Between Spring and Summer
Between Spring and Summer
Pairing: OnKey / OnTae
Rating: PG-13
Words: 3k~
“How was class?” he plays with the food on his plate, cutting his meat to even smaller pieces and even smaller. He knows he isn’t going to eat it, but he tries and he tries so hard to imagine the piece of it going into his mouth and him chewing it. Just thinking about it makes him sick, so he places down his eating utensils and looks up at the other.
“You know the same stuff really, nothing different.” And no, Kibum doesn’t know what the same stuff is because the last time he checked, he and Jinki were both majoring in two totally different things, so what exactly was the “same stuff, nothing different”? He was quite curious.
He pushed his plate back towards the small vase on the table and he waits for more, he waits for Jinki to elaborate on what the same stuff was, what really wasn’t different because he knows, Kibum finally knows and he wonders why he was so oblivious to the fact. How could his senses have become so dull over the past year or so? He wonders a lot, especially now when sitting across from the culprit
. “What?” he is clueless, or maybe he is pretending to be as he chews his food slowly while still looking at Kibum. His hair is in a clip, holding it back and his sweater is clinging to him, keeping his warmth and his secrets within the pores of his body so they don’t seep out but it really isn’t working.
Kibum glances down at his fingers nail, chuckling to himself. It is somewhat eerie, and bone-chilling at that. Jinki stops chewing at this point and places down everything. He pushes the strands of hair out of his face and he sits in silence.
Kibum isn’t the type of partner who you would watch about on your typical life time movie. He isn’t going to put up a fight, he isn’t going to scream and he isn’t going to beg. He isn’t going to pull out Jinki’s phone bill or who he recently has been texting for the past month. Kibum has more important things to do than do that, he has a life. Kibum is careful about how is going to ask his next question. Dinner definitely has been interesting to say the least. Well, it has been but not in the way that it should be. So without holding back, he asks:
“Is he prettier than me?” his voice is a little shaky and he isn’t sure if he can keep up this cool and calm façade up. He doesn’t have to really because after that, Jinki sobers up from his cluelessness. That smile, it comes off his face faster than ever. That innocent glint in his eyes, that is filled with honesty falls into pieces.
“How old is he? I know you like young and pretty boys. Is he smart? I hope he is.” He rambles on and he doesn’t notice Jinki no longer looking at him because right now, he doesn’t feel like he even has the right to look at the younger, to even look in his eyes.
“It is kind of funny, Jonghyun always said that no one could tie me down and I would get bored quickly.” Kibum let out a bitter chuckle after that because he really thought about he, he really did seem like that. He was naïve and he didn’t have patience for much. He just wasn’t the type of person to stay in a place longer than he felt he needed to be until his wanderlust (when it came to relationships) got the best of him and he moved onto his next toy. But it wasn’t that case this time.
“Is he prettier than me?” He asks again.
“No.” He finally answers, the guilt washing over him, hitting him like a tidal wave and knocking out everything that he thought was right about this in the first place.
Kibum gets up and goes over to get his cardigan, wrapping it around his thin frame. He sits back down and smiles sadly at the other.
“How long?”
“A month.” Jinki answers honestly. He waits a little as he watches Kibum move around, getting his plate and cleaning it off into the trash, tidying up the kitchen and doing the dishes in silence. He wonders if he should explain himself now, would it even make a difference, would it even heal the wounds that he has caused. Or maybe would he just add more salt to it because he wants to be that Band-Aid but he has failed. Not only as a friend but as his lover.
He watches as Kibum goes to the door. “Wait…where are you going?” he looks at the clock above the tv. “It is 12, everything is closed.” Kibum fixes his cardigan and he pauses for a minute. He looks around the shared apartment and how clean and simple it is and he wonders, should he even come back to this?
“I’ll be back.” He issues a broken promise and he goes out into the night, silently praying to himself that something awful happens to him so the heartbreak, the pain doesn’t creep up onto him like an unstoppable force.
That night, Kibum doesn’t come back.
The first time he faints, he thinks nothing of it. It is during his art course class. He is supposed to be sculpting what he loathes the most. It is weird because he doesn’t know whether to sculpt Jinki or his other lover. He thinks that maybe he should sculpt the boy and his pretty features. He begins with the head, and he goes from there but then he stops abruptly.
He has no idea what he looks like.
Jinki never mentioned a name, he never saw him or meet him. His eyes are suddenly wet with disappear and fear that all the pain is coming back into his heart because he has been fine for months. Moved into a different apartment, on his own and everything is new. He has to get use to the feeling of no one warming him up on really called days or reminding him that it is really hot and for him to take off some of his clothes so he can stop sweating so much.
He sort of loses himself within it all and he wishes to get it back.
When he faints, it is far from those clichéd angelic ones you see on a movie. He feels like his heart is freezing, and it keeps stopping and suddenly he hits his head on the edge of the stand. Everything is black and everything is silent.
When the doctor comes into his room in the hospital, he isn’t the least bit surprised to hear what the doctor has to say.
“Doctor Choi.” He confirms, nods slightly and he traces the bandages around his head and he can feel some of the blood. He is tall and his jawline is strong and serious, full of tension and nothing good to say. He is handsome and Kibum thinks that maybe if he didn’t look so bad and useless in the hospital bed, he’d ask Doctor Choi for his number.
“Nothing good, I will say.” The doctor says hesitantly. Kibum chuckles, a man that gets straight to the point is a man that he finds extremely attractive.
“What is it?”
As the doctor begins to elaborate on the situation, he tunes a lot of it out and he doesn’t really catch all of it except for the part where he is supposed to be dead within 5 months. The hospital’s top notch doctors are baffled by this unexplainable disease from an unknown origin. All he really knows is that he is slowly losing his strength and his balance is getting all out of sorts and soon he will be really ill, to the point where he can’t live.
This news isn’t really new to him. The day he walked out of his shared apartment with his former lover was when he truly died.
The second time he passes out, he is home and it just so happens that his friend Jonghyun was stopping by to bring some assignments from his courses. Word around campus is that it is really hard for him to move around and be around a lot of people. It is true, it definitely isn’t a lie and he has really let himself go. His eyes always seem to be red like he is crying and they are always wet, glassy and empty.
He is thinner than usual and he really hasn’t had the time to eat (he makes himself believe that). Between working half time and going to school at what use to seem like full time, it gets hard to focus on more than one thing for him when he has something eating away at his insides. Something eating away at who he is and what he would like to stand for.
He doesn’t remember much but the faint screaming of Jonghyun as he dropped some bags and ran over to Kibum who was sprawled out on the kitchen floor this time.
This time is going to be his last time he faints.
Four months have passed and he is in the hospital. He has a roommate now. It is much more comforting then being alone in a room, where everything is dull and depressing. His life is depressing enough; he needs a little bit more sparkle. A little bit more pizazz in his life and his roommate gives that.
Taemin is his name and he is 17 and still in high school. He is really pretty. Prettier than most boys Kibum has ever seen and has ever dated. His hair is long and back in a low ponytail most of the time. His smile is bright and his teeth are white as snow. His lips are full and his eyes shine brighter than the sun. He has this little gleam of hope in his eyes that you can always feel and see. It radiates off of him.
Taemin has never told Kibum why he is in here and how long he has been here and Kibum has never asked.
“Hyung, smile.” It is the most sincere when it comes from him. Kibum looks at him like something has hit him in the face, like something really disturbing has come to his view.
Kibum doesn’t remember the last time he has smiled and when he tries, it kind of hurts and he feels really weird.
Taemin chuckles. “Not like that hyung, like this.” He says softly and shows him. He gives him this big toothy smile that could blind someone.
“You’re pretty optimistic for a kid who seems to have been in here for a while.” Kibum says cautiously.
“Well, I mean…I have to, y’know? I have someone waiting for me to come out.”
“Who?”
“Someone special.” And it lingers in Kibum’s mind for a while. Someone special, someone to have and to hold, someone to call your own. He doesn’t really remember what that is like. It has been awhile.
Taemin sits up on the bed and turns off the tv from non-sense gag show and his legs hover or the edge of the bed. He stares at Kibum long and hard.
“Do you have someone special?”
“Do I have someone special?” Kibum repeats.
“Yeah..someone you truly love. Someone that you would do anything for. You would cross any ocean for them. You’d swim the English channel and come all the way back. You’d give a lung to them. Just anything to be with them.” Taemin laughs at himself, covering his mouth slightly and Kibum cannot help but smile, struggling to sit up some on the hospital bed. “Sounds silly, doesn’t it?”
Kibum shakes his head. “No..it doesn’t sound silly it all. It sounds rather nice.” Because in truth, it does.
Their conversation is cut short when the nurse comes in to let them know that Taemin has a visitor. It is Thursday today. It isn’t surprising, Taemin always has a visitor around this time but Kibum is usually out of the room with a doctor, running some tests or around and about the hospital with the help of Nurse Jessica.
“you’ll meet him today.” Taemin simply says as he gets up going to the door and he waits. He waits until he seems the older male coming his way. He doesn’t know whether he should act shy or give him the biggest hug his little body could handle. He goes with the shy act.
Kibum is playing with his phone, texting with Jonghyun. He is explaining about his last sexual endeavor with this girl named Ji Eun. Sweet and innocent, just the way he likes him and the way he would prefer them so he could taint them. He chuckles at his best friend’s text to him. He never was really interested in Jonghyun’s sexual rendezvous but when you are close to dying; you sometimes start to care a little bit more.
When Jinki steps into the room, he was the last person on Kibum’s mind who would be the younger’s special someone. Kibum is wondering why God hates him, to bring this pain back to him and everything. Maybe this is God saying that he should have gone back and fixed everything.
Jinki doesn’t really notice him yet because he is too busy greeting Taemin and trying to pry the younger off of him so he can sit and relax and bond like they usually do. If he could, he would come all the time, but due to conflict in schedules he is only available on Thursdays.
“hyung, this is…” Taemin is cut off by a wavering voice.
“Kibum….” Jinki whispers brokenly, shock written all over his face. Kibum looks up at him giving a sad smile and with all the strength in him and he gives a small little wave. What does he have more to say? He is lying in his death bed.
Later on that day, Taemin leaves Jinki to talk to Kibum. Jinki and Kibum don’t ask but it is funny how someone at Taemin’s age can figure out that there is some unfinished business. So Taemin goes to hang out with a friend of his named Taesun down the hall.
Jinki is sitting on Taemin’s bed, looking down at his hands and he is speechless. What do you really say and how do you say? So he tries to go with the flow without putting too much pressure on certain spots in the conversation.
“How long have you been here?”
“3 months.” Kibum answers slowly, looking from his phone over to Jinki. Jinki wants to cry out , how come he didn’t know about this?
“What happened?” Kibum isn’t sure if he is ready to tell him but he thinks it is the best time because he only has about 4 weeks left and there really isn’t any point in keeping secrets.
“Two days before I left…you know that doctor’s appointment I had? Well, I had been feeling sick for months but I never said anything. So I went to the doctor and they told me something.” He tries to sit up a little bit but even such a small task seems so big for him. When Jinki gets up to help him, Kibum shrugs him away and he painfully sits up some more.
“The Doctor said that something was happening and they weren’t going to be able to figure what was going on. He said it was kind of harmless.” He let out a bitter laugh. “But as you can see, it is causing a lot of harm right now.” Jinki just sits and listens. He takes the entire information in.
“I have four weeks left.”
“Just four?”
Kibum nods and stares straight ahead. “Just four.” He says in English.
Everyone is on their toes in the last month. Taemin tries to be careful when speaking about his special someone around Kibum. He never confronts Taemin about it but Taemin kind of gets the hidden messages, he reads between the solid and thick black lines that Kibum thinks no one can get through.
Believe it or not, Kibum becomes closer and closer with Jinki. Taemin is okay with those last 20 minutes of his time with Jinki going to Kibum. He knows his hyung really needs it. He never asks what happens and to be honest, he really doesn’t care. Not because he really just doesn’t care because he rather see a small smile claim Kibum’s beautiful lips.
It isn’t really that cold in the room but Kibum is freezing. “is that him?”
Jinki clears his throat and looks away. “Yeah it is.”
“You lied to me. You said he wasn’t prettier than me.” It even hurts to laugh now. Jinki gives a nervous chuckle just to show that he isn’t worrying because he knows just how much Kibum hates it.
“You know... When all that happened, while I was in art class, the teacher said to sculpt something that you hate the most. I was thinking of sculpting you or him. But at the time, I had no idea who he looked like. You never gave me a name or anything. It’s funny, I still kind of want to sculpt out Taemin now. But not out of hate, but out of love because I know why you love him. I know what you see in him.”
That is what breaks Jinki down, he is a mess. That is when the damn breaks, the tears fall freely and he is suddenly at the edge of the bed on Kibum’s side, holding his fragile hand.
“I didn’t mean to.” He pleads, over and over and over again to Kibum hoping that he will get it. Hoping that he’d still understand.
“You can’t help who you fall for.” Kibum reassures him.
And he is definitely right. You can hopelessly be with someone for four years and you fall for someone else. It just happens. It just does because there is this unstoppable force that pulls you toward someone else and you can’t stop it. You aren’t in control. You never were.
The next morning, Kibum never wakes up to the kiss of the sun.
A/N: The whole entire time I wrote this, Between Spring and Summer by Park Jiyoon was one repeat. It is Key's favorite song. I hope you have liked it~