Archive of Our Own

A crashing, screeching, deafening noise wakes Heeseung in an instant. Reverberation clangs through the HYPEN, rattling him down to the bone. It’s only as he leaps out of bed that he realises the ship is spinning, the stars outside his bedroom window drawn into long lines of silver.

The mag lev field keeps him rooted to HYPEN’s floor, and almost everything on board is either calibrated to the mag lev field or simply fastened down. But it doesn’t stop his head from spinning as he stumbles out of bed, bolting out the door and down the hall to the main deck.

Judging by the blaring alarm and flashing lights, something very large going very fast has crashed into them.

On the deck, Jungwon and Sunoo are already there from the night shift, Jungwon loudly cursing as he inspects the damage on the captain’s monitor. Sunoo is gripping two of the steering levers like his life depends on it.

“What did we hit?” Heeseung demands, already at Jungwon’s side to survey the damage.

“Freak asteroid shower,” Jungwon shouts over the groaning engines.

“Shower?” Jake exclaims from where he’s appeared at the main deck door, rumpled and wide-eyed. “As in, there are more?”

Heeseung looks up at the ship’s front navigational window. It should’ve been where he looked first, but the last thing he expected was for there to be more of them.

He sees the next asteroid half a second before it hits.

The ship goes careening again, and they all stumble a few feet to the side despite the pull of the mag lev field. This time, there’s a horrifying crack that sounds awfully like their ship’s tail getting torn clean off.

“What’s going on?” Jay says. He and Sunghoon have appeared now too, standing beside Jake at the doorway.

“We have to abandon the ship,” Jungwon says.

“I can pull her out of this!” Sunoo shouts, agitatedly twisting switches and hitting buttons as if any amount of rerouting power will get them out of the pull of an asteroid shower.

“It’s too late to save the ship, Sunoo, we need to save ourselves! You three, go get the escape pods open, I’ll get Riki!”

Looking over the monitor, Heeseung can’t disagree with Jungwon’s decision. The lights are flickering and dying around them as they speak—it’s a wonder the engine is still functional. They’ll be floating in a defenceless hunk of metal in the middle of an asteroid storm in minutes if they don’t escape now.

Jake and Sunghoon have leapt into action at Jungwon’s words, but Jake is a little slower to act.

“How can we go? What will we do?”

“We will find each other, and start again,” Jungwon says, putting his hands on Jake’s shoulders and turning him around. “The ship is done for. It’s more important that we all get out of this. Hyung, get Sunoo to a pod!”

Suddenly, Heeseung and Sunoo are left alone on the main deck.

“Sunoo, he’s right,” Heeseung says. The lights fully die on the main deck, and the ship coughs and splutters around them as the emergency lights kick in. “We need to get out of here before the oxygen field fails.”

Sunoo looks up to meet his eyes in the red light. Terror sits in them—Sunoo has never known a home other than the HYPEN. But there’s a burning guilt, too.

He was posted as their navigator overnight. That doesn’t mean the asteroid shower was his fault, or that it could’ve even been avoided. It certainly doesn’t mean he can give his life trying to correct something that is already too far gone.

“We’ll die in those pods!”

“We won’t, they are small enough to avoid the asteroids. This is what they are made for, Sunoo. You have to come, there’s no saving her now.”

He reaches out to take Sunoo’s wrist and pull him away. He wouldn’t dare touch him if it were any other day, any other circumstance—it even feels wrong that he’s the one to be left here, convincing Sunoo to save himself.

It’s not that he would leave Sunoo here to die whether the other five were here or not. He’s not about to let Sunoo do this. But he’s sure he’s the last person Sunoo wants to listen to right now.

Sunoo pulls back, but Heeseung won’t have it. He holds on tighter and pulls him away from the nav station, and Sunoo’s expression crumples as he finally gives in.

“I’m sorry,” he says, as Heeseung tugs him across the main deck quickly. “Oh, Gods, this is all my fault.”

Another asteroid hits right as they reach the doorway to the main deck. With this one, he can hear the engine finally die.

The mag lev field is also compromised on impact, and the two of them are untethered from the floor and launched into the ship’s walls.

He didn’t realise just how fast they were spinning until gravity slipped away from him. Heeseung can’t find his way up or down at the pace the ship is spinning, and he slams into the wall, then the ceiling, then the floor again as the ship tumbles him around and around.

Belatedly, he realises he’s still holding onto Sunoo’s wrist. While the weight of the two of them helps them slow down, having only one hand free doesn’t give him much chance to find some purchase.

When he’s slammed against—the ceiling?—and manages to seize the edge of something, he does his best to pin himself there to try and get his bearings. The ship’s spinning seems to be slowing, but the emergency lights have failed, and it’s so dark it’s hard to tell which way up he is. It takes him a few seconds to realise he’s clinging onto the open door of the pod—thank the Gods Jungwon had the others open them already—and that Jungwon himself is also clinging to the door of the pod next door.

“Drop him my way, I’ll take him!”

It’s only then that Heeseung realises Sunoo is unconscious, hanging only by Heeseung’s grip.

“You go!” he shouts back. The pods only hold two people each, and if Jungwon is already with Riki, he’s only putting himself at more risk trying to help them. “I’ve got this!”

He wastes no time. On the next turn of the ship, when the direction of momentum is just right, he lets go of the edge of the pod and drops them both inside.

The pod door automatically closes behind them, and the internal mag lev field activates. They’re unceremoniously pulled to the floor by the recalibration, and Heeseung tries not to land too heavily on Sunoo, catching himself on his hands.

Though there’s no time to waste, and Sunoo is still unconscious, and another fucking asteroid hits the HYPEN somewhere agonisingly close by, the blood running down the side of Sunoo’s face causes him to pause.

“Please wake up,” he says, even as he scoops Sunoo up under his back and under his thighs to lift him into one of the seats.

“Don’t be dead, please don’t be dead,” he says as he pulls on the straps and buckles him in, Sunoo’s head lolling in place. He cups his head in one hand, allowing himself the moment to wipe the blood away and look for the wound. Blood on the side of his head, but it’s from where his ear cartilage is torn, running red and wet but hopefully not too serious.

More alarmingly, his Unista is cracked.

Sunoo can’t go without a working Unista if they’re about to make an emergency landing on the nearest safe planet. The Unista is a universal stabiliser earpiece for all aspects of space travel. It translates languages and regulates atmospheres on foreign planets, protects vital organs during lightspeed travel and g-force speeds, and acts as a homing beacon if they get separated, among other things.

He only takes a moment to pause. Then he takes the cracked Unista from Sunoo’s ear and replaces it with his own, pressing the cracked one into his own ear as a replacement. Something is better than nothing.

Heeseung pulls the lever to power up the engine as he sits himself in the other chair, yanking the straps across his chest and securing himself in. He can feel the warm, wet trickle of Sunoo’s blood on his neck, and the pod’s control panel lights up, ready to launch.

He takes one last look at Sunoo, still unconscious in the chair, blood dripping onto his arm and disappearing onto the black sleeve of his uniform. Then he presses the button to launch the pod out into the expanse of space, propelling them both to the nearest planet.

‎‧₊˚✩ 🪐✩˚₊‧

Sunoo’s head is pounding, his ear burning, body aching where he’s uncomfortably strapped to something. Between the buzzing in his head and pressure behind his eyes, he can’t tell which way is up or down, or remember why he’s hurting so damn much.

It’s hard to open his eyes, especially against the bright light streaming directly onto his face, making his pounding headache worse. When he tries to turn his head away from the glare, pain surges through his ear, making him feel dizzy for a moment.

That’s when it all comes back. The asteroids that came out of nowhere, his failure to steer them away in time. Jungwon cursing, Heeseung pulling him away from the main deck to the escape pods….

And then…

He forces his eyes open. He’s sitting in the seat of an escape pod that is certainly no longer on their HYPEN. Through the nav window, a bright orange sun streams in against a red sky, and the angle they’ve landed at also displays a wonky horizon of dark earth. In the distance, a rock formation and what looks like the edge of a forest are hazy in his vision.

He looks to his left, and Heeseung sits in the other chair, body limp and unmoving.

“Heeseung?” he says, breath caught in his throat. Then he scrambles to unbuckle himself and pushes himself up shakily, careful to catch his balance on the sloped floor of the pod before he moves over to unbuckle Heeseung. “Hyung?”

There are no obvious injuries, but Heeseung starts to list forward when he’s unbuckled, and Sunoo places a hand on his chest to push him back.

“Hyung!” he says more urgently, and takes his shoulders to try and pinch him. He’s afraid to shake him or move him too much. “Please wake up!”

There’s a sharp breath, and Heeseung’s eyelids flutter, and he drags his eyes open. “Sunoo?”

“Oh Gods,” he breathes. His shoulders sag, and he draws his hands back. “Are you okay?”

Heeseung grimaces as he raises a hand to his head. “I’ll live. Are you okay?”

“I’ve hurt my ear, it’s killing me, I don’t think my hearing is right. And my body hurts everywhere, but I guess that’s to be expected after a crash. I can get the medical kit if you send out a distress signal.”

“Let’s find a way to power up the emergency lights first.”

Sunoo looks around them. The pod’s lights are on already, though they’re hardly needed with the bright sunlight streaming in through the window. “They’re already on.”

“What?”

Sunoo looks back at Heeseung’s face. He realises, then, that he’s not looking directly at Sunoo.

His gaze is hazy and drifting to the right of his head, like he’s not looking at anything in particular. Sunoo waves a hand in front of his face, and Heeseung doesn’t blink or change his gaze at all.

“It’s not the lights,” he says, and the last word catches in his throat.

“Oh,” Heeseung says, blinking a few times, but his distant gaze stays the same. “I can’t see anything.”

“Fuck,” Sunoo curses under his breath, waving his hand a few more times as if that will do anything. “Let me look at you, you might have a head injury.”

“Probably,” Heeseung murmurs.

He delicately touches Heeseung’s chin to turn his head to the left, then the right. There’s no visible injury beside a few scrapes in his hairline and a bruise on his cheek, though there is a bit of blood on his ear and neck. It’s not clear where it’s from, but more pressingly, Heeseung’s Unista is cracked open, part of the casing missing.

“Your Unista is broken,” Sunoo tells him. “This is bad. Stay there, let me see if the medical kit has a spare.”

It’s only another step to reach the emergency supplies, stored in the floor behind the seats. Although they’ve never had to use the pods for an actual emergency landing before, they have sometimes come in to use the emergency kits when supplies were running low. Jungwon is adamant about things being replaced as soon as possible, so thankfully, nothing looks to be missing at first glance.

But the emergency radio, a simple hand-held black box that can transmit SOS signals via almost any orbiting satellite, hadn’t been secured properly the last time it was taken out, and is loose among the medical kit and emergency rations.

He picks it up, and can feel the dents and cracks in it from being thrown about in their emergency landing. The lights don’t appear when he flicks the switch, no crackle of the radio humming to life.

“Fuck,” he says under his breath, hands shaking. He pockets the radio for now, pulling out the rations and medical kit and replacing the floorpiece again.

“What is it?”

“Radio is broken.”

“I can fix it,” Heeseung says assuredly, and Sunoo struggles to pry the medical kit open.

“How are you going to do that when you can’t see?” he asks agitatedly as it finally snaps open, rummaging through it for a spare Unista. There are bandages, butterfly stitches, painkillers, regeneration pills, stitch spray, antibiotics, medical wipes, concussion patches…

But no Unista.

“We’ll do it together,” Heeseung says, and Sunoo slams the medical kit shut, panic finally catching up with him and overwhelming him. He bends over double, hands on his knees, trying not to cry.

“There’s no spare,” he chokes out. “We’re fucked. We can’t go out there not knowing if the atmosphere is good for you, it could kill you. Our radio is broken. You can’t see—the others are Gods knows where, the power in this pod will last us a day at best—”

“If the power is still on in here, we can get a reading of the atmosphere from the pod. You can tell me if it’s safe or not. Come and look.”

Sunoo wants to shout at him. He wants to scream in frustration, but he bites down on his lip and stands up from the floor, coming back around to look at the nav screen.

Even now, with Heeseung so vulnerable and powerless, he’s the one holding it together of the two of them. Even without his sight, he’s in charge of the situation, and he knows exactly what to do next.

As much as he knows they both need that right now, it only pisses him off more. Of all the people he managed to end up stranded with, tending to, taking orders from, it just had to be Heeseung.

It takes him a few seconds to properly register the data on the screen. The readings show they’re on an isolated part of the planet, no life signs around for miles. The forest up ahead is their best bet, as it’s densely packed enough to possibly conceal life, especially if the life forms on this planet aren’t too advanced.

The atmosphere isn’t too dissimilar to Earth’s. It’s a little more oxygen-rich and has a stronger pull of gravity, but those two factors should balance each other out as long as they’re not here for too long. He can’t see anything in the readings that would be toxic to Heeseung, but the readings aren’t advanced in an old escape pod like this.

“How is it?”

“I think it’s okay,” he says, swiping to check all the data. No immediate risks, although the days on this planet look to be on the hotter side, and the nights rain down acid skies. “We need to find cover before dark—I’m not sure this pod is built to withstand acid rain.”

“Acid rain expected tonight?”

“Every night.”

“Okay. Not bad, as far as danger goes.”

Sunoo touches his own Unista tentatively to check for any cracks or breaks, and hisses when he only jostles the painful tear in his ear.

“You okay?”

“I need to look at my ear. It hurts so much.”

He picks up the medical kit again, setting the nav screen to reflect him so he can see his own wound. He gasps at the sight of it, the amount of blood on his cheek and neck, running down to his shoulder. Gingerly, he reaches in to take his own Unista out, covered in blood but unbroken.

Sunoo places it beside the medical kit and looks back at his reflection. The tear in his ear comes straight down from the top, looking like he’d crashed into something vertical that had sliced right through his ear. It’s a miracle his Unista wasn’t cracked, that his hearing isn’t worse off than a bit of buzzing on one side.

He looks back at Heeseung, the small amount of blood dripping from his ear. The crack in his Unista is vertical.

He looks back at himself in the reflection, then at Heeseung’s Unista again.

“That’s mine,” he says quietly before he can even think about it. The realisation rushes over him in a wave, and he steps closer to Heeseung, reaching out for his Unista.

“What? Hey—that might still work!”

Heeseung somehow grabs his wrist before he can pull back, but without his sight, it’s easy for Sunoo to transfer the Unista to his free hand to take a closer look at it.

When he holds it up to his ear, he can see in the reflection that the crack is perfectly aligned with his wound.

“You swapped them!” he says louder, fury roaring up in him, shaking off Heeseung’s grip harshly. “Why did you do that?”

“Because yours was broken,” Heeseung says steadfastly.

“That doesn’t mean you can sacrifice your own! This is probably the reason your sight is gone, you had nothing to protect you when we crash-landed!”

“It could just as easily be from a head injury. Give it back.”

“I don’t care what it’s from, that doesn’t change the fact that you put us both at risk by doing this!”

“I gave you the Unista because you were already injured, and it could’ve become ten times worse if you’d had to crash land without one.”

“And you’ve gone and given yourself an injury that could be permanently debilitating in the process—which of us is going to get us out of this mess now?”

“We’ll do it together. My vision loss is probably temporary.”

“Probably temporary,” Sunoo says, scathingly. “You can’t possibly know that.”

“I’m not going to apologise if that’s what you want.”

“You never do,” he spits. “This is exactly why we broke up in the first place!”

That finally casts Heeseung silent. For a moment, he looks shellshocked. Then he schools his face back into his usual neutral look.

They haven’t talked about their breakup since it happened, only awkwardly dancing around each other on the ship, never holding a direct conversation if they don’t have to. This is probably the first time they’ve been left alone together in months, not counting the moment on the main deck when the ship was crashing.

Maybe it was unfair of him to bring it up now. But he’s just so angry—at Heeseung, for always playing the hero, even when he’s not supposed to care about Sunoo anymore. At Jungwon, for leaving the two of them to escape together, all alone for miles around. At himself, for getting so worked up and upset over this gesture that could mean nothing. For not being able to keep his cool like Heeseung, who’s so unaffected in comparison to Sunoo right now.

“Give me the cracked one,” Heeseung says, holding out his hand. “You’re our eyes now. You need the protection more than I do.”

Sunoo’s chest burns with fury. But he knows that Heeseung is right, and that there’s no time to waste arguing about this.

He takes a deep breath, trying to focus on the important things right now. Getting them cleaned up and headed towards that forest for cover overnight is their priority.

Sunoo picks up a medical wipe, tearing open the packet with fumbling fingers. Then he comes to Heeseung’s side and starts to wipe the trail of blood—his blood, he realises now—from his neck and ear. He gets a little bit of satisfaction when Heeseung flinches at the sudden cold, but he doesn’t pull away when Sunoo’s fingers trail down his neck, only the thin wipe between them.

Then he picks up the cracked earpiece and places it back in Heeseung’s ear.

“I’m going to clean myself up, then we can leave,” he says. “You should try to stand, and make sure you’re not hurt anywhere else.”

“Yeah,” Heeseung says, voice slightly strained. “Okay.”

The amount of blood on Sunoo’s face, ear and neck is much more severe than Heeseung’s, and pain shoots through his head every time he comes close to the wound, so he has to grit his teeth and try to steady his hands to treat his injury. Some stitch spray and butterfly clips will keep it together until he can see a proper doctor, and he does his best to cover it with a stick-on bandage to protect it from infection.

“That will have to do,” he announces, packing everything away and picking up the backpack that contains their rations, placing the medical kit into it.

“Let me take the bag,” Heeseung says, holding his hands out.

“Are you hurt anywhere else?”

“No,” he says, though Sunoo isn’t sure whether to truly believe him. Had he not figured out the truth about the Unista, he’s certain Heeseung wouldn’t have told him.

“Fine,” he says, handing over the bag, placing the radio inside it before he does. “I’m going to open the door now.”

Heesung slings the backpack onto his shoulders, already waiting on the other side of the door. “Okay.”

The door swings open, revealing the expanse of red sky and dark earth ahead of them. Stepping off the ramp, the ground is soft and spongy to walk on, making him feel unbalanced, especially with the heavier pull of gravity than he’s used to.

“Woah,” Heeseung says, stepping off the ramp beside him and losing his balance on the unexpectedly sinking earth. Sunoo reaches out to catch his arm, and Heeseung rights himself with a hand on Sunoo’s shoulder. “Sorry.”

“It’s fine,” he says stiffly. “We should probably walk together anyway. If you trip and die because of a rock or something, I will kill you.”

Heeseung nods. “Okay.”

Sunoo slips his hand down to take Heeseung’s. After months of avoiding touching each other at all, it feels like the touch is burning hot.

The wrongness of it only reminds him that things have never been worse between them.

“Come on,” he says, and leads the way towards the distant forest.

‎‧₊˚✩ 🪐✩˚₊‧

“There are crops up here. They look like berries, or something.”

“We should avoid eating anything from here if the agriculture relies on acid rain,” Heeseung says. “Are we near the forest?”

“Yeah, the berries are on the trees. They’re not quite like our trees, though. All their branches and leaves are like… I don’t know, they’re so thick I can’t even see the sky. It’s like they’re one giant canopy with trunks here and there.”

“Maybe this is how the native species take cover from the rain.”

“Maybe. I’m not convinced there is a native species, at least not one that can help us. Everything looks so… wild.”

Even if he didn’t have Sunoo to describe their surroundings to him, Heeseung would be able to tell the moment they step into the forest. The temperature drops by several degrees, and the earth hardens, making it much easier to walk on. Honestly, he’d got used to walking on the spongy terrain after a few minutes, but he didn’t want to let go of Sunoo’s hand. Being tethered to someone else is as much of a comfort as a practicality while he’s blind to a completely foreign terrain.

Plus, he hasn’t touched Sunoo since their breakup, and despite everything, he still yearns for it.

Though he has no regrets about the Unista switch he pulled back on the ship, being without his vision is terrifying. It’s not that he doesn’t trust Sunoo. There’s no one he’d trust more to get him to safety. But he doesn’t like that he can’t look out for him in return.

He can only hold onto the belief that this is temporary, for now. Vision loss isn’t an unheard-of side effect of a bit of janky space travel.

But he doesn’t want the last image behind his eyes to be of Sunoo covered in blood.

His foot hits something hard, and he stumbles a little bit. Sunoo grips him tight. “Be careful. It’s more rocky here.”

“Keep your eyes ahead of us, I’ll be fine,” he says, and hears Sunoo scoff a little bit, but he doesn’t comment anything more.

The temperature is dropping quickly by the time Sunoo spots somewhere for them to hole up overnight. It’s a relief—he’s getting the sense that night is upon them, which means acid rain is soon to follow.

It takes some time to climb up to the cave, with its jagged and steep rocks leading up to the entrance. When it gets too steep to hold hands anymore, they release each other, and Heeseung relies on feeling his way by touch, Sunoo instructing him where the nearest hand and footholds are. When he finally pulls himself up to the top, he can feel Sunoo’s hand lightly on his arm, ushering him inside.

“It’s deep. We’ll be fine here. I hope it won’t be too cold overnight, I don’t even know how I’d begin making a fire with the look of the trees here…”

“Is there anything we can use to lie on, or under?”

“Nothing. It’s just rock in here. The skies are beautiful outside, though—the night sky is a dark green, and it’s pulsing and glowing…”

“Like acid?”

“Shut up, like the northern lights. It’s pretty.”

“I wish I could see it.”

Sunoo just hums, and Heeseung gets the sense he’s not looking at the sky anymore. “I’m sorry I said that stuff back there. I do hope your sight will come back.”

“Don’t apologise for how you feel. I made a decision in the moment, you don’t have to like it.”

“You did it to get me out of there safely. So, thank you for that.”

“I think we’re even now you’ve dragged me up to this cave.”

“I suppose so.”

There’s a pitter-patter overhead as the rain begins. They’d gotten inside in the nick of time.

“We should count stocks,” he says after a while. “You should eat something now, you’ve lost a lot of blood.”

“By we, you mean I should count stocks,” Sunoo grumbles. Heeseung places the bag in front of him and feels it pulled away by Sunoo’s grasp.

“How dark is it? It could wait until morning.”

“No, I’m hungry. And it’s not too dark, the sky is bright.”

“We should try to fix the radio, then. The sooner we can send for help, the better.”

“I don’t know how we can do that when you can’t see it. Maybe it’s better to wait for tomorrow, see if your sight is better.”

“I don’t think I’ll recover that quickly,” he says. He doesn’t want to pin his hopes on one night of sleep to solve everything. Not when it’s unlikely he’ll get much sleep in these conditions anyway. “It’s better if I talk you through it.”

“What if I make it worse?”

“You won’t. You’re capable. Crack it open and tell me what you see.”

Sunoo shuffles for a moment. “We have enough food for five days, by the way.”

“Good.”

There’s some more shuffling, and then the scrape of the radio being opened up. “Um. So. The radio is… I don’t think anything is missing. I think… there’s this white box that’s dented. Oh, yeah, it’s broken.”

“Sounds like the tuning capacitor. If that’s broken, the radio should still be able to send out a signal; it just might not go very far. You said it wouldn’t turn on at all?”

“Yeah. The battery is in place, though.”

“Check the wires, see if anything is snapped or frayed. Careful with your fingers.”

There’s some quiet tapping under the sounds of the rain. “Oh, yeah, one of the metal plates is dislodged. I might be able to fasten it again with the tools in the medical kit—hang on.”

Some more tapping and shuffling. Though it sounds hopeful that they’ll be able to get the radio working again, the signal won’t get far without a working tuning capacitor.

“Okay, I got it back in place.”

“See, I knew you could do it.” It’s weird, not being able to see someone as he speaks to them. When Sunoo doesn’t respond, he has no idea how his comment has been received. “Now there should be two red wires that go to the tuning capacitor. You need to take them out of the broken capacitor and wire them together instead. Make sure it’s turned off before you do anything.”

“Yeah, I can see them. Okay, hang on.”

Heeseung lies down and keeps one ear on the sound of Sunoo working. After some time, the radio clips back together again, and Sunoo makes a triumphant noise as it crackles to life.

“Mayday, Mayday, this is HYPEN Five and HYPEN Two calling for aid. We’re without a pod, on limited supplies, no route off planet. Please respond.”

The radio crackles, and they both listen to the static in silence.

“Because there’s no tuning capacitor, the message probably won’t reach them unless they’ve crashed conveniently nearby,” Heeseung says. “We should try to spot any signs of civilisation from the cave entrance tomorrow, see if we can get something to boost the signal. If not, we can go back to the pod, maybe there’s something we can salvage there.”

There’s a long silence, and then the radio is switched off. “Yeah. Okay.”

“Hey. You did good.”

Silence again. Heeseung sits back up, wishing he could see Sunoo, if only for a second.

“Thanks.”

“Get some sleep. I’ll…” he trails off.

Sunoo laughs. “Take watch? Yeah, maybe not.”

“Just sleep. I’ll be able to hear anything coming through that rain.”

“Hmm, sure,” Sunoo says, but he doesn’t complain any further. He must be exhausted—he hasn’t slept properly in who knows how many hours, suffered a not-insignificant injury, was unconscious during an emergency crash, then had to lead Heeseung across a hot, unknown terrain for hours. No wonder he’s not in the mood to argue anymore.

Heeseung repositions himself until he finds a wall of the cave to sit against. When he reaches his hand out, he accidentally brushes against something soft, and after a moment, he realises it’s Sunoo’s hair. Sunoo doesn’t move or say anything, so Heeseung is daring enough to draw the moment out, running his fingers gently along the soft strands.

Then he tucks his hand back into his lap, and settles in to keep watch.

‎‧₊˚✩ 🪐✩˚₊‧

When Sunoo wakes up the next morning, a familiar body heat presses against him. Red daylight is streaming in the cave, giving it a strange, husky quality. Days on this planet are hardly brighter than nights, thanks to the strange red quality of the sun and the glowing green of the night sky.

It takes him a few seconds to register that he was never woken up for night watch—he’d slept through the entire night. Either Heeseung tried to stay up all night and failed, or he decided it was safe enough for them both to sleep through the acid rain.

It was probably an accident, looking over the awkward angle Heeseung is lying at, mostly pushed up against the cave wall, cornered in by Sunoo on the other side. Sunoo’s arm is slung over Heeseung’s chest, like his body had found something familiar and hadn’t thought twice about keeping them close in the cool night.

He should really move before Heeseung wakes up. But, sue him—he’s exhausted after the crash. And after months of sleeping alone, it’s nice to have these precious moments of contact. Of closeness.

Then Heeseung sighs deeply, like he’s waking up, and Sunoo shoots away from him in a flash. He doesn’t know what he was thinking. They have to rely on each other out here, but he can’t mistake that for feelings they’re not supposed to have anymore.

He watches as Heeseung wakes up, brow furrowed, eyes only opening a crack. “Good morning.”

“Morning,” he says, sitting up. He’s squinting towards the face of the cave, which is a good sign.

“How’s your vision?”

“Uh… it’s back a little bit. I can see it’s lighter that way than all the other directions.” He points towards the mouth of the cave.

“So you can see light?”

“Yeah, but not much else.”

“Hey, that’s good. It means your sight probably will come back after all.”

He sees the tension bleed out of Heeseung’s shoulders even as he says it. “Yeah, I think so.”

“We should probably head out and look for civilisation, like you said.”

“Okay. Let’s go.”

Sunoo stands, wobbles, and stumbles a little bit. Heeseung still isn’t looking quite at him, but his head shoots up at the sound. “You okay?”

“Yeah, fine. I think I’m off balance cause of my ear… my hearing is a little worse in that ear right now.”

Heeseung nods seriously. “You be our eyes, I’ll be our ears.”

At the mouth of the cave, they’re situated above the level of the tree canopy, and he can see for miles across the dark earth.

“I think there might be some kind of settlement,” he says, peering over the far side of the forest. It’s hard to see with the angle they’re at, but there seems to be a slope to the earth in that direction, and the pointed tops of possibly buildings, or possibly a different species of trees, or possibly something else completely alien to him.

“The settlement is more likely to help us than the pod. Let’s head there.”

They head out, and getting down the jagged, rocky route to reach the earth again is slower and trickier than getting up. Sunoo goes first and tries to guide Heeseung from the ground, but they can’t afford another injury, so it’s careful work. Eventually they make it, but only start walking for a minute or so before Heeseung bumps into a tree.

Sunoo wordlessly takes his hand again and guides him through the forest. Neither of them speaks for a while, but Heeseung squeezes his hand every now and then like he’s trying to work up to something.

“Do you think the others crash-landed on this planet too?”

Sunoo turns back to look at Heeseung. It’s not like him to focus on things outside his control, but then again, there’s not very much within his control right now.

“It’s hard to say. There are a lot of planets in this solar system, and we were moving very fast. The pods are naturally drawn to the closest planet in range.”

“Jake, Sunghoon and Jay left minutes before we did. Jungwon and Riki might be closer.”

“Someone must be on their own,” Sunoo realises. “The pods only take two each.”

“They’ll be okay. We’ll find each other again. Chances are they’re all on a more developed planet than this one, and they’ve already got emergency landing help, and they’re coming to look for our homing signals right now.”

“Didn’t know you were such an optimist.”

“I believe in our team.”

Sunoo looks over at him. Heeseung’s face is turned to the sky as they come out at the edge of the forest, the sun beaming down on them. They’ve come to a long, but not wide, strip of built-up rock formations, with more forest on the other side of it.

“So do I. That doesn’t mean everyone else got luckier than us.”

“We had the roughest landing because we were the last pod to depart, and the only ones who got thrown around on the HYPEN. That’s what damaged your Unista. The mag lev failed, and you got thrown into something that nearly cracked your head open. Everyone else was in their pods by then, and by all means shouldn’t have any major injuries from the landing. So they’ve got to be doing better than we are right now.”

Sunoo stops where he’s standing. “I don’t remember any of that.”

“You were unconscious when I got you in the pod. There was so much blood, I was so scared that…”

He trails off, looking off into nothing, brows pinched. Sunoo stares at him.

Heeseung clears his throat. “We should change the bandage on your ear today. We don’t want it to get infected.”

“It was my fault the Unista was cracked in the first place, then.”

“What?”

“Because I didn’t want to leave the ship, we were the last off. If I’d gone as soon as Jungwon instructed us to, all that wouldn’t have happened.”

Heeseung tilts his head. “Maybe. But your instinct was to try and save us from this happening at all. I can’t blame you for that.”

Sunoo scoffs, gripping Heeseung’s hand tighter to pull him on. “Why are you always so—so self-sacrificial? I nearly got us killed, and you do everything in your power to make sure I don’t feel the guilt of it. Why shouldn’t I?”

“Sunoo, wait—”

“I’m just as capable as you of handling responsibility, of burden. You don’t have to take it all on yourself. It’s not fair. You are so—”

“No, seriously, wait.”

“What?”

They both come to a stop again. Sunoo has hardly been paying attention to their new surroundings, he realises, too busy processing that Heeseung saved his life in more than one way back on the HYPEN, while Sunoo is still trying to pick up the pieces of his own mistakes.

Heeseung is cocking his head. In the quiet, Sunoo hears it now, too—the shuffling of movement. There is no wind on this planet, no rustle of trees, nothing that sounds like bird song or the buzz of insects in the forest.

But now, among the rocks, something is out here with them.

Heeseung is their ears. Now it’s his turn to be their eyes.

There’s a slight movement to their left, and Sunoo pulls Heeseung closer to him. If they were suddenly jumped at, Heeseung wouldn’t be able to see it to protect himself. If they were separated, chances are Heeseung’s Unista won’t work to communicate with the native species.

Suddenly, he’s keenly feeling the responsibility of having Heeseung’s life in his hands.

“Hello?” he calls out. “We’re looking for help. We mean no harm.”

He tries not to baulk when the alien appears between two rocks.

It’s bipedal, something like a cross between a man and a kangaroo, with thick skin and large, dark eyes. He’s most unnerving because of how large he is, standing at eight or nine feet tall.

It seems to be alone, at least. No more sounds echo through the rocks besides the thump of the kangaroo man’s tail on the ground, his heavy footsteps.

There’s a growling sound that sounds distinctly unfriendly.

“I think we run,” Heeseung says, and Sunoo doesn’t pause to consider it.

He yanks Heeseung between the rocky formations, beginning to run, and nearly gets the fright of his life when they nearly dive into a steep canyon drop.

Behind them, the kangaroo man makes a sort of shrieking sound and begins jumping after them.

The sheer drops in the cracks of the rocky earth put them at an immediate disadvantage. Sunoo swerves them around the first one, but the further into the rocky plain they get, the more severe they are, swerving this way and that while the kangaroo man can easily jump across each of them.

Sunoo keeps running, hauling Heeseung with him. The canyons are not far, just deep. They can make it across.

“You’re going to have to trust me!” he shouts, whipping his head back only for a moment to see the kangaroo man gaining on them. “Large gap coming up—it’s not far, we can jump it!”

“Tell me when!” Heeseung responds, and Sunoo is floored only for a second by Heeseung’s instant trust in him.

“Three, two, one—now!”

They jump together. By some miracle, they land, still holding hands, with Heeseung stumbling only slightly.

They just have to make it to the forest line. This rocky place is clearly the alien’s territory, not under the trees. But the kangaroo man is moving faster than they can. They won’t make it on foot alone.

“Get ready!” he tells Heeseung, and pulls him to a sharp left around an upcoming pile of rocks. Instead of going forward, towards the trees, he pulls him backwards, into a rock formation behind them. There’s a little nook they can pause in, but it’s hardly big enough for one person—he drags Heesung back, pulling him into his body as much as he can, pressing him against the rock wall as he waits and watches for the kangaroo man to bound past.

Only a second later, he does so, without looking back at their hiding spot, darting between the rocks to try and find them again.

He exhales shakily, clutching onto Heeseung’s arms, their bodies pressed together, hot with tension.

“Quietly,” he whispers, and pulls Heeseung over to the right, stepping as silently as possible to avoid catching the kangaroo man’s attention again.

The line of trees is within sight up ahead. He restrains himself from making a dash for it, breathing getting heavier the closer they get.

Right as they reach the end of the plain, Sunoo spots movement between the rocks again, and at the same time, the alien spots them back.

“Run!” he shouts, and prays to the Gods he’s right about the kangaroo man’s turf.

They run together, Heeseung going all out, to the point Sunoo has to drag him closer when they reach the trees.

The kangaroo man doesn’t follow them into the forest. But they keep running for a while, just in case.

‎‧₊˚✩ 🪐✩˚₊‧

“Stop, wait, let’s take a breather. I think my ear started bleeding again.”

“What?” Heeseung asks, slowing to a stop almost immediately. “Did you catch it on something?”

“I don’t know—maybe, against the rock wall back there. My heart is pounding, maybe I’ve just been running too much.”

“Okay, let’s sit. You eat something, I’ll check your ear.”

Heeseung places the bag down, and Sunoo roots through it for the medical kit. “I can check it, it’s fine.”

“It’s not like you can see it either. Where are you?”

After a few seconds of shuffling, a medical wipe is ripped open, and Sunoo’s hands are holding his hands, wiping away the dirt on them. Heeseung stays still until he’s done, and Sunoo rips open another wipe and hands it to him.

“Be careful,” he says, taking Heeseung’s hand again and guiding it towards his ear.

“I always am,” Heeseung murmurs, very gently reaching out to graze his fingertips around the shape of Sunoo’s ear.

It’s sticky and wet with blood, so he takes his time carefully wiping it up, gentle around the tear through his cartilage. He hopes it feels worse than it looks, because it feels like his whole ear is split apart, the tear tenuously held together with hastily placed stitches.

“Feel if there’s any more blood left,” he says quietly when he’s done.

“I think you got it all,” Sunoo says after a second. “Yeah. I can replace the bandage. Thank you.”

He sits back, listening to Sunoo unwrap the adhesive bandage. “I’m sorry I can’t be more help out here. I’m sorry I can’t protect you right now.”

“Why are you apologising?” Sunoo murmurs, focused on his bandage. “It’s not your fault.”

“No. But I’m a liability right now.”

There’s the agitated snap of the medical kit closing. “So? This is exactly what I was trying to say to you out there. You need to start trusting me to help you instead of taking the burden all on yourself. You need to let yourself be vulnerable sometimes.”

“I do trust you.”

“No, you don’t.”

“There is no one I would trust more to get me off an alien planet while I’m blind and vulnerable. I’ve trusted you to lead us every step of the way since the pod, haven’t I?”

Sunoo is quiet for a moment. “Only because you had to.”

“Yes, I didn’t have a choice. But I’m not sorry because I’m not the one leading us right now. I’m not sorry because I don’t think you can handle it. I’m sorry because this is harder for you than it is for me, and I always want to protect you from that.”

There’s silence between them. Heeseung looks up at the faint glimpses of light overhead, the only thing he can see right now.

“You really trust me to get us out of here?”

“Of course.” He sits up straighter, a bit surprised by Sunoo’s tone. “Did I ever make you feel otherwise?”

Sunoo laughs disbelievingly. “I mean… it’s obvious I’m less capable than you, in a lot of ways. But you make it so blatant that you see me like that. You always do things for me, only for me, when you don’t need to. Especially when we are out on jobs, especially when things are dangerous. Like you think I’m the only one who can't do things for myself.”

He wishes so desperately that he could look into Sunoo’s eyes right now. “That’s not because I think you’re not capable. I’ve never thought that about you. It’s because I want to look after you, and I always want to be there for you. I’m sorry if I made you feel like I was taking away your agency. That wasn’t my intention.”

“You still do it now,” Sunoo says quietly. “It wasn’t just because we were dating, because you wanted to take care of your boyfriend. You still do it.”

“No, I did it because I love you. And I still love you now, even if I’m not supposed to.”

Sunoo lets out a shaky, disbelieving laugh. “Why did you never say these things to me before?”

“Why did you never tell me you felt like that earlier?”

“It’s not as easy as that…”

Heeseung tilts his head. “Yeah. I know.”

Sunoo takes in a breath sharply, then hesitates, like he’s about to speak.

There’s a rustling sound close by.

“Sunoo?”

Sunoo grabs his arm, but doesn’t speak—he must’ve heard it too.

There’s a thudding sound, like heavy footsteps, and Sunoo drags him to stand up. “We’re surrounded,” he says under his breath, then speaks up. “Hello? We’re looking for help—we crashed here yesterday…”

There’s a gruff, deep voice in a language Heeseung can’t understand. That confirms that his Unista is fully out of action.

“What? Please, we don’t need anything from you—”

Sunoo’s hand is suddenly wrenched away from him, and he yelps, and Heeseung lashes out at the large body he can sense behind him.

“Get off him!”

The fight doesn’t last long without being able to see where his opponents are or what they look like. It only takes one strong hand (paw?) to push at his shoulder and shove him to the ground.

“Please don’t hurt him—he’s injured, we both are—argh!”

Sunoo yells out in sharp pain. Maybe his ear was knocked, because Heeseung doesn’t hear a weapon or a significant impact.

It doesn’t matter—he can’t let them hurt Sunoo. “Don’t touch him!”

Heeseung is panicking, trying to stand, pinned to the ground by a foot or something else large and heavy he can’t push back against.

Sunoo is right, he doesn’t like feeling vulnerable, but no one does. What he really, truly can’t stand is being unable to protect someone he loves from certain suffering.

“Sunoo!” he shouts, and there’s an arm around his neck pulling him up against a broad, furry body.

“I’m okay, don’t fight back! It’s okay!”

“No!” he shouts, and tries to twist out of the alien’s arms holding him.

There’s a gruff voice, and he’s slammed back into the ground, where his head hits something hard. All the fight leaves him, and the last thing he hears is Sunoo calling his name.

‎‧₊˚✩ 🪐✩˚₊‧

Sunoo periodically flexes against the rope binding his hands as he sits and waits for Heeseung to wake up.

They’re back to back, bound to a pole in the centre of a dark cell, a barred window in the cell door their only source of light. The only thing stopping him from hyperventilating is that he can feel Heeseung’s fingertips when he twists his hand a certain way, can feel he’s still warm. He’s alive, just been knocked out on top of his existing head injury.

If this ruins his sight for good, Sunoo will never be able to forgive himself.

“Heeseung?” he tries again, the third or fourth time in the last few minutes. Heeseung might be able to undo these knots—he’s good at things like that—but as it is, Sunoo is just sitting here trying not to cry.

“Hm?” he hears in response, and tears prick at his eyes with sudden relief.

“Oh, thank the Gods—are you okay?”

“Urgh,” Heeseung groans. “My head is killing me.”

“Yeah,” Sunoo says, taking a deep breath. “I’m afraid that’s not going to get any better any time soon. Turns out the people here don’t like visitors.”

A breath from Heeseung. It’s killing Sunoo not to be able to see him, see how badly he’s hurt, survey whether he can still see at all. To see if there’s more pain in his expression than in his voice. But that’s exactly what it’s been like for Heeseung the past twenty-four hours, doing all that while traversing foreign terrain with a head injury, and he’s maintained his cool all this time. Sunoo can do it now, for Heeseung.

“Where are we?”

“Some kind of cell. But outside is… I don’t know exactly. I think it’s an arena.”

They’re both still and quiet for a long moment. He hadn’t noticed it before over the ringing in his ear, but in the distance, he can hear the shuffling of hundreds of feet, hundreds of hushed voices. It’s muffled by the thick stone walls and cell door, but it’s undeniably the sound of an arena full of spectators.

“We’re being put to fight,” Heeseung says, and he pulls at the bindings on his wrists, soft skin of his palms brushing against Sunoo’s fingers.

“Yeah,” Sunoo says. “I’m sorry I couldn’t stop them. I didn’t notice them until it was too late—it was so stupid…”

“Don’t apologise. We were outnumbered anyway; we would’ve been caught sooner or later. Are you hurt? How’s your ear?”

“It’s fine. It hurts, but I’m not gonna die. Do you think you can get out of these ropes?”

“I don’t know. I’m trying, but they’ve tied us tightly. Is there anything in the room that can help us?”

Sunoo looks around helplessly, though he already knows the answer. “No, it’s just us in here. Oh, Gods, no. I don’t want to go like this.”

“Do you know for certain we’re fighting?”

“That’s what they told me when they found us. That we need to win to gain their favour.”

“Do you know what we’re against?”

“No, I have no idea. Maybe more natives, maybe other prisoners. But, Hyung—they’re so big and strong, we won’t stand a chance—especially not with you, when you can’t see—”

“Okay, take a breath with me, Sunoo. We have to stay calm. Deep breath in, come on.”

Sunoo catches himself on the verge of hyperventilating, taking a shaky breath in and holding it for as long as he can with Heeseung. Then he exhales, and Heeseung’s thumb presses into his palm, and the contact grounds him more than he can say.

“Good. Good job. We’re going to get out of here, we just have to keep our cool.”

“I don’t want to die like this,” Sunoo says wetly, sniffing and wiping his damp cheek on his shoulder. “I don’t want us to go like this.”

“I fear I’m a lost cause,” Heeseung says lightly. “I won’t last more than ten seconds out there. But it might not be a fight to the death, we don’t know the customs of this place. Whatever it is, I can buy you at least a few seconds, you can make a run for any weak points you can see in the—”

“No. No! You can’t keep putting my life in front of yours, it’s not fair!”

“Trust me, if there was a chance we could both get out of this—”

“You always do this, making the decisions for both of us, throwing yourself on the line before anyone else can. One of these days, it’s going to get you killed, and that has always terrified me. I broke our relationship off because of this. There’s no way I’m going to let you do this. I’m not going to let you die today.”

Heeseung is silent for a long moment. “That’s why you wanted to break up?”

“I wanted a lot of things. I didn’t know how to say them. I shouldn’t have just called it off like that, I know, but I hoped you would get angry with me, you’d fight back, you’d finally tell me what you thought was wrong with me that you always had to shield me from the universe. We’d be on equal ground, and I wouldn’t just be helpless, always a step behind you.” He knocks his head back against the pole, blinking tears out of his eyes. “But I guess you were right all along about that anyway. You shouldn’t have swapped our Unistas, you should’ve been the one leading us across this planet. We’d be out of here by now.”

“Sunoo. I have never felt like you were helpless or hopeless without me. I don’t regret saving you, I haven’t regretted it for a moment. I would do it again, I would do it a hundred times over. I trust you, I believe in you, I always have. It’s because of that I wanted to give you the best shot of surviving the crash, it’s why you’re in the best position to save us both.”

“And look where that’s got us. You might never see again. You might die out here, they could come back any minute and put us in that arena against Gods knows what—”

“There are some things you can’t avoid in life. Crashing here, being caught—it’s not your fault. If one of us doesn’t make it back to the HYPEN after all this, that might be a sacrifice we have to live with. The universe put us in this situation, and it’s not fair, but that doesn’t mean we have to give in to it. It doesn’t mean I’m not going to fight like hell for you to live.”

Sunoo presses his lips together, doing his best not to sob. “I wish you’d fought back with me when we broke up. I wish I’d never broken things off in the first place. I wish I’d talked to you properly. I wish we had more time.”

“I’m sorry I hurt you,” Heeseung says softly. “I wish you’d told me before now, too. I never wanted us to break up. I only ever wanted what you wanted.”

“I wish we could do it over. I still love you, Hyung.”

Heeseung’s breath stutters.

The cell door rattles, then bangs open, hitting the stone wall. Two of the aliens—huge, blue, furry, gangling arms down to the floor—stomp inside, and Sunoo cries out in frustration. “Please, don’t do this, we haven’t done anything to you!”

“Sunoo, remember what I said,” Heeseung says, and the aliens tear through their bindings with one swipe, hauling Sunoo to his feet.

“No!” he shouts, twisting to see Heeseung being hauled up too, even as he is dragged out of the cell.

This can’t be it. This can’t be the end.

As soon as they pass through the cell door, the sound gets a hundred times louder.

The arena isn’t overwhelmingly large, but it is full. Crude layers of seating support a hundred, two hundred spectators around an arena not fifty feet wide.

On the other side of the arena is the kangaroo-looking alien, black beady eyes fixed on them.

The only way out is through the main entrance to the arena, but it’s completely blocked by the furry blue aliens. There’s no escape. They don’t even have any weapons to fight with.

“Sunoo?”

Heeseung stumbles out beside him, pushed into the arena. By the look of his expression, his vision is no better than earlier. Sunoo reaches for him and pulls him into his side.

“We’re totally surrounded. There’s nothing for it.”

Heeseung places a hand on his shoulder, steadying himself. “Can we win?”

Sunoo looks again over at the kangaroo man. The crowd grows louder. Vaguely, Sunoo realises they’re chanting, and he has to shout to be heard over them.

“I don’t know!”

“We’re going to damn well try, okay?”

A horn blares, and the kangaroo alien bounds towards them without a moment of hesitation.

He knows he should fight. But all he wants to do is stay clinging to Heeseung, stay in his arms. Protect him for as long as possible, and be protected by him, too.

If neither of them make it back to their crew, at least they can go together.

Heeseung has other ideas. “Make it out for me!”

“Wait—!”

Heeseung tears away from Sunoo, running towards the sound of the kangaroo bounding towards them.

Sunoo can’t stand here and watch him be torn apart.

This can’t be the last time they see each other.

“No!”

A dazzling flash of light appears in the centre of the arena, making the kangaroo stagger back, and even Heeseung falters, only feet away from it.

The crowd gasps, and in the wake of the light, stand two familiar figures.

“Not so fast, you!” Jungwon grabs Heeseung by the wrist, slapping a transporter bracelet on him and securing it in place.

“Wait!” Sunoo shouts, but Heeseung is already gone, being transported—somewhere. Probably a ship they’ve got cloaked overhead.

While he feels sick with relief that help has arrived, he’s terrified that cheap, quick transporter travel like that, without a working Unista, might be the last straw for Heeseung.

“It’s time to go, Hyung,” Riki says, snapping another transponder bracelet onto Sunoo’s wrist. The aliens around them are furious—leaving the stands, storming towards them—so there’s nothing more to argue.

He slams the transponder button and is whisked away from the planet in a second.

‎‧₊˚✩ 🪐✩˚₊‧

When Heeseung wakes up, his head is pounding.

He’s in a bed that isn’t his own, and it’s light in the room he’s in. Light and… he can see things. Distinct shapes, colours, textures.

He looks to see Sunoo half-asleep in a chair at his bedside, head resting against his hand. And it really is Sunoo, he can see him—his ear looks much better than the last time he saw him, still held together by a bandage, but only a small one.

He can’t tear his eyes away from Sunoo now that he’s seen him. Having his vision back makes him realise just how afraid he was that he might never see Sunoo’s face again.

Sunoo’s head slips from his hand, and he jolts, blinking awake again.

“Careful,” Heeseung says, and Sunoo sits up straight, eyes going wide.

“You’re awake!”

“Yeah. How long have I been asleep?”

“Two days,” Sunoo says, reaching out to take Heeseung’s hand over the bedsheets. Heeseung accepts it gladly, squeezing back. “Do you remember what happened?”

His brain is moving sluggishly. He’s only just starting to remember the peril they were in. “How did we get away?”

“Jungwon and Riki came for us. They dropped us off at an interplanetary hospital and went to look for the others. They picked up Jay and Sunghoon yesterday, and they’re out getting Jake today. We all ended up on different planets. They gave you a lot of treatment here—I don’t know what, exactly, but whatever it did fixed your vision. You can see me, right?”

“Yeah,” he says, eyes roaming Sunoo’s sleep-worn face, tired and beautiful. “Yeah, I feel a lot more like myself.”

Sunoo nods, shoulders dropping. “Then I think we’ll be okay. They gave me stuff for my ear, it should heal right up. Jungwon already got us a new ship. We’ll be fine.”

“And you and me? I don’t want to go back to avoiding each other after everything that happened. I never wanted to break up with you in the first place, Sunoo. I never should’ve let you do it.”

Sunoo’s laugh is watery. “It’s really stupid that it took us nearly dying to be honest with each other. We have to get better at that.”

“I promise to try if you do.”

Sunoo’s soft smile spreads as he blinks tears away. “To try?”

“I want us to try again. And I don’t want to wait. We’ve already wasted too much time.”

“I think we’d regret it if we didn’t try. We were stupid before. We can do better.”

“Yeah, I think so,” he says, and he can’t stop his own smile from spreading across his face. “Will you come here?”

He shuffles aside and pats the space beside him on the bed. Sunoo looks up at the hospital doorway, then climbs up onto the bed beside Heeseung without protest. Sunoo is such a tactile person, it’s no surprise he gave in without a second thought.

Sunoo shuffles around until he’s lying parallel to him, head beside him on the pillow. His shiny eyes are so close, and Heeseung reaches out to stroke his hair.

“Hi.”

“Hi.”

“I missed you.”

Sunoo’s cheeks are faintly pink. “I haven’t left your side in days.”

“That’s good,” he says softly. “I want it to always be like that.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

Heeseung kisses him gently, and Sunoo kisses him back.

It’s warm, like kissing Sunoo always is. Like a fire stoking in his belly, the embers flushing through his veins.

“I love you. I never stopped loving you.”

“Me neither. Why did we ever break up? I love you so much.”

Heeseung laughs and kisses him again, then pulls down Sunoo’s head to rest on his shoulder, hands rubbing over his back.

“We’re ridiculous.”

“Mh-hm,” Sunoo says, relaxing in his hold, pliant and lovely. “At least we’re ridiculous together.”