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He’s sat in the bath staring at the ceiling like a renaissance painting so Seungcheol leans against the doorway to morph into a romance movie - renaissance is full of tragedy Jihoon tells him. Jihoon is smoking. They are so cliche.
“Seungcheol grins to himself.” Jihoon utters into the bubble bath. Seungcheol does exactly that - though he ain’t a fan of following the script.
“Jihoon quotes Van Gogh, his bath morphs into sunflowers. He’d much rather it were the lesser known starry night.”
Seungcheol strolls over to him and takes a drag from his cigarette, brushing fingers through Jihoon’s hair. “Sunflowers are for nerds and farmers that work in cornfields.”
Jihoon is wearing white boxers. “Too lazy to wash ‘em.”
He smells like chamomile.
“Do ya reckon I could play a lute?” Jihoon asks, shuffling into a more comfortable position on the concrete ledge. He’s searching for stars but the clouds are too persistent.
“Like in Henry IV?”
Seungcheol’s phone often rings at 2am. 3am is the supposed witching hour but Jihoon insists on demons arriving at 2 - they seep through the crack under the door and pour out of Seungcheol’s phone speaker.
He’s crying - drunk on scentless vodka and babbling to Seungcheol from the floor of Seungkwan’s bedroom. Seungkwan snores (or maybe that’s the demons, it is witching hour after all).
“Would chloroform make me sleep betta?”
“Ya might not wake up, babe.”
“A’ll get some. A need some.” Jihoon whispers so Seungcheol won’t hear - it’s a message to the ghosts snaking through Seungkwan’s floorboards.
U no music is only vibrations? Ain’t it just so funny that nobody listens when i can’t stop shakin? Will u listen nxt time?
Shake me to the root of my bones - u can listen to it on repeat anytime. Music tgether 2nite. Ok?
Jihoon appears at his door dressed in slacks and a sweater he stole from his grandfather, headphones hanging out a tattered pocket.
“Good vibrations.” He whispers onto the skin of Seungcheol’s neck before sticking his tongue into the cavern of Seungcheol’s collarbone, hot and satanic.
Seungcheol buys him flowers one day - hours after Jihoon has plucked lavender from the curbstones outside and sprinkled it in the kitchen sink. “Am allergic.” He’d whispered. His favourite smell, Seungcheol’s, was lavender.
Seungcheol’s bouquet has lilies, sunflowers and - “Daffodils.” Jihoon whispers in awe, pulling one free and kissing it. He’d pressed it to Seungcheol’s lips next, before ripping it apart and putting the petals into his rollie. The rest had been closed up in books Jihoon was yet to read, probably wouldn’t now, just keep them acquiring dust and pieces of Seungcheol within the pages.
“The sun crawls up ma throat and it tastes like I’ve eaten a powerline.” He tells Jihoon.
“My lungs - they swap over an’ my veins tangle up like string an’ my grandma can’t knit anymore ‘cos she’s got arthritis y’know? S’like my bones aren’t marrow they’re solar panels and the sun’s goin’ down.”
One night Seungcheol joins him on Seungkwan’s floor and they kiss the demons away. Hold hands with them in fact, Seungkwan sings them lullabies before falling asleep with Jeonghan’s hair in his mouth and Jihoon kisses Seungcheol like he’s trying to steal his lungs - Seungcheol kisses Jihoon like he’s trying to steal his soul. If only bodies could combine. “Takin’ one for the team. S’like a lung transplant where you get hot air balloons instead.” Jihoon slurs, this time it’s tequila.
Seungcheol likes tequila.
Seungcheol likes Jihoon. He’d give him real lungs.
He tilt shifts the camera - Jihoon smiles with all his teeth, like he’s been hiding that one up his sleeve for a while. Seungcheol smiles back, the camera probably blocks it. Jihoon’s eyes look pretty crinkled like that - Seungcheol searches the lines like he’s looking for a missing person.
Like am running. Thru a meadow. Rmmber wht u said abt farmers n sunflowers? Still hate sunflowers. Rly don’t want to be a farmer. Hopin i make it to the roads tnite. Will u pick me up?
Seungcheol drives a battered honda, the whole shebang, filthy olive green and all. He got his license too early - went to a dodgy place. He’s been to a lot of dodgy places.
“Do ya think I’m a dodgy place?”
“The dodgiest.”
“I can’t sell ya a car.”
They make love in the back of his car that night, on the edge of a cornfield with the stars watching.
Jihoon does this thing, you see. Milky skin spread over Seungcheol’s khakis, sometimes he makes his lips red for fun, then bites Seungcheol’s until they bleed. Sometimes their blood gets mixed.
“Aids.”
Jihoon will moan. “Love y-“
He straddles him, his tongue can do powerful things. “If you had to give something up, don’t ever say ya tongue.” Seungcheol requests. Jihoon nods, there’s purple bruises on his chest. He’s pressing flowers into the pages of Seungcheol skin this time.
Jihoon sleeps in the position he was before they birthed him, back when he was safe through thick walls. Seungcheol kisses a ridge at the top of his spine with an open mouth and he doesn’t move, but he’s supposed to be a light sleeper. “Hoon?”
His knees are up against his chest, Seungcheol wants to kiss them too.
“Y’know, I broke my leg when I was eight. ‘Ave a screw in there an’ all.”
He’d paused musefully, stroking a thumb down the rough skin of Seungcheol’s hand. “Maybe you’re magnetic?”
It’s genius. Seungcheol had looked at their entwined hands and realised they’ve got to be joined together by something.
Hansol has a swimming pool. He’s rich, not in a way that makes you brag, in a way that makes you bashful, makes you deny money having any value.
“Why does summer make everyone wan’ta drown ‘emselves?”
Jihoon always stays under the water too long, he’s blonde now, longer, gets caught in the stream.
“I’m tryin’ to test myself.”
“You’re scaring me.”
There’s a barbecue after. Vodka isn’t meant to accompany hotdogs but for some reason, it does. Seokmin sticks pink umbrellas into the cocktails and tries to dive in the pool with flip flops on.
“You want a hotdog?”
“‘M not hungry.”
He looks a little sad and he’s started a collection of cocktail umbrellas, stabbing them into the vase of sunflowers one by one.
He’s scatterbrained when he’s high, Seungcheol sleeps and Jihoon runs across walls. Everything he says is equivocal. “I wanna write a book.” He’s climbing up Seungcheol’s chest, Seungcheol has only just opened his eyes. “Backwards.” He twists, stroking a hand down Seungcheol’s arm. “Sideways.” He whispers.
Ave gotta go. Might swim in hansol’s pool. Take a dip like a fuckin chicken wing. Rmmber when we set fire to my microwave cookin chicken? Might set fire to myself. Dnt call me
Jihoon doesn’t stay at his house, it’s untouched, pristine as a fucking hospital. He’d given Seungcheol a key, though. Seungcheol doubts Jihoon even has one himself.
There are maggots gnawing his stomach to shit. He doesn’t know why he’s here, there aren’t any traces of Jihoon. Even the bed can’t recall his scent.
The candles aren’t lit, aren’t used. Seungcheol lights them, every single one. Perhaps it’ll burn the building down. Won’t be missed. He feels the same, almost.
“‘Ave got the hot air balloons, Hoonie, my lungs too.” He says to empty space, perhaps the demons will wake up and listen to him. Witching hour might come a little earlier tonight.
Seungcheol’s fucked up his body clock.
Last time they got crossfaded, Jihoon had wanted to go abseiling with a noose. Seungcheol had dreamt about his stomach turning to a plant and he’d awoken to vomit sunflower seeds.
“Neva again.”
“You’re talkin’ out your ass.”
See, Soonyoung’s bedroom is different from Seungkwan’s. First, he lets Jihoon sleep in the bed. Second, he has carpets.
Jihoon goes round for the bath, ends up sleeping in it instead. Not full, unplugged. It smells all wrong here and Jihoon tells Soonyoung so. The bubbles had been violet.
“Am allergic.”
“D’you want weed or not?”
It feels like a nightshift. Witching hour grapples at him but Jihoon’s fingers have turned to mist, Jihoon has turned to mist, they tear right through him and he dissolves into the breeze. Soonyoung pours them shots.
Imagine it: you’ve got a fog and you’re pouring hennessy into it. What shape does it take?
“I say square.” Jihoon doesn’t want him to say anything. “It turns into rain.” He whispers, but the hash smoke carries it away. Hopefully to Seungcheol’s ears.
The bath hurts his back and the medicine cabinet has begun calling to him, so he climbs into Soonyoung’s bed.
He likens it to suffering, he’s being waterboarded by his own brain, burnt at the stake by what? His own brandishing hands?
6:34am: the cross, also, fades into a mist and carries the entire fog away with it so Jihoon wisps over to the landline.
He’s got Seungcheol’s number written in his head (tattooed onto his wrist).
“Ya better not change it.”
Seungcheol had gotten Jihoon’s birthday behind his ear.
“Ya better not pull a Van Gogh.”
The landline shivers in his hands. If he can still call them hands. He is mist, he is fog.
Seungcheol is a hot breath. Jihoon is forgetting the physical.
“I sent ya the rain. Think i might be disintegrating with it.”
I got a rash from the lavnder. I think it might be
shaped like a sunflowr. Isnt tht funny?
There’s a layer of rust forming down the side of Seungcheol’s honda, his windows open when he spins the pirate wheels so they’ve got them all gaping, open mouths for the wind to reach right in and throw them about.
“It’s too cold for swimmin’ an’ I wasn’t too sure if you’d be alright with me drownin’ myself so I got high instead.” Jihoon’s hair is blowing in the wind and Seungcheol’s tears fly back with it, but he’s smiling and he continues to smile even when the night air dries out his mouth.
Jihoon’s back in Seungcheol’s bath. Only this time, the shower is on and Seungcheol has joined him, though he’s getting his back nudged by the taps.
“An’ they said it couldn’t rain indoors.”
It’s the ending scene of a romantic comedy where Jihoon has stolen Jennifer Aniston's role and Seungcheol: Adam Sandler’s. The sunflowers are being battered by indoor rain, Seungcheol kisses Jihoon. Jihoon kisses Seungcheol.
They both smell like chamomile.