systole.

“…right?” 

he looks at her with kind eyes and tells himself to proceed with caution, tells himself he should be incapable of this--of paring himself back in layers, opening up and being softer, kinder, tender. he tries to tell himself that girls like sooyeon are dangerous, that feelings are temporary. yet here, with her so close and the tension slowly dissipating around them, jaeyoon feels exposed with his heart in his throat. 

he watches her and lets the warmth of her promise wash over his skin.

he doesn’t believe her. not really. 

still, he lets himself smile, strokes his thumb under her eye and tells himself to try.

“i’ll catch you if you fall.” doesn’t he always?

and all the while, the wheels turn inside his head as his stare lingers, heats just a little before he casts his eyes to a point beyond her shoulders. nowhere and everywhere else but on sooyeon’s eyes, her mouth against his palm, all at once. 

her voice comes suddenly--like an echo at the end of a tunnel--the shift in conversation jerking him from the memory of a champagne kiss, sticky sweet and oh so warm, so suddenly he has to blink, his gaze sharpening for a split second, cooling, before he remembers where he is, who he’s with, and gifts her with a hint of a smile, indulgent and amused.

“aw c’mon,” his voice is a warm tease, tone light enough to convey he means no harm, that he will hold no grudges over her. his lips widen, a notch more genuine, as he drops his hand from her face to poke her gently in the cheek instead. “you know i wouldn’t do that to you.”

right?

the question goes unspoken and he leaves the worry, the uncertainty caged inside his heart. he doesn’t tell her that he’s afraid, that she holds his wretched heart in the palm of her hands. “i care too much to hurt you.” you know this too, right? do you believe me, sooyeon? “besides, you’d kick my ass if i did.”

the joking is easy. this is what he’s used to. this is what he’s good at. pretending--it feels familiar, enough that jaeyoon can almost convince himself that everything’s okay between them, that it will continue to be, just like it had been before. before.

but he hears the hesitation in sooyeon’s voice and tells himself to handle her with care. turns the knife point towards his own throat and reaches between them, calloused fingers wrapping around her wrist, fingertips pressed light against the thud of her pulse. when he speaks, he weaves his heart, his treacherous feelings into a promise: “you’ll always have me, sooyeon.”

The shutter clicks again; if anything at least he makes a handsome photo.

"if you were, we’d be fucking right now. rose petals and all.” there’s no bite, no bark either. it’s some kind of backhanded go-with-the-flow tease of a joke as he recognizes the edge in her voice. almost like she’s trying to shape her words into something a little sharper. meant to hurt, draw blood. intentional or otherwise. soojung reminds him of ellie. all sharp edges with a mouth on her. firecracker in human form. it’s no wonder he finds himself relaxing, the tension that usually lined his shoulders melting straight away as soon as her next words drop.

if he were a kinder man, he’d have apologized for that uncalled for jab. friend or not, he should’ve known better than to use jiyong as ammunition just to get a rise out of her. the fun’s only as good if she bites back, looking for a spot of revenge. soojung knows more than she should, after all. 

but kwon jaeyoon has never been nice, despite what his legion of delusional fans would say.

“you’re absolutely right. you’re not.” he doesn’t account for how casual he sounds. he doesn’t particularly mean anything by it. it’s not an attack, not a gunshot. nothing but statement. pure fact. he supposes he could’ve been gentler, more tactful. but his mother never raised him up proper and so the artful war of words has never been his forte, far preferring the straitlaced way brutal honesty punched right into the heart of things. his only concession, however, is the way his eyes soften. just a little. sympathy shining in spades. “but you could be.” if the two of you would get your shit together.

the sudden shift of conversation has him raising an eyebrow, amused. “i’m a nobody amongst somebodies here,” his shoulders lift in a shrug, though the flick of the lighter in his hand belies the tension lingering still. he watches as soojung lifts the camera, lets her hide behind the lens, even as the shutter-click makes him blink. there’s something to be said about how quiet a surrender can be and his comes shaped in a confession rasped low and tinged in smoke as he lights another cigarette. keeps his hands busy, his mouth busier. “they don’t give a shit who i am, probably dun’ even know.” there’s laughter in there somewhere: a little hollow, all grit around the edges. he’s not sure he likes it.

“i… can’t sleep.”

admitting her weaknesses had never been something she was good at.

something about a vicious thunderstorm weighs heavy on the soul.

maybe it’s the city streets — always crowded, muddled with pairs of twos and threes and groups of fours and fives shouldering each other on their way to the station, elbows rubbing as they huddled beneath the shelter at a bus stop. maybe it’s the few lonely stragglers who have nowhere to go — no place to call home, no half to return whole to — the people wandering aimlessly in a metropolis half in rest, half awake.

maybe it’s the undercurrent of tension (of loneliness, of isolation) in a city so vast.

it makes the notorious anonymity amongst its people nothing more than a worn second skin everyone wraps around themselves first thing in the morning. it makes anonymity dangerous. lethal. it renders people into mere faces, gestures, minute facial expressions— something that barely piques your attention from across the street. something you notice in a split second and forget about soon after: a fleeting laugh, muffled cursing, lilting whispers. white noise.

anonymity turns people into nothing more than byproducts, bystanders, of the city.

maybe that’s why jaeyoon finds easy solace away from the chaos, housed way above ground — because, here, no one is watching. finds his place in the comfort of his sheets and the darkness of his room. it’s been days—weeks—since he’s had a good night’s sleep and the rain has managed to lull him into a familiar sense of tranquility. he’s drifting when a sound startles him awake. ellie.

“i wont run away like that anymore– not from you. you’re someone who i really shouldn’t run away from.” a fluttering smile, she laid her cheek on his chest with a soft hum. “you’re good to me, better than most.”

he feels the press of her body before he has a chance to dissect the words she’s saying and his arm wraps around her waist, pulling her closer, holding her flush against his side before he can stop himself. a sigh rustles her hair just as he turns and fits his chin atop her head. “it’s fine,” jaeyoon replies distractedly, voice distant as he listens to her cast apologies, fishing around for a weight to prop her up, hold her steady as she struggles to brace herself against the storm of her own emotions. “trust me. nobody gets it right the first time. besides, no one saw. no one noticed anything.”

no one was watching us goes unsaid. but the truth hangs heavy between them, like the subtle, heady scent of the cigarette he’d succumbed to on his drive over. the smell of it clinging to his clothes, his skin. “i care,” his voice is whisper soft; a confession for her ears only. “i always do.”

forgiveness begins with an apology. healing and rebuilding trickling in on the heels of relief and the lightness to his shoulders. it’d been a burden to hold onto his anger, the frustration, and all the questions he’d wanted to ask. it pales in comparison to the soft surrender sooyeon gives him in the wake of an olive branch. and somehow, jaeyoon can’t bring himself to carry that fury. can’t bring himself to light himself on fire when faced with the softness of her body pressed against him and the feel of her, solid and warm and real.

he’s studying the faint bruises smudged dark beneath her eyes when sooyeon’s voice carries. in it, he recognizes the weight of the promise she’s offering. he listens, eyes dark and expression unreadable, and almost sighs. don’t make promises you can’t keep, sooyeon. still, it’s been weeks since he’s last seen her or heard her voice or been this close. just like this.

his lips purse and he pulls away just enough to cup her face, thumb edging along the curve of her jaw, feather-light as he trails it across her bottom lip. surrender comes in the slight curve of his lips, a smile too gentle for words, his voice smoke and gravel.

“Oh,” she says and it almost sounds like the disappointment that breathes through but the relief is there too, the sense of calm. “What are you doing out here of all places? I’d thought you’d be out trying to fuck some pretty young thing.”

ft. @idjaeyoon​  — santiago, chile

being an idol was not a nine to five job. with six years under his belt, jaeyoon has had to learn to roll with the punches. which is why he finds himself wandering out into the open streets, into the stuffy crowd of unfamiliar faces after the hustle and bustle of the showcase dies down, settles into something that feels a little like a buzz on his skin. had he been anywhere but here, he’s sure he’d be out hitting the clubs with a shot glass in his hand or holed up in his studio, music all around. but he’s in santiago of all places, swimming across an ocean of people who could care less who he is and doesn’t give a damn what he’s here for. there’s a casualty to being foreign, rendered Other in the eyes of people who spoke in a different tongue, who would openly stare as he passed by. neither awestruck or rendered speechless.

they pass him by as if he were invisible. and jaeyoon finds he quite likes that.

so he drifts aimlessly, one hand curled around a lighter he’d bought some four blocks back. tonight, jaeyoon thinks he finally understands what freedom feels like--temporary though it was. like a ghost, he’s but a dot of orange cutting a path across the streets. with every habitual flick of his lighter, a hiss shatters his self-induced silence. tonight, there’s no moon. no stars. the suffocation of idol life melts away. rounding a corner off the street market, he passes a drunk, asking for a light. he lends a hand in exchange for a cigarette clasped between his teeth, bidding him farewell with a two finger salute.

two blocks down and he nearly collides with a body. a woman. soojung. stumbling spanish and all. he nearly laughs; the huff of a chuckle rumbling somewhere deep in his chest and muffled only by the back of his hand. watching as the recognition flash in her eyes, jaeyoon slips the cigarette out of his mouth and crushes it beneath his shoes, a grin hanging crooked at the corner of his lips. “wow,” the sarcasm almost burns. if he were a lesser man and prone to rising to baits like this, jaeyoon would’ve been a lit match, ready to defend his pride at the drop of a hat. but this is soojung, after all. and this is how they operate: all biting, offhand remarks that meant nothing. didn’t hurt, didn’t wound deep. “didn’t know you kept tabs on me, sooj.” hands pressed to his chest, jaeyoon rocks back on his heel, full on playful. he’s not thinking of anything but the look on her face and how she seemed to be minus her shadows. jiyong and her siamese twin, mona, nowhere to be found. 

“are you very angry at me?” 

there’s a part of him that wants to lash out, question why it’s always him she comes running to whenever the heartache hurts a little too much and gets a little too heavy to bear. why it couldn’t have been him, couldn’t have been right to kiss him that night. but he knows why. he’s always known.

because jaeyoon isn’t junseo and in comparison, he’ll always fall short. always second best.

it shouldn’t hurt as much as it does — her admission, the break in silence. in hindsight, he would’ve preferred nothing at all. so when the pain ripples through his chest, exhaling on a huff tinged with disappointment, jaeyoon has to close his eyes when the sofa dips inches from his side as sooyeon shifts closer, the phantom warmth of her body close enough to touch. close enough to test his razor-thin patience.

“it’s okay.” it really wasn’t. the weeks of static had been a glaring indication that lines were blurred and were in the precarious limbo state of being redrawn, reconstructed. he feels it in the way he’d tried to compromise and apologize for walking away instead of staying with her. in the moments where he had cigarette in his mouth and his phone in his hands and a whole wall of texts delivered, read, but never answered. he’d never been one to linger. but something about sooyeon remaining silent as the days crawled by hit a nerve. made him hurt. 

even the sound of her voice asking him if he was angry makes him swallow, his eyes opening. his gaze hazy, he turns to look at her. really looks at her. the question hangs there, between them. foreboding and hesitant. he could’ve let it filter right through with an it’s fine, we’re fine. he catches it, instead. lets it pinch the corner of his mouth, jaw clenching. “it hurt, sooyeon.”

the execution could’ve felt less like pulling a trigger. the words less like bullets meant to retaliate. and he hears the sharpness in his voice and tries to reel his anger back in. tries to forgive, to forget. 

(but how can he do that when he looks at her and aches?) 

they believed in each other, which was why she wanted to make sure she was someone he was proud to call a friend.

"don’t you?” he presses this soft, knowingly, into the inside of her wrist. there’s a measure of calm, of calculation, that he weighs with her pulse thrumming against his lips. feels like battle drums and a call to war. and he soldiers up in anticipation of meeting her gaze, eyes half-lidded and pooling warm and wicked with borderline intent. 

had ellie been another woman, this would be where he’d tug her close and press fingers into her hips, mouth on her neck. but ellie isn’t one of his ‘fuck ‘em and leave ‘em girls’. she’s forest fire and the slightest shift could spell disaster. so he backtracks. pulls away. douses the heat and tells himself that ellie isn’t prey--isn’t foe, but a friend. a good one. and if he wanted her to stay, he’d have to pull back his wolf teeth and sheath his claws. 

instead, he lets her sink into him for a moment as he laughs, one hand lifting to pat her on the head when her whine sings in his ear. “been stuck on it for a long time. something’s not right. sounds...incomplete. empty.” ink stained fingers tap restlessly against the sheets of music scrawled all over in scribbles of black and red. turning, jaeyoon’s all cheeky grin and waggling eyebrows, tongue in cheek. “i do more than write songs about my muses.” he toys with them. riles them up. reels them in. and pounces. there were no incomplete songs about those girls. no, there were no songs at all. too busy creating a whole different song to the press of hips and muffled moans to worry about how to put feelings to paper, turn gasps into poetry. because those girls were a means to an end. an escape from the monotony of day to day. 

but he doesn’t tell her that. he tells her this, though. because he can’t help himself. because he’s despicable.

“fall in love with me,” the words ripple between them, ringing with a hum of danger and a touch of suggestion. it comes with a side of sarcasm tucked into the corner of his mouth, too. it’s deliberate. a rakish charm meant to disarm. infuriate. except he cuts the joke short when he feels his world tilt off balance, a laugh rumbling deep in his chest as the distance between his hands and his midi controller grows.

a coward, unable to pick up after her own mess; sometimes im sooyeon thanked the gods far too much for her looks since she certainly doesn’t have the tact to survive without it. 

feelings are temporary. 

at least, that’s what he tells himself.

how he justifies the burn in his chest every time his calls went straight to voicemail and his messages were left unanswered. how suffocating it was to dangle on the precipice, waiting and waiting and waiting for the other shoe to drop. he tells himself to be the bigger person, to give sooyeon the benefit of the doubt. he reasons for her: she was drunk; it was a mistake. he makes excuses for her: she’s busy; she’s sought after, filming this and filming that; she’s sleeping.

he tells himself his frustration over her radio silence and her obvious reluctance to see or speak to him has nothing to do with how he feels about her. that he feels like he fucked up and crossed some forbidden line he wasn’t supposed to and ruined things. 

and that’s the problem, isn’t it?

his inability to truly be upset at sooyeon for choosing to put distance between them. how, no matter what she said or did, he would come running back to her whenever she calls. 

(like now. like always.)

he stands at the threshold with the door wide open in front of him and, for a second, jaeyoon thinks it would be a mistake to step through. but sooyeon talks and he watches her, listening to her stumble through her words. jaeyoon doesn’t realize he’s crossing over until the door shuts behind him and the back of his knees hit the cushions, his ass sinking into the plush before he realizes what he’s done and where he is. 

it’s only then does it feel like trespassing. 

how he listens to her voice trail into silence, awkward and unsure of herself. how his hands tremble between his knees--almost like he had to stop himself from reaching across to take her hand, fold it in between his and tell her it’s okay; that he’s here. how, despite, this being her home and where she should feel safe, she looks poised on the edge of running away.

the realization that jaeyoon did that to her hurts more than it should.

“despite how comfortable your couch is, i didn’t come to take a nap,” she tells him from her position lying on said couch. “try not to act too shocked when i say i came to see you.” 

in another world, they could’ve been lovers.

if there was no hanbyul. no sooyeon. no hani. no glitter gold fame to pursue. no self-loathing disguised as false bravado and thinly veiled arrogance. maybe, jaeyoon might’ve considered taking the plunge. might’ve looked twice at ellie and seen a possibility. might’ve wanted to cup her face and kiss her slow. shut her up. her and her spitfire mouth and eyes that burned. 

if there had been no boundaries, no limits, to consider jaeyoon might’ve said fuck it to everything.

it would’ve been so easy too. 

because he notices. her eyes, the stares. how often she seemed to be holding back. sometimes, he wonders what it would take for her to stumble--to toe the line. wonders if that’s what he’s been waiting for all along: for her to shake the status quo, to make the first move. for an excuse to do the unthinkable. 

he doesn’t.

because it’s ellie. hanbyul’s ellie. and he remembers the vow he’d made to him years ago (one he’d broken months ago and, later, renewed weeks after he got socked in the jaw for being stupid and touching someone he shouldn’t have. he wasn’t too keen on getting popped in the mouth so soon again) not to mess with his people. even if hanbyul no longer had a viable claim over a spitfire woman like ellie. 

it doesn’t stop him from letting her into his home, though. doesn’t stop him from tousling her hair whenever he passes her by. doesn’t stop him from pulling her into his lap. doesn’t stop him from touching her (little strokes, caresses, here and there: a hand on her shoulder, a thumb sweeping across her cheek, skating along her jaw, fingers tucking her hair behind her ears, his arm curled lazily around her waist. just because). doesn’t stop him from listening to her nag him from time to time, a smile curled at the corners of his mouth when he sees the fire in her eyes and how affection blooms soft in his chest every time she storms into his apartment like she owns it--nary a hello or a heads up. 

like tonight of all nights. 

The first thing he saw was his friend; admittedly looking miserable, which was ironic because he could match his feelings right now. Taking his jacket off and tossing it to the nearest couch, Seokyung pulled his phone out from his pocket as he looked around, almost dramatically, “Hurry up and open that bottle you promised, will you?” then it took him two steps to plop down on the couch next to the one Jaeyoon was occupying. He threw his head back and closed his eyes, letting out a deep and long sigh, “Though, I think we’ll probably need more than just one bottle.”

jaeyoon has always been a master at playing pretend.

in his early years that had meant smiling around a forkful of some fancy dish he doesn’t remember the name of. talking out of his ass to adults who pretended to like all of his four feet nothing self clad in head to toe designer someone or other, his hair slicked back and his bow tie choking the breath out of him. he’d been young and stupid then. too caught up in the need to please his parents that he would bend over backward to be whatever they wanted him to be. to play the part of boy wonder, an astute genius groomed to shoulder a legacy.

it was a heavy burden to carry--that crown atop his head. golden and encrusted with the weight of rules and expectations. one for everything he can think of. he remembers them all. all lessons he’d had to learn the hard way growing up. from diapers to designer suits and ties, jaeyoon learned what it meant to bend and not break under the weight of his mother’s perpetual disappointment.

twenty some years later and he still isn’t perfect. never will be. 

(you’re a disgrace.) 

he scoffs. yeah, tell me something new. same fight, same sustained wound her voice always manages to reopen, leaving him bleeding in her wake. he inhales sharply around the cigarette; the end nearly crushed between his teeth. exhales smoke through his nose and peers blearily at seokyung outlined in wisps of white-grey. blurry and distorted. sees a call to arms, a comrade answering his silent call for help.

jiyeon smiles to him, almost demure, almost like she doesn’t know jaeyoon. “and if you tried to hit on me at least your pick up lines would be better than the average guy.” she relaxes, leans more into the couch and her smiles stays the same. she has years of practice on that sweet girl image. “but you won’t hit on me, will you?”

it wasn’t a smart thing to do. being around, being this close to jiyeon. 

it should feel like a betrayal to junseo. how he can render himself casual, borderline flirtatious with a girl so wrapped up in his friend. (he could think of another woman caught in junseo’s web, too. and has to wonder what about junseo was so magnetic that not one, but two--possibly even three--girls would find themselves drawn like moths to his burning flame.) he’s not jealous, per se. jiyeon was never his to begin with. (neither was sooyeon. but that's something else entirely. complicated and tangled. a whole web of confusion and unresolved tension he’s not ready to dissect--let alone address or put a label to.) despite their one tryst in the aftermath of too much booze and calculated provocation, jaeyoon feels nothing. no attraction. no lingering feelings. nothing but playful camaraderie. 

jiyeon is simple, he learns. uncomplicated in the way that should make him cautious and tread carefully. instead, her nonchalance and her devil-may-care attitude draws from him a sense of mischief and cheekiness. makes him a little more loose-lipped and unafraid of casual flirtation meant to amuse, to entertain. strictly for show.

“like you for more than your mouth.” he grins back at her, waggling his eyebrows at her. all jokes and wanting to meet her tit for tat. “been there, done that.” kissing, he means. he’s already had her. tasted her. touched her. did lots of things in the darkness of the night so long ago he’s almost forgotten what she smelled like, what she felt like. it was for the best those memories stayed hidden. forever lost and buried. he’s no replacement for junseo. didn’t want to be, either. 

“oh, mon cherié,” she coos then shivers, fingers grasping his forearm when lips ghost. he speaks so wickedly but there is a softness hani stumbles on. melts into. here, hani fumbles. yet here, she doesn’t care she does. “i’ve been burning in hell since before we met. i’m not afraid of anything. especially not you.” let’s play with fire.

"i do want you.”

like a conquest. like a pawn captured. like dousing a fire blazing beneath his skin. it’s visceral. physical. carnal instinct rearing its head at the most inopportune times. it’s not a confession. just plain fact. a truth so raw, he doesn’t feel it ripped out of his chest until the words settle in the space between them, thrumming in anticipation. he realizes too late that he’s been baited, cornered this time around by this delicate slip of a woman. realizes he’d been lulled complacent by her mouth, her touch, and the defiance shining in her eyes. he can’t break her like this. no, she’d gone and done the unthinkable. reeled him in with the promise of something more. something dangerous and all consuming.

isn’t that how they’ve always been?

all fire and clashing together. nerves rubbed raw and ignited at the burn of fingertips trailing his skin and her eyes on him, all come hither smiles on curved red lips. taunting. she’s devastation in high heels. chae hani has always been temptation wrapped up in a lithe body and jaeyoon’s known women like her. and yet, here he is: feeling like a fly caught in a spider’s web, black widow a breath’s away from kissing him to death. 

no, this isn’t how it should end. with him as victim and his heart in her hands.

he laughs when she shoves him away, one hand rising to rub at his chest. it burns warm. it shouldn’t have. and a smile curls crooked at the sight of her. finds an opening in her questions and meets her curiosity with calculating intent. he leans in closer, fingers digging into her hip. harder enough to bruise, but not hurt. never to hurt. lips at her ear, he whispers to her his secrets. “not always with words.” smiling against hani’s neck, he fights back the urge to taste her when he feels her fingers on his arm. smiles at the first sign of weakness. there you are, love. come out to play. “i get to know them first: their favorite color, roses or daisies, silk or satin, red wine or champagne. an innocent game of twenty questions.” gotta reel ‘em in slow. get them on a hook. let them know he’s interested, willing to fulfill a fantasy. any fantasy.

he divulges his secrets as his hand slips higher and higher, leaves the curve of her hip, tracking upward past the dip of her waist, her shoulder. ends with him cupping the side of her neck, thumb grazing under her jaw. “touch them second: with my hands. like this,” his free hand slips under the hem of her shirt, fingers trailing against her skin, his thumb stroking softly against her ribs. “with my lips.” he presses his thumb lightly against her jaw, tilting her head back, smiling as her hair tumbles golden down her back. “here,” plants a kiss under her ear. “here,” trails lips towards the open collar of her shirt and kisses the base of her throat, mouth pressed light and soft against the flutter of her pulse. there’s a stroke of tongue, a hint of teeth. a flicker of flames left in its wake.

he smiles against her skin, kisses her throat once more for good measure, and lifts his head. there’s red there--remnants of her lipstick stamped in the shape of his lips stark against her pale skin. he looks at her then, eyes dark. wicked and dangerous. he doesn’t give her time to catch on before he makes his move. “and here,” he lowers his head, his mouth slanting over hers in a kiss so fiery he thinks he’s burning, skin igniting, heart rupturing. 

“late night, hm?” she notes, wraps him in a one armed hug with her free hand, wound around his waist, squeezing lightly at his side. “you’re lucky i was still awake.” tongue in cheek, she says this. she’s a noted insomniac and a workaholic on top of that. sleep is stolen in fitful hours displaced throughout the day. 

the city has teeth when it sleeps.

and jowi—jowi has teeth too. she has teeth when she bares them at him when he’s got her pinned to the mattress and handles her a little too hard. a little too rough. she has teeth when he calls her out on her bullshit two shot glasses too many and her face is blurry around the edges. has teeth when he catches her mid-laugh, mouth open and her head thrown back, dark hair spilling over her shoulders, down her back. now, in the dimness of his apartment with her arm around his waist, jaeyoon wonders if her teeth are sharper than the city put together. if she knows she’s dangerous. 

(it’s been weeks since he’s seen her last. months, probably. thinks he should ask how she’s been, what she’s been up to. if she’s managed to sleep. if she’s eaten. if she’s tired. why she decided to come after a stretch of radio silence. normal, polite bullshit. but they’ve never been conventional. fuck that.)

he’s got a cigarette in his mouth. half-lit and fading fast. at the press of her body against his, he inhales a lungful of smoke and chuckles through the urge to kiss her silent. “every night’s a late night.” there’s a shrug, his hand sliding down her side to rest against her hip. nonchalant, casual. turning, he kicks the door shut and walks her towards the couch. hipchecks her onto the armrest and peers down at her, grinning around the cigarette still clasped between his teeth. “know for a fact you’d still be awake. know you too well.” know you inside and out. 

he takes a moment to study her. looks at her properly. there’s evidence of exhaustion bruised faintly beneath her eyes. knows she’s run ragged lately. knows sleep has been a luxury robbed in exchange for schedules and promotions and being stretched thin; rubber band taut. her eyes are the same, though. her mouth too. something’s different about her, though. that’s new. 

she’s quiet. he’s quiet. and it’s been months since they’ve been this close together. like this. within reach. and it dawns on him that he doesn’t remember when he’d seen her last. he purses his lips and steps a little closer, his eyes shadowed, his voice all smoke and gravel. 

noah doesn’t remember a lot of the stupid shit he does, but he thinks a lot involves absolutely destroying any personal space between them. 

it’s strange how time can change a person. how it plucks from them their innocence, twists it into desperation and greed. how it turns what used to be hope into something deadly and dark. stranger, still, is how it attracts jaeyoon to people like noah. like seokyung. like junseo. taeho, san. daehyun. how broken people had a way of converging together. these are the people who has seen the cracks in his armor, sees the chip on his shoulder. can tell that the smile he flashes at cameras and at fans is just shy of genuine. always crooked, always a touch insincere. perhaps, it’s why people like noah can meet his darkness with a toast and a wry smirk when the cameras pan away, when the late night silence descends and jaeyoon can shed his skin. be himself. it’s people like noah that jaeyoon would give the world. would sacrifice his life for. 

sometimes, he wonders if noah knows. wonders if noah realizes just how much of an impact he’s had stumbling into his life as he did in the halls and training rooms of 99 ent. wonders if he knows that jaeyoon cares.

maybe this is why he always chooses the grandiose methods of affection. the bigger and brighter the better at times. as if it wanted to be absolutely sure noah knew the significant role he plays in his life. as if claiming him as a brother in the circles of the sons and daughters of the elite is as good as spitting in his parents’ face. this is my family now. he is my family. touch him and i will kill you. a warning. a message written in glitter gold and black label whiskey. 

jae stares into his drink. empty -- he’d knocked it back minutes ago. too fast. he should slow down if he wants to survive the remainder of the night. he doesn’t, though. embraces the blurred reflection he sees at the bottom of his glass, ears tuning out of the slurred conversation a girlfriend of a friend of a friend hanging off his arm. 

noah’s arrival is a welcomed distraction and he shifts to catch the weight of his best friend against his shoulder, mimes a stumble before he straightens, a chuckle rumbling warm in his chest, an arm now slung across noah’s waist. “happy birthday, old man. still looking good even though you’re one year closer to fifty.” an elbow jabs playfully into his friend’s ribs and sets his empty glass on a tray as a waiter breezes on by. nimble fingers manage to snatch two glasses of liquid gold from a bottle girl making her rounds and he presses one into noah’s hands just as his best friends plants a ripe, wet one on his cheek.

he gags on cue, his groan swallowed by the raucous laughter and the drunken whoops and catcalls from their circle of party guests all around. “yeah, yeah, yeah. love ya too, gramps.” his voice’s warmed over, though. even as a mock grimace twists his lips. half stumbling, he spills noah onto the couch steps away and clinks their glasses together, ready for a toast. “ladies and gentleman--the man of the hour,” jaeyoon introduces with a dramatic sweep of his free hand. he makes eye contact with a girl lingering at the corner of the room and winks. she nods and kills the lights. kills the music. plunges the room in temporary darkness and hushed silence.

it’s rehearsed--the theatrics, the grand gestures, the timing, the reactions. he’s made sure all those invited were well aware of the event he had painstakingly planned for his best friend. his brother. hours prior he’d done a run-through. advised them not to panic when the lights blow, when the music cuts. don’t ruin this. got it? and they know better than to disobey. know better than to mess this up. so here they are, waiting on bated breath for jaeyoon to take center stage.

smiling in the darkness, he snaps his fingers and the ballroom lights up again. dimmer. less disco and strobe and more yellow, warm and mellow. the fairy lights are cliche, strewn carefully around the room, but he likes the effect far better. less dizzying. he gestures at the waiter and in comes a tower of a cake. 

enough was enough.

there are distilled moments after midnight when jae closes his eyes and hears quiet rattling, phantom sounds of shutters clicking. like a projector running in an empty movie theater. his memories of the past day a film meant for his eyes only. here, in the too quiet apartment, all he can think of is the aches and pains of hours of practice on end. the exhaustion has a way of seeping into muscles, into bones, settling deep into the nerves. professionalism is pretending it isn’t there, festering like a disease. a bacteria. a slow-acting virus that flares up when the city is silent. asleep. defeat is letting it swallow him in the seconds it takes for the hour-hand to hit one.

he cracks one eye open to stare at the blood red digits of his alarm clock and the black screen of his phone. eerily silent (now, at least. moments before it had been buzzing with life, bursting with notification after notification. none of them hers.) and mocking him. he was not needed anymore.

it should come as a relief. (it doesn’t.) the emptiness weighs heavy. the loneliness burns cold.

this is how he loses track of time:

his phone in his hand, the display screen too bright, and his finger scrolling through a series of past conversations as his mind does an impromptu rewind pause play. a wry smile hangs crooked on his lips as his finger hovers over the string of numbers he knows will only lead him straight to voicemail. her expression still stings; the truth still hurts. and he still can’t reconcile the distance that has formed between him and sooyeon. he stares for far too long, throat dry. 

jae doesn’t get to file this all away because the sound of his phone chiming sets him on instant alert. it’s her--sooyeon. there’s no preamble. no ‘hey, i missed you.’ or ‘how have you been?’ no apology either. but jaeyoon expected that. he should be angry for the weeks of silence and worry gnawing at him from the inside out. should feel a visceral and biting kind of pettiness at her sudden contact (she must need him again. need him for something no one else can give her) after being rejected over and over again. he does--he is all those things--but still finds himself tapping open the message anyway. answers after a moment’s deliberation. 

[ 권재윤 ] : i’m free. [ 권재윤 ] : be there soon.