~chapter thirty-five~
okay?
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Most of my sweet memories were buried in the sand
The fire and the pain will now be coming to an end

After the boys spend hours just hanging out at the hospital, the doctor finally comes in and tells them to leave Kai alone. They all pout, lament and grumble; Chanyeol even goes as far as embracing the doctor in a hug and asking him with his most charming smile if they can stay a bit longer. The man rolls his eyes at him and tells him that Kai needs rest because he still hasn’t healed completely.

They all sigh in unison and Kai sends them all a puppy stare that makes them all go ‘aww’. They are a bunch of saps after all, very cuddly in addition, because Kai gets peppered with hugs and kisses and embraces and squeezes and it takes fifteen long minutes before they all leave. 

Taemin stretches out, steals a bag of chips from Kai’s bed and points at the door with a smirk. 

“I’m going to go for a walk, you guys mind?” he asks. The only people left in the room are essentially Kai and Mari and Taemin snickers and laughs mentally seeing their red, nervous faces. He doesn’t wait for any answer; he smiles dazzlingly and is out of the door in the next second.

Kai never felt more awkward. Not even when he had dinner at his first girlfriend’s house and her father turned out to be his old primary school teacher (he and Taemin spend days on planning how to piss that man off again). There was a lot of passive-aggressive sliding of food involved.

Mari, to his consolation, looked equally nervous. She was sitting on the chair by his side and Kai was angrier than ever that he can’t move enough to face her with his whole body. It made him itchy and weird. 

See, Kai was secretly a romantic. So telling the girl he loves that he loves her while being at the hospital with most of his body so hurting he can’t move and with so many drugs in his system he feels higher than we he tried pot with Taemin in ninth grade? Yeah. Not something a romantic would like to have.

So instead of going into his rant, into his speech that he so many times prepared in his mind, he decides to take Mari’s hand into his and lean back just so he can look at her. Mari seems to relax the second he touches her and she unconsciously leans forward, until her knees are touching the bed.

“So I need to tell you something,” he whispers. “But I really want to get the drugs out of my system first.”

Mari, surprisingly, smiles at this. Then she chuckles and her whole body is suddenly in giggles. She stops after a few seconds, looking at him, her eyes soft and fond and deep. Even in this state she looks like the most beautiful person in the world for him and he, for the first time in his life, is truly proud of something, because he saved her life. Not only he saved a human being, but also saved the girl that was the most precious for him. 

He let his eyes drift on her face, trying to remember it, catalogue it. Mari leans even closer and Kai makes a vague gesture at her. Mari climbs on his bed wordlessly, making sure she doesn’t press onto his hurt side, and sinks down next to him, leaning on his shoulder. Kai embraces her with his arm, his hand around her waist, and she snuggles closer, her hair tickling his lips and chin pleasantly. 

“Thank you,” she whispers simply. Then she looks up at him and they spend good two minutes just staring at each other like that, they eyes only moving slightly. They can’t even feel the time passing by.

Mari then leans a bit closer and plants a kiss in the corner of Kai’s lips; his skin seems to melt in that place and even as she pulls away, he can still feel her touch lingering there. He itches for more, but he knows it’s still not the time. He leans forward and kisses her loudly on her forehead, at what she giggles and hides her face in her hand in a manner of embarrassment. 

Kai starts peppering her with kisses all over her face then and he didn’t know that such innocent, small touches could ever make his body burn as much as they did at that moment. Mari squirms and squeals under him, but never leaves his side, never once stops clenching her fists on his torso, never once avoids his lips.
 

~*~

Two days later Kai is free to go. Meanwhile Mari is having some troubles with her lungs, but Jinki assures him it’s not a big deal. Kai tells him that every doctor says that, to what Jinki answers that if Mari was in danger and the doctors would ignore the threat, he would probably personally shove their heads into a toilet and flush twenty two times. 

So Kai goes home because he’s supposed to rest and because he still has to give testimony to the police and it takes much longer than any of them predicted.
 
A day later Taemin comes with a newspaper under his arm, which is weird because Taemin doesn’t read newspapers. He throws it onto the table in front of Kai, who is on the couch; it flops softly. 

“Read,” he says, pointing at it and making an inpatient face.

Kai makes a grimace at him for interrupting him his drama marathon, but eventually opens the newspaper to find a photo of Garn in the right corner; he loses focus for a second, panic overwhelming him, but then his brain switches again and he takes a deap breath.


"Yoo Sihyun, 34 y/o, was found dead in his apartment in Gangnam. The man was a part of an underground organization that excels in arms trade, hazard and illegal human organ trade. He was killed by another member of the same organization. The details aren’t known and will most probably stay hidden from the civilians. The police are working on the evidence found in his apartment as well as on the identity of his killer. It might be a huge step towards finding the boss of the organization and end the terror they spread in the city. It’s a second incident of this sort that has happened in the ranks of the organization and the first time it left some kind of evidences."


Kai looks up at Taemin, who’s tapping his foot on the floor.

“How the hell did you know—“ Kai starts, but Taemin cuts him off.

“I’m smart,” he scoffs. Kai scowls at him. “Yeah, okay. Jaejoong told me.”

“You started bonding with Jaejoong?” Kai quirks and annoyed brow at that. “Over mafia members that were after Mari? Why. Taemin. Why.”

The older boy rolls his eyes, “I’m not bonding with him, sheesh. I was visiting Mari and I heard them talking about it and Jaejoong caught me so he told me the whole thing. I have to say that he knows how to threat a guy because by the end of his long protective speech I was ready to my pants.”

“TMI,” Kai mutters. “Sneaky bastard.”

“That’s what Mari has been dealing with all this time? Freaking mafia?”

Kai's heart halts for a second, then he nods. "It's over now," he says quickly, leaning back onto the couch and staring into the ceiling. He can feel the couch dip under him as Taemin joins him.

"You're going to be okay, right?" his friend asks him quietly, his voice incredibly vulnerable, and Kai looks at him with equal emotions in his eyes. 

"Yeah," he whispers slowly, nodding his head. "It's over."

"Because you seriously scared the crap out of me," Taemin says, leaning back a little, his muscles tense. "When they called me to say that you've been in a fire— I just, you know that I would kick anybody’s if they touched you, but this is really serious, Kai, this is—“ 

“Hey,” Kai says, cutting him off; he turns so he’s facing Taemin entirely and leans on the back of the couch. Taemin rolls his eyes slightly, even though a few months ago he would be rapturous about Kai opening up to him and calming him down. Looks like the roles changed when he showed his vulnerability. “I’m not going anywhere. It’s over.”

“You always get yourself in that kind of stuff,” Taemin continues grimly. “I don’t want you to be hurt again, dammit. Not after Sang Hee,” he seems to catch himself suddenly because he stops breathing with a hitch. Kai still feels a pang of pain at the mention of her name, but it’s just pain. There’s no loneliness or guilt or longing. 

It’s been months since he had dreamed about Sang Hee. It’s been months since she even crossed his mind. From the second he met Mari, his mind was slowly becoming his mind again. Sang Hee was slowly disappearing away from it.

And it wasn’t that Mari replaced her, no. Sang Hee left a hole that needed filling and Mari already did that. But now she also took a new place in his heart, a super important spot that was reserved just for her.

He gasps suddenly, his heart seizing weirdly. His friend eyes him carefully, a bit startled; he glances at his wounded side, as if checking if it’s fine, only then Kai says, “I think I’m in love.”

Taemin snorts.

“Duh,” he mumbles lowly. “I know.”

Kai stares at the ceiling still.

“She’s so great,” he starts and Taemin growls suddenly, stands up.

“Oh no, I’m not going through this again, I’ve had enough of listening about your girlfriends and about your cute relationships and about your sappy lovey-dovey feelings the first time you started dating and I’m not going through that again.”

Instead, he runs downstairs and closes the door to his room with a loud thud.

Kai stares into the air for some time, his mind filled with pleasant thoughts, and there’s a pleasant buzz under his skin. 

~*~

Mari is having her supper (she thought that the hospital food will be disgusting, she never met anybody who’d actually like it) when Taemin’s head peeks through the doorstep. The boy squints his eyes at the room, glares at her neighbor, then inspects the whole place.

“You’re alone?” he asks Mari, and the girl frowns, puts her fork onto the side for a second. Taemin comes to her, swaggering a bit like always, but his hands are deep in his pockets and he looks quite tense. Mari tenses at that as well, swallowing loudly the last piece of her food. 

“I need to talk to you,” Taemin says, his voice stern; Mari is officially nervous.

“We’re going to have the talk,” she states, and Taemin smiles at that lightly, but soon is serious again. He still nods.

“So Kai is a bit weird,” he starts and the girl quirks her eyebrow at that. “No, wait, that came out wrong. I meant that—Kai has been through a lot. I mean, I get that you’ve been through a lot too so I guess that you two can kinda bond over how ty your lives have been—“ he shuts his mouth abruptly. “That’s not what I wanted to say at all.”

“Kai did tell me that sometimes you have a problem with your brain to mouth filter,” Mai tells him slowly, still raising a brow at him. Her heart is beating faster now and she’s glad that Taemin is focused on her and not on the machine beside her.

“Okay, listen,” he says, rubbing his hand onto his face. “Kai is incredible. He’s strong. He’s been through a lot and he had a very depressing phase in his life. He’s been a living wreck until a while ago, and… and I know that he recovered partially thanks to you. I, as his friend, was never able to help him the same way you did...”

“That’s bull,” Mari cuts him off; she’s heard so much about Taemin from Kai that she knew that if not him, Kai would probably break completely. Then it finally gets to her and she opens a bit, closes it again. “You’re afraid I’ll be like his previous girlfriend.”

Taemin looks quite shocked at that. He frowns, looks to the side as if suspecting to find someone with a huge banner screaming ‘Sang Hee!’ there, and looks at her again.

“How…?”

“Key,” Mari explains. “And, yeah, my own curiosity,” she adds with a vague eye roll. “I know I shouldn’t.”

Taemin stares at her for a few seconds. He clenches his hand into a fist and hits his other, spread palm once, as if making up his mind.

“I like you, Mari,” he says sincerely. “You’re sweet and brave and funny and—I can’t even imagine how strong you must’ve been through all these years. And I’m sorry that I found out about your life without your permission,” he cringes at that a bit; Mari still hasn’t decided what she thought about Taemin knowing, but she wasn’t angry, so it was a sign that she liked him too much to care. If Kai trusted Taemin then she felt confident with trusting him as well. “And I’m not saying that you are lying or being tricky, but I really need to know what are your feelings towards Kai. Because—the first time he truly fell in love with someone, I didn’t ask her about her feelings. I didn’t pay enough attention and if I would, I would know, I—“

His hand trembles suddenly and Mari finds herself leaning towards him, almost putting her hand on his clenched fist; Taemin sees her movement falter with uneasiness and sends her a quick, a bit forced smile, emotions clearly wrenching him a bit. 

“I was a ty friend,” he admits. “But it won’t happen again. So you need to tell me what you feel and what exactly you want from him, because he’s had enough rejection in his life already.”

Mari takes in his worried eyes, that little wrinkle between his frowning eyebrows, his tense shoulder muscles; her heart is beating rapidly at the thought of confessing her feelings for Kai to Taemin, of all people, and she can feel her cheeks reddening.

“I don’t want to hurt him,” she says slowly. “I wouldn’t dare to hurt him. He changed my life. I can’t give him a lot, I can’t really—I only have my feelings to give him, there’s nothing—“

“What feelings?”

She snaps her eyes at him and his straightforwardness, but Taemin looks all open and vulnerable and a bit content, too. So, even though it takes her enormous will force and ten long seconds of her cheeks literally burning and her hands squirming until she finally opens and whispers, “Love.”

Taemin blinks one, two, three times. He leans back in his chair, tension suddenly leaving his muscles, and he literally slides down his seat a bit. 

“Love,” he repeats. “Love is great. Love is enough. Love is everything he needs.”

Mari takes a deep breath. 

“He’s still freaking out over this though,” Taemin says suddenly, his tone so quickly changed Mari startles a bit. He’s not so serious anymore and he sounds normal again, talks fast with a hint of fondness but also sarcasm in his voice, maybe a bit of annoyance, too. “But I probably shouldn’t tell you this.” 

Mari chuckles.

“Just,” Taemin says. “Be gentle? To him, I mean.” 

Mari will. She can’t imagine herself being gentler to anyone more than to Kai; her heart swells at the sudden thought, at the sudden realization, and only then Taemin’s words get to her. 

She knew that Kai feels something towards her. She could see the way he reacted to her touches and the way his pupils dilated every time he looked at her. Even if Kai didn’t know, didn’t notice or realize, she already knew. But she didn’t know what exactly was going between them. She wasn’t sure she wanted to involve him into her life more than he was already; wasn’t sure if that won’t hurt him even more, even deeper. 

But now she was free.

And she could actually become someone Kai could lean on. Just like she could rely on him.

It felt unreal because Mari has been in love only one time in her life before, and she wouldn’t even have called it love. It was more like a crush. Then came her mom’s sickness and the debt and, well. She dreamed about having a normal life but never actually made plans for one because she never thought she’s going to get out of her indebted one.

And now Kai’s best friend practically told her that Kai is in love with her, that he might want to start a relationship and it was simply too much. 

She never felt warmer, fluffier – no matter how weird it sounds – in her life. She felt like back when she was only six years old and sitting on her mom’s lap, reading stories and watching silly cooking shows to make cupcakes in the evening.

There wasn’t much she could do about her heart’s rate, but she wasn’t exactly mad because of it. Taemin was eyeing the rhythmic beeping of the machine beside, seriousness all over his face. Then he grinned. 

“Okay,” he said. “Now I’m quite convinced, to be honest.”

~*~

The next day he tells Kai to “not this up”. 

Kai eyes him up and down, a mug halfway to his mouth. He flushes and nods.

~*~

Kai picks Mari up from the hospital the same evening. It’s warm and the girl seems one hundred percent better when she exits the building to find him outside. He skin is almost healed and when she sees him staring at her cheek she points at it with a grin.

“It won’t leave a scar,” she states, and Kai finds himself chuckling. He takes her luggage from her, even as she protests; he snaps his teeth at her in a playful manner, to stop her from nagging, and she rolls her eyes at him fondly.

They stand in front of each other for a long minute, both just staring, content, private smiles on their faces. Then a car honks somewhere behind them and they’re torn away from their heavy eye contest. 

Mari chuckles and Kai think that the sound of her laugh is one of the things he fell in love with first.

“Okay,” he says, stretching his hand out towards her. Mari glances at it and up at him, seeing his vulnerable and unsure eyes; she doesn’t waste any more seconds, takes his hand and intertwines their fingers together. She leans into him without thought and Kai tries to bring her even closer, if that’s even possible.

They walk towards the city in silence. They don’t say a word, but it doesn’t feel awkward or weird or nervous; they breathe steadily against each other, their fingers sliding lightly, their shoulders touching with every step they take, and every step is taken in unison. Left, right, left, right, left, right.

They walk across the bridge, cars passing them with soft whooshes, the river glistening and mirroring all the lights of the city at them. Kai stops in his tracks suddenly, looking into the water. Mari squeezes his hand a bit, but stops as well, peeks around his shoulder to see what he’s looking at. 

“That’s the place I first saw you,” Kai realizes out loud, shock hearable in his voice as he turns towards her; Mari looks around and tries to remember. 

“Flash tripped over you,” she muses. “Yeah.” 

Kai’s lips lift into a small smile and he leans over the barrier. Mari joins him and they both stare into the cold, pitch-black darkness of the water; a shiver runs down the girl’s neck. But then she looks a bit higher, at the way the surface illuminates the light.

“I imagined how’d it be to jump,” Kai whispers, and it was probably a comment he didn’t think she’d hear. But Mari did hear and she was fast in her reaction.

She placed her hand on his cheek so she could turn his face towards her. She cupped his face gently and stood on her tiptoes. 

“You don’t have to jump,” she said. “Not now, not ever.”

Kai’s eyes snap from her own to linger on her lips for exactly three seconds before he’s leaning forward.

His lips are gentle, touching Mari’s like he’s not certain he’s doing the right thing but Mari presses into it with a shaking inhale as her hands slip to curl around his neck. Kai’s hands slide up to fit over her hips, thumbs just brushing up under the hem of Mari’s shirt to at the skin there. Mari shivers suddenly, hot wave washing over her as their lips tangle slowly and sweetly, as they learn how to fit against each other. 

Kai a stripe on Mari’s bottom lip and the girl opens immediately. Kai slides in, feeling the hotness and wetness, the taste of coffee and something that is entirely her, and their bodies seem to just melt together.

Kai pulls back sooner than Mari would’ve liked him to, breath uncoordinated as he presses their foreheads together and looks at Mari like he was waiting for something. 

“Okay?” He questions, fingers still rubbing against Mari’s hips in feather-soft touches that leave her skin pebbling up.

“Depends. Are you going to regret it later on?” she asks, watching the way Kai’s lashes flutter. 

“Never,” he answers simply, looking up at her. 

“Okay. Then that was great.”

She scrapes her fingers lightly through Kai’s messy hair; in return, Kai makes her feel like a galaxy under his gaze. 

It's short but hopefully fluffy enough to make you all satisfied. 

So that's it guys ;_______; I'm going to post an epilogue this weekend so stay tuned, I really hope you'll like it. Only then I'll mark this story as complete. Gooosh. 

At first I thought that there should be more drama, more conflicts and issues, but then I thought that Kai changed a lot thanks to Mari and that their relationship is much simpler than Kai's and Sang Hee's and that's how it turned out. I'm quite proud. 

Anyway, I also requested a poster so go check it out in the foreword :) I changed the layout a bit as you can see too lol I'm lame 

Thank you for reading <3