#!drb

my character has a dream or nightmare about your character.

it’s happened again, he thinks, because he’s being pulled into that abstract almost reality that could fool just about anyone into believing.

but kai wants to think he’s not just anyone, that he can tell the difference between dream kaijus and the real thing. that he can tell an honest blood curdling shriek from something his mind has constructed. that he can convince himself the dead have not risen.

there are no shrieks though, no kaijus terrorising this dream, and eunsong is still six feet under.

jongin.

there are fingertips skimming over the ripped slits in his jeans and he’s damn sure they don’t belong to him.

there’s black hair and blacker eyes and jongin’s own hands are simultaneously tugging on strands and the collar of a white dress shirt.

he can’t remember where he is or how it is he got here but he can’t bring himself to care. his mind is otherwise occupied.

jongin.

sounds of bliss fill the room, the same room in which he’s defiled himself one too many times under the veil of darkness and curfews that had most of the shatterdome sleeping.

myungsoo’s with him and he’s the farthest from silent that kai’s ever heard him. he can feel those same fingers from before tugging, prying clothes from his body with a ferocity that should force kai into realising that this isn’t real.

but oh how he wants to believe that it is.

“jongin, wake up.” everything starts to shake, his vision slowly dissipating right before his eyes until all he sees around him is black.

“it’s just a nightmare,” myungsoo tries to console, but his voice is veiled with a dazed drowsiness that masks any possibility of sincerity. kai tries to picture himself through the elder’s eyes, his hair matted to his forehead, the wide eyes, and the rapid inhale-exhale rhythm stolen from his lungs. 

he thinks he can pinpoint the exact second the shock turns to disappointment across his face.

“it wasn’t a nightmare.

it wasn’t real..

your character witnesses something secretive or embarrassing about my character.

preparation isn’t exactly kai’s strong suit, but when he’s prepared he’s fucking meticulous.

the door is deadbolted shut and there aren’t any of his classes scheduled for another five more hours—not that he needs the full five but it doesn’t hurt to be thorough. he still needs to allow time to shower and since every single towel in his possession is ruined with bleach and dye, he needs time beforehand to scour the shatterdome for something clean to dry himself with. letting himself air dry isn’t exactly a viable option.

he had to find that out the hard way.

after factoring this into his equation, he finds that it leaves him with something close to three hours to himself—and he does what any single, able-bodied twenty-something year old boy does when left alone for too long.

my character has a dream or nightmare about your character.

gone.

long ago, kai had deemed it to be the worst word in the english language. in any language. it sounded horrible and felt so much worse, a longing ache in the pit of your stomach and the depths of your heart, and kai's sure he never wants to hear another pair of lips utter the word again.

when he closes his eyes, she’s there. when he opens them, she’s in his head instead and he can’t stand it. gone, but never truly forgotten. 

jongin..

sometimes he can hear her voice ringing so clearly in his ears that it’s almost like she’s right there with him, and he knows the only way that’s possible is insanity. and there’s no cure for insanity. not when the only person who can diagnose it shares a face two blinks too familiar with the girl he lost.

kai doesn’t think he can sit through another marshall–recommended consultation when all he could think about is how eunsong’s lips used to twitch upwards like that and how suzy’s eyelashes are long, too. fifteen minutes had passed and he hadn't said a damn word.

seven more hours after that, and he dreamed of eunsong that night. just when he thought he was getting over the nightmares. 

jongin, it’s okay.

he's back in the hospital room, the walls an off white and a woman's pale face stands stark in comparison. constant beeping surrounding him, hushed murmurs of secrets and devastation behind closed doors, and jongin's back in the room where he was forced to watch as the love of his life faded away from him.

but it's not eunsong's face he's staring at and it's not eunsong's fingers entwined with his own. 

it's suzy.

everything's going to be okay.

he jolts upright with a gasp, filling his lungs like a man starved, his cheeks damp and his heart a hollowed mess.

our characters say goodbye for the last time.

there’s something therapeutic about driving, and jongin’s felt it ever since the first time he was behind the wheel. the subtle shift of gears beneath his fingertips and the lulling hum of the engine never fails to suck away his stress like dust to a vacuum, his mind numbing with every passing mile. 

he doesn’t think, just does. his mind blank as he presses down on the clutch and guides the car from third to fourth gear, the revving of the engine drowning out the faint honking of cars he’d left behind at the last intersection. 

it’s not the first time he’s driven without music singing from the stereo to drown out his thoughts, but it’s the first time he doesn’t mind the quiet. he’s alone in his head and it’s a barren and dangerous place to be. but a soundtrack isn’t what he needs right now.

the light turns from red to green in front of him and it feels as though there’s a split second between stationary and sixty miles an hour, his back pressed into the driver’s seat and spine curved like the streamline of the car itself. the jaeger engineer that owned the car barely stopped to think when kai asked for the fastest ride he had. 

kai couldn’t even bring himself to feel guilty when he lied about his destination.

because people had long since abandoned the tradition of planning funerals for jaeger pilots, let alone ex-pilots.

when kai steps out of the car and the door slams to a close behind him, the floodgates of his mind open. the numbing effect of driving has vanished and leaves nothing but torment in its wake. he makes it barely ten paces forward of the curb before he feels like his knees are going to buckle beneath him, his own body betraying him.

the wrought iron gate before him is open, but there is no trace of another person in sight, green the only colour he can see for miles as an abundance of graves lay in arbitrary places across the cemetery. he doesn’t need to lift a hand to his face to know his cheeks are dampening with tears, though he’s quiet as he follows a path through the tombstones and past the empty spaces yet to be filled.

on his knees, jongin’s cheeks already reddened with anger, the black trousers he’s wearing are already scuffed with green and brown from the freshly dug up grass. 

he doesn’t find his voice until the sun’s already hanging overhead, the shade of the tree behind him long since shifted to another tombstone, for another weeping loved one. 

and jongin thinks of his regrets, all the words he never said and all the punches he landed and all the kisses he didn’t.

the phone in his pocket vibrates, but jongin’s numb again, tracing over the letters etched into the marble before him with his eyes, the static noise of the phone call only a distant hum now. because there’s only one number he wants to dial, and he knows they’re not going to pick up.

“i miss you.”

jongin murmurs, voice wavering between syllables and palms resting on the grass beneath his kneeling figure. it’s the most he can bring himself to say after he’s caught his breath and stopped himself from sobbing. he held back the entire morning, through the inescapable condolences and the inevitable briefing and the daily check-up he’s been prescribed to after one of the physicians found scars marring his wrists—but he can’t hold back now.

seconds turn into hours, harsh sunlight on the back of his neck turns into cool shade and wind blowing his silver hair across his forehead. and as jongin stands, he promises himself this will be the last time he visits—

“goodbye, myungsoo.”

my character recollects a past encounter with yours.

over the many years, various alcoholic beverages, and the abundance of hangovers that kai has endured, he’s learned to accept that sometimes he won’t exactly approve of the things he does while intoxicated. 

but the best thing about getting drunk, he’s learned, is that one tends to forget all the unwelcome wrongdoings they had committed the night before.

if it weren’t for his hasty breath of hesitance that usually overcomes him, kai’s almost certain he’d be covered in tattoos one can only shake their head and regretfully roll their eyes at. he’s partaken in his fair share of drunken and disorderly conduct, but he’s come to terms with his sins and said his metaphorical hail mary’s so he can live without shame. 

that being said, though, kai isn’t an exception to the rule of unwanted drunken flashbacks. it’s happened to him far too many times for him to be all that surprised about now, but when he’s breaking a sweat in the combat room, and a mass of memories assaults him all at once, he can’t help but internally cringe.

the latest one has kai almost anticipating the day it features in one of his nightmares.

and when it does, he won’t be able to look myungsoo in the eye.

why he thought it would be a good idea to drunk text myungsoo, he will never know. but why he actually did it, he’ll never let himself live it down. because he knows those texts are still floating around in either the inbox of the assault specialist’s phone, or in myungsoo’s retention of facts that will undoubtedly embarrass kai if ever spoken of. 

in the memory, he’s sitting at the bar—the same one that they’d no doubt shared a drink or two with that one time that kai recalls all too often—and his head is buried deep in the palms of his hands in the way only bartenders know. his phone is all too easily accessible in the right pocket of his coat, the number too familiar that it has kai’s fingertips twitching with prediction.

and it’s almost funny that the fightmaster without a care in the world is only ever impulsive enough to do what he so truly desires when intoxicated. 

( txt → not him ) sometimea i wonder what it wouldb e like f i met you under dtfferent circumdtances. before her. if upu would stoll hate me or if i could even actaully hate you

my character comforts your character.— in which kai accidentally mixes up myungsoo’s shampoo with bleach.

kai’s hands do that awkward mid–air pause that myungsoo is no doubt accustomed to by now. generally, it means the cogs in the fightmaster’s head are turning, that he’s somewhere stuck between making a decision and realising that in which he’s considering doing is absolutely idiotic. but he didn’t need to stand motionless for twenty full seconds to know that.

myungsoo’s glare is enough of an indication.

worrying his lip between nervous teeth, kai takes a slow step forward, only to take two steps back. he tries to overlook the metaphorical significance of that, because in his mind he’d made something close to progress in regards to myungsoo. this stunt, though, is sure to have set him back a few paces and he’s not at all sure what he can do to get back to where he was, back to that point where myungsoo didn’t look like he was going to murder kai in his sleep every night. 

“now i can be the one to send you texts about how blonde your hair is today—…” his voice tapers off towards the end, only then realising how ineffective an approach that is to comforting the obviously unamused newly–blonde. but honestly, kai thinks he looks good. though, that’s not saying much, because kai’s almost certain the reason isn’t dependent on myungsoo’s hair colour. 

“you’re an idiot,” is all he gets in reply, and it’s something of a relief because he was expecting far worse. violent physical contact, for example. it’s a little worrying that myungsoo isn’t going down kicking and screaming, because if the roles were reversed, and myungsoo accidentally dyed kai’s hair dark, kai might just cry. 

but, of course, myungsoo doesn’t have the mental age of four and a half and can actually think rationally while his emotional stability has been compromised.

“i’ll fix this. i’ll..” his hands are back in the air, but this time, it’s not because he needs to make a decision, but because kai’s hesitant about laying a hand on myungsoo. if it were any other person, he’d pat them on the back—maybe even go as far as to issue a hug—but it’s myungsoo and myungsoo isn’t any ordinary person so he can’t be issued with any ordinary reaction and so kai just has to think about this a little more and—

when did he get so … pensive? two months ago, kai wouldn’t have thought twice about something like this. he’d shrug it off with a sideways roll of his eyes and a self–assured smirk. and he doesn’t even want to think about what jongin would do if ever in this situation.

“luhan might have some spare dye,” kai mumbles to himself, his bottom lip back between his teeth and his feet dragging him in circles, pacing around their room. “but he probably only has pink.”

“kai, it’s—“ 

“but he’ll know where to get good quality dye anyway.” 

“it’s okay, really. i—“

“myungsoo, i’m trying to help!” kai’s face holds the determination he intended for a few seconds at most before realising how much of the gap between them myungsoo had bridged. 

"can you spare my ears and just shut up for one second?"

kai nods, moves a hovering hand to gesture zipping his lips together, and wonders how it’s possible that a lighter hair colour could bring out myungsoo’s eyes. he’ll save a mental note to scold himself for that one later.

i need you to stay. i need you.

he had been scolded, punished, set aside and put back into his place again and again, but being begged? no, begging was definitely a first. this was another side of myungsoo to see, another voice for kai to hear, and the only thing that kept him grounded to the floor beneath his feet was the pain that he could hear in the man’s voice.

a pain that he didn’t know existed.

fingers knotting in his hair, an arm curled around his back and he’s not ready for this. not ready for the hand pressing into the dip in his spine and this is far more scary than any fight he’s been in. at least when they’re fighting, he can anticipate myungsoo’s next move. but now kai can’t strike, wouldn’t allow himself to do it anyway, and it’s leaving him vulnerable. there are no targets on either of them anymore.

kai thinks to himself about the last time he’s been able to feel the heart trapped deep beneath ribs and it’s been far too long since his cheeks have flushed a faint pink. his bags are packed but his conviction is faltering and he wants so badly to unpack every single item contained within his luggage but his pride won’t let him. the notion of no more kim myungsoo won’t let him leave.

his stomach is turning and churning and maybe it’s the pulse ringing loud in his ears or the way that his eyes are closing with the embrace that stops him from realising that they’ve been hugging for too long. but he doesn’t care. it’s myungsoo and kai can think of nothing worse than leaving kim myungsoo, leaving the ppcd, and kai has always been too irrational for his own good.

because myungsoo is what is good for him.

when he pulls away, his eyes are on myungsoo’s face, on his lips and the curve of his bottom lip and the shadow it casts downwards onto his chin.

“i’m not going anywhere.”

and he definitely can’t leave.

he isn’t even kai anymore.

because this feels a lot like sentiment.

and that is definitely kim jongin’s forte.