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"Someone will remember us, I say, even in another time."
"How inconvenient to be made of desire."
"It's me, hi, I'm the problem its me."
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[FILL] my year of rest & relaxation
now xposted to ao3
Ship/Member: gyuhan (sorry)
Major Tags: substance abuse
Additional Tags: There is Something Wrong With Everyone in This, based off of ottessa moshfegh's year of r&r, explicit content
Permission to remix: Yes
Whenever Jeonghan woke up, he would shuffle through the day’s brightness and cut through the city in order to get coffee from the same corner shop on Finchley Road, which was objectively a shithole, but he liked the way the cashier smiled at him each time, because it helped him remember until he took Ambien and trazodone and Valium until he fell asleep again. A few months went by.
If he wanted variety, he would order Chinese takeout from the place across the street and find himself booking appointments for restaurants in his sleep. He always called back to cancel, but he hated doing this.
In the beginning, he would diligently have his laundry done for him. A cleaning service would come by once a week to pick up his pile from him and he would have them returned a few days later. Now, his clothes were strewn all over his apartment. He just no longer cared. Eventually, the sound of the washer and dryer was too much for him anyway, so he just threw away his dirty clothes and would buy new ones in turn, if he even remembered to do so.
He left the apartment infrequently; only doing so to sustain himself and to avoid people knocking at his door, their faux-concern far too cloying for his brain. It was enough to pick up his prescription medication that way; for him to stare at the pharmacist with disdain and for him to ignore the way she would look at him pitifully through her horn-rimmed glasses until he had to do it all over again. Jeonghan hated her, but she was kind to him and she never asked questions, although she annoyed him. So he grunted back at her and hoped that was enough. His father’s financial advisor handled things for him, anyways, and apparently he had more than enough in his savings account for him to continue his lifestyle for a year;
His year of rest and relaxation.
Mingyu frowned at Jeonghan. "You can’t just disappear on us.” He placed his arms on the side of the couch, nearly touching Jeonghan, who was lying down with a hand over his forehead.
“I can for a year,” Jeonghan retorted, not looking him in the eye. “I’ve already planned everything.”
“You can’t just plan to disappear, then,” Mingyu amended, still frowning. “It makes no sense.”
“It does, actually.” It did to Jeonghan. He was tired; tired of the way he had to perform niceties in the mornings, in the afternoons, in the evenings. Tired of how the few who were close to him would ask him questions; never out of real concern, but rather as a way to either take his money or to sleep with him.
Yoon Jeonghan was lost.
He’d lost his job earlier in the year as a nurse. He found himself deliberately endangering people by slacking during work and when his boss had yelled at him with spittle flying into his face, Jeonghan had told him to go fuck himself and he walked out, as simple as that. He didn’t really need the job, anyways. He had enough inheritance to keep him going on for two more lives, once he was done squandering the first.
Mingyu spluttered at Jeonghan, who just shrugged weakly in response.
“What are you going to do for a year?”
“Sleep,” Jeonghan replied. It was alluring to him. He had trouble sleeping most nights, and he was looking forward to conking out in a fit of medication. He’d taken Xanax at a party once and had fallen asleep on the couch there and then. It felt as though he disappeared from reality; was somehow transcendent, in-between places. It sounded like a fine idea to him.
“It sounds like a fine idea to me,” Jeonghan said, shrugging again. He didn’t really see the problem. He’d arranged for Mingyu to check in on him monthly, to make sure he wasn’t dying or dead in the process. Jeonghan was semi-healthy, other than his gross substance abuse. His kidneys would be fine, or so he thought, and he turned to Mingyu with something that could have been generously described as a smile. “I don’t see the problem.” He really didn’t.
The week prior, he’d tested his theory and found that the world was so much better when it was dulled by the hazy film of sleep. Time drifted on slowly in a thin blanket that enveloped him whole. His shirts were crusty with sweat-stains. The coffee on the bottom of his mugs had solidified into hard granules that would not get rid of themselves without at least three vigorous washes.
“It’s not going to be fine,” Mingyu said. “I’m worried about you, you know? Have you been seeing a therapist?”
“I have,” Jeonghan said. This was not a lie, either. He had been—because where else would he have been obtaining his endless supply of narcotics? But what he couldn’t tell Mingyu was that his therapist was forgetful and absolutely, almost certainly unethical in her practice; what with the way she would prescribe him four different types of benzos on top of each other, as Jeonghan begged her for stronger pills that would cure him from his supposed bouts of sleeplessness. (That had been cured a long while ago. Now, there was only sleep.)
“You’re horrible,” Mingyu said, and he had that expression that Jeonghan was too familiar with, that expression that told Jeonghan that he knew what Jeonghan was doing, but he didn’t want to voice it out loud, lest one of their feelings would get hurt. (It was typically Mingyu who hurt himself that way.)
“I know,” Jeonghan said, with an uncharacteristic tiredness he reserved for when he wanted Mingyu to shut up. Typically, it was often, but he liked to lie to himself and think that he was a good friend to him. That Mingyu would see and understand as to why he wanted a year of quiet.
“Is this because of your grandfather?”
“It’s not,” Jeonghan replied. And it wasn’t really. He couldn’t bear lying to Mingyu on the best of days.
“Okay,” Mingyu said, hurt in his eyes, and he got up to leave. Jeonghan watched him go from the comfort of his sofa, and curled up into a ball, closing his eyes.
He was faintly aware that a cat was meowing incessantly outside of his room. This bothered him, because it interrupted his medicated sleep. When he walked to his balcony to peer at it, it was almost as if it was never there in the first place. He kicked at the empty air and then felt ashamed when he realised how pathetic he felt.
The next morning, Mingyu came to take out the trash.
“I can’t believe how much shit the human body is capable of producing,” Mingyu said while Jeonghan sat stubbornly on the couch; his body a mere extension of it. “Since when did you like Thai?” He held up a container next to Jeonghan's face and he didn’t even flinch at the way the smell of fish sauce had soured over the weeks.
Jeonghan shrugged. “Is this unusual to you?” It was somewhat unusual to him. He ordered Thai whenever his cocktail of drugs got too much for him. Typically, he hated the way curry smelled and preferred bland meals; as if the lack of taste was a blanket for his sleep, both dull and grey.
“All of it is,” Mingyu sighed, and grumbled something out about how he’d have to come with a hazmat suit the next time. Jeonghan thanked God that there was still a next time. Mingyu continued to pick up various bits of trash around Jeonghan's apartment, but he never dared to enter Jeonghan's room. This was fine by him. He didn’t know whether he would be asking for too much, then, but he winced regardless at the thought of Mingyu poking at his crusty bedsheets.
Kim Mingyu was Jeonghan's friend from university. The two of them had known each other for years—in the way that they were no longer tied together by their shared interests, but rather a sense of necessity—and Jeonghan was quietly thankful for him, despite the fact that Mingyu believed in Simply Getting Over Things Through Toxic Positivity as a means of therapy rather than engaging in the practice itself.
Once Mingyu shoved the too-large bag of rubbish down the apartment’s trash chute, he opened Jeonghan's fridge and poured himself a glass of wine, downing it in seconds before disregarding his glass entirely and drinking straight from the bottle instead.
“This is a bit grim,” Mingyu said, grimacing, continuing to gulp the rest of the wine. He wiped his lips, which had turned purple.
“Get your own then.”
“I will,” Mingyu replied. He never did, but that was another part of their unspoken agreement; that Jeonghan would leave alcohol behind for Mingyu to drink excessively while Jeonghan laid on the couch in a medicated stupor; dumb and pliant. Sometimes, when Mingyu thought Jeonghan wasn't looking, he would do lines of coke on his kitchen counter.
Jeonghan knew, of course, but he couldn't bring himself to care all too much.
Mingyu wiped the back of his mouth with his hand and Jeonghan stared at the curve of his jaw before choosing to look out of the windows. “Turn the TV on or something, this is fucking bleak.” Mingyu said.
If Jeonghan was in a better mood, he’d ask Mingyu if he wanted to stay over for dinner and watch his DVDs together. Whenever Mingyu came over, they always ended up watching cable, which Jeonghan disliked. He preferred to watch familiar DVDs that would eat away at his anxieties; their words providing a horrible familiarity. It was almost as if Mingyu felt the need to keep up appearances; wearing gaudish suits that made Jeonghan's head throb and quoting a funny line from the latest TV series that he’d inevitably end up dropping. Jeonghan despised this and almost despised Mingyu for doing so. The problem was that Mingyu was invariably likeable, and Jeonghan was not.
Mingyu's apartment across London was in a building with a lift. It had a private gym—the first of its kind in his area—and it was obnoxiously stylish in the way that only people with established wealth were. Jeonghan's flat, meanwhile, smelled like old laundry and despair. It had a lift from the 60s that had a cage enclosing it and was unreliable in most parts. Despite this, Mingyu somehow preferred going to Jeonghan’s flat. Jeonghan didn’t know why. Jeonghan felt solitary and purposeless whenever he was with Mingyu. He felt a quiet resentment that he couldn’t place; their friendship a cruel parody of the other. He was certain that Mingyu resented him for the way that he fell into his sleep, as well. Almost as if they were trading blows with one another.
Mingyu liked pre-planning his work week in a way that Jeonghan didn’t. His schedule was always full, and there was the implication that he was doing things for Jeonghan as a favour, as if friendship could be measured by the number of times one did another’s laundry for them.
It was a certain sort of cruelness that close friends could only harbour for one another: Especially amongst two friends who had no real reason to be tied to one another due to their lack of interests intersecting. Meanness disguised under concern. Apathy under care. Pain under labour. Jeonghan knew this, and so did Mingyu, and yet the two of them fell into place like ill-fitting jigsaw puzzle pieces. Jeonghan was aware that he would not share this sort of relationship with anyone else, romantic or otherwise. (To think of Mingyu in a romantic light would be a disservice to himself.)
In the distance, one could hear the sound of the Underground. Life chugged along without them.
Jeonghan had been taking Nembutals all day. Sounds turned into mush turned into dust in his ears, and when he came to, he faintly realised that Mingyu was talking to him.
“—And I hate going back home, because they keep asking me about her, but we’re done, you know?”
Jeonghan nodded, not knowing still.
Time passed in an agonising haze.
"What are you looking at?" Jeonghan said. Mingyu was thumbing through Jeonghan's old magazines; their pages yellowed and dog-eared.
"Why do you have these lying around?"
Jeonghan shrugged, not really having an answer. "Do you want some tea?" He felt generous for once. As if brewing one mug of tea for Mingyu would replace all the times he'd lugged trash out of his apartment. He loathed himself for viewing friendship as a series of transactions, yet he felt as though he had to, if only for a moment.
Mingyu eyed him with suspicion. "Do you have any clean mugs?"
"Probably not," Jeonghan admitted. Mingyu laughed; a bright and sudden sound.
"You're an absolute mess," Mingyu said, but there was fondness in his eyes, and Jeonghan felt the world lose its dullness for a split second before it was replaced by a certain kind of dullness, probably brought upon by the fourth Valium he'd popped during the day. He reached out, almost as if to ruffle Jeonghan's hair, but the moment was broken when Jeonghan turned away involuntarily.
They sipped on their chamomile tea in silence.
"Who did you meet the other day?" Mingyu said, pouting unattractively.
"Joshua," Jeonghan replied, scalding his tongue in the process. He wanted to wince, and found that he couldn't.
"Why wasn't I invited?"
Jeonghan shrugged. At the time, he hadn't seen the occasion as particularly notable in that the three of them had to meet. Then again, Mingyu liked to feel as though he were more important than the overall situation. "It wasn't a big deal." It really wasn't.
"Ask me next time," Mingyu said, pouring a glass of beer noisily. It was an IPA of sorts. Jeonghan kept them in his fridge for Mingyu and hoarded foreign lagers for himself. "Do you want some?"
"Yeah, maybe," Jeonghan replied. Mingyu handed him over a bottle and Jeonghan habitually started peeling the corners of its label. Mingyu just sighed at him; his expression indecipherable.
"How are you sleeping?" Jeonghan's therapist, Dr. Lim said over the phone. They hadn't met in person in weeks, partly due to Dr. Lim's strange schedule and Jeonghan's refusal to leave his own flat.
"Poorly," Jeonghan lied. "I've had spotty hours of sleep."
"Tell me more," Dr. Lim said. It was nearly-lewd; the way Jeonghan could tell he was salivating over the prospect of a new diagnosis. Jeonghan hated him, if it weren't for the fact that he would dispense new oddities for him.
Jeonghan rubbed the side of his neck whilst holding the receiver with his other hand. "How do I start?"
Jeonghan then proceeded to tell Dr. Lim falsehoods about his sleep. How he apparently struggled before he wrestled to sleep. How he wanted to pass out, every night, without fail, and yet he was doomed to stare at the crack in the ceiling he'd been meaning to fix. This was only partly a lie. The red light from the shop across the street illuminated his face as he continued to murmur through the phone.
"What about your friend?" Dr. Lim said, suddenly, in the wake of Jeonghan's lies.
"My friend?"
"Kim Mingyu," Dr. Lim said. "He comes over often, does he not?"
"He does," Jeonghan said. His body felt very distant to his own.
"How do you feel about him?"
The simple answer to Dr. Lim's question was that Mingyu fucked Jeonghan sometimes.
"You're not—" Jeonghan said, angling his hips sideways so that Mingyu could thrust deeper into him. "It's not," he said, frustrated.
"I'm not what?" Mingyu said, clearly trying to sound sexy at first. After seeing Jeonghan's look of boredom, he deflated. Mingyu snorted some leftover coke right before they started undressing, and once again, Jeonghan laughed at the idea of Mingyu thinking that he was being discreet. There was a bottle of poppers by the nightstand that Jeonghan had used prior to them fucking.
Mingyu noticed Jeonghan eyeing the brown bottle and sighed. "Do you want me to take them too?" Without stopping for Jeonghan's response, he slipped out of Jeonghan to inhale; throwing his head back with a satisfied sigh. Jeonghan rolled over, waiting for Mingyu to enter him again.