Work Text:
It’s after-dark; the bar is empty. There are patrol lights blinking in the blackness outside, and the light inside is dim and orange, glittering in polished-wood tables, satin stools, the black marble floor with the white streaky patterns that always remind him of the blue veins right under his skin. The bar itself, right in front of where Luka is idly polishing a glass because he’s not entirely ready to pack up and go upstairs to his apartment yet, glitters, too. He’s diligent, after all.
And it is not entirely empty, either. There’s dark brown hair spread out over the bar, a little dull with grease among all the other polished, glittering things, and still the most beautiful of them all.
Hyuna groans, guttural. Luka feels it in his solar plexus.
“You’ve had enough to drink for today,” he says, to the crystal glass in his hand. He twists it this way and that, watching it catch the light. In the warmth of it, his fingertips look nearly normal. He clicks his tongue, puts the glass aside to turn the faucet to hot and run his hands under it.
Hyuna’s head rolls over until her cheek is smushed into the bar counter, until she can look at him. Her eyes are the slightest bit unfocused. She’s in a white tank-top and jeans, and there’s something so soft about her unraveled like this that he swallows at the warmth threatening to overtake him, turns off the faucet and dries his hands. He’s not going to let her rope him into a staring contest. He likes her too much; she always wins.
“Think that’s for me to decide, isn’t it?”
Which makes Luka smile, a little. He walks past her to her other side to finish putting the glasses away, perfectly aligned in a grid. Hyuna doesn’t turn her head around again. She’s probably too dizzy. Cute, cute, cute.
“You still need to get home. Without throwing up, preferably.”
A small pause. More lights flicker by outside, but nobody ever bothers Luka, which is one thing that he has to be grateful towards Heperu for. The other is stuck inside of his trachea every day, and stuck in needles into his bloodstream most nights. Some nights. Most nights.
“It’s after-dark already,” she says, finally. Which he knew already, of course.
“I’m not going to let you sleep out here on a bar stool, Hyuna.”
“What,” she says, and her voice is so bitter he can taste it on his own tongue, “not good enough for your usual fancy clientele? Not—not domesticated enough? Luka?”
And he doesn’t really have an answer to that. It’s not true, naturally: he has not once, not ever, thought about her like that. It hadn’t even occurred to him before she said it, that’s how far removed it is from anything he thinks about her. Now, what others have to say about the matter…
Abandoned child. That’s what Hyuna is. Forgotten by her Segyein guardian, left by herself alone to die. Now, they’re not children anymore, and thanks to Heperu’s affection—not towards Luka; never towards Luka, and naturally, not towards Hyuna, either (Luka doubts Heperu remembers about her most of the time)—Luka had been able to save her. But there is only one place free next to Luka, and barely that. He takes a swig of his water bottle, the minerals filling his senses completely for a moment, and swallows their ghosts. His and hers.
(One day, she’ll forgive him. One day.)
Still, none of that is why he won’t let her stay here.
“It’s too dangerous,” he decides on. “And it’s much more comfortable in—”
“Lu—ka,” Hyuna sing-songs. “Trying to get me in your bed?”
He falls quiet. Tilts his head back to squint into the lights. They’re turned down, the bar lights so very dim—for atmosphere, but for his benefit, too—and still they ache. His eyes are pulsing as he breathes in deep, then huffs it out through his mouth, as he tilts his head to glance at the little stage at the side of the bar, with most of the tables arranged to be able to look at it easily. It looks so naked right now, with only the skeleton of a microphone remaining. Usually, there’s speakers, and a drum set, and a few briefcases of various equipment, and a lot of cables.
He hasn’t heard Hyuna sing in years.
It doesn’t really matter anymore, Luka supposes. It doesn’t matter to her, so it doesn’t really matter anymore, no matter how he might feel about it. Hyuna’s hair is spread out on the bar, her eyes blurry and blinking slowly, the inside of her mouth hot flesh and sharp, slick teeth, bitter to the taste if he were to put his tongue into it. She loves it so much, the alcohol; sometimes, it makes him wonder if she loves it more than she loves him. If she still loves him at all. Things like that.
It doesn’t really matter anymore, he supposes.
“I have cigarettes,” he says, in the end. “Would you like to smoke with me?”
Hyuna lifts her head so fast it’s almost funny. She sways where she’s sitting, knuckles going pale where she’s gripping the edge of the bar for stability, nearly clawing into it, lips parted, eyes wide. A strand of hair is stuck to her mouth. He walks back towards her, leans over the bar, and brushes it away with his thumb. She doesn’t flinch.
She does scoff, though. “You can’t even smoke,” she says, flicking his nose where the breathing tubes disappear into his nostrils, and he makes a small noise of almost-protest at the back of his throat, “where’d you get those? And why?”
Luka drops his gaze to her hand, the one that had just touched him. It hangs in the air a moment more, moving slightly back and forth with human breath and human heartbeat, then she swallows, shifts, drops it. Huffs again.
“A patron left it at the bar. Probably an accident.”
She clicks her tongue. “There’s Segyein who smoke? As in, human cigarettes?”
There’s Segyein who do a whole lot of things. He shrugs. Drags his fingertip over the edge of the bar, just a bit away from her hand, feels it poke into the pad of his finger. Again and again and again, until it almost hurts. It curls up thickly, tightly in his throat, but he needs to be careful. Even with Hyuna—especially with Hyuna, perhaps, these days—he needs to be careful. And isn’t that just terrible? Isn’t that just so terrible?
“It’s tobacco. I checked.”
She hums. For a moment, he’s sure she’ll put her forehead back onto the bar and ignore him like she does sometimes; or crawl into one of the corner booths with the plush bench seating and the velvet blinds for privacy. He’s found here there on more than one occasion in the middle of the night, curled up and sleeping. Like a little stray cat, in a way, his Hyuna. As stubborn and independent as one, too, but that’s okay, he knows what’s good for her.
Then she does get up. Sways, holds up her hand when he moves to get around the bar counter, to steady her, pats down her jeans. “Alright, lead the way,” she says, even though she knows this place as well as he does. Even when it is her home, too. It should be her home, at least. To him it is, even when she runs off so much.
But, well, she does always return, doesn’t she? In the end, she does always return, does always come back to him. She does.
Luka bites down on the tip of his tongue, then he walks out and around the counter to join her. There’s something a little bit rigid about her when he’s standing right in front of her. From this distance, he has to tip his head up a little to be able to look her in the eyes, and she doesn’t flinch, either, when he reaches out to brush a strand of mussed up hair that’s seemingly determined to keep falling into her face behind her ear, but it looks like a close thing.
She does follow him when he turns. It’s a bit silly; he walks to the front door, first, to double check that he locked it (he did) and to grab his jacket and put it on, then doubles back to the counter, off to the side where the door leading upstairs is, all the while with her in tow.
If only things were like this, always.
When he flicks the light switch, the bar goes as dark as the outside world—so very far away from here, so very far away with her by his side, with her in his vicinity, it always, always, always is—and he doesn’t turn on the light in the staircase. After a few steps, after a low, hissed curse, and a rattling against metal stairs that is likely Hyuna hitting her foot, she claws into the back of his jacket for guidance, twists her hand (hands?) into it. It prickles everywhere in Luka’s body, her touch. All over, all over, all over.
She seems to be surprised when they don’t turn right to his apartment once they’ve climbed up one flight; her shoulder knocks into his, and there’s a gasp in the darkness where she’s standing. Luka, for his part, knows this staircase like the back of his hand.
Another flight up, then a door. Then the nigh sky explodes over them like a huge, flickering screen, like a painting.
Hyuna gasps; shrill and wondrous and girlish, and for a moment, it feels like they are children again, back in Anakt Garden, back together (and together with—) for a moment—
“You’ve never been up here?” he manages to say, tilting his head, smiling. He closes the door behind them and the wind whips Hyuna’s hair around and she scowls at him, then softens just a little when he shrugs out of his jacket.
“Are you kidding? I’m fine, but you’re gonna die without that. Just give me the cigarettes.”
He pauses, but there’s steel in Hyuna’s shoulders, in the furrow of her thick brows, in her grey, hazy eyes. Steel in her name stitched, branded right under her collarbone. He wants to lean in and put his mouth against it, taste metal on skin, taste her alcohol-sweat. Instead, he fishes the package of cigarettes out of the back pocket of his pants.
“Do you have a lighter?” he asks.
She doesn’t reply. Instead, she paces down the stone tiles of the roof, tugs a cigarette out of the packet and stuffs it into the pocket of her own pants, then scoots down the wall next to the door that leads back inside, sitting down with a groan. Cups the cigarette pinched between her lips, and something clicks and hisses and lights up her palm, so that answers his question.
It’s cold. He sits down beside her, and her arm is warm against his, even through his jacket. She doesn’t scoot away any, but perhaps that’s only because she’s hoping the smoke will make him cough.
Makes him smile, the thought. There’s a small thump that rushes down his spine when he allows his head to knock back into the wall, the scent of smoke lingering in the air as Hyuna inhales deep, deep, deeply. The stars above look like a spill of white ink on pitch-black canvas, some bigger, closer, than others. They twinkle so clearly with the city dead and dark like this that it feels like he could touch them if he just reached out.
Luka only ever feels like this with her by his side. It’s the only time he ever cares about all of these little things.
When he tilts his head to brush his face just barely, just feather-light over the crown of her head, her hair smells like human grease and sweat and smoke and something vaguely floral; the shampoo in his shower. Even under the starlight, almost covered in darkness entirely, she’s beautiful. She’s always beautiful, no matter what she looks like, and no matter what she does.
Hyuna groans, stretches out her legs, taps at the cigarette until ash rains down onto stone. Her prosthetic scrapes over the floor, making him shiver until he feels it in his teeth. She smokes in silence and he watches her and the stars and her-and-the-stars in silence, too.
She stubs out the cigarette when she’s done, once, twice, grinding it into a stone tile like it’s a canvas, like the cigarette’s a brush, like she’s a painter. It works itself through his body in a stab of hunger: the yearning for her, and for her art. She used to be an artist. A singer, yes, not a painter, but what’s the difference if it’s all so beautiful when it is coming from her?
He hasn’t heard Hyuna sing in years. It’s the only music he’s ever really liked.
In the dark of the night he hears her exhale, watches the last cloud of smoke drift from her lips to join its brethren up above in the night sky. She climbs into his lap and he lets her; loops his arms loosely around her waist and she lets him, too. She’s shivering. Should have taken his jacket, after all. Silly, silly, silly girl.
She presses the cigarette to his pulse, but it’s mostly stubbed out, frozen quickly in the cold here, and it only stings a little. Luka hisses, smiles at her, pulls her a little closer, watches a flicker of… something go over her face. Something like desperation.
“You probably should have done that before if you really wanted to hurt me,” he says, smiling. But that’s the thing, isn’t it? She doesn’t actually want to hurt him, doesn’t she?
She makes a strangled noise like a choke, or a sob, or a laugh, or something that’s all of those things, intertwined. Her forehead falls down, thunks against his, her eyes closed, lashes twitching, eyes flickering. He grabs at her upper arms, skin as icy as his own, rubs her there, and she lets him, but she makes another noise, does flinch a little this time. It’s too cold out here for the likes of them. He’ll get her back inside with him, yet.
“I hate you,” she says, strangled. Her cheeks are dry; she’s not crying. Today, she’s not crying. “I hate you, you know? I hate you.”
When he tugs her just a little closer, still, her head slips off his, and she slumps into him. There’s her breath at his throat, bleeding hotly in his skin, spreading under his clothes, too. She shivers when he rubs a thumb into her back, breathes in through her mouth, leans closer, still. She twitches, shakes, but she’s not crying. Slowly but surely, she settles down.
“I don’t like the people you hang out with,” Luka says, then.
Hyuna reels back. He’s still holding on to her, but she’s stronger than him, rips free even as he follows her, palm hitting the stone tiles with the force of her lunge. He breathes, pants, heart racing. Laughs when he sees her wide, wild eyes, her crinkled brow, her bared teeth. She’s so beautiful. Oh, she’s so, so beautiful. God, she’s so beautiful.
“What,” he pants, “did you think I didn’t know? That I didn’t notice? That you were hiding it from me? Please.”
It’s so audible, the way she swallows. He crawls closer to her in the cold. His hands are shaking. He doesn’t have to look to know how blue his fingers are under the cold starlight; that his lips are faring much the same. Hyuna squeezes her eyes shut.
“It’s okay,” he murmurs. “I’ll forgive you. I haven’t told anyone, and I don’t intend to. It’s okay. Can we go back inside? Will you go to sleep with me? Please? It’s okay. I’ll forgive you, okay?”
When he crumples, she catches his face in her palm. By now, her skin feels warm again, but she’s probably cold, too, isn’t she? Of course she is. “You’re such an idiot,” she says, but there’s barely any venom in it, and barely any heat, either. She grabs him under the armpits and yanks him back upright with her, and everything is spinning, but Hyuna is right there, and she’s real, and she’s human, and she’s alive, and she’s safe. Like this, in his arms, she’s safe. Luka will keep her safe. He’ll—
“I can’t,” he says, when she hauls his arm over her shoulders, when she tugs and kicks the door open and nudges them back inside. The darkness of the staircase swallows them whole, but it is warmer here. “I can’t keep you safe if you do stuff like that, Hyuna. I—”
“Shut your mouth,” she says, and then nothing else. The stairs creak a little under their combined weight. She fishes his keys out of his pocket when they’re in front of the door to his apartment, then pushes them inside, kicking the door shut behind them and discarding the keys on the shoe rack. The light is so, so, so bright when she turns it on, when she slips out from under him. “I’m going to take a shower. Don’t disturb me.”
And then she’s gone, disappeared into the living room, and then down the hall into the bathroom, steps pitter-pattering. Luka adjusts the lights in the apartment to dim them a little, then slips into his bedroom to lie down, to burrow under a blanket, to breathe, to wait for his heart rate to slow. From here, he can hear the rattle of the water in the shower. From here, when he closes his eyes, he can imagine her just like that: unraveled in his shower, in their shower, hair slick with it. She’ll smell like his shampoo more strongly again, now.
Don’t disturb me, she says, and yet, she’ll stay here. And yet, she’ll have to wear Luka’s clothes once she gets out since she doesn’t really take care of hers that he brought her, and she’ll slip into Luka’s bed, too, because she’ll check up on him, she’ll have to. She’s worried about him, after all. She’s always worried about him.
He reaches out for the ceiling and closes his hand around nothing. There are no stars to be seen from here.