Chapter Text
He can’t find the stupid alarm clock.
The thing is beeping off its little metal head and he’s spent the better part of the morning trying to locate it. Under the bed, between the sheets, in the drawer—nowhere.
So he does the only thing that he’s good at doing. Hongjoong bundles up the music sheets, his notebooks, pens and sticky tabs, and exits. The door slams over the sound of the annoying little contraption as he goes, muffling it enough so that he can tune it out.
Peace, at last.
The air in the living room is stale and chilly, like it usually is, most winter mornings in the city. But he doesn’t bother checking the thermostat, because he prefers layers, socks and slippers, and lazing around in his bedclothes. Doesn’t really matter that they’re not thick enough, or that he can catch a cold that way.
There’s no one around to nag him about it anymore.
Hongjoong throws himself onto the couch, and waits as the calm reclaims him. He steeps in the emptiness for a bit, suddenly feeling a little sad. It’s a shame, really. That brief moment of anger had actually felt a little refreshing, like a bucket of ice water. Being alone for long stretches of time usually means losing sense of most tangible emotions, even when he puts on his favourite shows, or an emotional song. It hadn’t always been like that, but now, there is no one to fight, no one to shout at. No one to laugh with him when something strange happened, no one to make him feel.
The rage makes him feel more alive, like how the warmth always finds his fingertips when he steps out of blustering wind and into his home.
It is nice.
The beeping of the infuriating alarm clock is starting to seep back in. Hongjoong breathes in the musty air that surrounds him, and releases it in a loud sigh, hoping it drowns out the annoyance once more.
It isn’t even his clock. Should’ve thrown it out when he had the chance.
---
Tonight I write the saddest lines,
But they’re woefully underwhelming—
---
Eventually, at some o’clock of the day, he starts considering food.
There hasn’t been much in his refrigerator lately, given the circumstances, but today, there’s some bread, but no butter, or jam, or anything. His toaster is still busted from that day where he snagged the wire and yanked it out of the socket and smashed it on the ground.
Well, bread’s bread. Bread’s fine.
At least there’s milk, so he throws some in a cup and sits. His dining table is a mess of things that his niece had left behind, papers and crayons and some crude drawings of herself, her parents, of grandpa and grandma, of him and— wow. He must’ve really tuned out what she was doing here the last time his brother and his husband dropped her off to be babysat because her toys are here too. Little colourful things of wood, in cubes and cuboids and prisms and pyramids, all sorts of shapes.
As he eats his plain bread with one hand, Hongjoong starts stacking the blocks up into a tower, as high as it can go. He jumps when his landline rings suddenly, as if it doesn’t usually ring around this time, every other day.
The tower is swiftly rebuilt as he ignores the call, as one does, and lets it go to voicemail. Everyone usually gives up after awhile. Hongjoong tries dipping his bread in the milk, as he balances a cylindrical block right at the top of the structure.
True to form, the answering machine beeps, and he waits just long enough to hear who it is.
“Hey, hyung. It’s me, Yunho.”
Then he shuts the rest out, turning back to the bread that is as dry as sand and the tower of blocks. The call ends just as he places the last one and the whole thing comes collapsing down, once again. Two, then three blocks falls in his milk. They bob up to the surface like ice cubes.
Damn. But the dismay is merely performative. There’s no one to witness it.
There’s still milk in the cup so he drinks it anyway. It doesn’t taste half bad.
---
In the light of all
We choose to bear
This escapes our understanding.
---
The toys go into the colander, where he’ll figure out how to clean them later, perhaps. Then it’s back to the couch for him. Hongjoong splays on his back, staring at his favourite spot in the ceiling. He hums a short tune that is stirring around in his head, but there’s no kick to it. Doesn’t feel like it could become anything. It floats away.
That just leaves him… where he started this morning.
There really isn’t anything on today; there haven’t been any new notifications or emails or new projects that he has to work on. It isn’t that bad a thing, his fingers aren’t itching for something to do. The melodies are too generic, his clothes and dyes and markers are in the bedroom, where the alarm clock is still beeping away, and he doesn’t feel like reading any books. He could call in the office for work, but the staff would probably tell him that he’s good for the moment, that there are no active projects for him, and he can just take a break. Worse still, he may get one of his friends on the other end; if he gets Yeosang or Jongho, they’d be polite and professional, but no doubt would slip in a question or two just because they’re curious. If he gets Wooyoung, he’d been signing up for a 1-hour guilt-trip to the moon and back.
So no, it doesn’t sound like a good idea to call in. He’ll make do with what he has.
And if it means doing nothing, Hongjoong thinks as he rolls onto his stomach and switches on the TV to a random channel, then so be it.
---
There’s a method to this rhyme,
Nothing here is true
The skin on some lips,
The taste of a tongue—
Everything reminds me of you.
---
He’s not one for action movies in the middle of the day, but when his answering machine collects yet another call and San’s voice comes through, Hyung, are you there?, he thinks to hell with it. He needs something to block everyone out. Can’t they just leave him alone, to his misery? Jeez.
Fast and Furious is a pretty safe bet, so he puts the first one on and turns the volume up, up, up. Pretending he can’t hear San pleading for him to please, come back. No one is angry with him anymore, won’t he please just come back?
He’s lucky that he can afford such a good sound system; it’s almost as good as they one they have in their studios. He can hear everything.
Hongjoong barely pays attention to most of the first show, so he hits the replay button, just to let it run again. It's a movie made on a multimillion-dollar budget, he argues with himself, the least he could do is try and appreciate the fast cars, pyrotechnics, and action sequences properly. And he will, right now. In this rewatch. He even pulls that stupid toy car from the storage room so he can sit in it and get into the mood.
What he does with his time is his business, and his business only.
He knows some of the models of the cars as they come up, having been schooled in them previously, but this time, however, he decides to pick a favourite. Which is ridiculously hard, seeing how all these machines look more or less the same to him. The electric ride-on vehicle he has — he thinks it must belong to one of the kids or something — is a Range Rover, which doesn't appear in any of the movies until the ninth or something, so that's really helpful.
Hongjoong is sure he's supposed to like the sleeker sporty ones, or the more familiar shapes of the Japanese models, but if he has to pick a favourite, it would be the Chevvies, or the Volks. Something about the sharp, almost boxy silhouettes of the cars made him feel like he was looking at something from another time in the past. It made him feel a bit nostalgic, sentimental even. When he has saved up enough, maybe he should try and get one. For himself, of course. He'll drive himself around this time.
He slowly makes his way through the rest of the franchise, pausing only for washroom and water breaks, and then some time after the sun disappears to get more bread. When he passes his sink to place his mug inside, the toys are still there. He doesn’t have time, he thinks hazily. Maybe later.
Somewhere in the middle of the seventh or eighth movie, Hongjoong dozes off. He doesn't dream.
---
What is left at the end of a fire
After it takes a home?
I ask the question
Yet I cannot answer
The silence, an aching whole.
---
The next day starts very much like the previous, but Hongjoong sleeps in because the alarm clock is in the other room and there's nothing it can do make him move. He props himself up on the sofa and stares out his bay window into the misty morning.
No calls from concerned younger ones that morning. Just the way he likes it.
Food has not magically appeared overnight in his cupboards, nor his refrigerator. He knows, he’s checked. The office still hasn't called in and although his email is an unsorted mess of read mail, he hasn't seen any work-related notifications, so he's incredibly bored. His fingers are starting to itch for something to do; between the children's toys and his craft supplies, the choice is clear. He wonders how much his niece likes old-school toys.
Speak of the devil, he had been taking a shower when he heard the ring of the phone, but as per protocol, he let it ring all the way. He had thought it was one of the members, with the low timbre of the voice, but then as he exits the shower, he hears his brother. By now, he’s talking to someone on his side of the line, “Do you want to say something to Uncle?”
His heart jumps several beats as there is a break, some rustling, then the angelic, childish lilt of his niece’s voice chimes in, “Uncle!”
Hongjoong can’t help but smile as he drops onto the sofa, scrubbing his towel through his blonde hair as he listens keenly to Hyesun talk.
“Uncle, it’s me, Hyesunnie! Can you hear me? Hello?”
“Sweetheart, he can’t answer you,” her father’s mildly amused voice interjects from a distance.
“Anyway, I hope you feel all better soon! I miss you, Uncle! I drew some pictures for you! Look!”
“He can’t— never mind. Hongjoong, we've gotta go. We’ll come by again, one of these days.”
A click tells him the call is over and the connection is dropped. But he can’t help but bask in the simple happiness of the call. It’s been a while since he’s smiled, but hearing his family always made him happy, like nothing else ever could.
But there is a phantom ache in his chest, because family used to include a few more people than just his relatives. Now they stand so far away, and even the sound of their voices makes it hard to breathe, like a knife getting slotted between his ribs.
He doesn’t have the guts to bite the bullet, to face them. He doesn’t have the right. Not after what he did. Not after everything he didn’t do.
The cheeriness from hearing his niece and brother ebbs, as he slumps back down against the armrest, staring at the large pillows of clouds forming outside. He wishes he could do something to fill the gaping, empty hole that is his chest.
Perhaps today, it will rain.
---
Tonight we go to sleep alone;
The sheets, cold and dry.
I balance between
here and the next
Edge from which I fly.
---
He's lying on the floor, in gloom of the foggy afternoon, with some random gameplay as background noise when the landline rings once more. It’s nice to know it’s working, he thinks bitterly, as he rises briefly to turn the volume up of his laptop, and then sliding back down and slightly under the coffee table to fixate on the cup-phones he's designing for Hyesun.
Denial is a wonderful thing, and he draws a smiley on the base of the cup where the string goes through, so the string becomes a long, long nose for the face.
Whoever is on the line is a persistent little shit, however. If he isn't trying so hard to avoid it, his money would be hundred percent on Wooyoung. Who he’s most definitely avoiding. He hums a mindless tune, but nothing can prepare him for the one line that he inadvertently catches, when he stops for air.
"...if Seonghwa hyung was here, he wouldn't want to see you like this either."
In that moment, he flinches so violently that he clips his head on the underside of the table. Cursing and swearing, he slides out from under the table, which is a bad move on his part, because it means he has no choice but to hear the rest of the call.
"You know I'm right, hyung," Yeosang's quiet voice says, before taking a long pause. He sighs into the receiver, but it’s not the crackle that makes Hongjoong wince. It's the clear disappointment, the weariness he hears in his young friend's tone.
"I know you wanted to give us space because you think we needed time, or because you thought for some idiotic reason that we don't love you as much as we love Seonghwa. The second part is stupid, by the way."
Sometimes, he wishes the shadows that haunt his apartment could come to life and swallow him already.
"I don't know how much more distance any of us can handle. With you being like this, and Seonghwa hyung... not being here..."
The words fade off. After an extended pause, the answering machine beeps to indicate that the call has come to an end. And the connection is gone.
He tries to pretend he hadn’t heard anything, but his next stroke on the cup is so wobbly that it skews off the side and onto his other hand. This is probably a sign for him, that he needs to stop.
Hongjoong doesn’t bother doing anything to the sound of the video he’s trying to fill the hollow room with; he crawls slowly and meekly back onto the couch, where there is too much space for just him. He pulls his knees up into his chest, wrapping the ropes around his shoulders until he can press one end to his own ear, and the other to his mouth.
Does it work?
He whispers the words he wants to say, so quietly, that he is pretty sure no one but him and the silly, useless paper cups know.
It’s my fault.
---
Tonight the lines still hurt
And so I will let them touch,
---
He feels guilty, so he tries to listen one of Yunho’s earlier calls. It’s a surprisingly harmless call. His closest friend talks to him comfortably, telling him in an easy-going tone about how his day had gone, how he and Jongho and Mingi had gone out for some coffee, how he had saw random bicycle kick up water at a poor old man at the bus stop, and he had went up and offered him a napkin. How later that night he had then met up with Wooyoung and Yeosang for drinks at a club, and they had gotten so drunk that they all crashed at San’s place because it was the closest.
Hongjoong is occupying himself with a children’s train set he’d found stashed in the TV cabinet. There’s something weirdly satisfying about making a circle with the tracks and making wooden replica of a locomotive vehicle go around and around and around.
At the end of the call, Yunho wishes Hongjoong and Seonghwa could’ve been there to join them. It would have been nice to hang out, after so long. To just let loose, like old times. He sounds so forlorn, that Hongjoong feels his stomach twist like a towel.
He clicks off at that part. No one needs to remind him of how good things used to be. No one needs to remind him to know what he loves, who he loves, all which are now lost. Of what he had thrown away, all for the sake of his passion. What he had given up to be where he is now.
Was it even worth it?
That very much depends on when you ask him that question. Because he knows exactly how to smile brightly for the cameras, fake a cocky attitude and drawl, Yes, of course. It was worth it. It is worth it.
Catch him on the flipside, however, and his answer wouldn’t be so certain.
And it’s because of them. It’s because… Seonghwa.
What did it cost?
The honest answer makes him shrink. And these days he feels small enough.
He doesn’t need to be reminded of it.
---
A pen to paper,
A knife to a throat,
---
Hongjoong isn’t sure when he falls asleep, but when he wakes again, he does so to the sound of the rain smashing against the glass of the living room window. The sun is bowing past the horizon, colouring everything a dusty blue. He musters the strength to swing his legs off the sofa, and stares at the mess he’s made.
Too much. He’ll just start in the kitchen.
The blocks are made of wood, and slightly grubby from having set in the sink overnight. He gives them a thorough rinse, but there’s no space in the drying rack, so he stacks them up on the counter, then sits with them. Watching the droplets slide off the roof of the castle and drip down the sides before pooling at the bases is oddly meditative. He lays there for a while, watching the rain crowd his view, and the painted wood dries. Things get so slippery when it rains.
---
Tell me,
---
He thinks he probably feels hungry, but the last raid through his empty refrigerator only yielded half a carton of milk, and his pantry only has bread right now. But somehow, going out to get groceries just to cook a meal is an impossible option.
So he sits, and waits, without being entirely sure what he is waiting for. Magic? Probably not. The sound of keys, and the light in the threshold tinkling as it comes on? Perhaps. A sign? Please.
It’s time to wake up.
Some kind of force seizes him, all at once. And for no reason at all, even though he is sure he’s just turned them inside out for the millionth time before dozing off, he tries the cupboards.
And that’s when he finds it.
In the middle of the overhead cabinet, sitting innocently on the middle shelf—
A lemon.
---
Does it cut?
---
He stares at it, suddenly not quite understanding what he’s seeing, what it even is.
But it’s a lemon. It sits there, balanced just right so it challenges him, yellow and perfect. Its leaf is a deep flick of green, like a cap against its head.
He reaches out, tentatively at first, then startles when his fingertips touch it and he feels the textured skin. It’s real.
It wasn’t there earlier.
Hongjoong holds it in his hand, its weight like a small, beating heart.
At that exact moment, the answering machine clicks, and before he can do anything, the red light pulses, and a voice comes through.
“Hongjoong-ah.”
The fruit slips right through his fingers.