very very loosely based on this song. not proofread bc i'm a lazy mothereffer.

XXI.

Seventeen-year-olds shouldn’t be doing things like these.

Seventeen-year-olds should be in school, going to parties, getting faced drunk - not learning how to make bombs, dismantling guns and killing people. 

“Amber,” Amber looks up from washing the blood off her hands, the running water turning red as it makes its way down the drain. She stares at it for a second before turning her attention back to the person who called her. 

“Hey Henry.” He smiles at her before sitting down her bed. Amber wipes her hands on a towel before getting a first aid kit. “Your bullet wound still needs stitches. Is Sungmin around?”

“Still cleaning up our mess, I guess.” Henry shrugs.

“Why can’t this goddamn place afford more than one surgeon?” Amber grumbles angrily, taking antiseptic and bandages out of the kit. “Take your shirt off.” 

Henry’s on the verge of making a joke out of it but seeing that Amber’s not in the mood, he shuts up and starts ing his shirt and taking off his tank with difficulty because of the bullet wound on his shoulder. Amber winces at the cut on his abdomen.

“That looks deep.” 

“I’ll live. We’ve been through worse.” 

Amber sighs and starts dressing the cut, slowing down when Henry winces. “You need Sungmin to look at this cut, too, okay?” 

“Sure, if it’ll make you sleep at night.” Henry shrugs, a teasing smile on his lips.

Amber swats his arm. “I’m serious.” 

“I know. I’m sorry.” 

Amber stays quiet and Henry bites his lip guiltily. He doesn’t know why but she seems to be really out of it recently. Their killing missions don’t go as smoothly as before because she’s always either spacing out or hesitating. Henry won’t blame her, though. She’s the youngest of the group and being seventeen in a mafia isn’t really that easy. 

“Hey,” Henry starts after his cut is all bandaged up. “Your 17th birthday is coming. What do you want to do?”

“Sleep. Be guilt free.” Amber sighs, cleaning up the first aid kit. “The second one is impossible, though.”

“Hey,” Henry stops her from stuffing the bandages in the kit, taking her hand and squeezing it lightly. “We could go rent a movie. Those really bad mafia movies that we laugh at all the time.”

“Not in the mood for that.” Amber grumbles.

“Dinner, then? My treat.”

“No thanks.”

“Come on, Am. You’re seventeen. You’re allowed to have fun.”

“Do I even still have the right?!” Amber looks at him and she could feel herself choking up, years of guilt starting to boil up on the surface. “We...we’ve killed people, Henry.”

“It’s kill or be killed in our world, Amber. We don’t have much of a choice.” Henry says, a tone of resignation in his voice. He knows how she feels. He started out young like she did. His first kill was when he was thirteen - a hostage of his uncle and he had handed him a gun and told him to finish the job. Henry remembers waking up in the middle of the night in cold sweat because all he could see was that man’s pleading eyes before he pulled the trigger.

“You think I don’t know that? We were born and raised into this kind of world. It’s kinda hard to forget.”

Henry reaches for her hand again and smiles, albeit a little sadly. “Forget for one day and go be seventeen. It’s your only chance.” 

Amber looks at him, eyes wandering from his face to the bullet wound to the cut on his abdomen. Twenty-year-olds shouldn’t be so used of having life-threatening wounds. Someone like Henry should be going to college - Berklee, where he used to dream of going when they were both too young and too naive to think that they have a way out of this. 

Will one day of forgetting be enough?

“Movie night sounds fun.” 

Henry smiles and squeezes her hand.