Legitimate trigger warning.

I still get nightmares. In fact, I get them so often I should be used to them by now. I'm not. No one ever really gets used to nightmares.

-Mark Z. Danielewski

At around two in the morning in the shabby house on Grace Drive, the inhabitants woke up to the sound of Baekhyun screaming.

Yixing was at his roommate's side in an instant, grabbing his hands and smacking him lightly on the face to wake him up. "Baek? Baek, what's wrong? Wake up, wake up, it's just a nightmare--"

Jongdae slammed into the bedroom door, followed closely by Sehun. "S , is he okay? Baek?" 

Sehun the bedside lamp and aimed it at Baekhyun's face. His eyes flew open and, for one frighteningly long moment, stared at something off in some distance. Finally, he blinked heavily, focusing in on the three people standing by the bedside.

"Lay?" he said, voice barely more than a breath.

Yixing held Baekhyun's hands, softly working his tense fingers. "Ssh. Ssh. We're here. You're awake. You're awake."

It was the second nightmare that month, nightmares that had previously only happened a few times a year. Nightmares that, at this point, Jongdae could do his research paper on for school and the other roommates had a routine set for.

Jongdae murmured into Yixing's ear and went into the kitchen for water. Sehun grabbed the towel on the bedside table and dabbed at the sweat on Baekhyun's forehead.

"What was it this time?" Yixing asked gently. "You've never screamed like that before."

Baekhyun looked away. "I can't...I can't remember."

Of course he did.

Jongdae handed the glass of water off to Baekhyun, both of them visibly shaken. "You okay, man?" the former asked, sitting down at the foot of the bed. 

Baekhyun squeezed the glass in his hands. "Y-yeah. I don't know--" A metallic taste filled his mouth, and he squeezed his eyes shut. If he looked up now, there would be the face staring at him from the shadowy far corner of the room. He peeled one eye open.

Nothing.

He threw the covers off his bed, suddenly very afraid. "I--I have to--I don't know, please, just--" Baekhyun looked to his left, at the empty space on the bed.

A dark figure sat there, faceless but very clearly looking in Baekhyun's direction, hands folded on legs that seemed to end at the knees. Waiting. 

Baekhyun tipped over the side into Yixing, throat working for a scream but nothing coming out. 

Chanyeol had just started drifting off to sleep in front of the TV when his phone rang under his hand. He rubbed at his eyes, pressing the receiving button almost automatically and bringing the cell up to his ear. "Hullo?"

An unfamiliar voice answered him. "Okay, this better be Park Chanyeol. I hope Baek's not screwing with me."

The sleepiness dissipated in a millisecond, and Chanyeol shot to his feet. "Who is this?"

"The name's Sehun. Baekhyun just had a--well, he's a s pile right now, and he kept saying to call you and to...wait, hang on...uh, to get him to your place? I don't know what this is, but--"

Chanyeol ran for the front entrance. "Oh. Oh, G-d. Is he okay? Should I pick him up?"

"He's, I, uh, he's fine. I'm sending him. I don't...I don't think he's in any kind of--"

"I know where the house is. Give me ten minutes. I'll be there."

Without putting on his coat or taking his gun, Chanyeol barely waited for his door to close before flying down the stairs and into the parking lot. He almost floored it, regaining composure at the last moment but still going much above the speed limit and running a few stop signs. 

Six minutes and thirteen seconds, and he slammed the brakes in front of Baekhyun's house.

Bakehyun was already outside with a taller man, hugging a pillow to his chest and shivering underneath a thick blanket. The other man rested a hand on his shoulder and jumped the steps up to Chanyeol's car. Chanyeol rolled the window down.

"Hey, I'm Yixing. I room with Baek." The man held out a hand, and Chanyeol shook it reluctantly. "He had a really bad nightmare...it's a lot more serious than it sounds, but he should explain it to you. I'm in no position to do it. He wants to be with you for the night for whatever reason, but I don't know if..."

"That's not a problem with me. As long as he's prepared, he's welcome to stay with me." Chanyeol gave Yixing the most reassuring smile he could manage. The roommate seemed convinced, because he gave Baekhyun a slight wave.

Baekhyun plodded down the steps, looking very much like a child, followed by two other men. Yixing said something quietly in his ear, and Baekhyun nodded, eyes deathly blank.

Chanyeol gave Baekhyun's roommates a wave before turning the car around towards his own apartment.

Baekhyun was silent, staring wide-eyed at some arbitrary point on the dashboard. 

Streetlights passed by like fireballs, lighting up the inside of the car briefly before vanishing to give way to another one. Chanyeol let one of his hands come off the wheel, searching for Baekhyun's still clutching at the pillow. The passenger flinched, then relaxed and squeezed Chanyeol's fingers.

"I'm being really stupid," he said softly.

Chanyeol shook his head, eyes still on the road ahead. "I told you to call me if you ever needed me, and you did. You did the right thing." Carefully, he brought Baekhyun's hands up to his lips, planting a butterfly kiss on his knuckles before dropping it down to the divider.

Up in the apartment, Chanyeol checked the locks to all the windows, keeping an eye on Baekhyun, sitting in the very corner of the couch and blockading himself with pillows. Baekhyun watched Chanyeol enter and leave the walk-in closet, staring intently at the murky darkness inside. A chill went down Chanyeol's spine, and he couldn't help but look over his own shoulder just to make sure there was nothing there.

Finally, Chanyeol brought a mug of tea to the coffee table and laid it down in front of Baekhyun.

"It's still really hot, so I'd let it sit for a while." Chanyeol put his arm around Baekhyun and pulled him in for a tight hug. "What happened?"

Baekhyun nestled into Chanyeol's shoulder. "I have really bad nightmares a lot, usually right after bad dizzy spells," he said. "And recently I've been...hallucinating, too. Bad ones, where I see people in places they shouldn't be or I see weird figures."

Chanyeol frowned into the top of Baekhyun's head. "Have you seen a doctor about that?"

"I have, but that's...that's not going to do anything. Medicine can't help."

"Why?"

Baekhyun sighed. "You wouldn't believe me."

"Try me. I've heard some strange things in my lifetime."

"Not like me." Baekhyun hugged Chanyeol close, hands snaking around his waist. "All the men in the Byun family, we've had...we don't live very long. The oldest was maybe thirty-something. It's...we go insane. Mentally insane. And we usually die in what my grandmother called a paranormal fit, where we get so afraid that we just...we just die." 

Chanyeol rubbed a soothing circle into Baekhyun's back. 

"I'm twenty-four already. I don't...I don't know when I'm going to die, exactly, but it's...the nightmares and the headaches and the hallucinations, they stopped for a short time, and now they're coming back, and they're worse than before..." Baekhyun bit his bottom lip hard to keep it from shaking, something that Chanyeol didn't miss. The taller man pulled away, studying Baekhyun's face.

"I believe you," he said. "But I don't know if I totally understand how this..."

"My mom called it a curse, but I think that's superstitious bulls ."

"Genetics, maybe. F ed-up genetics."

"Jongdae's been trying to help me since I told him, and he's studying genetic abnormalities, but what's that going to do?" Baekhun shrugged, and the resignation in his words stabbed Chanyeol through the heart.

"I'm sure there's something," he said, taking Baekhyun's hands between his own warm ones. 

"My grandfather did everything that could be done," Baekhyun said, looking away. "Medicines. Doctors. Voodoo. And he still died trying to tear his own throat out." His lips trembled, and he blinked hard to clear his eyes. "I'm not even scared anymore," he said, voice shaking. "I might as well do everything I can to make someone else's life better, if there's no way to save mine, you know?" He laughed bitterly. "Who knows."

Chanyeol shook his head, and for once, language failed him. 

Baekhyun pulled his hands free from Chanyeol's and reached for the mug of tea on the coffee table. "Sometimes I wish I was a big corporate person," he said. "Then someone might kill me before I killed myself."

The house was quiet after Baekhyun left. Sehun and Jongdae had gone to sleep quickly, shaken but tired.

Yixing paced the short, dark halls, mind racing a thousand miles too fast for him to sleep or even sit down. He hated nights like this, when Baekhyun was so afraid of a nightmare that he would cry and scream. He hated feeling helpless. He hated knowing he couldn't do anything.

Especially since that Park Chanyeol could--

Not now.

Finally, Yixing wandered into the kitchen for a glass of milk, deciding at the last minute to add cocoa powder for hot chocolate. As the cup turned in the rattling microwave, Yixing paced some more, stopping by the window to look outside. Grace Drive was beautiful, in its own shabby way. An old woman had given out cacti a few years ago when it was just Yixing and Sehun (G-d knew where she got them), and the little spiky balls adorned every windowsill, blooming with tiny yellow flowers every spring, no matter how cold it was. Asher Murkoff a few doors down painted murals on the sidewalks with some special paint that had yet to disappear, even in the heavy snow and rain. Edith Evans ran a florist's shop and gave out flowers when it was someone's birthday, and the one time a few kids decided to be rowdy, she sent them running. 

It was a nice little ecosystem they had, here on Grace Drive.

Yixing smiled to himself, then turned to retrieve his hot chocolate. Something caught his eye outside, and he leaned closer to the window. 

He had what Baekhyun liked to call a journalist's eye; he didn't miss anything, no matter how subtle. That was how he found things to write about and how he found ways to get into the most exclusive rooms of Highmont, as well as the reason he nearly got arrested more times than he could count.

And it was his journalist's eye that noticed the footprints outside the window.

After the snow melted, there were pockets of mud in the front yard, often in strange places. Someone who didn't live in the house wouldn't know which places to avoid. The grassy piece underneath the window, right by the brick, for instance, was perpetually soggy despite the sun reaching it almost every day. 

And clearly, someone not part of the household had been standing there.

The grass was flattened, slick mud smeared over some of it. Someone had stamped around it, probably trying to flatten it out, but there was one solid foot-shaped imprint still left. 

Big, too, belonging to someone standing around six feet. And there were very few people he knew taller than him at five-ten. None of them were good.

Yixing was known for underreaction, but this time, he knew something was very, very wrong.