Haunted House | a jaehyungparkian story

Chapter 4: in which Jae starts to (finally) realize something

Author's note:

  The story finally continues :) Sorry it took so long :") 

__________________________________________________________ 

Seasons passed. It was as if someone had pressed a fast forward button on their lives. Time just simply zipped by so quickly.

Or maybe it was their hectic schedules that gave off that impression. Jae wasn't sure. But before he knew it, autumn had arrived. If he looked out the dorm window, he could see the trees with their warm autumn colors.

The seasons were changing, but he wasn't. He stayed the same— the same Park Jaehyung that everyone knew.

Or did he?

Brian stayed the same. Jae was sure of that. Months had passed since the day they were laying on the dorm floor, staring at the ceiling. The day that Jae had set the definition of their relationship—

Friends.

That's what they were. Friends. Friends who became awkward after an incident in a haunted house. Friends whose awkwardness went away after one had informed the other that it was all nothing, and to pretend that it all never happened.

And that was what they did. They pretended that it never happened. Jae had convinced himself that the weird clenching feeling on his heart was gone, gone forever. He assumed that Brian felt the same.

So they continued. They continued their lives in that sweet, comfortable, and safe bubble of friendship. Jae could throw an arm around the younger man's shoulders without feeling weird. He could stay in one room alone with that same person, without having to fear that his heart was beating too loudly. They did their usual day-to-day activities— practicing, performing, eating, sleeping, playing, producing, and things that the normal Jae and Brian would do.

Everything was back to normal. And Jae was happy with it.

Or at least that was what he thought.

---

Jae might have frozen that metaphorical clock that Brian had imagined— might have broken it, even. But it was slowly fixing itself. Soon it would tick, slowly and unsurely. But it would surely begin to move. One tick. Two ticks. And it would keep going, completing a full circle across the clock's face.

And the hands of that clock would continue, gliding easily. Around and around and around.

---

There were moments when Jae doubted himself.

Amidst what should have been their normal, usual lives, there were moments where his heart would skip a beat. Where, for a few seconds, he would suddenly forget how to properly breathe.

Moments like those weren't big or grand in any way. On the contrary, they were subtle and small. Moments such as those should have been brushed off easily as nothing.

They were moments when Jae would catch Brian's eye from across the stage, and the bassist would grin at him before singing into the microphone. Moments when they would stay up till the wee hours of the morning in their room, chatting quietly as Dowoon slept soundly in the bunk above. Moments when they would be working on a song for hours, their fingers sore from strumming and plucking at guitar strings, and Brian would let out a tired laugh and ask Jae what time it was.