When Sanghyuk wakes, he’s on the couch.

The rough material beneath his sensitive fingertips tells him that it’s cloth, not leather, even though he already knows where he is. It is actually the first time waking up in this house without having to wait for his body to calibrate with his mind. When his eyes open, most of the time, his heartrate spikes until he can convince himself that he didn’t just wake up from his new life into an old nightmare. 

He stares at the ceiling and for the first time, he notices that there’s a black streak on the otherwise white ceiling and briefly wonders how the streak even got there in the first place.

Why didn’t someone just erase it? Odd. 

There’s a strange dampness on his back and he can feel sweat on his forehead even though his feet are cold as ice. This house doesn’t ever feel the same as the previous ones, or smell the same (the lingering smell of a mug cake still stays), but sometimes it makes him feel the same.

He still feels so small and useless.                                                                     

But then again, he’s not so fearful anymore, and that’s pretty darned good improvement. Sure, he still doesn’t feel completely safe when the exit of a room is blocked, and he just passed out from being scared, but those are just carried over from his… previous experiences. It’s not because of Hongbin, or the house, or anything at all. He just can’t forget the things that have been done to him. He’s more scared of freaking out than he is of being hurt and that’s good, that’s good, even though it still hurts, dammit. He sits up but it’s too fast, and his head spins a little bit, but he grits his teeth through it.

“Hyung,” Sanghyuk says so quietly that Hongbin doesn’t hear it at all through his earphones. “Hyung.”

His head snaps up so sharply that it looks unnatural and he literally rips the earphones from his ears.

“Oh, Hyuk-ah.” Hongbin considers standing up, but he stops himself just in time. “You feeling okay?”

Sanghyuk nods.

“You were out for maybe… an hour or so?”

“Yeah. Sorry.” Sanghyuk mumbles after a pause, because he feels like he has to say it even though Hongbin probably doesn’t want to hear it.

Hongbin has kind of given up on chiding his automatic apologies, so he just shoots him a soft look and explains that he’s not mad instead. It’s easier that way, doesn’t make the air feel sharp and prickly.

“Do you need me to call someone?” Hongbin says, just a little bit tremulously. “I could call someone to check if you want.”

“I’m fine, hyung.” Sanghyuk tries to sound like he’s sure, but his voice falters. “Just freaked out.”

They both know it isn’t freaking out. Freaking out doesn’t get someone to lose consciousness for almost an hour, freaking out doesn’t consist of collapsing to the floor like the life had been out of a shell, but they both chomp onto that excuse like it’s the only reasonable explanation because they’re afraid it’s going to set off yet another atomic bomb. One that wouldn’t affect the world in any way, but it’ll ruin Sanghyuk to the point of no return.

“Do you wanna come sit down with me?” Hongbin asks. “I’ll get you tea.”

Sanghyuk nods unsurely, but he stands anyway. There is a gray veil before his eyes that he cannot manage to blink away and he’s unstable on his feet that shuffle to the table. He lifts the chair so it doesn’t drag on the floor and sits down opposite Hongbin’s seat. His – The math textbook lies in front of him, off the floor, pen still stuck in between the pages.

Hongbin comes back with a cup of tea and sets it down in front of him. It smells of flowers and leaves and it’s the first time Sanghyuk’s drinking tea. The heat of the cup burns his hands but he just waits until his skin gets used to the pain. Hongbin closes his laptop and Sanghyuk gets a full view of his face, his hands that tidies the stack of photos on the table and shoving them into different files. Hongbin’s fingers are long and his arms are muscular, lines shifting in all the right places. Sanghyuk looks down at his own arms. His scars are chameleons, changing from white to pink to red then to invisible again – they’re really hardly there unless you know they are, but the sheer number of them makes it an eyesore.

“Are you… here?” Hongbin asks, sounding hesitant like he’s caught in between two worlds himself.

“Yeah. I know where I am and everything.” Sanghyuk says softly. “I am, here. I just – Just –”

Hongbin waits, and waits, but it doesn’t come. “You just what?”

“I don’t know. It’s like – I don’t even know myself.”       

Sanghyuk slurs his words on purpose. It’s not so much that he doesn’t want to say the things he’s saying. It’s more like he doesn’t really want to have serious talks with Hongbin until he actually manages to smooth the creases in his brain out and untangle himself from his thoughts. He’s a little bit nervous about saying the wrong things, or saying something he doesn’t actually feel. But then again it might just be himself trying to put all these serious topics off as long as he can because he doesn’t ever want to face his nightmares straight up.

“You don’t understand what you’re feeling or you don’t understand what you’re thinking about?” Hongbin tries good-naturedly.

“Both.” Sanghyuk says, then changes his mind. “Or maybe none. I don’t know.”

Sanghyuk takes another sip of his tea. It tastes mild, but good.

“It’s okay if you think, you know. Think as much as you want.” Hongbin opens his laptop again, a small smile on his face. “Just don’t let your thoughts overcome you.”

***

Sanghyuk works on his math for hours to come and he even tries to ask Hongbin for help once, except Hongbin just said “Why don’t you text Ravi?”, then forced him to use his phone. It’s a lot less nerve wrecking than he expected sending his first text to be and he thinks the pacing afterwards is at least ten times worse than actually pressing the send button with a nervous laughter.

While waiting for the reply, Sanghyuk literally cannot pick up his pen. The only reasonable explanation for the lack of his phone’s message tone is that Ravi already hates him, or that the question was too easy and that Ravi can tell he’s a hopeless case at math. He doesn’t dare reveal the fears to Hongbin because even though he himself knows it’s insane and nonsensical, he just cannot stop entertaining the possibilities.

Turns out, it’s not even that bad. Ravi replies after half an hour, but with such a full length and detailed explanation that it’s more than enough for Sanghyuk to do the whole chapter without effort.

***

They have a dinner of black bean noodles (Hongbin literally cannot stop praising Sanghyuk even though it’s tasteless on Sanghyuk’s tongue, uneasy in his stomach) and then they call Nakhun over Skype.

Sanghyuk’s hands are clammy as he waits for the screen on Nakhun’s end to respond.

“Hyung!” Hongbin exclaims, turning the volume up high.

“Hello!” Nakhun waves. “Hi, Sanghyuk!”

Sanghyuk waves back sheepishly then quickly retreats to his room to finish his science assignment after asking Hongbin because he’s too nervous about just speaking to someone after so long. Nakhun doesn’t seem to mind though – just gives him a reassuring smile and a small “bye”, even though he looks absolutely exhausted.

In his room they can hear them talking about work, about Hakyeon ‘and the others’, and the conversation fades into him after a while. They’re not necessarily saying anything bad, but it makes him feel so detached that he can’t concentrate on his work. He almost walks out and snaps “I can hear you, you know” but the steel in his spine vanishes as soon as he stands up, replaced by a horrible stinging underneath his skin. The anger rises in waves, but subside with a freezing chill when he realizes just how much he hates having the freedom to think about his own feelings. 

His Sirs talked about him like he wasn’t there all the time, but it never felt this way. They talked about him like he was a feral beast that had no right to listen in on the decisions that was going to affect his own body, like he was just an object in the room, incapable of speech.

But maybe it never felt this way before because Nakhun and Hongbin are talking about his wellbeing, when and how he should be interacting with other people. His Sirs only ever

“– hyuk,” Hongbin is suddenly standing in his room, like Sanghyuk just skipped a whole scene in a movie and cut to the wrong part. “You wanna talk to Nakhun hyung? He wants to talk to you.”

Sanghyuk’s heart is almost in his throat. “A – About what?”

“Don’t know,” Hongbin says. “Stuff.”

Sanghyuk thinks he still remembers how to do this. How to slip on a courteous smile, and tell someone what they want to hear, so he puts up his defences and walks out. 

***

http://www.asianfanfics.com/blog/view/993907