if you don't understand Daewon's role in this story, please read this blog post first: http://www.asianfanfics.com/blog/view/1168106

“I don’t eat.” Sanghyuk balls his hands into fists. “Not properly.”

“And Hongbin doesn’t make you?” Daewon’s eyebrows are raised in an unnecessarily accusatory manner.

“He tries – He does. I just can’t keep it down. It’s my fault.”         

It’s not the first time that Daewon has confronted Sanghyuk about his eating habits after three days of watching him shake while pushing food into his mouth like he’s being forced and insisting on smaller and even smaller portions still each meal.

He has been working with Sanghyuk on feeling comfortable around the house. The boy has learnt to talk leisurely with Daewon, even yesterday letting himself be brought down into subspace without freaking out. Slowly, it seems like Sanghyuk is starting to understand a normal Dom/sub dynamic, and that’s right where Daewon wants him because that’s how the journey to recognizing abuse starts. But, It’s obviously impossible for three days to undo years of pain. Daewon lets the first two days of tension go. But it’s almost at the end of the fourth day and Sanghyuk still hasn’t been eating nor sleeping well.

Daewon sighs miserably, thinking so hard that Sanghyuk can almost smell the gears in his head burning with friction. “Okay. Let me try something.”

He presses his hand into the nape of Sanghyuk’s neck, a slight pressure downwards towards the floor. Sanghyuk’s knees go weak.

“Kneel for me.”

He goes down, hands clasped behind his ramrod-straight back, head quietly sinking into that weird space. He hears Daewon padding around the apartment for a few moments through the mist of his thoughts. They dull after a while, like someone is dimming the lights in his head slowly.

Daewon pulls up a chair (makes sure to carry, not drag – loud sounds unsettle the boy) to sit in front of him. Sanghyuk keeps his eyes down.

“You’re such a good boy, Hyuk-ah.” Daewon slowly goes to his hair, feeling each strand. “I’m going to try something okay? It’s not going to hurt, and this is not a punishment. It’s just to help you with your eating, but I’m not going to do this for you again unless I see the need to. You have to learn how to eat by yourself, I’m just going to… help you in that direction today. Do you understand what I’m saying? Nod your head if yes.”

Sanghyuk nods.

“I need you in subspace for this to work.” Daewon lifts Sanghyuk’s chin up with two fingers. “Is that okay?”

Sanghyuk nods, with a small, “Yes, Sir.”

“What’s your color?”                                         

“Green.” He breathes out slowly, the way Daewon taught him to: use your lungs, let them expand with air. Don’t think about trying to get smaller with every breath, you’re meant to be relaxed in subspace. I’m a Dom you can trust. He feels half-under already.

Daewon smiles. “Good boy. You’re such a good boy for me. I’ll take care of you.”

Something in Sanghyuk’s heart leaps, because he knows now that when Daewon says that, he means it. Not in the cruel, twisted way that was the only thing he knew for most of his life.

“Okay, up.”                                                                                                           

Sanghyuk rises to his feet fluidly, like water, and Daewon really doesn’t think he’ll ever not marvel at how graceful the boy is. They walk into the kitchen, Sanghyuk trailing slightly behind, his left wrist held in Daewon’s tight grip. The tighter Daewon’s grip becomes, the lower he sinks.

They stop in front of the sink, and Daewon goes to loop a cotton cord rope around Sanghyuk’s wrist. It’s sufficiently snug, but loose enough for him to get out if he really had to.

“Color?”                                                                                                                                            

“Green. Sir.” Sanghyuk says slowly. His voice is a lot more confident than it usually is.

“Good, good.” He fastens the end of the rope to the counter and checks if the length is good – not too taut, not too long.

Daewon runs his hand down Sanghyuk’s spine, and the boy shudders under his touch. He closes his eyes and his shoulders relax.

“You’re going to stand here and finish the dishes, then you’re going to wipe them clean and stack them neatly.” Daewon makes his tone as firm as he can. No negotiations. Just surrendering choices. “I’m going to check on you regularly for your color. But if there’s anything wrong – and I mean it – you call me.”

Sanghyuk swallows and he bares his neck in a sign of vulnerability. “Yes Sir.”               

Daewon administers another strong squeeze against his waist, lets the boy know that he’s in charge, then walks out of the kitchen, taking note of the time.

***

Sanghyuk quickly falls into a haze and floats without a care. All that matters is getting the job done and making sure the dishes are all squeaky clean. He can hear his heartbeat, and he’s so calm that not once does it spike. There’s an indiscernible void of time that passes. It could’ve been an hour, it could’ve been 15 minutes.

The Dom comes by several times – many times – with gifts. Sometimes they’re shoulder massages, or praises, but mostly food. It’s not forceful; Daewon holds them out, open-palmed like how he would to a pet. He feeds Sanghyuk hotteok and pieces of kimbap alternating with fruit like grape or apple. 

By the time the dishes are done, Sanghyuk is full for once without even being aware of it. He doesn’t think about the food sloshing in his stomach and doesn’t care whether the food he ate was good or bad, fatty or not. He just knows that Daewon wants the best for him, was taking care of him. Nothing like that had ever happened before. Not with his other Sirs.

They starve him, and then make him gain weight only to starve him again. Food has never been a source of comfort or energy for Sanghyuk. It has only ever been a source of pain and a loss of control.

Daewon unties the rope from Sanghyuk’s wrist and massages where the skin was pinching slightly, lightly muttering words of praise. He inspects the plates as the boy stands quietly at the side, and he can’t help the tired smile that comes onto his face when Daewon his face and tells him how good he is and how proud he is of him.

They do the routine again the next day just for good measure. Daewon has Sanghyuk kneel on a cushion next to his chair, and feeds Sanghyuk bits of food from a separate plate. He doesn’t push Sanghyuk off when the boy sleepily leans against his thigh, and doesn’t “tsk” when Sanghyuk pulls away from the cup of water Daewon tips into his mouth when he’s had enough to drink. For the first time in a very long time, Sanghyuk stomachs every meal he has (dessert, even) and his throat doesn’t purge reflexively with every swallow.

But the most amazing thing is, not once does Daewon let him come up from his subdrop alone. He makes sure he’s warm enough, comfortable enough, and doesn’t leave his side until he’s very sure Sanghyuk is back to himself. The boy goes to sleep that night with food in his stomach for once, safe in his own skin.

As the days pass, Sanghyuk stops thinking of food as “good” or “bad”. Daewon breaks that wall with showing him how all food is necessary, even the high calorie ones. It still takes him terribly long to eat – Daewon once had to sit next to him for over an hour watching him eat a small bowl of oatmeal, trying to breathe through his panic attacks miserably as he did – and on some days it’s hard for him to keep his food down, but he never makes the decision to starve anymore.

***

Every single time Daewon respects and validates his safewording is another time Sanghyuk feels like he’s ready to become a person again.

It builds to the point where he spends an entire night holding back tears, curled up onto himself, trying to breathe, feeling all the emotion he was denied from on his skin all at once like he’s just come out of a fire, bad memories with safewords all burned off with the hell flames. It feels good to have your safeword respected, even better to realize that he as a person can be respected. He thinks he understands what Daewon means by re-writing trauma.

He wakes up the next day with tired eyes and a smile on his face, feeling not quite the same boy he was the night before.

***

Sanghyuk startles awake and his hands instinctively loosen. His chopsticks drop on the table. “Sorry. I was just –”

“It’s alright,” Daewon has a semi-amused smile on his face as he grabs another piece of kimchi. “Have you been sleeping okay?”

“Yeah.” Sanghyuk says, and it’s obviously too rapid a response to be even half believable.

“Are you lying to me?”                                      

Daewon has a cheeky look on his face, eyebrows quirked on one side, but Sanghyuk’s heart can’t help but almost stop. He figures he’s already been caught and already has his punishment coming, so might as well stop lying.

“Y – Yes.”

He startles at the next sound.                                              

“It’s the nightmares isn’t it?”

Sanghyuk doesn’t speak, doesn’t want to let Daewon into his head.

Daewon waits for a response and when he doesn’t get one, he just picks up his chopsticks and continues eating like it’s no big deal.

“I have them sometimes too, you know.” Daewon  “I’m pretty sure every human being has them at one point or another.”

He picks up a piece of meat and places it in Sanghyuk’s bowl.  “Most of my nightmares are about my subs. Sometimes I dream about not being able to save them, about them returning to where they were before they left… Sometimes I freak out about myself losing control with Domming. Byungjun tells me I worry too much, but I don’t think so. I think I just… care too much. I think. I dunno.”

Sanghyuk’s curious now, and Daewon can see it.

“I’ll show you something.” Daewon grins and lifts up the corner of his shirt.

Right below his left ribs, is a huge scar, new skin white and translucent. Sanghyuk has one that almost matches it in size on the left side of his back, but it isn’t as thick. It’s gnarly, raised and burningly red, but its thin.

“The wound was so huge, it couldn’t heal on its own on time so they had to graft skin from somewhere else.” Daewon laughs. “Wanna guess where?”

Sanghyuk looks up and says slowly, “Where?”

“My .” The Dom scratches the back of his neck in a sort of embarrassment, chuckling. “They had to graft it from my .”

“Seriously?” Sanghyuk says before he can control himself but Daewon doesn’t even seem to notice his lack of self-restraint.

“Seriously.” Daewon grins, then tucks it away gently. “Which is why when I look at it now, I don’t think about the Dom that stabbed me for convincing his sub to leave him. I just think about how the skin was from my and I laugh... It’s what I try to do for all my subs, or at least the ones who have had history of abuse. I try to replace that image of Doms being violent or manipulative with someone they can lean on and trust with their life. Then maybe they can one day look back at it and laugh.”

Sanghyuk mulls over it quietly.                                                 

“Do you want pills for sleeping?” Daewon suggests. “I’m sure we could get you some.”

Sanghyuk shakes his head.

Daewon frowns. “You’ve got to sleep somehow.”                                     

“I know, I know. I can do it, I promise. I just have to – have to, get used to – the – the,” Sanghyuk gestures his arms vaguely, because how do you tell someone that you still feel like you’re not allowed to sit on furniture? How do you tell someone that you’re not the same as them? That you’ve had all the human conditioned out of you?

But, of course, as always, nothing comes out. Sanghyuk looks up desperately at the Dom, and Daewon swears he can see tears starting to form. The boy looks like he’s done something wrong, like he’s expecting punishment for being tired.

“Okay, sorry,” Daewon says. “Is it me? The fact that Hongbin isn’t here?”

Sanghyuk shakes his head. It’s kind of the reason, but not exactly.

He’s trusts Daewon, but he doesn’t trust what Daewon is.

“The stress?” Daewon tries again.

Sanghyuk shakes his head. He’s starting to get anxious from the fact that maybe Daewon won’t ever guess the right answer and he’ll never be able to tell him, ever.

But Daewon is not the kind of person that gives up. “Is it the furniture?”  

The boy nods, with a sliver of relief. “It’s still a bit h – hard, trying to – be okay, with, not feeling like – yeah, like, – yeah.”

That night, Daewon brings out blankets and lays them out on the floor of Sanghyuk’s room. He sleeps a lot better.

***

Sanghyuk has to relearn the word no.                             

Daewon realizes this when one day he flat out asks Sanghyuk to do something that was never on the contract.

He asks Sanghyuk to him off, and the boy just goes to his knees even though he’s scared and breathing so hard he might pass out.

It’s easy for abused subs to relearn the traffic light system once they get into scenes with a good Dom that respects their safeword. A couple of times safewording, and they know they deserve respect. What feels like walking up mountains, though, is knowing how to say no to a bad Dom in the first place, even before they get into that headspace of traffic lights and safe pain. With Sanghyuk, disobedience isn’t even a remote option when faced with a Dom. Even if he’s in dangerous situation, it doesn’t occur to him.

Which is going to be a problem if he’s going to have to see his Sirs in court.

When Sanghyuk starts to fumble at the zip on Daewon’s pants, Daewon is the one that safewords. And then Sanghyuk becomes boneless, like the relief washing over him is too much too soon, and he curls up fetal on the floor. Daewon rubs circles in his back and nurses him back up from his rapid subdrop.

No sounds like such a simple word. Mono-syllabic. Easy for anyone to say.

But for Sanghyuk it feels like he gets physically hurt when he says it. Jolted in the back of his head. Maybe it’s learned. It sure feels like it. His body can’t forget the pain associated with the word.

So he’s standing in front of Daewon for the eighth damned time today, arms at his side, trembling, trying not to go down on his knees. Again.

There’s sweat running down his back in streaks and his hair is falling everywhere. Daewon doesn’t allow him to wash up before pulling him up to his feet and getting him to try again.

The Dom circles Sanghyuk, and the boy can feel the eyes roaming up and down his body. He shudders internally, biting onto his tongue for dear life, and he’s afraid he’ll accidentally clench down onto it too hard, biting it off completely. But at least then he’ll never have to say another word again. 

They’re both having a hard time. Honestly, right now, Daewon wants to er punch himself in the face, wants to quit this – whatever this is – completely. These are days where being a Dominant is so ing hard, especially with troubled subs. But he focuses on what’s most important, forces himself to spit the words out, snarling and curling on his tongue. “I want you to strip.”

Sanghyuk’s hands automatically go to peel off his shirt, but even as he’s doing so, he’s relentlessly begging, “red, please, red, red, red, please, don’t make me do this, I can’t–”

“I don’t want you to safeword. We’re not in a scene.” Daewon continues to circle, looking out attentively for where Sanghyuk looks like he’s coming apart (more than he already is). And its true. They’re not in a scene. He’s not even using his Dom voice. Sanghyuk needs to know the difference. “You can do it. Come on.”

Sanghyuk’s knees give in and he lets himself fall. Daewon catches the boy that’s apologizing non-stop in his arms, everything coming out of his mouth garbled and unintelligible. Daewon whispers softly in his ear, words of “you can do this, I know you can, I know it’s hard, but you only have to do it once, then I’ll take care of you, then I can bring you back up”, waits until the boy can think through the mush of his brain, and makes him stand still again, pulling his shirt back on.

“Take off your clothes and kneel.” Daewon is determined to make this the last time. He doesn’t think either of them are going to get out of this intact if they do it another time. He’s already feeling so exhausted and on the brink of tears, he can’t believe how terribly worn out the boy must feel.

Sanghyuk is crying when he starts to kneel – full-blown crying, snot running down his nose kind of crying. “I don’t want to, p – please.”

I don’t want to is an improvement, so Daewon pushes. Pushes, and tries to be nothing less than professional for Sanghyuk.

“I don’t think you heard me correctly. I said, take your clothes off.”                  

Sanghyuk’s body is wracked with sobs. “Please, please, please, I –”

“Strip.”

Then something in Sanghyuk clicks, and he stills like a gun waiting to be fired. “N – No. No.”

And in a second, there are strong arms around him, scooping him up and carrying him onto the couch. There are hands patting him, rubbing his back, wiping the sweat off his forehead, caressing his face. He has absolutely no more energy left in his body, he’s so tired but so close to just – hyperventilating, that he doesn’t know what to do. He’s panting and he can’t get enough oxygen into his lungs, just wants to sleep and maybe just sleep forever. But all of a sudden there’s a really, really sharp pain in his chest, sharper than he has ever known in a long time, and he scrambles to get away from the hold, to regain some space.

He feels his tailbone slam against the floor and he draws his knees up to his chest instinctively, pain snapping his head into reality. “I need – I just need to, breathe, I c – can’t – I can’t breathe –”

“I know, it’s okay, it’s okay,” Daewon says, voice so gentle that even through the fog, Sanghyuk can’t believe a Dom could sound so genuine, so kind. “Take your time, take it easy. Slow, now.”

He tries, but he only makes it half-way. And Daewon has to help him with the rest, kneeling in front of him, his hair and trying to get Sanghyuk to match his breathing. It hurts to fill his lungs up with air but Daewon talks him through it, through the pain – all the pain.

And slowly, the pain shifts and morphs until it is no longer.  

***

The next day, they do it again. It takes him two times to get the words out but this time, he doesn’t kneel. Its an accomplishment, even if Sanghyuk doesn’t 100% know what the aim of the exercise is. Daewon is so proud, he lets Sanghyuk read longer than he usually lets him, and lets Sanghyuk cook whatever he wants for lunch.

They go out for steak that night, and Daewon treats Sanghyuk to a churro, the best he’s ever tasted. Warm syrup explodes in his mouth with a burst of sweetness, and he burns his tongue with how fast he’s eating but he can’t stop because its so good. He looks up at Daewon in disbelief, and says “Wow. This is crazy.”

Daewon laughs with a tinge of pride and says, “And it’s only from McDonalds, dude. Imagine the real ones.”

Sanghyuk takes another bite, smiles in disbelief at how good it is, and without looking up, casually asks, “McDonalds?”

Daewon stuns. “No way.” 

Sanghyuk takes another bite. “Is it really pop – pop – ular…?"

There is a slight accent in the way he says it, like he can’t wrap his tongue around the word properly.

Daewon corrects him, “Popular”, but then moves on, staring in disbelief. “Wait, no, you’ve never had McDonalds before?”

“Mm-hm.” Sanghyuk nods. “Never. What is it?”

Daewon has literally never found himself more speechless in his entire life.

***

They spend an hour just walking around the district, and Daewon buys whatever Sanghyuk says he’s never had before. It’s a lot that the boy hasn’t tried, so they go home with bags and bags and bags of food, enough for them to have junk for weeks in a row.