He watches with dark, unreadable eyes as the slender frame runs from the room, only turning his gaze away when the door shuts.

Tipping his head, he brings his fingers up to his lips. His head had cleared slightly, enough for him to realize what was going on by the time they were halfway through their second kiss – which had resulted in him shoving Jungsoo in the opposite direction.

He bites the corner of his own lip thoughtfully, thinking back on Jungsoo’s expression as he fled. It had been dark, but with that faint bit of moonlight reflected in the leader’s eyes, he could’ve sworn he caught a glimpse of fear and anxiety and guilt mixed in those wide eyes of his.

Why did I tell him to stop?

The confusion floats around his mind in an empty daze; he narrows his eyes, thinking about what had just happened. Everything was kind of hazy in his still alcohol-induced mind, but he distinctly remembers Jungsoo pulling him in for a kiss; he distinctly remembers feeling Jungsoo’s hand on his neck; with a wince, he distinctly remembers how quickly his own body had reacted, wasting little time in kissing back and running his hands all over Jungsoo.

To say he wasn’t at fault in this situation would be a lie; he had been just as eager as Jungsoo.

Why? He wonders to himself, collapsing down onto the bed.

He strips himself of his shirt as well, deciding that it smelled too much of alcohol and that he’d rather sleep without having that putrid stench wafting around him. He wraps Jungsoo’s blankets around him and buries his head into the pillow.

It smells like Jungsoo, he notes to himself sleepily, breathing in the comfortingly familiar smell of his leader and friend.

That’s how he falls asleep in the early hours of the morning, covered in blankets, head resting on a pillow, body curled up on a bed that isn’t his, with the pale moonlight casting its gentle rays on the foot of the bed.

He awakens to the sensation of the sun’s warmth on the lower half of his body; his eyes open, looking around at a room that is decidedly not his. He’s too tired and somewhat hungover to care, letting his head drop back down into the soft pillow.

He inhales; a familiar smell engulfs his senses.

Oh.

All of a sudden, he’s wide awake, reminded of everything that had happened just a few hours before. Oh.

He slips out of bed, realizing he’s in no more than his underwear, his shirt and pants tossed carelessly onto the floor. Hiding a blush of embarrassment, he throws both of them on, flinching at the lingering smell of alcohol.

He knows he’ll have to go and face the leader eventually anyways; bracing himself, he swings the door open and heads down the stairs, padding down with almost cat-like quietness, and realizes that the couch is vacated.

There’s the sound of metal and glass from the kitchen, where he figures the leader must be having his breakfast.

“Hey.”

He doesn’t react when Jungsoo spooks a little at his soft greeting; the leader looks up at him from his morning coffee, still shirtless, clearly not expecting him to come down so early.

“Morning,” Jungsoo greets cautiously, and it stings a little, because they’ve never been this awkward before, aside from their three-month silence after the Incheon fight. “It’s only seven, you woke up early.”

He hesitates, contemplating on what to say. It’s a first for him. “I couldn’t sleep.”

Jungsoo tilts his head. “Hangover?”

“Partly hungover, partly because of what happened between us,” he says flatly, realizing that trying to avoid the topic forever wouldn’t really work out well.

The atmosphere chills all of a sudden; Jungsoo stops idly stirring his coffee, Heechul stops partway through a breath. Both of them stare at each other, barely moving.

Jungsoo breaks the silence. “Nothing happened last night,” he says curtly. “You were drunk, so I let you stay over until you felt better. That’s all, okay?” Jungsoo’s gaze is so intense, he wants to pull away but can’t even if he tried. “There’s nothing between us.”

Those few sentences jab deep at his heart, piercing mockingly at strands of emotion that he never knew he had. With those few words, Jungsoo had made it clear where he stood.

Not love. It was never love. Just a mistake that happened when they were alone, their minds clouded with lust and in his case, alcohol. It hits him, hard, that this is all they were – a mistake that was never meant to happen.

“I’m sorry,” is all he can choke out. “I’ll get going now.”

He leaves the place in a hurry, his footsteps only slowing once the door of the apartment closes behind him. He doesn’t bother to look back, taking the elevator down to his own apartment and keying in the passcode with more force than necessary.

Slamming the door behind him, he grabs whatever clothes he finds first from his wardrobe before entering the bathroom; he strips himself free of his clothes and switches the water on, shivering slightly as the cold liquid runs down his bare body.

He allows his body to lean against the wall weakly as the water flows down his body, his mind rushing with thoughts. Perhaps he should stop mulling on this; perhaps Jungsoo had been right, no matter how cutting those words felt. Perhaps it was just the alcohol that made him foolish and light-headed, and maybe it was the numerous schedules and tiring life that made Jungsoo break too, a way of relieving his stress.

Maybe the affection and passion that both of them had shared had just been a fragment of his imagination; maybe there had been absolutely nothing between them. Maybe he had lived in reality with his mind fogged with alcohol, but had awoken sober from his own hallucinations.

There was nothing between us.

As he repeats the phrase over and over in his head, he can feel himself slowly falling to his own – truth? Lie? He could feel his body relaxing as he forcefully chased the thought out of his mind; he’s gotten himself over many things before, and this was just another one of them.

What if… He quashes the thought firmly, clamping down on any contemplations regarding the topic. No.

He steps out of the shower a good thirty minutes later, hair wet and wearing fresh clothes. He makes his way to his gaming desk, finding his phone exactly where he left it before going out to drink the night before; one glance at it and he dismisses his messages as nothing of significance – mostly the members yelling at each other on the Super Junior group chat.

He collapses into the comfort of his own bed. His messy blankets, his soft pillow that smelled like him and no one else. In a way, as much as he loves his group, he’s kind of glad that promotions are over, and his schedule is free aside from his usual variety show recordings.

Is he being a coward for not wanting to come face-to-face with Jungsoo again?

He lies there, encapsulated in the silence of his own room, his custom-made red curtains blocking off majority of the sunlight. He lies there and thinks, the first time in a good while that he’s been so immersed in his own thoughts.

Why did I kiss back, anyway?

He dismisses it quickly – a little too quickly, perhaps – as the alcohol wrecking his thoughts back then, before a tiny, cryptic laugh escapes his lips. How ironic and funny it would be if the rumours that the company had tried so hard to shut down turned out true; what an uproar it would cause if he and Jungsoo had taken it any further.

His lips curve into a small satisfied smirk. It’s best this way, both of them staying far out of each other’s business. So that there’s no chance of them taking it any further – so that both of them will sink into the belief that there really was absolutely nothing between them as time turned the chapters of their days.

He laughs to himself. Him, with the image of an unparalleled flirt, liking guys? Never.

He sits up at last, his thoughts clearer now, and heads to his kitchen to pour himself a glass of water, banishing a nagging thought to the depths of his subconscious.

A rather annoying thought about how he somehow preferred kissing Jungsoo to kissing his ex-girlfriends.

No matter, it was the alcohol, he chants repeatedly in his head as he pours the water into a glass. I don’t like men, not that way.

By some time in the afternoon, after going through a near-kiss scene with a male guest on Knowing Brothers, he’s pretty sure that he has zero interest in men.

Good.

“Heechul-ah!” Janghoon calls. “Want to go clubbing tonight?”

He snickers derisively. “Why would you go?”

“Hey, I’m single,” he defends himself, “Besides, it’s a rare opportunity to get Kyunghoon out of his house.”

He raises an eyebrow, but is too tired to protest. “Fine.”

He doesn’t know if he’s going to spend time with them, or to prove the fact that whatever happened earlier that day meant absolutely nothing to him.

He knows he’s going to regret this as he takes another sip of the wine; two nights of drinking too much alcohol. He finishes the glass and puts it down, heading away from the counter. He doesn’t do much when he’s drunk, but the last time he was drunk it didn’t end well.

A woman in heels dances up to him with a daring smirk on her face; out of the corner of his eye, he sees other men glaring at him enviously.

Jungsoo flashes through his mind.

Get out.

Absorbed in his own mental fight, he doesn’t really care when she moves even closer to him. Trying to get Jungsoo out of his mind, he responds by snaking an arm around her waist, seeing her eyes light up in smugness and joy.

They lean in closer, and he’s pretty sure they can smell the alcohol lingering on each other’s breath; and that’s when Jungsoo flashes through his mind again, and he doesn’t know why, but for some reason it causes him to push her away.

She moves away from him, a look of confusion and annoyance in her deep gaze. “I – I’m sorry,” he says with a shake of his head before turning to the others who were watching nearby. “Hyung, I’m going home first. I’m tired.”

He doesn’t give them much of a chance to do anything except for shout a confused, “Bye” as he turns and speeds out of the place as soon as possible, his mind ringing with a thousand different possibilities.

Disturbingly enough, majority of those possibilities involved him and a certain other guy.

He’s scared.

He doesn’t know what of; it’s almost a foreign feeling to him. What is this unknown that he fears so greatly?

Himself? Jungsoo? The public? The media?

He doesn’t know.

But he guesses the thing that he’s scared of the most is the possibility that that 3am getaway was more than just nothing.

Or perhaps the thought that if it really was more than nothing, if it ever happened again, he may be too weak to push Jungsoo away.

No.

Please, no.

He grabs his phone, reading through his schedules. No award shows, no group schedules, nothing out of the ordinary.

Good.

He wouldn’t have to meet Jungsoo again – not for a while, at least.

He can just stay in the solitude of his own apartment, where he can bury the thoughts deep within. Or maybe he should go out more. Having time to think was a gamble for him; it would either end up with him drowning his thoughts, or his thoughts drowning him.

Alone in the darkness of his own apartment, he turns to his only source of distraction; letting everything else fade off, he allows his mind to be pulled away from reality, with only the sound of furious typing and mouse clicks filling the air as he turns to his late-night gaming.

By the time he switches off his computer and collapses on his bed, it’s past three in the morning. His eyes dull a little, and at this point he’s too tired to bother thinking anymore. “I’ll do fine like this,” he whispers to himself.

He’ll be fine. He’ll stay in places he knows, he’ll mix around with people he knows. Maybe he’ll go back to the reclusive person he once was, staying at home with his pets and playing games all day long; forgetting things in the small little ways that he knows.

“I’ll forget, just like everything else,” he murmurs, almost comfortingly, to himself in the dark of the room. “After a bit, it won’t have any meaning. After a bit, everything will be back to normal.”

Everything will be back to normal.

He can only hope.