cw: allusions to depression
he hums in acknowledgment, despite his mind being half in outer space, somewhere far away from where he is physically, suspended in a stifling, gravity-free bubble of stale grey sadness. his scrolling is aimless, just the absentminded drag of his finger from top to bottom of the screen, watching his feeds refresh, finding nothing satisfying or even remotely stimulating, closing the app in favor of another. wash, rinse, repeat.
he’d sent sungho a picture earlier, of bomul and duchess curled up next to each other on the couch, but has yet to see a response. he knows from firsthand experience that a trainee preparing for debut might not even have access to his phone, let alone time to respond to text messages about household pets, but the silence is an ache in his chest nonetheless.
eunwoo is trying, she is trying so far, and jeonghan knows that. but still, that stale grey hangs over him, making everything feel much heavier than it is. he manages a faint smile at her words, a halfway crooked close-lipped sort of thing, eyes flitting up to her briefly to let her know he finds humor in what she says, despite his inability to express it (it is funny; the jeonghan from a year ago may have laughed out loud, boisterously, caught the attention of nearby waitstaff even).
“mm,” he hums again, pausing his scrolling only to take a sip of his neglected iced americano, making a face at its taste, watered down by rapidly melting ice cubes, “we could start a tiktok. gansiktok.” even his own silly pun barely pulls the corner of his mouth up.
“we’re artists, eunwoo. that’s what art is,” he declares with a certain subdued profoundness, opening instagram for the third time in as many minutes, “pain.”
“you should hire me,” he declares after a few more moments, actually looking up at her this time; it’s only half a joke, a rather tame one all things considered, “jeongha might kill me. but i could use the extra money anyway. rent’s shit without sungho. and the dog eats like a horse.”
though her eyes narrow momentarily at jeonghan’s humming as a response, it doesn’t anger her- she understands it, though perhaps in a different way. it’s hard for a friend to watch another friend follow the path to debut, and eunwoo imagines the pain of it all is doubled for a partner. she knows that jeonghan is only trying to cope with a new reality too, and tries to help him adjust.
“gansitok,” she half-laughs, though her own smile is more because of his attempt at a joke, and the way that the corners of his mouth move at least a fraction. it’s an attempt, and even if that’s all they’ve got lately, it still counts. “ah, aren’t you a poet now,” she remarks, though she knows what he says is nothing but truth. she sighs, a non-verbal acceptance of the spoken truth, though the mantra repeats in her head. beauty is pain, art is pain, life is pain, but it goes on.
when his voice breaks the silence instead of hers, eunwoo meets his gaze with her own, confusion. her head tilts ever so slightly, attempting to discern whether jeonghan is joking again or not, and quickly realizes that maybe it isn’t one. she suppresses the frown that threatens to make an appearance, pursing her lips instead and reaching over to cover his hand with her own, sympathetic. “it gets better,” she tries to assure him, i promise, almost falling from her lips, but she can’t make a promise like that, not when neither of them know- not when promises are so easily broken. “but if you do want it, i have a manager position with your name on it, just say the word.”
