The cold kitchen floor is no place to stand at five-to-six in the morning, Chanyeol thinks to himself, but sleep is hard to come by when you’re nursing a wounded heart and a guilty conscience - as well as an insatiable craving for a bowl of soggy cornflakes sprinkled liberally with sugar.

He sets the milk down on the counter and blinks at it, eyes still watery and unfocused from lack of sleep. There's almost a full bottle left – that’ll last him at least until tomorrow. He's the only one here to drink it anyway, and apart from the occasional bowl of cereal, he only takes a dash of milk in his morning coffee.

Baekhyun was always the one who liked his coffee milky; Chanyeol prefers it nearly black.

It would always be the same old schtick, day after day. Baekhyun would stir something like half a bottle of full-cream milk into his coffee, and Chanyeol would point at it and make the very same smart-alecky comment.

Hey. You want some coffee with that milk?

And then he’d be met with the very same answer, followed by the very same exaggerated eye-roll.

Quiet, you.

But still, Baekhyun would always laugh - even if it was only to make Chanyeol feel better about himself for being unforgivably lame and predictable.

Stupid wisecracks have always been Chanyeol's specialty.

On closer inspection of the milk, Chanyeol can see that there are lip marks on the rim, as per bloody usual. Baekhyun had obviously been drinking right out of the bottle again.

Well, perhaps that won't be a problem anymore, he thinks to himself as he gulps down half of the remaining milk – also right out of the bottle. Chanyeol never drinks from the bottle – well, he’s doing it now, but today isn’t a normal day, so he’ll let this one slide. Baekhyun would always try to justify the unclean habit with something along the lines of ‘what’s a little bit of spittle among friends?’, but Chanyeol was never convinced. They’ve both shared more than a few bodily fluids at this point, granted, but it’s just the principle.

So admittedly, he doesn’t really know why he did it just then… but maybe it’s because Baekhyun isn’t here to call him out on his hypocrisy - and also, it’s as though a tiny insignificant part of Baekhyun will remain with him in a way, even if it's just a smear of his DNA from the mouth of a milk bottle. As stupid as that might sound to any other normal person.

In an attempt to mentally prepare himself for a worst-case scenario, Chanyeol tries to focus on whatever positives he can scrape together from this whole sorry situation. There are plenty of infuriating little habits he'd probably be glad to see the back of, like Baekhyun’s propensity for sleep-talking and stealing all the covers, and leaving empty toilet rolls in the bathroom instead of replacing them. Then there are his clothes, which are still scattered all over the floor of their bedroom – the ones he didn’t manage to hastily stuff into his suitcase when he stormed out of the house last night – possibly for good, Chanyeol can’t be sure. He didn’t really say anything when he left; he merely slammed the door near off its hinges, and that was that.

Chanyeol rinses out his empty bowl, noticing that Baekhyun’s food-encrusted crockery from the night before is still festering in the sink. Chanyeol would always end up washing both his and Baekhyun's dishes anyway; it was easier than reminding Baekhyun to do it, and besides, if you want something done right, you’re better off doing it yourself... but there’s something keeping him from doing it right now. Something he can't quite explain.

It’s not that Baekhyun’s selfish, as such – he’s just absent-minded, emotionally sensitive, and perhaps a bit flighty... but he’s also sharp and witty and endlessly intriguing; one smile could tell a thousand stories, and at the same time, could also mask a thousand sorrows. It took Chanyeol a good few years to learn to distinguish between the happy smiles and the sad ones. Both are equally breathtaking, but in the end, it’s all in the eyes.

Chanyeol, on the other hand, if he had to describe himself, would employ colourless adjectives like ‘calm’ and ‘rational’… in a nutshell, a bottler who internalises most things and only goes off very occasionally. But when he does inevitably erupt, it's always messier than a Science Fair volcano - just like the one he made with baking soda, vinegar and red food colouring in the sixth grade.

Goodness gracious, what a disaster that was.

Chanyeol thinks everyone’s entitled to the odd explosion; withholding strong emotions for lengthy periods of time isn’t healthy, after all. But the problem with these explosions, however rare they may be, is that Chanyeol’s mouth usually ends up spewing forth toxic things in the process – things that his head and heart will only regret for days afterwards. Today is just another one of those regretful days.

The next few days aren’t looking too good either.

Chanyeol can’t quite get his head around it all. It hasn’t even been twelve hours yet, but perhaps he should be seriously worried. It’s not really out of character, to be fair; Baekhyun is wont to run off even after the smallest tiff, and last night’s disagreement may have been many things, but ‘small’ could not be counted among them.

But still, he always comes back.

He always comes back.

Eventually.

…So why isn’t he back?

Chanyeol looks down at his watch and sighs. Six-fifteen a.m. The milkman should be doing the rounds soon.

He messily scrawls the words 'no milk today ' on a piece of scrap paper and shoves it under the front door, before dragging himself back to bed for one last hour of unsuccessful sleep.

- - -

Chanyeol hauls himself through the front door again that evening, tired and soaked to the bone after being caught in the rain without an umbrella (he doesn't believe in weather forecasts), only to find that Baekhyun still hasn’t returned. He dumps his briefcase by the door and sheds his wet jacket while his deflating heart settles in for the night, somewhere down in the depths of his stomach.

It’s been a long day, and he should be glad to be home. Their little terrace house may be modest – a poky fixer-upper that they never really got around to fixer-upping - but they somehow managed to breathe new life into it together, assembling it piece by piece into their own unique picture of a happy home.

And now half of that picture is missing.

As he moves silently from one empty room to the next, it occurs to Chanyeol that the practical purpose of each household object has become secondary to the memories tied to it – memories invariably linked to Baekhyun. In their bedroom is the old four-poster bed that creaks terribly at the slightest shifting of weight, which would always disturb their sleep, as well as make any sort of hanky-panky a noisy and unintentionally hilarious affair. In the opposite corner stands Baekhyun’s battered piano. It’s definitely seen better days, and room is scarce enough as it is, but Hell would freeze over before he’d be parted from it. Chanyeol had long since given up trying. He’s surprised Baekhyun didn’t attempt to roll it right out the door with him when he left.

In the bathroom there’s a clawfoot cast iron bathtub with two leaky taps where they would occasionally soak together, wrapped in each other’s arms, reaping the soothing benefits of hot water and si