bloodline. ateez x reader

|14| white

The feeling of familiarity.
The feeling of routine.
The feeling of home.
It's a dangerous emotion for hongjoong, knowing what comes next, having everything around him dull and predictable and white. White desks and white corridors, white beds and white restraints. People dressed in white carrying white papers, white wristbands, white keycards.  Nothing should ever be so unchanged, so pure, so bare,  but thats all rhat surrounded him. White bandages laced with crimson?

That was new.

"Hongjoong,,, Hoongjoong, wake up," The sleeping boy felt small hands grabbing at his white nightgown. "Joongie, please, wake up, please!" He snapped open his eyes at the pleading voice- it sounded so desperate. In an instant he sat upright, face inches from a skinny Wooyoung who looked at him in fear, grabbing the bandages on his arm. They were clean. "Joongie..."

Hongjoong's eyes searched through the younger's teary ones, his breath hitched at the terror he found. "What? What is it?" He urged. Wooyoung never woke up before Hongjoong, even if he did, they weren't roomates. Hongjoong would never have to suffer through his complaints this early unless something went wrong.

"It's Seonghwa," Wooyoung said, voice trembling, an anamoly. "They took him, Joongie."

At the words, his heart dropped to the floor.

Hongjoong took a deep inhale and blinked down at the covers, trying to focus his eyes in the dark. His clammy hands lay flat against the covers, nail beds short as they could go. He couldn't see as well as Wooyooung could in this light, let alone Seonghwa, but he could start to see the details of his room come together. The patient's rooms were dark at night, lights only coming on in the morning when they had to get up, but they were off at this time. All the patients should be sleeping, and disobedience to this rule meant direct punishment. However, this was the last thing on Hongjoong's mind.

"They shot him with the juice again, Joongie, he was unconscious and they dragged him out by his arms, like a ragdoll." He gulped, "D-Do you think they-"

His sentence was cut off when Hongjoong tore out of bed, stumbling out and slamming his hand onto the button to open the hostel door. The door opened silently, as it had so many times, but where a guard was supposed to be spectate him and the rest of the patients, the roofed courtyard was unmistakably empty. Wooyoung was behind him, peering over his shoulder while Hongjoong hesitantly stepped out of his room, his gaze glued to the wall of doors identical to his where the fellow patients slept two to a room. On his right, the only door left slightly ajar was Wooyoung and Seonghwa's room.

He glanced back up towards the linoleum-laced windows lining the common rooms. The lights of the hallways were on, illuminating the space with white light.

"We don't have time," Hongjoong said.

Wooyoung couldn't reply before the older boy turned the corner and started sprinting out into the hallway. Normally he'd hesitate to follow suit, but his best friend was gone. The Doctors took him and Hongjoong had no idea how long he could survive, or even if they planned on keeping him alive. The new EXSII was new, the only thing any of the inmates knew about the procedure was how dangerous it was. Wooyoung tripped over his own feet trying to catch up with Hongjoong.

The Doctors weren't far. Once more guards and armed nurses started appearing in the hallways they knew they had to be getting closer. Doctors would try to chase after them but the two were too fast and too nimble, skinny limbs scrambling past them in time to see the familiar boy with the onyx hair getting dragged away by nurses in matching blue facemasks and white lab coats.

An experimentation room waited for him, equipped with a restraint chair and another handful of nurses, one waiting patiently with a syringe. Hongjoong opened his mouth to shout his name when a hard force made impact with the back of his skull. A gloved hand came around his face and pulled him back, muffling his scream. He turned to fight off the doctor when he noticed Wooyoung a few feet behind, bleeding from his head, cheek pushed onto the linoleum floor, as he struggled against guards. His eyes locked with Hongjoong for one pleading moment, begging for something Hongjoong couldn't understand nor provide. Not with the way his heart was racing and his mind was occupied with Seonghwa.