(four months before)

"Where the hell were you?"

"I told you I'd be out tonight," he scoffs, taking off his watch and standing in front of the mirror, combing his hair.

"Which means 3 in the morning to you?"

"It means whatever the fuck I want it to mean, Minho."

"I thought you'd been kidnapped."

"This is the problem!" he shouts, turning around to face me, "you're always so fucking overprotective of me! It's suffocating."

"Suff - suffocating?" I nearly choke, his words jumbling in my brain and my throat, mixed up in the anger and fear spreading through my chest.

"It's suffocating to call you at two in the morning when you haven't been home all night? It's suffocating to text you once in the entire six hours you were gone because I was worried you were too drunk to get home? It's suffocating to call your friends because I thought you were dead in an alley somewhere?"

"It's suffocating to be constantly checked up on," he spits, turning his back to me again.

"It's because I fucking love you okay? I call you because I love you, and then I stop when you say you don't want me to call you anymore. Because I love you. I check up on you because I love you, and I stop because you tell me to. I'm doing everything you ask me to do and somehow I'm still doing it wrong."

He's silent, he won't even look at me.

"I don't know how to show you I love you anymore. I never do it right and you get mad."

"If you loved me you would trust me."

"Who said I didn't?"

He's quiet, but that's always a dangerous sign.

"I don't not trust you I just worry about you. Because I care about you."

"Go to sleep, I'll see you in the morning."

"Oh so you're leaving again?" I scowl, but in reality I'm helpless.

"I can't be near you right now. I need to leave."

"Fine. Don't come back until the vodka wears off. And if you wake up dead I wouldn't know any better."

"I hope you know this is all your fault. Call me when you come to your senses."

And he leaves. But the room isn't empty, the argument sits in it like an unwelcome guest.

I get up and pull the blankets into the closet, propping myself against a carboard box and waiting for sleep or death. Both would be convenient.

And then I realize what that strange smell was, the one that followed him through the apartment.

He smelled like sex.

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just a note - all flashbacks will be in chronological order