Chapter Text
“You know, whenever I lose a patient I always find myself wondering what happened to that one patient I wasn’t allowed to help. If he’d died without anyone ever helping him. If he’d died trying to escape. If he’d managed to escape and live. If my number had been taken away from him. If he’d tried to call but had gotten found out. If I'd gotten him killed because I tried to help him.”
Han Seo blinks and turns away from the window that he’d been staring aimlessly out of, waiting for someone to arrive with his admission papers. He stares as the man in scrubs and a doctor’s coat approaches him. His face is familiar, his memory of it tinged with desperation and panic. He stares and stares, not saying a word as the man settles into the chair beside his bed. And then it clicks.
“Dr. Lee,” he breathes, emotions roiling as he tries to blink away the overlapping images of a much younger Dr. Lee.
The man’s eyes crinkle, his age showing, as he smiles - and it’s as bright as Han Seo remembers. “So you do remember me. I’d been half afraid that you’d forgotten with how out of it you had been when I last saw you.”
Han Seo shakes his head, “I didn’t forget about you.” He pauses and swallows the words stuck in his throat.
Dr. Lee waits and when Han Seo can’t seem to force anything out he tilts his head to the side. “I was worried that someone had found the card and that you’d gotten in trouble, or something worse.”
He shakes his head again, “No, I just…” He can’t bring himself to continue.
“It‘s okay. I was just worried that my card got you into trouble, and then something bad happened.”
“You didn’t!” Han Seo waves his hands frantically, “I was grateful to have the card. I still have it,” he turns to the bedside table and reaches for his wallet that Cha Young had given back to him when he’d asked. He opens the worn wallet (his real one, his fancy one was lost somewhere in the madness of that night) and slips out the card from a hidden pocket that Dr. Lee had once given him. There’s speckles of blood from dark moments of consideration and the ink has started to fade where he’d rubbed at the scrawled number during nights when he had started to consider that just maybe, he didn’t want to try anymore.
He holds it out to show Dr. Lee. Dr. Lee’s eyes crinkle as he leans closer before pushing it back to Han Seo. “Keep it. My offer will always be open.”
Slowly, Han Seo slips it back into his wallet. “Thank you, Dr. Lee.”
“You can call me Ik Jun-hyung,” he smiles, “since we’re apparently co-workers now too.”
“Ik Jun-ssi.”
Ik Jun smiles, “We’ll have to work up to 'hyung' I see.”
Han Seo feels his ears heat and he ducks his head. When he looks up, his breath hitches.
“H-hyung?”
Ik Jun blinks, brows knitting together, a question in his eyes. But Han Seo isn’t looking at him.
Vincenzo is standing in the threshold between the sitting room and the treatment room. He’s staring at Ik Jun with a slight frown, eyes stony.
Han Seo tries to sit up, but dull pain radiates up his abdomen - he knew he shouldn’t have tried to push so hard during his physical therapy that morning — and a whimper escapes him even as he grits his teeth. Immediately, Ik Jun leans forward, hands hovering as he looks Han Seo over with a critical eye. Behind him, Vincenzo’s eyes narrow and he steps forward purposefully.
Panic rushes through Han Seo. He’s not sure if Vincenzo would actually do something to the doctor but the look in his eyes is one Han Seo is familiar with (though he’s more accustomed towards it being directed at him) and speaks of bodily harm.
“I’m fine!” He rushes to say, looking briefly at Ik Jun but then making steady eye contact with Vincenzo, even though it makes heat rush through his body.
(He refuses to think about why.)
“I just overextended myself in physical therapy so everything is a bit sore.”
Ik Jun frowns but settles back in his seat after glancing at the monitor showing his vitals. “You need to make sure you take it slow. If you screw something up trying to go too fast, you’ll end up on my operating table. Don’t bully the physical therapists into letting you do too much.”
Han Seo gives him a weak smile, knowing it’s not reassuring at all when Ik Jun’s expression doesn’t change. “I’ll be careful.”
Humming, Ik Jun glances at Vincenzo with narrowed eyes but stands anyway, glancing at his watch. “I have to go check on my patients and lovely residents now anyway so I’ll leave you to it. Don’t hesitate to call for the nurse if your abdomen starts bothering you. And tell your physical therapist about the pain when you see them tomorrow so they don’t push you too hard.”
Han Seo nods.
Pausing, Ik Jun looks at Vincenzo again and turns back to Han Seo. He mouths, “Are you okay?”
Han Seo’s eyes burn with unshed tears and he nods, grateful for the consideration that Ik Jun shows him.Ik Jun’s mouth twists but he nods and walks out of the room. As he passes Vincenzo, he bows his head briefly, his pace stuttering slightly when Vincenzo does not return the bow - simply staring at Ik Jun with a blank look on his face.
After the door shuts, Vincenzo crosses into the room, a hint of hesitation in his normally confident step. Han Seo swallows, nerves making his throat dry.
Vincenzo sits in the chair that Ik Jun had been occupying, shrugging off his suit jacket and hanging it off the back of the chair, the movement precise and stilted.
Silence stretches.
Han Seo fiddles with the thin sheet covering him. Shifting in the bed, his butt numb in the way that signaled he’d been spending entirely too long stationary, Han Seo looks up from his hands and manages to eek out, “Hyung?”
Vincenzo hums, gaze steady and just as piercing as Han Seo remembered it to be. The consigliere remains silent and Han Seo winces.
Did he anger Vincenzo? Did he do something wrong? He doesn’t know what he did wrong. Why can’t he remember?
“Cha Young-ssi said you were healed.” It’s a question and a statement all wrapped in one.
Han Seo blinks, unsure as to how he’s supposed to respond to that. He didn’t think that Cha Young had been keeping Vincenzo appraised.
(Didn’t know that Vincenzo cared.)
“Um,” Han Seo bites his lip, feeling heat rush to his ears as Vincenzo maintains his blank expression. “The surgeries and everything went well. I just have to make sure I don’t ruin any of their work by overstraining muscles or something.” He laughs nervously, “There’s a lot of physical therapy because they kept me unconscious for so long.”
Vincenzo’s eyes narrow and for a tense second Han Seo feels like he’s going to do something. But then the moment passes and Han Seo feels relief course through him.
He hasn’t felt this scared(?) in a while. He’s grown accustomed to all the of the hospital staff – his coworkers from his ward even came and visited him – and Cha Young. He hasn’t had to be scared.
(Han Seo doesn’t know what else to call the way that his blood seems to rush to his head and heart pump loudly and the way he gets nervous and aware of Vincenzo. If it’s not fear, what else could it be? Does Han Seo want it to be something else? Is he allowed to have it be something else? Fear is safe. Fear got him through all of these years of his miserable, pathetic life.)
“When will you be discharged?”
Han Seo shakes himself out of his thoughts and looks at Vincenzo. Something in the consigliere has eased – while still rigid and formal, there’s not the tension that had had Han Seo’s hindbrain yelling ‘Watch out! Danger!’ at him.
“Dr. Kim seemed to think that it’d be okay to release me by the end of this week as long as I wasn’t left alone. Cha Young-noona said – ” he stops and swallows nervously. What if Cha Young hadn’t told Vincenzo that she had said he could stay at Geumga Plaza. What if Vincenzo didn’t want him anywhere near there. What if he wants to just clear up loose ends – me? What if –
“Cha Young-ssi said what?”
Han Seo swallows and tells himself to grow the spine that let him tell Han Seok ‘No.’
“She said that I could stay at Geumga Plaza and that she and the residents could help.” In a rush, “So Dr. Kim said I should be okay to be discharged as long as I come back for checkups and don’t start work until he says I can start
back.”
Vincenzo nods, finger tapping his crisp dress pants.
(Han Seo never understood how he could look so comfortable in his suits. Any time that Han Seo wore one he felt like he was playing dress up – which he was. He’s always felt way more comfortable in his hoodies and scrubs. But Han Seok would never let him leave like that anymore.)
“You don’t need to work if you don’t want to,” Vincenzo says, voice flat.
“What?” Han Seo flinches. Is he not allowed to? What will he do if he can’t work? How will he make up for all the spilt blood?
“Your brother had plenty of money. It’s all yours now.”
“Wha – ” Han Seo’s voice cracks. “What does that mean?”
“It means that what was your brother’s is yours. I took care of it.”
Han Seo’s breath hitches, “I don’t understand.”
“The money, assets, whatever else he had.” Vincenzo leans forward, “I was able to get it all transferred to Seo Han Seo. It’s yours.”
“And you don’t want me to work?” Han Seo isn’t sure that he understands what’s happening. What does Vincenzo want from him?
Vincenzo’s eyebrows furrow and Han Seo feels himself tense. “You don’t have to work. There’s enough money for you to live off of without having to work.”
Blood money.
“But –”
Panic starts to swell. He doesn’t –
He can’t –
What –
How –
“Han Seo-ssi.”
A cold hand grips his wrist and squeezes gently and the world snaps back into focus.
Han Seo heaves, trying to breathe but his chest is tight and he can’t breathe.
The monitor is beeping beside him and he looks at it in panic. His heart rate is too high. His blood pressure is too high. Everything is too high. Everything is wrong.
The hand around his wrist squeezes again.
“Breathe, Han Seo-ah.”
Han Seo blinks, world starting to slow. ‘Han-seo-ah.’
“Hyung?” Han Seo whispers.
“Breathe,” Vincenzo says, standing over Han Seo.
Han Seo can hear the door slide open as Nurse Kim rushes in. She comes towards the monitor and immediately turns it off, looking at Han Seo with a critical eye. “What happened?”
Clutching at his chest with the arm that Vincenzo is still holding and trying to will his heart to slow down, Han Seo waves his other hand. “I was just surprised.” Nurse Kim’s eyes narrow, clearly not trusting him, and Han Seo winces, knowing that he’d never let that fly with a patient either. He smiles weakly, “Panic attack."
Nurse Kim scowls and looks at Vincenzo. “I think you’ve overstayed your welcome. Seo-ssi seems like he needs to get some rest.”
The corner of Vincenzo’s mouth twitches and he straightens, no longer looming over Han Seo. His grip on Han Seo’s wrist loosens and Han Seo feels the panic in him start to rise a little more. Panicking and trying not to panic about panicking, Han Seo grabs Vincenzo’s wrist with his free hand and blurts, “It’s fine!”
Nurse Kim opens her mouth to protest.
“I really was just surprised. I wasn’t expecting him to say what he said. I’m fine, Nurse Kim, I promise.”
Still frowning, she says, “If you’re sure…” She glances at the monitor again, “But you have to make sure you hit the call button if you need anything. I’ll be back in half an hour to change your dressings and take you to occupational therapy.”
He nods and bows his head to her. “Thank you.”
She leaves and Han Seo closes his eyes and focuses on his breathing.
In. Out. In. Out. In. Out. Again and again. Just like old times.
Feeling calmer, he slowly opens his eyes and immediately flushes when he realizes that he’s still holding Vincenzo’s wrist.
He lets go of it and rushes to apologize. “I’m sorry! I didn’t want you to leave before – ”
Vincenzo waves his newly freed hand and interrupts, “It’s fine.” He sits back down, “Shall we continue our conversation?”
Han Seo nods.
“The money is yours,” Vincenzo says, “I don’t need it.”
Han Seo tilts his head. He would have expected Vincenzo to want to keep it after all the trouble he went through to bring down Babel.
“You are free to have it, it’s all under your new name now anyway. That’s part of what made it take so long for me to get back anyway. There’s enough there that you won’t have to work a day if you don’t want to.”
Han Seo shakes his head, “I don’t want it.”
Vincenzo lifts an eyebrow in question.
He opens his mouth, unsure of how to explain. “I like working. I like doing this,” he gestures vaguely to the hospital around them. “I like actually being able to help people instead of just screwing them over and causing them pain. All I ever did with Babel was cause people pain. Cause them to die. This was the one place where I could repay some of that debt. And I was always so afraid that Han Seok-hyung would stop letting me do it. So I just listened to him so that he would let me keep coming back.
“Without this. I probably would have died a long time ago,” his breath hitches. “I would have said something and Han Seok-hyung would have killed me. It’s a miracle that he hadn’t already.” He rubs at his forehead where he can still feel the scar. “Doing this is the only thing I can do to repay everything I was complicit in.”
Straightening, Han Seo looks at Vincenzo, “I don’t want the money. And I’ll keep working.”
A pause.
And then Vincenzo smiles slightly.
Han Seo flushes. It’s unfair how handsome he looks when he smiles. And how handsome he looks even when he’s not smiling.
"What would you like me to do with the money?"
Han Seo exhales slowly, thinking. "Is there a - a charity fund? For the victims of Babel?"
Vincenzo hums, "I'll ask Cha Young-ssi, and if there's not I'm sure she'll set one up happily." With a wry half-smile, he looks at Han Seo like they're sharing a joke, "It's her hobby."
Huffing a startled laugh, Han Seo smiles slightly and looks down at his hands where his cuticles have become a bloody mess over the past hour. Vincenzo follows his gaze and the ever-present frown returns to his face. "I'll call the nurse back."
He moves to get up but Han Seo catches his sleeve, careful to no touch the pristine suit jacket with any of his bloody figures.
"She'll be back later and has better things to be doing when I can do it myself." He points to the corner of the room where the gauze, plasters, and other materials that they'd been using to redress his wounds were being stored. "Can you bring that over here, hyung?"
Han Seo watched Vincenzo clearly war at himself over doing what Han Seo asked versus do what he thought was right. Tugging at his sleeve once, Han Seo looks up at Vincenzo, "I've done it before. I don't want to bother Nurse Kim more than I already have.
Vincenzo's face darkens, and Han Seo fears he's said something wrong, fingers already loosening around Vinvenzo's sleeve. But then Vincenzo's face clears back to its poker face and he acquiesces.
Picking out the antiseptic solution, antiobiotic cream, and bandages he'd need, Han Seo starts the tedious process of cleaning his fingers of the blood he'd drawn in his anxiety. He startles when a warm hand takes the antiseptic-soaked cotton pad out of his hand.
His eyes dart to Vincenzo who has taken one of Han Seo's hands in his and is intently cleaning the blood off his finger tips. It stings but Han Seo can't feel that over the warmth he feels emanating from Vincenzo's hands.
"I can --"
A sharp glance from Vincenzo has his mouth snapping shut.
The sound of Han Seo’s breath fills the room and he watches as Vincenzo’s calloused hands gently (he wonders where Vincenzo learned it) wrap his cuticles.
He whispers, “Thank you, hyung.”
Vincenzo makes a soft sound and lays Han Seo’s hands back into his lap. Han Seo’s hands immediately feel cold once again.
Standing, Vincenzo places the medical supplies back on the tray and moves it away from the bed. He turns back to Han Seo and says, “Cha Young-ssi will be back to take you back to Geumga Plaza.”
Han Seo nods slowly. Feeling the slightest bit brave with the lingering warmth from Vincenzo’s care, Han Seo asks, “And what about you, hyung?”
Vincenzo lifts a silent eyebrow.
Swallowing, Han Seo asks, “Are you staying at the Plaza?”
“Yes.” He lifts his suit jacket from where it hung on the chair and slips it on. The sound of fabric rustling fills the air for a few long seconds. “I am still cleaning up a few loose ends and it wouldn’t do for me to be seen in as public of a place as a hospital for the moment. I will see you at the Plaza after you are discharged.”
Han Seo nods, something like hope burgeoning in him. Maybe he didn’t utterly fuck this up.
(Though he’s sure that he will inevitably fuck it up in the future. He’s never so lucky. But maybe he’ll get a few nice moments that he will be able to treasure when he’s turned out on the street. Those moments are the ones that got him through living with Han Seok, and he’s not sure that there will ever be anything as bad as Han Seok ever again.)
Vincenzo makes to leave and Han Seo blurts, “Wait!”
He pauses and Han Seo blinks.
“Um.” He’s suddenly tongue-tied and feeling like the first time that his nursing professors had given him praise - off-centered and stumbling for his place. “I wanted to - to say thank you.”
He somehow manages to speak the words without devolving into an utter mess - not that he isn’t already a mess.
Vincenzo’s eyes crinkle and Han Seo finds his breath stolen away.
(He remembers that smile from the gym, from the few drinks they’d had, from the way that Vincenzo had looked at him as he’d cradled his face in his hands after Han Seo had asked if he had done well.
It was a smile that should be registered as a deadly weapon.)
Vincenzo nods and leaves with a wave of his hand and Han Seo is left with the distinct feeling of ‘hyung is so cool.’
He’s glad that Vincenzo is already gone with the way that he knows his face is bright red and ears even brighter than that. Burying his face in his hands, he lets out a strangled groan and then pulls his hands away from his face to stare at the neat bandage job that Vincenzo had done. He has to bury his face in his hands again after thinking about the way that Vincenzo’s fingers had gently moved his own hands this way and that way to clean them and bandage them.
He is in so much trouble.
Han Seo thought he had trained himself out of having crushes. They never did him any good - even when Han Seok hadn’t found about them he’d been rejected and despised time and time again.
He’d thought he was destined to die alone (and young) and had told himself crushes weren’t worth it.
It had worked.
At least until Vincenzo had stalked into his life with the dichotomy of his bright smiles to his dark Italian consigliere-ness. Han Seo was sure that the bright smiles were camouflage and a tool to get information out of his targets, but that didn’t stop Han Seo from wanting to bring more of them to Vincenzo’s face.
…Not that he had a chance, with the way that Cha Young and Vincenzo acted around each other.
He sighs, dropping his hands. Looking up at the ceiling, he tells himself that at least he knows he doesn’t have a chance.
It’s not like any sort of mafioso would ever be gay, or even bisexual.
Han Seo will just have to resign himself to being allowed to look from afar. To being allowed to even live.
It’s more than he ever hoped for.
(Not that he’s sure that he wants this. But these are the cards he’s been dealt and maybe, just maybe he can wait a little longer to see where they fall before making a decision.
He hasn’t known happiness like he’d felt in those brief moments with Vincenzo and Cha Young since he was a boy.)
Han Seo looks out the window where darkness has started to fall and Seoul’s lights are starting to break through the darkness.
He has a chance now at least.
At the very least he’ll pay his respects to his mother — even if his emotions are a tumultuous ocean of pain and regret and betrayal.
She tried to give him something better.
His moments with her were what carried him through most of his childhood. And Cha Young gave him back to her at the end anyway.
He mouths, Seo Han Seo.
Swallowing, Han Seo shifts down in the bed and lets his eyes flutter shut, sleep easily overtaking him after the events of the day.
—
And then it’s the day of his discharge.