Solid GrounD (MxM)

When the Rules Shift

Rolling over, Austin nuzzled the pillow beneath his head and stretched, trying to remove the ache he felt along his back and side. When adjusting his position again didn't help, he rolled onto his back and slowly blinked his eyes open. 

Huh? 

It took him a minute to blink away the blurriness of sleep from his eyes to realize that there was something written on the ceiling. 미소. The letters looked like little pieces of foam meant for tacking onto walls, or in this case, it seemed, ceilings.

Licking his dry lips, Austin felt along his jeans until he found his phone. Well, that's why my waist was hurting a bit. Pulling out the device, he looked up each symbol, then copy and pasted them into the Google translator.

Smile.

He did so without even thinking about it, then turned his head to the side, only to see an empty bed beside where he lay on the floor. "Roh-Ahn?"

Austin pushed himself up at the same time his attention was drawn to the bathroom door in front of him as it was pushed open. Shit, don't look! Yeah, he wasn't good at listening, even to himself. The steam from the shower emerged with Roh-Ahn, carrying the scent of his shampoo with it. Austin's mind immediately registered that the guy had a towel barely secured around his waist and was walking with his cane, but when Roh-Ahn stopped in the doorway, clearly surprised to see him awake, Austin lifted his gaze from the towel to land on a small X shaped scar on Roh-Ahn's lower abdomen.

In the silence, his eyes continued to take in each individual mark that turned the right side of Roh-Ahn's body into a latticework of old scars. It was clear to him that someone had done the damage, and it hadn't been from an accident. You didn't get only the right side of your body torn up so badly, and not have more than one or two tiny scratches on the left side in a car crash.

He silently cursed himself for watching all of those late night crime dramas over the years because he began to pick out scars that had to have been caused by things other than knives. Several dots near the middle of his stomach and two just beneath his collar bone denoted cigarette burns. A couple others looked like they were from some sort of small item like a pen or pencil. The last, and most prevalent injuries scattered across his skin were undoubtedly caused by someone's fists. 

How could someone hate so much as to do something like that? And to someone as sweet as Roh-Ahn...

He couldn't understand it, but he did now know why Roh-Ahn had so many problems. 

If I ever find out who did it, they're dead. 

Austin was going through all of the ways he could torture the asshole who'd attacked Roh-Ahn when he noticed that the guy still hadn't moved a muscle. Okay. Don't do anything stupid. If he wanted you to see the scars, he would have just showed you them, but he's clearly freaking out on the inside since he hasn't even moved the entire time you've been staring. 

He really wanted to just get up and pull him into a hug, but watching all of those dramas also told him that doing that while someone was so surprised that they weren't even reacting, wasn't a good idea. So, he just gave a quiet sigh and smiled, then pointed up toward the word Roh-Ahn had put on his ceiling. 

Slowly, Roh-Ahn's eyes rose to the word, giving Austin the chance he'd needed to quietly get up and grab the shirt he'd noticed at the bottom of the bed. It was a dress shirt and mostly buttoned already, so he bunched up the fabric a bit and as Roh-Ahn began looking away from the ceiling, Austin tugged it gently over his head. 

Without a word, he settled the shirt over the scars, then waited until Roh-Ahn slipped his arms through the sleeves. Austin then reached up and buttoned all but one of the buttons before stepping back. "Would you like a ride to work today? I'm off." Austin said as he walked back over to where he'd slept and knelt down to pick up his phone.