Rhythm of Your Heart
Title: Rhythm of Your Heart
Author: mystery
Pairing: Zelo-centric (Bangzelo)
Rating: R
Genre: Angst, slight romance
Warning(s): Kind of self-harm (vomiting), mentions of minor character death, mentions of suicidal urges
Summary: Junhong is not okay, and maybe he never will be.
Author’s Note: I have no idea what this. I don’t think I should write after I finish books that leave me all dazed OTL
Fanfiction Masterlist
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Junhong wakes up when someone brushes rough fabric against his cheeks and whispers his name in his ear. He opens his eyes and the first thing he notices is the warmth of human bodied surrounding him. Too many. It seems Jongup, Youngjae and Daehyun have climbed down to the bottom bunk where Himchan and Yongguk are already sitting cross-legged as they watch him with worried eyes. In the following second, the realization that his cheeks are wet hits him.
“You were crying in your sleep,” Yongguk murmurs and Junhong sits up, curls into himself to hide his face from the others. He doesn’t want them to see that he’s still crying, doesn’t want them to know, but he can’t stop the sob that breaks free from his chest.
Yongguk gently hushes him as he pulls him into his lap and Junhong lets the older rock him back and forth. He hides his face in Yongguk’s neck, speaks against the warm skin. “Please, hyung,” he begs, his voice breathy and cracked, “please don’t leave. Stay, stay always.”
None of the others know what he’s been through, but they know it’s more painful than they can imagine. Junhong feels their sad gazes on him. They don’t pity him, and he doesn’t want them to. They sympathize with him; they feel his pain as if it was their own.
The next words that leave Junhong’s mouth are words they never thought they’d hear him say and it shocks them all to the core; “I love you.”
Yongguk stops his slow back and forth rocking of the boy in his arms and grabs Junhong’s shoulders to hold him at an arm’s length from himself. “What did you just say?” He breathes the words, as if they’re fragile. Junhong knows they are. They’re already on the verge of breaking and Yongguk just barely brushed against them. They’re as fragile as himself.
“I love you,” he repeats, louder and steadier now. “I love you, I love you, I love you.”
He doesn’t avert his gaze from Yongguk’s, even when what he sees there violently throws him into the very same pit he promised himself he’d never go back to.
He’s six years old and he’s sitting between his parents in a restaurant. He’s laughing at a joke his father made and he’s happy, happy. His parents are happy too, in love, and they’re happy, so happy. Junhong is their only child and the only one they can get - they know it, Junhong knows it, but neither of them mind. They’re happy like this, and maybe another person to make happy would ruin everything.
He’s nine years old and in one moment he’s unbuckling his seat belt to reach for the book he dropped under the seat in front of him. In the next second, his father steps on the brakes and the car lurches as it halts violently. Junhong knocks his head into the seat he was just reaching under and falls to the floor, but not much else happens, even as the car dangerously slides across the pavement to finally topple over on the side. As he slowly crawls out of the car, he knows it’s not the same for his parents.
He’s twelve when he first meets Bang Yongguk. Yongguk is six years older than him, eighteen, and tall and intimidating. Junhong is shy around him, but Yongguk is nice and Junhong looks up to him. Still it takes a year for Yongguk to gain Junhong’s full trust, and he does it by figuring Junhong’s biggest secret - that he just figured out that he’s homosexual - and sharing a secret of his own.
He’s sixteen years old, a hormonal, energetic teenager full of fear and hope, and he just got turned down. Yongguk has yet to say anything, but Junhong can already taste the words in the air. Yongguk’s lips are parted by a few millimeters and Junhong briefly thinks of how full and kissable they are before he turns around and scrambles out of bed.
It takes him a mere few seconds to reach the bathroom, but his running wakes up their manager, who slept over in the living room. Junhong ignores his confused calls of his name and locks the bathroom door behind him.
He sinks to his knees and dedicate a few seconds to the pain, wills it to really sink in and tear at his heart before he crawls across the floor and does what he always used to do when he needed to escape - he sticks his fingers down his throat, again and again, until his throat burns from the repeated contact with his stomach acids and his nose burns with the smell of it.
Exhausted, he lies back on the floor and stares at the white ceiling, shutting out the panicked calling of his name and the knocks on the door until his eyelids flicker and he falls asleep.
He wakes up not much later to a feeling of intense self-hatred. He’d done something he hadn’t done in seven years, something he promised himself to never do again.
There’s a frantic knock on the door and he blinks slowly before he sits up. His body is heavy, his reactions sluggish.
“Junhong, if you don’t open the door now I’m going to kick it in,” Yongguk’s voice warns, but there’s panic in his voice. Junhong slowly stands up, closes his eyes for a moment to not fall over when the dizziness settles in.
Only it doesn’t disappear, like it usually does. He stands there for a few moments with his eyes closed before he bends over, his body convulsing as he heaves a few times. All that comes up is saliva, slowly dripping onto the floor, holding on to his lips.
He stands up even slower this time and turns to look at himself in the mirror. His pale lips are chapped, the lower one shiny with saliva. His expression is blank and his skin is pale save for the portions right underneath his eyes. They’re a dark purple-bluish hue. There’s a thin sheen of sweat over his face and his eyes are dark, as expressionless as the rest of his face.
It’s amazing how quickly it changes, he thinks to himself before he turns away from the mirror. His hand is steady when he reaches out for the door and unlocks it before he slowly pushes the door handle down.
He’s numb and unfeeling. All of the pain was flushed down the toilet earlier and it left him with a cold, hard nothing.
The first thing he sees is Yongguk’s left eye. It’s dark and full of worry, yet a little angry. Junhong concludes that he is frustrated and scared. It’s an expression most of the people who handled him back then constantly wore. He hoped he’d never see it again, but it’s right in front of him now and he doesn’t even flinch.
The moment Yongguk catches sight of his face his eyes widen and he forces the door open all the way. A frantic, “Junhong!” escapes him when he tears into the bathroom to envelope the younger in a bone-crushing hug. Junhong notes that he only just manages to avoid the puddle of saliva on the floor.
“I’m sorry,” Yongguk whispers and he sways slightly on the spot. Junhong is a frozen statue; he doesn’t even lift his hands to reciprocate the hug. He blinks at the dark hallway. His chest barely even heaves with the breaths he takes. “I should’ve said something. I love you.”
Yongguk pulls away and cups Junhong’s face in his hands. Junhong forces his gaze to focus on Yongguk’s face. “I love you,” Yongguk repeats and Junhong almost wants to laugh. Does he think that’s what this is about?
“You don’t know,” he murmurs and Yongguk grimaces when his voice crackles. “You really don’t know.”
He sounds more amazed than accusing and wonders if that’s how he feels; amazed. He slowly reaches a hand up to brush a finger across Yongguk’s cheek. All he notices is the differences; Yongguk’s cheek is burning against his cold finger, his skin is nearly black compared to Junhong’s paper white hand, his skin is smooth whereas Junhong’s is rough and calloused. He wonders if all this is reality or if there’s something wrong in his head. His therapist once told him he sees the world differently when he shuts off like this. Junhong hates therapists.
“Don’t know what?” Yongguk asks and again Junhong blinks slowly. He can see the other members cowering in the hallway, chewing on their lower lips, pulling on their fingernails. They’re scared and nervous, too. Junhong doesn’t pity them. “I can’t know if you don’t tell me.”
Junhong tilts his head a little to the side and studies Yongguk’s face. His eyebrows are slightly furrowed, his nose a little scrunched. His lips are parted like that again, his eyes wide in confusion. Junhong forces his lips to form a smile, doesn’t grimace when the movement pulls on the cracks in his skin and makes it bleed.
“It doesn’t hurt,” he whispers.
There’s a pause and their breaths are the only things that attempt to cut through the heavy silence that chokes everyone but Junhong. Then Himchan slowly speaks up, “Maybe we should… take him to the hospital?”
And Junhong snaps back to reality. He pushes Yongguk to the side and takes care to avoid the puddle of saliva on the floor as he steps up to Himchan and pushes him against the wall. The older grimaces and Junhong thinks his breath might smell a little like vomit.
“I’m not going to the hospital!” he growls and there’s shock on Himchan’s face instead of disgust now. He goes lax in Junhong’s arms and Junhong releases him. He slowly backs away and watches as Himchan allows his knees to bend until he’s kneeling on the floor. “I’m not going to the hospital. Never again, you understand that?”
All Junhong sees in hospitals is death. Even where there are newborn babies, all he sees is death. Even in the most concentrated forms of life there are cracks that death seeps through and Junhong hates it.
“Never.”
No one pesters him for an explanation and Junhong is too numb to even be thankful as he continues to play his happy, energetic self in front of the cameras. He acts in front of everyone except his band mates and their manager, the people who already knows the truth.
They watch him warily, afraid that he’ll crack, but Junhong knows better. He won’t. He knows how to handle this.
Or so he thinks, until another nightmare lands him in the bathroom, once more on his knees with his fingers down his throat. The only difference is that Yongguk is at his side this time. His body is convulsing, tears are building in his eyes, his nose burns with the stench of his stomach fluids, but it doesn’t help this time.
In his mind he’s back in the hospital. It’s not the first time he’s there and it’s not the last. His mother is barely breathing despite the machines that keep her alive. Junhong stumbled and fell when the doctor snapped at him and he can’t bring himself to stand back up. Everything smells of sterilization and death.
“Hyung, hyung,” his voice is hoarse and there’s nothing more in his stomach to throw up, “you can’t leave like her, promise me you won’t.”
Yongguk holds him in his arms as he promises something Junhong knows he can’t keep.
Himchan makes him hot chocolate and Daehyun wraps him up in three layers of blankets before he’s allowed to curl up on the couch, but he still won’t stop shaking. He’s cold sweating, his teeth are chattering and he thinks his lips are bleeding, but maybe it’s just another illusion. His lips were bleeding that time, because when he fell he accidentally bit on the lower one too harshly.
“Stop,” Jongup begs him when Junhong’s breathing starts coming out in ragged puffs of air, but the words don’t even register in Junhong’s head. He’s too far gone already, he can’t stop even if he wants to - and he wants to, he wants to stop more than anything, but he can’t.
In his mind, Jongup is the nurse who pretended to be kind. He always told Junhong to keep visiting to keep his mother company, but Junhong already knew she was just a shell. They kept him alive because without her Junhong had no one. Junhong thought it was torture and he’d rather be all alone than hold on to a lie.
He’s hyperventilating and Yongguk’s shaking him in a desperate attempt to bring him back to reality. Junhong’s field of vision is fuzzy, and everything sounds as if they’re underwater, but he thinks Yongguk is yelling. Yelling at him?
Yongguk isn’t yelling at him. The frenzy of movement around him makes him realize, but then his eyes roll back into his head and he can’t register anything anymore. Everything slowly fades until there’s nothing.
The five young men stare at Junhong’s limp form on the couch. “He’s passed out,” Yongguk murmurs and there’s relief in his voice. At least he’s breathing normally now, is what everyone thinks and no one says aloud.
After the third time that Junhong wakes up crying, Himchan forces him to go back to his therapist. She’s surprised to see him, but she welcomes him with a smile. She gives him medicines again, but only after Yongguk promises he won’t let Junhong overdose.
A day passes, two, three, a week and Junhong practically itches with the urge to fight the pills from where Yongguk keeps them in his right jacket pocket and swallow all at once, but Yongguk easily wrestles him to the floor and holds him so tight against his chest that he can’t move.
Junhong is not okay and maybe he won’t ever be, but he thinks that maybe to the rhythm of Yongguk’s heartbeat, he can learn to breathe without choking.