Drowning in the Distance

V | Y/N

I slam open the door to the stairwell, buttoning my jacket as I sprint up the steps to the roof. Third to the fourth. My heart is pounding so loud in my ears, the taste of metal upon my tongue; I can barely hear my footsteps underneath me as I run up the steps. 

He has to be crazy. Fucking insane. With every close of my eyes, every blink, I see him standing there at the edge of the roof, about to plummet seven stories to his death, fear painted onto every feature of his face. Nothing like his previous confident smirk; his eyes wide in terror, lips parted in shock, eyebrows furrowed and skin sickly pale. 

Wheezing and spluttering, I make it past the fifth floor, stopping still for just a moment to try and catch my breath, my sweaty palms grabbing at the cool metal railing to keep myself from falling weakly to the floor. I peer up the stairwell to the top floor, my head spinning, my sore throat burning, my chest aching. I didn't even have time to grab my portable oxygen before my legs carried me out from my room and down the hall. What an idiot. Anybody else would say that he must have a death wish. And yet, the fear-stricken face that I'd seen from my bedroom window on the third floor told me otherwise. He didn't want to die. I could see it in his face, in his eyes, even from four stories below. Just two more stories. Two more. 

I force myself to keep climbing, my feet moving on command: left, right, left, right, left, right. Finally, thank God, the door to the roof is in sight, cracked open under a bright red alarm just ready to go off. I hesitate for a second, looking from the alarm to the door and back again. How didn't Haechan set it off? Is it broken? Then I see it. A tightly folded bill holding down the switch, stopping the alarm from blaring and letting everyone in the hospital know some crazy guy with cystic fibrosis and self-destructive tendencies is hanging out on the very edge of the roof. I shake my head. He might be crazy, but that's clever. I can't believe I'd never thought of it, being here so long. The door is propped open with a wallet, and I push through it as quickly as I can, making sure the dollar bill stays securely in place over the switch. I stop dead, taking a real breath for the first time in four flights of stairs.

Looking across the roof, I'm reassured to see that he's moved a safe distance away from the edge and hasn't fallen to his death. At least he had enough sense to move. Not that he had the sense to not be there in the first place. He turns to look at me as I rattle and rasp, a surprised expression on his face. I pull my black and white scarf closer as the cold air bites at my face and neck, looking down to see if his wallet is still wedged in the gap between the door and the metal before turning and storming over to him, irritation seeping beneath my skin.

"Do you have a death wish or something?" I shout, stopping a more-than-safe eight feet away from him. I want to know what his response will be to the question. He may or may not have one, but I definitely don't. His cheeks and nose are tinged red from the cold, and a thin layer of snow has collected on his wavy brown hair and the hood of his burgundy sweatshirt. When he looks like that, I can almost pretend he's not such an idiot, such a stupid fucking idiot. But then he starts talking again. Never mind. He shrugs at me, casually, motioning over the edge of the roof to the ground seven stories below.

"My lungs are toast. So I'm going to enjoy the view while I can." How poetic. Why did I expect anything different? I peer past him to see the twinkling city skyline far, far in the distance, the holiday lights covering every inch of every tree, brighter now than I've ever seen them as they bring the park below back to life. Some are even strung across the trees, creating this magical pathway you could walk under, head back, mouth agape. It's beautiful. In all my years here I've never been on the roof but the view, God, it makes me wish I'd have known. I've been missing out on this for ten years? It's only when I hear Donghyuck's feet scuff on the floor that I remember that he's here. Shivering, I pull my jacket tighter around me, wrapping my arms around my body to give me further warmth as I move my eyes from the lights in the distance back to him.