Work Text:
Tw // alcohol , drinking
“You still love him.”
“Come on, Theo. It’s been six months.”
“And?”
“And what? I’ve moved on. I don’t love him anymore.”
“Yeah, yeah. That’s really convincing. That’s why you dragged me here, to get drunk tonight-”
“You really think that’s the reason?”
“-tonight, exactly six months ago when you two broke up."
“Oh shut up.”
“Jiung, for once, can’t you be honest with yourself?”
He shot his best friend a look, but the gaze the other has is just as piercing as the words he just muttered. Has he been lying to himself all along? To be quite frank, this messy place is not the best choice to sort his thoughts out. It’s too loud and the lights are making him dizzy, considering that he had already downed two glasses of whatever alcohol the bartender gave him. But where else could he be when almost all of the places in the city only remind him of the past? The past where Intak was still in the picture, where everything seemed so perfect and endless, where promises were made but eventually broken.
A memory of the night Intak confessed to him in front of their dorm flashed before his semi-blurry vision. Perhaps it’s due to the alcohol, but he didn’t make an effort to brush it off anymore. Instead, he just closed his eyes, trying to remember how much of a blushing mess his boy--ex-boyfriend was back then which he found really adorable.
“c-can you at least say something? I-I just confessed here… you know it’s uh really embarrassing.”
“Can you say that again?”
“Ya! Why do I have to repeat myself?”
“Come on I didn’t hear it clearly!”
“That’s not my fault you weren’t listening intently!”
“Aw, how am i supposed to say anything then?”
“Ugh okay, okay I-I”
“I…?”
“Ilikeyou”
“There, I already said it!”
Jiung couldn’t help but let off a hearty laugh as he pulled the younger into a hug. Burying his head on Intak’s shoulders, he then said, “I like you too, silly.”
But maybe now, he’s out there, ready to confess to someone else. This shouldn’t bother him right? He is supposed to be happy to see his past lover successfully move on. After all, what matters the most is his happiness. More than anything, he wants him to be happy even if he’s not the reason anymore, even if it’s someone else that’s making him smile.
“Haa, Jiung what am I supposed to do with you.”
“Just go, Keeho needs you” He points to their other friend who is busy tending other customers.
“I’ll be back, don’t cause any trouble or else i’ll ban you here.”
“Alright, alright. Gooo”
Now he’s left alone at the counter with nothing but the half-filled glass keeping him company. The vibration in his pocket snatched his attention away from the lonely glass in front of him. A notification from Instagram.
Hwang Intak posted.
It’s a picture of him in a gray hoodie and specs, mouth forming a cute pout.
It was captioned “Uni sucks but at least I’m cute :3”
A small smile crept up his face, Yeah, you are. (Talk about being whipped.) He almost hit the heart button if it wasn’t for Theo’s voice coming from behind that made him jump a little. It’s a relief he came or else who knows what could have happened.
“That’s a cute ex right there.”
“God, Theo stop lurking!”
“Hey I was not! Maybe if you lowered your screen brightness a little I wouldn’t have seen it”
The blonde guy took the seat adjacent to him.
“Seems like he’s doing fine. Glad to see that we both moved on. ”
“If stalking your ex in his social media account after 6 months of breaking up is what ‘someone who has moved on’ is like, then yes I guess you BOTH have moved on from each other”
“I wasn’t stalking him okay. The app notified me.”
“Wow so you still have his notifications turned on?”
“I-I okay you got me there”
“You’re one funny man, Ji. I’m literally your best friend even if you deny it, I know.”
“You must also know that the hoodie he’s wearing in the picture was the one we bought on our first date.”
“That...is an interesting story. Well I didn’t know.”
Jiung just laughed and brought his attention back to his phone, silently scrolling through Intak’s feed. It’s full of familiar pictures. It’s still full of them , but in photographs of places they both visited. No photo of them together is to be found though.
“Our cafe. This is where we first met.”
“Yeah, we were about to close it but then I saw him sleeping in the corner near the window”
“And you begged me to wake him up.”
“Please, he looked so dumbfounded when he saw that he’s the only customer left.”
The two shaked their heads while smiling. It was a fun memory.
“Oh, isn’t that the Art museum near our college?”
“Mhmm. It was raining hard and I forgot to bring an umbrella. I waited for a long time for the rain to stop but it didn’t. Then he came outside the building, carrying a yellow one”
“Out of pity he asked you to join him so both of you can go to the nearest bus station.”
“Hey! It was not out of pity! He recognized me okay”
“Okay, whatever.”
“The cinema. First date.”
“I still can’t believe you went to watch a movie for the first date. That’s too cliche.”
“And you can’t even ask Keeho to be your boyfriend.”
“Foul!”
“You’re right though, the movie was boring but we went to shop afterward, which was waaay more fun”
“Of course shopping is never not fun duh”
The further he scrolls down, the more painful it gets. He wonders why Intak left the photos there when he could have just deleted it like what he did with the pictures they were together.
“Ji, you look so miserable right now”
“Way to state the obvious my dear friend”
“Well you know, Intak seems to have moved on.”
“Yeah, and I’m glad…”
“But…..?”
“You know, I should be happy for him...but I can’t convince myself to do so.”
He took Theo’s silence as a signal to keep talking.
“I am very aware of the fact that I have no right to envy other people who make him happy. That is very selfish, but I do and it feels so pathetic, it feels so wrong.”
“Mhmm”
"I hate to see him happy without me. "
"I still love him."
Alcohol-induced confessions are always true, right?
"There you go, you finally admitted it."
“It’s been six fucking months, Theo. But not one single day went by that I didn’t wish for us to be together again.. ”
“I’m the one who ended it right?”
“That doesn’t lessen the pain. It’s not always the one who leaves who gets less hurt.”
“So what are you planning to do now?”
“I don’t know, maybe move on? It’s not like I can ask him to love me again just because I’m still so hung up with the idea of 'us', just because I still love him.”
“At least try harder, Ji.”
“Oh please, I am” He rests his head on the counter, drifting off to sleep.
“I think you two should go home. You are a total mess, Jiung.”
Keeho said as he took over the counter. With that, Theo looked up to the blue-green haired guy and gave him a tired smile.
“Yeah haha, we’ll leave now. See you tomorrow.”
“Wait-” A gesticulation from Keeho made the other lean forward.
“Intak was here an hour before you two came.”