warning | blood, injuries / mention of abusive parent
note | i just needed to get this out of my head! DEVOTION!!!!
The first time Jiho met you was at a fraternity house party, and you broke his nose.
You had accidentally, on purpose, elbowed him in the face when you felt his taller frame looming behind you in the kitchen. The nose brace never sat in harmony with the rest of his face. He had listened to you apologize profusely to him about the accident for as long as he was ordered by the doctor to keep the brace. He never held a grudge against you. He just thought you packed a punch.
Despite the utter lack of anger towards you for temporarily destroying his face, Jiho wouldn't exactly say he let the accident go scot-free. Approaching you, which he would have never done before you broke his nose, has become a challenge.
Chatting with you was a breeze. Although you two didn't share common interests and were in different social circles, you were remarkably easy to talk to. You carried yourself with ease, and you conversed with a visible interest to teach and learn. You have given Jiho more opportunities to talk about himself and his hobbies than most people he has met since he started attending this university, and you've not once tried to brush his arm or lean on his weight.
The metal plate that was once on his nose has given him a new friend. An unlikely friend. A miracle in a tragedy.
Still, Jiho remained very careful in approaching you at any setting, in fear of a swinging fist (or elbow). Tip-toeing around like a criminal, announcing his presence like a coach with a megaphone, and shying behind walls and corners while staring at you in hopes that you would notice the telepathic message: he has all the plans to talk to you. It was an everyday message. He has done everything in his power to ensure he interacts with you at least once a day, even if he has to embarrass himself in the process.
His friends at the fraternity lightheartedly joked about his caution being a product of post-traumatic stress disorder. But he disagreed. If he were so traumatized, he didn't think he'd get the overwhelming urge to see you all the time. His friends also joked about that tendency. They called it masochism.
The first time Jiho offered you shelter at his apartment, he burned himself with the stove.
He always told his nosy friends that an unexplainable amnesia wiped all of his memories of that night, but he remembered everything. He thought about it too much not to remember every little detail. You grew two canker sores in your mouth; one on the side of your tongue and one on the gums above your top front teeth. They made it impossible for you to eat; just putting food in your mouth was difficult. It was a condition you mentioned to him after he fell asleep, when you woke him up to ask about the food in his fridge.
Trapped under a bedhead and extreme grogginess, he snatched his phone from the coffee table and apologized for his careless aggression to make sure you knew it wasn't meant for you. He walked to the kitchen barefoot, mumbling for you to wait for him on the couch, still warm with his weight.
You lay down, clipping the blanket between your arms and legs to pull it closer, and you watched the stove light turn on from across you. The blanket smelt of him, or you supposed it should. You have hugged him once or twice, but he always smelled of a certain cologne. The blanket has a gentler scent; a fluffy fabric, the softness of human skin, the anticipation of what would remind you of him when you go anywhere in the world.
Slightly bending your legs, you wondered how Jiho managed to fit his whole body into such a small space, or if he had chosen to sleep uncomfortably out of chivalry. His back moved around the kitchen with ease, his limbs familiarized with the layout of his home. Just as the voice of an annoyed boy over the phone rang through, you closed your eyes for a nap. Jiho, who was stuck between a bowl of rice and a bag of frozen shrimp, glared at Kyrell over the phone for making a fuss over his calling at two in the morning about "making some damn porridge."
You ate carefully, huffing and puffing through the stings between each spoonful. He watched you with his head in his palm, his consciousness slowly easing into the shade of dimness in his living room. His eyes chased after the spoon for evidence of your appetite filling, of him being useful to you. His other hand slipped over the arm perched on the coffee table, conveniently hiding the reddened spot on his hand where he'd burnt himself. When you caught him staring, and Jiho always looked at you with such intention, you awkwardly offered him a taste.
You leisurely fed him with the same spoon you ate from when he agreed. The porridge was bland; the shrimp barely added any taste. You didn't complain. You never complain. Your knee pressed over his thigh when you leaned over to feed him. He didn't say anything. He never says anything.
The first time Jiho felt pain like this was because of your father, and it was the first time anyone had ever hit him.
He still felt partly responsible for what happened, even though he was very clearly the victim. If he had stayed at your place for a while longer, if he had just done what he had always wanted to do, he would have been here when your father came barging into your newly acquired apartment. One that was supposed to be far away from your childhood home. He wasn't sure how he managed such rational yet irrational thoughts while his face was getting plumpled to hell and back, but he supposed you were always on his mind somehow.
Your father was abusive. Jiho knew that. From alcoholism, to being a poor husband, to being an even poorer father. You told him the night you fed him the porridge he made you, and subsequently revealed more as your relationship developed. Although he wagered he didn't need the finer details. After all, he wasn't childish enough to ignore the tension in the room whenever your father was around, which, thankfully, has not been much. He didn't think he would have let you stay in his presence long enough anyway.
It wasn't the kind of situation for anyone but you to give an opinion on, but he has given it a lot of his time. Secretly, he has given it considerable thought. It started how it always started. Not so much an opinion from a considerate person who just learned about their friend's hidden hardships, but also the opinion of a man who was very protective of a person he cared deeply about: hurt him back.
He never did. Passive redirection was the skill he learned specifically to deter your father, not boxing or any other physical means to inflict pain. Even when he was confronted with angry fists, he did nothing but try to block out the pain as much as possible. It wasn't long before his lips were busted, and blood trailed out of one of his nostrils, and his eyes could barely open, and he just felt so tired he couldn't straighten his posture if he tried.
The taxi sped up when the driver saw his state from the rear-view mirror. The sudden jolt spiked his spine and threw his head backward onto the seat. He exhaled in pain but relished the safety of the confined space that was taking him to get medical help.
Sitting next to him, whose only stain on their body was uncontrollable tears, was you. He peered at you, his sight hazed but not enough to register the sadness. Bringing his hand up slowly, he reached for your hand, because wiping your tears was too much effort at the moment.
"Don't cry," he said. "I'm sorry."
You resisted the urge to wipe your face and squeezed his hands instead. It was hard to look at him, considering it took you far too long to finally stand up to your father. You reckoned the boy next to you didn't care. Not enough, anyway.
"Why didn't you fight back?" you asked. Air punched through each word like a plea, a frustrated exclamation. "Why didn't you leave?"
"You wouldn't have wanted me to."
Jiho has given the situation considerable thought. Rightfully, he realized everything led him back to you. You were right. He could have done many things. He was younger, taller, and potentially stronger than your father. He could have done so many things, but he realized you may not have needed him to.
You were never physically trapped with your father. Once you became old enough to be financially independent, you understood there was only one easy step to take—leave. You could have, but you decided not to. Not because you were afraid, but that you cared. You cared too deeply about your father's well-being to leave him to rot on his own. You never fought back; you never said anything horrible; you picked up the litter around the house, and you paid for his alcohol consumption because he enjoyed it.
Small ways to find yourself back into his good graces, even after everything he has done, because you loved him regardless. The reason he found your new apartment was that you wanted him to. Except you had hoped he would come with peace, like you always did. And like always, you were sorely corrected.
Jiho understood that he was never allowed to hurt your father back because you would be devastated. He would never do that to you, so he lets your father hurt him until he's satisfied.
"He would have killed you," you said.
His lips were swollen. Saliva threatened to drip because he couldn't close them, and he found it so embarrassing to have to suckle them back into his mouth. Dipping his head to avoid your eyes, his gaze traveled to your arm. He stared at the scars on your arm, all of them almost fading into your skin due to the passage of time, and he felt refreshed knowing that he had nearly felt the same pain.
It used to scare him. His liking towards you, his devotion to you. His mind attempted to avoid it at every corner, his senses tried to deny it at every thought and question. He went to parties, he flirted, and he drank himself where the sun rises from the West. But his body was honest. His eyes only moved after your shadow, his hands were uncomfortable without a reminder of your shape, and his legs just could not stop themselves from jumping in front of the jagged end of a smashed beer bottle.
Jiho needed to feel the pain you did. He yearned for it. He needed to be stranded the same way you had, to suffer the same fate you had, to know you deeper than words and actions could ever allow him. A nose brace, a busted lip, and an identical scar on your arms that crossed over to each other.
It was devotion. A bloody marker, an injury that began with him and could only ever end with you, to let everyone know that he already belonged to someone.
"I know," he whispered. "That's why it has to be me."
You turned away to face the front, your eyes wide and your chest ceasing to breathe. Holding his hand felt unreal, a sense of sacredness. A man like him should not exist, at least not with you. Not a person who's too hung up on their past, a person who was inferior in every way possible, a person of your calibre.
But you couldn't let go. Your tears dropped onto his hand, and you couldn't let go. "Jiho, I–"
"I would do it again," he said before slowly raising his head. He leaned back against the seat to look at you. He sounded out of breath, but you couldn't tell if he was in pain or just afraid of your response. "For you."
You looked away momentarily, your eyes skipping over the darkened spot on his pale hand. When you looked back at his beat-up face, you could recognize him. Turning more on your side, you were careful as you reached for his face and pulled yourself closer. His lips were sour and metallic, a horrid taste of metal and a wound. But you kissed him anyway because those didn't mean anything.
"I love you." Jiho wanted to smile, but the pain forced his lips down. "You know that."
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