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The world is ending, and the streets are on fire.
The world is ending, the streets are on fire, and Jungsu is watching it all from the dim dorm kitchen, a cup of tea in his hand like it means anything at all as he gazes out the window, flames reflected in the dark canvas of his eyes. He sips his tea, lets it soothe the throat that'll never sing again. Maybe in the heavens Gunil talks about, he'll still need to upkeep a honeyed voice.
He glances over his shoulder at said man, hidden in the cushions of the couch, still and silent. It's the end of the world, and they're both stagnant. Stuck in place, unable really to go anyplace else.
For a minute, an anguished long enduring minute, Jungsu hates that he was ever here at all.
It's strange, to diminish his dream all down to a dingy day. If he'd given up, he'd not have missed out on so much time with his family. In his last hours, maybe he would have been with them, and he wouldn't have spent so long missing them. His mom, his dad, his sister. All together while the world ends.
The scientists say it's got something to do with the sun. With gravity and the orbit, and all things Jiseok would've distracted them himself explaining in morbid depth. But why should Jungsu give his death a name, when he can simply watch the flames?
Jiseok is with his family. So are all the others, and maybe Jungsu can hate the band less, if at least they could be with their family in the end.
He sighs. Can he really hate any of it at all? They wouldn't be his loved ones, if they'd all given up on their dreams. Their precious, just in arms-reach dreams. Even if they became nightmares, they were still loved, in the end. He can hate the band, they can't ever hate each other.
At least, Jungsu saw his family only a week or so again. At least he saw his family within the short year. Saw his mother, his father, is wearing his sister's perfume. Gunil–
Straightening, steering away from the window, Jungsu shuts the blinds, sets his tea aside. He steps behind the couch, leaning over the back of it, allowing himself only a spare second, to run his eyes over Gunil sprawled out over the sofa, stare trained on the battered sky. His mouth is pursed strangely, holding something within. For a brief, shattering moment, Jungsu's heart breaks.
He ignores it.
Reaching down, he pokes Gunil's stomach, hard. Gunil hisses, curling in on himself and folding an arm over the sore spot, stare flicking to Jungsu, unreadable. Searching Jungsu's face, or perhaps just committing it to memory, this one last time. "What are you thinking?" Jungsu asks, because there's no use in them reading between the lines anymore, there's no journal of Gunil's that's going to last for Jungsu to parse through.
Settling back into the couch, sitting up a little, crossing his arms over his knees, his hairs tickling Jungsu's elbow. "I should have never joined this band," he answers, and Jungsu forgets, until moments like these, not at all rare, almost entirely in-between, how exactly he and Gunil always seem to meet in some impossible middle.
Jungsu doesn't know about soulmates, but something similar, tethered just as strongly.
Like they had the time, Jungsu asks, "Why?"
Gunil peers up through his lashes, through his messy unstyled bangs, flat over his head, frizzy and bent from where he's laid them. He shrugs. "Maybe then it would have fallen apart, and you guys would have done something–more." He rubs his hands up and down his jeans, agitated. "I don't know, you guys would have lived life. At least as much as I have."
"I'm only three years younger, Hyung," Jungsu reminds, a tad teasing, as much as he can muster when the smell of smoke is beginning to seep underneath the doors, "Them, only four."
Shaking his head, Gunil smiles wanly. "You're still babies. In all the ways that don't count." He rests his cheek on his knee, words muffled, fuzzy like the air outside. "Three years is a lot." He seems to recount them in his head, whatever he'd experienced since he was just turned twenty.
Jungsu doesn't know how to respond for a bit, chewing on the skin of his cheek, unsure of how to comfort either of them, when catastrophe sits waiting at their door, knocking incessantly. "Not anymore," he finally murmurs, "Everyone's lost their future. Including you. That's bigger than anything now."
Gunil takes the hit, winces. He picks up his head, lifts it to look at Jungsu fully, and if the ground weren't already sinking into the pits of hell, Jungsu might've been knocked over by it. On a wobbly floor but strong knees, he stands steady as it is. "Let's not talk about it?" Gunil says, voice quiet enough Jungsu can hear screams over the shuddering breath of it.
Jungsu nods.
Exhaling heavily, Gunil squeezes his eyes shut, dropping his head to the couch, his ear pressed up against Jungsu's arm, and Jungsu wonders what he might hear beneath that flesh and muscle. Maybe fear, maybe heartbreak, maybe a hope with no place else to go, a poison spread through Jungsu's dying veins with fluttering wings.
Wordless, Gunil reaches up, laces his fingers with Jungsu's, slow and steady, so their fingers can tremble together. He traces his thumb over Jungsu's knuckles, the pads of his fingers, the lines of his palms. A tear falls from the corner of his eye, and Jungsu wishes he didn't know exactly what it was that Gunil was thinking.
He does, and so he returns the sentiment, massaging the back of Gunil's hand, applying enough pressure to feel the tendon and muscle, worked and worn and so painstakingly refined. He brings the hand up close to his face, breathing along the rough skin, admiring the cherished callouses, hard earned and protective. He fits Gunil's short thumb into the heel of his palm, admires the smallness of it compared to all the rest, crooked from practice.
Closing his eyes, he kisses it chastely, a flush in his cheeks not entirely attributed to the heat building in the air.
He pulls away, and Gunil watches him dewily, bottom lip wobbling, brows twitching. Intent, he pulls Jungsu's arm down over the couch, almost setting Jungsu off balance. He puts Jungsu's hand over his heart, lets Jungsu feel the way it brokenly beats. "Let's get married," he proposes.
Swallowing, gulping down their futile futures in blissful ignorance, Jungsu smiles waveringly. "Okay."
+
Drunken, they stumble through the dorm, dizzy with grief, with glee. They don't dare let go of each other's hand. They'll never let go of each other again, not for as long as they live, so not for long at all. Commitment is so easy, when so swift.
It's fun, a bubbly delirious sort of fun, teeming and tinged at the edges with barely veiled desperation. Jungsu trips on one of Jooyeon's shoes, nearly falls, but Gunil catches him, holds him close, and Jungsu giggles into his sturdy shoulder, so strong a giggle it may very well be a sob. An idea comes to them.
Gunil rummages through Hyeongjun's drawers, finds one of Hyeongjun's long white gauzy skirts, the kind for summer he’ll never get the chance to wear. He sits on the ground with a pair of scissors dull from haircut escapades, and tells Jungsu to find them rings. So of course, Jungsu seeks Seungmin's room. Piled full with clothes and accessories, it's a faux wedding's dream.
He returns to the room with two blazers folded over his arms, a non pair silver rings clasped in a fist. Gunil stands amidst the room, looking ridiculous, half of Hyeongjun's skirt pulled over his jeans, the bottom half tied in cut knots around Jooyeon’s favorite headband. Jungsu snorts. "Creative."
Putting his hands on his hips, spinning for show, making Jungsu somehow laugh in spite of life, Gunil smiles. "Thanks. General Ed college classes are good for something." He approaches Jungsu, pulling the blazers from his arms. "What about Ji?" he asks softly, looking through their assortment of mismatched items.
Jungsu leaves. and comes back with Jiseok's acoustic guitar, placing it on Hyeongjun's desk chair. Gunil stares at it, trying terribly not to shatter. "I wish there was service," he mourns, "I wish–"
"We said we wouldn't talk about it," Jungsu reminds gently, just because, if he thinks about it now, he'll keel over, unable to pick himself back up, and what's the point of prolonging their suffering any further.
Gunil nods once, roughly wipes his eyes, and returns to the matter at hand, picking one of Seungmin's blazers, holding it out for Jungsu to fit into. "It's a little tight," Jungsu complains, and Gunil chuckles against his back, a comfort Jungsu is so glad he doesn't have to be without. Being alone isn't even a conceivable thought, when Gunil is the one here with him.
"Want a tie?" Gunil hums, and Jungsu makes to shake his head, before reconsidering.
"Yeah."
This, this is Gunil's thing, that wraps around Jungsu's neck, soothing like a peaceful death. Gunil spins him around, tugging his favorite tie, the one with that silly tiger Gunil so adores, tightening it over Jungsu's throat. Jungsu steadies him by the elbows. "Thank you," he murmurs, really just to say it. If there was nothing else for them to do, he thinks every last second spent would be spent saying just that.
Thank you, thank you, thank you.
He doesn't quite know what for. Everything, probably. Even the bad.
Like one says you're welcome, Gunil responds pleasantly, "Thank you." He steps back, admiring Jungsu, and grinning broadly, proudly, a lot, too much for Jungsu to list. He holds out his arms, his turn, and Jungsu puts Seungmin's other blazer over his arms, folding the cuffs to fit Gunil's wrists.
"If you say it's too tight," Jungsu warns when Gunil opens his mouth, "You'll be insulting all of Seungmin's hard work."
Huffing a laugh through his nose, Gunli shakes his head. "I wouldn't dare. You're the one with pacific ocean shoulders, Su, not either of us." A thought hits him, he tilts his head. "I always wanted my wedding by the ocean."
Jungsu flattens the coarse fabric over Gunil's built shoulders, smiling fondly. He reaches over, grabs Jooyeon's headband, the lace of Hyeongjun's skirt tied to it crassly, and he places it atop Gunil's hair, mess on mess, tucking it behind his ears. "It'd only be right," he concurs.
+
They don't know how, refuse to question it, but the water runs. So to the sound of the bath's faucet flowing, Gunil sits at the edge of the tub. Dead flower petals from a fan's bouquet gifted to them weeks ago scattered over the tile floor, Jiseok's guitar propped in his lap, he plays something or the other. Harmonizing with the running water and the screeching flames.
It’s otherworldly, in the most literal sense, disarmingly surreal. Gunil makes the catastrophe endearing.
He sings lilting and laughing beneath his breath, just serious enough to keep Jungsu from being shy, "Here comes the bride, here comes the bride."
"Keep going with that," Jungsu threatens, though the infectious fizzy hysteria, somehow tender too, is spilling out from between his fingers, "And I'm not coming in."
"What should I sing instead?" Gunil queries, changing up the tune just a tad. "Oh, my jelly sweet Jungsu, as bright as a flower in spring, my lovely eternity to be–"
Peering through the crack of the door, Jungsu glares. "Stop it, or the wedding is off." So, a stupid dumb smirk on his face, Gunil shuts his mouth, strums Jiseok's guitar calmly, though his hands still shake. Jungsu doesn't suppose they'll ever stop at this rate.
Pulling open the door, Jungsu walks in, not any different than he'd been before, but a bride bloomed nonetheless, standing before Gunil somehow bashfully. Gunil's playing stills, and he sets the guitar aside, stands close.
That tremor in his fingers, Jungsu intakes a shaking breath, grasping the edge of the makeshift skirt veil, slowly pulling it over Gunil's face. Struck momentarily stunned by Gunil's soft smile, perhaps the softest he's ever worn, melted down to all its purest bits by the fire. So soft, Jungsu wants to sink in it. What else can beauty be, but that?
"Hi," he whispers, voice velvet and violets, blossoming up around Jungsu's neck and ears, tickling the tips of his ears and cheeks a vivid shade of pink. "Y'know, it isn't a good sign, if you want to divorce already."
Suddenly able to bear it all at once, Jungsu grins, rolling his eyes. "Shut up. We aren't divorcing." Such a silly thing to say, yet it makes Gunil beam and preen, eyes sparkling with a contented gleam. It's hard to really look at them. Jungsu isn't strong enough to carry the love that Gunil bears. He's sure no one is, not alone. Maybe if the others were here–
"How do we do this?" he asks, voice hoarse, and Gunil's expression saddened, like he somehow knows exactly what it is Jungsu is thinking. At this point, Jungsu wouldn't doubt it. Somehow, maybe the scientists could say, on their last day, they've become telepathic.
Squaring his shoulders, puffing out his chest, Gunil clears his throat. "Do you, Kim Jungsu–" Jungsu groans, laughing insatiably, leaning his head against Gunil's chest while Gunil carries on. "Take me, Koo Gunil, to be your lawfully wedded husband, through sickness and through health, 'til death do us part?"
Biting his lip, composing himself just enough to straighten and meagerly manage meeting Gunil's gaze, Jungsu nods. "I do." Gunil looks down to the ground, stifling a melting sunny smile. He looks so earnestly pleased, all of Jungsu aches for him.
"Do you, Koo Gunil, take me, Kim Jungsu, to be your lawfully wedded husband?" Gunil looks up at him, listening to his voice, latching onto it like a vine to trellis. He makes Jungsu nervous to even speak, he listens so dearly, holds Jungsu so dear. "Through sickness and through health, 'til death do us part?"
Squinting his eyes, looking to the side, Gunil smiles impishly. "I do not." Jungsu stutters, blinks rapidly and gapes at Gunil. But Gunil merely holds up Jungsu's hand, slips Seungmin's ring onto his finger. It just barely fits past his knuckle, and Gunil admires it, kissing it tenderly. "I'll have you even after death, in whatever comes next, into nothing maybe, I'll still be yours."
Speechless, Jungsu stares at Gunil, this lump swelling suffocatingly in his throat, unwilling to be subdued. Fat, syrupy crocodile tears crawl at snail's pace down his cheeks, and still all he can do is stare.
A sheen of sweat films Gunil's face, makes him damp like unpicked fruit on a rainy day. The heat crawls into them, seeps through their skin, plucks at their lungs, melts through the bone. They're softened in every sense of the word, and whereas Gunil turns to sap, Jungsu turns to incomprehensible mush.
Pouting, sobbing soundlessly, shoulders shaking, Jungsu takes the other ring, cries harder because the ring is Seungmin's, and not only is Seungmin not here, but Seungmin won't ever be here to see this, and twists it around Gunil's finger. It just barely almost fits.
He feels the ring against his spine when Gunil pulls him into an inescapable embrace, not one that even the reaper could tear Jungsu from, digging his nails into Jungsu's back, rubbing his hands up and down it, as if he could impossibly usher them into some unimaginable haven.
"Do we–" Jungsu sniffles through heaving cries, and Gunil has the gall to laugh at him, cradling the back of Jungsu's head into his neck, so Jungsu's tears soak his skin and veil "–do we say vows?"
Silent a long moment, the bathtub filling to the brim, spilling over the rim, falling onto the ground, soaking the dead, dried flower petals, the pressure of it tearing them to small shriveled pieces. "There's not enough time," he breaks eventually, "Even if–there would never be enough time or words for me to say to you all the things I want to."
Utterly overwhelmed, Jungsu buries his nose in Gunil's neck, the bow of his lips grazing the margin of Gunil's mole. "How long have you been waiting to be such a bleeding romantic?" he huffs, feeling goosebumps raise along Gunil's nape, brushing against his forehead like creases of a pillow.
"My whole life," Gunil professes, voice cracking.
Pulling away, outlining Gunil's torso and arms with his palms, cupping wet cheeks in a careful caress, Jungsu says, "If there's any one thing I have to say, it's that I'm sorry."
Swallowing, Gunil's stare pierces into his soul. He doesn't have to ask for what. He knows it all more intimately than Jungsu ever will. And because he's apologized in wordless countless ways every single day, he does not say it back, instead, "If there's one thing I will say, it's that if there was anyone I'd rather be here with, right now."
At the end of the world.
He leans forward, water beginning to pool at their feet, soak through their socks, but the discomfort has steadily been ingrained into their psyche, heat, saturation, mortality, it's all dug beneath their skin, the pain now dull. His fingers already at Jungsu's neck, all Gunil has to do is tip him forward, whisper against the seam of his lips a confession and a prayer.
"I'd always choose you."
+
He's got his arm tucked beneath Jungsu's legs, beneath Jungsu's back, his fingers along in Jungsu's knee and side respectively. In return, both Jungsu's arms are slung around his neck, his face pressed into Gunil's cheek, his giggles the closest they'll ever be to Gunil's ears and mind and heart. It's as lucky as Gunil will ever be. Laughter for morphine.
He lays Jungsu onto the couch, Jungsu not letting go, pulling him down with him, stumbling to place a knee on the cushion, catch himself on a crooked wrist into Jungsu's desperate kiss.
They can't go anywhere else. All the rooms are sweltering. Even where they are now, is hard enough to breathe as it is. It's only sensible, their solution. Strip. They tumble onto the hardwood of the living room, Jungsu's fervor overpowering, Gunil's balance unsteady. He cushions Gunil’s fall, brings them chest to chest, threads his fingers through Gunil's sweat drenched hair.
He kicks the coffee table away as he rips the skirt veil from Gunil's head, draping it on the cushion of the couch. Gunil sits back while he sits up, and they both shrug out of the blazers, their fingers slipping against each other's slick skin. It's hot. It's so hot. So hot they can feel themselves melting, feel their limbs burning. Any moment now, and they'll catch ablaze, nothing left of them but ash.
The gods or stars or all of the cosmos, whatever comes next, won't be able to pick them apart.
Halfway sitting, halfway resting the brunt of their weight on Gunil's firm forearms, they peel each other's clothes, fabric pasted to the flesh. Jungsu like flame, licks into Gunil's mouth, digs his thumbs into Gunil's cheeks, traces Gunil's teeth with his tongue. He's determined, in some way, to make them one.
He tastes of salt and iron, then copper, tugging on Gunil's top lip insistently, scraping the thin already broken skin, breaking further. If he can get beneath it, then any possibility of them parting, becomes nonexistent.
Lips spit soaked and pink tinged, Jungsu drags his tongue over Gunil's jaw, Gunil busying himself with adoring every inch of Jungsu that he can, taking Jungsu's cheek in his infirm bite, consuming him only in theory.
He gasps into Jungsu's skin, Jungsu's teeth latching onto the lobe of his ear, his hips jerking against Gunil's. Pleasure and pain coursing through to the center of his core, he near collapses, his arms oversore. Again, and again, Jungsu catches him, his hands pillowing Gunil's head gently against the ground. "Sorry," he rasps, licking the shell of Gunil's ear in fragile apology.
Robbed of words, Gunil just shakes his head, wrapping his arms around Jungsu's neck, the warmth not uncomfortable when it's Jungsu's all over. Sitting up, leaning against the couch, Jungsu tugs Gunil into his lap.
This way, neither of them can stumble, though they still shake. Quiver, like leaves, like dried flower petals in the path of storm. The fear doesn't really leave, this close to the scent of blood. They will be torn to shreds. Still they will hold each other dear when dead.
Smiling, Gunil tilts forward, kisses Jungsu innocent. Sweet, chaste pecks of their lips meeting and parting and meeting again. Never separated for long, soft smacks and content hums passing between their mouths in conversation.
Gunil is all rosy, patches of pink taking over the flesh of him. Jungsu is sure he isn’t much different, but he aims only to make Gunil’s lips redder because of it, so they can still stand out against him, bruised raw, swollen glossy. They will both burn one color, but at least Jungsu will remember the features of him before then.
"Have you done this before?" Gunil asks, worrying about those three years to the last second.
Dissatisfied by the question, because it means Gunil’s body parted from him, Jungsu pulls Gunil against him, refusing to speak unless it's directly seeped into Gunil's skin. "Not–not with…" He trails off, shaking his head, the movement minute, only his hair tickling Gunil's forehead telling. "You?"
A puff of laughter trickling along Jungsu's chin, Gunil mumbles, "What does it matter, it'll be my last." To which Jungsu whines, digs his nails deep into Gunil's thighs, the truce between them trembling. Gunil smooths Jungsu's hair. "Sorry." Jungsu hums his forgiveness, immediate, in an instant.
Gunil drags his mouth down, presses kisses to Jungsu's collarbones, his chest, his stomach. Reverently glad this is the last thing he'll ever see. Resting his lips where Jungsu's heart races, eyes fluttering shut as he's embraced in the proof of Jungsu's life. "I love you."
Jungsu makes a low noise in the back of his throat, mournful and maddened at once. Gunil paints Jungsu's waist with the trace of his touch. "I love you." Jungsu breathes heavy at the feeling of Seungmin’s ring, once cool, now so hot it feels freezing, ice against the bonfire of his gut. "I love you." It's worship, it's truth, it's vow.
He slips his thumb past Jungsu's waistband, his caress a threat at Jungsu's hip.
"I love you."
For the short while they have left, he forgets how to say anything else.
+
On the ground, no longer even the pretense of cold, soaked in sweat and tears and each other, whatever line separates their two entities blur, their persons becoming a haze of one self. It makes the discomfort more bearable, to simply consider this the necessary pain they must endure to finally once and for all fuse.
Jungsu thinks the building is on fire now too. His face is buried in Gunil's chest, so he doesn't smell the smoke, even if he's inhaling it.
The smoke will probably get them before anything else at this rate. It fills their lungs, clouds their minds. They're evaporate, each other's last breaths in a stubborn vapor at each other's necks. Stupid coughs on collarbones.
The tears don't fall far from their eyes, before becoming a flat shine against their cheek, a thought more than a real tangible thing anymore. They've dried themselves out, poured themselves into each other until there was nothing left, and the sacrifice was worth all the sweat.
Limbs leaden, joints wooden and bones sore, they do nothing but lay there, Gunil's nose in Jungsu's hair, Jungsu's head rested on Gunil’s chest, listening with rapt closeness, as Gunil's heartbeat gradually steadies, then slows and slows. His breath is hoarse against Jungsu's head, and Jungsu holds him tighter, fearing he'll leave first, leave Jungsu alone, for even a second.
So he wastes his precious breath.
"I didn't mean it," he confesses, voice as solid as the crackling air surrounding them. "There was nothing for me but this band." Perhaps he lost time, lost youth, lost those three years he could've experienced the woes and thrills of life, but this was life too. These people were his life.
A sound spills from Gunil's throat, Jungsu thinks it's supposed to be a laugh, more a deep wheeze. "I know," Gunil rasps, "Me neither. You guys…my everything."
Jungsu taps his fingers along Gunil's arm in an unforgettable rhythm. Music will be with Gunil in all their moments, even the final ones. "It was…" He laces their fingers together, Gunil's limp against his knuckles. "Worth it?"
Mustering his strength, Gunil squeezes Jungsu's hand, slides their rings together. The sound would be grating if in any other scenario. Now it's soothing against the backdrop of screams gone silent, the shrieking of walls crumbling, structures fracturing, foundations shattering. "It was."
Jungsu giggles, and Gunil slackens completely at the sound, inarguable one of his favorites. "Kim Gunil," he utters, with some of the last of his breaths. Into the clavicle of Gunil's chest, slithering down between Gunil’s shrouded lungs into the rungs of his ribs, the melding of their selves.
He feels Gunil's smile, without waver even with a helpless tremor. "Koo Jungsu." It sounds funny supposedly, unwieldy like a teenage dream, Gunil's chest jumping beneath Jungsu's head, his heart stuttering, and Jungsu squeezes, tighter tighter.
He glances up, takes Gunil's face in, the smile scarred on his face, his drooping lidded eyes, lashes batting prettily, pitifully, over sculpted cheekbones. What a sad, serenity sight. Jungsu soaks in it, absorbs it until he forgets what anything else looks like. Then he shuts his eyes, loyal to the picture in his head.
"Do you only love me because it's our last day?" he asks with his little remaining oxygen.
Gunil intakes a shallow, gasping breath, filling himself with smoke and ember so he can make one lasting promise Jungsu's way. He'd have done more if he could, probably, sacrificed every last part of his being for kindling, if it'd somehow kept Jungsu's grief at bay.
"I've loved you regardless…" His words trails off, struggling to be heard, to be more than a disturbance of air across his once again dry lips, chapped and cracked. Jungsu hears it, hears his lungs shutter, his vocal chords flutter, butterfly wings shredding in a gust. Still, Gunil manages the impossible, just for Jungsu.
"I'd love you forever, if we had it."
Barely audibly, the idea of his voice just barely palpable. His heart slows and slows and slows. If Jungsu's eyes were to open, his vision would blink in and out, his thoughts fragmenting and unraveling. He's a spool all used up. Just like the smoke wanted, he's a wisp of a dissipated soul.
Grief doesn't strike him, desperation flees him, sorrow hides within him. Still, he pushes himself up just enough, the single movement enough to make his heart stop a whole second. A hint of what's to come, that fleeting nothingness.
He presses his lips to Gunil's, spiraling into a slice of sheer despondence when he feels nothing against him. Not a single puff of air. It's not a kiss, though.
He just wants to share one last thing with Gunil, before he follows him into oblivion. The world can take from him everything.
Only Gunil will keep his dying breath.
+
A vitriol gasp building in his throat, he jerks up, his head hitting the bottom of the upper bunk. His vision blurs and dances before settling on his blanketed knees and the trembling fingers dug into them. His hand shoots to his heart, beating, to his mouth, breathing.
Tears soak his face, coat his neck in a shimmering film. He tastes salt, all his own.
He tears the blanket off of him, near falling out of his bed in his haste to leave it. His socks slide against the floor, he catches himself on the ladder of the bunk, staring out his room's window onto the peaceful mundane view of their neighboring building complex. Relief and shock turns his legs to jelly, and he has to hold onto the ladder rungs to keep him from sinking to his knees.
Pulling himself up, he peers into the upper bunk, exhaling staggeredly upon simply seeing Jiseok there, resting peacefully, sleeping soundly. Choking out his pillow, one leg free from his covers. Safe. Alive. Then again, Jungsu is both of those things too.
Still, he makes sure, reaching forward, lightly resting trembling fingertips against Jiseok's leg. Jiseok grumbles, and kicks him away, turning over onto his other side, but he was real, he was very much real. Stumbling back, Jungsu prods his own face, presses his cheeks to bone, solid, not sliding off, not melting.
He spins on his heel, racing out the door, so swift he almost catapults over the couch, breathing labored as he stares down at the empty cushions, the thin throw blanket crumpled at the end of it, the pillow untouched at the other. He grabs the pillow, eyes darting around feverishly, lungs seizing.
Jungsu mutters under his breath, frantic, turning around, perhaps to simply go mad right then and there, but it's okay, it's for naught. There he is. Standing there, his hand on the knob of Hyeongjun's and Jooyeon's door. Midnight hair wild, dark eyes wilder. His cheeks, nose, eyes, they're all the same red as Jungsu's, puffy and cried up.
For a second, they just stare. Soaking the sight of the other in.
Soon, quickly, it's not enough, not even close. Jungsu drops the pillow, manages just barely to catch Gunil falling into him, shoulders shaking, his hands curling into Jungsu's collar, face burrowed in Jungsu's neck, breathing him in.
Helpless then, Jungsu slides to the floor, holding Gunil as close as humanly possible, scrambling to wrap his arms around him, swallow him whole with the frame of his body. He curls around Gunil, wetting Gunil's unkempt hair with incessant, undying tears.
With the arm not wrapped secure around Jungsu's neck, Gunil finds Jungsu's hand, slotting their fingers together with desperate need. Jungsu finds himself seeking smooth metal resting atop Gunil's knuckle, almost surprised, when it isn't there. He lets free a shuddering breath, slumping into the back of the couch. "Was any of that real?" he asks, because he doesn't need to ask if Gunil had seen it too.
Lived it, if that was a term that could be applied to dying.
Voice wavering, Gunil digs his chin into Jungsu's shoulder, each movement jerky and awkward, like he really had just come back from life. "I don't know," he admits, "I almost think so."
Neither of them know what to do with that, overwhelmed simply by being here, in each other's arms, on earth, existing at all. That isn't satisfactory though. They're not dead, they're alive. They're together. They've got all of forever.
Dissolving into gasping giggles, Jungsu pries Gunil from his neck, squishing his damp cheeks between his cool palms, pulling him in, pressing their foreheads together. "I love you too," he declares, absolutely needing to, before he dies again at the hands of his own adoration, "I really do, Koo Gunil."
Gunil breaks into a heart wrenching grin, eyes fluttering shut, basking in Jungsu's confession. "Kim Gunil," he whispers, teasing. It sounds so much better, his voice strong, his heart rate speeding. Not at all hopeless.
Jungsu relaxes truly, body going slack, exhausted. It's Gunil's turn to be the pillar, petting Jungsu's head gently. "Not yet," he murmurs, smiling softly into Gunil's touch.
Gunil stills. "You can't go saying things like that."
"Why not?"
Cheeks pink, lukewarm against Jungsu's temple, Gunil ghosts his lips over Jungsu's forehead, and they both stutter. This feels much more real now, without imminent looming threat. Heavier in their chests, much harder to carry.
They'll carry it effortlessly nonetheless.
"I'm supposed to be the bleeding romantic," Gunil hums, "I've been waiting my whole life."
Jungsu looks up, lips curling around the butterfly flower petal thing blooming from his heart. A future. He tugs at Gunil's chin with steady fingers. "You'll have to wait a little longer." His eyes belying the sentiment, trained on Gunil's toothy smile.
"It's okay," Gunil breathes, "We have time, and I meant it. What I said." I'd love you forever, if we had it. Now they do, in some sense, the sense that means anything anymore. There's no resisting now, the lure of Gunil's promise, still fresh on Gunil's lips.
Jungsu dives in, bites into the heart of a tomorrow, and so many more after.