Drabble Series: The Three Hardest Things to Say-"I Love you"
"I Love You"
Genre: Angst
Pairing: Woohyun/Sunggyu
Warnings: Character Death, MalexMale
Disclaimer: I don't own the boys... Not even a little bit...
Summary: Woohyun doesn't understand how sorrow can be sweet when partings feel like a thousand knives carving into him.
A/N: This is one of three drabbles that I'm posting with the theme "the three hardest things to say". I got inspired by someone's status on Facebook (first time this has ever happened to me... Apparently Facebook actually has occasionally relevant things!) so I got this idea and decided to run with it. It's a lot shorter than most things I ever write so it's a challenge. But huzzah, I wrote something that isn't twenty pages long! Great success!
"Did you know that the three hardest things to say are "I love you", "I'm sorry", and "Help me"?
“I Love You”
The clock strikes 1:34 when Woohyun comes rushing into the hospital, tie flapping behind him. He nearly bumps into a few nurses who shoot him dirty looks, but he runs right by them. Normally he would stop and apologize, but today was anything but normal.
It takes him less than two minutes to locate the room he’s gone to so many times before. He enters in a frenzy, slamming the door open and surprising the doctor and nurses inside. Woohyun is pretty sure he looks like a lunatic right now, but the doctor only gives him a sympathetic look before shaking his head. That’s all it takes for his throat to constrict with the threat of sobs.
In thirty seconds the room clears, leaving him, the frail body in the bed, and the weak beeping of the heart monitor. He doesn’t know if he has the strength to keep himself together, but he begs his body to move forward and settle itself by the bed. He sits down in the chair that’s become a second home to him and takes the hand that he can’t imagine life without.
“I came as soon as I heard,” Woohyun whispers. His eyes roam over small eyes and caramel hair, trying to freeze the image in his mind. The smile he receives is small and sad, and it breaks Woohyun’s heart into pieces.
“You shouldn’t have come.”
Woohyun clenches the palm trapped within his fingers even tighter.
“Did you expect me not to?”
“No, but you shouldn’t have.”
“Sunggyu-“
“Why are you doing this to yourself?”
Woohyun remembers when he first met Sunggyu in a cramped corner of the school library. Sunggyu had been hiding from the rest of the world with a book on music theory, and Woohyun had been the lucky one to trip over Sunggyu’s outstretched legs and fall on top of him. Back then Sunggyu’s face had been all chubby cheeks and sharp eyes that intimidated most people, but they’d been softened by apology and worry for the man who’d made the mistake of wandering too close to him. Now, Sunggyu still has the same eyes, but his face had long since lost the fat and healthy glow Woohyun remembered.
“Because I love you.”
Sunggyu sighs, tilting his neck away from Woohyun, coughs catching his throat. Woohyun wants desperately to do something, anything to take away the sickness in the other’s veins, but he can’t.
He can’t, and it kills him.
“What’s the use in loving a sick person?”
“Don’t talk that way.”
“It’s true, isn’t it?”
The silence is oppressive, and Woohyun wonders which of the two of them is having a harder time breathing.
“They told you, didn’t they? That it didn’t work.” Sunggyu turns his head back to face Woohyun again. His eyebrows twitch with the pain of the movement.
“That’s why I came as fast as I could.”
“Don’t put off your work. It’s important.”
Woohyun wants to yell that Sunggyu is so much more important than the salary he earns and the office work he does, but one look and Woohyun’s nodding his head.
“I won’t do it next time.”
If there is a next time…
“You’d better not,” Sunggyu barely gasps out. The beeping of the heart monitor becomes erratic and weak. Woohyun automatically lifts himself out of the chair and sits on the edge of the hospital bed.
“Pull me up, will you?”
Woohyun snorts; Sunggyu is just as bossy as he’s always been. He places his hands under his shoulder blades, the other going to support his waist. Sunggyu gasps with the effort he puts into getting up. He has to hold onto Woohyun to prevent himself from falling backwards. Woohyun can feel the puffs of air against his neck, and it relieves him.
“Woohyun.”
His name makes him look up. Sunggyu’s wearing the most conflicted look Woohyun has ever seen on his face. He idly laces the fingers of Sunggyu’s hand with his own, watching the way they fit like they were made for each other. He hears Sunggyu’s breathing hitch and locks gazes with him. He knows Sunggyu is trying desperately to stay in control of himself the way he’d always done. He reaches to pull Sunggyu closer until their bodies fit they way their hands do.
“You’ve always had to do things on your own, haven’t you?”
The only response he gets is a shuddering breath. Woohyun bites his lower lip, but it’s no use. The tears are trickling out in the same frustrating way a leaky faucet doesn’t stop dripping water. He grasps the back of Sunggyu’s hospital gown, blanching at the fact that he can feel bones under his hands. It’s proof that Sunggyu is withering away and withering away and withering away…
“Am I allowed to be selfish, Woohyun? Can I be selfish… just this once?” Sunggyu asks. Woohyun wants to say yes, yes, yes, a million times yes, just don’t leave, don’t go…
Instead Woohyun doesn’t say anything. He only holds Sunggyu tighter, dampening the wretched hospital gown with his tears.
“I want you to know that I don’t regret anything. I don’t regret meeting you, and I don’t regret going out with you. The only thing I wish I could change is the fact that I was such a damn coward when it came to you…”
Sunggyu stops talking to cough, and Woohyun looks back to see there is blood on his hand.
“Sunggyu stop-“
“No, I need to say this. I know it’s horrible of me to say this right now, but I need you to know that even if I couldn’t say it before I cherished every moment we spent together, and I.. I…” Sunggyu takes a deep breath. “I really do love you so, so much that I can barely stand it. And I shouldn’t say this because I’m not going to be here, and I want you to be happy, but I want nothing more than for you to know how much I love you, even though I couldn’t say it earlier.”
Sunggyu’s breathing comes out in gasps, air rushing in and rushing out in a marathon that can’t be won. Woohyun pulls back to look at him and take in all the contours and edges that make up Sunggyu. He wants to trace the dips and bumps of his face, but he doesn't in fear that at any moment Sunggyu could disappear. The heart monitor is a constant reminder of that fact, its rapid tone permeating the room.
Sunggyu reaches for Woohyun’s face instead, bony fingers tracing his cheekbones and lips. He pulls him forward to kiss him chastely, pouring everything he feels into Woohyun until he can barely stand it. He grips Sunggyu’s unhealthily thin forearms in an attempt to keep them glued together but they inevitably separate.
“Promise me you’ll be happy?”
Woohyun watches the way Sunggyu looks so desperate, as though he’s trying his best to hold on to the last threads of life, but that thought almost brings Woohyun to a sobbing mess. He swallows and nods, not sure if he’s lying or not.
“You have to be happy enough for the both of us. You have to.”
That does it. Woohyun breathes a gasping sob, crushing Sunggyu so tight against him he has to wonder it he broke any of his bones. He melds them together, hoping desperately that they can somehow mix together in a mess of one human being.
At 2:02 Kim Sunggyu passes away in Woohyun’s arms, taking a part of his heart with him.
At 2:03 three doctors and five nurses have to pry away Woohyun screaming from Sunggyu’s lifeless body.
At 2:05 Woohyun feels dead inside, and he’s not sure if he can keep his promise.