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chctshire · 6 years

Text

unravelling.

harin&kyuro, 18k

“i love you” 154-200.

HARIN & KYURO

setting: hotel in tokyo

timeline: after shatter notes: relationship w/ hyunjoong declared over due to “busy schedules” earlier in the day

HARIN

it’s a familiar sight. the wide windows looking out on a cityscape familiar in its innumerable lights and sounds, its distant horns and the sound of cars, but unfamiliar in its features, in the language scrawled over signs, in the buildings that loom around her. she enjoys the anonymity of it, the disconnect from a city, a country that has become stifling. she’s a study in alcoholism and exhaustion, splayed out across the oversized bed, an oversized tshirt falling to mid thigh and a bottle of wine in her hand. probably illadvised to bring it onto the bed with her, but its a white, at least, so if (when) she spills it should be fine. its sweet on her tongue, a dessert wine with the barest prickle of honey sweet.

its her celebration.

it’s a fairly pathetic celebration, since she isn’t free of anything. she’s been relegated from public girlfriend and private whore to private whore alone and that in itself is somehow even more degrading. another nail in the coffin of her self esteem, another promise that she is not the sort of person people love, not the sort of person good for much more than her body and her looks, and even that will fade in time and then what - then what?

maybe she won’t get to that point, she muses idly, maybe she will use herself all up first, before then. it’s a sick thought she ought not entertain, but it slinks into her mind unbidden nonetheless, fingers scrolling idly through the comments as they pepper the articles from that morning. she’ll be the talk of the town, management had said, for at least a little bit, and wouldn’t that be nice. probably asked for an interview or two, ostensibly due to the comeback but really so they can sneak a question in about him. the thought makes her sick. she wants to scream the truth at them, just to silence the guilt and the hatred that twist in her chest, but even that wouldn’t work.

there’s a knock at the door that she’s too tired to answer, a buzz of her phone and she tosses it away without looking. she knows already who it is; the reason she’s doubled down on the wine. the reason she’s got a heat that builds behind her eyes before she even tugs it open to see him, all tousled hair and seeking eyes, looking for an answer that she’s going to have to give him.

its not the one he wants, though.

“thought i’d see you today.” she murmurs, offers something in lopsided approximation of a smile, half lurches on her feet as she beckons him inside ever so slightly clumsily. “lets get this over with.”

KYURO

when he wakes that morning in his makeup chair, it’s with a shake, with a brush swirling at his cheek. with a distant, ‘hyung wake up. hyung, kyuro hyung, you have to see this,’ that sounds something like juno or maybe daeul, jaesung? he can’t remember now. doesn’t really care, either, because there’s a phone shoved in his face and even through blurry, barely awake eyes he can read the title crystal clear.

sp ent. confirms hyunjoong and rebelle’s harin have broken up due to busy schedules.

and he moves to stand up, to run, to scream out loud because finally. fucking finally. but there’s already a stiff hand on his shoulder weighing him down before he has the clear mind to get up, a shake of their leader’s head and a glare he hasn’t seen in a long time because none of them dare to give him one and a, ‘later.’ so, later it is even if it feels like eons away. after makeup, after wardrobe, after sound check, after giving every inch of his body to their closing stage, letting his bubbling excitement overflow into his bones, his voice, his cocky smiles and the longest, longest linger afterwards. breath heavy, sweat pooling underneath the headband around his forehead, gaze intent into the recording camera before he mouths a one eighty three, i love you and tosses the mic.

he has slowed down considerably since before he saw her last. at least with all the public ones. in2ition’s ceo had called him up a day after he snuck into her dorm and told him, in so many words, to cut it out. people are starting to suspect. do you want last year to be your peak? think about the other members, too. work on another mixtape instead, we’ll give you a third music video this time if you want. he doesn’t know how he found out, but he can’t do anything but apologize profusely, and promise he won’t do it again. so, he doesn’t. until tonight. when he gets backstage, he can see the notifications piling up on his phone, can hear the constant buzz of it against the table. but his mind is elsewhere, his mind has long since been in her hotel room, room 200 according to a mutual friend because maybe, he thinks, the universe knows. maybe, this is it telling him something. telling him --

‘be careful.’

it’s not the universe but his roommate for the night, watching as kyuro sprays on expensive cologne and spits the mint gum he had been chewing to hide the smoke. kyuro just grins at him from the mirror a, ‘don’t worry,’ while he fits his rolex around his wrist and feels like a million bucks.

he leaves his shared hotel room after texting her that he’s coming, leaving the complimentary mini-bar all in tact. he smells like cigarettes and brand-name cologne when he walks down the hall, keeps his head down in the elevator to avoid the cctv. but he doesn’t smell like alcohol. for once, when he knocks on her door he isn’t drunk on anything but that headline. the best headline he thinks he’s ever seen. even better than those that detailed his mixtape or war’s never-ending achievements.

for once when he knocks, his heart is full instead of twisting with ache.

and then she opens the door and he can smell the wine, can see the half-heartedness of her smile, can hear her say, ‘let’s get this over with,’ and his heart sinks.

he comes in when beckoned, shuts the door quiet behind him before placing pale fingers around her waist to steady her, “of course i’d come. but -- get what over with?” a huge part of him had thought, upon reading the headline, that half of it was a lie. it’s always a lie, busy schedules. but the sliver of hope she had extended to him had him thinking maybe. maybe he got through to her. maybe it was because of him.

maybe he was wrong, he worries now.

“i’m not here for that. not in that way. i just thought...” he trails off, because what did he think? that she’d welcome him with open arms? a little bit, yeah. but now his eyes are flickering frantic between hers as if searching for some sort of answer in them and he feels light-headed when he can’t find it and thinks that maybe he should have poured some alcohol into his system. instead, he sits at the edge of the bed, sees his watch in the corner of his eye and thinks to himself that had been too much. that he expected too much.

“the articles weren’t lying, right?” he asks, almost pleading.

HARIN

when he asks her that question - the worst question, she can only laugh. its something mirthless and broken, like a ghost of what she’d been before. she tries not to look at him, not to see it on his face, but she fails. of course she fails, like she’s failed at everything - self control, dignity, kindness, love.

god he looks good.

and the worst part is that he looks happy. he looks so goddamn happy she could break in half right there, rupture on the floor and bleed right out. or at least - he did look happy. now he looks confused, written so obvious over his face, like he’s a balloon that’s been popped. deflating before he even knows why.

in another world she would have comforted him. in another world she would have clung to him the minute she opened the door - like she wanted to this time, and the time before, and every other time she’s ever seen him darken a distinctly familiar in its unfamiliarity hotel doorway.

she takes a gulp from the bottle and closes her eyes so she doesn’t have to see the look on his face, because harin is equivalent to coward in modern language and she just can’t do it. can’t see it.

it doesn’t stop her from hearing it, though.

his voice is raw suddenly, twisting into her like a knife. something pleading - a last chance to be a liar, to ruin herself and take him down with her and maybe, she thinks, looking back on a one eighty three she’d watched just an hour earlier, it would be worth it. for as long as it lasted - hours, minutes, days - it could be worth it. but then she remembers the look on his face when he performed to day. the fire there and the love and she can’t do it. not to him. to herself, sure, but not to him.

“of course its a fucking lie. every article has been a lie, kyuro.” she grates back at him, acidic and weary at once. “we weren’t dating,” its half a snarl, disgust in her tone because what’s the point of hiding it now, takes another mouthful because without a chemical crutch she can’t do any of this. “and it’s not over.”

she prays this is enough to get the message across, keeps her head turned out to the skyline because she can’t - refuses - won’t look at him when it all dawns on him, when her last chances at whatever this has been crumble.

KYURO

he’s always suspected.

how could he not? why else would she let him come in every time. why else would she have claimed to always cry, after. why else would she stay with that disgusting piece of shit (in kyuro’s own words) even after he left her battered and bruised and broken.

but he always left the thought at the back of his mind, filed under things that can’t be true because harin wouldn’t do that. and even if she did, she would’ve told him. wouldn’t have let him come and come and come back, each time more painful than the last, without telling him the truth. right? right?

wrong.

so fucking wrong.

everything about it. wrong.

his face twists into a multitude of emotions. shock, confusion, denial, realization, and anger. always anger. even now, after one hundred and eighty goddamn three. still anger. a volatile emotion that prompts him to stand again in a hurry, head spinning, pounding, aching. and he paces. steps away from her because he thinks if he sees her put that bottle to her lips one more time he might snatch it away. so instead he walks, slow shaky steps behind her, breath leaving him in a huff, in a scoff, in an unbelievable laugh. less pacing, more stumbling around in place, in some sort of lopsided circle with his hands in his hair squeezing, scratching, ruffling angrily.

after a few seconds of this he doesn’t know what else to say except, “why?”

it comes out louder than he’d expected. rougher, raw. the one question neither of them can ever answer but god, he needs one now.

he turns to look at her and when he sees her back instead, he grabs. turns her from her shoulder, forces her to look at him. to see the fire in his eyes, “why didn’t you just tell me? and why the fuck are you telling me now? tonight? one hundred and eighty three stupid fucking confessions later?”

HARIN

she keeps her gaze trained on the city lights outside her window. she keeps herself focused on not this, anything but this, anything but him, right now. its bad enough she can hear him. it’s bad enough she can feel the shift in the air, the change in his mood. distractedly, her mind brings back the image of him when she’d opened the door. the feel of him next to her. the way he’d tasted like the oranges she made him share with her. the earnestness in his voice at one fifty three, and four, and five, and six, and seven. so many times she almost believed did.

did believe it.

but it’s one thing to believe something and another to deserve it, and god knows she doesn’t. his steps trace behind her erratic and unsteady and she flinches away from it on instinct, shoulders drawn, and his laugh - it cuts into her like knives, brutal and sharp. this is the moment, the conversation, the unravelling she has been avoiding for so long and now that it is here she thinks, it is a little unfair for her to be so broken by it, when she always knew it was coming.

she drains the rest of the bottle, lets it hang at her side in listless fingers and flinches from his question.

he doesn’t let that happen though, his grip steady and rough when he tugs her to face him, and she sways on her feet - might have balanced herself against him on another day, but she doesn’t. why? “the same reason anyone makes a deal like that.” she says, loathing coating her words. “for screentime. articles. headlines. cf deals. brand deals.” she rattles off, all the things she’s gained at the price of everything inside her, as if any of that matters now.

and when his voice rings so desperate she musters up whatever courage she might have left because if she doesn’t cut him off now what can they do, either of them? they can’t make this work. they can’t avoid their own inevitable undoing.

“because you keep coming back.” she pulls a deep breath, shaky and unsteady, tries to fit all the disdain for herself into the words she pushes at him. “and i’ve lost my best excuse to keep you away.”

KYURO

he is in between stage one and two of the five stages of loss (the loss of his heart). waffling between denial and anger, tipping towards anger the more she speaks. of course he knows that why. a sponsorship is so called for a reason, a deceivingly normal word to hide the seediness behind it. and, in some twisted way, somewhere deep inside him he understands. he knows the desperation this industry breeds, had experienced it himself. had threatened his own company because of it. had spent hour after waking hour polishing music, polishing choreography, for even just three minutes of spotlight. and it had worked. every day a new headline, every day a new achievement, until no one could deny their existence anymore.

but this. this is different.

this, he doesn’t understand. so he tries desperately to make himself understand, frames it in terms that might make it easier to accept, his hands, trembling and hot, on her shoulders, “but why- why you? your company made you do this, didn’t they?”

there are so many why’s floating around in his head, crowding it, aching it. so many memories trying to counter it, the softness of her ‘one,’ the breathiness of her ‘please.’ but the smell of wine radiates off her and the loathing in her voice dizzies him, leaves his mind in shambles.

and then she breathes, shaky, unsteady, and speaks with all the same disdain he has for hyunjoong and brings him out of it; clears his mind except for her words repeating like a broken record scratching, grating, ‘best excuse - keep you away.’

he breaks. crumbles. feels something get lodged in the back of his throat before he manages to spit out with all the fire in his stomach, “fucking hell, harin.” he lets go of her then, almost pushing her back with the abruptness of the motion, the way his arms swings up, then down when he reaches for the bottle, then up again when he has half a mind to throw it. smash it. just to break something other than himself for once. and he almost does it, really does. staring at the the empty wall, fingers tight, knuckles white around the neck of the empty bottle.

instead he exhales shakily and inhales just the same, lets the bottle, lets his arm, fall down to his side in a swift, dejected motion. “why do you need to keep me away so fucking badly? we both know -- everyone knows -- that i love you. one eighty four. so why won’t you let me? i know--” he pauses there on an incredulous laugh, empty, aching, tongue sliding through his lips, teeth catching his bottom lip like he wants to prolong the, “no, i thought i knew. that you love me too, so why do you hate it so much that i keep coming back?”

HARU

He’s desperate for something to make this okay and she can hear it in his voice, trembles to her core because how can she do this? How can she convince the man she loves- if she’s being honest and now, she must be honest - of her own greatest shame, her own disgusting actions, her own rot and ruin? How can she?

It’s only the memory of what he’d looked like on stage that keeps her going, the fire that burns out of him on stage, like a hundred suns exploding with each verse, each word. He’s come too far and worked too hard, clawed his way up purely on merit and skill and how on earth can she let him ruin all of that over her?

“I said yes,” she tells him, a short dismissal of his arguments. She wasn’t forced. Heavily encouraged maybe. Coerced arguably. But she had seen the benefits there, too. Whether it had been strictly fair or moral she had agreed to the terms on the table-even if they had changed, even if they were more of a trap now than an exchange. There were always excuses- she was young, she was desperate, whatever. But she had said yes.

She shuts her eyes tight as if that can protect her against his words, against the loathing she knows she’ll find there( if not now then soon, surely ) and she drains the bottle only for him to yank it away from her. For a moment she’s sure he’ll fling it at her, or the wall, but he doesn’t and she lets out a breath she didn’t know she’d been holding.

“Because it’s stupid, kyuro. This whole -“ she gestures erratically between them, “thing is fucking stupid.” She pushes her hand back through tousled hair, yanks at the sleep shirt that has slid down her shoulder in their conflict, shakes her head in sharp uneven rhythm. “I hate it.” She says. I hate myself, she means. “I hate you,” she says, but she means herself again, and her choices. “I hate this.” This one rings true- she hates what she’s doing, what she chose, what she’s already done to him. “It was a mistake.”

KYURO

“why,” he breathes out like a broken record.

because he is, broken.

she had built him up with little slivers of hope and he let her, fervently ignoring everything that the thin silver lining encaptured -- the vitriol, the anger, the piercing words and nails. because he was, is, selfish. wants so badly to love. because now, at twenty-four and checking off all his professional goals quicker than he can think of new ones, love is all he hasn’t done. not properly, anyway. and is it so bad that he wants it with the one person who knows all sides of him? the charismatic side, the passionate, the sarcastic, the obsessive, the angry, and perhaps most importantly now: the honest, the soul-bared and desperate and damn near pathetic. because it had taken everything in him to show her all those sides, the honest, in particular. and he’s not sure he can go through that again with anyone else. not sure he wants to.

so of course, he is broken. because the silver lining has snapped and let the horrible, horrible contents flood out and wash over him all at once. and now, well. he hates himself for letting it get this far. grabs the bottle and hesitates to do anything with it except clutch it in his iron tight grip and hope it might break in his hands, dig glass through his skin to redirect the pain from his heart to something physical. something he can understand.

“yeah,” he agrees, for once, in a huff of breath, a small laugh strained and bitter, a grip tighter around the bottle, “this is stupid. so stupid. it was a huge fucking mistake. that i ever thought you could love me.” he punctuates with a scoff, with one step backward, with a hand to his other, twisting the watch around his wrist just to do something with his hand other than reach out to touch her. because if he does, he thinks he might lose it. as if he hasn’t already. because, i hate you, she says. and maybe he doesn’t believe it, but that doesn’t make it sting any less, one more dagger to his chest.

“shut up,” he spits out, squeezes the neck of the bottle tighter. “shut up,” he repeats, twists the bottle around in his hand. “fuck you,” he snarls, takes another step back, another, and another just in case, before he throws the bottle against the wall beside him with all the power she had seeped out of him. throws it because it felt like it was going to break in his hands if he kept it there any longer and he doesn’t want to redirect the pain anymore. wants to remember the impossible ache in his deflated heart, memorize it, internalize it, so maybe next time he won’t come back.

“you don’t get to tell me you hate me after everything i’ve done to try and make this stupid mistake work,” his volume rises with every word and now he’s seething, burning, breathing heavy and glaring right into her eyes, “i should hate you.”

and still, he doesn’t.

HARIN

in a distracted lull, some desperation of the mind to escape the duress of the present situation, harin thinks of the past. she thinks of they way she had felt the first time she saw him perform, how her heart had stopped in her chest. how they’d greeted war backstage and she couldn’t take her eyes off him, how she’d felt when he sent that first message. how it had been to steal moments backstage, to lock eyes across a room, to have this secret happiness in the middle of a bleak world.

she thinks, also, about numbers. about the unnumbered i love you’s that night, about the one hundred and eighty four that will be the last number, about how close they were to two hundred, about how much it had taken from her to say one. about how right it had been to say one. she thinks about another life when she could have made it to one thousand, one million if he’d let her. if she’d let herself.

so she tells him she hates him, because it’s the last thing she can do for him, and the first kindness she’s extended. in her first truly unselfish act, she hurts him, breaks him even, and how ironic is that? in all her selfishness and cruelty, even her kindness becomes a weapon.

someday he’ll realize she’s done him a favor now. he’ll meet and marry an actress, a lyricist, a regular wonderful woman. they’ll have children, and he’ll be happy. and that woman won’t have dark secrets, and she will be able to say i love you, and she will smile at him when he smiles and laugh with him when he laughs and he will have a career that spans as long as his lifetime and it is only that thought that gets her through it, the lips forming words she never wanted to say, that she hates to say, that she says to herself more than to him but he can’t know that, shouldn’t know that.

the glass shatters against the wall and she shatters with it, eyes closing with a curse beneath her breath despite herself, swallows hard. “well i said it. and i meant it.” she returns, grits her molars together and meets his gaze when he stares her down, lets it burn into her furious- like that fire might consume her, might cleanse her. “good. hate me. it’s better for both of us if you do.” she juts her chin, shoots it at him like a challenge, exhales fast. “now quit breaking shit like a toddler.”

KYURO

he wonders, briefly among all the other thoughts swirling in his mind, how they turned out this way. how stolen glances and smiles backstage and masked dates turned to this. drunk hotel meetings and anger and lies. so many lies. and now, he thinks he hates hotel rooms. the generic artwork hung on the wall, the large glass windows overlooking whatever city they stay in for that night, mocking them like it says, look at how beautiful the city is, it’s a shame you have no time to really visit it. he hates that it’s become their meeting spot most of all, though. every time he walks down an aisle, he thinks of her. every time he see’s a room number that used to be hers at another hotel, he thinks of her. every time, he thinks of her.

so he throws the bottle hard against the godforsaken hotel wall and lets it shatter, glass shards falling to the floor, scattering. an accurate representation of their progression, fragile, breakable, broken.

“no you didn’t,” he states with all the confidence he usually wears on stage. more to convince himself that she hadn’t meant it rather than her. though something in the back of his mind tells him he shouldn’t. tells him to take her words as gospel, let himself believe that she hates him. let himself believe that it would be better for them if he hated her. it could be easier that way, he muses. because all this anger, it’s exhausting. more tiring than the sleepless nights of practice, producing. it takes more out of him than any three hour concert can, leaves him empty and aching.

but, god. he loves her. and the rare minutes that he gets to feels more fulfilling than any chart statistic, any video view count, any amount of screaming, chanting in an arena full of possibly more love for him than harin has ever given. so he doesn’t let himself believe it, doesn’t take her challenge but shoots it down with intensity in his eyes, “i can’t hate you. one hundred eighty five.

but then she continues and he wants to laugh and cry at the same time. “you want me to stop acting like a toddler?” he spits back, incredulous, “then stop treating me like one. stop with this ‘it’s better for us’ bullshit because you what? think that having a relationship with you is going to ruin me? is that it? let me decide for myself if i want to fuck up my life, harin.”

HARIN

one hundred eighty five.

it hurts. that he keeps trying and she keeps pushing. it isn’t as if she wanted this- this horrible ache, this disgust to build between them. but she’d made her bed and now she had to lie in it. “i meant it. i mean it.” she insists, even if she doesn’t. “and either way, i’m sick of it. i’m sick of this. there’s no future in it, so why keep going? why bother?” this much is true at least, even if she is by far the selfish sort that would cling to a few more days - a fact reinforced by a breathy ‘one’s and desperate”please”s she wishes now she’d never said. it would have been easier by far if she had just turned him away the first time appeared in her doorway, the first time they had kissed and it tasted like alcohol and regret and anger.

instead she’s led them down this rabbit hole, ruined whatever they had once been and taken those memories, warped soft summer afternoons and stolen moments in closets at music bank into this, this anger and fear and frustration, this pendulum swing of emotions, this story in betrayal and backlash.

but he just says it again.

“get it the fuck together,” she shoots back at him, pushes her hand back through her hair and tousles it, knots her hand there in frustration. “hate me. what the fuck is wrong with you. i lied to you for a year. i strung you along for a year while i sold myself for a couple seconds on tv, while you broke your back and fell in love with me, and i didn’t tell you. he fucks me. all the time, kyuro, and i agreed to it, i said yes, i made this deal, and i lied to you. and i let you keep coming back here, and one hundred and eighty five times i didn’t say a damn thing back to you. so hate me. grow a backbone and some self respect and hate me.”

there’s an anger, there’s a frustration and a desperation in her because all she wants to do, really, is make him understand that this is over. that this has to be over, because it’s going to ruin him. she’s going to ruin him. maybe she already has; maybe he’s been too warped by her, broken down too far, driven too mad.

he keeps going and she wants to scream at him, smacks a loosely curled fist into his shoulder- not enough to hurt really but enough to vent her frustrations momentarily. “shut the fuck up,” she snaps back at him, clicks her tongue. “a relationship with me isn’t on the table, kyuro, don’t you get that? it’s not one of your fucking options.”

KYURO

he knows he’s lost it. his self-respect. somewhere between one and one hundred eighty-five he already knew it wouldn’t return, knew he had fallen off the deep end with no help for miles. so he doesn’t struggle to get up, just. stays. lets the waves take him far away, follows it, even. to the end. another number, because he needs to know what’s at the end now that he’s already there. he knows he looks and sounds pathetic because of it. he knows if anyone in his group saw him they’d ask where is kyuro and who the fuck are you? because this isn’t him. not really. desperate and crumbling and obsessed and selfish. he’s always been the latter two, but this is kyuro at rock bottom.the former exacerbates them. makes him hate the own sound of his voice when he tries to convince himself she doesn’t hate him, when he adds another number like it isn’t clear now that none of the previous ones mattered. not to her.

“what makes you think there’s no future in it,” he asks because he’s genuinely curious, genuinely annoyed, “what, do you have that little hope in us? me? even after i continued coming back for one year even while thinking you had a boyfriend? even when i’m still standing here like some kind of masochistic idiot?”

and even with anger lacing it, he says it, one eighty five, because he can’t hate her no matter how hard he tries. but then she tries for him. harder. to make him hate her. and for a split second, when his chest pangs at the thought of him in her and he exhales shakily, he thinks maybe he does. hates her for whittling him down to this, this mess of a man in stupidly unconditional love on the verge of giving everything he’s ever worked for up for a woman who can’t even say i love you.

“i know what a fucking sponsorship is, you don’t have to tell me the gritty details, but tell me this -- do you ask him to? do you ask him to stay? after? hm? while you’re laying there crying, do you ask him to stay?” he snaps back while walking back towards her, stopping just two small steps away and throwing his palm against the cool wall with a loud thud, “i don’t give a fuck if you made this deal or if it was forced on you, but i do want to know why- why did you lie to me? what good did that do harin, what was the point? was it fun seeing me break down? seeing me like this now? with no backbone? no wonder you don’t love me. you made sure you couldn’t.”

his fingers curl against the wall, a heated fist of white knuckles and he hits it again. not loud, just frustrated. frustrated, at himself, when she smacks him and he immediately moves to catch her wrist rough, their arms suspended in the air for a brief moment before he throws it down. “no, i won’t shut up. i already don’t have any self-respect so why should i stop now? then make it an option, harin, or did he buy that off you too? your ability to choose what to do?”

HARIN

harin plays things close to her chest. her members have noticed, obviously, that she’s falling apart, but even then it took them awhile. they knew about the sponsorship, but its such a nastily common thing they didn’t anticipate the toll it would end up taking on her. they knew about kyuro, but only before - not much of the after. she’s guarded maybe, or cautious. but not lately.

lately she’s been a disaster. she falls apart after stages. she’s a mess of bruises and cuts because she just hasn’t been able to eat right, or much at all, and the exhaustive hours of preparation and practice have left her dizzy. it’s an emotional exhaustion too, that vacant look in her eyes or the feeling that she’s not all present- somehow disconnected from the world around her. and maybe she is. maybe she’s buried whatever was left of kim harin the girl in the memories of those few hours she had had with him, those two nights of something almost good.

he keeps going and god, she underestimated him. underestimated one hundred and eighty five iterations of three little words because angry as he is, disgusted as he is, he keeps talking about futures and love and hope and she trembles, almost falters - almost. but not quite.

“because there is no future, kyuro. i don’t want a future.” he’ll take it as a “future with us” but its a future at all. the truth is she’s bone tired and beyond that, she hates this. this wretched thing she has become. the worst part is she did it to herself. she signed the dotted line. she made the deal with the devil. she sold her soul and predictably, it ruined her. so no, there isn’t a future. not for harin and kyuro because there might not be much of one for harin at all.

so she throws these things at him, begs him to leave, to hate her, with every ounce of decency and kindness that there might be left in her, twisted and rotten thing that she is, this sick little creature standing in front of him. “if you know what it is why are you being like this?” she snaps back, pushes her hand through her hair, “what do you want me to tell you? what good is it going to do, to tell you that i don’t, kyuro? that i don’t ask him to stay. do you think you’re special, because of that? you know the desperate will grab at anything nearby, right? what’s the saying, any port in a storm? do you think you really think it’s anything more than that?”

he grabs her wrist tight, in fairness, and she yanks it away - or she tries, but he’s always been stronger than he looks like he ought to be, muscle pressed tight to bone. his words are so true, and so desperate, and she wants him so badly. loves him so terribly much, the fucking idiot that he is. jesus fuckingt christ kyuro, “haven’t you been listening? i already made my choice.”

KYURO

his will is disintegrating. slowly and painfully, but surely. oh so surely. with her every rebuttal, with his every desperate attempt at patching the bridge between them gets stomped on, burned into ashes and scattered in the air and he has to start over. and over. and over. and he can only fall so many times before he doesn’t want to get up anymore. but then, what was it he wrote? rapped?

if you feel like you’re going to crash then accelerate more, you idiot.

so, accelerate he does. rattles off question after question, each more desperate than the last. then she turns them all against him and it aches. he thinks maybe he might pass out from the pain, from the fire in his veins doubling it. he’s weakening, and it shows in the shallow of his breath, in the flatness of his, “if you don’t want a future, then why. for god’s sake, harin, why did you ask me to stay?”

he keeps searching for an answer he’s now not sure he’ll ever get. and for what? even if by some miracle he gets her to agree with him and they have a third night of something sweet and hopeful, a third night that would surely do him over as if he isn’t already, feed him that last sliver of hope he needs to reenergize him. then what? he leaves because he has a schedule the next day, and the cycle repeats? she closes off again, pushes him away and the ache in his heart returns, the anger bubbles in his stomach again? he doesn’t know much more anger he can take before losing himself completely. so maybe she is right. maybe there is no future. maybe he should just leave. but then --

never mind, we’re too young and immature to give up, you idiot

so he pushes and prods, tries to prove to her, to himself, that there is something there. that he’s not just fighting because he’s an idiot but because there’s something there. to fight for. to suffer a million emotional deaths for. over and over. but then she’s always been good at hitting him right where it hurts and he falters. lips twitching into something broken, dejected, the light of a burning fire in his eyes fading away, replaced with darkness and hollow. his hand slides off the wall and hits his side with a quiet thud, and he barks a laugh of something acidic, steps back one because now -- finally -- now he has half a mind to leave.

“not anymore, no. what was i then, a cleansing palette to get that piece of shit off of you? to remember what it was like when someone who actually loves- loved you fucked you, instead? so that you didn’t feel like a fucking whore? i see, you had your role right, and so did i. and there i was thinking that yeah, actually, maybe i was special.”

he grabs her wrist, holds it tight when she tries to yank, and releases her after. doesn’t pull her in like he might have one minute ago. she makes her decision clear one more time, and so, “yeah, i heard you loud and clear. i don’t matter to you, right. that’s what it is? fine, i’ve made my choice too. congratulations, kim harin you fucking bitch, you win. is that what you wanted?”

HARIN

over and over he asks her and over and over she lies. well, not quite. she shifts the truth. she chooses her words carefully, while whats left of her heart screams in selfish desire to hold on. just a little longer. just one more night, and one more, and one more, because how many times have they been here now? how many times have they faced this moment, this conversation. even with the weight of her own truths behind her, pleases and ones, there’s only so much he can take. and he’s breaking. he’s letting go. it’s exactly what she wanted, what she planned on, what she has been trying and trying to make him do all night, with her carefully curated words, designed to hurt, aimed to strike.

and god, she hates it.

“i don’t know, kyuro, jesus, would you fucking stop with the third degree?” she snaps because she’s running out of better comebacks, she’s spiralling into the tail end of already fragile resolve, because she is selfish and cruel and wants to tell him this has all been a terrible mistake. that if he’ll try she can too. that she was sure he would hate her - terrified of it. that anything would have been better than him knowing what she was.

when the light fades out of his eyes she thinks anything would have been better than this. the anger was better than this, bright in its familiarity. radiant in his gaze, cleansing in its burn. but this - the hollow and the cold, the acid in his laugh, the cold absence as he steps back -- it feels like having her heart ripped from her chest. it feels like freezing. it feels like dying.

every desperate urge in her screams to hold him. to apologize. to do something, anything. to plead with him to understand how impossibly she loves him, how foolishly, how stupidly, how cruelly. and he throws the words in her face and he shifts to past tense, love to loved, and it feels physical. a blow to the chest, a crumbling of bones, a disintegration of spirit. this is what he needs. she thinks to herself, a desperate reminder, a horrible plea to keep herself in check.

“exactly. i was right. i know what i am. it’s not my fault if you can’t come to terms with it. what do you want me to do? to tell you its okay, i was coerced by my company, i hate him so it’s fine, i never thought of anyone but you - and then what? does that erase lies, kyuro? does that make you feel better that you came back, over and over again, to take the same things from me? so what, so fucking what. you used me. he used me. i used you both back. welcome to the real fucking world.” she snaps, and she’s not answering his questions, just dodging around them hoping a blow will land, hoping she won’t have to keep doing this, ripping herself apart. ripping him apart. because she can’t keep telling him she doesn’t care, can’t keep telling him it’s over because seeing him like this, hearing him like this, its wearing down every will to fight left in her.

KYURO

he feels --

he doesn’t know what he feels. he feels too much, too little, nothing, everything. like the world around him is falling apart and he can’t do anything about it. so he lets it happen, lets it take the light out of his eyes, lets it drag a sharpened blade slowly down his heart. but still. still. he doesn’t take that final step out the door. can’t. frozen in place or stuck in limbo, he doesn’t know, can’t tell the difference if there even is one.

but he tries. to move, to make that final step, takes one backwards towards her door, shards of broken glass crunching under the weight of his sneakers. his brand new pair of sneakers that he begged his manager to go out and buy for him while they were busy practicing that afternoon. foolish, he thinks now. absolutely foolish. the shoes, the cologne, the watch, him. he should have known. should’ve seen this coming. but he had been blinded by numbers and pleases and the steady rhythm of her heartbeat when she falls asleep. still partially is, since he can’t seem to take another step back even now.

because she avoids his question and he takes that as an answer. clings onto it like a lifeline, but even still, he is exhausted when he breathes, “yeah you do. it’s the same reason you said one.”

he says it, but now he’s not as sure. now, without rose-colored glasses tinting his view he thinks maybe. maybe she was lying the entire time. she managed to hide a big one for an entire year, after all. how hard would it be to make herself sound breathy when asking him please? and, well, now that he thinks about it, she hadn’t actually said i love you. just. one. that had been enough for him then, but now? when it took everything in him to be so honest, so raw, so unequivocally in love only to find out she had been lying for the better part of a year? now, it just hurts. and he wants her to feel the same way, changes loves to loved.

and yet, still. always, still. even after he says it himself, he wants to refute her, take it back. tell her that no, she’s not what she thinks she is. but she makes it hard, throws dart after dart and hits bullseye every time. or maybe his heart is just tired of being the sole target and so now his entire body is, and everything hurts, aches. then burns when she accuses him of the one thing he wants to make clear, “god do you really still think that’s why i came back every time? i wasn’t fucking using you, harin. jesus christ, did he fuck all the love out of you? is that why you needed two hundred, because if it’ll bring it back i’ll do it. sixteen more times. and if it doesn’t work then, fine. i’ll leave you the fuck alone and you can find someone else to cleanse you until you inevitably break him down too. just stay away from anyone in war, they don’t need another member willing to risk the group for a delusion of love.”

HARIN

“oh just - get over yourself. get over it. how can you love me, really? when you don’t know the half of it - of me. you love someone who used to exist. you love whatever you remember of me.” the words burst out of her adn in the moment it feels true. she isn’t, now, the sort of person to be loved. a liar and a cheat and a traitor. selfish and cruel. foolish and lacking in morals to the extent it is almost atrocious. she’s steeped in alcohol and drenched in deceit- how could he possibly know her enough to love her when she’s made it impossible to know her, when all that there is to know is rust and rot and ruin; the decaying pieces of something that once might have been beautiful. “but she’s gone, kyuro, that girl is dead and gone now. i sold her soul to the devil for screen time.”

the more brutally puts it the more he’ll understand, right? he has too. it’s their last shot. his last shot, at something else. something better. something more. he needs his future in tact and she’s not banking on much of one, so if one of them gets out of this successful it needs to be him. she can’t shackle him to her sinking ship just because she’s scared of drowning.

“isn’t it? don’t kid yourself. you were lonely and stupid. you wanted something to take your anger out on, somewhere to put all that rage you bottle up. so it was me. why not- why not pin it all on a willing target? you’re just fucked up enough you think it might have turned into love. you clung to the memory of a dead girl and hate fucked whatever was left of her - admit it to yourself. to both of us.” it shakes out of her like a storm cloud, boiling over the sky in a sick, slow creep, as more and more of her own self loathing paint into the words. as it becomes less about kyuro get away from me and more about her own moral and emotional decay, more about the fact that on a very real and intrinsic level she hates herself.

she clings to the last of the statement. “you bet. i’ll stay far away from war. it’s not worth the risk. none of this is worth the risk. so just - go. just fucking go, kyuro, jesus christ. why do you have to make everything two hundred times more difficult than it has to be?” she pushes shaking fingers back through her hair, buries them deep in tousled strands like the pain of tugging at them will anchor her. “stop being a fucking idiot and just go.”

KYURO

“if that was the only version of you i love, do you really think i would still be here? even after,” he pauses, motions his hand around frantically between them, “this? after revealing your big secret like you think that might make me hate you and prove to yourself that no one, not even an idiot like me, can love you? well guess what, harin, i’m a bigger idiot than you thought.” he laughs mirthlessly, throwing his hands up in the air before letting them fall back to his side tired, exhausted of having to prove himself over and over and over again.

but the more she talks, the more it becomes clear that he’s not the only broken one here. he should’ve known, really. but he’s been too selfish to notice. too focused on a them that he forgot about her. forgot to think about how selling herself would affect her. and now he sees it, hears it, the hatred in her eyes, her voice. hatred he thought might be for him, but like everything else, now he’s not sure. and, god, he really, really wants to kill hyunjoong for twisting her into something that would have been unrecognizable years ago. really wants to burn the entire industry to the ground for shattering kim harin into pieces.

“i’m not the one kidding myself here. you’re the one who wants so badly to believe i hate you to validate your own hatred, that all this time i was just using you as an outlet. and okay, so what if i was angry? was i supposed to be happy i was the other guy? that you would only see when i was drunk and lonely? that doesn’t mean i hate-fucked you, harin. that means i wanted, and still fucking want, you regardless. why can’t you just believe that, accept that? that someone can love you, even like this?” and just like that he steps forward again. though just once, still a few steps between them because he is so close to crumbling and he thinks if he feels her heat, hears her breath, that he will.

“how am i supposed to just fucking go, harin?” he asks, doesn’t realize there was a lump in the back of his throat until his words come out strained. he reaches up to squeeze his neck, to tangle fingers in the hair at the nape of it, “i said i’d only leave after two hundred.”

HARIN

the problem is that, for a year and some odd weeks, harin has been sure she would know how this would play out. harin knew down to her core he would find out the truth and he would hate her. loathe her, even. that her lies would be too much. that what she had become would be too disgusting to love, or to want, or to cling too. she had been as sure of it as she was sure the sky was blue, the earth solid under her feet, as sure as she was that without the stage kyuro would fall apart.

only it didn’t happen that way.

instead he’s standing in front of her and yeah, he’s angry. he’s furious. he’s spitting venom at her but just as vehemently he’s sticking close. he’s holding on. he’s here, counting up to two hundred like he wants to be there. like despite all of this, despite all of her, he wants to be there. and then he’s verbalizing it, like it would be ridiculous to think her secret would make him hate her, would destroy whatever love he had for her, and she just…

can’t comprehend it.

so she stands a little slack jawed, brows half furrowed, quick intakes of breath that might start to become words, but those words falter and dissipate, and she just….

stares.

stares at him, at this man in front of her, who sees something that she doesn’t, feels something that maybe she can’t. wants something she might not be able to give him but seems willing to wait anyway. to try. and why, and how, and what did she ever, ever do to deserve any of this? she doesn’t feel like that girl anymore. the one that could hold him so closely and love him so easily. she feels deeply and intensely there is something fundamentally broken in her now, that he must just not be able to see it. that if she could show it to him, if he discovered it - whatever it was - he would realize this was all a horrible mistake.

and he asks her - why don’t you believe it, why can’t you believe it, and she’s so in shock, so startled and so exhausted (and frankly, so drunk) that as he crowds in against her, towards her, she hits the wall with a soft thump, looks up and him and honestly, truly, painfully answers the only way she knows, “because it just doesn’t make sense.”

and it doesn’t.

at this point, its beyond her capacity to understand. it isn’t something that adds up, like having him scream at her desperately that 2+2=4 when she’s known it her whole life to be 5. like everything ordered and understood in her world is crumbling and she doesn’t know what to do with it. this had been her fear and her desperation for so long that she begins to fall apart now, when he picks it apart in front of her.

“but you have to go.” because that’s the only thing that makes sense. because how could you want to say. “even if you… you don’t get it now, or you don’t hate me now, you will. so right now, you have to go.” like a preemptive shield, she wields this. eventually he’ll see it. know it. this twisted thing inside her where harin used to be, even if he’s too blind now to recognize it - right? but her tone is strange, there’s a sort of helpless certainty to it, like she’s trying to convince him there’s a ghost in the corner, but only she can see it.

KYURO

he thinks, somehow, that over the past few weeks, in the days after the weight of unspoken confessions was lifted off his shoulder, that he’s transformed dramatically. like it wasn’t just a weight but a mask, a shield even. because before he had said i love you one, two, one eighty four times, he was fine with leaving. he didn’t hesitate to slip out from beneath her covers, slip back into his clothes wordlessly and go. he knows, now, why she thought he’d been using her for nothing but a way to relieve the resentment he harbored towards her. he hates that. hates himself. because maybe she strung him along, lied to him for an entire year and a couple months change, but he wasn’t any better. showing up drunk, expecting, taking before asking because he assumed. he assumed she knew. what he would never say. that she wasn’t just someone free for the taking, but someone he doesn’t want to lose. so even if he had to have her in anger and alcohol, then so be it.

but now that the mask’s been taken off and his soul has been spread out on the table, picked at, prodded at unil it’s worn down so thin he might not have one anymore, it’s hard to leave. he has given up too much, has said too much, has learned what love feels like too much to leave now. maybe in five years, hell maybe in a handful of weeks, he’ll look back at this ghost of a man and think, ‘wow, what an idiot. learns what love is for a few weeks and is already willing to risk what he’s worked at for eight years for it.’ and future-kyuro would be right. but right-now-kyuro doesn’t care. his mind is fixated so heavily on kim harin that he doesn’t know what he’ll do if he loses her. so he fights to make sure he doesn’t, perseveres even when his heart is aching and exhausted, rebuts until she is so confused by his insistence and he is standing over her, heart racing, breath hot, and falling apart at the seams from the pain in her voice.

“then let me explain it, one eighty five, i don’t understand it but i don’t care that you’ve sold yourself to him. one eighty six, i don’t care that he’s fucked you, it’s not great to think about and i still want to kill him but it changes nothing of what i think of you. one eighty seven, it hurts so fucking bad that you lied to me but it hurts more that you want me to leave. i love you, i love you, i love you.”

he’s desperate, he’s breaking, he’s shaking in his breaths, in his fingers when he reaches out, hesitates then wraps it around his own wrist instead, twisting the watch back and forth. back and forth. because if he doesn’t touch her, maybe he’ll still stand a chance at leaving like she wants him to. like he ought to, for both the sake of his dignity and war at this point.

and still he won’t go.

even when she asks, tells him he has to.

“harin if i don’t hate you now, what makes you think i ever will?” he returns through shallow breaths, because he hates this. he hates the heat behind his eyes, the lump in his throat threatening, threatening, threatening to come out. he hates his voice right now, isn’t sure he even recognizes it, the break in it. the raw exhaustion. but he hates the tone of her voice the most, the way she keeps telling him to go. the way she is so stubbornly convinced that he cannot love her, not now. not this version of kim harin. even though he does. he might not know why or how, but he does. and he wants so badly to convince her of it that he will stand there and weather everything she throws at him until she believes that yes, she can be loved. by him. by herself.

he returns her own words at her then, lets go of his watch and hesitates again, shifts his hand to swipe a thumb over his nose with a sniff, a swallow, shifts to place it in his hair. right at the top, curling fingers into bleached, dry strands and gripping tight, “even if you don’t get it now, one eighty eight, i love you.”

HARIN

harin wraps her arms around her torso, fingertips digging in between her ribs through the thin cotton,grasping to the point of bruising. like that will keep her from falling apart here, in front of him. none of this makes sense, her heart hammering hard against her ribs, his words echoing in between them, her cheeks flushed with alcohol and her own disoriented dismay. he exhales shaken, yanking at his hair in a way that mirrors the desperate press of her own fingers. “i don’t...know if i can.” she admits, nibbling at the edge of her lip, slouching against the wall to let it hold her upright.

“it’s just that, kyu, even if you do right now, somehow, love me - how long does that last? really, how long. in this industry, when there’s no variables, how long do people last? a few months, at best? but layer on top of it the fact, kyu, that he’s still gonna be fucking me. its not over, kyuro. just because its not public doesn’t mean he’s stopped. doesn’t mean i’m off the hook. how are you going to deal with that, if you’re on about being in love with me now. think it over. we go on a date, we hang out, i get a call. i leave. you know what’s happening. where i’m going. what he’s doing to me. how long until you hate me - or if not that, how long until you realize you just don’t want to put yourself through that? or whatever? like, realistically. or until something happens and he finds out about you - he already knows you were digging around. do you think he’s not got eyes out on you, on us, on this?” she grits her teeth, fingers pushing back through her hair shakily. “and if all of that is fine, somehow, what after that? what happens when you realize there’s something broken in me? i don’t know if i can be the person i used to be, kyuro. not after all this. i don’t think i can.”

its a lot more talking than she’d planned on, and a lot more honest, and a lot more desperate. “i just - i really - “ she exhales, chewing at her lowerlip with uncertainty, nose flaring slightly as she bites at the edge of her tongue, “i’ve lost too much already to risk more.” because that’s the gist of it isn’t it? at least in their nebulous anger state she can escape the thought that she could destroy it, did destroy it, had him fully and lost him. in this nebulous situation she can pretend any fight is her choice, any separation is the nature of their strangeness.

KYURO

ah.

how could he have forgotten that it was not over.

that fact got lost somewhere between all the venom and shattered glass and his shaky, desperate voice now. because, to him, it has to be over. he needs this. her. if he wants to stay sane anymore. this is what he vehemently believes, anyway. and maybe he was fine sharing before, when it was just a desperate, angry attempt to change her mind. to remind him of his existence. to make sure she never forgets him. min kyuro, made up of stolen glances, late night vents, and even later night kisses. min kyuro, the man who foolishly confessed to a woman scorned one hundred and eighty eight times.

one hundred and eighty eight times that ruined him, rendered him greedy, selfish, unable to share. not now.

so, he pauses. falters. doesn’t say the one eighty nine he had planned on. lets go of his hair and lets it sit messy atop his head, slides his hand over his eyes and squeezes them tight like maybe that will push the heat welling behind them down. he exhales too, with a tremble, heavy and loud in the cold air around them, like maybe that will get rid of the lump in his throat. the scenario plays in his head and he thinks, for once, that she’s right. he’s not sure if he can handle that then, not sure if he can handle that now so he ignores it while he can in favor of, “what don’t you understand harin -- i don’t need you to be the person you used to be. broken or not i will- i do love you. i will until you don’t think you are anymore.”

at least that is true, lets him slide his hand off his eyes and onto his throat, lets him flicker his eyes between hers, “and are you really asking me how long it will last? after i have spent the past three years doing so? after i let you, fuck, just fuck me up over and over again for one of those years? how many in this filthy fucking industry can say that? maybe no one else has any variables, but don’t try to ignore the ones between us pointing to a longer number than anyone smart would ever bet on.”

but then the elephant in the room trumpets, replays the scene over in his mind, and he can’t ignore it anymore.

he tries, truly, he does. squeezes his neck until he’s pulling skin between two fingers, pinching it. hard. like maybe if he can withstand that pain, he can withstand another couple hundred bullets aimed at his chest.

he’s bulletproof, after all.

except, not exactly. they’d given up on that concept and now he was rapping about i want it this love, i want it real love, and god, he really does. but how can he when he’s still there?

“and,” he starts, but he can’t do it. he can’t refute her. instead he grasps at straws he knows aren’t there, one more act of desperation to save him from the sinking ship he purposefully fractured a hole in himself. “i’ll. i’ll stop digging around, i won’t count anymore publically, i won’t give him a reason to be suspicious of me and if he still does try to drag me down, that’s not your problem. i’ll deal with it, i don’t know how but i will. fuck. just. fuck. can’t you break it yet? why did they publish that stupid fucking article if it’s not actually over? why couldn’t you have just answered my texts earlier before i got,” he pauses to gesture wildly at himself, to let go of his neck and hastily unclasp his stupid, stupid watch because it feels so damn heavy now, and tosses it on the bed, voice breaking when he continues, “so fucking excited?”

HARIN

he’s so hopeful and so desperate right now, clinging to this thing between them that harin is at a loss, what does she know? What can she even begin to do to change or alter this situation, how can she even begin to improve it? She runs her fingers through her hair shaken, digs her fingers into her rib cage to hold herself together, poses questions she can’t answer.

Maybe he has the answers she’s missing, the ones she assumed meant this would all fall apart in front of her. She can see him falter when she brings it up, reminds him that her deal isn’t done. That even if she could, even if he would, there would still be a demon lurking over them, a shadow cast over any happiness they managed.

“Will you? If you get to two hundred and all I can manage is two, will you still love me? If I come back to you a shell of a person, will you still love me? If I land a lead role, if I get a sweet cf deal, if every time you see my face on the television or the internet and you have to wonder it’s because I’m letting him fuck me, if the reminders are plastered across South Korea, will you still love me? If you take off my clothes and can see the bruises of his hands on me, are you going to love me? One hundred and eighty eight times were a lot easier to manage when you didn’t know the truth.” She feels this to be utterly true whatever he says- all good things come to an end, all stubborn stones are eventually worn down, mountains ground slowly into dust with repeated weathering. “ and what will I do then, kyuro. When it all falls apart, when you come to your senses, what will I do? When I’m barely keeping it together now, how will I manage then? And what, don’t say you won’t leave. Then it becomes staying from guilt, it becomes resentment and worry, it becomes caretakers fatigue. None of those are love.”

In the end he doesn’t have any answers either. She didn’t expect him too, but she’d hoped against hope. She shakes her head slow. “I’ll deal with it but I don’t know how- what good is that, kyu? What will that do if he gets pictures. If he drags you through the mud, what will Daeul do, or Jaesung, or Jaekyu, or Juno? Are you ready to look them in the eye and tell them you took those risks, you ruined everything you've worked so hard for, just for some slut? There’s no way.”

She watches the watch drop to the side and her heart breaks. “Because,” She begins bitterly, “he wants to date properly. Maybe get married.” It’s a cruel irony. “But of course why give up his toy before he has too.” He talks about excitement and her withered heart crumbles brows twitching into a furrow. “I really… thought you’d hate me. And. I wasn’t ready for it.”

KYURO

she isn’t wrong. he hates himself for even thinking it, but he knows she isn’t wrong. not entirely.

he is still so incredibly sure he will love her through hell and back, because he doesn’t think anything she does can hurt him more than right then, this very moment, a life as art exhibition with kyuro’s heart on display. cut and bruised and leaking and aching -- but still beating. stubbornly, like the man that owns it.

but he isn’t sure how he can watch her inevitably rise without that nagging voice in the back of his head saying, ‘oh, so that’s why she has a bruise on her thigh,’ or ‘oh, so that’s why she won’t let me hug her today.’ he isn’t sure what he’ll do if, in the middle of the night while he’s trying to remind her that she isn’t just some slut, breaths shallow in the air, veiny hands soft on her skin to remind her she can still be loved, not just fucked -- if he calls, then. resets any progress kyuro might have made back to zero. and what can he do anyway but let her go and fail to finish himself off in the cold aftermath?

he knows. he knows he will still love her, he feels it down to his core. because war and harin is all he’s ever had; the two main reasons he had the confidence to pen some of the lyrics he did for his mixtape and not be afraid to share it with the world anymore because he thought. he thought that wasn’t him anymore. titled the song the last because it was the last time he’d felt that way, he was so sure of it. but now, he thinks he titled the song prematurely. he thinks yes, he will love her, but yes, it will be hard.

just as hard as it is to refute her, now, the pauses more obvious, the fractures in his sentences increasing, the exhaustion in his voice though he tries, tries so hard, “i will. i know i will. why don’t you trust me?” he doesn’t know if he trusts himself. “i,” he starts and feels something scratching at his throat so he inhales sharp, sniffs and turns away, looks at the remnants of a bottle he wishes he hadn’t thrown now, “god what do you want me to say harin, yeah. okay, fine. yeah, one eighty nine, one ninety, they won’t- it won’t be easy. none of it will. but i don’t. i don’t care. do you think any of this has been easy? this past year just a walk in the park? who do you think i write my lyrics about, harin. i need u, blood, sweat, and tears -- who do you think came up with those ideas? what makes you so fucking sure i will leave at some point, haven’t you noticed by now? that i won’t? i won’t let you fall apart, harin, not because of guilt. not because of anything other than. one- one eighty nine. fuck. i love you.”

he’s all over the place when he speaks, walks two steps towards the shards of glass on the floor just to hear it crunch beneath him, then turns back on his heels, scratching at his head vigorously before he takes two steps towards her and looks her in the eye when he counts.

and then.

then, she brings their names up and he can see them all in his head.

he’d been avoiding thinking of them, focused so heavily on harin because he knew if he folded his members into the equation it would quickly become unsolvable. and now that they’re there -- daeul, who already had a hard time when he threatened to leave, jaekyu, who he spent countless hours mentoring about rap and helped him with dance in return, jaesung, who hypes kyuro’s music, kyuro’s verses up the most, and juno, who he practically raised, watched grow up into the golden boy of the team, who he knows would be so crushed that he almost walks out on that thought alone -- it’s hard. so incredibly hard.

so, he swallows. pauses, because he doesn’t know what to say. musters up the best thing he can think of, “i don’t know, i’ll buy the pictures off him if i have to before anyone finds out. i’ll do whatever he wants, except. except give you up.”

his volume softens then, the reality starting to get clearer with every argument she throws at him -- until, she answers his question and he laughs bitter, volume rising again. not at her, but because he didn’t think he could hate hyunjoong any more until now. “holy fuck. i’m going to fucking strangle him if i ever see him, i really fucking am,” he thinks he might collapse then, from all the exhaustion all the thoughts, scenarios dizzying his head so he bends down first. rocks back on his heels and scratches at the crown of his head with both hands. laughing, delirious, broken until he calms, exhales, inhales, lets his hands fall down to look up at her, asks, “god, what has he done to you.”

HARIN

everything she throws at him he has another answer, but she can see the hesitation building. she can see the uncertainty. his statements fragment and his heart stutters, she can all but hear it. gradually he begins to falter, his declarations less sure and his sentiments more frazzled. he crunches glass beneath his feet and he yanks his hands through his hair, he is earnest and desperate but on top of these things he is properly falling apart. he drops to the floor and fists his hands into blonde hair and his laughter is delirious and frightening, raw and brutal, the saddest sound she’s heard for years, in her entire life, probably. and when he looks up at her, like he’s so broken, she’s so scared of what he’s going to say next, sure this is the moment when the shoe drops.

but instead he breathes out a desperate plea of what has he done to you and she stares down at him almost aghast, eyes with and fingers trembling as she drops down in front of him in turn, cups his face in her hands like she can’t believe that he’s real. her thumbs are gentle, tracing the edges of his lips, fingertips against his cheekbones and soft beneath the corners of his eyes, before she slides them up to gently disentangle his hands from his hair, holds them in her own, cradles them careful before she grazes her lips across them, like a hundred featherlight apologies soft over his skin. its not enough, and it won’t ever be enough, but its what she has. “i don’t know. too much. too much, kyu.” she admits, because she can barely remember the person she used to be, has no idea what her future is going to look like, brings his hands up until they fit against her cheeks, nuzzled against them with a distant little whimper, eyes closed. “i just don’t see how this ends well.” she admits, “and i can’t - i can’t -”

she pulls a breath, and its shaky, uneven, something desperate that flutters unsteady from her lips. “I can’t ruin this for you. war, all of that. i can’t take you down with me. i can’t live with myself, if i do that, if i did that. i just can’t.” she drops his hands this time, fits her fingertips beneath his chin to til him toward her, examining his features. “even if i could believe you. even if i could love you…. how long am i on the hook for this, you know? i can’t ask that from you. i won’t. it was my...my mistake. my choice. there’s no way now that i would do this to you. you’ve….kyu look at where you’re at now. look at what you’re doing. if we tried this and it fell apart, if i was the reason it fell apart - kyu i can’t...i really can’t.” she admits, just as desperate as he had just been, just as earnest and miserable because she needs him to see it, needs him to realize the stakes - and in the process, reveals how desperately she cares.

KYURO

when he’s on the ground, hands in his hair and laughing, laughing so hard, deliriously because he thinks if he stops he might just cry — he remembers, briefly, when he had done the same in a bathroom also in japan almost three years ago. hid away from people, scared. he remembers calling her afterwards, how the sound of her voice soothed him so easily even with thousands of miles between them, a perfect mirror of this moment now. her hands gentle around his cheeks, her lips impossibly soft on his hands, her words blunt, no longer sharpened and aimed at his chest, just honest. her face closer to him than it had been all night, and yet feels the farthest away. a thousand miles between them on a broken, crumbling road.

but it’s soothing all the same.

steadies the erratic beat of his heart, slows the tremble in his fingers when she places them against her cheeks and he grazes his thumb under her eyes. “then don’t,” he starts, volume lowering once more until his voice is low, rasp from all the anger from before, “just please don’t let him do any more. not for my sake, but for yours. please.”

she continues. even in all this… kindness that seems like a ghost of harin past, she continues to push him away. but at least now, her fingers beneath his chin, his eyes locked on hers, her words so incredibly honest, he can make sense of it. can see clearly now that this whole time, while he had been selfishly grasping for something that was breaking her apart, that she’d been doing the opposite. remnants of self-hatred that he’s long since buried, memorialized as a reminder of a weaker him in his mixtape, come surging back all at once. for being so selfish, for ruining her, for ruining himself, for even daring to ruin war and six other lives along with him.

and so to rectify it all, he relents. all fight in him gone, shattered into pieces like the bottle behind him.

“okay,” he says and it take everything in him for just that one word, has to recoup for a moment before he can continue. exhales shaky, inhales just the same, tucks her hair behind her ear and leans in to press his lips soft against her forehead. stays there, hands sliding down to her back and pulling her in against him, because he can’t look at her when he continues, “okay. if you can’t, you don’t have to. i’ll… i’ll stop too. after tonight, i’ll leave you alone if that’s what you want.” his chin rests at the crown of her head then, as he repeats, “you don’t have to. i won’t make you do anything you don’t want to, anymore. i’m sorry.”

but even if he sees it now, hates the result of it, min kyuro is nothing, nothing, if not selfish.

so he lifts his chin, leans back to look at her, really look. no hollow in his eyes, no fire, just kyuro. “but before i go, can’t you just say it. admit it. one time. no numbers, just. three words. please.”

HARIN

neither of them have ever been wholly stable. they were never a functional pair, not really. both on the edge of overworked, obsessive, panicked. he was too stubborn and she wasn’t much better, and while she won out on selfishness it was only barely. ambitious to a fault, they were both all too willing to careen down unsafe paths, to self medicate in hedonism and addiction.

she still never expected an end like this.

surrounded by shattered glass, she tastes wine bitter now on her tongue, still. it twists and bubbles in her stomach alongside self loathing and fear and her own inability to cut this off cleanly. but honestly, that isn’t the worst part. the worst part isn’t even kyuro, how he looks, how he sounds, how he feels as she dances her fingertips over his face, as she pulls him closer, as his lips graze the top of her forehead and he holds her so carefully and so closely she trembles. as he finally makes her the offer she’s been waiting to hear all night, has tried bartering and bullying and berating out of him.

it’s the hope.

it’s this tiny, terrible voice in the back of her head, in her heart, that says maybe. maybe it can work. maybe one more night, or day, or week, or month, or year won’t hurt. maybe she can get better. maybe she can escape. maybe he can help her. maybe she can help him. maybe they can be something, maybe they can last. maybe, maybe, maybe.

but maybe not.

she can’t even promise him this next request, a choked laugh from her lips. “i wish i could,” she admits, and her eyes slide closed. “i don’t know what he’d do. the company. any of it. i don’t - “ she exhales, a shaky breath, “if i did it, and they buried me...then what was any of it for. what would i have left?” her voice is brittle and helpless, scattering into dust on a breathy exhale, a sardonic laugh that grates uncomfortable even against her own ears. “i’m really stuck in this one, kyu, i really fucked up.”

when he looks at her like that it almost undoes her, breaks down almost every inch of resolve she has, leaves her half smiling, her eyes full and lashes heavy with droplets close to being shed, her heart aching. “you’re still short, though. by like ten.” she points out, sniffles slightly despite herself, as she wraps her arms around his shoulders, pulls him in a little closer, until their noses brush and their foreheads touch. “so just, just - come here,” it’s a pointless command, because she’s mumbling it against his lips, leans forward toward him, knees on the floor now as she tilts towards him, fingertips trembling against pale skin as they slide from his jaws into his hair, a sting of pain as shards send a few shallow cuts across her knees, but she can barely think of it now, with her heart pounding in her chest and the end of all of this staring her grimly, darkly in the face.

KYURO

he tries to steel himself after he says okay. tries to pick the broken pieces back up and tape them together into something that looks even remotely like the man he was before the dam broke and he said i love you. he tries, truly tries. to rebuild that dam, to pour concrete on his heart, to build iron walls around it so nothing can ever snake its way in again. but rome wasn’t built in a day, and neither were kyuro’s first line of defenses, built through years of practice and the promise between six guys to give war their all until they’re physically unable. and when he thinks of them all again, thinks of the suffering they’ve gone through to finally stand there at the top with smiles, genuine though tired smiles, on their faces -- he can weather the pain and pour the concrete over his heart even while it’s screaming her name. begging.

but it is so hard when she’s right there in front of him, when her laugh comes out choked and sardonic, when he can feel her falling apart in his arms. so he stops. thinks he can wait until he leaves to start rebuilding because a couple more minutes won’t hurt any more than it already does. he wants to tell her that she’d have him. if nothing else, she’d have him. but then, what kind of reassurance is that when after hyunjoong, he thinks now he’s the second worst thing that could happen to her? so instead he returns, “then, please. just at least don’t let him ruin you anymore. however long it goes, you have to- you have to stay. here.” alive. “i know you can. if i can’t see you like this anymore, then at least let me see on you standing on screen, on stage, backstage, wherever.”

it hurts. the thought that she is so broken. it hurts more than the idea of him leaving, more than anything that transpired over the past year. and there is nothing more he wants to do than try to help mend every cracked piece of her, but he thinks even now just having his hands around her is more detrimental than anything. so he says okay, he says he’ll leave, but not without one last selfish request.

just one last request. one that he thinks she’ll grant him right then and there, because finally he’s offering her exactly what she wants and all she has to do for it is to say three words.

but she says so much more than three words and all the resolve he managed to build up begins to fracture.

she smiles. she reminds him he’s ten short. she gets on her knees and he can hear the crunch of glass that he wishes so badly he hadn’t put there. their noses brush and their foreheads touch and he lets go of a trembling breath he didn’t know he was holding. every little thing, another crack, the fracture grows, slowly but surely.

and then her lips are on his and it’s like she’s given back all the energy, all the life she had seeped out of him for the past year.

and, oh, what a mistake it is.

“one hundred ninety,” he whispers against her lips, after pulling away with a sharp intake of breath, “i love you.”

“one ninety one,” he whispers again against her neck, after peppering light kisses against soft skin, “i still love you.”

“one ninety two,” he breathes, voice low and barely above a whisper, after all the strength he’s been given back travels to his arms, allows him to slide one behind her knees, allows the other to place her hands around his neck then slide down to her back, “i love you, kim harin.”

“one ninety three,” he breathes again while he stands and lifts her up in his arms with him, fixes his gaze heavy and full, so full, of love, “i love everything about you.”

“one ninety four,” he says, laying her gently on the bed and reaching to wipe the shards off her knees with the sleeve of his black button up, wiping his long sleeves afterwards to assure they’re all gone, and leaning down to kiss her from the side of the bed, murmuring against her lips, “i think i love you more than i love myself.”

if this is the end of things, harin is going to make the best of it.

if this is the end of her, she’s going to hold on, a little longer than she really should. just a few more minutes can’t hurt, can it. it can’t make anything worse - he’s already here, they’re already broken, that ship has sailed. so, really, how much can a little more hurt- aside from wrecking her, ripping her heart out and stomping on it. but then, she’s been doing that on her own all night already.

she can’t make him any promises about the future, her future, so she just bites her lips closed and drops her head to examine the floor, the glass that glitters just barely beneath the dim lights, a pale green that attracts her gaze despite herself. she bites the insides of her cheeks and shrugs slightly, lets her forehead press to the other’s shoulder, then leans into him as the boy presses his lips to her forehead, holds her close and soft and careful and is it really any surprise that she couldn’t help but pull back from this to smile, small and soft and more than a little bit sad.

he responds exactly as she wished he would, his hands on her waist and sliding around her tight, his lips soft on hers. the smell of him - absent of alcohol, expensive cologne and the leather of his jacket and the peppermint soap he uses so often. she breathes in deep, memorizing him, spreads her fingers and drags her palms over his shoulders, canvassing him as she memorizes the shift of his muscles beneath her hands.

she wants to remember this. remember him. he scoops her up in his grip and she shifts to accommodate him, lets her legs fall open as the other fits down over her, brackets his hips to bring him closer. she winds her arms around his shoulders and pulls him down until their lips fit together. and when he pulls back a little to look at her, so sweetly and so wanting and so full, she cups her hands against his jaw again, gaze seeking, searching and intent as their gazes connect, in order to memorize this, too. she’s not sure she’s going to see anything like it again, after all.

“ninety five?” she prompts with half a smile on her lips, playful as she leans forward to nip and pepper kisses over the line of his jaw, down his neck, nuzzles into the crook of his shoulder. “and six?” she breaths, and you can hear the laugh on her lips, fingertips sliding through his hair. “how can you be so impossible? how on earth did i find you?” she breathes, incredulous to the last. “you stupid stubborn boy.”

KYURO

this is a farewell gift. he knows this as sure as he knows that grass is green, the sky is blue, and he will never love this way again. not if it’s not her, kim harin. but this is the last time. he knows if he comes back again tomorrow night, the night after, or any night that isn’t tonight, nothing will ever be like this again.

but, always a but, he thinks more and more with every graze of her finger, every nip and the smile on her lips, the laugh -- god, the laugh that he hasn’t heard this way in years, a sound he memorizes and stores in his heart for when he inevitably breaks down afterwards. that maybe. maybe he can still be selfish. he resolves that if not later, then at least now. he’s only being selfish for right now. then he will leave, later, and he will build that wall. he will delete her number and blacklist rebelle and harin online and he will not, can not, be selfish. not again. not after it becomes alarmingly clear that he’s half the reason her smile now is so unfamiliar even in its old familiarity. and so --

“one ninety five, you’re too impatient,” he laughs breathy, tilts his head to savor the feel of lips against his jaw, his neck, the nuzzle of her into his shoulder before he leans to do much of the same. fits himself closer to her, a hand sliding slowly, softly, down the bare of her thigh wrapped around him, his lips pressed gently down her neck, murmuring, “but i still love you just the same.”

she keeps going, talking, breathing against him, fingertips in his hair, and heat keeps swelling in his chest. spreads throughout his veins, not like a wildfire but a slow burning fireplace, crackling and warm. “one ninety six,” he breathes with a smile, fingertips brushing her hair back, grazing her cheekbone before, “you’re the one that made me this way, i love you.”

he slows the closer he gets to two hundred, knows that when he does, and when, if, she says it back, the words he had pleaded to hear, that it will be over. and he is afraid. so afraid. to know what comes after. but still it spills out of him, the last few gallons of water the dam had been hiding for years, “one ninety seven.” he retreats, briefly, to shrug his leather jacket off, lets it fall onto the floor with a thud before he leansa in once more. just inches from her face, drinking in the sight of her, the shine in her eyes when he says, “i ove you. more than you’ll ever know.”

it’s bittersweet when the words fall from his mouth. in its double meaning, the foreshadowing of a future they’re both painfully aware of. yet still, he can’t stop himself. addicted to this unfamiliar warmth in his chest, to the friction of her hips against him when he rocks his own ever so slowly and takes her lips in his. he can taste the wine in them, can breathe its aroma in when he parts her lips and inhales before catching her lower lip between his teeth. he tugs gently, lets it go, and whispers just the same, “one ninety eight, one ninety nine, i love you, i have always loved you.”

every number, another fracture in his already crumbling will.

“two hundred,” he counts breathlessly, and the world seems to stop spinning around them, “i don’t think i will ever stop loving you, kim harin.”

harin doesn’t want this to end. her heart beats at hyperspeed, fluttering against her ribs like a hummingbird’s wings against the hand that holds it, her skin flushed and every inch of her aching because soon, this will end. soon, this will be only memories. and all she can do now is make the best of what she has. of the last thing she will have. because kyuro can believe or say many things about love and its longevity, but he will have so many other chances and so many more years that he will certainly love again. while she? what does she have. a contract and a void in her chest. kyuro’s tolerance of her, his affection for her bizarre and broken being is a once in a lifetime phenomena. she might be his first love, but he is her last.

its a bleak thought to live with, she thinks distractedly, so perhaps its a good thing she might not have to do so, much longer. she pushes that to the side, however, in a misplaced desire to escape the present, to avoid her own macabre depression, intrusive thoughts that she has far too much trouble shaking. , a giggle escaping as she fits closer to him, clings a little tighter, tugs him a little closer. “i can’t help it. you know i’ve never been good at waiting around when it comes to you.” its true, honestly. she leans into him with a sigh, fits her hips against his, ignores the drag of fabric over her thighs, the other’s pants rough against her skin. they fit together like puzzle pieces as she nips and mouths over the line of his neck, flicks her tongue against the barely there marks that she leaves in her wake. she has to remember this, she has to remember his hands on her skin and his lips on hers, she has to remember the way he smells - orange and grapefruit and patchouli and jasmine, musky and sweet at once.

“i know. I know you do. i’ll remember it.” she promises, half to herself, half to him. because at least there’s that. at least there’s this. she could live a thousand years and never forget this. she fits her hands around him until her nails are digging into his shoulders just slightly, enough to press the intensity of her desire there, her affection, her love, in little bruises that will dot against pale skin. something for him to remember. she nips over his neck, against his collarbones, sucks a bruise into place there, too, for good measure. it’s easily coverable, she figures, and she wants him to remember her. at least for a few days. at least for a moment.

he tells her he doesn’t think he’ll ever stop loving her and her smile is sad, and sweet, and soft. and its hard, its hard to say it even now, because saying it means the end. saying it closes this chapter. and he’s so warm against her right now, and he’s so solid, his weight a comfort and a kindness that she can’t explain, can’t express. everything about him is at once familiar and intoxicating and she lets her eyes slide shut for a moment, a quiet sigh as she exhales. she opens them again, presses their foreheads together, noses brushing, breath mingling in the quiet as she breathes all the sincerity she can manage into a quiet, “i love you. since i met you, ‘til i die, i love you.”

KYURO

two hundred, he counts, and waits with bated breath. everything freezing in that moment, except the erratic beat of his heart, except her — the slow slide of her eyelids, the sigh off her lips, the warmth of her forehead against his. and. and. her voice, as sincere as all the love he has for her.

she says it, really says it, twice even, and he doesn’t think he can keep the heat behind his eyes there anymore. doesn’t even realize a few drops have already fallen down his cheek until he parts his lips to exhale heavy and a strangled sound comes out instead. he laughs, then, quiet and choked up, because he feels so stupid. laughs breathy and hot against her lips, barely kissing, just trembling in a mixture of joy and sadness and fear. because this is it and he doesn’t want it to be. prolongs it with a shaky, unnumbered, “i love you, kim harin, i love you so much,” and one more kiss. one more brush of their noses, one more deep inhale of her scent, one more. one more. one more.

and he breaks.

the last of his will, his resolve.

there is nothing but this moment, the two of them there more honest than they’ve ever been, in kyuro’s universe right then. war, the past eight years, the past year, the past hour all out the window, replaced with an echo of ‘i love you. since i met you, ‘til i die, i love you.’

i love you

“i want —“ he starts and stops in a quick breath, because he knows what he wants to say will pop the bubble. will propel him from the highest he’s ever been right back down to rock bottom. so he stops, at least for that moment and tangles his hand into her hair, fingers curling around the back of her neck while he rolls off her, falls right beside her. his lips part but he hesitates again, tangles their legs together instead and traces an unsteady hand up her thigh, up her oversized t-shirt, until he reaches her waist, curling his fingers around her with just enough pressure like he wants to make sure this is real.

and in the silence, this comfortable, melancholic silence, he doesn’t once let go of her gaze. he holds it like if he doesn’t she’ll forget him, or worse he’ll forget it. this moment. the warmth, the way his heart feels when it’s actually full and not seeping, not twisting with an underlying ache that never seems to disappear outside of this time locked moment. he holds it like he holds onto her, like he’s hanging on for dear life because god knows he won’t have one after this. not one he wants to live, anyway. a life without kim harin.

and so the selfish wins over and his will crumbles to dust.

“i want to keep loving you. like this. i need to, harin, please.”

HARIN

its like he keeps coming back around in a circle. every time they make any progress, any time they meet. harin’s heart clenches in her chest, something physical and aching in its fullness, like she might have been crushed under the weight of the other. she promises him she loves him and there is something melanchonic in it, something terribly fatal in her words, but they ring honest, sincere, more than anything she’s said in her life, she thinks.

min, kyu, ro.

she engraves the syllables into her heart as he holds her. as she holds his gaze. they tangle together and she can still feel his lips on hers. she can still feel the weight of him over her, against her. she holds it close, tucks it in her heart. for later, in the cold and the silence.

i want -

he says, and the silence that follows is long and heavy, the kind of pause that comes before a storm. tense, even, despite the languid slide of his hand, the heaviness of his hand on her hip. she looks him in the eye because the weight of his expression is too much to turn away from - the heavy intentness of his stare is something that holds her fixated in place, curled on her side, legs intertwined with his, lashes still wet with half-shed tears, mirroring those that dry and stain against his pale skin.

she knows what he has to say will not be good. she can see it in his eyes, hear it in the two words he’s managed, feel it in the aching pause that comes after. and when he speaks, she sighs, shuts her eyes slow and breaths out a heavy breath, like atlas lifting up the world once more.

“kyu, please, you just - we just - we just did this, kyu.” she mumbles, and she can feel the tears well up behind her eyelids, can feel the ache in her chest that threatens to override her common sense, curls herself a little closer to him despite the words that come from tired, bitten lips. “you said okay. you said it, kyu, you can’t just take it back now. please, it was so hard - it was too hard to do it once. don’t make me do it again.”

KYURO

there is so much conflict in him, the moment his will comes crashing down and lets his heart do the talking.

her eyes shut and her breath leaves heavy, and he holds so much regret forming as more heat behind his eyes. wishes he can take the words back because this isn’t the last thing he wants to remember. he wants her eyes to look at him again, to look as full as they had been just a second ago. if he has to take it back to see it again, then so be it.

but his hand slides and she is so warm, so soft, so solid under him, beside him and he doesn’t want to let go. he doesn’t think he can. arm wrapping around her curled frame to keep her close, to memorize the heat of her. even if right now he wants nothing more than to never let go, he knows nothing can change their predetermined end, though. an end just as stubborn as the two of them combined.

because she responds just the way he thought she would and that ache in his heart returns. a self-inflicted knife to his chest. every word she says, he digs it deeper and twists at the end for good measure. an attempt to remind himself of how painful it had been to get here, how painful it’d be to continue, how painful all his selfishness had been for her. to her. and so, although he waffles, although he falters, parts his lips slow and breathes shaky, although he wishes he can say anything but --

“okay,” he says, and it saps all the energy out of him once more, “okay, i’m sorry.”

he feels the tears this time, hot as they trickle slow down his cheek. he sniffs, pulls her in closer and buries his face in the crown of her head, leaving a kiss there before taking in a deep breath of the lavender scenting her hair. this isn’t the last image of him he wants her to see, tear stained and broken, so he steels himself and musters a weak smile, reaches his hand around to wipe the tears off his cheek. he pulls his head off hers, shifts down so her face is right there in front of his, a pale, quivering finger reaching to brush the droplets off under her eyes, “i know, i know it was. i’m sorry i just--” he laughs, softly, quietly, breathily, everything they normally aren’t but have been tonight in this painful farewell, “i thought i’d give it a shot. but forget i asked, please. just remember i love you.”

another unnumbered confession, another blade at his own heart while it screams at him to not give up.

but this isn’t giving up, he thinks now, he tells himself now, repeatedly until he believes it. this is loving her the only way she can handle, right now. this is taking the weight of the world off her shoulders and putting it on his. this is selflessly giving her what she wants until, and he hopes to god there is an until, she realizes she wants more. and he will still be there when she does.

until then, at least, he can be selfish for one more minute. he can grant himself the idle drag of his hands tracing patterns on her thigh, he can grant himself the press of his lips against hers soft, slow, he can grant himself the warmth of her forehead on his, the brush of their noses, the mingle of their breaths all before he asks against everything his heart is screaming for, “do you want me to go now?”

HARIN

they tangle up like this. together, desperate. she can hear the beat of his heart against his ribs, echoing in her ear. she can feel his hands on her back, can feel the heat of his tears on her own cheeks, on the top of her head, knows she’s staining his shirt in turn but is far past caring, at this point. he keeps going, past two hundred, unnumbered, unending, and it’s almost enough for her to believe that all of this could happen. that this could be okay.

she memorizes this moment, soft cotton against her skin, the dull and distant ache in her temples, hands in her hair and the quiet in between them. these are moments to remember for the rest of her life. these are moments to hold on too - when it is cold and the world is cruel, at least she had this. at least, once, she had him. she sighs out a breath that shudders hesitant and soft as she shifts in his grip. soon she can feel him move and it breaks that spell that holds them in place, reminds her that this too must end - sooner rather than later.

she doesn’t want that. in this moment everything in her rejects that cruel truth, fears the cold that will follow after, the frigid absence, when she can’t even cling to these moments for some kind of cruel comfort. so as selfish as he is in the drag of his hands and the brush of their noses, she is ten times more selfish, redoubles it as she fits her hands to his jaw, thumbs soft on his cheeks, lingering to press lightly against the mole at the side of his nose, one on his cheek, a barely there hint of a grin on her lips.

she closes her eyes for a moment, ignores his question, ignores everything else- except this. except warm hands and mingled breaths and soft touches in the quiet night. and her own selfishness wins out, not just last time, but this time as well, as she bites down on the corner of her lip, rolls onto her back to examine the ceiling, fingers stretching to the side to tangle with his. apparently once honesty has been broached she can’t hold it back, admits a soft, “i mean, no.”

she laughs, dry and strained, before she turns her head to look at him again, “we’re already in this deep tonight, right? you could - you could stay a little longer.”

KYURO

he doesn’t think he should. stay. for much longer. it had already taken everything in him twice to steel himself and just agree. to simply say one word. the thought of physically standing up, opening the door and shutting it one last time escapes him -- because he doesn’t know if he can, even when he knows he must. and with every ticking second, he can feel it getting more difficult to follow through, can feel his heart rising, rising, rising, so that when it finally drops, it’s from the highest altitude and with the heaviest pain. but what else can he do but stay? at least for a few more moments, at least until he has no choice because if he goes now he knows he’ll regret it more than saying okay. and so, “good,” he starts with a soft laugh that mirrors hers, turning his head to meet her eyes, “i didn’t want to go yet anyway. not until i clean that mess over there up, at least.” he jokes, a grin faint on his lips because this is what he wants her to remember, not the anger she’d gotten acquainted with over the past year. but the squeeze of his palm warm against hers, the glint in his eyes from moonlight shining through the large window, the upward twist of his lips and the warmth of it when he brings her hand up to kiss the back of it. he wants her to remember just kyuro, foolishly in love.

that, and the weight of him when he shifts, rolls over to straddle her waist, presses her hand back into the mattress. another smile on his lips, another pang in his chest that he ignores vehemently, another lump in his throat that has him inhaling deep to push it down before he can lean in, brush his nose underneath her jaw and leave a trail of soft kisses down her neck, “i love you, kim harin.”

#thread | unravelling #ship | harin & kyuro #char | harin

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