To Have and to Hold
To Have and to Hold
Rating; R
Pairing; KaiSoo, KaiHun, SeBaek, BaekYeol, XiuYeol
Genre; Romance, Angst, AU
Summary; In a world where love can be a death sentence, who would take the risk?
Warnings; Lots of character death, mentions of disease (both malignant and terminal)
Word count; 5,819
Notes; Written to fill this prompt.
Leaves rustled by Kim Jongin's feet as he made his way along the sidewalk. He paid them no mind, nor did he notice the way his breath curled from his lips in white puffs of condensation in the cold late-October air. He was surrounded by oranges and reds, people bundled in warmer jackets and scarves and hats as each day brought colder weather. None of that passed through Jongin's thoughts, though, as he turned up a long path and passed through automatic doors into a room with no orange or red, no cold and clean and sharp air, and only then did Jongin feel like autumn had arrived. The sights, sounds, and smells there, of bright whites and antiseptic, beeping machines and medicines, were Jongin's autumn. Where others talked about baking with their families, of lighting fires in fireplaces and curling close together, of gathering leaves with friends and tossing them and playing in them, Jongin held only this sterile place in mind. Especially that disinfectant smell.
Jongin didn't even need to consider his words as he asked the woman at the desk to the left of the entrance for the room number of the patient he'd come to visit. He'd been through this place often enough that he could set himself on autopilot and would still find himself wherever he was looking to go. And not thinking about why he was there made being there a lot easier, so he let go of his thoughts completely until he found himself in front of a light brown door nearly identical to the dozens of other light brown doors running up and down this same hallway, different only in its brass room number and the names scrawled in nearly-illegible handwriting on tiny cards slid into plastic slots beneath the room number.
It was there that the reality of the situation began to settle over Jongin. No matter how many times he found himself in this place, no matter how automatic his movements became, it was never easy. Despite the number of people he'd seen come and go here, Jongin had never learned how to not feel for every single one of them. And reading the second name on the list of room occupants, below Kim Joonmyun and above Zhang Yixing, put a stone in the bottom of Jongin's stomach and tightened his windpipe. Oh Sehun. Jongin blinked fast, looking away from the scrawled characters, and swallowed hard, then opened the door and stepped inside.
A young man who couldn't have been much older than Jongin but looked as though his deterioration had aged him significantly was laid out in the first bed. He was asleep, which Jongin found to be a blessing. He didn't even know how he would find words to say to Sehun, let alone his dying roommates. Jongin passed the sleeping man's bed, then paused with his hand on the curtain that separated Sehun's portion of the room from Kim Joonmyun's. Another deep breath helped him steady his nerves, and he tugged the curtain aside.
Sehun was sat up on his bed, a book in his lap and his eyes glued to the page. Jongin fought with himself over what to say to him, but it was Sehun who spoke first. "I honestly didn't think you'd come."
Jongin stepped toward the bed, paused, and stepped further. "I didn't know if you'd want me to."
A silence stretched between them, tense with hundreds of unspoken words and feelings, until Sehun finally responded, his voice low to try to hide the thickness caused by unshed tears, "I'm glad you did." He still wouldn't look up from his book, but Jongin could see that he wasn't reading, and he could see even from the man's profile that he'd lost weight and grown tired.
"Has Byun...?"
Sehun shook his head, letting his eyes fall shut. "As soon as I realized... you know, that this was where I was heading. That was the last time he spoke to me. Told me he was sorry as he grabbed his things and left."
Jongin wanted to tell Sehun that it was Sehun's own fault Byun Baekhyun had reacted that way. He wanted to scream and yell at Sehun for putting himself in that position, for landing himself in that bed, in that sterile place that smelled of disinfectant and medicine and looked shiny and bright despite the darkness of the place and sounded like monitors beeping, beeping, beeping until they stopped repeating their rhythm and let out one long high-pitched note that spoke of the finality of this place and of the fact that you couldn't get anything back once you sent it here. But there was no point, no good to come of it, and Jongin chose instead to sit in the chair beside Sehun's bed and reach out and take his hand gently.
Then Sehun did look up from his book. His eyes were searching and wet with tears. "I'm sorry."
"Don't apologize for loving me, or for loving him." Jongin knew better than to let himself fall in love. But not everyone could stop themselves from loving, and not everyone could hide those feelings deep inside and never speak of them. Sehun had been weak, and the weak were always weeded out. That thought didn't make the reality of it any easier to bare, but it helped Jongin sometimes to remind himself that he wasn't alone in his losses and that at least he was one of the strong ones.
"We were kids," Sehun pressed on weakly. "I was sixteen. Nobody understands that kind of responsibility when they're sixteen."
"You knew better," Jongin argued, but his voice was kind. And he could still remember the way he had been holding Sehun then, both still boys, too young to be exploring each other the way they had that summer, had memorized the way Sehun's head felt resting against his chest, the feel of his smooth back beneath Jongin's hands. Most vividly Jongin could recall the rush of fear he'd felt when Sehun had whispered I'll love you forever to a boy he thought was asleep beneath him. And Jongin had risen, scared, clutching at Sehun's hands, wishing he could undo those words for Sehun. But Sehun had looked sure, had clung to Jongin and sworn it a dozen more times that night, not seeming to care that Jongin never said it back.
Sehun tightened his hold on Jongin's hand. "They told me I have about three weeks left." The sentence came out small and scared.
"Then I'll be here every day for three weeks." Jongin offered Sehun a comforting smile. "If he won't be here, I will."
And he was, for three weeks, and then four more days before that note of finality rang out from the machine beside Sehun's bed, the young man's body shriveled and frail and shaking and finally falling still. Zhang Yixing had been on the other side of Sehun's bed, comforting Sehun alongside Jongin despite looking nearly as weak as Sehun. Two days later Yixing followed after Sehun, and Jongin was there to hold his hand as well, had been the only person to visit him during his stay.
Some hours later in his tiny apartment, Jongin reflected that he was happy to live his life alone rather than ever end up on one of those beds, surrounded by those machines and that smell and his own loneliness. Because he knew nobody in this world cared for him enough to visit.
~~~~~
Do Kyungsoo's body lent a warmth to Jongin that he hadn't felt in a long time. Jongin leaned into that heat almost desperately, his head spinning, and he could only vaguely recall his address to give it to Kyungsoo as he was half-carried by the older man down the sidewalk. How they ever made it there was beyond Jongin, but when they did he didn't want to let Kyungsoo go. Kyungsoo allowed himself to be held, held Jongin in return, and when their lips first met - sloppy, wet, desperate while sprawled across Jongin's tiny bed - Jongin decided he wanted Kyungsoo to spend the night. He could keep love at bay, but that didn't mean he couldn't fuck.
Kyungsoo was not only willing to stay but eager. He was far more sober than Jongin but still drunk enough to make bad decisions like sleeping with his coworker while drunk after having developed a crush on him during the four months they'd worked together. It was too hot and absolutely too messy, and Jongin was snoring almost as soon as they were done. Kyungsoo stayed awake for awhile after, though, wondering if he had any chance of turning this one night stand into something more. Kyungsoo had never been in love, didn't know if he ever wanted to be in love, but knew he wanted more than what he had, more than an empty apartment and his own company. Kyungsoo knew he wanted Jongin for longer than a night, and he would never forgive himself if he didn't try to get it.
Jongin avoided Kyungsoo at work after that night. He could see it in Kyungsoo's face; he wanted to talk to him alone, maybe wanted a repeat performance or, worse, a date. Jongin would never end up in one of those hospital beds. He didn't care if he seemed rude, he refused to let Kyungsoo try to reel him in, even going so far as to turn away mid-conversation and leave if he ever found himself left alone with Kyungsoo. There were worse things in this world than the look of hurt on Kyungsoo's face when Jongin behaved that way.
But Kyungsoo never relented. Even a month later he hadn't given up. And finally Jongin pulled him aside. "This needs to stop, Do Kyungsoo. Do you think I like turning you away all the time?"
"No, I don't think you like turning me down at all. I get why you're doing it but I know you don't like it, because you like me, right?" Kyungsoo pressed on despite Jongin's scoff at those words. "I'm not asking you to love me, Jongin. I'll never ask you for that. But I like you too. I like you and I want you. We can like each other, right? There's no risk in liking someone. That's all I want. To spend more time, you and me, liking each, maybe going out and liking each other at dinner and a movie."
Jongin shook his head, eyes on the floor, but Kyungsoo's hand on his jawline had him lifting his eyes to the other man's face and seeing in it Kyungsoo's sincerity and warmth.
"You like me, don't you, Kim Jongin?"
Jongin had never been good at lying, and something about Kyungsoo made that even more difficult, so while he didn't say yes, his failure to say no was all Kyungsoo really needed to understand the truth.
"Let me take you out."
Again Jongin didn't speak, no matter how much he wanted to turn Kyungsoo away. He hadn't been on a date in over half a year, and then he'd watched his high school boyfriend fall in love with another man and then deteriorate in a hospital bed just a handful of weeks prior. Jongin didn't know how to date, was afraid of love, couldn't stand to put himself or anyone else at that risk. Especially Kyungsoo, with his wide eyes that held a lot of honesty and maturity, his soft hands, his soothing voice. He never wanted Kyungsoo to risk falling in love. But he didn't say no.
"I'll pick you up at seven."
Kyungsoo left the supply closet, and Jongin attempted to hold onto the parts of himself he could already feel Kyungsoo taking with him.
~~~~~
"Answer your phone, fuckboy," was the entirety of the message Jongin left for Baekhyun that afternoon when his call went straight through to Baekhyun's voicemail again. He'd been trying to get ahold of him since the day Sehun had died. It was strange not hearing from Baekhyun for that long, and he'd begun to suspect he'd never hear from him again.
Not that it would be such a great loss, Jongin thought to himself a little bitterly.
And all thoughts of Baekhyun had left his mind by that evening as Jongin found himself actually having a good time with Kyungsoo, the shorter man's hand warm in his own and his nervousness evident whenever he spoke. Though Kyungsoo's words were a little stuttered and his voice was quieter than Jongin was used to, his gaze was as intense as ever, sucking Jongin further under each time their eyes met.
Jongin discovered that Kyungsoo was as neat at home as he was at work, that he dabbled in cooking and liked spaghetti, that he sang to himself whenever he was alone but wasn't brave enough to sing around anyone else. Jongin discovered that he was interested in all of those and dozens of other tiny facts he was finding out about Kyungsoo, such as the way Kyungsoo liked to hold hands and that Kyungsoo enjoyed putting his hand on the small of Jongin's back, and that Jongin held hands the same way and for the first time didn't mind someone touching his back. Jongin discovered that he wanted Kyungsoo to be interested when he confessed that he wasn't very neat and that he couldn't cook but loved to dance and had taken classes his whole life and maybe would have become a professional if things had worked out differently. Kyungsoo looked very interested.
Jongin didn't kiss Kyungsoo at the end of their date. He bade him a cold farewell and went to bed alone. If he'd let himself kiss Kyungsoo he was sure they would have ended up tangled in his sheets again, that they would have woken as happy the next morning as they'd been when they'd gone to bed and he would have missed him when he left, longed to feel his body and lips and the way his bedroom felt with a second occupant.
At the end of their second date a few nights later, Jongin allowed Kyungsoo a chaste kiss that was better than a frigid goodbye but not by much.
On their third date, after Jongin spent the entire two hours telling himself that he was stronger than his feelings, Kyungsoo walked Jongin to his door and kissed him, and kept kissing him even when he tried to pull away, then kissed him in his living room and hallway and bedroom and kissed down his neck, across his back, trailed his hands after his lips and discovered Jongin's body, pulled Jongin down under and let himself follow him down. Jongin woke the next morning with the memory of love touching every inch of his skin but choked on the idea of that word leaving his lips, so his mouth sought Kyungsoo's instead to give it something to do other than possibly betraying him. Still, when he pulled from their kiss he found the word in Kyungsoo's intense eyes and knew he was caught.
~~~~~
Jongin had fantasized about punching Baekhyun in his face if they ever crossed paths again. But when he came face to face with him, after tracking him down nearly two months after Sehun's death, Jongin knew he couldn't hurt Baekhyun anymore than Baekhyun had hurt himself.
It was in a different hospital than the one Sehun had spent the last weeks of his life that Jongin finally found Baekhyun. The smell was the same, though. Jongin thought of autumn despite the chill of mid-January.
"I wondered, before, if you ever loved him." The confession was blunt, like most things Jongin said.
"I wouldn't have taken him from you for anything less." But Baekhyun didn't need to explain himself; his proof was in crisp white sheets and small portions of individually-packaged Jell-Os served with each meal. It was written in the deterioration of his once-impressive looks. Baekhyun's breathing hitched, and Jongin didn't know if it was from memories or his failing body. "I didn't know what he'd promised you. He told me about it the day after I'd promised him the same thing." Baekhyun chuckled bitterly. "Maybe if I'd stayed until the end I wouldn't be here now. Maybe I would've kept my promise and loved him until he died. But I ran. I was so scared."
Jongin knew his last sentence was spoken with detachment because the man was far more scared now than he'd been then. As with Sehun he knew Baekhyun only had himself to blame, but all the same he asked for Baekhyun's prognosis - he only had a week left, if that long, Baekhyun let him know with another hitch in his breath - and stayed with him through it all. They had been friends most of their lives, from early childhood until the previous spring when Baekhyun had seduced, fucked, and stolen Sehun, and Jongin figured that had to count for something. So he stayed. He met Baekhyun's only other visitor, a tall man named Park Chanyeol who whispered something in Baekhyun's ear three hours before Baekhyun died. He didn't cry, as he had for Sehun.
And when Baekhyun's heart monitor went flat, Jongin left the room and called Kyungsoo, telling him, "I'll say this once and then never expect to hear it again. I don't know where we're headed and I won't speak for tomorrow, but today, right now, Do Kyungsoo, I love you."
Jongin's heart ached as he heard Kyungsoo softly return, "Today, I love you, too."
~~~~~
Jongin had been eight years old when he'd seen his father die of a broken heart. Wasting away in the hospital had only been the end of his father's illness. The months prior to his stay there had been difficult, his father growing weaker, crying too much. He'd been bedridden for four days before Jongin's uncle finally brought him to the hospital.
When Jongin was six, his mother had left. His father, he'd found out later, had proposed marriage. When he'd been rejected, he'd said the one thing that drove her away, the same confession Jongin had gotten from Sehun, a promise that he would love her forever. His father had been soft, his mother cold, a coward. It took two years for his father to fall out of love with the woman who had abandoned them. And once his vow was broken, his heart began to fail.
A broken vow of love or fidelity was a death sentence. It shut the body down. A person who claimed they would hold someone in their heart for any length of time and then failed to do so would be lucky to last four months after their failure. And it was never an easy end. It was ugly and painful, drawn out, and always started with the heart. First pain, sharp but brief, then skipped beats. From there each part of the body aged and shut down until walking was impossible and eating was a struggle. The final days were always the hardest, with the sufferer unable to breathe on his own, in constant pain, so frail that a light touch could feel like knives, and then their heart would simply cease function.
There was no cure.
The leaves had begun to change to yellows and oranges and reds when Jongin's father was admitted to the hospital. Jongin practically lived in his father's hospital room, only leaving when his uncle and the nurses carried him out at the end of visiting hours each night and running back each morning as soon as he woke up. On a rare occasion, the nurses took pity on him and let him and his uncle spend the night. Every day Jongin prayed that his father would be blessed with a miraculous, unprecedented recovery. He held onto that hope until the moment his father died.
After that, Jongin didn't hold hope for much of anything. Every autumn brought him back to those days and occasional nights spent by his father's side, a strong reminder of the promise he'd made to himself that he would never fall in love. He kept that promise even throughout his six-year relationship with Sehun.
It had taken Kyungsoo only a handful of months to undo his promise.
~~~~~
A married couple lived in the apartment across the hall from Jongin. They were older, perhaps in their seventies, possibly eighties, and had gotten married early in life. Jongin admired their love and devotion, and often asked them over or visited their apartment to talk about their life and relationship. It wasn't something they were unused to; marriage was a rare thing, growing rarer all the time to the point of near-extinction. But somehow they had remained in love and devoted to one another through all those years.
Jongin shared something he'd learned from them with Kyungsoo one night the following summer as they lounged on their bed enjoying the cool of the air conditioner. "They didn't use typical wedding vows." His fingers were laced loosely with Kyungsoo's on the bed, thumb running circles against his lover's hand. "She said their vows were, 'I promise to love you today, to be faithful to you for all of our tomorrows, and to stay by your side until death.'"
"That's clever," Kyungsoo decided, turning onto his side to face Jongin.
"They didn't need to amend it, though," Jongin continued. "They've never fallen out of love."
Brushing hair away from Jongin's forehead, Kyungsoo asked, "But did they know that then? They could have woken the next morning having fallen out of love. They still could."
It was true, but Jongin didn't say so, because for the first time he wanted to learn to have faith that love could truly last a lifetime, and that maybe that lifetime would be spent with Kyungsoo.
~~~~~
Chanyeol had met Baekhyun at their university. It had been love at first sight, according to Chanyeol, on his end anyway. Baekhyun had made Chanyeol want to put aside his childishness and settle into something more adult, more lasting. Baekhyun had known how Chanyeol felt, had made it clear he would never feel the same. But that never stopped Chanyeol from loving Baekhyun every day he'd known him. Baekhyun had allowed a close friendship. He had warned Chanyeol not to get his hopes up. He'd forbidden Chanyeol from ever saying his feelings aloud and absolved himself of all responsibility should Chanyeol ever decide to do so anyway.
"The first time I ever actually said the words to him was that day," Chanyeol told Jongin. Jongin didn't need to ask which day. "What I whispered to him... I told him, 'I've loved you since I met you, and I'll love you for your whole life.' And that was true. And I love him now, too."
Chanyeol and Jongin had become something akin to friends following Baekhyun's death. They'd shared their memories of him over drinks on more nights than Jongin could count. Jongin had wished for someone from Sehun's past to reminisce with him the same way, but Sehun had never had many people close to him, so Jongin settled for remembering Baekhyun with Chanyeol.
"He loved the man who loved me," Jongin had shared one night, deciding it sounded better than "he killed my ex."
"I wonder how anyone can love in this world," Chanyeol had responded, "but then I fall in love anyway. With the man who fell in love with the man who loved you."
~~~~~
Kim Minseok was small and tidy like Kyungsoo. He was a man of few words and unexpected strength. He kept himself on a strict diet and worked out almost every day to keep his body in perfect condition. He was grounded and serious. In short, he was Chanyeol's polar opposite.
Chanyeol had taken Jongin to a bar after they'd paid their respects to Baekhyun on the third anniversary of his death, and there they'd met Minseok. The man had been speaking Mandarin to his friend at the time - Huang Zitao, Jongin learned later that evening - and Chanyeol and tried to greet him using his limited knowledge of the language, only to find himself embarrassed but relieved when Minseok assured him he was actually Korean. Zitao, on the other hand, still struggled with his Korean and needed Minseok to translate for him a lot. They were both quiet but friendly, and Jongin could see how quickly Chanyeol was taking to the sharp-eyed man.
Chanyeol insisted on a double date with Jongin and Kyungsoo the first time he took Minseok out. Not that it had been necessary, as it turned out; Minseok was as taken with Chanyeol as Chanyeol had been when they'd met, and Jongin took Chanyeol's unsubtle hints and excused himself and Kyungsoo before their outing was even half finished.
Despite their differences, Chanyeol and Minseok seemed happy together. Chanyeol excitedly told Jongin, some months later, that they'd both confessed their love. Jongin had been jealous of that excitement, because even after nearly four years together, telling Kyungsoo he loved him still scared Jongin every time.
When Chanyeol told Jongin the following year that he was planning to propose to Minseok, Jongin wished him luck. Then he stopped spending time with the couple. He knew what their future would be, and he didn't want to be around to witness it.
~~~~~
Kyungsoo was very health-conscious. He insisted on feeding Jongin healthy foods and dragged him off the couch and out for walks sometimes. He never smoked and rarely drank.
He had cancer. He'd been complaining of a sore throat and difficulty breathing in the weeks following their seven-year anniversary, and had finally set an appointment to see his doctor. He'd been nervous after his appointment, telling Jongin it was probably nothing, that he was going to a specialist for further testing just in case. Jongin put on a calm act while panicking internally.
He brought Kyungsoo to his appointment with a specialist. He held himself together for Kyungsoo's sake. And as they sat together to hear Kyungsoo's results, Jongin let Kyungsoo cling to his hand as hard as he needed to, offering strength he didn't really have.
Tracheal cancer, they were told. In that moment Jongin felt his blood run cold and the bottom drop out of his stomach. Cancer wasn't something that could happen to his health-conscious boyfriend, the man he loved more than anything else in the world. Cancer happened to other people. His stomach turned and his heart wrenched. He wondered if Kyungsoo or the doctor could hear how short and shallow his breathing had become.
Through the buzzing of his own thoughts, Jongin continued listening to the doctor, and felt the grip around his heart finally ease at the word "malignant" - Kyungsoo would be fine.
The doctor went on to explain more about what Kyungsoo was likely to go through next - tracheal surgery, radiation therapy - and Jongin struggled to retain the particulars, though all he could really focus on was the fact that Kyungsoo wasn't going to die.
That night in bed with Kyungsoo, Jongin realized why some people, like his father, vowed to love someone forever, because he realized he loved Kyungsoo more than life itself. His love for Kyungsoo was nothing like what he heard in songs on the radio because nothing he heard there even came close to the feeling he'd had in the moments he'd feared for the life of his lover. He could live a hundred lifetimes and he doubted in any single one of them he would find a love like this. He didn't say it, would never dare, but he knew in that moment that he would never stop loving Kyungsoo.
The following morning he called Chanyeol and asked if he and his fiancee would like to come over.
~~~~~
The other driver, Kim Jongdae, hadn't made it, Jongin was told not so very long after waking up in a hospital bed surrounded by those machines and that smell, the smell of autumn and of his father and Sehun and Baekhyun and Jhang Yixing and that sleeping man Kim Joonmyun and some old woman and countless others. Jongin had a broken ankle. He wouldn't be able to dance for awhile and possibly never again. He was alive. Kyungsoo was very alive, gripping to Jongin as though letting go would mean losing him. Kim Jongdae was dead. It had been nobody's fault, according to the doctor, as though that helped Jongin feel any less guilty. Maybe Kim Jongdae had his own Kyungsoo at home who was now mourning the loss of the love of their life. (He didn't. Jongdae found himself content to live alone but his parents, a married couple still very much in love, had lost their only child. Jongin discovered this when he met the couple at Jongdae's burial. He and Kyungsoo visited them sometimes after that day. Years later, Jongdae's mother would confess to Jongin that having them around hurt at first but by then it felt to her as though God had taken one son from her and then given her two.)
When Kyungsoo finally released his hold on Jongin, he stayed close, climbed into Jongin's tiny bed to sit with him. He kept his intense eyes on Jongin, and Jongin could read in them all the things he'd been thinking the previous year before Kyungsoo's surgery.
"Jongin," Kyungsoo breathed a start, and Jongin squeezed his hand to stop him.
"I know," he answered, and Kyungsoo understood.
"I love you," Kyungsoo said instead, and it wasn't enough, wasn't close to enough, but it would have to do.
"I love you too." Jongin understood then why people, like his mother, like Baekhyun, ran. He knew a different kind of fear then, fear for the loss of a life he held more dearly than his own, of the possibility of having to watch Kyungsoo turn to bones in front of him. Knowing that when that time came, it would be because this man he could never stop loving had stopped loving him.
He knew what a selfish thing it would be to put Kyungsoo through that if he ever confessed.
Neither spoke the words in their hearts, but they both knew them by then, and for Jongin, that was all he needed just then.
~~~~~
On their 25th anniversary, Kyungsoo proposed. Jongin supposed he should have been terrified of the possibility. What he felt was warmth and excitement, though, and a contentment deep in his bones, a rightness. He answered without hesitation, a firm 'yes' that had Kyungsoo grinning the way that always made Jongin weak. When they kissed it somehow felt new again, and Kyungsoo's whispered "I love you" had Jongin standing in that hospital hallway outside Baekhyun's room as he'd been the first time, and this time he felt the words the way he should have then, with his whole body tingling and his heart warm and pounding.
The reception was small, just their closest family and friends in attendance. Chanyeol sat in the front row with his husband, and Minseok looked politely embarrassed as Chanyeol cried the entire time.
They had decided to use the vows the old married couple that had once lived across the hall had used. (They weren't there; they had lived in that apartment together and loved each other every day until the man succumbed to his old age ten years after that first summer Jongin spent with Kyungsoo, and his wife had followed a few weeks later.)
But as they stood on the altar, hearts racing, hands shaking, the possibility of the rest of their lives stretching out before them, Kyungsoo looked down at the slightly crumpled paper in his hand with the words of their agreed vows scrawled across it, and then he folded it and tucked it away in his pocket. Jongin began to panic.
"I have loved you every day for over twenty-five years," Kyungsoo professed, and Jongin wanted him to go back to the script, wanted desperately for things to go the way they had planned. "I have been faithful. I have cared for you and been cared for by you. I've seen you at your best and worst. I've survived cancer with you at my side. I have never wanted to be beside anyone else. I will never be with anyone else but you, Kim Jongin." Don't let him say it, Jongin cast out a silent prayer, tears in his eyes and his entire body trembling. "Today, I love you. Tomorrow when we wake up, I'll see your face beside mine and I will love you then, too. And every day, until death should do us part, Kim Jongin, I, Do Kyungsoo, will always love you."
The silence that followed those words was interrupted only by a quick, sharp sob from Chanyeol, and everyone in attendance knew Kyungsoo had gone off script.
Jongin considered running from the altar. He remembered his father. He pictured Kyungsoo succumbing to the same fate. He understood his mother so clearly in that moment. But he still regarded her as a coward, and with that and so many other thoughts in his mind, Jongin took Kyungsoo's hands in his own, held his gaze, and smiled shakily as two tears left his eyes to trek down his cheeks. "You've been pushing my boundaries since the first time you took me out." He chuckled, and Kyungsoo joined him. "You know how I feel. You knew it before I knew it. You've always gotten me." One hand released its hold on Kyungsoo's so he could cup Kyungsoo's cheek. "You'll always get me, and you'll always have me. Until death do us part, Do Kyungsoo, I, Kim Jongin, will always love you."
And he did, every day, until they were both grey and Kyungsoo had spent too many years battling a cancer that always came back. Jongin had said the words for both of them when Kyungsoo could no longer speak past tumors in his windpipe, soft murmurs of "I'll never leave" and "I'll always love you" beneath fluorescent lights while the smell of disinfectant didn't hurt Jongin as much as it had in years past, and it was only fitting that the leaves had just begun to turn when Kyungsoo took his final breath in that room, his lips moving in a pattern that Jongin had spent years learning, so that even without a voice he could hear the sincerity in his wedding vows that withstood the test of time.
Jongin lived for five more years and even then loved Kyungsoo every day of his life. When his old heart started giving out, Jongin felt ready to rejoin his husband somewhere beyond this place where love could be a death sentence, and the antiseptic smell of his hospital room was a comfort in his final moments.
Rating; R
Pairing; KaiSoo, KaiHun, SeBaek, BaekYeol, XiuYeol
Genre; Romance, Angst, AU
Summary; In a world where love can be a death sentence, who would take the risk?
Warnings; Lots of character death, mentions of disease (both malignant and terminal)
Word count; 5,819
Notes; Written to fill this prompt.
Leaves rustled by Kim Jongin's feet as he made his way along the sidewalk. He paid them no mind, nor did he notice the way his breath curled from his lips in white puffs of condensation in the cold late-October air. He was surrounded by oranges and reds, people bundled in warmer jackets and scarves and hats as each day brought colder weather. None of that passed through Jongin's thoughts, though, as he turned up a long path and passed through automatic doors into a room with no orange or red, no cold and clean and sharp air, and only then did Jongin feel like autumn had arrived. The sights, sounds, and smells there, of bright whites and antiseptic, beeping machines and medicines, were Jongin's autumn. Where others talked about baking with their families, of lighting fires in fireplaces and curling close together, of gathering leaves with friends and tossing them and playing in them, Jongin held only this sterile place in mind. Especially that disinfectant smell.
Jongin didn't even need to consider his words as he asked the woman at the desk to the left of the entrance for the room number of the patient he'd come to visit. He'd been through this place often enough that he could set himself on autopilot and would still find himself wherever he was looking to go. And not thinking about why he was there made being there a lot easier, so he let go of his thoughts completely until he found himself in front of a light brown door nearly identical to the dozens of other light brown doors running up and down this same hallway, different only in its brass room number and the names scrawled in nearly-illegible handwriting on tiny cards slid into plastic slots beneath the room number.
It was there that the reality of the situation began to settle over Jongin. No matter how many times he found himself in this place, no matter how automatic his movements became, it was never easy. Despite the number of people he'd seen come and go here, Jongin had never learned how to not feel for every single one of them. And reading the second name on the list of room occupants, below Kim Joonmyun and above Zhang Yixing, put a stone in the bottom of Jongin's stomach and tightened his windpipe. Oh Sehun. Jongin blinked fast, looking away from the scrawled characters, and swallowed hard, then opened the door and stepped inside.
A young man who couldn't have been much older than Jongin but looked as though his deterioration had aged him significantly was laid out in the first bed. He was asleep, which Jongin found to be a blessing. He didn't even know how he would find words to say to Sehun, let alone his dying roommates. Jongin passed the sleeping man's bed, then paused with his hand on the curtain that separated Sehun's portion of the room from Kim Joonmyun's. Another deep breath helped him steady his nerves, and he tugged the curtain aside.
Sehun was sat up on his bed, a book in his lap and his eyes glued to the page. Jongin fought with himself over what to say to him, but it was Sehun who spoke first. "I honestly didn't think you'd come."
Jongin stepped toward the bed, paused, and stepped further. "I didn't know if you'd want me to."
A silence stretched between them, tense with hundreds of unspoken words and feelings, until Sehun finally responded, his voice low to try to hide the thickness caused by unshed tears, "I'm glad you did." He still wouldn't look up from his book, but Jongin could see that he wasn't reading, and he could see even from the man's profile that he'd lost weight and grown tired.
"Has Byun...?"
Sehun shook his head, letting his eyes fall shut. "As soon as I realized... you know, that this was where I was heading. That was the last time he spoke to me. Told me he was sorry as he grabbed his things and left."
Jongin wanted to tell Sehun that it was Sehun's own fault Byun Baekhyun had reacted that way. He wanted to scream and yell at Sehun for putting himself in that position, for landing himself in that bed, in that sterile place that smelled of disinfectant and medicine and looked shiny and bright despite the darkness of the place and sounded like monitors beeping, beeping, beeping until they stopped repeating their rhythm and let out one long high-pitched note that spoke of the finality of this place and of the fact that you couldn't get anything back once you sent it here. But there was no point, no good to come of it, and Jongin chose instead to sit in the chair beside Sehun's bed and reach out and take his hand gently.
Then Sehun did look up from his book. His eyes were searching and wet with tears. "I'm sorry."
"Don't apologize for loving me, or for loving him." Jongin knew better than to let himself fall in love. But not everyone could stop themselves from loving, and not everyone could hide those feelings deep inside and never speak of them. Sehun had been weak, and the weak were always weeded out. That thought didn't make the reality of it any easier to bare, but it helped Jongin sometimes to remind himself that he wasn't alone in his losses and that at least he was one of the strong ones.
"We were kids," Sehun pressed on weakly. "I was sixteen. Nobody understands that kind of responsibility when they're sixteen."
"You knew better," Jongin argued, but his voice was kind. And he could still remember the way he had been holding Sehun then, both still boys, too young to be exploring each other the way they had that summer, had memorized the way Sehun's head felt resting against his chest, the feel of his smooth back beneath Jongin's hands. Most vividly Jongin could recall the rush of fear he'd felt when Sehun had whispered I'll love you forever to a boy he thought was asleep beneath him. And Jongin had risen, scared, clutching at Sehun's hands, wishing he could undo those words for Sehun. But Sehun had looked sure, had clung to Jongin and sworn it a dozen more times that night, not seeming to care that Jongin never said it back.
Sehun tightened his hold on Jongin's hand. "They told me I have about three weeks left." The sentence came out small and scared.
"Then I'll be here every day for three weeks." Jongin offered Sehun a comforting smile. "If he won't be here, I will."
And he was, for three weeks, and then four more days before that note of finality rang out from the machine beside Sehun's bed, the young man's body shriveled and frail and shaking and finally falling still. Zhang Yixing had been on the other side of Sehun's bed, comforting Sehun alongside Jongin despite looking nearly as weak as Sehun. Two days later Yixing followed after Sehun, and Jongin was there to hold his hand as well, had been the only person to visit him during his stay.
Some hours later in his tiny apartment, Jongin reflected that he was happy to live his life alone rather than ever end up on one of those beds, surrounded by those machines and that smell and his own loneliness. Because he knew nobody in this world cared for him enough to visit.
~~~~~
Do Kyungsoo's body lent a warmth to Jongin that he hadn't felt in a long time. Jongin leaned into that heat almost desperately, his head spinning, and he could only vaguely recall his address to give it to Kyungsoo as he was half-carried by the older man down the sidewalk. How they ever made it there was beyond Jongin, but when they did he didn't want to let Kyungsoo go. Kyungsoo allowed himself to be held, held Jongin in return, and when their lips first met - sloppy, wet, desperate while sprawled across Jongin's tiny bed - Jongin decided he wanted Kyungsoo to spend the night. He could keep love at bay, but that didn't mean he couldn't fuck.
Kyungsoo was not only willing to stay but eager. He was far more sober than Jongin but still drunk enough to make bad decisions like sleeping with his coworker while drunk after having developed a crush on him during the four months they'd worked together. It was too hot and absolutely too messy, and Jongin was snoring almost as soon as they were done. Kyungsoo stayed awake for awhile after, though, wondering if he had any chance of turning this one night stand into something more. Kyungsoo had never been in love, didn't know if he ever wanted to be in love, but knew he wanted more than what he had, more than an empty apartment and his own company. Kyungsoo knew he wanted Jongin for longer than a night, and he would never forgive himself if he didn't try to get it.
Jongin avoided Kyungsoo at work after that night. He could see it in Kyungsoo's face; he wanted to talk to him alone, maybe wanted a repeat performance or, worse, a date. Jongin would never end up in one of those hospital beds. He didn't care if he seemed rude, he refused to let Kyungsoo try to reel him in, even going so far as to turn away mid-conversation and leave if he ever found himself left alone with Kyungsoo. There were worse things in this world than the look of hurt on Kyungsoo's face when Jongin behaved that way.
But Kyungsoo never relented. Even a month later he hadn't given up. And finally Jongin pulled him aside. "This needs to stop, Do Kyungsoo. Do you think I like turning you away all the time?"
"No, I don't think you like turning me down at all. I get why you're doing it but I know you don't like it, because you like me, right?" Kyungsoo pressed on despite Jongin's scoff at those words. "I'm not asking you to love me, Jongin. I'll never ask you for that. But I like you too. I like you and I want you. We can like each other, right? There's no risk in liking someone. That's all I want. To spend more time, you and me, liking each, maybe going out and liking each other at dinner and a movie."
Jongin shook his head, eyes on the floor, but Kyungsoo's hand on his jawline had him lifting his eyes to the other man's face and seeing in it Kyungsoo's sincerity and warmth.
"You like me, don't you, Kim Jongin?"
Jongin had never been good at lying, and something about Kyungsoo made that even more difficult, so while he didn't say yes, his failure to say no was all Kyungsoo really needed to understand the truth.
"Let me take you out."
Again Jongin didn't speak, no matter how much he wanted to turn Kyungsoo away. He hadn't been on a date in over half a year, and then he'd watched his high school boyfriend fall in love with another man and then deteriorate in a hospital bed just a handful of weeks prior. Jongin didn't know how to date, was afraid of love, couldn't stand to put himself or anyone else at that risk. Especially Kyungsoo, with his wide eyes that held a lot of honesty and maturity, his soft hands, his soothing voice. He never wanted Kyungsoo to risk falling in love. But he didn't say no.
"I'll pick you up at seven."
Kyungsoo left the supply closet, and Jongin attempted to hold onto the parts of himself he could already feel Kyungsoo taking with him.
~~~~~
"Answer your phone, fuckboy," was the entirety of the message Jongin left for Baekhyun that afternoon when his call went straight through to Baekhyun's voicemail again. He'd been trying to get ahold of him since the day Sehun had died. It was strange not hearing from Baekhyun for that long, and he'd begun to suspect he'd never hear from him again.
Not that it would be such a great loss, Jongin thought to himself a little bitterly.
And all thoughts of Baekhyun had left his mind by that evening as Jongin found himself actually having a good time with Kyungsoo, the shorter man's hand warm in his own and his nervousness evident whenever he spoke. Though Kyungsoo's words were a little stuttered and his voice was quieter than Jongin was used to, his gaze was as intense as ever, sucking Jongin further under each time their eyes met.
Jongin discovered that Kyungsoo was as neat at home as he was at work, that he dabbled in cooking and liked spaghetti, that he sang to himself whenever he was alone but wasn't brave enough to sing around anyone else. Jongin discovered that he was interested in all of those and dozens of other tiny facts he was finding out about Kyungsoo, such as the way Kyungsoo liked to hold hands and that Kyungsoo enjoyed putting his hand on the small of Jongin's back, and that Jongin held hands the same way and for the first time didn't mind someone touching his back. Jongin discovered that he wanted Kyungsoo to be interested when he confessed that he wasn't very neat and that he couldn't cook but loved to dance and had taken classes his whole life and maybe would have become a professional if things had worked out differently. Kyungsoo looked very interested.
Jongin didn't kiss Kyungsoo at the end of their date. He bade him a cold farewell and went to bed alone. If he'd let himself kiss Kyungsoo he was sure they would have ended up tangled in his sheets again, that they would have woken as happy the next morning as they'd been when they'd gone to bed and he would have missed him when he left, longed to feel his body and lips and the way his bedroom felt with a second occupant.
At the end of their second date a few nights later, Jongin allowed Kyungsoo a chaste kiss that was better than a frigid goodbye but not by much.
On their third date, after Jongin spent the entire two hours telling himself that he was stronger than his feelings, Kyungsoo walked Jongin to his door and kissed him, and kept kissing him even when he tried to pull away, then kissed him in his living room and hallway and bedroom and kissed down his neck, across his back, trailed his hands after his lips and discovered Jongin's body, pulled Jongin down under and let himself follow him down. Jongin woke the next morning with the memory of love touching every inch of his skin but choked on the idea of that word leaving his lips, so his mouth sought Kyungsoo's instead to give it something to do other than possibly betraying him. Still, when he pulled from their kiss he found the word in Kyungsoo's intense eyes and knew he was caught.
~~~~~
Jongin had fantasized about punching Baekhyun in his face if they ever crossed paths again. But when he came face to face with him, after tracking him down nearly two months after Sehun's death, Jongin knew he couldn't hurt Baekhyun anymore than Baekhyun had hurt himself.
It was in a different hospital than the one Sehun had spent the last weeks of his life that Jongin finally found Baekhyun. The smell was the same, though. Jongin thought of autumn despite the chill of mid-January.
"I wondered, before, if you ever loved him." The confession was blunt, like most things Jongin said.
"I wouldn't have taken him from you for anything less." But Baekhyun didn't need to explain himself; his proof was in crisp white sheets and small portions of individually-packaged Jell-Os served with each meal. It was written in the deterioration of his once-impressive looks. Baekhyun's breathing hitched, and Jongin didn't know if it was from memories or his failing body. "I didn't know what he'd promised you. He told me about it the day after I'd promised him the same thing." Baekhyun chuckled bitterly. "Maybe if I'd stayed until the end I wouldn't be here now. Maybe I would've kept my promise and loved him until he died. But I ran. I was so scared."
Jongin knew his last sentence was spoken with detachment because the man was far more scared now than he'd been then. As with Sehun he knew Baekhyun only had himself to blame, but all the same he asked for Baekhyun's prognosis - he only had a week left, if that long, Baekhyun let him know with another hitch in his breath - and stayed with him through it all. They had been friends most of their lives, from early childhood until the previous spring when Baekhyun had seduced, fucked, and stolen Sehun, and Jongin figured that had to count for something. So he stayed. He met Baekhyun's only other visitor, a tall man named Park Chanyeol who whispered something in Baekhyun's ear three hours before Baekhyun died. He didn't cry, as he had for Sehun.
And when Baekhyun's heart monitor went flat, Jongin left the room and called Kyungsoo, telling him, "I'll say this once and then never expect to hear it again. I don't know where we're headed and I won't speak for tomorrow, but today, right now, Do Kyungsoo, I love you."
Jongin's heart ached as he heard Kyungsoo softly return, "Today, I love you, too."
~~~~~
Jongin had been eight years old when he'd seen his father die of a broken heart. Wasting away in the hospital had only been the end of his father's illness. The months prior to his stay there had been difficult, his father growing weaker, crying too much. He'd been bedridden for four days before Jongin's uncle finally brought him to the hospital.
When Jongin was six, his mother had left. His father, he'd found out later, had proposed marriage. When he'd been rejected, he'd said the one thing that drove her away, the same confession Jongin had gotten from Sehun, a promise that he would love her forever. His father had been soft, his mother cold, a coward. It took two years for his father to fall out of love with the woman who had abandoned them. And once his vow was broken, his heart began to fail.
A broken vow of love or fidelity was a death sentence. It shut the body down. A person who claimed they would hold someone in their heart for any length of time and then failed to do so would be lucky to last four months after their failure. And it was never an easy end. It was ugly and painful, drawn out, and always started with the heart. First pain, sharp but brief, then skipped beats. From there each part of the body aged and shut down until walking was impossible and eating was a struggle. The final days were always the hardest, with the sufferer unable to breathe on his own, in constant pain, so frail that a light touch could feel like knives, and then their heart would simply cease function.
There was no cure.
The leaves had begun to change to yellows and oranges and reds when Jongin's father was admitted to the hospital. Jongin practically lived in his father's hospital room, only leaving when his uncle and the nurses carried him out at the end of visiting hours each night and running back each morning as soon as he woke up. On a rare occasion, the nurses took pity on him and let him and his uncle spend the night. Every day Jongin prayed that his father would be blessed with a miraculous, unprecedented recovery. He held onto that hope until the moment his father died.
After that, Jongin didn't hold hope for much of anything. Every autumn brought him back to those days and occasional nights spent by his father's side, a strong reminder of the promise he'd made to himself that he would never fall in love. He kept that promise even throughout his six-year relationship with Sehun.
It had taken Kyungsoo only a handful of months to undo his promise.
~~~~~
A married couple lived in the apartment across the hall from Jongin. They were older, perhaps in their seventies, possibly eighties, and had gotten married early in life. Jongin admired their love and devotion, and often asked them over or visited their apartment to talk about their life and relationship. It wasn't something they were unused to; marriage was a rare thing, growing rarer all the time to the point of near-extinction. But somehow they had remained in love and devoted to one another through all those years.
Jongin shared something he'd learned from them with Kyungsoo one night the following summer as they lounged on their bed enjoying the cool of the air conditioner. "They didn't use typical wedding vows." His fingers were laced loosely with Kyungsoo's on the bed, thumb running circles against his lover's hand. "She said their vows were, 'I promise to love you today, to be faithful to you for all of our tomorrows, and to stay by your side until death.'"
"That's clever," Kyungsoo decided, turning onto his side to face Jongin.
"They didn't need to amend it, though," Jongin continued. "They've never fallen out of love."
Brushing hair away from Jongin's forehead, Kyungsoo asked, "But did they know that then? They could have woken the next morning having fallen out of love. They still could."
It was true, but Jongin didn't say so, because for the first time he wanted to learn to have faith that love could truly last a lifetime, and that maybe that lifetime would be spent with Kyungsoo.
~~~~~
Chanyeol had met Baekhyun at their university. It had been love at first sight, according to Chanyeol, on his end anyway. Baekhyun had made Chanyeol want to put aside his childishness and settle into something more adult, more lasting. Baekhyun had known how Chanyeol felt, had made it clear he would never feel the same. But that never stopped Chanyeol from loving Baekhyun every day he'd known him. Baekhyun had allowed a close friendship. He had warned Chanyeol not to get his hopes up. He'd forbidden Chanyeol from ever saying his feelings aloud and absolved himself of all responsibility should Chanyeol ever decide to do so anyway.
"The first time I ever actually said the words to him was that day," Chanyeol told Jongin. Jongin didn't need to ask which day. "What I whispered to him... I told him, 'I've loved you since I met you, and I'll love you for your whole life.' And that was true. And I love him now, too."
Chanyeol and Jongin had become something akin to friends following Baekhyun's death. They'd shared their memories of him over drinks on more nights than Jongin could count. Jongin had wished for someone from Sehun's past to reminisce with him the same way, but Sehun had never had many people close to him, so Jongin settled for remembering Baekhyun with Chanyeol.
"He loved the man who loved me," Jongin had shared one night, deciding it sounded better than "he killed my ex."
"I wonder how anyone can love in this world," Chanyeol had responded, "but then I fall in love anyway. With the man who fell in love with the man who loved you."
~~~~~
Kim Minseok was small and tidy like Kyungsoo. He was a man of few words and unexpected strength. He kept himself on a strict diet and worked out almost every day to keep his body in perfect condition. He was grounded and serious. In short, he was Chanyeol's polar opposite.
Chanyeol had taken Jongin to a bar after they'd paid their respects to Baekhyun on the third anniversary of his death, and there they'd met Minseok. The man had been speaking Mandarin to his friend at the time - Huang Zitao, Jongin learned later that evening - and Chanyeol and tried to greet him using his limited knowledge of the language, only to find himself embarrassed but relieved when Minseok assured him he was actually Korean. Zitao, on the other hand, still struggled with his Korean and needed Minseok to translate for him a lot. They were both quiet but friendly, and Jongin could see how quickly Chanyeol was taking to the sharp-eyed man.
Chanyeol insisted on a double date with Jongin and Kyungsoo the first time he took Minseok out. Not that it had been necessary, as it turned out; Minseok was as taken with Chanyeol as Chanyeol had been when they'd met, and Jongin took Chanyeol's unsubtle hints and excused himself and Kyungsoo before their outing was even half finished.
Despite their differences, Chanyeol and Minseok seemed happy together. Chanyeol excitedly told Jongin, some months later, that they'd both confessed their love. Jongin had been jealous of that excitement, because even after nearly four years together, telling Kyungsoo he loved him still scared Jongin every time.
When Chanyeol told Jongin the following year that he was planning to propose to Minseok, Jongin wished him luck. Then he stopped spending time with the couple. He knew what their future would be, and he didn't want to be around to witness it.
~~~~~
Kyungsoo was very health-conscious. He insisted on feeding Jongin healthy foods and dragged him off the couch and out for walks sometimes. He never smoked and rarely drank.
He had cancer. He'd been complaining of a sore throat and difficulty breathing in the weeks following their seven-year anniversary, and had finally set an appointment to see his doctor. He'd been nervous after his appointment, telling Jongin it was probably nothing, that he was going to a specialist for further testing just in case. Jongin put on a calm act while panicking internally.
He brought Kyungsoo to his appointment with a specialist. He held himself together for Kyungsoo's sake. And as they sat together to hear Kyungsoo's results, Jongin let Kyungsoo cling to his hand as hard as he needed to, offering strength he didn't really have.
Tracheal cancer, they were told. In that moment Jongin felt his blood run cold and the bottom drop out of his stomach. Cancer wasn't something that could happen to his health-conscious boyfriend, the man he loved more than anything else in the world. Cancer happened to other people. His stomach turned and his heart wrenched. He wondered if Kyungsoo or the doctor could hear how short and shallow his breathing had become.
Through the buzzing of his own thoughts, Jongin continued listening to the doctor, and felt the grip around his heart finally ease at the word "malignant" - Kyungsoo would be fine.
The doctor went on to explain more about what Kyungsoo was likely to go through next - tracheal surgery, radiation therapy - and Jongin struggled to retain the particulars, though all he could really focus on was the fact that Kyungsoo wasn't going to die.
That night in bed with Kyungsoo, Jongin realized why some people, like his father, vowed to love someone forever, because he realized he loved Kyungsoo more than life itself. His love for Kyungsoo was nothing like what he heard in songs on the radio because nothing he heard there even came close to the feeling he'd had in the moments he'd feared for the life of his lover. He could live a hundred lifetimes and he doubted in any single one of them he would find a love like this. He didn't say it, would never dare, but he knew in that moment that he would never stop loving Kyungsoo.
The following morning he called Chanyeol and asked if he and his fiancee would like to come over.
~~~~~
The other driver, Kim Jongdae, hadn't made it, Jongin was told not so very long after waking up in a hospital bed surrounded by those machines and that smell, the smell of autumn and of his father and Sehun and Baekhyun and Jhang Yixing and that sleeping man Kim Joonmyun and some old woman and countless others. Jongin had a broken ankle. He wouldn't be able to dance for awhile and possibly never again. He was alive. Kyungsoo was very alive, gripping to Jongin as though letting go would mean losing him. Kim Jongdae was dead. It had been nobody's fault, according to the doctor, as though that helped Jongin feel any less guilty. Maybe Kim Jongdae had his own Kyungsoo at home who was now mourning the loss of the love of their life. (He didn't. Jongdae found himself content to live alone but his parents, a married couple still very much in love, had lost their only child. Jongin discovered this when he met the couple at Jongdae's burial. He and Kyungsoo visited them sometimes after that day. Years later, Jongdae's mother would confess to Jongin that having them around hurt at first but by then it felt to her as though God had taken one son from her and then given her two.)
When Kyungsoo finally released his hold on Jongin, he stayed close, climbed into Jongin's tiny bed to sit with him. He kept his intense eyes on Jongin, and Jongin could read in them all the things he'd been thinking the previous year before Kyungsoo's surgery.
"Jongin," Kyungsoo breathed a start, and Jongin squeezed his hand to stop him.
"I know," he answered, and Kyungsoo understood.
"I love you," Kyungsoo said instead, and it wasn't enough, wasn't close to enough, but it would have to do.
"I love you too." Jongin understood then why people, like his mother, like Baekhyun, ran. He knew a different kind of fear then, fear for the loss of a life he held more dearly than his own, of the possibility of having to watch Kyungsoo turn to bones in front of him. Knowing that when that time came, it would be because this man he could never stop loving had stopped loving him.
He knew what a selfish thing it would be to put Kyungsoo through that if he ever confessed.
Neither spoke the words in their hearts, but they both knew them by then, and for Jongin, that was all he needed just then.
~~~~~
On their 25th anniversary, Kyungsoo proposed. Jongin supposed he should have been terrified of the possibility. What he felt was warmth and excitement, though, and a contentment deep in his bones, a rightness. He answered without hesitation, a firm 'yes' that had Kyungsoo grinning the way that always made Jongin weak. When they kissed it somehow felt new again, and Kyungsoo's whispered "I love you" had Jongin standing in that hospital hallway outside Baekhyun's room as he'd been the first time, and this time he felt the words the way he should have then, with his whole body tingling and his heart warm and pounding.
The reception was small, just their closest family and friends in attendance. Chanyeol sat in the front row with his husband, and Minseok looked politely embarrassed as Chanyeol cried the entire time.
They had decided to use the vows the old married couple that had once lived across the hall had used. (They weren't there; they had lived in that apartment together and loved each other every day until the man succumbed to his old age ten years after that first summer Jongin spent with Kyungsoo, and his wife had followed a few weeks later.)
But as they stood on the altar, hearts racing, hands shaking, the possibility of the rest of their lives stretching out before them, Kyungsoo looked down at the slightly crumpled paper in his hand with the words of their agreed vows scrawled across it, and then he folded it and tucked it away in his pocket. Jongin began to panic.
"I have loved you every day for over twenty-five years," Kyungsoo professed, and Jongin wanted him to go back to the script, wanted desperately for things to go the way they had planned. "I have been faithful. I have cared for you and been cared for by you. I've seen you at your best and worst. I've survived cancer with you at my side. I have never wanted to be beside anyone else. I will never be with anyone else but you, Kim Jongin." Don't let him say it, Jongin cast out a silent prayer, tears in his eyes and his entire body trembling. "Today, I love you. Tomorrow when we wake up, I'll see your face beside mine and I will love you then, too. And every day, until death should do us part, Kim Jongin, I, Do Kyungsoo, will always love you."
The silence that followed those words was interrupted only by a quick, sharp sob from Chanyeol, and everyone in attendance knew Kyungsoo had gone off script.
Jongin considered running from the altar. He remembered his father. He pictured Kyungsoo succumbing to the same fate. He understood his mother so clearly in that moment. But he still regarded her as a coward, and with that and so many other thoughts in his mind, Jongin took Kyungsoo's hands in his own, held his gaze, and smiled shakily as two tears left his eyes to trek down his cheeks. "You've been pushing my boundaries since the first time you took me out." He chuckled, and Kyungsoo joined him. "You know how I feel. You knew it before I knew it. You've always gotten me." One hand released its hold on Kyungsoo's so he could cup Kyungsoo's cheek. "You'll always get me, and you'll always have me. Until death do us part, Do Kyungsoo, I, Kim Jongin, will always love you."
And he did, every day, until they were both grey and Kyungsoo had spent too many years battling a cancer that always came back. Jongin had said the words for both of them when Kyungsoo could no longer speak past tumors in his windpipe, soft murmurs of "I'll never leave" and "I'll always love you" beneath fluorescent lights while the smell of disinfectant didn't hurt Jongin as much as it had in years past, and it was only fitting that the leaves had just begun to turn when Kyungsoo took his final breath in that room, his lips moving in a pattern that Jongin had spent years learning, so that even without a voice he could hear the sincerity in his wedding vows that withstood the test of time.
Jongin lived for five more years and even then loved Kyungsoo every day of his life. When his old heart started giving out, Jongin felt ready to rejoin his husband somewhere beyond this place where love could be a death sentence, and the antiseptic smell of his hospital room was a comfort in his final moments.