[Fic] i am become death (2/?)
Title: I am Become Death (2/?)
Author: butterflyweb
Rating: nc-17 (overall)
Pairings: gdtop, past!todae, past!gri
Summary: This is-this is insane. This can’t be happening, how could it be? The world didn’t just…it didn’t just fall apart like this. I am Legend, 28 Days Later AU.
A/N: Aish, it's been forever. I'm the slowest writer ever, yes? D: This chapter is a bit slower/shorter, a whole lot of exposition, but it's neccessary, so bear with me! Hopefully the next chappy will be up much, much faster. Till then, enjoy :D (Also, I just did a quick self-beta, so if there's any glaring errors, don't hesitate to point them out :))
|1|
Jiyong’s ‘flat’ turns out to be a boarded-up, Western-style house in the heart of Seoul. There’s no familiarity in the strange architecture, the way it sticks out from the face of the city like an apple among oranges. The walls are a hard red brick, spray painted with obscenities and crude cartoonish drawings of screaming faces, garbage littering the porch, the sidewalk that leads up to it.
For some reason, it’s more disquieting than the empty streets and the abandoned cars, like he’s truly stepping into a world he doesn’t know.
A hand falls on his arm, Jiyong urging him forward and up the walk, a faint stream of sunlight falling on the backs of their necks.
The door closes heavily behind them, blocking out the sun and the fresh air and the landscape of a city he’s lived all his life in. It’s an entirely new sensation of feeling trapped.
Seunghyun tries to let his eyes adjust to the dimness inside as behind him, Jiyong does up what seems like an endless series of locks on the door, clicking into place one by one. It’s then that he starts flipping the switches, a faint electric humming noise filling the silence as the lamps in the room come to life.
The house itself is all but stripped bare. There’s no furniture, no television, no table. Just dusty hardwood floors and a dozen lamps plugged into each and every available socket, the wallpaper peeled and tearing. If Jiyong hadn’t led him straight here, hadn’t let them in with keys…he would’ve said there was no way someone actually lived here.
“Did you live here….before?” His voice sounds strange and echoing in the silence of the room, Jiyong looking at him like he just now remembered he was here. “I mean, before…”
Before whatever happened to turn the city into a ghost town, happened. Before the last two months, when the world started spinning out of control and he stayed still, stuck in a hospital bed. Forgotten.
But Jiyong is already shaking his head, rendering an explanation moot. “No. I found it a few weeks ago. It’s more solid than most of the places around here, even though it took ages to board up all the damn windows.”
He tugs off his beanie, revealing a shock of white blonde hair with the roots growing in dark.
A dozen hundred-watt light bulbs or not, he’s suddenly the brightest thing in the room.
A hand touches at his shoulder before he’s realized Jiyong has moved, dizziness swimming through him, and his knees are starting to go weak.
“Come on. Let’s get you upstairs so I can check you over-you’ve been off your feet for two months. Adrenaline should be giving out any time.”
Seunghyun swallows thickly, suddenly aware that his body is trembling under Jiyong’s touch. Faintly, he wonders how long that’s been going on. “I thought…I thought you didn’t work at the hospital.”
A pause, and then patiently, “I didn’t. I was in nursing school. Before. Come on, you need to sit down and drink something."
He has no room or authority to argue, and so Seunghyun lets the other man guide him up a flight of stairs in the center of the sprawling main level.
The upstairs is a world apart.
It becomes immediately obvious, as Jiyong steers him into a room and into a chair, that this is where the other man lives. There are CDs scattered on the floor, a dresser pushed back into the corner, a small bookshelf teeming with novels, many of which proclaim their library ownership on the spine. Through the door, he can see a bed in another room, the layout wide and open.
Jiyong catches him looking, kneeling on the floor to dig through the rucksack Seunghyun has yet to see him part with.
“I think the owners were trying to make it into a duplex or something, with an apartment up top,” he explains unasked, coming up with a bottle of water that he twists the cap off of, pressing it into Seunghyun’s hand as he takes his other wrist. Fingers rest at his pulse point as Jiyong’s gaze fixes on his watch. “There’s a kitchenette up here, too.”
Seunghyun swallows the lukewarm water slowly despite the way his mouth feels like cotton. Watches as Jiyong nods to himself, sitting up on his knees to look into Seunghyun’s eyes, his brow furrowed in concentration.
“Here, follow my finger with your eyes, okay?”
He does his best to try, even as it makes him a little dizzy, the plastic water bottle cracking in his grip. “You said you’d explain what was going on,” Seunghyun gets out, closing his eyes once Jiyong seems satisfied enough to sit back on his heels. “Why…why everything is like this. What those things are.”
There’s a stretch of silence. “You should probably eat something first, you need to start getting your strength back-“
“No,” Seunghyun snaps, opening his eyes to stare at the other man, running a hand back through his greasy, unkempt hair. “No, I want to know. What the hell happened? Where is everyone?”
The questions are loud and stark to his own ears, dropping into the space that separates them like a challenge. Jiyong looks at a loss for long moments, his slender throat working as he swallows slowly, then shifts to close up the rucksack, not looking at him.
“It’s a virus.”
The sound of the zipper is soft and sharp as Jiyong tugs it through metal teeth, Seunghyun’s fingers closing into a fist.
“The news said…it was an experiment. A mutated strain of another disease. They were developing it in labs, it was supposed to be a cure for cancer.” Jiyong stands, pulling the edges of his sleeves over his hands. “A targeted attack on cancerous cells…they didn’t go into much detail, the development stages were still early, but…there was…there was contamination. Exposure.”
The sound of his own breathing is a soft rush in Seunghyun’s ears. In. Out.
“The government kept it hushed at first, there was some news about…about a generator leak at the labs, a radiation threat. They closed it down, and started taking in the surrounding communities for testing. No one really…suspected. Not at first.”
Dimly, somewhere in the back of his mind, Seunghyun remembers seeing an article about a radiation leak on Naver. He hadn’t clicked on it, had checked the football scores instead.
The floorboards squeak as Jiyong walks across the room, his voice agitated and soft with disuse.
“Then one of them got out.”
Seunghyun swallows hard, eyes on the outline of the other man’s profile. “Them?”
“The...things. Creatures. They…were people who’d been infected, but it wasn’t like…a normal virus, it…changed them. Made them feral, violent…and worse, they carried the disease in their bloodstream. People started dying, becoming infected, faster than anyone could control it. The only advantage we had was the photosensitivity, but…it wasn’t enough.”
He remembers the scratching at the door, the howls, like dying animals, the fingers curling under the edge…Jiyong’s hurry to get inside as the sky became overcast…a sick wave of fear doubles him over, Seunghyun dropping his head into his hands as disbelief threatens to give way under the weight of dread.
“How come…how didn’t I know about…”
Footsteps, and then Jiyong is in front of him, hands tight on his arms.
“Breathe. Breathe, Seunghyun. You were in the accident before the news of the epidemic broke. It was already too late, you were in a coma before they even began the quarantine.” A cool hand cups the back of his neck, Seunghyun closing his eyes as he tries not to be sick.
“If…if there was a quarantine, why…” Why is there no one here? Why is the city empty? Where is his family? Seunghyun looks up at him desperately.
“There were evacuations first,” Jiyong tells him quietly. “People started leaving the city, the country, airports were swamped with people fleeing. A lot of people, I think, thought it was an attack from the North, that we were headed for war or something. But news had already gotten to China and Japan and the Philippines, and they were refusing people entry. So the government stepped in.”
Seunghyun shakes his head, not understanding, not wanting to. “But no, that doesn’t…even if most people got out, there should still…”
“A lot of people died, Seunghyun. A lot.” Jiyong’s voice is soft, gentle, and Seunghyun spares an almost hysterical thought as to how he can be so calm. “And…and a lot of people who got left behind….they aren’t people anymore.”
Fingers clutch his arms tightly, almost bruising in their strength, and then relax.
“You’re the only living person I’ve seen in five weeks.”
The words steal the breath out of his chest, Seunghyun lurching out of the chair, movements rigid and aborted, like a malfunctioning piece of machinery. This is-this is insane. This can’t be happening, how could it be? The world didn’t just…it didn’t just fall apart like this. This was Seoul, this was a city of ten and a half million people, how could they be the only ones left? How could the city’s entire population be decimated inside a few months?
“I need-“ Seunghyun chokes, pulling away from Jiyong’s reaching hands, concern stamped like a brand on the other man’s face. “I need air, I can’t-“
Jiyong does catch his wrist at that, long fingers tight, able to circle bone far too easily.
“Calm down-Seunghyun, you can’t leave. Stop-you can’t--“ Jiyong tries to force him to sit down again, and someone his size shouldn’t be able to manhandle him like this, but Seunghyun’s body is wasted, black already crawling around the edge of his vision. His breathing is short in his own ears. Strained.
“You’re wrong,” he bites out as Jiyong sits him firmly down in the chair, one hand on his wrist, one hand on his cheek. “I don’t know who you are, but you’re lying-you’re lying, this is some kind of…of sick joke, or a drill, or-or-this isn’t a fucking sci-fi novel, this doesn’t-“
“Seunghyun-ssi,” Jiyong cuts in, his voice even and forcibly calm, even as his image swims in front of Seunghyun’s eyes. “Listen to me, you have to calm down, your body’s been under too much stress, you’re going to pass out if you keep this up.”
Grabbing at his hand, Seunghyun tries to pull it away from his wrist to no avail, then reaches up to clutch at the one resting against his cheek. Hyperventilating.
“I can’t-“
“Shh, listen to me. Listen to me, breathe, okay? In and out, come on.”
He closes his eyes tight, trying to obey, to drag air back into his protesting lungs, closing his eyes tight.
“Just like that, Seunghyun-ssi. Breathe. It’s going to be alright, just breathe...”
*
The picture is bent from being folded over inside of his pocket, the left side of it unevenly cut with scissors in an attempt to fit it in a too-small frame. It's a little overexposed, the angle not the best. But none of that keeps it from being one of his favorite pictures of himself and Daesung, taken when the younger man had needled him into spending the day hiking in Namhansanseong. It had been miserably hot, and he's pretty sure he'd complained the whole way, but you wouldn't know any of that from looking at the photo. The two of them smiling bright, Seunghyun's half-hidden against Daesung's cheek, the younger man's eyes all but disappearing as the shot catches him in mid-laugh.
Seunghyun sucks in a too sharp, too shallow breath, folding the picture in half and shoving in back in his pocket. Floorboards creak and he looks away from the door, tugging his knees up to his chest and wrapping his arms around them.
“You should really try and eat something.”
Jiyong’s voice is cautious and quiet behind him. Curling up a little tighter where he sits on a neatly-made bed, Seunghyun doesn’t respond. Instead, he focuses on breathing the way the other man told him to earlier, in and out, staring at the faded plaster on the walls and attempting to stave off the panic attack that keeps threatening to rear its ugly head. In. Out. In.
“Seunghyun-ssi.”
The floor creaks as he steps closer. Out.
“I know…I know it’s a lot, but you have to get your strength back up. You’ve lost a lot of weight and muscle. ” The bed dips beside him as Jiyong’s weight rests on the edge of it. The hesitation in his voice is stark, and for a minute, Seunghyun pictures him sitting by his unconscious body for all that time, talking to him like a friend, the way he had when he’d come in the hospital room.
In and out.
Seunghyun closes his eyes, blocking out the white wall and the image of Jiyong’s anxious features and the whole sick, crazy reality he’s been thrust into.
“How…how long have you been taking care of me? While I was…while I wasn’t awake?
In.
“About a month and a half,” the other man murmurs. “I was…well, looting, for lack of a better term and I saw you in there…you were…I just couldn’t leave you there alone to die like that.”
Seunghyun’s throat works. “….thank you.” Out.
“Don’t mention it.” The forcible levity of the words fades in the ensuing stretch of silence. “It’s almost dusk…maybe you should try to get some sleep.” A beat. “It’s…easier, sometimes, to sleep through it. I’ll keep watch, so don’t worry, just…just rest.”
The bed shifts as the other man moves to stand.
“What are we going to do?” Seunghyun asks, suddenly, tongue tasting like sandpaper. Body aching and tired and weak in a way he’s never felt before.
The quiet stretches for a long moment, too long, and Seunghyun turns his head to look at the blonde. Jiyong doesn’t meet his gaze, isn’t even facing him, rather staring quietly at a boarded up window. Seunghyun’s stomach twists.
“Jiyong-ssi. What do we do? Now?”
That gets the other man looking at him, his eyes troubled and his expression carefully neutral.
“Survive. Just survive.”
Seunghyun swallows again, something wanting to stick in his throat, as if it knows his stomach won’t be able to take it. “Until they come for us, you mean.”
Jiyong’s shoulders tense, even as his gaze falls. “Come for us?”
He latches onto the idea like a life raft, holding himself a little tighter, the grip he has on his wrist sure to bruise the pale flesh. “A rescue party. Other survivors, the ones who got out. I mean, you said people got out, right? And…and we aren’t infected, right? So we just have to wait till the government gets everything under control and safe, until they can come back for us.”
The blonde looks up at him, reaching over to touch Seunghyun’s knee gently, and if his reassuring smile looks forced, doesn’t meet his eyes, Seunghyun doesn’t see it. Won’t.
“Yeah. Until they come back for us.”
Author: butterflyweb
Rating: nc-17 (overall)
Pairings: gdtop, past!todae, past!gri
Summary: This is-this is insane. This can’t be happening, how could it be? The world didn’t just…it didn’t just fall apart like this. I am Legend, 28 Days Later AU.
A/N: Aish, it's been forever. I'm the slowest writer ever, yes? D: This chapter is a bit slower/shorter, a whole lot of exposition, but it's neccessary, so bear with me! Hopefully the next chappy will be up much, much faster. Till then, enjoy :D (Also, I just did a quick self-beta, so if there's any glaring errors, don't hesitate to point them out :))
|1|
Jiyong’s ‘flat’ turns out to be a boarded-up, Western-style house in the heart of Seoul. There’s no familiarity in the strange architecture, the way it sticks out from the face of the city like an apple among oranges. The walls are a hard red brick, spray painted with obscenities and crude cartoonish drawings of screaming faces, garbage littering the porch, the sidewalk that leads up to it.
For some reason, it’s more disquieting than the empty streets and the abandoned cars, like he’s truly stepping into a world he doesn’t know.
A hand falls on his arm, Jiyong urging him forward and up the walk, a faint stream of sunlight falling on the backs of their necks.
The door closes heavily behind them, blocking out the sun and the fresh air and the landscape of a city he’s lived all his life in. It’s an entirely new sensation of feeling trapped.
Seunghyun tries to let his eyes adjust to the dimness inside as behind him, Jiyong does up what seems like an endless series of locks on the door, clicking into place one by one. It’s then that he starts flipping the switches, a faint electric humming noise filling the silence as the lamps in the room come to life.
The house itself is all but stripped bare. There’s no furniture, no television, no table. Just dusty hardwood floors and a dozen lamps plugged into each and every available socket, the wallpaper peeled and tearing. If Jiyong hadn’t led him straight here, hadn’t let them in with keys…he would’ve said there was no way someone actually lived here.
“Did you live here….before?” His voice sounds strange and echoing in the silence of the room, Jiyong looking at him like he just now remembered he was here. “I mean, before…”
Before whatever happened to turn the city into a ghost town, happened. Before the last two months, when the world started spinning out of control and he stayed still, stuck in a hospital bed. Forgotten.
But Jiyong is already shaking his head, rendering an explanation moot. “No. I found it a few weeks ago. It’s more solid than most of the places around here, even though it took ages to board up all the damn windows.”
He tugs off his beanie, revealing a shock of white blonde hair with the roots growing in dark.
A dozen hundred-watt light bulbs or not, he’s suddenly the brightest thing in the room.
A hand touches at his shoulder before he’s realized Jiyong has moved, dizziness swimming through him, and his knees are starting to go weak.
“Come on. Let’s get you upstairs so I can check you over-you’ve been off your feet for two months. Adrenaline should be giving out any time.”
Seunghyun swallows thickly, suddenly aware that his body is trembling under Jiyong’s touch. Faintly, he wonders how long that’s been going on. “I thought…I thought you didn’t work at the hospital.”
A pause, and then patiently, “I didn’t. I was in nursing school. Before. Come on, you need to sit down and drink something."
He has no room or authority to argue, and so Seunghyun lets the other man guide him up a flight of stairs in the center of the sprawling main level.
The upstairs is a world apart.
It becomes immediately obvious, as Jiyong steers him into a room and into a chair, that this is where the other man lives. There are CDs scattered on the floor, a dresser pushed back into the corner, a small bookshelf teeming with novels, many of which proclaim their library ownership on the spine. Through the door, he can see a bed in another room, the layout wide and open.
Jiyong catches him looking, kneeling on the floor to dig through the rucksack Seunghyun has yet to see him part with.
“I think the owners were trying to make it into a duplex or something, with an apartment up top,” he explains unasked, coming up with a bottle of water that he twists the cap off of, pressing it into Seunghyun’s hand as he takes his other wrist. Fingers rest at his pulse point as Jiyong’s gaze fixes on his watch. “There’s a kitchenette up here, too.”
Seunghyun swallows the lukewarm water slowly despite the way his mouth feels like cotton. Watches as Jiyong nods to himself, sitting up on his knees to look into Seunghyun’s eyes, his brow furrowed in concentration.
“Here, follow my finger with your eyes, okay?”
He does his best to try, even as it makes him a little dizzy, the plastic water bottle cracking in his grip. “You said you’d explain what was going on,” Seunghyun gets out, closing his eyes once Jiyong seems satisfied enough to sit back on his heels. “Why…why everything is like this. What those things are.”
There’s a stretch of silence. “You should probably eat something first, you need to start getting your strength back-“
“No,” Seunghyun snaps, opening his eyes to stare at the other man, running a hand back through his greasy, unkempt hair. “No, I want to know. What the hell happened? Where is everyone?”
The questions are loud and stark to his own ears, dropping into the space that separates them like a challenge. Jiyong looks at a loss for long moments, his slender throat working as he swallows slowly, then shifts to close up the rucksack, not looking at him.
“It’s a virus.”
The sound of the zipper is soft and sharp as Jiyong tugs it through metal teeth, Seunghyun’s fingers closing into a fist.
“The news said…it was an experiment. A mutated strain of another disease. They were developing it in labs, it was supposed to be a cure for cancer.” Jiyong stands, pulling the edges of his sleeves over his hands. “A targeted attack on cancerous cells…they didn’t go into much detail, the development stages were still early, but…there was…there was contamination. Exposure.”
The sound of his own breathing is a soft rush in Seunghyun’s ears. In. Out.
“The government kept it hushed at first, there was some news about…about a generator leak at the labs, a radiation threat. They closed it down, and started taking in the surrounding communities for testing. No one really…suspected. Not at first.”
Dimly, somewhere in the back of his mind, Seunghyun remembers seeing an article about a radiation leak on Naver. He hadn’t clicked on it, had checked the football scores instead.
The floorboards squeak as Jiyong walks across the room, his voice agitated and soft with disuse.
“Then one of them got out.”
Seunghyun swallows hard, eyes on the outline of the other man’s profile. “Them?”
“The...things. Creatures. They…were people who’d been infected, but it wasn’t like…a normal virus, it…changed them. Made them feral, violent…and worse, they carried the disease in their bloodstream. People started dying, becoming infected, faster than anyone could control it. The only advantage we had was the photosensitivity, but…it wasn’t enough.”
He remembers the scratching at the door, the howls, like dying animals, the fingers curling under the edge…Jiyong’s hurry to get inside as the sky became overcast…a sick wave of fear doubles him over, Seunghyun dropping his head into his hands as disbelief threatens to give way under the weight of dread.
“How come…how didn’t I know about…”
Footsteps, and then Jiyong is in front of him, hands tight on his arms.
“Breathe. Breathe, Seunghyun. You were in the accident before the news of the epidemic broke. It was already too late, you were in a coma before they even began the quarantine.” A cool hand cups the back of his neck, Seunghyun closing his eyes as he tries not to be sick.
“If…if there was a quarantine, why…” Why is there no one here? Why is the city empty? Where is his family? Seunghyun looks up at him desperately.
“There were evacuations first,” Jiyong tells him quietly. “People started leaving the city, the country, airports were swamped with people fleeing. A lot of people, I think, thought it was an attack from the North, that we were headed for war or something. But news had already gotten to China and Japan and the Philippines, and they were refusing people entry. So the government stepped in.”
Seunghyun shakes his head, not understanding, not wanting to. “But no, that doesn’t…even if most people got out, there should still…”
“A lot of people died, Seunghyun. A lot.” Jiyong’s voice is soft, gentle, and Seunghyun spares an almost hysterical thought as to how he can be so calm. “And…and a lot of people who got left behind….they aren’t people anymore.”
Fingers clutch his arms tightly, almost bruising in their strength, and then relax.
“You’re the only living person I’ve seen in five weeks.”
The words steal the breath out of his chest, Seunghyun lurching out of the chair, movements rigid and aborted, like a malfunctioning piece of machinery. This is-this is insane. This can’t be happening, how could it be? The world didn’t just…it didn’t just fall apart like this. This was Seoul, this was a city of ten and a half million people, how could they be the only ones left? How could the city’s entire population be decimated inside a few months?
“I need-“ Seunghyun chokes, pulling away from Jiyong’s reaching hands, concern stamped like a brand on the other man’s face. “I need air, I can’t-“
Jiyong does catch his wrist at that, long fingers tight, able to circle bone far too easily.
“Calm down-Seunghyun, you can’t leave. Stop-you can’t--“ Jiyong tries to force him to sit down again, and someone his size shouldn’t be able to manhandle him like this, but Seunghyun’s body is wasted, black already crawling around the edge of his vision. His breathing is short in his own ears. Strained.
“You’re wrong,” he bites out as Jiyong sits him firmly down in the chair, one hand on his wrist, one hand on his cheek. “I don’t know who you are, but you’re lying-you’re lying, this is some kind of…of sick joke, or a drill, or-or-this isn’t a fucking sci-fi novel, this doesn’t-“
“Seunghyun-ssi,” Jiyong cuts in, his voice even and forcibly calm, even as his image swims in front of Seunghyun’s eyes. “Listen to me, you have to calm down, your body’s been under too much stress, you’re going to pass out if you keep this up.”
Grabbing at his hand, Seunghyun tries to pull it away from his wrist to no avail, then reaches up to clutch at the one resting against his cheek. Hyperventilating.
“I can’t-“
“Shh, listen to me. Listen to me, breathe, okay? In and out, come on.”
He closes his eyes tight, trying to obey, to drag air back into his protesting lungs, closing his eyes tight.
“Just like that, Seunghyun-ssi. Breathe. It’s going to be alright, just breathe...”
*
The picture is bent from being folded over inside of his pocket, the left side of it unevenly cut with scissors in an attempt to fit it in a too-small frame. It's a little overexposed, the angle not the best. But none of that keeps it from being one of his favorite pictures of himself and Daesung, taken when the younger man had needled him into spending the day hiking in Namhansanseong. It had been miserably hot, and he's pretty sure he'd complained the whole way, but you wouldn't know any of that from looking at the photo. The two of them smiling bright, Seunghyun's half-hidden against Daesung's cheek, the younger man's eyes all but disappearing as the shot catches him in mid-laugh.
Seunghyun sucks in a too sharp, too shallow breath, folding the picture in half and shoving in back in his pocket. Floorboards creak and he looks away from the door, tugging his knees up to his chest and wrapping his arms around them.
“You should really try and eat something.”
Jiyong’s voice is cautious and quiet behind him. Curling up a little tighter where he sits on a neatly-made bed, Seunghyun doesn’t respond. Instead, he focuses on breathing the way the other man told him to earlier, in and out, staring at the faded plaster on the walls and attempting to stave off the panic attack that keeps threatening to rear its ugly head. In. Out. In.
“Seunghyun-ssi.”
The floor creaks as he steps closer. Out.
“I know…I know it’s a lot, but you have to get your strength back up. You’ve lost a lot of weight and muscle. ” The bed dips beside him as Jiyong’s weight rests on the edge of it. The hesitation in his voice is stark, and for a minute, Seunghyun pictures him sitting by his unconscious body for all that time, talking to him like a friend, the way he had when he’d come in the hospital room.
In and out.
Seunghyun closes his eyes, blocking out the white wall and the image of Jiyong’s anxious features and the whole sick, crazy reality he’s been thrust into.
“How…how long have you been taking care of me? While I was…while I wasn’t awake?
In.
“About a month and a half,” the other man murmurs. “I was…well, looting, for lack of a better term and I saw you in there…you were…I just couldn’t leave you there alone to die like that.”
Seunghyun’s throat works. “….thank you.” Out.
“Don’t mention it.” The forcible levity of the words fades in the ensuing stretch of silence. “It’s almost dusk…maybe you should try to get some sleep.” A beat. “It’s…easier, sometimes, to sleep through it. I’ll keep watch, so don’t worry, just…just rest.”
The bed shifts as the other man moves to stand.
“What are we going to do?” Seunghyun asks, suddenly, tongue tasting like sandpaper. Body aching and tired and weak in a way he’s never felt before.
The quiet stretches for a long moment, too long, and Seunghyun turns his head to look at the blonde. Jiyong doesn’t meet his gaze, isn’t even facing him, rather staring quietly at a boarded up window. Seunghyun’s stomach twists.
“Jiyong-ssi. What do we do? Now?”
That gets the other man looking at him, his eyes troubled and his expression carefully neutral.
“Survive. Just survive.”
Seunghyun swallows again, something wanting to stick in his throat, as if it knows his stomach won’t be able to take it. “Until they come for us, you mean.”
Jiyong’s shoulders tense, even as his gaze falls. “Come for us?”
He latches onto the idea like a life raft, holding himself a little tighter, the grip he has on his wrist sure to bruise the pale flesh. “A rescue party. Other survivors, the ones who got out. I mean, you said people got out, right? And…and we aren’t infected, right? So we just have to wait till the government gets everything under control and safe, until they can come back for us.”
The blonde looks up at him, reaching over to touch Seunghyun’s knee gently, and if his reassuring smile looks forced, doesn’t meet his eyes, Seunghyun doesn’t see it. Won’t.
“Yeah. Until they come back for us.”