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Jeno can feel the lilt of his vision as he droops groggily against a lamppost. Utterances flitter in and out of his unconscious psyche, something about home, time. Through the dark spots of his vision he sees a figure draw a lit cigarette up to his lips; the smoke flurries into the crisp night sky, and then the glowing orange spot at the end of the cigarette leaks across his line of sight as it gets passed to another figure.
Streetlights skate by the car windows rambunctiously; defragmented flickers of light and beeps of horns and titters of conversation stream past Jeno's head. Jeno's body is a jumble of cold shivers and warm sweat, face slack as drool seeps into the collar of his shirt and leaves a dark hole in the fabric. Despite his numbness, his heart hurts...
He doesn't know why his heart hurts.
A body is pressed against his right side, two figures spilling laughter into the darkness, yet he feels innately alone.
When finally home, warmth envelops him in the form of blankets. A soft pillow propped beneath his head. A figure yanking off his jeans and smearing something wet across his face. Jeno gingerly, slowly, barely pulls open his heavy eyelids to squint at the boy before him: Donghyuck. Jeno vaguely recognises him as the figure shrouded by the animosity of a streetlight earlier.
His roommate, he thinks?
Jeno scrunches his eyebrows together; he's sure there's something more, something he's missing. The boy's eyes are ravishingly alive in the dead of the night, two comets that dart straight through him, prettily outlined by dark strokes of lashes. His hands are nimble, careful, as he moves aside a few strands of hair Jeno can feel cascading across his own forehead. With a gentle 'goodnight' that barely registers in Jeno's alcohol-soaked brain, he slips away from the bed.
Jeno senses, then, preliminary movement; a secondary figure wading deeper into the room. Jeno only tilts his head to face them when he hears the rustle of fabric, sees the shadow of Donghyuck's hand splayed across the chest of the other guy. They must think Jeno's asleep, because clothing winds up discarded on the ground without a care, and they kiss until Jeno finds himself unable to watch any longer, a sudden feeling of sickness traipsing across his stomach as they climb into Donghyuck's bed together.
Jeno feels that same pang of loneliness and hurt again, as well as something else so intense that it's as though his blankets are grounding him into the bed so harshly he's rendered unable to breathe. He asks himself what's wrong with him, screams internally, gasps for breath although he doesn't need to. And yet, like unsolicited solitude, not a single sound is elicited from his insensible being. Soft, muffled whines echo across the room and take control of the few senses Jeno has left, overpowering him. Is this what it means to feel green?
He tries to remember - remember anything - but alcohol has stolen every morsel of remembrance, it seems.
Perhaps this sudden bout—of panic, of deprivation, of jealousy—is all in his head, the voice of possessed doubt nibbling away at his core in the same way that Donghyuck is probably nibbling away at the unknown - albeit rather familiar, if he cared to look at him properly - guy's lip. Donghyuck, his roommate. A flicker of a memory ignites behind his eyes, four rectangularly aligned moles, a bright laugh, a scrunched-up nose. It fades as fast as it comes.
Meagre, diluted scenes eventually flitter through the cracks of his intoxication a few hours later upon awakening in a cold sweat. A dream? A memory? In this state, he's torn between reality and dreamland; boundless uncertainty. But he was there, Donghyuck, in his dream (or not-dream). Touching him. He was touching him, and Jeno felt every speck of it. All he feels now is dampness. And loss, somehow, somewhere.
Memories inevitably flood back the following morning, like water pushing and pushing against a dam until the force of nature overrides the barriers of man and allows copious bursts of water to plunge through. His head physically feels like a broken dam too, remnants of inebriation enabling a concoction of cottonmouth, a crushing headache, nausea and dire thirst. He could probably drink the weight of a dam right about now, actually. He cracks open his eyes, is attacked by a streak of light sneaking in through the curtains of the only window in his shared bedroom, and immediately closes them. It's far too early for dam analogies, he thinks. Not when he's hungover and the sun is rising as if to symbolise the dawn of a bright, new day when Jeno is begrudgingly plagued by endless thoughts of bad days. Worse days. Even some happy days, turned sour and spoilt like rotten milk left to dwell in a refrigerator for far too long. He squeezes his eyes shut as tightly as he can until all he sees is white, then trudges out of bed. The sunlight streaming through the curtains temporarily blinds him, but he doesn't care because it means he can barely see the two figures interlocked atop Donghyuck's bed.
His achy legs carry his downtrodden slump of a body to the kitchen sink where he downs a glass of water to replenish his dry, sore throat. His ears twitch at the sound of approaching footsteps, and then Donghyuck is pressed against him as he pours his own glass of water. Jeno's eyes flitter down to him, to his unkempt hair and droopy eyes and tacky skin. As Jeno takes in Donghyuck's dry lips, the images in his head grow vibrantly. Images he now knows to be truth rather than drunk-induced fantasies.
It started out with a kiss, lips crashing against one another like waves lapping at the shorefront. Donghyuck was the ocean, and Jeno was a tumbling sandcastle left to sempiternal demise.
"Morning," Donghyuck mumbles.
Jeno had startled a fraction too late, already immersed in the feeling of Donghyuck's soft lips against his. Before his sensory awareness caught up with him, he was pulling Donghyuck closer and entwining his fingers into the shorter boy's hair, drawing him back in without thinking to consult his brain or the concept of hindsight. That's always how mistakes happen, really, thoughtless actions done purely out of lust or passion, and all Jeno had felt in that moment was want. Want, need... an innermost craving washing over him.
"Good morning," Jeno replies, expressionless, pouring himself another glass of water.
Jeno had found him, late that night, submerged in darkness with only a flicker of light from the television to illuminate his tiny frame huddled on the sofa. He was watching something in black and white, Jeno doesn't recall the name. The only thing Jeno recalls vigorously is the sound of Donghyuck's muffled sobs as he dampened the sleeve of his pyjama top. Jeno had tried to comfort him, held him in his arms as he wept, occasionally brushing his nose against the top of Donghyuck's head. But then, with a soft exhale, Donghyuck had drawn away. He stared soullessly into the television screen for approximately half a minute - Jeno remembers counting the ticks of a distant clock, wondering whether Donghyuck was drunk, or possessed, or something much worse - then turned back to Jeno with newfound determination lining his features, vigil in his eyes. Leant right in and kissed Jeno as though it was the last thing he was ever going to do.
"Who stayed the night?" Jeno asks. He places his glass in the sink, and the itch of glass against steel makes him wince.
Jeno had kissed back almost furiously, at first, surprising even himself. Alas, he was the first to pull away - breathless, cheeks stained with Donghyuck's tears, heart about to flip dangerously in his chest - because a small voice in the back of his head had preempted him, reminded him that Donghyuck probably didn't mean any of it, that he was just highly inebriated, or emotionally unstable, and that Jeno was potentially taking advantage of him in a negative situation. That they were just friends, friends that'd known each other their entire goddamn lives... and friends shouldn't do that shit, friends shouldn't kiss each other like they meant it. That Donghyuck would regret it, eventually, and everything they'd built would crumble to the ground like it was made of sand - and their friendship meant more than that, meant more than a flimsy, meaningless kiss; their friendship had been the glue that had held Jeno together all these years. He withdrew wordlessly, padded across to their room and threw himself onto his bed, praying that Donghyuck was drunk enough to just forget.
And yet, like some sick jerk of fate, neither of them seemed to forget. Instead they drew quiet, avoided one another opportunistically and ceased to ever utter a word about what had happened. This went on for a solid two days until Donghyuck relayed an invite to one of Yukhei's parties, and Jeno accepted if only because it meant he'd have a reason to ask questions about the when and the where and the how and so forth, to get the conversation flowing. It didn't go as he expected, not really; Donghyuck sent him the details later, via text messages, and that was that.
The party itself was like Jeno's own idea of purgatory, watching as his own best friend flitted through a vast crowd, danced against smitten older guys, locked eyes with everybody in the room except for Jeno, all the while Jeno himself was pressed up against the arm of a couch drowning his liver in pungent tasting liquids whilst repeatedly asking himself where he went wrong, how he managed to get into this situation. The stench of alcohol and the sounds of sloppy, languid kissing from the couple beside him nauseated him until, eventually, he was too drunk to give a single shit and dumped himself outside under a flickering streetlight as a form of careless escapism.
The rest is a hazy smudge of history (in comparison to the fleeting thoughts swarming Jeno's mind at current, at least).
Donghyuck acknowledges Jeno. Looks up at him through his pretty lashes. Jeno's eyes lower to trace the remnants of water on his supple lips as if by instinct, then move back up to take in Donghyuck's widened eyes. He looks nervous, even a morsel guilty, maybe, as he speaks his next words:
"…Jaemin."
And that... That hurts. Hurts even more so now that he can picture it, can make out Jaemin in his blurry memories. Hurts that it had to be him.
They were both as close to Jaemin as the other, and Jeno knew - more than anyone, at this point - that friends were out of bounds. Unspeakable. A sudden surge of anger, of betrayal, of jealousy, of something powerfully nondescript unleashes itself in the pit of Jeno's stomach at the mere thought of it.
Like he's any better. Like he and Donghyuck haven't also kissed, he reminds himself. Except... that was supposed to have meant nothing, and this hurt far too much to be meaningless. This is more than a mistaken kiss, this is an entire hookup. And Jeno can't even deny that he's jealous, that his soul aches at the very notion of his best friends sleeping together, but he refuses to admit it either; admitting that he's jealous means accepting that he yearns for something he can't have. He feels trapped in his own hypocrisy.
Where does this leave them? The lines of their friendship triangle are now entrapped by grievances that Jeno can't ignore. He and Donghyuck have kissed; Donghyuck and Jaemin have fucked; Jeno is to wind up perpetually resenting Jaemin, and so on. Connections that are bound to be untethered. And Jeno feels like the loser, like the two of them are parallel lines and Jeno is a big fat circle left to his own eternal demise.
He sets his glass down without taking a single sip, causing Donghyuck to flinch at the clang of glass breaking through the soft morning atmosphere, and scurries out of the room, yet again without a word.
He seeks solace through the darts of water tumbling out of the shower-head, leans forward to let the water ease along his spine. Words come to him, then, far too late and with far too much bite.
Jeno curls into himself. Against his better judgement, he relays the events of last night, Donghyuck and Jaemin like two monsters in a sleep paralysis convulsed tale of fiction.
Will they continue to speak to one another now, the two of them? Or will they remain just as broken as he and Donghyuck currently are? Because Jeno doesn't know how he'll react if it turns out that a mere kiss can break a friendship of nineteen years when literal intercourse doesn't even make a dent in one of only three years. The thought in itself entails so many possibilities, but the ones that lurk in the forefront of Jeno's mind is that, above all, Jeno is disposable. He means nothing. And that, perhaps, Donghyuck likes Jaemin more than him in a way more than platonic.
It hurts because Jeno hadn't seen any of this coming. He hadn't expected any of this, from that very first kiss, to everything that happened thereafter, to the results of drunken stupor the night before.
And, sure, as grains of water drip from his fingertips he realises that maybe he is rattled for all the wrong reasons - maybe there is a part of him that seethes more at the fact that it was somebody else, somebody that wasn't him, and not so much that it was specifically Jaemin. And it isn't sensical, not really, because he and Donghyuck are only friends and Donghyuck had never shown signs of being interested in him romantically until the kiss, and even that wasn't concrete—wasn't an exclamation of love at all. All it is is a speck of deluded hope pressed against Jeno's cortex, sprung forth the very moment Donghyuck pressed his lips against Jeno's and the realisation dawned on the latter that perhaps this is what he'd secretly hoped for.
Perhaps this is the penance of a decade of yearning.
Thankfully, Jaemin isn't there when Jeno slips back into the kitchen after his shower. Donghyuck is there, though, perched upon one of the stools as he shovels something resembling dry porridge into his mouth. Jeno pushes the damp hair from his forehead and searches the fridge for something to eat.
"I told him to go, figured it was best," Donghyuck murmurs from somewhere behind him.
"Oh, really, you think?" His voice comes out obnoxiously dry.
The clang of Donghyuck dropping his spoon into his bowl reverberates across their empty apartment.
"Look, Jeno, it just happened. We were drunk, and..." Donghyuck continues on, but Jeno focuses his attention on garnering ingredients to make an omelette. Cracks open an egg, thinks about how he too feels like a broken, soggy piece of shit. All the while Donghyuck reclusively chokes through his alibi, his apology, his aversion. Streams of words that Jeno tries to block from his ears.
Jeno cares—Far too much, actually; he secretly gloats hearing about how it was a mistake, how it meant nothing, how it was a thoughtless, drunken endeavour. Howbeit, he opens his mouth and cuts Donghyuck short: "I don't care."
"Really?"
Oil sizzles in the pan; Jeno’s very core feels like that, too.
"Really."
There. Affirmation. Donghyuck will sigh in relief, Jeno will never speak of this again and his two best friends will live happily ever after, yadda yadda yadda.
On the bright side, at least Donghyuck is acknowledging his existence again. And maybe if Jeno shuns his emotions completely, their once-perfect friendship shall be restored and—
Jeno's cynical inner monologue is cut short by a pair of arms gently enveloping his waist, followed by the faint pressure of Donghyuck's head resting against the spot between his shoulder blades. Jeno's bones almost jump out of his skin in the same manner of theatrics as the oil currently jumping out of the frying pan.
"You care."
Silence ensues, except for metal against metal as Jeno stirs occasionally. Donghyuck's presence remains despite the drought of speech.
"I care?" Jeno eventually questions.
“I think so, yes.”
Jeno hums. Donghyuck stays silent, and Jeno assumes that there’s an air of mutual understanding between them, except the level of Donghyuck’s understanding isn’t quite compliant with the depth of Jeno’s dubious enlightenment. Jeno’s mind spins dizzily with too many things to focus on at once: His overcooked eggs, his beating heart, Donghyuck’s physical constraints, the press of his tongue against the back of his teeth as he attempts to stop a garbled confession from flowing forth due to both their animosity-sprung intimacy and Jeno’s brain crying out at him to finally fucking say something.
Donghyuck’s arms unwrap themselves when Jeno finally has to scoop out the omelette. He goes back to his soggy cereal and awaits Jeno’s company at the table. Jeno takes one bite, two, then decides that—fuck it, his brain had already been tormenting him for a solid week and if he doesn’t speak his mind now then he’s bound to be plagued with endless internal self-hatred-filled monologues.
“So... the kiss.”
Donghyuck is already looking at him, pensively, but his eyes grow just a fraction wider under Jeno’s unfaltering watch. “The kiss?”
“You kissed me the other day.”
“You wanna talk about the kiss?”
“Were you not going to talk about the kiss? Was I just supposed to forget that it happened, or...?”
Donghyuck circles his spoon around the leftover milk at the bottom of his bowl and his eyes lower to follow the motion, bringing about a burst of silence. Jeno’s eyes trace the expanse of his eyelashes, then his voice cuts through the air.
“Look, Donghyuck, I’m just worried about you. Confused, really. Me, you, Jaemin... We’re friends.” He swallows at that. Friends. All of this is so, so beyond that and both of them are aware of it. “You’ve just—You’ve never shown anything more than platonic attraction towards us and suddenly...Y’know.”
“‘M sorry,” Donghyuck mumbles. Jeno cant quite decipher the emotion behind the solemn expression on his face... Remorse? Panic? Betrayal? It could be all, it could be none. “I’m really sorry, I didn’t think, I-I’ve just been in a really weird place recently and I needed to vent some things.” He pauses, sighs in matrimony with Jeno’s heartbeat; Jeno doesn’t like the way he feels right now, not a single bit.
“It was a mistake,” Donghyuck finally exhales.
The omelette suddenly tastes bad in Jeno’s mouth, tastes cold and bland and rests too heavily against his tongue, almost to the point where he’s unable to move it in order to form words.
“Which part?” Jeno’s voice sounds murky, like unclear, polluted water infecting the atmosphere. And he knows, he knows how bitter he sounds, knows that Donghyuck will catch on to his insecurities any minute now, but he’s quite frankly too downtrodden to give a shit.
“All of it.”
Jeno chomps through the rest of his eggs silently (silence, a habit he seems to have acquired and thoroughly overused recently) teeth grinding down angrily with every bite. Donghyuck merely stares at him, and it’s like they’re having some sort of unspoken stand-off across the kitchen table.
“Did I say something wrong?”
Eager - yet diminishing - eyes meet Jeno’s.
He swallows down his last piece of omelette and pushes his plate away from him, low scrapes of friction filling the void of unease. He doesn’t make to move though, doesn’t even so much as exhale or open his mouth.
“Jeno...”
Donghyuck sounds aggravated now, and Jeno realises, then, that the situation has become far too convulsed. Too many wordless actions and half-arsed truths and nonexistent explanations and ulterior motives. He wishes he could hop back in time to a week or so ago, to before Donghyuck had kissed him. Before the downward spiral of their friendships began. Before his brain ceased to do anything other than mope about Donghyuck. Before his sudden aversion and jealousy and god only knows what other discrepancies. Before this entire fucking ruckus of emotional confusion became the centre of his existence.
“It wasn’t a mistake, Donghyuck,” he finally lets out. The words leave his body like air leaving a deflating balloon, and he says the next part quieter, almost like they’re the last, breathless words of a dying man. “You’re not allowed to kiss me like that and call it a mistake.”
Donghyuck stares at him blearily, frozen in time, like he’s unsure what to do or say or how to function. His mouth opens, closes. It finally reopens, and what leaves it is a trail of stuttering disbelief that Jeno doesn’t know how to unpack.
“I thought—You walked away and didn’t talk to me for two days. I thought—”
“You thought wrong.”
Donghyuck exhales. “What the fuck, Jeno.” Then he smiles, viscerally enlightening in the pre-noon glow of the sun and Jeno—Jeno sees stars. “You like me?”
The brightness of Donghyuck’s gaze becomes too much for Jeno. He fumbles with his cutlery, his prior braveness all but gone. His mind twirls with reckless abandon, trying to gage where this is going, how this will end. He glances from his empty plate, to Donghyuck, back to the plate, and wonders how it took him so fucking long to realise that he was hopelessly in love with the very epitome of warmth himself when all Donghyuck does—all he’s ever done—is encompass Jeno with the inexplicable feeling of tender fondness and adoration. “Yeah, I do.”
“You like me.” This time it isn’t a question, it’s a careful statement passed between Donghyuck’s mouth and ears. A statement he seems to enjoy, for his eyes alight and Jeno’s heart falls still behind his ribcage.
Silence, subtle, awkward nods, a small, wavering smile, a chair being pushed back, soft lips fleetingly pressed against the high point of Jeno’s cheekbone, indescribable warmth that overcomes Jeno’s entire being as the other boy draws back.
Donghyuck exhales. The balloon deflates. The sandcastle crashes into nothingness. The dam floods. All hell breaks loose in Jeno’s heart but for some reason, he’s grinning like an idiot.
“It’s a good thing I like you too, then.”