Chapter Text
“Okay, I found the gauze and the tweezers.” Ryan turned the brown bottle in his hand over to squint at the label again, one more time, just to make absolutely sure. “And the peroxide. I hope it’s okay if this washcloth gets ruined. The blood’s absolutely going to stain.”
Min-Gi didn’t answer. He just lay there, on his bed, face pressed hard into his pillow. If it wasn’t for the way he was still trembling in pain, Ryan would have thought he’d fallen asleep.
His eyes wandered over Min-Gi’s back, over the jagged cuts in the blue of his jacket. Over the shards of glass still poking out of his skin, yet to be removed. Over the blood. His shoulders sank as he took in the sight, the picture Min-Gi’s broken body painted.
That attack had been meant for him. He couldn’t understand why when the thing made clear what it was looking for.
Thing… Guess Ryan couldn’t call them that anymore.
“Look at me! Open your eyes and look at me, you pile of shit! You don’t even know what you’ve done!”
Ryan writhed in the too-tight grip of the metal claws, desperate to get himself free. At least an arm, a hand, a finger. Something.
The metal beast, the alien, the robot, whatever it was stared him down, eyes burning that vicious green, the flames reaching higher and higher with every word, like they fed off the creature’s anger. And it was right. Ryan had no clue why it was angry, what he or Min-Gi could have possibly done to make it want to kill them. All he knew was that the thing’s claws were wrapped around his chest, pinning down his arms, squeezing him tighter, and tighter, and tighter, and if Ryan didn’t do something soon, his ribs were going to snap like uncooked spaghetti.
“AUGH!”
Without warning, without explanation, the beast’s masked face twisted around to glare at the ground behind it.
Its grip loosened.
Min.
Ryan took a gasping breath, his first in too long.
For the second time that night, Min-Gi had saved him, and Ryan wasn’t about to let Min take his gruesome death in his place. He had to act fast.
Finally, he managed to jerk an arm out of the creature’s grip, and with all the strength he had left in him, he reeled back an arm and punched the thing in its stupid white face.
CRACK
The mask split clean down the middle, its left half, the side that connected with Ryan’s fist, crashing to the ground, revealing everything beneath. The tubes that had been spitting out flame, less magical when Ryan saw the mechanism. The hinge that had probably been used to hold the mask in place before Ryan dislodged it.
A flash of pale skin.
A single cerulean eye rolled toward Ryan, terrified, furious, but before Ryan could get a better look at what he was seeing, he was dropped. A hand parted through the countless chrome legs to shield the revealed half of the face beneath the mask, and the machine fled with its pilot.
Ryan might have given chase, but with the legs out of the way, he could see Min-Gi again, lying limp on the ground, his eyes closed, his body unmoving, a small pool of blood soaking into his arm.
Ryan’s heart leapt into his throat.
No, no, no, I can’t lose you, not after—
“Min!”
Ryan set the supplies he’d gathered on Min-Gi’s chest of drawers next to the bell. Hands free, he picked it up and turned it over in his hand. He’d seen Min-Gi carry it around everywhere with him since they met. He even had it on his lap in the coffee shop after the first attack. But as far as Ryan could see, it was just an ordinary bell. A weirdly warm bell, but there was probably a vent under it or something. Ryan squinted at the plate on the front, at the plate screwed into the base that happily branded it with the word Kez. Huh. Kinda familiar. Maybe it was a really rare…bell. Weird, sure, but if it was some sort of antique or something, and the guy in the robot was a collector…
“Why did they want the bell so bad?” asked Ryan, looking over his shoulder.
“I don’t know,” sighed Min-Gi, muffled through the pillow. “Why did they attack you if that’s really what they were looking for?”
“Good question.” Ryan set the bell back down. “But you know what? If finding out means getting attacked by a weird, futuristic robot again, I think I’m fine not knowing.” He stepped back from the chest of drawers, returning to Min-Gi’s side. “Okay, stand up. I’ll help you get your shirt off.”
Min-Gi’s back tensed, sending a visible shiver of pain through his body. He sucked a breath in through his teeth, and Ryan winced sympathetically. Not only from the pain, but because he knew this probably wasn’t Min-Gi’s ideal evening following the topic of their fight from earlier. There was no time to get used to the idea of a gay guy touching his bare skin, though. It was either Ryan or a doctor, and they both knew it.
So Min-Gi climbed shakily to his feet, turned around, and offered Ryan his back.
The blue jacket came off relatively easily. It still snagged shards and splinters as Ryan maneuvered it back, but with Ryan carefully picking at the fabric around the fabric, it came off with only a few pained, stifled grunts.
The formerly-white t-shirt beneath was a little less friendly.
“Hold still,” murmured Ryan, sliding his hands up past the hem of Min-Gi’s shirt. This…wasn’t how he pictured running his hands across Min-Gi’s skin. In those quiet moments, the moments he’d been sighing over all day while he was home alone, the catching of Min-Gi’s breath had been a lot hotter and a lot less like he was biting down the urge to cry out in pain.
Not like that’s going to happen now…
Ryan carefully removed the blood-stained shirt millimeter by millimeter, wincing at the way it stuck to Min-Gi’s skin. After a great deal of gentle tugging and cautious inching, however, Ryan managed to loop the shirt off the glass that pinned it to Min-Gi’s back and peel it over his head.
He really was pretty.
He’d be a lot prettier without all the blood.
“Okay,” said Ryan. “Well… You probably won’t get much use out of this shirt going forward. I guess you have a few new dustrags now.” He set the shirt on the foot of Min-Gi’s bed, bloody-side-up, to avoid staining anything else. “You should probably lie down now. This is definitely going to hurt, and I get the feeling you won’t flinch so much on the bed. Wouldn’t want to make any of these holes bigger, right?”
“Sure,” grumbled Min-Gi, already doing what Ryan suggested. “And this way I’ll have something to scream into.”
He buried his face in his pillow to prove his point.
Ryan grabbed the first aid supplies with a sigh. Man, what he wouldn’t have given to tell Min-Gi to get on his bed for a different reason.
Stop it. God, you’re the worst. You nearly lost him tonight and all you can think of is sex? Seriously?
Ryan lowered himself onto the edge of Min-Gi’s bed, right under where his arm curled to press the pillow into his face. He dropped the peroxide and the gauze by his feet, leaving him with only the tweezers, which he used to start picking out the smaller pieces of glass and dropping them into the small bin he’d dropped by Min-Gi’s headboard. The bigger glass shards…scared him. He didn’t want to pull those out until he was ready to bandage Min-Gi up.
The glass made a ring shape around the edges of Min-Gi’s back, avoiding the center. Probably because the center hit the window first and caused all the rest of the glass to crater outward, right into his skin.
That could have been me, thought Ryan. Maybe it would have been my arm, and I wouldn’t have been able to play for a while.
Or maybe it would have been my throat.
Ryan’s hand froze in mid-air, halfway to the next glass shard.
“…Min?”
“Y-Yeah?” grunted Min-Gi, voice more muffled than it was before. It sounded like he was biting his pillow.
Ryan rested the side of his hand on Min-Gi’s arm. He still held the tweezers, but he just…had to touch him. “Why did you save me?”
Min-Gi didn’t answer at first. Maybe trying to figure out what he was going to say. Maybe trying to decide whether it was safe to stop biting his pillow. But eventually, he turned his head to the side and laid it flat on his pillow. “What else was I supposed to do?”
“You could have done anything,” said Ryan. “You could have been frozen in fear and not done anything. You could have decided I wasn’t worth saving because we were fighting—”
“I’m not a monster,” said Min-Gi, narrowing his eyes.
“Never said you were.” Ryan set the tweezers on the edge of Min-Gi’s bed and brushed his fingers along the top of Min-Gi’s arm, cherishing his presence, his warmth, the fact that he was still alive despite the night they’d had. “I’m just saying we haven’t known each other that long, and we were fighting about something pretty serious, and… You know what? I’m not going to beat around the bush. I just came out, and you decided my life was worth saving anyway. I think it’s pretty safe to say, based on current ideas about certain epidemics, that that puts you safely in the minority.”
With a sigh, Min-Gi closed his eyes. “I don’t hate you for being gay. Honestly, I kind of suspected it, even before you told me you were playing at a gay bar. You’re just so…”
“Freakishly good-looking?”
“…Free.”
Ryan raised his eyebrows. Okay. Not what he was expecting, but he was listening.
“You’re not held down by anything,” said Min-Gi. “Not a town, not your family, not societal expectations… You don’t act like getting married and settling down to have a family was ever something anyone had in mind for you. You’re not bothered by living out of a van or by some guy you don’t know walking in on you in your underwear, or getting attacked by a killer robot…”
“I don’t know, man, that last part does kind of freak me out.”
“But it doesn’t stop you,” said Min-Gi. “I feel like I keep having to remind you it’s out there because you just keep going on. Life as usual for Ryan Akagi.”
Ryan looked down at the blue carpet beneath his feet, the twists in the shag texture, the shadows between the blue. “Well… It wasn’t tonight. When I saw you get hurt, I thought…” He bowed his head and kneaded his brow with his knuckles as the image of Min-Gi bouncing off that car like he was made of rubber ran through his mind. The visual of him meeting the asphalt with a slap and not getting up. “I… I don’t know what I thought. Just that, I guess. Everything in the world was just that.”
He lifted his head and took a long look down Min-Gi’s bare back, at the bloody spikes jutting from his skin, the myriad of still-bleeding lacerations yet to be cleaned.
“I was scared,” said Ryan, reaching for the tweezers again. “Honestly, I’m…usually scared. I’m not as free as you think.”
He plucked a splinter from Min-Gi’s shoulder, earning a whimper and convincing Min-Gi to bury his face back into his pillow.
“I could never do the apartment thing even if I wanted to,” explained Ryan. “It’s too…”
“Boring?” offered Min-Gi through grit teeth.
“Risky,” said Ryan. “I know, I know. The van thing probably seems way riskier to you, but… If something happens to me when I’m living out of my van, I can just move on to the next town. Get fresh jobs, make new friends, live a new life. Leave everything behind. If tonight went differently, I could have just zipped up my bag, loaded it into my van, and gone…somewhere. I couldn’t do that if I had an apartment of my own and furniture and…and a family.”
Min-Gi grunted when Ryan pulled a piece of glass out just a little too hard.
“Sorry,” muttered Ryan. “But, uh…all but the biggest pieces of glass are out now. I should probably clean the smaller cuts before I get the big ones out, though. They’re probably gonna bleed a lot.”
SMACK
“Wait.”
Ryan looked from the hand that had just wrapped tight around his wrist to the face of the man it belonged to.
“It’s either gonna hurt now or later, Min,” said Ryan. “I won’t judge you for crying.”
“No, that’s not—” Min-Gi tightened the hold he had around Ryan’s wrist. “Just— Before I spend the rest of the night fighting the urge to scream, I have to ask. When you say you would have left if tonight went differently, do you mean if I handled you coming out differently, or if I died?”
Ryan looked away, toward the side of Min-Gi’s room that was strangely empty. “Both, I guess.” He shrugged. “Either. If there was no reason for me to stick around anymore, what would be the point?”
“I’m…the reason you’re here?”
Min-Gi’s thick eyebrows drew together.
Setting the tweezers aside, Ryan bent down, hovering over Min-Gi’s head. He held his breath as he reached up, and with an uncertain, experimental hand, he found Min-Gi’s hair. It was softer than it looked as Ryan threaded his fingers through the shortest parts, up to the crown of Min-Gi’s head, where he’d styled the longest parts up and over.
Ryan was afraid to meet Min-Gi’s eyes again, afraid of what he’d see when Min-Gi felt his hand in his hair, aware that it might not be entirely platonic, that there was a chance, if Ryan liked men, that he could like this particular man. But Min-Gi’s eyes were just curious, patient, determined. He was waiting for his answer.
Ryan gave it to him.
“If you weren’t here, I would have left the day after the first attack.”
“What?” Min-Gi lifted his head, wincing when he put weight on his elbows, which in turn put weight on his back. “Wh…” He grimaced. “Why didn’t you—?”
“Easy.” Ryan took his hand out of Min-Gi’s hair. “That can’t be good for you.”
Min-Gi reluctantly lowered himself back onto the pillow, holding Ryan’s gaze the entire time. “Why were you going to leave?”
“Well, I kind of wanted to the day after I first met you,” explained Ryan, bending down to uncap the peroxide. “This town kind of… I don’t know. It just made me sad. The night after I met you in the diner, I cried myself to sleep. I don’t even know why, I just…” He shrugged. “I wanted out. But I had one more show to do, and then we got attacked and you invited me to stay, so…I stayed.” He looked from the open mouth of the peroxide bottle to Min-Gi’s face. “I’m glad I stayed. If I didn’t, I wouldn’t have learned what a great musician you were. Or just…how much fun you are. The way you light up when you forget about all the things that stress you out.” Ryan looked down. “How brave you are.” He breathed in through his nose, faster than Min-Gi could realize how gay that sounded. “I mean, you fought that thing back long enough for me to get an arm free when you could barely move.”
“…I guess.” Min-Gi shifted on the bed, a quiet hiss eking out through his teeth. “Ryan, that thing… I think it’s—”
“Human,” said Ryan. “It’s human under there. He’s moving the legs around like a car. Or she. They? I don’t know, I didn’t get a good look. But there was definitely a human face under the mask.”
“And human legs,” said Min-Gi. “Wearing corduroy pants.”
“Stylish,” said Ryan passively.
Min-Gi huffed a laugh against his pillow.
“Seriously, though?” Ryan raised the bottle over Min-Gi’s back. “If it’s just some guy in a fancy metal suit, that makes it all way less scary.”
“Still pretty scary,” said Min-Gi.
“Yeah, but like, dude-with-a-gun-wants-us-dead scary, not end-of-the-world scary.” Ryan smiled benignly. “Now would be a great time to bite the pillow, by the way.”
Min-Gi turned and pressed his face into the pillow, shoulders rock hard.
Ryan carefully poured hydrogen peroxide over Min-Gi’s back, catching the runoff with the cloth as Min-Gi spat out what sounded like a muffled stream of curses into his pillow.
“Sorry, Min.”
Min answered with a kick to the foot of his bed.
With the smaller cuts disinfected, Ryan finally turned his sights on the three big bastards surrounding the epicenter of the collision.
These…he wouldn’t need the tweezers for.
Ryan reached for the biggest piece first. His breath caught in his chest as he pinched it between his thumb and the side of his index finger. He couldn’t wiggle it out. Not without making Min-Gi’s wound bigger, which he did not want to do. He’d have to pull it out all at once.
Oh, man…
“Ready?” Ryan tightened his hold on the piece of glass. “Three, two—”
“Just pull it!”
Ryan yanked. The feeling of flesh sliding against glass made his stomach roll. It was like pulling a fork out of a steak.
One that started to bleed. A lot.
“H-Hold on, Min!” Ryan urgently pressed the washcloth he’d been using into the wound, stemming the flow of blood but immediately making the wound hiss and fizz into the peroxide-soaked cloth. “Two more, okay? Then we’re done.”
Min-Gi, face buried in his pillow, said something Ryan couldn’t quite hear but that sounded angry. Probably another demand to get it over with.
Ryan complied, quickly pulling out the last two chunks of bloodstained glass and laying a layer of gauze on the disinfected wounds before Min-Gi could lose too much blood.
Once everything was sealed with medical tape, Ryan leaned back, set the washcloth on the edge of the bin so it wouldn’t make a mess, and wiped his hands off on his shirt before using one to card through Min-Gi’s hair again.
“Okay, there we go. You’re all patched up.” With a fleeting reluctance, Ryan bent over and planted a kiss on the back of Min-Gi’s head, purely platonic. …Mostly platonic. Honestly, he just wanted to treasure the fact that Min-Gi was still with him. That he was still warm and receptive to kisses.
Min-Gi lifted his head, twisting it with a small wince to look over his shoulder. “Ryan?”
Ryan took his hand back, worried he was about to get told off for being a little too touchy-feely now that Min-Gi knew he was gay. “…Yeah?”
“You don’t seem too scared to me.”
Ryan raised his eyebrows.
With a hard, pained grimace, Min-Gi rolled onto his back and took a deep breath through his teeth. “I just mean…you seemed pretty brave when you hit the robot guy with your guitar case to save me.”
Ryan opened his mouth to argue, to insist that Min-Gi was even braver, that the thing with the guitar case was nothing, but Min-Gi didn’t let him.
“I also think…being able to be yourself…especially like this, right now…being gay, openly, with everything else that’s going on?” He shrugged and looked away. “That seems pretty brave to me. Even if you always have an escape plan just in case things don’t go well. I don’t think that’s cowardly. I think that’s just being safe. I’m sorry you have to take steps like that to be safe. And whatever happened with your family, why you get all…stiff whenever you bring them up?”
Ryan rubbed his arm, self-conscious. Part of him hoped Min-Gi would pick up on that, but now that he’d actually done it, he only felt like he must have been embarrassing himself by being so…accidentally-on-purpose vague about the whole thing. Maybe he was being dramatic. Maybe he should have just said something.
“It wasn’t right.”
Ryan raised his eyebrows.
Min-Gi narrowed his eyes. “I’m sorry your family sucks. Whatever they did, whether they kicked you out or disowned you or just…made you feel like so much shit you had to leave? It wasn’t right. And you deserved better. And if you thought I was going to do the same thing they did? I…” He looked away, just briefly, before his eyes darted right back, fierce and unyielding. “I can’t hold that against you. Anyone in your place would have done the same thing.”
Ryan wasn’t sure what to say. He stood stock-still, gaze latched onto Min-Gi’s face, at the determined scowl he sent back.
A long, slow breath shuddered from Ryan’s lips. “All right, man, cool.”
“Cool?” asked Min-Gi. “Of all the words you could have said, you went with ‘cool’?”
“Well, what was I supposed to say to that?” asked Ryan. “‘I’ve been waiting for my whole life for someone to tell me it’s okay that my family doesn’t love me, that it’s their loss, and you just said it like it was the most obvious thing in the world and that shook me to my core’? Is that what I’m supposed to say?”
Min-Gi blinked, slow and sluggish, looking as unsure as Ryan felt. “I mean… I guess that works better than ‘cool’.”
“Okay, well.” Ryan crossed his arms and shrugged. “Great. Glad I said it, then.”
He swallowed.
Min-Gi set his hands on his stomach and curled them into fists. There was something in his face, something that told Ryan there was something he needed to say.
Ryan waited for him to say it.
“You know, it’s not…” Min-Gi sighed. “You being gay really doesn’t bother me.”
“Maybe not,” said Ryan. “But something clearly does. So is it the fact that I’m so loudly gay?”
“No.”
“So is it that I hang out with other gay people?”
“No!” Min-Gi groaned. “Why are you so defensive all of a sudden? It doesn’t have anything to do with you being gay, personally or as part of the scene! Geez.”
“Sorry,” huffed Ryan. “I’m— I’m sorry. It’s just— The family thing, and with everything else we’ve talked about tonight, I guess I’m a little…” He shrugged sharply. “…tense.”
“No kidding,” said Min-Gi. “But I’m not out to get you.”
“I know. I…” Ryan sighed. “I know. But you clearly still have some kind of a problem with me, so what is it?”
“It’s not…” Min-Gi shrugged. “It’s not a problem, exactly? Well, I guess it is, but it’s not a problem with you.”
“Would you just spit it out already?”
“Fine!” Min-Gi groaned. “Fine. I’ll just—” He leaned back, his head hitting the mattress behind him. “The problem isn’t that you’re gay. The problem is—”
He froze.
Ryan raised his eyebrows expectantly, but all Min-Gi responded with was a sigh and silence. Whatever it was, he couldn’t bring himself to say it. And that definitely didn’t make Ryan feel any better, it just redistributed his concern from himself to Min.
“It’s not your fault.” Min-Gi turned his head so his cheek found the mattress. “It’s dumb anyway.”
“I doubt it, if it has you this worked up,” said Ryan. “But yeah. Fine. We don’t have to talk about it. But you know I’m not gonna, like…leave you, right? Not after…everything.”
“You are, though.”
Min-Gi’s voice was so quiet, Ryan could barely pick it up.
“You are leaving. Just not yet.”
“And not because of anything you’re freaking out about right now,” said Ryan. “I wouldn’t leave because of you. Not if you wanted me to stay.”
Min-Gi’s fists tightened until his knuckles turned white.
Ryan sat beside him. The mattress creaked beneath him. “I’m glad you’re okay.”
“Yeah.” Min-Gi’s hands relaxed, but he didn’t open his eyes. “Me, too.” Beat. “I mean—” He slapped a hand across his face. “I’m glad you’re okay, not—”
“I know what you meant,” said Ryan, almost laughing. “Just…hey.” He reached for Min-Gi’s face. As his hand traveled up, toward his moussed-up hair, forcing it to fall loose between his fingers, Min’s eyes finally opened. And when they did, they opened wide. “I like you a lot. And I kind of want to keep you around for a while, so…” He tucked a newly loose lock of hair behind Min-Gi’s ear. “Try not to get yourself killed. Okay?”
Min-Gi closed his eyes, and with a long but sharp breath through his nose, he reached for Ryan’s wrist.
“Back at you.”
Ryan nodded and pulled his hand out of Min-Gi’s. “Get some sleep. And don’t even think about working tomorrow.”
“Wasn’t planning on it,” grumbled Min-Gi.
“Good,” said Ryan. “Okay, in that case, there’s a couch in the living room that’s calling my name.” He stood from Min-Gi’s bed and grabbed the bin, along with the peroxide, the medical tape, and the gauze. “‘Night, Min.”
Min-Gi’s eyes lingered on him, just for a little bit past what Ryan would have expected before sliding shut.
“Yeah,” he murmured. “Good night.”
The door creaked all the way closed and shut tight with a click. Min-Gi waited for Ryan’s steps to disappear down the hall before calling out.
“You can come out now.”
Kez floated off Min-Gi’s chest of drawers and drifted close enough to land on his chest. “Wow, are you okay?”
Min-Gi set a hand on her dome and rubbed it gently. “That thing—or that guy, I guess?—attacked us again. But yeah.”
“No, I got that part,” said Kez. “I meant, like, you guys. You seemed kind of…high-strung? And like. Not on the same page?”
“We’ll be fine,” said Min-Gi. “We just sort of…had a rough conversation.”
“The gay thing?” Kez scoffed. “Like you didn’t know.”
“No, I mean…” Min-Gi’s hand stilled on the back of Kez’s bell. “I suspected. But I’m not…bothered by it. I’m just…scared he’s going to be too open about it at the wrong time and get himself—or both of us—hurt.”
“Then why didn’t you tell him that?” asked Kez.
Min-Gi chewed his lip.
Because that wasn’t the whole problem. Part of it, sure, but not all of it.
Yeah. Ryan’s…gay. And that makes things complicated. But it’s not actually him being gay that’s the problem.
The problem is…
…I think I am.