Chapter Text
Seonghyeon is seething.
His pillow is clamped over his head, both his arms crossed over it so tightly the threat of cramps in his forearms begins creeping up on him. It does nothing, absolutely nothing, to soothe his nerves.
It’s two in the morning, he knows because the numbers on the clock his roommate had installed on the wall earlier this semester are glaring at him red, glowing in the dark and taunting him with every tick. Seonghyeon is sick, he’s got the flu or some shit—his hair is plastered to his forehead, his t-shirt stuck to his spine, and yet, he’s still shivering because somehow, at some point in his feverish sleep, he kicked his blanket clean off the bed. It’s a bit of a war tug against himself really, the room is cold, courtesy of December rolling in, but his body is overheating as if it was trying to chase winter away all by itself, and he’s stuck in the middle trying to cater to both whims.
He grunts to himself when his roommate’s breath catches in his throat, a sound akin to a growl coming out of him and traveling all the way to Seonghyeon’s ears. It’s not even aggressive snoring, if anything, it’s a soft, rhythmic rumble, but it’s still noise and it’s noise that’s scraping right at the insides of Seonghyeon’s sensitive ear canal. The guy’s bed is on the other side of the room, a full stretch of linoleum and two mismatched desks away, but still, Seonghyeon finds a way to despise him for it.
Seonghyeon thinks he’s a pretty flexible person. He bends and twists to accommodate the people around him, half out of leftover fear from his father berating him his entire childhood over manners and fairness, half out of hope they would take pity on him and do the same. Thing is, living in a dorm has taught him one thing his father failed to fucking mention—people tend to lack the most basic modicum of decency, which okay, to each their own, but also, it’s been pissing Seonghyeon off to the point of tears lately.
His asshole roommate didn’t bother to throw out his takeout container. It’s somewhere on the floor near the trash can, the lid half open and leaking some red bubbly liquid, marinating the air in the scent of sour sauce and chicken, or duck, he doesn’t know. The room smells greasy, so much so that even with his sinuses blocked, thick and useless from a lingering cold, the smell cuts through, impossible to brush off.
Seonghyeon can handle some innocent snoring and food in his room, he can stomach unexpected sickness, he can clamp his eyes shut and bite his tongue swollen if it means preserving some degree of peace. What he cannot handle however—what is currently making his vision blur with angry, feverish tears—is his fucking neighbor.
He hugs the pillow tighter over his face.
Music blasts through the shared thin wall, an alternative rock track he knows so well, its distorted guitars scraping insistently at his skull. He can hear the bass vibrating through the brick–matter of fact, it seeps through the brick, through the frame of the bed, until he can feel it thrumming in his bones. There are voices too bleeding in with it, at least four of them overlapping in a loud, rude, swell of cackling laughter and conversations. Someone shouts, someone whoops back, and Seonghyeon has to clamp down hard to keep a distressed sound from escaping his own throat.
They’re on the bed, he knows they are, he’d caught a glimpse earlier in the semester when he was dragging himself back from the parking lot after an entire morning of unpacking and overbearing parents. The neighbor’s bed is shoved right up against the wall they share, the same identical placement as Seonghyeon’s, the same wall that now trembles with music and bodies shifting and springs creaking.
Seonghyeon is usually a pacifist, infuriatingly so for his friends. Under normal circumstances and if he weren’t nauseous and teary-eyed and on the brink of actual homicide, he would’ve just shrugged it off and put his earplugs in without any second thought.
He tried doing that, obviously, but with the noise dulled, all that remained was his own heart thumping heavy and loud in his chest, trying to escape through his ears. It made him dizzy, made his head hurt even more, and so, he ripped them out and flung them across the room with frustration snapping sharp in his chest, then resorted to the pillow.
If he weren’t so sensitive right now, he would’ve fought noise with noise and put on his own music. Something louder, something to drown out the wall, something more tasteful than whatever the hell is going on over there. But he knows himself too well, and himself will bend over and throw up upon the first beat drop. Go figure, the flu has scrambled his nerves.
Seonghyeon is usually a pacifist, infuriatingly so for his friends, but he isn’t a pushover, unfortunately for his pacifist father. If he weren’t this sick, he definitely would’ve stomped down the hall and pounded on the guy’s door until the hinges rattled. Hell, if he had even a fraction more strength, he would’ve just pushed his way inside and shut Radiohead up himself. Who even plays Radiohead with so many people around? Seonghyeon remembers a conversation about the very specific setting required for a Radiohead song to play, and this one doesn’t begin to fit at all–it seems as if the guy’s morals didn’t make the trip, and it’s making Seonghyeon sicker by the second.
Fucking Radiohead. He is not in the mood for fucking Radiohead. They make him all mellow and sad.
Thom Yorke’s voice drifts through the wall and something inside Seonghyeon’s chest tightens–-through the fever, through the nausea and through the pounding noise he’s fully aware in his frenzy that this time around it has nothing to do with the flu. Because he knows that voice, he knows that record, he knows the crackle of vinyl before the first note, knows the way it blooms slow and aching, knows it the way he knows the cadence of Keonho’s breathing when he’s asleep.
Seonghyeon pointedly ignores the way his heartbeat starts to stutter and climb. Instead, he pats the mattress blindly, searching for his phone without having to lift his head because there’s a migraine crouched behind his eyes, claws dug in and ready to pounce. His fingers brush cold metal near his hip after a while–finally–and then promptly knock it off the edge of the bed. Seonghyeon groans, miserable, and forces himself to reach down after it, the movement sending a dull spike through his skull. Somewhere in the process, his pillow gets shoved off too, and he leaves it abandoned on the floor.
He retrieves his phone, flops back down on his mattress, and brings it to his face. The screen flares to life, brutally bright, and it feels like it burns straight through his retinas. Seonghyeon winces, squinting hard as he swipes to unlock it—only for it to buzz stubbornly in his hand, the blatant rejection pushing him closer to a nervous breakdown. He has to type the password manually because Face ID doesn’t recognize a sweaty, half-dead him at 2:13 a.m. Great.
He ignores the ache of the reminder, he should change his password.
Seonghyeon
genuinely
if you don’t turn that shit down immediately
that dogshit horseshit shit from the butt shit music
im reporting your ass again
it’s two in the morning you fucking inconsiderate piece of shit
The reply is almost immediate.
Ahn Keonho
payback for all those nights u kept screaming at whoever joohan is over voc
it’s about time you learn that actions have consequences.
Seonghyeon’s eye twitches, head throbbing. Keonho knows Juhoon, he’s been the RA on duty for a whole week, something about staff shortage or whatever and Seonghyeon has reported him a bunch of times for noise in the last three days already, and Juhoon does wellness checks on Keonho every other night (not solely on Seonghyeon’s account, mostly). Of course he knows Juhoon, he might be closer to Juhoon than he is to Seonghyeon now, and that’s something to say.
Just as he begins typing curses, fingers battering frantically on his screen in sync with his quickening heartbeat, another text appears, making him still completely, eye blowing wider around another nervous twitch.
And Btw
clear the fridge
you're hogging the entire thing
Seonghyeon
fucking asshole
it’s juhoon
and ill stop screaming when you fucking pay for all that food of mine that’s apparently hogging the fridge THAT YOU STEAL EVERY DAY
Ahn Keonho
alr lil bro
enjoy radiohead
its playing from my 300$ turntable
ill skip no surprises for you
Seonghyeon sits up so abruptly his vision blacks out for half a second, pain flaring behind his eyelids.
Seonghyeon
I bought that fucking turntable
seen 2:16 A.M
He lies back down, defeated and angry, when Keonho doesn’t text back. The passing cars outside cast rectangles of yellows across the brick wall, light sliding and disappearing in slow intervals–his eyes catch on the movement, and he loses himself to it for a while, trying to get his mind off the outburst waiting to happen.
Through the wall, Yorke’s voice bleeds into his side of hell, thin, haunting and so familiar. Seonghyeon’s chest stutters the way it used to when Keonho would lean in too close, when their shoulders brushed and neither of them moved away.
It’s entirely too much, having Keonho so close. It’s the floor of a different room cities away, it’s shared headphones, it’s silence that isn’t so hostile. It’s Keonho looking at him with those big hazel eyes, lighter when the afternoon sun would shine on them, expressive and open and overflowing with easy affection. It’s next-door. Except now, Seonghyeon is forbidden from all it, Keonho’s presence, his gaze, his voice. Something inside Seonghyeon calcifies, the ache turns solid, settling behind his ribs again.
It takes a while before people start shuffling out of Keonho’s room. He hears the door open at some point, then, laughter fading down the hallway, a final thud, and the low murmur of a goodbye. It takes a little while longer before the tonearm lifts, and longer still before Seonghyeon’s mind settles, though it’s only a temporary relief.
In the silence, all he hears is his heart, and like clockwork, it makes him dizzy, like he’s shrinking inward on himself. The migraine blooms behind his eyes slowly, and he cannot avoid it any longer, really.
If he were to be completely honest, he’d say his soul aches every time it is reminded of what once was. Radiohead and vinyl collections and turntables and no surprises, Keonho, his best friend, his half and once his entire world. And Seonghyeon is an honest person, his mother used to always berate him for it, but to her relief, he is not always as honest, so he’d probably say it pisses him off that Keonho is next door after he had made it his life mission to avoid him forever, that he is flaunting the gifts Seonghyeon bought him in his face, and that he remembers Seonghyeon cannot listen to no surprises.
Fucking hell.
Seonghyeon doesn’t sleep, at least not until the sun rises, and even then, it barely counts—minutes after he’d started drifting into a somewhat comfortable sleep, devoid of headaches and upset stomachs, Martin is calling, telling him to meet for breakfast at their usual spot.
He hadn’t planned on leaving his bed for another couple hours at least, not until his only class of the day all the way into the evening, but Martin couldn’t really spend over twelve hours alone in his apartment without spiralling and he doesn’t really have the courage to be by himself in a café either apparently and he has a way of ruining Seonghyeon’s plans and Seonghyeon has a way of always showing up anyway, because Martin is his friend, and because lately, Seonghyeon doesn’t see him as much anymore. So he swallows his pain and gets dressed, hoping today would be kinder.
Seonghyeon is sitting at a café on campus–the one they first had breakfast in upon moving here and the day after and so on and on, until they found themselves in here every other day– with his laptop open in front of him, editing software pulled up and timeline stretched across the display in meaningless segments. The brightness is turned all the way up, but it’s useless against the sun’s glare spilling in through those floor to ceiling glass windows. It washes everything out, reduces his work to faint shapes and colors he has to squint to make sense of, and even then.
There’s a glass of orange juice by his elbow, condensation gathering and slipping down the sides, leaving a damp ring against the table. He’d ordered it offhandedly, ignoring the puzzled look Martin had given him—his stomach was constantly upset, and so, with the current state of affairs, Seonghyeon doubted he would be able to get anything else down. Seonghyeon doesn’t even drink orange juice, what he really wants is coffee, dark and scalding and strong enough to cut through the fog in his head, or maybe alcohol, an entire mug of vodka that would burn on the way down and leave him feeling less like this cracked shell of a human being.
The timeline should’ve at the very least started making sense by now. It doesn’t, not at all—he’s been going over the same clips for the past twenty minutes, dragging the cursor back and forth and watching the same few seconds replay until they lose all shape and intention. He was already too aware of what the problem was before he even got to delude himself into hope. Still, he checks again for the nth time, imagining the red going green just this time. Just this time, he wishes things would right themselves and he wouldn’t have to twist and stretch himself thinner than he could.
Well they don’t.
Half the mics were off, and it’s his fault for trusting James with the technicalities, really, but he was desperate and overwhelmed and only Theater Production Major James was available for a last second reshoot. It’s not even subtle enough to work around, the camera audio input was never turned on, hell, the camera itself wasn’t for a good portion of the scene, but that was fine, Seonghyeon still had the original shots and they were good enough–however, the whole reasoning behind this mess of a reshoot was to get the initial fractured audiotrack to smoothen out, and what was there to recover if nothing was even recorded? He stares at the clips he had planned perfectly, watches the expressions and gestures he had sketched down with vicious focus, reads the script he had written and deleted and written and deleted off the actors’ lips. It could’ve worked, matter of fact it should’ve worked. But all of it is sitting there with nothing underneath, hollow and completely useless.
Across from him, Martin snickers, and when Seonghyeon looks up, face already hardened, Martin is laughing at him.
“What’s so funny?” He snaps, a sharp scowl carving into his features.
“Nothing at all,” Martin says, still grinning with all his teeth. “Please resume your fruitful work.”
Seonghyeon drops his forehead to the edge of the table with a tired grunt, eyes landing on his scuffed sneakers.
He’d barely slept, and everything was catching up to him cruelly fast. His heart has been lodged at the base of his throat for days on end, a catastrophic mix of anxiety and sickness and exhaustion and something strangely Keonho-shaped.
He doesn’t even mean to think about him, but he’s there anyway, threading himself through Seonghyeon’s every thought like smoke. Usually, Seonghyeon could shove The Silence After™ to the back of his mind and drown it out with noise and motion. But now, with Keonho right there, just a wall away—well, he couldn’t really ignore it any longer, could he?
His fingers twitch slightly where they rest against the table, then curl tight around the edges just to have something solid to hold onto. It doesn’t work, so he sits back up straight on his chair and stares blankly at a spot somewhere behind Martin. Countless images flash in his mind, most of which are his room, here and back home, a classroom and a lecture hall, some pizza slices too, sushi, bbq chicken–it’s only registering now that he hasn’t had a proper meal in days, maybe two.
Martin says he looks like shit, which he had already said when he first saw him, and it’s irritating that he’s saying it twice. Seonghyeon says his homework is pissing him off and opens his laptop again.
“You’re a film student, your homework consists of watching—I don’t know, like Pulp Fiction or something.” Martin mutters in response, drumming his pen on a book mindlessly, his own laptop open. He’s got a bunch of stickers on there, it looks cool, Seonghyeon thinks of getting some of his own. “It can’t be that hard to bullshit your way through an open-ended essay.”
Seonghyeon thinks longingly of his bed, of the dip in the mattress molded to his body. He thinks of the leftover açaí waiting for him in the fridge, perfectly sweet and cold–he also thinks of a way to sneak into Martin’s apartment and steal his beloved synthesizer so he has a taste of Seonghyeon’s misery, maybe then he’ll stop belittling him, that asshole.
“Well you’re a music major bro,” he shoots back. “Unless you have better than that noise pollution on your SoundCloud to offer, neither of us is gonna be employed by the end of this shit.”
“Right.” Martin nods sagely, as if they’d both contributed something of equal value to the conversation. Then, without warning, he kicks Seonghyeon’s shin under the table.
Seonghyeon jerks with a sharp groan, pain flaring in his leg. It takes a second before he hits Martin back, even harder.
“At least I’m creating something instead of writing ten page essays on the importance of color grading in fuckass Red Notice or whatever–” Martin hits him again. “How are you studying cinema and focusing on soulless ass commercial movies, huh?”
He admits there’s some truth to the criticism, even if it stings a little. Part of him reluctantly understands why commercial films have their place in the curriculum, they’re technically good—but Seongheyon can’t shake the feeling that something important is being overlooked in favor of box office appeal and marketability and all that. It does leave him slightly frustrated every time he walks out of a discussion on another one of those, feeling like his time is wasted on the evident, but thankfully for him and sadly for Martin, it’s not all he fucking does.
“Oh really? At least half my assignments don’t involve tweaking the same four chords endlessly. They’re sucking your creativity away man.” Seonghyeon starts, “How’s that revolutionary lofi beat coming along, genius?”
They trade a few more half-hearted kicks under the table, both of them muttering insults. After a moment, Martin’s grin fades into something closer to a faint smirk, and it’s enough to make Seonghyeon’s face drop. He recognizes that face, how could he not when it’s all Martin’s been pulling lately.
Oh god.
It’s always like this with Martin anyway–he always finds a way, somehow, to bring the conversation back around to Keonho. Seonghyeon knows Martin thinks everything about it is unfair, he’s told him before when the wound was still fresh, on an angry whim, that he had been an asshole and that it would take a lot for everyone involved to forget and forgive and Seonghyeon went with it. He internalized it, blind to any rationale, and labeled himself the asshole, and in a way, it wasn’t the grand sacrifice he sometimes felt it was, because Martin was right.
It has always been the three of them, Seonghyeon would also make it his life mission to reconcile his two best friends if they ever had a falling out. But it doesn’t compare. Martin doesn’t begin to know how complicated this is, and Seonghyeon will never tell him, he never will, not unless his eyes stop watering every time he thinks about it.
“Is this about Keonho?” He asks, dropping his gaze back onto Seonghyeon, all previous laughter and ease forgotten.
Seonghyeon makes a noise in the back of his throat, feigning confusion and praying he could get out of this one, too. “What about Keonho?”
“You being bitchy and looking like shit.” Martin says, gesturing to Seonghyeon’s face. “It’s usually because of Keonho.”
Seonghyeon wants to deny and say it’s just the flu wearing him down, but, Martin is right, he’s embarrassingly right from beginning to end, but what does it make of Seonghyeon if he agrees? He has to fight it a little bit, at least, to keep some of his pride and dignity intact.
It has been three months of war between Keonho and Seonghyeon—since the very day they had moved into neighboring dorm rooms and everything between them had detonated.
Seonghyeon knew of Keonho’s pettiness, he’d seen it before, always directed at other people, but he hadn’t expected him to be so childish, had even less expected it to be directed at him. For three months straight, Seonghyeon had only slept full nights on occasion, mostly when Keonho was sleeping over at Martin’s, or staying out until morning. He’d wake up every other night at odd hours to the rumble of a heavy bass, or jolt out of a dream to a door slamming with very deliberate strength, unable to fall back asleep for hours afterwards. For three months, his food has been disappearing from the communal fridge—his prepped meals and milkshakes he budgeted around, throwing off his entire routine. For three months, Seonghyeon endured his little attitude, all of it from the cold shoulder and eye-rolls to the mean muttered curses Seonghyeon could hear perfectly fine.
Seonghyeon had taken it all without fully fighting back. He snapped a few times, sure–raised his voice, slammed a door of his own, made the wall rattle too, attempted to sabotage laundry–but he always pulled back, because every time the anger rose hot in his chest, a colder counterpart, a voice in his head whispered the truth. The truth that he had done this, all of it, that he had ruined everything, and that this was what he deserved.
For three months, Seonghyeon had accepted Keonho’s tricks as payback for fucking them up.
Three months of this silent, vicious stalemate, and Seonghyeon still couldn’t bring himself to admit out loud how much it was eating at him, couldn't bring himself to acknowledge how deeply Keonho still affected him, how much power he still held, and how much Seonghyeon hated himself for missing the version of Keonho that used to look at him with warmth instead of bone-deep icy contempt.
Because beneath all the irritation, there was guilt. Thick, suffocating guilt that sat in his stomach heavy like lead. He had fucked them up—really, thoroughly fucked them up, and so, Keonho had every right to be angry and more so every right to make his life hell.
But did it have to be this personal?
Seonghyeon holds Martin’s stare. Then he sighs, defeated and ready to take whatever the lord bestows upon him. “He’s doing everything he can to fucking annoy me. And it was fine at first cause I thought he’d fucking grow out of it, eventually, but he’s so fucking tenacious, so now I regret not moving rooms when I still fucking could.” He spits out before taking an aggressive sip of his bitter orange juice, eyes looking everywhere but Martin’s face.
Martin giggles dramatically, and Seonghyeon is now sure this whole outing was planned to anger him. “Bro, honest to god, you deserve that shit. It’s crazy how the universe works.”
Seonghyeon doesn’t laugh. He looks at Martin for a long time, long enough for the laughter to die in Martin’s throat and for discomfort to creep across his face. Martin starts squirming under the weight of his stare, swallowing hard, eyes darting back to his screen as if it could save him.
Worst part is he isn’t even wrong. Seonghyeon brought this upon himself.
He could still remember the exact moment everything between him and Keonho had shattered right in between his own two cruel hands. It had taken one moment where the easy way out glowed golden outside Keonho’s bedroom door, for Seonghyeon to bolt instead of facing what was growing, what had already grown out of the roots running a decade back. He had hurt Keonho. Badly. And now Keonho was making sure Seonghyeon felt every ounce of that pain in the most annoying, petty, relentless ways possible.
A quiet, perhaps masochistic part of Seonghyeon almost welcomed it, somewhere in the dark back of his mind—because as long as Keonho was still angry, as long as he was still putting this much effort into making Seonghyeon miserable, it meant he hadn’t completely moved on, it meant Seonghyeon still mattered enough to hate.
Martin’s voice rises again, a panicked edge to it and it pulls Seonghyeon out of his thoughts.
“Okay. You really look like you’re about to cry and I’d rather you don’t do that in public.” He sits up abruptly, leaning across the table as if his proximity alone could somehow stop the impending breakdown. Fucking dumbass. “I’m trying to impress the barista here, Seonghyeon, please don’t cry I can’t—”
Seonghyeon’s eyes narrow at the accusation.“I’m not gonna cry over Keonho. This isn’t fucking middle school.” Seonghyeon snaps, though the wet sniffle that follows betrays him. “And why the fuck are you trying to impress that thirty year old man?”
“Might as well be with the way you’re acting.” Martin shoots back, completely ignoring Seonghyeon’s question, the one really important part of all of this, really. “And lay off saying ‘fuck’ for a while bro it’s not helping your case.”
Seonghyeon lets out a weak snort, rubbing at his stinging eyes with the heel of his hand, although he’s embarrassed to the bone. “Don’t you ever have any comforting words to offer a struggling friend?”
“I’ve used them all up man. You already know what I’m gonna say.”
“No I don’t.”
Yes he does. He’s heard it a billion times.
“Okay.” Martin smiles, tight-lipped, far too knowing, and ready to repeat himself yet another time. “You are in love with Keonho, and it’s hurting you that he’s not talking to you, and that he’s treating you like shit, so you act like you hate him instead. But it’s not really working, is it.”
Seonghyeon’s stomach twists. “You’re ridiculous.”
Martin ignores him again, barreling forward with his babbling. “Thing is, it’s all your fault that you’re not talking because you went and pushed him away the one time he least expected it.”
Seonghyeon makes another pained sound, fingers flying to rub against his forehead. “Stop talking.”
“So really, it’s either you apologize, or you seam what you reap man. Not my rules.”
Seonghyeon’s lips twitches despite everything. “You fucking dumbwit. It’s you reap what you saw.”
Martin shrugs, completely unbothered and Seonghyeon closes his eyes, letting his head fall back against the chair. Martin’s words keep echoing in his skull.
“And I'm not in love with him. He’s my best friend.”
Martin has done nothing to help him. Not today and not six months ago when Seonghyeon had made Keonho cry.
He understands, mostly. Seonghyeon could be stubborn, but he wasn’t cruel. He knew that if their roles had been reversed, he would’ve held it against Martin for the rest of his life if he had picked sides. So he wholly gets it, really.
Still, it stings. Martin hadn’t picked sides, technically—but he had gone radio silent with Seonghyeon for two full weeks while he stayed by Keonho’s side, nursing his broken heart. When Martin finally showed up at his door, the first thing out of his mouth had been a furious “Get your shit together and fix this.” Seonghyeon’s only answer had been a flat, stubborn “No.”
In general, though, Martin had stayed neutral, fair, and impartial. Seonghyeon couldn’t even blame him for that.
He wished Martin would help now, with this stupid, endless cold war they were trapped in. But even Seonghyeon himself doesn’t know how to begin untangling the mess he’d created. He briefly thinks about going to Juhoon instead, but quickly dismisses the idea. Juhoon would probably just tell him to fuck right off and stop being a coward and he’d be right. The truth is painfully simple—Seonghyeon is the only one who could fix this, and that alone makes it ten times harder, because Seonghyeon is not simple.
Because he is itching, physically aching, to talk to Keonho again. He misses their old routine so badly it hurts. He longs for the quiet evenings they shared in each others’ rooms doing this and that, dreams of the way Keonho’s laugh used to fill rooms. He is dying to see Keonho’s face soften again, to have those warm eyes look at him with the same old unadulterated affection and devotion. Seonghyeon wants to hug Keonho, to bury his face in his neck and breathe him in like he used to before when they were alone on his bed, wants to touch him without feeling like he’s doing something he no longer had the right to.
But he can’t. He can’t because every time he imagines reaching out, the guilt slams into him like a brick wall. He can’t because he’d be an asshole for it.
Now, that absence has carved out a hollow, painful void inside his chest that is far bigger than the fear of loving his best friend had ever been.
Months ago, when he had first started realizing that his feelings for Keonho had crossed the line from friendship into something else, something he didn’t want and had never wanted, he had panicked, had distanced himself overnight, giving short replies and canceling plans and avoiding eye contact and shutting Keonho out. He had been scared shitless of what it meant, terrified of ruining their friendship, terrified of losing Keonho if he ever found out. Horrified at the thought of Keonho leaving him first.
So he went ahead and lost him still.
On a lonely night, after weeks of Keonho downright begging him to show his face, Seonghyeon had dragged himself to Keonho’s house. He had hugged his mother tightly and buried his face in her shoulder for a minute longer, hoping her scent alone would give him the courage to go and break her son’s heart. He swallowed the sour spoonful of sauce she insisted he taste, forcing a grateful smile even though it made his tongue curl. Then he had ruffled his sister’s hair and let himself be hit back instead of dodging like he normally would. He even crouched down to scratch under the puppy’s chin, letting the excited little dog lick at his fingers while its tail thumped wildly against the floor. Keonho’s father wasn’t home, and Seonghyeon was glad to have one less spectator.
The climb up the stairs to Keonho’s room had been agonizingly slow, slow enough for Seonghyeon’s every step to echo with dread, his heart hammering in his chest the higher he went. And so he quickened his pace before he could chicken out, reached Keonho’s room, slung the door open, and stayed there, standing upright like a pole with a stick rammed up its ass. Keonho was sitting on the edge of his bed, headphones around his neck. The second he saw Seonghyeon, his big eyes lit up with obvious relief. He stood up quickly, a small, hopeful smile breaking across his face.
Seonghyeon’s chest tightened. He hated how happy Keonho looked just to see him after weeks of being ignored. It made Seonghyeon want to drop everything–every wrong intuition and every stupid rule and every prepared sentence, just to prove Keonho right, to not make him feel dumb for smiling. But the unease came back like clockwork, gnawing at his heartstrings.
Keonho took a step closer, confusion creeping into his expression when Seonghyeon didn’t move to greet him like usual. “What’s going on?”
Seonghyeon looked at the floor for a moment, then forced his sticky lips apart, to speak his lie into life.
“I think we may need some distance for a while.” He starts, voice nowhere near as certain as he had wished it would be. “A lot of it. For a long time.”
Seonghyeon looked up in time to catch Keonho blinking, his smile fading fast. “What do you mean, distance?”
“I just…need space,” Seonghyeon said, reciting the excuse he had rehearsed. “Things have been really stressful lately with school and exams and my parents. My head’s all over the place. I think it’s better if we hang out less for now. So I can focus.”
Keonho stared at him, visibly confused. “That’s it?” His voice went up an octave, but he wasn’t angry. “You’ve been avoiding me for weeks because of stress? Seonghyeon, we’ve always helped each other with that stuff. Why are you suddenly pushing me away like this?” He pouted, something Seonghyeon would’ve deemed dramatic any other day.
Seonghyeon swallowed hard, refusing to meet Keonho’s eyes for too long. “It’s not sudden. I’ve just been thinking maybe it’s healthier if I handle some things on my own right now.”
Keonho’s shoulders dropped. He looked lost, and Seonghyeon could tell he wasn’t buying it, not at all. “Did I do something wrong? If I said something that bothered you, just tell me. We’ve been best friends for years—-you can talk to me.”
Seonghyeon powered through the ache and the burn, “You’re draining me,” He lied through gritted teeth. “Being around you, dealing with your constant texts and your need to hang out all the time—you need too much of my attention, Keonho. It’s exhausting and it’s taking too much of my energy and I can’t focus on what actually matters anymore. I need to cut out the distractions. And right now that’s you.” He talked fast, preferring to get it over with it.
Keonho stared at him, eyes widening in shock and expression twisting into a mix of hurt and anger and Seonghyeon gets it. “Distractions?” Keonho’s voice rose, sharp and unsteady at the edges. “Why am I a distraction to you, what—“
Seonghyeon didn’t back down. “Yeah. That’s what it feels like lately.”
“If you needed space, you could’ve just said that. When did I ever hold you back from what actually matters?” Keonho’s face quickly grew red with emotion. “What the fuck are you talking about, Seonghyeon?”
Seonghyeon didn’t say anything back, instead, he clenched his fists, his own frustrations bubbling up to the surface. But Keonho was faster to talk.
“I was there for you every single time you needed me–when you were injured and couldn’t do jackshit for weeks and I brought you food and sat with you and fed you. When you fought with your parents, I let you crash at my place for days and that’s okay, I liked doing those things for you–fuck that, it doesn’t matter!” He said, arms flailing around as he talked. “We did everything together, every single little and big thing.” Keonho listed off his fingers, anger rising. “And now you’re acting like I’m some annoying leech who’s been wasting your time?” His voice cracked, but he kept going, eyes bright with tears and defiance.
And so what? Seonghyeon did the same and more–he was there for Keonho in ways he wouldn’t even understand if he tried. He hated that he had to be the one to step away to preserve what Keonho could afford to take for granted, hated that staying close meant eroding himself bit by bit, smiling tight-lipped through something that felt increasingly unbearable, pretending that the proximity wasn’t ruining him. There was no version of this where he won–it was either he kept Keonho and lost himself, or he told the truth and risked losing him altogether–and Keonho, in all his anger, in all his certainty, couldn’t even see it. That was the worst part, somehow, Seonghyeon could do with the distance and the fear of losing him, but this cruel, gnawing realization that everything Keonho was demanding from he could never give without breaking something irreparable inside himself made him sick.
It used to be so easy, turning a blind eye to the ticking bomb inside. It used to be so easy when Keonho’s attention could slip past him like background chatter, when love was just something other people did, away from him there where he wouldn’t see. It used to be so easy bending himself into impossible angles trying to match Keonho’s speed; Seonghyeon had to learn, reluctantly, how to sit beside him without reaching, how to let him drift through conversations about other people without wanting to throw up, how to swallow down the need to be chosen by him and no one else.
“Seonghyeon. We’re going to college together in a couple months, we’re roommates, we literally fought your parents for so long just so you could go there and study what you love.” His breath hitched, quieter now, but more desperate for it. “With me. And Martin.
Seonghyeon felt the burn in his eyes. Keonho had done nothing wrong, and yet, Seonghyeon felt bitter about it all. Above everything else, he felt it would be easier falling back into his bad ways and falling in bed with Keonho right there, no matter the voice in his head wondering what it meant, wondering when he would be pushed away from the sheets for someone else to take his place again and again.
“Is it because I said that I used to be in love with you back then?” He started again, voice smaller and shakier. “Is it because you’re disgusted?”
Seonghyeon’s heart flipped in his chest, before plummeting straight to the storm in his stomach.
“Of course not,” he said, breathing a little ragged. “You know I’m not like that.”
“Then if I’m such a problem, why didn’t you say something sooner? Why let me keep texting you like an idiot, worrying about you every day?”
Seonghyeon remained stiff, jaw locked. The guilt was burning a hole in his chest, but he forced himself to double down.
“Because I didn’t want to hurt your feelings.”
Keonho shut up. He shut up, swallowing down his anger and fighting the tears threatening to spill over from the edges of his eyes, his long eyelashes barely holding them back. He shut up, and he looked at Seonghyeon with all the hurt feelings in the world and Seonghyeon took a long look at his pained face and spun around before his own could explode.
Seonghyeon’s heart clenches at the memory. Next door, Keonho is silent for the first night in a while. Seonghyeon wonders—what if he finally talked to him? What the hell would he even say? He closes his eyes and pictures it:
He is standing awkwardly in the middle of Keonho’s dorm room—the room he has yet to step foot in—with his hands clasped tightly in front of him, eyes glued to his socks like a child being scolded.
“I’m sorry I stopped talking to you,” he imagines himself saying, voice small. “I was kind of falling in love with you. And I couldn’t handle it. Don’t worry though, I cut that shit clean off. So we can be best friends again. Sorry.”
In his head, Keonho stands up slowly, walks over, and starts punching him in the face repeatedly without ever saying a word back.
Seonghyeon lets out a frustrated groan and aggressively rubs both hands up and down his face, as if he could scrub the pathetic fantasy out of his brain.
His roommate shoots him a concerned look from across the room. Seonghyeon ignores it.
The worst part isn’t even the violence—he’d let Keonho beat him bloody if he ever wanted to—it’s the terrifying possibility that Keonho might just stare at him in silence instead. It’s the thought that he would quietly tell him to get the fuck out, or worse yet—that he might believe him, and they’d go back to being “best friends” while Seonghyeon slowly suffocates under the weight of his feelings. Back to ground zero.
Seonghyeon turns in his bed to face the wall, heart in his throat for the twelfth night in a row.
It takes about two days for the anger to come back, tenfold.
Keonho keeps eating Seonghyeon’s food—which okay, nothing new—but there is only so much punishment one person can swallow before they start choking on it and Seonghyeon wishes he was choking on his fried rice instead of this headache-inducing irritation.
Seonghyeon can tell it’s Keonho stealing from his corner of the fridge because one, he literally admitted to it on several occasions without a hint of guilt, two, he always sees the fucker in the communal area with his nose deep in a plate of something Seonghyeon made. Same as right now.
It’s late at night, and Seonghyeon is exhausted from his shift—upon dragging his heavy limbs up three flights of stairs and stumbling into the kitchen with his only intention being to grab a banana off the counter, he sees Keonho sitting at the table in the middle of the room, shoulders curved inwards and elbow planted firmly on the wood, with the big overhead light shining upon his hunched down figure like a spotlight, like an orchestrated cruel theatrically charged scene. The rest of the room remains swallowed in shadows, unmoving and enticing, it makes Seonghyeon want to curl up on the floor in a dark corner and sleep for a long while, and it’s a strangely peaceful sight—if not for the nightmare playing out in the midst of it.
It wouldn’t even be a far-fetched theory, that this is a cruel joke. Seonghyeon can picture it perfectly, Keonho standing at the window earlier for whatever reason, watching him trudge down the path like a zombie, the gears rearing up in his head, and the ultimate decision to bring his good little stunt to life, you know, the finishing blow to Seonghyeon’s shit day and the satisfying ending to Keonho’s.
Seonghyeon breathes through his nose as some sort of distress sticks to the back of his throat. He is worn out to the point of irrationality, and the first sign of his descent into hell was the probing urge he’s been fighting since a couple minutes ago, the one telling him to punch Keonho’s face in.
“Throw it back up. I don’t care,” Seonghyeon spits out, voice meaner than he initially intended. The muscles in the lower half of his face quiver, strained by the pressure of his clenched jaw.
Keonho is sick, properly sick, almost as sick as Seonghyeon has been up until a night ago. His nose is runny, forcing out constant pitiful sniffles out of him that echo loudly in the quiet lounge and louder still in Seonghyeon’s head. Fever paints his cheeks a soft pink that makes him look strangely small and vulnerable—attainable, as if he weren’t the devil in Seonghyeon’s storyline. He thinks distantly that he might’ve given him his flu through the vents, or something, and he doesn’t feel guilty about it one bit.
Seonghyeon looks down at him from across the table, and Keonho looks back up through his long lashes and over those new, cheap square prescription glasses he probably got for five dollars at some random corner store—and he’s pulling them off too, although they keep slipping down the bridge of his nose and he keeps nudging them back up like it’s nothing, as if he weren’t aware of Seonghyeon’s heart throbbing in his chest from the sight of them alone, from the reminder, from being pulled years back down memory lane by the scruff of his neck to be made a voyeur to a Keonho he had crushed to smithereens—wearing the same glasses, with the same perpetually blushing cheeks shadowed by the same long lashes—the one who had once held unparalleled gentleness for Seonghyeon, who had known how to soften for him, who had been kinder. And he isn’t aware, he isn’t and he might never be.
Seonghyeon is so angry he doesn’t know what to do with any of it.
“My stomach’s upset, ask again and I might.” Keonho says hoarsely, dismissively, already reaching for the spoon again with a weak and exasperated hand.
Seonghyeon moves faster. He yanks the entire plate toward himself across the table, a piece of chicken sliding off and smearing sauce all over the surface as it slides back right to the spot on the table in front of Keonho, who looks down at it with shock. Seonghyeon doesn’t care, Keonho can have that scrap if he’s so desperate.
“I’m just wondering what exactly makes you think it’s okay to eat somebody else’s food,” Seonghyeon says through gritted teeth, throat tightening from anger and other symptoms of something.
Keonho scoffs as he falls back against his chair and crosses his arms over his chest. Seonghyeon’s gaze involuntarily tracks the motion, lingering on the defined muscles of his forearms. The sight irritates him even more.
“Your mom literally texts me every other day asking if I liked the food,” Keonho replies, voice rough and nasal from the cold, a little irritated edge to it. “I’m just having what’s mine.”
Seonghyeon freezes.
“What.”
Keonho raises an eyebrow and pushes his slipping glasses back up with one finger. “I could tell her you’re not even giving me my share, but I’m not that fucking cruel now am I?” He snaps, face twisting in a mean, condescending scowl. Ouch. “She seems to think I still deserve it, somehow.”
Seonghyeon’s jaw clenches so tightly it hurts. His own mother is conspiring against him now, too. He is reminded, against his will, that she still thinks Keonho is her son’s best friend, probably believes that they were looking out for each other in a foreign city miles away, like she had hoped they would.
But they’re not. Seonghyeon realizes with a hollow clarity that he knows nothing about Keonho now, not whether he’s struggling to settle into his new life or unraveling beneath it, not whether he aches for home or has already learned how to live without it, not whether sleep comes easily or tortures him still, not whether his grades are rising or slipping or if he even cares, nothing at all except for meaningless constant of his playlist, unchanged. Keonho is no longer watching over him the way his mother still believes he does, no, he is doing quite the opposite, threading himself into the fragile seams of Seonghyeon’s life and pulling them tighter until they strain, until they threaten to split, and Seonghyeon is certain she would be delighted to hear all about it.
Seonghyeon is also reminded that he doesn’t care what his mother has to say about anything at all, it’s his food at the end of the day, and this meal in particular she has not prepared.
“I don’t give a fuck who tells you you can eat my stuff,” he snaps back, words tumbling out fast and venomous. “You don’t, not unless I explicitly allow you to. It’s my fucking food that I make for myself. Get your own mom to cook for you or learn to cook yourself, or pick up another shift and live off delivery or something—I don’t care,” Seonghyeon pauses for a second when he notices his voice climbing higher. He closes his eyes and breathes through his nose, trying to keep himself from reaching over the table and killing Keonho, he wouldn’t, never, but it doesn’t hurt to fantasize about the things he can’t have. “If I catch you eating my shit again, we’ll both be starving, asshole.”
Keonho raises both eyebrows, then dramatically pushes out his bottom lip in an exaggerated pout.
Seonghyeon’s brows knit together. He really, really wants to reach across the table and shove that lip back into place.
“No,” Keonho says simply.
Seonghyeon blinks. “Fuck you mean no?”
“Do you ever stop bullshitting?” Keonho whines as he pushes himself up from the chair, still visibly weak from the fever but refusing to yield even an inch. “You’re allergic to peanuts, Seonghyeon. You wouldn’t touch a strawberry to save your life, and you hate fish so much you gag everytime you open the goddamn freezer. And yet, somehow, all that shit magically pops out in here all the time.”
Right. Seonghyeon wants to shove the plate back at him and retreat to the safety of his bed. His soles stay rooted in the floor instead.
“Point being?” he grinds out, face not giving away the heat crawling up his body from the pit of his stomach.
“You’re pissing me the fuck off, it’s unbearable being around you,” Keonho says, honest as always, painfully, brutally honest. “It’s all for me!” He yells, apparently not thinking of their floormates, “You wake up every morning to make strawberry milkshakes that you never drink like you used to when I slept over, there’s peanut butter toast on the table because it’s my favorite, and there’s always fish stocked up in the freezer even though it makes you sick because the only meat I can eat is fucking fish,” He lists, arms moving frantically as he talks. “But sure, tell me again how I’m not allowed to eat any of it! It’s honestly impressive how committed you are to your own bullshit!”
Seonghyeon feels the air leave his lungs. One thing he has tried hard to push aside is how honest Keonho can be. More honest than him. It makes lying to him feel even more pathetic.
He does make all that food for Keonho. He makes it because some stupid, stubborn part of him still cares, even after he pushed his own feelings down and the boy himself away with those cruel words months ago, telling him he was a draining, suffocating, dead weight. Seonghyeon never stopped taking care of him in his own way. Every morning he wakes up earlier than necessary and blends the expensive strawberries he buys out of his hard-earned paycheck into two servings of milkshakes exactly—always forcing himself to power through the taste and leaving his own empty glass in the sink as proof. He stocks the freezer with the specific fish Keonho loves even though he always breathes through his mouth when standing in the aisle. He spreads peanut butter on toast although last time he ate one, he ended up in the hospital.
He does it because taking care of Keonho is muscle memory—it’s what he’s done for years, when they were close. Cooking for Keonho used to be comforting, impossibly rewarding when he enjoyed the silly recipes Seonghyeon came up with, amping up the compliments and big grins. Now it feels like a habit and a way of letting himself believe he still knew Keonho better than anyone. It’s a pathetic, secret apology he’ll never voice, too, and it’s a cruel, selfish way to keep some small piece of them alive even while he pretends he wants nothing to do with him.
And yet, every time Keonho actually eats the food meant for him, Seonghyeon gets furious, because it feels like Keonho is winning, because It feels like Keonho is taking without giving back, because it feels like he’s claiming Seonghyeon’s offering without accepting his reaching hand.
It’s a dumb thought. Seonghyeon’s hand is not reaching, it’s barely unglued from his side, and yet, he hopes Keonho would take notice and be kinder, somehow.
It makes the lie Seonghyeon told sound stupid, threadbare under even the lightest scrutiny, because how is he meant to insist that Keonho’s attention is draining him when he is still rising at dawn to make food with Keonho in mind and no one else, not even himself?
Anger has always been the easier refuge, the same reflex that once had him raising his voice at his parents before they could begin, striking first so he would not have to stand there and be seen, and it is no different now, because getting mad at Keonho for something as small as eating the food meant for him feels safer than admitting how deeply he misses him, and safer still than confessing the more dangerous thing beneath it, that some part of him has never stopped caring for him.
“I’m not a picky eater anymore,” he lies, voice tight and defensive. “And I literally drink my milkshakes. Same for the fish, I like fish, it’s great and it’s healthy.”
“What about the peanut butter?” Keonho presses immediately.
“It’s for everyone!” Seonghyeon says, his own voice rising before he can contain it. “Not my fault you get here before anyone else.”
“Juhoon never eats breakfast.”
“What part of ‘everyone’ do you not get?” Seonghyeon snaps again, sharper, running a restless hand through his hair.
“You hate everyone on this floor except him! And maybe me, a little,” He mumbles that last part to himself, but Seonghyeon hears him alright.
He has noticed that Keonho seems to think Seonghyeon doesn’t hate him as much as he lets on. Neither of them are stupid, Seonghyeon is aware, but right now, he doesn’t have it in him to dwell on the thought, because right now, he does hate Keonho.
Seonghyeon raises an eyebrow at his brazenness, his upper lip lifting into a repulsed scowl. “I hate you the most.”
Keonho swallows, eyes rolling back in their sockets before he lets his lids fall on top of them.
“Great,” he says with a tired, sing-song tone, already turning away. “I’ll shoot your mom a text about the fried rice. Goodnight.”
Seonghyeon’s eyebrows knot together at the mention of his mother again. “Sit your unserious ass back down. You’re not texting my mom shit while you’re busy robbing me blind like a rat.”
Keonho lets out a wounded laugh that turns into a really long cough. It’s a bit before he can speak again. “That’s a new one. You used to call me puppy, that ring a bell?” He chokes out, tearing up from all that theatrical coughing.
“Oh my god. Genuinely just go ahead and choke on the fucking food. You’re no puppy, you’re a fucking ogre, you’re a countryside mouse, you’re an invasive species, you’re the fuckass cockroach in the drawers—”
“Goodnight.” Keonho blinks, face blank, before walking away into the darkness of the hallway.
And just like that, it’s over, and Seonghyeon has lost, again.
He closes his eyes and drops heavily into the nearest chair. His hands come up to cover his face as exhaustion and shame crash over him all at once. He feels like a hypocrite. He wants to fix this. He wants to run away. He wants to disappear. He wants to sleep. He wants to go home. He wants to quit his job. He wants to drop out. He wants to sleep, badly.
He is so deep in his spiraling thoughts that he jumps in his seat when a calm voice cuts through the silence from the back of the lounge, making the chair’s legs scrape against the tile.
“He’s got a point.”
Seonghyeon whips around, heart jumping. He squints, trying to make sense of the horror; Juhoon is sitting at the table all the way in the back of the room, half-hidden in the shadows like some shady escroc, casually chewing on a sandwich.
“What?” Seonghyeon breathes out, voice cracking with frustration as his face falls again, weighted down by just about everything.
“No, because he’s right.” Juhoon shrugs, already hurriedly packing up the rest of his food. “I need to tell Martin about this. I can’t believe you spend all day bitching about him and then secretly cook for him the moment my back is turned. You don’t even cook for me.”
“How the fuck do you know Martin?”
“Doesn’t matter. See you around.” Juhoon says as he disappears into the hallway, too.
Seonghyeon stays on the chair for a while longer, mind spiraling into nothingness.
Seonghyeon wakes up the next morning with an extra twenty minutes of sleep because he is making sure not to make strawberry milkshakes, or peanut butter toast for that matter.
He cracks one eye open and scrolls through a string of texts from Martin, still blurry with sleep–something about Keonho and love and being a hypocrite. He doesn’t bother reading them too closely, Martin’s opinion doesn’t really make it past first contact when it comes to Keonho anyway, so he replies with a thumbs up and snickers under his breath when his phone immediately starts vibrating with incoming texts.
Seonghyeon makes quick work of showering, grateful because it’s Wednesday and Wednesday is the one day his school only runs afternoon classes, so the dorm is dead quiet this early into the morning and the showers are blissfully, gloriously empty. He gets dressed, keeping an eye on the clock. Unlike everybody else, he has to head to the audio-visual department; he’s not doing so well with his script, but his classmates are apparently thriving, so much so that they have already reached out to him to act in their stuff.
He’s in his room fussing over his outfit—pointless, really, since it’ll all come off again soon anyway. He doesn’t even want to think about the costume they’ll shove him into, or whatever makeup they’ll smear across his face.
A sudden knock lands hard on the door, making him jump. He curses under his breath, remembering his roommate is still asleep, and crosses the room in quick strides, yanking the door open.
He finds Keonho is standing there, one eye closed while the other squints towards Seonghyeon as if he were gazing up at the fucking bright sun on a summer day. His hair is a mess, flattened in one direction and sticking up in another, and it’s obvious he’s only halfway out of sleep and disoriented like he always is in the morning. His posture is loose, unguarded, shoulders slightly slouched as one of his hands finds its way inside his shirt, scratching at his ribs.
For a moment, Seonghyeon doesn’t react at all. He looks him up and down, recognizing his own shirt–an old wrinkled bleach-stained band tee Keonho had gone home wearing after a sleepover sometime last year and never returned–on his shoulders. It’s stupid, but his attention catches and holds anyway, like it always does. Keonho standing there half-awake wearing Seonghyeon’s shirt shouldn’t mean anything—it’s just a stupid shirt, Seonghyeon clearly remembers giving it to Keonho forever because he liked it when Keonho wore his clothes and he looks soft around the edges, the way he only ever does in the morning, and it’s unfairly distracting.
He blinks once, slower than he means to, then shifts his weight slightly in the doorway.
Keonho blinks back with his one open eye. “Hi,” he mutters.
Seonghyeon looks at him like he’s sprouted a second head. “Hi?” He echoes, incredulous. “What do you mean, ‘hi’?”
Seonghyeon’s heart warps in on itself in his chest—he wants to reach out so badly, he wants to talk to Keonho properly, wants to take everything back and make Keonho take him back. It takes a sleepy ‘hi’ for his inhibitions to waver, it takes seeing him looking all soft and malleable at his door wearing his shirt for every wall to begin trembling.
“I meant hello, good morning.” Keonho yawns wide enough to crack his jaw. “No breakfast today?”
Seonghyeon lets out a dry scoff, heat climbing up his ears. “Nope. Not unless you start paying for my groceries, and maybe say ‘thank you’ from time to time.”
Keonho tilts his head, a little satisfied smile tugging at the corner of his lips. Even like this, somewhat smug, Seonghyeon cannot discern any malice behind it. “So it was for me. I was just messing with you yesterday, I actually did believe you'd started liking strawberries like that.” He says, scratching at the stubble on his chin.
Liar. Seonghyeon knows that Keonho knows. Seonghyeon also knows that Keonho knows that he is embarrassed, and that this is Keonho’s way of trying to lessen that, so that he doesn’t shut him off completely again. He might also be apologizing for being rude.
Seonghyeon’s mouth drops. Heat crawls up his face. He blinks, Keonho smirks. “It literally isn’t—listen can’t you just go back to bed and leave me alone for a little bit.” He says, mindful to keep his voice as quiet as his heart allows. “You’re always all up in my business dude. Let it go.”
Keonho bites on his lower lip, jaw locking, and there it is—Seonghyeon hurt him again. His expression flickers and drops, all traces of sleep suddenly gone. Seonghyeon regrets opening his mouth, the guilt is immediate.
Seonghyeon didn’t even mean it like that, and still, even with the knowledge that whatever this is is Keonho trying—in his own roundabout way, from the childish dorm wars to showing up at his door—he does nothing, not now by poking at open, gashing wounds and not ever, to get his own point across—that he wants it as badly as Keonho does.
“My bad then.” He says, sounding more dejected than angry.
Seonghyeon presses his lips together, then unglues them again when Keonho doesn’t step away. “You started it by knocking on my door.” Seonghyeon gestures at him, voice smaller. “Wearing my shirt again, by the way. Take it off and give it back if you’re just gonna keep throwing it in my face.”
He cannot look at Keonho’s drooping eyes any longer. It’s always like this anyway, Keonho comes bothering him, Seonghyeon snaps at him, he gets sad, and Seonghyeon sinks in the guilt all over again.
He slams the door in his face when Keonho makes no effort to rise to the challenge. Seonghyeon’s roommate jolts awake with a yelp.
Five minutes later, Seonghyeon untangles his hands from his hair and pulls his phone out of his pockets with more force than necessary, clicking on Keonho’s profile.
Seonghyeon
im sorry for yelling at you.
you can keep the shirt
i gave it to you for a reason
Ahn Keonho
Don’t ever text me again
Seonghyeon slams the door on his way out, hugging his jacket closer to his frame, his roommate his up anyway.
Seonghyeon is fucking cursed, that’s what he is.
The take had been going fine, better than fine, it was going perfectly according to plan and schedule. He had his lines locked in in just about half an hour of repetition, his clothes were decent and not ridiculous like he had feared, and the entirety of the crew were nodding along to his performance, just like he had hoped. Then everything soured when he couldn’t really focus on anything other than a specific lens in the background, its black hole of an eye sucking him in. His classmate, the one directing the project, the one with the big scary blue eyes, called for a break and told him to ‘fix whatever that was.’ after he’d burst out laughing of nerves for a third time in a row. Now he’s sitting on a plastic chair like an idiot while the lights get adjusted again.
Keonho won’t stop taking pictures of him.
He’s part of the crew, camera in hand, snapping behind-the-scenes shots, which Seonghyeon doesn’t really approve of really, but this isn’t his project so he shuts his mouth. Seonghyeon hadn’t seen his name on the crew sheet when he last checked, or he would’ve remembered, and would’ve prepared himself, maybe, or he wouldn’t have showed up at all. Instead he’s stuck here trying not to look directly at the guy who was just in his doorway an hour ago wearing his shirt and looking at him like that.
Keonho keeps taking pictures, the shutter click is all Seonghyeon can hear—it cuts through the chatter and pulls him in every time, keeps him on edge, waiting and expecting the next one to come. Every time Seonghyeon glances over, the lens is pointed at him, and it pulls him years back—it reminds him of high school, back when Keonho had that ridiculously title following his name on every paper, something like media and events coordinator or something like that, Seonghyeon never bothered to remember it properly. What mattered was that Keonho was the only one in the entire school allowed to carry a camera around like that, and somehow, despite that responsibility that he took surprisingly seriously, he always managed to sneak Seonghyeon’s face in the posts, over and over, candid and blurry and mid-laugh and mid-complaint—every version of him. He got a few reprimands for it, sure, but nothing that ever really stuck, because Keonho was good at what he did and he was trustworthy and a good talker and nothing would be enough to make Keonho stop, anyway, they couldn’t replace him. If anything, it just meant there were slightly fewer posts for a week before everything went right back to normal.
Seonghyeon used to be proud of seeing his own face through Keonho’s eyes, he used to screenshot the evidence and keep it in his gallery for later visits when he doubted Keonho’s care, even if he outwardly gave him shit for putting him on the jumbotron without his consent.
Eventually Keonho lowers the camera and walks over, eyes still on the screen as he scrolls through the shots. Seonghyeon gulps, then clears his throat, praying silently that this one wouldn’t go horribly, not after he’d swallowed his pride and apologized barely an hour ago.
“I thought you wanted to be a director,” he says, curious about the reason behind Seonghyeon being in front of a camera. His thumb keeps tapping the button again and again, and Seonghyeon watches him as he does so, grateful that Keonho’s attention is elsewhere.
Keonho’s hair is pushed back by a hairband, his forehead exposed and better looking glasses are propped on his nose. He looks good, although the dark circles under his eyes remind Seonghyeon that he forgot to make him something warm to fight off his cold.
“Screenwriter,” Seonghyeon corrects, sitting up straighter in the folding chair. The lights dim around them for the next setup. “What are you even doing here? Shouldn’t you be in the studio, drawing?” Seonghyeon is talking just to talk.
Keonho looks up before waving the camera lightly. “Photography is art. I’m double majoring, journalism and fine arts.”
“Oh, yeah. Okay.”
There’s an ugly feeling blooming in Seonghyeon’s chest—there was a time he knew of Keonho’s every move, every single step of his plans, his classes, his half-formed dreams, the ones he scraped off, too. He had spent his whole life cataloguing him, remembering him, learning him. Seonghyeon still can’t believe there are things about him he doesn’t know anymore, can’t fathom that there are pieces missing, things about him he had missed, and it stings more than it should.
Keonho leans against the wall right by Seonghyeon’s chair, still scrolling. “Yeah. I can’t fight all of you for the last bed in the homeless shelter,” he mutters, attention still mostly on his camera. “Someone has to have a real job.”
Seonghyeon grimaces. “You’re still an art major at the end of the day. And we’re losing journalism to AI anyway.”
“Don’t say that.” He pouts. “I’m a better writer than any soulless AI promgram out there. People will notice real talent.” Keonho shrugs.
“Who assigned you to this one project anyway?” Seonghyeon asks before he can stop himself. He hates how needy it sounds.
“My prof gave us a list of your class’s shoots. We picked the ones we wanted to cover.”
Seonghyeon swallows, suddenly overcome by the need to know every little thing. “Why did you pick this one though?”
Keonho finally looks up from the camera’s screen again and his expression is casual. “Your name was on it.” He pauses. “And I had the time slot free, so…”
Seonghyeon would’ve done the exact same thing, and they both know it, but Keonho needs to work on his honesty problem.
Before he can answer, someone yells for the lights to go lower and Keonho glances over, then back at him. “I’m on your project too, by the way,” he adds, already turning to leave. “The one you’re directing. Your name was in bold too. Cool.”
Seonghyeon sits there, sweat prickling at his temples, heart stupidly loud as Keonho walks back to his spot behind the camera.
He watches his back as he walks away, waiting for him to settle back in the shadows and face him. Seonghyeon is going to smile at Keonho, to apologize again for yelling at him earlier.
Keonho takes his spot behind the main camera and doesn’t look at Seonghyeon anymore. He turns his lens to the rest of the crew, and Seonghyeon waits for his turn, smile ready, but it doesn’t come.
Later, when he’s back in his room with the covers pulled up to his chin and sleep ready to take over, Seonghyeon checks Keonho’s Instagram account. He doesn’t have to scroll too far, he rarely posts—maybe three times a year if he’s feeling generous.
Seonghyeon stops at the picture of Martin and Keonho at graduation last summer—he clicks on it and begins swiping through the compilation like he did the night it first went up. At that point, they weren’t talking, and yet, Keonho still managed to put Seonghyeon in there. He swipes slowly through the photos, the first one of Martin and Keonho in their gowns, making silly faces, the blurry shot of the two of them stuffing their faces right after the ceremony, Keonho’s sister and his parents, some other people Seonghyeon vaguely recognizes, and then, the last one of the bunch.
Keonho and him on the beach during a trip years back, arms slung heavy around each other’s shoulders, both sunburned and grinning like idiots. Keonho’s head is tilted toward his, laughing at something Seonghyeon must have said. His own smile is wide and unguarded in a way he doesn’t begin to recognize anymore. Seonghyeon stares at it until the screen dims. He swipes back to the previous photo, then forward again, and it’s a lot like picking at a scab.
There are more pictures of him, scattered throughout the feed—some from last year and the years before that, all candids of him, laughing in the library, another from their trip to the coast, Seonghyeon half-asleep on Keonho’s shoulder on the train, one from a random night where he’s caught mid-bite of something—pictures Keonho never took down. It doesn’t mean anything in the grand scheme of things, that Keonho still has his pictures up, but it’s enough for Seonghyeon to keep hurting, it’s enough.
He remembers the way Keonho’s face had tightened earlier this morning at his door, the way the smugness had cracked when Seonghyeon told him to leave him alone. The guilt settles heavy in his ribs, thick and familiar, pressing down until it’s hard to breathe. He wonders how many more times Keonho will let him do this before he finally stops coming around.
With his heart in his throat and tears in his eyes, Seonghyeon clicks on Martin’s contact and begins typing in a last ditch effort to save something, he doesn’t know what.
Seonghyeon
I think I’m in love with Keonho
martin
see now
that’s not ridiculous
that’s not ridiculous to say that
exclamation mark