(fic)
永远爱你是我说过
(i promised that i would love you forever.)
sunggyu/woohyun | pg-13 | part 2 of 2
mostly, woohyun wants to know about sunggyu. he asks question after question in rapid fire: what is sunggyu’s sister’s name? does he like sports? when was his first kiss? are his parents still married? how long has he known myungsu? it’s a little like being interrogated, only without the bright lights and good-cop-bad-cop. still, woohyun seems truly interested.
sunggyu answers as best he can, one question after another. it doesn’t take long for him to stop being embarrassed to talk about kissing and girlfriends. woohyun makes him feel familiar.
“what’s with the third degree?” sunggyu eventually asks. they’ve shifted positions: sunggyu is sprawled on his back, careful of wood splinters and broken glass, and woohyun is on his side, head propped up in one hand. it’s so normal. sunggyu doesn’t know what to think. “are you gonna possess me and live my life or something?”
woohyun snorts. “no,” he says. “i don’t think i can possess people. you have to be angry for that.”
“you’re not angry?”
the words come before sunggyu can stop them, and he regrets them immediately. woohyun quiets in every sense of the word. his expression goes still, his body too. “sorry,” sunggyu says. “again.”
“i’m angry,” woohyun says. “about a lot of things. but nothing that possessing anyone would solve.” he pushes himself up, hands grinding against shattered glass on the floor. sunggyu winces, but woohyun doesn’t notice. (ghosts don’t mind things like scraped palms, do they?) “at the end of the day, i’d still be dead.”
the atmosphere in the room has changed. sunggyu can feel it. the air is thicker now, heavier. sunggyu remembers the way the air feels before a storm, wet with incipient moisture and charged with the possibility of lightning. that’s what the room feels like right now. it feels dangerous. “you must remember something good,” he says.
woohyun pauses. “i remember a lot of things,” he agrees. “a lot of good things.”
when he turns around, he’s smiling again. sunggyu feels something in his chest relax in relief. the air is clearer now. “do you want to see?” woohyun asks, reaching out a hand.
“can you do that?”
“i don’t know,” woohyun says. “why don’t we find out together?”
it’s not like time-travel, or at least it isn’t like any time-travel that sunggyu has ever imagined. he can still see the peeling walls and the splintering floorboards, water stains on the wallpaper, broken windows. but over that, like an image recalled from memory-from woohyun’s memory-is another scene. a good thing, layered over reality like a double exposure of film.
sunggyu feels the ghost of warmth on his cheek. there’s remembered sunlight streaming in through the closed window in woohyun’s bedroom-it must be late summer, or early autumn. “i was sick,” woohyun says, his fingers cool and dry where they’re closed around sunggyu’s. “staying home from school.”
in their shared memory, sunggyu can see a younger woohyun-sixteen years old, maybe, the same eyes, the same mouth, but softer somehow. this woohyun has less time to learn how cruel the universe can be. he’s lying in bed looking miserable. “a cold?” sunggyu asks.
“the flu. i was home for a week.”
sunggyu hears the echoes of footsteps on the stairs, and woohyun pulls him gently away from the door. not like it matters; memories can’t be changed. “my mom,” woohyun explains. “she stayed home with me during the day.” the tone of his voice is different, somehow. softer. happier.
it’s not anything special, really. a sick son, a concerned mother. she brings memory-woohyun soup and presses a cool cloth to his forehead, hums something soothing under her breath as she brushes woohyun’s hair from his forehead. it’s startlingly tender. sunggyu wonders why woohyun wanted to show him this.
“you miss her,” he says.
woohyun’s grip on his hand loosens, then tightens. “of course i miss her,” he says. “i miss them all. mom, dad, hyung-”
something in the air shifts, and the memory fades. the warmth is gone, and the sunlight. sunggyu and woohyun stand in the center of what used to be woohyun’s bedroom, and sunggyu is still thinking about tenderness, about a mother’s care. “i still don’t understand,” he says, pulling his hand back from woohyun’s.
“understand what?” woohyun pulls back, his eyes dark.
“why me, why that,” sunggyu says. “why are you showing me these things? what do you want me to understand?”
woohyun doesn’t answer. the air is heavy again. in all the ghost hunting shows that sunggyu has ever seen, the investigators have never been able to get straight answers from spirits; why did sunggyu think he would be any different? “i thought you would understand,” woohyun says. he sounds betrayed. sunggyu wonders why that tone hurts so much to hear. “i thought you would care.”
the dark electricity in the air between them makes the hair at the nape of sunggyu’s neck stand on end. “i’m sorry,” sunggyu says. “it’s not that i don’t care.”
woohyun takes a deep breath, and some of the oppressive weight of the air lifts away from sunggyu’s skin. “i know,” he says. “i know.” he smiles, and he has a beautiful smile. sunggyu knows it’s fake. “sorry. i guess the last couple of years have kind of messed with my social skills.”
even as he’s smiling, there is something terrible and empty and desperate in his eyes. it rattles in the hollow places of sunggyu’s bones. “woohyun,” sunggyu says, reaching out to touch woohyun’s cheek (a ghost’s skin, but it’s still skin, that’s surprising, sunggyu didn’t know ghosts had skin). “woohyun,” he says again, and pulls woohyun close. it seems at once like the wrong thing to do and the only thing he can do.
“what?” woohyun doesn’t hug him back. sunggyu wasn’t expecting him to.
“i’m sorry.”
an apology isn’t what sunggyu meant to give, but it seems true now that it’s been given a voice. “don’t be,” woohyun tells the curve of sunggyu’s shoulder. “it’s not your fault.”
but sunggyu learned a long time ago that being at fault and being sorry aren’t the same thing. he wraps his arms around woohyun’s shoulders, his middle, takes him by the shoulders and looks at him. “i’m sorry,” he says again. there’s much more he wants to say, but sunggyu doesn’t remember the words.
“stop apologizing,” woohyun says. he reaches out and touches sunggyu gently at the cheek, then at the edge of his jaw. “just stay with me.”
looking into woohyun’s eyes, all sunggyu can see is an abyss of loneliness. days, months, years, maybe in this room, maybe in other rooms-but sunggyu can see that woohyun has been terribly alone. it hurts something deep in him, like a cold touch to his aorta. “stay with you?” he repeats, just to make sure his voice still works.
“stay with me,” woohyun says. his hands are very cold.
“for how long?”
sunggyu doesn’t need woohyun to say it to know that woohyun means forever.
“i can’t,” he says in a rush. the cold touch to his heart feels like icicles in his veins now, feels like he’s being sliced open from the inside. a bruise on the heart will go unseen, skin and bones shielding the wound. “i can’t stay with you, i don’t even know you-”
“you know me.”
woohyun reaches out and grabs sunggyu’s wrist, his fingers like a vice. they pinch sunggyu’s skin. “you know,” he repeats, and then they’re tripwheeling, spiraling through memory after memory-woohyun’s brother tripping him down the stairs and then shaking with fear when woohyun’s forehead starts bleeding. woohyun’s parents fighting, woohyun himself watching from the top of the stairs. woohyun laughing at a joke told by a slim, big-eyed boy, and later, that same pretty boy pressed against woohyun’s mattress, half-unclothed, gasping. it’s too much. it’s too much.
“i don’t know you,” sunggyu repeats, and jerks his wrist out of woohyun’s grasp. woohyun’s nails leave welts on his wrist.
he runs.
sunggyu makes it as far as the main road before he drops to his knees and vomits behind a bush, and can’t quite meet the eyes of the pretty noona who stops to ask him if he’s all right.
“hyung, maybe you should stop letting dongwoo talk you into watching horror movies,” sungyeol suggests, and myungsu frowns at the scratches on his wrist but doesn’t say anything at all. sunggyu privately thinks he might be losing his mind. this isn’t science fiction. ghosts do not exist.
but.
sunggyu wakes up in the middle of the night with a sheen of sweat on his forehead, half-hard, panting. it’s not arousal, just adrenaline, but he still slides a hand under his sheets and touches himself, thinking about lonely dark eyes and pianist’s fingers. this is all so fucked-up. sunggyu comes with a name half-formed on his tongue, and takes a scalding shower to wash away the shame; when he emerges, his skin is pink and raw but he feels just as guilty as ever.
“i’m losing my mind,” he tells his reflection, but his reflection has nothing to say.
the house is empty when sunggyu comes back, but sunggyu can tell that it isn’t vacant. it’s too still, the windows too empty, the silence too oppressive. the animal part of sunggyu’s mind tells him to bolt, and the adrenaline is there like his body is about to be in motion-and still he stands on the walkway to the front door and says, “i know you’re watching.”
he breathes, and woohyun is sitting on the steps. “what do you want?” he asks. his voice does not sound kind.
truthfully, sunggyu doesn’t really know.
“you can’t just spring that kind of thing on people,” he says instead of answering the question. “the whole stay with me forever thing. humans are delicate.”
woohyun’s brow furrows. he turns his face into his shoulder, looking away. “i was human once, too,” he says. sunggyu hears the hurt and sadness in his voice, and it feels like being punched in the teeth. “not all that long ago, actually. it must not seem like that anymore.”
“that’s not what i meant.”
“then what did you mean?” woohyun’s eyes are very dark when his gaze meets sunggyu’s again. “why are you here, sunggyu?”
“i don’t know.”
it’s the truth, but it still makes woohyun flinch. sunggyu feels sorry about that. woohyun has been dealt enough hurt in his lifetime to last for several. “i don’t know,” he repeats, “but i think it’s because i know you were human. are human, sort of.”
“sort of.” woohyun snorts indelicately. “you’re either human or you’re not.”
sunggyu takes a step forward, hands clenching at his sides. he can’t figure out why he feels so passionate about this. what is it that’s driving him to behave like this, to be the champion of the downtrodden for this spectre of a boy that he barely even knows? “humanity isn’t about having a body,” sunggyu says. “it’s about. about-love, and hate, and feeling things. you feel a lot of things, woohyun. and it’s about what makes us individuals, instead of all just being like sheep or pigs or something.”
“you’re so eloquent.”
“shut up.” sunggyu thinks that maybe woohyun has lost touch of what made him human, once. maybe the cruel fingers of loneliness and isolation have taken that from him. what sunggyu wouldn’t give to give it back. “i’m being honest here, okay?”
“but you don’t even know me,” woohyun replies, his tone a lilting, sing-song mockery of the words sunggyu had spit in his face only a few days ago. it hurts. sunggyu deserves that.
“i can’t stay with you forever,” sunggyu says. “the best i can do is come by when i’m free and keep you company.”
“free?”
the word sounds like poison when woohyun says it. it almost tastes bitter on sunggyu’s tongue, too. residue. he shouldn’t have said that.
“i used to go to church when i was a kid, you know,” woohyun says. he sounds conversational, casual, but the darkness of his eyes and the whiteness of his knuckles belie the violence of the storm inside him. “you know what they teach you at church about what happens when you die, sunggyu? do you know?”
sunggyu hasn’t been to church since he was twelve, but he knows. “paradise,” he says.
“that’s right. paradise. they tell you that if you’re good, if you’re kind and treat everyone with respect and love god, then you’ll go to paradise.” woohyun’s expression twists, half cruel anger and half deep, deep pain. “is this my paradise?”
“woohyun-”
“is this all there is?” woohyun snaps. “i was a good kid, sunggyu, i went to church and went to school and didn’t even fucking narc on the sunbae who made me blow him behind the athletic supply building.”
sunggyu doesn’t know what to say. he doesn’t know what to say in the face of such crippling anger and fear and betrayal. he’s never felt that before, hopes he never does, and he doesn’t know what the magic words are. he doesn’t know the salve that will heal these wounds. “woohyun,” he says, because that’s all he can say.
woohyun goes quiet. he buries his face against his arm, but sunggyu can see the trembling in his shoulders.
“this is the rest of my existence,” he finally says. “this is everything there is for me. i don’t get paradise, sunggyu. i just get this empty house. that’s it.”
“woohyun, stop it,” sunggyu says, desperate, and takes the few more steps necessary to grab woohyun by the shoulders and hug him, close and not altogether warm (because ghosts don’t have body heat). but it’s contact. sunggyu has never been good at words, but he gives good hugs.
“this isn’t it,” sunggyu says, low and fierce. “you won’t be lonely, woohyun. i promise.”
woohyun takes a deep, shuddering breath-the memory of a deep breath-and wraps his hands around sunggyu’s wrists.”not anymore,” he says.
and then that icy grip closes around his heart, shattered ice in his veins, and sunggyu realizes a little too late.
it’s not at all the way sunggyu expects it to be.
when he remembers who he is, the world is nothing like he remembers. it’s cold. it’s very cold, and everything is very grey. the colors of the world are muted. sunggyu feels like he’s breathing in slow motion, and then realizes that he’s not breathing anymore.
“no,” he says, just to test his voice.
what comes out isn’t a voice as much a it is the memory of a voice. he can hear it in his mind, and it echoes in his ears, but there’s no substance. no sound. sunggyu isn’t sure how he knows that no one else can hear him speak.
“no,” he says, scrambling upright. his hands grind into the broken glass on the ground, and the pain doesn’t register. “no, no, what did you do to me-”
“i brought you home,” woohyun says. his voice sounds distant too. a very old recording being played in another room-that’s what it sounds like. “to stay. you can stay here, sunggyu. with me.”
through the window, sunggyu can see the edge of the world where the woods fade into pitch blackness, sticky and thick. tar black. “what is this place?” he asks. it’s a very stupid question. this is woohyun’s world, his playground. someplace between living and death, and sunggyu is trapped. his soul feels anchored to the floorboards in this house, to the walls themselves. he can’t leave.
woohyun comes up behind him, a faint presence behind him. “it’s paradise, sunggyu,” he says, and his fingers are cold on sunggyu’s wrist. “it’s paradise.”
(part 1) (part 2)
(i promised that i would love you forever.)
sunggyu/woohyun | pg-13 | part 2 of 2
mostly, woohyun wants to know about sunggyu. he asks question after question in rapid fire: what is sunggyu’s sister’s name? does he like sports? when was his first kiss? are his parents still married? how long has he known myungsu? it’s a little like being interrogated, only without the bright lights and good-cop-bad-cop. still, woohyun seems truly interested.
sunggyu answers as best he can, one question after another. it doesn’t take long for him to stop being embarrassed to talk about kissing and girlfriends. woohyun makes him feel familiar.
“what’s with the third degree?” sunggyu eventually asks. they’ve shifted positions: sunggyu is sprawled on his back, careful of wood splinters and broken glass, and woohyun is on his side, head propped up in one hand. it’s so normal. sunggyu doesn’t know what to think. “are you gonna possess me and live my life or something?”
woohyun snorts. “no,” he says. “i don’t think i can possess people. you have to be angry for that.”
“you’re not angry?”
the words come before sunggyu can stop them, and he regrets them immediately. woohyun quiets in every sense of the word. his expression goes still, his body too. “sorry,” sunggyu says. “again.”
“i’m angry,” woohyun says. “about a lot of things. but nothing that possessing anyone would solve.” he pushes himself up, hands grinding against shattered glass on the floor. sunggyu winces, but woohyun doesn’t notice. (ghosts don’t mind things like scraped palms, do they?) “at the end of the day, i’d still be dead.”
the atmosphere in the room has changed. sunggyu can feel it. the air is thicker now, heavier. sunggyu remembers the way the air feels before a storm, wet with incipient moisture and charged with the possibility of lightning. that’s what the room feels like right now. it feels dangerous. “you must remember something good,” he says.
woohyun pauses. “i remember a lot of things,” he agrees. “a lot of good things.”
when he turns around, he’s smiling again. sunggyu feels something in his chest relax in relief. the air is clearer now. “do you want to see?” woohyun asks, reaching out a hand.
“can you do that?”
“i don’t know,” woohyun says. “why don’t we find out together?”
it’s not like time-travel, or at least it isn’t like any time-travel that sunggyu has ever imagined. he can still see the peeling walls and the splintering floorboards, water stains on the wallpaper, broken windows. but over that, like an image recalled from memory-from woohyun’s memory-is another scene. a good thing, layered over reality like a double exposure of film.
sunggyu feels the ghost of warmth on his cheek. there’s remembered sunlight streaming in through the closed window in woohyun’s bedroom-it must be late summer, or early autumn. “i was sick,” woohyun says, his fingers cool and dry where they’re closed around sunggyu’s. “staying home from school.”
in their shared memory, sunggyu can see a younger woohyun-sixteen years old, maybe, the same eyes, the same mouth, but softer somehow. this woohyun has less time to learn how cruel the universe can be. he’s lying in bed looking miserable. “a cold?” sunggyu asks.
“the flu. i was home for a week.”
sunggyu hears the echoes of footsteps on the stairs, and woohyun pulls him gently away from the door. not like it matters; memories can’t be changed. “my mom,” woohyun explains. “she stayed home with me during the day.” the tone of his voice is different, somehow. softer. happier.
it’s not anything special, really. a sick son, a concerned mother. she brings memory-woohyun soup and presses a cool cloth to his forehead, hums something soothing under her breath as she brushes woohyun’s hair from his forehead. it’s startlingly tender. sunggyu wonders why woohyun wanted to show him this.
“you miss her,” he says.
woohyun’s grip on his hand loosens, then tightens. “of course i miss her,” he says. “i miss them all. mom, dad, hyung-”
something in the air shifts, and the memory fades. the warmth is gone, and the sunlight. sunggyu and woohyun stand in the center of what used to be woohyun’s bedroom, and sunggyu is still thinking about tenderness, about a mother’s care. “i still don’t understand,” he says, pulling his hand back from woohyun’s.
“understand what?” woohyun pulls back, his eyes dark.
“why me, why that,” sunggyu says. “why are you showing me these things? what do you want me to understand?”
woohyun doesn’t answer. the air is heavy again. in all the ghost hunting shows that sunggyu has ever seen, the investigators have never been able to get straight answers from spirits; why did sunggyu think he would be any different? “i thought you would understand,” woohyun says. he sounds betrayed. sunggyu wonders why that tone hurts so much to hear. “i thought you would care.”
the dark electricity in the air between them makes the hair at the nape of sunggyu’s neck stand on end. “i’m sorry,” sunggyu says. “it’s not that i don’t care.”
woohyun takes a deep breath, and some of the oppressive weight of the air lifts away from sunggyu’s skin. “i know,” he says. “i know.” he smiles, and he has a beautiful smile. sunggyu knows it’s fake. “sorry. i guess the last couple of years have kind of messed with my social skills.”
even as he’s smiling, there is something terrible and empty and desperate in his eyes. it rattles in the hollow places of sunggyu’s bones. “woohyun,” sunggyu says, reaching out to touch woohyun’s cheek (a ghost’s skin, but it’s still skin, that’s surprising, sunggyu didn’t know ghosts had skin). “woohyun,” he says again, and pulls woohyun close. it seems at once like the wrong thing to do and the only thing he can do.
“what?” woohyun doesn’t hug him back. sunggyu wasn’t expecting him to.
“i’m sorry.”
an apology isn’t what sunggyu meant to give, but it seems true now that it’s been given a voice. “don’t be,” woohyun tells the curve of sunggyu’s shoulder. “it’s not your fault.”
but sunggyu learned a long time ago that being at fault and being sorry aren’t the same thing. he wraps his arms around woohyun’s shoulders, his middle, takes him by the shoulders and looks at him. “i’m sorry,” he says again. there’s much more he wants to say, but sunggyu doesn’t remember the words.
“stop apologizing,” woohyun says. he reaches out and touches sunggyu gently at the cheek, then at the edge of his jaw. “just stay with me.”
looking into woohyun’s eyes, all sunggyu can see is an abyss of loneliness. days, months, years, maybe in this room, maybe in other rooms-but sunggyu can see that woohyun has been terribly alone. it hurts something deep in him, like a cold touch to his aorta. “stay with you?” he repeats, just to make sure his voice still works.
“stay with me,” woohyun says. his hands are very cold.
“for how long?”
sunggyu doesn’t need woohyun to say it to know that woohyun means forever.
“i can’t,” he says in a rush. the cold touch to his heart feels like icicles in his veins now, feels like he’s being sliced open from the inside. a bruise on the heart will go unseen, skin and bones shielding the wound. “i can’t stay with you, i don’t even know you-”
“you know me.”
woohyun reaches out and grabs sunggyu’s wrist, his fingers like a vice. they pinch sunggyu’s skin. “you know,” he repeats, and then they’re tripwheeling, spiraling through memory after memory-woohyun’s brother tripping him down the stairs and then shaking with fear when woohyun’s forehead starts bleeding. woohyun’s parents fighting, woohyun himself watching from the top of the stairs. woohyun laughing at a joke told by a slim, big-eyed boy, and later, that same pretty boy pressed against woohyun’s mattress, half-unclothed, gasping. it’s too much. it’s too much.
“i don’t know you,” sunggyu repeats, and jerks his wrist out of woohyun’s grasp. woohyun’s nails leave welts on his wrist.
he runs.
sunggyu makes it as far as the main road before he drops to his knees and vomits behind a bush, and can’t quite meet the eyes of the pretty noona who stops to ask him if he’s all right.
“hyung, maybe you should stop letting dongwoo talk you into watching horror movies,” sungyeol suggests, and myungsu frowns at the scratches on his wrist but doesn’t say anything at all. sunggyu privately thinks he might be losing his mind. this isn’t science fiction. ghosts do not exist.
but.
sunggyu wakes up in the middle of the night with a sheen of sweat on his forehead, half-hard, panting. it’s not arousal, just adrenaline, but he still slides a hand under his sheets and touches himself, thinking about lonely dark eyes and pianist’s fingers. this is all so fucked-up. sunggyu comes with a name half-formed on his tongue, and takes a scalding shower to wash away the shame; when he emerges, his skin is pink and raw but he feels just as guilty as ever.
“i’m losing my mind,” he tells his reflection, but his reflection has nothing to say.
the house is empty when sunggyu comes back, but sunggyu can tell that it isn’t vacant. it’s too still, the windows too empty, the silence too oppressive. the animal part of sunggyu’s mind tells him to bolt, and the adrenaline is there like his body is about to be in motion-and still he stands on the walkway to the front door and says, “i know you’re watching.”
he breathes, and woohyun is sitting on the steps. “what do you want?” he asks. his voice does not sound kind.
truthfully, sunggyu doesn’t really know.
“you can’t just spring that kind of thing on people,” he says instead of answering the question. “the whole stay with me forever thing. humans are delicate.”
woohyun’s brow furrows. he turns his face into his shoulder, looking away. “i was human once, too,” he says. sunggyu hears the hurt and sadness in his voice, and it feels like being punched in the teeth. “not all that long ago, actually. it must not seem like that anymore.”
“that’s not what i meant.”
“then what did you mean?” woohyun’s eyes are very dark when his gaze meets sunggyu’s again. “why are you here, sunggyu?”
“i don’t know.”
it’s the truth, but it still makes woohyun flinch. sunggyu feels sorry about that. woohyun has been dealt enough hurt in his lifetime to last for several. “i don’t know,” he repeats, “but i think it’s because i know you were human. are human, sort of.”
“sort of.” woohyun snorts indelicately. “you’re either human or you’re not.”
sunggyu takes a step forward, hands clenching at his sides. he can’t figure out why he feels so passionate about this. what is it that’s driving him to behave like this, to be the champion of the downtrodden for this spectre of a boy that he barely even knows? “humanity isn’t about having a body,” sunggyu says. “it’s about. about-love, and hate, and feeling things. you feel a lot of things, woohyun. and it’s about what makes us individuals, instead of all just being like sheep or pigs or something.”
“you’re so eloquent.”
“shut up.” sunggyu thinks that maybe woohyun has lost touch of what made him human, once. maybe the cruel fingers of loneliness and isolation have taken that from him. what sunggyu wouldn’t give to give it back. “i’m being honest here, okay?”
“but you don’t even know me,” woohyun replies, his tone a lilting, sing-song mockery of the words sunggyu had spit in his face only a few days ago. it hurts. sunggyu deserves that.
“i can’t stay with you forever,” sunggyu says. “the best i can do is come by when i’m free and keep you company.”
“free?”
the word sounds like poison when woohyun says it. it almost tastes bitter on sunggyu’s tongue, too. residue. he shouldn’t have said that.
“i used to go to church when i was a kid, you know,” woohyun says. he sounds conversational, casual, but the darkness of his eyes and the whiteness of his knuckles belie the violence of the storm inside him. “you know what they teach you at church about what happens when you die, sunggyu? do you know?”
sunggyu hasn’t been to church since he was twelve, but he knows. “paradise,” he says.
“that’s right. paradise. they tell you that if you’re good, if you’re kind and treat everyone with respect and love god, then you’ll go to paradise.” woohyun’s expression twists, half cruel anger and half deep, deep pain. “is this my paradise?”
“woohyun-”
“is this all there is?” woohyun snaps. “i was a good kid, sunggyu, i went to church and went to school and didn’t even fucking narc on the sunbae who made me blow him behind the athletic supply building.”
sunggyu doesn’t know what to say. he doesn’t know what to say in the face of such crippling anger and fear and betrayal. he’s never felt that before, hopes he never does, and he doesn’t know what the magic words are. he doesn’t know the salve that will heal these wounds. “woohyun,” he says, because that’s all he can say.
woohyun goes quiet. he buries his face against his arm, but sunggyu can see the trembling in his shoulders.
“this is the rest of my existence,” he finally says. “this is everything there is for me. i don’t get paradise, sunggyu. i just get this empty house. that’s it.”
“woohyun, stop it,” sunggyu says, desperate, and takes the few more steps necessary to grab woohyun by the shoulders and hug him, close and not altogether warm (because ghosts don’t have body heat). but it’s contact. sunggyu has never been good at words, but he gives good hugs.
“this isn’t it,” sunggyu says, low and fierce. “you won’t be lonely, woohyun. i promise.”
woohyun takes a deep, shuddering breath-the memory of a deep breath-and wraps his hands around sunggyu’s wrists.”not anymore,” he says.
and then that icy grip closes around his heart, shattered ice in his veins, and sunggyu realizes a little too late.
it’s not at all the way sunggyu expects it to be.
when he remembers who he is, the world is nothing like he remembers. it’s cold. it’s very cold, and everything is very grey. the colors of the world are muted. sunggyu feels like he’s breathing in slow motion, and then realizes that he’s not breathing anymore.
“no,” he says, just to test his voice.
what comes out isn’t a voice as much a it is the memory of a voice. he can hear it in his mind, and it echoes in his ears, but there’s no substance. no sound. sunggyu isn’t sure how he knows that no one else can hear him speak.
“no,” he says, scrambling upright. his hands grind into the broken glass on the ground, and the pain doesn’t register. “no, no, what did you do to me-”
“i brought you home,” woohyun says. his voice sounds distant too. a very old recording being played in another room-that’s what it sounds like. “to stay. you can stay here, sunggyu. with me.”
through the window, sunggyu can see the edge of the world where the woods fade into pitch blackness, sticky and thick. tar black. “what is this place?” he asks. it’s a very stupid question. this is woohyun’s world, his playground. someplace between living and death, and sunggyu is trapped. his soul feels anchored to the floorboards in this house, to the walls themselves. he can’t leave.
woohyun comes up behind him, a faint presence behind him. “it’s paradise, sunggyu,” he says, and his fingers are cold on sunggyu’s wrist. “it’s paradise.”
(part 1) (part 2)