Chapter Text
Donghyuck hates the way nighttime falls across Halifax College in October. Sharp-edged and inky blue, whistling up the sleeves of his coat and seeping through the edges of the old glass windows in the graduate library. He hates the way the wind comes wheeling around the corners of buildings in the quad, slamming into him and knocking the breath from his lungs. He hates the way the night freezes his cheeks and fingers.
But most of all, he hates the way it turns all the light extra golden. That Golden light thus shines over his nemesis and rival, Jaemin Na, making him look lit up from the inside.
It’s incredibly distracting and deeply offensive, if he’s being honest. Perhaps it’s his fault, Renjun suggests slyly, for always inviting Jaemin to sit at their table. Donghyuck insists that it’s purely out of politeness, even though it happens every time they’re in the library and Donghyuck sees Jaemin. Maybe he’s a masochist, Chenle offers, snickering. That could be true. Looking at Jaemin is often like looking at the sun, and not in a warm-on-your-face way. More like the scalding-your-retinas way.
Anyway, he’s here, lit by the study lamp and the overhead chandeliers and outlined in perfect evening blue light, and Donghyuck has an essay due.
Not just any essay— the essay, for the singular most important essay contest in his life. Victory would not only mean triumphing over all his peers (and therefore proving himself, once and for all, to be the best in the department) but finally proving himself to Jaemin as the more worldly and well-spoken. It would also show his father that he’s worth something, but that particular brand of trauma is too distracting to unpack right now.
The prompt had been simple, as they often are: What is tragedy?
Donghyuck has something genius here about the horrors of war and how humanity is forever doomed to repeat its worst mistakes. His friends have read the rough draft and passed his computer back to him with wide eyes. He knows it’s good. He knows it’s a winner. He only has to—
“You’re gonna have back problems again if you keep sitting like that,” Jaemin says, and Donghyuck’s already-scattered focus shatters into a million pieces.
He bolts upright and scowls at Jaemin. “Mind your own business.”
“I’m just saying, I’m not going to give you my notes if you miss class again to go to acupuncture, or whatever,” Jaemin answers, looking nonplussed by Donghyuck’s frustration.
“Fuck off,” Donghyuck says, and Jaemin shrugs.
“Okay, but don’t come sniffing around my apartment when you need my Roman law notes again.”
Mark, Renjun’s boyfriend, and Jisung, one of Jaemin’s friends, giggle into their hands. Something about Donghyuck and Jaemin’s relationship is entertaining to them, and the worst part is, they’re not the only ones. To most of the Classics department, which Donghyuck and Jaemin are both part of, their names are permanently stuck together. To refer to one of them is to invoke the other, even if by accident.
The thing is, he knows how they look. They must make a familiar sight: Jaemin, expensive backpack slung over his shoulder, smiling faintly. Donghyuck, incensed about something, dropping handwritten notes, his glasses tangled in his hair.
He’s heard the whispers too, of course. How could he not? They spend an absurd amount of time together, their heads bent close over some obscure translation of Gorgias. And then there’s Donghyuck rapidly closing the space between them when he gets particularly heated about something; Jaemin’s mindless hand on his back or shoulder, tugging at his sweater to keep him out of the way of errant bicyclists or muddy puddles.
But it’s only because Jaemin is the only one who can keep up with him. Who can and will match him step-by-step. Who will gleefully knock him off balance, only to set him right on his feet again.
Jaemin gets up to use the bathroom, and Donghyuck turns to his friends with an accusatory look.
“What the hell is wrong with you?”
“We just think you guys are funny,” Mark says apologetically, raising his hands.
“We’re not funny,” Donghyuck replies with slightly too much venom. “He’s insufferable.”
Mark, who has vocally disagreed on this last point many times before, wisely remains silent. He’s been friends with Donghyuck long enough to know when it’s not worth arguing with him.
Jaemin also knows when to give in, too. All too easily he’ll concede the point and smile, and say something affable, and Donghyuck will have technically won the argument but will still walk away with an itchy sensation of loss.
And that’s not even the start of his issue with Jaemin. Donghyuck’s frustration with him is endless; their rivalry is so deeply entrenched that even getting to class is a race, a competition to be won.
“He’s my worst rival,” Donghyuck says, “since—”
“High school, yeah,” Mark says. He’s heard this story a million times, but Donghyuck will tell him again anyway, because he’s worked up about this now. “You’re not even the same major.”
“This school is so damn small that it doesn’t even matter,” Donghyuck says, and Mark hums in agreement. “Except for the fucking business school, but that doesn’t count.”
“Renjun would disagree.”
“Renjun would definitely agree, he hates his major,” Donghyuck says. “Anyways, Jaemin has always thought he’s better than me, and he’s so smug about it, like it’s just so unfortunate that the rest of us have to be second place.”
“Sure,” Mark agrees easily. “But, uh, have you ever considered that maybe—”
“No,” Donghyuck says, scowling at him. “It’s not all in my head. You’ve seen it with your own eyes. Everyone says, oh, Jaemin’s so easy to get along with, he’s so fun to be around, he’s so easygoing, but when it’s me, suddenly it’s life or death. Suddenly he’s the most competitive person in the world.”
Jisung squints at Donghyuck, looking suspicious. He’s always quick to defend Jaemin, which is annoying. “It’s because you egg him on.”
“I do not—”
“You so do—”
Mark’s phone starts buzzing, cutting their argument short. It’s Renjun.
“The herald calls,” Donghyuck sighs dramatically. “Go ahead, answer it. I already know what he’s going to say.”
Mark gives Donghyuck an exasperated look, and picks up the call. “Hey, babe,” he says, smiling in the gross way he reserves for Renjun. “What’s up?”
“Probably something to do with Jaemin,” Donghyuck mutters darkly.
“What about me?” Jaemin asks, sitting back down. Donghyuck gives him a flat look.
“Only that I’m going to kick your ass in this essay competition,” Donghyuck says.
Jaemin raises an eyebrow. “You’ve barely written anything since we’ve been sitting here.”
“ Your fault, by the way,” Donghyuck says. “I was doing just fine until you came.”
Jaemin gives him an exasperated look. “Donghyuck, you invited me here.”
“Beside the point!” Donghyuck objects, ignoring the way Jisung is laughing at him again. “You should’ve said no! And anyways, you haven’t even looked at my homework for Greek Epics yet. Trish will kill me if I get my translation mixed up again.”
“Trish won’t kill you,” Jaemin says, “because she adores you. Let me see.”
“You’re the poetry expert,” Donghyuck says, changing tabs and passing Jaemin his computer. “It’s the least you can do, after all I’ve done for you.”
Jisung rolls his eyes so hard Donghyuck can feel it from two seats away. Mark hangs up his phone and slumps back in his chair. “Damn,” he says. “You guys are still working? It’s Friday night.”
“True academics understand the value of using their time efficiently,” Donghyuck says.
“You’re so full of shit,” Jisung tells him. “What did Renjun want?”
“Him and Chenle have started pregaming for the Halloween party,” Mark says. “They asked if we were coming.”
Jisung slams his computer closed in an instant and starts packing up his bag with impressive speed. “Absolutely. I’m sick of doing work.”
Mark turns to Jaemin and Donghyuck. “Are you guys coming too?”
Jaemin slides his eyes over to Donghyuck, who purses his lips. Both of them have too much work in unfinished states, but Charlie Laurier is throwing this party, which means it’ll have some modicum of taste, unlike so many other grimy kickbacks that Donghyuck gets invited to but doesn’t deign to attend.
Jaemin tilts his head at Donghyuck’s laptop. I’ll stay if you do.
“It’s Halloween,” Jisung complains. “You guys have been working all week. Can’t you let the dead Roman guys rest for one weekend?”
Absolutely not , Donghyuck almost says, but then he sees the tired slump of Jaemin’s shoulders and the way he rubs his eyes, eyelids half-closed.
“He’s got a point,” Donghyuck says at last. He could use a drink, if he’s being honest. The first round of judging for the essay competition is tonight, and it’s about as proofread and edited as it’ll possibly get. His anxiety makes him fidget. It would be nice to take the edge off. “My essay’s in good enough shape, and the homework isn’t due until Monday.”
Mark grins at Donghyuck, who sticks his tongue out.
“Thanks,” Jaemin says quietly, so none of their friends can overhear. Jisung is distracted by Mark, thankfully, who commands everyone’s attention as they pack up.
“Thanks for what,” Donghyuck says flatly. “I’ve never once ever done anything nice for you.”
Jaemin smiles knowingly, and leans in across the table, his arm braced against the surface. Donghyuck’s stomach does something horrific, like he’ll throw up. Definitely in need of a drink.
“Don’t worry, I won’t tell,” Jaemin murmurs. His eyes flick down, and then back up. “I know your reputation is important to you. It’s why you’re working so hard on this essay, right? So people will know you’re doing the right thing?”
Something uncomfortable and prickly sweeps over Donghyuck, raising gooseflesh. The thing is, it’s true. Beyond just his classmates and friends, there’s the matter of his father, who always knows exactly what he’s doing and how he’s doing it. This was the trade-off: Donghyuck is allowed his dalliances in undergrad, in return for law school in the future. Oh, and this: the second his grades slip, the second his father gets even a hint that someone may be doing better than him—all of this is gone. No more classics, no more Halifax autumns, no more coffee runs with Renjun, late-night studying in the undergrad library.
That night, before Donghyuck had left for his first day of freshman year, his dad had gripped his shoulder too tightly and looked him right in the eye. You make one mistake, he’s said, and I will ship you off to Korea to live with your uncle. You think I’m tough? Don’t disappoint me, and you won’t find out how easy your life is right now.
“You have no idea,” he replies, feeling off-balance. Jaemin is watching him closely— too closely, like he can pry the secrets out from under Donghyuck’s skin. “Now get out of here. You’re dead on your feet. You show up like this to the party, and I’ll regret dragging you out of here early.”
“Whatever you say,” Jaemin replies, grinning widely, like he doesn’t believe him. He throws his stuff into his bag and winks.
Donghyuck has to take a moment to steady himself. He hates how easily Jaemin can destabilize him. Forced proximity for years has given them an unfortunate understanding of each other, but it’s like Jaemin really watches him, and knows exactly what to say to knock him off-balance. Donghyuck is a shit-talker and a flirter by nature; he talks a big game out of necessity, so people can’t see the pure desperation that pushes him to win.
They part ways outside, Jaemin and Jisung head for north campus while Mark and Donghyuck go back to Donghyuck’s apartment, where Renjun and Chenle are already in full costume and drinking expensive wine out of Renjun’s nice crystal glasses.
Chenle, who’s wearing cat ears and a glittery see-through shirt, gives Donghyuck a smug smile when he walks through the door.
“Tore the scholar away from his books, did you?” he says, and Donghyuck rolls his eyes.
“That’s the lowest-effort costume I’ve seen from you in a while,” Donghyuck points out.
“Doesn’t matter,” Chenle says. “I just care about looking sexy.”
Renjun bursts into slightly tipsy laughter, and lets Mark squeeze next to him on the couch and kiss his cheek.
“I cannot take any of you,” Donghyuck says crossly, and steals Renjun’s wine out of his hand and goes to change. His friends’ laughter follows him all the way into his bedroom.
His costume is the same as last year’s—basic Greek Hero, with a white chiton, short cape, and fake golden laurel wreath. Sneakers because the east coast is too cold for sandals, even though he’d appreciate the historical accuracy.
Two shots and two glasses of wine later, his fingers are warm and he’s ready to go. Renjun is already flushed—he and Mark are dressed in baseball jerseys, supposedly from Twilight —and has a death grip on Chenle’s vape, which is always a bad sign as to how his night’s going to go.
Chenle, on the other hand, talks incessantly about hooking up with people the entire Uber ride, to the point that the driver looks vaguely uncomfortable by the time they stumble out of the backseat.
“I wonder if Jeno’s here already,” Chenle says, his eyes glinting.
Donghyuck makes a gagging noise. “Gross.”
“As if you and Jaemin are literally any better,” Renjun fires back, because he never misses an opportunity to point out something weird and twisty about their rivalry. Donghyuck knows, thank you very much. He plays it to his advantage, he’d like to think. “Oh, look, there they are.”
Jisung is some kind of zombie-ghost, low effort as Chenle. But Jaemin is wearing a pirate hat and a shirt open wide over his chest to show several golden necklaces. Donghyuck eyes the expanse of skin visible between the folds of his shirt and feels something slow and itchy crawl down his spine.
“Hi,” Jaemin says to all of them, even though he’s still staring at Donghyuck. Donghyuck shivers and realizes his coat is unbuttoned.
“Hi,” Donghyuck replies, and it sounds a little breathless. He feels very, very unsteady, though that’s probably the wine and the Fireball shooters he’d stashed in his pockets and then drank too quickly.
“Let’s go up,” Mark says, blissfully oblivious to the way everyone is looking between Jaemin and Donghyuck with sly, knowing expressions on their faces.
Donghyuck is grateful for the packed apartment and the dim lighting. Charlie Laurier appears dressed as a vampire, claps them all on the back, and offers them drinks. Jeno appears an hour later, slightly out of breath, and is instantly jumped by Chenle. The two of them vanish into the crowd of dancers and don’t reappear for a little while.
Donghyuck, in the meantime, drinks cider and vodka and dances until he’s winded, and then collapses on a couch to take a breather. The topic around him, bizarrely, becomes about Jaemin the second he sits down. Next thing he knows, he’s standing on the coffee table defending his honor as best he can.
“ Listen ,” he says, and the people on the couches around him immediately burst into disagreement, “I get such a bad rap for being the self-obsessed one in this relationship, which is stupid. Jaemin likes himself just as much as I like me. ”
“That is objectively untrue,” Jisung cuts in. He’s Jaemin’s best friend and the first to leap to his defense—also the first one to reign him in just when things get interesting. Donghyuck calls him the leash-holder, which irks Jisung to no end.
It’s kinda true, Jaemin had said once, drunk on sangria, his shirt unbuttoned down his chest. One of his feet hung over the side of the boat they were in, brushing the top of the smooth lake. I’d be on him all the time if not for you, Jisungie.
Donghyuck likes to think he could take Jaemin in a fight, but he’s also seen the way Jaemin’s shoulders fill out his sweaters, how even a wild sprint through the rain between classes doesn’t even wind him. So maybe not. Maybe it’s good that Jisung holds the leash.
Donghyuck rejoins the argument with renewed fervor, which somehow leeways into a debate about the validities of Monism, which gets everyone worked up about Parmenides, which of course gets the entirety of the department into a Theory of Forms frenzy, which Jeno somehow gets sucked into, and then he and Jisung spiral off into another conversation about geometry.
By the end of it all, they’re drunk and exhausted. Donghyuck has been speaking in a mix of Greek and Korean for the last forty-five minutes, and his head feels like it’s splitting. He collapses onto a couch near one of the big arched windows. Charlie’s place really is something else: vintage hardwood flooring and tasteful art. A view of the river, winding its way downtown. A stack of theory books is on the coffee table, and his homework is still out on the kitchen island.
Nobody is impressed by this place, of course. All of them here are drinking expensive whiskey from the bottle at age twenty-two, familiar with the taste. All of them here, as far as Donghyuck can tell, own their own cars. None of them work part-time, which allows them to dedicate themselves obsessively to their craft. There are ski holidays in Switzerland and summers in Greek villas, divorced parents in New York City, stories of nannies and Mary Janes and Christmas parties.
His eyes sort of naturally fall on Jaemin, who’s sitting on the armrest of a couch, explaining something to Mark and Renjun. He’s about to invent a reason to go over there and insert himself in the conversation when Chenle suddenly reappears and shouts his name, throwing himself onto the couch.
Jeno trails behind, a pleasant smile on his face and a huge hickey blooming right above his collarbone. Chenle’s pupils are huge. “I don’t want to know what you guys were doing, right?”
“Right,” Chenle confirms, leaning his face into Donghyuck’s neck. His breath is hot and sticky, but otherwise, Donghyuck doesn’t think he’s that drunk. Just high, probably.
Jisung has a slightly wounded look on his face, and Donghyuck subtly shifts Chenle’s weight over so Jisung can hold him up instead. Chenle looks entirely unperturbed by the change of possession.
“You should come to the basement,” he’s saying. “There’s freaky Greek stuff down there, a spell or whatnot. Penelope says it’s fake but it’s like, a really old basement, and this city’s been around long enough for it. You should get Jaemin, he’d love it.”
Definitely coke, Donghyuck thinks. And then his alcohol-fuzzy brain actually processes the content of Chenle’s words, and he stops in his tracks. “Really?”
“Yeah, they’re down there trying to translate it, but nobody’s as good at Ancient Greek as—”
“Me,” Donghyuck finishes, boasting only a little because it’s mostly true. He’s worked his ass off to be able to say that, too. “Okay, yeah, I’ll take a look.” He gets to his feet and goes over to Jaemin, who looks up as he comes over.
“What’s up?” he says. Donghyuck sways on his feet a little, and Jaemin puts a steadying hand against his side so he doesn’t tip over. The gold necklaces against his chest glint in the low light.
“Greek,” Donghyuck says, pulling his thoughts together. Jaemin’s hand is warm, and it’s distracting. Donghyuck wants to—he has to get rid of him, so he shakes Jaemin off and takes a big step back, nearly knocking a guy over.
“Greek?”
“In the basement,” Donghyuck continues. “Chenle was saying there’s an old cellar or something down there, with some Ancient Greek on the wall. Probably just graffiti, or a prank, but it still could be fun to go down there and show them up.”
“Because you’re the best at Ancient Greek,” Jaemin says, nodding.
Donghyuck grins broadly. “Yup.”
“Does everything have to be a competition?” Jaemin asks, almost petulant. “I bet it’s scary. Chenle’s always dragging us into scary stuff.”
“You are legally required to come with me down there,” Donghyuck says, “as my rival.”
“I don’t want to be your rival,” Jaemin says, and there’s something so plain and beseeching in his voice that Donghyuck actually stops for a second, his confidence flickering. Jaemin blinks at him for a long moment, and his mouth parts in surprise, like he too can’t believe he just said that.
“What,” Donghyuck says blankly, feeling like someone’s pulled the rug out from under him.
“I mean, I can’t ,” Jaemin says. “It’s not an even playing field.”
“And your on-the-spot Greek skills are ass,” Donghyuck fires back, though he still feels unsteady. “So technically, if you do the math—”
“Neither of our strong suits,” Jaemin reminds him, and Donghyuck laughs, the last vestiges of weirdness draining away, just like that.
“Well, it works out. So you’re coming with me, and we’ll cast this spell or whatever. Maybe it’ll give us a million bucks.”
“I wouldn’t say no to a million bucks,” Jaemin says thoughtfully, and that’s all the convincing he needs, apparently, because he follows Donghyuck back into the party, where Chenle’s got Jeno backed into a corner—tickling him? Kissing him? Donghyuck does not want to know. Jisung’s got an amused look on his face and a hand on Chenle’s lower back to keep from falling over. The whole scene is so bizarre that Donghyuck has to intercept them immediately, and gets Chenle to take them downstairs.
Chenle leads all four of them—Jisung and Jeno come with too, for lack of anything better to do, count on them to be bored at a party —down a weird stairwell, not a fire exit but also not often used, if the unfinished walls and dim lighting are any indication. As they descend, the air gets cooler, and a mineral-y smell starts to rise up around them, like wet rock. Eventually, the walls become rock, rough and slightly damp to the touch.
“Are we underground? ” Jaemin asks. His voice sounds oddly flat. Somehow, there’s no echo.
“Yeah, weird, right?” Chenle replies. They take the last few steps down and Donghyuck is surprised when the stairs give way to packed dirt. “Charlie said he’d never noticed this stairwell before tonight. He thinks it’s connected to some kind of old maintenance tunnel. C’mon, this way.”
Jisung and Jeno follow Chenle without complaint, chattering away. Donghyuck is about to follow when Jaemin grabs his wrist.
“Donghyuck,” he says quietly. “I don’t—this is weird.”
Donghyuck looks around—at the stone wall, the dirt floors, the dim lighting coming from somewhere around the corner up ahead. “I know.” It’s hard to tell through the heavy fog wrapped around him. Those martinis had really hit him in the last hour, and it’s hard to stand straight. But still, something is buzzing in faint alarm. Enough for him to notice.
“I mean, though,” Jaemin continues, and Donghyuck recognizes the quality of his voice as he enters Rationalization Mode. “There’s electric lights, and it’s not like we’re breaking and entering.”
“We’re just tired,” Donghyuck adds on, and Jaemin nods quickly. He drops Donghyuck’s wrist and puts some space between them. “Right?”
“Definitely,” Jaemin says, and together, in unspoken agreement, follow Chenle.
There are a few others down here, but they’re either too drunk or simply don’t know Greek, because nobody’s translated the words on the wall all the way.
They’re written in bright, neon blue—spray paint, it looks like. It relaxes Jaemin further, who was maybe expecting a giant, crumbling statue or a mysterious engraving in the wall. No, whoever wrote this clearly knew their Ancient Greek, but they were undeniably from this time period. There’s no secret Greek artifact down here—just a lightbulb on the ceiling in this weird round room, and a little riddle on the wall.
Jaemin and Donghyuck sit down and get to work. Samantha K., a fellow classics student, is so drunk she can barely stand up but offers a single word: sleep .
They figure out that it’s a noun form instead: someone who sleeps, a person who is sleeping—a sleep er . They work backwards from the rest of the words they know, filling in blanks with likely guesses until the whole of the riddle reveals itself.
Donghyuck looks up from the notes app on Jaemin’s phone where they’d been working, cross-checking websites and pictures of books from the library.
“We got it,” he announces, and everyone crowds around to listen.
He who wants too much:
Awake the sleeper,
Receive what is due,
Put the remaining to rest.
A moment of flat silence follows, like a breath drawn in. Donghyuck waits expectantly, but of course nothing happens. It’s graffiti on a wall and he’s drunk.
Charlie’s brow is wrinkled. “That’s it? ” he scoffs. “Sort of a letdown.”
Jaemin shrugs. “Well, I think it’s cool. It’s always the translation that’s rewarding, much more than the actual result.”
“I agree,” Donghyuck says, and catches several people rolling their eyes.
“Well, you guys are the scholarly sort,” another girl nods. Her pink hair is in pigtails, and everything about her from head to toe screams art student. “So it makes sense that you’d enjoy the process. I mean, painting’s the same way for me.”
“Great,” Donghyuck says, not sure what painting has to do with any of this, except that it’s enough to distract everyone and pull them into different conversations, utterly disinterested now that the excitement has passed.
“Well, they’re lame anyway,” Jaemin says in Korean, which is surprisingly shady of him to do and utterly delightful. “None of them get it.”
“No,” Donghyuck agrees, and catches Art Student’s drunken, irritated look. “What do you think it means, though? Like actually.”
“I mean, I’m guessing some kind of spirit,” Jaemin says. “Not sure about the rest of it, though.” He squints down at his phone again.
“It seems like a trade,” Donghyuck muses. “Like, whoever the asker is receives whatever it is that they want, and in return, they…put everyone else to sleep?”
“Sounds ominous,” Jaemin replies, this time in English. “Fucking scary. I told you, I don’t like scary shit.”
“Mm, it’s not too bad,” Donghyuck replies. “All that thinking made me tired though.”
Jaemin hums in agreement, and moves to lean back on his hands. “Ouch!” he cries suddenly, bolting upright, clutching his left hand to his chest. “What the fuck?”
“Lemme see,” Donghyuck demands immediately. “What happened?”
“There’s something—there’s something in my hand, glass or something,” Jaemin says, holding his hand out. Blood is gushing out around a fragment of grey— something .
“I don’t wanna take it out,” Jaemin whispers, looking a little ill.
Donghyuck grabs Jaemin’s wrist, fumbling in his jeans pocket for the crushed packet of tissues. Some people look over curiously as Donghyuck pulls out a tissue and carefully extracts the shard.
Jaemin winces as it tugs free. Blood drips down his wrist and onto the ground as he presses another tissue to his hand. “What is it?”
Donghyuck touches a finger to the edge of the shard curiously, only to draw back with a hiss as his fingertip splits.
“Holy shit, it’s razor-sharp,” Donghyuck warns, shaking his hand out before sticking his finger in his mouth. “Fuck, that hurt.”
He tosses the shard off to the side and peels the tissue away from Jaemin’s hand to check the damage. The cut is way smaller than expected, and the bleeding’s already stopped.
“Thanks,” Jaemin says. “I just—other people’s blood is fine, but when it’s mine, I just. It freaks me out.”
Donghyuck shakes his head, feeling awkward. “No worries. Want to find Renjun and go?”
“Most definitely,” Jaemin answers, and there’s that note of gratitude in his voice again. God, Donghyuck has really got to stop being nice to him.
Renjun gets them an Uber, Mark and Jaemin are tasked with tracking down their various other friends to make sure they’re not doing something stupid, like taking their clothes off in the street (one of Jeno’s drunken habits) or drinking coconut rum (which always makes Chenle throw up).
Donghyuck sits down next to Renjun on the curb. “Have fun?” he asks Renjun. “Halloween revelry complete?”
“Revelry was successful,,” Renjun confirms, tilting to the side to lay his head on Donghyuck’s shoulder. Donghyuck puts an arm around his shoulders and lets out a big breath. “What about you? Jaemin said you guys did something with Greek? Hopefully not ceremonial sacrifice or some crazy Diyonisian ritual.”
“No, none of that.” Donghyuck yawns. God, he’s tired. It’s like the exhaustion of the week has finally caught up to him. But it was worth it—his essay will be stellar, he’ll come out on top. He’ll survive another phone call with his dad, who will claw for weaknesses but find nothing to grab onto. No, Donghyuck will be as smooth and as perfect as marble. “Just some silly graffiti. The others wanted it translated, so we did it, but they didn’t even care.”
Renjun reads the look on Donghyuck’s face and laughs. “I can imagine your pride was pretty wounded at that.”
“Only a little,” Donghyuck admits. “Jaemin—well, like. You know. We did it together, and he’s in the same boat as me.”
“You and Jaemin are so weird ,” Renjun mumbles, his words slurring together. “If I didn’t know you two better, I’d think you were best friends.”
Donghyuck considers telling Renjun all of it. The disconcerting fact that Jaemin knows him—has always known him, better than any of them could guess. The way that Donghyuck can’t stop doing things for him, like a knee-jerk reaction. Instinctive, almost.
But then Chenle comes stumbling out of the lobby, his face pale and his shirt stained. He’d found the coconut rum, it seems. Jeno’s complaining about something in a low, whiny voice. Probably about why he couldn’t run shirtless down the street. He’s wearing Chenle’s cat ears.
“Jeno, I think you should take a break from bribing security guards,” Jaemin is telling him seriously. “It was only last weekend that you paid that guy a hundred bucks not to call the cops.”
“But if money makes all the problems go away,” Jeno says, “then why not ?”
“The Uber’s here,” Renjun says, and Donghyuck lets the truth wither on his tongue. They get Jeno and Chenle into the backseat, Renjun in between them. Mark looks up at Donghyuck guiltily. “You okay getting back on your own? We gotta make sure these two don’t end up at the bottom of the river.”
Chenle gasps. “Let’s go swimming .”
“Absolutely not,” Mark replies, reaching across Chenle to buckle his seatbelt for him. “Hyuck?”
“Yeah, it’s okay,” Donghyuck says. “Chenle smells bad anyway. Gross, Jeno, don’t do that. He puked on himself.”
Jeno yanks his face out of the crook of Chenle’s neck, looking dazed. “Huh?”
The driver is starting to give them weird looks, so Donghyuck steps back up onto the curb and gestures at them. “See you at home.”
The Uber pulls away, and Donghyuck orders another one, sinking back down onto the curb to wait. He’s a little cold without Renjun’s warmth at his side.
Jaemin sits next to him, looking thoughtful.
“You can go with Jisung,” Donghyuck says.
“Yeah,” Jisung says.
“S’okay,” Jaemin replies, propping his elbows on his knees and leaning his head on his folded arms. “No leash-holding needed. I’m pretty sober. And you live faraway.”
Jisung still doesn’t look convinced.
“Jisung, seriously, I’m okay,” Jaemin replies. “I’m good. I’ve got Donghyuck after all. Right?”
“Right,” Donghyuck agrees unsteadily, and Jaemin immediately wiggles closer to him, plastering himself against Donghyuck’s side, grinning up at Jisung.
“See?”
Jisung looks like he doesn’t want to see. He looks miserable, actually. Like he’d rather be anywhere else and not having this conversation with them. However, the worry in his eyes hasn’t totally dissipated, so he doesn’t budge.
“You guys are so fucking weird,” he mutters to himself. “Fine. Whatever. But, Jaemin, if he punches your face in or you get into an argument with him and lose, I’m not gonna feel bad.”
“I wouldn’t punch him,” Donghyuck protests. “There’s no honor in that.”
Jaemin nods enthusiastically. His breath is warm on Donghyuck’s face, whiskey-smelling. “Right, he’s a proper Greek. Look at his outfit.”
Jisung sighs, and Donghyuck sees that he’s finally convinced. “Okay. I’m going. Bye. Have fun doing— whatever it is you guys do.”
“Mock Roman trials,” Donghyuck says.
“Hosting a bacchanalia,” Jaemin adds.
Jisung just flips both of them off and walks away.
“Bye!” Jaemin calls at his retreating back, cackling gleefully. “Ah, he’s so easy to rile up. Anyways, I’m still a little freaked out about that wall thing.” He’s still far too close to Donghyuck, who’s starting to feel prickly and weird about it.
“Jaemin, it was just graffiti,” Donghyuck says reasonably. His Uber is two minutes away, a relief. Jaemin has a vice grip on his upper arm.
“Yeah, but the blood?” He holds up the hand that had been cut, but there’s no sign of a wound. Not even a scar, though it’d certainly been deep enough.
Donghyuck looks down at his own hand, where his fingertip had been sliced open. There’s no cut there either. He looks over at Jaemin, a small chill going down his spine.
“I’m telling you,” Jaemin says quietly, knowingly. “It’s weird.”
Donghyuck doesn’t know what to say. Luckily, the Uber comes, and he doesn’t have to think of anything.
He slowly separates from Jaemin, who looks oddly reluctant. Donghyuck hesitates.
“How are you getting back?”
“Oh, I live around here,” Jaemin says vaguely, and Donghyuck realizes he has no idea where Jaemin’s house is. Nobody, as far as he knows, has ever been there. “No worries. Get home safely, Donghyuck.”
“Alright,” Donghyuck replies, and gets into the Uber. He still feels off. It’s a feeling that persists while he washes his face and brushes his teeth. He can’t shake it as he drinks a glass of water and takes two painkillers. Even as he crawls into his bed, drunk and dizzy, he runs his thumb over the mysteriously-healed finger.
He doesn’t think he believes Jaemin—they were drunk, and…and other things, too. Too much studying. Overconfidence. A belief that the most interesting thing always has to happen to them.
Hush, now, a voice in his mind says. The sleep will find you soon enough, and after , everything you want will find you too.
But for now, rest.
He dreams about Jaemin.
“Oh god, you’re even in my dreams now,” is the first thing Jaemin says to him.
“What the hell,” Donghyuck says. “You’re in my dream.”
The room around them materializes suddenly—dark paneled walls, a huge velvet emerald sofa against one side. A fireplace, not yet lit. Heavy curtains drawn over windows, a stained-glass lamp in the corner casting everything in a blue-amber glow. A thick rug, one Donghyuck can almost feel under his feet. It’s a place he recognizes and doesn’t at the same time.
“Well, it’s stupid that you’re arguing with me even in my own head, I don’t like it that much,” Jaemin is saying. “I wish you’d just give it a break—”
“Shh,” Donghyuck says to him. Jaemin, surprisingly, shuts up. Anything’s possible in a dream, Donghyuck supposes, even the highly unlikely. Jaemin’s always saying something. Making a comment. Offering an opinion. Going on and on about something. Admittedly, it’s usually interesting. Donghyuck likes to listen to him talk, if only to look for points to argue with.
“What?” Jaemin whispers.
“Someone’s here,” Donghyuck replies. The hair on the back of his neck stands on end, and the edges of the dream ripple.
Suddenly, their Greek poetry professor is there, wearing her signature squashy cardigan, her hair pulled away from her face.
“Boys,” Trish says, in that same chiding tone she always uses when they get too wrapped up in each other—only, there’s no warmth in it. “Sit. You’re the ones that came for me, after all.”
“We did?” Donghyuck asks stupidly. “When? Office hours?”
“Who are you?” Jaemin says, eyes narrowing. Ah, Donghyuck’s glad he’s here asking the right questions, even if he is just a figment of Donghyuck’s imagination.
“Come now,” Trish says, tutting. Too condescending—she’s always been encouraging, even when they’ve gotten it wrong. Sometimes it grates against Donghyuck, constantly braced for impact, to have his mistakes treated with such gentleness. “You still haven’t figured it out? I had gleaned that you were particularly bright. Especially you.”
Her eyes move to Donghyuck, who is struck by the wrongness of them. Instead of their usual hazel, they’re dark, and endless. Looking at them makes him feel like he’s falling, like something essential is being drained from him.
Donghyuck sits heavily on the couch, feeling winded.
She glances at Jaemin. “You’re smart as well. Too much music in you, though. And sorrow. But no shortage of desire, either, and you’ll follow him anywhere, won’t you?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Jaemin says through gritted teeth. “You’re not Trish.”
“Certainly not,” the creature agrees. “You, however, are the sleepers. The ones who want. Oh, I know what you yearn for.”
She turns to Donghyuck, and in a voice only for him, she says: “You who are ruled by thumos : will you receive what you are due. Your dream of victory will manifest into truth. You will give anything to have it.”
For a second, Donghyuck’s deepest dreams unravel for him in his mind’s eye: recognition, approval, pride. A crowing, boastful sense of righteousness. A personal sort of justice.
He longs for it, and the longing sets him aflame. It consumes him. He cannot think. All he can do is look the creature wearing the skin of his Greek professor in the eye and say, “Yes.”
Good , it murmurs, in a distinctly male voice, a dark coil in the back of his mind. Good, good.
There’s a slow, searing pain on his right hand. Donghyuck looks down and watches the skin on his middle finger split open.. It doesn’t bleed—just pulses with a strange, slate-colored light and then closes, leaving a fine white scar.
Jaemin is watching him with abject horror. “What did you give it?”
“Nothing,” Donghyuck says, clenching his fist. “The question is, what did it give me? ”
“Come along, o sorrowful one,” Trish says to Jaemin. There is something slightly unnatural about her smile. “You dream of so much you cannot hope to fit it all in your body. Let me ease your burden.”
The room warps and stretches. Donghyuck’s lungs go tight; the scar along his finger burns and then Jaemin is watching his left hand split and heal, an exact mirror of Donghyuck’s.
“And so the deal is made. It is not so easily undone. Remember that, when the time comes.”
Something shadowy glitters in her eyes, and the scar on Donghyuck’s hand thrums with pain. He has just a second to turn to Jaemin, to catch the look on his face—tight-lipped resignation, and something deeper, wider—before the dream melts away, and the burning yanks Donghyuck back awake.
He’s thrashing and gasping for air before his eyes are even all the way open. His right side is hot, slick, and he fumbles for the light.
It’s a scene straight from a horror movie: his arm is covered in blood, staining his pajamas and his sheets, soaking into his duvet. There’s a red handprint over his heart.
For a minute, he can only stare at the scene. And then reality crashes into him like a blow to the solar plexus: the dream was real.
His throat constricts. He just barely makes it out of his gore-covered bed to the bathroom before he’s violently sick. He heaves until his vision spots, sweating slightly, and drags himself over to the shower and hits the handle until warm water comes spraying down on him. He slumps against the tile, breathing hard, letting the blood and sweat wash off of him.
Donghyuck wipes slowly at his bloody arm, only dully surprised to find no visible wound—only a little whorl of scar tissue, where he’d cut himself on the shard of pottery in the basement.
Where they’d translated that Greek on the wall.
Donghyuck had read the words, and then they’d bled.
Oh, god.
He’d be sick again if there was anything left in his stomach. He clenches his hand into a fist and struggles to make it all make sense. It had to have been some kind of god, or spirit, right? Some dream creature. His knowledge of minor Greek mythological figures isn’t that broad. He remembers when they read Ovid’s Metamorphoses and being bored out of his mind.
Jaemin liked it. Jaemin talked about it constantly while they were studying it, unfolding bits of sardonic humor and bright wit and laughing about it. He’d aced that essay. Donghyuck had only scored an A+ because the professor liked him, though he’d commented that it wasn’t Donghyuck’s usual standard of work.
Myth has never called to him like it has to Jaemin. He’s always preferred concrete study over the rambling, sprawling stories Jaemin so enjoys; why would he allow himself to get distracted by what could and would never be, when reality is enough of a challenge? Drop his defense for one second and he just knows he’ll get his teeth knocked in.
But…now the unreal is real. Myth has become fact. And what had that creature said? It had given him something. That which he was owed. The power to finally bend his life into whatever shape he’d like. A victory over all his overlords—his father, his grades, the looming dark of his future. All of the boys that had hit him with words or fists. The voices in his head, calling him worthless, unsuitable, forever a disappointment.
His clothes are so heavy he can hardly move. The water pounds down on his neck and shoulders. The blood is long gone, and he presses his thumb to the knot of scar on his middle finger.
Boy of desperation, boy of fury, something dark, slippery and coiled says, drifting through his thoughts like the remnants of a dream. How would you like to finally win the fight?
Slowly, shakily, Donghyuck gets to his feet, something in him solidifying as he shuts off the shower. He peels off his wet, heavy shirt and squeezes the water from it, watching the last of the blood swirl down the drain. He strips the ruined sheets from his bed and hides them in his closet—it’s too much blood to clean without drawing attention. He'll have to throw them away.
He gets dressed—wool sweater, his last clean pair of corduroys. He grabs his phone from his bare mattress.
And there it is.
An email from the essay competition. He doesn’t even need to open it to see the Dear Mr. Donghyuck Lee, Congratulations!
Immediately, the remaining fear melts away. His heart soars in his chest. The email calls his essay stunning and spectacular, nothing quite like anything we’ve read before. His professors, later that day, will reach out to him, offering their congratulations, saying that they’ve read it, that it was a real piece of scholarship. Trish even said it’d brought her to tears.
He recognizes, distantly, that this is slightly too good to be true. Like a dream pulled into reality, plucked from the underworld of his mind. He tries not to dwell on this even as classmates come up to him that Monday to offer their well-wishes. The cherry on the cake is when he receives a singular text message from his father, saying I saw the news about the competition. Nothing else, but the acknowledgement makes Donghyuck’s head spin. Pride swells in his chest.
“Well,” Jaemin says that afternoon after their classes are done, “how does it feel?”
They still haven’t talked about the dream. Some of the days-long elation fades from Donghyuck as he examines the serious expression on Jaemin’s face.
“Good,” he says cautiously. “Like a dream come true.”
The corners of Jaemin’s mouth tighten.
“It happened to you too, didn’t it?”
“What, waking up covered in rose petals?” Jaemin says. “The scar? You were there, Donghyuck. You tell me.”
“Roses?”
“Yeah,” Jaemin says. There’s a distant whir in the background, like car tires on pavement. “What, you didn’t get any? Lucky. I was all sweaty and they stained my bedsheets.”
Donghyuck purses his lips. Jaemin gets roses, and he gets blood? They wanted different things, so it makes sense. But roses? What in the world could Jaemin have received?
“No, I also had an unpleasant awakening,” Donghyuck says. “What do you think…what was that? Like, what happened and whatnot?”
“If you think I’m doing anything with that fucking creature, you’re wrong,” Jaemin replies darkly. “I only made that deal because—”
Jaemin’s breath catches in his throat, and he looks away. “Because why?” Donghyuck hedges.
“Doesn’t matter. But I know enough about myths and gods to know that they’re not to be fucked with. Donghyuck, c’mon.”
“But you’re not curious? ” Donghyuck presses. “After what happened to me? Don’t you want to know if your dream—”
“Of course I am,” Jaemin snaps, sounding genuinely irritated. “I just don’t know if I have it in me to pay the price.”
“What price? She didn’t say anything about a price,” Donghyuck says. He starts to walk the other direction. Mark had said something about a bar.
“Donghyuck,” Jaemin says, very seriously, catching Donghyuck by the wrist.
A strange shiver goes down Donghyuck’s spine. “Yeah?”
“Do you trust me?”
A beat of silence. Donghyuck feels inexplicably torn between humor and truth. Jaemin’s eyes search his for a long moment before he releases Donghyuck’s wrist.
“Don’t answer that,” Jaemin says, and Donghyuck breathes out in relief. “Anyways, I’m telling you, there’s gonna be hell to pay. Maybe not now, but at some point , it’s all going to go wrong.”
“That’s not true,” Donghyuck argues, shoving his arms into his coat and grabbing his bag. In the background, he hears a door open and slam shut. “You can’t possibly know that, Jaemin. How can you assume that everything’s going to turn out bad before it even starts?”
“Why do you always brace for a punch before knowing if one is even going to come?” Jaemin fires back, and Donghyuck jerks to a halt at a crosswalk.
“Am I that easy to read?” he asks after another strangely tense silence.
“No,” Jaemin says. “Don’t worry. It’s just because—well. I know you.”
“You do,” Donghyuck admits. “But it’s like they say, know thy enemy or whatever.”
“Or whatever,” Jaemin echoes.
The light switches to green. “Look,” he says. “it’s gonna be just fine—”
“I told you—”
“Okay, let’s just think about this for a second,” Donghyuck insists. He takes a deep, deep breath, gathering his courage. He’s not sure it’s even going to work —lowering himself to begging. Jaemin doesn’t like him, after all. He’s most likely immune to all of Donghyuck’s tricks, the ones that work so well on Mark and Jeno.
At the same time, Donghyuck cannot deny his curiosity. And try as he might, he also cannot deny the fact that he and Jaemin have been tied together.
So he lowers his voice and his eyes and tries to picture Jaemin’s face, which is probably purposely blank, like he makes it when he’s being stubborn but doesn’t want people to know he cares. “Jaemin, please, ” he says. “It’ll be fine. Just let it happen. A dream come true, Jaemin. Don’t you want to know what it’s like?”
Jaemin exhales. “What the fuck,” he says under his breath, so quietly Donghyuck almost misses it. “Fine,” he continues at normal volume. “Fine. Fuck. You’re so much trouble, you know?”
“So are you,” Donghyuck replies, feeling a smile spread across his face. “I know why you followed me downstairs, Jaemin.”
“Oh yeah?”
“You’re just as curious and self-obsessed as I am,” Donghyuck replies. “Deep down, under all your so-called reason and rationale, you’re excited this is happening to us.”
Jaemin doesn’t reply, which means Donghyuck is once again correct. He laughs.
“Fuck off,” Jaemin says, but Donghyuck can see his smile. “I’m leaving.”
He takes a left. Donghyuck goes right, but finds himself quite unable to wipe the unduly excited smile off his face.
Donghyuck gets home to see Renjun with his feet on the coffee table. “Ah, there’s our champion,” he says. “I texted Mark. They’re at the Corinth.”
“I hate that place,” Donghyuck says.
“Aw, but everyone there wants to see you,” Renjun replies. “You were on the news today, did you know? They’re calling you a genius. One of the brightest minds of the generation, and all that.”
Ah, Renjun knows him so well. It’s easy to get him to cave when he’s promised attention.
Everyone does indeed prove to be everyone—all their friends plus many extra. Jaemin’s there too, thankfully looking more at ease than he was earlier in the afternoon. Donghyuck touches the whorl of scar tissue on his finger and smiles.
They pull up to the Corinth, which, yes, Donghyuck really does hate.
Luckily, since it’s only five, the Corinth looks less menacing than usual. Donghyuck cringes at the memory of the bathroom, the sticky floors, battling his way to the bar to order a watery cocktail with too much soda.
It doesn’t help that his ex-boyfriend broke up with him in this very bar, just three months ago.
“Can’t we go somewhere else,” Donghyuck whines, tugging on Renjun’s coat. “Please, please, I hate this place.”
They told me you were self-obsessed, the boyfriend had said. It was fun at first. But now it’s just pathetic. Haechan, come on. You’re being pathetic.
Renjun assesses him for a long moment, and the prickly feeling of being known washes over him. “An hour,” Renjun says. “They have the heat lamps on out back. We can sit outside. I’ll buy you a burger, and then we’ll go.”
Out of all the people in his life, only two people know the extent of what the ex-boyfriend said. Of what he did . Renjun knows because he’s Donghyuck’s best friend, blood brother, etc., etc. And Jaemin knows, because he was there.
Again. Not something he likes to think about.
Jaemin is watching him carefully too, like he might detonate.
“I can stay with you out here if you need a second,” Renjun is saying as Donghyuck fidgets restlessly, balancing from foot to foot. Chenle and Jisung have already gone inside to get out of the cold.
Even as he says it, he glances at his phone. He’s got a bunch of messages from Mark.
“No, it’s okay,” Donghyuck says, even though he’d like nothing more than to stand out here and freeze with Renjun by his side. “I’ll just—I’ll just be a minute.”
“Okay, if you’re sure,” Renjun says. “Text me if you need anything.” Donghyuck nods, and then he follows Chenle and Jisung into the Corinth.
Jaemin, however, lingers.
“What are you still doing out here?” Donghyuck asks brusquely. “I’m not gonna cry, or throw myself in front of a car, or run away, if that’s what you’re worried about.”
Jaemin has a strange look on his face. “That night—”
Donghyuck flinches. “I don’t—I don’t wanna talk about it.”
“Was your nose broken? Like, did he break your nose?”
“I said,” Donghyuck replies, breathing out hard and trying to keep his emotions at bay. “I don’t wanna talk about it.”
Jaemin is silent for a second, and Donghyuck is convinced he’s going to press the point. Donghyuck would, if the situations were reversed. Everyone in Donghyuck’s family would hound him, circling around his weakness like sharks scenting blood.
“Okay,” Jaemin says eventually, and Donghyuck unexpectedly feels the tension go out of his shoulders. “We don’t have to. I’m sorry.”
The apology takes him aback. “I’m sorry too,” he replies, like a knee-jerk reaction. “I snapped at you. I just—I’m sensitive. About the whole thing, whatever, you know.”
“I do,” Jaemin replies softly, and Donghyuck blinks away the memory—Jaemin’s hands cupped around his face, his palms filling with Donghyuck’s blood, the ragged edge of his broken lip, the cut on his forehead, the blinding pain spreading through his face, blotting out his vision.
The ex-boyfriend had been a lacrosse player. He’d also been a drinker. Donghyuck had pushed him first, it’s true, and the retribution had been fierce. Perhaps undeservedly so.
He has a scar, right by his hairline. It took weeks for the bruising to go down—he was lucky, really, that school hadn’t started yet. Otherwise everyone would have seen, not just Jaemin.
Donghyuck sits down on the smoking bench near the entrance of the bar. “Fuck this place,” he murmurs, mostly to himself. If he lets his eyes trail a little to the left, he’d be able to see the narrow space between this bar and the next one, where he’d been shoved against the bricks. That’s where Jaemin had found him on that warm summer night.
“They don’t know, do they?”
Donghyuck shakes his head. “It’s embarrassing. What kinda guy gets beat by up his boyfriend?”
“I think they’d understand, if you told them,” Jaemin goes on, ignoring the self-deprecation. “They wouldn’t come back here ever again. Chenle might even burn the place down.”
Donghyuck, quite against his will, laughs a little. “He might. Or he’d buy it out. Open up a hot pot place. He and Renjun are always complaining how there’s not enough hot pot restaurants in this city.”
“They only ever go to one,” Jaemin says. “Why do they need other ones?”
They fall into conversation about Renjun and Chenle and their hot pot addiction, Chenle’s silly Burberry umbrella and the exorbitant amount of money Renjun spends on strange, unfamiliar liquor.
Donghyuck doesn’t even register the uptick in his mood until Jaemin really starts shivering and asks if he’s ready to go in. Donghyuck, to his great surprise, says yes. He gets to his feet and even offers Jaemin a hand up—his fingers are ice-cold—and follows him into the bar.
He’s not assaulted with memories because Jaemin is there, asking him about the second essay question on their exam, and he doesn’t think about being hit because Renjun is there, squeezing his hand and buying him a drink. He is enfolded into an airtight cocoon of friends, who share their food and commiserate about midterms, who drink and laugh and distract him as the last nice autumn day draws to a close, the sunset swifty bleeding into velvety black.
They leave the Corinth sooner rather than later, as promised. Their group has swelled to ten, and it’s thirty-dollar Ubers for everyone to the next bar, which is dimly-lit and thankfully not sticky. It’s one of Donghyuck’s favorites, the Oak Cellar, with its spectacular cocktails and truffle chips. Jaemin is a little fidgety while they’re there, only relaxing when Chenle buys him a drink. He downs it very quickly, which makes Donghyuck finish his own lemon martini in one quick gulp.
There’s another bar, and then someone’s overheated house, which has Donghyuck sweating in his nice wool sweater, so he gets rid of it and goes to dance in his t-shirt with his friends. Jaemin’s mouth is a tight line against the rim of his glass, something tense in his gaze as he watches them from the kitchen counter with Mark.
“Jaemin’s being weird,” Donghyuck says to Jisung, who is drinking whiskey straight out of the bottle, his favorite drunken activity. Jeno had appeared for a few seconds before vanishing with Chenle to do something with a group of people Donghyuck vaguely recognized—probably poppers, or coke or what have you, Donghyuck’s not sure. It’s not often that his group overlaps with that circle, but. They’re rich. They get bored of regular alcohol, Jeno claims.
Jisung is surveying Jaemin through the crowd. “He is, a little. Did you say something out of pocket to him again?”
“Like what?”
“Like how your only purpose in life is to defeat him, or that you believe you’re not capable of love? Something bizarre. And also untrue. He hates that shit you say about yourself.” Jisung hiccups, and scowls at Donghyuck. “ Don’t tell him I said that. He’d be embarrassed. I take it all back. Actually he hates you.”
Donghyuck blinks at him. “First of all, I do not believe I’m not capable of love, I just think—”
“Don’t care,” Jisung replies. “You are capable of love, obviously. You’re a good friend. I wouldn’t let Jaemin around you if you weren’t. The last thing he needs is someone being shitty to him.”
“Believe me, I get it,” Donghyuck says. He snatches the whiskey from Jisung’s hands. “Give me that. Whose is this anyway? Whose house is this?”
“Don’t know,” Jisung says. He shoves Donghyuck forward. “Go talk to him. It’ll make him feel better.”
Donghyuck does not have the emotional capacity to parse the meaning of those words, so he just stumbles over to Jaemin, his chest hot. The whiskey warms his belly, makes his vision liquid at the corners. Jaemin, despite his sullenness, looks unfairly good. He always looks unfairly good.
“Hey,” Jaemin says when Donghyuck gets close.
“Dance with me,” Donghyuck blurts. He’s not sure if it’s because he’s still riding the high of his success, or what, but something’s got in his head and it’s making everything woozy.
And fine, alright, so. Here’s the other thing—Jaemin, objectively, is good-looking. Donghyuck is a man of reason; he’s also gay as the sky is blue.
It’d take a stupid, blind idiot not to notice Jaemin, and all of the things that make him attractive: the symmetry of his brow, the full curve of his bottom lip, the way his eyelashes cast shadows on his cheekbones. His wide, dark brown eyes. Eyes that are currently fixed on Donghyuck, a little shocked.
“Me?”
“No, the guy behind you,” Donghyuck says, and watches Jaemin actually turn around before he realizes it’s a joke.
“But you—”
“If you don’t want to it’s fine.” Donghyuck starts to take a step back, but Jaemin’s hand, viper-quick, shoots out and wraps around his wrist.
“No,” Jaemin says, voice low and dark. Something sparks low in Donghyuck’s stomach. His breath stutters in his throat. “I want to.”
Donghyuck swallows. His throat is so dry it clicks. This is the closest he’s stood to Jaemin maybe ever, and suddenly, there’s all these things about his face that he’s noticing, like the dip in his cupid’s bow and the little scar in his eyebrow. “You just looked down, so I thought, maybe, you’d want to dance. With me.”
“With you,” Jaemin confirms. His expression is dreamlike. “Yes.”
So Donghyuck lets Jaemin, his most bitter rival, put his hands on Donghyuck’s waist. And he leads them both into the crush of people in the living room. He lets their chests brush. Lets his hands drape over Jaemin’s shoulders, lets his eyes meet Jaemin’s. The song changes to something a little slower, more bass-heavy, and Donghyuck feels like he’s unmoored, connected to reality only by the grip of Jaemin’s hands on his hips.
He stumbles only once, and Jaemin catches him so easily, his body warm and steady. Donghyuck saw him in a t-shirt the other day when they were sitting in the overly-warm life sciences building chipping away at some essay—16 pages on some utterly dull historical law documents—and nearly spilled water down his front at the unexpected proportions of Jaemin’s body, his shoulders and neat waist, strong arms and those fingers, nimble and—
“Donghyuck,” Jaemin breathes. Donghyuck feels like his whole body is one long, electric wire. Jaemin’s fingers have slipped beneath the hem of his t-shirt a few times now, at first on accident but now more purposefully when Donghyuck leans into him just to feel the heat of his body. “Can I—”
“Yes,” Donghyuck says. He feels like me might come out of his skin. The party spins around him, hazy and out-of-focus, and time slows to a crawl as Jaemin’s mouth meets his.
From there, he dissolves into sensation. He loses track of his body, of the people around him—all that’s left is Jaemin’s teeth scraping his lower lip, his tongue against Donghyuck’s, his hips, the growing hardness in the front of his jeans, and—
Donghyuck pulls away with a gasp, and reality slams back into him like a punch to the stomach. Jaemin’s mouth is kissed red, so red, and Donghyuck can feel every part of him being pulled towards Jaemin, magnetic. Jaemin’s chest heaves slightly.
“Whoa,” Donghyuck says. He can’t feel his fingers. “What the fuck.”
Jaemin watches him warily. “Are you going to freak out?”
Donghyuck looks at Jaemin. Looks at his mouth, at his jaw, and feels like he’s suddenly going to explode.
“No,” he says, and then immediately makes a break for it.
“Donghyuck!” Jaemin shouts, but Donghyuck escapes from the room and then from the house, bursting outside. His whole body is too hot, his skin too tight. His head rings as he tries to put the pieces together, refusing to accept the undeniable truth: he kissed Jaemin. Jaemin kissed him, on purpose, and liked it. Both— both of them liked it.
More alcohol doesn’t erase the facts, Donghyuck finds. Neither does the cigarette he smokes with Renjun on the way home. Neither does scrubbing his face so hard it hurts. Neither does crashing face-first into his bed, where he sees Jaemin’s face every time he closes his eyes. There’s school tomorrow, Roman Comparative Law—and he’s expected to just sit there with the knowledge of what Jaemin’s tongue feels like in his mouth?
When sleep finally does find him, his dreams are strange and turbulent. At one point, Jaemin is kissing down his chest, breath hot against Donghyuck’s stomach. In the next, he’s tumbling head-over-heels down a muddy slope, the sky strange and bruise-colored above his head. His father is there, calling him the brightest mind of the generation, and then throws a punch in Donghyuck’s direction. He ducks, and then two doors appear: huge and black, with old bronze handles right in the middle. A man with two faces—one on either side of his head—sits on a stool between them, watching Donghyuck with two sets of shrewd eyes.
You’ll walk here soon enough, a voice says, sliding around his neck. Two more images flash: a huge, mossy boulder under the bright, harsh sun of day. A creature that wears too many forms, changing shape in the blink of an eye.
Then there’s Jaemin again, his face pale and horrified. “Wake up,” he says, and his voice is so clear Donghyuck can feel himself surge back towards wakefulness. “Something terrible has happened.”
That breaks the dream completely. The darkness shatters around Donghyuck, and he wakes up.
He bolts upright in his living room, bare skin sticking to the leather couch. He’s drenched in sweat—hairline damp, shirt plastered to his back. Renjun sleeps peacefully on the rug next to him, his arm slung over Mark’s waist. Jisung’s passed out in the armchair in the corner, and upon further inspection, he finds Chenle and Jeno, thankfully fully clothed, snoring on top of the duvet in Renjun’s room.
All of them are asleep, their faces relaxed and peaceful. The early morning light streams through the window as the last remnants of the dream fade. Donghyuck feels his breath start to come a little easier.
Then the events of the previous night crash back over him, and he feels his whole body flash hot. Jaemin. His hands, his mouth. The way Donghyuck had undeniably kissed him back.
His phone is totally dead, so he plugs it in.
Then he goes over to Jisung and shakes him by the shoulder. “Jisung,” he says urgently. “Wake up. I need you to drive me to Jaemin’s house.” Better to have it out now, so he can focus on the essay competition. So Jaemin doesn’t get the wrong idea. So he can get rid of the itchy, restless feeling under his skin, like there are a thousand ants crawling over his bones.
Jisung doesn’t budge, even when Donghyuck shouts his name. Renjun, too, doesn’t move, even though Donghyuck knows he’s a light sleeper. He even kicks Mark gently in the side and sticks a finger in his ear just to see if they’re all playing one massive prank on him, but not a single one of them stirs.
Panic rises in his chest, quick and hot. Luckily, his phone turns on before he can go screaming out of his apartment, immediately lighting up with Jaemin’s caller ID.
“Hello?” Donghyuck says, once he can get his hands to stop shaking enough to pick up the call. “Jaemin? Something—”
Something terrible has happened, Jaemin had said in his dream.
And then Donghyuck remembers the rest: the deal, the promise. The way the creature in Trish’s skin had smirked at them, like it had known something they hadn’t. Donghyuck had woken up, and his dream had come true. He’d been on the news. For one shining moment, everyone had faced him and smiled. You won the fight, they seemed to say.
And now he’s paid the price.
The whole story pours from his lips. He scarcely stops to breathe. By the end his breath is coming quick and hot, and his heart feels like it’s about to beat out of his chest.
“Don’t worry,” Jaemin says. “We’ll get to the library, and we’ll figure something out—”
“Jaemin, it’s all our fault, ” Donghyuck says, hating the edge of hysteria in his voice but unable to keep the panic inside of him.
To his surprise, Jaemin doesn’t say told you so. He doesn't gloat, or crow victory. Instead, he says, “don’t you want to fix it?”
“How?” Donghyuck croaks. This is obviously some kind of magic spell, some fucked-up curse. His speciality is in fact. Solid argument based on evidence.
“Well,” Jaemin says, “if we’re dealing with something that’s maybe mythical, then we should check with the guys who wrote about it.”
“You’re saying that research is going to save our friends?”
“Got any better ideas?”
“Guess not,” Donghyuck mutters. “Fine. I’ll meet you there in twenty. Bring me a coffee.”
“So demanding,” Jaemin says, but Donghyuck knows he’ll do it. This is how it goes between them, unfortunately.
You kissed him, he thinks. What if everything’s different now?
“Why did you kiss me?” Donghyuck asks, but Jaemin’s already hung up.
Donghyuck deflates, the courage going out of him as he exhales. He looks at the still, peaceful bodies of his friends on the floor, their chests rising and falling in tandem. He reaches down to pull the blanket higher over Mark and Renjun, who don’t even stir, just like they didn’t when Donghyuck was shaking and yelling. Whatever has them, has them completely, body and mind alike.
And it’s up to Donghyuck—and Jaemin, his rival, who he kissed just last night—to save them.
Said rival is looking bedraggled and stressed, and immediately, all thoughts of confrontation fly from Donghyuck’s mind. He accepts the coffee meekly, taking a sip and marveling at the fact that it’s perfectly milky, just as he likes.
“So,” he starts. “Um, first off, I just wanted to say sorry.”
Jaemin gives him a confused look. “Why?”
“Well, I’m the one that dragged you into this,” Donghyuck says. “It was my idea in the first place to go down there.”
“We both made deals,” Jaemin replies. “We both said we’d do whatever it takes for our dreams to come to fruition. You got your victory and I got my—well, I got my dream too, and that’s that. We just have to deal with the consequences.”
Donghyuck bites his lip. “Yeah, but if I’d known —”
“There was no way for you to,” Jaemin interrupts forcefully. “Donghyuck, we’re both the kind of people that love when interesting things happen to us. We’d ignore all warning signs just to get a taste of the thrill.” He gives Donghyuck a brief, scalding look. Donghyuck feels heat creep into his face.
“And now we’re here,” Jaemin says. “We’ve gotten what we wanted. What are you gonna do about it?”
What is he gonna do? So quickly have things spun out of control, reshaped themselves into something barely recognizable. Donghyuck feels winded just thinking about it.
Of course, out of all the people in the world, it’s Jaemin. Seven years, he’s known him. Seven years, and Donghyuck still can’t find a way to pry him off, to cut him out of his life. He wants to win. He wants to triumph and then be left in peace. He wants to push Jaemin over and leave him there, and for once, not offer him a hand up, just to prove that Jaemin doesn’t take up an unreasonable amount of space in his head and under his skin.
It’s ironic, then, that he’s the one Donghyuck inexplicably tied to. It seems that for the time being, they’re stuck in this together.
“Fine,” Donghyuck says. He takes another sip of his coffee so he doesn’t have to see Jaemin’s flashing smile of victory. “Where do we even start? Robert Graves’ Greek Myths? ”
“No, we gotta go back farther than that,” Jaemin says. “Primary sources.”
“If you say Metamorphoses, then—”
Jaemin scoffs. “Donghyuck, your friends have fallen into some enchanted sleep, and you’re complaining about having to look through Ovid?”
“Yes, absolutely,” Donghyuck says. “You know how I feel about mythology.”
“Well, I’m not coming through a thousand pages all by myself,” Jaemin says.
“I’ll do the secondary sources,” Donghyuck pleads. “Jaemin. Please, please, please—”
Jaemin digs his fingers into Donghyuck’s side, making him erupt into breathless, ticklish laughter. “You can’t just abandon me with Ovid,” Jaemin says sternly, even as Donghyuck writhes with teary-eyed laughter. “I’ll get lonely.”
“Okay,” Donghyuck manages, but Jaemin’s hand clamps down harder, making him shriek. Several people are turning to look at them now, and Donghyuck’s face burns with embarrassment.
“Promise,” Jaemin threatens.
“I promise,” Donghyuck gasps. “I’ll help you. I vow upon my sword, upon my mother’s honor, just let me go—”
“Alright, I believe you,” Jaemin says brightly, and Donghyuck braces his hands on his knees to catch his breath. His belly aches, and the burn in his lungs and cheeks is sweet by comparison.
“My back,” Donghyuck complains, but Jaemin spares him no pity, practically dragging him by the back of his coat into the underbelly of the library where Donghyuck knows the classics section is. It’s a Saturday, so it’s no trouble finding a table near a window.
“Okay,” Donghyuck says, opening his laptop. “Where should we start?”
Jaemin flips open a notebook, where he’s written something in Ancient Greek. Donghyuck recognizes it as the words on the wall, the vow they spoke and bled over on that fateful night. “Here,” Jaemin says, tapping the page.
Donghyuck looses a breath. “You know this is old, Jaemin. Really, really old. And obscure. Actually, it might only exist in this notebook. Like, seriously, it may as well be a magic spell. Where are we even gonna find evidence for this?”
“We don’t know that,” Jaemin argues. “We haven’t even tried. Come on, where’s that academic spirit?”
Donghyuck feels a tiny spark of that old competitiveness light in his chest, and watches Jaemin’s expression go smug. He’s always known exactly how to get a rise out of Donghyuck.
“I’m more literary-focused anyway,” Donghyuck huffs as Jaemin continues to rib him. “Theory. Rhetoric.”
“Such a Classics bro,” Jaemin teases.
“Doesn’t exist,” Donghyuck argues, falling easily into the old argument. “Literally, there are ten people in our department, or whatever. Stereotypes need repetition, which requires widespread popularity, which we don’t have.”
“Whatever,” Jaemin says, as he always does. “If that helps you sleep at night. But just know, everyone thinks you’re like that.”
“I’m literally not,” Donghyuck argues, but it still takes Jaemin the better part of an hour to convince him to even open a book about Roman mythology.
All the while, their friends sleep, and Donghyuck catches Jaemin looking at him. He must be remembering. He has to be, because it’s haunting Donghyuck too.
But Jaemin doesn’t say anything, and try as he might, Donghyuck can’t find the courage either.
They spend the rest of their short daylight hours in the library, hunched over plastic-covered sources, squinting at their laptop screens and scribbling feverish, nonsensical phrases in various languages in their notebooks. It’s much easier to forget about Jaemin when his hands are busy, when his brain is focused on something other than the tangles of the English language.
For a little while, they chase a theory about the Eleusinian Mysteries, but then decide sacrificing a piglet isn’t similar enough to cutting palms and reading a spell.
“I mean, we’re talking straight up supernatural, ” Jaemin says.
“And besides, we didn’t have to bathe in a river,” Donghyuck adds.
Jaemin groans and leans back in his chair, stretching his arms over his head. Donghyuck’s eyes stick to the place where his shirt rides up over his stomach, and his mouth goes dry. “We’re not making any progress,” he says. “The library’s closing soon anyway.”
Donghyuck reluctantly closes the book he’s been looking through. “I feel bad. Guilty. I feel like we’re failing them. Like we’re not fighting hard enough.”
“We’re gonna get there,” Jaemin says, with so much conviction that Donghyuck almost believes him.
“We don’t have any other choice,” Donghyuck mutters. “Jaemin, what if they—”
“Hey,” Jaemin interrupts gently. “Don’t go there. Let’s not jump the gun.”
Donghyuck stands, suddenly feeling breathless and overheated again. The trembling has started in his hands again as he thinks about Mark— Renjun, his best friends—their bodies on his floor, all just so he could get recognition, so he could prove that he was better —?
“Let’s go check on them,” Jaemin says, grabbing Donghyuck’s hands. “And then—then, come back with me, okay?”
“Okay,” Donghyuck says, and his voice comes out as a pathetic whisper. He hates that Jaemin gets to see him like this. He hates that Jaemin has already seen him like this, stripped back so the raw, bloody parts of him are showing.
It takes him a little while to talk himself down from his embarrassment. “Jaemin,” he says.
“Hm?”
“Sorry I ran away,” he says. “Last night.”
Jaemin stops walking and blinks at Donghyuck, shocked. “Last night?”
“Yeah, you know,” Donghyuck gestures vaguely at the air, as if he could be alluding to anything else, “When we—uh. Anyways. I know we have a job to do, so, I thought I’d just clear the air and we could, you know. Move on.”
“Uh-huh,” Jaemin says, sounding dazed. “Move on.” He blinks again and shakes his head. “Wait. You’re not mad?”
“Not mad, but maybe, like,” Donghyuck starts, and then stops halfway through. Maybe what? Confused? Willing to try again? Turned-off? No, not that, not when his eyes have always snagged the edges of Jaemin’s face, or when he let Jaemin dance so near him for so long.
He can’t come up with anything to say, so he just stands there and lets Jaemin connect the pieces himself.
“Yeah,” Jaemin says. He kicks through a pile of leaves and gives Donghyuck a small smile. “I get it. As long as you’re not mad.”
“Not mad,” Donghyuck promises. A small truth like that is easy enough to offer, especially when they have so much work left to do.
Their friends are still passed out cold in Donghyuck’s apartments, breathing in sync, their positions only marginally shifted from before. The color is still in their faces and the warmth lingers in their hands, their pulses strong in their throats. Besides the fact that they’ve been sleeping for nearly twenty-four hours, they look perfectly fine. Healthier than normal, even.
“This is freaky,” Jaemin says, breaking the eerie quiet. “I don’t like this. Why—why is Jisung here? How did you all get here?”
“I don’t remember,” Donghyuck says, shrugging. “Honestly, it could’ve been magic. Or whatever.”
Jaemin slides a look over at Donghyuck. “And you’re gonna be okay staying here?”
“Fuck no ,” Donghyuck says, shuddering. “No way. What if something happens?” To me, he doesn’t say, but Jaemin probably knows anyway.
“Then come back with me,” Jaemin says.
Donghyuck raises an eyebrow. “Very bold. What if I kill you in your sleep? Prove myself superior once and for all?”
“You’re insane,” Jaemin deadpans. “What the hell kind of person even says that?”
“Your worst enemy,” Donghyuck teases, knocking his shoulder into Jaemin. This, he knows how to do. “Your rival. Your nightmare, come to life.” He kicks his shoes back on, turning his back firmly on the preternaturally-still faces of his friends.
“I wouldn’t go that far,” Jaemin says. “A nightmare? More like a mild inconvenience. Most of the time, Donghyuck, you’re my friend.”
Donghyuck freezes with his hand on the doorknob. His head’s a mess again. They’ve trod into unfamiliar, uncertain territory.
So all Donghyuck can do is make a joke. “Don’t let anyone overhear you say that, or it’ll damage my reputation.”
Jaemin snorts, and the moment passes like a flickering shadow. “Well, we can’t have that, can we.”
“No, it’s lucky that they’re asleep,” Donghyuck says.
Jaemin smiles a little sadly, and once again, Donghyuck is reminded that the people in here are in the palm of his hand. They’ll live or die by his ability to act normal around Jaemin, and do his fucking job.
He lingers in the doorway even as Jaemin starts for the elevators. “Don’t worry, guys,” he says to the apartment of sleeping people. “Don’t worry. We can do this.”
Jaemin’s apartment is small and warm.
“It gets sun all day,” Jaemin says. “Even in the winter. I pay a fortune for it, but it’s worth it.”
Donghyuck does a circle in the living room, which is crammed despite there being only a couch and a single chair. A TV rests precariously on a stack of books on the mantle. Actually, there are books everywhere—crowded on shelves, stacked on the coffee table, open on the small dining room table.
“I can take your coat,” Jaemin says, and Donghyuck shrugs it off, still amazed by the fact that he’s standing in Jaemin’s space. It even smells like him.
Don’t be weird! he thinks, and plops down on the couch as casually as he can manage. Luckily, he’s known Jaemin for long enough that he can rely on their familiar patterns. They order pizza and drink a little whiskey and play a few rounds of chess until Donghyuck gets tired of losing, fingers greasy with cheese. Jaemin pretends to flirt with him and Donghyuck makes a show of retching until Jaemin is laughing so hard he’s teary-eyed.
It’s quite simply the most fun Donghyuck has had in a long time. He spends so much time pretending, and putting on airs for the people around him that he forgets there’s a reason he let Jaemin around in the first place, all the way back in high school when teachers would groan when they’d turn up in class together.
He falls asleep on the couch halfway through a documentary about Ancient Egypt, and barely feels Jaemin tucking a blanket around him and turning off the light. His sides ache from laughing, and his hands and feet are warm from the radiator humming in the corner. He almost forgets the enormity of their task, so content and sleepy underneath Jaemin’s wonderful-smelling blanket.
And then the dream comes. There’s a river of blood, the sleeping, pale bodies of his friends. Jaemin with red flowers pushing through his eyesockets.
Donghyuck’s stomach turns, but before he can wake, he’s back before the doors.
The man with two faces turns so he can look at Donghyuck with two eyes instead of four. “You’ve come again,” he says. “This is not a place for humans.”
“I don’t know why I’m here,” Donghyuck says. “And who are you, anyways?”
“You’re not ready to go down yet,” the man muses, switching so the other face is staring at Donghyuck instead. His eyes are jade green, and the skin is more weathered and creased. “He’ll eat you alive. No, you wouldn’t even make it through the first trial.”
“ Who ’ll eat us? What trials?”
“Boy of thumos,” the man’s other face booms, fixing its lit-ember eyes on Donghyuck again. “Cross this land of night, and trade back those stolen dreams. Return the sleepers to the upper world. Three days you have until these doors close, and the choice is no longer yours.”
The green-eyed face spins to stare at him. The motion of the heads is starting to make Donghyuck slightly sick. “You are not alone,” he says, far quieter than his counterpart. His voice is like tires on gravel. “Look for another option.”
Donghyuck wakes with the face of the green-eyed god stamped along his retina. Before he’s even fully conscious, he’s stumbling off the couch and into Jaemin’s room, slamming open the door.
Jaemin, who’d been asleep on his belly, jerks suddenly awake, his hair awry and his eyes crazy. “Donghyuck?” he asks, getting a leg out of bed and nearly stumbling on his blanket. “What’s wrong? Are you okay?”
Donghyuck grabs him by his shoulders and shakes him slightly. “A god with two faces. A door. Three days to get down and undo the deal otherwise—fuck, um—” the dream is already fading fast, slipping like water between his fingers. “Otherwise, we’ll no longer get a choice.”
“A god with two faces?” Jaemin says, brow furrowing. Donghyuck comes back to himself slightly and realizes Jaemin isn’t wearing a shirt. It takes an incredible amount of willpower to keep his gaze fixed on Jaemin’s face. Was he always this built? When does he have time to go to the gym, when he’s around Donghyuck pretty much 24/7?
“What do you think?” Donghyuck asks distractedly. Jaemin has a tattoo on his hipbone, but Donghyuck snaps his eyes away before he can see what it is properly. “I mean, it’s a dream,” he adds anxiously, “so we can’t put too much stock into it, but it’s the second time I’ve seen him, and the warning seemed to make sense.”
“The god must be Janus,” Jaemin says. “He’s the Roman god of doors and choices and whatnot. Fuck , we really have to get to the library.”
Donghyuck tells Jaemin what he remembers from the rest of the dream while they get ready. Jaemin tosses Donghyuck a sweater to borrow and then off they go, shuffling through notes from the previous day and discussing where to start.
“Don’t you think,” Jaemin says, and Donghyuck looks up from his phone, “that the city seems quiet this morning?”
They both stop to consider this. The streets are definitely emptier than usual—it’s a beautiful Tuesday morning, the sun is out, and rush hour should’ve just started. But instead, the Starbucks on the corner has no line, and the parking lots near the financial district are only half-full.
The longer they stand, the more uneasy Donghyuck feels. The hair on the back of his neck lifts, goosebumps prickling down his spine and arms. “You don’t think…”
“I think we should get inside, is what,” Jaemin says uneasily, taking Donghyuck by the arm and pulling him along.
“It’s spreading,” Donghyuck hisses. “Jaemin, this is what he must’ve meant by three days. Three days until the whole city falls asleep and we’re the last ones awake, and it’s too late.”
Jaemin grits his teeth. “I know.”
Donghyuck reads the tense line of his body and the white-knuckle grip on his arm and immediately feels guilty. “I’m freaking you out,” he says. “I’m sorry.”
Jaemin shakes his head. “No, it’s my fault. I haven’t, like, sat and processed what’s happening yet. Part of me thinks that if I just pretend it’s another day, and we’re just going to the library to study, then maybe this’ll all reverse and we won’t…”
He trails off, but Donghyuck can read the lost, panicked look on his face. His hand is tight around Donghyuck’s, like if he lets go, they’re going to drift apart and never find each other again.
The moment feels so fraught and fragile that Donghyuck can’t fathom having to go to work. Here he is, wearing Jaemin’s sweater and facing down an impossible challenge. And here is Jaemin, looking the most vulnerable Donghyuck has ever seen him, his shoulders hunched unsurely.
“What if we got breakfast?” he asks tentatively. “The museum cafe has good pancakes. And there’s a small exhibition about ancient pottery.”
“What?” Jaemin asks, eyes widening. His expression immediately puts Donghyuck on edge, and he almost rescinds the offer.
“Not long,” Donghyuck says instead, holding up his hands. “Just a few hours. And who knows? Maybe we’ll find something about Janus or the two doors. Think of it like research.”
“Research…and pancakes?” Jaemin asks, wryly raising an eyebrow.
Donghyuck shrugs defensively. “Well, I’m hungry, and you’re not going to be any easier to debate until I get food in me.”
“Well, we can’t have that,” Jaemin says. He puts his hand on his chest with mock-drama. “Let’s fix that, then.”
They take a cab at Donghyuck’s insistence and buy their tickets. It’s a little awkward at first, both of them hyper-aware of the other. Donghyuck realizes they’ve never hung out on purpose, not like this. They’ve always distantly orbited each other, brushing shoulders at parties, Jaemin meeting Donghyuck’s glare across the library table with a smile. Never once have they walked side-by-side like this in the daylight, so far from campus.
It feels like Jaemin is a new person. It feels like Donghyuck is new, too.
Something new and fragile stretches between them. Donghyuck hopes it won’t shatter when the pressure inevitably becomes too great.
The museum exhibit is beautiful, of course. They trade facts and stories as they float through the hall, admiring the bronzework and pottery fragments. They get into a debate about Agamemnon, which Donghyuck thankfully wins, allowing him to save his pride after he mixes up Minoan and Mycenaean sculpture technique.
Donghyuck buys them overpriced breakfast at the museum cafe, and Jaemin browses the overpriced postcards. The awkwardness had fallen away as soon as they’d discovered a typo in one of the plaques, giggling into their hands. They’d gotten drawn into a twenty minute conversation with a curator, who was mystified at the breadth of their knowledge and also at their overwrought passion for the subject.
Two hours later, they’d emerged from the museum and Donghyuck had been dragged by the front of his coat down the steps to the riverside, where Jaemin had forced him to take two dozen pictures of him with the sky. The pictures keep coming out blurry, much to Jaemin’s displeasure, and he threatens to push Donghyuck in the water if he doesn’t stop messing around.
“I’m not,” Donghyuck says, putting his hand over his heart. “I swear it. I’m being very serious. I take my job very seriously.”
“You clearly do not ,” Jaemin retorts, scowling at his phone. “Seriously, how did you manage to underexpose this one? It’s the middle of the day?”
“Didn’t know you were a photographer, jeez,” Donghyuck replies.
“I’m actually offended you said that,” Jaemin says. “I take great pride and joy in my Instagram.”
Donghyuck squints at him. “What gives you the impression that I’m following your Instagram?”
Jaemin’s mouth drops open.
“What? You’re like, my enemy. Or something. We don’t—we’re not—”
“I thought I already told you,” Jaemin says firmly, “that we’re friends. Otherwise, what do you call all that?”
“I don’t know if friends is the right word,” Donghyuck argues. “I mean, I wished for victory and triumph over you.”
Jaemin eyes him. “I’ll win you over yet, just you wait.”
“Don’t get too confident,” Donghyuck replies, crossing his arms over his chest and smirking at him. “Just because we k—have to solve a mystery together, doesn’t mean I’m gonna go easy on you.”
He’d almost slipped up there, and Jaemin, eagle-eyed, privy to all of Donghyuck’s secrets and worst mistakes, catches it. Of course. And of course his lips tighten and eyes darken just a little, like he’s also remembering them standing too close, drawn together by an unexpected magnetism.
Fuck alcohol. And fuck good-looking guys that he refuses to draw the line with. Every single one of his ex-boyfriends had been trouble, in more ways than one, and now there’s Jaemin, who’s looking at him delightedly, like he loves a challenge, like he’ll take whatever Donghyuck gives him.
Blood rushes in his ears, making him lightheaded. Too bad for Jaemin, but he refuses to give in to whatever—this is, or consider the implications.
“Let’s go to the library,” Donghyuck says, spinning on his heel and nearly falling off the curb. “We’ve wasted enough time already.”
They’re coming up to the edge of campus before Jaemin speaks again. “I wouldn’t want you to,” he says.
“What?” Donghyuck asks.
“I wouldn’t want you to go easy on me,” Jaemin says, looking uncharacteristically abashed.
“Oh,” Donghyuck replies, feeling oddly touched. “Well, that’s good then.”
The flush is spreading down Jaemin’s neck now and Donghyuck feels a little flutter in his stomach. So rarely is Jaemin the one caught off-guard.
Fortunately for Jaemin, they’ve reached the library, one of the side entrances tucked away facing a parking lot. The trees above their heads have turned a remarkable shade of orange in the last couple weeks, and the leaves rattle when the wind whistles through them.
Their same table is unoccupied, thankfully, and they make quick work finding books, opening Wikipedia pages and academic libraries.
“The Romans loved this guy,” Jaemin says, spinning his laptop around. A picture shows the god—one face bearded and older, the other fresh-shaven and young. “He was pretty much ubiquitous in all their rites and whatnot.”
“Did you find anything about him guarding the gates of the underworld?”
“I’m not sure you necessarily saw the underworld,” Jaemin says. “And wait, before you get mad,” he continues, raising a hand, “I’m not saying it wasn’t the underworld. I think the get down —or go down—part of Janus’s warning definitely implies the underworld. But Janus was the god of decisions, of transitions. Clearly, there’s a choice we haven’t made or a preparation we haven’t completed yet.”
“Ugh,” Donghyuck says, dropping his forehead to the table. “How is it that I can wrap my head around Roman gods but not around what they want from us?”
“I mean, gods definitely explain the whole situation,” Jaemin says, “and if it’s the underworld, then it makes sense why they’re sleeping. What’s the second-closest thing to death, after all?”
“Fuck, what if it’s Hades? ” Donghyuck says, scrambling to sit up. “What do we do then?”
“I think it’d be Pluto,” Jaemin replies. “Janus is Roman.”
“But the writing on the wall was Greek,” Donghyuck says helplessly.
Jaemin heaves a massive sigh. “Jesus fucking Christ, this is complicated.”
“I wouldn’t be surprised if Jesus had a hand in this too,” Donghyuck grumbles, slumping back and crossing his arms over his chest. The dream is nothing but hazy fragments in his mind. He can’t even remember Janus’s face, much less his words. If only he’d had a pen and paper in his dream. If only he’d woken up covered in blood again, and the blood spelled a message. Some step-by-step instructions about how to break a sleeping curse.
“Wait a goddamn second,” Donghyuck says. “We’re so fucking dumb.”
Jaemin looks up from his computer and frowns. “Huh?”
“Oh my god, Jaemin, they’re asleep . They’re sleeping. Which motherfucker is it, that does sleep? Doesn’t he live in the underworld?”
“ Holy shit,” Jaemin replies, slamming his laptop keyboard so the screen lights up. “Fucking, uh—Hypnos, Somnus, whatever.”
He faces his computer in Donghyuck’s direction again and shoots to his feet. “I need Hesiod.”
Donghyuck scrolls through the entry on Hypnos while Jaemin frantically rifles through their huge edition of Theogony. He dwelt in Erebos, the land of eternal darkness, beyond the gates of the rising sun …
“Here he is,” Jaemin says, slapping the page. “Son of Nyx, personification of sleep. He was in the Iliad and the Odyssey like, a million times, I can’t believe I don’t remember him.”
“I have purged both of those from my memory,” Donghyuck says.
“Trish references them both at least five times per class.”
“And I just pretend like I know what she’s talking about. I could happily live another day without ever having to hear about Achilles or Odysseus ever again.”
Except, it’s a very real threat. Without the success from the essay contest, his father would deem him an utter failure and send him off to law school the second he’s awarded his bachelor’s. But he has the text—that acknowledgement that he’s done something impressive. It had reached his father’s social circles. His professors had fawned over it, quoting back fragments of his opening paragraph with wonder in their eyes. He’d won them all over. He’d finally proven himself.
That threat holds no water now, doesn’t it? Now that Donghyuck’s dream has come true. Now that everyone knows that what he’s doing is valuable.
Stolen dreams.
Janus’s voice floats back to him and he winces. Jaemin looks over at him, concerned, but Donghyuck feels uneasy telling him. He’s still not sure what Jaemin wished for—he’d been strangely evasive last time Donghyuck had asked—and until they know exactly what they’re dealing with, how helpful could it be, when they’re both already so on edge?
It’s hard to keep feeling unsettled in the face of Jaemin’s enthusiasm. Donghyuck finds himself just sitting and listening to him explain dense sections of Greek epics, unpacking turns of phrases. He doesn’t stop smiling when he’s passionate about something, Donghyuck realizes. He doesn’t gesture like Mark or shout like Chenle, but everything about his posture exudes confidence : the set of his shoulders, the lean of his hip against the table, the way he nods his head when Donghyuck tentatively bounces an idea back in their direction.
“Working theory,” Jaemin says. He’s wheeled over a whiteboard and has been methodically making notes as they’ve fleshed out Hypnos’ background and deciphered the symbolism in Donghyuck’s dream. “We have a choice: go down and confront Hypnos in Erebos, or turn away. This is what Janus was talking about. You had the dream yesterday, which means tomorrow is our last day.” He draws a line between Janus’s name and tomorrow’s date, written in red. “Hypnos said we were bound to him in some way, which means we’ll probably have to make another deal to unbind ourselves.”
“Uh-huh,” Donghyuck says, not really paying attention, eyes caught on the tiny bit of skin above Jaemin’s jeans where his shirt has ridden up.
“You’re not even paying attention,” Jaemin says, rolling his eyes.
“No, I’m totally following, I promise,” Donghyuck says. “Uh, you were saying about, uh, Hypnos?”
Jaemin’s mouth drops open in fake outrage, gesturing at the whiteboard. His shirt rides up higher. “I wheeled the white board over and all you can do is—”
Donghyuck feels all the blood rush to his head, and before he can even process what he’s doing, he lunges across the table—scattering their notes, sending their laptops and books flying—and pinches the bit of exposed skin at Jaemin’s waist as hard as he can.
“Ouch!” Jaemin yelps, dodging to the side, but Donghyuck’s momentum keeps carrying him forward. His laptop thuds to the ground as he nearly pitches off the table, his head colliding with Jaemin’s chest. “Donghyuck—what the fuck —” Jaemin catches him by the upper arms, yanking him upright before he goes crashing to the ground.
Donghyuck pushes the hair from his face, uncaring of the way he’s wrinkling their notes, kneeling on the table like this. Jaemin is laughing, thankfully, which makes Donghyuck laugh too, pulling his arms back to his body so Jaemin is forced to step closer. He smells like laundry, like having the heat on, like leaving the windows open at the turn of summer. His eyes are brown and thick-lashed, and standing this close, Donghyuck has the wild, breathless thought: why did it take me so long to kiss him?
“You are so much trouble,” Donghyuck breathes, and watches Jaemin’s face split into a mischievous grin.
“ I’m trouble? You’re the one who nearly jumped me for no reason!”
“It’s what you get,” Donghyuck says. “For standing there, being so—so—”
Jaemin raises an eyebrow and waits.
“So smart,” Donghyuck finishes, and the tension gradually goes out of the room. Jaemin releases him and steps back; it feels like Donghyuck can take a full breath again. “Smarter than me. You know I hate that.”
“Right,” Jaemin says sarcastically. “You hate when I do all the work and you just have to sit there and ask smartass questions.”
Donghyuck raises his fists. “Careful, or I’m gonna punch you next time. The pinch was just a warning.”
Jaemin yanks the hem of his t-shirt down and gives Donghyuck a look. “Try me. I bet I could pick you up with one hand. You’re all talk.”
Donghyuck tries not to notice the shiver that goes up his spine or the flush that he can feel in the hollow of his throat. Jaemin, however, does, and Donghyuck watches his eyelids lower a nearly imperceptible amount. Donghyuck feels himself shift forward, like his body is once again out of his control. Jaemin could lift him, he thinks, or get him against a wall and keep him there, chest-to-chest, hip-to-hip, no matter how Donghyuck—
But then Jaemin whacks Donghyuck on the shoulder a little too hard, and the tension once again is laid to rest. Donghyuck shakes his head like he’s clearing water from his ears, and sits back on his heels, a bit stunned at his own forwardness. What is happening to him? It must be the stress, plus the fact that he’s spent forty-eight hours straight with Jaemin.
The library closes again but they leave in much higher spirits than the previous night, gloating and admiring their own intelligence. Not even the expanding, sleep-heavy quiet of the city can totally kill their vibe, because Donghyuck walks past sleeping couples on benches or employees leaning against the counter and says, “We’re going to save you,” to all of them.
They make a stop at Donghyuck's house to check on their friends. Donghyuck turns up the heating when he feels Jeno’s cold hands, and takes care to tuck in all the blankets around their feet. Jaemin gently adjusts Jisung’s body so his neck isn’t bent at such an awkward angle.
“God, I miss them,” Donghyuck says, leaning back on his heels and watching the slow motion of Mark’s chest. Tears prick his eyes and he blinks furiously at the ceiling until they go away. “We’re gonna wake you guys up, okay? No matter what. No matter what it takes.”
He puts a hand on Renjun’s ankle, feeling the pulse there. Roman or Greek, mythological or not, dreaming or awake, Donghyuck is going down there and fucking up the person or thing that did this to them.
On the way back, Jaemin declares his fridge totally empty and guides them into a grocery store. There is one awake employee, but they’re extremely out of it and forget to scan half the items. Jaemin leaves ten bucks on the counter just as they slump to the floor and start snoring.
“Well, that was mildly concerning,” Jaemin says as they walk back to his apartment. “But hopefully by the end of tomorrow, we’ll be ready to go and Janus will let us through.”
“If we can even find him,” Donghyuck says. “I keep forgetting the dream as soon as I wake up.”
“Yeah, we’ll have to figure that out,” Jaemin says thoughtfully.
They have pasta and garlic bread for dinner, and Donghyuck takes secret delight in discovering another thing that Jaemin is good at. Cooking comes as easy to him as deciphering Greek epics, and he wears his skill with a similar confidence.
After Jaemin falls asleep at his laptop after dinner, Donghyuck declares bedtime for both of them. Jaemin lends him a towel and Donghyuck takes the shortest shower of his life, overly self-conscious of the fact that he’s naked in Jaemin’s house. The door is locked tight but it still feels weirdly vulnerable, somehow.
Jaemin is back asleep at the table again when Donghyuck walks back out.
“Jaemin,” Donghyuck calls playfully, “come on. Go wash your face and go to bed.”
Jaemin doesn’t stir, just breathes out heavily, stirring the hair over his forehead. Panic erupts in Donghyuck’s stomach, and he runs over and shakes Jaemin by the shoulders.
“ Jaemin, ” he says again, and this time, Jaemin jerks upright, his expression cloudy and confused.
“Huh?” Jaemin says. “Whasamatter?”
Relief sweeps over Donghyuck just as fast as the panic had, and he squats at Jaemin’s side, dizzy. He grips Jaemin’s forearm and presses his head to the side of Jaemin’s leg, breathing shakily through his nose. “Thank god,” he says. “I thought—I thought he’d gotten you too.”
“Oh,” Jaemin says, voice hoarse. He clears his throat. “ Oh. ” He slides off his chair and pulls Donghyuck to his chest, arms tight around his shoulders. “I’m okay. It’s alright. Sorry I scared you.”
“I can’t do this without you,” Donghyuck admits in the barest whisper, and feels Jaemin’s arms tighten around him. “I know I make all those jokes, but if you fell asleep too, then I don’t—I genuinely don’t know what I would do.”
One of Jaemin’s hands comes up to stroke Donghyck's hair, soothing. “I’m sorry,” he says again. He pulls away and touches Donghyuck’s cheek so gently it nearly shakes all of Donghyuck’s tears free. “Let’s go to bed, okay? I was thinking I could sleep out here with you so you could tell me about your dream the second you wake up.”
“Where?” Donghyuck asks, sitting back on heels. “There’s only one couch.”
“The floor, probably,” Jaemin says, and Donghyuck frowns at him. “What? We can’t both fit on the couch.”
“But you have a bed, idiot,” Donghyuck says.
Jaemin’s eyes narrow a fraction. “I do. But wouldn’t you be uncomfortable?”
“Why would I be uncomfortable?”
Jaemin hesitates, and Donghyuck reads the answer on his face. Because I kissed you. Because you almost kissed me. Because there’s something between us that’s getting harder to deny every time I touch you. Because you let me hold you, just then. You don’t want to bite my hand off, you just want me to touch you in all the ways that I know how. “I don’t know.”
“Well, you’re the one who said we’re friends,” Donghyuck replies, stubbornly ignoring all the insane things his body is doing at the moment. “Friends share beds. And besides, it’s all in the name of research, right?”
“Right,” Jaemin says slowly. “Research.”
And that brings him to the current moment, lying in the semi-darkness next to Jaemin. And maybe it’s something about the warmth of Jaemin’s body next to him, or the pressure of their situation, the too-many near misses, that makes truth suddenly pour from his lips.
“My dad sent me a text, after that essay,” Donghyuck says. “I don’t know what Hypnos did to make me win, but it’s one of the best things that’s ever happened to me.”
“You and your dad,” Jaemin answers haltingly, “don’t get along, right?”
“Not really,” Donghyuck replies.
“Not even when you were little?”
Donghyuck snorts. “It was even worse when I was a kid. We used to live in Seoul, him and my mom and me, and since I was around a lot more, he’d come home and take his anger out on both of us. When he divorced, he brought me here and left my mom behind as soon as the papers were signed.”
His dad says he doesn’t remember that night, the night he signed the divorce papers. But Donghyuck does, because his dad had pushed him, and Donghyuck had cracked his face against the corner of his bed so hard he’d nearly broken his jaw. It had loosened two of his baby teeth.
They’d gotten on a flight straight away. The flight attendants had to keep bringing him napkins for his mouth. He’d pried the loose teeth out in the airplane bathroom, so they’d stop hurting.
He remembers spitting blood into the puke bag, and finds that he’s shaking. His head hurts. His jaw hurts. The fact that he doesn’t know how to stop chasing his dad’s approval makes him ache down to his bones. That’s all his life has been, he feels. A series of failed opportunities to convince his dad that he’s not the same as his mother: a mistake, a vessel for derision, thrown away when his use has run out.
He doesn’t realize he’s crying until Jaemin’s arms come around him again, holding him tightly as the sobs wrack his body. He cries about his dad, about his friends fast asleep, about the fact that he likes Jaemin more than he knows how to say. He cries until the water runs out; until his body is nothing but one long, exhausted breath.
“I’m sorry,” he says. His voice comes out thick and snotty. “I got your shirt all wet.”
“It’s okay,” Jaemin replies, so earnestly that Donghyuck would start crying again if he could. “Do you feel better?”
“Yeah,” Donghyuck answers, and he means it. The anger has faded some, leaving a tired, sour taste behind, the ache in his lungs after a big cry. This, at least, is familiar. The comedown from the rage. “Sorry. I should be used to talking about it by now. It’s not like he was the only guy who did something shitty to me.”
Jaemin makes a derisive noise. “That’s fucked-up. Used to it. Nobody should be used to that kind of treatment. I can’t believe your dad is like that. It’s almost like—”
Jaemin stops, but Donghyuck knows where he was going. The ex-boyfriend, the one that left Donghyuck bloody and teary-eyed on the ground outside of the Corinth when Jaemin found him that night. A different kind of wound, but for the same reason.
“With Simon, the ex-boyfriend,” Donghyuck says, because if Jaemin isn’t going to continue then he may as well. What more does he have to hide? “He wasn’t the first.”
He hears more than sees Jaemin sit up. “ What? ”
“Oh, yeah,” Donghyuck replies, forcing a casual tone around the tightening in his throat. “Even the first guy I dated shoved me around a little. Called me an ice-cold bitch.”
“Alex?”
“That’s the one. Can’t believe you remember him.”
Jaemin exhales sharply . “He seemed so…”
“Sweet? Yeah, he was. And then his friends got in his head, and I got into my dream school and he didn’t, and it all unraveled.”
“And the others?”
“Just as bad,” Donghyuck murmurs. “I mean, it wasn’t—like, it wasn’t bad bad. With Simon, it was the worst. The others didn’t hit me, mostly because they knew I could bury them if they tried. It was just words. They always knew—they always knew exactly what to say to cut me down. Honestly, sometimes I wished they would’ve just punched me in the face.”
He takes a deep, staggering breath, and tests out the weight of this next truth. Here, in the late hours of the night, everything feels lighter, slipperier. Like he and his words could just drift silently into the air without consequence.
So he goes for it. “I’m like a magnet for them. People that treat me like shit, I mean. You’d think I would’ve had enough from my dad, but no, I guess not.”
There’s faint rustling as Jaemin turns on his side. Donghyuck feels Jaemin’s chin brush his shoulder and holds very, very still.
“I suppose they saw me as competition,” Donghyuck whispers. “The boyfriends. Like they constantly had to have one up on me. So it feels like, I don’t know. Like I should always expect a fight. Like I have to keep my hands up, or bam, I’m gonna get sucker-punched in the face by someone who I thought was supposed to love me.”
“ I’m not going to sucker-punch you,” Jaemin replies immediately. It’s so opposite of what Donghyuck thought he was going to say that he can only laugh in disbelief. “I’d at least give you a heads-up before I swung.”
“Well, that’s reassuring,” Donghyuck says, a little breathless.
Jaemin inches a hairsbreadth closer, his knees grazing Donghyuck’s calf. “If I could make it all better,” he starts, suddenly serious, “you have to know that I would. For you.”
Donghyuck shuts his eyes against the sudden burn of tears. “You can’t just say things like that,” he mutters. “Why would you say that?”
“If you’d let me,” Jaemin continues, unrelenting, “I’d stay with you. You don’t have to fight the fight all by yourself. You don’t even have to fight at all, if you don’t want to. You have m—”
He seems to realize the hugeness of his words at the same time Donghyuck does, and cuts himself short.
“You don’t know what you’re saying,” Donghyuck murmurs. Still, something holds him in place, even as Jaemin tentatively presses a few fingers to the side of Donghyuck’s chest, fitting between the notches in Donghyuck’s ribs. His heart is racing in his chest.
“You have people, Donghyuck,” Jaemin says. His breath is hot on Donghyuck’s skin, right above the neckline of his borrowed shirt. “Please don’t forget that. Please.”
Donghyuck presses his lips together and doesn’t respond. Jaemin’s words are unfamiliar and don’t fit right on him, making him prickle uncomfortably. The truth is, his isolation is a creature of his own making. His father, who had taught him that friends couldn’t be trusted, that lovers will inevitably grow to hate him and force him to leave. His boyfriends, who showed him that relationships were about trading blows, taking turns to see who could hurt the other. Love changes to pain. Love will always change to pain, and the only way to prevent that is to keep it out.
But then there’s Jaemin, who touches him so gently. Who listens to him and remembers the things he says. Who teases him, who squeezes his fingers tight, who pushes him and catches him in turn.
Jaemin, who hasn’t hurt him, not even once.
The evidence is right there in front of his eyes. Donghyuck is a man of logic, is he not? Expermination, observation, empirical data, gathered in his cupped hands. So couldn’t he just—why can’t he just—
He turns, and Jaemin is right there. As he’s always been, this whole time, sitting in the row behind Donghyuck and tickling the back of his neck, letting Donghyuck doodle in the margins of his notes, sipping overpriced Americanos in the low light of the library. Struggling through Etruscan history, arguing about the finer points of Roman law, getting overzealous about niche Greek philosophers.
“Donghyuck,” Jaemin says, and Donghyuck feels his breath ghost against his lips. “Stop thinking about it.”
Donghyuck shuts his eyes tight and holds very still. He feels the mattress dip by his head as Jaemin leans over him.
When their mouths meet this time, it’s chaste, entirely different from their first one at the party. Almost shy, as they test the waters. Donghyuck feels like an entirely different person, lying here, being kissed like this. Like the person on Halloween, a week ago, wasn’t even him, but rather a pale reflection. Maybe this was inevitable, then. It sure feels like it. Maybe—
“ Stop thinking,” Jaemin insists, pulling away. “I feel like I can hear your brain in there. When was the last time—”
“Then make me stop,” Donghyuck interrupts. “You’re doing a shitty job.”
Jaemin’s eyes are huge and shiny in the darkness. The light through the curtain glances off his cheekbones and the bridge of his nose. His pajama shirt gapes over his collarbones. Something murmurs in Donghyuck’s mind, and he tries to block it out.
“ Kiss me,” he hears himself tell Jaemin, in the barest whisper. It feels like the voice is coming from somewhere far away. “If you want me to stop thinking. Kiss me.”
So Jaemin does, with one hand cradling Donghyuck’s jaw, the other braced beside him. This time, his mouth is hot and insistent, thumb pressing at the corner of Donghyuck’s mouth, and oh, this is familiar.. Donghyuck lets his lips part and feels Jaemin’s tongue slide along his, feels Jaemin’s teeth graze his bottom lip, his fingers stroking along the edge of Donghyuck’s face.
The sensations mount until Donghyuck is practically shivering, feeling like he’s falling out of his skin. Jaemin kisses him so thoroughly that Donghyuck forgets time and place, until he’s reduced to tongue and lips and then only to the sound of his own hitched breathing, anchored to reality by the pressure of Jaemin’s hand resting gently on his throat.
He only becomes aware of his hips lifting off the mattress and the sweat pooling under his lower back when Jaemin pulls away with a groan. One of his legs is flung over Donghyuck’s right thigh, and Donghyuck knows he’s not the only one affected.
“Jaemin,” Donghyuck whispers, threading his fingers into the short hair at the base of Jaemin’s neck and tugging a little. He feels like he’s watching the scene play out from outside of his body. Like a film, or a memory: the sweat shining on Jaemin’s hairline, the flush on his throat, the dull shine of his skin in the diffused streetlight through the curtain.
Jaemin lets out another groan in response. Donghyuck kisses the side of his neck and clutches him closer. He kisses Jaemin’s jaw and his cheek, his chin, and wriggles a hand in between their bodies.
“If you do this,” Jaemin gasps as Donghyuck palms at him over his shorts, “you have to know—you gotta know that I’m—that—”
“Shh,” Donghyuck says, and gets a hand all the way around Jaemin, where he’s already a little sticky. His breath is hot and humid against Donghyuck’s face and his whole body trembles with the effort of keeping his weight off of Donghyuck. His mouth falls open and Donghyuck bites down on the skin between his neck and shoulder, moving his hand just so, tight but not painful, and watches with keen, smug satisfaction as Jaemin loses all words except please and Donghyuck .
It’s not long, then, until Jaemin comes totally undone, elbows giving out, eyelashes fluttering. Donghyuck takes his weight with a little laugh and flips them over so he can grind lazily against Jaemin’s thigh, Jaemin’s hand resting on his ass.
His mouth is sweet and pliant when Donghyuck kisses him, both of them damp and finished. Donghyuck catches his breath, loosely ensnared in the circle of Jaemin’s arms, and starts to feel the prickle of self-consciousness creep over him.
“First my shirt, now my bedsheets,” Jaemin says after a minute, erasing any fears Donghyuck had about it being awkward. “You’re ruining all my linens.”
“Next up, the couch,” Donghyuck teases, and Jaemin groans dramatically.
“Not the couch, it’s vintage.”
“Should we change the sheets?”
Another dramatic groan sends Donghyuck into a fit of giggles. But they get up and change the sheets, and then Jaemin says they should change their pajamas, and then Donghyuck says they should rinse off, and then Jaemin has him pinned up against the glass in the shower just like he threatened he would, and then his mouth is on Donghyuck’s chest, and then lower. “Just paying my dues,” he says sweetly, with a smile that does not match what he proceeds to do with his mouth.
And then at that point they’re both so tired they’re nearly delirious. Donghyuck crawls back into bed and slings a slightly proprietary arm over Jaemin’s chest, pulling him so close Jaemin has no hope of getting away.
“So this is how you are,” Jaemin whispers against Donghyuck’s cheek. “Possessive. I should’ve guessed, the way you’d always have to be my partner in class. Nobody else ever even had a chance.” His voice does something strange at the end, but Donghyuck can’t parse its meaning.
“You don’t even know half of it,” Donghyuck replies. “I wasn’t even doing it on purpose before, you know. It was all subconscious. I can’t believe I only started to notice after that freaky spell. I’ve been spending too much time with you.”
Jaemin hesitates for slightly too long, but before Donghyuck can ask him what’s wrong, he’s being kissed gently. “That must be it. Now get some sleep. We’ve still got more research to do tomorrow.”
Donghyuck closes his eyes, his body relaxed and heavy. Sleep rushes at him quickly, eagerly, and it’s in between the space of one breath and the next that he’s falling into nothingness.
This time, he sees them: a set of enormous bronze gates, shimmering in the distance. Past them, a wall of darkness so impenetrable and complete that Donghyuck’s eyes slide right off it. Erebos, land of eternal darkness, home to Hypnos.
Off to his right, a river rushes past, so loud it’s hard to think. Huge, waxy red flowers sway by the riverbank, caught in a strange, musty breeze.
He turns around, and there’s Janus with his two doors, sitting on his stool. The old, green-eyed face is currently looking at Donghyuck with a thoughtful expression.
“You’ve decided,” the god says. “Haven’t you?”
“Yes,” Donghyuck says.
“Then name your choice.”
Donghyuck takes a deep breath. “We’ll go down to the underworld. We’ll meet Hypnos, god of sleep, and renegotiate our terms. We will free our friends and restore everything to as it was.”
Janus’s face flips to the younger one. It laughs mockingly. “You choose, yet you still know nothing. We have given you ample time in this space between worlds, protected from the trials of the underworld, so you may make your decision with wisdom. Hypnos sleeps eternally, boy . His strength has faded as the times have changed. You know Hypnos’s nature, do you not?”
“I don’t—I’m not—” Donghyuck stutters, unprepared for the disdain in Janus’s voice. “What do you mean, it’s not Hypnos? Who else would have the power to put everyone to sleep like that?”
“Power,” green-eyed Janus muses. “Of course. You’ve been led astray by your own nature.”
From the other side, the other face mutters, “we should have appeared to the other one. He should know about desire. ”
“Desire. Yes. Not the power, but the desire. ” He tilts his head to the side, and then nods in satisfaction. “That is all we can offer you for tonight. Time is a tricky thing, beyond my reach, and you are running short of it. The next time you enter here, you will have to choose a door.”
“But—” Donghyuck starts, only it’s too late. There’s another rapid flash of images: Jaemin with a bloody heart in his hands, that mossy boulder in the circle of fir trees, and the river, its waters milky white.
Then he’s waking, rushing back towards consciousness with the sound of water in his ears and the damp, earthy smell of the wind in his nose.