Habit; Soonhoon

03

♧

JIHOON WAS NEVER hung up on Soonyoung, he'd like to get that much straight.

He mourned the loss of their love for a week or two. He cried some. Alright, fine.

But he was the one who decided to wrap himself in ribbon and hold the pieces together; he was the one who told himself to wipe Soonyoung from his mind and heart and move on. It was the healthiest thing to do - and it worked.

Leave it to Soonyoung himself to go and fuck things up again.

"Did it really work, though?" Jeonghan chews his lower lip, and his words fumble past the anxiety of his question. "You say you're fine, Jihoon, that you're over it, but ... you've always seemed a little off."

"You're probably imagining it," he shrugs. "I had to quit the wallowing before it got pathetic, and I started feeling fine a lot sooner than you might expect."

"You miss him, I think."

"I don't really think about him."

Jihoon is blank-faced and toneless, imagining himself a void and throwing any potential emotion into it, where it can't be recovered for the time being. He knows he's only being partly truthful.

He hasn't thought of Soonyoung very often, hasn't let himself; when Soonyoung toes the edge of his consciousness, it's practically reflex for him to shove the boy and all memories regarding him back to the recesses of his mind.

Still, something's always been there. Maybe not Soonyoung, but Soonyoung's shadow. Standing against a white wall when he's dreaming, or when one of his friends makes a risky comment. He might not have fully realized its presence, but he's felt it, ever-so-unsettling. He'll usually do his best to brush it off and ignore whatever it is, chalk it up to lack of sleep.

He's done a pretty good job at tricking himself, he thinks, playing his own mirage.

Jeonghan is gentle in the things he says and does, and he's truthful to no fault - only to the point of necessity - but right now he deems it necessary to tell Jihoon that he's not, in fact, fooling anyone.

"That's ... That's bullshit."

Jihoon bristles.

"No, it's not."

"Uh, yes? Yes, it is. And now you're going back to him - "

"That is absolutely not what's happening," he interrupts, speaking a little too loudly. "He said he wants to be friends again, and I - and I - "

"You want to be friends too?"

"No, no! It was never my idea, never something I'd even considered, but he - but he looked like it would really mean something to him, and I felt ... bad."

"You pitied him?"

"No I - I panicked, okay? What the hell was I supposed to say?"

Jeonghan shrugs and makes a noise, almost accusing. Jihoon gets it.

He could have said no.

The act of being kind and polite for the sake of someone else's feelings has not always been a great priority of his - he could have said no, he could have said he didn't want to be friends, he could have told Soonyoung he wants nothing to do with him anymore. He really could have.

But he didn't. Something told him not to.

"He just wants to be friends again," he says quietly. "Like we were at the very beginning."