half alone ( sungyeol x dongwoo, pg)
Sungyeol doesn’t remember how long he’s been dead; he just knows it’s been a long time. Long enough for his family to move out of the house and set up camp elsewhere, and long enough for his old friends to stop visiting his gravestone anymore. He thinks it’s been about 5 and a half years since it happened, and he can’t remember how he died either. The funeral is a vague and unhappy memory, and that’s as much as he can recall. Nothing beyond that, as if, when he did die, his existence died with him. His memory. His shadow. Everything about him doesn’t exist anymore, except that he can see, hear, smell and breathe just as he could when he was alive. But he’s definitely dead, because no one can see him, touch him, hear him or know he’s there.
When his family still lived in the house, not long after he died, he used to try and speak to his mother. Just a simple “eomma” or something, to get her attention. Sometimes, if he shouted loud enough, she would stop what she was doing and look absently around the room. Sometimes, if he shouted loud enough, she could hear him, but then she would shake herself, probably mentally scold herself, and then carry on with what she was doing. One time Sungyeol could’ve sworn he heard her say his name back, but he just put it down to the wind being particularly stormy that night. That was the most difficult thing to deal with about being dead: not being able to talk to his family anymore. He watched them slowly get on with their lives, slowly build themselves up again, and he couldn’t even say hello or goodbye or how are you or happy birthday or anything.
He didn’t believe in ghosts when he was alive. He liked horror movies to an extent, but he always thought you just died. He just remembers being in a lot of pain and everything going a little bit blurry, and then there was just brightness. He woke up in his living room and everything was exactly the same, except he wasn’t alive and there was nothing he could do but sit and watch his family grieve. It broke his heart, knowing he couldn’t comfort them or tell them he was still here. He wouldn’t even call himself a “ghost” because that implied that he haunted the house. He didn’t haunt it, he lived in it, he observed the people in it, he occupied it. Never haunt. He wasn’t a ghost, he was just left behind.
Within four years, they’d left the house. Sungyeol suspects it was down to wanting a new start. He watched them packing their suitcases and boxes, stood in the corners of their bedrooms and admired how empty the rooms were and how different it looked without any furniture. He ventured into his parents’ room, found his mother and father hugging each other in the middle of the room, open suitcase on the bed next to them. He spotted the photo of him lying on the comforter and he grinned at the memory. It was taken at his 18th birthday meal, and the photo showed him smiling, just about to blow out the candles on his cake. He thinks, although he doesn’t know how right he is, that it was taken just 7 months before his death. He would be 23 now, if he was still alive, but he doesn’t like to dwell on that.
He’d watched Daeyeol move out to university, had followed him there briefly for a little bit, just so he could see what college was like. And partly because he felt like he should do, to make sure he was okay, like hyungs do. He came home after the first week because he knew he didn’t need his help, he was getting along just fine. He’d attended family parties with his parents, just so he wouldn’t be stuck in the house, and, out of boredom, followed his father to work one day. There wasn’t much he could do, in all honesty. Sometimes he went for walks, to the park or something, or sometimes just wherever his feet took him. He visited his friends’ houses, even though he only had a few, and for a while it was fun to snoop in their business when they didn’t know he was there, but then he began to feel guilty for invading their privacy, so he stopped.
After that he just existed.
For the few weeks that the house was empty after the Lee household moved out, he roamed the streets, took random trains to various parts of Seoul, or walked around Gangnam aimlessly. He was always too scared to leave the city, always felt that if he left he wouldn’t be able to come back for some reason. So he went to see every part of Seoul he wanted to see while he was alive. That all happened within a week and later he just ended up wandering until potential buyers came to decide if they wanted the house. On those days, he made sure he’d be home. His curiosity for the unknown didn’t die along with his body, clearly. If anything, it probably made it more dominant.
None of the people really sparked his interest at all, and if he had any say, he wouldn’t’ve allowed them in. Lots of people liked the house. It was quiet, it was fairly big, it was safe, there was a school nearby… but if he was going to live with somebody, it had to be somebody he liked. He couldn’t help it. He didn’t want his old house to go to waste.
That was, until Dongwoo turned up. He was different. There was something almost obscure about him. He seemed the most interested in the house, which Sungyeol hadn’t seen before. The rest of the people who came to the view the house were middle-aged, or couples with children, or just couples on their own. Dongwoo was the first one he’d seen who was a twenty-something singleton, and that was what really intrigued him. Dongwoo had walked about the house, checking the view from every single window and examining the sizes of the room, smiling simply when he found something he liked. He was weird, but in the best way possible.
Sungyeol waited a few weeks, and then suddenly Dongwoo moved in, dragging in box after box of even weirder items, some containing only books or CDs or various bits of stationary. Sungyeol sensed he was one of those people who like to hoard, but it’s not like he can blame him, because his bedroom used to be a mess when he was alive, too. Dongwoo enlisted the help of someone called “Sungjong” to help him (Sungyeol knows this because he overheard Dongwoo shouting his name) and on that night, Dongwoo slept on the cold wood floor of the house because he didn’t yet have a bed.
He’s lived in the house for months, now, and still hasn’t noticed a thing.
Sungyeol doesn’t go out much now that he has someone else to share the house with. He’s watched Dongwoo a lot, both because he’s fascinated by Dongwoo and because he has nothing else to do, and he knows a lot about Dongwoo. He knows Dongwoo likes to write - not just little fragments of things, but pages and pages of song lyrics and raps, and he’s a true artist with a pen. He also knows that Dongwoo likes to decorate - he adorned the walls with portraits of abstract art, canvas after canvas of nothing but paint, but Dongwoo obviously loves them for a reason. Sungyeol can’t see the big deal; he’s never been a huge fan of analysing things for hidden meanings, which was probably why he didn’t do so well in Literature as a result, but Dongwoo has a talent for it, because the spatters and flicks of dried paint mean something enough to fill their house with them.
Sungyeol doesn’t like to refer to it as just “his house” anymore, because he shares it with Dongwoo, now. So he calls it “their”, to make it fair.
He knows that Dongwoo likes to sing - not publicly, or for a living, but he sings while he makes himself dinner, he sings in the shower, he sings as he washes the dishes. Mostly Sungyeol doesn’t recognise the songs, either because Dongwoo wrote them or he just isn’t musically informed like he was before. Occasionally Dongwoo will sing a song he does recognise, like something by Usher, and his voice isn’t brilliant (it breaks on high notes sometimes) but that doesn’t matter. Sungyeol likes when Dongwoo sings, it breaks the monotony of living in their house, gives him something to look forward to hearing every day. It’s the most endearing thing he’s ever witnessed in anybody, ever.
He knows that Sungjong, the guy who helped Dongwoo move in, is his best friend and he often stays over. From this, he also knows that Dongwoo cannot cook to save his life and his favourite take-away food is black-bean noodles. He likes joining Dongwoo and Sungjong on their weekly movie nights, because it’s like being at a sleepover. They get take-out meals and finish with a bowl of popcorn and a movie (one week Dongwoo chooses, the next it’s Sungjong’s choice) and either Sungjong stays over and sleeps on the couch, or he gets the bus home. No week is ever the same, it’s always different, always in a good way.
Dongwoo walks around the house in his underwear and has a laugh that is entirely too loud for Sungyeol’s liking. He watches foreign films without the subtitles, he is the laziest person Howon has ever met because he sleeps in until midday on weekends, and he leaves his shoes thrown carelessly in the hallway between the front door and the stairs. Sungyeol likes watching what Dongwoo does because it’s as if he’s watching another form of himself. He had his eccentricities, his quirks, that made his family think he was strange, too, like the fact that he arranged his CDs in the order of the year they were released, that he often wore the same clothes four days in a row, unknowingly, and that he used to dot the end of sentences with a smiley face and sign his name with an exclamation point at the end. Sungyeol likes watching Dongwoo because he knows he’s not the only one with a different perspective of life. Sungyeol likes watching Dongwoo because Dongwoo makes being unusual look so easy.
For him it was never that easy.
In a way he envies Dongwoo, because he made a home out of house that he himself could never really love, although he appreciates it a little more now that he shares it with Dongwoo. He knows absolutely nothing about Dongwoo’s life other than where he works, his best friend’s name and his daily routine. But he’s seen the vulnerable side to Dongwoo, the one that’s completely and totally himself in their home because, although he’s not quite alone, there’s no one there to see. Sungyeol never imagined knowing somebody like that, could never picture himself reaching that point in any friendship or relationship, but now he’s there he’s not sure he wants to let that go.
For the third night that week, Dongwoo cries himself to sleep, for reasons Sungyeol doesn’t know. He’s never watched Dongwoo sleep, even if they have been living together for 6 months, because he thinks that’s creepy, but he’s never so much as heard Dongwoo snore; the sound of his sobs makes his heart clench and his lungs constrict and his eyes water just a bit. Even when his family were grieving and they would cry quietly by themselves in their respective bedrooms, he never wanted to be alive more than he does when he hears Dongwoo cry. Maybe it’s because Dongwoo is always happy, never sad, and the sight makes him face reality. He wishes he had skin so he could wrap his arms around Dongwoo’s shaking form and cuddle him from behind. He wishes he was alive so he could protect Dongwoo from all the things that make him sad, and mould perfectly into his side as a way of saying “mine”. He wishes he was alive so that he could kiss the tears from Dongwoo’s cheeks.
Sungyeol wishes he had a voice so he could whisper calming words in Dongwoo’s ear until he fell asleep, so that, in the morning, he could say that he loves him and mean it.
Sungyeol’s not familiar with this, nor did he think he ever would be, but he smiles into the dark room surrounding them both. He reaches forward and starts to card his fingers through Dongwoo’s hair. Dongwoo won’t feel it, and will probably fall asleep, have bad dreams and cry again tomorrow night, but Sungyeol is patient, and he’ll be here every night, invisible but never hiding, to keep away the horrible things that threaten to invade their little home. He’s not the type to dwell on feelings for a long time, but who cares?
Dongwoo’s an exception.
When his family still lived in the house, not long after he died, he used to try and speak to his mother. Just a simple “eomma” or something, to get her attention. Sometimes, if he shouted loud enough, she would stop what she was doing and look absently around the room. Sometimes, if he shouted loud enough, she could hear him, but then she would shake herself, probably mentally scold herself, and then carry on with what she was doing. One time Sungyeol could’ve sworn he heard her say his name back, but he just put it down to the wind being particularly stormy that night. That was the most difficult thing to deal with about being dead: not being able to talk to his family anymore. He watched them slowly get on with their lives, slowly build themselves up again, and he couldn’t even say hello or goodbye or how are you or happy birthday or anything.
He didn’t believe in ghosts when he was alive. He liked horror movies to an extent, but he always thought you just died. He just remembers being in a lot of pain and everything going a little bit blurry, and then there was just brightness. He woke up in his living room and everything was exactly the same, except he wasn’t alive and there was nothing he could do but sit and watch his family grieve. It broke his heart, knowing he couldn’t comfort them or tell them he was still here. He wouldn’t even call himself a “ghost” because that implied that he haunted the house. He didn’t haunt it, he lived in it, he observed the people in it, he occupied it. Never haunt. He wasn’t a ghost, he was just left behind.
Within four years, they’d left the house. Sungyeol suspects it was down to wanting a new start. He watched them packing their suitcases and boxes, stood in the corners of their bedrooms and admired how empty the rooms were and how different it looked without any furniture. He ventured into his parents’ room, found his mother and father hugging each other in the middle of the room, open suitcase on the bed next to them. He spotted the photo of him lying on the comforter and he grinned at the memory. It was taken at his 18th birthday meal, and the photo showed him smiling, just about to blow out the candles on his cake. He thinks, although he doesn’t know how right he is, that it was taken just 7 months before his death. He would be 23 now, if he was still alive, but he doesn’t like to dwell on that.
He’d watched Daeyeol move out to university, had followed him there briefly for a little bit, just so he could see what college was like. And partly because he felt like he should do, to make sure he was okay, like hyungs do. He came home after the first week because he knew he didn’t need his help, he was getting along just fine. He’d attended family parties with his parents, just so he wouldn’t be stuck in the house, and, out of boredom, followed his father to work one day. There wasn’t much he could do, in all honesty. Sometimes he went for walks, to the park or something, or sometimes just wherever his feet took him. He visited his friends’ houses, even though he only had a few, and for a while it was fun to snoop in their business when they didn’t know he was there, but then he began to feel guilty for invading their privacy, so he stopped.
After that he just existed.
For the few weeks that the house was empty after the Lee household moved out, he roamed the streets, took random trains to various parts of Seoul, or walked around Gangnam aimlessly. He was always too scared to leave the city, always felt that if he left he wouldn’t be able to come back for some reason. So he went to see every part of Seoul he wanted to see while he was alive. That all happened within a week and later he just ended up wandering until potential buyers came to decide if they wanted the house. On those days, he made sure he’d be home. His curiosity for the unknown didn’t die along with his body, clearly. If anything, it probably made it more dominant.
None of the people really sparked his interest at all, and if he had any say, he wouldn’t’ve allowed them in. Lots of people liked the house. It was quiet, it was fairly big, it was safe, there was a school nearby… but if he was going to live with somebody, it had to be somebody he liked. He couldn’t help it. He didn’t want his old house to go to waste.
That was, until Dongwoo turned up. He was different. There was something almost obscure about him. He seemed the most interested in the house, which Sungyeol hadn’t seen before. The rest of the people who came to the view the house were middle-aged, or couples with children, or just couples on their own. Dongwoo was the first one he’d seen who was a twenty-something singleton, and that was what really intrigued him. Dongwoo had walked about the house, checking the view from every single window and examining the sizes of the room, smiling simply when he found something he liked. He was weird, but in the best way possible.
Sungyeol waited a few weeks, and then suddenly Dongwoo moved in, dragging in box after box of even weirder items, some containing only books or CDs or various bits of stationary. Sungyeol sensed he was one of those people who like to hoard, but it’s not like he can blame him, because his bedroom used to be a mess when he was alive, too. Dongwoo enlisted the help of someone called “Sungjong” to help him (Sungyeol knows this because he overheard Dongwoo shouting his name) and on that night, Dongwoo slept on the cold wood floor of the house because he didn’t yet have a bed.
He’s lived in the house for months, now, and still hasn’t noticed a thing.
Sungyeol doesn’t go out much now that he has someone else to share the house with. He’s watched Dongwoo a lot, both because he’s fascinated by Dongwoo and because he has nothing else to do, and he knows a lot about Dongwoo. He knows Dongwoo likes to write - not just little fragments of things, but pages and pages of song lyrics and raps, and he’s a true artist with a pen. He also knows that Dongwoo likes to decorate - he adorned the walls with portraits of abstract art, canvas after canvas of nothing but paint, but Dongwoo obviously loves them for a reason. Sungyeol can’t see the big deal; he’s never been a huge fan of analysing things for hidden meanings, which was probably why he didn’t do so well in Literature as a result, but Dongwoo has a talent for it, because the spatters and flicks of dried paint mean something enough to fill their house with them.
Sungyeol doesn’t like to refer to it as just “his house” anymore, because he shares it with Dongwoo, now. So he calls it “their”, to make it fair.
He knows that Dongwoo likes to sing - not publicly, or for a living, but he sings while he makes himself dinner, he sings in the shower, he sings as he washes the dishes. Mostly Sungyeol doesn’t recognise the songs, either because Dongwoo wrote them or he just isn’t musically informed like he was before. Occasionally Dongwoo will sing a song he does recognise, like something by Usher, and his voice isn’t brilliant (it breaks on high notes sometimes) but that doesn’t matter. Sungyeol likes when Dongwoo sings, it breaks the monotony of living in their house, gives him something to look forward to hearing every day. It’s the most endearing thing he’s ever witnessed in anybody, ever.
He knows that Sungjong, the guy who helped Dongwoo move in, is his best friend and he often stays over. From this, he also knows that Dongwoo cannot cook to save his life and his favourite take-away food is black-bean noodles. He likes joining Dongwoo and Sungjong on their weekly movie nights, because it’s like being at a sleepover. They get take-out meals and finish with a bowl of popcorn and a movie (one week Dongwoo chooses, the next it’s Sungjong’s choice) and either Sungjong stays over and sleeps on the couch, or he gets the bus home. No week is ever the same, it’s always different, always in a good way.
Dongwoo walks around the house in his underwear and has a laugh that is entirely too loud for Sungyeol’s liking. He watches foreign films without the subtitles, he is the laziest person Howon has ever met because he sleeps in until midday on weekends, and he leaves his shoes thrown carelessly in the hallway between the front door and the stairs. Sungyeol likes watching what Dongwoo does because it’s as if he’s watching another form of himself. He had his eccentricities, his quirks, that made his family think he was strange, too, like the fact that he arranged his CDs in the order of the year they were released, that he often wore the same clothes four days in a row, unknowingly, and that he used to dot the end of sentences with a smiley face and sign his name with an exclamation point at the end. Sungyeol likes watching Dongwoo because he knows he’s not the only one with a different perspective of life. Sungyeol likes watching Dongwoo because Dongwoo makes being unusual look so easy.
For him it was never that easy.
In a way he envies Dongwoo, because he made a home out of house that he himself could never really love, although he appreciates it a little more now that he shares it with Dongwoo. He knows absolutely nothing about Dongwoo’s life other than where he works, his best friend’s name and his daily routine. But he’s seen the vulnerable side to Dongwoo, the one that’s completely and totally himself in their home because, although he’s not quite alone, there’s no one there to see. Sungyeol never imagined knowing somebody like that, could never picture himself reaching that point in any friendship or relationship, but now he’s there he’s not sure he wants to let that go.
For the third night that week, Dongwoo cries himself to sleep, for reasons Sungyeol doesn’t know. He’s never watched Dongwoo sleep, even if they have been living together for 6 months, because he thinks that’s creepy, but he’s never so much as heard Dongwoo snore; the sound of his sobs makes his heart clench and his lungs constrict and his eyes water just a bit. Even when his family were grieving and they would cry quietly by themselves in their respective bedrooms, he never wanted to be alive more than he does when he hears Dongwoo cry. Maybe it’s because Dongwoo is always happy, never sad, and the sight makes him face reality. He wishes he had skin so he could wrap his arms around Dongwoo’s shaking form and cuddle him from behind. He wishes he was alive so he could protect Dongwoo from all the things that make him sad, and mould perfectly into his side as a way of saying “mine”. He wishes he was alive so that he could kiss the tears from Dongwoo’s cheeks.
Sungyeol wishes he had a voice so he could whisper calming words in Dongwoo’s ear until he fell asleep, so that, in the morning, he could say that he loves him and mean it.
Sungyeol’s not familiar with this, nor did he think he ever would be, but he smiles into the dark room surrounding them both. He reaches forward and starts to card his fingers through Dongwoo’s hair. Dongwoo won’t feel it, and will probably fall asleep, have bad dreams and cry again tomorrow night, but Sungyeol is patient, and he’ll be here every night, invisible but never hiding, to keep away the horrible things that threaten to invade their little home. He’s not the type to dwell on feelings for a long time, but who cares?
Dongwoo’s an exception.