Forewarning: Depictions of an anxiety attack and/or mental breakdown (last one, thankfully, I feel so bad writing this I'm putting him through so much I'm so sorry), suicidal thoughts, and descriptions that could potentially trigger emetophobia but nothing super graphic.
The car purred to a stop in the parking lot of the tall apartment building, engine humming into a silence as the older took the keys in his hands before exiting the vehicle. With hesitant steps, Jeongin slid out of the passenger seat and followed after him.
The interior appeared the same. A clean smell, a rich taste, the awe it once gave him turning into a familiar cringe to the point of nauseam. The plant with the punctured leaf on his first night visiting still sat in the corner alive as if it had never been damaged. It wasn't that long since he was last there, few days, a week at most, yet a chill collected on the walls and in corners he couldn't reach. A freeze glazing over the other people lounging in the lobby and the lively atmosphere it once had. His skin crawled, a shiver breaking out into goosebumps, and he drew his arms closer in on himself as his hands rubbed at his biceps. Trying to generate a heat he couldn't have.
As they stepped into the elevator, solid ground changing to a suspension from the highest ground, his knees buckled. He braced himself against the railing, managing to stay on his feet but the weakness in his body didn't leave him. This drowsiness washed over his nerves. A fuzziness in his head that wasn't there before, a vertigo in his ringing ears, the sleepless nights and void in his stomach catching up to consume him.
A hand quietly brushed against his, and Jeongin found himself leaning on the older in the elevator. Forehead to his collarbone, yet feeling nothing but a murky pattern in his touch. He thinks he might've heard someone asking if he was okay, or someone vying to talk to him but not being able to speak past a glass barrier. There was a reverb, an echo, the bass of a voice, but soft and unintelligible. He might've heard one voice, or two different ones, but it wouldn't have made a difference.
When the fog began to clear up, the supportive touch was slipping away. He might've tried to grab it back, fingers grazing his savior, to have a hand envelope his own.
One thing was for sure, he wasn't in an elevator. The ceiling was too vast and too far away to belong to an elevator, as well as a general comfort melting into his sore muscles that offered a mocking hug to him. A couch? It felt like a couch. It must have been. As he slowly pulled himself back from the edge of the world, the surroundings only confirmed his guess.
"How are you feeling?" The question cut through the last of the daze, a firm voice that called and grounded him back to reality.
Torn violently between wanting to attack the owner of the voice, and wanting the owner of the voice, Jeongin dropped the hand of the older next to him and rubbed lightly at his eyes. He muttered, "Like shit."
"Stay here," The street racer nodded before tossing his phone on the coffee table and beginning to walk away. He told softly, muttering more to himself as he made his way to the kitchen, "Get you something to drink, something to munch on too."
"I'm fine," Jeongin began to sit up, head screaming loud enough to send a wince through his features.
Chan whipped around, feet planting firmly to stand his ground. Jeongin outlined the tenseness in his shoulders with a tentative stare, bits of him curious and others saying not to trip landmines that may or may not have really existed in their world. He watched as Chan's shoulders struggled to straighten back up and his tone wavered, "Just this once, listen to me. Lay down. Stay there."
"Okay," Jeongin whispered the response after a few beats. His gaze still scanned the other. Even as he finally heeded his demand and carefully laid back on the couch, a wandering focus found it's way back to him every time. The younger breathed again as he settled, "Okay..."
Barely, the gentle exhale of a suppressed sigh came from the direction Chan was in before the sound of boots on linoleum filled his ears. He heard rummaging in cabinets, a faucet at some point, but Jeongin let his eyes fixate on the ceiling far above him and blocked out the noises around him.
There was not much else to do as he waited; he pressed his fingertips together, trying to press the pads in on themselves and make the joints ache; he played lightly will the strings of his hoodie, making knots in the pulls before untying and repeating for an excuse of entertainment; and counting the amount of lines he saw in the room, listing the shapes, telling himself that there wasn't anything odd about the room or anything that was misplaced. He had the smallest of suspicions that something was slightly ajar, but, never pressed on the theory. Instead, letting himself delve into his own mind he didn't dare trespass alone.
A vibration came from the coffee table. The reverberations sent tremors through the glass top, a needlessly loud announcement that attention should be drawn to it at any moment. Chan's phone. It rang and rang against the delicate surface.
He is on his phone a lot, maybe it's business? Jeongin propped himself up on a bruised elbow. He glanced to Chan who didn't seem to noticed the noise, too wrapped up in whatever he was doing, before looking back to the phone. It's vibrations died out as he did so, the end going silent as no one was demanding to talk with the older. He quietly began to lay back down.
Chan's phone went off again. Jeongin propped himself back up and watched the screen light up, ready to yell at the older that someone was trying to reach him.
Jeongin froze.
He didn't remember his friend's numbers. But, that one never left his mind. It was on emergency contacts and permission slips, speed dials and medical forms, hounded into his brain so he always had a phone to call.
The number that flashed across the screen was the same as his father's.
You haven't been hanging around with any shady characters lately,
have you?
With trembling hands, Jeongin snatched the phone off the coffee table. Reading and rereading, checking once, checking again, that was the only number it could have been.
Then, footsteps. Chan. He was coming back.
Jeongin glanced up from the electronic in his hand and met his gaze. In an instant, he could watch and nearly pinpoint the second of confusion in the older's face and in the next second, an immediate understanding of his change in demeanor. Like a light switch flipping on and off.
Jeongin stood from the couch; knees wobbling with an uncertainty and head reeling through a spinning world, "No. No, don't get near me."
In turn, Chan stated calmly, "Let me explain."
"I won't listen to anything you have to say," Jeongin growled at him.
"Need to hear me out," The older kept a gentle tone about him, one that Jeongin had never heard him use before. Maybe once or twice, or tinges of it here and there but never before like this. If he let his guard down, he would almost fall for the sweet allure of it. But Chan kept talking, "It's not what you're thinking."
"Did you delete their contacts?"
"Who's? Don't know what you're talking about So-" Chan cut himself off, weight shifting as he pressed his lips in a line. As he stepped forward, he corrected himself, "... Jeongin."
Jeongin shook his head as he backed behind the couch, nearly tripping over his feet, "I don't trust you."
"Don't trust me. But you need to at least know this."
"So that's why you never told me? Because you thought I should know? How long have you been in contact with my Dad? Does my mother know too?"
"No-"
"You're lying," The younger cut him off. He kept shaking his head, frantically denying anything that came from the older, regardless of the truth or lies he kept telling. If the older kept one secret, who was to say there wasn't one more? Or even two? Maybe even a hundred secrets and lies he'd been force fed since they met, but who was to even say that meeting was by chance now? There was nothing to trust.
Chan countered back, managing to keep that composed air about him, "What point is there in lying to you right now?"
"You're lying! Why won't you admit it?!" Jeongin snapped. The phone was clutched tightly to his chest as he stepped away, more than ever before feeling trapped between a tearing heart and a pounding head. All this, whatever it was, added to that grime of nausea from earlier. All this, it just made him sick. And now with the addition of this shotgun blast to his heart, it all felt fuzzy. As if the sudden gap of awareness from earlier wasn't bad enough, or the exhaustion, or the aching in his muscles, or the pain in his stomach, or the rapid thoughts that told him honey whispers of death. He was falling apart.
Chan was terrifyingly placid. Unlike Jeongin who's chest heaved with a burning irritation aggravated by lungs struggling for air, the older kept an open stance about him. His hands were loose, a gentle rise and fall of his shoulders, these slow movements as the air grew stagnant around them. Neither truly making a risk, neither truly pressing forward. A level-headed notation told Jeongin that Chan was waiting for him to do something, and the phone he clutched tightly slowly slipped from his grip. And even then, the older was calm. Somehow, it only drove him farther over the edge.
The younger's hands balled into tight fists, palms suffering from the sudden pressure as he blurted, "I wanted to die."
The chill from the lobby filled the room.
When Chan didn't say anything, he stepped around the couch and kept raving, mind blanking out on any rational decision he could have made in that moment for nothing but blurred vision. Slowly, he could hear his voice beginning to raise, "Maybe I still want to, I don't know! I could abandon my whole world for you. If it meant that to someone, anyone, I would have a worth to someone beyond a stepping stool, I would give up everything for you if you asked me. But, you never actually cared, did you? Are you proud of me? Do you care about me? You never answer. Every time I think I can get a reaction from you, it hurts! I'm not even sure why I'm mad at you."
Jeongin bit into his bottom lip hard enough to draw blood, jaw clenching and unclenching, steps storming towards Chan without much thought until they were close. Even then, the only thought he was able to properly process was rage. He kept going, seething at every corner, "And who are you to say what I want, huh? Who are you to say what I can and can't do! You're obsessive and controlling, you're annoying! Who gives you the right to say it's wrong?! You're not anyone important. You're a liar, you're a cheat, you're not worth anything. You're useless. You're the same as me!"
He could only see red.
"You're a fucking coward!"
And still, Chan said nothing. There was an emotion in his eyes that casted him down, a softness to his face that he wanted but would never be able to experience for himself. It didn't change. That apologetic and infuriating expression, it didn't change. Was it supposed to be caring? Or tender? It just felt like pity. He had been given that look from others, and now Chan too. It hurts.
"Why aren't you mad at me?" Jeongin shoved the older though it hardly did anything. What am I doing? He barked, "Come on!"
His mind flatlined as warm tears spilled down his cheeks. It hurts.
"Hate me!"
The younger grabbed on to Chan's arms, struggling to breathe with every passing second. He couldn't feel the stable ground under his feet, a flow sweeping him off his feet as it ebbed with the tide, dragging him in and out of a conscious mind. The pounding of his heart forced itself to the bottom of his throat, at any moment the nausea would overflow and send him away.
"Hate me, please," Jeongin dragged the older down with him as his knees met the hard floors. His nails dug frantically into the other's skin, fingers tightening their grip hard enough to leave bruises on an untouched paradise, the last of a stable reality slipping through his fingertips. As if at any moment he would slip through the cotton in his head and feel nothing but the cold floor on the other side. His chest contracted over his folded legs, a pathetic ball of a person desperately trying to hold on and numb to the touch trying to hold him close.
His overflow of tears collected on the floor below him; ones he both thought had dried up long before and others he repressed enough to finally let go of. Finally washing himself clean of the overwhelming sentiments, frustrations, passion, and euphoria he'd been caging back. At one point, he might've tried to cover his wails behind a convulsing hand only to have it be grabbed away from him. He was wrapped up in arms, kept safe from any harm besides that which came from his own mind. His fists tightened around the older's shirt and the only thought he register, when was the last time I was hugged like this?
And eventually, coming to the conclusion he never had.
Even the bile he threw up in the bathroom tasted sweeter on his tongue than any attachments he held to the last contacts for a falsified paradise his parents created for him. It stung, it burned, it cut and froze him with a suppressed hatred for the world that landed him where he was; overpowered with a fatal venom that would kill him when he let his mind slip into this dislodged and unstable sense of self.
When he fell apart, to rebuild again.
By the end of it all, the dusk sun filtered in through the large windows of the flat, casting and reaching their shadows in every which way, bringing the end of a day to the pastel painted sky but with it the hopes of what crawled in the night. The illicit deals and hidden feelings that hid under the over of darkness, delivering a home to some and a fear to others. With it; Behind the dusk, beyond the night, another day for those who's light it was able to reach. In the flat itself, the lights were shut off. The only guidance they were given was the eventide sun.
Jeongin was laying between the Chan's legs, back to the floor, head resting on the older's thigh, two warm hands holding his head carefully to gape at the ceiling. He watched the light cast over Chan's face as the older stared at the sky through his window, not the artificial glow that illuminated his features from the night they kissed, but a natural hue of a golden hour that lit him alive. Without thinking, Jeongin reached a mildly shaky hand to him and fondly touched his cheek, calling his attention back to him to which the older granted with a soft look. The younger croaked, "I'm sorry."
"Don't," Chan looped their fingers together and brought their hands to rest on Jeongin's chest. He comforted, "Shouldn't be apologizing for this."
"It's a lot- A lot happened."
"I know."
"I'm really hungry, and... and tired."
"Can talk more about it when you're rested," Chan nodded. With his free hand, his fingers played with the younger's hair strands, removing them from his clammy skin before pushing them back, letting the gentleness of something so simple ground him in reality.
"Earlier... I don't understand," Jeongin croaked up at him, "I don't know what you want."
"Don't want anything from you besides for you to listen to my side of this. Can be as mad as you want after," The street racer answered as he came to stare back out the window, a wistfulness about him that was a borderline uncharacteristic state to see him in. He continued, "But it can wait, you're overstimulated and stressed as is. Close your eyes for now."
Jeongin shifted around as a sigh left his body, coming to find a comfort spot on his side facing towards the older's temporary pillow of a leg. He wiggled a bit, trying to readjust himself, before commenting quietly, "The floor has become my best friend over the past few days."
"Yeah?" Chan laughed softly.
"It knows my secrets."
"Should I envy the floor?"
"Definitely," Jeongin breathed. The corner of his lips turned up, not quite into a smile, but a content echo of one. Regardless of what Chan's story was, of what he would hear later, if he should trust him or let him go, this was perfect. Nothing more than a soothing touch and a gentle word; it gradually lulled him into a needed intent sleep.
✘