Sitting down, talking out… feelings or thoughts or emotions or anything that required him to pry apart his rib cage and search for a remnant of any of them, well, it made him weary. There were only so many self-operations that he could perform before the blood ran dry — before he’d ragdoll and ask for relief, for someone to take his place so that he may do little more than nap. But the days were long, nights seemingly elongated and punctuated by the soft hums of nearby appliances that in many ways shouldn’t have been where his attention was drawn, and yet he found himself staring over the other’s shoulder, gaze lazily locked on the humming cooler that seemed to blink back at him in neon Morse code.
To say they were friends would be a stretch. Frankly he only had two friends and one of them he was sleeping with exclusively, so he was certain that made it more than “friends”. But did he care about the young man before him? … He was not a man of affectionate words, small pockets of time where one could feel safe and calm, only to be tossed back into the sea of violent thrashing and towering waves that’d crash into him, sending him to and fro with little care as to where he’d end up.
And he supposed this — this very seat — was where he was supposed to end up on a day like today.
“What’s so crazy about being able to talk to another person?” the Iksan native posed, uncrossing his arms to reach for the ceramic coffee cup before him. Unlike his exterior may have suggested, he held it daintily, pinky out and a pair of fingers gently supporting the mug. As he took a sip of the dark liquid, the soloist furrowed his brow, lips pulling tight against his teeth. “They sell fantasies of us, you know that. It’s best not to rabbit hole.”
The more the trainee praised him, the more of a strained smile Deoksu felt peeling across his lips. He hadn’t exactly been proud of his past actions, and hearing that this former mold of himself had been what encouraged the younger to join the industry was… disconcerting at best.
But a part of him felt… saddened. His fractured smile curled into a frown, but it almost immediately snapped into a smirk as he chuckled.
“Don’t give me a big head. We know what happened last time.”
Geonwoo let out a nervous laugh at Deoksu’s comment. Of course, the elder had a point. At the core of it all, him and Deoksu were really just two ordinary people with unusual careers. There wasn’t anything otherworldly about the man across from him, nothing written into his genes that made him something extraordinary. But Geonwoo still couldn’t quite reconcile the image of the Spyder he had seen in music videos and on TV screens with the idea of Ahn Deoksu, normal person in a coffee shop. There was still a bit of a halo around him, and even though Geonwoo knew better, both from meeting Deoksu several times and from getting involved in the industry himself, it was hard for that image to fade.
“I know,” he replied, reaching for his coffee only after Deoksu had already picked up his own. Geonwoo had never particularly been one of proper manners, and watching Deoksu hold his cup so daintily made him nervous. He picked his up with uncertain hands, pausing with the hot cup in his hands for a few moments before turning his face away to take a sip. When he set it back down, he tucked his hands under his legs anxiously.
“I know how it’s like, I’ve been here long enough,” he continued after a few moments. “But.. Still, it’s kind of hard to believe it right? I grew up listening to you, and now we’re having coffee like it’s nothing.”
Geonwoo wasn’t the most observant person, but he noticed the shift in Deoksu’s expression, his own mirroring the elder’s fall. Deoksu’s comment confirmed what Geonwoo had thought he was thinking, and he let out a sigh. “Not trying to give you a big head,” he clarified bluntly. “I just respect you. The past is the past, or whatever.” He waved a hand hurriedly, trying to clear the atmosphere, never one for feeling heavy.
