person every time he thinks it but on some level it’s true. He’s never going to be shamed for sodomizing, for falling in love with a man. But on the flip side, the side that people love focusing on because even the thought of two men loving it up is unthinkable, he will never fall in love with a woman. Now that he knows, he doesn’t think he could ever, in good faith, marry a woman and do that to her.
To some people those are effectively the same thing. Loving a man and not loving a woman. He’s excluded from the discrimination in some ways and included in it in a broader sense.
Clearly he’s been thinking about this for too long.
There’s so much to sift around in that it’ll take much more than a few nights. It’ll take several nights. Months of memories, and ponderings on how knowing will affect him, how it won’t. How he’ll plan out his future now that he knows he’ll never wake up one day magically falling the stereotype of a home loan, a marriage, and two-to-three kids. How he’ll tell anyone, if he even does.
It’ll take forever but that’s okay because he has forever. He also has Chan.
Other memories well to the forefront.
Instances that dredge up worries he hadn’t been able to explain then but can find the root of easily now.
Obsessions with getting partners for school dances, giggling when they got paired with girls during the school festival that he could never understand. The uneasiness of the people in his high school friend group dropping off the radar of availability as they got girlfriends. His weird attachment to found family relationships in media, where the couple never mattered as much as the friendships.
That his friends never said that they loved each other. Maybe they hadn’t but they had never said it.
He’s always hated that the word love belongs to romance.
In a fit of sudden rage and comeuppance, he shoves his body into somewhat presentable clothes – i.e. not pajamas – marches all the way to Chan’s apartment, throws open the door and throws his himself onto him, hanging around his shoulders.
All to say–
“Hyung, I love you. I love you so, so much.”
He doesn’t add on a “in a friend way” at the end. He doesn’t tack on – and he laughs at the thought – a no homo warning. He doesn’t need to. Chan understands.
Both that it’s platonic and that just because it is, doesn’t make it less than.
He loves Chan more than anyone who crushes on him or will love him more than anyone who dates him in the future. He’s knows that and Chan knows it too.
Chan returns the hug, arms winding around him and lugging him further inside so he can close the door. He lands a little peck on Jisung’s cheek and Jisung accepts it, cherishes it, because he knows there’s nothing behind it but platonic adoration.
“I love you too, Jisungie.”
No one can take this from them.