NCT Oneshots {ot23} | open

A Dying Duet: DoKun

▹prompt: light bulb
▹word count: 1460
▹genre: angst (with a hopeful ending)
▹warnings: n/a

ˑ༄ؘ ۪۪۫۫ ▹❀◃ ۪۪۫۫ ༄ؘ ˑ

Kun stares at the photo. His eyes blur, smoothing out the sharp shards of glass. Tears threaten to fall, but he sucks in a breath and wipes them away before treading over to the sofa where he sits, waiting. Doyoung will come back. Whether he has to wait ten minutes or ten years, Kun and his heart will not give up.

▹❀◃

Doyoung finds himself stood on the corner of a street. His heart races in his chest and it aches, screaming, demanding, to curl up in Kun's arms. Technically he could. He could turn around and run back to their apartment, but bitter anger and pride fix his feet to the pavement. The clouds are dark and ominous. The rain comes.

▹❀◃

There was a time when they were happy. They met in college. Music college, in fact, and Doyoung had followed the tinkling of a piano through the corridors until he found the room it was coming from. The music was so beautiful but so sad, and it was obvious the pianist was throwing so many emotions into every single note. Since he first heard Kun play, he knew Kun was the one for him.

Doyoung had approached Kun when the music stopped. The end came abruptly, mid-phrase, and Kun sighed, slouching over the piano and thumping the keys to let out his frustrations. Doyoung went in and smoothed out his frown with sweet encouragements. And eventually, after weeks of huddling together in the music room to vent their problems, a kiss.

Strangers to lovers, they did everything together. They composed songs; sweet, fluttering duets. Their voices complimented each other perfectly, and their hearts intertwined a little more with every lyric.

But every song has an end. And so does their relationship, it seems.

▹❀◃

The living room is dim, but Kun doesn't have the energy to make it across the room to turn the light on. The sofa is too soft. He hugs a cushion to his chest. Ghosts of Doyoung's perfume fill his nose, cloud his mind. Where did they go wrong? The last five months have been full of bickering, which morphed into arguments, but they always came crawling back into each other's hearts with an apology and a tender kiss. He decides to wait a bit longer. They never run from each other. Not until now, anyway.

▹❀◃

The photo is of the two of them. It's one of many. But this one is broken, shattered like their relationship. The frame fell amongst their yelling. The glass smashed, shards shot across the floor, dispersed by their raising voices, and their love died away. Not really, but their words claimed so.

I hate you!

Go away!

Get out!

And that was that.

Their smiles remain in the photograph, and in the photograph only.

▹❀◃

Doyoung enters a small café. It's not until he sits down that he realises his hair drips from the rain and his skin shivers from the cold. It's also the café where they used to sit and chat for hours on end. Used to. Doyoung doesn't order anything, for he doesn't think his raw throat could cope. He just slumps into a seat in the far corner and closes his eyes. People come and go, the bell above the door singing for them each in turn. His tongue feels heavy and awkward in his mouth. It's riddled with the guilty reminders of the words he spat out. He didn't mean them. He still doesn't mean them. His ears ring with horrible reminders of the words Kun spat at him. He knows that Kun didn't mean them. But they still said them. Where did they go wrong?