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It’s just another Sunday when Jeonghan sees Seungcheol at the grocery store.
Jeonghan swallows down the lump in his throat and forces himself to look away, eyes darting between the two different vitamin shakes in his hand. But his eyes are blurring, and he can’t tell which of these has banana; he hates the banana flavor. He hates how it tastes, the way it overpowers the flavor of every fruit present. Even the slightest bit is enough to linger long after he’s done. He hates that he can still see Seungcheol down the aisle in his peripheral view.
It’s been a few months since they last talked. They would talk more, but Jeonghan hates the way it makes him feel. The bitter taste of everything he did wrong lingers long after they finish talking.
It’s been six years since they broke up, seven since they started dating, and who knows how long since they’ve been stunlocked in each other’s orbit. It’s hard to pinpoint where their downfall came from, even harder to find one of them to blame, but Jeonghan bears the weight anyway. He has been for the past few years.
But Seungcheol has been nothing but kind to him; they didn’t end on bad terms, there was no point in being cruel to each other after the fact. It was cruel enough that they parted ways. It was cruel enough that they watched each other dance with other people, holding new bodies the way they used to hold one another.
Jeonghan remembers five and a half years ago, when they still tried being good friends, Seungcheol telling him about a date he was going on. He remembers the way his head was reeling. He can’t forget seeing them together at Seokmin’s birthday party months later, Seungcheol rubbing comforting circles into the junction between her thumb and forefinger. Jeonghan went home sober, retching into his toilet.
He started dating Joon only a few weeks later.
What the hell am I doing?
He snaps out of his daze, taking a deep, shaky breath in. When he turns back to where Seungcheol was, he’s gone. The afterimage of his silhouette starts to burn his eyes, so he looks back at the bottles in his hand. He leaves them both after realizing they both have banana; he’d already loitered too long in front of that area, someone would think he’s strange if he stayed a second longer.
Jeonghan adjusts his blouse in the mirror, tugging incessantly at the collar when it just won’t fall correctly. It’s a royal blue silk, one that Joon got for their anniversary two years ago. Jeonghan wonders if he’ll remember; he shuts down the thought, considering it was enough of an ordeal getting him to remember their anniversary tonight at all.
He’s not sure why, but it seems as though he can’t stop reminiscing today. He sees the necklace Joon bought him for his 26th birthday and recalls the fight they had gotten into. He sees their keys hanging together by the front door and remembers how many times he’s asked Joon to stay after they argued, to not run from whatever they were going through, his pleas falling on deaf ears. He notices their shoes lined up neatly outside and thinks about all the time he’s had to spend chasing Joon, living in his shadow.
With a forced gulp, Jeonghan meets Joon out front, opening the door to the passenger’s side himself. He thinks he might remember a time when Joon refused to let him open his own doors, but the memory is so distant and foggy he passes it off as something he falsified from a dream.
The ride to the restaurant is quiet, the ever-present gloom hanging over Joon’s head, clouds always close enough to cover Jeonghan’s eyes as well. Surely the drive to your anniversary dinner isn’t the ideal situation to contemplate the future of your relationship, but Jeonghan wonders when it got so hard to see in front of him. He wonders when his vision tunneled on trying to delicately handle Joon’s finicky happiness, even if it was at the cost of his own.
When they arrive at the restaurant, Jeonghan opens his door and pulls out his chair to sit across from Joon on their fifth anniversary and wonder what the hell he was doing with his life.
Unable to bring himself to do his usual labor of trying to bring up Joon’s mood, they just talk about things most couples would’ve discussed on drive over, or during breakfast, or when they come home from work and fall into each other’s arms.
They talk about work, how their day went, how their week was, the weather. Jeonghan tries to remember the last time he felt a sunny day. He declines a glass of wine.
A couple at a table nearby gets engaged. Jeonghan’s stomach drops; it’s in his nature to watch Joon’s reactions, analyzing every twitch of a muscle. He notices the way his bottom lip juts out the slightest bit, brows lowering. They don’t say anything about it. Jeonghan forces down some gnocchi and checks his watch, wondering if it could tell him how much time he’s wasted.
If the ride there was quiet, the ride home is dead silent. Jeonghan wonders if Joon knows. He wonders if Joon knows him just as well, if he knows all of his tells and could call his bluffs, read his feelings on his face.
He must’ve had at least an idea, judging by his silence when Jeonghan says he’s over it as soon as they step into their kitchen. He must’ve known even longer than Jeonghan, if the way he doesn’t fight for them at all is anything to go by.
Jeonghan wishes he had been clued in on it too, maybe he wouldn’t be choking on his sobs before someone he once thought he could’ve married. He doesn’t know if he would have. But at some point, maybe he could’ve wanted to. There was no way to tell, really.
He can’t stay in their shared apartment any longer, so he runs out in his semi-formal attire and sits on the curb in neatly pressed slacks, bawling in a way that makes him feel so, so small. Unimpressive, unworthy of a better love, faced with an untimely demise to a long rotted relationship.
He does the only thing he can at this moment, and calls the only person he can think of running to.
“Jeonghan?”
Jeonghan sniffles loudly, a wail spilling out in its wake, “Seungcheol.”
“Is everything okay? What’s going on?” Panic is clear in his voice. Jeonghan feels terrible for worrying him, over something like this even worse.
“Yeah, can I just- just for tonight-”
“Yeah, yeah, of course.”
When Jeonghan gets to Seungcheol’s place, the door swings open seconds after he knocks. His heart shatters when he sees the way Seungcheol’s eyebrows are furrowed, his face painted with concern.
“Jeonghan..” Seungcheol looks at him with such pity, and he only feels weaker every second that passes. He’s afraid that if he stands for a minute longer, his knees might buckle under the weight of lost time catching up to him. But Seungcheol opens his arms, and Jeonghan collapses in them with a pathetic sob, hands gripping meekly at the back of his t-shirt.
There are no words exchanged between them for the time being, just Seungcheol leading him to the couch and letting him drain his body of all the rain he’s collected from Joon’s storms. It’s all crashing into him, the way he expected, yearned for something better from someone who was never willing to give it, at least not to Jeonghan.
Jeonghan wants to find where he went wrong, wants to care about what wrong choice he made to end up here.
But no matter which way he tries to look at it, he can only find his error in the beginning, before it even started.
He only realizes now, being held in Seungcheol’s arms, what it would have been like if he made the right choice. His tears are no longer coming from mourning what he lost tonight, but what he could have had.
He thinks back to every time he saw his memories with Seungcheol in the cracks of his own relationship, when he imagined someone holding him on the nights that felt cold with another person in his bed. When the distance between him and Joon felt a mile long, he reminisced on how close was never enough for him and Seungcheol.
When he was left, deserted and depleted of his love, he longed to be taken back to a time when it poured out of him in rivets, pooling in Seungcheol’s dimples.
Jeonghan wondered why he let himself be locked away for so long, why he punished him and the one he loved the most for a mistake that neither and both of them made. But he doesn’t want to dwell on it, not when he knows better now.
When the sobs finally stop wracking his body, his shoulders only quivering lightly, Seungcheol pulls back to look at him in his swollen, red eyes. “Can I ask?” He says, quietly. Jeonghan only nods weakly.
“Did he leave you?”
Jeonghan feels his throat close up a bit; he knows his friends didn’t like Joon, didn’t like the person he made Jeonghan into even more so. But it’s only when Seungcheol asks that he realizes how lost he was, to the point where they couldn’t ever picture Jeonghan finally coming to his senses.
He shakes his head, mumbling in response, “No, I left him. After our anniversary dinner.”
Seungcheol looks surprised, quickly trying to neutralize his expression. “You finally left? Sorry–finally isn’t the right-”
“Seungcheol,” Jeonghan huffs out a feeble attempt at a laugh, “I know.”
He gets an awkward chuckle and a cough in response, Seungcheol’s cheeks tinted rose. “He would hate it if he knew you came to me right after.”
Joon hated Seungcheol. Jeonghan doesn’t really blame him, considering what he’s realized in himself, but he wonders if Joon saw a collection of all the ways he didn’t love Jeonghan and felt guilty. Maybe Jeonghan is giving him too much credit.
“Is that the reason you stopped talking to me?” Jeonghan regrets the question as soon as it leaves his mouth, chewing his lip when he sees Seungcheol recoil the slightest bit.
His voice is quiet when he answers, “It wasn’t him. I hated seeing you like that when I couldn’t do anything.”
If it wasn’t already broken beyond repair, Jeonghan’s heart fractures completely. He doesn’t really know what to say, what could possibly make this okay. In locking himself away, he locked Seungcheol out, someone who had been his other half since before they could even picture themselves as something more than friends. All he manages is, “Why did you wait?”
There's a pause of silence, but it isn’t heavy. Jeonghan sees Seungcheol’s shoulders untense the slightest bit, but still noticeable.
“You came, didn’t you?”
And he doesn’t need to explain himself for Jeonghan to understand.
Jeonghan made enough mistakes up until this point, but he wasn’t going to anymore. Not when he was finally where he was supposed to be. They both knew that.
“What if it took longer? Ten years? What if I never came?” Jeonghan asks, his voice choked up.
Seungcheol grins, “What if?”