Chapter Text
“How was it?” Jin asks.
Guard down, Hoseok sighs into the phone. He doesn’t want to get into it, but answers, despite himself. “Unsurprisingly, he left me barely anything. Mom and Minyoung get good sums though.”
“And Jungkook?” Jin asks, barreling right past formality, straight into the shadow that has been looming over the conversation like a venomous snake poised to strike, “what did Jungkook get?”
The question doesn’t hurt as badly as it would have a few years ago. Hoseok is sure Jin already knows. They’ve all been in touch with Jungkook. Jin is just - prodding him to talk. It’s really not a problem, though, since Hoseok singed away the finer threads of his feelings about Jungkook in a righteous fire long ago.
“What do you think, hyung?” Hoseok counters, the hint of anger in his voice irrepressible, “Jungkook got promoted. Walks away with a fuckton of cash.”
“Oh.”
“And you know what?” Hoseok takes another gulp with verve, “as well he should! He’s the most honored son of the Jung family.”
“Hoseok…” Jin starts, but Hoseok cuts him off with a dark laugh.
“It’s fine. It’s all fine—I’m just. Kidding around. You know how I am.”
“Yeah...I - know how you are.” A few beats pass. “Hoseok, are you sure you’re okay? I can...come there, if you want. I just finished dinner with Jimin and Taehyung. I’m not busy.”
“You worried I’m going to drink myself to death or something?”
It’s a joke a few shades darker than he should make, and Hoseok knows better. But he’s in that gauzy unfiltered headspace where the veil between his outward and inner selves is drawn.
“Fuck, Hobi. When you say shit like that, yeah. 'S exactly what I’m worried about.”
The discomfiting feeling of being misunderstood trickles down through Hoseok’s bones like ice water, but it’s not unfamiliar. He doesn’t recall being understood the way he wants to be in a long time, not even to himself.
“Hyung! Come on…! Ah, I’m only...I'm just joking, I swear! I’m okay. Really,” and he’s back to lying. Hoseok’s never been one to bare his soul. That’s the thing about caretakers, he thinks. He thrives by tending to the garden of pain inside the people they love, to the detriment of their own wellbeings.
There’s something warped in Hoseok, too, that he embraces the solitude of his suffering. It’s a sheet of cold air and he turns his face into it, lets in all of the sharp crystals prick at him and it feels good—stimulating and distracting. To be truly seen has become one of his biggest fears. The idea of it upsets his central nervous system. When he was young it was easier, laying himself bare, breaking open—it felt safe safe until it wasn't and he was left with nothing to show for it but a broken heart and too many regrets. It taught him a lesson. Maybe he wasn’t made to be comprehended by others, maybe he prefers to be unseen, hidden away in the darkness where his sadness can furl and unfurl its wounded wings in secret.
The liquor loosens his lips. He adds, “and—you know—once I get a buzz going, I can survive anything.”
“Okay...” says Jin tiredly, “I love you, you know. We all do. Please call if you need anything.”
“I will, hyung.” He won’t. But he says it anyway. For Jin’s benefit.
“Hoseok, I mean it. Anything.”
He wonders how his friends can stand him when he’s this exhausting. How they can love him despite his mess. Dripping with misery. It really is a gift to continue to fuck up as he has and to still have a team of people in his corner no matter what.
The pleasant cloudy feeling of being drunk blankets over him and he’s grateful for it. He finishes his drink. Orders another.
The bartender looks even more handsome under Hoseok’s hazy-drunk gaze. He makes a note to himself to flirt a bit more.
Everything is warm now, such a relief after a taxing day. The sirens of his anxiety and loud grief dampen.
He wasn’t expecting the will reading to be so sterile. So matter-of-fact. Oddly transactional.
Hoseok didn’t go to the funeral and he’s glad. Namjoon had texted him about it the other day. “Do you wish you had gone?,” and Hoseok responded immediately. “Fuck no.”
Nevermind putting on a calm face and going through the ritual of the burial. It feels like an admission of failure to come back to Seoul. To see everyone he left behind four years ago. He had hoped he could avoid the entire post-death enterprise, avoid having to see his extended family. Avoid seeing Jungkook. But his mother told him to come for the reading, knowing full well that Hoseok would do anything she asked at twice the speed.
The night Minyoung called and told him the news, Hoseok drank a bottle of vodka in the empty bathtub of his Tokyo apartment. In his mind, he drafted a eulogy. It was succinct:
“Jung Jiwoon of Jejo Industries, youngest vice-chairman in Seoul’s history. A real son of a bitch.”
Jiwoon was cold.
And the fact is, no one expected the co-founder of one of the largest manufacturing companies in the world to be docile or doting or sensitive - the company thrived under his father’s shrewd and trenchant leadership. Grew because of it. But the trouble with having a father like Jiwoon—rich and powerful and successful beyond measure—is the private toll that it takes. The closed-door reality of prestige is that it deforms. It makes a person sub-human. That’s what competition and capitalism and industry politics did to Jung Jiwoon. He became a mangled version of himself, or that’s what Hoseok’s mother told him once. “He didn’t used to be like this.”
Jung Jiwoon was irritable and incendiary, hackles perpetually raised. Constantly searching for things to demean and fights to start. Always, always, always finding Hoseok. Hoseok, the lightning rod for all of his father’s rancor. The son he didn’t want or like.
The concept of home takes a particular shape, color, and texture, Hoseok realized, depending on a child’s experience there. Jiwoon poisoned Hoseok’s well. Home was a place of turmoil—it was where he felt smallest. As a child, Hoseok was neither a sycophant nor belligerent, but he was loud. Jiwoon hated that. Be quiet, he’d say, and Hoseok would itch. Hoseok was bright, driven, curious, and certain things came easy, like making friends and taking risks, while others were hard, like school, making decisions, and doing what he was told. Jiwoon would snarl and flare at him, would call him a fuck-up, and the words sunk deep into Hoseok’s bones.
Home wasn’t a safe place to Hoseok. He was constantly vigilant, spine tingling and muscles pinched. While at work, his father was a shadow, haunting his days and nights, until by surprise he materialized in the house in a state of berating. Nothing good enough, not Hoseok’s grades, not his attitude, not his way of relating to the world, not his sexuality. Over time, it dissolved away Hoseok’s personhood like a chemical abrasive. Until he was nothing but steel and bone.
Hoseok’s three drinks in. He wanders down the Scotch-paved alleyways of his mind. Open doors he shouldn’t. Because why not, his father is gone, the will has been read and will be administered in the coming weeks. Property bequeathed. As he sits here, crawling into a bottle, the house staff are going through all of Jiwoon’s belongings. Parsing through all of his luxury suits and leather shoes, his expensive tech and his ₩1,200,000 liquors, nary a fingerprint of his children to be found.
Fathers are important to sons, Hoseok thinks, and sons are important to fathers. He muses, as he slides another gulp of liquid fire down his throat, what a difference it would have made having a normal dad. A real dad. Someone who loved him, someone he loved back. Hoseok’s throat constricts and his ears get hot. He aches for connection. The need for it blinks at his core, dim and constant.
He wonders why his father was the way he was, whether it was nature or nurture that warped him. Whether Jiwoon could have been saved, and by whom. Hoseok thinks Jiwoon’s parents may have been cruel but he couldn’t say—Hoseok never knew them.
The same thought floods him, expands a black hole in his chest, as it always does. It was him. Hoseok. Jiwoon’s disappointing oldest son. Argumentative and distracted, and too much like his mother. Hoseok was the reason. Jiwoon hated something in Hoseok, something Hoseok himself hates.
The reality is, it means very little to Hoseok why his father was what he was. All Hoseok knows is that now, at 28, he has nothing to show for surviving his father’s viciousness but a trail of self-hatred so long it’s only dwarfed by the clusterfuck of his destroyed relationships.
Hoseok’s dizzy with the weight of all this belated conjecture. Of what he wanted and never got. All of his unanswered resentment fights with his insides and at this late hour, his body feels bruised with it.
Sometimes the cord of all of Jiwoon’s hatred circumscribes Hoseok so tightly that he can’t think. He feels it now, around his breastbone and under his ribcage. He breathes deep to try and loosen it. Sets his head on the cool marble of the bar counter and closes his eyes.
The bartender slides another two fingers of Scotch in front of him with a knowing gaze.
“You look like you need this.”
God, he's pretty. Especially up close. He has a plush mouth that pleases Hoseok. It’s familiar and warms something deep inside of him.
“Is it that obvious that I’m going through some shit right now?” Hoseok runs his fingers through his hair, tucks it behind his ear. Pouts, in that way he knows is pretty and lets his eyelids hang low as he looks up at him. “Am I that much of a mess?”
The waiter nods, “yeah but—” he leans forward on the counter toward Hoseok and raises an eyebrow “a hot mess.” Hoseok watches, pleased, as the waiter’s eyes roam Hoseok’s torso. The corner of the waiter’s mouth ticks up.
Hoseok wants him. Sex would be a welcome distraction. A tactile feeling to untangle his twisting insides. He pictures those blow-job-lips around his cock and the image makes his brain fuzz. Broad shoulders, the curve of his slim waist into his hips. The urge to fuck him flares. “What’s your name?”
The waiter pulls a napkin from the bar counter. Writes something, fast and messy, then leans across the bar with a smile. Hoseok catches the heady smell of his cologne as he does, sharp and woody, a little sour with sweat.
“I’m off at 1.”
The waiter slides the napkin into the pocket of Hoseok’s suit jacket and walks away. Hoseok removes the napkin and reads it. "Jinyoung" and a phone number.
As Hoseok types Jinyoung’s number into his phone, a text message appears.
Where are you.
Hoseok’s buzz fades a bit, his mood shifts.
Ding. Another text. Tell me you’re not drinking yourself to death.
Ding. Your family can’t afford another big funeral right now.
Hoseok scoffs.
“I’m fine.” He types back. “Can’t make any promises about the drinking to death, though.”
Ding. Which bar?
Ding. If you’re going to do this, let me buy one of the drinks. That way I have an interesting anecdote for your eulogy.
“My dying wish is that you don’t eulogize me. I’d like actual friends to speak for me. Ones who aren’t bad public speakers. Not fucked-up exes.’” Hoseok types, full of typos, and turns the phone over onto the counter.
The sleeping monster called Want rumbles and swishes its tail deep in Hoseok’s belly. He begs it to stay still. It doesn’t.
After a few beats Hoseok’s fingers fly across the face of his phone before his brain can stop him. “I’m at Yeongi. At the bar.”
Hoseok counts time by how many more glasses of Scotch he downs. It’s two Scotches past when the door opens, cold air leaking in and clawing at Hoseok’s ears and neck. Hoseok doesn’t need to look up. He knows it’s Jungkook. But he looks anyway.
Hoseok is unsurprised that he came—Yeongi is downstairs from Jejo. He’s always been a night owl and he perpetually works late, he must've still been upstairs poring over the inane blahdy blah of the company he's loyal to. So fucking painfully similar to Jiwoon.
Jungkook is wearing the same clothes he wore earlier at the reading, a fitted suit and a tie that he loosens as he walks over. He’s clenching his jaw as he spots Hoseok at the bar and walks through toward him. The passage of time often feels too slow for Hoseok’s liking, he’s always been antsy and fidgety for the seasons to change, but right now all Hoseok can think is how much like a man Jungkook looks. Time has flown. He looks nothing like the boy Hoseok grew up with.
But then, Jungkook pauses a few feet short of him at the bar and says something to the bartender. Hoseok sees a shadow of him. The other Jungkook, the one etched onto his bones and vivid in his dreams, even now. In the way he holds his mouth, the grace of his musculature, eyes that flash in the dark room. The boy he knew in childhood, all buck teeth and big nose, who followed him around like a satellite orbiting a planet. But also—broad shoulders with big hands, quick-witted and quick on his feet. The man he fell in love with. Curved jaw that Hoseok’s lips know intimately. The edge of pink tongue behind white teeth, a tongue that traveled every inch of Hoseok’s body.
A lifetime ago.