Work Text:
There was something different about this episode. I knew it almost immediately after it happened. This wasn’t just a sticker on the calendar that marked my good and bad days. This was a shattering end to a pitiful story.
I remember when Saeyoung hung it up on the wall: a 12 month calendar with pictures of different kittens each month. When I asked him why we needed that, he said he wanted visual proof of my progress, so I could see how much better I was getting.
I tried really hard each day, aiming for that moment at 10 P.M. every night where I could pick out the sticker that best represented my day: a smile or a frown. I cherished the way Saeyoung smiled when I chose the happy face sticker. That smile was full of all the love I missed out on growing up. I actually felt pride when he praised me. Some months had more frowns than smiles, but… I could tangibly see my recovery, and that was surreal. I could almost believe I was getting better.
He didn’t have to explicitly say he loved me, even though he always did. It was visible in his actions: the way he held me at night like I was the only thing anchoring him to reality; the times he suggested we go for walks because he somehow always knew when the ice cream truck was visiting the local park; the way he let me choose my own clothes even though I only wanted the ones he had specifically chosen for me. He told me he loved me daily, like he was making up for all the years he couldn’t tell me.
As the months passed, the stickers with frowns on the calendar on the wall in the kitchen continued to multiply. This particular month, there had been no happy face stickers at all. Each time Saeyoung came back from the grocery store with another pack of stickers, I could see his shoulders sagging under the weight. He never said anything to me, but I saw him deflate every day I chose the frowning face.
I lied about it once, two months ago, but the way his face lit up made my stomach twist with shame. I wasn’t worthy of that smile and praise. I was as gnarled as my insides made me feel, and I wanted to save Saeyoung the pain of seeing it.
These bad days felt never ending. It had been so long since I had even seen a smile on the calendar, and I hated it. That stupid, physical reminder of my own failure. How can someone suck at being happy? How can I fail at something so laughably simple? The calendar looked so innocently unaware of its own meaning, but each frowning face felt like a buildup of failures, cascading over one another until it was all that consumed my soul. I couldn’t stand looking at it every day, so I ripped it off the wall, completely heedless of the cute kittens.
That was the beginning.
These frowns were broadcasting a message, one neither of us wanted to acknowledge, because it crushed everything we ever wanted in life.
This place was sterilized; even before I set foot in it, it was child proofed. Everyone made jokes about how doting Saeyoung had become, how he’d changed, how he’d become a better man to take care of his little brother. I hated when they said. It was like everyone saw my growth into an adult as illegitimate because I didn’t grow up normally; all because he appeared more well-adjusted than me. I spent my entire existence in his wake, as he discovered life before me. He went to church and I stayed home. He ate food and grew strong, while I went malnourished. He left and made a life, while I was forced to live in darkness.
My existence is nothing more than a weed sprouting nefariously through the concrete of a shadowy alley. There’s a metaphor for strength in there, I know there is, but all I can see is something absolutely unwanted, pathetic, and useless... and so very much myself.
He tried. I know he tried. He brought in the best doctors at Jumin’s recommendation. He let me cycle through psychiatrists and antipsychotics. He saw all my mood swings, all the times I cried, all the times I begged God to kill me. All I am. Everything that makes up Saeran Choi is wretched, twisted, and vile. A weed in concrete. A person with a black soul.
He was unbearably understanding through it all.
“Go ahead.”
Until he wasn’t.
I had him in my grasp. I could feel his hands scratching my forearms. I could feel the way the wheeze vibrated in his throat from the pressure I was forcing on his neck. I could smell the iron from the blood dripping from his mouth.
His glasses were half off his face, lenses smashed and arms twisted, but he still saw. He was looking beyond those glasses, as if he didn’t even notice them, to my eyes. And inside, I saw the understanding brother he once was die.
“Kill me.”
My breathing was already erratic, but those words somehow made my chest constrict, made the air I was breathing turn to miasma, made every fibre in my body cry out. This was what I wanted, wasn’t it? This was why I existed. This was my goal.
Tears blur my vision, and now I’m unsure whose wheezing was louder, his or mine.
“Don’t you hate me?” he asks.
When I search his face, all I can see is the blurred amber glint in his eye; a glint that I knew all too well. The way he was looking at me suggested he saw and mirrored everything in my own soul, that he thought of himself as wretchedly as I did, that he looked in the mirror everyday and hated the person reflected inside. His eyes looked so honest that I found myself mourning the death of his smile.
“I... deserve this.”
“Shut up!” I scream in response, my chest heaving from adrenaline. The first thing I had managed to say since we’d gotten to this point. Up until then, I apparently had a plethora of insults and hate that I couldn’t stop. Everything I voiced felt like poison built up inside my stomach, and with each exhalation, it was leaving me. I never once considered that the poison would just fill the room and taint not only my thoughts, but his as well.
“There’ll be n-no one... left.”
I knew that. Why did he have to say it like that? I knew. I knew. I knew. There never was anyone but him. There was never any hope to begin with. Why did he have to weave his spells? Why did he have to convince me there was something I could do? That if I prayed enough and took all my drugs like a good boy, God would let me be happy? That if I felt genuine sorrow for my actions I’d have a chance at redemption? Hope was just a curse, after all.
“Go ahead,” Saeyoung prompts again, and his voice sounds stronger. I must have loosened my grip. He tugs at my arm, but he isn’t trying to pull me away, he’s trying to encourage me. “Please.”
The thought that he might want this sickens me. It’s turned into more than my disgusting, self-indulgent fantasy. It’s turned into harsh reality, and I’m left to face the truth of the image I thought I had perfected in my mind. There’s no satisfaction in reality.
My own soul rings hollow to his pleas and I slacken my grip more.
“N-no… I-I need you,” I whisper.
When I let him go, he slumps to the floor lifelessly. For a minute, I wonder if I would have ever truly had the resolve to kill him. I watch as he coughs and hacks blood and drool onto the floor. It’s been so clean here since Saeran moved in, they say, but what they don’t know is that the sterilization wipes any traces of these incidents.
This wasn’t the first time I hurt him.
I lay down beside him, all tears and whimpers and strangled breathing. He holds his arms out, and I can see he’s shaking. He’s sacrificing so much of himself just to allow me to exist like this, a broken half-person. I’m like a caged animal and he’s my prey. He’s always my prey. He keeps me separated from the RFA because both of us have no idea how I’d act around them. My mood swings are too unpredictable, and… Saeyoung had said if I was going to hurt anyone, it should be him; it should always be him, and no one else. This is our secret. This is our plight. No one can ever know how broken the Chois are.
I hesitate for long enough that he drops his arms from sheer exhaustion, as if they weighed thousands of pounds. Instead, I crawl close enough to him to nuzzle into his arms, and I use my beige sweater to wipe the blood from his mouth and face. He’s thrown out so many of my clothes, but he just keeps buying new ones. He never complains. He never asks me not to. He just keeps up the charade.
Maybe if he gets enough people to believe I’m healing it’ll make it real.
“I’m… s-sorry,” I choke out. It’s not enough. God fucking dammit, it’s never enough, but Saeyoung always accepts it.
“I’ll-” another cough. They get worse every time. After the last episode, he was whispering for over a week. When the others questioned him, he said it was due to a cold. No one can ever find out. No one will ever find out.
“I know,” I respond, pressing my fingers to his lips and urging him not to speak.
But he speaks anyway.
“I’ll a-always… l-love you, Sae-Saeran.”
His eyes told me the words were lies. He tried, but this was it. He wasn’t strong enough to believe his own words anymore.
I’m not getting better, am I?