there’s an old song filtering through the sifts of the air that sits too still in his apartment – the silk he’d donned to man the stage tonight hangs unbuttoned, loose around gold-kissed skin. there’s something forgotten in the way the notes curl, the record playing the song just distorted enough for the low-lit dim of the hallway light to settle around him like molasses. ( here and now, noeul thinks he’s trapped somewhere between where the night ended, and where the morning will begin. it’s here when noeul thinks he’ll disappear – his name along with anything he’s called his own. )
it takes him some time to pull himself off the well-worn sofa he’s deposited himself on. there are forgotten aches at the soles of his feet, a lingering brush of the pain kissing his temples. he’s bathed too long under the city’s grime, its neon lights. when he came home tonight, he did so with the acknowledgement that he’d spend weeks behind this closed door – - he’d heal under soft cotton sheets and soft morning hours. ( he does this often – disappears under the turn of a rising sun, reminds himself that there’s more to him than just the ways in which he bleeds to unravel. ) he doesn’t let his body fold back on itself in exhaustion until he’s washed off the sweat from his skin, and dressed it in worn-in cotton. his hair no longer smoothed, body no longer on creative display – the stage personality of apollo makes way for noeul. ( he’s surprisingly human under all this, after all. ) it’s like this when he hears the pounding on his door. ( like clockwork, says that stubborn voice in his head that sounds deceptively like honey. ) he recognizes the cadence of the hits, knows who it is even before he pads his way to the door to open it.
it’s no surprise, the state he finds him in. and yet – and yet, it makes him steel his jaw, lazy blinks turning sharper.
noeul is pulling him in before seungjae even stops speaking, loose hand finding his as his fingers weave through seungjae’s on instinct. ( they fit together like they haven’t forgotten to, like they even could. ) the door shuffles shut, somehow, behind the two of them. there’s a careful caution to the way noeul’s gaze assesses the bruises painting seunjae’s face – the free hand coming to grasp his chin, turn his gaze to convince himself the extent of it isn’t half as bad as it has been at its worst.
the dead stillness of the air seems thinner now, strained under the way noeul wants to breathe him in. the fingers clasping his chin trace a swift path up to seam of mauve lips, the pad of his thumb tracing it in light touches that manage somehow still to be reverent. there’s supposed to be a greeting written somewhere in between their silence—but where’s the need? where’s the need, when his touch doesn’t know how to forget seungjae. he’s greedy when he pulls him in, lips soft when they press into seunjae’s even if there’s a thinly veiled desperation under it all. ( it tastes like the goodbyes they don’t know how to say, the apologies they’re too cowardly to face. ) he pulls away before he can lose his breath to him, forehead coming to rest against seunjae’s. when he breathes in, it’s deep; like seungjae’s the reason why the tightness in his chest eases long enough that he can feel the ache in it all.
but they don’t talk about that.
“—what was it this time?” he asks, pulling away just enough that he can settle his gaze on seungjae’s. he doesn’t think he wants to hear, it’s more of the same. ( there’s something tar-like on his tongue at the role he plays in this all. you could call it guilt, perhaps; something latent, easy to forget when they can blame the dark corners of the street rather than each other for the bruises their bodies hold. ) “what happened?”
ℍ𝔼 𝕃𝔼𝔸ℝℕ𝔼𝔻 𝕋𝕆 𝔽𝕆ℝ𝔾𝔼𝕋 𝔸𝔹𝕆𝕌𝕋 𝕎ℍ𝔸𝕋𝔼𝕍𝔼ℝ they wanted him to remember, and with that he meant to say he never learned. it wasn’t an inability as much as it was the lack of wanting — once he did something right they’d be willing to go easy on him, and once they went easy on him he’d be able to feel the crack in his ribcage when he dared take a breath. he didn’t feel guilt until he no longer had anyone but himself to blame, and it was easy to pin the blame on them: with their bruised skin and split lips that were only found on the inside where no one dared to reach. seungjae had seen it — the violence of the men in the pressed suits, their thin lips curling into grotesque smiles. they owned him, they would say, and the young man had reached acceptance.
but no punch ever stole his breath away. it was only noeul that had that capability and maybe that should’ve been the first red flag for seungjae to look for. this was a new form for drowning no one could’ve prepared him for, and whether he believed in faith or not mattered little — the boy suspected even the stars could not have seen them coming. they were two meteors crashing, but somehow surviving it, and now they were spinning out of control. whatever came in their path would not stand a chance.
there was something revolutionary when their lips touched, and whilst the wounded boy strangled a wince he seemed to melt into the touch if only momentarily. this was feeling — he had only ever learned to recognize this and pain, two very different ends of the same spectrum, and yet maybe they were not so far apart at all.
there was always sweetness in noeul’s touch, but seungjae had the horrible feeling he was overstaying his welcome and the aftertaste would not be as sweet.
«i don’t know,» seungjae replies truthfully, for at this point the meaning behind it all had ceased to be of importance. he couldn’t remember his last mission, but he had been stumbling feet and slurred words and hazy mind, and something had gone wrong as it so often did. he wasn’t sure if he preferred this numbness and slight amnesia to the way his bones would break to fit theirs. they were turning the boy into something he was not and he would let them. «i don’t think it matters.»
