Seventeen
Cantabile
seventeen
seventeen
[ Taemin ]
It’s easy to slip into a routine. They walk with each other to class after second, fifth, and eighth periods. When school lets out for the day they decide where to go (usually Jonghyun’s house). By the time homework is almost done and their snacks are depleted, things have degenerated into long makeout sessions on Jonghyun’s bed, which is near the window. They can hear outside from their position, and when warm breezes turn to the slamming of car doors they quickly turn on the TV and pretend to watch while curling their fingers together underneath the covers. When it’s safe again, they turn the volume up and do their best to impress the very moment into the softness of each other’s mouths, content with just kisses and the skim of fingers over skin.
On weekends, they get as far away as possible, and pretend that they only have each other in this world. Whether it’s a waterpark or a mall or a lake, doesn’t matter, because they only have eyes for each other. Spring turning into summer is lazy cruises down the highway blasting Top 40 hits; it’s skin on skin, chest to chest, fingers through hair. It’s sneaking to the town diner for lunch instead of eating with the other students, and it’s having finally found something worth the wait, worth the loneliness, worth the pressure, worth the pain.
When everyone else is against you, you hold on to the one person that isn’t.
Jonghyun’s chest is solid, even if Taemin’s legs extend further than Jonghyun’s. Taemin can feel the hard muscle beneath Jonghyun’s shirt, and he can hear his heartbeat as they lie together.
It’s a week to summer, and they’re looking forward to a last glory year in high school before tackling the real world. Finals have just finished and there’s nothing making them go to school, so they don’t. Jonghyun’s parents are at work.
“Taemin?” Jonghyun asks suddenly.
Taemin sits up and turns his face to the summer breeze, palms resting lightly on Jonghyun’s arm. “What is it?”
“You’re never going to leave me, are you?”
Taemin is shocked. After all they’ve been through, he can’t imagine anything other than his body against Jonghyun’s. “Why would you even ask something like that?”
Jonghyun blinks slowly, thinking. “It’s not that I’m afraid. It’s just that I need to know. Tell me that we’ll always be together, and I won’t need to know anything else.”
Taemin relaxes and sinks back onto the bed, into a bubble of warmth and everything that is Jonghyun, which smells like home, feels like perfection, and tastes, just a little, like belonging.
“I’ll always love you,” he smiles against the comfort of Jonghyun’s embrace.
“And I’ll always love you back.”
Nothing else is said, but that’s all that needs to be said, anyway.
[ author's notes — /cringes at mushiness. last chapter, guys! epilogue will take a bit longer to be posted. hope you like the new layout, and if the text is too small for you, ctrl-+ should work. :)
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