[ fic ] tell me that you'll miss me
B1A4 | cnu/sandeul | PG-13 | 3,500 w
dongwoo comes and goes. junghwan can't wait forever.
When they first meet Junghwan is nineteen.
They meet at the antique bookstore where Dongwoo works, the store smells eternally like some summery potpourri, even in the middle of fall, and its walls are dressed entirely in aged bookshelves. It’s sandwiched between a dangerously hip boutique and a frozen yogurt place, across the street there is a convenience store and before the traffic light a fast food place because there can never be too much convenience.
It’s a store that would seem terribly out of place if it weren’t in the process of being ‘discovered’ by the young and hip that have begun to hang out in the area now that the area has suddenly become cool.
“Wow, I can’t believe there’s really a store like this here,” Junghwan murmurs, almost drowned out by the metallic chime of the door’s hanging bell. Dongwoo doesn’t say anything, since he wasn’t meant to hear it, but he wants to tell him that the store was here before any of the other stuff. The store has been around longer than most of the people in the area can even remember, unchanging and always smelling of bergamot, honeysuckle, and vanilla.
Dongwoo expects Junghwan to peer around the corner and leave the store in a jangle but he steps around the shelves slowly, occasionally reaches out to touch the spine of an aged book carefully. He lingers, and when Dongwoo catches a glimpse of his expression he’s smiling.
“Have a good day,” Dongwoo calls out when Junghwan pulls the door open to leave, bells clattering, and he turns around to return the smile before leaving.
Junghwan visits the store again the following week. He’s wearing a bright yellow sweater that reminds Dongwoo of sunlight that trickles into the store around the window displays; but it’s almost 8PM and the sun has long since set so there’s no sunlight, only Junghwan. He catches Dongwoo’s gaze when he steps in and smiles sheepishly.
“I’m sorry, are you closing?”
“I close at eight…but you can stay a little longer if you’d like.”
It’s a weird place to be on a Friday night, Dongwoo thinks but somehow he ends up easing a collection of illustrated fairy tales off one of the shelves to show Junghwan. He dims the window lights and locks the door, but he lets Junghwan huddle over the book even when the clock strikes eight.
“It was printed in 1907,” Dongwoo tells him. Junghwan pulls his hands away at that, as if he thinks that touching it will make the book crumble into dust. Dongwoo laughs and turns the page for him.
“It looks so new, I had no idea.”
“I had to do some repairs when I got it but it was in pretty good condition overall.”
“You do repairs too?”
Dongwoo isn’t sure Junghwan is actually interested in book restoration but he talks anyways. Junghwan starts to carefully flip through the book again, fingertips hovering over the fine line drawings. Every so often he looks up to catch Dongwoo’s gaze to show he’s still listening, and Dongwoo pauses sometimes, caught in his stare.
“That’s amazing, I could never put all that time and patience into something like that.”
But he still listened to all that, Dongwoo thinks and it makes him smile. “I just like books.”
They talk for a long time. People rush past the shop window from somewhere to somewhere else and cars churn by, the city hums with the noise of too many things happening at once, but the two of them sit in the dim store and talk in quiet voices. Junghwan tells Dongwoo that he’s studying photography; he tells him that he wanted to come back to the store after his first visit because the store was so beautiful and stupidly that makes Dongwoo feel fluttery and happy.
“Isn’t it kind of old fashioned?” he asks, looking down as if to examining the book closely but really to hide his smile.
“No, it’s timeless is what it is.”
“I guess you’re right.”
Junghwan visits the store on Tuesday with two cups of coffee from the café around the corner, they’d just opened last week. He offers one cup to Dongwoo and he accepts it with a surprised ‘thank you.’
“You don’t mind, do you? Me visiting.”
Dongwoo thinks there’s no point in asking when they’d spent two hours talking after the store closed on Friday but still, it makes him smile. It’s starting to seem like Junghwan makes him smile.
“I don’t mind,” he answers, hiding behind the rim of his cup.
Somehow they tumble through fall and early winter. Before Dongwoo remembers to change the month on his calendar from October to November it’s already nearing Christmas.
Junghwan visits the store once or twice a week, usually with coffee or hot chocolate. Cozy visits once or twice weekly have stacked up into something more substantial; it’s mid-December when Junghwan asks Dongwoo about his Christmas plans.
“I don’t usually do anything.”
“Then do something with me, if nothing else we can just eat a lot or something and look at your books.”
“Not while you’re eating,” Dongwoo agrees easily with a teasing grin. “I don’t want you to drop bits of rice on my books.”
Dongwoo doesn’t have a lot of friends anymore, maybe that’s why he appreciates Junghwan’s company so much. Junghwan is incredibly easy to be with. For Dongwoo, who usually has a hard time keeping conversations afloat, Junghwan is happy to steer the conversation for him. He’ll ask Dongwoo light questions, sometimes they seem to come from nowhere, or just be completely on whim, but he never asks anything sensitive or personal.
“Are we doing presents? Because if we are I have no idea what you like. Other than books, and you have so many I wouldn’t know what book to get you.”
“You don’t have to get me anything.”
“But I want to. Tell me what you like.”
Dongwoo likes a lot of things, but mostly they’re not things to be requested or given. He likes it when a new bud sprouts from his old zebra plant, he likes the time of day as the sun is still setting and street lights are beginning to flicker on, he likes the way the store smells when Junghwan brings coffee even if he doesn’t like coffee.
“I like you.” He smiles cutely as Junghwan stares at him with saucer wide eyes.
He feels warm and alive, even though he knows this is usually the beginning of a downward stumble.
The second time Junghwan meets Dongwoo he is twenty-six.
They meet at a gallery; it’s the third day of a photography exhibit. Junghwan doesn’t need to be there but he’s excited about his first exhibit, even if there are only two of his pieces being shown. His name is printed so small on the postcard he’d had to circle and underline and highlight it to make sure his parents saw. But Dongwoo sees it and when he walks into the gallery there’s no chime, Junghwan just looks up and sees him.
There’s no way Junghwan could not recognise Dongwoo, because he looks the same except for his clothes and his glasses, and there’s no doubt that Dongwoo recognises him. Junghwan catches his gaze and Dongwoo has the nerve to smile, looking genuinely happy to see him.
Absence makes the heart grow fonder they say. Junghwan isn’t sure if it’s true but if it is then it’s absolutely unfair. Why should he be fond of some guy that walked out of his life without warning, as if he’d never been there?
The bookstore is still there, sandwiched between a yogurt place and a hair salon. Junghwan had visited the store after Seollal and Dongwoo hadn’t been there. He visited again the next day and then again the next week.
After that he stopped, he hadn’t visited again at all; but it had remained there, unchanging. Sometimes he peeked in when he walked by but this is the first time he’s really been back. He pushes the door open to the same metallic jingle and the same warm smell wraps around him like it hasn’t been six years since his last visit - and Dongwoo is there, like no time has passed.
Junghwan is pretty sure he should be angry but instead he feels strangely nervous seeing Dongwoo again after so long, it makes no sense. Why is he the one nervous when Dongwoo is the one that disappeared without a word. There’s a lot that Junghwan wants to say to him, he just has to figure out where to start.
Behind the counter Dongwoo looks totally at ease, he offers Junghwan a soft, slanted smile and his words are gone.
“I thought you wouldn’t come back,” Dongwoo says quietly.
Junghwan rolls his eyes, “I think that’s my line.”
“...I guess that’s true.” Dongwoo’s smile falls away but it’s not satisfying at all.
Dongwoo says nothing of where he went and what he did, instead he asks Junghwan about his life since they last met. It was like this back then too, Dongwoo rarely offering much about himself, instead he would let Junghwan talk and talk and talk. Once in a while he’d talk about one of his old books, as if the story of where it was printed was an appropriate stand in. It’d been kind of weird back then but now it’s annoying.
“Sorry,” Dongwoo ducks his head and mumbles.
“Well?” Junghwan insists; he isn’t willing to let it go for a second time.
“Cheongju, but I haven’t been back in a long time,” he finally answers, slow and soft.
“Why not?”
“…there’s no real reason to. I don’t have any relatives left there.” Dongwoo finally looks up at Junghwan and stares at him intently, as if he’d just told him something big and important. Maybe it is, after all it’s the only real thing Junghwan knows about Dongwoo other than his name and the location of his store.
Their second kiss comes six years after their first. Junghwan recalls that first one but it’s not like he can remember it with crystal like clarity, it’s been six years. All he remembers is that it was Christmas Eve and Dongwoo had pressed a light kiss to the corner of his lips and he’d stupidly turned to meet his lips fully.
Dongwoo is smiling a little when they pull apart, touching his lips lightly with his fingertips. “We were drinking hot chocolate last time too,” he tells Junghwan softly.
Junghwan looks down and away. Dongwoo is still leaning in, and maybe Junghwan can feel his breath on his skin. “I don’t remember.”
His mind doesn’t zoom in and focus in on that single, barely there moment six years ago. He’s twenty-six and Dongwoo had barely been a consistent part of his life for six months, why should that single brief memory be more significant than the thousands of other things he’s experienced?
Dongwoo kisses him again and murmurs his recollection of that kiss right onto Junghwan’s lips. He reminds Junghwan with every brush of their lips until he can remember what they were wearing, what the weather was like, and the homemade marshmallows that Dongwoo had gotten him as a present.
“You’re really horrible,” Junghwan tells Dongwoo. “I really liked you, and you just disappeared.”
He’d been so angry back then and he’s still angry, but he figures that’s because he still really likes Dongwoo.
Dongwoo looks at him and then down and away, “I’m sorry.”
“You’re so different every time I see you,” Dongwoo tells him, whispers into his bare shoulder. Under the blankets his body is warm but the tips of his fingers brushing across Junghwan’s cheek are cool.
“What’s that supposed to mean?” he asks, voice tight and a little defensive. He almost pulls away but somehow he ends up relaxing against Dongwoo instead. He noses at Junghwan’s shoulder, breath and lips ghosting over soft skin.
Being with Dongwoo is scary. The first time they’d met it hadn’t been scary; it’d been comfortable and easy even if Dongwoo had his quirks. But this time it’s different, their time together is scarred by the way he’d left so abruptly last time. He’d gone to China, Japan, Russia and then all the way to Spain, that’s what Dongwoo told him. He’d gone everywhere, drifting without any purpose.
It sounds like he never stays in one place long. He’s back now but Junghwan wonders if he’s months or days away from Dongwoo flitting off.
Dongwoo’s hand dips back under the covers, arms wrapping around Junghwan’s waist. He squirms a bit against Dongwoo, not liking the cold fingers on his warm stomach.
“You’re more amazing every time I see you, I feel like I’m falling in love with more and more of you every time.”
Junghwan can’t breathe for a few seconds; he struggles to turn in Dongwoo’s arms so that they’re face to face. His voice cracks when he finds it.
“Are you going to leave again now?”
Dongwoo blinks at Junghwan. His mouth falls open soundlessly before he shakes his head finally, but Junghwan doesn’t feel relieved at all.
“I want to stay,” he says as he touches his nose to Junghwan’s and closes his eyes.
Junghwan believes him because in spite of everything Dongwoo still feels perfectly genuine. He believes every word he says, every kiss and all his affection, even though he probably shouldn’t. Junghwan just closes his eyes and kisses Dongwoo. He knows he doesn’t know everything, or even much of anything, about Dongwoo but what he does know he knows with absolute certainty.
Junghwan kisses Dongwoo hard and deep because he wants to trust Dongwoo but he doesn’t think Dongwoo trusts him.
“If you disappear again I’ll never forgive you.”
The next time they see each other Junghwan is thirty.
Dongwoo didn’t disappear but he had to leave eventually and he’s gone for a little bit over two years. Junghwan told him that he wouldn’t wait and Dongwoo had smiled, told him that he deserved better. And then Junghwan had slapped him.
Dongwoo sent him postcards and letters wherever he went and Junghwan wrote back occasionally, but it’d been hard because the address changed every few months.
“You need to learn to use email, grandpa,” Junghwan tells him with a snort.
He’s maybe surprised to see him, probably surprised because Dongwoo had shown up without warning as usual. But all that shows of it is a crooked twitch of his smile; he signs Dongwoo’s copy of the book with flourish and neatly prints his new number under his signature. It’s hard to tell if he’s happy or irritated to see Dongwoo, probably a bit of both and a lot of other feelings too tangled to name.
Junghwan can’t say a whole lot to him, there’s an impressive line winding up to the table. It was probably cowardly of him to come see Junghwan like this but Dongwoo never claimed to be brave. He murmurs a thank you and steps away for the next person in line, he looks back at Junghwan but he’s not looking for Dongwoo anymore.
He watches as Junghwan talks and smiles and laughs; watches him sign every book with equal enthusiasm. It’s like looking in through a store window.
“You never change, do you?” Junghwan pushes his fingers through Dongwoo’s hair. It’s true, so true it stings. He pulls back a little and looks at Junghwan with his practiced smile.
“So we can pretend like no time has passed.”
Junghwan shoves him, pushes him against the bookshelf hard enough to make it shake. “Are you fucking kidding me?”
Junghwan kisses him against the bookshelf in Dongwoo’s dimly lit store. It smells like summer in the middle of winter, they can hear the sound of the city rolling forward through the windows. It reminds Dongwoo of the first winter they knew each other. Some things never seem to change but their kisses have changed.
He’s half of the equation, so Dongwoo figures maybe he’s changed a little too. He has to, tries to, so that he might fit into Junghwan’s life.
For the next four years Dongwoo comes and goes eight times. He’s here for half the year and there the other half. He comes back for seven months and is gone for five. It goes on like that until he’s back again on Christmas Eve, wrapping a thick scarf around Junghwan’s neck.
Junghwan is staring at him as coolly as he can manage, thick lips curled into a frown. It reminds Dongwoo of last Christmas and the one before that. He’s tempted to kiss the frown away but knows better by now. He is most in love the first month that he’s back and Junghwan is most angry the first week.
Dongwoo counts and sections their time together and apart obsessively like a treasured pattern, like the careful stitches that make up the scarf wrapped around Junghwan’s neck.
“I missed you.”
Junghwan unwinds the scarf and holds it out. He pushes his fingers between the warm, fat knots. He pries at it, tugs and pulls at it. He gives the impression of trying to unpuzzle something, trying to undo something that’s glued together.
“I miss you,” he says finally. He looks at Dongwoo finally, lets Dongwoo look him in the eye.
Junghwan is still angry but he doesn’t know how to be cool about anything, that’s just not him. He burns when he’s angry. It’s perfect really, because Dongwoo is always a little bit cold. Junghwan’s hands on the side of his face are warm as they kiss, he pulls Dongwoo down, and his mouth is hot.
Dongwoo’s body goes from cool to warm to hot. These moments together between the two of them, hot and sticky under tangled bed covers, breathe life into him.
It’s okay that Junghwan is angry. He should be angry, Dongwoo thinks, because he knows he’s horrible. He’s well aware that he gives Junghwan nothing; his affection is as hollow as a drum. Dongwoo brushes the hair back from Junghwan’s face, cups his hand to his cheek. Dongwoo kisses him with parted lips, licks him and bites reddened marks down his neck - but it’s like trying to fill a cup with air.
Junghwan claws at his back, his fingers dig into Dongwoo’s shoulder with deliberate force, struggling to mark and bruise him. He comes all over Dongwoo’s stomach in messy spurts and falls back on top of him, gluing them together as he sighs into his ear.
“Stay,” Junghwan tells him as he comes back from showering.
Dongwoo peeks at him from behind the towel and clumps of wet hair. Junghwan is sitting in bed with the scarf in his hands, fiddling with the stitches again. He pries at the knots until his finger peeks through one of the little spaces in between.
“I mean. Stay the night. What’s the point in leaving, you’re just going to go back to the store.”
Dongwoo smiles and dives back into the bed, he curls his arms around Junghwan’s waist and hooks his fingers together. He presses his nose to Junghwan’s stomach, all soft and warm.
“How long are you staying this time?”
Dongwoo tenses as the camera flashes. He’s gotten better with cameras though he’s never liked them. Anything for Junghwan, or at least he tries. Dongwoo pulls his legs up and shifts his weight, angles his face to let Junghwan catch the line of his jaw. He bites his lip, coincidentally, and there’s another flash.
“Um.” He doesn’t know if he’s any better with questions now than he was eight years ago.
“I can’t do this anymore,” Junghwan finally says it. It’s the year he’s turning thirty-five, twenty minutes after midnight of that New Year’s Day.
He’s still flushed and warm under the covers but Dongwoo is pulling away, drawing cool finger tips back from where his hand had settled on his chest. He sits up and doesn’t say a word. He folds his hands together in his lap as if he’s hiding something under his fingers, holding back, always holding something back. Even as Junghwan tries to pull secrets out of Dongwoo it’s like he’s digging through a bottomless reserve.
But he doesn’t need to know more.
“…are you even going to try to change my mind?”
“Is that possible? Some things just can’t change.”
Junghwan wonders why either of them try, if either of them are really trying. He curls and turns his back to Dongwoo who’s so still he may as well be dead.
“I hate that about you.”
The snow melts, the weather goes from cold to warm until it’s burning - and then it cools down again. The next time Dongwoo leaves Junghwan doesn’t expect to see him ever again.
Christmas Eve comes and goes, Dongwoo doesn’t come back.
prompt: ...vampires
i'm sorry. just um. squint a bit, or don't since it doesn't have to read that way at all.
(there's more to the story but that's not going to go here.)
dongwoo comes and goes. junghwan can't wait forever.
When they first meet Junghwan is nineteen.
They meet at the antique bookstore where Dongwoo works, the store smells eternally like some summery potpourri, even in the middle of fall, and its walls are dressed entirely in aged bookshelves. It’s sandwiched between a dangerously hip boutique and a frozen yogurt place, across the street there is a convenience store and before the traffic light a fast food place because there can never be too much convenience.
It’s a store that would seem terribly out of place if it weren’t in the process of being ‘discovered’ by the young and hip that have begun to hang out in the area now that the area has suddenly become cool.
“Wow, I can’t believe there’s really a store like this here,” Junghwan murmurs, almost drowned out by the metallic chime of the door’s hanging bell. Dongwoo doesn’t say anything, since he wasn’t meant to hear it, but he wants to tell him that the store was here before any of the other stuff. The store has been around longer than most of the people in the area can even remember, unchanging and always smelling of bergamot, honeysuckle, and vanilla.
Dongwoo expects Junghwan to peer around the corner and leave the store in a jangle but he steps around the shelves slowly, occasionally reaches out to touch the spine of an aged book carefully. He lingers, and when Dongwoo catches a glimpse of his expression he’s smiling.
“Have a good day,” Dongwoo calls out when Junghwan pulls the door open to leave, bells clattering, and he turns around to return the smile before leaving.
Junghwan visits the store again the following week. He’s wearing a bright yellow sweater that reminds Dongwoo of sunlight that trickles into the store around the window displays; but it’s almost 8PM and the sun has long since set so there’s no sunlight, only Junghwan. He catches Dongwoo’s gaze when he steps in and smiles sheepishly.
“I’m sorry, are you closing?”
“I close at eight…but you can stay a little longer if you’d like.”
It’s a weird place to be on a Friday night, Dongwoo thinks but somehow he ends up easing a collection of illustrated fairy tales off one of the shelves to show Junghwan. He dims the window lights and locks the door, but he lets Junghwan huddle over the book even when the clock strikes eight.
“It was printed in 1907,” Dongwoo tells him. Junghwan pulls his hands away at that, as if he thinks that touching it will make the book crumble into dust. Dongwoo laughs and turns the page for him.
“It looks so new, I had no idea.”
“I had to do some repairs when I got it but it was in pretty good condition overall.”
“You do repairs too?”
Dongwoo isn’t sure Junghwan is actually interested in book restoration but he talks anyways. Junghwan starts to carefully flip through the book again, fingertips hovering over the fine line drawings. Every so often he looks up to catch Dongwoo’s gaze to show he’s still listening, and Dongwoo pauses sometimes, caught in his stare.
“That’s amazing, I could never put all that time and patience into something like that.”
But he still listened to all that, Dongwoo thinks and it makes him smile. “I just like books.”
They talk for a long time. People rush past the shop window from somewhere to somewhere else and cars churn by, the city hums with the noise of too many things happening at once, but the two of them sit in the dim store and talk in quiet voices. Junghwan tells Dongwoo that he’s studying photography; he tells him that he wanted to come back to the store after his first visit because the store was so beautiful and stupidly that makes Dongwoo feel fluttery and happy.
“Isn’t it kind of old fashioned?” he asks, looking down as if to examining the book closely but really to hide his smile.
“No, it’s timeless is what it is.”
“I guess you’re right.”
Junghwan visits the store on Tuesday with two cups of coffee from the café around the corner, they’d just opened last week. He offers one cup to Dongwoo and he accepts it with a surprised ‘thank you.’
“You don’t mind, do you? Me visiting.”
Dongwoo thinks there’s no point in asking when they’d spent two hours talking after the store closed on Friday but still, it makes him smile. It’s starting to seem like Junghwan makes him smile.
“I don’t mind,” he answers, hiding behind the rim of his cup.
Somehow they tumble through fall and early winter. Before Dongwoo remembers to change the month on his calendar from October to November it’s already nearing Christmas.
Junghwan visits the store once or twice a week, usually with coffee or hot chocolate. Cozy visits once or twice weekly have stacked up into something more substantial; it’s mid-December when Junghwan asks Dongwoo about his Christmas plans.
“I don’t usually do anything.”
“Then do something with me, if nothing else we can just eat a lot or something and look at your books.”
“Not while you’re eating,” Dongwoo agrees easily with a teasing grin. “I don’t want you to drop bits of rice on my books.”
Dongwoo doesn’t have a lot of friends anymore, maybe that’s why he appreciates Junghwan’s company so much. Junghwan is incredibly easy to be with. For Dongwoo, who usually has a hard time keeping conversations afloat, Junghwan is happy to steer the conversation for him. He’ll ask Dongwoo light questions, sometimes they seem to come from nowhere, or just be completely on whim, but he never asks anything sensitive or personal.
“Are we doing presents? Because if we are I have no idea what you like. Other than books, and you have so many I wouldn’t know what book to get you.”
“You don’t have to get me anything.”
“But I want to. Tell me what you like.”
Dongwoo likes a lot of things, but mostly they’re not things to be requested or given. He likes it when a new bud sprouts from his old zebra plant, he likes the time of day as the sun is still setting and street lights are beginning to flicker on, he likes the way the store smells when Junghwan brings coffee even if he doesn’t like coffee.
“I like you.” He smiles cutely as Junghwan stares at him with saucer wide eyes.
He feels warm and alive, even though he knows this is usually the beginning of a downward stumble.
The second time Junghwan meets Dongwoo he is twenty-six.
They meet at a gallery; it’s the third day of a photography exhibit. Junghwan doesn’t need to be there but he’s excited about his first exhibit, even if there are only two of his pieces being shown. His name is printed so small on the postcard he’d had to circle and underline and highlight it to make sure his parents saw. But Dongwoo sees it and when he walks into the gallery there’s no chime, Junghwan just looks up and sees him.
There’s no way Junghwan could not recognise Dongwoo, because he looks the same except for his clothes and his glasses, and there’s no doubt that Dongwoo recognises him. Junghwan catches his gaze and Dongwoo has the nerve to smile, looking genuinely happy to see him.
Absence makes the heart grow fonder they say. Junghwan isn’t sure if it’s true but if it is then it’s absolutely unfair. Why should he be fond of some guy that walked out of his life without warning, as if he’d never been there?
The bookstore is still there, sandwiched between a yogurt place and a hair salon. Junghwan had visited the store after Seollal and Dongwoo hadn’t been there. He visited again the next day and then again the next week.
After that he stopped, he hadn’t visited again at all; but it had remained there, unchanging. Sometimes he peeked in when he walked by but this is the first time he’s really been back. He pushes the door open to the same metallic jingle and the same warm smell wraps around him like it hasn’t been six years since his last visit - and Dongwoo is there, like no time has passed.
Junghwan is pretty sure he should be angry but instead he feels strangely nervous seeing Dongwoo again after so long, it makes no sense. Why is he the one nervous when Dongwoo is the one that disappeared without a word. There’s a lot that Junghwan wants to say to him, he just has to figure out where to start.
Behind the counter Dongwoo looks totally at ease, he offers Junghwan a soft, slanted smile and his words are gone.
“I thought you wouldn’t come back,” Dongwoo says quietly.
Junghwan rolls his eyes, “I think that’s my line.”
“...I guess that’s true.” Dongwoo’s smile falls away but it’s not satisfying at all.
Dongwoo says nothing of where he went and what he did, instead he asks Junghwan about his life since they last met. It was like this back then too, Dongwoo rarely offering much about himself, instead he would let Junghwan talk and talk and talk. Once in a while he’d talk about one of his old books, as if the story of where it was printed was an appropriate stand in. It’d been kind of weird back then but now it’s annoying.
“Sorry,” Dongwoo ducks his head and mumbles.
“Well?” Junghwan insists; he isn’t willing to let it go for a second time.
“Cheongju, but I haven’t been back in a long time,” he finally answers, slow and soft.
“Why not?”
“…there’s no real reason to. I don’t have any relatives left there.” Dongwoo finally looks up at Junghwan and stares at him intently, as if he’d just told him something big and important. Maybe it is, after all it’s the only real thing Junghwan knows about Dongwoo other than his name and the location of his store.
Their second kiss comes six years after their first. Junghwan recalls that first one but it’s not like he can remember it with crystal like clarity, it’s been six years. All he remembers is that it was Christmas Eve and Dongwoo had pressed a light kiss to the corner of his lips and he’d stupidly turned to meet his lips fully.
Dongwoo is smiling a little when they pull apart, touching his lips lightly with his fingertips. “We were drinking hot chocolate last time too,” he tells Junghwan softly.
Junghwan looks down and away. Dongwoo is still leaning in, and maybe Junghwan can feel his breath on his skin. “I don’t remember.”
His mind doesn’t zoom in and focus in on that single, barely there moment six years ago. He’s twenty-six and Dongwoo had barely been a consistent part of his life for six months, why should that single brief memory be more significant than the thousands of other things he’s experienced?
Dongwoo kisses him again and murmurs his recollection of that kiss right onto Junghwan’s lips. He reminds Junghwan with every brush of their lips until he can remember what they were wearing, what the weather was like, and the homemade marshmallows that Dongwoo had gotten him as a present.
“You’re really horrible,” Junghwan tells Dongwoo. “I really liked you, and you just disappeared.”
He’d been so angry back then and he’s still angry, but he figures that’s because he still really likes Dongwoo.
Dongwoo looks at him and then down and away, “I’m sorry.”
“You’re so different every time I see you,” Dongwoo tells him, whispers into his bare shoulder. Under the blankets his body is warm but the tips of his fingers brushing across Junghwan’s cheek are cool.
“What’s that supposed to mean?” he asks, voice tight and a little defensive. He almost pulls away but somehow he ends up relaxing against Dongwoo instead. He noses at Junghwan’s shoulder, breath and lips ghosting over soft skin.
Being with Dongwoo is scary. The first time they’d met it hadn’t been scary; it’d been comfortable and easy even if Dongwoo had his quirks. But this time it’s different, their time together is scarred by the way he’d left so abruptly last time. He’d gone to China, Japan, Russia and then all the way to Spain, that’s what Dongwoo told him. He’d gone everywhere, drifting without any purpose.
It sounds like he never stays in one place long. He’s back now but Junghwan wonders if he’s months or days away from Dongwoo flitting off.
Dongwoo’s hand dips back under the covers, arms wrapping around Junghwan’s waist. He squirms a bit against Dongwoo, not liking the cold fingers on his warm stomach.
“You’re more amazing every time I see you, I feel like I’m falling in love with more and more of you every time.”
Junghwan can’t breathe for a few seconds; he struggles to turn in Dongwoo’s arms so that they’re face to face. His voice cracks when he finds it.
“Are you going to leave again now?”
Dongwoo blinks at Junghwan. His mouth falls open soundlessly before he shakes his head finally, but Junghwan doesn’t feel relieved at all.
“I want to stay,” he says as he touches his nose to Junghwan’s and closes his eyes.
Junghwan believes him because in spite of everything Dongwoo still feels perfectly genuine. He believes every word he says, every kiss and all his affection, even though he probably shouldn’t. Junghwan just closes his eyes and kisses Dongwoo. He knows he doesn’t know everything, or even much of anything, about Dongwoo but what he does know he knows with absolute certainty.
Junghwan kisses Dongwoo hard and deep because he wants to trust Dongwoo but he doesn’t think Dongwoo trusts him.
“If you disappear again I’ll never forgive you.”
The next time they see each other Junghwan is thirty.
Dongwoo didn’t disappear but he had to leave eventually and he’s gone for a little bit over two years. Junghwan told him that he wouldn’t wait and Dongwoo had smiled, told him that he deserved better. And then Junghwan had slapped him.
Dongwoo sent him postcards and letters wherever he went and Junghwan wrote back occasionally, but it’d been hard because the address changed every few months.
“You need to learn to use email, grandpa,” Junghwan tells him with a snort.
He’s maybe surprised to see him, probably surprised because Dongwoo had shown up without warning as usual. But all that shows of it is a crooked twitch of his smile; he signs Dongwoo’s copy of the book with flourish and neatly prints his new number under his signature. It’s hard to tell if he’s happy or irritated to see Dongwoo, probably a bit of both and a lot of other feelings too tangled to name.
Junghwan can’t say a whole lot to him, there’s an impressive line winding up to the table. It was probably cowardly of him to come see Junghwan like this but Dongwoo never claimed to be brave. He murmurs a thank you and steps away for the next person in line, he looks back at Junghwan but he’s not looking for Dongwoo anymore.
He watches as Junghwan talks and smiles and laughs; watches him sign every book with equal enthusiasm. It’s like looking in through a store window.
“You never change, do you?” Junghwan pushes his fingers through Dongwoo’s hair. It’s true, so true it stings. He pulls back a little and looks at Junghwan with his practiced smile.
“So we can pretend like no time has passed.”
Junghwan shoves him, pushes him against the bookshelf hard enough to make it shake. “Are you fucking kidding me?”
Junghwan kisses him against the bookshelf in Dongwoo’s dimly lit store. It smells like summer in the middle of winter, they can hear the sound of the city rolling forward through the windows. It reminds Dongwoo of the first winter they knew each other. Some things never seem to change but their kisses have changed.
He’s half of the equation, so Dongwoo figures maybe he’s changed a little too. He has to, tries to, so that he might fit into Junghwan’s life.
For the next four years Dongwoo comes and goes eight times. He’s here for half the year and there the other half. He comes back for seven months and is gone for five. It goes on like that until he’s back again on Christmas Eve, wrapping a thick scarf around Junghwan’s neck.
Junghwan is staring at him as coolly as he can manage, thick lips curled into a frown. It reminds Dongwoo of last Christmas and the one before that. He’s tempted to kiss the frown away but knows better by now. He is most in love the first month that he’s back and Junghwan is most angry the first week.
Dongwoo counts and sections their time together and apart obsessively like a treasured pattern, like the careful stitches that make up the scarf wrapped around Junghwan’s neck.
“I missed you.”
Junghwan unwinds the scarf and holds it out. He pushes his fingers between the warm, fat knots. He pries at it, tugs and pulls at it. He gives the impression of trying to unpuzzle something, trying to undo something that’s glued together.
“I miss you,” he says finally. He looks at Dongwoo finally, lets Dongwoo look him in the eye.
Junghwan is still angry but he doesn’t know how to be cool about anything, that’s just not him. He burns when he’s angry. It’s perfect really, because Dongwoo is always a little bit cold. Junghwan’s hands on the side of his face are warm as they kiss, he pulls Dongwoo down, and his mouth is hot.
Dongwoo’s body goes from cool to warm to hot. These moments together between the two of them, hot and sticky under tangled bed covers, breathe life into him.
It’s okay that Junghwan is angry. He should be angry, Dongwoo thinks, because he knows he’s horrible. He’s well aware that he gives Junghwan nothing; his affection is as hollow as a drum. Dongwoo brushes the hair back from Junghwan’s face, cups his hand to his cheek. Dongwoo kisses him with parted lips, licks him and bites reddened marks down his neck - but it’s like trying to fill a cup with air.
Junghwan claws at his back, his fingers dig into Dongwoo’s shoulder with deliberate force, struggling to mark and bruise him. He comes all over Dongwoo’s stomach in messy spurts and falls back on top of him, gluing them together as he sighs into his ear.
“Stay,” Junghwan tells him as he comes back from showering.
Dongwoo peeks at him from behind the towel and clumps of wet hair. Junghwan is sitting in bed with the scarf in his hands, fiddling with the stitches again. He pries at the knots until his finger peeks through one of the little spaces in between.
“I mean. Stay the night. What’s the point in leaving, you’re just going to go back to the store.”
Dongwoo smiles and dives back into the bed, he curls his arms around Junghwan’s waist and hooks his fingers together. He presses his nose to Junghwan’s stomach, all soft and warm.
“How long are you staying this time?”
Dongwoo tenses as the camera flashes. He’s gotten better with cameras though he’s never liked them. Anything for Junghwan, or at least he tries. Dongwoo pulls his legs up and shifts his weight, angles his face to let Junghwan catch the line of his jaw. He bites his lip, coincidentally, and there’s another flash.
“Um.” He doesn’t know if he’s any better with questions now than he was eight years ago.
“I can’t do this anymore,” Junghwan finally says it. It’s the year he’s turning thirty-five, twenty minutes after midnight of that New Year’s Day.
He’s still flushed and warm under the covers but Dongwoo is pulling away, drawing cool finger tips back from where his hand had settled on his chest. He sits up and doesn’t say a word. He folds his hands together in his lap as if he’s hiding something under his fingers, holding back, always holding something back. Even as Junghwan tries to pull secrets out of Dongwoo it’s like he’s digging through a bottomless reserve.
But he doesn’t need to know more.
“…are you even going to try to change my mind?”
“Is that possible? Some things just can’t change.”
Junghwan wonders why either of them try, if either of them are really trying. He curls and turns his back to Dongwoo who’s so still he may as well be dead.
“I hate that about you.”
The snow melts, the weather goes from cold to warm until it’s burning - and then it cools down again. The next time Dongwoo leaves Junghwan doesn’t expect to see him ever again.
Christmas Eve comes and goes, Dongwoo doesn’t come back.
prompt: ...vampires
i'm sorry. just um. squint a bit, or don't since it doesn't have to read that way at all.
(there's more to the story but that's not going to go here.)