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Maybe things aren’t meant to work out like this.
Maybe Jisung shouldn’t have let himself get tangled and twisted so intimately with Donghyuck, but he can’t say he regrets it.
He regrets some of it, obviously, like his feelings, and how it all started, and he regrets himself, mostly. See, people like Jisung, they get consumed by people like Donghyuck. It’s a tale as old as time, the moon falling for the sun, and in those stories no one ever truly ends up with a happily forever after. And Jisung is not even the moon, he’s maybe a star about to supernova, a star that has lost all its shine and luster and is ready for it all to end.
This is maybe how things happen, at least according to himself.
Jisung and Donghyuck meet only out of protocol. It’s part of the induction process, for Jisung to get introduced to all departments, even the ones he won’t be working with. The faces and names all blur together, going through the motions of pleasantries and introductions with people whose names he immediately forgets, and then he meets him.
Donghyuck Lee, from the marketing department, who Jisung is invited to come find him if he needs anything! Really, at the moment, it really only stands out because Donghyuck is pretty. Donghyuck is pretty and ten seconds into meeting him he knows it’s not only that, it’s not just that he has three cute moles and doughy round eyes or the prettiest pink lips, it’s also that his words drip with charisma, his smile is charming, he’s one of those people. Those people that just look like they came to the world knowing how to move around it, better at this life thing than anyone else.
Jisung is not one of those people, and so naturally he has spent his whole life chasing those who are.
His first week goes by in the blink of an eye, and he doesn’t see Donghyuck again until that first Friday after work.
The most important detail in this story, the one thing everyone needs to know, is that Jisung is lonely.
Not only is Jisung alone, but he’s lonely. He’s fumbling adulthood in every way possible but perhaps the most painful way is that Jisung goes home to an empty apartment. There’s no one to say good morning to, no one that reminds him to buy milk on his way home, no one to visit that niche jazz café between 5th and 6th avenue this Sunday. Jisung is so alone he forces himself to speak out loud because hours have passed and he realizes his throat is numb and heavy with all the fears he has no one to share with.
The detail is that Jisung is lonely and so, so deprived of human contact that when he gets casually invited out for drink by Jeno, the other guy in the software development department, Jisung says yes, doesn’t hesitate even for a second. Doesn’t even think about not being the best drinker, or that he won’t know anyone there at all, he’s just thankful someone’s looking at him, talking to him, seeking him.
And so Jisung’s lonely and a bad drinker, and Donghyuck is there. He’s not sure how a few beers devolved into that pretty smile being pressed against the curve of his shoulder, but it happened, and Jisung can’t say he regrets it. It’s fine, and that is to say that it was good, that Donghyuck felt warm and Jisung could wrap his hands almost the whole way around his tiny waist and pull them together. They were so close that suddenly Donghyuck wasn’t tiny, he was real, solid and encompassing and beautiful, so beautiful.
They don’t work in the same department, not even on the same floor, so it’s fine.
Jisung likes routine, he likes motions that can be repeated over and over again.
He doesn’t know how to cook much, but his mom taught him how to make gimbap, many years back before he had moved for college, and he likes going through the motions easily, mindlessly.
Place the rice on the seaweed, spread it, place the egg, the vegetables, roll it, slice it.
Easy, simple.
He sits two seats away from Donghyuck, next to Chenle from finance and Jaemin from legal, usually, with his rolled gimbap and a smile constantly teasing at the corners of his lips as he listens to whatever tirade Donghyuck has chosen that day for their lunch break.
Easy, simple, they’ll sneak into the storage room on the sixth floor and makeout there, later, and then on Friday Donghyuck will offer to drive him home after they get some dinner together with the other guys. They’ll drive home in comfortable silence, Donghyuck’s playlist droning on in the background, and when they walk up the stairs to his apartment Donghyuck will hold his hand, for nothing other than familiarity. He’ll press Jisung to the bedsheets and moan right into the broken seal of their slick mouths, so good for me, Sung, and it’ll be good. Easy, simple.
He used to leave immediately after, but after the first month he stayed, and they eat breakfast together on Saturday mornings, sitting under the window in Jisung’s kitchen, the one where he had some dead plants on the windowsill —they’re alive, now, because Jisung is alive, too.
Sometimes —most times— it feels like he’s that star again, but more. He’s a blackhole, and all he can do is press Donghyuck against the sink while they do the dishes and kiss him, kiss him until he goes all breathy and whiny.
Jisung has never been a greedy person. He’s never wanted more, he’s always just done what he can with the cards he’s been dealt with, never asked for more.
But Donghyuck’s hands will clutch at the back of his skull and pull, and all Jisung can think is more. More, everything, all; he just wants Donghyuck in a way that he’s never wanted anything else before, wholeheartedly, detrimentally.
He’ll try to erase any and all spaces between them, try to delay the inevitable moment when Donghyuck kisses him one last time, softly, before he walks through his door, and in the meantime all he’ll be thinking is more, everything, all.
Donghyuck’s still panting when Jisung’s mouth opens, and doesn’t stop. “I have an older brother. We used to be closer, but he got married and had kids and we’re not as close anymore.”
He’s not sure why he’s saying all this. They talk sometimes, when they finish, even as the sweat dries on their skin, even if they should really go shower and then right to sleep. But never about stuff like this, personal things.
But Donghyuck smiled at him, something so small and so intimate all Jisung could think is that no one’s ever seen him smile like that before; that one was just for him.
“My niece likes to do my hair when I visit, so I always keep it long. My mom calls me every week to make sure I’m okay, and sometimes she teaches me how to cook stuff through the phone. Last week I made mapo tofu,” It was good but it didn’t taste like hers. Let me make it for you, he thinks but doesn’t say. So that it can start tasting like mine. Like ours. “Sometimes I miss my home, even if it doesn’t feel like that anymore.”
Donghyuck, to his credit, doesn’t frown. His lips don’t purse in confusion, and his eyes don’t flood with uncertainty. He shifts so he’s one his side, all of his attention on Jisung’s profile. His chest rises like the low tides of the ocean, peaceful and steady.
“I broke my finger when I was a kid and it grew all bent,” he raises his left hand so Jisung can see it for himself, and then leaves his hand on Jisung’s chest. His knee knocks against his thigh, and stays. “My parents own a restaurant, and me and my three siblings were the only servers.”
His voice is so warm, so soft as to not disturb the calm of the night. Outside, someone laughs, a car speeds by, and the few stars in the sky are watching them. Jisung wonders if they’re a sight for sore eyes, or maybe they’re beautiful, even in the mess of sweaty bedsheets and come.
Donghyuck comes even closer, so he can press his button nose against the side of his neck, and throw a thigh over his own in the process. Jisung’s hand is trembling a bit, but he doesn’t let that stop him from putting it over the one Donghyuck has on his chest. He dwarfs him, he knows, but Donghyuck is the galaxy and so he’s bigger than life and all-powerful.
“I met Renjun when I was seven, and he didn’t know a lick of English. So now he speaks some broken Korean, and I know how to say you lost, let’s do it again in Chinese.”
How do lonely hearts speak? Is each beat of drum against a hollow chest some sort of morse code you spend years of your life learning? You lost, Jisung’s heart beats against his chest. Donghyuck presses a feather light kiss against the pulse of his neck. Let’s do it again.
“I’ll learn Chinese for you,” Jisung whispers, feeling like Earth has lost gravity and he’s floating, untethered. Maybe that’s how he finds himself flipping their positions, caging Donghyuck against the pillows. The moonlight graces his skin lovingly, and Jisung can see the shape of his mouth right in the middle of his chest.
Donghyuck is the one that ends up kissing him first. “I’ll teach you,” he replies, Jisung feeling each word against his tender lips.
Floating, untethered, until their lips connect again, and again.
He sits in front of Donghyuck today during their lunch hour. Their table is rowdy, as usual, Donghyuck the rowdiest of them all. There’s been a crisis in the marketing department, and he makes sure to break it down in the most dramatic retelling possible, to the delight of their friends.
They’re all smiling at him, too busy enthralled by the story to notice Jisung falling in love again.
That happens a lot. Him, falling for Donghyuck.
Once, it happened when he wasn’t even there. Jisung had gone to the bathroom and returned to find a banana and an energy drink on his desk. There was a little post-it stuck to the banana, baby blue, with a happy smile and almost time to go! scribbled on it.
Jisung keeps that note in his wallet, folded and creased from how many times he’s pulled it out to read it.
Sometimes he falls in love with Donghyuck buried deep inside of him, connected in every way possible, feeling like he’s burning from the inside out. Once, while making out in the closet during the break.
He smiles at Donghyuck, too, and when Donghyuck smiles back at him, private even in plain sight, he thinks oh.
It happened again.
Things don’t change for a while. Jisung likes routine and they’ve perfect theirs, unbeknown to their friends, even.
Actually, that changes; Jisung has friends now. Friends who ask how he’s doing because they want to know, and text him at weird hours of the night even though they have work in the morning. Friends to share the half of his orange with, and he has Donghyuck, who is a friend and also more and also less, he contains multitudes within him and Jisung likes them all.
So he has friends, and they keep fucking. First on Friday nights, and then it happens on a Tuesday, and then it happens whenever, they’ll just give each other a look before they have to clock out and he’ll know that there’ll be nail marks on one of their backs tonight, to be hidden under their pressed button downs in the morning, locked and bound under the knot of their ties.
The galaxy is continuously expanding. Every second, it reaches out into itself and grows, and continues to take over everything.
He thinks of this as he’s cleaning out his apartment on Sunday afternoon, finding bits and pieces of Donghyuck scattered all over the place. There’s three pairs of boxers, three socks, and two shirts in his laundry pile that belong to Donghyuck. There’s the blue toothbrush standing proudly next to his own, the brown polka dotted mug that Donghyuck likes to drink his tea from drying in the sink. He has a charger here, unplugged on his nightstand, and a book he has been trying to finish for months now on the coffee table.
There’s his teeth marks on the juncture where his neck and shoulder meet, ten little half-crescent moons in the shape of his nails on each side of Jisung’s waist.
Expanding and taking over everything else in his life, and for once Jisung considers maybe he isn’t a blackhole. Maybe Donghyuck is the sun, ready to consume the earth and the planets and all the other stars in the milky way, and Jisung is helpless but to fold his laundry for him and wash his mug and smile, smile, smile.
They’re making gimbap together, elbows touching as Donghyuck rolls them, when Jisung implodes.
Not a supernova, not a blackhole, just Jisung and the lonely child that lives in the jungle gym that is his ribcage.
“Do you want to go to this jazz café? Between 5th and 6th,” he blurts out, eyes stuck on the graceful motions of Donghyuck’s hands as he continues to spread the rice, place the vegetables, roll and slice. “With me.” He adds dumbly after a few seconds of just watching him slice gimbap. It’s what they’re having for dinner, because Jisung is a little in love with Donghyuck, maybe, and what’s one more routine for Donghyuck to take over?
Donghyuck remains relaxed. His elbow bumps Jisung’s as he plates their food, one roll at a time. There’s a bit of seaweed stuck on the corner of his lips. Jisung doesn’t move to clean it.
“Renjun thinks we’re dating,” Donghyuck replies. Jisung tries to not crumble right to the ground. “He has a whole theory about it; he told me he’s gonna make a presentation on Canva.”
“Jeno, too.” Just a month ago, he thinks, they were working on a bug on the company’s website together. A comma, always a stupid comma, and as Jisung was moving to delete it, Jeno had commented —as casually as someone like Jeno could— how long have you and Donghyuck been together? Jisung had not deleted the whole code only by the grace of God. He had shaken his head, even as his cheeks flooded with a very telling red. We’re not. And Jeno had nodded but his eyes said everything Jisung needed to know. Liar. And at that point, with Donghyuck’s toothbrush in his bathroom and his phone charger on the bedside table, Jisung had wondered if he was a liar or not.
His glasses have slipped down his nose, and that he does fix. Donghyuck sends him a grateful smile as he picks up their plated food and takes it to his tiny, rickety table underneath the windowsill. There’s a new addition there, a plant that flowers pink in the spring, one that Donghyuck had bought from the supermarket just last week. It’s pretty right now, and matches the pink starting to spot on Donghyuck’s cheeks.
“We are, aren’t we?” Donghyuck says, picking up a piece of gimpab with his wooden chopsticks. Jisung gets him a Coke Zero from the fridge and moves to sit down, too, placing it by Donghyuck’s right hand, already open. “Dating, I mean.”
Jisung picks up his chopsticks, toys around with the idea of picking up a piece. Puts them down when he sees they’re trembling. He takes in Donghyuck, relaxed and pensive. Not the sun, not the galaxy, just Donghyuck and his pretty moles and all the things he has whispered against the sesitive skin of Jisung’s collarbone.
“I think so,” he admits, and even as he trembles the words are firm, they’re honest. Easy, simple. Donghyuck takes a sip of his soda, and Jisung watches as his throat bobs with it, the long line of his neck as he swallows. “I think we’ve been, for a while.”
In three months he’ll be celebrating his first anniversary at his company. It’s a good one, where he gets health benefits and paid extra hours, and it gave him friends, and Donghyuck, a friend and also more, never less, not anymore.
“I’ll go to your café,” Donghyuck doesn’t confirm or deny. He picks up a roll of gimbap and taps it gently against Jisung’s lips, until they part, and Donghyuck watches him chew it thoughtfully. “Let’s go shopping together? I need new hoodies.”
Jisung’s brain spins a little, mouth full of questions and food that tastes just like home. Donghyuck doesn’t even give him enough time to question anything.
He picks up another roll and feeds it to Jisung, and he smiles so softly, so intimately the little kid swinging around Jisung’s ribs kicks their feet, delighted, sets off an ache in his chest and an extra beat in his heart. “I need to buy hoodies that fit you, too.”
“I’ll go,” Jisung tells him once he’s swallowed the food, “Why fit me?”
Donghyuck shrugs, pushing his can Jisung’s way. “Boyfriend hoodies.”
Boyfriend. Boyfriend.
Maybe not the sun, or the galaxy, or dying stars.
Definitely a supernova, leaving a newborn star in its wake. A new shine, a brand new chance.
“Of course,” Jisung murmurs, the words distorted around the smile stealing over his whole face. His heart beats so loud even the roaring of the sun’s flames wouldn’t be able to drown it out.
Donghyuck leans over the rickety table, shrouded in dying sunlight, and presses his mouth against Jisung’s. It’s warm, plush, tastes like home and Coke Zero.
“Of course.”