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Seokmin can have a presence, Seokmin can shapeshift, Seokmin can glow. Seokmin stares at Jihoon like he is the Sun, and Seokmin is the Moon. Seokmin knows he is the Sun, and Jihoon doesn’t really bother denying it anymore. Although he tries to tell Seokmin he isn’t just the Moon, but he’s Saturn too. Saturn with it’s rings, it’s greyness and it’s distance.
Seokmin is also a fox, a clown, a carnival ride, he has two sides like coin but a coin with a hundred sides. Seokmin is both sides of the moon, his shadows hide but Jihoon can hear their screams. Seokmin likes the Sun, he wishes he were the Sun but Seokmin is the Moon, and just the Moon, as much as Jihoon tells him he’s more.
Jihoon, who burns. Only Seokmin can see the flames that protrude from him, only Seokmin can see Jihoon trying to extinguish them. He sometimes succeeds...just for Seokmin to relight him, his ears fizzing and his eyes crackling, Seokmin sketches on a smile too perfectly delightful and menacing. Then Jihoon, who is as large as the sun and as light as dust, flares his nostrils as if smoke were to puff from them and proceeds to twirl his tongue around in his mouth, spewing words meant to burn but Seokmin heals quickly.
Seokmin with his cracked skin and rubble eyes would once take in the world with specs of dirt. Like looking through a used coffee filter- this was his choice, in the end he just didn’t want to see the world. Until his planet landed upon a star that burned so bright and so hot, the tears had melted away the dirt, and his rings broke.
His Saturn rings rumbled, cracked and shattered and Seokmin was grey, and distant and he was the Moon. And Jihoon was the Sun. And Seokmin orbited him.
✨
If you ever feel like you’re at the end of the road, and there’s just a cliff. Jump. There’s always a road at the bottom.
This is what Jihoon thinks at least, when he stands in the alleyway, besides bins that smell of rot and black and clutches his fimble guitar in his hand. He stares dreadly at what is to become his instruments graveyard and wonders if he should at least show respect and bury it beside his Mother.
His Mother wouldn’t like it, his Mother hated his guitar.
Jihoon thinks he hates it too, right now at least, and the doubt is what keeps him from lunging the string and the wood to the brick wall. Because when things shatter, they shatter. His Mother shattered.
His Mother was also a lunatic.
His guitar isn’t a lunatic, at least Jihoon would like to think so. Maybe it’s possessed, he contemplates this and then pushes it aside into a tiny, suffocating drawer and locks it. Jihoon’s probably the lunatic.
“You wouldn’t do that,” Seokmin purrs, his long, breakable arm leaning against the side of the cafe. Jihoon gives his stone smile an equally rigid frown. “Who would play for me then?”
A pro, Jihoon optimistically sings to himself, if he chucked his guitar, he wouldn’t have to play for this fragile stone man. Maybe he can break Seokmin with it - two inanimate objects, one swing of his arm. Kaboom.
Jihoon smiles at the thought, but not really, smiling is foreign to Jihoon as much as it is to Seokmin, as much as he pretends to be acquaintances with it.
“Maybe you should learn to play it yourself, want it?” Jihoon offers with a lazy wrist and a flat face. Flat as hell, his face was as round and flat as a pancake. Which isn’t so bad, people like pancakes.
Seokmin doesn’t like the response, his face doesn’t change, but Jihoon hears his insides loud and clear. “But I like it when you play, you have a sound.”
“Strings.”
“Yours.”
“It’s an instrument. The guitar has a sound, not me.” I lost mine.
“You have a sound, you’re just frustratingly deaf my Jihoon.” Seokmin licks his lips as he says it and Jihoon knows by now not to look at it. He has a radar, Jihoon does, a radar now that fizzes and cracks in his head, it senses when Seokmin is about to do something that might instantly turn Jihoon’s insides into the aftermath of a blender massacre.
He’d imagine at this point however, that his organs are already misplaced, sometimes he swears he feels his heart in his stomach, or maybe in his throat. Maybe his heart is ripped apart. That aside, he’s pretty sure he’s felt his brain in his dick.
“Besides,” Seokmin pushes himself off the wall, slowly. Jihoon watches him, thinking if there was a God, they didn’t really bother much when they made Seokmin, then again they were probably really angry when they made Jihoon. “We have a deal.”
A deal. If Jihoon hated a word like Seokmin hates peaches and street lamps, then he’d hate those words.
“You didn’t forget our deal, right?” Seokmin’s voice tastes like venom, the sour kind.
“I play, you keep your mouth shut?” Jihoon slings the guitar back over his shoulder, and feels it land with a grudge on his small back.
Seokmin visibly shivers, or inwardly shivers, Jihoon see’s him shiver either way and watches him reveal his teeth as he tries to smile. Jihoon’s heard people say how lovely Seokmin’s smile is, Jihoon just sees knives sharpening.
“That’s it, now come inside, it’s cold.” It wasn’t cold, it was Summer, and Summer’s are never cold here. But Seokmin is, Seokmin is always cold and Jihoon wonders how it isn’t contagious.
✨
It’s a cafe, but not really. A disguise, or maybe a gimmick. There’s a bar, dark wallpaper, and glittering chandeliers. There’s a grand piano and a stool. Cafe’s don’t have bars or chandeliers, cafes don’t have stool- well, they have different kinds of stools. They don’t have Jihoon’s stool.
Jihoon and Seokmin have worked here for four months now. The first time Seokmin heard Jihoon’s guitar, he thinks he cried, or not, he’s pretty sure something watery happened in his head. He heard ripples, and swooshing, he heard the ocean and he saw the stars on it’s surface, although he’s pretty sure now that was just the chandeliers.
Jihoon plays like he’s spent the entire day conserving this enormous amount of energy within him. Like an atomic bomb, he presses through the day away slowly until he explodes in a string of sounds so hot and catastrophic Seokmin thinks if he get’s close enough the impact will turn him a cinder. But the water rushes, and instead of feeling burnt and dry, he feels moist and earthly. He hates it, he hates it in a way he hates oranges but will still drink a carton of orange juice.
Seokmin is meant to wait the tables, but he tends to take his breaks in the night so he can do nothing but watch Jihoon’s fingers dance down the strings and his legs jump like he was ready to propel off the ground. He probably was, someone like him wasn’t meant for this planet, someone like him was too good for these dark walls and Seokmin’s eyes.
Jihoon was hot, was large, enormous in a small body, Jihoon was energy and fire, Jihoon was the sun. And jesus how much Seokmin wishes he could lick at the flames, and feel himself flutter into ashes, so he could return to the universe as stardust and be as close to the sun as possible.
✨
The deal arose the first time Seokmin and Jihoon spoke to each other. Rather the first noise Jihoon had made directly to Seokmin was an aggravated grunt, Seokmin cherishes it anyway, keeps it on replay at the back of his head along with the sound of Jihoon’s guitar string snapping. Although that came with the image of it whipping at Jihoon, leaving a bloody line in it’s wake, it was the most colour Seokmin had seen on Jihoon’s face.
Until Seokmin had caught him jerking off in the changing room one time. Then that was the most colour Seokmin had seen on Jihoon’s face; blotches of red, blue, green and murder. Seokmin’s life was in immediate danger and in a sudden hot flash he lifted his arms and swore secrecy but not without a conniving smile and the words ‘if you play for me’ left his threatening lips.
Seokmin knew he was always treading upon a game that was too hot, too encompassing for the two of them and he couldn’t wait to burn.
✨
Jihoon’s mother died when he graduated high school. A gift, she wrote on her letter, in her usual calm cursive handwriting. The letter laid out neatly on the bottom of her bed had a hint of rose water to it, she was always akin to detail, too much detail.
Evidently Jihoon wasn’t expecting his graduation gift to be her death, then again he can’t say he was surprised. She stuck around long enough.
She even offered him a P.S note: please, for my haunting soul, stop playing the guitar.
It was a line she used every day of the week, it was a line he ignored. Although one time he asked why and she simply shrugged, “it makes you happy.”
The word happy wasn’t really a part of Jihoon’s vocabulary. Not to say he’s always a raging big foot trapped into the body of a neverland boy but rather than happy he’d like to use the words blank, still, maybe even content. His mother would have never understood though.
All his mother understood was men, the occasional woman, long black hair and hatred.
He thinks Seokmin and her would never get along. Better off she’s in the sky somewhere bothering a God that probably regrets.
Sometimes Jihoon wonders, what is the point in some people, if they come and go, and leave blobs like Jihoon behind. He thinks leaving nothing behind would have been far more productive.
Jihoon takes comfort in the fact it’ll end with him.
✨
When Jihoon plays privately for Seokmin it’s usually when the cafe is deserted. Seokmin offers himself up as sacrifice when the manager asks about closing up, it leaves him a place to abuse the sound of Jihoon’s guitar and garners him points as an employee.
He’s usually cleaning up the bar because Jihoon plays better, more...free when he feels like he isn’t being watched. But he’s always being watched, always, Seokmin’s eyes has never been able to leave him since the moment he heard him pluck those notes.
It’s a sickly infatuation for a man who clings to nothing but himself. Seokmin who grew up detesting his parents with grimaces meant for mourning over corpses, because abuse doesn’t just come from fists and kicks. Then again, they had made things a little easy, gave him money. Oh how he loved the fresh scent of eased guilt. Then they kicked him out.
He was prepared. Seokmin is always prepared, he can read people easily, that and they open up themselves up to him. Like legs spreading in bed, their insides would expose for him willingly. All he had to do was smile, breathe friendliness and ooze ease. People were so easy. People were so lukewarm.
Not Jihoon, never Jihoon.
✨
Jihoon was fourteen when he realised he was gay as fuck. It was the middle of the night, he went to grab a cup of water. Then there was the sound of footsteps and in the illuminating light of the bathroom Jihoon caught sight of the man his mother had slept with that night. He was stark naked, and Jihoon couldn’t take his eyes off his extremely hard, very pointing dick.
It was a bit of an oh moment, Jihoon didn’t really think about it again until he grew up. Then he came to an awakening of sexual frustration, it was disastrous.
He wasn’t attracted to Seokmin at first. In fact, when Seokmin had caught him in the changing room, the first thought was pouring acid over his unconscious body. He hated his face as far as he was concerned, he hated how Seokmin held himself, how Seokmin morphed into different things with every different person he met.
It took Jihoon a long time to realize that the Seokmin that was with him was Seokmin. He unravels himself around Jihoon, exposes his skeletal bones and his crushed insides, not consciously though. Jihoon wonders if Seokmin even knows who he is himself. Jihoon see’s it though, see’s the fiery gleam of his eyes and the shadows in his chests he keeps locked up.
Jihoon didn’t realise his type were self-tortured bastards.
He doesn’t think about it much. Jihoon long learnt that the men he ever thought about where nothing but pipe dreams. Seokmin was just a really long, over-extended, wobbly and stubborn pipe. This might take time.
✨
On the other hand, Seokmin never really thought about his sexuality. He likes to feel good though, sex was just one of many means that got him to that high of amusement and pleasure. That’s all people were useful for, Seokmin thinks. Even Jihoon is just another means to pass the time.
Albeit, a lot of time has passed and he hasn’t gotten bored, but that just means Jihoon’s useful. Afterall stars don’t die out for a bajillion of years.
This comes hurtling down fast.
Seokmin thinks his chest is about to combust when he see’s Jihoon talking on the phone and he smiles. Smiles widely, ends reaching his eyes, teeth on display. Seokmin has never seen Jihoon’s teeth. And suddenly Jihoon isn’t just the sun, he isn’t just burning hot, he’s the orange juice Seokmin would drink, he’s the dark sidewalk Seokmin would use to avoid street lamps, he’s the flesh underneath the skin of a peach.
And Seokmin is green, a dark, dirty green.
Seokmin ran into him, blindly, and knowingly, his tray of empty glasses came crashing into Jihoon and as the cups turned into pretty puzzle pieces, so did Jihoon’s phone. It cracked, the sound music to Seokmin’s ears and Jihoon didn’t miss the twisted smile that morphed onto his face.
“Sorry,” Seokmin muses as he goes to pick the broken pieces off the ground. Not paying any attention to Jihoon’s murdered phone.
Jihoon snaps a hand around Seokmin’s wrist. Seokmin apprehensive, and dare he say, nervous looks up to Jihoon’s empty face. He licks his lips as Jihoon lifts his hand from the wrist and shakes it, the chipped glass dropping to the marble ground with a clink.
“Don’t touch it, use a broom.” He says flatly, picking up his phone, and darting off.
Seokmin, his smile itching his cheeks, shakingly takes his wrist to his lips and bites at the skin. Jihoon’s fingertips left scars of stardust behind and Seokmin would wear them like a brand. He’d revel in the memory and he would become so addicted to the dust that tasted so much like fire he’d later realise his interest was not going to be short lived at all.
✨
Jihoon’s mother was a prostitute. He learnt this after receiving a hefty amount of inheritance. Rather it was just a large sum of money in a savings account with no exact source for any type of judicial system to deem illegal. The old hag hadn’t even written a will with her two letter suicide note. Then again she had no one but him, there wouldn’t have been a point.
Evidently, Jihoon realised, she had done what she could for him and stuck to her lifeline as long as she could before slipping. He didn’t really hate her, didn’t love her much either, she was simply a shadow that had died with the sun one day, and never rose again.
The money got him by enough for him to rent a new place and find a job. Jihoon works two jobs, Seokmin doesn’t know about the first one. Seokmin shouldn’t know about the first one. As far as Jihoon was concerned, Seokmin was possessive. He didn’t mind it, it was odd being wanted for once. It was just...Jihoon wasn’t very good at deciphering exactly what kind of want Seokmin was pining for.
He’d been going with the flow for a couple of months now, Jihoon wonders if he should push it. There wasn’t much to lose.
Then, one day, Seokmin almost gets hit by a car.
Jihoon crashes into him first. Although Seokmin was taller, Jihoon was more muscular, he always felt like he had to make up for his height.
The two of them roll across the road like tumbleweed on fast forward. Jihoon ends up slamming his back into the railing and Seokmin sit’s up with bloody hands and a cut above his eye.
Seokmin think’s they’re okay until he see’s the guitar flattened on the dark empty road like roadkill. The strings snapped and twisted, the wood splintered like the instrument exploded from the inside out.
Jihoon sighs as he stiffly gets up and limps to his friend. The guitar is dead. Kaboom. Jihoon thinks he wants to laugh, after all he had wanted this and now it’s happened, he‘s just glad he hadn’t done it himself.
Seokmin looks down at the smothered corpse and then up at Jihoon, unable to read his flat expression. Seokmin finds no will of his own to find amusement in this predicament.
“What to do?” Jihoon huffs and brings a hand to his dishevelled hair. “I can’t play for you anymore.”
“You will.”
“How?”
“I’ll just buy you another one.”
Jihoon takes in his statement with a quirk of his eyebrow. “We should go to a hospital.” Seokmin says, surprising the both of them, he even thinks the dead guitar does a little note for emphasis.
“I’m fine. You’re bleeding.”
“You’re broken.” Seokmin spits this out.
Jihoon tilts his head. “I think you’re the broken one.”
“What?”
“You’re shaking.”
Seokmin looks down at his hands. They’re still.
“No, I’m not.”
“Yes, you are.” Jihoon huffs once and then turns to limp his way back to the side walk. Seokmin doesn’t move. “Aren’t you coming?”
Jihoon says this with both anticipation and impending disappointment. He thinks Seokmin has shut down, like shutters trickling down on a bright sunny day but then he gives Jihoon a still sort of look and steps over the guitar, following him.
✨
They end up at Jihoon’s apartment. It’s white. It’s white everywhere. Walls are white. Kitchen is white. Sofa’s are white. The TV’s black-not Jihoon’s first choice. Seokmin thinks of hospitals and illness but then he see’s three small, box portraits. Each blue, and stark, and of the sea and he feels the water rushing. In an instant, this becomes Jihoon’s home.
Jihoon tries to do the whole first aid thing and fails miserably. First he pours out too much alcohol onto the cotton pad, soaking Seokmin’s trousers. None of Jihoon’s clothes would fit him, so now Seokmin is sitting on the white sofa with just his boxers and a ripped button up t-shirt. Uncomfortable was an understatement.
Especially when Jihoon proceeds to dab the wound above Seokmin’s eyes and ends up poking him in the eye with his extended pinky. Apparently he does that when he’s trying to concentrate. Now Seokmin is pantless and blind.
Jihoon realises he’s doing more damage than not and decides to make food for the two of them while they wait for Seokmin’s pants to dry after dunking it in water. Jihoon can’t say he’s very good at chores, but he does have confidence in cooking.
Seokmin sits on the sofa’s cross legged in a state of indifference, and he’s a little cold. Jihoon sizzling something in the kitchen is the only sound that fills up the apartment. Seokmin wonders how an apartment can be so clean for someone so apparently uncoordinated, then again he was the one that almost got hit by a car.
The fact Jihoon had saved his life hadn’t really sunk in yet. The funny thing is Seokmin was thinking about Jihoon when he mindlessly stepped out onto the road. Mental check, don’t think about Jihoon when walking home. Which is easier said than done, Seokmin is always thinking about Jihoon.
Jihoon comes back with some stir fried rice and a blanket. He chucks the both of them at Seokmin. They eat in silence. Jihoon’s eyes down at his food with Seokmin’s eyes on Jihoon. Jihoon knows he’s watching and Seokmin knows he knows he’s watching him. The two of them continue like that until Seokmin’s pants dry and he finally leaves.
✨
Jihoon doesn’t come to work the next day, or the day after, or the day after that. Seokmin is fraying at the edges with every hour that ticks by. He hasn’t gone not seeing Jihoon for so long his imagination was starting to give out on him. He was losing his mind. His manager had no answers and Seokmin decided he was definitely dead.
Broke his back, snapped his neck, heart attack, stroke, haemorrhage, any-fucking-thing could have happened to him after the road incident. It was going to be Seokmin’s fault. Jihoon’s light was going to puff out because Seokmin couldn’t stop revolving himself around him for one second.
Evidently, he was being awfully dramatic. He knows this, which is why he hadn’t actually stomped his way to Jihoon’s apartment. It wasn’t far but Seokmin apparently had more self control than he gave himself credit for.
But then he explodes. Literally his chest just obliterates, except he doesn’t really see his insides propel outwards. He’s pretty sure he fucking exploded, he didn’t know how else his chest could have crumpled the way it did.
Jihoon’s in a guitar shop, just a couple of streets away from Seokmin’s place. It’s dimly lit, nothing but the man behind the counter and Jihoon in view through the floor-to-wall windows. Guitars surround them in the box of a shop they’ve secluded themselves in.
Seokmin is slapped with a wave emotions; relief, he looked okay. Confusion, why wasn’t he coming to work? And anger, fire hatred, venom spitting anger as he watched Jihoon comfortably lean into the man and smile widely as he plucked at the strings of a guitar.
Seokmin watches him for a long time. His legs twitch to move and walk away but there’s a destructive feeling running through his veins and he almost contemplates walking into the shop and tearing everything apart.
He doesn’t.
Instead Jihoon catches him through the window, and his smile drops. Seokmin’s one hundred percent sure his insides have turned into nothing but rubble. He notices Jihoon get up but starts making his way down the street fast.
“I’ll pick it up tomorrow morning,” Jihoon say’s from behind, the sound of the door shutting.
Seokmin slows down, just a fraction, and waits with never ending anticipation for when Jihoon calls out his name. “Seokmin.” And it sounds like lightening, and Seokmin wants to thrive in the sparks.
Seokmin, although highly elated, turns around to Jihoon with a tight smile, Jihoon returns it with a frown.
“Where have you been Jihoonie?” Seokmin says with a taunting tilt of his head.
Jihoon takes him in silently for a moment, “Hurt my back, had to rest.”
Seokmin’s lip twitches. He cracks. “You look pretty okay.”
“Ah...I came to pick up a new guitar.”
“I told you I’d get you one.”
“I didn’t want you to.”
“You don’t want something from me?”
“That’s not it.”
They both snap into silence, a war in frowns.
Seokmin stares down at Jihoon and Jihoon brushes a hand through his hair. Seokmin stares down at the ends of his turned down lips and Jihoon looks up at him with a questioning look.
Seokmin takes a step forward and with two of his index fingers he pokes at ends of Jihoon’s lips and forces his cheeks upwards. “Why don’t you smile more?”
“Why don’t you?”
“I always smile.”
“No, you don’t.” Jihoon looks down at his chest. “You’re always crying.”
The words catch Seokmin off guard, and suddenly he’s frozen with his fingers jammed in Jihoon’s cheeks. Jihoon blinks up at him and sighs, stepping away from his touch.
“Is that what you want?” Jihoon asks, and ruffles the back of his head. “For me to smile?”
“Yes…” Seokmin says it with uncertainty.
“Is that it?”
Seokmin’s most definitely uncertain.
Jihoon takes a step forward and looks up with a challenge. Seokmin is seriously pondering upon what challenge they’re about to have.
Then, suddenly, Jihoon grabs Seokmin by the collar and tugs him down.
Their lips touch and Seokmin is set on fire. Literally, metaphorically. There was no way to explain the shocks that run through his skin like electricity as Jihoon pressed their lips together. The sparks that sent the blood in his veins to boiling and if he thought he exploded before, he was definitely going to explode now. His last breath was going to be swallowed by Jihoon and he’d just fucking combust.
He thinks he it can’t get worse. Then Jihoon licks his bottom lip, and yup, now he’s awake. Seokmin’s whole body jerks upright, his fingers are tingling and his heart is thumping so hard, he’s sure it’s just going to run up his throat and jump out his mouth.
His eyes are blinking a 100 miles per hour when Jihoon finally releases his grip and takes a step back. He looks okay until Seokmin see’s his hand shaking just before he shoves it into his pocket.
“Yup,” Seokmin bursts out into laughter. “That’s exactly it.”
Jihoon arches an eyebrow.
Seokmin takes a step to Jihoon and hovers with a large, taunting smirk. “You realise you’ll probably regret this?” Seokmin murmurs as his fingertips trace Jihoon necks. Jihoon doesn’t make an effort to move away and it just excites Seokmin further.
“Who knows?” Jihoon looks down at were Seokmin touches him. “Your hand is so cold.”
Seokmin hums, deep in his chest. “And you’re so warm.” He murmurs before pressing his lips back to Jihoon’s, and turns to ashes.