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"Nana."
"Hm?"
"Do you think you're... happy?"
...
"Why are you asking?"
"I don't know. Just curious."
"Are you happy?"
...
"I don't know. I think I am."
"Then, I'm happy you're happy."
"But I wish you'd be happy too, Nana."
"Don't worry about me, baby. I'm doing just fine."
...
"You promise?"
"Mhm. I promise."
Jeno is right. Jaemin should be happy.
But he's not. Funny how that works, isn't it? He's doomed by the fucking narrative.
It should be simple, really.
He's hot, he's rich, he's famous - what more could he possibly want?
Why isn't he happy?
He wonders, sometimes, if he had made a deal with the devil behind his own back. Had he sold the memories of their greeting and any semblance of true fulfillment with the promise of success? Outlandish as it may seem, sometimes Jaemin fears it's the only thing that can explain his hunger.
He has everything he's ever possibly dreamed of, yet he still wants more. So much greed still burning, always burning, stubborn and unbridled, stirring in his stomach like a storm-proof match weathering the heavy rain.
Greed wraps a dirty hand around his ankle and refuses to let go, insatiable and hungry, a monster in wait always wanting more and more and more no matter how much she feasts. Whatever it was that made Jaemin so attractive to this monster, he curses the day they first met.
These days, it's no material success that Jaemin chases, it's just Jeno.
Jeno, with his voice low like gravel - hot, sweet nothings whispered like the Lord's most sinful prayers, lovelier than any hymn ever could be. Jeno, with his pale skin, red and flushed, sticky with sweat and cum on his face. His lips part, pink and pretty, fingers tangled in Jaemin's platinum blonde hair as he shudders with a silent gasp.
Jeno. Gorgeous.
The makeup artists, their stylists and photographers, they can try and recreate this look, but nothing compares to the real deal, Jeno, feverish and heady, coming down from his high with a pleasant blush spreading across his chest as he goes pliant in Jaemin's lap.
This is a luxury reserved for Jaemin, and Jaemin only.
Jaemin presses into the red bruises blooming on Jeno's shoulder and thinks, in a far off corner of his mind, that he'd love to show this, him off. So pretty, always so pretty, his Jeno. If only the whole world could know just who made the hickeys on Jeno's neck.
He knows what it could do to them, to their group, to their careers, to the trajectory of their entire lives, if they were caught. Though this industry has no place for people like him, Jaemin finds he can't bring himself to care.
Jaemin wants Jeno anyway, in every sense of the word.
It'd be easy if it was just sex. A simple agreement between two group mates who used each other to let off steam sometimes, but Jaemin can't just do easy, can he?
No, Jaemin is foolish, just as much as he is selfish.
He wants more. More than this, more than just sex and a quick fuck in the break room. Lovely as he is fucked out and needy, Jaemin also wants him candid and domestic, drowning in a sweater he stole from him months ago with that big, dopey smile Jaemin loves so much.
Is it selfish, to want to be loved? To want to love?
Because that's all Jaemin has ever wanted, really.
It's too late for him to go back and have any semblance of the regular civilian life he signed away in thick red ink on the bottom of his contract. This agreement, arrangement, whatever they have going on- it's the closest Jaemin's ever been to anyone.
They blur the lines when they do more than just fuck, when before they were ever friends with benefits, they were coworkers, roommates, and above all else, friends.
Do fuck buddies stay the night after, and rest in your arms, nestled in the crook of your shoulder and hugging your chest?
Do they stay till the morning, and help you make breakfast, comfortable in your clothes like it's their own?
Do they sit by your bed when you're ill, and hold your hair back when you vomit - do they kiss your forehead and promise to be there when you wake?
When they ask if you want to meet in your next life - are you supposed to say yes?
When Jeno fucks him, he feels wanted, but when he kisses up his arm and down his spine, slow and drawn-out, he feels loved.
Even though this isn't what they agreed to, is it so wrong for Jaemin to want more?
Just as Greed winds up his ankle with a vice grip, refusing to let go, Jeno bleeds into every aspect of his life and keeps his heart beating, slow and steady.
Jaemin can't get enough, and that's just the problem, isn't it?
He wants more, and more, and more, and more-
Until he doesn't.
Ever the hypocrite, Na Jaemin.
Jaemin is not happy - that much he has known for a long time.
Not from lack of trying, or any fault of his own, no, Jaemin simply isn't happy.
Even though he has debuted. Even though he has won trophies, and awards, and sold out stadiums far bigger than he could have ever imagined.
Even though he has achieved everything he possibly could in this lifetime, Jaemin is not happy.
What do you do, then, when you've reached the end of the tunnel, and realize the light you chase is growing, ever brighter, yet you are only dimming? Your soul is fading, resolve so quickly dissipating - you fail to steal the sun out of the sky, and you remember you are only as strong as your wax wings that burn to a crisp when you so much as dare to fly.
If Jaemin were to make a deal with the devil once again, he'd ask for one more life. Just one more, and that's it. One life with Jeno, simple and easy, away from the lights and the cameras and the prying eyes of the public.
He wouldn't ask for fame, or success, like he had before. Just Jeno. Just a life spent loving Jeno would be enough for him.
Jaemin wants to make up for all the mistakes of this life.
This time, he thinks. This time I'll do things right. Meet him at a coffee shop, or somewhere in a college lecture - have an awkward talking phase where all their friends tease them every time they're around each other. They'll go on mock dates, and pretend to study at the library, stealing glances from across the table.
He'll probably confess his feelings drunk out of his mind, walking home from a house party or a club, because even in this life, Jaemin will still be a little bit of a mess - but he won't be a coward. Not like he is now.
He wants to buy him flowers and couple's rings. take him out for a fancy dinner on their anniversary. He'll post him on his Instagram with cheesy captions and romantic songs playing in the background. They'll move in together eventually, and Jaemin will let Jeno pick out the decor, even if he knows nothing about furnishing a house, because it's Jeno, and Jaemin just wants to see him smile.
If they're still friends in this next life, then Haechan will probably reply to their stories with green, puking emojis, pretending to throw up in their mentions
Jaemin hopes they're still friends. Hopes they all still are, even if Haechan is just as annoying as he is now. He hopes they'll be friends, even without their contracts or a life of fame tying them together. Hopes none of them have to deal with paparazzi or stalker fans again.
Then, maybe Haechan wouldn't have to look both ways before reaching for Mark's hand. Maybe Jaemin wouldn't have to hide under this thin excuse of convenience and cowardice.
Maybe they could all be happy, then, in this fantasy of a next life, but until then, it remains just that, a fantasy.
Until then, Jaemin will continue to tow this fine line they've drawn. He digs his heels into the sand and takes as much as he can possibly get before the rising tide washes it all away.
Years, or months, or weeks from now, whenever it may be. Jaemin knows it's coming. He sees it already.
The cracks in the walls. The thunder rolling in, steady. The clock is ticking, so rapidly quickening, they are living off borrowed time, and Fate has only ever been so kind.
If there's one thing Jaemin and Jeno are, permanent is not one of them. Not here. Not in this timeline.
Their foundation is rocky, built on quicksand and sinking mud. The lies spilling from his lips are only so powerful in protecting what is already stretched paper thin and bled red raw.
Jaemin is a lot of things, but he knows himself well enough to say that strong is not one of them.
Tide rolling in like clockwork on the rocks, they weather his bones unkindly, timely fading. Gather the vultures to pick the marrow from his ribs and the rot of his flesh, the hand he uses to swat them away is only caught between beak and claw, wrung and wretched. He watches helplessly as his limbs spill scarlet, splattered and stained.
When the waves soon wash his skeleton away to sea, Jaemin will not fight their rising tide, nor the sting of the sun in his eyes, a blindingly bright reminder of the light he's chased for so long. Maybe when the sun bleaches his bones in the daylight he can soak in their warmth, if just for a little bit, before night falls and chills him again.
When they discuss their contracts no later than next month, Jaemin will not be one of the ones re-signing.
No matter how they beg and plead, no matter how high they raise his wages or tempt him with the riches and gold trophies they had before, he knows the shine of the metal is only a reflection of the sterile, yellow, office lights glaring down.
He doesn't know where that puts him. Who is Jaemin, after all, if not an idol - if not the dazzling, sharp-toothed smile singing on the billboards?
When he pulls back from the stage lights and camera flashes, he realizes just how little of himself is left in the darkness of his own bedroom. Bare slivers of a boy that never had the change to grow, choked out by the monster so ever-present, stare back at him, unblinking.
But it seems Greed has finally met her match, as the fire thrumming through his veins settles as ash and cinder, heavy and unmoving in the pit of his stomach. It never was a storm that snuffed her flame out, but the soft drip of a faucet leaking, tantalizingly slow. The tide rises. The rain falls. Jaemin is sinking - watching the light fade away once again, midnight now a familiar sight for him to bear.
Jaemin doesn't know where the current is taking him, but his bones wear weary, and he finds he no longer has the strength to fight it anyway.
Jaemin and Jeno, whatever they are, they weren't meant to last in this lifetime, whether through Jaemin's own cowardice, or the misfortune of their situation, they're misaligned, just barely.
The eyes of his past stare back at him, and though they are no devil, Jaemin pleads to their mercy anyway.
He wills the weight of his words to move them - wills the whispers of this promise to carry over to a Jaemin who is stronger than he will ever be.
"Nana."
"Hm?"
"You never answered my question."
...
"About my next life?"
"Yeah. About our next life."
...
"Yeah. I'd want to meet you again. Always. In every life."
"In every life?"
"Yeah. In every life."
...
"Then, yeah. I do too."
"Yeah?"
"Yeah."