Knight of Wands
Title: knight of wands
Pairing: TaePyo (vague)
Group: Block B
Rating: PG
WARNING: mentions of depression, the entire Block B scandal era; ps: it's not linear, exactly
Notes: Birthday!fic for blackheart_lies, I'm sorry it's angsty. It was supposed to be cute and the prompt in my head was "Jihoon likes Taeil's hands in his hair" but then this thing came out and I like it but it was supposed to be CUTE, C'MON, because TaePyo is the fluff couple and just why. I hope you like it, though! :D
Summary: Everything goes to shit after the scandal.
-
Going home feels like a defeat, an admittance that he’s given up and they’ve won. The idea should be as crushing as it once was, but instead of distraught, Jihoon just feels flat.
Flat is the best way to describe it, as if there’s no more matter of him to compress, as if Jihoon’s sunk to the lowest point under the ocean and the pressure overwhelms him, until he is crumpled into the tiniest space he can possibly possess and even that isn’t small enough. Because he can still feel that all-over press of a mile of water over his limbs, and when he wakes it’s always with his knees curled to his chest and hands over his face.
-
They’re called triggers, the doctors tell him. They’ll be things he doesn’t expect and there’s no way to know for sure what they are until he runs into them. Jihoon doesn’t believe they exist, because he can’t be bothered to put the effort in. Nothing thus far has set him off, has managed to pierce his consciousness with the incisiveness of that petition, and he thinks there’s nothing that can possibly bother him again, no emotions left to swallow him whole.
It should feel like a victory, but there’s no elation anywhere in his bones, either. There’s nothing, and maybe that should worry him, but he finds that worry is gone, too, with everything else.
The only thing he can find the effort to do is sleep and watch endless repetitions of daytime television while his parents are at work. He eats with the mechanical precision of a sleepwalker, taste lost somewhere in his fragmenting dreams. His mother comes by after work to collect his half-finished or completely untouched bowls from the living room floor and the cups stacked next to the headboard of his bed.
She rests his hand on his shoulder when she thinks he’s asleep, and he lets her, because he can barely feel the touch anyway.
-
The first psychotherapy session out of the hospital he just sits through, unsure of what to talk about. Minutes tick away from the hour in silence as his doctor sits at the desk opposite him, pen scritching audibly over his notepad. Jihoon stares at the pen, and then his hands.
He doesn’t want to talk about anything. He can barely remember what happened, and for him that’s good. Pushing at that darkness inside his head, trying to dredge up the blacked-out memories, just leaves him short of breath and feeling as though the world is about to collapse in on him.
So he leaves it that way, accepts the breach in memory as if he’d just fallen asleep.
Vaguely, he wonders if he’s awoken yet.
-
There are drugs, no, no, wait- there are no drugs. They’re offered at the hospital, pen hovering over a prescription pad as if he’d be stupid to say no. But he doesn’t like it, just barely off the drip of the emergency room and his hand is sore from the needles and his eyes hurt from the glowing lights and the white walls are spinning and Jihoon’s afraid if he takes one more thing he’ll close his eyes and end up in that strange darkness still so close to his vision.
It’s just barely cleared and he’s still swimming in that partial-sleep, so he says no and the prescription pad closes with the resignation of the presumed correct, denied.
He wonders, later, if he’d made the right decision, because his sleep is fractured and unsettled. Even awake, for hours at a time he feels like he can barely breathe and it’s only the simplicity of his routine that allows him to keep going. Chemical dependence, his brain blares out at him in a rictus of phantom fear when he thinks about calling the doctor, and he thought he was past this, past his mind giving a fuck, but he supposes it’s something that there’s this one last, remaining barrier. Even if he’s not sure if it’s an indication of his remaining sanity or just a snarl of irrationality to be overcome.
-
Coming back to the dorm is something else. Everyone else is there, waiting cautiously by the door as he enters. He tries to smile, because he knows he should, but there’s something off in it. No one returns it. Yukwon comes over to help carry his stuff to his bedroom and Jihoon trails after him slowly, unease clawing at his insides the closer they draw to the door, though he can’t say why.
He stops in the threshold, watching as Yukwon puts his bag carefully on his familiar bed, and realizes he’s holding his breath. With a sigh, he lets it out, tries to relax, ten, nine, eight, seven, six, but the next breath he takes in is overwhelming in something- the smell of their manager’s detergent, Minhyuk’s favorite cologne, the faint sweat-scent of Taeil’s shoes- and it all blacks out.
-
Kyung was the one to find him in their shared bedroom, on the floor, Manager Ko tells him as he stands over the bed in the hospital (hospital? why?), hands gripped tight behind his back. There’s sweat shimmering over his brow and across the bridge of his lips that moves when Manager Ko says, So you might owe him your life.
Jihoon’s so tired and delusional that he’ll be surprised if he remembers this conversation at all, just the all-over body ache that has him wanting to moan in pain. The idea that he’s alive surprises him, though the feeling is so distant he doesn’t even think it’s his own. Why should he be surprised he’s alive?
But he can’t think of it, can’t fight against the sleep that drags at him and pulls him too far from the questions. He barely catches the last words out of his manager’s mouth.
And Taeil. He saved you, too.
He forgets it all, even the pain.
-
Jihoon wakes up in the bathroom of the dorm, bent over the toilet. There’s a hand on his neck, thumb stroking softly over the ridge of his skull. The toilet is empty and the air around his face is cold and almost wet- the toilet must have just been flushed. His throat hurts, burnt and acidic, and there are tears that he doesn’t remember forming in the corners of his eyes.
A voice murmurs over his shoulder. He doesn’t feel uneasy anymore, but he doesn’t feel anything else in its place; the comfort leaves him empty. Against his will, the tears drip from the corners of his eyes into the bowl of the toilet. There’s nothing he can do to stop them, because he doesn’t know where they’re coming from.
He should be sad, if he’s crying, especially when the tears catch in his throat and he’s gasping for breath, shoulders shuddering. He’s never cried like this in his living memory, and it’s stupid because the tears don’t mean anything, are just lies in saltwater, spreading over his cheeks.
The hand on his nape stills, then drops to his shoulder and there’s a body pressed up against his side. He should look over, see who it is, but he can’t open his eyes, can barely catch his breath. There’s no way he deserves this pity, this concern, but there’s no energy to turn it away.
-
The second psychotherapy visit goes much like the first, though his doctor tries harder to get him to speak. Jihoon finds himself staring at the window, slatted blinds closed and glowing unevenly with winter light, in that strange headspace where nothing seems to be going on in his mind at all.
Everything in the past couple weeks feels surreal, unlike his true life. It’s almost as if he isn’t here, the whole thing an ephemeral concoction brought to life by sleepless nights and the stress of a comeback. He’s content to float through it as if it’ll suddenly, like a bubble, pop and he’ll be back in bed in between shoots at M! Countdown, reading through the news before the live broadcast.
But he suddenly thinks of Thailand, that laughter, the camera, die Pyo Jihoon, and he’s slammed back into his seat by the details of his reality, so quickly that he almost gasps, mouth widening to let it out.
His doctor looks at him with interest, pen poised, waiting for Jihoon to speak.
This is real.
-
He sleeps in the living room the first night. It’s too cold in there, early March too much even for the heavy blanket, and his toes are distractingly cold. He should get up and move, but the open doorway to the bedroom is a dark mirage at the edge of his vision, menacing in a way he doesn’t want to challenge.
It takes him almost an hour of staring at the ceiling for someone to come out of the bedroom, feet shuffling.
“Are you still awake?” Taeil’s voice, sweet and high even with the rough edge of sleep to it, floats over to him.
Jihoon shifts in answer, too tired to think of something to say. He doesn’t expect Taeil to come over and sit next to his head on the armrest. He thinks Taeil will say something else, ask more questions, but instead Taeil’s hand just drops to his forehead. The hair gets brushed off there with light, warm strokes, and there’s something so soothing in the motion that he closes his eyes.
He’s intent to stay awake even so, to wait out this numbness until the exhaustion of sleeplessness makes his body react in a way his mind no longer wants to. But the pass of Taeil’s fingers over his forehead, the soft pet of his hand against his brow, drags sleep over Jihoon so quickly he doesn’t have time to prepare.
In the morning, he wakes up to the smell of breakfast, heavy sunlight sending long shadows across his legs. It’s surprising, because he hasn’t slept past sunrise in weeks.
-
There are no easy solutions, the management office says. How odd, because they sound like doctors when they say it, their interlaced fingers and brooding eyes that seem to stare past them all, as if seeing a diagnosis that has long since left behind the body it applies to.
We need time to make everything right. They make their excuses, packing up their contracts and notebooks and sticking their pens into shirtfront pockets. Take some time off.
There’s no prescription waiting at the door, no mental exercises to run through provided. They aren’t like doctors, not like this, because there is no thought to the bodies that occupy their office, just to the frenzy of response outside the doors.
It’s the exact opposite of what Jihoon needs. He doesn’t need time, not anymore. He needs to work past this and move on quickly with actual projects, because the hole in his memory is starting to drag at him, calling to him to obsess and press on it like a bruise across unmarred flesh, wanting to excite the pain up from underneath. There needs to be new memories in the making, new things to do, and even if he doesn’t always have the energy or the desire, the exhaustion is better than the flatness of feeling. At least it’ll be something, even if it’s not enough.
-
It keeps happening, this. Jihoon’s head in Taeil’s lap, Taeil’s fingers so light through his hair, fingernails just barely scraping past his skin. Most days it makes him sleep, when sleep doesn’t come for him alone, and Taeil will see him awake at 3:30AM, eyes wild and dark with exhaustion, and motion for him to come lie down. It’s the only way he can enter the shared bedroom, the overwhelming scent of Taeil’s sleep-musked skin blocking out everything else when he climbs in bed next to him.
And some days it keeps him awake, just on the bare edge of consciousness as the members flit in and out of the living room, where he’s sprawled over the couch. He feels caught between worlds, and it’s in this ambivalent state of being that he remembers he wasn’t always like this. It’s not the soft motion of Taeil’s hands over the drop of his temples, but it’s as though some resistance is crumbling inside of him as he lies there. That strange soporific element of his consciousness is lifting away, has been lifting for a while in fits and starts, until the comfort of those hands can reach him.
-
He doesn’t mean to grow his hair long. In truth, he just misses his last scheduled hair appointment because he can’t get himself to leave the house. His parents aren’t home and there’s no manager to drag him out, like there are at the dorms. Because of the hiatus, their company has essentially abandoned them, and after this, there are no more appointments. No more dermatologists or nutritionists, no more hair stylists or dentists. He watches the time pass for his appointment and when it’s an hour gone, he thinks, Done.
-
Talking is only easier because he feels like he’s coming out of it. He doesn’t want to define it, doesn’t try to think of it too much, talks around it because it’s still so close. It doesn’t have a name because the idea is too terrifying to hold defined in his mind. Names have too much weight, and he’s just begun to access a modicum of fear.
He remembers that in old fairytales, shamans could bind a person to them if they knew their true name. It’s paralyzing, the idea that this could be shackled to him forever; he wonders if shamans ever tried to forget the names of the persons they had bound to them, because they couldn’t take the connection anymore, couldn’t bear the weight of something so heavy as another person’s soul.
In the future, he’ll have to come back to it, but for now he leaves it nameless.
-
When he laughs, it hurts. He doesn’t expect to laugh at the joke, doesn’t know where the laugh comes from, because it’s odd and strangled and cuts straight through his chest and out his throat. He stops almost as soon as he begins and Jiho looks startled, before an uneven smile curls into his cheek. Jiho ducks his head, smiling, as if he’s secretly proud.
It feels like it’s been years since Jihoon last laughed, at least genuinely, and it’s almost unnatural. But it happens again and again, at things he wouldn’t think would make him laugh. Everything is uneven now, feelings patchy and coming in short bursts through breaks in the static. He can’t trust any of them to last, hates and loves their brevity in equal measure. It’s something, and it’s working to be enough.
-
He’s just about to fall asleep, head messily tucked underneath Taeil’s chin and breathing in the smell of his skin. Taeil’s hand is curled around his nape and his breath disturbs the hairs over the crown of Jihoon’s head. It’s shorter now, dyed platinum blond for their comeback, and maybe he misses the pull of Taeil’s fingers through the extra length sometimes, but there’s something else keeping him from sleep.
It’s the familiarity in the touch, the recognizable press of Taeil’s fingers into the crook of his neck. His heart jumps in his chest when he realizes it, beats harder against his ribcage and catches his breath for a second. As if he’s heard, Taeil shifts a little in his sleep, and Jihoon is amazed that even something so slight can disturb him.
They've been this way forever, but it's the touch that jolts through his memories to the time before; it seems so obvious now. He remembers its tenuous beginning, almost there, before it was abruptly drowned out by the static. It’s so close again but so fragile, perhaps he only has moments, and Jihoon shifts upwards until he can press dry lips against Taeil’s cheek. Jihoon looks down at him, terrified and wanting, holding onto that slippery bit of hope that he’s collected up. His heartbeat strikes at his skin, demanding his breath, but he doesn't want to risk it. He was so certain a moment ago but he’s not anymore, not with the shadows covering most of Taeil’s face.
Taeil’s eyes flick open, dark eyes still tired but a small smile on his lips. There's a moment of quiet between them, then he pulls Jihoon back down to him, presses a sleepy kiss to his mouth.
Pairing: TaePyo (vague)
Group: Block B
Rating: PG
WARNING: mentions of depression, the entire Block B scandal era; ps: it's not linear, exactly
Notes: Birthday!fic for blackheart_lies, I'm sorry it's angsty. It was supposed to be cute and the prompt in my head was "Jihoon likes Taeil's hands in his hair" but then this thing came out and I like it but it was supposed to be CUTE, C'MON, because TaePyo is the fluff couple and just why. I hope you like it, though! :D
Summary: Everything goes to shit after the scandal.
-
Going home feels like a defeat, an admittance that he’s given up and they’ve won. The idea should be as crushing as it once was, but instead of distraught, Jihoon just feels flat.
Flat is the best way to describe it, as if there’s no more matter of him to compress, as if Jihoon’s sunk to the lowest point under the ocean and the pressure overwhelms him, until he is crumpled into the tiniest space he can possibly possess and even that isn’t small enough. Because he can still feel that all-over press of a mile of water over his limbs, and when he wakes it’s always with his knees curled to his chest and hands over his face.
-
They’re called triggers, the doctors tell him. They’ll be things he doesn’t expect and there’s no way to know for sure what they are until he runs into them. Jihoon doesn’t believe they exist, because he can’t be bothered to put the effort in. Nothing thus far has set him off, has managed to pierce his consciousness with the incisiveness of that petition, and he thinks there’s nothing that can possibly bother him again, no emotions left to swallow him whole.
It should feel like a victory, but there’s no elation anywhere in his bones, either. There’s nothing, and maybe that should worry him, but he finds that worry is gone, too, with everything else.
The only thing he can find the effort to do is sleep and watch endless repetitions of daytime television while his parents are at work. He eats with the mechanical precision of a sleepwalker, taste lost somewhere in his fragmenting dreams. His mother comes by after work to collect his half-finished or completely untouched bowls from the living room floor and the cups stacked next to the headboard of his bed.
She rests his hand on his shoulder when she thinks he’s asleep, and he lets her, because he can barely feel the touch anyway.
-
The first psychotherapy session out of the hospital he just sits through, unsure of what to talk about. Minutes tick away from the hour in silence as his doctor sits at the desk opposite him, pen scritching audibly over his notepad. Jihoon stares at the pen, and then his hands.
He doesn’t want to talk about anything. He can barely remember what happened, and for him that’s good. Pushing at that darkness inside his head, trying to dredge up the blacked-out memories, just leaves him short of breath and feeling as though the world is about to collapse in on him.
So he leaves it that way, accepts the breach in memory as if he’d just fallen asleep.
Vaguely, he wonders if he’s awoken yet.
-
There are drugs, no, no, wait- there are no drugs. They’re offered at the hospital, pen hovering over a prescription pad as if he’d be stupid to say no. But he doesn’t like it, just barely off the drip of the emergency room and his hand is sore from the needles and his eyes hurt from the glowing lights and the white walls are spinning and Jihoon’s afraid if he takes one more thing he’ll close his eyes and end up in that strange darkness still so close to his vision.
It’s just barely cleared and he’s still swimming in that partial-sleep, so he says no and the prescription pad closes with the resignation of the presumed correct, denied.
He wonders, later, if he’d made the right decision, because his sleep is fractured and unsettled. Even awake, for hours at a time he feels like he can barely breathe and it’s only the simplicity of his routine that allows him to keep going. Chemical dependence, his brain blares out at him in a rictus of phantom fear when he thinks about calling the doctor, and he thought he was past this, past his mind giving a fuck, but he supposes it’s something that there’s this one last, remaining barrier. Even if he’s not sure if it’s an indication of his remaining sanity or just a snarl of irrationality to be overcome.
-
Coming back to the dorm is something else. Everyone else is there, waiting cautiously by the door as he enters. He tries to smile, because he knows he should, but there’s something off in it. No one returns it. Yukwon comes over to help carry his stuff to his bedroom and Jihoon trails after him slowly, unease clawing at his insides the closer they draw to the door, though he can’t say why.
He stops in the threshold, watching as Yukwon puts his bag carefully on his familiar bed, and realizes he’s holding his breath. With a sigh, he lets it out, tries to relax, ten, nine, eight, seven, six, but the next breath he takes in is overwhelming in something- the smell of their manager’s detergent, Minhyuk’s favorite cologne, the faint sweat-scent of Taeil’s shoes- and it all blacks out.
-
Kyung was the one to find him in their shared bedroom, on the floor, Manager Ko tells him as he stands over the bed in the hospital (hospital? why?), hands gripped tight behind his back. There’s sweat shimmering over his brow and across the bridge of his lips that moves when Manager Ko says, So you might owe him your life.
Jihoon’s so tired and delusional that he’ll be surprised if he remembers this conversation at all, just the all-over body ache that has him wanting to moan in pain. The idea that he’s alive surprises him, though the feeling is so distant he doesn’t even think it’s his own. Why should he be surprised he’s alive?
But he can’t think of it, can’t fight against the sleep that drags at him and pulls him too far from the questions. He barely catches the last words out of his manager’s mouth.
And Taeil. He saved you, too.
He forgets it all, even the pain.
-
Jihoon wakes up in the bathroom of the dorm, bent over the toilet. There’s a hand on his neck, thumb stroking softly over the ridge of his skull. The toilet is empty and the air around his face is cold and almost wet- the toilet must have just been flushed. His throat hurts, burnt and acidic, and there are tears that he doesn’t remember forming in the corners of his eyes.
A voice murmurs over his shoulder. He doesn’t feel uneasy anymore, but he doesn’t feel anything else in its place; the comfort leaves him empty. Against his will, the tears drip from the corners of his eyes into the bowl of the toilet. There’s nothing he can do to stop them, because he doesn’t know where they’re coming from.
He should be sad, if he’s crying, especially when the tears catch in his throat and he’s gasping for breath, shoulders shuddering. He’s never cried like this in his living memory, and it’s stupid because the tears don’t mean anything, are just lies in saltwater, spreading over his cheeks.
The hand on his nape stills, then drops to his shoulder and there’s a body pressed up against his side. He should look over, see who it is, but he can’t open his eyes, can barely catch his breath. There’s no way he deserves this pity, this concern, but there’s no energy to turn it away.
-
The second psychotherapy visit goes much like the first, though his doctor tries harder to get him to speak. Jihoon finds himself staring at the window, slatted blinds closed and glowing unevenly with winter light, in that strange headspace where nothing seems to be going on in his mind at all.
Everything in the past couple weeks feels surreal, unlike his true life. It’s almost as if he isn’t here, the whole thing an ephemeral concoction brought to life by sleepless nights and the stress of a comeback. He’s content to float through it as if it’ll suddenly, like a bubble, pop and he’ll be back in bed in between shoots at M! Countdown, reading through the news before the live broadcast.
But he suddenly thinks of Thailand, that laughter, the camera, die Pyo Jihoon, and he’s slammed back into his seat by the details of his reality, so quickly that he almost gasps, mouth widening to let it out.
His doctor looks at him with interest, pen poised, waiting for Jihoon to speak.
This is real.
-
He sleeps in the living room the first night. It’s too cold in there, early March too much even for the heavy blanket, and his toes are distractingly cold. He should get up and move, but the open doorway to the bedroom is a dark mirage at the edge of his vision, menacing in a way he doesn’t want to challenge.
It takes him almost an hour of staring at the ceiling for someone to come out of the bedroom, feet shuffling.
“Are you still awake?” Taeil’s voice, sweet and high even with the rough edge of sleep to it, floats over to him.
Jihoon shifts in answer, too tired to think of something to say. He doesn’t expect Taeil to come over and sit next to his head on the armrest. He thinks Taeil will say something else, ask more questions, but instead Taeil’s hand just drops to his forehead. The hair gets brushed off there with light, warm strokes, and there’s something so soothing in the motion that he closes his eyes.
He’s intent to stay awake even so, to wait out this numbness until the exhaustion of sleeplessness makes his body react in a way his mind no longer wants to. But the pass of Taeil’s fingers over his forehead, the soft pet of his hand against his brow, drags sleep over Jihoon so quickly he doesn’t have time to prepare.
In the morning, he wakes up to the smell of breakfast, heavy sunlight sending long shadows across his legs. It’s surprising, because he hasn’t slept past sunrise in weeks.
-
There are no easy solutions, the management office says. How odd, because they sound like doctors when they say it, their interlaced fingers and brooding eyes that seem to stare past them all, as if seeing a diagnosis that has long since left behind the body it applies to.
We need time to make everything right. They make their excuses, packing up their contracts and notebooks and sticking their pens into shirtfront pockets. Take some time off.
There’s no prescription waiting at the door, no mental exercises to run through provided. They aren’t like doctors, not like this, because there is no thought to the bodies that occupy their office, just to the frenzy of response outside the doors.
It’s the exact opposite of what Jihoon needs. He doesn’t need time, not anymore. He needs to work past this and move on quickly with actual projects, because the hole in his memory is starting to drag at him, calling to him to obsess and press on it like a bruise across unmarred flesh, wanting to excite the pain up from underneath. There needs to be new memories in the making, new things to do, and even if he doesn’t always have the energy or the desire, the exhaustion is better than the flatness of feeling. At least it’ll be something, even if it’s not enough.
-
It keeps happening, this. Jihoon’s head in Taeil’s lap, Taeil’s fingers so light through his hair, fingernails just barely scraping past his skin. Most days it makes him sleep, when sleep doesn’t come for him alone, and Taeil will see him awake at 3:30AM, eyes wild and dark with exhaustion, and motion for him to come lie down. It’s the only way he can enter the shared bedroom, the overwhelming scent of Taeil’s sleep-musked skin blocking out everything else when he climbs in bed next to him.
And some days it keeps him awake, just on the bare edge of consciousness as the members flit in and out of the living room, where he’s sprawled over the couch. He feels caught between worlds, and it’s in this ambivalent state of being that he remembers he wasn’t always like this. It’s not the soft motion of Taeil’s hands over the drop of his temples, but it’s as though some resistance is crumbling inside of him as he lies there. That strange soporific element of his consciousness is lifting away, has been lifting for a while in fits and starts, until the comfort of those hands can reach him.
-
He doesn’t mean to grow his hair long. In truth, he just misses his last scheduled hair appointment because he can’t get himself to leave the house. His parents aren’t home and there’s no manager to drag him out, like there are at the dorms. Because of the hiatus, their company has essentially abandoned them, and after this, there are no more appointments. No more dermatologists or nutritionists, no more hair stylists or dentists. He watches the time pass for his appointment and when it’s an hour gone, he thinks, Done.
-
Talking is only easier because he feels like he’s coming out of it. He doesn’t want to define it, doesn’t try to think of it too much, talks around it because it’s still so close. It doesn’t have a name because the idea is too terrifying to hold defined in his mind. Names have too much weight, and he’s just begun to access a modicum of fear.
He remembers that in old fairytales, shamans could bind a person to them if they knew their true name. It’s paralyzing, the idea that this could be shackled to him forever; he wonders if shamans ever tried to forget the names of the persons they had bound to them, because they couldn’t take the connection anymore, couldn’t bear the weight of something so heavy as another person’s soul.
In the future, he’ll have to come back to it, but for now he leaves it nameless.
-
When he laughs, it hurts. He doesn’t expect to laugh at the joke, doesn’t know where the laugh comes from, because it’s odd and strangled and cuts straight through his chest and out his throat. He stops almost as soon as he begins and Jiho looks startled, before an uneven smile curls into his cheek. Jiho ducks his head, smiling, as if he’s secretly proud.
It feels like it’s been years since Jihoon last laughed, at least genuinely, and it’s almost unnatural. But it happens again and again, at things he wouldn’t think would make him laugh. Everything is uneven now, feelings patchy and coming in short bursts through breaks in the static. He can’t trust any of them to last, hates and loves their brevity in equal measure. It’s something, and it’s working to be enough.
-
He’s just about to fall asleep, head messily tucked underneath Taeil’s chin and breathing in the smell of his skin. Taeil’s hand is curled around his nape and his breath disturbs the hairs over the crown of Jihoon’s head. It’s shorter now, dyed platinum blond for their comeback, and maybe he misses the pull of Taeil’s fingers through the extra length sometimes, but there’s something else keeping him from sleep.
It’s the familiarity in the touch, the recognizable press of Taeil’s fingers into the crook of his neck. His heart jumps in his chest when he realizes it, beats harder against his ribcage and catches his breath for a second. As if he’s heard, Taeil shifts a little in his sleep, and Jihoon is amazed that even something so slight can disturb him.
They've been this way forever, but it's the touch that jolts through his memories to the time before; it seems so obvious now. He remembers its tenuous beginning, almost there, before it was abruptly drowned out by the static. It’s so close again but so fragile, perhaps he only has moments, and Jihoon shifts upwards until he can press dry lips against Taeil’s cheek. Jihoon looks down at him, terrified and wanting, holding onto that slippery bit of hope that he’s collected up. His heartbeat strikes at his skin, demanding his breath, but he doesn't want to risk it. He was so certain a moment ago but he’s not anymore, not with the shadows covering most of Taeil’s face.
Taeil’s eyes flick open, dark eyes still tired but a small smile on his lips. There's a moment of quiet between them, then he pulls Jihoon back down to him, presses a sleepy kiss to his mouth.