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Renjun thinks a lot. About the state of things, about his plants, the weather, the stars, everything and nothing at all. And on days where the sun is taking its sweet time to dip past the horizon and the blue sky merges into night with the glory that is evening, Renjun thinks about Na Jaemin too.
Today is one of those days. Na Jaemin’s skin is ridiculously golden in the glow of the setting sun. He tells Renjun that he likes to study astronomy, planets and stars and everything in between, and Renjun just tries to figure Jaemin out.
For one, Jaemin is ridiculously nice. Too nice, maybe even, with the kind of smile that you rarely get to see on other faces. His eyes are round and bright, brown over brown, framed by lashes long enough to cast shadows on his cheeks, and the corners of his mouth are quirked upwards in a half-finished grin.
At times Renjun wonders what he would look like up close. Does he have freckles on his face? What colour would his eyes reflect in the broken nightlight on his table? How would Na Jaemin look, perched on a chair in the corner of his room, trying to make his old DS cartridges start?
On some days, when Renjun’s feeling particularly imaginative, he envisions Jaemin as a witch. A siren. A fairy. Whispering incantations late at night that pass through the thin walls and worm their way into Renjun’s sleeping ears. He’s always just out on the small balcony that mirrors Renjun’s own, watering his plants, bathing in the streetlights as the city goes quiet.
But he isn’t any of that. He’s just a boy, fresh out of college, maybe around Renjun’s age, that sits under the stars and hums along to the old show tunes on the radio.
Renjun’s been caught staring before, but embarrassment has quickly burned out between them. Now, Jaemin smiles when he finds Renjun looking.
Not today, though. Today Jaemin’s usual smile is curved downwards, forehead drowned in deep, deep thought. Renjun doesn’t know what a boy like him has to worry about, though he figures it’s not his place to guess. His lashes fan out like butterfly wings on his cheekbone. The type of wings you’d die to ride high on, the type that takes your breath away as they take you to the clouds.
The sun’s almost out of sight now, taking the last slivers of daylight with it. Renjun reaches out his window, as if he alone would be enough to bring the sun back. It looks like the horizon is swallowing the sun, almost, and Renjun wonders if the sky will swallow him up at the end of the world. Or it would be more like an embrace. It would be peaceful, slow, and Renjun would feel nothing as his bones turn to dust.
Renjun sort of wishes they’d be together once it comes. Not necessarily together together, but closer. Maybe their windows will be open wider by then.
Which leads to the matter at hand: what is Jaemin thinking about that has him so worried? Why are his eyes so cloudy, instead of staring up at the stars like he’s not afraid of going up in flames?
“Jaemin,” Renjun calls. Jaemin looks up from where he’s sitting on the balcony. “Whatcha thinking about?”
“Nothing. Why?” Jaemin’s eyebrows are raised.
“Just asking,” Renjun shrugs, leaning back in his chair. The night sky is a pool of ink. “You look worried.”
Jaemin laughs once, a soft exhale that almost gets lost to the murmur of the late summer breeze. “I’m not worried.”
“Then what’s wrong?” Now it’s Renjun’s turn to frown. “No one worries just because they feel like it, you know.”
“Tell you what,” the expression on Jaemin’s face is replaced with a grin. “I don’t see how that concerns you, Huang Renjun.”
Well, so maybe it doesn’t. But Renjun is not so easily convinced.
“It’s got to be anyone’s business but yours,” he argues. “You just have to share the burden sometimes.”
“You’ve got some big life lessons, haven’t you?” Jaemin shakes his head. The smile is still on his face. Renjun’s almost a little triumphant to know that he’s the reason for it. “I’ll tell you something interesting: did you know that pigs can’t look up?”
“Really?” Renjun takes a sip of his tea. It’s sweet, leaves a fruity aftertaste at the back of his throat, and he feels young. So young.
“Yep. Don’t you think it would be cool if someone tilted a pig ever so gently so that its eyes could line up with the stars? Imagine how amazing that would be - to see the stars for the first time.”
Renjun’s gaze shifts to the sky laid bare in front of them. He squints at it, as if to ask it whether Jaemin is right or not.
The sun is a snitch. The moon doesn’t care. The stars, though - they listen. If you’re quiet enough, if you reach out at just the right time, then they listen. The burden gets shared, it gets sent away to space, to a place far, far away.
“Must be nice.” Renjun props his chin up on his palms. “I wonder what it’d be like.”
“I know, right?” Jaemin says, softer this time. He looks tired in the darkness of the night. He looks terribly human.
To be fair, he is human. But sometimes Renjun forgets that people are just people, and the night makes him remember how, in the end, everyone gets tired. Everyone has dark circles and worn-down shirts and late-night shivers from fears they can’t escape.
The stars are the only thing that differentiate the night sky from the sea. The whole world gets a lot smaller, then. In the quiet summer downing, it’s easy to forget which is which.
“I’m going to bed,” Jaemin says at least, standing up. He runs a hand through his dark brown hair. “See you?”
“Goodnight, Na Jaemin.”
Jaemin’s smile goes up and up, to the sky, and stays there. Somewhere in Renjun’s heart, a window is left open.
Long after the lights in Jaemin’s apartment go out, Renjun stays where he is. He feels so much right now. His heart feels like a soft stutter, and he thinks to himself - what am I going to do with a love like this?
✧
“Jaemin?” he calls from the balcony. It’s been going on for a while now - them talking until the sun sets, window to window, voices seeping through the space between them. Renjun is used to calling Jaemin’s name, sometimes he doesn’t answer right away, but he’s always there.
So is the sun. Summer is always harsh, with the sun being everywhere at every hour, and Renjun’s really got nothing better to do than watch the slow-crawling trail of people and cars below. Sometimes he heads downtown to look at art museums and check new cafes out, or meet his college friends for lunch (is it really still lunch if you have it at four pm in the afternoon?), but it’s tiring and Renjun doesn’t have that much social battery all the time, okay.
“What is it?” Jaemin yells from his apartment. The curtains are drawn, and Renjun can’t make out where he is. He can imagine, though - his feet up on the desk, glasses on his nose, eyebrows furrowed as he picks up yet another book.
“Can I come over?” Renjun yells back, one leg already over the railing. He sets one foot on the ledge and jumps, straight onto Jaemin’s balcony. The door to the balcony is open - it always is.
Jaemin’s room is small. Their apartments are built with the same mold, the same carbon copy of a dozen others - but somehow, Jaemin’s still manages to be different from his. His walls are white, plain, but not cold. There are posters and frames strung up all over. A pink speaker the shape of a cloud is playing Frank Sinatra as he enters. Everything feels timeless, lived-in, and an overwhelming sense of fondness blooms in Renjun’s chest.
“Hi, Injun.” Jaemin turns around in his chair, typical grin plastered on his face. His stupid, beautiful face, with stupid eyes that crinkle whenever he smiles. His hair is mussed up, from the constant running of his fingers through it, probably. Renjun hates how he looks like a Frank Sinatra love song.
It’s so easy for Jaemin. He just says whatever he likes to, now, and Renjun has to deal with the intense heartache that it brings.
“You’re gonna slip and fall from the ledge one day,” Jaemin smiles, not looking up from his book.
“No I’m not,” Renjun protests, flopping onto Jaemin’s freshly made bed. “I’ll come back to haunt you if I really do end up falling to my death.”
“Sure.” Jaemin answers, nonchalant as ever. Then, as if it was the most casual thing in the world, he adds: “Have you ever slow danced?”
“No.”
“Me neither,” he shrugs. “I had this dream the night before that we were slow dancing. To a Frank Sinatra song. I - well. Don’t know what that’s on about.”
Renjun’s mouth falls open. “Oh.”
“Yeah.” Jaemin’s deliberately avoiding his gaze, now, and Renjun feels like his heart is going to burst. Stupid. Jaemin is so stupid.
Renjun is stupider. “Let’s do it, then,” he grabs Jaemin’s wrist, shuffling off the bed till his feet touch the floor.
There’s one thing, though. Renjun’s never known how to be soft, how to be gentle, and the words sound like a demand when they leave his lips. All at once, he feels seventeen again, like he’s got a whole world to spend, a whole life to fall in love.
For a second, he’s afraid that Jaemin will say no. But he doesn’t.
Jaemin sounds a little breathless, even, afraid that Renjun will back down and laugh like it’s a joke. His fingers reach for the hem of Renjun’s shirt, pulling Renjun towards him, and they just stare at each other for a second, cheeks flushed, limbs tense.
“Yes,” he answers. “Yes.”
Renjun feels so young.
It’s youth - desperate, persistent, capable of moving mountains and forging the waves on the sea. Ambition. Finding liberation in the sun, under the stars, as your heart beats on, louder than the thumps of the bass in the background as the night tells you to run, boy, run.
Yes. One green light, one spring, one summer, twin brown eyes.
“Will you dance with me?” Renjun teases, voice smooth around the edges. “Or are you just going to stand here like I’ll break into pieces if you get too close?”
“Who knows,” Jaemin whispers back, mesmerised. “Maybe you might.” He takes Renjun’s hand in his, shifts them slowly so Renjun has his back to the sun, and the light shines on Jaemin’s face with an intensity that turns his eyes pure gold. The breathlessness stays, still.
A lot of things between them go unspoken, said through lingering gazes and upturned mouths, creases on white collars and the smell of freshly brewed tea. There’s no telling who leads who while they’re dancing, when they’re both swaying hesitantly within the off-white walls, where no one can see them but them.
“One, two, three.” He counts their steps, even the steps they miss because they’re too busy laughing. “You can’t dance,” Renjun tells Jaemin, soft as the grazing of a lamb in the spring.
“Neither can you,” Jaemin retorts. “Neither of us can.”
They’re stupid. Both of them are. Renjun lays his head on Jaemin’s shoulder, hushing the unease in them, and they stay like that for a long time. And it just so happens that this is one of those few moments where you can feel like everything’s quiet. Where there’s nothing louder than you, yourself. Where the tension melts off your shoulders and collects in a pool at your feet and ha, it’s fine, it was fine all along. Maybe not before, and the future’s hard to see, but now, in the present, the moment, fine is the most you can feel. It’s something worth holding on to, in every sense of the word.
So Renjun does. He holds on. Sways them side to side as the sun dips past the horizon and the stars come out to do a waltz of their own and they forget their own names in the drowsiness of evening.
✧
“I think all the time,” Renjun says as they’re sitting on Jaemin’s balcony later that night.
“About what?” The conversation feels like one they’ve had before, one that Renjun can’t quite wrap his head around.
“About everything. And nothing, too, sometimes. And you,” Renjun confesses, turning to Jaemin. There are freckles on his cheeks. Renjun reaches out to touch them. They look like stars on Jaemin’s face.
Jaemin’s still looking at him when he pulls back. The words never leave his mouth, but Renjun hears them, anyway, loud and clear as a confession in Times Square. It’s fine. They’ve got all the time in the world.
✧
“Would you catch me if I fell from the ledge?” Renjun asks on a clear autumn morning, wrapped up in one of Jaemin’s sweatshirts.
“No,” Jaemin says, and snorts at the displeasure on Renjun’s face. “I’d give you wings and teach you to fly.”
“Sap,” Renjun grumbles, buries his face in Jaemin’s shoulder. “Where’d you go, if we could fly?”
Jaemin thinks for a moment. “Everywhere.”
“Everywhere?”
“Yes,” he affirms. “Moscow. Venice. Michigan. Wherever you wanted to go.” His words are soft, tender, and so is his voice, and the world slows down as if to accommodate the growing warmth in his chest.
“Even McDonald’s? Dairy Queen? Target? Would you take me to a 7/11 parking lot if I asked?”
“Anywhere,” Jaemin yawns, and Renjun’s thinks he’s got something to look forward to, now.