inspired by a theme list in the 31_days prompt community @ livejournal. gd's pov.

"I am seeing ghosts in everything I do."

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'We haven't talked in a while. How is Argentina? Don't do anything too crazy. ha'

His eyes burned as he stared at his phone, watching intently until the text was confirmed as 'delivered' before he set it back down on his desk, face-down amongst the equipment that surrounded him. Scores of music sheets were scattered across the table. Storyboards were pinned up everywhere, all but covering the walls. With a long breath, he glanced around the room, then kicked his chair away from the desk and went to pace around the house.

It was quiet. The echoing sound of his lone footsteps on the marble flooring rang throughout the house, throughout his head. As he passed the window, he realized rain was falling outside. He stopped for a second, then stepped closer, looking through the glassy pane to the streets miles below him, looking curiously until he found the streetlight at the corner. A memory rippled through him.

Black umbrella, cigarette smoke in the air; a ring on his hand. Seunghyun's warm laughter made a cloud between them and brought a smile to his Jiyong's lips even as he shivered inside his long coat and desperately sipped at the warm drink in his hands. He stepped into the puddles they passed as the other talked; beside him, the tall man carefully stepped around them, full of enthusiasm about whatever story he was telling at the time. It always made Jiyong smile when he started to talk about something that excited him, because of how silent he usually was. It was nice to listen every once in a while... Seunghyun's lips were as hot as the summer when they reached the end of the street and he leaned close for a kiss.

Jiyong abruptly turned away from the rain-streaked window and continued to the kitchen. He filled the coffee machine, then put food out for the dogs and watched them eat from where he leaned against the counter. The coffee machine gurgled away across the room; he closed his eyes for a moment, hoping to stave away their burning ache, and his thoughts wandered again.

They traveled to all the mornings when Seunghyun got up early, earlier than the hour when Jiyong even dared to roll over, setting the coffee pot and rice cooker before he went for his run. On those mornings Jiyong always woke up to the smell of breakfast. He wasn't ever a morning person, but having him around had always made things easier.

He carefully set his coffee cup down when he returned to his desk, staring longways at his phone. When he turned it over to see that he had a text, he wasn't sure if he was elated or sad; the feeling that settled into his gut was peculiar, and it made him uneasy to be unsure of his feelings though his heart raced as he stared at that name on the notification. His fingers shook as he typed in his passcode and peered at the message.

'We are having fun. The weather in Argentina is nicer.' 

A pang ran through him. The emotion hadn't touched him directly; rather it was more like he could hear the faint murmur of it, as if he were listening to it through a phone line with bad reception. It took him a moment to figure out what it was, but he eventually recognized it as the reminants of an anger that he'd misplaced years ago. He reread the text once, twice, a dozen times, sometimes putting his phone down for a while and then coming back to it. Each and every time, he stumbled over the word 'we' like an untied shoelace that he was unable to lengthen his stride to avoid.

He could only assume the other person was Seunghyun's boyfriend--the man he'd turned to after he and Jiyong had split for the last time. He'd met him once in passing years ago; he still saw his face in his dreams on dark nights. Just thinking about that bastard made his fists clench, and he angrily turned his phone over again.

Why was it so easy for Seunghyun to just move on? When they split, he'd sauntered right off to that other man and appeared to have gotten it golden with him.

Things were so hard for him, on the other hand; relationship after relationship, it all turned to , and after the years all Jiyong ended up with was an empty house and a black heart as withered as a raisin. Sure, he'd landed some pretty sweet producing jobs after making friends with a few big movie producers, but all those storyboards laying around his great big rooms only made him feel more lonely, like the people inside the stills were staring out at him and his failed love life. He thought that things might finally change when he met that Italian designer who was involved with Givenchy, but only a few months into their fling it became apparent that Tisci wasn't ever going to get over Frank Ocean, and once again, 'relationship' turned into 'relation-'.

He was difficult to be with; he'd learned that a long time ago. His personality was often abrasive and he worked himself to the bone without making time for much else than feeding the dogs and, on rare occasion, feeding himself. One day he was proposing to you over a candlelit dinner--the next, he wanted you out out out. Few people understood his history; even fewer understood where he'd started from, and eventually everyone got their fill of him once the stars faded from their love-struck eyes.

That's what had made Seunghyun special, what had made him patient enough to withstand all of Jiyong's natural disasters. His tornados, his earthquakes, his fires, his tsunamis; he stood through all of it without batting an eyelash. But, given too much water, even a fish can die, and one day the hurricane had finally dampened him enough.

Jiyong combed his fingers through his hair, glancing at the phone again after an hour had gone by. He gradually worked up the nerve and reached over to pick it up, tapping out a reply. 

'I want to see you.'

The message was confirmed 'read' almost as soon as it was sent. A chill ran up his spine as he realized that it meant Seunghyun was staring at his phone as well, somewhere on the other side of their vast planet; it dawned on him that this was the closest he'd come to him in months. He felt anxiety raise as the 'typing' bubble popped up, disappeared, and popped up again. He could envision the other's clumsy fingers struggling with the touchpad so succinctly that they might as well have been in the same room.

'I'm probably moving out here for good,' came the reply with a vibration.

He felt his heart drop--what little of a heart he had left, anyway. 'You can't. I miss you. Come home. Please,' he wrote back, not caring how desperate he sounded. After all, it was the honest to god truth. He was alone. He was desperate.

Seunghyun read the message. He waited for the 'typing' bubble to pop up again from the other, but it didn't, even after several moments. With shaking hands, he began to type again, realizing the other would not reply and not wanting the conversation to end. This was the closest he'd come to him at all in such a long time; his heart panicked at the thought that it might be the last for a while again, too.

'You're all I have left,' Jiyong pleaded. 'I'm going crazy, I'm seeing you everywhere. I can't stop thinking about you. I can't stop wanting you. I am seeing ghosts in everything I do. Ghosts of you.' His eyes began to burn, but this time it was from the stinging of bitter, vulnerable tears, and not from staring at his computer for hours...

Message read.

After a long moment, the other began to write back. He thought that maybe there was hope after all.

'What do you want from me? Why are you doing this? I've moved on.' 

He blinked back the mist in his eyes, willing them not to fall. 'How can you say that after everything? Does he really know you better than me?'

'He's kind to me.'

'Is that it? I can change. I've learned my lesson.'

The moments dragged on. Jiyong began to type another message, again. 'Please... I can't let you go. Make this suffering stop...'

Message read. As he said a small prayer within himself, he heard a noise in the distance gradually growing louder. It sounded like beeping, maybe like the coffee pot was going off--

Jiyong's face was warm and wet as he wrenched awake with a gasp, legs tangled in his sheets and his vision blurry as he looked around. On his nightstand laid his phone, alarm loudly beeping to wake him as scheduled. The bed was empty beside him; nothing but movie stills laid out across the sheets and pillows. "No, no," he whispered frantically, beginning to cry as he scrambled for his phone. He nearly ripped it off of the iHome, but he didn't care, his hands shaking as he tapped in his passcode once, twice, three times before he got it right.

3 new emails, 1 voicemail, 1 SMS message. Tears fell on his shirt as he read each name carefully, a small cry escaping him when none of them were the name he'd wished for. With the last tiny hope of his hanging on, he went to his messages and scrolled through the conversations until he found the one with Seunghyun.

Last message--eight months ago.