Notes:
Part 2 will be posted soon!! I already have the idea of what to do, I just have to figure out how to tie all the parts I've already written.
This fic takes so much research ('cause I don't want to get anything wrong) and mental strength lol help
Also, please don't kill me. I posted this like a couple of weeks ago in ao3 and I forgot to post it here 🥲 sorry
Thank you for waiting!!
They won't leave you
They won't leave you
They won't leave you
They won't
They won't
They won't They won't they won'tthwywonttheywont
He repeats the words in his head like a mantra meant to soothe the crippling anxiety festering in his chest.
It's an impossible task, he concludes.
His chest feels like it's been filled with buzzing, out of control bees. They sting and scratch in every part of Xuxi's delicate body in a futile attempt to be let out. Xuxi knows better. Knows that were they to be let out, the floor would crumble and the semblance of normalcy he's been enjoying would fall with it.
Everything is already crumbling- his useless, useless mind supplies.
He's sitting on the bathroom's white, pristine tiles and he's scared. Terrified out of his mind from a monster no one else can see.
For many, it's the memories. Memories of someone that, once upon a time, hurt them so irreparably, that fear cripples their movements.
For some, it's the hands that touched them. That bruised them. That cut them.
For many, it's the voices that screamed. The ones that hurt and burned with every insult.
For him...for him the monster is himself. The hands that bruised his body are his. The ones that cut his skin are tied to his arms. The voices are those inside his head.
And he is terrified.
Terrified of himself.
Because for a second, and Xuxi thinks it was just a second, he had his fingers down his throat.
And gosh, he is terrified.
It feels too similar, too close to the absolute loss of control he had felt all those months ago. So fucking close he can practically feel the blood coming out his arms.
In a panic, he looks down. Searches the image of blood dripping down his abused wrists, staining the floor and leaving marks that not even the best cleanser had been able to remove.
He finds only scar tissue. No blood seeping out. No red-stained tiles, only little spots where white looked more like pink, and then the white floor. Because there’s white fucking everywhere and it’s starting to drive Xuxi mad.
There’s white on the tiles, on the walls. White on his face. White on his trembling hands. White on the knuckle gripping the toilet lid shut. So much white he could scream, and somewhere in the back of his mind, he thinks that this may not be very healthy. That he, perhaps, should call for help.
Because the beating of his heart is definitely not supposed to be on his ears, he much rather have it on his chest.
He recalls the burning pain in his chest is also not meant to be there.
But he might just be imagining it.
He may be exaggerating because that's what he does best.
It could just be part of the anxiety attack he's sure is racking his body.
Xuxi decides to believe that explanation. Even when the voice of his doctor echoes in his mind with words like chest pain and arrhythmia, because he can't afford to have one more thing wrong with him. Can't admit that he's more ruined than everyone thought.
He heaves a breath and pushes himself up, supporting his weight on the sink. Xuxi avoids the image displayed in the mirror like the plague. He doesn't want to see that one who dares call himself Huang Xuxi when he's nothing but an empty shell.
Xuxi makes his trek back to the empty living room, where once upon a time he had indulged in sugary sweets and greasy popcorn.
The thought makes his stomach churn.
He doesn't want to think anymore. Wants to lay on the floor and just not think.
Thinking is too hard, too painful, too much, and he wants it to stop. He's said this multiple times. He’s thought about it even more, and the problem is the feeling doesn't seem to change.
No matter how many pills he takes or how much he talks, it doesn't fucking change. So what is he supposed to do when the answers are not right? When the antidote is meant for a different poison?
Perhaps he is the poison.
Perhaps there's no antidote.
Maybe there's no hope for his mind or his body.
Xuxi is lying on the floor before he realises, and he can't help the sigh of relief that escapes his lips when his skin hits the cold wood.
The members had left a while ago. Something about an emergency meeting? Or a dance practice? An album? Shit, he wasn't even paying attention.
He had been too focused on the food in front of him to concentrate on the conversation, even when said conversation was meant to include him as an active participant.
The members left with a promise to come back in a few minutes and Xuxi said goodbye with a promise of ‘being good’, in Kun’s words. If being good included not purging, he had already failed that task - Xuxi thought bitterly. It probably did include that- his mind supplied.
Oh well. Just one more thing to add to the list of ‘Things Xuxi Had Fucked Up’. It was still an ongoing project, and to Xuxi’s disgrace, it didn’t seem to be coming to an end any time soon. Instead, as he was just noticing, the list kept growing with every passing second he existed on this Earth. The others probably noticed too, although he doubted they knew about the list.
Although, he must give credit where credit was due…and that was to himself. And isn’t that just an odd thing to say; Huang Xuxi giving credit to himself for something? Please, unfathomable. Yet here he was, lying on their living room’s floor about to give himself credit for something.
The world was a wild thing.
The thing is, he had been doing better. He had been able to eat without throwing it all up and sure, his portions were tiny compared to the others, but with the number of times he was forced to eat, Xuxi was almost sure he ended up eating more than all of them combined.
Most importantly, he was doing so good. Anxiety attacks, for the past week, hadn't been a daily occurrence. The exhaustion that crawled over his body had been manageable and mental breakdowns were kept to a minimum. For fucks sake, he hadn't even used the feeding tube, and that -in Xuxi’s case- was saying something.
The point is, he was doing so good.
…
And he had to go and ruin it.
The members had left because they trusted Xuxi. Because they thought he was actually getting better.
But because Xuxi always beats expectations, he had thrown all that trust down the fucking drain. Literally. He had thrust his fingers inside his mouth and drained his stomach of all the food he had shoved down his throat right before the others left.
Now that trust lies next to him on the floor. Defeated and gone.
Xiaojun's words echo in his mind. Yes, recovery wasn’t linear, or whatever the fuck his therapist had been saying. Yes, Xiaojun was right, three months is not nearly enough to recover from this. And yes, Xiaojun had said they wouldn’t leave him.
But that was when he hadn’t gone and ruined all the progress they had made.
Book after book, testimony after testimony he had read, and seen, and heard, talked about how the first few weeks the urge to just shove their fingers inside their mouth and gag until there was no calorie left inside their body, was almost unbearable. Xuxi hadn’t had that luxury. The pleasure of being able to make a decision.
His body made it for him.
For him, the battle was never against the urge to purge, because half the things he ate, his body made sure were out in the next ten minutes. His body was so used to getting rid of everything, he didn’t even need to try. Hell, his fucking stomach had stopped moving to digest the stupid food.
The point is, for a while now, he hadn’t needed to purge; Xuxi’s body just did all the work.
This was new. This type of failure was new.
His body? The way his stomach worked? He couldn’t control that. There was no way for him to say ‘Oh hey stomach, we’re supposed to be working now'. No way for him to go back to functioning like a normal human being after all he had done to his body.
But this? Thrusting his fingers inside his mouth because he couldn’t handle a little panic attack?
That…that he was supposed to be able to control. He was supposed to be better.
And if the members hadn't left before, they sure were now.
A choked laugh escapes his throat as he opens his eyes. He stares at the ceiling. The weird sticky toy Kunhang had once stuck there stared back at him, mocking him for looking so miserable.
He should probably stand up, stop being useless and do something.
He could go out. For a walk. Even though he wasn’t allowed out without company.
But he could go out. For a walk. Or a run. If he could run, he would.
And he could go out. For a walk. Or a run. Or he could dance. But he couldn’t, could he?
He was going out.
For a walk.
Yeah, just a walk. Alone.
The ceiling felt unfamiliar- no, that wasn’t it…the ceiling felt unreal. He felt unreal. Like the world he existed in was not there, and he was suddenly floating in an endless ocean of nothingness. The room felt like part of his imagination; as if it had never existed. As if he had never existed. And although he kept saying ‘felt’, Xuxi wasn’t actually sure he felt anything at this point.
Other than perhaps numbness.
There was probably a medical term for this. For the immense feeling of nothing.
Yeah, there probably was.
Xuxi lifted his body from the floor, letting out a grunt as the weight of his pain dragged him down. He picked up his jacket and made his way to the door, leaving the member’s trust on the floor, abandoned just like he had abandoned sanity before.
A hand-no, his hand travelled to his chest, rubbing the spot where the pain started. Again, he was sure that pain wasn’t meant to be there but he had been tested, and been tested and done test after test about his heart, his brain, his muscles; and they said it was okay. His heart was okay even if it didn’t feel like it.
He lost muscle- the voice of his doctor explained- he lost muscle everywhere. He lost ‘cardiac muscle mass’, but it was okay, because the doctors had said it was okay.
He’s sure he has medicine for this somewhere in the depths of that locked box that hid under the kitchen sink.
Xuxi’s out of the door before he can dwell too much on it.
His shoes scrape against the sidewalk as the sound of people carry the nothingness away. A minuscule reprieve from the numbness in his hands, in his heart, in his body and his mind.
Someone pushes him. He stumbles. An apology is whispered next to him and then they keep walking. Xuxi and the stranger, and Xuxi wonders if he passed some of the numbness to that man.
He notices then that he isn’t wearing his face mask and a brief rush of panic attacks him. People will see him - he realises. People could recognise him and think ‘Wow, he looks terrible’ and Xuxi would be able to do nothing but agree. Pictures could be taken and people will compare the past and the present and say ‘Shit, before he was fat and now he’s just miserable’. And someone else will say, ‘At least before he smiled’ and then the messages would begin. The Instagram DMs would start being fired faster than bullets and he would fall again, fall faster, deeper.
People will see him and perhaps…this was not the best idea he’s had in a while.
Xuxi keeps walking though. His face is hidden in the scarf he’s wearing, hidden in the disguise of being cold. The panic ebbs away eventually, his heart rate slows, stops trying to escape his rib cage. Xuxi’s breath hitches against his lips, and he cleans the lonely tear that had escaped his eyes in the mere seconds of panic.
Then he’s being crushed with the previous numbness, and perhaps he likes this better than the panic and the pain.
He stops at a convenience store, picks a mask, pays for it and walks out to the chilling outside air. This time with a face mask covering his features.
Xuxi stops in front of a big, fancy-looking building and presses his back to the freezing wall. His phone makes its way out of his pocket and without really thinking about it, he’s calling Kun. For what? He doesn’t know either. To ask for help? To tell him he’s out in the cold when he shouldn’t?
A ring, then two and three.
To burden him more?
He hangs up. Kun doesn’t need to worry when he already has so much going on, so many other problems.
They’re probably going to kick him out when they find out what he did anyway, so why bother.
Xuxi’s jacket unsticks itself from the wall with a grunt escaping the boy’s lips. Fuck is it cold. Why did he go out again?
He pushes his ungloved hands inside his pockets, shielding them from the cold the same way he wishes he could do with his heart. The cold keeps seeping in and he concludes, once again, that shielding anything from the cold is an impossible task.
His feet keep moving until he’s standing in front of one of the dance practice rooms inside the SM building. How he got there would be one of the greatest mysteries Xuxi has ever encountered if he had half a mind to realise how out of it he is.
There’s music coming from inside the room, he realises. He doesn’t recognise it, but that’s not really surprising considering his lack of communication with the outside world. Xuxi thinks it might be something EXO related, if the voices booming through the speakers is anything to go by.
Then again, he could be wrong and all of this could be part of his imagination.
Xuxi rolls his shoulders and heaves a sigh. He should really head back home now, face the consequences of his stupid actions and start packing his things.
He turns around just when the door starts opening.
‘Shit’- he thinks.
A resigned sigh leaves his throat before he can stop it. He had expected to, at least, have the small mercy of the members not finding out about his little adventure through the city, but when has the universe ever given Xuxi something he wants.
He turns around to face his executioner.
Baekhyun is standing in front of him.
‘Shit indeed’- his mind supplies.
Yeah, he’s fucked.
Notes:
The awaited Baekhyun interaction is here :,)
1. What do you think about the chapter?
2. What was your favourite part?
3. Do you have any suggestions?
4. Any questions?
Luv you beautiful human beings 💜💜💜