[T/W]: mention of scars, suicidal thoughts, anxiety attacks/hyperventilation

It seems like the world is in upheaval, and everything is happening at once. But strangely, for the first time in a very long time, Sanghyuk is in the eye of the storm. He’s enjoying relatively peaceful days, but it’s only because no one is telling him anything.

Hongbin says not to worry and that he’s just sorting out stuff with Minki, so he doesn’t have time to spare. Except he says it in a way that makes Sanghyuk feel like a small child, as if he can be bribed by a few promises or placations. Sanghyuk would like to think he’s more than that but Hongbin is smarter than him, and so it may be all the better. Sanghyuk wants to say let me help, and he wants to say thank you or anything at all, but Hongbin is always out the door before he can really build up the bravery to do it. Sanghyuk sometimes picks up the phone to call but he gets so afraid that Hongbin might be mad, he just puts it back down again. He lets himself get dropped off at Nakhun’s house – occasionally Hakyeon’s place when Taekwoon has an off day, but he never goes to the company anymore. He’s too scared, and even though he has never really been brave in his life, he thinks he’s a little bit less sociable now because of the incident.

But he doesn’t mind Hongbin’s friends. They don’t touch him, or get too close unless they really have to. They don’t prod too much, or ask too many questions when he gets too “sick” to do anything except sleep. They lend out their couches to him, and kitchens.

Yoon teaches him how to bake everything under the sun, and tells him its okay to call him hyung, which is nice. Yoon has a dance studio, and spends the rest of his time lounging around the house when he’s not dancing. Together, they bake cakes (no peanut butter) and bread and chewy chocolate chip cookies, and Sanghyuk thinks he finds himself in the smell of the kitchen after a fresh batch of pastries. He loses himself in perusing online recipes and cracking open age old recipe books tucked away in the dusty top cupboard.

He’s enjoying relatively smooth days. Perhaps not smooth nights, because he still gets nightmares, but the days flow on like the steady, reassuring thrum of a river. He structures a routine that he follows day in, day out, and uses his post-it pad religiously. He is starting to learn all his points of weakness, and on days when he’s feeling particularly strong he can stop himself from dissociating completely. Most times it doesn’t work and he gets stuck in his head too deep, but as long as he can get himself to move – to bake, to do whatever Yoon needs him to do, he can pretend that he’s still living in his own body. Which is the best he can do on some days.

Hongbin is busy a lot, but he still tries to hang out with Sanghyuk whenever he can. They still watch movies, and Hongbin still helps him with chemistry and math. But no one explains anything to him – maybe they’re smart enough to know that Sanghyuk is too stupid to discuss important things with. It makes sense, but it doesn’t mean it hurts any less.

Sanghyuk keeps the frustration tightly wound up, and close to his chest. He has lived for lesser, with lesser before. It’s a piece of cake to deal with this. There are lots of things he’s willing to trade to continue living, no matter how terrible the life he ends up with gets.

But then, just like it always does, Sanghyuk gets whirled into the storm again.

***

He gets a text from Hongbin – a one liner, with a full stop at the end. That never happens, and immediately, warning sirens go off in his head; the warning of an incoming storm.

I’m coming to pick you up and we’re going home, right now.

Sanghyuk lifts himself up onto his feet with his ever-shaky hands, and even though he can feel the lack of blood making him dizzy, he pushes forward.  He walks straight to the kitchen and from there he loses all sense of time. The fear starts from his fingers that slide the phone open to show the message, then spreads all the way through, until his stomach is tense with bundled nerves.  

He’s reduced to thoughts of anxiety, he feels like he’s nothing more than vibrations, pacing up and down the kitchen, breathing in tiny gasps, holding onto reality by short spurts of animalistic instinct to take in air. He wrings his hands but its no use. He can feel safety, and everything he’s been taught the past few months slipping away from him.

He tries to pull himself up from the darkness of his mind even though he can physically feel his own brain sinking deeper, but after a while he gives up, thinking that Hongbin might hurt him less if he’s pliable and obedient.

And maybe it’s a few minutes later, or maybe it’s an entire hour, but suddenly he looks up and Taekwoon is staring back at him, holding a yogurt cup nonchalantly as he leans against the kitchen door.  

“What are you doing?”                                                                              

For a moment, the words do not register and Sanghyuk hates himself even more because Ravi has been trying so hard to get Sanghyuk to read, write, listen well – stupid, stupid, stupid. But he realizes that the words only seem foreign for the first few seconds because the words in his own head, sounding so painfully like him and a thousand other angry voices, are flashing by so quickly that they hardly make any sense.

“I – uh, I –” Sanghyuk clamps his mouth shut after that, so terrified of puking and making a mess that he decides to just chew on his inner cheek.  

“You okay?” Taekwoon sets his cup down on the counter (he’s getting closer, Sanghyuk realizes belatedly: his vision is too messed up to have any sense of depth at this point).

Then before Sanghyuk can drop to his knees, before he can start pleading for Taekwoon to please stop advancing or to please just tell him what he needs to do to be good, the doorbell rings and he jumps involuntarily, feeling lunch rise up his throat. As Taekwoon goes to answer it, he quickly grabs a few biscuits off the counter and stuffs them in his pockets. In case he doesn’t get food later.

He has been twelve and starved against his will before. He doesn’t want that to happen again, not when he has food all the time now.

But the next thing he knows, Hongbin is walking into the kitchen, his shoes still on, grabbing him painfully by his wrist. He lets himself be guided out, lagging behind like some sort of a dog, heart beating thickly and eyes empty.

He doesn’t hear Taekwoon calling after them.                                            

***

Hakyeon has had a nagging feeling in his gut for the past few weeks. At first he thinks it’s maybe the new issue of magazines, so he checks and checks until he’s sure there’s not even a single typo, but the feeling still stays.

He starts to rewind his days, working his way backwards when he’s on the verge of falling asleep at night, and then on a whim, he decides to pull security footage from the day of the café. At first, as the tape plays, nothing seems wrong. He almost stops playing it halfway through, ready to dismiss his gut feeling as unnecessary paranoia, because everything is exactly as what Sanghyuk had told them. He went to collect his cake, then something triggered him – a smell, or maybe a voice, he doesn’t remember – and that’s why he bolted.

But then something catches Hakyeon’s attention.       

From the grainy corner of the screen, he watches as a man approaches Sanghyuk. Gets so close it’s uncomfortable for Hakyeon even through the security cameras, and leans forward to say something in Sanghyuk’s ear.

Hakyeon almost can’t believe it, so he plays it back again. The man is still there, and this time Hakyeon is almost sure he’s an employee.

He picks up his phone and waits for Hongbin to pick up.

***

Sanghyuk’s body brings him up the stairs and into the apartment, steeling itself against the blow towards the back of his head that never comes. Hongbin pushes past him to unlock the door and he steps inside, careful not to touch anything – this isn’t his home anymore, even though – even though Hongbin promised. Someone definitely promised him he always has a home here.

He stops short, shaking lightly in the dining room as Hongbin pauses to lean against the couch, arms folded with a barely controlled anger.

“What happened at the café that day?” Sanghyuk flinches at Hongbin’s voice that strikes base like thunder. “I thought you told me nothing happened, that you freaked out?”

Sanghyuk doesn’t say anything.                                                                                         

“Why did you lie to me?” Hongbin says next.

“I didn’t, I – ah –”                                                                                                                              

“You saw someone, didn’t you?” Hongbin draws himself up to full height. From where Sanghyuk stands he looks so big. “Why don’t you go ahead and tell me who he is?”

“He’s not real, he’s not – He wasn’t real – I was just imagining him – I – I was seeing things –” Sanghyuk starts to babble, starts to sweat, starts to tell himself that there’s still a chance for salvation.

But then Hongbin starts to shout, and Sanghyuk knows all is lost, “What the , Sanghyuk? You see things now? And you didn’t think to ing tell me?”. In the distance there is the scraping of a chair leg against the floor as Sanghyuk backs up from where Hongbin is slowly approaching him. And there are too many sounds attacking him all at once, and his heart is beating so fast, and he feels himself falling backwards onto the ground when the chair gives way, and, and –

It only takes Hongbin three seconds to realize, but by then it’s too late.                    

“Oh no, oh no, , oh no, Hyuk-ah,” Hongbin carefully crouches down, moving almost entirely on his knees to where Sanghyuk slumps on the floor, his entire upper body weight supported by his good hand. Sanghyuk’s bad hand curls up next to him, like its not sure whether to submit or defend. “No, no, no, I’m sorry, I was just scared, I didn’t mean to shout, I promise. Oh my god, I’m so sorry. Hyuk-ah? I’m sorry – I – Can you hear me?”

Nothing works for a good minute, not even shaking Sanghyuk by his shoulders. The boy just sits there, staring blankly at Hongbin with a frightened, wide gaze that shifts, as if he’s trying to remember exactly who Hongbin is. He’s unmoving, which scares Hongbin more than anything else, because no matter how scared Sanghyuk gets he at least still has tremors. Hongbin hadn’t seen him check out this bad since the early days.

Then Hongbin starts to freak out, because nothing is working. Because maybe – just maybe, this could be the one time Sanghyuk never comes back and it would all be his fault. He starts to run his fingers along his scarred wrist, subconsciously thinking of blood, and no matter how many times he begs for Sanghyuk to recognize him the boy just can’t seem to remember to know how.

Hongbin is well into suicidal thoughts and he’s a quick second away from calling Daewon, or Nakhun, or anyone before he remembers one last trick. He runs to get the worry stone from Sanghyuk’s room, where it always is on the table, and presses it into the boy’s hands, holding a firm grip over Sanghyuk’s fingers, just hoping that the stone is as magical as Sanghyuk makes it out to be.

“Please, please, please, please,” Hongbin starts to rock on the balls of his feet, staring intently at Sanghyuk like that would make his memories come back faster.

Then there is a flutter of fingers beneath Hongbin’s hand and Sanghyuk blinks, eyes squinting back into focus.

“. , I’m sorry.” Hongbin lets go, and almost wants to collapse with relief when Sanghyuk’s hand squeezes around the stone by itself. “I’m sorry. You’re Han Sanghyuk. I’m sorry I shouted. I didn’t –”

“Hyung?” Sanghyuk’s voice is tiny, and far away, and Hongbin’s stomach flips violently because he put that hurt there. “I’m sorry – I – Don’t hurt me. I’ll listen, ‘kay? Don’t – I’ll listen, I’ll listen – Don’t hurt me, I don’t – I can’t remember what – I – Please, I’ll listen –“

 “No, no, no, I’m not going to hurt you, I promise. I promise.” Hongbin feels the tears well up in his eyes, and a few fall when he blinks. “I’m so ing sorry, I didn’t mean to shout. It wasn’t even angry I was just so scared. It’s all my fault. .”

Sanghyuk still looks confused, and Hongbin is about to run away from his own up because he doesn’t think he can fix this, not now, not ever, but then suddenly the boy says, as if no wrongdoing had been done to him at all, “Don’t cry, hyung.”  

Hongbin leans forwards and collapses into Sanghyuk with relief, and they both almost fall to the floor but Sanghyuk manages to catch him in time. He cries some more even though he doesn’t want to, because there was a moment where he legitimately felt twelve again, felt like he was being scolded by his mother for messing up something he didn’t mean to.

And there is a lot of weight between the both of them in this friendship. But this is the first time Hongbin realizes that maybe Sanghyuk could forgive him for the person he isn’t and for all the goodness he cannot seem to achieve.