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The light sifts through the abundance of leaves and falls to the old marble-trimmed walls and neat lawn in bright splotches, like a reversed play of domino. The day is nearing its peak, and past the solstice summer ripens into the thick, heady odor of jasmine trees and whipped peonies, warmed up by sunlight. He breathes in a mouthful—on the roof of his tongue it unfolds into remnants of rosemary bushes and rancid white currant that sit around him, too hidden in the shadows. The Jeongs like their gardens pristine with the impression of being wild; there nothing leaves room for improvisation.
Away from the main entryway, from the front road reserved for welcomed guests, Taeyong drums his fingers in a candid rhythm on the overheated dashboard. He doesn’t mind waiting. At this hour barely anyone is around—too busy sweating on neighbors’ tennis courts and exhaling smoke into the afternoon glasses of their green wine; a local blend. Only the youngest are at home.
He won’t miss him; like that, Jaehyun will first have to pass through the arcade leading outside, flickering through ivory piers and blooming branches like a mirage, to get to the garden. A snap of a window shut, repeated flutter of doors, and the echo of fast, resolute steps almost taking a run—windswept hair, pale even amid summer, but maybe he is even paler in winter, only his cheeks are sun-kissed and flushed to radiance, he steps out of the pathway of short elderflower trees. Another treasure of the Jeongs’ gardens.
Taeyong cranes his neck to see better, and willow shadows fall above his eyes.
Jaehyun jogs to the car and smiles brightly, showing all of his teeth. He’s got white petals stuck in his honey-brown hair; where the sun hits, it is a shade away from blonde. A child of a midsummer night’s dream, Apollo’s baby, he throws his worn-in bowling bag on the backseat of Taeyong’s chocolate convertible, and flecking shadows swallow him too, away under their delicate covers. His every move and each gesture is mellow youth and searing freedom. Looks are so deceiving. Between the two of them, Taeyong is the rolling stone one, tied down to someone else’s dream that turned into a wasteland.
Foregoing opening the door, Jaehyun hops on the shotgun, just out of habit. His gaze sparks with mischief and transparent joy. In it Taeyong sees his dazed reflection, drunk on pollen and what is left of a heat wave.
“Drive, cherry.”
Shy of kissing him in the open, Taeyong starts the engine. Pebbles of gravel grate under the pressure. Over the other’s shoulder he chances a glance at Jaehyun’s sister, who stands on the steps of the veranda, hugged by greenery. Soojung’s arms are crossed over her ruffled blouse; surrounded by hydrangeas, she stares back at him disapprovingly, unkindly. She sees right through him, and she certainly doesn’t like what he has to offer.
She is fair: he has nothing but eight acres of dried-out vineyards and a worthless heart under his name.
He is exactly who they have told Jaehyun to stay away from. A bad influence, a waste of time. Too much, too little, ever out of proportion. Rampant like a weed. He will ruin you, his uptight sister, his posh parents all say. Yet he is the one that feels like a ruin when Jaehyun’s fingers settle on his thigh—adamant, tender—as juniper hedgerows lead them out of the villa’s stone gates.
He drives him mad, Taeyong’s demise.
Ample rows of cypresses and citrus groves whip past them, stretching down the hills. Teal glints of the lake shine through their crowns, like a silver spoon among the bluish shores. The breeze is heavy up there. It slips under Taeyong’s silken shirt through the low pool of the neckline, around the small pendant, licking cool stripes across his chest and face. His fringe whirs upwards, unruly as it is, and curls away from the forehead.
For a moment Jaehyun’s hand parts with his leg to turn the radio knob on. It purrs out slow, susurrant jazz, barely audible over the hum of the car. Taeyong catches his fingers over the console to turn the volume up together and earns a sweet, contented laugh—Jaehyun knows to look into gestures rather than words.
Wind in his hair, the younger offers his face to the sunlight and closes his eyes. Relaxed, as though time with its shortcomings for him dilutes to the intermittent June’s heat and passing panorama, a smudge of jade. In a way, maybe it is. Pearls on his neck—generational wealth, when the only valuable things passed through generations in Taeyong’s family are his father’s convertible, a tattered manor with a leaking roof, and genetic disposition to alcoholism.
He is so mesmerizing it is almost unfair.
This is why Taeyong indulges him with all those ridiculous names that suit rather children and come and go with his mood. Some stick. Cherry, he calls still, even though the red of his locks long faded to auburn. He will play annoyed and allow him everything.
Taeyong grips the steering wheel tighter and trains his eyes on the road. At the intersection the car takes a familiar turn to the overgrown orchards, tucked away from the prying eyes. In the thick veil of burdock and khella’s rosettes he recognizes the shape of a limestone cherub, covered in dark spots from age and humidity, missing one of its wings.
“When do I have to return you?”
Jaehyun lets out a sigh, his eyes still closed. “Never.”
Taeyong scoffs but smiles. “Don’t want to have a hunt for my head started.” He receives a little amused sound of sympathy. “You have to be a good boy. When?”
Elbow on the door, the younger twirls his fingers idly to the lazy tune, playing with the air passing through. “We can be late for dinner. Folks are going to have some friends over.” He turns to look at him. “You can stay too.”
Taeyong presses his lips to a line and does not answer.
Jaehyun’s hand comes further up his thigh, and he is sincere. “I want you here. They won’t mind.”
They will all mind, but Jaehyun is everyone’s darling, and just for him they will tolerate Taeyong for a single night. Tight-lipped and cautious, pretending he is nothing more than a vacant seat. It would hurt if he was younger, but after a while a repeated bruise subdues to a permanent numbness.
It would be hypocritical to complain, and this flaw is not the one he is willing to be condemned for. From the first time they met last year, he already knew how things would come to pass, but hope is a habit that is hard to shake off.
On the second day of summer in the public nymphaeum he slipped on the staircase, covered in moss and morning dew, and fell and fell and fell down, scratching his knees to bleed, into the lush grass and wet clover stems that reached his shoulders. And then he felt it—the absence of weight against his sternum, a piece fallen out of place—and surged forward, outstretched hands rummaging hastily, full of turf and nothing, until the round shape of a necklace dug into his palm in the field of champagne dahlias. There, among large ruffled buds, he raised his head to meet dark eyes of a shade of gunmetal. Startled, like his own.
The eyes shifted, changing to curious, and a hand gently moved a blooming cup to the side to reveal a face.
“Have you found it?”
The gold was coarse under his fingers; Taeyong nodded. In the mist of the early hour, he was unable to swallow down his heartbeat. He was like nothing Taeyong had ever seen before. Songbirds were chirruping above; he felt like one, caught trespassing the garden of Eden.
A voice cut in, calling for someone from the alley.
“I’m Jaehyun,” he said, not looking away, and waited for a name in return.
That day, as he watched Jaehyun disappear under the white wisteria vines to where his sister was waiting for him, impatient, he foresaw himself coming back. He returned the next morning, and the morning after that—two weeks later, when the rains finally stopped, Taeyong kissed him, pressing his back firmly into the ivy-wreathed wall.
It was easy not to think, to let things take their natural order and overlook the obstacles. How the eldest Jungs treated him as if he had carried some kind of disease—impoverishment; how their friendship was seen as a charity event in which Jaehyun should not get too involved; how in their eyes Taeyong was becoming an obstacle himself. What weight did any of it hold when on the day June turned July, after a tedious dinner, Jaehyun led him upstairs to his room? None. Timid but sure, he sat on the bed and said happy birthday.
Every bliss compared to him dimmed to coal.
Before the dawn could break, Jaehyun caught Taeyong’s wrist and stretched his spine like that of a cat, sheets pooling around him, to gift him the first kiss of his twenties. The difference between them stretched back to two years.
Into the maze of rooms—he was trying to make it back unnoticed but simply ran out of luck. From the other side of the corridor, Soojung saw him and knew.
She never told anyone. In that aspect they are very similar: for Jaehyun, they will do anything.
Maybe this is what love is—under the fruit trees Jaehyun’s delicate fingers unbutton the linen shirt, and something coils in his stomach at the sight of his alabaster shoulders. Taeyong gets on the backseat and tugs him after. There they help each other undress without a rush, like it is a part of a game.
He doesn’t have much to compare it with. A lonely child of a lonely lineage; the bloodline will run dry with him.
It probably was love all along when he sat for hours in the winter gloom and waited for something he didn’t even know what for, for a sign, a call, or a letter. He waited and waited and daffodils bloomed and wilted and then the summer came again.
Came back sleepless nights, rosarium trysts, and misplaced kisses stamped to gums because Jaehyun gets giddy and skittish in the cold before sunrise. As though there were no autumn, no winter or spring, and time only came into being with the news of the Jungs returning for the season.
What is it if not love now that Jaehyun’s lips travel up his knee to the thigh until he’s flush against him, when he laughs into Taeyong’s tanned shoulder, when he presses their foreheads together and Taeyong kisses a shaky smile of the corner of his mouth. Outside of it the world deafens and stops its existence.
Isn’t it love if Jaehyun breathes his name, his real name, out into his ear, scratching his ribs with blunt nails. Halo of smudged sunlight flames behind his head. In a dazzled hast he runs his palm over Taeyong’s slick pectorals until his fingers wrap around the pendant—Taeyong obliges and gives him more.
The swollen lips part as if to say something, and he involuntary leans in closer, ready to catch it. But then gunmetal eyes lose focus, Jaehyun loses himself in a staggering wave of temptation, and all of the words get lost in its haze, unsaid, forever under his tongue.
He presses his wet mouth to the salty spot above Jaehyun’s heart; paradisiacal. Strands of Taeyong’s hair stick to the dampness of his collarbone. He wishes to come clean but instead presses harder, hands around his waist, overlapping, and whispers it into the skin, chants a silent answer.
I love you. I love you. I love you.
Everything goes still for a moment and then unwraps—wind upon leaves, a distant trill of orioles, somebody’s heartbeat and unsteady inhales. The world spins back about its axis. Jaehyun huffs, panting slightly, and gently wipes a bead of sweat that rolls down the bridge of Taeyong’s nose. He moves forward to reach somewhere behind the other’s temple, but Taeyong is too focused on the fact that they are still connected.
A brief, loud rustle fills his ears. Then Jaehyun rolls his hips back proudly and presents him his trophy—a flawless pair of dark-red cherries. He puts it on Taeyong like an earring; the tips of his fingers linger on the shell of his ear.
“Beautiful,” he laughs blissfully, short on breath.
Taeyong kisses his chin. “You are.”
Jaehyun shakes his head absently. As though transfixed, he traces the sharp features of a favorite face—from the strong line of his brow bone down to the prominent dip of the cupid’s bow—full of bold edges and thorns yet unexpectedly soft, unfathomably delicate. Regardless, like all of Taeyong. Lustre eyes framed by wisps of lashes—Jaehyun would do anything for him if he only allowed. He would abandon everything. But the older is too used to dealing with sticks and stones on his own. When you are stripped down to the bones you exhaust your pride, and Jaehyun is running out of time for the naivety to be gotten away with.
Rays of warm light dance on Taeyong’s skin, mimicking ripples on water, in a pattern of cherry laurels.
“You look like a hummingbird.”
Larkish, Taeyong swipes his thumb up over Jaehyun’s navel and tastes salt, musk, bitterness.
Him.
Jaehyun’s smile is blurred. “Gross.”
When Taeyong presses the same finger to the wavering seam of his mouth, it meets sharp, perfect teeth first—a reminder—before being granted access. And then back, in reverse—lower lip, chin, adam’s apple—wet path through the heaving chest, lower, lower. Jaehyun’s eyes flutter shut and he rolls his hips once again, with more ardor. “You’re doing it on purpose.”
Taeyong smiles despite himself, despite bitter thoughts. “I can’t seem to stop.”
After all, they will still send him back, whether he wants it or not, to the swarm of his equals, to the promising connections, to where your daddy’s assets can forgive you any mistake, and where your family name can buy you affection. Priceless package thrown across borders, even though he is the most alive here, where they are supposed to watch parrot tulips go in season together. And Taeyong will sit for hours waiting for something, for a sign, for a message in the permanent void of his godforsaken rotting house through another winter, dreaming of bringing fresh ranunculus in the first minute of his birthday, while Jaehyun will dial and hang up, dial and hang up as the phone will ring into the empty walls. Just a sheer chance of an hour never colliding.
But none of it matters now. Now, enclosed by the intoxicating smell of wild peaches and fallen apricots, he has Jaehyun all to himself. Completely, unconditionally. Now there are still a few hours until dinner, and two full months of infinite summer ahead of them.