[fanfic] My Heart’s Caffeine - Super Junior - EunHae
Donghae is ... awkward. But he means well. He meets Hyukjae in a coffee shop, and ends up spending an excessive amount of time there.
The chilly drizzle transforms into an icy mayhem of pissing rain in the matter of half a heartbeat. One moment everything is veiled thickly in a soft blanket of bone-chilling, damp mist, the next ice-cold droplets of water are hammering down on the streets around him, drenching his hair within seconds and drizzling down beneath his collar. He curses violently, standing up the collar of his suddenly dreadfully useless navy parkas and clutching it shut as he lifts his messenger bag above his head. He’s shivering already.
The words ‘coffee shop’ jump out at him through near-opaque grey sheets of rain and blurs of people and traffic and emergency-state-opened umbrellas, and he hurries towards it, gratefully.
Panting and shivering from head to toe, dripping and feeling in many ways miserable, he steps into the comforting warmth and blinks water out of his eyes.
The establishment is quite small, with a black tile counter at the far end and a group of chair-coupled, small round tables in black and soft sand-colors with details of stainless steel. Music is playing gently over speakers and the air is rich with the scent of coffee and tinged with sweet, a few of the tables occupied by a handful of people, the entire scenery blissfully oblivious of the icily wet hell outside.
Doing an effort to pat and shake away the rivulets of water from his jacket and hair, he makes his way towards the counter. He bemoans the state of himself as he clambers up onto one of the tall stools near the farthest end of the counter. He is midway through wrestling himself out of his soaked jacket as he with a sudden lash of horror realizes his laptop in his bag may be in a much worse state than himself. Whimpering, he grabs for his dripping bag, placing it on the counter before him to carefully extract the laptop.
It’s about as wet as he’d feared. Looking around, he finds a stack of tissues and grabs a handful to administer first aid. Without the computer, he is beyond screwed and there is no chance in hell he can afford a new one in the next five years or so.
“Well, your day looks worse than mine.” The voice is soft, somehow cool in its texture but kind and he blinks a few times before he realizes the barista is looking across the counter at him with a crooked smile.
Donghae suddenly finds his mouth very dry, then his skin very tight and warm, even though he was shivering with cold just seconds ago. There are no words in his mind, none. None comprehensible, at least.
The boy is blonde, near whitishly so, silky strands fraying in eyes as dark as the coffee he serves, his jaw-line cuttingly sharp and his cheekbones angular and high, his lips full. He is wearing a black waist-down apron over an oversized black t-shirt that hints to a leanly muscular chest and carved shoulders.
He is stunning, is the only near comprehensible thought Donghae can conjure up, in a slightly off-kilter, edgy way.
“Maybe not, though.” The barista cocks his head to the side, his hair falling into his eyes as they seemed to glitter, a widening smirk playing around the corners of his mouth. “Can I get you anything?”
Donghae realizes with horror that his mouth is hanging open, his hand clutching hard at the now damp paper tissues he was just mopping away at his computer with. “I’m - ehm -” There are no words to put into sentences. None whatsoever. “I - uhm - I’m -”
“Yes?” The barista inquires, his voice kind with a tiny hint of amusement. Donghae’s cheeks are burning so hot he’s surprised his skin isn’t blistering yet. “Coffee?”
“I - uhm - I’m -” Donghae splutters again. He seems to have spontaneously, effectively reduced his vocabulary to just that, which is terrible in unearthly grand proportions; and not only because he likes to call himself a writer. The blonde raises dark eyebrows. Donghae gives up on forming a verbal answer and decides it’s better to just nod.
“What kind?”
Donghae blinks furiously, despairingly trying to come with even a distantly intellectual reply. “Uhm -” he does a whole lot of stuttering and spluttering and strings together something that contains virtually no vowels.
“Cappuccino?” The barista looks like he didn’t quite catch the request but dares a guess. Donghae nods, feeling beyond mortified, lowering his gaze to his hands as the blonde walks off to make his coffee.
The rain’s still pouring ruthlessly outside, hitting the windows like large tears. Donghae returns to his attempt to save his laptop from drowning, half furious at himself, half existentially miserable. The sky is pissing on him and he just behaved with all the grace of a mentally challenged sloth in front of a total stranger. Dreading, he opens his laptop and turns it on. He lets out a puff of breath. At the very least it seems unharmed by the rain.
“One cappuccino.” Donghae nearly falls off his seat, and looks up at the blonde barista again. He thinks he sees a smirk playing around the corners of his lips, and Donghae feels his cheeks heaten up again as he mumbles a thanks and immediately burns his lips on the scorching liquid. He splutters and chokes, foamed milk travels up into his nostrils and presses the rain-damp tissues to his face, snorting and tear-eyed, and the barista looks at him over his shoulder as he’s walking away. Donghae swallows a whimper and ducks in behind his screen.
That is how he remains for the greater reminder of the afternoon, hanging low over his keyboard as the ice-rain still whips down onto the world. He doesn’t get much writing done though, because for some reason his gaze keeps creeping to the side of the screen and further away to follow the movement of the blonde barista behind the counter. His mind won’t really focus on the words he was supposed to type, rather he notices the way the blonde moves here and there behind the counter with a sort of swift grace he finds almost mesmerizing; how his blonde hair flies and how he smiles and laughs.
He orders another coffee after a while, entirely because the barista comes over and asks if he wants anything else. A caramel latte this time. Donghae is positive this is the best coffee he has ever tasted, even with the tip of his tongue burned numb.
“I do feel bad about throwing you out, but I really don’t have a choice.” Donghae is dangerously close to physically falling off his chair for the second time that day and again, he looks up dazedly at the blonde barista smiling down at him crookedly. “I have to close.”
Donghae blinks and looks around. The shop is completely void of all people but the two of them, chairs have been lifted up onto tables and even the lighting has been doused slightly.
Donghae snaps and starts scrambling his things together, spluttering unintelligible apologies. The barista chuckles. “It’s alright, I don’t mind the company.” He flaunts away and leaves Donghae’s cheeks burning again.
The whipping icy rain is continuously pouring from the night sky as he ducks out onto the street. He looks back through the glass door behind him. The blonde is rummaging with something behind the counter, his fair hair falling to the front and shielding his eyes. Donghae turns away, pulls up his shoulders and trudges out into the busy Seoul night, and for some reason he feels warm on the inside in spite of the pouring cold raging all around him.
Donghae lies awake for quite a while that night, staring unseeingly at the shadow-patched ceiling of his studio. The next afternoon after work he finds himself outside the coffee-shops glass-door, not even sure how he got there. It’s a sunny, crisp late autumn day and dry leaves blow gently around his feet as he stands unmoving for a moment, feeling sheepish.
He catches a glimpse of blonde hair and just like that, he’s through the door and walking towards the smooth tile counter. He slips down onto a chair at the counter again, near the glass wall towards the busy Yongsan-street, thumbing at the worn fabric of the canvas messenger bag that encloses his laptop. He can’t quite lift his gaze to where the barista is talking to an elderly lady at the far end of the counter.
“It’s nice out today.” One more time, Donghae just about topples off his chair.
He blinks up at the grinning barista one more time. His oversized t-shirt is dark pebble grey today, the loose neckline showing just the base of sharp collarbones. Donghae’s mouth has magically dried up completely again. It’s like a full-blown desert in there. He makes a half-choked sound in response.
The barista smiles and Donghae feels stupid even as he cannot help but wonder if the guy recognizes him. Probably not. Why would he? “Can I get you anything?”
Grateful that no speaking is strictly required from him, Donghae nods.
“Great. What would you like? Drink of the day is -” he cranes his neck slightly to read off a black slate on the wall behind the counter “- Mocha Latte.”
Donghae nods again and, as the barista turns away with a smile, unfolds his laptop and all but rams his nose into the screen. He’s still sniffing slightly and anxiously checking his fingers for traces of a potential nosebleed as the barista returns with his tall mug of coffee and a smile that makes him forget all about the general existence of his nose. Feeling sheepish, he manages a smile back that he’s sure looks like a horrendous grimace, his cheeks aching and burning.
He doesn’t get much writing done that day either, he mostly just stares into thin air feeling sheepish in general. So he takes a book out of his bag and holds it upside-down for a while until he notices and drops it to the floor in sheer horror instead. He stutteringly orders a sandwich and another coffee after an hour at the blonde’s cheerful inquiry. This time Donghae notices the customers draining away as the closing hour crawls neared but he does not want to move. Instead he remains perched on his seat and starts blushing hotly even as the barista eventually rounds to walk up to him.
“Don’t wanna throw you out in the night or anything, but I have to close.” He gives a crooked little smile that makes something in Donghae’s throat not flutter but twitch like something dying.
He mumbles and starts to fumble his laptop into his bag.
“Goodnight.” Donghae tries to smile and reply but it comes out as a muffled mumble. There’s been nothing about the blonde’s demeanor the entire afternoon to incline recognition. But then again, why would there.
He ends up in the coffee shop the next afternoon, and the one after. The third day the barista tells him “See you tomorrow” as he leaves. Donghae doesn’t know if it’s a question or just a general comment - as he thinks on it, the words may just have been “See you next time” - still, he feels suddenly very awake in spite of the late hour and takes a walk along the Han River before he turns his step homewards.
“What’ya writing?”
Almost two weeks later, he is mere inches away from flying off his chair backwards. He’s spent another stretch of hours staring emptily at his laptop’s screen, time flowing past him completely unnoticed.
The barista might just as well have crashed a chair down on his head or screamed in his ear at the top of his lungs: Donghae jumps, fumbles and nearly throws his laptop off the counter.
“Huh?”
The barista chuckles low in his throat, his eyes creasing just a bit. “You’ve been sitting here writing for weeks now, so what’ya writing?” he peers at the screen. It’s black, and has been so for quite some time.
Donghae is pretty sure there must be steam physically rising from the top of his head. “I - uh - I, uhm. The battery died.”
“Oh. There’s a power outlet right there.” The barista points at the wall not an arm’s length away from Donghae’s laptop.
Donghae stares from the outlet to his laptop and back again like a man who’s lost his country. The blonde chuckles.
“Don’t worry, you don’t have to tell me.” He looks amused rather than offended but Donghae hasn’t been this close to tears since his favorite goldfish died in seventh grade.
“I’m closing.” The blonde is walking away, looking hugely entertained, and Donghae is far too distraught to see that it’s in a kindly way and not at all patronizing.
“I’ll tell you,” Donghae blurts, and the barista laughs over his shoulder.
“You can do that tomorrow.”
Donghae walks home along the freezing body of the Han river, ignorant to the icy wind nibbling at his ears and cheeks, contemplating whether he perhaps should jump into the water. Never has he felt so mortified, and yet there’s a nonsensical, persistently glowing ball of warmth in the center of his chest.
He learns the barista’s name the day after. It’s Hyukjae. Lee Hyukjae. It seems to be a slow day, maybe because outside is offering what might just be this year’s last day with sun and degrees that don’t require wool-layering and scarfs in tenfold loops; and the population in the establishment is scarce just before closing hour - except for Donghae and his laptop there’s just a couple at a remote table and they are obviously oblivious of all that concerns anything other than themselves and their whispering, giggling hand-holding. Donghae, who has made sure to plug in his laptop today, is tapping his fingers absently at the keys without the actual intention of forming words, because yet again there are no words in his mind. And yet again, his gaze wanders off, all on its own, to the blonde behind the counter, who is occupied at the coffee-machine, his back to Donghae. His shoulders are wide for his lean frame, compact. Donghae reacts just a little too slow as the other turns and walks straight towards him, two tall glasses of steaming, layered beverage in stable hands. He blinks, starts, looks down, and then up again as one glass is set down next to him.
He blinks at it, deeply mystified. Though he can sort of piece together what one may do with such a thing, he cannot remember asking for it. The barista chuckles. “It’s on me,” he says and there’s a sort of liquid warm quality to his voice.
To Donghae’s great horror he sits himself down, just on the other side of the counter, elbows on the tile and leanly sinewy arms crossed. “So?” he says in a nudging kind of way.
Donghae blinks some more. “I- uhm. What?”
The blonde laughs, ducking his head slightly and showing gums. “You were gonna tell me what you’re writing. So tell me.”
“Oh.” Donghae looks at the screen of his laptop like he’s never gazed upon such a thing before. “I. Uh. A book. I- I’m writing a novel.”
The opposed looks impressed, intrigued even, and genuinely so. “Really?”
Donghae’s cheeks start to heat up again. “Yeah,” he says, brilliantly. “I work at a library.” As if that had anything to do with really anything at all. Really, it doesn’t.
The barista nods as if what Donghae just said makes perfect sense to him. “What’s it about?”
Donghae looks down and his face starts to burn with some more intensity, but for the first time in a long while it’s not the blonde barista who’s the direct cause of it. “I- uhm- kinda. It’s complicated.” It isn’t really but trying to explain the story, with all it’s nooks and layers and late night walks to piece together it all, to a stranger is, and it’s uncomfortable, like baring a piece of his soul. Even though he’d very much like to share the struggle of it all. He doesn’t even know why.
“Okay,” says the other simply. “I’m sure it is.” Donghae looks up at him. He doesn’t look turned down or annoyed or patronizing. It’s like Donghae’s answer was the only sensible reply to him, and that’s all there is to it.
“I’d love to read it, someday.” And though he knows it’s just one of those kindly things people tend to say to people claiming to write books, it has him smile and feel warm for several reasons, and he mumbles an incoherent thanks.
The blonde smiles. “What’s your name?”
“Lee Donghae.”
“I’m Hyukjae. Lee Hyukjae.” Donghae smiles into his coffee and narrowly escapes having it travel aggressively up his nose.
Donghae doesn’t know what to say then, but it seems Lee Hyukjae doesn’t mind the silence so they sit quietly and drink their coffee.
Donghae keeps coming to the coffee-shop, nearly every day. And Hyukjae works, nearly every day. Late autumn turns into a young winter, with a dry powder of snow drifting around the corners and nooks of Seoul city.
Hyukjae talks to Donghae, he tells him about how he came to Seoul years back from a tiny little town somewhere in the countryside on a mountainside with a couple of friends, about how he wants to be a professional dancer one day so that he can quit the job at the shop, about the company where he dances. He talks with ease, not as if he’s showcasing himself but rather as if he enjoys sharing his story with Donghae. And Donghae listens, he drinks coffee and listens. He doesn’t talk that much, but Hyukjae doesn’t pry much, either. He asks something, occasionally, and Donghae answers then, stumbling and stuttering; but Donghae has never been one to spill out words in the vocal sense and Hyukjae really does not seem to mind.
It’s past first of December; glowing, gleaming, blinking ornaments and decorative light-works dangling over alleys and in windows and the soft touch of snow caresses the night air as Donghae ducks out into the street, his canvas messenger-bag slung over a shoulder and a thick scarf slung several times around his neck.
He starts down the street, kicking mindlessly at nothings and the lazy drifting powder of snow on the curb. It’s as he’s just about to turn the corner that he pauses and turns. Hyukjae is lingering by the door to the shop, his brightly red scarf like a beacon in the night. He turns away from locking the door, gazing out in the street for a moment before his face breaks into his wide, gummy smile. For an insanely wheeling heartbeat Donghae thinks it is at him, then someone steps up to the blonde. He’s seen the guy before. He sometimes takes shifts at the shop. He doesn’t remember his name, and he doesn’t care. It might be Kyuhyung or Kyujung or some sort. Donghae has half a mind not to stare as Hyukjae hugs the guy and they set off down the street arms around each other's shoulders, away from him, but what does it matter, really. Hyukjae doesn’t turn back to look at him, frankly he probably doesn’t even know Donghae is standing there at the corner, watching his receding back. It’s not that obvious. It’s the center of Seoul, after all, and the streets are crowded with people enjoying the first preglow of the holiday. But Donghae can see it and he wishes with all his wretched being he didn’t, that it would not pull at the depths of his guts so.
He stands there for a long while after they disappear around the next corner, feeling empty and very silly. Then he starts walking numbly, completely unaware of where his feet are carrying him. He does not care, and it’s a long while before he stands before his own door.
Some part of Donghae probably resolves to keep away from the softly lit, sand-toned little coffee shop with it’s cheerful blonde barista, at least for a little while. But somehow his feet carry him there anyway after work, the next day and the day after that, and after that.
Hyukjae smiles and chats and brings him coffee. And Donghae smiles and stutters and splutters and doesn’t say much that makes a whole lot of sense. Nothing’s changed. And perhaps, nothing has.
The twinkling, jingling, glowing holiday crawls closer and eventually wraps Seoul in a white sheet of snow, as soft and beautiful as it is harsh and cold. For a short while, at least, until the city rubs off its grey on the pure whiteness. The coffee shop is open for business until the night before Christmas Eve and Lee Hyukjae is wearing a Santa’s hat with a fluffy white ball the size of a large man’s fist that dangles around his shoulder as he grins a ‘merry Christmas’ at Donghae who’s trying to get the snow out of his hair.
Donghae stutters out something that is closer to a grumble than anything else.
“Okay, I don’t like Christmas but you seem way worse off than I. You know what, this is on me.”
He brings Donghae a tall, steaming mug that smells heavily of cinnamon. And along with the crooked grin he receives, he feels just a tiny bit better.
The holiday drags off eventually, remnants and memories pulling after as though they try to cling fast like the thick fog that clings to the city, and as the glow fades away, the world is left but with a cold, grey dampness hanging heavy as lead in the air. Time would probably like him to forget, but it lingers, potent and wrenching and oh so unjustified in the depths of his gut as he sees Hyukjae smile to someone across the counter, as Donghae turns at the corner to look back at the little shop in the night.
His feet bring him back, day after day, as if it the one single place in the entirety of Seoul city where one could possibly go with the intention of writing a novel. The snow melts, and the first gentle breath of spring touches the air, brittle and fragile like paper-thin glass, a thread of smoke hanging in the air, threatened to be blown apart into nothing with just the slightest disturbance. Hyukjae makes coffee and Donghae spends many hours sitting at the counter, drinking coffee and trying to write. Hyungkyun or whatever his name may be has been around much for a while.
Spring sets down its foot finally, the parks and the trees along the Han river flourishing into cotton candy-pink clouds of blossoms and the sun finally manages to set some lingering warmth into the air. Donghae makes a few tries to sit at the river and write. The bricked shores are full of people, kites and dogs and tents, young ones hanging out in groups, children playing and elderly couples walking with hands clasped behind their backs.
He writes some. Deletes some more. Kyunghan ceases to show eventually and Donghae pretends not to notice.
“How do I look?” Donghae looks up, just to observe, entirely certain Hyukjae is not talking to him. But Hyukjae is standing right in front of him, leaning with one hand against the counter, the other on his hip. His whitish bleached hair silkily straight and just fringing at his coffee-dark eyes. He’s wearing a lead-gray t-shirt that clings to his skin just like that and looks as if it’s very soft, just a few sizes too big. The half-amused expectant look on his face tells Donghae, he is in fact the one being asked, but he can’t for his life understand the question.
“Great,” he says before he can think - but before he has time to blush and stutter, Hyukjae gives him a huge smile, showing gums and his mind goes so blank he promptly forgets even to be embarrassed. He must look absolutely and utterly nonplussed as he stares at the barista, because the blonde gives a crooked grin, just between bashful and mischievous.
“Have a date,” he admits, and Donghae’s general gut-area suddenly decides it might travel down to hang around his feet for a while.
“It’ll be great,” he hears himself say distantly, too distracted by the boiling sensation in his intestines to even stutter.
The smile Hyukjae gives him in response shines like spring itself and Donghae has the distant impression something might just have torn a bit inside of him. He sits there for the remainder of the afternoon, watching the blonde boy. He sees the dark-haired, fine-featured guy who enters the shop about half an hour before closing, sees the way they greet each other. The dark-haired sits at the counter, a few chairs from Donghae’s, nodding a polite greeting that Donghae decidedly does not feel like returning.
He leaves the shop on his own accord five minutes before closing that night, for the first time in a very long time. He doesn’t feel like lingering today.
Neither does he feel like asking Hyukjae how it went the day after. He has no interest in the answer whatsoever. But it’s hanging in the air, visibly present in Hyukjae’s smile and his voice. So he asks, eventually. And Hyukjae beams as he tells him about Sungmin, and it hurts, in an oddly dejected and disconnected way.
Late spring eventually, hesitantly turns into early summer, like dipping a toe into the not-yet-really warm water of the ocean. After a few weeks it’s full-on summer with iced americanos and patbingsoo on shaded terraces. Hyukjae takes a two week break. Donghae thinks he may be going somewhere, like Busan or some sort, with the dude Donghae doesn’t want to know anything about - of course, he by now knows a great deal.
Donghae keeps coming to the coffeeshop during those two weeks, whole-heartedly ignoring the sensation of how wrong and empty it feels without the blonde barista there to the extent where he almost believes himself.
He’s almost ten chapters into the novel, which is farther than he’s ever come before deleting the entire goddamned thing. He feels like he’s walking on a ledge, writing it, about twenty meters above a highway and blindfolded - but then again, somewhere along the way he’s somehow decided he has no more fucks to give, quite frankly. No one will ever read the becursed thing anyway so what does it matter anyway?
He sees that Hyukjae is back before he even steps into the shop, as if someone’s hung a giant spotlight above his head. He’s polishing glasses, transporting them from the rack to the mirror-backed shelf behind the counter in efficient, deft movements. As Donghae perches himself onto one of the tall chairs, he greets him cheerfully and soon Donghae sits with a steaming, tall coffee in front of him and listens to Hyukjae talking. He isn’t actually sure about what the blonde is talking, and it concerns him slightly, but every time he tries to focus enough to catch up, he’s distracted and thrown off-rails again. He hadn’t really realized how pleasant it could be to just listen to a person talk. To the quality of his voice, the low chuckle of a laugh, how sharp his ‘s’s are. And he doesn’t quite realize he talks quite a bit himself, too, about work, about his writing, even if he talks more about the process of it than of the story itself. His laptop remains in his bag that day, untouched.
The day after that, he folds his laptop shut as he sees Hyukjae come around the counter to lift the chairs in the shop up onto the tables, and helps him. The smile the blonde gives him as he does, makes him fumble and drop the chair. It lands on his foot; which makes tears spring to his eyes, but at least it’s soundless. He limps home through the hot summer night with a smile that persistently does not want to leave the corner of his lips. He has trouble sleeping that night again, though it is very much unrelated to his half-crushed toe and very much more connected to the odd feeling in his gut; a mismatched mix between brooding churning and sickening thrill.
Some days later, Hyukjae asks him out. Donghae nearly dies. As a matter of fact, that’s probably exactly what he’s done, or this wouldn’t be happening. Of course, Hyukjae doesn’t actually ask him out, not in that way, but he does. “Hey, wanna go out tonight?” Donghae stutters and blinks and blushes and almost bursts into tears but he does want to, and they do, strolling around Myeongdong, eating spicy rice-cakes and fried chicken off street-vendors and talking about the unimportant things in life.
The day after that, the dude whose name Donghae has decidedly not remembered comes to the shop during the afternoon snooze. Donghae tries very much to keep his gaze on his laptop, but it keeps slipping, drawn to the guy leaning against the counter like metal to a magnet. It’s infuriatingly annoying. He’s far too preoccupied with trying not to look to actually take note of what he’s really looking at.
It’s only as the guy has flounced off again, that he notices that something about Hyukjae isn’t quite as per usual. The blonde smiles and chats to customers like he does every hour of every day, but there is something different, something missing. Like a light has been dimmed that he wasn’t aware was on in the first place.
The insane heat takes little to no notice of summer reaching the edge of September and continues baking down on the brick planes of Seoul well into October. It’s not one or two occasions, not a change that is really all that noticeable. But Donghae is looking closely, he does not know how not to anymore, and he picks out detail after little detail, just barely there, storing them in his subconsciousness until they heap up and become actually noticeable. It’s a layer missing from Hyukjae’s smile, the edge of the glint in his eyes duller. A pause that tells more than the loud words of defence that inevitably follow.
Donghae would rather not see it, would rather not be aware of it at all. He wished he didn’t care, that he could be sincere when he tells himself it isn’t his business. But he does care, quite frankly he is enraged. It’s boiling way deep down in him, but boiling it is. At some point he wonders how someone could possibly ignore a person like Hyukjae at all.
Donghae isn’t a meddler. He is best at minding his own business and that’s what he does, mostly. Well, all the time, actually. It’s sort of what he does, what he’s always done. But when he hears Hyukjae explain that it’s not that, no, he’s just busy these days, and of course he didn’t mean it like that, he wants to meddle, he wants to do something, anything to get Hyukjae out of the emotional cage he’s tripped into.
But Donghae isn’t a meddler. He is best at minding his own business. And so he doesn’t know how to do whatever it is one, if one were prone to meddling, would do in this situation. Whenever he tries to mention it, Hyukjae blossoms up in defensive explanations, evading and dodging until Donghae is afraid he’ll just chase him off, so he backs down, says something along the lines of ‘that’s probably how it is’ and they talk about something else.
They go out frequently, strolling streets and having snacks at street-corners, drinking soju on plastic chairs, talking about everything that isn’t important.
Hyukjae is showing reddened eyes and dark circles beneath them and Donghae aches for him, for how utterly powerless he himself is in the face of it all. He asks, knowing already before he does that he’ll be dismissed. He waits, clenching teeth and fists in silence, enduring the sight of what’s no longer all that subtle, waits for it to culminate and break, as it has to eventually.
At least, that’s what he hopes, what he needs to believe. It’ll end soon, it can’t go on like this forever. But autumn cools into winter and nothing changes - nothing apart from the fact that it’s getting more painful by the day for Donghae to watch. Not that it's his pain that is in any way important, but since Hyukjae is nowhere inclined to acknowledge his own, it's all there is to it. So he's in pain. He's in pain when Hyukjae's shirts grow even baggier on his slimming frame. He's in pain when he sees the little spark that lights in the espresso-dark eyes at the beep from his phone, and the way it dies, fading slowly, doused in disappointment. He's in pain when he pretends not to hear the phone-calls that have been reduced to pleading and begging.
But the worst part is not understanding. Hyukjae isn't stupid, Donghae knows that, in fact the blonde barista is probably one of the brightest and quick-witted people Donghae has ever known. So he can not understand how Hyukjae doesn't see what's being done to him, that he doesn't see that he isn't in love anymore, that all it is at this point is pain and toxic despair and holding on for the sake of not letting up.
Hyukjae asks him out for Christmas and Donghae would have been a blushing, happy, stuttering mess if he hadn't known better. He does though, know better. He also blushes and stutters a fair amount anyhow, so there is that. For all the good it does him. There is something downcast and subdued about the blonde during the evening, worse than it has been for a while, but when Donghae suggest they take an early night, since it doesn’t seem like Hyukjae really wants to be there at all, he’s declined, almost feverishly so. It doesn’t fall to place until several days later when Hyukjae confesses they’ve broken up, mumbling it into the steamed milk of his coffee after closing time, looking so beaten and wounded Donghae feels as though someone punched a fist through the wall of his ribcage and torn something apart.
The rage doesn’t come until afterwards; at the man who’s left that once shining blonde dulled and numbed, snuffed out all the light in him, but worse, at Hyukjae himself. Donghae’s mad at him for letting himself be used like this, letting himself be owned, beaten, discarded like this, because he knows better. He has to know better. He has to know he is better than this. He has to now he is worth more than this. And Donghae’s heart gives a painful throb at this as he wonders if that’s what it comes down to. If Hyukjae thinks this is the best he can get, then all Donghae would have to do would be to convince him otherwise.
I’m right here.
But it isn’t that simple, Donghae knows that deep in his heart, it’s a solid truth that doesn’t give way however much he wishes it to, as if it’s been there all along. Maybe it has. Hyukjae is trapped way beyond Donghae’s ability to get him out, he’s far too gone to be saved by anything Donghae can say or do. Far too gone to be saved even by his own misery.
Donghae can actually physically feel his own heart breaking, tearing in two, slowly, bit by bit. As he the man he’s come to hate, despise beyond all rhyme or reason wait outside the shop at night, appearing like out of shadows like the devil he’s come to be in Donghae’s mind and heart, the urge to punch him is a physical zap of electricity down his arm. Yet he knows with every fiber of his soul and body that that would hurt Hyukjae way more than anything that man has ever done to him. It’s the look Hyukjae throws him over his shoulder before walking into the embrace that’s waiting for him, that undoes him completely. That look of abashed apology will haunt him for the rest of his life.
How he wants to yell at Lee Hyukjae, tell him this is wrong, that he can’t do this to himself. That he’s worth better than this, damn, the last jerk on earth is worth better than this, that he can’t keep on destroying himself like this, that Donghae won’t fucking watch it anymore, he can’t stand it any longer. But he can’t bring one single word past his lips.
He feels like he’s trapped in a glass cage, like one of those black-and-white face-painted pantomimes from movies, as he watches the cycle start anew. Hyukjae has lit up again, though Donghae feels the light is tainted and bleak, and he isn’t even sure it’s just due to the filter of his own prejudice. As it starts to fade again, probably quicker than ever, he does not know what to do with himself. He takes up running, which he last did regularly as he was still in high school; it’s a good outlet for the raging frustration within him, though not nearly enough. He finds himself caught in a painful trap; he wants to spend as little time within the vicinity of Lee Hyukjae as possible, yet he’s come to find the world a much better place when he’s near the blonde barista. So he spends a great deal of his time convincing himself of reasons to stay away, only to then start convincing himself to go back. He writes through long nights of restless sleeplessness and falls asleep at work more than once, prompting Park Jungsu to erupt in a redundant and emotional speech about life priorities and discipline which Donghae feels he's done nothing to deserve at all.
It all drags out into a monotone stretch of misery and time is long overdue as he notices the change in Hyukjae. Perhaps it’s because it isn’t a change of something as much as something disappearing, slowly, very slowly. Summer passes with it’s choking heat and fall wraps it all in frost and fog. When he notices, he needs another couple of weeks to figure it out, as far as that goes. The change is subtle, just barely there if one squints really hard.
“Donghae? You okay?” Donghae jumps and blinks at Hyukjae, who’s stopped to turn around in the middle of the street and looks with raised eyebrows at Donghae over his spicy rice-cake. Well, strictly speaking, it’s Donghae who’s stopped, squinting at the blonde as if lacking his glasses. Which he doesn’t; he’s quite sure he’s wearing them. And it’s not that Hyukjae’s suddenly turned blurry. It might be the opposite, he might actually be a little clearer around the edges.
Donghae mumbles at being fine and they keep on walking through the crowded Myeongdong street. Hyukjae amiably chats away at his side but Donghae lets it wash over him, only vaguely aware. Then again, Hyukjae is used to losing Donghae to uncharted cognitive realms. Donghae is thinking back, stopping at memories to look closer at them before moving on. He might be wrong. He’s probably wrong. He’s good at imagining things into truth until he believes them, after all. Wouldn’t he have noticed earlier, then? But no, it might be weeks, months since Hyukjae last mentioned it.
Donghae doesn’t say, doesn’t dare to mention. Doesn’t dare to hope. But he looks closer at Hyukjae as the weeks roll past through November and into December. Something is different, he can’t be imagining it. A weight seems lifted off Hyukjae’s shoulders. He really is clearer around the edges. He hasn’t erupted into reeling bliss, no, there’s a somberness about him - maybe that’s just it, maybe that’s why it was harder to see. Donghae threads carefully, doesn’t mention, doesn’t ask, doesn’t pry, pretends he hasn’t noticed. And such, it takes him completely by surprise. Though, Donghae is, after all, quite easily surprised.
They’ve ended up at Cheonggyecheon one night just before Christmas, couples lining the steps down to the icy water like doves on wires. Well, Donghae has ended up, clutching a long gone cold and forgotten drink in a paper-wrapped styrofoam mug, and Hyukjae somehow, miraculously has found him. Hyukjae sits down next down to him and silence rests peacefully between them for a while. Until Donghae notices that Hyukjae is, in all stillness and silence, is preparing to say something.
It drags on until Donghae thinks he was wrong, only not really. Hyukjae stares out over the lights reflected in the water, looking oddly content. Donghae braces himself, because he knows Hyukjae will tell him they’re back together again and it’s good, it’s different this time, all will be well. It isn’t true, and he so very much wants to believe Hyukjae knows that.
“Donghae?”
“Yes?”
“Do you wanna go somewhere with me? Tonight? Now?”
“Sure.”
But Hyukjae doesn’t get up, so they sit in silence for a while longer.
“Donghae?”
“Yes?”
“I meant, will you go out with me?”
“Sure. Where do you want to go?”
He regrets the tired note in his voice but Hyukjae seems more amused than anything else.
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