Work Text:
Byungjoo. (17 -present day-)
Sometimes Byungjoo runs at night.
And sometimes there’s a boy standing on the sidewalk.
He’s a ghost—he thinks, since he doesn’t talk. On occasion he smiles, all cat like and sweet. He smiles back because he doesn’t believe he’s really there; thinks that the stress has finally gotten to him and he’s beginning to see things. He’s finally cracked. He doesn't say anything about him to Jiho, he’d just worry silently beneath all those clever words, all the bullshit that everyone loves to hear from him, and he’s got enough shit on his plate than to bother with his assortment of mental issues finally taking physical form; his loneliness manifesting into some made up figure.
It isn’t until around midnight on a particularly restless night; bike riders and cars that roar, lights that hide the stars that he understands—oh.
He’s real, after all.
It’s when he jogs by that he can hear him calling out—soft, really, and he barely catches it over the sound of his own heavy breathing. He stops and turns, unsure that he’s heard anything at all, but the kid is looking directly at him, smiling like usual.
“Huh?”
Even in the dark he’s the only thing he can see. Even with the blaring sound of civilization around them, he’s the loudest thing in his ears. He demands attention and Byungjoo finds that in that moment, it’s the only thing he knows how to do.
Hansol looks at him like he’s got secrets to tell behind the feline curve of his mouth—things he wants to tell him, but things that he can’t. His gaze is often severe with an awareness of something but he can’t be sure what, doesn’t know what’s lurking in the crinkles around his eyes, the creases of his mouth when he grins.
Not even as he begins to make routinely runs every other night, much more frequently than before. He sees him every time, cuts his jog short to walk with him to the nearest park where they sit on benches, swing on swing sets or sometimes just walk in silence because they like the company. This time, Byungjoo brings them goguma to split and they walk aimlessly along the sidewalks, keeping to one direction so they won’t get lost.
Hansol perks up at this, really perks up at this and starts to speak more than he has in the past two weeks combined. Byungjoo can’t believe how much he likes the sound of his voice.
He makes a habit of bringing him food to share.
“Don’t your parents worry about you being out so late?” Hansol asks him one night, mouth full of shrimp chips. Days have passed and he makes no obvious attempt to refine his eating habits around him—still speaks with his mouth full, biting off more than he can chew before he’s really even swallowed.
Byungjoo contemplates his answer, expression blank. “Not really. They work at night, so they don’t really concern themselves with what I do while they’re gone.”
“Ah.” He hums, looking for eye contact as he wipes his mouth with his sleeve. “Doesn’t it get lonely?”
He doesn’t talk about this—not really even to Jiho. They have the benefit of not needing to—of just knowing, so they instead just pretend that their problems don’t exist while hoping that, when they graduate, something will change. This era of their life will be over and they can move on from this rubbish. For a long moment he hesitates to answer but there’s something about Hansol that compels him to speak; so he does.
“Yeah, honestly.”
A couple of minutes pass before Byungjoo breaks the ice again, careful. “What about your parents? Do they worry?”
Hansol’s expression is frighteningly unreadable for a flickering second. He stuffs more shrimp chips into his mouth to occupy the muscles in his face and doesn’t speak for a long while. When he does, he actually manages to smile when he answers. But Byungjoo knows bullshit when he sees it. He invented it. Or at least, Jiho did.
“Of course they do.”