[exo] the world as i know it
|| jongin x yixing; minor implied! luhan x yixing || pg || romance, angst ||
warning: #HowToGrammar // disclaimer: copyright infringement not intended.
summary: there's always something to look at if you open your eyes.
a/n: this was written last year & posted in my previous journal so its highly possible that some of you have read it before.
a/n2: click here for the new and (hopefully) improved version.
**
the world as i know it ;;
Cold. So cold it reaches down to your very bones - seeping into your blood. So cold it penetrates your veins, numbs your heart and ultimately and inevitably freezes your soul. Like a thousand knives coming at you - piercing through skin and slicing past flesh. You can’t breathe. You can’t think. Your senses are encased in ice.
**
Jongin wakes up in the middle of a night screaming. Heart pounding furiously beneath his ribcage, cold beads of perspiration on his clammy skin. Breaths coming out in harsh ragged gasps, the lingering ghosts of his nightmare fade and vanish. Jongin doesn’t remember - he never does.
Throwing aside the thick bedcovers, thick suffocating bedcovers, Jongin sits up abruptly. Legs bent, elbows resting on knees, he takes his spinning head into his shaky hands - fingers clutching fistfuls of midnight black hair, and starts to pull at the strands. Frustration overcomes him and a growl escapes his parched and cracked lips. A low growl of helplessness. Jongin was often likened to a jaguar for his swift and sharp movements, and at that very moment, he was very much a wounded and lost big feline.
He looks to his side and notices that the right side of the bed is empty and cold. His heart clenches painfully in his heaving chest and it’s so hard to breathe.
The room is deadly silent, like an abandoned graveyard. The silence is overwhelming, eerie, and yet at the same time, it’s loud. So loud, deafeningly loud.
Jongin wants to scream, wants to do something, anything to break the silence - the silence which is slowly but surely eating him inside, killing him softly bit by little bit. So he takes in a shuddering breath, throws his head back and screams.
Jongin screams till the air in his lungs run out, he screams till his throat feels strained. He screams, long and hard. Jongin screams till his voice cracks, till his eyes start to water.
Till tears start flowing from the dark pools of his eyes.
And then it’s quiet again. But then this time, the silence is punctuated by the sounds of laboured breathing and muffled sobs.
Trembling hand against mouth, Jongin valiantly tries to stifle his cries. His cheeks are wet, his vision blurring, his eyes drowning.
It’s silent, so silent. Jongin cannot hear anything. He cannot hear anything but the ghosts of yesterdays. His voice, his words, his laughter. His whispers, his breath against his ear.
Yixing.
Jongin hears Yixing, and he wants so much to ignore it.
Jongin wants to forget the way how that melodious voice sounds - warm, mellow, and comforting. He wants to forget how the peals of laughter tinkle magically in the breeze.
He wants to forget how Yixing had once whispered “I love you”.
Jongin wants to forget, but then again, he’s afraid of losing the memories - he doesn’t want to let go of all the snapshots stored in his mind.
He hates that he hurts, he hates that he’s hurting so much. But he knows, deep down, that the pain he’s experiencing is proof that the time they spent together is actually a reality.
A reality that feels so very much like a far-away dream. A reality that has passed its expiry date. A reality, which can only be relived in memories. A story, which has ended before the allocated time, never to be continued.
A story never to be completed.
**
Kim Jongin, twenty-two, sits in a corner of a Starbucks café with a steaming cup of espresso topped with whipped cream in his gloved hands.
There’s a freaking blizzard outside and the young man had ducked into the café, which thankfully had a roaring fire, to escape from being frozen to death.
Jongin takes in a deep breath, inhaling the aroma of freshly brewed coffee - feeling it entering and filling up his lungs - and closes his eyes. A small smile tugs at the corners of his full lips.
And when he opens his raven orbs a few moments later, he finds a smiling face peering at him from across the table he was seated at.
His eyes make quick work of the stranger. Pale skin, so unlike his own, sparkling mocha-brown eyes which are currently crinkled at the sides, a delicate nose, a pair of soft and luscious looking lips, and a dancing dimple upon a cheek.
Jongin finds himself staring at the beautiful boy in front of him with a lump in his throat and an unfamiliar sensation in the pits of his stomach.
The boy coughs softly and looks at Jongin with dancing eyes and gentle smile.
“Can I sit there?” he asks, pointing with his un-gloved finger to a chair across Jongin. “Everywhere else is full.”
Jongin quickly glances around and notices that more than half the shop is empty.
Looking at the standing boy, Jongin clears the lump in his throat and says, “Yes, of course you can.”
The boy breaks out into a disarming grin, hurries to pull out the char and sits, all the while looking straight into Jongin’s eyes.
Jongin swears the entire shop just got a notch brighter.
Picking his cup, he takes a sip and basks in the warm comfortable aura that the boy seems to radiate effortlessly. He uses this silent opportunity to further observe this beautiful stranger.
Jongin sees that the boy’s cheeks are slightly flushed, probably from the cold, and thinks that the light pink is such a pretty colour.
Jongin had never liked pink.
When he sees that the boy is rubbing his hands together and blowing on them, he asks - eyebrow arching.
“You don’t wear gloves in this weather?”
The boy looks up and smiles. “Of course I do. I have a lovely purple hand-knitted pair. I forgot to bring them out today.”
Hearing the rather unexpected and surprising answer, Jongin frowns - crease forming above the bridge of his nose - and removes his black leather gloves.
“Wear them,” he says with a tone of finality.
The boy looks at him in wide-eyed surprise, and for a moment Jongin thinks that he was about to refuse.
Jongin is already forming an argument should the other reject, when a pair of slim hands reaches over for the gloves.
He sees another heart-stopping grin on that flushed face as the boy puts the gloves on. Jongin notices that they fit perfectly, and his heart unexplainably leaps in his chest
“Thank you. I’m Yixing by the way. Zhang Yixing,” says the boy - all sparkling eyes, blushing cheeks, and dancing dimple.
Jongin feels time slowing down and hears the soft lub dub lub dub beneath his ribcage. He finds no explanation to why he can’t seem to look away from this Zhang Yixing’s face. He can’t explain why he’s so drawn to those perfectly- shaped lips.
Jongin wonders how that mouth would taste beneath his own. The thought shakes him rudely from his reverie because dammit, he had just fantasized about kissing a stranger.
Kim Jongin doesn’t believe in love. He does not fall for anyone. Ever.
When he realizes rather belatedly that Yixing is still looking at him expectedly, a small smile creeps onto his face.
“Jongin, Kim Jongin. It’s nice to meet you Zhang Yixing,” he says, internally marvelling over the way those foreign syllables roll off his tongue.
It’s utterly delicious; Jongin thinks as he enters a dream-like trance, that name is absolutely beautiful.
He forgets that he doesn’t believe in the thing called love.
But when he hears musical giggles fill the air, when Yixing says It’s nice to meet you too Kim Jongin, he decides that maybe it’s alright to forget every once in a while.
**
Jongin wakes up abruptly one night. He doesn’t know why he did; he just woke up without any rhyme or reason.
The only source of light was the soft and faint beams of moonlight that filter in through the windows.
Jongin turns his face slightly to look up at the velvet black sky. He’s counting the stars when it becomes pitch black all of a sudden.
Jongin has lost his sense of sight. The only things he can see are the pictures in his head.
Yixing’s lovely face, Yixing’s sparkling eyes, Yixing’s dimple, Yixing’s lean slender frame, Yixing’s slim hands, Yixing’s beautiful lips.
Yixing, Yixing, Yixing.
All Jongin can see is Yixing, all he can hear is Yixing. Nothing but Yixing.
Kim Jongin parts his lips and screams into the night.
**
“Jongin, I love you.”
Jongin looks up from the pale expanse of Yixing’s neck and stares at him with an unreadable expression in his eyes.
“I’m sorry, could you repeat that? I thought I heard - “
“I said I love you Jongin. And I mean it, I love you. I really do.” Yixing says softly and earnestly, smile ever-present on his lips.
Jongin looks at a glowing Yixing and his heart clenches painfully. He wants to tell Yixing that he loves him too, but he reminds himself that there’s no such thing as love in this world. That’s why he doesn’t believe in it.
Reaching out a hand to caress a soft cheek, Jongin asks softly.
“Isn’t all this enough? Is it really necessary to bring in the feelings and complicate things?”
“Complicate?” Yixing frowns, “I don’t see how this complicates things. Don’t you want something more than just sex, Jongin?”
“Don’t you love me?”
Jongin lets his hand fall. His heart lurches as he begins to worry his bottom lip with his teeth. An internal battle starts.
“Jongin-ah - “
“I don’t want to,” Jongin blurts out loudly.
“You don’t want to love me? Is that it Jongin? All these times, you’ve just been fucking around with me, am I right?”
Jongin sees the hurt and confusion swirling in the depths of Yixing’s brown orbs and hurriedly looks away.
“It’s not like that. I just..” he pauses to take a breath. “I don’t know Yixing, I don’t know.”
Jongin forces himself to look at Yixing when silence ensues.
The boy isn’t smiling anymore.
“What are you so afraid of? Why are you scared Jongin?” asks a frowning Yixing.
“I - “ Jongin swallows harshly. “I need some time to think.”
And with that, he leaves the room.
He really shouldn’t have left.
**
Luhan follows Jongin’s every movement with his penetrating gaze. He brushes away imaginary specks of dust from his cashmere sweater and says.
“Tell me again why you’re flying off to China tomorrow?”
Jongin pauses in his actions to spare his friend a glance before he resumes his packing.
“Because Yixing’s going there and I’m chasing after him. I’ve told you before, haven’t I?”
Luhan runs a hand through his blonde hair and ignores the question.
“So you’re going after him to tell him you’re sorry and that you love him back. What makes you think he’ll take you back?”
Not even bothering to look up, Jongin mutters, “Because he loves me.”
Luhan raises a sceptical eyebrow and asks the younger boy.
“It’s been weeks Jongin, weeks. You’re sure about his feelings?”
Jongin freezes at this. Slowly, he spins around to face Luhan.
“Hyung, I know what you’re thinking but I, I really have to do this,” he starts to say.
“It doesn’t matter to me even if he hates me; I have to be with him. I’d rather live a lie than to never see him again. Because no matter how much I try to deny and ignore it, I can’t live without him.”
“Because without him, the world as I know it will cease to exist.”
Luhan’s face softens at the younger boy’s words and a sigh escapes him.
**
It’s raining when Jongin spots a heart-achingly familiar figure in the middle of a street.
And without giving it another thought, he runs forward to the said figure.
His entire body is drenched, his hair plastered all over his face, his clothes sticking to his skin, and he’s shivering from the cold brittle wind.
But all that doesn’t matter because Jongin has his arms around Yixing and everything feels right again. Yixing’s in his arms and that’s what really matters.
“Don’t leave me Xing,” he sobs quietly. “Please don’t.”
Yixing doesn’t move for a second. Then he pries away the arms around his frame and turns around.
He looks at Jongin and smiles softly. Reaching up, he places a chaste kiss on the boy’s trembling lips and whispers, “I’m leaving for China. And I’m not coming back.”
Picking up the umbrella that has fallen to the ground, Yixing presses the wooden handle into Jongin’s hand and says softly.
“Go home and take a warm shower. Don’t follow me.”
Jongin continues staring wordlessly even after the elder gives him another small smile and walks away.
He stares with a freezing heart as he notices Yixing’s shoulders tremble - an indication that he’s crying.
The rain pours relentlessly down upon Yixing’s slender body and Jongin wants to do something - anything - to shelter him from the cold.
He watches as another familiar silhouette run towards the shivering body and pull him into a nearby shop.
Jongin doesn’t pause to figure out who that second figure is.
All he can focus on is how numb his heart feels, how cold he is.
**
Luhan stands up from the couch he was sitting on, and makes his way to Jongin.
“He won’t take you back Jongin.”
“What, how - “
Luhan stops directly in front of the younger boy and says clearly, “Because I won’t let him.”
“I’m leaving for China as well.”
Jongin blinks. Realization hits him like a ton of bricks.
Luhan. It was Luhan who he saw that day. Luhan who was with Yixing.
Luhan, who is going to end the story once and for all.
“I’m sorry Jongin,” Luhan says with something akin to pity in his eyes. “You had your chance.”
**
Jongin’s in the shower when his phone vibrates.
One new message from Zhang Yixing: You had your chance. Goodbye Jongin.
**
There’s always someone to look at if you open your eyes.
Kim Jongin opened his eyes when it was too late.
**
- please leave a comment or review! \o//
warning: #HowToGrammar // disclaimer: copyright infringement not intended.
summary: there's always something to look at if you open your eyes.
a/n: this was written last year & posted in my previous journal so its highly possible that some of you have read it before.
a/n2: click here for the new and (hopefully) improved version.
**
the world as i know it ;;
Cold. So cold it reaches down to your very bones - seeping into your blood. So cold it penetrates your veins, numbs your heart and ultimately and inevitably freezes your soul. Like a thousand knives coming at you - piercing through skin and slicing past flesh. You can’t breathe. You can’t think. Your senses are encased in ice.
**
Jongin wakes up in the middle of a night screaming. Heart pounding furiously beneath his ribcage, cold beads of perspiration on his clammy skin. Breaths coming out in harsh ragged gasps, the lingering ghosts of his nightmare fade and vanish. Jongin doesn’t remember - he never does.
Throwing aside the thick bedcovers, thick suffocating bedcovers, Jongin sits up abruptly. Legs bent, elbows resting on knees, he takes his spinning head into his shaky hands - fingers clutching fistfuls of midnight black hair, and starts to pull at the strands. Frustration overcomes him and a growl escapes his parched and cracked lips. A low growl of helplessness. Jongin was often likened to a jaguar for his swift and sharp movements, and at that very moment, he was very much a wounded and lost big feline.
He looks to his side and notices that the right side of the bed is empty and cold. His heart clenches painfully in his heaving chest and it’s so hard to breathe.
The room is deadly silent, like an abandoned graveyard. The silence is overwhelming, eerie, and yet at the same time, it’s loud. So loud, deafeningly loud.
Jongin wants to scream, wants to do something, anything to break the silence - the silence which is slowly but surely eating him inside, killing him softly bit by little bit. So he takes in a shuddering breath, throws his head back and screams.
Jongin screams till the air in his lungs run out, he screams till his throat feels strained. He screams, long and hard. Jongin screams till his voice cracks, till his eyes start to water.
Till tears start flowing from the dark pools of his eyes.
And then it’s quiet again. But then this time, the silence is punctuated by the sounds of laboured breathing and muffled sobs.
Trembling hand against mouth, Jongin valiantly tries to stifle his cries. His cheeks are wet, his vision blurring, his eyes drowning.
It’s silent, so silent. Jongin cannot hear anything. He cannot hear anything but the ghosts of yesterdays. His voice, his words, his laughter. His whispers, his breath against his ear.
Yixing.
Jongin hears Yixing, and he wants so much to ignore it.
Jongin wants to forget the way how that melodious voice sounds - warm, mellow, and comforting. He wants to forget how the peals of laughter tinkle magically in the breeze.
He wants to forget how Yixing had once whispered “I love you”.
Jongin wants to forget, but then again, he’s afraid of losing the memories - he doesn’t want to let go of all the snapshots stored in his mind.
He hates that he hurts, he hates that he’s hurting so much. But he knows, deep down, that the pain he’s experiencing is proof that the time they spent together is actually a reality.
A reality that feels so very much like a far-away dream. A reality that has passed its expiry date. A reality, which can only be relived in memories. A story, which has ended before the allocated time, never to be continued.
A story never to be completed.
**
Kim Jongin, twenty-two, sits in a corner of a Starbucks café with a steaming cup of espresso topped with whipped cream in his gloved hands.
There’s a freaking blizzard outside and the young man had ducked into the café, which thankfully had a roaring fire, to escape from being frozen to death.
Jongin takes in a deep breath, inhaling the aroma of freshly brewed coffee - feeling it entering and filling up his lungs - and closes his eyes. A small smile tugs at the corners of his full lips.
And when he opens his raven orbs a few moments later, he finds a smiling face peering at him from across the table he was seated at.
His eyes make quick work of the stranger. Pale skin, so unlike his own, sparkling mocha-brown eyes which are currently crinkled at the sides, a delicate nose, a pair of soft and luscious looking lips, and a dancing dimple upon a cheek.
Jongin finds himself staring at the beautiful boy in front of him with a lump in his throat and an unfamiliar sensation in the pits of his stomach.
The boy coughs softly and looks at Jongin with dancing eyes and gentle smile.
“Can I sit there?” he asks, pointing with his un-gloved finger to a chair across Jongin. “Everywhere else is full.”
Jongin quickly glances around and notices that more than half the shop is empty.
Looking at the standing boy, Jongin clears the lump in his throat and says, “Yes, of course you can.”
The boy breaks out into a disarming grin, hurries to pull out the char and sits, all the while looking straight into Jongin’s eyes.
Jongin swears the entire shop just got a notch brighter.
Picking his cup, he takes a sip and basks in the warm comfortable aura that the boy seems to radiate effortlessly. He uses this silent opportunity to further observe this beautiful stranger.
Jongin sees that the boy’s cheeks are slightly flushed, probably from the cold, and thinks that the light pink is such a pretty colour.
Jongin had never liked pink.
When he sees that the boy is rubbing his hands together and blowing on them, he asks - eyebrow arching.
“You don’t wear gloves in this weather?”
The boy looks up and smiles. “Of course I do. I have a lovely purple hand-knitted pair. I forgot to bring them out today.”
Hearing the rather unexpected and surprising answer, Jongin frowns - crease forming above the bridge of his nose - and removes his black leather gloves.
“Wear them,” he says with a tone of finality.
The boy looks at him in wide-eyed surprise, and for a moment Jongin thinks that he was about to refuse.
Jongin is already forming an argument should the other reject, when a pair of slim hands reaches over for the gloves.
He sees another heart-stopping grin on that flushed face as the boy puts the gloves on. Jongin notices that they fit perfectly, and his heart unexplainably leaps in his chest
“Thank you. I’m Yixing by the way. Zhang Yixing,” says the boy - all sparkling eyes, blushing cheeks, and dancing dimple.
Jongin feels time slowing down and hears the soft lub dub lub dub beneath his ribcage. He finds no explanation to why he can’t seem to look away from this Zhang Yixing’s face. He can’t explain why he’s so drawn to those perfectly- shaped lips.
Jongin wonders how that mouth would taste beneath his own. The thought shakes him rudely from his reverie because dammit, he had just fantasized about kissing a stranger.
Kim Jongin doesn’t believe in love. He does not fall for anyone. Ever.
When he realizes rather belatedly that Yixing is still looking at him expectedly, a small smile creeps onto his face.
“Jongin, Kim Jongin. It’s nice to meet you Zhang Yixing,” he says, internally marvelling over the way those foreign syllables roll off his tongue.
It’s utterly delicious; Jongin thinks as he enters a dream-like trance, that name is absolutely beautiful.
He forgets that he doesn’t believe in the thing called love.
But when he hears musical giggles fill the air, when Yixing says It’s nice to meet you too Kim Jongin, he decides that maybe it’s alright to forget every once in a while.
**
Jongin wakes up abruptly one night. He doesn’t know why he did; he just woke up without any rhyme or reason.
The only source of light was the soft and faint beams of moonlight that filter in through the windows.
Jongin turns his face slightly to look up at the velvet black sky. He’s counting the stars when it becomes pitch black all of a sudden.
Jongin has lost his sense of sight. The only things he can see are the pictures in his head.
Yixing’s lovely face, Yixing’s sparkling eyes, Yixing’s dimple, Yixing’s lean slender frame, Yixing’s slim hands, Yixing’s beautiful lips.
Yixing, Yixing, Yixing.
All Jongin can see is Yixing, all he can hear is Yixing. Nothing but Yixing.
Kim Jongin parts his lips and screams into the night.
**
“Jongin, I love you.”
Jongin looks up from the pale expanse of Yixing’s neck and stares at him with an unreadable expression in his eyes.
“I’m sorry, could you repeat that? I thought I heard - “
“I said I love you Jongin. And I mean it, I love you. I really do.” Yixing says softly and earnestly, smile ever-present on his lips.
Jongin looks at a glowing Yixing and his heart clenches painfully. He wants to tell Yixing that he loves him too, but he reminds himself that there’s no such thing as love in this world. That’s why he doesn’t believe in it.
Reaching out a hand to caress a soft cheek, Jongin asks softly.
“Isn’t all this enough? Is it really necessary to bring in the feelings and complicate things?”
“Complicate?” Yixing frowns, “I don’t see how this complicates things. Don’t you want something more than just sex, Jongin?”
“Don’t you love me?”
Jongin lets his hand fall. His heart lurches as he begins to worry his bottom lip with his teeth. An internal battle starts.
“Jongin-ah - “
“I don’t want to,” Jongin blurts out loudly.
“You don’t want to love me? Is that it Jongin? All these times, you’ve just been fucking around with me, am I right?”
Jongin sees the hurt and confusion swirling in the depths of Yixing’s brown orbs and hurriedly looks away.
“It’s not like that. I just..” he pauses to take a breath. “I don’t know Yixing, I don’t know.”
Jongin forces himself to look at Yixing when silence ensues.
The boy isn’t smiling anymore.
“What are you so afraid of? Why are you scared Jongin?” asks a frowning Yixing.
“I - “ Jongin swallows harshly. “I need some time to think.”
And with that, he leaves the room.
He really shouldn’t have left.
**
Luhan follows Jongin’s every movement with his penetrating gaze. He brushes away imaginary specks of dust from his cashmere sweater and says.
“Tell me again why you’re flying off to China tomorrow?”
Jongin pauses in his actions to spare his friend a glance before he resumes his packing.
“Because Yixing’s going there and I’m chasing after him. I’ve told you before, haven’t I?”
Luhan runs a hand through his blonde hair and ignores the question.
“So you’re going after him to tell him you’re sorry and that you love him back. What makes you think he’ll take you back?”
Not even bothering to look up, Jongin mutters, “Because he loves me.”
Luhan raises a sceptical eyebrow and asks the younger boy.
“It’s been weeks Jongin, weeks. You’re sure about his feelings?”
Jongin freezes at this. Slowly, he spins around to face Luhan.
“Hyung, I know what you’re thinking but I, I really have to do this,” he starts to say.
“It doesn’t matter to me even if he hates me; I have to be with him. I’d rather live a lie than to never see him again. Because no matter how much I try to deny and ignore it, I can’t live without him.”
“Because without him, the world as I know it will cease to exist.”
Luhan’s face softens at the younger boy’s words and a sigh escapes him.
**
It’s raining when Jongin spots a heart-achingly familiar figure in the middle of a street.
And without giving it another thought, he runs forward to the said figure.
His entire body is drenched, his hair plastered all over his face, his clothes sticking to his skin, and he’s shivering from the cold brittle wind.
But all that doesn’t matter because Jongin has his arms around Yixing and everything feels right again. Yixing’s in his arms and that’s what really matters.
“Don’t leave me Xing,” he sobs quietly. “Please don’t.”
Yixing doesn’t move for a second. Then he pries away the arms around his frame and turns around.
He looks at Jongin and smiles softly. Reaching up, he places a chaste kiss on the boy’s trembling lips and whispers, “I’m leaving for China. And I’m not coming back.”
Picking up the umbrella that has fallen to the ground, Yixing presses the wooden handle into Jongin’s hand and says softly.
“Go home and take a warm shower. Don’t follow me.”
Jongin continues staring wordlessly even after the elder gives him another small smile and walks away.
He stares with a freezing heart as he notices Yixing’s shoulders tremble - an indication that he’s crying.
The rain pours relentlessly down upon Yixing’s slender body and Jongin wants to do something - anything - to shelter him from the cold.
He watches as another familiar silhouette run towards the shivering body and pull him into a nearby shop.
Jongin doesn’t pause to figure out who that second figure is.
All he can focus on is how numb his heart feels, how cold he is.
**
Luhan stands up from the couch he was sitting on, and makes his way to Jongin.
“He won’t take you back Jongin.”
“What, how - “
Luhan stops directly in front of the younger boy and says clearly, “Because I won’t let him.”
“I’m leaving for China as well.”
Jongin blinks. Realization hits him like a ton of bricks.
Luhan. It was Luhan who he saw that day. Luhan who was with Yixing.
Luhan, who is going to end the story once and for all.
“I’m sorry Jongin,” Luhan says with something akin to pity in his eyes. “You had your chance.”
**
Jongin’s in the shower when his phone vibrates.
One new message from Zhang Yixing: You had your chance. Goodbye Jongin.
**
There’s always someone to look at if you open your eyes.
Kim Jongin opened his eyes when it was too late.
**
- please leave a comment or review! \o//