Jiho startled awake to the solemn silence of a dark dorm room. Momentarily dazed, disoriented - as though something had just flashed past, out of consciousness's grasp. Only the imbalance of his own slow, sleep-deep breathing and quickened heartbeat could be heard. But something had disturbed him...
Rising up onto elbows on his lower bunk, the recruit tangled midway between a yawn and half a stretch, to fumble about the bedside table for his phone.
03 : 12
Neon digits glaring out from stark screen - Jiho adjusting brightness settings as he flinched away with a low groan.
Flopping back down onto the mattress, unidentified unease knotted his stomach. There was a heaviness lying in wait in the night's brooding, velvet skies, burdening the space about the military base with suffocating weight, even in its stillness.
"How's the saying go?", Jiho addressed himself in the gloom, no slumbering roommates to piss off since all three had booked leave for the weekend, "...It's the calm before the-"
-Theatrical timing illuminating the dorm with a sudden strike. Mother Nature's loyal paparazzi - lightning - casting eerie shadows to turn even the most familiar of objects into foes.
A lampshade, a guitar case, a spider plant, looming large.
A shiver seized through Jiho's body, though the air hung unseasonably humid with little hint of chill. Tension as his fingers curled into the sheets below, anticipating...
"One...two...three...four...five...six...seven...eight...nine...ten-"
There, at last. Bassline's rumbling roll of thunder. Like a hibernating dragon unfurling in the ancient valley of some forgotten, bygone era.
Many may forget that thunder is, science says, the sound of lightning. But Lee Jiho? Jiho stood amongst those who knew, because as surely as a sound wave chases its light wave, his younger brother would follow a storm to his bedroom.
Jaekyung was no blood brother, of course, but as bandmates since adolescence, they'd grown together in every other way that counts. Through the rookie days of three packs of ramyeon ravaged from a saucepan at 4am after all-night rehearsals, to the heady heights of national, then global, fame. The sold-out stadiums, the award shows, the six-figure brand sponsorship deals - hell, the blood, sweat and tears behind all that glitters (but isn't gold).
Side by side, with their other members, through every metaphorical storm. But never more than when it thundered.
It was the unspoken understanding of all seven of the group, that when cumulonimbus clouds loomed to sully the horizon - of whichever part of the world they lay their pillows that night - their youngest member, Shin Jaekyung, would seek his Jiho.
With what motive was never entirely clear, but only that it would occur and wouldn’t be prevented. The faithful padding of slippered feet between adjoining hotel suites, along apartment hallways, down concrete stairwells or spiralling staircases. Anywhere, anytime, to find him.
Even then, all grown up to twenty-four, like clockwork he would come. Jiho knew it.
He'd ask to hold him...
"Can I lie with you, hyung?"
Shiny-eyed, boyish need in that moment, despite the muscular shoulders and tattoo-inked skin that sold the outward world otherwise.
And Jiho would brace himself.
Brace himself to endure.
//
"Can I lie with you, hyung?"
The dorm's door had opened and clicked hurriedly, hushedly shut behind Shin Jaekyung, standing broad and taller in dark vest and grey joggers, and peering blindly out into the dim as he chewed anxiously at the exact empty space on his lip where a piercing would usually be - in civilian life.
It was the first stormy night of the few months since the pair had enlisted for mandatory military service. Placed in a unit together at their own and management's request - a support system for the Maknae, it was presumed.
Astraphobia - fear of thunder, in Jaekyung's case - wasn't the sole reason.
"JK, watch Jiho's back" had been the audio to his parting hug with their group leader. For he may be two years the junior of Lee Jiho, but remained the bulkier framed, lesser questioned, and not so vulnerable to targeted toxic masculinity.
Though in that precise moment, what use was any of it, when he was trembling like Autumn’s last leaf?
Another strobe of lightning - leaving a freeze framed film negative of wild, widened eyes in a ghostly white face, as blood drained and Jaekyung sank down to crouch, hands shielding his own ears against the wall of sound that pursued.
"No...n-no...", he heard his own voice croak out.
Even as the room around him was swirling, superimposing onto another - buried - night.
Eight years old again, fighting with everything he had to get there. To get where?
Torrents of rain had left the narrow footpath treacherous - feet slipping and sliding, sucked down by mud as Jaekyungie ran, blinded by panic and the lightning that flashed. His ankle twisted painfully, skin of exposed arms and legs torn by the thorns of wet undergrowth that clung to slow him down, to hold him back.
Thunder rolling, foreboding, cloaking the sorry landscape with a merciless melancholy that time itself would not lift.
Capricious winds that whispereddon't go, child, don't look, even as they howled hell's harmonies like choirs of banshees above the roar of the river he had reached at last.
A river - but in name only.
Swollen rage of Earth's guttural fury. A colourless, dark-moving mass, that in the flash flood had surged banks to claim back all mankind's debts. Rural smallholdings that once had nestled alongside, nurtured by her sweet sustenance, swept away to insignificance.
Only splintered wooden planks of generations of foundations, homes torn limb from limb.
The bloated body of a next-door neighbour's drowned cow bobbing sickeningly, round and round, trapped in nauseating whirlpool. Mocking the broken boy until his whole body heaved.
Because he knew that Halmeoni was in there too.
In there but long gone...as a smack of thunder brought him to his bloodied knees at last.
Alone in the world.
//
Hands reaching out, hooking beneath his armpits to drag his dead weight determinedly across a carpeted dorm's floor. 'Small hands' - the thought drifted idly by, a tickle to his subconscious mind.
Then a cocoon of softness - a mattress below, a duvet above, and those same hands pulling him firmly in against their owner's warm chest to shield.
Only then did he realise he had been retching violently in his adult form too. Grounded back by the heartbeat resounding the body he clung to, somehow synchronised to his own. Cheek's stained with childhood's tears - straining to gulp air into panic-strangled lungs, then shuddering to expel it back out.
The small hands' small fingers reaching instinctively to entwine his long hair in comfort - but, finding the unfamiliar shave, resorting to pat gently at his head.
Breathing evening…
Knuckles un-fisting…
Trembling ceasing...
As slowly, behind his shield, Jaekyung came back to himself.
//
The first warmth a fourteen-year-old JK had encountered upon travelling to Seoul to audition and meet his new bandmates, was the small hand of a smiley eyed Jiho-hyung - offered to shake in greeting.
Over time, it was his beauty he was more preoccupied by.
Full lips to frame that smile that brightened every day as its own solar energy source. Characterful, emotive eyes. A body slighter than Jaekyung’s own, but with power and supple curves to torment, as year on year the elder trespassed uninvited upon more and more of the younger's nightly dreams.
It was because Lee Jiho had helped the lost little country mouse find his bearings in city life, he told himself. It was only natural - they spent all of their hours rehearsing together, just their bodies, beats and beading sweat, both bandmates featuring heavily in the dance and vocal lines. Or - I waslonely, we were teenagers, girlfriends were strictly forbidden - any and all of the above.
Yet the era of anarchic hormones had been long since left behind, and still Shin Jaekyung struggled to hold his balance on that treacherous tightrope - 'to toe the line'.
The line that he should never, ever, cross.
//
"Gwaenchan-ayo”, Jiho repeated rhythmically, as he rubbed the younger's back through his vest, "it's fine, you're ok".
Up and down and up and down.
Patient, since he knew well that it was a process that couldn’t be rushed. Jaekyung must find his own way back from the place that had scarred him so harshly.
Up and down and up and down, unhurried and undemanding...
It was always the moment the pliant body in his arms went suddenly rigid, that Jiho watched the other man regain a tentative grip on reality. Then they would silently, swiftly, disentangle. Sometimes an apologetic smile or awkward giggle - even, once or twice, a casual hand-grasp of thanks unspoken. Back to bandmates as soon as the storm passed.
So this time, as any other time, upon sensing Jaekyung’s return to rational being, Jiho awaited the hasty extraction. Waited, with his hand hovering, paused midway in stroking down the other's spine.
Outside, kohl clouds had finally burst in earnest, shedding their dark shawls as raindrops that drummed against the dormitory's windows. Night's air cooling, storm's humidity chased away by crispness, as creeping clarity stole the stage.
And still Jiho waited.
All at once too aware of his own presence; his clammy palms, the anxiety that constricted his throat as an ever-tightening, Amazonian boa.
If it had been any other Godly handsome man in his bed, he would have flippantly sassed his way out of the neverending loop - or f*cked his way. Either way.
But Shin Jaekyung was different. Hadn't he always been?
This was Jiho's endurance. Not the idol’s half-naked, thirst-trap photoshoots. Not witnessing him fawned and pawed at by fans. Not the rotating rumours of other-idol girlfriends. But the holding him through every unknown storm without falling so damned hard in love that he could never return from it.
These moments that were theirs, all theirs, and weighed so heavily upon his heart that he felt it was breaking. Actually, physically, breaking apart. A chasm, growing deeper and more dangerous with each year that passed at Jaekyung's side.
But just then, he was in his arms, and no one was letting go.
Storm playing its percussion. The sound of a common room door swinging shut on a distant floor. The scent of each other's shower gel and musk, mingling, as moonlight slanted through cloud cover and blinds.
It pooled in the younger man's eyes, silver bewitching to dance in his black, when he shifted to meet Jiho's gaze, frozen.
"There was a storm-", he said simply.
Words hanging in the air as it took the elder a moment to understand just what was playing out, until - eyes softening:
"Jae, you don't have to"
"Yeah, I think I do", the quiet reply.
Then with a steadying breath, Jaekyung began to tell his story, began to lay bare his soul.
//
"There was a storm back then - back then when I was a kid", the younger man flat on his back, staring up at the metal slats of the bunk above, reaching a hand to tug - childlike fidgeting - at a loose thread hanging forlornly from worn mattress.
The voice he spoke with seemed somehow gravelly, as if the words themselves could be as rough, as painful, as their collective meaning...
"After my Pa passed to leave me with Almeoni, I boarded at the school in the next town over during the week. But that day, the teachers released us to our families, once the local weather station warned how bad it was going to get. Phone masts were down or damaged early on, so I couldn't reach my grandmother right from the start. I hitched a ride back home, but the driver shoved me out of the passenger side miles short, turning back at the last big farmstead before we hit the river"
Jaekyung paused there, Jiho just able to make out his silhouette in profile, Adam's apple bobbing as he swallowed. As if bracing himself all over again to face what was to come.
The elder stretched out instinctively to take his hand. To soothe.
"Uhm" - he was forcing himself to continue, something like a purge - "So I just ran for hours with thunder clashing around my skull like cymbals, until my ears were ringing and my head felt like it would split. sh*t, I hate that f*cking sound. I guess part of me knew that it was hopeless, seeing the damage as I got closer, trees strewn around like toothpicks. No people left behind, like some video game’s ghost town. But I still tried, you know? I tried so hard to believe and to get to her like she would have done for me...I f*cking tried-"
"Jaekyung-Ah, it's enough, that's enough", Jiho shaking him insistently by the shoulder, "You can stop now"
"It just always felt like if I said it out loud, it would be real. The universe would know it was my fault. Now it does…”
"It's not your fault"
"But if I’d been faster, or stronger, or-“
"It was never your fault"
Jiho tightening his grip on the hand he still held in his own.
Something was changing - right then and there in that room. Metamorphosising into something more. Was it the altered setting? A relative freedom compared to the micromanagement of an idol group's over-scheduling. Or just the culmination of so, so, many years...
He let go of the hand.
Wasn't that what he was supposed to do?
The creak of the bunk as the younger turned onto his left side to bring them face-to-face - almost nose to nose.
Emotions running high - fizzing full, to burst towards the surface - and palpable in the watchful air around.
Both standing on the edge of a cliff at the cusp of dawn, muted light beginning to steal moonlight, as still the rain fell on.
Hours had passed since the storm began, hadn't they? What time was it now? - Jiho forced his thoughts desperately, any and all distractions invited - would morning's training be cancelled? Or would they have to relocate to-
"Jiho" - Jaekyung interrupted, voice lower, breathier then - a whole different channel. Shivers down the elder’s spine as goosebumps prickled into life upon forearms. "Jiho-ssi"
And the narrow distance between them ever-closing.
Oh God, oh sh*t.
The elder’s eyes squeezed shut, as he felt his bandmate's hot breath on his ear, words whispered:
"If you want me to stop, then turn away now"
//
It's said there's a moment at dusk in which a figure on the horizon becomes fleetingly indecipherable, entre chien et loup: the time between a dog and a wolf.
Such an instance occurs at the other end of a day too, in the minutes before dawn breaks. At 5.58am in late February, South Korea. Where two men could wonder 'what are we?', because in that muffled light where lines were blurred, neither really knew.
Even as they kissed.
At first the faintest of trembling lip brushes, then another, another.
Dream-like sequence of slow motion, stop motion - noses nudging, cheeks nuzzling, seeking out one another's warm comfort like said wolf mates in an underground den.
Entirely, thrillingly, new, yet achingly familiar.
Every time, Jaekyung finding his way magnetically back to Jiho's lips, full of frowned concentration as he brought their mouths together with more pressing purpose, maturing kisses to linger longer.
A sugar addict to his sweetest nectar.
"Hyung...Jiho-yah...don't forget…to breathe" - giddy and ghosting his thumb along the elder's lower lip as he embraced him, honey-drunk intoxicated.
Yet still the awareness to read the tension that gripped the silent other, the awkwardness that leadened his limbs in the hug, as he stood lost, at those same crossroads.
Jaekyung checking himself, regrouping and retreating.
Slow down. Slow down.
Moments to adjust to the monumental.
Instead, foreheads rested together where they lay - reaching, hesitantly, to stroke the comical spikiness of Jiho's newly-shorn hair down his nape. Tracing around to the face he’d longed to touch, hand caressing every dimple, every tiny worry line and individual eyelash, on its journey. As if, they were the most wondrous thing.
Tilting the other's chin upwards for dark eyes to meet in seriousness:
"Is this ok? Or, do you hate it?”
And Jiho’s uncharacteristically small voice, for the first time in a long time…
“I like it. I like it…too much”
The younger expelling air in emboldened ‘pfft’ - cupping the elder’s face with passionate force between his hands:
“Don’t you get it yet? When it’s you for me, there is no too much. I can’t even f*cking remember back to a time when I didn’t want you with everything that I am-”
Words cascading out into the air as butterflies escaping their net, fluttering defiance against swirling storm’s oppression.
“-Because who looks this damn beautiful with a military issue buzz cut?"
Familiar giggles. Lighter, easier, together.
“You think I’m beautiful?”, Jiho blushing, despite himself.
Jaekyung peppering pinked cheeks with infinite replies, all the unspoken remains of his reassurance: “You know I do”
A decade’s flames sparked alight even as rain cooled the earth around, heat flickering body to body as the two found themselves flush up against one another, souls bared and nowhere left to hide. Finally, last chains of heroic restraint melting from Jiho’s armour as he moulded right into the other with a whole-body sigh.
Hands roaming beneath hem lines, over mutually muscular backs. Pulling each other closer - impossibly closer. They’d danced this dance so many times - stretches and holds and lifts - but not like this. Never with true feeling and the freedom to succumb.
My bandmate, my dance partner, my friend, my brother, my-
What?
Jaekyung’s eyes glimmering as the elder pushed him onto his back to climb astride - just enough height beneath the upper bunk. Locked gaze unflinching when Jiho leaned forwards, savouring their spice, to lick down into his mouth. Insatiable hunger - now that he was at the dinner table. Tongues vying for dominance, teeth clashing, breath hitching as saliva glistened the air between the pair.
They met one another’s arousal. Heavy erections held apart by only the shy fabric of sweatpants. Kissing open mouthed until jaws ached, and Jiho’s hips began to move.
It wasn’t clear who moaned out first - it didn’t matter, neither could hold back now they’d ventured so far into the unknown and unnameable. Sounds of pleasure singing from lips to paint up, up, up to the room’s sky, in gasps and grunts and groans that swallowed up the soundtrack of storm.
All-consuming, until it felt the whole universe existed only between them.
Jiho urging the younger’s hands round to grip his ass to bruises, as he dry rutted - Jaekyung sucking a sharp breath in through teeth at the smoothness, the ample plumpness, of forbidden fruit in palms’ grasp at last.
The urge to smack it, to bite it, to bury his whole face in it and taste his hyung’s depths…
f*ck.
He was growing more maniacal with every roll of the elder’s hips. The sight of Jiho riding him in such impatience that both still wore night’s clothes - mouth parted and head flung back in ecstasy - a vision so perfect it could drive him straight off insanity’s brink.
“Haaa. Slow down, hyung. Go easy on me, or it’ll all be over…", he rasped.
To no avail - or wilfully ignored - they’d endured so long, too long, for each other.
“Touch me”, Jiho’s voice taking on a whiny edge as he dragged a white t-shirt up over his own head, clumsily relieving Jaekyung of his vest. Still grinding their groins - weeping co*cks crushed so hard between them that it hurt - but painful closeness almost second-nature nostalgia to those two.
Last semblances of self-control lost, as the younger craned to suck and swell candied pink nipples above - humming desire - to leave the elder’s back arched as his movements turned to desperate, disparate bouncing. Moans that were high-pitched mewls, as he slammed his own hand across his mouth to keep their secret.
A cacophony of arrhythmic bed creaking - feverishly flushed cheeks and glassy eyes.
So close to heaven.
Somewhere in the grounds below, one howling guard dog answering another in kind. There was a sense of earliest awakenings stirring that wet world for sunrise. Within the hour, first bedside alarms would be ringing to stagger shower room queues for the servicemen.
But not yet - this moment was theirs, only theirs, and they clung to it like each other.
At last Jaekyung flipping Jiho beneath him, caging him down on the mattress between powerful arms, as he thrust wildly against clothed desire.
“-Mmmh…Jae…Jaekyung-ah…I want you…please…want you inside me” - Jiho’s near delirious whimpers as he bucked below, wrapping legs around buttocks to pull him in for more, more.
The younger huffing out cheeks, sweat streaming, pooling in riveted contours of tanned, rippling muscles, from just the sheer effort of not giving what he was asked.
“…Not here, not like this…m-my Jiho-ssi” - uttering it as a mantra.
Until they ended up right back where they started. On their sides and nose to nose in apple pie bedsheets. A face-off as each gazed into the other’s eyes - heavy-lidded desire - and fisted his co*ck for the first time.
It wouldn’t take long.
“I want to kiss you”, Jiho needy as he neared his bliss.
“Me too, baby” - it rolled off Jaekyung’s tongue as if he’d been saying it his whole life.
Panting into one another’s mouths as their hands stroked each other at pace, lowered sweatpants already sticky with spilled adoration.
Scorched flesh, rigid and aching for release.
“Nnngghh”
“Ahhhhh”
“I’m gonna c-come” / “I’m coming too”
co*cks twitching to shoot out ribbons of pearly euphoria.
And in the throes of otherworldly climax - a moment in which both came so far undone the galaxy’s stars seemed to blaze by as fireflies where they floated - they embraced.
Holding tight, holding on, as the aftershocks of what they’d done reverberated, to ricochet from head to heart and back again.
Ragged breaths atop a rugged landscape of lust: sweat and come and limbs entwined.
The time entre chien et loup passed to past, and in the brave light of a brand new day - grinning at one another as the fourteen and sixteen-year-old they once had been - whether dogs, wolves, or any other, Jaekyung and Jiho knew just what they were.
My bandmate, my dance partner, my friend, my brother, my love.
My love.
“Jae, do you hear that?”
The younger co*cking his head - rounded eyes and quizzical, as ears searched for Jiho’s meaning.
Until at last, it dawned:
“The storm is over”
// END //
