Chapter Text
The knowledge that Soobin won’t be there anymore doesn’t hit him until much later on. Then it’s blurry again, like everything else always is until he’s at a crowded dingy bar and his mouth tastes like soju and cigarettes. It’s not particularly glorious — the way his head seems to be swimming. Yeonjun has never been the type to seek out places like this. Kai never really liked it for him to be there, either. It was always the same thing; hyung, hyung — hyung, please — in that lovely way of his, simply because he couldn't figure out another way to keep Yeonjun to himself and away from all those terrible things Yeonjun allowed to happen. Yet Kai could only do so much. Figure out so many ways. It worked, until it didn't, because Yeonjun had always done it for Kai and Kai only. Never for himself, never for anyone else. Sometimes, he thinks he'd done it for Taehyun, too, though Taehyun had other prospects, other chances. Other times, he entertains the idea that he'd done it for Soobin — if only to give him an occupation, but that's entirely too presumptuous of him;
To think he matters enough that Soobin would have no other way.
Yeonjun can't really pinpoint the moment where Soobin had seemed to become desperate to get out. If he really thinks about it, it could have simply been from the very start of times. He remembers the very first time they'd met, and Soobin had had this air around him — like he'd been doomed long before he'd even been born. Like there had never been anything out there for him. Ceaseless pain, maybe, in that awful way: sticky and dull, like a useless throb in his bones. Yet Yeonjun loved him. Loved him then, loves him now, despite the splinters in his heart. Terrible thing — to have none of their blood rushing through his veins as if he were one with them; with Soobin and Kai and Taehyun all three all at once.
He uncaps another bottle. It doesn't matter that the metal cuts into his skin, all sharp but thoroughly painless. The napkin on the bar is stained red. Ruby red, the same colour that seems to haunt him at all times. When he's in the ring, when he's at home and his wounds split open at the faintest movement, when he's here too away from Kai and away from Soobin and away from everything else that had done little outside breaking his heart.
In a way, he knows it's stupid.
Choi Yeonjun, twenty-four years old, has never lost a fight.
Yet, at the same time, as if cruelty could never forgive him;
Choi Yeonjun, twenty-four years old, has never gotten anything he's ever wanted in his life.
He gulps the soju down. One sip after another. Hurried, like he's running out of time. Yeonjun supposes he's never quite had the time. It makes his eyes water. It's plain and it burns the back of his throat the more he swallows it. His mouth tastes funny, all warm and tingly. Yeonjun doesn’t like it. He doesn’t know if he’s ever liked it — drinking, that is. He used to drink a lot more, back when he’d started at the ring. It was some sort of initiation process, where he’d let himself be buried at the very bottom of every bottle just so he could maybe erase that pungent taste of blood from the roof of his mouth. Yet Kai had hated it — every bit of it, every drop of it that would slip into Yeonjun’s blood all fuzzy and warm. So he’d stopped despite the tangy taste on the tip of his tongue that wouldn't go away no matter how many times he'd go into the ring and come back out in that sickening, terrifying glory.
"Didn't think I'd see you outside the ring."
Yeonjun startles in his seat. His eyes flutter shut, heart pounding in his chest. He can hear the chair next to him get pulled back, scratching against the flooring loudly and unpleasantly. Yeonjun takes another gulp, only to calm down his racing pulse. Beomgyu's sweet perfume — sweeter than he'd remembered it, engulfs him whole.
He swallows. It's harsh on his throat. "Beomgyu-ssi," he greets. His cheeks flare. Yeonjun blames it on the soju running freely through his veins. It's easier that way than to think of Choi Beomgyu and let him consume him whole. He'd barely met him, two little instances that seemed much too insignificant to be worth thinking about so agonizingly. Yet that had always been his curse, he thinks — to drink up even the smallest dregs, to let it settle under his skin so achingly, so unpleasantly, until there'd be nothing left of him. He thinks it's always been his curse — to want and want and want and never get.
"How's your head?" Beomgyu asks him. By now, he's slid into the seat comfortably, his hands folded over the counter.
"My head?"
"You took a pretty tough hit a few days ago."
"Ah," Yeonjun swallows. It's just as dry, just as unpleasant. But he doesn't want to drink anymore. His mind is plenty fuzzy, blurred out at the edges just enough. "It's alright, I guess. Nothing that should worry you." He replies. "Especially not as a doctor."
Beomgyu laughs. It's that same sound from the other day, lovely and so infuriatingly pleasant to hear. His skin colours prettily, too, all rosy. "I'm not a doctor, Yeonjun-ssi."
"Could have fooled me."
Beomgyu smiles at him. It's soft, and his teeth peek out just a little bit. Yeonjun decides he likes it. Likes the way his eyes seem to light up, crinkling at the sides, and the way his nose scrunches a bit, too, all cutely. It seems like he's embarrassed, even if just in the slightest. The rosy hue of his skin deepens. "I really am not. I dropped out of med-school. So not much of a degree to get by."
"You went to med-school?"
Beomgyu hums. In front of him, a glass of beer is placed. The condensation rolls prettily. Yeonjun's eyes zero in on it. The single drop as it trails down the foggy glass. When it hits the wooden countertop, it disperses all of a sudden. Yeonjun takes another sip of his drink. It goes down his throat all smoothly, if just a bit fiery. School. He hadn't considered that in a long time; it wasn't something that was acquirable for him. It wasn't for Kai, either, even if Yeonjun so desperately wanted it to be. Everything for Kai. If anything, he stopped living for himself a long time ago. He doesn't think he's ever lived for himself in the first place. At first, it had been to be a dutiful son by any means. Anything, everything — just to make his mother happy. Anything and everything, just to make it so she doesn't have to struggle. But then it had been her death, and then he'd had nothing to live by except for himself. And it had been terrifying — to all of a sudden have so much of himself to care for, so much of himself to think as something more than just a figment of someone's imagination. But Kai had come in quickly after, and he'd had bright eyes, all pretty and wonderful, and a red mouth that would redden even more the harder he'd cry, and Yeonjun had finally found something to live for again. Silly — is all he keeps telling himself, that he's never been quite capable of existing outside something else.
At first, it had been his mother. Then it had been Kai. And now —
Now it's the ring, too, even if there's not one part of him that doesn't feel repulsed at even the mere thought of it. The ring and the seedy alleyways that lead to it. The ring and the overbearing chlorine smell that clings to the sticky, chipped tiles of the changing rooms. The ring and the loud crowds always cheering him on. The ring and the blood that splatters over his singlets and stains them until he has to scrub them clean with iced water and bars of soap he coughs up money to pay for. The ring the ring the ring — sickening glory it is, the way it makes eats away at him.
Terrifying — the way he lives for it, too.
"I did. And then I didn't. Soobin is going, though" Beomgyu offers. It's kind. He always speaks kindly. Patiently. "I think he'll like it."
He knows Beomgyu is offering Soobin up as a common subject. It's easy to talk about something they are both familiar with. But Soobin is leaving, and Yeonjun has no desire to talk about him. Not when Soobin is getting out, and as glad as Yeonjun is for it, he can't help but think why not me, why not me, why — it has never been him.
"Do you miss it?" Yeonjun asks him, instead. "School, I mean."
Beomgyu laughs again. Wistful, like there are so many other things he'd rather be discussing. "Yes and no." He takes a sip of his beer. Carefully, delicately, with his dainty, long fingers wrapped tightly around the glass until the condensation melts. "Yes, because I grew up wanting to be a doctor. Always. For as long as I could remember."
"And no?"
"No, because it was never worth it, I guess."
On his barstool, Yeonjun turns to him. Beomgyu is lithe, with broad shoulders and a small, tight waist, and his clothes cling to him and drown him in their fabric at the same time. Today, he's dressed differently than he had been in the locker rooms back at the ring. His thick, long-padding coat hangs on the back of the barstool, and instead of a plain, graphic t-shirt, he's dressed in a soft, thin sweater that seems to envelop him whole. It goes past the tips of his fingers, and the fabric seems to soak up most of the wetness clinging to his glass. It's pretty, though. Everything about him is pretty. When he takes another sip of his beer, Yeonjun watches the way his throat moves, just as delicately as the rest of him. His red lips part, his lashes flutter shut, and then his whole body seems to relax, bit by bit, in front of Yeonjun's eyes. Pretty.
"Not worth it?"
"I'm not in school anymore now, am I?" Beomgyu laughs. "I patch you up after your fights, don't I? Was it worth it?"
"I don't know."
Beomgyu finishes his entire drink in one go. His cheeks deepen their flush. It's less rosy, and more of that beet red, like he's embarrassed of himself. Yeonjun wants more than anything to pull him closer, to feel his warmth under the tips of his fingers and see if he's really more than just a figment of his imagination. He itches for it, really. But boys like Choi Beomgyu don't belong in the same places as Choi Yeonjun. Boys like Choi Beomgyu, with their long silky hair and their pretty, bright eyes and well-taken-care-of nails have nothing to do with boys like Choi Yeonjun who scrape their hands bloody every other night for some cash and who are scared to crack an egg from their fridge before dropping it in water to keep the illusion that they have yet to be rotten for just a bit longer.
"I don't want to be here anymore," is what Beomgyu tells him.
Somehow, Yeonjun understands.
By the time they make it out of the bar, their coats are over their shoulders, and the air outside is cold enough that it makes Yeonjun's skin feel as if it's cracking. And when they stumble through the door and Beomgyu grabs his arm to drag him step after step, Yeonjun's heart feels just a bit lighter in his chest.
"I know a place."
—
The place Beomgyu takes him to is nothing special, but it is seven bus stops away and Beomgyu pays for their tickets without even asking. Then, when he gets off the bus, he doesn't wait to see if Yeonjun will follow him as if he's more than sure that Yeonjun will. And Yeonjun does because there's nothing quite as interesting as Choi Beomgyu and the softness of his skin and silkiness of his long hair.
Still, the place isn't special. It's the rooftop of a clean, modern apartment building that he unlocks with a shiny key hanging from his belt loop. Yeonjun doesn't question it and doesn't linger to stare at the clean floors and the white of the walls. Instead, he follows him quietly, his breath dense in the cold air. Every movement Beomgyu makes brings his perfume out; the sweet, cloying scent that Yeonjun breathes in as much as he can hold in his lungs. When Beomgyu pushes the latched door open, the air is even colder. It bites into Yeonjun's skin, but he makes no protest. It's enough that he's following Beomgyu. It's enough that someone like Choi Beomgyu had allowed Yeonjun to trail after him, to breathe in his perfume.
Up there, Beomgyu's breathtaking. The wind pushes the hair out of his face and colours his cheeks even rosier, and Yeonjun wants him more than ever. He'd thought him pretty when he first saw him, soft and sweet, down on his knees holding the palm of Yeonjun's hand as if he were most precious, and he thinks him pretty, now, too, when he's above the world and there's a lightness to his feet that hadn't been there before.
"It's not special," Beomgyu tells him. "And it's cold, I'm sorry. But I like this place."
Yeonjun offers him a smile. The soju is still warm in his veins, but not quite enough to keep him from shivering. "That's alright," is all he says. "Thank you for taking me here."
Then, when Beomgyu sits down on the cold ground, Yeonjun follows. Shoulder to shoulder, but not quite touching — or at least not touching enough to make him feel as if he's on fire. Still, Yeonjun thinks himself happy. Even if just for a second, even if it is fleeting. He'd lived for everyone but himself, yet now, at the very height of himself, with Beomgyu so near, Yeonjun thinks he lives for himself.
"How did you come across it?"
"I live here," Beomgyu says. "Inherited the apartment from my grandmother." He says it so simply, like it's only natural for it to happen.
It's funny — that there's an easiness to his words that Yeonjun could never endure. He'd never quite thought about it like that; owning an apartment, even if it is inherited. Owning anything, really, outside the clothes on his back and the few others he has stacked on top of each other in that tiny little wardrobe he has in his room back at his and Kai's place. It had never quite felt real to own. To have something to claim as his own, to think of it as undeniably his. He wishes for it, though. Yearns for it in a way that is destructible because, at the end of the day, he wishes it for Kai more than he could ever wish it for himself. The mosaic in the kitchen — the pretty one, unlike the one they already have. The one in the magazine clippings Yeonjun knows Kai hides from him out of guilt. I can work more, he'd tell Yeonjun, seriously, hyung, I can pick up some extra shifts, I can, I really can — but Yeonjun has never quite let him. He couldn't let him because Kai has always been something precious, something to be held dearly, cradled until he'd be putty in Yeonjun's arms, soft and happy and sated.
"I see."
"You must think of me differently now," Beomgyu breathes. "I'm not one of those rich kids."
"I never said you are," Yeonjun is quick to interrupt, but, truthfully, it had been undeniable. The location, the way everything around him looked. Yeonjun hadn't really stepped foot outside his neighborhood in a long time.
Beomgyu doesn't turn to look at him. If he can feel Yeonjun staring at him, he doesn't say anything. "Yes, but you're thinking it, aren't you?" He whispers.
"No. Not necessarily."
Beomgyu giggles. "You're so lovely, Yeonjun-ssi."
"Hyung."
Beomgyu flushes entirely. From the top of his head, all the way into the dip of his collarbones. "Hyung, then. You're so lovely, hyung." And Beomgyu says it so gently like he's been trusted with something special. It makes Yeonjun's chest tighten. Right in the very centre of it, coiled tightly, like he can't breathe.
"It's — I don't really know if it matters," he mumbles, "that you live the way you do, or if you live the way I do."
Beomgyu turns to look at him for the first time that evening. He's even more beautiful then than he'd been all evening and every other time Yeonjun had seen him. Bright-eyed with flushed cheeks and a mouth just as red. "Except that it does, doesn't it?" He gulps. The skin of his neck tightens. "To you, at least. It matters, doesn't it?"
"No." Yeonjun insists. "It's — it's whatever, Beomgyu-yah. I don't care."
The lie sits heavy on his tongue. He wants to believe it more than anything. To let Beomgyu know that it doesn't matter in a way in which Beomgyu will believe him, too, like he'd believed everything else Yeonjun had told him until then. But it matters, because even now, when it is just the two of them somewhere in Seoul, and the cold air bites at their skin just the same, boys like Choi Beomgyu should have nothing to do with those like Yeonjun. Even now, when they're flushed red with the same alcohol, and share memories only the two of them can share, it is as much of a truth that they're not the same.
"It doesn't matter," he repeats. "I — I live the way I live, and you live the way you live, and that's okay."
He expects Beomgyu to laugh. To say something condescending, despite the fact that Beomgyu had been nothing but sweet to him all this time. He expects Beomgyu to lash out at him the way every person who has ever laid eyes on Yeonjun and had seen the holes in his clothes and the worn-out rubber of his sneakers had. Yet Beomgyu doesn't do anything of the sort. instead, he lays down on his back, the same red flush on his cheeks, and laughs.
"Ah, hyung, if only you knew," Beomgyu says between quiet, soft giggles. It's pretty — the way it makes Yeonjun's heart burst in his chest like a nebula. If he closes his eyes, he can picture it. A million stars constricted into one, white at the edges, fizzling more and more and more until he could barely hold it inside of himself anymore. Violent, when it would reach its peak. Still inside of himself, right there, rooted in place.
Beomgyu's quiet laugh makes him laugh, too. It starts softly, a little thrum in his veins. Slowly, it bubbles in his chest and then in his throat, until he can hear himself laughing, too. It feels good. Yeonjun doesn't remember the last he'd laughed with such hunger for it. He doesn't remember the last time it had felt this good, this carefree. He settles on his back, too. The rooftop is cold under his back, more than anything had been that night, but he likes it. It's sobering, in a way, to feel it. I'm alive, he tells to himself. Then, more carefree than ever, out loud for Beomgyu to hear it, too. "I'm alive."
Amusedly, Beomgyu continues to laugh, too. "You are, hyung. Of course, you are." Then, he turns himself over until he's settled most of his weight on his elbows, and reaches out to place his hand on the middle of Yeonjun's chest. "You are, hyung, you've always been. " Yet what does Beomgyu know, when he tells such things? What does he know about Yeonjun, when he laughs so carefreely next to him, like they're not eons away from each other despite the brush of their skin? "You've always been," he repeats as if to settle it for himself more than for Yeonjun.
"I am." Yeonjun nods, between breathless chuckles. Every single one feels as if it's punched out of him; painful, but strangely calming. "I'm alive, I'm —"
Once they calm down, Beomgyu asks him softly. "When was the last time you lived for yourself?"
Yeonjun's mouth dries. It's a complicated question that Yeonjun has never quite had an answer for. Yet he thinks about it anyway. Maybe he'll know, if Beomgyu is next to him, flushed red and so much prettier than Yeonjun could have ever imagined him to be. Surely, there must have been a moment, a time when it had mattered. A time when he had mattered more than everything else. Yeonjun comes up short no matter how hard he tries. He could answer him anything -- could tell Beomgyu lies that sit pretty in the space between them but hang heavy on the tip of his tongue. Yet when he looks at Beomgyu, at the way he stares so earnestly at Yeonjun like he's hanging by his every word, he can't bring himself to lie to him.
"I don't know, Beomgyu-yah," he sighs out. Suddenly, the sky is darker than it had been, and suddenly, the air around him is heavier. Suddenly, there's Kai at the back of his mind again, bright, boundless mass of energy that Yeonjun cannot help but cradle softly into his chest like there's nothing more precious in this world. Suddenly, it's Choi Soobin and the way he'd always just wanted out, desperate for anything that could land him anywhere else. Suddenly it's Kang Taehyun and the rough pads of his fingertips and the fact tat he had never been anything but patient with Yeonjun, endlessly so, as if Yeonjun had been worth it. "I don't think I've ever been alive."
"That's silly, hyung," he's breathless when he moves closer, even if it's by just a millimetre. His perfume is sweeter, too, sticking to Yeonjun's skin the longer they sit next to each other, "you've always been alive. You have just never lived for yourself."
Yeonjun knows. He knows that every single time he steps foot into the ring, it's not for himself. He knows that everything he'd ever stolen back at the orphanage has not been for himself. He knows that every little flower he'd plucked out of the ground when his mother had died had not been for himself. He knows he knows he knows. -- it's sickening; to always know.
"I suppose."
Beomgyu gets up on his knees. He shuffles closer until he's hovering over Yeonjun's face. His perfume is even sweeter and it fills up every crevice of Yeonjun's lungs, sinks into the muscle until every breath he takes is dizzying. "I didn't either," Beomgyu whispers. "Live for myself, I mean," he adds in a hurry. Then, his hands cup Yeonjun's face all tentatively, a soft smile on his face, "and then I did. It's why I'm here, hyung, with you. Because I lived for myself."
Yeonjun finds it hard to swallow. Beomgyu looks at him with large, round eyes and they're brighter than any star on the sky behind him. He wishes he could tell Beomgyu just that, yet his heart twists in his chest painfully the more he wants to open his mouth and simply admit it. "It's why I'm here, too," Yeonjun whispers. The words slip past the knot in his throat. They settle onto Beomgyu's skin. Flushed red and warm to the touch, and lovelier than anything Yeonjun had ever witnessed. "Because I lived for myself, too."
"You're alive."
Yeonjun stifles a smile. "I'm alive."
With that, Beomgyu settles back on the ground. He's closer now than he had been earlier that evening when they'd first laid down together. His shoulder bumps into Yeonjun's, but it's a welcomed heat. Yeonjun shivers. He lets his eyes flutter shut and breathes in deeply until he's dizzy with everything around him. There are barely any sounds. Just some chatters from the world beneath them, and the sound of tires across the cold asphalt. Peaceful. Quieter than the world had ever been. Yeonjun thinks he could get used to it.
"I got disowned," Beomgyu says, after a while. It's in a small voice like he's scared to tell it to Yeonjun. It's hard to believe that when the boy seems to be made out of life and nothing else. It's almost impossible to think of Choi Beomgyu as something so small. He'd been at the very back of Yeonjun's mind ever since they first met. An incessant thought so maddening, so infuriatingly beautiful that Yeonjun hadn't been able to focus on anything else. His very own curse — to want and want and want, and never quite get. Out of all things Yeonjun had ever wanted, Choi Beomgyu had seemed the most unattainable one. "I can't afford med school anymore. It's why I dropped out. It hadn't been worth it, I guess because I have worked hard all my life for it, and yet —," he stops himself short. The way Beomgyu's breath seems to catch in his throat is peculiar. He'd been like a mirage every time Yeonjun had met him. Sweet and soft and fuzzy around the edges. Beomgyu had been so unlike everyone else Yeonjun had ever met: beautiful and bright, effervescent in a way that had been greater than Yeonjun had ever thought himself capable of becoming. He'd been everything; yet now, in the dead of the night, above Seoul where nothing but the cold can reach him, Choi Beomgyu is small and quivering, like he'd never quite lived for himself either.
Almost like he lives the way Yeonjun lives, too.
"Why did you get disowned?"
Beomgyu draws in a sharp breath. It's louder than any sound he'd made the entire night, but just as beautiful. Like a sign that he's alive, too, in the very same way Yeonjun is. Not quite godly, not quite anything other than human.
"I — I had a disagreement with my father. My mother had no say in it, obviously," he laughs, but this time it's dry like it pains him to do it. Yeonjun hates the sound of it. "I don't really... it's okay, though, hyung because I live the same way you do. There's not quite any difference. You know what I mean? That you shouldn't ... that you shouldn't think about it like that. It doesn't matter. It doesn't." Beomgyu says it with such finality, that it seems almost strange for Yeonjun to disagree, despite how much he wants to.
"I think it does," Yeonjun whispers to him. "But it shouldn't."
"I suppose. I'm alive like you are, and I live like you live." Beomgyu tells him. Strangely, like there have never been truer words. "I'm alive like you are and I live like you live and it doesn't matter, that I didn't, for a while."
And Yeonjun —
Shoulder to shoulder, somewhere far away, above Seoul and away from every memory that haunts him. Away from Kai who he loves, but never feels like he loves him just enough. Away from the ring, from the blood in his mouth. Away from Soobin, too, just like he'll always be because Soobin is leaving. Away from Taehyun because he's never deserved his patience, but Taehyun cares, still.
Yeonjun can't help but agree.
It doesn't matter.
—
At the ring, Yeonjun is restless. He'd been restless every day since he had run into Beomgyu and boldly declared himself alive. It had been sobering when the sun had risen up on the horizon Yeonjun had left and the life had bled out of him until he'd been nothing but a shadow of himself, sticky on the cold pavement on the way back to his and Kai's apartment. Beomgyu's laughter had remained some sort of revelation in his memory. Alive, alive, alive — Choi Yeonjun had never lived. Not until a few days prior, when Beomgyu had breathed life into him, one drunken, quiet giggle at a time.
Kai had asked him where he'd been. Pale and worried sick, as if Yeonjun could never care for himself the way Kai could care for him. Yeonjun had supposed it was alright. He acted quite the same; always stressed, always in an impasse. Kai, Kai, Kai — he never minded it, though. He couldn't — not when Kai would dim every now and then right before his eyes, and Yeonjun would have to watch the light go out of his eyes in that sickening way where he could not do much about it. And yet he tried ceaselessly.
"With Beomgyu," Yeonjun had answered, and then, like an afterthought, "Soobin is leaving." But Yeonjun did not need to look into Kai's eyes to figure out that Kai had already known that Soobin would be leaving. He did not need to look into his eyes to know that Kai had never told him despite how much he knew it would rattle Yeonjun. And yet, he didn't blame him, because there were countless things Yeonjun did not tell him either, like when he'd go into the ring twice in the same night just so he could buy a new pair of shoes for Kai to wear because he'd see the way the rubber had worn out, or the way Yeonjun would cut the mould off the bread and eat the rest without telling him, or that he never really thought there would be a way out of the ring for him, but he knew there could be a way out for Kai if only he tried just a bit harder.
So, naturally, Kai hadn't addressed Soobin, almost as if he were already nothing more than some sort of spectre in their lives. A shadow of what he'd been. An end to a means. It felt wrong, too, to think of Soobin like that, because he'd always been there in that same way Taehyun had — not quite here, nor there, but still, a constant stable enough that Yeonjun could rest himself assured. Instead, Kai had flashed him half a smile, more faded than any other, and had placed his hands on his hips, right over that worn-out apron he could never quite rid himself of. "Does Beomgyu make you happy?"
And Yeonjun hadn't thought twice of it when he'd simply said "yes".
Since then, it'd been almost a week, and Yeonjun hadn't seen Beomgyu at all, and he hadn't seen Soobin either. Taehyun had dropped by on two different days to drink that coffee he likes out of the chipped, matching mug he'd bought for all of them, and every time he'd made a cup for Yeonjun, too, and complained about the instant powdered one in his pantry. Almost like nothing had changed. Yeonjun had pretended, too, that it didn't matter that Soobin was leaving. He'd pretended it when he counted the money and dropped his coins in the little stained Tupperware container he hides behind his bed in a little nook he'd found where the draft sometimes comes into his apartment when the temperature drops a degree or two too low.
In the changing rooms, everything goes the same way it does. He strips down to the white singlet under his shirt and his pants and sits himself down until Taehyun comes in to tape his hands for him. Last time, it had been Beomgyu to do it, and he'd been lovely on his knees, staring up at Yeonjun like he was worth something more than some measly coins they'd bet on him at the very end of the night. Yet now he does not know if Beomgyu will come in again with a blush on his face and just as eager. Part of him hopes he does, yet another part of him, much bigger and more violent, rooted so deeply into his chest, thinks there's nothing in this world that Beomgyu would want with him anymore. So Yeonjun pretends that the possible loss of it doesn't bother him.
When enough time passes and that lacerating fear latches onto his heart even more violently, he begins unfastening the tape himself. There is no trace of Taehyun, and no trace of Beomgyu, either. At the back of his mind, Yeonjun likes to think it isn't him. At the back of his mind, he likes to deem himself worthy of at least a good word before his fight, if not a pat on his back to give him any sort of faux-strength.
But they don't come.
Instead, it's two men he's only ever talked to a couple of times; the ones who had pulled him by the back of his shirt and offered him this life. They're taller and broader than him, and Yeonjun has never quite felt comfortable around them. Yet he doesn't do anything other than get to his feet and bow, despite the ache in his joints from every fight his body had endured. They talk to him as if he's worth nothing, but Yeonjun doesn't mind it. Few people had treated him otherwise. Yet their words are cutting and it's once again this sort of sickening glory that fills him up from the very core. We need to rig the bets, they'd told him, even if you feel like you're winning. Don't. Even if it almost kills you. And Yeonjun had wanted to argue; he'd thought of Kai and the way he'd worry about him nonetheless, but even more were he to come out of this fight all bloody and battered, like an amalgam of his own bones and flesh. And then he'd thought of Beomgyu, too, who'd taken it so seriously that it had been almost amusing. I'm alive, he'd wanted to tell them, and I lived for myself and it had been wonderful. Why must I live for you, when no one has ever lived for him, but they never left any room for an argument? It'd been simple, really, do it, or we kill you ourselves, and Yeonjun had thought of Kai again, and of the mosaic tiles in that kitchen he'd always wanted and wrapped the bandages around his hand tighter than ever. Then, he'd walked into the ring again, like he does every other night, and has done one too many times, and caught only a glimpse of Beomgyu in the crowd, wide-eyed and just as beautiful as he'd been every single time.
The fight starts like every other. Yeonjun's ears ring from the shrill screams and his mouth tastes like copper before there is any blood on the tip of his tongue. The man is shorter than him, but stocky, with broad shoulders Yeonjun could never have, and a thick neck. He comes at Yeonjun with all his might and when the first punch connects with his jaw, it makes him dizzy right away. Their words haunt him. In his body, every nerve feels as if it is on fire. Fight of flight — it is always the same. Tense all over, from the very top of his head all the way down. It runs through him in waves. Fight or flight, fight or flight, fight fight fight — it has always been fight. But now, with their words stuck in his mind like gum, he wills his body not to react. It's hard to do it when every atom urges him to move, to lift his hands up and cover himself. To run. But he does it anyway; never for himself. It has never been for himself. Even now, with blood pooling in his mouth, it's for Kai, still, because Kai had never deserved to live his life the way he does.
The man lands another punch. It clatters his teeth and the screams are louder than before. Hollers that ring in his ears louder and louder, until it feels almost like a siren. Yeonjun clenches his jaw. He lands a hit, too, but his bones feel like they're shattered, anyway. Every bit of him screams.
Choi Yeonjun, twenty-four years old, has never lost a fight.
In his soul, he aches.
He lets himself be punched again. Dizzy and bloody, on the ground like a crumbled mess, unaware of anything else.
It's a kick next, with just as much hunger behind it as every other hit the boy had landed on him until then.
Distantly, he thinks about everything once again. They're flashes of it, colourless and tasteless and haunting all at the same time. His mother, the way he'd always imagined his father, the orphanage, Kai — everything and nothing, all at once. Another kick, right to his stomach, and it feels as if everything will crack. If he tries, he can map out the entirety of himself: his aching lungs as they expand with every stuttered breath, the rapid beat of his heart as it tries to keep him alive, the awful pain in his side the more kicks he takes, the throb in his jaw, in his temples, around his nose; all the way through his bloodstream as if has always been part of himself.
Is this what they felt like, is all he can think about, when I had been the one to get them on the ground all bloody and useless, a mere pile of bones and flesh, deformed and rotting and ugly? All by my own doing. Yeonjun curls in on himself. He looks at his hands — a brief glimpse, blurred out at the edges. All with my own two hands. Terrible thing that I am, destroyer of the word.
When he chances one last look at the crowd, right before everything blurs out entirely, he sees Beomgyu's wide eyes. Dull and so unlike how he'd stared at Yeonjun on the rooftop when he'd breathed life into Yeonjun's lungs, one word at a time.
I'm alive, he wants to tell him, but I still have never lived for myself.
The last thing he sees is the way Beomgyu's fingers tighten over the barricade.
—
When he comes back to it, his body aches more than Yeonjun had ever thought possible. Every limb, every muscle, every bone. When he tries to swallow, his throat is dry enough that it hurts. Yeonjun whines, and, all of a sudden, he can hear the scuffle of a pair of shoes against the floor. Hands press to his face, cold but still so gentle, and, for a second, he thinks he had died.
"You're awake," the person breathes out. It's full of relief like he had thought Yeonjun had died, too.
It isn't an unfair assumption. In the ring, he'd thought of it, too, although briefly. But now, with the ache in his joints, Yeonjun feels more alive than ever.
"I —," he croaks. His throat hurts, too.
"Don't —," the person hurries to tilt his head up carefully, and then they press the rim of a glass to his cracked lips. "Don't try and speak. It's okay — you're okay, hyung."
The first sip of water is painful. It's cool on his tongue, but when it goes down his throat, Yeonjun can barely swallow it. Still, he continues drinking, despite the soothing noises coming from the person holding him, and their insistence for him to just take it easy. On his fourth gulp, it starts feeling better. His head clears, even if it's just a little bit. By the eighth sip, he can open his eyes. Bit by bit, the scene in front of him sets. He's in the locker rooms yet he doesn't remember how he'd made it there. The flickering fluorescent light does nothing to ease the dull throb in his temples. He squeezes his eyes back shut. The hands pressed to Yeonjun's face have yet to cease their gentle caress, and he leans into it as much as he can. He breathes in. Sweet perfume fills in his lungs.
Beomgyu.
Urgently, he opens his eyes. It makes his head throb harder. "Beomgyu," he breathes, out. "I—,"
"You're okay, hyung," the boy tells him. His voice wavers, but it's soft nonetheless. It's almost as if it is impossible for him to form a sentence otherwise. Always so soothing, always so full of life. "Gave Taehyun-hyung and I quite the fright, though," he adds. It's meant to be light-hearted. Joking, like Yeonjun isn't propped up on the cold tiles of the grimy locker rooms. Joking — like Yeonjun hadn't let himself get beaten to a pulp for the entire ring to see.
All of a sudden, it all becomes clearer than it had been all night.
Choi Yeonjun, twenty-four, has never lost a fight.
The more he thinks about it, the funnier it becomes to him. Soon, there's garbled laughter bubbling up in his throat. Then, it erupts all at once, spilling out of him until he can barely catch a hold of himself. Every chuckle wreaks havoc in his body. He can feel it in his tummy, in his lungs, in every bone as it rattles deep under his flesh. Choi Yeonjun, twenty-four, has never lost a fight, Choi Yeonjun, twenty-four, has never lost a fight, Choi Yeonjun, twenty-four --
"Hyung?" Beomgyu's voice is shrill. He grabs at Yeonjun's face and digs his thumbs into his cheeks. He angles Yeonjun's head back, making it so that he can look him in the eyes, yet Yeonjun can't see him. He can't really see anything at all. Everything is blurred around the edges, and the more Beomgyu digs his fingers into his skin, the more he feels as if ablaze. It doesn't help to cease Yeonjun's laughter. If anything, it seems to only spur it on. "Hyung? Hyung —," It's urgent and terrifying, but Yeonjun can't stop. He hadn't laughed as much in a lifetime. Hadn't laughed with such hunger; not even when he'd been with Beomgyu on the rooftop and he'd finally felt the movement of his body and deemed himself alive.
"Fuck," Yeonjun gasps, "I guess I'm alive, aren't I, Beomgyu-yah?" His voice sounds strange to his own ears. The sound of it seems to be coming from far, far away; someplace he cannot reach. Yeonjun doesn't pay it any mind. Instead, he giggles some more, takes and takes out of the sickening feel of doom spreading out through his body. He drinks it up in one go — the unsettlement in his tummy, the quiet fret in his blood. I'm alive, I'm alive, I'm alive.
Finally, when he calms down, and it's only an echo of his laughter ringing in his ears, he sees Beomgyu entirely. The wetness of his eyes, the curl of his lashes, the bitten-red hue of his lips. Pretty, is all he can think about. Then, maybe I am dead.
"Hyung," Beomgyu repeats. His breath is warm over Yeonjun's face. "You're crazy."
Yeonjun chuckles again. He feels like everything, and nothing at once. Floating above the ground, like he'd felt that night on the rooftop with Beomgyu. Inflated with helium — a mirage of some sort. "Maybe," he says. Then, because he's alive and he'd gotten a second chance and it has never felt this maddening before, "You're pretty, did you know that?"
Beomgyu blushes. Fire-red, right over the highest point of his cheeks. "I should check you for a concussion."
"My name is Choi Yeonjun," he says, "and I was born September 13th, 1972. In Seoul. Not concussed at all."
Beomgyu smiles at him knowingly. The blush sits pretty over his skin, from his hairline all the way down under the collar of his shirt. It peeks over his ears too, right at the tip. He's more beautiful than he'd ever been, though Yeonjun thinks he'll never fail to think of him like that — pretty and full of life and everything that Yeonjun could ever want.
"Funny," Beomgyu says, dryly. He leans in closer until they're barely a breath away. Like this, he smells even sweeter. Yeonjun can't get enough of it. "But you got the beating of a lifetime. I do have to check up on you."
"It's alright," Yeonjun breathes. Up close, Beomgyu is dizzyingly beautiful. Up close, Yeonjun feels like the ground has disappeared from underneath his feet. "I'll never say no to a pretty boy."
Beomgyu blushes again. It's redder now like he can't quite get used to Yeonjun's words at all. "I should take you home, hyung."
In an instant, his heart flips in his chest. Home. Yeonjun doesn't want to go home. He doesn't need to look at himself to know that there'd been damage done to his body. He doesn't need to know that there's dry blood stuck to his skin, and bruises blooming yellow, purple, and blue all over his body. Yeonjun would never hear the end of it from Kai. Not when Kai had begged him time and time again to stop and Yeonjun had never once listened.
He grabs Beomgyu's wrist in haste. Under his fingers, Beomgyu's hand feels as if it is burning. It makes a shiver go down Yeonjun's spine, pleasant and electric and so unlike himself. "I can't go home." He says. I can't let Kai see me like this, not when I have no money to give him, either. The realization sits with him bitterly. He'd lost; there'd be barely anything for groceries that week and certainly barely anything to give Kai simply because Yeonjun liked to do it. Nothing — Yeonjun had never realized just how deeply he'd latched onto winning.
"What do you mean?"
Yeonjun shakes his head. It does nothing but worsen the pain. "I can't go home," he repeats. "Please."
Beomgyu hesitates. Then, bit by bit, he deflates, and he buries a tentative hand in Yeonjun's hair. "Okay. You're not going home, then." He whispers.
At Beomgyu's gentle ministrations, Yeonjun's eyes flutter shut. "Thank you."
Beomgyu doesn't tell him anything anymore. Instead, he shuffles even closer until his thigh touches Yeonjun's and continues to softly run his hand through Yeonjun's hair as if he's precious. His sweet perfume engulfs Yeonjun wholly. Like a little bubble, encapsulating him, until it's sticky at the back of his throat. He doesn't mind it, though. Not when Beomgyu feels so warm and safe pressed against him.
He doesn't know how much time passes. Yet when he opens his eyes, it's still Beomgyu that greets him, with his eyes almost as bright as they always are, and his mouth just as red. Yeonjun thinks it wouldn't hurt to stay alive if this was the only thing he'd ever see.
—
Beomgyu does bring him home. However, home is Beomgyu's apartment in the clean building that he'd inherited from his grandmother. It's not grand; if anything, it seems even smaller than the one he shares with Kai. Yet it's lived-in and warm, and when Beomgyu drops him onto the couch, Yeonjun doesn't want to move ever again. It's an old, leather thing, but it feels better than anything once Beomgyu props his legs up on a pillow, on top of the small coffee table in front of it.
"I'll get you something to drink," Beomgyu tells him, and then he seems to dissipate all at once before Yeonjun's eyes. His feet are soft over the hardwood floors, and even if he strains, Yeonjun can't quite hear him. Beomgyu is strange like that; he laughs louder than anyone Yeonjun had ever heard but falls just as quiet as any other time. There's both life and death brewing inside him, and they're both equally violent when they unfurl. His apartment is much the same as him: warm and bright, but terrifying at the same time, with tall ceilings and anatomy books littering the entire floor. Stacks of paper lay unmoving on the desk shoved in the corner of the room, right next to the window, and the curtains are dark, and heavy, like faux-velvet. Yeonjun envies him, though it doesn't last long. I live like you live, hyung, Beomgyu had said, but Yeonjun doesn't agree. Can't agree; there are things in Beomgyu's apartment that Yeonjun can only dream of owning like the record player in the corner of the room right by a large Yucca plant or the large mirror with the golden frame propped up against the wall. There are things like the large picture books on top of his coffee table or the heavy curtains that hang in front of his windows and the fact that there is not one thing that seems to be out of place or that there are countless lamps on every surface and Beomgyu has almost all of them on.
Still, he doesn't comment on it. There is rarely any reason for him to open his mouth, let alone regarding situations like these. Yeonjun is not uncomfortable either. It's a bleak reminder of some sort that boys like Choi Beomgyu have nothing to do with boys like himself, but he isn't uncomfortable. Even bleaker is the reminder that while Beomgyu has all of this, he lost much more. They disowned me — why? He hadn't told Yeonjun. If anything, Yeonjun doesn't know if he ever will. But Beomgyu lost things despite still having so much. He lost things like a career and a family and every bit of stability that Yeonjun craved all his life; lost things that Yeonjun never really had in the first place. If anything, he can't feel uncomfortable. In some sickening, awful part of himself, he knows Beomgyu has lost much more than Yeonjun ever could.
"Are you hungry?"
Yeonjun looks up. In the kitchen, Beomgyu props himself up on his elbows on the counter. The walls behind him is that mosaic Kai always talked about. Yeonjun pretends his mouth doesn't dry at the sight of it. It's spotless, too — the way Kai would keep it. Scrubbed clean in every little corner until his fingers would bleed. He'd smile at Yeonjun all happily, from one ear to another, in that way of his where he made it seem like nothing bad could ever happen. He'd tell him thank you, hyung, and Yeonjun would think, for the first time, that everything would have truly been worth it.
"Not really," he replies. Usually, after a fight, he'd eat only because Kai would make it for him. Steamed buns, sometimes meat. He'd never really look him in the eyes, though. Almost as if he were ashamed of it. Sometimes, Yeonjun thinks about it, long and hard — whether Kai thinks lowly of him in the same way he thinks of himself, limited to so little, bound by his own self.
Beomgyu frowns. Yeonjun can't look at anything except the mosaic behind him. "Really? You took a pretty nasty beating."
"Isn't that supposed to cut off my lack of appetite?"
"Maybe." Beomgyu's voice is airy. So delicate still, despite the circumstances. "I'll make you something, anyway. Maybe you'll be hungry later. I'm not saying you should eat as your doctor, but maybe you should eat?"
"Is that a question?"
It startles a laugh out of Beomgyu. Sweet little sound, rolling off of him in endless waves. "No. You should eat."
Yeonjun doesn't reply anymore. He settles in on the couch. It's soft under him, all leather and warm blankets and fluffed-up pillows. Beomgyu's apartment is cozy in the way Yeonjun imagines most apartments are. It is all warm tones and muted lights and Yeonjun is dizzy with it the more he looks around: posters he'd seen around at the cinemas litter the off-white walls, ash-trays chipped at the edges, one bright colour after another, cups that don't match at all. It's endless pairs of shoes at the entrance and coats hanging heavy from the coat rack, burgundy and navy blue and black, long and padded or leather.
Dizzy.
Yeonjun can't get enough of it.
"Why did you lose?" Beomgyu asks him. This time it's not airy or lighthearted in the way it'd been all these times. Yeonjun doesn't think he'd ever seen Beomgyu all serious and grim. It's not a pretty look on him; instead of that little glimmer in his round eyes, he's pale as a ghost, dull, too, seemingly so lifeless. Nothing like he'd been before. Nothing like he'd been on the rooftop when he'd breathed life inside me until I felt distorted, like a balloon. Like this, Beomgyu is still beautiful. Lackluster, though, dim — so terribly dim, and so unlike himself. Yeonjun can't look at him.
"He was better than me," he answers shortly. The lie sits heavy on the tip of his tongue. Acrid, too, burning like acid. "Taller, bigger — better."
"That's not true," he argues. "You've never — they said you've never lost. So why now?" There's a distant clatter, but Yeonjun still can't bring himself to look at him. He doesn't want to. Not when Beomgyu's dim and Yeonjun has only recently understood what it means to be alive. He can't look at him when that life doesn't rattle inside Beomgyu all bright and bubbling-hot and unbearable. Everything Yeonjun had ever wanted. "Taehyun —" Yeonjun can hear his footsteps, but he still doesn't look at him. They're soft, and when he reaches the carpet in his living room, Yeonjun can't hear him at all anymore. He feels him, though, when he cups his face in his hands. They're cold against his skin, and Yeonjun shuts his eyes immediately. "Taehyun-ssi told me you'd win. That he ran through all possible scenarios and you'd still win. They placed bets on you, not them."
Yeonjun squeezes his eyes shut. Tighter and tighter, until it almost hurts. "I just lost." He says, simply. He doesn't know how to admit it; I lost because I'm nothing to them, and they're everything to me — it's embarrassing to admit it, even to himself.
Beomgyu's thumbs dig under his jaw, right next to the bone. It should be painful, really, but Yeonjun can't find it in himself to care. The way Beomgyu tugs at his face, the way his breath fans over his face, warm and so alive, bursting with everything that Yeonjun isn't -- it's soothing. "Just like that?"
Yeonjun breathes out shakily. He can feel it in his bones, the way it rattles him, almost as if it's his last. "Just like that."
All of a sudden, Beomgyu's touch is gone. Yeonjun mourns it. It leaves him cold. "I see," Beomgyu mutters. When he sits down next to Yeonjun, the sofa moves under his weight. He's so alive, Yeonjun tells himself. He's so alive and I'm never going to be as alive as he is. But it doesn't matter — because Beomgyu cradles him to his chest anyway, all gentle like he's been every single time, and Yeonjun wants nothing more than to open his eyes and look at him and tell him I'm a pawn in their little game and I mean nothing to them, and yet they're everything to me. He wants so desperately to push his forehead into the crook of Beomgyu's neck, where he smells most like himself so he can understand, for just a second, what it means to have a pulse that keeps you alive.
Yeonjun doesn't.
Instead, he remains unmoving on the couch, with Beomgyu right next to him, in an apartment that feels like so much more than Yeonjun could ever comprehend.
Instead, he breathes Beomgyu in as much as he can, drinks up all the life that bleeds out of him and thinks, not for the first time, that maybe he'd learn to be alive, that it'd be okay if only it'd be Beomgyu's blood in his veins.