L'appel Du Vide
Title: L'appel Du Vide
Author: eojireowo
Paring: AJ/Kiseop
Rating: R
Summary: In which AJ's a bit of a martyr with a penchant for broken things and Kiseop fits the bill.
I don't know what this is. It was supposed to be a drabble/ficlet but it manifested itself into a 3.4k something and I've never wrote anything that long before. It's probably, without a doubt, cry worthy bad. I'm sorry. It's been sitting on my computer and I'm tired of looking at it.
Warning: slight sexual implications, mentions of drug use.
When AJ first sees him, he’s a walking catastrophe; all dark, glassy eyes, and sweat drenched hair, and painted on jeans - pockets filled to the brim with the worst of intentions.
It’s simultaneously the most beautiful and the most contemptible thing that AJ’s ever seen and it draws him in like a moth to a flame; the way the music seems to flow through his very being, lighting him up from the inside out, the way perspiration pools in the concave of his clavicles, the sensual stretch of cotton and denim over an alabaster foundation.
He feels himself move forward, pulled by invisible string, and it’s everything and nothing like an impending train crash, the way that they collide - avertible but impossible to stop once it’s started.
Up close, he’s less perfect.
A disarray of hair that needs to be re-dyed and makeup that isn’t waterproof. His eyes are ringed with purple like he hasn’t slept in weeks, and there’s a yellowing bruise beneath his chin with questionable origin. AJ’s hypnotized by the offbeat swing of his hips and the way that the multicolored lights gather in the contours of his cheekbones and in the water that clings to his eyelashes. He looks like he’s in shambles and held together by nothing more than school glue; eyebrows furrowed and bottom lip bitten and bloody.
His eyes fly open when AJ grasps him by the hips, effectively disrupting his rhythm, damp and rimmed in streaky eyeliner. For a moment, something akin to confusion and pain flashes over his features, but it’s gone almost as fast as it appeared, replaced by a look of appraisal as he glances over the length of AJ’s body. He winds spidery arms around his shoulders, pressing so close that they breathe each other’s air, and exhales his name - Kiseop - into AJ’s ear.
Kiseop tastes just like he looks - utterly shambolic. Like sweat, and bad news, and cheap booze. His fingers are cold, but his breath is hot, and AJ succumbs easily to the burn of Kiseop’s dry ice touch while they fall together like dominoes.
AJ awakes to a throbbing headache, and a mouth that tastes like an ashtray. Beside him, the sheets are rumpled and pushed inward, a telltale sign that someone else had slept there. But they have long gone cold, and AJ’s left alone to feel the chill and the phantom tingle of skin against his own.
This is crazy, AJ thinks as he steps back into the exact same club two days later.
It’s significantly less packed than it was on Saturday, but there are still enough people that AJ knows this could take him all night. I must be crazy.
Finally, after nearly two hours of fruitless searching, AJ makes his way off the dance floor. He resigns to the fact that Kiseop probably has a healthy social life that doesn’t involve gritty nightclubs on Mondays despite the way he looks.
He’s almost to the door when a tipsy girl in a bustier cuts him off, forcing AJ to stop in his tracks. The bathroom door swings open, narrowly missing him, and - as if on cue - out waltzes a familiar redhead. AJ can’t believe his luck, and without a second thought he grabs Kiseop by the arm and spins him around.
Kiseop’s got half of an expletive out of his mouth and his arm yanked out of AJ’s hold before he recognizes who’s standing in front of him. Then he laughs, tinkling and a bit incredulously, wiping at the corner of his mouth with his thumb.
He looks more put together than he did the last time AJ saw him - with dry eyes this time - but his hair’s a bird nest and there are scratch marks down his neck.
“Really?” asks Kiseop, scanning AJ’s face with guarded eyes like he’s playing some kind of joke. “I’m sorry, but I don’t do repeats.”
It takes AJ a couple of beats to process the meaning behind Kiseop’s words, and then he’s flushing to the tips of his ears and stuttering out, “N-no, that’s not why I’m here,” and grabbing onto Kiseop’s arm again as the other turns to leave.
Kiseop’s eyebrows rise into his bangs inquiringly, and AJ wonders wear his brain-to-mouth filter goes as he blurts out the first thing that comes to mind: “Do you want to get coffee with me?”
Kiseop laughs, but then he seems to realize that AJ’s entirely serious and his expression slides off his face.
“No thanks,” he says, shaking his head resolutely, features unreadable. “No one drinks coffee at this hour,” and then he slips from AJ’s grasp and merges onto the dance floor.
It’s two weeks later and AJ doesn’t understand why he can’t seem to get Kiseop out of his head. Despite his best efforts to fully submerge himself into his studies and part-time job stocking stationary and ballpoint pens at an office supply store, Kiseop seems to dance continuously on the fringes of his thoughts.
“You know that’s not how one night stands work, right?” asks Eli around the straw to his milk tea after AJ finishes recounting the tale of his deplorable rejection. Eli looks amused, but AJ just wants to slam his head on the tiny two-by-two table of their shared apartment, or perhaps drown himself in his tea cup.
“I’m serious,” AJ admonishes with a whine. “I can’t get him out of my head.”
Eli sobers up a bit. “Was he just really good, or…?” He trails off suggestively, “because I could help you there.”
AJ recalls a pair of overeager hands, sloppy kisses with too much saliva, and a receptiveness that seemed to border on desperate and disfavor at the same time. He shakes his head.
“No, it’s not that,” he says, thumbing at the rim of his cup. “It’s just…he looked so broken and…” He trails off uncertainly, Kiseop’s confused eyes and pinched expression flashing in his mind.
Eli’s eyes soften in understanding - it’s not the first time that they have had a conversation like this.
“I think you have some sort of messiah complex.”
AJ just shrugs.
“You can’t fix things that don’t want to be fixed,” Eli says gently, and then, almost as an afterthought, adds “it’s bad enough that you buy only the dented cans at the grocery store. Kevin won’t eat anything because he’s scared of contracting botulism.”
AJ has to roll his eyes at that. “There’s nothing wrong with the cans that I buy,” he defends. “They have character.”
“What they have is a higher chance of carrying foodborne illnesses.”
“No one said you had to eat the food that I buy,” AJ retorts, and he laughs as he watches Eli pout.
When they part ways later that evening, AJ still doesn’t have any answers, but he feels a bit better.
The third time that AJ sees Kiseop, it’s merely by chance.
AJ’s standing in a line that seems endless, at the market a block from his apartment, swinging his plastic hand basket precariously like it’s the ship ride at Lotte World. He’s nearly to the register when the woman in front of him steps out last minute. He inches forward. The cashier - a girl with a flat hair and a blotchy complexion - tells her current costumer the price for the ramen they’re purchasing and AJ watches as they pull out a handful of change.
“I’m sorry, sir, but you’re about three-hundred short,” she says, counting the coins diligently.
“I am? But I…” the customer murmurs, and AJ feels like he might get whiplash from how fast he looks up.
He almost doesn’t recognize Kiseop sans club attire.
He’s wearing loose street clothes and sneakers that have seen better days. Beneath the harsh fluorescent lights, his skin looks sallow and transparent, the rings beneath his eyes so dark that they look ingrained. Kiseop shifts from foot to foot, like he’s unsure of what to do. The woman behind AJ steps on his heels. If AJ thought that Kiseop looked exhausted before, he was sadly mistaken, watching the redhead’s face flash with anxiety.
“Here,” says AJ, and he passes a crumbled banknote to the cashier. “I’ll pay for him.”
Kiseop protests, but AJ insists and the cashier finishes ringing up the ramen - they’re holding up the line - and then moves onto AJ’s basket. By the time AJ exits, laden down with two plastic bags, Kiseop’s vanished, only to reappear against a streetlight with the noodle package pressed to his chest.
“I just wanted to thank you,” Kiseop says, pushing himself off the post. “You didn’t have to do that.”
AJ nods. “I know. Don’t worry about it.”
There’s a beat of silence that borders on uncomfortable as they stare at one another until Kiseop yields.
“So, do you stalk all of your one night stands?” he asks, playing with the edges of the ramen wrapper.
AJ’s taken aback and a bit affronted, but then he notices the almost mischievous curve of Kiseop’s lips.
“Only the really pretty ones,” he shoots back. “Do you turn down every coffee date?”
Kiseop flushes, “Only if they’re at midnight.”
“Are you hungry?” AJ asks, though he already can guess the answer by the way Kiseop clutches the ramen packet like it’s his last lifeline and by the way his clothes hang off his frame. “Would you like to get lunch with me?”
Kiseop hesitates, but then he smiles, teeth flashing brilliantly in the afternoon sun. “I’d love to.”
One date manages to lead to a series of others.
It doesn’t take long for AJ to realize that the wrecked Kiseop from the club - all challenging kisses and subzero fingers - and the one that turned him down are entirely different from the one that teases him over bubble tea, or blushes at their interlocked hands. In public, Kiseop is wary and guarded, anxious in crowds or unfamiliar places. At night, he’s confident and uninhibited; like the darkness hollows him out and the city lights fill in the spaces. Some days, he brandishes his bruises - still anonymous to AJ - like battle scars, and in others he drowns beneath swaths of fabric.
Kiseop’s like an enigmatic, multifaceted puzzle, and AJ finds himself wanting to disassemble him, to peel him apart layer by layer until he understands every particle that makes him up.
I’m in deep, he thinks, after he admits that he wouldn’t mind doing just that. I’ve done it again.
It tastes bittersweet.
Their blossoming relationship runs smooth until the first time that Kiseop stands him up.
It’s a Friday evening in early July, the sky dark with impending rain, and AJ waits outside the cinema long after the last showing - waits until the rain starts and the grumble of thunderclouds begin - but Kiseop never shows, and AJ treks home in the downpour.
He doesn’t hear from Kiseop for nearly a week after that. Kiseop leaves a message on his answering machine at three in the morning, apologizing. He has a new job, and it pays better than his dishwashing stint at a local pizza shop. It’s a night job, he tells AJ’s voicemail, amidst a backdrop of muffled music and sounds of the streets, and the hours aren’t very flexible yet because he’s new. He says he’s sorry and that he’ll talk to him soon.
Soon happens to be two hours later.
“Jaeseop,” he says, sounding like he swallowed steel wool, and AJ’s stomach twists at the use of his first name. “We can’t go on like this. I’m no good for you.” The words are abrupt and AJ feels sort of blindsided.
“Please don’t look for me.”
Kiseop’s message haunts him like a ghost after that, and AJ’s forces himself - with Eli’s insistence - to push it away and bury himself into his studies and approaching exams.
It works for almost a month.
Then Kiseop shows up on his doorstep to his apartment, drenched to the bone from the seasonal rains, and leaving puddles on the carpet. His hair is plastered to his forehead, brown beneath the dim lighting, and there’s a fretful, almost desolate, look in his eyes. AJ’s surprised to see him - he didn’t expect to see Kiseop again, much less standing outside his apartment - and he knows it must show on his face by the way that Kiseop twists the frayed hem of his t-shirt in his hands.
“Kiseop,” AJ says, and the use of his name seems to shake him apart.
In an instant, Kiseop’s crossed the threshold of his apartment and is clutching AJ by his shoulders, fingers twitching over the inseam. His nails scratch against the skin of AJ’s neck and collar and he stares at him like he’s trying to look through him, pupils blown, so close that he’s breathing in AJ’s exhales. AJ murmurs his name again, questioningly, and pleas begin to roll off of Kiseop’s tongue.
“Please,” he whispers, the syllables scraping and carving their way out of his throat like the letters are serrated glass. “I’m sorry…so sorry…but please.” He clings to AJ, wet mouth pressed into the spot beneath his ear.
AJ grasps onto Kiseop’s hips. The skin under his fingers where Kiseop’s shirt’s ridden up feels like ice.
“It’s okay,” he says, because Kiseop won’t stop apologizing, and he isn’t even sure what he’s sorry for at this point. The pleas seem to fall from his mouth until their ingrained in the fibers of the carpet. “What’s wrong? What do you need?”
“Please,” Kiseop reiterates, heartbreakingly desperate, molding himself impossibly closer. “C-cold, so cold. Please - I just want…I want to…feel.” Kiseop’s tears scald his skin.
“I - okay. Okay,” AJ manages because he doesn’t know what else to say. He lets Kiseop twine skeletal fingers into his hair and fit their lips together, teeth clacking, and nails bruising as he mutters nonsensical words into his mouth that slide like ice cubes down AJ’s throat and coat his lungs with frost.
Unlike the first time, he’s there the next morning, curled up in AJ’s musky blankets with his head on his chest.
He’s there the next morning, too.
Together they fall into pattern that resembles a routine except it’s lacking in consistency. AJ never knows what state Kiseop will be in when he walks - or sometimes stumbles - into his apartment, always at odd hours of the night. Sometimes he doesn’t show up at all, but he’s there more often than not. Occasionally, Kiseop will materialize stupidly drunk in varying degrees of undress, or utterly blissed out, his pupils completely shot until they all but swallow his irises. Other times, he’ll do an entire one-eighty, and show up smiley and bright like an evening star.
AJ welcomes him all the same, because he’s grown to crave Kiseop’s company.
Kiseop doesn’t mention his late night activities, and avoids all talk about himself at all costs, despite AJ’s pursuing. Eventually, AJ comes to know that Kiseop won’t tell, so he stops asking. Instead, he helps apply vinegar to his bruises, and band-aids to his scratches, and pretends to not notice the tracks on his arms or the dirt on his knees.
“Thank you,” Kiseop murmurs one morning near dawn, tracing mindless patterns into AJ’s skin with his fingertips.
“For what?” asks AJ, because he doesn’t know what he’s done.
Kiseop doesn’t answer until nearly a minute later.
“I’m going to end up breaking your heart,” he says solemnly.
AJ raises his head to look Kiseop in the eye. “What do you mean?”
Kiseop smiles, but it’s more of a grimace than anything else.
“I’m no good for you,” he whispers, an echo of an earlier conversation, so quietly AJ has to strain to hear it.
AJ slides a hand into Kiseop’s hair, pushing it back off of his forehead.
“That’s not true,” he protests, and Kiseop hums. “I could always break your heart.”
“No,” answers Kiseop, leaning into his touch. “No, you can’t.”
It’s early October when AJ comes home to find Kiseop leaning over the kitchen sink with his arm beneath the faucet, the water running pink with his blood. He starts when he sees him - Kiseop never visits during the day - then he notices the specks of crimson that dot the linoleum floor, and the dangerous sway of Kiseop’s shoulders, and crosses the room in two strides.
“What happened?” AJ demands, a hairsbreadth away from panicking.
Kiseop lets AJ take him by the elbow to wrap a dishcloth around his forearm where a good three-inch gash lays, jagged and grisly under subpar lighting of the kitchen’s single light bulb. He doesn’t answer AJ, but he doesn’t have to as AJ spots his discarded jacket on the counter, and the powder filled baggy beside it.
He presses down hard and Kiseop sucks in a breath between his teeth.
“Are you crazy?” AJ asks, staring at Kiseop with wide eyes.
“It’s not that bad,” Kiseop manages, but he’s white-knuckling the counter.
“Kiseop, would you listen to yourself?” AJ wants to scoff. “You’re going to end up dead.”
Kiseop stares at his shoes and mutters something about knifes and ‘not his fault’ under his breath.
“Promise me you’ll stop,” AJ says as he empties their first aid kit.
Kiseop doesn’t say a thing in return.
When AJ bandages him up, he feels like a corpse, and when Kiseop leaves that evening with his fix in his back pocket and gauze around his arm, he doesn’t come back. AJ knows he should have expected it, but it hurts nonetheless.
Kiseop doesn’t return any of his calls.
By November, Kiseop’s number is disconnected, but AJ doesn’t delete until December.
AJ’s pulling a late-night study session with Eli and the nice guy from two doors down, Hoon, when he gets the phone call. It’s two days before winter examinations, and he feels brain dead and this close to falling asleep in the chip bowl.
“AJ?” the person on the other end of the line asks, like they’re not sure who they called.
“Yes?”
“Thank god. This is Shin Dongho,” they say on an exhale.
AJ’s sure that he knows that name, and when he finally puts two and two together, stoichiometry and valence configurations and sleeping are the last thing on his mind, because Shin Dongho is Kiseop’s friend, and if he’s calling, AJ doubts that he’s baring good news.
He isn’t.
“AJ, it’s Kiseop,” Dongho says, and he sounds like a deflated balloon. “He’s in the hospital.”
Overdose, he tells AJ, they found him in the club bathroom, he kept mumbling your name.
AJ’s stomach drops. “I’ll be there in ten,” he promises.
He’s on his feet so fast that his head spins, and Eli and Hoon call after him in confusion.
AJ manages to convince the head nurse that he’s Kiseop’s brother although the look nothing alike, and they let him in to see him.
He’s hooked up to a ventilator, and he looks exceptionally frail to AJ in his thin, standard-issue hospital gown, his skin as thin as rice paper. Dongho’s sitting in a plastic chair at his bedside. His head snaps up when AJ walks in and his face is even more depleted than his voice had been on the phone.
“I’m glad you came,” says Dongho, and AJ thinks he looks too old for than his mere eighteen years.
“I told you I would,” AJ replies, taking the empty seat on the opposite side of the room.
They sit in silence after that, the antiseptic of the room stinging their noses.
Kiseop awakes and hour later while Dongho’s off getting them coffee.
“Hey,” AJ greets, watching as Kiseop blinks and then stares at him with glossy, disoriented eyes.
Kiseop tries to talk, but he struggles with the ventilator, and furrow his eyebrows.
“You overdosed,” AJ says once Kiseop’s eyes have made it back to him after taking in the white-wash walls of his surroundings and the steady beep of his heart rate machine. “You can’t breathe on your own.”
Kiseop’s fingers grasp weakly at his sheets and AJ takes his hand in his own.
“It’ll be okay. You’ll be alright,” AJ assures him, as silent tears begin to slide down Kiseop’s ashen, paper doll cheeks. “We’re going to get you help.”
Kiseop tries to nod, his hand twitching in AJ’s hold, fingers gripping, and he cries harder.
AJ rubs his thumb over his knuckles then, and for the first time Kiseop feels warm.
Author: eojireowo
Paring: AJ/Kiseop
Rating: R
Summary: In which AJ's a bit of a martyr with a penchant for broken things and Kiseop fits the bill.
I don't know what this is. It was supposed to be a drabble/ficlet but it manifested itself into a 3.4k something and I've never wrote anything that long before. It's probably, without a doubt, cry worthy bad. I'm sorry. It's been sitting on my computer and I'm tired of looking at it.
Warning: slight sexual implications, mentions of drug use.
When AJ first sees him, he’s a walking catastrophe; all dark, glassy eyes, and sweat drenched hair, and painted on jeans - pockets filled to the brim with the worst of intentions.
It’s simultaneously the most beautiful and the most contemptible thing that AJ’s ever seen and it draws him in like a moth to a flame; the way the music seems to flow through his very being, lighting him up from the inside out, the way perspiration pools in the concave of his clavicles, the sensual stretch of cotton and denim over an alabaster foundation.
He feels himself move forward, pulled by invisible string, and it’s everything and nothing like an impending train crash, the way that they collide - avertible but impossible to stop once it’s started.
Up close, he’s less perfect.
A disarray of hair that needs to be re-dyed and makeup that isn’t waterproof. His eyes are ringed with purple like he hasn’t slept in weeks, and there’s a yellowing bruise beneath his chin with questionable origin. AJ’s hypnotized by the offbeat swing of his hips and the way that the multicolored lights gather in the contours of his cheekbones and in the water that clings to his eyelashes. He looks like he’s in shambles and held together by nothing more than school glue; eyebrows furrowed and bottom lip bitten and bloody.
His eyes fly open when AJ grasps him by the hips, effectively disrupting his rhythm, damp and rimmed in streaky eyeliner. For a moment, something akin to confusion and pain flashes over his features, but it’s gone almost as fast as it appeared, replaced by a look of appraisal as he glances over the length of AJ’s body. He winds spidery arms around his shoulders, pressing so close that they breathe each other’s air, and exhales his name - Kiseop - into AJ’s ear.
Kiseop tastes just like he looks - utterly shambolic. Like sweat, and bad news, and cheap booze. His fingers are cold, but his breath is hot, and AJ succumbs easily to the burn of Kiseop’s dry ice touch while they fall together like dominoes.
AJ awakes to a throbbing headache, and a mouth that tastes like an ashtray. Beside him, the sheets are rumpled and pushed inward, a telltale sign that someone else had slept there. But they have long gone cold, and AJ’s left alone to feel the chill and the phantom tingle of skin against his own.
This is crazy, AJ thinks as he steps back into the exact same club two days later.
It’s significantly less packed than it was on Saturday, but there are still enough people that AJ knows this could take him all night. I must be crazy.
Finally, after nearly two hours of fruitless searching, AJ makes his way off the dance floor. He resigns to the fact that Kiseop probably has a healthy social life that doesn’t involve gritty nightclubs on Mondays despite the way he looks.
He’s almost to the door when a tipsy girl in a bustier cuts him off, forcing AJ to stop in his tracks. The bathroom door swings open, narrowly missing him, and - as if on cue - out waltzes a familiar redhead. AJ can’t believe his luck, and without a second thought he grabs Kiseop by the arm and spins him around.
Kiseop’s got half of an expletive out of his mouth and his arm yanked out of AJ’s hold before he recognizes who’s standing in front of him. Then he laughs, tinkling and a bit incredulously, wiping at the corner of his mouth with his thumb.
He looks more put together than he did the last time AJ saw him - with dry eyes this time - but his hair’s a bird nest and there are scratch marks down his neck.
“Really?” asks Kiseop, scanning AJ’s face with guarded eyes like he’s playing some kind of joke. “I’m sorry, but I don’t do repeats.”
It takes AJ a couple of beats to process the meaning behind Kiseop’s words, and then he’s flushing to the tips of his ears and stuttering out, “N-no, that’s not why I’m here,” and grabbing onto Kiseop’s arm again as the other turns to leave.
Kiseop’s eyebrows rise into his bangs inquiringly, and AJ wonders wear his brain-to-mouth filter goes as he blurts out the first thing that comes to mind: “Do you want to get coffee with me?”
Kiseop laughs, but then he seems to realize that AJ’s entirely serious and his expression slides off his face.
“No thanks,” he says, shaking his head resolutely, features unreadable. “No one drinks coffee at this hour,” and then he slips from AJ’s grasp and merges onto the dance floor.
It’s two weeks later and AJ doesn’t understand why he can’t seem to get Kiseop out of his head. Despite his best efforts to fully submerge himself into his studies and part-time job stocking stationary and ballpoint pens at an office supply store, Kiseop seems to dance continuously on the fringes of his thoughts.
“You know that’s not how one night stands work, right?” asks Eli around the straw to his milk tea after AJ finishes recounting the tale of his deplorable rejection. Eli looks amused, but AJ just wants to slam his head on the tiny two-by-two table of their shared apartment, or perhaps drown himself in his tea cup.
“I’m serious,” AJ admonishes with a whine. “I can’t get him out of my head.”
Eli sobers up a bit. “Was he just really good, or…?” He trails off suggestively, “because I could help you there.”
AJ recalls a pair of overeager hands, sloppy kisses with too much saliva, and a receptiveness that seemed to border on desperate and disfavor at the same time. He shakes his head.
“No, it’s not that,” he says, thumbing at the rim of his cup. “It’s just…he looked so broken and…” He trails off uncertainly, Kiseop’s confused eyes and pinched expression flashing in his mind.
Eli’s eyes soften in understanding - it’s not the first time that they have had a conversation like this.
“I think you have some sort of messiah complex.”
AJ just shrugs.
“You can’t fix things that don’t want to be fixed,” Eli says gently, and then, almost as an afterthought, adds “it’s bad enough that you buy only the dented cans at the grocery store. Kevin won’t eat anything because he’s scared of contracting botulism.”
AJ has to roll his eyes at that. “There’s nothing wrong with the cans that I buy,” he defends. “They have character.”
“What they have is a higher chance of carrying foodborne illnesses.”
“No one said you had to eat the food that I buy,” AJ retorts, and he laughs as he watches Eli pout.
When they part ways later that evening, AJ still doesn’t have any answers, but he feels a bit better.
The third time that AJ sees Kiseop, it’s merely by chance.
AJ’s standing in a line that seems endless, at the market a block from his apartment, swinging his plastic hand basket precariously like it’s the ship ride at Lotte World. He’s nearly to the register when the woman in front of him steps out last minute. He inches forward. The cashier - a girl with a flat hair and a blotchy complexion - tells her current costumer the price for the ramen they’re purchasing and AJ watches as they pull out a handful of change.
“I’m sorry, sir, but you’re about three-hundred short,” she says, counting the coins diligently.
“I am? But I…” the customer murmurs, and AJ feels like he might get whiplash from how fast he looks up.
He almost doesn’t recognize Kiseop sans club attire.
He’s wearing loose street clothes and sneakers that have seen better days. Beneath the harsh fluorescent lights, his skin looks sallow and transparent, the rings beneath his eyes so dark that they look ingrained. Kiseop shifts from foot to foot, like he’s unsure of what to do. The woman behind AJ steps on his heels. If AJ thought that Kiseop looked exhausted before, he was sadly mistaken, watching the redhead’s face flash with anxiety.
“Here,” says AJ, and he passes a crumbled banknote to the cashier. “I’ll pay for him.”
Kiseop protests, but AJ insists and the cashier finishes ringing up the ramen - they’re holding up the line - and then moves onto AJ’s basket. By the time AJ exits, laden down with two plastic bags, Kiseop’s vanished, only to reappear against a streetlight with the noodle package pressed to his chest.
“I just wanted to thank you,” Kiseop says, pushing himself off the post. “You didn’t have to do that.”
AJ nods. “I know. Don’t worry about it.”
There’s a beat of silence that borders on uncomfortable as they stare at one another until Kiseop yields.
“So, do you stalk all of your one night stands?” he asks, playing with the edges of the ramen wrapper.
AJ’s taken aback and a bit affronted, but then he notices the almost mischievous curve of Kiseop’s lips.
“Only the really pretty ones,” he shoots back. “Do you turn down every coffee date?”
Kiseop flushes, “Only if they’re at midnight.”
“Are you hungry?” AJ asks, though he already can guess the answer by the way Kiseop clutches the ramen packet like it’s his last lifeline and by the way his clothes hang off his frame. “Would you like to get lunch with me?”
Kiseop hesitates, but then he smiles, teeth flashing brilliantly in the afternoon sun. “I’d love to.”
One date manages to lead to a series of others.
It doesn’t take long for AJ to realize that the wrecked Kiseop from the club - all challenging kisses and subzero fingers - and the one that turned him down are entirely different from the one that teases him over bubble tea, or blushes at their interlocked hands. In public, Kiseop is wary and guarded, anxious in crowds or unfamiliar places. At night, he’s confident and uninhibited; like the darkness hollows him out and the city lights fill in the spaces. Some days, he brandishes his bruises - still anonymous to AJ - like battle scars, and in others he drowns beneath swaths of fabric.
Kiseop’s like an enigmatic, multifaceted puzzle, and AJ finds himself wanting to disassemble him, to peel him apart layer by layer until he understands every particle that makes him up.
I’m in deep, he thinks, after he admits that he wouldn’t mind doing just that. I’ve done it again.
It tastes bittersweet.
Their blossoming relationship runs smooth until the first time that Kiseop stands him up.
It’s a Friday evening in early July, the sky dark with impending rain, and AJ waits outside the cinema long after the last showing - waits until the rain starts and the grumble of thunderclouds begin - but Kiseop never shows, and AJ treks home in the downpour.
He doesn’t hear from Kiseop for nearly a week after that. Kiseop leaves a message on his answering machine at three in the morning, apologizing. He has a new job, and it pays better than his dishwashing stint at a local pizza shop. It’s a night job, he tells AJ’s voicemail, amidst a backdrop of muffled music and sounds of the streets, and the hours aren’t very flexible yet because he’s new. He says he’s sorry and that he’ll talk to him soon.
Soon happens to be two hours later.
“Jaeseop,” he says, sounding like he swallowed steel wool, and AJ’s stomach twists at the use of his first name. “We can’t go on like this. I’m no good for you.” The words are abrupt and AJ feels sort of blindsided.
“Please don’t look for me.”
Kiseop’s message haunts him like a ghost after that, and AJ’s forces himself - with Eli’s insistence - to push it away and bury himself into his studies and approaching exams.
It works for almost a month.
Then Kiseop shows up on his doorstep to his apartment, drenched to the bone from the seasonal rains, and leaving puddles on the carpet. His hair is plastered to his forehead, brown beneath the dim lighting, and there’s a fretful, almost desolate, look in his eyes. AJ’s surprised to see him - he didn’t expect to see Kiseop again, much less standing outside his apartment - and he knows it must show on his face by the way that Kiseop twists the frayed hem of his t-shirt in his hands.
“Kiseop,” AJ says, and the use of his name seems to shake him apart.
In an instant, Kiseop’s crossed the threshold of his apartment and is clutching AJ by his shoulders, fingers twitching over the inseam. His nails scratch against the skin of AJ’s neck and collar and he stares at him like he’s trying to look through him, pupils blown, so close that he’s breathing in AJ’s exhales. AJ murmurs his name again, questioningly, and pleas begin to roll off of Kiseop’s tongue.
“Please,” he whispers, the syllables scraping and carving their way out of his throat like the letters are serrated glass. “I’m sorry…so sorry…but please.” He clings to AJ, wet mouth pressed into the spot beneath his ear.
AJ grasps onto Kiseop’s hips. The skin under his fingers where Kiseop’s shirt’s ridden up feels like ice.
“It’s okay,” he says, because Kiseop won’t stop apologizing, and he isn’t even sure what he’s sorry for at this point. The pleas seem to fall from his mouth until their ingrained in the fibers of the carpet. “What’s wrong? What do you need?”
“Please,” Kiseop reiterates, heartbreakingly desperate, molding himself impossibly closer. “C-cold, so cold. Please - I just want…I want to…feel.” Kiseop’s tears scald his skin.
“I - okay. Okay,” AJ manages because he doesn’t know what else to say. He lets Kiseop twine skeletal fingers into his hair and fit their lips together, teeth clacking, and nails bruising as he mutters nonsensical words into his mouth that slide like ice cubes down AJ’s throat and coat his lungs with frost.
Unlike the first time, he’s there the next morning, curled up in AJ’s musky blankets with his head on his chest.
He’s there the next morning, too.
Together they fall into pattern that resembles a routine except it’s lacking in consistency. AJ never knows what state Kiseop will be in when he walks - or sometimes stumbles - into his apartment, always at odd hours of the night. Sometimes he doesn’t show up at all, but he’s there more often than not. Occasionally, Kiseop will materialize stupidly drunk in varying degrees of undress, or utterly blissed out, his pupils completely shot until they all but swallow his irises. Other times, he’ll do an entire one-eighty, and show up smiley and bright like an evening star.
AJ welcomes him all the same, because he’s grown to crave Kiseop’s company.
Kiseop doesn’t mention his late night activities, and avoids all talk about himself at all costs, despite AJ’s pursuing. Eventually, AJ comes to know that Kiseop won’t tell, so he stops asking. Instead, he helps apply vinegar to his bruises, and band-aids to his scratches, and pretends to not notice the tracks on his arms or the dirt on his knees.
“Thank you,” Kiseop murmurs one morning near dawn, tracing mindless patterns into AJ’s skin with his fingertips.
“For what?” asks AJ, because he doesn’t know what he’s done.
Kiseop doesn’t answer until nearly a minute later.
“I’m going to end up breaking your heart,” he says solemnly.
AJ raises his head to look Kiseop in the eye. “What do you mean?”
Kiseop smiles, but it’s more of a grimace than anything else.
“I’m no good for you,” he whispers, an echo of an earlier conversation, so quietly AJ has to strain to hear it.
AJ slides a hand into Kiseop’s hair, pushing it back off of his forehead.
“That’s not true,” he protests, and Kiseop hums. “I could always break your heart.”
“No,” answers Kiseop, leaning into his touch. “No, you can’t.”
It’s early October when AJ comes home to find Kiseop leaning over the kitchen sink with his arm beneath the faucet, the water running pink with his blood. He starts when he sees him - Kiseop never visits during the day - then he notices the specks of crimson that dot the linoleum floor, and the dangerous sway of Kiseop’s shoulders, and crosses the room in two strides.
“What happened?” AJ demands, a hairsbreadth away from panicking.
Kiseop lets AJ take him by the elbow to wrap a dishcloth around his forearm where a good three-inch gash lays, jagged and grisly under subpar lighting of the kitchen’s single light bulb. He doesn’t answer AJ, but he doesn’t have to as AJ spots his discarded jacket on the counter, and the powder filled baggy beside it.
He presses down hard and Kiseop sucks in a breath between his teeth.
“Are you crazy?” AJ asks, staring at Kiseop with wide eyes.
“It’s not that bad,” Kiseop manages, but he’s white-knuckling the counter.
“Kiseop, would you listen to yourself?” AJ wants to scoff. “You’re going to end up dead.”
Kiseop stares at his shoes and mutters something about knifes and ‘not his fault’ under his breath.
“Promise me you’ll stop,” AJ says as he empties their first aid kit.
Kiseop doesn’t say a thing in return.
When AJ bandages him up, he feels like a corpse, and when Kiseop leaves that evening with his fix in his back pocket and gauze around his arm, he doesn’t come back. AJ knows he should have expected it, but it hurts nonetheless.
Kiseop doesn’t return any of his calls.
By November, Kiseop’s number is disconnected, but AJ doesn’t delete until December.
AJ’s pulling a late-night study session with Eli and the nice guy from two doors down, Hoon, when he gets the phone call. It’s two days before winter examinations, and he feels brain dead and this close to falling asleep in the chip bowl.
“AJ?” the person on the other end of the line asks, like they’re not sure who they called.
“Yes?”
“Thank god. This is Shin Dongho,” they say on an exhale.
AJ’s sure that he knows that name, and when he finally puts two and two together, stoichiometry and valence configurations and sleeping are the last thing on his mind, because Shin Dongho is Kiseop’s friend, and if he’s calling, AJ doubts that he’s baring good news.
He isn’t.
“AJ, it’s Kiseop,” Dongho says, and he sounds like a deflated balloon. “He’s in the hospital.”
Overdose, he tells AJ, they found him in the club bathroom, he kept mumbling your name.
AJ’s stomach drops. “I’ll be there in ten,” he promises.
He’s on his feet so fast that his head spins, and Eli and Hoon call after him in confusion.
AJ manages to convince the head nurse that he’s Kiseop’s brother although the look nothing alike, and they let him in to see him.
He’s hooked up to a ventilator, and he looks exceptionally frail to AJ in his thin, standard-issue hospital gown, his skin as thin as rice paper. Dongho’s sitting in a plastic chair at his bedside. His head snaps up when AJ walks in and his face is even more depleted than his voice had been on the phone.
“I’m glad you came,” says Dongho, and AJ thinks he looks too old for than his mere eighteen years.
“I told you I would,” AJ replies, taking the empty seat on the opposite side of the room.
They sit in silence after that, the antiseptic of the room stinging their noses.
Kiseop awakes and hour later while Dongho’s off getting them coffee.
“Hey,” AJ greets, watching as Kiseop blinks and then stares at him with glossy, disoriented eyes.
Kiseop tries to talk, but he struggles with the ventilator, and furrow his eyebrows.
“You overdosed,” AJ says once Kiseop’s eyes have made it back to him after taking in the white-wash walls of his surroundings and the steady beep of his heart rate machine. “You can’t breathe on your own.”
Kiseop’s fingers grasp weakly at his sheets and AJ takes his hand in his own.
“It’ll be okay. You’ll be alright,” AJ assures him, as silent tears begin to slide down Kiseop’s ashen, paper doll cheeks. “We’re going to get you help.”
Kiseop tries to nod, his hand twitching in AJ’s hold, fingers gripping, and he cries harder.
AJ rubs his thumb over his knuckles then, and for the first time Kiseop feels warm.