asphyxia
asphyxia
paralyzing_time
angst; m; kyuhae, friendship!kyumin
2396 words
kyuhyun learns a lesson in letting go. AU
warnings: character death
notes: my run-ons are on purpose. merry christmas, everyone! expect a spam of posts from me since i wrote a lot while i didn't have internet and have it now for a day (still out of town though).
-
It's early in the morning when Kyuhyun wakes up in a cold sweat admidst a pile of sunken, disarrayed sheets.
His eyes immediately check the clock and when the arrows point at two fifty-three am, he shakes the clock, trying to see if it’ll change to a different time. When it doesn’t, he digs his face into his pillows, hoping to somehow fall asleep from just seeing pitch black. Maybe if he suffocates himself, it won’t be so bad.
It doesn’t work. Not that his plans actually work that well in the first place, but it’s worth a try.
He tries to ignore the ticking of his alarm clock and the complete, utter silence of his room. He tries to ignore the sweat rolling down his heated skin and the many thoughts in his mind.
(He tries to ignore the blurry image of Donghae’s smile and the hazy sound of Donghae’s voice singing him a lullaby, lulling him back to slumber.)
-
Kyuhyun is startled awake by the shriek of his alarm clock, but uses one arm to shut the annoying sound off and the other to force himself to get up from the warmth of his bed. It used to be Donghae’s arms that kept him warm instead of the blankets he tried to replace him with.
He drags himself to the bathroom and takes one look with a wince at what he sees. His fingertips brush against the bones that were barely sticking out and then they run down the clammy skin of his hollowed cheeks. He thinks to himself, I’ve been playing too much Starcraft. He plays Starcraft because other than his homework and studying, he doesn’t have much else to do in his free time.
(Only because Donghae isn’t there anymore.)
-
His friends have enough of his depression (“You need to get out,” Heechul claimed, waving his arms in the air. “You’re wasting your life away!”) so they drag him to bar and force him to drink because, as they told him, getting drunk gives you a happy, high feeling. He’s drunk by the fourth cup of whatever-the-hell-they-bought-him alcohol and has to hold onto Sungmin to even stand up. His words are jumbled but he is a whole lot lighter in mind and spirit, and babbles to Sungmin about how much he thinks life sucks.
“Why did he leave me, Sungmin?” Kyuhyun slurs while leaning onto the older male, mostly mumbling words to himself. He forgets to add formalities. “Am I unattractive?”
“No, Kyuhyun-ah, he felt like he needed to see other people.” Sungmin tries to break the answer to him gently, but it doesn’t matter either way because Kyuhyun is either too drunk to comprehend it or purposely ignoring it.
The younger male forces his head up and sees Donghae liplocking other male, even if he is intoxicated and barely able to take in anything at the moment.
“That’s his new boyfriend, huh?” His words come out rushed (and Sungmin thinks, maybe it’s just him, also a little hurt) before he’s really leaning onto Sungmin for support and the other stumbles from the sudden onslaught of weight. “Not that bad.”
“K-”
“Hyung, I think I’m going to be sick.” Kyuhyun announces while clutching his stomach and looking to the ground. Sungmin panics.
“No, Kyuhyun, not on my new sho-”
Kyuhyun feels the bile coming up his throat and throws up on the ground, Sungmin’s shoes and all.
(The sight of Donghae kissing someone other than him makes Kyuhyun sick.)
-
Kyuhyun officially loses a friend for one day, three hours, and forty-three minutes (he had called and apologized - after suffering through the initial pain of the hangover - and Sungmin had accepted, along with the promise of new shoes). Two hours, one nurse Sungmin, and one-hundred-fifty-dollars less later, he’s left in the bed of his dormitory to fight the rest of his headache, which significantly healed because of Sungmin practically shoving medicine down his throat. His roommate, Yesung, left him alone in exchange for going to Ryeowook’s because he knew Kyuhyun would be crabby when he woke up.
Knocks sound in the silence and a groan leaves the college student’s lips. If it’s that bastard Heechul coming to laugh at him, he will kill him. He reluctantly forces himself off the mattress and trudges toward the door, too annoyed to check the eye hole to see if it was really Heechul. He immediately opens the door, just wanting to get this humiliation over with.
“Heechul, if you came here to laugh or force me ou-”
The rest of his angry words die on his tongue when he sees that it isn’t Heechul, but it’s Donghae standing at his door.
“Donghae…?”
He sees Donghae give a small smile at his informality and his heart flutters in his chest (Kyuhyun tries to tell it to calm down, but it doesn’t), beating two, four, six.
“Kyuhyun-ah.” When Kyuhyun hears his name leave the other’s lips, it sounds like it slipped from an angel’s lips.
“What are you doing here, Donghae-sshi?” Kyuhyun asks, although to him, it doesn’t really matter because Donghae’s here, in front of him, and not tongue wrestling with the guy he saw when he was at the bar. He only adds the formality because he wants Donghae to hear and think, what has he done after I left, and know the hurt that has been suffocating him.
“Aren’t you going to let me in?” His amused voice seems to make Kyuhyun’s body move and before the young male even knows it, the other is inside.
“How have you been?” Donghae starts, going close to Kyuhyun and hugging him, which makes Kyuhyun’s breath hitch. “I missed you, Kyu.”
No, you don’t or I missed you too is what Kyuhyun wants to say, but he bites his tongue.
Before he knows it, Donghae’s lips are on his and he’s digging his nails into Donghae’s shirt as if saying no, please, don’t go, I love you because Donghae’s lips are so much like a drug, so addictive and so sweet and so right and wrong at the same time.
(He doesn’t remember Donghae ever being a one-night-stand person.)
-
Kyuhyun basks in the warmth and afterglow in the fairly early hours of morning, pretending to be asleep because he knows Donghae is awake. He tries so hard to resist the urge to shiver when he feels Donghae’s fingertips brush over the slightly protruding bones. Donghae’s fingers descend his sweat-slick skin and he’s lightly tracing wordless confessions along his bones, breaths just barely hitting Kyuhyun’s bare skin. It seems like in these gentle touches he’s saying I’m sorry, I love you, I was wrong, or maybe it’s just Kyuhyun interpreting it the way he likes it.
Kyuhyun knows that Donghae leaves not from the movement of the bed, but from the absence of warmth and comfort that escape him when he feels Donghae leave. He hears the other scribbling something down, but he still pretends to be asleep because maybe if he does so, this will turn out to be just a horrible dream and it’s not really happening and Donghae isn’t really leaving him all over again.
It’s not until he hears the front door of the dorm quietly close shut that he opens his eyes and blinks sleep out. He walks toward the small note and sees a feeble I’m sorry, this was a mistake written in Donghae’s messy penmanship.
He doesn’t know whether it’s the hurt, the anger, the love, or all of them together that makes him tear the paper up and call Sungmin, sounding like he’s barely keeping himself together.
(Since when did Donghae abandon people?)
-
The last time Kyuhyun cried was when his grandma died, but Donghae was the one holding him in his arms and comforting him in every way imaginable. Now it’s Sungmin and it’s just not the same. He can feel the difference in Sungmin’s hold and the different type of warmth that Sungmin’s hand in his emits. It’s the warmth of love, but one of friendship, not one of romance and that manages to break Kyuhyun a little bit more.
“Shhh,” Sungmin coos, and it seems like he’s trying to find something to say, but can’t find the right words, which Kyuhyun is thankful for because he doesn’t want words. It’ll ruin his illusion of Donghae being the one holding him and comforting him even though he’s the cause of his hurt.
“I, Kyu,” Sungmin stumbles over his words, sounding both surprised and sympathetic, squeezing Kyuhyun a little tighter in his protective hold in exchange for his lack of verbal responses.
It doesn’t help comfort Kyuhyun any, but the tears have stopped and now he just feels emotionally and physically drained.
He feels the lines of Sungmin’s body against his own, and they’re not the same subtle muscles that used to cradle him and his heart. He hears the soft, comforting voice, and it’s not the same as the whimsical, light, airy quality that used to fill his ears. He senses the warmth of the male, and it’s not the same as the comfort and solaces that used to wash up inside of him in waves.
(Kyuhyun wonders if Donghae ever thinks about him while he’s with his new boyfriend.)
-
At the university, Kyuhyun walks down the hall of the music building after getting out of his vocals class before passing by the dance studio. Through the window, he catches a glimpse of Donghae’s body sliding and turning, heels sweeping against the ground in a graceful whirl. Donghae always seems to be like fire. Beauty casts itself in his movements, equally fluid as seductive, and he looks so lost in his dancing that Kyuhyun isn’t noticed.
The singer forces himself to tear his gaze away and walk into the room across from the dance studio, finding Ryeowook playing the piano. He smiles softly; he wishes he could get as lost in his singing as Ryeowook is in his piano playing.
“Kyuhyun-ah!” Ryeowook calls out after snapping out of his stupor, apologies written all over his delicate features. “I’m sorry, I was busy playing and-”
“It’s okay, hyung.”
Ryeowook doesn’t say anything more and just nods because they both know that there’s nothing worth saying, only notes worth playing and words worth singing. The soft sound of the piano slowly occupies the silence that fell earlier and Kyuhyun’s rich voice slowly melds in, becoming one with the instrument. Kyuhyun closes his eyes as the words fly off his lips without any thought at all. He feels the coolness of the metal barely reaching his lips in a swift kiss before almost dropping the microphone and messing up his mantra of lyrics.
His apologies are scrambled as he tries to revive his singing world again, but Ryeowook just watches him in a knowing silence before letting his gaze drift elsewhere.
(Did Donghae ever fall during his dance routines?)
-
Kyuhyun doesn’t know what happened. He doesn’t know how he ended up on a hospital bed in the emergency room with an oxygen mask over his face, feeling absolutely numb. He can’t see anything; it’s all black, but he can hear and feel everything else. He can hear everyone screaming around him, yelling that he needs to keep holding on and that he’ll make it and to fight for his life. He can feel it when the doctors insert the IV needle into his vein and when Sungmin squeezes his hand (how does he know? Sungmin’s grip is always a little too rigid and a little too tight).
However, he doesn’t want to open his eyes and come to reality that he is, indeed, in a hospital room with a heart monitor beeping every so often to tell him he’s still alive. That he is, indeed, still broken, but he’s okay with that. He’s a little more broken than before, with the bones piercing him from the inside out and making his heart hurt. When he does finally wake up, he sees Sungmin hovering near him and barely processes the anxious babbling from his friend; it’s something about being so worried and getting into a car accident and serious injuries.
His throat feels so dry and Sungmin just won’t shut up, which irritates Kyuhyun because all he wants to do is be alone and wallow in his self-pity about how Donghae won’t even come to the hospital to see him.
“Is he,” Kyuhyun is finally able to start in his raspy, crackled voice, “is he happy, hyung?”
Sungmin doesn’t say anything, but really, what can he say? He just nods and Kyuhyun swears that he feels his bones piercing into his heart even more - his thin, withering bones, the ones barely covered by his skin because he always forgets to eat and, when he does eat, he can barely swallow anything.
“I need to go, Kyu.” He hears Sungmin’s gentle voice. “I have class. Get better, okay?”
Kyuhyun manages to turn to his side with great difficulty - have you ever tried turning with an IV in the middle of your arm - and faces Sungmin. He squeezes his friend’s hand with whatever leftover strength he has and Sungmin’s eyes turn glassy; he’s such a good friend that he understands and just nods. Kyuhyun feels the other’s hand slowly slip from his and hears the footsteps of Sungmin leaving.
His eyes shut close and he pretends to go to sleep to make time go faster, and, in his head, he wonders how much time he has left. His ears pick up on rushing steps coming towards him and he thinks that Sungmin probably forgot something, but he can’t bring himself to open his eyes. He’s so, so tired.
A hand wraps around his bony one and that touch is so familiar, but Kyuhyun is too disoriented to place it. It feels a lot like Donghae’s, but that’s impossible, because Donghae wouldn’t visit him in the hospital while he has his own life to live and Kyuhyun is just a mess he can’t live with. He barely makes out the words don’t leave me and I need you, Kyu, and Kyuhyun blames his auditory hallucinations on his current state.
“I love you,” is the last thing Kyuhyun hears.
(Donghae. Donghae used to say that too.)
paralyzing_time
angst; m; kyuhae, friendship!kyumin
2396 words
kyuhyun learns a lesson in letting go. AU
warnings: character death
notes: my run-ons are on purpose. merry christmas, everyone! expect a spam of posts from me since i wrote a lot while i didn't have internet and have it now for a day (still out of town though).
-
It's early in the morning when Kyuhyun wakes up in a cold sweat admidst a pile of sunken, disarrayed sheets.
His eyes immediately check the clock and when the arrows point at two fifty-three am, he shakes the clock, trying to see if it’ll change to a different time. When it doesn’t, he digs his face into his pillows, hoping to somehow fall asleep from just seeing pitch black. Maybe if he suffocates himself, it won’t be so bad.
It doesn’t work. Not that his plans actually work that well in the first place, but it’s worth a try.
He tries to ignore the ticking of his alarm clock and the complete, utter silence of his room. He tries to ignore the sweat rolling down his heated skin and the many thoughts in his mind.
(He tries to ignore the blurry image of Donghae’s smile and the hazy sound of Donghae’s voice singing him a lullaby, lulling him back to slumber.)
-
Kyuhyun is startled awake by the shriek of his alarm clock, but uses one arm to shut the annoying sound off and the other to force himself to get up from the warmth of his bed. It used to be Donghae’s arms that kept him warm instead of the blankets he tried to replace him with.
He drags himself to the bathroom and takes one look with a wince at what he sees. His fingertips brush against the bones that were barely sticking out and then they run down the clammy skin of his hollowed cheeks. He thinks to himself, I’ve been playing too much Starcraft. He plays Starcraft because other than his homework and studying, he doesn’t have much else to do in his free time.
(Only because Donghae isn’t there anymore.)
-
His friends have enough of his depression (“You need to get out,” Heechul claimed, waving his arms in the air. “You’re wasting your life away!”) so they drag him to bar and force him to drink because, as they told him, getting drunk gives you a happy, high feeling. He’s drunk by the fourth cup of whatever-the-hell-they-bought-him alcohol and has to hold onto Sungmin to even stand up. His words are jumbled but he is a whole lot lighter in mind and spirit, and babbles to Sungmin about how much he thinks life sucks.
“Why did he leave me, Sungmin?” Kyuhyun slurs while leaning onto the older male, mostly mumbling words to himself. He forgets to add formalities. “Am I unattractive?”
“No, Kyuhyun-ah, he felt like he needed to see other people.” Sungmin tries to break the answer to him gently, but it doesn’t matter either way because Kyuhyun is either too drunk to comprehend it or purposely ignoring it.
The younger male forces his head up and sees Donghae liplocking other male, even if he is intoxicated and barely able to take in anything at the moment.
“That’s his new boyfriend, huh?” His words come out rushed (and Sungmin thinks, maybe it’s just him, also a little hurt) before he’s really leaning onto Sungmin for support and the other stumbles from the sudden onslaught of weight. “Not that bad.”
“K-”
“Hyung, I think I’m going to be sick.” Kyuhyun announces while clutching his stomach and looking to the ground. Sungmin panics.
“No, Kyuhyun, not on my new sho-”
Kyuhyun feels the bile coming up his throat and throws up on the ground, Sungmin’s shoes and all.
(The sight of Donghae kissing someone other than him makes Kyuhyun sick.)
-
Kyuhyun officially loses a friend for one day, three hours, and forty-three minutes (he had called and apologized - after suffering through the initial pain of the hangover - and Sungmin had accepted, along with the promise of new shoes). Two hours, one nurse Sungmin, and one-hundred-fifty-dollars less later, he’s left in the bed of his dormitory to fight the rest of his headache, which significantly healed because of Sungmin practically shoving medicine down his throat. His roommate, Yesung, left him alone in exchange for going to Ryeowook’s because he knew Kyuhyun would be crabby when he woke up.
Knocks sound in the silence and a groan leaves the college student’s lips. If it’s that bastard Heechul coming to laugh at him, he will kill him. He reluctantly forces himself off the mattress and trudges toward the door, too annoyed to check the eye hole to see if it was really Heechul. He immediately opens the door, just wanting to get this humiliation over with.
“Heechul, if you came here to laugh or force me ou-”
The rest of his angry words die on his tongue when he sees that it isn’t Heechul, but it’s Donghae standing at his door.
“Donghae…?”
He sees Donghae give a small smile at his informality and his heart flutters in his chest (Kyuhyun tries to tell it to calm down, but it doesn’t), beating two, four, six.
“Kyuhyun-ah.” When Kyuhyun hears his name leave the other’s lips, it sounds like it slipped from an angel’s lips.
“What are you doing here, Donghae-sshi?” Kyuhyun asks, although to him, it doesn’t really matter because Donghae’s here, in front of him, and not tongue wrestling with the guy he saw when he was at the bar. He only adds the formality because he wants Donghae to hear and think, what has he done after I left, and know the hurt that has been suffocating him.
“Aren’t you going to let me in?” His amused voice seems to make Kyuhyun’s body move and before the young male even knows it, the other is inside.
“How have you been?” Donghae starts, going close to Kyuhyun and hugging him, which makes Kyuhyun’s breath hitch. “I missed you, Kyu.”
No, you don’t or I missed you too is what Kyuhyun wants to say, but he bites his tongue.
Before he knows it, Donghae’s lips are on his and he’s digging his nails into Donghae’s shirt as if saying no, please, don’t go, I love you because Donghae’s lips are so much like a drug, so addictive and so sweet and so right and wrong at the same time.
(He doesn’t remember Donghae ever being a one-night-stand person.)
-
Kyuhyun basks in the warmth and afterglow in the fairly early hours of morning, pretending to be asleep because he knows Donghae is awake. He tries so hard to resist the urge to shiver when he feels Donghae’s fingertips brush over the slightly protruding bones. Donghae’s fingers descend his sweat-slick skin and he’s lightly tracing wordless confessions along his bones, breaths just barely hitting Kyuhyun’s bare skin. It seems like in these gentle touches he’s saying I’m sorry, I love you, I was wrong, or maybe it’s just Kyuhyun interpreting it the way he likes it.
Kyuhyun knows that Donghae leaves not from the movement of the bed, but from the absence of warmth and comfort that escape him when he feels Donghae leave. He hears the other scribbling something down, but he still pretends to be asleep because maybe if he does so, this will turn out to be just a horrible dream and it’s not really happening and Donghae isn’t really leaving him all over again.
It’s not until he hears the front door of the dorm quietly close shut that he opens his eyes and blinks sleep out. He walks toward the small note and sees a feeble I’m sorry, this was a mistake written in Donghae’s messy penmanship.
He doesn’t know whether it’s the hurt, the anger, the love, or all of them together that makes him tear the paper up and call Sungmin, sounding like he’s barely keeping himself together.
(Since when did Donghae abandon people?)
-
The last time Kyuhyun cried was when his grandma died, but Donghae was the one holding him in his arms and comforting him in every way imaginable. Now it’s Sungmin and it’s just not the same. He can feel the difference in Sungmin’s hold and the different type of warmth that Sungmin’s hand in his emits. It’s the warmth of love, but one of friendship, not one of romance and that manages to break Kyuhyun a little bit more.
“Shhh,” Sungmin coos, and it seems like he’s trying to find something to say, but can’t find the right words, which Kyuhyun is thankful for because he doesn’t want words. It’ll ruin his illusion of Donghae being the one holding him and comforting him even though he’s the cause of his hurt.
“I, Kyu,” Sungmin stumbles over his words, sounding both surprised and sympathetic, squeezing Kyuhyun a little tighter in his protective hold in exchange for his lack of verbal responses.
It doesn’t help comfort Kyuhyun any, but the tears have stopped and now he just feels emotionally and physically drained.
He feels the lines of Sungmin’s body against his own, and they’re not the same subtle muscles that used to cradle him and his heart. He hears the soft, comforting voice, and it’s not the same as the whimsical, light, airy quality that used to fill his ears. He senses the warmth of the male, and it’s not the same as the comfort and solaces that used to wash up inside of him in waves.
(Kyuhyun wonders if Donghae ever thinks about him while he’s with his new boyfriend.)
-
At the university, Kyuhyun walks down the hall of the music building after getting out of his vocals class before passing by the dance studio. Through the window, he catches a glimpse of Donghae’s body sliding and turning, heels sweeping against the ground in a graceful whirl. Donghae always seems to be like fire. Beauty casts itself in his movements, equally fluid as seductive, and he looks so lost in his dancing that Kyuhyun isn’t noticed.
The singer forces himself to tear his gaze away and walk into the room across from the dance studio, finding Ryeowook playing the piano. He smiles softly; he wishes he could get as lost in his singing as Ryeowook is in his piano playing.
“Kyuhyun-ah!” Ryeowook calls out after snapping out of his stupor, apologies written all over his delicate features. “I’m sorry, I was busy playing and-”
“It’s okay, hyung.”
Ryeowook doesn’t say anything more and just nods because they both know that there’s nothing worth saying, only notes worth playing and words worth singing. The soft sound of the piano slowly occupies the silence that fell earlier and Kyuhyun’s rich voice slowly melds in, becoming one with the instrument. Kyuhyun closes his eyes as the words fly off his lips without any thought at all. He feels the coolness of the metal barely reaching his lips in a swift kiss before almost dropping the microphone and messing up his mantra of lyrics.
His apologies are scrambled as he tries to revive his singing world again, but Ryeowook just watches him in a knowing silence before letting his gaze drift elsewhere.
(Did Donghae ever fall during his dance routines?)
-
Kyuhyun doesn’t know what happened. He doesn’t know how he ended up on a hospital bed in the emergency room with an oxygen mask over his face, feeling absolutely numb. He can’t see anything; it’s all black, but he can hear and feel everything else. He can hear everyone screaming around him, yelling that he needs to keep holding on and that he’ll make it and to fight for his life. He can feel it when the doctors insert the IV needle into his vein and when Sungmin squeezes his hand (how does he know? Sungmin’s grip is always a little too rigid and a little too tight).
However, he doesn’t want to open his eyes and come to reality that he is, indeed, in a hospital room with a heart monitor beeping every so often to tell him he’s still alive. That he is, indeed, still broken, but he’s okay with that. He’s a little more broken than before, with the bones piercing him from the inside out and making his heart hurt. When he does finally wake up, he sees Sungmin hovering near him and barely processes the anxious babbling from his friend; it’s something about being so worried and getting into a car accident and serious injuries.
His throat feels so dry and Sungmin just won’t shut up, which irritates Kyuhyun because all he wants to do is be alone and wallow in his self-pity about how Donghae won’t even come to the hospital to see him.
“Is he,” Kyuhyun is finally able to start in his raspy, crackled voice, “is he happy, hyung?”
Sungmin doesn’t say anything, but really, what can he say? He just nods and Kyuhyun swears that he feels his bones piercing into his heart even more - his thin, withering bones, the ones barely covered by his skin because he always forgets to eat and, when he does eat, he can barely swallow anything.
“I need to go, Kyu.” He hears Sungmin’s gentle voice. “I have class. Get better, okay?”
Kyuhyun manages to turn to his side with great difficulty - have you ever tried turning with an IV in the middle of your arm - and faces Sungmin. He squeezes his friend’s hand with whatever leftover strength he has and Sungmin’s eyes turn glassy; he’s such a good friend that he understands and just nods. Kyuhyun feels the other’s hand slowly slip from his and hears the footsteps of Sungmin leaving.
His eyes shut close and he pretends to go to sleep to make time go faster, and, in his head, he wonders how much time he has left. His ears pick up on rushing steps coming towards him and he thinks that Sungmin probably forgot something, but he can’t bring himself to open his eyes. He’s so, so tired.
A hand wraps around his bony one and that touch is so familiar, but Kyuhyun is too disoriented to place it. It feels a lot like Donghae’s, but that’s impossible, because Donghae wouldn’t visit him in the hospital while he has his own life to live and Kyuhyun is just a mess he can’t live with. He barely makes out the words don’t leave me and I need you, Kyu, and Kyuhyun blames his auditory hallucinations on his current state.
“I love you,” is the last thing Kyuhyun hears.
(Donghae. Donghae used to say that too.)