[ficlet] turning saints into the sea
Title: turning saints into the sea
Pairing: go namsoon/park heungsoo (if you squint)
Rating: pg13
Genre: slice-of-life
Warnings: swearing, mild violence
Author: gdgdbaby
Notes: advent calendar day 16, for underhand_glory. pre-series fic. 903 words.
Heungsoo can count on one hand the number of people who have willingly touched him since Namsoon left. There was his physical therapist, the clinical brush of his hand against Heungsoo's waist as he bent into his first lunge after leaving the hospital, and his noona, who'd nursed him through the worst of the physical pain. The jjang from the middle school in Bucheon who'd come to challenge him doesn't count. He'd broken too easily after the second fist to his abdomen, Heungsoo faster and stronger even with his bad knee.
So, two. It doesn't help that every twinge of his leg reminds him that Namsoon isn't there. Sleep is no respite. Heungsoo wakes up some days to the ghost of a heavy arm hooked over his shoulders, summer nights when Namsoon would run a hand up his back and shove his head into a steaming pot of ramyeon, the noodles stinging his throat as they slid down with the kimchi. Heungsoo rolls over and the other side of the futon is empty. He feels this ache more acutely than the one in his knee-but it's the same thing, not really understanding the extent of its support until it was torn away.
The worst kind of cliché: one that's true.
He thinks about Namsoon of his own volition sometimes, and after the cloud of anger clears a little he wonders where Namsoon is. What he might be doing. It's like continuously prodding at a wound that will never heal, but Heungsoo does it anyway because it's the only thing that makes him feel anything anymore. He sits in front of a pot of gurgling water and thinks about whether Namsoon's decided to run with the older gangs in and around Gyeonggi-do, or if he was trying to make himself respectable. If he was still going to school. If he had a new gang, if he was a new jjang in a new place, if he had someone new to sling his arm around and call a friend now that Heungsoo was gone.
He gets three months off from school after putting the kid from Bucheon in the hospital. That turns into a year, and then two. Heungsoo hobbles through PT and the police inquiry and then it's just him and Heungah, who finally puts her foot down and says, Stop. Or maybe it was Start-"I know you want to, and it's tempting," she says, a full head shorter than he is, now, but always hardier, her eyes like cut crystal when she glares down at him. "But you can't put your entire life on hold indefinitely because of this."
Heungsoo opens his mouth to say something about how she wouldn't understand-but Heungah had to give up everything just to keep their mother in the hospital. And what was Heungsoo doing but sitting around and wasting away?
He packs up everything about his past and puts it in a box and lets it gather dust. It doesn't matter. There's nothing for him in it.
He goes back to school and it's hell. He'd never stayed docile in class day after day before Namsoon left, and even now, when he's making the effort to keep his head down and just make it to graduation, his mere presence seems like a blight on every high school he strolls into. A living magnet for trouble. He transfers three times his first year, twice because of challengers and once because the second place student in their class had accused Heungsoo of cheating off his exam. Bullshit. As if Heungsoo cared enough to go through the trouble.
Seungri is supposed to be a last resort. A bottom-tier school for a bottom-tier student, the final stop for kids like him. He should've known Namsoon would be there. Except it isn't Namsoon, not really-it's a decrepit shade, a doppelganger, some kid who looks like Namsoon, walks like Namsoon, has his face and his voice and his little mannerisms, the slow blink at confusion and the flare of his nose at surprise, but none of the personality. He isn't the Namsoon that Heungsoo knew. He's too quiet. Too lethargic, like all the life's been leeched right out of him. The old Namsoon wouldn't even be in class at this hour. This downgraded version stares for a moment at Heungsoo's face from across the aisle before turning his head toward the window and going to sleep.
And yet. Seeing him in the flesh for the first time in three years tears something wide open in Heungsoo's chest, all the pent-up frustrations and stupid, hopeless yearning rushing past the floodgates, sweeping out all the thick layers of detached deadness. It hurts to feel. It hurts to want Namsoon to turn back around and look him in the eye and tell him everything he hadn't when Heungsoo woke up alone in the hospital room after the surgery, not because he isn't sure whether or not Namsoon would do it, but because Heungsoo wants it so much, and shouldn't. He shouldn't want Namsoon to reach over and hook that arm over his shoulder, as if it was only yesterday they were stealing candy and chips from the 7-Eleven to take home and gorge themselves on like kings.
It's easier to turn to the anger again, spread out like a web over the gaping hole in his chest. The rest can come later.
fin
Pairing: go namsoon/park heungsoo (if you squint)
Rating: pg13
Genre: slice-of-life
Warnings: swearing, mild violence
Author: gdgdbaby
Notes: advent calendar day 16, for underhand_glory. pre-series fic. 903 words.
Heungsoo can count on one hand the number of people who have willingly touched him since Namsoon left. There was his physical therapist, the clinical brush of his hand against Heungsoo's waist as he bent into his first lunge after leaving the hospital, and his noona, who'd nursed him through the worst of the physical pain. The jjang from the middle school in Bucheon who'd come to challenge him doesn't count. He'd broken too easily after the second fist to his abdomen, Heungsoo faster and stronger even with his bad knee.
So, two. It doesn't help that every twinge of his leg reminds him that Namsoon isn't there. Sleep is no respite. Heungsoo wakes up some days to the ghost of a heavy arm hooked over his shoulders, summer nights when Namsoon would run a hand up his back and shove his head into a steaming pot of ramyeon, the noodles stinging his throat as they slid down with the kimchi. Heungsoo rolls over and the other side of the futon is empty. He feels this ache more acutely than the one in his knee-but it's the same thing, not really understanding the extent of its support until it was torn away.
The worst kind of cliché: one that's true.
He thinks about Namsoon of his own volition sometimes, and after the cloud of anger clears a little he wonders where Namsoon is. What he might be doing. It's like continuously prodding at a wound that will never heal, but Heungsoo does it anyway because it's the only thing that makes him feel anything anymore. He sits in front of a pot of gurgling water and thinks about whether Namsoon's decided to run with the older gangs in and around Gyeonggi-do, or if he was trying to make himself respectable. If he was still going to school. If he had a new gang, if he was a new jjang in a new place, if he had someone new to sling his arm around and call a friend now that Heungsoo was gone.
He gets three months off from school after putting the kid from Bucheon in the hospital. That turns into a year, and then two. Heungsoo hobbles through PT and the police inquiry and then it's just him and Heungah, who finally puts her foot down and says, Stop. Or maybe it was Start-"I know you want to, and it's tempting," she says, a full head shorter than he is, now, but always hardier, her eyes like cut crystal when she glares down at him. "But you can't put your entire life on hold indefinitely because of this."
Heungsoo opens his mouth to say something about how she wouldn't understand-but Heungah had to give up everything just to keep their mother in the hospital. And what was Heungsoo doing but sitting around and wasting away?
He packs up everything about his past and puts it in a box and lets it gather dust. It doesn't matter. There's nothing for him in it.
He goes back to school and it's hell. He'd never stayed docile in class day after day before Namsoon left, and even now, when he's making the effort to keep his head down and just make it to graduation, his mere presence seems like a blight on every high school he strolls into. A living magnet for trouble. He transfers three times his first year, twice because of challengers and once because the second place student in their class had accused Heungsoo of cheating off his exam. Bullshit. As if Heungsoo cared enough to go through the trouble.
Seungri is supposed to be a last resort. A bottom-tier school for a bottom-tier student, the final stop for kids like him. He should've known Namsoon would be there. Except it isn't Namsoon, not really-it's a decrepit shade, a doppelganger, some kid who looks like Namsoon, walks like Namsoon, has his face and his voice and his little mannerisms, the slow blink at confusion and the flare of his nose at surprise, but none of the personality. He isn't the Namsoon that Heungsoo knew. He's too quiet. Too lethargic, like all the life's been leeched right out of him. The old Namsoon wouldn't even be in class at this hour. This downgraded version stares for a moment at Heungsoo's face from across the aisle before turning his head toward the window and going to sleep.
And yet. Seeing him in the flesh for the first time in three years tears something wide open in Heungsoo's chest, all the pent-up frustrations and stupid, hopeless yearning rushing past the floodgates, sweeping out all the thick layers of detached deadness. It hurts to feel. It hurts to want Namsoon to turn back around and look him in the eye and tell him everything he hadn't when Heungsoo woke up alone in the hospital room after the surgery, not because he isn't sure whether or not Namsoon would do it, but because Heungsoo wants it so much, and shouldn't. He shouldn't want Namsoon to reach over and hook that arm over his shoulder, as if it was only yesterday they were stealing candy and chips from the 7-Eleven to take home and gorge themselves on like kings.
It's easier to turn to the anger again, spread out like a web over the gaping hole in his chest. The rest can come later.
fin