cigarettes after sex

Affection

Taeyong knows Jaehyun from kindergarten and they took up to each other almost instantly, because they both were terrible introverts. They didn't even need words as they found each other, Taeyong came to sit beside Jaehyun and Jaehyun gave him his doll. Taeyong was ken and Jaehyun always barbie. The first sounds they uttered in each other's presence were in fact giggles as they placed the dolls on top of each other and grinned.
He had asked him to call him "Yongie" but Jaehyun insisted that "Tae" sounded better so he never called him "Yongie".They were friends after that. They grew up together, their parents made it look like they could stand each other, but the truth was that they were too different. Jaehyun's father worked in a quarry, his wife struggled to make decent people out of her pupils instead of her two children, Taeyong's mother was a humans-rights-defender, his father a clerk. They were just not cut out for each other. Taeyong yet clung to Jaehyun's side, it was a special bond that they had. They never had to act up in front of each other and were reassured by each other's silence.
~
As they were teenagers Taeyong read a lot and Jaehyun was always there to listen, he absorbed every word and message Taeyong unloaded on him, was familiar with Tolstoy's philosophy without reading him, was spooked by Stephen King's Horror stories, and knew everything about Plato and Socrates. It was simple for Taeyong to talk to him of the stuff he read because since Jaehyun didn't read it he couldn't argue, only absorb and answer with generalities, shaping his opinion using the bits of thought ty deigned to spill on him. Taeyong often wondered what Jaehyun busied himself with in his freetime since he didn't read, but concluded that perhaps not everyone had to be constantly kept busy. As Jaehyun didn't read, didn't do anything specific, he had much time to absorb what was around him, enjoy the simple things, enjoy the banal stuff, the work of the wind, the gorgeous glare of the moon, the fresh drops of dew on the leaves and bodies of flowers, the world around him. Taeyong jokingly called him the primitive man, Jaehyun didn't have to do much throughout the day to keep himself content and Jaehyun knew that he was lazy to be that way so he didn't deny it. Taeyong admired that about him. Jaehyun didn't have to put on a show, he was naturally charming. He cooked and brought food if you hung out with him, he reached out to fix your hair if it got messed up by the wind, he paid if it was his idea to eat out and he never asked you for money. He rarely ate himself. Cooking was that part of life surrounding him that he showed most interest in, because it was an experience. He would eat what he made and he had real results, nothing abstract but real and impermanent.

When Taeyong knocked on his door that particular evening, Jaehyun was embracing some kind of existential struggle. He was still sore because Adeline, the girl he knocked, had settled for abortion. There was another thing very typical to him, he had always wanted to be a father.
Johnny was still avoiding him, Jaehyun had begun avoiding him in return. He was not in his best state.
"Jaehyun, it's me! Open up", Taeyong cried, as though it could hasten Jaehyun's steps. He pulled his sweater tighter around his body, hugging it anxiously, waiting for any kind of response. Jaehyun shuffled his feet to the door and opening it told Teayong to come in. Taeyong darted to the couch where he took place, realizing it was very cold and, glancing around, that the windows all stood wide open. Jaehyun, a gracious host he was, had instantly made it his task to close them, pacing up the room as he halted by every heater he could find, groping for the handle. "Did you know Ady transferred?", was how Taeyong decided to start, meaning Adeline, to which Jaehyun's reply was,"Did she? Good for her"
He was halfway through with the last window, thrust it shut, and reached to turn and tilt it. "Did you break up with her or something?", Taeyong casually drove on. Jaehyun had turned and yawned. All those preludes were starting to irritate him and he wished he'd just cut to the essence of his visit.
"Well, you could as well have gone milder about it, because now everyone thinks you did it for me"
Jaehyun made a questioning motion with his hand, pointing his finger at himself, giving Taeyong a smile which was a response Taeyong had reckoned with. Jaehyun had heard about that already, yet he said,"For you?"."I guess she spread a rumor-", Taeyong explained and he sounded uneasy, lacing his words with caution,"-of us having an affair behind her back or something"
Jaehyun had meanwhile sat down beside him and was contemplating, obviously picturing what Taeyong had just shared. He was laughing now. Unbothered, Taeyong continued,"Johnny would've been too farfetched, I guess"
The two lapsed into silence. Jaehyun had a look of a man, shot and long dead, with his mouth still open in his last, querulous cry, dying along with the face that now, petrified, displayed the sentence of struggle written all over it. If someone looked at it, he would instantly understand what had killed him and how. His forehead was wan, so white it was almost blue, his eyes rose above the two pouches of lids like two lights in the process of burning out and his mouth shut but wry, was pulled by one corner towards the chin. His cheeks were glistening in the light with crystalline particles scattered across his face like a spell of a fairy, a gleaming trace she had left blowing the sparkling dust into his face.
Ty read from it the struggle, pain, and suffering and wanted to know all about it. How it started and who was to blame, he wanted either to help or be reassured that it was a battle jh had to stand through alone. That this struggle was as important a part of life as the cooking, the wind or the dew on the tips of the leaves in the morning. That there was simply no way around it.
"What a silly thing to make up though", Taeyong stated it as a fact that had to be stated. His smile supported his words, seizing Jaehyun up, he searched for mutuality in his eyes. For a moment, he was certain that the face he was perceiving was simply not capable of what he expected from it, then, Jaehyin suddenly chuckled, pulled up his hand and patted ty cheek. Taeyong was so thrown off by the touch he couldn't focus on anything else. Jaehyun had never touched him before and meant it as a friendly gesture, the kind of a pat a parent would give its child, as a gesture of compassion. There has never been a situation like this, where Jaehyun would feel entitled to such forms of affection though.
Taeyong stared at Jaehyun blundly for a second, then, something in his brain played that famous sound of a click and he leaned forward, exactly as Jaehyun leaned forward too. They kissed naturally, like it was a thing they did sometimes, like it wasn't at all new, without hesitation, without thought, without regret. In this very moment, the world seemed to be on Jaehyun's side, to stand proudly in front of him, smile and approve. It wasn't Taeyong that he kissed, not lips of a living body, it was the whole world and Taeyong just a triviality, an irrelevant detail, a mere formality. Taeyong pushed him back, Jaehyun closed his arms around his neck, the couch was a mere formality too, in Jaehyun's head he was soaring up, through the roof to the couds, he felt light, light like a feather. When they gasped for air and Jaehyun finally managed to speak, what he said was," You're good at this"
"Really? Never did that before"
They kissed again after that. The couch gave out a funny squeak once in a while, the window Jaehyun has omitted, excited, flapped open, then close, within regular even thuds, a slow rhythm of a loud heart. The thuds were accelerating, no more an even rhythm, a violent staccato was pervading the room, one that drives one into anxiety of anticipation, that makes one tremble with excitement. Then opened the door.
Taeyong shot up and fell back. A beat passed in silence and then Johnny knew.
"Look who the cat dragged in"
It was Jaehyun that spoke, he had sighed after that and sat up. His back running straight up to the base of his neck, his head, pulled towards the floor, it dangled there like after a spin, as he stood up, it was still wobbling. He walked to the table throwing it back, then right, then gliding it along his back. His hand flew up to hold at his neck, kneading some nameless muscle, as though the tension it was set to resolve was that of the space surrounding it.
"You lied to me"
Johnny had asked him about the rumor before and Jaehyun had told him something that Johnny concluded to be a lie, for what he was now seeing could not be explained otherwise.
"Are you calling me a liar?" Jaehyun had exhaled it, spread it across the air in a single breath, he was too tired to speak and his exhaustion could be summed up in that one breath, the content of his words was only secondary.
"Why would you lie to me about something like this?"
Jaehyun thought of lighting the cigarette here, but now looked up, straight at Johnny like what he said was said in a language he had to identify first. His eyes were wide and Johnny did not know what to make of it."I am certainly not having this conversation with you right now"
Jaehyun crossed the room, and looked up again as Johnny grabbed his wrist. He had a face that was unyielding in its expression and it was his glare that made Johnny withdraw his hand, not his words. "Don't you dare put your hands on me"
The door was slammed shut and Johnny remained silent for a while. He was ashamed and he didn't know what to say. Taeyong was looking at him begrudgingly whilst he was contemplating, not sure how to deal with what had to be dealt with, searching for an excuse to turn away from it. Meanwhile he said,"Why?" He did not know what he meant as he said that. "oh, fuck off" Taeyong was rushing past through the exit, out into the staircase. His words were rushed too. He was looking for Jaehyun. He had a very bad feeling and his pounding heart told him he was right to have it. He seldom witnessed Jaehyun in pain, sometimes he thought that Jaehyun was unfamiliar with the concept, that Jung Jaehyun never suffered. He was always so calm and so poised that degradation to a feeling such as sadness seemed inappropriate for him as a person.
He seemed so unaffected that it never quite reached the point of sadness or happiness, he was always in the space of between, he was simply existing, enjoying existence in the calm natural kind of way that was accessible only to him. He was nirvana in soul and spirit, people got that from looking at his face, and it was why he invoked so different responses from both, boys and girls. His cool manner was why girls chased him and boys hated his guts. You did not dare to mess with Jaehyun, you were expected to hate him but stay out, because that face was a warning in itself. It was a face of a man that didn't give a flying fuck.
That was why seeing Jaehyun, for the first time, distraught for no apparent reason, Taeyong was actually afraid of what Jaehyun might do. He deemed Jaehyun capable of anything.
He found him in the passage between two dorm buildings, the space dedicated to trash containers and permanent duvets of dust. Hunched by one of the containers, his hand suspended in the air, he was holding the pack of cigarettes. His free hand, tentatively hanging above it, he was hesitating to pick out a cigarette. Taeyong was holding his breath. As Jaehyun hand moved down, it didn't pick out a cigarette, what it had found there was not even in the shape of a cigarette.

Taeyong gasped.