Archive of Our Own ^beta

Everything was grey and blue. Taeyong couldn’t remember a colour past purple, past green; he couldn’t picture a sunset, a forest fire, an explosion. His imagination was frozen. If he pinched his skin until it bled, he knew his blood would be black. Grey. Dark blue. That was what blood had always looked like, right? 

Blood. There was blood on the tile next to him. 

Black, he reasoned, with conviction. The blood was black. It wasn’t his, but it really, really could’ve been.

God, I should go home.

Say it.

“I-” want to go home, Taeyong tried to say, voice peeling and splitting apart until he was mouthing the words without making a sound.

I’m going to call someone, he thought to himself. He should’ve told someone where he was going. He should’ve brought someone with him, even though that was the opposite of what he wanted when he left the dorms.

Taeyong knew wasn’t actually going to call anyone. Instead, he’d take out his phone, run his thumb over the cracked screen, and wonder why he hadn’t felt a single fucking thing when he’d accepted an award on the behalf of NCT 127 last week. Or why he hadn’t cried in months. Or why, a few nights ago, when he’d gone to a nightclub drunk off his head and the prettiest girl on the dance floor kissed his cheek, all he could do was wish she’d stop looking at him.

He ran his fingers over the black blood. It had clearly been there for a long time, and it wasn’t coming off. Well, he’d thought so; when he lifted his hand to his face, he saw that dark lines had collected under his fingernails. Odd satisfaction took the form of creeping vines around his ribcage.

What if I’m dead?

What if everyone else is dead, and I’m the only one left?

Taeyong sighed, slid down the side of the pool until he could lie down, and closed his eyes. The cold tile at the bottom of the swimming pool was the numbness under his skin. His rings, smooth around his fingers, were the chains digging into his ankles. He reached for his phone - he slid his thumb over the screen until he found where it had cracked, and the latticework of thin lines was everything he wished he could feel.

There is water above me.

Taeyong wanted to swim, but the air was clear smoke. It wouldn’t hold his weight. He wanted to hold his breath and open his eyes and see grey and blue and black. 

There was an engine noise from somewhere. Taeyong couldn’t tell. He didn’t care.

No, he didn’t care, not until the car started getting a lot closer, and he could hear the tires on gravel, and see the bright ghost light of LED headlights throw the pillars into sharp focus around him. He cared enough to feel a prickle of exhaustion and nothing more.

“Taeyong?” Someone shouted.

I want to swim, Taeyong thought.

Taeyong picked up his phone, wishing adrenaline would kick through his system when messages asking where he was showed up on his homescreen. They were from Ten. Ten, who was staying at the NCT 127 dorms for this week because he was recording something with Johnny. Ten, who Taeyong didn’t really see anymore, because they were on such different schedules, but who always lingered on his mind when he saw him in the dance studio, or the kitchen, or the bathroom hallway. 

Taeyong tried not to think about him. It was simple, most of the time - thinking about nothing was a habit Taeyong easily picked up, but he figured Ten was harder to get off his mind because they’d known each other for so long and he was so used to Ten being around. 

Fuck, Taeyong didn’t care.

There was blood under his fingernails and cold tile under his head. Taeyong was underwater. 

“Taeyong?” Ten’s voice, closer. Echoing.

Taeyong closed his eyes again and let his hands uncurl, fingers loosen, feeling his metal rings slide against the pool tile. Each inhale was as still and empty as the one before. 

Bright, blinding light swiped across his vision, and Taeyong didn’t move.

“Ah- shit, Taeyong-”

Taeyong watched, eyes lidded, as Ten crouched on the edge of the swimming pool and hopped down into it. He was light on his feet. Of course he was, Taeyong hadn’t been expecting anything else, but somehow the fact hit Taeyong like a freight train and he felt his breathing slip, just once, before everything was gone again. He closed his eyes before Ten started running towards him.

“Taeyongie, hey hey. Wake up, okay?”

Ten’s clothes rustled a few feet away. Taeyong heard shoes slide and felt knees land on the tile beside his head. 

“I’m not asleep,” Taeyong muttered.

Ten made a quick noise of either relief or alarm that Taeyong was speaking, and touched the side of his head. Taeyong opened his eyes at the contact without thinking about it. Ten’s fingers were light and warm and his nails were smooth, brushing against Taeyong’s ear; Taeyong almost ground his teeth with the need to take comfort in his touch, because they’d been friends for so long, he knew Ten like he knew the back of his own hand, but right now he barely felt a fucking thing other than dimness and that ever-present urge to be alone.

“Let’s go home?” Ten whispered, hopefully. “Hyung, it’s almost two in the morning.”

So?

Taeyong managed to focus on Ten’s face. Ten looked worried, unconcealed dark circles under his eyes, pulling at his bottom lip with his teeth, with black gelled hair falling into his eyes like a romance movie star. It wasn’t like him. Taeyong knew Ten would want to wash it by now. Ten liked his hair soft, especially when WayV and SuperM were between promotions and when he was going to bed.

“Taeyong,” Ten whined, when Taeyong closed his eyes again. He pushed Taeyong’s cheek gently. 

“How did you find me?”

“Find my friends,” Ten told him, and Taeyong could picture a tiny smile growing on his face as he said it. “The app. I tracked your phone. It’s, ah- oh. Your phone screen is cracked.”

Taeyong smoothed his finger over the lines and wondered how many hours it would be until he turned twenty-six.

“I know,” he said.

“When did it happen?”

Taeyong’s head was black and blue. His mind was smoke. “I don’t know,” he said, truthfully.

A beat of silence. Ten’s thumb moved across Taeyong’s cheekbone, and he slid his fingers up, scratching lightly over Taeyong’s temple before pushing strands of jet black hair behind his ear. Something strange and old stirred in Taeyong’s chest.

“Come home,” Ten whispered. “Please.”

And Taeyong was entirely, completely distracted by whatever the hell was going on inside him right now, so he sat up and blinked himself to shaky awareness. The feeling was gone a moment later. 

I want to swim, Taeyong’s mind repeated.

Ten was looking at him. His eyes were sharp and tired and familiar. “What are you doing here?” He asked, and his voice was soft, just like Taeyong remembered it to be, just like Taeyong knew it always was when the sky was dark and the world was silent.

Taeyong opened his mouth and said, “I want to swim.”

And then he added, “You’re sitting on blood.”

Ten’s eyebrows lifted and lowered in a split second, and he shifted his knee, directing his phone flashlight to the tile floor. Black blood. Old black blood that Taeyong had grazed his fingers over and gotten stuck under his nails.

“That’s not blood, hyung,” Ten said, as if Taeyong was being funny. “That’s just dirt. And if you wanted to swim, you could’ve gone to the place on Daehak-ro tomorrow morning.”

As clear as Taeyong knew the world was blue and black, he knew the dark smudges on the bottom of the pool were blood. 

“Are you okay?” Ten asked, still watching him.

Taeyong was going to say something. It was just a question; he had lots of practice answering questions, and had managed to answer weirder ones, more invasive ones than this in the past. This question was going to be easy. All he had to do was say something.

Taeyong stared at the far side of the pool. His head was static, his body was numb, and his fingers were cold.

“It’s fine, just stand up, okay? Ah, let’s just go. Taeyong.”

Ten, Taeyong replied, mentally.

Taeyong started to get to his feet. Ten took his hand and pulled him the rest of the way. His skin was warm and alive, and Taeyong didn’t really have any opinions about holding Ten’s hand, but right now he didn’t feel like letting go.

“Are you cold?”

Taeyong shrugged. Standing up felt kind of like dying. Black blood rushed away from his head, making him dizzy, making him all too aware of his body. Ten bent down beside him to pick something up - his phone, or Taeyong’s phone, maybe - and Taeyong’s chest tightened a little, just a little, when Ten’s fingers slipped out of his.

The sound of Ten moving faded into the background of Taeyong’s consciousness. He looked up through the caved-in ceiling of the old building. The sky, on nights like this, was as pretty and distant as a memory.

Ten’s hand nudged his elbow, and Taeyong followed him to the shallow end of the pool, feeling the bones in his ankles move with unsettling clarity. The phone flashlight Ten was holding cast cold white shadows behind rubble and formed stark lines under steel railings. This place was a wreck, and Taeyong knew it; he didn’t come here for any kind of pleasant atmosphere. He came here because abandoned, collapsing, thirty-years-old swimming centres matched the inside of his mind in a way that nothing else came close to.

Sad, when he put it like that. Sad, if he actually cared what people thought about him and his odd, worrying habits.

But I do care what people think about me, Taeyong thought. His voice sounded deadpan even when it was inside his head. Because I need to. It’s a survival instinct.

Right now, the only thing Taeyong cared about was blue-grey water. Ten was the only one around. And Ten was an exception: Ten didn’t count as people who judged him.

“Is it your back?” Ten said quietly.

Taeyong stopped halfway up the ladder. He shook his head, once. The light touch of Ten’s fingertips a few inches to the right of his spine disappeared.

If it was my back, poking me wouldn’t help, Taeyong wanted to say. He didn’t. Ten did things sometimes that didn’t make sense, and he did them because he cared. He’d always been like that, for better or for worse, and Taeyong wasn’t going to bother trying to understand how that felt right now; most of the time, he barely managed to care about himself.

Up the ladder, across the pockmarked pool deck. The walls, save for the support pillars, were in pieces. Ten’s car was right outside where the outer wall used to be, empty, dark, and grey-silver. He’d come alone. Taeyong’s eyes flickered to the jet-black car across the gravel parking lot. It was his, when he lived at the NCT 127 dorms - well, it was his and Taeil’s, but Taeil only drove in the mornings, leaving the car at Taeyong’s hand for the rest of the clock unless it was an emergency. It never was. 

“Which car,” Taeyong hedged, vaguely. He knew he’d intended to call someone, but he hadn’t actually wanted to. So what did he really want? To go home? To eat? To swim? To lie down in the bottom of an empty swimming pool, barely breathing, barely thinking, watching the stars move through the caved-in roof until the sun came up? 

“Let’s take my car,” Ten said. His voice was silk and gentle, as it often was, and had a very slight rough edge that made Taeyong realize he’d been recording today. It had been so long since Taeyong had heard Ten sing in person.

Taeyong opened the passenger side door. Ten’s phone flashlight reflected off the hood of the car, drawing Taeyong’s eyes, before Ten opened his phone and disabled it. The car was silent when both doors were closed.

“You look tired,” Taeyong said. 

He was used to talking to people. That was the only thing keeping him from closing his eyes and relaxing into his seat, submerging himself in a cold silence that would only get worse with time.

Ten glanced at him over the gearshift and turned the headlights on with a click. The car smelled like him; it smelled like his shampoo, the stuff that Taeyong had found and sniffed in the bathroom a few days ago because he didn’t recognize it on the counter. It smelled like the cologne that followed Ten around, that Taeyong had never thought to put a name to. There was a cat keychain in the cupholder. There was a black wallet in front of the gearshift. If Taeyong had tried to picture Ten’s car before getting in, he would’ve been mostly right.

“That’s ‘cause I am tired.” Ten’s eyes caught the dashboard lights, glittering and dark, and something in Taeyong’s body flickered alive for a half-second, for a fraction of a moment. Ten started the ignition. “Aren’t you?”

Taeyong shrugged. He picked black blood out from under his fingernails. The roar of the engine wiped away all of his thoughts.

=

“Taeyong-hyung.”

“Hm.”

Ten’s fingers tapped the back of the steering wheel to a tune Taeyong recognized, but didn’t remember the name of. “We can come back tomorrow and pick up your car, yeah?”

Taeyong hadn’t been paying attention to the drive. He hadn’t been paying attention to anything except listening to Ten’s breathing and trying to put his own in sync. “Taeil,” he said.

“Taeil can use my car,” Ten offered. “I ride to the studio with Johnny, anyways.”

Taeyong just nodded. He looked out the window, tilted his head back against the seat to stretch his neck, and fidgeted.

“Hey, Taeyong. Do you go there a lot?”

Part of Taeyong wanted to put his face in his hands and refuse to answer. A bigger part of him wanted to talk to Ten, because they hadn’t had an actual conversation for at least a year; they spoke about work, about NCT, but nothing else, nothing casual. Taeyong didn’t know what Ten was up to anymore. The shows he watched? What he did when he was bored? How the WayV pets were? Taeyong knew everything about Ten, but nothing about the Ten right beside him.

Taeyong shrugged.

“Ah, Taeyong,” Ten sighed, taking one hand off the wheel to pat Taeyong’s knee. “Talk to me, okay? 

Taeyong nodded robotically. Ten’s hand on his knee should’ve been comforting. Taeyong remembered their trainee days, where they’d lie down in bed and watch movies together, taking much-needed solace in shared contact and experience. It was a blur in Taeyong’s mind, but being in Ten’s car helped. Being close to Ten peeled back the years between them.

Dorm rooms and promises: leaning on each other when life and work became too much. It was a close relationship. It had to be. Taeyong remembered Ten’s fingers carding through his hair, calming him down when he was crying in a way that nothing else ever did, because the dorm room they shared was the closest he had to privacy and sometimes Ten knew him better than he knew himself. He remembered how Ten would climb into his bunk and curl up to him at night, wordlessly asking to be held, and Taeyong would have to hug him to his chest or throw a leg over his hip, just so Ten could fall asleep. He remembered sitting on the floor in the practice room - his chest would heave, he’d sip water between ragged breaths, and he’d feel a million times better when he caught Ten’s eye and saw he was doing the same. They were both exhausted. They were both working hard. They were both fighting for something more. 

“Not really,” Taeyong said, finally. “I don’t. Go there a lot, I mean.”

The small, relieved smile curving Ten’s lips made Taeyong feel saner. “Doyoung said you drive around at night when you want to be alone.”

Taeyong squinted when headlights from an oncoming car took over the windshield. “He did?”

“He notices when you’re gone. They all do.”

Taeyong shook his head and rubbed his eyes. He didn’t know if it was the rumble of the engine, the movement of the car, or the smell of Ten’s cologne that was making him sleepy, but he couldn’t stop his eyelids from drooping. He still felt numb and mechanical. He still felt empty and he still wanted to be alone.

I want to swim.

“Did you turn the heat up?” Taeyong asked, realizing the tiredness he felt might be due more to biology than Ten’s presence. He didn’t know if he had goosebumps on his arms in the pool, but he knew he didn’t have any now, and he could move his fingers easier. Ten had definitely adjusted the climate controls.

Ten glanced at him. “You looked cold,” he said, in that familiar voice, tempered by hours of singing.

I was numb, Taeyong thought. I wasn’t cold. I wasn’t anything. I was underwater. 

I’m still underwater. 

=

“We’re here. Come on, Taeyong.”

Taeyong blinked, once, twice, eyelids heavy. The words sounded like an order. “Taeyong-hyung,” he corrected, mindlessly.

Ten gave him a look and turned the car off. The lights from the dash paled and vanished, leaving Ten to be illuminated by the stark parking garage LEDs as he watched Taeyong with an odd expectancy. Taeyong held his gaze. He felt frozen. He wanted to stay in Ten’s car, and he didn’t know why.

“What’s up?” Ten asked, voice sending a flutter of unfamiliar nerves up Taeyong’s neck. When Taeyong swallowed and faced forward again, the feeling was gone, replaced with baffled emptiness.

I don’t know, he wanted to say.

I think something’s wrong with me.

Taeyong realized he’d unconsciously lifted his hand to his mouth to chew on his nails. He immediately curled his fingers into a fist. Bad habit. The cameras didn’t want to see his bad habits.

“Taeyong…”

“Nothing,” Taeyong forced out. The cameras didn’t want to see his cold, faded, swimming-pool mind. The cameras weren’t here right now, he was only with Ten, but it didn’t matter either way; he was still NCT’s Taeyong, and he had to act like it, because outside of that he was nothing.

Ten’s face, tilted to look at Taeyong’s profile, was dark and worried. Taeyong almost shivered.

“Okay,” Ten said, quietly. “Ah, okay, let’s go.”

Taeyong got out of Ten’s car feeling like he’d left a piece of himself in the front seat. Maybe he had. Maybe he’d died there, and it was his ghost who followed Ten into the elevator. There was still blood under his fingernails. It tasted like chalky dirt in his mouth.

“I think most of them are asleep,” Ten whispered, when they reached the door that led to the fifth-floor half of the NCT 127 dorms. “Doyoung was awake an hour ago, but he’s probably in bed now. Haechan was trying to convince him to let Yuta paint his toenails.”

Taeyong rubbed a hand across his forehead, not processing. “What?”

“Nevermind.” Ten lifted his cat keychain, unlocked the apartment door, and pushed it open to let Taeyong enter.

Haechan was on the couch, but there was no sign of anyone else. Taeyong took in the familiar landscape of the apartment, and it felt like he was looking at everything from far away - everything was muffled and distant and hazy. His senses were dulled. Had they always been like that?

Yeah. The world had always looked like that.

“You found him, hyung?” Haechan whispered. He was half-asleep. The TV was on, playing Netflix previews on mute.

Ten closed the door with a click and waved his keychain at Haechan. “Yeah, I found him.” 

“I’m going to bed. Do you want me to help with the couch?”

“It’s okay, Haechan-ah. Go to sleep. But don’t wake up Johnny, I need him in a good mood tomorrow.”

Haechan’s face split into a tired smile. Taeyong wished he had that kind of effect on people; he wished he could say things and mean them, say things and have people respond in ways that mattered. 

I wish I was at the bottom of a swimming pool, Taeyong thought, aimlessly.

Haechan padded out of the room and vanished into his and Johnny’s shared bedroom. Ten put his keys down with a clink, leaving Taeyong’s peripheral vision for a moment, and when he came back, he looped his arms around Taeyong’s body from behind.

“Ten?”

Ten’s chin was resting on his shoulder, curved and sharp as always. Taeyong could picture the smooth lines of his face without looking at him. “I missed you, hyung,” Ten told him, under his breath. “We never hang out anymore.”

“Too busy,” Taeyong supplied, unhelpfully.

Ten’s sigh was warm against his cheek. He smelled like shampoo and cologne. “Yeah,” he agreed. “Too busy.”

Ten slid his arms away, and Taeyong felt a flicker of disappointment, of loss, and bit his tongue to stifle it. He was- afraid? His heart was beating, a little bit faster than normal probably, and maybe he felt a bit light-headed, or maybe he was just tired, Taeyong didn’t know anything, ever.

I am underwater. Taeyong’s mind was faint and scattered and barely conscious. Bittersweet, heavy emptiness filtered through his body, millisecond by millisecond, until everything was gone and Taeyong didn’t know where it went. 

Ten was putting pressure on Taeyong’s mid-back to get him to move. Taeyong wished he felt like anything more than a body, a corpse, a skeleton. He wished he felt like a person.

When Taeyong focused on his surroundings again, he was sitting on his bed, and Ten was standing in front of him. 

“I need to-”

“-have a shower,” Taeyong interrupted. 

Ten blinked at him. “I- what?”

I think something’s wrong with me, Taeyong thought, helplessly. He opened his mouth. He was going to say it. This was what he wanted to do, when he was lying in the swimming pool, thinking about calling someone. His bed was unmade and the sheets were tangled where he sat on them. His room was dark, the only illumination coming from a night-light plugged into an outlet near the door.

Taeyong closed his jaw with a click and reached towards Ten’s forehead. He twisted a strand of Ten’s gelled, unwashed hair between his fingers. “You like it when your hair is soft.”

Ten stared at him.

“You told me that. In rookies.”

Ten huffed, and Taeyong wasn’t sure if it was a laugh, a sigh, or something else entirely. With a small smile, he reached up and took Taeyong’s hand from his forehead. “That was five years ago, hyung. But you’re right. You should have a shower first, though.” To emphasize his point, Ten tapped Taeyong’s fingernails, tilting his hand so the light caught them better. There was still black blood stuck underneath. 

Taeyong didn’t want to have a shower. He wanted to be able to smile when someone told him they loved him, loved NCT, loved his music. He wanted to feel a rush when he heard a new song in the studio. He wanted to put his hands to his face and cry. He wanted to look outside at night and not feel a digging urge to be alone, to go somewhere no one would find him, to vanish into the dark and degrade into nothing, a nobody, a figure made of ashes and echoes and dried blood at the bottom of old swimming pools.

“Hey,” Ten murmured. And then he was pushing Taeyong’s hair behind his ear, smoothing it back, his fingers light and gentle, and Taeyong didn’t know what to do.

Taeyong closed his eyes and felt his ribcage tighten, a boa constrictor around his lungs. Say it. Something’s wrong with me. Say it. Say it. Black and blue and grey, there are miles of water above me. Say it.

“Sorry.” Ten’s hand stilled. “Sorry, I know we aren’t- I mean, we used to be… closer. It’s been a long time, I guess.”

“No,” Taeyong whispered, feeling drunk and painfully sober at the same time, blank and cold along the edges. When Ten’s fingers didn’t start moving again, he continued. “No. I remember. In our room, when I was… you used to…”

Ten shifted his weight. “It made you feel better.”

“Why did we stop?”

We. The closeness, the reliance. It was a ridiculous question; they both knew the answer. Rookies had led to NCT, which led to different subunits, which led to years spent at a distance - and they’d grown up since then, too. This week had to be the one of the only times he’d shared a living space with Ten since the Baby Don’t Stop promotions, and Ten was barely around, only coming home to sleep on the pull-out couch in the common area, so Taeyong wasn’t even sure if it counted. 

Ten’s eyes were dark and sad, expression curious and confused. “Schedules.”

Taeyong watched him. His gaze caught on the line of Ten’s lips, his nose, the smudges of makeup on his eyelids. He felt something lonely curl in his stomach. 

“I’ll have a shower,” Taeyong said, standing up, letting Ten’s hand fall from his head and letting the world return to shades of blue and grey around him. I think-

I think something’s wrong with me.

=

Taeyong turned the shower off and wrapped a towel around himself. His head was filled with the static drum of water hitting tile; he’d showered completely on autopilot, barely remembering to clean under his nails. 

“My turn,” Ten said, almost making Taeyong jump. Ten was leaning against the wall outside the bathroom door. He had dark circles under his eyes, accentuated by the poor lighting, and he would’ve looked gaunt if not for the familiar smirk of his lips. The smirk didn’t last long. Ten took a small step into Taeyong’s space, and before Taeyong could move out of the way, Ten caught his shoulder and leaned towards his hair.

“What,” Taeyong said, trying to sound less empty than he felt. 

Ten was silent for a moment. “Did you use my shampoo?”

Did I?

Taeyong opened his mouth, then closed it. He didn’t know. He didn’t remember picking what to use. Every bottle looked the same, they were all shades of grey and blue, they were all made of plastic.

I don’t know, Taeyong wanted to mumble. I don’t know, I think something’s-

“Ah, hyung, that’s kind of nice.” Ten smiled, a little shyly, and Taeyong felt something twist at the back of his throat. “You smell good now. Like me.”

Taeyong wondered how long it would take for Ten’s soft smile to fade from his memory, and he wasn’t comforted by the estimate he came up with. His heartbeat was audible in his ears. He didn’t know what to do. There was something twitching in his chest, and it hurt. It filled the gaps in his hollow ribcage, and he knew it would only last a second - he tried to hold onto the feeling, desperation coiling hot, panicked fingers around his windpipe. He needed to find some way to maintain it.

Taeyong loosened his grip on the towel around his body, letting it slip off one of his shoulders. He watched Ten’s eyes dart down- then back to his eyes, and down again, and he felt something.

The bob of Ten’s throat kickstarted Taeyong’s fight-or-flight response. It was too much of something, that same something, the strange twist under his tongue and behind his collarbones, that-

“I’m gonna get dressed,” Taeyong said, in one short breath.

Ten’s shy smile had evaporated, replaced by an even shyer blush, if Taeyong could even call the slight pinkness high on Ten’s cheekbones a blush. Taeyong could smell Ten’s shampoo in his own hair and felt his own face heat up, because- because what am I doing? What the fuck was he doing?

I am terrified, Taeyong realized.

Ten nodded. Taeyong left Ten standing outside the bathroom and fled down the hallway back to his room, each step turning the world dark, blue, and unfocused, until all Taeyong could remember was the feeling of his rings against pool tile. 

He was lightyears from whatever Ten was. Ten was bright and alive; Taeyong was forgetting what his smile looked like.

I am at the bottom of a swimming pool, Taeyong thought to himself, apathy cold and thick in his bloodstream. 

Everything was hazy. Everything was grey. Everything was gone.

Clothes: sweatpants and a white t-shirt. Taeyong sat on his bed and dried his hair with the towel, realizing too late that the black dye was starting to run. He couldn’t bring himself to care about the inky marks, but he knew it would be an inconvenience to clean or replace, and the thought of dealing with it later made him exhausted. He balled the towel up and dropped it on the floor. As an afterthought, he nudged it under the bed with his heel.

It had to be three in the morning by now, but Taeyong’s gauge on time was mediocre, and he didn’t want to stand up and check his phone to make sure. 

Minutes passed. Taeyong tried to move his foot. He felt like he was underwater. 

No, he didn’t feel like he was underwater; he was underwater, and he couldn’t inhale, because if he did, he was going to drown. If he took a breath, his lungs were going to fill with water. So he wasn’t going to breathe. He wasn’t going to drown - he couldn’t die, not with his life as it was now, with the world watching him. He couldn’t drown. He’d hold his breath instead. 

I’m at the bottom of a swimming pool, and everything above me is water.

He couldn’t breathe. I’m at the bottom of a swimming pool, and-

In the corner of his vision, Taeyong saw his bedroom door move.

Taeyong couldn’t make out Ten’s voice from the other side of the door. Taeyong couldn’t hear anything, because the water was gone, all of the water was gone, and was gasping for air, finally able to breathe again, and whatever Ten was saying had heightened in volume and become more urgent-

“Taeyong, Taeyong- hey!”

“What,” Taeyong choked out, between ragged inhales, feeling his heart pound in his head like a bass drum. Ten’s hands were on either side of his face - hooked under his ears, cupping his jaw, thumbs low on his cheeks like he was something fragile, something so unlike the person Taeyong knew he had to be.

“-yongie, just breathe, okay,” Ten was saying, words high and sharp with anxiety. “Ah, I- please tell me what’s happening- are you okay?”

I am underwater, Taeyong’s mind shouted. I am alone. I’m afraid that I can’t feel anything. I can’t feel anything. I can’t feel anything. I’m terrified of-

“I think,” Taeyong muttered. He was dizzy and he couldn’t tell if he was shivering or not, but Ten’s hands were unsteady against his skin, and that felt like proof enough. Say it. Say it. The water is black and blue and there is blood on the bottom of the swimming pool.

I think- I think-

“I think something’s wrong with me,” he whispered. 

Taeyong’s ears were ringing. The sound ricocheted through his empty, numb body, and he wished, idly, uncaringly, that Ten would leave his room. 

Ten’s hands moved to his shoulders, and then to his back. Taeyong didn’t realize he was being hugged until his cheek was against Ten’s neck. Water droplets still clung to Ten’s hair and skin from his shower - he smelled like shampoo, he smelled like something familiar, warm, and a little bit like fresh laundry, a little bit like conditioner. Taeyong clenched his jaw and closed his eyes. He pushed his nose against Ten’s skin until he forgot what blood and dirt tasted like.

I am…

“Tae-yong-hyung,” Ten murmured, stretching out the syllables, the vibrations from his throat sinking into Taeyong’s eardrums. “I’m worried about you.”

And Taeyong, for all his experience as NCT’s leader, didn’t know what to say and didn’t know what to do. He was as void as a corpse. He was a ghost, and his body was stuck at the bottom of the swimming pool, in Ten’s car, on every stage he performed; at the recording studio, and the dance studio. Miles of water and decades of silence. He was alone.

Ten, he thought, desperately.

Taeyong raised his arms from where they’d been limp at his sides and wrapped them around Ten before his mind could protest. Ten hummed, fondly, gently, and Taeyong gripped his fight-or-flight response in a chokehold where it sparked to life in his brain, crushing it to the drumbeat of his racing heart, because he was afraid, so afraid of whatever this was, but he needed it to live - he kept going until his hand was scarred and strained and his nails were bright with hot, red blood- burning him, burning his skin, and he was terrified, he was terrified, but he was feeling something. 

“You’re crying,” Ten told him, softly. Taeyong didn’t believe it.

Feverish tears stung the corners of Taeyong’s eyes. He didn’t believe it.

“I’m not,” Taeyong whispered.

Ten pulled back - just a couple of inches - and drew his arm up to rest on Taeyong’s shoulder. He propped his hand on the side of Taeyong’s head, thumb against his cheekbone, fingertips light on his hairline, and wiped a tear from under Taeyong’s eye.

“See?”

Taeyong swallowed, hard.

I am at the bottom of-

Ten pushed Taeyong’s hair off his forehead with a light, careful touch, and ran his fingers through it, over his head, all the way to the base of Taeyong’s skull. And again. And Taeyong let out a ragged breath. And Taeyong squeezed his eyes shut and buried his face in Ten’s neck and tried to convince his body to stop trembling.

“It’s okay,” Ten mumbled. “Shh, hyung, it’s okay.”

Maybe it was, maybe it wasn’t, but right now, Taeyong’s world had narrowed down to Ten’s voice in his ear, the soft t-shirt Ten was wearing, and Ten’s fingertips in his hair. He bit the inside of his cheek and felt hot tears on his face.

Taeyong almost didn’t notice the greys and blues coming back. 

“Ten,” he said, throat rough.

“Yeah?”

Taeyong’s vision swam. He was sitting on his bed, which was high enough that when Ten was leaning down in front of him, they were less than a foot apart in height - and it worked for the moment, but Taeyong could feel the world slipping out from under him, and he needed something else to keep him alive. He hugged Ten tighter, curling his fingers in Ten’s shirt, and tilted backwards to pull him onto the bed.

Ten landed on him with a small noise of surprise. Taeyong felt his own breath catch at the sudden weight of Ten's body - he was dizzy, and the twitch in his chest wasn’t helping. Ten propped himself up on his hands and shook his hair like a dog. A mist of water droplets landed on Taeyong’s face, and there was just enough light in the room for him to make out Ten’s expression: perplexed, a little shell-shocked, pinched with worry. Taeyong felt a pulse of annoyance at himself. He was a year older - he was supposed to be the one worried about Ten, he was the leader of NCT, it was his role to care about everyone else - but it didn’t last. Nights and days spent in the SM Rookies dorms with Ten had long since nullified every qualm Taeyong had about who took care of who. If they couldn’t rely on each other, lean on each other, they had nothing.

Holy shit, Taeyong thought. He was exhausted. Heart pounding, mind whirling, body alive and electric; he couldn’t remember the last time he’d felt like this. He couldn’t remember if he’d ever felt like this before. 

On stage, his brain supplied. Baby Don’t Stop. Mastering choreography after weeks of practice. Rapping my favourite line in Cherry Bomb to a stadium audience. The last day of Rookies, when I joined NCT, and the sky was at my fingertips. 

The world wasn’t always grey and blue.

“Ten,” Taeyong said, again. He’d pitched his voice down in some effort to stave off the numbness. Something about Ten - something about the shape of his eyes, the angle of his lips, the softness of his hair, the blush that sometimes appeared high on his cheekbones - made Taeyong’s ribs tighten, made something twist behind his sternum, at the base of his throat, and he needed to keep it close.

Ten narrowed his eyes slightly. “Taeyong?”

Low in his throat, Taeyong murmured, “Hey, Ten.”

Ten blinked hard and swallowed harder. He nearly startled when Taeyong reached up to touch his face. Ten’s eyes were wide, and if Taeyong let his own lips fall open a quarter-inch, let his tongue dart out to wet them - yeah, this was working. Ten was distracted. It’s working.

Taeyong didn’t know exactly what he was doing, but he wasn’t planning on stopping. He was chasing the twitching feeling in his chest - wherever that took him, he’d go. He’d follow it anywhere right now. Not like this was entirely new to him, anyway; he and Ten shared an odd chemistry, one that often showed itself on stage, and, for a while, it was a tool used to make the fans scream just a little louder. They’d play it up under the spotlights, the criss-crossing cameras, the motion of the crowd, and when their faces were close, voices getting picked up in each other’s mics, Taeyong couldn’t tell if his exhilaration was borne of himself or of the fans’ excitement. 

The fans, he’d tell himself, backstage, after the show was over. Ten’s whipcord smirk and his bared collarbones had nothing to do with it.

“Taeyong-hyung,” Ten said, carefully, jarring Taeyong out of his head. “What’s going on?”

“What’s going on,” Taeyong parroted, in a barely-audible mumble.

Ten rolled off of him, lifting Taeyong’s fingers off his cheek and securing them in his own hand. Taeyong let himself be pulled onto his side and watched Ten’s damp hair flatten against his bedsheets. It wasn’t dyed, so it wouldn’t stain the white like Taeyong’s hair would. Like Taeyong’s hair had probably already done.

“You’re acting… weird, hyung. Different.”

Taeyong really didn’t want to get into it. All of this talking was going to push him back into his hazy stupor, and he was so fucking sick of the swimming pool - he was so tired of being tired, of having to smile on purpose, of avoiding people for no reason. “I’m not. You don’t spend enough time with me anymore, so you don’t know what I’m usually like.”

“Ah, so what are you like, now?”

Taeyong gave him a corrosive look. Empty? Numb? A million miles underwater? Desperate to be alone, so much so that I drive around in the middle of the night and find abandoned parks and buildings to doze off in? 

“Nothing.”

“Nothing,” Ten repeated. His voice was comforting, finally. Taeyong loved how his voice was comforting. He loved how it made him feel human. He held onto the comfort with blood-red fingernails and a beating heart and swore he wouldn’t let it go without a fight.

“Something’s wrong with me,” Taeyong said, feeling five years younger than himself, as if he was lying in Ten’s bunk in the SM Rookies dorms and crumbling under the expectations and responsibility weighing on his shoulders. 

Ten’s thumb traced the lines on Taeyong’s palm. “What do you mean?”

“I don’t…”

Just go back to the swimming pool. If I go back, I won’t have to think or talk or feel or-

Taeyong was hanging on by a thread. He was walking the edge of emotion, just aware enough to feel a twitch of sanity in the pulse point under his ear, but not enough to string together words that mattered. 

What the fuck, Taeyong thought, hopelessly.

He curled his hand around the back of Ten’s neck and pulled him close. Light caught the edge of Ten’s cheekbone, the corner of his lips; it tangled in his still-damp shock of hair, and the black strands shone like ink. His gaze was too heavy for Taeyong to hold, eyes wide and conflicted and worried and just- too much. Everything was too much and not enough at the same time.

I don’t know what the hell I’m doing.

The water was coming back. Not again.

I’m at the bottom of-

“Tae-”

Taeyong felt his bones turn to lead, felt his lungs fill with water, and he kissed Ten on the corner of his mouth.

I DON’T KNOW WHAT I’M-

“Oh,” Ten breathed, dragging every thought in Taeyong’s waterlogged skull to a lurching stop. Taeyong was still at the bottom of a swimming pool. He was numb and decaying and entirely, absolutely nothing.

“Is that what you meant?” Ten whispered. It was a question. Taeyong knew that, but he didn’t know how to answer. He didn’t want to think of an answer - he didn’t want to think about anything. He didn’t want to do anything, except find the twitch in his chest and behind his tongue and use it to drag himself out of this fucking swimming pool.

Why didn’t that work, Taeyong thought, frantically. Why am I still- why- why is the water still-

“Taeyong…”

Taeyong kissed the corner of Ten’s lips, again. Ten’s eyes followed him. Come on. Come on, snap back to life, get it over with, forget about the pool and go back to how it was when the world wasn’t numb.

Everything is so-

“What are you doing?” Ten murmured. His eyelashes were dark and pretty, and until now, Taeyong hadn’t noticed how they fluttered against his cheeks when he closed his eyes. It was enough to make Taeyong stare.

Stare, not feel.

Why am I so empty?

Taeyong wasn’t expecting it when Ten kissed him, but the way Ten cupped Taeyong’s jaw and tilted his head should’ve given him more than enough warning.

Panic rose in Taeyong’s throat. He pushed it down. With panic came the urge to run away, to be alone, and he was fighting everything to do with that, so he couldn’t panic. It was just Ten. Ten, who Taeyong had never actually kissed on the mouth before - who, if Taeyong thought about it, tasted pretty good, and he had soft lips, and he obviously knew how to kiss people, and- and Taeyong never exactly imagined what it would be like to kiss Ten, but at the moment, he didn’t really want to stop.

Ten was gentle with him. Taeyong didn’t know what to think.

“Is that what you wanted?” Ten asked, when he pulled away. Ten’s voice was softer and less sure than Taeyong had ever heard it in his life. 

Taeyong opened his mouth. His thoughts stopped and started, reeled back and forth. He still wanted to be alone. A spike of frustration slipped between his ribs and stayed there, cold and jagged, a stupid, endless reminder that Taeyong was nothing. “Why isn’t it working.”

“What?”

“It’s not working,” Taeyong repeated. He couldn’t think clearly, but he could say everything that came to mind, as it came to mind. “Why can’t I- why isn’t- I can’t feel anything. Why can’t I feel anything?”

Pathetic, he deadpanned, to himself. I wish I was at the bottom of a swimming pool.

Ten’s eyebrows were furrowed with anxious, nervous concern, and he was worrying at his bottom lip like it would fix anything. “What do you mean, hyung?”

“Kiss me harder,” Taeyong demanded. He didn’t feel sane. He barely felt human. 

Ten’s eyes went a little wide. “Taeyong?”

Please, Ten.

Taeyong pulled Ten forward by the collar of his shirt and pressed their lips together. Ten let him. He let Taeyong take control; let him bite his bottom lip, let him push his shoulder down on the mattress and get on top of him, desperate. Taeyong was so desperate. His bloodstream was kicking with adrenaline, and Taeyong knew enough to identify it as fear - fear of this, of managing to feel something other than staleness, fear of waking up in a world that was new and changing and dangerous like it used to be. Fear of having to take what he felt and handle it. Fear of not having an escape route, a shield forged of numb disconnect to protect himself, or a swimming pool to bury his lonely mind in.

I’m trapped in the eye of the storm.

Ten’s hands were in his hair, subtly keeping his head still. One of Ten’s knees was up, maintaining a distance between their bodies. As soon as Taeyong tried to push his legs down, to twist his head from Ten's restraints, Ten slipped his knee out of the way, hooked his leg over Taeyong’s back, and flipped Taeyong over.

“What do you want?” Ten asked, tone guarded. He looked disheveled, lips redder than usual, pupils blown and trying to catch his breath, but he’d still pinned Taeyong to the bed with graceful ease. Taeyong wasn’t surprised, but he was annoyed - the way Ten’s body moved with each inhale shouldn’t have been as captivating as it was. Taeyong closed his eyes to focus.

What do you want? Taeyong almost opened his mouth and said, you, but he couldn’t. This was Ten. This was the Ten he’d known since he was eighteen, and he’d see right through Taeyong, because Taeyong didn’t actually know what he wanted. Hell, right now, Taeyong would say anything to get Ten close to him again, and he wasn’t even sure why, aside from his frantic drive to feel something. A last-ditch effort to shock himself awake from a nightmare? The suicidal urge for intimacy with someone he’d known for eight years, instead of a stranger at a club who would forget about him in the morning? Maybe both. Maybe neither. Maybe Taeyong was just desperate for something new.

“What did you mean,” Ten pressed on, “when you said you were like ‘nothing’ nowadays?”

He sounded upset. Taeyong couldn’t relate; he was dizzy and static and frustrated, and he could barely remember what Ten had said.

“I’m…”

“Taeyong-hyung,” Ten whispered.

Kiss me until I feel something, Taeyong wished. Pointless. He’d tried that, and it didn’t fucking work. None of this worked. He was going to get up, go outside and walk around in the dark until he either passed out or made his way back to the apartment complex in the morning. He was going to lose himself in the recesses of old swimming centres and live underwater where nothing was real.

“I need help,” Taeyong said. He didn’t realize his mouth was moving until he’d closed it. When he bit down on his tongue, he tasted bitter dirt. 

“Tell me,” Ten instructed, and his voice was a song. It reminded Taeyong of days, nights, hours, seconds spent living around him, beside him, in sync with him. Taeyong’s life was a dream. His mind was a melody in a chorus, stuck on loop, repeating until the grooves inlaid in the record of his thoughts were smooth with overuse. 

“I don’t know how.”

Maybe there was something in Taeyong’s expression, in his empty voice; maybe in the stiff, still set of his jaw; maybe in the way he rubbed his eyes, because he was exhausted and cold and numb, and everything felt like dull sandpaper against his skin. Or maybe it was the combination of it all that made Ten sigh and lower himself to relax against Taeyong’s chest.

“Hyung,” Ten murmured. He didn’t continue. His cheek was warm where it rested over Taeyong’s heart.

I kissed him, Taeyong registered, dimly, staring at his bedroom ceiling.

On the lips. And I didn’t hate it. And…

I need to leave, Taeyong thought, in a sudden moment of ice-cold clarity. I need to leave. I need to go right now and I can’t come back until I’ve forgotten all of this. 

Taeyong squeezed his eyes shut and felt tiles under his head. I am at the bottom of a swimming pool. 

“Tae-yong,” Ten mumbled. His fingers tapped Taeyong’s ribcage. “Why did you kiss me?”

Everything’s so much better under the ocean. Everything is less complicated, less confusing, less demanding, less painful, when it’s behind shades of blue and grey. 

Nothing matters underwater. Nothing matters at all anymore.

Taeyong wasn’t thinking. All he knew was Ten’s weight, the smell of Ten’s shampoo, and the gentle warmth from Ten’s body. All he knew was the taste of Ten’s lips and the softness of Ten’s voice.

“I can’t feel anything.”

Except you, Taeyong corrected. Sometimes.

Ten was silent for a moment. “You thought this would make you feel something,” he said slowly, drawing crosses and circles on Taeyong’s chest. His hand stilled. “But you said it didn’t work.”

Taeyong nodded. He was trapped underwater; if he opened his mouth, only bubbles would come out.

“Why did you think it would work?”

Taeyong tried to shrug. The shift of his shoulders was enough to convey his lack of answer to Ten. What would he say, anyway? Sometimes I look at you and something in the base of my throat hurts? Sometimes you talk and your voice feels like home? Sometimes you touch me and smile and I don’t want you to stop? Sometimes I see the way your gaze drops to my lips, to the unbuttoned collar of my shirts, and I love the way your eyes get darker- and sometimes when you dance, I can’t stop watching how your body moves, how you push your hair off your forehead- and I’ve known you for so long, I just-

“Don’t use me for things like that, please,” Ten whispered, barely audible. “If you don’t actually… want me like that. Okay, hyung?”

Guilt was the teeth gnawing at Taeyong’s stomach. Because- do I want you like that? Is that what this means? Or am I just desperate for someone, and you’re right here, and-

“I don’t know what I want,” Taeyong managed to say, voice sounding vague and muted to his own ears. I don’t know. I don’t know anything. I didn’t mean to use you. He bit his lip and wished the numbness would come back, stupidly, feebly - he’d gotten this far in fighting the urge to run, and there was still a voice in his head that begged to go back to the swimming pool. He was a coward. 

“I’m sorry,” Taeyong mumbled.

“Ah, Taeyong…”

Don’t use me if you don’t actually want me like that.

The realization hit him slowly, like ice water seeping through his veins. It hit him like a memory; something he’d forgotten, buried deep in his mind, and dug up by accident. It hit him like the whistle of carrion birds circling overhead.

Ten likes me. More than-

Had Taeyong been in any other state of mind, he’d be panicking. He knew at least that much about himself. 

I never thought about- I never actually considered you, because in Rookies we were young and afraid and I needed a friend, and then- then after, we were being watched by the world, and I didn’t let myself think about you- I couldn’t let myself think about you.

Taeyong smelled Ten’s shampoo in his hair and he felt high, in a bad way. In an unsteady, disoriented, dazed way. He felt like he was made of glass. He felt like the walls of his swimming pool were lined with deep, irreparable cracks, torn by the winds of a hurricane Taeyong could no longer feel.

What if I’m wrong? 

“Ten?”

“Yeah?”

What if I’m right? Taeyong opened his mouth, but couldn’t say anything.

Ten’s hand found Taeyong’s chin in the dark. He made a shh motion against Taeyong’s lips with his index finger, and Taeyong felt something twist roughly in his chest. “Let’s talk tomorrow, okay?” 

It sounded like a promise. Taeyong didn’t like making promises. These days, he couldn’t trust himself to keep them.

“Okay,” he whispered, against Ten’s knuckle.

When Ten started to roll off the bed, Taeyong caught his hand and held onto it. The room was dark. Ten’s eyes were darker.

“Stay?” Usually Taeyong didn't have to say anything - usually, holding Ten’s hand and meeting his gaze was enough. Now, though, the world was a shade dimmer, and a shade blurrier. The space between them was marred by years at a distance; it was warped with the worry in Ten’s expression when he found Taeyong in the swimming pool, and bent out of place by the kiss they’d shared.

The flicker of doubt stiffening Ten’s face gave way to relief, and something warm flickered behind Taeyong’s collarbones. 

Taeyong’s fingers were numb. He tasted cold metal in his mouth. His bed was made of pool tiles, stained with blood and dirt, but Ten was made of sweet-smelling shampoo, of gentle kisses and lithe muscle; of high-fives in practice rooms, hugs at award shows, and dazzling photoshoot smiles. He was made of skin and bone and blood and life.

I don’t know what I want, Taeyong thought.

Ten lifted the covers from the foot of the bed, pulled them up to Taeyong’s chest, and tucked himself beside Taeyong.

I don’t know who I am.

But right now, with Ten’s body curled against his, he felt a little less like forgetting his own name.