say you love me | choi beomgyu 최범규

⌦ 23

"i'll walk you to the bus stop!" she beamed.

"no, no, it's fine. you don't have to!" he waved his hands at her. "you should eat some breakfast and i'll just text you once i get on the bus."

haeri shook her head at him and opened the front door. "nope, i'm walking you to the bus stop. let's go!" she gestured for him to walk out the house.

beomgyu picked up his bag and hesitantly followed her outside the house. "you seriously don't have to..."

"yeah, but i want to!" she told him, locking the door before interlocking their arms. "plus, it's just down the street, so it's just like i'm taking a little morning stroll, you know?"

he sighed. "if you say so."

༺♡༻

approaching the beaten up maroon door of his home, beomgyu let out a heavy sigh of despair as he could already hear the blaring sound of the television from outside. that meant that his uncle was in fact home and was sitting in the room right beside the front door.

as much as beomgyu would love to just sneak back in through a window, he knew from experience that his uncle would catch him in the act as he always had. somehow the tv just wasn't loud enough to ever block out the creaking of the windows as they opened and closed.

the boy reached for the doorknob with a shaky hand and slowly opened the door halfway. he cautiously stepped inside through the gap and shut the door as quietly as possible, not wanting to alert his uncle of his return just yet.

beomgyu allowed himself the time to prep himself for what he knew was about to come by carefully untying his shoes and placing them neatly on the shoe rack.

you're used to this already, beomgyu. it's the same routine as always. just a few minutes and he'll go back to ignoring your existence for the rest of the day. just get through those few minutes, no matter how hard it may be, and you can be free for the remainder of the day. sounds easy enough, right?

tw : physical & verbal abuse/violence (ends at the ✧)

but, no matter how much he tried to assure himself he'd be fine, he couldn't stop his body from trembling in fear because he knew that there was no guarantee that he would be okay. he was already well aware that he wouldn't walk out of that living room unscathed; he never had. a couple of blows to his body and a few to his self esteem. that's how it always was.

to mentally prepare himself one last time, beomgyu took a deep breath and slowly released it before forcing himself to step foot into the living room where his uncle laid sprawled across the couch with his can of beer in hand.

"look who decided to show up." his uncle grumbled as soon as he caught sight of his nephew. he crushed the empty can and let it drop to the ground, then sat up and pushed the power button on the remote.

beomgyu watched as he did so and while the absence of the loud tv volume was nice, he was sure that he would prefer listening to that over his uncle. maybe the tv would've even drowned out his uncle's voice and saved the boy's self esteem from being even further damaged.

"so you decided that sleeping on the streets would be better than being with me, is that it?" the man questioned as he approached beomgyu. he delivered a shove to the boy's shoulder, "you should be grateful i took you in and kept a roof above your head, do you hear me?"