Chapter Text
The man in front of Sieun is tall. Overwhelmingly so. It’s the first thing he notices about him; Sieun is of a shorter-than-average height himself, and this man must be nearly 185cm. Sieun tenses slightly, and in response Jongwoo steadies his support, holding Sieun just slightly tighter. The man is perceptive, eerily so, and his eyes shift from Jongwoo’s face to their point of contact and something unknown swirls in his expression.
It makes Sieun’s stomach churn.
He’s tall, and also objectively handsome. A slim nose and black hair, with full lips and a small mole beneath. The glasses that are perched on the bridge of his nose are thin-rimmed and silver, but with the way they’re so far down his face Sieun assumes that they’re for reading only. When he shifts his gaze to Sieun, they meet eyes, and Sieun shivers immediately after.
“Open the door,” Jongwoo grits out, ignoring the question, and it moves the man’s attention back to him, thankfully. The man only frowns slightly, a bit of displeasure appearing on his face. For a second, Sieun thinks that they’re going to be denied and the man will shut the door in their face, but he merely nods and opens it further to allow them both in, with a curt “Of course.”
The apartment is inconspicuous. Nothing out of the ordinary, save for the single model of a full, very detailed set of human teeth on display. Sieun’s gaze lingers throughout as he’s led into the main room, still supported by Jongwoo’s steady arm. A TV, a gray couch, a wooden coffee table with some papers scattered atop, a few books on a shelf, and two armchairs; it’s surprisingly normal.
He doesn’t know why he expected otherwise. Focusing on his environment helps him be distracted from the lingering pain, so he continues to observe the space around him.
There’s a kitchen to the right of the living room where Jongwoo leads him. Nothing out of the ordinary; he can only see some meat seasoning left out from the corner of his eye on the counter. Jongwoo pulls a chair out for him.
Jongwoo sets him down at the main dining room table, patting his shoulder in something that he thinks is meant to be reassuring. He crouches to meet Sieun’s eye level from a shorter position. “Stay here,” Jongwoo says, looking over his shoulder. “I’ll get some medicine to treat … this.”
He gestures to the significantly more roughed up part of his uniform. Sieun feels like a little kid when he just nods without saying anything, like he’d just fallen off his bicycle and his mother was treating his scraped knee, not like he’d gone wild over just one mention of Ahn Suho. It’s not unlike Sieun’s a grenade, and Suho the pin.
Sieun bites his lip as Jongwoo leaves. In his defense, it hadn’t been just a mention of him; Go Hyuntak had gone too far. It was coming his way, and Sieun’s sure he was using his name and a story derived from a dumb rumor to instigate Sieun into fighting back. It worked, and Sieun had been stupid to let it work, because he’d vowed not to fight. The coppery taste of blood in his mouth lingers still from when it’d pooled up earlier.
He tries to keep from moving much, since his bones feel like they’re just barely connected by a weak plaster bond. Sieun interlaces his fingers, layering and unlayering them while he waits for Jongwoo to return. He can only feel faintly guilty and look at the hands that he had sworn to put on the shelf, and think of Suho. There’s little to distract him. Copper continues to linger atop his tongue.
A faint click echoes through the small space and he hears footsteps behind him. Right—there’s another person still here, the strange and tall man from just a few seconds ago. He shuffles into the entrance of the kitchen but lingers there like a shade, leaning against the doorframe and doesn’t say a word; he just remains there. Sieun can feel a gaze on the back of his neck that makes his hair stand up and his body tense.
He falls into that same oddly ‘sprung’ feeling; ready to bolt or attack at the slightest threat. Fight-or-flight, he recalls from his psychology textbook, and the third one, freeze, which he thinks he’s feeling now. The scrutinizing gaze of Jongwoo’s roommate bores a hole into his skull, pinning him with a gaze he can’t even meet properly.
It’s quiet. Really damn quiet. Too quiet, which is a phrase he’d never let Suho catch him dead saying; something Sieun himself would have never said in any situation other than this. He likes the quiet. He thrives in the quiet, drowning himself in the silent environment of schoolwork at his desk and at home, but this is neither of those places— this is somewhere foreign. Outside of his dominion, where he feels less like a human and more like a piece of meat. More like rotting meat, with the intent way he can feel Jongwoo’s roommate is staring at him.
His barely lucid, pain-rattled brain seems to come up with these strange metaphors. He can hear footsteps again, this time getting closer; he watches as Jongwoo’s roommate sits down at the table on the seat across from him. In blatant process and Sieun’s own stubbornness, Sieun looks down at his hands and refuses to meet the other man’s gaze.
Elbows gently hit the table. One arm folds over the other, comfortable, from what little Sieun can see. Jongwoo’s roommate is staring, boring holes into Sieun’s skull across the surface. It’s blatant enough that he feels the normally impermeable line of sight on his significantly smaller build.
In response, Sieun drags his head upwards, as slow as possible, fed up with being picked apart like a bug. He furrows his brows, eyes darkening, and glares back with as much murderous intensity as he can muster towards Jongwoo’s roommate.
It only causes him to smirk. Smile, grin as though he’s finally realized something about Sieun, which makes his skin crawl— not for the first time since he’s entered Jongwoo’s apartment. The man across from him lazily tips his head onto his hands. In this moment, Sieun feels a kinship to butterflies pinned to canvas.
Sieun hears Jongwoo at last, come rushing into the dining room with a small collection of household medical supplies.
He stops. Surveys the scene in front of him with growing realization, as Sieun shifts his glare away from the roommate and miserably, to Jongwoo, who in response just sighs and pulls out a chair for himself at the table.
“Glad to see you two are getting along well,” he mutters, digging through the basket. He pulls out a bottle of rubbing alcohol and a cotton ball, as well as a roll of bandages. He dabs the liquid onto the cotton ball and glances at Sieun, who looks back at Jongwoo with dull eyes.
“...” He pauses, cotton ball still in hand, looking awkward.
Sieun manages a “I can do it myself.” It’s weak, and Sieun knows it, but he can’t stand being taken care of much more. Jongwoo looks like he wants to protest, but he hands the rest of the cotton balls and rubbing alcohol to Sieun.
He doesn’t hand the bandages to Sieun, though. Sieun looks at them, and Jongwoo shakes his head.
“I’ll do these. You need to let me at least check your wounds, Sieun.”
Too tired to protest, Sieun nods and stands up to limp to the bathroom. The first door in the small hallway is creaked open and he trudges in. He closes it behind him quietly and looks at his state in the mirror for the first time.
There’s an ugly-looking bruise on his face. Blood, dried from earlier remains on his lips, which have broken open again— he’d forgotten to use his chapstick again. His hair is tousled, his uniform crumpled badly enough that he doesn’t want to check what his stomach and chest look like.
He needs to, though. Wincing as he takes his jacket off and lifts his shirt, it’s… just about as bad as he thought it would be. He can nearly see all the points of impact, clumps of dried blood and tracks of it on the path of his abdomen. Bracing himself, he dabs a bit of alcohol on the cotton ball and gingerly cleans his wounds.
A small “fuck” falls out; it hurts, after all, and Sieun has never been good with pain. But he’s learnt to deal with it; he remembers nights coming back bruised when Suho is occupied with a shift at the restaurant, and his unwillingness to have to deal with his father’s questioning.
He makes quick work of it. When he walks back, Jongwoo and his creepy roommate are … speaking? Arguing? Something like that, but it seems like Jongwoo is more worked up. His roommate is just staring at him with intense eyes and a smile while Jongwoo mouths off on him.
When he steps into their sight, footsteps heavy enough to make sound, both of them turn to face him with different intensities. Jongwoo stops in his speech and nods to the chair. Sieun sits while Jongwoo whips his head to glare at his roommate and grabs the bandage roll.
The face Jongwoo makes when Sieun’s layers of clothes are lifted up is something he has always hated. A grimace followed by pity; and only god knows how much he hates pity. It’s not like he’s some weak, helpless kid; he’s not deserving of pity. He… He—
“Have you two been introduced?”
Snapped out of his thoughts, Sieun blinks. There are bandages already wrapped around his chest. He’s about to respond curtly, but Jongwoo’s roommate beats him to it.
“Not yet,” he says. Unluckily for Sieun, this is another excuse for Jongwoo’s roommate to continue to peer and stare at him while Sieun feels like something is crawling underneath his skin. Jongwoo just looks at his roommate with an expression that reads like ‘...So are you going to do so or not?’ and sighs when he gets no discernable response in the answering smile.
“Sieun, meet Seo Moonjo.” Jongwoo gestures from Sieun to Moonjo. “Moonjo, meet Yeon Sieun.”
“A pleasure,” Moonjo purrs. Sieun isn’t fond of it, so he gives no response.
Jongwoo peels open a large bandaid and sticks it on Sieun’s bruise. He rubs the edges to seal it; Sieun finds the pads of his fingertips are rough, but his handling is gentle. Again, he feels weird, uncomfortable (in a different way from how Moonjo makes him feel). It’s not like he’s being treated like glass, but not thrown around like he’s indestructible either, he’s…
Being patched up, instead.
And well. He runs his fingers down the bandages, feeling the security. His hand drifts to the bandage on his face, poking, prodding. His body hurts a little less. Sieun feels a hand ruffle his hair; Jongwoo’s. He flinches away instinctively, eyes blown wide open. Jongwoo looks a little hurt, but cracks a small smile and shakes his head.
It’s too familiar, too soon. The extent of physical contact he can manage is only that of which is absolutely necessary, the bandages, leaning on Jongwoo’s arm on the way here. He’s not— they’re not— close. Close enough. He won’t let the two of them be, or else Jongwoo will end up hurt like the rest of them have ended up.
Sieun is just indebted to him.
Jongwoo whispers to Moonjo while Sieun fidgets with his fingers awkwardly. He hisses something angrily that makes Moonjo frown, wounded, but still heads over to one of the rooms in the hall to do something. Frankly, Sieun doesn’t want to know what he gets up to.
“I’m not going to ask about anything that happened,” Jongwoo starts. His tone is delicate, bracing, “But are you going to tell me about it? Who those kids were and why they did that, at least?”
Sieun bites his lip, staying quiet. Oddly enough, he feels like he’s being coaxed by a parent to say something; a child on trial by their parent to admit their crime. It’s not fully his crime, mostly another’s, but it’s his nonetheless— he still threw many a punch. One too many, he’d say.
It’s guilt that keeps him from talking. He fought when he shouldn’t have. He threw a punch when he should’ve kept his fists by his side no matter how angry he felt. He got angry too easily. He was too sensitive. All of this could’ve been avoided some way or another if he had done something different, and that’s what he hates about all of it.
And he’s usually different, too. Methodical. The more that he thinks about it, he can probably pinpoint where he started to slip from that old version of himself, but he won’t go down that train of thought. When he looks up, Jongwoo is still watching him, a twinge of hope in his eyes.
“They’re… classmates. Schoolmates.” Sieun says, apprehensively. Vague enough for him, and still technically true. “I don’t know them.” Also true. A total of two short-lived interactions means nothing in regards to familiarity.
Jongwoo has a look on his face that screams suspicion. He knows that Sieun isn’t telling him the full story, and he looks like he wants to know more, but whether he’ll push or not is what Sieun wonders. He doesn’t know why, so there’s no point anyways.
“Is that really it, kid?” Sieun isn’t fond of the nickname.
“I really don’t know,” Sieun snaps. He doesn’t know why they picked on Juntae (as per Hyoman’s report) or why Hyuntak was so angry at him, why he keeps needing to fight. All he wants is a quiet life, alone. “I don’t—I don’t know why I hit him first. I shouldn’t have—” Sieun inhales sharply, “People keep bothering me when I don’t do anything to them. I don’t know why they came after me.”
He’s sure he’s being too harsh, but he purposefully chooses not to apologise. Jongwoo, however, after he’s recovered from the slightest bit of shock, has a bit of a strange look on his face.
“You said you hit him first?” He says, a weird tone in his voice.
“He provoked me,” He went too far. He deserved it, a small voice in his head whispers. Unwilling to elaborate more on the fight, but wanting to defend himself, Sieun continues, “I don’t start fights I can’t win.” I don’t really start fights at all.
Luckily for him, Jongwoo looks satisfied with the answer. Enough so to quit prying. Sieun doesn’t want to think about it anymore; he’d like to live in a reality where Hyuntak is willing to forget about his existence as a whole the next time they see each other. Sieun is more than willing to put it to rest and move on.
“Twice I’ve seen you injured now,” Jongwoo murmurs. “You’ve got to keep yourself safe, kid. Stay out of fights as much as possible. You’re just going to get hurt.” Sieun can hear something regretful in his tone, not directed towards Sieun himself.
“I know how to protect myself,” He protests, and Jongwoo snorts.
Jongwoo backtracks when Sieun fires him a glare. He makes a show of waving his hands in front of his face as he says, “I do, honestly! I’m surprised you made it back with the injuries you sustained.” Jongwoo hesitates.
“Just… stay out of trouble,” He says. “You’re still young. You have a lot going for you.”
At Eunjang? Yeah, right. Sieun nearly scoffs at that— he ruined most of those prospects when he walked into Byeoksan with a murderous rage and nearly killed a few of their students. That same night he met Jongwoo he thought his world was going to end right then and there, and in some ways it did. A sharp pang pierces his chest and his hand goes to his heart instinctively.
Jongwoo’s eyes drag over where he clutches his uniform in a puzzled manner, as though he wasn’t sure his words would have that much effect. It’s not the fault of his words. Sieun just continues to find himself eerily vulnerable around him, more inclined to (metaphorically) lean on him.
“You know what?” Jongwoo says suddenly. Sieun, in fact, does not know what. “Here.” Jongwoo doesn’t hand him anything, but instead extends his hand out as if to expect something for himself. “Give me your phone.”
“Why?” Sieun says, instinct kicking in. It’s in his jacket pocket, but he makes no move to take it out.
“Just give it to me for a second,” Jongwoo urges, and Sieun slowly slides his phone out. He makes sure that his suspiciousness is obvious in his actions, and places his phone in Jongwoo’s outstretched hand.
He taps a few buttons and Sieun hears a ring from another phone in Jongwoo’s pocket. It’s cut off almost instantly, and he’s given his phone back— pretty quick, to Jongwoo’s credit. A small meter labeled ‘Trust Level’ has risen slightly under Jongwoo’s file in Sieun’s head.
“My phone number,” he points to the last number in Sieun’s call history. “Save it. You make me think this isn’t gonna be the last time you’re hurt like this. If you really need help… you can call me. I’ll try my best to help however I can.”
Jongwoo’s making a weird face. Some kind of mix of awkwardness and earnest and concern and a few other odd, out-of-place emotions, and it all makes his expression look a little constipated. Sieun holds his phone, staring at the number— eleven digits starting with an +84, the first number dialed on his phone other than his Eomeoni and Abeoji.
“Or don’t,” Jongwoo interjects, breaking a small period of silence. “You don’t need to do anything you don’t want to do, Si—”
“Okay,” Sieun says simply. Jongwoo is silenced promptly, and after processing his acknowledgement, nods in response.
“Are your wounds still hurting?” Jongwoo asks, switching the conversation.
Sieun shakes his head, shutting off his phone. The bright and stabbing pain has dulled down into a slightly numb feeling, reduced to a passive ache. No longer he feels like he’s about to collapse and break into a set of 206 bones; the bandages have made good work of that.
He can see a text message from Eomeoni pop up on the screen asking him if he’s gotten home— he doesn’t have cram school today. Normally, he’d be at his desk, reviewing for the next day. He’s sure Jongwoo sees the notification as well, since he stands up from the dining table.
“I’ll see you out,” He says, silently acknowledging Sieun’s other commitments. Sieun stands up as well, wrapping his jacket around himself a little tighter, in a pathetic attempt to look a little more presentable. “Need a ride?”
This time, he doesn’t accept one. His house is close enough and his legs are working fine, and he doesn’t want to keep inconveniencing Jongwoo. He shakes his head again, slinging his bag over his shoulder, stepping out of the apartment.
Moonjo walks out of wherever he was hiding as he’s about to leave. He’s without the glasses from earlier, making him look significantly younger, tousling his hair next to Jongwoo in the doorway. He has a small smile on his face, thin and not revealing anything.
“Bye, Sieun-ah,” Jongwoo says as he slips on his shoes, and Moonjo nods a farewell as well. “Don’t forget to call when you need it. Seriously.”
Sieun mimics the action and walks down the hall, Jongwoo’s lingering, watching gaze behind him until he hears a soft click, and when he looks back, they’re gone, inside the apartment. Only Sieun-ah echoes in his head as he returns down the same, cold path he’s walked enough times before to his own home that feels less and less welcome every time he opens the door.