Crumbling Bridges {YuJae} | complete

nineteen

tada! have another update hahah

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Jaehyun shuts out the world. He sets firm boundaries and forbids anyone to even dare to break them, cancelling Johnny's calls and ignoring Yuta's texts and Taeil's emails, and scolding Hyejin for the slightest wrong move.

"I'm your father. Do as I say, for fuck's sake!"

Jaehyun breaks.

Hyejin recoils away, face stricken with a panic that only solidifies the self-hatred in Jaehyun's stomach, but he can't free himself from the anger no matter how hard he struggles. There's no point letting anyone in if it's only going to end with pain. He's learnt the same lesson, again.

"Just... just go to school." His anger simmers, the bubbles curling back to mere irritation that's smothered in regret when his stepdaughter scoffs and leaves the kitchen without a word. She doesn't clean away her bowl from breakfast like he told her to, shouted at her to do, even. The door slams a minute later. Jaehyun buries his head in his hands. He can't even bring himself to cry.

Hyejin only asked for a lift to school. Jaehyun knows it would've been nice to spend time with her and get out of the house for the first time in three days, but moving from the chair at the kitchen table is too much effort when his muscles are fatigued from depression. He had sworn to never allow emptiness to invade him ever again, yet old habits coax him, bundle him up in a blanket, whisper depreciating sweet nothings into his ears until they're the only words he can hear and until the blanket morphs into a trap. The ring of his phone sounds like it's deep underwater. Like usual, he doesn't answer the call.

He spends the day on the sofa draped in one of Sanghoon's old hoodies instead of the blanket from Yuta. Pillow pulled to his chest, Jaehyun flicks from film to film on Netflix, never settling on any of them for longer than ten minutes, unable to focus for the plot to make any sense. Johnny would have a fit if he saw the hoodie. Jaehyun told him he'd taken his ex's discarded clothes to a charity shop. He did, but the black unbranded item fit too well and carried too many memories of giddy dates and lonely nights that, like the locket, he just couldn't part with it.

Giving up with Netflix, he returns to the main television channel. It's the midday news. People are dying, trees are burning, and no one knows how to save the economy. Jaehyun doesn't know how to save himself. His stomach grumbles, head faint from lack of food since lunchtime the previous day, but he doesn't move to eat. It wouldn't be a pastry from Yuta, so he doesn't see the point in eating.

What's Yuta doing right now? Is he skipping work too? Is he eating the croissant himself? Jaehyun can't help but wonder. The harder he swears to never speak to Yuta again, the more the Japanese appears in his mind, and the more he wants to fall into his arms and never leave.

He misses Yuta. More than his parents, his ex-husband, more than he's ever missed anyone. He's not even mad at him anymore. Jaehyun is mad at himself. He blames himself for everything. He was the one who raised his voice and got defensive and walked out the café without paying. Anger locks him away so he can't reach out to his boyfriend. It stamps on his chest and he can't breathe, can't scream, can only open his mouth in a silent plead.

Are they even boyfriends anymore? Jaehyun doesn't know. The question circles his mind all afternoon, and deep into the evening until the sun rises for the cycle to continue.

He still hasn't moved from the sofa by the time Hyejin returns. It's nearly five o'clock since she had her piano lesson after school and Jaehyun wishes she would play the new pieces for him, but she simply ghosts into her room and he soon hears the punches to her keyboard that won't stop until dinner, or until she's exhausted all the upgrades on the video game.