“Minho? ….Earth to Minho? Song Minho?”

He jumped, shook his head and took a second to remember where he was. The dim light of the bar, the untouched glass on the table, the delicate hand lightly tapping at the table. Where was he? Focusing his gaze, he met his friend’s dark eyes, slight annoyance painted on the younger man’s face.

“Hyung, have you even been listening? Are you even here?”

Seungyoon had all rights to be annoyed, and all Minho could do was give him a little nod. No, he hadn’t been listening at all; his thoughts had been flying far away, to the other side of the river and to a certain rooftop apartment.  Something they clearly shouldn’t be doing, least of all when they finally had time to meet up and have a drink together. With him a hospice nurse that usually lived with his patients and Seungyoon just starting as a residency physician at Severance Hospital’s new cancer ward, they had close to no time to actually meet up.

“I’m sorry, I just… have a lot to think about these days.”

“Is that so?”

The way Seungyoon crossed his arms and looked over at him made it clear that he was not at all satisfied with that answer. Ever since they met in university the younger man had been able to call a lie or when Minho didn’t tell the full truth. And every single time, without any exception, he had pulled out the whole story.

“…Okay, I have someone to think a lot about.”

“Aha! So that’s why you wanted to meet me!”

Seungyoon’s smirk was so annoying Minho was tempted to punch it off of him, but he held back.  He couldn’t go around hitting one of his best friends for catching him red handed.  Apart from just hanging out, he did have a goal behind the meeting, and without further ado he pulled a thick file out of his backpack and slid it across the table.

"Is it really a hopeless case?”

“That better not be what I think it is. You know there are laws about privacy and punishments for sharing of information like that?”

“…don’t read the name then?”

Was it really that important? Minho didn’t need an answer to the entire file; he just wanted a doctor’s opinion (one that he could trust at that). The bizarre idea that Taehyun could be saved after all hadn’t left his head since the night of his birthday.

I feel like I should try to hold on just a little longer just to spend more time with you.

That was what the boy had written in his card, and the words still made Minho’s heart ache with a strange, dull pain. Seungyoon was one of his last hopes to try and do something to help the kid. If he even would help, that was. Minho could see how his friend’s hand seemed to itch to take the file, but his high standards of morality and love for rules was clearly holding him back.

“Look, those old geezers at the best hospitals in Korea couldn’t figure it out, maybe the rising star at Severance can figure something out?”

“You won’t win this with flatter, Song. Not to mention that the truth doesn’t count as flatter.”

Minho rolled his eyes and finally took a sip of his beer.  Sometimes he had a hard time deciding if his friend really was as nice and righteous as he seemed, or just acted the part and was nothing but a sarcastic bastard. Could be either really, or perhaps simply both? Whatever he really was, the other finally grabbed the medical file and started flipping through it, his lips pursued and brow furrowed.  When he first opened it, Seungyoon seemed mainly uninterested, like he really was just doing this because he was asked. But as he went through page after page there was obvious fascination slowly becoming evident on his face.

“Two questions.”

“Yes?”

“One… how is this kid still alive? And two, isn’t he in a lot of pain?”

The words made something ache painfully in Minho’s chest and he couldn’t help his jaw from falling open. “He what-… and what?” Did his voice function properly? Or did it sound as broken to his friend as it did to himself? He had known that Taehyun wasn’t in good shape, but in pain? The boy never said anything out loud about being in pain, not a word. Sometimes he would excuse himself and sleep for an hour or two but that was it. As his nurse, wouldn’t he have told him? “He never told me anything.”

Seungyoon’s dark eyes narrowed and Minho could feel his stare burn into him. Obviously something was off, and sadly none of them were dumb enough to ignore it.

“Never? Not once?”

“Not since like… I don’t know, the first month or so?”

“Not since the first month.”

Judging by the tone of Seungyoon’s voice when he repeated Minho’s last words, he was thinking really hard about something. Yes, it was clearly really weird that Taehyun hadn’t said anything, but Minho had taken it as a kind of sign that the boy had gotten better. Was it such a bad thing to hope that not hearing anything from him meant that he had gotten a little bit better? Or at least not any worse? Minho wished he could honestly said it had been a reasonable thought, but the more he thought about it, the more it worried him. Had Taehyun been in pain without telling him? Had he just complained less to cover up when things got bad? What kind of nurse was he if his patient couldn’t even be honest with him?!

Had he taken a short break from self loathing, Minho would have looked up and found Seungyoon still looking at him, but with a completely different expression on his handsome face. Unlike Minho, he could see a little bit clearer since he was outside of the whole drama. Clearly something was going on, something than involved nurse and patient, and the trust and whatever more there was between them. Because clearly there was something there. Judging by Taehyun’s papers, he should be in enough pain to make any person complain, but when even his nurse hadn’t heard anything about it something was off. And what other reason could that be than not wanting him to worry?

“Just talk to him?”

Clearly not the most original suggestion out there, but Seungyoon was right. The best would be to talk to Taehyun about it even if it was a difficult subject to touch on. After the birthday party (or perhaps even since before that) they had just stopped talking about sickness related things and instead talked about each other. That was, Taehyun had dragged answer after answer out of a rather unwilling Minho who for some reason just couldn’t shut up. What did he know about Taehyun apart for simple things about his family, his music taste, his love for video games and that he was sick. Compared to stupid details like scars from kindergarten and even grades in middle school. What magic had he used to find out all of this? Minho considered himself a rather open and friendly person in general, but disliked to really open up to people. In private it was easier to deal with people with smiles and silly jokes than to actually open up about things.

“You don’t know how he can get sometimes…”

Seungyoon arched an eyebrow.

“True. But you do. So you’ll know what to say.”

“That’s not what I meant, and you know it.”

“Well, so what? You spend all day, every day together. Don’t come here and tell me you don’t talk at all! No excuse! You talk to him, and I will take some more time to look at these?”

He waved the medical file around a bit and Minho knew he couldn’t deny the deal. Fruitless work wasn’t Seungyoon’s style at all, since he was the kind that always wanted a result. Just a little result might be enough to give Taehyun some more time, or even change his fate. The boy’s current one just seemed so sad.

Several hours later, when Minho stepped out of the taxi and headed towards the familiar building where most likely Taehyun would be asleep right about now. The talk with Seungyoon had not had the calming effect he hoped it would, but it had opened his eyes up to some new sides of the relationship he had with Taehyun. Relationship? Was that even the right word? He stopped on the pavement, putting his hand to his face. Why did a word like that make him blush? “A relationship between two people”, there was absolutely no reason to blush because of a simple thought like that. What was he becoming because of this sickly, silly boy? Minho shook his head, tried to swallow his thoughts and quickly pressed the building password code before heading inside in direction of the elevator. Whatever happened, he'd have to talk to Taehyun. 

"You're back?"

Messy brown hair and a yawning Taeyun was what met him when he slipped through the door of the penthouse.  Despite being way past 3 AM, he was up? Or had he fallen asleep in the living room instead of his bedroom? That wouldn’t be a first time either. But there was something so happy and almost thankful in the boy’s expression that Minho didn’t have the heart to scold him (nor bring up topics from his talk with Seungyoon). Instead he quickly kicked off his shoes, took off his jacket and walked over to ruffle Taehyun’s hair.

“Do you or do you not remember what both me and your doctor said about sleep?”

“Yeah, yeah. I just… forgot the time,” Taehyun mumbled quietly, combing his fingers through his hair. The way he yawned after speaking didn’t help convincing Minho that a certain someone had stayed up waiting for him.

“Well, no forgetting it now. Off to bed, and I don’t want to see you up until around noon. That’s when I plant to get up.”

He really was falling deeper and deeper without stop. A bit like how Alice fell without stop down the rabbit hole.

A/N: This chapter ended up a bit of a "filler chapter", but I hope you still like it! And I hope you like the introduction of a new character ;) I now somehow have an idea what to do with my next chapters, so I hope I can write them out in not too long. Also, sorry for the wait with this chapter! Real world is taking its toll.... -_-