Chapter Text
Friday, 02:22pm, the sky is gray and his coffee is cold.
From the 22nd floor, Seokjin contemplates the streets and buildings below, unable to define in words the feeling that constricts his chest. “Maybe it's just my heart beating,” he muses dumbly, leaning into the glass wall, wondering when his last check-up was. As much as he tries to run away from his thoughts, he is too aware of his own coping mechanisms - too much therapy to be successful. Incidentally, then, he harbors a slight dissatisfaction for everything in his vicinity: his favorite tie, the only one he genuinely likes, feels suffocatingly tight; the air conditioner is too cold, even if there's sweat dripping down his spine; everything is too quiet, deadly silent, yet he could spend the next few years without talking to anyone.
Backwards, it is hard to name a feeling when it isn't clear what he is supposed to feel.
He throws the coffee away in disgust and resists the urge to retrieve his cellphone. Whatever was there this morning will still be there now: the text exchange between him and Jaehwan is a thing that exists, even if the whole fiasco makes him feel like he is watching his whole life unfold from behind his own head.
Breaking up was not part of their plans. His plans. Was it? Or do we simply get what we deserve?
The cheating part is not what really mystifies him - truth is Seokjin would be genuinely surprised had it not happened. What really keeps him troubled, unable to move on like he does with everything else, is feeling as guilty as Jaehwan for the end of things. Granted, Seokjin was not the one sticking his dick into whoever it was that Jaehwan had been fucking. Yet, their relationship had been doomed for a while - a few years - going through the waves but slowly sinking with them.
To say that Seokjin and his fiancé had been distant for a while is a generous way to put it. It all felt right on paper: beautiful apartment, successful careers, 5 year-old relationship, mostly neutral extended families, living in the belly-button of South Korea. So why did they barely talk to each other if they shared a home? Why did they sleep in separate rooms - how come not disturbing each other's sleeping routines had been their biggest priority? Why couldn't Seokjin remember the last meaningful words they told each other before everything went to shit?
Seokjin can only remember the expanse of blue suede between them on the couch.
Was this whole façade a misplaced convenience, perhaps?
Seokjin sighs, yearning for a cigarette. On his way to the next meeting room, he detours to the restroom to freshen up. He washes his mouth and hands. Looks himself in the mirror and sees someone else: a baby, freshly born, missing the womb.
Jaehwan had accommodated himself into how easy it was to live like they did. Seokjin did it too, and in some few moments of clarity, he couldn't muster up the courage to make or request an earnest effort for change.
And so they slowly drifted apart, growing accustomed to a mediocre life and diet unhappiness.
They really thought happily-ever-after could be that easy, huh?
Seokjin goes to the meeting and the next 50 minutes or so are filled with an useless discussion that could have been an email. Yoongi texts him, one more message that piles up in his chat inbox, unread and unanswered, because Seokjin doesn't have anything to say to anyone. His friends’ best intentions have no use for him at the moment: no, he doesn't want to talk about it; no, he doesn't need help to take Jaehwan out of the house; no, he doesn't want company. The humiliation of it all, however, feels like a slow burn, a scar in his face that will permanently follow him everywhere, that everyone can see.
*
By 06:30pm there's a martini in his hand, dirty, with two olives.
The bar is not particularly inviting, turned towards the beige hotel lobby, short wooden counter sprouting from the wall and creating an area where a few tables can be randomly distributed without disrupting the influx of guests. But, most importantly, it's always mostly empty.
And it's absolutely convenient as well: the hotel is close to work enough for Seokjin to get there by foot, but the bar is inconspicuous enough not to become a happy hour option. Very bland, very nothing. Perfect. He likes it here because it is not frequented by his colleagues, or anyone that he knows for that matter. Jaehwan has spent the last week in his old apartment, and tonight he will retrieve some of his belongings. Seokjin doesn't want to be present, so he has a few hours to kill.
Tonight, there's a small group of people sitting at the back, scattered on two separate tables, minding their own business. The less, the better.
Truth is Jaehwan unwillingly aimed for Seokjin's humiliation. Had he not been so obvious to the point where Seokjin could not both stay with him and save face, Seokjin would remain turning the blind eye to the dumpster fire that was their relationship.
A dick pick! A fucking dick pick that he found on Jaehwan's cellphone one week ago had been the fuse to their undoing: the rug was taken away from them and everything under it was put on plain sight.
Go figure. Seokjin loved Jaehwan. Even now, a wounded sense of affection remains, mixed with contempt for what they were and regret for what they could have been.
But could they?
It is symptomatic that Seokjin did not ask questions after Jaehwan's confession. Truth is that he does not care how many times or who he slept with - although it was many. Too many - since thankfully his own tests came up clean. But the practical character of their text exchange shows where his priorities lie: a long string of attempts to explain himself on Jaehwan's side, guilty but devoid of any passion, and a long list of which belongings Jaehwan can take from their shared apartment on Seokjin's side, detached and uninterested.
Has it even been love at all?
In the end, a relationship is a dance created by the parties involved: the shared responsibility for their failure is not something that can be compartmentalized. They gave up on each other and, to some extent, they gave up on themselves. So no, it is not surprising that at some point Jaehwan went looking for affection and pleasure somewhere else. If anything, at least it shows that there's still something alive in him, capable of feeling and capable of love. Seokjin envies that.
What is surprising is looking at himself in the mirror behind the bar, tasting like a car tank, and discovering himself as someone who could accept living with so little.
*
Around 8pm, the buzz of Seokjin's cellphone matches the buzz between his lungs.
Jaehwan has been messaging nonstop.
“Where are you?”, he asks.
“Can we talk?", he begs.
Seokjin doesn't know what to say or how to say it, so he doesn't answer. Many words spin around his head, but none of them reach his mouth or his fingers because they all feel meaningless. He feels meaningless, and completely unequipped to deal with… well, anything.
The funny thing is that after years dancing to their own broken tune, the feeling of crashing and burning has only made itself real during this last week. To be completely honest, Seokjin had been willing to put up with virtually anything as to not rock their boat.
He feels so betrayed by himself.
When he exchanges a quick, blurred look with the guy sitting on table 7, Seokjin remembers that he hasn't been touched in about a year. Not more than the protocolar good morning and goodnight peck on the lips with Jaehwan, that Seokjin himself had been advised to chase, or the regular handholding that is expected from a couple on occasion. By his own therapist's request, he had tried to initiate something - anything - four or five times in this period, but at some point getting rejected got old, so he responded to it by distancing himself as well.
With each of them sitting on opposite sides, in complete silence, that couch felt like an ocean.
The notion pulls a sob out of him.
The bartender, a young woman with a cute nose, is kind enough to ignore it, leaving Seokjin to his own devices - another drink and some peanuts - and getting a fat tip for it.
As the hours crawl, it becomes some drinks, and his stomach hurts. He doesn't know exactly how or when, but at some point the engagement ring has migrated from his finger to the counter, and it looks like it would speak if it could. Seokjin looks at it like it's a snake that could bite.
Yoongi has been calling, “can you at least text me that you're fine?”
He cannot, he is not.
A little honesty doesn't hurt, even if it's delayed.
So here's honesty: Kim Seokjin, lawyer, 33 years old and absolutely unprepared to deal with the fact that his life is crumbling. He really thought he had things slightly figured out at this point. Pure fiction. But the truth is that Seokjin has spent years telling himself only the stories that he wanted to hear.
He cries on his martini and feels thankful that it all tastes the same.
*
By 10pm Seokjin is completely wasted, necktie shoved into his pocket and blazer resting on the stool by his side. After too many missed calls, he simply put his cellphone in Do Not Disturb and left it somewhere. Faceless clients come and go, but everything around spins, and his stomach feels like a washing machine fighting the knot in his throat. He is at war, and the best he can do is put his head in his arms and wait for the world to stop without blacking out.
Then he starts hiccuping and decides that god is dead.
As a response from above, a cold glass of sparkly water appears in front of him, and he chugs it in one go, gulping painfully and without decorum. Then another one appears, and Seokjin drinks this one as well, this time slower.
(But time is just a concept, and he has already abandoned the idea, unable to recognize minutes melting into each other and becoming the past.)
At some point, however, he registers a familiar voice in his periphery, and the feeling of arms around his shoulders, firm and demanding. In a flash, things start moving strangely around him, and his nausea returns tenfold. He is given something to ease the feeling, along with many other things and more water. He listens to a pathetic whine and is horrified at the possibility that it comes from himself. Then somehow he wakes up in the middle of the night in his bed, in his pajamas, surrounded by arms around his waist and a warm breath behind his neck. And then the world ends in darkness.
*
Seokjin would rather die.
Regardless of his wishes, he is very much alive, woken up by a pounding headache and wickedly twisted bowels. The discomfort is only overridden by a terrifying lack of memory - he is absolutely unable to remember how he got home in one piece. He tries his best to collect himself, but any intellectual effort is rewarded with pain and nausea. On the bedside table, the clock ticks around 8am, Saturday, but he still feels slightly drunk and cannot bring himself to fall asleep again.
His room looks off.
It takes him a few seconds to understand that most of Jaehwan's things are already gone, and he feels swallowed by the white walls. It's embarrassingly crushing how his heart drops into his sore stomach, blooming into a dull sense of loneliness over the view of empty spaces that were not there before. Seokjin's own room is certainly the easy part to deal with. In his imagination, Jaehwan's room, right beside his own, is morphed into a wasteland. The rest of the apartment already feels like a cemetery of things that they cherished together, and Seokjin feels boneless, unable to bring himself to leave his bed.
He feels half of a person.
When his bedroom door opens and Yoongi comes in wearing Seokjin's sweats and tee and carrying a tray with a glass of orange juice, a cup of coffee and some dry toast, a piece of a puzzle falls into place.
“Morning, princess.”
Seokjin cannot answer.
Sensing a fragile moment, Yoongi sits beside him and offers quiet answers to some of the unasked questions: he was the one to retrieve Seokjin from the bar and take him home.
“How?” he asks, gratefully accepting the breakfast in bed like a sick child.
“Jaehwan called. He was looking for you. I told him to get his shit and get the fuck out of here, but went looking for you as well.”
“But you don't know that bar,” he says slowly, feeling profoundly stupid between small bites of toast, his mouth nasty.
“Yeah, you really know how to disappear.”
Seokjin says a lazy “sorry” but none of them think he is.
Yoongi continues, waving a hand in dismissal, walking around: “I called but of course you didn't answer. On my 1000th attempt, someone answered and told me where you were.”
“Someone? The bartender?”
“Someone. A guy.”
At that, Seokjin visibly tries to dissolve into a puddle of antimatter by sheer will. Yoongi allows him to commiserate in self-deprecation and curses softly when he doesn't find Advil.
Yoongi and Seokjin were roommates during college and then developed a very quiet and honest friendship, one of Seokjin's few bonds that defeated time and distance. After some twists and turns of destiny, Seokjin ended up working as a lawyer at the same entertainment company where Yoongi worked as a producer, and somehow their very respectful and lighthearted connection barged into new territory, and now they take turns telling each other what to do and disregarding each other's boundaries from time to time. True friendship.
Yoongi gives up and sits back. He's also wearing Seokjin's socks.
“I gave you some medicine to help dodge the worst of your hangover, even though you deserve the pain. But there's absolutely no food in the house, so Hobi will bring us something later,” he lays back, takes his cellphone out and relays their plan as if Seokjin had already agreed. Well. It feels deserved. He also agrees. “And you really need to take a shower.”
Agreed as well.
Seokjin resumes eating in silence, allowing himself to check on the defeated rumble in his chest.
Yep, still there.
His insides are still trying to agree with the toast and he drinks his coffee, oddly disconnected from himself. Or whatever is himself right now. He takes a shower and notices Jaehwan's toiletries gone, and misses a life that they never had. Because of the water and the steam, he looks at the mirror but is not sure whether or not he cries, neither exactly why. When he leaves the bathroom, his bed is made and there is an Advil and a glass of water waiting for him. Yoongi has taken a blanket and a pillow to the couch and is looking for something for them to watch.
Jaehwan's door is closed.
In retrospect, Seokjin can think of one hundred different occasions in which a different attitude on their part could have changed their relationship (but could it?), and presently he can think of one hundred reasons to try to salvage them, not to throw their history away.
Having accepted that he doesn't know how deep is the hole that he put himself into, however, reinforces that small commitment he made with honesty: so he admits that memory is playing tricks on him, because there isn't much to cling into in their history. Of course there were good moments, a broken clock is right twice a day. But even the happy memories feel shallow and alien, almost as if they pertain to someone else.
Where even is his ring?
He feels a light pang of despair at this. Naked. Did he leave it at the bar? Did he lose it? Should he call?
“Yoongi.”
Yoongi looks at him and clearly senses his agitation. And for some reason, seeing his friend watching him in genuine concern, preparing a cocoon for them at the couch and battling with the remote control brings something else to the surface, something watery and mushy. Seokjin feels himself collapse a little.
Yoongi looks like real good memories from real good times.
Real love.
Maybe he needed company after all.
“Forget it.”
Seokjin joins him under the covers. Yoongi gingerly wraps his arms around the older man's waist and he feels real too. They half watch the first Shrek movie and half nap through it until Hoseok arrives with food, and then they all watch the other movies from the franchise for the rest of the day.
*
It takes Seokjin two more weeks to feel able to talk about it properly.
He does so during a dinner with both Yoongi and Hoseok, after some beers, and it feels like taking the scab out of a fresh wound. He feels drained and unable to cry, but trying to put his feelings into words helps him organize some thoughts, even if just a little - and any relief is welcome.
“Respectfully, the fact that both of you screwed up doesn't make him any less of an asshole, hyung,” Hoseok distances his fingers as if separating the matter in two. “It's okay to make mistakes during a relationship, it's okay to end one as well. What's not okay is that he lied to you and robbed you of the chance to make the best decisions with all the information you needed.”
“And I disagree that he doesn't love you anymore, hyung. I think he does,” Yoongi ponders, offering him some meat. “He took you for granted. I think that's worse.”
“But he lied. Lying is not loving,” Hoseok intervenes, and his gaze towards Yoongi turns intense.
“There are many kinds of love out there, I think,” Yoongi retorts, pensively. He speaks carefully. “Some of them are selfish and bad. Some of them are better to stay away from."
Hoseok and Yoongi have been doing this dance for a while, and Seokjin makes a point to keep quiet about it and let them do their thing. It's an unaddressed push and pull that is bound to come up sooner than later, and that Seokjin deems very curious: everything about their dynamics constitutes a relationship, except for the relationship itself. There's clearly something they're trying to figure out, but Seokjin is not in any condition to put a finger on it.
As if to prove a point, Yoongi continues, taking a gulp of his beer, “of course we would think that people take care of the things they love. But love can be destructive and mean as well,“ when he drinks his beer, his eyes meet Hoseok's and he carries the weight of it with dignity. “But it's love nonetheless. Of some kind, at least.”
“If anything like this can be called ‘love', what is even the meaning of the word?”
“Maybe we should stop trying to give a name to everything.”
Hoseok somewhat deflates, something sad and tender in the way his shoulders sag. They're still looking at each other, but the air turns softer, like they're repeating a conversation that they don't talk and that they didn't have.
And nobody is happy about whatever is being not-spoken. It pisses Seokjin off - but who is he to say anything about relationships?
“Well, I think that means that, between them both, he only loves himself,” Hoseok answers quietly.
Seokjin considers that.
Isn't he the same?
Seeing him tense up by his side, Yoongi turns his attention back to the older man, studying him openly until he can formulate the obvious question with the most inoffensive words.
“Do you love him, hyung?”
Ah.
Seokjin rubs his face tiredly with his hands, tongue trapped in his mouth. They give him time to think, ordering more food and drinks while at it. Honesty is a very brutal thing, and Seokjin is brutally aware that part of the reason for his connivance to a bankrupt relationship was his unwillingness to stir things up.
Maybe if he was ignorant for long enough they could achieve the life that he dreamed of. Is this some kind of love?
“I don't know anymore. I haven't known for a while.”
Part of the reason was also his own vanity. After all, doesn't admitting the end of something that he put so much effort into make him look just plainly stupid? Seokjin certainly loved the image that it painted in his head. The idea of it.
Which means this isn't even the most important question, right? If out of the two of them, as Hoseok said, Jaehwan loves only himself, that at least makes one of them who loves something real. Is this so wrong? Maybe Jaehwan was the sanest one all this time.
Hoseok is quick to read into Seokjin's ellipsis, and this time he bites where it hurts, so Seokjin cannot run away.
“Oh, hyung. How can a man like you have the self-esteem of a pea?”
That draws a crease between Yoongi's eyes. Seokjin cringes at how cheesy it sounds. “Who talks like this?", he answers lamely. But it has been something in his mind lately: how much of his own identity has been mashed into their relationship? And by not being in it anymore, how much of his own meaning has Seokjin lost? How much of a real Seokjin was still there in him and what was it like?
On cue, he feels Yoongi's eyes boring holes into his side, a protective hand reaching for his arm. On his face, a grimace.
“Hyung, you have lost weight.”
Reflected on Yoongi's eyes, Seokjin barely recognizes himself.
*
What does he love, then?
Not his pride, apparently. Otherwise, he would not be back at that hotel lobby in a few days, asking the manager about a golden ring that could or could not have been lost here some weeks ago. The shame is all-consuming, yet Seokjin has done far worse to his self-respect. This tame amount of disgrace is a regular Monday.
“At the bar?", the manager parrots Seokjin's words back at him, astonished by the fact that the lawyer had not gotten in touch earlier. It's very solicitous and mildly infuriating. “Let me check.”
And off he goes to the bar, although Seokjin could have done that himself. Around him, the hotel looks cheap and dignified, full of carpet and wallpaper. It's 7pm and the movement is slow.
He cannot really explain why he came. Earlier, Hoseok asked what he was trying to accomplish by getting the ring back at this point. Nothing. Anything. It just feels too wrong not to give it a proper fate, whatever it could be.
“So the ring is the problem, hyung?", they ganged on him and Seokjin never disagreed that it was a pointless idea, but it was clear that he'd rather deal with the ring than with everything else wrong in his life.
Cut him some slack, everyone has got to start somewhere.
It doesn’t take long for the manager to come back, bartender in tow and a golden ring in his hand. When Seokjin was younger, his first girlfriend moved out of town very abruptly due to a loss in her family. No farewells, no goodbyes, just teenage drama in its pure form. As a sign of mourning for a love that could never be, Seokjin wore their promise ring with a silver chain around his neck for months, hoping that his feelings could reach his loved one across the road (until someone called him Frodo and the gesture lost some of its allure).
Now, he doesn't quite know what to do with the cold metal loop in his palm.
The bartender, not the same girl from that day, explains:
“Sir, good evening. The friend that took care of your orders the other day said that a guest helped you out and found your ring. He left it with us and a note. We did not know how to reach you, but Yunah knew you'd come back!”
Seokjin is swiftly left with a ring and a neon yellow post-it, and as the manager interrogates the returning bartender (“Are you sure he is the owner?” “Of course I am, he is the pretty one!"), he wonders how easily someone could get away with murder in a place like this. In the post-it, two words and a phone number.
“Table 7.”
He stuffs both things into his pocket and tries not to think too much about either.