Work Text:
"Cale-nim?"
Tap, tap
The redhead stepped through the crimson dyed earth, looking on at the corpses spread without a soul to retrieve them back.
"…"
None of those who lay were from his side, but the sight stayed in his gaze for longer than he wanted to.
"…Let's go."
The filth glued to the sole of his boots, trudging along.
"Raon must be getting bored."
Cale erased the red from his vision and the concern that flashed in the other's eyes.
It had been a long day.
****
Cale had always been fond of having anything sweet.
So exactly when did the same apple pies turn repulsive, those soggy pieces of clumsiness and care that never not made him feel better?
But it wasn't a big deal, not really.
There wasn't anything he could do, not when Raon stared at him with those innocent, twinkling eyes, waiting for him to chew on the pie, and pat his head in praise afterwards.
So that was what he did. It didn't matter if he threw up later at night, away from the watchful gazes of his family.
Or when Choi Han eagerly brought him the fresh crêpe Beacrox had baked, the kind he preferred the most.
Cale had briefly wondered to himself, ‘How did they know?’
But he didn't entertain the thought for much; his family always seemed to know him better than himself.
So he ate those warm pieces of care wrapped in shapes of cats and wolves as well. Because what else was he supposed to do?
It didn't matter if he didn't eat anything afterwards. And for a few days more. Really, such things hardly mattered when his body was healthy, when his brain was working, when sleep didn't come so easily but when it did he could finally, finally rest.
So it wasn't that Cale starved himself often. Starvation, in his terms, didn't come so easily, so willingly. It came enveloped with loud crashes never too loud, a stench of something that had never quite left his senses, and a discomfort, a feeling that he had been twisted wrong one day and never unwired since. Sometimes it brought along an ache, often numbness.
But what he did? That wasn't even remotely close to something so harrowing.
He simply skipped meals for days, just because the taste never felt right. Or it did, and it smelled so much like home, but he couldn't tell himself the same when he was doubled over on the bathroom tiles, clasping his hand over his mouth so the kids wouldn't be alarmed.
This? It wasn't any big deal.
He was just, a bit sick sometimes.
And the meals never quite tasted right.
****
It was odd.
He preferred silence, working alone over people hovering around him.
But sometimes, it felt odd.
Tap
The noise of scribbling ink and pages shuffling one over the other resounded through the space.
Cale absentmindedly stared at the documents on his right, still halfway left to be read.
Usually, no, rarely was it ever this much. He had to sneak into a certain someone's guarded office to look for more work. There wasn't any particular reason; he was simply bored.
Of course, he made a point to ignore the said person's call after he had succeeded in a not-so-obvious thievery.
“Haa…”
A sigh escaped his lips, his head throbbing from the strain.
The pen tipped from his grasp, the words stretching into an incomprehensible scribble.
It didn't bother him. The paper had long begun to look blur to him, a constant monotony.
Sometimes, the silence felt heavy. The air weighed on his limbs—sticky, uncomfortable—and his vision dulled, like he was an audience watching it all, an audience in his own body.
And he felt so unbearably cold that his bones seemed to shriek with every limb he moved—he had been startled bad when he first heard a familiar scream sound in his ears, only to realise that it was just a nightmare.
Cale gazed out the window, the faint moonlight peeking over his visage.
Swoosh
He trudged towards the dim light, promptly drawing the curtains close.
‘... Annoying.’
If his hands shivered as he held the fabric, he didn't pay it any heed.
Cale sat back on his seat, but pushed aside the papers lying messily aside. He wasn't bored anymore, so he couldn't work. He was simply annoyed.
In the darkness, a brief memory surfaced through his mind.
"Ah."
‘How long ago was it..?’
As Kim Rok Soo, he had developed some sort of aversion to light. Records were good enough at wrecking his mind, and the blinding lights aimed right at his face didn't help the migraines at all. So he slept with all the lights off, woke up and worked with the same—only ever bothering to open a window when he couldn't see properly, which he still found annoying.
It was around then, a day when Choi Jung Soo had shown an utterly exasperated expression to him while switching on nearly every source of light in the dim apartment—the windows included—as he continued his usual nagging, though the concerned undertone wasn't really subtle.
‘Hmm…’
Cale couldn't quite remember what he had said. But he remembered the other's expression, the way his eyes glinted in surprise and the way worry immediately shrouded it afterwards. Or the way he always checked the lights first whenever he entered Kim Rok Soo’s apartment after that time.
Or the way Cale never bothered to change the lights after most of them had fused, after that snarky man couldn't come in to check on those stupid lights. Because why would he?
For who would he?
Cale stared at the ceiling, his vision foggy.
Just sometimes, it felt odd.
For one, the silence.
Or the stupid, stupid lights.
Or the absence of a nagging that he had never really considered before.
****
“Human!”
It wasn't only the silence that was annoying.
“Cale-nim.”
Sometimes, it was eyes.
“Dongsaeng.”
Or words.
But more annoying of the two were gazes, gazes of his family—fond, unfamiliar, the types that always made him wonder,
‘When will they leave?’
So he did a little more, he tried too hard and pushed himself more than what was comfortable, because if it meant repaying, if it meant that he wouldn't have to feel like this again, he could cough up all the blood his body held and still feel at peace.
But they—his people—they never left.
It was surprising, maybe. But more bewildering, more of a question of what was wrong with them than with him.
And then it got annoying. Overwhelming. Nauseating.
The only good part was that they referred to him as Cale.
He couldn't have maintained the facade if they had called that name, that cursed one, with their warm smiles and affectionate words.
But that didn't change the fact that it was annoying, or that he sometimes felt so sick when he heard Alberu call him dongsaeng, yet all he could do was pretend and pretend.
Or when his kids followed him around to bloodied fields and ran between frigid corpses simply because they trusted their guardian.
And Cale never felt deserving of it—he couldn't dare to.
So sometimes, he left from supper a little too early.
He hid the guilt underneath his sleeves and the nausea between pursed lips and gave proper excuses, subtly embarrassed apologies.
He left the family dinner when it got too hard to breathe, when the topic had diverged to his health and his well being and all he could feel was such a deplorable shame that he couldn't bear to sit in his own body—so he left.
With proper excuses, of course.
****
Swish
An urge overcame his senses, any sort of rationality or the like thrown aside.
"Ron."
Time seemed to still. His breath never came out right, stuck in the crevices of his own clenched jaws.
"Can you…"
Can you hear it? This ringing?
The words crawled underneath his skin, furling with uncertainty and a bit of shame, a bit of something that reeked, something nauseating.
"…"
Cale observed the finely ironed sleeve crumbled underneath his grasp. How most things were, that came across his life.
"Young master?"
He blinked. Once, twice, a kind of stretch that made it hard to tell if he was breathing still.
A buzz rang in his ears. A kind of shriek, the stretch of nails raw against a wooden board. Blood. The slow draw of his own breath, a vague thumping that reminded him of where he stood.
"Ah."
There were no words.
"It's nothing."
There was nothing he could ever say to put this into comprehension, to appear sane when everything in his body screamed otherwise.
Tap
Ron wordlessly observed the other, before turning back to serving the sweet tea.
If his gaze lingered on the redhead from then on, the latter never noticed.
****
"Human."
The redhead leaned by the willow, briefly opening his eyes to see the black dragon hovering right in front.
"Hmm?"
His arms outstretched on their own. The motion had become too natural by now.
Raon didn't say anything, looking up as he made himself comfortable in Cale's arms. If he noticed they were shaking he didn't point it out. After all, the breeze was a bit chilly, and his human had always been weak.
The young dragon flapped his wings once, feeling a hand start to caress his head.
"Humans-"
Cale observed the child trying to choose his words properly. He didn't understand, but he waited.
"I read that humans don't go through a growth phase, like the strong and mighty dragons."
The redhead nodded absentmindedly, trying to shake away the grogginess creeping in.
"That's true."
"…Right! So, so humans are weak, really really weak…"
A quiet sigh left his lips. He didn't mean to, but the exhaustion was obvious even to a child's eyes.
Raon hurried his words when he noticed the same.
"So, human, you are weak too."
Cale met the child's gaze.
"…and you won't go through a growth phase…"
"Mhm."
Pat, pat
Raon paused, mulling over his words. He couldn't erase the sight from his mind. The time he had tried to jump scare his guardian, only to witness, through a barely open door, the sight of Cale heaving over the floor with blood soaking his sleeves wholly
That, and many more.
So many that the images turned into something tangible, something that seemed to physically rack his body.
"Raon."
The child blinked.
"What's wrong?"
The curt words, the indifferent gaze.
The care so obvious hidden underneath them.
"…If, no…"
Pat
"You won't go through a growth phase…still…"
The child tried to focus on the warmth over his head instead of the fog obscuring his guardian's gaze.
"…Even then, I won't-"
"Yeah."
Raon leaned closer to the other. Cale's arms automatically supported him, as if the thought wasn't even needed.
"I won't leave you, human…"
Just like the redhead hadn't.
Just like Cale had carried him through the haze of many ongoing battles, carried him so warmly in his arms the dragon hadn't noticed the blood soaking the latter's coat until much later.
"…I won't leave Cale…"
There were other words he wanted to say.
So many words he found his throat clogging up and his eyes growing blurry.
"Yeah."
Pat
"Okay."
But the redhead patted his head as if he knew.
Raon wanted to tell him that the stupid human really knew nothing, but when he felt the force caressing his head growing weaker, he held his words back.
Pat, pat
This time, it wasn't the child who fell asleep first.
Cale's arm still covered him, so Raon let himself indulge in that warmth for only a moment more.