warning: character death

It was so busy. There were nurses and doctors running around, but there always were in the ICU ward. Parents and sisters and brothers sat, waiting for information about their loved ones, by the main desk. One man, however, was frantically trying to find someone who knew what was happening to his friend.

Jongwoon met Ryeowook when he was going to check on his mother in the hospital. His mom had been hospitalized with a bad case of pneumonia and Jongwoon had been visiting her when he ran into the small, frail man in a wheelchair. It only took a couple of exchanged sentences for them to become friends. It didn’t take long for him to establish an almost daily routine of coming to see the younger man after he got off work.

“Isn’t it great outside, Ryeowook?” Jongwoon breathed deeply; he’d pushed Ryeowook down the hall and outside into the hospital garden so that his friend could get some fresh air that day.

The smaller man nodded slowly, reaching up and running thin fingers over the overhanging leaves of the tree nearby. “It smells so much nicer out here,” he laughed, and Jongwoon felt his heart flutter.

“When you get better, I’ll take you up to the top of this mountain my dad use to take me to when I was a kid. It’s really gorgeous up there.”

“I’d like that,” Ryeowook murmured, a flicker of sadness dancing in his eye for a moment that Jongwoon didn’t notice.

“Excuse me—”

“Yes, sir?” The nurse paused briefly, her piercing eyes turning to the agitated Jongwoon.

“Ryeowook—Kim Ryeowook—he was in room three oh two—they said, they said he’d been brought to the ICU last night and—”

“I’m sorry, sir, but I just arrived, so I don’t have any information about any of the new patients. You should ask one of the residents who was here last night, okay?” The nurse dashed off, leaving Jongwoon shaking there in the middle of the floor, his heart pounding.

The week Ryeowook was confined to bed rest was the week that Jongwoon kissed him for the first time.

They were sitting in his private room, Jongwoon telling the younger man a story, complete with over-exaggerated gestures and silly voices, when Ryeowook wilted back against his pillows in a coughing fit. His hyung was about to call the nurses when he felt the younger’s hand on his arm, holding him still.

“I’m okay,” Ryeowook whispered after he caught his breath. “Finish telling me the story?”

But Jongwoon couldn’t, shaking his head slightly as he sat down on the edge of the bed. “Are you sure you’re okay? You didn’t sound okay, Wook. I don’t want you getting any worse, only better.”

“I’m fine,” the younger pressed. “You shouldn’t worry so much—”

“I can’t help but worry about the man I’m in love with,” Jongwoon muttered, mostly to himself, but loud enough that Ryeowook heard it; he felt the fingers on his arm tense up before relax and slide down to his hand.

“You shouldn’t love me,” Ryeowook said softly, lacing his fingers with Jongwoon’s and squeezing his hand gently. “I’m really not worth the trouble.”

“Wook! Wook, you are—”

“But I love you too,” Ryeowook finished, and the room was silent for a moment before Jongwoon shifted, his hand sliding up to cup Ryeowook’s cheek before he leaned down and pressed his lips against the soft, pale ones that he’d so often wished he could kiss.

When he pulled away, they were both smiling and breathless.

“Do you want me to finish that story?” Jongwoon asked, slightly teasingly, and Ryeowook laughed.

“I want you to kiss me again.”

And he did.

“Please—do you know anything about Ryeowook—please, his brother just called and—Heechul!”

Jongwoon tore away from the resident he had cornered and dashed over to the tired looking man that had just walked down the hall; Ryeowook’s older brother, Heechul.

“Heechul, please, will you tell me what’s going on? He’s going to be fine, isn’t he?”

Heechul swallowed, slowly looking up at Jongwoon, his face blank.

“Isn’t he?”

“He really loved you, you know,” Heechul murmured, and Jongwoon was struck with the finality of the phrase, of the past tense and what that meant, and he stumbled backwards, his back hitting the wall, the hospital around him starting to blur as his eyes filled with tears.

 “You make me want to be healthy so damn bad,” Ryeowook muttered.

It was late; Jongwoon, who had become friends with a couple of the nurses over the past few months, had been allowed to stay after visiting hours had ended. He had slipped onto the bed with Ryeowook and had wrapped his arm around the younger’s shoulders as they flipped through a book open across their laps.

“Did you not want to before?”

“I did, I guess, but, god, I have never wanted to be healthy more than I do now. I want to go do all of these things with you, like climb that mountain. I want to kiss you without becoming breathless for all the wrong reasons.”

A smile played around the corner of Jongwoon’s lips as he leaned down, kissing the top of his boyfriend’s head. “You’re going to be healthy one day. Your doctors seem really optimistic about the new treatments. Once you’re all healed up, I’ll take you everywhere you want to go, alright?”

Ryeowook smiled slightly, but the smile didn’t reach his eyes; he looked down at the book and ran his fingers along the edge of one page.

“Yeah,” he mumbled, and he didn’t tell Jongwoon about the way he was struggling to breathe even with the nubs of the cannula hooked behind his ears tickling his nose.

“—heard his lungs had filled with liquid—”

“—couldn’t drain—”

“—such a bright young man—”

“—everyone thought he’d been doing better—”

Jongwoon let the soft voices around him wash over him as he stared straight ahead. He shuffled forward, staring at the picture of the smiling, happy, healthy Ryeowook there surrounded by flowers for as long as he could before turning and bowing deeply.

Mrs. Kim, her eyes red and puffy, simply pulled Jongwoon into a hug; he felt Heechul pat him on the back.

“I never saw him as happy as he was with you,” she whispered to him, leaning back to smile slightly at him. “Thank you for being there with him.”

Jongwoon felt the tears he’d been holding back spring to his eyes and Mrs. Kim tugged him into a tight hug once again.

Ryeowook yawned, resting his head on Jongwoon’s shoulder.

“Is my little bear getting tired?” Jongwoon teased lightly, leaning his own head against Ryeowook’s.

“Oh, shut up, I’m sick,” Ryeowook grumbled back and they both laughed. “Sing to me?”

Before he got sick, Ryeowook had loved to sing and, when he found out that Jongwoon liked to as well, he pressured the older man into singing for him whenever he could.

“Anything for you,” Jongwoon murmured, thinking for a moment before he began to sing a soft love song; it wasn’t long before Ryeowook’s uneven breathing slowed and he drifted off to sleep.

Jongwoon watched him for a while, running his fingers over Ryeowook’s skin and smiling at his boyfriend’s soft puffs as he slept. “I love you, Kim Ryeowook,” he whispered.

Jongwoon stood in front of Ryeowook’s picture, the same one he’d stared at for so long before, and sighed heavily. He gripped the flowers in his hands tightly for a moment more before carefully placing them in front of the picture.

“I love you, Kim Ryeowook,” he said softly. “Always will.”

“I love you too, stupid,” Ryeowook laughed, leaning against Jongwoon as the older man helped him walk around the hospital garden. Jongwoon flushed a light red. “I always will, till the day I die. And then some.”