There was a time when Jaehwan cared enough to make it to his bed after a heavy night of clubbing. Now he wakes with his face pressing against cold tiles, sometimes in his bathroom, sometimes in the kitchen, even once on the threshold of his front door, long legs and broad shoulders crammed on the rug inside.

Today he opens his eyes, curled up in fetal position in his bathtub. Every part of his body aches from drinking. After a moment or two, the all-too familiar ringing that vibrates through his ears and entire head causes him to shut his eyes again.

The bathroom clock reads 2:45 PM.

~

Jaehwan doesn’t even bother getting up half these days. When he does, he completely ignores the trashy state of his apartment, sidestepping the permanent mountain of dishes in his sink as he pushes a frozen waffle into a toaster that feebly pops the waffle out a minute later. A couple more hours trudge away as Jaehwan perches on his rickety tabletop, scrolling through his phone without really looking at anything that passes.

A particularly bad bout of headaches hit Jaehwan as he finally finishes the last soggy remains of the waffle. Groaning and shoving piles of outdated art magazines and frozen dinner leftovers aside, he makes space for his head to sleep some more.

His phone reads 12:30 PM.

~

Though Jaehwan usually sleeps most of the day away, he finds himself exhausted as he stares at the clothes strewn around his room. Having given up on laundry long ago, he finds a rusty pair of scissors somewhere and slices off the sleeves of an old T-shirt.

After pulling on his new shirt and a pair of black jeans, he splashes water on his face. He always averts his eyes from his reflection in the grimy mirror—because he doesn’t need to see the shell of a person that he’s gradually come to realize is himself, he needs to go on his daily drinking binge.

He can’t find his ID anywhere, though. So Jaehwan ends up on his bed with an arm thrown over his eyes (to block the gray light streaming in from a cracked window). His eyes close almost immediately.

Not long after, the sun begins to set.  

~

The landlord has been leaving rent notices on Jaehwan’s front door, in increasingly desperate attempts to get Jaehwan to pay up, since Jaehwan never answers the door and he only ever leaves in the dead of the night. Jaehwan hasn’t responded to a single one of these notices yet. He doesn’t even know what one of these papers looks like.

However, in the middle of his waffle nibbling, on one of the days Jaehwan has given enough s to get up and get dressed, a figure enters his apartment with a spare key, shoving the pale red rent paper underneath Jaehwan’s nose.

Jaehwan raises an eyebrow without even looking away from his phone, “Haven’t seen you in a while.”

“Could say the same to you,” Taekwoon hops onto the table, sliding so that his hip melds against Jaehwan’s.

Jaehwan leans his head against Taekwoon’s shoulder as Taekwoon wraps his strong white arms around Jaehwan. They stay that way for a while, each looking through their respective phones, slowly whiling the day away.

It’s late at night when Jaehwan begs Taekwoon to help finagle them into a club. Taekwoon agrees most reluctantly.

“You need to get a job again so you can pay off your rent, and that dump you call an apartment really needs cleaning,” Taekwoon shouts over the pounding music, but Jaehwan ignores him, sloppily pouring drink after drink down his throat. There’s alcohol dripping onto Jaehwan’s shirt, and he knows he looks downright pathetic, but he just can’t stop—and he won’t.

Taekwoon tries to get Jaehwan’s attention again several times over the next few hours, but Jaehwan weakly shoves him away, Taekwoon’s final “Jaehwan I’m seriously worried about you—” falling short on his ears.

Later, when Jaehwan’s throwing up in bushes outside a club, and Taekwoon is pounding his back, Jaehwan notices in a haze that the salty tears intermingled with the vomit on the earth aren’t his.

It’s only late next day when Jaehwan wakes in his own bed, musty sheets carefully tucked around him, that he realizes that Taekwoon hasn’t given up on him yet. It actually hurts Taekwoon to see Jaehwan wasting away like this.

It doesn’t matter if hundred or a thousand people care about his situation, though, Jaehwan thinks. He presses his face into his sweat-stained pillow. No matter how many people care, it’s all irrelevant, because he’s given up long ago. 

____

author's note: hopefully this was okay, like i said, this is my first time posting, so any feedback is welcome....i don't know if i should continue writing or not cause i've always felt more comfortable reading but if this wasn't too bad i might consider writing more :) thanks for reading!