Chapter Text
Apink’s Mr Chu fills the room and wakes Jeongguk up, wearingly. He hasn’t heard this song since he and Seokjin had broke up, and he’s certainly not sure why he’s hearing it now.
(Seokjin had set it as his specified ringtone so whenever Seokjin calls him, it’d start playing and then Seokjin had called him when he was studying at a library. Jeongguk had jolted up in surprise, hissing out in pain when his knee hit the bottom of the table. When he asked Seokjin about it, Seokjin only cheekily responded with, “So everytime I call you, you get to hear about how much I love you first! Mr. Chu, you know?” and winked and then Jeongguk promptly shut up.)
Now it seems his ex - who he hasn’t talked to in months despite having the same social circle - is calling him at two am in the monring and Jeongguk has no fucking idea if he should pick up or not.
(Screw it, Jeongguk thinks.)
“Guk-ah.” There’s the sound of people screaming in the background and Jeongguk squints in the dark as he checks the caller ID again.
“Seokjin-hyung?”
“Guk-ah,” Seokjin murmurs, “Come pick me up!” Seokjin giggles slightly and Jeongguk face palms.
“Are you drunk ?”
Seokjin’s voice was much too high-pitched, much too unstable to really be Seokjin.
“S’no. Just fi- seven? Nine? Shots? Yeah. S’not much.” Jeongguk blanches, nine shots? Seokjin’s alcohol intake was never that high. Eeven when they were together Seokjin’s maximum was six shots. Granted, even then, Seokjin wasn’t drunk enough to be deemed as intoxicated.
Something stirs in Jeongguk’s stomach and Jeongguk shuts his eyes and pushes it as far down as he can. Another day, he’ll deal with it another day.
-
“You’re so fucking heavy hyung, what the actual fuck,” grunts out Jeongguk, who tows a wobbly and drunk Seokjin into the room, a hand wrapped around Seokjin’s shoulders. There’s something warm spreading over the areas where their bodies come in contact, and Jeongguk takes a slow breath in.
(He misses this.)
Seokjin clucks his lips, and a slip of drool falls from between his lips. Jeongguk grimaces and looks away.
The thing about it all is that, Jeongguk feels so drained but - not because it’s 3 am, not because he had to carry Seokjin up the flight of stairs, and not because he still has pages and pages of office work to get back to. He’s tired because his heart refuses to stop pumping at an alarming speed and he’s tired because his head hurts and the man lying on the bed in front of him is making him feel things he already thought he had tucked safely into the small pocket in the back of his mind.
-
Jeongguk hates how familiar his apartment still is, even though it’s been months since they’ve broken up. He hates how the spare key is still tucked under the doormat like it’s always been, like it’s supposed to be normal.
(It’s not, because the only reason Seokjin has a spare key in the first place was because Jeongguk has crashed at his place far too many times and Seokjin had just slipped a key under the doormat, because “You come here way too often, Guk-ah, I made a spare key just for you, saves us some troubles, yeah?” and it’s not fair that he’s still keeping it there like the sole reminder of it doesn’t spark memories of their times together.)
It’s not fair, Jeongguk thinks, that Seokjin can waltz back in his life like this and erase all of Jeongguk’s previous attempts to forget the man.
(But you let him, Jeongguk thinks, you let him do this to you, and you’ll let him do it a thousand times over if he really wanted to.)
The pictures of Jjangu are still exactly where they are, and everything’s exactly the same except Jeongguk’s t-shirts and things no longer occupy the mass of the living room and bedroom. Everything smells like Seokjin, feels like Seokjin and Jeongguk grows sick to his stomach.
He looks around for a hangover pill and places it on the drawer next to the bed when he finds it, with a glass of water. Jeongguk stares at Seokjin, who’s fallen asleep, and leans down to brush his hair aside and pulls the blanket up to Seokjin’s face.
-
“You’ve got to stop doing this Seokjin-hyung,” Jeongguk murmurs as he stares at the incoming call flashing on his phone.
And if, Jeongguk thinks, and if Seokjin was sober enough to respond to him, he’d do so with another witty response that he always seemed to have, he’d say something akin to “ But Guk-ah, you’d still do it anyways” and Jeongguk hates how true it is.
-
It’s become a routine, of sorts. Seokjin would drunk-dial him at an ungodly hour on a Saturday, and Jeongguk would rush to the same bar in his pajamas and unkempt hair, heart in his throat as he searches the crowd for Seokjin. He’d find Seokjin waiting for him, quiet but clingy, and something in Jeongguk makes him pause and itch uncomfortably all over.
They’d head back to Seokjin’s home, and Jeongguk would tuck Seokjin in bed and leave a few hangover pills on the table before leaving. For the next six days, there is no contact between the two of them, until it happens again on another Saturday, in the same old bar and Seokjin, in the same pair of arms.
-
Seokjin was never a conversational drunk. He was always quiet and made weird noises at the back of his throat but he never striked up a full conversation, and Jeongguk presumes it’s because the alcohol intake has made Seokjin lost all his coherence.
So in the nth time where Jeongguk had to take an intoxicated Seokjin home, Seokjin shrugs off his own socks and starts yawning but he stops as he sees Jeongguk by the door with another set of hangover pills.
Jeongguk frowns and mutters under his breath, “Weird. You should be asleep right now.”
“I miss you.” Seokjin says.
A long pause. Jeongguk blinks and looks up at the man who has his shirt halfway off, hair messed up and cheeks stained a delicate red - he looks more drunk than ever but something in the sight makes Jeongguk involuntarily soften.
“What?”
“I said,” Seokjin says, frowning as he looks down at his feet, “I miss you.”
(Maybe, Jeongguk thinks, maybe this could mean that they can get back together again. They can go on dates and go stargazing and go to bars together, and Jeongguk might finally fill the gaping hole that’s been tearing at his heart ever since Seokjin had first called.
But the term maybe was much too obscure and Jeongguk has been a realist all his life.)
Jeongguk takes a deep breath in and shakes his head slightly to get rid of the thoughts that are slowly plaguing his mind. They weren’t appropriate at this time of day, and they were certainly too foolish to even consider. Seokjin was intoxicated, he was saying things he’ll never remember in the morning.
Jeongguk moves forward to place the cup of water and the hangover pills on the dresser and he turns around to go but Seokjin’s throaty and almost, almost desperate whisper stops him.
“S…Stay with me.” Seokjin says.
(This is not how things are suppose to go. Jeongguk iss suppose to leave now and return home to an empty bed that lacks in warmth. He’s suppose to leave without the aching heaviness in his heart. Because this is drunk Seokjin speaking, this is drunk Seokjin who has no problems in moving on and acting like everything's a-okay in life. And Jeongguk isn't, Jeongguk gets attached and he clings and clings and falls in a bed of thorns waiting for him at the bottom of the pit.
In the end, protocol is, he's suppose to leave.)