Our Tears

don't leave like this (why am i in love alone?)

Author : silverkatana
Original publish on : archieve of our own | 2018
Author notes : it's nearly 11pm at night and maybe i decided to write more angst because i had nothing better to do

___________________________________

It starts with a red rose, with an abashed smile and a shy, "Will you go out with me?"

It continues with an acceptance of the flower, with a radiant beam and a trembling, "of course I will".

It ends with the lack of roses, with tears rolling down cheeks and an unheard, "Why am I in love alone?"

He lies cheek against the soft white of his pillow, skin marked dry with familiar shed tears and eyelids heavy from staying up for too long. The lights of the city glitter in the night sky through his glass window that he doesn't have the strength to draw the curtains against, and somewhere in his tired mind he catches himself wondering is he out there somewhere without me having fun in the shine of the city lights?

Sleep claims him after time goes by - he loses track of how many seconds and minutes and maybe hours go by before he succumbs - and when he's next awoken dawn light is filtering in streaks through the glass and tracing lines across the white of the pillows and bedsheets. He's awoken by the shifting of the bed, of the faint ringing of a phone alarm, and of a scent so familiar to him it only makes his heart break more.

"You're here," he whispers out, his mind still groggy in the early morning, but sharp enough to know for sure that it's him, it's him, it's really him.

"Go back to sleep," the response comes quietly, dismissively, as the man opposite from him gets off the bed and throws on a suit from the wardrobe. "I'm going to be late for work if I don't hurry, so I don't have time to talk."

You never have time to talk, he wishes he could say bitingly, but he holds his tongue, watching only as the man picks up his laptop and begins to make his way towards the living room.

"Jungsoo," he calls, his voice scratchy in the early dawn hours, and in the back of his mind he wonders how long it's been since he's called Jungsoo by name in front of him, "What time will you come back?"

The man smoothens his suit and turns, and for a flicker of time his eyes soften a little, or perhaps that's just his imagination. "Chul-ah." A weary sigh accompanies the uttering of his name. "I told you that work is busy nowadays, so I don't have much time. I'll try to be back before you sleep, alright?"

Heechul nods his head before proceeding to bury it into his own pillow - half because every part of his body is screaming at him to fall back asleep, half so Jungsoo doesn't have to see the bitterness that's making itself present in every downward twitch of his lips and furrowing of the eyebrows.

When he wakes up again, this time by the soft tunes of Standing EGG's Little Star playing through his phone as his alarm at nine-thirty in the morning, he sits up straight and looks around the room after rubbing the sleep out of his eyes.

The vacated pillow next to him immaculately placed, free of any fallen loose hairs or signs of rest, clothes from the night before carefully folded and placed at the foot of the bed instead of being strewn across the floor, unworn home slippers arranged parallel to one another at the doorway.

If he didn't know better, he'd think that he was the only one living in the house.

He busies himself throughout the day, first with finishing up the write-up to be sent to his boss via email, then ordering food in for lunch because he's been so wrapped up with his thoughts that he's forgotten all about breakfast; halfway through eating his regular order of jjajangmyeon he lifts his head and casts his gaze across the house, across memories held in little photo frames or in the form of objects that he hasn't gathered the courage to look at for a long time.