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What are you supposed to do when you're about to part with the love of your life? What are you supposed to say when you're about to walk out of a relationship that never had been a relationship in the first place?
Jeonghan doesn't know.
All he wants right now is to fall on the ground and die. All he wants to do is to stop looking at the man in front of him—stop watching as the blood and life drains from his face. He wants to stop.
But he can't.
Because even in the face of heartbreak, Seungcheol is beautiful.
A wary sigh comes out of his mouth. “I don't want this to end.” Jeonghan says, almost like a whisper, almost slurring the words. This. Them. Us. Whatever the hell they even are. Were.
Jeonghan looks directly at Seungcheol's eyes, at his face, sucking in the features that had already been etched into his brain. He lets himself stare at the man a little longer, dragging it as if this is the last time he'll ever get to do so.
Maybe it is, if Fate isn't kinder.
And is Fate ever really kind to her little marionettes?
“So don't, Han.” Seungcheol suggests, scurrying to take Jeonghan's hand into his, molding them together like pieces of clay. “Don't end this.” He says, almost pleading. “Don't end us.” His eyes search for answers in Jeonghan's. Answers for questions he doesn't even have the courage to ask himself. “We could stay, you know? As we are. Now. This could stay.”
“I don't—know what this is, Cheol.” Jeonghan whines, fighting the urgency of water in his tear ducts. “What is this? What are we?” He heaves another sigh that almost came out as a scoff. He doesn't pull his hand away from the other. He couldn't. “What are we staying as, what are we staying for? We're…” Jeonghan trails off, simply because he doesn't know what comes after that.
He doesn't know what it is they are because they’re certainly not friends, but most definitely not lovers. They weren't even standing in the middle of it. They were… something worse. Something entirely more tragic that no one knows what.
What even is it that they were supposed to be? Everything had gotten lost in the haze of wanting, yearning, loving, that they had almost lost their way out. Almost. Jeonghan didn't. He knew what it is that he wants—or wanted—or still want, but can't have. Not fully, at least.
And maybe that was reason enough to have it drilled in his head that he needed a whole loaf instead of just getting half—or mere scraps, even.
“We're…” Seungcheol attempts to answer, but miserably fails. “I don't know.” For a few seconds, he quietens. Then the next, he says, “Something.”
“Something.” Jeonghan almost laughs. He repeats it like an echo of a ghost that had haunted him for a year.
Shaking his head, Jeonghan unconsciously clicks his tongue, less of annoyance, more of sadness. Of anger. He doesn't even know what it is that made him angry—or where his anger even is directed at.
He ponders a bit, and thinks that maybe he was angry at Seungcheol—but of course not. He could never be angry at Seungcheol. Never too much.
Instead, maybe he was angry at himself—but was it really his fault that he had fallen in love?
They were something. Something was what they were settling for. Not nothing, but something—something but not actually anything at all.
“Being something with you is better than nothing at all,” He once said at Seungcheol. That was foolish of him. That was a lie—he's realized that now.
Grasping a rope so tight even with the risk of it snapping in half. Holding tightly on a spiked net even when the water is low. Not bringing an umbrella in a storm. Knowing a disease but not knowing its cure. A flower blooming in a deserted desert.
That is what they are.
“But we're happy, Jeonghan.” Seungcheol pushed.
I heard myself sob more than I heard myself laugh, is what Jeonghan chooses not to say.
“Why can't we continue being—”
“A secret?” Jeonghan cuts in. “Cheol, I can't…” Jeonghan shakes his head, shakes the tears away. Not now. “I can't do it any more than I want to.” He blurts out, truthful with his words. “You're not ready to come out yet, Cheol, and I understand that. I do, and I'm not forcing you to, it's just that…”
Seungcheol finishes for him. “You need someone to be ready for you…”
Wrong. Jeonghan needs Seungcheol. Not anyone or anything else.
But he settles for what he hears. “This is too complicated, Cheol.” Jeonghan claims. And he was right. They were settling for something that is a complication. Jeonghan's life is already so complex that he needs a love that's as simple as one breath.
Loving Choi Seungcheol steals every air in his body.
A moment of silence. It hangs in the air. Until, “Is there someone else? Someone waiting for you?” Seungcheol asks, heartbroken.
Jeonghan shuts him down with a simple “No.” There isn't anyone else and there wouldn't be anyone else any time soon. His heart will beat for Seungcheol, clinging to him and the remnants of his scent and his memories like oxygen.
Jeonghan hopes for the day his heart would beat for himself.
“So it's over.” Seungcheol concludes. “I guess it's really… over.” Seungcheol repeats, as if to make himself believe. The look on his face, so heartbroken—Jeonghan was struck to his core. “It would hurt me if you go.” Seungcheol's eyes prickled with gloss. Tears that were all on the verge of falling.
Gently, Jeonghan's hand glides to cup Seungcheol's cheek. He cradles it. Caresses. “I'm sorry, Cheol.” He gives the other a kiss on his temple. “But it's hurting me now that I stay.” He claims.
It was the truth. Their love was killing him. He feels it. He feels something in him die a little every single time they would have to force themselves to push each other away, untangle their hands, just because someone walks in.
And so that was it. Those were all the words it took for Seungcheol to finally accept it. He doesn't have to say anything because Jeonghan could already see it. He could feel it in the way Seungcheol's grip on his hand loosen until he lets go.
They were over.
Because Jeonghan was hurting.
And Seungcheol puts Jeonghan above all else like a god that he worships.
“Okay.” Seungcheol blinks. A tear runs down, creating a path on his cheeks. “Will you let me hug you?”
A beat. Jeonghan looks at him, contemplating as he bites his lip. He nods.
Slowly, as if dragging the time, Seungcheol snakes his arms around him, pulling Jeonghan as close he can get, breathing him in as if it was the last time.
Because it possibly, probably is.
Jeonghan doesn’t hug him back. He stands there, frozen as his nails dig the insides of his palms, focusing on the pain in it instead of the one in his heart. He knew that once he welcomes the embrace, it would become a hug that feels so right it could only be so wrong.
Jeonghan knew that if he hugged back, he would cling on to Seungcheol with no intentions of letting go.
Jeonghan knew that if he hugged back, he would squeeze Seungcheol, he would squeeze himself, forcing them to mold together into a piece that would eventually break. Jeonghan will not let Seungcheol break.
As Seungcheol parted their bodies, all Jeonghan wanted to do was pull him again. Pull him close. Pull him enough that he will stick.
But he didn’t. He kept his eyes down, not wanting to see the pain that he caused,
“I’m always going to love you, Jeonghan.”
Me too.
When Jeonghan looked up, it was Seungcheol’s sad smile that greeted him.
When Jeonghan walked away, it was Seungcheol's sad smile that bid him goodbye.
He doesn’t look back anymore, afraid of what he’ll see—more so of the instinct that will take over him once he sees Seungcheol again.
Jeonghan doesn’t cry. Not yet. Not until he reaches home, and turns on the television. Not until he plays the first tragic, gut-wrenching movie he finds on netflix. Not until he could pretend that his tear stained cheeks were not entirely because of the boy whose lips are tainted cherry-red, and whose heart is tainted with the pain he caused.
Jeonghan is out of his labyrinth. After one year and three months of navigating its maze, he was finally free from it.
And now all he wanted to do was go back in there and get lost. Get lost and never find his way out. Because that labyrinth was his home.
Seungcheol was his home.