Ship/Member: Seungkwan Major Tags: N/A Additional Tags: Volleyball player Seungkwan, Winter, Depression Permission to remix: Please ask wc:518
A/N: I think your prompt was a little more hopeful than this turned out to be, sorry about that op :/
***
Seungkwan almost doesn’t realise something’s wrong until he’s mid-way through practice.
The warm-ups pass as they usually do and he completes his drills without event.
It’s when they’re paired off for a short scrimmage when it becomes painfully clear that Seungkwan is slow today.
He doesn’t do anything wrong, no balls to the face nor any flubbed sets but his timing is off just by a little and when there’s just two of them on court, there is nowhere to hide.
Nobody gives him shit for it—everybody has off days, after all. And he’s lucky enough to be paired with Junhui who not only covers for him during the game but also doesn’t get on his case, afterwards, lets him go with just a comforting pat on his shoulder.
Seungkwan stews while they cool down on the sidelines.
His feet drag as they walk to the showers and as the first spray of water hits him, he wonders if he’s coming down with a cold. He had been oddly foggy during his run in the morning.
Worst case scenario, it might even be the flu, he thinks. Better steel himself for it, just in case.
He’s so lost in thought, he doesn’t realise the changing room’s emptied out around him, and he only catches Joshua’s resigned sigh as he’s leaving, clearly given up on whatever he was trying to ask Seungkwan.
It catches him by surprise how quickly the tears well up in his eyes.
“What the fuck,” Seungkwan shudders, furiously wiping at the dampness with one hand as he wrestles himself into his joggers with the other.
A stream of curses fall out of him as it takes him another ten minutes to get into his clothes and out of the gym.
The cold hits him like a punch to the face when he steps out and it’s a wonder he doesn’t sink to the ground right then and there.
Grinding his teeth, he foregoes the train and hails a cab, the sirens now going off at full volume in his head.
The thing about this that makes denial harder, the thing that you don’t know until you know: it’s thick and viscous and climbs around you and sinks its teeth into your skin and stays there.
It clings to him now, vines twisting and shackling his ankles to the ground as he all but heaves his body on to the bed.
The draft follows him under the sheets but he pulls them tighter around his body, unwilling to yield the last warmth of the day, sun long having dipped under the sky as he had watched from the cab’s windows.
The weight settles on top of him, pressing down on his chest and it’s funny, how he’d tried so hard to rationalise it as something, anything else when nothing invisible has ever had a presence this pronounced—how he always, always, tries to fix the blame on something else. Denial’s a prayer of the helpless, after all.
The weight presses him into the mattress and Seungkwan closes his eyes and lets it. He lets it.
[FILL] winter sleep
Major Tags: N/A
Additional Tags: Volleyball player Seungkwan, Winter, Depression
Permission to remix: Please ask
wc:518
A/N: I think your prompt was a little more hopeful than this turned out to be, sorry about that op :/
***
Seungkwan almost doesn’t realise something’s wrong until he’s mid-way through practice.
The warm-ups pass as they usually do and he completes his drills without event.
It’s when they’re paired off for a short scrimmage when it becomes painfully clear that Seungkwan is slow today.
He doesn’t do anything wrong, no balls to the face nor any flubbed sets but his timing is off just by a little and when there’s just two of them on court, there is nowhere to hide.
Nobody gives him shit for it—everybody has off days, after all. And he’s lucky enough to be paired with Junhui who not only covers for him during the game but also doesn’t get on his case, afterwards, lets him go with just a comforting pat on his shoulder.
Seungkwan stews while they cool down on the sidelines.
His feet drag as they walk to the showers and as the first spray of water hits him, he wonders if he’s coming down with a cold. He had been oddly foggy during his run in the morning.
Worst case scenario, it might even be the flu, he thinks. Better steel himself for it, just in case.
He’s so lost in thought, he doesn’t realise the changing room’s emptied out around him, and he only catches Joshua’s resigned sigh as he’s leaving, clearly given up on whatever he was trying to ask Seungkwan.
It catches him by surprise how quickly the tears well up in his eyes.
“What the fuck,” Seungkwan shudders, furiously wiping at the dampness with one hand as he wrestles himself into his joggers with the other.
A stream of curses fall out of him as it takes him another ten minutes to get into his clothes and out of the gym.
The cold hits him like a punch to the face when he steps out and it’s a wonder he doesn’t sink to the ground right then and there.
Grinding his teeth, he foregoes the train and hails a cab, the sirens now going off at full volume in his head.
The thing about this that makes denial harder, the thing that you don’t know until you know: it’s thick and viscous and climbs around you and sinks its teeth into your skin and stays there.
It clings to him now, vines twisting and shackling his ankles to the ground as he all but heaves his body on to the bed.
The draft follows him under the sheets but he pulls them tighter around his body, unwilling to yield the last warmth of the day, sun long having dipped under the sky as he had watched from the cab’s windows.
The weight settles on top of him, pressing down on his chest and it’s funny, how he’d tried so hard to rationalise it as something, anything else when nothing invisible has ever had a presence this pronounced—how he always, always, tries to fix the blame on something else. Denial’s a prayer of the helpless, after all.
The weight presses him into the mattress and Seungkwan closes his eyes and lets it. He lets it.