wc: 1k; tags: psychological horror, paranormal forces implied to be at play or maybe you're just losing your mind, lowkey yandere!yh; warnings: blood, mentions of death/wanting to die, no implied or graphic violence despite the genre
a small drabble for the nightmare before christmas collab
a/n: is this what i have actually planned for the collab? well no, but i needed a little break from working on the actual fic, and the idea for this kind of yunho au has been haunting @blizzardfluffykpop and me for quite a while now~ hope you enjoy! also do check out the other fics for the collab (&you can still join too)~
collab masterlist | ateez masterlist
The snow is biting at your bare feet with sharp teeth and your toes have long started to feel numb. But you need to keep going, the few meters of rope you have left proof of how far you’ve come. The rough surface has scraped your palms to the point of leaving them sore and bloody, but you can barely register the pain. Like your toes, your hands are numb from the cold and the tips of your fingers are already turning blue. Still, you hold onto the rope, keeping it taut and making sure it stays as straight as possible behind you. You’ve tried to escape this cursed forest one too many times to let go now, not when this is the closest to a plan you’ve ever had.
You’ve found the seemingly endless rope in the basement and then patiently waited for him to fall asleep before you snuck out and tightly secured it around one of the wooden pillars on the porch in the early morning hours. Surely, if you just keep it in a straight line behind you, you will not end up going in a circle again. Surely, it will be different this time. Surely, you’ll never have to see that goddamn house again. He’ll regret letting you roam around so freely, but by the time he notices you’ll already be long gone.
That fighting spirit is hard to keep up though. You're at a disadvantage, not just because of the snow, but also because the days are too short. The sun has already started to set and the temperatures will drop even further once the last rays have disappeared at the horizon. And he is going to wake up too. You know you have to reach something, you have to be somewhere, before the night falls. But you're reaching your limit. Your steps are becoming slower with every meter. The cold has crept into every crevice of your lungs, making it painful and hard to breathe. And with every passing moment, with every snowflake settling on the crown of your head, hope is shrinking. You're not going to make it. Maybe, if you're lucky, someone will find you out here before he does. Or maybe you’ll just die here. It doesn’t seem that scary now. Rather, the thought of falling into a deep and endless sleep seems almost comforting. At least you wouldn’t be freezing anymore. At least you wouldn’t be dragged back again.
But then, your bleary eyes spot something in the growing darkness. A small cottage between the tall trees. There’s smoke rising up from the chimney and light behind the windows.
Someone.
Help.
Hope.
You can almost forget the pain as you stumble forward, gathering your last strength to reach the cottage. After all the failed attempts, you’ll finally be safe. Whoever lives there will surely help you. You’ll get to go home.
You get closer, step by step. You can see the candles in the windows giving out a soft warm glow. You can see a familiar chair on the porch, white fur draped over it for comfort. And you see something tied around one of the pillars. A rope. It's wrapped around the dark wood, once, twice, secured by a tight knot. The short end is dangling beneath it, the other is leading out into the forest, disappearing somewhere between the endless trees.
You let out a laugh—shrill, desperate, hysteric. When you look behind, the rope in your hand is in a straight line, like it has been this whole time. You drop it into the snow, and the rope tied to the pillar slacks too. You still can’t stop your manic laughter, even when none of this feels the slightest bit funny at all. It's an automatic response, a reaction born from the inability to comprehend the cruel truth you're being confronted with. The tears rolling down your cheeks feel cold. Slowly, you sink to your knees, your joints frozen from the long walk. It was all for nothing. You barely feel the snow soaking through the fabric of your pants as you curl up on yourself, laughing, crying, sobbing. You wish you'd never gotten this far. You wish you would have died before getting here. But how foolish to think he'd ever let you.
You don’t bother to look up when you hear steps in the snow. It doesn’t matter anymore.
“Dearest, what are you doing out here, hm?” Yunho's voice is soft and gentle. He crouches down beside you and it doesn’t even make you flinch when he wipes away the tears staining your cheeks. “You’re not wearing shoes. What were you in such a hurry for, that you couldn’t put on shoes?” He sighs, as if you're just a silly kid that went out barefooted. As if you didn't risk your life just to get away from him, again and again and again.
You don’t resist when he lifts you up and carries you back towards the house. You know fighting is futile. His arms are wrapped around you tightly, and if you’re not careful you could almost find comfort in his steady hold. Your head lolls forward, coming to rest on his shoulder. You’re glad you don’t have to look at him. Instead, you stare into the snowy forest all around you. You wonder if you’ll get to see anything else ever again.
“Will you ever let me go home?” your voice sounds so distant, you barely register it as your own.
“But, dearest,” he replies with a little chuckle, “We're already there.”
He takes the familiar wooden steps leading up to the porch, carrying you like you barely weigh anything to him at all. When he pushes open the front door, you're immediately engulfed in the warmth radiating from the crackling fireplace. It's a blessing to your frozen body.
“Home sweet home,” he hums and you hear the smile in his voice. You’re scared you'll start believing it one of these days.
Summary: Your boyfriend chokes out as the poison slowly sets in, “Run! Run! You have to get away from me! Please!” And you run away from him like your life depends on it, because it does.
A part of the Nightmare Before Christmas Collab
Horror, Gore, Hurt/Comfort, Established Relationship au, Trauma Healing
Warnings: Mentions of Blood, Severe injuries (one lung gets punctured), Poison, Near-Death Experience/Close encounters with death/believing you’re dead (no main character death), Werewolf Prestigiousness (not from characters involved), Beomgyu has a former mate that left him due to the similar experience Taehyun and you go through :) so, there’s that. More than likely not how you heal from a neurotoxin but it's a werewolf neurotoxin- (so take that as you will), Can a Snowstorm be a warning idk? [You don’t catch hypothermia, even tho you should have, it’s a Christmas miracle]. *And if I missed anything pls lmk*
Word Count: 7,418
Werewolf! Taehyun X Human! Reader [Mentions of Werewolf! Best friend! Beomgyu]
[A/n: This collab was & is currently being hosted by @jinkoh and me! Please check out the other fics that will be posted for this collab~ Ff: This was supposed to be my first work for this collab to come out, but alas, it’s out now, and that’s what counts. The bonus does feel like it has room to be a poly au but take it hwvr you like. It wasn’t outright intentional, but I see how it reads now and yeah. Whatever you feel is right to you.]
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You were glad you could spend the snowstorm in your boyfriend’s cozy apartment. Sure, you could be back home and feel just as warm, but your boyfriend is like your own personal radiator that you can wrap yourself around and feel extra toasty with. There were so many perks that came with him being a werewolf that were unimaginable. And one of those was not needing a blanket in the dead of winter, because he’d keep you warm.
You’re relaxing with Taehyun; your legs seated in his lap feeling warm in the relatively cold room as you drink hot cocoa together and enjoy the movie in front of you. The two of you laugh at the holiday special, and everything feels perfect.
Even when you hear glass break, you don’t pay much mind to it, figuring it’s just a noise coming from the tv. Until all of sudden, your boyfriend starts shifting out from under you. You’ve seen him shift plenty of times, but never shift like this… One that looks like he’s fighting himself against himself, as if turning right now isn’t something he wants.
The way his bones crunch forcibly, and the way his breath comes out in huffs, like he’s fighting against himself not to become one. Is weird and it's worrying you as alarm bells sound off in your head.
It’s not like Taehyun at all to turn in the middle of a movie you were both enjoying. Sure, he’d turn randomly at times, in your opinion. But nothing like this, the wolf form that he’s taken on currently is nothing like that giant wolf-like puppy form he usually takes on. The wolf before you, looks like something out of your worst nightmares. His fur is in every which direction, standing on end, as if he’s scared for what’s about to come. His eyes look bloodshot, nothing like the soft sweet chocolate brown eyes he’d have when he was all fuzzy and cuddled up to you. You hear the last of his voice choke out, “Run! Please run! You have to get away from me! Please…”
You scramble to your feet, barely remembering how to slip on your shoes as you quickly cement yourself to the wall, fear coursing through you. He had to be joking right now, right? Yes, he looks like he could kill you, but Taehyun would never be capable of that, but could he? You inch towards the door, just in case, he meant it. And the second his head snaps towards you, you know you’re no longer with your loving boyfriend that wouldn’t harm a hair on your head. What was staring at you was something that came straight from hell and held malicious intent just for you. Whatever came over your boyfriend in the past two minutes, no longer was him. And you had to get out of here, and now.
You make a break for it, practically ripping the door off the hinges, and slamming it behind you. You run away, fear and adrenaline coursing through you, running like he was going to kill you. Something your boyfriend would never dream of doing, but now, you’re certain he’s about to. What happened to your sweet, doting, loving boyfriend? Did it have something to do with the sound of that glass breaking? It had to have. You just didn’t know why.
You run knowing your life depends on it, because if Taehyun told you to run with his last fiber of his sane being, then he meant it. And you were so fucked. Tears stream down your cheeks as the cold bites at your skin, you wish you grabbed a coat, but time didn’t allow for that. And now, you can hear that werewolf, that was once your boyfriend, barreling after you since it finally busted through your front door. You think to yourself, “Fuck, I’m so dead.” The snow feels like ice pelting at you, and without your winter coat you know you won’t last long in these conditions in just your sweater, especially against whatever came over Taehyun just now.
You always thought that if you got into a terrifying scenario like this, that you’d be able to escape because you were better than the main characters in those stupid horror movies. That you wouldn’t let them get to you, and you would do just about anything just to get out alive. You’d throw bleach into their eyes, you’d turn on a blow torch, and you’d most certainly would have grabbed your winter coat. But now, that you were in the situation, you realized that fear clutches onto nothing logical. And you most certainly weren’t prepared for your own boyfriend to be the monster you were running away from. The part of you that would kill anything to stay alive is now currently fighting with the fact that somewhere in there, is your boyfriend, the guy you’ve been in love with for two years and been friends with for even longer. So, the part of you that’s going ‘gouge his eyes out’ ‘if his claws rip into you, you hurtle him into a tree and pray that it falls over.’ But as you’re sprinting, none of those conclusions feel right.
You make it to a park, and reach the jungle gym, the one the two of you had finished your first date on, and that’s when you see the moon high in the sky. It shocks you to see it’s a waning gibbous, it’s not even a full moon, something is wrong, and you know it. If it was the full moon, it would make sense why he turned unwillingly, but it wasn’t a full moon. But even when he turned unwillingly, he never felt ill intent, and his bones definitely did not snap forcibly like that. Usually, if he needed to turn, he would spend the whole day cuddled up to you.
Something was wrong with this whole scenario, and there was no time to figure it out, as you hear the thunderous sounds of him finally catching up to you. You’re not sure how you even managed to run this far without him catching up. But if your intuition was right, he was fighting against himself, to stop himself from reaching you. You can’t help but take a quick look back as you climb to the highest point of the jungle gym. Just to find his werewolf form scaling the jungle gym with no hassle. You take a quick look around and spot a slide, and if you used this height to your advantage, you could make it to the tallest slide in about three bounds.
Just as you’re about to jump off, that’s when you feel claws swipe into you for the first time. He knocks you down and through the metal bars. The height you drop from and onto your back, into the snow-covered ground below you, has the breath catching in your lungs. You cough, and watch as he starts to slip through the metal bars. You scramble backwards, with a scream of, “Come on, Taehyun! I know you’re in there! It’s (Y/n)! Come on, you have to remember and now! Before it’s too late!” But his once white scleras are now black and his irises are red, and there’s not a flicker of recognition to your words in them. You gulp, realizing he's too far gone, before you look down at your leg, where he got you a second ago, and that’s when you notice how your leg is bleeding. You won’t be able to run as well now, but that didn’t mean you weren’t damned and determined to get away. The adrenaline that is coursing through you is the only thing keeping you from feeling it. But you weren’t about to let the nasty sight stop you from escaping.
You quickly flip over, and army crawl out from under the bars and take off sprinting, all while the bitter cold wind whips snow at you. You could feel the pain evident in your legs as you crawled, but you couldn’t let pain win, or worse would befall onto you. You had to get away while you were still able to. If you were to look back, you could see your faint trails of blood streaking through the snow, but you were too scared to even consider looking back. Knowing if you were to look back, you would see the creature that was inhabiting the form of what was once your loving boyfriend, and you couldn’t bear to look at that thing again.
You just have to make it to the slide and up the ladder, and you could use the slide to your advantage. All you had to do was make it to sunrise, right? That would be the end of it, right? If so, you could do it. You had to live; there was no way around it. And then, when you’re alive tomorrow morning, and recovering, you can figure out how to navigate the trauma this night has given you both, together. Or you could dump him and never, ever, see him again. Whatever conclusion feels best tomorrow, feels best then, right now, you focus on surviving.
And just as you get over to the ladder of the slide, and have made it up two rungs, you feel claws dig into your legs. You let out a blood curdling scream from the pain it renders in you. You do everything in your power to hold onto the metal ladder, praying that you’ll be like the kid in ‘A Christmas Story’ who’s tongue got stuck to the metal and they had to rip him off, at least being stuck to these metal rungs, would give you a couple more seconds to contemplate your next course of action.
But you don’t stick. And yet, you’re still forcibly ripped off and dragged away from the metal ladder and back under the jungle gym you just escaped from. When he flips you over, you land on your back, and it knocks the wind out of you once again. The pain that courses through you is immense as you feel bruises instantly form on your backside, ones that will take weeks to heal. You steady your breathing and that’s when you see how your blood matted your boyfriend’s once beautiful soft fur. The creature above you was nothing like your sweet boyfriend, and you knew it. Whatever came over him, wasn’t his choice, but now you’re both reaping the consequences of something neither of you could have predicted or stopped from happening.
You whimper, “Taehyun, please, it’s me. You can fight this, come on…” You pray for just a flicker of recognition to wash over his eyes, but all you see are blood red irises and black scleras staring at you… No, through you.
So, you do what any rational person would do and start whacking, beating him as hard as you can. Which only makes the creature above you angrier. He raises his paw to strike, and you grab his furry snow-covered appendage to hold it back. And that’s when you feel how much stronger he is than you are. It feels like those horror movie scenes where the main character is desperate to keep the knife from being plunged into their chest, by the masked killer above them. You start crying and whimpering, knowing there’s no way you’ll be able to fight him off of you, and that you’re really going to die at the hands, the paws, of your once loving boyfriend. And soon, by the looks of it, your blood would be splattered all over the white snow.
Usually, your boyfriend would let you win while you were play fighting, especially in his werewolf form just to make you grin, even though you both knew he was stronger than you. And it made his inner wolf just as happy. But now, there’s not a semblance of his actual self left in the creature that inhabits his werewolf form. He feels ten times stronger than he usually is, and you’re desperate to keep his long claws away from you. Because if you could just fight this off for a little longer, your boyfriend would come out of his transformation, right? If you could just hold out a little longer, it would be over, right? But the more you fight against him the closer his claws get to your chest. You feel your arms grow weaker, the more the creature above you fights against you. You won’t be able to fight for much longer, and you know it.
And before you can think of any solution, the creature’s paw slips from your hold, and you shut your eyes tightly. You can’t watch him kill you. Even if it’s no longer your boyfriend inside of the creature, you can still picture his cute face, and you can’t bear the thought of him being the one that will end your existence. You can’t even let out a scream, with so much terror ripping through you all at once. You feel his claws rip into your side, tearing through your sweater and through your delicate skin, ripping into the muscle above your ribcage, just to pull away. And you’re certain he’s going to start digging into you like a dog buries their favorite bone. You feel him pounce on you, which causes your eyes to fly open as the air in your lungs rushes out. You gasp for air, you realize when he dug into your rib cage a second ago, that he had punctured your lung from how deep his claws went. It makes it that much harder to gather air into your lungs. You look up at the gibbous moon, wondering how today ended up like this.
And just as you’re about to accept your fate, you remember what Beomgyu said to you, “I know you might not ever think you will ever need this. But uh, just keep this around your neck just in case, okay?” Your eyes widen and you quickly feel for the dog whistle that laid underneath your now torn and blood-soaked sweater. You find it as you feel his claws start to dig into your skin again. And with all your might, you blow the whistle, loud and clear. Your lungs feel like they’re going to explode, but you have to keep blowing or you’ll really have to accept your demise.
The werewolf above you immediately starts whimpering, the sounds too much for him to bear. And while he cowers and moves off of you to get away from the sound. You clamber backwards, not letting off the whistle. Your lungs are burning, but you have to get out of here while you’re still capable of moving. Your blood is seeping out of you and onto the white snow below, but you have to get somewhere safe and far away. Or if you’re able to, get to the hospital that’s about fifteen minutes away. But with the state you’re in, you know it’ll take you an hour to get there, if you live that long. How you haven’t passed out yet, must be a miracle, or the adrenaline running through your veins was working double time.
You reach a soft pine tree covered in snow, and rest your back against it, no longer able to move. You know you’re bound to pass out soon with the amount of blood pouring out of you now. You huff a laugh as you realize this is why Beomgyu gave you this whistle. If only you’d remember sooner, you probably would still have a chance at living another day, but you didn’t, and you’ll have to suffer with that knowledge until you draw your last breath. You feel your breath grow shorter as you try to rip apart your sweater to make some type of wrap, to slow some of the bleeding. But your fingers are numb from the cold, so it makes all of this, that much harder to manage. You know for sure he must have punctured your lung; with the way your breathing feels. The tears streaming down your cheeks are of no use to you. Your shiny tears weren’t going to help you, only a medical team could save you now. And you certainly didn’t bring your phone to call yourself an ambulance. If you were brave horror movie you, you would have it and had them on speed dial by now, but you weren’t. No one was coming to save you, especially with that creature after you.
But worst of all, you were going and you knew it. Whether bleeding-out, hypothermia, or the werewolf gets to you first, you found you didn’t have any more energy to care about it. You were right earlier; you were so dead. You rest your head back, say a few goodbyes, and hope that if there is an afterlife, that it’ll be better than the life you just experienced. You whisper how proud you were of yourself and how brave you were especially in your final moments. And how you weren’t mad at Taehyun, that you knew it truly wasn’t his fault. That you knew something went wrong, and in your last moments, you whisper how much you had loved him. You close your eyes as the darkness envelopes you.
It’s weird, death doesn’t feel like you thought it would, it feels like endlessly drifting without a clear path in sight. Maybe you really did die before your time, and they weren’t sure what to do with you yet. And yet, you don’t give up, you keep searching for the pearly gates, or something, anything, that would lead you to your eternal resting place. But everywhere you look is dark, like one big endless void. And unlike how you always thought you’d feel when you passed, you don’t feel a lick of peace. Rather you feel immense amounts of pain, and something like tears falling against your cheek. But that shouldn’t be possible, should it? You can’t feel pain or cry when you’re dead, right? So, why did it feel like you could feel tears hitting your cheek and why did you ache so much?
You blink your eyes open, and finally, you’re blinded by white lights, and you can’t help but feel relieved. You finally drifted into heaven, and now you can finally rest and be at peace. Whatever you were in before was just a void before they could finally open the pearly gates for you. Maybe that’s why you could feel yourself crying, because you were finally coming home. Or maybe it was your great grandma crying how your life was lost too soon and cradling you in her arms. You weren’t quite sure, but whatever it was, you were relieved all the suffering was finally over.
But as your eyes adjust, you realize that the light that was blinding you, wasn’t the shining gates of heaven, but it was just fluorescent white hospital lighting. You were alive, the suffering wasn’t over. And god, did it hurt, that’s why you were feeling all that pain ‘in the void’. It was a dreamless sleep as your body fought to stay alive. You wonder if the reason you woke up was because the pain medication finally wore off. Or maybe they thought you really left this plane of existence and decided to stop funneling you the medication. And that’s why you were feeling the full brunt of your injuries again. But you find it’s too hard to think about things like that, when you’re in as much pain as you are. The lights above are enough to give you a headache alone, you certainly can’t think about complex things like that right now.
You gaze downwards, not daring to move a muscle more than your eyes, wondering if you were really crying in your sleep, and to your horror, you find the man that was once a creature, that had chased you down and led you to this very moment. Was now in his human form, and in a hospital gown, crying above you. You could feel his arms braced around you as he sobbed. You wanted to run away, you had to get away, that’s what he told you in his last moments, but you’re stuck to the bed, unable to move even if you needed to. But did you still have to run now that he was human again? You weren’t sure, nothing made sense anymore. You were in too much pain to make sense of the situation.
You almost wish to tell him to get off of you, scared that he’ll turn back into the creature. But you don’t have the energy, so you just settle on closing your eyes again as your other senses catch up to your sense of touch and sight. You start hearing his murmured apologies, how he didn’t have any control over his body, and how upset he was at himself for not being able to take control over the poison that took over his system. Poison? If you had more energy to piece everything together, that would make perfect sense.
That’s when the doctor comes in, and you hear the doctor scold, “Mr. Kang… What did I tell you about getting up from your bed? Just because you don’t feel the effects of the poison, doesn’t mean you’re still not poisoned. You need to lay down, and now.” You can hear his sniffle, “But… I almost killed them. Please, I can’t be that far away from them. They’re my mate.” The doctor grumbles, “I can understand that Mr. Kang, but I have to check their vitals hourly, and with you all over them, I can’t do that.”
Taehyun doesn’t move, afraid that if he does, you’ll truly be gone this time. And you hear the doctor tell him softly, “How about this, I’ll arrange something, so that your beds will be closer together, okay?” You hear Taehyun sniffle, and you assume he agrees with that solution, before he asks, “Are they going to be okay?” The doctor sighs, “I told you time and time again, we’re doing everything we can. It is up to them if they feel like being among the living after the hell you both just went through.” And that’s when you finally feel Taehyun move away from you, placing a kiss on your cheek as he murmurs another apology against your skin.
You almost let out a sigh of relief, not only did it lift some pressure off your chest, but now it clicked into place why he forcibly turned under the waning gibbous moon. When it didn’t make any sense, and now you know without a doubt, it wasn’t his fault. Someone poisoned him and he had no control over himself, or well, he did for a brief few moments, desperately holding himself back until he was no longer able to fend off the poison. And before you can think much more about that as the doctor continues checking your vitals, you knock out from the sheer amount of pain you’re in.
But this time instead of endlessly drifting in a colorless void, you drift into a memory. You’re sitting with Beomgyu on his couch, when he first gave you the whistle that saved your life. He told you before he brought it out, “There’s something you should know, and it’s something that’s been happening more frequently, that I feel I need to give you something to protect yourself.”
You looked at him with worry, “What’s happening? And why do I need to protect myself? If you’re giving me a taser, I’ll have you know it’ll be useless, I will accidentally tase myself.”
He laughs at the thought before he grows serious, “There’s been attacks on people like Taehyun and me. And it’s not a taser, but it’s something that will keep you safe.” He hands you a dog whistle that’s on a silver chain.
You scoffed at him, “What the fuck is this supposed to do if I’m real danger?”
He looks down and if his ears were out, you were sure they’d be flattened against his head as he softly tells you, “It’s a whistle, that is so piercing to our ears, we become immobile, and it triggers our human senses to awaken again.”
You put your hand on his knee, “How can you be so sure?”
He looks solemn as he whispers, “It’s uh… It’s worked on me before.”
You softly say, “Oh.” And take the silver chain from his hands, “I thought you couldn’t touch silver.”
He rolls his eyes, “I can, it can’t pierce me though, or I’ll like get an infection or something.”
You laugh, “Okay. And why is it necessary that I need it now, after all my years of being around you guys.”
He can’t look at you as he whispers, “There are bad people in this world, (N/n)…”
You sigh, “I know that.”
“Well, these people want to harm werewolves, and they’ve decided their best course of action is turning werewolves against their mates.”
“And how are they doing that?”
“By poisoning the werewolf and turning them into killing machines, so that they attack whoever’s closest to them at that moment. And nine times out of ten it’s their mate that they’re with.”
“But why?”
“I think it’s torture us because they don’t believe werewolves should be with ordinary humans…”
“Oh…” He gave you a tight-lipped smile before you put the chain over your neck and he flipped the subject to something else entirely.
You were grateful that you listened to Beomgyu and kept it on, only taking it off to shower, and sometimes during intimate moments.
When you wake up from the memory, you find Taehyun’s bed is only a plug outlet away, with no curtain separating the two of you. If you were in a better condition, you would have laughed. He definitely got what he asked for, if not more. You look to see he’s resting on his side, sleeping so he’s facing you. And you smile softly, he was watching over you until he fell asleep, and you couldn’t help but be endeared by it. You look down for the first time and find the tubes sticking out from under your blanket, and you realize they’re attached to you, keeping your lung functioning. If you could lift the blanket off of you and move the hospital gown, you were sure you would find gauze wrapped around your chest, and your legs.
As you examine yourself, you start hearing whimpers, you turn your head to look in the direction of where the noises were coming from to find Taehyun twisting and turning in his sleep, sobbing in his dreams. You desperately wish to come to his aide and calm him down, but you still can’t move. When he turns away from you, that’s when you see it, a bandage, oozing purpley-black goo. You thought that they would have drained it all from him by now, but by the looks of it, it was still inside his system. You immediately find the remote attached to your endless amounts of cords and hit the call button. A few minutes go by and a nurse walks in, “Hi, you’re up! That’s a pleasure to see! Anything I can help you with?” You smile at her before you point towards your boyfriend. And she gasps as he lets out another pained noise, “Oh, his bandage is leaking again…” You look at her baffled, “Aren’t you guys going to pump that out of his system?”
She shakes his head, “No, um this is a type of poison his body has to fight and build a resistance to.” You feel utter disbelief; this has to be some type of medical malpractice. And she sees the way you look at her as she changes his bandage and raises the dosage of his pain medication before she comes back over to your bed. “I know that sounds wrong, and for humans like you and I, our stomachs would be pumped, or we would be given something to take care of it.” You nod, waiting for her to explain, “Well, you see the reason you’re both in here is due to a type of ‘poison’ to simplify it. What he was shot with was a neurological toxin, that if he doesn’t build a resistance to, and he gets hit by it again, it’s possible he won’t return to ‘normal’. Or worse, he’ll die instantly. So, his body has to fight this not just for your safety, and others around him, but his too.” She puts her hand over yours as she tells you, “This is going to be difficult for both of you. And I’m sorry you will have to watch him suffer and not be able to do much. But I promise you that we took out as much as we could. But you have to know that for everyone’s sake, he has to fight off the rest to build immunity.”
You nod and ask, trying to get more of an understanding of what’s going on, “So, is it kind of like when you get a shot and it has a partially dead virus in it, that your body has to fight off?” She gleams at you, “Yes, that’s a good analogy for it!” She releases your hand and tells you, “Now, I’m going to make sure to do hourly sweeps knowing he’s in the stage where he's finally starting to leak the toxin out.” You nod and that puts you at ease, and she says, “Now, do you need anything, dear?” You think for a moment, “I could go for a glass of water?” She smiles, “I’ll be right back with that for you.”
She comes back with some water, and you drink a few sips before you fall back to sleep, not able to handle staying up too long with the condition you’re in. Maybe tomorrow you’ll be able to be up for longer.
You wake up to find a soft kitty-cat plushie leaning against your non injured side. And you smile at it, seeking comfort in it, already knowing it came from someone who got out of their bed and bought it for you when they weren’t supposed to move. You kiss the top of its head, and with the little energy you have, you move your blanket back to see what your body looks like. You find where the chest tube was inserted and you can’t resist circling your finger around it and you let out a hiss of pain when you accidentally touch it. You look at your gauze-covered torso and see how the white bandages are starting to gain light splotches, you know they’ll probably be back soon to reapplying the gauzes. That creature did a number on you.
You look over at Taehyun’s bed, expecting to see him peacefully sleeping or fighting the toxin, but you find his eyes are already on you. The way he looks at you is painful, he looks like a kicked puppy, he asks softly, and if his ears were out, you were sure they’d be flattened to his head. He asks in the gentlest voice possible, “Are you okay… I heard you let out a hiss of pain?”
You didn’t think this would be the first conversation you’d have when you talked to each other again. But you weren’t even certain what would be the appropriate first conversation to have after an event like that. But you sigh, “I’m okay, I just touched the tubing accidentally, and it did not feel good.” You give him a tight-lipped smile, and he immediately reciprocates it, and you ask, “How about you? I saw your wound last night.” He immediately covers it with his hand, as if he’s ashamed of it, “I um, it hurts but nothing is painful in comparison to what it caused me to do to you.” You feel tears brimming your eyes as you painfully tell him your regret, “I wish I remembered to use the dog whistle sooner, we wouldn’t be in this mess in the first place.” He shakes his head at you, “Don’t say that. It’s not your fault.” A tear slips from your eye as you tell him, “It’s not yours, either.”
A minute of silence goes by, and you ask warily, “After I um, after I knocked out, do you know what happened?” His eyes look at the drop ceiling above before his eyes fall back onto yours, “The whistle finally allowed me to take back control over my body… I got to you as fast as I could, I ripped up the shirt that I still had on in my human form and tied it around your legs which were pouring out more blood than your chest was at the time. And ran with you in my arms to the hospital…” He sighs, “I must have looked like an absolute psycho with you in my arms, and my hands all bloodied.” You huff a laugh at the imagery, “We must have looked like a gruesome sight together.”
He lightly laughs before he tells you, “Beomgyu swatted the shit out of me when he got here.” You let out a chortle, not able to laugh any harder even if you wanted to, “Yeah? What for?” He rolls his eyes, “You know why, I almost killed his best friend.” You smirk and let out a satisfied, “Heh.” Causing Taehyun to roll his eyes, before he softly says, “I thought I lost you.” Your gaze softens as you hold the cat plushie close to your uninjured side, “I thought I was a goner for sure. I even said my final goodbyes.” He looks down at the white and blue speckled tile, “You did?” You sigh as you tell him, “Yeah. I didn’t blame you for what happened, I just wished I remembered that whistle sooner. It would have been my biggest regret.” His eyes are full of tears as he looks at you, “I’m sorry, I put you through that.”
You reach your hand out as far as your body will let you, and he grabs it, before he leans over and presses a kiss to your hand. And that’s when the doctor comes in, he grins seeing you both awake, “Good to see you both awake!” You both give him a small smile back. He examines your vitals before he returns to the foot of your beds, “You’re both going to stay here for a couple more days.” You nod at the doctor, and he tells you, “You’ll get your chest tube out tomorrow, and your lung should make a full recovery. But I will request that you see one of our lung specialists for a checkup in a couple weeks to make sure it’s healing properly, okay?” You nod in agreement, and he turns to Taehyun, “Once you’ve fully fought off the neurotoxin, we’ll release you both.” Taehyun nods and the doctor leaves.
And not a moment later, Beomgyu flies in, throwing open both of your curtains, before closing them behind him, “I came as soon as I heard you both were awake.” You give him a soft smile, “Hi, Beom…” He smiles, “Hi.” He looks at how you’re holding hands and says, “Well, it seems you haven’t decided to break up with him.” You roll your eyes, “He’s stuck with me now.” Taehyun laughs, “Yeah, we’re trauma bonded.” You huff a laugh and Beomgyu goes, “So, you’re saying the claws stay on-” You both let out the loudest, “BEOMGYU!” You can both muster which makes him cackle.
He takes his seat between you both, keeping you guys company until visiting hours are over.
Shortly after they took out your chest tube, they moved you both to your own hospital room, so you two could share and cope with it all. You wake earlier than Taehyun again and clutch the cat plushie to your non injured side as you watch the snow fall outside the window. There was no cold nipping at you, nor was there blood seeping out of you. But you could still feel the ache from your lung trying to heal itself, and it sucked. There wouldn’t be a trace of your blood in the snow, but there would be the lingering scars, from a creature that was a poisoned form of your boyfriend.
Beomgyu finally shared hours before you got your chest tube out, how he worked through it with his former mate. And how they both parted ways because his former mate couldn’t bear to be with him any longer. But you didn’t want that same fate to befall Taehyun and you. As much damage as that creature caused you, it wasn’t your boyfriend’s doing, he didn’t want it to happen. The poison seeped into his mind and caused him to attack the first thing he saw, and that just happened to be you. He told you how much he fought against himself, just at least to give you a few more seconds. But nothing stopped his claws from digging into you, no matter how much he cried in his mind. He was no longer himself. So, while in a way, he was the one to hurt you, it wasn’t him. And you could differentiate and accept that.
So, when you hear Taehyun start to stir, you get up from your bed, dragging your IV stand with you before you sit on his bed, holding the little plushie he got you tight in your arms. You softly let out, “Tae…” He sleepily asks, “Yeah?” You ask, “You want to watch the snowfall with me?” He scrambles up from his lying position to sit beside you, “I’d love to.” The two of you watched the snowfall outside, and while you were both traumatized in different aspects, you were willing to continue on this road together. Even if it was hard, you had each other, and that was the most important thing. Somehow, it would be okay.
-----(Bonus)------
When you two were released, you both needed some space to work through what you both went through that night. You still lived in the same house, nothing truly changed that way, but there was a sensitive approach in the way you two went about each other now. Because while you both had a lot of trust in one another, that fear that something could change your relationship in seconds, outside of your guy’s control, terrified you both.
It was endearing how Beomgyu stepped up and helped you both back together. You knew in a way it was healing for him, because he could fix your relationship that he couldn’t fix with his former mate. And as determined as Taehyun and you were to make it work, Beomgyu was even more determined. He even repaired the window that was broken before you guys came back to your house. In a way, the three of you were healing together, in your own ways.
The first time Taehyun turned, you weren’t home, but Beomgyu was there for him as Taehyun whimpered and was haunted by the memories of what his claws once did to you in this form, albeit poisoned, it was still his body. And it pained him to no end, no amount of consoling from Beomgyu could help him. You came back home shortly after he transformed back. And Taehyun cried into your arms, all while holding you close to him, apologizing profusely, all while you cooed at him. You still weren’t ready to see him in his werewolf form yet, but you were still proud of him.
When you were both ready, after Taehyun had transformed comfortably by himself a few times, you asked Beomgyu to be there, he already planned on it. Because he knew you both would feel safer if he could step in, if something went south. And those first two attempts were a doozy. You were terrified, and Taehyun couldn’t handle the sheer fear he saw in your eyes when you looked at him, and how it felt in your bond.
It took three separate times before you could finally touch his soft fur, and when you finally did, it was like your souls both eased up. The tension was still there, but you both weren’t as wary anymore. If there was another toxin shot into his body, you both knew what to do. And it wasn’t as scary anymore, it would be okay, because no matter what you had each other, and Beomgyu. Who was currently cheering about you finally wrapping your arms around Taehyun’s soft fur, patting you both on the back, proud of you both for overcoming the hardest hurdle.
Yet, the first time he shifts in front of you, without Beomgyu around, you can’t help but reel back on instinct. Something, two months ago, you would never have dreamt of doing. Rather, you’d immediately be patting your lap and wanting him to lay on top of you. But now as you stand with your guard up, you can’t help but wish this was two months ago, and there was no trauma surrounding your once perfect relationship. Tears slip from your eyes before you can help it, and it has Taehyun whimpering and cooing at you. He bows his head at you, and his soft eyes look solemn. He sits on the hard floor, and you tentatively sit down on your knees before him. After a couple of minutes of just looking at each other, you come close and have him rest his soft furry head on your thighs. He lets you decide how the night will go, and when it gets too overwhelming, he turns back.
It was hard navigating both of your traumas, because sometimes as you slept side by side, he’d wake up in fights of shouts, begging himself to stop hurting you. And you’d have to ease him back to sleep. You quickly found out how hard he fought against himself just to stop himself from coming after you, but nothing had worked. He prayed to every god he could think of to get his body under control. And it wasn’t until you blew that whistle that he finally had enough power to control himself. He couldn’t think straight, it was like he was the passenger in his own body, watching as his own claws viciously ripped into you causing your blood to spray all over the pure white snow below. But his mind was so far gone that he couldn’t do anything at all but scream.
And sometimes he’d wake up to you sobbing in your sleep, begging him to remember it was you. Thrashing as you fought back against him, whispering how you didn’t want to go, that it was too soon, you still had so much you wanted to do. And it pained him to no end, but he held you through it all, until your cries turned into soft snores and your thrashing turned from shivers to steady breathing. He knew how much you fought against him just to live but relieving it pained him in a way he never thought it could.
By the end of winter, there were moments that would cause you both to flinch away, but you were working through it together. And that’s what mattered most.
He makes you both a cup of hot cocoa, with extra marshmallows and chocolate bits before he settles on the couch besides you. You instantly throw your legs over his lap and his hand, pulls your knees close to his chest as you cuddle up into your personal radiator to watch your favorite series. He nuzzles his face into your neck, and it feels like everything will be okay again. It was all falling into place, no matter what tried to split you apart, no matter how traumatizing it was or could be, you both would make it through it, together, with or without help. You sip on your hot cocoa as you feel him softly purr against you, and you laugh, “You’re like an overgrown cat sometimes.” He laughs, “And you’re like my personal ice cube.” You chuckle and curl further into him. If you could make it through that terrible night together, you could make it through anything.
summary: the reason you’re still alive after a deadly accident is that changmin loves you. you have no idea, just how much. he will never let you die—
but he won’t let you live either.
wc: 8.8k, tags: psychological horror (?), medical horror (?), established relationship/married au, doctor!kyu, slightly yandere!kyu?, warnings: mentions of death, blood, surgery, organ donation, needles, scars, (maybe body horror if you squint), death wishes, non-sexual nudity; mdni
a/n: it's finally done!! i'm so relieved! it isn't even long but it somehow took me ages to finish >_< anyway--this is for the nightmare before christmas collab @blizzardfluffykpop and I spontaneously came up with in december--pls check out the other fics as well~
also let me just say i think the tags make this fic seem a lot worse than it really is...
collab masterlist | tbz masterlist
“Are we really doing this again?”
He doesn't let himself be distracted as he inserts the needle for the IV. He's above such comments by now.
“God loves her too much to let her die,” he simply replies.
“Not God, just you. It's you that loves me too much.”
“You're not her.”
She lets out a chuckle. Ah, he hates that her insolent laugh sounds the same as yours.
“Sure, tell yourself that. But do you think she'll still be able to love you after all of this?”
“The very fact that you're asking this proves you're not her. Besides,” he attaches the drip, “she won't have to know.”
The solution slowly wanders through the tube. It should start taking effect in just a few seconds. He has almost perfected it by now.
A smile spreads on your lips that she has borrowed. “She will, though. I made sure of that.”
He can't deny the unsettling feeling taking root in his guts. But then your eyes fall shut and he feels assured again. “Rest well, six.”
SMELL
The scent of gingerbread and cinnamon. That's the first thing you notice when you wake up, even before you open your eyes. It's a nostalgic scent, a scent that reminds you of your childhood. It also reminds you of Changmin and every Christmas you've spent with him. Weird. Is it already Christmas again? You could've sworn it was only just Valentine’s Day—or was it? Your head feels fuzzy, like a fog blurring your memories. You'll have to take a look at the calendar. Surely this confusion will pass once you see the numbers in front of you. Surely you're just half asleep.
You slowly blink your eyes open. It's your bedroom, yours and Changmin's. Something about it looks a little different, a little unfamiliar, but you can't place what it is exactly. It feels like coming back home after a really long time, and realizing that time has passed there, too.
The sweet festive scent is so heavy in the air, wafting in through the ajar door, that you're enticed to follow it to the kitchen. Surely you'll find your husband there, crouching in front of the oven and watching the gingerbread taking form with the sparkle of a child in his warm brown eyes. He always pours so much love into everything he does, always full of pride and affection for the things he so carefully creates.
When you step into the kitchen, Changmin is in the middle of pulling the tray from the oven, the scent of the gingerbread mouthwatering. He’s humming a gentle little melody that feels so very familiar and so very like home. The moment he notices your presence, he turns to look at you and there is that same loving sparkle in his eyes that he has for his beloved baked goods.
"Y/n," he smiles and your heart warms at how affectionate his voice sounds when he says your name. He sets the tray aside and steps over to you, brushing your hair out of your face. "You're finally awake." His hands take yours, turning them around almost as if he’s examining them. "Took you quite a while, didn't it?"
You feel inclined to agree, your body and head do feel heavy, as if you've woken up from a nap that was a little too long. But then, you're not even sure what time it is, nor do you remember going to bed. “Did it?” You ask instead.
“Mhm,” he nods, “it’s like you slept for ages. I was starting to get worried.” But you don’t see much of that worry in his smile.
Though—on closer inspection Changmin looks older than you've ever seen him. Not old, just worn and tired, as if life had taken its toll on him. The shadows under his eyes look just a tad darker, his skin just a tad more sallow. How didn't you notice that earlier? You gently cup his cheek. "Have things been hard, love?"
He melts into your touch, "Very," he admits, "it's been so hard. But it's all fine now. I'm all fine now. You're with me after all.” He covers your hand with his own, closing his eyes to bathe in your warmth and affection. “Sometimes I feel like you’re my magic healing potion. No matter how broken I feel, you always make me whole again.”
“Don’t say that, I’d rather you wouldn’t break in the first place.”
“I know,” he lets out a small sigh, “I know.”
“For how long did I sleep anyway?”
“A week?” He says it like it’s no big deal.
“What?”
“Maybe not a week,” he glances over to the calendar and you follow his gaze. December 5th. “Six days.”
“Six—what?!”
“I also thought it was a little unusual, but I suppose your body needed the rest.”
“A little unusual?” Why is he so calm about this? “Are you messing with me right now?”
“You know I wouldn’t do that to you, my love,” he presses a small kiss to the palm of your hand.
“Then—what’s going on? Why did I sleep for an entire week?!”
“Six days—,” he corrects but you ignore him. You pull your hand away.
“And why is it December?”
“You noticed, huh? What month did you think it was? March?”
“February—but I—just tell me what’s going on already!”
“Wow, that’s amazing. So close! Your memory is really amazing this time. I wasn’t sure this would be possible—”
You feel sick with anxiety and confusion and there are tears brimming in your eyes. “Changmin, please.”
His eyes widen when he sees your expression, almost as if he only just noticed how distressed you are. “I’m sorry, love, don’t cry. I didn’t mean to scare you. I’ll tell you everything, hm?” He cups your cheeks, thumbs running soft patterns over your skin, “Let’s sit down and talk about it properly. I’m just so happy about you waking up.”
Twenty minutes later you’re sitting on the couch in the living room, blankly staring at the mug in your hands, the tea growing colder by the second. Maybe ignorance was bliss. Maybe you should’ve never asked.
“Love?” Changmin carefully breaks the silence, nervously fumbling with the fuzzy blanket you bought together back when you moved into this house.
“I died,” you whisper, struggling to wrap your head around it. “I died in March. And now it’s December. And I’m alive?”
He winces. “You make it sound kind of creepy.”
“Because it is! It is creepy!”
“No, no, love, it’s not. It wasn’t your time yet. It was a stupid accident, that goddamn driver—,” he pauses, closing his eyes to compose himself before he continues, “You shouldn’t have died back then, so you didn’t!”
“But I—how?!”
“Science,” he says and you can hear the pride in his voice, “it’s all science, y/n. The doctors wanted to give up on you after a few hours, but I insisted." He looks at you fondly, softly. "And here you are."
It still doesn't sound like something that makes sense. "But you said I died in March. How come I woke up in December?"
Changmin’s eyebrows draw together, as if just the thought of all the time in between physically pains him. “It can take a lot of time for people to come back,” he says vaguely.
“You mean like a coma?”
"Something like that," he squeezes your hand comfortingly.
"But why am I not in the hospital?"
He worries his lower lip between his teeth, "I thought waking up at home would be better…" he trails off, "and you've been stable and not dependent on any machines for a week now so it seemed safe too."
"I see." You look around the house that is the same and yet isn't, "Still, isn't it weird?"
"Y/n, if it was up to the doctors in the hospital, you'd be dead now," the sudden sharpness of his voice almost makes you flinch, "Forgive me if I don't trust them with your life and would much rather look after you myself, not just as your husband but as a doctor. You do remember that, right? That I'm a doctor too?"
You just stare at him, suddenly feeling like a scolded child. When he notices your timid face he softens up immediately, "I'm sorry, my love. I didn't mean to be harsh with you." His hand gently cups your cheek, "But I promise the decision to bring you home wasn't made irresponsibly. Everything I did was for the sake of keeping you alive. Okay?"
You cover his warm hand with your own, "Okay."
"We can talk about it more later, but don’t push yourself too hard right now. You only just woke up after all."
"Yeah," you close your eyes, "it's been a lot."
With nothing to do, time passes too slowly, one endless day followed by another. A single week feels like an entire month, and even Changmin’s countless attempts at waking your Christmas spirit doesn’t help. The enticing scent of gingerbread cookies stops being enticing at all. Knowing you’ve been gone for several months and now just being back feels weird. You wonder if it feels this way for everyone who wakes up from a long coma. It’s just odd to know how much time has passed without you. You’re still the same, but your life isn’t. You’re not going to work. You’re not joking around with your colleagues. You’re not going home in the early evening to a Changmin who excitedly comes out of his lab the moment he hears your key in the door.
Instead, you are just there, from the moment you wake up until you fall asleep at night.
You have breakfast.
You do some physical therapy.
You have lunch.
You waste away the afternoon.
Sometimes you sit in the garden, but it gets cold too quickly.
Your body aches.
You have dinner.
Changmin helps you wash up and massages your sore joints.
You go to bed.
You dream about a life that feels better than this.
Your life didn’t wait, while you were gone. Changmin is still the same, though. He is warm and sweet and assuring. He tells you to give it time, that things will be better soon, that you just need to adjust and recover.
“I’ve seen it many times,” he says, “It’s tiring and hard now, but before you know it, you’ll feel like you again. Be patient.”
You know that he is right, but it doesn’t make it much easier to persist. Especially when you know that even once you recover there won’t be a job waiting for you anymore. You can’t even blame them, they probably considered you as good as dead. But when Changmin breaks the news to you that there is no workplace to return to, a small voice in your head starts to ask what you returned for at all. When nothing is waiting for you after waking up, wouldn’t it have been better not to wake up?
You quickly silence that voice every time it emerges though. After all, you still have your loving husband who treasures you more than anything, and surely you’ll eventually find purpose again. It’s just that all your friends from work don’t seem interested in reaching out to you either. Do they not care at all? Does no one care at all? When you ask Changmin about them he reluctantly admits that they haven’t visited you in the hospital even once in the past months. He did tell them you woke up, but even then they never cared to get back to you. It hurts, much worse than your body ever could.
“Love,” Changmin says as he helps you dry your hair after a warm bath that you’ve mostly spent in silence, “Things will get better, I promise.” He sits behind you, his fingers gently carding through your locks, making sure the air of the blow dryer doesn’t get too hot. “After you’ve fully recovered, we’ll find you a nice job you like. And you’ll find new friends too.” He turns off the blow dryer and sets it aside. He doesn’t move away yet, and neither do you. Instead he wraps his arms around your shoulders from behind and leans down to leave a peck on the crown of your hair. It’s a gesture that feels familiar and comforting. “My baby is too loveable to not have friends after all, isn’t she?”
You can’t help a soft little giggle escaping your lips at his antics, before you turn more serious again. “It’s just hard,” you whisper, voice more frail than you want it to be, “It’s really hard.”
“I know,” he hugs you impossibly tighter, “But you’re alive. That’s the most important thing. My love is alive and breathing and talking and walking around. What could be more important than that?”
You try to stop yourself from crying, “Yeah,” you nod, “I’m alive.”
TOUCH
You stand in front of the sink, naked, looking at yourself in the bathroom mirror and taking in the mess that is staring back at you. Your body is covered in scars. Burn scars on your thigh and on one of your arms, spanning all the way from your elbow to the back of your shoulder and your collar bone. You have surgical scars, too. On your lower stomach and some traces of stitches on your knee. And of course the giant scar starting at your sternum and splitting your upper body in half, as if you'd been pried open, cut in two and reassembled. Changmin explained them to you: the one on your stomach is from a kidney transplant. The big one from a heart, your heart, that's been taken out of your ribcage and replaced by someone else's. You're grateful that Changmin told you and yet it doesn’t make you feel better. Instead you feel even more like a rag doll, stitched together from spare parts.
Your fingers trace the red and bumpy line on your sternum. You wonder how much of you could be replaced before you'd become someone else altogether. If you had a stranger's eyes, would it still be you looking into the mirror right now, or would it be them? And even now, with someone else's heart and kidney, are you still just you or inevitably a little them, too?
“What are you doing, Love?” Changmin’s voice pulls you out of your thoughts. You meet his gaze through the reflection and it's full of love and fondness.
“Just—you know,” you vaguely reply because you don’t really know yourself. Still, Changmin hums understandingly. He grabs your bathrobe from the hook by the door and steps closer.
“You're pretty,” he says as he drapes the soft material around your shoulders.
“You're lying.”
“You know I don’t have a habit of lying,” he kisses your neck, warm words carving themselves into your skin, “You're perfect,” and you can’t help but believe him.
Changmin has mainly worked from home, even before your accident. He’s a doctor, but rather than staying an active practitioner he decided to pour his efforts into research. So, a few years ago, when the two of you built the very house you’re living in now, he invested a good penny into his own little laboratory. Of course he could easily use the facilities at the university he has signed a contract with, but he doesn’t like to be away from home too much. Even for his bi-weekly lecture, on Mondays and Thursdays, he’d much rather do it digitally from home, but the University doesn’t exactly agree with that. He has already done that the last few weeks, opting to stay home as much as possible from the moment it started looking like you could wake up. And he’d like to keep doing it a little longer, maybe just until the end of the year, wanting to spend as much time with you as possible now that you’ve come back to him.
“Or I could just cancel today’s lecture altogether,” he whines, still hoping you’ll agree to him not going to work.
“I can’t believe you,” You shake your head with an incredulous laugh. “Don’t disappoint your students. There’s only two more weeks until the winter break anyway.”
“Exactly,” he pouts, “I could just cancel for the rest of this and next week too and start afresh in the new—”
“Ji Changmin,” you reprimand, shoving his bag into his chest, “Don’t be childish.”
“Fine.” He grabs his bag and pecks your lips, “I’ll be back in a few hours. Take it slow today.”
“Of course,” you agree, even when you’re tired of how slow everything has been, “I love you.”
“I love you more.”
Once the door falls shut behind him, you almost regret sending him away. You know it was the right thing to do, you know it’s good to get some normalcy back as soon as possible. But it’s the first time since waking up that you are truly alone. Without him, the house suddenly feels too big and too quiet. It makes you realize how dependent you’ve become on your husband, how you don’t even know how to pass your time the moment he isn’t around. You aimlessly walk around the house, trying to find something to occupy yourself with. You’ve never particularly enjoyed chores, but right now you’d kill for a pile of laundry to take care of or some dishes to wash. There is nothing, though, and you know Changmin wouldn’t approve of you doing anything tedious while your body hasn’t fully recovered anyway.
You wander upstairs. You haven’t gone up there once since you woke up. Maybe because your legs already feel tired the moment you think of using stairs. Or maybe because there is nothing for you to do there. Aside from Changmin’s laboratory there’s only a second, smaller bathroom and an office up there. Your office to be precise, for the days you’d work from home. But you don’t need an office right now, do you? Still, you take the stairs and you walk down the narrow hallway to the familiar wooden door. When you push it open, it’s just as you remember it. But it looks neater. Changmin must have come here to clean up from time to time. There’s no dust collecting anywhere, and the documents on your desk are neatly stacked, just waiting for you to return. Except, you won’t.
You sit down on the desk chair and lean back and relieve the stress on your joints. It’s freezing outside, but the sun falling in through the window feels warm on your cheeks. And for a moment you’re just you, breathing and alive. Your hands subconsciously start to fiddle with the worn out leather on the arm rests the way they always did when you felt stuck at work. There’s already some cushioning peeking out through small rips in the material and Changmin has tried to buy a new chair for you a zillion times, but you like this one. It feels cozy and familiar, and you love things that feel familiar, now more than ever.
At some point you must’ve fallen asleep because the sound of the keys in the front door wakes you up.
“Y/n?” Changmin’s cheery voice calls for you and there’s automatically a smile spreading on your lips. You get up to greet him. Briefly, you notice a digital keypad next to the lab door, that you don’t remember being there before, but when Changmin calls for you again, the thought is forgotten.
“Are you upstairs?” He pokes his head up the stairwell and his eyes light up the moment they fall on you.
“Took a little nap in the office.”
“On that ratty old chair?” He shakes his head in disbelief, but his arms are open for you to melt into.
“It’s comfy.”
“If you say so,” Changmin rests his chin on the top of your head.
“Not as comfy as this though.”
He chuckles and you feel the vibration in his chest.
“How was work?”
“Boring,” he shrugs, “Missed you.”
“Yeah,” you nuzzle further into his embrace, “I missed you, too.”
“So I can work from home again?”
“Don’t be childish.”
HEARING
Sometimes sleep comes to you easily. Sometimes it doesn’t. You lay awake, restless and unsettled. And then there is that faint beeping noise. You think it’s a memory; the sound of the heart monitor you must have been attached to for a long time now deeply connected to the state of sleeping, of closing your eyes. You already know you’re imagining it, but it still drives you insane with its unrelenting, steady rhythm.
Beep.
Beep.
Beep.
You cover your ears, but it’s stuck in your brain, like a persistent tinnitus.
Beep.
Beep.
Beep.
You toss and turn.
“Love?” Changmin’s sleepy voice breaks through the dark, “What’s wrong?”
“Can’t sleep,” you admit, feeling guilty for waking him up, and all just because of a noise that isn’t actually there.
“Come here,” he whispers and you crawl into his arms that pull you close to him. “It’s all good,” he assures, “Everything is okay.”
You can hear the steady beat of his heart, and it seems to drown out any other sound around you.
Your office quickly becomes a place of comfort to you. The silence and the sun falling in through the window make you feel peaceful and relaxed in a way that no other place seems to be able to. You have a feeling Changmin doesn’t like it too much, when you retreat into your little territory since he wants to spend as much time together as possible, so you rarely go up while he’s home. Whenever he’s gone for his lecture or locked away in his lab though, you take the stairs up and sink into your ratty, old chair.
You sometimes use your alone time for reading or writing, but mostly you just sit there with your eyes closed and enjoy the silence. You don’t remember liking silence much before the accident. Rather, you’ve always been unsettled if things got too quiet, finding yourself in need of creating some kind of noise or hustle to feel safe. Now though, silence means peace. Maybe you’ve gotten used to it, after being in a coma for so long. Maybe you haven’t created any kind of noise in so long that now you’ve forgotten how to, and just the thought of it feels exhausting. No, this is nice, just you and the sound of your breathing and the beating of a stranger’s heart in your chest (and the steady beeping that seems to be just a little louder up here).
You fiddle with the armrest, until the tip of your finger briefly gets caught in one of the rips. And there you feel something, stuffed between the leather cover and the cushioning. You dig in further to get a hold of it, and what you pull out is a piece of paper, folded up into a tiny square. Just trash, probably, that got there during production. Still, you unfold it, just in case, and you’re met with blue ink. There are only two words written down:
his diary.
You’re not sure what you’re supposed to make of this and you’d easily forget about it, but what’s weird is that the handwriting is all too familiar: it’s your own. You don’t remember ever making a note like that, and even less hiding it in the arm rest of your chair. Something is off, even when you fail to understand what it is just yet. The piece of paper feels as heavy as a stone in the palm of your hand. You shove it back into the cushioning of the arm rest. It’s nothing. It’s nothing. It’s
nothing.
You walk past his lab door. There’s a small LED on the keypad, blinking in a slow rhythm. You stop. Take a step back. You have no real reason to check. You’ve always kept out of his lab for the most part. It doesn’t matter if Changmin decided to lock it. It doesn’t matter if the door opens or not.
You push down the handle.
It doesn’t open.
When you come downstairs, Changmin is standing in the kitchen. It smells like garlic and onions. He must have left his lab a while ago to get a start on cooking.
“Hey,” he turns to you with a warm smile and a wooden spoon in his hand.
“Hey,” you find it hard to smile back.
“What have you been up to?”
“Nothing much,” you shrug, “just took a nap.” You could tell him about the little note you found, laugh and make a joke out of it like isn’t that strange? But you don’t. Something tells you it’s best to never mention it at all.
Changmin’s gaze seems to examine you for a moment too long before he turns back to the pots in front of him. “You’ve come to really love your office, hm?”
“Haven’t I always?”
He hums, “Maybe.”
It feels like the beeping is getting louder, even when you know that can’t possibly be true. But it seems to increase in volume, just a little bit, with every breath you take. And it’s getting impossible to tune it out. No, it seems to always be there, awake or not, and it’s slowly but surely driving you to insanity. It feels like something is crawling into your ears, wrapping its sneaky fingers around your brain and messing with it, messing with you—if this is even you at all? What if your brain has been replaced too, while they were at it? What if your very soul has been ripped out of your ribcage along with your heart, what if you’re nothing but a shell of yourself, housing a loosely stitched together fragments of different identities—
You sit up in bed, drenched in sweat and with your eyes wide open. Something is off. Something is off with you.
“Changmin,” you whisper, into the dark, and you immediately hear him stirring beside you, “what if I lost my mind? What if I came back wrong?”
For a while it stays silent, and you wonder if he even heard you or if he’s still asleep. But then you feel his hand covering your own. “You didn’t, Love. You came back perfect, I promise. You’re just taking your time to adjust.”
There’s noise when you wake up. Steps, voices, people. You’re not sure when you’ve last heard the voice of someone who isn’t Changmin. But who is it? Curiously you poke your head out of the bedroom door. You hear Changmin talking to someone by the door.
“Sign here too,” the stranger’s voice says.
“Right, thank you,” your husband replies, a happy lilt to his voice.
“Changmin?” you wrap your night robe around yourself and slowly step out of the bedroom.
“Morning, Love,” he briefly looks up to greet you with a warm smile, before he focuses back onto the screen the delivery man is holding out to sign. “Anything else?” he asks, directed at the man.
“We have already loaded the things for disposal, so that’ll be all.”
“Perfect,” Changmin nods, “Have a nice day then.”
“You too, Sir,” the delivery man’s gaze briefly darts to you down the hallway, giving you a small nod, “Ma’am.”
You nod awkwardly, and then he’s gone and you’re alone with Changmin again. You walk up to him to hug him from behind, but he beats you to it, turning around and wraps his arms around you.
“Did you sleep well, Love?” He pecks your forehead.
“Mmh,” you lean into his touch and soak up his warmth, “What did he pick up?”
“Hehe,” another peck, “the better question would be what he delivered.”
“So, what did he deliver?”
“You wanna see?” He sounds excited to show you, but somehow an odd feeling settles in your stomach. Still, you nod.
The feeling doesn’t improve when Changmin leads you up the stairs, past his lab and to your office.
You force a laugh, “What could it be?”
“Let’s see,” Changmin grins and pushes open the door.
It’s different.
There is still a desk, and a chair, but it’s not your desk and not your chair.
It looks nice, it really does. It’s tasteful and cozy and nice but it’s not yours.
“Oh,” is all you let out.
“Oh?” Changmin’s eyebrows draw together, “do you not like it?”
“No, it’s—it’s nice.” That seems to be the only description you can come up with.
“I thought—since you’re spending so much time in your office these days….,” he explains, seemingly noticing your reluctance.
“Yeah.”
“The chair is really comfortable, I promise. Made sure it’s good for naps, too.”
You stare at it. It looks comfortable. Still—“I liked the old chair.”
“Oh.” He looks so genuinely heartbroken, it makes you feel heartbroken for him too. “I—do you want me to call them and get it back? I’m sure I could—”
“No,” you take a breath, “No, it’s okay. It’s lovely, I’ll just—I’ll need some time to adjust.” You peck his lips, “It’s fine I promise.”
To prove your point you sit down in the new chair and lean back. It’s comfortable. It’s soft. There are no rips in the leather. There are no hidden messages in the arm rest either.
TASTE
The faint beeping noise haunts you. And sometimes, when you let your imagination get the better of you, you think you can hear someone, or something, breathing through the walls.
It’s hard to place, exactly, but you feel like something has shifted ever so slightly. You want it to be your mind playing tricks on you, but sometimes, when Changmin is looking at you, he seems weary. Or maybe it’s just you who’s feeling weary; exhausted by the tinnitus you can’t get rid of and confused by a note you must have written yourself. Now that it’s gone though, you start to question if it’d ever been there at all, or if it’s just something your restless mind constructed in a dream.
Changmin is locked away in his lab again and that’s another thing that unsettles you. He has always spent a lot of time in there, but it feels different now. Everytime you hear the little sound the lock makes when the door falls shut, something inside of you tightens.
You make a cup of coffee and gather some of the gingerbread cookies from the last batch Changmin made a few days ago on a plate. He’s been working for hours without a break—he must be hungry right? But as you take up the stairs, carrying a small tray in front of you, you know very well that it isn’t kindness that brings you to the door of his lab, but suspicion. Why is the door always locked? What is he hiding?
“Hm?” Changmin hums from the inside when you knock.
“I made coffee,” you make your voice sound light.
“You did? How sweet.” You hear him shuffling around inside, “Give me a second—”
It takes more than a second before the door finally clicks open, but at least it does. He’s letting you in.
You hope your attempt at appearing casual as you walk inside and look around succeeds. The lab isn’t much different from how you remember it. There’s lab cabinets full of small bottles and medical equipment lining one of the walls, and bookshelves lining the one across from it. In one corner he has his worktable that’s folded up against the wall. He’s always had it, but you’re not sure it ever came to use. And then of course there’s his desk in the middle of the room, and another door behind it, where you know he stores some machines. He has let you in there once, years ago, showed and explained to you the things he has there, but you didn’t really understand them back then.
“Since when did you start locking the lab?”
“Ah, it’s because of some of the chemicals and medication I sometimes have here,” he closes the door behind you and follows you back towards his desk, “It’s the regulations that these things need to be locked away.”
You don’t know if it’s true, but it sounds plausible. You set the tray with the coffee and cookies onto the desk, next to his closed laptop.
And there you see it.
A small notebook on his desk. The cover is a dark brown, and there’s a single word embossed: DIARY.
his diary.
You cast your gaze away, as if just looking at it was somehow risky. As if you’ve done something forbidden.
You try to distract yourself, and maybe him, too, by taking a bite from one of the cookies. It tastes stale and your mouth is so dry it feels hard to swallow a single crumb. You start coughing, and Changmin is immediately there, his hand on your back, drawing reassuring patterns.
“Are you okay, Love?”
“I—Yeah. I think I overexerted myself a bit today,” you press out.
“That’s okay,” he pecks your cheek, “let’s get you downstairs, hm? You can lay down a bit.”
You nod and let him lead the way. But your head stays in the lab. You need to get your hands on that diary.
He helps you change into comfortable clothes, his fingertips just a little cold against your skin as he rids you off your sweater and top.
“You’re perfect,” he whispers when his eyes fall onto your naked skin and his lips briefly find you sternum. “You’re perfect,” he repeats as he kisses your scar, and you wonder why it doesn’t feel like he’s complimenting you, but instead just the body that has been stitched back together so perfectly.
SIGHT
You need to get into his lab. You need to take a look at that diary and see what’s inside. If there’s anything inside, at all. Maybe it’s all good, maybe you’re just being paranoid. Maybe that note meant nothing. But to prove that, you need to read his diary.
You try to act normal around him, until your chance arrives. You haven’t put much thought into a plan which probably isn’t the smartest idea, but somehow things seem to fall into place. While you still feel like the vibe between the two of you is just the slightest bit off, he doesn’t seem to suspect anything. Or maybe he feels safe with the lock barring you from his lab. Either way, after the usual whining of wanting to stay with you, he leaves for his lecture, and you’re left alone at home, knowing you have a few hours before he’ll return. After you’re sure he is really gone, you make your way upstairs.
Your eyes stare at the numbers on the keypad. The LED is still steadily blinking in a blue light. You can’t see any traces on the pad, no indicators which numbers have been pressed and which haven’t. But maybe, maybe, you’ll just be lucky? If Changmin doesn’t have anything to hide from you, surely, the code won’t be that hard, right?
You type in his birthday. Then your own. Nothing. You try the day you’ve met and the day you married. Still, nothing.
You try the day of the accident.
The keypad makes a sound. The LED turns green.
When you press down the handle, the door opens.
Something is keeping you from going in right away. Even with all the doubts and troubles polluting your mind, you still feel that what you’re doing is wrong. But you need clarity.
You finally take a step inside, and it’s exactly the way it was a few days ago when you brought him coffee. Except, his laptop is gone; he must’ve taken it along for his lecture. And the diary isn’t laying on the desk either. What if he took it along? But if it really contains something important, would he risk taking it along to university?
You search the desk carefully, looking under documents and checking if maybe it’s just hidden somewhere. When you open one of the drawers, there it is, right on top in a way that almost feels careless. If he even has anything to hide. It seems you just can’t stop yourself from clinging to hope.
You take it out and sit down in the chair behind his desk, but you hesitate before opening it. The all too familiar beeping feels impossibly loud, almost drowning out the rushing of blood in your ear and the thumping of the heart in your chest.
Finally, you open it.
True to its name it seems to be a diary. The first entry dates back to a few days after the accident.
March 21
They wanted to declare her dead. I managed to convince them to keep trying. She’s in a coma now, but I know she will wake up.
March 22
She will need a heart transplant. They say her survival chances are slim, even if she gets one on time. The hospital needs better doctors.
It feels hard to read this. Every page you turn, day after day, it’s Changmin fighting for you, doing his best to convince the doctors at the hospital not to pull the plugs on the machines keeping you alive. But never once did he lose faith that you’d come back to him.
April 3
They declared her dead. I brought her home. It wasn’t easy, but it’s the only way.
You’re staring at the page in confusion. That doesn’t make sense. He told you, you’ve only come home once you were stable. So how come, the diary says he brought you home in April? And why have you been declared dead?
April 5
The heart transplant was a success. Now I need to find a way to wake her up.
From home? Where did he get the heart? Did he steal it at the hospital? Did he bring you back there? But it says nothing about that there. Your gaze subconsciously wanders towards the folded up work table. You suppose a body would fit on there…
Your heart racing uncomfortably in your chest, you skip through the pages.
April 29
Y/n woke up. She is not quite herself though. She’s displaying confusion and aggression. She doesn’t seem to remember anything.
You understand none of the things you’re reading. You want to puke.
May 2
She’s in so much pain. Her blood levels are bad too. She will need a kidney transplant.
Your hand wanders to your abdomen, to the place you know your surgery scars are.
May 3
I had to put her into an artificial coma. I’ll need to find a transplant for her. I’d give her one of my own, but our blood groups aren’t compatible.
May 5
I’m running out of time.
May 8
I’ve finally found a donor. The transplant was successful. If I figure out good storage conditions I should be well prepared even if she needs other organs later.
Storage options? For organs? Does he have organs hidden in some fridge here somewhere?
May 12
She woke up again. She doesn’t seem to remember the last time. She doesn’t remember me, either. But she’s calmer, this time. I’m sure she will remember, soon.
May 18
The supplier is stable.
Supplier?
May 31
Her liver function test results have gotten significantly worse. She doesn’t want surgery, but she will need a transplant.
None of this rings a bell. A liver transplant? Changmin never said anything about that.
June 7
I convinced her. It’s for the best. We’ll have the surgery tomorrow.
June 8
The surgery was a success, but she hasn’t woken up yet.
June 9
There have been issues with the supplier. I'm worried about the condition of the other organs.
June 12
She doesn’t remember again. Why does she never remember?
June 15
The situation with the supplier has stabilized.
June 19
I don’t know how much longer I can wait for her to come back to me.
June 27
It’s not y/n. No matter how much I look at it.
July 1
#3 has been laid to rest.
You blink. Once, twice. Laid to rest? What does that mean? The sickening feeling that’s been taking root in your guts is only getting worse. Still, you keep reading, you need to know. You need to know everything.
July 7
#4 woke up.
#4. Not you, not y/n. But #4. You skip a few pages, the pulse racing in your veins, eyes quickly scanning what’s written down, until they get stuck on those horrifying words again.
August 11
Attempt #4 laid to rest.
And again
September 22
Attempt #5 laid to rest.
It doesn’t make sense.
October 13
Six doesn’t like it, when I call her that. But I can’t call her y/n. Six doesn’t remember being y/n, nor does she remember us. She acts differently. She doesn’t love me. She’s not her.
October 28
It’s becoming a pain. Six knows too much. For now, she is still useful, though. It’s not good when the body stays in a coma for too long.
November 26
Attempt #6 laid to rest.
December 6
Y/n woke up. She remembers. Only the important parts, though. Only us, not the others. That just proves they weren’t her.
You don’t want to read this, but you can’t stop.
December 10
She’s a bit timid, but I’m sure she’ll grow into her old self soon.
December 15
Y/n’s been acting a little off. I can’t help but remember Six’s last words. I’m worried.
December 18
Eliminated any possible sources of disturbance.
You halt for a moment. That date—it’s the day he switched out the furniture in your office. He’s onto you.
But more than that, something else clicks into place to: the note. It must’ve been Six who left it for you. She must’ve found out all of this, pieced it together way better than your puzzled mind can right now, and tried to tell you, too, thinking you had a right to know. And you supposed, you did. Because you haven’t been in a coma for months like Changmin had told you. No, you’ve been awake, alive, six times. And four times, he decided you’ve come back wrong. So he killed you, four times.
You stare at the journal in your hands with so much disgust and horror, it sickens you. What sickens you more, is all the empty pages left. So much more space to fill with attempts should he decide, you’re not you after all.
Suddenly the sound of the front door pulls you out of your trance. Your eyes flick to the clock on the wall. He’s early. You need to leave, but you can’t.
“Y/n?” His voice sounds through the house.
You need to leave.
You can hear him humming as he comes up the stairs. It’s a soft little melody, but the way it slowly comes closer feels scary, threatening. There’s not much left of that homely feeling his singing used to give you. You know you need to hide, need to put the diary back to its place and pretend you’ve never laid eyes on a single word written down inside, but something is stopping you, keeping you frozen in place as his steps approach.
The humming stops abruptly when he reaches the lab door. You closed it, and yet he seems to notice that something is off, seems to already know that you’ve snuck in there. It carries over in the silence hanging over you.
You listen in horror as he taps the code into the keypad. You know you’re running out of time to hide. Your gaze falls onto the white door, the one Changmin supposedly stores equipment behind. In a surge of panic, you scramble to your feet and run over, dairy clutched to your chest as you push down the handle. It’s open. Without much thought you rush inside and close the door behind you, just in time before you hear Changmin stepping into the lab.
You can’t feel any kind of relief though, not when an all too familiar sound gets even louder once you stand in the room. Not when you find a hospital bed before you, surrounded by an array of machines. And then there is the body, frail and with skin so pale it barely contrasts with the white sheets. There’s all kinds of tubes attached to him, but whoever he is seems to be alive. The steady beeping of the heart monitor indicates as much. The supplier, you realize. The very person who had to give up one of his kidneys and a part of his liver to you. Did Changmin kidnap him? Did he kidnap and put him into a coma, to keep you alive? Reduced to a mere ‘supplier’ of organs, as if they’re mere spare parts, as if his life is worth less than yours?
You feel sick.
There’s movement in the lab. The sound of a cabinet opening. The clinking of glass. Then steps, getting closer once more. Changmin must’ve already noticed the diary missing on his desk. Stupid you, for taking it with you. Then again, did you really think there was a way out of this?
“Y/n?” There’s a singsong to his voice, but it’s lacking any trace of warmth. You don’t recognize the sound of it.
You don’t respond and just stand there frozen, caged between the hospital bed before you and the stranger in the lab behind you.
You screw your eyes shut. You wish you could just wake up from this nightmare now. You wish you’d never stepped foot in here, never read a single word from his diary. Maybe playing pretend that things would’ve been better. Maybe dying, staying dead, would’ve been best. But clearly, Changmin could never let you die, the way he couldn’t let you live either. And once you were gone, there’d be another you, and another, and another—
“Y/n,” he repeats, and he’s right outside the door now, “Come out, hm?”
You don’t move.
“If you don’t come out, I’ll have to come in, y/n.”
You still don’t move.
He pushes down the handle and opens the door behind you. You’re scared. Never once has the presence of your husband made you feel scared, but it does now. You don’t even want to turn around.
“Y/n,” his voice is too soft for the situation, “why did you come in here, hm? There’s nothing for you to see here.” You feel his hand ghosting over your shoulder and it sends uncomfortable shudders down your spine.
“Isn’t there plenty, though?”
“But nothing you could understand.”
“Explain it then.”
He huffs a small laugh, “I don’t think you’ll like the explanations I have.”
“Oh, really? So, you’re aware that what you did was wrong?”
He shakes his head, “I said you won’t like it. That doesn’t mean it was wrong.”
You finally turn to look at him and it feels like you’re looking at a stranger, as if the body of your husband has been taken over by someone who isn’t him at all, just the way he must’ve felt of every version of yourself that woke up before you. It fills you with such an overwhelming sense of grief, you almost can’t stomach it. You’re feeling yourself choke up, “How could it not be wrong? Changmin, you kidnapped someone. You stole his organs. You’re slowly killing him.”
“He was never going to wake up again anyway! His brain damage is too severe, he’s only still alive because of me! Besides,” he composes himself, and his voice sounds colder when he continues, calculated, “he doesn’t deserve any better. This is all his own fault.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“He’s the drunk driver that hit you with his car, y/n. Everything would’ve been fine, if it hadn’t been for him. We could’ve been happy, the way we’ve always been. And thanks to his organs, we could still be happy now.”
Your eyes wander back to the frail body on the bed. But you can’t find it in you to feel anger towards him. It’s hard to imagine a weak and pathetic figure like him sitting behind the wheel, much less drunk and reckless. But you figure, the months he’s spent in a coma since the accident have taken their toll on his body.
“That doesn’t make this right, though,” you meet Changmin’s eyes again, “You can’t just keep him here like that.”
“Then what? Should I have let you die?” He asks it as if he knows he has won now, as if he’s so certain you’ll understand him now.
But you still don’t.
“Yes.”
Changmin’s eyes widen in surprise, “You don’t mean that. You’re not in your right mind.”
You almost want to laugh, “What, like Six?”
Something in him shifts at the mention of her, his gaze turns colder and his jaw tenses. He lets out a drawn out sigh, running his hand over his face, and pushing his tongue into his cheek in frustration. “Why do you have to do this, my love?”
You’re scared. You’re scared out of your mind, but maybe you don’t have much sense of self-preservation left in you, because you don’t stop pushing, "Right," you scoff, "Because that's all I am, your love. It's so inherent to my identity that I came back wrong if I don't remember you. It's so fundamental to my being that there is no point in me breathing if I'm not yours."
You're almost spitting the words at him, hoping they hurt him in the way he's hurting you, hoping he suffers from the truth you feed to him, "But I'm my own person, Changmin. And I promise you, in no life of mine has there ever been a moment when I loved you more than I respected myself."
"Self-respect. Of course. A most useless character trait of yours,” He shakes his head, and it’s like he’s so far away, like none of your words mean anything to him at all, “I do love that fire in your eyes, though. Still, this won't do.”
You see something in his hand from your peripheral vision. A syringe, you realize when he steps closer to you. He must’ve had it hidden in his sleeve this whole time, ready to streak if you’re not worth keeping. You stumble backwards in a panic, until your back hits the hospital bed and you’re stuck with nowhere to go.
“Changmin, no, don’t.”
He’s so calm about this, as if what he’s about to do doesn’t disturb him at all. He grabs your wrist and turns you around, back pressed against his chest. You uselessly struggle in his grip, but he doesn’t budge. He has never overpowered you like that, never used his strength on you like that before, and it makes you feel small and pathetic. There’s a small prick, as he holds the needle up against your neck, "Couldn’t you have at least waited until after christmas?" Changmin whispers in your ear, “It’s such a pity to celebrate by myself.”
“N-no, Changmin, don't, no, please," you beg but then you already feel the tip of the needle breaking your skin and then the pressure of whatever liquid is inside that syringe being pushed into your veins. It's an odd feeling; you can tell your heartbeat is slowing with no way to urge it to beat faster and your limbs lose strength until your knees give in beneath you. The room seems to fade before your eyes, but you realize it's not the room that's fading, it’s you. You distantly register the way Changmin lowers you to the ground, gentle hands making sure you don't hit your head. When you gather your last strength to look at him again, you think he looks sad. You think he looks like your husband. You want to cup his cheek and comfort him, but you cannot muster enough strength to do so.
“Changmin,” you’re not sure his name actually makes it out of your mouth, “This time, let death do us apart.”
“I can’t,” he says, “I love you too much.”
Once your eyes are empty and still, Changmin carefully closes your lids. It's his last act of love towards you, towards this version of you. He opens his diary.
December 22
Attempt #7 laid to rest.
The scent of gingerbread and cinnamon. That's the first thing you notice when you wake up. You blink your eyes open to find Changmin next to you, a sweet smile on his face. “Good morning, Love. You woke up just in time for New Year's.”
collab masterlist | tbz masterlist
♡ pls consider reblogging if you enjoyed this & check out the other fics as well ♡
There’s no better way to celebrate the holiday season than with a bit of horror and blood~ This is where you can find all the gruesome winter goodies that are currently posted for this collab hosted by Kebbi (@jinkoh) and me (@blizzardfluffykpop)
Posting period: dec 13th - jan 13th 2026
Please remember to like, reblog, and leave feedback on the fics you enjoy!! And remember to heed the warnings~
A Scarring Night to Remember
By @blizzardfluffykpop
Jay X Gn! Reader ❄️🔪 Gore, Hurt/Comfort
While you both survived the worst of that winter night, the trauma was still there. But at least with the song Jay wrote while in recovery, the two of you could dream of better nights together.
home sweet home
By @jinkoh
yunho x gn!reader ❄️😱 Psychological Horror, Comfort?
you'll make it home this time for sure...
Poisoned Werewolf
By @blizzardfluffykpop
Taehyun X Gn! Reader ❄️🐺 Gore, Hurt/Comfort
Your boyfriend chokes out as the poison slowly sets in, “Run! Run! You have to get away from me! Please!” And you run away from him like your life depends on it, because it does.
footprints in the snow
By @sungbeam
nonidol!jung wooyoung x f!reader ❄️😈 Supernatural Horror, Angst
there's something out there... and it wants to come in.
the 7th attempt
By @jinkoh
changmin x fem!reader ❄️💉 Psychological Horror, Medical Horror
summary: the reason you’re still alive after a deadly accident is that changmin loves you. you have no idea, just how much. he will never let you die—
but he won’t let you live either.
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tagging who expressed interest/already decided to join: @sungbeam
what better way to celebrate the holiday season than with a bit of horror and blood, right? that's why kate and I decided to host a tiny little christmas collab to match~
posting period: dec 13th - jan 13th 2026
who can participate?
Literally anyone above the age of 18 who's interested in writing wintery horror fics. Joining spontaneously after the posting period has already started is fine too!
what works are accepted?
Idol x reader fics (can be platonic/non-romantic)
any group is fine, the idol has to be at least 18y/o
works should be a dark/horror genre, it's up to you how exactly you want to interpret that prompt
nsfw, graphic or disturbing content is allowed, but make sure to tag it properly & include necessary warnings
any length is fine, from a short little drabble to a full length fic
writing several or multi-chaptered fics is also allowed
how to join?
tag both Kate (@blizzardfluffykpop) and me (@jinkoh) in your published fic so that we can find it easily
we'll add every posted fic to a running masterlist that we'll update regularly
please link back to the masterlist on your fic so that readers can also find other works from the collab
feel free to leave a comment under this post or dm either of us if you have any questions or wish to discuss ideas beforehand~
tagging who expressed interest/already decided to join: @stay-mon-army @sungbeam @thegreenlynx
