Really, Baby (I Will Be Just Fine)

13

Taehyung had entered his life like a glorious bruise that erupted across the pale, white skin of his chest, where the pain feels good because it’s pretty and so, so different against him.

But Hoseok is still a lifeguard, which entails coming to work everyday with a hot coworker like Seokjin. It reminds him of how much Hoseok wanted someone like Seokjin to notice him, someone as ideally perfect as Seokjin to enter into his life and stain his skin in purples and blues. And because Hoseok still works at the pool, he still works out fives days of the week, spending most nights in the dance studio until the janitor comes around to the recreational center to kick him out.

Something about the way the walls seem to cave in when he collapses to the floor in a tired heap, the rise and fall of his chest like waves crashing against the sand, is comforting even if it makes his head feel heavier than the weight on his shoulder when he looks into the mirror. It’s a lot like looking into the windows of Taehyung’s eyes whenever they’re together, pouring half the container of sugar into their coffee because they thought they could handle it black. When he looks at Taehyung, he sees an endless sea of hope, chance, confidence, like he could jump out of his seat and sing at the top of his lungs.

He thinks he likes being alone until he’s looking at his own reflection in the mirrors of the dance studio. If they looked like Taehyung’s warm eyes, he could stare at himself until even he didn’t recognize the make-up of his own features.

Hoseok throws an arm over his eyes to shield them from the  fluorescent lights on the ceiling. It’s like this lately, dancing till his bones feel like water and smoke, till his mind is drifting to Taehyung’s knobby knees and fragile wrists. The thing is, Taehyung coming to mind isn’t exactly intentional, and Hoseok has seen more than enough dramas to understand that it meant something entirely different from a drifting, wandering mind, because his mind wasn’t searching. It was running in circles and starting in the same spots, over and over like unpracticed habits.

Hoseok shakes his head and forces it from his mind. Taehyung is a fluttering butterfly that would drift into his life and pass by, but Seokjin is someone he’s liked for almost a year now ever since he started his job last summer. Hoseok doesn’t really know, and maybe he’s just trying to convince himself of foolish things to get his mind away from Taehyung, but he thinks he loves Seokjin because Seokjin could make him love himself. Everything was fine up until Taehyung came into his life, and to solve the storm inside his chest, Hoseok is going to ask Seokjin out. The sooner, the better.

Just then, the janitor knocks on the window of the studio and tears him startlingly from his thoughts.

He says, “Time to go, kiddo.”

And Hoseok nods. “Yeah,” he says. “Time to go.”