#8 - For changeful, from your mixup partner!
Title: verdant
For: changeful
Pairing/Focus: (Gongchan/CNU/Baro)
Rating: PG
Word Count: 8k
Summary: SciFi!AU - Dongwoo lives in a world without air.
“Find a place that’s alive.”
Dongwoo slips the mask over his nose and mouth. He tightens the straps over his ears, pulling tight until the leather presses a seal into his skin. The sweet, half-bitter smell of earthen air fills his mouth, swims back until his head spins with it for a moment, like it always does. That first inhale of oxygen is softened by plants so near, instead of endlessly cycled through the underducts and spun down, down, to his small apartment, and he can taste it on the back of his tongue, that new-oxygen tint.
They used to live farthest out, the richest ones, until live soil got scarce and trees got scarcer. It was the trees that died out first, the biggest forests withering from the inside out, and then low plants, and finally the weeds slowly disappeared. It didn’t take long until attached greenhouses were deemed necessary for survival, and no one could afford to be alone anymore. The richest filled up the apartment blocks, pushed people out of the penthouses and the upper levels and sometimes even all of the flats above ground, crowding their new-bought windowsills and the tiled floors with plants, blocking out even the view. There wasn’t a lot to see anymore, anyway.
If Dongwoo didn’t have to go searching, he doubts he’d have seen the surface at all the past three years. It doesn’t make him as sad as it would have, once.
Dongwoo waves at the security guard behind the screen, and adjusts the goggles over his eyes one more time. The red light in the corner flickers to green. The pressure-sealed door hisses as he unwinds the metal seal, spinning the wheel until the door pops free and he can shove it open. Warmth spreads over his skin, that dry, sharp heat even the morning can’t soften, and he takes an involuntary breath.
He can still breathe. The seal around his face holds.
It’s still an odd thing to think about as he steps out into the world, that the air he feels against his face isn’t the kind he can breathe. The street is empty of life, the sun overhead a constant shade of carcinogenic orange that spreads quick heat over his skin. He pushes the door back into place with his shoulder, spinning the dial until it clicks shut. Beyond, he can hear the hiss and whirr of the air lock.
With one hand, he blocks out the sun as he rounds the side of the building. His bike is still where he left it the night before, propped on its side against the bowed metal of the building.
Before, he never could have left anything outside, but now his biggest worry is the heat corrupting the metal.
Dongwoo folds himself onto the bike, spinning the pedals backwards for a moment until he’s comfortable in the seat. Then he goes, pushing off into the city, the only sounds the click and whirr of his bike’s wheels.
He knows this part of the city so well he sometimes dreams of it, the long, erstwhile passages gone to fallow on an earth that can no longer reclaim them. It seems to take longer for things to go to dust, now, in the dry earth. Or maybe Dongwoo just never noticed before, too busy with other things. Time is all they’ve got left, really.
The modern glass-walled buildings stream past, flickering off orange and blue in the snatches of sky, followed by more and more bolted steel as property values go down and stories shrink to fifteen, thirteen, twelve. Concrete has tumbled everywhere, filling up the alleys and dropped from the sky onto sidewalks no longer used.
He takes the middle lane down the main road, following the curve as it heads up, out of town. The asphalt is cracked, and he has to jump over one, two potholes in a row, swerving around the jagged edge of others. The metal air canister bounces against his back, but he’s worn it for so long it seems natural, now.
There are several roads out of this part of town and he takes the northernmost one today. It almost feels like a breeze as he pedals up the side of the hill and coasts down the low, sloping descent on the other side. He lets go of the handles and just glides down the road, keeping the path straight between his knees. The streets are lined with desiccated shells of former one-family dwellings, their white sides gone grey and their roofs drooping slightly. Occasionally, he passes the odd storefront, shelves empty and doors cracked permanently open.
It’s been almost five years since his family moved out of their house, and the sight of his former street has finally lost its sting.
Dongwoo rises on the bike and pedals harder up the next hill, trying not to let his breath go hard under the mask. He takes a rest at the top of the highest hill, looking out over the crumbling outskirts and into the central cluster of glassed greenhouses perched on increasingly taller buildings. The sun cuts through the glass, sending odd shapes of sharp light across the city. He wonders how many people will keep their window shades shut today, how many won’t see the sunlight.
On the other side of the mountain, the bare slope of ground leads to a dead forest, light gone flat and somehow harsh on the scores of dust and brown. Sometimes he goes exploring there, but he doesn’t have the energy today.
He hops back on his bike and starts a slow pedal through the suburbs. It’s an odd job, to search. It’s probably the most important one, beyond gardening or water reclamation, but no one wants to do it. He could probably pedal away on his bike, see how far he could get, and no one would know. The air canister on his back could give him 10 hours, maybe enough to get to the next closest town. No one would really care.
It’s the thought that stops him in the middle of the street, at the middling point between the low, abandoned apartment buildings and a construction park, half-finished.
/I could be somewhere else. I could just leave,/ Dongwoo thinks. It’s eerie to contemplate, in the almost-absolute silence of the abandoned part of the city. He thinks of his tiny apartment, the small bed and endlessly cycling air units above his head, the half-shadow of his slip of a window at ground level. In reality, he’s already alone. He could just be alone somewhere else.
He almost doesn’t notice it. He’s already swung his leg over the seat of his bike and is about to push off when he pauses, unsure. It looked like-
His heart seems to stop for a moment, in that long pause between seeing and recognition. In the frozen world, he feels stuck, body reacting faster than his conscious mind.
In a quick motion, he shoves the bike to the ground and runs forward, ripping off his gloves as he goes. Leaning over, he captures it between his shaking forefinger and thumb. He recognizes the soft, silky texture more by idea than pure gut recognition.
Something weakens in behind his knees and he collapses to the ground.
It’s a leaf.
-
He spends more than an hour walking around the area, searching in a desperation that fades with every unsuccessful minute. There are no plants on the ground, not even the slightest trace of one amongst the encircling dust. Even if it were a split water duct that had somehow sprouted life, he’d need to know, but Dongwoo can’t find anything. It’s all dry, all dead.
Eventually, he collapses sideways against a wall, sliding down to a crouch. Tears of frustration spring at his eyes and he wants to scream but can’t risk unsealing his mask. His chest heaves with the effort of keeping it all in. He reaches out, uselessly, into the useless air, wishing there was something he could grab, something he could twist in frustration between his hands of this breathless world, these empty spaces.
Instead, he picks up a piece of concrete, crumbing and rough in his hands, and stands up to fling it against the wall of a run-down house. He doesn’t know why he thought he had finally found-
Something flickers at the corner of his gaze, a flash of light. He thinks it’s the tears, but when he turns his head, he can see it again, that faraway glimmer.
But this area is dead. No one lives here, no one can. He’s miles away from the centre of town and the glassed-in greenhouses or polarized sides of modern buildings. He’s miles away from plants and water and oxygen, and the sealing that keeps it all in.
The concrete drops from his hand.
-
He traces that fine glimmer of light into the construction area, following its flickering existence through the shadows thrown long in the setting sun. Tension has racketed his shoulders high around his neck as he finds an old set of metal stairs leading up into a half-finished apartment block frame. The area is just as dead as everywhere else, but there’s a conviction Dongwoo can’t place that leads him upwards, through the dizzying staircases and to the roof of the frame.
It would have been at least 15 stories, high for their city. Only the concrete base is done, the basic honeycomb structure kept aloft despite the intervening years.
“No,” he whispers into the mask, stopping at the top of the stairs.
Built into the centre of the roof is a huge domed greenhouse, steamed with life. It sprawls across the rooftop in disjointed sections, almost filling the space. Behind the yellowed glass are the strange, overlapping shadows of plants, trees, flowers.
It can’t be habitable, there’s no way, Dongwoo thinks as he strides towards the door. The leaf is in his pocket like a good luck charm, like a reminder, like a bread crumb. He doesn’t know what.
He raps on the glass of the door, staring down at its rusted handle. His breathing feels tight, like he has no more oxygen, but the dial on his wrist says he has several more hours. There’s no one there. There can’t be anyone in there. He should have left and reported this all back to his supervisor, even though he hasn’t seen the woman in months.
Something moves between the still shadows of the plants, comes closer to the front.
A blurry face appears for a moment, features smudged with the age of the glass as the person beyond looms forward.
“Come in!” Dongwoo hears from a low voice, a man, then, and the door swings open briefly and his arm is caught and he’s dragged inside.
-
He is disoriented by the plants, the sheer number of living plants around him, so he doesn’t immediately react when the man in front of him reaches out and pulls the mask from his face.
The seal begins to unstick and Dongwoo jerks back, startled. He clamps a hand down on the mask, feeling his heart race in his chest.
The man drops his hand, looking surprised. “Oh. Sorry.” He’s not wearing a mask, though, and he doesn’t look particularly sorry.
Dongwoo stares at him, uncomprehending in so many ways. The pull and hiss of his own breathing is loud in his ears, heavy with the unsteady state of his breaths. Inside the greenhouse, the air is thick with latent heat and water, and it begins to collect on the uncovered spaces of Dongwoo’s skin. It’s so odd after the dry pitch of the atmosphere outside. Dongwoo wonders how long it’s been since he’s seen live plants in person.
His job for the past five years has been to search for signs of life in the world outside, to find plants sprouting in the ground or forcing their way through the remains of cement and asphalt, and he’s spent the last five years seeing nothing but dust and the slow disintegration of a city. He’s not even sure when the last time he stood next to another person without a pane of glass between them.
The man tilts his head, dark hair falling over one eye. He has a sharp, angled face that seems deceivingly young, though he can’t be much younger than Dongwoo. What’s even more odd than the greenhouse is that there’s something familiar about this man.
“Are you okay?” he asks, slowly, as if he’s not sure that Dongwoo will understand. “Do you want some water or something?” When long moments pass and Dongwoo doesn’t respond, he turns and yells into the jungle. “Sunwoo-hyung!”
There’s a rattle of metal against glass from deep within the plants and a few moments later, a round-faced man with messy black hair ducks around a fern-like tree.
There’s a split second where Dongwoo can’t move, feeling like he’s been touched by a huge current through the top of his head, hitting every joint on the way down and drawing them taut. Lightning strikes can cause paralysis; electrocution, too, he knows.
Sunwoo stops, seemingly caught in the same moment as Dongwoo, and stares.
He thought- “Sunwoo?” he says, voice lost in the hiss of his face mask. It can’t be.
Sunwoo is just staring at him, ratty shirt drooping over his tanned arms, thinner than before, like he hasn’t been eating properly, but still undeniably himself. Then his face screws up into some mixture of joy and effervescence and he says, “Dongwoo-hyung?”
Dongwoo raises a shaky hand, waving, maybe, or reaching out to touch this specter from his past, and Sunwoo steps across the short distance and slams into him bodily, wrapping his arms around Dongwoo’s shoulders. He’s warm and it’s been so long since Dongwoo hugged anyone, touched anyone, that he’s taken aback for a moment.
Even through the loudness of his breathing, Dongwoo can hear Sunwoo whisper, “Oh, my God, Dongwoo, I don’t- I thought-“ his voice soft and confused. Dongwoo feels like someone is yanking at his heart, hard, as he presses his hands into the soft fabric over Sunwoo’s shoulder blades. He is alive. He’s- he’s alive.
Sunwoo pulls back, suddenly, and he’s smiling, huge and bright. “Take off your mask,” he says, like Dongwoo is being silly, and Dongwoo lets him pull off the seal until the mask hangs around his neck. Dongwoo peels the goggles off as well and blinks into the overwhelming humidity of the greenhouse.
Everything looks so much more green without the polarization of the goggles, the shadows deeper and every leaf suddenly defined. Sunlight streams in from outside and reflects from the glass planes, giving excess light to the space.
Sunwoo is staring at him, and the man over his shoulder is watching them both, carefully. Something about his gaze is unsettling, though he was nothing but polite before.
“I can’t believe you’re alive!” Sunwoo practically yells and Dongwoo laughs, wants to say “same,” because Dongwoo is living in an apartment in the city, with vents and facilities and other, if hidden, people and Sunwoo is? Well, Sunwoo is here.
“Man, it’s been so long, hasn’t it? I haven’t seen you since first year.” Sunwoo looks him up and down, at his dusty pants and long sleeved shirt, one glove still on. “Aren’t you hot?” he asks.
Dongwoo laughs, the sound startling out of him. He’s still confused and overwhelmed, and he runs one hand through his now-damp hair, feeling the sweat stick to his fingers. “Yeah,” he admits, and looks again at the guy behind Sunwoo, who is just staring at them. Dongwoo doesn’t understand why he looks so familiar.
Dongwoo swallows, throat clicking, and looks back at Sunwoo. “Do you have water?” That’s easier than all the million questions he has fighting in his brain for prominence.
Sunwoo brightens, turns to look over his shoulder. “Chansik-ah, can you-?” but he’s already turned away and disappeared into the plants. Sunwoo wraps a hand around Dongwoo’s arm and pulls him further inside the greenhouse.
It’s packed with a huge amount of plants of all sizes, crowded together in islands near the center and lined in rows closer out towards the edge. There must be a method to it, because Sunwoo guides him seamlessly through a cluster of huge palms, and between two bamboo sprouts in two huge pots, and they find themselves in a kitchen-like area. There’s a tiny electric stove surrounded by plates, pots, and a tiny shelving unit that’s packed with glass mason jars full of various beans, grains, oils, flour. There’s a couple of flattened pillows on the floor, arranged in a circle.
Dongwoo stares, taken aback.
Chansik is crouched in the corner and when they come in, he turns around with a mug, chipped at the top, of water. He hands it over to Dongwoo without a word, and stands there, somewhat awkward in silence.
“Thank you,” Dongwoo says, unsure.
Sunwoo comes to stand at Chansik’s shoulder, pointing out at Dongwoo.
“Chansik-ah, this is my sunbae from school. High school. Shin Dongwoo-hyung. And Dongwoo-hyung, this is my family friend, Chansik.”
Dongwoo bows in greeting, feeling rusty with disuse. Chansik mutters out a low hello, and his voice is so soft Dongwoo feels like he needs to lean closer to hear.
“Maybe you remember him?” Sunwoo says, tilting his head. “Chansik used to come stay with my family a lot, and he was staying with us when, uh, you know.”
Ah, so that’s why. “Yeah, I was wondering why he looked so familiar,” Dongwoo says. A small smile curls at the edge of Chansik’s mouth, and Dongwoo’s heart squeezes a little.
-
They settle in at the cushions in the center of the kitchen area, and it’s only when Chansik puts down a couple of dishes that Dongwoo realizes he’s starving. All of the food is fresh- fresh vegetables and homemade kimchi and it’s been so long since Dongwoo had fresh food that his throat clogs with emotion and he can hardly eat.
Chansik peers at him closely as Sunwoo leans over and piles things onto his plate. Dongwoo wants to look away but there’s nowhere to shield his face.
“Are you okay?” he asks quietly, and Dongwoo tries to smile.
“Yeah,” he says, but his memory is spinning with memories of his mother and grandmother making kimchi together on the roof of their building, right when the trees would go red and the air would start to sharpen with cold. There’s no way to keep the emotion from his voice.
“Does it taste bad or something?” Chansik looks worried. “I usually cook, but Sunwoo-hyung will eat anything, so is it- is it bad?”
“I do not!” Sunwoo protests around a mouthful of rice, menacing Chansik with his spoon. His cheeks are stuffed with rice and it reminds Dongwoo so forcefully of his time in high school, eating lunch with Sunwoo and their other friends, and he laughs, concerned he’s going to cry.
Chansik laughs, too, and the brightness in his face lightens a little of Dongwoo’s misery.
“Okay, okay,” Sunwoo manages, good-natured enough to let it past. He swallows, though there’s still a piece of rice sticking to his face. “I look stupid, okay. But Dongwoo-hyung, you need to come with us tonight! Ah, I need to show you everything.”
Chansik looks up from where he’s reaching out for another spoonful of stew. “To the market?” he asks, but he doesn’t sound encouraging. Those fine eyebrows dip towards each other in the center of his forehead.
“Market? What market?” Dongwoo doesn’t know any markets still existed, or shops. All of the food he’s gotten for the past five years has come down in pre-packed containers, assembled in some air-sealed factory in the center of town.
Sunwoo throws up his hands just as Chansik reaches over and wipes away the rice with one finger. He flashes a soft, bright grin at Chansik before he turns back to Dongwoo, excited. Dongwoo is still looking over at Chansik when the man presses the finger between his lips, licking away the rice. A hot spark of something like jealousy snaps against his chest, unexpectedly.
“There’s a market!” Sunwoo’s voice pulls him back to the present, and he turns away from the fine flare of Chansik’s eyelashes against his cheekbones. “It’s great, you’ll love it. It’s where we get all of our stuff. Basically everything here.”
“Sunwoo-hyung, I don’t think-,” Chansik protests quietly, but Sunwoo waves a bit, dismissive.
“He’ll be fine,” he says, but then leans forward, his hands pressed onto his knees and his eyes serious. “You can’t tell anyone about this market. Not a word.” He waits until Dongwoo nods before he moves back.
“Now, tell me about your life-.”
-
Time passes quickly in the odd greenhouse as they sit and eat, chatting.
Sunwoo seems so much like the boy he was in high school, with his quick smiles and buoyant personality. The intervening years have smoothed away the rough edges that Dongwoo recalls from their first years together, softened the sharp bursts of anxiety that were sometimes apparent in the set of Sunwoo’s shoulders or the twist in his voice, but kept the best parts.
He was always good-looking, even in those ill-fitting high school blazers, and time has left him broad across the shoulders and tanned along the expanses of his skin. Perhaps it’s just because it’s been so long since Dongwoo has been in the presence of people, he’s forgotten how substantial they can be. It’s disconcerting, the way Sunwoo’s laughter sharpens the air or the way Chansik shifts while he talks, and he’s not used to it.
And Chansik.
Dongwoo isn’t sure what it is about him that pulls Dongwoo in, if it’s his soft voice that rises in volume and confidence the longer they sit together, or the slight edge that comes out in his jokes and hides in his normal speech. There’s that tiny rebuke in his voice that has Dongwoo wanting to push forward, see how far Chansik will let him go before stopping him up abruptly.
They skim over their shared and recent history, never touching anything resembling serious subjects. Those things have been discussed and turned over so many times that Dongwoo has begun to forget how to parse between the story he tells everyone and what really happened, and he’s not sure what version he would end up telling Sunwoo and Chansik, anyway. The events have blurred together in his mind, leaving behind the sharp details of his mother’s face and the depth of an ache he can never bring himself to face, the rest of the just a story he falls into when people turn to him, questioning, “So, what happened to you?”
Sunwoo has always had a way of dragging people along with the enthusiasm in his voice, though, and whenever heaviness pulls at their conversation, he manages to bounce it back up.
Being around them is nearly overwhelming, the soft friendliness of Sunwoo and the almost-shy, waiting personality of Chansik bleeding together into something Dongwoo had made himself forget. There’s a loneliness in him that he had ignored for so long he had thought it had gone away, but as the two of them clear the dishes away and disappear into the greenhouse to finish up some other business, he feels the pulling hollowness of it in his chest.
He pulls his knees up to his chest and rests his chin on his dusty jeans, staring up through the panes of glass.
It’s startling to see the sky change, even through the yellowed, steamy windows of the ceiling. The shape of the house refracts the light in odd ways, sending orange streaks through the top of Sunwoo’s hair or reddish patches of light over Chansik’s cheeks. Dongwoo hasn’t seen a sunset in years, and never so fully. He feels like he’s sitting inside the sky as the sun bleeds into the Western horizon, darkening the dusty hills to blue, then deep shades of indigo.
Time, Dongwoo knows, is running out. The clock on his wrist beeps in warning and then again in agitated distress, telling him he only has minutes left to reach a safe, enclosed space.
He watches the time run out with a detached, macabre interest. The minutes bleed away into the last, frantic seconds, milliseconds flashing in the corner until the screen flashes with bright red and then goes dark. It’s the first and only time he’s ever gone out past the curfew imposed by his oxygen tank, and there’s a tip of anxiety at the base of his spine. Looking at the remains of Sunwoo and Chansik’s life around him, the neatly stacked dishes and the slight earthy scent in the air, he can’t regret it.
There’s no way to know if they’ll look for him, or if they’ll think he passed away. He never bothered to ask what happened to the other searchers, the ones who didn’t come back. It had always seemed as though they had merely abandoned their jobs, thought them pointless and gone back to burrow in the safety of their air-sealed apartment buildings, but now Dongwoo isn’t so sure.
Sunwoo, though, comes around the corner with an odd backpack strapped over his shoulders, Chansik trailing behind.
“Ready to go?” Sunwoo asks, and through his enthusiasm Dongwoo can still read Chansik’s reluctance. Dongwoo clambers up and rolls his largely full oxygen tank over one shoulder, nodding. They head over to the door and as Dongwoo follows, he stares in disbelief at the backpacks on their backs.
They look like plastic boxes, completely sealed in, with a row of little plants in containers at the bottom. The plants are completely verdant, green with life, and the top of the plastic box connects with plastic tubing fitted to modified air masks. It’s the most bizarre thing Dongwoo has ever seen.
Sunwoo looks over his shoulder and grins. “Do you like them?”
Dongwoo reaches out and traces over the edge of Chansik’s, who’s closest. “They’re interesting,” he admits, “but so strange. I can’t even believe they work.”
Chansik’s offended scoff is covered by Sunwoo’s higher laughter. “Of course they work,” Chansik insists, before lifting his mask to his face and strapping it on. He strides off towards the door while Sunwoo shrugs. There’s a sharp ache in Dongwoo’s chest that belies a mistake, a misstep that might destroy this delicate friendship. He wants to call Chansik back, but Sunwoo just claps him on the shoulder.
“Don’t worry about it, hyung. He just designed them and everything, so he’s kind of protective about them. But they’re completely safe, so don’t worry.” Sunwoo straps on his own mask, taps it with one finger and raises his eyebrows teasingly, before disappearing into the twilit foliage. Dongwoo struggles to keep up.
-
The unease shifts slightly when they reach bottom of the apartment block and Chansik spots Dongwoo’s bike, fallen over onto its side in the dusty ground. He makes a sound that’s loud enough to be heard, even through Dongwoo’s noisily recirculating oxygen mask, before running over to it and standing it up.
“Can I ride it?” he asks, and Dongwoo just waves him along.
At first Chansik is unsteady on the bike, like he’s forgotten how to maneuver in one, but soon he’s spinning in circles around Dongwoo and Sunwoo.
“Can I ride it to the market?” he asks, sounding more alive than before. His eyes catch Dongwoo’s as he passes, but he’s gone too quickly for Dongwoo to do more than feel his heartbeat stutter a bit in his chest.
Sunwoo shrugs. “If Dongwoo is okay with it?”
Chansik pedals close, until he’s close enough to touch. “Please?” he entreats Dongwoo, before flashing around behind them for a second and then in front.
“Sure,” Dongwoo says, though his voice is muffled considerably by his mask. He raises a thumbs-up and Chansik lifts one hand off the handles and cheers.
Chansik looks happier on the bike than Dongwoo has ever felt. It’s an odd kind of accomplishment.
He pedals ahead as Sunwoo and Dongwoo hike along behind. The streets are odd in the falling darkness, the fullness of the night softened with the gathering dust and crumbing buildings. The absolute silence should be unnerving, but the bump of Sunwoo’s shoulder against his own quiets down the inexplicable ache in his skin, metes that aching certainty that there should be more sound amongst the slowly disintegrating houses.
Chansik leads them along passages that Dongwoo vaguely remembers, the click of the bike and the flash of his oxygen tank giving clue to where he’s going to turn next. He’ll disappear for blocks and then reappear around the corner of a building, just the faraway click as he changes gears giving him away moments before he passes by Dongwoo’s shoulder in a rush of wind.
They make their way into the old business district of the city, where tall buildings, thick with glass sides, were abandoned in the rush for safety and left to slowly fall apart. It’s not in Dongwoo’s area, but it’s familiar all the same. The asphalt is near-new under their feet, but the lack of maintenance has sent huge chasms across the surface that Chansik has to jump the bike over.
It’s in the crossroads of four tall buildings that they draw to a stop and Chansik dismounts, engaging the kickstand.. The mirrored sides of the buildings reflect the weak moonlight back on each other, sending odd shadows across the slope of Sunwoo’s face and deepening the dark mass of Chansik’s hair. Sunwoo leans over in the middle of the road and, with Chansik’s help, pulls off the manhole cover and sets it to one side.
Tension flares across the crown of Dongwoo’s head, a mixture of excitement and uncertainty.
Sunwoo goes first, bracing himself over the edge of the hole and then dropping into the complete darkness inside. Alarmed, Dongwoo peers into the tunnel, but there’s nothing to discern, not even the echo of Sunwoo’s landing.
He looks up and Chansik is watching him. Slowly, the man reaches up and presses a finger to the outside of his homemade oxygen mask, indicating quiet. Even through the scratched plastic of his own goggles, his dark eyes compel him, seeming to entreat Dongwoo, demand something. Then he crouches and points out a ladder bolted into the wall.
Should I? Dongwoo wonders, but there’s really no time to decide. He’s here. He grasps the sides of the steel ladder and lowers himself into the darkness.
-
In the tunnel, a presence looms up behind him and grabs his wrist. Dongwoo jerks, feeling his heart leap in his chest in a brief spasm of panic and he thinks, this is it, they’re going to kill me and-and what? Take my bike? but it’s just Sunwoo.
“C’mon, hyung, this way,” he whispers, and though Dongwoo can’t see him, or the tunnel, or anything at all, he follows. He trusted Sunwoo, then. He trusts Sunwoo now.
The only thing he has is Sunwoo’s shoulder under his hand. He wraps his hand around the leather strap of Sunwoo’s backpack, and though he knows he must be digging his knuckles into the soft pad of muscle of Sunwoo’s shoulder, the other man doesn’t say a word.
They travel in the darkness, Sunwoo seeming to lead by memory or special sight or something. Dongwoo holds tight to his friend’s backpack, aware that if he let go, his oxygen would almost certainly run out before he made it back to to the surface.
And then there’s something odd in the air around them. It seems to thicken as they continue on, each turn in the darkness that Sunwoo takes seeming to bring them deeper into it, and it takes Dongwoo a long moment to identify what it is, because it seems so impossible.
Water. There’s water in the air, and it begins to gather on his skin in a thin film. Unlike in Sunwoo and Chansik’s greenhouse, the water is cold, as if at the depths of the sea. With his free hand, Dongwoo reaches out and traces his fingers across the curved wall. The concrete is freezing and all-over damp, until his fingers are dripping with the water.
His skin flares hot with anxiety and then cold again, sending goosebumps across his body. It’s against every principle he learned when first becoming a searcher, to have what must be a huge leak of water go unreported. Resources are already so scarce. There must be a broken pipe, somewhere up above, dripping onto this tunnel.
He’s just about to ask Sunwoo about it, when the tunnel starts to lighten. It’s gradual at first, but then Sunwoo makes a turn and there’s such a bright light ahead that Dongwoo needs to blink several times before he can even focus on what he’s seeing.
It’s a door, a huge lock wheel on the front like on the top of a submarine. A bright red light burns at the top, spreading harsh light over the tunnel immediately in front. Sunwoo strides over and spins the wheel, dragging open the circular door, and they all step inside a tiny room, guarded on the other side by another huge, circular door with a similar wheel lock.
Dongwoo’s senses blare with unease, and he can tell his breath is beginning to shake. So many questions are fighting for prominence in his mind, like where are we, and what’s happening, and his long-ingrained habit of being on the alert for unusual things, are knocking the ground from beneath his feet. Chansik spins the inner wheel lock and the red light above their heads shuts off and the green light next to it lights up.
“Cool,” Sunwoo says, and turns to open the other door.
Chansik presses up along Dongwoo’s back, just the suggestion of warmth on the bare edge of his skin. “They must have approved of you,” Chansik says, and his voice is clear. With one finger, he points over Dongwoo’s shoulder to the slightest blink of a camera in the corner of the airlock.
Dongwoo follows the line of his arm over and is surprised to see that the oxygen mask has been pulled from his face and hangs around his neck.
“You don’t need that anymore,” Chansik says.
This time when he reaches out to unseal the mask, Dongwoo lets him. There’s that moment of shock when it peels off, like he shouldn’t be doing this, but the next sharp inhalation he takes is definitely of oxygen and calms the panic rising in his chest. Chansik lets the mask drop and with his other hand traces a line over the indent it has made in the skin of his cheek.
Dongwoo can’t move, can only focus on the light trace of Chansik’s finger across his face. His breath, so precious, seems caught up in his chest for a burning moment. Chansik is looking up at him, his goggles pushed up into his hair and mask hanging uselessly around his neck, as if waiting for something. As if waiting for Dongwoo to do something. Dongwoo tilts his face into the touch, until Chansik is cupping the curve of his jaw.
Chansik stares at him with those dark eyes, and strokes, very gently, over his cheek. Time draws long in that ache of tension, Dongwoo’s heart beating heavily against his chest, then suddenly snaps up.
“Guys!” Sunwoo yells, ducking back around the open door to peer in at them. His eyes click from Dongwoo’s face to Chansik’s now diverted gaze. An expression flickers across his face, something of consternation or even of anger, before it smooths into his soft features. “Aren’t you coming?” he asks, just the barest edge to his voice.
Chansik ducks through the doorway without looking back at Dongwoo. He seems almost guilty, his shoulders dropped. As he passes Sunwoo, Chansik reaches out and clasps his upper arm for a brief moment, and Sunwoo’s gaze turns to follow him. There’s an expression on his face that Dongwoo can’t read.
Dongwoo feels like he’s listening to an important conversation in another language, one that he can’t possibly understand. For the first time, Dongwoo wonders if the relationship between Chansik and Sunwoo isn’t so simple as “family friends,” as if there’s more that they’re hiding from him.
When Sunwoo looks back at Dongwoo, he seems much his regular self, though there’s a reserve that wasn’t there before.
“Let’s go, hyung,” Sunwoo says, but the enthusiasm that was there before has deflated, slightly.
-
The market is set in a sprawling set of interlinked tunnels all pressed together and culminating in a single central tunnel. Old-style neon lights stack up on the walls and underset halogen lights send odd shadows up and over his friends’ faces as they squeeze through the tight tunnels and shuffle around various stalls.
By far the strangest thing, though, is how many other people are there. There are stall-owners and people of various ages and interests poring through the wares set on the floor or stacked on shelves or spread out over tables. Dongwoo hasn’t seen so many people in- in years. Not all in one place, not all together, talking and laughing and exchanging goods of their own for the stall-owners’ wares.
They press close, the scent of their skin and the lilting cadence of their laughter or bartering pressing in on Dongwoo. It’s almost too much, with the harsh flatness of the halogen lights and the low ceiling of the tunnel, all of the people seeming dangerous, somehow. They’ll get stuck in the close space, Dongwoo will get stuck, with their talk and laughter they’ll use up all of the oxygen being pumped into the enclosed tunnels.
Anxiety crawls over Dongwoo’s skin and tightens his fingers into fists. Sweat begins to prickle over his temples, like he’s too hot, though the tunnels are cool with that damp that coalesces into occasional drops of fat rain. Dongwoo can’t help the way his gaze flickers down the tunnels, not looking at the stalls or the goods, not really, but calculating the exits, how long it would take to get down one, his mask on, out into the relative freedom of the underground network.
And his friends. There’s something sharp in between them now, a tension that even Dongwoo can read, distracted and overwhelmed that he is. They walk side-by-side, but stiff-backed, as if they touch or bend, they’ll admit weakness, fall, break. Dongwoo doesn’t know how to deal with Chansik, doesn’t even really know what’s going on, and Sunwoo is just as bad.
Unchanged though he might have seemed, the years spent apart stretch obviously between Dongwoo and Sunwoo, leaving him unable to fix this. Even in high school, Sunwoo never really got mad. Dongwoo doesn’t even know what went wrong, really, why Sunwoo nor Chansik will look straight at him.
All he has is that niggling thought that Chansik and Sunwoo might be more than they said. He watches as they walk together, making room for the other in an automatic way that belies the years- it must be years- they’ve lived together, around each other. Even angry at each other, they make room.
All he can think of is the way Chansik touched his face, the pads of those soft fingers over the rise of his cheek. The way that Sunwoo looked so- mad? hurt? if only for a moment.
The thought that he may have gotten in the middle of something compounds the anxiety and makes his head spin. There’s nowhere else he can go. He doesn’t think he can even go back to his apartment, now. There would be no explanation that he could give that wouldn’t compromise this, his friends, their secret lives on the edge of whatever society they have left.
Dongwoo can’t go back, not with the risk he’d pose to their security. And if Sunwoo and Chansik won’t let him go with them-
The lights blur in front of his eyes, dangerous, looming, and the breath in his chest lets up. It feels like a vise has tightened around his throat.
No more oxygen- he thinks, wildly, and that deep fear of slow suffocation, death by lack, weakens his knees and sends him crashing into the wall. He can barely brace himself before he’s sliding down, and voices are crowding around him, louder, louder, and then soft, barely there at all. Darkness clouds out the flatness of the light.
I’m dying, he thinks. Mom-
-
He’s not dying. Even through the darkness, he can feel the rise and fall of his chest in breath. He wakes to hands on his face, touching softly at first and then delivering a stinging slap to his ear.
Jerking up, he realizes he’s no longer in the tight, almost claustrophobic market, but near where they first entered the tunnels. His shoulder is squashed up against the cool of the ladder and his oxygen mask is strapped to his face. His stomach roils, clenching tight, and he groans deep in his throat.
Chansik stands up from where he was crouched in front of Dongwoo and says something quietly to Sunwoo, who is looking down at him with worry clear across his face. A handheld light in Chansik’s grip sends faint light over their features.
Dongwoo stares at Sunwoo through his still-wavering vision, guilt pressing a hot hand on his heart. He wants to apologize, but for what?
I’m sorry that your friend, your lover, the only person you have left in this emptying world reached out for me? I’m sorry that I didn’t turn away? I just wanted it to be you, he thinks, trying to keep his gaze on Sunwoo’s clearing face, but the apology wouldn’t be true. Not completely. I used to just want it to be you, but now I want- now I want?
But it’s not allowed, wanting both, even Dongwoo knows that. He watches as Sunwoo crouches down in front of him and presses warm fingers to the sides of his face and then over the rise of his sluggish pulse. A sharp sensation knifes at his stomach, like he’s taken something already and guilt is going to eat him up from the middle, out, unless he confesses.
He should want neither, ask for nothing. Half would be worse than all, and Dongwoo can’t do this. Oxygen is flowing to his lungs but he still feels like he can barely breathe. His chest is too small.
“C’mon, let’s go,” Sunwoo says, and something like a smile crinkles his visible cheeks. He doesn’t sound mad at all, and there’s none of the bitterness of before. Dongwoo doesn’t know how he can do that, switch off whatever anger he has in order to take care of someone else.
With strong hands, he heaves Dongwoo up onto his feet. He waits until Dongwoo can take small, weak steps before directing him up the ladder.
“Don’t worry,” Sunwoo says, hands on his back, as Chansik directs the way with the beam of his flashlight. “We’ll be right behind you.”
Dongwoo starts up with shaking hands, still feeling sick, but knowing that the faster he goes up, the faster they can finish this.
Maybe he can go back to his apartment. Maybe he can think up a convincing lie. Maybe he can do that and still see them, sometimes. Or, if not, maybe he can at least direct any searches away from their sprawling greenhouse, their delicate life they’ve managed to construct at the edge of a breathless world.
But all he can think about with every clanging step is: Both. Neither. Both. Neither. Both.
The top rung sounds with a decisive neither.
-
Sunwoo piles Dongwoo onto the back of the bicycle, balancing him on the seat while he stands on the pedals. Dongwoo holds fast to Sunwoo’s waist as his friend pedals through the still-darkened city, unable to keep track of the passing streets even as his head clears. Wind rushes past his face and spins through his hair, and he tries to think of anything but that last, definite neither. Beyond the dip of the bicycle from side to side and the movement of the muscles under Sunwoo’s shirt, it’s the only clear thought his mind can focus on, however.
By the time they get back to the unfinished apartment block, Dongwoo’s head has stopped spinning and he can stand on largely unshaky legs when Sunwoo pulls to a stop at the base of the stairs.
Sunwoo still wraps one of his arms over his shoulders and starts walking him up the stairs. Dongwoo wants to pull away from the press of Sunwoo but can’t make himself, with the soft curve of his shoulder fitting easily under Dongwoo’s arm.
If I had only said, back in school, Dongwoo thinks dimly. We could have had this, before the world- but it’s a useless thought, wishing different from a disaster that’s already occurred. Angry at himself, he pushes the thought away.
Neither.
Chansik has been left to walk, so it’s just the two of them when they let themselves back into the greenhouse, empty and seeming to wait for them at the top of the apartment block.
In the weak moonlight, the plants loom eerily over the center path. As Dongwoo follows Sunwoo through the twisting plants, he can feel their leaves reaching out for him, brushing over the crown of his head and tapping at his ankles. He can’t tell if they’re welcoming him back or acting as a warning, trying to tell him to stop, that he’s making a mistake. It’s almost too late, now.
The warm smell of the earth comforts him through his growing unease. Every breath tinted with it makes Dongwoo feel safe, as if he’s finally in a world that can breathe again, as if he’s finally found a kind of life he’d forgotten about the past five years. Dongwoo watches as Sunwoo’s dark head disappears around the stretch of a palm leaf and deeper into the greenhouse. Sunwoo has said nothing since they got back, neither told him to stay nor told him to go, and his silence is almost worse than a rebuke.
The thought that he’ll have to give this up crushes at his heart. Now that he knows this exists, he can’t-
The plants open up to reveal a small living area in the center of a large ring of bushes. There’s a large mattress, maybe queen-sized, covered in a messy arrangement of pillows and faded colored sheets.
Sunwoo stops and turns around. Some sort of soft kindness pulls at his dark eyes, and the shadows gathered around them draw the lines deeper in his face.
Tell me to go, Dongwoo thinks, even as his heart desperately cries the opposite. He wants to reach out and pull Sunwoo to him in that dark curve of plants, of verdant life, hold him to his chest. He wants to feel the pulse of Sunwoo’s breath over the rise of his neck, wants those warm, rough hands to press into his sides and give him a solidity Dongwoo has lacked since they parted.
Would Sunwoo be soft against him, warm skin on skin, or would he push back more solidly when Dongwoo leaned in to kiss him? Would he dig his fingers into Dongwoo’s hips, soft and then more sharply, like Chansik might?
Dongwoo wants both, sharp and soft, pushing and pulling at him, and he knows he’ll get neither, because he doesn’t belong in a pair. He needs to leave, but he’s rooted to the ground.
Sunwoo reaches out for him, curling one warm hand around until his fingers press, blunt, across the rising knobs of Dongwoo’s spine. Heat surges through Dongwoo from the point of contact, because the grip is leading, somehow, telling. Stay, it says. He reaches up and cups the hand with his own, unable to speak.
“Let’s go to bed,” Sunwoo says, soft, in the dark, like he knows. Both, and Dongwoo’s heart skips. “We’ll talk tomorrow,” he promises. He’s not asking Dongwoo to leave, and for now, that’s enough.
When they curl up on the bed, Sunwoo slips an arm over Dongwoo’s waist and his hand presses comfort into Dongwoo’s skin. Stay.
Chansik comes in later, quiet in the dark. He smells like the outside world, dusty and crowded with a scent like talcum powder, minerals against his skin. He slips onto the bed next to Dongwoo, who can barely stir, and their knees brush against each other.
Even at the edge of sleep, Dongwoo can feel the light brush of Chansik’s fingers through his hair, just for a moment. The air smells like earth and the slight salt of human skin, breath. Life.
END
For: changeful
Pairing/Focus: (Gongchan/CNU/Baro)
Rating: PG
Word Count: 8k
Summary: SciFi!AU - Dongwoo lives in a world without air.
“Find a place that’s alive.”
Dongwoo slips the mask over his nose and mouth. He tightens the straps over his ears, pulling tight until the leather presses a seal into his skin. The sweet, half-bitter smell of earthen air fills his mouth, swims back until his head spins with it for a moment, like it always does. That first inhale of oxygen is softened by plants so near, instead of endlessly cycled through the underducts and spun down, down, to his small apartment, and he can taste it on the back of his tongue, that new-oxygen tint.
They used to live farthest out, the richest ones, until live soil got scarce and trees got scarcer. It was the trees that died out first, the biggest forests withering from the inside out, and then low plants, and finally the weeds slowly disappeared. It didn’t take long until attached greenhouses were deemed necessary for survival, and no one could afford to be alone anymore. The richest filled up the apartment blocks, pushed people out of the penthouses and the upper levels and sometimes even all of the flats above ground, crowding their new-bought windowsills and the tiled floors with plants, blocking out even the view. There wasn’t a lot to see anymore, anyway.
If Dongwoo didn’t have to go searching, he doubts he’d have seen the surface at all the past three years. It doesn’t make him as sad as it would have, once.
Dongwoo waves at the security guard behind the screen, and adjusts the goggles over his eyes one more time. The red light in the corner flickers to green. The pressure-sealed door hisses as he unwinds the metal seal, spinning the wheel until the door pops free and he can shove it open. Warmth spreads over his skin, that dry, sharp heat even the morning can’t soften, and he takes an involuntary breath.
He can still breathe. The seal around his face holds.
It’s still an odd thing to think about as he steps out into the world, that the air he feels against his face isn’t the kind he can breathe. The street is empty of life, the sun overhead a constant shade of carcinogenic orange that spreads quick heat over his skin. He pushes the door back into place with his shoulder, spinning the dial until it clicks shut. Beyond, he can hear the hiss and whirr of the air lock.
With one hand, he blocks out the sun as he rounds the side of the building. His bike is still where he left it the night before, propped on its side against the bowed metal of the building.
Before, he never could have left anything outside, but now his biggest worry is the heat corrupting the metal.
Dongwoo folds himself onto the bike, spinning the pedals backwards for a moment until he’s comfortable in the seat. Then he goes, pushing off into the city, the only sounds the click and whirr of his bike’s wheels.
He knows this part of the city so well he sometimes dreams of it, the long, erstwhile passages gone to fallow on an earth that can no longer reclaim them. It seems to take longer for things to go to dust, now, in the dry earth. Or maybe Dongwoo just never noticed before, too busy with other things. Time is all they’ve got left, really.
The modern glass-walled buildings stream past, flickering off orange and blue in the snatches of sky, followed by more and more bolted steel as property values go down and stories shrink to fifteen, thirteen, twelve. Concrete has tumbled everywhere, filling up the alleys and dropped from the sky onto sidewalks no longer used.
He takes the middle lane down the main road, following the curve as it heads up, out of town. The asphalt is cracked, and he has to jump over one, two potholes in a row, swerving around the jagged edge of others. The metal air canister bounces against his back, but he’s worn it for so long it seems natural, now.
There are several roads out of this part of town and he takes the northernmost one today. It almost feels like a breeze as he pedals up the side of the hill and coasts down the low, sloping descent on the other side. He lets go of the handles and just glides down the road, keeping the path straight between his knees. The streets are lined with desiccated shells of former one-family dwellings, their white sides gone grey and their roofs drooping slightly. Occasionally, he passes the odd storefront, shelves empty and doors cracked permanently open.
It’s been almost five years since his family moved out of their house, and the sight of his former street has finally lost its sting.
Dongwoo rises on the bike and pedals harder up the next hill, trying not to let his breath go hard under the mask. He takes a rest at the top of the highest hill, looking out over the crumbling outskirts and into the central cluster of glassed greenhouses perched on increasingly taller buildings. The sun cuts through the glass, sending odd shapes of sharp light across the city. He wonders how many people will keep their window shades shut today, how many won’t see the sunlight.
On the other side of the mountain, the bare slope of ground leads to a dead forest, light gone flat and somehow harsh on the scores of dust and brown. Sometimes he goes exploring there, but he doesn’t have the energy today.
He hops back on his bike and starts a slow pedal through the suburbs. It’s an odd job, to search. It’s probably the most important one, beyond gardening or water reclamation, but no one wants to do it. He could probably pedal away on his bike, see how far he could get, and no one would know. The air canister on his back could give him 10 hours, maybe enough to get to the next closest town. No one would really care.
It’s the thought that stops him in the middle of the street, at the middling point between the low, abandoned apartment buildings and a construction park, half-finished.
/I could be somewhere else. I could just leave,/ Dongwoo thinks. It’s eerie to contemplate, in the almost-absolute silence of the abandoned part of the city. He thinks of his tiny apartment, the small bed and endlessly cycling air units above his head, the half-shadow of his slip of a window at ground level. In reality, he’s already alone. He could just be alone somewhere else.
He almost doesn’t notice it. He’s already swung his leg over the seat of his bike and is about to push off when he pauses, unsure. It looked like-
His heart seems to stop for a moment, in that long pause between seeing and recognition. In the frozen world, he feels stuck, body reacting faster than his conscious mind.
In a quick motion, he shoves the bike to the ground and runs forward, ripping off his gloves as he goes. Leaning over, he captures it between his shaking forefinger and thumb. He recognizes the soft, silky texture more by idea than pure gut recognition.
Something weakens in behind his knees and he collapses to the ground.
It’s a leaf.
-
He spends more than an hour walking around the area, searching in a desperation that fades with every unsuccessful minute. There are no plants on the ground, not even the slightest trace of one amongst the encircling dust. Even if it were a split water duct that had somehow sprouted life, he’d need to know, but Dongwoo can’t find anything. It’s all dry, all dead.
Eventually, he collapses sideways against a wall, sliding down to a crouch. Tears of frustration spring at his eyes and he wants to scream but can’t risk unsealing his mask. His chest heaves with the effort of keeping it all in. He reaches out, uselessly, into the useless air, wishing there was something he could grab, something he could twist in frustration between his hands of this breathless world, these empty spaces.
Instead, he picks up a piece of concrete, crumbing and rough in his hands, and stands up to fling it against the wall of a run-down house. He doesn’t know why he thought he had finally found-
Something flickers at the corner of his gaze, a flash of light. He thinks it’s the tears, but when he turns his head, he can see it again, that faraway glimmer.
But this area is dead. No one lives here, no one can. He’s miles away from the centre of town and the glassed-in greenhouses or polarized sides of modern buildings. He’s miles away from plants and water and oxygen, and the sealing that keeps it all in.
The concrete drops from his hand.
-
He traces that fine glimmer of light into the construction area, following its flickering existence through the shadows thrown long in the setting sun. Tension has racketed his shoulders high around his neck as he finds an old set of metal stairs leading up into a half-finished apartment block frame. The area is just as dead as everywhere else, but there’s a conviction Dongwoo can’t place that leads him upwards, through the dizzying staircases and to the roof of the frame.
It would have been at least 15 stories, high for their city. Only the concrete base is done, the basic honeycomb structure kept aloft despite the intervening years.
“No,” he whispers into the mask, stopping at the top of the stairs.
Built into the centre of the roof is a huge domed greenhouse, steamed with life. It sprawls across the rooftop in disjointed sections, almost filling the space. Behind the yellowed glass are the strange, overlapping shadows of plants, trees, flowers.
It can’t be habitable, there’s no way, Dongwoo thinks as he strides towards the door. The leaf is in his pocket like a good luck charm, like a reminder, like a bread crumb. He doesn’t know what.
He raps on the glass of the door, staring down at its rusted handle. His breathing feels tight, like he has no more oxygen, but the dial on his wrist says he has several more hours. There’s no one there. There can’t be anyone in there. He should have left and reported this all back to his supervisor, even though he hasn’t seen the woman in months.
Something moves between the still shadows of the plants, comes closer to the front.
A blurry face appears for a moment, features smudged with the age of the glass as the person beyond looms forward.
“Come in!” Dongwoo hears from a low voice, a man, then, and the door swings open briefly and his arm is caught and he’s dragged inside.
-
He is disoriented by the plants, the sheer number of living plants around him, so he doesn’t immediately react when the man in front of him reaches out and pulls the mask from his face.
The seal begins to unstick and Dongwoo jerks back, startled. He clamps a hand down on the mask, feeling his heart race in his chest.
The man drops his hand, looking surprised. “Oh. Sorry.” He’s not wearing a mask, though, and he doesn’t look particularly sorry.
Dongwoo stares at him, uncomprehending in so many ways. The pull and hiss of his own breathing is loud in his ears, heavy with the unsteady state of his breaths. Inside the greenhouse, the air is thick with latent heat and water, and it begins to collect on the uncovered spaces of Dongwoo’s skin. It’s so odd after the dry pitch of the atmosphere outside. Dongwoo wonders how long it’s been since he’s seen live plants in person.
His job for the past five years has been to search for signs of life in the world outside, to find plants sprouting in the ground or forcing their way through the remains of cement and asphalt, and he’s spent the last five years seeing nothing but dust and the slow disintegration of a city. He’s not even sure when the last time he stood next to another person without a pane of glass between them.
The man tilts his head, dark hair falling over one eye. He has a sharp, angled face that seems deceivingly young, though he can’t be much younger than Dongwoo. What’s even more odd than the greenhouse is that there’s something familiar about this man.
“Are you okay?” he asks, slowly, as if he’s not sure that Dongwoo will understand. “Do you want some water or something?” When long moments pass and Dongwoo doesn’t respond, he turns and yells into the jungle. “Sunwoo-hyung!”
There’s a rattle of metal against glass from deep within the plants and a few moments later, a round-faced man with messy black hair ducks around a fern-like tree.
There’s a split second where Dongwoo can’t move, feeling like he’s been touched by a huge current through the top of his head, hitting every joint on the way down and drawing them taut. Lightning strikes can cause paralysis; electrocution, too, he knows.
Sunwoo stops, seemingly caught in the same moment as Dongwoo, and stares.
He thought- “Sunwoo?” he says, voice lost in the hiss of his face mask. It can’t be.
Sunwoo is just staring at him, ratty shirt drooping over his tanned arms, thinner than before, like he hasn’t been eating properly, but still undeniably himself. Then his face screws up into some mixture of joy and effervescence and he says, “Dongwoo-hyung?”
Dongwoo raises a shaky hand, waving, maybe, or reaching out to touch this specter from his past, and Sunwoo steps across the short distance and slams into him bodily, wrapping his arms around Dongwoo’s shoulders. He’s warm and it’s been so long since Dongwoo hugged anyone, touched anyone, that he’s taken aback for a moment.
Even through the loudness of his breathing, Dongwoo can hear Sunwoo whisper, “Oh, my God, Dongwoo, I don’t- I thought-“ his voice soft and confused. Dongwoo feels like someone is yanking at his heart, hard, as he presses his hands into the soft fabric over Sunwoo’s shoulder blades. He is alive. He’s- he’s alive.
Sunwoo pulls back, suddenly, and he’s smiling, huge and bright. “Take off your mask,” he says, like Dongwoo is being silly, and Dongwoo lets him pull off the seal until the mask hangs around his neck. Dongwoo peels the goggles off as well and blinks into the overwhelming humidity of the greenhouse.
Everything looks so much more green without the polarization of the goggles, the shadows deeper and every leaf suddenly defined. Sunlight streams in from outside and reflects from the glass planes, giving excess light to the space.
Sunwoo is staring at him, and the man over his shoulder is watching them both, carefully. Something about his gaze is unsettling, though he was nothing but polite before.
“I can’t believe you’re alive!” Sunwoo practically yells and Dongwoo laughs, wants to say “same,” because Dongwoo is living in an apartment in the city, with vents and facilities and other, if hidden, people and Sunwoo is? Well, Sunwoo is here.
“Man, it’s been so long, hasn’t it? I haven’t seen you since first year.” Sunwoo looks him up and down, at his dusty pants and long sleeved shirt, one glove still on. “Aren’t you hot?” he asks.
Dongwoo laughs, the sound startling out of him. He’s still confused and overwhelmed, and he runs one hand through his now-damp hair, feeling the sweat stick to his fingers. “Yeah,” he admits, and looks again at the guy behind Sunwoo, who is just staring at them. Dongwoo doesn’t understand why he looks so familiar.
Dongwoo swallows, throat clicking, and looks back at Sunwoo. “Do you have water?” That’s easier than all the million questions he has fighting in his brain for prominence.
Sunwoo brightens, turns to look over his shoulder. “Chansik-ah, can you-?” but he’s already turned away and disappeared into the plants. Sunwoo wraps a hand around Dongwoo’s arm and pulls him further inside the greenhouse.
It’s packed with a huge amount of plants of all sizes, crowded together in islands near the center and lined in rows closer out towards the edge. There must be a method to it, because Sunwoo guides him seamlessly through a cluster of huge palms, and between two bamboo sprouts in two huge pots, and they find themselves in a kitchen-like area. There’s a tiny electric stove surrounded by plates, pots, and a tiny shelving unit that’s packed with glass mason jars full of various beans, grains, oils, flour. There’s a couple of flattened pillows on the floor, arranged in a circle.
Dongwoo stares, taken aback.
Chansik is crouched in the corner and when they come in, he turns around with a mug, chipped at the top, of water. He hands it over to Dongwoo without a word, and stands there, somewhat awkward in silence.
“Thank you,” Dongwoo says, unsure.
Sunwoo comes to stand at Chansik’s shoulder, pointing out at Dongwoo.
“Chansik-ah, this is my sunbae from school. High school. Shin Dongwoo-hyung. And Dongwoo-hyung, this is my family friend, Chansik.”
Dongwoo bows in greeting, feeling rusty with disuse. Chansik mutters out a low hello, and his voice is so soft Dongwoo feels like he needs to lean closer to hear.
“Maybe you remember him?” Sunwoo says, tilting his head. “Chansik used to come stay with my family a lot, and he was staying with us when, uh, you know.”
Ah, so that’s why. “Yeah, I was wondering why he looked so familiar,” Dongwoo says. A small smile curls at the edge of Chansik’s mouth, and Dongwoo’s heart squeezes a little.
-
They settle in at the cushions in the center of the kitchen area, and it’s only when Chansik puts down a couple of dishes that Dongwoo realizes he’s starving. All of the food is fresh- fresh vegetables and homemade kimchi and it’s been so long since Dongwoo had fresh food that his throat clogs with emotion and he can hardly eat.
Chansik peers at him closely as Sunwoo leans over and piles things onto his plate. Dongwoo wants to look away but there’s nowhere to shield his face.
“Are you okay?” he asks quietly, and Dongwoo tries to smile.
“Yeah,” he says, but his memory is spinning with memories of his mother and grandmother making kimchi together on the roof of their building, right when the trees would go red and the air would start to sharpen with cold. There’s no way to keep the emotion from his voice.
“Does it taste bad or something?” Chansik looks worried. “I usually cook, but Sunwoo-hyung will eat anything, so is it- is it bad?”
“I do not!” Sunwoo protests around a mouthful of rice, menacing Chansik with his spoon. His cheeks are stuffed with rice and it reminds Dongwoo so forcefully of his time in high school, eating lunch with Sunwoo and their other friends, and he laughs, concerned he’s going to cry.
Chansik laughs, too, and the brightness in his face lightens a little of Dongwoo’s misery.
“Okay, okay,” Sunwoo manages, good-natured enough to let it past. He swallows, though there’s still a piece of rice sticking to his face. “I look stupid, okay. But Dongwoo-hyung, you need to come with us tonight! Ah, I need to show you everything.”
Chansik looks up from where he’s reaching out for another spoonful of stew. “To the market?” he asks, but he doesn’t sound encouraging. Those fine eyebrows dip towards each other in the center of his forehead.
“Market? What market?” Dongwoo doesn’t know any markets still existed, or shops. All of the food he’s gotten for the past five years has come down in pre-packed containers, assembled in some air-sealed factory in the center of town.
Sunwoo throws up his hands just as Chansik reaches over and wipes away the rice with one finger. He flashes a soft, bright grin at Chansik before he turns back to Dongwoo, excited. Dongwoo is still looking over at Chansik when the man presses the finger between his lips, licking away the rice. A hot spark of something like jealousy snaps against his chest, unexpectedly.
“There’s a market!” Sunwoo’s voice pulls him back to the present, and he turns away from the fine flare of Chansik’s eyelashes against his cheekbones. “It’s great, you’ll love it. It’s where we get all of our stuff. Basically everything here.”
“Sunwoo-hyung, I don’t think-,” Chansik protests quietly, but Sunwoo waves a bit, dismissive.
“He’ll be fine,” he says, but then leans forward, his hands pressed onto his knees and his eyes serious. “You can’t tell anyone about this market. Not a word.” He waits until Dongwoo nods before he moves back.
“Now, tell me about your life-.”
-
Time passes quickly in the odd greenhouse as they sit and eat, chatting.
Sunwoo seems so much like the boy he was in high school, with his quick smiles and buoyant personality. The intervening years have smoothed away the rough edges that Dongwoo recalls from their first years together, softened the sharp bursts of anxiety that were sometimes apparent in the set of Sunwoo’s shoulders or the twist in his voice, but kept the best parts.
He was always good-looking, even in those ill-fitting high school blazers, and time has left him broad across the shoulders and tanned along the expanses of his skin. Perhaps it’s just because it’s been so long since Dongwoo has been in the presence of people, he’s forgotten how substantial they can be. It’s disconcerting, the way Sunwoo’s laughter sharpens the air or the way Chansik shifts while he talks, and he’s not used to it.
And Chansik.
Dongwoo isn’t sure what it is about him that pulls Dongwoo in, if it’s his soft voice that rises in volume and confidence the longer they sit together, or the slight edge that comes out in his jokes and hides in his normal speech. There’s that tiny rebuke in his voice that has Dongwoo wanting to push forward, see how far Chansik will let him go before stopping him up abruptly.
They skim over their shared and recent history, never touching anything resembling serious subjects. Those things have been discussed and turned over so many times that Dongwoo has begun to forget how to parse between the story he tells everyone and what really happened, and he’s not sure what version he would end up telling Sunwoo and Chansik, anyway. The events have blurred together in his mind, leaving behind the sharp details of his mother’s face and the depth of an ache he can never bring himself to face, the rest of the just a story he falls into when people turn to him, questioning, “So, what happened to you?”
Sunwoo has always had a way of dragging people along with the enthusiasm in his voice, though, and whenever heaviness pulls at their conversation, he manages to bounce it back up.
Being around them is nearly overwhelming, the soft friendliness of Sunwoo and the almost-shy, waiting personality of Chansik bleeding together into something Dongwoo had made himself forget. There’s a loneliness in him that he had ignored for so long he had thought it had gone away, but as the two of them clear the dishes away and disappear into the greenhouse to finish up some other business, he feels the pulling hollowness of it in his chest.
He pulls his knees up to his chest and rests his chin on his dusty jeans, staring up through the panes of glass.
It’s startling to see the sky change, even through the yellowed, steamy windows of the ceiling. The shape of the house refracts the light in odd ways, sending orange streaks through the top of Sunwoo’s hair or reddish patches of light over Chansik’s cheeks. Dongwoo hasn’t seen a sunset in years, and never so fully. He feels like he’s sitting inside the sky as the sun bleeds into the Western horizon, darkening the dusty hills to blue, then deep shades of indigo.
Time, Dongwoo knows, is running out. The clock on his wrist beeps in warning and then again in agitated distress, telling him he only has minutes left to reach a safe, enclosed space.
He watches the time run out with a detached, macabre interest. The minutes bleed away into the last, frantic seconds, milliseconds flashing in the corner until the screen flashes with bright red and then goes dark. It’s the first and only time he’s ever gone out past the curfew imposed by his oxygen tank, and there’s a tip of anxiety at the base of his spine. Looking at the remains of Sunwoo and Chansik’s life around him, the neatly stacked dishes and the slight earthy scent in the air, he can’t regret it.
There’s no way to know if they’ll look for him, or if they’ll think he passed away. He never bothered to ask what happened to the other searchers, the ones who didn’t come back. It had always seemed as though they had merely abandoned their jobs, thought them pointless and gone back to burrow in the safety of their air-sealed apartment buildings, but now Dongwoo isn’t so sure.
Sunwoo, though, comes around the corner with an odd backpack strapped over his shoulders, Chansik trailing behind.
“Ready to go?” Sunwoo asks, and through his enthusiasm Dongwoo can still read Chansik’s reluctance. Dongwoo clambers up and rolls his largely full oxygen tank over one shoulder, nodding. They head over to the door and as Dongwoo follows, he stares in disbelief at the backpacks on their backs.
They look like plastic boxes, completely sealed in, with a row of little plants in containers at the bottom. The plants are completely verdant, green with life, and the top of the plastic box connects with plastic tubing fitted to modified air masks. It’s the most bizarre thing Dongwoo has ever seen.
Sunwoo looks over his shoulder and grins. “Do you like them?”
Dongwoo reaches out and traces over the edge of Chansik’s, who’s closest. “They’re interesting,” he admits, “but so strange. I can’t even believe they work.”
Chansik’s offended scoff is covered by Sunwoo’s higher laughter. “Of course they work,” Chansik insists, before lifting his mask to his face and strapping it on. He strides off towards the door while Sunwoo shrugs. There’s a sharp ache in Dongwoo’s chest that belies a mistake, a misstep that might destroy this delicate friendship. He wants to call Chansik back, but Sunwoo just claps him on the shoulder.
“Don’t worry about it, hyung. He just designed them and everything, so he’s kind of protective about them. But they’re completely safe, so don’t worry.” Sunwoo straps on his own mask, taps it with one finger and raises his eyebrows teasingly, before disappearing into the twilit foliage. Dongwoo struggles to keep up.
-
The unease shifts slightly when they reach bottom of the apartment block and Chansik spots Dongwoo’s bike, fallen over onto its side in the dusty ground. He makes a sound that’s loud enough to be heard, even through Dongwoo’s noisily recirculating oxygen mask, before running over to it and standing it up.
“Can I ride it?” he asks, and Dongwoo just waves him along.
At first Chansik is unsteady on the bike, like he’s forgotten how to maneuver in one, but soon he’s spinning in circles around Dongwoo and Sunwoo.
“Can I ride it to the market?” he asks, sounding more alive than before. His eyes catch Dongwoo’s as he passes, but he’s gone too quickly for Dongwoo to do more than feel his heartbeat stutter a bit in his chest.
Sunwoo shrugs. “If Dongwoo is okay with it?”
Chansik pedals close, until he’s close enough to touch. “Please?” he entreats Dongwoo, before flashing around behind them for a second and then in front.
“Sure,” Dongwoo says, though his voice is muffled considerably by his mask. He raises a thumbs-up and Chansik lifts one hand off the handles and cheers.
Chansik looks happier on the bike than Dongwoo has ever felt. It’s an odd kind of accomplishment.
He pedals ahead as Sunwoo and Dongwoo hike along behind. The streets are odd in the falling darkness, the fullness of the night softened with the gathering dust and crumbing buildings. The absolute silence should be unnerving, but the bump of Sunwoo’s shoulder against his own quiets down the inexplicable ache in his skin, metes that aching certainty that there should be more sound amongst the slowly disintegrating houses.
Chansik leads them along passages that Dongwoo vaguely remembers, the click of the bike and the flash of his oxygen tank giving clue to where he’s going to turn next. He’ll disappear for blocks and then reappear around the corner of a building, just the faraway click as he changes gears giving him away moments before he passes by Dongwoo’s shoulder in a rush of wind.
They make their way into the old business district of the city, where tall buildings, thick with glass sides, were abandoned in the rush for safety and left to slowly fall apart. It’s not in Dongwoo’s area, but it’s familiar all the same. The asphalt is near-new under their feet, but the lack of maintenance has sent huge chasms across the surface that Chansik has to jump the bike over.
It’s in the crossroads of four tall buildings that they draw to a stop and Chansik dismounts, engaging the kickstand.. The mirrored sides of the buildings reflect the weak moonlight back on each other, sending odd shadows across the slope of Sunwoo’s face and deepening the dark mass of Chansik’s hair. Sunwoo leans over in the middle of the road and, with Chansik’s help, pulls off the manhole cover and sets it to one side.
Tension flares across the crown of Dongwoo’s head, a mixture of excitement and uncertainty.
Sunwoo goes first, bracing himself over the edge of the hole and then dropping into the complete darkness inside. Alarmed, Dongwoo peers into the tunnel, but there’s nothing to discern, not even the echo of Sunwoo’s landing.
He looks up and Chansik is watching him. Slowly, the man reaches up and presses a finger to the outside of his homemade oxygen mask, indicating quiet. Even through the scratched plastic of his own goggles, his dark eyes compel him, seeming to entreat Dongwoo, demand something. Then he crouches and points out a ladder bolted into the wall.
Should I? Dongwoo wonders, but there’s really no time to decide. He’s here. He grasps the sides of the steel ladder and lowers himself into the darkness.
-
In the tunnel, a presence looms up behind him and grabs his wrist. Dongwoo jerks, feeling his heart leap in his chest in a brief spasm of panic and he thinks, this is it, they’re going to kill me and-and what? Take my bike? but it’s just Sunwoo.
“C’mon, hyung, this way,” he whispers, and though Dongwoo can’t see him, or the tunnel, or anything at all, he follows. He trusted Sunwoo, then. He trusts Sunwoo now.
The only thing he has is Sunwoo’s shoulder under his hand. He wraps his hand around the leather strap of Sunwoo’s backpack, and though he knows he must be digging his knuckles into the soft pad of muscle of Sunwoo’s shoulder, the other man doesn’t say a word.
They travel in the darkness, Sunwoo seeming to lead by memory or special sight or something. Dongwoo holds tight to his friend’s backpack, aware that if he let go, his oxygen would almost certainly run out before he made it back to to the surface.
And then there’s something odd in the air around them. It seems to thicken as they continue on, each turn in the darkness that Sunwoo takes seeming to bring them deeper into it, and it takes Dongwoo a long moment to identify what it is, because it seems so impossible.
Water. There’s water in the air, and it begins to gather on his skin in a thin film. Unlike in Sunwoo and Chansik’s greenhouse, the water is cold, as if at the depths of the sea. With his free hand, Dongwoo reaches out and traces his fingers across the curved wall. The concrete is freezing and all-over damp, until his fingers are dripping with the water.
His skin flares hot with anxiety and then cold again, sending goosebumps across his body. It’s against every principle he learned when first becoming a searcher, to have what must be a huge leak of water go unreported. Resources are already so scarce. There must be a broken pipe, somewhere up above, dripping onto this tunnel.
He’s just about to ask Sunwoo about it, when the tunnel starts to lighten. It’s gradual at first, but then Sunwoo makes a turn and there’s such a bright light ahead that Dongwoo needs to blink several times before he can even focus on what he’s seeing.
It’s a door, a huge lock wheel on the front like on the top of a submarine. A bright red light burns at the top, spreading harsh light over the tunnel immediately in front. Sunwoo strides over and spins the wheel, dragging open the circular door, and they all step inside a tiny room, guarded on the other side by another huge, circular door with a similar wheel lock.
Dongwoo’s senses blare with unease, and he can tell his breath is beginning to shake. So many questions are fighting for prominence in his mind, like where are we, and what’s happening, and his long-ingrained habit of being on the alert for unusual things, are knocking the ground from beneath his feet. Chansik spins the inner wheel lock and the red light above their heads shuts off and the green light next to it lights up.
“Cool,” Sunwoo says, and turns to open the other door.
Chansik presses up along Dongwoo’s back, just the suggestion of warmth on the bare edge of his skin. “They must have approved of you,” Chansik says, and his voice is clear. With one finger, he points over Dongwoo’s shoulder to the slightest blink of a camera in the corner of the airlock.
Dongwoo follows the line of his arm over and is surprised to see that the oxygen mask has been pulled from his face and hangs around his neck.
“You don’t need that anymore,” Chansik says.
This time when he reaches out to unseal the mask, Dongwoo lets him. There’s that moment of shock when it peels off, like he shouldn’t be doing this, but the next sharp inhalation he takes is definitely of oxygen and calms the panic rising in his chest. Chansik lets the mask drop and with his other hand traces a line over the indent it has made in the skin of his cheek.
Dongwoo can’t move, can only focus on the light trace of Chansik’s finger across his face. His breath, so precious, seems caught up in his chest for a burning moment. Chansik is looking up at him, his goggles pushed up into his hair and mask hanging uselessly around his neck, as if waiting for something. As if waiting for Dongwoo to do something. Dongwoo tilts his face into the touch, until Chansik is cupping the curve of his jaw.
Chansik stares at him with those dark eyes, and strokes, very gently, over his cheek. Time draws long in that ache of tension, Dongwoo’s heart beating heavily against his chest, then suddenly snaps up.
“Guys!” Sunwoo yells, ducking back around the open door to peer in at them. His eyes click from Dongwoo’s face to Chansik’s now diverted gaze. An expression flickers across his face, something of consternation or even of anger, before it smooths into his soft features. “Aren’t you coming?” he asks, just the barest edge to his voice.
Chansik ducks through the doorway without looking back at Dongwoo. He seems almost guilty, his shoulders dropped. As he passes Sunwoo, Chansik reaches out and clasps his upper arm for a brief moment, and Sunwoo’s gaze turns to follow him. There’s an expression on his face that Dongwoo can’t read.
Dongwoo feels like he’s listening to an important conversation in another language, one that he can’t possibly understand. For the first time, Dongwoo wonders if the relationship between Chansik and Sunwoo isn’t so simple as “family friends,” as if there’s more that they’re hiding from him.
When Sunwoo looks back at Dongwoo, he seems much his regular self, though there’s a reserve that wasn’t there before.
“Let’s go, hyung,” Sunwoo says, but the enthusiasm that was there before has deflated, slightly.
-
The market is set in a sprawling set of interlinked tunnels all pressed together and culminating in a single central tunnel. Old-style neon lights stack up on the walls and underset halogen lights send odd shadows up and over his friends’ faces as they squeeze through the tight tunnels and shuffle around various stalls.
By far the strangest thing, though, is how many other people are there. There are stall-owners and people of various ages and interests poring through the wares set on the floor or stacked on shelves or spread out over tables. Dongwoo hasn’t seen so many people in- in years. Not all in one place, not all together, talking and laughing and exchanging goods of their own for the stall-owners’ wares.
They press close, the scent of their skin and the lilting cadence of their laughter or bartering pressing in on Dongwoo. It’s almost too much, with the harsh flatness of the halogen lights and the low ceiling of the tunnel, all of the people seeming dangerous, somehow. They’ll get stuck in the close space, Dongwoo will get stuck, with their talk and laughter they’ll use up all of the oxygen being pumped into the enclosed tunnels.
Anxiety crawls over Dongwoo’s skin and tightens his fingers into fists. Sweat begins to prickle over his temples, like he’s too hot, though the tunnels are cool with that damp that coalesces into occasional drops of fat rain. Dongwoo can’t help the way his gaze flickers down the tunnels, not looking at the stalls or the goods, not really, but calculating the exits, how long it would take to get down one, his mask on, out into the relative freedom of the underground network.
And his friends. There’s something sharp in between them now, a tension that even Dongwoo can read, distracted and overwhelmed that he is. They walk side-by-side, but stiff-backed, as if they touch or bend, they’ll admit weakness, fall, break. Dongwoo doesn’t know how to deal with Chansik, doesn’t even really know what’s going on, and Sunwoo is just as bad.
Unchanged though he might have seemed, the years spent apart stretch obviously between Dongwoo and Sunwoo, leaving him unable to fix this. Even in high school, Sunwoo never really got mad. Dongwoo doesn’t even know what went wrong, really, why Sunwoo nor Chansik will look straight at him.
All he has is that niggling thought that Chansik and Sunwoo might be more than they said. He watches as they walk together, making room for the other in an automatic way that belies the years- it must be years- they’ve lived together, around each other. Even angry at each other, they make room.
All he can think of is the way Chansik touched his face, the pads of those soft fingers over the rise of his cheek. The way that Sunwoo looked so- mad? hurt? if only for a moment.
The thought that he may have gotten in the middle of something compounds the anxiety and makes his head spin. There’s nowhere else he can go. He doesn’t think he can even go back to his apartment, now. There would be no explanation that he could give that wouldn’t compromise this, his friends, their secret lives on the edge of whatever society they have left.
Dongwoo can’t go back, not with the risk he’d pose to their security. And if Sunwoo and Chansik won’t let him go with them-
The lights blur in front of his eyes, dangerous, looming, and the breath in his chest lets up. It feels like a vise has tightened around his throat.
No more oxygen- he thinks, wildly, and that deep fear of slow suffocation, death by lack, weakens his knees and sends him crashing into the wall. He can barely brace himself before he’s sliding down, and voices are crowding around him, louder, louder, and then soft, barely there at all. Darkness clouds out the flatness of the light.
I’m dying, he thinks. Mom-
-
He’s not dying. Even through the darkness, he can feel the rise and fall of his chest in breath. He wakes to hands on his face, touching softly at first and then delivering a stinging slap to his ear.
Jerking up, he realizes he’s no longer in the tight, almost claustrophobic market, but near where they first entered the tunnels. His shoulder is squashed up against the cool of the ladder and his oxygen mask is strapped to his face. His stomach roils, clenching tight, and he groans deep in his throat.
Chansik stands up from where he was crouched in front of Dongwoo and says something quietly to Sunwoo, who is looking down at him with worry clear across his face. A handheld light in Chansik’s grip sends faint light over their features.
Dongwoo stares at Sunwoo through his still-wavering vision, guilt pressing a hot hand on his heart. He wants to apologize, but for what?
I’m sorry that your friend, your lover, the only person you have left in this emptying world reached out for me? I’m sorry that I didn’t turn away? I just wanted it to be you, he thinks, trying to keep his gaze on Sunwoo’s clearing face, but the apology wouldn’t be true. Not completely. I used to just want it to be you, but now I want- now I want?
But it’s not allowed, wanting both, even Dongwoo knows that. He watches as Sunwoo crouches down in front of him and presses warm fingers to the sides of his face and then over the rise of his sluggish pulse. A sharp sensation knifes at his stomach, like he’s taken something already and guilt is going to eat him up from the middle, out, unless he confesses.
He should want neither, ask for nothing. Half would be worse than all, and Dongwoo can’t do this. Oxygen is flowing to his lungs but he still feels like he can barely breathe. His chest is too small.
“C’mon, let’s go,” Sunwoo says, and something like a smile crinkles his visible cheeks. He doesn’t sound mad at all, and there’s none of the bitterness of before. Dongwoo doesn’t know how he can do that, switch off whatever anger he has in order to take care of someone else.
With strong hands, he heaves Dongwoo up onto his feet. He waits until Dongwoo can take small, weak steps before directing him up the ladder.
“Don’t worry,” Sunwoo says, hands on his back, as Chansik directs the way with the beam of his flashlight. “We’ll be right behind you.”
Dongwoo starts up with shaking hands, still feeling sick, but knowing that the faster he goes up, the faster they can finish this.
Maybe he can go back to his apartment. Maybe he can think up a convincing lie. Maybe he can do that and still see them, sometimes. Or, if not, maybe he can at least direct any searches away from their sprawling greenhouse, their delicate life they’ve managed to construct at the edge of a breathless world.
But all he can think about with every clanging step is: Both. Neither. Both. Neither. Both.
The top rung sounds with a decisive neither.
-
Sunwoo piles Dongwoo onto the back of the bicycle, balancing him on the seat while he stands on the pedals. Dongwoo holds fast to Sunwoo’s waist as his friend pedals through the still-darkened city, unable to keep track of the passing streets even as his head clears. Wind rushes past his face and spins through his hair, and he tries to think of anything but that last, definite neither. Beyond the dip of the bicycle from side to side and the movement of the muscles under Sunwoo’s shirt, it’s the only clear thought his mind can focus on, however.
By the time they get back to the unfinished apartment block, Dongwoo’s head has stopped spinning and he can stand on largely unshaky legs when Sunwoo pulls to a stop at the base of the stairs.
Sunwoo still wraps one of his arms over his shoulders and starts walking him up the stairs. Dongwoo wants to pull away from the press of Sunwoo but can’t make himself, with the soft curve of his shoulder fitting easily under Dongwoo’s arm.
If I had only said, back in school, Dongwoo thinks dimly. We could have had this, before the world- but it’s a useless thought, wishing different from a disaster that’s already occurred. Angry at himself, he pushes the thought away.
Neither.
Chansik has been left to walk, so it’s just the two of them when they let themselves back into the greenhouse, empty and seeming to wait for them at the top of the apartment block.
In the weak moonlight, the plants loom eerily over the center path. As Dongwoo follows Sunwoo through the twisting plants, he can feel their leaves reaching out for him, brushing over the crown of his head and tapping at his ankles. He can’t tell if they’re welcoming him back or acting as a warning, trying to tell him to stop, that he’s making a mistake. It’s almost too late, now.
The warm smell of the earth comforts him through his growing unease. Every breath tinted with it makes Dongwoo feel safe, as if he’s finally in a world that can breathe again, as if he’s finally found a kind of life he’d forgotten about the past five years. Dongwoo watches as Sunwoo’s dark head disappears around the stretch of a palm leaf and deeper into the greenhouse. Sunwoo has said nothing since they got back, neither told him to stay nor told him to go, and his silence is almost worse than a rebuke.
The thought that he’ll have to give this up crushes at his heart. Now that he knows this exists, he can’t-
The plants open up to reveal a small living area in the center of a large ring of bushes. There’s a large mattress, maybe queen-sized, covered in a messy arrangement of pillows and faded colored sheets.
Sunwoo stops and turns around. Some sort of soft kindness pulls at his dark eyes, and the shadows gathered around them draw the lines deeper in his face.
Tell me to go, Dongwoo thinks, even as his heart desperately cries the opposite. He wants to reach out and pull Sunwoo to him in that dark curve of plants, of verdant life, hold him to his chest. He wants to feel the pulse of Sunwoo’s breath over the rise of his neck, wants those warm, rough hands to press into his sides and give him a solidity Dongwoo has lacked since they parted.
Would Sunwoo be soft against him, warm skin on skin, or would he push back more solidly when Dongwoo leaned in to kiss him? Would he dig his fingers into Dongwoo’s hips, soft and then more sharply, like Chansik might?
Dongwoo wants both, sharp and soft, pushing and pulling at him, and he knows he’ll get neither, because he doesn’t belong in a pair. He needs to leave, but he’s rooted to the ground.
Sunwoo reaches out for him, curling one warm hand around until his fingers press, blunt, across the rising knobs of Dongwoo’s spine. Heat surges through Dongwoo from the point of contact, because the grip is leading, somehow, telling. Stay, it says. He reaches up and cups the hand with his own, unable to speak.
“Let’s go to bed,” Sunwoo says, soft, in the dark, like he knows. Both, and Dongwoo’s heart skips. “We’ll talk tomorrow,” he promises. He’s not asking Dongwoo to leave, and for now, that’s enough.
When they curl up on the bed, Sunwoo slips an arm over Dongwoo’s waist and his hand presses comfort into Dongwoo’s skin. Stay.
Chansik comes in later, quiet in the dark. He smells like the outside world, dusty and crowded with a scent like talcum powder, minerals against his skin. He slips onto the bed next to Dongwoo, who can barely stir, and their knees brush against each other.
Even at the edge of sleep, Dongwoo can feel the light brush of Chansik’s fingers through his hair, just for a moment. The air smells like earth and the slight salt of human skin, breath. Life.
END