Title: never lose touch (feel the static)
Fandom: The Time of Fever/Unintentional Love Story
Rating: PG
Length: 2665 words
Notes: Pining, Recovery from injury, References to child abuse, References to homophobia, OCs, Realizations, Text message conversations, Angst with a hopeful ending. Huge thanks to teaotter for beta. <3
Summary: In the cool of the kitchen, Hotae pours two glasses of water and gives one to Sua.

“What happened to you?” she asks, jerking her head at his leg.

“Motorbike accident. You?”

She shrugs and looks around the room. “Auntie said I’d be able to stay here a few days while she finds me somewhere permanent. She said your mum would understand.”




Lying on his bed, Hotae turns a page in his manhwa, reads three panels, and realises he has no idea what the hero and his sidekick are arguing about. He lets the book drop to his chest. His eyes feel glassy, and his head is empty. For the first time since the accident, his leg doesn’t ache. Instead, he’s numb all over. It must be twenty minutes since he last checked his phone.

He already knows there won’t be any new messages. There never are.

“Son, have you done your physio exercises today?” calls his mum from outside, where she’s cleaning vegetables for dinner.

He sighs silently and suppresses the temptation to whine. It’s hot and dusty outside, and the afternoon sun is unrelenting. But his mum has had to close the shop while she cares for him, and he doesn’t want to add to her burdens. “I forgot. I’ll do them now.”

He pries himself up and limps outside to the collection of weights and bands he keeps in the shade of the tree. As if moving has upset his equilibrium, memories suddenly crowd in, but he makes his mind skate over them like his eyes had skated over the page just now. He’s so tired of being miserable.

The yard feels too empty.

“Unnie!” A woman in a floral blouse opens the gate. Behind her, carrying a bulging backpack, is a girl with a nasty black eye and bruises on her arm.

Hotae jumps to his feet.

The girl looks a little younger than him and is thin as a straw. Her hair is short and red, and her chin juts pugnaciously. She’s obviously digging into her anger to keep herself together, and it’s only half working.

The woman says to Hotae’s mum, “Unnie, this is Choi Sua. I’m sorry we didn’t call ahead—things happened faster than I thought.”

“Oh, Choi Sua. Of course.” Hotae’s mum puts down the scallions she’s just cleaned and stands up. “It’s so good to meet you, Sua. Your auntie did the right thing bringing you here. You can relax now, okay? You’re safe.” She takes Sua’s bag and pats the girl’s shoulder. “This is my son. Hotae, take Sua inside for a drink while I talk to Kim Jian.”

It’s a painfully familiar scene—well, a mix of several scenes—except that the part of Donghee is being played by a sullen girl. Hotae’s fingernails dig into his palms. He doesn’t want to deal with this right now. He just wants to lie in his room and do absolutely nothing until the pain goes away. But of course his mum won’t just ignore someone else’s problems.

In the cool of the kitchen, Hotae pours two glasses of water and gives one to Sua.

“What happened to you?” she asks, jerking her head at his leg.

“Motorbike accident. You?”

She shrugs and looks around the room. “Auntie said I’d be able to stay here a few days while she finds me somewhere permanent. She said your mum would understand.”

“Understand what?” Hotae doesn’t mean to frown, but he doesn’t get it, and he really just wants to be alone.

Sua drinks her water in one long gulp and lowers the glass. Still not meeting his eye, she says, flatly, “I kissed my best friend. Her mother found out and told my mum, and my mum told my dad. And he—he—”

Hotae freezes.

“I told him I’m never getting married, that I like girls, and— when he was—when he stopped, he said never to come back. That it’s not my home anymore.” She does look at him then, glaring defiantly from her blackened eye.

All Hotae can see is Kim Donghee on his birthday, returning from his parents’ place bruised and crying. What is this, a safehouse for abused kids? He swallows. “You’re safe here,” he tells Sua, just like his mum had. And then, because he hasn’t told anyone, and it’s burning a hole in his chest, and because Sua had just blurted out her thing, he adds, “I kissed my best friend, too.”

She raises her eyebrows. “A guy?”

“Yeah.”

“And your mum didn’t mind?”

“She doesn’t know, but.” He doesn’t need to consider to know the truth. “No, she wouldn’t be angry. That’s not why I haven’t told her. He left and went to Seoul.”

It’s too raw, still. He can’t think about Kim Donghee without his heart ripping apart. He definitely can’t say his name. And if he told his mum—would she think it was weird? What if she looked at him differently?

What if she guessed he’s the reason Kim Donghee went away?

Sua seems glad to have something to think about that isn’t her own situation. “Maybe your mum knows you’re gay, though. Maybe that’s the reason she takes in other gay kids. It must be, right? You’re lucky that she’s so nice.”

“What are you talking about?” Hotae rubs the back of his neck. She might as well be speaking a foreign language for all the sense she’s making—assuming Hotae is gay, talking about other gay kids. “What gay kids?”

Sua frowns. “Auntie said your mum let other gay kids come and live with her. Isn’t it true?” She crosses her arms, hunches her shoulders. “I don’t have anywhere else to go.”

“You can stay here,” says Hotae. She looks so small, and that shiner must really hurt. “Do you want ice for your face?” Without waiting for an answer, he gets an icepack from the freezer and gives it to her wrapped in a tea towel. But he’s moving on autopilot. Her words keep repeating in his head: that’s why she’s taken in other gay kids.

The only person mum has taken in is Kim Donghee. Is there a rumour going around—one that even adults have heard—that Kim Donghee is gay? Did it start because of Hotae? Is that why Kim Donghee left?

Panic prickles in Hotae’s palms and on his tongue. His back tightens. Someone must have found out about the kisses. Maybe there was someone hiding in the infirmary who saw them. However the gossip started, it must be Hotae’s fault. Because he couldn’t stop obsessing about the softness of Donghee’s lips, couldn’t help asking. And then—because he had no self-control—he’d held Donghee down on the living room floor and kissed him again. And okay, Donghee had kissed back at first, but in the end, he’d shoved Hotae away.

Donghee cares about Hotae as a friend—that’s why they’d spent that last day together. But he left because of the kisses. Because Hotae hadn’t been able to keep his hands to himself.

Or because someone had found out.

When Hotae found the art diary, those drawings of him, he’d thought it was a sign Donghee felt something too. That the thing between them was mutual. That there’d been a chance of happiness together, before Hotae had fucked it all up. But if Donghee was okay with being with another guy, why would he have left? Why end that kiss the way he did? Why hadn’t he—

Kim Donghee can’t be gay. Can he?

Except—except that ahjusshi had used to be so proud of Donghee when they were young. He’d used to boast about his grades and talk about the grand future ahead of him. That’s how it had been before Hotae and his parents went to Seoul. Something had changed while Hotae was away.

Ahjusshi found out his son is gay.

Before Hotae came back. Before the kisses. And this is worse, so much worse than just ahjusshi drinking too much and being free with his fists. That would be bad enough, from someone who’s supposed to love you. But to lash out at Donghee for who he is—

Hotae can’t stand it. He can’t stand any of this. He needs to go for a run or dive right down to the bottom of the school pool, feel the weight of all that water pressing down on him. He needs to move. He mutters an excuse and heads unseeingly for the door, but his leg spasms and nearly gives out under him.

He catches himself against the doorframe and blindly changes course to go collapse on the couch. Everything is wrong and confusing. He’s trapped in his head. His leg hurts, but that’s nothing to the knife-sharp stab behind the ribs. The pain of missing Kim Donghee.

“Are you okay? What’s wrong?” Sua has followed him into the living room, still holding the icepack to her face.

Hotae shakes his head. “When you kissed your friend, did she—did she kiss you too?”

Sua jerks back a little. It takes her a second to answer, and when she does, her voice is small and dull. “I thought so. Before we did it, she said she liked me. But afterwards, the next day, she said she must have been crazy. That it was a mistake. And then her family sent her to Busan to live with her aunt. I—I didn’t even get to say good-bye. And she won’t answer my messages. I don’t know if—maybe they took her phone away, or maybe—”

“That sucks.” Truly, it’s the saddest story Hotae’s heard in his life. He wonders if the girl, Sua’s friend, had lied when she’d said she liked Sua. Or was it the other part that was the lie: when she took it back?

Tears are running down Sua’s cheeks now. She dashes them away, and Hotae averts his gaze—down to the floor.

He doesn’t come in here anymore if he can help it. It’s easier to read on his bed or sit outside in the sun. In here, the memories are too close and vivid—the warmth from the heater, the taste of mandarins on Kim Donghee’s lips, the way he’d flinched from Hotae’s hand, the hurt look in his eyes. And other times: reading together, teasing, Kim Donghee dabbing ointment on Hotae’s cuts.

Sometimes Hotae thinks he only dated those girls so that they’d break up with him and hit him, and he’d have an excuse to go to Kim Donghee for first aid.

“Where did you kiss her?” he asks Sua.

He doesn’t know why he’s asking, but she doesn’t look surprised. “In the woods behind her parents’ house. Under a tree. Everything smelled of pine needles.” Sua sniffs and wipes her face on her sleeve. “What about you?”

It’s like they’re torturing each other with reminiscences. Is it just because they’ve both finally met someone who knows how it feels? Hotae points at the floor. “Right here.”

She looks where he’s pointing. “At least you got to do it inside.”

It’s such a weird thing to say, it actually pulls a rough, snotty chuckle from Hotae’s throat. And after that, he feels maybe five percent less awful.

“The couch is comfortable,” he tells her. “I don’t know what my mum will say, but as for me, you can stay as long as you need to.”

Apparently they’re running a shelter for abandoned gay kids now. It’ll be a good distraction.


*


That night, he can’t sleep. Occasional muffled sobs come from the living room. His head teems with his own questions. Like: if he’d known Kim Donghee was gay, that that was the reason he’d left home, would he ever have had the nerve to ask for that first kiss? Would he have kissed him again in the living room, holding him down like that, taking and taking until Donghee made him stop?

He’d really thought kissing a friend wouldn’t mean anything to Donghee—or he’d told himself it wouldn’t. On some level he’d believed it.

On another level—he’d thought they were the same: confused, curious, drawn together without understanding why. After all, how could Kim Donghee who’d never even left Gangneung be gay? He was so good, made all his teachers proud, never put a foot wrong.

And now he’s gone, and Hotae can’t even bring himself to ask Mum about it. To say, Why did Kim Donghee have to leave home? Why did he really leave us? What does it mean? He can’t say Donghee’s name. The one who promised to teach him when he didn’t understand isn’t here.

Restless, frustrated, Hotae turns his phone over in his hands. He opens their message thread and scrolls back to the morning after that night.

I’m really sorry.
I’ve truly reflected on myself.
Maybe I’m really going crazy.

Hotae sounded just like Choi Sua’s friend. He scrubs his face and thinks about Donghee coming to the school to say goodbye, asking for one last hug. About him coming into Hotae’s hospital room when he thought Hotae was asleep.

About how it must feel to be gay and have your friend apologise for kissing you like it’s a crazy outlandish thing to do.

He rubs his thumb over his fingers like he’s limbering up, and then he types a new message:

You’ve been eating well, right?

Sua’s crying in the living room, but outside, the night is quiet and still and empty. It’s nothing like his memories of Seoul, all traffic noise, people everywhere, endless jam-packed subway rides. Sending the message feels like trying to communicate between planets. Like sending out a hopeful satellite signal, not knowing if anyone’s listening. But it’s not really that far—they’re in the same time zone.

Kim Donghee…
Are you asleep?

How can Donghee sleep when there’s so much that needs to be said between them?

And then, like a miracle from the emptiness of space, Hotae gets a reply.

Yeah, I’m sleeping.

Hotae breathes a grateful laugh. His heart speeds up a little, and so do his thumbs.

Ha, liar. I bet you’re studying.

How’s your leg?

Getting better. I’ve been doing my exercises.

It feels completely different now he knows Donghee is reading what he writes. Donghee who is officially gay. Who’s attending university with thousands of other students, some of whom must also be guys who like other guys. Hotae starts typing, Have you met anyone? But he deletes it without sending. He doesn’t want to know. He wants to believe Donghee is all his.

So he lets his churning thoughts and feelings spill out instead.

When I apologised for kissing you, I didn’t mean it.
You know that, right?
I’m not sorry.
I might be crazy though.

He waits and waits, but no more replies come. There’s no way at all to know what Donghee is thinking. Maybe he really does hate Hotae. But that just means things can’t get any worse—so for just a few minutes, in the dark, with a broken-hearted girl crying softly in the next room, Hotae lets himself say whatever he wants.

Hey, Kim Donghee! Answer me.
Are you ever coming back?

Still no answer, but Hotae feels Donghee’s attention like static over his skin, somehow reaching him across the miles. It’s almost like lying together in the dark, like they used to. Hotae pictures the drawing tucked into the back of his favourite manhwa: his own face framed with a sunflower, drawn by Kim Donghee. He’s looked at it so many times he only has to close his eyes to see every detail. His own face, smiling and bright.

He tries again.

Well?
You’d better.

And at last, an answer arrives: Yeah. One day I’ll come back.

Hotae bites his lip. He’s determined not to cry. This is good news! And since telling the truth has won him this much, he lets his thumbs continue unchecked.

Kim Donghee, I miss your face.

After a long pause, Donghee answers again—ignoring Hotae’s words, but that doesn’t even matter. It’s enough to get a reply: It’s late. and Sleep.

And Hotae will sleep soon. He thinks he’ll be able to now. His eyelids feel heavy. His leg doesn’t even hurt much. But he has one last thing to say:

You said everything changes.
I won’t.
I’ll be waiting.



END