Drabbles

After Seokjin made him set an alarm so he wouldn’t keep forgetting, Namjoon does his skincare routine at eleven every night, no matter how late after that he stays up reading or working. It turns out, the ritual of it is a little bit magic — it turns the rest of the night into a quiet, stolen witching hour, his own. He takes out his contacts before he washes his face, and in his glasses, he has no peripheral vision. There is nothing in front of him but his book, for as long as he wants to read it, and then the cool, peaceful expanse of his bed.

It’s nice, in a new way. He’s getting used to it. It’s okay.

His nights were not so peaceful before, he thinks treacherously. His nights were not so quiet. He did not spend his nights alone, before.

The lilting chime of the doorbell hits like a gong, startling him up. He almost stumbles through the apartment, bleary at the reminder of others awake in the world. Now it feels dangerous not to have his peripheral vision, like a predator could come up from any side.

He is both viscerally shocked and not surprised at all to see Jackson’s face on the monitor.

What are you doing here, he imagines himself saying, or, go away. His finger presses the “speak” button. “Are you bleeding?” he asks.

Jackson touches his nose and grins down at his fingers as he pulls them away, his smile radiant under the blood smeared over his lips. “Some girl on the dance floor was fist-pumping too hard,” he says. Then, in his sweet, teasing whine, “How come you weren’t there to protect me, Namjoon-ah?”

“Because you dumped me,” Namjoon says flatly.

“Don’t be like that,” Jackson says. (Like what? Aware of reality? Jackson would find that annoying.) “Let me in. Where else am I supposed to go?”

“Go to your new apartment,” Namjoon says.

“No way.” Jackson leans against the wall on one arm, closer to the camera, so Namjoon’s monitor is full of the delicate interlocking angles of his jaw and neck and shoulder. Namjoon can’t get a deep breath, chest heavy like someone’s sitting on it. “My landlady’s all nosy, she’ll kick me out if she sees me like this.”

That’s not Namjoon’s problem, but he can’t make himself say That’s not my problem.

“Namjoon-ah,” Jackson says softly, the way only he can, like each consonant is a new curve in a kiss.

“Stop,” Namjoon says. “Just stop.” He presses the button to open the door. 

Namjoon goes to the bathroom sink to wet a washcloth as Jackson lurches his drunk ass up the stairs. Namjoon still feels like he can’t see, and his head is spinning so fast it’s making his hands clumsy and slow. He gets in a deep breath, but somehow it makes his chest feel tighter, worse.

“Namjoon-ah!” Jackson calls from the door as he lets himself in. Now his voice sounds bigger, blustery — mocking. Namjoon thought it was mocking when they first met, and then Jackson convinced him it was something else, but now he’s sure again this bravado is making fun of him, somehow. Almost sure.

Namjoon doesn’t look in the mirror. He takes one more breath, and goes out.

Jackson is sitting on the sofa, paging through Namjoon’s novel with a frown creasing his forehead, like he always used to look when he had to try hard to understand Namjoon.

“Don’t get blood everywhere.” Namjoon hands the washcloth forward.

Jackson blinks at it, and then turns his face up, closing his eyes.

“Come on,” Namjoon says, nudging Jackson’s shoulder with the knuckles of his wet hand. It’s no contact, really, nothing at all, bone on white James Dean t-shirt, but Namjoon feels it everywhere.

Jackson opens his eyes, sighing, and takes the cloth, and then sets it down next to him on Namjoon’s sofa and goes back to the book.

“Oh come on,” Namjoon says. He snatches the cloth up again and grabs Jackson’s jaw with his other hand, so roughly he immediately regrets it. But Jackson only smiles as he closes his eyes again. 

More gently, Namjoon wipes the blood away from Jackson’s nose and mouth. It’s messy work; the cloth seems to smear the mess around more than absorbing it, making everything worse.

But Namjoon folds it over and presses a new clean spot to Jackson’s skin, and soon he’s wiping the last pink smears of blood away. Jackson’s upper lip is a little fat, too, purple with a new bruise, and he winces when Namjoon presses too hard there.

“Sorry,” Namjoon says.

Jackson makes a strange noise, a tiny scoff of disbelief.

“What?” Namjoon asks. “What are you doing?”

“I don’t fuckin’ know,” Jackson says, his voice small with terrible honesty.

Job done, Namjoon starts to pull away. Jackson grabs his wrist, keeping him there—hunched in front of the sofa with a wet, bloody cloth a few centimeters from Jackson’s face.

Namjoon’s heart pounds. Maybe Jackson can feel the beat, his fingers gripping tight over the tender skin inside Namjoon’s wrist. Maybe Namjoon will have a bruise tomorrow, when Jackson is gone again.

“How come you always treat me like the bad guy?” Jackson asks.

Don’t hurt me, Namjoon thinks. Please don’t hurt me. He sets his jaw. “Why don’t you do something good?”