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

Chapter 84: The Lowest Point

Sometimes Han would catch himself staring and feel sick with guilt. What kind of person noticed beauty in the middle of this? What kind of love was it that could catalog the precise angle of someone's cheekbones while cleaning the mess from their sheets?

* * * 

The screaming started the morning Han decided enough was enough. Two months of passive deterioration. Two months of JL sinking deeper into catatonia. 

"You're getting up," he announced, throwing open the windows to let in offensive amounts of fresh air. "We're starting today."

JL didn't even open his eyes. "No."

"This isn't a discussion."

"Leave."

But Han was already moving, hands firm on JL's shoulders, ignoring the flinch, the instinctive recoil. He pulled JL upright upon his legs, not violently but inexorably.

JL gasped like the motion had torn something inside him. His arms trembled, barely able to hold his own weight. Tears sprang immediate and involuntary to eyes that had seemed incapable of producing them anymore.

"It hurts -- "

"I know."

"I can't do it."

Han leaned closer, close enough to smell the sourness of JL's breath, close enough to see each individual eyelash clumped with dried tears. His own voice shook for the first time since this started.

"Yes, you can."

What followed was war.

Not the clean kind with rules and boundaries, but the messy, grinding kind where victory looked identical to defeat. 

Every morning Han would arrive to find JL curled away from the door, pretending sleep. Every morning Han would throw the curtains open, pull the blanket off his legs, and haul him upright while JL cursed with creativity that would have been impressive if it wasn't so heartbreaking.

"You bastard -- " JL would snarl, voice raw from screaming. "Stop it, stop it, I hate you -- "

"Then hate me," Han would whisper back, holding him steady while his body shook with the effort of remaining vertical. "But you will stay upright."

Some days JL threw things. A glass once, which shattered against the wall in a constellation of fury. Han swept up the pieces in silence, blood dripping from where the shards had nicked his fingers, while JL sobbed apologies that turned into fresh rage.

"You're insane," JL wept, face red and swollen. "I'll never walk. All this is for nothing."

"You want to run again."

"You don't know that!" The scream tore from JL's throat, primal and desperate. "You don't know anything! You don't know what it's like -- "

"I know you," Han's voice broke, finally, after weeks of holding steady. "I know you're still in there. And I know you want this, even if you can't remember why."

"What I want? What I want is to die."

The bad days were very bad.

Days when JL vomited from pain and medication and rage combined. When he soiled himself because moving to the bathroom required cooperation he wouldn't give. When Han had to hold him down to prevent him from clawing at his own useless legs, drawing blood with his nails like he could punish them into working.