II

Eunhyuk had to wait for more than a week before he met Donghae again.

Instead of him, many weird personalities had bought stuff in his little grocery store in the meantime. He had known before that this wasn’t the best district of Seoul, but maybe he had expected less drunk or stoned people or dudes that looked like they wanted to destroy the whole store and him as well. But Eunhyuk knew what to say, he knew how to treat people so he actually didn’t see a problem in this. Which didn’t mean that he wasn’t scared, by the way.

Lovely Donghae didn’t come in the evening like the last time. No, he came in the morning, only a few minutes after the shop opened its doors. Around this time only a few mothers with children or old people came to the shop and Eunhyuk was busy with refilling one of the shelves. As silent steps stopped right behind him, the first thing for him to do was to send a prayer to heaven that whoever that was wouldn’t puke over his shoulder. It wouldn’t be the first time, after all.

"Please wait. I'll be done in a second", he said and nicely piled up a little tower of canned beans. Eunhyuk would never admit it, but he was madly proud of his accurate pile creations, even if no one except for him really took notice of them.

"Hello."

That voice.    
It was a wonder that his head didn’t hit anything as he rose from the ground in light speed, yet he bumped against the shelf as he turned around and with this made a couple of cans roll over the floor.

"Oh hey Donghae! How are you? What are you doing here?" he asked and laughed dumbly before his gaze landed on the basket the other was holding. "Do you want to buy something?"

You , what else should he be doing here?!

Donghae nodded. "I thought you could help me…"

"Yes, yes, yes! No problem! What do you need?"

The brunet looked even sadder and especially tired that day. This blocked Eunhyuk's euphoria extremely because he wanted to know what was going on. Donghae looked like he had been awake the whole night… Was that a rest of eyeliner he saw around his eyes?

"Shouldn’t you first tidy this up?" Donghae asked under his breath. Eunhyuk followed his gaze.

"Oh." He quickly picked up the cans and nearly threw them next to the others, almost dropped one or two because he was in such a hurry. In that moment he didn’t even think about accuracy. Once finished, he quickly dusted himself down and sent him a smile. "So? What can I do for you?"

Donghae's hands tightly held on to the basket, Eunhyuk thought they were shaking a bit. "Do you have… plasters? Bandages, maybe?"

Sometimes Eunhyuk liked to speak without much thinking. "Why, is somebody hurt?"

It was meant to sound funny, but the edges of Donghae's mouth didn’t even twitch. The brunet didn’t answer, just looked like an even bigger picture of misery. He even lowered his gaze and Eunhyuk knew he had to apologize.

"Sorry, I just…" He ran a nervous hand over his nape. "What I can offer is a first-aid box. You know, the ones you can keep in your car. They're over here."

Eunhyuk led him to a small island at the other end of the store. He arrived before him and so he could see that Donghae was slightly limping. The question was burning on his tongue, but this time he kept himself from asking. He didn’t want to be rude.

"There are also scissors inside the box, one of those thin blankets, gloves-"

"I take it."

He nodded and reached him one of the boxes. As Donghae hesitantly accepted it, he saw something red peeping out from underneath his sleeve. It looked like something was wrapped around his arm, most likely as provisional bandage. Eunhyuk knew that it wasn’t his business, but he wanted to help.

"I can help you to treat the wound, if you want", he said therefore.

Donghae seemed to be confused so he nodded towards his arm. Another moment of thinking was needed, then the brunet shook his head. "You don’t have to…"

"I want to."

Donghae tried to hide the wound under his sleeve, but Eunhyuk gently grabbed his hand in time. He couldn’t deny that this little action caused a massive amount of butterflies to fly around in his stomach and he was nearly sure that the color of his face already started changing. Eunhyuk was someone who fell in love pretty quickly and it was obvious that Donghae was totally his type. He knew that Donghae most likely didn’t feel the same – yet – but maybe he had the chance to win his heart. To him it didn’t look like there was no interest at all. Otherwise Donghae surely wouldn’t have visited him again.

"Come on, you can sit down."

He carefully pulled him along and made him sit on a chair behind the counter. There he took the basket out of Donghae's hands and started unwrapping the first-aid box. With a small bowl of water right next to him, he was soon crouching down on the floor and gently rolled up the other's left sleeve. Donghae seemed to be embarrassed; he didn’t say anything, however. And Eunhyuk did the same, stayed quiet because he didn’t want to make him feel even more uncomfortable.

What he saw in front of him indeed was a bandage, probably made out of a piece of cloth. It was stained with something dark that Eunhyuk pretty quickly identified as blood. Some of it had already dried, but as he carefully removed the cloth, he had to notice that the wound was still bleeding. To him it looked like Donghae had got hurt by something sharp; there was a cut on his forearm that was about as long as his index finger.

"You know, the last time I needed my medical skills was when this giant dude flew into the canned beer a month ago. I hope you don’t mind my inexperience."

He sent Donghae another smile and felt like he had to tell him one of his stories to distract him. The silence around them was suffocating.

Donghae tilted his head to the side and watched how the other dabbed his wounds with disinfectant. It surely burned like mad, but he didn’t even flinch. "Was he drunk?" he asked silently.

"Pretty much, yeah", Eunhyuk chuckled.

"Drunk people… destroy a lot."

"That's true. I don’t get why people even drink so much that they can't walk straight anymore. Where is the fun in this? All you do is weaving and… throwing up."

"Maybe some people want to forget about things."

Eunhyuk looked up. He wanted to ask him if he also drank to forget, but he kept himself from doing so. This wasn’t an interview, after all. "You're right."

Silence once again fell upon them as Eunhyuk continued treating the other's wounds. He tried acting like he didn’t notice it, but he knew that Donghae was watching him – and this really made his heart flutter like crazy.

The more he cleaned the skin around the wound, the more he noticed the bruises on Donghae's arm. He saw a lot – and he had to bite his tongue to not ask where they were coming from. His gaze darted over to Donghae's other arm. The long sleeve hid possible bruises, but Eunhyuk could see something else instead.

He reached out for the other's hand and Donghae placed it on his palm like a well-trained dog. It was cute to watch, but Eunhyuk almost didn’t notice. His gaze was glued to the little round spot on the back of Donghae's hand, his eyes narrowing. He had seen something like this before. This was how it looked like when you got burned by a cigarette. And judging by the amount of dried blood around said spot, the burning cigarette had been in contact with his skin for longer than just a second.

"Do you smoke?" he wanted to know.

Donghae pretty quickly shook his head so Eunhyuk was sure of one thing: someone had pressed the cigarette against Donghae's skin. It was hard for him to not freak out and just silently continue treating the cut on the other's arm.

Don’t ask. That's got nothing to do with you…

"Before you came here there was this old friendly lady who owned the shop", Donghae mumbled after a while. "Her name was Mrs. Kwon… Do you know where she is now?"

Eunhyuk was a bit surprised to hear this question. He didn’t know her; he only knew that the previous tenant had died of old age. Why was he the one who had to tell Donghae about this?

He shortly looked up, but he couldn’t look him in the eyes while explaining this. "Um, well… As far as I know she… went to heaven", he eventually said and felt like an idiot because he hadn't told him straight forward that she was dea