he can't focus, there isn't anything to focus on. it is snow and dark and wind and a fleeting thought of a warmth that he once held. he stumbles. and his body feels the emptiness of the dark. this pressing blackness that sinks into his skin and through his bones, settling a strange familiar lonlines inside of him. he knows it. he has always known it. it has grown and lived inside him for so long. his knees ache as he straightens himself and continues walking as the snow falls.

a calm silence, a distant alien world. he closes his eyes and tries to breathe in, the cold stinging the back of his throat and his lungs. he can't stop shivering. the snow continues to fall.

"come back, junmyeon, please," — something distant calls for him. someone.

he doesn't listen. he can't. this boundless emptiness is louder, filled with a solid empty sound. he can hear himself breathing, his lungs working and his heart pumping but there is something deeper, something much more darker in the blackness. he keep walking, pushing beyond the voice. pushing beyond the warmth of hands and a mouth with his name on the lips. the ache in the chest is profound.

the snow falls.

"junmyeon!" — he knows who it is but he doesn't register them. that solid pain inside would bleed through his chest, break his bones and pour from within him. a stone weighing heavier and heavier at the bottom of his ocean, pulling him down down down. he is bleeding and he knows that the voice is bleeding too, blood red and dark on their lips and on the back of his hand. he is shivering, the snow is falling. he can't stop. the ocean might drown him, the darkness might swallow him up.

"i can't," he says and his voice is broken, glass in shards on the ground. the starless night reflects his words, distant and too far away to be real. his breath is a soft puff of white. "i can't."

the snow is falling.

"you don't get to walk away! junmyeon!" — if he stops, he dies.

there is something broken in that voice too, he knows it. the same sort of sharpness at the edge of a cry. the wound it creates inside of him bleeds and he reaches to his chest, fingers scratching against the fabric of his shirt. the snow falls, swirls and breathes in an endless white against black. he gasps, a choked sob in the back of his throat. his hands ache as he curls them into fists, cold and blood and red against white in his fractal world.

red against white against black, he is bleeding and it is snowing and the emptiness looms around and within.

hands grab his arm and his legs give out, weak and cold and tired and he just needs to rest. he sinks against this new warmth, fleeting and numb like a flame just out of reach. those hands hold him steady, warm against a heartbeat that thuds too loudly and too wildly. a sound he knew and he closes his eyes. the snow is falling and he feels stiff and cold and dark. — chanyeol, he remembers.

how could he forget?

the snow is falling. they're on the ground, chanyeol's arms wrapped tight around him as he shivers. he clings to him, fingers around his arm with his head against his chest, staring at the snow. figures form together in the snowflakes. hands brushing faces, kisses shared in the barest of moments, the impression of a laugh and a promise whispers between morning and light and softness breathed into the touch of lips against the back of a hand. everything is fragments on the snow, light glinting off ice and the fading of everything.

chanyeol whispers something, words almost too soft in this place.

"please don't walk away, junmyeon. if you go, i won't be able to follow. please don't leave me."

he looks up at chanyeol, fingers slow to touch the line of his jaw and pull his face closer. blood and cold and his lips, junmyeon kisses him. soft, an almost whisper of something. snow falls in his hair, against the wound on his face. there is a matching one on his hand, blood and skin and pain and chanyeol chanyeol chanyeol.

"i can't," he says, afraid.

"just stay with me," — chanyeol has tears in his eyes, tears on his face. "you don't have to do anything else, just stay with me. just stay with me."

he is so tired.

junmyeon closes his eyes, leaning against chanyeol and the snow falls.