WIP dump (IV): Eunhyuk/Sungmin
What I was originally writing for starlitbright before deciding it was too angsty.
- In high school no one talked about the future and knew what they were really saying. “Maybe I’ll become a soccer player,” Hyukjae said, picking at the scab on his elbow with the back of his nail. “Quit school and do it for real.”
“Don’t touch it,” Sungmin said. “Just let it heal.” Hyukjae put his itching fingers back in his pocket. Sungmin aimed his soda can at the trash can at the end of the hallway and missed. Hyukjae made like he was going to pick it up for him but stopped and grinned instead. Sungmin hit him lightly on the head and walked over to drop the can into the bin himself. Sungmin was and is a model citizen.
After class they waited for the bus together. Sungmin looked up at the sky and frowned. “It smells like it’s going to rain.”
“I don’t get it,” Hyukjae said, just as the bus pulled up at the curb.
At the Christmas party, Donghae pretended to be drunk over cider and believed it himself. He sauntered over to Hyukjae and pointed at the ceiling. “Hey look.” When Hyukjae did, his chin jutted upwards, and the shadow on his neck tilted to reveal a strip of smooth skin. Hyukjae was so thin he was almost transparent, but right now Donghae was the transparent one. “I don’t see anything,” Hyukjae said right before Donghae leaned in.
“Mistletoe,” Donghae lied afterwards, catching his breath. He smiled like it was too warm in his reindeer sweater and Hyukjae felt that the warmth was contagious, and he also felt Sungmin watching them from the doorway, a tray of cookies in his hands.
“Those are some funny-shaped cookies,” Shindong said, reaching for one, and Sungmin laughed, embarrassed.
In college Hyukjae found that he didn’t have the time to write everyone letters or even emails on a regular basis and that letting go of friendships gradually was easier than maintaining them. He played club soccer during the fall and made new friends, whom he would eventually drift apart from as well, but he was still thinking in the present at that time.
Donghae sent him frequent emails, detailed about the minutiae of his university life, university girls. He never mentioned boys, so Hyukjae took that one incident to be isolated and an anomaly, a kink in the timeline of the otherwise normal progression of their lives. “I miss you,” Donghae would end his emails, and Hyukjae rarely wrote it back, although he thought it often.
Sungmin didn’t write, but sometimes he called. Sometimes meant almost never, but the times he did Hyukjae remembered so carefully that they seemed to count more.
Sungmin was drinking now, but he’d moved on from hard liquor and soju. “I’m taking a wine-tasting class. The funny thing is, it’s open to underage first-years as well.”
“Your school is great.”
“I wish you could come over and be my drinking partner.”
“Hyung, I don’t drink.” Hyukjae regretted it as soon as the words left his mouth, but it was something Sungmin had known for years.
There was a pause and then embarrassed laughter on the other end. “I can’t believe I forgot. I must be tipsier than I thought.”
“How much did you have?”
“A glass or two.”
“Seriously?”
“Or five. I don’t know, after 10:30 I kind of lost track.”
Hyukjae heard a siren on Sungmin’s end, loudening and then dimming away. He cleared his throat, swallowing the phlegm that had taken residence there. “Hyung, are you okay?”
Hyukjae was able to recognize Sungmin’s unconvincing smile anywhere, never mind now as it weighed heavy over the receiver, quivering miles and miles away. “I’m great. Do I not sound okay? I’m just tired.”
“I miss you.”
In the same way that Hyukjae almost never said it back to Donghae, Sungmin kept quiet, and the words dangled in the space between them.
“Wanna go out for coffee?” the girl in his Korean Literature class asked him. She was captain of the girls soccer team; Hyukjae recognized her from pictures in the school paper. Usually they caught her with her leg mid-swing or her face twisted into a competitive snarl. She was reasonably attractive at the moment, her hair pulled back in a headband, but her clothes were odd and her eyes were set too far apart and gave her a continually surprised look he couldn’t appreciate.
“Sorry, I’m pretty busy.”
The excuses he gave were starting to sound like just that even to himself.