kim jongin's guide to loving oh sehun

part 1/1

kim jongin's guide to loving oh sehun;

[ a depressed individual ]

i. give him a reason to get out of bed every single morning

the day before yesterday, it was because the water heater in sehun's bathroom was damaged. sehun had to rap exhausted knuckles against the sharp wood of jongin's door just to get his kind neighbor to bring a worn-out casserole and fill it with tap water before letting the stove's fire heat it to a reasonable temperature. february's chills and raindrops made itself known outside of jongin's window. he shut it close.

when the pitter-patter of droplets against gravel failed to reach the confines of the room, jongin experienced a desire to barge the windows open, just to slice the thick fog of silence suffocating him because oh sehun refused to part his lips to say anything. sehun produced a pack of cigarettes from somewhere in his jeans, and jongin accepted it.

he did not bother letting sehun know he doesn't smoke, which is why jongin perched the cancer stick between his lips, took a long drag out of it, he raised his eyebrows when his neighbor smiled at him; a mischievous child yet to be punished for a juvenile crime. they stared at each other while waiting for bubbles to rise and smoke to hover over the water.

silence, unlit cigarette sticks, a few feet and unfamiliarity separated jongin and sehun. sehun was unwilling to initiate a conversation, and jongin is too draggy to start one.

heat and time and the water finished boiling. with the help of jongin, sehun carried and poured the hot water on his bathtub. sehun murmured thank you. jongin replied with a grunt that could have meant 'welcome' or 'don't bother me again'. sehun did not let jongin stay inside his apartment long enough to decode his reply. he ushered jongin to the door and slammed it shut (in the most polite way possible).

jongin went back to his own place and realized it's his first time conversing with his neighbor. he only knew sehun's name because it was engraved in gold on his door. why, jongin doesn't know. just that sehun smelled like baby lotion and had the emotional capacity of a rock.

yesterday, it was because jongin discovered a hole on his wall while cleaning his desk. and when he peeped through one eye, sehun's neat room greeted his iris. the furniture consists of shades ranging from trunk-brown to soil-brown and jongin decides it's too melancholic, so he knocked on sehun's door three times to inform him about the hole.

after two minutes' worth of heated argument, jongin decided to be the bigger person and fixed the hole himself because sehun told hi h was the one who found it, therefore he's responsible for it. while jongin tried and failed, and tried again to cover said hole up with flimsy paper and tape, sehun's husky voice echoed on his mind. the voice had no right to be in his brain in the first place, but jongin didn't bother letting it get away by channeling his thoughts differently. oh sehun has a very nice voice. a voice that made jongin think of vanilla ice creams with chocolate syrup and rainbow sprinkles on top.

today, sehun uses his knees because for some reason, his arms feels like jellies and just as incapable of knocking. when jongin answers the door with his lazy, caramel eyes and just-as-caramel skin, sehun asks for his name. when jongin inquires why he might need that, the younger informs him that he hates him and it's only logical to know the name of the person you hate.

jongin introduces himself without imploring for a name in return. before leaving, sehun smiled and jongin spends his whole day wondering if it was meant to be friendly or taunting or somewhere in between.

ii. Act like his phantom limb;
be there when he needs you,
and leave when he doesn't

the day before yesterday, jongin had dragged sehun's staggering frame tipsy with alcohol and spicy kimchi to his room. last night, sehun used an actual hammer to hammer the thin wall separating him from jongin, and like a spell, jongin burst through his room, wanting to know what the fuck rattled sehun's pea-brain for doing that at e-fucking-leven in the evening. sehun had wordlessly dragged jongin by the collar of his cheap shirt out of their building, darting through the city's illuminated maze.