The two of them sit, hand in hand, idly watching the blaring TV. There’s nothing really interesting on and the younger boy beside him has slipped away into a book instead. Headphones rest on his own shoulders humming music that dilutes into the dull noise of the broadcast. As they sit unmoving beside one another the day passes with decided slowness, just as the countless days before it.

This isn’t going to work anymore.

The thought makes him cringe but, only because it’s true does it hurt him so. This achingly detached routine of being together without really “being together” and doing nothing is breaking his heart. He knows he has to do it, it’d be better for the both of them if he did.

Knowing that doesn’t make it any easier.

What happened to all the wonderful times they had together? Those days where they could be together without countries separating them? Those days when they could do whatever they pleased. Even if they were rehearsing for a show or practicing all day it was still worth the tiresome hours knowing they'd be reunited at the busy day's end. Night would fall painting dark hues and bright stars across the canvas of the sky. Colors he once found as welcoming as the warm embrace he would drift off in under the cocoon of blankets encircling them. Each gentle touch, shared memory, every moment spent together, doesn’t that mean anything anymore?

A long time ago it was everything. A long time ago it wasn't just him who felt this way. Once upon a time it was them against the world. Once upon a time they had a happy ending. Not anymore, those things are nothing now. Lost in the echoes of the past and doomed to drift among forgotten stories like their own.

Time and distance has torn them apart. The very essence of their relationship is breaking away. Like a hopeless, fading flower who's petals are falling successively into the bitter nothingness.

As much as he’s tried, gathering those petals is meaningless.

Bringing fallen petals back to a dying flower is useless. The flower will never bloom again no matter how much you wish it otherwise.

And desperately wish he has.

“Hyung, are you okay?” the sleepy eyed boy beside him asks, finally noticing him. These are the first words spoken since they joined one another in the empty living room.

“Yes, I’m fine.” he mumbles in reply, voice thick with disuse and lack of emotion. That’s what’s become of the two of them, a lack of emotion and feeling in even the simplest of replies.

I’m fine.

A lie and nothing more.

There isn't enough feeling in the lie to sound even moderately convincing.

“Are you sure?” The concern is there but it sounds forced, unnatural.

No.

“Yes.”

Can’t he tell he's lying?

He should’ve been able to see through his lie easily, as he always has. Instead their words cease and the younger goes back to his book, ignoring him once more. Never has he hated literature as much as in this moment. How can it so easily capture the attention he desperately craves for? How can an inanimate object possibly be more entrancing than him, a living breathing person? Can’t the lengthy history with its reader earn him even a passing glance?

Never.

He could never overcome the eloquent words of the book that its reader so carefully holds in his free hand. He’s certain the hand holding the book contains more warmth than the slim fingers laced through his. The fingers he used to trace and fiddle with on the days they spent just like this but, in a happier time. Before the weary days of loneliness spent miles apart created the gaping crevice between them. A wound that’s cut deeper and deeper with every day spent away in China or just sitting here like statues without any regard for one another.
 

It hurts him more to think he’s the only one thinking this way.

How can he possibly know if the stoic boy beside him even cares about him anymore? For all he knows he could hate him. Hate him and put with him to avoid breaking his fragile heart. He’d rather he just shatters it into a thousand irreparable pieces and walk away than make him endure this agonizing drift away from one another. It’d be an act of mercy by this point.

A clean cut of the fraying thread barely holding them together.