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The bed is uncomfortably warm beneath his skin, the mattress piercing his side. The fabric smells like shit, and he can faintly remember basking in the euphoria of that scent last night. His consciousness plays hide and seek with him for a moment, vision blurry and awareness subdued.
He blinks once, twice, before the ceiling turns clear. He gets up to a sitting position, clutching his throbbing head.
Fuck, he feels like shit.
Electric eyes scan the familiar room. His joints unsurprisingly ache like they live on their own, his clothes pile dry in the corner, collecting stink, and his laptop is lit open, flashing messages from last night. He is too unfocused to read them.
Something rings, and it echoes louder and louder against his head with each passing second. Khun groans. Fucking Michael. Can’t just leave him the fuck alone. The bastard needs help.
Well, Khun probably does too.
Sunlight passes through the thick curtains draped over the window, illuminating the room in a faded golden glow. Over the bed, through the ground, his shadow is tall and looming, the outline abnormally thin and disproportionate. Even his own shadow appears shitty.
The earth must have been unsteady, because for the next three steps, Khun takes a stride the wrong away, one foot heavier than the other, and he absentmindedly collapses on the ground. Damn Michael .
He stays sprawled over the ground for a long moment, though it must actually be short, because the door bursts open and someone saunters in, bringing with him the fresh scent of outside and autumn breeze.
“This is pathetic,” comes the monotone drawl.
The voice cuts short the whirling ceiling before him. He thinks he sees a sweet-looking boy and a gator with palpable grins on their faces. His mouth tastes like acid.
“Oi, Earrings.”
A toe jabs his side. He is drawn back to the room. Plain empty ceiling and a harshly lit bulb in front of him. But the view is promptly replaced with a raven-haired man, dark sanpaku eyes seizing him. Khun blinks slowly.
“You look uglier than the last time I saw you.”
When was I pretty to you? His thoughts ask, but his voice doesn’t follow.
“Are you going to get up or am I going to drag you into the bathroom? You honestly look worse than shit.”
It doesn’t take him more than three seconds to grab him across the room and throw him into the bathroom. The tiles are cold beneath his shorts, and his palms suddenly feel sweaty. He attempts to pull himself up as Seppuku Swordsman turns on the faucet, but his legs are too weak, or too heavy, so he instead crawls his way closer to the door.
“Stop acting like a big brat,” Hatz heaves him up, cold fingers damp on his arms. “You can undress.”
Khun glares at him. “What.”
“There are bubbles,” Hatz tries to explain, a faint flush on his cheeks, pointing a strict finger at the bathtub. “And I’m not interested enough to watch, Earrings.” True to his word, the moment he lets go of Khun, he turns around, hands tucked safely in his pockets.
Khun hesitates for a moment, his fingers lazily tracing the side of the bathtub. One hand dips down into the water. It is warm. Taking his shirt and pants off will be laborious, but at least the water will be worth it.
Hatz waits patiently, relieved at the sound of clothes ruffling, then the heavy thump of a belt. He sighs and checks his wrist watch. They still have thirty minutes.
The sound of continuous phone calls is muffled against the closed door that separates them, but it is audible enough to be annoying. He considers checking the caller, until Earrings calls out.
“It’s fine, you can turn around now.” His voice is softer than he last heard it. Earrings is hugging his knees in the bathtub, blue strands covering most of his face. “It’s cold. Why is it cold? I thought it was warm.”
Hatz restrains himself from rolling his eyes. “I’m going to check your phone. It’s been ringing nonstop—”
“That’s just Michael. The fucking creep can’t leave me alone.”
“I thought you blocked him?”
“I fucking did.”
So his stalker still bothers him to this day. Does Bam know about that? Shaking off those thoughts, Hatz kneels next to the tub, plucking one of the bottles from the countertop.
He squeezes the shampoo bottle on top of Khun’s head but the latter tries to slap his hand away. Hatz intercepts by smacking it lightly with his wrist. He catches a glimpse of the back of Earrings’ forearm, and the slashes carved in it. For a moment, he sees red, something ugly forming in his stomach, growing consciousness.
“Bam and Rak are going to be here shortly,” Hatz says. “Would you like them to see you like this?”
“They’re dead,” he deadpans. The room grows cold. Hatz’s hands on his head are suddenly heavy.
“They’re alive, you dipshit. It’s because of those drugs that you keep seeing them dead. They’re alive. You are the only one who’s dead. In the mind, at least.”
So they’re alive. It scares Khun more than it supposedly should relieve him. “I keep seeing them dead, Hatz. In my dreams, in my nightmares, fuck, even when I’m awake.”
Hatz’s fingers stop close to his forehead. Khun closes his eyes as shampoo trickles down the bridge of his nose.
There is a slight hesitation. Fingernails dig lightly into his scalp. “Do they know?”
Rak probably does, Hatz thinks. Bam, on the other hand, certainly doesn’t. Earrings never shows Bam this side of him. Hatz can never understand, really. He never sees Earrings as the reliable, unwavering genius that Bam sees. Earrings has always been anxious and sensitive beneath that confident surface of his. Those two sides can coexist, of course, but it’s hard to see past those layers when that’s what Hatz has always seen. And known. Earrings can act like the world is in the palm of his hand, but most of Hatz will only remember the boy desperately hugging himself in the corner the first month after the awful news of Bam’s death.
“They don’t have to,” Earrings tells him. “Especially Bam. He wouldn’t have left then.”
Earrings believes he’s the evilest thing this tower has ever seen. Hatz thinks he’s the second most selfless person he knows. First will have been Bam.
“Isu keeps asking for you,” he informs him, swinging out of the topic before he can even properly think about it. His hair still feels soft under his fingertips. He drags the stray locks back. “The yellow head says he has a favor for you.” Hatz sweeps the pale blue bangs out of his forehead, merging them with the rest. “You’ve been MIA for too long.”
“Can’t believe I was missed,” he teases.
Hatz’s fingers find themselves just above the back of his neck. He subconsciously twirls a strand. “They miss you.”
Two breaths and one blink later, Earrings responds, “I’m not so sure ’bout that.”
Hatz is tempted to pull his hair and yank his head back to look at him, to gauge why he’s being like this. Desperate to be forgiven but never making an effort to forgive himself. Like he’s above of everyone and no one. Trying to placate his nerves, he manages to say, “Bam and Rak miss you.”
But they’re the ones who left, Hatz thinks angrily. Why the fuck did they leave you, Earrings? Why did you never ask?
“I suppose I do too.” Khun lifts his head up, and Hatz is thinking of millions of things to describe how shitty that smile is. “I messed up, you know. Pretty badly. Here I am now, too pathetic to be looked at. I try not to think about them, because every time I do, I’d just lose my mind. Bam wouldn’t say anything but I know he blames me for what happened to the team. Rak knows how pathetic I’ve become. I keep asking myself; why wasn’t I the one who—”
“Khun,” Hatz cuts him off. His real name tastes bitter. For reasons he can’t be bothered to ask, Earrings has always preferred to be called by his last name, no matter how he damns his own family. Well, he has always been ironic. “I’m worried about you too.”
They both don’t know how long the silence lasts, but it must have been long, because time resumes when the bathroom is bolted open, and Hatz catches a flash of brown hair and another sturdier brown, screaming.
“Khun!”
“Blue turtle!”
“We came as soon as Hatz told us you’re sick! I’ve been calling several times and you’re not answering! Are you okay? Is it fine for you to bathe already?!”
“Oi turtle, I bought you bananas, be grateful! I came all this way just for you, hmp! But I wasn’t really worried though!”
Bam and Rak. They’re here. Hatz steps aside to let them reach Earrings, and he thinks he sees a pale hand almost reaching out, straying out of the bathtub, and Earrings opening his mouth, about to say something, probably about to call out.
He doesn’t.
They lock eyes for the last time, each other’s names at the tip of their tongues. None of them budge. The doorknob is cold underneath his fingers. Bam never knows anything. Hatz knows the young bright brunette has forgiven Earrings a long time ago. Hatz knows Rak never blames him.
Yet, he never tells him anything.
“Take care of that Earrings,” he tells them. To Hatz, he will always be just 'Earrings'. A childish nickname born out of rivalry and taunting, but it rolls off his tongue like home.
Their gazes burn his back. He shrugs them off.
“Or else I will.”
The knob twists, and when Hatz steps out, he thinks he hears them call out his name, but he is too far away to catch it.