*

. Inviolate with beauty. Simple and clean. Chalk skin was swallowed whole by the black stillness, surface rippling under the lambent moon’s watchful eye. Peace was realised through deliverance.

Joonmyun runs prostrate fingers through the prickle of hair that covers his head, uncomfortably short and close to his scalp. Hmm, it’s starting to grow back already, he muses before lethargically dragging the neck chaffingly sharp polyester seatbelt across his body. It fastens with an altogether ordinary and yet indescribably satisfying click of metal against metal.

A velveteen, but undeniably sad, smile crosses his lips when his eyes grace the ten year old polaroid on the dashboard. It’s a little bent around the edges and the two faces, incandescent as an overpowering flash bathed their white reflective skin, are a little out of focus but undeniably happy and absolutely in love. Nostalgia becomes him as he emptily heaves a sigh and brings the car to life, allowing his reminiscence to guide him to the place he remembers so vividly.

“Hmm, there’s nothing more liberating than forgetting the world exists.” A voice hummed, sinking into the plush seat on Joonmyun’s right. The uniform lines painted on the road were rapidly losing their race against the engine that crooned a monotone song into the night - the predictability begged for his eyes to meet the younger man’s. Naturally, he complied all too willingly. There was a glazed, somewhat distant look in the sublime russet orbs and Joonmyun was struck by the fact that perhaps he was already forgetting the world and existing only within the security of the passenger seat. He held on his gaze for as long as possible before returning his focus, albeit reluctantly, to the worn tarmac that vanished beneath the protruding car bonnet.
 “You’re probably right.” Joonmyun muttered in reply, mindlessly changing gear as he took a right turn.

He barely looks when he makes the same turn off, he’s watching the orange hum of the streetlights streak the polaroid as they fly by, stealing chance glimpses at the private memento.
With a flick of his wrist, the small round bone casting a shadow on his arm as it protruded slightly, life peters out of the engine and the jostling hum is put to rest. The same cannot be said for his reminiscences that pool in the once closed off pockets of his memory. It’s the place  he used to keep Exo, until he realised that the feelings he has for Exo don’t match the ones he has for…. Him.

“We can’t do this!” Joonmyun’s intent was to be commanding and authoritative but his gasp of a whisper fluttered away into the still night with much the same grace of a butterfly on a lazy spring evening. Entirely unthreatening, with his resolve already bending, he was silenced by tender fingers curling around his wrist and a guiding hand shepherding him out of the open car door.
“Hush,” The word was softer than a lullaby and sweeter than fresh honey. Joonmyun felt himself dissolve to the stillness when his wrist was released so that his kindly shepherd could remove his shirt in a single lissom movement.
Joonmyun’s eyes traced the familiar body, admiring the tricky curves and bones that hadn’t quite found their place yet. Puberty had long since disappeared from the beautiful porcelain moppet before him, but the complications of youth were still evident in the awkward jut of his hip bone and surplus of baby fat that had resolutely refused to leave his cheeks.
Without another word, Joonmyun separated his own body from the confines of his cloth cocoon. He was hesitant, but he didn’t stop and followed the steering footsteps that crunched over the sparse covering of bark and dried leaves that covered the ground. Shoes and pants were lost somewhere along the way.

The water was cold, and for a while his breathing was jagged, but the following silence made everything okay… More than okay.

Sitting against the cool metal of the bonnet, Joonmyun smiles because nothing has changed even after all of these years. The air had that same obtrusive bite that harsh patterns along his skin, the ground was littered the same copse of fallen foliage and the black expanse of shimmering water invitingly projected the image of the moon back at him like a prize to be won should he venture into its depths. Everything was exactly as he remembered it until-

“Hey, hey watch this…” A girl’s voice, thick with inebriation, squawks obnoxiously. Joonmyun flinches as though her voice has struck him fatally because really, it might as well have. His heart begins to bleed and the magic of the night is slashed apart by the sudden crash of an ungraceful body plunging with blind intoxication into the river. From his position, he cannot see them, but the raucous laughter of the girl’s peers poisons the air and the sad, feeble remainder of a ripple born from her almighty scar on the water’s surface taints all it spreads to. All he wants is to soothe the river but the impossible remains exactly that – impossible.

With a heavy heart and broken expectations of a single night of quiet, he sighs and climbs back into his car before booking into a motel. He isn’t ready to leave this place, not yet.

*

“Joonmyun?”

“Mmm?”

“You forgot your shirt again.”

The next day, Joonmyun allows himself to be led once more to the bank of the river, the most private and secluded corner of Seoul and his spiritual home. Tonight, he hopes, will be more fortunate than the last.

He hadn’t thought it through, coming here before meeting anyone else, before meeting him, but he had done it anyway. His emotions, the fierce boiling pot of bubbling feelings he’d repressed for two whole years, had finally overflowed and taken place in a reaction of rash decisions. He didn’t regret it though, not in the slightest.
He didn’t realise how much he had truly, deeply, with all his heart, wanted to be here, to feel as he had back then. It only hit him now that the prize had been so elusive, snatched out from between his finger tips at the most critical second.

He finds himself staring at the water, gathering the fragments of his shattered determination. He is going to do this, even if he’s painfully alone.

“Don’t worry. No one will see you… Just me.”

Whispered words swim through his ears, ghosts of their former selves and oddly hollow without their passage from between two plump lips. As Joonmyun remembers, he begins by slipping the small pearls of his shirt buttons free from their rigid place, allowing the twin curtains of material to fall limply by his sides. Hesitantly, he lets the garment tumble from his shoulders, landing on the cool hood of the car, and then shifts his attention to his shoes. The laces are frustrating, the cords intertwined far too tightly to be reasonable and he breaks a nail as he picks the knot atop his left foot undone. The other is significantly easier and suddenly he finds himself fumbling with his belt buckle, eager to be released from the everyday penitentiary of casual attire.

Dreamlike, but as determined as a mountain is still, he steps to the water’s edge and curls his toes in the, moist but pleasantly so, mud of the river bank. All that’s separating him from being entirely at one with nature is the patterned expanse of fitted underwear that protects his last shred of modesty. A finger smoothes over the branded waistband before hooking underneath and smoothly pulling it away from the goosebumped skin.

His lungs collapse as a breath of relief mingled with tension and discomfort dissolves into the sky.

“See? It’s perfectly natural.”

Yes, he thinks as he recalls the encouraging words and steps out from the underwear pooled around his feet, it is perfectly natural. And yet his body is wracked by tentativeness and an innocent fear of violation and disrupted privacy. Of course it’s not as important if he’s seen now… Back then, things were different. He was different. He wasn’t alone, he had Exo to consider - and he had him.

Now he’s here alone and nothing really matters. No one else can see him – he’s in a private kingdom created entirely for him, closed off from the hustle and bustle of others. They don’t understand the sentimentality that this tiny corner of the world holds for him. It’s a small candle in the blackout of the globe, giving its light to two people only, and he likes it that way. The low hanging moon and taciturn smile of the night would fall apart if anyone else tried to seek refuge under it. It’s private, he thinks, and will always remain that way.

His breath catches in his throat, raw and suffocating, as he wades into the freezing depths of the river. It’s scathing and sharp against the carefully crafted porcelain of his skin and it’s disappointing because last time he came here it was the middle July and the river was as warm and comforting as bathwater. Today, however, it’s nearly September and the white effulgence of the moon doesn’t compare the shuddering low temperature that encases Joonmyun’s small, yet broader than before, figure.

Taking the plunge, so to speak, he quickens his pace, and allows himself to be swallowed in the serenity of the shivers that roll up and down his spine.

“The moon’s beautiful tonight.” The murmur passed his lips before he was even aware he was speaking. A thoughtful hum met his ears in reply. He was weightless, letting the water support him in a gentle embrace.
It’d be nice if there were two, he thought, one for each of them. The sun was infinitely more lustrous and incredible, but the they… They were two moons. Delicate, introvert, shimmering.

Rather than lie still, Joonmyun twists, turns and tumbles through the underwater world. His fingers are splayed, feeling the rush between them cling to his skin, and his toes catch the riverbed with a gentle grace that barely disturbs the covering of clay.

He is freedom, beauty and nature melded together by a sublime forge under the moon’s watchful eye. His body and mind are at one with peace and serenity and Joonmyun can’t remember ever feeling this pure and lucid. The facility of memories and the present becoming one is almost ridiculous but he doesn’t stop it. The entire reason he’s here is to be unified with what time has stolen from him, and if that means wallowing in his nostalgia, then so be it.

Regardless, the beauty and liberty of being and indigenous in the water bathes away all of his stress. Numb and wondrously languid, he allows his body to be carried by the ebb and flow of the river, not a single muscle tensed. Even his eyes are closed and then -

“I thought you might be here.”

The intruding voice rings out in the night, but isn’t… it can’t be. Why would it be?

Joonmyun’s body snaps to attention and his first reaction is to cover himself before he realises the water is pitch enough to protect his dignity and he doesn’t even have anything to hide because it’s –

“Kyungsoo.”

The younger laughs, ethereal and softer than gossamer but oh so sweetly familiar. Joonmyun bashfully stares back, aware of the changes both of them have undergone. Last time they saw each other, Joonmyun was a wisp of man – far too thin but undeniably exquisite – and Kyungsoo’s hair had been even less than the feather like comb that the elders was now. It hadn’t been a fond meeting; in fact, it had been a parting of ways. With childlike sheepishness masked as maturity that transcended the situation, they had mutually announced to one another that their relationship was through. It was for the better, they had agreed on that day four years ago.

It wasn’t.

Now, however, the rigorous regime of the military has whipped Joonmyun into shape, his body bulky and his head stripped of the hair that once softened his small, robust features. Kyungsoo, on the other hand, has begun to shed the complimentary muscle that came as part of the military service package. His hair is longer, settling comfortably around the defined curve of his cheekbones. Joonmyun wonders when he got so thin, but he doesn’t ask, because he can’t speak and his head is spinning because why is Kyungsoo here?

“I can’t believe you didn’t come to see me.” There’s a twinge in Kyungsoo’s voice that Joonmyun can’t decipher. The younger’s eyes twinkle with bitter mischief and Joonmyun relaxes because he’s reading too far into the slightest things like he always does. He bobs in the water, vaguely aware of the fact that Kyungsoo isn’t wearing socks or shoes, his feet covered in dirt as leaves poke out at angles beneath his toes.

“I didn’t think, I mean, this was the first place I-“

“It’s fine.” Kyungsoo hums, eyes tracing the sky with a far off look. Joonmyun recognises it instantly – the youngest of the pair is closing his soul to the rest of the earth, forgetting it’s there. He and Kyungsoo are the only one’s existing in his blanketed world of privacy and wonder.

Joonmyun turns away and watches the gentle ripples, remnants of disturbance, peter out into nothing. He feels he should say something but he isn’t sure what he wants to tell him. He wants to pick up the pieces and glue them back together but it’s futile, he thinks. Closing his eyes, he falls onto his back, once again supported by the still and watched by the lunar glow.

“I’ve only seen Chanyeol.” He finds himself saying; mouth running before he can stop it. It’s better if he says nothing and the lets moment carry itself, but he can’t stop because even though he’s done nothing wrong he wants to put everything right. “He came to greet me on my release. You know what he’s like.”

There’s no reply so he struggles to form words that communicate his meaning but it’s as hopeless as trying to make a sandcastle when the tide is chasing dangerously closely. Another minute, maybe sixty, maybe an entire day, passes before either party speaks again. The task falls on the one-time-leader who crumbles under the pressure of his own expectations.

“I never wanted to-“ He begins as he twists around to face the bank, but the words fall mute and his eyes swell at the glory that’s before him. Kyungsoo’s shirt is somewhere on the ground, gray material camouflaged by the monochromatic light that shone down on them from heavens, and his torso is vibrant and magnificent. His hands are wrapped around his belt buckle, and the stretch of leather is slipping loose as his attention turns to his zipper. In his unwavering focus, he hadn’t heard the elder and is entirely, blissfully unaware of the attention him with the intensity of a thousand suns.

Joonmyun swiftly turns away once more; oddly shy as Kyungsoo strips himself so shamelessly. He hears the other enter the water, but resolutely locks his eyes on the sky.

He isn’t prepared when arms wrap around his chest, and a heartbeat is so close and in time with his own, appearing suddenly as if they’re a divine gift. He breathes slowly and his body fuses with the familiarity and sacred simplicity of another form, just as naturally bare as his own, at his side. This is the feeling he’s yearned for so strongly and now he’s receiving it, this blossoming companionship and trust that had disappeared into dusty tome of the past.

Joonmyun turns so they’re chest to chest, limbs entangled as they wrap around one another. He’s speechless as he appraises his counterpart, drinking in every detail of man he’s missed so very dearly.
His eyes are lidded and a solemn smile sits heavily on his round face which Joonmyun can’t quite read despite knowing him better than he knows himself.

“I was wrong. It was wrong. I just…” Kyungsoo begins, propelling himself backwards slowly as he untwines himself from Joonmyun. The words are irrelevant because all Joonmyun can comprehend is the unbounded beauty and innocence that radiates from the man before him.

An alabaster wonder, swathed in a sea of black liquid diamond, pulsating with a docile self-consciousness akin to an infant, separated from its mother. The man he loved… The man he still loves, reduced to nothing more than childish embarrassment and remorse.

Joonmyun says nothing, aware of the fact that all of a sudden he’s crying and so is Kyungsoo. A bitter sound, somewhere between a sob, laugh and choke, erupts from his throat before he moves, gliding through the plane of water. His arms find the fragile body, convulsing with sobs, and embrace it, cradling him under the unsleeping stars – the only witness to their unspoken confessions. Their lips meet for a brief second and Joonmyun’s shocked because he has forgotten just how well they fitted together, the plump cushions of Kyungsoo’s rosebuds and his own notably slighter pair.

They complete each other and Joonmyun wonders how he possibly survived this long with the belief that they would never be able to return to how they once were – the boys in the photograph overflowing with unbridled glee and rash youthfulness that follows love.

“I’m sorry.” Kyungsoo says sometime later, when they are no longer holding one another, instead floating as two very separate (and yet very much the same) entities. Joonmyun wonders why, but doesn’t ask because that would mean admitting his own wrong doing and he can’t bring himself to spoil the serenity of the tranquil darkness. His eyes sit on upon the moon and his chest heaves with a breath laboured by the pain of the past.

“Don’t be. We did what we thought was best.” Spoken like a true leader, he thinks, and smiles despite himself. A small chuckle follows and before he knows it, suppressed laughter is floating in his lungs and bouncing in his throat. It feels good, knowing that forgetting the bad things is this easy. It dilutes the awkwardness of suddenly finding yourself in public with the one person you hold above all, who until just an hour ago you assumed would never be yours again.

Hours fly silently by as they swim, revelling in the joys of nature. They lay head to tail with the water carrying their weight, fingers laced together between their bodies, vessels of love on the sea of forgiveness.

In the blink of a hazy eye, the black has given way to the watercolour palette of dawn and the quiet hum of far off cars can be heard if you listen close enough. Their bubble is bursting and Joonmyun wants nothing more than to keep it in perfect condition for as long as he possibly can, tightening his grip on the younger’s hand when he attempts to pull away.

“Joonmyun.” Kyungsoo’s voice coos, reality beginning to filter through the rapidly fading stars. It’s morning, and the safety of the night is abandoning them to fend for themselves.

“I know.” He sighs, shifting his body so that he’s upright, albeit reluctantly so. A kind smile that falls just short of Kyungsoo’s eyes graces him and he’s reminded of how, despite being the leader, Kyungsoo always took care of everyone so much better than he ever could. Even if they would suffer first, he made sure they did what was best in the long run – something Joonmyun could never do; he could never bring himself to cause upset, even for the better.
Resigned to the inevitable, he paddles gently towards the bank, following the dripping figure of his splendid lover. His breath comes short and sharp, painful in the back of his throat, when the dewy morning breeze slaps his bare skin and grabs onto the moisture that covers his entire body.

“Here.” Kyungsoo smiles, returning from the boot of his own car that Joonmyun doesn’t remember ever pulling up by the bank. Before he can protest, there’s a world of downy white surrounding his head and warm tickle of fluff against his neck. The towel moves down away from his face, skirting his neck and shoulders as Kyungsoo lovingly pats his body dry. There’s a look in his eyes that screams affection and dutiful concentration, as if this act of tenderness can rectify all the hurt and loneliness they’ve caused each other.

It doesn’t have to.

Joonmyun forgives him with every fibre of his being but he can’t help but wonder if Kyungsoo feels the same. If he’s this eager to prove his repentance then does he think that Joonmyun has to apologise and correct all his wrong doings too? No towel in hand to dab away his sins, the elder leans forward, crossing the already negligible distance between their two bodies, pressing an evocative kiss against the full lips he knows so well.
They kiss him back and they become synchronised, heads tilting into each other with minute smiles for the other’s eyes only. Pink clings to pink as lips pull apart and Joonmyun chuckles because there’s so much alien romance surrounding them. It’s like they’re twenty-something again, just discovering their fascination with each other, drinking in every touch and embrace because it’s new and exhilaratingly tender. However, they aren’t. Joonmyun is thirty-five, having had his conscription delayed a few years, and Kyungsoo is thirty-three – this isn’t new and they’re seasoned with life and experience.

Kyungsoo bites his lip, towel still held tight in his petit fist as he takes a minute step back.

“We should get dressed and go home. You need some sleep.” He says as the palm of his hand gently wipes the still tumbling beads of fresh water from Joonmyun’s face. He complies and they silently dress after drying off, Kyungsoo helping him with his stubborn buttons that just won’t fit through their holes.

They’re both in Joonmyun’s car (“I’ll come pick mine up later.” Kyungsoo assures him) and before either can speak, their eyes simultaneously fall on the old photograph on the dashboard.

“Wow, you still have this?” Kyungsoo asks, silently impressed as he picks it up carefully between his thumb and forefinger, fastidious should it fall apart. Joonmyun’s shy but he nods anyway. From the corner of his eyes, he can see the paint of orange that their photographed faces as each streetlight flies by. The reflection of orange mingled with the memory and all of its splendour are too much and threaten to overflow so Joonmyun hums and replies to distract himself.

“Couldn’t bring myself to get rid of it.” He laughs, eyes glued to road because it’s morning and the amount of traffic is steadily increasing as the night shift ends and exhausted workers go home. He can feel Kyungsoo’s signature stare boring into him, but ignores it. What can he say?

“I love you.” Kyungsoo says after a while of quiet contemplation and their eyes meet for a brief second of sincerity and unbridled feeling. That look is there again, the well-known gloss of an exclusive existence for the two of them.

It’s not until now that Joonmyun understands what it means. To want and need to be so superbly alone with another person that you realise you cannot stand to be without. It’s perfect and it’s scary but he accepts it because he wants to… If he had given up on the night the peace was torn asunder, none of this would have happened. No, it is because of his patience and his firm belief that tranquil quiet was the only way to truly relive his memories that he was finally able to rediscover the present.

“I love you too.” He muses, right hand absentmindedly playing around with the radio. Their private universe would lie dormant for now and something had to fill the void.

Kyungsoo laughs gently when he recognises the song playing and they bask in the bittersweet irony as they sail through the city.

“Nightswimming deserves a quiet night….”