'cause there's a monster living under my bed
fandom: got7
focus: youngjae-centric
rating: pg13
*remix of i want a friend, too by minchievous for kpop_ficmix 2015
notes: title and cut text from santana ft everlast's 'put your lights on'. not sure if warnings are necessary; but there is peripheral character death and demon related stuff. also nightmares and childhood trauma, and mentions of panic attacks.
summary: youngjae has been in and out of psychiatrist's offices for the better part of his life, but he's not crazy. he's not. he knows what he saw, knows in his bones that it was real even if not even his own parents remember he had a brother.
He was outside with his parents and his brother, they'd just been to the park, and now Bambam was talking to a boy about his age, and Youngjae felt happy Bambam was making friends - even if Bambam always made friends, Youngjae liked Bambam's friends.
And then the world turned cold as the other boy stared at Bambam, eyes glowing redder and redder and Bambam's eyes turned lifeless and his face went slack, and Youngjae felt terror starting to claw at his throat as the colour seemed to drain from his brother's skin, leaving him and the red-eyed boy in almost-grayscale, washed out and dead and when Bambam turned to look at him his eyes were red too and Youngjae could hear screaming he didn't even realise was coming from him as his parents held on to him, chatting as if they couldn't see anything, as if nothing was happening, as if Youngjae wasn't screaming, scrabbling at their arms, trying to get them to let go, and he didn't know if he wanted to run towards his brother and drag him away from the boy, drag him to safety, or if he wanted to run away from the advancing duo, eyes glowing redredred in the darkness, run away to safety. More red eyes blinked into existence in the shadows, multiplying and multiplying until there was a wall of glowing red eyes headed by the two boys walking towards him, teeth growing into poison-tipped fangs and fingernails growing into claws and their eyes glowed redder and redder as the darkness advanced and closed in on Youngjae and his unsuspecting, oblivious parents-
Youngjae awoke with a start, tangled in his blankets and breathing heavily, heart beating rapidly in his chest as his eyes adjusted to the light, less than dark from the dim glow of the nightlight on his bedside table that was never off when the sun went down for this very reason.
He kept his eyes open, focussing on a spot on the ceiling and drew on every breathing technique any psychiatrist had ever taught him to slow his breathing, to calm down.
Wow, he hoped he hadn't screamed. The neighbours already looked at him weirdly enough when they happened to see each other.
He pushed himself into a sitting position when his breathing regulated itself and his heartbeat started to slow down, untangling his legs from his bedsheets, and rubbed at his eyes.
It had been a while since he'd last had the nightmare - four and a half months, a new record. He couldn't remember a time before he'd had this recurring nightmare.
No, scratch that, he could. It happened to coincide with memories of a brother everyone told him never existed.
He looked at the clock next to his bed and groaned when he saw the time flashing 3:58am. He was going to be tired in class that day.
Grumbling under his breath, he clumsily climbed out of bed, heading to get a glass of water - he wasn't even going to try go to sleep immediately. It never worked; he knew from experience and years of telling himself to just go straight back to sleep. The nightmare just repeated as soon as his eyes closed or he lay there in terror for hours on end. There hadn't been any other outcome - at 20 and after 14 years of this, he knew better than to try.
The poison dripping from the fangs was new, he thought idly. The fangs and claws themselves weren't common features in the dream to begin with, but they'd never been this pronounced. He threw a sour glance at the tomes of religious and mythological demon iconography sitting on his desk. He should not have read them right before going to bed. Bad idea.
'Come on, Youngjae, you know better,' he muttered to himself, comforted a little by his voice breaking the almost-silence, 'You need your sleep.'
It was half past five before he felt calm enough to maybe attempt going back to sleep, wondering if it was worth it to try for the hour and a half of sleep he'd get before his alarm went off. He glanced out at the less dark than it had been twenty minutes ago sky and resigned himself to yawning through the afternoon. He tapped at the desk idly for a few minutes before deciding what the hell, and snorting a bit at his choice of phrase, reached for the books again.
After years of his parents making appointments with psychiatrists and specialists (and one appointment with a priest, made by his desperate and still indulgent Papa, in which the priest said he wasn't possessed so an exorcism was out of the question, and their solution would be to pray. Considering neither of his parents were particularly religious, that didn't happen. Besides, Youngjae doesn't think you can pray away the truth), Youngjae had stopped broadcasting his story. He'd stopped talking about the brother he apparently never had, because all it did was make his parents cast worried looks at each other and sit him down to softly explain that he was an only child, that they'd never adopted anyone else.
And Youngjae couldn't explain why they didn't remember, couldn't explain why there were no records, why Bambam didn't appear in any of the pictures in the albums that Youngjae was sure he'd been in. The only thing that kept him from thinking that he was completely crazy more than at his lowest points was the memory of one of Bambam's friends from preschool coming up to him and asking where Bambam when he went back to school when his parents could get him to stop crying about Bambam's disappearance (abduction. It was an abduction, there was no other way to describe it. An abduction from memory and time and space). He'd tried to find the girl years later, had managed to track her down, but when he asked her what she remembered about Bambam he was met with a blank stare and a question of 'who?'.
(She didn't remember, but they'd built up a semblance of a friendship regardless. She didn't question his interests, even if he caught her side-eyeing him sometimes with an all too familiar expression of concern. He never mentioned Bambam to her again.)
Sometimes he thought he should stop, let it go. Give it up. When he was utterly exhausted, sometimes he thought maybe he did imagine it - but no, he can't have, he can't have imagined three years of playing with his brother - he had no memories of his early childhood without him having a brother, there's no way he could have made it all up.
It upset his parents, his constant insistence about Bambam's existence, his terror of the dark, his separation anxiety that started from what they referred to as That Afternoon, leaving him freaking when he was away from either of his parents for too long, afraid he'd never see them again (he still opened phonecalls asking how the other one was, always slightly scared he'd be met with the familiar phrase 'who are you talking about?'). He couldn't help his panic attacks that still sometimes happened at sudden pitch darkness (power outages were his worst nightmare - well. Aside from his actual nightmares), but he could stop mentioning Bambam, stop trying to make his parents remember. So he did, and he could almost hear his parents heave a sigh of relief when he stopped talking about Bambam at fifteen.
They still exchanged concerned looks when they saw him reading about or researching demons and they'd veto'd his interest in studying the occult and supernatural phenomenon in university, but it was easier than the fights he could hear then having about what to do next with him.
He never stopped looking, though. He never forgot about Bambam, and devoured any information about demons or other creatures who could do what he'd seen - he hadn't found anything that was an exact match, but he had barely scratched the surface on what was available.
He could explain away his interests to friends fairly easily with shows like Supernatural and Constantine running; often managing to make friends with similar interests - or at least whose faces wouldn't glaze over when he started talking about demons. Even if none of them understood his fear of the dark in conjunction with being a fan of shows like that, they didn't question him. He had friends, unlike the people he'd driven away in primary school by constantly talking about a brother that his parents said didn't exist.
He was walking home from the library one evening, glancing worriedly up at the dimming sky - the streetlights weren't enough to make himself feel safe and he needed to get home as soon as possible.
He hurried past a group of guys about his age laughing amongst themselves as he took the shortcut, his eyes slipping over them easily as he immediately regretted stepping into the darker alleyway.
'Whatever, you know they're busy. Stop being so clingy, Bambam.'
He froze as their words drifted towards him, the name registering a beat after he heard it.
It can't be, he thought in disbelief, slowly turning around, actually looking at the group.
Three guys standing, all three taller than him, and two limp figures lying on the ground he hadn't noticed before, and his breath started quickening, catching in his throat as his eyes darted between the faces of the ones standing.
One of them didn't look familiar in the slightest. The second looked like he might be the boy with the red eyes, maybe, add fourteen years, and Youngjae felt something settle in his bones, something akin to fear and relief and validation all rolled up into one. Youngjae's eyes caught on the third one and his mind whirred, adding on years, lengthening features and taking away baby fat, and he couldn't be sure, not at all, not when he remembered him as five years old, but it could be- maybe-
'Bambam?' he said, his voice wavery and unsure and the third one his eyes were fixed on looked over in confusion a beat before the other two turned, and Youngjae's legs almost gave out underneath him. 'It is you,' he breathed.
'How does he know your name?' the one Youngjae didn't recognise muttered.
'I don't know,' his brother replied.
'You're Bambam,' Youngjae said, 'Khunpimook Bhuwakul -' His start at his full name only confirmed it for Youngjae and he felt like he was floating, unattached to the world as his words came out in a rush, '- and I could never say your name but I remember trying to write it and you're my brother and Papa and Dad don't remember you but I knew I wasn't crazy and you were taken and he-' Youngjae's hand was shaking slightly as he levelled a finger at the aged-up version of the face that was scorched into his memory, '- he took you, his eyes went red and - and -'
'I have no idea who you are,' Bambam interrupted.
'You're my brother!' Youngjae cried.
'I don't have a brother. Not a real one,' Bambam denied.
'But you are! Or - you were, you were until he took you, until - until he made you a demon like him!'
All three started at the word demon, and the one Youngjae didn't recognise lunged at him and Youngjae startled back even as the demon who took Bambam grabbed his arm.
'Jungkook, leave him,' he said, and the one who'd lunged at Youngjae rounded on him.
'He called us demons, Yugyeom, he knows!' Jungkook exclaimed and Yugyeom's eyes slid past him to look at Youngjae, giving him a once over and then holding his gaze.
Youngjae stumbled back in fear as red bled into his eyes, and Yugyeom smirked.
'Doesn't matter,' he said confidently, 'No one will believe him anyway.'
Youngjae felt the air leave his lungs at his words. He couldn't decide whether he was glad they didn't seem to be going to kill him or upset that they were leaving him again with the knowledge that he wasn't crazy or imagining things because of course no one would believe him. They hadn't before, why would they now?
'Brave, aren't you,' Yugyeom addressed Youngjae and Youngjae took another step back, breathing shallow and difficult. 'Wandering around in the dark even when you know what's out there.' He laughed and a part of Youngjae's mind thought, well, that's going to make the nightmares worse. 'You're lucky we've hunted quite a bit today already.'
'We're absolutely stuffed,' Bambam added with a sharp-toothed grin and Youngjae felt a lump rise in his throat.
Yugyeom laughed again and a chill ran down Youngjae's spine.
'Come on,' the demon said, and the other two followed along obediently, shooting pointed amused grins at Youngjae.
Youngjae's eyes didn't leave them, couldn't leave him, and he felt frozen and they walked forward and it was only when they faded into smoke that he let out a scream and collapsed.
The dark didn't bother him as he sat there in a heap, tears pricking at his eyes. He tried to think of breathing exercises, anything to stop himself from shaking, but he couldn't remember any, they slipped from his mind like water - like smoke, as panicked breaths hitched in his lungs.
No one came to see what was wrong.
A scream in a dark alley isn't all that rare, really.
focus: youngjae-centric
rating: pg13
*remix of i want a friend, too by minchievous for kpop_ficmix 2015
notes: title and cut text from santana ft everlast's 'put your lights on'. not sure if warnings are necessary; but there is peripheral character death and demon related stuff. also nightmares and childhood trauma, and mentions of panic attacks.
summary: youngjae has been in and out of psychiatrist's offices for the better part of his life, but he's not crazy. he's not. he knows what he saw, knows in his bones that it was real even if not even his own parents remember he had a brother.
He was outside with his parents and his brother, they'd just been to the park, and now Bambam was talking to a boy about his age, and Youngjae felt happy Bambam was making friends - even if Bambam always made friends, Youngjae liked Bambam's friends.
And then the world turned cold as the other boy stared at Bambam, eyes glowing redder and redder and Bambam's eyes turned lifeless and his face went slack, and Youngjae felt terror starting to claw at his throat as the colour seemed to drain from his brother's skin, leaving him and the red-eyed boy in almost-grayscale, washed out and dead and when Bambam turned to look at him his eyes were red too and Youngjae could hear screaming he didn't even realise was coming from him as his parents held on to him, chatting as if they couldn't see anything, as if nothing was happening, as if Youngjae wasn't screaming, scrabbling at their arms, trying to get them to let go, and he didn't know if he wanted to run towards his brother and drag him away from the boy, drag him to safety, or if he wanted to run away from the advancing duo, eyes glowing redredred in the darkness, run away to safety. More red eyes blinked into existence in the shadows, multiplying and multiplying until there was a wall of glowing red eyes headed by the two boys walking towards him, teeth growing into poison-tipped fangs and fingernails growing into claws and their eyes glowed redder and redder as the darkness advanced and closed in on Youngjae and his unsuspecting, oblivious parents-
Youngjae awoke with a start, tangled in his blankets and breathing heavily, heart beating rapidly in his chest as his eyes adjusted to the light, less than dark from the dim glow of the nightlight on his bedside table that was never off when the sun went down for this very reason.
He kept his eyes open, focussing on a spot on the ceiling and drew on every breathing technique any psychiatrist had ever taught him to slow his breathing, to calm down.
Wow, he hoped he hadn't screamed. The neighbours already looked at him weirdly enough when they happened to see each other.
He pushed himself into a sitting position when his breathing regulated itself and his heartbeat started to slow down, untangling his legs from his bedsheets, and rubbed at his eyes.
It had been a while since he'd last had the nightmare - four and a half months, a new record. He couldn't remember a time before he'd had this recurring nightmare.
No, scratch that, he could. It happened to coincide with memories of a brother everyone told him never existed.
He looked at the clock next to his bed and groaned when he saw the time flashing 3:58am. He was going to be tired in class that day.
Grumbling under his breath, he clumsily climbed out of bed, heading to get a glass of water - he wasn't even going to try go to sleep immediately. It never worked; he knew from experience and years of telling himself to just go straight back to sleep. The nightmare just repeated as soon as his eyes closed or he lay there in terror for hours on end. There hadn't been any other outcome - at 20 and after 14 years of this, he knew better than to try.
The poison dripping from the fangs was new, he thought idly. The fangs and claws themselves weren't common features in the dream to begin with, but they'd never been this pronounced. He threw a sour glance at the tomes of religious and mythological demon iconography sitting on his desk. He should not have read them right before going to bed. Bad idea.
'Come on, Youngjae, you know better,' he muttered to himself, comforted a little by his voice breaking the almost-silence, 'You need your sleep.'
It was half past five before he felt calm enough to maybe attempt going back to sleep, wondering if it was worth it to try for the hour and a half of sleep he'd get before his alarm went off. He glanced out at the less dark than it had been twenty minutes ago sky and resigned himself to yawning through the afternoon. He tapped at the desk idly for a few minutes before deciding what the hell, and snorting a bit at his choice of phrase, reached for the books again.
After years of his parents making appointments with psychiatrists and specialists (and one appointment with a priest, made by his desperate and still indulgent Papa, in which the priest said he wasn't possessed so an exorcism was out of the question, and their solution would be to pray. Considering neither of his parents were particularly religious, that didn't happen. Besides, Youngjae doesn't think you can pray away the truth), Youngjae had stopped broadcasting his story. He'd stopped talking about the brother he apparently never had, because all it did was make his parents cast worried looks at each other and sit him down to softly explain that he was an only child, that they'd never adopted anyone else.
And Youngjae couldn't explain why they didn't remember, couldn't explain why there were no records, why Bambam didn't appear in any of the pictures in the albums that Youngjae was sure he'd been in. The only thing that kept him from thinking that he was completely crazy more than at his lowest points was the memory of one of Bambam's friends from preschool coming up to him and asking where Bambam when he went back to school when his parents could get him to stop crying about Bambam's disappearance (abduction. It was an abduction, there was no other way to describe it. An abduction from memory and time and space). He'd tried to find the girl years later, had managed to track her down, but when he asked her what she remembered about Bambam he was met with a blank stare and a question of 'who?'.
(She didn't remember, but they'd built up a semblance of a friendship regardless. She didn't question his interests, even if he caught her side-eyeing him sometimes with an all too familiar expression of concern. He never mentioned Bambam to her again.)
Sometimes he thought he should stop, let it go. Give it up. When he was utterly exhausted, sometimes he thought maybe he did imagine it - but no, he can't have, he can't have imagined three years of playing with his brother - he had no memories of his early childhood without him having a brother, there's no way he could have made it all up.
It upset his parents, his constant insistence about Bambam's existence, his terror of the dark, his separation anxiety that started from what they referred to as That Afternoon, leaving him freaking when he was away from either of his parents for too long, afraid he'd never see them again (he still opened phonecalls asking how the other one was, always slightly scared he'd be met with the familiar phrase 'who are you talking about?'). He couldn't help his panic attacks that still sometimes happened at sudden pitch darkness (power outages were his worst nightmare - well. Aside from his actual nightmares), but he could stop mentioning Bambam, stop trying to make his parents remember. So he did, and he could almost hear his parents heave a sigh of relief when he stopped talking about Bambam at fifteen.
They still exchanged concerned looks when they saw him reading about or researching demons and they'd veto'd his interest in studying the occult and supernatural phenomenon in university, but it was easier than the fights he could hear then having about what to do next with him.
He never stopped looking, though. He never forgot about Bambam, and devoured any information about demons or other creatures who could do what he'd seen - he hadn't found anything that was an exact match, but he had barely scratched the surface on what was available.
He could explain away his interests to friends fairly easily with shows like Supernatural and Constantine running; often managing to make friends with similar interests - or at least whose faces wouldn't glaze over when he started talking about demons. Even if none of them understood his fear of the dark in conjunction with being a fan of shows like that, they didn't question him. He had friends, unlike the people he'd driven away in primary school by constantly talking about a brother that his parents said didn't exist.
He was walking home from the library one evening, glancing worriedly up at the dimming sky - the streetlights weren't enough to make himself feel safe and he needed to get home as soon as possible.
He hurried past a group of guys about his age laughing amongst themselves as he took the shortcut, his eyes slipping over them easily as he immediately regretted stepping into the darker alleyway.
'Whatever, you know they're busy. Stop being so clingy, Bambam.'
He froze as their words drifted towards him, the name registering a beat after he heard it.
It can't be, he thought in disbelief, slowly turning around, actually looking at the group.
Three guys standing, all three taller than him, and two limp figures lying on the ground he hadn't noticed before, and his breath started quickening, catching in his throat as his eyes darted between the faces of the ones standing.
One of them didn't look familiar in the slightest. The second looked like he might be the boy with the red eyes, maybe, add fourteen years, and Youngjae felt something settle in his bones, something akin to fear and relief and validation all rolled up into one. Youngjae's eyes caught on the third one and his mind whirred, adding on years, lengthening features and taking away baby fat, and he couldn't be sure, not at all, not when he remembered him as five years old, but it could be- maybe-
'Bambam?' he said, his voice wavery and unsure and the third one his eyes were fixed on looked over in confusion a beat before the other two turned, and Youngjae's legs almost gave out underneath him. 'It is you,' he breathed.
'How does he know your name?' the one Youngjae didn't recognise muttered.
'I don't know,' his brother replied.
'You're Bambam,' Youngjae said, 'Khunpimook Bhuwakul -' His start at his full name only confirmed it for Youngjae and he felt like he was floating, unattached to the world as his words came out in a rush, '- and I could never say your name but I remember trying to write it and you're my brother and Papa and Dad don't remember you but I knew I wasn't crazy and you were taken and he-' Youngjae's hand was shaking slightly as he levelled a finger at the aged-up version of the face that was scorched into his memory, '- he took you, his eyes went red and - and -'
'I have no idea who you are,' Bambam interrupted.
'You're my brother!' Youngjae cried.
'I don't have a brother. Not a real one,' Bambam denied.
'But you are! Or - you were, you were until he took you, until - until he made you a demon like him!'
All three started at the word demon, and the one Youngjae didn't recognise lunged at him and Youngjae startled back even as the demon who took Bambam grabbed his arm.
'Jungkook, leave him,' he said, and the one who'd lunged at Youngjae rounded on him.
'He called us demons, Yugyeom, he knows!' Jungkook exclaimed and Yugyeom's eyes slid past him to look at Youngjae, giving him a once over and then holding his gaze.
Youngjae stumbled back in fear as red bled into his eyes, and Yugyeom smirked.
'Doesn't matter,' he said confidently, 'No one will believe him anyway.'
Youngjae felt the air leave his lungs at his words. He couldn't decide whether he was glad they didn't seem to be going to kill him or upset that they were leaving him again with the knowledge that he wasn't crazy or imagining things because of course no one would believe him. They hadn't before, why would they now?
'Brave, aren't you,' Yugyeom addressed Youngjae and Youngjae took another step back, breathing shallow and difficult. 'Wandering around in the dark even when you know what's out there.' He laughed and a part of Youngjae's mind thought, well, that's going to make the nightmares worse. 'You're lucky we've hunted quite a bit today already.'
'We're absolutely stuffed,' Bambam added with a sharp-toothed grin and Youngjae felt a lump rise in his throat.
Yugyeom laughed again and a chill ran down Youngjae's spine.
'Come on,' the demon said, and the other two followed along obediently, shooting pointed amused grins at Youngjae.
Youngjae's eyes didn't leave them, couldn't leave him, and he felt frozen and they walked forward and it was only when they faded into smoke that he let out a scream and collapsed.
The dark didn't bother him as he sat there in a heap, tears pricking at his eyes. He tried to think of breathing exercises, anything to stop himself from shaking, but he couldn't remember any, they slipped from his mind like water - like smoke, as panicked breaths hitched in his lungs.
No one came to see what was wrong.
A scream in a dark alley isn't all that rare, really.