A G A P E

Look with fear at that which surrounds you. Park Sunjung. ☥

[leneemusing]

i am honey dipped in poison. and it is not my fault when the hungry come to taste my nectar. they never asked permission anyway.

leneemusing

[anaxiphvlia]

lithified‌:

The inside of the club had made him claustrophobic. After that, anything would be a relief. Even if it’s standing on a sidewalk strewn with passed-out drunks and litter, shifting uncomfortably under praise he doesn’t deserve. Her last sentiment is so upbeat it rips a laugh from him, short and bitter.

“Yeah, it would.” Rude, as always. Pushing away what little support he’s getting from anyone. “But thanks.”

Ungrateful son-of-a-bitch and he knows it. It’s just hard to bear it. Being lauded for doing the bare minimum, for short-circuiting the mad impulse to destroy himself. It’s all he does these days – fight it. Come so close to failure he can taste it. Fight it some more.

Stop breathing at the thought of him.

He should have known better than to hope he’d get away with not talking about this.

“He knows.” Knows exactly what this is doing to Sungjoon, constantly exposing him to his greatest weakness. A loaded gun always in plain sight, beckoning for him to pull the trigger. “It’s one of two things he knows about me, really. The other is that he wants to fuck me over in any and every way he possibly can.”

He has to force himself to take a breath, just to stop hatred from choking him.

Sunjung is trying. She really is. She’s looking at this objectively, with the distance he could never manage, and offering whatever words she thinks could help. He should try being grateful. He should try not shutting her down immediately.

“Yeah,” he says finally. “That’s the plan.” One that sounds simple, in theory. In practice, it varies from tedious on good days to excruciating, every minute, on bad ones.

He doesn’t know where they’re going. Only that he doesn’t want to stay here. It feels better to be moving, away from something, even if it is toward nothing. He drinks in the night air, expanding his consciousness from the cramped confines of four walls and his own skull to encompass the street around them, the city alive despite the late hour, the boundless cloudless sky. For a precious few breaths, he settles into something close to peace.

The keening of a police siren reminds him he should never be at ease if he knows what’s good for him. It brings him back to the present, grasping for a plan. They’ve started walking toward Gwanak-gu. It always ends like this. Her gone, him alone in an empty apartment. There’s no escaping himself then.

“Where do you live anyway?”

If there’s one thing that Sunjung could say is characteristic of Sungjoon (besides his height), it would probably be the expression he always has on his face. It’s not quite pained - at least most of the time - but something similar. Blank, but transparently “I want to leave right now.” Even in the sporadic yellow haze, she can see it clearly.

He doesn’t want to talk about work. Never really does. He loves to complain about the man he works for, but never anything else. She supposes that’s fair. He doesn’t exactly seem like the white collar type - or blue collar, even. It’s probably plausible deniability that keeps him from saying anything more.

She’s okay with that. She doesn’t exactly talk about what she does, either. He knows she tattoos, but that’s about it. She’s always forming relationships like this, always taking and never giving. She loves it, taking.

It feels the best when she takes everything.

The next question almost goes unheard. A car passes by and Sungjoon is so quiet to begin with, but after a second she pieces it together.

“Across the river; Jung-gu.”

She goes to brush a strand of hair from her face and pauses, squinting in the half-light at her palm before she reaches into her bag to find her leftover tissues. She doesn’t stop, just rummages around until she finds one and scrubs at her hand a couple of times before dropping the tissue back into the purse and finally brushing her hair out of her face.

“You don’t live far from here, though, right? Mind if I come over?” You don’t leave people alone after they almost relapse. And it doesn’t seem like Sungjoon has a lot of other people that can keep an eye on him. She’s already finished with her other plans, so there’s no reason to leave.

“Have any whiskey?”

[anaxiphvlia]

vahimali‌:

God, he’s heavy.

He hadn’t looked it, when they met at the bar. He hadn’t seemed in any way intimidating – too fawning and faux-chivalrous to register as a threat. He’d only started to give her second thoughts when he tried (between the third time the knife bit into his skin and the sixth, maybe) to shove her into the bathroom wall and throttle her with his bare hands. Her own pair, blood-smeared and manicure-taloned, scrabbled at muscled forearms in the beginnings of panic before she reigned in her composure. Before she adjusted her grip on the knife’s handle and made quick work of his neck, leaving it a bloody ruin.

(And when she rubbed at her throat over his crumpled form, it was his blood she left on her skin, and her own she could feel beating heavy against her fingertips.)

Muscle is heavier than fat. Something they always say, those gym-rat types, though it’s a completely idiotic statement. A pound of muscle and a pound of fat weigh the same. It’s density that matters. This dead weight she’s dragging along is entirely too heavy for the size of him – all that muscle. It hadn’t done him much good, in the end. And it’s making things unnecessarily difficult for her. The garbage bag he’s tied up into is surely tearing to shreds against the asphalt, and it’s only how thoroughly she bled him in the bathtub that’s stopping him from leaving a messy trail in their wake.

She’s exhausted. She isn’t stopping. Not until she reaches the river. Dumping him won’t be the same as making the problem go away forever, just long enough to throw a little uncertainty into the autopsy. No evidence of any use, just another poor bastard to add to the list. The body count of the one they’re now calling the Sinchon Slasher.

Her mouth curls around the name. It’s better than she’d ever dared to hope for. As euphonious as it is sensationalistic. Dramatic. Just like her. And it’s what has her flagging strength surging again, giving her the will to drag him those last few blocks.

These streets are deserted. She’s not worried about being found – the only sound is the slow dragging in stops and starts as she hauls him along. Her feet on the pavement are soundless, her heels discarded in frustration in an alley some ways back. She’s so thoroughly secure in the fact that she is alone out here that it comes as a nasty shock to find she is suddenly not.

She falls quiet. Stills every inch of her body, even her breathing, lest it give her away. It’s… something strange, she’s stumbled upon. The one in the dim-lit alley in front of her is not alone, either, she registers after only a second. Her back is to Vita. And she’s standing over another, one Vita can barely see – only that this form is unmoving on the ground. And it doesn’t take a genius to deduce that it’s their blood staining the hands of this crimson-haired stranger.

She lets the body drop, and lets out a breath.

The night is dark. It’s full of things that want to get you. At least, that’s what parents have been saying for ages and ages now. Around here, it’s full of drunk people just trying to have a good time.

Yeongdong has always been a good place to go when she’s felt trapped within the confines of her mundane daily life. When her whole routine is going to work and back to her apartment, she’ll turn to it. Take a night off and take men up on as many free drinks that they’ll buy her.

Tonight is one of those nights. And the man that won her attention was a grad student who’d loudly announced to the entire throng of people at the bar that he was flunking out. Seemed pretty enthusiastic, considering.

So she’d laughed at his jokes and accepted his invitation to “somewhere more private.” More private, she guesses, was initially going to be his place, but ultimately ended up being an alleyway several blocks away. Not many people passing through here - a little closer to the residential side of things. But a stone’s throw to the river. Just a highway away.

He takes her hand and goes in for a kiss, only to scream into her mouth as his wrist is cut open, blood shooting out like a geyser. Then she grabs his other hand and slides her knife through that wrist, as well. And then it slides through his belly as if she were gutting a fish. His scream sputters, eventually fading into silence as he collapses in on himself. His legs fold, he hits the ground hard.

She almost smiles, wiping her face on her sleeve. Euphoria pumps through her veins… until she hears something behind her. Tell-tale trash bag crinkling has her turning her head. Before her now is something she’s honestly never anticipated seeing.

A woman, slight with dark hair stands behind her, having dropped a large black garbage bag. She’s dressed well, faintly illuminated by the street light across the way. Sunjung instinctively holds her breath, as if pretending that she isn’t seen will somehow magically make the whole scene go away.

It doesn’t.

When she speaks, her voice is far more sure than she feels. Slowly, her composure rebuilds itself. The woman doesn’t look any less confused than she is.

“Well, this is a little… awkward, wouldn’t you say?”

[anaxiphvlia]

lithified:

[sms: sunjung] i like to think of myself as bitter [sms: sunjung] seriously tho – how did you know what day it was? [sms: sunjung] you really are stalking me. fuck

[ you’re not wrong, i guess. - 12:08 ]

[ not stalking you, just interested. stalking requires visual or physical proximity. good to know i was right. - 12:09 ]

[ what do you want, though? a cupcake? a fifth of whiskey? - 12:09 ]

[anaxiphvlia]

lithified:

Twenty minutes. He can handle that. She hangs up the phone and he almost convinces himself she’s right.

But the minutes crawl by at an agonizing pace. He’s settled onto the only surface clean enough to trust – the edge of the bathtub. Leaning his head back on the cool porcelain tile offers some relief, but only from the stifling heat. There’s no respite from his own racing thoughts.

Someone pounds at the door again. He waits for them to give up, but they only try again a minute later. They sound angry. “What’re you doin’ in there, jerkin’ off?”

He laughs and doesn’t answer. Maybe he should. At least it would distract him from the fact that the problem is right in his jacket pocket, nestled next to his heart.

He reaches into a different pocket and comes out with a pack of Reds. Two left. He checks the time. Ten minutes. He fits a cigarette between his lips and lights up. Only on the exhale does his gaze drift up to the ceiling, to check for a smoke detector. There’s nothing there but a single bare lightbulb. When the nicotine hits his system it starts to soothe his frayed nerves. It’s not enough, but it’s something.

When he gets her text, it displays as from an unknown number. He takes the time to save it with her name before finally rising, flicking the cigarette butt into the toilet, and exiting the now smoke-filled room. The man right outside the door gives him a dirty look before hurrying inside. Sungjoon barely glances at him.

He wonders where she’s at. She’d be wise to stick near the exit, so it’s there he heads for. It’s hard to see past the crowd, they’re packed in so closely – sloppy drunks kissing and grinding and dancing terribly, all lit by an ultraviolet blue that makes their faces impossible to distinguish. He pushes through them, toward where he knows he’ll find his escape.

He doesn’t make it that far. It’s a long-haired kid who grabs him by the arm, pulling him close enough to shout into his ear. “Got any dope left?”

Sungjoon only hesitates a second. “How much you need?”

“2g?”

The kid is pulling out his wallet. There’s a break in the crowd where someone’s rushing for the door, probably to throw up on the sidewalk, and in the streetlight that filters in for a moment he catches sight of her platinum-blonde hair. His eyes linger on her as he pushes his luck.

“Got a lot more than that. Need to get rid of it. You want 4?”

The kid rifles through his wallet again, debating it with a frown. “I could do 3?”

It’s good enough. He pulls out the bags, swaps them with the bills in the kid’s palm. He doesn’t stick around to hear his thank you.

He knows she’d seen the exchange. He only hopes she won’t mention it. She has to know that he’s already aware that this line of work is the worst imaginable for a person in his position. She has to know that he has no choice.

He pushes the door open, leading the way out. The few party guests out here are long gone, sick with alcohol poisoning, or else dozing off with lit cigarettes. He ignores them and only addresses Sunjung.

“Thanks for coming.”

He can’t quite look her in the eyes, still.

There are a million bodies here, all connected in some way - grinding, kissing, touching. Sharing pipes, sharing needles. It’s no wonder that Sungjoon would be tempted to relapse.

She’s in the process of wondering why such an antisocial guy would be hanging out at this kind of scene when his head pokes out of the bathroom and he starts shuffling in her direction.

Then he stops.

She sees - just barely - a strung out kid grabbing at his arm and they talk... And then Sungjoon pulls something out of his jacket, they trade - money for some wrapped up bags. That’s why he’s here.

Of course. That explains a lot about his situation.

He makes it over and then keeps walking, and she has to peel herself off of the wall to follow him back out the door. Mindless chatter transitions into the dull pulse of music and the occasional shout or scream. It’s become easier to think.

She’s not quite sure what to say. There’s a lot to process, and they’ve got a long way to go, so it’s probably okay to have a moment of peace before they get into anything.

“No problem.”

She wants to take his hand or his arm, or just touch his shoulder. It’s easier to reassure someone that way. There’s some kind of connection, a feeling of security. But it would only make him feel worse. Pitied.

“You did great. I’m glad you called. Would it be too cliche to say that I’m proud of you?”

It’s dark, so he probably doesn’t see the half-smile that she offers him. Sirens start in the distance, and she has a funny feeling she knows where they’re headed.

“That’s a... tough situation to be in.” She probably shouldn’t broach the subject just yet, but they’ll have to talk about it at some point. “I take it your employer wouldn’t care enough to move you to another area if you told him you were in recovery. From what little you’ve said about him, he seems pretty rigid.”

She stops as they come to the sidewalk. There’s a street light hanging over them - it casts strange shadows on her companion’s face; he’s all angles.

“Look, I’m not going to judge you or try and ask you to leave your job. You’re not stupid; you wouldn’t be there if you didn’t have to be, right?”

She takes a breath.

“It’ll be harder if you stay. But you can make it. Just keep your head down. Be careful.”

[anaxiphvlia]

lithified:

And the moment she answers in the affirmative, he feels the tightness in his chest start to relax. He breathes a little easier now. It isn’t a show of weakness. He’s done right for once.

He listens to her words and tries to absorb them. Tries to make them sink in. But it’s hard, when every nerve in his body is screaming out for a chemical balm, and just the thought of giving in, of giving them what they want, turns his stomach. Because it wouldn’t be just this once. He knows himself, and he knows how thoroughly he lacks self-control, at least when it comes to this. It’d put him right back to square one. All his hard work undone by a moment of stupidity.

No. He’s stronger than that. He has to be, if he doesn’t want to end up dead.

“Okay,” he says, and sounds half-hearted even to himself. He breathes through the panic, through the doubt and confusion making his head swim. If only everyone would be quiet for a minute. He can still hear the music through the door, almost as loud as it’d been out on the dance floor. It’s barely muffled in here, but he’s tuned so sharply to Sunjung’s voice he can hear every syllable.

She asks where he is, and he has to think about it. He’d followed the group back from the club down the block, to continue the party. He tries to retrace their steps. “Down Dosan-daero toward Yeongdong Bridge. Take the next left after Club Answer. Brick building. You’ll know the one. Just follow the shitty music.”

She’s coming for him. It’s a relief, somehow, but brings with it its own set of problems. If he skips out on the party now, he won’t have enough money come tomorrow. He weighs disappointing the boss against disappointing himself and, with the ghost of a mournful smile, makes what he knows is the right choice.

“Just text me when you’re here.”

Even over the phone, he sounds pitiful. It’s hard to picture him huddled up in the corner of a party somewhere trying not to lose himself. Hard to imagine him actually admitting to his own weakness.

But here they are.

In the pin-drop silence of this basement, the sense of urgency is somehow magnified.

“Give me,” she has to pull away for a second to glance at the time on her phone, “twenty minutes.”

A big breath.

“You’ll be okay, Sungjoon.”

And then she hangs up.

She’s not actually too far away - probably a fifteen-minute walk - but the mess on the floor demands her attention before she’s able to run out and be Sungjoon’s Knight in Shining Armor. It’s bloody, covered in evidence, and honestly, she doesn’t want to deal with it.

There’s nothing around to cut it up with, so she decides to opt for something that could be considered a signature if ever she were to be discovered: fire.

She takes a package of cheap tissue from her bag and splits it up three ways. One third is placed on his face, near his hairline, the next is placed on his stomach, and the third she returns to her bag. Hair and fat burn the fastest.

She fishes her lighter out from one of the inner pockets of the bag and sets the small stacks of tissue alight, one after another, before also taking up the ends of his sleeves and holds the flame to those too. Usually, she’d take some joy out of this.

Right now it’s just tedious.

She pulls back and stands up, takes a moment to straighten herself out. She puts away the lighter and waits for her companion to catch. It takes a couple of minutes, but when the smell begins to become unbearable she decides to make her exit.

She tries not to catch anyone’s eye on the walk over. There’s a line outside the club tonight. People are laughing, some people are arguing, and she keeps going. Someone gets tossed out by a bouncer, almost staggers into the street.

Just as the music from Answer fades out, she begins to hear what must be noise from the party. There’s just as much hollering, and it looks like someone’s puking on the sidewalk. She tries to give him a wide birth as she walks up.

There’s nobody watching the door.

As soon as she’s inside, she has to press herself to the wall to make sure she isn’t shoved further into the crowd amassed in the living room.

She pulls her phone back out.

                                                                [ sms: B Sungjoon - inside. where are you? - 2:27 ]

[anaxiphvlia]

lithified:

He’d gone for a cigarette, thinking it would clear his head. Thinking that was all he needed. But the minute he steps back inside, and feels claustrophobia sinking its teeth into him again, he knows he won’t feel better until he leaves. And at this rate, that could be hours.

Tonight he’s at a house party. The kid who owns this place must be loaded, judging by the sound system alone. It’s enough to make the walls vibrate, to make conversation below a shout impossible, to make his head pound with an inescapable sense of overstimulation. It isn’t like him to be unable to handle this.

Then again, he’s been offered more pills and lines of powder in the last hour than he can count. At a party like this, everyone loves a dealer.

He won’t be leaving until he sells everything. But he’s been slacking off, which leaves him with almost a week of stock to unload in one night. Not impossible. Only tedious.

He’s tired of saying no.

He finds himself in the bathroom. Locks the door behind him and ignores the pounding and shouting for him to free it up. There are others; he’d seen a couple stumbling into one of them. They’d probably be done before he would.

He stares at the phone in his hands and takes a deep breath. He knows what he should do. It’s been drilled into him – enough that it brought him in here, but now that the moment has arrived he can’t quite make himself do it. He’s nervous; he doesn’t know why. What could she do? Laugh at him? Tell him to suck it up?

He’s done worse to himself already. So he punches in the number, closes his eyes while he listens to it ring. She picks up eventually.

“I need…” he starts, and sighs. He doesn’t know how to finish that sentence. “You’re my sponsor, right? I’m supposed to call you when I’m about to fuck up?”

The night is dark.

Outside of the city, there would be only the moon to guide you. Here, she has the assistance of street lamps and neon signs - the only shadows exist in alleyways and basements.

She’s visited both tonight.

A local guy - Gangnam born and bred, he said - decided to bark up her tree at the bar, and things took off. He was a lawyer, lived on his own but visited his parents often. Did a lot of overtime.

He was a handful.

She had a hard time getting him to follow her lead once they’d absconded to a more secluded location. He just couldn’t take a hint.

And he was heavy.

When he hit pavement, it was like a refrigerator had tipped over. The sound was deafening - so loud that she was afraid someone was going to come and investigate. But they never did. Not even when her knife sunk into his neck and he hollered like... well, like he was dying.

Not the easiest one she’s had, but certainly not the hardest either.

It’s as she’s starting the cleanup that her phone starts vibrating in her pocket. A familiar tone chimes on and off (one of the ones that had come with the phone), cutting through the squish of a body dragging through its own blood. She takes a moment to wipe her hands on the guy’s shirt before she retrieves it. A deep breath.

It’s a number that she knows, but hasn’t seen recently. She drags her thumb across the screen and starts listening.

“Yeah,” she says, and it’s almost a shock even to herself, “I guess you could say that.”

She closes her eyes.

“No matter what you do, you’re not fucking up, Sungjoon. But you can make it through this - I know you can.”

He’s going to think it sounds hollow, fake even for a counselor, but she believes it. Somewhere, deep in her bones, she knows that he’s stubborn enough to make it out alive.

“Where are you?”

[anaxiphvlia]

❛  Repost & BOLD which lines of famous poetry apply to your muse.

i saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked. // tyger tyger, burning bright // i have done it again. // do not go gentle into that good night. // the sea is calm to-night. // let us go then, you and i, // april is the cruelest month. // pretty women wonder where my secret lies. // there is a place where the sidewalk ends. // i carry your heart with me (i carry it in my heart) // two roads diverged in a yellow wood. // whose woods these are i think i know, // let us twain walk aside from the rest. // once upon a midnight dreary, while i pondered, weak and weary, // i taught myself to live simply and wisely. // it so happens i am sick of being a man // i wandered lonely as a cloud // does it dry up like a raisin in the sun? // o my love is like a red, red rose. // o captain! my captain! our fearful trip is done; // out of the night that covers me // it was many and many a year ago // you may write me down in history // do not stand at my grave and weep // some say the world will end in fire // some say in ice. // hope is the thing with feathers // the wind was a torrent of darkness among the gusty trees, // no man is an island, // remember me when i am gone away, // i met a traveler from an antique land // ‘twas brillig, and the slithy toves // this is thy hour o soul, // when we wear the mask that grins and lies, // death be not proud, // and death shall have no dominion. // laugh, and the world laughs with you; // the art of losing isn’t hard to master; // to see a world in a grain of sand // is there anybody there? said the traveller // nobody heard him, the dead man, // that crazed girl improvising her music.// come to me in the silence of the night; // where the mind is without fear and the head is held high // when you are old and grey and full of sleep, // in flanders’ fields the poppies blow // i thought of you and how you love this beauty // life, believe, is not a dream // it may be misery not to sing at all, // if tarry space no limit knows // come live with me and be my love, // had we but world enough and time, // my heart aches, and a drowsy numbness pains my sense // bright star, would i were stedfast as thou art- // thou still unravish’d bride of quietness // how do i love thee? let me count the ways. // heaven is what i cannot reach! // my dear, my dear, i know // in visions of the dark night // shall i compare thee to a summers day? // break, break, break // she walks in beauty, // i had a dream, which was not at all a dream. // he clasps the ring with crooked hands.

[anaxiphvlia]

L O O K I N G  F O R  T H R E A D S.

It’s been a while since there’s been anything on my blog besides Sungjoon’s dorky face and while I love him, I’d like to start some stuff with someone else!

If you’re interested in doing something (anything) with Sunjung, just hit me up via ask or messenger. I’m willing to work with pretty much everything, and it doesn’t have to be main timeline - it can be au or past/future/etc.

Hey, thanks for reading. Have a good one. ❤

[anaxiphvlia]

9:33℠

[lithified]

The tension in the room had been thick enough to choke him, but it starts to dispel. Right around the time she walks away from him.

That’s a relief. He’d half expected her to refuse.

He switches off the light but he hangs back in the doorway, leaning against it, watching her from across the room. She perches, she drinks, she talks at him. He very nearly rolls his eyes at her first question, but she seems to know it will go unanswered and tries a different tack.

This one is decidedly more effective.

She keeps talking, trying new angles, seemingly unaware of how efficiently she’s snagged him. Sungjoon is staring as if it’s the first time he’s seen her. Bottle-blonde hair, angular face, deadly sharp eyes. Knowing eyes. I’ve been where you are. He looks away, disoriented by the revelation and the way it colors everything she has done up until this moment.

Ambushing him with the meeting, because she knows he’d never go to one willingly. Throwing out his stash because she knows it’s the only way to break the cycle. It still bothers him, and likely will for a while, but it’s hard to be furious when he knows it’s exactly what he would have done.

Exactly what he has done, once before. That had been the beginning of his longest clean-streak ever. Thirteen months. Had he really forgotten how proud he was of that?

Sunjung is still talking, only now he’s really listening. He doesn’t know how to feel about some of what she says – the sentiment is a little too much for him – but more of it actually comes as welcome knowledge. He’s woefully undereducated on the medical options available, having quit cold-turkey the first time around. A week in Hell, that was. Too much of it spent laying on the floor of his old apartment, feverish and sick, racked with a bone-deep ache that scarcely let him find any respite in sleep at all.

Sunjung’s finished now, waiting for an answer. She’s been bracing herself for more arguments, that much is clear. She may not know it, but she’s already changed everything. After all, another addict is the only one who’d ever stood a chance of getting him to listen.

“You’ve been where I am?”

He’s still slightly incredulous, but even under scrutiny he doesn’t detect any hint that she’s lying to him. His eyes flit to the clock: 9:50. His last shot had been late, closer to dawn than midnight, just enough to put him to sleep. It’d be starting any time now.

“Two weeks.”

The silence in the apartment is so absolute, even a quiet agreement is too loud. His voice sounds as grave as he feels. “I’ll try it. I’m not promising anything. If I hate it, I’m stopping.” He gives her a smile that could cut. “I know better than to expect you to pay me back, though.”

[anaxiphvlia]

There’s disbelief in his voice, and it’s not entirely unwarranted. There’s no indication besides faded marks on limbs too thin. She keeps them covered now. It was a long time ago - there’s no reason to talk about it outside these walls. She hums an affirmation.

There’s an unspoken question - why do you think I got into this?

She counts fourty-two nodules on the ceiling before the scene cuts back to Sungjoon and she’s the one astonished. For a lot of reasons, she’d expected a little more fight, a more upset. But he’s compliant, and he’s fair.

Maybe he’s grown more weary than she’d realized. Maybe he’s just going along with it so that she’ll leave. He doesn’t seem like he’d be a very good liar, but it’s better not to assume. He’s survived this long, after all.

There’s a deep intake and she exhales slowly. There’s a split second where she considers congratulating him, as she would for someone at a meeting, but this isn’t the same - it may undo everything. So she opts for returning his smile something genuine.

“That’s all I’m asking,” she says,”Thank you.”

It’s not unfamiliar to be sincere, she’s just a little out of practice. It leaves her feeling oddly relieved for the moment.

“We’ll start with the coffee and go from there.”

She finishes hers, but hangs on to the cup, still twisting it between her fingers. This is the part where she normally takes her leave, exiting with a quick quip and a wink. There’s the sense that she’s lingering, hanging around after her welcome has worn out. She’s not sure if she wants to go.

“Do you want me to stay and... help you through it, or should I just make some calls?”

[anaxiphvlia]

9:33℠

[lithified]

When she finally finds her words, they make him flinch.

You know why. And he does. There’s no need to explain. He’s got a problem; she wants to fix it. Everyone knows that when you’re drowning you swim, or else you die. And he’s been drowning for months. For years. He doesn’t need to be told of the statistics – the mortality rate, the health complications, how dramatically he’s reducing his chances for any kind of success in life. He’d have to be an idiot not to know all that. Thing is, it’s not her problem to fix.

Then she’s stepping into his space, pushing past yet another boundary with no regard for him. He’s seething, and here she is, touching his face like she knows him, like she hasn’t done anything wrong. Tenderly, like a lover. He doesn’t trust himself to move because he knows he’d push her away; he barely trusts himself to breathe. She has to know how angry he is – he’s been told he’s terribly easy to read, and he’s doing nothing to hide it now.

He’s waiting for her to say something; what, he doesn’t know. He doesn’t expect an apology, but he can’t help but be disappointed when all she does is repeat herself.

He’s losing patience fast. His throat is dry and the proximity is making him uncomfortable for more reasons than one. If she’d been standing here a few weeks ago, he might have kissed her. Two betrayals later, it’s the last thing he wants to do. He takes a steadying breath, and tries to organize the rant he can feel building up into coherent arguments.

The effort dies when she opens her mouth again.

“Don’t fucking patronize me,” he sighs with a decisive step back, and what he knows must be an ugly grimace. “You don’t even fucking know me. You think you do, but you don’t know shit. You think you can just come in here and try to change my life? Who the fuck do you think you are?”

With the distance between them, there’s room for other concerns to creep in. Like that he’s flat broke. And she’s just thrown out what should have lasted him til the end of the week. Which means he has withdrawals to look forward to, and soon.

“Fucking hell,” he swears, dragging a hand down his face. “Yeah, I’m really gonna enjoy being sick the next few days. Real fun, especially since I have to work the whole fucking time.” Handing over bags all day long, knowing if he snagged just one he’d find relief. And as suicidal as he knows stealing from the boss would be, he’s not entirely sure he wouldn’t.

He takes in a breath, feeling unaccountably weary as he lets it out. The anger’s receding, replaced in increments by despair. His voice is calmer than he is. “I think you should leave.”

[anaxiphvlia]

It’s not patronizing when you don’t feel a sense of superiority. But she knows well enough that it seems that way, especially to him.

But she has been around long enough to know that there’s not really anyone superior to anyone else.

“Nobody knows you.” It’s quiet, but full of conviction. “Not the way that you do.”

Her hands fall uselessly to her sides and it’s almost apparent that she’s lost this fight, until he decides that she should leave. There are a lot of reasons for her to go, and there aren’t as many to stay. But she can’t give up now. When you’ve made a mess, you’re supposed to lay in it, right?

She slides past him, back into the living room.

“Haven’t finished my coffee yet. I’ll leave when I’m done.”

The back of the couch is familiar to her already; she leans against it after scooping up the paper cup from the floor. It’s not hot any more, just lukewarm, and it’s a little bitter now that the heat has worn off. That’s okay.

There are only so many nerves she can step on today, and seventy-five percent have probably worn down so far. She can’t push too much farther, or she’ll break everything.

“I think that begs the question, though, do you even know yourself?” There’s a little amusement in the question, but she smothers it. “I’ve been where you are, and it’s not somewhere a compass will work.”

That’s typical talk that she uses at meetings; it comes easily to her, fabricated but only just so. That’s not something that will work on him, she decides. He’s heard it all before.

“Okay, that’s bullshit.” The cup turns between her fingers and she watches the stain on the rim as it passes her by. “What’s real is that you aren’t able to get out of this yourself. Very few people can.”

She takes a sip.

“I’m not saying this as a counselor. I’m not getting paid for this, I don’t get brownie points for it. I’m not a crusader for justice and clean living. You’re just... really interesting.” It’s probably as close to the truth as she’s willing to hedge for right now. “It’d be a real shame for you to be extinguished because of some suped-up chemicals.”

There’s no real way to dig out of this, but it’s okay.

“I know some people that have access to methadone, but you’d have to go to a clinic. There’s buprenorphine, but you’d need a prescription.” She tightens her grip on the cup. “There are options.”

She can’t get him to look her in the eyes - he seems to be avoiding her because he’s avoiding something else, too, and there’s definitely more to this story than what she’s willing to dig out right now.

“What’s happening today is that I’m giving those options to you. It’s not a handout, it’s not charity. I’m not doing this out of the goodness of my heart. This is because you are worth more than what you spend on drugs. You play guitar, you watch shitty tv, you drink, you smoke, and you hit on girls out of your league at bars, and you are you.”

Her eyes trail over the popcorn ceiling and she almost smiles, but it comes out a little wistful. He’s going to kick her out.

 “You don’t have to take any of this to heart if you don’t want to. You’re the one that’s going to choose where you go from here. If you decide in two weeks that you can’t do it, I’ll pay you back for everything you lost.” Discounting emotional and mental security, probably - that’s priceless. “But only if you try the other stuff first. Is that okay?”

[anaxiphvlia]

9:33℠

[lithified]

Something tells him it’s the song’s hook, that classic riff, that got her learning it. Iconic as it is, it’s exceedingly simple. Well, she may be a beginner, but it’d only take effort for her to get better. Maybe he could even help. If she asked nicely.

He’s still flipping restlessly through channels when she leaves the room, giving him a moment’s respite from the need to socialize. It’s not that he hates it, really, he just has to be prepared for it, and this morning’s rude awakening left him no time for that. He doesn’t hate Sunjung either – tempting as it is to seize onto the righteous anger that still flares up at the thought of the nasty trap she’d laid for him. But now that she’s made her point, maybe she’ll drop it. She’s being pleasant enough for the time being, he’ll give her that. Not at all preachy. There’s even a glimmer of the dry wit that’d drawn him to her, that night at the bar. He’d forgotten about that. Maybe they could be friends after all, or something like it.

He’s finally found something that holds his interest; onscreen the camera pans up a steep slope carpeted with deep green and over its peak, and it reminds him of Gwanaksan – a beautiful place, and a nice hard hike, and practically in his backyard. He tries to remember how long it’s been since he visited. Months. Over a year, maybe. Why hasn’t he been? Habit, he figures. He’s fallen out of some, fallen deeper into others.

It takes a special kind of fucked-up to fall into an uncomfortable silence with yourself. But in it he finds himself looking around, bizarrely missing Sunjung’s presence. It’s then he notices the bedroom door ajar.

Precious little else could send him so quickly into panic – not even a second later he’s wrenching open the door, but the room is vacant. Nothing looks to be disturbed, but his skin’s already crawling at the what-if and it won’t stop until he’s checked. Shutting the door behind him, he crosses to the drawer that hides his stash, heart in his throat.

And it’s empty. All cleaned out.

The ensuing flush makes him want to cry. Though by the time he reaches her, it’s transformed into blind rage. He stands in the doorway, too angry for words, shocked and offended to his core at the sheer audacity of what she’s done, and the smug smile she turns on him now.

It takes him several more seconds of grappling with indignation, forcing air into his lungs, unfurling hands that hang at his sides like lead, before he grits out one syllable– “Why?”

[anaxiphvlia]

This part is easy.

One ziplock after another, substances fall into the toilet and disappear down into the pipe system that feeds into the sewers. There are a lot of twists and turns, but they’ll all be disintegrated before they reach the main flow. As many hands as there are reaching for this, reaching for hundreds of dollars in manufactured euphoria, there will be none that find a hold on anything she’s holding now.

She’s quick - deft fingers peel apart plastic and tip it forward without thinking, then discard it in the bin next to her. It’s. Easy.

Her heart pounds. Calm as she is on the outside, there’s a storm in her mind that crescendos as the last bag pops open. She wonders what the reaction will be, decides she knows already what’s going to happen. He’s going to storm in and yell, and she’s going to know exactly what to say.

And she’s a quarter right, at least.

The footfalls through the door signal that she needs to hurry, and so she does. The flush comes just a beat before he does.

He’s thrown and it’s startling. The look on his face is somewhere in between defeated and furious and she’s not sure which he’s going to pick until the dialogue starts.

Why?

There are a million innocent reasons, but none of them feel right.

I just wanted to see what would happen.

But that’s not acceptable. And it’s not entirely true, either. This part is hard.

“You know why.”

She’s going to push her luck, and, silently, she hopes that she’s got a lot of it to spare.

The last bag falls into the bin and she’s stepping forward, crossing the small room to close the distance. Her hands reach on their own and her fingers are brushing dark locks behind ears. She’s holding his head in place, searching for something she won’t find in his eyes.

“You know why.”

It’s a mantra, and maybe she hopes that he’ll come up with an answer on his own because it would be too much to admit the truth. She’s not a scientist and he’s not a lab rat, and there’s a pang somewhere inside that tells her she probably should have stuck to minding her own business.

His jaw works under her palms.

“You’re kind of beautiful, actually, under there. I’d like to see it some day.”

[anaxiphvlia]

9:33℠

[lithified]

The keys get thrown carelessly on the table, boots kicked off by the door, and the first order of business upon entering his apartment: he turns on the TV. Loud. Quiet enough that he can hear her, of course, but loud enough to make clear he’s not in the mood for this.

Talking. Questions. She’s nosy as she is pushy, is what he thinks, but what he says is “Yeah.” She calls him interesting; either she’s easily impressed or she’s mocking him – he doesn’t particularly care which. Still, it’s nothing terribly personal she’s asking him to divulge, so he doesn’t see the harm in giving her the truth. “More so when I was younger. I think four years’s my record anywhere. Unless moving within the city doesn’t count. Then it’s six in Seoul, two in this place.”

He doesn’t even know what he’s watching. Whatever he’d fallen asleep to last night – ah, the History Channel. It cuts from grainy footage of men shaking hands in front of a crowd to a wide shot of the Hindenburg burning and he’s changing the channel.

His eyes flick to the guitar when she mentions it, and he cheeks his comment about what a brilliant question that is. “Yeah, I play.” He slumps further into the couch and sips at his coffee again, switching past the news and two mediocre-looking dramas, more concerned with finding something interesting to fill awkward silences than the conversation itself. “What ‘bout you?”

[anaxiphvlia]

She wonders vaguely what it must be like to be able to move from one spot to the next without any worry. She’s never really been able to let herself go like that. There’s always been point a, point b, scheduled flights and return trips. The closest she’ll ever come to completely detaching...

She’s tempted to lean against the back of the couch as she continues to observe the space, but decides against it. It’s probably better not to get too comfortable. Maybe the next time she’s here, it’ll be on a more leisurely occasion.

“Ah, good question. I could probably get through Smoke on the Water without too much trouble, but that’s about it.” Another smile. “I’d ask you to play something but you’re already so affable.”

He doesn’t seem to be paying too much attention, more invested in the television than the company. She sets her coffee on the nearest flat surface - the floor.

“Where’s your bathroom?”

Innocent enough. He doesn’t think much of it;  mumbles out a response into the lid of his cup. That’s probably as good as it gets. A quick thank you and she’s on her way.

She picks the other door.

The bedroom is sparsely furnished, too. There’s a chair and a dresser, but the bed is only separated from the floor by a box spring, and the bedside tables are on the cheaper side. It’s not terrible, all in all.

She starts poking around.

The dresser yields nothing other than the knowledge that you can duct tape handles back on and make it look real, apparently. The first table she checks is full of bundles - probably enough for a day or two more. The second contains ziplock bags that are empty for the most part, save for two that have a few nuggets left. She pulls everything out of both, double-checks the rest of the room, and then takes it back out the door.

If he’s got anything else, it’s not in there.

Quietly, she enters the bathroom. And she starts opening.

[anaxiphvlia]

9:33℠

[lithified]

For a moment, he actually thinks he’s gotten away. Until he hears it. Footsteps in the lobby behind him, which could be anyone, but he knows it’s her. Gut feeling. Confirmed a second later when her voice stops him halfway up the stairs.

Inaudibly, he sighs. And slowly turns.

It’s weird when someone sweet-talks him. He’s learned not to trust it. He’s wary of another trap, and he’ll be damned if she pulls one over on him twice. His only advantage is that he knows better now, and she won’t be dragging him anywhere.

Still. He takes another sip of the free coffee, which isn’t terrible, and makes a decent excuse not to answer just yet. He’s looking somewhere to the left of her and trying not to cave, to the expectation on her face, to the taunting voice in the back of his mind.

She’s just a girl. How much of a threat could she be?

Pushing down the paranoia that instinctively rears its head in the face of anyone intruding on his private space, he turns away from her, back toward his apartment, and keeps walking.

“Whatever.”

[anaxiphvlia]

Passive is probably the best response she could’ve gotten. He could’ve turned her away outright and she wouldn’t have been able to circumnavigate that as easily.

What does a rat do when you take it out of the maze? She wants to find out.

He’s exactly as quiet as he’s been all morning as they make the journey upward. She’s not sure how many flights up he is, but she reasons this might be part of the reason he’s so skinny. This is likely as close to exercise as he gets. Not bad, though.

They come to his door and he pulls out his keys - probably expected whatever exchange he was anticipating to last longer, or is just really paranoid about people stealing his stuff. As the wood swings free, she slips past him and finds out that he doesn’t actually have a lot of stuff to steal, after all. But the possessions in the open aren’t his most valuable.

The baggies, the foil wraps, syringes - those are what she’s looking for. And he’s smart enough to keep them hidden. But probably not very well.

“I wasn’t expecting much, but this falls a little short. Makes sense, though. Very you.” She scans the space and takes herself on a small tour. Bedroom is probably through there, bathroom behind that door. “Not to say that you’re a disappointment. So far you’re actually exceedingly interesting. Did you move a lot?”

Her eyes land on a guitar and she smiles faintly.

“Do you play?”

[anaxiphvlia]

9:33℠

[lithified]

He’s ready to head right back the way he came; only the cup in her outstretched hand stops him. As it happens, coffee is exactly what he needs (among other things, but that’s none of her business). He accepts it, and his expression doesn’t soften from the disgruntled scowl firmly in place; his eyes drift away from her and he scowls at the wall instead, resolutely not saying thank you or confirming that black is, in fact, how he takes it.

He drinks deeply and focuses on his exit plan. If she came this far to see him, it’s doubtful any half-assed excuse he can fabricate will work to shake her. Sunjung is too damn pushy – it’s  exactly how he ended up sitting through that fucking meeting, and he’s not about to let her do it again.

“Not enough,” he answers dryly, too late to be anything but rude. “I dunno why you’re here, but whatever it is, it’s not a good time. I’ll see ya around.”

And he’s gone. Back inside with his free coffee and only mildly inconvenienced by the whole ordeal.

[anaxiphvlia]

It’s not as if his escape isn’t anticipated. There were a lot of possible outcomes to this scenario, and Sungjoon not sticking around was featured in most of them. Maybe if they both survive this, she’ll talk to him about facing his problems instead of running from them.

The glass doesn’t swing fast enough, falters at the door closer secured to the top. She slips through and takes long strides to make up the distance.

“Let’s make sure to get you a nap later, then. Before you go to work.”

She meets him at the stairs.

“We just have to talk, okay? I don’t like leaving things on a sour note.”

This case is steep, but her legs are long enough to carry her up as quickly as his do. All in all, it seems like a pretty okay building. No amazingly grand, but not the worst place to live. There aren’t a ton of cracks in the plaster, at least. Not too quietly, her mind suggests the possibility that her companion might think that it’s “kinda fancy.”

“Please?”

[anaxiphvlia]

9:33℠

[lithified]

He’s ready to head right back the way he came; only the cup in her outstretched hand stops him. As it happens, coffee is exactly what he needs (among other things, but that’s none of her business). He accepts it, and his expression doesn’t soften from the disgruntled scowl firmly in place; his eyes drift away from her and he scowls at the wall instead, resolutely not saying thank you or confirming that black is, in fact, how he takes it.

He drinks deeply and focuses on his exit plan. If she came this far to see him, it’s doubtful any half-assed excuse he can fabricate will work to shake her. Sunjung is too damn pushy – it’s  exactly how he ended up sitting through that fucking meeting, and he’s not about to let her do it again.

“Not enough,” he answers dryly, too late to be anything but rude. “I dunno why you’re here, but whatever it is, it’s not a good time. I’ll see ya around.”

And he’s gone. Back inside with his free coffee and only mildly inconvenienced by the whole ordeal.

[anaxiphvlia]

Her lips twitch into a smile as it appears he’s not going to say anything. He was so chatty when they first met that the silence is nearly shocking. She raises an eyebrow as she takes another sip, waiting for the response.

He doesn’t disappoint.

The glass door is about to swing shut when she catches it, slips through to follow her companion. This, she knows, would probably be considered stalking, as he’d implicated. She doesn’t think he’s going to press charges, though.

Maybe one day she’ll stop being nosy.

She doesn’t think to say anything until she’s caught up, meeting him at the stairs.

“I think now’s a good time, actually.”

There’s a moment of pause, a second of hesitation, before she follows him up.

This is going to be interesting, to say the least.

“I’m just here to talk. I wanted to say that I’m sorry about the other day, and that I won’t try to subvert you that way again.”

She’s careful with her words today, because they could make or break this next situation. If her plans go accordingly, she’ll probably be seeing a lot more of Sungjoon; it might be best to keep on adequate terms.

[anaxiphvlia]

9:33℠

ilithified:

It goes without saying that he slept like shit, and when he’s woken by the grating buzz of phone on bedside table he takes one look at the window-shade lit up by bright morning sunlight and groans. Some day he’ll be able to sleep in til noon, and on that day he’ll know what it’s like to be fully rested for once. Today he accepts his fate, sits up, and checks the phone.

He doesn’t know that number. And it sets him ticking down a list of possibilities in his head – a customer? They’d know to be more subtle, and find him at night. Ksung? It’s another number he has saved, but just how often do mob bosses change phones anyway? He knows better than to write off the possibility of Sunggyu doing anything, no matter how bizarre or illogical it may seem, and it’s the realization that if he doesn’t come down Sunggyu will find a way up that finally gets him dressed and out the door.

Heading down the last flight of stairs, he looks for a sign of who awaits him, but out the glass of the building’s main door all he can see is pedestrians passing by. It’s only once he’s out on the sidewalk that he spots her, and it stops him dead. He’s glad it’s not Sunggyu, but that’s about all he can say.

“You stalking me now?” He’s half-joking, but serious enough. “Look, it’s not that I’m not flattered, I just think there are about a thousand ways you could be spending your time that don’t involve being a pain in my ass.”

A few minutes pass without word from Sungjoon, and she’s almost slightly worried that he isn’t going to show. She knows that he’s home - he doesn’t seem like the type to get up early and leave the house before the break of dawn - so he might be choosing to ignore the commands of an unknown number.

She shuffles around a small inventory, hugs two cardboard cups between her arm and her ribs, and checks her phone one more time to make sure she hasn’t missed anything from her companion. Nothing. A quiet click of annoyance escapes.

She takes a sip from one of the drinks and as the liquid scalds her tongue, she sees a familiar face swing out the door.

He doesn’t smile, but that’s expected. Who would smile when they learn of the tick that has latched on to them? She’s come to accept this part as necessary.

“The courthouse isn’t too far, if you’d like to get a restraining order.” She slides her cellphone back into a pocket and uses the newly-freed hand to offer him the cup without a lipstick stain. “I’ll even call you a cab, if you want. But something tells me that’s not how you want to spend your day.”

Neither is this, but she doesn’t mention that part.

“Coffee, black. Never asked how you take it, my bad.” He looks like the type that would enjoy something so bitter. “Appears you need it, though; you don’t look like the freshest flower in the room. Also my fault, so my apologies. How much sleep did you get?”

He’s not dirty, just disheveled. The morning has not been kind to him, and it looks like sleep still hangs over him like a robe. The phrase “too early for this” comes to mind as a comparison. She almost feels bad for waking him.

It might be better to save “sorry” for what’s going to happen later, though.