共鸣 (Resonance) for DOEIROS
Title: 共鸣 (Resonance)
Recipient: doeiros
Pairings: Baekhyun/Junmyeon, Junmyeon/Lu Han
Word Count: 2563 words
Rating: PG-13/R
Warnings: major character death, minor character death, implied murder (fratricide), disturbed personalities, terminal illness, implied cancer, copious blood references, psychiatrist/mental illness implications, implied possession/multi-personality issues, implied abuse
Summary: Junmyeon is Baekhyun is Junmyeon. Lu Han is someone else.
Author's Note: Thanks so much to the mods for being understanding of health and other issues. Thanks to my recipient for the great prompts - I hope this is even a little bit like what you wanted. Thanks so much to tlist for being there and also not being there when I needed to focus, A for beta-ing despite travel (you'd better arrive home safely!) and a certain person who is awesome no matter what they might say.
This story was inspired by The Kooks Taking pictures of you, The Vaccines The Beast in Me, Devonté Hynes Palo Alto, Salyu 共鳴（空虚な石）by Lily Chou-Chou (translation) & Priscilla Ahn Fine On The Outside.
He loves to paint the sky red.
The pictures that line the walls of the darkroom flutter in the air. Tiny wisps of thought that dance through the moments, the memories.
There are wolves howling outside now; he can feel the sound on his skin. Time to burn.
•••---•••
now: part i
"Do you have a fear of flying?" The doctor wore a white coat, white pants, white shoes. The walls were white.
I would give anything for a splash of crimson.
"Not really." It's just nicer to have less far to fall.
"Why then did you refuse to attend your only brother's funeral?" The doctor looked over her glasses at him; her eyeliner was clumping in the creases of her eyelids. That's not nice.
Junmyeon wasn't looking at her when he replied. He was looking at her eyelids, trying to figure out what was going wrong with them. I didn't want to go, that's why.
"He didn't want to go."
"Who didn't want to go?" The doctor looked slightly puzzled, the pencil she was spinning in her hand dropping with a soft thump onto the pad of paper she wasn't making notes on. That's not becoming of a psychiatrist.
"Baekhyun."
•••---•••
childhood: the beginning
As a child he has a lot of imaginary friends. They're a regular gang, if his stories at the dinner table are to be believed. In fact, his only friend-in-the-flesh is Baekhyun, the neighbour next door. Baekhyun is noisy and rude and his face sticks in Junmyeon's mind; he's the only person he's ever met robust enought to be imaginary and yet completely real. Together they populate the world with monsters; Junmyeon suggests magical talking animals but Baekhyun vetoes the idea with no small disdain - "talking animals are for boring people who read books," he says, glancing over at their classmate Jongin who has his nose in a book - Junmyeon privately disagrees but Baekhyun wins as usual.
Later on, when they're struggling to pull bulky winter coats on over their stiff uniform blazers, Baekhyun tells Junmyeon his first secret: "There's a monster inside me," he whispers, the scarf he's winding around his neck briefly muffling his voice.
Junmyeon doesn't understand at first, what was his friend talking about? But a few days later, after they've been having a particularly nice time in the snow, throwing snowballs at innocent passersby before scurrying to hide in the safety of the park trees, Baekhyun coughs, red colouring the ground.
"Is that the monster?" Junmyeon asks. He's worried but Baekhyun only looks bored, smearing scarlet over the back of his hand as he wipes his mouth; red particles stick to his cheek, which Junmyeon would like to brush away but -
"Yup," Baekhyun nods, grinning. "It's eating me from the inside." He keeps making snowballs, case closed, but Junmyeon can't get the picture out of his mind.
He dreams, that night ... vicious spiked things winding around Baekhyun's white skeleton, tearing away chunks of his lungs and sucking the broken edges of bones - Junmyeon wakes up screaming but can't explain why.
•••---•••
first encounter
He saw him first behind the lens of a camera. Gold hair, sun refracting off the wind-ruffled tendrils. I like him.
"Hi," he said, before he could stop himself. You know you wanted to anyway. He kicked Baekhyun. That was uncalled for.
The boy froze in the act of climbing onto a red bicycle. Red bicycle. Point number one in his favour. He looked over his shoulder at Junmyeon who smiled, eyes crinkling. The boy's foot slipped and he ended up in a tangle of metal, crimson dotting the floor from a skinned knee. Yum.
"Stop it," Junmyeon hissed, he couldn't help it. When the boy looked up, confused, he deflected his attention -
"Do you need any help?" He was only being polite but the boy blushed, scarlet rising to paint his cheeks. Such a pretty colour.
"No, I'm okay," the boy stammered, but he staggered getting up, wincing as his scratched palms made contact with the ground. Junmyeon stepped in to help, gently lifting him by his forearms.
"I'm Junmyeon," he said, because it seemed the polite thing to do. And I'm Baekhyun. Another kick.
The boy smiled gratefully, his perfect face breaking up into the cutest expression Junmyeon had ever seen. Except mine of course. "I'm Lu Han."
They ended up walking through the park side by side, leaves crunching underfoot, red and brown and gold. Lu Han talked about school, his hobby: soccer, and what it felt like to leave everything behind. Junmyeon was distracted by his skin, a single sheet of unblemished silk that wrapped the muscles and veins and nerves with such delicate grace; he could almost see the tracery of red pulsing underneath the surface. When Lu Han lifted his hand to shade his eyes, the sun shining through and exposing the crimson within, he couldn't help himself:
"Click."
Lu Han turned in surprise and Junmyeon quickly cleared his throat to hide his embarrassment, the camera on the strap around his neck falling down to thump into his chest with a thud.
"I have a photography project to take pictures of the autumn leaves," he lied, the words falling smoothly off of his tongue. Yeah right.
Lu han's interest seemed piqued. "Are you in the photography club?" he asked. Junmyeon nodded.
"I'm the president," he explained.
"That's cool," the blond boy smiled. "I'm the captain of the soccer team." He air-drabbled an invisible ball for a moment, finishing off with a magnificent kick towards a fictional goal where the path curved and disappeared into the trees, red leaves thrown up into the air and scattering with the wind.
Junmyeon couldn't help it; he snapped another picture, but Lu Han only grinned back at him. It's lucky you're the president and can change this season's theme to autumn...
•••---•••
youth: the end
His older brother died that month. "Accident," some people said. "Suicide," others whispered. Junmyeon knew his brother had had secrets; he'd pried some of them out himself over the years, poking until his brother snapped and lashed out, red decorating the room.
"Go ahead dear," his mother had said, when he complained afterwards and wanted to run away from home. "Here's my credit card. Just don't fly to Africa, okay?" She'd smiled at him, ruffling his hair, and he'd winced but managed to hide it.
Don't touch me.
It had been hard, back then, to tell where he ended and Baekhyun began.
By the time his brother died it was like a second skin.
He didn't go to the funeral; the smell of roses already haunted his sleep, the thick red petals crawling down his throat in search of -
You aren't trying to suffocate me, are you?
Of course not.
•••---•••
childhood: holding patterns
Baekhyun gets thinner and thinner and soon Junmyeon isn't sure if he wasn't imaginary to begin with.
"You're real, right?" He's not worried, he doesn't care at all. Right.
"Shut up," Baekhyun mocks him affectionately, then coughs into his sleeve. He wears a lot of red lately, his new favourite colour. The trailing crimson from his mouth, spattering onto the fabric, doesn't show.
"Baekhyun!" his mother calls from the next-door porch, her voice warbling in the wind. The sound grates on Junmyeon's ears; he frowns as Baekhyun makes faces in the hall mirror before leaving.
"What do you think we look like when we die?" he says, instead of goodbye.
Junmyeon stands in front of the mirror for the next hour, pretending to be dead, but it looks strange with his eyes open. He finally sneaks into his brother's room to get his new camera, an SLR that he isn't even allowed to breathe on, and takes a shot of his reflection with his eyes closed. He examines the picture in the screen after, excitement turning to something darker when the blurry picture shows someone who looks remarkably like -
"What are you doing with my stuff?!" His brother's voice explodes through the hall from where he stands in the doorway, backlit by the late afternoon sun. Junmyeon drops the camera; it makes a sickening crunch as it hits the slate floor.
He tells his mother, later, that he fell down the stairs.
•••---•••
second encounter
Junyeon saw Lu Han again at the library, his buttery hair all aglow in a pool of sunlight from the stained glass windows. Red is still better. "Shut up."
He was supposed to be looking for a biography on Federico García Lorca but his eyes kept straying to the live boy sitting at a table, head nodding over a book. What a cutie, he's going to drool all over the page. Junmyeon ignored Baekhyun, slipping around the corner of the bookshelves to peek between the spaces. Lu Han looked like he was trying to study but his eyes kept closing, his head drifting down to the table before he would jerk awake for a moment, eyes blinking around in surprise before he did it all over again.
Your heart is hurting me. Go talk to him.
He snapped a photo instead; a halo of light around a sleepy face, his mouth spread into an unconcious smile as he stared at the screen, whether it was his or Baekhyun's he didn't know. Looking up, he was surprised to see Lu Han, eyes open, looking back at him. There was a curious expression on his face as he beckoned Junmyeon over. Don't even think about running.
"Did you take a picture of me?" His voice was soft but to the point. Junmyeon tucked his camera protectively beneath one arm.
"No," he lied, "I was taking a picture of the stained glass behind you. It's for the autumn theme." They both looked up at the window, red and orange glass forming flames of cold fire.
"I've always wondered," Lu Hand said thoughtfully, "is that hell?" No, this is hell. Baekhyun's voice was so sharp it cut; Junmyeon winced before shrugging.
"I think it's some kind of modern art," he said vaguely, when he knew for a fact that it was a homage in red to Chagall's blue stained glass in St. Stephan's Church in Mainz. "Kind of autumn feelings." You're such a liar. But Lu Han smiled, and everything was worth it.
"That's so pretty," he said, abandoning his book, the pages limp like forgotten autumn leaves stained red in the glass-filtered light.
"You like art?" Junmyeon asked, hopefully.
"A bit," Lu Han shrugged, "but mostly I like the outdoors; playing soccer in autumn when the air is crisp and the morning breeze bites as you breathe it down." What about winter?
"What about winter?" Junmyeon asked, the words slipping out of his mouth before he realized it.
"Snow isn't so cold when you're running," Lu Han grinned, and Junmyeon couldn't help but smile back. Now your heart is disgustingly mushy; make up your mind. Junmyeon's fingers whitened on the neck-strap of his camera.
•••---•••
youth: the beginning
Baekhyun was already with him; that last time.
It was dark and no one was home except Junmyeon. And me. They were marathoning Hannibal, red and blue and the sound of footsteps and then the door opened behind him and everything went black. Junmyeon!
When opened his eyes everything hurt; face to the carpet he painfully pried himself up on elbows, looking at the pattern in carmine on the white tile floor. He was dripping red from his nose and mouth, he swiped at his face ineffectually with the back of one hand and then almost collapsed as stars went off behind his eyes. Stop moving.
A few deep breaths later, nausea settling like a sick weight but the pain coalescing enough that he was able to roll himself back to slump against the wall, he looked around the room. There was a trail of red leading around to the front of the sofa that was out of his view. On screen, bloody angels with torn backs watched over a silent sleeper. Baekhyun was silent.
"Baekhyun?" Nothing. Junmyeon sank forward onto his hands and knees, managing to drag himself forward and around the corner of the white leather to the tableau beyond.
Red everywhere. His brother, smiling. Skull smashed in.
"Baekhyun?" Junmyeon looked down at his hands, the red tips of his fingers.
Silence.
In between flickers of conciousness, he managed to somehow plan a solution. It was a good thing his parents were gone for the weekend.
Baekhyun only came back when he'd sent the car hurtling over the cliff, his brother belted inside.
"Where were you?" Junmyeon didn't ask what had happened.
He didn't want to know.
•••---•••
childhood: the end
It's summer, the last summer, cicadas singing in the heat. Baekhyun's not supposed to play outside, sweat standing out sharply on his forehead, skin stretched over skull.
He does anyway.
Baekhyun and Junmyeon join hands and whirl and whirl until their eyes are red from the wind, tears streaming, before they lie down hand in hand in the long grass and pretend they're in Africa, a pride of lions lying in wait to tear them to shreds.
Baekhyun starts coughing and Junmyeon wants to tell him to be quiet, the lions will hear, but his friend's eyes are red and he coughs so hard that crimson spots his eyelashes, leaving drops on the dry grass between his hands.
"Baekhyun?" Junmyeon sits up but he doesn't know what to do. They're not supposed to be out here; he'll get in trouble if he's caught. Next to him, his friend starts gasping for air as the spots of red become thicker.
"Wait, I'll get Mom," Junmyeon says; even the child he is knows that this is more than cross parents and no dessert after supper.
Stop. It's Baekyun's voice, but it's in his head. He looks over at his friend, limp on the ground, not breathing.
"Baekhyun?" Something rises to his throat, he doesn't know if it's fear or bile but it tastes terrible on his tongue.
Shh. It'll be okay.
He lies down beside his friend until the sun sinks below the horizon, bathing the world in scarlet.
My favourite colour.
•••---•••
now: part ii
"Who's Baekhyun?" The doctor's white coat was starting to grate on his senses. Fingernails on a chalkboard of nails, white scraps trailing red. I'm Baekhyun.
Junmyeon only smiled, didn't say anything. The doctor sighed, the air escaping from her mouth in soft exhale.
"Do you have any friends, people you've met recently?" She sounded annoyed, too used to weak, helpless people who wanted to be cracked. We could help you with that.
"We like Lu Han." Junmyeon smiled; the motion echoed internally with a pleased purr.
"Who is that?" She leaned forward, interest sparking in her cornflower blue eyes.
"Just a new friend." Junmyeon's voice was bored. The doctor sighed again, another dead end.
"Do you have plans to get to know him better?" she asked, a last ditch-attempt with a rusty shovel.
Junmyeon nodded. Yes, we have plans.
•••---•••
The wolves that were howling outside have slipped into his skin; he can feel them tearing through muscle and bone to gnaw at the gristle and marrow. Everything sings with fire.
The pictures that line the walls of the darkroom are being torn away in the fierce gale, heat melts them into black fascimiles of themselves, faces into grinning rictus and hands curled jealously around hearts. Memories shred, thoughts turn to ash; everything dances, a whirling dervish to tear apart the present until nothing is left.
The sky is red.
Recipient: doeiros
Pairings: Baekhyun/Junmyeon, Junmyeon/Lu Han
Word Count: 2563 words
Rating: PG-13/R
Warnings: major character death, minor character death, implied murder (fratricide), disturbed personalities, terminal illness, implied cancer, copious blood references, psychiatrist/mental illness implications, implied possession/multi-personality issues, implied abuse
Summary: Junmyeon is Baekhyun is Junmyeon. Lu Han is someone else.
Author's Note: Thanks so much to the mods for being understanding of health and other issues. Thanks to my recipient for the great prompts - I hope this is even a little bit like what you wanted. Thanks so much to tlist for being there and also not being there when I needed to focus, A for beta-ing despite travel (you'd better arrive home safely!) and a certain person who is awesome no matter what they might say.
This story was inspired by The Kooks Taking pictures of you, The Vaccines The Beast in Me, Devonté Hynes Palo Alto, Salyu 共鳴（空虚な石）by Lily Chou-Chou (translation) & Priscilla Ahn Fine On The Outside.
He loves to paint the sky red.
The pictures that line the walls of the darkroom flutter in the air. Tiny wisps of thought that dance through the moments, the memories.
There are wolves howling outside now; he can feel the sound on his skin. Time to burn.
•••---•••
now: part i
"Do you have a fear of flying?" The doctor wore a white coat, white pants, white shoes. The walls were white.
I would give anything for a splash of crimson.
"Not really." It's just nicer to have less far to fall.
"Why then did you refuse to attend your only brother's funeral?" The doctor looked over her glasses at him; her eyeliner was clumping in the creases of her eyelids. That's not nice.
Junmyeon wasn't looking at her when he replied. He was looking at her eyelids, trying to figure out what was going wrong with them. I didn't want to go, that's why.
"He didn't want to go."
"Who didn't want to go?" The doctor looked slightly puzzled, the pencil she was spinning in her hand dropping with a soft thump onto the pad of paper she wasn't making notes on. That's not becoming of a psychiatrist.
"Baekhyun."
•••---•••
childhood: the beginning
As a child he has a lot of imaginary friends. They're a regular gang, if his stories at the dinner table are to be believed. In fact, his only friend-in-the-flesh is Baekhyun, the neighbour next door. Baekhyun is noisy and rude and his face sticks in Junmyeon's mind; he's the only person he's ever met robust enought to be imaginary and yet completely real. Together they populate the world with monsters; Junmyeon suggests magical talking animals but Baekhyun vetoes the idea with no small disdain - "talking animals are for boring people who read books," he says, glancing over at their classmate Jongin who has his nose in a book - Junmyeon privately disagrees but Baekhyun wins as usual.
Later on, when they're struggling to pull bulky winter coats on over their stiff uniform blazers, Baekhyun tells Junmyeon his first secret: "There's a monster inside me," he whispers, the scarf he's winding around his neck briefly muffling his voice.
Junmyeon doesn't understand at first, what was his friend talking about? But a few days later, after they've been having a particularly nice time in the snow, throwing snowballs at innocent passersby before scurrying to hide in the safety of the park trees, Baekhyun coughs, red colouring the ground.
"Is that the monster?" Junmyeon asks. He's worried but Baekhyun only looks bored, smearing scarlet over the back of his hand as he wipes his mouth; red particles stick to his cheek, which Junmyeon would like to brush away but -
"Yup," Baekhyun nods, grinning. "It's eating me from the inside." He keeps making snowballs, case closed, but Junmyeon can't get the picture out of his mind.
He dreams, that night ... vicious spiked things winding around Baekhyun's white skeleton, tearing away chunks of his lungs and sucking the broken edges of bones - Junmyeon wakes up screaming but can't explain why.
•••---•••
first encounter
He saw him first behind the lens of a camera. Gold hair, sun refracting off the wind-ruffled tendrils. I like him.
"Hi," he said, before he could stop himself. You know you wanted to anyway. He kicked Baekhyun. That was uncalled for.
The boy froze in the act of climbing onto a red bicycle. Red bicycle. Point number one in his favour. He looked over his shoulder at Junmyeon who smiled, eyes crinkling. The boy's foot slipped and he ended up in a tangle of metal, crimson dotting the floor from a skinned knee. Yum.
"Stop it," Junmyeon hissed, he couldn't help it. When the boy looked up, confused, he deflected his attention -
"Do you need any help?" He was only being polite but the boy blushed, scarlet rising to paint his cheeks. Such a pretty colour.
"No, I'm okay," the boy stammered, but he staggered getting up, wincing as his scratched palms made contact with the ground. Junmyeon stepped in to help, gently lifting him by his forearms.
"I'm Junmyeon," he said, because it seemed the polite thing to do. And I'm Baekhyun. Another kick.
The boy smiled gratefully, his perfect face breaking up into the cutest expression Junmyeon had ever seen. Except mine of course. "I'm Lu Han."
They ended up walking through the park side by side, leaves crunching underfoot, red and brown and gold. Lu Han talked about school, his hobby: soccer, and what it felt like to leave everything behind. Junmyeon was distracted by his skin, a single sheet of unblemished silk that wrapped the muscles and veins and nerves with such delicate grace; he could almost see the tracery of red pulsing underneath the surface. When Lu Han lifted his hand to shade his eyes, the sun shining through and exposing the crimson within, he couldn't help himself:
"Click."
Lu Han turned in surprise and Junmyeon quickly cleared his throat to hide his embarrassment, the camera on the strap around his neck falling down to thump into his chest with a thud.
"I have a photography project to take pictures of the autumn leaves," he lied, the words falling smoothly off of his tongue. Yeah right.
Lu han's interest seemed piqued. "Are you in the photography club?" he asked. Junmyeon nodded.
"I'm the president," he explained.
"That's cool," the blond boy smiled. "I'm the captain of the soccer team." He air-drabbled an invisible ball for a moment, finishing off with a magnificent kick towards a fictional goal where the path curved and disappeared into the trees, red leaves thrown up into the air and scattering with the wind.
Junmyeon couldn't help it; he snapped another picture, but Lu Han only grinned back at him. It's lucky you're the president and can change this season's theme to autumn...
•••---•••
youth: the end
His older brother died that month. "Accident," some people said. "Suicide," others whispered. Junmyeon knew his brother had had secrets; he'd pried some of them out himself over the years, poking until his brother snapped and lashed out, red decorating the room.
"Go ahead dear," his mother had said, when he complained afterwards and wanted to run away from home. "Here's my credit card. Just don't fly to Africa, okay?" She'd smiled at him, ruffling his hair, and he'd winced but managed to hide it.
Don't touch me.
It had been hard, back then, to tell where he ended and Baekhyun began.
By the time his brother died it was like a second skin.
He didn't go to the funeral; the smell of roses already haunted his sleep, the thick red petals crawling down his throat in search of -
You aren't trying to suffocate me, are you?
Of course not.
•••---•••
childhood: holding patterns
Baekhyun gets thinner and thinner and soon Junmyeon isn't sure if he wasn't imaginary to begin with.
"You're real, right?" He's not worried, he doesn't care at all. Right.
"Shut up," Baekhyun mocks him affectionately, then coughs into his sleeve. He wears a lot of red lately, his new favourite colour. The trailing crimson from his mouth, spattering onto the fabric, doesn't show.
"Baekhyun!" his mother calls from the next-door porch, her voice warbling in the wind. The sound grates on Junmyeon's ears; he frowns as Baekhyun makes faces in the hall mirror before leaving.
"What do you think we look like when we die?" he says, instead of goodbye.
Junmyeon stands in front of the mirror for the next hour, pretending to be dead, but it looks strange with his eyes open. He finally sneaks into his brother's room to get his new camera, an SLR that he isn't even allowed to breathe on, and takes a shot of his reflection with his eyes closed. He examines the picture in the screen after, excitement turning to something darker when the blurry picture shows someone who looks remarkably like -
"What are you doing with my stuff?!" His brother's voice explodes through the hall from where he stands in the doorway, backlit by the late afternoon sun. Junmyeon drops the camera; it makes a sickening crunch as it hits the slate floor.
He tells his mother, later, that he fell down the stairs.
•••---•••
second encounter
Junyeon saw Lu Han again at the library, his buttery hair all aglow in a pool of sunlight from the stained glass windows. Red is still better. "Shut up."
He was supposed to be looking for a biography on Federico García Lorca but his eyes kept straying to the live boy sitting at a table, head nodding over a book. What a cutie, he's going to drool all over the page. Junmyeon ignored Baekhyun, slipping around the corner of the bookshelves to peek between the spaces. Lu Han looked like he was trying to study but his eyes kept closing, his head drifting down to the table before he would jerk awake for a moment, eyes blinking around in surprise before he did it all over again.
Your heart is hurting me. Go talk to him.
He snapped a photo instead; a halo of light around a sleepy face, his mouth spread into an unconcious smile as he stared at the screen, whether it was his or Baekhyun's he didn't know. Looking up, he was surprised to see Lu Han, eyes open, looking back at him. There was a curious expression on his face as he beckoned Junmyeon over. Don't even think about running.
"Did you take a picture of me?" His voice was soft but to the point. Junmyeon tucked his camera protectively beneath one arm.
"No," he lied, "I was taking a picture of the stained glass behind you. It's for the autumn theme." They both looked up at the window, red and orange glass forming flames of cold fire.
"I've always wondered," Lu Hand said thoughtfully, "is that hell?" No, this is hell. Baekhyun's voice was so sharp it cut; Junmyeon winced before shrugging.
"I think it's some kind of modern art," he said vaguely, when he knew for a fact that it was a homage in red to Chagall's blue stained glass in St. Stephan's Church in Mainz. "Kind of autumn feelings." You're such a liar. But Lu Han smiled, and everything was worth it.
"That's so pretty," he said, abandoning his book, the pages limp like forgotten autumn leaves stained red in the glass-filtered light.
"You like art?" Junmyeon asked, hopefully.
"A bit," Lu Han shrugged, "but mostly I like the outdoors; playing soccer in autumn when the air is crisp and the morning breeze bites as you breathe it down." What about winter?
"What about winter?" Junmyeon asked, the words slipping out of his mouth before he realized it.
"Snow isn't so cold when you're running," Lu Han grinned, and Junmyeon couldn't help but smile back. Now your heart is disgustingly mushy; make up your mind. Junmyeon's fingers whitened on the neck-strap of his camera.
•••---•••
youth: the beginning
Baekhyun was already with him; that last time.
It was dark and no one was home except Junmyeon. And me. They were marathoning Hannibal, red and blue and the sound of footsteps and then the door opened behind him and everything went black. Junmyeon!
When opened his eyes everything hurt; face to the carpet he painfully pried himself up on elbows, looking at the pattern in carmine on the white tile floor. He was dripping red from his nose and mouth, he swiped at his face ineffectually with the back of one hand and then almost collapsed as stars went off behind his eyes. Stop moving.
A few deep breaths later, nausea settling like a sick weight but the pain coalescing enough that he was able to roll himself back to slump against the wall, he looked around the room. There was a trail of red leading around to the front of the sofa that was out of his view. On screen, bloody angels with torn backs watched over a silent sleeper. Baekhyun was silent.
"Baekhyun?" Nothing. Junmyeon sank forward onto his hands and knees, managing to drag himself forward and around the corner of the white leather to the tableau beyond.
Red everywhere. His brother, smiling. Skull smashed in.
"Baekhyun?" Junmyeon looked down at his hands, the red tips of his fingers.
Silence.
In between flickers of conciousness, he managed to somehow plan a solution. It was a good thing his parents were gone for the weekend.
Baekhyun only came back when he'd sent the car hurtling over the cliff, his brother belted inside.
"Where were you?" Junmyeon didn't ask what had happened.
He didn't want to know.
•••---•••
childhood: the end
It's summer, the last summer, cicadas singing in the heat. Baekhyun's not supposed to play outside, sweat standing out sharply on his forehead, skin stretched over skull.
He does anyway.
Baekhyun and Junmyeon join hands and whirl and whirl until their eyes are red from the wind, tears streaming, before they lie down hand in hand in the long grass and pretend they're in Africa, a pride of lions lying in wait to tear them to shreds.
Baekhyun starts coughing and Junmyeon wants to tell him to be quiet, the lions will hear, but his friend's eyes are red and he coughs so hard that crimson spots his eyelashes, leaving drops on the dry grass between his hands.
"Baekhyun?" Junmyeon sits up but he doesn't know what to do. They're not supposed to be out here; he'll get in trouble if he's caught. Next to him, his friend starts gasping for air as the spots of red become thicker.
"Wait, I'll get Mom," Junmyeon says; even the child he is knows that this is more than cross parents and no dessert after supper.
Stop. It's Baekyun's voice, but it's in his head. He looks over at his friend, limp on the ground, not breathing.
"Baekhyun?" Something rises to his throat, he doesn't know if it's fear or bile but it tastes terrible on his tongue.
Shh. It'll be okay.
He lies down beside his friend until the sun sinks below the horizon, bathing the world in scarlet.
My favourite colour.
•••---•••
now: part ii
"Who's Baekhyun?" The doctor's white coat was starting to grate on his senses. Fingernails on a chalkboard of nails, white scraps trailing red. I'm Baekhyun.
Junmyeon only smiled, didn't say anything. The doctor sighed, the air escaping from her mouth in soft exhale.
"Do you have any friends, people you've met recently?" She sounded annoyed, too used to weak, helpless people who wanted to be cracked. We could help you with that.
"We like Lu Han." Junmyeon smiled; the motion echoed internally with a pleased purr.
"Who is that?" She leaned forward, interest sparking in her cornflower blue eyes.
"Just a new friend." Junmyeon's voice was bored. The doctor sighed again, another dead end.
"Do you have plans to get to know him better?" she asked, a last ditch-attempt with a rusty shovel.
Junmyeon nodded. Yes, we have plans.
•••---•••
The wolves that were howling outside have slipped into his skin; he can feel them tearing through muscle and bone to gnaw at the gristle and marrow. Everything sings with fire.
The pictures that line the walls of the darkroom are being torn away in the fierce gale, heat melts them into black fascimiles of themselves, faces into grinning rictus and hands curled jealously around hearts. Memories shred, thoughts turn to ash; everything dances, a whirling dervish to tear apart the present until nothing is left.
The sky is red.