December had been an interesting month for Dejun, really; it’d seen the complete collapse of the life he’d built for himself in Seoul, all in a matter of weeks: Jihyo’s unexpected departure, the mystery of Lucky Strike’s status, which became less of a mystery and took on a more grave prognosis with every passing day, the end of his lease, the return of Guanheng.
It’d been chaos, but in chaos he’d found a certain sense of freedom. He’d been able to shrug off a lot of his worries, even if he’d picked up a few new ones, and he liked the idea of a fresh start.
That was how him and Guanheng had come to share an apartment.
There was absolutely a strange sense of anxiety perched heavily in Dejun’s chest regarding the whole thing, but it’s what made sense; Dejun would rather not have to pay the rent alone, and Guanheng had nowhere else to go.
He tried to ignore the side of him that recognised how part of it was wanting Guanheng close.
They’d really only just settled in, although they’d done a poor job of that, having not finished unpacking what little they had even after several weeks. The place a tundra of a bachelor pad; sparse of furniture and decor.
And food, apparently, Dejun realises after a peek in the fridge.
“Guanheng?” He calls to the other man in Cantonese, “What do you want to eat?”
the light from his phone screen illuminates his face as he stands on the doorstep to the apartment. it’d been years since he last saw the man who perhaps might be right on the other side of this very door, and though excitement brewed in his stomach, a nervousness that brought bile to the back of his throat also surfaced. the last time he’d seen him, they’d both cried - it was a day that haunted guanheng.
now, here he was, homeless, tired, with a backpack, suitcase, and a very grumpy cat in a carrier, standing on the same man’s doorstep. would he still live there? would he slam the door in guanheng’s face before he could even apologise for how things ended? he was the only person guanheng wished to see, now that he really had nowhere to tie him down to.
would dejun still hate him for ending things?
he wondered, had the older boy changed at all in the years they’d been apart? had he grown taller, or matured more? did his hair still look the same, and did he still enjoy all the things he used to. in only a few years guanheng had, himself, changed a lot, on the outside at least. his interests had changed a little, but his morals, and his slightly pessimistic view of the world hadn’t changed much at all - how could it when he was thrown out of his home just for loving someone?
a meow drew him out of his deep thoughts, and he smiled slightly, leaning down to peer into the cat carrier and shush the fluffy ragdoll cat. maybe she knew they were close to her other dad, who she hadn’t seen for as long as guanheng hadn’t - he was sure she missed dejun just as much as guanheng himself did.
he takes a deep, shuddering breath, before stepping closer to the door and lifting his hand to press the bell, his heart hammering with nerves as he wonders if he got the right address, or if dejun even still lived here. he wasn’t entirely sure what he’d do if he didn’t live here anymore, and guanheng was unable to find him.
Dejun isn’t the sort to put on machismo, to puff his chest out, any of that, but he does like maintaining at least a little dignity, and is thusly loath to admit that he just needs to see his mother right now.
His parents’ apartment isn’t that far from his, and yet still it’s been too long since he’s made the trek; he’s just in a strange head space as of late.
It had taken him weeks to figure out that it was loneliness, in part because he was so unused to feeling it. He’d done such a good job avoiding it, but this year he’d lost a lot. He’d lost Lucky Strike, he’d lost a lot of his friends in the indie music scene, he’d regained Guanheng, and then lost him again, too.
For a while, he’d let the loneliness sink its teeth into him, deeply. It was a strange combination of feeling that he deserved the feeling, and relishing the sensation of feeling anything at all, his life having faded into a strange sort of gray.
But Dejun was soft, too soft; too weak to really withdraw from the world, to punish himself.
He’d only ever felt an aching conviction for two things in his life. Everything else was so much more comfortable when he just left it to the current, went with the flow. It was comfortable, he thought, to just let the river take things. Every time he tried to hold something close to his chest, it hurt him.
There was a time where he’d thought that music was the only thing that hadn’t, that the callouses on the tips of his fingers were enough to protect him, but lately even it had begun to sting.
His parents’ apartment is cool, and the air in it smells clean, like the plants his mother keeps dotted about the apartment. The smell of acrylic paint lingers in the air as well, because she’s got the door to her bedroom open. She takes him in there for a moment to look at the thing she’s painting, an impressionistic take on a photo of her and her family she’d found in a shoebox the previous week. Her and Dejun look at the photo, expressing for a moment how cute his grandmother was and had always been, and laughing at how terrible his uncle Chenglei’s hair had been as a teen.
She washes some grapes and slices a pear for them to share as they sit in the living room, putting on one of the records she’d collected in her youth, back when she was still in Hong Kong. He often tried to picture his mother as a young model, an aspiring actress, and although he’d often felt a sense of guilt at how much she’d given up to have himself and his brother, and to raise them, he thinks now, as he watches her sink into her plush chair, the one that is her chair, that she seems happy, surrounded by pretty flowers, a stripe of powder blue paint dried on the side of her forearm that she hadn’t noticed to watch. They sit in silence for a couple minutes, listening to Jeff Buckley croon about lilac wine, and he wonders what it was about this song in particular that she’d always loved so much, or how she’d first heard it.
His dog comes huffing over to him, fat and old, but always cute, still a baby. It was a little painful, to see him try to bounce and skip, too innocent for the age he’d reached. Dejun has to take him by his body and lift him onto the sofa beside him, his joints too stiff and painful for him to jump anymore, and as he stretches himself onto the sofa, stomach-down, the dog waddles into the small of his back, plopping his creaky body down into it with a characteristically short-snouted snort.
He thinks for a moment about how much more grey the fur around the pup’s eyes is now, and watches his mother stand to take the now-clean plate into the kitchen, and by the time she’s back, his eyes are filled with tears.
She notices, of course, and instead of sitting in her chair, she leans on the edge of the sofa, clutching the edge of the cushion so she can lower herself to the floor in front of him, turning so that she can mess his hair a bit, and as she does, he notices the stiffness in her joints too, and the tears wobble in his eyes, swelling so the world is blurred into frosted glass. He feels her lips on the frown of his head for a second, and reaches up to wipe his eyes, thinking that he should be embarrassed to be crying like this in front of his mother, at his age, but somehow feeling nothing more than relief.
“Why don’t you stay here with me tonight, huh?” she says, the concern that coloured her voice soft, “You can sleep in dad’s room, and we can get something nice for dinner.”
He can’t properly answer her, his throat thick with the urge so sob. He can only manage a pitiful nod, his tears tickling the bridge of his nose as they slide over it and onto the couch cushion.
it had been a long few months, and things had changed a lot. not in a particularly negative way, but in a way that had guanheng feeling as thought his world was spinning just a little off it’s usual tilt. it felt different, in a way that was hard to get used to, but not in a way that made him uncomfortable. change, after all, was meant to be good, and it would hopefully help him grow, and move on from a lot of old, childish hopes he’d been clinging onto.
the most notable change is probably how he spends his time, and who he spends it with. before march guanheng spent a lot of his time with dejun and dejun only. he’d go out working on videos or shoots for instagram, sending out emails from starbucks and trying to get a picture of his lunch in the best lighting, before heading home to dejun, to cuddle on their futon in the living room and watch some show or other on one of their laptops with take out containers from their dinner around them.
now, though, things were a little different. guanheng had been spending less time at home, and more time with kun, at his place usually. at first it had felt wrong, like he was betraying dejun by not spending every night with him, but he had to keep reminding himself that friends who lived together didn’t have to spend every evening together; most didn’t. of course, there was a sting in his chest from not seeing him as much, and sleeping in the same bed each night, after coming home from kun’s apartment, if he did go home, started to feel not quite right in a way.
guanheng loved dejun, and he knew wasn’t going to say he didn’t - he’d loved him non-stop since the first time he fell in love with him back in high school, and it was hard to stop loving him, even though he knew he had to. it was ridiculous - turning up on dejun’s doorstep, still in love with him. remaining his roommate even after moving from the first apartment, still in love with him. sleeping in the same bed as him because they ‘couldn’t afford two beds’, still in love with him. guanheng knew he couldn’t keep torturing himself - he had to move on.
that’s when he’d turned to kun in march. it had been a rather odd conversation, since guanheng had been so open about his intentions, and he’d been sure kun was going to say no (because really what sane, self-preserving person would say yes), but he hadn’t. he’d agreed to help guanheng out. now, here they were, months later, after multiple simple dates that had morphed into guanheng knowing the code to his apartment door, and letting himself in in the afternoons, groceries in hand more often than not, ready to cook kun a homemade meal for when he got back.
after kun got signed, the schedule changed a little, and guanheng began to stay over more often, to spend more time with him. he’d come later, cook later, and keep their food warm until kun arrived back from training. guanheng even asked a friend from instagram who’d trained in massage therapy about some tips for easy massages he could do for kun after he got back from training, since he knew he’d have had a strenuous day.
the less time guanheng spent at his own home, with dejun, the easier it felt to let go, in a way. that burning in the very depths of his chest remained when he looked at dejun; that instinct to beam, and grab his hand never left, but it became easier to tell himself he was moving on finally. he didn’t feel as guilty when spending the night with kun, and didn’t really think of the evenings he’d spent binge watching shows with dejun and eating take out.
in a way, guanheng finally had the clarity of mind to realise how much dejun and he had been clinging to how they acted before dejun moved away. it’s what they used to do - binge watch shows, or play music in their rooms while lounging around, often in their underwear. they hadn’t really grown up as much as he thought they should have, at least not in how they acted around each other. the thing that made guanheng realise how childish their relationship seemed at this point was how they’d never bothered to really cook for one another, just as they did as teenagers.
it would take one of them being sick for the other to cook something, but now guanheng was cooking homemade meals almost every night for kun, making sure to research dishes from where kun grew up to try and make it feel more like ‘mum’s cooking’ - which was always nice. guanheng felt more like a grown up, cooking meals and going out of his way to learn new skills just to help out someone he cared about.
but once he’d realised what his and dejun’s relationship had been lacking, the guilt hit. of course, now he knew he could do these things for someone, thinking about how he hadn’t really bothered for dejun stung somewhere far down inside him. they’d fallen into old habits without thinking about it when guanheng had showed up on his doorstep.
but it was time for them to both grow up and figure out what they really wanted.
guanheng was still pretty sure dejun had moved on - he wasn’t dumb enough to not notice all the signs that pointed to dejun having multiple casual partners before guanheng turned up, maybe even for a short while after he got there. dejun hadn’t sat around moping like guanheng had, he’d acted like a normal young adult and had those wild few years of sleeping around, it would seem.
guanheng hadn’t even held someones hand in a romantic way between dejun in high school and kun in march. of course, thing has progressed from hand-holding, but not too far. they didn’t exactly talk about the specifics of how slow they wanted to go, but it was as if it were something unspoken but acknowledged by both that they were taking things as slow as they felt necessary. with guanheng seeking someone to help him finally move on, and kun being masochistic enough to agree, it seemed smartest to go slow, and reevaluate where they stood every few weeks.
so far, things seemed to be looking like they were working, and guanheng felt like his life wasn’t standing so still anymore. he felt more motivated than he had done in months, lyrics starting to flow a lot easier, and sounding a lot happier these days. there was a renewed hope in everything he created, and despite him knowing he probably wouldn’t ever fully get over dejun, at this point, he’d accepted that moving on from him as much as possible was enough for him.
if guanheng could move on enough to feel things for someone else, then that was enough for him. he’d been frozen in this love for so long it felt as if his life had stood still for over three years, and he was finally thawing out. the less he focused on dejun, the better he felt. even so, he made sure to put aside time at least once a week to go out for coffee with dejun, to ask him about his week, and make sure he didn’t hold his hand.
it had taken conscious effort at first, but less so in recent weeks.
it had gotten to the point where guanheng really did feel something fluttery in his chest when kun smiled at him, and the mix of relief, and something akin to guilt that he felt almost had him in tears a few times. he was pretty sure the guilt was from feeling as though he still owed his entire heart to dejun and him alone, but he knew, logically, he didn’t owe dejun his heart any more, not after all this time.
guanheng thinks this all over as he sits on kun’s couch (not a futon, like he and dejun had in their pretty bare apartment), reading a book, which he’d not done in a very long time, as he never felt like he had enough time to spare, never felt relaxed enough to kick back and simply read a book. the smell of the stew he’d made for dinner emanating from the kitchen, where it was being kept warm in the slow cooker guanheng had invested in, realising how handy the ‘keep warm’ function was.
realising how much he feels like he’d grown up in just a few months, he smiles to himself a little, satisfied at his own personal growth, even if there’s a few things that still sting about the change up in habits. he doesn’t want to think about how dejun might be sitting along on the evenings when guanheng’s out now, and he makes a mental note to ask him what he does with his evenings more recently. guanheng doesn’t want to be the only one to grow up - he’s pretty sure dejun might need to as well, after all the months they’d spent wrapped up in each only each others company.
growing up wasn’t fun, most of the time, but boy did it feel empowering. from never cooking, to cooking almost every night, and taking what felt like a very strong grip on his life. he felt like hie head was clearer now, so he had time to think about what he really wanted to do with his future.
and of course, he missed qiuqiu (dejuns and his cat), but he knew she would keep dejun company now that he couldn’t as often.
