THE BROTHERS | NCT BXB

7: Consequences

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Rosary beads of water slid down Taeyong's skin as he stood under the tap. When minutes turned to hours and hours blurred back to minutes, Taeyong turned off the water and stepped out of the shower. He'd spent a long time in there - enough for his skin to shrivel up, turning dry and pruny from the excess moisture, enough for his skin to sting as bullets of water rained overhead. In the shower, he had scrubbed at his skin, rubbing until it'd turned red and raw, almost fiery in complexion, but it hadn't changed the fact that he'd still felt them on him - in him.

He still felt Johnny inside him, tearing him apart. He still felt Mark's handprints faint around his neck. And there was no getting rid of the feeling of Jaehyun lodged into his throat, cock sheathed inside of him like that was its home. The only way to rid himself of their touch would be to turn himself inside out and skin himself alive.

Puddles formed around his shivering feet as he trekked across the bathroom floor to his sink, leaning over it to get a good look at himself. His fingers slipped around the edge as he held himself up, observing what had become of him. It'd been a long time since he'd seen himself in the mirror. It'd been a long time since he'd gazed at himself openly, scrutinising himself like Minjae had forced him to do before every dinner party to ensure nothing was out of place. But, looking back at himself, he felt nothing but a sense of vacancy. His eyes were devoid of warmth, sunken in at the underlying gorge, and his hair had grown from when he'd cut it with Ten and Jaehyun, black tufts framing his face delicately.

Taeyong winced, stomach churning over. There was something plowing a hole in his stomach, digging since he'd returned home last night, like dread had been bundled up and tied with a rope, being lowered down from the height of his chest until it'd formed a crater down below in his gut. He'd come home in the dead of the night and hadn't slept in fear that if he'd closed his eyes, Johnny and Mark would be there again, a knife to his neck for the second time. But this time, they'd show no mercy. This time, they'd make sure to pay him back tenfold, and Johnny, especially, appeared like the type to hold a grudge.

The lack of sleep was taking a toll on Taeyong, making him struggle to keep himself up against the sink, dizzy. An itch dredged at the rear of his head, just behind the skull, its blunt nails digging away to let the darker thoughts he'd been holding at bay take over.

A sharp noise resounded from the sink - the sound of scuttling - and Taeyong's eyes shot open when he heard it. He looked down to see a bug crawling inside, brown and large, its legs scratching inside the sink. He walked back sharply, breath catching as he stared down at it. It was the first time he'd seen any sort of bug in his home since he'd been living in Ridgewood, aside from the occasional spiders and ants when he'd left food to rot in the kitchen for days. A bug this big - a bug this large - was one he hadn't seen in years, not since he'd left home the night he'd run away with Minjae, leaving his father dead and surrounded by a pool of his own blood. Past experience told him that bugs like this were never alone because if there was one, there were hundreds. They tended to travel in packs.

Turning on his heels, Taeyong's head whipped back to the wall behind him, taking in the peeling white paint. Behind the overlays of stripped white was brown. Bugs crawled up and out, one by one, taking root on the wall and scampering around, the sound of their movement somehow amplified in his ears now that he realised that they were there - now that he realised that since last night, they'd always been there.

Taeyong's blood froze at the sight of them, a ball of nausea expanding in his belly and up into his throat. Throughout the night, he'd heard scratching on the walls, on the roof, underneath his bed, but he had pinned it on auditory hallucinations - the same way the wind screamed and the floorboards creaked even when there was not a soul around. But now, he'd found the cause of it.