𝗟𝗢𝗩𝗘 𝗔𝗡𝗗 𝗔𝗟𝗟 𝗢𝗙 𝗧𝗛𝗘 𝗦𝗢𝗥𝗧𝗦. ❥ a pluto side story.

BONUS.viii | mania

➪. MANIA.
obsessive love, jealous of everything, toxic.
ALSO USED TO: describe wen junhui and xu minghao's love.

TAKES PLACE BEFORE PLUTO

junhui and minghao were high school sweethearts. sort of. their friends mingyu and wonwoo were as well, and they saw breaking up as too much of an effort.

so they just stayed together. sort of.

for them, their relationship straight out of high school was easy. they loved each other, and they had even moved out together.

things would be alright. sort of.

junhui didn't know that he was supposed to be scared of himself. he didn't know that he had no idea how to take care of someone other than himself. and he definitely didn't know that he had no clue how to love someone properly.

when he'd been growing up, his mother and father didn't have the strongest relationship going on. he didn't exactly notice this (being a child and all), but there were subtle hints over the years. things were so bad that he'd have to stay with his aunt for a few days at a time some months. whenever he got back, his mother would have some faint scars or might even be out.

there was one day when junhui was around 11, in which he came home from school, nearly stepping on a piece of broken glass as he entered through the front door. "dad?"

no response. he looked at the glass on the floor, finding a bit of dirt there alongside a few flowers. his mother's favourite vase.

where was his mother?

"mom?" junhui navigated through the glass, keeping his shoes on despite knowing how much his dad hated dirt, sand, and little pebbles getting tracked into the house.

it didn't take long for him to find his mother, shivering behind the couch and bleeding.

"mom!"

she was too weak to answer, looking as through she was about to pass out. junhui was in a panic, reaching as quickly as he could for the home phone.

it was... rough. when his dad arrived at the hospital (probably not completely sober) he had to tell him what had happened. his dad didn't seem surprised, but still came inside and waited with him.

"dad?" junhui had asked after some time. "why did you hurt mom?"

his dad was silent, almost as if he was a bit stunned. "because i love her."

"but why would you hurt her if you love her?"

"because i want her to look her best. but she doesn't look good right now, so i have to help her. one day, she'll be nice and skinny and happy."

and junhui accepted that answer. it wasn't like he knew any better. after all, he didn't have any friends. he didn't go over to other houses and see how any of his peer's parents treated each other. he didn't go online too often either. he could see that what was happening in his house was bad.

he didn't know where the thoughts started. when he started waking up next to minghao and finding him unattractive. but he did.

so he figured that he might as well follow what his father had done. the words started off as suggestions, getting harsher and harsher. he was meaner and meaner to minghao, and then he hit his boyfriend for the first time.

junhui really didn't know what was bubbling up in him. he'd been finding more and more to critique about minghao. not just how he looked, but how he dressed and acted in public. they had to keep their loving mask on outside, of course, but that just meant more issues.

he didn't even remember what he'd said, but he couldn't forget what minghao looked like one the slap hit his cheek. he looked betrayed.

they broke up not too long afterwards.

the thing was, junhui had realized that minghao couldn't exactly escape. he didn't have a job and the older was... growing into his father with the whole drinking ordeal. it was a little hard for them to get accustomed to their new relationship (especially with junhui finding something wrong with minghao every five seconds), but they eventually figured things out. they were merely roommates now.

junhui thought that maybe minghao would start to find a job after their breakup, but the younger didn't seem to be making any moves to. the older had overheard a conversation that minghao had with wonwoo, in which he stated that he was going this for junhui's sake.

junhui also noticed how rough minghao was getting. the latter always put him first, despite them not being in a relationship anymore. he always cooked for him and took care of him, picking him up from the nearby bar that he always managed to find himself stumbling into frequently. junhui was the breadwinner, and minghao was the caretaker. he had little focus on himself, not eating much, but junhui only saw this as improvement.

minghao also had things that he liked to do himself. he had a little notebook with him almost all the time, one that junhui had never looked into. he didn't think that anything the younger had to do that wasn't benefitial to him was stupid, of course, so this was predictable.

let's set another scene: junhui, pissed as fuck, walking into his house and wanting nothing more than to sleep, passing out drunk being an optional path. minghao didn't appear at the doorway the moment that he entered the house, but he didn't even care.

upon entering his bedroom, he found that his bed was stripped of it's sheets. so long to that good sleep. junhui made his way back down the stairs, grabbing a bottle of wine from the kitchen and downing half of in like it was a shot.

minghao chose this moment to enter the kitchen, eyes trained on the bottle in junhui's hands.

"xu minghao, where are my bedsheets?"

"um..." minghao didn't break eye contact with the bottle.

"xu minghao, look at me when i'm talking to you. and i asked you a question."

the younger looked up. "they're in the wash. i didn't notice they were dirty, so i just decided to throw them into the laundry–"

"i wanted to sleep, you know. do you even know how shitty my day has been?!"

"no, but i had no idea that you wanted to sleep. i–"

"you can't do anything right, can you?"

"well, it's not my fault, but–"

"can you fucking shut up already?" junhui threw the bottle on the ground, wine and glass all over the hardwood floor. "clean that up."

he walked out of the kitchen, but felt the slightest bit bad. he remembered what he'd seen that day when he was 11, minghao probably shivering just as his mother had been.

" just because you know you're colourblind doesn't mean you can see the colours "
― jaidenanimations & boyinaband, " empty "

***

i just imagine that junhui's mother was actually forced into a marriage by her parents but that's something he'd only find out after his behaviour changes