Chapter Text
The first of spring, 14:00, Seonghyeon was the only one in the bar.
It was right after lunchtime, the costumers stopped coming, and the place, seen from behind a bench, was silent.
Seonghyeon turned around the face of the sign hung on the door, from "open" to "closed", and attached next to it the schedule for that day.
SATURDAY
7:30 - 14:00, 18:00 - 00:00
He shoved a cloth on his shoulder and started doing the dishes, because there was nothing else to do.
Working was exhausting, especially when there were weird costumers asking cocktails at 10 in the morning, and Seonghyeon needed a good sleep.
The bar had a narrow shape: the counter on the right and the costumers table on the left. A flickering light from above, and a drink refrigerator, its humming was the loudest thing in the whole room .
The sink opened with an intense flow, but it was not enough to wipe the dirty stains off the dishes. But still, Seonghyeon kept trying, alienated.
He exhaled.
His hands had barely enough energy to move.
Music would have made him feel better, but his headache was too strong for any kind of melody. And he even had the late shift that night, because it was a Saturday.
He would have gone back home and slept as soon as the dishes were finished, until then there was no going back.
Working in there was boring, charmless, monotone: it wasn't a big bar, there were always the same faces, at the same hours, with the same schedule; the same smiles, the same conversations, the same routine. There was no change, there hadn't been for 1096 days, to be exact.
Nothing to do, even outside of work: the streets always had the same flickering lights and the same heavy cemented streets, with clouds of who-knows-what kind of gas everyone breathed in. But everyone's organism now takes it in like oxygen.
It was alienation.
Suddenly, the change he was looking for came knocking at his door.
Bringing him back to reality, someone was knocking on the glass entrance rapidly, as if they needed a place to hide. Seonghyeon didn't even stop the flow.
"We are closed" he muttered, eyes still fixed on the sink.
They knocked again.
Seonghyeon got away from the sink, and without looking opened the door frustrated.
"We are-" but his voice cut out, looking at the man standing right before him.
"We see again"
There goes a face he remembered, in spite of its 3 years of absence.
There goes one of the most shameless men he had ever seen.
Out of all people, why was Keonho standing right in front of the bar he worked at, with a smile on his face like he had never disappeared and with arms open like he wanted to hug Seonghyeon.
The bartender froze on the entrance, choking the door handle with his fist.
"What? I shouldn't have come?" Keonho was joking. How could he joke?
"You...Why aren't you in New York? When- How-" he let go off the door handle, feeling like he could pass out.
"I have day-offs too, you know?" Keonho got closer. Seonghyeon made a step behind him.
"Invite me in for a coffee then?"
He was still the same 17 year old he was three years ago, and Seonghyeon couldn't help but stare at him, trying to find a difference with how he was before.
"Yeah, Uhm, alright..." he turned around and held the door for Keonho, letting him inside the most wasted bar of all time.
Seonghyeon was restless, and of course he was! Since when was Keonho back in town?
It had happened too fast without advise, and Seonghyeon's heart was taken in a whole rush.
He dashed behind the counter again, getting back to cleaning dishes like he couldn't get away from it, hiding his emotional state, because it didn't matter when it came to job. Seonghyeon still threw glances at Keonho once in a while.
Keonho looked around dazzled, lingering at the flickering light on the roof, and then at Seonghyeon's figure.
Accidentally, their eyes met.
"Cozy" shrugging, Keonho carried on, making his way to a table, as Seonghyeon froze again under the cold water of the sink.
The boy was sitting on a chair, too small to let somebody sprawl on it the way Keonho was; he posed his bag on the white tablecloth, which Seonghyeon hadn't renewed yet.
Keonho was calm. Careless, like it was the most natural thing on the face of the earth; like him leaving three years before hadn't signed Seonghyeon forever.
But he loved that view, he always did, even if he couldn't help but hating it at the same time.
Some seconds passed, enough to make Seonghyeon realise that Keonho was looking at him, expecting him to take the other seat.
But he didn't want to sit there with him.
"Want a coffee?" he dodged every sign like it could've carved him open.
Keonho just hummed in response.
It was not awkward, Seonghyeon had his own valuable reasons to ignore Keonho; he had a real reason to avoid that talk with him.
While he was pouring the coffee in the two cups, Keonho spoke again.
"I shouldn't have come?"
Seonghyeon felt like tearing up, hearing the sad tone he said that: he never meant to not miss Keonho, how could he think that he didn't want him there?
"No, it's not that...I didn't expect you to come. Like this, right now" he didn't turn around to face Keonho.
They stayed silent for a while.
Seonghyeon took the full cups and positioned them on the tray
"Why not? I had a break from New York, and I decided to come back for a day or two! It's what friends do, isn't it?"
Seonghyeon approached to the table, exhaling in a laughter "Friends".
No, they were not friends before Keonho went away, they were more. More than just friends, until Seonghyeon felt too much.
Keonho proceeded to position the tray on the table, pulling Seonghyeon's chair with his feet from under the table.
"Why? We weren't friends?" he laughed with the smirk of someone who knew, who remembered vividly, who wasn't playing dumb.
With a sigh, Seonghyeon slumped on the chair like a dead body, and sat there cross legged.
"No we were not. Don't pretend to play dumb" Seonghyeon said, sticking out his hand to get the coffee.
Keonho lifted his eyebrows, as if someone had accused him, as he reached the bag of sugar "You are right, I am playing dumb. So what were we?"
He said that like it was a light hearted joke, like it belonged to the past, like there was no chance Seonghyeon still cried nights over it.
The bartender froze again, trying to assume a calmer expression, pretending to think.
There was something he wanted to tell that face once and for all, to make him pay for playing with him.
"Lovers?" he said tentative, staring at the coffee like he was talking to the cup.
Keonho didn't hesitate to deny that. "No, not lovers. I never said I loved you"
His heart was breaking, gradually. He could feel the cracks in his chest spreading more and more. So he forgot the only time he told Seonghyeon he loved him, then.
"You acted like you did" Seonghyeon shrugged, unbothered on the outside.
"I almost did. We don't need a label, I think. We just kissed once in a while. The band didn't even know, it was nothing serious"
Ah right, the band.
Martin, Juhoon and James were the rest of the band, back in high school.
Why was he doing this to him? Why did he sound evil?
It felt like he was making everyone think that the diamond he has is made of plastic.
The topic closed there: Seonghyeon thought that if he had answered back, he would've ended up tossing things around, up and down like an angry man, and it was really not the case.
For a while the only sound between them was the stirring of spoons against ceramic, and the sipping of warm coffee against their lips. It didn't feel nice, the atmosphere was pensive, as if it was hanging on a cliff for dear life.
There they were. United again after three years of missed calls, silence and unanswered questions that gradually reduced Seonghyeon to whatever he was.
Keonho moved out of Korea and went to New York 1096 days ago, leaving the acquaintances and the friendships, and Seonghyeon's only love with nothing to live with.
When Keonho left, it felt as if somebody had suddenly stopped watering their favorite flower; the plant withered, and that was Seonghyeon.
Keonho was the person who stopped taking care of him.
In some ways, he depended on him.
There were so many things that remained unspoken between them, even the most trivial ones, Seonghyeon wanted to know them.
He was not the kind to do old chattering, but with the one who broke his heart and whom he still adored, it was okay.
"Do you still have the music sheets?" asked Seonghyeon, still not looking in his eyes.
Keonho leaned back, pouting light heartedly "Probably, but... I don't even remember where, honestly". He laughed like an idiot, but there was a hint of nostalgia in him as well.
"Is your sister still studying?" asked Keonho, getting serious again, playing with the spoon at the edge of the cup.
Seonghyeon shrugged in response "Yeah...She has got nice grades, she wants to get a degree".
His sister was in Daejeon, he wasn't. That was something else that broke his heart, the fact that he even moved out just to stay with his friends and it ended up in tragedy anyway.
"Ah, happy to know that"
Seonghyeon nodded.
"Did you send your lyrics to that agency?"
"Long ago, I am still waiting for an answer"
Seonghyeon cleaned the edges of him mouth with a tissue.
"Is Manhattan great?"
"Sometimes" Keonho muttered, mouth deep in the hole of the cup.
"Did you meet somebody there?"
It was unnecessary to ask, but now that he knew Keonho had never really loved him, it wasn't something awkward to ask.
"No" coldly, the younger boy answered.
Seonghyeon felt relieved.
"And how is... how is swimming?" the bartender took a sip of his coffee, overlapping one leg to the other under the table. Keonho scratched the back of his neck, looking hesitant. But it was alright, now that he was back, Seonghyeon had no rush of doing things, he could take all the time he needed now, a way of compensating his absence during the past six years.
"I dropped out, too much shit to divvie up, you know?"
It wasn't really his cup of tea, so why did that make him feel so stuck on the past?
Seonghyeon felt a heart reaching wave hitting him to the core: it was the feeling of things, situations, people going from their best moments ever to the most miserable conversations over a newspaper and coffee.
He wanted to punch him, slap him on that beautiful, soft, flushed cheeks like he had never loved him, like it was his fault that everything had changed.
"Ah..." his head was down, it had no business to look right into Keonho's eyes, why would it?
It was a pity. But over the years Seonghyeon has accepted that he is not a hero, that he can't change things just because he wants to.
The only sound between them was the friction of the coffee cups on the small plates underneath and some hurried sip.
"And what about the garage?"
Ah, the garage.
Seonghyeon had to think twice before answering, he almost forgot the garage.
He bit his lower lip, squinting his eyes, trying to remember if he knew what had happened.
"I am pretty sure it's still there" he shrugged in the end, holding onto the warm side of the cup, letting the heat flush throughout his gloves.
Keonho's eyes shined.
"Really? My drums are still there?"
"I don't know"
Seonghyeon didn't mean to sound as cold as he did, but he had always been taught not to give out false hopes. He didn't want to hear the sound of Keonho's heart shattering, he never meant to.
"Why don't we go and see? There might still be something... I don't know, Martin's Full Metal Jacket poster on the wall" and he chuckled softly, like it was lightly forced.
Seonghyeon didn't laugh right back. Would he have been able to see the garage again after so many years?
He just nodded, smiling.
"Wait for someone to sue us" his eyes reached the roof, then went back on Keonho; but his stare was lost, somewhere on the floor. Seonghyeon could see the memories in his head just from his pupils.
"You always said that, especially when our classmates would follow us and then snitch"
Yes, Seonghyeon remembered that. It made him smile.
"Yeah, I always said that"
Back when they were a band, nobody's parents gave them a space to play, so they decided to find one on their own: there was a house with a garage some blocks away from their school, and the owners were always away, sometimes they wouldn't come back in a week or two. After discovering that practically nobody lived there, they decided to use the house garage as if it was their own.
Apart from all the memories it held for all five of them, Keonho and Seonghyeon had another reason to hold that place dear, because it was where they would stay together alone. Nobody ever knew what they did, nor that they had that dynamic, because evidently it was nothing special. Seonghyeon's mistake was to believe that they were something until Keonho departed.
"I heard that the owners have died" Keonho said out of the blue bringing Seonghyeon back to reality a bit too quickly.
"Died?!" he broke his composed position on the chair, making the previously calm surface of the coffee tremble. "How?! They were a young couple, how did they...?"
Keonho took his hands and held them.
"I don't know, don't worry, it's alright, it's alright" if he could have, he would have hugged him.
Keonho was smiling at him with a sad face, and Seonghyeon didn't understand.
Exhaling, he calmed down and sat back again on his chair, but Keonho wouldn't let go off his hands.
"So... is it abandoned now?" Keonho asked, eyes fixed on Seonghyeon.
"I... I don't know, I... I don't really pass by often... after all..." he hinted a smirk " they never knew we hanged out in their garage" tried to chuckle as much as he could.
Keonho laughed back, probably because he felt pity towards him.
"We can go back any time we want"
why did it suddenly feel reassuring?
His hands were warm, overlapped on Seonghyeon's, in a way they hadn't been for 3 years.
"Let's go take a look, if you still remember how to sneak in"
Seonghyeon was tired, he really was. But what was the point of Keonho coming back for a while if he didn't stay with him?
•°☆°•
With a slow pace, intoxicated with nostalgia, they walked down the block like two old men, and reached the house with the garage.
Seonghyeon was standing right in front of it, from the yard.
Now that he knew that there was not even a soul in that house, it felt haunted.
His brain, by memory, made him sneak from the door of the garage door in the backyard. And, always by memory, his heart beated faster, because it remembered the garage as a place where he had fun. For the first time, he was looking at that room with a heart renching nostalgia.
"Didn't they have a cat?" whispered Keonho right behind Seonghyeon, as they opened the little garage door.
The latter turned around, and met Keonho's face right next to his ear. His lips almost caressed Seonghyeon's forehead.
"They gave it out for adoption" he turned around rapidly, a rosy tint appearing on his cheeks. He could hear Keonho grinning right next to him.
He turned around the door handle, and there they were again.
In the garage.
Seonghyeon reached out to click on the half broken light switch, and everything was born again.
It was a squared room, and, surprisingly, the vintage decorations they had put up as teenagers were still there. The owners didn't have a car, but for some reason they had a garage.
In the middle, there was a golden yellowish carpet, bought by Juhoon because his mother told him to make it disappear from his bedroom, so he made it appear in the garage; there was a dusty black bass that Martin used to play, some books scattered here and there, and one or two basket balls, for when Juhoon and James had finger cramps.
On the walls there were rackets, music and anime posters.
A bookshelf, full of old music sheets and Juhoon's and Seonghyeon's favorite novels, backed the wall; at the bottom of the furniture, there were some drawers.
With widened eyes and parted lips, Seonghyeon looked around, to see how many things he remembered and how many he forgot.
On all the left, there were Keonho's drums.
Yes, they were a bit dusty, but they were still there.
They never left, unlike their owner.
"Woah. It's really been 1000 years" Keonho whistled, parting from Seonghyeon's side and stroking the walls with his hand.
He rolled his eyes at him as he sat on a low bureau.
"No, it has just been 1000 days"
It escaped his mouth before he could stop it.
Keonho turned around.
"You seriously counted the days I was away?!" he laughed, as if he had never given Seonghyeon any reason to do that. As if saying "yes" would've been weird.
"I just made it up, calm down"
Seonghyeon saved himself, crossing his arms, because he didn't want to look so desperate.
Keonho turned around and noticed Martin's black bass sitting on the pavement: old stickers and a bisexual flag brooch being the only accessories coloring the instrument.
The question came out too suddenly.
"How is Martin doing? Haven't heard from him yet"
Seonghyeon took a deep breath.
"He is getting married in August"
Keonho turned around and looked at Seonghyeon with a dry mouth, as if it was unbelievable.
He never looked at him back.
Yes, that was what it felt like, to miss out on things. To be gone for a while, turning back and seeing that the city and its people have grown.
And, in that case, Martin was one of their dearest friends, and it was weird that he hadn't invited Keonho.
Soon, his mouth curled in a smile.
"Happy for him" he shrugged and turned around again, like nothing had happened.
Seonghyeon kept looking at him from behind
Keonho felt the need to touch everything, as if his eyes were an unreliable author, while Seonghyeon was scared of even looking at anything: furniture held memories - he thought everything did - so he was scared that by touching them he could've altered the past. It was stupid, he knew that. It was a thought he formulated between the 30th and the 1095th day after Keonho's departure.
Things had feelings, children were right.
In another dimension, there was him from three years ago, with the rest of the band, standing right where Seonghyeon was. He always felt pity for his past self, because he had no idea of what would have happened.
"My drums!!! My drums, Seonghyeon!"
If Seonghyeon was the one making child-like thoughts, Keonho was the kid himself, pointing at his instrument like it was made of gold.
In a hurry, he sat on the stool, legs wide and hands on his thighs. Seonghyeon watched him looking for the drum stick with desperate eyes, and chuckled at him.
"You always lose them" he looked at him from the bureau he was sitting on, which was on the other side of the garage.
Keonho looked at him, inhaled and laughed "Why are you sitting there?"
Seonghyeon looked at him, a spoken truth lingering between them.
He shrugged.
"Because I want to. Nothing special"
Keonho just kept on laughing and nodded ironically. Now he was standing up from the stool and was searching for his drum sticks inside one of the bookshelf drawers, near the bureau.
Seonghyeon's eyes were still at the stool, and flinched only when Keonho exclamed.
"Oh! Look at this" he stood up from his crawled position and showed Seonghyeon a burnt CD.
He gasped as soon as he saw what was written on it with a dark blue crayon:
《 from koko to hyeon 》!
TRACKS:
Haru Haru (BIGBANG)
What Katie Did (The Libertines)
Sweet Child 'o Mine (Guns 'n Roses)
November Rain (Guns 'n Roses)
Blowin' in the wind ( Bob Dylan)
Replay (Shinee)
Fluorescent Adolescent (Arctic Monkeys)
Let Down (Radiohead)
It was an old CD Keonho had burnt for Seonghyeon. There were other tracks, but he didn't remember any of them. Plus, the crayon had wiped away.
The back of his eyes was getting teary, so he rapidly lifted his head, before they could get red.
He found Keonho looking at him with a smirk. Seonghyeon didn't know if he loved to see him suffering, or if he was really as innocent as he looked.
But him being back, something Seonghyeon had been desiring for 1096 days, turned out to be a nightmare: waves of memories were drowning him, and Keonho wasn't going down with him.
Keonho was evil for coming up to him again.
And now he was haunting the CD Seonghyeon would have brought to the grave.
Seonghyeon looked down at the CD in Keonho's hands, realising how close he had got to the bureau, then looked up again. Keonho didn't take his eyes off of him.
"What...is this?" he touched the CD.
"What is what?" Keonho's , whisper stroke his cheeks.
Seonghyeon leaned back on the bureau, trying to get a bit of distance, but Keonho's answer was to put a hand on the dresser, right behind the older boy. It was wrong, it was all so wrong.
It was like years ago.
Keonho got closer, and his other hand met Seonghyeon's on the wooden surface.
"Did you miss me?" asked Keonho, admiring Seonghyeon's face, from his hairline to his chin.
The other boy felt like crying right there.
Why was he doing that? Why was he holding his hand as if he was going to stay forever? As if he wanted Seonghyeon to cry the nights over him.
Probably Keonho had no idea of what he was doing, of how it was making Seonghyeon upset.
And all he ever wanted was to hug him, feel him close to his breath forever. No departures, no flights, just the two of them living in a Seoul that remembered both.
But now Keonho was a stranger in the Seoul.
Felt like a stranger when he walked down the streets like he had no idea of where he was going
But now Seoul, the cashiers at supermarkets, the teachers, the children, the friends probably didn't remember him anymore.
"Yes, I.. I did"
Seonghyeon's voice cane out shaky, breathy; Keonho's felt like he had a lump in his throat.
Their eyes wondered, travelling each other's faces, like they were a map. Keonho's breath was so close to his'; their fingers softly overlapped onto each other; and Seonghyeon had leaned back so far, trying to find some distance, that Keonho was slightly bending down.
Was it alright? Is it really him?
The questions came up again in Seonghyeon's head, making him doubt, tilting slightly his head from Keonho hesitantly.
Suddenly, his grip on the older boy felt more reassuring. He smiled at him, genuinely for the first time.
"Hey, it's okay. It's me" a light whisper.
His hand placed on his waist.
No more hesitant, Seonghyeon leaned in and pressed his lips onto Keonho's.
The other boy kissed him back, the exact same way he did years ago. His lips even tasted like they did years ago: taste of coffee and cinnamon, intoxicating like the nostalgia he felt on the way to the garage.
Intoxicating like his charm and his way of being; like the joy they felt when he was keeping him company, like the pain Seonghyeon survived for 1096 days.
There they were again, kissing in the garage like they always used to do.