Work Text:
Seong Gi-hun, 35-year-old male, sustained multiple fractures and blunt trauma to the abdomen as a result of an automobile collision on the highway. GCS is 12 and the patient is showing signs of hypovolemic shock secondary to probable internal abdominal bleeding with a blood pressure of 90/55. No obvious head or spinal injuries present.
*****
The silence of Sang-woo’s night ended with a single phone call.
Maybe his heart wouldn’t have pounded so trepidatiously if the shrill melody of his cell phone had penetrated his ears in the middle of the day. If it had come through on a sunny afternoon while he’d been sitting in front of his work desk, peacefully sipping a cup of hot tea on his lunch break, he may not have even answered it, completely indifferent to the news that it would reveal to him. If he did, maybe the cup would have shattered at his feet. Maybe he’d yell, and maybe he’d get to the hospital in his hometown within the hour.
But this was the middle of the night, and Sang-woo was sitting up rigidly in his bed, his chest visibly trembling as he reached out a shaky arm to pick his phone off of the nightstand, desperate to rid himself of that piercing high-pitched noise.
Who could be calling him from an unknown number in Ssangmun-dong? He briefly thought of his mother, considering the possibility of accidental injury due to the nature of her work handling sharp knives, and his throat began to constrict with fear as the anticipation of receiving bad news overtook his mind. It had been quite a while since he’d seen her last, a year at minimum, and knowing that she’d sustained an injury would’ve been a less than ideal way to bring them back together.
Biting the bullet, he finally answered the call.
“Cho Sang-woo?” A female’s voice cut through the room.
“Speaking,” he answered nervously, his mouth uncomfortably dry.
“This is Dr. Yun from Hanil General Hospital in Ssangmun-dong. I’m calling about Seong Gi-hun. He sustained several fractures in a car accident, and he was taken into emergency surgery to correct internal bleeding in the abdomen…”
Seong Gi-hun? His childhood best friend, Seong Gi-hun? Sang-woo hadn’t heard that name in several years, let alone had seen the man himself, since he was newly 23 years old and fresh out of college. The last memory that he could recall was that Gi-hun had taken a picture of him and his mother after Sang-woo’s college graduation ceremony. The two of them had snapped a few photos together as well, but Sang-woo had lost them in the move to his new apartment in Seoul. As the doctor spoke, he couldn’t help but wonder if they were still lying around someplace in his closet, buried beneath all of the books and other items from his travels that he’d collected over the years.
His confusion overwhelmed him to the point that he could hardly pay attention to her words. Why was he being told this? This was sensitive information that should be relayed to Gi-hun’s mother, not the childhood friend that had abandoned him after it was clear that they would never traverse through life with the same caliber.
The fear that had been choking him when he’d been startled out of his slumber shamefully transformed into a sort of relief in knowing that nothing bad had happened to his mother.
“Cho Sang-woo?” she repeated again, patiently waiting for a response in the midst of his silent brooding.
“Why did you call me about this?” he asked, ignoring everything that the doctor had said about Gi-hun’s health in order to vainly satisfy his own curiosity. He rubbed a hand over one of his eyes as he swung his legs off the side of the bed to stand up and pace the floor. His heart was still beating quickly enough to bother him.
She fell quiet for a moment. “You’re Seong Gi-hun’s emergency contact.”
“I am?” Sang-woo couldn’t hide his surprise, and could not for the life of him figure out a single reason as to why Gi-hun would select him for such a significant role.
“Yes,” Dr. Yun said, undeterred by his deflection. “Like I mentioned already, his surgery went well and he should wake up in a few hours. We’re rehydrating him and giving him blood products. He fortunately did not sustain any major head injuries, and we expect that he’ll be nauseous when he wakes up, so we’re going to need to decompress his stomach by putting in a tube. I’m sure he would really appreciate having someone there for him, if you are available to come to the hospital.”
Sang-woo stopped pacing, and his heart sank in his chest at the idea of Gi-hun waking up in a bright hospital room all alone, covered in bloody bandages and painful stitches, vomiting while someone tried to force a tube down into his stomach. Gi-hun was not Sang-woo’s emergency contact– his mother was, but Sang-woo knew without a doubt that if he was the one in the hospital, Gi-hun would be there for him through every second.
He decided that he could extend the same courtesy.
“I’ll come to see him soon.”
*****
When Sang-woo was escorted to Gi-hun’s hospital room by a nurse a few hours later, he stood awkwardly in the doorway and watched as the medical personnel fussed over him and neatened up his tangled hair, speaking kindly to him as they did so. Gi-hun’s bed was sitting up completely straight, and the man in it was ghostly pale, his lips cracked and purple and eyes squeezed tightly shut. Sang-woo noticed a small bandage on his cheek, a sling on his left arm, an IV in his good arm, and a bright blue cast on his left leg, though he was sure that there were plenty more bandages and bruises that he couldn’t see.
It was painful to see him like this. Was it supposed to be easy to know that the person that he’d grown up admiring had suffered such debilitating injuries, even if it had been eleven years since they’d last seen each other? Sang-woo knew that the Gi-hun he remembered, the one that had kissed his cheeks when he cried and fell asleep on his shoulder when they watched a movie late at night on the couch, could never have deserved anything like this in a million years. His heart ripped into two, right there in the doorway to the hospital room, and Sang-woo suddenly felt horrible for ever feeling relief over the phone.
It would take much more than a kiss or two on the cheek to relieve Gi-hun from this kind of suffering.
A nurse threw a towel over his lap and raised a cup and straw to Gi-hun’s mouth. He quietly wrapped his mouth around the end of the straw.
“Keep swallowing,” she instructed him.
Sang-woo, still a ghost in the entrance to the room, watched as a skinny tube was skillfully inserted into one of Gi-hun’s nostrils. After a moment, Gi-hun gagged and vomit leaked from his mouth, and another nurse wiped his lips and chin. He shuddered, eyes still closed, and the nurse attached a syringe to the tube to suction out the rest. She attached the tube to Gi-hun’s nose using a small bandage, and lowered the bed so that Gi-hun was laying down more comfortably.
He groaned, eyes still closed, and the nurses told him something else before acknowledging Sang-woo in the doorway.
“It looks like someone’s here to see you, Gi-hun,” one of them said.
Gi-hun slowly turned his head towards the door and opened his eyes, painfully swallowing against the tube in his throat, and he cracked a small smile.
“Sang-woo.”
Sang-woo gave the nurses a curt nod as they left the room and he took their place by Gi-hun’s bed, sitting in a chair on the side of the arm that was in the sling.
“What happened, Gi-hun?” Sang-woo sighed, crossing his arms and giving him a pitiful expression, looking closely at the tape on his nose.
Gi-hun closed his eyes, his voice hoarse. “Chauffeuring. I fell asleep.”
Sang-woo didn’t know what to say. His mother had told him that Gi-hun drove as a chauffeur for his primary source of income, but neither of them had ever anticipated that something like this would happen to him due to his reputation as an extraordinarily careful driver. He’d been told that Gi-hun often chauffeured at night anyways, but to fall asleep at the wheel meant that he had to be working himself to the point of exhaustion. Sang-woo wondered if it was because he desperately needed the money. If that was the case, then how was Gi-hun supposed to pay for the rehabilitation and all of the new stitches that marred his body on top of his current rent? They both figured that it was an unfathomable amount of money, far beyond what Gi-hun would ever make in a single lifetime.
Gi-hun would die in debt, but at least he hadn’t died so soon.
“Why am I your emergency contact?” Sang-woo asked, no longer in the mood for niceties. “I haven’t spoken to you in eleven years.”
Gi-hun’s eyes opened, and he smiled weakly at Sang-woo before reaching over with his good arm and taking his hand. “How else was I supposed to get you back from Seoul to see me?”
Sang-woo exhaled deeply, his heart clenching at his old friend’s sentimentality. He repositioned their hands so that they could intertwine their fingers like they’d done a million times before. “You could’ve called me.”
“You wouldn’t have answered.”
Sang-woo honestly didn’t know whether he would have answered a call from Gi-hun or not, and his heart stung at his friend’s recognition of his disloyalty.
“What about your mother?” he wondered out loud, trying to direct the conversation away from himself.
Gi-hun swallowed, wincing at the discomfort in his throat. “She already came. She has to work.”
“How do you feel?” Sang-woo asked, mentally berating himself for the stupidity of his question. He was desperately trying to be empathetic, but Gi-hun had always been much more skilled at providing comfort between the two of them growing up. Sang-woo knew that he didn’t really have to be here anymore– Gi-hun just told him that he wasn’t alone, and that was the main reason that Sang-woo had come in the first place.
“Like a broken doll,” he said. “I’m going to have to walk with a cane like an old man.” Gi-hun cracked another smile– even in the face of tragedy, he found a million reasons to express nothing but happiness. Sang-woo was incredulous of him, but he knew the troubled waters of Gi-hun’s mind better than anyone else.
“When do you go home?”
“Soon, but they’ve gotta take this damn tube out of me first.” He pointed at his nose. “This is the most uncomfortable thing they’ve done to me by far. But at least I’m not going to puke and pull my stitches anymore.”
“You’ve gone through a lot, hyung. I’m sorry.” Sang-woo stroked the back of Gi-hun’s palm with his thumb. He briefly wondered if he should come back to see Gi-hun a second time after today, or if a phone call to check up on him would suffice.
“Oh my God, I forgot about Marbles,” Gi-hun exclaimed, glancing at the clock on the wall, seemingly talking to himself.
“Marbles?”
“My cat,” he told him. “Marbles. She hasn’t been fed yet.”
“You have a cat?” Sang-woo asked, scrunching up his nose. He hated cats.
“She’s a stray, but I took her in and cleaned her up really well. She’s so sweet, Sang-woo. You would really like her.” His eyes widened, and a pleading expression suddenly crossed his face. “Oh, Sang-woo, could you do me a favor? Could you feed her for me? My keys are… somewhere in this room, I think. She just takes a small can of wet food in the mornings. Please? I hate to ask you to do anything else, because I’m sure you have to work, but–”
Wasn’t Gi-hun supposed to have less energy from all of the pain medication that he was taking? Sang-woo was impressed that Gi-hun was still talking like he wasn’t injured at all, like there wasn’t a cocktail of antibiotics and narcotics weighing down his eyelids and slowing the rhythm of his heart.
“I called off today. I can feed your cat.”
“Marbles.”
Sang-woo paused. “I can feed Marbles this one time, but after I come back and drop off your keys, I have to go back to Seoul, Gi-hun.”
“That’s alright,” Gi-hun reassured him. “Just knowing that you came here at all makes me so happy. I’m so grateful, Sang-woo. Really. I hope you know that I would do the same for you.”
I do know that, but you’re not my emergency contact. I don’t even know if I would tell you that I was injured at all.
Sang-woo turned up his lips at him regardless of the uncomfortable pounding of his heart and negative thoughts that swirled in his mind. He stood up and found Gi-hun’s keys on the other side of the room by the sink, taking them in hand before waving at his childhood friend.
Gi-hun waved back at him, the IV in his arm waving with it, and Sang-woo couldn’t help but feel a wave of pity wash over him one more time when Gi-hun shot him a wide smile. He looked so pathetic there, smiling like that with tape on his nose and half of his body immobilized. If Sang-woo were a sentimental man, he would’ve shed a tear.
*****
Marbles was a white cat with brown circular patches, and she scurried away from the front door when Sang-woo stepped inside. Looking around the apartment, he noticed that Gi-hun’s belongings were poorly organized, most likely the result of working too much to find the time to put things back in their proper places.
Organized clutter, Sang-woo was sure that Gi-hun would call it.
How was Gi-hun supposed to navigate with a cane in a cluttered apartment with a pile of clothes in the middle of the floor? Sang-woo imagined Gi-hun falling over in the middle of the living room, or– heaven forbid, in the shower, hitting his head against the tile and bleeding out silently while calling for help that would never arrive.
He shivered at the thought, and walked over to the kitchen, opening the pantry to find plenty of cat food and very little edible food for a human to eat.
Does he even eat? He looked skinnier in the hospital, but Gi-hun had always been thinner like that, he thought, mentally comparing how small Gi-hun had looked with his injuries in the hospital bed compared to when Sang-woo had last seen him eleven years ago.
Sang-woo couldn’t help but imagine Gi-hun sleeping night after night after being discharged from the hospital without a morsel of food in his stomach, especially now that he wouldn’t be able to go to the market or the convenience store due to his temporary disabilities. And who knew how often his mother could come by to see him or cook for him with her endlessly busy work schedule?
Sang-woo’s guilt overtook him entirely. He knew that he couldn’t let Gi-hun come back here alone without a guilty conscience, and he knew that his friend couldn’t afford a home health aide to take care of him. Sang-woo decided that he could do it, just for a little while, until Gi-hun made enough progress in his rehabilitation to no longer be at risk for falling. He considered all of the details in his head very carefully. He could work from his laptop, do the food shopping for the two of them, help Gi-hun walk throughout the apartment, and feed the cat— it wouldn’t be that difficult.
He pulled a can of cat food out of the pantry and opened it. At the smell of canned fish, Marbles soon presented herself in front of him and rubbed against his legs, weaving in between his socked feet. Sang-woo couldn’t help but find the behavior mildly endearing even if he really disliked cats, and he bent down to set the can on the ground next to the bowl of water that Gi-hun must have left out for her.
Sang-woo picked some of the clothes off of the messy floor and found a basket to put them in before making his way back to the hospital. Gi-hun beamed at seeing him back in the hospital room, and Sang-woo sat down in the chair next to him once again.
“When you get out of here, I’m going to stay with you for a little while. Your apartment’s a mess, and I’m worried that you’ll fall,” he confessed. “You also have no food at all in your kitchen, and you’re going to need to eat to get better.”
Instead of the smile he’d been expecting to see on Gi-hun’s face, Sang-woo was met with a frown.
“You don’t have to do that, Sang-woo. I know you don’t really want to. You seeing me like this in the hospital, choking on my own vomit and being unable to move is embarrassing enough.”
“I do want to. Because you would do the same for me.”
Gi-hun gave him a sad expression and took his hand once more. “Do you feel guilty, somehow? Like you owe me something?”
Yes. I owe you everything that you’ve given me over the years. Let me give it all back to you.
“No, I don’t,” he lied. “You’re going to need someone to help you when you get out of this place, and you made me your emergency contact for a reason. Let me be there for you while you heal.”
“You really want to do this?”
Sang-woo nodded, intertwining their fingers.
“Thank you, Sang-woo-ah. Thank you,” Gi-hun sighed, finally giving Sang-woo the smile he’d been expecting this entire time, grinning from ear to ear with his eyes crinkling around the edges. Sang-woo squeezed his hand one more time.
Gi-hun looked somewhat better, even though it had only been an hour since Sang-woo had seen him last. His lips were pinker and less dry now, and the tube had already been removed from his nose, seemingly finished doing its job and leaving him wading in a sea of temporary relief. Maybe Sang-woo would have kissed him then if he hadn’t just vomited, his mind aching to discover the true reason that Gi-hun had selected him to be his emergency contact. What if the reason was not because Gi-hun had no one else, but because he still loved Sang-woo the same way that Sang-woo had loved him all of these years? Was it fair after all of this time for Sang-woo to wonder how Gi-hun felt about him, regardless of his decision to bury both their friendship and his falsely unrequited feelings in the past?
He wondered if he would ever really know.
Sang-woo knew that this was just the beginning. He knew that the rest of Gi-hun’s recovery would not be so linear, but he would try his best to be patient. Gi-hun deserved that from him, and he deserved everything else that Sang-woo could give him because of the unsaid reasons that he kept dear and close to his heart. Gi-hun was endlessly loyal and selfless, always putting others before himself, and Sang-woo was willing to do the same for him, just this once.
*****
For every day until he was discharged, Sang-woo brought Gi-hun takeout in an attempt to bring more of the color back to his cheeks through proper nourishment. He would bring his laptop with him and type up spreadsheets while Gi-hun fed himself with one hand, and every once in a while he’d find himself looking up to watch him eat.
Gi-hun never caught his gaze while he ate, too focused on the task at hand to notice Sang-woo’s eyes on him. On the fifth day, he lay down his fork and unfastened the sling on his arm, wincing as he stretched out the tense limb. Sang-woo noticed this immediately and opened his mouth to object, but Gi-hun wiggled his fingers and playfully blew him a kiss.
“Gi-hun, you shouldn’t take that off. Isn’t your arm broken?”
“No, my shoulder’s just sprained really badly. Besides, the sling is really uncomfortable. I’ll be alright.” He ate a spoonful of rice, then looked at Sang-woo thoughtfully. “My leg is broken in two places though.”
“You should take this more seriously.” Sang-woo frowned, closing his laptop. “You’re going home today, and I’m sure the doctor would feel better about it if she knew that you were following her instructions.”
Gi-hun huffed, and a nurse entered the room with a thick packet of paper. Sang-woo stood up to meet her halfway, and she started discussing Gi-hun’s discharge instructions with him, handing Sang-woo a pill organizer as she did so. Gi-hun decided to tune out their conversation, closing his eyes and imagining himself at home, sitting on his couch in front of his small TV, laughing at his favorite show while Marbles purred on his lap. It was painful to remember that he hadn’t seen her in a few days. She was all he really had besides his mother, and he missed her more than anything.
“Hyung,” Sang-woo called once she had left the room. Gi-hun’s eyes flicked up to his own. “After we get you home, I have to go pick up your medications from the pharmacy. Do you think that you’ll be okay alone for a while?”
“I’m not going to take the medications,” Gi-hun said, seemingly unbothered and looking down at his left hand. “I can’t afford them.”
I’m sure that you can’t afford any of this either, but here you are, Sang-woo wanted to remind him, though he bit his tongue instead.
*****
Getting Gi-hun up the stairs to his apartment was the most difficult part of their day. Thoroughly embarrassed, Gi-hun waved Sang-woo on and told him that he’d make it up eventually, and that using a cane when disabled wasn’t actually as easy as it looked. Sang-woo had frowned at him but stood at his side anyways, and when they finally made it to the apartment, Gi-hun squealed with delight upon seeing his cat waiting inside by the front door.
He unfastened his sling and dropped it to his feet, bending down to scoop Marbles off of the floor regardless of the pain in his shoulder and abdomen. He pressed a kiss to the top of her head before cradling her in his arms, and she meowed quietly in response. Sang-woo watched this happen, silently setting the paperwork, hospital items, and his bag of belongings on the countertop. For a moment, he pressed his lips into a thin line, and when Gi-hun leaned over to place Marbles back onto the ground, he noticed that his friend stumbled forward.
“Careful,” Sang-woo warned, taking a step closer to him.
“I’m fine.” Gi-hun waved a hand and smiled brightly in an attempt to reassure him, though Sang-woo was far from convinced. He moved past Sang-woo further into the kitchen to open the pantry and check its contents, finding it to be well-stocked with an amount of food that he normally would've never been able to afford at a single period in time. His heart sank in his chest. “Sang-woo, you bought all of this?”
“I did. I wanted to make sure that you didn’t accidentally starve yourself to death.”
“This is too much… Don’t get me wrong, I’m grateful, but this makes no sense.” Gi-hun turned to face him and waved his arm to gesture at the food. “You didn’t have to buy all this for me.”
“It’s not for you,” Sang-woo reminded him. “It’s for us, remember?”
“Right.” Gi-hun gave him a sheepish expression, rubbing the back of his neck. “About that, Sang-woo, if you’re having doubts about wanting to be here, you don’t have to stay. I’m sure that I can get around just fine.”
“I already told you that I wanted to, hyung. There’s a reason that I’m still here.”
Gi-hun didn’t know what that reason was, though he wanted to give Sang-woo the benefit of the doubt that his actions were out of generosity rather than guilt towards his condition and their past. At this point, he didn’t know whether or not he regretted listing Sang-woo as his emergency contact, and knowing that Sang-woo was solely there to take care of him made him feel intensely embarrassed. This hadn’t been Gi-hun’s intention, and he didn’t even really know why he’d written Sang-woo’s name down on the paperwork in the first place. Gi-hun was grateful for his presence, but knowing that it took eleven years and a self-inflicted car accident to bring him back made him want to run far away and never speak to him ever again. Sang-woo had never done more than pat him on the back and hand him a tissue while he cried, so why was he doing this? Why now?
“I’m going to shower,” he said, deciding to change the subject. Sang-woo looked through the items on the counter and picked up a waterproof cover for the cast on his leg, silently handing it to him. “Thank you, Sang-woo.” Gi-hun smiled at him gently, though it seemed ingenuine to both parties.
Sang-woo watched as Gi-hun made his way to the bathroom with his cane and closed the door behind him. When he heard the sound of water running, he turned back to the pantry and started pulling out ingredients to cook a simple meal for the two of them to eat for dinner. After beginning to boil a pot of water on the stove, he sorted through the rest of the items that they’d been given at the hospital and casually flipped through Gi-hun’s discharge instructions.
In the bathroom, Gi-hun tossed his cane to the ground and fell back against the wall for support. He reached his right hand up to his sprained shoulder and massaged it, gritting his teeth at the pain, then moved his hands down to the hem of his shirt and tried to pull it off. The movement of pulling his shirt off over his head was too much for his weak arm, and he cursed under his breath.
He didn’t want to bother Sang-woo over something like this, but what else was he supposed to do? Gi-hun attempted one more time, wincing as he strained his arm out from the sleeve of the shirt, and took another break.
Sang-woo hadn’t fought Gi-hun when he said that he didn’t want to take the medication, but Gi-hun was quickly regretting his decision. Once he got the shirt off, he used both hands to undress his lower half. His injured arm was shaking, and he pressed it closely to his chest before looking down at the cast on his leg. He couldn’t take much more of this, and his eyes welled up with tears of frustration at being unable to complete such an ordinarily simple task. Blinking them away, he grabbed a towel that had been sitting on the rack, carefully wrapped it around his waist, and stepped out from the bathroom with his cane.
“Everything okay?” Sang-woo asked, raising an eyebrow at him, first looking at his face then down at the stitches on his bare chest.
“Yeah, I just– can you wrap my cast? I can’t really move my arm that well.” Gi-hun shrugged and tried to maintain his cheerful facade, though Sang-woo noticed the glassiness in his eyes. He set down the knife he’d been using to cut potatoes with and followed Gi-hun into the bathroom.
Gi-hun sat down on the toilet, and Sang-woo kneeled between his legs with the wrap for his cast. As he applied it, Gi-hun looked down at him and made the impulsive decision to start carding his fingers through his hair.
Sang-woo looked up, mildly surprised at the contact, and Gi-hun bashfully smiled at him. Although he was still cynical of Sang-woo’s intentions, he was even more grateful to have someone nearby to help. “Thank you,” he murmured, still gently toying with the strands. Sang-woo put his hands on Gi-hun’s knees as they looked at each other for an intense moment, then the younger man blinked and stood up.
“You’re welcome. Let me know if you need anything else,” Sang-woo responded quickly, looking back at him one more time returning to the kitchen. Gi-hun successfully bathed himself with one hand, thankful for the opportunity to rinse the hospital and car accident grime off of his body. He stood under the showerhead for much longer than necessary, his aching muscles soaking up the water’s warmth, and a while later, Sang-woo knocked on the door and told him that he was finished cooking.
Drying himself was difficult, and so was redressing himself in his bedroom, but he did it alone anyways, not wanting Sang-woo to fuss over him anymore than he already was. He tried to put his sling back on to hold his arm in position, and threw it on the ground once more when he couldn’t clasp it.
Fuck it. He would go without.
When he was in the hospital, Gi-hun hadn’t felt the full extent of his injuries due to the pain medication they’d given him every eight hours. Now, with nothing, his mental state quickly grew depressive as he realized how unbearable the next few weeks of healing would be without it.
While they were eating, Gi-hun kept his injured arm snug against his chest, and Sang-woo looked at him with a soft expression. The older man was quiet, timid– it reminded him of a wounded deer.
“Where’s your sling?”
“The bedroom. I couldn’t get it on.”
Sang-woo retrieved it from the bedroom and leaned down to slide his arm into it. Gi-hun didn’t object.
That night, Gi-hun watched Sang-woo toss a blanket onto the couch and arrange a pillow for himself. He felt guilty for having him sleep on the couch, but he didn’t believe that Sang-woo would have accepted his invitation to share a bed anyways.
Sang-woo helped Gi-hun position himself comfortably in the bed, and he cooed a quiet ‘goodnight’ before shutting off the light and closing the door. Gi-hun wondered if he should have viewed their interactions with more sentimentality. Afterall, this was the first time they’d said goodnight to each other in eleven years. Marbles curled up warmly next to him, and eventually his exhaustion overtook him and he closed his eyes.
Regardless of the blessing, Gi-hun didn’t sleep well that night. A dull but prominent throbbing sensation had begun in his leg within the cast, and the stitches on his chest felt rather sensitive when he lay on his abdomen. He gripped his cast tightly, begging for the pain to leave him, and wished that Sang-woo had convinced him to pay for the medications, even if he could hardly afford this month’s rent as is.
His eyes watered again, shameful tears threatening to fall, and when he decided that he couldn’t bear the pain anymore, he stood up from the bed, trying to balance on his cast without grabbing his cane, and held onto the furniture as he navigated towards the exit to the bedroom and then past Sang-woo to the kitchen. It was completely dark in the apartment, and Gi-hun knew that turning on a light would more than likely wake Sang-woo up, so he took one more blind step into the darkness. His injured leg slipped out from under him and he fell flat onto the tile, reaching out his good arm but still lightly hitting his face on the ground.
After his initial moment of shock, Gi-hun began to sob disheartenedly as he lay on the floor, unable to continue masking his anguish, and rolled over onto his side, clutching at his abdomen and feeling a dampness seep into the leg of his sweatpants. There was no way that he’d be able to stand up, he realized, his heart weighing in his chest as angry tears poured out of his eyes. In an attempt to relieve his pain, he’d made it all ten times worse within a mere instant.
The lights were on within a few seconds, and soon Sang-woo was kneeling in front of him once more, the knees of his own sweatpants wet as they lay in the puddle of water from the cat bowl that had spilled.
“Gi-hun. Hyung,” Sang-woo called, his voice urgent, but Gi-hun couldn’t hear him over the frustration and humiliation that boiled in his mind and clogged his ears. He squeezed his eyes shut, not wanting to see the face of someone who cared, to have to explain his actions and receive a lecture like a young child for exercising his independence. He wished Sang-woo wasn’t here and that he didn’t have to be seen like this. He wished he’d never written his name on those medical documents all those years ago, and he wished that Sang-woo hadn’t offered to stay.
“Leave me alone,” he choked out, his lip trembling as the words left his mouth. The cold floor felt so soothing against his burning skin– he didn’t want to get back up.
“What happened? Where’s your cane?” Sang-woo asked instead, gently squeezing Gi-hun’s arm. He knew at this moment that he’d truly made the right choice to offer to take care of him, and he didn’t care if Gi-hun secretly resented him for it. Sang-woo honestly didn’t know if he would ever be able to stop helping after witnessing this– the guilt building in his chest at the idea of leaving was too much for him to bear.
Your cane. Gi-hun couldn’t think of anything more degrading than that. He didn’t respond.
Sang-woo sighed, looking at Gi-hun’s face with a sympathetic expression, though the older man couldn’t see it. “Come on, I’ll help you up. Take my hand.”
But Gi-hun didn’t move.
Sang-woo lay down next to him instead, pressing his own cheek against the tile with his face mere inches away from Gi-hun’s. He touched their knees together and placed a tender hand on Gi-hun’s cheek, gently wiping the tears.
Gi-hun opened his eyes then at the touch, meeting Sang-woo’s eyes for a moment before he blinked and two new tears fell, one hitting Sang-woo’s thumb. It ripped his heart to shreds when Sang-woo looked at him like that, like he was a broken shell of who he used to be, someone worthy of pity rather than love. The pain in his chest overtook everything else– the throbbing in his leg, the sensitivity of his stitches, and the burn of his arm– it all disappeared when his heart began to ache with every beat.
He squeezed his eyes shut once more. “Go away. Please.”
“I’m not going to leave you,” Sang-woo whispered, his voice beginning to break. It couldn’t have been due to anything besides guilt. “Tell me what happened.”
Gi-hun’s resolve began to fade at Sang-woo’s vulnerability. “I just wanted to be able to sleep.” He sighed, and Sang-woo pulled him comfortably into his arms.
“How bad does it hurt?”
Another sob escaped his mouth. He couldn’t put it into words, and Sang-woo couldn’t possibly have understood.
Gi-hun melted into him, clutching tightly at his arm. There were so many other things he wanted to say, so many things that had nothing to do with his injuries or his fall. He wanted to ask him about why he’d left him behind for eleven years, why it took this long for him to come back, why he was doing all of this for him, but he was too exhausted to say anything else. Sang-woo wanted nothing more than to kiss him, to relieve his pain through gentleness, but held back instead, holding Gi-hun tightly against his body as he continued to cry on the floor.
They lay there for a few more minutes until Gi-hun had been reduced to sniffles, and Sang-woo sat the two of them up on the kitchen floor before helping Gi-hun stand. The bottom halves of their sweatpants had soaked through with water from the spilled cat bowl, and Sang-woo carefully walked him back to the bedroom and helped him get back into bed. Marbles was still sleeping in her original spot on the comforter, and Gi-hun reached out to pet her as he settled back down against the pillow.
“I’ll get you ibuprofen from the kitchen, and tomorrow I’ll go pick up your prescriptions.” Sang-woo told him, brushing his fingers through Gi-hun’s hair the same way that he’d done to him in the bathroom. “And don’t worry, I’ll pay for them.”
He returned a few minutes later with a few capsules of ibuprofen and a cup of water, and Sang-woo watched Gi-hun take them before returning to the kitchen and mopping the water off of the kitchen tile. When he went to check on Gi-hun one more time, the older man was still awake. He sat up and patted the bed next to him, and Sang-woo settled at his side, laying on top of the covers rather than beneath them.
They looked at each other in the dark for a few moments, and then Gi-hun took his hand before laying down.
Sang-woo would never be able to leave.
*****
After the first day, it had been easy for Gi-hun and Sang-woo to fall into a routine.
Sang-woo would sort Gi-hun’s pills into the organizer for him each week, and Gi-hun focused on restrengthening his arm until he was able to rid himself of the sling for good. The two of them planned their meals together, and Sang-woo would purchase the food for them to cook since Gi-hun still lacked confidence in traveling up and down stairs. Sang-woo would work throughout the day on his laptop and then prepare them something to eat while Gi-hun showered, the days cycling over and over again like clockwork.
Gi-hun had become more accepting of Sang-woo’s assistance. When he’d still been wearing the sling, he allowed Sang-woo to take off his shirt and pants multiple times, though he’d never been completely nude in front of him. Sang-woo helped him redress himself sometimes too, always paying special attention not to let his hands linger on a single piece of skin for too long. The shame that Gi-hun associated with letting someone perform such simple actions for him faded away, and he wondered what it was like from Sang-woo’s point of view.
Would Sang-woo have allowed Gi-hun to do the same for him? How did it feel to take care of another person the way Sang-woo was taking care of him now? Was it exhausting? Or rewarding? Or did it simply feel like a domestic routine?
Gi-hun had insisted that Sang-woo share the bed with him every night, although they always turned away from each other while they slept. The comfort of having Sang-woo nearby extended far beyond safety. It warmed the blood in his veins, healing him quicker, and it gave him hope that things would soon return to the way that they’d been before, where he didn’t have to wrap his leg to take a shower or limit the motion of his arm with every activity that he performed throughout the day.
At the same time, neither Gi-hun nor Sang-woo were ready to return to the way that things had been before. It would mean that Sang-woo would return back to Seoul and that Gi-hun would find himself behind the wheel of a car once more, driving passengers across the city when he wasn’t even sure if he could safely drive himself. It would mean another eleven years apart, another eleven years of unspoken words and repressed emotions that kept them circling each other only when they were together within the four walls of Gi-hun’s apartment.
*****
One morning, Gi-hun woke up to see Sang-woo sleepily looking at him, his face illuminated by the light slotting through the blinds. Gi-hun’s lips curled into a tired smile, and Sang-woo reached a hand over to lightly massage his shoulder through his shirt, though it no longer caused him any problems. He closed his eyes at the delicate touch, and after a moment, Sang-woo’s hand was gently brushing hair behind his ear.
The intimacy of it all was ethereal, and Gi-hun couldn’t help but look at him and wonder if he should be reciprocating somehow, by stroking his cheek or pressing a kiss to his forehead. He imagined Sang-woo leaning in to kiss him, though he couldn’t do it himself, and allowed his lips to part slightly at the thought.
Their daze was interrupted by Marbles jumping onto the bed with a meow, and she settled in the space of the bed that lay between their torsos. To Gi-hun’s surprise, Sang-woo began to pet her by lightly scratching her back, something he hadn’t really seen since the younger man had generally avoided coming into contact with her.
She began to purr, and Gi-hun met Sang-woo’s eyes once more, feeling his heart swell in his chest at the sight. Nothing felt more right than this, the two of them and a domesticated cat sharing a bed while the sun drowned out the stars of their hometown, and Gi-hun couldn’t help but feel overwhelmed with thankfulness and the need to repay him somehow.
No amount of money in the world would ever be enough to thank Sang-woo for all of the help that he had given him, and he hardly had the money to pay for next month’s rent as is. Regardless of his limitations, he decided what he could do was show Sang-woo how grateful he was through actions, reinforcing once more that he would have done the same for him, and the way he would do so, he decided, would be by cooking a meal.
It would be a show of independence, a product of Sang-woo’s careful attention and patience, a way to show how much he thrived under his generosity.
“I’ll cook for us this morning,” Gi-hun murmured, reaching out a hand to pet Marbles as well, their hands coming into contact on the cat’s side.
“Are you ready for that?” came Sang-woo’s quiet voice, pulling Gi-hun’s hand off of the cat and intertwining their fingers again.
Gi-hun nodded, though his cheek was still pressed against the pillow, and felt his pulse race at Sang-woo’s thumb stroking the back of his hand.
“Let me know if you need anything,” Sang-woo told him, his voice soft yet gravelly from sleep. “I’m going to sleep a little longer, but don’t hesitate to ask.”
After giving him a gentle smile, Gi-hun stood up and left the bedroom, traveling to the kitchen and starting to pull food out of the pantry. It felt good for him to be able to complete such a familiar task so soon, because even though he rarely had the money to afford enough to eat, he’d always loved to cook.
His balance was still off and he had to lean against the countertop with each movement since he’d left his cane in the bedroom, but he was far from deterred. He warmed up a pan on the stove in preparation to make omelettes, and began to cut up vegetables to put in them. Before he started cooking the eggs, he carefully carried silverware and cups to the table, but lost his equilibrium and fell against it, catching himself on the edge.
The sound of him tripping made a noise loud enough to rouse Sang-woo, and soon he was approaching the kitchen to check on him. Gi-hun, who had already set the items on the table and returned to the stove, looked at him sheepishly.
“Are you alright?” The concern in Sang-woo’s voice nipped at Gi-hun’s heart.
“Walking around is getting easier,” he responded. “I’m sorry for making you get up.”
“Don’t be. Did you want me to help you?”
Gi-hun shook his head, and gestured at the table. “You should start working. I want to do this on my own.”
Sang-woo nodded, retrieved his laptop from the bedroom, and began to work from the kitchen table, though his eyes always traveled back up to Gi-hun. He observed how the motor strength in his arm had fully returned to him, and his chest ached with a bittersweetness that he hated, a mixture of happiness towards Gi-hun’s return to independence and an overwhelming sense of dread that his assistance was no longer needed.
Gi-hun flipped the omelettes, and Sang-woo stood up from the table, closing the distance until he was pressing against the older man’s back, wrapping his arms around his waist as he looked down at the pan in front of them.
“I’m proud of you,” he whispered in Gi-hun’s ear, feeling how his body tensed then relaxed at the contact. He wondered how his touch made him feel, even though he knew that Gi-hun would never tell him.
Gi-hun let his eyes close for a moment, then turned in Sang-woo’s arms to face him, carefully studying his face. “All thanks to you,” he smiled.
Sang-woo wanted to kiss him like he’d dreamed about doing in his teenage years. He’d never been brave enough to do so, and he wondered if Gi-hun felt the same internal struggle during the intimate moments that they shared or if he’d ever resented Sang-woo for not acting first. Growing up, they’d always been closer than the average pair of friends, and the two of them had developed feelings unbeknownst to each other towards the end of high school. Gi-hun had confessed his love on a rooftop one night after they’d each drunk a bottle of soju, but Sang-woo had turned him down even if it was all he’d ever wanted to hear. In a few weeks, he would’ve had to leave for college, and he didn’t want to carry the emotional baggage of their short-lived relationship with him to Seoul. Gi-hun hadn’t mentioned his feelings since, even though he knew how Sang-woo truly felt about him.
Eleven years had brought them here. Eleven years had brought Gi-hun back into his arms, smiling at him with a tender heart and a blue cast on his leg. Eleven years was what it had taken for Sang-woo to realize the mistakes that he’d made. He wondered if Gi-hun would ever bring up that night on the rooftop, and if he’d ever forgive him for leaving him behind.
Gi-hun must’ve seen something in his eyes, something betraying his inner turmoil. “Go sit down, Sang-woo. I’ll bring the food to you.”
The food was plated and brought to the table, and the two of them ate while Marbles slept on the floor by their feet. Sang-woo insisted on cleaning up, but Gi-hun refused to let him, suggesting instead that he continue to work on his laptop. Later on, after taking a shower, Sang-woo sat on the couch and flicked through the channels on the TV, absentmindedly petting Marbles as he did so. Gi-hun had been folding their laundry on the table, and after folding the last pair of pants, he decided to sit down next to him, offering to spend a few thousand won to rent a movie to watch together.
They sat up straight for the majority of the movie, reclining back against the couch cushions, and halfway through, Gi-hun pulled his legs up onto the couch and relaxed his head comfortably on Sang-woo’s lap. The younger man looked down at him with the faintest smile on his lips, although Gi-hun couldn’t see it, and started running his fingers through Gi-hun’s hair, brushing it behind his ear as he fell asleep.
Sang-woo wished that their domestic bliss would last a lifetime, but he knew that all good things eventually came to an end. Gi-hun was increasingly independent, far from requiring the assistance of a caregiver, and he would go back to work soon, depriving Sang-woo of his reason to stay.
He relished these small moments as the bittersweetness of it all exacerbated the aching in his chest.
*****
The day that Sang-woo realized Gi-hun truly didn’t need him to take care of him anymore, the older man had been sitting on the couch watching television with Marbles peacefully sleeping in his lap. He was petting her with his left hand, giving special attention to the areas behind her ears, and Sang-woo was typing on his laptop at the kitchen table for work.
“The month is almost over, Sang-woo.”
Sang-woo looked up from his laptop screen to Gi-hun’s face across the room.
“You’ve been here for nearly a month,” he explained. “I feel like I’m holding you back from things.”
Sang-woo frowned and closed his laptop. “You’re not. I like being here for you.”
“Why?” There it was– one of the questions he’d been aching to ask ever since Sang-woo had mentioned the idea to him. Sang-woo’s pulse quickened, but Gi-hun was still relaxed, his eyes still glued on Marbles, who had begun to purr from his scratches.
“Because I like you,” Sang-woo told him, hoping Gi-hun would not read too much into the double meaning of his words.
“Can I ask you something else, Sang-woo?”
When he didn’t answer, Gi-hun continued, seemingly unreactive. “You originally told me that you’d only come here to take care of me for a little while, but you know that I’ve stopped using my cane for about a week now.”
“I guess I’m in denial,” Sang-woo uttered, feeling increasingly trapped.
“I just don’t really understand why you did this for me in the first place.”
Marbles sat up, stretched, and jumped down from Gi-hun’s lap, walking across the room and weaving in between Sang-woo’s feet.
“And I don’t understand why you put me down as your emergency contact.”
“That was years ago, and I’m not sure why I did it either,” Gi-hun sighed, finally meeting Sang-woo’s eyes and placing his hands on his knees. “I guess it's because I wanted there to be a way to keep you connected to me. I never anticipated that something like this was going to happen, and as much as I’ve liked seeing you again, I honestly didn’t think that you would’ve shown up, let alone offer to do all of this.”
“You didn’t think I would come?” Sang-woo asked, his heart stinging in his chest. Gi-hun was right in his assumptions, he realized– maybe, if he’d been called by the hospital on a different day, he wouldn’t have come at all. It hurt to know that Gi-hun thought he was predictably selfish and heartless enough to ignore a close friend in need. But Gi-hun was more than just a friend to him.
“Was I supposed to think that you would? After you graduated and started working, you completely left me behind. I didn’t need to see you every weekend, you know. A phone call or a drink every once in a while would’ve been nice.”
“I have a lot of regrets, and leaving you behind is one of them. You deserved a lot better than that, Gi-hun. You were always there for me when I needed a shoulder to lean on, and I know that I was never there for you. When I got a call from the hospital, I felt like–”
“You owed me something,” Gi-hun finished. “Like I said before.”
Sang-woo hesitated and stood up from his chair, desperately trying to think of what to say next, but Gi-hun didn’t seem too upset with him in the present moment.
“For the longest time, I thought that maybe you’d offered to stay with me because you genuinely wanted to help me, but now I know for sure that you were just stroking your ego. I never wanted pity, Sang-woo. I wanted you. I wanted you to care. I always did.”
“I do care. Do you think I’d be standing here in front of you if I didn’t?”
“You tell me. Tell me what you got out of this, from staying here with me throughout my recovery.” Gi-hun’s words were cold like ice now, chilling Sang-woo to the core, but his demeanor was composed aside from the few tears that were spilling down his cheeks.
“You,” Sang-woo sighed, willing himself to take a few steps closer to him but holding his place instead.
“Do you really think that you have me?” Gi-hun asked him incredulously, finally standing up from the couch and carefully balancing half of his weight on his casted leg.
“I want to.”
“You don’t. You don’t have me. And that’s completely your fault for letting what we had go when you left.” Another silent tear fell.
“Hyung, I–”
“Do you feel guilty anymore? Did you help me out enough to feel like we were finally even?”
“I don’t ever think I’ll stop feeling guilty,” Sang-woo murmured, hardly able to hear his own voice over the blood pounding in his ears. “I loved you and I let you go when we should’ve been together this whole time. I should’ve kissed you when we were on the roof, and I should’ve answered your calls. I should’ve supported you enough so that you didn’t work yourself to the point of exhaustion and fall asleep while driving. There are so many things that I should’ve done, Gi-hun, and every single one of them has come back to hurt us. I didn’t see it before, but spending this month with you has made me realize how much I regret leaving you behind. Being together now means something. Let it mean something, Gi-hun. Please.”
Gi-hun stepped from around the coffee table and stood in front of Sang-woo, placing a hand on his dry cheek. He seemed to have been crying more than Sang-woo had originally noticed.
“Oh, Sang-woo,” he whispered, tilting his head to the side just slightly. Sang-woo could see the trails on his cheeks, and he wanted to wipe them off, to kiss them just like Gi-hun had done when they were younger. “You’re carrying so much weight on your shoulders. I promise that my car accident had nothing to do with you. If I’m a constant reminder of everything you believe that you did wrong over the past eleven years, then I think that it would be best if we separate one more time. You’ve got a whole life back in Seoul that you need to get back to, and I can do things on my own now. I don’t want you here out of guilt towards what we could’ve had.”
Sang-woo felt his own eyes quickly becoming glassy. “Don’t kick me out now, even if it’s my fault that we can’t be together. I can make it all up to you if you let me stay.”
Gi-hun’s teary gaze searched his face, and as soon as his lips parted to speak once more, Sang-woo’s lips were on his, salty with his own tears.
He knew that he should’ve kissed him years ago when Gi-hun had confessed his feelings for him on that rooftop beneath the stars. He should’ve kissed him when they lay side by side on the tile floor in a puddle of spilt water on their first night together. He should’ve kissed him all those nights that they’d fallen asleep facing each other before turning away in their bed, and he should’ve kissed him all of those times that Gi-hun had leaned against the kitchen countertop, a gentle smile on his face as he watched Sang-woo prepare their meals and sort his pills.
He leaned their foreheads together, placing both of his hands on Gi-hun’s face. “I love you. Please don’t make me leave, don’t make me–”
Gi-hun kissed him then, although he knew how unfair the universe had been to them. Their kisses were short, broken, desperate, and Gi-hun sobbed in the middle of it all before Sang-woo pulled their faces even closer together. Their hearts shattered simultaneously though for different reasons, and Gi-hun’s mind couldn’t ignore Sang-woo’s guilt, the obligation to make up for past mistakes trapping him here like a ghost. He had to let Sang-woo go, to free him like he’d been freed when he had traveled to Seoul to begin his college classes at the age of nineteen.
“Sang-woo,” Gi-hun uttered, his voice broken and cheeks wet as he pulled away. “I don’t want you here anymore. Please. Just go.”
He squeezed his eyes shut and turned his head, feeling Sang-woo looking at him, and suddenly the younger man’s hands left his face, leaving his cheeks in contact with the cold air. Gi-hun quickly moved away from him, walking into the guest bathroom and locking himself in it, sitting on top of the toilet as he listened to Sang-woo silently collect his things. As soon as he heard the door to the apartment close, Gi-hun began to bawl, covering his face with his hands even though he believed that he’d done exactly what he was supposed to do.
When he finally exited the bathroom, he noticed that a stack of bills had been left on the kitchen counter, just enough to pay his rent for the next month. He picked up the money and threw it on the floor out of frustration, watching as the colorful bills scattered across the tile, before looking to see if Sang-woo had left anything else behind. He found a singular post-it stuck to the door of the refrigerator, and he peeled it off, holding it in his hands as he looked down at it.
Remember: you have a doctor’s appointment on the 30th. - SW
His heart weighed in his chest. Another tear fell down his cheek, landing onto the note and staining it darker, smudging the ink by Sang-woo’s initials. He carefully restuck it to the fridge, inhaled deeply, and turned around to inspect the rest of the apartment.
The pantry was still stocked, but otherwise all of his belongings were gone, and Gi-hun didn’t know whether or not he was relieved or disappointed that Sang-woo would never have a reason to return to him. Maybe they’d see each other when another eleven years had passed, long after Gi-hun had fully healed from his injuries. Maybe Sang-woo would be married and have a child this time, and maybe they would’ve finally moved on from what had happened between them in high school, finally accepting that their desires to be together were meant to stay buried in the past.
That night, for the first time in a month, Gi-hun lay in an empty bed.
*****
The 30th happened to be only two weeks away.
It was the appointment at which Gi-hun’s cast was supposed to be removed, and the thought of hearing good news about his leg from his doctor thoroughly excited him. Finally, he would be able to rid himself of the last tangible trace of his car accident, to rid himself of the mobility devices and reminders of his injuries that brought him so much shame. Today, he’d officially reached the end of his recovery, and he owed Sang-woo everything for his assistance even if he doubted that they’d ever willingly speak to each other again.
The morning of his appointment, Gi-hun wondered if Sang-woo’s guilt had been sated. He wondered how Sang-woo had spent the past two weeks, if he’d gotten over the feelings that he’d been struggling with while staying with him, and if he was feeling the same sense of accomplishment as him in knowing that today was the day that Gi-hun stepped back out into the world as a healed man.
This was the first time that Gi-hun had to take the stairs by himself in a month and a half. Sang-woo had always been there to spot him, to support his weak side as they carefully traveled up and down the steps. Now, Gi-hun was alone by his own doing, faced with two flights of stairs and a cast through which he could not feel whether he was actually touching the step below him. Gripping the rail tightly, he eased himself down, taking special care to balance himself before taking another step, until he made it out into the sidewalk and managed to find himself a ride to the hospital.
Once he entered the main entrance to the building and spoke to the receptionist, he was directed to Dr. Yun’s specific department, which was only a short elevator ride and walk away from where he’d been standing. When Gi-hun entered the waiting area, he immediately noticed Sang-woo sitting in a chair across from where he’d walked in from.
Sang-woo was absentmindedly flipping through a men’s magazine that Gi-hun assumed that he’d picked up off of the side table next to him, seemingly not noticing Gi-hun looking at him. His glasses were pushed up his nose and he was wearing his usual business attire, but this time he was in shirtsleeves and his hair was just messy enough to pull away from the formality of his clothes. Gi-hun furrowed his eyebrows, trying to make sense of how he felt about seeing him there, before finally maneuvering himself into a nearby chair.
He couldn’t look away from him, and he internally debated whether or not he should greet him, ask him why he was there, or ignore his presence until he was called for his appointment. His decision was made for him when Sang-woo finally noticed him, lowered his magazine, and gave him a curt, dignified nod.
“You look good.”
Gi-hun’s curiosity got the best of him and took control of his mouth. “Sang-woo, why are you here?” He meant to sound inquisitive, but his words came out exasperatedly, causing him to wince at his poor delivery.
“I was there for you from the beginning. I wanted to see you through to the end,” Sang-woo told him, closing the magazine and placing it back on the table. “Today’s the day, after all.”
Gi-hun turned away from him and looked at his own lap, blinking as he tried to gather his thoughts. His heart pounded at Sang-woo’s sappy words, which thickened his blood and slowed its movement so that it flowed like honey.
It’s his guilt. It’s always been guilt, remember?
He had no intention in taking this as a move by Sang-woo to bring them back together. This, what Sang-woo was doing by showing up here, was nothing more than a moment of closure for him, a moment in which he could finally close the storybook that they’d been writing together for the past month. Sang-woo always hated gray areas, so Gi-hun couldn’t blame him for wanting to see how he had fared in his recovery. He could give him this, but nothing more.
“Thanks for coming,” Gi-hun said, though his words were ingenuine. Sang-woo being here only made things more complicated for him, pulling on his heart strings and filling his mind with the emotions that he’d been trying to suppress for the longest time. The love that he’d accumulated for Sang-woo over the past month was nothing like what he’d felt in high school. This love was deeper, burned slower in his soul, and consumed him in its entirety. It healed his pain and warmed the blood in his veins. He could fall, and he knew that Sang-woo would always catch him. It was the reason why Sang-woo would catch him that wracked his mind.
Normally, Sang-woo would’ve tried to take his hand at such sentiment, but he stayed rigid, instead offering Gi-hun a polite expression, clearly trying not to overstep.
The past two weeks had not been easy for him, filled with sleepless nights, the ache for Gi-hun’s soft touch on his skin, and the regret that he had not made his intentions clearer from the beginning. But not even Sang-woo knew that he would’ve fallen for Gi-hun again so suddenly, so how could he have fixed things? A cat-shaped emptiness had formed in his heart as well, since he had grown to quite like Marbles, the living and breathing symbol of their domestic routine.
Sang-woo didn’t feel guilty anymore, nor did he continue to pity Gi-hun for what had happened to him. Gi-hun didn’t deserve pity or his guilt. He deserved love and empathy, to have been viewed as an entire person rather than a set of injuries. He deserved to be loved in the future without Sang-woo’s regret of not loving him in the past. Loving Gi-hun back then knowing that he would have to leave for Seoul would’ve ripped him to shreds, planting rose seeds in his lungs and bleeding him dry as the thorns sliced him open from the inside.
All they needed was to move forward, and Sang-woo had been unable to let go of his old decisions, to let go of how he had rejected Gi-hun’s love for him on that rooftop and completely cut off all communication when he graduated from college at the ripe age of twenty-three.
Eleven years, it had been. And it would’ve been much longer than that.
Gi-hun hadn’t asked for much. All he wanted to know was why, and Sang-woo couldn’t answer his question without feeling bile rise up in his throat.
But now he finally knew what he had wanted to say.
Because I loved you too. Because I never stopped. Because life is precious, and so are you.
“Of course,” Sang-woo said instead.
The two men sat in silence in the waiting room. Right when Sang-woo checked his watch, a nurse stepped out from behind the desk and called Gi-hun’s name. The two of them stood up, and Gi-hun glanced at Sang-woo as they did so, giving him a silent nod.
Sang-woo mentally noted how much Gi-hun’s walking had improved since the last time they’d seen each other as they traveled together down the hall into the examination room. Gi-hun sat on the table, his legs dangling off of the edge while Sang-woo sat in a chair off to the side.
Dr. Yun eventually entered the room and kindly greeted the two men, though she didn’t immediately recognize Sang-woo, and it showed on her face.
“Cho Sang-woo,” he uttered, far from offended. “His emergency contact.”
A knowing expression spread across her face at the remembrance of their phone call. She gave him a shy smile before taking a seat and turning to examine Gi-hun’s cast. Dr. Yun discussed with the two of them that she wanted to get an x-ray before removing the cast to ensure proper alignment, and she escorted Gi-hun to another room to complete the scan.
Although it was only a few minutes, the waiting made Sang-woo tense. What if Gi-hun needed to keep the cast on for even longer? He wondered if Gi-hun would somehow blame him for the shortcomings of his healing process, criticizing the amount of mobility that Sang-woo allowed him to exercise.
Upon their return, Sang-woo gave him a questioning gaze, and Gi-hun finally broke his resolve and gave him a wide smile, indicating good news.
When Gi-hun’s leg was finally free from the cast, it was far from visually appealing. It was noticeably smaller than his other leg, paler, and the skin was quite dry, all things that the doctor told them was normal. The doctor helped him down from the table, and he teetered slightly on his leg before attempting to bear weight on it and take a few steps.
Sang-woo’s heart swelled at Gi-hun’s joy, and he offered a smile of his own when Gi-hun met his eyes. He wondered if Gi-hun would hug him then, or if he should stand up and offer to do it first, but neither of them moved.
“Thank you, Sang-woo, for all of your help,” Gi-hun finally said to him, genuinely grateful, before turning back around to the doctor and beginning to ask her a few questions.
Sang-woo looked down to notice that Gi-hun only had one shoe, clearly an oversight in preparing for the removal of his cast, and took off one of his own to expose a socked foot. When Gi-hun looked back at him, Sang-woo placed the shoe in his hands and gestured at his bare foot. “For getting home.”
Gi-hun shook his head. “I can’t take one of your shoes and then send you back to Seoul. Follow me back to my apartment and I’ll give it back to you.”
And so they went, Gi-hun wearing mismatched shoes and Sang-woo wearing only one.
When they reentered the apartment, Sang-woo was relieved to see that nothing had really changed since he’d left. He bent down to pet Marbles and the two of them carefully removed their shoes. After a moment, Sang-woo walked into the kitchen and saw his post-it still stuck on the fridge with the smeared ink over his initials. Before he could wonder what had gotten it wet, Gi-hun appeared beside him with the shoe in his hand.
“Here’s your shoe.”
“Thanks,” Sang-woo said. “I’m glad everything went well today.” By the front door, he put his shoes back on and placed his hand on the doorknob. “Take care, Gi-hun,” he added.
“Sang-woo.”
He paused, then turned his head to see Gi-hun’s face. Gi-hun was looking at him nervously, though it was obvious that he was trying to exude false confidence.
“Do you want to stay for dinner?”
If they were going to spend another eleven years apart, they may as well formally end their time together over dinner. He let go of the doorknob and nodded.
Gi-hun took a shower before cooking for them. Sang-woo sat patiently on the couch, soaking in the familiarity of the situation as he scratched lightly behind Marbles’ ears. Once Gi-hun had redressed and begun to cook, their conversation was minimal, awkward. Eating together was even more awkward since they were sitting so closely, and when they were done, Sang-woo hurriedly offered to wash their plates.
“Watch a movie with me,” Gi-hun offered, more of a statement than a question, and Sang-woo sat down next to him on the couch after putting away the dishes.
This was wrong. Gi-hun had been the one to kick him out, so why was he suddenly pulling him back in? Maybe he was testing the depths of Sang-woo’s guilt, seeing how far he would go to make it up to him. Regardless of his cynicism, he would let Gi-hun have his way. He always would.
The movie began to play, but neither of them were paying attention to it. Sang-woo saw Gi-hun glance at him for a quick moment before turning back towards the television, and he decided that he couldn’t suffer in silence any longer.
“I missed you.”
Gi-hun said nothing, though his eyes deflected from the television to another spot in the apartment.
“I missed you too,” he murmured after a moment. “I’ve been lonely without you here.”
“I’m sorry,” Sang-woo found himself saying.
“I should be sorry to you. I should’ve accepted your help without asking so many questions. I didn’t realize that I was hurting you.”
“Don’t say that. The hurt that I caused you was unforgivable. I didn’t deserve your trust, Gi-hun, but I don’t feel guilty anymore. I didn’t come to your doctor’s appointment out of obligation. I came because I care about you.”
“Did you mean what you said when you kissed me?” Gi-hun looked at him then, and suddenly the space between them on the couch felt overwhelmingly warm.
“What?”
“That you love me.”
Sang-woo’s breath hitched, and then he said, “Yes.”
Gi-hun turned his whole body, pulling up one of his knees onto the couch, his heart pounding in his chest as he reached up to remove Sang-woo’s glasses, placing them gently onto the coffee table.
Sang-woo forgot how to breathe when he felt Gi-hun’s hands on him, one brushing hair behind his ear and the other settling at the back of his head.
“You want this?” Sang-woo asked, his voice a breathless whisper. He remembered how Gi-hun had kissed him right before he’d kicked him out two weeks ago. He watched the movement of Gi-hun’s Adam's apple as he swallowed and felt his hand tighten in his hair on the back of his neck.
And finally, after an insufferable silence, he nodded his head barely enough for Sang-woo to notice. He leaned in then, brushing their lips together for just a moment before kissing him chastely, just one time.
Sang-woo waited for him to continue, not wanting to push him. He felt Gi-hun take in a breath and then they were kissing again, the movements so soft and sweet that they each could’ve shed a tear. Gi-hun pulled back and rested his forehead against Sang-woo’s, and Sang-woo finally moved his hands from where they’d been laying on the couch to Gi-hun’s face.
Gi-hun closed his eyes at the touch and went back in once more, his heart a fluttering mess in his chest as they kissed each other. This kiss was nothing like their first. The first time had been tearful and full of guilt, resentment, and obligation, but this kiss was healing for them, silently mending their invisible injuries. It was full of love and patience, something they’d been chasing for a long time, knowing that what they needed the most could only come from the other. Gi-hun felt the familiar warming of the blood in his veins and Sang-woo felt the ache in his chest fade away as the kiss deepened, and all of the pieces that they’d been missing seemed to finally fall back into place.
Gi-hun pulled Sang-woo down with him as he began to lay back against the couch, his head landing on a soft pillow that had been propped up on the armrest. They lay side by side, the base of the couch having just enough width to support them both, and reconnected their lips. After a few moments, their legs intertwined and Sang-woo placed a hand on Gi-hun’s previously injured shoulder, gently running his fingers up and down Gi-hun’s arm in a way that gave him goosebumps. Gi-hun broke the kiss as Sang-woo’s hand reached his own at the third pass, intertwining their fingers.
“I love you,” he whispered, slotting their lips together between phrases. “Stay this time. Please.”
“I could never leave,” Sang-woo responded, and that was all Gi-hun needed to hear.
He pulled Gi-hun into his arms similarly to the way he’d done when they’d been laying on the kitchen tile on their first night, and this time there was no hesitation about kissing him, about healing him through the gentleness that had been building in his heart. Gi-hun hid his head in the crook of Sang-woo’s neck, and the two lay there silently for a while as Sang-woo stroked a hand over his back through his shirt.
Eventually, Gi-hun fell asleep, and the breaths that he exhaled against Sang-woo’s shoulder became slower and more shallow, his worries having left him in his dreams. Sang-woo pressed a kiss to the top of his head as the movie credits rolled across the TV, and he decided to take Gi-hun to his bedroom so that he could sleep more comfortably.
He slowly untangled his limbs from Gi-hun’s on the couch, and Gi-hun let out a small noise at the loss of warmth. It was a precious, quiet sound, not one of pain but of innocence, and it warmed Sang-woo’s heart to see how Gi-hun craved his presence, even in his dreams. Sang-woo then picked him up and carried him bridal style to the room, incredulous of how deep of a sleeper he was. He tucked Gi-hun in beneath the sheets and turned to the dresser to find makeshift pajamas, but before he could step away from the bed, Gi-hun gently grabbed his wrist.
“Don’t go,” he mumbled, his voice half-incoherent from tiredness.
Sang-woo placed his hand on top of Gi-hun’s. “I’ll be right back,” he murmured, and Gi-hun let go of his wrist in a gesture of assent.
A few minutes later, he climbed into bed next to Gi-hun wearing a clean t-shirt and a pair of gray sweatpants. Sang-woo turned his back to Gi-hun when he settled beneath the sheets, knowing that simply having the other person there was enough for each of them, and he finally closed his eyes.
In the morning, when the light slotted through the blinds once more, Sang-woo opened his eyes to find Gi-hun gazing at him with his head propped up on his elbow. The older man gently smiled at him, and Sang-woo found himself smiling in return, though the delirium of waking up from sleep had not yet left him.
“Good morning,” Gi-hun cooed. “Welcome home.”
The space between them on the bed felt warm like the couch had. Sang-woo closed the distance between their faces in a short instant, brushing their lips together and placing a hand on Gi-hun’s waist like he’d wanted to do all of those mornings that they’d woken up in the same bed. All of his hesitation had left him, replaced with the desire to do and say all of the things that he’d been too afraid to in the past.
As the two men kissed, Marbles joined them on the bed and curled up between their torsos like she always used to do. Sang-woo reached his hand up from Gi-hun’s waist to his cheek, and Gi-hun held onto his forearm as he leaned into Sang-woo’s touch.
The two of them decided that it was best to stop wasting time and to talk about their living situation that same day after breakfast. They would have to decide how many days a week Sang-woo would come to spend the night, how they would define their relationship, and how they would acclimate to domestic life together all over again.
Before his accident, Gi-hun would never take walks because he rarely had the time. After the two men had gotten dressed, it had been his idea to walk down the street to the local park to talk things out. On instinct, Sang-woo had begun to wonder if it was too soon for Gi-hun to walk such a distance, since his cast had been removed only one day before. Regardless of Sang-woo’s obstinance, however, Gi-hun had managed to quell his worries with his best smile and a few reassuring words about his ability to get around without pain.
So, the very morning that they’d woken up in the same bed, the two of them walked side by side on the pavement through the city with their fingers gently brushing in between them, sometimes catching on each other but never intertwining.
Once they settled onto the wooden park bench, conversation flowed easily between them. It had been so long since the two of them had spent time together outdoors like this, feeling the autumn breeze muss up their hair and chill their exposed fingertips. Sang-woo rested a hand above Gi-hun’s left knee when he made a promise to protect him from then on, and Gi-hun responded by placing his own hand on top and clasping them together. He smiled then, a beautiful show of white teeth and the gentle lines of middle age, and Sang-woo’s chest swelled with a happiness that he hadn’t felt since he’d received his acceptance letter to Seoul National University in his last year of high school.
They decided that Sang-woo would spend the night on Mondays, Tuesdays, and Wednesdays so that Gi-hun could drive as a chauffeur during the afternoon and night throughout the remainder of the week. Sang-woo had been reluctant to agree with Gi-hun’s decision to drive at night like he’d done before his accident, but Gi-hun reasoned that people tipped better if they were taking late rides and that he would no longer be overworking himself to make end’s meet with Sang-woo’s support.
Their schedule ended up working quite well for them, although Gi-hun couldn’t start working as a chauffeur again until he made amends with the company and followed through with their legal procedures for company car accidents. During their nights together, they would cook dinner, go on walks, and see movies, although the two of them secretly preferred to watch them on Gi-hun’s TV so that they could lay together on the couch with Marbles curled up by their feet.
They both knew that the readjustment period wouldn’t be as simple as they’d originally anticipated it to be, since the dynamic of their relationship was no longer the same. Gi-hun was no longer injured, and Sang-woo was no longer his caregiver. Instead, the two men stood on equal ground, but it was difficult for Sang-woo to gaze at him with anything other than concern every time Gi-hun almost tripped over one of his own feet or slammed his finger in a door. Gi-hun would laugh and tell him to stop worrying so much, but how could he? How could he pretend that Gi-hun hadn’t been on the cusp of bleeding to death on the night of his accident, leaving him with sixteen stitches, a sling, and a bright blue cast on his leg? How could he pretend that such a simple mistake of not getting enough sleep had almost gotten him killed?
Nothing would ever happen to Gi-hun as long as Sang-woo was with him. He’d already promised both himself and Gi-hun that much on the fateful day of their talk.
One Tuesday afternoon, when Sang-woo was removing his suit jacket to get more comfortable in Gi-hun’s apartment after work, Gi-hun greeted him at the front door with a kiss.
“Let’s go to your apartment tonight,” he suggested, his eyes glimmering with the sunlight slotting through the blinds. “There’s a restaurant in Seoul that I’ve been meaning to try for a while now.”
Gi-hun hadn’t been to Sang-woo’s place ever since their arrangement had begun. It had always been more natural for Sang-woo to come to him, since Gi-hun hadn’t really been able to travel very far with his injuries. Now that he was well again, there was no real reason that Gi-hun couldn’t spend a night or two with him in Seoul.
An hour later, they found themselves sitting at a table by the window in a quaint restaurant in Seoul with two bowls of maeun-tang and various side dishes in front of them.
Sang-woo ate a spoonful of rice and watched as Gi-hun used his chopsticks to pick up a piece of fish from his stew. “How did you find this place?” he asked, mirroring the other man’s actions and placing a piece of fish in his mouth. Gi-hun didn’t strike him as the type of person to scout out places to visit in other cities.
“I dropped someone off here once,” Gi-hun told him, setting his chopsticks down. “Before, you know.”
The two of them had tried not to talk about the car accident anymore. There was no need to, although sometimes it was difficult to describe past memories without alluding to it as a period of time in their lives. Whenever someone spoke about it, either one or both of them would wince, and their conversation would dwindle until a new subject was introduced.
Today, however, the three-month anniversary since Gi-hun’s cast had been removed, Sang-woo didn’t wince. Instead, he nodded understandingly and asked about other places that Gi-hun had always wanted to visit.
Slowly, they were moving on from what had happened. The car accident no longer defined Gi-hun and Sang-woo’s history together. Now, it was simply just a piece of it.
Sang-woo’s apartment was exactly how Gi-hun imagined that it would be. Every room was sleek and modern, possessing a monochrome gradient of black and white, but neat and almost too clean to be homely. There were no pictures hanging on the walls, no houseplants or piles of laundry on the floor, and certainly no cats.
The gentle light of the moon illuminated the white of Sang-woo’s bedsheets as it fell through the open curtains. Gi-hun sat down on the side of the bed and lay back onto the mattress as he stretched his arms out over his head.
“No wonder you’re so tense all of the time,” Gi-hun laughed, still lying flat and gazing up at the ceiling. “This mattress is as hard as a rock.”
Sang-woo stood by Gi-hun’s legs and leaned over him, placing his hands on each side of Gi-hun’s head and looking down into his eyes. “Is it really that bad?” He asked, smiling coyly when Gi-hun laughed once more. Sang-woo removed a hand from where it was resting by Gi-hun’s face and placed it on his hip instead.
“No,” Gi-hun grinned, steadily maintaining their eye contact. “It’s not. I just know that you secretly like my bed more.”
“I do. I sleep better at your place.”
“Because of me or because of my mattress?”
“Both.”
When Gi-hun’s lips parted with amusement, Sang-woo leaned down to press a chaste kiss to them, rubbing his hand over Gi-hun’s hip as he did so. After kissing him once, he pulled back slowly so that their faces were still close, and Gi-hun moved his arms from out over his head to place his hands on Sang-woo’s cheeks. He gently stroked them with his thumbs, biting down on his lower lip as if he was carefully considering something.
“Kiss me again,” he whispered after a moment of silence. His words came out teasingly, but his eyes were completely dark, having previously lost their faint shimmer from the outdoor light.
Sang-woo slotted their lips together once more, feeling Gi-hun’s warm mouth melt against his own as he tightened his hold on Gi-hun’s hip. When he introduced his tongue, Gi-hun let out a soft noise, and Sang-woo raised one of his knees up to the bed so that he could lean even lower and kiss him more deeply. Their tongues circled each other’s mouths for a few passes before Sang-woo broke the kiss and started licking at Gi-hun’s neck, paying special attention to his pulse point as he took a bit of the skin between his teeth.
With a muffled sigh, Gi-hun removed his hands from Sang-woo’s cheeks and placed them flush on his chest through his shirt, lightly tugging at the soft fabric. Sang-woo slid his hand up from Gi-hun’s hip to his face, cradling his cheek and admiring the purpling of the mark he’d left above his carotid, before standing up straight to pull his own shirt over his head.
Gi-hun had seen Sang-woo shirtless plenty of times before, but the moonlight slotting through the window painted his half-naked body in a brand-new perspective. His muscles appeared well-defined, yet soft with age in an alternation of rough edges and gentle lines. Gi-hun compared the sight to a painting that beautified mankind for the purpose of artistic aesthetics, one that held the power to make people stop and stare and wonder how such a person could have ever existed.
But Sang-woo was not a painting. There was real flesh on his bones, real blood pulsing through his beating heart, and real desire warming his veins as he looked down at Gi-hun, who still lay expectantly on the mattress, marred by the handiwork of his mouth and aching to be touched by his hands.
He sat up and spread his legs so that Sang-woo could properly stand between them, reaching out to splay his hands on Sang-woo’s bare chest and feeling the warm skin against his palms.
When Sang-woo pulled at the bottom hem of Gi-hun’s shirt to remove it, their brains flooded with the action’s familiarity. Both of them remembered how Sang-woo had helped Gi-hun undress himself throughout his month of recovery so that he could shower or change his clothes when he’d been in too much pain to do it himself.
Throughout all of the past times that Sang-woo had undressed him, Gi-hun's face and chest had never been stained bright pink with enamourment and anticipation like this. His lips had never been kiss-bitten like this, plump and pigmented from the abuse of Sang-woo’s mouth on his own. There had never been a purple hickey blooming amongst the pale skin of his neck like this, and his skin had never burned so intensely against Sang-woo’s cold fingertips.
This time, Sang-woo wasn’t viewing him as a patient in need of assistance. He was viewing him as an equal, someone to be lusted after and desired, someone worthy of the love that flowed through him and worthy of the prying eyes that carefully mapped out every square inch of his sensitive body.
Gi-hun lay back down on the bed, this time scooting backward so that his legs were supported by the mattress, and Sang-woo climbed onto the bed after him, settling in between Gi-hun’s bent knees. He leaned over him once more and kissed him again, and Gi-hun gripped the sheets when Sang-woo started licking a tantalizing trail from his neck, to his collarbone, and then down to his left nipple. Sang-woo kept one hand on Gi-hun’s waist to hold him still while he abused the nub, and reached his other hand down to Gi-hun’s sweatpants, sliding it into the fabric and tracing the outline of Gi-hun’s half-hard cock through his boxers.
At feeling his arousal, Sang-woo pulled his hand out from Gi-hun’s sweatpants, spat in his palm, and properly took Gi-hun in his grip, pumping steadily and pressing his thumb against the frenulum on his upward passes. He moved his mouth to the other nipple, and Gi-hun moaned as Sang-woo stroked him at an agonizingly slow pace, raising a hand and tangling it in his dark hair.
“Sang-woo,” he sighed, and the man in question stopped licking at his chest to gaze up at him. Sang-woo increased the speed of his strokes just slightly, and Gi-hun felt his heart quiver in his chest knowing that he was being watched and that Sang-woo was enjoying this just as much as he was. His hips bucked into Sang-woo’s hand just once, although he wanted to continue, to chase his sweet release from the man that he loved and had been sharing a bed with for months. “Come here,” he begged, and Sang-woo moved to lay down next to him.
They turned onto their sides, and Sang-woo took Gi-hun in hand again while they reconnected their lips. Their kisses were messier and hotter than they’d been before, and Gi-hun fumbled in the near darkness to unbutton Sang-woo’s pants and mirror what was being done to him.
He broke the kiss to spit in his hand and began jacking off Sang-woo at the same pace that he was being stroked to, wrapping his other arm around Sang-woo’s neck to pull their bodies closer.
Gi-hun neared his climax rather soon, with moans and sweet praise falling from his lips whenever they stopped kissing to take in a few shaking breaths, and his strokes on Sang-woo’s cock lost their rhythm and eventually stopped as he reached his orgasm.
Sang-woo bit at his lips when Gi-hun shuddered next to him, releasing all over Sang-woo’s hand in his boxers with a low whimper. With a few more strokes, Sang-woo let go of Gi-hun’s softening cock and wiped his hand on his own pants. Gi-hun, feeling the euphoric aftereffects of his own orgasm, took Sang-woo back into his hand and resumed stroking him as he caught his breath.
“I want you to fuck me,” Gi-hun told him in the darkness, his voice quiet and shy like he was telling a secret, and then he lightly squeezed the base of Sang-woo’s cock to stave off his building orgasm. He placed his free hand on Sang-woo’s cheek, and the other man nodded. Gi-hun could have anything he wanted from him.
Sang-woo stood up from the bed, then undressed his lower half. With a few drops of precum dribbling down the length of it, Sang-woo’s cock stood up hard and straight against his abdomen. Gi-hun only looked at it for a moment before gazing back up at Sang-woo’s lust-drunk expression, admiring his half-lidded eyes and soft parted lips. Sang-woo leaned over him and positioned his fingers in the hem of Gi-hun’s sweatpants and boxers to remove them together as Gi-hun lifted up his hips.
Gi-hun turned his body and moved up on the bed so that he was properly laying against the pillows, and Sang-woo opened the drawer of his nightstand to pull out a bottle of lube. He climbed between Gi-hun’s legs, pressing kisses to his inner thighs as he settled into position and began to work him open with a single lube-slicked finger.
This was not Gi-hun’s first time with a man, nor was it Sang-woo’s, but it was their first time together. Gi-hun felt emotions rising within him like a tidal wave, a growing leak in a large dam that was sure to break open, a mixture of gratefulness and love and willingness to be taken by someone that he hadn’t been allowed to have. He’d confessed his feelings and had his heart broken in high school beneath the same crescent moon that was illuminating Sang-woo’s bedroom tonight.
Who said that his heart couldn’t be healed beneath it too?
Sang-woo worked a second finger into his hole, and it didn’t hurt. Gi-hun promised Sang-woo that he would tell him if it did, though his eyes were quickly becoming glassy at how delicately he was being handled. He’d wanted this for so long, and yet it was more overwhelming than the rehabilitation for his injuries had been.
He was loved. Sang-woo loved him. He always had.
Gi-hun was soft, like he’d been ever since he’d reached his orgasm, but Sang-woo was still trying to pleasure him, to open him up slowly to minimize his pain, scissoring his fingers and curling them in an attempt to graze his prostate. He added a third finger and continued his movements.
After a few minutes, he removed his fingers and placed his clean hand on Gi-hun’s hip, rubbing it soothingly. “Are you ready?”
“I’m ready,” Gi-hun reassured him, his voice beginning to break just subtly enough that Sang-woo couldn’t hear it.
Sang-woo kneeled between his legs, and Gi-hun watched him stroke himself to full hardness with lube in his palm. He swallowed against a lump in his throat.
He pressed in. Gi-hun rested his hands on Sang-woo’s shoulders as their bodies connected, and when he was fully sheathed, Sang-woo linked his arms under Gi-hun’s. Gi-hun wrapped his arms around Sang-woo’s neck and his legs around his waist, and when Sang-woo began to thrust into him, the first tears fell down his cheeks.
Sang-woo’s head was buried in Gi-hun’s neck, kissing the love bite he’d left earlier, and Gi-hun’s heart began to ache. The silent tears continued to fall as Sang-woo fucked him, but he wasn’t in any pain.
Sang-woo’s mouth brushed his ear. “I love you,” he whispered, rolling his hips into Gi-hun with a steady, but careful pace. “I love you, hyung. Love you so much.”
Gi-hun let out a sob then, unable to be hidden compared to the silent tears that he’d been shedding ever since Sang-woo had penetrated him. He felt shameful for expressing himself in such a childish way, but he couldn’t control himself anymore. His heart and mind were so overwhelmed by having everything he’d ever wanted come true all at once, and the expression that Sang-woo gave him made him want to cry even harder.
Sang-woo had stopped his movements immediately and was analyzing his face, using his clean hand to stroke one of his cheeks. “Gi-hun, are you crying?”
Gi-hun wiped one of his eyes, but otherwise didn’t say anything.
“Gi-hun, what’s wrong? Does it hurt? Do you want to stop?” He cupped Gi-hun’s face in his hands, tilting his head and looking at how the tear trails reflected in the moonlight.
“No,” Gi-hun whispered, grabbing Sang-woo’s wrist when he tried to pull out. “Keep going. Please.”
Sang-woo frowned at him, clearly torn, and Gi-hun intertwined their fingers. “Please,” he repeated, his voice broken. Gi-hun took their intertwined hands and extended their arms out over his head. He took Sang-woo’s other hand and did the same.
“Are you sure?” Sang-woo asked, stroking his thumb over the back of one of Gi-hun’s palms.
Gi-hun nodded up at him, and another tear fell.
Sang-woo leaned down to kiss his cheek where the tear had fallen, just like Gi-hun had used to do for him in high school. Hesitantly, he began to move again, though he’d softened quite a bit. When he worked his erection back up, he gazed down at Gi-hun’s face and watched him carefully. Gi-hun’s eyes were closed and his lips were parted, letting out small noises when Sang-woo would thrust into him.
He kissed him, their hands still intertwined on the mattress as Sang-woo brought his thrusts back to their original pace. Their lips moved against each other with fervor, and when Gi-hun pulled back, he brushed their noses together, panting against Sang-woo’s mouth. “I love you,” he murmured. “I love you, Sang-woo, I–”
Sang-woo cut him off by reconnecting their lips. “I love you too,” he uttered between kisses.
When Sang-woo’s movements lost their steady rhythm and he was about to cum, he made to pull out, but Gi-hun stopped him.
“It’s okay,” he promised, and Sang-woo cursed against Gi-hun’s neck as he came, thrusting into him erratically as his orgasm overtook him. After a few moments, Sang-woo pulled himself out and lay back next to Gi-hun on the mattress, keeping one hand intertwined between them.
They kissed one more time, slowly and sweetly, and then rested their foreheads against each other.
“Thank you for loving me,” Gi-hun whispered, his heart so full of pure love that he didn’t know what to do with it all. “Thank you for being there for me all this time, Sang-woo.”
“I’ll always be there for you, hyung. You’ll never have to worry about that again.”
Sang-woo’s cell phone rang in the pocket of his pants that were on the floor. The same shrill ringtone that had cut through the air the night of Gi-hun’s accident filled their ears, and Sang-woo visibly shivered at the memory of how he’d woken up in terror from the sound. He hurriedly separated from Gi-hun to silence his phone, then tossed it on the nightstand before rubbing a hand on the back of his neck and staring at the floor.
“What’s wrong?” Gi-hun asked, sitting up on the bed and reaching out to him.
“Nothing,” Sang-woo told him, blinking and looking back up at his face. “That ringtone just freaks me out. I’ve been meaning to change it.”
He didn’t have to tell Gi-hun what that ringtone really meant to him. He didn’t have to tell him how he’d sat up in his bed out of sheer terror, how he’d hesitated about whether or not to come see him in the hospital, and how he’d questioned his status of being Gi-hun’s emergency contact over the phone. He didn’t have to mention the car accident ever again after tonight. Not after all of this.
Sang-woo found himself smiling at him, at the irony of the situation. Life had brought them full circle, and this time around, he could actually see the parallels to their childhood, to the moment Gi-hun had said “I love you” for the first time, to his college graduation, and to the night of the car accident. Every decision they’d ever made had culminated to land them here, with Gi-hun sitting on the very bed that he’d been laying in when their eleven-year separation had come to an end.
More than anything, he was grateful. He was grateful for his chance at redemption by helping an old friend throughout their recovery and mending their invisible wounds in the process. He was grateful for being able to find a home in the man that he’d loved for years, and he was grateful for Gi-hun’s life above all other things.
It had taken more than eleven years for Sang-woo to realize that what he’d needed this entire time was right in front of him.
He took Gi-hun’s hand and led him to the bathroom so that they could get themselves cleaned up. When they were both bathed and fully redressed in clothes to sleep in, the two of them lay together beneath Sang-woo’s bedsheets for the very first time.
“I love you,” Gi-hun told him, laying an arm over Sang-woo’s chest and resting his head on his shoulder.
Sang-woo smiled, although Gi-hun couldn’t see it, and began running his fingers through his hair. “I love you too,” he murmured.
Gi-hun fell asleep a few minutes later with Sang-woo still stroking his hair. Gazing up at the ceiling, Sang-woo wondered what the past eleven years would’ve been like if they hadn’t separated from each other, and soon enough, his heavy eyelids closed too.
*****
A few months later, Sang-woo asked Gi-hun (and Marbles) to move in with him.
For the most part, the move had been relatively easy, since the two of them had sorted through all of Gi-hun’s belongings before packing them up and transporting them to Seoul. One night after dinner, when Sang-woo had to finish up a spreadsheet for work, Gi-hun opened up another box and started looking for places in the apartment to store his things.
He opened a closet to find a neat stack of books on the top shelf, and when he pulled one down to see what it was, a few pictures fell from between the pages onto the floor. Gi-hun bent down to pick them up, and saw that one of them was a picture of him and Sang-woo at his graduation from Seoul National University eleven years ago.
Gi-hun walked into Sang-woo’s office and handed him the picture triumphantly. “Look what I found,” he grinned, his voice sing-songy. “You look exactly the same, just older.”
When Sang-woo glanced up from his computer to look at the picture, his expression was incredulous. “I’ve been looking for this. Where did you find it?”
“The hall closet, in one of the books.”
Sang-woo smiled fondly as he looked down at the picture of the two of them beaming at the camera with their arms around each other. Gi-hun had been wearing an ironed dress shirt and coordinated pants, which to this day was the fanciest outfit that Sang-woo had ever seen him wear. In the picture, Sang-woo was wearing his black cap and gown since it had been taken immediately after the ceremony.
“I can’t believe that this was actually eleven years ago,” Sang-woo mused. “It didn’t feel that long.”
“No, it didn’t,” Gi-hun agreed, leaning over Sang-woo’s shoulder to look at the picture with him. “I’m just glad that we found our way back to each other.”
Sang-woo lowered the picture onto his desk and turned to stand up from his chair. “Me too,” he said to him, meaning it. “I’m glad you’re here with me.”
His words had two meanings: one was in reference to their present, and one was in reference to their past. The day in the picture had been the last time that they’d seen each other before Gi-hun’s car accident over a decade later. At his sweet words, Gi-hun pulled Sang-woo into his arms for a warm hug, and Sang-woo melted into him, full of emotion about everything that they’d overcome together in the past year, and full of hope for their future.
When Sang-woo glanced back at the desk to see the picture of the two of them from eleven years ago one more time, he held onto Gi-hun just a little bit tighter and promised both of them that he would never let go of him again.