SEE ME [Chapter 1]
Saturday, February 10, 2018yeaaaaayy
it's another new day of laziness so I finally uploading the first chapter LOL OK IT'S NOT LIKE I DO IT ONLY WHEN I HAVE NOTHING TO DO but I totally forgot about it I know everything is literally miserable but I'm quite happy it's still on track here!
not really but yea I have the rights to be happy.
anyways I guess I warned y'all enough BUT IT TURNED OUT I DIDN'T I mean about this fanfiction, it's a military au where Johnny's a lieutenant (Johnny's real name is Seo Youngho which I'm using in this fanfiction) and Jaehyun's a field medic, a frontline trauma medic to be exact, whose job is at the front line, the first aids on the battlefield.was a front medic I mean whoops
anyways I guess I warned y'all enough BUT IT TURNED OUT I DIDN'T I mean about this fanfiction, it's a military au where Johnny's a lieutenant (Johnny's real name is Seo Youngho which I'm using in this fanfiction) and Jaehyun's a field medic, a frontline trauma medic to be exact, whose job is at the front line, the first aids on the battlefield.
you remember how I finished this already? so there's no excuse for me to keep it longer lol so after a week here's the first chapter and don't forget to comment!
▲
Then, there was pain. Pain and heat. And pain and pressure, and pain and
dark and pain and dark. And pain, pain, pain, pain – he couldn’t breathe, it hurts so bad. He couldn’t breathe.
It felt like, his lungs were on fire. His lips had cracked and he could taste
blood all over his mouth.
There was something weighing him down, holding him down, whatever – and
after what seemed like a thousand years the ringing in his ears reduced enough
that he could hear the screams and sobs and weeps and cries around him, the
sound of metal clanking, the hiss and spit of fire through fabric or paper or
some other material burning too hot and too fast. Still, everything was so goddamn
dark.
It was so goddamn dark and so goddamn loud and he couldn’t breathe, but
somewhere in the dark someone was calling his name in a voice he almost
recognized and he considered calling back in response before nothingness
overtook him, dragging him down.
For a while there was nothing – which was, for him, infinitely better than
other resources.
▲
For a while there was nothing.
Maybe it was no longer a while,
there was nothing for such a long time that he almost didn’t notice when he
regained consciousness – the dark was frankly too deep, his head was packed too
thick into cotton wool, the gentle whispers of the space around him were too
much like the quiet rhythmic murmur of his own heart – it wasn’t until he heard
the sound of door opening that he realized, he was awake.
He was awake but god – god, he
was goddamn tired. He felt like every bone was weighted down with harness,
every muscle thickened, his blood sluggishly run through his veins like tar –
he felt like. He wanted to look up, to say hello and introduce himself to the
stranger who had just opened the door like he was trained to do, but all he
could bring himself to do was turn his head on the pillow toward the sound. He
couldn’t sit. He couldn’t speak. Honestly, he couldn’t even open his eyes.
“You’re awake,” there came a voice; a voice of a man. It was quiet, somewhat
louder than whoever’s low humming whispers – very soft and careful. He hadn’t
realized until the voice rolled over him that his ears were still ringing
almost like a soft lullaby, on the edge of reality – but the voice cut through
it smooth and easy. “How are you feeling?”
“Tired,” he said, and god – god,
his throat hurt so much. He felt so tight and used up and exhausted, everything
hurt so much. It was too much.
The creaking of a chair – this man sat. The crackling sound of plastic
casters on linoleum tile. Then a hand – a cool and dry and careful hand,
slipping over the skin of his wrist to feel his artery pulse. “I can believe
that,” the voice said, pitched a little high but so quiet and again, careful
and so soft. “You’ve had a long week, Lieutenant Seo.”
The air had smelled like dust and antibacterial soap and hand sanitizer
but the owner of the voice had brought in something else, something felt like
home and smell like cool rose tea on a tiring day, and he was exhausted as hell
and his bones were so heavy and his muscles were so thick and… and this hand on
his wrist felt like a lifeline. The rose tea scent felt like a lifeline. He
could feel himself slipping back into the quiet darkness and as he did the hand
gently slide over his skin to pull away—
“Don’t,”
he breathed, clutching weakly. Gripping to lace their fingers together and only
half succeeding. “Don’t– don’t go. It’s so dark. Please.”
“Lieutenant
Seo—“
“Please,”
he said again, feeling nothingness creeping under his consciousness. Somewhere
in the room –or maybe it was somewhere in his head– humming and whispering
insistently, buzzing in his ears. “Please just– just call me Youngho. It’s so
dark.”
“Youngho,” said the voice. “Go back to sleep, Youngho.”
“It’s dark.” Probably as obvious as it can be, Youngho breathed. He didn’t
even know whether he’s opening his eyes or not – slipping below the surface.
And the last thing he remembered was that voice.
“I know.” He said into the pitch back, his low tones echoing deep into
Youngho’s head as though over a great distance. “I’m sorry.”
For a long while there was
nothing.
▲
When the automatic ICU door slide open, the nurse at the front desk barely
glanced up before going back to what she was doing. “You’re late.” She said,
biting her lip as he flipped through a handful file folders.
“Traffic,” he said. “Can’t turn the siren on for everything. How is he
today?”
She rolled her eyes and chewed on the inside of her cheek. “Lucid,” she
said finally. “They’ve reduced the morphine enough that he’s able to understand
what’s going on around him, anyway.”
Maybe it meant something that she didn’t have to ask ‘who’ he meant. Maybe
it meant something that she knew he was running late. Maybe everything meant
something because the word lucid had
passed her lips and he couldn’t think about anything else. “Are they telling
him?” he breathed, leaning on the counter for support. “Are they telling him
today?”
The nurse opened her mouth – and flinched as a crashing noise rushed down
the corridor. She went pale and both of them faced the source of the sound,
followed by an incomprehensible shouting. “Yes, they’re telling him today.”
He took a step forward, heart felt like up his throat – but something
caught in his sleeve, he looked down and it was her hand, tangled.
“Not today, Jaehyun,” She said, smooth and lumbering. “You don’t see the
aftermath. I do. Don’t go to him today.”
“He needs—“
“Trust me.” she said again, and Jaehyun could feel her sincerity through
her hand and up his arm wrapping his heart. Maybe she’s right. He doesn’t see whatever it is happened to
him. “Trust me, Jaehyun. Come back tomorrow.”
“I can’t leave him alone,” Jaehyun choked, turning wild eyes on her face.
“I can’t let him go through this without—“
“He doesn’t know who you are.” The look in her eyes told him that she knew
he’d given in already, and her fingers dropped from his sleeve. “You may have been
visiting him for three weeks, but he’s been on morphine the whole time. You’re
just some stranger to him. He doesn’t know who you are.”
“Yeah,” Jaehyun said finally, looking down the corridor. “He never did.”
▲
For a while Seo Youngho wished that he could go back to nothingness, but
they wouldn’t increase his morphine after they’d already started weaning him
off of it – instead he just floated on the surface in the impenetrable dark,
thinking over and over and over and over about things he’d never do again,
never experience again, and never see again. Never see a flame. Never see a
sunset. Never see his mother’s face, the way her eyes crinkled when she
laughed.
He’d never be a Lieutenant ever again.
When the doctors had come in they pulled up chairs next to his bed and
he asked when the bandages would come off, because he was bored he was goddamn
bored, the least he wished to do was to read a damn book, doing nothing in
darkness was killing him–
And instead of telling him when the bandages would come off they’d told
him it didn’t matter whether the bandages would come off or not. They told him
he’d never see again. They told him the shrapnel had cut through the optic
nerves. They told him they did everything they could to salvage his eyes but
he’d been dying. He’d been dying and they had to prioritize saving his life
over his sight, and if the trauma medic hadn’t done such a good job, he might
have slipped into unconsciousness then out of existence while trapped still
under building bricks that had come down when the bomb went off.
“That trauma medic saved your life, Lieutenant,” the doctor said, his
voice low and boring like an old pendulum. “If he hadn’t done everything right—“
“He should have let me die,” Youngho interrupted. “He should have let me fucking die. He should’ve just—“
“Lieutenant Seo—“
“Won’t you stop calling me Lieutenant?!”
After that… after that he’d embarrassed himself.
If his tear ducts still worked maybe he would have cried. If there wasn’t
still scar tissue healing in his throat from
where the shrapnel had hit him maybe he would have screamed, but he’d
settled for yelling and pulling out his IV poorly
because he couldn’t see it he couldn’t fucking see it he’d never fucking see it and knocking something to the floor maybe
a tray? A clipboard? –the sound of metal
touching the floor it was– and trying to get out of his bed but somebody,
two somebodies, three somebodies actually, had caught him by the shoulders and
forced him down as he yelled as loud as he could.
Someone stabbed a hypodermic needle into him and as the sedative took hold
he tried like hell to hold on but found himself slipping into unconsciousness
still.
“It’ll be okay,” the doctor said, tick
tock tick tock. “It’ll be better soon. When you wake up we can talk again.”
The last thing Youngho remembered was his lips parting as his lungs
sucking the last drop of oxygen and his own voice. “He should have just let me
die.”
▲
That had been four days ago, and Seo Youngho had to reluctantly admit that
it had gotten very very very slightly better. The pain of the loss wasn’t as
sharp as he thought. The sting of it wasn’t so acute, it didn’t feel like a
poison creeping under his skin and running through his blood – choking him and
pulling him down to a dark hole called despair with the realization of what
he’d lost.
They were weaning him off the morphine, of course, but for the meantime he
was still on it. A small dose, nothing like the dose of drug addicts they’d had
him under before as he’d healed past the point on impenetrable pain, but enough
to keep his senses alive and his head light as if full of air. Even so, he was
bored. He was bored. He couldn’t read a book like his old boring time. He’d
tried watching TV but after 5 minutes of frustration of almost silence followed
by a gasp of horror and the sound of palm against someone’s face, whatever it
is, what had happened? Who knew. Certainly not him.
On the second day he’d started playing a game with himself as he lay in
the hospital bed. He’d worked out which nurse wore which shoes, the varying
squeaks against the linoleum tile as they walked, and which sounds belonged to
the people with the gentlest touch on his IV. To the people who warmed the
stethoscope before pressing it to his skin. The ones who ignored him or talked
to him, the ones who knew his name, and the ones who barely look at his chart.
After he’d memorized the footsteps –it only took him a few shifts– he’d
gotten bored again and tried memorized breathing patterns, sounds in someone’s
voice that would leak through when they exhaled, the difference between the
nurses who smoked and those who didn’t. On the third day he could recognize
every nurse by their walk. By their breathing. Some walked like balloons. Some
walked like tigers. Some breathed like accordions.
On the fourth day there was the sound of a pair of shoes he didn’t
recognize in the hallway.
It wasn’t that unusual of an occurrence. Visitors came and went, patients
came and went, residents came and went. Once one of the nurses had apparently
broke the heel on one of her shoes halfway through her shift and had to change
into sneakers, and he’d been thrown off all day. But this pair of shoes, this
walk, this sound – the gentle squeak on tile, footsteps close together but not
hurried in a way that suggested anxiety combined with long legs – it wasn’t.
This pair of shoes stopped in front of his door.
One of the things he’d always wondered was whether his remaining senses
would sharpen if he ever lost one of them like
right now. If he lost his hearing would his sense of smell work harder to
catch up? If he lost his sense of taste, would he be able to see the difference
between a sweet pepper and a spicy one? He wasn’t sure yet if they would, but
when that pair of shoes stopped in front of his door he held his breath and
waited.
It wasn’t either of his parent, he could tell that much. It wasn’t anyone
from his platoon who’d been by over the last week. It wasn’t a nurse, or at
least not one he had before. And whoever it was – they seemed worried.
Uncertain. Even through the wood of the door Youngho could hear a hitch in
their breath almost like they’d been running, could hear their shoes squeak as
they shifted their weight from one hip to another.
A hand was on the door. The sound of the hinges squeaking quietly.
“Hello,” Youngho said, inclining his head upward and smiling like his
mother had always taught him. “How are you? What’s your name?”
It was a quick inhale, shaky and weak. One of the shoes took a short step
back like whoever it was at the door had to steady themselves.
“I’m fine,” said the voice, the
voice he almost recognized like he’d heard it maybe in a dream – so quiet and
careful and felt like a cool rose tea on a tiring day – “I’m fine. I’m
great. Are you… how are you?”
Youngho shrugged. “Been better,” he admitted, trying to keep the sarcasm
out of his voice. “I hate to ask again, but what’s your name? I’m still…” he
gestured wordlessly at the bandages wrapped around his head, covering his eyes.
“I– I’m still learning to recognize people by their voices.”
“You probably don’t know me.” said the voice. The door closed. The shoes
moved closer, and there was the creaking of the chair next to his bed. Plastic
casters on linoleum tile. “I’ve visited before, but you were usually… asleep.”
“Or stoned out of my damn mind, more like.” The voice sucked in a quick
shocked breath. “It’s okay, I was on a lot of morphine. You can say it now that
I’m awake. What’s your name?”
“Jung Jaehyun.” Said the voice–
–and a flash of visual memory shot through Youngho’s head like a lightning
bolt.
Those sharp cheeks. Black hair. His dimples. Jung Jaehyun is a bright and
cheery person. They’d hardly ever interacted – Lieutenants and EMTs didn’t have
much time to do with each other, ideally, but Youngho remembered Jung Jaehyun.
He was a hardworking kid. Tall even
though Youngho was still taller than him and made rude jokes that followed
up by covering his mouth with a hand as his eyes darted to check whether he’d
been heard by a higher-ranking officer.
Fun. Bright. But why was he here? Maybe some visitation program. Visiting
wounded veterans or whatever.
“I know you, Jung Jaehyun,” Youngho said, extending his right hand
in direction of Jaehyun’s voice. “I... I’m Seo Youngho.”
“Yes,” Jaehyun said, and then there was the feel of a cool, dry hand over his
palm. Cool, dry fingers tightening over the back of his hand. “I know.”
It hurt.
It hurt, seeing Lieutenant Seo like this. He and Seo Youngho had never
been close – they’d perhaps exchanged a total of two dozen words in the time
that they’d been stationed at the same base together, but Jaehyun had always… he’d
always looked up to the Lieutenant, in a way. He’d always seemed so smart and
so careful yet somehow still so easily flustered and hesitant. He looks way too
charismatic as a Lieutenant but he was also the kind of person who wasn’t
afraid to listen. He spoke too fast sometimes but he always apologized when
he’d caused harm, he’d cared for other people’s business, and…
… and it just hurt seeing him like this.
He was still in his hospital gown, light blue with white piping and loose
knots at the back of his neck. There was an IV on his arm and a blood oxygen
sensor on the tip of one of the fingers on his left hand and his tidy military
buzz cut had grown out on top over the last couple of weeks so that it hung a
little over the bandages covering his eyes.
Jaehyun had tried not to stare at the bandages at first, back a few weeks
ago when he hadn’t been able to stop himself from visiting Lieutenant Seo in
the ICU, but then he’d realized that it didn’t matter whether he stared or not
because even if the Lieutenant had been lucid and he hadn’t been he wouldn’t have known to be bothered by how
closely Jaehyun studied his features, the extent of his wounds, the gauze over
his eyes.
He was still as handsome as ever. His lips were still curvy. His neck was
straight and his shoulders well-muscled and his collar bone were sharp under
the loose, sagging opening of the hospital gown. But his eyes…
Jaehyun had always liked the Lieutenant’s eyes, and now he knew they’d
never be the same again.
The doctors had done a good job. The scars on Seo Youngho’s face were
still streaked pink but they were fading quickly and soon Jaehyun knew he’d
only notice them if he was looking for them, if the light shone on him on a
certain way. His voice had always been deep but his mouth had been open when
the bomb had gone off and the loaded shrapnel or more like shards of glass and small nails and all manner of innocuous things that
were terrible when travelling at 300kmph and now when he spoke, Jaehyun
could hear a new sort of gravel to it, the subtle undertone of a throat left
shredded and ragged.
The scars were the worst – right at the edge of the bandages, creeping
under the gauze like spider webs. Jaehyun was almost curious what it looked
like underneath but to be honest, he felt more like crying rather than curious.
It had been weeks since the blast and he still had nightmares every single damn
night and he was never curious enough to ask to be there when the bandages were
changed.
He was never curious enough, recalling the fact that he was the very first
person to know that Lieutenant Seo wasn’t going to see ever again.
“How are you doing, Lieutenant Seo?” Jaehyun managed, after a few moments
of silence. “Are they treating you all right?”
“I’m bored,” the Lieutenant said, sighing and flopping back against the
hospital bed. “TV isn’t interesting if you can’t watch it. I’ve always hated
audio books and I, I obviously can’t read—” he gestured helplessly at his face, and bit his lip for a
second before letting out a pained cough of wry laugh. “You know, I’ve– I’ve
started playing a game with myself?”
Jaehyun
glanced up to see the smile peeping at the corners of Youngho’s lips. It was a
smile. “A game?”
“I’ve been
memorizing all the nurse’s shoes,” the Lieutenant explained, his voice dropping
into a whisper. “The sound they make, the way they walk.”
“How’s
that been going for you?”
The
Lieutenant shrugged. “Got bored again pretty fast,” he said, and now Jaehyun
was beginning to hear the slight slur in his voice left over from the small
dose of morphine they were still giving him. “Only took a couple of shifts to
learn everybody. Switched to breathing patterns, but that was even faster to
learn. I’m not sure what else to learn next.”
“How
about… heartbeats?” Jaehyun said, and bit his tongue.
The
Lieutenant – well, he didn’t look up because the bandages covered his eyes, but
he cocked his chin to the side curiously. “Heartbeats?”
“Heartbeats,”
Jaehyun repeated stupidly. “I– I don’t know how accurate it is, but– but in, uh, there’s this one Marvel character
who, um, can’t see, and he—”
“Daredevil,”
the Lieutenant interrupted.
“Yeah. Yeah, Daredevil. He learned how to tell
people’s emotions by listening to their heartbeats. I don’t know how realistic
it is—”
“Sounds
like a challenge.” The Lieutenant’s voice was softening, going low and quiet as
he settled back against the mattress. “Sounds fucking… sounds nearly fucking
impossible.”
“It was
a stupid idea, Lieutenant Seo, you don’t have to—”
“No,”
the Lieutenant sighed, shaking his head. The morphine was pulling him under
again. “I like it. I’m gonna try it out. See if I can do it. It’ll be harder
than shoes or breathing patterns.”
Jaehyun
watched him for a few seconds as he breathed slowed and deepened into sleep
before pushing the chair out and standing up to leave. god – he’d finally had
something resembling a conversation with the Lieutenant and he’d messed it all
up by talking about a comic book superhero rather than asking about what he’d
feel? Way to go, Jaehyun. Way to mess everything up on the very first–
“Jaehyun,” came the Lieutenant’s voice
behind him.
Jaehyun swallowed, hand still on the
doorknob. He turned. “Yes, Lieutenant Seo?”
“I thought I told you,” Seo Youngho
breathed, “to call me Youngho.”
“Youngho,” Jaehyun said after a second. He’d
remembered? He’d remembered. No, there’s no way he would remembered. He’d been…
to put it in Youngho’s words he’d been stoned out of his mind. Oh, right. He
might have been telling pretty much everyone to call him Seo Youngho. “Okay.
I’ll… I’ll call you Youngho.”
“Good.” Youngho said, and fell asleep.
▲
After
six weeks the bandages came off and for all and when he felt his face the skin
that had been underneath felt soft and damp and distressingly elastic, like he
was touching a maggot. There were divots in his skin, scars and trails left
behind by the shrapnel screaming over him across him through him, and he would
trace them carefully with his fingertips when he knew he was alone.
He knew
he’d never been perfectly handsome so maybe it wasn’t so bad. Maybe he could…
maybe he could find somebody else who was blind, right? They could navigate the
world together, bumping into things and each other and not caring what they
looked like. He had time now. Now that he
couldn’t stay in the military, of course he can’t – what would he do? The
honorary discharge paper had arrived the other day along with a medal and a
letter of gratitude that one of the nurses had had to read to him.
He found
himself wishing that Jaehyun had been there to read it instead, until he broke down
to the floor right at the end ‘We offer
our sincerest condolences,’ the nurse
had read – and was so, so grateful that Jaehyun wasn’t there to see his
pathetic side like this.
Jaehyun
didn’t visit him everyday. He was busy. He had work, he’s an elite trauma medic.
He had life. He had friends, family, stuff to do, errands to run, things that
didn’t involve dropping everything and racing to Youngho’s hospital room –he’d
finally been moved to the rehab unit, thank god– whenever Youngho got bored.
But he visited almost everyday – with tangerines and little brain-teaser
puzzles that Youngho could feel his way through and on one memorable occasion
he’d brought in a copy of the monthly newsletter from the base and read out all
the best gossip in town, trying to hold back laughter as he explained context,
about who had been caught doing what, at the sheer size and severity of the
trouble they’d gotten into.
Youngho
had peeled the tangerines himself, struggling with the dimpled peel, prodding
at the meat of the fruit to find the indentations of each little section. They
smelled orange bright and clean and sharp,
in the same way that Jaehyun smelled like,
soft and gentle and just very slightly warm. Back when he was still on
bandages Youngho once found himself wondering what he smelled like to Jaehyun
before remembering that Jaehyun had all kinds of clues to recognize him, not
just sound and smell. He’d asked for a pair of sunglasses and tried to keep
them on whenever Jaehyun visited. He’d told himself that it was only polite to
hide the scarring.
They’d
had to teach him to dress himself all over again. He’d had to start wearing
t-shirts with an obvious tag at the back of his neck so that he could tell
whether he was wearing it front to back. He’d always liked baggy clothing over
everything even his military uniform, over everything… but now when he wore
large clothing he felt like he was floating. Like, he couldn’t keep his
balance. So he switched to fitted t-shirts, that way he could keep track of
where his skin ended. He’d started asking for long sleeved shirts even in the
middle of summer so that he could better tell where his arms were, but rejected
gloves since they made him feel even more blind than he did already.
On the
day they were moving him to a different section of the rehab clinic, Youngho
was sitting on his bed with his hands smoothing over the denim on his thighs,
feeling each thread under his fingertips, when he heard the sound of Jaehyun’s
shoes in the hall. The sunglasses was tucked into his collar by one arm and he
struggled to pull them out, feeling for the nose guards with his fingertips so
that he put them on the right way, and only just had enough time to tuck his
hands back into his lap when knuckles rapped the door.
“Who is
it?” Youngho called – but it wasn’t a question. He knew.
The door
clicked. The hinges creaked. Jaehyun’s shoes squeaking on the tile. Jaehyun’s
scent, the cool rose tea on a tiring day. Then Jaehyun’s voice, “Like you
really have to ask.”
Youngho
shrugged, spreading his hands wide in a gesture of innocence. “Keeping up
appearances.”
“How
goes the game?”
“Still
can’t tell the difference between lying and recent physical exertion,” Youngho
replied. He shrugged again, following the sound of Jaehyun’s footsteps and his breathing and his heartbeat as
he wandered across the room toward the window. “I can hear heartbeats most of
the time now, though. Even when people are talking. I’ve been practicing.”
“On
who?” the shade were up – he could hear Jaehyun’s voice echoing oddly off the
glass.
“Nurses,
mostly.” He swallowed. “On you a little. When you’re around. I hope you don’t
mind.”
“Why
would I mind?” Jaehyun had turned his head away from the window, his voice
coming straight back toward him form the corner. “I’m the one who gave you the
idea. I should expect you to try to listen to my heartbeat.” He hesitated, and
Youngho could hear the quick inhalation of uncertainty in the moment of
almost-silence. “What did you notice? In my heartbeat?”
“It’s
always a little fast,” Youngho said, almost not wanting to give up his secrets.
He’d kept his inside knowledge of Jaehyun’s heart rate to himself for a while
now, listening intently for it when Jaehyun came to visit, turning the memory
of the sound over and over and over once Jaehyun had left again. “I mean when
you first come in– it’s always a little fast, but it seems to even out.” He
inclined his head upward, a mannerism left over from when he would have once
looked up to meet Jaehyun’s eye. “Do you exercise before you come to visit me?”
“There’s
a nurse who makes me nervous,” Jaehyun stuttered out after a second. “Even if
she’s not here I get a little anxious, like… what if I run to her?”
“The one
who smokes unfiltered,” Youngho replied, nodding his head. “And she wears
inexpensive lipstick. I can smell it. At least I’m pretty sure that’s what you
mean– she’s a real terror.”
“Probably,”
Jaehyun said, voice distant and weak. “Um,
you said you were being moved today?”
“Long
term care,” Youngho said, trying to keep the bitterness out of his voice. He’d
never, even once in his life, dreamt or thought that he’d been in the long term
care ward of a hospital in his twenties. He felt like an old man. “They’re
going to start teaching me how to be independent again. Teach me braille. Stuff
like that.” He bit his lip. “It’s… I guess I’m looking for it.”
“It’s a
step forward.”
“It’s
just another step.”
Jaehyun
felt quiet.
Part of
Youngho hated these moments, where Jaehyun was at a loss of what to say in the
face of Youngho’s sheer pitifulness. He hated it, he hated it so much. He
hadn’t quite gotten over wishing that trauma medic had just let him die right
there in the fallout of the blast, had left him to rot in the dust and saved
someone who could have lived a full life. If only he could just… if only he
could just see Jaehyun maybe it would
be better.
Part of
Youngho hated these moments, but the rest of him almost reveled in them. The
moments where Jaehyun went still and Youngho could hear the steady even
in-and-out of his breath. The thump of his heart in his chest. The way he
shifted, the way he moved all the time even when he was standing still.
“They’ll
probably be here soon,” Jaehyun said suddenly, stepping forward. “To help move
you over. I should—”
Youngho
reached out and felt a tide of pride as he managed to catch Jaehyun’s wrist on
the first try. He’d heard the swish in the air, calculated the distance. He’d
been practicing throwing things and catching them again and all of it
culminated in this tiny shining moment of success. “Wait,” he said, feeling the
hoarseness of his scarred throat as he spoke. “Wait.”
“Youngho—”
“You can
come with me,” Youngho persisted, standing up and shoving his sunglasses
self-consciously up the bridge of his nose. “If– I mean, only if you wanted to
keep visiting, if you come with me then you’d know what room I was in– or
whatever.” He finished stupidly, letting Jaehyun’s wrist go, feeling like an
idiot.
It was
very stupid, but he was lonely. His parents came last week maybe because it was
such a long way to come from Chicago and he thought his parents probably
wouldn’t come again. He’d been practically married to his job for 6 years and
didn’t have a girlfriend. His friends from the base had seemed to forget about
him one by one, seeming to grow annoyed with his slow progress and his
complaints and the way he looked without sunglasses on. Only Jaehyun kept
coming by.
Youngho
still wasn’t sure why Jaehyun kept coming, but he couldn’t bring himself to
ask. What if it was pity? What if Jaehyun’s wife worked in the hospital and he
just swung by on his way from bringing her lunch? What if it was some community
service program he was doing, some volunteer work to go on a resume?
He just
wanted Jaehyun to be his friend. He just wanted Jaehyun to come with him to the
long term care ward. He just… he just wanted. He couldn’t figure out what he
wanted. He couldn’t admit it to himself.
“Yeah,”
Jaehyun’s voice carried over to him through the penetrative dark. Jaehyun’s
hand, cool and dry, curling around his wrist. Jaehyun’s scent, like cool rose tea on a tiring day.
“Yeah, ‘or whatever’. I’ll come with you.”
“Only if
you want to keep visiting.” Youngho repeated weakly.
“I do,”
Jaehyun said, tugging his own arm. “Come on. Let’s go check out your new room.”
▲
Everyone don't forget to stream NCT's videos they are releasing tons and tons of mvs and making videos my nctzen soul can't survive.
-kairay.
2 Comments
I was like "is this angst" because it doesn't look happy at all then I look at the tag then oof my bad I forgot you always write angst and kill us on daily basis .
ReplyDeletelol I saw everyone's complain on daily basis as well!
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