tw// character death

On nights like this, Heeseung regrets not talking about him enough.

He’d woken up to the feeling of small hands, paw-like on his cheeks and neck, and the very familiar weight of his son crawling up on the bed. Heeseung was tired, barely able to squint his eyes open but he welcomed the warm weight of his son in his arms without any qualms, more so when he could hear small sniffles and feel small fists curling up his nightshirt.

“Nightmare?” He had asked, but Riki had shook his head, telling him in a hushed trembling voice that it wasn’t. “‘S good dreamie.”

Heeseung had frowned, looking down at his seven year old son whose face was still fresh with tears and dried snot under his nose. “Then why are you crying?” He softly asks, wiping away the wetness from his son’s rounded cheeks.

Riki scrunches his nose in answer, rubbing under his eyes with a small thumb before he speaks. “Appa—saw appa.”

And that was enough of an answer to Heeseung to know what it meant.

He swallowed thickly, smoothing a hand down his son’s small back as he looked up at the ceiling. Suddenly, the world seemed a little blurry to his vision. “What was appa doing?”

Riki nuzzles his chest, small palms curled on his shirt and knobby knees bracketing his torso. “Appa and Daddy and Riki—in a park. Too m-many sunflowers, Daddy. It was so pretty.”

Heeseung finds the image flash right before his eyes, feeling like a memory that was only lived yesterday but actually years old. His fingers twitch on Riki’s warm back, as if the ghost of a touch was still present under his fingertips.

It’s foolish to delude himself into thinking he can still find a grasp of him even after so long. Four years isn’t short, and every time Riki or someone else brings him up in a conversation, Heeseung remembers that unfortunate day again and again—of waiting in their living room with Riki on his lap, for a lover to come home from work that never did.

It’s been three years since the accident, three summers of going sunflower sighting as a family of two rather than three and four years since the day that Riki’s dream commenced in reality. Heeseung knows Riki barely remembers him, he was only four to begin with but his son’s memories are sharper and more precise, spread into bits by his dreams to relive every night.

“Daddy sang and—and Riki danced with appa.”

The dreams vary with time, sometimes he wakes up to Riki crying because of a nightmare and sometimes, it’s nights like this where he cries for a whole different reason.

When he was younger, still with a memory that remembered his face and presence all too well, Riki used to cry without the involvement of dreams. He used to weep and sob in Heeseung’s arms while remembering his appa. Now, he only cries after a dream and doesn’t ask for him as much as he used to.

“Then appa hugged Riki—” He hears a sniffle, a small nose bumping his chest as Riki tries to stifle his cries against his shirt.

He inhales slowly, the blur in vision worsening with each breath that he and his son take into the night. Heeseung hugs his son tighter when he feels something wet and warm slide down his temple.

“Appa’s hug was nice, Daddy.”

Sometimes, Heeseung is envious of his son’s ability to relive his best memories in his dreams.

With the fourth anniversary mark, Heeseung had started to forget some of the things already. And he knows that the human memory is faulty by nature but it’s still unfair to give the power of reliving the past to children through dreams but not him.

Heeseung wants to meet Jaeyun in his dreams too.

He wants to remember what Jaeyun’s hug used to feel like as well.