Their freedom turns to retreat into the endless ocean of remaining school days until graduation just as cruelly. Joohyoung has barely blinked, and it's already the last weekend of their summer holidays. He finds himself in Jiho's room yet again, the fan on full blast as the heat is throwing its blanket over the city one last time before it will begrudgingly make way for seasons where it's easier to breathe in actual oxygen instead of sticky humidity.
They are watching The Cat Returns. It's all a bit bizarre, but that's what Joohyoung has grown to like about the world in these movies. Not everything makes sense, because that's not the point. Seen from the other side of things, it's all real and perfectly reasonable and what is considered normal beyond the screen doesn't matter. The rest of the world doesn't matter.
It's somewhere towards the latter third of the movie when Joohyoung excuses himself to go the bathroom. When he comes back, Jiho has paused the film and is mindlessly chipping away at remnants of popcorn sticking to the long white sleeves he is wearing underneath his Totoro shirt.
"I can't believe you aren't sweating buckets." Joohyoung throws himself back onto his spot on the beanbag, right by Jiho's side. He taps against his sleeves. "This plus the body heat. How are you still alive, man."
"I don't mind." Jiho shrugs. "I get cold really easily, though. For balance, I guess."
"I'm so jealous. I could be half naked and still feel hot all the time."
"Nobody is forcing you to stick to me like glue," Jiho laughs. "I mean yeah, it's pretty warm and I could roll up my sleeves. But I don't feel much of a difference. There's also nothing to see, so. Don't have any reason."
"Nothing to see," Joohyoung slowly repeats.
His thought go haywire at the image.
Fuck, he was doing so well at pushing it away.
There must be a shift in his face. A falter in his smile or a little frown he doesn't notice, because Jiho — sweet, attentive Jiho — suddenly sits up and stares at him with his stern fox eyes. Under his gaze, Joohyoung's tediously built composure starts crumbling away like it's nothing.
Jiho has always been more emotionally aware than he is, like his own honesty extends to be able to see the truth in Joohyoung's eyes when he himself hasn't figured out yet where to look for it. It's the PC room all over again. The convenience store, the first handholding.
Jiho pouts slightly, thinking. Then he places his hand on Joohyoung's, but doesn't intertwine their fingers.
"What's wrong?"
Joohyoung's breath stutters in his throat regardless.
Jiho knows, he always knows.
Joohyoung feels a nervous laughter escaping him. Jiho's warmth on the back of his hand is the only thing keeping him grounded at this point. He needs to wither away. Scream. He's crying, bleeding, losing, TXT style. And oh god, he's internally monologuing in the language of shitposts again, this is bad.
"I don't really know."
Jiho taps his pinky finger against his own. "Tell me what's on your mind? We could try figure it out together." And god, Joohyoung wants to melt into him. Burn down into a heap of ash and run through the hourglass of his hands if it means he can make his home in his lap.
He's not even making any sense.
"Do you ever think about getting tattoos?" he bursts out and immediately cringes. That was absolutely not what he meant to say, but life has no rewind button and the universe likes to see him suffer.
Jiho blinks. "Uhm. Sometimes. They're cool, they tell stories, but I'm too scared of needles to ever go for it. Why?"
"Do you think they're hot?"
"Hot?" Hesitance clings to his voice. "Define...?"
Joohyoung's first reaction is to chuckle at his purity, but then he thinks about it for more than a split second. Hot can probably mean different things for different people. It's not as childish of a question as it sounds like.
"You know. You think they're interesting. Make you want to know everything about them. You keep thinking about it, wondering what the tattoos mean and why they have it."
"Is that really what hot means, like, objectively" Jiho grins. But the right corner of his mouth doesn't go higher than the left as usual. He presses his lips together, looks away seeking courage on the frozen screen on his PC.
He seems to struggle to get his next words out. "From what I heard, I thought you — feel something? Or is it really just pure interest and I've been lied to a thousand times?" The little laugh that follows sounds hollow and tense.
Joohyoung, in an attempt to make him loosen up, snorts. "You're talking like you've never found anything hot in your life."
"Because I haven't."
The confession lingers in the air, suspended in the tireless buzzing of the fan.
Joohyoung stills.
What does that even mean? He wants to ask. Why did you need me to define? I thought you knew everything. But his heart is breaking enough at the sight of Jiho's clenched jaw, his nervous eyes darting to ceiling, floor, screen, the figurines on the windowsill, everywhere but him, and Joohyoung guesses that there are much better things to say. This wasn't even supposed to be about tickling a secret out of Jiho. It's him who should be brave and stop beating around the bush.
There's a kind of tension in Jiho's voice that he hasn't heard before. He is withholding something, trying to get a point across in his silence that Joohyoung can't gasp onto quite yet.
"That's fine," he offers.
Jiho freezes. Then he softly shakes his head, like he's admitting defeat to something, or someone, that only exists in his head. "I'm not sure you get what I mean. Sometimes, I see people and think oh. I want to look like them. I need to copy and paste their genes into mine. Or something like that. I never felt like I had to... be with them? At least not in the way that most people do. And it took me a while to accept that, but I think that's just the kind of person I am."
He squeezes his hand, hard. But it's Joohyoung's heart that aches instead.
"Well, that's okay, too," Joohyoung says, and squeezes back through the pain. "You're being unusually vague and I'll be honest, it confuses the heck out of me, but it doesn't matter. You're still you. The details of your dating history don't change anything."
"Would you feel sad for me if I never started dating?"
"No."
The answer comes easily and firm, like it has always been right there, on the tip of his tongue. Because he means it. Because he can always be honest with him, without having to twist it into a joke in order to be understood. "If it's not your thing, that it's not your thing. It's as simple as that. Romance is super annoying anyway and in my humble opinion, you're doing yourself a huge favor by staying away as long as possible."
For a painful heartbeat, he thinks he has messed up big time. Jiho stares at him with wide, wide eyes. His mouth has fallen slightly open.
"Super annoying, you say...?" He sounds careful. Like he risks it all by daring to believe him. Something in Joohyoung snaps.
"It really is. Buckle up for story time, because I need an outside opinion on this whole fucking mess and so that I can show you that you're really not missing out on anything."
He hears Minjun giving him an unamused applause in the back of his mind. And so he finally, finally ends up spilling over.
He tells him about Jungwoo, the damn electronics shop, the pokémon store, their few other dates-or-similar that involved awkward clicking noises breaking through the static of their discord calls. The clumsy kissing, the instagram comments. Everything else that has happened since then and muddled his whole view on their short-lived thing. Jaewon confessing that Jungwoo got over him in no time, finding out he has been lying about who put an end to their failing relationship first, and Minjun turning into a stuttering, rambling wreck when it comes to his crush while Joohyoung at one point just ran out of things to say to the guy he dated.
He almost interrupts himself to laugh at the various reactions flickering over Jiho's face. It's a wild mix of fascination, attentive noises and solemn nods to assure him he's listening, and something that borders on disgust, or him being seriously appalled. It makes Joohyoung feel like this situation is only half as messed up as it actually is, and more like a twisted comedy.
His chest feels lighter once it's all out.
He didn't even realize he hasn't told anyone the full story until now. Minjun knows a lot of bits and parts, he's given him puzzle pieces but never the entire picture. Winnie is still in the belief that Jungwoo broke up with him, and Joohyoung plans to keep it that way. In the end, it does nothing to help if he stirs up bad vibes in Jungwoo's friend group, and he knows it's best to address his ex alone.
Not like he ever tried to do so in the past weeks. He had been perfectly fine sweeping it under the rug.
He hasn't forgotten how to act delusional for sure.
"That's why you were spacing out like that in the PC room," is the first thing Jiho mutters. He says it like a question, and at the same time it sounds like he already guessed something along the lines and is curious to confirm his suspicions.
"Yeah. Looking back, I think we were holding onto something that was never there to begin with. I thought I liked him, but maybe I was lying to myself for the sake of having a boyfriend, because that sounded...nice." With each word is another flame burning up his fingers, crawling up his arm, his neck, his cheeks. Getting closer to the lick away at the truth hidden away in his subconscious. "It sounded reasonable. Guys our age have crushes, they go on dates, kiss around and so on. I guessed it was my turn to have these experiences. But then it was nothing like I expected, and I was just extremely unlucky to meet the wrong person and find out it can really feel like one big scam."
He sighs. "And here's the thing — I mean it when I say I'm not upset about the breakup itself the slightest bit. I just want to know why he is being so weird about it. But I think a part of me does miss what we could've been, at least in some kind of way, and that's why I can't let go of this. He had these tattoos on his arm. They were hot, like, they might have been the reason I was so interested in him at first. But he could never tell me what they mean to him. Which is fine! If he wasn't so closed off in every other way too. We were barely friends the entire time."
Jiho keeps nodding along, and for the first time Joohyoung feels like everything he is saying makes perfect sense. The more he talks about it, the more the fog lifts. It's like the annoying dialogue box in his mind is finally giving him the option to close it and move on.
And in Jiho's patient, kind fox eyes, Joohyoung sees the problem for what it is and where it all went wrong.
"I might just wanted to be friends with him," he breathes, stunned. He gulps, his throat feeling dry.
It feels so obvious when he says it, like it was always there for him to reach. And also incredibly silly.
It shouldn't have taken him what, almost two months to arrive at the conclusion that he wanted to know Jungwoo without having him first, wanted to wear his oversized hoodies for the proof that Jungwoo trusted him, wanted to look at him and be able to tell if he's smiling out of obligation, of relief or because something reminded him of a fond memory. He wanted to be the person Jungwoo went to if he felt alone, because for all the zero-bullshit-persona and the air of aloofness that follows him like a cloud of reeking perfume, there has to be a reason he flees into the universe in his headphones so often.
Jungwoo didn't reveal the world much about himself, and Joohyoung had wanted to know.
Jiho gives him a glance that could be compassion or pity, depending on how self-deprecating Joohyoung feels that day, and so he shrinks in on himself while Jiho reaches behind him to pull something out from the small space between the bean bag and the wall.
There's already an empty bottle of coffee somewhere under the desk, because Joohyoung missed the trashcan short by one unfortunate centimeter earlier. But Jiho, with his crazy intuition, now wordlessly holds up a second bottle to him.
Joohyoung stares at it for a moment. Overwhelmed, like a bird who forgot how to fly in mid-air.
But then Jiho silently pushes the coffee into his hands, guides his fingers to wrap around it and smiles and oh, Joohyoung learns, his panicked heart landing safely in the gaps between Jiho's pretty hands and his own, he already has me all figured out.
Jiho pulls away. Joohyoung uncaps the bottle and holds it to his mouth before the strangled noise that threatens to leave his throat makes either of them worry about his sanity.
How is Jiho doing that? Bringing him back to earth without doing anything at all?
The coffee has turned lukewarm. Joohyoung is too grateful for the emergency supply to even pretend to care.
"That is weirdly relatable," Jiho suddenly says, and Joohyoung nearly spits out his mouthful all over him.
He quickly swallows, twisting the cap back onto the bottle. "It is?"
"There was this girl in middle school." Jiho lets out a slow groan and momentarily squeezes his eyes shut at the memory. "It's an embarrassing part of my life. Ugh, I shouldn't have brought it up."
"You don't have to tell me anything. I am curious, though."
"It's fine. I guess it's time I got it out of my system, as well."
For this, he searches for his hand again. This time, he intertwines their fingers. A rush of affection travels up Joohyoung's spine.
He wants to hold him like this until he physically can't anymore.
"It's all kind of stupid," Jiho starts. "I was thirteen, had no clue what I was doing. Junho was friends with her twin brothers. She held my hand a lot and we cuddled on the backseat when our timetables aligned and Junho drove us to school. We were just very clingy with each other and it took me ages to figure out I just liked being noticed for once — being seen and being held. For the first time, I didn't feel like a ghost."
Jiho shrugs and twists his face in pain. "I should've known she would end up developing a crush on me. Normal people don't do all that stuff platonically. But it was kind of my fault for telling her first I might like you and making her think something was happening between us. Now I know better. I wish I didn't have to break her heart back then."
"I do that stuff with you," Joohyoung points out, holding up their joined hands in the space between them. "And what the heck? Somebody liking you and choosing to act upon it is not your fault."
Jiho's face impossibly softens at the gesture. "True, but a part of me still feels guilty...like I could have done something before our friendship had to end because of it. And I know you don't like me that way. Ever since you texted me that time after we watched Princess Mononoke."
"Oh, yeah." Joohyoung remembers. For some reason, it takes him a quick internal pep talk to continue, "I said we should platonically get together."
"And that's why you're weird. You're so you when you say things like that."
Jiho's gaze falls onto their hands, still hovering up in the air.
Then he brings them to his mouth and plants a kiss onto the back of his own hand.
Joohyoung swears the warmth spreads through their palms, tightly pressed against each other. Wanders through his own fingertips and straight into his stomach, where it lives on as the soft shine of a candle in the night, wax dripping into every fiber of his being, a declaration, a promise.
"Oh, you like me so much," Joohyoung whispers, teasing. His voice might be shaking from the gravity of it all. Jiho is a star, and Joohyoung feels honored to be in his orbit.
"I do," Jiho grins, lopsided. "Was that okay?"
Joohyoung tackles him into a hug.
He's a mess. He just figured out he probably never liked Jungwoo the way Minjun likes his Seo Won, and he is a giant hypocrite for being upset at the thought of Jungwoo forgetting about him without much effort. Also, Jiho is platonically in love with him? And Joohyoung has no idea what he's feeling.
It's okay. He doesn't have to know right now. Jiho's arms wrap around him, laughing, his eyes kind and ever patient.
Somewhere between fits of unprompted giggles and silent pats on the back that remind Joohyoung that he's allowed to just be, whatever this entails, Jiho sighs.
"You know, despite being asexual and aromantic, sometimes... I want to be someone's boyfriend so bad. It just sounds pretty. It's like saying, hey, that's my person over there. My little guy. It would...make me happy, I guess, but I know it's not something I can have. And really, I can live with that. Dating sounds complicated."
Asexual, aromantic. Jiho says it now like it's nothing, even though he was so hesitant to even imply the words earlier. He trusts him. The terms echo in his brain, burn their way into his skull.
"Oh yeah, dating sucks. But the word itself does sound really nice," he quietly agrees. He thinks of Woo Jewon and friends or boyfriends or something else and tries to picture someone saying, hi, this is Jiho, my boyfriend. Because it's his brain and his thoughts, he can't imagine it in any other voice than his own.
It sounds right. It probably shouldn't? It definitely shouldn't.
He files that discussion away for a later time.
They continue The Cat Returns, and Joohyoung helps Jiho to free himself from the remaining popcorn sticking to him like magnets. Jiho's giggle feels like home. Like warmth flooding his veins. Maybe his vessels always meant to carry this soft noise in his bloodstreams and he just didn't know it until he met him.
Not all of this is making sense, Joohyoung is aware.
But it's okay.
It's real to him, and nothing else matters.
.
This chapter is actually so important to me...something about this was just so cathartic to write. Joohyoung figuring out he had a squish (=friendship crush) on Jungwoo the entire time, Jiho being oblivious to other people's crushes on him, the entire talk about the word "hot" and what it actually means (I still have no idea) are inspired by my own experiences and it was just so so healing to put it all into words. This story means to much to me. It's my safe place, my aspec sanctuary. Writing this fic changed me. Made me much more comfortable in my identity.
God I could ramble on and on about these two, but I'll stop here for the sake of spoilers and the fact that I'm going to ramble in the author's notes of the following chapters as well, probably...thanks for reading, and see you at next week's update <33
~ Mona