𝙚𝙫𝙚𝙧𝙮𝙩𝙝𝙞𝙣𝙜 𝙧𝙚𝙙 - 𝙟.𝙟𝙝 - 𝘢𝘯𝘨𝘴𝘵
(pretty much) sfw: explicit language, almost non-existent suggestiveness content/warnings: exbf!jaehyun x fem!reader, alcohol/hangover, smoking cigs, basically jaehyun has the worst day of his life and reader only appears in memory, deplorably SAD and MISERABLE i genuinely teared up writing a line or two, there's some specks of fluff so you don't kill me but it doesn't make up for the rest tbh, maybe u will laugh once if ur lucky. sorry this is my brand w.c. 1.9k
♬ listening to - Roses - JAEHYUN 𝘦𝘷𝘦𝘳𝘺𝘵𝘩𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘳𝘦𝘥’𝘴 𝘢 𝘤𝘰𝘭𝘥 𝘳𝘦𝘮𝘪𝘯𝘥𝘦𝘳 𝘰𝘧 𝘺𝘰𝘶…
FEBRUARY 15TH 2024 8:55 AM
jaehyun awoke too early for his own good, a foggy headed, clammy skinned, post-birthday ghost of himself.
the bed was cold and oddly humid, and the lamp on his bedside table was still on. he remembered mostly everything from celebrating his birthday; dinner, drinks, coming home and beelining for his bed, thinking about how he should go get some water, but apparently he fell asleep before he could convince himself to stand back up.
all things considered, it had been a fairly uneventful night out, so why did he have this sinking, stewing feeling that he’d done something completely disordered? maybe it was an average case of hangover anxiety, where any fun from the alcohol turns all ugly and inside out the next morning. that’s just brain chemistry, the usual consequences of indulging in depressants, and then going to sleep idiotically dehydrated — right?
unsurprisingly, science wasn't very comforting at a time like this. jaehyun reached for his phone, which he’d miraculously managed to connect to its charger, and thought to text a few friends he was out with, check if they’d dragged themselves to bed any more skillfully than he’d done himself.
and that’s when he saw it: right there at the top of his recent messages, your name.
at 11:49 PM, jaehyun, being the suave, romantic man he was, texted you, his ex-girlfriend, a poetic masterpiece: thinkkin g about u. wash you where at home waiting forme. miss u.
and he did it again, and worse, at 11:56 PM: im getting old without you. Hate that
the first one was marked delivered, the second one was sitting in perpetual green limbo, waiting for delivery that would likely never come.
if his texts were less honest he might have found a way to laugh at himself for it and move about his hungover business, but unfortunately, his liquored-up self had only admitted simple, desperate feelings, and the typos weren’t even bad enough to hide behind.
his brain could only seem to confront his actions in stupidly minced half-thoughts.
- he texted you: bad. - you only received the first, more generically pathetic one: good. - he was left to wonder if the second text might've at least earned him a ‘happy birthday, asshole’ in response: bad. - you had the common sense to block him: good. - he would never possess enough common sense, much less willpower, to block you in return, and might spend the rest of his dying days waiting for any notification to be attached to your name. bad bad bad.
recollections were trickling back to him. he texted you on the ride home quietly in the back of the car, and without telling anyone, either because he was feeling very good about himself or very horrible — that part was unclear, but it had to have been one or the other.
logically, jaehyun was aware you were getting on just fine without him in your life. you didn’t call after cutting things off, you didn’t double back, didn’t second guess yourself. foolishly, arrogantly, he expected you'd do all three, but the joke had to be on him in the end, didn't it? here he was, trying to reach you the second his inhibitions slipped away.
the last words you said to his face still made him wince:
“you know what your problem is? you don’t think about anyone but your fucking self, jae, and it’s exhausting– you are exhausting.”
months later, he remained unsure whether there was truth to your claim, or if you were just saying anything that came to mind out of frustration, aiming to hit him where it hurt most.
leaving his phone behind as he shuffled away from his bedroom, jaehyun wondered: where were you now? who was rolling over to be met with your face, your sweet, scratchy good-morning voice, your body warming the other half of their bed? who was pulling you on top of them, drifting in and out of sleep, endlessly soothed beneath your weight? whose t-shirt were you inside of? did they complain about your morning breath? did they kiss you anyway, tongue and everything? was it like him? or was it better, because it was nothing like him?
oh, the things he would do to be that person, ridiculous things; any sin, any trade, any deal with the devil — what stage of grief is bargaining again? hopefully one near the end.
with an ibuprofen in hand to kill the headache, jaehyun opened his kitchen cupboard for a water glass. shoved at the back was your favorite coffee mug, the only one you’d use at his apartment; its shape distorted by shadows and reflections, but still glaringly recognizable as the only red thing on the shelf.
nevermind the water glass; he bent over to drink straight from the kitchen tap, groaning at the soreness in his neck muscles, his shoulders, down his back. was it from the alcohol, was he that old now, or was he just miserable, physically and emotionally failing? he didn’t know. tried not to think about it. instead, he hung his head low in the sink basin, water still running, the cool splash accumulating in drops on his face. his brain was half lost to last night, and half stuck in the cupboard with your mug.
did the person you were with now even know how you took your coffee? he hoped not. he hoped they’d never even bothered to ask. actually, he hoped you were alone.
“fuck.” he sighed as he stood upright, raking a dampened hand through his hair. decidedly, you were correct; he was exhausting, even to himself. selfish, too.
1:27 PM
the day after valentine’s was always a strange sight. shops were trying to purge themselves of evidence that it happened at all, putting every holiday item loudy on clearance, shoving anything heart shaped, pink, or red into the arms of customers or stowaway boxes.
while walking up the street, jaehyun kept his head down, diligent not to make eye contact with the flower vendor selling leftover rose bouquets at half-price. they were your favorite flower, he knew that well. if you were still around, he would’ve bought out the vendor’s whole supply, and you would’ve loved him for it even if those leftover roses were the shoddy, over-bloomed ones that no one had wanted the day before.
jaehyun had a work obligation to tend to that afternoon, and he did so responsibly, but it was clear just from looking at him that he couldn’t wait to get back home. nevertheless, people greeted him with cheer, saying he’d earned the right to his birthday hangover. he smiled and joked back, just enough to keep friends and colleagues from questioning his sanity.
5:20 PM
a traffic light hung high overhead, exhaust billowed behind a lone car stopped needlessly at the intersection, brake lights glowing, and everything was red. red or colorless. the city felt abrasive, thinly spread, like life had been sucked away in the air of february’s icy dusk.
between work and the car park, jaehyun stepped into a hole-in-the-wall convenience store, its jarringly flashing OPEN sign reflecting off the wet sidewalk slop; he couldn’t miss it even with his eyes trained on the ground.
at any given moment, a million people were somewhere out in the world, nurturing a cigarette habit. jaehyun was not typically one of those people, but a handful of times, he had been one with you.
he told the man working the counter, “pack of lucky strikes, thanks.” and the request felt instantly shameful, foreign in his own mouth, dissonant in his ears.
the worker’s hand stalled over the tobacco shelf. “you want silver? gold?”
“oh– the normal ones. sorry.”
“so, red?”
“red,” he agreed, and had to actively remind himself not to glare for being made to say it out loud. “yeah.”
the sun had disappeared in full by the time jaehyun was leaned up against the side of his car, rushing through his first cigarette. the best part was how the smoke warmed his face and stung his eyes, forcing them to close. with the smell thick in his nose, head buzzing, he could almost form a vague apparition of you being there too.
once upon a time, you would’ve managed to get half inside his coat with him, your arms wound up his back, cold hands on his bare, hot skin, giddy from the warmth, the contact, the nicotine. you would’ve held the filter to his lips so he didn’t have to open his eyes. he regretted it now, not having them open when it counted. in his imagination, he tried to make up the way you must’ve been looking up at him, how beautiful, how catastrophic. he could see it, but then he couldn’t, not the way hoped to, so he stopped trying. if he squinted his mind’s eye any harder, he feared he might cry.
the first cigarette left him queasy. the second one did too, but he endured it to the last millimetre anyway. it was an exercise in self-punishment, or a stab at retribution, or an attempt to feel whatever it was that smokers felt and loved so much. whatever that was, he didn’t feel it. all he had gained was the realization that cigarettes are best enjoyed when already drunk, well-fed, preferably in paris, and in good company.
9:00 PM
turning in for an early night seemed the only viable option by the time jaehyun had fed himself, showered, brushed his teeth twice in an effort to erase all traces of red lucky strike from his body.
he stood at the side of his bed, stared at it, hated its emptiness, hated the right side where he slept, and hated the left side where he didn’t because it was still yours. staring back at him from one of the pillowcases, a faint lipstick stain that his normal laundry detergent wouldn’t remove — not that that he ever truly tried to remove it. the proof that you were once there was too important, bleach would've been sacrilegious.
jaehyun could recall the exact night you left that stain. the memory played involuntarily every time he caught a glimpse it.
it was after a dinner date, a spontaneous one where he’d simply called you and asked, “are you hungry and can you be ready in twenty minutes?”
“yes, yes– yes to both,” you replied, caught off guard and slightly stammering. he could practically hear you smiling in excitement through the phone.
afterwards, you returned to his apartment together, mildly tipsy from splitting an expensive bottle of merlot. admittedly, he had ordered it for no reason other than to demonstrate his willingness to spend money on you. he had a tendency for being a bit pretentious with his wallet, but in clever, particular ways, difficult not to find charming.
back then, the fresh and deeply naive sense of perfection still shrouded the relationship.
maybe that’s why the memory shimmered so cleanly in jaehyun’s mind, a time-softened motion picture of half-undressing one another before falling limb over limb on his mattress, a mess of quiet laughter, greedy hands, shameless mouths. the lipstick that remained on his pillowcase must have been the only hint of red he hadn’t managed to kiss off of you.
now, he laid his head on his pillow, looking to the half of his bed where you weren’t, but should’ve been, looking back. the idea that you, in a different room, in a different apartment building, maybe even a different city altogether, might be doing the exact same thing was what let him ease into sleep. that, and the possibility of one day you unblocking him, his second text delivering at last, and he might wake up to a ‘happy late birthday, asshole’ message on his screen.
an: listen…….kia suggested that i turn this fic loose into the internet, so i did, because i'm a faithful steed <3 ...would anyone even believe me if i said i was writing a mostly-wholesome hendery fic before throwing myself back into this wip? oops. lemme get back to that real quick.
lmk your thoughts, fears, concerns, or anything!!
ok. love u. bye.
