The first section of this chapter portrays severe mental illness and a mental health crisis. Please stay safe and skip it if you need to <3

During the time of slowly increasing bleakness before Baekhyun almost died, there were days where he would feel a strange sense of disconnect. It was like being in a glass bubble, where life went on around the outside of him but never touched him on the inside. Things were happening, he was doing things, but he felt so separate from reality it was like he didn’t really exist.

Now he feels like that almost all the time. He feels like everything has been drained out of him. The darkness he experienced, the whispering voices, the things his therapist tells him were hallucinations, they got to him during those days when he had sunk so low he couldn’t even move. They slipped into him and replaced his flesh with smoke, his bones with ashes. He feels like all the substance to him is gone, both inside and outside. He feels like a skeleton, something already long dead and buried, the earth pressing heavy, heavy around him.

In the beginning even just getting out of bed had been so impossible there was no point in even trying. Yeonseok had to physically help him sit up, help him dress, help him shower, half-carry him to the couch. It would be an hour’s work just getting Baekhyun through the task of eating a cup of thin soup, because his swallowing reflex seemed to have given up the ghost along with the rest of him. He was basically non-functional. The fact that he’s now able to do all those things on his own, at least most of the time, is what tells Baekhyun that despite how he feels, he is starting to get better. The medication is slowly working.

Baekhyun can get up when Yeonseok or Chanyeol tell him now. He can shower on his own, and it’s rare now that he gets so stuck standing aimlessly under the jet that one of them has to come in and pull him out again after half an hour. He can find clothes to get dressed in without them having to lay them out for him so that he doesn’t spend hours staring emptily into the wardrobe. And in addition to these tasks, which are really so basic Baekhyun doesn’t think he should be receiving the praise he gets for achieving them, he’s found something that he almost actually likes doing. There’s a window in the lounge where, if he stands by it, he can see down into the street five stories below. He likes to stand there and watch the people walking by, and the cars. It’s easier than watching TV, which is too loud, too busy, too full of things happening for him to be able to take in. Watching people through the glass is silent and calm. It doesn’t make him feel so overwhelmed he wants to crawl into some dark space and never come out again.

The sun shines in a clear blue sky as an elderly lady walks past with a younger woman, perhaps her daughter. Next come a couple of young teenage boys, snickering over a pack of cigarettes. They don’t look old enough to smoke. The thoughts about the people below him swim through him, bringing with them a faint sense that things might be interesting, if only he could break out of the glass bubble and exist as part of the world again.

In the last couple of weeks, he’s been getting brief glimpses of the possibility that one day, maybe, he might be able to do it. It’s like the glass bubble is getting a bit thinner, a bit less all-encompassing. His therapist seems pleased with his progress, and Baekhyun supposes the medication is doing its job. He can’t summon up any excitement about it, but somewhere among the emptiness there is the distant hope that things might get better again. He might not feel like this forever. He’s ill, and the medicine will help him. Maybe one day, he’ll be able to breathe out the smoke and shadows replacing his insides, let it flow out of his nose and mouth and eyes and ears and make room for happiness again.

Today, though...today feels strange. He feels strange. He leans his forehead against the window and has the odd sensation of registering something cold against his skin, but not actually feeling the coldness of it. He tries to figure out what the strange feeling is. It’s not the terrible bleakness pressing around him like dead earth so that even breathing feels hard, but it’s not one of the glimpses of normality that have been getting a little more frequent over the past few weeks either. He just feels...strange.

He turns away from the window and stares into the apartment. He’s spent the last two months here, doors open and safety measures making life a lot more inconvenient than it’s supposed to be, but he hasn’t complained. The rules and safety measures remind him that someone cares about him, cares enough to do these things to try and keep him safe. Baekhyun doesn’t really understand why Chanyeol cares, but the evidence is there in the locked-away medications and the safety catches on the windows. Chanyeol cares enough that he doesn’t want Baekhyun to die.

He’s home alone for now, finally trusted to not try and off himself in the half hour or so it will take Yeonseok to pick up groceries. But as Baekhyun looks around the lounge, he thinks it looks weird. There’s something...wrong. The shapes of things look strange, somehow. Or maybe it’s not that they look strange, it’s that they feel strange. Different. It makes him feel uneasy, shivery on the inside. He doesn’t understand what he’s feeling. Has something changed in the apartment? Did they move something? Maybe that’s it. Maybe they changed something a bit and Baekhyun hasn’t been paying enough attention to his surroundings to realise what it is that’s come or gone.

He needs to figure it out. The wrongness he senses is making him feel floaty. He hates it.

He starts to shuffle slowly around the room. There are clusters of potted indoor trees, well-cared for with shiny leaves and moist soil. It has to be Yeonseok who cares for them, because it certainly can’t be Chanyeol. Once Baekhyun would’ve told Chanyeol so immediately upon seeing them, and Chanyeol would have been mock-offended and pretended to be hurt that Baekhyun didn’t appreciate his outstanding gardening skills, but truth be told, there would be no gardening skills at all, and Baekhyun would bask in the glory of being right once again. He stops in front of the trees and looks at them. He doesn’t think there are any new ones or any missing. For a while, he gets caught in tracing the latticed trunk of the ornamental fig, fingertips the smooth bark, but the wrongness is nagging at him, and he moves on.

There are DVDs on the shelf underneath the TV. Those are Chanyeol’s. Baekhyun looks at them. He doesn’t know if there are any new ones, but the wrongness is more than the addition of a few new DVDs. That wouldn’t make everything feel so strange. The books in the shelf beside it are probably Yeonseok’s, because Baekhyun doesn’t remember Chanyeol caring for Murakami’s melancholic literature, or indeed caring for literature at all. He takes another few steps forward and looks at the games abandoned by the dusty playstation. They are a mix of old and new. The one lying on the top of the playstation is Call of Duty. Baekhyun remembers playing that against Kyungsoo and having his thoroughly kicked when he’d just started in residency. Something touches his lips, a ghost of a smile, but it doesn’t last long.

With his eyes tilted down, the rug catches his eyes and mind. It’s old, like something from a grandparent’s home. The colours are muted, but it has a lot of patterns. Baekhyun has never particularly noticed it before, but now the patterns seem to leer at him, weird and disjointed and senseless. He can’t make sense of them. The patterns have no meaning at all. They seem to grow and twist in his vision, tug at his chest. His head spins. How has he not noticed these patterns before? It feels like they’re bad things, evil things, calling him somewhere he doesn’t know, somewhere outside of himself, different and terribly wrong. He’s going to lose himself. This rug, these patterns, they’re going to take him somewhere he doesn’t know and doesn’t want to go…

He tears his eyes from the rug and takes a step forward, clings to the bookshelf, panting a little. This isn’t real. The rug isn’t real. No, the rug is real, the patterns aren’t real. The evilness of them is not real. They are just patterns. They do not leer at him. They do not move. Baekhyun has to connect with something real. He stares at the first thing that comes to his eyes, the spine of a book, white hangul on red. He reads the words Norwegian Wood and Murakami and reads them and re-reads them over and over and over again, desperately focusing on the letters. He feels so strange. So sick. But letters are real. The blocky shapes of them are real. Baekhyun is real.

His breathing calms. The wrongness trying to steal him his soul subsides into the corners and seeps away. The relief is so great Baekhyun almost goes to his knees with it. He clings to the bookshelf and closes his eyes. He’s shaking, but the sick feeling inside him is nearly gone, and he’s just so, so relieved.

When Baekhyun opens his eyes again, he sees a framed photograph on the bookshelf, a little below his eye level. One person in the photo is Chanyeol, his hair a little longer and dyed light brown. That’s the way he’d worn it about three years ago, if Baekhyun remembers rightly. The other is Yeonseok, proud in his uniform showing off a promotion emblem. Baekhyun looks at the photograph. Both men’s faces are glowing with happiness and Chanyeol’s arm is slung around Yeonseok’s shoulders.

This picture was not there before. Baekhyun is almost sure. He would have noticed it before, wouldn’t he? He doesn’t completely trust his own memory, and he knows he hasn’t been exactly observant lately, but he has lived here for nearly two months. He would have seen it, wouldn’t he? He grips the bookshelf a little harder. Is this what was wrong? Not the bad patterns on the rug, after all? Did Chanyeol and Yeonseok put new photos up?

There’s another photo on the shelf above. He has to stand on tiptoe to see it properly. This one seems more recent. Chanyeol is carrying Yeonseok on his back, shirts with flower prints contrasting their sun-kissed skin, tropical foliage in the background. Baekhyun cannot remember Chanyeol telling him about going somewhere tropical. He starts to feel weird again. Shivery again. Is he losing his mind? Chanyeol is his best friend. Surely he would have told Baekhyun about going overseas. He loves to talk about things like that. He would have shown Baekhyun photos, videos, told him stories about the funny and ridiculous things that always seem to happen to Chanyeol. What...what is going on?

Feeling sick, Baekhyun drags his eyes from the photo and is immediately caught by the rug again. The patterns. Why is this rug so evil? But it’s not evil. Baekhyun knows it’s not really evil, it’s not really the rug. He’s being ridiculous, but he feels like he’s being turned inside out and it’s hard to believe what it’s not real when it just feels, it feels so real. He wants it to stop. It has to stop, has to, has to stop.

He goes to his hands and knees on the rug, trembling, teeth gritted against the sickness inside him. It terrifies him to get closer to the patterns, but he needs to force himself, needs to show himself, convince himself that the rug is just a rug and the patterns cannot hurt him. He presses his right hand in a fist to his chest to try and keep himself from floating away and begins to trace the patterns with the fingertips of his left hand. He watches his fingers tracing the patterns and feels the roughness of the carpet against his skin. They are just patterns. Just patterns in an antique rug. They cannot hurt him. He’s okay. He’s okay.

The wrongness slips away from him again. The patterns are just patterns. The rug is just a rug. Baekhyun isn’t being lifted and floated away and out of it all. He sobs with relief, a dry sob, more like a spasm, his stomach hurting as all his muscles clench. His trembling lessens. His breathing comes easier as the relief settles calm over him. Things feel normal again, but he keeps holding onto himself and keeps tracing the patterns in the rug anyway. It feels safer than trying to do anything else. He doesn’t know what might set him off again. It’s safer not to look, not to think, when everything carries this sense of danger.

He hears the front door opening as if from a very great distance. Yeonseok is home. He hears the sound of him putting the rustling bags on the kitchen bench, hears footsteps approaching him, though he cannot look up. He’s locked in again, gotten stuck, and he can only trace and trace.

“Baekhyun?” Yeonseok asks. Baekhyun senses, rather than sees, Yeonseok crouch down in front of him. He catches Baekhyun’s hand, stilling it in his tracing. “Come on, now, you know this isn’t good for you,” Yeonseok says gently. He reaches for Baekhyun’s other hand, the one clenched in a fist to his chest. “Let’s get up, okay?”

Baekhyun lets Yeonseok pull his hand away from his chest and help him to his feet. He’s so relieved Yeonseok is back. Things feel so much less scary when there’s another person here. Yeonseok leads him to the couch and sits him on it. He knows the couch. The couch doesn’t feel different. It feels safe. Baekhyun tries to say thank you to Yeonseok for saving him, but the way to his voice feels so, so far that he despairs of ever reaching it. Giving up on the words, he looks up at Yeonseok, forcing himself to make eye contact. He’s supposed to be getting better, not being such a burden. He tries to say thank you with his eyes.

Yeonseok is looking a little worried as he looks at Baekhyun. “Do you feel really bad today?”

Baekhyun gazes at him. He doesn’t really know what to call how he feels. It’s an all-over inside ache, but it’s not really something physical. It’s what happens when you’re a skeleton, dust and ashes for your bones. After a while, Yeonseok sighs a little, turns and goes back into the kitchen to put the groceries away.

Yeonseok returns a few minutes later. “Hey, Baekhyun?” Baekhyun looks up at him again, and Yeonseok holds out a book. “Chanyeol told me you liked to read manhwas in med school. I thought you might like this one. It used to be my favourite when I was younger.”

He holds the book in front of Baekhyun, and Baekhyun takes it automatically. He looks down to see a black and white cover, the title Catharsis. He recalls how he’d staved off the first awful feeling by reading the title of the Murakami book, and shoves the memory away quickly in case it catches him again. Reading is good. Letters are good and strong and real. How did Yeonseok know?

He should say thank you, but his words didn’t work last time and Baekhyun is too tired to try again. Still, maybe he can show Yeonseok his gratitude. He curls up into the corner of the couch, opens the first page and glances back up at Yeonseok. Yeonseok smiles at him with a little of the same happiness Baekhyun recognises from the photos he’s just seen, so Baekhyun looks back at the page and starts reading.

He’s barely aware of Yeonseok cleaning the apartment or Chanyeol arriving home. He sinks into the words, the pictures, focuses on them as intensely as he can, gets lost in them, and for a while Baekhyun doesn’t feel sick or sad. It takes him a while to read, longer than it should, because sometimes he stares for too long at the pictures and words without being able to take in their meaning.

It takes him all afternoon, but when he’s nearing the last few pages, something from outside the book catches at his attention. He stops reading and tunes into the conversation Chanyeol is having with Yeonseok near the computer desk behind the couch. They’re talking about a party or a gathering of friends, but that’s not what’s interesting. There’s a tenderness to Chanyeol’s voice, a sense of great affection. It reminds Baekhyun of the way he used to talk to Nari.

“Okay, love,” Chanyeol says, and then he’s turning away from Yeonseok and towards Baekhyun. Love? Baekhyun thinks blankly, but Chanyeol’s attention is on him and he fixes his eyes on a picture at random. Chanyeol drops onto the couch next to him. Baekhyun can feel him watching him, giving him the chance to acknowledge his presence, but he ignores it, his eyes starting to dry out as he reads the same speech-bubble over and over without making any sense of it. Chanyeol wants to talk, and the energy required for conversation is just so, so impossible.

Eventually Chanyeol leans closer and pokes his shoulder, his shadow making it harder to read the text.

“What are you reading?”

Baekhyun folds the manhwa over to show him the cover. Chanyeol smiles and taps it a couple of times. “I really liked that one. Do you like it?”

Baekhyun nods, and Chanyeol seems oddly pleased with his non-verbal communication. Baekhyun just doesn’t understand how Chanyeol can keep going. He would’ve gotten sick of himself many weeks ago. Chanyeol starts to talk about the parts of the manhwa he liked best, and Baekhyun finds his eyes drawn up to watch his friend’s face. How do you do it, he wonders as Chanyeol chatters on. How are you such a good person? Chanyeol, for his part, seems perfectly happy to babble on, despite that Baekhyun isn’t finding a way to respond. He watches the different expressions cross Chanyeol’s face with fascination. He’s not even really understanding what Chanyeol is saying. It’s just interesting to watch his face, and the deep tones of his voice are soothing.

After a few minutes Yeonseok calls for Chanyeol from his bedroom. When the bedroom door closes behind them, Baekhyun puts the manhwa on the coffee table and stands up to go to the computer desk. He’d gotten distracted from figuring out what was wrong earlier and the strange feeling is growing around him again. He has to figure it out. The desk is cluttered. One side is piled with printed-out medical studies, and on the other side someone has been using a metal ruler and pencils to draft out some kind of table or roster. That must be Yeonseok, something related to police work. None of it gives him any further clues to the strangeness that’s hovering at the edges of everything.

Baekhyun turns to look somewhere else, but before he can step away from the desk the door to the bedroom opens. Baekhyun sees interlocked fingers slowly slipping from each other as Yeonseok leaves the bedroom. The world seems to tunnel and stretch away from him, reeling and distant, and Baekhyun knows.

He is so stupid. How did he never see it until now? Of course Chanyeol and Yeonseok are not flatmates. They’re together. Partners. Lovers.

It all makes sense. The pictures on the shelves. The pet names whispered in hushed corners. All the time spent together in the bedroom. Words begin to seep from the walls and whisper at him. Chanyeol and Yeonseok are together. And they didn’t tell Baekhyun. Not only that. They hid it. They pretended. Lied.

Baekhyun feels like he’s been shoved into ice water. His thoughts start spiraling out of control faster than they have done in weeks. He doesn’t understand. No, he doesn’t want to understand. He doesn’t want to listen to the cruel words leaching from the walls to hiss around him, his edges, looking for a way in. But he should listen. They’re only telling him the truth. You’re bad, they whisper. You’re wrong. Look what you’ve done. You’ve forced them to hide in their own apartment, just because of you.You’re so wrong they couldn’t trust you. Your best friend lied to you, and why would he do that, if there wasn’t something terribly wrong with you? Of course they hid their love from you. Nobody could ever trust you. Nobody could ever love you.

He knows it’s true. Nari taught him that. And now Chanyeol, too.

Everything is going strange. The walls are wrong. The shapes of things. They loom and leer at him, and the voices just keep whispering. There’s a taste of ash and acid in his mouth. You’re an intruder, they tell him. A burden. Nobody wants you. Nobody could ever want you. You crashed into their happy lives and made them have to hide. You shouldn’t be here. A person like you shouldn’t even exist.

Maybe that’s why he feels so detached. So different, so separate, so unreal. He feels like he doesn’t exist because he shouldn’t exist. He’s out of place in the world and it wants him out of it.

Baekhyun stands, frozen, unseeing. Of course. It all makes sense. There’s something inherently wrong about him, that makes people not trust him, not love him, need to get away from him. Hate him. They all hate him, Baekhyun knows it, and the worst part is they’re right to. His therapist has been trying to convince him otherwise and Baekhyun was slowly starting to believe, but no, she was wrong after all. It is all him.

The wrongness around him hisses. His skin crawls where it touches him. He’s scared. He’s so, so, scared. He wants to scream. He can feel them coming for him, the things, the thoughts, taking on forms in the darkness and crowding him, clouding him. Everything is looming wrong, and the walls, the walls are melting. No, he wants to cry, no, please, not again, not again - but he can feel them, he can feel them coming for him...

“Baekhyun?” A strong voice cuts through the darkness. A pair of concerned eyes staring at him, forehead frowning. “Are you okay?”

He wants to say no, but he can’t. He’s locked in, trapped. His knees feel weak. Besides, the things hiss, what right does he have to ask for help? That’ll only burden Chanyeol more than ever. Without Baekhyun, Chanyeol and Yeonseok won’t have to hide their relationship. Without him around, things will be normal and good. You should disappear, the words sink like smoke into his skin, you’re nothing but a burden and all you do is cause suffering wherever you go.

Strong hands grab onto his shoulders and shake him gently.

“Wake up,” Chanyeol says. He sounds alarmed, alarmed enough to make Baekhyun’s eyes slide to his friend’s, but he can’t really even see him. He opens his mouth and tries to form words, but there aren’t any words, only hissing noises all around him, and the looming dark.

Terror strikes Baekhyun then. He remembers what he was told. Psychotic, his therapist had said, he had psychotic depression. Even in Baekhyun’s most distant state those words had struck him deep and hard, because they’d sounded so scary. Is that what’s happening to him? Is he having another episode? Is it happening again? No. He can’t stand it. He can’t go through this again. He can’t. He’s so scared, so scared. He wants it to stop.

Chanyeol is holding his shoulders. It hurts. He’s not aware of how hard his fingers are digging into his skin. It’ll leave bruises but Baekhyun doesn’t care, because the walls, the walls are melting. Chanyeol is looking over his shoulder and calling for Yeonseok, and Baekhyun doesn’t even think. His hand just reaches out on its own and snatches up the metal ruler from the computer desk, and then he’s digging the sharp corner into his own wrist and dragging sharp and hard, and there’s a terrible noise of ripping.

“Baekhyun!” Chanyeol shouts. He grabs Baekhyun’s hands and tries to pull the ruler out of his grip. Usually Chanyeol is far stronger than Baekhyun and would be able to do this easily, but desperation has lent Baekhyun strength and they struggle over the ruler while blood bubbles up around Baekhyun’s wrist. “Yeonseok, help me!” Chanyeol yells, and then there are two of them, and Baekhyun starts to lose the battle. The ruler is wrenched from his hand. Someone grabs both his wrists and crosses them over his chest. He’s pulled backwards and down, held in someone’s lap with his back against their chest. It’s Yeonseok, because Chanyeol is in front of him, eyes wide and lips moving with words Baekhyun can’t hear. He struggles and thrashes wildly but he doesn’t have a chance. Yeonseok has him wrapped tight from behind in a hold he can’t escape from and Chanyeol is sitting on his legs, pinning them to the ground. Baekhyun is terrified. He’s beyond terrified and into mindless, primal panic. The things will get him. He wants to scream, he needs to scream, but he can’t he can’t he can’t...

There’s someone speaking into his ear. Not one of the scary voices. A calm voice, deep and gentle. He feels the warmth of it sink in. “You’re safe,” he hears. “I know it’s scary, I know you’re scared but you’re safe, Baekhyun, you’re okay. I’ve got you. You’re safe.”

The words repeat and Baekhyun latches onto them. Yeonseok is holding him. Chanyeol has his legs. They’re holding him down, and suddenly Baekhyun realises just how hard he’s fighting. Why? Why is he fighting? It’s terror, he’s afraid, he’s so afraid of the dark and the things in it, but he shouldn’t fight Chanyeol and Yeonseok. They’re his friends, they want to help him. He’s going to hurt them if he fights like this.

He shudders and goes limp. He feels slippery terror all around him, but he won’t risk hurting them, he can’t. Yeonseok is still speaking, the voice close to his ear. “You’re safe. Be calm. You’re safe.”

Slowly the way they’re restraining his body starts to feel less terrifying and more like a sense of security. He starts to hear his own breathing. It’s ragged. But the darkness isn’t trying to suffocate him anymore. It’s lifting. The creatures in it are swimming away. The walls are not melting. Chanyeol is looking into his eyes. He’s got a look on his face Baekhyun recognizes, professional calm hiding raw worry beneath it.

“His pupils have blown wide,” he’s saying to Yeonseok. “It’s the fight or flight response. Can you handle him if I go get the benzodiazepine?”

“No -” Baekhyun chokes out. Chanyeol’s eyes snap to his face. “I don’t - need -”

“Baekhyun, are you with us?” Chanyeol asks, calm but intent. Baekhyun nods. It’s easier than speaking. He’s shaking badly, but not the frenzied thrashing of before.

“Sorry,” he gasps. “I’m sorry, I just, they were coming, I was so scared -”

“I can get you the benzo, if you want,” Chanyeol says, but Baekhyun shakes his head. He doesn’t want it. It’ll only sedate him, and he doesn’t need that now he’s calming, and he’s sick of drugs, and things are getting normal again. He’s okay. He is.

“I won’t fight,” he whispers. Yeonseok’s tight hold of him cautiously loosens a little, then, when Baekhyun does nothing but sit there and tremble, loosens a little more, allowing Chanyeol to take his wrist and inspect the mess he’s made of it with the ruler. Baekhyun looks at it too, numbly. It’s bleeding sluggishly, but it’s more messy than deep.

“It’s not too bad,” Chanyeol confirms, and lets out a long breath.

“I’m sorry,” Baekhyun says. Shame curdles inside him, making him want to curl up and hide. He chokes on his words. They taste of ashes, but he has to get them out. “I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to. I’m sorry.”

“I’ll get the first-aid kit,” Yeonseok says. Baekhyun is passed over into Chanyeol’s arms like he’s a child. Chanyeol wraps his arms around him tightly.

“You’re okay,” he murmurs. “You’re safe.”

Baekhyun closes his eyes. He’s utterly exhausted. The words have gone, the terror retreated. He won’t think of the thing that triggered him. He can’t, at least not yet. He can’t deal with it, he can’t go through that again. He’s awful and selfish, but right now, he just needs Chanyeol hugging him and telling him everything’s okay.

“I’m sorry,” he says again, and starts to cry. He sobs into Chanyeol’s chest, feels the warm vibration of soothing words, though he can’t take in what’s being said. Eventually his tears stop, and he lies limply in Chanyeol’s arms, just feeling the safety of someone holding him close.

His wrist is bandaged up tidily when he opens his eyes again. He hears Chanyeol tell Yeonseok he missed his calling as a doctor, and Yeonseok laughingly reply that Chanyeol knows he’d go crazy if he didn’t have a job involving physical activity. He looks up at Chanyeol, and feeling him move, Chanyeol smiles down at him, running fingers over his hair. They’re still sitting on the floor beside the computer desk, but Yeonseok must have taken the ruler away.

“Do you think you can get up?” Chanyeol asks. Baekhyun nods, so Chanyeol helps him stand. He clings to Chanyeol’s shirt and breathes until the head-rush fades. He’s so tired. He looks longingly towards his bedroom, but Chanyeol shakes his head.

“Dinner first,” he says, and Baekhyun doesn’t have the energy to argue.

Chanyeol guides him through the apartment towards the kitchen and pushes him gently into a chair. When the food arrives it smells stronger than ever before and he almost gags. He can’t eat tonight, there’s just no way.

Chanyeol doesn’t seem to care about the food. He puts two pills and a glass of water in front of Baekhyun and looks at him expectantly. They’re his regular antidepressants, not the benzodiazepine, and Baekhyun knows he has to take them. He reaches for the pills. It takes an immense effort to lift his hand towards his mouth. He shudders convulsively, his body rejecting the idea of swallowing even before he gets the pills in his mouth, and he clenches his fist around them.

“I’ll be sick,” he whispers. Chanyeol looks at him sympathetically, but shakes his head.

“You have to take them. You know you do.” He puts a large hand on Baekhyun’s back and holds it there. The pressure seems to help a little. “Take a deep breath. You can do it.”

Baekhyun closes his eyes. Chanyeol is right, he has to take them. Today’s episode has shown him that. He needs his medication so that terrible things like this will stop happening to him.

He puts the pills into his mouth and reaches for the glass of water to help him swallow them. He takes a small sip and presses a fist against his mouth as he struggles with his uncooperative swallow reflex. It takes him nearly a minute before he manages to gulp them down. His stomach lurches violently, but the pills don’t return. He leans forward and puts his head on the table. Everything feels awful. Not only is his mind hurting him, his body is too.

Chanyeol’s hand moves to the back of his neck, massaging gently with one hand while he eats with the other, chatting to Yeonseok across the table. Slowly Baekhyun’s nausea retreats, until he thinks he’s not going to throw up after all, which is good, because he needs the meds.

By the time he gets his head off the table Yeonseok and Chanyeol are nearly done with their meals. Baekhyun shakes his head when Yeonseok asks if he can try eating something. He leaves the table when Chanyeol nods at him. He doesn’t go straight into his bedroom to fall asleep, even though he’s tired, because he’s still a little scared. He doesn’t want to be alone, not even with the door open. Instead he returns to the living room. The quilted blanket is comforting as he huddles under it into the corner. After a while, he reaches for Catharsis. He knows what happens now, but maybe that’s why he wants to read it again. He can disappear into a fictional world that will always be the same, where his feelings don’t exist. He can be Leon Mori for the rest of the evening and push everything else away.

As the evening wears on, the sun sets and the apartment is lit up by artificial light. Yeonseok pulls the curtains halfway down to prevent the darkness from creeping in. The coffee brewer sends the scent of coffee around in the apartment. Baekhyun hears Chanyeol looking for ice cream in the freezer. It’s still cold outside but Chanyeol has always liked ice cream. Baekhyun likes ice cream too. It never mattered that it was winter, they’d seek out the freezers outside convenience stores and make their mouths go as numb as their fingers around strawberry melona or traffic light ice pops.

He goes back to the book until the couch dips. He lifts his eyes and looks at Chanyeol.

“Feeling better?” Chanyeol asks. Baekhyun thinks about it, then nods.

“That’s good,” Chanyeol smiles at him. He hesitates before continuing. “Maybe this isn’t the best time, but I don’t know if there’s ever really a good time, and I was planning to tell you this today and I don’t want to put it off, because it’s really important.” He’s babbling a little, the way he does when he gets nervous. Baekhyun bites the inside of his cheek. Why is Chanyeol nervous? Has he any reason to be nervous?

Of course. This is it. Baekhyun’s a burden and they want him out of the way, of course they do. Who would want someone who is so unstable that they hurt themselves in front of them? Who would want someone who causes them that kind of stress? Who would want someone they have to hide their relationship from in their own home? Of course Chanyeol has to tell him he can no longer live with him. Baekhyun ruins everything. Nari couldn’t stand him and now he’s ruined things even with Chanyeol. Not even such a good person as Chanyeol can stay with Baekhyun.

“Are you listening?” Chanyeol asks. Baekhyun can’t even nod this time, but Chanyeol seems able to tell that he is listening. He takes a deep breath and Baekhyun’s fingers wrap tight into the blanket. He’s caused enough trouble for them. He has to stay calm and take this like an adult even though he feels like screaming.

“I haven’t been completely honest with you,” Chanyeol says. “I’m really sorry for not trusting you with this before. For years I’ve been hiding my true self and I was so afraid of being rejected that I thought hiding was better. But it’s not and I know that now. Yeonseok isn’t my flatmate.” He takes a shaky breath. “He’s...my boyfriend.”

The wall clock ticking in the kitchen can be heard in the living room. Baekhyun waits for the rest, the parts where Chanyeol tells him he’s an awful person, to get out and that he won’t be missed. Chanyeol doesn’t say more, though. He just glances at Baekhyun, nervously, like he’s waiting for a response, waiting for a sign. Baekhyun isn’t entirely sure what kind of sign to give him.

“You w-want me to leave, right?” he prompts eventually. It’s more of a whisper, and his throat feels tight. “Just say it. I understand...” but his voice breaks, making a liar of him.

Chanyeol’s eyes widen. “What? Of course not! Why would I want you to leave?”

Baekhyun stares back at him. Is this some kind of trick question? Why would Chanyeol want him to stay, is the real question. “Because...I…I am a burden?” It comes out like a question, and his shoulders hunch. Chanyeol shakes his head and reaches over to pull him close, and despite himself Baekhyun presses closer, desperately seeking comfort for the ache in his heart.

“No, you’re not a burden at all. You could never be that,” Chanyeol says. “You’re my best friend, Baekhyun, and I’ll stick with you no matter what.”

“Then...why…” Baekhyun tries to find his way through the conversation. His head feels fuzzy. “Don’t you want me out of the way?”

“Of course not,” Chanyeol smiles at him, but there’s concern in his eyes.

“But you didn’t tell me before, about you and Yeonseok. You had to pretend he’s your flatmate,” Baekhyun says slowly, trying to reason it out. “If I wasn’t here...you wouldn’t have to pretend?”

“Oh, Baekhyun, it’s not that at all.” Chanyeol looks so sad. “It was all my fault. My parents were vocally anti-homouality when I was a teenager, so I never told them, and it became a habit to hide. I’ve been terrified of people finding out and hating me for years. It’s only in the past couple of months I realised I didn’t want to hide who I am forever. Jongdae said… no, it was what he didn’t say, really, that made me realise I needed to trust my friends and give them a chance, instead of making that decision for them.”

Baekhyun stares at him until he connects what Chanyeol just said with its meaning.

“You told Jongdae about Yeonseok before me?” he asks, and his lips automatically form a pout.

“I didn’t actually mean to tell him. It was only a couple of months ago, when I had measles. I was delirious and accidentally outed myself,” Chanyeol explains. Baekhyun huffs and looks away, pouting hard as he feigns offense. Chanyeol looks alarmed for a second until Baekhyun meets his eye again and manages a tiny mischievous smirk. A procession of shock, relief, and then mirth crosses Chanyeol’s face, and he starts to laugh. It’s the first time Baekhyun has made Chanyeol laugh in many months, and a tiny bubble of warmth makes its way up from inside his chest to make his own smile grow. It’s not a laugh, not yet, but it’s definitely a genuine smile.

Chanyeol’s laughter subsides and he speaks again. “So, are you...are you okay with me being…” he swallows, as if the words are hard to say. “With me being gay? It’s probably a shock, I know, but -”

Baekhyun’s smile touches his lips again. “I already knew,” he says.

Chanyeol’s jaw drops. He stares at Baekhyun, shocked into silence.

“You...you knew?” he echoes after a while. He sounds hoarse.

“Sure,” Baekhyun says. “I figured it out in our first year of college. I wondered if you’d bring it up someday, but you never did.” He shrugs. “It never mattered, anyway. You’re you, Chanyeol. You’re my best friend.”

Chanyeol looks like Baekhyun has just turned his entire world upside down, so Baekhyun decides not to say any more, at least not until his friend has got his head on straight again. He shifts on the couch, and leans against Chanyeol’s shoulder. They’re joined by Yeonseok a couple of minutes later, who turns on the TV. Yeonseok sits on the other side of the couch and reaches over to take Chanyeol’s hand, and Chanyeol relaxes back onto the couch. Baekhyun closes his eyes as the other two watch the TV. He’s so tired, but he’s so relieved. The voices lied. Chanyeol wasn’t hating him after all. He trusted Baekhyun today. He still wants Baekhyun for his best friend.

Baekhyun knows he still has a long way to go, but for now he feels safe and loved and present, the physical contact reaching through his glass bubble and keeping him here and now. He made Chanyeol laugh, and he smiled - twice! - without having to try. Perhaps there will be an end to all this, after all. Perhaps one day.

---

Sehun hates being alone. He hates being lonely. Loneliness is heavy. Loneliness makes him ache even when he’s surrounded by people. So