Work Text:
Choi Su-bong is eighteen, almost nineteen, in grade twelve going to a school in buttfuck Gangnam, where it’s just barely more affordable in Seoul for his mother.
He is eighteen and his alarm clock is blaring in his ear at five in the morning sharp and he’s never wanted to simply skip more—It’s not as if he doesn’t enough already. His teachers don’t give a shit if the pothead who always smells like cigarettes, Nam-gyu’s doing the little bastard, is missing from the back of their class.
Su-bong blinks in the sun from his sheer curtains and grunts as he stretches his arms above his body.
He’s fucking tired.
It’s the middle of the school year, he’s been high almost, almost, everyday and he’s just barely passing with straight ‘C’ letter grades.
Despite it, he sits up and musters the courage to finally get ready. Uniform; White polo, navy slacks, black shoes of any kind, must be formal. He straightens his hair into a perfect fringe for at least twenty minutes, and then grabs an ounce, his iPod, his headphones, his backpack, and doesn’t say goodbye before walking out the door.
The trip to the corner Su-bong usually meets Nam-gyu and Gyeong-su is a short walk, maybe five minutes of uninterrupted music until he’s met with Gyeong-su’s mousy face on the corner, there before Nam-gyu.
“Oi! Thanos!”
Gyeong-su is the only one who calls Su-bong by his alternate name. The name he releases music under and has done for multiple years now. Gyeong-su is also the only one who is conveniently in the same grade as him.
A handshake and a share of sly grins.
“What’s up, my brother?”
Gyeong-su is a fanboy deep in his soul, a sweet guy too, wears his heart on his sleeve, really. He asked Su-bong to sign a burned CD once with all of his songs on it. Su-bong has no idea how they get along besides the fact that they like the same Pokémon games and he’s a damn good trip sitter.
Su-bong ruffles the other’s hair before Gyeong-su responds.
“Hey! Nothin’ man, same shit… you haven’t been to school in, like, three days, Nam-gyu’s tripping.” He’s exaggerating; Nam-gyu had texted at least… ten or so times. Maybe that was tripping, Su-bong just appreciated the attention.
Speak of the devil, choppy bangs and a matching uniform start coming into view on the left, a cigarette in one hand.
“He’ll be fine.”
Nam-gyu is a year below them and at seventeen, his birthday in a week, he’s terrified of losing Su-bong.
They’ve known each other since they were in diapers; If Nam-gyu’s junkie mom knew anything it was how to set up a fucked up playdate so both their parents could get high; After Su-bong’s dad left, he started gently proding his mom to find where the little boy with big brown eyes lived, and eventually playdates were a regular thing again.
They don’t do “playdates” anymore—Most of the time they get high on whatever Nam-gyu found from his mom, snuck out of the drawer that week and see what happens.
Though, now, presently; Nam-gyu is yelling in his face.
“Earth to Su-bong! You prick where the fuck have you been?!”
Su-bong blanches when he realizes he has to actually tell people where he was.
—
Too many pills, a note with goodbyes, and then streamlined colors, like TV static.
Only, Su-bong woke up an hour or so later, his mother next to him with a bottle of Narcan and tears streaming down her face, muttering something about how her baby boy should never have had to resort to something like this.
He spent two days in the hospital, one at home.
Choi Su-bong now has talk therapy every week on Friday after school from now on and it will continue that way until he’s off his mother’s insurance.
And maybe that’s a good thing.
—
Su-bong scratches his neck, looks around almost guilty, his eyes pleading for something just this once.
“Can I tell you after school?”
“If you tell me you got crabs or something I’m gonna shove you in a locker tomorrow.”
Nam-gyu is barely five foot seven at his age, he’s lying through his teeth and Su-bong knows it.
“Thanos would never—!”
Nam-gyu cuts Gyeong-su off.
“Oh my god, shut the fuck up!”
—
The bus is its usual affair.
Nam-gyu pulls Se-mi’s hair at some point, up in a perfect ponytail, and she hops seats to beat at his back.
“Hey! You—You bitch! Ow!”
A hit lands square in his chest and the youngest of the group cowers against Su-bong in his seat, the same boy who had his headphones in not exactly paying attention to his surroundings as he took one earbud out and looked down at Nam-gyu.
“Aww… Nam-su, you want me to cuddle you?”
Nam-gyu sneers up at him, it’s all the meanness of a kitten whose teeth aren’t quite sharp enough, at least to Su-bong.
“Fuck no! Get me away from that crazy bitch—!” As Nam-gyu speaks he kicks out a leg at Se-mi who grabs at his ankle and tugs at him, making him slip down the seat.
Su-bong looks at Se-mi with furrowed brows.
She lets go of his foot, rasing her hands up in mock offense.
“You two dated in middle school, quit fighting all the time, Jesus Christ, señorita!”
Se-mi rolls her eyes. Hard.
“He pulled my hair, what the fuck else was I supposed to do?!”
Nam-gyu looks over at her smugly, holding onto Su-bong’s backpack and because of that look there’s a screaming match until they part ways at homeroom over whether Su-bong has a favorite or not.
Spoiler alert: He does.
—
Su-bong sleeps through two classes of his three before lunch.
The only one he stays awake for is music.
Lunch comes and goes; Nam-gyu chases Min-su around the cafeteria with an expired chocolate milk, the more cowardice of the two shrieking as he is chased.
Math, English, then History.
A cycle that repeats, like ouroboros.
—
Nam-gyu walks with Su-bong home, in comfortable silence the younger stubs his cigarette out as he speaks.
“Where were you?”
There’s hesitance in Nam-gyu’s voice that Su-bong isn’t used to, glancing over at the other boy, his hair just barely grown out, bangs sweeping over his forehead as a vow of ‘I am going to grow it out. I swear.’—Su-bong always thought he was the prettiest thing.
“I tried to kill myself.” He swallows. “Again.”
Nam-gyu stops in his tracks and Su-bong pauses as well to simply stare at him.
“I—I don’t know, okay? It was bad. I have therapy every week now and if it happens again…” Su-bong trails off for a moment before returning to his words. “I’m probably getting put in impatient by my mom for a few months at least.” He ends his sentence with a shrug, as if it was nothing.
Not a confession he wouldn’t tell anyone besides Nam-gyu.
Then the other raven hair boy is speaking.
“You’re so fucking stupid, you know that?! Just fucking call me!” He’s all up in Su-bong’s face, grabbing at polo collars and backpack straps alike. “Talk to me! Let me fucking care!” There’s tears in his eyes that weren’t there before.
Never has Nam-gyu been so stressed about an attempt before, it would be hypocritical considering how much he puts his own life on the line with the amount little razor blades that grace his skin, just barely avoiding arteries; But maybe it’s the aspect of losing Su-bong for months at a time afterwards being possible, being alone, without him, that scares him most.
“Just—Please.”
Nam-gyu presses his head against the older’s chest and Su-bong sighs. They’re in the middle of the pavement, but still, he wraps his arms around Nam-gyu and rubs little circles into his back.
“I’m sorry... I’m not going anywhere.”
Most people would think they were dating in a position like this, but after almost seventeen years and a crumpled note that was specifically supposed to go to Nam-gyu, Su-bong has vowed to never tell him.
—
Choi Su-bong’s apartment is a quaint thing shared with his mother, her little items here and there amongst his teenage chaos.
Nam-gyu has always said he likes it there more than at home.
Says it more comfortable than his own, has an air about to that shows that he and his mom actually care about each other—Su-bong’s laundry folded on the couch, not by him, plates from shared dinners in the sink, photos up on every wall from when Su-bong was an infant up until his grade twelve photos.
There are some photos of Nam-gyu up on the wall as well, his little gap toothed smile wide in a picture beside his mother’s photograph on the wall with Su-bong where they’re on a seesaw at the park, another where they’re outside McDonalds, next to the couch.
The two boys pass through the living room, all the way to Su-bong’s room and both collapse on his twin bed without a word, Nam-gyu’s head burrowing into the older’s stomach as they lay there idly.
His mother isn’t home; working the afternoon to night shift like usual.
“Hey.” Nam-gyu snaps his fingers at Su-bong.
The younger of the two’s voice cuts through the silence like a bullet through glass, unexpected.
“I have weed but that’s it.” He sniffs and scratches at his face with short, bitten nails. “Mom caught me going through her pills.”
A laugh sounds from Su-bong.
“Dumbass.” Then his hand finds Nam-gyu’s hair scratching at his scalp in the way he found out the other liked when he was sixteen and teasing the fuck out of him. What? Gay chicken isn’t really gay. “Grab it and I’ll open a window.”
—
A window is opened, the joint is rolled, Su-bong’s room fills with smoke despite it; Eyes grow heavy, brains grow foggy, and Nam-gyu begins to giggle.
“Your eyes are red as shit, where’d you get this my boy?”
Nam-gyu just laughs, throwing his head back. Su-bong furrows his eyebrows, his expression serious now.
“No, seriously, where’d you get this?”
As Nam-gyu grows silent, Su-bong analyses his face. Guilt, some sort of shame, and… stoned as ever living fuck. “Some older guy.” The younger finally admits, his cheeks flushing bright red. “He asked for a handjob for it.” Su-bong felt his heart sink and he ran a hand over his face.
“God, Nam-gyu.”
They don’t talk about it again.
—
Nam-gyu goes home at eight while Su-bong is still high, commenting something on how pretty Nam-gyu’s eyes are while he closes the front door.
Ten minutes later, he gets a text from none other than Nam-gyu.
| NAM—GYU: HI
| NAM—GYU: I DIDNT SAY IT IN PERSON BECAUSE IT WAS CRINGE BUT…
| NAM—GYU: I REALLY DO NEED YOU TO STAY.
| NAM—GYU: LIKE ALIVE.
Su-bong chuckles at his phone, his boy really does have a way with words.
| ME: don’t worry too much about it
He’s high so nothing really matters right now, not his life, not that he’s in love with his best friend, not that he almost told him, and certainly not that he almost died.
| ME: im still here, aren’t i?
—
Three days pass like normal.
Slacking in school and daily hangouts with his stupid crew and then it’s Nam-gyu’s birthday.
The big one-eight.
He only asks for Su-bong to come over, and personally shuts down Gyeong-su when he asks if he can come over and smoke too, because Nam-gyu is pretentious about birthdays, at least in Su-bong’s opinion. Every year since Nam-gyu was nine it’s always been just him and Su-bong, a cupcake and candles from the convenience store on the corner and a wish for something only Nam-gyu knew.
This year, his birthday falls on a Friday. The last time it was on a Friday was in two-thousand-six when he was turning thirteen.
Su-bong has therapy.
—
“How have you been feeling?”
“Fine.”
“Would you like to expand?”
“Not really."
“Did anything exciting happen today?”
“It’s my best friend's birthday. He’s turning eighteen.”
“How does that make you feel?”
Choi Su-bong fucking hates therapy.
—
After five, he finally goes to Nam-gyu’s the boy in his house alone, his sister shipped off to a friends’ house, and his mother most likely somewhere in an alley, bruises lining her tracked arms.
There’s already a cupcake in front of him, chocolate cake and frosting like he’s always gotten, even when he was asking for it with pocket change—Never quite the exact amount, not that he knew, yet the store owner always gave him it because he knew the little boy with clothes too big and eyes too wide deserved a birthday too.
Su-bong grabs candles out of the junk drawer and starts humming.
“My boy is eighteen, finally a grown man!” Then he’s sticking candles in every different direction until he runs out at eight. “Well, I guess you’re eight… minus the teen.”
Nam-gyu looks up at Su-bong with big eyes and grins.
“Light them.”
A lighter, a big blow, a wish.
—
Su-bong watches Nam-gyu sneak two rainbow pills from his moms drawer, shoving one in his own mouth and then another in the older boys.
Within a half hour they’re both flat on their backs in Nam-gyu’s room, on his wooden floor. They’ve been mostly silent and it’s Su-bong who speaks first this time.
“What have you been wishing for since you were nine anyways?”
Nam-gyu gazes at him with wide pupils, dilated to the point where the brown is almost absent. “To kiss you.” He mutters. “At least once.” And then his hands come up to fix his bangs like he said nothing at all.
Su-bong’s eyebrows furrow immediately, high or not and his hands grip at the side of Nam-gyu’s face and he speaks roughly again.
“Wait, you like me?”
Nam-gyu laughs, loudly.
“A lot.”
His cheeks are a pretty pink color and his lips have been licked so they’re just all that much more alluring.
When Su-bong kisses him he tastes like chalky pills, sweet lollipops, and cigarettes.
—
“Su-bong… did you just come your pants because we were making out?”
Nam-gyu is met with utter silence.