romaniranch fic dump 3 [diamonds 2/2]
there's diamonds in your eyes [2/2]
Sehun seems to spend a lot of time in the music room, Joonmyun comes to realize. Perhaps he likes being surrounded by noise, since it’s the closest he has to getting his headphones back.
He’s in there now, and Joonmyun goes to meet him. He’s got his CD player in his hand, once again sans headphones.
“You like music a lot, don’t you?” Joonmyun asks, sitting down across from Sehun on one of the long grey tables in the corner of the room.
“Yeah, I guess,” Sehun mumbles, only glancing up at Joonmyun for a moment before returning his eyes to the purple device in his hands.
“That’s good,” Joonmyun says, leaning over the table, resting his chin in his palm. “I liked it a lot more as a kid, I wish I was as into it now.”
Sehun nods, and then looks up, like he’s reading the words he’s saying on the ceiling, except they don’t sound the slightest bit rehearsed. “Music reminds me of things… it’s like a weird way of storing memories, a song can take you right back to how you felt when you first heard it, or when you couldn’t stop listening to it.”
Sehun looks down then, presses the ‘next’ button on his CD player a few times.
“What does this song remind you of?” Joonmyun asks, tilting his chin in the direction of the device.
Sehun breathes in, and exhales at the same time as he says, “Being happy.”
Joonmyun smiles. “That’s always a good thing. I wish I had something like that I could… control, I guess.”
Sehun’s brows lift. “You seem pretty happy, most of the time.”
“What makes you say that?” Joonmyun asks.
“You’re always smiling.”
Joonmyun chuckles. “It’s a learned skill.”
“Oh,” Sehun says, and he looks back down to his hands, fiddling with this CD player.
“I also tend to smile when I’m around people I like, so there’s that,” Joonmyun quickly adds, lower lip tightening in efforts to keep from smiling now, proving his point. He fails when Sehun looks up to grin at him.
Later that night, Sehun is nowhere to be found again. Joonmyun has a quick look around his bed, and sees his CD player is also missing.
Quietly, he walks out to the main hallway, rounding the corner until the front desk is in his line of sight. He peeks up towards the cubby holes behind the main desk, and specifically at the top row. There is a distinct lack of purple headphones in them, and Joonmyun smiles.
-
His mother is here.
Joonmyun is almost thirty, but he feels like a child in her presence. She’s here because it’s the day she’d promised to come visit. But his father isn’t here, and neither is his sister. Joonmyun’s heart feels like it’s sinking, and it’s taking all of his insides along with it.
She sighs after just looking at him. She looks tired, worn out, and Joonmyun knows it’s his fault, it’s always been his fault.
The thing is, she told him beforehand that his father couldn’t come, but she didn’t mention his sister-
“You know she isn’t here,” his mother says, voice quiet yet firm.
Joonmyun would feel dizzy if this couch wasn’t so old, wasn’t sucking him in and wrapping him in foam and scratchy fabric.
Joonmyun nods at his mother, and then says, “I’m sorry. I think I’m getting better, really, I’ll make her proud of me. Dad too, and you.”
His mother’s face is virtually twisted in disappointment, and she seems as though she almost can’t even look at him. He’s a failure, he knows. Everyone knows.
By the time Joonmyun gets back to his room, he’s lost all of the feeling in his upper legs. He sits on the end of his bed this time, instead of the side, and faces the wall.
He would describe the feeling as numb, but that isn’t quite it. Numb means his fingers wouldn’t tingle like he’s standing over the edge of the building he was too afraid to jump from, numb means his chest wouldn’t feel so hollow it aches. Things fade, in and out of consciousness, and this isn’t what being numb feels like. Numb is feeling nothing, numb is a privilege. This just feels like torture, a punishment that consumes him, inside and out.
Joonmyun probably wouldn’t have known Sehun was there if he didn’t move to sit next to him, if he didn’t speak. He feels his presence like a quiet wind, something you feel but don’t quite see.
“She didn’t come to see you, did she?” Sehun asks quietly.
Joonmyun stares down at his hands, curls in his fingers until he’s scraping at his own palms. He shakes his head to answer Sehun’s question.
“Can I sleep in your bed tonight?” Sehun whispers.
“Okay,” Joonmyun says, because he doesn’t have the energy to see the disappointment he’s caused on another person’s face.
Joonmyun gets up from his bed, walks slowly over to Sehun’s bed to lift the covers and burrow beneath them, but Sehun’s hand on his waist stops him.
“I meant with you in it,” Sehun says.
Sehun snuggles into Joonmyun, curls around him like a protective layer, added skin and bone and muscle. Joonmyun would cry if he could, but he’s more upset that he doesn’t feel anything, he wants to feel something from this.
Right now all he feels is the physical warmth of a body behind his. He feels Sehun’s heartbeat, Sehun’s body and biology alive, but nothing deeper than that. He desperately wants to feel the way he did when Sehun’s hand touched his thigh, when he brought feeling to something he thought was long dead.
Sehun’s arm is a gentle weight over his waist, and he holds Joonmyun in his sleep so carefully. Joonmyun thinks that if things were different he might turn around, might press his face into the warm skin at Sehun’s throat, might let the beats of their hearts mingle, but for now… for now he doesn’t feel like moving.
-
Joonmyun eats breakfast the next morning, mind a clouded haze of dulled emotion. He half wonders if this is what Sehun feels like, but he knows the whole him-feeling-nothing accusations aren’t true at all.
He does notice some things, but it’s like the edges of his vision blur whatever he can’t see. He can’t see the person next to him, but he can see the small flecks of dust that hover in the slotted beams of sunlight that pour in through the blinds at the window. He can’t see where the sun is, or anything outside the window, but he can see the people sitting one table down from him.
One of those people is Sehun, and he’s staring again, so Joonmyun looks down. Not because of discomfort, but because the repetition of the gesture makes it feel less special to him now. Like he’s a freak instead of something nice to look at.
Sehun isn’t sitting alone. Chanyeol is with him, leaning in to talk directly into Sehun’s ear, though Sehun keeps his eyes focused on Joonmyun. His face is distorted, pulling - he looks almost frustrated or upset.
All three of them manage to jump in surprise when a balled napkin hits Chanyeol on the ear, accompanied with a shriek of, “Stop whispering!”
When Joonmyun returns to his room for the night, after having stared at a blank piece of paper for the better part of the evening in writing therapy, Sehun is already there. He looks more than just frustrated now. He looks angry.
Joonmyun carefully sits on the side of the bed facing Sehun’s to remove his shoes, and something in Sehun snaps.
“You know your sister is dead, right? Tell me you know that.”
The way he barks it makes Joonmyun flinch. It’s like picking a scab solely to open a wound that you can dig a fingernail into again. It hurts, but you expect it. He nods slowly to answer his question, despite this.
“Were you lying to me then? To everyone?” Sehun asks.
Joonmyun glances up at Sehun, “No, I just-”
“Then what the fuck?”
“It’s just easier,” Joonmyun says, and saying it aloud feels like cutting strings, setting something free. “It’s easier to pretend it didn’t happen.”
Joonmyun allows himself to look at Sehun. The boy is chewing on his lower lip, elbows resting on knees, hands clutched tight together between them. His forehead would be wrinkled if he were older, his brows so tightly knit in an emotion Joonmyun isn’t sure he can decipher right now.
“Whose phone is it you call all the time?” Sehun asks.
“Hers,” Joonmyun says. “I know she’ll never pick up.”
“Shit, Joonmyun,” Sehun breathes, and then his hands are cradling his face, white blond strands of hair slipping through the cracks in his fingers like tiny rays of sunshine.
Maybe Joonmyun has been lying, but not about this. Perhaps he hasn’t made any progress at all. If that’s the case then he really has been lying to everyone - even himself.
He wishes he could see Sehun’s face. Not knowing what he thinks right now is killing him, hiding his expression against his palms. It’s one of the first times Sehun purposely refuses to look at him, and Joonmyun doesn’t like it.
“I wish it was me instead of her,” Joonmyun says quietly, and this, at least, gets Sehun to lift his head. “I think my parents do too, sometimes.”
“Fuck them, I don’t wish it was you, okay?”
Joonmyun smiles, solely for Sehun’s benefit. “I’m not as happy as people think. I’m just good at pretending.”
Sehun rests his chin into his palm, which makes his lips look pouty and soft. He looks at nothing and concentrates on it, like he’s thinking hard.
“Everyone has their demons, you just need to learn to live with them,” he mumbles, voice softened by the fact that he’s putting the weight of his head in his palm, “Make it so they don’t consume you, so you still have a least a little piece of yourself that hasn’t been tainted by what other people tell you is ‘okay’. Just… you have to stop pretending. Okay? Just stop.”
“I will,” Joonmyun says, nodding. His heart aches a little because no one’s ever told him to stop this out of concern for his own mental health. It’s always to benefit the people around him. “I’m sorry,” he adds.
“Stop apologizing for it. You don’t do it on purpose, so don’t apologize.”
They both sleep in Joonmyun’s bed again that night, Sehun’s chest once again fitted to Joonmyun’s back. He used to not be able to fall asleep unless he was straight on his back, facing the ceiling, but the soft sounds of Sehun’s breathing so close to his ear lulls him into it. He even feels the press of Sehun’s lips on his hair. Not quite a kiss, but just there, open, comfortable.
Sehun rests his bony arm around Joonmyun’s waist again, and it feels like he isn’t alone in this anymore.
-
Things get better over the next few days. Sehun is a constant presence at his side, and he even goes with Sehun to movement therapy instead of writing. They’ve started sharing a bed out of sheer comfort, and it’s nice. Joonmyun thinks he would miss it if Sehun decided he didn’t want to sleep there anymore. Sometimes Sehun hums songs as he falls asleep, and Joonmyun recognizes some of them. And sometimes Joonmyun traces the outline of Sehun’s fingers at his stomach, threads them together and holds, and Sehun never wakes. Sehun sleeps so heavily, in fact, that Joonmyun has stopped worrying about waking him when he gets up at the crack of dawn to wash his face.
The mirror in this bathroom is hazy, unclear. It’s made of plastic so that the patients can’t break it. Everything that comes in or out of here is viewed as a weapon of self destruction, and they’re good about catching things. The door doesn’t lock, but Joonmyun doesn’t mind it as much in here. Sehun could walk in and he wouldn’t feel uncomfortable. It’s worse out in the hallways, using the communal bathrooms feels like playing a game of risk.
Something is different today, a heavy weight against his chest, even standing. Sehun’s exit evaluation is tomorrow. There’s a chance this could be their last full day together. Sometimes Joonmyun thinks Sehun has done more for him than the doctors have, and he’s almost certain he’ll be given the OK.
He should be happy for him, and he is. But there’s this tiny selfish tug of disappointment, one that nags at the back of his mind, telling him they haven’t had enough time.
-
“Hey, sorry I’m not here right now. Leave me a message, and I’ll call you back. Bye!”
Joonmyun closes his eyes. Deep breath, in through the nose, three, four, five. Out through the mouth.
The beep of the machine after her voice feels like it’s suspended in mid air. Joonmyun doesn’t see it, and he’s sure he isn’t there, but he thinks of Sehun on the other side of the glass window, watching him.
He opens his eyes, and hangs up the phone.
-
Joonmyun does eventually go back to writing therapy. He’s more than established that movement is simply not his thing, and though he apparently has a nice voice, instruments seem like strange devices from the future, and he thinks he should probably stick with what he knows.
What he knows would usually be a letter to his sister. Another one to add to the growing file in his folder.
This time, though, he writes one to his parents.
It isn’t very long, only a page on one side, but it’s the most honest thing he’s ever written. In it he says how much he misses her, and how he doesn’t think he will ever stop comparing the worth of their lives. He says he’s sorry, too, but he clarifies what for, and gives meaning to it. He asks for them to be patient with him, to love him. That he will get better.
He stands from the table, clutching the letter in his hand, fingertips tingling as if he’s worried it may slip from his grasp.
Taking a few deep, calming breaths, he approaches the therapist.
“I want to send this one,” he says.
-
After writing therapy he feels much better, less like he’s weighed down by an invisible wet blanket, like he can breathe again. He feels a little guilty having spent so much time in the writing therapy room on Sehun’s last day, but he knows he’ll get to see him before he goes, he wouldn’t just leave like that.
On his way back to the room Joonmyun sees a small horde of nurses at his door, and then hears a sharp crack that sounds like something hitting the wall and shattering. One of the nurses is speaking loudly, but even still, he can hear Sehun’s pained voice beneath the chaos, and his heart lodges itself in his throat. He doesn’t intend to start running to the room as quickly as he does, only adding to the frenzy in the hall, but it’s like he can’t control it - his body is moving of its own accord.
When he gets there the nurses looks tired, pissed off. Joonmyun can’t see Sehun, only the back of him. His shoulder muscles ripple as he lifts his hands to his hair, pulling at it, his back heaving in quiet sobs.
“You might not want to go in there right now. He’s refused a tranquilizer and none of us feel like fighting with him,” one of the nurses says.
“Can I try talking to him? Please?”
The nurse shrugs, and shakes her head, waving him in. Whatever Sehun said, she must have taken some of it personally. Two of the other nurses stay in the hallway. It’s not like they can’t run back in if things escalate again. This door doesn’t have a lock.
Still, Joonmyun closes it quietly behind him as he enters. He immediately sees what the sound of something breaking was. Sehun’s CD player is on the floor, the top snapped off, and a dent in the wall above it. The CD must have rolled beneath the bed.
“Hey,” he says quietly, pressing a gentle hand to the center of Sehun’s back, and he can feel the boy trembling, shaking.
“They’re not letting me go,” he mumbles, and the waver in his voice makes Joonmyun’s heart ache. “My parents think I’m not ready yet.”
“I’m sorry, Sehu-”
Sehun snaps backwards, and Joonmyun nearly stumbles to get out of his way. Sehun rounds his bed, grabs the tissue box on the side table, the brand new one he’d never bothered to open, and chucks it violently at the same point of the wall where he’d thrown his CD player. It obviously doesn’t make as much of an impact.
Frustrated by this, Sehun sits down on his bed and grabs his pillow. He clutches it so tight in his lap, squeezing the material, that his knuckles go white. Joonmyun sees just enough of his face to know hes so, so desperately holding back tears - angrily so.
“They always tell me what I do wrong,” Sehun mumbles, his voice ruined from probably screaming while Joonmyun wasn’t even close enough to hear. “It’s never about what I do right, not once have they ever told me I’m doing something fucking right.”
Joonmyun is still standing awkwardly in the same position as when he pulled away from Sehun so he could lash out. He makes the snap decision to walk over to the wall to pick up the pieces of Sehun’s CD player, and he leans down under the bed to get the actual CD. He places all of this on the table by the window, and then slowly, cautiously, sits next to Sehun on his own bed, facing him with one leg tucked under him.
“Why did they think you weren’t ready?” he asks quietly.
“Because they don’t want to deal with me, it’s easier to keep me in a cage,” Sehun grumbles.
Joonmyun isn’t really thinking when he places his hand on Sehun’s wrist at the pillow in his lap. He holds the back of his hand, and traces around the bone there with his thumb.
“You’ll be out of here soon,” he says softly, “I think you’re fine, really.”
“Yeah?”
Sehun looks at him now, and it’s obvious he has been crying. His face is red with it, his eyes raw and sore. He is still the most beautiful person Joonmyun thinks he has ever seen. Perhaps it’s amplified by the fact that he’s trying so hard to hold back his tears that they’re clinging to his eyelashes, and it almost looks like his eyes are sparkling.
“Yeah,” Joonmyun replies, and Sehun keeps looking at him expectantly, waiting.
Joonmyun decides then to stop fighting instinct, and he leans forward, hand still braced on Sehun’s wrist, and kisses him.
Sehun’s lips are cold, and a little damp. He gasps quietly into Joonmyun’s mouth, and the movement makes it so Joonmyun’s lip catches on Sehun’s, tugging a little. His hand turns to grip Sehun’s, but in this he realizes Sehun hasn’t moved. He’s frozen, rigid, and he’s so softly timid about kissing him back.
Joonmyun immediately pulls back, heart sinking through the floor, and he covers his mouth.
“Sehun, I’m so sorry.”
Sehun’s brow furrows again, angry or confused - possibly both. “What was that?”
Joonmyun laughs, a kneejerk reaction to the feeling of rejection, but Sehun looks equally as wounded.
“I don’t know, I’m sorry.”
Joonmyun gets up, leaves the room, and ignores the way the nurses in the hall call after him.
-
These hallways are now etched into Joonmyun’s mind, a mental map that’s more instinct than memory. It’s like dialing his sister’s phone number - he couldn’t tell you how he knows it, he just does.
He paces the entire length of the therapy rooms, back around on himself, around the cafeteria. He walks, and walks, and hopes if he does it for long enough he can somehow erase what he just did, that he can take it back. He doesn’t need Sehun like that, he never did. He needs Sehun’s eyes on him in group, a steady constant to focus on, block everything else that’s bad. He needs Sehun’s solid warmth as a reminder that he isn’t alone.
He doesn’t need to kiss Sehun, but he wants to.
He wants to feel Sehun’s skin on his, wants his hands on his thighs, bringing feeling to something he thought was numb. He wants to taste Sehun’s tongue, catch a small piece of his DNA, take a part of him and give back a part of himself.
Sexual desire somehow takes a backseat when the first thing on your personal agenda is dying, but he wants it with Sehun. He wants his hands on his body, his mouth, his hair against his cheek, he wants to share the same breath, he wants to feel so profoundly, like he’s perhaps never felt anything before, not since the cut of the blades on his thighs, and not as painful.
But he should be ashamed by this, and he is. Sehun is a boy, Sehun barely knows what he wants, nevermind what he actually needs. What he doesn’t need is a miserable office worker approaching his thirties falling in love with him.
By the time he comes back to his room later, the nurses are no longer stationed in the hallway outside their door. But that isn’t why he’s nervous going in.
He gasps the minute he turns from closing the door quietly, because Sehun is right in front of him, crowding him into the doorway, his face set hard, mouth firm. Joonmyun hasn’t been actually afraid of Sehun before, but he is now.
“Why did you kiss me?” Sehun asks, voice quiet like a whisper, though the words are packed with force.
Joonmyun is adamant to prove he isn’t a liar. Definitely not to Sehun.
“Because I wanted to. I’m sorry.”
His heart feels like it’s going to tear a hole in his chest, it’s beating so hard. Sehun is so close, so close Joonmyun is backed into the wall by the door, and he’s got that angrily concentrated tightness to his brows.
And then his eyes flicker down to Joonmyun’s mouth, and his face softens, and Joonmyun knows. He can feel it, can almost taste it, which is why he leans up to meet him.
Kissing Sehun this time is somewhat shocking, when Sehun obviously wants it just as bad as he does. His lips aren’t as cold, but they’re still damp, he’s clearly been biting them anxiously. Unconsciously at the thought, Joonmyun closes his teeth around Sehun’s lower lip, biting down softly, and Sehun groans right into his mouth.
When he pulls away this time his pupils are blown so wide his eyes almost look black, and he barely pulls away far enough for them to speak, so Joonmyun knows this isn’t an escape.
He’s breathing so heavily, Joonmyun thinks every inhale of his own is all Sehun’s breath, it’s all around him.
“If you’re gonna kiss someone, do it like you mean it, okay, you have to mean it,” he murmurs, mouth so close Joonmyun can feel the words on his lips.
Joonmyun exhales, slides his hands up Sehun’s chest, around his neck, up into his hair, and he pulls him down. The kiss this time is slower, but still deep. Sehun slides his tongue along Joonmyun’s, coaxing it into his mouth when Joonmyun parts his lips. His heart is pounding so heavily, and it feels so suddenly weak and frail, that he thinks something might be medically wrong with him. He clutches Sehun’s bicep with his hand and squeezes, which seems to be a silently successful way at getting him to pull away.
“I mean it,” Joonmyun mumbles, and then Sehun has a hand around his waist, pulling him, walking them both backwards, faces still so, so close.
Falling back into the bed is easy, it feels like their route was planned for them, like their bodies are moving with the knowledge of their final destination, and their hearts are only there to fuel the journey. The door doesn’t lock - anyone could come in, but they won’t. And even if they did, Joonmyun doesn’t have the mental capacity to care.
Sehun has Joonmyun on his back, settled between his legs, and everything shifts the minute Joonmyun pushes his hips up, feels the hardness in Sehun’s pajama bottom run just along the side of his own. Sehun whimpers and curls his body around Joonmyun, presses his face into his neck, and won’t stop heaving in every single breath.
Sehun rolls his own hips this time, and moans, his mouth a hot, wet point of pressure against Joonmyun’s throat. Joonmyun shifts himself until their erections are together, separated only by two flimsy pieces of fabric, and then he kisses Sehun’s ear, and it’s like some kind of trigger is pulled.
Sehun pulls back, sits on his knees, and everything is frantic, rushed. Joonmyun tries to sit up himself, thinking he needs to help him with whatever it is he’s doing, but Sehun only pushes him back flat. Sehun manages to yank the covers out from under them and tosses it over them completely, and the fact that they’re both breathing so heavily means that the air under here quickly turns hot and muggy.
Sehun yanks Joonmyun’s pants down just past his hips, and then shimmies out of his own, which slip down further towards his knees with how he’s standing, and then he collapses back on top of Joonmyun, kissing him hard and wet.
Joonmyun’s entire body is so overwhelmed with heightened feeling, his toes tingling, his stomach knotting so much it aches in a pleasant way, that when Sehun actually grips both of their dicks in his one hand, Joonmyun yelps.
Sehun nibbles on the tip of Joonmyun’s tongue, and then bites down hard enough to make him whimper.
“We have to be quiet, okay?” he murmurs against Joonmyun’s mouth, and Joonmyun nods.
They find a rhythm that works. Sehun’s hand moves at rapid speed, that Joonmyun thinks, lewdly, is thanks to more recent teenage experience. But with that he begins to push his hips up, adding their dicks sliding together to the friction of Sehun’s hand. He has his cheek pressed against Sehun’s now, both breathing too heavily, and too dizzy with arousal to be able to kiss.
Joonmyun’s mouth is open, right by Sehun’s ear, when he thinks he says, “I’m coming,” though he probably only just murmurs and breathes.
By the time they’ve both finished, Joonmyun’s sleep t-shirt is utterly ruined by both of their spunk, and Sehun is collapsed on him, laughing, his own shirt absorbing some of the sticky mess.
Joonmyun ends up laughing too, though he isn’t sure why. Nothing about this is funny, but he’s happy, at least. Perhaps it’s just a reactionary release of endorphins, the leftover dregs of his orgasm still making his knees tremble.
They don’t say anything for a while, and Sehun doesn’t move. The damp spot between their stomachs is starting to cool and feel gross, but bigger, more important than that, Sehun’s heartbeat is still thudding so loudly that Joonmyun can hear it in his own head.
After a while - minutes, seconds, perhaps hours - Sehun presses his face into Joonmyun’s chest, nuzzles the crease of his arm at his shoulder with his nose. He’s still panting and shaking, and he says, “I feel so many things when I’m with you.”
Joonmyun inhales. One, two, three, four, five.
He feels like crying, but it’s the good kind. The kind that washes over you, a warm blanket of relief mixed with elation. His eyes fill up, and his throat feels too tight, so he doesn’t say anything, doesn’t say that Sehun makes him feel like living, even though he does. He just squeezes Sehun’s waist, holding him tighter, and hopes he understands
-
It’s another Tuesday.
Joonmyun expects Sehun to be gone, so it’s a bit of a shock to see him there, sitting on the edge of Joonmyun’s bed like he’s been waiting for him.
“Can I show you something?” he asks, small smile lighting up his eyes, his mouth tight with trying to hide it.
Joonmyun grins and nods.
Sehun tosses him a hoodie to wear, and then escorts them both towards the nurses offices. Joonmyun is too caught up in examining how Sehun’s clothes fit him, how much longer the arms on the sleeves are, and how he already recognizes the smell of him, that he doesn’t see Sehun walk right up to the security staff by reception.
It’s late enough now that he’s one of the only staff members up front, and Joonmyun recognizes this as the guy Chanyeol is usually caught talking to. He opens the door to the stairwell for them, and then the door at the side wall which leads up towards the roof. Joonmyun stares curiously at Sehun, until the security staff member speaks.
“You have one hour, alright?” he says, and Sehun nods, waving him away.
Sehun drags Joonmyun up to the roof by the oversized sleeve of his hoodie, and then collapses on the set gravel on the ground once the door clunks closed behind them. He digs into the front pocket of his own hoodie and pulls out a pack of cigarettes and a lighter.
“Want one?” he asks, offering the box to Joonmyun.
Joonmyun shakes his head, “Don’t smoke.”
Sehun lies back, his head pillowed by his hood, and Joonmyun sits cross legged at his side, staring out at the tops of the buildings that surround them. It feels like forever since he’s been outside. Even with the scent of Sehun’s cigarette, the air feels fresher, more organic, despite being surrounded by industry and city smog.
“Is this where you go on Tuesdays?” Joonmyun asks.
“Yeah,” Sehun says, “They rehash the security tapes on Tuesday nights, Chanyeol found out. So I get my headphones and come up here to smoke and listen to music. Not this time, though.”
Joonmyun wants to ask where he got the lighter, and how that stays hidden from the staff. He figures Chanyeol has something to do with that too, and he doesn’t ask. Instead his mind lingers on the fact that Sehun brought him with him this time, let him into his own secret place.
Sehun stares up at the sky as he smokes. The wind whips past them, and Joonmyun is familiar enough with tall buildings to know why it’s always so much stronger up high. Joonmyun isn’t particularly bothered by the smoke, but he feels like teasing Sehun about it anyway.
“You should quit that,” he says, poking Sehun in the ribs with the knuckle of his index finger.
Sehun snorts. “Oh, okay, ‘cause I haven’t heard that one before.”
He lifts the smoke towards his mouth, but Joonmyun intercepts it, pulls it gently away from his fingers. He holds it awkwardly in one hand, while the other balances on the gravel to lean down so he can kiss Sehun. His lips taste faintly of ash, but the minute his tongue slips into Joonmyun’s mouth, he doesn’t notice it anymore.
“There are better things to do with your mouth,” Joonmyun says without thinking, and Sehun barks out a laugh so loud that it echos around them.
“Oh yeah?” Sehun says, still laughing, tilting his head up to peer at Joonmyun.
“Yeah.”
Sehun snatches the smoke back from Joonmyun’s hand, but before Joonmyun can think of scolding him, Sehun has flicked it away. Joonmyun watches it roll, smoke still burning from its ember, until it stops by the crease at the edge of the roof.
If he had paid attention, he would have seen Sehun watching him, smiling. He would have been less surprised by Sehun’s hands sliding into his hair, pulling him back down, kissing him hard and soft, all at once.
An hour doesn’t seem at all long enough up here, but Sehun feels different. He’s more relaxed, less tense and wound up. He shifts himself eventually, so that his head is resting in Joonmyun’s lap, and he closes his eyes like he could fall asleep this way.
Joonmyun plays with his hair, combs his fingers through it, and starts to hum the same song they’d sang together before in their room. He catches a hint of Sehun’s smile, and figures if he’s going to be the replacement for Sehun’s music, he might as well try and be decent at it.
Sehun’s smile fades into the ease of sleep, not out of disappointment, the minute Joonmyun very softly starts to sing, “Bye bye beautiful, don’t bother to write…”
-
Joonmyun skips writing for music therapy again, heading down there with Sehun for what Chanyeol has tentatively dubbed ‘band practice’. They get so into it that the music starts to sound like nothing more than a cacophony of noise, but Joonmyun can’t stop smiling. Eventually they figure out some sort of rhythm, and then Sehun is trying to convince him to dance.
Joonmyun twists away from him, backing up towards the tables at the edges of the room. “You know I don’t dance!”
“Are you kidding me right now? Nobody in here gives a shit, just move.”
He tugs Joonmyun hard enough to get him to finally give in, and then Joonmyun is very awkwardly bouncing around to the beat currently being led by Chanyeol’s drums. Even Chanyeol is dancing, hopping awkwardly around with the bongo still wedged between his knees, wiggling his hips on every landing.
Joonmyun feels like he probably looks his age right now - awkward and lacking confidence - but it doesn’t feel like Sehun’s laughing at him. If anything, it’s with him, since Joonmyun can’t stop laughing himself.
Later that night they tangle beneath the sheets of Joonmyun’s bed, legs twisted together, hearts synched, beating in time. Sehun kisses him until his lips are raw and sore, but Joonmyun’s chest is full of hope and love, and he wouldn’t change this for anything.
-
“What makes you happy?”
Group therapy is something that Joonmyun actually looks forward to. He finally has answers to give, he has things to remember, stories to tell.
“Weed!” Chanyeol practically yells, which earns him a scowl from the doctor. Well, that confirms where Sehun got his lighter from. “Hey, I’m being honest,” he adds, and she concedes him this, at least.
Sehun says music, not surprisingly. He looks steadily at Joonmyun when he says, “And that one song that will always remind you of something happy.”
When the discussion gets to Joonmyun, it isn’t negative energy that makes him nervous. It’s more social jitters, the kind that reminds him of being a teenager, maybe confessing to someone he liked in his class. Or maybe that first time Sehun kissed him back and said ‘you have to mean it’.
“Well, The Walking Stereotypes makes me happy, I think we might even be the next big thing,” he says, and Chanyeol whoops and rolls his fist in the air, punching an invisible bag. “But, more than that, just… music.”
He looks at Sehun as he says it, who is, unsurprisingly, looking right back at him. He wonders if Sehun knows what he means, that ‘music’ is really just a safe way of saying him.
At least now when Sehun stares, most times he’s smiling.
-
When Joonmyun gets back to their room after a day absorbed in writing letters to nobody, Sehun is sitting on the edge of his own bed, his knee bouncing, his entire body screaming barely restrained anxiety.
Joonmyun is afraid as he approaches him. Afraid for what might have happened, for whatever Sehun is feeling.
“Hey,” he says gently, standing in front of Sehun, whose head is dipped low, shoulders hunched. “What’s wrong?”
Sehun looks up suddenly, and it’s so, so quiet in here. Joonmyun could hear a pin drop. His eyes are full of tears, but he’s smiling, beaming.
“I’m getting out,” is all he says, and his voice wobbles enough that Joonmyun expects the sob that jerks him forward.
Joonmyun stands between his knees, Sehun still seated on the bed, and wraps his arms around Sehun’s shoulders as he presses his face into Joonmyun’s stomach.
Joonmyun doesn’t say anything, doesn’t know what to say. Part of him wants to beg him to stay, to not leave him alone here, but another, bigger part of him hates that he’s even remotely upset by the fact that he’s finally better - at least better enough to leave.
His own throat feels tight, so he waits, threads fingers through Sehun’s hair as Sehun tightens his arms around his waist, and when he speaks he knows his own voice is hoarse with unshed tears, but he has to say this to him.
“Sehun I am so, so proud of you.”
Sehun’s voice cracks on a heaving sob, and he squeezes Joonmyun so tight he nearly can’t breathe through it.
-
Joonmyun’s own evaluation is coming up soon. He hasn’t called or written his sister in a while, so he thinks he’s made progress, though he isn’t sure if it’s enough. He can’t even really think about it beyond that right now, because Sehun is leaving the ward after dinner, and Joonmyun tries his very best not to look as devastated by this as he feels.
The doctors said Sehun made a vast improvement. He was smiling more, interacting better with his peers and with the nurses. Sehun cried into his belly and kept saying it was him, all because of him. Joonmyun couldn’t even speak, could only continue to run fingers through his hair and hold him close. The mere notion that someone’s life might actually bebetter because of him is a hard thing to wrap his head around, but he believes Sehun.
Joonmyun goes to the communal bathrooms to cry. Not to hide it from the nurses and staff, he’s not afraid of losing points, but to hide it from Sehun. He cries and looks in the mirror, forces himself to watch the tears fall down his cheeks, to remember this emotion and what it feels like to lose someone in a positive way.
Unfortunately this means he’s prone to those who ignore the ‘occupied’ sign, which happens only a few minutes after he enters the bathroom, and his state of emotional suspension is abruptly interrupted.
The person apologizes and leaves, but Joonmyun isn’t mad, or even embarrassed. He turns back around and instead splashes water onto his face, washes the remnants of salty tears away from his cheeks and his mouth, so that Sehun won’t taste it on him, and then pats his face dry with paper towels.
He smiles at his reflection before he leaves the room, convinces himself he looks okay, despite the redness around his eyes. He makes a quick stop at their room to pick something up, before walking out towards reception
All goodbyes happen in the main foyer, so Joonmyun doesn’t get to properly say goodbye the way he wanted to. Not it like it matters, it wouldn’t hurt any less.
When Sehun sees him, his chin crinkles up, and Joonmyun hugs him so he doesn’t have to see it. They stay together, arms wrapped around each other, for probably far longer than is deemed acceptable by any two people that would be considered ‘friends’. Sehun is shaking in his arms, and Joonmyun doesn’t think he can prolong this anymore.
He pulls away and hands Sehun a small paper bag. Sehun looks at him curiously before taking it, and then his jaw drops when he pulls out his purple portable CD player.
“You fixed it?” he asks in disbelief.
The thing looks a mess now, but it works. Joonmyun tested it, with Chanyeol’s help. The top and the edges, where the hinges were, are all covered in duct tape, but Joonmyun seems to remember Sehun thinking battle scars were something to be admired, not ignored.
“Yeah. It doesn’t look like it’s fixed, but it works,” Joonmyun says.
“Thank you,” Sehun says sincerely, and then it looks as though he goes through some rapid wave of inner turmoil, before he decides to swiftly lean down and kiss Joonmyun, right out in the open.
Chanyeol yelps like a dog who’s had his tail stood on behind them, and Joonmyun blushes fiercely.
Sehun laughs, and then he’s balling up the paper bag, sticking it in the pocket of his coat, and then digging in his upper pocket to fish out a small, folded piece of paper. He hands this over to Joonmyun before he leaves with glistening eyes.
On the walk back to his room, alone, Joonmyun thinks this might be what numb feels like. He doesn’t even jump when Chanyeol’s arm lands around his shoulders.
“I knew you guys would happen, totally not surprised,” he says, despite the fact that he practically shrieked like a high school girl when they kissed.
And Joonmyun would laugh at this, but he doesn’t have the energy to, not yet.
Later on in his room, alone, Joonmyun unfolds the paper. On it is written three words.
‘Bye bye beautiful’
Joonmyun laughs through the tears that crowd his vision, and he squeezes the piece of paper in his hand with a grip that could turn ash to diamonds.
At least he didn’t add the part about not bothering to write.
-
Group therapy feels wrong without Sehun sitting across from him, but that doesn’t mean he’s taken any steps backwards. If anything he feels like barreling forwards, through all obstacles. He needs to get out now, needs to get better, because there’s something he wants out there, something for him to live for.
“Topic for today is if you could change one thing about your life, what would it be? Even things you know you actually can’t change, let’s think without boundaries here.”
Chanyeol’s answer surprises him. He says he would have learned an instrument much earlier, joined a real band and gotten good at it. Throughout his whole time here he’s never really seen Chanyeol as a human being with real emotions, more like a character that keeps stock and wants everyone to like him, but Joonmyun wonders how much of The Walking Stereotypes was his way of coping with things.
Joonmyun thinks about meeting Sehun as discussion falls to him. He thinks about the state of mind he was in when he admitted himself to this place. He thinks, and remembers, how it felt to share a room with someone you barely spoke to, and then how it felt to have that all change and be taken away from you.
He’s not as miserable as he should be. He knows their story hasn’t ended, only been put on pause. There was a time where he used to wish it was him that died instead of his sister. He’d wish for it so hard he’d give himself a headache with shutting his eyes so tightly. And he realizes now that he doesn’t want that anymore.
“I wouldn’t change anything,” he says definitively.
-
When his mother comes to see him again, she looks good. Well rested, less frazzled. She’s wearing a bright turquoise blazer and her hair is curled, and Joonmyun wonders if anyone’s told her how pretty she is lately.
She’s holding his letter in her hand, he notices. She holds it up at him as she says, “Thank you for this.”
“You don’t have to thank me, mom,” he says to her, quiet, as if anyone would listen in on this conversation that they’ve been needing to have for years.
Her eyes are shining with tears, and she nods and says, “I just want you to live your life for you. Not in anyone’s shadow. That’s all I’ve ever wanted.”
Joonmyun’s throat tightens, despite the rest of his body thrumming with relief. He nods a few times, keeps his emotions in check. She’ll cry for sure if he does.
“I think I want that too,” he says, and he means it.
-
Packing up his things to leave feels surreal. He’s embedded his soul into this building, and to realize he hadn’t brought much of himself into it to begin with is a strange feeling, but it doesn’t bother him all that much.
He’s got his bag stuffed with his clothes and toiletries, shoved under his arm, the only way to carry it without its strap. Before he heads to the main entrance, he makes a stop at the call room, lifts the yellow receiver gently from the phone.
The answering machine beeps, and he leaves his message.
“Hi mom. I’ll be leaving here in a minute. I’m just going to go back to my own place tonight, try to get settled. I have my phone again though, you can call me. We can go out for dinner tomorrow, like you said.”
He’s standing as he says all this, bag still held awkwardly beneath his arm, against his ribs.
“I love you, mom,” he adds with a gentle smile, and then quietly hangs up the phone.
The nurse returns his shoelaces, and he can’t imagine wearing his shoes with them again, so he stuffs them into his bag to deal with later. She gives him back the strap for his bag, and then all of his pens and his notebook.
Joonmyun puts on his belt, refastening it and adjusting his shirt to cover it, before putting on his long fleece coat. It doesn’t seem as cold out now, but Joonmyun still sees the cool morning fog from the windows when he wakes.
Stepping outside of the building is equally as terrifying as it is thrilling. He hadn’t realized how quiet the ward had been until now - until his ears are filled with the sounds of life buzzing around him, cars running, people laughing, yelling, dogs barking.
When he breathes in the air this time, it feels like he’s absorbing it with a new pair of a lungs, a fresh body and a new perspective on things. He’s alone when he leaves, but he came in alone too, so it’s only fitting.
It doesn’t last long, though. His eyes follow the trail of a bus, which rides past the intersection to reveal a tall, blond boy standing on the other side of the street, his hair bleached white and styled up off his forehead. He’s got a black coat on and skinny jeans, black gauges in his ears, and he’s smiling - all teeth and curved eyes - and Joonmyun is so hopelessly in love.
Sehun waits for him to cross, grinning and shifting his weight from foot to foot, bouncing with energy and barely restrained nerves. He grabs Joonmyun when he’s close enough, pulls him in and holds him close. Joonmyun inhales that scent that he’d missed, the one that only lingered on his pillow for a few days after he left.
“Welcome home,” Sehun says against the shell of his ear, and Joonmyun smiles.