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The glass shattered with a sharp noise against the wall. It used to be a wine bottle, laying abandoned and recently emptied on a table mere seconds before.
Hyunjin flinched when it hit the surface behind his back, startled by the noise even though he had been expecting it. The bottle had also landed so far from where he was standing it might have as well not been aimed at him, but of course that wasn’t the case; Seungmin’s aim had always been kind of off, and when he was this drunk it reached a whole new level.
Almost right after throwing it Seungmin collapsed on the floor of their living room, clearly no longer able to support his body on his legs. Hyunjin just scoffed and walked past him, still seething with rage he didn’t have the chance to fully let out, all thanks to his husband’s excessive drinking; it made it impossible for them to have arguments long enough to really be useful. He wanted to scream more at him, to throw something as well - perhaps one of those hideous luxury contemporary vases of his - and hopefully not miss his target.
The loud bang of his bedroom’s door slamming shut echoed through the otherwise silent house and, left alone with his anger, all Hyunjin could do to soothe his nerves was letting his imagination run. He didn’t want to be there, trapped in that hell of a house he helped to build everyday, but he couldn’t just let his thoughts wander somewhere else: if even he did try to picture happier places, better situations, miles of sandy beaches and parks bathed in warm sunlight, his mind would just take him back to the living room where Seungmin presumably was still lying. After so many years he had nearly stopped to make the effort at all - try to calm himself down, keep the hatred at bay; it was worth nothing. He now accepted there was no point in suppressing the negative feelings, so he let them grow until they consumed him, turned him into the hateful monster he knew he was. Seungmin had done the same.
Sitting on the edge of his bed, he let himself indulge in the memory of a sunny spring day filled with soft pink blooming flowers for maybe two seconds before heading straight to the image his brain would have brought to him either way.
If that’s how it had to be, he should at least make the most of it.
So he pictured Seungmin hopelessly crawling on the shiny mahogany floor, dragging himself on the expensive carpet and across the room deliriously, his actions made sloppy and nonsensical by the daze clouding his brain. He could see him carry his own body to the other side of the room, where the bottle had shattered. He could see his arms giving out and his face falling on a pile of splinters. Hyunjin would hear his pained cry and come out of his room, only to find his husband writhing on the floor, his face covered in glass. He would stand there and watch a large piece of shiny glass dangling from Seungmin’s eye, and blood dripping down his cheeks, his neck, staining his clothes and covering his hands in his desperate attempts to get it off. And he would laugh. He would laugh and rush back to his room to dig out his stiff brushes and dusty oil paint, long untouched as they belonged to a different time, and after years he would paint his husband again: not smiling brightly and illuminated by his own beauty, but twisted in the crazed suffering of a wounded caged animal. It would be his best piece and he would cherish it for the rest of his life, carefully keeping it for himself only to see.
Or maybe the alcohol would make him sick. Then Seungmin could just throw up right there where he had left him and choke on his own vomit. He could die like that, in a banal and disgusting way - oh how satisfying that would be. Hyunjin imagined the morning after, how he would take a couple of minutes to bask in the sight of the corpse, Seungmin’s parted lips tainted with spit and bile, his limbs messily arranged on the floor like a discarded doll’s.
Then he would force himself to cry. It wasn’t difficult, he had done it many times before: he would just need to stare ahead without blinking and accelerate his breathing, and in no time he would be sobbing, ready to call an ambulance and the police and Seungmin’s parents and their friends and anyone else this meticulously crafted panicked spouse would feel the need to alert.
It was the perfect vision, really. Coming back to reality, he felt reborn.
What they had been fighting about this time Hyunjin couldn’t exactly remember. Besides, he didn’t care.
The thing about living like Hyunjin and Seungmin did, carrying all this resentment, this fury even, is that it never quite left. Under his composed appearance, his polite smile and calm demeanor, Hyunjin could constantly feel a pitch black pit. And there was something nestled in there, deep in his guts, that growled and roared and waited to burst. It would do that often, too - bursting, that his. Seeing Seungmin’s face, hearing his voice, being in their house… it was enough to awaken in him a sheer desire to hurt, to destroy everything that he could reach until nothing but emptiness would surround him, and the dark feeling harboring inside him could be let out at last. His husband was the first thing he wanted to see torn to shreds.
So no, he didn’t care what it was this time. It must have been the same old speech anyway: you’ve ruined my life, it’s all your fault, I hope you die and whatever. Trying to determine who said what would be just wasted time - much like their marriage, one could say.
The words they had for each other were interchangeable, really. What they felt for each other was the exact same ugly feeling.
***
Entering the living room the morning after, Hyunjin was disappointed to see the room empty. No blood-stained glass, no corpse covered in puke. The remains of the bottle were still there though, scattered near the wall exactly where he had left them.
Seungmin hadn’t bothered to clean up his mess, and Hyunjin wasn’t going to either. It had happened countless times before anyway, whenever one or the other threw something at the other - it was rather common for them. Neither ever took the responsibility, and they left whatever was broken to just lie on the floor, no matter how dangerous it could be.
Aren’t you going to take this shit off my fucking floor? Hyunjin had once snapped at Seungmin, after what used to be a plate had been staying in the middle of their kitchen for four days. Hyunjin had thrown that one, if he remembered correctly.
Seungmin, who had been sitting at the table sipping on a coffee like nothing was wrong, had just sneered.
No, he had said, not when there’s a chance you’ll trip and cut your throat open.
They always let the charlady take care of that. She came in twice a week, every Tuesday and Friday, and luckily it was Tuesday. It was just up to whoever let her in to come up with some bullshit story about what had happened, anything other than my bastard husband tried to throw this shit at me again because he thinks I’m better off dead. They both found it didn’t sound that well.
By the time she rang the doorbell Hyunjin was ready to put on his best act. He smiled warmly when he opened the door and let her in while asking about her day. He carefully phrased his sentences because he had never bothered to learn her name.
Then, after a couple minutes of empty small talk, he led her to the living room. He did his best to look mortified, standing near the door and not quite entering the room, his eyes fixed on his feet.
“Actually I- just before you rang I was clearing out a couple of glasses and this bottle from last night and I don’t know how but it slipped from my hands… I’ll take care of it though! Don’t worry about it, I’ll just take a second”
The charlady shook her head and waved her hands at him to catch his attention, and when he timidly lifted his gaze she spoke.
“That’s nonsense darling, I can clean this. It’s just a small accident, it wasn’t even full”
Hyunjin smiled at her and stayed while she started on her work by picking up the glass from the floor, thanking her profusely. When it felt like enough he pretended to suddenly remember he had to run some errands, he said goodbye to the charlady and quickly left.
He had nowhere to be, but wandering felt better than being in that house.
The thing he regretted the most - aside from marrying Seungmin, that is - was never getting a job. Seungmin had managed to secure prestigious internships since his first year at law school, he worked hard and graduated in no time, a well-paying position already in his hands. So Hyunjin had taken his time, savored the years spent earning his degree and when he got it he saw no reason to seek out a job - he didn’t have many options anyway. Hell, he had a Philosophy degree.
He had to admit to himself, that was a bad idea right from the start. Even when things with Seungmin were going well he was never made to stay at home: it made him restless, made him spiral. He spent his days feeling trapped, even though nothing was keeping him in. He felt like all he could do to escape that discomfort, that tingle lying under his skin, was keeping his mind busy. He got into art and painted for hours on end, and he always made such a mess that he ended up spending as much time cleaning after himself; he read all kinds of books, tried to get invested in any show they had on tv, and he was constantly calling his friends asking them to hang out. It was like that for a while, until he grew tired. He couldn’t stand being alone, and everything he did was too passive to him, it just wasn’t enough to fill his brain with something, anything that could take him away from himself. And he thought he was doing fine back then.
He was happy, he couldn’t lie. But it was far too easy to forget what it felt like when all those things that drove him and made him do what he did - the loneliness, the need to create, to be useful - coexisted with the exhaustion. Then he was still terrified of being by himself, but he was also physically unable to stand the presence of others, and he still wanted to run around and do anything and everything at once, but he also couldn’t get out of bed. He thought if he had had a job it wouldn’t have been so bad. Having schedules and deadlines and responsibilities would have kept him grounded.
Now that things with Seungmin were the way they were, he didn’t quite feel like that anymore. He had become apathetic, and if he ever got restless again he just ignored it. He wasn’t sure it was better than before, and he wasn’t sure he wouldn’t grow tired again, but he couldn’t bring himself to care. He still wished he had a job though, because that would give him an excuse to be out of the house all the time, just like Seungmin.
He wondered if Seungmin was at work. If he had managed to drag himself to his room the night before maybe he hadn't been that drunk after all, and while Hyunjin was walking down the street lazily eyeing shop windows, he was in his office with his head pounding in his hands.
Or maybe he did die choking on his vomit. Maybe the charlady would be the one to find him collapsed on the bathroom floor, and Hyunjin was about to receive her call and pretend to have a meltdown in the middle of the city, under the eyes of hundreds of passersby. He would have never forgiven that bitch for stripping him of his right to gloat on Seungmin’s corpse.
No, he had probably managed to get his ass to work and he must have had his assistant bring him painkillers. Much like Seungmin himself, she was a snake. That’s why he had hired her in the first place, he figured, it made her good at her job. After all, as a lawyer, Seungmin was the absolute scum of the Earth. Hyunjin knew that was his own fault.
Like many others, when Seungmin started law school he had good intentions. He wanted to change the system, help the ill-fated, bring justice and all that. Needless to say, he wasn’t like that anymore. But Seungmin had never been money-hungry, and he didn’t let power go to his head either. The poor noble soul corrupted by the world he wanted to save, that would have been way too easy to sell, wouldn’t it? Seungmin was stronger than that, he would have never fallen so stupidly - Hyunjin knew, and that’s how he also knew he was the one to blame for the change in Seungmin’s behaviour.
It seemed like he had lost all faith in humanity. The more they grew apart, the more Seungmin’s view of the world around him turned sour. As hard as it was to piece together the dynamics of their downfall, Hyunjin was confident they had both changed their attitudes towards one another at the same time and at the same pace. Yet it seemed that seeing Hyunjin change - the way he became distant, cold, and eventually hateful and aggressive - made Seungmin lose his mind. Seungmin wasn’t any less venomous, any less violent, and before any of them could realize he was a completely different person. Their relationship had cracked somehow and apparently that was enough to turn their worlds upside down.
Seungmin had started drinking too much. He had always had a taste for good wine, he used to nurse a glass for hours to savor its smell and its taste, and now he wouldn’t have been able to tell apart the finest of bottles from fucking boxed wine. Not that Hyunjin didn’t drink, or drank responsively, but he was doing much better than his husband for that matter. He had other ways of self-destructing, and they were a little less cliché.
As Seungmin was becoming an alcoholist, he was also losing all sense of ethics. At some point he had realized he had his dream job, a beautiful house, and what was supposed to be the love of his life right by his side and still, he wasn’t happy. His life was the textbook definition of perfection and yet it felt like hell. How could that be fair? He had never believed in any god or any divine justice, but he did believe in Justice. Hyunjin was the one who took that from him, and he was perfectly conscious of that. If Seungmin had stopped caring about what kind of people he defended in court and if his passionate fight for what’s right turned into showing off his rhetoric skills to easily swayed judges, it was Hyunjin’s fault.
***
If Hyunjin couldn’t tell what had gone wrong in their relationship, the reason why they were keeping up their act was even more unclear to him.
While he may not understand - and he suspected Seungmin didn’t either - Hyunjin still put maximum effort in playing his part. Pretending he was as happy and in love as he was supposed to was second nature, and so was making himself look like a good person.
He supposed it had something to do with respectability. Like a fucking Jane Austen novel. Except it made no sense, since being gay and married to a man was never the most respectable thing to do, especially for Seungmin. Hyunjin had often been at events as Seungmin’s partner, events he had to attend to make connections and secure his position at work, and it was painfully obvious how having Hyunjin attached to his arm instead of some random trophy wife made things more difficult than they had any right to be. If it truly had something to do with social prestige, then he should have just gone for a woman.
He had told Hyunjin so, once. He had said if he had to spend his whole life with somebody he hated it might have as well been a woman from a respectable family to make him look good in the field. Well, the wine and whatever he had mixed it with made him slur the whole speech and he did throw a couple of profanities here and there, but that was the global sense. That time Hyunjin had almost asked him why he didn’t just leave him for someone else then, someone he would hate all the same but useful. More useful than him. He hadn’t though, he knew better - he knew Seungmin didn’t have an answer for that.
Then there were their friends. The act, Hyunjin figured, was for them. They had always known them as the perfect couple: they were the ones who had been together since high school and would have been prom kings, if only prom could have two kings. In their eyes they had always been soulmates, disgustingly in love and obnoxious about it, and here they were, going out of their ways to uphold that reputation and wrecking their own lives as a result.
It was an unspoken rule between Hyunjin and Seungmin to be particularly careful around their friends, because if they were to drop the act with them it would be game over. And rationally they knew, of course they knew, that their friends would have all supported them from the start if they had immediately spoken up about their problems, and that no one would have picked sides and they would have still loved them, but it didn’t matter now. They went far too deep. It made no sense, but it was how it was, no changing that.
***
In the afternoon Hyunjin met up with Felix and Jeongin.
It was a random decision mostly, fueled by the fact Felix had a day off, Jeongin only worked in the morning and Hyunjin, well, he did nothing all day. It also wasn’t his suggestion to see each other, and that made him glad - he didn’t like begging for company anymore.
He still happily accepted though, and despite being free and bored out of his mind for the entirety of that morning, he still managed to skip lunch and arrive at Felix’s late. It was all planned, but still.
Now one thing he had never understood about Felix was his insufferable, idiotic fixation with pictures. Not taking them, but rather looking at them. And this time too, when he let himself in he found Felix sitting on the nice cream porch swing in his tiny garden, Jeongin by his side and the dumbest huge smile on his face as he flicked through a photobook. Yes, that’s right. He printed them. That’s borderline obsessive behavior, if you asked him.
“Hyunjin look! Remember these?”
As soon as he sat down next to Felix, his friend excitedly shoved the photobook in his lap to look at. It was a flimsy little thing, barely holding itself together: it was made from scrap, all poorly arranged cardboard and papers precariously glued together - even carefully balancing it on his thighs felt like a leap of faith. Felix had decorated it with all sorts of tapes and ribbons and god knows what else in a fashion Hyunjin could only describe as pastel maximalism. He found it infantile and ugly, in a somewhat charming way.
Unfortunately hyperfocusing on the horror that was the overall layout could distract him to an extent to the pictures laid out in front of him, pictures he was well acquainted with. They were Jeongin’s favorites after all, and Felix had always been a people pleaser to an embarrassing extent. Ironically, most of those photos were taken by Seungmin and by Hyunjin himself. If only he had known.
He couldn’t remember how many years had passed precisely, but it had been a while. It was summer, one of those god-given warm and breezy summers, and their whole group of friends had gone on holiday together to the seaside, not far from Jeongin’s hometown. They had rented a house for two weeks, and it was a dream with its white wooden decor and huge windows - for eight people it was tiny, but when you’re young as they were that’s hardly a problem: they had group showers, they were always at the beach and never slept. Hyunjin remembered how many nights they had spent partying on the sand, sometimes in proper discos, sometimes by themselves with the cheapest bottles of whatever they sold at the liquor store. He also remembered some of them managing to keep up with such rhythms better than others, the latters ending up loudly snoring in the middle of the beach with the sun way up in the sky.
He only vaguely remembered the bed, the one he was almost never in, where he had fucked a lot more than he had slept. Seungmin and he used to fuck a lot back in those days. It had been almost impossible to have alone time on that holiday, but again when you're young as they were you found a way. Admittedly it had taken a while for their sex life to die down, and sometimes it still amazed Hyunjin how much time he had needed to become touch-repulsed. Perhaps it had something to do with the irresistible appeal of hate sex, or the fact that Seungmin was objectively good-looking, and very much so. Or it might have just been both of them having needs and nothing more. After all, Hyunjin had never cheated on him. He had a feeling Seungmin hadn’t either, but at the end of the day he had no way of knowing, and he found he didn't really care.
A lot of those pictures were so bad because they had been taken by drunk people by night, and, Hyunjin had to admit, it was hilarious seeing a picture of Felix, presumably completely naked, immersed in the dark water with just half his head and a hand clutching a mostly empty bottle of rum peaking out, fixed to the photobook with a baby blue string and a couple kitten stickers. The juxtaposition was kind of genius.
Alas, among all the images of red-eyed people and carelessly used camera flash there were also some pretty decent photographs, taken in daylight by a steady hand, and depicting slightly less messed up subjects. His eye landed on a picture of himself coming out of the water, holding Seungmin’s hand. As he looked at it, he could almost feel his lips burning with salt and his drenched hair dripping water down his already wet shoulders and back. He was facing away from the camera, looking at his husband - then boyfriend - with a genuine smile directed at him, which Seungmin was returning. He traced the edge with the tip of his forefinger and let his face contort in a wide grin, while he easily suppressed a nauseous feeling.
Hyunjin immediately realized the only way he could survive this hangout and keep his sanity, or what was left of it anyway, was drinking through it. The sooner he got himself a drink, the better. With an empty stomach it was guaranteed to kick in fast, and that made the sickness afterwards worth it.
It wasn’t too hard to get what he wanted, really. He just looked at another couple of pages, smiled at some other gut-wrenching photos and threw in little comments about how amazing it had been and how they should totally go on a holiday like this together again. It was impossible now that each of them had jobs and families which came with different schedules and duties, they knew it as well as he did. Thank God for that. Dinner parties are one thing, but Hyunjin couldn’t possibly think he and Seungmin could stomach each other’s presence and act all lovey-dovey for twenty-four consecutive hours, let alone two weeks. Still, he managed to get his friends in a reminiscing, day-dreaming mood, and those kinds of moods just call for a good drink to pair them with.
Honestly it was far too easy to get them to agree to get alcohol. Jeongin especially, he was always so eager to drink whenever the opportunity presented itself - it was a little concerning. Oh, well.
Another chilling detail about Felix’s house is he had alcohol, but only weird and almost undrinkable things. Like lemon-flavored beer. Rosé wine. Sangria. And worst of all that mint-flavored vodka that tastes like fucking mouthwash. Hyunjin was kind of picky, he could admit that to himself, but he found when he wanted to get drunk he was willing to compromise. Not that he would ever tell Felix about how horrible he found his taste, he couldn’t really afford to have his friends see how bitter and hateful he had become.
Still, the moment he got his hands on a bottle of that liquid toothpaste of a beverage he felt all his concerns leave him at once, and it only got better when the photobook was discarded - read as carefully placed inside, none of them were animals - and the three of them started to drink and talk freely. That was also when everything fell apart.
Truly astonishing, how the smallest misstep can lead to a disaster. A solid foundation of lies, Hyunjin discovered, could crumble in less than a minute, sending countless years of hard work to waste, and all because of a stupid comment carelessly thrown between shots.
He forgot the words he said the second they left his mouth, but he knew it was something about how much he loathed Seungmin’s voice. Of course, he had coated the confession in a sugary layer of fake affection, but he should have realized earlier that wasn’t going to be enough. He had never dared to take such a risk, why the hell should he begin now.
Felix didn’t actually think much of it. He clearly though Hyunjin was joking, and laughed as he replied with some slurred sentence that was only half-comprehensible, his voice already sounding drowsy. What are you even saying, you never shut up about how angelic Minnie’s voice is, or something like that. To properly understand that, Felix would have had to have his full attention, which he didn’t, because Hyunjin was focused on Jeongin.
As soon as he had said that, whatever that even was, Jeongin’s head snapped in his direction, eyes wide and smile wiped from his face in an instant. He understood, he very obviously understood that something was wrong, and Hyunjin had no idea how he could be so lucid still but it was clear Jeongin could see it wasn’t a one time thing.
All was back to normal in the span of a second. Jeongin turned to Felix, who was already talking about something else, his face morphing into a smile so easily it was kind of disturbing. Hyunjin also recomposed himself in no time, and he managed to surprise himself how simple it was to keep pretending even as panic coursed through him stronger than it ever did. The act truly had become a part of him - he could no longer get rid of it.
Up until they said their goodbyes and parted ways, Hyunjin could feel Jeongin’s eyes on him, and, as subtle as his looks were, they held an unbearable weight. Felix seemed to be clueless, but Hyunjin couldn’t find any relief in that. If Jeongin had truly understood, the act wasn’t going to last.
As soon as he reached his house, Hyunjin rushed to the bathroom, fell to his knees and threw up. He knew it wasn’t because of the alcohol.
***
The morning after found Hyunjin sitting in the living room, waiting. His night had been filled with insomnia, and not the somewhat comforting, familiar kind he had spent most of his life with. Anxiety had been churning at his insides, keeping him painfully awake and petrified, and worse of all sometimes allowing him to slip, just for handfuls of minutes at a time, in a delirious, restless sleep, from which he awoke more shaken than before.
He waited until morning, then he waited some more to hear Seungmin leave, and he finally dragged himself into the living room and texted Jeongin. He had asked him to come meet him, and Jeongin had agreed to come around in the afternoon. The exchange had been curt and uncharacteristically cold, but undeniably fitting for their current situation.
And now, left with nothing but nervous waiting, Hyunjin let himself be absorbed in the appearance of the room he was in.
When they had first moved in, Seungmin had taken care of the interior design, and he had chosen contemporary style - Hyunjin had never liked it, but at the time he was fine with it. So the house had been filled with neutral coloured furniture, cold shiny materials and minimalistic prints. Initially, Seungmin was planning to replace the original mahogany floor with a tiled one, but he ended up deciding against it because Hyunjin loved it so much. A nice gesture, it sure had felt like one at the time, but now he saw it was an eyesore. A luxurious wooden flooring, with its rich dark brown hues, didn’t belong in a house like that, heartless and impersonal. It was far too warm, too beautiful, and it just filled Hyunjin with more rage, because it didn’t represent what living there was like at all, it mismatched grotesquely with what he felt.
As he took in the familiar nightmare that surrounded him, time seemed to dilate - yet it still passed too quickly. The doorbell ring came to his ear, soon, too soon, and it found him unprepared. Hyunjin shivered, but he rose to his feet to answer the door.
He wasn’t ready. He had known before but he was sure when he saw Jeongin standing in his doorway, hard eyes meeting his. He shivered again. Years had passed since the last time he had felt this vulnerable, and the feeling was so foreign it found him unprepared, unable to handle himself. Hyunjin could sense a lifetime of lies crumbling under his feet, making his head spin, condemning him to free fall.
He didn’t look like he felt though, this he knew for sure. Everything in his appearance was perfected to the point of coming off as eerie. He had selected his clothes, carefully washed and brushed his hair, and even as he sat by himself his posture was stiff and impeccable. Even his guts twisting themselves in his stomach felt like a mechanic act, and his anxiety something merely physical and performative, that couldn't beat the apathy lying underneath.
Still, it was almost like Jeongin could see something beyond, perhaps something that was lost to Hyunjin himself. There was a hint of surprise in Jeongin’s eyes, and something that looked like sympathy, but tasted like regret.
Hyunjin let him in like he normally would, and as they sat down on the couch once again a thick tension lingered in the room. Hyunjin knew it was there, but he couldn’t quite perceive it.
“Hyunjin,” Jeongin spoke at last, after some minutes had passed in utter silence “what’s really going on here?”
Now that was a stupid question, Hyunjin thought. The answer it was calling for was far too vast, and not something he could provide. There were thousands, million things he could say. He could have said that Seungmin was cruel, and violent. He could have said Seungmin was an alcoholist. He could even have said that Seungmin used his words to hurt - at work putting his voice at service of the wicked, at home finding the most hateful things to torture his husband with. He could have said that all the things Seungmin was, Hyunjin was as well.
“I hate this living room” is what he said instead.
Jeongin took a moment to register the calm, measured tone Hyunjin used, and the words that rolled out of his mouth.
“What?”
“It’s cold, and soulless. Grey is the only color you’ll see here. The whole house is like this. It’s hideous”
Jeongin blinked at him, slowly, but stayed silent. It was like he knew, after the initial shock, that if he allowed him to, Hyunjin would keep on talking. And he was right. He had nothing left to lose now.
“I hate this house too. This isn’t a home, it’s a living hell”
“And Seungmin..?”
“Of course I fucking hate Seungmin. That bastard ruined my life, he took everything from me and turned me into a monster and then forced me to pretend all was alright and we’re in love and living the dream but we’re not, I ruined his life too and he fucking hates me too”
Hyunjin didn’t raise his voice. He stared ahead, looked at Jeongin right in the eyes and watched the horror take over his features. But it was okay. He had said it at last. And Jeongin was horrified, yes, but not nearly as surprised as he should be.
Just like Seungmin was turned into a cold-blooded monster in an expensive suit, Hyunjin had also lost something. He didn’t believe in love anymore. He, who had always been a hopeless romantic. Arguably, it wasn’t as serious as Seungmin’s situation: him losing his work integrity and his ethics ruined lives, for sure, but Hyunjin was now selfish enough to realize it and not care.
Once he would have given his everything for others - Seungmin, his friends, even complete strangers. He used to overflow with ingenuity and kindness and love. He didn’t think he could ever run out of it, he went out of his way to express it and it never felt like enough. But he was dried out now and he would never be back to what he used to be.
It wasn’t just Seungmin, he didn’t love anyone anymore. Anything. So even if he came back home and found Seungmin dead, what would he do? He won’t start over and live a happy life, he can’t. He hadn’t been living since years before, since the day he had stopped loving, and he can’t even fucking pinpoint when that was. He lost everything, and he’ll never have it back.
Jeongin knew.
Jeongin knew and there was a dull pain in his eyes, like he was mourning Hyunjin who was right in front of him. He was mourning his friend and the life he could have lived, the life Seungmin could have lived, and the life they all could have if things were different. And just like Hyunjin, Jeongin didn’t understand what had gone wrong, or why. But he knew.
For a moment, one agonizingly long second, Hyunjin felt that same pain he could see in Jeongin’s eyes. Then their souls mirrored one another, they screamed in unison, and after all that time Hyunjin shared an emotion with another human being, something different from the hatred he felt for Seungmin and Seungmin felt for him. It hit him full force, gave him whiplash, and then it was gone.
Hyunjin was back with his apathy, the all-consuming void lying beneath. Still, Jeongin knew. He might have to murder him now.
***
Long after Jeongin had left - Hyunjin hadn’t murdered him in the end - Seungmin came back from work.
He found Hyunjin on the couch, waiting still. Hyunjin never waited for him in the evening, not since a long while, but Seungmin made a point of ignoring it as he went to grab a beer and sit at the kitchen table.
Hyunjin wordlessly got up and went to stand beside his husband, who was taking his first few generous gulps from the drink in his hands, and he didn’t waste any time before speaking up.
“Jeongin knows”
Of course, there was no need to specify what Jeongin knew.
After all those years, Hyunjin didn’t think Seungmin was capable of surprising him anymore. They had become the same ugly thing, they thought the same thoughts and spoke the same words, everytime without fail, but not this time. He was expecting anger, he was waiting for his husband to shout and to beat him, and he was ready to take it and return it. Instead, what hit him was the sound of Seungmin’s humorless laugh crawling all the way up to his ears.
“I think you’re worth nothing,” Seungmin’s tone was light, conversational even “but I thought you could handle this one simple thing. That was so stupid of me”
Hyunjin didn’t bat an eye - he stayed unmoving and quiet. Seungmin continued instead.
“You dumb fucking bitch” the insult wasn’t spat up through gritted teeth like it was usually said, like it was meant to be said, but offered like any other four words “All these years of hard work just thrown out of the fucking window. You’re no good even as a fake”
Seungmin didn’t bother to look at him, he stared straight ahead with a light smirk playing on his lip, a disgusting mix of disbelief and resignation, with a hint of amusement.
“You ruined my life” Hyunjin finally says, not for the first time “I never fucking see you and I can’t shake the thought of you. Every second of my life I can’t even try to be happy because you’re always with me. You haunt like the worst fucking nightmare”
Seungmin’s sneer sounded to him like the screech of nails on a blackboard.
“I’m always thinking about you too, love”
“I hope you die” Hyunjin barked at him, harsh.
“I hope we both die” Seungmin finally lifted his head and met his eyes. Hyunjin knew right away what it meant.
We’re never getting rid of each other.