Work Text:
it’s January. They are all huddled up in a room while it rains outside.
Extremely loud chattering with crazy hand gestures as futile topics are thrown around.
Jongin is quiet. He doesn’t really like celebrating his birthday. Or birthdays. Or celebrating in general. Not anymore. Everything to him is a blur.
Everything but Kyungsoo.
Everything was a blur until Kyungsoo starts arguing with Chanyeol over the ideal number of chicken nugget pieces that McDonald’s should serve per order.
His eyes linger on the older boy. And then fall to Kyungsoo’s finger, as he points it accusingly at the giant quirky mess that is Chanyeol. His hand looks so soft and touchable. Kyungsoo was cruel.
Chanyeol grabs his finger and pulls it towards his mouth as if he wants to bite it and Kyungsoo laughs with a loud “HEY!” and tries to pull his finger away. Kyungsoo’s heart shaped lips were cruel. Everything about Kyungsoo was soft and cruel.
Jongin still remembers last January. He still remembers the way Kyungsoo’s eyes were looking at his shoes, at the sky, at the floor. Anywhere but Jongin’s eyes when he ripped and crumpled up Jongin’s heart like a paper full of nasty regrets and unfixable mistakes as he told him, ”I’m sorry, Jongin-ah.. I don’t-” The younger boy’s breath hitched as he interrupted his bitter rejection with a soft but shaky ”okay.. it’s okay” the rejection would mock him for eternity. The tightness of his chest mocks him. The stinging he feels in his tired eyes mocks him. His aching hands that don’t have the right to touch mock him.
Kyungsoo laughing with others, touching others, treating him the same way he treats the others. It all mocks him and laughs at him in the face with a bitter reminder that he’s not as special as he thought he’d be. He never will be.
He watches as Kyungsoo excuses himself before getting up to answer his phone with a stupid heart shaped smile on his face. And Jongin doesn’t want to know who’s calling.
”but I’ll always be your hyung”
But is this what he is supposed to feel when he calls him hyung? The hummingbirds in his chest no longer feel nice. They hurt. They hurt and Jongin wants to cut their wings and rip them to pieces so that they’ll stop flapping their stupid wings whenever Kyungsoo’s arm ghostly brushes against his. Kyungsoo was cruel. So cruel.
There are days when Jongin keeps chanting to himself that he’ll be okay and that he’ll get over it. And there are other days when Jongin won’t leave his bed and he feels nothing but the tangled overwhelming feelings spooning him from behind under heavy blankets of overflowing melancholy in the darkness of his bedroom.
And today is one of those other days, but Jongin isn’t in the safety of his bedroom. And these overwhelming feelings are mercilessly stabbing him rather than engulfing him.
His chest burns and his eyes sting as tears threaten to take their leap and roll down his cheeks to fall hitting his folded arms with grace full of woe. Jongin hates it.
Chanyeol gives him a sympathetic look with an it’s okay smile. Jongin hates it.
He looks away. It’s been a year and they still give him the look. Like he’s a kicked puppy. Jongin hates it.
He wishes one day he can wake up and feel nothing. He wishes he can tear his chest open letting all these unrequited feelings pour out along with the disturbing hummingbirds. For his chest cannot contain them anymore.
Jongin is tired and he just wants peace but Kyungsoo is soft and Kyungsoo is cruel. And Kyungsoo does not love him back.