It’s dark. 

Breathing, gentle breathing. Floorboards creak. One, two, three, steps out in the hallway punctuate each exhale. 

A voice, that voice, no longer speaking, but singing some tune that stings my ears like death. 

Four, five, six steps - is someone coming for me?

So dark. 

Breathing, fluid, soft, breathing. I wonder if anyone else can hear it. 

I wonder if holding my breath is a waste of time. 

It’s dark.

My eyes are closed.

“Taemin?”

“Hm?” 

He’s lying beside me, as has become a habit of his. He comes everyday. No words, just motion. He enters, climbs in beside me, and let’s his scent coat the room in gentle silence before one of us speaks. 

It’s always me.

“Uh...” I blush, realizing I have nothing of interest to say. I simply wanted to hear his voice. That same quiet ‘hum’ of a response that has, like everything else about our interaction, slipped seamlessly into our elegant routine of silence, hushed voices, and gentle breathing in a dark room. 

Taemin flips over onto his stomach and grins into my eyes. “Let’s do something.” He announces confidently, eyebrows curving in a mysterious expression that both fascinates and terrifies me. 

Each movement so expressive, so beautiful, a hundred emotions folded into one amused laugh of a boy I’ve known a mere weeks. 

“Like what?” I ask, glancing around the shadow splashed walls for a single ‘something’ we could turn into an activity. “This place doesn’t exactly have many options.”

Taemin giggles and grasps my hand into his. “This place may not, but we do.”

“What?”

“Come on!”

Before I can even process what he’s told me, he pulls me out of bed and down the hall, spurred with a strength quite unsuited for his thin body that seemed a majority of bone and pale flesh. 

“What are we doing? We’re not supposed to be out,” I whisper, dreadfully aware of the late hour Taemin has chosen for our little excursion. 

“That’s the point. So be quiet.” 

I listen, savoring the feel of fingers intertwined between my own, dragged along by a boy who had all the energy of the sun and more beneath his fingertips. He runs, I follow, and there is silence, save light footsteps on cold linoleum floors, and soft breathing of two running from the rules we know. 

Taemin peeks warily around the corner before he drags me along again. I scamper behind him, keeping up with his surprisingly quick steps before we pause outside a familiar entranceway.

“This...” I murmur, scanning the white plaque beside the door, “Dr. Lee’s office?”

Taemin nods.

“Come on,” he says, yanking my hand toward the door. For a second, I hesitate.

“We... we shouldn’t be doing this. What if we get caught?”

Taemin gives me a half smile, somewhere between a smirk and a laugh. “Minho, it’s not like they can punish us anymore than they already have.” He chuckles, and right then, that’s all the reasoning I need. 

It feels interesting - to know that you truly have nothing to lose. That no matter what you do, nothing could possibly be worse than the situation in which you are already trapped. 

It’s terrifying, yes, but somehow it’s just so freeing. 

And freedom is something I’ve never had the pleasure of experiencing before. Before this, before him. 

“Okay,” I nod, a nervous smile tingling upon my lips. “Okay, let’s do it.”

Taemin’s face illuminates in one more bright smile before he pulls me around the door, finally releasing my hand at our entry. 

Freedom; something never felt, never touched, something terrifying and magnificent and otherworldly all at once.

I am trapped by visions and voices but Taemin - Taemin is my freedom.

“Wow...” He murmurs, tracing his hands along the wooden desks and glancing wildly about the room, as if he’d never seen it before. It is a bit true; he’s never seen it past the allotted hours, and it just looks different. There is something about a room that is locked only in ‘morality’ and laced with the forbidden. It seems eerily quiet, like we’ve slipped out of our own word and into some other dimension that’s just slightly off, slightly different, and infinitely more exciting. 

“It feels so weird being in here,” I whisper, following Taemin’s path and running my hands along any item that has been graced by the touch of his smooth fingertips. “I feel like we’re going to get in so much trouble.”

“That’s the fun of it,” Taemin says, bounding forward gracefully as he inspects every corner of the room, his hospital gown running about his knees as it tries to keep up with his movement. 

He’s so full of energy he seems to glow. The room is dark, but I see him so clearly. 

The sun of our world away from everyone else’s. 

“Let’s look at our files,” he whispers, holding his hand beside his mouth though there’s no reason to do so. It just adds to the excitement of it. The feeling of sneaking around, of doing something just the two of us, is more exhilarating than I can handle. 

“Are you sure?” I ask, more of a formality than anything else. By now I’m so far trapped in the whirlpool that is his eyes and the tornado of his voice that I could never escape. 

Taemin shuffles through the files before pulling out his own. I see, and take careful note, that his last name is Lee.

Something so simply shouldn’t make me this happy, but for some reason, it does. 

Everything. 

His names, his habits, his likes and dislikes. 

His history, his future, his skills and his fears...

I want to know it all. 

“What’s your last name?” He asks.

“Choi,” I respond with a blush, strangely satisfied that he’s asked something about me, even something as impersonal as my last name. I just want to know I’m not the only one.

I feel the bones in my spine crack as I jolt upward, suddenly hyper aware of the footsteps rapping against the floors and gaining volume as they approach the room we are in no way supposed to be occupying. 

Taemin and I share one panicked glance, the fear in his eyes evident as they widen like apertures before darting around the room desperately in search for a suitable hiding place. Though we both agree there isn’t much they can do to us if we get caught, the sheer adrenaline makes my fingers shake feebly as I try to keep my balance.

“Quick, here!” I whisper, this time taking his hand in my own and dragging him beneath Dr. Lee’s desk. The space underneath is small, but we don’t have much have a choice.

“It’s too cramped, I can’t fit...” Taemin half-whispers, half-shouts in panic. “Move your legs, like this.”

Taemin puts his palms on my legs and pushes them apart, scooting beneath the desk and landing directly on my lap. He grabs the chair and covers the open area of the desk before turning around and placing a soft hand over my lips, miming for me to stay quiet - thought I’m not sure I’d be able to speak even if I wanted to. 

I can feel every inch of him before me through our hospital gowns that, for the first time since my admission, I find myself being grateful for for their thin, inadequate fabric. He’s warm, but it’s a special kind of warmth. It’s soft, inviting, pulsing with emotion and b with the energy that floats around him at every minute. 

His head is pushed beside my shoulder and his neck is right next to my mouth. I feel myself wanting to press my lips to that skin, that glowing skin, just to see if its as smooth as it looks, or if my eyes are too blinded by his smile to make a proper conclusion. 

Taemin tenses up beneath me as a pair of feet become visible beneath our hiding place. I wrap my hands around his stomach to keep him pressed close to me, something unconsciously driving me to touch him as much as I can, something impossible to avoid in such a cramped space. I can feel his back pressed to my stomach and his legs fitted between my own. He fits like a doll on a young child’s lap - so comfortable I feel myself melting, so gentle I feel like I’m falling into him. 

My senses warmed, my thoughts muddled, Lee Taemin’s scent surrounding my own and me, sitting back and drowning in him. 

There’s the sound of file cabinets opening, closing, then the footsteps of two black shoes turning and walking outside the door they just came through. I sigh in relief before it molds into one of longing. Our position is no longer compromised. I have to start swimming again. 

Taemin, however, doesn’t budge from his position in my lap. He merely lays his legs out and opens the files as if he hasn’t even noticed. 

“That was close,” he says with a laugh, turning his neck to smile at me. I return it, best I can, though my face is still mildly paralyzed from the position we have found ourselves in. 

“Y-yeah,” I mutter. My lips are so preoccupied with figuring out how to facilitate breathing again that I can’t seem to say much else. 

Taemin scans the files before he turns white as the sheets of paper he’s looking at. 

“What?” I ask nervously, terrified of what he’s found. Would I never leave this place? Would I forever be confined to this maze of hallways and dread? Would I never see my family again?

“We...” He breathes steadily, closing his eyes before bursting out into a laugh of pure relief and dreams unfulfilled. A laugh that breathes hope where there was none, belonging to the boy that tears down fear with a glance, with a smile. “We’re getting transferred.”

I blink at him, mouth hung so far ajar I can feel the cool of air on my tongue. “W-what?”

He flips the papers around, eyes gathering tears in the pools of his eyes as he says with joy, the joy that has no rival in its appeal, no contemporary known. 

The joy that’s the only hope I have, at least for now.

“We’re going to the second floor.”

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A/N - It's been too long! It won't happen again. I am (mostly) back on schedule, and this fic will update more regularly from now on. 

Vote if you enjoy :)

Love you all!

-Gelisi