{ just give me a reason to keep my heart beating

“Save me.”

Jongin throws the pen aside in a dramatic flourish as he scrawls the words on to the page. His handwriting is messy and scratchy, and there are blots scattered over the paper where he had pressed too hard. His handwriting is almost unreadable. Like chicken scratches. Meaningless chicken scratches.

He opens his mouth as his lungs fight for air. Breathe. Breathe in. Breathe out.

He can taste stale air and hopeless feelings. He can taste the blank stares, the whispers, the tuts of the public as he flounders beneath their upturned noses. He can taste the disappointment lingering at the back of his throat, a bitter cough drop that didn’t go all the way down and now makes him worse than what he used to be.

He breathes in the sense of being useless, of always being useless.

“Save me,” he whispers, and his voice is thick with drowned feelings and unshed tears. “Save me.”

Jongin is broken and limp, drained of life and everything that comes with it. Kai is full of vitality, always ready with a shy smile or a y smirk. He thought he could keep the both of them under control, to somehow bridge a link between them to keep himself sane.

But the link is broken, and he doesn’t know how to thread it back together.

Jongin wants to die. Kai wants to dance.

“Save me.” He glances at the bottle of pills that sit tantalizingly close to his hand. He stretches a finger towards it, inching towards it slowly. Freedom is so close he can taste it on the tip of his tongue, feel it on the tips of his fingers. Just a few centimeters...

His phone lights up beside him and he glances at it before snatching it up, hastily tapping a shaky finger to the green ‘answer’ button on the screen.

“Soojung?”

“You’re not leaving me, are you?” A shiver runs up his spine; she knows.

He doesn’t even need to think. The bottle of pills is suddenly insignificant to him.

“Of course not.”

Jongin wants to die and Kai wants to dance but it is Soojung they both live for.