9,900 words

TWO

Baekhyun usually loves the sound of his doorbell ringing. It means a neighbour has decided to pop round, and it never fails to make him smile when he realises that people think of him without him being physically present. Sometimes it’ll be Mrs Mason who runs the bakery, sharing out her homemade cakes that are about to go out of date, and other times it’s a few neighbourhood ladies inviting themselves in for tea and biscuits. He has to admit, he fits in rather well with middle-aged women – he does love gossip after all – and always finds himself chuckling as they flip through their magazines, pointing out male underwear models that supposedly look like him.

This morning, though, the doorbell is akin to the ominous caw of a crow, its cutting beak dragging him from the sleep his body is desperately clinging to. He wills its incessance to end, scrunching his eyes closed to wait out the call of death before the knocking starts and someone calls his name.

Jongin.

Baekhyun peels his eyes open and finds himself staring at the dust clumps under his bed where a few forgotten canvases lie. He doesn’t remember ending up here, but he thanks his drunk self for sparing a thought to bring the duvet with him when he most likely collapsed on the floor in an emotional heap. He can feel a breeze blowing around the back of his neck, the window wide open and letting the birdsong flow through. When he uproots his face from the carpet, he winces at the puddle of drool he leaves behind and the funny texture it has left on his skin. He’s never been graceful in the mornings.

“Baekhyun?” Jongin knocks again, so Baekhyun latches his fingers onto whatever is nearest – the bed and the radiator – and forces himself unsteadily to his feet. He doesn’t feel sick yet, which is a feat in and of itself. The smell on his clothes indicates that he probably vomited somewhere, and although he’s not necessarily proud of himself for overdoing it by about five drinks, he’s glad that at least there’s less alcohol in his system for his trip downstairs.

He’s still wearing his shirt and jeans from yesterday, and he’s pretty sure the folds in the denim have cut off his circulation in everything from the waist down; on his way across the landing, he tries to dislodge a stubborn wedgie that would likely be painful if he wasn’t feeling worryingly numb down there, and he’s almost got it when Jongin knocks again and makes him jump. He clings onto the banister for life as he braves the stairs, fingers gripping onto the towel he slung there after his shower yesterday, and wonders when exactly it was that Jongin started being so loud.

The route downstairs is littered with obstacles, things he’s stacked on the edge of the steps intended for use upstairs that he never bothered moving. There’s a new supply of shampoo and conditioner on one step, then a camera charger he used the other week so he could grab some photos of the sunset. He almost falls at the last hurdle when he thinks there’s one less step than there actually is, confidently stepping out into mid-air and falling into his pile of shoes at the bottom. Only when he’s drunk or hungover does he realise how messy he is, and he would stop to tidy up if Jongin wasn’t now poking his fingers through his letterbox and yelling through it.

Without giving it much thought, he brushes their fingers together as a warning before he swings the door open. The daylight smacks him in the face, the ringing in his ears instant and deafening, but he just about hears the softly spoken murmur of his name and squints through black spots at Jongin cradling a few splintered pieces of wood held together with flimsy bits of torn paper. Baekhyun’s first thought is that it’s some kind of contemporary, minimalist baby mobile that one would dangle over a cot, and then Jongin holds it out in such a way that spreads the torn paper, or canvas, and realisation hits.

“Morning, Baek!” He tries to smile, at least. “I was just leaving the hotel on my way to town and…” His warm eyes drop to the deceased painting, letting the visuals explain the rest. “It was in the road,” he says gently, lower lip pouting as he juggles the stakes around and accidentally tears the linen a little more. Baekhyun watches the top of the capital building and its revolving restaurant tear in two. “I didn’t mean to run over it, it just kind of… happened.”

And suddenly, Baekhyun remembers last night. Granted, a lot of it is a blur. He remembers something about traffic cones and a Diana Ross song, and, for no reason in particular, his taxi driver’s huge, cartoon smile, but the rest is a mystery. The only thing he can really, truly remember is the weight of his chest being crushed and the words I don't know if this is going to work anymore. The rest of his and Sehun’s conversation doesn’t seem to have registered in his mind, very likely to be some kind of coping mechanism, but he remembers the gist of what was said. Baekhyun is stubborn. Sehun’s work is important. He doesn’t have time for Baekhyun. He’d rather be with someone else.

Baekhyun is never cold towards Jongin. In fact, he’s the complete opposite. He’s never met someone who’s more kind, genuine, and as much of a sweetheart until he moved here, soaking up the sunny smiles and contagious laughter that radiates from Jongin’s whole being whenever he finds something the remotest bit funny. Jongin was one of the first people to reach out to him, to extend a hand wrapped up in a mitten (it was winter at the time) and invite him to the weekly pub quiz, and later, to the youth club he runs down in the village hall.

But right now, Baekhyun feels, for the most part, empty. And if not empty, then filled with hurt. It’s like a monster sitting on his chest with its talons for fingers locked around his throat, turning him green and making him resent everything and everyone because they’re all so happy and he isn’t. He can’t even bring himself to offer a polite smile, and instead he glares at the painting, pointedly grumbles “Keep it” and slams the door shut – then feels guilty about it for the next hour and a half until he’s too exhausted to care anymore.

It’s after he’s made himself a cup of tea and sat down on his settee that he notices the silence. Impenetrable and all-consuming, it devours every corner of his mind until he has no other option but to replay that moment over and over again, trying to figure out if he could have woken up in Sehun’s bed this morning if he’d done something differently. It takes approximately two hours of doing word searches for him to come to terms with that the fact that he has never been this lost before. He has no idea how to feel.

Sehun was so clean, so careful, with the way he’d spoken, making the blame fall on Baekhyun’s shoulders whether it be right or not. He starts to question everything, and spends several days cooped up at home trying to come to answers that don’t want to come to him. Every memory plays back in his head like some kind of documentary, highlighting their pinnacle moments of progress and then their dire moments of decline.

Their first kiss happened after their second date. Sehun had never kissed anyone before so it was short and sweet, and Baekhyun was high off the knowledge that Sehun had deemed him special enough to receive one of his firsts. It was a casual date, a walk around the city park that had a traveling fairground in for the summer. He remembers their fingers getting sticky with candyfloss and them both getting covered in bruises from the rickety old roller coasters that literally hurled them around every corner without mercy. Baekhyun remembers feeling happy. He remembers looking forward to next time, and the time after that, and the time after that. It didn’t occur to him that at some point, there wouldn’t be a next anymore.

Sehun doesn’t text him in the days following. Baekhyun bites back a sob and presses his face more firmly into his pillow when he realises that Sehun has no reason to talk to him anymore. Why would he need to know if Baekhyun was okay? He’s probably well into courting his new guy by now, Baekhyun left coughing up dust in his tyre tracks. But he knows that Sehun wouldn’t do that. Sehun has always been a gentleman, kind and calm and thoughtful – most of the time. Sure, they had disagreements, but Sehun never held grudges or brought up past arguments in the new ones. Thinking along those lines fails to make Baekhyun feel better. Sehun was so great. He doesn’t deserve to be dragged down by anyone. Baekhyun hopes he can be happy with his new venture, and then starts throwing things around the room in a tantrum because he wants Sehun to be happy with him and no one else.

The villagers call his landline endlessly but he never picks up the phone. They’ll have heard rumours by now, from Jongin or the neighbours, whoever thinks they have an idea of what’s going on, and he doesn’t want to face the fact that everyone knows because it’s real. Everyone will look at him with pity. Even the cab driver did. And he can’t stand the thought of feeling so low, feeling so unwanted, when he’s supposed to be the happy chap who lives down the road.

He could always unplug the telephone, of course, save himself the migraines, but just when he’s got his fingers clamped around the wire he stops himself. Unplug the landline and they’ll start peering in through his windows, shouting through his letterbox, and he wants neither of those things to happen. He bangs his head against the wall until he manages to let go, and then he decides to brew himself another cup of tea to stop the churning of his empty stomach. Since Friday, he hasn’t really been eating that much, but it works in his favour. His food is lasting longer, so he can spend a greater amount of time hiding away and not slinking out through his doorway to the corner shop, bound to run into people on the way.

While he doesn’t eat, he does wash himself, if sitting in the bathtub for three hours under the meek stream of water that is his shower counts. All the fixtures and fittings are the same as they were when he first moved in five years ago, and still the same when his grandparents moved in before him, some forty years ago. He had the place rewired and replumbed last autumn when he sprung a leak and water came down through his kitchen ceiling, but couldn’t afford a shiny white toilet or a sink with glossy silver faucets, so his showerhead has the same circumference as his favourite Winnie the Pooh mug and half the nozzles don’t work. Perhaps he should invest. New me, new bathroom. Some retail therapy might do him good, except he hasn’t painted anything commercially in a while and his income is dropping. Baekhyun buries his head in his arms, warm water jetting against his back, and remembers how he used to want a set of His and His sinks for his future home.

Naturally, the villagers don’t stop at an unreturned telephone call. On Monday, the week following the incident, they start walking past his house and none so discreetly goggling through his living room window. One morning, he’s hunched up in the corner of his sofa staring at the sudoku book of puzzles he’s got in his lap when Old Joe comes hobbling past without the decency to even pretend that he’s looking at something else. Baekhyun lives at the end of a row of terraced houses. The only thing further down the lane is Junmyeon’s luxury hotel in the old manor house, and he’s fairly certain that Old Joe, Mrs Parker and Camilla Harvey aren’t popping down to play some golf with an overpriced pot of tea every three hours.

Eventually, he opens his fridge and cupboards to find them bare of the things he needs. No milk, bread, cheese, not even any pasta. There’s only a packet of crackers that went out of date last November and a box of powdered strawberry flavouring to make a milkshake with. Right.

Baekhyun reluctantly gets dressed. He lazily slides into a pair of old, bobbled joggers and a hoodie that he can hide inside, then waits by his front door until the coast is clear. He runs calculations in his head, noting that today is Wednesday and trying to figure out what time everyone will be too busy to be wandering around. The farmers will be up in the hills so there’s no need to worry about them, and judging by the time Old Joe should be watching daytime TV with Agnes. So long as he can avoid the big talkers he shouldn’t be cornered into a conversation.

The corner shop is thankfully empty, save for Rose who stands behind the till filling out what looks to be a stock sheet. He slopes around the shop figuring out what he can eat that won’t make him feel sick, the soft thrum of the fridges and freezers and the sound of Rose’s pencil marking ticks on her paper making him feel like less of a focal point. He accidentally catches her eye when he’s moving from the bread to the snacks, and he freezes in fear until she gives him a kind smile and returns to her work.

Rose is one of the kindest people Baekhyun knows. Her jokes are never at anyone’s expense, and she’s always one of the first in line to offer a helping hand where and when she can. She’s pretty too, Baekhyun can appreciate. Long, curly red hair that tumbles wildly over her shoulders, freckled pale skin and friendly brown eyes. If he was that way inclined, Baekhyun wouldn’t have any qualms about chasing her – the thought, unexpected in its appearance, leaves a bitter taste on his tongue. He immediately thinks of Sehun, who left him for someone else, and Yixing, Rose’s boyfriend who she’s oh-so in love with. Envy clenches around his heart and lungs and he feels rather faint, but Baekhyun puts it down to his lack of food over the past few days instead of emotional turmoil. It , yet he feels like if he seems too bothered about the break-up, he’s letting Sehun win.

He pays without making eye contact and is glad that Rose says nothing to him other than “Is that everything?”, “Do you need help packing?” and “Cash or card?”. Baekhyun usually brings his token jute bag that says ‘Crafts are good!!!’ when shopping but from the current limited brain capacity he currently has, he forgot, and has to use his croaky voice to ask for a plastic replacement. Rose is nothing but thoughtful, packing his shop for him even though he would have been fine doing it himself and telling him to take care as she hands it over.

“I saw that Mrs Mason has a few reduced cakes on sale,” she says. “They need to be eaten by today.”

At the mention of cake, Baekhyun’s stomach betrays him. It growls, loud enough for Rose to hear, and he quickly hurries away from her eyes when they drop to his midriff. She’s not one to gossip, but the whispers can become distorted. Baekhyun hadn’t eaten anything all day when he came into my shop can easily turn into Rose said Baekhyun isn’t eating. Someone invite him over for dinner immediately!

The cake wins on his way back home, and he stops at Mrs Mason’s bakery to pick himself the fattest, unhealthiest one he can see. His smile is awkward when he returns the one she sends his way, and things grow even more awkward when he stands in front of the glass counter trying to decide what to have. He can’t think with Mrs Mason staring at him like he’s her next meal, so he ends up pointing at a red velvet cupcake and not saying anything when she mistakes his choice for a choux bun. It could have been worse, Baekhyun reasons, and hands over the cash when she tells him the cost.

She boxes it up for him so it won’t get crushed in his shopping bag, and smiles sweetly at him as she slides it across the countertop and asks, “Sehun no longer in the picture?”

Baekhyun’s hands go numb where he’s picking up the cake. He stills completely, staring blankly into the eyes of Mrs Mason who he knows didn’t mean any harm, but who has managed to destroy his confidence in a single line anyway. Everyone knows. Great.

Baekhyun shakes his head, unable to find his voice, and promptly makes an exit. He starts crying as soon as his front door is locked behind him, and he throws the cake box onto the floor in rebellion before he heads upstairs and buries himself in his duvet. The humiliation is strangling him. Sehun got out unscathed, left him because he wasn’t good enough, and Baekhyun doesn’t know how to cope with all the insecurities that have planted themselves in his mind and wound roots down into his thoughts. Will he ever be enough for someone? Will anyone want him for life? Baekhyun sniffles into his pillow, the fabric still damp from this morning, and somehow falls asleep to the thought of aging alone with fifty cats for company.

When he heads downstairs later on in the evening, the sun already set and the village quiet save for the wauling of Agnes’ cat, Baekhyun discovers that his cake is still tucked safely inside the box, albeit a little battered, and decides to eat it. He thinks of Mrs Mason again, chewing the pastry and swallowing it down a sore throat. The way he eats is messy, cream all over his face, and soon he finds himself mourning that there’s no one to clean it up for him anymore. Sehun would have taken the opportunity to make a move, to kiss the cream between his own lips and the rest of it up. Something pinches Baekhyun’s chest and his head droops forwards from the pain, eyes happening to fall upon his mobile phone discarded on the coffee table.

Sehun’s number is still at the top of his inbox, the last sent message from Friday appearing as a preview and trailing off with an ellipsis. Sehun is at the top of his contacts too, under ‘A…Sehun’, and is the first on speed dial. His gallery is full of pictures of them together, his music library stocked with songs Sehun had recommended or played in his car for one of their long drives between Bybrook and Hapton. He has dumb gaming apps installed that he saw Sehun playing, and still has tabs open on his browser that Sehun used to look things up when they were cooking or watching a TV show and couldn’t figure out where they’d seen an actor before. His house is no different. Sehun is everywhere.

It’s too tempting. Baekhyun scrolls up through their past messages and forgets for a moment that they’re not together anymore. He laughs at Sehun’s dry jokes, smiles fondly at all the plans they made, traverses back further still to the days when they used to text each other good night and good morning, and I love you.

[I miss you], he types slowly, then staring at the draft trying to figure out if this is the right thing to do or not. And though it may not be right, to disrupt Sehun’s new life with Mr Perfect, it is certainly true. Baekhyun has never missed anyone so much as he does Sehun, not even his parents when he moved away, or his grandparents when they died. So he sends it, and regrets it, and tries to bottle up the distress that comes from being left on read.

He wishes he could say he stopped after that. That he deleted Sehun’s number and maybe even threw out his phone after smashing it and setting it on fire. But his emotions get worse, his loneliness amplified with each passing day, and it feels like the part of himself he lost to Sehun is growing more and more in size the longer they spend apart. Will he have to live with this ache forever?

[You’re a selfish bastard], he texts to Sehun, a hundred percent sure in his mind that he is the only one suffering and that Sehun is off in the clouds having the time of his life. Faint is his memory of asking Sehun if there was someone else, but he sharply remembers the guilty expression that had been his gut reaction. Baekhyun swears he asked who it was as well, but he doesn’t recall getting an answer to that, and right now, with his mind running a mile a minute to try and picture what the new guy looks like, Baekhyun is overwhelmed by this all-consuming need to know.

First, he checks Facebook, and when he comes across nothing he realises that this is too respectable a site to be seen breaking up with your boyfriend and happening upon a new one two days later. Sehun is also friends with Baekhyun’s mother on Facebook, and Baekhyun cringes at how he is still ‘in a relationship’ and Sehun has himself down as ‘single’. Snapchat is a painful one, watching the stories of his old college friends pass by, a mixture of men his age on night’s out and men his age recording their babies wrapped up in blankets. It feels like everyone is doing something except for him. Everyone is successful, a long list of accomplishments under their belts, and him? Baekhyun is just a painter, a lonely painter, living out in the middle of nowhere with no future prospects of getting married, having kids, or making enough to do more than just get by.

Instagram is the one that does it. An icy rush sweeps through his chest and down to his fingertips, eyes absorbed by the picture of Sehun smiling with the side of his face pressed against the face of someone Baekhyun thinks he’s met before. They didn’t chat for long, but back in April at Sehun’s birthday party they’d been introduced and he’d seemed quiet, awkward, anxious. The exact opposite of Baekhyun in every way. And maybe the caption is the reason why.

Three months with this one! (*^▽^*)

That’s funny. Baekhyun remembers breaking up only a week ago.

It would make sense for him to be mad. Instead, he just feels numb. He is well aware that things always get worse before they get better, yet he was not aware of just how bad it could get. Like clockwork, he checks Sehun’s Instagram the minute he wakes up and the minute before he goes to sleep, hunting for pictures of him and his new man together for a reason he doesn’t even know yet. Does he want to learn more about this ‘Logan’ guy to see if he’s better than him? Or does his subconscious want to break through his lovesick delusion that Sehun might come back to him in the future?

In situations where he can’t help himself, he has a great number of neighbours he can count on. Vanessa Shaw next door is a great listener, and Martha and Maggie a few doors down have