“I’ve been living alone for quite some time actually...” The familiar voice bounces off the wall before it lazily drips down to a background murmur inside his head. Jeonghan presses himself further against the headboard.

“Must be really sad sometimes, Cheol?” And further until his back could feel the hard wood crease against his exhausted skin.

One thing that with recovery is after a long, long time of making yourself believe you’re good and fully functioning, a happenstance—probably, the rain or Jeonghan should stop making excuses for him to tread back to the familiar flat— would trigger the surge of recollections and it’s back to summer, two years ago. Square one.

And Jeonghan is more than terrified.

The door of the room swings open, half of a broad back comes into view, turns around— “Yeah, my bedroom? Oh, wait,” and makes eye contact with him. “I’m sorry about that, I can’t. It’s messy.”

The door closes.

“Close the door on your way out.”

“Noted.” It’s all these things that Jeonghan hates: coffees sometimes taste way too sweet for his own liking; and, Seungcheol’s vacant voice that slips off nothing but a placid, cold shrug.

Jeonghan opts to scan the ruins of the room—messy, indeed. It’s too quiet and the padding of feet becomes fainter until he can’t hear them anymore like how he opted to stare at something far than to meet his eyes that day.

It’s four minutes before the door swings open again.

“Yoon Jeonghan, I’m going to scold you.”

“What? I’m not doing anything!”

“I will keep the door open.”

“Sure, sir.”

“What are you doing here?” There’s exhaustion laced in the other’s voice and if Jeonghan did not feel pathetic earlier, now he does.

He swears he tried his best to smile, to mock him, but his lips pulled down into a frown, tugging not only the corners of his lips but somewhere he doesn’t know. Or would not admit. “Finally found someone who could give you the time I wasn’t able to give you?”

Seungcheol tentatively walks around the crevices of Jeonghan’s faults and chooses to sit down on the edge of the bed. He reaches out to massage his left ankle and there’s resignation in the face that Jeonghan once did not expect to have. “Let’s get you home.”

That’s what he’s terrified with.

The younger pulls his feet back and curls his knees up to his chest.

“Don’t pull my leg too much, idiot. That hurts!”

Jeonghan should have been compromised to a daily routine of coming in to terms that eighteen isn’t probably way too young anymore, if not for Seungcheol.

“I won’t be doing this if you stretched enough before playing. You’re dumb. Do you know that?”

Sure the sheets sear desperately familiar under his flesh but the elder’s touch is more burning. He can’t tolerate it.

Maybe the worst kind of anger is the suppressed one, or maybe the one mingled with longing and silence—because not once did he take his gaze away from the other. Seungcheol gets up and opens the door.

That’s when Jeonghan asks. “Why can’t I have you the way that I want?”

Seungcheol turns around and there, Jeonghan finally sees-- the fury.

“Han, we shouldn’t be doing this.”

There’s a lot of things Jeonghan isn’t proud of but there’s also a hell lot of reasons for his actions. Rationalizations have paved him his way of getting on whatever he can carve out of guilt’s wrath. The end does justify the means, as he likes to say.

“What are you talking about?”

But Seungcheol’s touch, he decides, is something he won’t deprive himself of, even if it means slightly disturbing the conscience that has long been asleep in the back of his head.

“.”

“What do you want, Jeonghan? Attention?”

Jeonghan flinches at how his name rolls in the raven’s tongue. Attention, probably. He gets up and pats his shirt before he murmurs, “You.”

The laugh that escapes Seungcheol’s mouth is mocking, a hundred-eighty degree turn from the complacent voice he put up earlier. It reminds him of the tattoo that runs down Seungcheol’s back; makes him want to claw at it again, for the last time.

“If you’re expecting we could get back to the way we were, that’s a throw to the wind.”

But Jeonghan knows Seungcheol. He knows the slight quirk of his lips; even though it houses despise, he could tell how much he’s only controlling himself back. “Don’t you want me?”

“Don’t you want me?”

Jeonghan has his way of words. It comes through easy; as a talent he’s held close to his facades and walls.

“I—what?”

“I said, don’t you want me?”

Jeonghan has his way of words and he sometimes wish he shouldn’t have.

“Jeonghan, even if I begged you, you still wouldn’t stay.”

The younger only takes big three steps. Finally, inches away from the man, he’s breathless but he grips at the hem of the other’s shirt and he rests his head on his chest; a shout of surrender, defeat. “We could be friends... who don’t see other people.”

“What are we?”

“Friends.”

“Oh.”

“Huh,” Seungcheol spits but did not make any move to push him away. “Friends who ?”

“You enjoyed our arrangement.”

“Nothing has changed. I still need you and you still don’t want me.”

Jeonghan looks up and threads his finger through Seungcheol’s soft black locks, pushing the falling fringes away from his eyes, revealing the entirety of how exhausted he is. The younger relishes at the sight, melts at the warmth and aches at how his gaze seems just there.. and at the same time far. He doesn’t know what’s wrong with him.

“You look undeniably hot when your hair is pushed back.”

“So, I’ve been told.”

“’Thank you’ is the right answer to my compliment. I can see your ego from here.”

“We could still be friends for one last time.” His hands are fast to skim down the elder’s arms down his waist before he’s forcibly yanked back and pushed off and out the door. Seungcheol’s grip is hard around his upper arm and it hurts but nothing merely compares to how pathetic he had come.

“Get out, Jeonghan.”

This time the smile comes easy for Jeonghan, pain hidden behind deceit and a smirk that stretches beautifully across his features. “How about you, Cheol? What do you actually need from me?”

“I don’t need someone who only likes me from afar.”

Jeonghan’s first sentences upon meeting Seungcheol is, “Don’t even try sitting on that chair. I don’t need anyone. And I’m not even slightly interested for a date.”

Circumstances shouldn’t have let the two happen.

Seungcheol’s first laugh around Jeonghan dwindles with words like, “What—? I’m only asking if I could borrow this chair. I’m sitting with my friends over there.”

Circumstances say those weren’t the first sentences Jeonghan ever said to the older. College hallways had been a pass for short ‘Excuse me’s or ‘I’m sorry’s to nameless people along the faceless crowd. They’re all slick with sweat. Seungcheol remembers PE. Jeonghan is busy with his half-open backpack and coffee cup, lips pressed to the lid and shouting at someone for ruining his sketchbook.

Maybe Seungcheol really wanted to share the table with Jeonghan.

“I don’t like the tattoo.” Jeonghan also has his way with lies: true intent under snide comments and nonchalant spites. If someone could lie straight into hell, that would be him. He won’t even blink.

“Not that I need your approval,” Seungcheol is spontaneous where Jeonghan remains unmarred. There’s a two-way train to where their fissures rip and fill.

The next day, Seungcheol gets a cartila