He recoils in the spot, once more, feeling the touch given by Sunan when their hands come together; or rather, when his is taken into this gentle hold. Suddenly, he feels fourteen again and his cheeks are red as they briefly hold hands after school before aprting ways. Suddenly, he’s painfully aware of the roughness and callousness of his hands as they are now; the wreckage of skin born from both hits as well as a general lack of care. He’s painfully aware of everything that surrounds him, everything that he is. He plays it off, however, with a forcibly composed mien, controlled breath inhaled with care.
“He hasn’t complained about them, but he might just be too nice to say anything really. And he’s actually quite literally everything but the hunting type… I think he’d cry. He’d cry if I got poisoned, too. My father would cry seeing us both, probably, but he’s a fucking wanker who’d probably prefer — yeah. We met in the military, y’know? Kind of ironic.” The hold remains, continuous exchange of a touch, but Minwoo’s face is now festooned with the arch of a smile, a glimmer to his black eyes; one that the red and the painting underneath cannot devastate. “He’s really pretty. And, uh… our first year anniversary is coming up soon.” His glance is now on his friend again, looking down. He’s smiling, still, upward turn of lip, gentleness embroidered into skin, though it’s followed by a realization’s twitch. “Fuck. Our first anniversary is coming up soon. Do I look too fucked up?”
His hand’s extension proposes an inchoate entitlement, one gradually nurtured and more completely conceived into a notable something when its clutched his cheek, his hand, the palm conforming to the shape thereupon. His thumb grazes somehow slowly, experimental, its pad elevated by the contour, tip pushing beneath the eyelids, everything tender in a way not actually as inexplicable as it seems. Sunan has a gaze like a mouthpiece, after all. It says now to preserve the silence, and, moreover, to permit him. He’s caressing with a knowingness, the ultimate metamorphosis of that entitlement realizing itself with the way it holds on, steadying as if it had remembered finally. There is damage everywhere, pain both felt and unfelt that he tries to overwrite with the absentminded taps pressed lightly like shed blossoms, ephemeral and colliding with the same impact, the same impression that brings someone back every spring.
“I don’t know,” murmuringly, deducing something there amidst his touches, turning the other’s head, observant. “I guess that depends on how he usually sees you, doesn’t it?” His supposition totes another layer whose eligibility he does not rectify outright, keeps hintingly swathed like a masquerade, watching with a persistence, private amusement brightening his iris. “How do you think he sees you?” He turns him aside again, studying the other cheek. “If he’s really the type to cry so freely, I bet he doesn’t see you like this usually, does he?” His thumb solidifying a usable weight beneath the other’s jaw, other fingertips occupying themselves with keeping his head up, thumb dragging itself down to the start of his throat. More damage.
“I bet he doesn’t see you as someone people had intended to kill,” the words cue his Cheshire grin, emerging only faintly, dissipated as his own head tilts, vision dissecting the column of his neck. “And I bet he also doesn’t know that you were hospitalized, saved by your ex-boyfriend and are here to give him money he doesn’t actually need. Money he’s told you that he doesn’t actually need, but you still haven’t left yet.” It’s a kind of feline mischief, one step forward that he seizes with alacrity when he’s made himself the opportunity, baring the other’s neck with a lean farther upward, his voice coming about like a purr, sensationalizing near his skin.
“That’s not fair of me to say it like that, though. I’m probably keeping you, aren’t I? We’re ‘catching up’, ‘it’s been a long time’,” the unspoken ‘etcetera’ is instead wrung about the dismissive whirl of his other, unoccupied hand. “It doesn’t mean anything. It wasn’t emotionally driven at all. I bet you didn’t think I’d answer the door, even,” the quiet suck of his teeth, “but I did. And you’re still here now, kind of too far past the point for your original intent to have been your only intent.” Sunan has a gaze like a knife, after all. It’s holding its blade at his jugular, severing in a deep dive for his trachea, murderous but incidentally, like the unavoidable casualty when carrying something that sharp. It’s accidental, and he means only to play. He pulls away entirely, a kind of feline disinterest prompting him abruptly, swishing back to deposit himself on top of his couch, legs pulled to his chest.
“At least he’s thinking of you, Minu. Even if he does freak out about it, it’s only because he cares.” A bit more embittered than he means to reveal, his peripherals avoiding the two person bedroom behind him, sifting through the bulk of something nauseating. “If you’re that worried about it, maybe try to do something for your anniversary that doesn’t require actually physically meeting up. Like a scavenger hunt, or something where you tell him where to go. It can end up with you giving him a gift after. Something sweet, something personal, that you associate with yourself and want him to have. What do you think?”
