Chapter Text
It would have been nice if he could have said for sure that Taeyong was there for him. It would have been easier to know what to do with his hands and months worth of expectations if he could have known without doubt that Taeyong had put on a top that glittered and shown up outside of Bill Graham because he wanted to see Doyoung, and not because Johnny had offered him a free ticket to see headliners that Doyoung knew Taeyong liked. He wanted to believe that Taeyong, who didn’t really seem to hang out with anyone so far as Doyoung could tell, came out that night because he was happy to have an excuse to hang out with Doyoung. He wanted to think that the sparkles and the newly dyed hair were for him because Doyoung had once said he thought Taeyong would look good platinum blond. He wanted to hope that Taeyong liked him, that he felt the same insane pull of attraction that Doyoung did every time they touched, but it was hard to know anything for sure when it came to Taeyong.
Taeyong stood at the front of the line with Johnny and Ten, instead of lingering slightly behind, like Doyoung would have done if it had been him and he was trying to spend time with the person he liked. Taeyong smiled for the first time all night at Ten, of all people, when Ten asked him if he had ever been a dancer, when Ten complimented his nice body lines. He’d looked somewhere off into the distance when Doyoung had told Taeyong he looked good, that he liked Taeyong's shirt and that he had been right about the hair.
Taeyong did that a lot, looked at something other than Doyoung when Doyoung was looking at him.
But then Taeyong leaned into him like he’d been waiting to be touched all evening when Doyoung put his arm around Taeyong’s shoulders and showed him a video of his choir class singing at his high school’s graduation ceremony the week before. That’s how it worked. If Doyoung came close, Taeyong came closer, at least until Doyoung crossed some line he couldn’t see or missed some cue he couldn’t hear and then Taeyong was gone again. Taeyong smelled like cologne and a little bit of the vape smoke that Doyoung had come to learn to tolerate if he wanted to be near to Taeyong, and as the line started to move he thought about holding Taeyong’s hand as they went into the venue, but then Taeyong put his hands in his pockets and Doyoung decided to let the impulse go, just like he had with all the rest.
Taeyong walked in on his own, Johnny and Ten laughing behind him while Doyoung tried to catch up.
~~
The music was good. More to Johnny and Taeyong’s taste than his own, but Doyoung liked the vocals layered on top of the synths and the deep bass beats well enough to enjoy himself. The crowd was massive, the center of the floor a sea of flags and banners and someone in the thick of it was blowing bubbles. Doyoung watched them float towards beams of light and then towards darkness of the rafters while he waited in line for drinks, having been told by Johnny’s new boyfriend that it was his turn to buy a round. He didn’t mind buying, but he didn’t love being bossed around, so he had taken the long way around to the bar. By the time he got back, three overpriced vodka tonics and one Jack and Coke balanced precariously in his arms, the bubbles had all popped and Taeyong had gone.
Johnny gestured into the crush of bodies with a shrug, took his drink and then held Ten’s up to Ten’s lips, letting him do lewd things with the straw that Doyoung didn’t really want to witness. He watched and wondered what it would be like if Taeyong flirted with him like that – openly, obviously, with the kind of desire that must have made Johnny feel like he could conquer the world. Taeyong didn’t even stick around to sip on the drink that Doyoung had bought and it made him question again if Taeyong had come here for him or for the music that called to him like a drug.
Doyoung drank his drink too quickly and did what he’d been doing since the first time he’d met Taeyong. He let just enough vodka make him forget that he was probably a little bit pathetic and pushed his way into the crowd, chasing Taeyong like Taeyong chased lights and beat drops. If it hadn’t kept working, if he hadn’t continued to find Taeyong time after time, standing in the middle of dancefloor after dancefloor looking at Doyoung like he’d just been waiting to be found, Doyoung would have given up months ago.
Or maybe he wouldn’t have. Maybe Taeyong was his siren song. Doyoung didn’t know because every single time he chased, every time he followed, he caught Taeyong, at least for a little while, at least until the music stopped and the house lights went up.
“I only dance with you,” Taeyong told him once, flush and sweaty beneath another set of flashing lights, his arms around Doyoung’s shoulder and his breath warm in Doyoung’s ear as he tried to shout over the bass.
“This guy, he likes me so much,” fell off of Doyoung’s tongue because Doyoung was high off of the feeling of Taeyong’s fingers on the back of his neck, on the idea that he could be Taeyong’s only anything. He thought then that if he leaned in to kiss Taeyong he wouldn’t get a turned cheek. Taeyong gazed at Doyoung, his big brown eyes soft and pretty enough that Doyoung almost believed his own bullshit.
Maybe Taeyong did like him so much. Even if Taeyong was someone who existed on another plane of existence and Doyoung was just some guy who kept reaching for him on the dancefloor. But then Taeyong spun out of Doyoung’s reach and put his hands above his head, his fingers touching air instead of Doyoung and Doyoung thought maybe dancing needed to be enough for now, until he could be really sure.
Tonight was no different. Doyoung found him halfway to the barrier, the blonde of his hair and the shine of his shirt enough to draw his eye and draw him in. And even though Doyoung knew he wasn’t the only one looking, that he would never be the only looking, he felt like the only man in the room whenTaeyong smiled at him and held out his hand, asking Doyoung to come to him, the closet Taeyong ever got to asking Doyoung for anything at all.
“There you are,” Doyoung shouted, curling his hand around Taeyong’s palm and pulling him in, maybe with a little bit too much force. Taeyong’s eyes were wide, his teeth were digging into his bottom lip. “Sorry,” Doyoung said, rubbing his thumb over tendons and bone. Taeyong’s tongue traced over the place he had just chewed up, his mouth a little bit wet and red now. “It’s just, I bought a drink and you were gone.”
“I wanted to dance,” Taeyong said, as if that was any kind of excuse for running away, for leaving Doyoung holding a drink no one wanted. Doyoung put Taeyong’s empty hand on his shoulder, offering himself instead of a drink, letting the vodka in his veins make him brave enough to wind his arm around Taeyong’s waist. Taeyong’s hips moved beneath the splay of Doyoung’s fingers, his wet lips moving around words Doyoung had to half-guess at, the music so incredibly loud this close to the stage. “You know I love these songs.”
Doyoung did know because sometimes he thought the only things Taeyong loved openly were music and fish and staying up all night. He wanted to be on that shortlist but wasn’t sure how to make the cut, not when Taeyong gave him so little to go on, not when he had been trying to color in the outline of Taeyong in mind for months and months had only just begun to understand the shades of Taeyong’s wants and desires. Taeyong started to move, his shirt glittering beneath the lights, his arms glistening with sweat and his gaze somewhere on Doyoung’s face, but still not really looking, not into his eyes.
“Don’t be mad, Doie,” Taeyong murmured, close enough that Doyoung could feel his lips on the shell of his ear and Doyoung wondered why it was that the only thing about him Taeyong would take liberties with was his name.
“I’m not mad.”
He wasn’t mad. He didn’t know Taeyong well enough to know if he should be mad at moments like this or if this was just who Taeyong was – someone who existed in the liminal space of darkened clubs and sweaty dancefloors, who couldn’t help but wander off when the music started to play – or if maybe one day he would know enough to know that Taeyong was shy, or selfish, or just strange.
“Then dance with me.” Taeyong tipped his head towards the sky, lights pouring down his neck like drops of rain and disappearing into the shimmer and shine of his shirt. “I’ve been waiting forever for you to get here.”
“Then stop running away from me,” Doyoung said, not mad, but frustrated and captivated, the same way he’d been for almost six months. Taeyong blinked at him, long eyelashes sweeping down over big brown eyes that did horrible things to Doyoung’s sense of equilibrium. He waited for Taeyong to say something, to say anything, but Taeyong just closed his eyes and swayed to the beat, as if his beauty alone was enough to win the point.
Doyoung started to dance, started to follow, and knew that Taeyong had won, that he was going to give up on the drink that had been forgotten, on being upset by the space that Taeyong always put between them when Doyoung came too close or looked at him for too long.
Doyoung felt sequins beneath his fingertips as he moved his hands up Taeyong’s back, trying to keep time with someone who was so much more natural at all of this than he was. He was a singer, not a dancer. He was someone who liked music, Taeyong felt like someone who was made of it, made for it. Doyoung held Taeyong as tightly as he dared, wondering if Taeyong would kiss and fuck as rhythmically as he moved, if he’d be like this spread beneath Doyoung in bed.
Song after song, Taeyong let himself be held. There was sweat dripping down Doyoung’s spine and Taeyong’s hair was starting to curl at the ends, the humidity of too many people and not enough air making it all sticky and thick, right down to the places where bare skin touched bare skin. Doyoung curled his palm around Taeyong’s throat and thought about the shape of his lips when Doyoung let his thumb rest over a pulse that seemed to kick up in time with the music.
The pace of the music grew frenetic and Taeyong slipped in closer, his expression somewhere between serene and ecstatic as everyone in the crowd got high on the gradual rise to the top. Taeyong slid his knee between Doyoung’s thighs and Doyoung held his breath as Taeyong put his hand over Doyoung’s heart. The lights around them flashed, the floor shook with a thousand pairs of feet moving in time. The crescendo was coming, the inevitable crashing so close that Doyoung could almost count down to it measure for measure. Doyoung had Taeyong by the throat and Taeyong was holding his heart and the lights were bright in Taeyong’s eyes.
“Do you feel it?” Taeyong asked, still talking right into his ear, hot-breathed questions that made Doyoung anxious because he didn’t like it when he didn’t understand the question and he felt like he never understood what it was Taeyong was asking of him. Taeyong’s lashes fluttered. “I feel it.”
Doyoung looked into Taeyong’s eyes and asked, “Feel what?”
“This. This beat.” Taeyong curled his fingers into Doyoung’s shirt, dragging it up a little, pulling the hem out of Doyoung’s pants. “How fast it is.” Taeyong’s gaze was almost imploring. Like there was something he needed to know. “How hard it’s going. Do you feel it too?”
Taeyong’s shirt glittered. Taeyong stood below the strobe lights with his hand on Doyoung’s chest, palm to heart, while Doyoung felt blood pump beneath the press of his thumb and the beat dropped. Everyone around them jumped, but Doyoung was rooted in place, struck down by the way Taeyong was looking at him, and Doyoung told Taeyong the only knew he for certain, an answer to the question Taeyong had asked:
“It’s 138.”
“What is?”
Taeyong blinked as the music went hard again, the beat drop picked up and tossed into the sky, left to float there until the end of the night, the high of highs already come and gone. Doyoung shouted inside his head for his nerve endings to come online, for something inside of him to push his own button and help him stop being paralyzed by how pretty Taeyong was tonight, how beautiful Taeyong was, how Doyoung worried that he would never be confident enough to move close enough to be able to really try and read the invitation in Taeyong’s eyes.
Doyoung stroked his thumb down Taeyong’s neck and tried again, “138. The beats per minute.”
“Our hearts?” Taeyong tapped his fingers on Doyoung’s chest and licked lips that Doyoung worried must have been chapped by now given how often Taeyong wet them.
“The music. It’s the average bpm for this kind of stuff.” Doyoung shook his head and smiled, tipping his head towards the stage. “This stuff you like so much.”
“You’re talking about the music?”
Taeyong’s hand fell off his chest and the little smile fell off his face and Doyoung knew that he’d gotten the answer wrong. Again.
“I thought you wanted to know?” Doyoung ran his hands through his sweaty hair and blew out a breath, his heart and lungs still working on overtime as the pace of the music slowed and deepened, dipping into a rhythmic trough that would only be escaped when the DJ started to build the beats again, bringing the crowd to one last peak before the night was well and truly over. “I thought that’s what you were asking.”
“No. It wasn’t.”
Wide-eyed hurt looked as beautiful on Taeyong as anything else and Doyoung wondered what the hell it said about him that he was as turned on as he was worried when Taeyong turned around and started to walk away. Doyoung followed, feeling stupid and wrong footed just like he had countless other nights when Taeyong acted like he was a candle burning bright that Doyoung had blown out and left as nothing more than smoke.
The crowds moved for Taeyong, because crowds would always move for someone like him and Doyoung trailed in his wake, feeling like he’d lost something that was his to keep when Taeyong held out his hand to Johnny’s boyfriend and said:
“Do you still want to dance with me? I need someone who can keep up.”
Johnny had his arm around Doyoung’s shoulders while Johnny’s boyfriend had his arms all over Taeyong and Johnny wanted to know what Doyoung had done wrong, and Doyoung didn’t know. He never quite knew when it came to Taeyong. He’d missed Taeyong’s mark, had missed the timing or the moment and Doyoung thought it was kind of unfair that Taeyong was upset with Doyoung when Doyoung had been doing his best to try and understand for months and months.
“Don’t think too hard,” Johnny said, smiling like he didn’t have a goddamned care in the world while he watched his boyfriend match Taeyong move for move, beat for beat, like they were made to dance together. “Just enjoy the moment.”
Doyoung was jealous. Jealous of Johnny for having someone who looked at him like Ten did every time he slid up and down Taeyong’s shimmering body, like Johnny knew all his answers, knew how to get him right. Jealous of Ten for touching Taeyong with the kind of careless confidence Doyoung had never had once in his life over anything at all. Jealous of Taeyong for getting to take the easy road, for leaving it to Doyoung to figure out how they were supposed to get wherever they were destined to go.
The beat picked up, the music building again. Johnny took Ten into his arms and kissed him in the middle of a giant club for anyone to see. Doyoung stood alone trying not to feel like he was an idiot for trying to see if he could be a part of Taeyong's puzzle, if he could fit inside the empty spaces in Taeyong's heart. Taeyong stood alone on the floor with his arms wrapped around his sparkling shirt and looked at Doyoung with uncertain, questioning eyes and waited.
Taeyong ran from Doyoung. But he waited, too. Doyoung wished he could understand. That he could know. Taeyong’s hips started to sway and there was no one there to hold them. Doyoung put his hand on his chest and counted to 138 before he took a step towards Taeyong and tried again.