(Kyungil POV)
...
By the time you make it to your hotel room, you're so happy to be off of the plane and unpacking that you end up chasing your roommate off with your unpredictable mood. "I'm gonna go hang out in the other rooms," he says before he leaves you to organize your luggage. It's about five minutes before there's a knock at the door and you sigh, because every time you go overseas, someone forgets their keycard and you're always the one who has to solve it. You answer the door, expecting to see Dokyun waiting patiently, but your assumption proves to be incorrect as your eyes land on someone considerably shorter than your roommate. 

He's standing in the hallway, a few feet from the door, and he stares up at you the second you open it. "Can I come in?" he asks expectantly. "Uh... now's not exactly a good time," you reply. "Really? Are you hiding someone in there?" His smile fades as you look down at your feet. "Oh," he says, "I didn't realize. I'll go." He turns to leave, but you reach out to stop him before you realize it, grab onto his hand and pull him back toward you. "There's no one in there now, but there will be, and I don't know when he'll be back," you explain, even though keeping him here is an awful idea and you should have let him believe you weren't alone. "He's in my room with Jaeho. He saw me leave so I don't think he'll risk coming back for a while."

"Why is that a risk?" He sighs. "It's not, but he thinks it is." You let go of his hand belatedly and stuff your hands in your pockets. "So, can I come in?" You should say no, but there isn't another logical reason you can give him, so you let him in. He sits on the floor, leans back against the foot of your bed, closes his eyes. "Are you okay?" you ask as you sit down next to him. "I don't want to pretend," he admits. "I know, but what other option is there?"

"I don't know," he whispers, and it's breaking your heart because you know this is the right thing, you know it'll be better for him in the long run, but it's hard to remember that when he seems so sad and small. "If you really can't, then just ignore me and we'll figure out how to explain it later." He opens his eyes and looks over at you. "I don't think I can ignore you either." 

"What do you want then?" He's fidgety and he's wringing his hands and you think that this can only end one way, but you can't just kick him out, you can't lie to him anymore, you can't make this harder on him, so you wait for him to answer. "If you were happy being with me, then we could try again, we could... but it doesn't matter because you weren't happy, so maybe I just want to be able to make you happy." His honesty is killing you, it's breaking through the barriers you tried to build between the two of you, it's dangerous and risky and you should really tell him to leave, but you don't have the strength. "I told you that wasn't your fault," you tell him in an attempt to cover up your lies. "It's not about fault, if you were happy, it might be worth the risk."

"No, it wouldn't," you try weakly, but he's never going to believe you. "It wouldn't?" You shake your head. "This is over for a reason, and it has nothing to do with my happiness." He nods slowly, stares at the floor, bites his lip. "You still think you need to protect me, don't you," he mumbles softly. "Yeah," you whisper. "From what?" From me, you think, but he'll probably never understand it, so you keep those reasons to yourself. "From giving up on what you want for something that can never last." 

"What if I don't need it to last? What if I just..." he trails off. "It isn't fair for you to have to settle." His voice breaks a little as he replies, "None of this is fair." You know he's right, but nothing that he says, no words in any language you've ever heard could make it fair, so you're not sure that it's even worth the effort. "Then we should run away," you suggest, and he sniffles quietly. "Where would we go?" You shrug. "Somewhere far away, somewhere with pretty mountains and interesting buildings, someplace where no one's even heard of us." 

He sighs and you know it's ridiculous to even think about leaving, to think of taking him with you, because the reason you're in this mess is because you both want the attention, you can't lay low, you can't pretend to be normal and get normal jobs and live like normal people, not yet. "I'll get a job as a personal trainer and you can find one at recording studio and we'll compromise between my lake house and your tiny apartment and I'll cook and you can shop and we'll forget about this, we'll start over." He reaches out and brushes his hand against yours. "I know you don't mean it, but thanks for saying it anyway." He might be wrong, because it feels like there's a chance that you do mean it, even though it's wrong and it could never work, and you don't want him that way anyway so it can't matter, right? It's just a sarcastic, optimistic, ridiculous plan, right? (There isn't any part of you that wants to run away with him, right?)

He stands up from the floor. "You gonna be okay tomorrow?" you ask even though you know his answer already. "I'll be fine," he assures you, but you can't really believe him. "I won't cry if you don't," he adds confidently. "You're sure about that?" He nods affirmatively. "Then I guess I won't cry." He's leaving and you should let him, but you can't keep your thoughts to yourself one moment longer. "Everything's ending," you mumble, and he looks away in an attempt to hide the hurt in his eyes. "We knew it would end. All of it." 

"Is that supposed to make me feel better?" He shakes his head. "It's not forever," he whispers, "it's just a couple of years." You clear your throat, disrupting the emotion gathering there. "When did you turn into an optimist?" you say, standing up from the floor. "Maybe something could change by then. It's possible, right? Things change sometimes, don't they?" He's looking up at you, holding eye contact, desperation behind his eyes. "Sometimes, sometimes they do." He swallows hard, looks away from you in embarrassment. "But sometimes they don't," you add, "sometimes things don't change just because you ignore them."

"But how are you supposed to know the difference?" He's looking at you again, tears threatening to spill over his swollen eyelids, and you think you might actually be dying this time. "I know you think I do, but I don't have all the answers." He thinks you can protect him and he thinks you know the answers to his questions and he thinks that you hold all the power, but as it turns out, none of those things are true. He looks away for a moment, then back at you with renewed determination in his eyes. "Maybe things don't change until someone makes them."

He crosses the distance between you in two steps and then he's kissing you, and his skin is damp with tears and his hand is grasping your hair to angle your face closer to his and he's balancing on his toes so he can reach you and you can't help it, you kiss him back, you wrap your hands around his waist. His feet leave the ground as you lift him into your arms and he tangles his legs around yours as you turn around to set him down on the desk behind you. He seems lighter, weaker than you remember and you wonder how long it's been since he ate an actual meal. To think he had tried to convince you he could take care of himself. (But you know the reason he can't is you.)

Despite the position you've gotten yourselves into, you don't want to do anything to escalate this situation further because this can't keep happening and your roommate will be back at some point and, as it turns out, he remembered to take his key to the lock, so you rest your hands against his face and you ignore his fists balled up in your shirt and you ignore the muffled whines that leave his throat and echo in your mind and you ignore the way he keeps trying to pull you closer to him, the way the edge of the desk is digging through your jeans and into your skin. This has to stop, you have to stop him, you have to stop— 

"I love you," he mumbles against your lips, and it shouldn't take something like that to drag you back to reality, but you're grateful regardless. You pull away from him, feel his legs tighten around your thighs as he locks his ankles together and looks up at you. "This isn't something you can change," you explain softly, more breathless than you'd like to admit. "Give me one more chance, I can figure out how to make you happy, I can learn," he begs, and you wonder how long he's been feeling like this, you wonder how he can possibly believe that you weren't happy with him, you wonder why you're only good at lying to him. "Please," he adds, "I know we don't have a lot of time left, but I'm a quick learner, I know I can do it if you'll let me try again, I'll do whatever you want me to, just let me try. Just one more time."

You are an awful person. You're the devil, no, you are worse than the devil himself for letting this poor, wonderful, beautiful boy believe that he doesn't possess the ability to make you happy, that he isn't enough for you, that he has to drive himself crazy trying to prove his worth to you. You are the one who is worthless, you're the one who is unworthy of him, you're the one who doesn't deserve his perfection. You are worthless, you are hopeless, and you can't lie to him anymore. 

"I was happy," you whisper, close your eyes to ignore the shock in his, lean in to kiss him again. Either he takes a moment to process your words or he's trying to weigh the pros and cons of getting mad at you against breaking contact again, but either way he pulls backs from you slowly and looks at you, he looks hurt and confused and you wonder if you should have kept lying. "You lied? About that too?" Your lie about meeting someone else was a lie of omission, not that it matters to him right now, but this lie was real. This lie was deliberate and he deserves to hate you for it. (He deserves so much better than you.)

"You were happy?" he whispers and you know he did believe you, he trusted you and you betrayed him, and you're dying, you're suffocating in the relative silence because you're waiting for him to explode, you're waiting for him to realize how awful you've been to him, you're waiting for him to finally see that he's worth more than this. (You've been waiting for almost a year now.)

He swallows hard, his eyes still damp and reddened, he looks down at his hands which are still tangled in the fabric of your shirt. "You were happy," he repeats, like he doesn't believe the words, like he doesn't understand what they mean. "You are more than capable of making me happy." He looks back up at you, releases your shirt from his grasp, takes a deep breath. You hold yours. "Why did you wait this long to tell me? We're running out of time."

"I wanted you to hate me, so you could move on." He scoffs, tears still evident in his voice. "That's not how it works," he tells you. "I had to try," you mutter weakly. He slides himself off the desk, you back up to give him room to think. "I should... I should go..." He turns away, but you reach out to stop him, place your hand on his waist. "I'm sorry I keep screwing this up," you tell him softly. "This," he mutters, "I don't even know what this is." He has a point, you've never talked about it, what this all means. Not in any real way, not in a concrete, factual way that would make sense to him, and you have your reasons for that, but it's not fair to him, he shouldn't have to live in limbo, and maybe you'd tell him exactly what this is, if you knew yourself. "What do you want it to be?"

"What I want doesn't mean anything," he replies. "That's not true," you complain. "It is true," he insists. "It means something to me!" you say, your voice increasing in volume. "No, it doesn't," he mumbles, looking down at the ground. "Just tell me and we'll find out," you suggest. "Don't make me say it," he begs, but you want to hear it, you want to hear what you already know in his words. "Just tell me what you want from me." He looks back up at you and he's biting his bottom lip so hard, you think he'll break the skin. "I just want to be with you," he whispers finally. "And that doesn't mean anything?" He shakes his head. "Not if you don't want to be with me." Oh. Right. He still thinks you're strong, he still thinks you can protect him, he still thinks you don't mean it when you say you love him. "Everything is ending even if it's not what we want," you remind him, "but that doesn't mean we can't want it to stop." 

"It still doesn't change anything." You nod slowly, move closer to him despite the alarm bells ringing in your head. "But it means something," you whisper, your eyes dropping to meet his, "it means something to me." He looks away from you, leans back against the desk behind him. "But you're still leaving," he reminds you softly. "Not yet." He sighs, because you're pretending not to understand, you're pretending that there's another possible outcome, but he's too smart for that. (He's too smart for you, and yet.) 

"If you can't pretend that everything is okay, then at least pretend that this isn't the end." He shakes his head. "Tell me it's not the end and I'll believe you." The truth is that this has ended as many times as it's started, the truth is that this is never going to be over as long as you're alive, the truth is that you don't want to leave him either, you want to protect him for the rest of your life, you want to be there for him, you want to be with him, but the truth never does you any good anyway. "I don't know what this is," you say, move in close to him, reach out to touch his face, "but this is not the end." You lean down to kiss him one last time and he lays his hands against your neck. "You should go back to your room, tell him the coast is clear," you instruct after a moment. "Say it again," he whispers, and you think you should wonder what he means, but you don't. "This is not the end."

(He readjusts his clothes and his hair before he walks out the door, he turns back to look at you once more, a sad smile tugging at his lips, and you don't know why but you feel much worse than you would if this really was the end.)