band;infinite

pairing;sunggyuxmyungsoo

genre;oneshot

wc;1,978

summary; Myungsoo's emotions are degenerating.

title; Green Grass Against Gray Tiles

---

“How does anguish feel like?”

“Why do you keep asking about negative emotions? Why won’t you try happy or hope or excited or—something along those lines?” Sunggyu feels like he’s about to uproot the entire area of scalp at the top of his head.  “This place is about as drab as it can be.” For extra effect, he throws both hands into the air and let them fall back down, limply hanging on either side of the red plastic chair he’s sitting in.

Myungsoo doesn’t say a word, and proceeds to glance around the gray room. Sunggyu watches as deep, charcoal orbs flicker around in all directions, before resting their gaze on his face. The eyes blink once, twice.

“I don’t know. I don’t remember feeling any of those things. I mean, when I could still, you know, feel.”

Sunggyu thinks that sounded awful and sad, like his heart just chipped off a little at the edges for the boy. Because nobody deserves to not know happiness, he thinks. He’s sure that Myungsoo didn’t not know happiness—he just doesn’t remember feeling it.

That’s part of his condition. Acute Memoraphilia. Sunggyu hears every syllable clear and loud from the oncologist’s fat lips. It’s not actually cancer—though very similar—but a “very, very, rare” disease that affects one in  nine million people. Myungsoo’s case is the first in Korea, though.  A condtion whereby the patient’s ability to feel emotions degenerate overtime, robbing the individual the ability to feel.

“Okay, let’s see it this way- emotions. They are very important; very much more important than you think they are. They don’t only make you human—because robots do not possess emotions—but also, keep you alive.” (Sunggyu did not appreciate the bad joke about robots.) The gaunt-looking, bespectacled man continues.

“When you feel emotional pain, your body reacts to it physically. Which is why sometimes people are so overcome with grief, their bodies break down. People can die from feeling too much. The body detects the high level of “sad hormones” circling in your bloodstream. It tries to get rid of it, but sometimes it doesn’t succeed. But for the young man over here, it’s the exact opposite; there comes a point when his brain is unable to detect any emotion, and so the body cannot react correctly. His body breaks down day by day. Until- until—“

“He dies?” A voice at the back of Sunggyu’s throat chokes out.

The man coughs, diverts his eyes downwards, and gives a gesture that resembled the ghost of a nod. “That is why we need to isolate him from the outside immediately. More human contact, more emotions he cannot detect. “

-

“Are you interested in finding out how happy feels like?”

Myungsoo nods,  slowly, but solidly.

“I’ll be right back.”

When Sunggyu returns, Myungsoo is lying flat on his hospital bed and is staring straight ahead at the ceiling decorated with a constellation of many, many, tiny cracks. Then he realizes what the elder is doing and he sits up in a split second.

“Hyung. What the . What the are you doing this is a ing hospital are you insa-“

“Shhh.”

The elder lifts his right index finger, wet with bits of grass, to his pink lips.

“When have you ever cared for rules anyway? Relax—it’s just grass.”

Myungsoo watches as the other man toss chunks of grass and fresh mud all over the gray cemented floor, like green flowers blooming in a vast wasteland. He was sure that for several minutes, the incurably insane and the supposedly sane just switched roles. When Sunggyu’s done, he stretches out his hand and with expectant eyes twinkling with childish excitement. Myungsoo grasps it. They walk once across the tiny space in his room, now dotted with patches of freshly plucked, wet grass. When they’re done, they walk a second, third, fourth time. And a fifth, and sixth. They stop at the seventeenth time. The grass has gone all mashed and warm from their feet’s contact.

Sunggyu watches as the younger, much skinnier (he’s drastically lost weight over the expanse of six months) with hollowed out cheeks, plopped himself down in the middle of a considerably decent patch of dead grass. He grabs a tuft with both his hands and lifts it to his nose, taking a deep breath, his eyes closed.

When he opens them again, a beautiful, beautiful smile spread across the latter’s face; a smile so angelic and genuine as a child’s, with dimples so deep they could be wells. Sunggyu feels out of breath (Myungsoo literally took his breath away, he swears inwardly). He hasn’t seen such a smile, no, no one has seen that smile ever since a year ago, when the poor kid started to change. 

“I remember now, Hyung. Thank you.” 

He needn’t have said anything, though. His smile was enough to crush Sunggyu’s poor heart into tiny smithereens—even tinier than those cracks on the ceiling—for all the right and wrong reasons.

-

Grass.

The sound of his mother’s laughter, as he runs around the grass patch of the botanical gardens on a picnic Sunday; the smell of freshly mowed grass as he lies on the middle school field watching clouds, joined by his best friend, Sungyeo; Sungyeol’s smile that day; The crisp sound of dried grass during the walk through the forest near the hospital with Sunggyu;

He remembers what happy feels like.

-

At half-past eleven, Myungsoo is suddenly awake. (The hospital has ridiculously inhumane lights out timings at ten p.m. Sunggyu hates it, because he hates leaving Myungsoo every night.) Sunggyu hasn’t gone home yet, that night. He had wanted to stay a little longer.

“Why are you awake, Myung-ah?” Sunggyu carries his red plastic chair and scoots closer to the edge of the bed.  To his surprise, the latter doesn’t reply, and instead stares up at the ceiling with a weary look Sunggyu’s never seen. After ten minutes of silence, Sunggyu’s almost sure that the other has fallen back asleep until he heard a mutter in the darkness.

“What?”                                           

“I’ve never been in love.”

Well, Sunggyu sure wasn’t expecting that. Yet all of a sudden, he feels his heart starting to beat louder than usual, and he’s not sure of why.

 “Hyung?”

“Hmm?”

“Have you ever been in love?”

Sunggyu jerks backwards, a tremor shooting down his spine. He gulps down thickly, his throat suddenly drying up like a river in summer. He thinks of all those feelings he’s never admitted to having, will not admit anyway, keeping them in a safe place at the bottom of his stomach. He feels his stomach churning.

“Y-yea-yeah. I. Think.” He stutters—really stutters, but Myungsoo doesn’t notice. Then suddenly it hits him, hard, the next question Myungsoo is going to ask.

“Can you tell me how love feels like?”

Sunggyu hesitates, for a long, long time. He’s usually not one to take risks in relationships; love in general. But this is not usually.

Not when the person you love is dying.

Sunggyu  starts to crawl into the younger man’s bed made for one—tentatively at first, testing waters, but when Myungsoo scoots aside to give him more space, he takes the cue. Suddenly they’re sharing a bed together, Sunggyu and Myungsoo, bodies pressed up against each other because the bed is just not made for two. Their eyes lock, for the longest time ever in the entirety of their eight-year friendship. Sunggyu can see Myungsoo’s dark orbs, as clear and calm as lakes, in the sheer light that seems to veil the room. He whispers a “Maybe I can show you” before closing in, brushing the tips of their noses together and in the split second before he closes his eyes, he saw Myungsoo close his. Their lips meet- no fireworks, no sparks, no nothing. Just lips and warm breaths and the sweet taste of Myungsoo’s mouth. They go slow, taking the time to nibble and explore the softness and every wrinkle and fold of the other’s lips. Sunggyu’s free right hand moves around the other’s slim waist, onto the flat of his back and presses him closer. He feels fingers in between his own strands of crimson-coloured hair, at first just letting them slide over, then closing up into a fist, tugging slightly at his scalp. Then they pull away- Sunggyu first.

They gasp for air and Sunggyu’s sure glad Myungsoo doesn’t need an oxygen tank. As quickly as they parted, they connect again; this time going at a faster tempo, wasting no time as Sunggyu feels now two hands tangled in his hair, breaths hitched faster and lips more urgent. One hand slides down in the miniscule space between their bodies. Sunggyu’s eyes open as he tenses at the coldness under he thin cotton button-down. He feels momentarily ashamed and curses at himself for not working out more because all there is for Myungsoo to feel is probably vast expanses of cold wobbliness.

He takes the chance to watch the man up-close. Apart from the faint freckles sprinkled like stars along the stretch of area along his cheekbones and nose, he notices also the little imperfections in the form of teenage acne battle scars, swollen eyebags, and tiny wrinkles and smile lines. There is probably no way to explain human beings’ desire to love things that are broken and flawed—or at least, he does.

They break away again, without Myungsoo’s lips breaking contact with the surface of Sunggyu’s skin as he moves away from the face, along the uneven ridges of the man’s jawbone, down to the base of his neck and his collarbone. Sunggyu fails to suppress the tiny mewl he let escape as the latter nibbles on his most sensitive spot, at his collarbone nearest to where his neck ends. He feels heat reach his face, and holds his breath when he feels the lips stop in their tracks, wetness and warmth concentrated at his collarbones. The lips leave the patch of skin and suddenly they are both at each others’ eye levels.

“Do you love me, Sunggyu?”

Sunggyu releases the breath he’s been holding and stumbles a shaky yes. He looks up at Myungsoo’s eyes again and judging from the look they hold he realizes that the latter didn’t hear. He  in his lips squeezes his eyes tight before opening them, and opening his mouth,

“Yes. Yes I do. If you haven’t realised.”

Myungsoo nods slowly, like a student who’s trying to take in the things the teacher just taught. But love is more than late-night kisses and hugs and touches. It is daily hospital visits, home-cooked food and someone to cry to. Sunggyu wonders if Myungsoo understands.

-

Sunggyu doesn’t recall when they both fall asleep, but he remembers Myungsoo curling up tighter into his chest, and so he pulls him in as close as he can. But the next thing that happens comes as a blur—Sunggyu wakes up to a lump burning with high temperature in his temperature, and he screams when the man in his arms doesn’t respond. A nurse rushes in first, places a hand on Myungsoo’s forehead, then runs off and returns with more people—nurses and doctors. Sunggyu stands near the nightstand by the window as the platoon surrounds the bed, and several moments later, wheel the limp, pale looking human out of the room. They send Myungsoo into Intensive Care. Sunggyu’s not allowed to enter and so he stays in the hallway with the huge brick of a digital clock, bearing blood red numbers. 2.26am. He sits in one of those gray plastic chairs—different from the one inside Myungsoo’s room—and waits.

-

Sunggyu stops waiting.

-

Anguish (n.)- severe mental or physical suffering.

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a/n; sorry about that. I really am. I'm sorry if this was confusing esp the ending. It's up to you to decide~ Anyway did anyone get the book reference? (ha ha) I wrote this over three nights somewhere between 12am-2am-ish each night which explains everything.

Welcome to the first oneshot of this collection! I hope I didn't drive you away already..