Chapter Text
—...and do you think you've ever felt that? Resolve?
—No. Or, at least—never noticeably. It's just never enough, right?
—Does anyone else feel like it might be a bit of a theme here? That phrase. Never enough. Have you asked yourselves, any of you?
There's a hesitation, and the lack of noise in the room is almost enough to draw Jisung's attention back to the group. Almost enough. It stays rooted, instead, in the corner of the room.
—Asked ourselves what?
—If it's ever been enough. Anything. Ever.
— Well, for me, it started when I was a kid. That feeling, like no matter what I did, it never...
There's a fishbowl on a cheap, three-legged table, propped up by the wall and the faith of God alone, and back at the start, there were fish in there. He would spend the sessions watching them dig with gaping, shapeless mouths at the dirt embedded between multi-coloured rocks at the bottom of the bowl, the only thing left behind to prove that there were ever really fish there at all.
(An equal reminder to when he caught a glimpse of a bag of fish food once, heaped over in a lump in the storeroom. There was a discount sticker plastered over a rip in the seam on one side.)
Cheap lighting makes a cheap atmosphere, casts cheap shadows. Sends cheap glimmers of life skidding out across the walls from where the light hits water through glass. Cheap glass. Cheap fish food. They probably wouldn't mind, because maybe dirt tastes good to fish no matter the price.
—...that's it, I guess. My life. I wasn't set up for much, was I?
—If you think about your life like it was set up for you, then no, not at all. Not set up for much at all.
—I mean, when you say it like that—
—Try to be open-minded in this space, everyone. A lot of us are here for similar reasons, even if we think about them differently. Rather than thinking about it like...
(If we think about similar things in different ways, surely that's the furthest apart that we could get? It feels, to him, the simplest difference. The way that we think.)
No one here manages to hold his attention for longer than a breath's length, in and out, and then he's somewhere else. In all fairness to the people around him, there aren't many people who manage to keep his gaze. These boring, self-serving fuckers never stood a chance.
—...point, maybe it's my perspective. Can you change that, though?
—There's not much you can't change if you're willing to try?
—So I could lower my tax rates?!
—Ha. If only. That's one of the few.
There's a collective rumbling, like a laugh that tears through the room, but with less life. A giggle that scratches at the room's arm. People shoot downcast glances at the faces to either side, downturned smiles and the collective understanding that even if everything seems bad, taxes will always be a little bit worse.
He might share a glance with his neighbour, too, an older lady who sits a little bit crooked in a cheap plastic chair. Might bask in the warmth of shared misery, if he could only bother to turn his head, or at the very least crack a fucking smile.
Why should he? No one here would notice.
—Something we all have in common, in that sense. Taxes.
—Well, taxes and—
His pupils stretch and dilate every now and again. They flick to one side, back to the other, scanning apathetically.
—So, we're coming to the end of our timeframe. Anyone want to share anything before we finish up for the day? Jisung?
Fucking hell. Like time wasn't going slowly enough, and now he has to share. It's never been one of his strong suits.
The smile he contemplated before is forced out, and he feels cheap lighting strike a glint off of his teeth. "I'm okay," he eases, shuffling back just a little in his chair because it makes him feel like he might be able to blend in. "Not much to report."
"Have you had any positive moments this week that you'd like to talk about?"
"I had a great pizza on Thursday. Y'know, like, stuffed crust. Four cheese. The works."
"Jisung, it's—"
"That was my positive moment," he interrupts, too old to be sulking but too young to care.
"—it's important that you share with the group," she chastises, "to help you on your journey."
This makes him laugh, and it splits the room in half.
(No one else is laughing.)
"As long as it's a one-way ticket," he grins, "I couldn't give a fuck about the journey."
No one looks at him. They make a point of it, not looking, but it doesn't bother him anymore. His eyes have roamed back to his one reliable source of companionship in this godforsaken room, to water that needs cleaning and amber-coloured bodies that shift in the light, to—
Well, nothing.
An empty fishbowl.
A noise over by the doorway makes a sound not unlike the rattle of a fish spitting rocks back out so they sink down into a floor of substrates, and he's the only one who spares it a glance.
A glance that lingers. There's someone new. He's not used to new, not anymore. A glance that might last a lifetime, because for once, he isn't looking despairingly into the corner of the room.
He's looking at him.
──*ੈ✩‧₊˚‧₊˚🖇️✩ ₊˚
"How was it? Today?"
Jisung's eyes flick to the dim glow of his laptop screen, catch on the low power sign in the bottom corner. It's a reminder, and an excuse—a reminder to fumble around behind his desk for his charger, an excuse to focus on getting it into the socket first time rather than the concerned face staring at him from the monitor.
"Fine," he grumbles, downcast gaze on the smiley face thanking him for gracing his laptop with charge. "Fine, like always."
"You're annoying," cuts Changbin. His voice might span miles, seas, time zones, but it's still just as harsh through a shitty internet connection. "You're annoying me right now."
"Oh, I'm sorry. Is my misery too monosyllabic for you?" he bites back.
"You're not miserable, Sung. You're annoying."
He rolls his eyes so far back into his head that he can almost see the pathetic attempt at making his room cosy in the back of his skull. String lights that feather and fray at the edges strung across his grey matter, and a poor-quality print-out picture of him and the same guy who's now glaring through the screen stuck in the cavern of his skull. "I'm not annoying," he whines (annoyingly). "I'm lonely. So, miserable. Right?"
Not for the first time, Changbin looks guilty. "You know I'd come visit if—"
"I know," he smiles back, wan and watered down. "I'm just feeling sorry for myself. Don't worry. Life goes on for everyone, huh?"
"Jisung—"
"There was a new guy. Today."
And as easy as that, he's back there. Back under bad lighting, out of the cocoon that his bedroom offers. Back there, in a circle of chairs, willing for someone whose name he doesn't even know to spare a glance in his direction.
"Yeah?" Changbin seems to welcome the change in conversation.
"Yeah."
"Did you speak to him?"
As if. He snorts. "Forget who you're talking to?"
Changbin rolls his eyes this time, and Jisung wonders if he, too, catches a glimpse of the world around him when he does. "So, why mention him? If you didn't even talk to him?"
"Dunno," he mutters. He really doesn't. "He seemed... cool."
"High praise."
"Nice hair. Short, but soft, like I could run my fingers through it—"
"Keep it PG, Sung. For my sanity."
Drags a scoff out of him, because he wasn't going to say anything that bad. Still, he fumbles for something PG to say. "He had nice eyes. But, like, dark eyes. Like, I want you to look at me naked ey—"
"I'm hanging up."
"Noooooo," he whines back over the interruption, sending his best pout across their connection. "Don't go."
"Can we talk about something else except your horrible sexual desires and need to embed them on poor, innocent strangers?"
"Fine. Go, then."
They talk a little bit more, of course. Changbin never likes to say goodbye, even if sometimes, Jisung talks about things that make him feel queasy in the pit of his stomach. They're chalk and cheese. When they first met (as kids, across the playground, glaring at each other because Jisung's Joker backpack clashed with Changbin's Batman one), they argued for a straight month like they'd been an old married couple in every life they'd lived before, and then decided they'd be best friends in every one yet to come.
(Not as poetic as that, not for 5-year-olds. Closer to telling each other how much they stink, and look like a bug, and how rubbish their drawings are. Closer to picking each other for every partnered activity in class, and holding hands on the playground.)
Changbin knows everything. Too much. It makes Jisung's heart feel heavy, but maybe that's what's kept him grounded for so long. Without Changbin, he sometimes thinks, he'd have floated up around the moon by now.
Heaven knows he's tried.
When his room goes quiet, his brain starts to wander. He fills the space that Changbin's voice leaves behind with low music and kicks out his legs on his bed so his spine pushes down into the mattress.
There's an aquarium on the windowsill, and he knows it's empty.
Old habits die hard. His eyes still track the glass like he can see them, fish that curl and flex scales that glimmer in water hit by evening sun. The fish have never been here, not in this room. They're long gone by now. He used to feel like maybe they were still there, like they'd slipped up out of their habitat one night and taken a cruise through his veins, the bulge of their heads creeping up along his arms and peeking out from his stomach.
That thought makes him feel sick these days. He knows they're gone. They won't come back.
Old habits die hard.
He's always had an addictive personality. Joker when he was a kid turned into Twilight as a teen (Robert Pattinson is hot, keep your judgements to yourself) and Twilight turned into Shameless. Collecting Pokemon cards, iced Americanos, scratch cards and Fortnite and paint-by-numbers and his Year 10 Maths teacher.
His brain is a festering pit of old habits. So it's easy, really, like pulling on a fresh pair of socks or feeling tepid water slip over your shoulders as the shower struggles to heat up. He sinks into thinking like it's nothing new.
Everyone else in his group likes to boast how well they're doing with bright clothes, colourful hair. It's a neon disco that Jisung wishes he'd never been invited to, and so he protests in whatever way he can.
Today, it was dark clothes. All black. Mourning clothes for a morning session, because apparently, everyone finds it easy to shed their past lives (past sins) like snakes that have outgrown their skin, but he still has to fight through stacks of playing cards and old cigarette papers that clutter up his wardrobe.
So he sticks to black clothes. Sometimes, he'll go so far as to paint his face an almost ghostly shade of alabaster with cheap foundation, carve out his under-eyes with mauve shadows. He's mourning. He never quite adjusted to his 'new life'.
Someone else must be saying goodbye, too.
The someone else plays on his mind as the thick fabric of his pillowcase clings like a hug around the back of his neck. He was expressionless in the meeting (daringly so, for someone who had interrupted it mid-way through), but he smirks at Jisung in the scene that he plays out in his head.
A newcomer. A breath of fresh air in a room that's long-since dead.
In the daydream, the guy's watching him, perilously chasmic eyes that in real life threatened to swallow him up like a void but at the same time, only flickered in his direction once throughout the meeting.
(He'd been gazing at the fishbowl. The guy's eyes had followed him there, just once. Never came back, much to Jisung's despair.)
And Jisung has sworn off feelings, and new things, and hope, and excitement, and that fizz that starts to clutter around his brain like static whenever he finds something new that might be worth lending his entire self to.
But he's always liked a challenge. The newcomer hadn't looked at him, but he'd spent the whole rest of the meeting burning holes into cool, tan skin, wondering what dark thoughts might live in a head of cropped, inky-black hair.
Who can blame him?
He's always had an addictive personality. Old habits die hard.
──*ੈ✩‧₊˚‧₊˚🖇️✩ ₊˚
The next group session is a week later, and the days crawl by. These days, every hour, minute, second, every indicator that time is passing as slow and fast as it can all at once, it clings to his skin and leaves a funny taste in his mouth.
He hates time. Hates it. Unpredictable, how one moment you can see your whole life sprawling out in front of you, languorous and lazy, only for years to then pass you in the blink of an eye.
Fitting. People in group love to talk about time.
—hardest part, I reckon. I have so much time now, but I don't know what to do with it.
—What would you usually do with it?
—Well, back... y'know, before. I would—
The clock on the wall (right above the door, like some cruel acknowledgement of the fact that the hour-long session time cages them in here) ticks loudly, and sometimes it feels like the fact it's so loud is what makes it tick so slowly.
Maybe today, it's because he's waiting.
No sign of the new guy, the same dark horse who's spent the last week stampeding through his brain for no fucking reason. He's in a bad mood. Because the guy's not here, maybe? Or maybe because Jisung is?
Surrounded by people who melt into the circle of chairs like plasticine figures on a hot day, the same primary colours, harsh and unblended. Pretending to listen to their lifeless groaning. Pretending like he isn't one more sad story away from ripping the ears from his skull, or the veins from his wrist.
But the sound of the clock is barely a breath in his ear now, and every second that ticks away is closer to a sluggish minute.
Because, all of a sudden, "Oh!", the woman who leads the group is saying. Her voice isn't background noise anymore. "You've joined us again!"
He's back.
The pessimistic half of his brain wasn't expecting the guy to come back.
Last week was the nth meeting. Not Jisung's first ever, but the first with the appearance of the second coming of Aphrodite her fucking self. This is n+1.
The newcomer doesn't say anything back to the still-beaming woman, just offers her a wry smile that's crooked across his face but comes nowhere near his eyes. He takes a seat, folds his arms. Crosses one leg over the other and hooks them at the knee. His trousers are too big for him. Too much fabric, Jisung notes, and sure—it might look soft, like you want to drop a tab and spend the evening grazing your fingertips against it, but there's still too much of it.
"We didn't hear from you last week. Would you like to introduce yourself to the group?"
He watches the guy shuffle uncomfortably in his seat. In return, he gets a flicker of eyes in his direction before they hop to another face in the circle and then end on the woman who spoke.
"I'm new." It comes out clipped, his voice surprisingly soft-pitched, and the shortness of it is enough to make Jisung need to hide a snorted laugh. "New to all of this."
"That's okay," smiles the woman. Her hands are folded in her lap. "Sharing is valuable, but waiting until you're ready is important, too."
The second snort isn't hidden.
"Something to share, Jisung?" Pointed. He's the only one in the group who seems able to get under her skin. He relishes in the fact.
"Can I wait until I'm ready?"
"Have I ever forced you to talk when you didn't want to? If I did, I'm really—"
The back of the chair digs into the knots in his spine. "It was implied," Jisung retaliates with a huff. She gets under his skin just as much. He's not sure why. Out the corner of his eye, he catches a fleeting grin pass over the guy's face.
Whilst the woman tries to get the group back into some kind of order, he ruminates. His arms are folded tightly across his chest, and if he was judging the guy who he's currently trying not to look at for wearing too-big clothes, he's equally as guilty. But the fabric of his hoodie bunches up around his forearms, and it makes him feel safe.
—...were talking about trauma. Not just how it affects our choices, but where we carry it. Where we feel it.
—Mine's in my stomach, I think. Like... seasickness.
—Yeah. Same.
—I think it's less corporeal for me.
—Corporeal?
—As in, not my body. My mind. Soul, self, whatever you wanna call it.
—All great recognitions of where we...
When he was eleven, Jisung once caught his mum with her hand wrist-deep in the piggy bank that sat in prime position on his windowsill. Except when he thinks about it, he never really caught her, because he said nothing about the crime—just watched her, tried to count how many pennies she had clenched in her fist from his spot around the corner of the door.
He stood still enough against the wall that she didn't notice when she skulked back out of the room. Too busy counting up the silver in her palm.
After that, he started hiding his piggy bank.
Is that where his trauma is carried? Or is it in his knees? They bounce, like he's electric, some godforsaken reincarnation of the Duracell bunny, but with an Id and an Ego yet no real will to live.
The only thrum of energy in the room.
But there are eyes on him. Perilous, like he imagined, but not just because of the depth and when he meets them, Jisung feels like he might be tumbling, because he can't move. He's spinning out into—
Empty fishbowl. Empty. He grounds himself.
"What?" he mouths across the circle. No one else is looking, so only the guy catches it.
He gets little more than a shrug back in response. The movement makes an over-sized jumper—almost as big as his pants, he notes—pull down on one side. A black t-shirt underneath, and a sliver more of skin that should be honey-warm, but crystallises in the harsh lighting.
The guy flicks his eyes back to the woman, who's still talking. Jisung's eyes don't move from where they've rooted themselves.
"—Jisung?"
Uprooted, rolled. "Yes?"
"We were just talking about milestones. It's a big one for you today, isn't it?"
Fuck. He should've known. The flowers waiting for him on his doorstep, the well-wishes from Changbin over text that morning. "Yep," he manages to force out, but it's through gritted teeth and at risk of a mouthful of sick.
"Would you like to share anything with the group about how that feels for you?"
Three months. "It feels like absolute shit," he grumbles, and he knows no one is looking at him, because they never do.
Is he surprised, then, that someone is? That the same someone is glancing at him from under soot-swept lashes, like looking at Jisung straight-on is some kind of crime? And when he's caught, he glances away, like the smile on his face isn't proof that he'd been listening intently.
"You know our rules on the language we use here," she reprimands.
"Oh, yeah, I'm sorry." He's not. "It feels like agony. Hell, even. Like I'm Sisyphus, but the rock I'm pushing is made of screaming babies, and spiders, and thumbtacks, and—"
"Okay, Jisung," she acquiesces, and under her breath, "I'm sorry I asked."
No one else is looking at him, and in all honesty, they all look somewhat annoyed. He is somewhat annoying, even if admitting that to himself means accepting that Changbin has been right all along.
Worth it, though.
The guy's smile is still crooked, but this time, it meets his eyes. Crumples them, creases them, and even when he catches Jisung looking and straightens his face out, there's something in his eyes that wasn't there before.
He'll ask for the guy's name at the end of the meeting, he tells himself. Has to. The only person in this group who has so far dared to seem real.
But when the clock ticks over the hour, the guy slips out like water through a cracked pipe, and he's gone.
──*ੈ✩‧₊˚‧₊˚🖇️✩ ₊˚
A few days later, Jisung finds himself—like he always does, nowadays—passing time. He's at work, and he's spent the last couple of hours on shift alone by trying to estimate how many cans of Red Bull there are left in the fridge, and approximately how long it'll take before he has to restock them.
He's worked here for a while now. Two months, drawing closer to three with every breath. It's a small convenience store, and one of the three places where he passes time in the city. Flat. Group. Work. Métro, boulot, dodo, he finds himself thinking.
Travel, work, sleep. Chuck in group sessions and the occasional video call with his friends from back home, and that's his life in a nutshell.
It's taking a serious amount of willpower not to fall asleep. The twilight shift has started to tick late into the night. The bright lights inside make it hard to see out of the window-lined walls, but he knows that out there, people are starting to trickle back home. The streets are becoming quieter, less busy.
Inside, the same. The music has switched over to the late-night soundtrack, all lo-fi beats and thrumming basslines that almost send his willpower stumbling into dreams. There's no one in the aisles. The last customer left over an hour ago with a few shoplifted goods in his pockets that Jisung pretended not to see.
So it's natural, really. Completely expected.
When the bell on the door chimes for someone's arrival, he screams.
"Jesus. No need for the dramatics."
"You're late," Jisung mutters, holding cold hands against the burning skin of shamed ears.
"Bad traffic. Taxi got stuck behind a cyclist, and the cyclist was stuck behind a learner driver."
"You walk here," he says drily to a sheepish Jeongin, "and since when was there traffic at 11pm?" Jeongin has his face turned away from him as he shoves his coat into the store cupboard, but still tries to hide a wince when he realises he's been caught out.
"...You're right. I meant I got stuck behind a cyclist on the pavement. Who was stuck behind a learner."
"Learner walker? Most people just call them babies."
"I meant—"
"—that you're a lying bastard?"
"Exactly."
Jeongin has a way of being so insufferably stupid that it makes him laugh, and he does so now, snorted and hidden by his head sinking back down onto his elbow.
They've not been working together for long. Jeongin only joined the team a couple of weeks ago, and he's so insufferably stupid that they got along like a house on fire from the moment they met.
"Got some new carts from a guy online, if you want any," the younger chirps, back on the shop floor now and facing-up products on a shelf right next to Jisung's till. "Good stuff. Cali, he said."
If you ever want to make him wince (like, really grimace, like he's just sucked on a lemon or smelled something foul), those two words will do it. Good stuff. Jeongin doesn't know about group, or three months, or feeling like shit, so it's not his fault. But still, those words are a ghost, and Jisung is fucking haunted.
"And you believed him?" he replies, regardless.
Jeongin shrugs. "I like to see the good in people."
"And you wouldn't know a lying dealer if one smacked you in the face"
"A lying dealer did smack me in the face once. I'll have you know I knew exactly who—and what—he was."
His eyes follow him on his quest to try and organise a stack of Pepero boxes which have taken to falling off the shelf every time the younger moves his hands away. "Yeah?" Jeongin has a lot of stories like this, and they tend to make Jisung feel nostalgic.
"Yeah. Tried to barter him down from 50 to 45 for an eighth, and he lost his—fuck, stupid fucking boxes—sorry. Lost his shit. Swung for my jaw, then threatened to draw for the strap." The last part is ushered out with air quotes, and they both laugh. "Like anyone round here has a strap."
"How much did you end up paying for the eighth, then?"
"Oh, 45," Jeongin replies, and again, he's not looking at Jisung, but he still beams a smile that splits his face right down the middle. "And he smoked me out before I left."
"You realise 45 for an eighth is still, like, criminally high prices?" Pardon the pun.
"Not round here," Jeongin laments. "Prices are steep. No one does anything fun round here, so everything fun is soooo expensive."
Jisung hasn't done anything fun in months. "I used to get an eighth for twenty," he reminisces. A gram for 25, a tab for 5, and the occasional eight ball for 100 when he was really in need of some fun.
"Back in the good old days. You been up to much?"
"Oh, you know me. Always something going on," he shoots back, sarcasm clawing at the back of his throat.
"What have you binge-watched this week?"
"First three seasons of Brassic. A good couple Gossip Girl episodes. Finished a full run through of Stardew Valley, too."
"Thrilling," Jeongin snorts. He's a few years younger, and it's painfully clear. Jeongin still thinks he's bulletproof, hasn't yet realised that life is out to get him.
Sometimes, Jisung is desperate to prove that he's still young, too. "I met someone, though."
"Really?" The shock in Jeongin's voice is borderline offensive. "Who? Where?"
Where? Fuck. He didn't think that part through. "Oh, just a guy. But, like, dangerously hot. Met him at... at a bar."
"You were at a bar?"
Fuck. "No." Jeongin knows that he's Cali sober, thinks that drink is the only vice he hides from. "I was outside a bar. I was buying buds, and he was just... there."
"What's his name?"
"...I don't—"
"Did you meet this guy?" Jeongin interrupts, "Or just see him from a distance and realise your life was so boring that you needed to make up some illicit affair with someone who's— what was it you said?— dangerously hot?"
He huffs, sulking. "It sounds dumb when you put it like that."
"Awww, baby," pouts the younger, finally rounding out usually slanted eyes and gazing with pity—yuck—at him. "That's because it is dumb."
"Whatever," he sighs. "Least I won't have to pay for your seat when I marry the guy, I guess."
And it's not pity anymore, but something more akin to a dumbfounded sense of admiration. "Christ," Jeongin exhales. "You really are a fucking psycho."
If only he knew, hums his inner monologue. If it had a face, it would be smiling right now, catty and cynical. "Why do you think we get along so well?" he says instead, with a grin that's much more superficial.
Because Jeongin has the type of smile that most addicts take on. The same one as Jisung, the same as his mum, the same as most of his friends from back home.
It scared him off, at first. He'd keep his distance from Jeongin whenever they were on shift together, until he realised that the younger actually wasn't an addict, just a friendly kid with big teeth and a slight dependency on weed.
He buys a cart off him at the end of shift, goes home and wills himself not to smoke the whole thing in one go. A couple of lungfuls. Just to help him sleep.
──*ੈ✩‧₊˚‧₊˚🖇️✩ ₊˚
Fast-forward a couple of weeks to another group session. If he's been counting right, it's n+4.
They've still not spoken, but he's starting to work out how to get the newcomer's attention—except he's not a newcomer, not anymore. He's started arriving on time, becoming what Jisung calls a voyageur. Someone who's there just to listen.
And he always sits in the same seat. Both of them do. They're on opposite sides of the circle.
The guy has a habit of pressing his tongue up to his teeth when he's listening to someone, which peek out from flushed lips that look like they might feel just like a gummy between Jisung's incisors. Sometimes, the guy will shove his tongue up to his gums, making the skin around his mouth swell up. He's doing it now. Jisung can't pull his eyes away.
—...and we're all guilty of something, I think.
—Guilty is an interesting word to use. Are we all guilty? And if that's the case, is it really guilt?
"What else would it be?" Jisung snorts. He's gotten more vocal in group, knows it's down to the new guy's presence. "You think we all feel good about what we're here for? What we've done?"
When he flicks his eyes, he catches the guy smirking. He only really reacts when Jisung speaks, he's noticed.
"Interesting point," the woman ponders. "Does anyone agree with Jisung?"
He wonders if the guy will reply. He hasn't, not yet, not in four group meetings, nor in the heartbeat at the end where he slinks out of the room like a spectre. He doesn't now, either, so Jisung tunes back out.
They're both bolder in the way that they look at each other. In the first few sessions, their eyes would meet, and the guy would flick his eyes away like looking wasn't allowed. Now, they make a point to let their gaze linger on each other.
The rest of the session passes quickly, with Jisung's attention drawn now away from empty fishbowls and lathered generously on a guy whose name he doesn't even know.
When it's over, he presumes the guy will have disappeared with the wind, like always. Just like himself, desperate to leave as soon as the hour-long frame has gone and the proverbial shackles have been loosened.
Today is different. There's a thirst in the back of his throat, and for the first time, he finds himself drawn to the refreshment table where the rest of the attendees mill around and discuss their mundane-as-fuck lives for however long they care to.
He spills a mouthful of juice onto the plastic table when he pours some from the pitcher into a paper cup. He takes a swig, and chokes on it, because in his ear like a ghost—
"Jisung, right?"
A shiver that he wouldn't like to admit to threatens to wrack its way through him. The breathed-out word is cool, and directed straight down the back of his neck.
"Uh—" A flush rises up his cheeks. "Yeah. Jisung, yeah. That's me." That's me? How fucking embarrassing.
He's pouring himself a drink. "Come here often, Jisung?"
"What a cliché," he laughs back, feigning off the thrill that he can feel, not quite flushed but fizzing under his skin.
The guy smirks. Takes a sip, swallows. His Adam's apple bobs through thin skin. "I'm not good at making conversation."
"Yeah, well," Jisung hums, "you're in a good place, then. No one here can talk for shit."
"You don't seem to talk much in the sessions. Or, like... the way you talk is different."
With a nod of his head, he guides the guy (making a mental note to ask what his fucking name is, at some point, at least) away from the refreshments area, and the people milling around stale cookies and over-diluted juice. "Different? Why, because I don't self-indulge in how painfully miserable and pointless my life is?"
"Proves my point," smiles the guy. "You're funny."
"Makes up for the trauma."
When the guy laughs for the first time, something twinges in his stomach. It's lilting, a laugh that rises for a second before stumbling out with one last exhale. "Feels like we all have that in common."
"You've not been coming here for long." A question disguised as a statement. You're not supposed to ask people why they're in a NA meeting, in the same way you shouldn't really ask an inmate what landed them behind bars.
"I wasn't aware you were keeping tabs on me," he answers with a smile. It almost feels like he's being flirted with.
Awfully similar feeling to the first time he tried aci—
Bad thoughts, he scolds himself in his head. But it does feel similar. There's that familiar purr in his heartbeat, and it might be a trick of the light, but he could swear he's just seen the flick of a tail in the empty fishbowl still sat across the room.
The guy cuts in again when he doesn't answer his question. "Do you like fish?"
"What?" Jisung suppresses a laugh. "Fish?"
"You keep looking at the bowl in the corner like there's something in there that we're all missing."
"What, like the meaning of life is swimming around in an acrylic fish bowl in a desecrated church hall?" Laughing feels easy, so he does. They've paused by the opening to the now empty circle of chairs, as if they might be about to sit back down and start spilling sins.
"Easy to assume that life has a meaning," the guy hums. The drink in his paper cup should be liquor, he thinks, and they should be sat in a low-lit bar with some corny jazz buzzing away in the corner.
If they were normal people, in a normal place. He might not feel so scared, if they were normal.
"Did you go somewhere?"
If he did, he's easily brought back with a smile. "Sorry," he says. "Lost in thought."
"About fish? Or the meaning of life?"
"Neither. Thinking about what I should eat for dinner tonight." It's always felt simpler to lie to strangers.
And the guy answers so easily, like he is normal. Like he's not scared. "Eat with me."
Spluttering into his drink, "I don't even know your name."
"Minho." So fucking easy. "Lee Minho, 27. Addict." The guy—Minho. Lee Minho—flashes a smile that quirks up one side.
"Han Jisung," he says on auto-pilot, "25. Addict."
"So, Han Jisung. 25-year-old addict. Will you?"
"Will I?"
That tongue's flicking back over bunny teeth, and Minho leans in like he's the one who's hungry. "Eat with me."
"I'm not as easy as that, angel." He feels nervous, and it makes him sharper than he would usually be.
Thank God, Minho laughs. Not so positive—leans back a little bit. He has a way of flicking his eyes up, down, summing Jisung up in one steady movement.
The room around them seems to have grown smaller. There may as well be no one left in it, and no juice left in their cups. No smell of burnt-out candles, or people lingering on the other side of the room. Just the feeling of being shaken up like a bottle of Fanta.
"Sorry," Minho relents. "Too soon?"
"No!" Fuck. Too eager? "I mean, that's not it. I'm just working tonight. That's all."
"Shame. They've just opened a new naengmyeon place a few streets over. I'm desperate to go."
"Oh, my God, I love naengmyeon," he says, because he does. And he wants to go eat cold noodles with this preternatural stranger. But he also knows what will happen if he misses work. "I can't, not tonight, but—another day?"
"Sure. That has to be a promise, though. One day." There's something childlike to the way Minho looks at him, and it makes him feel like he's fifteen years younger. Abashed and shy, confronted by one of the cool kids on the playground.
But they're both addicts. Cold-noodle-loving, humanity-hating, pessimistic addicts. So he nods. "One day."
"Will you be here? Next week? At group?" The older seems unsure all of a sudden, like everything else had felt natural except those three questions.
"Three months strong," he answers, biting tone hard to leave out. "Have to be here next week."
"See you there," Minho smiles back.
He's almost gone. Jisung watches him go. It means he sees him pause, sees the slight curl to his fist before he turns on one heel and, with a determined face, heads back towards him.
"Can I have your number?"
"What are you going to do with it?" It's an attempt to be the cooler kid on the playground.
"Who knows? Might sign you up to daily capybara pics, or sell your data on to the government. Text you when I'm lonely, maybe."
"Two good options out of three," he muses.
Minho's face lifts into a cocksure smile. "Only a good option if I get lonely."
And Jisung is still trying to be cool, so he grimaces. "No, dummy. I love capybaras and don't care who has my data, as long as it means you use the money to buy me naengmyeon. One day."
"One day," Minho repeats. "But can I get your number in the meantime?"
An interesting tactic. He, himself, would usually ask for someone's Instagram, so giving away his number feels weird. But something about Minho is magnetising, and weird doesn't necessarily mean bad.
(What exactly makes Minho so fascinating is difficult to put into words. He's not really that much taller, but he still tilts his head down to look at him when they speak, and it makes Jisung feel like he's really listening. His eyes catch the light like sparks off of dark flint, and he fidgets with his fingers when he talks. Whatever it is, it's hard to ignore.)
"Okay," he relents, because how could he not? "Put your number in. I'll drop call you."
He saves Minho's name as something dumb, and wonders what he's saved as in the other's phone.
When he watches him leave a second time, he goes for real, but still turns once to wave goodbye on his way.
You're funny plays on his mind for the rest of the night. Rest of the week, even. Eat with me. Text you when I'm lonely. The mental image of Minho sat across from him, silver earrings and cat-eyes and then sat in front of him, Jisung on his knees on the floor and his—
Oh. This might be a little bit concerning.
Minho might grow scales.