Work Text:
The alcohol makes Seungmin feel slow, a little out of time and space, like he’s watching himself in third-person with a three-second delay. Seungmin feels like he’s watching himself lead a lamb to slaughter. Seungmin is the lamb. And the slaughterhouse is Minho. Or maybe it’s the other way around. Either way, the tragedy is too fascinating to be stopped for Seungmin who is three-seconds behind. Seungmin who is present hits call.
“Hello?”
This is stupid. Three-Seconds-Behind Seungmin is laughing. Present Seungmin lets the silence warp the static feeling in his chest.
“Kim Seungmin?”
“Fuck,” he whispers and ends the call.
Seungmin who is three-seconds behind is still laughing when he feels the crisp snap back to reality slam into the time delay. The contradiction causes an ache in his head, but suddenly he’s staring at his message thread with crystal clear vision and his last text to Lee Minho is glaring at him in bold letters.
Half an hour is how long it takes to sober him up. Half an hour is how long it takes for Lee Minho to find his way to Seungmin’s door. Half an hour is how long it feels like he watches Minho through his peephole before he finally wretches the door open.
“What are you doing here?” Seungmin plays dumb like a defense mechanism.
Minho holds up his phone and waves it in the air, “You called.”
“No, I-”
“You called, Kim Seungmin. Would you like to see my call logs?” Minho taps his phone alive and dutifully reads his call logs, “Half an hour ago, Kim Seungmin, duration 0:23 seconds, 22 of which I simply listened to you breathe. The last second was a whispered ‘fuck’ and then the haunting sound of a dialtone. So yes, Kim Seungmin, you called.”
“It was a buttdial.”
Minho looks at him too long for comfort and Seungmin squirms.
“No,” he says simply, and walks through the door frame, toeing his shoes off carefully next to the hall closet. Minho takes a careful look around before declaring, “This is different.”
Seungmin feels like he is experiencing culture shock as he looks at Minho standing in this unfamiliar yet familiar place he calls home. “Yeah,” he responds.
“You changed the carpets.”
“Yeah.”
“Why?”
Seungmin couldn’t say that he felt like the tears he shed never lifted no matter how hard he tried to scrub the guilt away. That salt water stains seemingly turned to tar and it stuck beneath his shoes and weighed him down, kept him rooted to some mistake he didn’t know how to fix.
“I didn’t like the color,” he says instead. A blatant lie. The new carpet is only a shade or two off.
Minho raises his eyebrows, but doesn’t comment. He only takes a few steps further in before he turns around, “What did you do to the walls?”
“I didn’t do anything to the walls,” Seungmin says.
“Yes, you did. Why does it look so…” Minho takes another look around and scoffs, “Nevermind. Forget I said anything.”
Seungmin figures that Minho means that the walls are stripped of pictures from their time together. He wants to laugh, and it’s a near thing if he wasn’t so sure it would have come out hollow and empty. If he closes his eyes, he can see their entry way lined with a timeline of them. A love story printed on shiny photo paper and hung in heavy frames. If he shuts them even tighter, he can see the shattered glass that remained when Minho left and the door shook so violently that flimsy screws couldn’t hold them together.
“Okay,” he breathes, “The, um… well, you know where the kitchen is. Are you hungry? I can make dinner, if you want.”
Minho simply turns again and leads them to the kitchen counter. Seungmin follows helplessly. Distantly, he notes that there are few things that remain constant.
“Kim Seungmin,” Minho takes a seat at the counter, and Seungmin moves to stand on the opposite side. Between them, the marble island feels endless. On one end, sits an ultimatum. On the other, a finality. They both close chapters that neither of them feel ready to finish reading. “Why did you call me?”
“Do I have to have a reason to call you?” Seungmin asks, pouring each of them a glass of water.
“You have to have a reason when you told me you wanted a divorce two months ago, yes. Typically, people don’t call their ex-husbands for fun.”
“You’re not my ex-husband yet.”
“Hm… according to my phone contacts you are. And to the lawyers you’ve no doubt spoken to. We are ex-husbands by all accounts except on paper, really.”
Seungmin feels like the floor has given way to a giant sinkhole beneath him. He doesn’t know what to say, so he lets the silence stretch between them because he feels like it’s the only thing keeping them tethered together.
Carefully, Minho pulls the string.
“You know… a lot of things change when your back is turned,” he says cryptically, drumming his fingers on the countertop and taking a long look around the place he used to come home to. “You turn around for one second and suddenly your carpets are ripped up and your hallways are empty and your marriage is in shambles.”
Seungmin nods slowly, still scrambling for something to say to the ghost sitting in his apartment.
“You turn around and things are different but somehow you still feel the same.”
The statement sits heavily between them.
Unraveling. Seungmin feels like his last thread has been pulled taut and he’s trying desperately to keep from unraveling. But Minho has always known how to get him loose and vulnerable.
“Do you still feel the same?” Seungmin speaks, studying the bridge of Minho’s nose, still tall enough to climb mountains, still straight enough to slide his finger down without a pause. He remembers wanting to mar it the first time Minho looked at him with such contempt on the night of their separation, looking down at him through the steep line of his nose. Then he thought he didn’t need another broken thing to fix.
Minho looks him in the eyes for the first time that night, for the first time since he walked out, “Yes. But also no. So I suppose that’s ultimately a no.”
“That’s not a real answer.”
“Then ask a real question.”
“You—” Seungmin looks at him in disbelief, “you frustrate the hell out of me.”
Minho tilts his head curiously, “Isn’t that why you asked for a divorce?”
“Yes! But… also no.” Seungmin runs his hands through his hair and pulls at his nape. He feels suffocated. Lamb, meet Slaughterhouse. Seungmin is both the lamb and the guillotine. He looks down before the blade. “It was so much more than that. It was… I never… it was easier. We were exploding in this tiny apartment like the floorboards were tripmines and it was so much easier than talking to you. Than looking at you and trying to love you. It used to be the most natural thing, you know that? I used to love you like it was given, like I needed it as much as I needed to breathe, unconscious and necessary.”
Seungmin feels the sting of past tense like an old wound. Less pain and more ache. A soreness in all his vital organs.
“Can I ask you a question, Kim Seungmin?” Minho doesn’t even pause to wait for an answer, “Did you think it was hard to love me, or did you just give up on it?”
Seungmin snaps his head up. The butcher is Minho, he decides, who profits from his death. “You don’t get to ask me that. You didn’t even fight for us. You didn’t even cry for us. Did you even love me in the end?”
The accusation causes Minho’s facade of composure to crack, “Of course I fucking loved you, you were my husband. What kind of question is that?”
Seungmin thinks Minho’s rising volume is a sick sort of victory bell. He is almost smug when he asks, “Then why did you leave?”
“Because it was easier, Seungmin,” delirium stains the falsetto of Minho’s voice, “wouldn’t you understand that the most out of everyone? It was easier than standing there and arguing with you and trying to love you despite it all. I never asked for a divorce, Seungmin, you just gave me one. And who was I to argue with you when you seemed like you made a decision already? Who was I to keep you shackled to something that made you unhappy?”
Seungmin feels ill with tension, “You’re throwing my words back at me and I—”
“Am I throwing your words back at you, or do we just feel the same things? You seem to forget we used to be soulmates, Seungmin. You and I… we just understand each other like that,” Minho sneers, like the way they love is a thing to be weaponized. The way they loved. A dull throb jolts his kidneys.
The pain of it all makes Seungmin feel cruel. Here is where he finds that the slaughterhouse makes him go mad. The words slip out of his mouth before he can even understand the implication of them, “God, do you really believe that shit?”
“And you don’t?” Minho squints, “So you just lied to me these past six years? Every single wordless confession and ‘I was made for you’ was just a lie?”
A part of Seungmin wants to protest, wants to scream that of course he meant it all, that no matter how hard he tries he thinks he will always be made for Minho and his sharp edges. But a bigger part of Seungmin feels like he wants to justify himself, to prove why they would have always ended like this, why all the heartache he put them through will always be worth it. That part of Seungmin is spiteful and Seungmin has always been good at being spiteful.
The kitchen is pin-drop silent when he says, deathly calm, “Well, we’re sitting here, aren’t we? We’re sitting on two opposite sides of a dividing table, trying to love each other, and it just won’t work. Is that what soulmates look like to you?”
A fire blazes in Minho’s eyes. Seungmin’s anger recognizes its kin and burns in response. Minho’s next words do nothing to dampen the flames.
“You know what? I don’t know anymore. I used to think it looked like you, but now I look at you and all I see is your face having the audacity to spill tears over my carpets when you asked me for a divorce.”
A heavy thrum is simmering underneath his skin and he feels deadly, like his point has been proved a thousand times over, “We never would have survived like this and you know that.”
Minho stares at him for a moment and leans back, scrutinizes Seungmin’s stance and his eyes and everything he fell in love with. He stands and walks around the island until they’re standing toe-to-toe. His nose is still steep when he looks at Seungmin. Miles high. Mighty. Godly.
“You are terribly good at hurting the things you love when you’re scared.”
Seungmin swallows the bile crawling up his throat. He knows Minho has no intention of stepping away until he gets a response. He resents him for that. Resents him for his killing blow and his observance and his two-years-older wisdom. Resents him for always being a thousand steps ahead. Seungmin so desperately wants to knock him down to his level.
Seungmin grasps the nape of Minho’s neck and pulls him until their foreheads touch. The gasp Minho lets out is sickeningly satisfying. The way Minho’s body is still incredibly attuned to Seungmin’s is even more so. Their lips find each other frustratingly fast, like a moth to a flame. Suicidal and seductive.
Seungmin doesn’t realize he’s gripping too hard until Minho drags his nails down the plain of his back. Then he thinks that maybe they’ve always been good at this sort of push-and-pull hurt. An obsession with equilibrium and justice. It’s intoxicating.
“You kiss like you’re trying to start a fight, you know that?” Minho breathes as they separate.
“Maybe I am.”
“Good,” Minho says, leaning back in to bite at Seungmin’s lip, “I love fighting with you.”
The way they love is bruising, he knows. The kind of love that leaves marks. Seungmin revels in it as he pushes his hands against Minho’s waist and presses him into the counter. He hopes that he leaves his fingerprints along Minho’s hips, a temporary tattoo that won’t come off so easily with hot water and a rough towel. Remnants of Seungmin left on Minho’s body to remind him of regret and compulsion, things that come and go and come again. He wants Minho to hate him and want him at the same time, to despise what’s left and miss it when it’s gone.
The kiss is anything but romantic, all wet and messy and teeth-clashing. Seungmin presses into Minho so hard that his spine bends over the marble and he groans. Seungmin rolls his hips, using his grip on Minho to bring him forward in a dirty grind. Minho’s head rolls back in pleasure and Seungmin moves his lips to his neck, leaving a trail of open-mouthed kisses down to his collarbone. He takes his time to leave a bruise where no one can see, just beneath the collar of the older’s stretched shirt that Seungmin thinks used to be his.
“Fuck, Seungmin—”
“What, baby? What do you need from me?” The nickname slips off his tongue like honey, saccharine and slow. Jagi. Jagiya. Yeobo. Overly saturated. Mocking. Neither of them have ever been too fond of sweet things.
Seungmin licks a line up to Minho’s ear and bites at the lobe, “Tell me what you want or I’ll leave you here and you can walk right out again.”
“You’re being mean,” Minho gasps, raking his blunt fingernails through Seungmin’s hair. He grabs a fistful and yanks, guiding Seungmin’s lips back to his for another filthy kiss. They spend an eternity glued to the hot press of each other’s mouths.
But Seungmin is impatient and he wants to feel something close to sin for the first time in months, so he moves his grip down to Minho’s thighs and lifts, settling the older onto the cold counter, knocking their lukewarm glasses of water to the ground. Seungmin pays the shattered glass no attention as he pulls at Minho’s calves until he gets the hint to wrap his legs around Seungmin’s waist. Seungmin squeezes the muscle of Minho’s thighs until he moans.
“Min-ah, please,” Minho pants, clawing at the shirt on Seungmin’s back.
“So desperate. Didn’t get any dick with Jisung, huh? All your talk about soulmates, but you still couldn’t work out even without me in the picture,” Seungmin scoffs, feeling the heat rise to his cheeks in a rare display of shame. Jealousy was reserved for the young and insecure, he knew. When they were together, Seungmin only felt confident with his place in Minho’s life. But now they are floating in a limbo and Seungmin isn’t too sure where he belongs, so the green monster comes roaring alive.
Minho stiffens, but Seungmin keeps pressing kisses to his jaw in an attempt to move past it, hurries to unbutton the jeans on Minho’s hips. It’s too late, he thinks. He’s ruined it. Minho was right, he had been looking for a fight and this was it.
Minho’s hands are too gentle when they grasp Seungmin’s wrists, beginning to yank at his zipper.
“Do you really think I’d do that to you?” he whispers. “You think I’m such a whore that I’d fuck my best friend in the midst of a divorce with my husband?”
Seungmin pushes his hand up Minho’s shirt in response. Keeps mouthing at the junction of Minho’s neck and shoulders. Keeps his eyes shut, stitched together.
Minho scoffs. His hands are rough when he takes Seungmin’s hands from his stomach and places them on the counter, putting his weight on them to push himself to his tallest. Seungmin looks at him through his lashes, watches the cold contempt creep into his eyes.
“You’re disgusting, Kim Seungmin. Jisung kept me housed and fed and functioning when all you gave me was a box of belongings I left behind. He loved me more than you ever did in those months, you know that? It didn’t matter that it was nothing more than platonic. He still loved me.”
Seungmin feels the guilt rush through his bloodstream. All at once, the fire extinguishes and all that’s left of them are the ashes of something once worthy of worship. He slumps into the crook of Minho’s neck and breathes. Minho makes no move for comfort, but he doesn’t push him away and Seungmin can only count his blessings.
“I’m sorry,” Seungmin whispers, “I loved you.”
“You still love me,” Minho says, and it sounds like a question and an accusation and a guarantee all at once.
“Of course I do.”
Seungmin expects the tick of the clock to be the punctuation of a heavy scene. No resolution, just a resounding emptiness where he deserves no reply. He thinks of the wedding band sitting on top of an overturned photo in the middle of scattered papers and pens, the only pristine piece of them he has left. He thinks of how this moment is the only untainted memory he has left too. An overdue confession surrounded by self-administered disaster. Honesty bleeds him dry.
“Me too,” Minho sighs, moving his hands to cradle the back of Seungmin’s head.
The moment feels too much like a ceasefire, but the sheets are too stained for a white flag. Seungmin feels like his eyes are filtered with frosted glass, like what he sees may or may not be what he believes it is.
“Why can’t we be happy, Seungmin?”
Seungmin shudders a hollow laugh, “Because love isn’t enough.”
Silence blankets them in security, shrouds them in false normalcy. Right now, it feels like they are young and naive again, with problems that can be solved in their sleep. When they wake up, they will be burdened with the knowledge that they’re older, more jaded, shouldered with the responsibility of hard work and effort. It will never feel this easy again.
“Take me to bed, Kim Seungmin.”
Seungmin nods against his shoulder, keeping his head cradled in Minho’s arms as he carries them through the small apartment to a bedroom that used to be theirs with aching muscle-memory.
When they turn around, everything stays the same, broken glass and ashes in their wake, fractured parts of them to put together in the dusty rays of sunshine peeking through the blinds.