cigarettes after sex

you're all I want

Johnny was downing his fifth shot of soju when Donghyuck and Mark found him in the bar of their hotel. He instantly turned around and waddled to Mark who he embraced and kissed.

"My boy!"
Johnny's eyes were half closed, his lids lazily flapping open and shut, his face was flecked with faintly red blotches, a distinct sign that he was drunk.
Hyuck took a step back and signed Mark to deal with Johnny on his own. Mark struggled with the task, Johnny was huge and leaning into him as though the idea of legs and their support was suddenly lost to him, he was overpowering Mark like a wrestler, merely with his weight and Mark realized he was weaker than he thought. Much weaker. He dragged him to a chair,  pushed him down and squatted beside him. "What are you doing here?"
"I'm cold"
Mark braced himself, the frown followed later.
"Johnny, what are you doing here?"
There was little empathy in Mark's voice, yet Johnny tried,"Can I stay with you?".
Mark watched Haechan, as though in the look he would give him he could find the answer to Johnny's words. Donghyuck said "No" instead. Johnny was hugging and rubbing his arms which was meant to convince them he was indeed cold and it did make them pity him but not in the way he expected them to.
"Everybody hates me", he then said, with finality of a long stated fact.
"I don't hate you" Hyuck squeezed Mark's arm and pulled at it, stepping forwards where Mark was standing before.
"You can't stay here"
Mark proposed to order a cab but it turned out Johnny spent all of his money he had on him on shots. His pockets were empty. Call his parents was no option either, it was far too late for people their age to be driving. The taxi was ordered anyway. Mark paid for it and because Johnny tried escaping every time the driver tried moving the car, they drove with him. Johnny's parents were still awake and not very happy to receive Johnny. It could've been because he was drunk but in that moment it was really something else. Something that made them reluctant to let Donghyuck and Mark take off. They were offered Johnny's bed, and Johnny was sentenced to a night on the couch. While Mark and Mrs. Suh were preparing the bed, Donghyuck saw Johnny sitting obediently on the edge of the couch and something in him, something really soft and squidgy, was pinched. It made him reconsider the manner in which he dealt with Johnny and come to sit next to him on the couch.
After some minutes of silence he said,"You can talk to me, Johnny". He hesitated. "I know"
He was awaiting some sort of reaction but as silence fell over them again he rushed,"I know he has feelings for you".
Johnny started.
"What?"
He was fixed on some object in front of him and although he wanted to vent his dismay all he could do was remain staring, blankly ahead. He looked like someone hit on the head so hard he was both disoriented and focused all at once.
"You didn't know.."
Johnny's nose, cheeks and brows all quivered, all giving in on a quake rising from under the numbness of his face muscles, something so trenchant and powerful it could brake through the screen of tranquility.
"You mean like ..platonically..?"
"No"
"Bullshit"
Hyuck realized why Johnny was so hard to talk to, why he instinctively pushed him away before. He was unbearably stubborn.
"Have you ever been out camping, Johnny? I don't know how your family quality time looked like back then but growing up we did come to the woods quite often. A magic experience indeed, the never ending nights, creepy stories by the campfire, and surprisingly never a single bug. You light a fire and let it lull you into deep sleep until it ebbs and leaves dark ashes in the morning.
I'd often wonder:
Why does it go away, why not burn forever?"
Johnny was stumped and puzzled and couldn't interpret his narrative. "Nothing lasts forever...?", he said however.
"Not quite. Fire feeds of wood, once you stop throwing crags and sticks it begins to fade away. It dies away only if you stop nursing it"
"What I try to illustrate is that Jaehyun would never have stayed by your side for so long if your actions never bore signs of reciprocity. Means I don't believe his feelings were always one-sided, means it's.."
"-yes I get the point I just don't understand why he would have feelings for me? Just like that, out of blue?"
Haechan breathed, in and out.
"Okay. Take me and Mark. What do you think we're doing when we're alone?"
"What does it matter what I think you're doing when you're alone?"
"Just answer the damn question, will you?"
"Okay, I suppose you, like, talk and stuff. Go to the movies, hold hands? And I guess sometimes you make out"
"And?"
"Fuck?"
"Finally!"
Donghyuck breathed in and out again.
"Okay, now. What do you and Jaehyun do when you're alone"
"Well, we don't hold hands"
"Okay"
"It's so stupid, I don't see how it's relevant"
Hyuck squinted and dragged out,"Just say it"
"Alright, yes we fuck too"
Haechan lit up, he was beaming.
"Well, I don't see much of a difference. Oh, no wait. There's one, we're not calling each other friends and we know that this, between us is headed somewhere. We admit that we like each other, romantically and yes we do hold hands because it's not 14th century after all and we're not ashamed of who we are"
He was as though speaking to his younger self. He too had the same fears just as they started going out, he too couldn't get used to the thought of being tied to one person, of this bond between two people. He too was ashamed of who he was.
"I'm not ashamed of who I am and I'm not like you." Seeing Donghyuck narrowing his eyes, he added,"Not that it's bad or anything"
Haechan withdrew and leaned back. Attentive to some thought of his own, he was poking some point above his brows, drumming the rhythm of his own pulse or perhaps the passing seconds on his watch. He had the desire to curse.
"I understand that there's sex without feelings, I really do. It's just, is it really without feelings though?"
He was not so sure anymore.
Johnny contemplated, the mention of sex made him relive the memories of it.
"Okay, stop imagining it, good God!"
Johnny bit back a smile.
"Jesus" They laughed.
After what it felt like eternity, Hyuck, with that wistful smile still playfully hovering over his features, said,"Don't you sometimes just stop and think how incredibly happy you are to know, to have him? How lucky you are that his parents drunk another glass of wine the night they conceived him? That you're just happy when he's there, just because it's him, not because he's doing something no one does but because you know it's him right there, no one else? Don't you sometimes think that it's almost inappropriate how happy you are in his presence, that you're going to pay for it somehow, because it's just that good?.." Donghyuck could go on like this forever, but something about the face Johnny made, told him he needed to stop. He seemed a moment away from breaking apart but it wasn't anything about his face or his stillness, it was the look of diffused horror in his lucid, wide eyes.
He knew. And it came with a terrible weight in his stomach. In fact, it was first the weight, then the recognition. His mind racing, too scattered and unfocused to formulate one clear thought but if he was able to do that the thought would be: It must be it.
Then he started crying.