– prophetic

 it  feels  so  unnatural  to  cooperate  with  this,  to  not  just  jump  ship  and  disappear  underwater  again  as  he  always  does  at  the  first  sign  of  trouble,  and  so  he  pushes  himself  because  discomfort  isn’t  where  his  adoration’s  limits  lie.  apparently.  “ harang,  it’s  me. ”  he  calls  out  finally,  figures  it’s  a  good  place  to  start,  a  good  foundation  to  build  on.

His body is heavy - a rock tossed to the middle of a pond, slow-sinking and covered in sediment. When he coughs, it wracks his chest and leaves a black smudge on the back of his hand. And he’s caught, again, in a limbo. Real or not real? It feels real, but it always felt real. Manufactured into reality and built from chemistry and reaction that sputtered up like flares inside of his body, left him burning. Not from disease, not the real kind. It never has been. He refuses to pull himself up and out his door, refuses to find the nearest hospital and settle himself out in the waiting room to sit for a doctor to poke and prod and give him more medicine to fix a problem that never was one.

So he stays in his apartment, bundled up and shivering hard enough that he imagines his bones clatter around like xylophone keys inside of his body.

There’s a knock, and at first he ignores it, largely because he doesn’t want to pick his body up. But it repeats, the same hollowed out thwack that matches in sound to Harang’s cough. Despite it giving away his presence, he remains where he is curled up on his couch. The voice come next though, familiar and it reaches out to him to press in against his chest, feels it spread out like a balm. Almost as unnatural as the black blood he’d had to staunch from coming out his nose earlier.

(It sits in that hollowed out space just underneath his throat, where that necklace hangs.)

“Coming,” he says, but it’s rasped out. He shouldn’t go to the door, shouldn’t press the button to release the lock and yank it open; the same as he shouldn’t have done it all last time, but he does. There’s something driving him forward, some part of him that craves his presence (or maybe just a presence). Harang truly hates being alone, was all but conditioned to seek someone out to make things better.

ggcren​:

a hush of breath. fingers running through his hair as he breathes in again, opens his mouth to speak and then doesn’t. he tries a smile again when he looks up and finds rioh’s eyes. the small tug on his chest is anything but fake, so hyunwoo buries it back. “look, rioh, i do0n’t want to be a bother, you know. if you still hate methis much then you don’t have to come,” exasperation, lips pressed on a thin, frustrated line. “i just- i miss you. i want to spend time with you. even after everything. that’s all. but if that’s too much to ask then. i’m sorry. for being selfish. once again,” the chuckle he lets out is embarrassed. the most honest thing he has said in so long, and yet laced with so much ill intention.

to rioh, nothing much makes sense. hyunwoo in front of him again with that same easy grace he’d brought with him into rioh’s shop. the same easy grace he’d lived in when they’d been together, back then. and that always puzzles him. the way he manages to enshroud himself with it, something that rioh can never seem to jam himself into, to make it all fit right the same way that hyunwoo does. all of those ill-shaped emotions have a way of sticking to rioh, twisting up his face and souring his words. it’d always felt like a mismatch, then, when they fought. or when rioh got stuck feeling like he cared too much about something.

it’s mostly how he feels now. that smile sliding across hyunwoo’s face, charming if you ask the right person. at the moment it kicks at old memories, scatters them like a blanket of dust in his head. a grimy coating of the past that’s hard to see through. he lets it settle instead of fighting it. too many nights together. some good. the click of hyunwoo’s camera mid-laugh, warm hands stealing cold from his skin late at night. fingers through his hair, the way hyunwoo’s cheek would dimple when rioh reached out toward his face. 

and the bad. of course there was bad, could it be called a relationship otherwise? that smile. that infuriating fucking smile. in the middle of arguments when rioh had felt so angry he was all but choking on it, words with the sense strangled out of them. the moments when rioh felt like he was being too much, especially toward the end, but when hyunwoo didn’t want to take it from him anymore. and then nothing. that silence, slipped out of his life so very easily. left rioh wondering if he’d ever be capable of doing the same. but no, probably not. and not because of love of hope or something nice. picturesque. he was just weak. would’ve sat there clinging and miserable if hyunwoo hadn’t walked out on him first.

that didn’t make him any less angry though. it was the emotion that brought rioh the most comfort. felt the safest.

“what else.” rioh repeats it after him, maybe meant for it to be sarcastic. but it sounds fainter, a repetition. a ghostly and questioning imprint. instead of pushing his voice to a desired tone, he slides down in his chair. settles into an uncaring slump and sips from his mug. shifts his eyes pointedly toward the window even if they both probably know he’d rather stare at hyunwoo. rememorize his features. draw him again later in his old sketchbook, just in a practice of masochism.

rioh & hyunwoo.

rioh had forgone the appointment. gave him a recommendation to another artist he knew, someone that wouldn’t be marking their theoretical baggage down on hyunwoo’s body. it felt too much like stitching an unresolved past into hyunwoo’s skin, the thought of tattooing him, like rioh would be unravelling some part of himself and leaving it behind, all ground up between the ink. and hyunwoo likely wouldn’t even notice, as obliviously as he’d walked into the shop he’d walk out with as little significance behind it. that’s what rioh had assumed, at least.

until hyunwoo kept pushing about catching up, seeing each other, and rioh had no choice but to jump to his next assumption (lest he lose his balance and fall, drown in the waters of his own self pity once again - pass), that whatever guilt hyunwoo might’ve felt about ghosting from his life had caught up to him, and now he was eager on figuring it all out before he could give karma a chance to catch back up. 

rioh didn’t really want to give him the satisfaction, and he didn’t really think he had it in him to put forth the energy, the vulnerability to let him try. but as jagged and messy and likened to some vicious, serrated cliff face that rioh was, hyunwoo wore him down. a continual pounding of theoretical waves until rioh was something blunt and, presumably, unintimidating. 

so they met. for coffee. a five minute walk from rioh’s shop, because he didn’t want to give up the pretense that he couldn’t be bothered with the reintroduction of hyunwoo back into his life. wanted to attempt to keep some flimsy veneer that hyunwoo, here, now, might no longer affect him (like his initial seething reaction didn’t give that away already, but rioh was ready to lie about it with his eyes closed, blind to the obvious truth if he needed to).

“i don’t really get it. why we’re here.”

it’s bitter, the words have had time to marinate in the black coffee rioh’s been sipping away at for the better part of five minutes. 

twenty46​:

“kiha,” she presses her lips to the shell of his ear, “baby you promised only a couple of hours and it’s already nearly midnight.” her fingers dig into his hipbones to drive the point home. anywhere but here would be heaven. “don’t you think you should keep your promise to me?”

it becomes easy; like she’s an extension of himself. an extra limb he can nearly feel. a pantomimed connection knit in close near his ribs. a person of her own mind, and not necessarily predictable, but they’ve been together for so long by now he can predict. jinil thinks she feels the same. at the very least, they’re able to communicate past words balled up behind the veil of affected vowels. with a tilt in tone, a pressure dug in near his hips. he gets it, there’s no real way to miss it. that also doesn’t mean he doesn’t find yongji’s latest persona hilarious -- he’s been enjoying himself far more than she has tonight. mainly because rich, pompous douchebag has always been an obnoxiously easy character to fit himself into.

“darling.” he trades back, and there’s that thick stilt to his voice. that kind of heavy tones people with too much money use, where it means they’re ordering not telling. jinil’s always found it split between funny and demeaning. it depends on the situation, he supposes. and how seriously he’s taking a situation in. if they were anywhere else but in the middle of a con, yongji might smack him for it. but it fits the situation. it fits who they’re pretending to be.

he lets his head loll at the reminder, glances at their compatriot for the night. the man whose large penthouse they’re attending. the man whose art they want to add to their own personal collection. the poor idiot. jinil might even begin to feel bad if his personality wasn’t so goddamn grating. 

he sighs, like she might be a burden. and there’s that unspoken acknowledgment of women that his newfound non-friend laughs at. gives jinil a nod ahead and redirects his attention elsewhere. another friend, or maybe a girl to harass. the world’s his oyster, apparently. 

“fine, let’s go. i’ll keep my promise.” loud enough to for people to hear before he curls his arm around her waist and walks them both out of the large living room everyone’s clustered inside. out in the hall and he stills enough to crane his neck and peer down the hallway.

twenty46​:

slowly she steps towards him and smiles, something deceptively sweet.

“i think, you’d be a great king. you just have to give yourself the chance.”

there’s a moment of contemplation that hangs in the air. it’s quiet, but not comfortable. like a thick blanket pressed over the face, a struggle to find air. an ache in the chest. and then he remember to breathe, remembers to voice his thoughts aloud. “when does it matter what i want?” he feels as if he’s living his life on a merry-go-round. decorated ornately with gilded gold and marble. something to stare at, with pretty music. a show of splendor as it goes round and round on it’s pretty, cyclical track. until the music and motion makes him sick. but it continues on in that same dizzying pull that he can’t step down from. that he can’t change the direction of. 

and jinil, at this point, knows no other way to live.

just lets all those ill-harbored thoughts tunnel holes in his skull. holes filled up with paranoia or doubt or rage.

he watches from the corner of his eyes as sowon picks herself up. eventually lets out a sigh and uses the momentum of it to roll himself onto his side. one arm hangs lazily off the edge of the mattress. there’s a listless weight to him that he doesn't bother to correct. 

“of course i don’t want it.” he curls his tongue up against the roof of his mouth, produces a click of a noise as he thinks. muddled thoughts swarming his head, thick as taffy and hard to pull apart. that’s been happening a lot to him lately. sometimes they feel congealed, fused together. hard to discern one from the other until they meld together and become whole in some frankensteined conclusion. 

“a great king to do what?” 

it’s a genuine sort of question that jinil doesn’t have a definite answer to. he knows he feels threatened, backed into a corner and optionless. so much so that he can’t seem to find the option to escape, what route he can take to get there. 

how he can step off that merry-go-round track and find his bearings again.

“they wouldn’t let me anyway. do much of anything, i mean. anything against their agenda.” that ‘they’ is nebulous. this mass of piled-together politicians that jinil has decided are out to get him. but sometimes sowon makes him feel like that thought process is real. that he’s not insane. 

ggcren​:

“that’s-,” he stares around the place, looks at rioh’s drawnings. he can’t help the smile that comes, in despite of all the tension he feels in the air. “you’re still this good. unbelievable.” he breathes out, looks back, chuckles at the way rioh’s phrases his question. “you’re pissed at me,” he states, and he knows he can be punched just by saying this. should be punched, even. “you’re really, really pissed at me. aren’t you?”

rioh has always been described as a reactive person. easy to churn up his insides into anger or frustration that etches itself visible across his face. excitement, too. but that’s not what’s taking front and center stage at the moment. how could it? it’d be one thing if they parted on good terms, if rioh had any idea for why he ducked out and left him. but he doesn’t. never did. so what else is there to settle on but that gut-grind of anger? and it leaks out. it always leaks out. he used to swear hyunwoo walked around with some kind of emotional penknife that he could use to cut a slit into rioh’s bag of welled up annoyance and let it spill on a whim.

not that rioh was never guilty of doing the same.

but that’s not what this situation is about, is it? it’s on the annoying way hyunwoo is acting like this entire situation is casual. is fine. like they should both just be merrily surprised, a good point in the day to reminisce on later. like he didn’t upend everything when he left. like he didn’t leave rioh in a depressive sort of spiral while hyunwoo came out looking ten times better for it.

“the only reason i’m bad at guessing around you is because whatever goes on in your head makes no goddamn sense.” rioh manages to hold back some of the spite that wants to strike out viper-fanged and ready. but what real reason would there be for hyunwoo to want a tattoo from him? unless it was all pointless to him, and at the end of the day rioh didn’t really matter. just someone he happened across, and someone he was liable to forget despite having his ink stitched into his body.

if the anger wasn’t there, this though would’ve made him ache in that bone-throbbing sort of way that resonates out from the core.

but he brings him inside anyway. rioh is a great many things, but objectively smart is not one of them.

the tone shifts, at least on his end. but hyunwoo somehow remains the same. a near-cheery color to his voice that rioh finds unnatural given their setting. he doesn’t bother trying to hide rolling his eyes, he does it. let’s them settle in the top corner of the ceiling. it’s easier than looking at hyunwoo’s face. easier than trying to pick apart his expression - scared of what he might find there.

“why the fuck wouldn’t i be pissed, hyunwoo?” it eventually comes out after a stretch of thick, stifling silence. he wants to walk closer. to grab at him, shake some sense at him, hit him. hold him. dig his nails into skin and let himself collapse his weight into him. but he stays rooted in the same spot instead. he doesn’t want to give him the satisfaction of it. rioh’s vulnerability is his own shameful secret he doesn’t feel inclined to share. 

“should i be happy? you didn’t even mean to come see me. so why should i be happy? do you want me to say thank you? thank you for leaving me. thank you for never reaching out. thank you for leaving me wondering what the fuck i had done. thank you so much, hyunwoo. really. i appreciate it. i’m so goddamn glad you walked into my shop just to remind me how imbalanced everything between us was.” it’s a rant that rises and falls with a tremble in his tone. something angry ground up and spat out from between his molars. pointless too, he thinks, because why would hyunwoo care about any of it? what pain would it carry? it’ll land like a hornet without a stinger, just an annoying drone as it flutters about; hopelessly benign. 

finally, he drags his eyes away from the ceiling. unwillingly looks back over at hyunwoo.

ggcren​:

he looks at him, waits.  part of him hopes he will say no.  part of him doesn’t know what will be of him if he does.  

there’s a strained sense of tension between them -- that’s how rioh imagines it to be anyway. can feel it thread through his ribs, pull him up taught and exposed. but he can’t quite tell if hyunwoo is all tangled up in it too, or if he just has the other end coiled around his wrist. content to yank rioh around on a whim. so he tries to play things close to the chest, words that slip out slow and seeking, trying to find some amount of sense he can shape around the situation.

he slides over the book, shifts his weight from heel to toe and back again in an uneven sway as he watches hyunwoo flip through a few pages. and eventually, more words come, dragged out by hyunwoo’s own admission of chance. would he want hyunwoo to mark up his body if he walked in blind? maybe not. or maybe he would. but then, rioh’s always figured he was the sicker of the pair. more prone to digging in his claws and winding himself up close. more prone to curl in tight and vicious to the point of discomfort. questioning that bid for closeness in the end. was it a mystery, really, when hyunwoo broke himself away and left him?

rioh’s rolled that thought around in his head long enough in the after that he’s gone and left dents in his skull with all the assumptions by now.

he could go and ask him, but it feels awkward standing in the middle of the room completely sober and waiting on the end of a business deal to be confirmed. so he doesn’t. 

“well, how should i know?” rioh doesn’t necessarily mean it to land like a jab - or, well, perhaps that isn’t true. perhaps he’d like if it it did land, if it did dig into his skin and bloom into a fractured, fish-hooked sort of pain. the kind that can’t be pried out easily. he’d like it if he somehow mattered that much to him. but he assumes now that he doesn’t. that this whole situation will be chalked up to a funny little situation, that the tattoo might be explained away as having been done by a friend i once knew, by chance. it really was funny. the thought of it, that assumption, starts to set alight all that anger. rolls it into a slow simmer.

“i can make a guess that maybe you wouldn’t like me leaving a permanent mark on you again, after all.” and the anger kicks up and into words, as is very often the case when it comes to rioh. he provokes. provokes into more anger, or arguments, or violence, or any number of things decidedly not pleasant. 

provokes people into running away from him. 

he nearly rolls his eyes at the question. the very last thing he wants is to be cornered and told he’s overreacting, creating assumptions in his head, overblown and misinterpreted. but he doesn’t. because rioh is still that vicious sort of child, seeking and yowling and looking to hook his claws back in, to find that comfort again - if only by force; now painted over in nostalgia. 

“yeah, i have an...office.” the word’s dubious, it’s more a room to draw in, a place to eat, a laptop jammed in the corner with a few art programs loaded onto it. checks his book once in a quick glance to make sure he won’t need to reschedule anything, stops briefly by his apprentice and gives her the go-ahead to leave early before he finally swings the door open and allows hyunwoo in before him. 

ggcren​:

he tries a smile. tries to look as unbothered as he walks towards the man who once held a tight grasp on his body, his soul. his hair a washed out blue. his eyes icy and cold against his. hyunwoo remembers days passed when rioh’s eyes would burn him, break him. he leans in. “a piece from your book seems fine. i don’t have anything planned, really,” he shrugs, looks at the book and flips through the pages. “no wonder i chose this place after seeing your instagram. i always liked your style.” he looks up and smiles at rioh, friendly, almost. is it a jab or a complement, though? not even hyunwoo knows. his head is a mess of thoughts, his heart ripped apart with way too many feelings, each single one of them going into different directions. 

words have never been something that have come easily to rioh. instead, they tangle at his heels like discarded wire, leaves him to picked through the frayed mass with a wary unease that it might send a shock through him, translated into the wrong message. he’s always taken more easily to art. to letting whatever mass of unlabeled emotions take form in a drawing, something he can translate out, siphon from his body when he’s feeling overwhelmed. but not words. he has a sort of resentment with them; they are - after all - so easy to misunderstand. to misuse. and maybe he does it again now. 

he picks them from the pile, something rote and centered exactly around the reason that hyunwoo is here, in front of him. but then, even if they were the wrong words. detached or distant or situationally inapplicable. even then, should he be the one to care? rioh, in this moment, isn’t sure of what hyunwoo wants. to make amends? to explain himself? but rioh is in an uncertain position of being left in the dark, and so he doesn’t breach the subject.

but when hyunwoo does, it somehow makes it work. accidental, a joke played on the two of them by fate. and so maybe they weren’t the wrong words after all. hyunwoo hadn’t sought him out, and so presumably hyunwoo doesn’t want to return back into his life after he so quickly escaped their relationship. left it behind him without so much as a text message. rioh flicks the back of his lip ring with his tongue, a habit he’d traded out for biting his nails.

so he finds himself nodding, like he’s on autopilot. finds his book of pre-drawn tattoos and slides it across the counter for him to flip through. 

“thanks.” he means it to be a trade of words, but it almost sounds like a question. the situation feels like too much, too much emotionally to handle at the moment. he tries to compartmentalize. to shove all of those ugly, rancid feelings into boxes that he can unpack later over too many bottles of soju. not right now. and not in front of him. it would be humiliating, wouldn’t it? to give hyunwoo the satisfaction of seeing him broken up or upset given how many years he’s been gone. so he swallows all that down and curls his fingers tight against the edge of the counter.

“you look good.” he means it, though it does provide a complimentary precursor to his follow up of -- “and i understand, if you want to cancel the appointment. you didn’t know it was my shop, so. i don’t want to put something on your body permanently if you’ll regret it, knowing i’m the artist.” 

do you regret me?

ggcren​:

he breathes in. 

“rioh?” he breathes out. 

if he’d have known he was coming he would have tried harder, put an effort into how he looked. maybe. it’s hard to gauge, because in the immediate moment, he’s gut-punched by the shock of it it all. an unexpected fizz that bubbles down his spine and makes his skin prickle. there’s no time for that dammed up anger to break and flood him. walled off and stagnating over the years since hyunwoo had packed up and ghosted from his life. there one minute and gone the next, and it made rioh resent how heavily he’d depended on him. how much he’d relied on him at the time. a lack of affection and a loneliness that suddenly felt wider. a chasm threatening to swallow him whole. 

but he’d moved on, in that way where you’re forced to. had managed to grow from the poke and stick tattoo endeavors he’d been experimenting with back when hyunwoo was still with him. found someone to train under, managed to cultivate his own style, turn a profit on an eventual business. he wasn’t living a particularly lavish lifestyle, but he had something. a decent apartment, enough money to rent out his own space. it was well-enough. 

and then hyunwoo had to waltz in and shatter that thin sheet of well-enough glass he’d constructed his life out of.

because of course he hadn’t been expecting him -- why would he? he’d seen the scheduled appointment, a quick glance in the book for something last minute, a name attached. but it wasn’t like kim hyunwoo was all that uncommon, so why would he assume it was him? for all he knew he’d packed up and whisked himself off to a new city, a new country. it wasn’t like he’d bothered to stay in touch. 

and there’s this minute of silence where rioh chews at the inside of his cheek and contemplates hiding away in the backroom, leaving his apprentice to sort out the mess -- text her to tell him there was a scheduling conflict. but he doesn’t do that. because he’d missed him. an honest-to-god ache. some hollow point in his chest that hyunwoo had carved out for himself way back then, that rioh hadn’t learned how to cement over, to fix. and then hyunwoo says his name, and it feels like there’s no running from this moment; rioh is physically incapable of it, hyunwoo’s voice tethers him like glue.

“hyunwoo,” and he means it to come out casual, but it slides thick and scratched from the back of his throat. he clears it, runs his fingers back through faded blue hair, tugs enough for the sharp, fleeting pain of it to distract him before he takes a step forward. they both look a little different now. rioh’s body is marked up, hair colored, has a metal ring in his lip he keeps flicking with his tongue in a nervous habit. hyunwoo looks more filled out, like he had enough time to go to the gym. he looks expensive too, in a way he never did before with ratty flannels and jeans that had holes worn through at the knees. 

“i guess you’re my appointment. long time no see.” the anger’s not there yet, still washed over by hyunwoo’s presence. but the implication is, that rioh missed him. that they hadn’t necessarily parted on perfect terms. 

@vxctrcs -- lost boy drabbles, the past.

JANUARY --

their breath comes out in thick clumps when they exhale. creaky-ribbed and with effort. cold has a way of sneaking down a throat and making everything stiff. blood and air and circulation. fingers and toes, too. eunchan shakes the sleeves of the sweatshirt he’s stolen from hyunsu down around his hands. tries to melt that feeling of ice from skin. every so often and eunchan takes a pull from his nicked cigarette. the smog of it mixes and they’re left in a sea of clouds, left adrift on top of the blocky rooftop. the sort not made for people. they’d gone and shimmied up the last story of it using a broken pipe as a foothold. last summer and eunchan had sliced his shin open on it. clearly they haven’t bothered learning from the experience. “it’s mine, steal your own.” the third time eunchan’s told hyunsu that when he’s felt him shift forward enough, seeking. the kind of seedy resolution that comes from a sixteen year old with an addiction and no ready way to fill it. eunchan laughs, stretches his arm up and away from them both. he hopes, anyway. hynusu and his long ass reach. 

there’s no room for them inside. that’s what it feels like a lot of the time. he likes those quiet moment when everyone in his house is gone for work. when it’s just him, worn-rough furniture, and an empty cabinet. otherwise he just follows hyunsu around. he has for as long as he can remember. there might’ve been a calculation in it once, the biggest kid on the playground makes for a nice sort of threat. but now it’s a lazy sort of comfort. the kind he takes for granted. like heat simmering under the floorboards in the middle of winter. a necessary comfort you don’t notice until it’s gone. 

“fine. here.” exasperated, and eunchan hold his hand up somewhere near his shoulder. feels the sway of his wrist and puff of hot air fan out across his knuckles as hyunsu takes a drag. a hum at the thanks that follows. “you think we’ll ever do anything?” eunchan glares at the skyline when he says it. it’s one of those questions that doesn’t really have an answer.  instead of waiting for hyunsu to try and force one into place, eunchan turns and kisses him before he gets the bright idea to speak. his lips are cold, and chapped from the wind. eunchan takes another drag instead of dwelling on it, leans back into hyunsu’s touch when he feels his fingers flex tighter at his waist.

APRIL --

eunchan has a way of collecting bruises, like a stamp-collector might. just pressed into his skin instead. from picking fights and mouthing off. from being in the wrong place at the wrong time. hyunsu does too, but only sometimes. eunchan thinks it’s different anyways. hyunsu is all firebright. red and wicked and hot. he twists up and unfurls into anger. not with his words, really. just with his body. heavy-knuckled and hard. it’s thanks to hyunsu that eunchan knows what bone against bone sounds like. and that wet pop of a noise when a head hits pavement. hyunsu’s got bruises like badges of honor -- deserved or not. maybe that honor’s a little wayward. so they’re different sorts. but sometimes it looks like they match. eunchan takes a strange, thrilled sort of pleasure in it. lining their forearms up side by side and tracing make-believe constellations across their skin, using bruises like connect-me-dot guidelines, with the fat-tipped marker of a pen and the sort of smell that left him dizzied from chemicals. 

“it’s pretty, right?” eunchan asks him, once. mid-orion’s belt. “like we’re connected.” it might work out a little better if he knew exactly what orion’s belt looked like. he’s going off a half-remembered picture from a textbook he’d seen two weeks ago. maybe it’s stupid. they’re too old for this now. eunchan’s seventeen, but sentimentality refuses to leave him. it stays, like an overbearing parent. the only thing he had raising him through life. maybe it’s what makes him such a wanting, messy thing. eunchan shifts enough to hold the pen cap between his teeth, though reaches over to etch a smiley face against hyunsu’s cheek before he clicks it back into place. he laughs around the pen before it’s yanked free. hyunsu. and eunchan scrambles and runs before retribution is scrawled across his skin.

JULY --

the air is a hot swelter, the summer sticky. the thought of high school has left them both. eunchan fingers at a tattoo he got near his bicep. the kind needle-poked painstakingly into skin. wobbly letters he’d winced through on a dilapidated couch. the beer he’d drank down had made it feel better, but it’d thinned out his blood enough that it’d been messier too. both of them had been too unknowledgeable to know it made any difference. it’s mostly healed over, now. but the skin’s raised enough that he can feel it. hyunsu’s hand eventually replaces his own, and eunchan lets him. despite the fan they have propped up on a shaky-legged table, it still feels too hot. the fact that they’re pressed close together doesn’t help. the whir of it sounds pathetic, like it’s on its last breath. struggling to puff more stale air across feverish skin. still, eunchan keeps himself in place. he likes the way he can feel hyunsu’s heart against his ribs. that rhythmic roll-thump of it. 

the kind of feeling he could fall asleep to. 

eunchan mouths at the thin skin of hyunsu’s throat. it’s graceless, but filled with sentiment. he knows if he angles himself closer, hips just right hyunsu will start to complain about where they are and if company will show up soon. eunchan knows it because he’s done this very same thing more times than he can count. he feels the way hyunsu’s fingers glide across the small of his back, slicked with sweat. eunchan ignores how borderline-disgusting that is. “what if we just-- for a bit.” eunchan digs his fingers in near hyunsu’s bicep, curls him closer so they can kiss.

SEPTEMBER --

eunchan’s always heard your twenties are supposed to be filled with potential. but his seem to be filled with mostly nothing. hyunsu’s there, he always is. deadend jobs and a drinking habit eunchan refuses to give up. he likes to pretend, between blackout-dotted memories, that he might not feel for hyunsu quite as much as he does. it’d make things easier. the trouble with that though, is that eunchan wants it. wants hyunsu to want him. the same way he wants validation for near anyone who looks at him long enough. and then hyunsu had gone and said it one day anyway, in that sleepy-husk of a voice. i love you, all fond and like he hadn’t realized the gravity of what he’d said. the way it read past platonic and straight into unabated fear. eunchan’s been thinking on that since. most of it’s no good. 

“don’t.” they’re at friend’s party, hosted in a bar that looks more cement-basement than anything else. hyunsu’s hand flutters from where it sits on his forearm. back and forth, like a deer tap dancing across the highway. a semi hurdling toward it, a horn-blare between a decision or death. eunchan hates it when hyunsu doesn’t listen to him. like now. hand settling back into place. eunchan yanks his own arm away instead. if he weren’t waiting for a drink, he might’ve walked away. but he is, so he doesn’t. they haven’t talked in three days. it feels unfair hyunsu’s making him break his streak now. we should- and eunchan knows he’s going to say talk. like that’ll solve all their problems. solve all his problems. fat fucking chance.

@cxutela / kisae and jaehwan. near the barracks.

kisae slithers the alleyways and beaten down roads of ba sing se with all the loyalty of a snake. this identity doesn’t fit him quite right. but there’s no room for him here, the real him. with the fury of a dying nation locked under the cage of his ribs, his heart bird-beating like wings on wire. here, he’s not a bender. just a student, lost among the many that swarm the sprawling university. it’s a good place to hide. tucked away in the middle of an expansive auditorium, pretending to listen into the sort of scholastic rhetoric that sounds more egotistic than it does enlightening. but kisae doesn’t argue that point. it’s not why he’s here.

he’s after a different sort of information. it’s lost in the dai li. he wonders what plans are stuffed up like wadded cotton in the heads of those generals and elite. it seems to have the same consistency, with how entirely useless kisae sees them as. or maybe detrimental. he just knows his own people trust them so little that he finds himself here. it’s hard to drag useful information free, though. a slow build to establish a persona, something balanced on the tip of political history. a nameless student on a quest to fill the pages of a dissertation, but it’s been hard finding anyone to give him the time of day.

except for jaehwan. only, it feels like his time may as well be spent kicking rocks for all that jaehwan gives him. it’d be frustrating if kisae didn’t find him agreeable. and so it isn’t frustrating. or, not entirely. 

that’s why he’s here. for him. he’d say it like the truth anyway, if someone asked. kisae’s eyes are peeled open wide and thirsty, like he’s trying to drink in his immediate surroundings. imprint them to memory. it could be useful. maybe there’s a way in. a way to fit his body skinny behind the cracks of a wall and eavesdrop. he’s done it before, just not here. jaehwan interrupts his scouring. kisae blinks slowly, like he’s pulling himself out of a daydream. 

“can i steal you or will they notice you’re gone?” he reaches out to tug at the edge of his shirt. he’d been trying to flirt from the moment it seemed like jaehwan was staring too long at his mouth one day. he still can’t tell if it’s working.