Chapter Text
Since nothing in Kihyun’s life ever goes even slightly how he imagines it would, their formidable rescue doesn’t either. First of all the person who opens the door isn’t some sort of nefarious grandma, it’s just a dude holding a tiny dog. The dog is so tiny everyone fixates on that for way too long. It has huge button-like black eyes that stare back at them. Absolutely nothing is going on behind those eyes, though, and Kihyun wonders how tiny this dog’s brain must be. Maybe the size of a walnut. Now that he thinks about it, walnuts kind of look like brains, really. And then he remembers reading somewhere that plants are actually smart; in the sense they can communicate quite elaborately, sometimes even wage all out wars or conversely help each other out. Nature is so wonderful. Everything is connected. He’s getting all misty eyed just thinking about it.
“Are you okay?” Minhyuk asks him right in his ear, at his usual volume. Kihyun flinches away both from him and incoming tinnitus, and “no,” he answers miserably. Minhyuk pats him on the shoulder with a little sigh. Tuning back into reality Kihyun realizes Jooheon is talking with the guy at the door. Naturally Kihyun had assumed the dude was Doodle, but it’s not him. It’s the other hostage.
“Why didn’t you just leave?” a guy from the child squad is asking him. The guy just shrugs, scratching his tiny dog behind the ears.
“It’s not like I have an apartment to go back to,” he says matter-of-factly. That’s a fair point to make, and Kihyun wonders absently if maybe the population has grown a little bit too desensitized over time. As if the constant super-whatever’s shenanigans had had some impact on everyone’s cognitive functions and produced a whole generation of people who just don’t feel anything. Maybe scientists should look into it. Even if, well, it’s not quite true that they’re not feeling anything. For one, Kihyun feels way too much. About plants and tiny dogs, and Hyungwon must of all. But still. Maybe scientists are already looking into it, though, Kihyun isn’t really up-to-date with whatever is going on in the scientific community. He’s already not up-to-date with whatever is going on right in front of his eyes, having missed when the hell did the conversation shift to how delicious Doodle’s grandma’s hotteoks are.
“I told you guys they were good!” Jooheon is beaming excitedly, and the toddler team is nodding with way too much enthusiasm for people supposed to be the arm of justice or whatever.
“It’s uncanny,” the hostage is saying, and then he launches into an extremely detailed description of the exact taste, breaking down second-by-second what exactly happens after you take a bite. The guy has a way with words, Kihyun can give him that. He actually feels himself salivating and Changkyun is just straight-up drooling. It takes about fifteen minutes of standing around talking about the ratio of sugar to cinnamon for Kihyun to remember that’s not what they’re here for. He has a potentially single roommate to rescue, and a supervillain to beat up. Or at least scream at. Or glower at? Judging from how chill this particular hostage is, Doodle might not be all that mean but he still melted a whole building.
“Excuse me,” Kihyun tries to interrupt, but gets steamrolled over by Felix asking something about texture, launching the guy into another long-winded rant about the ideal heat to cooking time ratio necessary to achieve the perfect, most desirable outcome. Kihyun glowers at Felix but the kid is too busy staring at the dude with stars in his eyes to even notice, which means a lot considering how into being glowered at he seems to be. Why don’t they just go in to eat those damn hotteoks is beyond Kihyun.
“What’s going on?” someone next to him asks and Kihyun shrugs. He doesn’t even have the energy to be annoyed.
“Everyone is a dumbass,” he answers flatly and the guy laughs. He has a nice, ha-ha-ha laugh that has Kihyun look at him, and that’s when he realizes that yeah, this dude is definitely not part of the infant clan, but he’s not one of his own friends either. He has a nice, open face though, and Kihyun feels immediately at ease. Maybe he’s just a friendly neighbor getting concerned about the amount of people gathering in the next-door grandma’s yard. What a nice young man, with his handsome smile and pleasant, slightly accented voice. He seems like the helpful, considerate type. A guy with principles who would give good advice. He doesn’t look sticky like Changkyun, he has no gross stains anywhere like Minhyuk, and he doesn’t look weirdly slippery like Jooheon does. Maybe this is the type of person Kihyun needs in his life. Maybe everything would be better if he had this type of friend, instead of the usual gaggle of lunatics he hangs out with.
Now is the time to change his life, he thinks, and turns fully towards the guy, a smile plastered on his face. Kindly neighbor takes a step back, his handsome smile wavering a little, and Kihyun tries to tone down the intensity before opening his mouth. He doesn’t have time to say anything, though. Jooheon beats him to it.
“Yo Doodle!” he screams, throwing his arms wide open.
“Dude!” kindly-neighbor says, bro-hugging the living hell out of Jooheon while Kihyun looks on, dread pooling low in his stomach.
“How long have you been here?” Jooheon is asking, and nice-young-man answers in his pleasant voice.
“Since that child almost got vehicular manslaughter-ed by that shitty car,” he answers.
“Not a child,” Felix says almost automatically, while the too-buff-for-a-toddler dude from the juvenile coterie vehemently defends their car’s honor. Kihyun takes this time to speed run the five stages of grief.
“Is this what you guys do?” Minhyuk is asking. “Just stand around until you feel like making yourselves known?”
Doodle smiles at him, but he doesn’t have time to answer. A cloud of seething hatred is standing in his way.
“You melted my building,” Kihyun grits out from behind clenched teeth. Doodle has the guts to look bashful.
“I’m sorry?” he tries, but Kihyun can tell he doesn’t mean it. That’s just the thing with people like him. They do not care about all the inconveniences they cause others. They are a plague upon mankind and Kihyun is blessed to be surrounded by upright, kind people who stand by him when absolute wastes of space like Doodle decide their hobbies are worth wrecking everyone else’s very important schedule. Sure his friends might be a little sticky and stain-y but no one is perfect. No matter what he said earlier; it was in the privacy of his own thoughts and nobody heard.
“I liked my building,” Kihyun continues, and he can feel a vein throb at his forehead. Judging by how wide-eyed and red Felix looks standing right next to Doodle, Kihyun must appear as unhinged as he feels. “I lived there. It had all my stuff in it,” he continues. “It had my roommate.”
“Oh, he’s safe!” Doodle says with a bright smile as if that would make anything better. It does a little bit, but Doodle doesn’t have to know. Kihyun feels like biting his face off, which is the second time he feels like that in one day. It’s a little worrying. Maybe he just needs to get it out of his system.
“I’m gonna bite your face off,” he says then because everyone deserves a warning, even absolute bastards who melt his building and kidnap his roommate. Felix’s barely contained moan kind of stops him in his tracks though, and both Doodle and him stare until the kid sort of shrinks into himself.
“I’m sorry,” Felix squeaks, and the guy next to him starts to awkwardly pat him on the shoulder as Felix hangs his head in shame. There is so much to unpack here but that’s when Jooheon decides to intervene, taking both Kihyun and Doodle’s hands into his own.
“Aw guys,” he says, “come on, we should all be friends. Nothing really dire happened after all.”
“I’m homeless,” Kihyun remarks absently, and that does give Jooheon pause.
“But you’re alive!” is what he comes up with after a few seconds of intense thinking and Kihyun shoots him a glowering stare. Being alive is basically the source of all his problems.
“There’s fates worse than death,” he enunciates calmly. “Like what I’m going to do to Doodle.”
“I mean, that weird child has a point,” Doodle says then, gesturing to Felix who’s still too ashamed to defend his status as a non-child. “If you’re talking about biting my face off I might actually be into it.”
Kihyun whimpers, the sound following him all the way down to the ground where he crouches, face buried in his hands. Why is this so difficult? Why can no one be normal? Why is this the world he lives in? So many unanswered questions. He wishes he was a walnut-brained tiny dog or a smart tree or something other than some pathetic little dude with a pathetic little crush and terrible friends who expect him to play nice with some guy who melted his goddamn building. Where is he going to live? This is all kind of awful.
“You can stay at my grandma’s place,” Doodle says as a peace offering. “She’s barely alive, she won’t even notice.”
“That’s true,” says the hostage, hoisting his tiny dog higher on his arm. “It’s like she’s mostly dead, unless she makes hotteok, in which case she is mostly alive.”
“That sounds dreadful,” Kihyun croaks. Doodle is patting him on the top of his head and he doesn’t even have the energy to slap his hand away.
“Do you want to go in and have hotteok?” Doodle asks then, voice all soft and placating.
“Yeah,” Kihyun answers a little pathetically, eyes brimming with tears. He is so tired. Doodle nods, taking hold of his wrist to help him get up. For some reason Kihyun limps all the way to the front door, Doodle supporting his weight as if Kihyun was some sort of wounded little soldier with mortar shell in his leg. Kihyun really commits to the bit too, wincing in pain as they climb the stairs to the front door, and the worst is that Doodle absolutely does play along, telling him to be strong for his wife and kids back home.
“I’m gay,” Kihyun tells him matter-of-factly.
“Sweet,” Doodle answers. “If you do kill me it will be a win for diversity.”
“I wouldn’t,” Kihyun says, because now that he’s inside Doodle’s house he can’t rightly break the rules of hospitality. And also now they’ve apparently been through war together, and thus have formed an unbreakable bond.
“That’s what everyone thinks until they actually kill someone,” Doodle tells him wisely and Kihyun feels his stomach drop.
“Are you a murderer?” he asks faintly, and Doodle laughs. They’re hobbling through the corridor towards a delicious cinnamon smell. Kihyun could start to walk normally again but he is feeling a little vulnerable and a little tired and having someone just hold him through it feels very comforting. Until he starts to wonder just how touch starved he really is; that is just a depressing avenue to go down, but thankfully Doodle distracts him from it.
“I’m not a murderer,” he says, which doesn’t really mean anything considering what he just said thirty seconds earlier.
“Not yet,” Kihyun corrects him, and Doodle actually seems to think at that, which doesn’t really suit his face.
“You know,” he says, “not any one supervillain has ever killed someone.”
“Reaper must have,” Kihyun counters, “or he wouldn’t be in mega turbo jail. Also his name is Reaper, which would be kinda lame if he didn’t kill anyone.”
“He’s not in maxi hell jail anymore,” Doodle remarks wisely, “he escaped.”
“I know,” Kihyun sighs. “That’s why no-one was there to prevent you from melting my building and kidnapping my roommate.”
“So really, if you think about it,” Doodle starts, “this is all Reaper’s fault.”
“That’s true,” Kihyun says, because he is someone who is not easily swayed in any way. This is all Reaper’s fault. Kihyun is going to bite his face off, even if no one really knows what he looks like on account of the mask, and then all will be well. He’ll probably get a medal, and then he could bum a new apartment from the mayor on account of having bitten Reaper’s face off, and Hyungwon would still live with him because it will be a very big apartment with like, a patio, even if Kihyun isn’t entirely sure what a patio actually is but that would be the opportunity to figure it out, and then one day when they’re having wine in the rooftop pool he’ll confess his undying love to Hyungwon who will tell him he feels the same and it will be magical. That’s what he deserves.
“Is he alright?” Kihyun vaguely hears Doodle asking.
“Yeah,” Minhyuk answers, “he just looks like that when his brain overheats from trying to comprehend his own stupidity.”
Kihyun opens his mouth to protest but Minhyuk passes him by with the entirety of the vagrants’ league in tow like some sort of mother goose.
“Stop fantasizing about biting people’s faces off,” he says as he passes, “we all know your weak jaw would snap under the effort.”
Kihyun doesn’t say anything to that; he is oddly pleased the only obstacle Minhyuk sees standing between him and biting people’s face off is his weak jaw. What even is a weak jaw though, Kihyun isn’t too sure. Can you strengthen your jaw? Do jaw workouts exist? If so he needs to get on that immediately. There’s probably a Youtube tutorial for it somewhere. There’s Youtube tutorials for everything.
“What are you doing?” he hears Minhyuk say to someone just as he reaches the kitchen’s doorway, still supported by his fellow soldier. Hyungwon is standing there, staring at them with wide eyes. He is very obviously using chopsticks to poke a sleeping old woman in the cheek.
“I just – I think she’s dead,” Hyungwon says a little breathily. Doodle unceremoniously drops Kihyun, who falls to the floor in a heap, and runs to his grandmother, extirpating a little mirror from his pocket that he shoves under his grandma’s nose.
“Fuck you scared me,” he says, “she’s not dead, she’s still breathing. See?”
He shoves the mirror in Hyungwon’s face, who takes a couple steps back, looking very confused.
“There’s condensation!” Doodle is half yelling.
“She didn’t have a pulse!” Hyungwon defends himself, and Doodle shrugs, putting the mirror back in his pocket. The fact that he has a mirror seemingly expressively for the purpose of checking whether or not his grandma is still breathing is sort of disturbing to Kihyun but apparently he’s the only one, since no one remarks on it.
“She mostly doesn’t have one,” Doodle says, placated.
“What,” Hyungwon asks eloquently, before noticing the crowd that just invaded the kitchen.
“Minhyuk?” he says, Minhyuk beaming at him. “Who’s all this?” he adds as the little boys’ syndicate sort of arrange themselves all around him in a half circle.
“My sons,” Minhyuk says, and that’s when Hyungwon finally notices the little heap of Kihyun pooling on the floor.
“Kihyun!” he says, rushing to crouch at his side. “Are you okay?”
“I have shrapnel in my leg,” Kihyun croaks.
“What?” Hyungwon asks, a little incredulous, and who could blame him really.
“We think it’s the concussion’s after effects,” Minhyuk says wisely, “he’s been incredibly off the rails, even for him.”
“Oh,” Hyungwon only says, and then he awkwardly pats Kihyun on the head. Everyone just seems to be doing that lately.
“I’m happy you’re not melted,” Kihyun tries again, and Hyungwon nods.
“I’m happy about that too,” he says softly, and Kihyun feels like crying, either from relief or embarrassment. Maybe both.
“We’re homeless, though,” he adds just to fill the silence.
“It’s okay, we have insurance.”
“We do? I wasn’t in charge of that, was I?”
“No,” Hyungwon says, and pats him again. It’s nice. The kitchen tiles are cool under him, and Hyungwon’s hand is warm and soft, so familiar it almost hurts. Suddenly Kihyun is okay with being a pathetic little dude and he sits up, Hyungwon’s hand falling from his head to his shoulder.
“You’ve had a rough couple of days, uh,” Hyungwon says, and Kihyun scoffs.
“Try weeks,” he whines, Hyungwon pulling slightly on his arm to hug him as he laughs. It’s gangly and awkward, Hyungwon’s shaking laughter reverberating against Kihyun’s chest. Kihyun closes his eyes, breathing in Hyungwon’s cinnamon smell; suddenly he feels all wistful, like some kind of lovesick idiot. Which he is. He is such a loser.
“Okay kids,” he hears Minhyuk say, “let’s fuck off for a second.”
As he passes Kihyun by, herding the middle school rejects in front of him, Minhyuk kicks Kihyun in the lower back, which is painful and mean, and somehow Kihyun instantly knows what this kick means. You better confess in this kitchen filled with cinnamon smell and mostly-dead grandmas or I will be the one to bite your face off.
The kitchen is strangely quiet, once everyone has left. Kihyun leaves Hyungwon’s embrace, settling cross-legged on the cold kitchen tiles. Hyungwon does the same, and for a second Kihyun feels the urge to start a game of patty cakes, but that’s the crazy side of his brain talking so he doesn’t listen. It’s really not the ideal time for that. Also the youth council representatives have all left, and that is their kind of thing, not his. Hyungwon’s hands are twitching on his knees, though, and Kihyun thinks in passing that maybe he’s feeling the same. Or maybe, just maybe, he is feeling Kihyun’s second urge, but that would be pretty bizarre because that second urge is to reach out, take Hyungwon’s hand, and sort of rub his face on it. Which Hyungwon has no reason to do, what with already being in a throuple and such. At this thought Kihyun almost settles for his third urge, which is to just start bawling his eyes out, but he is now a changed man, having been through war and such, and thus decides to be brave.
“So,” he starts, Hyungwon’s eyes huge on him, and then he just stops. His gaze sort of drifts from Hyungwon’s face to Doodle’s grandma, but it is a bit unsettling so he goes for Hyungwon’s elbow instead.
“Yeah?” Hyungwon encourages him, but Kihyun’s mind is suddenly very blank, even more so than usual. There is absolutely nothing going on in there and he just stares helplessly at Hyungwon’s elbow, as if it would suddenly sprout a mouth and feed him his lines.
“Do you think I’m a moron?” is what Hyungwon’s elbow comes up with for him, and Kihyun feels like slapping himself, what’s with Hyungwon looking like he’s actually thinking about it.
“Well,” Hyungwon starts, and Kihyun winces. “You are a little bit. But it’s fine, you know. We don’t really need you to be anything else.”
“Who’s we,” Kihyun asks miserably and Hyungwon reaches out, his fingers settling on Kihyun’s wrist, which he sort of just holds. Kihyun is staring, wondering if this is a bit of a weird thing to do or if he’s just overthinking this.
“You know,” Hyungwon shrugs. Kihyun does not know. “Everyone else? It’s fine if you’re a little crazy. It’s hard not to be, considering.”
Hyungwon gestures vaguely, and Kihyun follows his hand, looking around the kitchen. It’s surprisingly tidy, for a supervillain lair. Above the sink the wall is tiled, little ducks and ducklings painted on the ceramic. Kihyun stares, and the more he stares at the ducks the sadder he gets. He doesn’t really know what does it. Maybe it’s the naive way they are drawn, or how sad ducklings generally make him because they are so tiny and vulnerable and there’s nothing he can do for them. Maybe he’s just very tired, and Hyungwon is holding his wrist but wouldn’t hold his hand.
“Why didn’t you call me?” Kihyun says, dropping his gaze to the kitchen towel hanging from a hook near the ducks. It’s patterned with little hedgehogs, and hedgehogs are even more tragic than ducklings, what with the awful ways they die; ripped apart by mowers’ blades, flattened by cars, eaten alive by birds and ticks and parasites, curling into themselves as they lay on their back, their little faces disappearing in a forest of spines that can do nothing for them anymore. There is so much suffering in this world, Kihyun thinks, a heavy sigh escaping him.
“Are you alright?” Hyungwon is asking and it feels like this is all he ever asks him. Kihyun nods, trying again.
“I was so worried,” he says, “why didn’t you tell me where you were?”
Hyungwon stares at him, silent for too long a time before he drops his gaze, and he looks almost flustered.
“I needed time to think,” he says, “and it was a nice place to do it.”
“Think about what?” Kihyun asks, and Hyungwon shrugs. It feels like he’s going to pull away, yet his grip on Kihyun’s wrist tightens and when he looks up Kihyun thinks he looks sad, almost as sad as he himself is about the hedgehogs.
“We haven’t been doing so well lately, have we?” Hyungwon asks and Kihyun’s heart misses a beat; this is much too raw a thing to say, and he doesn’t know how to answer on the same level.
“I’m sorry,” he tries, “I know it’s my fault. I’ll be less weird.”
Hyungwon laughs, but it is his tired, sad laugh Kihyun never really liked, and he doesn’t know how to make it better.
“It’s not just your fault,” Hyungwon says without looking at him. “I had things I needed to sort through, too.”
“Is this about the throuple you’re in?” Kihyun asks before he can think better of it and Hyungwon’s gaze snaps back to him, his eyes wide. If anything he doesn’t look sad anymore, mostly confused. Kihyun takes that as a win.
“What?” he croaks. “What throuple? I’m not in any throuple. There’s a throuple?”
“You know,” Kihyun says vaguely but judging by Hyungwon’s befuddled stare he really does not, so Kihyun sighs, launching himself into an explanation he knows sounds increasingly moronic at each new words that comes out of his mouth. But Hyungwon is laughing. A full belly kind of laugh that stretches his mouth wide and crinkle his eyes, and it’s so nice Kihyun decides to lay it on thick. It doesn’t matter if it makes him look so much worse; Hyungwon is laughing.
“Kihyun,” Hyungwon says, trying for seriousness but he’s still wiping small tears at the corner of his eyes. “Kihyun,” he tries again, putting both hands on Kihyun’s knees and looking at him straight in the face. “You need to stop writing rpf fanfics in your head.”
“What are rpf fanfics?” Kihyun asks, and Hyungwon sighs like he cannot believe his ears.
“I’ll show you later, it’s not important,” he says. “What’s important is that I’m not in a throuple with Hoseok and the mayor. And I know Hoseok is Wonho. I don’t want to date him. Also never refer to me at the lettuce in a meat sandwich, even if you’d be okay with it. If anything I’d be the bread holding that shit together. But thank you for the laugh.”
“I’m sorry,” Kihyun says, looking down as if he’s being scolded by a teacher.
“It’s fine,” Hyungwon sighs, and his hands are still on Kihyun’s knees, his fingers sort of drumming a little rhythm there. It’s nice. Kihyun had missed sitting so close together. “So, why were you all weird about me being in a throuple, though? You never quite got to that part.”
“Yeah, well,” Kihyun starts eloquently and just stops. He could just say it. This seems like the right place, after all. It smells nice, old-timey homey, there’s little ducklings on the tiles and hedgehogs on the kitchen towels. It also seems a bit unreal, what’s with the half-dead or mostly alive grandma. Maybe if he said it there it would be less dire than if he said it in a really real place, like Minhyuk’s coffee shop or the pool on the roof he doesn’t yet have.
“Is it about what you said at the hospital?” Hyungwon asks, trying to be helpful. “You know, about how you love me so m–”
Hyungwon doesn’t get to finish, Kihyun flabbily slapping his whole hand flat against his face and just leaving it there.
“Shh,” Kihyun says, feeling himself sweat like a whore in a church. This is all kind of terrible. Changkyun had said that confessions made under duress weren’t admissible in a court of law and it should stay that way. “Let’s forget about what happened in the hospital.”
“But I don’t want to,” Hyungwon mumbles from behind his palm and Kihyun freezes, staring wide-eyed at whatever he can see of Hyungwon’s face. It’s not much. Hyungwon’s face is so damn tiny.
“I don’t want to forget about it,” Hyungwon repeats, pulling on Kihyun’s wrist to free himself. Kihyun watches the proceedings entirely detached. This is not really happening, not as long as he’s in a room with a half-alive grandmother and ducks on tiles. But Hyungwon is linking their fingers together as he lowers their hands, and he looks terribly vulnerable. And scared. Why does he look scared?
“What do you mean?” Kihyun asks, mouth so dry he could sand a table with his tongue. This is not going like he planned. He didn’t have any time to rehearse. There is no wine, no pool. There is no patio. Or maybe there is, he doesn’t really know what a patio is. There’s only cold kitchen tiles and Hyungwon looking at him so pleadingly Kihyun feels like crying again.
“Can’t you just tell me?” Hyungwon asks, and Kihyun cannot look at him anymore. He feels his heart beating against his lips, blood rushing to his ears and they must be embarrassingly red. But maybe it doesn’t matter. Hyungwon’s hand is still holding his own and Kihyun stares at their intertwined fingers as he finds the courage to speak.
“Your face is so tiny and nice,” he starts, because his whole hospital speech is somehow printed word-for-word in his brain as a form of personal hell. “I wish you cared about my knives and found me as pretty as you think Hoseok is,” he continues, and then gets it all out in a rush without looking at Hyungwon. “I didn’t like him at first, Hoseok I mean, because I thought he was stealing you from me. Then I didn’t like him because he punched me in the face and it actually really hurt, the guy is so strong. Like so strong. I felt my brain ring like a gong. Couldn’t have been good, I wonder how many neurons I lost. But anyway. Back at the hospital I said I loved you so much and it’s true. And I don’t mean it in a friendly way, I mean like Hoseok loves the mayor or how Changkyun loves tight pants. That’s why I was acting unhinged. That and the concussion, I guess. Please remember I had a concussion cause I feel like it’s a good excuse for all the weirdness.”
When he stops and only silence answers him Kihyun dares to look up, finding Hyungwon staring at him with a seraphic idiot’s grin; he’s still holding his hand, fingers tightening their grip as he pulls slightly, Kihyun’s whole body following.
“Please say something before I go mental,” Kihyun says and Hyungwon lets out a big laugh, one that Kihyun feels more than he hears, mushed as he is against Hyungwon’s chest.
“I’m sorry, I’m just relieved it’s not something worse.”
“You know,” Kihyun says slowly, “there is not one person in the history of the whole entire universe that hoped to hear that as an answer to their confession.”
“I’m sorry,” Hyungwon repeats and he pushes Kihyun slightly off his chest to look at him properly. He’s still looking beatific and Kihyun’s hand is still unrelinquished. That must be good, Kihyun decides, and his heart isn’t so heavy anymore. “I mean,” Hyungwon continues “I was hoping it was this, but it felt a bit presumptuous too, so I thought maybe it was something else that was not as good.”
Kihyun stares dumbly because at this point he might as well let Hyungwon worm his way to an actual answer, even if it feels like it might take half an hour. At least when it’s not so clear he doesn’t have to face what will come after. Kihyun always liked the in-betweens, when there’s nothing to do but wait and everything is still a possibility; you can pick the one you like best and imagine what it would be like. There is one possibility he hadn’t imagined, though, and it’s Jooheon and Doodle barging into the kitchen, Minhyuk on their heels shouting something incoherent about a Group Chat and Reaper and a Death Ray. Kihyun wisely decides to tune them out, because this is not what is important right now, but then the tiny troop is also pouring into the room, two of them hauling mostly-dead grandma onto a third one’s shoulders.
“We gotta move!” Minhyuk is yelling, grabbing Hyungwon to haul him to his feet. They’re still attached at the hand, so Kihyun sort of naturally follows and finds himself running down Doodle’s corridor despite having absolutely no idea why he would be subjected to something of the sort.
“What is happening?” he asks and Felix answers, looking way too excited for what his words amount to, which is unrelenting fiery death.
“Reaper sent a message to Jooheon’s group chat saying they should go somewhere safe cause he was gonna fire his death ray, you know, for revenge.”
“I fucking hate that guy,” Kihyun grits out, already out of breath. He has so many reasons to hate Reaper. The guy interrupted the most important moment of his life, and now he’s making him run, of all things.
“I think it’s nice of him to warn his friends,” Felix says and Kihyun shoots him a glare.
“You have a very warped sense of what niceness is,” he remarks as they barrel through the front door, tumbling down the steps.
“We’re not friends, that guy’s weird,” Jooheon yells to them as he sprints right past towards the coffee shop’s van. Minhyuk has already started it, the motor rumbling to life as the buff one from the runaway faction opens the back door to get everyone inside.
“You know that if Minhyuk drives, we're as good as dead,” Hyungwon says to no one in particular as he climbs in, still hanging on Kihyun’s hand. They’re both very sweaty and it is a bit gross and sticky but neither one of them wishes to let go.
“I’ll drive,” says some dude wearing a shirt with cats on it. It looks home-made. Kihyun judges a little.
“Didn’t you only pass the writing test?” Felix asks him but the guy just winks and disappears back outside. There’s the sound of wrestling, a noise sounding suspiciously like Minhyuk whimpering, and then the van starts moving before they’re actually all inside. Doodle and Changkyun have to leg it down the street while the buff one tries to catch their extended hands, hanging from one of the doors, while the rest of the teen force holds onto his belt. Everyone is screaming.
They do manage to get both of them in before their driver gets the hang of the accelerator, and then Kihyun realizes that death ray or not, they’re probably going to get flattened like a blood pancake anyway. Their driver is so fast. Taking turns on two wheels kind of fast, which is quite a feat to achieve with a van loaded with like thirty five people. There’s so many arms and legs everywhere. It doesn’t help that they’re being shaken every which way. His lap has never seen that many asses. Or faces for that matter, and he’s trying to apologize to the buff dude for kneeing him in the forehead but it’s hard to do over Felix scream-laughing. Kihyun finally knows what lettuce feels like inside the salad spinner. It’s not great.
They’re not the only ones evacuating but apparently it is not an issue for Discount Mad Max at the wheel, who’s weaving through traffic quite expertly for a guy whose only driving experience comes from the arcades. Other drivers seem to realize they’d rather be behind him than in front and soon they’re heading some sort of caravan down the highway, tires screaching.
“Does he know death rays aren’t the only way to go?” Kihyun says to no one in particular. Buff dude pats him on the knee in a placating way while holding his own shattered forehead with his other hand. “It’s his way of getting into warrior heaven,” he says, which doesn’t mean anything, but Kihyun just nods anyway.
“Aren’t you guys supposed to be helping, by the way?” he continues, because now that he thinks about it, the whole point of them being here was to arrest Doodle or something. Now they’re just peacefully sharing some sort of getaway van from hell while hugging each other. “Weren’t you some sort of special fighting squad?”
“Oh yeah,” Felix says, as if he’d just remembered. “But there’s nothing much we can do about a death ray.”
“We’re helping you,” buff guy adds, still patting Kihyun’s knee. People keep patting him, Kihyun realizes then. He doesn’t know what that says about him but it’s nice, in a way. It makes him feel included. His gaze drops to Hyungwon’s hand, still clinging to his own, and he cannot believe he’s going to die in the back of a shitty van without having gone on a date even once. He wonders if the archaeologists who’ll dig up his skeletal remains in a thousand years will find him still clutching Hyungwon’s hand and think they were together. He hopes so. He wonders if they will keep them in the same box at the museum.
“Hey,” he says to Hyungwon huddled next to him, “what happens to those skeletons archaeologists find buried together? Like do they keep them together after the dig is done?”
“Why are you asking me this?” Hyungwon answers and Kihyun wonders if it would be too weird to tell him. It probably would. They aren’t even together or anything, it would be a little bit intense to tell him he hopes their desiccated bones will end up together in the same box at the museum’s archives. Which museum would it even be? He went to the National Museum once and it had a grand total of zero skeletons, which was a bit of a let-down. So many celadons though. Like a huge Homeplus.
“I’m just asking,” he says at the same time the van takes a particularly violent turn and they all get plastered to the wall. If they die now, Kihyun thinks, he’d be buried under so many dudes archaeologists would never know Hyungwon was special. They’d just think they had a polycule going on.
“We’re outside the blast radius! You can stop!” Jooheon starts screaming, kicking up to the driver’s seat from where he’s lying on the floor. “Please stop,” he adds a little miserably. “I’m gonna barf.”
The van screeches to a halt right there and then, plastering all of them against the front seat, and then it remains blissfully still. Kihyun understands then that land sickness really is a thing – when he gets out of the van, still dragging Hyungwon behind him, it seems to him he is still moving and it is hard to put one foot in front of the other. It’s like he’s drunk, without all the wonderful upsides.
Mad Max has driven them up a bridge spanning the river, and there’s a pretty view of the city from where they stand. In different circumstances it would even have been nice. They could have had a little picnic and all. As it is, Kihyun elects to just lie down right there on the warm concrete while everyone else lines up against the railing, staring in the direction they came from. The ground is a little hard under him but it beats having to stand up, and Hyungwon is sitting cross-legged next to him, his knee touching his shoulder. They’re not holding hands anymore, though, which is a tad disappointing.
“Nothing ever goes like I want it to,” Kihyun says, closing his eyes. Hyungwon laughs and starts to smooth back Kihyun’s hair, fingers carding through the strands. It’s nice. Kihyun doesn’t miss holding hands anymore.
“What did you want to happen?” Hyungwon asks, and Kihyun sighs.
“Well,” he starts, “if I’m being perfectly honest I don’t really know. But it didn’t involve any death-ray or van ride from hell or anything of the sort. I hadn’t planned on dying so young.”
“We’re not dying,” Jooheon says from somewhere on his other side, “we’re outside the blast radius.”
“Yeah,” Kihyun sighs, “‘cause death rays are notoriously trustworthy.”
“Can I do something,” Hyungwon interrupts, “before we die?”
“Not dying,” Jooheon says.
“Sure,” Kihyun nods.
And then a shadow leans over him, blocking the light that filters through his closed eyelids. And there’s a warm, pressing weight against his lips. It takes way too long to register that Hyungwon is kissing him. At least he hopes it is Hyungwon. Kihyun cracks an eye open, parting his lips as he confirms that yes, indeed, Hyungwon is kissing him. For a second he thinks that he will just pass out, his heart beating so fast it might spear itself on his ribs. But Hyungwon is deepening the kiss, and Kihyun rests a hand against his nape to keep him there, maybe forever.
They miss the collective intake of breath coming from the general direction of the lad squad. They also miss the strange sound like a window breaking but so much louder, and they don’t really pay attention to the rush of hot hair that blasts over them. When they finally part and Kihyun opens his eyes, he watches as ashes fall down from the sky like snow, how dust settles in Hyungwon’s soft hair.
“Told you we wouldn’t die,” he hears Jooheon say, his voice raspy as he coughs up a mouthful of dust. Kihyun sits up, looking around; everything and everyone looks kind of grey. It’s amazing, Kihyun thinks. Best day of his life.