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Sunghoon opened his eyes, slowly registering the unfamiliar surroundings. He was lying on a bed that didn't feel like his, and in his blurred sight, he could only see white. As he blinked quickly to clear the sleep from his eyes, he heard a familiar voice pipe up beside him.
"Oh good, you're awake!" His friend, Jay, stood up to make a call from the nurse station.
Sunghoon squinted his eyes. "What happened?"
"Skating practice," Jay replied, not looking up from the phone he was dialing on. "You were injured– Yes, he woke up already, thank you– So we had to bring you here," he explained, exchanging between Sunghoon and the nurse on the other line.
"What injury?"
"Head injury. They said you had a bad landing. You're lucky you only needed a few stitches."
Oh. Sunghoon brought his fingers up to his hairline near his right temple to blindly search for the stitches. Sure enough, there were a few, about three or four at most.
A nurse reached their room in no time, effectively interrupting their conversation. When she entered, Jay excused himself to take a call, to which Sunghoon nodded.
The nurse took her time in explaining what happened to his head. But after the fall and his current anesthesia high, he couldn’t care less right now about what happened. He took comfort in the fact that it wasn’t critical and decided to forgo the details, making a mental note to just ask Jay about it later. After taking another few minutes to carefully check Sunghoon's head, the nurse nodded to herself.
"Alright, you should be able to go home by tomorrow. For now, let’s just wait for the anesthesia to wear off and see if anything happens after your fall. Hopefully, nothing bad, and you’re good to go.”
Sunghoon could only nod, not finding it in himself to reply at the moment. Taking his silence as her cue to continue, the nurse spoke again.
"After that, you will have to come back in a week or if you ever feel the pain worsening. Until then, you could have someone help you clean your wound every so often."
"That's perfect!" Sunghoon heard Jay say from the door as he entered the room. He went to sit on the chair beside him. "Jake can do that for you. They're on break next week, right?"
"What? Who's—"
"And by the way, you shouldn't do strenuous activities just yet, it'll further your injury. Skating will have to wait for at least two weeks."
"Two weeks?!" Sunghoon sat up in a flash, and just as quickly, he clutched onto his head in pain. He immediately laid back down on his bed in hopes of alleviating the sudden pain.
“What the heck,” Jay said, stepping in to help the younger find a better lying position on his hospital bed. “You’re still thinking about skating even in this state. Take a break, man, Jake’s gonna scold you if you keep this up.”
After nodding to the nurse when she excused herself from them, Sunghoon directed his gaze towards his friend, who was now arranging the fruits he bought when the younger was getting his wound stitched earlier.
“That’s two whole weeks! I can’t go into another slump again, there’s another tournament in just a couple of months,” he complained, sighing. “And who’s Jake by the way, why do you keep on mentioning him?”
Jay halted from his activity, proceeding to stare disbelievingly at Sunghoon for a full second. When he came back to his senses, he set the oranges he’d been holding and went to sit on the chair beside the bed.
“You had me there for a second,” he said, chuckling as he sat down. Sunghoon watched him yank his phone out of his pocket when he heard the ping of a notification. He didn’t fail to notice when Jay’s eyes lit up animatedly as he skimmed the contents of the message he received. Before Jay could even speak again, Sunghoon beat him to it.
“I really don’t remember, was I supposed to know him?”
Jay looked up at him once more with a horrified expression, this time staring in his eyes longer to see if he was kidding.
“Bro, please tell me you are kidding because if not–”
The creaking sound of the door opening interrupted him mid-sentence. In entered a raven-haired boy about the same age as Jay and Sunghoon, who carefully looked around the room until he recognized the people inside.
“Hello, sorry I took longer than expected.” The unfamiliar guy put his bag beside what Sunghoon recognized as his own. While he was busy removing his jacket, Sunghoon marveled at his handsome features, as though it was his first time seeing him all over again.
“Damn,” he whispered, supposedly just to himself, but the other two heard him as well. The new guy, who he assumed was Jake, approached his bedside in an instant with a concerned look in his eyes.
“Hey.” He took Sunghoon’s hand in both of his. Jay stood up and offered his seat beside the bed, which Jake gladly accepted.
“Jay told me you fell on your head today. Does it hurt anywhere else? Are you feeling okay?” he asked question after question. Sunghoon, meanwhile, could only gape at him in awe of his appearance.
From his position behind Jake, Jay could see how their interaction was faring. When Sunghoon didn’t reply for who knows how long, he decided to speak up.
“Dude, he just asked you a question.”
As if he didn’t hear Jay speak, Sunghoon went on and stared at Jake, who was now getting weirded out by the skater’s behavior. Yet before he could even voice out his concerns, Sunghoon blurted out.
“Are you single?”
With wide eyes, Jake turned to Jay, silently waiting for an answer. The older just shrugged, he himself not knowing whatever was going on with his friend.
“What’s going on, Hoon?”
Sunghoon ignored his question. “If you’re single, do you think I have a chance? I can be your boyfriend.”
Upon hearing this, Jay let out a loud cackle, his mind now supplying him with the reason why the skater was acting like this. Jake, meanwhile, only stared at him in clueless shock, prompting Sunghoon to go on with his awestruck rant.
“What business can I help you with here on earth? You seem to have fallen from heaven.”
Still clueless, Jake could only offer a confused smile and replied, “Sorry, but I’m already taken.”
At that, Sunghoon visibly deflated, which earned him another bout of laughter from Jay.
“No way, he’s really clueless! This is interesting!” Jay clutched his stomach after he had calmed down. He dropped a hand on Jake’s shoulder to get his attention and leaned over to his ear.
“Don’t worry Jakey, Sunghoon here is just disinhibited from the anesthesia,” he whispered and raised his brows for effect. This seemed to convince Jake enough so he motioned to Sunghoon next.
“Sunghoon, how come you don’t recognize your own boyfriend?”
This time, Sunghoon was the one whose eyes widened in surprise. “ My boyfriend?”
“Yup. Jake.”
“But I thought he said he’s taken?”
Jay rolled his eyes. “Well, duh. He’s taken by you.”
Thinking everything was too good to be true, Sunghoon stared at his hand now interlocked with Jake’s, then to the eyes of who was apparently his boyfriend. Jake took this as a hint and nodded at him.
“Yes, Hoon, he’s telling the truth.” Jake chuckled. He brought the back of Sunghoon’s hand against his cheek.
“So, mind telling me about how you’re feeling now?”
.
Thankfully, nothing out of the ordinary happened while he was under observation yesterday, so the doctor permitted Sunghoon to go home today. Even better, Jake’s only class for the day was still in the afternoon, therefore allowing him to accompany Sunghoon in his first few hours of arriving home from the hospital.
As he watched Jake whip up a simple breakfast for the both of them, he couldn't help but ponder on how this was their first time being together in the morning ever since they began dating. It was always either Sunghoon out for skating practice or Jake caught up with student council duties, and that's not even talking about their separate classes. From this line of thought, he could only let out a sigh.
The sound of a bowl hitting the surface of the table interrupted Sunghoon from his brief moment of reflection. On the chair directly in front of him sat his most beautiful specimen of a boyfriend whom he can’t help but gawk at any moment of the day.
“Hoon, the food’s getting cold,” Jake called his attention by tapping the bowl of ramen noodles with his chopsticks. Right away, Sunghoon went and got his own portion, looking back up to the older when he heard a clearing of a throat.
“Come to think of it, you were just like this yesterday.”
“Like what?” Sunghoon took a slurp of the noodles and sighed. This was heavenly.
“Oh, you don’t remember?” Jake’s brows raised. He reached out for the younger’s head to ruffle his hair, and let out a laugh when he got a pout in return.
“Come on, tell me.”
“Fine.” Jake reached for a nearby paper towel roll on the kitchen counter. “You were quite disinhibited yesterday so you kept on staring at me. You even asked me some… cute questions,” he narrated while ripping a sheet before leaning over to wipe Sunghoon’s sauce-stained lips.
“Did I embarrass myself?”
“Nah. You just went on about how handsome I was and everything.”
Caught off guard, Sunghoon choked on his noodles, making Jake spring up to get him a glass of water. When he had calmed down, he shot the other an incredulous look.
“So I did embarrass myself,” he said in between coughs.
“Oh c’mon, I think it’s cute!”
After a few more banter in between eating, they washed their dishes and immediately went to the bathroom. Being that the stitches were way beyond his sight, Sunghoon had no choice but to let Jake help him wash his hair. Sure, he felt a bit weird having his boyfriend help him bathe for the first time, but seeing how Jake didn’t mind, Sunghoon decided he didn’t either.
In just a while, they were now sitting beside each other on the younger’s bed. Jake was drying Sunghoon’s hair as meticulously as he could while trying not to pull his stitches in the process. When he presumed he was done, he went to stand up to hang the towel but was stopped by a hand wrapping around on his wrist.
“It hurts, Jakey…” Sunghoon whined, face still down even after the older has finished drying his hair. Jake chuckled at him and told him to wait for a minute while he went to hang the wet cloth. When he came back, his hands automatically went their way to Sunghoon’s cheeks. He brought the skater’s head to his face to press a kiss on his right temple, right where his stitches were.
“Better?”
“Yeah.”
Sunghoon smiled up at the older and wrapped his arms around his waist. He pulled him closer to rest his head on his chest, while Jake brought his fingers to his hair and gently combed through it.
“Maybe I should fall on my head more after this,” he commented, earning him a slap on the shoulder in response.
“You wouldn’t dare.” Jake sent him a playful glare but still ended up giggling.
“But what if I accidentally did it again? Will you still take care of me?”
“Well, of course.” Jake pressed another kiss to his temple. “I am your boyfriend after all. I’ll take care of you forever.”
From where he was sitting below Jake, Sunghoon could see the light from the window surrounding the other’s figure, creating an illusion of a halo around him. Just maybe, Sunghoon thought,
Jake really did come from heaven.