Work Text:
Temptation
/tɛm(p)ˈteɪʃ(ə)n/
Noun.
Noun: temptation; plural noun: temptations
It is a desire to do something, especially something wrong or unwise. / Something that attracts or tempts someone. / The tempting of Jesus by the Devil.
There is a bittersweetness to falling in love with your best friend. Especially when that friend is of the same gender, especially when it happens in a world where there isn’t much room made willingly for you to live. But it's almost worse when it all strikes out of nowhere - a sharp sudden.
So of course, when the feeling erupts from the tips of his toes, up through his legs, pooling smack dab in the pit of his stomach, Mark Lee does the first thing that comes to mind; he bolts.
When he returns home, the sticky sweat from outside's humidity is already clinging to his clothes, under his arms, and at the back of his neck. And panic has begun making home within his bones, rattling through him like some sort of freight train. It's all enough to make his knees give out.
Unwanted visitors are knocking on his door, but it’s company only he can see.
Shame pokes its head in, smiling and baring teeth big and sharp enough to eat him whole.
Though humiliation offers no greetings before seeping through his skin and weaving itself hot and sticky around his intestines. He’s going to die, that he is sure of - because always the dramatic one is Mark Lee when it comes to feelings of the heart.
In the corner of his childhood bedroom, amidst heaps of clutter, there’s a small lamp. The bulb shines bright — even after years and years of use — enough to blur Mark’s vision and cast out funny shapes in blues and purples. Basking in that moment of partial impairment, though, isn’t enough. Nothing is going to be enough to rip out this sickening feeling on the surface of his heart.
Sure he thinks about it: the what, the why, and the how, though it doesn’t matter all that much. Stepping into himself, rummaging through his brain like a starved dog looking for scraps, isn’t going to fix anything. He can peel back every red and gooey layer, can dive down into the unvisited charters of his mind all he wants, but in the end, it won’t change a damn thing.
Because the fact of the matter is - one day Mark Lee sat across from his laughing friend and just like that, it was as if the sun had come down from above, held his head back in her palms, and said: drink me, drink me, drink me - and he drank.
Lee Donghyuck sits atop his childhood bed, the same bed he’s had for the past twenty years.
Except this time, it feels different.
Sweat clings behind his knees and he silently thanks god that summer is coming to an end. It feels a little soon but he tries not to feel too sad about it, not when there are more pressing matters at stake.
There are half-moon indents pressed into both of his palms from where he’d clenched down too hard in frustration. Mark had left and now Donghyuck isn’t sure if he should laugh, cry, or both.
When your friend bolts out of your room all of a sudden, something surely must have happened. Something of the bad sort and Donghyuck feels a little sick when thinking about it. Mark left and now he feels like a disobedient kid waiting for a scolding. Donghyuck grew up in fear of just that and now worry, insecurity, and helplessness were flooding through him like a tidal wave.
He sits on his bed, but it feels different this time around. Mark’s replacement is Guilt and it sits squashed up against his shoulders. He knows it wishes to latch onto him and spread, to manipulate his system. For a brief second Donghyuck’s old therapist’s voice sounds in his head, telling him that guilt and shame are two similar yet two very different things: are you feeling guilty or ashamed, Donghyuck? He didn’t know, he still doesn’t know. He just feels bad. What does it matter? He doesn’t care, not when they all feel the same.
His bare legs tremble where his best friend had sat not even twenty minutes prior and what a contrast it is, to the war raging within him. There’s a bite-sized lump sitting mockingly on his Adam's apple, egging him on to cry. It threatens to burst through his skin like a decomposed hand reaching from beyond the grave - let me out, let me out, let me out!
And Donghyuck wants, wants more than anything to cry. To feel. To fling open his bedroom door and run after Mark, to grab hold of him and shake, to ask, plead, beg; he doesn’t know. To say, “don’t go, don’t go, don’t go!”
But guilt and shame are as nasty and as cruel as each other. As immortal. They’re not going anywhere. They sit on Donghyuck’s shoulders and with hot breath and voices barely above a whisper, they say, “you are not good enough.”
So Donghyuck sits. Stays.
While outside, the sun finally sets and with it, it takes Donghyuck’s warmth.
Full sun, half sun, no sun. Just like that.