Untitled
pairing: taekey
rating: PG-13
Vladimir Nabokov wrote, “Common sense tells us that our existence is but a brief crack of light between two eternities of darkness.”
And there was no relative time as I felt his hand in mine, the gentle pull of the earth beneath our feet. There was only him, and me, and the breath we shared as we moved through that existence, like wading against the incoming tide. Up, up, and out, forever towards the horizon as we sought to leave it all behind, a thin veil of dust in our memories -- to leave everything that was not a part of our being.
And it was that moment of bursting forth into the light, the world shimmering around us, that I felt that swell in my chest, and a euphoric light-headedness. I had never been more sure or more terrified of anything in my life. Our grip on each other’s hands tightened, with his pulse against my pulse, our blood as rushed as our patience.
But, above all, it was an innate, all-encompassing happiness. Feeling his skin against mine, the air in our lungs like a slow burn, feet pounding mercilessly as our legs carried us, completely detached from thought.
Together.
*****************************************************************************************
I awoke in a pool of light, washed by the early morning sun with him next to me. He really was a prince, a perfect angel, as I studied how the sunlight caressed his milky skin, reflected off of his cornhusk blonde hair, worshipped the sharp planes of his cheekbones and collarbones. And his soft, cupid’s lips pressed against my bare shoulder, leaving his breath to condensate against my skin. I watched as his eyes moved behind his eyelids, and his lashes fluttered to life.
Key’s lips curled into a smile, or as much of one he could manage in his haze.
“Hey,” he whispered.
“Hey,” I chuckled back as he propped himself up on his elbows, laying on his stomach for a minute to get his bearings.
Without another word, he slinked out from under the covers to grab his robe. He knew I followed his every move, watched as his shoulder blades moved under his skin as he wrapped it around his naked body, over his shoulders.
As he tied the robe and fished a cigarette out of the breast pocket, I finally sat up, the sheets all but forgotten as they slipped from my waist.
“Filthy,” I muttered.
“The robe, the cigarette, or the sheets?” he poised, unlit cigarette bobbing precariously between his lips.
“The robe, you ass,” I laughed. “But I need to do laundry.”
“Do it tomorrow,” he waved his hand, brandishing the lighter about before lighting the stick. “And my robe is fine.”
I raised my eyebrow and gave him an exaggerated once-over. Key’s robe was probably once a very nice plaid in shades of grey, but now the flannel was worn and faded, and the print wasn’t as distinguishable. And it didn’t help that he turned the collar up around his neck, like a complete prat.
Shifting, Key said more to himself than to me, “I’m going to make breakfast.”
“Come back to bed,” I whined. “It’s a Saturday. Please?”
He came back around to the bed and exhaled his smoke into the sunlight before leaning in and kissing me deeply on the lips. He ran his tongue against my bottom lip and I complied, opening my mouth to him. I could taste the cigarette smoke, but underneath it, a sweetness lingered. However, before I could pull him back down onto the mattress, he pried himself out of my grip, calling over his shoulder as he left the room.
“Don’t use all of the hot water, okay?”
By the time I stepped out of the bathroom, toweling my hair, I could smell breakfast was ready. Now, Key wasn’t necessarily a good cook, per se, but if you complimented him enough, he’d cook for you as much as you wanted, and that was enough for me.
He’d set a bagel with fried eggs and a bowl of fruit on the table next to the glass of water and the pills. Already on his second cigarette, he leaned back against the counter, his cats’ eyes watching my every move.
I swallowed the pills and opened my mouth, sticking my tongue out obscenely at him to show that I hadn’t faked it, before he turned back to the stove, satisfied enough to cook his own breakfast.
“You look like a prat with your collar turned up like that,” I muttered to his back.
“You say that every morning,” he replied snippily. “And every morning, I don’t care.”
“Well,” I said around a mouthful of bagel, “you could always, oh, I dunno, not do it. I’m gonna buy you a new robe. One without a collar. Just so I don’t feel secondhand embarrassment at breakfast.”
“Who is there to feel embarrassed around? New people I don’t know about?” he joked. But then he was silent, as if waiting for me to actually answer. His hand holding the spatula stilled.
“No,” I assured him quietly. “Just...no, there’s no one. I promise.”
“I knew you weren’t serious,” his smile faltered for the briefest of moments as he turned to look at me over his shoulder, spatula back to work.
It all had started with some blurred vision, a headache here and there. But after I’d dropped half the dish-ware in my cabinets, brushed against the doorjamb one too many times, Key had insisted we check up on it. ‘You’re not the clumsy type,’ he had said.
The mass that had been growing in my brain was in the earlier stages, the doctors had told us. But when it would become a problem, it would become a problem quickly. That’s when Key decided that I would move in with him. He wasn’t comfortable leaving me on my own. I think he was scared that one day, he’d have to make that phone call. Or even worse, get that phone call from one of the neighbors. It made him feel safer knowing that I was under his ever-watchful eye. In fact, I don’t think he trusted anyone else to take care of me, even myself.
If the Present-Me could go back in time and tell the Past-Me about the tumor, I would tell myself to lighten up a little. Have some fun. Make sure you definitely talk to Kim Kibum at that one party you’ll actually go to. Get drunk off your ass and dance with him, even if it means you’ll wake up the next morning in a strange bed without really remembering how you got there. Because despite it all -- the 2 a.m. drunk phone calls reciting ‘Waiting for Godot’, the rehearsals to which you’ll be late or miss completely because you’re with him, the fact that he can be a complete dick sometimes (and, according to him, you will be the first to tell him that, at least to his face) -- he will be everything you could’ve ever wished for, both in a friend and eventually more. And when you finally get that diagnosis, your world should feel like it’s crashing down around you, but because of him, it won’t.
“What are you studying today?” I asked him, taking my plate to the sink and washing it off. He was still working on his fruit, twirling the fork around in his fingers slowly, inspecting every inch of the strawberry before his tongue tentatively plucked it away. With a violent little stab, he speared an unsuspecting grape and repeated the process.
I waited until he had moved onto the honeydew before receiving an answer.
“Biocentrism,” he said looked up at me with innocent eyes, fully expecting to know what the hell that was.
I nodded, “Okay...and what’s that?”
“Another theory.”
I threw the dishtowel at him.
“It’s like...there are seven parts to the theory. But the main gist is that time and space don’t actually exist. And that they don’t have an independent reality outside of our understanding. There is no external reality, so anything that proceeds consciousness only exists in probability. Life creates the universe, not the other way around.”
“Sounds like you already know about it.”
“I want to ponder it a little more,” he replied, turning back to the little green cube of melon perched on the fork. This time, instead of pulling it into his mouth in one go, he let his lips wrap around it, sucking on it.
“Don’t make me hit you,” I threatened.
“Oh, but it’s Saturday. Loosen up a little, Tae,” he drawled before finally chewing the fruit, mouth open.
I smacked his shoulder anyway, just because I could.
He was becoming more obsessed, day by day, week by week, I could tell. His research was consuming him like a quiet fire, slowly turning his world and everything around us into ash. Whenever anyone -- me, our friends, anyone -- tried to talk to him about it, he would shut himself away and deny it adamantly. I felt guilt churning around in the cold pit of my stomach. The whole reason for this sudden shift was because of me, and Key would become defensive whenever I hinted that maybe I should move out, let him have some space.
“No!” he screamed at me once, taking me by the shoulders and giving them a good shake. Hot tears threatened to spring forth from his eyes. “You’re staying with me! You’re not leaving me!”
I tried to calm him down, “No, no...of course not! I’m never going to leave you, okay? I promise. Forget I said anything, I’m sorry, Key...!”
Slowly, I could feel the vice grip of his slender fingers loosen, no doubt leaving behind bruises.
“I promise,” I cooed soothingly, bringing my hands to his face as I leaned in to brush my lips against his. His pressed back against mine chastely as I felt one of his arms wrap delicately yet surely around my waist, his other hand lifted to my neck, braiding his fingers through my copper strands. I had needed a haircut badly, but I couldn’t bear to cut it. Not yet.
He began rubbing small circles into my lower back and I melted further into his embrace, our thighs brushing against each other. His lips parted against mine, and I sighed a little. Key pulled back to give attention to my jawline, moving slowly, pressing lingering kisses against my neck, down to my collarbones exposed by the wide neck of my tee hanging on my bony shoulders. I tried to steady my breathing, but I could already feel my heart speeding up, like a hummingbird’s wings hovering in my chest. The feeling of him, of us, like this, was something I hoped I would never get used to.
We laid there together for hours, limbs tangled together like wild branches of a tree after a storm, skin sticking from sweat among other things. I think Key had turned the television on at some point, and a scientist’s voice droned on about some theory or another.
“Let me up,” I tapped Key gently on the shoulder, finally feeling restless and hungry.
Key obliged, raising himself enough on sore arms so that I could peel myself away and slide off the couch, planning on getting a shower while I was at it. Unable to find my own underwear, I found Key’s boxers on the floor and slid into them, letting the fabric hang precariously from my hipbones. We used to be able to share clothes more often...
It was when I tried to take a step in the direction of the bathroom that it felt as if the ground had been pulled from under my feet, like the tablecloth of a magic trick. I threw my hands out in front of me and found the doorway, but down I stumbled. Everything was warped and even as I looked at my hands, they appeared to be curving off into the distance, miles away from my shoulders.
Immediately, Key was by my side and tugging me by my underarms into a sitting position on the floor, steadying my head to rest back against his shoulder.
“Are you okay?! Taemin!”
“I’m...just a little dizzy...stood up too fast,” I insisted. But then I felt myself falling backwards as if waking from a dream, and I started violently. Where were my legs?
“Oh God, hold on, Tae!” I felt Key steady my shoulders before sliding away from behind me and guiding me to lay flat on the floor.
Out of the corner of my eye, I could see his white body stumble back towards the couch and pull on his jeans, diving for his phone on the coffee table. He was a mere flash on the horizon, and I felt the earth lurch violently beneath me again. Rolling over onto my stomach, I braced myself against the floor, a cry escaping my throat. All I wanted was the moving to stop.
Letting me stay on my stomach, Key was back and hoisted me up far enough to slide beneath my torso, laying me across his lap. He was running his hand up and down my spine, trying to soothe me as he cried down the phone. Even his voice sounded as if he was in a tunnel.
“Just hurry the fuck up and get here! I don’t know what to do! I think he’s stroking--” Key choked out, voice raising an octave with every breath.
He laid the phone down and tried to brush my hair out of my face.
“Tae, can you hear me? Are you still with me?” his voice was tiny and desperate. I could feel tears drop onto my back and roll off my skin.
Beginning to panic, I didn’t know how much longer I could hold out. My mind was starting to race and I couldn’t force my mouth to form words, couldn’t place my tongue against my teeth to make sound. I rolled what I wanted to say around and around in my head, but eventually the phrases didn’t make sense to me. Somehow, I think I bobbed my head, somewhere in between a ‘yes’ and a ‘no’. The world was melting away from around me and I was sinking down through the floor.
And then, nothingness.
I awoke in a pool of light, unaware of how much time had passed. All I knew for sure was that I was definitely alive. I was definitely still here.
A presence of bodies lingered on my right and left. A blonde head rested near my shoulder, face down in the sheets, hands laced tightly in mine. I knew Key hadn’t left my side, even for a minute.
The figure on my right stirred.
“You’re awake...!” a deep voice exhaled, and an arm was craning over me, shaking the blonde on my left from his fitful slumber. “Key! He’s back...”
As his sleep fell away, realization washed over him, and I could feel the waves of excitement and relief rolling off of his body. A keening noise tore from Key’s throat in his half-conscious state, and he lifted himself just enough off the edge of the bed to envelop me. Wetness seeped into my skin as shrieking little breaths muffled and died against my shoulder. It was a sound I’d only heard animals make, caught in a hunter’s trap and facing the end, only to be shown mercy. Never had I heard such pitiful sounds come from Key.
The arm across me massaged Key’s shoulder while a face came into view.
“Minho,” I fumbled, tongue still heavy in my mouth.
“Hey, Tae,” a lopsided smile broke lazily across his face. “You scared the shit out of us.”
“Sorry,” I managed to slur, although why I was apologizing, I didn’t really know. “What’s going on?”
“You collapsed, blacked out. Key thought you were having a stroke and told me if I didn’t get my ass over to the apartment to drive you to the hospital, he’d kill me.”
“Sounds like him,” my voice scratched.
Key lifted his head, eyes glassy and reddened.
“How can you two joke at a time like this?” he was incredulous. “I thought you were going to die!”
“But I didn’t,” I pointed out. “It’s reason to be happy.”
Key shook his head in disbelief and continued from Minho’s story, “Anyways...we got you to the hospital. Broke a few traffic laws in the process. Good news, you didn’t have a stroke...”
I nodded my head in thought, waiting for him to continue. A ‘but’ lingered in the air and I was anticipating it.
“But,” Minho filled in. “They think it’s becoming more aggressive. They want to start you on chemo--”
“No,” I interrupted.
“Taemin, please!” Key gripped my hand tighter. “Please, you need to do this. You can’t avoid it any longer, and I won’t let y--”
“No,” I repeated myself firmly. “I’m not taking chemo.”
Key heaved an exaggerated sigh.
“If you don’t agree to it,” he started, warning in his voice. “I’m going to sign--”
“No, you won’t,” I interrupted him.
“Watch me, Tae.”
“Both you and I don’t want this. I know it,” I insisted. “You know what it would do to me, Key.”
“Or, I could risk losing you altogether! Do you really expect me to make that decision?”
“No, so I’m making it for you. Or, rather, for me. I’m not taking chemo, and that’s the end of it,” I snapped, closing my eyes.
I felt the edge of the bed dip under pressure as Key leaned his weight into his elbows, dropping his head into his hands.
Minho’s footsteps echoed across the floor, long and measured, and the rubber on the soles of his trainers squeaked on the tile as he turned into the hallway, leaving Key and I alone.
After a few beats, I worked up enough strength to continue.
“You know I’d be a total mess, Key. I wouldn’t be able to even get out of bed, probably. Nauseous all the time, wasting away in front of your eyes. Sleeping half the day away.”
“Those are only in extreme cases,” Key wanted to argue.
“Brain tumors are extreme cases.”
“Please, Taemin. What happened at the house...i-it scared me to death. It was so sudden; I didn’t know what to do. Never had I felt so completely helpless,” his voice broke. He was crying again.
“I was scared, too,” I admitted. “But...since the diagnosis...you know, I should feel some sort of rush, shouldn’t I? Sensing an end, or some shit. But...I haven’t felt any more alive, like I’m actually living for once.”
“The chemo can shrink the tumor, Taemin. It’s not too late. And they can maybe operate, and you can be cured. And then you won’t die,” he persisted.
“At least right now, I can manage,” I argued back. “I can live normally, mostly. The chemo is only going to make me sicker, Key. Physically sicker than I am now, and I don’t want that. What if they can’t operate, and I die anyway? Do you really want our last moments together to be me lying around like a vegetable, you cleaning up my sick day after day because I’m unable to? Unable to even hold a conversation--?”
Silence fell between us, and Key’s breath hitched, trying to keep another sob from wracking his body. This time, more gently, I continued.
“Key...in everything you’ve been studying...isn’t there something there for us?” I prodded.
A little moment later, barely above a whisper, an answer.
“There’s a way for us to be together.”
Nodding, admittedly half humoring him, I signaled for him to continue. Anything that would console him now was worth it.
“I’ve been reading...and it all makes sense. It really does. Why--” and here he cleared his throat. “--why, you know...none of this has to make sense.”
He gestured around the room at nothing in particular.
“Existence...it’s not absolute.”
I could see a fire behind his eyes now, flickering, and a new drive. And for some, intangible reason, I realized it scared me. This isn’t what I had in mind when Key said he had been looking into alternatives of how to deal with our situation.
“And so it doesn’t have to be like this. It’s only this way because we’re assuming it. So it’s able to manifest itself,” he spoke quicker, harsher.
“We don’t have to let it!” he exclaimed. “It only exists because we let it! But we can change that -- we determine the universe, not the other way around! It’s all under our control!”
“Key--” I tried.
“No, Taemin,” Key insisted. “I know this. I know that I know this. And if you don’t want to play by these rules, we don’t have to. Because I’m not going to let you die. And we can change things. You don’t have to have cancer, and I don’t have to lose you. You don’t have to leave me!”
I reached out to touch his face, his eyes now dancing, gazing at something I clearly couldn’t see and, deep down, I don’t know if I even wanted to see it.
“We just have to take that other probability. It only exists in a probability state right now, our alternative choice...” he trailed off.
“What do you mean?” I asked him, voice barely audible, lost in his presence.
“I mean, we don’t have to play with this probability we’ve been living anymore. We can take another choice.”
More silence. And then finally, with my throat dry:
“How?”
Now that Key’s mind had its newfound determination, I should have regretted my decisions. All of them. But at the same time, there was that new edge. A new blade for him and I to run our tongues down. And the taste lingered, heavy in the air, taunting, drawing us back for more.
Key didn’t leave the apartment except for the occasional late-night fast food whenever a sudden craving of mine set in. Otherwise, we had all of the groceries delivered. Friends would call, asking Key to come out for a drink, but he always refused. When we weren’t in bed, skin to skin, completely as one together, or simply sitting with each other, wrapped tightly under a blanket on the couch, Key’s nose was buried deeply into some book. He was retreating farther into himself than I had ever thought possible, but I trusted him. There was no reason for me not to.
He was a genius, and I never doubted it. Long before we were together, when we first met, you could tell that Key thought about things differently. He could understand things other people couldn’t. Often, he would retreat into his thoughts and stay curled there for long periods of time. But now, something was different. It was like turning the volume dial from 4 to 10.
However, I couldn’t lie and say I didn’t enjoy the new Key to a degree. He was incredibly attentive, and I guess I never realized exactly how much I craved every ounce of the attention he paid me. In fact, I didn’t see anything wrong with this new Key at all. It’s not like he had shunned the outside world completely. Minho still came to visit. Jonghyun came, too. As far as I was concerned, they were the only two other people he ever gave a shit about anyways.
Nothing was strange, really.
There would be good days and bad days. On the good days, I could almost forget that there was a mass in my head, eating away at my brain. On the bad...well, even the bad days weren’t that terrible. Headaches would wake me up from sleep and have me stumbling into the bathroom to empty the contents of my stomach. Sudden dizziness would overtake me when I was taking a shower or doing the laundry. My balance would be wobbly as I walked before steadying myself.
But today was a bad, bad day.
Like every other day for the past 6 mornings, I woke up before sunrise needing to throw up. Detangling my legs from the sheets, I slid out of bed, trying my hardest not to wake Key. I faced the porcelain and nothing came up. I stood bent in half until the feeling subsided, and with a sigh of relief I hoped that maybe today would be a good day. I kept my balance the entire way back to bed, and sinking back onto the mattress, my head felt at ease against the pillow. Key still slept soundly beside me on his stomach, hair matted against his forehead and the covers slung low on his waist. In the glow of the numbers on the clock, I let my eyes roam the expanse of his skin, charting every swell, every jut of bone from the gentle slope of his shoulders, down the cut of his vertebrae, to the slight curve of his ass under the sheets. The room felt hot, so I settled down waist deep back into the covers, kicking my foot out from under them to dangle over the side of the bed. Taking an elastic from the bedside table, I yanked my hair into a knot at the back of my head, just to get it off my neck. Sleep came easily after.
“Oh God,” I moaned, rolling onto my stomach into empty space. Key was no longer in bed, but I couldn’t bring myself to register that right now. Light shone from behind the curtains and I could swear my head had cracked open by itself, cleaved in two from temple to base. My hands felt wildly at my skull, running over the surface, checking that my head was still intact, hoping I wouldn’t feel ragged bone and blood spilling through the cracks. “Oh God--oh!”
I pulled my hands away, squinting through the shoddy light, trying to see if they were bathed in red.
“What’s wrong, Tae?” Key popped his head around the door with a smirk, morning cigarette tucked between his lips. He had a towel in his hands with that old robe half on, wrapped about his waist and letting the top hang clear from his torso. Water was beading from his freshly showered hair, down his neck to settle in the dip of his collarbones. “Should I not have cleaned up yet?”
“Fuck...my head, Key,” I groaned. “Am I bleeding? I can’t tell--”
I felt the sudden dip in the mattress as Key straddled my waist, swatting my hands away.
“Hold on, let me see -- what the hell happened?”
His fingers were running through my scalp and he yanked the elastic out of my hair to properly inspect my head, turning my neck side to side.
“Is my skull there?” I voiced, muffled against the pillow.
“Yes, your skull is still there, you dumbass. What’s going on?” Key sat back, not moving from his spot on my lower back.
“Feels like someone busted my head open,” I whined.
“It’s called a hangover,” Key playfully hit my shoulder. “You had quite a bit to drink last night, remember?”
“I’m not hungover,” I insisted. “I woke up early this morning nauseous, but I didn’t get sick. And I didn’t have a headache, either.”
“Oh.”
Key’s weight shifted off of me and I could feel him settle flush against my body next to me on the mattress. I knew he was thinking, flipping quietly through the medical textbooks in his head.
“Like, migraine-bad? Or just, bad-bad?”
“Like, someone-took-an-axe-to-my-fucking-head bad, Key. C’mon,” I snapped.
I realized my tone right after I said it, and fell quiet.
“I’m sorry.”
“It’s okay,” he assured me. And then, “Let me go get your medicine, okay?”
His absence left me feeling cold, and I shivered, my bare back to the door. There was a vulnerability I didn’t usually feel, and I wanted to turn around, paranoia creeping across my shoulder blades.
The soft padding of Key’s feet on the carpet reached my ears and I rolled over to meet him, pulling the sheet with me out of courtesy I had never cared to pay before.
“Can you bring me a shirt?” I felt incredibly silly asking as I took the pills and glass of water from him.
“Yeah, sure, Tae,” he replied, his smile not quite reaching his eyes like it normally did.
I watched him, albeit a little foggily, pick up last night’s clothes from the floor and toss them into the laundry hamper before rummaging through the dresser drawer for a clean tee shirt. He found a grey one, soft from wear, and gave it a sniff before bringing it back to me.
As he helped me sit up, my head reeled, and I grasped the crook of his elbow tightly, staying steady for a moment and waiting for it to subside. When I reached out for the shirt, Key helped pull it over my head; it smelled fresh, like the lavender soap he used.
“Do you want me to bring you breakfast in bed?” he asked. “Are you even hungry?”
“I’m starving, but no. Just help me into the kitchen,” I assured him.
“Okay, hold on,” he went back to the dresser and brought two pairs of lounge pants. He untied the robe from his waist and let it fall in a pool at his feet, standing brief in his nakedness before he slipped on one pair and handed me the other.
I shimmied into them from my position on the bed, and Key took me from under the arm to help heave me to my feet. Trying my best to stay upright, I let him support me into the living room where he deposited me on the couch, within view of the kitchen.
My headache subsided after breakfast and the rest of the day was running smoothly. Key was curled into his usual spot on the couch, dividing his attention between the book in his lap and the medical show on whatever educational channel we received. Absentmindedly, he kneaded his foot, sliding it slowly up and down my leg while I laid under the blanket on the opposite end, watching the minutes tick by slowly on my phone, wanting so badly for sleep to take me under.
Without warning, the room gave a violent turn, and my phone slipped out of my hand to the floor. Falling backwards against the arm of the couch, my view was suddenly of the ceiling, spinning. Before I could kick Key, he saw what was going on and climbed over me, shoving his arm underneath my neck to support me.
“Taemin, Taemin!” he called. And I swear I could hear him, but it wasn’t registering that I needed to respond. What was ‘Taemin’...that’s my name, isn’t it? Yes. I should probably say something. But I can’t really be bothered right now, can I?
A noise was tearing from somewhere in the back of my throat and I just wanted the noise to stop, but it only became louder. It was giving me a headache, and I could’ve sworn something was ripping inside my skull.
Key pulled me farther down the couch until I was lying flat underneath him, wailing.
“Just make it stop,” I broke down, tears streaming from my eyes, rolling into my hairline. My face scrunched up involuntarily from the crying, only adding tension to my jawline and temples.
Key, at a loss for the umpteenth time since the hospital stint two months ago, could only stay hunched over me, arms cradling my head and neck, and place his lips over and over again to my forehead. Honestly, what could we do? We could call an ambulance, but what would they be able to do once we got to the hospital? Drug me up? It would all be only temporary. Over the past 4 weeks or so, I had been getting worse. Neither Key or I could deny it.
As my vision went white, the cold pit of my stomach turned. I was able to roll onto my side quick enough for breakfast to go on the floor instead of on Key, and as I continued to dry heave long after my stomach was emptied, I couldn’t stop sobbing and apologizing. He stayed over me, holding me onto the couch between his thighs and keeping my hair pulled away in his fist.
Countless I’m-sorries spilled from my mouth once nothing else would and before I could stop myself, “I’m sorry, Key, I’m sorry...! I’ll do anything! Please make it stop! I’ll take the chemo! I’ll take the fucking chemo...!”
Key’s arms wrapped tight around my shoulders and he pressed his face into my neck. It’s when I realized that he was crying silent tears, too.
The date was set for me to start my chemotherapy, and leading up to it, my days were, of course, good ones. It’s like, you never feel like shit the day you finally get a doctor’s appointment, right? And so you start to think why you’re wasting their time and yours.
While we could, Key and I enjoyed every bit of each other as possible. He stopped taking phone calls, and we spent every minute with each other. Even his books were left carelessly strewn about the apartment, forgotten on this table or that shelf.
But he was planning. I just knew it.
I completely lost myself in the day and time. Key had closed all of the heavy curtains, blocking out the sun. He unplugged all of the clocks.
“We’re living on our own time now, okay?” he had said. It kept him, I knew, from knowing how many more ‘good days’ he had left with me, before they all ran out.
Perhaps quite stupidly, I took up Key’s smoking habit. We’d lie together in the bed, sheets kicked around our feet, exhausted and messy and debauched, and light them, one after the other.
“You’re quiet,” I spoke into the darkness, more towards the ceiling than anyone in particular. I could hear a drag of breath near my ear, see the embers of his cigarette like a firefly. An exhale.
“I’m thinking,” he said matter-of-factly. I felt a hand near my face and reached out to it, taking the offered cigarette.
“Well,” I prodded, letting the smoke fill my lungs and enjoying the burn of the exhale, “a penny for your thoughts?”
The silent hand was back and I swatted it away.
“No, not until you talk.”
Key sighed, and then, resignedly, “...you don’t have to take the chemo.”
I nearly choked on the inhale and he took the opportunity to pluck the cigarette from my fingers.
“Why? After all this time, all the begging? ‘Please, Taemin, take the chemo!’”
“Butterflies.”
“Excuse me?”
I felt a shift in the mattress as Key leaned away to the bedside table, depositing the butt into the ashtray and tapping another stick out of the pack. The flame of his lighter sparked to life and I watched the light flicker across his face for a brief second, catching on his cheekbones and the sweat still lingering at his temple, bangs mussed. Smoke curled from between his lips and away into the darkness.
“Remember how I said there was another possibility, lying in wait for us? How it’s just in a probability state...?”
Key settled back down into the pillows, scooting over to me and turning onto his side so that we were nose to nose. A few more inches and I would feel his eyelashes dusting my cheek, his lips on my lips.
“...so, it’s like butterflies,” his voice softened. “You know -- ‘Now I do not know whether I was then a man dreaming I was a butterfly, or whether I am now a butterfly, dreaming I am a man.’”
I reached out for his free hand curled between us and knitted my fingers in his, giving it a gentle squeeze.
“Right now, you’re the man dreaming that you could be the butterfly. With chemo, you’ll build yourself a little cocoon and hopefully emerge on the other side, cancer-free.”
Here, he paused to smoke, perhaps to collect his thoughts. I waited quietly for him to continue.
“But what if,” his voice lowered as if he were confiding in me, letting me in on a secret that the rest of the universe wasn’t meant to know, “you’re simply a butterfly dreaming you’re a man; a man with a brain tumor?...It’s all a metaphor though, of course. Sort of. You see?”
“Yes, I think so...So, what you’re saying is...?” the point he was trying to make was slowly dawning on me.
“All you have to do is simply wake up.”
And there in the dark, the two of us were pressed together, elbow to elbow, chest to chest, the curve of our knees bending into each other in perfect angles, and it made perfect sense -- what we had to do.
We could have this forever. This togetherness. And I could be healthy. We would only have to start over, take the alternative route, enact that other possibility lying in sleep, unused somewhere in the universe.
So we made our decision. As the sun climbed into the midmorning sky, Key and I set foot out of the apartment for the first time in 3 months. And the sky was so blue, so clear. Hand in hand, we made our silent progression.
Key had called Minho, rambled a bit down the other line. I don’t think he quite understood, but that’s okay. How could he possibly understand, you see? We had already experienced living away from the same moon, the same breath, the same sunlight.
When we came to the hospital -- not a grand piece of architecture by any means, but one with a good view, looking out over a city of glass -- Key squeezed my hand a little tighter, assuring me. I was steady on my feet, with a clear head today. I didn’t even need my medicine.
It was easy enough to take the elevator, stopping short a few floors from the top. And it was no feat to find the little box posted on the wall.
Our fingers laced together over the handle.
“Ready?” Key smiled breathily.
“You’ll be with me the entire time?”
“The entire time,” he assured me. I nodded.
With a pull, deafening bells rang through the floors. Like ants, sterile, pressed and starched bodies flooded the hallways. Their commotion was drowned out by the cries of the sirens’ song, and Key took this time to pull us along into one of the stairwells.
From there, there was nothing left. On either side of us, existence had stopped and only Key and I mattered. The entirety of me felt numb as I leaned into Key against the wall of the stairwell. Swarms of the barely-living passed us in their haste, flowing down, down, down into the concrete pit. Our mouths pressed together, lost in the drag of the ocean’s floor.
We just needed to surface for air.
Earlier that morning, as Key was finishing up the in the shower, and now as I dove headlong with him into the steady stream of the crowd, I recalled what he had told me as often as he could since the day I was diagnosed.
“Vladimir Nabokov wrote, ‘Common sense tells us that our existence is but a brief crack of light between two eternities of darkness.’”
And there was no relative time as I felt his hand in mine, the gentle pull of the earth beneath our feet. There was only him, and me, and the breath we shared as we moved through that existence, like wading against the incoming tide. Up, up, and out, forever towards the horizon as we sought to leave it all behind, a thin veil of dust in our memories -- to leave everything that was not a part of our being.
And it was that moment of bursting forth into the light, the world shimmering around us, that I felt that swell in my chest, and a euphoric light-headedness. I had never been more sure or more terrified of anything in my life. Our grip on each other’s hands tightened, with his pulse against my pulse, our blood as rushed as our patience.
But, above all, it was an innate, all-encompassing happiness. Feeling his skin against mine, the air in our lungs like a slow burn, feet pounding mercilessly as our legs carried us, completely detached from thought.
Together.
At the edge of everything, Key and I were together. Just like how it was supposed to be.
Our lips melded together as we were one being, stretched beneath the sun. There was lavender on the wind, and worlds left to explore in the depths. His eyes never left mine, our bodies flush, hearts throbbing. I could feel nothing more than his arms around me, mine around him, one last staggering breath.
And the ground fell away.
rating: PG-13
Vladimir Nabokov wrote, “Common sense tells us that our existence is but a brief crack of light between two eternities of darkness.”
And there was no relative time as I felt his hand in mine, the gentle pull of the earth beneath our feet. There was only him, and me, and the breath we shared as we moved through that existence, like wading against the incoming tide. Up, up, and out, forever towards the horizon as we sought to leave it all behind, a thin veil of dust in our memories -- to leave everything that was not a part of our being.
And it was that moment of bursting forth into the light, the world shimmering around us, that I felt that swell in my chest, and a euphoric light-headedness. I had never been more sure or more terrified of anything in my life. Our grip on each other’s hands tightened, with his pulse against my pulse, our blood as rushed as our patience.
But, above all, it was an innate, all-encompassing happiness. Feeling his skin against mine, the air in our lungs like a slow burn, feet pounding mercilessly as our legs carried us, completely detached from thought.
Together.
*****************************************************************************************
I awoke in a pool of light, washed by the early morning sun with him next to me. He really was a prince, a perfect angel, as I studied how the sunlight caressed his milky skin, reflected off of his cornhusk blonde hair, worshipped the sharp planes of his cheekbones and collarbones. And his soft, cupid’s lips pressed against my bare shoulder, leaving his breath to condensate against my skin. I watched as his eyes moved behind his eyelids, and his lashes fluttered to life.
Key’s lips curled into a smile, or as much of one he could manage in his haze.
“Hey,” he whispered.
“Hey,” I chuckled back as he propped himself up on his elbows, laying on his stomach for a minute to get his bearings.
Without another word, he slinked out from under the covers to grab his robe. He knew I followed his every move, watched as his shoulder blades moved under his skin as he wrapped it around his naked body, over his shoulders.
As he tied the robe and fished a cigarette out of the breast pocket, I finally sat up, the sheets all but forgotten as they slipped from my waist.
“Filthy,” I muttered.
“The robe, the cigarette, or the sheets?” he poised, unlit cigarette bobbing precariously between his lips.
“The robe, you ass,” I laughed. “But I need to do laundry.”
“Do it tomorrow,” he waved his hand, brandishing the lighter about before lighting the stick. “And my robe is fine.”
I raised my eyebrow and gave him an exaggerated once-over. Key’s robe was probably once a very nice plaid in shades of grey, but now the flannel was worn and faded, and the print wasn’t as distinguishable. And it didn’t help that he turned the collar up around his neck, like a complete prat.
Shifting, Key said more to himself than to me, “I’m going to make breakfast.”
“Come back to bed,” I whined. “It’s a Saturday. Please?”
He came back around to the bed and exhaled his smoke into the sunlight before leaning in and kissing me deeply on the lips. He ran his tongue against my bottom lip and I complied, opening my mouth to him. I could taste the cigarette smoke, but underneath it, a sweetness lingered. However, before I could pull him back down onto the mattress, he pried himself out of my grip, calling over his shoulder as he left the room.
“Don’t use all of the hot water, okay?”
By the time I stepped out of the bathroom, toweling my hair, I could smell breakfast was ready. Now, Key wasn’t necessarily a good cook, per se, but if you complimented him enough, he’d cook for you as much as you wanted, and that was enough for me.
He’d set a bagel with fried eggs and a bowl of fruit on the table next to the glass of water and the pills. Already on his second cigarette, he leaned back against the counter, his cats’ eyes watching my every move.
I swallowed the pills and opened my mouth, sticking my tongue out obscenely at him to show that I hadn’t faked it, before he turned back to the stove, satisfied enough to cook his own breakfast.
“You look like a prat with your collar turned up like that,” I muttered to his back.
“You say that every morning,” he replied snippily. “And every morning, I don’t care.”
“Well,” I said around a mouthful of bagel, “you could always, oh, I dunno, not do it. I’m gonna buy you a new robe. One without a collar. Just so I don’t feel secondhand embarrassment at breakfast.”
“Who is there to feel embarrassed around? New people I don’t know about?” he joked. But then he was silent, as if waiting for me to actually answer. His hand holding the spatula stilled.
“No,” I assured him quietly. “Just...no, there’s no one. I promise.”
“I knew you weren’t serious,” his smile faltered for the briefest of moments as he turned to look at me over his shoulder, spatula back to work.
It all had started with some blurred vision, a headache here and there. But after I’d dropped half the dish-ware in my cabinets, brushed against the doorjamb one too many times, Key had insisted we check up on it. ‘You’re not the clumsy type,’ he had said.
The mass that had been growing in my brain was in the earlier stages, the doctors had told us. But when it would become a problem, it would become a problem quickly. That’s when Key decided that I would move in with him. He wasn’t comfortable leaving me on my own. I think he was scared that one day, he’d have to make that phone call. Or even worse, get that phone call from one of the neighbors. It made him feel safer knowing that I was under his ever-watchful eye. In fact, I don’t think he trusted anyone else to take care of me, even myself.
If the Present-Me could go back in time and tell the Past-Me about the tumor, I would tell myself to lighten up a little. Have some fun. Make sure you definitely talk to Kim Kibum at that one party you’ll actually go to. Get drunk off your ass and dance with him, even if it means you’ll wake up the next morning in a strange bed without really remembering how you got there. Because despite it all -- the 2 a.m. drunk phone calls reciting ‘Waiting for Godot’, the rehearsals to which you’ll be late or miss completely because you’re with him, the fact that he can be a complete dick sometimes (and, according to him, you will be the first to tell him that, at least to his face) -- he will be everything you could’ve ever wished for, both in a friend and eventually more. And when you finally get that diagnosis, your world should feel like it’s crashing down around you, but because of him, it won’t.
“What are you studying today?” I asked him, taking my plate to the sink and washing it off. He was still working on his fruit, twirling the fork around in his fingers slowly, inspecting every inch of the strawberry before his tongue tentatively plucked it away. With a violent little stab, he speared an unsuspecting grape and repeated the process.
I waited until he had moved onto the honeydew before receiving an answer.
“Biocentrism,” he said looked up at me with innocent eyes, fully expecting to know what the hell that was.
I nodded, “Okay...and what’s that?”
“Another theory.”
I threw the dishtowel at him.
“It’s like...there are seven parts to the theory. But the main gist is that time and space don’t actually exist. And that they don’t have an independent reality outside of our understanding. There is no external reality, so anything that proceeds consciousness only exists in probability. Life creates the universe, not the other way around.”
“Sounds like you already know about it.”
“I want to ponder it a little more,” he replied, turning back to the little green cube of melon perched on the fork. This time, instead of pulling it into his mouth in one go, he let his lips wrap around it, sucking on it.
“Don’t make me hit you,” I threatened.
“Oh, but it’s Saturday. Loosen up a little, Tae,” he drawled before finally chewing the fruit, mouth open.
I smacked his shoulder anyway, just because I could.
He was becoming more obsessed, day by day, week by week, I could tell. His research was consuming him like a quiet fire, slowly turning his world and everything around us into ash. Whenever anyone -- me, our friends, anyone -- tried to talk to him about it, he would shut himself away and deny it adamantly. I felt guilt churning around in the cold pit of my stomach. The whole reason for this sudden shift was because of me, and Key would become defensive whenever I hinted that maybe I should move out, let him have some space.
“No!” he screamed at me once, taking me by the shoulders and giving them a good shake. Hot tears threatened to spring forth from his eyes. “You’re staying with me! You’re not leaving me!”
I tried to calm him down, “No, no...of course not! I’m never going to leave you, okay? I promise. Forget I said anything, I’m sorry, Key...!”
Slowly, I could feel the vice grip of his slender fingers loosen, no doubt leaving behind bruises.
“I promise,” I cooed soothingly, bringing my hands to his face as I leaned in to brush my lips against his. His pressed back against mine chastely as I felt one of his arms wrap delicately yet surely around my waist, his other hand lifted to my neck, braiding his fingers through my copper strands. I had needed a haircut badly, but I couldn’t bear to cut it. Not yet.
He began rubbing small circles into my lower back and I melted further into his embrace, our thighs brushing against each other. His lips parted against mine, and I sighed a little. Key pulled back to give attention to my jawline, moving slowly, pressing lingering kisses against my neck, down to my collarbones exposed by the wide neck of my tee hanging on my bony shoulders. I tried to steady my breathing, but I could already feel my heart speeding up, like a hummingbird’s wings hovering in my chest. The feeling of him, of us, like this, was something I hoped I would never get used to.
We laid there together for hours, limbs tangled together like wild branches of a tree after a storm, skin sticking from sweat among other things. I think Key had turned the television on at some point, and a scientist’s voice droned on about some theory or another.
“Let me up,” I tapped Key gently on the shoulder, finally feeling restless and hungry.
Key obliged, raising himself enough on sore arms so that I could peel myself away and slide off the couch, planning on getting a shower while I was at it. Unable to find my own underwear, I found Key’s boxers on the floor and slid into them, letting the fabric hang precariously from my hipbones. We used to be able to share clothes more often...
It was when I tried to take a step in the direction of the bathroom that it felt as if the ground had been pulled from under my feet, like the tablecloth of a magic trick. I threw my hands out in front of me and found the doorway, but down I stumbled. Everything was warped and even as I looked at my hands, they appeared to be curving off into the distance, miles away from my shoulders.
Immediately, Key was by my side and tugging me by my underarms into a sitting position on the floor, steadying my head to rest back against his shoulder.
“Are you okay?! Taemin!”
“I’m...just a little dizzy...stood up too fast,” I insisted. But then I felt myself falling backwards as if waking from a dream, and I started violently. Where were my legs?
“Oh God, hold on, Tae!” I felt Key steady my shoulders before sliding away from behind me and guiding me to lay flat on the floor.
Out of the corner of my eye, I could see his white body stumble back towards the couch and pull on his jeans, diving for his phone on the coffee table. He was a mere flash on the horizon, and I felt the earth lurch violently beneath me again. Rolling over onto my stomach, I braced myself against the floor, a cry escaping my throat. All I wanted was the moving to stop.
Letting me stay on my stomach, Key was back and hoisted me up far enough to slide beneath my torso, laying me across his lap. He was running his hand up and down my spine, trying to soothe me as he cried down the phone. Even his voice sounded as if he was in a tunnel.
“Just hurry the fuck up and get here! I don’t know what to do! I think he’s stroking--” Key choked out, voice raising an octave with every breath.
He laid the phone down and tried to brush my hair out of my face.
“Tae, can you hear me? Are you still with me?” his voice was tiny and desperate. I could feel tears drop onto my back and roll off my skin.
Beginning to panic, I didn’t know how much longer I could hold out. My mind was starting to race and I couldn’t force my mouth to form words, couldn’t place my tongue against my teeth to make sound. I rolled what I wanted to say around and around in my head, but eventually the phrases didn’t make sense to me. Somehow, I think I bobbed my head, somewhere in between a ‘yes’ and a ‘no’. The world was melting away from around me and I was sinking down through the floor.
And then, nothingness.
I awoke in a pool of light, unaware of how much time had passed. All I knew for sure was that I was definitely alive. I was definitely still here.
A presence of bodies lingered on my right and left. A blonde head rested near my shoulder, face down in the sheets, hands laced tightly in mine. I knew Key hadn’t left my side, even for a minute.
The figure on my right stirred.
“You’re awake...!” a deep voice exhaled, and an arm was craning over me, shaking the blonde on my left from his fitful slumber. “Key! He’s back...”
As his sleep fell away, realization washed over him, and I could feel the waves of excitement and relief rolling off of his body. A keening noise tore from Key’s throat in his half-conscious state, and he lifted himself just enough off the edge of the bed to envelop me. Wetness seeped into my skin as shrieking little breaths muffled and died against my shoulder. It was a sound I’d only heard animals make, caught in a hunter’s trap and facing the end, only to be shown mercy. Never had I heard such pitiful sounds come from Key.
The arm across me massaged Key’s shoulder while a face came into view.
“Minho,” I fumbled, tongue still heavy in my mouth.
“Hey, Tae,” a lopsided smile broke lazily across his face. “You scared the shit out of us.”
“Sorry,” I managed to slur, although why I was apologizing, I didn’t really know. “What’s going on?”
“You collapsed, blacked out. Key thought you were having a stroke and told me if I didn’t get my ass over to the apartment to drive you to the hospital, he’d kill me.”
“Sounds like him,” my voice scratched.
Key lifted his head, eyes glassy and reddened.
“How can you two joke at a time like this?” he was incredulous. “I thought you were going to die!”
“But I didn’t,” I pointed out. “It’s reason to be happy.”
Key shook his head in disbelief and continued from Minho’s story, “Anyways...we got you to the hospital. Broke a few traffic laws in the process. Good news, you didn’t have a stroke...”
I nodded my head in thought, waiting for him to continue. A ‘but’ lingered in the air and I was anticipating it.
“But,” Minho filled in. “They think it’s becoming more aggressive. They want to start you on chemo--”
“No,” I interrupted.
“Taemin, please!” Key gripped my hand tighter. “Please, you need to do this. You can’t avoid it any longer, and I won’t let y--”
“No,” I repeated myself firmly. “I’m not taking chemo.”
Key heaved an exaggerated sigh.
“If you don’t agree to it,” he started, warning in his voice. “I’m going to sign--”
“No, you won’t,” I interrupted him.
“Watch me, Tae.”
“Both you and I don’t want this. I know it,” I insisted. “You know what it would do to me, Key.”
“Or, I could risk losing you altogether! Do you really expect me to make that decision?”
“No, so I’m making it for you. Or, rather, for me. I’m not taking chemo, and that’s the end of it,” I snapped, closing my eyes.
I felt the edge of the bed dip under pressure as Key leaned his weight into his elbows, dropping his head into his hands.
Minho’s footsteps echoed across the floor, long and measured, and the rubber on the soles of his trainers squeaked on the tile as he turned into the hallway, leaving Key and I alone.
After a few beats, I worked up enough strength to continue.
“You know I’d be a total mess, Key. I wouldn’t be able to even get out of bed, probably. Nauseous all the time, wasting away in front of your eyes. Sleeping half the day away.”
“Those are only in extreme cases,” Key wanted to argue.
“Brain tumors are extreme cases.”
“Please, Taemin. What happened at the house...i-it scared me to death. It was so sudden; I didn’t know what to do. Never had I felt so completely helpless,” his voice broke. He was crying again.
“I was scared, too,” I admitted. “But...since the diagnosis...you know, I should feel some sort of rush, shouldn’t I? Sensing an end, or some shit. But...I haven’t felt any more alive, like I’m actually living for once.”
“The chemo can shrink the tumor, Taemin. It’s not too late. And they can maybe operate, and you can be cured. And then you won’t die,” he persisted.
“At least right now, I can manage,” I argued back. “I can live normally, mostly. The chemo is only going to make me sicker, Key. Physically sicker than I am now, and I don’t want that. What if they can’t operate, and I die anyway? Do you really want our last moments together to be me lying around like a vegetable, you cleaning up my sick day after day because I’m unable to? Unable to even hold a conversation--?”
Silence fell between us, and Key’s breath hitched, trying to keep another sob from wracking his body. This time, more gently, I continued.
“Key...in everything you’ve been studying...isn’t there something there for us?” I prodded.
A little moment later, barely above a whisper, an answer.
“There’s a way for us to be together.”
Nodding, admittedly half humoring him, I signaled for him to continue. Anything that would console him now was worth it.
“I’ve been reading...and it all makes sense. It really does. Why--” and here he cleared his throat. “--why, you know...none of this has to make sense.”
He gestured around the room at nothing in particular.
“Existence...it’s not absolute.”
I could see a fire behind his eyes now, flickering, and a new drive. And for some, intangible reason, I realized it scared me. This isn’t what I had in mind when Key said he had been looking into alternatives of how to deal with our situation.
“And so it doesn’t have to be like this. It’s only this way because we’re assuming it. So it’s able to manifest itself,” he spoke quicker, harsher.
“We don’t have to let it!” he exclaimed. “It only exists because we let it! But we can change that -- we determine the universe, not the other way around! It’s all under our control!”
“Key--” I tried.
“No, Taemin,” Key insisted. “I know this. I know that I know this. And if you don’t want to play by these rules, we don’t have to. Because I’m not going to let you die. And we can change things. You don’t have to have cancer, and I don’t have to lose you. You don’t have to leave me!”
I reached out to touch his face, his eyes now dancing, gazing at something I clearly couldn’t see and, deep down, I don’t know if I even wanted to see it.
“We just have to take that other probability. It only exists in a probability state right now, our alternative choice...” he trailed off.
“What do you mean?” I asked him, voice barely audible, lost in his presence.
“I mean, we don’t have to play with this probability we’ve been living anymore. We can take another choice.”
More silence. And then finally, with my throat dry:
“How?”
Now that Key’s mind had its newfound determination, I should have regretted my decisions. All of them. But at the same time, there was that new edge. A new blade for him and I to run our tongues down. And the taste lingered, heavy in the air, taunting, drawing us back for more.
Key didn’t leave the apartment except for the occasional late-night fast food whenever a sudden craving of mine set in. Otherwise, we had all of the groceries delivered. Friends would call, asking Key to come out for a drink, but he always refused. When we weren’t in bed, skin to skin, completely as one together, or simply sitting with each other, wrapped tightly under a blanket on the couch, Key’s nose was buried deeply into some book. He was retreating farther into himself than I had ever thought possible, but I trusted him. There was no reason for me not to.
He was a genius, and I never doubted it. Long before we were together, when we first met, you could tell that Key thought about things differently. He could understand things other people couldn’t. Often, he would retreat into his thoughts and stay curled there for long periods of time. But now, something was different. It was like turning the volume dial from 4 to 10.
However, I couldn’t lie and say I didn’t enjoy the new Key to a degree. He was incredibly attentive, and I guess I never realized exactly how much I craved every ounce of the attention he paid me. In fact, I didn’t see anything wrong with this new Key at all. It’s not like he had shunned the outside world completely. Minho still came to visit. Jonghyun came, too. As far as I was concerned, they were the only two other people he ever gave a shit about anyways.
Nothing was strange, really.
There would be good days and bad days. On the good days, I could almost forget that there was a mass in my head, eating away at my brain. On the bad...well, even the bad days weren’t that terrible. Headaches would wake me up from sleep and have me stumbling into the bathroom to empty the contents of my stomach. Sudden dizziness would overtake me when I was taking a shower or doing the laundry. My balance would be wobbly as I walked before steadying myself.
But today was a bad, bad day.
Like every other day for the past 6 mornings, I woke up before sunrise needing to throw up. Detangling my legs from the sheets, I slid out of bed, trying my hardest not to wake Key. I faced the porcelain and nothing came up. I stood bent in half until the feeling subsided, and with a sigh of relief I hoped that maybe today would be a good day. I kept my balance the entire way back to bed, and sinking back onto the mattress, my head felt at ease against the pillow. Key still slept soundly beside me on his stomach, hair matted against his forehead and the covers slung low on his waist. In the glow of the numbers on the clock, I let my eyes roam the expanse of his skin, charting every swell, every jut of bone from the gentle slope of his shoulders, down the cut of his vertebrae, to the slight curve of his ass under the sheets. The room felt hot, so I settled down waist deep back into the covers, kicking my foot out from under them to dangle over the side of the bed. Taking an elastic from the bedside table, I yanked my hair into a knot at the back of my head, just to get it off my neck. Sleep came easily after.
“Oh God,” I moaned, rolling onto my stomach into empty space. Key was no longer in bed, but I couldn’t bring myself to register that right now. Light shone from behind the curtains and I could swear my head had cracked open by itself, cleaved in two from temple to base. My hands felt wildly at my skull, running over the surface, checking that my head was still intact, hoping I wouldn’t feel ragged bone and blood spilling through the cracks. “Oh God--oh!”
I pulled my hands away, squinting through the shoddy light, trying to see if they were bathed in red.
“What’s wrong, Tae?” Key popped his head around the door with a smirk, morning cigarette tucked between his lips. He had a towel in his hands with that old robe half on, wrapped about his waist and letting the top hang clear from his torso. Water was beading from his freshly showered hair, down his neck to settle in the dip of his collarbones. “Should I not have cleaned up yet?”
“Fuck...my head, Key,” I groaned. “Am I bleeding? I can’t tell--”
I felt the sudden dip in the mattress as Key straddled my waist, swatting my hands away.
“Hold on, let me see -- what the hell happened?”
His fingers were running through my scalp and he yanked the elastic out of my hair to properly inspect my head, turning my neck side to side.
“Is my skull there?” I voiced, muffled against the pillow.
“Yes, your skull is still there, you dumbass. What’s going on?” Key sat back, not moving from his spot on my lower back.
“Feels like someone busted my head open,” I whined.
“It’s called a hangover,” Key playfully hit my shoulder. “You had quite a bit to drink last night, remember?”
“I’m not hungover,” I insisted. “I woke up early this morning nauseous, but I didn’t get sick. And I didn’t have a headache, either.”
“Oh.”
Key’s weight shifted off of me and I could feel him settle flush against my body next to me on the mattress. I knew he was thinking, flipping quietly through the medical textbooks in his head.
“Like, migraine-bad? Or just, bad-bad?”
“Like, someone-took-an-axe-to-my-fucking-head bad, Key. C’mon,” I snapped.
I realized my tone right after I said it, and fell quiet.
“I’m sorry.”
“It’s okay,” he assured me. And then, “Let me go get your medicine, okay?”
His absence left me feeling cold, and I shivered, my bare back to the door. There was a vulnerability I didn’t usually feel, and I wanted to turn around, paranoia creeping across my shoulder blades.
The soft padding of Key’s feet on the carpet reached my ears and I rolled over to meet him, pulling the sheet with me out of courtesy I had never cared to pay before.
“Can you bring me a shirt?” I felt incredibly silly asking as I took the pills and glass of water from him.
“Yeah, sure, Tae,” he replied, his smile not quite reaching his eyes like it normally did.
I watched him, albeit a little foggily, pick up last night’s clothes from the floor and toss them into the laundry hamper before rummaging through the dresser drawer for a clean tee shirt. He found a grey one, soft from wear, and gave it a sniff before bringing it back to me.
As he helped me sit up, my head reeled, and I grasped the crook of his elbow tightly, staying steady for a moment and waiting for it to subside. When I reached out for the shirt, Key helped pull it over my head; it smelled fresh, like the lavender soap he used.
“Do you want me to bring you breakfast in bed?” he asked. “Are you even hungry?”
“I’m starving, but no. Just help me into the kitchen,” I assured him.
“Okay, hold on,” he went back to the dresser and brought two pairs of lounge pants. He untied the robe from his waist and let it fall in a pool at his feet, standing brief in his nakedness before he slipped on one pair and handed me the other.
I shimmied into them from my position on the bed, and Key took me from under the arm to help heave me to my feet. Trying my best to stay upright, I let him support me into the living room where he deposited me on the couch, within view of the kitchen.
My headache subsided after breakfast and the rest of the day was running smoothly. Key was curled into his usual spot on the couch, dividing his attention between the book in his lap and the medical show on whatever educational channel we received. Absentmindedly, he kneaded his foot, sliding it slowly up and down my leg while I laid under the blanket on the opposite end, watching the minutes tick by slowly on my phone, wanting so badly for sleep to take me under.
Without warning, the room gave a violent turn, and my phone slipped out of my hand to the floor. Falling backwards against the arm of the couch, my view was suddenly of the ceiling, spinning. Before I could kick Key, he saw what was going on and climbed over me, shoving his arm underneath my neck to support me.
“Taemin, Taemin!” he called. And I swear I could hear him, but it wasn’t registering that I needed to respond. What was ‘Taemin’...that’s my name, isn’t it? Yes. I should probably say something. But I can’t really be bothered right now, can I?
A noise was tearing from somewhere in the back of my throat and I just wanted the noise to stop, but it only became louder. It was giving me a headache, and I could’ve sworn something was ripping inside my skull.
Key pulled me farther down the couch until I was lying flat underneath him, wailing.
“Just make it stop,” I broke down, tears streaming from my eyes, rolling into my hairline. My face scrunched up involuntarily from the crying, only adding tension to my jawline and temples.
Key, at a loss for the umpteenth time since the hospital stint two months ago, could only stay hunched over me, arms cradling my head and neck, and place his lips over and over again to my forehead. Honestly, what could we do? We could call an ambulance, but what would they be able to do once we got to the hospital? Drug me up? It would all be only temporary. Over the past 4 weeks or so, I had been getting worse. Neither Key or I could deny it.
As my vision went white, the cold pit of my stomach turned. I was able to roll onto my side quick enough for breakfast to go on the floor instead of on Key, and as I continued to dry heave long after my stomach was emptied, I couldn’t stop sobbing and apologizing. He stayed over me, holding me onto the couch between his thighs and keeping my hair pulled away in his fist.
Countless I’m-sorries spilled from my mouth once nothing else would and before I could stop myself, “I’m sorry, Key, I’m sorry...! I’ll do anything! Please make it stop! I’ll take the chemo! I’ll take the fucking chemo...!”
Key’s arms wrapped tight around my shoulders and he pressed his face into my neck. It’s when I realized that he was crying silent tears, too.
The date was set for me to start my chemotherapy, and leading up to it, my days were, of course, good ones. It’s like, you never feel like shit the day you finally get a doctor’s appointment, right? And so you start to think why you’re wasting their time and yours.
While we could, Key and I enjoyed every bit of each other as possible. He stopped taking phone calls, and we spent every minute with each other. Even his books were left carelessly strewn about the apartment, forgotten on this table or that shelf.
But he was planning. I just knew it.
I completely lost myself in the day and time. Key had closed all of the heavy curtains, blocking out the sun. He unplugged all of the clocks.
“We’re living on our own time now, okay?” he had said. It kept him, I knew, from knowing how many more ‘good days’ he had left with me, before they all ran out.
Perhaps quite stupidly, I took up Key’s smoking habit. We’d lie together in the bed, sheets kicked around our feet, exhausted and messy and debauched, and light them, one after the other.
“You’re quiet,” I spoke into the darkness, more towards the ceiling than anyone in particular. I could hear a drag of breath near my ear, see the embers of his cigarette like a firefly. An exhale.
“I’m thinking,” he said matter-of-factly. I felt a hand near my face and reached out to it, taking the offered cigarette.
“Well,” I prodded, letting the smoke fill my lungs and enjoying the burn of the exhale, “a penny for your thoughts?”
The silent hand was back and I swatted it away.
“No, not until you talk.”
Key sighed, and then, resignedly, “...you don’t have to take the chemo.”
I nearly choked on the inhale and he took the opportunity to pluck the cigarette from my fingers.
“Why? After all this time, all the begging? ‘Please, Taemin, take the chemo!’”
“Butterflies.”
“Excuse me?”
I felt a shift in the mattress as Key leaned away to the bedside table, depositing the butt into the ashtray and tapping another stick out of the pack. The flame of his lighter sparked to life and I watched the light flicker across his face for a brief second, catching on his cheekbones and the sweat still lingering at his temple, bangs mussed. Smoke curled from between his lips and away into the darkness.
“Remember how I said there was another possibility, lying in wait for us? How it’s just in a probability state...?”
Key settled back down into the pillows, scooting over to me and turning onto his side so that we were nose to nose. A few more inches and I would feel his eyelashes dusting my cheek, his lips on my lips.
“...so, it’s like butterflies,” his voice softened. “You know -- ‘Now I do not know whether I was then a man dreaming I was a butterfly, or whether I am now a butterfly, dreaming I am a man.’”
I reached out for his free hand curled between us and knitted my fingers in his, giving it a gentle squeeze.
“Right now, you’re the man dreaming that you could be the butterfly. With chemo, you’ll build yourself a little cocoon and hopefully emerge on the other side, cancer-free.”
Here, he paused to smoke, perhaps to collect his thoughts. I waited quietly for him to continue.
“But what if,” his voice lowered as if he were confiding in me, letting me in on a secret that the rest of the universe wasn’t meant to know, “you’re simply a butterfly dreaming you’re a man; a man with a brain tumor?...It’s all a metaphor though, of course. Sort of. You see?”
“Yes, I think so...So, what you’re saying is...?” the point he was trying to make was slowly dawning on me.
“All you have to do is simply wake up.”
And there in the dark, the two of us were pressed together, elbow to elbow, chest to chest, the curve of our knees bending into each other in perfect angles, and it made perfect sense -- what we had to do.
We could have this forever. This togetherness. And I could be healthy. We would only have to start over, take the alternative route, enact that other possibility lying in sleep, unused somewhere in the universe.
So we made our decision. As the sun climbed into the midmorning sky, Key and I set foot out of the apartment for the first time in 3 months. And the sky was so blue, so clear. Hand in hand, we made our silent progression.
Key had called Minho, rambled a bit down the other line. I don’t think he quite understood, but that’s okay. How could he possibly understand, you see? We had already experienced living away from the same moon, the same breath, the same sunlight.
When we came to the hospital -- not a grand piece of architecture by any means, but one with a good view, looking out over a city of glass -- Key squeezed my hand a little tighter, assuring me. I was steady on my feet, with a clear head today. I didn’t even need my medicine.
It was easy enough to take the elevator, stopping short a few floors from the top. And it was no feat to find the little box posted on the wall.
Our fingers laced together over the handle.
“Ready?” Key smiled breathily.
“You’ll be with me the entire time?”
“The entire time,” he assured me. I nodded.
With a pull, deafening bells rang through the floors. Like ants, sterile, pressed and starched bodies flooded the hallways. Their commotion was drowned out by the cries of the sirens’ song, and Key took this time to pull us along into one of the stairwells.
From there, there was nothing left. On either side of us, existence had stopped and only Key and I mattered. The entirety of me felt numb as I leaned into Key against the wall of the stairwell. Swarms of the barely-living passed us in their haste, flowing down, down, down into the concrete pit. Our mouths pressed together, lost in the drag of the ocean’s floor.
We just needed to surface for air.
Earlier that morning, as Key was finishing up the in the shower, and now as I dove headlong with him into the steady stream of the crowd, I recalled what he had told me as often as he could since the day I was diagnosed.
“Vladimir Nabokov wrote, ‘Common sense tells us that our existence is but a brief crack of light between two eternities of darkness.’”
And there was no relative time as I felt his hand in mine, the gentle pull of the earth beneath our feet. There was only him, and me, and the breath we shared as we moved through that existence, like wading against the incoming tide. Up, up, and out, forever towards the horizon as we sought to leave it all behind, a thin veil of dust in our memories -- to leave everything that was not a part of our being.
And it was that moment of bursting forth into the light, the world shimmering around us, that I felt that swell in my chest, and a euphoric light-headedness. I had never been more sure or more terrified of anything in my life. Our grip on each other’s hands tightened, with his pulse against my pulse, our blood as rushed as our patience.
But, above all, it was an innate, all-encompassing happiness. Feeling his skin against mine, the air in our lungs like a slow burn, feet pounding mercilessly as our legs carried us, completely detached from thought.
Together.
At the edge of everything, Key and I were together. Just like how it was supposed to be.
Our lips melded together as we were one being, stretched beneath the sun. There was lavender on the wind, and worlds left to explore in the depths. His eyes never left mine, our bodies flush, hearts throbbing. I could feel nothing more than his arms around me, mine around him, one last staggering breath.
And the ground fell away.