Work Text:
They’re broken up, completely out of each other’s lives.
It ended almost two full years ago. It was all Jeonghan’s fault.
Always looking for problems in places that do not exist. Always having a little too much poison in his mouth. Always having a little too much fire on his hands. Always being a little too cold to a warm heart that is burning his own.
Jeonghan doesn’t know how relationships work.
He doesn’t nag at Seungcheol, not really, just makes small things into those huge deals that give both of them a headache and good makeup sex.
Like that one time Seungcheol came home late and he was in a pissy mood for almost two days. Seungcheol had surprised him with his favorite dinner and had kissed him deeply and all Jeonghan tasted in this kiss was remorse. It was like mold, growing in his mouth, between his teeth and underneath his tongue. He wonders if Seungcheol ever got a taste of that. It has only grown. He thinks it will consume him one day.
Or that one time Seungcheol didn’t do the dishes, but was sitting on the couch drinking beer and watching soccer. Instead of sitting down next to him, Jeonghan had gone to bed and slept with his back to Seungcheol. He woke up with arms around his torso and a face pressed in between his shoulder blades. He had sighed into the mattress and suffocated on his own. He doesn’t know if Seungcheol ever saw him gasping for air and ignored it.
Or that one time Jeonghan flirted with a stranger in a bar and felt too guilty and was being distant on purpose for a week. He came home late and went out early, rarely replied and then with lame excuses. He noticed the bags under Seungcheol’s eyes, but he was too busy bearing the weight of his own. Eventually, Seungcheol had stopped him from getting up early once again and dragged him back into his arms. “Don’t leave again, the bed is too cold.” Jeonghan hadn’t replied and went back to sleep.
Or that one time Jeonghan dropped a plate and Seungcheol found him sobbing on the floor surrounded by glass shards. He had cleaned them up for him and Jeonghan never cried in front of him ever again. His eyes still sting. He doesn’t own tissues.
Or that one time he told Seungcheol that he doesn’t feel good enough and not loved by him because he doesn’t care about him and work always comes first when he knows exactly that Seungcheol is working that much to keep them afloat because he loves him. He remembers the look on Seungcheol’s face when he said those words, and how Seungcheol hasn’t bothered replying. He remembers the silence that rested on their shoulders like a curse.
Or that one time Seungcheol flinched away from him because when Jeonghan was drunk he was saying mean things and slapped him across the face. Jeonghan couldn’t look him in the eye for what felt like forever until Seungcheol had told him that it was okay and to please look at him again, he couldn’t take it anymore. He had begged. Jeonghan had struggled to breathe.
The guilt never left Jeonghan.
It lives in his chest. In his new, old and moldy apartment. It lives next to him and rots in his bedsheets that haven’t been changed in at least three months. It lives in his head like a tumor and eats him alive. It’s everywhere, in every corner. He can’t run from it, even if he tried. It would follow him wherever he would decide to go.
Jeonghan was the one who broke up. Of course.
He told him that it couldn’t work out and that he’s sorry for doing this, but he wasn’t crying and he looked at Seungcheol a total of three times in those five minutes and Seungcheol had barely begged him to stay. He had cried silently and he wouldn’t stop.
Jeonghan moved out with the few items that were his own and stood in front of the closed door for five minutes listening to Seungcheol sob. He left the building and sat in his car until he saw Minghao walking into it.
Three years were thrown into the wind within five minutes. Seungcheol hadn’t begged him to stay. So he didn’t. Jeonghan decided to move across the country to escape from everything that reminded him of Seungcheol.
Every single street of their neighbourhood holds memories, and Jeonghan couldn’t stand to look at the bars and cafés they used to go to together. He thinks that every corner of this godforsaken city has a stain from where they went to, and Jeonghan refuses to be met with those or clean them up. He will run from it like he always has.
Twenty-two months later, Seungcheol is suddenly in his town shopping for groceries and Jeonghan drops everything to escape the shop.
He can’t breathe.
Jeonghan sits in his bed with his guilt and stares at his wall. He’s miserable. The guilt clogs up his airways.
He wonders if Seungcheol has ever thought about him. If he still does.
Jeonghan has never stopped. He dreams of his regrets and wakes up in a cold sweat with his guilt hugging his torso and he can’t breathe. He hopes that Seungcheol is sleeping well. That he is well rested and dreams of better things. That the other side of Seungcheol’s bed isn’t cold, but filled with a person warmer than Jeonghan. Somebody who can give him the closure Jeonghan was too much of a coward to give.
He sees Seungcheol again.
At the park, on a cloudy Sunday afternoon at four in the evening with a white, small dog. Jeonghan sits and smokes his cigarettes and turns away. At his favorite coffee shop ordering a latte macchiato while his dog sits by his feet oh so very patiently. Jeonghan could never be a dog. He bites too much, he growls and he’d be put in a cage or on the streets. Jeonghan goes home without his coffee that day but with two more packs of cigarettes. He fled the café and didn’t look back.
In every corner of this godforsaken town, Seungcheol is there.
And Jeonghan hopes he’s well and prays Seungcheol hasn’t seen him.
His back has holes in it. Seungcheol can’t stop staring, can’t stop wandering around in hopes to see him again. He’s not that well but he still hopes that Jeonghan is taking care of himself.
He sees him buying a pack of cigarettes on a Thursday afternoon and watches him smoke.
In and out. In and out.
Jeonghan looks up from the floor, meets his eyes. Freezes.
Seungcheol doesn’t look away. Jeonghan throws his cigarette on the floor and stomps it out. He turns around and leaves.
Seungcheol smiles.
***
It’s three in the morning and Jeonghan cannot sleep.
He exits his apartment complex and walks to his town’s local park to sit on a bench and smoke. That’s kind of all he has been doing lately. Smoking away his brain. He thinks he’s fine with that. There is nobody who would stop him either, nobody who would ask him to stop smoking for the sake of his health. So he keeps going.
He sits there and closes his eyes, ignoring any kind of noise. He ignores the footsteps and the person sitting down next to him.
The person sighs.
Jeonghan’s eyes snap open.
He’s too afraid to look properly.
“You mind if I smoke?”
He pulls out a new cigarette and watches Seungcheol shake his head. He lights it up and takes a deep drag as Seungcheol asks, “since when do you smoke?” He blows the smoke out and watches it fade into the night.
Jeonghan shrugs. “Dunno. Like two years ago.”
Seungcheol nods slowly.
They’re quiet. They have nothing to say.
Jeonghan’s mind is full. He feels empty.
Jeonghan takes another drag and flicks the ash off his cigarette. He watches it fall to the ground, next to his feet. Seungcheol is sitting far from him. He shivers.
“What are you doing here?”
“Can’t sleep.”
Jeonghan looks at him quickly and scoffs. “In this fucking town. What are you doing here?”
He shrugs. “I moved.”
Jeonghan drops his cigarette, “alright”, and stomps it out. “I’m going home.”
He stands up from the rusty bench and Seungcheol stays seated. The look on his face is a little too familiar. Jeonghan feels his lungs contract, they’re being crushed because he can smoke and flick the ash off all he wants— his guilt will always stay, nestled into his lungs and in every cigarette.
Jeonghan leaves like he always does.
He doesn’t look back.
Seungcheol hears the tires screeching.
***
Jeonghan does not sleep that night and is reminded of the first few nights he has spent here. Cars honking in the distance, his bed uncomfortably firm and his back stiff. He had spent his nights staring at the ceiling or smoking on his windowsill. He remembers the cold of the November night air as he sits in the early hours of a September day and takes the last drag of his cigarette before he stubs it out in the ashtray.
He breathes out heavily and buries his face in his arms.
Time seems to pass slower than usual and it takes the sun forever to rise again.
He feels like he can’t even appreciate the beauty of nature, something as simple as a sunrise. He looks down onto the street, watches the few cars pass by and watches Seungcheol walk his goddamn dog at six in the morning. Jeonghan fumbles for another cigarette and lights it with shaking hands. He inhales deeply and lets the nicotine do its thing.
Jeonghan closes his eyes and when he opens them again Seungcheol is gone.
He’s back in time and he inhales deeper, hopes that his heart eats the nicotine like air and he coughs violently. He remembers the walls of their apartment and he remembers Seungcheol’s tears, but he doesn’t remember his own.
His hand is shaking when he brings the cigarette up to his mouth for another drag, another hit. He can feel his eyes burning the way his lungs burn when he has smoked too much at once(and he thinks that it’s the same with Seungcheol. Time spent with Seungcheol made his heart burn, Seungcheol’s love for him made him want to cry on a daily basis because a person like him does not deserve gentle love. He tore himself apart.
He thinks back to their shared bed and the comfy beddings Seungcheol had bought, remembers all those plants that have died because neither of them could keep them alive. Too much water or not enough. Water is supposed to mean life, he thinks both of them knew that, but with them it only ever meant drowning. Suffocation.
Jeonghan reaches for his pack of cigarettes and finds it empty.
Before he knows it, he is out the door and on his way to the closest store. When he walks in, Seungcheol is at the register with his dog sitting by his feet again. Jeonghan tries his best not to scoff.
He walks up to the register and stands behind Seungcheol, watches him pay and listens to him effortlessly conversing with the ajumma while his dog waits and waits and waits. All dogs do is wait and behave and those who don’t are bad. Don’t bite and don’t growl and just wait.
Jeonghan taps his foot impatiently.
***
When Jeonghan walks outside with three new packs, Seungcheol is standing there with his dog. Jeonghan eyes it up and down, its perfectly white fur and pink collar.
Jeonghan pulls out a cigarette and lights it. He turns around and begins walking away when Seungcheol calls out for him.
“Wait!”
I’m not a damn dog. I’m not your fucking dog!
He keeps walking.
***
Jeonghan smiles at the stranger and he knows exactly what kind of smile he has put on. The one where only the left side of his mouth is tugged up with his eyes lidded. It is one of his lazy smiles that does the seduction on its own.
The stranger (he could not remember his name for the life of him) took his hand and brought it up to his lips to press a chaste kiss on it.
“Order me a drink?” he asks sweetly.
Three tequila shots later and Jeonghan’s sight is blurry. He cannot make out the stranger’s face and he does not remember it either.
“You want me to take you home, pretty?” he asks and Jeonghan follows him blindly, has half a mind to take his coat when they leave and the man’s hand on his thigh is the only thing keeping him grounded.
He’s rough, way too rough, and he doesn’t care about what Jeonghan says. When Jeonghan slaps his hands away from his hips because it hurts too much, he grips them tighter. When he lets out a gasp because he’s in pain, the man laughs into his ear and wraps his fingers around his throat, squeezing.
Jeonghan is dizzy and he doesn’t know where he is or what’s happening to him. He stares at the ceiling and grips the bedsheets, bites his lip to muffle any noises coming from him and blinks away the tears.
He wakes up when the sun has barely begun to rise again.
A man next to him is snoring loudly and Jeonghan realizes that this is not his room. His head is pounding and he tries his best to get dressed on his shaky legs. He slips out of the room and searches for his coat. He finds it draped over the couch and all of his belongings in there.
He steps outside and stands on the sidewalk helplessly.
After a few minutes, he calls himself a cab and waits until the sun is high up in the sky.
***
The water is steaming hot and he scrubs at his skin but nothing helps. Nothing ever helps against this feeling.
***
It wasn’t the first time and Jeonghan doubts that this was the last time either.
He blows out the smoke and wonders if smoking is worth it. It only numbs his senses for a brief moment and he feels anxious without cigarettes. It’s all temporary. Everything seems to be temporary in his life.
He stubs his cigarette out and reaches for a new one anyway.
***
The next day he meets Seungcheol without his dog.
He almost wants to ask where his perfect dog is and why he would be out without it. Jeonghan keeps it to himself and passes by the bench Seunghceol is sitting on, already reaching for his pocket. His fingers reach for mold and they stain his nails.
“Jeonghan,” Seungcheol calls out, voice soft but laced with something close to desperation.
Involuntarily, he stops in his tracks. “Please,” he says and Jeonghan’s knees almost give out.
Seungcheol wraps his fingers around his wrist tenderly and they still hurt, but his skin smells like his guilt and he feels too ashamed to look Seungcheol in the eye. The fear of Seungcheol looking right through him eats him alive. He hopes that the walls he’s been putting up are tall enough. He hopes that Seungcheol is too tired to climb them now.
“Don’t,” Jeonghan whispers and his grip loosens.
“Sit?”
Seungcheol tugs him backwards lightly and Jeonghan stumbles onto the bench. He pulls his pack out of his pocket, but he can’t light his damn cigarette. His hands are trembling too much and Jeonghan tries to blame it on the cold.
Gently, Seungcheol pries the lighter from his hands and cups his hand around the cigarette while he lights it with the other. Jeonghan eagerly inhales as deeply as he can and closes his eyes. He leans his head back and blows out the smoke.
He turns his head and finds Seungcheol already staring at him.
“No matter when I see you, you’re smoking,” he says, “don’t you think you’re smoking too much?”
Jeonghan tugs the left side of his mouth up and watches Seungcheol swallow. Neither of them have really changed. He chuckles as he breathes out again and waves the smoke away from Seungcheol’s face. “Is there a thing such as smoking too much?”
Seungcheol shrugs, his eyes never leaving his mouth.
He brings the cigarette back up to his lips, stops and offers it to Seungcheol. Jeonghan can see the wheels in his head turning before he leans in and wraps his lips around the thin stick, inhaling and coughing it all out.
Jeonghan chuckles and reaches out with his hand and then retreats. Do they have boundaries?
“You never smoked?”
Seungcheol shakes his head and coughs some more.
“You want me to teach you?”
“Will I get addicted as well?”
Jeonghan pauses. “Perhaps.”
Seungcheol leans back against the bench and turns his head to Jeonghan. He sees his hand twitch in his lap and can’t help the quick smile that flashes across his face. It’s wiped right off when Seungcheol says “I saw you with that guy”.
His smile falters and he almost drops his cigarette.
“Okay,” he says. “You stalking me now or what are you trying to tell me?”
Seungcheol sighs, “you didn’t look sober.”
Jeonghan squirms uncomfortably and looks away. His lungs are contracting again so he inhales deeply to blame it on the cigarettes he smokes. Tries to ignore the ache in his lungs even though he knows that his heart is the one thing hurting the most. Tries to blame it on anything other than his own actions. He inhales again.
Jeonghan refuses to meet Seungcheol’s eyes. “I’m fine.”
“Are you?” he presses.
Seungcheol has always been big on communication.
They used to be healthy. All “are you just venting or seeking advice?”, “I need space right now, but I’ll be back soon”, “I don’t understand. Help me understand you”, “what you just said hurt me. Can we talk tomorrow?” and “talk to me. Let’s figure this out”.
Until there was no more talking, just off-handed comments and waving the other off when they made an attempt to talk about issues. About the big elephant in the room that couldn’t be overlooked. Seungcheol had brought the communication into the relationship and Jeonghan tore down everything they had built up together.
There was this one time he was sitting on the couch, staring at a spot behind the TV when Seungcheol had sat down beside him, gently touching his arm. Jeonghan had shaken his hand off and crossed his arms in front of his chest.
“Are you giving me silent treatment?”
Jeonghan hadn’t answered.
“Did I do something and didn’t notice that you didn’t like it? I’m sorry. Talk to me.”
“Just go.”
“What?”
Jeonghan wouldn’t look at him.
“Leave.”
“You need space, got it.”
Seungcheol had gotten up and left their apartment and Jeonghan had stubbornly wiped away all tears rolling down his cheeks. He had woken up that morning with a nasty feeling in his heart and it ached.
Every time he looked at Seungcheol there were tears threatening to spill. He had swallowed them down. When Seungcheol kissed his cheek goodbye like he always did, he scrubbed the spot for five minutes. His wrist itched, right where the expensive bracelet Seungcheol had gifted to him was at home.
Jeonghan didn’t know where any of that had come from. But suddenly all love meant to him was suffocation.
As he was showering that morning, he had scrubbed at his skin until it had turned red and all he was thinking about were silent nights. Suddenly he was nineteen years old again, in an apartment that wasn’t his, a man that reminded him of his father and neither of them really loved him.
“You love too loudly,” the man had said to him and Jeonghan shrunk into himself and didn’t say a word for three days.
When Seungcheol had come back later that day, Jeonghan was in bed. He had laid down beside him and kissed his temple, the most vulnerable spot, and whispered “take your time, baby” and hugged him from behind.
Jeonghan refuses to think about their past and looks at him again. Seungcheol’s eyes haven’t changed one bit. Eye contact to Seungcheol is like breathing, his brown eyes always speak the words he has trouble saying. Seungcheol’s eyes are the portal to his heart and Jeonghan used to be fluent in reading his eyes. He knows that his own eyes are stubborn and used to betray the rest of his face. He hates eye contact and he hates that Seungcheol’s eyes are beautiful. He wonders what Seungcheol sees on his face.
Jeonghan swallows and nods slowly. “Okay,” he says quietly. “I’ll leave.”
Seungcheol looks at him helplessly, but Jeonghan’s gaze has returned to the ground. “Jeonghan,” he says, his voice cracking mid-way. “You never told me why.”
He shrugs and stands up. “We’re over, Seungcheol,” he says, “why are you here?”
“You don’t mean that, you don’t mean any of that,” Seungcheol murmurs, voice desperate. His tears drop down his face and onto his hands resting on his lap.
Jeonghan’s eyes finally rake over his face and Seungcheol wishes he could kiss the bags under his eyes away. He wishes he could go back to asking Jeonghan how he was feeling, back to taking one look at his face and knowing exactly what Jeonghan needed at the moment but was too scared to say it. “How would you know?” Jeonghan asks, voice quiet.
“I know you,” he replies, “I know you.”
“No, you don’t,” Jeonghan says in a hushed whisper.
Seungcheol feels his heart drop multiple feet. He feels dizzy. Nauseous.
He’s set back two years, Jeonghan on the couch next to him. “We won’t work out,” he had said and he was too dazed to say anything. When Minghao had showed up fifteen minutes later, only then had he started begging for him to come back. He was sobbing into Minghao’s shoulder and couldn't get rid of the headache for two weeks.
He had moved here in hopes of a new start. Meeting Jeonghan again was never his intention. He wanted to finally move on. Two years had felt like more than enough time to grieve the loss of a person still alive.
And then he saw him.
Long, dark hair blowing in the wind, a cigarette between his lips, pale face and red lips.
He remembers not breathing. He remembers sleepless nights and strange dreams, he remembers sleeping next to his regrets and tissues because he could have fought harder and he should have. He remembers lying awake in his new bed and wondering if Jeonghan was awake as well, if he was thinking about Seungcheol as often he was thinking of him.
It becomes a necessity to see Jeonghan in this town.
In-between the bright colors, Jeonghan stands out. He’s always gray or black with the golden Marlboros and red lighter. It always goes a little bit quiet when he sees him and now Jeonghan wants to walk away.
When Seungcheol looks at Jeonghan, he can feel the regret pooling in his stomach. It settles heavily and chains him down. It paralyzes him.
“Don’t leave,” he whispers. He thinks it sounds close to begging.
Jeonghan closes his eyes.
“Why are you stopping me now?”
He stands up and Seungcheol scrambles to his feet, but trips over them and falls onto his knees. He looks up at Jeonghan. Seungcheol can’t see a thing through his teary eyes. “Please,” he says again.
“Please don’t,” Jeonghan replies.
***
Winter rolls around.
The town is coated in white and Jeonghan is loading the last box into his car. He closes the trunk and sighs. This town makes him sick to his stomach.
Across the street, Seungcheol is standing with his dog.
Jeonghan lingers by his car, smokes a cigarette before he finally gets inside. He starts his car and looks back to Seungcheol one last time.
He’s holding a cigarette.