Chapter Text
“Ahn Suho, get the fuck out of your head. I’m not gonna tell you again, son, you cost me a match tonight and I’ll break your fucking nose myself.”
Ugly. That’s all Suho thinks about when Coach Jang squats in front of him, old, grimy hands forcibly squeezing his shoulders, shaking. From this view, as in Suho slumping on the stool that rests in the corner of the ring, his head lolled slightly back, he can see all of his Coach’s nasty pores and sun-stricken wrinkles. He can see the threatening glare in his Coach’s eye, one that concedes only when Suho’s KO-ed three guys in a night without letting the matches linger past a fourth round. Suho determines that he looks really ugly from here.
He also scoffs, looking around nonchalantly when he says, “As if you had the strength, Ajussi. I don’t know why you say these things when you can’t stand up for longer than a few minutes without excusing yourself back to a seat, claiming that you gain a ‘new perspective’ to coaching from sitting on your ass.”
The moment he opened his mouth, Suho anticipated a crisp slap to the face, yet with every word that flowed out of his mouth, a collected silence passed over Coach Jang. It frightened Suho more than a red cheek.
Instead of letting the thought linger, he quickly turns his head to peek between the black ropes that hang at his eye level. Past the ring and the matted parameters that separate the art and the enthusiasts, wait rows and rows of empty seating.
Suho can imagine it if he closes his eyes, people packed like sardines in these seats, standing and sitting, yelling at him and his opponent to hit harder, dodge faster--
Coach Jang pulls him from his drift, gripping his chin and pulling it with a force that a 71-year-old man should not possess, to look at his ugly face. One that’s contorted in a grimace so sinister, Suho thinks he might actually hurt him this time.
“Now, son, listen to me, and listen close,” he shakes Suho’s head in his iron grip-- as if it would make Suho hear better, “you’re good, you know you’re good. But I know you better. You’re trash. Your hook looks sloppy. Your footwork,” he shakes Suho again, “son, your footwork is dogshit today.” He laughs exasperatedly, like he can’t believe what he’s saying. “We have two matches tonight, and your footwork is actual, stinking--” he releases his grip and stands, kicking Suho’s stool to emphasize “dog - shit”.
“What the fuc--” Suho begins as he slides against the corner cushion, his stool kicked out from underneath him.
“What was that? Hm? Say something again, son. I dare you.”
Coach Jang dares him. He dares him to stand up and push the Ajussi so hard against the canvas that he hears bones crack. It would be so easy. Coach Jang is strong, built from decades of welterweight boxing and ceaseless training for a dead-end career. Suho is stronger…so much stronger. It would take nothing out of him to pin him to the floor and press his forearm to the man’s neck, putting just enough pressure that blood stops flowing to the brain of the wilted, dying boxer.
Suho just hangs his head, lifting himself onto his feet slowly. “That’s right, son.”
Little does Coach Jang know--
“Hey! Ah…Ahn Suho! Ahn-Suho-ssi, KB wants you.” The boy pauses, “Oh! Sorry, Coach-nim, please excuse Suho-ssi. Kang Byul is in urgent need of his presence…a ah, financial thing, if you understand.” The boy-- Jin, bows a perfect ninety-degree angle and then pitter-patters up to the edge of the ring where Suho’s stands.
“Coach Jang, if you’ll excuse me.” Suho bends in half, folding himself between the ropes to join Jin, who’s looking at him like he’s lost a limb.
“It’s alright, boy, do what you need to now-- you’re not gonna be able to later when I’m through with you and your wretched disrespect.” He says it coolly, as if he can already picture Suho on his hands and feet, holding himself up as he smacks the ever-loving shit out of Suho’s ass with a metal rod. Because obviously that’ll help Suho win more. Obviously.
Suho takes one last look at Coach Jang before picking up his hoodie from the floor and pulling it over his head, engulfing his sweaty torso in soft, clingy material.
“Where’s KB, Jin?”
“I- in the back…past the room with the chairs.” Jin stares at Suho as he says it.
“Okay, thanks.”
He turns and begins to walk away from the lit ring towards a dingier, less clean section of the arena. Despite the facility’s overbearing neon signage that plasters every main entrance and exit hall, the long hall descending in front of Suho is bare, the overhead lights that line the ceiling flickering on and off, buzzing.
Suho already knows that the second door on the right is the chair storage, so he can only guess from the two other doors in the hallway—one ten steps from where he is on his left and one at the end of the hall—that KB is in the latter.
He always had a thing for theatrics, Suho reminds himself as he begins trodding towards the room, the only sign of KB peeking through the hazy yellow light in the crack between the door and the tiled floor.
Suho sighs, deep enough to feel a pinch in his rib from earlier, and clamps his hand on the knob, turning and opening the door brazenly.
He’d been expecting KB, dull, snarky KB, sitting at a desk with his feet up, shoes off, smoking a cigarette.
What he finds instead is Sieun, cleaning the pink-tainted, sweat-soaked towels from last night, all clumped together in a basin.
Suho stalls.
“Yah, Sieun-ah, I thought you were downstairs? Did they move you?” The last time Suho had seen Sieun was last month when he got hit so hard in the face that the cut on his cheekbone had bled nonstop for a half-hour. He’d gone through two rags and three disinfectant wipes before Sieun, who’d gone slightly pale despite his job, decided to send him home with Neosporin, gauze, and tape…
“You can finish it yourself.”
“But I want you to do it, I can barely grasp my shirt. What makes you think I can properly apply the gauze?”
“I have another guy waiting on me, Suho. It’s been almost an hour.”
“And he can’t wait? I need you more…”
Suho blinks.
“Sorry, Sieun-ah, what was that?”
Sieun takes a deep breath, “I said that I’d just gotten in here a couple of weeks ago. They wanted a smooth transition to the main floor, so it took some time, but I’m here now.”
Oh.
Suho looks at him curiously for a moment before leaning against the wall, KB’s request for him hardly lingering.
Sieun looked different from the last time he’d seen him; a little slimmer, more clean-cut, as if he hadn’t been eating enough because he’d spent all his money on a trip to the barber. His white coat draped over wide shoulders like a hanger, a navy button-up on his torso. A loose red tie hung tightly at his nape.
Sieun held himself like he worked for an underground boxing ring, confident and laid-back. He met Sieun’s eyes and knew that they would always give his youth away; they were too big, too feminine. They were beautiful.
“Do you have somewhere to be, Suho?”
Did he?
“No.”
Sieun narrowed his eyes, like Suho was suspicious of something. He wasn’t suspicious of anything.
“Honest! I was, uh, walking to--” to do what? To fucking stare at Yeon Sieun. To scare the poor guy.
“-To find KB…and I thought I’d stop by.” Sieun’s glare doesn’t dwindle. “To give you a heads up about tonight! I have a couple matches tonight, and, you know, the chances are really low, but um-- I might need your help later. To help fix me up.” A pause. “Yeah.”
Sieun’s expression deadpans, and a simple, “Okay,” is muttered before he turns his back to Suho and turns the sink back on.
Suho waits for something, anything, to be said further by Sieun. This is ridiculous, Suho thinks. It’s quite ridiculous, indeed, that every time he walks into Sieun’s space, he can’t control his demeanour; every relaxed muscle and cool expression he can muster suddenly become non-existent. Sieun doesn’t ever pay more than a few concerned glances or unimpressed stares towards Suho before focusing on his job: to fix him up. Not just Suho. All the fighters who work under Chico’s. There aren’t many, but there are enough that Suho’s name could get lost with someone less pointed…someone who isn’t Sieun.
“Bye Sieun.” Suho doesn’t wait for a response.
Closing the door behind him and taking a step back into the hallway, he narrows his eyes at the musk coming from the room he had passed earlier.
KB.
“You asked for me?”
KB drops his feet from a file cabinet, turns his swivel chair, and sighs. “What took you so long?” He opens his front pocket, embroidered with a “Chico’s” label in big, red, cursive letters, and pulls out a Marlboro, sticking it between his white teeth. A muffled, “You know how I feel about pay days, Suho-ya,” comes out as he attempts to light the cigarette.
“Today’s no different than any other, so I expected that the message would be sent easily,” he inhales and smoke escapes from his mouth, “I take it Jin told you where I was.”
“He did.”
“So then,” he drags again, “why did it take you so long to get to me, Suho-ya?”
Suho looks away, indifference written all over his face. He guesses KB probably thinks he’s being a smug punk, wasting his time like every second didn’t cost him 500 won.
Schedules were important here. Suho could give less of a damn.
“I got lost.”
“Where? In Busan?” KB rises from his chair and slips into Adidas slippers before slowly trailing his cigarette, sitting on the front of a large desk that rests in the middle of the musty, dimly lit room.
Suho sways on his feet, finding it harder to ignore the smell of his sweat-soiled hoodie.
“No.” In Sieun’s office, he can hardly smell anything. Everything’s always so sterile that Suho’s clothes, no matter how gross, smell like disinfectant after a while.
“I went into the wrong room. Sorry ‘bout that. Sir.”
KB clicks his tongue, “Suho-ya, there’s no need for that,” he pulls a folder out from beneath his ass and shakes it off, “Here’s what you earned this month.”
He drops the cigarette on the floor and stomps on it with his slipper, “Should be 4 and a half million won. Checked and counted.”
Suho drags his eyes towards KB’s face, “That’s with the extra stuff?”
“Yes, these…sponsors weren’t as generous.”
“There were three.”
“Well, maybe they weren’t adequately satisfied with you. Sounds like a personal issue.”
Suho scoffs, “That’s bullshit, we have a compulsory downpayment--”
“That covers your rent just fine.”
“It fucking doesn’t when I’m giving myself to the people who ‘invest’ here and then pay me a couple extra dollars for my services, the fuck.”
KB rolls his eyes, turning around to sit back in his chair. “You’re excused.”
“Yeah, tell them I said thank you.”
Suho leaves the door open when he leaves, knowing that it’ll piss off KB a little more. Be just that more annoying. The fucker can hardly tie his own shoes-- Suho wouldn’t put it past him to not be able to get up and close a door.
He looks down at the envelope of money in his hands and laughs. He laughs as he walks through the arena towards his room to grab his backpack. He laughs as he walks towards the main foyer, away from his screeching Coach and Jin, who’s babbling him a ‘See you later.” He laughs until he’s gotten on his motorbike and is driving, all the way to the apartment above Chico’s Bodyshop. Suho stops laughing once he’s stepped inside his living room and throws his bag across the room, a grating shout to follow.
“What the actual fuck. What the actual fuck?!” He repeats to himself.
He stalks over to his punching bag and starts hurling his fists, unable to keep himself in check-- under control-- because What. The. Actual. Fuck.
Three different nights, after three separate, horrible evenings of getting the everloving shit punched out of him, kicked out of him. He fucked and got fucked on three occassions. For a couple hundred thousand won added to his paycheck.
The ring has never had a prostitute. God-- can he even call himself that?
Chico’s is dirty, but not that dirty. Not dirty enough to sell their fighters. No. This was Suho’s decision. A horrible fucking decision. He thought, then, maybe he could buy some new equipment and take a trip to see his grandma in Jeju.
“Sorry mistake.” He growls into every thrusting knuckle, red from the lack of a bandage.
The worst part? Only the first woman was hot. That’s the only fucking reason he decided to do it in the first place! She was older and foreign, and was nice enough to get it over as quickly as possible. She just wanted a fuck, nothing more, nothing less.
And he delivered. She came. It was easy, great. She said she would forward the money to KB the next morning-- that everything would be covered.
The next woman was younger, Korean, and very, very, clingy. She really wasn’t nice enough for Suho to get on his knees and do what he did.
And the guy. The guy…Suho wasn’t expecting, not even by a long shot. Suho had almost walked out, but the man explained gently that the money was already in. He said he’d seen Suho fight and that he couldn’t help but request him-- needed to know if Suho’s body was really that strong. He had big eyes and was so big, everywhere.
Suho had never been fingered before in his life; he hardly knew that was something possible…down there. It hurt like hell, and then it didn’t after a while, and Suho can’t dwell on the fact that it felt good because if he does, then it’ll mean something more, something he’s not ready to think about.
It was the best of the three nights, but it made him feel horrible, so horrible that he told KB to cut off any possibility of it ever happening again.
Suho can’t dwell because he knows that eventually, he’ll cave and deny anyone KB sends his way, no matter how insistent he is that it’s a final decision. He’ll deny until another man, one who resembles the donor, comes knocking at the door to his resting room in the arena.
Then, he’ll really be fucked.
So he can’t dwell.
Suho stops punching the bag and sits down for the first time in hours. He shrugs off his hoodie and lets the chilly air of his cluttered apartment cool his body temperature to equilibrium. He hadn’t changed his shoes when he left the arena; too pent up to do just about anything, Suho had left his practice boots on, laced tight onto his ankle.
When Suho started fighting with Chico’s, the shoes were the hardest to adjust to. Before then, when he fought, it was in old canvas shoes. He’d been a part of a youth MMA club before quitting after his grandma got hospitalized, and they didn’t pay for anything.
The stroke left them moving to Jeju Island, where his grandma could be with her cousin, and Suho could have a change of pace. He never stopped fighting; he just didn’t do it in a nice gym with proper guys who knew when to shut the hell up and mind their business.
When Suho fought, it was in school bathrooms and behind sketchy alleyways, because dammit, they always had to be in fucking alleyways.
At the time, he knew it was cliche. He really knows now, just how much of a cliche, deadbeat punk he was, entertaining weaker deadbeat punks who couldn’t hold a spar with him longer than a couple of minutes.
It’s not like he was an elite fighter, but inside Suho was a simmering feeling, one that took over; it guided every calculated move, every angry blow, every irritated kick. It made Suho a good fighter, a great one. The flow of his frustration made him untouchable to most of the kids he knew. Of course, there were the wannabe gangsters who tried to recruit him to be a part of their group, some who challenged him just for the fun of it.
Suho didn’t care. He really, really didn’t.
They could come at him and he’d treat every one of them all the same, with swift force and ease. He didn’t see fighting like a game, but sometimes he questioned just how real everything was; was it normal to be like this…all the time? Was it necessary?
It took until the end of high school for Suho to promptly decide that it wasn’t.
And then he moved back to Seoul to try and start a new chapter-- do something different. On the day he left, he’d promised his grandma that he was going to be humble, make money for her, and be a good grandson. He was still all of those things. Suho always kept his promises.
Well…not always. Not when he started working at Chico’s and quickly learned that he was only good for a few things: being a good grandson, and fighting- fighting until his body gave out, fighting until Coach Jang said he was done, fighting for everything and nothing at the same time.
He’s turning 21 soon. His first match ever was on his 19th birthday. Two years.
Suho drags a hand over his face and trudges over to his backpack lying haphazardly on the floor. His phone didn’t crack from the impact, thank God, Suho thinks.
He should really take care of his temper more properly…invest in online Yoga classes or something.
When he taps on the screen, he’s met with a message from Uber, telling him that a new seasonal deal is coming up. There are a few more spam notifications that get swiped to the trash, and Suho’s about to clear his entire inbox when he stops himself from swiping left on a notification from Messages.
‘ “Oppa, how are you doing? I heard you got Jang-nim mad. Do you want me to bring you some food?” ‘
Hayoon.
Suho decided to ignore the message for a little while.
Before he’d inevitably answer with a “sure” and then later, a “samgyetang”, Suho had to take a shower. After that, he’d wash the dishes from the morning and walk his clothes to the laundromat across the street. He’d wait around in the café next door and get a water. Then, right as his timer would go off, telling him that his clothes were almost done, he’d open the message and text her.
Suho sniffs the clothes as he gathers them into a mesh hamper, cringing at the faint smell of his odor, eternally stuck to the fabric of his workout gear.
“This is ridiculous,” he says, tossing the hamper onto his bed.
“Should I just head in early?” Out goes the old tape, in goes the new tape as Suho begins to pack his bag for the evening. He already had his things in the room at the arena, but the tape they used wasn’t good enough. The facility provided the athletes certain things: a room with a bed and a kitchenette, sparring boots, and shitty tape.
He’d found this one through Sieun. The day they’d met, Suho had a bruised knuckle and a bleeding blister from the material of the gloves rubbing against his slick skin. He’d never seen him before.
“What happened to Yuna-noona?”
Sieun didn’t meet his eye, didn’t even lift his head, “I don’t know.”
Suho sat idly on one of the nursing beds. “How come? Don’t they tell new people this kind of thing? I mean…she was just here this morning. I saw her. I talked to her.”
Sieun walked over to him slowly and took his gaze head-on, “They didn’t tell me anything.”
“Oh,” a smaller, more calloused hand would take his for a moment, before a gloved one flipped his wrist over and took a look at the blister.
“Aren’t you gonna ask me how I got it?”
“No.”
“Why not?” Suho tried searching for his eyes again-- those big, round eyes. Long lashes.
“My job isn’t,” Sieun dropped his hand, “to ask questions.”
“Aren’t you a doctor?”
“Yes.”
Suho waited expectantly for Sieun to say something else.
“I don’t ask questions I already know the answers to, Suho.” He paused dead in his tracks because how did this new guy know his fucking name?
“Wha- What do you--”
“Your gloves…? This point at the wrist--” he tapped on Suho’s arm with the gloved finger, “-is where your glove ends.”
Sliding a finger down, dragging on Suho’s skin just enough, Sieun felt the knuckle on Suho’s middle and ring finger, “These need zinc-oxide tape, not EAB.”
“Okay--”
“The one they use is too flexible. And it's a cheap brand-- it’ll fall off your fingers once you start to sweat. That’s why you’re bruising.” For the second time, he dropped Suho’s hand.
After he’d finished wrapping Suho’s hand and applying ointment, Suho had asked for the brand.
Sieun tossed the box of tape at him and told him to get home safe.
Since then, every week, when Suho’s first aid and treatment materials got replenished, stacked neatly on the counter of his kitchenette, he wasted no time picking up the box of tape and tossing it in the trash.
Just as Suho is about to turn off his TV and put his slides on, a ring comes from the doorbell.
Fuck-- Hayoon…he’d totally forgotten.
He opens the front door, “Hey, Hayoon-ssi, how are you doing?”
“Good, good. H- Here’s your food, oppa. It took a little while to get here, so it might be a little cold, so my apologies!” She bowed slowly before straightening up, a nervous smile on her face.
He really wishes it would fall off by itself. It always pained him a little to say something just to remind her that he was too old for her-- like talking about taxes, or the weather.
“No worries, thank you for getting it for me, Hayoon. I know with how taxes are right now that it can be a bit harder buying from restaurants!” He gives her the widest, tight lipped smile just as hers dwindles, uncertainty creeping into expression, as if it’s just dawned on her that he is, in fact, too damn old for her.
“Oh-- oh yes, well it’s no big deal, oppa! You can pay me back with snacks later.” She steps back from his door. “I’ll see you later!”
When he sees her vanish behind the corner fence at the end of the laundromat’s parking lot, he sighs, stepping back inside quickly to refrigerate the soup and leave. Leave for another night of getting his shit rocked. For another night of Coach Jang.
“I’m gonna kill him someday,” he mutters, getting onto his motorbike before revving the engine.
Suho’s restless. He has three hours before his first match at 9. The night officially begins in 20 minutes when some new kid debuts against James. James is 28 and just got out of prison a few months ago. Suho stifles a laugh at the thought. We all had to start somewhere, he reminds himself.
Tonight, he was going against some local fighters from two different gyms across the city: Green Lantern and Kim Lee’s.
Neither of them were particularly exciting places-- Green Lantern was all aesthetic and no physicality, Kim Lee’s was too traditional for his taste. Suho liked unique fighting techniques, abstract approaches.
Whenever guys from Kim Lee’s came to spar during practice sessions, Suho could prepare for every move, every jab and kick, every duck. It was almost as exhausting as actually fighting the guys.
Suho shakes off the thought. Just because the fights were going to be easy didn’t mean Suho was gonna leave unharmed. Coach Jang’s fury was no blind promise-- it’s as if the man had something to prove, as if he saw Suho as an attachment of his insecurities and beating him was the only way to project. It’d always been like that, though, Suho thought. Since day one, he’d always been the brunt of Coach Jang’s unrelenting frustration with every little thing that went wrong, even things that went right.
The idea of having a senior citizen hit him hard enough to have blue bruises the next day was enough to rid Suho of any smugness he could’ve possibly developed by being the best under Chico’s.
Sure, the others were good, strong, but Suho knew he was the best. It was evident in the precision of his technique, the manner he approached the sport.
To Suho, fighting really was an art. The bodies moving-- flowing with one another-- were like paints on a canvas, mixing to make the perfect color. Every stroke, every jab and upper-cut, every hold and all the steps towards momentum were purposeful…meticulous. The white highlights and grey shading, the blinding lights of the arena, and blood dripping off the tarp on the floor, all made a great painting. A great big painting.
And because Suho was an artist, and all the other guys were just…fighters, he was the best. Simple as that.
The sound of something hitting his door startles him. It didn’t sound like a knock-- could’ve been a person who got lost. It’d be right around the time most people walk their way into the arena to find their seats and whatnot. The bang didn’t sound right, though.
It’d been too harsh, too abrupt. Like a kick or a slam.
No one would be knocking on his door like that. Not even Coach Jang, despite his temperament.
Tentatively creeping out of his cot, Suho tiptoes towards the door, hearing for any other noises, indicators that someone’s outside his room. As he grabs the handle and turns, the bulbs in the light fixtures above his sink buzz.
The white lights turn off, and then on, casting his flickering shadow on the door. It’s as if someone’s flipping a switch, the way the light turns rhythmically.
A shaky breath escapes Suho’s lips as he turns the doorknob. He can feel his chest caving in from the tension in his body. It feels weird, whatever this is…fear? Uncertainty? Suho doesn’t think he should be feeling afraid right now. For all he knew, the lights could be a coincidence.
He opens the door to an empty hallway. Taking a tentative step out, Suho looks left and right, searching the depth of the long hallway to see any sign of somebody. Save for the big neon arrows at the end of each hallway pointing directions to the restrooms and the main foyer, Suho’s alone. There’s nothing. Not even trash, or a dirty rag on the floor. It’s spotless.
He turns to his left and inspects the walls. Chico’s owns the arena, and typically, they don’t hire cleaners. The cleanest he sees in the rooming hall is the red carpets that stretch the circumference of the arena. No one except fighters and coaches is in there-- not even casual gym goers. With everyone wearing Adidas slippers and whatever trendy slides are in, dust never picks up. Not really, anyway.
All the people frequenting this hall would drag shit on the wall, though; equipment, their bags-- maybe they’d write something or tag it with a sticker. He’d even seen some crusted blood sometimes.
Today, it’s all fucking empty.
The walk back to his room is awkward, albeit also scary. Suho doesn’t think something like this has ever happened. It should be a goddamn miracle to have the facility be clean for once, but all it does is put him on edge.
Splashing his face a couple of times, he lets the cool water seep into his pores and drip through his short bangs. “Get the fuck out of your head, Suho. Coach really might have to break your face if you can’t get it together.”
The reflection in the mirror looks rough. He’s got a cut on his lip from this morning and the tainted look of green-purple just underneath his eyes. His skin is otherwise smooth; he’s clean-shaven and has no blemishes. He’s always looked decent… high-set cheekbones and straight eyebrows: a sharp yet delicate nose and soft lips. Suho knows, though, deep in his eyes is a type of tired that comes from exhaustion that’s been meddling for too long, not from having no sleep.
He stands at the mirror for a while, the process of analyzing every part of his face and his upper body somewhat therapeutic, as self-absorbed as it may be. Sue him.
In the midst of staring at himself in the quiet, quiet room, Suho thinks he’s hearing things when the subtle sound of liquid drops reaches his absolute threshold.
Suho lowers himself to the faucet and looks for the sign of drippage. When nothing comes out, he stands up and ruffles his hair a little, shuffling over to his cot before he hears it again. The drip-drop of something in his room.
Sticking a finger under the faucet, he waits.
“What the…” On his finger, a single dot, crimson in color. It wells up and breaks at the tenuous shake of his hand, the faintest draw of blood falling into the porcelain bowl of the sink.
At first. Suho thinks he’s seeing things. Blood, real blood, falling from the faucet of his room. Blood falling from a faucet. Blood.
Another drop gets onto his finger, and he yelps.
Rubbing his hand on his mesh shorts, he walks cautiously out of his room and sprints the empty hallway to the main foyer. He’s about to reach the janitor’s room when he remembers that there are people, a lot of people, moseying around where he’s headed. The idea of dealing with them, in any situation, sounds worse than some fucking blood in the pipes.
The only person he could reach without making a commotion is on the other side of the arena. He’d probably know what to do-- probably be civil about the whole thing. Sieun would have a logical reason as to why his sink is bleeding.
The white door stands out against the bleak navy blue walls of the hall. He supposes it should, it being an infirmary…emergencies and all.
The walk there was shaky, neurotic. Suho felt like his entire body was running with a live wire, kind of how he felt seeing his shadow flicker on the wooden door. It was something unnatural, and it made his senses tingle.
Walking into total darkness, his unrest rises until he’s frantically searching for the light switch on the wall. He’s out of his element; the room’s so dark, the only source of light being the glimmer of light reflecting on the steel supports of the nursing beds. “Sieun? Sieun, are you in here?”
The clang of metal and the sound of something plastic crumpling startles Suho who almost trips before finally finding the goddamn switch to turn the lights on.
Suho blinks the stars from his eyes, and as they adjust, they fall on something worse. Something so much worse, Suho doesn’t even think he’s seeing it right.
“Suho-” Sieun sounds strangled. The rough edges of his usually smooth voice warn Suho that he’s terrified. He isn’t sure if the fact is comical or horrifying.
Across the room, in front of the medical refrigerators and freezers, Sieun stands like a deer in front of headlights. His wide eyes, blown, pupils dilated and black.
At his feet, a storage cart full of supplies is turned over, sacks of liquid deep red strewn around.
In Sieun’s hand, a crumpled bag drips the same dark blood-- the same blood that’s smeared over his lips and drying on his chin.
“Suho-” Sieun starts again, taking a step towards Suho, who’s still frozen in place. “Suho, it isn’t what it looks like. I knocked over the cart, and when I picked it up, the lights went off. I- I couldn’t find the switch and tripped. The blood is mine, it--”
He stops abruptly at the movement in Suho’s arm, daring to rise-- to urge Sieun to stop. His movements are strained, as if he’s tethered. Tethered by fear? Amazement? Disbelief?
“I didn’t see anything,” Suho says before grasping the door handle and slipping through the door to the dead hallway, reeking of smoke. Suho can taste the bile rising in his throat as he stumbles over his feet, unable to find a single place in the fucking thing that isn’t scaring the shit out of him.
“Suho. Suho…Ahn-Suho, son, wake up.” He feels the firm grip on his shoulder, thumbs pressing into his dank skin. Suho can’t feel much, between the new, throbbing ache in his legs and the burning sensations in his hands, cramping from being in the gloves for so long, but he can feel that. In all its impossible strength, he can feel it, and it grounds him.
“I’m not sleeping…” Suho mumbles, turning his head back and forth, a weak attempt at sitting up straight, resisting against Suho’s better judgment.
“Son…Son, you gotta get up out of the seat, the next fight is going on in a half-hour and the cleaning crew has to wipe the blood off the canvas.”
Suho’s daze is all-consuming; the poor sense of coordination, the overstimulating light, circling over his head like little birds in those old cartoons he used to watch as a kid-- it made him feel out of his body, uncontrolled, and zooming out of the exosphere, into space. It didn’t feel good. Not even a little-- not in the slightest.
The mention of blood had his head whipping around, poorly concealed shock washing over his face.
He’s falling, falling back through the ozone, turning into a fireball of confusion and energy that has seemingly come out of nowhere. He’s falling back into consciousness, and now, he’s doomed. The fights were real, and he won. He beat those other guys to a pulp, in less than four rounds, and swift motion-- clean, lethal motion.
It comes back to him, running away from the white door, bulldozing into his gear, and sitting in absolute silence before opening the door to a very startled Jin who was telling him that Coach Jang had been calling for him for the last ten minutes.
The ache of his angry Coach sears his skin now that he can remember it, getting wacked into focus, before eventually suiting up and heading towards the fighter's entrance of the arena, loud and boisterous and so bright.
He remembers the pained faces of his opponents, their eyes muddled with fear and something like awe, watching Suho as he advanced towards them. He remembers racing thoughts and flames at the bottom of his feet, heating him up and cooling him down, keeping him agitated for a prolonged forty-five minutes. He remembers thinking about Sieun and how badly he’d wanted to bloody the other guys up.
“Son, I said to come on,” Coach Jang says as he tugs Suho hard enough for him to stumble over his stool and land on all fours, his mind steadying amidst the chaos threatening to pull his lunch from his stomach. His eyes land on the canvas, light streaks of smeared blood oxidizing the color of shit. That’s what gets him to stand up, posture tall, and walk away from the ring, putting on a stoic show for the stands that are still going wild.
Following Coach Jang without paying any mind, the next time he looks up, a white door appears in his line of vision. Just the color makes the air in his body feel like it’s being compressed by an invisible vacuum, sucking all the bravery out of his form, leaving him a lean-muscled, tan skinned raisin of a man.
Coach Jang takes him by the cheek, squeezing so that Suho’s lips purse, and he feels like a fish. “He’s not here yet, so just settle in for a minute, and Sieun-ah will be with you.” He slaps Suho’s cheek and pushes him onto a nursing bed, the lining paper crinkling beneath him. “Keep it up, son, rest up.”
As Coach Jang leaves the infirmary, the hinges of the door squeak to signal his departure. The sound echoes throughout the pristine room, telling Suho that he’s completely alone. His eyes dart to the fridge, an image of Sieun, star-struck and bloody, burning in his mind.
It would be normal if Suho could just get over the fact that Sieun was a fucking vampire. The problem is, it isn’t normal that Sieun’s a vampire. It isn’t fucking normal that he drinks blood from medical bags and eats them because its all he has.
If Sieun wasn’t such a bad liar, maybe Suho could believe the white lie that he really had slipped and fell, and that all the blood on his face was incidentaly there, not because Sieun had been drinking from the bags, slurping and sucking until the bag was clean, and all there was left was the drible of blood under his lip falling down his chin.
It was unfortunate because Sieun was a horrible liar-- or at least to Suho. For all he knows, Sieun could be a pathological liar to everyone else, but alas, he wasn’t to Suho. And it’s an unfortunate thing because now Suho can’t ignore anything. He can’t pretend to ignore the blinding fact, the one flashing like a police siren in his head-- behind his eyes-- that Sieun’s a vampire.
Another creaking sound shouts at him, and he can’t bear to look up, knowing that Sieun’s there, probably ashamed, maybe even scared. He can anticipate consoling Sieun and tell him that he was sorry about running away earlier. He can even be sweet and take the whole procedure gently.
What he can’t do is prepare for the normalcy of Sieun’s entrance, the way he prepares the IV, and moves easily across the counter, collecting cotton balls and antiseptic wipes.
“How are you--”
“Give me your arm.” Suho obliges.
He lets Sieun do his work, stripping his silk cover off to give Sieun the access he needs.
Suho loses track of the time it takes for Sieun to stitch the cut on his bicep and wrap the side of his torso, littered with scratches and a long, deep bruise that spans the length of his oblique.
“What happened here?”
Suho blanks before realising that Sieun’s talking to him. “I-I’m not sure. I think-I…” All Suho can do is breathe deeply, consider what he needs to say…what he needs to say.
“Can you lift yourself onto the bed?” Sieun’s tone is soft, unique to the sternness he usually expresses. Suho feels like he shouldn’t focus on it so much, but it’s so strange how the whole situation has turned out that he can’t find it in himself to not analyze every minor detail-- like how pliable Sieun’s question sounds, waiting to be formed by Suho’s response, rough or curved at the edges.
“Yeah.” He moves, wincing slightly at the discomfort in his body. During the fights, he’d gone on autopilot, and now he was suffering the consequences. The stiffness in his muscles spread throughout his body, and as badly as he wanted to be as non-disruptive as possible, afraid to ruin the serenity of their interaction, it hurt to move, to breathe. It hurt a lot. A low whimper escapes his mouth as he tries to reposition his legs.
He doesn’t see the way Sieun’s body stops momentarily at the sound.
Suho closes his eyes and pictures a universe where Yoona is still here, instead. He would lie down, and her warm fingers would push at the skin around his injuries. She always talked him through it, asking him how he was doing and how the match went. She always listened-- let him run his mouth the way he always does. Before every fight, she would always wish him good luck and tell him, “Don’t come back until tomorrow, okay? I don’t want to see your face tonight, hm?” It was always with a dazzling grin and the kindest eyes, somewhere in them, a glimmer of competition, challenging him to be the best that he could be, every time.
Suho notices the way cold hands handle his body, quick to fix and slow to prod, checking for any and every abnormality. Sieun’s breath is even but short, coming in small, rhythmic bursts from his mouth. Suho opens his eyes to stare at the way his chest rises and falls, peaking at the long, nimble fingers opening wrappers and popping open bottles, bringing Suho back to life.
“Are you okay?” Suho hardly registers that he’s asked the question until his lips close and he gulps, once again afraid of triggering a new beginning-- one he’s not sure he wants to start or even tiptoe near-- if only it means that everything can stay the way it is between them.
“Yes.”
“Sieun-”
“Ahn Suho, I am perfectly fine. I don’t know why you’d be asking me a question like that when you know all I ever do is coop up in this infirmary and treat the same fifteen people.”
Sieun glares at him with more than enough force that Suho knows he should shut up, but his actions betray his mind. There’s no way he can just let it go. Sieun’s a vampire. Sieun’s a vampire . “I just wanted to make sure, I mean, after what happened earlier.”
“I slipped.”
Suho scoffs and flinches at Sieun’s attempt to wipe the residue of a cut on his leg, the movement causing Sieun to jump and take a step back, angry and terrified.
“Yeah, Sieun-ah, you fucking slipped and ended up accidentaly licking all the blood off the floor.”
“That’s not-”
“I know, Sieun. I know. I don’t understand how you think you can hide something like this when TV exists.”
Sieun leans against the bed across from his, unable to speak, unable to look further than the gleaming white tile floors.
“It’s so convenient for you, to work here. You can pump blood all you need to and it’ll never bat an eye because they trust you. They know you’re doing a job well done, so what’s the difference if a little blood is drawn, right?”
Sieun’s breath is shaky, and he shudders at the incrimination.
“You have no idea what it’s like.” Sieun’s voice, despite the trembling in his body, is sturdy. “I-I barely live, and I do so little, so that no one notices.” Sieun looks up at him, a strained sadness in his eyes, “No one ever noticed.”
“Well, help me understand you, Sieun. Let me understand you so that I’m not so afraid every time I see your door, or you.”
“I don’t think that’s possible.”
“Of course it’s fucking possible, Sieun, you just have to talk.”
“I don’t think it’s worth it.”
“Why not?”
“I don’t want you in my head, I don’t want you anywhere near me,” Sieun says harshly, no warmth in his voice. The Sieun that had spoken to him only moments before was gone. This Sieun didn’t care that it hurt Suho to hear him speak so bluntly, so aggressively towards him…when all he wanted was to understand.
“It’s your fucking job, isn’t it? To help me?”
“I guess our time is up.”
Suho’s irritation bubbles over into his voice, into the way his subtle actions tread closer to violence than they do towards peace, towards making things better. “You know it isn’t, Sieun. You’re just afraid.”
“Get out, I have someone else to see.”
“Who else would want to see you, Sieun?” Suho knows instantly that he shouldn’t have said it. It was mean and full of spite, and Suho didn’t mean a word of it. He couldn’t help the way his mouth reacted-- miles before his brain, and he also can’t help, now, the way his body stills and everything comes crashing down.
Sieun’s face is emotionless, as rock solid as a statue. “Get out.”
“I didn’t mean it- Sieun--”
Sieun takes a step towards Suho and shoves him towards the door, yelling a final, “Get out!” before turning his back and stalking towards the room on the other side of the infirmary.
All Suho can do is turn and run, tumbling through the white door with the shaded window, tumbling through the hallway towards the nearest exit for the second time today. He has to get out.