Chapter Text
Yeonjun awakens to the unpleasant feeling of his stomach rocking. The space around him is dim and it takes several moments for his eyes to adjust. He nearly jumps out of his skin when he notices another person in the room with him.
“… You’re an idiot,” Beomgyu says, voice tight. “Say it back.”
Yeonjun relaxes onto his cot. “You’re an idiot.”
Beomgyu flings a wad of gauze at his head and Yeonjun lets it hit its mark. “You know what I meant, Yeonjun.”
“I’m an idiot,” Yeonjun replies, opting not to demand honorifics with Beomgyu already angry at him.
“Say it again,” Beomgyu whispers in a watery tone.
Yeonjun sits up and bites back a wince from the sudden movement. “I’m an idiot.”
Beomgyu’s face is red and wet with tears. Dried blood smears his cheeks and hands. Yeonjun’s chest armor lays in a ruined heap at his feet. “And you’re sorry.”
Yeonjun can feel the gauze pressing into the skin, his stomach and thigh pulsating beneath the dressings as they stitch back together cell by cell. He wonders how long he was out. “And I’m sorry,” he parrots.
Beomgyu keeps their distance as he says, “You could’ve died.”
“I’m sorry—”
“Are you?” Beomgyu interrupts him, swiping at his still leaking tears in an attempt to stop them. The action only smudges more blood onto his skin. “You can’t really be. You and Soobin. Do you know how sick I felt? I was all alone for hours. With fucking Jimin, no less. I thought—”
Beomgyu hiccups and Yeonjun jumps into action, ignoring how the rock of the boat further tips his balance. He lands rather uncoordinatedly on Beomgyu but yanks him into a hug regardless. “I am sorry, Gyu. I was an idiot and… and I was selfish. I didn’t mean to worry you. Hyung thought he could do it all alone. I’m sorry. It won’t happen again.”
Beomgyu breaks then, wailing and sobbing with his whole heart. Yeonjun only holds the younger ghoul tighter. He buries his head into Beomgyu’s hair and regrets ever thinking he was content with leaving this Earth, with leaving his family.
The noise of Beomgyu’s cries brings Taehyun below deck. He hesitates at the doorway of the small room but Yeonjun nods in acknowledgement.
“You really are an idiot, hyung,” Beomgyu hiccups again.
Yeonjun pulls back from their embrace and smiles weakly. “You get a free pass to call me an idiot for a month. Does that help?”
“Do I have to use honorifics?” Beomgyu sniffles.
“Only if we’re in public.”
“Fine, idiot,” Beomgyu says and swipes at his nose.
“Thank you, Gyu.”
“Whatever. Don’t move around too much. Your intestines are still healing. Not to mention your thigh muscles—”
“I got it, I got it. You should clean up,” Yeonjun suggests, lifting his gaze towards Taehyun who swoops in right on cue.
“C’mon, hyung. The sink isn’t far.”
Yeonjun watches them stumble across the room arm in arm before taking the stairs to the upper deck. His gait is uneven, his body naturally putting more weight on his good leg. He curses Hangyeol under his breath for what he’s sure to be the first of many times.
He pushes open a rickety wooden door and shields his eyes from the onslaught of wind when he emerges above deck. Shimmering blue seas greet him, waves crashing into the boat and each other to make a song all their own.
It smells like salt and peace and quiet. He scans for people. He spots the captain’s cockpit, squinting to make out a singular figure at the helm, and a second at his side. He limps out and around to check the bow of the boat.
It takes a moment of focus but he spots a lanky silhouette in the distance. He moves on instinct.
Soobin has changed clothes since Yeonjun last saw him. He no longer dawns the navy blue armor of the CCG but now wears a simple cotton long sleeve and jeans. His hair is wind swept, twisting with every passing breeze and Yeonjun feels a strange need to tuck the strands where they belong.
He instead forces himself to join Soobin at the railing, standing close enough that their shoulders touch.
“Captain said we’ll hit land in about four hours,” Soobin says, eyes trained on the endless sea before them. “Kai thinks he knows enough Japanese to at least get us somewhere to sleep for the night.”
“That’s good,” Yeonjun says, surprised when his voice comes out hoarse. He clears his throat then speaks again, “… Thanks… by the way.”
“For what?”
Yeonjun tongues his cheek, a bit embarrassed, as he clarifies, “Covering my ass back in the van.”
“I think I did a fair bit more than cover it.”
Yeonjun rolls his eyes, amending, “Saving my ass then.”
Soobin slightly smiles at the water, an infamous dimple digging deep into his cheek. “You’re welcome. This whole thing would’ve been pretty pointless if you’d died.”
They sit in silence. Yeonjun struggles to split his attention between the ocean and Soobin. He gives up, settling on the one with the strongest pull. “… I gave Beomgyu permission to call me an idiot. It’s only right that I extend the offer.”
“Have I ever needed your permission to do that?” Soobin asks without missing a beat.
“Point taken.” Yeonjun fights a smirk.
Soobin bites his inner lip then looks to his hands. They’re clean but Yeonjun can tell he’s seeing past blood on them. “We killed him,” he says.
“You did most of the ground work.”
“… I didn’t know I could.”
Yeonjun peers down at Soobin’s hands too. “I mean you kind of flung me into a window once so I wasn’t too surprised. Though you did scare me a bit. Didn’t take you for the monologue type.”
Soobin blushes now, which is hilarious considering the topic of discussion. “I wanted him to die miserable. Otherwise, he would’ve spun his death into something honorable.”
“Fair, fair. Can’t say I would’ve done anything differently.” Yeonjun gives into the urge to lace their hands together. They fit, much to his dismay. His still scarred, bloodied hands almost look at home between Soobin’s clean and soft palms. Yeonjun’s first instinct is to snatch his hands back to his sides. His second is to say, “He died without an audience and without final words. After all his atrocities, I think such a death was in order. Thank you again.”
“Stop thanking me for murder. It’s weird,” Soobin replies, still blushing.
Yeonjun is about to act on his first instinct when Soobin closes his fingers around Yeonjun’s hands.
“How are you feeling? Beomgyu said you might be nauseous as your body processes the poison.”
Yeonjun checks internally, finding only a dull ache in his gut. “I’m alright. My mom—” The name tears down the flimsy mental barricade he put to block out the grief. He pauses as it washes over, lips pressing together in an effort to stop overflow. His heartbeat shifts to his ears then his throat and finally rests back in his chest. He speaks when he’s certain no tears will come, “Poison ran in her family’s lineage. There’s a level of resistance baked into my DNA. The worst of its effect glided over me.”
“That’s good to know,” Soobin says.
They stand with the wind whipping between them and the smell of salt all about them. Goosebumps form on Yeonjun’s arms and chest from the cold exposure. But his hands gather Soobin’s warmth gratefully.
“Did you learn anything from all of this?”
“I should train core more often,” Yeonjun says thoughtfully. “Being impaled twice is one time too many for my taste.”
Soobin narrows his eyes, but Yeonjun swears he almost smiles. “And?”
“That you’re as dumb as I am.”
“Pft. Impossible!”
“Did you even know how to aim that thing?” Yeonjun asks.
Soobin raises a brow. “What thing?”
“The gun you so causally had.”
Soobin’s lips pucker. “I had some–” he pauses to think of his next words “–quick safety training.”
“So no.”
“Hey, I still blew through two investigators!”
Yeonjun smirks then. “Did you?”
“Of course I did. What are you on about? You saw them yourself—” Soobin’s expression shifts from confusion to embarrassment and then annoyance. “You’re gross.”
“I’m not the one who blew two investigators—“
“Blew through!”
“Po-tay-toe, po-tah-do,” Yeonjun sing-songs dismissively.
“You’re so immature.”
Yeonjun bows with a smile. “Thank you.”
Soobin studies him for a beat then says, “Do you remember what happened before you passed out?”
Yeonjun’s smile fades.
Right, he’d been trailing after Soobin to make sure the one-eyed ghoul made it to the boat when a dove surprised him from behind.
He had limited mobility and even less stamina. He fought until his wings gave up. Then he fought some more.
His vision had tripled. His mouth was full of copper and bile and spit. He wasn’t even sure if he was standing since his legs had gone numb some time after his fifth rough landing.
He thought his time was truly up. He just knew he was done for when memories began to meld into his actual vision.
He could perfectly picture finding Kai huddled in the corner of his decimated family home.
He saw Beomgyu and Taehyun, grungy from their life of squatting, untrusting as he approached them at the black market.
He watched Soobin cry for the first time, curled into himself on the couch of their home.
Yeonjun was only struck then by how many terrible memories he had. Terror and exhaustion and sorrow were all he could think of in his last moments. He ought to have been sad. But he was so very cold.
And then it fell dark.
Then light.
Then dark again.
Yeonjun felt like his spirit was cast out of his body. He was everything and nothing. He was dead.
“Yeonjun, please,” Soobin cried, something distressed and desperate. “You promised. You don’t break your promises!”
I don’t. Yeonjun thought.
“Get him on the fucking boat already!” Jimin hissed. “I told the captain to take sail the moment I left the dock.”
Soobin’s hysterical tone intensified as he said, “I can’t carry him alone—“
“You can and you will! Now go!”
And then it was dark again.
Yeonjun accepted the cold. He accepted the heaviness of his eyelids, the sinking weight of his bones, the understanding that he had lived a life of pain and misfortune.
Until his spinal nerves lit aflame. His eyes attempted to flee his skull. The pain built a scream in his throat, grating up his hardly there vocal chords, and forcing his mouth open.
“He’s going into shock!” Beomgyu bellowed. He seemed to have multiplied into six bodies as he leaned over Yeonjun’s body. “Help me get this vest off of him!”
Soobin also split into six figures, all sobbing and bloodied and shaking. “You’re safe, you’re safe. I brought you all the way here,” he chanted. “You will not die on me. Do you hear me, Yeonjun? You. Will. Not. Die!”
An unendurable pressure attempted to keep his abdomen together. The excruciating agony coupled with already alight nerves threw him right back into darkness.
Yeonjun flexes his jaw now. He swears his muscles twitch all throughout his body at the reminder of what he’d gone through in less than 24 hours. “I almost died.” When Soobin hesitates, Yeonjun adds, “You saved me… Again.”
Soobin bites his top lip then nods. “Well, yes, that happened but,” he trails off.
Yeonjun blinks, surprised by the disappointed expression casting over Soobin’s features. “But?”
“… What about before… that?”
“Before that?” Yeonjun repeats.
Soobin loosens his hold on Yeonjun’s hands. “You really don’t remember?”
“I mean I might, I just don’t know what—”
Soobin leans in so suddenly that Yeonjun’s mouth clamps shut. He is stupefied when the one-eyed ghoul presses a butterfly kiss to his lips. “This,” he says softly.
“Oh.” Yeonjun squeaks and is appalled because when has he ever squeaked in his life?
Soobin stays right there, hovering and staring. “Ring a bell?”
“Several actually.”
“Good.”
The boldness of Soobin’s words stirs up something mystifying in Yeonjun. He isn’t sure if he likes or hates it. It twists his gut up all the same. “Did you like it or something?” He manages to tease.
“Just as much as you did.”
Yeonjun means to scoff but it comes out as a nervous puff. “What makes you think I enjoyed it? I hate you, remember?”
“You didn’t push me away.”
Yeonjun gapes at the younger ghoul’s sheer audacity.
“You still haven’t pushed me away.” Soobin smirks, daring to lean closer. “You let me kiss you twice now.”
Yeonjun sputters to his own defense, “Hold on, I kissed you first last time—”
“—Which further proves my point.”
Their lips are touching now, each word taking shape on the other’s mouth, and Yeonjun isn’t sure when his hand cups Soobin’s jaw or when Soobin coils a careful arm around his waist.
“You always have to be right,” Yeonjun mutters.
“You always have to deny me.”
This kiss is different from the last. It’s tender, sweet. Careful and coy and teasing in a light hearted way. Almost like a series of pecks that are too lazy to separate, too needy to slow, and too comforting to leave.
“I still hate you,” Yeonjun says, nipping at Soobin’s plush bottom lip.
Soobin chuckles and Yeonjun feels it in his own chest. “Not as much as I hate you.”
“Doubt that.”
They kiss like that, draped in each other’s arms, in leisurely slow pulls, as if time is infinite. The sinking sun bears witness to their union. Yeonjun lets his body be huddled into Soobin’s hulking frame, lets his eyes close and lips feel, lets his heart thump into a frenzy of its own making.
Until they acquire an unwanted audience.
“Oh my god, get a room, will you?” Taehyun seems to shout from across the deck.
They should jump apart but it takes them each a moment to process outside stimuli.
Soobin releases Yeonjun slowly.
Yeonjun follows suit a delayed beat later.
They both turn to find Taehyun closer than they expected with a gobsmacked Beomgyu in tow.
Yeonjun finds his words somewhere in his less scattered brain. “Where’s Kai?”
“Hello?” Taehyun crows. “Are we just going to ignore that?”
“Yes,” Soobin and Yeonjun say in unison.
It takes a few more prompts for Taehyun to explain that Kai has already fallen asleep in the barracks for the night.
“We should take watches. We all need a bit of shut eye,” Yeonjun decides, glancing towards the sun ducking below the horizon.
“I don’t mind staying up first,” Soobin volunteers.
Beomgyu firmly shakes his head. “No. You’re running off fumes. You and Yeonjun hyung should get rest first.”
“That includes you, Dr. Choi,” Taehyun says with a squint. “All of you go to sleep first. I’ll wake Kai up for the second watch.”
“Are you sure?” Soobin asks.
“I am. I can survive for another hour.”
“Alright, but we can—” Yeonjun starts.
“Enough. Bed. Now. All of you,” Taehyun says sternly.
They enter the barracks in a single file, rocking with the swaying ship. Soobin claims the bottom bunk opposite of Kai while Yeonjun clambers into the bunk abive him. Beomgyu climbs into his cot above Kai and whispers goodnight.
It isn’t long before his soft snores join Kai’s and Yeonjun is left staring at the ceiling. He shifts positions rather restlessly, ending on one with his right arm and leg hanging over the edge. He is surprised when soft fingers trace up his palm to intertwine their hands.
“Goodnight, Yeonjun,” Soobin whispers.
“… Go to sleep, Soobin,” he responds with something he can only identify as embarrassment. “I’ll see you once you’re awake.”
“You promise?”
“I do.”