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Yeonjun saw it coming from a mile away, if he was honest with himself. He didn’t want to be honest with himself, honesty had always been a tripwire designed perfectly for his demise, but between the endless dance practices and the exhaustion from managing and leading an entire fucking dance troupe and the desperation to be perfect on stage, the cracks had defined themselves into fault lines.
The fourth time he came home to an empty household at midnight felt empty, as if all the air within him had been sucked out. It left him lightheaded, lost, scrambling to hang the keys to the apartment up on the hook lovingly affixed by Beomgyu with a snarky remark on how “the pain of stepping on Legos is nothing compared to the sharp end of that Eiffel Tower keychain you insist upon having attached to the keys” to which Yeonjun had reminded him that it was him who had bought him the damned thing in the first place. The conversation replayed itself in Yeonjun’s mind on a loop, Beomgyu’s face warping between teasing and genuine irritation, his voice impossible to decipher by the tenth time around.
The text still sat in his phone messages, unreplied. There was an “i’m really sorry, hyung” which had followed the video Soobin had sent, a “text me back when you can, worried about you,” a reminder that there was someone there for him. It didn’t matter now, though. Yeonjun couldn’t see past the tears blurring his vision as he stumbled in to sit down on the couch, blinking rapidly to no avail as he tried to forget the godforsaken video. He didn’t want to know, fuck, he didn’t care what that meant about his self-respect or pride. Didn’t everyone say that ignorance was bliss? He would give anything to unsee it, unsee the tangle of limbs and mouths in heated harmony under purple lights, Beomgyu’s eyes closed in ecstasy and in sweet unawareness of the eyes upon him as he merged, became one, with a stranger whose hands had staked fresh claim on Beomgyu’s narrow waist.
He dug his hands into his hair and tugged, choking back the tightness in his throat. The oxygen going through his windpipe felt like poison. Beomgyu still wasn’t home. Yeonjun wasn’t sure he ever would be home again, even if he came back to this apartment which they called theirs. If he could step through the threshold like had thousands of times before with all the ease of a seasoned cheater— God, Yeonjun couldn’t even think the word without bile rising up into his throat. He withdrew his hands to throw the offending phone away from him. It hit the wooden floor with a dull thud, screen lighting up at the movement once again and dimly illuminating the dark living room.
For a moment, Yeonjun stared at where it lay. Then he breathed out, even and measured, and stood, walked over to the phone to pick it up and put it in his pocket, ignored the sticky wetness on his cheeks that had spilled over before he could even realize, and walked to the bedroom, the queen size bed a welcome reprieve from the ache in his back. His head felt like it was full of cotton, and he stared lifelessly at the wall until sleep took over.
Beomgyu returned the next morning with a cheery excuse of how he had been “far too drunk to get home safe, Soobin’s couch had to do for the night,” and Yeonjun plastered a grin on to tell him in return that he was just glad to have him back. To have him home. Home.
They went back to normal, as if nothing had changed. The sameness of it all was suffocating. Yeonjun couldn’t help but watch his lover’s lithe body as he moved around the apartment, haunted by the question of why and when and so much more. When they got under the covers later that evening, Beomgyu positioned himself as always with his back up against Yeonjun’s front and a hand tangled in his hand, the arm which Yeonjun draped over his waist by force of habit held close. But Yeonjun couldn’t stop thinking about it, flickers of the video embedded too deep in his brain to erase, a far cry from the Beomgyu he knew, the Beomgyu he loved and was holding in his arms. The familiar fingers, the thumb stroking over the knuckle in Yeonjun’s hand was everything to him.
And it would stay that way, as long as Yeonjun had any say in it. He didn’t want to know. He didn’t want to know. He didn’t want to know. And perhaps if he could repeat it to himself enough, he really wouldn’t know anymore.