KIM HAEGON && OH SUNYOUNG , THE LOVERS .
"This is not a love story, but love is in it. That is, love is just outside it, looking for a way to break in." (x)
A SCENE (1K / 1,089 words.)
--- set on December 2022, a week before Christmas.
"Can I come in?" Haegon asks the shut door, lips hovering the wood, forehead resting against it. “Yongie– Yongie, it’s me.”
He hears steps, a crack, the sound of keys being unlocked.
When the door swings open, Haegon is faced with a Sunyoung that’s in shambles – messy hair barely contained in a ponytail, eyebags the color of asphalt, her tee sliding off her left shoulder. She had gotten drunk, she had said when she texted: was drunk and missing him, thinking of him, wanting to hear his voice, touch his face.
She looks so unlike how he found her on that first night – standing by the fog machine, fluorescent light painting her whole body pink, the two of them surrounded by music loud enough for Haegon to feel the bass on the center of his chest, on his teeth.
He had looked at her from across the room then forced his head down to his beer, to his shoes. As if, he thought; If only.
Haegon knows now that it was Sunyoung who found him, that she perfectly framed herself to be kept, like a pearl ready to be turned into the centerpiece of a necklace, set to sit close to the chest.
Not even his chest, at that. Haegon was just the box she would temporarily reside on, would use to–
Mask gone, show over, and she’s still as beautiful as a dream, enough so to knock Haegon’s breath away, to turn him into an ice sculpture.
For a long moment, none of them dare to move forward. But they don’t move backwards, either – it’s the motivation Haegon needs to force his gaze up, trembling, trying a smile that he knows looks crooked, vulnerable, horrible.
Sunyoung wears a similar uncertain expression on her face, until it melts into the one he loves; close mouthed smile with the eyebrows descending. (A picture of regret– No. Affection.)
She opens her arms wide, showcasing the whole land that is her chest and the crook of her neck, and Haegon is bolting to be near her before he can even think about it, almost falling apart when he feels her hugging him back just as tight on his waist, then up his back, near his shoulders.
“There, there,” Sunyoung says with a breathy chuckle, running a soothing hand up his hair, contouring his nape. “It’s okay now, baby. You’re okay– Okay with me.”
"I'm sorry– I’m so sorry I left, I– I’m sorry, sorry, sorry, I’m never– Never again," Haegon whispers, rambles faint enough to be just puffs of air near her ear. He feels her shake her head against his temper, hears her mutter a melodic sounding ‘Shhhh’.
“I’m sorry I let you leave,” Sunyoung secrets back, now sounding just as teary. “I missed you so, so much, Haegon, I– I thought I fucked everything last time, that it would be the last last time, and I couldn’t leave it be how– God, I haven’t even been breathing normal, you– Did you miss me? Even now that you know, did you still–"
Haegon can only nod and nod, exhilarated and overwhelmed, as he lets her coarse his head out of its hideout and angle his mouth to hers.
Naturally, they kiss unnaturally: Haegon had always been a too eager kisser, Sunyoung a stiff one, and they haven’t done this in way too many months, enough to feel like a whole lifetime ago.
(Weeks before their last fall out, Sunyoung had already stopped kissing him. Haegon, who had always been too afraid of rejection to ever dare to reach first, waited. When nothing came he learned to want nothing.)
Now, they bump on every single corner of the entrance’s walls, and on the living room’s furniture and then the ones in her bedroom – Haegon steps on a bra, on a lighter, on three cans of beer that make a rattling sound that makes them both laugh, breaking their mouths apart.
He sits on the edge of her bed and has to close his eyes as the familiar smell of Sunyoung’s herbal candles catches up to him, her skin bathed in perfume as she sits on his lap.
“Hey,” she says, breathy, smiley, an inch away. She hooks an arm around his neck and the other skates down his arm. “Hey. Look at me. Can I talk for once, before anything else? Honesty hour. How do you like that? Let’s make it a rule, okay? Can it be a rule? A you and me rule?”
“It’s a rule,” Haegon says, absently.
He feels– tired, as he does when they just talk. His left foot is dormant, he feels it and taps it against the red rug, feels like there’s bees on it.
"Being apart," Sunyoung prompts, tracing an ever lasting circle with her thumb against one of his wrists, "Really fucking hurted me. It’s important that you know you did it. You've hurt me."
"You've hurt me first," Haegon tells her, tone just as even.
To that, Sunyoung flashes him a flat and crude grin, one that’s not trying to be charming for once. He thinks he sees her shoulders spasm, like she wants to shrug it off but also wants to hold it in.
Her fingertip has gone still on his arm. When it moves again, Haegon feels it turn into a nail that pokes then digs, leaving a small dent on his skin.
"Don't leave again, Haegon-ah," Sunyoung says, somewhat coldly – a plea, on her own way. "I'm asking nicely, this time, for you to stay."
"Then don't kiss Minwoo again," Haegon counters, getting a hold of and pinching her ear lobe with little caution, rotating the stud of her earring in between his fingers a little roughly. "Don’t lie to me again. Don’t cheat. That's all I'm asking."
Sunyoung drags her face nearer, stops with their noses an inch from touching, looks him in the eyes. She says without uttering a thing, ‘Promise.’
Haegon closes the gap and kisses her once to show he understands, then again to chase the words she isn’t saying, swallow them and keep it in the safe within him.
A third kiss, because that’s what couples do, and that’s what they are again; a fourth in which Sunyoung takes a handful of his shirt, pushes and pins Haegon's back against the mattress, holds him in place.
Love is a grip tight enough to keep the blood from running out the wounds, and she has that engraved in her bones just as much as he does.
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