Work Text:
He opens his eyes to nothing but vast whiteness.
The air around him smells like a fresh bouquet of roses. He slowly turns and a bundle of white roses with round dewdrops framing its petals reaches his sight.
He tentatively puts his shaky hand on the flowers, and the stems feel as smooth as his face.
Something's amiss, but he cannot put a name to what was lost.
Like all the fragments he left behind, all the things Kangmin told him that was of no importance to their existence.
The only thing he needs to know is that Kangmin loves him. He doesn't even have to reciprocate, because that is the extent of how much love he is getting from the only person he remembers.
The only name he remembers is Kangmin's.
Yoo Kangmin. Yoo for willow, Kang for ridge, and Min for autumn sky. His birthday is on the 25th of January, now 22 years old, and one of his nicknames is Kangnaengie because he is the maknae of...
Of what?
He realizes with a startle that he has no recollection of his own name nor age.
He only knows that he should be older than Kangmin, because Kangmin addresses him as hyung.
Just hyung and no prefixes whatsoever.
Were they close enough for Kangmin to forgo his given name entirely and refer to him as hyung only? He ascertained that what he was feeling for the other man was a sort of camaraderie that could not have been faked, but to call it "love", in the romantic sense, felt leaden in his heart, tugging out unwanted fears from deep inside.
Is this really love, if all it brought him was discom-
The sweet smell of berries and yoghurt distracts him from his absent pondering, and he looks up to find Kangmin standing at the door, the only source of color in his periphery.
He squints at the stinging red of Kangmin's hair, a stark contrast with the muted mauve of the contents in the bowl he's holding.
Red, like the color of poppies in bloom, of hickeys and fresh bruises and gashes overflowing with metallic tang.
Red.
He chews and dawdles on the word.
The word that comes to his mind is in English and not Korean, and that surprises him. One syllable, with the rolling "r" and even an emphasis on the ending "d".
He thinks of glowing birds swooping down and flowers so bright they were burning like flames.
He belatedly realizes that Kangmin asked him something, with unadulterated concern bleeding from him.
He clears his throat.
Weird.
In his vague memory, his voice was always clear because of... Because of what?
Maybe Kangmin has the answer for that. He knows he doesn't.
"What are you doing today?"
He gets a nonchalant response of just work as usual.
He presses on.
"What do you usually do?"
The warmth disintegrates from Kangmin's gaze, and is replaced by something wholly foreign to him — a sort of alarm that he thought was out of place within their relationship.
He opens his mouth, and —
Nothing more.
He feels a sting in his neck, and the last thing he recalls before everything fades to black was the frenzy in Kangmin's eyes.
He opens his eyes to nothing but white walls.
The air smells of sterile nothingness, the kind that one would subconsciously associate with hospitals and clinics, all unpleasant situations.
He frowns.
He thinks of the clear and fresh fragrance of roses, and of white petals with dew, a misty reminder of the outside. A vague but fond recollection.
He does not remember in detail. Everything is blurred.
He looks down at himself, and sees his own hands down by his sides in an unnaturally bent angle. He feels no pain.
He sees the blooming reds of bite marks and hand-shaped bruises but all he feels is nothing.
The white of the room blankets his mind in stillness.
He sits and watches, in silent awe, as the poppies on his skin wither into black and blues, and yet his consciousness is still stagnant.
He does not take note of the person tending to him, like a gardener to his beloved blooms, with shears to trim away unwanted weeds, a steady hand to stabilize the stems, and water for the flowers to unfurl in their full glory.
The water is murky and bitter, but he swallows it with practised ease, despite a weak alarm resonating deep within his subconsciousness.
The pain turns into silent pleasure, and the burning hands on his torso feels like a welcomed relief. Something inside tips over and the pleasure takes leave, leaving behind gnawing tears, and a stream of white and red trailing from down below.
The black and blues give way to more hell flames, a bloody reminder of a love so misplaced it is only causing harm.
And yet he feels no pain. The colors do not matter. He closes his eyes, and the world returns to a colorless standstill, his shallow breath the only sign that his pallid body was still alive, his heart weakly beating to the rhythm of a song ingrained in his heart.
His body is a field overtaken by wild poppies.