#moatxt

You look up, and the guy does a double-take as well. You recognize the familiar features that haunted your thoughts, even after all the time that had passed. The guy’s expression hardened, hiding his surprise behind a stoic mask. He cut his hair short and dyed his hair a dark red; you almost didn’t recognize him.

“Oh, it’s you.” Beomgyu scoffed. You felt your heart sink as you noticed a girl clinging to Beomgyu’s side. It felt like someone had stabbed you with a knife when you saw him with another girl, the sight cut through the alcohol-induced vision. The other woman leans into Beomgyu—something that you had already seen many times before, especially with him and other women—she turned to see the sight of you.

Beomgyu always finds himself being drawn to parties each time. There’s something in his subconscious hope that thinks he’d be able to see you again. Though he’d never admit it, seeing you there brings a mix of emotions. The desire to catch glimpses of you and the adrenaline of knowing things are over. It all creates a complex struggle for him, and he craves that feeling. The feeling of toxicity. Beomgyu’s always tough on you because he’s trying to distance himself, convincing himself he doesn’t want you anymore, because he’s bad for you. And he knows that. Deep down, he can’t shake the lingering feeling. He’s always caught in a cycle of wanting what he can’t have.

The parties, the places you both used to be at together, it all haunts the both of you. They carry memories and emotional significance for you and him. He doesn’t admit it, but you always will, and it breaks something in you both each time. You couldn’t help but blurt out the first thing that came to mind, “Having fun with your latest hook up?” Beomgyu turns to look at you, his gaze narrowing as he takes in your drunken state. As for the girl, she gave you a sideways glance, looking you up and down. She even muttered a small “Do you know her?”

“This is my girlfriend,” Beomgyu’s lie towards you is curt, and the indifference in his tone added fuel to the fire that was burning within you. Before you could say something stupid again, he suddenly grabbed your forearm and guided you out of the crowded room. He let go when you two were in the backyard, closing the sliding door behind them. The cool night air hit your face, which sobered you up, just for a second. Beomgyu nudged you into a secluded corner. “Tell me what you want to say, now.”

He spent months trying to forget about you. He tried finding you in other girls. He dated girls who had the same interests as you, who shared your smile, and he tried drowning his heartache in their laughter. They never lasted, though. His heart was always tangled up in your memory, the ghost of your touch, and all of the girls knew. So they left—or pushed him away, knowing they were all fighting wars they’d never let him win.

Beomgyu crossed his arms as he studied you with a mixture of annoyance and some other unreadable emotion. He couldn’t read you anymore, understand you. You guys were in love for six years, but it’s all gone, buried away. This reminded you of countless conversations you two had like this. The two of you, always finding yourselves in isolated places just to argue about minor topics. “Since when do you lie so easily?” You finally asked, and your voice trembled beneath everything. A muscle in Beomgyu’s jaw jumps. The red dye in his hair catches the dim light set in the backyard, which burns like embers.

“Since it became easier than telling the truth,” You didn’t understand what he meant. He ran his hand through his hair in frustration, he was tired of you. “Don’t you understand?” Beomgyu had lost it. “You’re the other woman. I’m sure you always have been.” You had been looking down the whole time, from the moment he grabbed your arm until now, but his words pierced through your head, making you look up. You stared at him, and your eyes started to sting with tears threatening to fall out. “Beomgyu, I don’t know why I can’t get rid of you—“ A breeze kicked up, and the scent of someone’s cigarette and Beomgyu’s cologne entered your nose. It smelled like all the nights you wasted loving him.

“Don’t give me that bullshit.” He furrowed his eyebrows, not allowing himself to hear you out anymore. He let out a short, disbelieving laugh as he shook his head. “I was never there for you to get rid of, that’s the problem here.” His voice softened for just a slight second, you could hear it; you were sure of it. But, there was firmness behind all of it. “You keep rewriting us like it’s some sad movie. We already had our ending.”

You looked down again, fidgeting with your fingers. You knew he wasn’t done speaking. He never was. “I loved you, yes,” Beomgyu sighed deeply, “I planned to marry you, for Christ’s sake.” He paused at what he had just said. He hadn’t told her that before. Memories flashed through his mind, but he quickly dismissed them and hoped that you hadn’t heard what he said. “That’s what’s making this so painful. We already had our story, and it’s over. Why can’t you accept that? I can’t keep putting you down like this.

You wiped away the tears with the back of your hand. There was a mix of pain and desperation in your eyes as you looked up at him once more. “You wouldn’t understand,” you said, your voice was barely a whisper, yet it still held so much emotion. Beomgyu clenched his jaw as his expression hardened again. He was angry and tired. “Make me understand,” he retorted. “Make me see why it’s so hard for you to let go of me.”

Before you spoke again, you seemed to choke back a bitter laugh. “That’s the thing isn’t it? You don’t want to understand! You— you moved on so cleanly. As if I was nothing. Like we were nothing.” Your voice cracked, the alcohol and heartbreak were slurring your words. Beomgyu pinched his nose bridge. “God, you’re so drunk.”

“And don’t even try to change the subject!” The words burst out of your mouth before you could even stop them, “You’re still lying to me. Planned to marry me? Are you serious? If it was like that—if I even meant that much to you, why did it feel like you erased me the second you ended things with me?” The night air was too sharp. The music from inside of the house felt more faint to the both of you. There were other people in the backyard as well, but too drunk to even notice your argument.

Beomgyu’s patience is snapping, “Because that’s what healthy people do. They don’t—” He cut himself off when he saw the fresh tears glinting in your eyes under the dim porch light. His voice drops lower suddenly, almost pleading. “Why do you keep doing this to yourself?” The silence stretched out between you two. Your voice cracked with raw honesty. “I thought if I waited long enough, then one day it wouldn’t hurt anymore.”

His breath hitched at your confession. The vulnerability was drawn all over your face, which made his anger falter. He assumed that you were still clinging onto the past out of some delusional hope. When he heard the truth, his heart ached, but he was sure to not show it. Beomgyu just stood there, unsure of what to say. “That’s not how it works.”

You winced at his unexpected words. He exhaled sharply, his shoulders tensing as he looked away, somewhere past your shoulder. The glow of the party lights blurred through the sliding door. “You don’t wait for pain to leave.” His fingers twitched at his sides. “You keep walking until, one day, you forget to count the steps.” The rawness in Beomgyu’s voice surprised himself, and it got quieter—just for the both of them. “So, why are you still counting?” He lied, again. Beomgyu knew. He knew that he was counting as well. Hypocrite.

His words hit you, and you realize you’ve been staring into his eyes for too long. It stung, so you tried looking away, but your eyes landed on his hands instead. You’re too scared to look away but too afraid to meet his gaze once more, knowing you’d just get lost in it. You clench your jaw before answering him. “You think it’s that easy, huh?” You scoff, but it’s mostly at yourself. It comes out broken, with pain. “That I can just forget everything we had.” You pause, not knowing if you should say it, but you do. “Do you even think about what we had?”

Beomgyu is caught off-guard by your question—by the way your words hit him right in the chest. He went silent for a moment, and you were able to see his defenses starting to crumble. It was visible in his face. “Of course, I think about it. Every damn day.” He didn’t lie this time. His tone is sharp, almost cold, but the crack in his voice betrays him. You were able to see how he truly felt—just for a little—in the cracks of his expression. His throat bobs as if he’s swallowing back something dangerous to say. He fights back all his emotions, but his eyes are telling a different story. “I think about it—about you, more than I should.” He pauses to take a deep breath, looking away from you again. This gave you the chance to look at him. You were both fighting the urge to reach out to each other, to pull each other into a hug, to kiss the tears away. But you both don’t.

Your fingers tighten around your own arms, nails digging in just to feel something real. Anything but this soul-crushing ache. The way Beomgyu’s voice splinters on how he says “should” makes your breath hitch. He hates that you still reduce him to this—to all of these trembling arguments in secluded corners. Even after months. Beomgyu suddenly steps closer, crowding you against the wall. “You wanna know what I really think about that?” His chest was heavy with the effort of restraint of feeling you again. The admission hanging between you two like a guillotine. You can almost taste his cologne mixed with whiskey. He still wore the same one. Beomgyu’s pupils swallow the dim light behind you whole when you lift a shaking hand to his face, but he doesn’t pull away. He never did. “It was the best lie I ever told myself.”

Your thumb brushed his lower lip. Once, then twice. It was similar to the way you always did whenever you knew he was lying. “..Liar.” And a ragged exhale punched right past his teeth. His eyelashes flutter shut for one second before he seizes your wrist mid-air. He made sure not to hurt you like the way you were hurting him. When he spoke again, it’s pure venom, but laced with honey. “You made me this way.” The pad of his thumb dug into your pulse point in your wrist, where it just races for him. Beomgyu’s words hit you like a punch to the gut, the memories stir up a tidal wave of everything you’d both tried to bury. His grip on your wrist tightens, and his eyes blazed with a fierce intensity. There’s a part of him itching to hold you, but the other part was angry. At himself, at you, and the whole situation.

“Me? I made you this way?” You pull your wrist back, and Beomgyu almost says something back at the release of touch you both had. “Bullshit. You were always good at hurting people. Especially me.” Your voice cracks—half-laugh and half-sob—as you look at your wrist. The red imprint of his fingers linger. “God, you’re pathetic. Still blaming me for your own choices.” The night air stung as you walked towards him and he stepped away from you with each step closer, putting deliberate distance between you two. “Tell me, Beomgyu—when all those girls kiss you, do their lips taste like how mine used to?” His expression darkened almost instantly. Something wild and unhinged flickers in his gaze before he closes the distance in one step, pushing you against the backyard wall again. His breath is ragged against your check.

“..Because you still say my name the same way. You still look at my lips the same way you did almost a year ago.” The words are out your mouth before you can stop them, again, cutting through the thick tension in the air. Beomgyu’s expression falters for a split second before he hardens his gaze. You notice the way he swallows, the way his eyes flick down to your lips again. The words themselves were a punch in the gut. He looked like he was about to kiss you, then he suddenly stepped back. It’s like a switch flipped inside of him. “Don’t.” He almost sounds wounded. He ran a hand through his hair. The rejection feels like a slap, nothing you weren’t used to. You knew the look on his face. He's shutting you out, throwing up a barrier between you guys as high as he could.

Beomgyu gazes at you, and when he spoke again, his voice was raw. “You want me to admit it? Fine.” A step closer—his cologne and the whiskey on his sweet breath made your pulse spike. “I remember everything. The way you laughed when I would always forget my house keys. How your hair smelled after you showered. That fucking—” He stopped talking, his jaw locking. He didn’t want to say more. “Now tell me, was that what you wanted?” He’s already taking steps back from her, ready to turn his back when—

You stopped him from leaving, tugging his arm. “Then why didn’t you fight for us?” He freezes when you grab his arm. Everything was tense in his body. His mask was slipping, his breath unsteady as you dig your nails in his skin. “Like how I did?” He yanks free of your grip, stalking closer again until there’s barely space to breathe. “You really think I didn’t try?” Beomgyu took breaths with the effort of keeping his composure, but his eyes burned. “You want to know why I didn’t fight further? Because some fires don’t need to be put out—they need to burn.” His voice drops to a whisper, rough as gravel. “And we were always too good at destroying each other.”

Beomgyu knew he should push you away from him or else he’d completely destroy you when you guys were together, but now it felt like all his effort was ruined. He was hurting you worse at this moment. There are so many things you want to say, but you’re not sure where to even start. “Every day I tried to let you go—Fuck, I still am!” He raised his voice for the first time tonight, and it sparked something within you. “Every day, I woke up and I had to remind myself why I walked away!” He laughs, but there’s no amusement in the sound. It’s cold and empty. The way your entire body reacts to him—he recognizes that. “You have no idea.. how I’ve tried to move on.” You can see the mist of his breath against the cold air.

His voice, his words have rooted you to the spot. You wanted to leave. But the way you’ve never seen him like this—bare and broken—it made you want to stay longer. “Everything I did, every single moment. It was to convince myself I still didn’t want you.” He closes his eyes, bobbing his head up to breathe out, as if the confession is physically painful. “So tell me,” You spoke up. “Why did you leave me? Rather than fighting for me—for us? Beomgyu, you always resort to leaving instead of fixing the problem.”

His voice broke when he responded immediately, looking down at you again. “Because fixing it would’ve destroyed us faster.” A confession dragged from somewhere rotting inside him. “I loved you enough to let us hurt.. but not enough, because it let us turn into people who hated each other.” There was silence. The party’s laughter in the distance felt like it was mocking you both now. “You have to admit,” He says your name softly, despite the tone he had just a few seconds ago. “The spark was gone.” His words hang in the air between you, they were sharp and heavy like a blade buried too deep to pull out. The way he says your name.. It was almost regretful. The saying makes your chest tighten. You want to argue, but there’s a terrifying truth in what he’s saying. “The spark was never gone, Beomgyu. We just stopped trying to light it.”

Beomgyu exhales through his nose, a bitter laugh that doesn’t really reach his eyes. “Maybe.” He tilts his head slightly, “Or we were always better at burning out than staying lit up.” He was studying you like he was memorizing every detail before walking away for good this time. “Either way, it doesn’t matter now.” The finality of his words settles over the both of you like a moth to a flame. Neither of you move for a long moment. “If it didn’t matter, then why are you here?” You realize. “I mean, you knew you’d see me here.” He was caught. When you were guys together, he knew everything about you. How you always go to the parties Taehyun or Soobin would invite you to. The way you acted whenever he’d leave your side. “You really think I’d be here if I didn’t have to be?” He snapped back.

Your hands curl into fists at your sides, trying to hold on to your sanity that was crumbling by the minute. Your voice was shaking with restrained anger. “What I think is that you haven’t changed at all. Same excuses, same bullshit.” A sharp inhale. “You’d rather lie, run away, than admit that you care.”

Beomgyu’s defenses splinter. The truth in your words hit him like a physical blow, and for the first time tonight, his composure wavers. “Then what do you want me to say?!” He sounded raw. He was cracked open. “That I still—” His teeth sunk into his lower lip like punishment. The unspoken words hang between you two. The guillotine was about to drop. The moth was about to turn into ash. His chest heaves as he steps back—like putting distance between you two once more will somehow erase the slip up he just said.

“That you still what, Beomgyu?” After that, the air between you two turned into something more. It was charged with the weight of everything unsaid. Beomgyu’s breath stopped for a split second as your accusation hung. His voice broke. “I still..” His jaw clenches hard enough to hurt. The air feels frozen around you, like time itself has stalled. Beomgyu’s words are like a slap in the face, yet at the same time, something in you wants to stay, to hear the rest of the sentence, even if it hurts you. You’re almost afraid of what he’ll say.

His pupils dilate. His whisper was drenched in venom again, no longer with the sweetness of honey anymore. “I’m still yours.” His confession between you was raw, ruined, and real. Instinctively, your hand flies towards his face. It was a sharp reaction to the pain he’s caused you, but Beomgyu moves faster, catching your wrist mid-air with a grip that borders on bruising. For a heartbeat, time stops. One second he’s pulling you in, the other second, your lips meet.

It wasn’t soft, or sweet. He was hungry. It was like he was trying to rewrite every mistake with the press of his lips against yours. His free hand tangles in your hair, tilting your head back as if he’s daring you to pull away—daring you to pretend this doesn’t ruin you both. Pretend that this just ruined the efforts of him pushing you away for so long. The taste of him floods your senses: whiskey and winter mint, something so painfully familiar makes your chest ache.

The way he swirls his tongue against yours, the way he bites your lip in between ragged breaths, the taste of you against his tongue. When he almost lets out a low moan, he has to remind himself where he’s at, and he breaks away. Beomgyu’s lips rests against your forehead, lips still hovering close enough to ghost over yours as he speaks. His voice was wrecked, “Now tell me that the spark isn’t lit.” He pulls away from your forehead—just enough to look you in the eye. His face is a mask of pain and want, his lips were bruised and red from the kiss. Stained with your red lipstick. The words are barely a breath, like he doesn’t quite know how to say them. “I still love you.”

His words were filled with something suffocating. It was choking you. Beomgyu’s grip on your wrist slackens, but he doesn’t let you go. His voice is raw with a truth he can no longer deny. “I’m just bad for you. For all of this.” His thumb brushes over your pulse point. It was gentle now, almost apologetic. “I hurt you every time I touch you.” Beomgyu stepped back, releasing you like he was now realizing how deep his poison ran.

“You’re right. You’re really bad at this. Leaving, staying, loving. Everything.” You let out a small laugh that sounded too much like a sob. Beomgyu wasn’t sure where you were going with this. “So go ahead. Hurt me, just like you did the first time.” His hands lift, like he wants to pull you into a kiss again. Instead, he stops midway, fingers curling into a fist before dropping limply at his side. The distance between you two has never felt more suffocating. “I wish I knew how to love you without wrecking us both.” He admit.

”I’m never asking for perfection, I’m only asking for honesty.” The weight of your words hang there. Beomgyu swallows hard, his eyes never leaving yours. “Then here’s my honesty.” A sharp inhale. His fingers twitch. He wants to wipe away the tear tracking down your cheek. “I’m terrified of how much I still want you.”

“That’s all I needed to hear.” Your voice was steadier than your heartbeat. “I still want you.”