Work Text:
Kim Soleum knows his dongsaeng.
He knows him instinctively in the way he knows to stand beside him during their grandmother's funeral, knows to swat the spider near them when he sees it.
Kim Soleum knows his dongsaeng the way only family can, the way only bonds forged across shared childhoods and inadvertently quiet coming outs can.
The way only relationships across universes can.
Kim Soleum knows his brother didn't lose himself over his disappearance. Knows that he didn't throw a wrench in his life because of his disappearance.
So. He doesn't go to see him.
The moment he returns, passed out on the cold floor, he goes to resign.
He checks his balance, and on the messages alp sees one message left everyday for him. Without fail, there would be one message everyday in that app.
Comparatively, there was an influx of calls, too, but they had died after the eight day. He closes his bank portal and the app, and changes.
He goes out, and once done with legal formalities, he sleeps.
Kim Soleum sleeps for a long, long time. He sleeps like a man who hasn't in years, and more than likely that is true. He hadn't slept nicely there, if at all.
This time, Kim Soleum sleeps for a good fourteen hours, just melting into his bed.
When he wakes up again, he notices his house is cleaned and dusted. It is neat, neat in the way his little brother's room always is.
Neat chaos, if you will.
Kim Soleum knows that if he looks closely, there is a system in place that he is unaware of. A system which has helped his brother cope, giving him something to do rather than just sit around.
He smiles.
He's too tired to get up, the adrenaline in his body faded away. His brain is still offline, and so he is in the limbo where he just is, like everything just is in the vast universe.
His posters of the various DER characters, the ones he got secondhand, are kept aside as he left them, the only thing changed in his room being the dust content.
His dongsaeng didn't touch his room.
Kim Soleum falls back on the bed and smiles again. He opens his KakaoTalk, and to his family's group chat, he sends one simple message:
I am back.
He wonders if the police had let them know earlier, but truthfully he doesn't care.
He showers, lazy and with no rhythm, and lets himself drown in the sound of the water, pleasantly feeling the hum of it, and the distant heat of it. The pressure feels like its melting and melding his skin—and isn't that familiar?
He showers, with nothing but the sounds of Seoul and his own apartment to accompany him, and that feels liberating in a way only cleaning one's body does.
As leisurely, he changes it to a dark green tee and shorts, and sits in his balcony.
The coffee maker is clearly seeing constant use.
He sings something inhumane under his breath, and boils a cup of milk for himself.
Its exactly 36 minutes later that his front door flows open and in steps someone he knows since before the day he learnt the word 'love'.
In steps someone he didn't realise he missed until he saw him again, and that someone comes running to him— in uniform.
He sees him and for a split second they just stare at eachother, before Kim Soleum breaks in a grin and opens his arms, and he lets himself fall back against the sofa of his balcony because he knows his dongsaeng.
He's tackled down with the force of a charging deer, and well.
Thats something, isn't it?
For the next few minutes he only runs his hands through inky strands, knowing better than to take away the freedom of letting his little brother recognise his older brother all over again.
Knowing better than to take away the assurance of coming to something on one's own.
He keeps hugging him, and its awkward when a growing teenager tries to fit against you while keeping himself curled up but its okay because he understands.
He kisses his forehead once, and continuously pats the young boy, lowering his voice to whisper softly.
"I am home."
A wet sniffle answers him, a sound somewhere between tears and smiles.
"Welcome home."
Behind the balcony door, stand a group of people looking at the home they always knew 'existed' but never truly thought would be something tangible.