Work Text:
There’s a new boy joining their section of school; it’s a big deal, because while the school Yeonwoo attends isn’t small, their division is - the division for differently abled, the special needs kids, the low IQ, or just undesirables. People call them a lot of things, things that aren’t fair and aren’t always true either, like Seokjin who seems to be in his class only because his father asked him to be put there for some sort of messed up punishment, and a year later, there he still is.
Yeonwoo wonders if he’d be in this class simply because he’s a mono even if he did speak. There was another mono at one point - a girl who didn’t last long before her guardian pulled her out and moved them to the country. Rumor was she met her probe and that’s why they left, but Yeonwoo wouldn’t know. He never talked to her, in part because she couldn’t sign, but in part because monos knew better than to befriend each other.
He’s lucky in a lot of ways. His teachers are incredibly lenient with him, too busy accommodating other students with higher needs than his own. He mostly studies on his own, so they leave him be and ignore the fact he won’t talk, even if every doctor has made sure to tell his aunt and educators and put it on all of his records that he is perfectly capable of speaking. With the right support and a lot of therapy, everyone thinks they can encourage him to verbally speak again.
But Yeonwoo hasn’t spoken in over five years. He’s not so sure he could anymore either, even if he wanted to, no matter what the doctors say. He knows how to sign, has a lot of different text apps to help him along. He would love to tell everyone that they don’t need to speak either, but that’s not his place, and it’s not theirs to tell him what to do either.
The new boy appears in the room as if the whispered gossip of a few students summoned him through wishful thinking; immediately, a hush falls across his peers when the door slides open. They’re used to a school administrator coming in to chastise them for something, more than likely not something that has anything to do with them even.
Instead, it’s a slight boy Yeonwoo’s age. He’s got a face mask on and one dangly earring hanging out from around it, but he can still tell the other boy is smiling, even with half of his face covered.
His name is Yoohan, he signs at the front of the classroom. Only a few of them know any sign language, Yeonwoo being one of them, so their teacher interprets it for the rest of the class. He’s completely deaf, he informs them also, and just arrived from Seoul.
Their teacher places him next to Yeonwoo and tells the new student that he also signs. Yoohan turns to him, bowing before sitting. Yeonwoo flushes at being singled out, sinking down in his chair and avoiding eye contact.
You’re hearing impaired? Yoohan signs.
Yeonwoo ignores him for a solid ten seconds, long enough that Yoohan lowers his hands. Quickly, he shakes his head, then goes back to ignoring Yoohan.
Surprisingly, Yoohan doesn’t take all his classes with theirs; he is integrated into other classes with students their age, so he comes and go throughout the day. It’s interesting to watch both the students in their class interact with Yoohan, but also students from other sections of the school try and befriend him. He’s good looking enough, Yeonwoo thinks, and that saves him from the stigma of being differently abled, although he seems to always be wearing the mask, day after day, for reasons unknown.
He’s been there almost three weeks before Yeonwoo sees his face - they don’t eat together, so he’s avoided it, but Yoohan removes it for some reason or another, Yeonwoo isn’t paying attention to the boy next to him at that moment, but when he taps on his desk to ask him something, Yeonwoo turns, sees a burst of something before he can really even comprehend it then thinks no more.
He comes to in the nurse’s office, Yoohan sitting close to his side, gazing out the window with crossed legs.
There are colors, he realizes. It’s shocking - so shocking that Yeonwoo opens his mouth to say something, anything, but he snaps his jaw shut before it squeaks out.
His eyes roam the walls, out the window, then to the boy next to him. Yoohan is smiling again under his mask, his eyes a color he can’t describe, but it cuts through the other colors in the room, warm in a sea of cool.
He’s his probe, Yeonwoo finally thinks. Of course. Of course his probe showed up in his class, of course his probe would be someone like him. The shame of being singled out in special needs couldn’t even save him from this.
Yoohan is frantically signing things, but Yeonwoo isn’t really paying attention. He doesn’t want to pay attention, he wants to get up and leave. When he sits up, Yoohan jumps to push him back down. Rest, he signs. They’re not expecting us back in class this afternoon.
Scowling, Yeonwoo turns on his side so he doesn’t have to look at Yoohan or his hands. He hopes the boy is going to receive the message and leave him alone, but other than a soft creak in the chair that his probe inhabits, there’s nothing. He doesn’t try to force any more conversation.
The clock on the wall ticks, ticks, ticks.
The colors are bleeding. What once was discernible is now washed out and fading into similar shades. That does cause Yeonwoo to sit up, quickly enough that the probe can’t stop hm - he wants to yell stop, wait - but to who?
A soft hand on his. Yoohan peeks into his frame of vision and asks, Are the colors gone? Do you want them back?
Oh, how he wishes that Yoohan could remain oblivious. He wishes that Yoohan never came to this school, and he wishes that he would have mistaken his fainting for anything other than a color rush, but ignoring his problems has always been something he excelled in. Isn’t that how he partially came to be where he is now?
Yeonwoo gets up, brushing Yoohan’s hand off his arm, and stalks out of the nurse’s office despite her protests. He goes back to class and finishes his last lesson. Yoohan never comes back though, but when the bell rings to dismiss them for the day, he is outside in the courtyard, and as soon as he spots Yeonwoo, rushes over to join him.
How are you feeling?
Yeonwoo just keeps walking; it’s not fast enough. As he passes Yoohan, he notices that the other boy has been crying. Red eyes and pale cheeks, but Yeonwoo won’t allow himself to feel any certain way about that.
Despite his lack of acknowledgment, Yoohan follows Yeonwoo all the way home. He stands at the threshold of the front gate and watches as Yeonwoo enters the front door and shuts it without ever saying a thing to him, but he doesn’t try and stop him any more, and he continues to stand outside for a few minutes before leaving.
The next day, Yoohan sits down quietly next to him, his head hung kind of low. He doesn’t try to grab Yeonwoo’s attention, he just fidgets with his mask, a new habit, Yeonwoo realizes. The probe traces it around his chin, as if checking to make sure it’s properly in place at all times. He does it again and again over the course of the day.
He doesn’t even look at Yeonwoo, but when school is over, he follows him home again from a short distance. Yeonwoo watches him from the safety of the foyer’s window on the other side of the gate where the probe remains, quietly watching the front door as if the mono might come back out.
This happens again the next day. Then the next. Yoohan doesn’t talk much with Yeonwoo outside of what’s necessary for class, but he hovers, always double checking his mask is in place. He continues to trail Yeonwoo home in the afternoon, and sometimes he stands outside the gate wistfully for a long time, other days he departs somewhat quickly.
These behaviors do not go unnoticed, and they’re noticed by exactly the kind of students at their school that force a lot of his peers into their class. It happens so quickly one afternoon; Yeonwoo enters his home, takes off his shoes and slides on his slippers, and by the time he peeks back out the window for his customary last glance, there they are.
It’s a group of boys from a year above them in school - Yeonwoo doesn’t know them well, and Yoohan wouldn’t know them at all. They’re trying to talk to Yoohan, and though he knows that the probe can read lips to a certain extent, it’s hard when there’s a group and they’re pressing into him, surrounding him.
The hairs on the back of Yeonwoo’s neck go up; he stands, frozen at the window, waiting. One of the boys puts a hand on Yoohan’s shoulder, and it’s not gentle - Yoohan’s entire body jolts from the impact, but Yeonwoo can’t see his face.
He’s holding his breath. The group is saying something to Yoohan, physically shaking him at the same time.
Then they’re dragging him away by his arms, Yoohan struggling and for a moment, from his profile, Yeonwoo can see the fear on his face.
Yeonwoo flies out of the house, down the stairs to the street. They’re moving quickly away from the house towards the end of the street that has the space and capacity to hide certain deeds, but Yeonwoo is faster.
“HEY!”
His voice startles them all, but it mostly startles him. The group of boys shuffling Yoohan along stops to look back at him, the confusion evident on their faces. Most of the upper school knows vaguely who Yeonwoo is - the boy who doesn’t speak even though he could. The mono’s whose mom was tortured and ultimately abducted right in front of him, and the men who did it left their mark on the twelve-year-old boy too.
Back in middle school, after the event, kids would try and spy on Yeonwoo, to catch a glimpse of the scars left on his arms, or the spiderweb of lines peeking out from under his gym t-shirt that hung a little lower than the collared uniforms. The worst scar is a long gash from his belly button to his collarbones, but no student ever saw that one since the school allowed him to change in a private bathroom.
The boy whose mom is probably dead, and her son who should have died with her. Instead, he miraculously survived, only to stop talking. He wears long sleeves, long pants, no matter the temperature, no matter the activity.
He’s a local legend at school.
Now, the older boys gape at him, their mouths open and useless. Yoohan struggles in their hold, but they don’t let go, and Yoohan can’t turn to see what’s happening, doesn’t see the mono behind him.
“Get your hands off of him.” His voice is scratchy - it doesn’t carry far. He’s not even sure if he’s understandable, or if the students are just gaping at him because he’s trying to speak, regardless of the actual words.
Finally, one of them blinks. “Right. You’re his mono.”
They all stand at an impasse for a moment, then the boy speaks again: “You heard him. Let him go.”
His friends all look at him, but the ringleader wrenches Yoohan roughly from another lackey's hold, then flings Yoohan to the pavement of front of them. It’s there that Yoohan looks up, sees Yeonwoo just a few feet from him.
Yoohan tries to scramble up, tries to make a break for Yeonwoo, but a foot comes down on his back and presses him into the dirt. “You better come and get him, Choi.”
Yoohan moves his arms - he’s trying to sign something while being pressed into the earth, Yeonwoo realizes, but suddenly the ringleader lets off his back to jump down on his hands. Yoohan howls - it’s a different cry, a hollow cry, and it’s just as jarring at Yeonwoo’s previous yell.
This time, Yeonwoo doesn’t mince words - he just pounces, knocking the first kid over, but then the other three quickly come for him. It’s a mix of kicking feet and punching hands, and Yeonwoo can’t see or hear what happened to his probe, but in the back of his mind he’s got enough thought to hope that the other boy ran for it.
Of course, he didn’t do any such thing. Yeonwoo can’t see him from the bottom of the pile of wrestling bodies - at this point, there is blood in his nose and mouth, and he can already feel one of his eyes throbbing in a way that indicates it’ll be swollen shut tomorrow - but he can hear him.
It’s a yell, a screech, a scream. The thing about non-hearing people is, because they’ve never heard another yell before, they wouldn’t know theirs sound different, but it does. Yoohan’s screams sound otherworldly, and it makes the bullies on top of Yeonwoo stop.
Yoohan doesn’t stop screaming. It’s loud - way louder than Yeonwoo would think possible. Yeonwoo, stuck in a painful hold under the ringleader, huffs a laugh, then clears his lungs and screams just as much as his probe.
His own screaming sounds different. It sounds wrong. Misplaced, like Yoohan’s. Different because of his voice’s lack of use. Above him, one of the boys is backing away from the pile.
“We need to get out of here.” There are audible nerves in his voice, even over all the screaming.
“Yeah, let’s get out of here. Someone’s going to hear!” another of the students adds.
The third boy joins his standing friends, and finally, the instigator clambers up from the ground, giving one final kick to Yeonwoo’s side that shuts him up, then they’re gone. Yoohan stands closeby, wailing, eyes closed. Through the throbbing pain in his entire body now, Yeonwoo stands slowly, wobbling over to Yoohan before his probe even realizes it.
He covers Yoohan’s mouth with his hand; his eyes fly open, but his body visibly relaxes when he sees it’s Yeonwoo.
Colors swirl all around him. Colors he’s never seen before, because they’re different from what he saw in the nurse’s office, and at some point in the scuffle, Yoohan’s mask was lost.
Yeonwoo’s knees shake - from the fight, or from the color rush? He slides to the ground once more, Yoohan’s hands trying to catch him. His vision tunnels in and out, and his probe’s fingers flit all over his face and neck and hands - anywhere there is a visible injury. He’s crying, looking over Yeonwoo, so Yeonwoo gives him a bloody smile thinking it might help soothe him, but then he remembers the taste of blood between his teeth.
Yoohan cries harder. Hospital, he signs shakily.
Yeonwoo shakes his head. I’m fine, unless you need to go?
Yoohan just stares at him. They’re holding hands, Yeonwoo realizes. It hurts, but he lifts Yoohan’s hands up to inspect them. It’s hard, because his bruised eye also has blood in it. He squints, looking for damage to Yoohan’s hands. He has to have functioning hands. He has to be able to sign.
Did he hurt you? Yeonwoo asks.
Yoohan just stares at him, a blank look on his face.
If you need to go to a hospital, we can.
Then his probe looks angry. Really angry. Am I hurt? Am I hurt? Yeonwoo - seeing his probe sign out his name sends a shiver down his spine - you are bleeding from multiple places. You need to go to a hospital.
Yeonwoo shakes his head. Help me up. I can patch myself up. He knows his signing his shaky - maybe it’s not entirely readable even, but when he puts his hands down to try and push up, Yoohan helps. They limp their way into Yeonwoo’s house, then the probe helps him with the first aid kit in the bathroom.
While Yeonwoo holds multiple bandages down to stem the bleeding, Yoohan works his way from one injury to the next. He’s got a cut above one eye that he puts a bandage on, there’s not much to do right now for the black eye other than ice it later, then Yoohan wipes away the blood around his nose. It’s not broken, luckily, but it does sting even when Yoohan’s breath fans across it. There’s a busted lip, then a vicious cut across one of his ears.
Also, the bruising on his arms and torso. But Yoohan doesn’t need to see that.
Their hands are too busy to talk, and Yeonwoo likes that. He’s so focused on the red - it’s red, he knows blood is red. He could never have imagined this red, and now he understands. Red is violence. Red is death.
His mother’s face, the last time he saw it, would have been this color, this red. Tears fill his eyes, and he looks down at one of his arms, letting go of an injury to push a sleeve up his arm enough to look at one of the scars on his forearm.
What color is it? Is it pink? Pink is the lesser of red, right? His scars are raised, they’re long. Yeonwoo looks up when he realizes that Yoohan’s frantic motions have stopped.
Oh. It’s because Yoohan is looking down at Yeonwoo’s arm. He grabs it, kind of roughly given the circumstance, then traces the scar with his free hand. His fingers skate across the skin, pushing the sleeve up further as he goes to expose more of the scar.
Yoohan’s mouth moves soundlessly. Yeonwoo knows what he’s trying to ask, all the same.
His hands tremble. My mom was murdered five years ago. Probably. She was alive last I saw her, but the cops said they most likely killed her. Like they tried to kill me.
Yeonwoo folds his hands back into his lap. One of the fingers on his left hand is swollen and purplish - it’s not broken, but he realizes from a sports injury from his youth that he probably burst a blood vessel. It’s growing stiffer by the moment, and he also knows it needs to be taped or it’ll get worse.
Oh well. He’ll get to that later. No use in alarming Yoohan further.
Besides. He likes to see the changing color.
What color are they? he asks, tapping at the scar on his arm.
Yoohan swallows. White.
These are white?
Yes. Kind of. People would say so. It’s not - it’s not white white. There are different whites.
Yeonwoo just kind of nods. He rests his head against the wall. I’m not sure I will be able to keep signing.
You can speak? Right? I saw you - you said something to them.
Never said I couldn’t talk. I choose not to.
Yoohan looks up at him, then down at his hands. He bites his lip. You’re, he stumbles over signing the word, selectively mute. Isn’t that what they call it?
Yeonwoo doesn’t respond to that. He’s sick of hearing about selective mutism; he doesn’t need to hear it from his probe. He expects Yoohan to ask why he won’t speak if he physically can, but the other boy doesn’t say anything else to him at all. Instead, he pries Yeonwoo’s fingers off the wash cloth held to his cheek so he can wash off the blood there before bandaging it.
Yeonwoo closes his eyes, leaning against the wall. The air around him feels cool, Yoohan’s movements fanning over his heated skin. The last of his energy seems to have been zapped from his body, and like a puppet cut from its strings, he collapses.
A hand snaps in front of his face. Yeonwoo jerks upright, realizing he’d maybe been dozing off or about to. Yoohan smiles at him, annoyingly so given the beating they just took, and Yeonwoo scowls at him, wants to tell him it’s rude to snap his fingers in his face.
While the colors are still there when he opens his eyes, they pulse and vibrate as he looks at Yoohan again. He squints - his head hurts, either from the color rush or the injuries, he still isn’t sure.
You’re cute, even with a busted face.
Yeonwoo is grateful his face is already red. He looks over Yoohan’s shoulder at the opposite wall and wishes he could ask the probe to take a step back. He doesn’t. He lets Yoohan glide the tips of his fingers over the shells of his ears, down his jaw, then along one of his collarbones.
I used to wonder what it would be like to be someone’s probe. I used to wonder if it was the closest thing I could have to a soulmate, someone who would just automatically accept me. He pauses, biting his lip. I just never imagined someone so pretty.
Yeonwoo scowls harder, and that makes Yoohan laugh. The sound of it startles him in the quiet of his home; again, Yoohan’s laughter is different from their hearing peers. It sounds less like a rhythm and more like scattered glass. Delicate, but complex in a way.
If you ever speak again, I’d like to feel it. Yoohan gently puts his palm against Yeonwoo’s throat.
It’s hard for him to sign - his hands really do ache, but Yeonwoo replies: I did it for you.
I know.
And maybe one day he’ll do it again for Yoohan; after all, it seems a meager trade for seeing color.
I don’t want to be a mono. My mom died because she was a mono.
Yoohan’s face falls at that. Yeonwoo. He’d already abbreviating his name with a Y, but now he makes a sign for beloved. Yeonwoo starts when he realizes that he’s talking about him, calling him his beloved. There’s nothing wrong with being a mono.
And Yeonwoo just shakes his head, closing his eyes again. What a preposterous thing to say. He doesn’t want to talk with his probe anymore - he wants to forget he has a probe. He wishes Yoohan would leave him there to ache in sorrow on his own.
A hand takes his and squeezes it. Yeonwoo jerks it away to sign: I’ll hurt you. Probes get hurt.
Are you going to hurt me more than those boys out there hurt you?
They stare each other down, Yoohan more in kindness than Yeonwoo. He wants to cross his arms like a petulant child, but his probe is standing between his knees in the way. It’s the closest someone has been next to him in a long time, he realizes.
Yeonwoo signs the word for color, then tucks at Yoohan’s hoodie. It’s - a lot, whatever the color is. He’s too tired and too sore to keep this up for long - his body is about to crash, and even though he wants to, he also panics at the idea of his probe leaving. He wants to keep Yoohan there, wants to keep him safe.
Wants to see more color.
It’s a yellow. I would call this lemon. After he signs, Yoohan rests his hands on top of Yeonwoo’s lap, his face close. Yeonwoo has always preferred conversing in sign language, in part because you know when another person is about to speak - you can see them lift their hands to begin. It’s not jarring, it doesn’t come from seemingly nowhere. There is warning, there is structure.
Yoohan smiles at him. Do you want to see more colors?
He takes him by hand to the window in the living space and points at things outside, signing them slowly for the mono, and Yeonwoo leans heavily into the window, angled towards his probe, and watches, and watches, and watches. His eyes are low, he knows, and there’s no moving from the window. He no longer feels able to keep himself upright, and some of his last truly conscious thoughts are worries about his aunt coming home to this face and Yoohan walking home alone.
There are no longer colors, just the dark, but he can still feel Yoohan signing colors and names of things on the back of his hand, or on top of an old scar. His probe won’t be there when he wakes up later, and his aunt definitely isn’t happy about the fight, or the fact he’s met his probe when she makes that discovery just a mere week later.
She’s shocked, then elated, and all is forgiven (for the moment) when Yeonwoo tells her that either Yoohan stays or he goes. He tells her. Out loud. His voice is softer than he meant, but it feels different to control that sort of thing now. Behind him, Yoohan looks in-between his aunt and the back of his mono.
Yeonwoo, he signs against the skin under his shirt. What did you say to her?
She’s just standing there, open mouthed. She snaps it closed, then shakes her head, but doesn’t say anything more other than (later) asking if the probe will stay for dinner. Yeonwoo takes his probe by hand into his room before carefully removing his mask; the colors rush in, and he first thing he does is pull up his sleeves to look at the bruising on his arm.
Yoohan sadly watches him look over his injuries in color. Yeonwoo, what did you say to her?
Shaking his head, Yeonwoo stands and lifts his shirt. The bruising is worst on his chest and around his one eye. Yoohan makes a noise, something like a hiss, when he sees it. Yeonwoo lets the shirt drops from his fingers and he sits back down. Close, but not close enough.
There has to be room for hands.
Say it again. Whatever it was. Yoohan leans forward, pressing his fingers to Yeonwoo’s neck and watching his lips.
Yeonwoo speaks, but there’s no one there to hear it. He smiles, but Yoohan just licks his lips. It’s a pretty sight and such a shame that Yoohan keeps his face covered most of the time.
The probe doesn’t ask again, and Yeonwoo has no idea how proficient he is at reading lips. They lie together on his bed and half of the time when Yeonwoo just swallows, Yoohan will put his fingers against this throat, ready, just in case.
I wish I could hear your voice. Everyone else gets to. It makes me - angry, because I’m your probe, and I should be able to.
Yeonwoo shakes his head. Don’t like to talk.
I know.
Besides, you’ve seen the most - Yeonwoo settles on a word - vulnerable parts of me.
Yoohan deflates. I wish you hadn’t been hurt because of me.
But Yeonwoo smiles and knows. You bare marks for the people you love.
Mine aren’t permanent.
Not yet.