It's finally back up! I haven't gotten my assignment marks back but I've talked to the teacher and she said it should be okay so I'm putting it back up ^^ Sorry to everyone who waited so long!

Pairing; Xiuchen
Words; 1487
Notes/Warnings; mentions of side-character death, deliberate starvation, ty angst
Inspired by this and this wonderful piece of fanart

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His eyes open in the darkness and he sits up abruptly, covers falling off him. Jongdae stares wildly around the room before he realises what’s going on, and his heartbeat starts to slow. He’s in his bedroom, he can see the stray moonlight hiding behind the drawn curtains and breathing a soft, dull glow to the dark room. He’s still here, he’s still alive. Jongdae lies back down and covers his eyes with an arm but as soon as he does images streak through his eyelids and he finds himself stumbling out of bed and wrenching open the door of his room, letting his instincts navigate him to the bathroom since he seems to have lost all senses. He manages to get as far as the bathtub before the second wave of nausea hits him like a bolt of lightning (he thinks it quite ironic) and Jongdae’s body tries to vomit the guilt out of him for the sixth time in four days. Nothing comes but saliva and a series of dry heaves that makes him wish he had actually eaten something when the others had pleaded him to. But he knows that come morning he won’t act on that regret, so he doesn’t see a point in dwelling on the thought. Although nothing turned up to paint the bathtub the nausea leaves a nasty feeling in his mouth, so Jongdae rinses it out before heading back. The curtains have been nudged aside by a breeze from the ajar window, letting the moon pinpoint a full-length mirror in the corner for Jongdae to see as soon as he comes through the door. It’s a plain mirror, white frame and stand giving it a look of innocence as it glints as him, beckoning. He sighs, and walks towards the mirror.

Stupid ing moon.

Jongdae shucks off his shirt while he’s at it, tossing it aside before he takes a deep breath, and steps in front of the full length mirror. What seems like an elaborate network of roots, or perhaps veins, run down the entirety of his right torso, spreading onto his arms and neck, creeping gently up to his face, leaving a blot on his cheek before curling around his nose. He traces one of the brown marks down his arm and a frown buries its way between his eyebrows. If only he’d been a little more careful, if only he hadn’t been such a cocky bastard none of this would have happened. But now Chanyeol is dead and he has the scars to prove how much he’d ed up. A nice little memento to whisper into his ear every. Single. Day for the rest of his life.

He doesn’t even notice the figure approaching him from behind until he feels cool fingers wind around his torso and a chin rest on his tainted shoulder.

“Stop staring at yourself and come back to bed.” Minseok mumbles, eyes hooded from drowsiness. “Why are you even up? It’s like, four in the morning.”

“Nightmare.” Jongdae replies, staring down at his feet. The scars had even stretched down to his toes.

“Oh.” A short silence in which Minseok rubs the pads of his fingers lightly across his abdomen. It feels soothing, and Jongdae lets his head lean against Minseok’s, breathing lightly. “It’ll all be fine, you know that right?”

“Yeah.” Jongdae replies quietly, uncertainly. Would it all be fine? Could Jongdae live like this, every day, feeling the weight of his crimes every time he glanced at his reflection? Every time he catches sight of the marks on his skin, every time he sees fire (whether that be a flickering candle or his stove), every time he thinks sees a tall, lanky figure out of the corner of his eye, splaying his palm to let flames curl around his fingertips, every time he whips his head around to find that he was just seeing things again, every time-

“Jongdae,” Minseok interrupts, “I can hear you thinking.” He presses his lips against Jongdae’s neck, where more scars lurk. Jongdae shudders slightly partly, but not entirely, at how cold the elder’s lips are.

He scrabbles up enough courage to look back up into the mirror, glancing over his own face before landing on Minseok. The man was wearing pyjama pants with a plain, low cut v-neck. One of Jongdae’s, if he wasn’t mistaken.

“It’s all going to be fine.” Minseok said softly, wrapping his arms more tightly around Jongdae’s waist and brushing his lips up to bury his face in Jongdae’s hair, just behind his ear. “It’s all going to be okay.”

Jongdae closes his eyes and prays that Minseok’s right. He peeks his eyes open to stare at the damage done to the other. Minseok’s skin looks as though a small toddler had coloured it in, multi-coloured crayons clutched in fat fists and scribbling away haphazardously. His arms are completely darkened, as though they had suffered a bad tan, but there were uneven blotches of chalky white that were pock marked with blisters. Jongdae cringes as his eyes trail up and land on his right shoulder. A blackened, waxy looking coating covers it like an oil spill, bubbling over his shoulder, slugging down his arm and leaking up to his neck. That was your fault, Jongdae reminds himself.

Your fault.

“Jongdae I swear if you don’t stop blaming yourself I’m going to freeze your fingers. It’s not your fault.” Can Minseok read minds? Was it possible to hold two powers? Jongdae thought not but Minseok seems to be challenging that.

He turns around, away from the mirror and buries his face in the crook of Minseok’s marred neck, clutching onto him tightly.

“My fault.” He whispers in a choked voice. “All my fault.”

“No.” Minseok replies firmly. “Not your fault.”

“Chanyeol…he…”

“We can’t change it, Jongdae. It’s done.”

“My fault.”

“His fault, our fault. We should have all been more careful.”

“You-your arms-“

“It’s not like it hasn’t happened before, and Yixing did as much as I would let him and it was more than enough to make sure I’ll heal.”

“Shoulder?”

“I’ve had worse.” He indicates towards his left ear, where Jongdae can see the section that had been frostbitten off. He never liked looking at that ear, if he could help it.

“I’m sorry.” Jongdae mumbles into Minseok’s blackened skin, but the other dismisses it and weaves their fingers together, starting to drag him back to the bed.

“The only thing you should be sorry about is how you’ve been eating nothing for the past week. Sleep, then have some breakfast in the morning.”

Jongdae doesn’t bother replying, fatigue hits him from the tears he can’t remember spilling and yet are drying on his cheeks. He falls rather than climbs back in, curling himself up against Minseok’s side as he climbs in afterwards. Letting the cool air engulf him dampens Chanyeol, as though when he died he left his fire behind, scorching it into Jongdae. He knows when he wakes up in the morning it’ll be back, he knows he’ll feel too sick to swallow even under Minseok’s intense gaze, he knows he’ll probably find himself shuddering awake in the middle of the night, feeling the tingling traces of fire and electricity burning through him as though it hadn’t been two months since the incident, he knows the moon will lead him back to the mirror in the corner of the room, the one Jongdae keeps telling himself he should break. He knows Minseok’ll be there again, wrapping himself up around Jongdae and muffling his thoughts into grey noise until he wakes up and the whole process repeats himself. Minseok knows what it’s like, to feel that guilt. Although it’s been two years it still sticks to the pit of his stomach like tar.  He thinks in a way he’s trying to make up for it by doing this, by staying at Jongdae’s side and keeping him grounded. As though by sacrificing his sleep and sanity he’s unravelling his sins, as though by begging Tao to stop Jongdae’s time every evening and spoon feeding him small increments of food the other won’t notice he’s asking for forgiveness from God, as though by keeping Jongdae just above the surface he can somehow pull Jongin out of the water too.

He wraps his arms a little tighter around the tiny frame of Jongdae, and closes his eyes. A small part of himself hopes that maybe tonight he’ll be able to get some sleep, but he knows it’s all in vain.

The moon lets out a breathy sigh, fanning out the curtains slightly before they fall back into place, smothering the light back down to blend in with the shadows. The two figures lie there in stillness, both of them breathing evenly but neither of them finding it in themselves to close their eyes and let their minds take over just yet.

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A/N

Inspired by ohsh(-it)’s MAMA AU series she is doing. Check her out on deviantart, tumblr, society 6, instagram and twitter

I totally did not mean for it to turn out like this I’m so sorry this was just really bitter and cold and lead to nowhere I don’t even think it was proper Xiuchen.

Just as a side note no, Chenyeol and Xiukai are not meant to be ships. Chanyeol is my bias (which for some reason means killing him every chance I get) and Jongin I just chose at random.

I was going to write the scene where Chanyeol dies but I couldn’t find a way to put it in smoothly and I didn’t want the introduction to be a dream sequence so oh well. If anyone’s curious I might write it up separately?

If you didn’t already know Yixing’s power is healing. Ohsh hasn’t yet done him and so I gave one to him; every time Yixing heals, it takes away from his own health, which is why Minseok wouldn’t let him heal the whole way (if you’re thinking I got the idea from Naruto’s Tsunade-you’re right)

(EDIT: She did Lay! I had the right gist ^^;)