XIV

Without you

There has been a time when Seungyoon wouldn’t let things seep through his skin and taint him.

When he was young (and wild and free, he would laugh) Seungyoon had been able to discern from what he needed in his life and what he didn’t, to pick all the good things and throw away the bad ones, to choose and go forward without any regret. Seungyoon – the young one, the one who had learnt how to wake up from a slumber that had undermined part of his teenager years – was someone many could call romantic, a dreamer, but others would see as a guy who knew his limits and in this knowledge found strength.

He wasn’t a daredevil. He wasn’t reckless. He wasn’t a fool.

Or maybe he was one for the way he had decided to give himself to his dream, yet he knew what he had to do without having any important loss and damage left. No wounds, no scars – not when he knew how to shelter himself.

Now that he isn’t that young – or maybe he just doesn’t feel like it, because life has wiped off the spark of innocence in his eyes – he’s a sinking ship with too many holes in his keel, leaking water bringing him down. Now he is the fool who let himself suffer without a proper reason.

He drinks a glass, then another. Soju burns his throat and in pain he finds elation.

Everything starts to fall down when you open yourself too much and give your heart to someone else. Seungyoon has always known this. He had learnt it too well when he was just a kid with no dreams and decided to put faith in his classmates and in their friendships, to trust them and dote them, but received only unjustified hatred, scorns or resilient silence.

Seungyoon doesn’t want pity for that – honestly, his story is something that happens to so many people in the world that there is no point to consider him special. There is nothing special in being thrown away like a useless toy or being without one parent, it is just plain ordinary sufferance.

There is nothing special in the way he closed his heart and learnt how to distrust humans, too. It’s something that happens every day and everywhere, probably; it’s the same as when he decided to stop dreaming and left himself swing between awake and sleep without thinking too much, dull apathy protecting him from his feelings to the point he just was lacking human emotions. Less pain, less sorrow, less everything – even the happiness of having his mother’s love was dulled.

What is extraordinary – what people like about him, he found out later – is the way he had fought back for his life. Even in this, Seungyoon thinks there is nothing special.

Because he knows he wouldn’t have done it alone. He would have kept sleeping and shutting the world out from his life – the nice comfort of his blanket around his body and the dimness of his room, the reassurance of being alone in there, without any person around, and the pleasure of having all the strands of his withered imagination in his hands, locked in that dark corner – everything was easier than going back to life.

There are times when people can’t do it alone, times they need a hand to pull them out from the grave they already dig for themselves.

Seungyoon knows that the one who is extraordinary is his mother and not him.

Nonetheless, when he was young he had gone back to life and fought and found a way and a place. He had found, finally, people he could trust: his brothers. And he had opened his heart, forgetting the first rule he had written on his diary so many years ago, when he had just seen how ugly the world is.

Another drink, he downs his bitterness with the alcohol.

Seungyoon should worry for getting recognized, he should cover his face and hide who he is, for it’s ugly to see another human being suffering, especially if it’s a celebrity. He has to be perfect and bring happiness to other through his persona, not to cling to a bottle of soju and pour out alcohol instead of tears. It could be read as something nice, but it’s mostly an egoistic reason: people need to see someone can do it, someone can be what they aren’t, they have to put all their hope and faith in someone. And there is nothing worse than realizing the celebrity they learn to love is someone they don’t want, ruining their dreams by being just... human.

Seungyoon has always sold his belief of being an inspirational model to other people, to make his fans winners through his music. Yet he’s a person too and today he feels raw and he can’t be bothered to cover his face and hide – he just wants to be recognized, not by fans, but by people, he wants to find another hand to help him stay straight, he needs another human being – someone, anyone – to make him feel like everything is gonna be ok even if it’s not. He’s alone and he can’t bear it, not tonight.

He doesn’t want to be forgotten. He doesn’t want to be there, he doesn’t want to be Kang Seungyoon at all. He just needs a hug.

He just needs him to love him. More than whole humanity reassuring him and soothing his pain, more than recognition and white lies, more than anything else, Seungyoon just wants him (to love him back again).

Seungyoon drinks another bottle and yells at the woman behind the counter to give him more.

“Kang Seungyoon-shi, please behave”, she whispers to him, trying to shush him with a hand.

How that woman can’t see that he can’t, he won’t, he’s not able to stop. If he quits drinking now he’ll start to think more and more and everything he wants is to shut everything down and forget himself and his past in a glass of soju.

Honestly, he should have known. He should have expected this day – this pain, this bite, this anger, everything. He should have known nothing would last.

He should have known someone would throw him away again. Just he didn’t expect him to do so. He fooled himself by saying their love was enough to keep them together forever. He said himself that he was enough.

Seungyoon can’t bear the thought to not be special to that person. He’s ok to disregard the mythology behind his name and the urban legends around his persona, but he can’t accept he’s just a human being – and not the Kang Seungyoon everyone loves – when it comes to him.

Yet, he should have known.

Because he was the one who saw him not for the celebrity he was, but as a human, a brother, a lover.

“Do you have someone to call? I can’t take care of you”, the woman is annoying and Seungyoon just tells her to go away. He catches his phone and tries to dial a number without much success. He can’t call the substitute driver, he can’t find the number in his list, his fingers slides on the touchscreen without an apparent pattern, shaking. He manages to call his number 1 in the fast dial and waits to that person to answer and then hang up. Or maybe to just ignore his call.

Seungyoon is surprised when he hears his voice croaking through the microphone. Seungyoon woke him up, most surely, because his voice is thick with sleep and he asks him if he’s ok, like he has done so many times before. Like nothing has happened between them.

And Seungyoon plays along. “I need someone to pick me up”.

Seungyoon knows he shouldn’t have trusted him, but honestly it was a helpless cause. His heart was hopeless since the first time he had laid his eyes on him. The love he had felt for him was something he had difficulty to hide – it was ok to love each one of s, he thought, but there was something not ok in the way he lingered inside his heart, his presence quaking all the limits Seungyoon had set between them, his laugh crushing any of his resolution, his eyes seeking something in Seungyoon that he was too easily set to give away. His love for him was something he couldn’t hold back for too much.

He had learnt from his mother that, more than expecting love from others, you should learn to give it. In the end, Seungyoon couldn’t stop himself. His heart was already his.

They had been happy.

Like many other happy couples, they had good times and bad times, they had up and downs and summers and winters. Seungyoon liked to think they had something special too, in the way they were linked not just by the love, but by an understanding they had of the other one, the way they could enjoy the silence between them and find happiness in it; the way they could seek inspiration in the other one and discover music in their love.

Seungyoon knows they had been ing happy for a long time. He wonders what has made this fall apart. He wonders if it’s his fault, even if they already decided they both are guilty for the ending of their relationship.

(there were too many ghosts and regrets piling up, too much dust to sweep off in their relationship, and in the end it was natural to just break up – Seungyoon justifies himself)

Honestly, Seungyoon can’t get over the last day they had together and the many days before, when he would lay on him and sing on his heart and fold his fingers around his neck – when they had been one.

Seungyoon misses him so much that he knows he won’t be whole for a very long time, not without him.

He reaches Seungyoon very late in the night and founds him resting his head on the table, a constellation of empty bottles haloing him.

Seungyoon up his head when he hears him sit across from him. The sorrow in his eyes makes his heart ache a little more, but he’s the one sober so he should not be affected by these things, he shouldn’t put his barrier down and be the adult one.

“Why did you drink so much, hyung?” his voice is just a whisper and fondness is all over the place, no matter what history they have between them.

“I couldn’t help it. It was so easy to just… drink it away”.

The pain.

He sees in his eyes that he wants to say so much more – most probably, now Seungyoon is thinking if he can ask him to go back to him, if he can they just be like they were before, if there is a way to fix them, because he can’t be like this anymore and there is no happiness in a world without him. He sees in his eyes so much more, the feelings lingering and the alcohol clouding his judgments and memories of them being together, at this hour of the night, in the same bed, talking about their future or the movie they watched few hours before or maybe just cuddling. Seungyoon wants to ask him if there is something like that left for the two of them, but he knows better and stays silent.

Taehyun covers his hand with his own, patting him with affection. “Come on, let me bring you home, hyung”.

There is nothing left for them, not more than this act.

It is extraordinary and special, Seungyoon thinks, how someone who you thought it would be your life can become a stranger so easily.

When Taehyun opens the car door for him, Seungyoon dies in the crystal-clear realization that there is no way to have him back, that life goes on and he’s the one stuck in a past he has to forget if he wants to go back to breath and live.

Seungyoon just wants to erase everything, then. That’s the time he misses the dull apathy he once had, when he was young and alone and scarred – yet, not as much as today.

eventually, how many years have passed, there is no “forever”
eventually, We’re not meant to be, become alone again

So, this is a prompt I wanted to write since day 1 of this collection: "Seungyoon getting drunk remembering his love story with Taehyun". Well, everything became a little more angst and I can't say it's not Between the lines' fault too (I'm sure I was more than inspired by that fic, when I wrote this some days ago) ... and I think everyone should read it if you haven't yet :3

And... hi angst you're nice.