Title: Lick
Characters: Heechul/Hangeng
Rating: PG
Wordcount: 683
Summary: Cigarettes. He smokes them one too many times a day, but in all honesty he can’t be bothered to care.
A/N: And another dark one. My dearest daughter tells me I'm writing a lot of dark fics lately, but I just can't help it. I don't have the state of mind for happy and fluffy right now. -sigh-
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Cigarettes.
He smokes them one too many times a day, but in all honesty he can’t be bothered to care. They tell him that he’s losing years of his life as he goes on smoking and he just smiles at them, tells them it’s okay. Because it is. Really. Especially considering the thrown-together heap of useless that people refer to as life these days.
He figures it’s the way they look at it against the way he looks at it, but when they tell him he’s wrong and that his life has a use, he finds it impossible to believe them. They know he doesn’t agree with them as he licks the paper of his newly rolled tobacco friend and puts it between his lips.
And he wonders how many more licks it will take until he dies.
There’s a flower pot on the window sill that he remembers as being a gift from someone he once held dear. The name slips down the edge of his memory as he tries to grasp it, but he doesn’t really care much. All he knows is that the pot hasn’t held flowers for years, but has meanwhile started to serve as an ashtray. One that shows his addiction when you look into it and find it already half filled with leftover pieces of cigarette.
Sometimes it’s amusing to think that he could probably build a house with the amount of tobacco packages he has emptied so far, but on the other hand it just annoys him, because if he’s got enough free time to smoke that many cigarettes, then what exactly is he doing here anyway? He snorts and turns away from the window sill, only to be stopped dead in his tracks when a voice reaches him: “Heechul-ah! You should water the flowers regularly or they’ll wither and die.”
The slightly accented Korean floods through him, strumming at his heartstrings and playing a melody he thought he had long forgotten. He gasps for air in a much more delicate way than when he’s choking on his own coughing again, and the next moment his eyes are leaking salty water drops. “Yah, why are you crying? I’ll only be gone..” he hears himself say to that accented voice, but the sound dies away before the sentence is finished.
And he wonders how many more licks it will take until he stops crying.
For a while he lets himself get lost in memories of a house filled with all kinds of different plants and flowers. He vaguely remembers a smile on soft pink lips and a shared bottle of beer, but the images fade away again before he can fully see them. There’s a slight feeling of belonging, tugging at his insides, but the next moment someone knocks on his door and he turns to look who’s there. When he sees a young man with black hair he frowns and cocks his head a little, as if to ask ‘Who are you?’ without really uttering any words.
“Hey Heechul.” the unknown young man tells him in accented Korean that somehow sounds familiar. “I’m just coming by to see how you’re doing. Looks like you’re still smoking, eh? Didn’t I tell you you should quit?” The young man smiles, but there’s tears in his eyes and Heechul finds himself wanting to wipe them away with his fingers. Instead he keeps a distance, because he doesn’t even know the other. His silence makes the other’s smile turn even more bitter. “It’s not good for you, you know.”
He disagrees, in silence, because no matter what the other says, he’s sure that smoking can’t be that bad. Because every time he blows out another breath of smoke, there’s images and voices, blurred and vague as if they’re coming from far away, but they’re still there. It gives him hope that things will get better. Sometimes he thinks he’s winning against the amnesia, but then the memories disappear again until he rolls and lights a new cigarette.
And he wonders how many more licks it will take until he remembers.
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