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The only warmth in the air comes from the lighter that sparks in Hongjoong’s hand as he flicks the switch to ignite the flame, one hand cupped behind the flame to protect it from the winter breeze. The warmth seeps into his hand as he does so, the cigarette between his lips catching flame before evening out into smoke that drifts past his face.
The street is almost deathly silent, muffled by freshly fallen snow and the lack of students on campus. Hongjoong is by himself, sitting atop one of the picnic benches with names and initials carved into the wood. Scorch marks from other smokers dropping cigarettes or putting them out decorate the old wood, the bench only saved from the snow partially due to a tree whose branches took the brunt of the flakes. Hongjoong’s boots dig into the frost on the seat, perched on the table part to smoke and watch it drift into the sky.
The first drag of nicotine is a slight head rush, but Hongjoong holds his breath until it burns in his lungs and exhales slow. He’s long desensitized himself to the scent of cigarettes, uncaring of the sharp smell that lingers around him and burrows into the jacket on his shoulders. It’s ripped and repaired, patches and buttons scattered across it in a purposefully chaotic way, and it’s Hongjoong’s favorite jacket. It always has a pack of cigarettes and a lighter in the pockets, and Hongjoong runs a thumb over the decorated plastic of the lighter.
It’s a bright neon pink, something Hongjoong didn’t pick for himself. Mingi had grabbed a pack of two from the gas station before leaving for the holidays and chucked a random one at Hongjoong, cackling when the older man noticed the color and shouted after him. Hongjoong doesn’t actually give a fuck about the color, but it’s always fun to shout at Mingi. The other makes it almost too easy to tease him; the apartment feels like a corpse without his presence. Hongjoong can’t stand the silence, the emptiness, the space meant for two reduced to one. It’s suffocating, skeletal fingers closing around Hongjoong’s throat.
Another drag of the cigarette, the smoke dancing through the air. Hongjoong can’t see shapes in it the way Mingi tries to, unseeing eyes uncaring of the smoke that curls around his features and dissipates into the evening cold. Hongjoong’s nose and the tips of his fingers ache from the chill, but he’s not ready to leave yet. He’s not ready to go back to the empty apartment, to the pin-drop silence, to the crushing weight that pushes down on his shoulders when he can’t even hear a single neighbor through the wall in their mostly student living complex. Hongjoong doesn’t deal well with silence, with absolute isolation; refused to even see Mingi off as he boarded a train home for the holidays, choosing to say his goodbye the night before and sleep in, trying to hide away from the inevitable.
He’s burned through almost an entire pack of cigarettes already, and it’s barely been two days. Hongjoong knows it isn’t healthy, and at the same time, he doesn’t care. The winter cold, the distant lights, the battered Christmas ads lining the street, a torn flier on a nearby light post; it’s mocking. Hongjoong looks away from the tattered paper and back down at his shoes, the black boots scraping against the ice of the bench, another pull of smoke into his lungs.
Hongjoong’s phone has been dead for three days. He’d gotten a phone call and left it ringing, watched the voicemail record in the corner. He’d been frozen, staring at the screen, the unsaved number he knew by heart, turmoil churning in his gut and the urge to scream and shatter the device overwhelming. Instead, he let the battery drain, ignored Mingi when he complained about not being able to text him and get an answer. Letting the phone stay alive was worse than being cut off from the world for a little while, and Hongjoong prefers this. The quiet, the way he’s unreachable. He doesn’t want to be reached, doesn’t want to be spoken to by people he hates.
Loves?
Hates.
The cigarette is halfway gone, the taste of it heavy on Hongjoong’s tongue. He plucks it from his mouth with two fingers, glancing at it briefly, examining the chipped polish on his index and middle fingernails. Black and red, dark colors, desperately in need of a new paint job. Hongjoong can worry about it later. Things can always be put off until later. He’s put half his life on hold until later; at least that’s how it feels, most of the time.
“Can I sit?”
The voice is sudden, ripping Hongjoong from his zoned-out silence. His head jerks towards the voice, rapid blinks as he tries to focus on the newcomer, lips parting in surprise and cigarette held delicately between two fingers. The stranger is tall, put-together, a beige coat around his shoulders and black hair styled impeccably. Hongjoong raises an eyebrow slowly, the same one he has pierced; the stranger doesn’t falter or look away. He’s wearing a watch that Hongjoong would guess is worth three months of rent. Expensive strangers — pretty strangers — don’t just wander university campuses at past midnight on Christmas Eve.
Maybe he’s hallucinating. It wouldn’t be something he’d be able to rule out with complete certainty.
“I don’t care,” Hongjoong replies eventually, his voice raspy from disuse and cigarette smoke. The stranger smiles, teeth white and brilliant, and steps up onto the bench. His boots are unmarked, polished; brand new. He sits about a foot away from Hongjoong on the table, adjusting the scarf around his neck as he settles down. Is it cashmere? Hongjoong knows his fabrics well, but his head is hazy from the smoke. Maybe this man is just a cigarette-induced mirage, conjured by Hongjoong’s aching loneliness and desperation.
Quiet falls again. Hongjoong keeps smoking, breathing even. The scent will sink into the stranger’s clothes if he stays too long, linger around him like an unwanted pest, difficult to get rid of and horrible to deal with. Still, Hongjoong doesn’t put out the cigarette. The stranger made his choice. It’s not Hongjoong’s problem if he reeks of cigarette smoke from his fancy jacket, cashmere scarf, styled hair. It’s not Hongjoong’s problem if nicotine sinks into the cracks in the golden watch, stains leather boots, weaves through manicured nails and drifts across unbitten lips.
Mingi always lectures Hongjoong on the benefits of chapstick. Thinking about Mingi makes everything ache even more. Hongjoong takes another drag of the cigarette, wrinkles his nose when he notices that it’s almost completely burned out. The pack in his jacket is mostly empty, and most stores are closed by now. He has more, stored in his desk, but his apartment is a fifteen minute walk and Hongjoong knows if he goes back the blank silence will choke him again. The walls of the too-big apartment will close in. Hongjoong will die, asphyxiated, gasping for breath and sobbing for relief. Alone.
“Could you spare a cigarette?”
Hongjoong almost jumps out of his skin, head snapping towards the strange man. The other seems genuine, one upkept eyebrow raised in curiosity, and Hongjoong flounders for a moment, footing lost. He manages to pull himself together and nod, flicking the butt of his burnt out cigarette onto the ground and pulling the pack from his pocket, tugging one out and setting it between his lips before offering the pack to the stranger. He seems to hesitate for a moment before taking one, perfect nails and perfect fingers. Hongjoong’s nails are bitten down and painted with chipped polish, a couple fingers with bandages from when he couldn’t stop picking at his own skin. The prickle of shame against his neck is sharp, but he pockets the pack of cigarettes again and pulls out the lighter.
He lights his own cigarette before offering the light to the other man. The stranger holds the cigarette above the flame, letting it catch, and Hongjoong pulls his hand back when it’s lit. He turns his head away, breathes in deep, exhales slow. Watches the stranger from the corner of his eye, the way the man eyes the cigarette like it’s an alien object, the unsure way he lifts it to his lips and breathes in.
Hongjoong knows this man hasn’t smoked a day in his life. Still, he says nothing as he takes a drag from the cigarette and coughs out the smoke, trying to be quiet and failing. Hongjoong knows it isn’t any of his business.
“Why’d you ask when you don’t smoke?” Hongjoong asks anyway, taking the cigarette from between his lips and looking at the stranger. The other man’s hair brushes his shoulders; there’s silver earrings decorating both of his ears. He looks like he’s walked off a runway, a page of a magazine, the Instagram page of some model. He doesn’t look like he belongs here, sitting next to Hongjoong, smoking a cigarette on an abandoned college campus.
“How do you know I don’t smoke?” The stranger replies instead of answering Hongjoong’s question. A poor attempt at deflection; Hongjoong snorts as he takes another drag, rolling his eyes.
“You’re looking at it like it’s gonna kill you, and you choked on the first drag.” Hongjoong waves his free hand vaguely through the air towards the strange man. “You don’t smoke. Why ask?”
“Oh.” The man sighs, looking at the cigarette in his own hand, frowning at it like it’s offended him in some way. “I… isn’t that what you do when you’re stressed? They do it in books and films.”
“You’re stressed, then?” Hongjoong drops his hand, lets it fall against the table, digs his fingers into the powder snow. He can warm his fingers with the cigarette, with the flame. The strange man nods once, curt.
“My name is Seonghwa,” the stranger offers after a brief silence. Hongjoong didn’t ask for the information, but he files it away regardless. He doesn’t return with his own name, instead lifting the cigarette again, breathing deep, letting the smoke twine through his lungs, his veins, sink into his bloodstream. Even in the presence of someone else, the weight is crushing, the silence is creeping just around the corner. The lights on one of the wreaths decorating the lampposts flicker, on the verge of burning out. Hongjoong can relate a lot to that wreath. It has a purpose, a meaning, but only for a short time, and if it burns, if it malfunctions — it has no use.
“Thank you for the cigarette,” Seonghwa adds after an awkward length of nothing between them. Hongjoong blinks slow at the statement, torn between laughter and confusion.
“You don’t smoke.” Hongjoong jerks his chin towards the cigarette which is slowly burning down, untouched. Seonghwa laughs, the sound gentle in the breeze, an echo of the bells that play in churches and cathedrals. Angelic, almost, a dusting of snow across his shoulders and a pink flush across his cheeks.
“You still gave it to me.” Seonghwa shrugs, as if it’s a simple line of thought. Perhaps it is; perhaps he’s right. Hongjoong doesn’t continue the conversation, finishing his second cigarette. He deliberates for only a moment before plucking Seonghwa’s unfinished one from his fingers, lifting it to his lips, taking a drag. Seonghwa’s lip gloss stains the butt of the cigarette, something vaguely flavored strawberry, and the other man is staring wide-eyed at Hongjoong.
“You weren’t gonna smoke it,” Hongjoong points out. Seonghwa tilts his head, conceding to the statement. His eyes still linger on Hongjoong’s lips, on the shape of them around the cigarette, on the broken skin and indents where his teeth had torn into flesh in his worrying. Hongjoong’s lips aren’t smooth and swiped with pink gloss, battered and broken instead, torn to shreds and riddled with anxious habits.
“Can I have your name, at least?” Seonghwa asks, his eyes still on Hongjoong’s lips. Hongjoong falters at the phrase, the politeness of the request. The etherealness around Seonghwa doesn’t dim even for a moment, lamplight against styled hair, a golden-tinted aura across his skin. Hongjoong is a moth to a flame, a smoker drawn to a pretty boy, fingertips against fairy light bulbs to feel the sting of hot electricity.
“Hongjoong,” he says after a pause, the name fragile in the air, hesitant and wavering. Breathed out like the smoke, curling through the air, swept away by the wind, buried beneath the snowflakes. Seonghwa mouths the name to himself, treasuring it like something precious, something worthy. As if it belongs to someone more than a near-dropout smoking on a bench on Christmas Eve, alone, in the late hours of the night. It could be the name of a prince, a nobleman, someone grand and beautiful and worthy of admiration.
But it only belongs to Hongjoong.
“You should be with people during this time of year.” Seonghwa’s voice is careful, treading a minefield, and Hongjoong wishes he could feel the sting. Numbness is all that’s truly left, a static sound, a television buzzing without signal. A signal lost years ago, perhaps never even found in the first place. Adrift in the atmosphere, waiting for the antenna to be turned in the right direction.
“You’re people.” Hongjoong’s deadpan statement doesn’t even faze Seonghwa, the other humming as if he agrees. Settling down more on the picnic table, shifting a bit closer to Hongjoong, the heat radiating from him almost able to sink into Hongjoong. A ridiculous sort of thought — both of them are bundled in jackets, with Seonghwa’s distinctly more expensive and warm — but Hongjoong eyes the other’s arm and doesn’t move away, only a few inches between them now.
“I suppose I am,” Seonghwa muses. He studies Hongjoong more intensely, eyes searching, looking for something. Hongjoong isn’t quite sure what, but he lets the other man stare as he smokes, the faint strawberry flavor lingering amidst the heaviness of the nicotine. It’s just as out of place as the rest of Seonghwa is. Hongjoong is rather sure that the silver in his ears is high-quality, unlike the metal in his own ears and eyebrow. Even the way Seonghwa breathes radiates prim and proper and good-mannered, never taking risks, never straying, never talking to boys who reek of cigarettes and have skin covered in ink and scars.
“Should we spend the holiday together, then?” Seonghwa asks, and Hongjoong falters, stopping dead in his tracks. The question is absurd — they’re strangers who met within the recent hour, who shared a cigarette that Hongjoong handed over and now has between his lips, who are from two different worlds. Seonghwa shouldn’t be breathing the same smoke-riddled air as Hongjoong, shouldn’t be sitting next to him on the old bench, shouldn’t be walking alone on a college campus on Christmas Eve.
“Are you serious?” Hongjoong reaches up and plucks the cigarette from between his lips, using it to gesture between himself and Seonghwa. “We just met. I don’t know anything about you.”
“That’s what first dates are for,” Seonghwa points out, eyes sparking in the lamplight. The wreath that had started to lose its power flickers again, and Hongjoong considers as he takes another drag from the cigarette.
“You’re asking me out? Me?” Hongjoong gestures a ring covered hand towards himself, the piercings and the dark bags and the cigarettes. Seonghwa just nods; highlighter brushed across the tip of his nose, glitter in the corner of his eyes, some sort of expensive cologne sprayed on his collar. Hongjoong waits for a moment, giving Seonghwa an out. A way to back off. A chance to avoid the baggage that he’ll come with, the burdens he holds, the dead phone in his pocket and the almost-empty pack of cigarettes and neon pink lighter. Seonghwa doesn’t pull back, doesn’t falter. Hongjoong tilts his head.
“What the hell,” he mutters at last, shoulders falling, ash against wood, three burnt down cigarettes and strawberry lip gloss. “Yeah. Okay. Let’s spend the holiday together.”
Seonghwa’s smile is bright, radiant in the darkness. The wreath light steady out, buzzing a final time and not again. Hongjoong doesn’t reach for a fourth cigarette, instead letting Seonghwa pull him to his feet, to adjust the collar of his jacket. He knows that he carries the heavy scent of cigarettes, a clash with Seonghwa’s high-end cologne, but Seonghwa doesn’t bat an eye.
He adjusts the antenna, and catches Hongjoong’s signal with a brush of a hand and a kind smile. Cigarette ash on the ground, swept away by snowflakes, the glow of Christmas lights; Seonghwa’s soft hand in Hongjoong’s, uncaring of the roughness, the calluses from playing guitar, the bandages from nervous habits. Hongjoong lets himself be dragged along into the snow, the chill, leaving the warmth of lit cigarettes behind.