we build our dreams (on broken land) [i/iii]
Title: we build our dreams (on broken land)
Pairing: Kai/Kyungsoo
Genre: horror, angst
Length: 21625w
Warnings: character death, alcohol abuse, highlight to see: schizophrenia
Summary: Kyungsoo finds out that sometimes, love knows no bounds.
The sun beats down upon a grim scene, sunlight bathing a pale face, highlighting the contrast between dry skin and skin that’s been moistened by tears. Kyungsoo stares angrily up at the hospital - he’d been coming here his whole life, but not for something like this. Never for something like this.
The walk into the funeral home inside the hospital is one he takes with heavy steps, every meeting of his feet with the ground bringing him just that much closer to the reality he never thought he’d have to face. He doesn’t bother to look at the flowers that are on sale - doesn’t spare a glance at the man selling urns and coffins either. Instead he walks straight to the table outside the room he dreads having to enter.
Trembling hands lift the pen next to the guestbook on the table, and he presses his name into paper with the dexterity of a child in kindergarten. The wobbly Do Kyungsoo that stares back at him from the page makes him think it’s jeering at him - look at you, so weak, so unstable. Can’t you even write your name right? - until he has to look away. He pulls a couple of bills from his wallet and shoves them none too gently into the envelopes that wait on the table as well, before going to stand in front of the door.
He stands there silently for what seems like two eternities, taking in the way the grain of the wood swirls into one another, drawing patterns on the door. The people around him take less than five seconds to disappear through doors just like this one, but Kyungsoo doesn’t think he can do this that easily.
He knows what’s on the other side, and the mere thought of it terrifies him.
‘Kyungsoo?’ the deep timbre of Chanyeol’s voice rolls in through one ear and out the other, and Kyungsoo doesn’t move. Chanyeol sighs. He puts a hand on Kyungsoo’s shoulder, and the latter barely even flinches. ‘We have to go in there, you know.’ he says.
‘I’m not ready.’ croaks Kyungsoo. His vocal cords are worn out from all the screaming he did the night before - tearing screeches from his throat and scars across his heart - and purple shadows hang in the skin underneath his eyes. He looks as terrible as he feels, and Chanyeol can’t help but feel his pain.
‘I know it’s hard, man. But… He’s waiting for you.’ Chanyeol’s words are tentative, skid off his tongue awkwardly. He takes Kyungsoo’s silence as a surrender, and gently eases the door open. ‘I’m right behind you, alright?’ he reassures. Kyungsoo nods numbly.
They take a few steps into the room. Chanyeol thinks this is pretty good progress - until Kyungsoo stops dead in his tracks, fists clenching and jaw tightening.
The coffin is laden with white lilies and chrysanthemums, a single frame resting atop the wood. Kyungsoo hates how everything looks so perfect, so properly arranged, every flower in its place. The photo of the dead man is uninterrupted by stray petals and Kyungsoo wants to throw things at it, wants to break the frame in half, make its glass shatter all over the floor. But Chanyeol’s grip only tightens as the elder bends him into a bow, and Kyungsoo forces his body to comply.
Enough damage has been done for now.
‘I’m so sorry for your loss. We both are,’ Chanyeol speaks in perfect formal tongue, Kyungsoo finds himself unable to say anything. He can only bow at the father who’s just lost his only son, his eyes glued to the shoes of the mother who weeps uncontrollably over her dead child. He feels the fragile pillars of his strength begin to crumble, and he’s grateful when Chanyeol leads him away from the grieving family and offers him a drink.
Across the room, Jongin’s photo watches them with blank eyes and an inconsequential smile.
Kyungsoo drinks to drown the thought that he’ll never hear Jongin’s laugh again.
+
Muffled screams echo through the corridors of Kyungsoo’s mind. They’re a mish mash of voices that seem to have no connection - his third grade math teacher, the class monitor’s mother, the old man from the grocery store he used to go to when he was thirteen - and they’re all screaming his name.
He keeps running. His feet struggle to find a way out of the labyrinth built on broken spirits and shrill voices, and he can feel desperation inch into the join of his limbs with every step he takes.
You could have saved me
The voice that he dreads hearing most sneaks up on him, breathes itself over the back of his neck. It coaxes the hairs there to stand on end, and the guilt and disgust make Kyungsoo want to crawl out of his very skin, rip it off his body until he has nothing left to feel or touch with.
Why didn’t you save me
He’d rather be broken, bleeding out than have to face this shame.
Kyungsoo
‘Jongin, I’m -’
It’s too late
Another scream tears through his eardrums, threatens to crack open his skull and imprint itself on his brain forever. Kyungsoo clamps his hands over his ears and screws his eyes shut tight, trying to find room in his lungs for breath -
+
- And this is how he wakes. His eyes shoot open as his body heaves off the bed, chest rising and falling rapidly, heartbeat skittering. The telltale signs of early morning hang limply in the air surrounding him, darkness still staking its claim over the strips of sky he can see through his blinds. A cold sheen of sweat coats his skin and his throat burns - and he’s thankful for the fact that he lives off campus, where the walls aren’t paper thin and nobody outside can hear his troubles as he sleeps.
It’s getting close to a month, now, and Kyungsoo tries to set aside the fact that the nights aren’t getting any better.
‘Dream,’ he pants, shaking hand coming up to pat his chest, drag his nails into the skin there to leave red marks. ‘It was just. A dream,’ he says. There’s a note of firmness in his voice when he says it. The clock on his phone reads 5:07am. He still has another four hours of sleep to go before he has to attempt to drag his body out of bed and into class.
Once his breathing is steady, he falls back on the bed, draws up the covers to his chin and shuts his eyes. He needs his rest.
After all, staying awake means acknowledging that the other side of the bed is cold and untouched, and Kyungsoo would rather face fifty of his nightmares than that.
Anything but that.
Chanyeol (9:36am)
Man are you coming to class this morning
Chanyeol (9:47am)
Do you want me to sign attendance for you
Chanyeol (9:54am)
Kyungsoo. You can’t go on like this.
Chanyeol (12:05pm)
I’m coming over
The sound of knuckles rapping urgently on his door makes Kyungsoo wake with a start. ‘Kyungsoo! Kyungsoo, open up!’ barks Chanyeol, the usual calm bass of his voice hitched up in slight panic. ‘I know you’re in there, Kyungsoo. Open up. Please,’ desperation inches into his voice, and Kyungsoo sighs as he rolls out of bed.
He opens the door to a frazzled Chanyeol, bag of takeaway in one hand, the other curled into a fist at eye level. The moment the taller registers that his friend is still, thankfully, alive and semi-well, he throws a long arm around him, bringing Kyungsoo to his chest in an embrace tight enough to leave the younger gasping for air. When he’s sure Kyungsoo’s all in one piece, he pulls away, grips both the younger’s shoulders at arm’s length.
‘Why the fuck haven’t you been answering my messages?’ he demands, inviting himself in and throwing the bag of food on the kitchenette counter. He’s ready to give Kyungsoo the lecture of a lifetime, at least send me a “k” or a smiley or something next time and other general texting etiquette waiting to roll off his tongue. He kicks his shoes off, takes a few steps into the apartment and stops.
His mouth drops open.
The apartment is in disarray, dirty laundry strewn all over the floor, delivery boxes stacked haphazardly on every available surface. A tentative breath is all it takes for Chanyeol to confirm that the place smells as bad as it looks, and he can’t believe it has come to this.
The skin on Kyungsoo’s arm, when Chanyeol reaches out to grab it, is sticky and unwashed and the latter almost wants to flinch away. ‘What’s gotten into you?’ he demands, brows furrowing together when he only gets a reproachful look in reply. He wants to breathe a deep sigh, but the stench of week-old food stops him from inhaling more than he needs to.
Nothing’s gotten into Kyungsoo, he realises. It’s startlingly apparent that, instead, something has left him forever.
It doesn’t take a genius to figure out what’s wrong with him, and Chanyeol puts two and two together quickly enough. He sets his mouth in a grim line, before firmly pulling Kyungsoo to the couch, large feet and long legs wading through the debris of the younger’s heartache scattered all over the floor.
Chanyeol scrutinises Kyungsoo’s face the moment they’re both seated. His skin looks three shades paler and more gaunt, and it makes the bruised patches under his eyes stand out even more. His hair is a messy, unwashed stack on his head, and Chanyeol doesn’t dare think about how much weight Kyungsoo’s lost in such a short amount of time. The dirty dishes look abundant, but Chanyeol knows there’s nowhere near enough of them for Kyungsoo to have been eating right since… it happened.
Chanyeol squares his shoulders, tries to paint his face a shade of infectious sun in the hope that it’s contagious.
‘Alright. First things first, you’re gonna go take a shower. Wash your hair, wash your face, wash all of this,’ - here, he sweeps a long arm around the room, gesturing at the upturned frames and the torn book pages scattered around it - ‘away. You’re going to eat a proper meal at the proper time, and then afterwards, we are going to clean this mess up. Got it?’ he asks.
Kyungsoo stares at him blankly, before wordlessly curling into himself and shutting his eyes. Chanyeol groans.
‘Look, Kyungsoo. I know this is hard - and I’m not asking you to do too much. I’m just - I’m just asking you, as a friend, to try going back to normal, a little bit at a time. Try and heal. He - he wouldn’t have wanted this, and you know that. You know that.’ Chanyeol says. His words make the edges of Kyungsoo’s vision blur together, wetness making the monotone shades of the world around him blend and merge.
Kyungsoo’s never been a big fan of the truth, but he knows that Chanyeol’s right.
Jongin would have hated to see him like this.
He unfurls his limbs slowly, gradually, and lets his body go limp. The atmosphere is tense for the next few seconds, Kyungsoo reluctant to even begin trying to merge back into the brickwork of society, Chanyeol unable to ascertain how he should react. Slowly, Kyungsoo turns his head, eyes flitting up to meet Chanyeol’s. He sees the worry in them, the concern, the love and the care of a true friend and guilt smashes into his chest like a force unrivalled.
He only wants what’s best for him.
Kyungsoo takes a deep breath, tries to calm the anxiety that precedes the bile rising in his throat. It’s now or never. He truly can’t go on like this. He clears his throat, opens his mouth to speak for the first time in weeks, voice a little scratchy, throat a little out of practice.
‘I know,’ he says, and Chanyeol sighs with relief. ‘I know.’
Somewhere in the corner of the dimly lit room, the shadow that hides between the bookshelf and the wall grows darker, inches just beyond the border that the light had restricted it to.
Neither man sees.
Kyungsoo’s fingers remain frozen where they hover above the keys of his laptop. His lecturer is at the front of the lecture hall, tiny remote shooting a red dot onto the projected screen, and he should be taking notes - but he can’t. The document that’s displayed on his laptop screen remains blank, and it takes Jongdae nudging him for him to realise it.
‘Dude. Did you get what he just said about the whole system? I’m kind of drawing a blank here,’ Jongdae mumbles, eyes still on the old man struggling through his 38th slide. ‘Kyungsoo?’
‘Huh?’ says Kyungsoo, finally snapping out of his reverie. ‘I’m sorry - what did you just say?’
Jongdae presses his lips together, raises his eyebrows at all the white that’s on Kyungsoo’s screen. The thought of being ashamed doesn’t even cross the younger’s mind. ‘I was asking if you understood how the whole system works,’ says Jongdae, deliberately letting the words amble off his tongue a little slower. ‘But, I mean… I guess not.’ His eyes dart pointedly to the empty screen, and Kyungsoo lets out a sigh.
‘Sorry,’ says Kyungsoo again, tongue moving on autopilot. ‘I’m just not… Focusing today, I guess,’ he finishes lamely. He tries to ignore the concern that’s beginning to seep into the lines on Jongdae’s face. This isn’t what he wants.
‘Look, Kyungsoo - ’
‘Stop,’ Kyungsoo hisses, eyes trained on the graph that’s emblazoned across the projector screen below. ‘If you’re going to give me a lecture, just stop. Chanyeol already beat you to it,’ he says, mouth setting in a grim line as he tries to refocus his attention on a point just above where the stream of light from the projector ends. He hears Jongdae take a deep breath, one that’s laced with careful thought, and he feels rather than sees the elder slump back against his seat.
The rest of the lecture passes without ceremony, Kyungsoo staring blankly at the screen throughout, Jongdae idly twiddling his thumbs. Kyungsoo is about ready to make a dash back to his room and bury himself under his covers as soon as the lecturer dismisses them, the rest of his classes for the day be damned - but he’s stopped by a strong grip on his upper arm, one that keeps him anchored in place.
He glares at where Jongdae’s hand wraps around his bicep, as if daring the elder to hold on.
Jongdae lets go.
‘I wasn’t trying to pick a fight,’ says Jongdae, softly, because the hardness in Kyungsoo’s eyes tells him that all they harbour is pain. ‘I’m sorry if I came across as interfering, that wasn’t my intention.’
Kyungsoo lets out a short sigh, straightens up and lets his body relax a little, the rigidity of his muscles from before disappearing when he sees the sincerity outlined in Jongdae’s irises. ‘I get it,’ he says, because he doesn’t know what else there is for him to say. He knows Jongdae, has known him for years - the elder would never want to stick his nose in to Kyungsoo’s business unless he was asked to, and he always had Kyungsoo’s best interests at heart.
Silence thickens the air between them, and Jongdae presses his lips together before he pulls his phone out. ‘You need to loosen up,’ says Jongdae, his tone coated in a new kind of resolve. ‘I know Yeol’s got you doing all the basics right again, because - well, I mean, you showed up for class showered this time - but you need to go out. Have fun. Live.’
The last words pricks a thorn right to the middle of Kyungsoo’s chest, but he tries his best not to let it show. You can’t help the fact that some people aren’t allowed that last privilege anymore, after all. ‘I don’t know - ’ he begins to say, but Jongdae cuts him off.
Kyungsoo’s phone beeps where it sits in his pocket.
‘I’ve just sent you the details for Sehun’s party this Saturday. I’ve got stuff I need to get done during the weekend, so I can’t come, but you should go.’ Jongdae sees that Kyungsoo’s about to open his mouth to protest, but he stops him again. ‘Look, Kyungsoo, I’m not going to take no for an answer. And I’m not about to let Sehun do that, either.’
He reaches out and grasps Kyungsoo’s shoulder, the younger’s eyes falling to meet the floor.
‘Just go have a good night out, forget about things for a bit, let loose. You deserve it,’ he coaxes, smiling gently at his disheartened friend.
Kyungsoo just sighs. ‘I’ll think about it,’ he says, partly because he knows that if he doesn’t, Jongdae won’t let him go in peace.
‘Don’t just say that,’ warns Jongdae, as if he’d just read Kyungsoo’s mind. ‘Really think about it. Go, alright? Have some fun.’
He grips Kyungsoo’s shoulder a little tighter, lowers his voice so only Kyungsoo can hear.
‘You still have a life to live.’ he says.
‘Don’t forget that.’
Kyungsoo finds himself in a labyrinth painted fully monochrome, pristine white walls decorated with geometric shapes in black. This is different, Kyungsoo thinks - usually he’s trapped in a maze of hedges and thorns and blood curdling screams in the dead of night, but this scene - this whole atmosphere is new to him. He takes tentative steps forward, hands hovering in front of his chest, ready to clamp down on his ears, just in case.
One, two, five, seven, sixteen.
He counts each footstep like a man on death row on his way to the gallows, and he breathes a sigh of relief when no screaming lunges out to terrorise him. He’s about to walk more comfortably when he sees a drop of red on the floor, burning crimson on pure white.
As he looks he sees the drop elongate, growing and growing until it forms a trail rounding the corner in front of him. His mind is screaming at him to stop, to turn back, not to follow that trail - but his curiosity allies with a stronger force Kyungsoo can’t quite place, and he lets his feet carry him forward.
Every step he takes corresponds to a hike in his heart rate, and he knows he should stop, but he keeps going forward. He turns corners and follows the trail along curves, lets it lead him even though he knows he shouldn’t.
The trail stops at a dead end, halts right where the floor meets a wall, and Kyungsoo feels himself deflate. There isn’t anything remarkable on the wall before him, just the same geometric patterns that he’d seen on all the other walls, and he stands there, confused. It’s all rather anti-climactic to him, but, he thinks, there must be some sort of connotation that he isn’t getting. Some message written in barely visible ink that he isn’t trying hard enough to see.
He considers the pattern, follows each stroke and turn and sharp edge with his eyes, but he doesn’t think that it’s any different from the ones he’d seen before. He stares at it, long and hard, tries to forge some kind of significance out of meaningless lines - until the pattern begins to move. Kyungsoo’s eyes widen as he takes a step back, mouth falling open as he watches the lines detach from one another and rearrange themselves into letters, into words that Kyungsoo’s almost too afraid to read.
The flurry of activity on the wall dies down after a few moments, and the final product stares back at him like an accusation made in reticence. Just three characters.
Do Kyungsoo
Kyungsoo’s throat goes dry, his name glaring ominously back at him from the wall. No further movement is made on the part of the letters, or the wall, so he takes a deep breath, steadies himself and steps forward. It really is just his name - three large, black characters marring the expanse of white that they’re printed on. He doesn’t know what drives him to do it, but the next thing Kyungsoo knows, he’s reaching out to touch the paint, to touch his name on that wall, and as soon as flesh meets plaster, he knows he’s made a mistake.
Because the words aren’t in black anymore, and they’re nowhere near as harmless as he made them out to be.
They make the tips of Kyungsoo’s fingers burn when he touches them, and he pulls away immediately in shock. His eyes widen even more, if possible, in horror when he looks at his fingertips - they’re tinted red, dark enough that Kyungsoo’s afraid of how certain he is that this liquid - it wasn’t paint.
It’s blood.
He looks back at the characters on the wall and they aren’t pitch black anymore, either - they’ve all turned that same shade of blood red, neat, rigid lines giving way to dripping trails of crimson, and Kyungsoo stumbles backwards. The scream that he’s ready to emit never makes it out of his throat - at least, not in his own voice.
Because when he opens his mouth to scream, to yell, to say something - it isn’t the baritone that teeters on the edge of a light bass that he’d cultured from rough linen to smooth silk - it is, instead, a voice that sounds almost as familiar as his own. It’s a voice he knows so well, used to long to hear, but it’s one that sends chills to his very marrow now, ice causing his heart to almost stop.
‘Save me,’
No, he thinks, wants to scream, but his tongue just keeps forming words that aren’t his own - I can’t -
‘YOU SAID YOU LOVED ME!’
I did, thinks Kyungsoo, desperately clawing at his neck, trying to make the screaming stop, but you can’t fight something you can’t see, and Kyungsoo doesn’t know what’s going on inside him - I do, I love you, I love you, I love you, so much -
‘LIAR!’
I’m not lying! screeches the voice in Kyungsoo’s brain, and this is the point when his body grows too heavy for his legs, and his knees buckle, and he hits the ground, his eyes screwed shut and his hands on his ears, they’re ringing now - I love you, I miss you, I -
‘ALL LIES!’
‘NO!’
Kyungsoo finally finds his own voice, opens his eyes at the sound of it, and sits up. He isn’t in that dreadful room anymore - his floor is brown parquet, walls a less sterile cream - and his body is coated in a light sheen of sweat, his covers thrown off his bed and onto the floor. He’s panting, chest heaving in and out, and it only dimly registers in the back of his mind that his phone is ringing.
He reaches over for it, throws himself back down on his bed, and answers with a croaky ‘Hello?’
‘Hey,’ says the voice, and Kyungsoo immediately recognises it as Sehun’s. ‘Am I interrupting anything?’
‘No,’ says Kyungsoo, his voice still rough when it hits chilled air. ‘Nothing at all.’
‘Great,’ says Sehun, and Kyungsoo can hear that half smile the younger usually wears hanging on the single word. ‘Jongdae says you’re coming to my party on Saturday.’
Kyungsoo bites down on his tongue for a bit, reminds himself that he promised he’d try. He doesn’t really want to, but Jongdae and Chanyeol are right - he shouldn’t go on like this. He licks his lips. ‘Yeah, yeah - I mean, unless you’re calling to uninvite me.’ He tacks on a half-hearted chuckle that sounds forced even to his own ears, but if Sehun notices, he doesn’t let on.
‘No way, man,’ says Sehun, ‘I wasn’t calling to do that at all. I was just wondering if you wanted to go out and get a couple of drinks with some of my friends tomorrow night - kind of a warm up, you know, to get you ready for the real deal Saturday.’
Kyungsoo smiles wryly at the empty bottles of soju he’s left lying on his dresser, some tipped on their sides with their contents spilling over, ruining dark wood. He doesn’t need warming up - but he does need company. ‘Sure,’ he says, the lingering shock from his dream making him speak first, and think later.
‘Great, I’ll come by at ten,’ says Sehun, before he hangs up.
Kyungsoo replaces his phone back on his bedside table, and rolls over to bring his covers back up on the bed. He wraps himself up in them, curls up on one side, and tries to fight off consciousness and block out the last vestiges of the screaming he’d done in Jongin’s voice.
He’d never had a nightmare as bad as that one before, he’d never had the hairs on the back of his neck stand up so straight before in his life - and he was scared. He was lonely, tired, emotionally spent, and scared. He just wanted to sleep.
His eyelids slowly droop and sleep slowly claims him as its victim, and this time, no images of Jongin are on playback in his mind. It’s just an endless expanse of black, no blood, no white, no screaming. Kyungsoo’s heartbeat slows down as he slips deeper into slumber, and he’s out cold within minutes.
In the darkest corner of his room, something stirs - there is a figure there, an outline of grey against black, of a man about a head taller than Kyungsoo, the body of which is lean and slightly muscular - but not much else can be seen. Just the faint silhouette of a figure with its front to Kyungsoo, completely still, unmoving.
Kyungsoo is fast asleep.
This is how he doesn’t see.
The club, when Kyungsoo gets there, is not only buzzing with activity, it’s roaring with it. The steady growl of whispers being pressed from lips to ears, the thrumming of speakers in corners of the ceiling, the glow of multiple colours off skin coming from overhead lights - they all mix in with the pulse of the scene reverberating through the club’s floors, and Kyungsoo can’t help but think it’s all infectious, all this energy. It makes him loosen up almost immediately, and Sehun smiles when he sees the elder’s shoulders drop just a little, the tension that knotted his muscles evaporating into alcohol-tinged air.
Friday nights, Kyungsoo thinks, brings with it a different shade of clarity that it roller-paints over the entire city, one that’s tinged neon and onyx, bright and dark all at once, even before the clock strikes midnight. Sehun had picked him up, as promised, at ten in the SUV his father had bought him for his eighteenth birthday. He’d climbed in and was greeted by a rather dark, gothic-looking man with a disconcertingly sunny disposition, one who’d introduced himself as Zitao, and another, considerably smaller, but by no means more quiet man named Baekhyun. Both had formidable amounts of black lining their eyes and excitement rushing through their bones and making their grins shine, and Kyungsoo had almost been blinded, right there in his leather seat.
‘Hey,’ says Sehun, clapping a hand on Kyungsoo’s shoulder, making the elder flinch. ‘Sorry about that. But - are you alright?’ he asks, something like genuine concern underlining each of his words.
Kyungsoo lets another few seconds pass in which he takes everything in again - the people, the smells, the sounds. They’re all intoxicating in their own way - something in his heart tugs when he sees someone shimmy their hips the way he’d known Jongin to, and he looks at Sehun with his lips pressed in a line.
‘I don’t know,’ he says, honesty coming out in a place where that’s the least of the rest of the patrons’ worries. The skin between his brows crinkles and lets Sehun know that this worry is deep-seated, planted in the deeper crevices of Kyungsoo’s heart, but he also knows that it’s the type of worry alcohol can fix. He knows that if Kyungsoo would just let go - just bury that grief in him for a little while, it’ll seal itself there and he can think about it later.
‘Live for the moment,’ Sehun says, asking the bartender for a drink. The bartender makes a show of picking out a glass and a bottle of vodka, smirking when Sehun nods at the stronger stuff. He pours the drink with a flourish, and hands it to Sehun with a wink.
‘Take this,’ says Sehun, all confidence and an assuring smile, and he pushes the drink towards Kyungsoo.
The latter eyes the clear liquid a little apprehensively, distrust bubbling under the surface of his skin the same way the clear liquid does. One whiff of the stuff tells him it’s stronger than any of the liquids he’d previously ingested, none of his soju bottles reeking nearly as much as this one glass, and he looks up at Sehun with a tinge of worry in large eyes.
‘Are you sure about this?’ asks Kyungsoo, suddenly feeling the cautiousness he’d had before everything - before, even, Jongin - rear its head again. He didn’t have Jongin around anymore - no one was obligated to take care of him, should a situation arise.
Sehun snickers.
‘I think the real question is, are you sure about this?’ he challenges, and even though his tone is mocking, the light grip he places on Kyungsoo’s shoulder is one that reassures. Let loose, it says, I’ll take care of you.
So Kyungsoo does.
‘I love you soooooooooo much, Sehunnie,’ slurs Kyungsoo, one arm draped across Sehun’s shoulders, his body slumped against the younger’s. They had left the club just after two o’ clock hit and Baekhyun had been nowhere to be found, Zitao giving them a wink goodbye over his date-for-the-night’s shoulder. By then Kyungsoo had had more than his fair share of alcohol for the night - even the bartender refused to adhere to his drunken demands for ‘MORE! GIVE ME ANOTHER!’
Sehun had apologised to the man and dragged Kyungsoo off, a heavy sigh escaping his lips when he noticed how… floppy Kyungsoo had become. It was near impossible for him to get Kyungsoo safely buckled in, and even when he did, the elder seemed to let his spine turn to jelly, slumping so far into the seat that his butt barely stayed on the leather upholstery.
Sehun had driven them to Kyungsoo’s in silence, releasing another heavy sigh when he realised he couldn’t leave Kyungsoo to himself to get up to his unit. Left alone, he was sure, Kyungsoo would have found a way to fall up the stairs.
This is how, fifteen minutes and a lot of struggling later, Sehun finds himself supporting Kyungsoo’s weight with one arm, trying to unlock the front door of Kyungsoo’s apartment with his free hand.
‘Oh dear!’ exclaims Kyungsoo, suddenly snapping straight up when Sehun finally gets the door opened. The elder rushes forward to block the doorway with his own (admittedly slight) frame, alcohol-induced blush pushing deeper.
‘Kyungsoo?’ questions Sehun, raising an eyebrow.
‘Oh no, Sehunnie, you can’t come inside!’ says Kyungsoo, looking absolutely scandalised. ‘This place is a mess, and I’m not about to disgrace my family name that way!’
Sehun rolls his eyes, sleep beginning to make them feel heavy, even as he looks incredulously at Kyungsoo. He shrugs, ten seconds later, when he remembers that the elder is drunk out of his mind, probably has no idea what he’s saying and, most importantly, safe home already. His duty for the night is done. He smiles at Kyungsoo, dropping all confusion from his expression.
‘Alright, hyung. I’ll see you tomorrow night. Go get to bed in one piece,’ says Sehun, and he bids the elder farewell without further ceremony.
Through the haze that’s making his fingers tremble, Kyungsoo manages, still, to lock the door, before he stumbles through his vacant apartment and makes his way to his bed. It’s still unmade, the covers thrown aside in the morning still lying in a heap in the corner of the bed, but Kyungsoo pays no heed to them.
‘Sleep time,’ he whines to himself as he chucks his phone on his bedside table, smiling before he throws his body - still fully clothed and somewhat reeking of alcohol and sweat - across his bed, head landing inches away from his pillow.
He’s out within the next five minutes, deep breathing a solid indication that he was, in fact, asleep.
Something stirs in the corner of his room.
The figure from the night before solidifies, faint outlines of skin and muscle coming together more clearly, more precisely now that they’ve had time to figure out how to meet. The figure is undoubtedly male - taller than Kyungsoo by about a head, lean muscle and angles where Kyungsoo had curves and softer limbs - and it begins to move. It first pulls the curtains closed, cold fingers tugging on worn cotton, before the silver in its eyes fixates on the sleeping man on the bed.
Seconds pass.
It takes one, two, three tentative steps before it reaches Kyungsoo’s form on the bed, the sleeping man not even stirring when the figure bends close to his face.
Kyungsoo
Kyungsoo wrinkles his nose a little, lets out a gentle snore, and then he’s asleep again, completely oblivious to the figure that’s hovering inches from his face.
It silently pulls the covers on top of Kyungsoo, tucks them up until they’re right under his chin before it slinks back to its corner, its silver eyes glowing ominously in the shadows.
Kyungsoo doesn’t dream that night.
The angry buzzing of his phone on his bedside table is what wakes him the next morning.
Kyungsoo’s eyes crack open to be greeted by the dull glow of sun through his washed-out curtains, heat bearing down on him when he realises he was wrapped up in his blanket.
‘Strange,’ he says to himself, but doesn’t get the time to think any more of it. He scrambles to get to his phone, swallowing when he sees the name Chanyeol written in white on it. He lets his thumb hover on the green call button before he decides to just bite the bullet and pick up the call, all while hoping the elder would give him a break and not worsen his hangover.
‘What the fuck happened to you?’ demands Chanyeol, in a voice that’s far too loud for Kyungsoo’s hungover mind to take. The younger cringes and decides to put his friend on speaker, flopping back down on his front, ready for the lecture he knows is sure to come.
‘Overslept,’ murmurs Kyungsoo, hoping his voice is loud enough to carry through to Chanyeol.
‘I’ll bet you did,’ says Chanyeol, sounding no less disgruntled than he did before. ‘Are you on your way, yet?’ he continues, and the question shocks Kyungsoo enough for his eyes to widen and for his neck to snap up in confusion.
‘On my way? To what?’ he asks, and it’s barely audible, but Kyungsoo’s sure he can hear Chanyeol groan on the other end of the line.
‘We were supposed to meet for lunch, Soo,’ says Chanyeol, exasperation seeping into the spaces between his syllables. ‘Today. Now. Half an hour ago, actually,’ he says, and his last words finally have Kyungsoo’s memory jogging.
‘Fuck, I’m sorry,’ he says, sitting up and he’s about to pull his clothes off so he can take a shower when he sees it.
When he sees him.
There’s a person in the room with him, hiding in the corner that’s nearest the window, and Kyungsoo almost doesn’t believe his eyes. Because - because his limbs don’t react the way they would had the person been a stranger, his voice doesn’t try to climb out of his throat in a scream. He knows this can’t be true, but - but it is.
Standing there, in the corner of his bedroom, is Jongin.
Kyungsoo drops his phone on the ground, doesn’t even flinch when he hears the screen shatter and splinter apart.
There’s the faint sound of Chanyeol’s voice, that can still be heard from where the phone is lying on the ground. ‘Kyungsoo? Kyungsoo, are you there? Don’t fuck around with me right now,’ says Chanyeol, and if Kyungsoo had been paying full attention, if Kyungsoo hadn’t been staring at his dead boyfriend in the flesh - he would have heard the worry that simmered just in the undertones of Chanyeol’s voice.
But Jongin is here, in the same room with him, staring at him as he stares back, so he doesn’t.
‘Jongin?’ asks Kyungsoo, voice escaping him tentatively, a novice swimmer diving straight into the deep end. ‘Is that - is that really you?’
Kyungsoo sits, waits for an answer that never comes. Jongin just stands there, stares blankly at him before he tilts his head to the side, eyes still trained on the elder.
‘Jongin?’ says Kyungsoo, and this time his voice trembles more violently, his words coming out shakier, and he feels the makeshift plaster that’s keeping his heart together crack, break apart, give again.
This can’t be true. He can’t be Jongin. He just can’t.
Kyungsoo screws his eyes tight shut, tells himself that he’s just seeing things, Jongin’s been gone for months, now, nobody is in the room with him - and then he opens his eyes again, and is greeted by nothing more than a vacant wall staring back at him.
Jongin is gone.
‘Kyungsoo? Kyungsoo, for fuck’s sake, answer me!’ yells Chanyeol, and Kyungsoo absent-mindedly reaches for his phone, all the while keeping his eyes on the corner of his room, where his walls join.
‘Yeah - yeah, I’m here,’ murmurs Kyungsoo, pushing himself out of bed, taking slow steps towards the place Jongin had been standing in.
‘Just - man, show up soon, alright?’ says Chanyeol, a tone of defeat ringing clear in his voice.
Kyungsoo nods, forgets that Chanyeol can’t actually see him. He thrusts his arm out in front of him, waves it a few times in the spot where he’d seen Jongin standing in before. His fingers meet nothing but air - and his nerves are too shot to notice how much colder the air there is.
‘Kyungsoo!’
‘Alright,’ says Kyungsoo, stepping back. ‘I’ll see you soon,’ he says, and he hangs up.
He spends the next few seconds with a perplexed look on his face, eyes fixated on a spot on the floor. There isn’t anything extraordinary there, and there isn’t anything out of place about this corner of his room - there wasn’t anything there that indicated Jongin had ever been there in the first place.
Jongin is dead, reminds a voice in his head, ringing firm and clear and Kyungsoo almost wants to punch himself in the face for thinking it could have been him.
He’d seen it all happen, he’d seen the light leave Jongin’s eyes.
He shakes his head.
It must have been the hangover.
// two
Pairing: Kai/Kyungsoo
Genre: horror, angst
Length: 21625w
Warnings: character death, alcohol abuse, highlight to see: schizophrenia
Summary: Kyungsoo finds out that sometimes, love knows no bounds.
The sun beats down upon a grim scene, sunlight bathing a pale face, highlighting the contrast between dry skin and skin that’s been moistened by tears. Kyungsoo stares angrily up at the hospital - he’d been coming here his whole life, but not for something like this. Never for something like this.
The walk into the funeral home inside the hospital is one he takes with heavy steps, every meeting of his feet with the ground bringing him just that much closer to the reality he never thought he’d have to face. He doesn’t bother to look at the flowers that are on sale - doesn’t spare a glance at the man selling urns and coffins either. Instead he walks straight to the table outside the room he dreads having to enter.
Trembling hands lift the pen next to the guestbook on the table, and he presses his name into paper with the dexterity of a child in kindergarten. The wobbly Do Kyungsoo that stares back at him from the page makes him think it’s jeering at him - look at you, so weak, so unstable. Can’t you even write your name right? - until he has to look away. He pulls a couple of bills from his wallet and shoves them none too gently into the envelopes that wait on the table as well, before going to stand in front of the door.
He stands there silently for what seems like two eternities, taking in the way the grain of the wood swirls into one another, drawing patterns on the door. The people around him take less than five seconds to disappear through doors just like this one, but Kyungsoo doesn’t think he can do this that easily.
He knows what’s on the other side, and the mere thought of it terrifies him.
‘Kyungsoo?’ the deep timbre of Chanyeol’s voice rolls in through one ear and out the other, and Kyungsoo doesn’t move. Chanyeol sighs. He puts a hand on Kyungsoo’s shoulder, and the latter barely even flinches. ‘We have to go in there, you know.’ he says.
‘I’m not ready.’ croaks Kyungsoo. His vocal cords are worn out from all the screaming he did the night before - tearing screeches from his throat and scars across his heart - and purple shadows hang in the skin underneath his eyes. He looks as terrible as he feels, and Chanyeol can’t help but feel his pain.
‘I know it’s hard, man. But… He’s waiting for you.’ Chanyeol’s words are tentative, skid off his tongue awkwardly. He takes Kyungsoo’s silence as a surrender, and gently eases the door open. ‘I’m right behind you, alright?’ he reassures. Kyungsoo nods numbly.
They take a few steps into the room. Chanyeol thinks this is pretty good progress - until Kyungsoo stops dead in his tracks, fists clenching and jaw tightening.
The coffin is laden with white lilies and chrysanthemums, a single frame resting atop the wood. Kyungsoo hates how everything looks so perfect, so properly arranged, every flower in its place. The photo of the dead man is uninterrupted by stray petals and Kyungsoo wants to throw things at it, wants to break the frame in half, make its glass shatter all over the floor. But Chanyeol’s grip only tightens as the elder bends him into a bow, and Kyungsoo forces his body to comply.
Enough damage has been done for now.
‘I’m so sorry for your loss. We both are,’ Chanyeol speaks in perfect formal tongue, Kyungsoo finds himself unable to say anything. He can only bow at the father who’s just lost his only son, his eyes glued to the shoes of the mother who weeps uncontrollably over her dead child. He feels the fragile pillars of his strength begin to crumble, and he’s grateful when Chanyeol leads him away from the grieving family and offers him a drink.
Across the room, Jongin’s photo watches them with blank eyes and an inconsequential smile.
Kyungsoo drinks to drown the thought that he’ll never hear Jongin’s laugh again.
+
Muffled screams echo through the corridors of Kyungsoo’s mind. They’re a mish mash of voices that seem to have no connection - his third grade math teacher, the class monitor’s mother, the old man from the grocery store he used to go to when he was thirteen - and they’re all screaming his name.
He keeps running. His feet struggle to find a way out of the labyrinth built on broken spirits and shrill voices, and he can feel desperation inch into the join of his limbs with every step he takes.
You could have saved me
The voice that he dreads hearing most sneaks up on him, breathes itself over the back of his neck. It coaxes the hairs there to stand on end, and the guilt and disgust make Kyungsoo want to crawl out of his very skin, rip it off his body until he has nothing left to feel or touch with.
Why didn’t you save me
He’d rather be broken, bleeding out than have to face this shame.
Kyungsoo
‘Jongin, I’m -’
It’s too late
Another scream tears through his eardrums, threatens to crack open his skull and imprint itself on his brain forever. Kyungsoo clamps his hands over his ears and screws his eyes shut tight, trying to find room in his lungs for breath -
+
- And this is how he wakes. His eyes shoot open as his body heaves off the bed, chest rising and falling rapidly, heartbeat skittering. The telltale signs of early morning hang limply in the air surrounding him, darkness still staking its claim over the strips of sky he can see through his blinds. A cold sheen of sweat coats his skin and his throat burns - and he’s thankful for the fact that he lives off campus, where the walls aren’t paper thin and nobody outside can hear his troubles as he sleeps.
It’s getting close to a month, now, and Kyungsoo tries to set aside the fact that the nights aren’t getting any better.
‘Dream,’ he pants, shaking hand coming up to pat his chest, drag his nails into the skin there to leave red marks. ‘It was just. A dream,’ he says. There’s a note of firmness in his voice when he says it. The clock on his phone reads 5:07am. He still has another four hours of sleep to go before he has to attempt to drag his body out of bed and into class.
Once his breathing is steady, he falls back on the bed, draws up the covers to his chin and shuts his eyes. He needs his rest.
After all, staying awake means acknowledging that the other side of the bed is cold and untouched, and Kyungsoo would rather face fifty of his nightmares than that.
Anything but that.
Chanyeol (9:36am)
Man are you coming to class this morning
Chanyeol (9:47am)
Do you want me to sign attendance for you
Chanyeol (9:54am)
Kyungsoo. You can’t go on like this.
Chanyeol (12:05pm)
I’m coming over
The sound of knuckles rapping urgently on his door makes Kyungsoo wake with a start. ‘Kyungsoo! Kyungsoo, open up!’ barks Chanyeol, the usual calm bass of his voice hitched up in slight panic. ‘I know you’re in there, Kyungsoo. Open up. Please,’ desperation inches into his voice, and Kyungsoo sighs as he rolls out of bed.
He opens the door to a frazzled Chanyeol, bag of takeaway in one hand, the other curled into a fist at eye level. The moment the taller registers that his friend is still, thankfully, alive and semi-well, he throws a long arm around him, bringing Kyungsoo to his chest in an embrace tight enough to leave the younger gasping for air. When he’s sure Kyungsoo’s all in one piece, he pulls away, grips both the younger’s shoulders at arm’s length.
‘Why the fuck haven’t you been answering my messages?’ he demands, inviting himself in and throwing the bag of food on the kitchenette counter. He’s ready to give Kyungsoo the lecture of a lifetime, at least send me a “k” or a smiley or something next time and other general texting etiquette waiting to roll off his tongue. He kicks his shoes off, takes a few steps into the apartment and stops.
His mouth drops open.
The apartment is in disarray, dirty laundry strewn all over the floor, delivery boxes stacked haphazardly on every available surface. A tentative breath is all it takes for Chanyeol to confirm that the place smells as bad as it looks, and he can’t believe it has come to this.
The skin on Kyungsoo’s arm, when Chanyeol reaches out to grab it, is sticky and unwashed and the latter almost wants to flinch away. ‘What’s gotten into you?’ he demands, brows furrowing together when he only gets a reproachful look in reply. He wants to breathe a deep sigh, but the stench of week-old food stops him from inhaling more than he needs to.
Nothing’s gotten into Kyungsoo, he realises. It’s startlingly apparent that, instead, something has left him forever.
It doesn’t take a genius to figure out what’s wrong with him, and Chanyeol puts two and two together quickly enough. He sets his mouth in a grim line, before firmly pulling Kyungsoo to the couch, large feet and long legs wading through the debris of the younger’s heartache scattered all over the floor.
Chanyeol scrutinises Kyungsoo’s face the moment they’re both seated. His skin looks three shades paler and more gaunt, and it makes the bruised patches under his eyes stand out even more. His hair is a messy, unwashed stack on his head, and Chanyeol doesn’t dare think about how much weight Kyungsoo’s lost in such a short amount of time. The dirty dishes look abundant, but Chanyeol knows there’s nowhere near enough of them for Kyungsoo to have been eating right since… it happened.
Chanyeol squares his shoulders, tries to paint his face a shade of infectious sun in the hope that it’s contagious.
‘Alright. First things first, you’re gonna go take a shower. Wash your hair, wash your face, wash all of this,’ - here, he sweeps a long arm around the room, gesturing at the upturned frames and the torn book pages scattered around it - ‘away. You’re going to eat a proper meal at the proper time, and then afterwards, we are going to clean this mess up. Got it?’ he asks.
Kyungsoo stares at him blankly, before wordlessly curling into himself and shutting his eyes. Chanyeol groans.
‘Look, Kyungsoo. I know this is hard - and I’m not asking you to do too much. I’m just - I’m just asking you, as a friend, to try going back to normal, a little bit at a time. Try and heal. He - he wouldn’t have wanted this, and you know that. You know that.’ Chanyeol says. His words make the edges of Kyungsoo’s vision blur together, wetness making the monotone shades of the world around him blend and merge.
Kyungsoo’s never been a big fan of the truth, but he knows that Chanyeol’s right.
Jongin would have hated to see him like this.
He unfurls his limbs slowly, gradually, and lets his body go limp. The atmosphere is tense for the next few seconds, Kyungsoo reluctant to even begin trying to merge back into the brickwork of society, Chanyeol unable to ascertain how he should react. Slowly, Kyungsoo turns his head, eyes flitting up to meet Chanyeol’s. He sees the worry in them, the concern, the love and the care of a true friend and guilt smashes into his chest like a force unrivalled.
He only wants what’s best for him.
Kyungsoo takes a deep breath, tries to calm the anxiety that precedes the bile rising in his throat. It’s now or never. He truly can’t go on like this. He clears his throat, opens his mouth to speak for the first time in weeks, voice a little scratchy, throat a little out of practice.
‘I know,’ he says, and Chanyeol sighs with relief. ‘I know.’
Somewhere in the corner of the dimly lit room, the shadow that hides between the bookshelf and the wall grows darker, inches just beyond the border that the light had restricted it to.
Neither man sees.
Kyungsoo’s fingers remain frozen where they hover above the keys of his laptop. His lecturer is at the front of the lecture hall, tiny remote shooting a red dot onto the projected screen, and he should be taking notes - but he can’t. The document that’s displayed on his laptop screen remains blank, and it takes Jongdae nudging him for him to realise it.
‘Dude. Did you get what he just said about the whole system? I’m kind of drawing a blank here,’ Jongdae mumbles, eyes still on the old man struggling through his 38th slide. ‘Kyungsoo?’
‘Huh?’ says Kyungsoo, finally snapping out of his reverie. ‘I’m sorry - what did you just say?’
Jongdae presses his lips together, raises his eyebrows at all the white that’s on Kyungsoo’s screen. The thought of being ashamed doesn’t even cross the younger’s mind. ‘I was asking if you understood how the whole system works,’ says Jongdae, deliberately letting the words amble off his tongue a little slower. ‘But, I mean… I guess not.’ His eyes dart pointedly to the empty screen, and Kyungsoo lets out a sigh.
‘Sorry,’ says Kyungsoo again, tongue moving on autopilot. ‘I’m just not… Focusing today, I guess,’ he finishes lamely. He tries to ignore the concern that’s beginning to seep into the lines on Jongdae’s face. This isn’t what he wants.
‘Look, Kyungsoo - ’
‘Stop,’ Kyungsoo hisses, eyes trained on the graph that’s emblazoned across the projector screen below. ‘If you’re going to give me a lecture, just stop. Chanyeol already beat you to it,’ he says, mouth setting in a grim line as he tries to refocus his attention on a point just above where the stream of light from the projector ends. He hears Jongdae take a deep breath, one that’s laced with careful thought, and he feels rather than sees the elder slump back against his seat.
The rest of the lecture passes without ceremony, Kyungsoo staring blankly at the screen throughout, Jongdae idly twiddling his thumbs. Kyungsoo is about ready to make a dash back to his room and bury himself under his covers as soon as the lecturer dismisses them, the rest of his classes for the day be damned - but he’s stopped by a strong grip on his upper arm, one that keeps him anchored in place.
He glares at where Jongdae’s hand wraps around his bicep, as if daring the elder to hold on.
Jongdae lets go.
‘I wasn’t trying to pick a fight,’ says Jongdae, softly, because the hardness in Kyungsoo’s eyes tells him that all they harbour is pain. ‘I’m sorry if I came across as interfering, that wasn’t my intention.’
Kyungsoo lets out a short sigh, straightens up and lets his body relax a little, the rigidity of his muscles from before disappearing when he sees the sincerity outlined in Jongdae’s irises. ‘I get it,’ he says, because he doesn’t know what else there is for him to say. He knows Jongdae, has known him for years - the elder would never want to stick his nose in to Kyungsoo’s business unless he was asked to, and he always had Kyungsoo’s best interests at heart.
Silence thickens the air between them, and Jongdae presses his lips together before he pulls his phone out. ‘You need to loosen up,’ says Jongdae, his tone coated in a new kind of resolve. ‘I know Yeol’s got you doing all the basics right again, because - well, I mean, you showed up for class showered this time - but you need to go out. Have fun. Live.’
The last words pricks a thorn right to the middle of Kyungsoo’s chest, but he tries his best not to let it show. You can’t help the fact that some people aren’t allowed that last privilege anymore, after all. ‘I don’t know - ’ he begins to say, but Jongdae cuts him off.
Kyungsoo’s phone beeps where it sits in his pocket.
‘I’ve just sent you the details for Sehun’s party this Saturday. I’ve got stuff I need to get done during the weekend, so I can’t come, but you should go.’ Jongdae sees that Kyungsoo’s about to open his mouth to protest, but he stops him again. ‘Look, Kyungsoo, I’m not going to take no for an answer. And I’m not about to let Sehun do that, either.’
He reaches out and grasps Kyungsoo’s shoulder, the younger’s eyes falling to meet the floor.
‘Just go have a good night out, forget about things for a bit, let loose. You deserve it,’ he coaxes, smiling gently at his disheartened friend.
Kyungsoo just sighs. ‘I’ll think about it,’ he says, partly because he knows that if he doesn’t, Jongdae won’t let him go in peace.
‘Don’t just say that,’ warns Jongdae, as if he’d just read Kyungsoo’s mind. ‘Really think about it. Go, alright? Have some fun.’
He grips Kyungsoo’s shoulder a little tighter, lowers his voice so only Kyungsoo can hear.
‘You still have a life to live.’ he says.
‘Don’t forget that.’
Kyungsoo finds himself in a labyrinth painted fully monochrome, pristine white walls decorated with geometric shapes in black. This is different, Kyungsoo thinks - usually he’s trapped in a maze of hedges and thorns and blood curdling screams in the dead of night, but this scene - this whole atmosphere is new to him. He takes tentative steps forward, hands hovering in front of his chest, ready to clamp down on his ears, just in case.
One, two, five, seven, sixteen.
He counts each footstep like a man on death row on his way to the gallows, and he breathes a sigh of relief when no screaming lunges out to terrorise him. He’s about to walk more comfortably when he sees a drop of red on the floor, burning crimson on pure white.
As he looks he sees the drop elongate, growing and growing until it forms a trail rounding the corner in front of him. His mind is screaming at him to stop, to turn back, not to follow that trail - but his curiosity allies with a stronger force Kyungsoo can’t quite place, and he lets his feet carry him forward.
Every step he takes corresponds to a hike in his heart rate, and he knows he should stop, but he keeps going forward. He turns corners and follows the trail along curves, lets it lead him even though he knows he shouldn’t.
The trail stops at a dead end, halts right where the floor meets a wall, and Kyungsoo feels himself deflate. There isn’t anything remarkable on the wall before him, just the same geometric patterns that he’d seen on all the other walls, and he stands there, confused. It’s all rather anti-climactic to him, but, he thinks, there must be some sort of connotation that he isn’t getting. Some message written in barely visible ink that he isn’t trying hard enough to see.
He considers the pattern, follows each stroke and turn and sharp edge with his eyes, but he doesn’t think that it’s any different from the ones he’d seen before. He stares at it, long and hard, tries to forge some kind of significance out of meaningless lines - until the pattern begins to move. Kyungsoo’s eyes widen as he takes a step back, mouth falling open as he watches the lines detach from one another and rearrange themselves into letters, into words that Kyungsoo’s almost too afraid to read.
The flurry of activity on the wall dies down after a few moments, and the final product stares back at him like an accusation made in reticence. Just three characters.
Do Kyungsoo
Kyungsoo’s throat goes dry, his name glaring ominously back at him from the wall. No further movement is made on the part of the letters, or the wall, so he takes a deep breath, steadies himself and steps forward. It really is just his name - three large, black characters marring the expanse of white that they’re printed on. He doesn’t know what drives him to do it, but the next thing Kyungsoo knows, he’s reaching out to touch the paint, to touch his name on that wall, and as soon as flesh meets plaster, he knows he’s made a mistake.
Because the words aren’t in black anymore, and they’re nowhere near as harmless as he made them out to be.
They make the tips of Kyungsoo’s fingers burn when he touches them, and he pulls away immediately in shock. His eyes widen even more, if possible, in horror when he looks at his fingertips - they’re tinted red, dark enough that Kyungsoo’s afraid of how certain he is that this liquid - it wasn’t paint.
It’s blood.
He looks back at the characters on the wall and they aren’t pitch black anymore, either - they’ve all turned that same shade of blood red, neat, rigid lines giving way to dripping trails of crimson, and Kyungsoo stumbles backwards. The scream that he’s ready to emit never makes it out of his throat - at least, not in his own voice.
Because when he opens his mouth to scream, to yell, to say something - it isn’t the baritone that teeters on the edge of a light bass that he’d cultured from rough linen to smooth silk - it is, instead, a voice that sounds almost as familiar as his own. It’s a voice he knows so well, used to long to hear, but it’s one that sends chills to his very marrow now, ice causing his heart to almost stop.
‘Save me,’
No, he thinks, wants to scream, but his tongue just keeps forming words that aren’t his own - I can’t -
‘YOU SAID YOU LOVED ME!’
I did, thinks Kyungsoo, desperately clawing at his neck, trying to make the screaming stop, but you can’t fight something you can’t see, and Kyungsoo doesn’t know what’s going on inside him - I do, I love you, I love you, I love you, so much -
‘LIAR!’
I’m not lying! screeches the voice in Kyungsoo’s brain, and this is the point when his body grows too heavy for his legs, and his knees buckle, and he hits the ground, his eyes screwed shut and his hands on his ears, they’re ringing now - I love you, I miss you, I -
‘ALL LIES!’
‘NO!’
Kyungsoo finally finds his own voice, opens his eyes at the sound of it, and sits up. He isn’t in that dreadful room anymore - his floor is brown parquet, walls a less sterile cream - and his body is coated in a light sheen of sweat, his covers thrown off his bed and onto the floor. He’s panting, chest heaving in and out, and it only dimly registers in the back of his mind that his phone is ringing.
He reaches over for it, throws himself back down on his bed, and answers with a croaky ‘Hello?’
‘Hey,’ says the voice, and Kyungsoo immediately recognises it as Sehun’s. ‘Am I interrupting anything?’
‘No,’ says Kyungsoo, his voice still rough when it hits chilled air. ‘Nothing at all.’
‘Great,’ says Sehun, and Kyungsoo can hear that half smile the younger usually wears hanging on the single word. ‘Jongdae says you’re coming to my party on Saturday.’
Kyungsoo bites down on his tongue for a bit, reminds himself that he promised he’d try. He doesn’t really want to, but Jongdae and Chanyeol are right - he shouldn’t go on like this. He licks his lips. ‘Yeah, yeah - I mean, unless you’re calling to uninvite me.’ He tacks on a half-hearted chuckle that sounds forced even to his own ears, but if Sehun notices, he doesn’t let on.
‘No way, man,’ says Sehun, ‘I wasn’t calling to do that at all. I was just wondering if you wanted to go out and get a couple of drinks with some of my friends tomorrow night - kind of a warm up, you know, to get you ready for the real deal Saturday.’
Kyungsoo smiles wryly at the empty bottles of soju he’s left lying on his dresser, some tipped on their sides with their contents spilling over, ruining dark wood. He doesn’t need warming up - but he does need company. ‘Sure,’ he says, the lingering shock from his dream making him speak first, and think later.
‘Great, I’ll come by at ten,’ says Sehun, before he hangs up.
Kyungsoo replaces his phone back on his bedside table, and rolls over to bring his covers back up on the bed. He wraps himself up in them, curls up on one side, and tries to fight off consciousness and block out the last vestiges of the screaming he’d done in Jongin’s voice.
He’d never had a nightmare as bad as that one before, he’d never had the hairs on the back of his neck stand up so straight before in his life - and he was scared. He was lonely, tired, emotionally spent, and scared. He just wanted to sleep.
His eyelids slowly droop and sleep slowly claims him as its victim, and this time, no images of Jongin are on playback in his mind. It’s just an endless expanse of black, no blood, no white, no screaming. Kyungsoo’s heartbeat slows down as he slips deeper into slumber, and he’s out cold within minutes.
In the darkest corner of his room, something stirs - there is a figure there, an outline of grey against black, of a man about a head taller than Kyungsoo, the body of which is lean and slightly muscular - but not much else can be seen. Just the faint silhouette of a figure with its front to Kyungsoo, completely still, unmoving.
Kyungsoo is fast asleep.
This is how he doesn’t see.
The club, when Kyungsoo gets there, is not only buzzing with activity, it’s roaring with it. The steady growl of whispers being pressed from lips to ears, the thrumming of speakers in corners of the ceiling, the glow of multiple colours off skin coming from overhead lights - they all mix in with the pulse of the scene reverberating through the club’s floors, and Kyungsoo can’t help but think it’s all infectious, all this energy. It makes him loosen up almost immediately, and Sehun smiles when he sees the elder’s shoulders drop just a little, the tension that knotted his muscles evaporating into alcohol-tinged air.
Friday nights, Kyungsoo thinks, brings with it a different shade of clarity that it roller-paints over the entire city, one that’s tinged neon and onyx, bright and dark all at once, even before the clock strikes midnight. Sehun had picked him up, as promised, at ten in the SUV his father had bought him for his eighteenth birthday. He’d climbed in and was greeted by a rather dark, gothic-looking man with a disconcertingly sunny disposition, one who’d introduced himself as Zitao, and another, considerably smaller, but by no means more quiet man named Baekhyun. Both had formidable amounts of black lining their eyes and excitement rushing through their bones and making their grins shine, and Kyungsoo had almost been blinded, right there in his leather seat.
‘Hey,’ says Sehun, clapping a hand on Kyungsoo’s shoulder, making the elder flinch. ‘Sorry about that. But - are you alright?’ he asks, something like genuine concern underlining each of his words.
Kyungsoo lets another few seconds pass in which he takes everything in again - the people, the smells, the sounds. They’re all intoxicating in their own way - something in his heart tugs when he sees someone shimmy their hips the way he’d known Jongin to, and he looks at Sehun with his lips pressed in a line.
‘I don’t know,’ he says, honesty coming out in a place where that’s the least of the rest of the patrons’ worries. The skin between his brows crinkles and lets Sehun know that this worry is deep-seated, planted in the deeper crevices of Kyungsoo’s heart, but he also knows that it’s the type of worry alcohol can fix. He knows that if Kyungsoo would just let go - just bury that grief in him for a little while, it’ll seal itself there and he can think about it later.
‘Live for the moment,’ Sehun says, asking the bartender for a drink. The bartender makes a show of picking out a glass and a bottle of vodka, smirking when Sehun nods at the stronger stuff. He pours the drink with a flourish, and hands it to Sehun with a wink.
‘Take this,’ says Sehun, all confidence and an assuring smile, and he pushes the drink towards Kyungsoo.
The latter eyes the clear liquid a little apprehensively, distrust bubbling under the surface of his skin the same way the clear liquid does. One whiff of the stuff tells him it’s stronger than any of the liquids he’d previously ingested, none of his soju bottles reeking nearly as much as this one glass, and he looks up at Sehun with a tinge of worry in large eyes.
‘Are you sure about this?’ asks Kyungsoo, suddenly feeling the cautiousness he’d had before everything - before, even, Jongin - rear its head again. He didn’t have Jongin around anymore - no one was obligated to take care of him, should a situation arise.
Sehun snickers.
‘I think the real question is, are you sure about this?’ he challenges, and even though his tone is mocking, the light grip he places on Kyungsoo’s shoulder is one that reassures. Let loose, it says, I’ll take care of you.
So Kyungsoo does.
‘I love you soooooooooo much, Sehunnie,’ slurs Kyungsoo, one arm draped across Sehun’s shoulders, his body slumped against the younger’s. They had left the club just after two o’ clock hit and Baekhyun had been nowhere to be found, Zitao giving them a wink goodbye over his date-for-the-night’s shoulder. By then Kyungsoo had had more than his fair share of alcohol for the night - even the bartender refused to adhere to his drunken demands for ‘MORE! GIVE ME ANOTHER!’
Sehun had apologised to the man and dragged Kyungsoo off, a heavy sigh escaping his lips when he noticed how… floppy Kyungsoo had become. It was near impossible for him to get Kyungsoo safely buckled in, and even when he did, the elder seemed to let his spine turn to jelly, slumping so far into the seat that his butt barely stayed on the leather upholstery.
Sehun had driven them to Kyungsoo’s in silence, releasing another heavy sigh when he realised he couldn’t leave Kyungsoo to himself to get up to his unit. Left alone, he was sure, Kyungsoo would have found a way to fall up the stairs.
This is how, fifteen minutes and a lot of struggling later, Sehun finds himself supporting Kyungsoo’s weight with one arm, trying to unlock the front door of Kyungsoo’s apartment with his free hand.
‘Oh dear!’ exclaims Kyungsoo, suddenly snapping straight up when Sehun finally gets the door opened. The elder rushes forward to block the doorway with his own (admittedly slight) frame, alcohol-induced blush pushing deeper.
‘Kyungsoo?’ questions Sehun, raising an eyebrow.
‘Oh no, Sehunnie, you can’t come inside!’ says Kyungsoo, looking absolutely scandalised. ‘This place is a mess, and I’m not about to disgrace my family name that way!’
Sehun rolls his eyes, sleep beginning to make them feel heavy, even as he looks incredulously at Kyungsoo. He shrugs, ten seconds later, when he remembers that the elder is drunk out of his mind, probably has no idea what he’s saying and, most importantly, safe home already. His duty for the night is done. He smiles at Kyungsoo, dropping all confusion from his expression.
‘Alright, hyung. I’ll see you tomorrow night. Go get to bed in one piece,’ says Sehun, and he bids the elder farewell without further ceremony.
Through the haze that’s making his fingers tremble, Kyungsoo manages, still, to lock the door, before he stumbles through his vacant apartment and makes his way to his bed. It’s still unmade, the covers thrown aside in the morning still lying in a heap in the corner of the bed, but Kyungsoo pays no heed to them.
‘Sleep time,’ he whines to himself as he chucks his phone on his bedside table, smiling before he throws his body - still fully clothed and somewhat reeking of alcohol and sweat - across his bed, head landing inches away from his pillow.
He’s out within the next five minutes, deep breathing a solid indication that he was, in fact, asleep.
Something stirs in the corner of his room.
The figure from the night before solidifies, faint outlines of skin and muscle coming together more clearly, more precisely now that they’ve had time to figure out how to meet. The figure is undoubtedly male - taller than Kyungsoo by about a head, lean muscle and angles where Kyungsoo had curves and softer limbs - and it begins to move. It first pulls the curtains closed, cold fingers tugging on worn cotton, before the silver in its eyes fixates on the sleeping man on the bed.
Seconds pass.
It takes one, two, three tentative steps before it reaches Kyungsoo’s form on the bed, the sleeping man not even stirring when the figure bends close to his face.
Kyungsoo
Kyungsoo wrinkles his nose a little, lets out a gentle snore, and then he’s asleep again, completely oblivious to the figure that’s hovering inches from his face.
It silently pulls the covers on top of Kyungsoo, tucks them up until they’re right under his chin before it slinks back to its corner, its silver eyes glowing ominously in the shadows.
Kyungsoo doesn’t dream that night.
The angry buzzing of his phone on his bedside table is what wakes him the next morning.
Kyungsoo’s eyes crack open to be greeted by the dull glow of sun through his washed-out curtains, heat bearing down on him when he realises he was wrapped up in his blanket.
‘Strange,’ he says to himself, but doesn’t get the time to think any more of it. He scrambles to get to his phone, swallowing when he sees the name Chanyeol written in white on it. He lets his thumb hover on the green call button before he decides to just bite the bullet and pick up the call, all while hoping the elder would give him a break and not worsen his hangover.
‘What the fuck happened to you?’ demands Chanyeol, in a voice that’s far too loud for Kyungsoo’s hungover mind to take. The younger cringes and decides to put his friend on speaker, flopping back down on his front, ready for the lecture he knows is sure to come.
‘Overslept,’ murmurs Kyungsoo, hoping his voice is loud enough to carry through to Chanyeol.
‘I’ll bet you did,’ says Chanyeol, sounding no less disgruntled than he did before. ‘Are you on your way, yet?’ he continues, and the question shocks Kyungsoo enough for his eyes to widen and for his neck to snap up in confusion.
‘On my way? To what?’ he asks, and it’s barely audible, but Kyungsoo’s sure he can hear Chanyeol groan on the other end of the line.
‘We were supposed to meet for lunch, Soo,’ says Chanyeol, exasperation seeping into the spaces between his syllables. ‘Today. Now. Half an hour ago, actually,’ he says, and his last words finally have Kyungsoo’s memory jogging.
‘Fuck, I’m sorry,’ he says, sitting up and he’s about to pull his clothes off so he can take a shower when he sees it.
When he sees him.
There’s a person in the room with him, hiding in the corner that’s nearest the window, and Kyungsoo almost doesn’t believe his eyes. Because - because his limbs don’t react the way they would had the person been a stranger, his voice doesn’t try to climb out of his throat in a scream. He knows this can’t be true, but - but it is.
Standing there, in the corner of his bedroom, is Jongin.
Kyungsoo drops his phone on the ground, doesn’t even flinch when he hears the screen shatter and splinter apart.
There’s the faint sound of Chanyeol’s voice, that can still be heard from where the phone is lying on the ground. ‘Kyungsoo? Kyungsoo, are you there? Don’t fuck around with me right now,’ says Chanyeol, and if Kyungsoo had been paying full attention, if Kyungsoo hadn’t been staring at his dead boyfriend in the flesh - he would have heard the worry that simmered just in the undertones of Chanyeol’s voice.
But Jongin is here, in the same room with him, staring at him as he stares back, so he doesn’t.
‘Jongin?’ asks Kyungsoo, voice escaping him tentatively, a novice swimmer diving straight into the deep end. ‘Is that - is that really you?’
Kyungsoo sits, waits for an answer that never comes. Jongin just stands there, stares blankly at him before he tilts his head to the side, eyes still trained on the elder.
‘Jongin?’ says Kyungsoo, and this time his voice trembles more violently, his words coming out shakier, and he feels the makeshift plaster that’s keeping his heart together crack, break apart, give again.
This can’t be true. He can’t be Jongin. He just can’t.
Kyungsoo screws his eyes tight shut, tells himself that he’s just seeing things, Jongin’s been gone for months, now, nobody is in the room with him - and then he opens his eyes again, and is greeted by nothing more than a vacant wall staring back at him.
Jongin is gone.
‘Kyungsoo? Kyungsoo, for fuck’s sake, answer me!’ yells Chanyeol, and Kyungsoo absent-mindedly reaches for his phone, all the while keeping his eyes on the corner of his room, where his walls join.
‘Yeah - yeah, I’m here,’ murmurs Kyungsoo, pushing himself out of bed, taking slow steps towards the place Jongin had been standing in.
‘Just - man, show up soon, alright?’ says Chanyeol, a tone of defeat ringing clear in his voice.
Kyungsoo nods, forgets that Chanyeol can’t actually see him. He thrusts his arm out in front of him, waves it a few times in the spot where he’d seen Jongin standing in before. His fingers meet nothing but air - and his nerves are too shot to notice how much colder the air there is.
‘Kyungsoo!’
‘Alright,’ says Kyungsoo, stepping back. ‘I’ll see you soon,’ he says, and he hangs up.
He spends the next few seconds with a perplexed look on his face, eyes fixated on a spot on the floor. There isn’t anything extraordinary there, and there isn’t anything out of place about this corner of his room - there wasn’t anything there that indicated Jongin had ever been there in the first place.
Jongin is dead, reminds a voice in his head, ringing firm and clear and Kyungsoo almost wants to punch himself in the face for thinking it could have been him.
He’d seen it all happen, he’d seen the light leave Jongin’s eyes.
He shakes his head.
It must have been the hangover.
// two