attention | gyuricky

twenty-four.

They'd both expected it, though no one really knew when the other shoe was going to drop. It was just a matter of time, Gyuvin figured, before it came back. Before he awoke in the earliest hours of the morning to the sound of suppressed sobbing, painfully raw, awfully familiar.

He figures he's trained by now; it's almost instinctual the way he shakes the haziness of sleep away and climbs into Ricky's bed without having to think about it, careful not to move too fast or speak too loudly so he won't startle him. Ricky's hunched over and curled up into a ball and his hands are pulling at his hair out of habit again, but his shoulders are heaving and he's hyperventilating so hard Gyuvin genuinely worries for a second he's having an asthma attack or something.

"Ricky, it's me," he says softly, trying to pry the other boy's hands away from his face gingerly. "Ricky, can you hear me? It's over, it's not real."

Ricky does nothing but shake his head and continue to rock back and forth for a good few minutes, though he gradually extricates his fingers from his hair and moves to just wrap his arms around his knees instead. Gyuvin keeps his own hands on the other boy's shoulders, rubbing slow circles into his back so he stays grounded.

He leans over to look into Ricky's eyes when his breathing has calmed enough for him to answer questions. "Ricky, it's over, and it wasn't real. You know that, right?"

Ricky nods, but one glance into his lap and the way his hands pick at each other absentmindedly tell Gyuvin he's not out of the woods yet.

"It was Yujin again, wasn't it?"

Something clouds his eyes for a second and he almost looks like he's decided not to answer, but he eventually shakes his head.

"Wasn't him? But you don't get nightmares this bad about anything else, do you?"

Ricky unwraps his arms from around his knees so's sitting cross-legged on his bed. The comforter's a mess from the way he was thrashing earlier, and Gyuvin takes a hand away from Ricky's shoulder to reach to smooth it out.

"It wasn't Yujin," he says slowly, his voice thick, the way Gyuvin knows people sound when they're crying or trying not to. "It was different. It was you."

"What? Me?"

Ricky doesn't answer, and Gyuvin continues to splutter.

"But I don't get it. I'm not dea-" Gyuvin catches himself right there and shuts up, opting to just sit quietly opposite Ricky, his hands idle in his lap where they've fallen after he'd decided Ricky was calm enough not to need back rubs anymore.

They remain this way, a standstill, for a few minutes until Ricky eventually moves, leaning back onto the headboard. "I don't know. It was bad," he says softly. "I don't want to remember."

"Okay, please don't," Gyuvin says quickly. "I'll go get you some water, okay?"

"No, I'll just go get it," Ricky answers. "I don't think I'll be able to sleep tonight anyway."

Gyuvin gives him a look, and Ricky wonders for just a fleeting second why he reminds him of a concerned puppy. "But you have classes. You can't sleep so little all the time, you'll kill yourself like that."

Ricky meets his gaze and laughs softly, something bitter. "You don't think I want to? I wish I could sleep."

"Let's go for a walk, okay?" Gyuvin suggests, after a few seconds of thinking. "I read that being around nature helps ground you to reality. And it might tire you out a bit."

Ricky sighs. "Yeah, okay. Let's go."

Gyuvin climbs back off Ricky's bed to root around in the darkness for a sweatshirt to put on over his pajamas, stopping by the kitchen counter to pick up his keys before opening the door and stepping outside. The night air is refreshingly cold against his face and the warmth inside the apartment suddenly feels stifling by comparison, and he turns around at the sound of the door clicking shut and Ricky's sneakers behind him.

They don't talk as they head downstairs and pick a random path to walk down, but the silence between them isn't painful. The footpaths weaving between the dormitory buildings are lit by evenly-spaced streetlamps and Gyuvin idly counts the steps he takes between each streetlamp as he thinks about the last time they were here together, the night he got drunk at the club and forgot his keys, the night Ricky came to bring him home.

He thinks about when their apartment became home to him. It's something slow, he supposes, something creeping, the way no one ever notices it when it happens but wonders in hindsight when it began.

"Can I ask you a question?"

Ricky looks back at him, hands in his pockets, from where he's slightly ahead. "Yeah. What is it?"

"What are your nightmares about?" Gyuvin asks. "You don't have to answer if you don't want to."

"I watch him die every night," Ricky says slowly. "Sometimes in different ways. Sometimes in the way he really died. Whatever it is, it always feels real. I snap out of it eventually, but it feels like shit. I wake up and I'm dazed, and I can't tell what's reality and what isn't."

"That must be terrifying," Gyuvin answers, his heart at his feet. "I'm sorry. You don't deserve that."

"Maybe I do," Ricky counters, eyes downcast. "I never told you what really happened. I never told anyone, actually. I didn't even tell Hao. That's how much I hated myself for it."

"For what?"

"For not saving him."

Gyuvin frowns. "What do you mean?"

"The night the accident happened, Yujin had called me. It was past two in the morning and I was already asleep, and I didn't answer the call. When I woke up the next day, Hao called me and told me he'd been in an accident, and to come to the hospital quick because they didn't think he was going to make it."

Gyuvin notices that he's unconsciously stopped walking when Ricky stopped walking. They stand, opposite each other under the moonlight, one hand reaching out for the other over the Atlantic.

"Anyway, you know the story from here. They tried to save him, but he didn't make it. I watched them wheel him out with a sheet over his face." Ricky looks up, and there's something in his gaze that stabs deep into Gyuvin. "I always wonder if things might have turned out differently if I'd answered that call. Maybe he could've lived. Maybe he'd be here right now."

"But you never know. What if he was just calling to say goodnight? What if he was just calling to ask a math question?" Gyuvin knows he's pushing it again, but he goes on. "What if it was nothing?"

"What if it was something?"

They're both silent for a long moment.

"You can't destroy yourself over what ifs," Gyuvin says finally. "In another universe, you picked up the call, and he died anyway. And in another universe, you didn't, and he lived. You can go round and round thinking about it, but you'll never have an answer because it's already over, and hating yourself every day for the rest of your life isn't going to change that."

"Would you have hated me?" Ricky interjects suddenly. "If I hadn't found you in time, at the supply room? What if you'd died that night?"

"I wouldn't have," Gyuvin answers, and it's resolute. "I chose to be at the art building that day, I chose to go into the supply room, I'm the one who spilled the turpentine. The same way Yujin chose to be out on the street that night. I made my choices, the same way he made his."

He's quiet for a while, before he continues. "Those mistakes, they belong to me. You don't get to take responsibility for them."

Ricky nods slowly, turning back to walk in the direction of their dorm. "I'm tired. Let's go back."

"Okay."