Boundaries
f o u r t y t h r e e w o r d s
How can we be whole together if you are not empty in the place that I am to fill?
He stood from the bed on quivering legs that threatened to give out from underneath him at first.
A few steps and a bend and he was pulling one of their shirts over his head. It smelled of the other’s department store collogue but it was better than smelling of he decided as he hiked the waist band of his boxers back over his hipbones. They had always been too big for him, or maybe he was just too skinny for them.
The eucalyptus boards make no sound as the skin of his feet stuck and peeled along them as he walked down the hall to the bathroom. The place was filled with a dim grey-blue light. It was early morning, the sun would be waking soon and the world would start again. Everyone would go about their day and plug in hours doing whatever it was they did, everything complete, everything in its place. Everything had a place.
Everything but him.
He had been sleeping with the older male for a couple months or so now. He supposed they were dating but it wasn’t anything exclusive.
That’s what he told his friends whenever they asked. But he knew even calling it dating was a stretch.
He hissed when the cold tile of the bathroom floor first hit his feet, you would think he would be used to it by now but he wasn’t. Another indication that he didn’t have a place here, he thought.
His thighs burned when he spread his legs apart to stand in front of the toilet, but you wouldn’t have known unless you caught the split-second twitch of his cheek muscles. He peed. Then flushed and moved to the sink. He took a spare washcloth from the second to the bottom right draw under the sink and cleaned what places on him still felt sticky.
It wasn’t that he didn’t want it to be anything more than routine booty calls, on the contrary, he wanted it to be so much more. But he knew the other didn’t.
Or maybe the other did want more, he didn’t know too well. He just knew that the other didn’t want the more to be with him.
There were others that had the more, he knew there were. He had heard about them in passing, seen them at a glance, in the places of the other’s life he hadn’t gained access into yet but stolen looks of when no one else was looking.
If there are others in the one you love’s life, even in their mind, then there is nothing you can do.
He wondered if there was a place for him in this world where he would be free of this terrible sense of others.
Ringing out the washcloth, he hung it on the wooden hook on the back of the door to dry before sticking and peeling his way back down the hallway to the bedroom from which he came.
Stopping in the doorway, he stared at the other’s sleeping body in the bed. The other was on his stomach, head turned away from him, dark hair contrasting dramatically with the white crumpled sheets. The other’s back was tan, broad and toned, tattoo ink decorating a few corners, arms folded under the pillow causing the muscles to flex in a way that had his mind reeling back to just a few hours earlier.
When they had been in that bed together, connected, moving, swooning. When he had been knocked breathless too many times to count, like he was every time they did this.
When the other had stayed cushioned upon him, dazed, enervated, heart beating like a hammer upon him. With one hand the other had clasped his head, their gazes locked and liquid.
“So beautiful…” the other said in a low voice broken by passion.
That was one of the reasons why he kept clinging on; kept trying make a place for himself here; kept trying to fill what wasn’t empty; no one had ever called him beautiful before. Not like the way the other did.
Moving finally from the doorway he removed the shirt that no longer smelled like department store collogue and slipped silently back into his place in the bed. The bed shifted and soon his back was against the other’s front and the other had thrown his arm over him, trapping him in place.
A physical representation of the invisible boundaries that he’d never be able to cross…
“The bed is too cold without you.” said Minsoo.
Chanhee chuckled. “Sorry, I’ll stay in my place next time.”
a/n : angsty chapter is short and angsty and from chanhee's pov (sorta) in case you couldn't tell
sorry for taking forever to updste this im a y author i know OTL
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