12: As Time Goes By
Title: As Time Goes By
Pairing: Luck
Rating: PG-15
Genre: AU, angst, romance, songfic: Nell - 마음을 잃다
Summary: Taekwoon imagines the things he wishes Sanghyuk would say, but it doesn't have the effect he was hoping for.
Wordcount: 3,038
It's been two hours since Taekwoon last heard from Sanghyuk.
The reality of things is starting to sink in, but he remains on his bed, quietly. Anything else seems like too much to ask for right now. Crying unrestrainedly felt so good at first, but it's becoming increasingly clear that letting the pain out will get him nowhere. Sanghyuk isn't here, he's not coming back. Nothing is changing. The pain was overwhelming at first, too much so for him to feel anything else, but he's becoming bored of it now, grieving. Already.
He rolls over on his side, small tears changing direction and rolling over the bridge of his nose. The last sunshine of this dying day hits him directly in the face, and he squeezes his eyes shut, cursing his own inability to get things done - he was supposed to buy blinds for his bedroom window months ago, damnit, it's impossible to fall asleep in his bed like this. Even Sanghyuk told him so at least fifteen times.
It's been two hours. If Sanghyuk was to call right now, what would Taekwoon want him to say? Too many things, most likely. Would they help? Probably not. But this silence is not helping either.
Taekwoon's life seems to stop where he lies. He doesn't know what to do once he has stopped crying.
Eleven a.m., Sunday morning. Taekwoon sits alone by his kitchen table, stirring the coffee in the mug before him. The sun beams in through the window (he should really buy blinds for this room, too, like he finally did for his bedroom); it's a beautiful day.
It's been twenty three beautiful days since he last heard from Sanghyuk.
The floor is dirty; he should definitely clean his house soon. Maybe take a day and deal with everything he's been neglecting recently, there's been too many other things that have needed doing, like lying around on the couch, watching reruns of old talkshows. Very important. Of course the state of things around the house didn't improve when his friends barged in with snacks and dust this weekend, like they did the weekend before that, and the one before that. They mean well, Taekwoon knows that, but the silence is starting to return to what it was before Sanghyuk left. He thinks he can be alone now without losing his mind.
His cellphone, placed on the table beside his mug, rings with vibrations that are loud against the wooden board. He picks it up quickly without looking at the caller ID.
”Hello?”
”Taekwoon, it's me. Please don't hang up.”
Taekwoon stares in front of him, one hand gripping his mug.
”I'm sorry, okay? What I did was so shitty and stupid and- I keep trying to think of ways to take it back or, or- make it better, make it up to you, but... I realize I can't change the past but there has to be something I can do, right? Because the truth is that I love you, Taekwoon, not anyone else, and I think you know that as well as I do. At least I hope you do. You know, don't you?”
Taekwoon's attention is more focused on the birdsong outside the window than on Sanghyuk's stressed voice.
”Look, if this was all a lie, if you didn't mean the world to me, I wouldn't make such an effort to make you forgive me, don't you realize that?” Maybe there are tears in his voice now, Taekwoon still hasn't decided about that. ”I don't know what else to say, Taekwoon, other than please, please forgive me, please take me back-”
Taekwoon hangs up. It's not working. He places the phone back down on the table, knowing full and well that there is no risk of it ringing again and disturbing his peace. If what he's experiencing is really peace, that is. Odds are it's just emptiness. If there's a difference.
He drinks his coffee, and the warmth soothes his insides. Yes, today is a good day to do some cleaning. God knows he has a lot of things to throw out.
It's been twenty three days since he last talked to Sanghyuk. He was sick of mourning after two hours, and he is just about ready to drop dead now.
Taekwoon isn't particularly fond of going to pubs and the like; socializing is completely fine at home, with or without alcohol. Plus, pubs are loud, the wrong kind of loud. Not the kind Taekwoon can enjoy at times, even though he'd never admit it; not the kind of loud his friends are when they get in the mood, singing karaoke or yelling at the TV during a soccer game, or the kind of loud Sanghyuk was when he was tired and found something absolutely hilarious (even though those things were rarely hilarious as much as they were bizarre, but Taekwoon never felt the need to mention that).
But indeed, sometimes going out is inevitable. Like, say, when Hakyeon and Wonshik doesn't give him a choice. So they go, they sit together and they talk, and they talk and they talk ('they' being Hakyeon and Wonshik), and Taekwoon wonders two things: 1, why they couldn't just talk at home, and 2, how it's possible for Hakyeon and Wonshik to have so much to say to each other all the time. Taekwoon never does. Not even to Sanghyuk, who he loved more than anything in the world, did he have this much to say. Maybe that's one of the reasons he's gone now.
It's been fifty seven days since Taekwoon last heard from Sanghyuk. He doesn't think much about that, because there's too much to think about once he starts. He pushes all of that aside, and lives in a constant state of mild surprise over the fact that he is still alive. That he's still breathing even though Sanghyuk isn't here, that he manages to remain standing even though the younger proves with every silent second that passes that he doesn't care.
It's been fifty seven days, but that doesn't stop Taekwoon's heart from clenching when he sees Sanghyuk stand up from one of the nearby tables, leaning down to make sure he catches his friends' words before he straightens up and makes his way over to the bar.
”No,” Taekwoon groans weakly, interrupting the hurried conversation between Hakyeon and Wonshik. They both turn to look at him in surprise, both instantly worried; they have long since learned that silence is Taekwoon's natural state. But when he talks, they listen.
”What?” Hakyeon asks, and when Taekwoon simply stares over his shoulder, he turns and follows the other's gaze. ”Shit,” he hisses once he notices Sanghyuk, and Hakyeon and Wonshik exchange a strained look.
”He still hasn't called, huh?” Wonshik asks carefully.
Taekwoon shakes his head, taking a sip out of his bottle. No, he hasn't called. No, he hasn't texted or dropped by. No, he hasn't spared Taekwoon a thought.
”Does it bother you that he's here?” Hakyeon asks. Taekwoon traces Sanghyuk with his eyes as he makes his way back to his table. ”'Cause, we could leave, you know, if it bothers you.”
”It's fine,” Taekwoon says firmly. Then he turns to Wonshik. ”You were saying?”
They're reluctant, and it starts out slow, but their conversation picks up again soon. Taekwoon can take care of himself, and he doesn't appreicate being nagged at, no matter how good their intentions are. They know this too. So they talk, and pretend like they don't know about the wound that keeps getting torn open in Taekwoon's heart, so that maybe one day, Taekwoon can forget about it too.
Taekwoon is considerably drunker when there's a hand on his wrist, tugging incessantly. He looks up in a daze, and wills his expression not to change when he is met with Sanghyuk's drunken face staring back at him.
”Let's talk,” Sanghyuk says, and pulls harder. Taekwoon stumbles, hits his knee on the table, but follows the younger, pretending like he can't fight back, like he doesn't have a choice. He sees his friends' disapproving looks, sad eyes and titled lips, as if trying to tell him he should say no. They're right, of course. But for Taekwoon, with Sanghyuk there was never such a thing as saying 'no'.
Sanghyuk pulls him out into the street and around the corner, where he stops, letting go of Taekwoon's hand. Taekwoon almost yells in protest at the loss of contact, but he's not quite that drunk yet.
”Take me back,” Sanghyuk blurts out, blunt and straight-forward as he's always been.
Taekwoon frowns. ”No.”
”Yes,” the younger insists, moving closer. Taekwoon backs away, but is stopped by the wall, and he looks down, the sad little tufts of weed breaking through the spaces between each tile and all the cigarette buds and broken glass more inviting to look at than Sanghyuk's determined face.
”No,” Taekwoon repeats, perhaps even weaker than before, but Sanghyuk's fingers find his chin and tilt his face up, forcing him to return his gaze.
”Why not?”
Taekwoon shakes his head. ”Because I don't love you.”
As soon as the words leave his mouth, he cries. Sanghyuk gives him a look of complete disdain, and Taekwoon knows it's because the statement is ridiculous, as if he's trying to deny his own existence in this world.
Sanghyuk presses himself closer, wiping at the tears on Taekwoon's cheeks. Taekwoon marvels at the heat of his body; he has tried to forget it for fifty seven days yet it's the one thing he can always recall at any given moment. ”Listen, I need you,” Sanghyuk says, hands settling on Taekwoon's shoulders and nails digging through his shirt. ”Don't do this.”
”Says the person who fucked someone else and then lied about it for months,” Taekwoon splutters, his tears making him stutter. It pisses him off, that he can't sound as angry as he feels, that he can't cause fear, at the very least, in the other boy, after everything that Sanghyuk has stirred in him.
”Of course I lied,” Sanghyuk replied off-handedly. ”I didn't want to hurt you. You would have lied, too.”
Taekwoon squeezes his eyes shurt as the tears pour even harder, because Sanghyuk keeps reminding him of this truth that he doesn't want to think of. ”I would never... never have slept with anyone else,” he chokes out, held back against the wall by Sanghyuk's hands on his shoulders, his head hung low. ”So no. I wouldn't have lied.”
”Me neither,” Sanghyuk says. ”I will never do this to you again. Okay? From now on, I will never do it again.”
Taekwoon laughs through his tears. Surely he can do better than this. ”You do realize, right, that once you've done it, 'never' is already lost?”
Sanghyuk shakes his head. ”Forgive me, Taekwoon.”
Taekwoon is about to say no again, but Sanghyuk's lips are on his and his body is pushing him against the wall, hands wandering all over his body, from his shoulders to his hair, down to his chest and over his stomach, brushing over his crotch and stroking down his thighs. Taekwoon groans, because he wants this so much, he can't help but warp his arms around Sanghyuk's neck, but that alone is enough to make him want to run away, because he shouldn't want this. Not now that he knows what kind of person Sanghyuk really is. He shouldn't love him, shouldn't long for him, should not let him touch him like this, control him like this - but Sanghyuk has stolen the word 'no' from his vocabulary, taken and swallowed it right from his lips.
Hakyeon comes walking around the corner - Taekwoon assumes he's been gone for too long - and his worried expression softens when he sees Taekwoon there, with his back indeed pressed against the wall, but on the ground, face in his hands as his tears keep falling. Hakyeon is on his knees in front of him in a second, hand softly combing through his hair, without any of the urgency and heat that Sanghyuk's fingers burned into his scalp.
”Taekwoon,” Hakyeon says sadly, and Taekwoon knows from his tone that he should feel ashamed, embarrassed, like a child that's been discovered crying under his bed, but he can't make himself feel it. This is all too fucking horrible. ”Do you want to go home?”
He nods when his voice fails him, and Hakyeon leans against him, holding him close.
The clock has struck midnight, and it's been fifty eight days since Taekwoon last talked to Sanghyuk. Maybe fifty eight days isn't enough time to forget somebody, but to Taekwoon it feels like a lifetime.
In one of the corners of the library, there is a small table with two chairs right between two windows. This is Taekwoon's favorite spot, because through the window that faces east, he can see all the way down to the docks, and it's an extremely calming sight, especially since this city is one that sees countless days of bad weather. Sitting in his chair with his books, earbuds in place and his bag occupying the chair opposite him, he loves watching the ocean storm.
And as for the books, he reads everything that is not related to Sanghyuk. There's a shelf just for poetry just beside his table, and when he first started coming here he worked through so many of those poems in a very short time, but he has given up on that. The library is his place to unwind, not think about what he can't forget.
Because, as it is, it's been one hundred and thirty two days since Taekwoon last talked to Sanghyuk. The truth is that nobody would wait that long if there was something they truly needed to say. Taekwoon has been right here, just a phone call away the entire time, but Sanghyuk is has been silent. Obviously, Sanghyuk is finished with him.
But there's a small voice in the back of Taekwoon's head that keeps reminding him that Taekwoon himself had so many things he wanted to tell Sanghyuk, things he wanted to say so badly that every waken moment was spent imagining what would happen if Sanghyuk contacted him, if Sanghyuk said this and that. Taekwoon has pracitcally spent the last hundred days living through his own imagination, as if that was the only way he could survive this pointed, careless silence. But he hasn't uttered a word to Sanghyuk. He's been just as quiet as the younger has. And that, despite his indignant wishes for another truth, keeps him hopeful for all the things he doesn't know.
Sanghyuk moves Taekwoon's bag down on the floor and sinks down into the chair opposite him. Taekwoon doesn't raise his head, doesn't acknowledge him in any way, but keeps on reading.
”Taekwoon, look at me,” Sanghyuk says calmly after a long, silent moment.
And Taekwoon does. He stares ahead, and for the first time, it seems the problem isn't that he has nothing to say. It's that there's nothing he wants to say.
”I'm sorry,” says Sanghyuk, and Taekwoon stares out the window. The words mean nothing to him.
”That changes nothing.”
”Doesn't it?” Sanghyuk asks, surprised. ”Isn't that what you've been waiting for ever since we last spoke? An apology?”
”Oh, it is,” Taekwoon says, surprisingly calm. ”It still doesn't change anything.”
Sanghyuk shifts impatiently. ”What do you want me to say? I love you? I'd do anything for you? The moment I lost you was the worst moment of my life, and I'd do anything to take it back?” He gestures wildly, frustrated with Taekwoon's lack of a reaction. ”Doesn't any of that mean anything to you?”
”That's what I'm wondering,” Taekwoon mumbles. He turns his attention back to his book, which in all honesty has things a lot more interesting to say than Sanghyuk ever could, after what he did.
”Hey,” Sanghyuk says, suddenly reaching across the table and putting his hand over the page Taekwoon was reading. The latter looks up, an annoyed glint in his eyes. ”Why do you keep wishing for an apology when you can't even accept one?”
Taekwoon purses his lips and shakes his head. ”I thought that was all I needed, but... I guess I really can't accept it.”
He stares at Sanghyuk until the younger withdraws his hand. Then he goes back to reading, does his best to ignore the other's presence even though the mere thought that he is so close makes his heart simultaneously sing in delight and wail in protest.
Sanghyuk leaves again at some point, when Taekwoon has been so immersed in his story that he doesn't notice it until after he is gone. His heart skips a beat in victory when he realizes he went almost twenty minutes without thinking of him, even when he was right there and he could so easily have thrown himself into his arms - maybe things are looking up, after all.
It's been one hundred and thirty two days since the two of them last spoke, and Taekwoon is still stuck in his circle of wanting Sanghyuk to say so many things, to take it all back, to apologize, yet realizing he could never accept said apology either way - only to realize, in the end, that none of it matters. He's not getting an apology. Sanghyuk doesn't want to take it all back. And somewhere, whether it's in two days or two thousand days from now, Taekwoon has to accept that.
twitter / tumblr