kim jongin's guide to loving oh sehun
title: kim jongin's guide to loving oh sehun
pairing: i don't know, don't you get sassy with me.
length: oneshot // 7.5k
genre: angst, romance
note: this is sad and boring and long, & the list is based off her poem
Summary: sehun isn't atlas and even kings have scars that never bleed.
kim jongin's guide to loving oh sehun;
[ a depressed individual ]
i give him a reason to get out of bed every single morning
the day before yesterday, it was because the water heater in sehun's bathroom was damaged. sehun had to rap exhausted knuckles against the sharp wood of jongin's door just to get his kind neighbor to bring a worn-out casserole and fill it with tap water before letting the stove's fire heat it to a reasonable temperature. february's chills and raindrops made itself known outside of jongin's window. he shut it close.
when the pitter-patter of droplets against gravel failed to reach the confines of the room, jongin experienced a desire to barge the windows open, just to slice the thick fog of silence suffocating him because oh sehun refused to part his lips to say anything. sehun produced a pack of cigarettes from somewhere in his jeans, and jongin accepted it.
he did not bother letting sehun know he doesn't smoke, which is why jongin perched the cancer stick between his lips, took a long drag out of it, he raised his eyebrows when his neighbor smiled at him; a mischievous child yet to be punished for a juvenile crime. they stared at each other while waiting for bubbles to rise and smoke to hover over the water.
silence, unlit cigarette sticks, a few feet and unfamiliarity separated jongin and sehun. sehun was unwilling to initiate a conversation, and jongin is too draggy to start one.
heat and time and the water finished boiling. with the help of jongin, sehun carried and poured the hot water on his bathtub. sehun murmured thank you. jongin replied with a grunt that could have meant 'welcome' or 'don't bother me again'. sehun did not let jongin stay inside his apartment long enough to decode his reply. he ushered jongin to the door and slammed it shut (in the most polite way possible).
jongin went back to his own place and realized it's his first time conversing with his neighbor. he only knew sehun's name because it was engraved in gold on his door. why, jongin doesn't know. just that sehun smelled like baby lotion and had the emotional capacity of a rock.
yesterday, it was because jongin discovered a hole on his wall while cleaning his desk. and when he peeped through one eye, sehun's neat room greeted his iris. the furniture consists of shades ranging from trunk-brown to soil-brown and jongin decides it's too melancholic, so he knocked on sehun's door three times to inform him about the hole.
after two minutes' worth of heated argument, jongin decided to be the bigger person and fixed the hole himself because sehun told hi h was the one who found it, therefore he's responsible for it. while jongin tried and failed, and tried again to cover said hole up with flimsy paper and tape, sehun's husky voice echoed on his mind. the voice had no right to be in his brain in the first place, but jongin didn't bother letting it get away by channeling his thoughts differently. oh sehun has a very nice voice. a voice that made jongin think of vanilla ice creams with chocolate syrup and rainbow sprinkles on top.
today, sehun uses his knees because for some reason, his arms feels like jellies and just as incapable of knocking. when jongin answers the door with his lazy, caramel eyes and just-as-caramel skin, sehun asks for his name. when jongin inquires why he might need that, the younger informs him that he hates him and it's only logical to know the name of the person you hate.
jongin introduces himself without imploring for a name in return. before leaving, sehun smiled and jongin spends his whole day wondering if it was meant to be friendly or taunting or somewhere in between.
ii Act like his phantom limb;
be there when he needs you,
and leave when he doesn't
the day before yesterday, jongin had dragged sehun's staggering frame tipsy with alcohol and spicy kimchi to his room. last night, sehun used an actual hammer to hammer the thin wall separating him from jongin, and like a spell, jongin burst through his room, wanting to know what the fuck rattled sehun's pea-brain for doing that at e-fucking-leven in the evening. sehun had wordlessly dragged jongin by the collar of his cheap shirt out of their building, darting through the city's illuminated maze.
jongin whined, groaned and complained like a rag doll as his converse-clad foot scraped the road's concrete. sehun's hold remained painfully tight. he only pursed his lips shut when they stopped in front of a run-down bar that looked twice as old as his frail friend, joonmyun. joonmyun is in his thirties, so that's saying something.
as they placed their orders, sehun informed him it's treat because it's been six months since he hated kim jongin so this is a half-year celebration. sehun told jongin its his treat. and as the tyrant sehun with his neat hairstyle and pristine clothes talked to the balding bartender, jongin wondered where sehun gets his money because he looked like he's in his late teens and he's not even going out of his house. sehun's smile is more intimidating behind beer bottles and glowing neons.
and in this light, sehun was like atlas; the one who carried the burden of over seven billion people on his shoulders.
they drank and drank some more, but jongin made sure to leave a bit room to be sober enough to guide both of them back home.
yesterday, kim jongin woke up with a sharp feeling ricocheting back and forth the walls of his tender brain. his breath smelled like beer and unholiness when he opened his mouth, so he closed it immediately. something reeked of vomit and when he peered down his shirt, he recalled sehun's episode of puking the contents of his stomach into what he thought was a garbage bin on the street. jongin did not know if he should have been offended that sehun mistook his shirt as a trash can or not.
he observed sehun's sleeping figure and decided to not be offended. after all, jongin himself had been too tired to haul his anchored limbs back to his own apartment and treated sehun's wooden floor as a bed. as his own way of saying thank you, jongin raided sehun's kitchen until he found two cups of noodles--because they're the only thing he can cook well since they don't require touching the stove or knives and cutting boards that could potentially end in a wildfire.
he had been looking at the stove while waiting for the water to boil when he remembered a morning like this, not too long ago. it had been february's coldness instead of august's warmth waiting outside the walls, and sehun had knocked on his door while asking for a favor. they'd been strangers then. and they're still strangers now, but jongin concluded that their mini-conversations made them less-strange. he was curious as to why sehun bothered him instead of solving the problem on his own.
the sound of ruffled sheets and creaking floorboards caused jongin's head to turn until he saw sehun's indescribable face and his eyebrows, lips and eyes forming a scowl. just as he was about to greet sehun good morning, sehun started lashing out, eliciting a worried response from jongin. sehun kept on screaming words jongin can't understand, throwing everything in his reach, hazel eyes looking at jongin, but not really seeing him.
jongin tried to calm him down, but left when sehun sent something flying in jongin's direction. it was only when jongin felt his cheeks with his left hand when they both realized it was a broken glass and its shards left a ribbon of red on jongin's soft flesh.
jongin departed; the heart-breaking sound of sehun's cries acting like the background music as a trail of blood dripped down his neck. they should have been tears, but kim jongin does not cry. not anymore.
today, sehun pokes the paper-covered wall with his index finger and slips a rolled-up note on the new hole. it took jongin two hours in the shower, and then three more minutes of sweeping his floor clean to find the rolled paper. he reads it, smiles, and tucks it in a box along with a cigarette stick pressed flat on its edge.
i'm really sorry for what happened. i wasn't in the right state of mind, because well-- my psychiatrist says so.
i have problems, you see. i mean, we all have problems, just that mine might be worst than the rest.
i don't want to talk about it, if you want to know more, don't. but i feel like i owe this to you.
dinner tomorrow night? i'll cook and it won't be just noodles because i'm not like someone i know
iii. Go to Hallmark and buy him
as many cards as you can with your allowance or salary
the day before yesterday, kim jongin received his salary from one of his part-time jobs. he's had more job than a sane person would like to admit. sometimes he's a cashier, a waiter, a dancer, and every once in a blue moon, he babysits for a little boy whose family lives a floor below him. jongin actually earns enough from being a waiter to cover for his expenses, but he prefers running around, doing menial tasks just to have more money. and maybe he won't admit it to himself, but he takes delight in treating sehun to something, no matter how insignificant it might seem. sehun doesn't ask for anything, and maybe that's why jongin feels like it's his mission to give sehun everything.
right after paying his bills, rationing some for his monthly food and other necessities, and giving the landowner his monthly rent, he headed off to hallmark to buy all the cards he can. they range from cheesy humor, to romantic ones, to the ones with cats and penguins with party hats in front, cards with dancing elephants and red ribbons, and even ones with gingerbread houses.
when he arrived home, he began signing each and every card with his initials.
yesterday, he slid the cards through sehun's door. there are thirty-six of them. when jongin slipped the thirty-fifth card, he takes the last one behind his back before knocking sharply on sehun's door. when he footsteps traveled to his ears, jongin turned and ran to his apartment.
today, jongin hides the thirty-sixth card inside the brown shoe box. now, the cigarette and note aren't lonely. the thirty-sixth card is a 'get well soon' card, and sometime between the day before yesterday and yesterday, jongin replayed sehun's laughter, the way he'd tilt his head to the right when he's thinking deeply, and how he'd stick out his tongue out a bit when he's amused again and again in his mind until his nerves processed them and explained everything to his heart.
it is only when it started beating rapidly and tingling with such foreign sensations that jongin realizes he likes sehun. and he doesn't know how, or when, or where, or why it happened, just that he's sure it's 'like' because when you like someone and they're depressed, you don't send them get well soon cards.
when you like someone and they're depressed, do what jongin does. he sits down on the floor, mouth adjacent to the hole in the taped paper as he calls out sehun's name. sehun answers and walks closer. when jongin feels like sehun is close enough, he tells sehun he hopes he'll feel better.
jongin doesn't feed sehun plastic sentiments in the form of cards that have been sent to over 25, 000 people every year
iv. Dig a hole in the backyard and give him a shovel
then step back as he rips his sadness in handfuls and bury it in the hole
the day before yesterday, sehun entered jongin's apartment, under the guise of being too lonely and needy. over a cup of bitter coffee, sehun told jongin he just came from one of his monthly appointments to his psychiatrist, yifan (but sehun said he's more cuckoo than his patients. because who the fuck lets a stuffed alpaca sit beside them in their office?) without as much as a side comment, jongin stood up slowly, disappeared somewhere, and came back to the living room holding two shining shovels in his hand.
wordlessly, in the same way sehun dragged him to a dingy bar, jongin handed sehun a shovel and when sehun took it, jongin grabbed sehun's free hand, towing it outside of the building. between the entrance and the empty lot filled with some kind of industrial soil, jongin was encouraged by the gentle caress of september's breeze and the avid whisper of the wind as they swayed the branches of leaves in red and gold and swirled like thin helicopters around jongin and sehun. jongin finally asked sehun why he was always alone.
sehun kept quiet until the both of them started injuring the ground with sharp metal and vigorous arms. halfway through digging, sehun told jongin the reason he's almost always alone is because he's aware that he's a ticking time bomb. he was meant to self-destruct and there's no use damaging anyone surrounding him.
when jongin asked why he was talking to him, sehun simply called jongin a bastard.
yesterday, jongin and sehun went back to the spot they dug. there's a notebook and pen on sehun's lap. as they sat on the ground with the afternoon skies around them, jongin instructed sehun to write down whatever was burdening him because jongin felt like he's so much more capable than that yifan dude who can't even cure sehun after years of treatment. sehun wrote and jongin told himself to not get captivated by the way sehun holds the pen between the tangle of his fingers.
jongin discovered what the deal was about when his eyes landed on ripped pieces of paper inked with sehun's messy scrawl. he read and then he wanted to know why we let hearts break inwardly instead of ripping that blasted organ out of our chests and into the atmosphere for naked eyes to see; each crack caused by old agonies, battered tissues one touch away from giving out, short and lengthy scars etched by all the 'you're not good enough's collected from the lips of the ones we loved, thorn-adorned splinters acting as souvenirs from the adventures we all went through that made us who we are. he longed for sehun to see this, to know he isn't the only one suffering. but he gulped down words and kept them in as sehun buried each paper one by one;
i'm fucking sad and i don't know if that covers it.
when i was nine years old, i saw how my mom killed my father.
then she blasted her head off with the same gun in front of my eyes.
i thought i was blind because i couldn't see anything after that. it turned out that my eyes was just covered with blood.
whose, i don't know. the police never told me.
my uncle and who took me in told me they loved me.
they gave me their wealth and i'm hiding in this place now.
i hated them after that because my mother had at least told my father 'i love you'
a million and one hundred eighty nine times before she pulled the trigger.
my neighbor's name is jongin and he is annoying and he smells like chlorine.
today, kim jongin runs a shaking hand through sehun's soft hair. everything else is steady; jongin's heartbeat as sehun's head rests exactly atop his chest, sehun's breathing (inhale, exhale), the constant circular motion of the ceiling fan above. he closes his eyes and tries hard not to think of yesterday or the day before that. he tries to forget how the great wall of china comes crumbling down to dust with sehun's words. with lids tightly shut, he ignores the concept of ticking time bombs and things killing you from the inside out, how everything was created to be destroyed.
he takes a deep breath and reminds himself he shouldn't be melting into sehun's bones and clinging to his heart, but here he is; plastered to sehun. the grain of his being flowing to the ivory-skinned boy, merging with his foundation
v.Cook a romantic dinner for two
play a recording of you saying something important
again and again until the needle scratches
the day before yesterday, jongin spent two hours badgering his close friend, kyungsoo to teach him one delicious meal. then he spent the rest of his day in kyungsoo's kitchen, observing the shorter guy as he juggles ingredients in his hands, placed pasta sticks to a casserole, little things that jongin can't even understand so kyungsoo told him to write everything down because it's easier that way.
jongin did.
yesterday, he invited sehun over and watched with dancing eyes as sehun ate the soggy spaghetti jongin deliberately prepared. the pasta was overcooked and the sauce hadn't been stirred properly, hotdogs weren't sliced thin enough, but that didn't seem like a major setback for sehun who had never tasted a home-cooked meal in his life. each bite fueled the already-wide grin on his face, and he looked at jongin's plate with longing eyes when his was swiped clean. jongin was more than happy to gently push his plate to sehun's direction.
jongin's own stomach was growling, but there was nothing new to that. even if he ate, it'd still be difficult to swallow. he settled for watching sehun devour his food as if his life depended on it. jongin's did.
today, jongin calls sehun through the hole in the wall. sehun arrives with a series of complaints about the time, grumbling about how people need their sleep and just because you cook delicious spaghetti doesn't give you the licence to disturb individuals who need their beauty rest. sehun flattens his ears against the wall.
jongin repeatedly says 'you're loved. you're important. you're wonderful' again and again until his tongue grew weary and sehun starts believing it.
vi. Fill the bathtub with roses and hot water
light some candles
remove his clothes one by one
the day before yesterday marked the anniversary of their first meeting. jongin stopped by a flower shop after his shift. this isn't a sudden decision, or a momentary impulse. this was the result of five hours twisting and turning in his bed, grasping pillowcases to bring out a solution for sehun. a reward, if you will. because sehun's room isn't that melancholy anymore.
there are polaroid pictures of him and jongin captured in the streets of cheongdamdong, hongdae, and other hideouts in seoul. the background varies; a dim alleyway, a sunlit park with merry strangers, carnivals with their neon lights and colorful rides, a calm river someplace outside the city. the clothes change too; sometimes they're light undershirts, others layered. the only thing that was constant was the identical mirth glowing behind dark eyes, faces pressed against each other, and unbridled happiness tilted lips can't express enough.
sehun learned to show other expressions, too. along with the falling of autumn leaves and greetings of winter's snowflakes, a smile blossoms on his face, sometimes he'd crack a joke or two, leaving behind vines entwining itself on jongin's heart. other times, he'd teach jongin lessons they both didn't need to learn. laughter worked like a warm blanket on chilly nights. hugs subdues hidden tears. feelings are better off felt than explained.
when the bouquet of red roses were in his hand, jongin fixed his thoughts on the flower's freshness, not the fact that they'll wither and lose their beauty some day.
yesterday, jongin and sehun made love. porcelain-frail and caramel-toned skin glowing underneath the candles' golden lights. plucked blood-red petals flirting with sweat-covered thighs. groans followed moans and names dissolved like the droplets of liquid aroma mixed with tub water and body fluids. fingers pressed against spines, massaging the sadness out of them. mouth covering lips, transferring as much love as the other can handle. need and passion translated into echoes caused by flesh smacking flesh. sehun writhed underneath jongin's arms as every term of endearment were exchanged.( i need you, i want you, you're everything, you're so special. i can't believe you're mine. i more than just like you. )
but never once did they say 'i love you'.
today, jongin hides a rose petal and molten candle on his shoe box
vii. Take him rollerblading at night
the day before yesterday, sehun gripped the hem of jongin's gray shirt while trying to balance himself. jongin reached out to take sehun's hand in his, guiding the both of them carefully. when sehun finally got the gist of it and the sleeping city's street lights turned red, jongin and sehun drifted through lanes loitered with sluggish cars with just as sluggish drivers. sehun turned and rolled away. jongin made sure to let sehun be happy, but keeping him close enough like a satellite. the wind bit, the road felt uncomfortable, and the city's glow blinded him.
when they arrived home, heaving and red, sehun hugged jongin, gushing about how he never had that much fun in his life before. jongin grinned and planted a kiss on sehun's lips, telling him that it's the perfect way to end a perfect day.
sehun said it's all poetic bullshit. jongin kissed him again.
yesterday, kim jongin's throat woke him up. clenching, aching, pain overlapping against pain. he staggered to his bathroom and avoids making a ruckus. he learned from experience that even the slightest noise resonates to sehun's room. awareness is the last thing he needs as the beginning of bile rises to his throat, through his mouth and out to the toilet bowl. jongin closed his eyes, concentrating on keeping his voice from getting louder.
tears took the place of the strangled sobs he forced his vocal chords to hold in. by the moisture on the side of his eyes, it's clear to jongin that suffering has to make itself known. when it all stopped and all that remained was a burning feeling behind his sternum, he opened his eyes and what he saw pulled the floodgates of unshed tears open.
kim jongin watched as blood stained the whiteness, along with remnants of the last food he ate. he knew what this meant. hematasis, it's all coming back and it's worst than before. his wrist watch informed him it's 6:17 A.M., and he allowed the tears to fall; not because everything inside him hurts, but because inside his body, there's a clock that runs on a different time, counting his months, week, days, hours ticking down to the nanoseconds.
the pain doubles. everything intensifies; from the surface of pain to the line of acceptance. there's a cloud of misery in his world now. because he finally has a reason to fight for a battle he'll never be able to win.
today, kim jongin brightens up sehun's room with an ear-splitting grin and a heap of DVD's in hand. sehun fixes his couch and turns the lights off; doing everything out of new-found habit than anything else. they decide on a cheesy rom-com flick (jongin likes throwing popcorns at the glib male leads and sehun likes laughing at that). like clockwork, sehun nestles his head on the crook of jongin's shoulder, and jongin intertwines their fingers together from under the heavy blankets while watching the bright figures dance on the screen.
actually, it was just sehun who watched. jongin's too occupied glancing at sehun and memorizing everything before condensing them in phrases; soft hands, smells like baby lotion, protruding collarbones, tongue slightly sticking out when serious, three lines between creased brows, ticklish in his hips, his hair the same color as angry, rain clouds.
viii. Be patient
Things like these take time
the day before yesterday, sehun experienced one of his 'i'd like to be by myself' moments, and really, it's all fine by jongin. as sehun obliviously sleeps in his room, jongin compiles papers after papers and begins writing. both of them knew jongin's fascination with creating lists; grocery lists, schedules, red things he sees on a particular day.
but then three hours seemed to be sehun's capacity to keep jongin at bay.
sehun knocked and entered jongin's living room along with the hint of twilight on the other side of jongin's window. sehun came equipped with a thin book and a steaming mug of coffee he didn't make for jongin. jongin understood and resumed to scribbling furiously on his notebook. sehun was close enough to notice the thin bones sticking in the middle of jongin's wrist and the hollowness of his cheeks, vacuuming pity out of sehun. he wasn't sure if it was pity, or love, or worry, or a little bit of everything. raw emotions were new and caught him red-handed.
but he's sure that whatever he felt was strong enough to ask jongin if he's okay. jongin smiled and it didn't reach his eyes. he asked if sehun was okay, when the other nodded, jongin whispered that everything is okay.
something in the way jongin slurred his syllables alerted sehun.
yesterday, sehun's knocks against jongin's door went unanswered. thinking that jongin might be out somewhere, he headed back to his own apartment. meanwhile, jongin clutched for his phone. shaking fingers fumble to speed dial kyungsoo. lying down on the coldness of the floor, jongin pleaded for help and kyungsoo could only reassure him with the words; i'll be there quickly, hang on.
had sehun peeked through the flimsy hole, he'd have witnessed jongin gasping and lying helplessly in a pool of his blood.
today, it's jongin who barged into sehun's room and before the younger could utter anything else, jongin engulfs him in a tight hug. he lets his deprived arms and desperate breathing do the talking. there are a dozen of questions suspended in the air. questions without sufficient answers and understandable reasons
ix. Wait until there's a full moon
Trace his scars; for each one revealed, tell him you'll stay for another year
tell him that if he only had one scar, you' d stay forever
the day before yesterday, kim jongin cried on his friends kyungsoo and joonmyun's shoulders for the first time. this appeared as a surprise to the pair, considering how secretive and quiet jongin can get. kyungsoo, being the one with the sensitive heart, cried along with jongin, their muffled sobs soaked in by the trusted walls of joonmyun's kitchen.
joonmyun diverted his gaze from jongin's trembling lips and stretched knuckles to stop seeing the pain. but unfortunately, joonmyun can't block out his ears to stop hearing jongin as he cried out, hyung, I love sehun, hyung. I finally understand now, hyung. why some cancer patients go through chemotherapy even though death will just catch up to them. I thought it was silly hyung. cough. why couldn't they just accept their destinies like me, right? you know i thought it was stupid so i didn't go through treatment years ago and just let it consume me. now i wish i fought it. hick. everyone dies i know that, hyung. but i wasn't really aware of having reasons to live.
i told you about sehun, right? you know hyung, he sticks his tongue out when he's pondering over something. i like the way his fingers curl on mugs and i shouldn't even like that. i mean, it's stupid and little and really. stupid stupid. it's also stupid how he smiles and blushes like a girl. acts like one, too. but you know what's more stupid how i would go through chemotherapy if it meant i get to see him be his stupid self at least for one more day. if these medicines and tubes can give me one more chance to hear him whine about the weather. he keeps telling me that the rain is annoying. he is, too. but i won't mind having him around. just one more week, one more day, hyung. i finally figured out what it's like to be alive.
kyungsoo told the frail jongin that even if he had forever to live, he still wouldn't have enough of sehun. jongin laughed bitterly, muttering about the infinite chances hiding in 'forever'.
yesterday, jongin and sehun made love on the rooftop of their building, atop soiled blankets and underneath the moon's silver glows, surrounded by dim lights and ten o'clock darkness that won't reveal the secret of these young lovers. kisses were given and bites taken. as jongin explored sehun's body, his lips uttered words too quiet to be heard.
when their gasping bodies gave out, jongin lied down beside sehun. and aside from the noise of the traffic in the distance and their sharp breathing, no other sound could be heard. but it's been two years since he found the empty space in the wall, two years since he started to get addicted to sehun's scent. jongin had already mastered the art of listening to the words sehun didn't say.
jongin mumbled a number (twenty-six). jongin told sehun he had twenty-six scars. he'll stay for twenty-six more years. sehun began talking about years and decay and happy-ever-afters. jongin grabbed sehun's hands with fingers as cold as the moon's surface. with the help of his dried lips and pleading eyes, jongin changed the topic to the big bang, the start of everything, of origins and great beginnings. jongin talked of worn-out 'once upon a time's, never touching the gold-engraved 'the end's.
today, sehun surprises himself and jongin when he began skimming through a newspaper he claimed to have bought across the street. details about job advertisements and hiring never escaped sehun's dark eyes. he tells jongin about his decision to go out to the real world and do something for himself. he thanks jongin and tells him he can't have done it without his help. now, sehun says, i'm gonna live forever.
jongin smiles slightly, wishing he could tell sehun the same thing.
x. Find mars
Label it
the day before yesterday, sehun showed up front of jongin's doorstep, wearing paint-splattered clothing and a frown on his face. adorned with a string of protest about this painter he's working for. his name is luhan and according to sehun, he would have shoved luhan's ugly face against his palette if only he didn't need the painter's money and the job.
two tablespoons of sugar were added to the cup of coffee jongin's making for sehun. edges of the light curtain sways in the wind. dust motes spiraled in an invisible path lit by the sun's rays. there are spots on the wooden floor that shone too bright. trivial little things like these filled the distance between them; a distance that can't be quenched by curious conversations or excited footsteps. nor can this distance be measured by feet or meters, because sometimes the words 'too far' begins making sense and more often than sometimes, no one could still understand.
in his usual, drowsy tone, sehun spoke of art, what the real world is like. he mentioned something about the streets being too polluted, the cars zooming too fast, pedestrians walking too slow, rain clouds being too heavy; the never ending stream of surprises waiting for him at every intersection. jongin perfected the role of a listener as sehun painted pictures with his lips and vibrant eyes that had enough energy to fuel both of them.
and one minute they were two people inside a musky living room, talking about every-day happenings and the weather. then the next, jongin envisioned himself to be inches, miles away. in a place blessed with cyan skies guiding him as he shuffled forward, carrying a black cage in hand. deprived of any sort of knowledge, the jongin in his mind opened the cage with moist hands. he thought the liquid was his tears.
tears that dripped down after another as something moved inside. a splash of colorful feathers folded too tight against each other, as if time itself clipped its wings. it was undoubtedly captivating, but jongin didn't have enough time for reverence as the beautiful creature stretched its wings to fly away. away. away. away until it became a dot of chrome against the calm skies.
away. away. away and away until jongin was left to question it's existence in the first place.
yesterday, sehun treated jongin, just because he wanted to. it was their first official date, in a sense. maybe it wasn't. jongin was sure that they've been out to the cinema, the park, and even some coffee shops before. but things felt different now, as if jongin was given a new pair of glasses that sharpened his vision. sehun's smile seemed more vivid in a moving sea of people. his eyes brighter as the screen's light hits them in the cinema's darkness.
even his other senses heightened in sensitivity. his ears would catch sehun sigh and gasp and wheeze during appropriate scenes. when sehun's lips touched his, jongin could appreciate sehun's spearmint taste on his tongue, how it lingered like a ghost even after sehun pulled away. sehun's flesh alerted him before, but now it electrocuted him; as if there was an uncontrollable power supply in sehun's fingers.
each whisper, each wink, each smile, each word, each glance, each kiss was tucked into a rusted suitcase in jongin's mind. a suitcase that had never been opened before simply because was nothing to keep inside. a suitcase of nothingness now brimming with splintered fragments of a man whose tongue peaks out when concentrated, whose nose scrunches timidly when disgusted, whose voice raised goosebumps on the back of his neck, a man whose kisses were bullets shot straight to jongin's heart.
today, sehun's cheek is against jongin's chest. skin glued to skin by the thin layer of sweat compelled by hours of love-making inside sehun's neat little room. jongin tries his best to not lean down and kiss the runaway strands of sehun's hair--and fails miserably. he brings out his phone and speed dials kyungsoo while running his other hand through sehun's hair, which he had previously gripped, caressed and kissed earlier.
when the ringing stops, indicating that kyungsoo answered, jongin gushes to tell his friend that he finally gets the character, eri asai from murakami's book, after dark. his voice duets with sehun's breathing; he informs kyungsoo he understands the word 'desire' and 'freeze' now. eri asai went through self-induced comma and no one around her saw reason in that. she had everything she want, didn't she? why would she close her eyes to the world?
it takes jongin one look at sehun to realize the answer to a question he's been pondering over for months. if given the chance, he'd have slept through all his life like eri, even though he's hedged by the rope of fortune.
once upon a time, he shares to kyungsoo, we come across a particular stage when we think everything is just the way it should be. and just this piece of our lifeline, just this droplet of a moment in an ocean of moments could have us hoping that we can close our eyes and preserve what we have in the present. to keep it in our own pandora's box.
kyungsoo calls him a shakespearean ignoramus who's high on coke and prose. jongin laughs because kyungsoo doesn't get it. because no one does and no one will.
jongin isn't intoxicated; he's dying.
those are two very different things.
x. Make it say: we were here
the day before yesterday, jongin felt his internal hourglass tip. the sand grains of his seconds slithering closer to the end by each belch his throat produces to accompany the bile flowing out to the toilet bowl. and then there's the crimson liquid that was supposed to be keeping him alive, but even that attempts to escape from him. a voice in his mind instructed him to get on with it; he should be used to the pain now. and then another murmuring to go ahead and cry, because even kings have scars that never bleed.
these voices were drowning in his desire to yell out sehun's name.
yesterday, jongin received a message from sehun saying that he'll be home late because he's invited by some of luhan's friends for dinner. this strip of normalcy in sehun's life pushed jongin on edge, and this time, he did not even dig his weight against the ground to stop the force, even just by a centimeter. he got up and did what he planned to do, all the while telling himself that death isn't solid; you can't grasp it or hold it or shove it to another room or get down on your knees and beg for it to please wait because you need more time to appreciate someone's hoarse laughter and corny pick up lines.
death is like the air that followed jongin as he rummaged through his drawers, bringing out his carefully hidden shoe box and a stack of papers held together by a thin string and what's left of his sanity. the rhythm of his breathing and his footsteps getting closer to sehun's room served as jongin's companion. left, right, legs, please don't give out, left, right until he's in front of sehun's coffee table.
and he timidly placed the papers and box down, something hot and warm --were they tears? welled up behind his eyes. maybe it was because he's conducting his own little burial and no one was around to watch him grip pieces of himself and leave them on the table; a letter, never-ending papers containing lists and a box full of souvenirs. then a thought materialized and he scampered around for a pencil and paper.
he wrote with a compliant heart and a brain that told him to go on and write because this is what's best for sehun. kim jongin scribbled a list on a torn notebook page. a list that he didn't want to make, but he had to. a list that no one can pull off the same way he did, but maybe they can do better
today, sehun comes home wearing smile and a shirt that isn't his because his gray ones were drenched by some unsuspecting stranger. his limbs and head hurts as if they've just been stepped on by a buffalo. it's his first time staying out of his house and away from jongin overnight. it feels nostalgic and euphoric at the same time. he expected to come home to a pair of open arms, waiting for him and maybe some warm toast and fried eggs for breakfast. jongin's cooking skills surprisingly improved after episodes of sehun pretending that jongin's oily meals were god's latest miracles after rice cookers.
the smile, however, fades from his face little by little as he caught sight of a brown shoe box (that isn't his) and some papers (that surely isn't his) on his coffee table. he opens it and takes the items out one by one; a molten candle, a pressed rose petal, cigarette stick, a shard of glass, movie tickets, a damaged wheel of some roller skates, a torn paper with a little hole that fit perfectly on sehun's index finger.
today, kim jongin listens to the roaring of the angry waves below him. and another; the sound of loneliness. he's high enough for the sea's foam to be pools of white. with eyes open and dry, he lets his last thought be the three volatile raps of his neighbor's knuckles against his door. his right foot inches forward, half in the open air; there's oh sehun's deep voice yelling at jongin to fix that goddamned hole because he was the one who discovered it. by the time jongin takes a deep breath, he rewinds back to sehun's job-searching and later on, his complains. kim jongin spreads his arms out and lets himself fall, knowing that sehun will be okay.
today, sehun forces himself to read the wrinkled paper on top of the box. after, of course, absorbing jongin's letter written with words like; hematasis, metastasis, cancer, the end. as he finished with the first one, sehun thinks it's the perfect time for someone to barge into his door and yell 'time stops, the world ends' because that's exactly how he feels right now;
Kim Jongin's guide to loving oh sehun; [a depressed individual]
i give him a reason to get out of bed every single morning
ii Act like his phantom limb be there when he needs you, eave when he doesn't
iii Go to Hallmark and buy him as many cards as you can with your allowance or salary
iv.Dig a hole in the backyard and give him a shovel then step back as he rips his sadness in handfuls and bury it in the hole
v. Cook a romantic dinner for two play a recording of you saying something important again and again until the needle scratches
vi. Fill the bathtub with roses and hot water light some candles remove his clothes one by one
vii. Take him rollerblading at night
viii. Be patient. things like these take time
ix. Wait until there's a full moon, trace his scars, for each one revealed, tell him you'll stay for another year; t tell him that if he only had one scar, you'll stay forever
x. Get a telescope and find mars
xi. Label it
xii. Make it say we were here
xiii Don't tell him you love him, show it
(notice that there aren't any periods on the lists, these thoughts are endless)
tomorrow, sehun will wake up to the groaning engines and incoherent chatter composing the seven o'clock street noise. an unwelcomed noise, perhaps, but it was inevitable because he forgot to close his windows shut last night. he'll instinctively grab a plate and his spoon and fork before going out of his house to knock on jongin's door. the echoes his knuckles against wood cause and the lack of reply on the other end will remind him of jongin and his absence. he'll feel his knees give out beneath him tears follow suit, even though he doesn't think it's physically possible for a human to have this much tears leaking out of their sockets. he'll loiter on fast-paced highways, trying to find pieces of jongin in a stranger's wrist, the way that girl sitting by the park bench squeezes her eyes shut, a man's hip as they sway when walking.
tomorrow, sehun will pour his hate out on luhan because the stupid chinese bigot didn't allow him to take a day off to nurse his broken heart. sehun will accidentally-on-purpose put too much water on luhan's tea and not enough sugar because there's nothing in the world luhan hates aside from that. he'll get forty-three minutes' worth of scolding from the passionate painter, and forty-three minutes is more than enough for sehun to be frustrated to the point of bitch-slapping that nagger across the face. he'll leave luhan's studio, worrying that he'll lose his job. but later on, luhan will show up in his doorstep, eyes on his feet and heart on his sleeve as he mutters I'm sorry.
tomorrow, sehun will impose self-loathing. he'll fuel the fire of his self-hate using jongin's multiple lists and letters. he'll reprimand himself for being so selfish he didn't notice the signs of jongin--gosh, jongin practically turned transparent in front of his eyes. sehun will tear the polaroid pictures down and pry his sheets off in a fit of rage. a rage that'll kill itself like arson in an abandoned warehouse. when seconds quenches the fire, the ashes of what we have beens, what we should have beens, what we never will be, would manifest on him. his fingers will fumble to tape back the pictures and put them back properly, like a suspect hiding evidences of his crime. he'll be secretly hoping that doing this would bring jongin back, would return the kisses and childish pillow fights, the nasty name callings and hardcore lovemaking.
tomorrow, doors will open for sehun. tomorrow, a hand would flip the page of a thick book. a book that happened to be about sehun's life. a story without end, but a story nonetheless. a story with chapters meant to be finished to introduce a new one.
tomorrow will come, maybe with the sun's greeting or the heaven's drizzle. maybe with yesterday's regrets or today's mistakes. with a potential lover or mortal enemy. maybe with a broken water heater or a surprise hole in the wall.
either way, tomorrow will come.
f i n
note: written for clap13times amp; i am so not writing sekai again.
i actually didn't have a concrete plot /sobs/
& this is so not my forte. what is up with me and falling people.
but i hope you enjoyed reading ;}
pairing: i don't know, don't you get sassy with me.
length: oneshot // 7.5k
genre: angst, romance
note: this is sad and boring and long, & the list is based off her poem
Summary: sehun isn't atlas and even kings have scars that never bleed.
kim jongin's guide to loving oh sehun;
[ a depressed individual ]
i give him a reason to get out of bed every single morning
the day before yesterday, it was because the water heater in sehun's bathroom was damaged. sehun had to rap exhausted knuckles against the sharp wood of jongin's door just to get his kind neighbor to bring a worn-out casserole and fill it with tap water before letting the stove's fire heat it to a reasonable temperature. february's chills and raindrops made itself known outside of jongin's window. he shut it close.
when the pitter-patter of droplets against gravel failed to reach the confines of the room, jongin experienced a desire to barge the windows open, just to slice the thick fog of silence suffocating him because oh sehun refused to part his lips to say anything. sehun produced a pack of cigarettes from somewhere in his jeans, and jongin accepted it.
he did not bother letting sehun know he doesn't smoke, which is why jongin perched the cancer stick between his lips, took a long drag out of it, he raised his eyebrows when his neighbor smiled at him; a mischievous child yet to be punished for a juvenile crime. they stared at each other while waiting for bubbles to rise and smoke to hover over the water.
silence, unlit cigarette sticks, a few feet and unfamiliarity separated jongin and sehun. sehun was unwilling to initiate a conversation, and jongin is too draggy to start one.
heat and time and the water finished boiling. with the help of jongin, sehun carried and poured the hot water on his bathtub. sehun murmured thank you. jongin replied with a grunt that could have meant 'welcome' or 'don't bother me again'. sehun did not let jongin stay inside his apartment long enough to decode his reply. he ushered jongin to the door and slammed it shut (in the most polite way possible).
jongin went back to his own place and realized it's his first time conversing with his neighbor. he only knew sehun's name because it was engraved in gold on his door. why, jongin doesn't know. just that sehun smelled like baby lotion and had the emotional capacity of a rock.
yesterday, it was because jongin discovered a hole on his wall while cleaning his desk. and when he peeped through one eye, sehun's neat room greeted his iris. the furniture consists of shades ranging from trunk-brown to soil-brown and jongin decides it's too melancholic, so he knocked on sehun's door three times to inform him about the hole.
after two minutes' worth of heated argument, jongin decided to be the bigger person and fixed the hole himself because sehun told hi h was the one who found it, therefore he's responsible for it. while jongin tried and failed, and tried again to cover said hole up with flimsy paper and tape, sehun's husky voice echoed on his mind. the voice had no right to be in his brain in the first place, but jongin didn't bother letting it get away by channeling his thoughts differently. oh sehun has a very nice voice. a voice that made jongin think of vanilla ice creams with chocolate syrup and rainbow sprinkles on top.
today, sehun uses his knees because for some reason, his arms feels like jellies and just as incapable of knocking. when jongin answers the door with his lazy, caramel eyes and just-as-caramel skin, sehun asks for his name. when jongin inquires why he might need that, the younger informs him that he hates him and it's only logical to know the name of the person you hate.
jongin introduces himself without imploring for a name in return. before leaving, sehun smiled and jongin spends his whole day wondering if it was meant to be friendly or taunting or somewhere in between.
ii Act like his phantom limb;
be there when he needs you,
and leave when he doesn't
the day before yesterday, jongin had dragged sehun's staggering frame tipsy with alcohol and spicy kimchi to his room. last night, sehun used an actual hammer to hammer the thin wall separating him from jongin, and like a spell, jongin burst through his room, wanting to know what the fuck rattled sehun's pea-brain for doing that at e-fucking-leven in the evening. sehun had wordlessly dragged jongin by the collar of his cheap shirt out of their building, darting through the city's illuminated maze.
jongin whined, groaned and complained like a rag doll as his converse-clad foot scraped the road's concrete. sehun's hold remained painfully tight. he only pursed his lips shut when they stopped in front of a run-down bar that looked twice as old as his frail friend, joonmyun. joonmyun is in his thirties, so that's saying something.
as they placed their orders, sehun informed him it's treat because it's been six months since he hated kim jongin so this is a half-year celebration. sehun told jongin its his treat. and as the tyrant sehun with his neat hairstyle and pristine clothes talked to the balding bartender, jongin wondered where sehun gets his money because he looked like he's in his late teens and he's not even going out of his house. sehun's smile is more intimidating behind beer bottles and glowing neons.
and in this light, sehun was like atlas; the one who carried the burden of over seven billion people on his shoulders.
they drank and drank some more, but jongin made sure to leave a bit room to be sober enough to guide both of them back home.
yesterday, kim jongin woke up with a sharp feeling ricocheting back and forth the walls of his tender brain. his breath smelled like beer and unholiness when he opened his mouth, so he closed it immediately. something reeked of vomit and when he peered down his shirt, he recalled sehun's episode of puking the contents of his stomach into what he thought was a garbage bin on the street. jongin did not know if he should have been offended that sehun mistook his shirt as a trash can or not.
he observed sehun's sleeping figure and decided to not be offended. after all, jongin himself had been too tired to haul his anchored limbs back to his own apartment and treated sehun's wooden floor as a bed. as his own way of saying thank you, jongin raided sehun's kitchen until he found two cups of noodles--because they're the only thing he can cook well since they don't require touching the stove or knives and cutting boards that could potentially end in a wildfire.
he had been looking at the stove while waiting for the water to boil when he remembered a morning like this, not too long ago. it had been february's coldness instead of august's warmth waiting outside the walls, and sehun had knocked on his door while asking for a favor. they'd been strangers then. and they're still strangers now, but jongin concluded that their mini-conversations made them less-strange. he was curious as to why sehun bothered him instead of solving the problem on his own.
the sound of ruffled sheets and creaking floorboards caused jongin's head to turn until he saw sehun's indescribable face and his eyebrows, lips and eyes forming a scowl. just as he was about to greet sehun good morning, sehun started lashing out, eliciting a worried response from jongin. sehun kept on screaming words jongin can't understand, throwing everything in his reach, hazel eyes looking at jongin, but not really seeing him.
jongin tried to calm him down, but left when sehun sent something flying in jongin's direction. it was only when jongin felt his cheeks with his left hand when they both realized it was a broken glass and its shards left a ribbon of red on jongin's soft flesh.
jongin departed; the heart-breaking sound of sehun's cries acting like the background music as a trail of blood dripped down his neck. they should have been tears, but kim jongin does not cry. not anymore.
today, sehun pokes the paper-covered wall with his index finger and slips a rolled-up note on the new hole. it took jongin two hours in the shower, and then three more minutes of sweeping his floor clean to find the rolled paper. he reads it, smiles, and tucks it in a box along with a cigarette stick pressed flat on its edge.
i'm really sorry for what happened. i wasn't in the right state of mind, because well-- my psychiatrist says so.
i have problems, you see. i mean, we all have problems, just that mine might be worst than the rest.
i don't want to talk about it, if you want to know more, don't. but i feel like i owe this to you.
dinner tomorrow night? i'll cook and it won't be just noodles because i'm not like someone i know
iii. Go to Hallmark and buy him
as many cards as you can with your allowance or salary
the day before yesterday, kim jongin received his salary from one of his part-time jobs. he's had more job than a sane person would like to admit. sometimes he's a cashier, a waiter, a dancer, and every once in a blue moon, he babysits for a little boy whose family lives a floor below him. jongin actually earns enough from being a waiter to cover for his expenses, but he prefers running around, doing menial tasks just to have more money. and maybe he won't admit it to himself, but he takes delight in treating sehun to something, no matter how insignificant it might seem. sehun doesn't ask for anything, and maybe that's why jongin feels like it's his mission to give sehun everything.
right after paying his bills, rationing some for his monthly food and other necessities, and giving the landowner his monthly rent, he headed off to hallmark to buy all the cards he can. they range from cheesy humor, to romantic ones, to the ones with cats and penguins with party hats in front, cards with dancing elephants and red ribbons, and even ones with gingerbread houses.
when he arrived home, he began signing each and every card with his initials.
yesterday, he slid the cards through sehun's door. there are thirty-six of them. when jongin slipped the thirty-fifth card, he takes the last one behind his back before knocking sharply on sehun's door. when he footsteps traveled to his ears, jongin turned and ran to his apartment.
today, jongin hides the thirty-sixth card inside the brown shoe box. now, the cigarette and note aren't lonely. the thirty-sixth card is a 'get well soon' card, and sometime between the day before yesterday and yesterday, jongin replayed sehun's laughter, the way he'd tilt his head to the right when he's thinking deeply, and how he'd stick out his tongue out a bit when he's amused again and again in his mind until his nerves processed them and explained everything to his heart.
it is only when it started beating rapidly and tingling with such foreign sensations that jongin realizes he likes sehun. and he doesn't know how, or when, or where, or why it happened, just that he's sure it's 'like' because when you like someone and they're depressed, you don't send them get well soon cards.
when you like someone and they're depressed, do what jongin does. he sits down on the floor, mouth adjacent to the hole in the taped paper as he calls out sehun's name. sehun answers and walks closer. when jongin feels like sehun is close enough, he tells sehun he hopes he'll feel better.
jongin doesn't feed sehun plastic sentiments in the form of cards that have been sent to over 25, 000 people every year
iv. Dig a hole in the backyard and give him a shovel
then step back as he rips his sadness in handfuls and bury it in the hole
the day before yesterday, sehun entered jongin's apartment, under the guise of being too lonely and needy. over a cup of bitter coffee, sehun told jongin he just came from one of his monthly appointments to his psychiatrist, yifan (but sehun said he's more cuckoo than his patients. because who the fuck lets a stuffed alpaca sit beside them in their office?) without as much as a side comment, jongin stood up slowly, disappeared somewhere, and came back to the living room holding two shining shovels in his hand.
wordlessly, in the same way sehun dragged him to a dingy bar, jongin handed sehun a shovel and when sehun took it, jongin grabbed sehun's free hand, towing it outside of the building. between the entrance and the empty lot filled with some kind of industrial soil, jongin was encouraged by the gentle caress of september's breeze and the avid whisper of the wind as they swayed the branches of leaves in red and gold and swirled like thin helicopters around jongin and sehun. jongin finally asked sehun why he was always alone.
sehun kept quiet until the both of them started injuring the ground with sharp metal and vigorous arms. halfway through digging, sehun told jongin the reason he's almost always alone is because he's aware that he's a ticking time bomb. he was meant to self-destruct and there's no use damaging anyone surrounding him.
when jongin asked why he was talking to him, sehun simply called jongin a bastard.
yesterday, jongin and sehun went back to the spot they dug. there's a notebook and pen on sehun's lap. as they sat on the ground with the afternoon skies around them, jongin instructed sehun to write down whatever was burdening him because jongin felt like he's so much more capable than that yifan dude who can't even cure sehun after years of treatment. sehun wrote and jongin told himself to not get captivated by the way sehun holds the pen between the tangle of his fingers.
jongin discovered what the deal was about when his eyes landed on ripped pieces of paper inked with sehun's messy scrawl. he read and then he wanted to know why we let hearts break inwardly instead of ripping that blasted organ out of our chests and into the atmosphere for naked eyes to see; each crack caused by old agonies, battered tissues one touch away from giving out, short and lengthy scars etched by all the 'you're not good enough's collected from the lips of the ones we loved, thorn-adorned splinters acting as souvenirs from the adventures we all went through that made us who we are. he longed for sehun to see this, to know he isn't the only one suffering. but he gulped down words and kept them in as sehun buried each paper one by one;
i'm fucking sad and i don't know if that covers it.
when i was nine years old, i saw how my mom killed my father.
then she blasted her head off with the same gun in front of my eyes.
i thought i was blind because i couldn't see anything after that. it turned out that my eyes was just covered with blood.
whose, i don't know. the police never told me.
my uncle and who took me in told me they loved me.
they gave me their wealth and i'm hiding in this place now.
i hated them after that because my mother had at least told my father 'i love you'
a million and one hundred eighty nine times before she pulled the trigger.
my neighbor's name is jongin and he is annoying and he smells like chlorine.
today, kim jongin runs a shaking hand through sehun's soft hair. everything else is steady; jongin's heartbeat as sehun's head rests exactly atop his chest, sehun's breathing (inhale, exhale), the constant circular motion of the ceiling fan above. he closes his eyes and tries hard not to think of yesterday or the day before that. he tries to forget how the great wall of china comes crumbling down to dust with sehun's words. with lids tightly shut, he ignores the concept of ticking time bombs and things killing you from the inside out, how everything was created to be destroyed.
he takes a deep breath and reminds himself he shouldn't be melting into sehun's bones and clinging to his heart, but here he is; plastered to sehun. the grain of his being flowing to the ivory-skinned boy, merging with his foundation
v.Cook a romantic dinner for two
play a recording of you saying something important
again and again until the needle scratches
the day before yesterday, jongin spent two hours badgering his close friend, kyungsoo to teach him one delicious meal. then he spent the rest of his day in kyungsoo's kitchen, observing the shorter guy as he juggles ingredients in his hands, placed pasta sticks to a casserole, little things that jongin can't even understand so kyungsoo told him to write everything down because it's easier that way.
jongin did.
yesterday, he invited sehun over and watched with dancing eyes as sehun ate the soggy spaghetti jongin deliberately prepared. the pasta was overcooked and the sauce hadn't been stirred properly, hotdogs weren't sliced thin enough, but that didn't seem like a major setback for sehun who had never tasted a home-cooked meal in his life. each bite fueled the already-wide grin on his face, and he looked at jongin's plate with longing eyes when his was swiped clean. jongin was more than happy to gently push his plate to sehun's direction.
jongin's own stomach was growling, but there was nothing new to that. even if he ate, it'd still be difficult to swallow. he settled for watching sehun devour his food as if his life depended on it. jongin's did.
today, jongin calls sehun through the hole in the wall. sehun arrives with a series of complaints about the time, grumbling about how people need their sleep and just because you cook delicious spaghetti doesn't give you the licence to disturb individuals who need their beauty rest. sehun flattens his ears against the wall.
jongin repeatedly says 'you're loved. you're important. you're wonderful' again and again until his tongue grew weary and sehun starts believing it.
vi. Fill the bathtub with roses and hot water
light some candles
remove his clothes one by one
the day before yesterday marked the anniversary of their first meeting. jongin stopped by a flower shop after his shift. this isn't a sudden decision, or a momentary impulse. this was the result of five hours twisting and turning in his bed, grasping pillowcases to bring out a solution for sehun. a reward, if you will. because sehun's room isn't that melancholy anymore.
there are polaroid pictures of him and jongin captured in the streets of cheongdamdong, hongdae, and other hideouts in seoul. the background varies; a dim alleyway, a sunlit park with merry strangers, carnivals with their neon lights and colorful rides, a calm river someplace outside the city. the clothes change too; sometimes they're light undershirts, others layered. the only thing that was constant was the identical mirth glowing behind dark eyes, faces pressed against each other, and unbridled happiness tilted lips can't express enough.
sehun learned to show other expressions, too. along with the falling of autumn leaves and greetings of winter's snowflakes, a smile blossoms on his face, sometimes he'd crack a joke or two, leaving behind vines entwining itself on jongin's heart. other times, he'd teach jongin lessons they both didn't need to learn. laughter worked like a warm blanket on chilly nights. hugs subdues hidden tears. feelings are better off felt than explained.
when the bouquet of red roses were in his hand, jongin fixed his thoughts on the flower's freshness, not the fact that they'll wither and lose their beauty some day.
yesterday, jongin and sehun made love. porcelain-frail and caramel-toned skin glowing underneath the candles' golden lights. plucked blood-red petals flirting with sweat-covered thighs. groans followed moans and names dissolved like the droplets of liquid aroma mixed with tub water and body fluids. fingers pressed against spines, massaging the sadness out of them. mouth covering lips, transferring as much love as the other can handle. need and passion translated into echoes caused by flesh smacking flesh. sehun writhed underneath jongin's arms as every term of endearment were exchanged.( i need you, i want you, you're everything, you're so special. i can't believe you're mine. i more than just like you. )
but never once did they say 'i love you'.
today, jongin hides a rose petal and molten candle on his shoe box
vii. Take him rollerblading at night
the day before yesterday, sehun gripped the hem of jongin's gray shirt while trying to balance himself. jongin reached out to take sehun's hand in his, guiding the both of them carefully. when sehun finally got the gist of it and the sleeping city's street lights turned red, jongin and sehun drifted through lanes loitered with sluggish cars with just as sluggish drivers. sehun turned and rolled away. jongin made sure to let sehun be happy, but keeping him close enough like a satellite. the wind bit, the road felt uncomfortable, and the city's glow blinded him.
when they arrived home, heaving and red, sehun hugged jongin, gushing about how he never had that much fun in his life before. jongin grinned and planted a kiss on sehun's lips, telling him that it's the perfect way to end a perfect day.
sehun said it's all poetic bullshit. jongin kissed him again.
yesterday, kim jongin's throat woke him up. clenching, aching, pain overlapping against pain. he staggered to his bathroom and avoids making a ruckus. he learned from experience that even the slightest noise resonates to sehun's room. awareness is the last thing he needs as the beginning of bile rises to his throat, through his mouth and out to the toilet bowl. jongin closed his eyes, concentrating on keeping his voice from getting louder.
tears took the place of the strangled sobs he forced his vocal chords to hold in. by the moisture on the side of his eyes, it's clear to jongin that suffering has to make itself known. when it all stopped and all that remained was a burning feeling behind his sternum, he opened his eyes and what he saw pulled the floodgates of unshed tears open.
kim jongin watched as blood stained the whiteness, along with remnants of the last food he ate. he knew what this meant. hematasis, it's all coming back and it's worst than before. his wrist watch informed him it's 6:17 A.M., and he allowed the tears to fall; not because everything inside him hurts, but because inside his body, there's a clock that runs on a different time, counting his months, week, days, hours ticking down to the nanoseconds.
the pain doubles. everything intensifies; from the surface of pain to the line of acceptance. there's a cloud of misery in his world now. because he finally has a reason to fight for a battle he'll never be able to win.
today, kim jongin brightens up sehun's room with an ear-splitting grin and a heap of DVD's in hand. sehun fixes his couch and turns the lights off; doing everything out of new-found habit than anything else. they decide on a cheesy rom-com flick (jongin likes throwing popcorns at the glib male leads and sehun likes laughing at that). like clockwork, sehun nestles his head on the crook of jongin's shoulder, and jongin intertwines their fingers together from under the heavy blankets while watching the bright figures dance on the screen.
actually, it was just sehun who watched. jongin's too occupied glancing at sehun and memorizing everything before condensing them in phrases; soft hands, smells like baby lotion, protruding collarbones, tongue slightly sticking out when serious, three lines between creased brows, ticklish in his hips, his hair the same color as angry, rain clouds.
viii. Be patient
Things like these take time
the day before yesterday, sehun experienced one of his 'i'd like to be by myself' moments, and really, it's all fine by jongin. as sehun obliviously sleeps in his room, jongin compiles papers after papers and begins writing. both of them knew jongin's fascination with creating lists; grocery lists, schedules, red things he sees on a particular day.
but then three hours seemed to be sehun's capacity to keep jongin at bay.
sehun knocked and entered jongin's living room along with the hint of twilight on the other side of jongin's window. sehun came equipped with a thin book and a steaming mug of coffee he didn't make for jongin. jongin understood and resumed to scribbling furiously on his notebook. sehun was close enough to notice the thin bones sticking in the middle of jongin's wrist and the hollowness of his cheeks, vacuuming pity out of sehun. he wasn't sure if it was pity, or love, or worry, or a little bit of everything. raw emotions were new and caught him red-handed.
but he's sure that whatever he felt was strong enough to ask jongin if he's okay. jongin smiled and it didn't reach his eyes. he asked if sehun was okay, when the other nodded, jongin whispered that everything is okay.
something in the way jongin slurred his syllables alerted sehun.
yesterday, sehun's knocks against jongin's door went unanswered. thinking that jongin might be out somewhere, he headed back to his own apartment. meanwhile, jongin clutched for his phone. shaking fingers fumble to speed dial kyungsoo. lying down on the coldness of the floor, jongin pleaded for help and kyungsoo could only reassure him with the words; i'll be there quickly, hang on.
had sehun peeked through the flimsy hole, he'd have witnessed jongin gasping and lying helplessly in a pool of his blood.
today, it's jongin who barged into sehun's room and before the younger could utter anything else, jongin engulfs him in a tight hug. he lets his deprived arms and desperate breathing do the talking. there are a dozen of questions suspended in the air. questions without sufficient answers and understandable reasons
ix. Wait until there's a full moon
Trace his scars; for each one revealed, tell him you'll stay for another year
tell him that if he only had one scar, you' d stay forever
the day before yesterday, kim jongin cried on his friends kyungsoo and joonmyun's shoulders for the first time. this appeared as a surprise to the pair, considering how secretive and quiet jongin can get. kyungsoo, being the one with the sensitive heart, cried along with jongin, their muffled sobs soaked in by the trusted walls of joonmyun's kitchen.
joonmyun diverted his gaze from jongin's trembling lips and stretched knuckles to stop seeing the pain. but unfortunately, joonmyun can't block out his ears to stop hearing jongin as he cried out, hyung, I love sehun, hyung. I finally understand now, hyung. why some cancer patients go through chemotherapy even though death will just catch up to them. I thought it was silly hyung. cough. why couldn't they just accept their destinies like me, right? you know i thought it was stupid so i didn't go through treatment years ago and just let it consume me. now i wish i fought it. hick. everyone dies i know that, hyung. but i wasn't really aware of having reasons to live.
i told you about sehun, right? you know hyung, he sticks his tongue out when he's pondering over something. i like the way his fingers curl on mugs and i shouldn't even like that. i mean, it's stupid and little and really. stupid stupid. it's also stupid how he smiles and blushes like a girl. acts like one, too. but you know what's more stupid how i would go through chemotherapy if it meant i get to see him be his stupid self at least for one more day. if these medicines and tubes can give me one more chance to hear him whine about the weather. he keeps telling me that the rain is annoying. he is, too. but i won't mind having him around. just one more week, one more day, hyung. i finally figured out what it's like to be alive.
kyungsoo told the frail jongin that even if he had forever to live, he still wouldn't have enough of sehun. jongin laughed bitterly, muttering about the infinite chances hiding in 'forever'.
yesterday, jongin and sehun made love on the rooftop of their building, atop soiled blankets and underneath the moon's silver glows, surrounded by dim lights and ten o'clock darkness that won't reveal the secret of these young lovers. kisses were given and bites taken. as jongin explored sehun's body, his lips uttered words too quiet to be heard.
when their gasping bodies gave out, jongin lied down beside sehun. and aside from the noise of the traffic in the distance and their sharp breathing, no other sound could be heard. but it's been two years since he found the empty space in the wall, two years since he started to get addicted to sehun's scent. jongin had already mastered the art of listening to the words sehun didn't say.
jongin mumbled a number (twenty-six). jongin told sehun he had twenty-six scars. he'll stay for twenty-six more years. sehun began talking about years and decay and happy-ever-afters. jongin grabbed sehun's hands with fingers as cold as the moon's surface. with the help of his dried lips and pleading eyes, jongin changed the topic to the big bang, the start of everything, of origins and great beginnings. jongin talked of worn-out 'once upon a time's, never touching the gold-engraved 'the end's.
today, sehun surprises himself and jongin when he began skimming through a newspaper he claimed to have bought across the street. details about job advertisements and hiring never escaped sehun's dark eyes. he tells jongin about his decision to go out to the real world and do something for himself. he thanks jongin and tells him he can't have done it without his help. now, sehun says, i'm gonna live forever.
jongin smiles slightly, wishing he could tell sehun the same thing.
x. Find mars
Label it
the day before yesterday, sehun showed up front of jongin's doorstep, wearing paint-splattered clothing and a frown on his face. adorned with a string of protest about this painter he's working for. his name is luhan and according to sehun, he would have shoved luhan's ugly face against his palette if only he didn't need the painter's money and the job.
two tablespoons of sugar were added to the cup of coffee jongin's making for sehun. edges of the light curtain sways in the wind. dust motes spiraled in an invisible path lit by the sun's rays. there are spots on the wooden floor that shone too bright. trivial little things like these filled the distance between them; a distance that can't be quenched by curious conversations or excited footsteps. nor can this distance be measured by feet or meters, because sometimes the words 'too far' begins making sense and more often than sometimes, no one could still understand.
in his usual, drowsy tone, sehun spoke of art, what the real world is like. he mentioned something about the streets being too polluted, the cars zooming too fast, pedestrians walking too slow, rain clouds being too heavy; the never ending stream of surprises waiting for him at every intersection. jongin perfected the role of a listener as sehun painted pictures with his lips and vibrant eyes that had enough energy to fuel both of them.
and one minute they were two people inside a musky living room, talking about every-day happenings and the weather. then the next, jongin envisioned himself to be inches, miles away. in a place blessed with cyan skies guiding him as he shuffled forward, carrying a black cage in hand. deprived of any sort of knowledge, the jongin in his mind opened the cage with moist hands. he thought the liquid was his tears.
tears that dripped down after another as something moved inside. a splash of colorful feathers folded too tight against each other, as if time itself clipped its wings. it was undoubtedly captivating, but jongin didn't have enough time for reverence as the beautiful creature stretched its wings to fly away. away. away. away until it became a dot of chrome against the calm skies.
away. away. away and away until jongin was left to question it's existence in the first place.
yesterday, sehun treated jongin, just because he wanted to. it was their first official date, in a sense. maybe it wasn't. jongin was sure that they've been out to the cinema, the park, and even some coffee shops before. but things felt different now, as if jongin was given a new pair of glasses that sharpened his vision. sehun's smile seemed more vivid in a moving sea of people. his eyes brighter as the screen's light hits them in the cinema's darkness.
even his other senses heightened in sensitivity. his ears would catch sehun sigh and gasp and wheeze during appropriate scenes. when sehun's lips touched his, jongin could appreciate sehun's spearmint taste on his tongue, how it lingered like a ghost even after sehun pulled away. sehun's flesh alerted him before, but now it electrocuted him; as if there was an uncontrollable power supply in sehun's fingers.
each whisper, each wink, each smile, each word, each glance, each kiss was tucked into a rusted suitcase in jongin's mind. a suitcase that had never been opened before simply because was nothing to keep inside. a suitcase of nothingness now brimming with splintered fragments of a man whose tongue peaks out when concentrated, whose nose scrunches timidly when disgusted, whose voice raised goosebumps on the back of his neck, a man whose kisses were bullets shot straight to jongin's heart.
today, sehun's cheek is against jongin's chest. skin glued to skin by the thin layer of sweat compelled by hours of love-making inside sehun's neat little room. jongin tries his best to not lean down and kiss the runaway strands of sehun's hair--and fails miserably. he brings out his phone and speed dials kyungsoo while running his other hand through sehun's hair, which he had previously gripped, caressed and kissed earlier.
when the ringing stops, indicating that kyungsoo answered, jongin gushes to tell his friend that he finally gets the character, eri asai from murakami's book, after dark. his voice duets with sehun's breathing; he informs kyungsoo he understands the word 'desire' and 'freeze' now. eri asai went through self-induced comma and no one around her saw reason in that. she had everything she want, didn't she? why would she close her eyes to the world?
it takes jongin one look at sehun to realize the answer to a question he's been pondering over for months. if given the chance, he'd have slept through all his life like eri, even though he's hedged by the rope of fortune.
once upon a time, he shares to kyungsoo, we come across a particular stage when we think everything is just the way it should be. and just this piece of our lifeline, just this droplet of a moment in an ocean of moments could have us hoping that we can close our eyes and preserve what we have in the present. to keep it in our own pandora's box.
kyungsoo calls him a shakespearean ignoramus who's high on coke and prose. jongin laughs because kyungsoo doesn't get it. because no one does and no one will.
jongin isn't intoxicated; he's dying.
those are two very different things.
x. Make it say: we were here
the day before yesterday, jongin felt his internal hourglass tip. the sand grains of his seconds slithering closer to the end by each belch his throat produces to accompany the bile flowing out to the toilet bowl. and then there's the crimson liquid that was supposed to be keeping him alive, but even that attempts to escape from him. a voice in his mind instructed him to get on with it; he should be used to the pain now. and then another murmuring to go ahead and cry, because even kings have scars that never bleed.
these voices were drowning in his desire to yell out sehun's name.
yesterday, jongin received a message from sehun saying that he'll be home late because he's invited by some of luhan's friends for dinner. this strip of normalcy in sehun's life pushed jongin on edge, and this time, he did not even dig his weight against the ground to stop the force, even just by a centimeter. he got up and did what he planned to do, all the while telling himself that death isn't solid; you can't grasp it or hold it or shove it to another room or get down on your knees and beg for it to please wait because you need more time to appreciate someone's hoarse laughter and corny pick up lines.
death is like the air that followed jongin as he rummaged through his drawers, bringing out his carefully hidden shoe box and a stack of papers held together by a thin string and what's left of his sanity. the rhythm of his breathing and his footsteps getting closer to sehun's room served as jongin's companion. left, right, legs, please don't give out, left, right until he's in front of sehun's coffee table.
and he timidly placed the papers and box down, something hot and warm --were they tears? welled up behind his eyes. maybe it was because he's conducting his own little burial and no one was around to watch him grip pieces of himself and leave them on the table; a letter, never-ending papers containing lists and a box full of souvenirs. then a thought materialized and he scampered around for a pencil and paper.
he wrote with a compliant heart and a brain that told him to go on and write because this is what's best for sehun. kim jongin scribbled a list on a torn notebook page. a list that he didn't want to make, but he had to. a list that no one can pull off the same way he did, but maybe they can do better
today, sehun comes home wearing smile and a shirt that isn't his because his gray ones were drenched by some unsuspecting stranger. his limbs and head hurts as if they've just been stepped on by a buffalo. it's his first time staying out of his house and away from jongin overnight. it feels nostalgic and euphoric at the same time. he expected to come home to a pair of open arms, waiting for him and maybe some warm toast and fried eggs for breakfast. jongin's cooking skills surprisingly improved after episodes of sehun pretending that jongin's oily meals were god's latest miracles after rice cookers.
the smile, however, fades from his face little by little as he caught sight of a brown shoe box (that isn't his) and some papers (that surely isn't his) on his coffee table. he opens it and takes the items out one by one; a molten candle, a pressed rose petal, cigarette stick, a shard of glass, movie tickets, a damaged wheel of some roller skates, a torn paper with a little hole that fit perfectly on sehun's index finger.
today, kim jongin listens to the roaring of the angry waves below him. and another; the sound of loneliness. he's high enough for the sea's foam to be pools of white. with eyes open and dry, he lets his last thought be the three volatile raps of his neighbor's knuckles against his door. his right foot inches forward, half in the open air; there's oh sehun's deep voice yelling at jongin to fix that goddamned hole because he was the one who discovered it. by the time jongin takes a deep breath, he rewinds back to sehun's job-searching and later on, his complains. kim jongin spreads his arms out and lets himself fall, knowing that sehun will be okay.
today, sehun forces himself to read the wrinkled paper on top of the box. after, of course, absorbing jongin's letter written with words like; hematasis, metastasis, cancer, the end. as he finished with the first one, sehun thinks it's the perfect time for someone to barge into his door and yell 'time stops, the world ends' because that's exactly how he feels right now;
Kim Jongin's guide to loving oh sehun; [a depressed individual]
i give him a reason to get out of bed every single morning
ii Act like his phantom limb be there when he needs you, eave when he doesn't
iii Go to Hallmark and buy him as many cards as you can with your allowance or salary
iv.Dig a hole in the backyard and give him a shovel then step back as he rips his sadness in handfuls and bury it in the hole
v. Cook a romantic dinner for two play a recording of you saying something important again and again until the needle scratches
vi. Fill the bathtub with roses and hot water light some candles remove his clothes one by one
vii. Take him rollerblading at night
viii. Be patient. things like these take time
ix. Wait until there's a full moon, trace his scars, for each one revealed, tell him you'll stay for another year; t tell him that if he only had one scar, you'll stay forever
x. Get a telescope and find mars
xi. Label it
xii. Make it say we were here
xiii Don't tell him you love him, show it
(notice that there aren't any periods on the lists, these thoughts are endless)
tomorrow, sehun will wake up to the groaning engines and incoherent chatter composing the seven o'clock street noise. an unwelcomed noise, perhaps, but it was inevitable because he forgot to close his windows shut last night. he'll instinctively grab a plate and his spoon and fork before going out of his house to knock on jongin's door. the echoes his knuckles against wood cause and the lack of reply on the other end will remind him of jongin and his absence. he'll feel his knees give out beneath him tears follow suit, even though he doesn't think it's physically possible for a human to have this much tears leaking out of their sockets. he'll loiter on fast-paced highways, trying to find pieces of jongin in a stranger's wrist, the way that girl sitting by the park bench squeezes her eyes shut, a man's hip as they sway when walking.
tomorrow, sehun will pour his hate out on luhan because the stupid chinese bigot didn't allow him to take a day off to nurse his broken heart. sehun will accidentally-on-purpose put too much water on luhan's tea and not enough sugar because there's nothing in the world luhan hates aside from that. he'll get forty-three minutes' worth of scolding from the passionate painter, and forty-three minutes is more than enough for sehun to be frustrated to the point of bitch-slapping that nagger across the face. he'll leave luhan's studio, worrying that he'll lose his job. but later on, luhan will show up in his doorstep, eyes on his feet and heart on his sleeve as he mutters I'm sorry.
tomorrow, sehun will impose self-loathing. he'll fuel the fire of his self-hate using jongin's multiple lists and letters. he'll reprimand himself for being so selfish he didn't notice the signs of jongin--gosh, jongin practically turned transparent in front of his eyes. sehun will tear the polaroid pictures down and pry his sheets off in a fit of rage. a rage that'll kill itself like arson in an abandoned warehouse. when seconds quenches the fire, the ashes of what we have beens, what we should have beens, what we never will be, would manifest on him. his fingers will fumble to tape back the pictures and put them back properly, like a suspect hiding evidences of his crime. he'll be secretly hoping that doing this would bring jongin back, would return the kisses and childish pillow fights, the nasty name callings and hardcore lovemaking.
tomorrow, doors will open for sehun. tomorrow, a hand would flip the page of a thick book. a book that happened to be about sehun's life. a story without end, but a story nonetheless. a story with chapters meant to be finished to introduce a new one.
tomorrow will come, maybe with the sun's greeting or the heaven's drizzle. maybe with yesterday's regrets or today's mistakes. with a potential lover or mortal enemy. maybe with a broken water heater or a surprise hole in the wall.
either way, tomorrow will come.
f i n
note: written for clap13times amp; i am so not writing sekai again.
i actually didn't have a concrete plot /sobs/
& this is so not my forte. what is up with me and falling people.
but i hope you enjoyed reading ;}