#it feels like a kind of personal treasure one keeps in an ornate box somewhere deep out of reverence and fear that it withers

[mist-the-wannabe-linguist]

There is your favourite song, there is your go-to song when you're sad, there is your childhood nostalgia song, and then there is That One Song you heard once when you were five years old and then never again and it ripped straight through your soul, rewired your brain, got absorbed into your DNA and changed something fundamental about you as a person. It has been fifteen years since you heard it and you can still recall the memory almost perfectly. It's not present in any of your playlists because it is simply Too Powerful. That song is your personal patron god

[soobadnoonecanstopher]

Only the One You Love, part 6 (A Kyungsoo Series)

Genre: Angst / Romance

Characters: You X Kyungsoo

Only the One you Love[M]:  part 1, part 2, part 3, part 4, part 5, part 6 , part 7

The ringing went on and on. The trilling that sounded into your ear had a hypnotizing effect.

You knew this was useless. You knew he wasn’t going to answer. The knot inside your stomach had grown its own roots by now, sinking down spiny hooks that would require a professional to remove with how persistent they clung to the soft flesh of the inside of your guts.

Kyungsoo had been upset. This was probably an understatement, but you tended toward understatements lately. For survival. Particularly when the alternative was the sort of scary painful that you didn’t dare touch with your bare fingertips.

His voice mail picked up again. You had lost track of how many times you had called now. You tried to space them out, not calling immediately after hanging up and once again not leaving a voicemail. Who listened to voicemails anyway?

Maybe he was just busy.

Or—

Maybe he forgot his phone again. Maybe it was hidden away inside the top drawer of his nightstand where he kept the small black box with the tiny treasure you had given as a gift the last time you visited.

He told you he couldn't wear it out anywhere with the tiniest frown on his lips. His eyes though...as he ran a fingertip along the wooden edge and picked up the handwritten card inside with the photo of the old woman and her story, his eyes sparkled in wonder the longer he looked down into that box.

You had never intended to buy him a ring. What kind of crazy person must he have thought you were. But your last translating assignment had brought you to a small village so far removed from the modern world you were beginning to forget what it felt like to have internet access. You’d wandered during your off time, out of unparalleled boredom. You didn't even have a cell phone signal and yet you still pulled the useless thing out, again and again, begging for it to just work so you could send the final text message with the three little red hearts to ‘the love of your goddamn life,’ as his contact information read at the time. For the record, it didn't say that anymore.

It was just a small shop with trinkets and baubles. Hardly anything precious from the look of it, but something about the building caught your eye. Once inside the door, the place bloomed with its own positive energy and the woman at the counter looked ancient. Perhaps the people in small villages didn't retire. She had to be over 100 and she lifted her face toward you when you walked inside; soft brown eyes took you in with a blank and passive expression on her face and after just a few seconds you saw the pull of her lips as she bared a smile composed of about three teeth.

“Welcome, my dear,” she said sweetly and her hand swept over the glass countertop. “Come. Let’s find something for your love.”

“Oh, I’m not—” why you couldn't bring yourself to deny it was a mystery to you, but you tried just once more, “I’m not in lo— He’s not really the type to wear these things,” you laughed through the answer. It didn’t matter. She was watching you closely with her knowing eyes and your own eyes were already drifting over her many offerings. Precious stones, precious metals, simple designs, and wildly ornate jewelry that hadn’t been in style for decades.

You were taken aback suddenly by the intricate detail of some of the pieces and the undeniable style that was recognizable throughout all of them.

“Wow, do you make all of these yourself?” The closer you looked at her, the more you saw. She wore a dusty stained apron over her clothes and her fingertips were calloused and worn. You saw bits of incomplete works behind her. Tools for prying and hammering and shaping and her eyes watched your face as you made your discoveries, suddenly looking down into the case before you with a fresher mind and sharper focus.

“What is he like? Is he very handsome?”

You giggled at her question and bit down on your own lip to try and keep your composure in front of the old woman who knew too much already. You simply nodded your head at her question and pulled your phone out again. What was the harm in this? It wasn’t like she would know him. She didn’t look like the type to even own a tv.

On your phone, in your photo gallery, hidden well within folders of folders you found it. The picture you had taken with him the last time you felt his hands running along your skin and his lips pressed against yours. It was the last picture you had taken before leaving for the airport and he had held on to you for much longer than was safe. You worried about missing your flight. You worried about traffic to the airport and you nuzzled into his warmth with a whine when his hands refused to let you go. He was the one to snap the picture and the smile in the shot was tense. You could see the sadness in those eyes at your departure.

“Very strong man,” she said and she was pulling something out from the bottom of the case. “I made this one just for him. It protects him so he can protect you.”

Cradled within her shaking fingertips was a small black ring and something surged up warm inside your belly as you looked down into her hands. It looked like him. It felt like him. How could this old woman have made this tiny thing so perfectly with her old trembling hands?

“What is it?” You knew there had to be a story behind this. It felt too perfect and she seemed to completely sure just by looking at one picture of Kyungsoo on your phone.

“Obsidian,” Kyungsoo read on the card in his fingertips and his lips were moving as he read quickly and silently to himself.

“Did this really come out of a volcano?” His eyes were wide with wonder and he pulled the ring out to look closer. You nodded once, your eyes down on the ring he held in his fingers and you felt a little dip of nerves in your belly when he slipped it carefully onto his ring finger. It went on smoothly and fit perfectly; as if the woman had really made it just for him.

“Hmm…” he mused quietly to himself, “my aura does feel healed.”

You snorted quietly into your hand, the laughter bubbling up against your will with the dead-panned delivery he’d given.

“I’m serious, don't laugh.” His eyes were motionless and wide on yours and there wasn’t a hint of a smile on his face. “Look at me, I’m trying to think a negative thought. I just tried very hard right now and nope...all positive. All of the dark is gone.”

You were openly giggling now and he didn’t break the serious expression on his face.

“You can take it off now, Soo. I know you can’t wear it. I just saw it and I had to get it for you.”

“I love it,” he said with his eyes down on his hand still adorned with the black band, “and I love you.”

Perhaps he had just put the phone inside the drawer beside the ring and left without taking it with him. Perhaps all of these calls were ringing into an empty room in an empty home somewhere in Seoul and he would return home tonight to find dozens of missed calls from you and look at them all with a smile on his face.

The knot in your belly, the uncomfortable somewhat painful ball of anxiety swelled up higher and you swallowed it down. When was the last time he had answered your calls?

Had it really been a week now? Had he really been so upset about the blind date; about your omission really, which he called a lie, did he really need to take it this far?

You had worked up the nerve all day today. You’d practiced what you would say to him.

‘I’m sorry I did that. I’m sorry I pretended I was single for one night. I was bored and I was lonely and I was wrong. You’re right, it was really shitty of me to do. I’m so sorry I hurt you like this.’

Again and again, the phone rang. Again and again, his voicemail picked up; just an automated voice telling you again and again that the user could not come to the phone at this time.

‘I’m sorry I blamed it on Anna. It was my decision to go. I accepted the date and I met with him and danced with him and I never thought of how you might feel about that.’

It had been months since you had seen Kyungsoo in person. It had been weeks since you had video called with him. It had been days since your last short and dismissive phone call with him and his schedule had him so busy you felt like you had been abandoned. When Anna called you up to go out with a friend of hers; told you single girls like you shouldn’t just waste away in their apartments all night; told you that you were young and you should go out and live a little, you caved so damn easily and agreed to meet her at the club. ‘She was right,’ you thought back then. You deserved to have fun. You thought at the time, you deserved to be desired by someone. It was a moment of weakness. It was a mistake.

‘It was Anna. She made me go and you’re always so busy you won't even talk to me sometimes. I was bored and I wanted to go out.’ It was stupid to try and blame anyone else. Blaming Anna was one mistake, but when you said that, implying that somehow he was to blame you getting drunk enough for an attractive young man to grope your ass and leave sloppy goodbye kisses on your cheek that were documented by Anna’s phone, well...everything just blew up then. Do Kyungsoo, the man you loved the most; the only one you loved...he had a temper and he was going to let you know it.

‘But I thought about it now; I put myself in your place and I can see now that it was wrong. You’ve never done anything like that to me, Kyungsoo, and I’m sorry I did that to you.’

After what felt like hours of calling, something suddenly changed. Instead of the ringing, there was an invisible switch flipped and you got a new message. A message telling you that the phone had been turned off.

He had turned off his phone and you never got to say those words you had planned to say.

The minutes of waiting turned to hours and you must have fallen asleep.

You were only aware of the sleep because something was vibrating against your face and you were answering a phone call half between sleep and awake.

“How can you be sleeping right now?” It was Kyungsoo’s voice but the effect was wrong. The tone was biting and the vowels were sluggish and heavy. “You must not have a care in the world to be sleeping so soundly when I’ve been—”

Your living room was dark and you lifted your head from the arm of the couch where you had briefly, only for a second, rested your head in between the calls that didn’t even go to his voicemail anymore.

“—I’ve been killing myself with work...and some other things.”  His words paused only with the sounds of swallowing.

You had to wipe hard at your eyes and you steered your vision toward the spot on the bookshelf where the green illuminated numbers would tell you what time it was if you could only get your eyes to focus.

03:49

“Kyungsoo?” Your sleepy mind that was jarred awake with such a force was pushing the name through your lips well before your stomach could sink with the sudden drop of the shaking elevator you had been riding in your dream.

“Were you expecting someone else to call you?” Sarcasm and a definite blurriness sat on the tip of that tongue. Your ears were humming and the sinking came.

That sinking feeling that started at the bottom of your esophagus and pulled slowly and unendingly — it only built and built upon itself  — passed along your all-day-empty stomach deep into your guts where it wrung and coiled and throbbed with the racing of your heartbeat.

“Perhaps some other man you’ve let touch you while I’ve been working my fucking ass off—”

Some things were becoming incredibly evident.

Kyungsoo was drunk.

Kyungsoo was very drunk, still angry, and beyond the mental capacity to hold his words back.

“Kyungsoo.”

The name came out as a warning and you slapped your lips shut and sent a noisy exhale through your nose that echoed through your own ear as it bounced back and forth from your living room, all the way to his living room or his kitchen or a secluded bar in downtown Seoul and back again to your living room, where the numbers on that clock on the bookshelf mocked you with it’s 03:53 and your skin prickled and shivered where the chill of this conversation invaded.

“Oh. Sorry, sorry — ssso sorry.” He wasn’t. The extra s sounds made his voice slither like a snake over your skin and the chill deepened and sunk down through to your bones.

“I guess you’re still not ready to talk about it, right?” The question was heavy with sarcasm and the pointed silence after his question was as hostile as a slap in the face. If you were taken aback by his words, by his anger, or by his biting tone, you wouldn't have noticed. Inside of you, everything was already too bombarded to feel anything other than intense apprehension.

It was looming. It was a tightly pulled catapult ready to fire. It was the last 10 seconds of a bomb detonator and you watched the numbers count down without a pair of wire cutters to cut the red wire.

You inhaled through the vacuum inside your chest, ignoring the tremble in your lungs that only seemed to be feeding off the tremble in your bottom lip.

“Kyungsoo, y-you’re...you sound like you’ve been drinking a lot, maybe right now isn’t the best time—”

Your attempt at rationality was cut off by a short and gruff laugh that was about as far from a response to actual humor as a laugh could get and the chuckle was short lived because he was coughing loudly into the mouthpiece of his cellphone. It echoed in your ear and made you wince with each rough hack.

“I thought grown adults could drink themselves into drunken stupors and not be held accountable for their actions, right? Wasn’t that what you decided? And I thought — twenty-three — missed calls meant you really, really wanted to talk to me. But...stupid me, I should have known—”

“I did want to talk to you. I do want to talk to you but what I’m saying is I don't think anything constructive can happen right now with you in this condition.” You knew your tone was snappish but you couldn’t help that. He was acting unreasonable; avoiding you for days and then coming to you with this attitude and in this state. It was clear that he was ready for a fight and a talk right now, with him feeling this way and with you feeling the way you felt would only end up a mess.

You were sure that with a level head, with a level heart and soul you could get through to him... just how sorry you actually felt about your mistake. Just how much you knew that you had hurt him. Just how certain you were that you could make it up to him and if you could just get him to listen with just one speck of the love he had for you in his heart he would believe you and he would forgive you and you could both move on from this...this hiccup in the relationship.

But that wasn’t going to happen right now. Not tonight, not with the anger you could feel magnified by the alcohol raging through his blood.

“Well if you don't have anything to say to me, I’ve got something to say to you.”

Kyungsoo spoke up suddenly, only this time, strangely, you could feel much less of the anger you had been sensing through most of this phone call.

The shift was abrupt and it was terrifying. You stared ahead through the darkness of your living room [04:01] and the heavy weights inside your guts sunk hard. You felt the stretch in your gag reflex and you swallowed away the excess saliva that had collected at the back of your throat.

Kyungsoo inhaled a breath and it vibrated and it gasped. It was interrupted by something halfway through his throat — the sound of a spasm inside of him for a split second — it made you swim inside of your own head. You drowned in it.

You swallowed away the saliva that built up again, your own big-baby bottom lip betraying you and continued shuttering all on its own.

“I don't think this is working.”

Everything…

Stopped.

Everything that had been urgent and everything that had been desperate... stopped and slowly, like a lazy moving fog, slippery fingers crawled lightly along your scalp on the crown of your head and your skin prickled and puckered as the blackness washed over you —

From way up top, it crawled slowly and steadily down your temples with a shivering coolness, it traveled — the blackness, the bleakness, the bloodless and lifeless shadow that was swallowing you whole.

“I tried. I really did, but I don’t ...I don't think I can do this anymore. I think...we should stop this. I want...I want to break up.”

...with you. He wanted to break up with you. Kyungsoo was breaking up with you. This was real.

All traces of the anger were gone; stolen by the darkness and the 04:08 began to blur into one big green mass of light on the far end of your view. You stared at it until the wet warmth crested and sunk down your face, clearing the numbers again before they disappeared completely when you closed out the light.

04:08 in the morning, was the time he said those words to you. You never wanted to look at that clock again. You never wanted to open your eyes again, but the sound of the choked sob on the other end of your phone pulled them open.

You wanted to die.

04:08 in the morning was when Do Kyungsoo broke up with you and you stared at the clock in silence, wishing that when 4:09 came he would take it back. He would say he was only kidding (with tears in his voice and not even a deadpan tone on back of his throat, please, God let him be kidding,) what if...what if he changed his mind at 4:09?

Kyungsoo was silent, save for the occasional sniffle of his nose and you hadn’t said a single word.

Time… those wretched numbers on that clock just moved on and Kyungsoo was silent.

You couldn’t. All you wanted to do was curl into yourself, close your eyes and go back to sleep because this was obviously a very bad dream you were trapped in. It was probably because you’d fallen asleep on the couch in an uncomfortable position and the blood flow to your brain had obviously been interrupted by the 90-degree angle of the arm of this couch.

Sure, the tears that ran silently down your face felt real enough, and the pain you could feel in the heel of your palm as you dug your fingernails into your skin hard enough to leave marks, hard enough to break the skin and draw blood might be a trick of your sleeping mind.

The sound of your name in a soft whisper broke you out of it.

He called your name.

He said it softly and with all of the cruelest tenderness that he usually said it with and you felt the first broken sob break free from your lips. You quickly covered your mouth with your hand but it was no use. It had already happened and wouldn’t be put back inside of you quite so easily.

“I’m sorry,” he said and he was so broken. “I’m sorry,” he repeated once more and after that, the terrible silence of the call being disconnected was unmistakable.

The phone call was gone. It had ended at 04:14 and you kept the phone against your ear, listening to the lifelessness of the device that had been the instrument of your destruction.

The call was gone.

Kyungsoo was gone.

He did not call you back. You didn’t dare call him. The decision had been made and you were too broken to function that night.

The sun rose and the day went on and that clock rounded the numbers again and again and life all around you moved on as if you hadn’t just lost everything.

***

“I’m still in love with you.”

Even though he had just said it to you with his own lips, he did not look at you.

You sure as hell were watching him.

Kyungsoo held himself in a carefully posed stance, half bent at the waist as he curled into his own heavy breathing and kept his eyes trained down on the space of flooring in front of his bare feet.

You remembered how the time after the breakup was like living in a fog. You remembered forcing yourself to look away from your phone screen at the images of him at the airport; at the concerts; smiling and laughing with his friends; taunting you with how okay he obviously was with losing you; with getting rid of you, and feeling the throb inside as you tried to breathe in deep enough to stop the dizziness in your head when you simply could not stop crying enough to breathe properly.

You remembered not leaving your apartment for weeks; simply ignoring your growling stomach and ringing telephone until they both gave up.

You remembered the rejection. He didn’t want you anymore. He’d grown sick of you, as you had always deep down inside of you feared he would...and sooner than expected with only a few months of actual relationship under your belt and he was just done with you. You’d made a mistake and…he was done so easily.

You remembered the guilt and self hatred. This was your fault. You deserved this for what you had done. You did not deserve forgiveness nor even the chance to beg for it. This was your fault entirely and the pain inside your chest that was beginning to feel normal to you would be your companion for the rest of your life.

It took weeks, possibly close to a month for you to even begin to feel okay again. And longer for you to feel like maybe you weren’t the worst kind of woman in the world, the kind of woman who would destroy the precious love of a beautiful man like he was. It took so long until you could look at yourself in the mirror and not want to hide away.

And when it finally happened, when you were at last able to clean up the mess that had been your stress-wrecked skin, buy some new clothes that did not remind you of that time you took a cab in Seoul and got splashed with muddy water on the way to his home from the airport. The way he fussed and fretted over the stains and even when you told him to just leave it he insisted on soaking them overnight in his bathtub filled with soapy water and even pulled you into the suds with him barefoot and giggling as you stomped together until every last trace of the mud was gone. You could still feel the strong grip of his hands on your forearms as he held onto you, nagging about splashing so much in case you slipped and fell and hurt yourself.

You had to throw out most of your wardrobe.

You’d shopped for a few things first. New clothes. A new clock. Things that would make you feel like perhaps you were a normal person. Maybe even a good person. Maybe.

But what?

‘Still in love...’

Just like that? If not for the tragedy of your life you might have laughed.

Kyungsoo had ended it. He didn’t call you once. Didn’t text or even make an appearance on your Facebook — which you made a conscious effort to keep up to date on the off chance that he might try, you posted the occasional happy looking selfie (faked of course) — but there was nothing from him. It was like you ceased to exist to him. At times you even wondered if you had dreamed the entire thing?

How? How in the hell could he still have any feelings left when he showed no signs of regretting the break-up? He just worked as he always did. He looked well and healthy. He looked as carefree as could be.

You’d been dying on the inside just trying to seem okay.

Kyungsoo was silent. The room had gone still after his confession (in triplicate) and you stared ahead at the man in disbelief.

Disbelief turned to questions in your mind the longer you watched the now fully clothed man standing in the tiny space that was your dining room. (There was a table and chair there at least and just because you could probably reach out and touch him from the edge of your bed didn’t make it any less of a dining room.)

“Why are you saying this now, Kyungsoo?”

You’d asked the most pressing question that had been inflating the balloon inside your head before it could burst and send bits of your sanity all over the room...apartment...whatever this glorified closet you lived in was advertised as in the real-estate pamphlet.

Why was he only saying this now? Why hadn’t he mentioned this, oh six months ago when your world had collapsed and you’d spent all those sleepless nights hating yourself for making him hate you.

Why did it take the interest of another man; a pint and a half of vodka — a drunk and easily fuckable ex-girlfriend with just enough guilt about sending a vulnerable and recognizable celebrity away to fend for himself — to invite him in — why did it take all of that for him to realize this? And only after being cornered about his motives in taking her to bed did he actually fess up about it.

Frankly, and at the risk of sounding like a broken-fucking-record, you were finding that you had more questions than you had relief at hearing his sudden love confession.

“I’m saying it because it’s the truth. I...came home with you last night, I...slept with you last night because I’m not over you—”

You knew that much. He wasn’t understanding your question and you could feel a bubbling up inside your chest with an urgency that made you sit up straighter on the bed you still occupied.

“No, Kyungsoo, I mean why are you telling me this now? Why only now? Do you have any idea what the past six months have been like for me?”

“What they’ve been like for you? What about how I have felt...how I still feel?” His incredulous tone pushed back against your own and your recognized his defenses kicking in as he straightened his posture and took a step toward where you sat with your knees pulled high against your chest on the bed. You sat in a ball now, a protective sphere that you’d adopted on some subconscious instinct when the flood of memories had taken hold of your emotions and sent you for a spin.

“You broke up with me, Kyungsoo. Do you remember that? Because you seemed pretty sure of yourself when you did it and it’s not like I heard anything else from you ever again.”

Kyungsoo’s movement had not stopped at one step and he was moving closer to where you had stationed yourself in the bed — his movements, you watched them closely with your wide and anxious eyes when you noticed he was coming closer to you — too close for what you were comfortable with right now and you couldn’t help the way you stiffened when his hand extended swiftly as he reached. Only he wasn’t coming for you, his hand pulled at the top dresser drawer that sat directly beside your bed that doubled as a nightstand for your bedside lamp and cell phone charger.

If he noticed your flinch he didn’t draw attention to it and you watched as he peered inside at the stacks of carefully folded underwear, socks, and bras. He grabbed swiftly, handfuls coming out with one of each, selecting without regard for matching colors or fabrics he merely grabbed blindly and tossed items from the open drawer toward where you had established your own shameful naked little bunker on the bed.

The top drawer was slid shut without a delicate hand and the lamp on top of the dresser rattled with his rough movement.

“I know what I did. Don’t you think I know very well what I did?”

The question definitely sounded rhetorical and you eyed the underwear in your hands that you didn’t really want to slip on right now with the mess you still felt all over your body. Not without a shower first at least.

He was down to the next drawer and he pulled out a pink cotton t-shirt that you used mostly for yoga or for sitting on your couch eating potato chips as you wore yoga pants and thought about perhaps joining a yoga class one day at the gym.

The shirt hit you square in the chest and you watched it roll down before making some sort of half-hearted hand motion that mimicked a catching attempt.

You opted to forego the underwear, but welcomed the cover of the shirt and as you slipped it over your head. Your arms were halfway through when his next question was the next thing to hit you.

“Why didn’t you say anything? At all?”

You pulled the fabric down over your breasts and your belly, feeling warmer and more secure and you looked up to meet his eyes that finally — finally met yours since he had started talking about love and broken hearts and all that lighthearted, fun, morning-after-a-drunken-mistake shit.

The only problem with this question was the confused look on your face. You weren’t exactly sure what he meant. Did he mean why you hadn’t told him about the blind date? Because you were pretty damned sure that was a dead horse that had been beaten to a bloody pulp six months ago.

“When I broke up with you...why didn’t you say anything? You just … you just let it happen. You didn’t hold on to me at all. You didn’t fight for me or even make it seem like you gave a shit, why? Why did you just let me go like that? Like it was nothing to you — like I was nothing...”

In his hands, he held a roll of black fabric that he had pulled from inside a drawer. He’d been steadily unfolding and refolding things as he spoke, hardly paying attention to the items he chose, you figured these were nervous movements now, to occupy his hands as his heart raged with the feelings coursing through him.

“I...didn’t think I had the right to,” you whispered after probably too long of a pause. You angled your legs toward the edge of the bed at last. Ready for baby steps now that you had a shirt on and he was bobbing his head with a bite of his lip and his eyes floating over the features your face for as long as his nerves allowed.

He focused back down on the black fabric in his hands and unrolled as the familiarity and significance of that inconspicuous item hit you like the clunk of hard plastic, hollow and incriminating, clattering down onto the floor between his feet.

You knew what it was before it hit the floor. His eyes followed the sound and was bending at the waist to wrap his rounded fingertips around the black plastic case that held a pair of round eyeglasses that you had last touched with your own trembling fingertips exactly one week ago  before rolling them inside a pair of black running pants and stuffing the whole shameful secret deep inside your dresser drawer.

Kyungsoo crouched on his ankles with the case that held his old glasses gripped tightly in the palm of his hand — the eyeglasses from last year that you had taken as a keepsake — a reminder of the swift and all-consuming love you had shared with him and he stared down at the plain and harmless-seeming item with a suffocating silence building between the separate spaces you both occupied.

You didn’t dare touch it with your words or your fingers. You felt trapped and frozen as if you had just been caught in a lie.

Under his breath and whispered with the softest voice, you heard him speak. On his tongue was the sound of your name. He carried it on his breath and it exited his lips as a single brush stroke and oh, such a quiet thing had no business painting you from head to toe in warmth like this. It was only your name. You’d heard it from countless people all day at work with little impact. The force was in the delivery; with how he touched it so carefully and delicately with his tongue. He cradled it on his lips as securely as he cradled the plastic case in his hands and when he said it again, a softer whisper, it was so much worse. He sank down to the floor, from hunched on his ankles down to fall down on his knees and you heard the hard exhale as the air left his lungs.

“Why didn’t you stop me? I would have stopped. I would have taken it back...why did you just let me go? You never say no to anything. You always just let things happen...but I thought...I thought — you should have stopped me—”

“Kyungsoo, I’m sorry.” With the threat of your own guilt overshadowing your brief bout of courage you spoke your words quickly and he closed his downcast eyes at the sound of your voice. “I know it’s late for this...too late for this but I just needed to say it. I’m sorry for what I did to you. I know I hurt you back then. It was never my intention to hurt you but I did and I am very sorry. I shouldn’t have waited so long to say it. I shouldn’t have waited for us to be over to say it.”

“I know you are sorry.” He was nodding his head and his eyelids fluttered and shook as he squeezed them tight.

“I know. You mentioned it last night. I know I should have given you the chance to say that — I just….I handled it bad back then— o-over?” He was speaking amidst a new sound in the room.

“Over?” He repeated again to himself, this terrible word you had used to describe the truth of your relationship with the man you loved. Over. It had been over for months. It had ended. It ceased to exist. It was no longer. Your mind knew it. Your body knew it. Some days you still worked on getting your heart to know it, but it would get the message eventually. As long as you stopped doing things like inviting him into your home while drunk and jumping at the chance to kiss his lips and hop into bed with him.

A buzzing, not coming from your plugged-in cell phone but from what seemed to be inside the front pocket of his sweatpants.

“Shit,” he whispered and pulled out the blasted device with as much annoyance as worry on his face at the interruption. “Shit..shit,” he mouthed this time, mostly under his breath and the buzzing stopped when he pressed something on the screen.

“What is it?” A feeling had dawned. Something was probably happening… some work-related thing and you recalled the phone call you ignored earlier. Was there something you were forgetting in your hungover state? Wasn’t there something that was supposed to happen today?

“My manager. Shit. I think...I think we may be—” he was scrolling on the phone and his face pulled into a grimace as he wrinkled his nose, “we may be late for a flight.”

We? Were you also supposed to be on a plane right now — doing your damn job instead of your ex?

The phone in his hand was buzzing again and his eyes reached up for yours in quiet warning as he lifted it to his ear to speak this time.

“Oh..umm...Hyung—” As soon as he spoke the sound of another voice spoke up and over him. Loud and rough with an urgent tone that had you reaching for your own cell.

You had three missed calls.  Two from a staff member named Alie who had been in charge of updating you on upcoming schedules and events in which your assistance was required and one missed call from Oh Sehun.

You also had one text message waiting from the later and you clicked on the icon with the notification.

‘hey party girl~ guess you’re not used to the thug life??don’t worry I told your boss or whoever the chick with the angry eyebrows is that you were feeling sick and would join us later. You’re welcome ^~ you’ll have to catch the next flight to osaka because we’re taking off now. see you soon :) also..have you heard from Kyungsoo??’

The text message from Sehun was from two hours ago and you sat up straighter on the edge of your bed as hazy memories of your last minute schedule changes had floated into your inbox at work the day before. You were to be on the flight today for a fan meeting in Japan that was happening tomorrow. This was important and you had thought that perhaps this could be your one chance to prove yourself in this new position that had been dropped in your lap by an overly proactive Oh Sehun who seemed to always have your interests in his mind. How could you have possibly forgotten about this?

Well, you knew how you forgot, he was sitting on his ass on your floor with his phone held up to his ear as he talked to his manager in a surprising 95% honest-to-God account of how he got very drunk the night before and was kind of a huge mess right now, a little embarrassed about it, definitely in no condition for an airport appearance, and would need at least two hours before the next flight. He was all apologies for the oversight and you could hear the change in the voice that responded through his phone as it went from irate to passive and forgiving.

You keyed out a short thank you to Sehun for his quick thinking and promised to buy him a drink for the effort.

‘anytime~ sweetness :3,’ His response followed and left you with mixed feelings.

The nagging voice in the back of your mind told you that you should probably cut back on the friendliness on your part — at least to keep him from getting the wrong idea. He only knew your super helpful, professional work persona that was nice to everybody because that was the job.

And if that was what he was into then that was fine for him but you weren’t that up all the time. Not really. That kind of false happiness and super outgoing nature was hard to maintain and sometimes you enjoyed the calm silence of an evening with a man who knew when to just let you read a good book in peace as he played a video game on the couch in between belly rubs for his two puppies and opening his mouth for the grapes you fed him in-between chapters.

No.

You shook your head to clear the memory and you wished that you could shake the warm feeling that flooded through your chest as you looked across the space at the man who had finished his phone call and was staring down at the plastic case that held his eyeglasses. It would have been 9 months since his own hands had touched them.

But almost as quickly as the warmth came the ache. Your heart’s memory was really a son-of-a-bitch sometimes. The pain you felt inside with every second that passed reminded you just how easily he had dropped you. He was so quick to dump you and never look back. And you were left to pick up your own pieces. To clean up your own mess. And your self-restoration project was nearly complete. You had been applying the final fresh coats of paint when he sauntered his way into your bed last night with those tempting lips and that goddamned smell of his and set your deadline back weeks, if not months.

“I have to go,” he said after delaying it for as long as possible. You knew it was coming. You understood the job; you always had. You also had your own flight to prepare for and although you could travel in as big a state of disaster as you pleased, you’d still prefer to shower and at least put on some damn underwear.

“Did you just call this over?” He hadn’t moved from his spot on the floor but cocked his head to the side to peer at you. There was a definite audible challenge in his voice and you bit down on the inside of your lip, a furrow on your brows to see his eyes blink-blink-blink at you; awaiting your answer.

“I did,” you offered, careful to keep your tone as calm and emotionless as possible.

His left eyebrow ticked up a millimeter over his eye and his tongue darted out to moisten his bottom lip before the short inhale through his parted lips provided the necessarily over-dramatic groundwork for his next words.

“I fell asleep inside of you last night. I can still smell you all over my skin. I’m ... so in love with you — but … over?” His head was shaking itself back and forth as his lips hung open with the final syllable of the word. The exception he took to the word evident in the dramatic delivery.

“Kyungsoo, last night...happened,” you said and you had to squeeze your fists into tight balls to keep your voice steady, “but, it wasn’t, like, a reset button. We still broke up. And now I’ve got this life here and this job here and—” (this blanket here, and this single pink slip-on house shoe here…) thankfully you stopped talking after the job mention. It would have to be reason enough. You weren’t here for a debate on the facts, you were just trying to survive this.

Your words grew thick and heavy when his eyes glanced around your apartment, no doubt placing his own little judgments over the life you made such grand claims to and you suddenly wished that you had opted for the living accommodations upgrade. At least a one bedroom would have a door you could close dramatically as you stormed out of the kitchen.

When his eyes found yours again you noticed a marked lack of judgment in them. Instead, he was listening to you speak, with most of the traces of the agitation from this morning gone, Kyungsoo sat with his legs folded into his chest, arms wrapped around his knees and he watched as you tried to find the words to explain how you wouldn’t be so weak to him again. The idea that you had to defend how over this relationship was ridiculous.  

Honestly, the idea of spending a lifetime waking up in his arms sounded like impossible fairytale-heaven but having tasted that there’s-nothing-more-we-can-do, blood-in-the-back-of-your-throat flavor that was the nightmare of losing him — well, that was enough to make you want to run anywhere that was in the opposite direction of those big brown eyes, those impossibly soft, plump lips, and the dangerous temptation of his voice that flowed like sticky honey over all your skin.

“—and… honestly, I don’t think that we, I mean I’m ready for … another, umm, a-another relation-thing with—with any other, another, otro...person, human. Sorry. Someone. Anyone—” he was watching you very-very closely as you spoke and each stumble and stutter over your words made his stupid eyebrow bounce above his eye in a distracting way. You could see the soft curve of the corners of his lips as you bumbled your way into some sort of words that might have meant what you were trying to mean had they only been placed in the right order.

Your Korean felt elementary all of a sudden with the way he was looking at you. You wanted to scream. Why couldn’t you Korean properly right now?

“Wh—what?” You said and gave up at last with a defeated exhale and dramatic slouch of your shoulders.

“What?” He said almost as soon as you said it and his chin perked and his spine straightened. And then he was moving, legs pushing off the floor he moved his whole body into a standing position that set noisy alarms blaring inside of your ears where only you could hear them. What was he doing? Where was he going? Was he leaving? (Already?) Would he ever return?

You stood up. You had to. It was an instinct and the room swayed a bit in your vision with the hangover headache throb that the movement stirred inside.

“You were mumbling something about a person, but I don’t...what does relation-thing mean?” He had asked it with a straight face but you couldn’t be completely positive he wasn’t teasing you for your sloppy Korean (in a high-stress environment while hungover and living inside some sort of vivid nightmare, dammit Do Kyungsoo)...nope, there it was. There was the smallest twitch in his bottom lip, on the left side. It was his tell and you’d become very familiar with being teased by this man. He was definitely teasing you right now at the worst possible time for him to tease you.

The teasing was unwelcome. It was ill-timed and sparked a fire of defense inside of your chest. How dare he? How would he like it if you held this conversation entirely in English and you got to laugh at him for bumbling over his words, and during such an important topic of discussion too...you wanted to smack him.

“A relation-thing is what we don’t have, Do Kyungsoo. Now, I’m sure you’ve got a flight to catch and I’ve got a bottle of aspirin to swallow so…”

“I think you’re wrong,” he countered, with all traces of teasing gone from his face, “of all the things you and I have, a relation-thing is probably the best way to describe it. This thing. The thing we have...me and you...you and me...and the thing. I’ve never been surer of anything in my life.”

How dare he make sense right now? You would have made sense too if given half of the advantage he had with this happening in his mother tongue.

You felt dizzy. Was it possible that you were still drunk? On top of taking your nonsense bumble and turning it into a somewhat sensible examination of the nature of you and Kyungsoo’s non-relationship, he was doing his damn talking now, his half joking half serious talking that he did sometimes when the dark moods had been lifted enough for sarcasm and playfulness to come in to the conversation and it made your head swim. Both with how fucking wonderful it was to finally hear again and with how absolutely terrified you felt when that first tiny sigh of defeat escaped your lips; against your will, of course.

For with the defeat would come the acceptance and with the acceptance would the laughter and soon, if you weren’t careful, you might run the risk of joking along with him or God forbid, laughing at something he said.

So you held your breath. And you closed your eyes. And you willed your body to behave itself. No smiling, no laughter. No caving at all, you were a pillar of strength and fortitude. This man was just a man. His lips were pretty and his eyes were prettier and his dick was nice too but, no, he was just a human being like you were. He wore funny pants all the time. He bought multiple pairs of them. He only owned black socks of all the same style and design because he said it made laundry a breeze. He refused to eat certain herbs and made a huge over-the-top deal anytime someone used the word they were defining in the definition of that same word. He was just a human being. One that didn’t know how to write a detailed text message to save his life. He was shit. He was wonderful in person, but he was still shit in all other forms of communication. He didn’t have to have this power over you. You wouldn’t let him have this.

You could touch him right now and be completely unaffected. You could use your hand to push his welcome-overstaying ass right on out of your front door if you wanted.

“—and did you also throw in a Spanish word? I think it must be a good sign that you’re this nervous around me because that means—”

He stopped talking the second you placed a warm palm over the center of his chest and his eyes widened with the inhale of breath that made your hand move up as his lungs inflated.

“It doesn’t mean anything, Kyungsoo.”

In an instant, his expression changed. With the humor gone from his eyes, you saw traces of a nervous energy forcing them to remain wide and set on you. He swallowed quickly and his big brown eyes watched you with just the smallest furrow in his brows as he half blinked his lids.

And then it was warm. He moved, you felt the movement in his chest before the warmth of his hand laid over yours and his fingers wrapped around yours as his heat invaded and permeated, battling the chill that fought to keep control of your heart.

A pillar of strength.

“I know that you’re mad at me,” he said.

Throbbing, dehydrated, used up and sore strength. Like a 1999 Toyota with a half a million miles, bald tires and busted up windows -- that started right up despite everyone’s wishes that it would finally just die so they’d have an excuse to buy something new and shiny.

“You can be mad at me. It’s okay, I can handle that. If you want to yell at me, then you can do that too. I know I hurt you and I was an asshole.”

He had your hand encased in his and you could feel the steady pounding of his heart through his chest wall underneath your palm. Its rhythm was frantic. It followed the same beat as the pounding of your own heart that echoed against your eardrums.

Your own gravity was shaky at best. You felt like you might just float up right into the ceiling above your head with how disconnected you felt to the floor beneath your feet and each breath that vacated your lungs felt too heavy and too weighted for just standing here in the middle of your apartment with your hand held down over the heart of the man you loved.

Every single brain cell inside of your head was beginning to panic and scream for letting this invasive touch of his warmth go on for this long.

“K-Kyungsoo,” you managed. You weren’t about to fall back into the same ways of the past you, the you who gave herself up so easily and cried over the shattered and broken pieces of the remnants of her heart that his big boots had carelessly and thoughtlessly stomped all over.

He had slept well every night unaware that some of the shards were still stuck to the bottom of his shoes. You’d felt tiny cracks in the way it pumped since then. He had taken them with him, and yet here you were thinking stupid thoughts in your stupid head about that vulnerable look in his eyes.

You could do this. You could probably do this.

There was so much more to lose here. Back home it was just your stupid heart, but here, it would be your job. It would be your reputation in this industry. It would be your chances of a future in the only career you’d ever loved. It would be ruin.

You shouldn’t have done this with him in the first place, but now… now it was impossible. You had read through several very real, very threatening clauses in the contract that you signed when you had accepted the job. Things that talked about lawsuits and things that talked about breaches of contract that carried with them a number of horrible, life ruining things for everyone involved.

If not just to protect your heart, shouldn’t you at least give a damn about your future?

“I’m not looking for an answer right now,” he said and you resisted the urge to inform him that he hadn’t asked a single question, “I just want you to know—”

If the hand over your hand was too much physical contact for you, you damn were no near prepared for the one that had been harmlessly winding up for an attack at his side. It moved, with slippery fingertips that promised all sorts of soul-destroying things, up your shoulder and you had to close your eyes — you had to — goddamn him and that hand. It reached the bare skin of your neck, the soft skin of your jaw and further, an entire palm, his entire hand lightly laid over your cheek. Your eyes burned to open. They begged for it, but you resisted. You would wait this out in the darkness of your own making.

“Kyungsoo, what are you doing?” Your voice sounded more stable than any of your internal organs felt, combined.

“I’ve missed you so much.”

He was too much. This was so much. You wouldn't be able to make the flight. You wouldn't be able to do your job at the fan meeting because he was going to leave you for dead right here on this floor.

“Haven’t you missed me? Was there ever anyone else you were interested in? Anyone at all? I’ve been trying and trying just to...seem normal, just to even tolerate anyone else but...but I can’t. If it isn’t you, I can’t even look at another woman.”

You felt frozen in time. This second, this moment felt magnified and dragged out as if you had somehow dropped into a wormhole in which time no longer made sense and your skin was humming all over your body.

“Will you open your eyes and look at me, please,” he sounded much closer and much more dangerous than before. Your heart was about to quit. This was too much for any one person to take.

You loved him.

You loved him.

He hurt you.

He left you behind.

His phone was ringing.

The buzzing wasn’t your skin. The buzzing was his phone ringing. It must have been ringing for a while.

“No. No...ignore it,” he begged when your shift in posture must have told him that you too were very aware of the calls of his job. “It will stop. I’ll make it stop.” And he was moving, hands leaving your flesh, finally letting you breathe again with their absence. With frantic eyes running over screens, the interruption was silenced for a moment and he threw it. It was tossed with a surprising bit of force across the room where you heard the dull clatter of plastic.

“Kyungsoo, you need to go to work.”

“I don't have to go yet.” It sounded feeble. He was deep in his denial. “I’m already going to be scolded, I don't have to go yet.” With his hands off of you, there was a greater sense of self-control pulsing through your veins and you took a step back and away from him. He watched the movement you took and bit down on the inside of his lip as his hands moved again; this time grasping at the space directly in front of him. It was a noncommittal move. It was unsure and tentative and you knew he wanted to touch you again, but the moment had already been interrupted and he didn’t quite dare.

“I,” when he spoke, at last, it was half breath and half voice, “need you to say something. You’ve been so quiet and it’s making me very uncomfortable. Will you say something, please?”

“What do you want me to say, Kyungsoo?” This wasn’t him winning. This was you being a rational adult who was talking through things with your ex-boyfriend who was obviously a trick of the universe set out to destroy you once again, if only you would just fall for it.

“I don't know. Just say something. Tell me you hate me, tell me I broke your heart. Yell at me, hit me, do something. Tell me you fucking missed me as much as I missed you. Call me a bastard, why are you so quiet?” His voice rose with each new thought he added and you could feel your emotions bubbling up hot and fast inside of your chest as he spoke.

You had been quiet for your own self-preservation. It was survival. He was right about all of it. He did break your heart. You did want to yell at him and you did want to hit him. You missed him so much you had forgotten what it was like to go to sleep without the pain in your stomach from being so empty inside.

Even with him standing in front of you now, even with the closeness you could feel physically to him, you had placed up a thick impenetrable wall whose stones were made of the strongest materials. He was here with you close enough for you to reach out and touch but the barrier around your heart was fortified. If you focused, which you were trying your best not to, you could see that even in his hungover, filthy state, he was the same. He had the same little habits, his fingernails chewed down to the quick, his lips frequently the place he went to bite on when nervous, like now, he was doing it even now as he stood here begging for you to just talk to him. His straight black hair was limp on his head and the slight build of his shoulders looked gaunt and thin. He had lost weight and it showed on his face.

And his anger; you remembered it from the phone calls. The jealousy and the cursing, he had felt like another person. Someone other than this broken down man who looked close to tears in front of you.

You couldn't yell. You couldn't scream and call him names, he was your Kyungsoo.

He had been yours.

And then he wasn't.

“Why did you do that?” You said softly after what felt like hours of silence and you could feel your own mood pulling your lips down into a frown. You couldn't fight it. You couldn't fix it. You couldn't put up the brave and chipper facade anymore because he was here, confronting you about how you felt and you felt so broken inside, “Why did you do that?” You asked again and he took a step closer to where you had retreated.

There was a throbbing in your chest and in the back of your throat.

“I’m sorry,” he said against your ear and he was so close. When he inhaled it was from your oxygen supply and you could feel the warmth from his skin against your own. It burned with broken promises and pain.

Hands — trembling against you, connected to warm arms wrapping around you and there he was, surrounding you with a familiarity that ached as it moved and enveloped every inch of the pain. Breathing was difficult. Staying upright was difficult and he was speaking into your ear with the softness of a lullaby, “I’m so sorry, baby. I’m sorry I did that to you.”

“You’re such a jerk you know that?” you said suddenly. A burst of courage smacking you against the ass and his shoulders stiffened around you for a second as the calm circles he was rubbing into your back stalled. His surprise only lasted for a moment before you felt his face move up and down with his acknowledgment of your words.

“And an idiot. That was so stupid, Kyungsoo. If you’re mad at me, then you talk to me about it, you don't just get drunk and break up with me, what the fuck?” There was less vehement nodding happening now and more of a general stiffness as he took a step back to look into your face as you spoke your piece at last.

“And the jealousy? What exactly do you think of me? Europeans kiss on the cheek as a greeting, Kyungsoo. Did you expect me to say ‘oh sorry, I can’t say hi to you today, my boyfriend’s a fucking psychopath in khakis who’s going to accuse me of fucking the entire party tonight if I greet you all’ should I have told them that?”

If he had stiffened up before, this next bit had given his posture a real test. You half wondered if you had gone too far. But really, the man had asked, practically begged for your honest to god take on the whole thing and it was a bit hard to censor yourself once you had gotten started.

While his hands still remained around you, the hold was very loose now. You didn't exactly blame him and the longer you thought about the things he had said to you about the whole thing, the more you wondered why it took you so long to say how you really felt.

You did hear the smallest whisper from him. He repeated one word but it was nearly completely under his breath and it seemed to be the one word he took the most offense to. ‘Khakis’ he repeated and your eyes widened so far they nearly popped out of your head. The look was enough to pull his lips shut tight and you wondered if he would ever be able to say the word to you again without bringing up some ugly memories of this moment.

“Hmm?” You lifted a brow and he angled his chin down and his eyes down and his ego down and shook his head once with a definite pout on his face.

“Nothing. Khaki-psycho. That’s me,” his deadpan delivery was on point, “that would be a good band name.”

The joke was abrupt and unexpected and you fought the smile as best as you could but the short guffaw that erupted from your lips only pissed you off more. How dare he make you laugh. You had been doing so well.

When he saw the smile you noticed the immediate change in his face and his own lips trembled against the lift in mood.

“Don't you dare laugh. You aren't allowed to laugh yet, that was just for me.” You lifted a finger toward his face and you knew it was irrational now, to be irritated that he was laughing. But these things weren’t exactly going according to the owner’s manual of life and it was just a little bit satisfying to see him quickly blank out his lips and nod his head up and down obediently.

“Yes ma’am,” he said in a low tone that sounded just about as chastised as a scolded puppy and he looked exactly as adorable as one.

Damn him. Damn the eyes and damn the lips and damn the pout and the way he was watching you at this moment. Damn the hangover and the headache and the way the light made your temples throb and damn the filthy condition of both of your bodies and damn the way he smelled under the layer of old booze and old sex, how dare he still smell like Kyungsoo after all of that. He hadn’t even brushed his teeth and you suddenly became a bit self-conscious about how close you had been standing to him this entire time.

“You stink,” you said with half a heart of conviction and his eyes widened marginally as he chewed on the inside of his lip again.

“So do you,” he said with the threat of a smile on his lips and you lifted your palm to swat in annoyance at his chest for his bluntness. Of course, you stunk, you hadn’t had a shower or brushed your teeth or even cleaned up your bedsheets. He was laughing again, without your permission, he giggled and grabbed your hand to hold it still before you could hit him again and you yelped in surprise to feel the soft warmth of the skin of his cheek against your own.

Your hand in his had given him leverage and he pulled you closer to him, letting the momentum of the little tug bring you forward you collided with his chest and his arms were around you again, only this time much less for the comfort and much more demanding of something else. Closeness and contact and you whined and complained as you tried to wiggle free.

“You said I stink,” you said and his face was so close now and he laughed again.

“You smell,” there was a sharp inhale and he coughed for dramatic effect, “so bad right now.” And with the gasp of shock in your chest, you felt your balance shift and you were lifted off of your feet. He was moving forward and you recognized that the destination in his path of movement was your bathroom. “Guess we have no choice but to shower together.”

“I’ll scrub your back and you can scrub mine, okay?”

It was a bad idea. The sex itself the night before had been a bad idea but this...a shower together with all of that closeness and touching that that sort of thing involved. It was absolutely out of the question.

You found your footing when he plopped you down in front of the bathroom door and you felt the door behind your back give way when you were leaned against it and Kyungsoo was here right in front of you, making you feel drunk all over again with the way he leaned toward you.

You could feel it coming before he leaned in closer. There was a thickness in the air that felt heavy on your skin and his focus was much too shaky. Those eyes kept drifting over your face. That gaze kept finding its way down to your lips despite the state of you and god he was beautiful up close.

“I really want to kiss you right now,” his confession was as soft as the fingertip’s touch you felt trailing over your hips.

“But I thought I stunk,” you said with an accusatory grin and he wasn’t smiling at all.

This wouldn’t do at all. You stepped back, letting his hands fall away as you left his embrace and your bathroom held all of the things you needed to fix this problem. You had just the one toothbrush but honestly, at this point he couldn’t afford to be very picky.

You shared with him — a fresh squeeze for him first and he brushed quickly with the sight of your reflection in the mirror in the corner of his eye.

You took your time with yourself; ignoring the stalker-like way he watched you from the edge of the bathroom sink and you brushed carefully and for a very long time, paying extra care to get the backs of your molars and even the surface of your tongue.

“You know,” you said in between the rinsing and filling the small cup of mouthwash to swish around your mouth, “this doesn’t mean I’m ready for another relationship. Especially not one at work. This is different this time. I have more responsibilities, being the exclusive translator for EXO and I can’t afford to mess around. I just can’t.”

“I didn’t say anything about a relationship.” His response was quick. Too quick;  you could see the pink in his ears and the way his eyes fell as he looked down at his already shorter than short fingernails for new growth to bite.

You felt a little bit like the bad guy now with the sulk on his face and the definite slump in his shoulders.

“So don’t you think a shower together, as friends and co-workers, might be a bad idea?”

“I shower with my friends sometimes.”

Your eyebrow cocked up on its own. “You shower...naked... with your friends?”

“Well...I don’t shower in my clothes and no bathroom lock can keep Baekhyun out, so…”

He was full of shit. He knew he was full of shit just as much as you did and it took exactly ten seconds of staring at him before you heard the sigh.

“Fine. I can’t do this. I don’t want to be your friend. Can you really be my friend? You’re still mad at me right?”

He was impossible. Had he really not heard the whole speech about work? This was your career and his career and that had been your heart, goddammit, and the man was simply dangerous to keep inside your house any longer.

You were aware that time had been passing quickly. Despite the extra couple of hours the flight reschedule bought him, he couldn’t stand around in this bathroom not showering or making any attempt at getting ready for the day. And you also had to shower. You were familiar enough with your hot water heater to know that you had only enough of the supply for one and maybe a quarter showers before the cold would come crashing down over your head and shock whichever unlucky soul to the bones that just happened to be the one to shower second.

Could you really do that to him? He did kind of deserve it.

“I’ll shower first, very very fast, and then you can shower, okay?”

Kyungsoo did not respond right away, not with words. He was throwing what you were pretty sure was a little fit inside his head about being rejected by you. All the while, attempting to keep up a calm and cool exterior.

But the silence unnerved you and you could feel the urge to offer him some sort of comfort or solace at least. The desire to pacify this man was embedded deep within your soul.

“I did, by the way…” you said cryptically as you went to your shower and turned on the tap to the cooler side of warm to conserve the hot water for his shower.

He lifted his brows in question, clearly expecting you to elaborate.

“You did what?”

“Miss you.” You caved as easily as a sandstone cliffside and he leaned against the bathroom wall with his hands hung against his side and he blinked slowly and carefully as if he were sending hidden messages with his eyelids.

“How much?” He asked but he did not move. He lips hardly moved at all and you wondered if he would give you any privacy while you showered.

How much had you missed him? A hundred? A thousand? Ten million? How could you quantify that with a response? You missed everything about him. You missed the stubbornly flat hair that sat on stop if his head, growing straight out and refusing to stay where you moved it with begging fingertips. You missed the constellations of moles that scattered over his skin. You missed the tips of his fingers and the tips of his toes that he never ever ever let you touch (because of feet tickle threats) and you missed threatening him with those tickles that made him absolutely irrational and fighty. You missed the softness of his lips and the sounds he made when he ate something delicious. You missed the sound of his breathing beside you. You missed the way he talked to his puppies. You missed the way he told you he loved you.

You missed everything so completely. How would you ever be able to describe it with words?

You couldn’t. All you could do was step into him. All you could do was lift your chin and place your mouth against his and relish in the easy give of his lips against yours.

You kissed him. This was against the rules. The minty toothpaste flavor of his lips matched the flavor on your own and yet he still tasted like Kyungsoo. His lips were a spell and he wasn’t kissing you back in any way that was suggestive or demanding.

His lips parted slowly and carefully and time seemed to slow again. There was a gentle way about this as he simply received from you. When you took his bottom lip in between your own, he gave it up easily and the suction from his mouth against your lip was so slight, it was hardly there at all.

Yet the gentleness of this sparked a contrast in you. Something that burned inside of your stomach like a warning. Something that flowed up the back of your throat and begged for you to stop this. As if you had willingly subjected yourself to poison and the effects were beginning to take hold.

Were you really the one doing this? Were you the one that had forgotten your own safety?

You pulled away from him and opened your eyes to see his face. His lips were parted and his eyes were closed. In the split seconds of your departure, he opened his eyes and caught your focus in his own.

He did not speak nor move. You could not either. You were, both, affected by the kiss and disappointed in yourself for doing it. Yet, somehow, like the sex the night before, not able to regret it.

It happened, yes. You were human and this was the man you loved. But you shouldn’t. You shouldn’t any of it, you shouldn’t sleep with him again you shouldn’t kiss him again, you shouldn’t touch his bare skin with your fingertips and you shouldn’t run your fingers through his hair.

You felt the wavering inside of you like it had its own physical form. The desire to forget it all; all of the pain, the sleepless nights you spent in agony, the hurtful words he slung so carelessly at you and the way he simply vanished from your entire world for months.

The feeling of being abandoned.

The feeling of being left alone to stand in the center of a barren field with no light from the sun nor any water to drink. You’d waited alone for days. You kept watch on the horizon; hoping and wishing for any sign of him. A glimpse of his form returning for you; saying with a smile that he was kidding. That he didn’t mean any of it. That he would take you back and things would be the way they were before.

But he never came. And you were faced with two options. Stay here alone and abandoned in this field and die, or get up and walk away.

It hadn’t felt like love. It didn’t feel like he even liked you.

Could you really forget all of that so easily?

Did he mean it when he said he loved you? Would he drop you again just as easily as he had the first time? Could you survive -- to have your shattered and clumsily taped together heartbroken a second time?

It was Kyungsoo who broke the silence.

“Are you scared of me now?”

Kyungsoo always saw too much.

Only the One you Love[M]:  part 1, part 2, part 3, part 4, part 5, part 6 , part 7

[the-artsy-magic]

*It was a boring day for the pair, deep in the pond Warfstache calls home. The stone water moved around them where they sat, Warfstache with Adrian’s head in his lap. A hand ran through the siren’s hair, a soft hum leaving him.*

**”Do you remember anything from before, love? Were you human? That’s how sirens are born, mm? Violent deaths at sea?”**

*The wisp pulled his hand from Adrian’s hair, then, pink eyes bright with curiosity. He hoped the siren remembered...*

*A boring day, maybe. No imminent meetings for Warfstache or planned hunts for the siren, but... that never meant it couldn’t happen. Adrian was occupied with reading, pouring through various old runes and photos from a later history venture. It was interesting, he thought. And maybe even an obvious cry at a memory, but... Warfstache’s question?*

*The siren damn near purred at the attention, head leaning back gently into the touch to his hair. Calm moments were far and few between for the pair, but... he’d found he does enjoy them.*

**”Never more than a face here or there... there’s a blonde girl, and I sometimes remember that I was drowned, but that’s it... I couldn’t say who I was before this. I don’t think I’m meant to remember, really.”**

*Adrian always wanted to remember, but... it’s true, there was only ever a face or two he ever remembered. He thinks the girl was a relative, but her name was never something he got. She was so young....*

*Piercing blue locks back up to pink before he makes a sort of shrugging gesture, not sure enough about much else to really say more. He knows a crown was involved, but that only brought more questions, so he didn’t bring it up. He was meant to marry, but the ocean apparently got in the way. Granted, those all could have been dreams anyway. Still, Adrian clung to any piece of who he could have been, no matter how far buried the context was.*

*Warfstache gives a quiet hum of contemplation, scratching his nails gently through his hair again while he considers the words. A blonde girl, and drowning...*

*Blonde girls are horribly common, and always have been, so that’s not specifically helpful... And the drowning is obvious, how else would he have become a siren?*

**”It’s alright that you don’t know, love. Maybe your past was hell. Maybe it’s a blessing to forget.”**

*A sigh through his nose is the only other response the risk has. He knows he wishes he could forget... Maybe it’s better that the only person he loves, at least now, doesn’t have that burden.*

Even that talk is just a memory now.

The siren lies alone in the underwater home, the sounds surrounding him only the ambient of the pond above him. It’s far too quiet here, granted… it always *was* a respectable degree of silent before. Adrian always finds himself missing the sound of another heartbeat, of someone in this damn house actually breathing.

It’s too quiet without *him* here.

It’s been almost a year since Warfstache was killed, and somehow this stupid house only seems to get more and more silent. The siren still has no goddamn clue how that box is supposed to help him bring his wisp back. It’s just a fucking box, and while he’s sure there’s some sort of magic to it. Hell, Adrian’s not even been able to open the goddamn thing, only poke it with fingers that are seeming to blacken the longer he stares at them. To be fair, he’s not really had the energy for a hunt.

Maybe this is what he looks like when he’s dying. Tch… if only he could.

He’s spent the better part of a year locked in these walls with the ornate wooden box near him, and for a split second he wonders if this is what people do with urns. He decides better, knowing this isn’t nearly the same. Warfstache is only temporarily gone… at least, the siren hopes so.

If he can just figure out what the fuck to do with this box.

It hits him a month later, when the deep inky color seemed to have spread from his fingertips up his arms. Siren song can be very specific, and Adrian’s has a sort of quiet, haunting melody to it. It’s been ages since he’s sung anything in this house, mostly at his love’s request. Not that Warfstache never enjoyed his singing… quite the opposite, actually. But who can really resist siren song?

Still, after a few bars of the old melody, far older than he is, the box clicks open to his side. The lid butts up into his arm—the only reason he’d even noticed.

The same song is repeated back at the opening of the ornate little chest and for some reason, that starts to strike with him. He remembers.

*It’s a lullaby.*

*”You can only sing this song to someone you love… it’s how you share your heart with them, so you have to be sure, okay?”*

*He’d been just a child, giggling on his mom’s lap when she taught him the song. And when she was old enough, he’d taught it to his sister. But… that’s not all—he’s taught it to someone else, too.*

*He remembers the way his own honey brown eyes reflected in his god’s eyes in the sunlight. Small scenes and memories play out in his mind of beautiful chocolate curls and deep brown eyes ringed in perfect sea blue. Maybe someone shouldn’t be so goddamn perfect, but…. whoever is swimming around in Adrian’s memories was.*

*He remembers the low rumbles of Greek he heard in the middle of secret walls, of picnics and of making friends somewhere you really weren’t meant to be. He can damn near feel the soft touches, the rough ones, some in the dark and some in the middle of the day, can remember how he felt the first time that his own name fell from his god’s lips. His name…*

Adrian stares hard into the box, as if glaring daggers at the melody itself would get him further. He wants the name. He wants *his* name. He knows he wasn’t always a siren, and this? This is only a long awaited confirmation. The deep cracks in the inked colors of his skin are filling with gold, steaming away in ways that feel like even his bones are blistering from the heat.

*He remembers a crown, a rejection, but… never his own. He remembers refusing __her__. Hera—she’s… she’s the one who ordered his death. “A fitting end for our water-bearer, isn’t it?” she had jeered, chaining him to the millstone in front of those he’d loved. All for refusing… what?*

*The name he wants is just at the tip of his tongue, it’s right there, he can see Pelagius talking to him. He can see the god trying to get his attention, because he had always been so bad to zone off just in the sight, but…. that had been after. He wasn’t human then, was he? No, he’d been the same. He’d been a… god?*

*Aquarius.*

*Thats still not his own, but… a name given to him. A name he’d worn to hide himself, to keep his secrets. A human turned god—surely that could cause more problems than good.*

*He remembers Pelagius searching for him, searching searching though the man was right in front of him. Right beside him. Aquarius stood by Pela no matter how hard he was looking for the human who’d fallen for him, and only then Aquarius would realize had loved him back… but Aquarius couldn’t tell. Could never tell him.*

*Pela was determined to find Aquila.*

Aquila. His name is Aquila.

He was born in Argos beside the sunflower fields. He had honey brown eyes and dark olive skin and he was in love with a Greek god of chaos and order… and… grapes? He grew up a slave in Rome but refused to learn Latin.

Adrian remembers it all—remembers refusing Hera and being publicly executed just for telling her no. He was a human turned god because Zeus is… well, read the mythology books. He remembers being taken away from his love not once, but twice, and how hard the god had searched for Aquila when he was right there all along.

Fuck, his head is pounding. When he gets another good look, he’s sat bolt upright with the box in his lap, dark hands dripping gold as if his veins themselves had been split open. He’d seen this, but… the last time he had this kind of feeling… Pela got hurt, didn’t he..? *Fuck, he has to find him, he has to…. but.. is Pelagius even alive, still?*

Adrian’s not sure, but… what he does know is where Warfstache is, and how to bring him back. *Finally.*

God, the river is worse off than he recalls, but.. hell, he needs to get Warf out. The screams surrounding echo through the sirens head, but… he wouldn’t even realize, by the time his hand reaches to pull Warfstache out of the water, that the wisp would see Aquarius, wild eyed and full of determination, and not the siren he was so used to.

*A laugh that echos, the happiest sound he’s ever heard echoing from a small boy who deserved none of what he got. Smiles that light up rooms, hair that falls into his eyes and covers his ears draw smiles from a being as ancient as time, calms his soul like never before.*

*In between smiles, a different face. A face that smirks at his suffering, violates him. A face that laughs when he whips him, tearing his back into glorified hamburger meat, even if at the time he didn’t know what that was (it didn’t exist.)*

*Then a third face, harsher than the first, but still kind. Save for the embarrassment of their first meeting, a kind god. A friend, then more. Then a God who claims him, stealing him from the violator, saving him and condemning himself.*

*A mark, bright gold around his neck. A feeling he will never have again. The feeling of being loved.*

The images flash through his mind, and even the good ones are painted in a dark light. Things he will never have, things he treasured more than anything, things he feels the loss of even millennia later.

Then? He’s being pulled out, collapsing into arms he thought he would never feel again. A face swims before him, and -

No. No. Aquarius is dead.

**”What kind of new, hellish nightmare is this? That makes this feel... real? I really don’t appreciate it.”**

He doesn’t realize the change in himself until after Warfstache said something. Fuck, he’s just fucking thrilled to see his stupid pink bastard again. Fuck.

Gentle hands take hold of Warf’s face, and the face staring down at him in absolute worry falls back into the piercing, stubborn-ass siren Warfstache would have known him as. Granted, using that kind of energy to bring back a dead wisp? It gets to him a lot quicker than he would like... but, to be fair, the full power of Aquarius had never been meant to be used through this body.

Warfstache is asking a question, but Adrian takes far too long to process it. He’s busy holding his love’s face in his hands, looking him over for any signs of lingering injury.

**”Are you alright..?”**

He doesn’t answer yet, not... not at first. Not until the golden glow that had taken his eyes fully before had returned to their normal icy pinpricks. Only after checking his wisp over fully does he register the question fully, giving a shy sort of smile.

**”I remembered... You asked me a while back if I knew anything.... I’m.... several things. was several things. My name was Aquila.”**

Before Warfstache can really get a good look around, there’s a distant sound of crashing waves and the pair are back home. Where they belong, and Adrian doesn’t have to sit in the full on quiet anymore.

He still needs to find Pela, but.... Warf needs to be okay first. To be fair, he’s been dead a long time, and Adrian’s protective. His wisp comes first.

Warfstache collapses the moment they’re home, shaking and exhausted. Being in that river for a year will do that to a guy. Images of his past surface again in his mind, and he has to push them down. He *has* to.

Because finally, Adrian remembers.

The wisp’s face lights up when he grins up at Adrian from the floor, pink eyes exhausted but sparkling with happiness. He honestly never thought he would see the day!

**”I’ll be alright, love... Tell me what you remember?”**

The words come out almost like a child begging for a bedtime story, just one more before they fall asleep, and it’s possible that that’s what this is, but... This is important to Warfstache, knowing who his love was before. Knowing who Adrian thought he was.

**”Tell me about everything... Everyone.”**

The siren feels the collapse coming, just in time to catch and bring his love to sit with him, pupils flashing between crystalline and honey briefly before settling back. Adrian’s head is still throbbing at just the sheer volume of the lives he’s still remembering, still watching like movies from his own mind, but... he does tell Warfstache everything.

He starts where he thinks the beginning is, probably apologizing too much for the pieces he’s still trying to get back. After all, these things happened hundreds upon thousands of years ago. He’s not sure Argos is even known for their sunflowers anymore.

There are clumsy stops and bums when there’s something he swears he *did* remember before, mostly in between the line of where Aquila becomes Aquarius. That part is still a blur to him, but... he does his best.

His wisp looks so tired... maybe he should have waited to let him know he remembers, but... it was the first thing to sort of slip from his lips. Something else? He always looks at his feet when he’s talking about Pelagius.

The friend he’d made in Rome, and the only other one he’d met there who still spoke Greek. The one he’d fallen far too fully for as a human, and then managed to win over himself as a god. Funny enough, Aquarius was never allowed to tell anyone who he’d been before. So Aquarius watched his love search for years and years on end for the Greek boy he’d met in Rome. And then.....

The day Pelagius watched him die.

Someone so centric to what *was* his life—would the god still even remember him?

**”I have to find him.. Pela, I mean....”**

There’s a soft pause in the sirens words, and honestly? He’s never sounded quite so.... human, before now. Most of the higher magic layers in his voice have dropped, leaving only him.

**”He spent.... so long looking for Aquila, and.. I was right in front of him. I watched him search for years. Hell, he was still trying to find him when I died and, I just... I think he deserves the truth. He should know what happened to him—that they’re gone, and he can stop looking... if he’s still alive, anyway..”**

Warfstache smiles through the whole explanation, never saying anything but “it’s alright, Love” when Adrian can’t remember something. Honestly, he’s just thrilled his siren remembers.

*Aquarius laughs, and it’s like ~~Warfstache’s~~ whole world has narrowed down to this moment, the sparkling gold eyes bringing a smile to his face. Seeing him happy...? It’s the second best thing in the world.*

Every time Adrian mentions Pelagius, his face falls just a little, picking back up so quickly that by the time Adrian looks up from his feet, it’s like it never happened.

*A hand on his neck, a harsh, burning pain, and then? A glowing gold mark, a show of his friend? Maybe more? His claim over him, and he smiles.*

Then? Adrian mentions wanting to find Pelagius, and Warf’s smile turns shy. Tears fall, then pink eyes close.

It makes sense, now... that Adrian’s eyes changed to who he was before in the face of a God’s wrath - a god he barely knew.

*The home he shared with his god is... The same as always. And that makes the layer of dust all the more painful.*

*Terrified honey eyes blaze again in his mind, and every thought, every single piece of Aquila he’d tried and tried and fucking tried to shove back down only comes bubbling back to the surface. Bright laughter, smiles that seemed to melt even a god’s lonely heart, inky black hair that dropped back into his eyes with every move: Aquila. His first love, Aquila, and the one he didn’t have for nearly long enough.. The one he’d pushed so far down in his mind that the coin tucked under his shirt always had become little more than a numb weight to his conscious mind until now, but… his feelings for Aquila were bright and lasting. Eternal, even.*

*But… his beautiful brothel boy, like every good thing in his goddamn life, has always been taken away far too soon.*

*He’s dead.*

*Aquila is __dead.__*

*~~Warfstache~~ doesn’t know when he started saying it to himself, and certainly doesn’t remember when he started screaming it.*

*Aquila is **dead.***

*But all he can see are those scared eyes staring up at him.*

~~*”HE’S FUCKING DEAD!!*”~~

He shakes off the memory of his second love dying long enough to be hit with the shock of Adrian, his siren, his *god,* being his human. His first love, his universe, the memory of whom keeps him going even in this day. Even if he never told Adrian just how much he still thinks of his little brothel boy.

*The look on Aquila’s face when he walks in carrying a picnic basket is fucking priceless. He’s been to this room three times now, and they’ve talked more than they’ve fucked. He honestly really likes this boy, and has come to think of him as a friend.*

*Its the smile on his boy’s face when he sees the bread and fish that Warfstache..... well no, that wasn’t his name then, was it? realizes he might be looking at someone more than a friend.*

He smiles fondly at the memory, then puts together the way Aquarius acted when he first met him.

Almost like they already knew each other.

*??? has never seen this guy before, but he says he’s just never been to one of these parties... There’s no way in hell this guy could be the new god. So he starts on his rant, how he hates these parties, how it’s all just... Well...*

*"I hate parties. I'm forced to come whether I like it or not, thanks to Posiden. And these always happen whenever Zeus fucks someone new and decides they have to be a god, for one reason or another, and then we end up for a new god for something like... Dust, or feathers! I don't understand the point of it!"*

*There's a huff, and ??? crosses his arms over his chest.*

*"The food is great, but the gods are always so useless. They're not very bright, either. It's just a waste of my time."*

*His new friend grins, and laughs a surprisingly familiar laugh.* **”Well, what if it’s the god of dust AND feathers this time?”**

*Zeus calls from the high table, and his friend smiles.*

**”Well, that’s my cue. I gotta go be the god of dust and feathers now. See ya!”**

*While he walks away, ???’s cheeks flush red. Well, shit.*

He doesn’t speak a word, still, sorting his thoughts as he decides what to say.

*He watches as Aquarius is tied to the millstone, hand clutching his adoptive daughter’s with white knuckles. Everything seems very far away, like it’s happening to someone else.*

*He barely registers when Aquila’s precious sister, his rescued child, tears her hand from his and sprints for Aquarius, shouting something he can’t make out, and wraps her arms around him.*

*??? falls to his knees when the chains wrap around her, too, and the stone drops with a shout from the god.*

There’s something in that memory that Warfstache can’t remember, something blocked out with a haze. An image, paired with whatever Amalia shouted...

And he knows now that what she shouted was a name.

*Aquila.*

Black hair fades into a chocolate brown, pink growing and being consumed by the brown as it curls, framing his face and just brushing his shoulders. Pink eyes open and turn brown, flecked with sea green and gold, changing as skin turns olive. The mark on his neck becomes more obvious, glowing teal for a moment before it fades back into a bright gold.

Pelagius looks up at Adrian from where Warfstache just stood, eyes sparkling with even more tears.

**”I’m alive, love.”**

The siren is... oddly calmed by Warf’s reactions... it’s a lot of information even for *him*, so... his love’s silence? It’s only fair. Hell, three lifetimes would be a lot for anyone. He’s happy to at least remember what he does, though, and to have his boyfriend be so understanding of the bits he doesn’t remember or that are so blurry?

It’s a good feeling.

He pauses at the end, letting Warfstache sort through thoughts. Don’t think he didn’t notice the difference in the other man whenever he brings up Pela—and really? He thinks Warfstache deserves to be a little tense.. Adrian’s lives before we’re so centric to the other god.. he’s sure that his love wouldn’t really like the idea of him going out to try to find an old flame. Adrian understands that, but it really wouldn’t be anything like you’d think.

He just wants Pelagius to know the truth about Aquila, nothing more.

What Adrian *isn’t* expecting? The transformation ahead of him, from familiar pink into the god of order and chaos he’d only just been speaking about. Shock takes over in the swimming mind of the siren, wide eyes piercing as they glare up to where his boyfriend had just been. This is cruel. Either cruel, or far too coincidental.

**”No. No, don’t you dare try to tell me..”** his words get choked by the utter speed of his throat drying out, eyes never once leaving the sight of Pela’s. He won’t believe this—he refuses. He’s not, *Warfstache* is not Pelagius, and those pretty brown curls that have plagued him for *years* before finally remembering the name do not belong to Warfstache.

There’s no fucking way.

**”Don’t try to lie to me like that...”**

But he’s not. Adrian knows he’s not lying, and that’s maybe the worst part.