Silence; Woohyun/Myungsoo; PG
Title: Silence
Author yolochinchins
Rating: PG
Pairing/Focus: Woohyun/Myungsoo
Word Count: 3272
A/N: Angst, character death, and a sad Myungsoo. I hope it doesn't really confuse anyone .-.
Summary: All Myungsoo can hear is the silence.
Smoke and bitter coffee fill his mouth everyday and it’s all he really lives on. That and breathing in the rotten scents of the city that hangs below his twenty-second floor flat that he hardly ever steps out of. He writes, Myungsoo is a writer. He puts all the blank emotions he feels and inks them onto even blanker paper that never seems to ever be fully written on. He doesn't like going out because the streets are loud and filled with endless noises. That’s all the world has ever been to him, nothing but white noise. Myungsoo doesn’t care about those things because he’s skinny and dying and books have always been all that he’s known of the world. Everyone dies, he concluded, but not everyone dies as quick as Kim Myungsoo is and not everyone wants to die as quick as Kim Myungsoo does.
Endless fog (or maybe it’s all just smog and Myungsoo pretends to see fog because it’s ‘prettier’) always wafts through the streets below him and he pretends that he’s in the clouds and is flying away to better tomorrows, ones where pollution and white noise don’t exist. Ones where he needs more than smoke and bitter coffee to survive on and one where Sungyeol would visit him everyday. A world five years ago when Myungsoo got his first book published and was deemed as a genius to the world of writing and where Sungyeol would smile at him all gummy and was still alive.
Just wishful thinking though.
Myungsoo hates wishful thinking.
-
He’s really stupid, Myungsoo can’t help but think when he sees the bulky looking male standing outside of the coffee shop, spilling different kinds of books and pens from his bag while someone is trying to help him. Only they aren’t helping but trying to take his wallet. The guy just smiles though and he looks really stupid to Myungsoo because who smiles like that? Smiling like nothing else matters and he’s just really glad to be alive. Myungsoo can’t fathom what poor soul was stuffed into such a stupid body. Instead he gets pulled into the smile as if there’s some hidden magnet there that attracts the flavors of smoke and bitter coffee.
“Scram,” Myungsoo sputters out when he’s reached the two and he’s kicking the kid on the floor that’s still searching for the wallet. The kid doesn’t hesitate to stand up (he’s almost as tall as Sungyeol) and give Myungsoo a daring look.
“I’m just trying to help him out,” the kid says, knowing Myungsoo isn’t buying a single word from him, but then the barista is eyeing them and so the kid glances at Myungsoo then the bulky looking idiot before bashfully dashing out and Myungsoo is a little more than confused, but he looks over at the stupid guy and the guy is all smiles.
Myungsoo doesn’t say anything but stares at him and the guy stares back and they awkwardly stare for a few minutes before the guy looks up at the clock hanging on the faded yellow walls of the coffee house, then he smiles again at Myungsoo and leaves.
That magnet connected to his smile has Myungsoo staring at his back as he leaves the place.
-
They meet again when it’s raining and Myungsoo needs more coffee beans to occupy all the spaces in his kitchen cabinets. The city is dark and wet because of the weather, even though it’s midday. Myungsoo prefers things like this, cold and black. He doesn’t like the feeling of warmth because it reminds him of all things living and of all things that aren’t living. He also doesn’t like anything aside from black because anything else reminds of shades of brown and pink that use to fill his sight all the time. Shades that faded to gray and soon - black.
He’s all wet and shivering when Myungsoo finds him, sitting in the middle of the coffee house. The middle is where all the white noise comes from, where lots of people sit and chatter, the television set plays the news rather intensly, and the baristas like to call orders as loud as they possibly can. Myungsoo hates that area and he likes to avoid because it’s so loud and terrible to his ears that he walks around to get to the counter.
Only after he’s made an order for fifty bags of his favorite (Sungyeol’s favorite) coffee beans, he gets pulled in by that magical smile magnet.
Bee stung lips, Myungsoo decides, are what form into that smile. White teeth become exposed and eyes crinkle up into moon crescents. Myungsoo can’t decide which pulls him in more, the smile with the teeth or the smile with the eyes.
They don’t talk, instead Myungsoo stands in the middle of the coffee house and stares at the guy who in return continues to smile and for a moment Myungsoo feels like the blank canvas of his heart has been stroked by a red brush, but the feeling immediately disappears because Myungsoo scrapes the red out and splatters it with black.
Red was Sungyeol’s color.
-
He doesn’t know why the pain of being alone in his room has begun to eat away at his brain and most days he just spends sitting out on the balcony chain smoking and thinking about how the clouds under him have vanished with the rain and how the sky is blinding with it’s light and how lonely he feels right now. Myungsoo is incredibly lonely, has always been incredibly lonely since five years ago and even though the smoke clogs his lungs and the bitter coffee erases the memories, Myungsoo know’s he’ll never forget. He’ll never forget to breathe, to live, to think, to remember, to be lonely.
All Myungsoo can feel now is the loneliness and it eats and eats and eats all that he is until all he becomes is a puff of graying smoke and a puddle of black coffee.
He hasn’t had a meal in weeks.
Myungsoo is skinny, bones protruding more than they should in a twenty six year old. He doesn’t want to eat, can’t eat because the last time he had a meal he threw it all up and the reality of seeing blood spluttering out from his mouth scares the living hell out of him.
Myungsoo wants to die but Myungsoo is afraid of dying.
No one pities him.
-
When he sees him again, it’s months later and now fall has begun to show it’s face around the polluted city they live in. Myungsoo stops by the coffee house to get more coffee beans, when his head turns directly towards him. He’s sitting in the middle of the place again, concentrating so hard on the coffee cup in his hands that Myungsoo thinks it will combust into flames. Only this is real life and it doesn’t, instead he stops glaring at the coffee and takes a gulp of it. Myungsoo watches the way the liquid goes down his throat and how his adam’s apple bobs with the passing. He watches when the cup is brought back down and how a pink tongue flicks across those bee stung lips and then the magnet is automatically turned back on when he smiles and catches Myungsoo’s gaze on him.
Myungsoo leaves before he fills out his order.
-
“Aren’t you cold?”
Myungsoo doesn’t hear anything, instead he sees the messily written words written on a white napkin which has been splayed out on his lap. He stares at it before looking up at those dark eyes that seem to suck Myungsoo up in some weird vortex of bland colors yet vibrant emotions.
“I like being cold,” Myungsoo finds himself confessing and then those dark eyes curve in that way which always has a way of consuming Myungsoo’s attention and he takes in a sharp breath. Those eyes stay glued to Myungsoo’s mouth.
The napkin is pulled from his lap and returned with new words scrawled out.
“Being cold is nice,”
The small corners of Myungsoo’s mouth slightly curve but it can’t be called a smile, not yet at least.
-
Woohyun is his name.
Myungsoo finds that out weeks later when he sees him again and finds another napkin laying on his lap.
He doesn’t question why Woohyun writes on napkins and Woohyun doesn’t question why Myungsoo is as thin as a stick. Instead they talk about things. Small things, trivial things that don’t mean anything and that can be easily forgotten. However Myungsoo never forgets them and somewhere in his head he’d like to think that Woohyun doesn’t forget them either.
Slowly (and it creeps on all around Myungsoo without him even having to think twice about it) Woohyun looks a lot less dumb to Myungsoo and a whole lot different. Myungsoo can’t help but notice the little wrinkles on his face when he smiles or when he laughs, it’s always a little chuckle and though Myungsoo barely hears it, it’s a sound that he likes and it sends small little flutters of something he doesn’t understand into his brain. Somehow Woohyun has created splotches of red all over Myungsoo’s canvas and Myungsoo doesn’t try to cover it with black anymore because
Red is Woohyun.
-
The first time they kiss is when it’s nearing the end of winter and the snow is so heavy and thick that Myungsoo feels like the clouds below his flat have somehow returned. They’re in the coffee house when the news announces that all roads are closed and buses have stopped. Woohyun’s too immersed in laughing at some lame joke Myungsoo’s told that he doesn’t seem to catch any of it until Myungsoo tells him.
So they go upstairs to Myungsoo’s flat and Myungsoo decides to let Woohyun stay the night (or whenever the buses start to run again, but Myungsoo could honestly care less because he’d much prefer Woohyun just stay forever) and they end up playing multiple rounds of drawing games because Woohyun isn’t really in the mood to watch any movies.
It’s been a whole season and Myungsoo still hasn’t heard Woohyun talk.
It finally begins to pique his curiosity.
“Hyung, why do you always just write to me on paper?”
Myungsoo’s notices how Woohyun stiffens up and how his dark eyes get even darker before he smiles and shrugs. It’s a crooked, pursed smile and somehow for once Myungsoo hates silence and wants to hear something.
“No, but seriously. Tell me bec-”
And that’s when they have their first kiss because Woohyun wants to shut Myungsoo up and those damn bee stung lips feel so good against Myungsoo’s chapped ones and for the first time in a long time, Myungsoo tastes something other than smoke and bitter coffee.
He tastes Woohyun and Woohyun tastes like hope and life.
-
The first time Myungsoo hears Woohyun talk, he cries.
His voice is deep and vibrates into every fiber of Myungsoo’s body and it’s smooth and milky and wraps itself all around Myungsoo’s eardrums and he can’t stop himself when the tears stream over his worn out eyes and down his hollow cheeks (he’s gotten even thinner believe it or not). Woohyun immediately thinks something is wrong and mumbles multiple apologizes and holds Myungsoo in his arms and the sound of his voice keeps on playing over and over in Myungsoo’s head and he starts hysterically laughing and pushes himself away from a confused Woohyun before wiping away his tears and kissing those lips that he adores.
That night they chose to lay on the hardwood floors of Myungsoo’s apartment and listen to the drowning sounds of the city (at least Myungsoo does because he hears everything) and Woohyun has his arms wrapped around Myungsoo and Myungsoo has his nose in the crook of Woohyun’s neck and for once being cold doesn’t feel as nice as it use to because Woohyun is warm and Myungsoo likes this warmth.
Feeling something warm doesn’t make Myungsoo feel so lonely.
-
Myungsoo chides Woohyun to talk more, but he mostly mumbles and hums noises that Myungsoo still really likes. Since Woohyun has begun to talk to Myungsoo, he begins to eat. He begins to survive off of something other than smoke and bitter coffee. As if he is living off of the taste of hope and life instead. Something Myungsoo likes to taste whenever he kisses Woohyun.
He’s become more lively, more alive looking. The dark rings around his eyes are much softer and his clothes fit a little better and there’s a splash of pink on his cheeks and Myungsoo just looks like he survives off of Woohyun.
“You know, you sound beautiful,” Myungsoo confesses and Woohyun lightly chuckles, the sound making Myungsoo smile and scrunch up in that way that only his face does.
Woohyun just hums something and Myungsoo bounces on his lap like a child before they kiss more and fall to the floor in a tangle of limbs and both are breathless when suddenly Myungsoo’s heart hurts so much and he lets go of Woohyun’s arms and clutches his chest. There’s a stabbing pain and Myungsoo feels like he really can’t breath even though he’s heaving so hard and Woohyun is calling out his name and gripping his shoulders so hard that it hurts.
Myungsoo’s heart calms down and he can breath for real now and he blinks a few times at Woohyun and bitterly smiles and Woohyun’s dark eyes are filled with so much concern that Myungsoo’s heart aches in a completely different way and then he starts to cry and there’s just so much pain everywhere.
“I’m dying,” Myungsoo feels the need to say and Woohyun cradles him in his arms.
-
It’s summer now and the days are too warm for Myungsoo’s liking but he still sticks to Woohyun’s side even though they get sweaty and sticky. It’s annoying to Myungsoo, but if he’d be sweaty and sticky with anyone then he’d want it to be Woohyun. They spend most of the summer in Myungsoo’s flat just talking about different things that still seem trivial yet they’re so much deeper than they appear on the surface and both Myungsoo and Woohyun never forget them. Other days they go to the coffee house and drink their coffee and talk some more but instead of sitting in Myungsoo’s usual quiet corner, they stay in the middle of the place and have become part of the white noise. Myungsoo doesn’t care though, because now he doesn’t hear the white noise, all he hears is Woohyun.
When it’s particularly hot and the night doesn’t seem to bring any coolness, Woohyun takes Myungsoo to the roof and they lay under the smog filled sky and Woohyun mumbles different constellations and where they would appear if you could see the sky and Myungsoo mentions that he hates the sky but Woohyun doesn’t catch it because they’re laying side by side and Woohyun isn’t looking at Myungsoo but rather the sky.
Myungsoo doesn’t really notice until he begins to suddenly talk about Sungyeol in a discrete way. It’s like this that he finds out Woohyun can’t hear a damn thing he’s saying and he isn’t being ignored - no, Woohyun can’t hear anything.
His eyes are closed when Myungsoo says, “Hyung.”
He doesn’t get a real response. Myungsoo doesn’t move but he keeps his eyes on Woohyun and keeps on talking.
“Hyung, your face is stupid.”
“Hyung, I can see your undies, they’re red.”
“Hyung, you’ve got a booger in your nose.”
“Hyung, I ate the last of the ramyun today.”
“Hyung, I love you.”
The last words are heavy and thick on Myungsoo’s tongue and though he’s just saying it to get Woohyun’s attention, there’s some strange lingering truth to it and it makes Myungsoo want to blush and he’s glad it’s really dark outside or else if he really was blushing (which he is) then Woohyun wouldn’t be able to see it even if his eyes were open.
But there isn’t a single response from Woohyun at all and Myungsoo doesn’t think he’s sleeping. He can’t be, right?
Myungsoo moves slightly and turns his head to face Woohyun, that’s when the older male finally cracks his eyes open and smiles at Myungsoo, an expectant look on his face; as if saying “Yes, Myunggie? Did you have something to say?”
Myungsoo blinks a few times in confusion and then he shakes his head and goes back to looking at the sky which he hates and which can’t even do him the decency of showing him the constellations Woohyun was mumbling about.
-
It’s silent. So silent that it burns Myungsoo’s ears, a feeling that is foreign to him because how does silence even burn ears? Do Woohyun’s ears burn like this from all this quietness around them - around him? Myungsoo doesn’t want to know, he doesn’t want to know if silence burns Woohyun’s ears they way it burns Myungsoo’s. He thinks that if he finds out then he’ll be too confused to understand. Myungsoo is a scared child who is afraid of death and spiders and choking on smoke and hearing the reasons behind Woohyun’s silence.
Myungsoo has always been afraid, has always been scared of everything. So much he locks himself up in his twenty second floor flat and only goes out to get coffee when he needs more and he writes about all the things that plague his mind about how much it hurts to be him and how he misses Sungyeol and how he loves Woohyun but Woohyun can’t - doesn’t ever hear him and Myungsoo realizes that in the silence he is all alone and nothing can reach him and he’s going to die alone and that everything he’s ever thought was real is simply not.
He doesn’t try to understand. He can’t. Myungsoo is lost, so lost within himself and after all he’s dying so why should he even bother to?
He wants to hear the white noise again, but all he gets is silence.
Woohyun’s silence. Sungyeol’s silence. Myungsoo’s silence.
-
It’s five days later when Sunggyu goes to visit Myungsoo in months and when he goes into the twenty second floor flat he gets hit with the smell of death and bitter iron. A contrast from the usual scents Myungsoo carries with him and everything he touches.
Sunggyu goes to the bathroom and nearly vomits when he sees Myungsoo’s body laying in a pool of diluted blood, varying from pink to the deepest reds.
There was no Sungyeol. There was no Woohyun. There’s always just been Myungsoo, all alone and all afraid of white noises and spiders and death. He lived off of smoke and bitter coffee, and even when hope and life seemed to fuel him, the reality of it all was never real enough to make him hold on longer.
All Myungsoo can hear now is the silence.
Author yolochinchins
Rating: PG
Pairing/Focus: Woohyun/Myungsoo
Word Count: 3272
A/N: Angst, character death, and a sad Myungsoo. I hope it doesn't really confuse anyone .-.
Summary: All Myungsoo can hear is the silence.
Smoke and bitter coffee fill his mouth everyday and it’s all he really lives on. That and breathing in the rotten scents of the city that hangs below his twenty-second floor flat that he hardly ever steps out of. He writes, Myungsoo is a writer. He puts all the blank emotions he feels and inks them onto even blanker paper that never seems to ever be fully written on. He doesn't like going out because the streets are loud and filled with endless noises. That’s all the world has ever been to him, nothing but white noise. Myungsoo doesn’t care about those things because he’s skinny and dying and books have always been all that he’s known of the world. Everyone dies, he concluded, but not everyone dies as quick as Kim Myungsoo is and not everyone wants to die as quick as Kim Myungsoo does.
Endless fog (or maybe it’s all just smog and Myungsoo pretends to see fog because it’s ‘prettier’) always wafts through the streets below him and he pretends that he’s in the clouds and is flying away to better tomorrows, ones where pollution and white noise don’t exist. Ones where he needs more than smoke and bitter coffee to survive on and one where Sungyeol would visit him everyday. A world five years ago when Myungsoo got his first book published and was deemed as a genius to the world of writing and where Sungyeol would smile at him all gummy and was still alive.
Just wishful thinking though.
Myungsoo hates wishful thinking.
-
He’s really stupid, Myungsoo can’t help but think when he sees the bulky looking male standing outside of the coffee shop, spilling different kinds of books and pens from his bag while someone is trying to help him. Only they aren’t helping but trying to take his wallet. The guy just smiles though and he looks really stupid to Myungsoo because who smiles like that? Smiling like nothing else matters and he’s just really glad to be alive. Myungsoo can’t fathom what poor soul was stuffed into such a stupid body. Instead he gets pulled into the smile as if there’s some hidden magnet there that attracts the flavors of smoke and bitter coffee.
“Scram,” Myungsoo sputters out when he’s reached the two and he’s kicking the kid on the floor that’s still searching for the wallet. The kid doesn’t hesitate to stand up (he’s almost as tall as Sungyeol) and give Myungsoo a daring look.
“I’m just trying to help him out,” the kid says, knowing Myungsoo isn’t buying a single word from him, but then the barista is eyeing them and so the kid glances at Myungsoo then the bulky looking idiot before bashfully dashing out and Myungsoo is a little more than confused, but he looks over at the stupid guy and the guy is all smiles.
Myungsoo doesn’t say anything but stares at him and the guy stares back and they awkwardly stare for a few minutes before the guy looks up at the clock hanging on the faded yellow walls of the coffee house, then he smiles again at Myungsoo and leaves.
That magnet connected to his smile has Myungsoo staring at his back as he leaves the place.
-
They meet again when it’s raining and Myungsoo needs more coffee beans to occupy all the spaces in his kitchen cabinets. The city is dark and wet because of the weather, even though it’s midday. Myungsoo prefers things like this, cold and black. He doesn’t like the feeling of warmth because it reminds him of all things living and of all things that aren’t living. He also doesn’t like anything aside from black because anything else reminds of shades of brown and pink that use to fill his sight all the time. Shades that faded to gray and soon - black.
He’s all wet and shivering when Myungsoo finds him, sitting in the middle of the coffee house. The middle is where all the white noise comes from, where lots of people sit and chatter, the television set plays the news rather intensly, and the baristas like to call orders as loud as they possibly can. Myungsoo hates that area and he likes to avoid because it’s so loud and terrible to his ears that he walks around to get to the counter.
Only after he’s made an order for fifty bags of his favorite (Sungyeol’s favorite) coffee beans, he gets pulled in by that magical smile magnet.
Bee stung lips, Myungsoo decides, are what form into that smile. White teeth become exposed and eyes crinkle up into moon crescents. Myungsoo can’t decide which pulls him in more, the smile with the teeth or the smile with the eyes.
They don’t talk, instead Myungsoo stands in the middle of the coffee house and stares at the guy who in return continues to smile and for a moment Myungsoo feels like the blank canvas of his heart has been stroked by a red brush, but the feeling immediately disappears because Myungsoo scrapes the red out and splatters it with black.
Red was Sungyeol’s color.
-
He doesn’t know why the pain of being alone in his room has begun to eat away at his brain and most days he just spends sitting out on the balcony chain smoking and thinking about how the clouds under him have vanished with the rain and how the sky is blinding with it’s light and how lonely he feels right now. Myungsoo is incredibly lonely, has always been incredibly lonely since five years ago and even though the smoke clogs his lungs and the bitter coffee erases the memories, Myungsoo know’s he’ll never forget. He’ll never forget to breathe, to live, to think, to remember, to be lonely.
All Myungsoo can feel now is the loneliness and it eats and eats and eats all that he is until all he becomes is a puff of graying smoke and a puddle of black coffee.
He hasn’t had a meal in weeks.
Myungsoo is skinny, bones protruding more than they should in a twenty six year old. He doesn’t want to eat, can’t eat because the last time he had a meal he threw it all up and the reality of seeing blood spluttering out from his mouth scares the living hell out of him.
Myungsoo wants to die but Myungsoo is afraid of dying.
No one pities him.
-
When he sees him again, it’s months later and now fall has begun to show it’s face around the polluted city they live in. Myungsoo stops by the coffee house to get more coffee beans, when his head turns directly towards him. He’s sitting in the middle of the place again, concentrating so hard on the coffee cup in his hands that Myungsoo thinks it will combust into flames. Only this is real life and it doesn’t, instead he stops glaring at the coffee and takes a gulp of it. Myungsoo watches the way the liquid goes down his throat and how his adam’s apple bobs with the passing. He watches when the cup is brought back down and how a pink tongue flicks across those bee stung lips and then the magnet is automatically turned back on when he smiles and catches Myungsoo’s gaze on him.
Myungsoo leaves before he fills out his order.
-
“Aren’t you cold?”
Myungsoo doesn’t hear anything, instead he sees the messily written words written on a white napkin which has been splayed out on his lap. He stares at it before looking up at those dark eyes that seem to suck Myungsoo up in some weird vortex of bland colors yet vibrant emotions.
“I like being cold,” Myungsoo finds himself confessing and then those dark eyes curve in that way which always has a way of consuming Myungsoo’s attention and he takes in a sharp breath. Those eyes stay glued to Myungsoo’s mouth.
The napkin is pulled from his lap and returned with new words scrawled out.
“Being cold is nice,”
The small corners of Myungsoo’s mouth slightly curve but it can’t be called a smile, not yet at least.
-
Woohyun is his name.
Myungsoo finds that out weeks later when he sees him again and finds another napkin laying on his lap.
He doesn’t question why Woohyun writes on napkins and Woohyun doesn’t question why Myungsoo is as thin as a stick. Instead they talk about things. Small things, trivial things that don’t mean anything and that can be easily forgotten. However Myungsoo never forgets them and somewhere in his head he’d like to think that Woohyun doesn’t forget them either.
Slowly (and it creeps on all around Myungsoo without him even having to think twice about it) Woohyun looks a lot less dumb to Myungsoo and a whole lot different. Myungsoo can’t help but notice the little wrinkles on his face when he smiles or when he laughs, it’s always a little chuckle and though Myungsoo barely hears it, it’s a sound that he likes and it sends small little flutters of something he doesn’t understand into his brain. Somehow Woohyun has created splotches of red all over Myungsoo’s canvas and Myungsoo doesn’t try to cover it with black anymore because
Red is Woohyun.
-
The first time they kiss is when it’s nearing the end of winter and the snow is so heavy and thick that Myungsoo feels like the clouds below his flat have somehow returned. They’re in the coffee house when the news announces that all roads are closed and buses have stopped. Woohyun’s too immersed in laughing at some lame joke Myungsoo’s told that he doesn’t seem to catch any of it until Myungsoo tells him.
So they go upstairs to Myungsoo’s flat and Myungsoo decides to let Woohyun stay the night (or whenever the buses start to run again, but Myungsoo could honestly care less because he’d much prefer Woohyun just stay forever) and they end up playing multiple rounds of drawing games because Woohyun isn’t really in the mood to watch any movies.
It’s been a whole season and Myungsoo still hasn’t heard Woohyun talk.
It finally begins to pique his curiosity.
“Hyung, why do you always just write to me on paper?”
Myungsoo’s notices how Woohyun stiffens up and how his dark eyes get even darker before he smiles and shrugs. It’s a crooked, pursed smile and somehow for once Myungsoo hates silence and wants to hear something.
“No, but seriously. Tell me bec-”
And that’s when they have their first kiss because Woohyun wants to shut Myungsoo up and those damn bee stung lips feel so good against Myungsoo’s chapped ones and for the first time in a long time, Myungsoo tastes something other than smoke and bitter coffee.
He tastes Woohyun and Woohyun tastes like hope and life.
-
The first time Myungsoo hears Woohyun talk, he cries.
His voice is deep and vibrates into every fiber of Myungsoo’s body and it’s smooth and milky and wraps itself all around Myungsoo’s eardrums and he can’t stop himself when the tears stream over his worn out eyes and down his hollow cheeks (he’s gotten even thinner believe it or not). Woohyun immediately thinks something is wrong and mumbles multiple apologizes and holds Myungsoo in his arms and the sound of his voice keeps on playing over and over in Myungsoo’s head and he starts hysterically laughing and pushes himself away from a confused Woohyun before wiping away his tears and kissing those lips that he adores.
That night they chose to lay on the hardwood floors of Myungsoo’s apartment and listen to the drowning sounds of the city (at least Myungsoo does because he hears everything) and Woohyun has his arms wrapped around Myungsoo and Myungsoo has his nose in the crook of Woohyun’s neck and for once being cold doesn’t feel as nice as it use to because Woohyun is warm and Myungsoo likes this warmth.
Feeling something warm doesn’t make Myungsoo feel so lonely.
-
Myungsoo chides Woohyun to talk more, but he mostly mumbles and hums noises that Myungsoo still really likes. Since Woohyun has begun to talk to Myungsoo, he begins to eat. He begins to survive off of something other than smoke and bitter coffee. As if he is living off of the taste of hope and life instead. Something Myungsoo likes to taste whenever he kisses Woohyun.
He’s become more lively, more alive looking. The dark rings around his eyes are much softer and his clothes fit a little better and there’s a splash of pink on his cheeks and Myungsoo just looks like he survives off of Woohyun.
“You know, you sound beautiful,” Myungsoo confesses and Woohyun lightly chuckles, the sound making Myungsoo smile and scrunch up in that way that only his face does.
Woohyun just hums something and Myungsoo bounces on his lap like a child before they kiss more and fall to the floor in a tangle of limbs and both are breathless when suddenly Myungsoo’s heart hurts so much and he lets go of Woohyun’s arms and clutches his chest. There’s a stabbing pain and Myungsoo feels like he really can’t breath even though he’s heaving so hard and Woohyun is calling out his name and gripping his shoulders so hard that it hurts.
Myungsoo’s heart calms down and he can breath for real now and he blinks a few times at Woohyun and bitterly smiles and Woohyun’s dark eyes are filled with so much concern that Myungsoo’s heart aches in a completely different way and then he starts to cry and there’s just so much pain everywhere.
“I’m dying,” Myungsoo feels the need to say and Woohyun cradles him in his arms.
-
It’s summer now and the days are too warm for Myungsoo’s liking but he still sticks to Woohyun’s side even though they get sweaty and sticky. It’s annoying to Myungsoo, but if he’d be sweaty and sticky with anyone then he’d want it to be Woohyun. They spend most of the summer in Myungsoo’s flat just talking about different things that still seem trivial yet they’re so much deeper than they appear on the surface and both Myungsoo and Woohyun never forget them. Other days they go to the coffee house and drink their coffee and talk some more but instead of sitting in Myungsoo’s usual quiet corner, they stay in the middle of the place and have become part of the white noise. Myungsoo doesn’t care though, because now he doesn’t hear the white noise, all he hears is Woohyun.
When it’s particularly hot and the night doesn’t seem to bring any coolness, Woohyun takes Myungsoo to the roof and they lay under the smog filled sky and Woohyun mumbles different constellations and where they would appear if you could see the sky and Myungsoo mentions that he hates the sky but Woohyun doesn’t catch it because they’re laying side by side and Woohyun isn’t looking at Myungsoo but rather the sky.
Myungsoo doesn’t really notice until he begins to suddenly talk about Sungyeol in a discrete way. It’s like this that he finds out Woohyun can’t hear a damn thing he’s saying and he isn’t being ignored - no, Woohyun can’t hear anything.
His eyes are closed when Myungsoo says, “Hyung.”
He doesn’t get a real response. Myungsoo doesn’t move but he keeps his eyes on Woohyun and keeps on talking.
“Hyung, your face is stupid.”
“Hyung, I can see your undies, they’re red.”
“Hyung, you’ve got a booger in your nose.”
“Hyung, I ate the last of the ramyun today.”
“Hyung, I love you.”
The last words are heavy and thick on Myungsoo’s tongue and though he’s just saying it to get Woohyun’s attention, there’s some strange lingering truth to it and it makes Myungsoo want to blush and he’s glad it’s really dark outside or else if he really was blushing (which he is) then Woohyun wouldn’t be able to see it even if his eyes were open.
But there isn’t a single response from Woohyun at all and Myungsoo doesn’t think he’s sleeping. He can’t be, right?
Myungsoo moves slightly and turns his head to face Woohyun, that’s when the older male finally cracks his eyes open and smiles at Myungsoo, an expectant look on his face; as if saying “Yes, Myunggie? Did you have something to say?”
Myungsoo blinks a few times in confusion and then he shakes his head and goes back to looking at the sky which he hates and which can’t even do him the decency of showing him the constellations Woohyun was mumbling about.
-
It’s silent. So silent that it burns Myungsoo’s ears, a feeling that is foreign to him because how does silence even burn ears? Do Woohyun’s ears burn like this from all this quietness around them - around him? Myungsoo doesn’t want to know, he doesn’t want to know if silence burns Woohyun’s ears they way it burns Myungsoo’s. He thinks that if he finds out then he’ll be too confused to understand. Myungsoo is a scared child who is afraid of death and spiders and choking on smoke and hearing the reasons behind Woohyun’s silence.
Myungsoo has always been afraid, has always been scared of everything. So much he locks himself up in his twenty second floor flat and only goes out to get coffee when he needs more and he writes about all the things that plague his mind about how much it hurts to be him and how he misses Sungyeol and how he loves Woohyun but Woohyun can’t - doesn’t ever hear him and Myungsoo realizes that in the silence he is all alone and nothing can reach him and he’s going to die alone and that everything he’s ever thought was real is simply not.
He doesn’t try to understand. He can’t. Myungsoo is lost, so lost within himself and after all he’s dying so why should he even bother to?
He wants to hear the white noise again, but all he gets is silence.
Woohyun’s silence. Sungyeol’s silence. Myungsoo’s silence.
-
It’s five days later when Sunggyu goes to visit Myungsoo in months and when he goes into the twenty second floor flat he gets hit with the smell of death and bitter iron. A contrast from the usual scents Myungsoo carries with him and everything he touches.
Sunggyu goes to the bathroom and nearly vomits when he sees Myungsoo’s body laying in a pool of diluted blood, varying from pink to the deepest reds.
There was no Sungyeol. There was no Woohyun. There’s always just been Myungsoo, all alone and all afraid of white noises and spiders and death. He lived off of smoke and bitter coffee, and even when hope and life seemed to fuel him, the reality of it all was never real enough to make him hold on longer.
All Myungsoo can hear now is the silence.