ft. @wxjihwan
there are moments when a man is brought to his knees. he’s not speaking of the crude sort, be it glinting blade or careless whisper. no, these moments… detail the same impulses that call sinner to holy ground, to fall to his knees before maruhan’s sacred likeness and beg, all in the name of repentance. and what this means for a man like park beomseok is despite the impression he gives off—like he’s embraced that carnal nature within him so intimately, one can pick up its distinct scent from his skin like the smell of sex—there are moments when even he falls to his knees in regret.
why, sinner’s prayer on the tip of his tongue, here he stands now, in a class where winx and specialists meet to pair off and giddy up into the fucking sunset. and he’s not like this—as in he’s not usually so present, usually seen instead with eyes glazed over because park beomseok doesn’t do academia. but he’s here, and he’s here because she is here. because jihwan is here.
and call it a twist of fate, if you will, that the instructor’s paired them off together. beomseok doesn’t complain, doesn’t try to shimmy his way out of it—it encompassing a myriad of things, from a boring partner to the boring classwork—simply walks over to jihwan’s side like a child who’s been caught with his hands deep in the cookie jar. and suppose the metaphor is awfully fitting, given that he’d been nothing short of an adolescent when he’d wronged her, vandalised her pretty heart in the regretful days documenting his teen angst. in this way, beomseok displays his bleeding heart, that compassion he still battles to perceive as character strength rather than crippling weakness.
he stands beside her, shoulder to shoulder, and there’s a silence held between them. and it’s indescribably poignant, kind of like the i’m glad to see you’re okay and the i’m sorry i never owned up to all the ways i’ve hurt you he means to say that falls into the space between them and dissipates before they get the chance to reach her ears. what he says instead is, “jihwan-ah…” and it’s almost weird, saying her name, not because it’s been awhile, but because it’s not familiar. because when they were last together, she’d only ever been his princess, his buttercup, his sunshine, even in the days when he knew he no longer loved her. “it’s been awhile,” he admits, swallows the crack in his voice though the regret drips from his every syllable. he smiles weakly, “how have you been?”