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It's hard to know how long he sits on the rooftop after Jaewon leaves and takes a chunk of his bleeding heart with him. It's long enough he starts to get cold, drawing his legs up to hug them, shivering in the thin protection of his jacket against the breeze.
He feels his phone vibrate and entertains, just for a tiny devastating moment, that it might be Jaewon. But it isn't, it's Joonpyo, and he feels horrible as he lets it ring and ring until it stops but it doesn't stop him doing it.
He thinks Jaewon is lying. About feeling nothing for him, about everything they did being meaningless to him. But he might not be. He's obviously messed up over what happened, he's obviously messed up full stop, over his brother or his parents or any number of things from the overwhelming pile of other burdens he seems to carry with him.
Courage is good, he knows distantly, an admirable trait. It's good that he stood up for himself, that he's trying to fight for what they could have. But as he shivers in a ball on the roof of his dorm building it's hard to feel anything but embarrassed for thinking that he had a chance, that he was worth fighting for at all.
Maybe Jaewon isn't lying. Maybe its not the denial that's because of his fucked up state, but the fact that anything happened to deny in the first place. Maybe he never liked Jihyun at all, maybe he really was out of his mind. He'd said he'd called Jihyun because he didn't know him well, because he didn't come with baggage. Maybe… maybe Jaewon needed comfort, and Jihyun was just there, easy, the desperate little country mouse, new to the city and just starting to peek out of the closet. Disposable when Jaewon had to go back to his real life.
It hadn't felt like it though. Jaewon had seemed more nervous than he was, had got him out of his clothes and stared at him in something like awe. He had dropped his head to press a kiss to the bony jut of Jihyun's ankle like it was the most precious thing on earth, and continued upwards, trembling, worshiping his way up Jihyun's body until he reached his mouth again. It hadn't seemed meaningless, the way he had looked at him, the way he had touched him, the way he had kissed him and held him and stared like he couldn't believe what he saw.
But maybe he's like that with all the boys he fucks by the moonlit ocean only to pretend they don't exist in daylight, and Jihyun is just the one who ruined the script by nearly dying the next day.
– – –
They find him eventually, Aeri and Joonpyo together. Joonpyo whines and Aeri scolds until they suddenly aren’t any more, and it’s not until Aeri is crouched in front of him with a hand on his knee and Joonpyo is draping a hoodie over his shoulders that he realises its because he hasn’t reacted to their presence at all. He’s not even looking at them.
He forces himself to meet Aeri’s eye.
“You’re freezing,” she says softly, and that’s new. She’s not really a soft person, it’s a little alarming that she’s trying now. “Come on, let’s get you inside.”
She holds his elbow and Joonpyo wraps an arm round his shoulders and together they guide him inside, down the stairs and into their dorm room. He’s not sure how long he sits on his bed while they bustle around him, handing him steaming a cup of the tea that Joonpyo’s grandmother had forced them to bring and neither of them like. Long enough for the warmth to seep from the cup into his fingers, so that when he finally takes a sip it’s lukewarm and all the more disgusting for it.
“This is gross,” he says, holding the cup out again. His voice sounds rough. Joonpyo literally jumps when he speaks, and he thinks it must have been quite a while since they found him and brought him down.
Aeri takes the cup off him and sets it on the bedside table which was probably within his reach if he’d bothered to stretch a little. He pulls Joonpyo’s hoodie further around himself.
“I couldn’t reach you,” Joonpyo says. “You weren’t answering your phone, we said we’d all go to noraebang tonight, remember?”
“Sorry.”
“It’s okay, Jihyun-ah, that isn’t what I meant. We were worried about you, idiot. How long were you sitting on the roof for?”
Jihyun frowns. It was nearly dark when they came inside, the streetlights had already turned on– he hadn’t really noticed the sun going down, but it must have.
“I don’t know. What time is it?”
“Like eight o’clock.”
Jaewon’s class had let out at twenty past three. He knew because he’d had to check the schedule to track him down, to be brave and make him talk to him. He recalls the way he’d told Joonpyo ”I’ll have him back.” and wants to slap himself for the embarrassingly misplaced arrogance.
“About four hours, I think,” he tells them, and then because he can’t bear to be asked. “I talked to Jaewon. And then he left.”
He can see them looking at each other out of the corner of his eye. He’s half expecting a barrage of questions, but instead something sets in Aeri’s face and she tilts her head, like she’s cracking her neck ready for a fight. It’s obvious she’s come to her own conclusion without needing to hear any more.
“Do you want me to kill him?” She asks, as though she’s offering him dinner or notes from a missed class . Casual in attitude but serious in intent, so much more like her normal self than she had been before.
It makes him laugh, although it’s a pitiful half strangled thing, the sound of it in the quiet dorm room.
“Please don’t,” he chokes out, and then it’s not laughter anymore, and they press in from either side and hold his pieces together as he cries.
– – –
Jihyun is clearing the grill from a freshly vacated table when he walks into the restaurant. There's a brief flash of excitement, one he's not sure will ever cease when he sees Jaewon's face, that's only partially tempered by the fresh hurt that piles on straight away. And then…
He's not sure how he even notices. Jaewon's steps are steady, he's upright, but there's– something. Something about the looseness of his shoulders that are always perpetually tight, something about the lack of control in his face that is always so controlled, something in the flat brightness of his eyes, and Jihyun doesn't even need to hear him speak or smell his breath to know.
Is that what it is? Is Jihyun only ever wantable through the haze of alcohol?
He wasn't drunk at the beach, some traitorous part of his brain whispers.
The sudden, burning anger surprises him. How dare he break Jihyun’s heart and then show up here like he has any right to the place? How dare he take liquid courage when all Jiyhun had were his own guts? He's hit with an irrational, horrible desire to flip the tray from the grill up, to let the cinders and the tiny burnt pieces of grease and pork rind litter Jaewon's infuriating, unshakeable expression of alcohol-fuelled contrition, and he nearly drops the tongs with the force of it. He doesn't do it. He clears the table, ignores Jaewon as he follows him to the hatch, ignores the concerned look on his boss' face as he aggressively dumps the dishes in the kitchen. He's unprepared for the proximity when he turns around, but he keeps his face steady.
"Can I help you?" He asks, customer service voice cutting the air between them like a knife.
And then, because he can't help twisting it, he adds- "Sunbaenim?" – and watches the hope die in Jaewon's eyes.