Work Text:
Donghyuck is pretty sure the game is over. The candle burned out, nothing to light anymore. He’s thought this before, several times. He’ll be sitting there, and then it hits him. It happens from time to time, which, over the years, has been hard to explain.
No, I’m fine now. I just freaked out a bit. Sorry.
You can only apologize so much and only make excuses for your behavior so many times. It doesn’t always fly with everyone, like his mother. It doesn’t fly with his mother. He learns this as a teenager, that this is never going to fly. She tells him that, right to his face.
I’m sick and tired of you acting like the boy who cried wolf, you need to get a hold of yourself.
He tries, he does. It’s not like there is a lack of trying. He’s done so before. Given up, let all of the energy leave him and let his body fall to the ground, and stay there for two months. He lies in his dark room and stares at the ceiling, quiet music making his phone hum beside him. The light peeks through the curtains and he moans when the sun rises, wishing for just a little more peace before he remembers that even with no desire, he has responsibilities.
It’s August, he’ll go back to school soon enough, but still, he’ll lie there as long as he can. It’s an easy lesson to learn that nobody is there to save you. You will be alone, you will stay that way. If you put no effort in, who will watch you? Who will see you? If the answer is nobody, then the game must be over.
When he’s eighteen, he learns that if he wants to keep playing, then he must try at something. He doesn’t want to keep playing, but he wants to want it. So he tries, at something. He starts lying.
Two truths, one lie. The grass is green, the water moves with the wind, you want to be alive.
Time blurs it all, and eventually, he loses track of it being a lie. Playing the game becomes easy, second nature. He finds if you do enough convincing, you can start to believe anything. Even if you spend the last seven years of your life thinking about the way to destroy yourself in the least impactful way possible, if you go outside enough, you’ll stop thinking about it.
Or at least, when you do think about it, because you will, it won’t be as hard to get rid of.
Maybe if I jumped in the river becomes the river reflects the sunset. At six-thirty, the river turns red and orange. I’d like to see it one more time.
It works, it works until it doesn’t.
It works until he thinks too much, until a stranger gives him weird looks for mouthing the words to the song playing in his headphones. Until he realizes that his “friends” know nothing about him at all. Until someone he’s known for years forgets that he’s good at the one thing he thinks he’s good at.
Then, the river turns red in the sunlight turns into I wish I could sink to the bottom.
He’s good at it, he’s been good at lying for years. He looks down and stares at the spot he’d lied in just months earlier, letting the sun hit his face and not grimacing because he thought he deserved it. Now he stands in the shade and stares at red water.
The river is red in the sun. The river is red in the sun. The water rises too high to walk along the sand after it rains. Touch the pole once when you reach the end of the path before turning around. Nobody is going to save you. The sun sets below the horizon and the river turns black. The river is red in the sun. Nobody is going to save you.
He gasps while trying to steady his breathing before walking back to his car in the dark. Two people walk by and he can see them look over before laughing and stepping over the patch of mud in the path. Nobody saves him.
Donghyuck is sure the game is over. He waits for the signs he knows he’ll see. He goes about his days and decides to let things end naturally. It seems much more exhausting to decide for himself for once in his life. So yet again, he goes with the flow. The flow that will almost surely inevitably bring him to the end.
It builds up over weeks. His boss hates him. His friends make plans without him. He tries to write, but nothing comes. He tries to get out of bed, but nothing works. The aching feeling grows unbearable just like he’d thought it would, and he feels his soul giving out before his body does.
It’s Wednesday when the game finally ends. He gets in his car and drives to the river a couple of hours before sunset. He sits and stares and waits for the last sign. Something to officially end it all. Maybe an asteroid hits, or maybe a bird lands next to him. Whatever happens happens and the game can end. He can drive home, pull the pills from his medicine cabinet, and it can be done.
The sun touches the horizon when he gets his sign. He swings his arm around and it skims a branch that slices through his skin. Blood runs down his arm the way it did when he was younger and he bursts into tears despite it not hurting at all. He watches as it drips down and scoffs, thinking it’s ridiculous that things need to end this way.
He can’t leave before the sun, so he waits a final time, watching the river turn red.
The river turns red in the sun, the sky turns with it. The water moves with the wind. The sand is uncovered due to lack of rain. Touch the pole. You want to die. Nobody is going to save you.
“Are you okay?”
Nobody is going to save you.
“Sorry if I’m being invasive. I just--”
Nobody is going to save you.
“I passed by here twice and you were crying both times. And I’ve seen you before and it was like-- I thought you were crying then but I really couldn’t tell.”
Nobody is going to save you.
“But you’re definitely crying now. And you’re wearing the same coat as then, so, I can tell it’s you.”
Donghyuck blinks, raising the arm covered in a clean streak of dried blood to wipe his eyes.
He spends two years wishing on every star that someone would only ask, and now that somebody does, he’s not sure what to say. How do you reply? Yes, I’m okay, I just realized my time is up.
“I’m Mark.”
Mark steps over the chunk of rocks and sits on the sand next to Donghyuck, looking out at the water and pulling his knees to his chest.
Mark taps at his nametag, “Unless this is someone else's coat, you’re Donghyuck?”
Donghyuck nods and blinks, swallowing roughly.
“Can I know what's wrong? You don’t have to tell me details, or tell me at all. But sometimes it’s nice to have someone to listen with no judgment, you know?”
He tries to speak, but coughs before anything can come out. He isn’t sure what the right response is anyway. Is it honesty? I want to go home and kill myself, you’re holding me up. Half-truth? I’m so tired, I don’t want to keep living the way I am now. Lie? Sorry to make you worry, I’m okay.
He forces out an I can’t- before coughing again and Mark tells him to take his time.
It’s all a fantasy, that’s all he can think. He’s so far gone he’s started hallucinating someone saving him, someone caring. Not even someone he knows but a stranger, taking time to make sure he’s okay. The cynicism takes over and he starts to convince himself Mark must only be doing this to make himself feel better. Maybe he thinks it’s a good deed, something he feels obligated to do.
It’d be another story had they already known each other, but Mark is new. Mark doesn’t know that Donghyuck is odd, bad at making friends, bad at everything. No talents to his name, no good grades, and no promotions. More people seem to dislike him than like him. A stranger wouldn’t know any of this. If they did, they wouldn’t ask.
It feels fake.
The river turns red, then black when the sun disappears. Someone is saving you.
His breathing is steady now and he decides a lie gets him nowhere, even if he’s already going nowhere.
“I was going to go home and kill myself.”
Mark turns his head to look at Donghyuck again instead of the water.
“Was?”
“Well, I- I don’t know anymore. I’m just…”
Mark nods like he understands, which freaks him out a little.
“I don’t think you should.”
Donghyuck hardly has the energy to laugh but he scoffs at that and picks at the dried blood on his arm. Mark doesn’t ask.
“Why not?” Donghyuck asks lightly like this conversation isn’t important at all.
“Well, whatever it is, the thing that’s making you want to, it could change, right?”
Donghyuck scoffs again and shakes his head, “I don’t think I’ll change. I’ve been like this forever.”
“You think it’s you?”
“It is me.”
Mark hums, picking up a stick and snapping it in half a moment later.
“I still don’t think you should, I think you’ll regret it.”
Donghyuck makes a face and sighs, “Can’t regret anything if I'm dead.”
“You aren’t dead yet.”
Donghyuck shrugs and makes a noise like he doesn’t get it.
“Well I mean, I don’t know how you’re planning on doing it, but it won’t be instant. Even if you managed to get your hands on a gun somehow, you still have to load it. Swallow the pills.” He looks over and motions to Donghyucks arm, “Cut your arm open.” He takes a deep breath and looks over at the bridge at the opposite end of the path. “Jump in.”
He blinks a few times before speaking again, “It all takes some time, time for you to think, and regret. And half the time it doesn’t even work. And then you’re in the hospital or something, and they take your phone. You get locked in a room and you stare at the wall and all you can think about is how you shouldn’t have done it.”
“This isn’t very comforting.”
Mark’s expression softens at that, “Well, comforting doesn’t work on most people.”
“Nobody’s ever comforted me before,” Donghyuck says, “It’d be nice just once.”
“You don’t have anyone who comforts you?”
A shake of the head.
“Well, I will.”
“You’re not good at it.”
Mark takes it well and even smiles a little, “Then I’ll work on it. You work on living and I’ll work on comforting. Now we both have a goal.”
Donghyuck stares at him for a bit before shaking his head.
“This conversation is dumb.”
“Why?”
“I’ll never even see you after this. I’ll leave and it’ll end.”
Mark shrugs and says it doesn’t have to. He says something about instagram but Donghyuck can hardly hear it. He zones out, but they exchange contacts. miraculously, Donghyuck sleeps in his bed, and wakes up the next morning with several messages waiting for him.