[there are multiple flashbacks from two different people who aren't 'specified'. oh and warning for assualt? i guess]

When Minseok’s eyes flutter open, he is facing the front door. Confused and disoriented, he blinks slowly. Lu Han’s place. Slept over. Living room. Right, okay. Everything makes sense now.

A little more than afraid to get up because he knows he’s going to feel the ache of sleeping on the floor all over his body, he closes his eyes again — only to have them snap back open moments later when his clearing mind registers the heavy arm draped over his waist, the warmth pressed against his back, and the shallow puffs of air teasing the back of his neck. Preventing himself from having a mental breakdown because oh, it’s no big deal, Lu Han is only spooning him, he carefully pats Lu Han’s arm in an (useless) attempt to wake him up.

“L-Lu Han?”

The other man makes a noise and flexes his arm, pulling Minseok closer to his body. He mutters something under his breath in Chinese and listening to his throaty, sleep-ridden voice brings Minseok so close to having a serious heart attack. Did he mention this was horrible for his mental health? Because it is.

“Lu Han?” He tries again, this time pinching the other’s skin and pulling the thin strands of hair on his arm.

Lu Han whines in his sleep but he eventually lets go and rolls onto his back. He looks at the slumbering man — mouth hanging open, ugly squirtle shirt out of place and revealing a cute navel, hair ruffled, totally attractive — and then at the digital clock on the dvd player sitting beneath the television. It’s just a little two in the afternoon. They’ve overslept. Well, whatever. It doesn’t matter how long they slept. He just wonders how long he can stall going back.

A half an hour later he walks out of the bathroom, bag heavy in his hand, to Lu Han still passed out amongst rumpled sheets and bed spreads. Smiling fondly at the scene, he leaves his bag in the hallway and moves to drape his body perpendicular to Lu Han’s sleeping form. 

The sudden weight of another man laying on him shocks Lu Han into wakefulness and his eyes dart around frantically before stopping on Minseok and his amused eyes and bright, cheerful, beautiful smile. And then he kicks himself because his thoughts are drifting into the forbidden zone in which he’s suddenly confused over his feelings for the other. Again. He hears Yixing’s voice in the back of his head, telling him he’s in denial and he’s always had a not-so-secret crush on the theatre student. He ignores his pesky inner-Yixing voice. Since when did he ever listen to Lay?

“Well this is a lovely wake-up call,” he jokes when he finds his voice, matching Minseok’s smile with a grin of his own.

“It is, isn’t it?”

Hiding a yawn behind the back of his hand, he nods. “And to what do I owe the honor of waking up to your body on top of mine?”

Minseok freezes above him and he’s struck with a small wave of deja vu.

Looking at the ceiling, he shifts under the other man. “Just laugh if you want to. Both my ego and my man-pride are virtually indestructible at this point.”

If he wasn't being pinned down by a hysterical Minseok he would have brought out the nurf gun again.

It isn’t until Minseok’s barricaded himself in the kitchen and threatened him to stay away if he values his pokemon pajamas that Lu Han, splayed out on the living room floor, comes to realize it’s Sunday — meaning the next day is Monday — and he hasn’t done any of his homework. His vocals course isn’t a problem because no matter how late he shows up to class, his professor isn’t going to fail his most prized singer. But with the end of the academic year coming to an end soon, his other classes are fair game. If his internal clock is working properly today (but he was woken up at three in the afternoon so it probably isn’t), he has a twenty-page Propaganda in Film term paper due in about three weeks, a Science of Meditation test in two and a half weeks, and a Physics test in….well he doesn’t know when that one is.

Either way, he worries about his grades and calls Minseok a demon (because obviously it’s his fault if Lu Han fails) until the other returns to the living room. Minseok kicks him in the side, telling him he made breakfast with the small amount of real, healthy ingredients in the kitchen. Lu Han is amazed because he thinks it’s the first time the stove has been used for something other than boiling water since he moved in.

Complaining about how he bruises easily, Lu Han pushes himself up off the floor and strolls over to the kitchen. The large plate of pajeon sitting on the counter calls out of him in the most heavenly of voices. He didn’t even know he had green onions. God, if he could, he would marry Minseok. There is nothing more appealing than a man who can cook and why are his thoughts so strange and all over the place today? Maybe he’s catching a cold or something.

“Uh…Lu Han…”

The called turns over his shoulder, half of a pancake hanging from his lips. “Hmm?”

“Thanks. For this. For having me over. It might not make a lot of sense to you, but it meant a lot to me.”

“Oh, uh, no problem. You’re welcome any time. I think the nerf gun will miss shooting at you after you leave," he says before shoving the rest of the vegetable cake in his mouth.

“Is that supposed to be a clever way of telling me you’ll miss me?”

“No?”

Minseok gives him a look, Lu Han ignores him in favor of swiping the second to last pancake.

"Are you leaving now?"

When the other nods, he takes a small bite of the pancake and then tosses it back onto the plate. Raising his thumb at the grimace of disgust on Minseok's face, he walks up to him and ruffles his hair, affectionately.

"I'll walk you out."

Lu Han’s arms wrap around his midsection and he’s pulled into a hug that is much too tight for comfort but Lu Han is warm and smells like vanilla-scented soap and he likes being pressed close against his chest even though he can’t breathe. Catching himself before he lets out a sigh of content, he timidly reciprocates the hug. It’s nice until two minutes go by and his right foot starts to fall asleep.

“Not that I mind but…” he starts, partly lying and partly telling the truth. “Are you going to let go any time soon? I’m losing feeling in my foot.”

Lu Han gasps, realizing he was getting a little too comfortable with Minseok. He splutters, trying to come up with something to say to explain himself. (He’s been doing that a lot lately around the cute Korean man, stumbling over his words and sounding like a total idiot).

“You’re totally going to miss me.”

"I am not!" So maybe yelling defensively isn't the best thing to convince the other. Coughing behind a closed fist, he tries to cover up his outburst. "So I guess the next time we have to go to your place?"

Apprehension crosses the other man's face but it's gone just as quickly as it appeared.

"Maybe, maybe not. I don’t think you’d like being at my place.”

“You could live in a cardboard box and I wouldn’t mind as long as we’re together,” he says much too quickly and much too defensively.

And then the biggest awkward silence looms in the space around them and Lu Han begs for a car to speed down the street in the next five seconds so he can throw himself in front of it and end his misery. Minseok squints his eyes and looks to say something but bites back the words. Lu Han takes the opportunity given to him and escapes.

“I…I think my shower is on fire. I’ll talk to you later and don’t die on the way back or something tragic like that okayI’mleavingbye.”

Minseok may or may not have called after him.

The lights are off when he returns home, pushing the door closed behind him. Mentally exhausted, he slips the duffle bag off his shoulder, leaving it against the shoe organizer. He kicks off his shoes, toeing them beside the organizer as well. He’ll tidy them later. If he remembers.

Meandering farther into the shadowed apartment, he finds his way to his bedroom, trailing his fingers along the edges of the walls. Stopping short of the bedroom door, he wrinkles his nose, picking up the faint flowery scent in the air. Roses? But Kris doesn’t even like flowers. Curious about the smell invading the hallway, he back tracks, traversing the apartment in the dark to the light switch for the hall. Before he can flick the switch, he feels something hit him in the back of the head and all of a sudden he’s on the floor with a hand around his ankle, being dragged toward the bathroom.

He doesn’t bother with struggling at first because the bathroom is directly across the hall from the bedroom and his efforts would be in vain. He does, however, let out a rabid growl when he’s pulled up off the floor by his neck, lashing out at the man he’s been forced to live with for the past two years. Accomplishing nothing more than raking dull nails across the other’s cheek and raising pink welts but drawing no blood, he resorts to glaring. When all else is pretty much useless, the least he can do is remain (seemingly) unamused.

His glare is returned with just as much intensity and for a minute it’s just the two of them exchanging non-verbal insults and jibes until Kris turns his attention to the tub.

“I’m upset. I was ready to forgive you for going out. I prepared a nice dinner —”

Minseok snorts, Kris tightens his grip around his neck.

“You’re not exactly in a position to be disrespectful.”

“Sorry, it was a complete reflex,” Minseok responds, still managing to sound rude despite the strain of his voice.

Minseok belatedly realizes there is a small rose-scented candle burning in the center of the sink bowl. Kris cracks a smile. The almost unnoticeable quirk of his lips is sadistic at most and malevolent at best. Really, if he wasn’t filled with so much blinding hate for the younger man, he’d be terrified and yet, here he is, more overcome with rage than fear.

That is…until he’s thrown easily and carelessly into the bath tub, back of his skull hitting the tacky seafoam green tiled wall. The shock of arctic water against his skin causes him to gasp. Taking in a mouthful of water, he resurfaces to cough through it, but then Kris’ over-sized hand is around his neck again, forcing him back under.

“I prepared a nice dinner, picked up a bottle of Chardonnay. I almost did the romantic thing with the rose petals in the bath water but I didn’t think you deserved that,” Kris says, finishing off his earlier statement. Minseok doesn't hear anything but the sound of his heart beating and the slosh of the bath water around his ears. 

Despite the fact, he doesn’t know how to swim, and therefore has zero skill in holding his breath for long periods of time — because he’s sure Kris isn’t going to let him up any time soon — he isn’t worried, isn’t panicking. The need to take in air, to cough, to hack, to vomit, to just open his mouth and let whatever happens happen sets a dull ache in his chest but he ignores it, pressing his lips together. At some point, he closes his eyes and tries to paint images on the back of his eyelids.

Brows furrowing, the trunk of his body raises in the shallow water and his mouth involuntarily opens, body confused into thinking it’s resurfacing and acting on its own. his water, he convulses in an adrenaline-fueled response to being held own, and he catches Kris’ wrist with his hand.

Kris’ laugh echoes under the water and he digs his nails into his attacker’s skin.

One half of him is in a frenzy, wanting to fight back even though it’s a terrible idea; the other half just wants to color in pretty pictures with the little boy he can see on the back of his eyelids.

(He sits at the top of the stairs in their little just-out-of-the-city 2-story house, having woken up due to the noise and crawling out of his small bed.

He can’t understand what’s going on but even as a toddler he’s smart enough to know they’re fighting down there. What about? Well, he come to know later in life.

“Where have you been all week? Do you think it’s okay for you to go out to that bimbo boss of your’s and leave me with that brat upstairs? Six days you’ve been gone and six days I’ve had to be bothered with feeding him and clothing him and all that other .”

“And you think I don’t know you’ve been sleeping with my brother. I’m sure his wife would love to hear about that. I may not like the woman but at least she takes care of their daughter.”

“I don’t see why I need to care about him. I didn’t even want the little . I wanted to abort him but you didn’t want to pay for it. You didn’t want a child either.”

“Maybe if you had a job you could have paid for it yourself. I don’t have money to just throw away for a kid you couldn’t prevent yourself from having.”

“Maybe I should chop your off in the middle of the night. So you don’t get that you’re shacking up with pregnant like me and make another woman unhappy.”)

Partially worried and partially confused, he tries to open his eyes but everything is still black. He’s not sure if he just imagined opening his eyes, if the bathroom is really that dark, if the water is distorting his sight, or if the shadows of unconsciousness crept into the corners of his vision before he had a chance to realize it.

One thing is for sure: that memory that came and passed without warning just now was probably the start of his life ‘flashing before his eyes’.

Wincing as his back of his head collides with the white storage shelf, he teeters to the side, off balance. Collapsing onto weak legs, he attempts to crawl out of the closet. Just reaching the door, the blackened bottom of a house slipper against his forehead pushes him back in.

His tears are red hot streaming down his cheeks. He can’t hear anything over his sniffling to keep the mucus under control; not even the woman screaming her last profanities at him before slamming the door shut and encasing him in total darkness.

The sound of her slippers shuffling away reaches his ears and he panics, crawling over to the door and banging tiny fists against the barrier.

“Mommy? Mommy! Where are you going? Mommy?!”

Standing, he jiggles the knob. Something swirls in his stomach. He’s going to be sick.

“Mommy, you can’t leave me in here, please, mommy!”

“Do you hear his voice in your head? Does he tell you to do things?”

He watches the middle aged man with large circular glasses pace around the room with narrowed eyes. Cheek cupped by his palm, he closed his eyes.

“I don’t appreciate you talking to me as if I might have paranoid schizophrenia. Or that I may be simply hallucinating. Especially when you still haven’t caught on that I’m not the same person you talked to two weeks ago.”

“I think I’m going to prescribe you something that should keep you from hearing these voices.”

The man is scribbling on a small sheet of paper when he opens his eyes.

He barely holds back the growl itching at the back of his throat.

“And I think you’re a quack. Because for the zillionth time, I’m not hearing voices.”

“Xiumin, I need —”

He shrugs the arm off his shoulder and glares at the tall man behind him.

“I’m not Xiumin. Keep your hands off me, Wu Yifan.”

“What’s wrong with you?”

He knits his brows at that, affronted.

“There isn’t anything wrong with me. Maybe you just need to learn to tell the difference between your pansy boyfriend and a stranger."

“Hey, Minseok!”

He gasps when he’s suddenly in the arms of a strange person. He considers screaming for help but then he’s let go and the stranger smiles at him.

“I-I’m sorry. I think you have the wrong person. My name is Xiumin.”

The smile on the stranger’s face falters and they look him up and down.

“Oh, my bad, man. I could have sworn you looked just like him.”

He’s not sure what’s more worrisome: being mistaken for another person or the condescending laughter he hears in his head.

This is the last place he wants to be right now.

Turning his head, he narrows his eyes at the only other person in the room, sitting in the chair beneath the window.

“You’re not allowed to smoke in here.”

The figure at the window glances at him from the corner of their eyes before looking back out the window, releasing a cloud of smoke that presses against the glass before dissipating. “That’s exactly what the in the scrubs told me but we all know how great I am at taking directions from others.”

“You’re still an idiot,” Minseok says before relaxing into the hard mattress of the bed. He’s been in this hospital enough times the stiffness of the mattress and the smell of alcohol and latex doesn’t even faze him — almost reminds him of home.

“Nice to know you think of me so highly, Minseok. Especially when it’s been months since we’ve last spoke.”

Allowing a small smile to grace his features, MInseok closes his eyes. “Why am I friends with you again?”

“Because we’re both insane.” The figure shrugs even though the action goes unseen, leaving the window to stand by the bed. “Should I call for the nurse?” At Minseok’s nod, the person takes a long drag of their cigarette, finger of their free hand pressing the call button on the side of the bed.

Pulling a face, Minseok looks at the tall now-brunet by his side, amusement lighting up his eyes. “I am not insane,” he laughs, not even noticing the dull pain that blooms in his chest, desensitized.

“What are you talking about?” Chanyeol grins. “You’re not even a real person.”

“I take offense to that.” He sniffs. “And that makes the original owner of this body insane and makes me a poor, lost soul.”

Rolling his eyes, Chanyeol places a hand on his chest. “Oh, forgive me. My idiot mind forgot you two aren’t the same person.” He grinds out the cigarette on a free spot of the wall behind Minseok’s bed before dropping it in the waste bin opposite the bed.

“Kim Xiumin?” A cute nurse peeks her head around the door frame before shuffling in, a curious looking guy behind her. Must be an intern.

Minseok, however reluctantly, nods. He even offers her a small smile. Chanyeol laughs at the entire exchange.

“I’m Narae. I’ll be your nurse for today. You can actually be discharged today but we wanted to wait until you woke up to ask some questions about what happened since your friend here doesn’t know. Plus we need to update your medical records.”

She hands him a clipboard and a black ballpoint pen. He checks over the information quickly, only crossing out an anti-depressant and replacing it with an anti-anxiety medication.

He also does his best to answer her questions about what happened but he doesn’t remember much. Just coming home and being dragged into the bathroom and trying to uncover the rest of his memories ends in a blinding headache. That means Xiumin is the one to ask about that but after their meetings with their ignorant psychiatrist, he’s come to learn that he can’t hear Xiumin, Xiumin can only hear him.

Narae nods her head and leaves with the intern to get the papers ready for his discharge. Once she closes the door, he faces Chanyeol, eyebrows raised behind his long fringe.

Falling back into the chair beneath the window, Chanyeol crosses his left leg over the other. “My dad was pissed because Kris wasn’t showing up for work and so I went to your place to drag him to the garage. The door was open but it didn’t look like anyone was there. I thought you two were out somewhere and I was about to leave. Except, I was ‘bout to piss myself so I went to the bathroom to find you unconscious and hanging out of the bath tub.”

“You’re the last person I’d assume to take me to a hospital.”

Chanyeol shrugs. “I had flashbacks.”

Minseok nods, knowing exactly what the other is talking about.

“Sorry about worrying you.”

“Who said I was worried?”