#lols

Oh G 😅😅😅

Hayato to Jae

Jae didn't move.

Hayato's fingertips drifted across the scar with a tenderness so quiet it almost hurt more than the wound itself ever had --- the way rain touches a windowpane that has spent years bracing for something harder. They traced the uneven ridge without hesitation, without flinching, as though there was nothing grotesque about it, nothing broken that needed pretending not to see. As though the scar were simply another line on a map Hayato had already decided to memorize.

Jae's breathing slowed.

Not because he relaxed.

Because his chest had forgotten how.

His eyes lingered on Hayato's hand, and something in him went very still, the way an animal goes still when it can't yet tell if the thing approaching means harm.

A rough thing.

A mechanic's hands had learned to expect impact, bruises, grease, split knuckles and burns. Hands built for wrenches and warfare, for holding on to things that didn't want to be held.

Not this.

Never this.

"...Bonnie," he murmured, the nickname leaving him softer than intended, worn smooth at the edges like a coin carried too long in a pocket. "Keep touchin' me like that an' I'll start thinkin' yer tryin' tae fix me."

A crooked smile surfaced.

Small.

Fragile.

It didn't quite reach his eyes - it lived somewhere lower, somewhere more honest, the kind of smile that had learned early to keep its distance from hope.

His own hand rose instinctively, resting over Hayato's wrist, not to stop him, only to anchor himself to the warmth, the way a man lost at sea might hold on to driftwood without daring to believe it could carry his whole weight.

For a long while, he said nothing.

The silence wasn't empty.

It was crowded.

With memories that had never properly been buried.

With a bedroom that no longer existed except in the architecture of nightmares.

With moonlight slipping beneath a half-open door, thin and indifferent, the way moonlight always is to the things it illuminates.

With worn blankets soaked crimson, a colour that had never quite left him no matter how many years he'd tried to scrub it out of his memory.

With a woman whose hands had once tucked him into bed before those very same hands returned carrying a knife, the cruelest kind of betrayal, the kind that comes wrapped in love.

When he finally spoke again, his voice had changed.

Lower.

Rougher.

Like something dragged up from a place that didn't see much light.

"...My mam gave me this."

The words were so calm they were almost unsettling, spoken the way one might mention the weather, or the time.

No anger.

No accusation.

Just truth, laid bare and unadorned, the way only the oldest wounds could afford to be told.

A silence settled between them, thick enough to touch.

Jae stared somewhere past Hayato's shoulder, eyes fixed on a memory that had never stopped existing, that lived permanently just behind his ribs like a second, quieter heartbeat.

"...She thought I was born rotten."

Another pause, longer this time, as if the words needed a moment to find the courage to leave him.

"Thought I had too much sin in me."

His jaw shifted.

Not in anger.

In remembrance —---the particular ache of revisiting somewhere you never fully left.

"I was asleep."

His thumb absentmindedly stroked across Hayato's knuckles, an unconscious tenderness, as though his hands had decided to offer comfort even while his voice delivered horror.

"I remember wakin' up 'cause my face felt warm."

A faint, hollow laugh escaped him, brittle as old paper.

"Turns out it weren't warmth."

"It was blood."

Even the morning light seemed to hesitate at that, softening at the edges of the room as though it, too, didn't want to witness what came next.

Dust floated through it lazily, unaware that old ghosts had entered the room and settled into the corners like uninvited guests.

"She came into my room with a knife."

His voice remained level.

Almost detached, the calm of someone who has told this story to himself so many times in the dark that it no longer has the power to undo him --- or so he wants to believe.

"The priest filled her head with enough fuckin' fear that she genuinely believed killin' me would've saved my soul."

A long silence followed, heavy as wet wool.

"I was just a wee kid."

The words barely disturbed the air, small and plain, and somehow more devastating for it.

"I didn't even know what sin was."

His eyes lowered, and for a moment the crooked confidence he wore like armor seemed to slip, revealing the boy underneath who had never gotten the chance to grow past that night.

"I remember askin' her why."

A pause, the kind that stretches like a held breath.

"She just kept cryin'."

His throat tightened almost imperceptibly, the only outward crack in an otherwise steady voice.

"Wouldn't stop apologisin'..."

Another slow breath, drawn in like a man steadying himself before diving.

"...while she was still holdin' the knife."

He smiled then.

Not because anything was funny.

Because sometimes smiles were all that kept old wounds stitched together, the only suture he'd ever learned to make.

"It weren't hatred."

He shook his head faintly, as if arguing with a version of the story he'd once believed and had since outgrown.

"That's the part that took me years tae understand."

"She loved me."

"She was just..."

He searched for the word the way a man searches a dark room for a light switch he knows is there somewhere.

"...Ill."

The word lingered.

Heavy.

Merciful --- the kindest verdict he could offer the person who had hurt him most.

"Fear'll make good people do fucked-up things."

His gaze finally returned to Hayato, steady despite everything the story had cost him.

There was no self-pity in it.

Only an exhaustion that had aged long before he had, the tiredness of a man who'd been carrying something heavy since before he was tall enough to carry anything at all.

"The pigs called her dangerous."

A crooked smile touched his lips, sad and soft at once.

"I only remember thinkin' she looked terrified."

He leaned almost imperceptibly into Hayato's touch, a small, involuntary surrender.

Like some forgotten part of him had spent years waiting for someone gentle enough to prove that hands weren't made only for hurting --- that they could also be made for this, for staying, for tracing old wounds like something worth keeping rather than something to look away from.

"For years..."

His voice softened further, dropping to something almost private, something meant for no one but the man in front of him.

"...I couldn't stand anybody touchin' this side o' my face."

Another pause, the words coming slower now, like each one had to be excavated.

"I thought if somebody's hand ended up here..."

His fingers tightened ever so slightly around Hayato's, an anchor tightening its grip on the one solid thing in the room.

"...they'd only ever see what she saw."

A quiet breath escaped him, something between relief and grief.

"But ya don't."

His eyes searched Hayato's.

Steady.

Open --- a door he had kept bolted for most of his life, unlatched now, if only for this one.

"Ya never look at me like I'm cursed."

His forehead rested lightly against Hayato's, and the space between them disappeared until only shared breath remained, warm and slow and unhurried, like the world outside had agreed to wait.

"...Ya just look at me."

He closed his eyes for a brief moment, as if to hold on to the feeling before it could slip away.

"And I don't think ya understand how fuckin' rare that is."

When he opened them again, the familiar crooked grin returned.

Small.

Worn.

Entirely his —--the one piece of armor he'd never quite managed to lose, even now.

"...Knife missed my eye by an inch."

A quiet chuckle slipped through his nose, dry and disbelieving even after all this time.

"Spent years thinkin' I was lucky 'cause I could still see."

His thumb brushed gently across Hayato's fingers, slow, reverent, like he was still testing whether this was real.

"...Turns out I got luckier than that."

His gaze never left Hayato's.

"'Cause somehow..."

A long pause, the kind that holds its breath before saying something it's never said out loud before.

"...I lived long enough fer these hands tae be the next ones that touched it."

"...An' fer once," he added, quieter still, almost like a confession he hadn't planned on making, "I ain't flinchin'."

He let out a breath that shook only slightly.

"Cannae remember the last time that happened."

And for the first time since telling the story, Jae allowed himself to smile without forcing it.

Small.

Quiet.

Crazy 😅