sinjvn:
“ do i hate you? ” his lower lips falls into his mouth and then drops out. his brows draw closer above the crease of his eyes. head shakes, for some reason, his heart also does. it twitches, it tugs. “ i don’t think i can hate you, emi, ” he murmurs, and then louder again, “ i don’t want to hate you. ” tongue running quick across his lips, heejun begins again, “ but you hurt me and maybe that sounds selfish because the drugs came from me, ” he speaks eager to get it all out, as quick as possible to have her hear it, to understand it. “ when you told me you needed me. i didn’t think it was that. i didn’t want our friendship - ” he exhales through his nose, hates what he has to say next, “ to be only about drugs. ” his hand resting against her cheek has stopped the constant trembling that lingered in his body, calms him for a bit. he is speaking up again and it’s almost like he doesn’t know when to stop, the coke making him more talkative, it also doesn’t help that he is constantly on the verge of spilling everything out, “ something happened when you were away. ” he says, half-confessess and his eyes move, shift to the spot where their friends are - clueless to what is happening. “ and it was hard and i wished you were here with me, ” i needed you rests on his tongue, but he swallows quickly staring at the features of emi’s face, darting across her eyes, her nose, her lips - and lingering there. he is so desperate for that bit of comfort, for something to take his mind of that he presses forward. his lips are moving closer, and then his other hand lift and he is holding her against both side of her face and pulls her in for a kiss. it happens so quick. without thought and he moves his lips over her, and they’re soft, so soft. it’s been so long and he doesn’t want to stop kissing her, but it is as if something out of his control pulls him away, eyes parting, eyes capturing hers, and he is starting to realize what he just done, what he just said. he didn’t even wait for her reaction to any of it tugs, his mind a delirious mess. “ i think i should go. ”
she feels suspended as he repeats her question back at her, still like one of those mosquitos trapped in amber, unable to move as she waits for his answer. it feels like an eternity before he speaks again, although she knows it couldn’t have been, and yet emi’s not breathing until his words register. i don’t think i can hate you, emi. i don’t want to hate you. they repeat over and over like a siren, like a record that had been scratched, and she’s so stupidly happy she thinks she might cry. but he’s switching gears too fast, her smile twitching, her emotions struggling to catch up. “ i know i hurt you, ” she manages to say, and her voice is soft, the hand that’s holding his against her cheek unmoving like she was scared he’d pull away if she let go. “ but you’re wrong if you think it’s only about drugs. it’s so much more than that. the way i feel about you ––––– ” she can’t finish the sentence, her throat closing has her heart leaps upwards, words sounding strangled as she chokes on it. emi thinks maybe she’s not breathing right again, like maybe she’d forgotten to inhale paying too much attention to the boy in front of her instead, the one who had her head spinning in a way she knew had nothing at all to do with the drugs in her system. she exhales, but then he’s talking again, saying things that have her heart lurching in all sorts of directions. “ i’m sorry i wasn’t there. ” she hadn’t realized how long she’d been waiting to tell him that until she’s said it, the words leaving her lips the way confessions used to as a child at church. “ i didn’t want to go, ” she continues, but this time her voice wavers, and she’s smiling but it’s the sad kind, the type of smile that comes right before the tears well up at the corners of her eyes like tiny diamonds. her brain is a mess, thoughts racing past too quick to be sorted, the things she wants to tell him dying at the tip of her tongue because he’s looking at her and she thinks maybe another eternity could pass them by and she wouldn’t even notice because god those fucking eyes do something to her. and then he has his hands on both sides of her face, and her lips barely have time to part in surprise before he’s pulling her towards him, kissing her. emi had imagined this moment about a million times. she’d daydreamed about it the way you do when you have a crush, girlish and silly. she’d longed for it on nights her imagination took her to more private places, the type of dreams that were better suited for the darkness of her bedroom. she used to pray for this in rehab, those long months when she’d felt a loneliness so strong it had nearly killed her. no recreation of what it might be like to be kissed by heejun, however, compared to the real thing. his lips impossibly soft against her own. the hands on either side of her face suddenly something emi is very thankful for, because she’s sure it’s the only thing keeping her grounded in that moment, feeling so light she’s sure she could float away like an astronaut lost in space. and then ––––– nothing. he’s pulled away and she feels the loss like maybe he’d taken a part of her with him, too. it’s panic that creeps in first, and she feels the way she did on her kitchen floor that day, except this time she’s not sure she can take it if he walks away again. “ no, ” she breathes, and her arm reaches out to wrap around his wrist before she slides her fingers down into his hand the way he’d done to her earlier. “ please don’t go.” and she hates herself for sounding so desperate, hates herself for the way she can’t even pretend he hadn’t turned her world upside down. “ i need you,” emi confesses, and it’s what she’d told him that fateful day, except this time she doesn’t stop. “ i need you to stay here. and to kiss me again. and to hold me later when we fall asleep because i hate it when i’m alone. because i want it to be you ––––– because i need it to be you. ” her eyelashes feel sticky, and emi has no idea if she’s crying or if she’s overheating, every nerve on fire as she waits to see if he’d stay or go. “ it’s not just about drugs, heejun.” his name is delicate, something she feels she has to whisper, like if she was any louder everything might shatter. “ it never was.”