Running to You | Park Han + JL + Steven | Haneulz + Stejay AU

Chapter 84: The Lowest Point

Steven froze in the doorway, tray trembling slightly. "JL -- "

"I can't bear it." JL's eyes looked defeated, haunted. "You seeing me like this. I can't."

"I don't care that you can't walk. I love you exactly as you are -- "

"That's why you have to go." JL's voice broke. "Please, Steven. Please."

Steven set the tray down with infinite care. His throat worked, swallowing words that wanted to pour out. "I don't want to leave you."

"But you will. Because I'm asking."

The silence stretched between them, taut with everything unsaid. 

Steven found Han outside later that night. In the hallway, in the dark.

For a while, neither spoke.

Then Steven whispered, so brokenly soft, "He needs someone who can pull him out of this."

Han's face was still hard. But his voice was quieter. "Yes."

"And it's not me."

The words hung there, too painful to catch.

Steven looked away first, blinking back his own collapse.

"You love him too," Han said.

"I do." Steven's breath hitched. "But I don't have what it takes to fight him. Not like you do."

Han's fists clenched at his sides.

"I hate watching him like this," Steven whispered. "But if you're the one who can reach him -- then do it. Even if he hates you for it."

Han nodded once. And for a moment, his voice broke too.

"I will."

* * * 

Steven kept his word and left the next morning. 

Which left Han alone with JL's rage.

"Get up," Han announced the next morning, pulling back curtains.

"Leave me alone."

"You need to do your exercises."

"I need you to get out." JL's voice was sharp, cutting. "Why are you even here? We don't even have a real relationship. We are nothing."

Han didn't respond, just moved to help JL sit up. JL's hand shot out, shoving weakly at Han's chest.

"Don't touch me."

But Han's hands were already under JL's arms, lifting with steady pressure. JL's fists beat against his chest -- weak impacts that Han absorbed without flinching.

And Han stayed.

He developed routines that felt like rituals. Every morning: check for bedsores, massage the legs that couldn't feel it, clean whatever needed cleaning. The basin of warm water. The soft cloths. The careful ministrations that JL neither asked for nor acknowledged.

"You don't have to do this," JL rasped once, on a particularly bad morning when Han was cleaning vomit from his hair. "I didn't ask you to do this."

Han didn't respond. There was nothing to say that wouldn't sound like pity or obligation. He just kept working, wiping bile from JL's chin, changing sweat-soaked shirts, pretending this was normal. That this was what love looked like -- not poetry or passion, but the methodical removal of bodily fluids from someone who'd given up.

The worst part wasn't the smell or the silence or even the thanklessness of it. The worst part was how JL's beauty persisted beneath the degradation. 

Even unwashed, even hollow-eyed, even with vomit crusted at the corners of his mouth -- he was still devastatingly himself. That sharp jawline, those expressive features, all of it wasted on a body that had become a prison.