Love You Blindly (part 1)

[reebeegee]

Title: Love You Blindly
Pairings: SuDo, SeKaiLu (but not really…?), broken LuLay
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: ~12,983
Summary: Kyungsoo thinks Joonmyun is an angel not meant for him; Jongin is lost in what he wants but can’t find.
A/N: The title and little snippets of poetry are from Pablo Neruda’s poem “I Do Not Love You Except Because I love You.”
A/N 2 Orginally written for donawhalee for sncj_santa. Also, for some reason when I transfered this from word to lj some letters and punctuation got deleted. If you find any mistakes please let me know. *original fic posted here*



Love You Blindly

I love you only because it's you the one I love;
I hate you deeply, and hating you
Bend to you, and the measure of my changing love for you
Is that I do not see you but love you blindly.

Mornings are always the hardest. There’s a slight feeling of disorientation when Kyungsoo’s eyes flicker open and he looks over at the person lying beside him. Joonmyun snores softly, head half buried in his pillow as tiny drops of drool slowly dribble from between pink lips down onto the navy blue of the pillowcases. It will most likely leave a stain. Joonmyun will nervously giggle about it later and try to deny that he sleeps with his mouth open, but Kyungsoo knows better. He’s woken up to the same thing many times in the past three years that they’ve been together, and almost each time since they hit their fifth month together he’s felt that stinging twinge of disorientation. That little nudge in his gut that continuously asks “what are you doing here and why is this never enough?”

Despite the close proximity of their bodies and the heat of Joonmyun’s palm pressed against Kyungsoo’s side, this feels empty. A feeling like he’s lying in bed alone, except that obviously Joonmyun is right next to him. He can hear the soft breathing and gentle snores as he watches the drool dribble down onto an already drying puddle of spit. He can feel the heat of Joonmyun’s hand across his hip, but the touch is weightless. They may as well not be touching at all, like there’s no substance within the contact of their bodies.

It’s like waking up to emptiness. A lacking, crunching, feeling in his muscles and bones when he shifts and lets Joonmyun’s fingers slide across his skin and land on the mattress. There’s another person in this bed, there has been almost every morning for the past three years, but it still feels lacking, like Joonmyun is always floating just above the sheets. A perfect angel hovering next to him, just out of reach, while Kyungsoo sinks into the bedspread like a demon glowering about in the fiery pits of hell. Layers of cotton, foam, and feathery pillows with drool stains that smother him with guilt.

Joonmyun is perfect. Always there, always loving, always willing to put up with Kyungsoo’s little fits. He flutters around on his angel wings giving Kyungsoo boundless attention and adoration, smoothing over worries and nagging self doubts, while Kyungsoo glowers in his little fire pits and dark caverns. One day, he wonders if Joonmyun will ever notice all the burns. Little licks of flames when Kyungsoo’s petulant inner demon spouts out its own stream of fire and says it’s had enough of this, that maybe they should just end things already because he will always feel like something is missing. What they have now will never be enough. There’s a little glitch in his soul. Too many needle holes in his heart and gaps in his mind that keep him looking for something. But what? He can’t ever seem to figure that out.

Kyungsoo slips out of bed, careful not to disturb his sleeping angel, and tries to wash out his absent mood with a scalding shower. The hot water turns his skin a lovely shade of red, but does nothing to wash away the mood. He scrubs at his arms with soap and runs his fingers through his hair, thoroughly massaging shampoo around every follicle until every inch of exposed flesh and strand of hair is coated in hygiene products.

Sometimes he’s able to fool himself into believing that by rinsing away all the soap and shampoo he’ll clean off all the dirty, guilty feelings about his relationship with Joonmyun. When he scrubs at his face with face wash, he’s peeling off layers of self-loathing. When he applies conditioner to his hair, he’s smoothing on a new coat of happiness and hopes that when he rinses is out some of the happiness will stick. He’ll wash over all the little gaps in his heart and fill them with the contentment of Joonmyun’s shampoo, conditioner, and body soap.

But chemicals and fake scents aren’t an adequate antidote this morning. He gets out of the shower feeling clean on the outside, but dirty on the inside. Too incapable of being enough for a person that deserves more and treats him like he too has angel wings instead of razor sharp teeth and claws. On the steam coated mirror he scribbles out a few hateful words, and then rubs them away with the palm of his hand, collecting the condensation on his skin. He used to write little love notes to Joonmyun in the fog before he started feeling the ache of that missing piece in his body and the guilt set in that he was holding Joonmyun back.

Once upon a time he’d thought that Joonmyun would be that final cure for all the years of searching for something that never seemed to exist. And then that fairytale chapter of his life ended and he was back to ground zero, feeling empty and alone but with an angel by his side.

“Good morning.” Joonmyun smiles sleepily when Kyungsoo saunters back into their room, crisp white towel wrapped securely around his waist.

“Morning,” Kyungsoo hums and starts to pull clothes out their dresser. Dark blue jeans and a plain black shirt. “You drooled on the pillow cases again.”

Joonmyun blushes and tries to hide the very evident spot of dried spit by burying his face in the pillow and groaning, “I’m sorry.”

“It’s okay. Maybe we should just toss them anyways and buy new ones once we’re done moving. Perhaps a lighter shade so it’s not so noticeable when you slobber all over them,” he chuckles. He hopes Joonmyun doesn’t notice the little hitch in his voice when he mentions moving, not wanting him to realize that he’s fallen into another one of those moods. But Joonmyun’s eyes and ears are quick to catch note of every little breath and twitch that Kyungsoo makes.

“Kyungsoo, again?” Joonmyun sighs, propping his head up in the palm of his hand and watches him pull on a pair of jeans. His eyes trace up the curve of Kyungsoo’s thighs and linger on his face, searching for that all too familiar absent look and tense posture.

Kyungsoo sits down on the edge of the bed and scrunches the fabric of his shirt nervously before ungracefully pulling it over his head. “Always,” he murmurs.

When is he ever not in one of those moods hese days? Today it’s just a little bit stronger than usual.

“Is it because we’re moving, or something else?” Joonmyun wraps his arms around Kyungsoo’s waist and presses his face into the fabric of his jeans. It’s a bit of an awkward stretch since he doesn’t want to sit up proper and instead opts for squishing his face into Kyungsoo’s thigh. “Things have been going so well….”

“I’m sorry.” His head droops with heavy disappointment.

Again, he can feel the heat from Joonmyun’s body seeping into him, but it’s a feathery touch. A touch that says he doesn’t deserve to be held and consoled like this. One that reaffirms that Joonmyun is not the missing piece and probably never will be. True, it’s been a few months since he’s sunk into a mood, but even when he can feel the weight of Joonmyun’s existences next to him, on days when the touch is real and the emotions are full and blooming, there’s still the little creeping feeling in the back of Kyungsoo’s skull that protests to all of this and whispers this is wrong, Joonmyun is wrong.

“Don’t be sorry. You can’t help it. It’s fine. We’ll work this out like we always do.”

“We shouldn’t always have to work this out though,” Kyungsoo whines. He’s always upsetting his angel, but he can’t help it when his angel is a masochist.

“But I don’t mind-”

“Of course you don’t mind,” he snaps. “Sometimes I just wish you’d accept that fact that I’ll always feel like I’m missing something and you’ll never be able to fill in all the fractures. You’re not an angel, you’re just shitty asphalt that fills up all the potholes during the summer and then winter comes and they need to be fixed again.” The words sting more than he intended them too, but maybe that means they’ll work this time (like they’ve ever worked before).

Joonmyun looks up at him and smiles, the sadness barely noticeable except for a miniscule flicker in his eyes. He’s always been good at ignoring the flames and latching onto the rainbows. “You think I’m an angel?”

“I think you try too hard to be one.” Lies. Of course you’re an angel, and I’m a putrid little demon sucking the happiness out of you and gobbling it up.

“You’re cute,” he chuckles. “Come on, I’ll make you pancakes for breakfast. They’ll make you feel better. They always do.”

“You’re not even dressed,” Kyungsoo protests. He’s not in the mood for pancakes, even if they do make him feel better. Pancakes are just another reminder that they’re going to go through all of this again. Murky moods aren’t as easily digested fluffy flapjacks, especially if they’re coated in syrup. Murky moods like to settle into the environment, nip at Joonmyun’s perfect wings and glimmering halo until they shrivel in on themselves and either he or Kyungsoo ends up red-faced and crying.

Joonmyun blinks up at him and snorts. “I can always get dressed.”

“Right.”

“If you’d prefer, I can make pancakes in the buff. You’d know better than I do that cooking doesn’t necessarily require clothing.” He smirks.

“Please don’t remind me. I nearly scalded my…. Never mind, I’m not even going to say it. I can’t believe I went through with that dare. That’s all aside from the point though, Joonmyun. Pancakes or no pancakes, naked or not, this feeling isn’t going to go away. Ever. And you know it, but you keep trying to glue us back together. So maybe it works for a few weeks or a few months, but it always comes down to this. I’m always missing something and you’re trying to fill the little chips but you’re the wrong sealant. You just don’t fit.”

“You won’t let me fit,” Joonmyun groans and buries his head back into Kyungsoo’s thigh.

“I want you to fit,” Kyungsoo murmurs soothingly and runs his fingers through Joonmyun’s newly cut hair. He’d been growing it out for a while before Kyungsoo finally declared that he was tired of his boyfriend looking like a shaggy dog and immediately that afternoon he’d gone and got it trimmed. He’d even dyed it a nice nutty brown.

“Then what’s the-”

“You can’t fit. I told you this when I first met you that part of me is always looking for something. It’s never settled on anything, and I doubted it would settle on you. But here you are, three years later, still trying to claim that little spot,” he huffs and accidentally tugs on a lock of his lover’s hair a little too roughly causing Joonmyun to whine in protest and properly sit himself up in bed.

“And here you are, three years later, still in our bed almost every morning, still smiling at me almost every day, still saying you want to love me even with this little gap in your heart. When are you going to notice that if I’ve put up with it for three years I really don’t care?” He reaches out and traces his thumb across Kyungsoo’s cheek and awkwardly heart shaped lips. Kyungsoo doesn’t lean into the touch, but he doesn’t flinch away either.

“I’m just stupid then,” he mumbles against his angel’s fingers.

“No, you just like me more than you’d like to admit,” Joonmyun says smugly, thumb sliding down the width of Kyungsoo’s lips so he can trace the soft line of his jaw. “You think you’re holding me back, and that’s just silly. I know you don’t tell me these things, but I see the way you look at me, like I’m some sort of god when really I’m more selfish than you know. You don’t hold me back at all. I cling to you because I love you even if you don’t love me as much and I keep hoping that I’ll get that chance to be more than just some temporary super glue. And even if I don’t get that chance, I’ll still want you, forever. Now maybe, if the day comes when you finally think you’ve found that little part of yourself that you think you're lacking, then I’ll have no choice but to let you go. But you haven’t found it yet, and maybe you never will, so at least you have me and I can continue to adore you for eternity if that’s what it takes.”

“Joonmyun don’t. You’re going to make me feel more guilty for not loving you enough even if that’s not what you’re intending to do.” Kyungsoo can already feel his lips quivering. This is bad. He’s always the first one to crack. The first to reluctantly let tears slide down his cheeks and his face turn embarrassingly pink as he takes in a few ragged breaths. Joonmyun’s seen him sob too many times over the years and it always feels wrong.

“Don’t cry,” Joonmyun whispers and kisses the newly dripping tears off of Kyungsoo’s cheeks. “I don’t mean it. You love me enough for me to be satisfied, and that’s fine. You don’t need to love me more than you already do.”

Kyungsoo finally pushes Joonmyun’s hand away and starts wiping furiously at the tears that are still slipping down his cheek.

“I hate you.”

“You love me.” He smiles because it’s true, even if Kyungsoo won’t properly admit it.

Words aren’t the only way to express your affections, and Joonmyun has learned to look for the right signs over the years. The little gestures that show Kyungsoo cares even if he’ll never admit it, like humoring him on the nights when he would rather discuss romantic literature than have hot steamy sex (what a wonderful first year anniversary…). Or the times when Joonmyun used to forget his precariously low alcohol tolerance and Kyungsoo ended up cleaning up vomit and dealing with pitiful hangovers after seemingly harmful social gatherings (but that hasn’t happened recently, thank god). Even the way that Kyungsoo manages to tolerate Joonmyun’s horrible taste in music, occasionally learning some of the lyrics so they can sing along together or for sporadic serenades. They’re small (well sometimes big when it involves an evening of vomit), silly things that amount to more than he is ever aware of.

“I don’t know, Joonmyun,” he grumbles with frustration. “I have to go to work, and I’m not in the mood for pancakes anyways.”

“Can I kiss you goodbye?” Joonmyun coos and leans in, pressing the tips of their noses together.

“No,” Kyungsoo snorts, but kisses Joonmyun anyways. He keeps the kiss short and detached, however, just because he’s annoyed that Joonmyun is so good at getting what he wants without seeming like too much of an ass. His angel is manipulative in all the right ways. “I’m failing at hating you,” he sighs and leans back out of Joonmyun’s grasp.

“I’m okay with that.” His angel smirks.

“Whatever. I’m going to work now. And don’t pester me with texts and phone calls all day because you’re lonely. It’s improper etiquette for me to respond to any of them on the job and I hate when you clog up my voicemail.”

Joonmyun chuckles and falls back onto the bed, wrapping himself in blankets.

“You’re going to do it anyways, aren’t you?” Kyungsoo frowns and pokes one of Joonmyun’s naked thighs, which is now the only part of him that remains exposed.

The only answer Kyungsoo gets is a little twitch of muscle and the muffled sound of laughter.

“Brat. Lucky you, getting to spend all of Sunday in bed.”

“Mmmph.” Joonmyun giggles underneath the blankets and then pokes out his head. “You could always not go to work, and stay here, in bed, with me.” He smiles mischievously.

“And get fired for missing work again?” Kyungsoo rolls his eyes.

“We’re moving in a month anyways,” he says pointedly.

“Still, I’d rather resign than get fired. So I’ll be leaving now. And don’t you dare text and call me,” he warns and musses his fingers through Joonmyun’s hair.

Joonmyun shrugs and wraps himself up in blankets again without saying a word. He’s going to do it anyways. He always does, and he knows Kyungsoo doesn’t hate it that much. Joonmyun texts Kyungsoo the way Kyungsoo used to write him love notes in steamed mirrors, only Joonmyun never stopped.

With a sigh, Kyungsoo resumes his task of getting dressed, pulling on dark grey socks and tennis shoes. He’s happy that working at his university’s library requires no dress code, so he’s allowed to wear nice comfortable shoes since he spends the majority of his time lurking around from floor to floor, putting books back in their proper places and helping students when they get lost in one of the tiers.

If it weren’t for his job at the library, he probably would have never met Joonmyun, considering they studied completely different majors. Joonmyun was studying English literature at that time, wanting to be a high school teacher, and Kyungsoo was - well still is - studying chemistry. He’ll be graduating in a month, though.  And then they’re moving. Kyungsoo will say goodbye to this apartment and his old school and hope that with the move he’ll regain a little more of his heart, learn to love Joonmyun a little more, and finally plug up the holes that have been repeatedly growing and shrinking and then growing again over the years.

“Don’t forget your keys,” Joonmyun calls from underneath the blankets.

Kyungsoo says nothing, but laughs softly to himself and slaps Joonmyun’s butt (or what he assumes to be his butt since he can’t specifically make out any body parts under the covers. It’s just a lump of Joonmyun). Joonmyun only grunts at the unwelcome gesture.

Hardly a minute after walking out of their apartment building, and of course grabbing his keys and granola bar, Kyungsoo receives a text.

Meet me for coffee later? It’s not as good as pancakes, but it’s caffeinated and we’re both lacking sleep ^^ Love you ♥

Already, Kyungsoo’s heart feels a little fuller.

º º º º

There are so many things that Jongin shouldn’t do, like lounge around eating potato chips and drinking coke all day while watching JGV (because regular porn just isn’t his thing, especially since Sehun told him he’d probably make a good JGV porn star, if only he were Japanese), or neglecting to do his laundry for a month (because Luhan is now too disgusted to even wake Jongin up in the morning if that means he has to go into his bedroom), or neglecting to go do dance practice (which is possibly the only part about college that Jongin excels at). But the number one thing that Jongin probably shouldn’t have done, is fuck his best friend after getting drunk with him at his twenty-first birthday surprise party that Luhan and he had planned.

It’s certainly not the drinking that was the bad idea (okay, well maybe it was considering that taking Sehun’s virginity probably would never have happened if they weren’t both drunk) but the fucking part that was bad. The two of them are childhood friends, and it’s been obvious to Jongin for at least two years now that Sehun is madly in love with him, but it’s also been two years that Jongin has constantly rejected him (more like neglected to tell him that he’s not interested while subtly avoiding all related conversations). And now, here they are, completely naked with the evidence of what occurred last night all over the bed sheets, and a head-busting hangover (or at least Jongin has one).

“Fuck…” Jongin whispers.

“No really,” Luhan snaps, standing in the wide-open doorframe of Jongin’s bedroom with a disgusted look on his face. “You don’t even like him like that, Jongin.”

“You don’t like me like that either, but you didn’t seem to mind when I fucked you,” he growls and tries to roll out of bed while half-heartedly hiding his nakedness.

“I’m not emotionally attached to you like he is. What we did hardly meant a thing, especially once I learned how big of a slob you are, so it makes no difference to me.” Luhan grimaces and tries to block the dirty laundry from his vision. “That boy, however, is head over heels for you, and you just fucked him, and soon he’s going to wake up and you’re going to have to find a way to tell him this didn’t mean anything without it completely ruining your friendship.”

“Right, thank you Dr. Luhan. Your sentiments are duly noted.” Jongin rolls his eyes and drops the sheets back onto the bed so at least they’re still covering Sehun. Luhan’s definitely seen plenty of Jongin’s naked ass and dick to not be shocked to see him saunter out of his bedroom and into the bathroom to shower off last night’s evidence of too much vodka and not enough condoms.

“Disgusting,” Luhan clucks disapprovingly.

The usual mess in Jongin’s room is amplified by the smell of too many rounds of drunken sex and god knows what else. It’s a little sickening to see considering that Jongin wasn’t always like this, at least not when they first met. He wasn’t necessarily a perfectly good boy before now, but he certainly wasn’t this bad. He wasn’t this lost and twisted. He would never ever have thought of sleeping with Sehun because he never ever wanted their relationship to get to this point. The Jongin that Luhan first met as the lost little college freshman would have taken his friends current lovesick condition into consideration before ungraciously sleeping with him during the surprise birthday party that they had planned for him.

Sehun stirs beneath the sheets so Luhan does his best to retreat quietly out of the room, not wanting to be the first thing the poor boy’s disoriented eyes will land on when he finally awakens. This isn’t Luhan’s mess to sort out, but Sehun is one of his closest friend’s now (which used to be a spot reserved for Jongin until he lost himself somehow) and he feels obligated to coach these two hopeless boys through the current disorder that Jongin’s made. It’s going to be messy (as if this hasn’t already been a mess for years) but Luhan hopes it will be worth it. Sometimes there’s no worse feeling than losing your long time friends. Luhan would know, since he’s already made that mistake. He doesn’t want to watch his past play out in front of him in the form of Jongin and Sehun.

Luhan settles himself against the fake marble countertop of their kitchen and slowly nurses his second cup of coffee, hoping that somehow it will help ease the minor throb in his head. His alcohol tolerance is relatively low so he did his best to avoid most of it last night until Kris talked him into a beer, or maybe two, or was it three? He can’t remember, but it’s not settling well.

He can hear Jongin humming to himself in the shower and starts chuckling at the mental image of Jongin dancing to his favorite girl group’s songs under the jet stream of lukewarm water. The fact that he’s walked in on it happening before makes it all the more amusing. Catching Jongin doing stupid shit like that reminds him of the less crazy boy he met a few years ago. In fact, he’s almost tempted to walk in on him just for a little bit of happy déjà vu, but just as quick as that thought comes he hears the water flow stop. Unlike Luhan, Jongin is amazing at taking reasonably timed showers. For the first month that they started living with each other, Jongin used to threaten to call the paramedics if Luhan didn’t resurface from the bathroom within an hour.

“Want something to eat, or are you too hungover for food?” Luhan asks dubiously when a half naked Jongin, clad only with a towel wrapped around his waist, plops himself down in a chair at their small kitchen table.

“I’m never too hungover to food. But maybe I’ll start with toast and some Advil.” He grins and shakes his head like a sloppy dog. Water droplets fleck across the table and Luhan has to try not to sob at how Jongin always makes a mess of things, even if those are hygienic water drops since he just came out of the shower. Their whole apartment is an absolute mess after last night’s festivities, but Jongin could at least try to not make it worse.

“Okay.” Dutifully, Luhan puts two slices of bread in the toaster and sets it to the lowest setting because he knows that Jongin doesn’t like his toast too toasted. He prefers when the bread is still slightly soft and fluffy, but warm enough to melt butter fresh from the fridge. Sehun was the one who taught him the art of making perfect toast for Jongin. Not too crisp, but not too fresh and squishy either.

Sehun had taken it upon himself to educate Luhan all about the proper ways to care for Jongin when he first found out they were going to live together. Don’t be too rude if you wake him up in the morning, he’ll end up kicking you. If he says he doesn’t care that you’re going out for dinner with someone else, usually that means he does care and probably wants you to at least ask him if he wants to join if even if he just ends up declining the offer anyway. Don’t ever use his toothpaste; he’ll scrub the toilet bowl with your toothbrush. Don’t feed him cooked peppers. Don’t do this. Don’t do that. Feed him this. Buy him that. He likes a specific brand of toilet paper. Don’t, don’t, don’t. Do, do, do. Hell, Luhan nearly snapped at him to live with damn Kim Jongin himself, but then he remembered why Jongin works so hard to keep that little gap of distance between them. Only now he’s gone and fucked that all up, literally.

“Thank you, waiter,” Jongin chuckles when Luhan artfully sets the place of perfectly cooked toast and a glass of water down in front of him. Luhan rolls his eyes and decides to go on a hunt for Advil instead of retorting to the spoiled, hung over brat with a snide comment.

Sometimes, when Jongin feels like being extra cheeky in the morning (which is usually never the case when he has to get up early for the classes he’s probably failing), he calls him Mother Lulu like he’s some sort of saint. Sometimes he’s able to ignore it, but most of the time it makes Luhan awkwardly snort his coffee trying not to laugh. One time Jongin caught him in the middle of chomping down on a mouthful of cheerios. You can only imagine how sore his nose was after that. Cereal, Luhan discovered that day, was not meant to come out of your nostrils.

“So,” Luhan starts and then falters when he sits down across from Jongin at the table. He slides two pills across to the younger boy and then guiltily looks down at his coffee cup. He’s put too much sugar and milk in it on accident. Luhan doesn’t like lattes. He likes coffee with a smidge of cream and even less sugar, but they’re out of cream anyways.

“So?” Jongin slides both pills into his mouth at once and gulps them down with almost half his glass of water.

Luhan watches Jongin’s Adam’s apple bob up and down as he swallows before deciding to respond. “So, what are you going to do about Sehun? He’s bound to come out here any minute now. Even when drunk he hardly ever sleeps past noon.”

Jongin’s eyes flicker to the digital clock on the microwave behind Luhan’s head and frowns. The clock typically runs two or three minutes fast, but it’s already gleaming a bright green 11:45 at Jongin’s glassy eyes. He winces and nibbles on his toast. What should one do about Oh Sehun?

“I don’t know,” he states simply and mashes the bread around in his mouth with his tongue, giving his saliva extra time to break down the carbohydrates.

“You don’t know?” It’s less of a question and more of statement when the words fall out of Luhan’s mouth and into the surrounding atmosphere. He’d excepted that answer. After all, Jongin spent his shower time singing girly songs instead of contemplating his current situation.

“Nope.” He pops the ‘p’ and takes a sip of water before nibbling on an unmarred corner of his toast. “No idea.”

“Do you really not like him like that in the slightest? I mean, I know you guys have been great friends almost since birth, but really, no little part of you thinks Oh Sehun is worth more than a friendship with? I see the way he looks at you, Jongin, the way Yixing used to look at me before I messed that up, and I just keep hoping you’ll maybe change your mind. Don’t do what I did…”

“It’s not going to change, Luhan, and you know exactly why.” Jongin glares at him. He doesn’t deal well with being scolded, and he’d hoped that after explaining his reasoning to Luhan so long ago he’d let this slide. But he hasn’t.

“Please don’t tell me this is because of your search for your missing piece, Jongin. How long are you going to keep looking for something that probably doesn’t even exist? What if it’s not even a person that you’re looking for? What if it’s something stupid like a Barbie doll or lost pencil? Is that worth messing this up over?” Luhan moans.

“It’s not just some object, Luhan. I know it. Whatever I’m looking for, it’s a person. There’s only one person out there that can complete me and it’s not Sehun. He’s a great friend and I adore him, as a friend, and fucking him was a huge mistake even if it did feel good, but it’s lacking, Luhan. Sehun is lacking. Even last night I couldn’t get rid of the empty feeling. It’s not him, and it won’t ever be him, otherwise it would already be him.”

Luhan chokes a little on his coffee when his eyes flicker past Jongin to see an absolutely crushed Sehun standing in the doorway of Jongin’s bedroom, sheets awkwardly tied around him because he probably couldn’t find his own clothes among the mess that is Jongin’s.

“Sehun,” Luhan whispers weakly. He’s already on the verge of crying, Luhan can tell. Slippery eyes and red cheeks. The only thing stopping the tears is a forced grimace that’s trying to hold in the sob. Happy fucking birthday, Oh Sehun. Isn’t being twenty-one great? By the way, your best friend will never love you. Oh, and in case you forgot, you had sex with him last night several times.

“S-so… I’m…. lacking?” Sehun teeters on his feet a little and fists one hand in the fabric of the sheets while the other digs into the wood of the doorframe. They smell like him. They smell like Jongin and alcohol and sweat. It’s sickening. He wishes this bed sheets were his own and that they only smelled like him and his flowery scented laundry detergent. Instead they smell like a nightmare and they belong to stupid Jongin.

Jongin takes an awkward bite of his toast because he doesn’t know what else to do. He hates conflict. Hate arguing and yelling and talking about serious issues. On the outside, he’s twenty-one. A junior in college that will maybe graduate and maybe get a job and hopefully always have a place to live and food to eat, but on the inside he’s still a child. Coddled all his life by parents, babysat by Luhan. More than a little lost when it comes to this whole concept of growing up. He doesn’t know how to deal with the messes he makes, but he still makes so many of them, like a baby that constantly spits back out his food only to have it shoved in his mouth again. He never learned to chew and swallow.

“Yes,” Jongin whispers and puts the toast down on his plate. It’s cold and unpalatable now. His Advil doesn’t work so well with emotional pain, but at least the headache is numbed.

“Oh.” The younger boy blinks a couple times, a little taken aback at the admission, like he’d expected, maybe even hoped, his friend would put up a little bit more of a fight than he has.

“Oh,” Sehun says again, because Jongin says nothing, and he feels the need for words, sounds, anything to fill the silence that’s shattering his heart.

Luhan flickers his gaze between the two of them. He can see the desperate look glazing over Sehun’s eyes and wants to do something, anything, but isn’t quite sure what. This isn’t, or shouldn’t, be his fight. He isn’t baby Kim Jongin or lovesick Oh Sehun, he’s just the friend that’s stuck in the middle, trying to calculate his next move if this argument doesn’t pan out well. Except it’s hard to argue when the opposing person refuses to say a word, much less look at the person he’s quarreling with.

“Don’t you have anything to say, Jongin?” Luhan asks hopefully. He doesn’t like arguments either, but this is something that’s been bubbling up between the two fools for years now, and it needs to be let out.

He shakes his head. No.

Sehun looks over at Luhan and lets the first few tears slip discretely down his cheeks. He almost wishes it were his bed he’d woken up in. At least with Luhan he would have been able to talk thing out. In front of Luhan, Sehun wouldn’t care if he cried and his nose turned runny and obnoxiously red. There’d be no uncomfortable sense of embarrassment or desire to hide, but with Jongin he feels like submerging himself into shadows, sinking behind velvet curtains and clown masks. With Jongin, you have to dance around every sensitive topic, and it’s tiring. Even after years of friendship, years of idle chatter and deep talks, he still has to hide everything for Kim Jongin.

“Well…. I-I… I guess I’ll get dressed then,” he sniffles.

Jongin nods his head and bites his lip. Okay.

Words would be more helpful, Luhan thinks. He’d like to say it too, but he doesn’t. Instead he glares angrily at the too milky, too sweet contents of his coffee cup when Sehun suppresses a sob and shuts himself in Jongin’s room. Luhan clucks his tongue disapprovingly for the second time today and chokes down a gulp of his coffee. A line of milky liquid dribbles down the outside of the white cup when he puts it pack down on the table with an ungraceful thud. Jongin jumps in his seat. Baby.

“You’re a real asshole sometimes, Jongin.”

“I know.”

Then why don’t you do something about it? “I’m going to go check on Sehun since you’re so content to sit here silently and let him sob,” Luhan pouts and slides his chair back against the tiled floors, making sure they screech extra loudly to set Jongin a little more on edge. Right now, he’d like to do anything to piss Jongin off, but he knows it will only make things worse and he doesn’t want to add any more fuel to this fire than it already has.

Jongin swallows uncomfortably and watches Luhan leave him. He doesn’t like to be alone with his thoughts when he feels guilty, but he doesn’t want to follow Luhan either. Instead, he stares at the digital clock on the microwave, counting down the seconds between the minutes. One. Five. Thirty. Fifty-five. One minute. Two minutes. Ten.

He counts because it keeps him distracted and because it fills his head with some other noise than the muffled conversation and muted cries coming from his bedroom. He wishes they had a grandfather clock so he could focus on the tick-tock-tick-tock instead of the one-two-threes and soothing “it’s okay” and the “we’ll figure this out”.

Twenty-three minutes, fifteen seconds.

Sehun slips out of Jongin’s room. He couldn’t find his own pants, but he fits well enough in the only clean pair of Jongin’s pants. It’ll take Luhan a lifetime to convince him not to burn them, or his shirt, that he’s actually managed to find, which smells too much like the bedroom. He doesn’t look over at the back of Jongin’s head when he shuffles towards the front room, softly turns the knob, then slams it shut the second he’s safely outside of the apartment.

Twenty-five minutes, forty-eight seconds.

Luhan sits down across from Jongin again. He looks down at his coffee then back up at his friend with distracted eyes. “Your toast’s cold.”

Twenty-seven and a half.

Jongin’s still counting. He nods, looks over at his bedroom door, left slightly ajar, and over at the front door that Sehun slammed shut.

Thirty-two.

Jongin feels worse than empty.

Thirty-nine.

How many minutes will it take for him to feel satisfied?

Forty-five.

How many has he already wasted waiting to feel complete?

Millions.

(part 2)