The reading room in Cheong Ryong’s dorm is still weirdly cold even in the late afternoon, the warmer spring sun not being enough to warm it. So Taehyun sits on the leather couch, black hair falling on his face as he opens his book, The Vegetarian, by Kang Han. He sighs in deeply, slightly upset by how he’s not been reading these last few days, these last few weeks to be more precise. Things have been so crazy lately, so much shit, so many things he simply doesn’t even want to deal with right now. So he tries to hide himself somewhere else, another land, anywhere. When reality is too much, Taehyun always knew where to find shelter.
But his peace and quiet is broken by the door opening, a tall figure joining him in the room. Taehyun can’t help but hold his breath, that very same feeling he gets in his gut whenever he sees him – a mixture of hatred and fear, and a hint of memories he doesn’t want to remember at all right now.
He should stand up and leave. He should, god, he fucking should. But he just stays where he is, legs crossed, book in hand, watching as Jaeho makes his way into the room. There is this thing Taehyun feels, this electricity in him that makes him stay. A death wish, if you will. He must have one for sure, seeing how many boys obviously stronger than him he has been willingly provoking.
“Jaeho-sshi,” he calls before he can stop himself, “having a nice day?” A friendly question, though he knows the other knows better than that.
You have the skin of your enemies between your teeth and their pleadings under your nails —
and you look like a burning pyre.
Disgusting.
It’s only in times like this where he feels the most burden.
Jaebum sits alone.
Back, slouched against one of the many duplicates of chairs. Knees, with the slightest pressure atop them from the bottom of the desk. Hands, incredibly dry and numb as they rest in his lap. His gaze remains lazy and subdued, in a blank stare at nothing in particular. Yet, if he moves his eyes at all they would be hindered from their strangely blurred focus.
His mind wanders, recklessly into what he admits to never forgetting.
Shin Jaeho stood taller than him, as always.
He had something new that stained black and blue, per usual.
Jaebum made sure to wait in the right places, even corners and behind doors, to get a first look at their newfound experimentation. He would find himself trembling, in case he set his eyes upon his own fate. He would shiver at the thought of blades grazing his skin as they did here, or bruise the very bone as they did there, or perhaps send such a fucked up message elsewhere.
Occassionally, he’d find Jaeho biting down on cloth — by choice.
To keep from making sounds, but to keep his pride from escaping in any way. Jaebum’s noticed a few “initiate scars”on his own skin, but on the other there’s something so much deeper that he now watches the other in caution. He’s no longer waiting, but he’s anticipating to see what those blades and bruises have created two years later.
Chest, rising with a deep inhale and falling with a sharp gust of breath.
Arms cross, a chainmail to keep his burden from bursting.
The feel of tailored cotton is stark from the silk.
So this is how it feels, to straighten your sleeve and clip your cufflink as your figure stands in the mirror. Where Jaebum stares at himself for once, to think that he’d have to get used to it all.
How his cufflinks would be in his pocket by the early rise, and tailored cotton would be hanging in the corner. It would be too hot to bother with looking sophisticated, even the styled look from this morning is tousled from fingers grabbing and frantically brushing. Where stress rises with each changing number, any wrong estimate causes his estate to drop, for relations to fault, and for his career to crumble.
Jaebum watched his dad, his mirror, every day from there on out.
Eyes, they blink and fall out of the blurry gaze.
There must be something better to think about, as the day dies to birth the night.
Jaebum pissed him off only once.
Only when he came back, with a hefty stain on his shirt. Crisp clean met a blueberry hue that day, when the idiot had the audacity to walk into the lunch room and ask a girl out to a party. Jaebum wasn’t there to hear Taemin’s words, but he managed to see Sungjae sneak out from the heavy swinging door later on.
Taemin had called Jaebum an asshole.
Sungjae couldn’t stop laughing.
Jaebum apologized to him only once.
Taemin complained that he didn’t even want to go to the party in the first place, that it was for pretentious assholes like Jaebum and Sungjae (as if Taemin knew him at all). But Jaebum couldn’t help but follow the other to his room, in a silent apology for laughing at something as sincere as his feelings.
Lips, they curve ever so slightly.
Though, it leaves sooner than the thought.
Jisu had told him that Jiyong would be there, even Bobby was going to be there.
She was his only way of knowing anything about dumb and dumber, of knowing when he should turn and act like nothing happened on porcelain and tile. Where there was a damper of music and an acceleration of physical friction.
Jaebum remembered walking out, flustered and caught in a daze.
He remembered seeing Bobby look at him, first with a smile, but then it’s disappearance as he realized what he was looking at. That moment, it reminds Jaebum of why he was here. Why he lets polished red graze his cheek and sequined hips align so close to his own. It reminds him of why he hides, and why he can’t ever walk past the fucking bathroom without feeling —
Guilty.
He thinks, only for a moment, what it would mean to smile at Jiyong.
To have him smile back.
For once, Jaebum closes hie eyes.
His arm stretches out on the desk, where his head would rest to hopefully gradient to slumber. To his own day dying, to birth a night of numb understanding. Even in his unconscious state, Jaebum finds himself wandering amongst these memories. Where faces stare back, blank and with victimization written all over them.
For once, Jaebum feels such guilt.
That he never did enough.
That he never showed the truth.
That he’s hidden for too long.
“ There’s nothing wrong with that.
I won’t tell anyone, I promise.
I’m just curious about — you. That’s all. ”
He remembers it all too fucking vividly.
How Jinwoo reminds him of the blades and bruises; yet his words, words that are so much sharper and harder than he’d ever felt before. Where a voice like his hisses a curse so dark and sinister, so much like who he remembers.
It’s only times like this where Jaebum despises having a mind.
Back, cold and leaning solely on the pressure of his spine.
Hands, still dry but cold and numb from a lack of touch.
He doesn’t dare to open his eyes, even in the dark.
