hold me 𐦍 yeonbin

031 ᯓᡣ𐭩

Soobin is about to tell him that Siyeon is busy, and then he remembers that it doesn't take a warlock to fill a bathtub.

"Let's get this off first," Soobin says, unzipping Yeonjun's jacket and peeling it back from his long sleeves.

The shirt clings to his body, outlining his form in way Soobin has never seen it before. He looks away and takes off his own jacket, hanging both of them outside over the porch railing before closing the door, taking a deep breath of warm air as they head upstairs.

"Do you remember how this works?" Soobin asks when he closes the bathroom door. He doesn't know how much Bora showed him beyond strip and sit in the tub.

"I remember."

Soobin pulls the faucet, turning the handle all the way to the left so the water is almost at a boiling point. It won't be Siyeon's infinite-bubble kind of bubble bath and it won't stay hot forever, but he does his best to work with the tube of floral scented bubble starter left under the sink and pulls up his sleeve to stir it into the water.

"How hot do you want-"

Yeonjun's shirt is on the floor, his exposed scarred torso making Soobin freeze where he sits.

He knew Yeonjun had been through hell in the operating room. He knew somewhat of the horrible things they did to him from the little he described his unsedated surgery. He never imagined the lasting effects it would have on his human body.

Yeonjun's wound in the magic store healed before Soobin even wiped it clean, leaving nothing but smooth, if not patchy red skin that healed the next day. In the bright overhead light of the bathroom, Soobin clearly sees the lines of scars marking where he had been cut open. Where the man he described with having fake eyes played with scalpels and needles inside him.

Yeonjun's arms are free of scarring save for a patch of thin, mostly healed lines right below his shoulders over the faded, incomprehensible tattoo. His chest and abdomen suffered the most.

Many of the lines are perfectly straight and thin in horizontal and vertical parallels. Some look like they have been closed and reopened several times. Two crisscrossed scars cut over the left side of his chest. They're the ugliest, most haphazardly drawn lines on his body. Whoever made the cuts either had no practice or no care for their tidiness like the rest of them.

Soobin counts at least twenty scars before he realizes he's been staring long enough that the water has risen to his sleeve. He yanks his hand out of the tub and turns off the water, hoping that when he looks back at Yeonjun he would have been imagining what he saw.

"Why are you crying?" Yeonjun asks. His voice shakes. He stars at the door, avoiding Soobin's eyes.

"I'm not crying," Soobin says, wiping away his tears. "It's from the rain."

"I'm not going to apologize." Yeonjun crosses his arms over his torso and hunches his shoulders, curling into himself to leave less of the scarring exposed.

"You don't have to-" Soobin chokes on a sob, quickly catching his breath to stay calm for Yeonjun.

Stay calm for Yeonjun.

"They..." Soobin can't form a sentence. "You said they... This whole time, you... Holy shit." It's all Soobin can say.

"It doesn't hurt, so stop worrying."

But it must have hurt so fucking much.

"I thought you healed fast."

That was a shitty thing to say. Soobin shouldn't even be staring.