The Trouble

by Daria Defore

  Nights like this where they hung out. Going to shows, talking shit, cooking, all those comfortable and easy things they did. He just liked being around Jiyoon. And he wanted to kiss him, and hold him and probably eat him out again.

  They could pull that off, right? He didn't have to be in love to make that work.

  But despite how easy it had all been so far, Jiyoon was still hesitating and that made Danny's stomach sink. Maybe it wasn't as simple as he was making it out to be. Maybe there really was something he was missing, that he didn't understand.

  "Not that I wanna drag this out, but can I ask you one more thing?"

  "Of course," Jiyoon said.

  "It's not about me being aro, is it?" Danny clasped his hands together. He hadn't realized it until the words were on the tip of his tongue, but if this was why he wasn't good enough—if this was why he was complicated—he wasn't sure how he could take it. It had been so easy up till now that he hadn't let himself consider it.

  Jiyoon stared back at him, and suddenly his sharp gaze softened. "No. No, I don't think that's a problem."

  Danny let out a gusty breath. "Cool. Yeah, no, I wasn't worried about that. I mean, not that we're gonna date anyway, so."

  Jiyoon held his gaze long enough to meet Danny's smile with an awkward one of his own. Then he quickly dropped his eyes back to his hands, and Danny did the same.

  "If we were to end up together. Somehow." Jiyoon was speaking with painstaking slowness. "If that were to happen, I would be happy to discuss with you your needs and… perhaps, whatever boundaries you might require."

  "Oh." Danny's heart dropped, and he wasn't sure what to say.

  "I don't think that you're in any way lacking of—of anything."

  Stop making it harder not to kiss you, Danny wanted to beg. Instead, he laughed. "Dude, this isn't a Jane Austen book."

  "Of course not. I would've married Devin out of convenience by now." Jiyoon raised the bottle with a wry smile and took a drink before passing it back to Danny.

  There was obviously still something bothering him, but Danny didn't want to push on that particular bruise anymore.

  "How long were you guys together?" he asked as the sun dipped down behind the Space Needle. Lights had begun flicking on up Queen Anne Hill, and South Lake Union glowed across the water.

  "Two years." Jiyoon gave him a half-smile. "It feels like a long time."

  "It is a long time." He mulled it over. "Were you friends?"

  "I suppose. Not like you and I are. We just knew each other."

  Danny was grasping at straws, trying to imagine a world in which Devin had been charming enough to net Jiyoon Lee's affection.

  "You're trying to guess why we were together," Jiyoon said.

  Danny cringed. "Yeah, sorry. He just didn't seem… Honestly, he wasn't nice to you."

  "The thing about Devin," Jiyoon said, "is that he has his shit together. Other people have five-year plans—he has a seven-year plan. He knows where he wants to buy property, he knows where he wants to work. He already has a job offer. That kind of stability… that's attractive."

  "You must've thrown a wrench into that when you broke up with him, then."

  "What?" Jiyoon gave him a look of confusion.

  "I mean, you… you messed up the plan."

  "Oh." Jiyoon looked down at his knees. "I doubt I was included."

  "Oh. Sorry."

  "It doesn't matter, honestly. It wasn't just that he had it all worked out. He challenged me, and he made me more ambitious. I appreciated that," Jiyoon finished with a shrug. "When we got along, it was because our ambitions are very similar."

  "Like, world domination? Because you sound a bit like a supervillain."

  Jiyoon smiled. "Fortunately for you, no. No, I just want… stability." He picked at the label on the wine bottle and then smiled more faintly at Danny. "I didn't grow up with money. But I've seen the peace of mind it can bring. So that's my evil plan."

  "Peace of mind."

  "Yes. I know it's not terribly exciting—"

  "No, I want you to have that. I want—whatever you want," he finished lamely.

  "Have you considered—" Jiyoon stopped. "That it's November. And it's very chilly out."

  Danny hadn't even paid attention to his stiff fingers and toes. It hadn't mattered, and he got the feeling it wasn't something Jiyoon cared about either.

  The wine really hit him as they were walking along the cracked streets back to Jiyoon's place, and both of them were laughing like idiots until Jiyoon punched the door code in with wavering fingers. He pushed it open and then turned back to face Danny, teeth sunk in his lower lip.

  "Can you—" he started. Danny's heart rose in his throat. "Can you make it home all right?"

  "Yeah… it's not far."

  "Good." Jiyoon's cheeks were red, and he gave Danny a flustered smile. "You should probably stay there tonight."

  "Well, yeah," said Danny, like he hadn't just been thinking about kissing Jiyoon against the door. "It's my house."

  "Right. I'll see you later, then." Jiyoon slid through the door, leaving Danny to wander back into the cold.

  Chapter Twelve

  Danny was determined to let things chill out after that. That vow lasted until Sam thrust his hungover ass directly into studying, which made Danny's head ache even more. Once they finished they were going to practice, with or without Lei.

  Well, definitely without at that point, since Lei had left early for Olympia. Danny was still churning with annoyance over the whole thing.

  Sam passively watched him compose and delete a text to Jiyoon three times before snapping, "Will you please stop avoiding him and ask him to help us?"

  A half-hour later, Jiyoon had arrived on their doorstep with a peace offering-slash-hangover cure: two containers of takeout soup from the Korean place around the corner.

  It was weird seeing Jiyoon seat himself at their kitchen table with his books and a Styrofoam soup container, chatting with Sam in Korean about their favorite restaurants.

  They fell back into easy camaraderie as soon as Jiyoon saw (and laughed at) their messy bedroom with all the futons on the floor. He commented that their couch was definitely not big enough for him plus the band, but if they could concede to sit on the floor or leave, he'd love to watch a movie on Danny's TV. Danny, in turn, told him he had no right to make fun of their mess when Jiyoon basically lived in a glorified closet.

  It was good to shuck off the weirdness of the night before. Everything was in the open now: Danny knew that he wasn't inventing sexual tension out of nothing, and Jiyoon knew that he could act on it. If he wanted to.

  Lei got back from Olympia late on Sunday night, and went to bed without speaking to anyone. It was a pretty impressive feat, considering most of the time he never shut his mouth at all. Danny gritted his teeth and took the high road—this time. He dreaded what would happen if Lei tried to pull something like this again. Or if he decided once and for all that school was more important than the band.

  The promise of the quarter ending loomed on the horizon like a storm about to roll in.

  *~*~*

  Danny bent himself to learning stupid formulas and staring at numbers till his eyes crossed. He didn't want to fail, but it was so hard to remember why this was important—especially when they went onstage for their sole November show. A screaming crowd greeted them the second they stepped onstage.

  "I guess absence really does make the heart grow fonder," Danny murmured in the special tone he reserved for crowd-seduction, and it was off.

  Except the rest of the show was as rocky as if it was their first. And it wasn't just Lei's fault either, though he did fuck up his share of cues. Danny was off too, and even Sam fucked up her timing a couple times. As a bassist, no one noticed. Vick was the only one who held it together, for which Danny was profoundly grateful because when Vick fucked up it was impossible not to notice.

  After the show they circled up backstage, silent and nervous.


  "Whatever," Danny finally said. "Let’s not fuck up next time."

  He hoped they wouldn’t. Next time would be in front of a way bigger audience than this one.

  Danny would’ve given anything for more time to prepare, and to prove to Erika that he was serious about his music career. Instead, he kept having to fit in practice time on the edges of his packed schedule. They had moved from the music room on campus to a rented studio closer to Erika's office. Stepping into that insulated room was like taking a deep breath.

  The only other place he really felt that way was Jiyoon's apartment. That and the concert looming on the horizon kept him going. They had half again as many songs finished as would fit in their time slot, and Erika had personally approved all of them. Danny sang them in the shower, mumbled them on the way to class, and scratched them in the margins of his notes. The concert was the Saturday before finals week, and he felt like once it was finished he'd see a way out. Everything would start to make more sense.

  Until then—

  "Mr. Kim?" Professor Weaver's voice boomed. "Mr. Kim, do you have somewhere else you'd rather be?"

  Danny shot up in his seat, shaking off sleep. Professor Weaver was standing at the front of the room with his hands on his hips, staring right at him.

  "Sorry—shit, sorry."

  "Do you think you're on vacation already, Mr. Kim?"

  "No…" Danny didn't recognize the slide on the projector, and his own notes stopped after two lines. Jiyoon stood at the front of the room, his eyes flicking nervously back and forth between Danny and Professor Weaver. And everyone, everyone else was staring right at him.

  "I don't tolerate students who treat my class like an extension of their bedroom. Maybe if you could stay awake in class you would be making better grades, eh?"

  "Okay, wow—" Danny began, his temper flaring.

  Professor Weaver thrust his neck out. "Do you have something to say, Mr. Kim?" He kept speaking, but the words whooshed by Danny's ears, unheard. He looked to Jiyoon for—what? The right answer? Just in time to see Jiyoon very deliberately reach out and push a textbook over the edge of the table, letting it fall to the floor.

  It landed with a crash, breaking the tension and sending everyone in the room flinching back in their seats.

  "Oh my God, I'm so sorry!" Jiyoon laughed and bent over to pick it up. "Slippery fingers. Oh, but Professor, did you want me to hand back the midterms today, or was that tomorrow?"

  "You don't remember?" Weaver grumbled.

  Jiyoon snapped his fingers. "It was today, wasn't it? Sorry, I didn't mean to interrupt the lecture…" He looked pointedly at the slides on the projector, and Weaver turned back to them as well.

  Danny let out a shaky breath, his hands clenching so tight the muscles ached.

  Sam's hand brushed Danny's arm, and he shook it off. His eyes were stinging, and his heart was still racing. Everyone else had moved on, but Danny still felt angry enough to spit, to throw his notebook on the ground and walk out.

  And he would already have been kicked out too if it hadn't been for Jiyoon. The only reason he was passing at all was because of Jiyoon's help, and now he had stepped in again to save his ass when he had no reason to. When Danny was about to lose his temper and take it out on the professor like he deserved.

  His anger didn't dissipate, just simmered low under his skin. He didn't hear the rest of the lecture—at least, not until Weaver asked Jiyoon to pass back the midterms.

  "We'll spend the next class going over your answers to the test questions," Weaver droned. "Until then, you can spend some time re-examining the problems on your own time."

  A knot grew in Danny's stomach as Jiyoon moved up the aisle handing out stacks of tests to be passed down the rows. He was pretty sure he didn't want to spend any more quality time with that test. Unless that time was spent lighting it on fire and sending its ashes out to sea.

  Jiyoon paused next to him and Danny kept his eyes firmly on his desk. If he looked at Jiyoon right now, he wouldn't be able to keep his shit together.

  The stack of papers landed in front of him, with Danny's name and a big number forty-three, circled in red, right on top.

  A failing grade.

  Danny took it and passed the stack down to Sam. Jiyoon was already gone, handing out the rest of the tests like nothing had happened. Danny was left behind, burning red with embarrassment and holding the actual physical proof of how incompetent he was.

  He clenched his hands so hard he thought his fingers might bore holes in the paper. Failing. He was failing.

  He stuffed the test into his backpack and zipped it shut with some intensity. At the front of the room, Weaver glanced his way and narrowed his eyes. When Weaver looked away again, Sam nudged Danny in the side.

  Danny grimaced and made a zero with his fingers.

  "Shit," Sam mouthed back. She flipped her paper towards Danny so that he could see the sixty-eight written at the top. Not a great grade, but not failing. He must have looked pretty fucking crushed, because Sam scooted her chair closer and let her arm fall around Danny's waist.

  They sat like that until the class ended. Every minute that ticked by felt like an eternity, like Danny would have to spend the rest of his life in that hard plastic chair, getting his soul sucked out of him. When Weaver finally released them, Danny shoved everything into his backpack and rushed out the door. He didn't look around for Jiyoon, and only realized Sam had kept up with him when she fell in line next to Danny at the cafe.

  "You don't exactly need coffee," Sam commented. It just riled him up more.

  "Maybe if Professor fucking Weaver wants me to stay awake during his boring-ass lectures, he could buy me a cup his damn self." They took a table, and Danny let his bags hit the ground with a bang. "Fuck this bullshit class. Fuck that bullshit professor." He shut his eyes and covered his face with his hands. He still wanted to cry, but the room was full of people, and the last thing he wanted was more witnesses to his very public near-breakdown.

  He dropped his hands to the table and contemplated driving his head through it instead.

  "There you are." Jiyoon wove through the crowd, one arm full of books and papers as usual. He looked frazzled now, but Danny remembered him dropping that textbook as cool as could be. Saving his ass again. "Are you okay?" Jiyoon reached out to squeeze Danny's shoulder, and Danny flinched away.

  "I'm fine. Everyone fails tests sometimes, Jesus." His teeth were on edge, and he snapped out, "Except for you, maybe."

  "Ah." Jiyoon drew his books closer to his chest. There was a tense silence, which Danny wasn't going to be the first to break. He knew he should thank Jiyoon for the trick with the book that distracted Weaver, but when he thought about saying the words, it turned into a laundry list of shit he owed him. Shit he had never asked for and couldn't repay.

  And after all that, he couldn't even pass one stupid test.

  "I'll see you later, then." Jiyoon turned on his heel and left.

  Danny glared at the tabletop.

  "That was really rude," Sam said, and took a sip of her coffee. "You hurt his feelings."

  "Whatever," Danny snapped, and then, "Fuck."

  He shoved his chair back and ran after Jiyoon, catching him in the hall.

  "Jiyoon, wait! I'm sorry."

  Jiyoon whipped around, his lips tight.

  "I'm an idiot. You had my back in there and I was an asshole to you, so… fuck."

  All of Danny's anger had turned inward, but Jiyoon just stood there, straight-faced and tense. Then he let out a long breath and his shoulders sagged. "Forget about it. I can tell you're tired."

  "Why aren't you yelling at me?" Danny asked desperately. He could see the effort it was taking Jiyoon to be patient, to understand. But he didn't deserve it.

  "Should I?"

  "You're always so fucking patient, even when I'm being a fuckwit. I don't—it's so frustrating sometimes. So please just scream at me or something. Tell me to stop being an asshole."

  Jiyoo
n's shoulders were hiking up again. "Do you need to be yelled at to remember to be nice to me?"

  "No. God, no."

  "I don't exactly want to be like Professor Weaver right now. I'm your friend, and yes, I'm trying to be patient with you. I know you're stressed. I'm sorry I'm not helping."

  "You are helping."

  "I don't feel like I can help if I don't know what the problem is." Again, Jiyoon was all deliberate calm, with an undercurrent of communicate with me, you fuck. Well, maybe Danny had imagined the last bit.

  "It's everything." He took a deep breath, tried to ground himself. Jiyoon hefted his books up against his chest and stepped closer, framing Danny's face with his free hand. His palm was cold and dry, and his touch made Danny shiver.

  Jiyoon pulled away. "Sorry—"

  "No, your hand's just cold."

  "Oh." Jiyoon looked at his hand as if it had transformed into a deadly weapon. "Sorry again." He dropped his hand to his side, and Danny stared, wondering if there was a cool way to say, "No, go ahead and touch my face."

  "I know that test didn't go as you hoped," Jiyoon said instead.

  "No, but—I don't wanna talk about it."

  Jiyoon nodded. "We don't have to. But… your TA is going to need to talk to you about it. And you're not going to enjoy that."

  "Yeah. I know."

  "Neither is he, by the way." Jiyoon gave him a look that was half sympathy and half shared misery. "He sort of wanted to tear it up and throw it away."

  Danny let out a deep, agonizing huff of breath and sagged against the wall. "This sucks."

  "It does. It sucks quite a lot." Before Danny's eyes, Jiyoon composed himself. He made it look so easy: one breath and all the worries were smoothed off his face. "How can I help?" Jiyoon asked, talking over Danny's noise of protest. "Even if everything feels awful right now, if we can pinpoint one thing to make it less stressful, that would be something, right?"

  Danny tamped down his guilt and tried to find the right words to describe this emotional mess. "Okay. I don't understand the material. Every time I look at it on my own it's like—it's just nonsense. I'm not sleeping a lot. I'm trying to pass all my classes, and so I end up working all night. And when I'm not studying, I'm working with the band, or I'm hanging out with you. Once in a while, I even try to take a nap."