☢ minor waltz; myung & zelo
He couldn’t clearly recall their first encounter, avague mixture of awkward smiles and hesitant invitations, tripping over words that seemed out of place. Short texts before dinner and after work grew in length, his phone lighting up at the break of dawn illuminating his bedside table on sleepless nights. Scarred fingers hovered over the simple name registered in his contacts before the screen went black, remnants of the brief conversation lingering over the shell of his ears as the hint of a smile crept over his lips. Put strictly, they knew close to nothing about each other – at least the basic details that one expected to be informed of once having befriended another. Uniforms or any form of identification were carefully hidden away in his closet, the thick taste of bloodlust and fume of violence pressed under light sprays of cologne.
Myungsoo assumed what he felt towards the younger male was an attraction based on differences, a decalcomania of what his youth would have been had be not chosen the path of becoming an enforcer. A high school diploma, a university life – a pattern so normal that it had become an extreme abnormality in his own life. The youth had often complained about desires and dreams, how they differed from the expectations of his parents at the dinner table on the corners of run down streets. Ironically his complaints filled Myungsoo with a foreign desire to dream developing a thirst for more words from the other’s lips, his presence that seemed to kindle the ashen hearth of his thoughts.
It had been on an impulse that he had sent the text to the younger, with a clumsy invitation to spend the evening at his apartment. He vaguely recalled quickly adding on mentions of watching a movie together, perhaps with some beer in hand. The majority of their encounters had been on the streets, Myungsoo himself being rather reluctant to bring the other into the gloomy scape of his apartment, the rooms which had grown frigid due to extended absences somehow not fitting the radiance of youth that encased Junhong. Yet, there was that small hint of wishful thought: that perhaps if the other ever set foot in his house some of the warmth would bloom from under the floor of concrete indifference.
Everything had been set up best as it could have been, the blankets of his bed dragged out to the living room and placed upon the couch, two cans of beer set down on the table in front of the couch, the blue screen of the television reflecting off the white walls with an eerie shade. At the ring of the doorbell Myungsoo’s breath momentarily caught in his chest before he opened the door to find the tall boy, standing aside to make passage, smiles laced between words of greeting. “It didn’t take you that long- I mean, uh.” He bit back a curse at his own choice of words before nudging the other over to the couch instead. “It’s nice to have you here, is what I meant.”
