The lock closet (1)

 

They've known each other for years and he is certain that the little frown angling the corner of Howon’s eyes is something doubtful and fearful; he's afraid that things are going to change quite not in the way he has always thought of. Dongwoo pushes both his hands in the sink and washes his face, body and eyes lowered not to look at him in the mirror. Not to look at him at all.

“Are you ok?” Howon says.

“Yeah, I’m ok. It’s nothing.” He replies, trying his best to sound nonchalant.

But the younger knows that the tips of Dongwoo’s fingers are shaking when he grabs the towel to dry his face still not looking at him. Howon doesn’t exactly know if he should pretends that whatever looks different in Dongwoo he isn’t noticing. But he does.
They both do, wordlessly.

They just kissed and it’s different from any other kiss or attention they’ve played with in the past few years.
A lot of time spent touching and teasing and laughing about it ‘cause Dongwoo has always been physical and Howon always liked it. But that's different. To both of them it sounds like it's not a joke anymore and they can't stand the consciousness it, too afraid of losing something more precious than a bunch of doubts and fears.

So when Dongwoo says it’s ok maybe Howon looks reluctant at first about truly believing it but in the end he does, he decides that it’s ok for him too, that it’s ok to hurt a bit if it's for their friendship’s sake.

And while both of them are waiting for a smile or something familiar to ease up the tension, they're afraid as children fear monsters hiding in their closets. Maybe they’re together in some dark room looking at the closet’s doors, well aware that the monster is breathing inside there, careless about hiding, ready to jump out. 

Howon knows because Dongwoo’s fingers are shaking.
Dongwoo knows because of Howon’s astray and unsure look in the mirror that doesn't point at him.
 

 

the dusk. (2)

 

Dongwoo’s breath is heavy as he sighs and pants next to Howon’s ear.

Howon has his hands clenched around his sharp thighs, fingers wrapped into the flesh to help himself bestriding what is right to feel and what is not. What is sweet and what is bitter about it. At a certain point, he realizes later, Dongwoo’s entire body is shaking after being knocked down by the pleasure with a helpless and abandoned shriek that sounds like catharsis and panic. No sound involved.

He's like him too: all shakes and hard breaths, s that once the pleasure is flushed away he hates with all his heart and soul. Irrational and desperate . That’s it.
Howon slips out of him and rolls over his back, he pulls Dongwoo closer, like an echo of an hold habit, while searching for new ones to come. Different and harmless ones.

Every time they finish Howon feels like Dongwoo’s going to cry himself to his sleep, but the elder never does it for real. He stares at Howon's black eyes looking for one good reason not to and maybe he always finds one to stop just before. Maybe they're small and almost faded reasons, but they mean everything to him and he cares that they will always remain that defined and solid. Howon feels like he knows exactly about how much he cares just looking at him and his shy attempts to smile.

They don’t have often. When free of schedules they would remain at one or another’s place to spend the night together, maybe a couple of days which makes them feel like they’re kind of a normal couple even though there are no kisses or tragic goodbyes when the door closes and they’re facing each other's back straight in their minds. Maybe a lot of silent apologies.

Being like that, together, it’s of dense comfort and it’s hard to see the bitterness of some kind of broken relationship, like that one, through it. Maybe when they’re home alone they can kind of sense it like a black and unnamable disease for which the cure is being together again and again. And the sickness sometimes disappears and sometimes just grows bigger. Plays bad jokes to them.

Neither Dongwoo or Howon knew if the way they are now would be a palliative or some bad injection of sullenness. They do believe in the center of their stomachs being messed up and curled like a knot of snakes, venom spilling from each kisses in which they find relief and pleasantness.

They lied once about a kiss and then something inside them started being insincere about everything else they had been through together. Like a taboo, something no one wants to talk about, love grew like a savage garden in which flowers, thorns and bad roots were hiding and messing together. Sometimes they are flowers, sometimes just thorns.

So that is the darkness. The void in which they hide while watching at the slightly open closet. Comforted and terrified because you don’t even know if this monster has cat-eyes able to look in the shadows. They wait, aware of being both curious and scared.

And while waiting, Dongwoo asks himself, touching Howon’s stomach like he’s planting seeds of hopes deep in his lungs, when his fingers stopped shaking at them touching.

 

the monster. (3)

 

It’s the last day of the year and they’re apart.

Dongwoo is sitting at the train station with his arms crossed. It’s cold but he knows about things that have been colder than that, he knows how deep in his spine that things have been sometimes. He sent his parents away for a vacation, the restaurant’s closed.
One train passes every hour, up in the cloud of his thinking he already lost the second.
He won't miss the third, for sure.

He cups his hands in front of his face and pushes the palms on the eyes. He rubs rather slowly the sleepiness away and starts humming something. The quay is empty except for him and the sound of his smartphone receiving texts. Everyone’s at home with their families. All the members are out. Myungsoo is the only one who has offered him to spend that day together with his parents but Dongwoo rejected with a firm and maybe hasted no. He’s humming like he’s singing and can’t consider nothing but what he’s saying to himself. He prays a long list of things.

“Eyes. Mouth. Kindness. Shaking. Water. Hands. Teeth. Breaths. Comfort. Fear. Hurting.” he continues like that, filling his honey-like eyes with the stream of some shaking tears in the corner of them and he’s not even aware of that: he has glows and the wool is slowly devouring every salty drops even before he can notice the soppy watery on his cheeks.

In the end he sniffles. He says “Home” and it’s like someone's tearing his heart out of his chest. He’s quite sure that those, the hurt he feels, is shaped like the thorns who have devoured the flowers. He neglects thinking about the unkindness of not being sincere, he mostly hates the uncommon fears that suddendly spilled out from just one word. So many in so little.

That is, maybe, a reason he has well-kept-up for last.

Home.

The cellphone rings and the train is arriving. Dongwoo looks up for the messages while he stands up. “Home” he repeats unlocking the screen to read the newly received message. It’s distant and nonchalant and maybe a little empty like the train would be on his way home.

“Hyung ~ ~
wish you an happy new year.”

Dongwoo gulps, not replying to that one.

 

--

 

Howon is sitting alone at his place. He is in front of the glass windows where he and Dongwoo were pushed the first time they made love. When he slid between his legs and felt like heaven was a place on Earth. The home is quiet and there’s no one around. He forgot to switch on the heating and the floor is just so cold he’s shaking a lil bit.

He continuously checks his phone for a reply but the messages icon never shows up.

When Howon puts his forehead on the top of his knees he doesn’t know how to react to his stomach wanting to throw up curses and galls. He fell asleep that way, feeling like crying but not truly being able to.

A firm hand on his shoulder shakes the roots of his sleep out of him waking him up. Dongwoo is above him and the younger feels like he can’t move at all. Dongwoo smiles, not widely as he used to do for the fans, but it’s a sincere and comforting smile and it’s just as fragile as he has always been up there in Howon’s apartment.

Howon feels guilty to not adding nothing to the text like he wanted to and seeing Dongwoo there makes him wonder if someone has done it in his place. Dongwoo looks like a fading fear, nose red and watery eyes. Howon knows he hasn’t replied, that being there is his reply.

“Were you up to something?” Howon asks and Dongwoo’s smile becomes a lil’ more firm and less shady.
“I was busy coming Home.” He says with his voice quivering. He doesn’t help him to back up on his feet.

Dongwoo slides quietly on the floor, next to him, and Howon notices that he's hot and tempered, not like before. The younger opens his mouth but can't say a thing. The older doesn’t want to know if he was about to say something about it, about Home. He has, once more, a reason to stay.

They wouldn't talk for hours, they just stay curled next to each other, Dongwoo resting with every vertebra of his spine pressed against Howon’s firm chest. No kissing, no touching, snow slowly falling to cover Seoul white in a day that is so silent that makes everything looks like a soft and easy dream. They do feel at home, but no one of them says a thing about it.

So sometimes it feels like the monster has never been in the closet. And the closet itself is nothing but an excuse, a trick, for people to think that to see something scary they have to watch in an actually common and scary and physical place. So they never think that being next to each other holding hands while waiting for something to jump out of a closet is already not having fears of whatever would come out of the closed doors. That fear is shaped like them and their minds. They intimately know that the monster in the closet is nothing but the most scared part of them and that the day it would come out they would have hold hands so much that maybe they won’t escape, but stay. Always stay. Claiming home.

They both know.

They know as Dongwoo presses his fingers on the back of Howon’s hand and he’s shaking.

Again.