Chapter Text
The state of my heart, he was my best friend
Into the car, from the back,
Oh, admiration in falling asleep
All of my powers, day after day
I can tell you we swaggered and swayed
Deep in the tower, the prairies below
I can tell you the telling gets old
— The Predatory Wasp of Palisades is out to Get Us, Sufjan Stevens
ʚ・ ୨୧・ ɞ
“So, we’re gay,” Jaeyun states as a matter of fact.
“Yes,” Sunghoon answers, looking away from the latter.
“But I’m not a boy,” he adds.
“What? I’ve seen your dick, Sunghoon.”
“No, I mean—that’s not what I meant.”
“Then what do you mean?”
“I mean…” Sunghoon pauses, re-evaluating his own stream of thought. He didn’t really think about this too hard, except that he knows that he feels shapeless, sometimes like his own soul crawling out of his body like a hermit crab shedding its shell. That there are mornings where his body almost feels like too much of a body– and his ‘boy’ parts are itching in all of the wrong places like if one wore an unwashed mink sweater. He thought about ripping off his dick once and keeping it somewhere else, but not shedding it completely; like if he could just attach a velcro strap to it and put it back on when he’s feeling like himself again. He doesn’t really know what to do with this feeling warping around him, drawing a cliff beneath his feet, pulling his legs into the damnation of confusion and listlessness.
At the crux of it, he doesn’t really know what he’s thinking about, or what it all really means. But he knows one thing: maybe telling someone else could help acquiesce the feeling, somewhat make it real.
“I mean, like I don’t feel like a boy sometimes. In a literal sense.”
“Huh,” Jaeyun breathes, tilting his head in an attempt to follow.
“Do you think I can be pretty?”
“What do you mean–you’re already very pretty.”
“I mean, like a girl kind of pretty.”
Jaeyun studies his face for a short moment. Sunghoon’s never really the kind of person who ever became bothered with much, except if it had anything to do with his friends’ business. He paid little to no attention to himself, except perhaps trying to eat on time or accomplish his weekly running. But there Sunghoon was, anticipatory of his response, eyebrows furrowed and his hyper-consciousness of his being radiating towards him, though Jaeyun did not fully understand it.
He reaches a hand towards Sunghoon’s pensive face, brushing away the strands of hair that have fallen on his face.
“I think you’re gorgeous,” he whispers, almost like a secret only Sunghoon should know, and places his lips on his. Tenderly, more telling of everything else that he could not exactly say at the time, but assuring just the same. But Sunghoon knows exactly what he meant; because when he lets himself become light as air, Jaeyun places himself on top of him, his anchor to the roaring seas, each electric warmth tingling through his flesh the ample reminder that he’s alive and this is his body.
As Jaeyun’s hands reach the bandeau of his sweats, slowly slipping inside, Sunghoon stops him.
“Don’t,” he breathes.
“Don’t touch it.”
“Okay,” Jaeyun relents, burying his head into Sunghoon’s neck, his hands firmly pressed against the sides of his stomach to guide him down towards the bed. Sunghoon lets himself fall, arching his back so Jaeyun knows to hold him up like that and keep them so painstakingly close and he shuts his eyes to drown himself in the pleasure about to take over him.
The conversation ends there, not until Sunghoon found himself sobbing inside the men’s restroom at the doctor’s office weeks later. He had to give a urine sample for his yearly medical exam—no biggie—he drank from a particularly large water bottle prior to his appointment—but when he had to stand inside the cubicle, looking downwards opened the gates towards the cesspool once more, and now he’s hyperventilating. It doesn’t have to be a big deal. In fact, he didn’t want it to be. He doesn’t have to feel so absent from his own existence–but he is–and now he has to come up with an explanation as to why a) he took 20 minutes to piss in a cup, and b) why he exited the bathroom with puffy eyes.
“Was it painful?” the doctor asked.
“No,” Sunghoon says, wiping his nose with the sleeve of his sweater. “I must’ve gotten an allergic reaction. Jungwon visited with a cat this morning.”
He’s not allergic to cats, but the doctor didn't say anything and just took his sample.
“Well, we’ll call you when your results are out.”
“Of course.”
He goes home. The train ride was haunting, his blurry reflection on the windows ghosting him with every glance. When humans are contained within a moving object, it takes the body a while to follow the direction of the vehicle—the inertia traveling slowly. At each acceleration, he feels himself depart farther and further from his body, until he’s the person watching him on the seat several carriages over, and then several stations over.
He smells like shit. The apartment is empty, and he quickly crawls out of his clothes and jumps into the bathtub. There, Sunghoon waits: the bubbly water submerges his entire body, holding his breath beneath the surface. The water shifts and sinks into the curves of his body, almost sticking to skin, but as soon as he waves his hand around or moves himself ever so slightly, the water releases themself against him and suddenly he’s free again. After almost an hour in the water the bubbles have long dissipated and he’s met with a blurry sight of wrinkled skin, and he tells himself he has to get up but his legs find no strength within them, you’re so fucking useless, he yells in his mind, hands tightly held against the edge of the tub as he summons his upper-body strength to pull him up, Jaeyun’s going to come home and there’s nothing in here–and the apartment’s a fucking mess, and he finally gets up and the sheer force causes water to splatter against the walls and floor of their small bathroom.
He sees himself in the mirror through his periphery—slouched, disheveled. Too much of nothing. Just as he was about to exit the bathroom, he hears keys jangle right outside their door as Jaeyun enters the apartment. He pauses to listen to the sound: his feet shuffling his shoes off, the metal shoe rack softly ringing against the wall with the newfound weight it’s carrying–they never assembled the poor thing properly–and finally, Jaeyun’s keyring being hung against the key hooks they installed above the shoe rack.
“Im home,” Jaeyun calls out.
“I’m in the bathroom,” Sunghoon answers, and not only a few seconds later, Jaeyun gently swings the bathroom door open and wraps his arms around him with no question, unbothered by his boyfriend being sopping wet. Sunghoon lets himself lag behind before returning the hug.
“Anything happen at the doctor’s?”
“I had a mental breakdown in his bathroom.”
Jaeyun parts from the hug, brushing Sunghoon’s hair away from his face with a worried look in his eyes. “What happened?”
Sunghoon tries to find a better way to verbalize his thoughts. He thinks about why he should bother–not like Jaeyun would understand him any less–but something in it feels so shameful and shallow that he’s afraid to confront the matter fully.
Unable to find an excuse, he acquiesces.
“I just saw my penis and thought terrible things. I’m sorry I didn’t clean up around here, I’ll do it tomorrow, I promise.”
“It’s okay,” Jaeyun reassures him–because of-fucking-course it is–and grabs a towel from the rack and pats him dry.
“How was work?” Sunghoon asks, his body slowly returning to him as he gets grounded by Jaeyun’s touch.
“It was okay, tax season is about to wrap up so I’d be less busy-lift your arms up–I saw Jongseong today.”
“Really? How’s the family?”
“Well, he and Jungwon actually asked to see us for dinner this weekend. I said I’d ask if you’re okay with going.”
“What? Of course I’d love to go! We haven’t seen them since the wedding, after all.”
“Okay,” Jaeyun hangs the towel back in the rack and plants a soft kiss on Sunghoon’s forehead. “Do you want anything for dinner? We can just get delivery.”
“Can we go to 7-11?”
Jaeyun hums in agreement, lifting Sunghoon’s hands with his own and intertwining their fingers. He lets him go and turns around, unbuttoning his soaked dress shirt. The bathroom light fell onto the muscles in his back as he tossed the shirt in the laundry basket; he smiled at Sunghoon before closing the door behind him, “I’ll wait for you in the car.”
Sunghoon once again looks at himself in the mirror. The shape is him again, whole again. He hates it, because why else would you need to feel the touch of somebody else to know something so miniscule, so innate in human beings. What difference does it make when somebody else holds you? Why does it matter to validate the body? To acknowledge the space it occupies?
Somewhere along the way, Sunghoon decides that they should bring a gift when they visit the Parks. He ducks out of work early, taking an Uber to the shopping center. Something simple, he makes a mental note, and scours the home goods store for something nice. And simple. A few hours pass by and he finds himself in the department store, looking at clothes because he’s suddenly decided that he needs to wear something new to the dinner as well. Nothing from the men’s section stood out to him, and his feet unknowingly dragged him to the women’s section. Just to look, he reasons out, and why do clothes have a gender anyway?
He scans rack after rack of dresses, and suddenly imagines himself wearing this black evening dress, thinking about how the fabric would hug his body and the slit would hike all the way towards his thigh–still retaining civility–but enough to entice Jaeyun and keep him distracted. He thought about how the off-shoulder cut would be perfect for his collarbones, and he could wear a necklace he’d hidden away long ago–a gift from their fourth anniversary–and a pair of earrings that weren’t the plain studs he’d gotten since he’s had his ears pierced. Trying to hold the dress up against himself, he peers at the mirror to check how it’d look like. He thinks of all the ways he could wear it out and all the ways Jaeyun could take it off of him when a saleslady taps him on the shoulder.
“Can I help you, sir?”
“Uh, no, it’s okay,” Sunghoon fumbles, shoving the dress hastily back into the clothing rack, almost throwing up in his mouth.
“That dress would look nice on your girlfriend sir, no doubt.”
He smiles politely.
“Of course.”
Sunghoon finds himself wearing a turtleneck and a blazer at the dinner table. He hates it–still thinking about the dress–the only site of contention that won was when he found dangling jade earrings in their jewelry box and swapped out his usual piercings. Before they left the house, he proudly showed Jaeyun his earrings.
“Look,” he says, beaming with excitement as he tucks his hair behind his ear.
Jaeyun places his hand against the stone, a smile forming across his face.
“Pretty, right?”
“If it’s you it’s always pretty,” Jaeyun says, kissing the skin beside his ear.
The Parks prepared such an extravagant dinner for the four of them. He watches them falling so naturally into their places, assisting each other so lovingly and throwing words at each other like it didn’t matter–thank you wife, you’re welcome my husband–and they meant it so playfully and earnestly at the same time. They really seemed like the first ones to get married ever since they’d become a couple in high school, and it was as if they had been uttering these words to each other long before they knew what it meant nor what weight it carried.
Jaeyun called him his wife, too.
“Call me your wife,” he half-screams through bated breaths.
“My wife,” Jaeyun whispered, the curtains moving with the wind, revealing the hot afternoon sun spotlighting their naked bodies.
“Jaeyun-ah, please,”
“Please say it again.”
Jaeyun’s gaze softens before he unties his wrists. Sunghoon latches onto his back, fingernails digging through his sun-kissed skin.
“My lovely wife,” he kisses Sunghoon’s forehead, “You’re doing so good,” he growls, and buries himself deeper inside him, moving rougher than before. Sunghoon’s on the edge, teetering between pain and pleasure, but the word wife echoes in his mind that it grows louder with each pounding, and it sinks so beautifully and naturally into his very being. Jaeyun’s wife. He so longs to proclaim it so loudly, his wife, and it would be just as acceptable as any other declaration, and nobody would dare say anything against it. He would wear the label proudly on his neck–and he would get it tattooed on his forehead if he could.
Still, he knows that’s not what it meant in that context. He wants it to mean something else, something casual–he wants too many things to the point that it doesn’t make sense to want anything at all. He thinks he’s asking too much from Jaeyun, so he fishes for the moments that he could have–like when he’s so out of it that there are tears in his eyes and he sees Jaeyun towering over him, and no matter how rough they get he would still call him his pretty thing, his beautiful wife, and kiss him all over before cleaning him up.
He floats by the entire conversation. Mostly, it was Jaeyun and Jongseong who talked—they shared stories from their honeymoon in the Netherlands, and Jungwon would chime in every now and again to give them his peace of mind, and once in a while the conversation would wait for Sunghoon’s response, to which he would say something but keep it short so they would continue talking without him, and Jaeyun would run his hand across his thigh from beneath the table to comfort him, but instead Sunghoon would think again about the dress and how better and more grounding it would’ve been if these stupid pants didn’t hinder skin to skin touch.
“Where would you guys go on your honeymoon?” Jungwon asks.
Sunghoon bites his lip. We’re not even married yet, he thinks. And the more excruciating thought– he hasn’t even proposed.
The latter was probably his fault more than it is Jaeyun’s: he could always propose on his own if it bothered him that much, but he also dug his own grave when the panic of compulsory heterosexuality led him to loudly denounce marriage in front of Jaeyun all those years ago.
Because they were good friends, Sunghoon, devout atheist, found himself sitting through a Sunday service not through his own merit but Jaeyun’s.
“God, can I do something else Jaeyun? I’ll give you Anica’s number. I’ll clean your room for a month. Anything.” He moans, flopping face-first into Jaeyun’s bed, the metal creaking to his weight.
Jaeyun pays him no mind, flipping through the pages of Sunghoon’s empty workbook, “I don’t want Anica’s number.”
“Who in the class, then? I’ll even talk to the seniors if you’re into that,” Sunghoon yells into the pillow.
“I just asked you to go to church with me on Sunday. That’s literally the easiest thing in the world in exchange for this favor you’re asking me.”
“But I don't go to church! I don't have anything to say to Jesus–or God–whichever the older one is.”
Jaeyun closes the workbook to give his best friend a strange glance.
“All the more reason for you to go.”
Sunghoon sighs, “You can make a killing being one of those youth pastors that girls follow around because they’re handsome, not because they are awakened by the evangelical church.”
“Only if that same charm works on you, huh?” Jaeyun laughs.
Sunghoon hasn’t stepped foot inside a church in years, but because he was once a diligent attendee (a child with no choice), he fits right in when he knows what to say and when to say it–and he even hums along to the songs. When the priest was preparing for the homily, he stifled a yawn.
“I would like to share a story with everyone. A week ago, a couple had booked the parish for their wedding…” the priest prefixes, preparing Sunghoon for the longest 30 minutes of his life. If it were any other day, he would sleep through it—but the talk of marriage kept him awake, forming a like of questions in his head he can ask Jaeyun later.
“Do you ever think about getting married someday?” Jaeyun asks over a shared bucket of french fries.
“I can barely pass Calculus,” Sunghoon snorts, and Jaeyun throws him a serious stare. He clears his throat, “Aren’t we too young to be talking about this?”
Jaeyun rips open a ketchup packet and pours it on a clean tissue paper, “It’s just that when I used to serve in the church, we also officiated a lot of weddings. It’s pretty nice to see. The bride cries, and sometimes the groom does too.”
“A lot of marriages end in divorce.”
Jaeyun playfully slaps his hand, “You’re evil.”
Sunghoon smiles slyly.
“If you’re really curious—and don’t get offended—I think it’s all bullshit. Marriage, I mean.”
“Why?”
Sunghoon takes a sip of his cherry coke, “I don’t know, I never really saw myself as the getting married type.”
“Not even to Faye, that girl you went out with for almost a year?”
“Yuck—” Sunghoon jokingly makes a face, “Especially not even Faye! I told you, we only went out so she could go out with Gianna, that girl from our home ec class.”
“She’s a lesbian, he’s gay, and their marriage defies all stereotypes,” Jaeyun jests, laughing at his own joke. Sunghoon tenses up at the word gay, his soul halting behind him and spiraling into a series of questions—is he serious? Does he know anything ? I’m not out, am I? What gives it away?
“Relax, I’m kidding,” Jaeyun says, reassuring.
A beat falls.
“I bet you’ve got your dream wedding in mind already, you hopeless romantic.”
Jaeyun swirls the ketchup around with his fry.
“Doesn’t really matter if the person I’d thought of marrying doesn’t want to get married, no? Being together for a lifetime is enough.”
He was about to brush past the question when Jaeyun unexpectedly answered, “Spain seems to be an interesting place.” He looks at him, their hands held underneath the table, his thumb caressing his skin softly so as to reassure him. “What do you think?”
Sunghoon swallows, “Uh, yeah! And the sights are amazing. We could go backpacking across Europe if we wanted to.”
“Oh, I love that,” Jongseong notes, and Sunghoon takes a sip of his drink.
“By the way, how’s the coffee shop going?”
“We don’t have it yet,” Jaeyun answers, taking over the conversation for Sunghoon. “But we found this land from Sunghoon-ah’s officemate, and we’re just waiting for the owner to agree on our price.”
Sunghoon lights up at the topic of the coffee shop–a dream he’s shared with Jaeyun for as long as he’s known him. “But we already have plans in place, we’ve scouted for furniture and concepts and the like.”
“Well, I can’t wait,” Jungwon says, encouraging. “You just hope Jaeyun still remembers what he learned in uni when he took that barista course!”
The table shares laughter.
“Well, we can always hire someone. Jaeyun can work the bar on weekends, if he’s not too tired from work.”
“This is mainly Sunghoon’s pet project,” Jaeyun says proudly. He always finds ways to spotlight Sunghoon, be it through talking too highly of his cooking or showing visitors photo albums from his skating days, but in this case it was truer than ever. In high school, Jaeyun would listen attentively as Sunghoon went on and on about a coffee shop, and how his only dream would be to manage a small cafe and take care of a small place that people would like hanging out in. Somewhere along the way Jaeyun’s name would get lumped into his plans, and he would agree because he was a puppy that followed him around then, and he would sign up for a vocational certificate on barista training without even thinking about it because yes, he wants to be a part of Sunghoon’s future–and he did all this without knowing they would fuck that one drunken night before they graduated from university, and that they would somehow end up living together years later, stuck in each other’s orbits.
This time, Sunghoon allows all eyes to be on him. He talks their ears off about the cafe, and Jaeyun listens as if he’s never heard it before.
“We should do this more often!” Jungwon exclaims, cleaning up the empty plates from the table before handing them over to Jongseong, who puts them in the sink. “And Sunghoon, thank you for the vase.”
“It’s not a problem,” Sunghoon smiles. “Next time, we’ll host.”
They are silent on the drive home, both socially exhausted. To avoid traffic, Jaeyun passes through Chinatown, and they find themselves driving past a Buddhist temple and then a Catholic parish. Sunghoon always thought it funny to have two different religious buildings next to each other, but Jaeyun would always silently do his sign of the cross whenever he passed by a church and say nothing afterwards. There once was a rosary that hung by their rearview mirror—a gift from his mother when he went to university–but Sunghoon notices that it has long since been removed.
“Huh,” he hums.
“What is it?”
“I never noticed you took out the rosary.”
Jaeyun says nothing, his eyes on the road. Sunghoon almost says something, but looks outside the window to keep himself from talking. It was not his place to pry.
He didn’t even do his sign of the cross like he used to when they drove by.
Jaeyun has his reasons. Same as to why Sunghoon doesn’t dare step into the ice rink again.
He holds Sunghoon’s hand while he drives, letting him go temporarily to switch gears, but always, always finding his way back. They watch a movie while waiting for the food to go down, and Sunghoon crawls into his arms as they go to bed.
“Jaeyun-ah, can you call me your wife again?” he whispers, buried into his chest.
Jaeyun tightens his embrace. In all the years they’ve known each other–and in all the years they have been together–there remains so many things that sit melancholically behind them. Like when Jaeyun and Sunghoon met at church when they were children where Jaeyun used to be an altar boy and Sunghoon an unwilling child. Or when Jaeyun’s proper introduction to him was in a figure skating meet, where Jaeyun would first discover what it meant to be in total trance when he watched Sunghoon then, slender and tall, moving so gracefully against the ice, spinning about like he was as light as a feather.
They met in their own holy lands, and somewhere along the way they both turned their backs against it and never looked back. Perhaps a consequence that was uncalled for, perhaps a punishment. But in the present and in their shared space, it’s so safe, and sometimes when Jaeyun watches Sunghoon move he’s still so light and graceful–albeit beefier and taller—and Sunghoon falls into his knees to worship Jaeyun as he takes him all in, somehow they’ve made and remade their own sacred spaces. It fills the longing for now, but they both know they miss their old lives as much as they like their new ones. You’re allowed to want a piece of who you used to be while wanting to make things anew.
“Good night, wife.”
Sunghoon makes a mental note to visit the eye doctor. He closes his eyes shut to force the migraine out of him, simply because he could not afford to take another break. He still has so many manuscripts to edit, and his boss is already not happy that he skipped last week without saying anything. His eyes still closed, he feels around his drawer for the Tiger Balm, scooping a generous amount and lathering it against his forehead, deeply massaging his temples and hoping that his fingers would pass through his skin and his skull and dig his brain out of there. It’s a loveless job, but it pays the bills. If he quit, he doesn’t exactly know where he would go–so it was just a matter of staying for the money.
“Hey Sunghoon,” his office-mate, Heesung, peers above his cubicle.
“Aiya, tell Mr. Garrett I’ll have the manuscripts done by today,” Sunghoon answers passively, opening his eyes and moving his mouse around to wake his screen.
“It’s not about that, I have good news!”
Sunghoon slides his chair a few inches behind to meet Heesung in the eye.
“Grandpa’s agreed, the land is yours if you can pay by next week and fix the paperwork. He’s too old for the entire notary thing, so you know…” Heesung floats an envelope towards Sunghoon.
Sunghoon bites his lip to suppress a wide-eyed smile, and takes the envelope in his hands. “That’s amazing, thank you.”
“Your accountant boyfriend should come in handy.” Heesung winks, and disappears into the office.
Sunghoon takes a peek at the papers, the words Property Transfer gleaming with gold and all things happy.
Jaeyun makes quick work of everything, Sunghoon happily sits beside him, trying to make out the numbers that he’s crunching on his screen. He was always terrible with math, so he was just happy to be there.
“So here’s our mortgage, if we pay it in fragments,” Jaeyun points at a cell in his spreadsheet, “and this is if we pay it in full.”
“Can we even do that?”
“It would blow, like, 30% of our savings, but it’s doable. Much better than paying it monthly, too. It’s not like we didn’t save up for this.”
“Oh, that’s good!” Sunghoon jumps in joy, crawling into his boyfriend’s lap. “That’s good.”
“We’re getting our cafe, baby,” Jaeyun says, pressing his forehead against him, his eyes drawn to Sunghoon’s lips.
“We are,” Sunghoon smiles, his hands wrapped around Jaeyun’s neck, happily pulling him in for a kiss. He has so many worries, and sometimes he wants too much to want anything at all. But he lets it all slide this time. He feels the future at the length of his arm—a boy in his arms, a dream unfolding—the rest can always be figured out later.