Chapter 34: The Hollow Apology
The front door clicked shut, sealing the silence behind Jensen's departing guests. Their perfumed farewells still hung in the air—Jisoo's cool kiss against his cheek, Taehyung's clap on the shoulder, the murmured assurances that they'd "see themselves out." None of them had met his eyes properly. Guilt had a smell, Jensen thought distantly. It clung like smoke.
He stood in the foyer for a long moment, listening to the echo of their footsteps fade into the Seoul night. The apartment felt cavernous suddenly, the way it always did after guests left, but tonight the emptiness pressed differently. Heavier.
From the kitchen came the sound of water running, the clink of crystal against crystal.
Jensen moved toward the sound, his feet carrying him reluctantly. The kitchen lights were warm, golden, spilling across the marble counters where Leonid stood at the sink, his back to the doorway. He was washing the glasses with methodical precision, his broad shoulders moving beneath the thin cotton of his shirt. The tendons in his forearms shifted as he worked, soap suds clinging to his skin.
"Leonid." Jensen's voice came out rougher than he intended. He cleared his throat. "You don't need to do that. The staff—"
"They're already gone for the night." Leonid's tone was light, almost cheerful. He didn't turn around. "And I don't mind. It's soothing, actually. Mindless."
The words settled between them like stones dropped into still water.
Jensen walked closer, each step deliberate, the marble cool beneath his bare feet. He stopped at the kitchen island, his fingers brushing the polished edge of the granite. "About tonight—"
"Wasn't your dinner lovely?" Leonid cut in, still scrubbing at a glass with focused intensity. "I thought the lamb was perfectly cooked. Your friends certainly seemed to enjoy themselves. Hanbyul had seconds. I noticed." He paused, reaching for another glass. "You have good people around you, princess. They care about you."
The words felt wrong, like clothing that didn't fit. Jensen watched the rigid line of Leonid's spine, the way his shoulders held tension despite his casual tone, the almost too-bright quality of his voice.
"Leonid." Jensen's voice dropped, something raw bleeding through. "I need to say something. About what they said. About—"
"Did you want something to eat?" Leonid finally turned, and his smile was blinding. Empty. "I've been thinking about what to make you all night. Comfort food, maybe. You look like you need it. I could do that braised short rib dish you like, the one with the ginger and star anise. Or maybe something lighter? You've been working so hard lately, princess. Let me take care of you."
Jensen stared at him, searching for cracks in the facade. There were none. Only that bright, empty smile, the kind that didn't reach his eyes, the kind Jensen had taught himself to recognize over the years they'd spent tangled together—but tonight, it was Leonid wearing the mask.
"Something's wrong," Jensen said slowly. "You're doing that thing. Where you pretend everything's fine."
"I don't know what you're talking about." Leonid's smile didn't waver as he reached for a knife, a bell pepper, the cutting board. "I'm just hungry. It's been a long day."
"Leonid."
The knife paused mid-slice. Something flickered in those dark eyes—fractures beneath the gloss, a flash of something wounded—and then it was gone, smoothed over with practiced ease.
"I'm making dinner," Leonid said, his tone carrying a finality that invited no argument. He turned back to the cutting board, his knife moving through the pepper in clean, methodical strokes. "You should go sit down. Put on something comfortable. I'll bring it to you when it's ready."
Jensen didn't move. He stood frozen behind Leonid, watching the vegetables fall into neat slices, watching the tension leap in Leonid's jaw.
"They were cruel tonight," Jensen said quietly. "What they said about you. Your background. The orphanage. It wasn't right, and I—"
"They weren't wrong." The words came out flat, matter-of-fact, like a weather report. Leonid kept his eyes on his work. "I did grow up in an orphanage. I did learn to fight before I learned to read. I'm not one of you, princess. I never will be. They were just stating facts."
"The way they said it—"
"Doesn't matter." The knife came down harder, splitting the pepper cleanly in half. "Stings less that way. Trust me."
Jensen's chest tightened, something aching blooming behind his ribs. "Leonid. Look at me."
"I'm cooking."
"Leonid."
"Jensen." The knife finally stilled, and Leonid looked up—but not at Jensen. At the wall opposite him, his expression shuttered, unreadable. "Please. Just let me do this. Let me make you dinner. Let everything be normal for one night."
The word hung in the air, a plea wrapped in denial.
Normal. As if what had happened tonight was anything close to normal. As if the things Jensen's friends had said—that Jensen himself had fed them—could be undone by a well-cooked meal.
Jensen moved closer, his hand reaching out to touch Leonid's shoulder. The moment his fingers made contact, Leonid flinched—a full-body recoil, as if Jensen's touch had burned him. The pepper slipped from his grip, rolling across the counter and falling to the floor with a soft thud.
The silence that followed was deafening.
Leonid stared at the fallen pepper, his chest rising and falling in shallow breaths. A muscle jumped in his jaw. His hands, braced against the edge of the counter, were shaking.
"Sorry," he said, though Jensen hadn't apologized. "I just—surprised me."
Jensen's hand hovered in the air between them, empty, aching. He looked at Leonid's profile—the sharp line of his jaw, the dark lashes that shadowed his cheek, the vulnerability that crept in around the edges of his carefully constructed composure—and felt something crack open inside him.
"Don't," Leonid said suddenly. His voice was raw, stripped of its earlier bright nothingness. "Don't look at me like that."
"Like what?"
"Like you're sorry." Leonid finally turned, and his eyes were wet—not crying, not quite, but glistening with something unshed and painful. "You're never sorry when it matters. You wanted this, didn't you? You wanted me to hurt."
"No." The denial came too fast, too desperate. "That's not—I didn't mean—"
"You talked about me." Leonid's voice cracked at the edges, crumbling despite his evident effort to hold it together. "You sat there with your friends—with those people—and you fed them pieces of me. My childhood. My pain. The things I told you in the dark when for some stupid reason I thought you were safe." A bitter laugh escaped him, hollow and mocking. "And then you let them tear me apart. For what? For something Minho said?"
"That's not—"
"I heard you," Leonid said, and the words fell like stones between them. "In there. You said—" His voice broke, and he stopped, pressing his fingers to his eyes. A long, shaky breath escaped him. "You said it wouldn't be so charming if you'd gone through it too. You said my hunger wasn't anything special. You made me into—into a joke."
Jensen felt the words land like physical blows. Remembered saying them, remembered the way they'd rolled off his tongue with such casual ease, feeding his friends the ammunition they needed. Remembered the flash of cold satisfaction he'd felt as the laughter rippled through the room.
Now that satisfaction curdled in his stomach, sick and acrid.
"I'm sorry," Jensen whispered. The words felt insufficient, a bandage on a wound that needed surgery. "I was angry. Minho's comment about you—about how you see me as a girlfriend—and I was so blinded by my own stupidity that I didn't realize—"
"Didn't realize what?" Leonid's voice cracked again, splintering along the fault lines he'd tried so hard to hide. "That I'm a person? That I have feelings? That I remember every single time I've had to scrape for scraps while people like your friends looked at me like I was beneath their notice?" He laughed again, but the sound was hollow. "Orphans learn to read rooms. We learn to survive. And you—" he pointed at Jensen, his hand trembling— "you brought me into your world and then punished me for not belonging in it."
The kitchen fell silent, broken only by the soft hum of the refrigerator and the ragged sound of Leonid's breathing.
"I've never wanted to be anything but yours," Leonid said quietly, his voice stripped of all pretense. "I've clawed and fought and scraped together a life just to prove I could stand beside you. But I can't fight your contempt, Jensen. I can't fight the way you look at me when you think I'm not paying attention—like I'm something you've slummed down to touch."
"That's not true." Jensen's voice was barely a whisper, his chest aching with something raw and unnamed. "I love you. You know I love you. I've loved you since we were children, since before I knew what love meant."
"And yet you let them speak about me like trash." Leonid shook his head slowly, a gesture of exhausted defeat. "You did more than let them. You joined in."
The admission hung between them, undeniable. Jensen had no defense, no clever retort, no way to spin what he'd done into something palatable.
The thing about pride, Jensen would later think, was that it demanded tribute. It demanded sacrifices on its altar—and he had offered up Leonid's heart, his history, his dignity, all to feed the wounded ego that had been smarting since Minho's careless words.
"You flinched," Jensen said instead, his voice small. "When I touched you just now."
Leonid's breath hitched, and he looked away. His profile was carved from stone, and then it cracked. His jaw tightened, his throat bobbed, and the first tear spilled over his cheek with a slowness that seemed almost cruel. He dashed it away quickly, angrily, as if the tear itself was a betrayal.
"I need a minute," Leonid said roughly. He turned toward the window, gripping the edge of the sink, his shoulders rising and falling as he fought for composure. "Could you—just go wait in the living room? Please?"
Jensen opened his mouth to argue, to push, to demand they face this together. But something in the shattered quality of Leonid's voice stopped him. He'd seen Leonid in every state—bloodied, furious, trembling with pleasure, wrecked with laughter. But he'd never seen Leonid look so tired.
So he retreated, his feet heavy against the floor, each step away from Leonid feeling like a severing.
Jensen settled onto the couch, the leather creaking beneath him, the room's comfortable silence now laced with the sharp aftertaste of guilt. He could hear the sounds of the kitchen resuming—the tap turning on, the knife finding its rhythm again. Leonid singing under his breath, some old song Jensen didn't recognize, a ghost of normalcy attempting to resurrect itself.
Two hours later, Leonid emerged with two plates balanced on his forearms. He had cooked the braised short ribs, Jensen saw. The rich, dark sauce glistened under the dining room's warm lights, steam curling upward with a soft, mouthwatering promise. He'd set the table with the good china, the kind from the wedding collection, placed fresh wildflowers in a crystal vase.
"You didn't have to go to all this trouble," Jensen said quietly.
"I wanted to." Leonid's smile was back in place, almost convincing now. Almost. "Eat, princess. Before it gets cold."
They ate in silence, punctuated by Leonid's determinedly bright observations about the weather, about a new café that had opened near his restaurant, about a stray cat he'd seen on his morning run. He filled the spaces around the truth. Jensen watched him speak, watched the careful construction of normalcy in every gesture, and felt something cold settle into his bones.
This was worse than if Leonid had shouted. Worse than if he'd thrown something. Because this was Leonid retreating so completely inside himself that Jensen was being shut out, frozen in the arctic chill of carefully scripted pleasantness.
The meal passed, the plates cleared, the kitchen squared away. Leonid moved through the apartment with the methodical diligence of a caretaker, fluffing cushions, dimming lights, checking locks. Jensen followed, helpless, caught in the wake of his own doing.
And then, the bedroom. The deep, quiet shadows of the room they shared. The bed that had witnessed every shade of their hunger for one another.
Leonid climbed in first, settling onto his usual side, his back turned to Jensen. The space between them felt oceanic.
Jensen lay frozen, the silence pressing against his skin like a physical weight. He could hear Leonid's breathing—steady, deliberately slow. The breathing of a man pretending to sleep.
Ring.
"Leonid." Jensen's voice was rough, barely a whisper.
"Mm?"
"Are you—" Jensen's throat constricted. He swallowed hard. "Are we okay?"
Leonid didn't turn. His voice came soft, muffled by the pillow, wrapped in a heavy silence. "Just tired, princess. Long day. Sleep."
But his voice cracked on the last word, splintering like a pane of glass.
And in the dark of their bedroom, the space between them froze over. Jensen lay awake, staring at the ceiling, wondering how two people could be so close together and yet so catastrophically far apart.
He reached out, oh so hesitantly, his fingers brushing the cotton of Leonid's shirt, just the edge of his hip. He felt Leonid stiffen at the contact, a tight, brief clench of muscle before going slack again—a body that had learned not to react, or risk inviting more pain.
The message was clear.
Don't touch me.
Jensen's hand dropped away. His palm burned where it had held Leonid's heat for that single, fleeting moment. He stared at the back of Leonid's head, tracing the familiar dark curls, the slope of his shoulders, the vulnerability that he'd known every bone of for years but somehow had hurt deeply tonight.
Tomorrow. Tomorrow he would make this right. They would fight, scream, make up in that desperate, raw way they always did. The storm would pass, the sun would shine, and Leonid would call him princess again with that infuriating grin, and everything would be—
Jensen's throat burned.
Leonid's breaths had evened out, but Jensen knew better. He could feel the tension in the air, the unshed tears, the quiet devastation. He'd miscalculated. He'd cut too deep into the one person who mattered more than anything, and the damage wasn't healing—it was festering.
Leonid didn't shift, but a final word drifted back through the darkness, a whisper that came sharp and aching out of the gloom, a crack that broke the silence Jensen had begun to sink into. "If they're all you see, princess, then maybe we're not what I thought we were."
And then Leonid pulled the blanket tighter, closing his eyes against the pain.
Jensen felt his heart splinter, lying alone in their bed beside the only person he'd ever loved, the distance between them stretching wider than the city outside their window.