thirty

227 19 6
                                    

Ѱ

The trip back to Seattle is uneventful. Niki ended up offering to drive Jay so they could catch up more, and Jay had agreed because the thought of going home still made him anxious, so postponing his arrival by a few hours was an option he welcomed.

As the trees go by in blurs of green, Jay thinks that he has basically taken this trip already, only that that trip was accompanied by chips, Christmas music, and a U-Haul named Linda.

Upon arrival, when Jay warily unlocks the apartment, he is greeted by nobody. The carnations from when he left are still on the table in a clear vase, but the flower is stained with color to match the water it sits in.

Ah, Jay figures, he never actually saw the color Heeseung had chosen. It's pink, the color of love, charm, and compassion; it's all the things that Heeseung is to Jay, and Jay feels disappointed that he left his best friend to witness the beauty of the flower alone.

It's early afternoon, and Jay feels like having pizza, so he orders from Dominos's and lies down on the couch to take a nap while he waits. He wakes up forty-five minutes later to the sound of knocking on the door.

Shit, he thinks, the pizza. He sits up and rubs his eyes while searching for his wallet for cash to tip. The knocking gets louder, and Jay, for a fleeting moment, thinks about forgetting the tip and chewing out the pizza guy for almost breaking the damn door down.

When he finally locates a wad of bills, he marches up to the door, slightly wobbling from that just-woke-up trance, and opens it.

Lee Heeseung stands before him with a backpack around his shoulder, a box of pizza balanced on his knee, and a hand raised in a fist that freezes mid-knock.

They both stare at each other before Heeseung begins with a: "What the fuck."

Jay replies accordingly with a: "Sorry I kidnapped your shampoo," and Heeseung falters for a second, softening, before remembering what he came for. His brows furrow so hard that Jay thinks they'll snap off his face.

The older male holds up a letter and a purple lei in the hand that was obscured by the pizza box, and Jay's eyes widen when he sees that the letter has been opened because that is something that was never meant to resurface since kids are stupid and are supposed to forget about time capsules they made in middle school.

The lei is worn down and eroded by soil and rain over the years; it looks a bit worse for wear, and Jay thinks 'same'.

"You opened it!" He says, his voice sounding too shrill even to his own ears amidst the cramped space of the foyer.

Heeseung scoffs. "Jay, I've seen blood gush like a geyser from a gross, gaping slice in your side and watched you puke up caramel popcorn into a toilet."

Good point, Jay thinks while nodding slowly.

A part of him really wants to shut the door in Heeseung's face and never open it again, to prolong the inevitable confrontation, but that's not fair since Heeseung pays rent just like Jay does, and they've been able to co-exist in the same space for almost a whole year, so why is it so hard to do that now??

It's all just the same coping mechanism that's worked so far but gotten old and rusty since feelings aren't material things; they can't be packed up and squished into cardboard boxes—or lately, in Jay's circumstance, a suitcase.

He wishes he could go back to the old days when people kept their promises and second chances were possible, and he didn't have to think about how he would tear through the asteroid belts between Mars and Jupiter to discover that one thing he's been seeking for ages.

moving day | Heeseung x JayWhere stories live. Discover now