[100 suju fic challenge]
065. Grip - Donghae/Donghae
possible AU, PG-13, 1146 words
notes:...yeah, I don't know either
The face in front of your own is exactly the same. Exactly the same in every, single, little way. Except your hair parts to the right, and his to the left. You think yours looks better, to be honest, and you tell him so. Your voice sounds louder than you’d expected, and it makes you jump, makes you start and look wildly around yourself for the source of it.
No one, no one but you, and him. Your eyes flash back to that face again, narrow accusingly, “what did you do that for?” Your heart is still racing away inside of your chest, racing and racing and you think that it’s trying to get away, to get out, beating against the prison of your ribcage, and any moment now you expect your racing heart to beat right out of your chest.
You look down at the floor, half-expecting to see your lump of heart - a fascinating organ, actually, really quite wonderful how it keeps all that blood flowing in the proper directions, keeps you alive and - oh, what was it you were looking at again? Ah, right. Your heart, on the floor in front of your feet. There’s nothing there, though, and you frown, fingers reaching up to touch the left side of your chest, searching for the bloody, open hole your racing heart escaped from.
Nothing. Smooth, slightly pale skin, but no hole. No blood. And, best of all, you can feel the thumps of your heart, beneath the skin and under the press of your palm. Still a little fast, but hey, at least it’s doing its job.
You glance up, and notice that he, too, is touching his chest, mimicking your movements. “No, idiot, it’s on the other side.” A little harsh, but then, what fool doesn’t know which side his heart is on? The one you’ve been left with, obviously.
He looks chastened, but remains silent. Good, you want him to be quiet. You don’t want any noise. Loud, sudden noises make you jump, make your heart flutter and race for freedom. They make you noisy, too, and whenever you get noisy and afraid, the little men and their axes start hitting the inside of your head. You don’t like it when they do that, because you’re afraid, even though they’re tiny men with tinier axes, that one day they’ll just keep hitting and hitting and chopping and chopping with those axes and break through the bone of your skull and then what would happen? As long as they’re inside your head, you can keep them out of trouble.
They need to be kept out of trouble. The tiny men with their tiny axes are dangerous.
“Don’t make them angry,” you warn him, voice low and conspiratorial. It’s a secret, you don’t want anyone else to hear. “They hurt when you make them angry. Be quiet, okay?” He looks at you, awed and revered and with love, and you’re satisfied with that. He has to love you, because he has no one else in the world but you, now.
And then he looks scared. He looks really, really scared and you feel a sudden urge to protect him, to keep him safe, to keep him free from all the horrible, horrible things that bother you. You don’t want him to know what the men and their axes can be like. Or the thing behind the door, that waits for you in the shadows. And the monster that likes to torment you at night, hold your eyelids open between strong, thin fingers and stare into your face and keep you awake all night long. Not to mention the thin lady. You shudder at the very thought. You don’t like the thin lady, and she’s possibly the worst of them all. Yeah, even more so than the tiny men. The thin lady can be anywhere, everywhere, and she always comes at just the worst times.
It’s not safe to even think about her, and you shake your head back and forth, back and forth, trying to shake the thought out, to make it slip from your ears and vanish, evaporate into the air and disappear. Please.
You go still. So very very still. Even holding your breath. You think that if you stay still, then perhaps, perhaps, if you’re very very lucky, she won’t know you thought about her, even accidentally. And then she won’t come. You don’t want her to come. Don’t don’t don’t at all oh please, please don’t come, not now, not now, please.
You’re shaking, violently, but you don’t realise it, you think you’re still, frozen, you think you might have turned into a statue, but really you’re quivering and shaking and trembling from head to toe and whispering inane - insane? - things beneath your trembling breath and your eyes are wild as they dart from side to side, side to side to side, looking and looking for any sign of her.
It isn’t the thin lady that comes first, though. It’s the tiny men, and you can feel them start to hack away at the inside of your skull with their tiny axes. An army of them, hacking and hacking and hacking at the bone. You groan, and your hands are at your head, nails raking slowly over your scalp, trying to get them to go away because it hurts, it really really hurts, and you don’t want them to hack their way out of your head because then who knows what havoc they’ll create once they’re free?
“Go away!” you tell them, unaware that you’re shouting, and shouting, and the shouts turn into screams because now there are even more and those axes might be tiny but they hurt, they hurt! You look at him, and all he seems to be doing is looking back rather calmly at you. Calm calm calm, so calm in the face of your pain, and you wonder how he can do that. Why doesn’t he understand?
“Donghae.” You hear your name, and you think maybe he said it, that he spoke again, that he knows your name even when you didn’t tell him. You scream, again, a wild sound, a crazy sound. There’s a flash, a sting of pain in your arm, and then slowly, so painstakingly slowly, the tiny men with their tiny axes go away, leave you be, and the ringing in your head fades, fades fades fades.
The last thing you see, before you black out, is his face, smiling back at you. Smiling like he knows, but doesn’t quite understand. Smiling.
You want to hurt him. Hit him. Something. But then you’re unconscious, and can’t do anything else. And it’s a little harder anyway, to hit yourself. To hurt him, when he’s you, the you you used to be, anyway. The you before you lost your grip on reality.
01/100 [archive]
possible AU, PG-13, 1146 words
notes:...yeah, I don't know either
The face in front of your own is exactly the same. Exactly the same in every, single, little way. Except your hair parts to the right, and his to the left. You think yours looks better, to be honest, and you tell him so. Your voice sounds louder than you’d expected, and it makes you jump, makes you start and look wildly around yourself for the source of it.
No one, no one but you, and him. Your eyes flash back to that face again, narrow accusingly, “what did you do that for?” Your heart is still racing away inside of your chest, racing and racing and you think that it’s trying to get away, to get out, beating against the prison of your ribcage, and any moment now you expect your racing heart to beat right out of your chest.
You look down at the floor, half-expecting to see your lump of heart - a fascinating organ, actually, really quite wonderful how it keeps all that blood flowing in the proper directions, keeps you alive and - oh, what was it you were looking at again? Ah, right. Your heart, on the floor in front of your feet. There’s nothing there, though, and you frown, fingers reaching up to touch the left side of your chest, searching for the bloody, open hole your racing heart escaped from.
Nothing. Smooth, slightly pale skin, but no hole. No blood. And, best of all, you can feel the thumps of your heart, beneath the skin and under the press of your palm. Still a little fast, but hey, at least it’s doing its job.
You glance up, and notice that he, too, is touching his chest, mimicking your movements. “No, idiot, it’s on the other side.” A little harsh, but then, what fool doesn’t know which side his heart is on? The one you’ve been left with, obviously.
He looks chastened, but remains silent. Good, you want him to be quiet. You don’t want any noise. Loud, sudden noises make you jump, make your heart flutter and race for freedom. They make you noisy, too, and whenever you get noisy and afraid, the little men and their axes start hitting the inside of your head. You don’t like it when they do that, because you’re afraid, even though they’re tiny men with tinier axes, that one day they’ll just keep hitting and hitting and chopping and chopping with those axes and break through the bone of your skull and then what would happen? As long as they’re inside your head, you can keep them out of trouble.
They need to be kept out of trouble. The tiny men with their tiny axes are dangerous.
“Don’t make them angry,” you warn him, voice low and conspiratorial. It’s a secret, you don’t want anyone else to hear. “They hurt when you make them angry. Be quiet, okay?” He looks at you, awed and revered and with love, and you’re satisfied with that. He has to love you, because he has no one else in the world but you, now.
And then he looks scared. He looks really, really scared and you feel a sudden urge to protect him, to keep him safe, to keep him free from all the horrible, horrible things that bother you. You don’t want him to know what the men and their axes can be like. Or the thing behind the door, that waits for you in the shadows. And the monster that likes to torment you at night, hold your eyelids open between strong, thin fingers and stare into your face and keep you awake all night long. Not to mention the thin lady. You shudder at the very thought. You don’t like the thin lady, and she’s possibly the worst of them all. Yeah, even more so than the tiny men. The thin lady can be anywhere, everywhere, and she always comes at just the worst times.
It’s not safe to even think about her, and you shake your head back and forth, back and forth, trying to shake the thought out, to make it slip from your ears and vanish, evaporate into the air and disappear. Please.
You go still. So very very still. Even holding your breath. You think that if you stay still, then perhaps, perhaps, if you’re very very lucky, she won’t know you thought about her, even accidentally. And then she won’t come. You don’t want her to come. Don’t don’t don’t at all oh please, please don’t come, not now, not now, please.
You’re shaking, violently, but you don’t realise it, you think you’re still, frozen, you think you might have turned into a statue, but really you’re quivering and shaking and trembling from head to toe and whispering inane - insane? - things beneath your trembling breath and your eyes are wild as they dart from side to side, side to side to side, looking and looking for any sign of her.
It isn’t the thin lady that comes first, though. It’s the tiny men, and you can feel them start to hack away at the inside of your skull with their tiny axes. An army of them, hacking and hacking and hacking at the bone. You groan, and your hands are at your head, nails raking slowly over your scalp, trying to get them to go away because it hurts, it really really hurts, and you don’t want them to hack their way out of your head because then who knows what havoc they’ll create once they’re free?
“Go away!” you tell them, unaware that you’re shouting, and shouting, and the shouts turn into screams because now there are even more and those axes might be tiny but they hurt, they hurt! You look at him, and all he seems to be doing is looking back rather calmly at you. Calm calm calm, so calm in the face of your pain, and you wonder how he can do that. Why doesn’t he understand?
“Donghae.” You hear your name, and you think maybe he said it, that he spoke again, that he knows your name even when you didn’t tell him. You scream, again, a wild sound, a crazy sound. There’s a flash, a sting of pain in your arm, and then slowly, so painstakingly slowly, the tiny men with their tiny axes go away, leave you be, and the ringing in your head fades, fades fades fades.
The last thing you see, before you black out, is his face, smiling back at you. Smiling like he knows, but doesn’t quite understand. Smiling.
You want to hurt him. Hit him. Something. But then you’re unconscious, and can’t do anything else. And it’s a little harder anyway, to hit yourself. To hurt him, when he’s you, the you you used to be, anyway. The you before you lost your grip on reality.
01/100 [archive]