Hands

Seunghyun and Jiyong are smoking a bowl in the studio when Seunghyun asks, “Aren’t hands kind of weird?”

Jiyong burst out laughing, “Wow –,” he wheezes, too choked by laughter to string together more than a word or two at a time – “Hyung...you’re...such a – such a cliche!”

Seunghyun blinks. “Why?” he asks. He has no idea what Jiyong’s talking about.

Jiyong wipes tears from his eyes. “You’re staring at your hands! And you’re saying –” he dissolves into laughter again – “talking about hands! Being weird! That’s like the most cliche thing you can do when you’re high.”

“Oh,” says Seunghyun. He has to think about it for a minute to get what Jiyong means. “Oh! No, I didn’t mean like weird looking,” he says. Jiyong is still laughing pretty hard, so he waits for him to calm down. It takes so long that Seunghyun forgets he had something to say.

“Well?” Jiyong asks when he’s finally able to sit still again.

“Hmm?”

“What’s weird about hands?” Jiyong asks, his voice tensing a bit as he undoubtedly suppresses another giggling fit.

“Oh, right,” says Seunghyun. “Well, I was just going to say, isn’t it weird that our hands are so intimate, but they’re the only thing we don’t cover up? And our faces!” Seunghyun says, remembering faces. “We don’t cover our faces either, and they’re really intimate too. Like, someone touching your hands or your face is a big deal, but they’re the only parts of you that are always available to touch.”

The amusement has melted from Jiyong’s face. “Yeah,” he says, nodding slowly. “You’re right, Hyung. Your hands are like...how you experience the world.”

“Right!” says Seunghyun, shifting his weight and moving closer to Jiyong in the process. “They’re so personal, so you’d think we’d want to cover them up. But we don’t. They’re the one thing we don’t. It’s like the same as if you walked around in pants with no crotch,” he says.

“They make those,” Jiyong says, eyes flaring wide. “They make pants with no crotch. You can buy them if you want.”

A giggle bursts from Seunghyun as he imagines showing up to dance practice one day with his dick out. “I don’t want those,” he says. “But listen. Listen! Isn’t it weird? It’s so weird. Your hands are so sensitive, and we just leave them completely unprotected most of the time.”

“Yeah,” says Jiyong, back to nodding in a steady rhythm. “Yeah, that’s right.”

“It’s like you live in your hands. You know? The way you do in your head? Like if your leg is touching something it’s not a big deal, but if you’re touching something with your hands, it’s like –” Seunghyun can’t come up with the right word, but when he says, “You know?” Jiyong nods a little more vigorously. “Maybe I should start wearing gloves,” Seunghyun muses.

“No!” Jiyong says, his own hands darting out to grab one of Seunghyun’s. “Your hands are so nice,” he says, looking down at the one he’s captured with some strange fervor in his eyes. He holds Seunghyun’s hand, a good bit larger than Jiyong's, and inspects it like it’s a rare, precious artifact. Seunghyun’s hand stills as Jiyong holds it; he feels almost incapable of moving it anymore, as though it’s now Jiyong’s to do with what he will – even though he senses every bit of Jiyong’s touch so acutely.

Jiyong’s hands are pleasantly warm, the skin smooth but firm. He plays with Seunghyun’s fingers, bending them gently, then turns his hand over and traces a circle in the bowl of his palm.

“I can tell your future, you know,” Jiyong says. “From your palm. I read about it on the internet. The lines and stuff. I can totally see everything that’s going to happen to you.”

“Oh yeah? What’s going to happen, then?”

“Mmm,” Jiyong considers. “Oh, well, see here?” Jiyong jabs at a spot somewhere near his thumb. “This is where you meet the most handsome man in the world. He becomes your group’s leader.” He can’t hold back his laughter at his own joke.

“Yah,” Seunghyun says, his hand coming back to life to lazily swat at Jiyong. “You weren’t even a man at all when we met. You were just a snot-nosed little kid.”

“But Hyung,” Jiyong groans. “That’s how palm-reading works. It tells you your whole life. And I became the most handsome man in the world, didn’t I?”

“Oh yeah,” Seunghyun snorts. “Totally. Yeah, Kwon Jiyong is definitely more handsome than –” He means to name a top actor or model, but he can’t come up with a single one. He laughs; he must be more stoned than he thought. “Let me do yours,” he says, lifting Jiyong’s hand.

“But you don’t know how to read palms,” Jiyong says through giggles.

Seunghyun’s giggling too. “Sure I do, sure I do. Um…” He sweeps a thumb across Jiyong’s palm and somehow can’t bring himself to stop, distracted by the steady movement and the way he can feel the whorls in Jiyong’s skin. “You’re going to...um...I think...shit.” He looks up at Jiyong and grins sheepishly.

“It’s okay Hyung; I already know my future.”

“You do?”

“Yeah, I’m an expert palm reader, remember? I’m going to get three things.” He sits up straight and clears his throat. “Fortune!” he shouts, voice stiff and serious, “Fame! Love!” He relaxes back against the couch, laughing.

“Ahh, so you’re a good person to be friends with,” Seunghyun says. “I can ride your coattails right to the top. So I’ll stick with you.”

“Will you?” Jiyong asks. The question hangs in the air, the silence suddenly strange and still and tense. But before Seunghyun can even guess at what’s happening, the mood shifts back. “Let me see,” Jiyong says, taking Seunghyun’s hand again. It’s the opposite to the one he’d looked at before, but apparently that doesn’t matter for an expert palm reader. “Ah yes,” he says, nodding sagely. “We’ll be together for many years to come.”

*

When Jiyong passes Seunghyun a water bottle, or a pen, or a plate, or whatever, sometimes his fingers brush Seunghyun’s.

When other people pass Seunghyun things, sometimes their fingers brush too. But when it happens with Jiyong, Seunghyun notices.

*

The day after the first time Seunghyun preps Jiyong, he can’t stop looking at his hand. He keeps measuring his fingers against things, marveling at how deep inside Jiyong they went. Of course, his dick went even deeper, but somehow that’s less remarkable. Because he wore a condom then, and now his dick is safely in his pants, tucked away behind two layers of clothing, and his fingers – which were covered in nothing but lube – are just out in the world, touching stuff. As though they weren’t, merely hours ago, inside Kwon Jiyong.

They tingle when he thinks about it (they tingle all day): how Jiyong was so warm and tight, how he could feel every flutter and twitch. He thinks of Jiyong’s bossy tone as he coached Seunghyun, how his words turned to a high-pitched keen when Seunghyun found the spot he was looking for. These fingers – these very same fingers that have fumbled with coins and dropped cups of coffee and accidentally hit him in the face when he was trying to pry a lid off a jar – they made Jiyong’s thighs shake. They made him moan. They opened him up so Seunghyun and Jiyong could make love.

He keeps his right hand in his pocket for much of that day, but what’s strange is how quickly it stops feeling strange. Because he needs his hands to eat and write things down and brush his teeth and a million other mundane daily jobs. He can’t reserve them for the sacred act of touching Jiyong. And he finds, to his surprise, that people can’t tell what they’ve done just by looking. They don’t glow or vibrate or anything. They look just the same as the hands of all the people who haven’t had the pleasure of making Jiyong come.

Seunghyun’s hands are, like his relationship with Jiyong itself, a secret hidden in plain sight.

*

Seunghyun comes to associate Jiyong taking off rings with getting laid. This is a problem, because sometimes he’ll get horny watching him remove borrowed rings after a photoshoot, when they’re off to their next scheduled event and don’t have time for even a clumsy grope to tide him over.

Jiyong doesn’t always take off his jewelry when they fuck – he’s left on watches, bracelets, necklaces. But never rings. When Seunghyun points this out, Jiyong says, “Well, mostly the ones I wear are so clunky. I don’t want to hurt you by accident. I want to just touch you without thinking about it.”

They’re lying in Seunghyun’s bed together, curled up naked and facing each other. Seunghyun loves having sex with Jiyong – he really can’t stress enough how good it is – but when they’re apart, these are often the times he thinks back on. It’s a different kind of bliss: more even and slow.

“The first time I wore a really big ring,” Jiyong says, knotting his and Seunghyun’s hands together, “I had this vision of myself jacking off with it on and my foreskin getting pinched in it.” Seunghyun winces and lets out a horrified sound. Jiyong squeezes his hand and grins, half sympathetic and half amused. “I know,” he says. “So I never wear rings if my hand’s going near a dick.”

“Then maybe I should glue rings to your fingers if we’re going to be separated,” Seunghyun teases.

“What, so I can’t masturbate?”

“No, so you can’t touch anyone else’s dick. Although, yeah, I guess you wouldn’t be able to touch yourself, either.”

“Hyung,” Jiyong says, reaching up to lay his hand along Seunghyun’s jaw, the pad of his index finger rubbing circles on the hinge, “please trust me when I tell you the only dicks I want to touch are the ones currently in this bed.”

Seunghyun makes a show of sitting up and looking around for additional cocks, but he can’t hide the grin that has broken across his face.

*

It’s horrible, but a tiny, secret, selfish part of Seunghyun doesn’t want Jiyong to ever stop smoking. It’s crazy because of course Jiyong getting sick would be the worst thing in the world, but some little part of him is intensely attracted to the way Jiyong smokes. It’s not just his lips pursing to inhale or the smoke curling languidly out of his mouth; it’s every step in his routine, from the way he shakes a cigarette out of the pack to the way he stubs out the butt when he’s through. It’s rather like the pleasure Seunghyun gets from watching Jiyong’s long, clever fingers roll a joint – but watching him smoke a cigarette is something he can do much more often.

“Hyung, I’m going for a smoke break, you want to come?”

That part’s good too.

*

They’ve taken over a swanky Manhattan steakhouse to celebrate shooting their two new music videos. Seunghyun and Jiyong are sitting next to each other in the center of one of those big curved booths that Seunghyun is sure he saw in some American gangster movie or another. The room is dimly lit and loud with the chatter in both English and Korean – more English, actually, since most of the crew was hired over here. It’s nice; Seunghyun can tune out the noise and focus on the conversations he wants to have.

Seunghyun’s lowering his glass of beer back onto the table when Jiyong slips his hand in Seunghyun’s pocket. In his surprise he lets go a fraction of a second too soon, but he’s drank enough that none spills and the thick white tablecloth muffles the clunk.

If you’d asked him before this happened, Seunghyun would’ve said that Jiyong would for sure go for his dick in this situation. He loved to find ways to subtly fondle Seunghyun in public. But he doesn’t. He just rests his hand on Seunghyun’s thigh, only the thin material of Seunghyun’s pocket separating their skin.

Seunghyun pats Jiyong’s fingers through his jeans, then after a moment of hesitation, puts his own hand in Jiyong’s pocket. He allows himself to exchange a boyish grin with Jiyong, then turns back to the table and refocuses on the group.

*

If Seunghyun is feeling overwhelmed, like the room is closing in and he’s going to be drowned in a sea of cloying faces, he shakes the bracelets down his wrist and folds his fingers as flat against his palm as he possibly can until he can just barely graze the beads with his fingertips. If he really needs to, he reaches over with his opposite hand and briefly grasps his wrist, feeling the beads press into the flesh of his palm. It always makes him feel better.

He didn’t understand, at first, why Jiyong insisted on buying Seunghyun a set to match the ones Seunghyun had bought him. But now he gets it. The briefest touch reminds him of when the world is just the two of them, alone together.

*

When Seunghyun feels the glass slice into his hand, his first thought is, Fuck, followed shortly by, Oh, it’s not that bad. It doesn’t hurt too much, but he’s probably still going to need a band-aid which will fuck up the shots where that hand is visible which will fuck up the whole filming schedule which will make this movie take even fucking longer which fucking sucks.

Then he looks down and sees all the blood. Fuck, he thinks again.

He keeps trying to argue that he doesn’t really need to go to the hospital, even as he bleeds all over everything. His clothes, the floor, the DP who tries to take a look but turns green and has to walk away. One of the camera operators, a man at least six foot tall and built like a brick house, looks on the verge of fainting. Seunghyun’s manager isn’t looking too steady either. It’s the makeup noona who marches over, grabs Seunghyun by the wrist, yanks his arm up, and says loud enough to cut through all the panicked chatter, “You need to go to the fucking hospital.” She tells Seunghyun to keep his hand elevated and manager-hyung to get his shit together. Seunghyun is so awed by her assertiveness – this very same woman asked permission to dab sweat from his brow earlier today and thanked him when he said yes – that he doesn’t notice that blood is now running down his arm under the cuff of his shirt. (The next time Seunghyun sees her, she apologizes profusely for her “rude, unprofessional outburst” and goes back to being mind-numbingly deferential.)

It only starts to hurt much later, at the hospital, after the surgery. (Apparently he fucked his hand up past the point that simple stitches would suffice. He needed actual surgery. They made him change into a hospital gown. It was brutal.) But he’s put on painkillers strong enough to give him a little buzz. Dopey, he reads the alarmed messages Jiyong sent him (their managers are always in touch) and smiles. He takes a picture of his heavily bandaged hand and writes, This is the hand I jack off with T_T

Jiyong gets back to him almost instantly: Our poor Oppa! Someone will have to help you with that, I guess ^_-

But their conversation is cut short when manager-hyung tells him his parents are on their way up. Seunghyun has been dreading this – his parents have never been too pleased with his career, and they’re bound to see this as evidence that they were right to disapprove. The meds take the edge off, but it still sucks. His mother cries like he’s dying and his father gives him a look that says: After everything we went through so you wouldn’t have to work with your hands.

Which is unfair. Because it’s not like he’s doing fucking construction or something. He sulks through their visit, getting annoyed with his mother’s fussing. His mom tries to stay over, but he insists she go home with his dad. Even after they leave, his irritation lingers, and he can’t come up with a clever response to Jiyong’s message saying that he’s going to dress up as nurse and sneak in to see him. Time stretches on and all he’s got is ‘Yes, I want that’, which isn’t funny at all. So he just puts his phone away and goes to sleep.

*

Seunghyun should feel guilty about how his accident halted production on the movie – and he does; really, he does – but privately he's incredibly relieved to have a break. He's just been so tired.

Even more privately, he's relieved Jiyong is busy promoting and that they won't be spending every second of his time off together. Of course he loves being around Jiyong, but Jiyong doesn't understand the concept of needing time alone. Jiyong's the sort of person who will call you to have breakfast and then want to go shopping and then want to go out to lunch and then want to go to a movie and then want to go out for dinner and then want to go out clubbing and then it's three in the morning and he's telling you this whole long story while you're trying to get in a taxi and just go home. And it's fun – Jiyong knows how to have a good time – and it's exciting to be the focus of his attention, to feel so wanted by him. But the thing about Jiyong is that he has no problem doing all that two days in a row. Or three. Or four. Or every day until his next schedule. And Seunghyun's just not up for that; even less so lately. He sometimes likes to be home alone and eat junk food in his pajamas. He likes to sit in silence watch the sky out the window. He knows it's boring and weird, but he likes it.

Only if he tried to tell Jiyong that he didn't want to spend time with anyone, Jiyong would take it as 'I don't want to spend time with you'. So it's just a lot easier when Jiyong's schedule precludes back-to-back all-day hang outs.

But even though he spends most of his break sleeping and lounging and just generally being a lazy fuck, he's still exhausted the whole time. Jiyong pouts, saying that he shouldn't have pushed himself to do the fan meeting the day after the accident, but surely that wasn't enough to make him this tired. He'd thought he just needed to catch up on some sleep, but now that he has, he thinks maybe he slept too much and what he actually needs to do is keep busy. Which shouldn’t be difficult given he’s simultaneously on a world tour and starring in a movie.

His hand is wrapped up so thickly that it's like an awkward club at the end of his arm. He’s supposed to wear a sling, probably because when he doesn't keep his arm restrained, he reflexively reaches out for things with his injured hand.

Like Jiyong, for example. The first time he does it, Jiyong freaks out, certain Seunghyun's hand is on the verge of falling off. But by the fifth or sixth time Seunghyun's clumsy swipe interrupts their attempts at intimacy, he just laughs. "You're going to give me a new fetish if you keep prodding my junk with that thing."

“Sorry,” Seunghyun mumbles, rubbing at his eyes with his good hand. It’s frustrating; this is something he’s usually pretty good at.

Jiyong kisses his jaw softly and whispers “Just let me take care of you, okay?” He gently holds Seunghyun’s bandaged wrist in place at his side while he starts working on him. But Seunghyun is distracted and still sort of vaguely annoyed with this whole situation, and it takes him longer than usual to get hard.

*

“Hyung, I think you should take me out tonight,” Jiyong says, flashing a sloppy grin. He just showed up a few minutes ago and it seems he’s already tipsy – he came by cab and his breath is overpoweringly minty, like he chewed a bunch of gum to cover up the smell of liquor. Seunghyun’s not exactly stone-cold sober himself, but his is a very different kind of buzz. Definitely not the fun drunk Jiyong is aiming for.

“I’m tired,” he says. “I was just going to bed.” He wasn’t, but it’s not like his plans are dramatically different from being asleep.

“Oppaaa,” Jiyong whines. “Come play with me.” Jiyong has followed Seunghyun into his living room and he stands there with his arms outstretched, opening and closing his hands, while Seunghyun flops onto the couch.

“We shouldn’t go out together. Someone might take pictures,” Seunghyun says. He burned with indignation when they were told off for their “childish, thoughtless behavior”, but it makes for a convenient excuse.

“I’ll invite people!” Jiyong says brightly. “We’ll make it a guys’ night out! Come on, don’t you want to see your friends?”

“I just want to sleep,” Seunghyun says. He can no longer remember the last time this wasn’t true.

“Hyung, you’re so boring. It’s really getting annoying,” says Jiyong.

Jiyong’s words feel like a stone dropped in his chest, disturbing the cold waters within. Seunghyun turns on his side and draws his knees towards his chest, as if doing so will stop the iciness from leaking out.

When Jiyong sees Seunghyun has no response to this, that he’s not going to leap from the couch with a laugh, he sighs. “Well, I want to go out,” he says.

“Okay,” Seunghyun replies. “Thanks for stopping by.” He doesn’t know if he’s being sarcastic or not.

While they’re waiting for another cab, Seunghyun manages to sit up on the couch. Jiyong sits beside him.

“Hyung, why are you like this?” Jiyong asks. He says it in a whiny voice, but Seunghyun can feel the note of concern underlying it. “What’s wrong?”

Seunghyun tries to figure out how to answer that. “Nothing,” he finally says, which feels like the most honest response given the available options. “I’m all right. I’m just tired.” This is less honest, but still not entirely untrue.

“You’re tired a lot lately,” Jiyong says.

“Yeah.”

Jiyong picks up Seunghyun’s hand and plays with it absentmindedly, staring off at nothing. Seunghyun watches how Jiyong’s long, slim fingers pluck at his own. But his eyes drift to focus on the mark on his hand, now fading from its former angry red, and he feels a wave of exhaustion. He’s supposed to be wearing silicon pads on it to help with the scarring, but it’s rare that he can be bothered. He can already feel the ugly, patchwork thickness of the new skin.

Jiyong looks down then and notices Seunghyun’s scar, too. “It’s getting better,” he comments. Then he jumps up. “Wait a second; I’ll be right back.”

Seunghyun can hear him rummaging around the kitchen. He returns a moment later with a sharpie. “Hyung, I have some advice for you,” he says as he uncaps the marker, “and as your band leader you have to listen to me, okay? Here’s what you should do.” He makes two little marks below Seunghyun’s first knuckle so the scar becomes the mouth in a smiley face.

Seunghyun looks up at Jiyong’s face, barely able to comprehend. Jiyong is grinning, pleased with his cleverness.

It is a testament to how much Seunghyun loves Jiyong that he manages to pull the corners of his mouth up into a simulacrum of a smile. Jiyong beams back at him.

Just then Jiyong’s phone buzzes; his car is here. “Have fun tonight,” Seunghyun says, forcing his voice up an octave to sound light and cheerful.

“You sure you don’t want to come?” Jiyong asks as he stands.

“Yeah, I’m beat,” Seunghyun says, yawning for effect. He’s suddenly incredibly embarrassed by the state of his house – and himself; when was the last time he washed his hair? “Probably just going to do a load of laundry and hit the hay.” Seunghyun in fact has no idea how to work his washer. His mom is the only one who uses it. He (or more accurately, his manager) has his clothes sent out.

“All right. Sleep well.” Jiyong bends down to kiss him and bounds off.

The smile slides off Seunghyun’s face when he hears the door close. He sinks back into the couch and slumps horizontal. The scar on his hand is burning.

*

Seunghyun remembers one time hearing a woman describe her relationship with her boyfriend as 'out-of-sync' and thinking, What does that even mean? But now he understands, because that's how it is with him and Jiyong. Their conversations are halting and awkward; full of weird, passive-aggressive jabs. They can never seem to catch each other on the phone. Their sex somehow now includes a lot more elbows and cold feet.

Jiyong comes over one night with takeout, and even though Seunghyun recognizes the kindness of his gesture, he’s just grumpy that Jiyong didn’t call first because everything’s a mess and he has leftovers he was looking forward to eating.

In the kitchen together, as Seunghyun digs around for clean wine glasses, Jiyong tries to take his hand. But Seunghyun doesn't see and he moves at the wrong moment and Jiyong winds up bumping his hand away instead, his fingertips gliding feather-light across Seunghyun’s skin.

*

Usually Jiyong likes birthday surprises, but this year he tells Seunghyun three full weeks in advance what the plan is. “You’re going to take me to get a tattoo on the twentieth. That’s going to be your present to me.”

“But I can’t drive,” Seunghyun points out.

“Well, I’ll drive. But you’re going to come with me. And pay for that tattoo. Don’t worry, it shouldn’t be too expensive.”

“Okay.” Seunghyun has about a million questions: What’s the tattoo of? Where will it be? Why is this his gift? Is the tattoo related to him, to them? Doesn’t he want anything else? Is anyone coming with them? How long will it take? But they’re in such a strange place at the moment, their relationship slowly blooming again now that Seunghyun’s started to come back to himself. Everything feels so delicate. He doesn’t want to push.

Jiyong made a private appointment, so the shop is empty but for them and the artist. While she and Jiyong talk, Seunghyun wanders around looking at sample drawings and photos of finished pieces. Seunghyun asked about the new tattoo on the ride over, but Jiyong just smiled mysteriously and told him he’d see it when it was done. As hard as he’s trying to respect that, he can’t help but sneak glances and try to guess what’s going on.

Jiyong is sitting in the chair, the tattoo artist on a stool beside him, bent over his left arm. Seunghyun feels a little wave of disappointment – he'd sort of convinced himself that the tattoo was going to be something to do with him, but Jiyong says his right arm is dedicated to Seunghyun. It isn't really, though. Jiyong was the one who started saying stuff about “the sweet life” and – in what he now recognizes to be one in a series of weird, misdirected attempts to win Jiyong's affection – Seunghyun put that up as his title on Cyworld. Then Jiyong put up 'vita dolce' – the Italian for 'sweet life' – as his Cyworld title. At the time Seunghyun took this as an effort to one-up him, but it was actually Jiyong's own weird, misdirected (and entirely unnecessary) attempt at winning Seunghyun's affection. So this sweet life business started and ended with Jiyong, and only serves to remind Seunghyun of being an idiot teenager who didn’t understand his own feelings. And the Keith Haring tattoo is really more about being queer in general than specifically about their relationship. Seunghyun pointed all this out to Jiyong, who told him not to worry because when he was fifty he was going to have Seunghyun’s face tattooed on his bicep. (“My face when I’m fifty or my face now?” Seunghyun had asked. Jiyong responded that he would do exhaustive research in the twenty-something years to come to find the best possible picture of Seunghyun to use.)

After a few minutes, Jiyong calls out, "Hyung, come see!"

"Is it finished already?" Seunghyun asks as he hurries over.

"No, she just drew on what it's going to look like. See?"

"It's on your hand!" Seunghyun blurts. Jiyong already has his fortune/fame/love tattoos on his fingers, but those are mostly hidden. This is a smiley face in the space between his thumb and forefinger on the back of his hand. Only gloves or some serious makeup would cover it.

“Yeah,” says Jiyong. “What do you think?”

“But...your hand!” Seunghyun can’t get over it. Who gets a tattoo on the back of their hand like that? Hands are visible all the time. If anyone knows what it’s like to have a big obvious mark on the back of their hand, it’s Seunghyun.

And suddenly he takes in the design: the curve of the mouth, the location. His stomach drops. This is the tattoo Jiyong wants him to pay for? A cruel parody of a reminder of the worst time in Seunghyun’s life? He lifts his eyes to meet Jiyong’s, searching for an explanation – is this some kind of punishment? But there’s no malice on Jiyong’s face; only a of hopeful smile.

Seunghyun’s lips part, but even if he knew what to say to this, he couldn’t say it front of the tattoo artist.

Jiyong turns to her and says, “Could you give us a minute? I just need to talk privately to him before I do this.”

“Of course,” she says. “Just come get me when you’re ready to go.”

They wait for her to leave the room before looking at each other again.

“Come sit,” Jiyong says, nodding at the vacated stool. When he does, Jiyong reaches out and passes his fingers through Seunghyun’s hair with a fond smile. “Hyung...do you like it?”

What’s Seunghyun supposed to say? He hasn’t criticized a single thing Jiyong’s said or done since they started up again. He knows he doesn’t have the right, not after what he put Jiyong through. But this – this is forever. And it’s clearly so important to Jiyong. How can he say something? How can he not? “I just… Uh… Why...why are you getting this?” Seunghyun asks slowly.

Jiyong reaches out to lay a finger on the back of Seunghyun’s hand. “Your scar,” he says. “Every time I see it, I think about that movie, how you pushed yourself, how sad you were, our breakup. I hate that. I want to be reminded of happy things.”

Seunghyun nods. He can feel himself shutting down, his heart sinking, dimming. It makes sense. Jiyong wants to cover up a bad memory with something good. It’s just like the night he wanted Seunghyun to cover up his misery with a fake smile. But what Jiyong doesn’t seem to realize is that Seunghyun was devastated by that. It had killed that Jiyong was so dismissive of his pain – even though Seunghyun knew he didn’t have a good excuse for what he was going through.

“So I’m getting it to remind myself,” Jiyong continues, “that we love each other, and we’ve been so happy together, even if there have been bad times. And when you can’t smile, I’ll look at this and remember that it’s my job to smile for you.”

Jiyong’s words are like a pinprick that lets all the pressure in his chest bleed away. Seunghyun is having no problem smiling now.

The gaze at each other, stupid and happy, until finally Jiyong asks, “Should I tell her to come back in?”

“Yeah,” says Seunghyun. “But are you positive you want it on your hand? Everyone will see it.”

"That’s what I want,” Jiyong says. “And no one will be able to tell me I have to take it off.”

As they're leaving the shop, Jiyong freshly inked, they are alone in the hallway to the exit. Wordlessly, they join their marked hands, and like that they walk to the door.

Notes