Screams painted the white walls of the ICU a darker color. A man had been transferred from a small town’s hospital just the day before and had broken the cursed silence that tended to suffocate the unit.

It was no longer quiet, but that didn’t mean the dismal mood had lifted. If anything, faces got longer, shadows darker, and wrinkles deeper. The nurses—the ones not rushing to the man’s side—walked with their brows met in the middle. It was the only pity they could give to that poor, poor man in room 214.

People shuffled passed the open door and the lone figure trying to keep it together beside the frame. They cringed at the sounds and kept their head hung low. They could tell he was desperate without looking. Had they been brave enough, they would have known the extent to which he really was.

The screams escalated to shrieks and were heart wrenchingly loud—a testament to the massive amount of pain present in a place that no one could physically see. They were the closest things the staff would get to a manifestation, beside the way his arms curled into themselves and the way his face contorted accordingly. They’d never know what it felt like, but the visual and soundtrack were enough.

The man’s muscles tensed to the point of popping, starting in his shoulder and sending a shockwave down the rest of both arms and then accumulating in his extremities. The wave was a quick mover, shooting back up and down again in no time flat, taking complete control of everything in its path.

He felt like his body was trying to do the impossible. He was involuntarily working on imploding, intent on his own self destruction from the inside, and all he could do was scream it out. He tried with all his might to expel the pain possessing him from out of his mouth, but all he could do was endure and wait for it to go away.

Absolutely oblivious to the rush of people around him, the pads they placed beside him, and all precautionary measures they were taking to make sure he didn’t bite through his tongue, the man could do nothing but take it. He was only slightly aware of the red color on the back of his eyelids, but he didn’t know it was from the sun coming in as if to kiss his skin in apology. He knew nothing but pain and the way it felt surreal in a cloudy, far off kind of way. The pain was very much there, but the rest of him wasn’t.

Why was he feeling it? What was going on? Was he dying? , let him be dying, please.

Anything would be better, he was sure of it.

A few minutes felt like a few millennia because unseeing eyes and unfeeling bodies have no way of telling.

When the torture let up, he still had no control. The need to stretch his arms out after having them cramped and curled was overwhelming, but a feat too great for the moment. He was so stiff and the way his left shoulder was jerking left the rest of his muscles unconsidered, anyway. A male nurse with a sturdy sort of strength tried to restrain the movement, but it just couldn’t be done.

The man in the bed lay there, his face drenched in a mixture of tears and sweat that was starting move downward and soak through his gown. Roughly five minutes of that, and his body could take no more. He was left in the rubble of what was his wavering strength, made fragile like a porcelain doll that had teetered on the edge of a high shelf and had finally taken the fall. Heavy eyelids slipped over the remaining visible whiteness of his eyes—the colored irises having rolled back into his skull in the minutes prior. His body shut down from the strain.

Even through the trembling and the panting, his body was absorbed into blackness—a comatose state.

The unit went back to its customary solemn silence. Only the beeping of machines, the scuffling of hurried feet on the floor, and the uneven breaths of patients and visitors alike dared to break it again.

After having stepped out of the room during the ordeal, the lone figure outside room 214 gathered the courage to move again.

***

Jinki shuffled back toward the open door, afraid of what he was going to see. The silence was eerie after what had just happened. He’d never seen anything like what Kibum had just gone through. If it was hard on him, he couldn’t even imagine what Kibum felt…

To have to sit back and let everything take its course was never even an option before, but now it was being shoved into his face as the only one.

Kibum’s screams tore a few of his own out. They were mingling with sobs and became an unrecognizable mess as the two converged—one from the direction of his head and one from his heart—in his throat. When he had to step out and he released them in the hallway, he sensed the stagnant hospital air turn into a frenzy around him.

Jinki knew he had no right to complain about how much it hurt to watch, but seeing the person you love morphed into a ball of agonizing tremors… he wasn’t prepared for that. It was as much a shock to his unknowing system as it was Kibum’s, to be fair. He didn’t want to see that; he didn’t want that for Kibum. He didn’t wish that on anyone.

He didn’t know the pain personally, but he could see it thrashing around in Kibum’s glazed over eyes. They were completely blank except for that—the pain being the only thing registering.

It made Jinki cry to think Kibum’s last five minutes were a world revolving around and existing only because of pain. Even now that the worst had past, he still couldn’t be at peace. The man’s body still shook, his arms still awkwardly positioned, still tensed up. He wasn’t even breathing right, and the oxygen they set him up with wasn’t doing a damn bit of good.

Jinki still couldn’t do a thing to help. Nothing could make that go away now that it had come, but not fully gone.

He brushed his own trembling fingers over Kibum’s cheek—pale, wet, and deflated as it was. It was as if he were collecting the porcelain doll into his arms, not willing to see the full effects the fall had caused quite yet.

After a kiss to his damp forehead, Jinki took a seat in the room’s sole chair to wait the man’s sleep out.

***

Exactly an hour and seventeen minutes passed by, the medication the nurses pumped Kibum with prolonging the exhaustion-induced state.

Jinki didn’t notice the fluttering of eyelids or the shifting of eyes, but the sniffling got his attention just fine.

Kibum was confused. He didn’t know what had taken place, just that it hurt. He cried about his traumatic episode and how his painful dream was substituted by something filled with all his favorite things—like a subconscious way to make him feel better, or a reward for making it through at all. He cried because he thought he was dying and he cried over the fact that he wanted it to happen at one point.

Kibum’s speech was slurred from the combination of medication and sheer enervation, getting caught on long strings of stutters. Jinki saw that it frustrated the younger, figuring more than a few of those tears were due to frustration rather than from fear or confusion.

Jinki wanted nothing more than to crawl into that bed and hold him, but refrained from doing so because of the wires and just in case Kibum was still in pain. He just looked so fragile…

Instead, he settled for hunching over the side of the bed and the grey, protective pads and cradling Kibum’s face in his hands. He peppered kisses from his forehead to his nose, his nose to his cheek, his cheek to his jaw, and his jaw to his mouth. The action seemed to calm the borderline hysterics into a steady stream of tears that were determined to never leave the man’s cheeks dry again. Jinki thought that was okay because they were cascading down his own face, too.

The silence of the room was slightly less pressing than before, but the feeling still lingered on the outskirts of their minds.

“Y-y-you were there, J-j-jinki.” The stuttering looked to be something they’d have to deal with for a while.

The older man was fine with that as long as he was still graced with Kibum’s voice.

“I was where, baby?”

For a moment, Jinki felt guilt-ridden over the fact that he wasn’t strong enough to stay in the room through all of it. How could he have left his love’s side when he needed him most?

“My d-dream. Not the scary-y one. In my dream, your f-f-face was ev-verywhere—in the sun, the middle of flower-r-rs . You were everywhere a-and, god, it just made me s-so happy.”

Weak laughter bubbled through the sadness and Jinki should have felt better, but he only felt worse.

He wanted to be in Kibum’s place. Why did this perfect being have to carry a burden so big? Why not himself?

Well, because Kibum was obviously a lot stronger than himself.

Jinki finally opened his arms to inspect the damage done to his porcelain doll.

The fall had left him fragile, but, even now, he remained unbroken. A wave of pride overtook him, the tears blurring his vision being given the okay for another round. Jinki leaned in again, both hands remaining on his doll’s face, and kissed him. It was bittersweet, but didn’t feel out of place.

He loved this man so much. His porcelain doll sported a few cracks, but still sat pretty.

Author's note: So... my mom went to the hospital and this is my way of getting out how I felt about it (except in a romantic light that I didn't feel for her, obviously). I dunno... I don't have much to say. Hope you liked it? ENJOY MY PAIN, PLEASE. I sound like I'm crazed. UGH. Ignore me. OTL