Chapter Text
Dinner is a quiet affair in the Han household.
It didn’t use to be. There used to be screaming, laughing, and bickering all throughout the meal as Yoohyun would catch up Yoojin on what school was like and how his classes were going. Now the only sound is the gently simmering pot of stew on the stove, the methodical sound of chopping as Yoojin finishes up dinner, and the radio crackling quietly beside Yoohyun who is pretending to work on something at the kitchen table so that Yoojiin can have some semblance of normality in his life. Actually he probably is working on something, now that he looks closer. Those are definitely government files that Yoohyun is reading.
A few months ago he would have ripped them from his grasp with a stern “let your hyung handle this Yoohyun”. But the last time he had tried Yoohyun had shrieked that Yoojin had “no right” to “snoop” through his “private and confidential files”. And Yoojin had yelled right back that Yoohyun was his little brother and only seventeen and as such all of his business was Yoojin’s business too. The argument ended, as it usually did, with Yoohyun reminding him that he was now legally an adult and could do whatever he wanted, and Yoojin would bite his tongue so hard it drew blood so he wouldn’t say that the government was just trying to exploit him and that it didn’t matter if Yoohyun felt like an adult because he was still a kid and Yoojin was always going to look after him even when he did eventually become an adult.
The sound of the radio washes over him gently, its familiar crackling filling the room as Yoojin dumps a couple of chopped carrots into the pot. The radio is older than him and Yoohyun and should definitely have been replaced at some point but it had belonged to their mother who used to have it on all the time when she was cooking and it’s now become a habit for him as well. Turning it on always makes him feel like she’s right behind him, like he’ll turn around and she’ll be sitting at the kitchen table, chiding their father over his bad potato peeling skills while helping Yoohyun with his math lessons. When she’d first died, he’d turned on the radio all the time, spending a small fortune on batteries, just to hear its familiar and comforting crackling. He wonders if Yoohyun associates the sound with him now instead of their mother, if the static sound that makes the words almost unrecognizable reminds him of home in the same way the chipped walls and the unidentifiable stains on the couch do.
Yoohyun has put his document away and is now dutifully setting up the table, probably sensing that Yoojin is almost done with cooking. And for a moment it feels nice. With the government documents out of view the scene is a familiar one: Yoojin finishing up dinner while Yoohyunn is setting up the table, the silence warm and familiar instead of tense and unhappy the way it would so often become these days. It feels normal in a way nothing has since Yoohyun awakened and Yoojin failed him by not doing the same, like he got magically transported back in time for a few blissful moments.
“Yoohyun,” he sets the utensils in the sink and begins rinsing them with water, “can you please take the stew and set it on the table?”
“Of course.”
He turns around to grab the cutting board just in time to see Yoohyun lean forward to grab the pot by its handles.
Its metal handles.
With his bare hands.
Yoojin moves before his brain even registers what is happening. The decision to slap the pot out of Yoohyun’s hands is instinctual, born out of several years in which his first and only mission was “keep Yoohyun safe”. There is a white-hot flash of pain and someone is screaming, though he can’t tell if it’s him or Yoohyun, and a distant clang and splat as the pot hits the ground, spilling all of its contents on the floor.
“What are you doing?!” Yoohyun screams, looking at the fallen pot of stew and then back up at his hyung.
“What do you mean what am I doing?” He screams right back, his uninjured hand cupping his injured one, “Are you insane? Grabbing the pot with your bare hands like that! You could have hurt yourself really badly you know!”
There is a moment of heavy silence where Yoohyun looks at him with something unreadable in his eyes. It’s unsettling. He used to be able to read Yoohyun’s moods like no other, but ever since that had happened Yoohyun had gotten these odd flickers of emotion that he had been unable to read.
Finally he speaks up.
“Hyung I’m resistant to fire.” He says quietly and neutrally, eyes fixed on his face.
And just like that the spell is broken. The statement hangs heavy in the air between them for a moment before Yoojin lets out a breathy laugh, utterly devoid of joy.
Of course you are, Yoojin wants to sob, of course you would be.
“I forgot.” The admission lies equally as heavy between them for a moment before Yoojin twitches his hand and hisses in pain, reminding both of them that Yoojin was not resistant to fire.
“Let me see.” Yoohyun stretches his hand expectantly.
“It’s fine.” He sneaks a look at his burned palm and sure enough, it seems to only be a second-degree burn. “I just need to put some ointment on it and I’ll be right as rain.” He says, not being able to help the optimistic tone he often used on Yoohyun when he was a child to avoid worrying him whenever he was short on rent money, or when he got the flu.
“Hyung.” Yoohyun sighs, exasperated, and gently grabs Yoojin’s injured wrist, pulling him closer so he can inspect his burned hand. His face is pinched in an unhappy frown as he assesses the damage, eyes scanning his injury critically while Yoojin stares at the stew that he’s going to have to clean up from the floor later.
He runs the numbers in his head. This stew was supposed to last them three days, four if they were a little skimpy, and now it’s on the floor. He quickly runs through this month’s budget, desperately cutting costs and shuffling things around in his head to make the meager amount of money he has stretch until his next paycheck comes. It’s not his first time subsiding only on prayers and ramen noodles but it still hurts.
“I think we should go to a hospital.” Yoohyun says after a long pause. “It looks really bad.”
The thought of sitting in one of the little plastic chairs in an emergency room, with Yoohyun fidgeting nervously at his side, is too unbearable to consider right now. Plus he cannot afford a trip to the emergency room, especially not now that he was going to have to make his money stretch thinner than it was supposed to.
“Nonsense. Just go get me the emergency kit yeah?”
“Hyung…”
“Yoohyun.” His voice is stern, the way it used to when Yoojin had to enforce bedtime on school nights. “I’m fine. Go get me the emergency kit. You still remember where it is right?”
The last sentence is spoken with more bitterness than he would have liked, but Yoohyun simply nods and leaves to get the kit, leaving Yoojin to stare at the ruined stew and try to figure out what they’re going to eat tonight. If he had been on his own he might have not cared and simply scooped the stew back up in the spilled pot and eaten it anyway, but there was no way he could feed his little brother something that had been on the floor. He hadn’t sunken that low yet. (Had he?)
Yoohyun stares at him for a moment before he folds and gets up to get the emergency kit. He comes back quickly and opens it with an efficiency that he definitely didn’t have before.
“I still think we should go to a doctor.” He says as he starts methodically applying the ointment on Yoojin’s hand, his touch deft and light. He watches, almost entranced, as his little brother uses the last of the gauze the wrap his hand up in smooth practiced movements.
He’s used to this, he realizes dully through the pain, this is something he’s done a lot, something he’s practiced. He must be used to dealing with danger, there’s very little that can hurt him now but that doesn’t mean he can’t get hurt, that the people that go with him in the dungeons can’t get hurt, or even random civilians when a dungeon spontaneously opens up.
Thinking about it makes his heart ache and makes the guilt he always carries with him now curl deep in his gut. Instead he chooses to look at Yoohyun, studying him as he wraps his hand.
He looks strong and confident. For a moment Yoojinn feels like he has peered into another timeline where nothing went wrong and his little brother made it to medical school like he always wanted to. He starts packing the emergency kit again, his movements deft and well-practiced, and that’s when Yoojin realizes: Yoohyun was taking care of him and could now do so better than Yoojin could take care of him.
The realization hits him like a bucket of ice water and he freezes. He has spent his entire life, has sacrificed any hope of a bright future he might have had, for Yoohyun, taking care of him, clothing him, force feeding him vegetables. What is he supposed to do now that Yoohyun has outgrown his need of him? Now that he no longer needs his hyung to protect him? Is he supposed to simply move on with his life? Let Yoohyun face the dangers of the world as well as the unholy horrors of the dungeons alone? He can’t bring himself to even think about it.
“Here take this.” He hands Yoojin a painkiller. There are only three left he notes absentmindedly, as he downs the one Yoohyun had just handed him. Another thing he has to buy that he can’t afford. He’ll have to use them sparsely until he could afford to buy some more. Yoohyun pulls on his sleeve, effectively pulling him out of his mental budget-planning.
“Hyung,” Yoohyun says carefully, the way he used to as a child when he was about to ask for something he knew Yoojin would probably say no to. “Can we have ice cream for dinner?” He asks, as though Yoojin would be doing him a favour and indulging him and not saving his ass by letting him not have to think up of something for them to eat.
“Sure.” Yoojin says. “Why not.”
He takes the tub of mint chocolate ice cream out of the freezer. Almost empty, he notices as he scoops the last of it in two bowls and hands the one with more ice cream to Yoohyun. They sit on the couch, all pretenses of having a proper dinner gone, the static coming from the radio blanketing them with its soothing tone.
“Yoohyun you have ice cream on your face.” Yoojin says, impossibly fond.
“What? Where?” He rubs at a random spot on his chin, completely missing it. Automatically, Yoojin grabs a tissue and carefully cleans his face with it, the way he so often did when Yoohyun was a child.
“There.” He smiles softly.
They finish the rest of their meal in silence, Yoohyun’s head resting against Yoojin’s shoulder. Yoohyun insists on washing taking the bowls and washing them himself instead of letting Yoojin do it, gamley taking instructions from him even though “I know how to wash a bowl hyung!”, soft laughter filling the room. He feels, for a moment, like he could have this forever.
Two weeks later Yoohyun has moved out of the house without a goodbye or a note, and Yoojin is so distraught it takes him a week before he realises the radio is gone too.