Luhan sits alone at the bar at Jongin’s party, nursing a bottle of vodka that he’d already emptied over halfway in the past hour and a half, spinning a shot glass in between his fingers (and he wonders why he even bothered with the glass in the first place, since he’d given up using it after the fifth shot and started drinking straight from the bottle).

He leans over on the counter, tilting his head to the side, and maybe it’s the alcohol, or maybe it’s just his delusional mind speaking to him (or maybe it’s the truth, but Luhan pushes that thought so far back in his mind that it goes straight through his head), but Luhan sees the door open, and in walks Minseok, the love of his life.

The love of his life, whose hand is linked with the hand of another man, with spiky black hair and sharp cheekbones, whose smile reminds Luhan of a cat when Jongin greets the two.

The glass falls from Luhan’s hand, shattering on the floor.

“Wow Lu, how much have you had to drink?” Jongin sighs, grabbing a small vacuum from behind the bar, as though he knew these sorts of things would happen.

Luhan doesn’t answer him, burying his head deeper into his hoodie-clad arms.

“Is he alright?” he can hear a soft voice ask, and his heart clenches, because he knows that voice, and he hasn’t heard it in far too long.

“He’ll be fine. Probably.” Luhan imagines that Jongin shrugs at this, and he hears the sound of their footsteps fade away.

Luhan’s eyes slide shut to the sound of his beating heart, each clench of the muscle in his chest a painful reminder of what he’d done wrong.

~*~*~*~*~

Looking back, Luhan can’t really pinpoint when exactly things started to go bad.

Maybe it was when Luhan started waking up early for no good reason and leaving the apartment, because it was just too suffocating for him to be there.

Maybe it was when Luhan started waking up to an empty bed more often than not.

Maybe it was when he forgot Minseok’s birthday, their anniversary, Valentine’s Day, White Day… and not just once.

Maybe it was when Minseok asked him if he wanted to go out, and he said no, and instead hit the clubs until the break of dawn (and he knew that Minseok knew where he was, but Minseok never said anything, and neither did Minseok.)

Whatever it was, he knew that one day, he came home to an apartment that had been completely ridden of Minseok’s belongings; the walls bare of his favorite photographs, the closets emptied of his clothes, even his leftover food had been removed from the refrigerator.

Luhan didn’t sleep that night, as he sat on the sofa, his body still as he stared blankly at the turned-off television, shivers running through his body, but he made no move to grab a blanket.

He was numb.

There was nothing left for him to do.

Minseok had left, moved on, and although Luhan knew that the right thing to do was to try to win him back, he’d already blown it.

Because with Minseok, there were no second chances.

Luhan couldn’t deal with knowing that Minseok would always judge him, wonder if he cared, wonder if he even loved him.

(But the answer was, and is, always, always yes.)

~*~*~*~*~

“Yah. Wake up, you lump.”

Luhan is shaken, and his eyes blearily open, his vision fuzzy at first, but then clearing, to reveal Jongin standing in front of him.

“Party’s over. Go home.”

Luhan slides off the chair, his legs wobbly from sitting for so long. Jongin catches him deftly before he can crash to the floor, and he sighs.

“You know what, just stay here for the night. Well, morning, I guess.”

Luhan nods in thanks, his throat too dry to actually say anything.

He’s been at Jongin’s house enough times before to know where the guest bedroom is (damn rich kid, Luhan thinks) as he stumbles through the hall, and almost falls over someone who’s sitting against the wall.

“Who—oh.”

Luhan looks down at the man, and even in his somewhat inebriated state, he recognizes him as the man who Minseok had come in with earlier.

“Jongdae,” Luhan says, his tongue barely able to form the man’s name. “Haven’t seen you in a while.”

“Yeah,” Jongdae replies, rubbing his eyes. “Minseok was taking a nap and I guess I fell asleep out here waiting for him.”

(Luhan pretends that hearing Minseok’s name from someone else’s lips doesn’t hurt him.)

“Yeah, he was never good at handling his alcohol,” Luhan mutters. “How long have you been going out?”

“Around half a year?” Jongdae murmurs, his eyebrows furrowing slightly in concentration. “Maybe longer.”

“I see…”

The door to Jongin’s spare room opens, and Minseok comes stumbling out, rubbing his eyes. “Jongdae, what time is it? I think I slept too long…”

“Time to go home,” Jongdae chuckles, wrapping an arm around Minseok’s waist (and Luhan wishes it was his arm there, holding Minseok close to his body.)

The two begin to leave, Minseok slumped over on Jongdae’s shoulder, and Luhan’s heart begins to pound faster, as if warning him that there’s something more he needs to tell Jongdae before they leave.

“Jongdae, wait,” Luhan chokes out, one hand extended towards the man instinctively.

“Hm?” Jongdae turns around, one eyebrow raised. “What is it?”

“Make sure you never let go of him,” Luhan whispers. “Spend every hour of the day you can with him. Take him dancing. Just… don’t do what I did.”

Tears begin to fall, leaving glistening trails on his pale skin as he whirls around and slips into the spare room, slamming the door behind him.

He falls onto the bed, burying his face into the sheets as the tears come faster, and sobs wrack his body as he realizes that Minseok had just slept there moments before, and the sheets are soaked with his scent.

“I love you,” he hiccups, hugging the blanket to his chest, as though it were actually Minseok he were embracing and not just a lump of cotton and feathers. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”

Luhan’s eyes close, and he slips into slumber, dreaming of Minseok, and all the things they could have done, if Luhan was still his man.

...um yeah.

no happy endings for fluffy couple ;___; (lol sorry i call them that because they're so flufffyyyyy)

i kinda wanna expand this later... but oh well