Work Text:
It started with an orange.
Simple. Innocuous. Sitting on the corner of Hyunjin’s desk.
He’d been working on a painting when it was suddenly taken from his peripheral vision, in the hands of someone else.
He looked up. Found Jisung standing there, that familiar face that both felt like home and enemy territory all in one, and Hyunjin’s stomach boiled, acid curling and crashing like the tide.
He didn’t want to argue today, or tomorrow, or anymore at all. Hyunjin didn’t want to fight with him, not again. He just wanted to exist and move through the day like he was invisible, like he didn’t exist at all, just a wisp of an absence of something that used to be there floating through the air. He was not feeling well today, not after fighting with Jisung all night and feeling like they’d taken a hundred steps back.
Hyunjin opened his mouth to tell him to fuck off, to leave him alone and go mind his own business, but his mouth closed a second later.
He watched, transfixed, as Jisung held the orange in his hand, cradling it with deft fingers as he began to peel it.
He was meticulously thorough — peeling back the skin in a fluid motion until the whole thing eventually gave way, the central core coming out along with some of the pith — silent as he worked. Hyunjin fully expected that to be it, for him to put the orange on his desk to smooth things over and throw the skin at Hyunjin as he sauntered away, a way of saying “I’m still angry but I don’t want to fight either.”
Instead, Jisung threw the skin away in the bin beside Hyunjin’s desk, and then slowly, silently, began working to remove the pith from around the fruit. He was meticulously thorough about this, too, peeling it from around the whole orange first and then opening the orange up, working to peel off the rest of the pith segment by segment, piece by piece.
Distantly, Hyunjin wondered if this was how Jisung saw him. Covered in layers of sticky gunk that needed to be peeled back, piece by piece, little by little, until you achieved a clean membrane, one you could bite into, the citrus and acid both sweet and biting.
He wondered if Jisung would ever take him apart that way. Hyunjin had imagined it — he thought it would be a reciprocal thing — had imagined them taking each other apart with gentle fingers, soft kisses turned open mouthed and lazy, bodies and souls warm beneath their touch. He was tired of it being the opposite, of their mouths being so harsh, the biting and dangerous drip of acid in their words, venom on their tongues, soft hands rough as they curled into fists, gesticulating with frustration between them as the tension grew and grew.
He felt that tension here, still, could see it in the way that Jisung tried to appear soft and docile while his entire frame shook with the restraint to not let his anger out.
Hyunjin silently marveled at him, confused, hurt, some of his own anger still simmering beneath the surface, lingering around, leaving a sour taste in Hyunjin’s mouth. He wondered how many times they would have to do this, how much more they had to go through before they didn’t anymore.
He wondered how long it would take Jisung to understand.
He watched as Jisung worked, his sad, round eyes focusing only on the orange, seemingly refusing to look at Hyunjin’s face.
They sat like that until Jisung was done, until the membrane of each segment was clean, lined up neatly in a row at the edge of Hyunjin’s desk. Jisung sighed through his nose, then, and Hyunjin could see the way he fumbled in his brain to figure out what to do next now that his task was over.
Jisung lifted his gaze, eyes scanning Hyunjin’s face. His bottom lip wobbled a little, eyes growing shiny as his brow furrowed. He was tired, too — Hyunjin could see it in his face, with the dark circles, skin soft, hair rumpled, tear tracks tacky from where Jisung hadn’t fully wiped them away — and Hyunjin felt his heart give a weak thump.
How much more would this take? When would Jisung finally see?
Hyunjin realized the silence had stretched too long, that Jisung mistook the ache in Hyunjin’s heart for bitterness, and watched as Jisung took a trembling breath. He moved, turning like he was going to walk back to his room, keep the space and silence and this ocean of misery between them until Chan and Changbin got home and forced them to interact.
But Hyunjin didn’t want that anymore.
He wanted peace. He wanted soft words and softer touches, wanted to rest his forehead on those plump cheeks while they cuddled as they napped, happy and warm under Hyunjin’s blankets, his hand curled protectively in a fist as it rested over Jisung’s heart, as if to say “this is mine, he is mine and you can’t take him from me.”
His hand shot out before he could think twice about it, curling into the hem of Jisung’s sweater and yanking him back like a dog on a short leash. A surprised noise passed Jisung’s lips, the first noise to break the silence.
Jisung turned, hesitation in his face as he looked at Hyunjin once more. Hyunjin pulled him closer by his shirt, till his legs bumped into the side of Hyunjin’s desk chair. He let Jisung’s shirt go only to grab an orange segment, holding it up to Jisung in offering, willing his hands not to shake.
Hyunjin felt crazy, in that split second.
He wondered how it would look to an outsider, him holding the segment to Jisung. To Jisung, it probably just seemed like a normal peace offering, another chance to smooth things over and get them back to the good place. To Hyunjin, it was everything.
He could deal with their little spats here and there — he could deal with the bickering and disagreements and play fighting — but he couldn’t deal with the actual fights anymore, the arguments. He couldn’t deal with the silence, the discomfort, or the knowledge that he made Jisung feel anything other than the fact that Hyunjin loved him so desperately and so deeply for even just a moment.
Hyunjin held the orange segment to Jisung as if to say “this is me. This is my heart. You just took care of it so sweetly, don’t you see? You knew what to do, knew how to get to the core of it. This is my heart. This heart is yours. Take it, please, so I know we’ll be alright.”
It was a split second.
Jisung took the orange segment with gentle fingers, bringing it to his mouth and taking a dutiful bite. Hyunjin watched as a small mist came out of the vesicles of the orange and coated the corner of Jisung’s mouth, those precious cheeks puffing up just the slightest as he chewed.
Hyunjin smiled softly, and Jisung smiled back, lips shiny with juice.
It started with an orange, Hyunjin would remember. It started with an orange, and he knew they would be alright.