Boundary Dreamers [1/2]
Title: Boundary Dreamers
Pairing: Kihae, Slight!Eunhae
Rating: PG-13
Genre: angst
Warnings: Character Death
Prompt: I don't want to forget about you (but I have no choice)
Summary: In the boundary where Life would mean forgetting and Death: letting go, Kibum meets Donghae, and together, they try to hold on.
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"Let me die the moment my love dies.
Let me not outlive my own capacity to love.
Let me die still loving, and so, never die."
- Mary Zimmerman (Metamorphoses: A Play)
----------------------------------------
Kibum opens his eyes to see light. A white blinding light which should have scorched his corneas on any regular circumstance, but didn't, and instead filled him warm comforting feeling that made him want to close his eyes and sleep once more.
He blinked.
"Where am I?"
He asks wonderingly to no one in particular as he took stock of the fact that he was lying on something both soft and prickly and it tickled him behind the ears. His heart jumps to his throat when a voice answers his question.
"I don't know."
A grinning boy pops into his line of vision and Kibum sits up with a start.
The boy, Kibum noticed, was wearing a white flowing shirt and loose pants that didn't quite reach his ankles. He was also barefoot.
Kibum narrowed his eyes and notices that he was wearing something quite similar.
"How can you not know?" he demands, irritated and confused.
The boy shrugs and then grins even wider.
"Nobody does."
-------------------------
The boy, Kibum later learns, is named Donghae, and he's been here for quite sometime.
"What do you mean you don't remember?" he asks as his fingers absentmindedly twiddled with the grass by his feet, the only other existing thing in this landscape besides the white comforting light which seemed to come from nowhere and everywhere at once.
"Earth." Donghae states matter-of-factly. as he lay propped up on his elbows with his feet waving in the air, he stares up at Kibum with unabashed curiosity, "I don't remember what it's like and I've been here forever." he draws out the last word like a kid would and then smiles encouragingly up at Kibum with his eyes sparkling as if he expected the other boy to tell him a long tale about what the earth was like.
"Forever?" he pokes the other boy lightly and the smaller boy giggles before rolling away and then pushing himself off the ground with blades of grass stuck in his hair.
Kibum reaches over to pluck them off but Donghae waves the others hands away and then shakes his head like a wet dog would to get the water out of his fur.
Kibum frowns at him and the other only smiles toothily back. He couldn't deny that the other boys method was faster though.
"Forever." Donghae agrees.
------------------------------
"So what do you do here?" Kibum asks Donghae a little bit later (he isn't sure when that little bit later is, the light never did fade and nothing else seemed to change.) as they're wandering aimlessly over the bare landscape, side by side.
"Wait." the other answers quite casually and Kibum raises his eyebrow at him.
"For what?" he asks.
Donghae stops walking and turns to him, spreading his arms as he did so and Kibums eyes widens as the winds suddenly picks up, and the grass gets pulled out of their roots and they flew in spirals around the smaller boy who had his eyes closed as his hair whipped around his face and Kibum has to cover his face with his arms to avoid getting hit by any of the flying debris (grass).
"Change." Donghae says quietly.
And then he brings his arms back down to his sides and it was over as soon as it had begun and it was only two boys on a blank landscape with not a whisper of the wind to be heard.
"Huh."
Kibum says nonchalantly eyes wide and mouth still hanging slightly open, he shrugs stoically, and promptly faints into Donghae's arms.
----------------------------
Kibum was falling.
The wind roars in his ears as he shot headfirst downward into what seemed to be an infinity of darkness and he shuts his eyes and yelled with all his might in protest for the impending impact.
But it never comes.
Kibum opens his eyes to find himself floating, there was nothing around him but that same inky black that he feared that he might be blind.
"Donghae-shi?" he calls out nervously. He tries to move but finds that there is something keeping his limbs stuck to his sides. He tries to look down to see what it was but he finds that he cannot move his head either. He panics and he screams and he tries to fight against the forces holding him down but it is to no avail.
"Donghae!!!!!" he yells again, eyes frantically darting left and right hoping to see something, anything but the never-ending darkness. "Donghae!!!""
And then he freezes because he hears something. A whisper from far away, and it was so soft that he almost doesn't hear it but then it was there. He gulps and relaxes slowly, ears perked up to listen and then it was only his ragged breaths that was heard and he waits hopefully for it to come again.
And it does come again, faintly and not so clear, as if it was coming from a cellphone with bad reception but Kibum knew what he had heard, somebody was calling his name, and that person was definitely not Donghae.
"...mom?"
----------------------
Kibum opens his eyes to twinkling eyes, a small smile and delicate hands running through his hair and the surface his head is on is both soft yet firm and comfortably warm.
"What happened?" he asks Donghae, sitting up and shuddering as he remembered darkness and falling.
"You went away for a while..." Donghae tells him, a small smile playing around his lips and Kibum thought his eyes were bright, too bright, but then Donghae blinks and then Kibum forgets what he saw.
"Away?" Kibum asks wonderingly as Donghae stands up and helps Kibum to his feet as well. "What do you mean away? Where did i go?"
Donghae shrugs and for once, there is no smile to come with his answer.
"I don't know, Kibum-shi." he looks away and then looks back up at him and Kibum somehow feels sad even when there was no reason to be.
"I've never been there."
------------------------
It's a few days later (though Kibum really isn't so sure) when something out of the ordinary happens again and it takes Kibum so much my surprise that he accidentally hits Donghae in the eye as he shoots up from the grass and Donghae pouts up at him with one hand pressed against the injured eye but Kibum has no time to say sorry because he's too captivated by the sudden appearance of another unconscious boy sprawled in the grass and he's dressed just like them but the clothes seem to large on his frail frame.
"Where'd he come from?" he whispers to Donghae, never taking his eyes away from the sleeping boys fragile yet beautiful features.
"The same place where you came from." Donghae answers, his voice also leveled down into a whisper. Kibum accepts his answer and together the two of them inch closer to the prone form on the ground.
Abruptly, the boy's eyes flutter open and his big brown eyes stare wonderingly up at the nonexistent sky.
"Where am I?" he whispers quietly in a voice as delicate as the rest of him, and Kibum has to bite back his grin at the strange sense of deja vu he felt.
"We don't know." Kibum answers as he exchanges amused glances with Donghae. "Nobody does."
The boy looks up at the both of them in surprise and blinks.
"Who are you?"
"I'm Donghae!" Donghae chirps up happily and then throws his arm over Kibums shoulders to bring him close. "and this is Kibum." Kibum smiles and waves weakly.
"Hello. It's nice to meet you." the small boy greets them, smiling softly. He looks up at them through his long eyelashes and Kibum could practically feel his heart melt. He offers out his hand for the small boy to take and he smiles gratefully up at him.
"Thank you." he says, and he slides his small hands into Kibums (it's all warmth and softness and fragility that makes Kibums heart stop) and Kibum leans back so he could pull him up but then there's a sudden burst of wind and the warmth disappears and he falls unto his bum with an 'oof'.
"What happened?" Kibum asks Donghae as the other boy helps him up and he gawps openly at seemingly untouched grass. "Where did he go?"
"Back." Donghae explained, and then he grabs Kibums hand and they stroll away lightly like nothing had even happened. Kibum is dazed and he just keeps looking back at where the small boy was just a few seconds ago.
It takes a while before Donghae finally notices and he turns back to face Kibum again, a half-pout on his face.
"You shouldn't worry about him." he half-whined, attempting to reassure the taller boy.
"Ryeowook always comes back."
----------------------
"Donghae-shi?"
"Hmmm?" Donghae hums melodically (and Kibum couldn't help but wish that he'd hear the smaller boy sing to him someday) not looking up from the necklace he was weaving out of the tall grasses around him, childishly absorbed in his work.
"If Ryeowook-shi has been here before...how come he didn't know who you were?" he asks as he fiddled with his own grass necklace, it was a question that had bugged him since the 'visit' as Donghae liked to call it.
"He forgot." Donghae answers airily, too airily to be real. Kibum narrows his eyes. "Everybody does..."
"You mean when they leave...?" Kibum trails off, unwilling to even consider the possibility that-
"People aren't supposed to remember this place, Kibum-shi." Donghae tears out another blade of grass from the ground and he knots it into the necklace, eyes keen and eyebrows creased. Kibum watches him with emotionless eyes.
"But i left didn't I?" Kibum says, settling his grass necklace aside and scooting closer to Donghae. The silence of the normally hyper guy disturbing him greatly. "For a while...but I didn't forget."
Kibum prods Donghae on the side and the other jumps and drops the necklace that he was painstakingly making and his head shoots up to glare at Kibum. He almost grins, but then he notices that Donghae's eyes are way too bright again and his heart sinks just a little bit deep inside.
"You will." Donghae tells him with conviction, and it's enough to have Kibum breathless once again.
"You will forget."
Kibum made to shake his head to protest but then, suddenly, something gives way beneath him and the next thing he knows is falling.
and then there was darkness.
---------------------------
Kibum once again finds himself hovering above a dark chasm, but something was different, and he couldn't quite put a finger on what it was.
"Kibummm.....Kibummmmm...." his eyes snap up and he tries to move his head to see where the voice was coming from but something was still keeping his head in place and he gives up struggling as soon as he began, his shoulders sinking down as he squeezes his eyes shut to prevent the moisture in them from falling.
"Mom?" he breathes out shakily. Eyes still squished shut.
"Kibum wake up!!! Kibum please..." His moms voice comes again and this time it fluctuates in volume and tone and Kibum has a hard time understanding what she was saying around her loud sobs.
"Mom I'm right here." He says, voice a bit stronger, he opens his eyes and looks up, squinting.
"Kibum.....going to cut....please.....hear me?" the voice comes again, seemingly not hearing anything of what Kibum was saying and some parts of her speech were beginning to buzz out to intelligibleness, but Kibum could hear her burgeoning hysteria in her voice and it creeps down unto him and he began to fight against his invisible ropes again.
""Mom? Mom! I can hear you!! Mom where are you?!!" he cries, trying and failing to wiggle his toes.
He expects his mom to answer again but the voice that followed made his blood run cold.
.".....Kim Kibum"
"Dad?" he whispere unbelievingly, and he stops struggling for a brief moment before it sinks into him that his Father really was somewhere talking to him and he knew he had to answer back. He begins struggling again with renewed vigor.
"DAD I"M HERE!!!" he yells, at the pitch black sky, registering for a moment that there was a slight tinge of red there before he blacks out again out of exhaustion.
...Wake up...
---------------------
Chirping birds.
That was the first thing that Kibum hears as he opens his eyes once again to the bright light and shifting grass that was the 'horizon' as Kibum liked to call it, because all that he saw when he was there. He shifts to support his weight on his elbows and looks around to scan over the landscape searching for the only other living person living here and he finds the boy with his back against him.
"Donghae...?" he calls out as he scrambles on his feet, and Donghae turns around just in time for Kibum to see something brilliantly blue in the blank white sky burn hot white and fizzle out behind him.
The chirping of the birds sputter to a halt.
."Hello!" Donghae greets him happily, head tilting to the side as he grinned. He spreads his arms wide so that Kibum could run into his arms and Kibum complies, burying his nose into the smaller boys neck.
"What was that behind you a while ago, Donghae?" Kibum asks later, after he'd pulled away and they were both lounging in the grass once again.
"Oh that?" Donghae says as he played with the tips of Kibums fingers. "Well, Ryeowook just left."
Kibum blinks and cocks his head in confusion.
"There wasn't any blue light when he left last time..."
"That's because last time he only went back." Donghae explains as he places Kibums palm against his and smiles slightly at how much longer Kibums fingers are than his own. "This time he moved on."
"Oh." Kibum says, slowly digesting the true meaning behind Donghae's words.
"So he isn't coming back?" Kibum probes quietly, conscious of how Donghae's eyes were glued resolutely to the ground.
"No."
Kibum chooses to ignore the way Donghae's voice broke and instead pulls the smaller boy gently towards him and allows him to rest against his chest. Donghae doesn't cry, instead he buries his nose into Kibums shirt as he closes his eyes and breathes, he just breathes, and the small smile on his face doesn't disappear.
"I won't do that to you." Kibum tells the smaller boy, heart constricting at the complete loneliness he felt radiating from the body lying against his.
"Thank you."
----------------------------------
Open your eyes Kibum.....
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"Kibum?" Donghae calls out, tugging lightly at a stray lock of Kibums hair that stood up from the rest.
"Ne~?" Kibum smiles over at him and pulls Donghae's hands out of his hair and he traps the appendage down with his own in the grass.
"Can i call you Bummie?" Donghae asks and he looks down at his knuckles and Kibum stares.
"Bummie?" Kibum repeats, wide-eyed, and Donghae turns red.
"Well, Kibum is too common you know. Anybody can be called Kibum and-" Donghae begins blabbering and Kibum couldn't help but smile softly at him.
"I like it." he announces, before he lays his head back down on the grass.
"..what?" Donghae blinks several times.
"I like it." Kibum says again, and he pulls Donghae's hand closer to himself, not too close, but close enough. He doesn't open his eyes when he speaks again.
"I like it very much...Hae...."
And maybe their hands tighten just a little bit at that moment, but then again...maybe not.
------------------------------
Time passes and neither of them notice it. Kibum hasn't left again for quite some time and he doesn't know whether this is good or bad, but then sometimes Donghae smiles up at him and he decides that it must be good because seeing that smile must be enough to make up for anything.
They get visitors sometimes, some of those disappear as quickly as they come, others, like one Lee Sungmin, had stayed with them for quite some time before he'd disappeared with a sudden rustling of the wind when they'd been wrestling on the ground. Donghae had smiled when this had happened, stating that the small boy had finally awoken and Kibum had understood and hugged Donghae anyway because he knew the other needed it.
Yet others still, unlike Sungmin who had gone the same way that he had arrived, leave through the blue tear in the sky, and Kibum carries Donghae when this happens, because the other boy trembles even though he smiles and Kibum just can't stand watching him like that, so fragile and yet so unbelievably strong.
"My father left through one of those." Donghae tells him one day as they wave one Kim Youngwoon goodbye, and Kibum looks up in concern to find Donghae smiling sadly up at the whiteness that was their sky.
"We were in a car accident." Donghae tells him, and Kibum squeezes Donghae's hand, a split-second of reassurance. "I was 11."
Kibum frowns.
"How old are you now, Hae?" he asks as he pulls the other one closer when he begins to feel how the other trembled through their intertwined fingers.
Donghae closes his eyes.
"What year was it when you were still awake?" he whispers and Kibum clutches him just a little bit closer.
"2010." Kibum answers quietly and he watches Donghae as he pales, lips moving quickly as he counted back.
"I'm fourteen, Bummie." Donghae tells him at last, face stricken, and Kibum tucks Donghae's head in the crook of his neck as he also registers what Donghae's age meant.
three long years...
Kibum can only hug him tighter.
-------------------------------
Kibum wakes up to find himself floating, but the sky isn't pure black anymore, there's a tinge of red everywhere and if he listened really hard he could hear the beeping of a machine from far far away. He feels his chest constrict.
No.
He thinks in panic. Donghae needed him. No. He squeezes his eyes shut and wills himself to go back but nothing happens.
A female voice filters through the slightly reddish space.
"..left for work. That Kim Heechul is acting up again, giving your Father headaches. You should see them fight. The neighbors are starting to complain again."
A soft chuckle follows after that and Kibums heart hurts because he hasn't heard his mother in so long and he couldn't bear to hear so much hurt in her voice even when she laughed, but then...Donghae...
"Your sister misses you a lot, you know. Even if......doesn't come.....ten. She doesn't .....seeing you like this. Kibum.....pen...ur eyes. ....miss....so much.....o.....wai.......be here." the voice started fizzling out and Kibum bowed his head, biting his lip.
He opens his eyes and one lone tear drops down into the red abyss and Kibum chooses to forget that it had ever even existed.
-------------------------------
"You're back."
Kibum looks up from his spot on the grass and grins up at the other.
"Of course."
Donghae wrinkles his nose as he tugs his white shirt down with both hands, avoiding Kibums eyes.
"You thought i'd really leave...." Kibum says, and it's a statement, not a question and Donghae turns away from him even as Kibum struggles to his feet.
"You should..." Donghae says, "Leave, i mean. You really should."
Kibum shakes his head and he gently cups Donghae's chin to force the other to look at him but Donghae keeps his gaze resolutely on the ground.
"Hae..." he begins to say and the clump in his throat tells him that he just might cry so he squints his eyes into little slits to prevent this from happening.
"Hae...I-"
"Hello?"
Kibum and Donghae look up at the same time to see a new figure in white standing just a few feet away from them, a gum-filled smile on his face as he sheepishly scratched the back of his head.
"I'm sorry to interrupt but, i think I'm lost..." he says, "Can you guys tell me where this is?"
"No." Donghae answers before Kibum can even open his mouth and Kibum turns to see that Donghae is smiling again, but this time he sees that the smile isn't as genuine as a Donghae smile should be.
"I'm sorry but we can't help you." Donghae continues, taking Kibums hand away from his face but still holding unto it, squeezing it reassuringly,
"We're both lost as well."
=========================
Next Part Here---->
A/N: I just had to post this before ss3 manila. I was supposed to post it all in one go but..yeah. :P
Comments are love!
Pairing: Kihae, Slight!Eunhae
Rating: PG-13
Genre: angst
Warnings: Character Death
Prompt: I don't want to forget about you (but I have no choice)
Summary: In the boundary where Life would mean forgetting and Death: letting go, Kibum meets Donghae, and together, they try to hold on.
---------------------------------------
"Let me die the moment my love dies.
Let me not outlive my own capacity to love.
Let me die still loving, and so, never die."
- Mary Zimmerman (Metamorphoses: A Play)
----------------------------------------
Kibum opens his eyes to see light. A white blinding light which should have scorched his corneas on any regular circumstance, but didn't, and instead filled him warm comforting feeling that made him want to close his eyes and sleep once more.
He blinked.
"Where am I?"
He asks wonderingly to no one in particular as he took stock of the fact that he was lying on something both soft and prickly and it tickled him behind the ears. His heart jumps to his throat when a voice answers his question.
"I don't know."
A grinning boy pops into his line of vision and Kibum sits up with a start.
The boy, Kibum noticed, was wearing a white flowing shirt and loose pants that didn't quite reach his ankles. He was also barefoot.
Kibum narrowed his eyes and notices that he was wearing something quite similar.
"How can you not know?" he demands, irritated and confused.
The boy shrugs and then grins even wider.
"Nobody does."
-------------------------
The boy, Kibum later learns, is named Donghae, and he's been here for quite sometime.
"What do you mean you don't remember?" he asks as his fingers absentmindedly twiddled with the grass by his feet, the only other existing thing in this landscape besides the white comforting light which seemed to come from nowhere and everywhere at once.
"Earth." Donghae states matter-of-factly. as he lay propped up on his elbows with his feet waving in the air, he stares up at Kibum with unabashed curiosity, "I don't remember what it's like and I've been here forever." he draws out the last word like a kid would and then smiles encouragingly up at Kibum with his eyes sparkling as if he expected the other boy to tell him a long tale about what the earth was like.
"Forever?" he pokes the other boy lightly and the smaller boy giggles before rolling away and then pushing himself off the ground with blades of grass stuck in his hair.
Kibum reaches over to pluck them off but Donghae waves the others hands away and then shakes his head like a wet dog would to get the water out of his fur.
Kibum frowns at him and the other only smiles toothily back. He couldn't deny that the other boys method was faster though.
"Forever." Donghae agrees.
------------------------------
"So what do you do here?" Kibum asks Donghae a little bit later (he isn't sure when that little bit later is, the light never did fade and nothing else seemed to change.) as they're wandering aimlessly over the bare landscape, side by side.
"Wait." the other answers quite casually and Kibum raises his eyebrow at him.
"For what?" he asks.
Donghae stops walking and turns to him, spreading his arms as he did so and Kibums eyes widens as the winds suddenly picks up, and the grass gets pulled out of their roots and they flew in spirals around the smaller boy who had his eyes closed as his hair whipped around his face and Kibum has to cover his face with his arms to avoid getting hit by any of the flying debris (grass).
"Change." Donghae says quietly.
And then he brings his arms back down to his sides and it was over as soon as it had begun and it was only two boys on a blank landscape with not a whisper of the wind to be heard.
"Huh."
Kibum says nonchalantly eyes wide and mouth still hanging slightly open, he shrugs stoically, and promptly faints into Donghae's arms.
----------------------------
Kibum was falling.
The wind roars in his ears as he shot headfirst downward into what seemed to be an infinity of darkness and he shuts his eyes and yelled with all his might in protest for the impending impact.
But it never comes.
Kibum opens his eyes to find himself floating, there was nothing around him but that same inky black that he feared that he might be blind.
"Donghae-shi?" he calls out nervously. He tries to move but finds that there is something keeping his limbs stuck to his sides. He tries to look down to see what it was but he finds that he cannot move his head either. He panics and he screams and he tries to fight against the forces holding him down but it is to no avail.
"Donghae!!!!!" he yells again, eyes frantically darting left and right hoping to see something, anything but the never-ending darkness. "Donghae!!!""
And then he freezes because he hears something. A whisper from far away, and it was so soft that he almost doesn't hear it but then it was there. He gulps and relaxes slowly, ears perked up to listen and then it was only his ragged breaths that was heard and he waits hopefully for it to come again.
And it does come again, faintly and not so clear, as if it was coming from a cellphone with bad reception but Kibum knew what he had heard, somebody was calling his name, and that person was definitely not Donghae.
"...mom?"
----------------------
Kibum opens his eyes to twinkling eyes, a small smile and delicate hands running through his hair and the surface his head is on is both soft yet firm and comfortably warm.
"What happened?" he asks Donghae, sitting up and shuddering as he remembered darkness and falling.
"You went away for a while..." Donghae tells him, a small smile playing around his lips and Kibum thought his eyes were bright, too bright, but then Donghae blinks and then Kibum forgets what he saw.
"Away?" Kibum asks wonderingly as Donghae stands up and helps Kibum to his feet as well. "What do you mean away? Where did i go?"
Donghae shrugs and for once, there is no smile to come with his answer.
"I don't know, Kibum-shi." he looks away and then looks back up at him and Kibum somehow feels sad even when there was no reason to be.
"I've never been there."
------------------------
It's a few days later (though Kibum really isn't so sure) when something out of the ordinary happens again and it takes Kibum so much my surprise that he accidentally hits Donghae in the eye as he shoots up from the grass and Donghae pouts up at him with one hand pressed against the injured eye but Kibum has no time to say sorry because he's too captivated by the sudden appearance of another unconscious boy sprawled in the grass and he's dressed just like them but the clothes seem to large on his frail frame.
"Where'd he come from?" he whispers to Donghae, never taking his eyes away from the sleeping boys fragile yet beautiful features.
"The same place where you came from." Donghae answers, his voice also leveled down into a whisper. Kibum accepts his answer and together the two of them inch closer to the prone form on the ground.
Abruptly, the boy's eyes flutter open and his big brown eyes stare wonderingly up at the nonexistent sky.
"Where am I?" he whispers quietly in a voice as delicate as the rest of him, and Kibum has to bite back his grin at the strange sense of deja vu he felt.
"We don't know." Kibum answers as he exchanges amused glances with Donghae. "Nobody does."
The boy looks up at the both of them in surprise and blinks.
"Who are you?"
"I'm Donghae!" Donghae chirps up happily and then throws his arm over Kibums shoulders to bring him close. "and this is Kibum." Kibum smiles and waves weakly.
"Hello. It's nice to meet you." the small boy greets them, smiling softly. He looks up at them through his long eyelashes and Kibum could practically feel his heart melt. He offers out his hand for the small boy to take and he smiles gratefully up at him.
"Thank you." he says, and he slides his small hands into Kibums (it's all warmth and softness and fragility that makes Kibums heart stop) and Kibum leans back so he could pull him up but then there's a sudden burst of wind and the warmth disappears and he falls unto his bum with an 'oof'.
"What happened?" Kibum asks Donghae as the other boy helps him up and he gawps openly at seemingly untouched grass. "Where did he go?"
"Back." Donghae explained, and then he grabs Kibums hand and they stroll away lightly like nothing had even happened. Kibum is dazed and he just keeps looking back at where the small boy was just a few seconds ago.
It takes a while before Donghae finally notices and he turns back to face Kibum again, a half-pout on his face.
"You shouldn't worry about him." he half-whined, attempting to reassure the taller boy.
"Ryeowook always comes back."
----------------------
"Donghae-shi?"
"Hmmm?" Donghae hums melodically (and Kibum couldn't help but wish that he'd hear the smaller boy sing to him someday) not looking up from the necklace he was weaving out of the tall grasses around him, childishly absorbed in his work.
"If Ryeowook-shi has been here before...how come he didn't know who you were?" he asks as he fiddled with his own grass necklace, it was a question that had bugged him since the 'visit' as Donghae liked to call it.
"He forgot." Donghae answers airily, too airily to be real. Kibum narrows his eyes. "Everybody does..."
"You mean when they leave...?" Kibum trails off, unwilling to even consider the possibility that-
"People aren't supposed to remember this place, Kibum-shi." Donghae tears out another blade of grass from the ground and he knots it into the necklace, eyes keen and eyebrows creased. Kibum watches him with emotionless eyes.
"But i left didn't I?" Kibum says, settling his grass necklace aside and scooting closer to Donghae. The silence of the normally hyper guy disturbing him greatly. "For a while...but I didn't forget."
Kibum prods Donghae on the side and the other jumps and drops the necklace that he was painstakingly making and his head shoots up to glare at Kibum. He almost grins, but then he notices that Donghae's eyes are way too bright again and his heart sinks just a little bit deep inside.
"You will." Donghae tells him with conviction, and it's enough to have Kibum breathless once again.
"You will forget."
Kibum made to shake his head to protest but then, suddenly, something gives way beneath him and the next thing he knows is falling.
and then there was darkness.
---------------------------
Kibum once again finds himself hovering above a dark chasm, but something was different, and he couldn't quite put a finger on what it was.
"Kibummm.....Kibummmmm...." his eyes snap up and he tries to move his head to see where the voice was coming from but something was still keeping his head in place and he gives up struggling as soon as he began, his shoulders sinking down as he squeezes his eyes shut to prevent the moisture in them from falling.
"Mom?" he breathes out shakily. Eyes still squished shut.
"Kibum wake up!!! Kibum please..." His moms voice comes again and this time it fluctuates in volume and tone and Kibum has a hard time understanding what she was saying around her loud sobs.
"Mom I'm right here." He says, voice a bit stronger, he opens his eyes and looks up, squinting.
"Kibum.....going to cut....please.....hear me?" the voice comes again, seemingly not hearing anything of what Kibum was saying and some parts of her speech were beginning to buzz out to intelligibleness, but Kibum could hear her burgeoning hysteria in her voice and it creeps down unto him and he began to fight against his invisible ropes again.
""Mom? Mom! I can hear you!! Mom where are you?!!" he cries, trying and failing to wiggle his toes.
He expects his mom to answer again but the voice that followed made his blood run cold.
.".....Kim Kibum"
"Dad?" he whispere unbelievingly, and he stops struggling for a brief moment before it sinks into him that his Father really was somewhere talking to him and he knew he had to answer back. He begins struggling again with renewed vigor.
"DAD I"M HERE!!!" he yells, at the pitch black sky, registering for a moment that there was a slight tinge of red there before he blacks out again out of exhaustion.
...Wake up...
---------------------
Chirping birds.
That was the first thing that Kibum hears as he opens his eyes once again to the bright light and shifting grass that was the 'horizon' as Kibum liked to call it, because all that he saw when he was there. He shifts to support his weight on his elbows and looks around to scan over the landscape searching for the only other living person living here and he finds the boy with his back against him.
"Donghae...?" he calls out as he scrambles on his feet, and Donghae turns around just in time for Kibum to see something brilliantly blue in the blank white sky burn hot white and fizzle out behind him.
The chirping of the birds sputter to a halt.
."Hello!" Donghae greets him happily, head tilting to the side as he grinned. He spreads his arms wide so that Kibum could run into his arms and Kibum complies, burying his nose into the smaller boys neck.
"What was that behind you a while ago, Donghae?" Kibum asks later, after he'd pulled away and they were both lounging in the grass once again.
"Oh that?" Donghae says as he played with the tips of Kibums fingers. "Well, Ryeowook just left."
Kibum blinks and cocks his head in confusion.
"There wasn't any blue light when he left last time..."
"That's because last time he only went back." Donghae explains as he places Kibums palm against his and smiles slightly at how much longer Kibums fingers are than his own. "This time he moved on."
"Oh." Kibum says, slowly digesting the true meaning behind Donghae's words.
"So he isn't coming back?" Kibum probes quietly, conscious of how Donghae's eyes were glued resolutely to the ground.
"No."
Kibum chooses to ignore the way Donghae's voice broke and instead pulls the smaller boy gently towards him and allows him to rest against his chest. Donghae doesn't cry, instead he buries his nose into Kibums shirt as he closes his eyes and breathes, he just breathes, and the small smile on his face doesn't disappear.
"I won't do that to you." Kibum tells the smaller boy, heart constricting at the complete loneliness he felt radiating from the body lying against his.
"Thank you."
----------------------------------
Open your eyes Kibum.....
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"Kibum?" Donghae calls out, tugging lightly at a stray lock of Kibums hair that stood up from the rest.
"Ne~?" Kibum smiles over at him and pulls Donghae's hands out of his hair and he traps the appendage down with his own in the grass.
"Can i call you Bummie?" Donghae asks and he looks down at his knuckles and Kibum stares.
"Bummie?" Kibum repeats, wide-eyed, and Donghae turns red.
"Well, Kibum is too common you know. Anybody can be called Kibum and-" Donghae begins blabbering and Kibum couldn't help but smile softly at him.
"I like it." he announces, before he lays his head back down on the grass.
"..what?" Donghae blinks several times.
"I like it." Kibum says again, and he pulls Donghae's hand closer to himself, not too close, but close enough. He doesn't open his eyes when he speaks again.
"I like it very much...Hae...."
And maybe their hands tighten just a little bit at that moment, but then again...maybe not.
------------------------------
Time passes and neither of them notice it. Kibum hasn't left again for quite some time and he doesn't know whether this is good or bad, but then sometimes Donghae smiles up at him and he decides that it must be good because seeing that smile must be enough to make up for anything.
They get visitors sometimes, some of those disappear as quickly as they come, others, like one Lee Sungmin, had stayed with them for quite some time before he'd disappeared with a sudden rustling of the wind when they'd been wrestling on the ground. Donghae had smiled when this had happened, stating that the small boy had finally awoken and Kibum had understood and hugged Donghae anyway because he knew the other needed it.
Yet others still, unlike Sungmin who had gone the same way that he had arrived, leave through the blue tear in the sky, and Kibum carries Donghae when this happens, because the other boy trembles even though he smiles and Kibum just can't stand watching him like that, so fragile and yet so unbelievably strong.
"My father left through one of those." Donghae tells him one day as they wave one Kim Youngwoon goodbye, and Kibum looks up in concern to find Donghae smiling sadly up at the whiteness that was their sky.
"We were in a car accident." Donghae tells him, and Kibum squeezes Donghae's hand, a split-second of reassurance. "I was 11."
Kibum frowns.
"How old are you now, Hae?" he asks as he pulls the other one closer when he begins to feel how the other trembled through their intertwined fingers.
Donghae closes his eyes.
"What year was it when you were still awake?" he whispers and Kibum clutches him just a little bit closer.
"2010." Kibum answers quietly and he watches Donghae as he pales, lips moving quickly as he counted back.
"I'm fourteen, Bummie." Donghae tells him at last, face stricken, and Kibum tucks Donghae's head in the crook of his neck as he also registers what Donghae's age meant.
three long years...
Kibum can only hug him tighter.
-------------------------------
Kibum wakes up to find himself floating, but the sky isn't pure black anymore, there's a tinge of red everywhere and if he listened really hard he could hear the beeping of a machine from far far away. He feels his chest constrict.
No.
He thinks in panic. Donghae needed him. No. He squeezes his eyes shut and wills himself to go back but nothing happens.
A female voice filters through the slightly reddish space.
"..left for work. That Kim Heechul is acting up again, giving your Father headaches. You should see them fight. The neighbors are starting to complain again."
A soft chuckle follows after that and Kibums heart hurts because he hasn't heard his mother in so long and he couldn't bear to hear so much hurt in her voice even when she laughed, but then...Donghae...
"Your sister misses you a lot, you know. Even if......doesn't come.....ten. She doesn't .....seeing you like this. Kibum.....pen...ur eyes. ....miss....so much.....o.....wai.......be here." the voice started fizzling out and Kibum bowed his head, biting his lip.
He opens his eyes and one lone tear drops down into the red abyss and Kibum chooses to forget that it had ever even existed.
-------------------------------
"You're back."
Kibum looks up from his spot on the grass and grins up at the other.
"Of course."
Donghae wrinkles his nose as he tugs his white shirt down with both hands, avoiding Kibums eyes.
"You thought i'd really leave...." Kibum says, and it's a statement, not a question and Donghae turns away from him even as Kibum struggles to his feet.
"You should..." Donghae says, "Leave, i mean. You really should."
Kibum shakes his head and he gently cups Donghae's chin to force the other to look at him but Donghae keeps his gaze resolutely on the ground.
"Hae..." he begins to say and the clump in his throat tells him that he just might cry so he squints his eyes into little slits to prevent this from happening.
"Hae...I-"
"Hello?"
Kibum and Donghae look up at the same time to see a new figure in white standing just a few feet away from them, a gum-filled smile on his face as he sheepishly scratched the back of his head.
"I'm sorry to interrupt but, i think I'm lost..." he says, "Can you guys tell me where this is?"
"No." Donghae answers before Kibum can even open his mouth and Kibum turns to see that Donghae is smiling again, but this time he sees that the smile isn't as genuine as a Donghae smile should be.
"I'm sorry but we can't help you." Donghae continues, taking Kibums hand away from his face but still holding unto it, squeezing it reassuringly,
"We're both lost as well."
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Next Part Here---->
A/N: I just had to post this before ss3 manila. I was supposed to post it all in one go but..yeah. :P
Comments are love!