Lee Donghae isn’t a dramatic type. He is an adult, he works seriously at his job, he pays taxes, and separates his trash. He isn’t a man who falls apart over little things, he never cried to any film, if not counting the "Boy in the Striped Pajamas" but in this case, it’s just hard to blame him. No, Donghae usually doesn’t dramatize. He can solve his problems, he can explain his reasons, he can understand the mind of another person. Donghae is not dramatic.

“Are you coming today?” he asks, glancing at the clock and turns off the burner under the kettle. It reaches ten in the evening.

“No, Donghae,” responds Hyukjae. Donghae is unable to hear the boredom in his voice.  “I'm tired. I'll see you on weekend, okay?”

“Sure,” Donghae smiles. “Good night, sweetheart.”

“Good night.”

Click.

Donghae takes his favorite tea with hibiscus leaves and sits in front of a computer. He leaves the small lamp in the corner of the room , because he doesn’t like the dark; not when there is no one home. And usually there’s no one.

He ignores the strange feeling in his chest and plays the film.

***

“It's been almost two weeks,” Heechul says with raised eyebrows.

“So what?” Donghae shrugs. “He's busy. I can’t blame him. He works like crazy at those photoshoots, you know how this business works.”

“Donghae, he's ignoring you,” says Heechul. He slips the last paper documents in the shredder, and bites into an apple. “He should be showing more interest. You're a busy person too, but somehow you can find time for him.”

“Come on,” Donghae smiles. “I can’t expect from him to take care of me; I'm not a child.”

“Yes, you are,” Heechul laughs.

“Shut up!” Donghae throws a pencil at him.

Heechul catches it on the fly and quietly gives back to Donghae. He pats him on the head and Donghae closes his eyes.

He isn’t a child. He doesn’t have to worry about lack of interest from Hyukjae.

***

“Hey baby,” he greets him with a smile.

Hyukjae is standing in his doorway, beautiful as always. Perfectly smooth face with beautiful outlined eyes. Donghae's heart leaps with joy. Hyukjae leans to kiss his cheek, but his skin only briefly brushes against Donghae’s.

“Sorry, but I can’t stay,” he says quickly, squeezing past him. He smells of expensive perfume and Donghae realizes he’s wearing a makeup.

“Are you going to work?” he asks, frowning. Donghae had cooked dinner and bought wine for the evening. It's their seventh month in relationship celebration. He barely stopped himself from buying a champagne.

“Yes, the car is waiting for me downstairs. I have to take my laptop bag.” Hyukjae is already in his bedroom and goes to the closet. “I don’t know how I’ll make it through all of this, it's crazy. Hey, have you s seen my pen drive?”

Donghae silently reaches into a drawer and takes out a small portable drive with the logo of a blue monkey. He bought it for Hyukjae’s birthday few months ago.

“Oh, thanks,” Hyukjae smiles. “I was looking for it everywhere.”

“No problem, all you had to do was ask,” responds Donghae, stepping closer to him.

“Ah, well, that’s all,” Hyukjae sighs and looks around the room. “I’m sorry I can’t stay. They moved my flight to tonight. Extra schedules and all. I hope you’re not mad.”

“Not at all,” Donghae smiles warmly at him. “I know you’re busy and...”

“I'll call you as soon as I can, I promise,” Hyukjae says and puts his hand on Donghae’s cheek. For a moment, he looks at him with tenderness and Donghae can’t help but smile. “I have to go. I'll call you, I promise,” repeats Hyukjae, and soon disappears quickly through the front door.

Donghae goes to the kitchen and turns off the oven. He leans against the kitchen counter and tries to keep the feeling of Hyukjae’s touch on his cheek. 

How long the feeling stays before it turns into a memory?

***

Hyukjae doesn’t call for three days. During that time, Donghae had already cleaned the entire house, caught  up with all the work and watched the entire season of "New Girl." He isn’t worried; after all, there's nothing to worry about. Hyukjae is at work. His schedule is bursting at the seams, he has no time to worry about regular calls. Donghae understands that. He only sends another message, asking if everything is okay and he goes to sleep.

He doesn’t wait for a response that never comes.

***

“You look terrible.”

“Oh, thank you, Heechul, nice to see you too.” Donghae throws his bag on the desk with a sigh and turns on the computer.

“Still nothing?”

“Don’t ask, please...”

Behind his back, Heechul sadly shakes his head.

***

“You're a moron,” he hisses into the phone.

“What? Heechul, I don’t have time for your riddles. Tell me exactly what you want.” Hyukjae's voice is irritated, which annoys him even more.

“To inform you that you’re a moron,” he says angrily. “If you are going to leave Donghae, just do it. Be a man and break up with him, instead of playing some ty star. He loves you and he deserves a little bit of sincerity, don’t you think?”

“Don’t meddle in the things that are between me and Donghae,” responds Hyukjae warningly.

“Leave him or start being with him. Really be with him. He needs you, but he can do without you. Only give him the chance to break free from you.”

“You don’t understand! I told you to ...”

Click.

***

“Donghae ...”

“I really think you look great in these pictures! This really is your moment! I'm so proud of you, Hyukjae. These lights, the black suit .. You looked really fabulous! I can hardly believe it's you!”

“Donghae,” Hyukjae repeats firmly. He’s trying to concentrate, but Donghae’s face brightening with happiness doesn’t help him.

“Just think, a little more and you may be flying to the United States. I could definitely see you on western covers. Maybe France? What do you think?”

“Donghae, listen,” says Hyukjae and this time he takes the other’s hand. Donghae smiles brightly at him and nods his head, waiting for the next words. “I think we should break up.”

He’s only able to look for a second like a Donghae’s happy face turns into confusion.

“What are you talking about?” he asks, shaking his head.

“I think .. that would be for the best. I know how you feel about me and you're really important to me, but .. at this point I am not able to give you what you need. Not with my work mode and all these new orders. I think it's best if we end it now, so you don’t have to wait for me, because the truth is,  I don’t know when I'll have time to take care of you.”

Donghae shakes his head again and looks nervously around.

“No, Hyuk. You are wrong. I don’t mind waiting for you. I don’t really mind that you don’t have time for me. I get it! That's your job and your dreams. I want to be with you when you meet them.”

“I’m only hurting you, admit it,” Hyukjae says and a tear runs down his cheek. He thought this would be much easier.

“No!” Donghae says firmly. “You’re not hurting me. I love you, I understand you're busy, but when everything calms down ...”

“Donghae, please,” he says quietly. “It will be for the best. Please understand that I do it also for your own good.”

Donghae looks at him with empty eyes. Hyukjae leans down and kisses his temple.

“It really is the best for everybody,” he whispers when he gets up and leaves Donghae at the cafe table.

***

“No comments on how ty I look today?” Donghae says, when Heechul is silent.

“No,” he only responds quietly.

“No bitter remarks about my ed up relationship?”

“No, Donghae.”

Donghae averts his angry gaze from his friend’s worried eyes. He sits down at the computer desk and squeezes his eyelids. He will not cry at work. No, absolutely not. He  has a lot of things to do, he is a responsible man. His personal life has nothing to do with it. He will not cry, because he isn’t the type who dramatizes when something goes wrong. He'll be fine and he will not cry.

Heechul hands him a tissue and pats his back.

***

Saturday has always been difficult, at least since things started to fall apart. Saturdays have always been a day to fill, they were laundry days and shopping days, and catch-up reading days, and movies marathons days, and sometimes, when it was really bad, visit family days.

Donghae sits wearing his sweatpants with the hole on the knee and a pink shirt that says "Marathon 2010." Nothing else is clean enough to wear.

“We have only this”, he mutters to Heebum, who looks at him with curious eyes from his place on the couch. Donghae doesn’t mind having instant ramen for dinner. After a while you get used to the absence of a specific tastes. “What? Stop looking at me like that. It's not my fault that Heechul left you here. I also would have preferred to go with him in this delegation, but this idiot got me a free weekend. Can you imagine that? This guy has the emotional competence of orangutan.”

Donghae sighs and wonders if talking to animals is a sign of extreme desperation. Then he decides that it doesn’t matter to him.

“You want to go for a walk?” he asks again a cat who nuzzles his leg.  “Why not? I have to buy ice cream anyway. Come, we'll take the car.”

Heebum lays asleep on the passenger seat and Donghae turns off the radio to not wake him up. He drives to a small shop run by a family from Vietnam. It’s the only place where he can buy green tea flavored ice creams. 

“Wake up”, he says as he takes Heebum on hand. Said cat blinks at him and yawns lazily.

“Donghae,” the young assistant smiles. “Long time no see.”

“I was kinda busy,” he smiles in response and pulls his cap down on his forehead. “You don’t mind if I go in with him?”  he points at a cat in his arms.

“Of course not! I love cats,” Soa smiles, Heebum’s  back.

Donghae quickly chooses his favorite snacks and heads to the cashier with them.

“Why don’t  you ever try another flavor?” Soa laughs when she takes his tea ice cream.

“Why, if this is one is perfect?” he shrugs.

“It's nice to try new things,”  Soa says, putting his things into the bag.

"What is that?” asks Donghae and points the finger at the row set brown bottles on the shelf.

“Bia hoi,”  Sao says with perfect accent. For Donghae it sounds like a munching. “It's a popular Vietnamese beer.”

“Give me four bottles, please,” Donghae smiles, pulling out his wallet.

***

Bia hoi doesn’t taste like anything special, but with tea ice cream and Suse rice cookies, its flavor improves significantly. Donghae thinks it’s incredibly funny to try pronouncing its name correctly. Heebum doesn’t mind; he eats a piece of cookie from Donghae’s hand and lays himself on the couch next to his thigh.

“Hey kid, how is it?” Heechul asks, and even though Donghae is slugging, he is still able to register an artificially cheerful tone in his friend’s voice.

“Great,” Donghae chuckles. “Me and Heebum arranged a little party!”

“You drunk?”  he asks, astonished.

“Bia hoi!” Donhae laughs.  “It means ‘immersion’! Can you imagine how many things Google knows?”

“This wasn’t a good idea, huh?” Heechul says, leaving his cheerful tone for good.

“ It wasn’t,” Donghae confirms. “But thanks for Heebum, man. He really is a great companion! I have to go. I still have two bottles and ice cream that almost melted.”

When more than an hour later he’s dragging himself to bed, he still has a smile on his face.

Bia hoi, he thinks, how beautiful it is.

***

“You're a moron!” Heechul says again, this time strongly stabbing Hyukjae's chest with forefinger.

“What is it?!” he asks,  immediately adopting to a defensive attitude.

“I told you all this, so you could fix things with Donghae, not leave him!”

“You told me to leave him!” he defends himself. He doesn’t have the patience to figure out his brother’s twisted thinking.

“I thought you were a little smarter,” Heechul attacks again.  “How could you just leave him like that?! You loved him, for god sake!”

“It's not that simple, Heechul,”  Hyukjae says quietly. “He .. We were only falling apart from each other. I know it's my fault, I tried, but sometimes, I didn’t know how to fix it.”

“If you stopped thinking about yourself, you would know what to do!”

“Stop attacking me, okay?! I don’t understand it too!”

Heechul takes a deep breath and rubs his forehead.

“How's he doing?” Hyukjae asks hesitantly.

“How do you think?” Heechul snaps angrily. “He’s miserable! He has a broken heart, damn it!”

Hyukjae bites his lip and looks down at his feet.

“But ... he can handle it, right?”

Heechul wants to hit him.

“Of course,” he hisses venomously. “In the end he will be much better without you.”

***

“No, this is a really good idea,” Donghae smiles. Heechul can’t believe how easy it went.

“You realize you’ll have to clean your apartment?” he laughs a little.

“We can always go to yours,” Donghae shrugs. “Your apartment is a lot nicer anyway.”

“No way! No bringing one night stands to my place! I learned this by a painful experience, and I'm not going to change that  rule for you!”

“Chill out,” Donghae laughs. “We're just going to the club. No need to make all of these backup plans.”

“You’re right”,  Heechul chuckles. “Just you and me and Johnnie Walker.”

“I thought you hate whiskey,” Donghae raises his eyebrows.

“So what? It looks manly enough when it’s ordered at the bar.”

“And then what? You'll be secretly sipping my strawberry margaritas?”

“No,” Heechul says. “I’ll be secretly sipping my own.”

Donghae laughs and Heechul feels that it’s almost sincere.

“Oh, and one more thing,” he warns at the end. “You have a ban for everything that’s strawberry.”

***

Heechul’s previous concerns turn out to be unfounded. Donghae immediately understands it when he sees an unknown ceiling above and he feels a warm body next to him. Bed sheets smelling floral and strange.

What is the etiquette in these situations?

Donghae doesn’t remember anymore. Should he wait until the girl wakes up? Make her a breakfast? Take a shower and smile at her, as if he just spent the best night of his life?

He would consider it if he remembered her name.

In the elevator he quickly fastens his shirt and throws himself a glimpse in the mirror. Messy hair and swollen eyes. He folds collar around his neck and sees two large hickeys. He touches them with a finger and smiles at himself in the mirror.

It's nice, he thinks optimistically. It's almost, almost like love.