“HyukJae… ”

HyukJae murmured something from the floor. Having had three beers DongHae felt dizzy, but he had made it to the bed, unlike HyukJae; but HyukJae lost count of his beers half way through the night.

In the dark, and moving in all fours, DongHae looked for HyukJae. He found him with his back against the side of the bed, head resting loosely over it. So he lay face down, putting his arms around his neck. HyukJae smelled like alcohol, like sweat and smoke, like a party, stranger ‘s party.

“Hyukkie…” DongHae ‘s tone was like a child trying to convince his mother to buy him a candy. “I wanna try’em out”.

Which was something similar to what he was trying to do.

“Hae – I said no. It could be dangerous.”

HyukJae ‘s voice sounded croaky but firm. He was too drunk to say more, still he wanted to enlist all the reasons why it was a bad idea: they didn’t know what was in those pills, they got them from someone they met at a stranger ‘s party to which they were invited after their first solo concert in Japan, if anyone found out they would have problems and not just with the company…

But all excuses vanished when DongHae slid his hands down his chest, whispering in his ear the wonders he had been told, illustrating the wonderful experience it could be.

Finally, the pills disappeared from the TV table.

DongHae was right it was a wonderful experience. So wonderful that they repeated it over, and over again.

Then the unavoidable happened: it ceased to be enough. What began as a pill every two weeks became a couple pills a week when they started the promotion with his other sub-unit and was a pill every day when the album with the whole group was released. At the beginning of the world tour something stronger came to them.

Nobody noticed anything. They did it together, at the end of the day when no one would look for them anymore; during the daylight they did their job perfectly, got up early, met of people, said funny things, smiled and waved. But slowly they began to feel anxious; the night didn’t come fast enough.

Until one day HyukJae came even later than usual to the apartment to which he had moved to with DongHae at the begging of the promotions. Amid extreme fatigue and dark circles poorly disguised, HyukJae had been convincing himself that what they were doing was not that dangerous, they had control; they were doing it together. When he saw DongHae sitting, or rather lying, next to the bed, with a pair of syringes by his side, he knew it was not.

The filled syringe was for him, he was conscious of it. He didn’t take it, he couldn’t and so he told DongHae: that was enough, they were loosing control, was the time to stop. He never imagined seeing DongHae so angry; for him they were in the top of the world, what was there to loose?

Of course then everyone found out what was happening, that was hell.

DongHae left two days later.

Original chapter in spanish by me :D