heirloom

heeey everyone, i’m blue - she/her - 18+ and i’m here to introduce sunkyu, your local familiar determined to sow a better future free of fear and distrust between all species by investing in early childhood education. easy peasy! you can find his intro below but it’s not required reading at all <3 and if you’d like to plot, just like this post and i’ll dm you asap ☆⌒(ゝ。∂) !

pages: basics || full || plots || starter call 

“what should we order.. do you think we should order pizza to the hotel instead?” yujin offers, and maybe he’s trying to make some sort of small talk to distract sunkyu from whatever he had been thinking about as he pulls his seatbelt on, only hoping that the simple idleness of it is helpful— he’d do anything for him, and having sunkyu in his life for so long, he only hopes that knowing what he needs in this moment comes to him as naturally as everything else does, when it comes to things between the two of them.

@feysunkyu

his smile softens when yujin agrees, humming when he feels yujin nosing against his back. he tilts his head against yujin’s lightly in a little moment of silence, happy to linger in the easy affection, and when yujin does finally reopen his eyes, sunkyu meets his gaze with the same smile still playing at his lips. “you read my mind.”

he notices the way yujin pauses, the way yujin maybe is pausing because he noticed something too. it’s quick, something he might’ve missed if he didn’t know yujin so well, but that was part of the issue, wasn’t it, that he knew yujin better than he knew himself. he wonders if it means yujin can see right through him, and he wonders if that glimmer of-- understanding there means that yujin might understand this better than he does. and then it passes, and yujin is standing up, and sunkyu feels the kiss he leaves on the top of his head and hears him commenting on the sand, but it’s all also a little bit further away than before, the way a change in altitude leaves his ears ringing.

pushing through it, sunkyu helps him put away their snacks before standing up to shove his feet back into his shoes and dust sand off the blanket as best he can before yujin folds it up, and when it’s folded back in his arms he surveys the area they’d been laying on before, the sand that’s been flattened in memory of their blanket there, and imagines that it’s probably going to be blown over by the morning or maybe even before the end of the night, and it’ll be like they’d never been there at all. sometimes these moments are like that, he thinks, so fleeting and left to silence that he wonders if they happened at all. 

but his memory isn’t sand, and yujin isn’t just a guest who treads there once and never again, and there’s a part of him that always remembers the feel of him even after he’s gone, like a fossil imprinted into the earth instead, buried but there. though maybe he hasn’t been doing a very good job of burying it lately. clearly these strangers have seen something, and he thinks that’s what puts the erratic note in his pulse -- not that it’s there, but that it’s been seen.

which doesn’t even make sense, because he’s not ashamed to be mistaken as that. he’s not ashamed to be seen with yujin -- yujin, who has sand in his hair right now, who sunkyu clicks his tongue at and reaches for so he can brush it off and chides, “that’s what you get for octopus-ing on the sand. ah, there’s so much, it’s here too,” and furrows his brows at as he pats little grains of sand away from his forehead.

he’s not ashamed. he doesn’t think yujin is either. so. so--?

he hates the way he can feel the question bubbling up in him, but not in the form of words. he knows it’s probably not helping how he looks as they make their way back to the car, but this seems like the farthest he’s seen this line, and if he lets go of it now then when’s the next time he’ll get this far again? “pizza sounds good, and maybe...cinnamon sticks. i'll find someplace with cinnamon sticks, the one with the frosting dip. but we should at least shower too or the bed’s going to feel like we never left the beach,” he decides as he buckles in, and he should really say more, but silence lapses over him again after that, and then throughout the drive as he fiddles with the strap of his seatbelt. the radio helps, until it reminds him of how he’d fiddled with this same radio in this same car last week as they drove up to his parents’ house, and then he’s thinking about those nights again, and now he’s

back at the hotel. he’s helping yujin unload their things, and they’re carrying them in, and they’re passing the lobby. it’s a different receptionist now, but sunkyu still finds himself sulking into yujin’s side and bumping him into the farthest side of the lobby on their way to the elevators, like if he keeps them far enough, he can outstride this thing that’s been nagging at him all day. then they’re arriving at their room, and he’s pulling out the keycard and opening the door for yujin, and there’s their suitcase by the dresser, only one because that had made the most sense, and there’s their bed, only one because that had also made the most sense, and there’s the window on the opposite wall of the door, the sleepy city and the beach below, and their reflections on the glass staring back. him and yujin. that makes the most sense, too.

[...]

he closes the distance between them. feels the gravity close between them, that rush, then the sweet, familiar feeling of sunkyu’s lips against his own. he lets his eyes fall shut, and this is the feeling in his chest, warm and right and.. home. yujin doesn’t think it’s a place anymore, he thinks that maybe it’s right here.

sunkyu in his arms, sunkyu pressed against his side, sunkyu’s mouth slotting perfectly when he seeks him out in the dark. he rises a bit up on his elbow from where he had slid down, and when he pulls back, he lets his eyes flutter open as their noses brush. like this, he can barely hear the fireworks, maybe even the rest of the world. just the fluttering of his own heart in his chest, the warmth that blooms inside him when he’s this close to him. just that familiar beat of home, home, home.

@feysunkyu​

yujin’s response has him grinning a little. “you are always hot,” he allows, wiggling an arm behind them to pet yujin’s back magnanimously. the rest of yujin’s words, he lets settle like melting cotton candy, true and sweet. yujin’s the one who runs warmer between the them, but in a way that doesn’t make sunkyu feel entirely useless with his clumsy hands and poor circulation -- like when yujin runs too warm sunkyu could soak in some of it for him, keep it safe until the day, maybe, that yujin might feel cold too. a decent alternative for a bond, he thinks. a way to look after yujin without all of the risks that came with him.

“i think,” he says, cheeks burning faintly at how casually yujin just says some of these things, “that fireworks get you a little sappy, yujin-ah. but yes, if we could find more time to do things like this more often just because we want to, i’d like that.” his grin turns amused, fond, as he’s pulled into a half hug, half octopus’s grip. “just us,” he decides to agree, bumping his chin against the top of yujin’s head to make up for not being able to squeeze him back, unless he wanted them to lose balance and topple into the blanket. “okay, okay, i get it, no other octopi required.”

it wouldn’t be impossible-- no, it really isn’t. maybe he’ll take some time off of work, maybe even from his studies. experience the last two weeks of an actual summer break. that sounds nice. he thinks of how much time he spends away or preoccupied, which is really just another word for away, that if the world was a globe then he’s an observer watching it closely, adding spin whenever it slows dangerously. he’s not sure what he’s so afraid of seeing if he were to let it stop. 

when he’s with yujin he finds it hard to remember at all. it even begins to feel acceptable that the world should settle beneath his feet and he regains his bearings to take in the state of it. maybe he’s tired of spinning.

maybe. maybe.

he’s idly aware of yujin calling his name-- he turns, a thought on the tip of his tongue, but it fizzles somewhere in the distance that yujin closes between them.

with practiced ease, sunkyu curls down to receive him, settling a hand lightly on yujin’s hip to tell him that he doesn’t have to strain too far up to brush their mouths together. it’s simple and it’s familiar, the way most things are with yujin, except maybe-- except maybe the night sky is familiar too, too familiar, reminding him of the sheet of stars they’d found themselves under just the week before, dipped in the aquamarine lights of his parents’ pool; reminding him of the constellations he’d asked yujin to name much earlier than that on their balcony. the feeling too is too familiar, in a way that sunkyu can’t place, because it hasn’t changed at all. it’s always been like this.

and yet-- now. now, the world slows, and an image threatens to become clear, and sunkyu has to pull away first before it does, flustered worse than he usually is by something so relatively innocent. it’s this question, why? this, but why has it always been like this? it’s this thing that’s been beating in his chest for a while now, the thing he’s not sure he wants yujin to hear, but if he turns away too quickly yujin might mistake it for discomfort so he stays where he is, meeting yujin’s gaze like he isn’t afraid of anything, fingers rubbing pensively over his hip. there are still fireworks crackling in the sky, but they’re distant sounds, muted with the rest of the world.

even his own voice feels like something he’s hearing from the other side of a glass wall when he murmurs, “can we head back early? i kind of wanna beat the crowd.” and maybe he wants more of the silence, the kind where he won’t even be able to hear himself think. he shifts -- he’s got an elbow bent by yujin’s too, allowing him to lean down and brush their noses together, feather light. “the window in our room faces the beach, doesn’t it? if there’s still more, we can watch it from bed instead of getting sand in weird places.”

[...]

nothing else matters. he repeats it to himself like a mantra, a litany of reassurances that he keeps close to his heart, in that he’ll never let anyone or anything ever take this, take sunkyu, from him.

not when it’s his. not when he is sunkyu’s, in turn. the entire world couldn’t take this from them. he’ll never let it.

sunkyu’s counting the bursts of fireworks. 

was. 

is currently trying to. 

he gets to three or four, maybe five if he’s extra diligent, until one of them inevitably lights up his periphery where yujin sits, close enough that sunkyu could recognize his presence without turning, and he just barely catches himself from turning anyway. he manages, but the amount of focus that takes alone is enough to knock him off-count, and then he’s back to one again. 

the warm glow of his necklace is somewhat of a consolation, that if his thoughts have been giving him away in yujin’s necklace too then at least he isn’t alone. he thinks of saying something, to maybe tease yujin about the intermittent warmth he catches from the necklace these days, but he’s acutely aware of how often he must have been doing the same for yujin too and thinks better of it. he’s not sure how he could justify himself if yujin turned the same question on him.

he focuses on the fireworks, then, although those really just make him think of yujin too: the sparks that manifest when yujin laughs, the brilliant bursts of light they had chased that night down to the river. as if it isn’t enough that yujin is here, nuzzling against his shoulder, asking him if he’s warm enough-- “i’m okay,” he hums, shivering more from yujin’s proximity than any bite of the cold, but he isn’t surprised when he feels yujin shrugging off his jacket one moment and then draping it over his shoulders the next. he turns to admonish him, only to find yujin already looking in his direction and instantly look away. “one of these times, you’re going to be cold without your jacket, and you’re going to get sick,” he grumbles, but he presents a solution for this instantly by shifting closer, making sure that yujin’s within that pool of warmth growing and growing inside him. 

he misses a firework when he turns to make sure yujin’s still comfortable, then another when he accidentally catches yujin’s gaze again. like a house of cards, all of the effort he’s put into keeping his attention on the fireworks crumbles, and sunkyu can only hope it’s dark enough to hide his sheepishness at having been caught distracted. 

it isn’t yujin’s fault. it’s only his own and maybe a bit that receptionist’s from earlier and her assumption about them that had pulled a startled, confused little laugh out of him. it hedges at the boundaries of his thoughts now, persistent no matter how many times he’s pushed it away already, determined to keep this day for them and them only, not to worry about anyone else or what they might think of them.

“you’re missing the show,” sunkyu manages to come up with, reaching up to guide yujin’s cheek to the sky and ignoring that he’s missing it too. he hears another firework go off but its light blossoms over yujin’s features, so does he is he really missing it? “up there, yujin-ah.”

[...]

“c’mon. let’s forget all of this for a little while. let’s just. focus on each other, okay? it’s just us, here,” yujin tells him, and he thinks that when he looks into his eyes, it calms all of the shaking that had once been racking his frame, his hands, and thinks that it replaces it with a certain type of warmth that yujin can rely on, that yujin wants to stay in for awhile.

one more gaze, here, and yujin offers him the quietest smile. a million and one. a million more.

@feysunkyu

and that’s just it, isn’t it? the helplessness that yujin describes that sunkyu thinks would be bearable if it was only about himself, but it isn’t. it’s about yujin too now, for both better or for worse, and as yujin slips down to join him on the floor all he can think is that he wouldn’t change a bit about having yujin in his life but he wishes it had been out of better circumstances. something that was their choice from the beginning.

but he can’t change this anymore. he’s not sure what he can change, but listening to yujin’s words, to how much he seems to mean them-- maybe this is something he can do too. maybe he can’t control what happens to them, but he can control how they get through it, and if yujin is choosing to stay -- god, yujin is choosing to stay -- then sunkyu nods and says, though the words shake, “okay. okay, i believe you.” he swallows the lump that’s been in his throat and tells him, voice small, “you have me too, yujin-ah.”

constantly, it feels as though they’re on a slope. maybe they’ve got one hand in each other’s, but the other has always been clutching at the earth, unable to climb, only able to keep holding on. to ask if it’s always be like this is to look down and acknowledge the sheer drop below them, a sight that he’s sure would unsettle him into letting go and backsliding, and sunkyu can’t afford that, not when they already make so little progress upwards. they are survivors, like this. all they've done is to survive, no more, no less, and it throws him to think of how much will continue to do only to maintain that precarious balance, and how long he’s accepted this, because it works now, doesn’t it? they’re surviving. but he can’t imagine having to live like this for the rest of his life. he doesn’t want to imagine it for yujin’s.

so when he says, “no matter what else happens, you’re always going to have me,” sunkyu wants to promise more. yujin wipes the last traces of blood on their hands and faces and kisses his forehead and sunkyu wants to promise more, that one day this won’t even be a promise they’ll have to make. one day yujin will have that house he’d told sunkyu about on the balcony, and all of this will be as far away as the stars they’d seen that night, and they won’t have to think about anything but the moment they’re in.

maybe he can give yujin a little bit of that tonight. he can promise at least tonight, can’t he?

yujin drops the cloth into the bathtub and sunkyu watches it slop with the rest of yujin’s clothes. he wants to clean, but more than that, he wants to do as yujin says -- focus on them, here, now. forget the rest. forget everything he’s so afraid of. he can study them in the morning when there’s light, but for now he cups a hand beneath yujin’s jaw, holding him gently. there’s a lot of other things he wants to promise. but he’s going to start with the one he made earlier.

“it’ll be easier to forget when we’re not on the floor,” he whispers, breaking into a small smile. maybe it doesn’t quite reach his eyes, not when he can still see the telltale wetness in yujin’s, but it doesn’t matter. he climbs to his feet first, careful to help yujin up without disturbing his wounds after, and helps him out of the bathroom.

[...]

he sits up after a while of laying on the floor in thought and glances at sunkyu. “well, if i can… i’d like to.” he states, “or in the very least, throw in my application for consideration,” he states. Once sunkyu mentions that he’d adopt them but he’s moving and he’s not sure about roommate, junghwa mentally thanks his lucky stars that he lives with no one. he is almost about to add something when sunkyu states something else and junghwa feels insulted once. “Excuse me! Are you implying that I’m weird?” he asks, holding his hand to his chest, as though the sheer word makes him angry. “the sheer audacity of this ho,” he mutters, as though  sunkyu has just insulted his entire family. “i mean, i am weird but like hearing you say that is weird,” he laughs. 

he chokes on his saliva a mere second later. “s-seven thousand? bro, i may be old but i ain’t a relic,” he states, laughing “yeah,  i had a pet cat back in venice when i was living in italy,” he adds. “can’t be  that difficult right? dogs are similar to cats? I think,” he states, brushing off the fact that hes only been a cat person. 

"pokemon plushies,” sunkyu repeats, relieved to hear something that’s familiar. “yeah! yes. if i see any pokemon, like pikachu and pip...torch...” he trails off into a mumble as he realizes that his knowledge of pokemon might actually only be marginally bigger than video games, and that he might start to sound older than a centuries-old vampire, then tries to recover, “or a narwhal or dragon, i’ll remember my debt to you, my liege.” he puts ji’s paws together, ignoring how she starts gnawing at his fingers instead, and makes do a little bow with him. “still kind of surprised you’re a narwhal kind of person though? i thought you’d be, like, into big cats.” 

he switches back to scratching ji, junghwa’s comment about the girls needing a good home and a good family making him smile -- he’s glad that junghwa seems to understand, sounds like he really does care. it’s an unspoken rule at the shelter not to get too attached, but sunkyu thinks that that’s always been a little impossible for him to do, and he just wants every one of them to have a family. they never asked to be taken in by people who eventually decided they didn’t want them, and they certainly deserved to be loved and cared for.

so to hear junghwa sound so sincere about it makes him happy, happy enough that his teasing tone fizzles away into something openly excited. “you can! i can get you the form before we leave and if you want, i can even help you fill it out! you really won’t regret it, they’re angels.” he beams, scooting closer with the intent of apologizing for calling junghwa old and weird, but then--

“ho?!” it’s practically a squeak, indignant. maybe deserved, but indignant all the same. “you-- you’re a ho!” he hisses the word out so that the dogs, these poor children, won’t hear, and grabs the nearest dog pillow to smack into the only part of junghwa that doesn’t currently have a dog nearby, which happens to be his head. he huffs. “you are weird. and i knew you were a cat person, but obviously i didn’t mean a bad weird or i wouldn’t be friends with you. i don’t usually mix well with cat people.” he sighs as he resigns to crawling towards the front counter to dig through the filing cabinet they keep behind it.

“they’re pretty different, but having that experience already can’t hurt. ‘least you won’t go into it blind.” he fishes out one of their application forms before crawling back over to junghwa and waving it in his face. “here, you can take it with y-- wait, wait, can you help me walk them before we leave?” he snatches the paper back, replacing it with a pleading look cast towards junghwa. “if i do it alone, i get tripped up on the leashes.” asking for help’s about as painful as pulling teeth, but since junghwa’s already here...

dear abeoji,

i hope you’re well. i’m sorry that it’s taken me this long to write again. 

[...]

yujin looks up after a moment to meet his gaze. he thinks about all of the times he’s ever met sunkyu’s eyes, and wishes that like this, it didn’t have to be another one that he would remember, covered in his own blood. “tell me what you’re thinking,” he says quietly, because he can see that sunkyu is holding something back, maybe, he can see all of the thoughts that he keeps inside, and he doesn’t want him to, wants to clear them all away.

tw: blood, injuries

“i’m not letting them do anything with you,” sunkyu says softly as he follows along with yujin’s motions, helping him to slide that jacket off. it leaves small, ugly smears where it lands in the tub. there are more on yujin’s button down, the once-stark white now rumpled and dull even under the bathroom lights, and even the blood that’s dripped there doesn’t look so vibrant or smell so strongly anymore. either it’s drying or he’s gotten used to the harshness of it already. if it’s the latter, then good-- good, good that there’s less to vie for his attention when yujin needs it more.

“of course i will,” he promises quietly. “i’ll stay with you the whole night. the whole day tomorrow too, maybe the whole week. you’ll get sick of me, just wait.” he smiles wanly. “just wanna stop the bleeding and get you cleaned up first, and then. then we’ll go. yeah?”

he says it for himself too, to give himself direction, to keep the compass needle of his mind from spindling erratically and uselessly.

“i’m going to get this off of you too, okay? i... i have to make sure there’s no bleeding underneath.” he places a gentle hand on yujin’s shoulder. he thinks of all the times he’s leaned or rested an arm there and how yujin has always felt so steadfast beneath him, how he’s never looked this vulnerable before. he waits for yujin to agree before starting on the buttons of his shirt, and his hands don’t shake all the while. he undoes the last button and he isn’t shaking. he slowly slips the shirt from yujin’s shoulders, revealing the smattering of bruises on his torso, and a small, strained breath wrenches itself out of his mouth before he can stop it but he isn’t shaking, he isn’t, because he needs to be the steadfast one now.

“it’s okay,” he says when yujin apologizes again. he lets the shirt join the jacket in the tub. “it’s okay,” he repeats, will repeat it as many times he needs to until yujin believes it. 

he lets memory have a hand: the rest, he watches himself carry out through his eyes. his hands do most of the work, shifting between feather-soft touches when he has to tilt yujin’s head up to be able to look at his wounds and the firmer touch needed to dab the red away with the washcloth. he cleans yujin’s face and his torso, exceedingly careful around the bruises, although it never does away with the fear that every time he touches yujin, he’s only causing him more pain.

it’s hard to think like this. it’s even harder to string together an answer for yujin’s question that will convince him that it is okay; it’s hard to promise when the evidence of yujin’s mortality is there beneath his hands now, every memory he has of yujin saying i’m fine, i’ll be fine resounding in his thoughts, and when they’ll never really go away. they’ll heal, and maybe they won’t leave scars but memories leave more than scars, and sunkyu thinks that this is never going to leave him. even now, every time he takes a selfish second to close his eyes and steel himself, he can still see yujin stained red in the dark. he feels the slick stick of his hands even after he soaks them in the warm water each time he wrings out the cloth. 

eventually, impossibly, he finishes. the washcloth has left a damp, flushed sheen to parts of yujin’s skin, but sunkyu will take that hue of pink over crimson. 

“i’m going to get you a shirt.” before he straightens, he leans over to press a soundless kiss to the top of yujin’s hair. it’s okay, this says. sunkyu ignores the wetness gathering in his eyes again. “i’ll be back, don’t worry.” he leaves the room before yujin can get a look at him.

he returns with one of his bigger sweaters his hands, a worn, faded green one that’s big enough to dwarf even yujin. sunkyu eases it over his head and helps him put his arms through the sleeves, and then there’s a moment where he thinks that it’s really finished now and he can bring yujin to bed and he can breathe, but when he guides yujin’s hands out of the sleeves he realizes that there’s still blood there, dried and caked around yujin’s fingers. the sting rushes back to his eyes, almost too quickly for him to swallow back, and he resorts to kneeling on the tile with yujin’s hand clutched in his so that yujin can’t look up at him and worry.

he thinks that he finally has an answer now. he hopes yujin won’t mind that it’s taken him so long, and that yujin will forgive him when he admits to the back of yujin’s knuckles, voice as heavy as he feels, "i’m just so tired, yujin-ah.

“i’m tired of...all of this. of having to deal with all of this and watching you-- you having to change for your parents. you having to go at all and do these things for them that make you so-- when you come back, and you say it’s fine, but it’s. it’s not really, but it feels like it’s the only thing we can say, because even if it’s not fine, what can we do, right? i’m tired of not being able to do anything to change it. to fix it. i hate that our parents have so much control over us, and that yours would let something like this happen to you. i hate that it feels like our own lives don’t even-- that they’re not even ours, that everything we do is for them, like we’re always just. counting down to something, trying to make sure it never runs out, and. that doesn’t even feel like a life. and...”

he wrests his breathing under control, bowing his head closer to yujin’s hand so that yujin doesn’t see his composure fracturing.

“and i’m scared. i’m so scared for you. i feel it every time you have to go to them. i’m scared of you getting hurt and not being able to stop it, and i’m scared that this still isn’t the worst. you came home tonight, but what if next time--”

he can’t say it, can’t name this fear that’s fostered all this rot in him so deep that he couldn’t scratch it out of his bones if he tried, like the old superstition that if he gives it his voice, he’ll give it a form. just another monster to loom over their shoulders.

feysunkyu·:

Ro-Sa ended up laughing when she saw his expression fall, it looked cute to her. – “Forgive me, but yes.” – She laughed and sat down beside him, was silent for a few seconds taking the liberty to speak first. – “A lot of people come here with their own problems, most of them are insecurities, so I think in your case just a chamomile tea can help you.” – She smiled and got up taking the menu and heading back to the kitchen.

“shouldn’t i be the one saying sorry?” the sheepish smile still hadn’t left sunkyu’s face. he shifted over to make room for her, relieved that she was being fairly nice about it, especially when all sunkyu had done was fumble around for about five minutes now. “chamomile sounds great, yeah. though i wouldn’t call it...problems...” when she left with the menu, he allowed his gaze to fall over the rest of the tea shop, with all of its warmth and decorations that made it seem as though it wasn’t a place he should be thinking of emergency exits for. still, old habits meant that he pinpointed the front entrance quickly, imagining where the shop was situated on the street and the path back home he’d retrace if he had to.

To: @feysunkyu

Ro-Sa had spent the morning working in her mother’s tea shop, she loved working there because she was able to meet a lot of different people. She could hear the bell connected to the door screeching as a young man entered the establishment, Ro-Sa waited for him to sit down before going to him and putting the menu under the table and smiling sweetly to him. – “Welcome to my family’s tea shop, do you want something specific? You look stressed so I can recommend something just for you!.” – Said Ro-Sa.

oh. she worked there? he should have probably looked at her nametag first. ro-sa, it said, and sunkyu murmured a quiet thank you to her as he took a seat.

it’s not that he’s guilty or ashamed -- this isn’t why he presses himself into the farthest corner of the train car or why he looks both directions before crossing the right street a few stops later. it’s not that he’s afraid that he might see a familiar face and they might ask what he’s doing. in those hypothetical conversations, the hypothetical-him always fumbles over the right answer to give: oh, well, i was getting sick of coffee, and i thought i’d try tea, and then i managed to find this shop. the hypothetical-him sounds defensive, and sunkyu doesn’t know why that is, why it feels like such an admission of weakness to say. it’s only tea.

the truth is as simple: that sometimes he feels like a book bound too tightly, spine pulled taught and made to hold too many pages, and it’s better on some days and worse on others, but when it’s the latter and he can’t afford to unravel and coffee’s just going to make his bones rattle out of his skin, it’s tea that he goes to, and he’s just sick of the store-bought tea bags he’s been surviving on for four years now, is all. better tea will better help solve all of his problems.

he found this shop a couple of weeks ago, technically. it had caught his eye from the other side of the street and he’d vowed to go, but that was before the rest of the week washed in like a storm and slowing down to breathe hasn’t really felt like an option.

today, though. today. sunkyu enters the shop with his jacket drawn tightly over himself, like the streets aren’t bathed by the warmth of the sunset outside.

it smells...comforting here. he’s not sure if it’s the different ribbons of tea swirling in the air or some kind of placebo effect already settling in, but his posture relaxes. fractionally. 

the bar’s lights are warm. sunkyu’s not usually a bar kind of person, with the exception of his first year in undergrad when it seemed imperative that he impressed his classmates by proving he wasn't allergic to fun, and even that year’s been repressed now, filed away in the figurative boxes where he keeps memories he’s happy not to think about.

maybe this time there’d been a cute girl involved, and maybe she’d been the one to suggest meeting at this bar, and maybe sunkyu doesn’t mind that he hasn’t seen her since she excused herself to the bathroom about forty-five minutes ago because this is the first bar he had discovered when he had just moved out, eager to fill in the rest of the world beyond his parents’ house, and it’s the bar he had first seen oleander perform live at. 

the memory sits clearer in his mind than most. it had been a friday, and he hadn’t really been dressed for a bar (nor for himself, really, when he thinks of how everything had felt wrong that first year, like his parents would come to reprimand him if they saw how he slouched in too-big clothes), and that was probably why he spent most of the night wondering, as he did, what am i doing here, what am i doing.

he remembers how something had shifted when oleander took the stage. he remembers how it had felt when he heard the first notes of the first song, the same song that he used to play in his childhood bedroom, too quiet so that his parents wouldn’t hear, and how he’d almost cried when they sang — it’s mortifying, actually, and a little pathetic when he thinks back on how relieved he’d been just to find that one familiar thing in a sea of bigger, changing things. sober. god.

he remembers seeing ara for the first time. he’d been starry-eyed, because of course he was— it was ara’s voice that fought off the silence he hated around his house and then his first apartment after, still fights off the silence now, in the new space he shares with yujin, whenever yujin is out and sunkyu’s been left to think, think, think.

maybe his oleander records sit in their own box in the living room, right next to the record player he’d also bought that first year, although his collection’s turned out to be oleander records, a classical track or two, and a britney’s greatest hits. maybe he’s never really moved on from when ara reportedly dropped from the group, all but disappearing from what sunkyu could tell, and every time he listens to a song of theirs now it hasn’t been the same.

and maybe the bar's lights are really warm. has he said that already? he’s rambling. stalling. he’s two drinks of something sweet in, enough that he has the courage to consider starting a conversation with a stranger, and maybe it’s because there’s been someone sitting next to him who looks— familiar.

someone who looks like ara.

not exactly as he remembers, but close enough to have derailed him into this memory train for the past ten minutes, gaze fixed resolutely on his empty glass in front of him. can it be a coincidence? sure, or he could even be imagining things, but it’s this bar. couldn’t it really be—

“did you eat?” he asks sunkyu quietly, and he might just be trying to buy himself some time before he makes the walk to the bathroom, maybe all of his adrenaline has finally run out, and he’s being hit with the pain and exhaustion all at once, of countless late nights out using his magic, expending as much of it as he could to finish these potions just to fail the deal, everything finally coming into fruition to leave him standing here feeling fragmented and broken.

he’ll make it up to sunkyu. he’ll do everything he can to.

it seems to be a lifetime before yujin finally lowers his hands and looks up at him, and what sunkyu sees there brings a sharp, fresh sting to his eyes. yujin’s name is on the tip of his tongue again, but he can’t find the voice to say it when yujin looks this battered, broken. it isn’t just in his bruises but in his eyes, in his voice when he says sunkyu’s name and utters an apology.

tw: blood