attention | gyuricky

ten.

Ricky looks up from where he's sitting on one of the massive speakers, in the middle of tuning his guitar. "Yujin-ah, have you thought about what you're going to major in?"

"Yeah, I know you've still got two years till you graduate but it's good to have plans," Zhanghao chimes in.

"I've thought about it a lot recently," Yujin answers, jumping up to sit on top of the piano, swinging his legs where they don't touch the ground. "I think I'm going to major in architecture."

"Oh, architecture's a difficult major," Seungeon says. "You can handle it, right Yujin?"

"Of course! I'll work hard and do my best."

"I know you will," Zhanghao says, smiling. "We'll wait for you to come join us at the university, okay?"

"Okay, hyung. I'll see you there."

─

Gyuvin's been trained by years and years of taking sneaky naps in classes that don't matter; he's not usually a light sleeper, but he finds himself awake somewhere during the early hours of the morning, as far as he can tell from the pitch blackness outside his window. It takes his sense of hearing a minute or so to wake itself up, but as he flops over to face away from the window, he hears the distinct yet muffled sound of breathing, a little louder than he's used to.

The door to the living room is cracked ajar as they usually leave it, with the light on outside in case one of them needs to cross over to use the bathroom in the middle of the night. A wedge of light spills into the room where the door hangs open, illuminating just the corner of Ricky's bed, but casting enough glow for Gyuvin to see a figure hunched over under the blanket.

Ricky isn't crying, Gyuvin can tell that much, it's a milder sound. It's something he's oddly familiar with; his younger brother used to get nightmares all the time back when they used to share a room, and he'd wake up in the middle of the night covered in cold sweat and shaking uncontrollably and wouldn't be able to fall back asleep until Gyuvin crept out of his own bed and comforted him till his shoulders stopped heaving and his breathing became even. They'd gotten their own rooms at some point during their youth and from then on Gyuvin never really knew if his brother had nightmares anymore, but by then he supposed he was well-trained enough not to need anyone's help to recover from them.

Gyuvin can't see very well in the relative darkness, but he pushes his blanket off silently and crosses over the space between their beds. "Ricky?" he calls softly, trying not to startle his roommate. It doesn't work; the bundle buried under the blanket freezes and the room goes silent, almost as if he's holding his breath.

"Ricky? Is everything okay?" He sits down slowly at the edge of the bed, trying not to disturb the blanket pile as much as possible. "I'm just concerned, that's all."

"Leave me alone," comes the reply, muffled by the thick blanket but still undeniably raw, as if he's struggling not to let anxiety swallow him whole. 

He remembers suddenly that people waking from nightmares have trouble recognising, for the first couple of minutes, that they're awake and that the nightmare isn't real, and that physical touch is the quickest and most effective way to ground them, to bring them back to reality so they can snap out of it.

"You're shaking, you won't be able to sleep like this," Gyuvin says softly, coaxing, words he's said a hundred times but never to Ricky, and never like this. "I'm going to touch your back, okay? Just until you calm down a little."

He waits a few beats for the other boy to say no, which he surprisingly doesn't, before placing his hands gently on Ricky's shoulders, making slow, soothing circles, and even through the blanket and whatever he's wearing Gyuvin can feel how tense he is, as if a thousand bolts of lightning were coursing through his veins. Ricky doesn't say anything more and Gyuvin keeps going, smooth, repetitive actions until he feels the other boy's breathing begin to slow, shoulders softening under his touch.

"Are you feeling better?" he asks quietly, taking his hands away. "I'll get some water and leave it on your nightstand, so just drink some before you go back to sleep okay?"

Gyuvin heads out into the kitchen and fights the urge to close his eyes as the bright light startles him, feeling around for a clean glass to fill with warm water. He sets the glass down by Ricky's bedside and climbs back into his own bed, watching the other boy in the bed opposite. Somewhere during the time he'd gone out into the kitchen Ricky had extricated himself from the blanket and lay back down, and Gyuvin's relieved to see the method of soothing he's done for years seems to have worked for him, too.

"Goodnight, Ricky."

The other boy doesn't answer, as usual, as expected, but Gyuvin doesn't mind.