Red | Sookai ✔

five: ruby

Hueningkai finds him curled up on the doorstep, the tear tracks shining on his face nearly blue from the cold.

Soobin barely registers Hueningkai's panicked swearing as he wrestles the gun from his numb fingers and bundles Soobin into the house. He hardly feels the protruding bones against his back as his boyfriend wraps him in every single jacket he can find and drags him to the couch. He scarcely senses the strain in Hueningkai's brittle bones, the panting in his horrified, chastising words. All he sees is red. Beautiful, terrible red.

"I'm sorry I didn't watch you wake up this morning," Soobin whispers.

Hueningkai throws his arms around him. He's crying.

(Soobin's never seen Hueningkai cry.)

"What were you doing?" Hueningkai screams, and he sounds more afraid than Soobin's ever heard him before.

He loves me. He needs me.

The gun, firmly set on the coffee table, taunts Soobin with its invisible metal eyes, as if daring him to pick it up and place it at the side of his head. He imagines blood spilling out of his cranium and over his deadened fingers, and he wonders what Hueningkai would say.

"G-gun," Soobin manages to get out. His lips feel like they're going to fall off his face.

"Never mind the gun! What were you thinking? It's so cold, and you were shivering, and I don't know how long you were out there for, and hyung, I---I---" Hueningkai's speech is slurred with sobs, wracking his agitated words with horror. The hot arms pressed into Soobin's layered sides are nothing but bone, and Soobin thinks about how Yeonjun's right.

"Tell me you love me," Soobin chokes out.

Hueningkai hugs him tighter, and it's not really that tight because he's so weak, but it's enough. "Damn it, Soobin," he curses, and there's a strange, rough edge to his voice. "All this just because you wanted me to say I love you?"

No, Soobin wants to say. You're misunderstanding things. I just want---I just want to know you love me. That you need me. I didn't---didn't do this on purpose. I didn't. I didn't mean to hurt you. Because Hueningkai's sad, and Hueningkai's angry, and it's all Soobin's fault.

"No," is all he can say, and Hueningkai cries harder.

(He can't feel his hands anymore.)

All the reasons that he should and shouldn't, all the ways that he died and didn't, all the words that he said and sobbed. They come crashing out of Soobin's throat in a tsunami from the east coast, an earthquake off the side of Jeju Island. "Y-Yeonjun told me to k-kill myself."

Hueningkai freezes, and Soobin can't miss the way his emotions collapse over him like a tidal wave, the way his thoughts sear themselves onto every inch of his pallid skin like cattle brands. "Yeonjun?" he repeats, and he sounds like a child, a sweet summer child, the child he'd been before Soobin had stolen his summer and his youth from him. "He's...here?"

He loves me. He needs me.

But no matter how many times Soobin repeats the mantra in his head, he can't help the jealousy that builds up in his chest at how curious Hueningkai sounds, how wistful. And he knows Hueningkai hasn't seen Yeonjun in years, too long to even miss him anymore, and that he's not a high schooler stuck between the hearts of two boys anymore, and that he's Soobin's and only Soobin's now, but the way the mere mention of Yeonjun's name seems to send Hueningkai spiralling out of some surreal dream burns envy into Soobin's soul, sickly and bilious and emerald green.

(After all, the forbidden fruit always tastes the best.)

"Not anymore," Soobin confesses, and he hadn't killed Yeonjun, but with the way Hueningkai's face falls, he wishes he had. "He found us. He found us, Hueningie. He wants me to kill myself." And he's shaking, crying, a perfect storm, but he can't help it. He can't help the way he feels. "He wants you for himself, Hueningie. He wants to take you away from me." Enfolded in his boyfriend's careful embrace, Soobin shivers, sensation finally flooding back into his limbs. "He says I'm killing you."