“I swear I’m never leaving my bed again.”

It was a weak hungover cry, muffled under heavy blankets from a wiggling lump who couldn’t quite find a comfortable position to lay himself in. I greeted the sob with an amused snort from his door. Judging how badly he’d been out of it the other night, I’d say he deserved every jolt he got now, but that didn’t seem to stop me from jumping to his door at every wince and whine.

“Don’t make promises you can’t keep.” I wasn’t laughing - or at least trying my best - but the little messy tuff of hair that stuck from an opening in the corner of his sheets had me smiling at the least. “You’re going to need to come out sooner or later for food. Or to pee. You can’t just hold it all up in there.”

He probably wasn’t even serious.

“I’m serious, Daehyun.” He made a whine of protest; something about not breaking this one. The tone of his voice had me guessing that he’d rolled his eyes from under the blankets where I couldn’t see.

Didn’t matter though, I was giving him an hour to cave. Maybe less.

It took Jongup half of the hour that I gave him to break the oath, crawling out of his room with a hand pressed between his legs and making a desperate beeline toward the single restroom across the hall from our two bedrooms. In his defense, he lasted a lot longer than I probably would have with a full bladder.

When I laughed, he hollered back a little, flushing a bright red and climbing into the couch with me once he was finished in the toilet.

He was adorable.

Curled up comfortably on the couch, the painkillers I’d given him earlier finally seeming to do its job, he sighed, knees kicked up to chest and arms wrapped tightly across. “I change my mind,” I don’t know why I’d even expected anything serious out of a still half-hungover kid, “I’m never leaving the house.” I probably should have known better than to think that Jongup would be able to support coherent thoughts.

It’s with that he’s got me laughing again, nearly falling over off the edge of the couch. He shot an offended look my way, but that didn’t stop the fit of laughs. My bet was that he’d go again his words again in a matter of days if not mere hours. Jongup cared too much for his grades and reputation to skip out on classes. Plus, how did he suppose he was going to survive the week without his hamburger obsession?

“You’re gonna back out again in a day or something.”

It wasn’t that I doubted his resolve, but the promises he was making today just weren’t exactly straight of mind. He was just making silly promises all drunk people did, hungover in the morning.

(I’m honestly guilty to a bunch of them as well, none of them properly upheld. The first time I’d gotten as badly spun like Jongup had been, I’d sworn off drinking for life; and look where that got me.)

So think of it as a word of wisdom from a senior drunkee: you never keep oaths made with a throbbing head for long. It was always a vicious cycle of drinking and regretting, but repeating the process again the next week. Especially if you were a freshman in college.

I leave him to that as he kicks me humorlessly in the , mumbling something I’d guess were profanities had it been anyone but Jongup. Unlike him, who usually finished all his classwork the second he returned from his daily schedules, I still had a mountain I’d yet to tackle that was due tomorrow.

By the time I’d finished my last assignment - a ridiculous composition one that should not have been assigned for anything other than as a final (even if it were only just a rough first draft) - the sun had already begun to peek over the horizon; that left me maybe a little over an hour before my alarm went off for an early breakfast before rushing in the shower. The question was, was I going to lose breakfast or sleep.

(The answer was easy; since when did I, Jung Daehyun, ever miss food?)

“Food it is.”

But as tired as I was from spending an all nighter staring down at my squiggly lines that were supposed to be notes, my conscious was intact enough to know that water was not supposed to talk back - even if it wasn’t exactly a fully connected sentence I got back.

So imagine my surprise when it did.

The bottle dropped out of my hands and my immediate reaction was to hide behind the nearest wall, watching as the water spilled out and onto the wooden flooring (which was going to rise in an ugly way if I didn’t clean it up before it settled). “E-excuse me?” So I might have been a little delirious from all the black and white, but that was completely besides the point.

It didn’t exactly respond to me (would have been weirder if it did), but I did locate the where sound (the actual one and not the bottle) was coming from.

“Jongup?”

I didn’t see him in his bed, which was weird, because I was positive this was where the sound had come from. Actually, the whole room looked empty; if there wasn’t another whine, I wouldn’t have known he was in at all.

He was curled under the bed, clutched to a tiny ball.

“Hey, hey, Jongup, get out from under there.”

I could barely notice the way he shook his head. His voice was scratchy. “No, no, it’s alright. I’m alright. It’s fine. I’m fine.”

He obviously wasn’t. So I rolled my eyes and dragged him out anyways, brushing the dust from his hair when he was fully excavated from the house dirt.

“There. Better out here than under there, right?” He didn’t reply. “Now, want to tell me why you were under there?”

He made a muffled sound and then paused, sighing before starting again louder. “I had a nightmare. They … I was a bird and they caged me up. I couldn’t see them but they told me to sing. I can’t sing. They knew I can’t sing. But there were just so many.

“I … I was so scared.”

a/n: last three chapters. things will be speeding up a lot and really awkward. i'm really bad at writing endings. + forgot today was thursday. late(ish) update.