swallowed by darkness
pairing: onesided!jongin/sehun
genre: angst
rating: nc-17
warnings: (highlight to read) child abuse, non-consensual sex
summary: sehun falls too deep in love and there isn't anyone to pull him out.
sehun's family had never been a happy one.
they lived in a place where gangs were everywhere and police were scarce. his father gambled often, always borrowing money from the cold eyes gang when he didn't have enough. he soon fell into hefty debt, and without any way to pay back the large sum of money, he killed himself out of desperation. a month later, sehun's mother hanged herself out of grief, leaving the thirteen-year-old sehun lost and alone.
he turned fourteen two days later, when the cold eyes gang turned up at his house. they took him in, forced him to sexually service older men to earn money. they told him he was helping his parents pay back their debt, and the naive sehun believed them, thought they really would let him go once he paid everything back.
but of course they didn't.
he tried escaping once he figured it out, ran away from the gang at the age of 15. but they caught him, dragged him back and beat him half to death. a few weeks later, he tried escaping a second time, only to be caught yet again. it went on for several months, until sehun finally gave up, finally resigned himself to selling his body. there wasn't anyone left to care about him anyway.
but jongin comes into his life one day, and sehun finds himself thinking that maybe, just maybe, he'd be different.
jongin's worlds apart from the people he meets every day. at the age of twenty-two, jongin is bright, cheerful, effervescent even, and sehun finds himself pining every day for his sun, the sun that lights up his life with jokes and cheer.
jongin doesn't know what sehun does for a living. sehun never told him, choosing to let jongin believe he was 20 and unemployed. but the truth is that he's 17, alone and afraid to lose jongin. the tan male is his sole friend, his only source of light in the darkness. he doesn't want to lose that too.
(he's pretty sure jongin would find out sooner or later though. in this place, teenage boys selling their bodies are rare, and other than him, almost no one is named sehun.)
jongin meets him once a week at the little flower shop down the street. technically, sehun's not supposed to wander around, but then again the gang doesn't bother to keep an eye on him when he's out soliciting clients anyway.
this time, jongin arrives with a musical box for him and sehun can't help but smile. there's a weird feeling in his chest, and he's pretty sure it's thumping wildly.
sehun doesn't know why or how, but he thinks he's falling in love with jongin.
a week later, sehun goes to the flower shop with a tub of ice-cream he saved up to buy. he knows he'll be beaten up if they find out he's been keeping some money for himself, but he can't bring himself to really care.
night falls and sehun knows he'll have to work all night to earn enough money for the day, but his mind is focused on jongin, focused on why he didn't come. the ice cream melts in the plastic tub but sehun doesn't notice it when he leaves.
a month passes with sehun waiting alone at the flower shop every week. he knows he should give up on jongin already but he doesn't want to lose his sun.
the shop owner walks out of the shop towards him and for a moment he fears she's going to reprimand him, going to forbid him from waiting outside her shop. instead she pats him on the shoulder, tells him not to waste his time waiting for someone who'll never come.
confused, sehun looks up at her questioningly, only for her to tell him that jongin came by the day before.
"he came with a girl to buy flowers, said i should tell you to stop waiting because he wouldn't come back," she explains, her voice gentle and full of pity. "don't waste your time here, boy."
it takes a while for the words to register in sehun's brain, and he blinks numbly when it finally sinks in. he thanks the shop owner, though he doesn't know what for, and walks out of the shop in a daze.
he doesn't get very far before his legs give out on him, and he collapses against a brick wall. tears are slipping down his cheeks but he doesn't notice. passers-by either irritatedly walk around him or turn to give him a pitiful look, but again, he doesn't notice. all he can think of is jongin jongin jongin. did he find out who sehun truly was? since when did he have a girlfriend? why was he so nice to him if he already had a girlfriend? and...did jongin ever love him?
sehun pulls his knees up to his chest, hugging them for warmth as the evening chill starts to seep into his bones. he's severely underdressed for january, only wearing a sweater and long, tight jeans, but then again he was supposed to be in motel rooms with clients, not waiting for jongin in the cold.
he stays there numbly until night falls and the gang come looking for him. he vaguely registers them dragging him somewhere, then proceeding to beat the living daylights out of him. all of a sudden there's a sharp pain in his stomach, and he isn't sure what happened, but he can feel his fingers slick with blood, and there's too much of it. his eyelids grow heavy and he's tempted to close them, to fall asleep and never wake up again. he looks straight ahead and sees jongin's musical box smashed to pieces on the floor. tears cloud his eyes, and he realises that maybe he really did love jongin after all. but it's too late now, too late to ask for a second chance with jongin. slowly, sehun closes his eyes, and he falls into a peaceful sleep for the first time in three years.