Chapter 5 [Of Tearing and Healing]

            *A/N~ I’m sorry for the wait, but here is the latest chapter. Read on!

            Sungyeol was torn.

            No matter what he did, no matter how hard he tried, how absolutely hard he tried, he did not know what to do. Little over a week had passed since Myungsoo and he had screamed realities at each other, and going to school that Monday, having had a week-long reprieve from school and not even coming into the barest contact with Myungsoo had left Sungyeol strung tight, wound with a terse energy that kept him awake at night, every night for the past week. Just walking into the classroom where he knew Myungsoo was, was painful and excruciatingly difficult. However, Sungyeol set his reasons, his foolish, groundless reasons for pushing Myungsoo away against his hurt, steeled his iron façade, his silver mask, set his sights on his friends in the corner, and walked into the classroom, chest tight with nervousness.

            Monday passed with minimal Myungsoo contact, and Sungyeol thanked God that He had answered his selfish requests. Tuesday was simple, barely seeing Myungsoo, passing him in hallways and pretending that seeing him did not make Sungyeol’s stomach try to punch its way through his throat with pain and guilt. Wednesday passed.

            Everyone had noted the shift in Sungyeol’s behavior. His coaches, teachers, peers, everyone had pointed out how quiet Sungyeol was all of a sudden, how he no longer truly laughed or smiled. It was easier for him to feign indifference rather than to accept his hurt, and he felt far too much hurt to allow himself to feel.

            Thursday came the first and only severe emotional conflict of the week, the very first contact that Sungyeol had had with Myungsoo that was not a shouting match in weeks.

            It came during their shared language class, an advanced college class that Sungyeol barely paid any heed to, and still managed to receive an “A.” Sungyeol was bent over his paper, texting an old friend, when a friend tapped him on the shoulder.

            “Here,” Wooyoung hissed, slipping Sungyeol a folded up sheet of paper. Puzzled, Sungyeol took it, fingers outlining a small object inside of the paper.

            “Who’s this from?” He asked.

            “Nichkhun, I think. He passed it to me, anyway, and told me to give it to you,” Wooyoung shrugged, and then turned back around. Sungyeol turned the paper over, and nearly dropped it with hands that suddenly began shaking and trembling fiercely. His eyes burned, but he gritted his teeth; he would not cry now.

            An infinity symbol, a symbol that Sungyeol had come to associate with Myungsoo over the past several months was carefully sketched on the paper, hovering almost dead center, black ink tattooing itself across Sungyeol’s eyelids. Sungyeol opened the paper, slowly unfolding the tight creases, and peeked inside.

            A small flower, the same kind that Myungsoo had given Sungyeol the day of a ball that the two had attended lay tiny and fragile at the bottom of the paper. Sungyeol looked at the flower, throat suddenly closing, his vision almost entirely blurred.

            Picking his head up slowly, he looked towards the front of the room, directly towards where Myungsoo watched him open the paper. Just as their eyes made contact, Myungsoo dropped his to his lap, face twisted with what appeared to be a mixture of sadness and resignation. Right then, at that very moment, without the conscious thought, Sungyeol decided that that expression did not fit on Myungsoo’s features, and that it could never show again. He forced his expression blank as he turned his own eyes back to his desk and shoved the paper into his bag, stowing the flower in his notebook.

            Torn between not saying anything, and texting Myungsoo, desperately pleading, “Please. Please, I need to talk to you; I can’t do this; it hurts too much,” Sungyeol’s hands knotted themselves together in the fabric of his jeans, and he felt nausea rise as he staved off waves of fear.

I hurt Myungsoo.

            The thought rang through his head, clanged harshly on his consciousness, and nearly paralyzed his limbs. The rest of the day, he wallowed in that thought, sank deep into a pensive silence, and then brooded throughout practice and on the way home.

            Sitting on the couch, knees pulled up to his chest, Sungyeol stared at the television without even seeing it, contemplating his options, weighing them against each other. He jumped as someone sat beside him, a hand resting on his knees.

            “What’s wrong?” His mother asked, her face creased in concern. Sungyeol stared at the black screen (when had the television gone off?) and sighed.

            “Is it about Myungsoo?” She prompted, trying to force him to meet her eyes. Sungyeol nodded one time slowly. His mother sighed patiently, and then rubbed a soothing hand over his back.

            “Don’t worry about it. He loves you, and you love him, and that isn’t going to change. You two were far too close to all of a sudden be torn entirely apart. Just bide your time, alright? You’ll see; this isn’t the end,” she said, kissing him on the forehead, and then rising. Sungyeol sighed again, his chest feeling a slight bit looser.

            Myungsoo still loved him? After all of the wicked that Sungyeol had done? After all of the isolation that Sungyeol had self-imposed, Myungsoo still loved him? He didn’t know how that would be possible, how someone so purely good could love someone as completely bad Sungyeol was, but his mother was one of the wisest people that Sungyeol knew, and she was probably right.

            Sungyeol threw himself entirely into a swim meet that weekend, himself into an intense workout regime, trying to detract his mind from Myungsoo. And, for the most part, it worked. He didn’t think of Myungsoo when he was otherwise occupied with bringing his harsh breathing to a normal rate, and keeping his body upright as he ran fasterfasterfaster on the treadmill.

            Monday, on the way to school, Sungyeol stared out of the window of the bus, thoughts entirely fastened on Myungsoo, worrying that something would happen that day, something that Sungyeol would say or do that would drive Myungsoo that much more away from him. His body shook as he walked down the hallways to the classroom, knees seemingly weak as they only were when he was worried.

            Just seeing Myungsoo sitting with Taeyeon was enough to send his emotions spiraling down into a hole of self-pity and self-disgust. Sungyeol collapsed in a chair, back to Myungsoo, and turned his music up to shut the world out. The bell rang, and it took an intense amount of energy to rise to his feet, grab his bag, and head out of the room to begin another day at school.

            Dragging his body into his first period, Sungyeol wavered for an instant before rising hurriedly to his feet before the tears could escape his eyelids and trail down his face in irritatingly obvious streaks. The teacher waved him away, and Sungyeol dashed to the bathroom, a bathroom that he never used in school, and clung to the cold stone of the sink, his breathing ragged and harsh in his ears.

            Footsteps tapped by the door, and a pair turned into the bathroom, and Sungyeol looked up, only to see Myungsoo. An influx of emotions seared across Myungsoo’s face before his expression fell carefully blank.

            Sungyeol gripped the sink even harder, and tried his hardest to keep the tears from falling into the sink, but after just an instant, he gave up, surrendered himself to his grief, and the first sob of many ripped its way from his diaphragm through his throat.

            “I can leave, if you want.”

            Myungsoo’s voice was low, and Sungyeol barely caught his words. No. No. NO! This was the first that he’d been alone in a room since he and Myungsoo had snapped.

Come back. Please? Myungsoo. Myungsoo. Emotions flooded through Sungyeol’s mind, forming groundless sentences that were just as elusive as sand when water was poured over it.

            “I’m so sorry.” His voice sounded raw, even to his own ears, and his throat felt tightertightertighter until he felt as though he couldn’t draw another breath. He felt rather than saw Myungsoo beginning to leave the bathroom, and his heart grabbed his stomach and plummeted to the depths of his consciousness.

            Craning his neck to look towards the doorway, he saw Myungsoo’s legs slow to a stop. Then, Sungyeol dropped his head down, hanging heavy between his shoulders and his breath echoed strangely off of the stone sink. He tried, he really did, to control his shuddering gasps, but his efforts were fruitless; he could not calm his heaving breaths.

            A hand touched Sungyeol’s shoulder lightly, then, with a tentative hesitance, Myungsoo’s arm was resting across his shoulders, and his other hand came up to lay on Sungyeol’s elbow.

            “Don’t cry,” Myungsoo said quietly. Sungyeol sobbed, head down, trying hard to quiet himself, and ending up choking on air. He was acutely, painfully aware of the class across the hall, and how silent they were, how they were surely witnessing the spectacle that Sungyeol was making of himself, and honestly, at this point, with Myungsoo standing beside him, and his emotions pouring themselves violently from his body, he didn’t give a . 

            “Stop crying?” The way that Myungsoo’s quiet voice lilted up at the last syllable posed a question, and his hands bore down with sudden, firm force and pushed Sungyeol upright.

            “Look at yourself,” he said. Sungyeol peered at his reflection in the dingy mirror through the haze of tears and his hair. To him, his eyes looked paler than ever, and his cheeks were stained a dark red, the red flowing across his face until it also covered his nose. He chanced a glance over his shoulder, and he saw Myungsoo, the other’s eyes dark and trained on Sungyeol in the mirror, his face slightly pale.

I must be dreaming.

            “But…You hate me,” Sungyeol said weakly. He probably just felt a pause between his heartbeats when Myungsoo spoke.

            “I don’t hate you,” came his response.

I-I I’m so sorry, Myungsoo. I hurt you, and I tried to rationalize it with my own hurt. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry.

            Sungyeol brought his breathing under control, and then straightened to his full height. He turned, facing Myungsoo, and barely managed a second of eye contact before guilt raged through him again, and he was forced to drop his eyes to the cracked school-tile floor. Myungsoo’s hands were on his shoulders, still, and Sungyeol twitched slightly, simultaneously reaching out for Myungsoo and stopping himself. Then, he caved, and stumbled forward until his head was resting on Myungsoo’s shoulder, and his hands were gripping handfuls of Myungsoo’s jacket.

            Everything was Myungsoo; the pressure of Myungsoo holding him, the clean-clothes-pure-Myungsoo-Myungsoo-smell, the rise and fall of Myungsoo’s ribcage with his breathing, and Sungyeol finally felt the final weight, the harshest pressure of Myungsoo-loss fall away, and he felt light, lighter than he had in ages.

            When Sungyeol pulled away, he was still unable to meet Myungsoo’s eyes, but finally, finally, he was comfortable with the fact that Myungsoo was right in front of him, comfortable with the reality that he was simply a fool, and he had finally broken and allowed the weak, vulnerable side of him to show, comfortable with the fact that Myungsoo did not hate him, that he had just alleviated all of Sungyeol’s pain and grief with four words.

            For the first time in months, Sungyeol was able to breathe, and that night, the first night in many tortuous weeks, he fell immediately asleep, did not dream, and rose the next morning, weary and sore, as though he had not seen the world clearly, and had been fighting for a long, long time.

            Arriving at school was simple, and Myungsoo ran up and tackled him, and for the first time in a long time, the hallways and the classroom rang with the sound of their laughter, Sungyeol smiled, Myungsoo laughed, and the world was alright. Finally, finally, the world was alright.

A/N~

Sorry for the late update! I hope you liked this one, because I certainly did!!! I don’t know if this is the last chapter, or not, so I won’t mark it as complete yet.

And since I write such awful author’s notes,

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                        ~Mak~