He had been involved with loan sharks for a while, stressed about money from even more. It began when his mother signed a contract, just for her café to be destroyed a few days after. You've been helping since then, and your heart shattered everytime you saw him come back, falling apart, both physically and mentally.

The sink was already running when you stepped into the bathroom.

Cold water splashed against porcelain, carrying diluted streaks of red toward the drain. Kim Gun-woo stood there instead of sitting this time, one hand braced on the counter, head lowered. In the harsh light, the damage was impossible to miss---a split lip, swollen knuckles, a raw scrape across his shoulder where the skin looked angry and torn, a still open cut at the side of his brow. He showed the remanants of the fight, but not the weight of it. Not the way his chest rose too fast, like his body hadn’t realized the fight was over.

You closed the door quietly.

He looked up, startled, then relaxed when he saw it was you. “Hey,” He said, like it was normal. Like he wasn’t bleeding into your sink.

You reached past him and turned the water off. “Sit. Now.”

He hesitated, then obeyed, lowering himself onto the closed toilet lid. His shoulders sagged the second he did, exhaustion finally winning. You grabbed a towel and pressed it gently against his lip. He winced---not from the pain, but from how careful you were.

“I messed up,” He said suddenly.

You pulled the towel away just long enough to look at him. “You survived.”

He let out a breath, almost a laugh. “Barely.”

You cleaned him slowly, methodically. Blood first. Dirt next. Your fingers stayed steady even when his weren’t. When you lifted his arm to treat the scrape, his muscles tensed on instinct, ready to fight something that wasn’t there.

“It's okay,” You murmured. “I've got you.”

That made him still.

Kim Gun-woo had always been solid---unmoving, unbreakable, a wall between danger and the people he loved. Seeing him like this, eyes lowered, letting you tend to him, felt like being trusted with something fragile and rare.

“I didn’t want you to see me like this,” He admitted.

You taped gauze into place and smoothed it down with your thumb. “Why?”

“Because I don't want you to worry about me so much that…” He trailed off.

You cupped his jaw gently, forcing him to meet your gaze. “I prefer a beaten up Gun-woo over a smiling one who hides his pain.”

His throat bobbed. For a moment, he looked like he might argue---then he didn’t. He just leaned forward, resting his forehead against yours after carefully pulling you to sit on his leg. The contact was hesitant, like he was asking permission even then.

Not quite a kiss, but something just as intimate—that's what you and him had always been, in the end: More than friends, less than lovers.

Or just not yet mature enough to understand your heart had been each other's for far more time than a few months.

You wrapped an arm around him without thinking.

He exhaled, long and shaky, the kind of breath someone let out after holding it for too long. “Thank you” He whispered, his breath brushing your lips.

You stayed there, the bathroom light buzzing overhead, the world reduced to quiet breaths and bandages and the steady proof that he was there. Alive. Safe.

Later, when the cuts were covered and the bruises no longer looked so angry, he laced his fingers through yours.

“Next time,” He said softly, “I’d try to come back with fewer reasons for you to patch me up.”

You squeezed his hand. “Just come back.”

He nodded. And that time, you believed he understood exactly what that meant.

"What happened?" You finally asked, and his body slumped like he had been waiting for that question to arrive but had been hoping for you to just forget it this time.

"Does it matter?" He fumbled lowly—gaze dropping to the floor like that tone alone could convince you to drop the subject, while his finger started to draw kind circles against the side of your thigh, an action that was soothing him more than you, or maybe distracting him a little from the pain.