jeonghan planted his feet back on the ground, tried to smooth out the wrinkles on his jacket. once again, he stuffed his hands into its front pockets, ready to start moving up when the question hits him. ah, shit. how was he going to say this without sound like he was committed? in a sense, he was. but, again, not in the way jongup was thinking. this whole meeting was filled with assumptions. jeonghan decided to just give it straight (ha!). “for veo, actually.”
he kicked at the concrete ground, forces himself to look directly into the other’s eyes - look at me. look at me. look at me. it’s not what you think. why do you think i’m here? “he gave me a recreation of the first day we met - inside a snow globe. i gave him a ring. you know. like best friends do.” he sounded defensive, and so he sighed, feeling like he was being put on the spot. “i’ve known him a decade, mon chèr. if i was sure i wanted to marry him, i already would have. it’s really not what you think. or, you know, what everyone thinks for that matter.”
It was official, Jongup could listen to Jeonghan speaking for a long time and he would never get tired. It never occurred him that he would miss their long bickering moments until they were actually gone. The saying that you’d only miss something when you don’t have it anymore came biting him in the ass for almost three years now, if he counted the months they simply stopped talking for no reason
Yeah, no reason at all, Jongup, quit being a liar.
You’ve been lying to yourself for as long as you can remember since you arrive at Hogwarts. You lied when you said you didn’t care about people, you didn’t care when they pointed you saying you were there just because your father paid for your stay. You lied with your smiled and teasing when your head hurt so much because you remembered something from your past. You lied when you said you didn’t care that Jeonghan was now after Kris, that only cared about himself.
Liar. Liar. That should be your second name.
But obviously it was easier to pretend there was no reason at all, that the connections the two of them forged with others weren’t going to affect them, that their relationship wasn’t going to change if they paid more attention to other people other than themselves, that they weren’t going to miss the lingering touches, the secret meetings, the hushed kisses behind closed doors.
And how Jongup missed him, just his presence. Having Jeonghan there made him feel like the stupid student again because he suddenly felt like misbehaving, even if he was there, in another reality, a future that wasn’t exactly planned for the two of them exist at the same time, but now that he was there, it felt almost as unimaginable that he didn’t belong there in the first place.
“The last time my best friend and I shared a bonding moment, we made some kind of blood pact.”, he half joked, the silly memories of him and Yifan as teenagers, playing with their wands and experimenting things before he was thrown to Durmstrang. Promises that they were going to keep talking, keeping writing, never letting their friendship die, everything now coming to life as he fully understood what Jeonghan was trying to say.
Still, it felt weird and bitter, that taste that there was something there that he didn’t know, or he wouldn’t want to know. Because Veovis Jung was a special part in Jeonghan’s life and he could deny that, he couldn’t ask for things to change like that and he wouldn’t. but he was also human and he also felt jealousy consume him, even if he wanted to deny.
After all, their encounter wasn’t supposed to mean anything, right?
“You never know what can happen. Sometimes you have a person by your side for the longest you can remember and only when they’re not anymore, you realize you want them to be there more than anything.” Only when his eyes are locked with Jeonghan’s and he actually realized what he just said, he chuckled, shaking his head briefly only to pay more attention now to the stairs in front of them.
He took the first few steps before looking back, raising a hand to the other male, an invitation, which he hoped Jeonghan wouldn’t say no this time. “Come with me?”
