pt. 10
3:37am(Kyungil POV)
...
He's not saying anything, he doesn't say a word to you or anyone else once the live stream ends, not one word on the ride back to the dorm. You know this was a bad idea, convincing him that you could make this work at home, especially considering that it doesn't really work when you're away either, but it's too late to take it back now.
You don't see him until later that night, when you're grabbing a beer from the fridge and he comes out of his room for a bottled water. His eyes are sleepy and he's dressed for bed and he stops when he sees you, when you turn around and lean back against the fridge, pop open your beer and take a gulp. "I just need some water," he whispers, walking toward you and reaching toward the fridge. "Are you done giving me the silent treatment?"
"I don't have anything to say," he says as a weak defense, his hand falling to his side. "I think there's actually a lot you could say, but I'll start if you can't think of anything." You put your hand on his arm, look at him sincerely. "I'm sorry," you say. "For what?" You step away from the fridge, allow him to open it. "For breaking the rules. That one about unnecessary touching, I broke it and I'm sorry." You realize belatedly that you just broke it again. He retrieves a water bottle, starts to walk back down the hall. "That's it?" you say, your voice creeping above a whisper. He turns back to look at you. "Maybe we need to pause this again," he says softly. "Is that what you want?"
"What I want doesn't matter," he replies and you want to disagree, but he wouldn't believe you even if you weren't in this situation. "I'll be more careful," you tell him confidently (you hope). "It's my fault, I broke the rules first." He hangs his head, like he thinks you blame him, but you know you're the only one to blame, you're the one who let this happen, you're the one who suggested forgoing the pause button, you're the one that got handsy with him because you were worried, but even if you hadn't done any of those things, you'd still bear the blame because you're in charge and you're older than him and you're supposed to protect him. (You used to be so good at your job.)
"None of this is your fault," you say, your voice dropping back down to a whisper. He shakes his head. "You're only doing this because I want to, I should have kept it under control." You reach toward him, grab his hand, stare at him until he finally looks at you. "I'm not here because it's what you want. I made the first move, remember?" You're not exactly sure why it's so important to you that he knows it, but you tell him anyway. (Because he deserves to know that you're not what he deserves.)
You know he'll keep trying to blame himself all night if you let him, so you don't give him the chance, you hold his hand and you lead him to your room, you close the door and you place your drinks on your dresser and you lean in and you rest your hands on his face and you kiss him until it doesn't matter who's to blame. (He'll realize that you're to blame someday anyway.)
You spend the early morning looking at his sleeping figure and agonizing over how busy you're going to be for the next couple of months, how tired you already are, how your exhaustion always ends up hurting him in one way or another. You know this isn't much of a secret anymore, not to anyone who's paying attention, but you're still pretending that you're being subtle, that you're not taking unnecessary risks, that no one has any idea what you're doing when you're alone with him.
You decide to try and wake him up because you have a schedule and you also have a tendency to drive yourself crazy when he's not awake to distract you, but he doesn't seem to care about that now, he rolls away from you and mumbles, "Too tired, hate bowling." You chuckle at his grumpiness, you've forgotten just how much he hates getting out of bed in the morning because he's seemed a lot more willing to wake up lately, and sometimes he even wakes up before you just so he can be the one to kiss you awake. (You're glad your influence on him isn't always a bad thing.)
You lay your hand on his back, trail your fingers down his spine, command yourself not to say anything stupid because there is a sort of warm feeling growing in your heart and that is exactly the place where it shouldn't be happening, he makes you feel so cozy and safe and that's a bad thing only because you have a habit of opening your mouth without thinking when you feel safe, opening your mouth and saying ridiculous things that shouldn't be said because they shouldn't be true, things like, 'I missed you' or 'I think you're so beautiful' or 'I love you', and you really used to believe that you could keep everything under control. You thought if anyone was going to get too attached, it would certainly be him, so you had nothing to worry about. (Have you always been this dumb?)
You accept your stupidity for right now, halt your endless internal reflections, return your focus to the boy who's trying valiantly to go back to sleep next to you, because he's so damn cute when he defies you, and you can't help but lean down to press kisses into his back, next to his spine, one after the other, trailing a lazy pattern of something that can't possibly be love across his skin. He sighs and mutters, "It's not gonna work."
"What?" you say, your words muffled by his skin. "I'm not getting up yet." You laugh. "You sure about that?" You can almost hear him roll his eyes at your childishness, he turns over so he can see you and you realize how far you made it down his back because his waistband is about an inch from your chin and you look up at him. "Give it your best shot," he teases and you glance at the clock, sit up and shake your head. "We have to leave in an hour and a half and that is not nearly enough time." He lets out a frustrated squeak and he's just so freaking precious, and you really just want to kiss him, but if you start, you'll never make your schedule, so you settle for ruffling his hair and climbing out of bed.
You start to get dressed and he buries his head in your pillows again. You remember that the two of you didn't really solve anything last night, that things are just as volatile as ever, but he's too sleepy to talk about anything right now, and he looks worn out but not upset, so you let it go, drag him out of bed in time to get ready for work. He whines the whole time, but he's not just being dramatic, you can tell from the dark circles under his eyes that he's not exaggerating his exhaustion, and it's definitely partially your fault, and you decide that you could all desperately use a day off, you'll ask your manager later, he'll arrange it for you.
That's how you find yourself on a not-a-date with him a few days later, sitting in the back of an empty theater, trying to focus on a movie that you've been wanting to see for weeks, but he's decided to direct all of his focus to you and the next thing you know, you're making out in the back of a dark theater like you're in high school or something, not that you're complaining because the movie was kind of disappointing anyway. Or at least, the first ten minutes were.
You have to stop being so obvious, you have to stop taking so many risks, you have to stop wanting this so badly, but right now you owe it to him to stop trying to figure out how to stop and focus on the fact that he deserves this, he deserves your full attention.
The credits roll and you're confused by the ending, and not just because you only saw about fifteen minutes of the movie, but you'll have to watch it again later because he's holding your hand and staring off into space and he doesn't look okay, he almost looks sick. You squeeze his hand and ask, "Are you alright?" He snaps back into reality, looks over at you, his eyes sad and cold. "I'm fine," he tries, but you have a few more minutes of credits and you're not going to let him lie to you this time, and you have a sneaking suspicion that you know exactly why he seems so different than he did a minute ago.
"I know the movie was kind of lame, but it's nothing to cry over," you say, lean over to run your hand across his scalp. "I'm not crying," he insists, but his voice wavers a little and he looks away from you in embarrassment. You lay your hand on his forehead, but he shakes it off. "No fever, so what is it?" He stands up, grabs his phone from the cup holder. "We should go, it's late."
"You know I'm gonna bug you until you spit it out, but I'm really tired, so can't we just skip all of that?" you suggest. "This isn't a hookup!" He tries to walk past you, but you rest your feet on the seat in front of you so he can't escape. You should deny it, but he's upset and he's already on the brink of tears and you can't do that to him right now because this is your fault and you should've protected him from this. (You should have protected him from you.)
"Then what is it?" you ask, but you know he won't answer you because he probably doesn't know either. "We should go," he whispers instead. "Answer my question first," you insist, because you want him to be angry, you want him to call you out on this, you want him to be upset that you keep hurting him, you want him to realize that this isn't something he should want, that this will destroy him, that he has to grow up and protect himself because you're too selfish to do it for him anymore. (Maybe you never did it in the first place.)
"I can't, we have to go," he says, trying to push past your legs and escape, but you don't budge. "You have to pay the toll first," you try to joke, because he's not frustrated enough to direct his anger at you yet and he's getting all serious again and it's hurting you to see him hurting and you can't make it stop, so this will have to do for now. He shakes his head and rolls his eyes, which are still watery, leans down to kiss you, you slide your feet back down to the floor, wrap your arms around his waist, pull him into your lap, keep him from leaving. "Do you regret it?" you say, and you think he'll ask which part, but he doesn't, he just shakes his head again and stands up from your lap.
When you get back to the dorm, he boards himself up in his studio to work and you don't know what to do, you didn't want to make this harder for him, but you should have known that your not-a-date would turn into a date-by-any-other-name and that you'd just end up hurting him, just like you always do.
It takes you about ten minutes to decide to raid his studio and fix this, even though that is the extent of your plan and your intent to fix this will fade when you see his face, but you invade his space anyway, sit next to him at his computer, spin his chair so he's facing you. "Do you want to pause this again?" you ask. "Pausing this doesn't make it better."
"What would make it better?" His shoulders drop and he looks down at his lap. "If it was real." You might have known he was thinking it, but you didn't think he would actually say it, so you're caught a little off guard. It is real, that's the problem, you think, and this is all your fault. "Real how?" you whisper, because it might help if you know what he wants, what this means to him, where he wants this to end up, and it might help him if he got to tell you. "Real like a rel—" he stops, rolls his chair back from you. "Forget it."
"Isn't that the problem? Isn't that why you're upset? Because tonight felt kind of... normal?" You're not sure if normal is exactly the right term, but making out in a theater for two hours seems a little more like a date than anything else and you know he knows it, you know he's trying to forget it and you should be trying too, but you're putting it off. "Tonight felt... I don't know, didn't it feel kind of right to you too? Like it... like we're supposed to..." he trails off and he looks crushed because you're still staring at him like you don't understand, but you're only doing it because you want him to say it first, you want him to say that this is what he wants because maybe it would be okay, maybe you could forget everything else if this is really what he wants, if he really understands that the two of you can't have a future, if he can accept that right now is all you get.
"Never mind," he mutters, "of course you wouldn't feel that way." He stands up from his chair and he starts to leave, but you say his name and he stops immediately, halfway between you and the door. You walk closer to him, rest your chin on his shoulder, wrap your arms around him. "So, is that what you want? Instead of pausing this, you want... an upgrade?" He sighs. "What I want isn't important. What matters is that I can't do this if I have to wonder what we... what I mean to you all the time. Am I a hookup? Am I just a distraction? I don't want an answer, I want you to tell me what this is and keep it that way." In theory, he's got the right idea, he's got a good plan, but in reality you've been questioning what he means to you for months and the answer is always changing and you keep getting more and more confused and conflicted, but if this is what he needs from you, then you'll try.
"You are..." you stop, make him rotate to face you, because you can't do this if you aren't looking at him. "You are my friend and sometimes I take advantage of that so that I don't fall apart." It's not exactly a lie, but he is more than just your friend and sleeping with you is not how he keeps you from falling apart, you just know that admitting it would make this worse. "It's... not a hookup, but this obviously isn't a relationship either, so what am I?"
"You're mine," you say, unaware of how wrongly possessive it sounds until the words leave your lips, so you add, "unless you don't want to be." He bites his lip. "I want to be, but you don't want to date me, so we have to keep this from feeling like we're dating." You're not sure what you want from him, but you have no choice but to agree. "So, no more movies?" you clarify. "No more movies," he confirms, but the statement carries a lot more weight than that. "We either have to press pause again or save this for when we're really desperate."
"I don't want to pause it," you say and he nods. "Then we'll just dial it back until we go back on tour." He steps away from you, sits down on the couch. "And when we do go back?" you prompt. "We'll... renegotiate." You sit next to him. "So we just... ignore each other until then?" He scoffs. "We follow the rules, for real this time." You nod, try to remember all the rules he had made a month ago. No sleeping next to him, keep kissing to a minimum, no touching unless you're hooking up. You think you might be forgetting a few, but you're not going to ask him to remind you. He sticks out his pinky. "Promise?" he says and it's childish and it doesn't mean anything, but you link your pinky finger with his anyway, because he deserves to get what he wants. "Promise."
(It doesn't sink in until later, when you can't sleep and everything is quiet and he's in his own bed, but at some point you started to want an actual relationship with him and you're not ready to deal with that just yet, so you block it out and focus on making this easier on him instead.)
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