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“I’m so bored. That’s the worst part about it. Nothing to do.” Wooyoung whines, glaring down the length of his body at his foot and ankle, secured snugly in a thick nylon brace.
San lifts his head from the pillows on Wooyoung’s bed and follows his brooding gaze to his foot and then back up to his face. “Did you play games on your phone?”
“Yeah, got sick of those real fast.”
“Did you watch tv?” San squirms closer like a puppy whose interest is suddenly perked, watching Wooyoung’s face like it’s the sun around which his whole universe revolves.
“Yeah. You can only watch so much.”
“But there’s so many different shows…” San pouts in a baby voice, picking up Woo’s hand and playing with his fingers.
“I just wanna get out of here. I need to move. I’m losing out on so much,” For the billionth time, frustration swells up in his chest, making him feel like he’s suffocating even though he’s just laying like a board in his bed, doing nothing.
“Well, we didn’t practice too much today…” San mumbles, but Wooyoung knows from the way his voice drops down to the babiest whisper that it’s a lie. “Why do you even try to lie to me, Sanie?”
“Cause you always lie to me.”
“That’s a lie! I never!” He’s honestly shocked, looking at San in open-mouthed disbelief.
“Careful, Wooyoungie, keep it still as possible, member?” San huddles around his foot and gently fluffs the pillow on which it rests, then leans forward and brushes a dry kiss to the tiny window of bare skin peeking out through the crisscrossed bands of the brace.
Wooyoung’s expression softens. He has half a mind to reach forward and stroke San’s hair, but he feels like San would like it even better if he kept still and restful.
Unfortunately the kiss has left something of a tickle in its wake, a sensation that seemed to creep deeper beneath his brace instead of going away.
“Hey, Sanie?”
“Yeah?” San blinks and puts down his phone.
“Can you scratch my foot?”
“Scratch your foot? Oh yeah, no problem.” With his half-English chirp of a reply, he flops the opposite way in the bed, giving his bandaged foot the lightest scritches. He’s afraid to hurt him. He keeps shooting glances up towards Woo’s face, looking for some sign. He groans and sighs. “You’re not gonna hurt me. You can actually scratch it.”
San scratches a little more vigorously, playfully gritting his teeth as he uses small movements of his fingertips to scratch at what little of his foot he can actually get to.
Wooyoung doesn’t feel satisfied even once the scratch has gone away. He heaves an even bigger sigh, earning a concerned whine from San who slides back up the bed and nuzzles close.
“Just another few days, Wooyoungie.”
“Yeah, and what am I supposed to do til then?”
#####
Wooyoung has been sleeping deep and heavy every night, having to take two huge pain pills just to make sure he can even get there.
In the mornings he feels sick, groggy, and it’s always late morning by the time he can actually string a coherent thought together; That thought usually being ‘fuck’ as he realizes the poor staff member left behind as his babysitter now has to do their morning chore of helping him get to the bathroom and then wait an eternity as his body decides everything it wants or does not want to do, in completely random moods these days due to the painkillers and antibiotics and nausea that goes with them.
He’s about to call out when he notices the box on the floor near his bed. It’s a cheap plastic craft box, bright red and obviously new. It’s close enough that he can reach out and drag it closer without dying tragically. He does, attracted to the random object like a moth to a lamplight.
The box is full of markers and colored pencils, a few pens, in both black and rainbow hues. There’s crayons rolling around at the bottom, the wax tips crisp and new, and beneath them a bundle of sticker sheets, lying flat.
“What the hell….?”
He realizes the box is sitting on top of a stack of construction paper. He moves it aside and picks up the top piece of golden yellow. San’s handwriting is across the top.
‘To my precious Wooyoungie: I heard there was an explorer who stole a pirate ship and found a whole new island with animals and places and treasures no one had ever seen. Can you tell me some of the things he saw and did on the first day?’
“Y-yah, San, are you really serious right now…” Wooyoung laughs to himself, his throat dry and scratchy, and sets the paper aside. He can barely see straight let alone think about this sort of nonsense.
He surmounts the task of using the restroom first, then eats a light portion of rice and plain soup for breakfast, then sleeps, then wakes up fitfully to watch Let’s Plays on youtube.
All afternoon the box is in the corner of his eye like a cheerful blocky cherry, and finally he clicks his tongue and takes a handful of markers and a sheet of fresh paper.
#####
It’s not important what he writes and doodles on that first paper, or what ends up spilling onto the second sheet. In fact, he forgets about it completely when the deep throb in his ankle randomly comes back harder than ever, making his pale face tense as he swallows one more pill.
When he wakes up San is curled beside him in a t-shirt and denim overalls, opening his eyes at the same time as him. The older boy’s gaze is bright. He hadn’t been sleeping.
“Mmmm...Sanie, what time is it?”
“Doesn’t matter, just rest. And here, drink a little.”
Like some hallucination of an angel in a desert, San presses the lip of an ice cold water bottle to his lips and soothes his parched throat.
He sleeps again, much more easily.
#####
No, the important part is when he wakes up the next morning the box and the papers had been set up exactly as they were before. Any used crayons or pencils had been resharpened.
Sitting on top of the box this time are the completed pages. Wooyoung frowns and picks them up. Beneath his pages are two more, cute fantastical drawings and excited text filling the bright paper from edge to edge.
Turns out, he discovers as he reads, his island explorer isn’t alone on the island.
A second explorer had come from the opposite end of this world, where the sky is bright yellow at night and during the day the moon is out and the sky is dark purple.
Luckily these two wandering explorers get along with each other perfectly from their first meeting, and on that first day this explorer of San’s saved Wooyoung’s from a monster who would open its mouth so big it would look like a pool of clear water, only to snap shut on unsuspecting travelers.
Wooyoung pulls San’s last page to the top and it just says: 'On the third night, they woke up in a crazy bad storm. But instead of falling rain it was pounding starlight, as all the stars started blinking out of the sky and hurtling towards them.'
That's it.
'Well, this is grim…' Wooyoung sighs, rereading the words slowly. He can’t believe that this actually has the gears in his brain turning, engaging. San is a brat. 'Guess I can’t just leave them like this…'
#####
San never says a word about either of their stories, and that fact makes Wooyoung stubbornly refuse to say anything, either, And the box just sits there in plain view, being used by both of them at different times, but never in front of each other.
They spend most of the evenings together. Or, as Wooyoung teases, San spends all his evenings with him, because he’s not able to do anything to escape. He’s at San’s mercy.
But they both know San can’t go without him. It breaks Wooyoung’s heart how soft and gentle the older is with him because of his stupid ankle. There was a time where he wouldn’t have believed that a “walking-on-eggshells” mode even existed for Choi San, but now he’s seeing it day in and day out.
His sunny boy talks softer, touches him more carefully, is attentive and wary, hopping up at the slightest hint that Wooyoung might need something.
Wooyoung likes best when he finally relaxes and he puts his arm around him in the bed. They had rigged a selfie-stick to hold a phone above their faces so they could watch videos and movies, whatever was bearable for Wooyoung because San only wanted what he wanted.
And the subject of pirate explorers really never comes up.
#####
There’s something wrong inside his ankle. Some tiny, tiny fracture the first x-rays hadn’t picked up. And unfortunately something in that fracture got pissed off, started huffing and puffing and leaking bad stuff into his blood.
That is the jist of it. Wooyoung doesn’t remember much. The fever hits deep and quick. What he does remember is San holding his hand in his own trembling one. He remembers thinking it was funny that he was the one that was having to go to the hospital but San is the one worrying so much that he is shaking, barely saying a word.
“It’s okay, Sanie,” he thinks he sighs at one point, as their manager bustles around making calls and packing his backpack with clean clothes.
“Are you sure? Are you sure? The internet said that...”
As much as Wooyoung wants to hang onto every word of his no doubt doom-filled prophecy, he fades out sometime around there, still feeling those trembling fingers clinging to his.
#####
“Do you know what these are?”
In his hospital room by his bedside, Hongjoong carefully pulls out a thick sheaf of construction paper from a manila envelope and deposits them into Wooyoung’s lap.
Wooyoung is sitting up and eating jello, feeling almost normal now that his body was no longer combating with silent unknown terrors.
But his heart sinks as the weight of the paper rests on his thighs. The stack had gotten so thick. There’s probably fifteen more pages than he last remembers.
He gives Hongjoong a sideways glance, running his fingertips across the familiar top page.
“Yeah, more or less.”
“I know it wasn’t any of my business, but we were getting kind of worried.”
“I’m doing so much better though, hyung.”
Hongjoong looks at him for a long moment. “You’re gonna be dancing by end of next week, let’s be honest. It’s not you we’re worried about anymore.” Then he cants his chin towards the papers and stands up, dropping an orange and green marker in Wooyoung’s lap.
“I’ll stop by in a half hour or so, see if you need anything before I head back.”
“Okay…” He’s blushing. Their leader knows too much. He really did get into business that wasn’t his.
But Wooyoung can’t help but feel grateful as he flips to the new pages with a sense of dread.
San’s explorer is devastated when he wakes up alone, his partner missing. Without him by his side, one calamity after another befall him, driving him all the way back to the beach his ship had landed on. That’s where he’s left, having lost everything, crouching in the shadow of his beached ship. Distraught and unsure what to do. Too afraid to even try anything.
Wooyoung’s eyes burn by the end. He sniffs and rubs his nose. “This is stupid…”
But for some reason this stupid thing hurt so deeply, bringing a sick ache to his stomach that was so different than the pain from his leg, more vague yet definitely worse.
He has to take big deep breaths for a good minute or two, then sits up and claws his greasy hair back from his face, grabbing the closest marker.
#####
‘Hey, I went to steal us this bigger, better ship, idiot. What have you been doing this whole time?’
#####
The packet of papers is gone the next time he wakes up, including the five new pages he’d added to the sheaf. He had written himself into exhaustion, evident by the marker ink that stains his fingers and palm, and the telltale wriggly line streaked across his bedcover where he must have dropped a marker.
He winces when he sees it, wondering how much it costs to get marker out of your hospital bed.
He wants to see San.
“Is there anything you need?” His manager asks during his nightly visit, stopping by after the boys’ schedule is done.
“San.”
“I know…” his manager sighs, scratching his hair. He looks genuinely torn. And tired. His clothes look like he may have been wearing them for the last two days.
“I’m afraid if I bring him here he’s not gonna leave.”
“You haven’t brought anyone except Hongjoong.”
“Wooyoung-ah, be nice, now… We haven't had the manpower for driving, security... ”
“So I should just rot here, by myself?” He knows he’s being dramatic as he flings his head back petulantly into the pillows, lower lip giving a brief tremble.
Their manager heaves another sigh. “I’ll see what I can do.”
#####
Wooyoung wakes up with San tucked beneath his arm, a thin but muscled arm flung across his chest. He’s a comfortable, familiar weight.
“I think it’ll be okay. The doctor approved him to be released this evening, anyway.”
Wooyoung blinks his bleary eyes, the small hospital room swimming slowly into focus.
It’s his manager and the nurse talking. He closes his eyes, having heard all he needs to. His hand is on San’s warm back. Hair like dry cornsilk brushes beneath his jaw. For San not to have jolted awake the second he stirred says everything.
You must have been so tired, waiting for me. There better not be sand all over the bed.
#####
Hongjoong is right, unsurprisingly. His body mends swiftly and his strength comes back in the next week. After a few days of light exercise and gentle dance practice he’s back in regular practice and schedule, maybe taking an extra cat nap here or there to keep his energy up.
San still never says anything about the story they wrote each other; about their little avatars, if that’s what they are.
Wooyoung doesn’t get why, but he doesn’t want to somehow ruin whatever that had meant for San, so he forces himself to not bring it up either.
One night he happens to glance through San and Yunho’s cracked bedroom door and sees San reclined on his top bunk, bent knees crossed one over the other (almost touching the ceiling), and a construction paper book in his hands. The familiar pages are neatly bound together somehow, maybe stapled or hole-punched and clasped. It doesn’t matter. What matters to Wooyoung is the soft, sweet expression on San’s face as he very slowly flips the pages, viewing each one in a way Wooyoung can tell he’s reading every word and studying every stupid doodle. His pretty lips are parted in thought. His slender foot bobs up and down, sometimes pausing in suspense.
Finally San tucks the booklet reverently beneath his pillow and curls around his big bear plush, laying his wild head down to sleep.
Wooyoung stares at his narrow shoulders for a long while and then returns to his own room.
#####
Finally both explorers had reached the end of the island, having left no corner unexplored and no monsters un-fought.
‘I guess we run this place, now.’ said the first explorer, looking out at their wild land, standing beside his partner. ‘But wanna know the most ridiculous thing? I’ve been thinking that what I like most on this island is you. You make me want something more than anything we’ve seen or any treasure we’ve found.’
Then the handsome explorer grabbed the cute explorer’s face and kissed him good, not letting him go for a long time.
‘Have you ever felt that, too?’
#####
Wooyoung’s fingers are clammy as he tries to maneuver the new pages beneath San’s pillow. The attempt goes miserably. He can feel and hear the crumple of the paper as he fails to slot them in at the right angle. Finally he just props the page against the older’s head and then scampers away.
His heart pounds as he closes the door.
Is that a sleepy ‘Wooyoungie?’ he hears from San’s bed?
He doesn’t turn back. Not now.
San needs some time to chart their course.