(for yuki_rvclw) Adagio
For: yuki_rvclw
Title: Adagio
Genre: fantasy/sci-fi, romance, tragedy
Rating: NC-17
Side Pairings (if any): -
Warnings: [Click to view]character death
Word Count: 5k
Summary: As before there was ever a monster, there was a boy and the man loved the boy first.
Author's Note: dear yukimi, I actually have a 30k catboy soo waiting for you after this fic fest but unfortunately I couldn’t get it done in time but I will reach out to you about it after I tie it together. The fic is based on the same premise as the movie Victor Frankenstein and I’ve made it to be like a prologue to the classic tale most of us have heard about!! I really hope you enjoy it and I’m sorry if it’s horrible!
As before there was ever a monster, there was a boy.
Gracing the jut of his shoulder is a soft palm, as gentle as a gust of spring’s wind yet it awakens and tugs at the strings of his heart akin to one of a skilled puppeteer. The nature of the touch is one of curiosity and recognition, the golden glint of wonder within the stranger’s eyes sparking a warmth that leaves him breathless as his hands continue to tremble in his lap.
In one hand, he held the man’s pocket watch and the chain of it trails along the ground like the tail of a dead animal. The watch continues to tick in the palm of his hand like the steady rise and fall of the woman’s chest; body sprawled out on the ground in the way of a bird that could no longer take flight but she has escaped from death, all because of the pocket watch in his very own hand.
The breathing creature is an aerialist, having fallen from the grace of her body that swung high through the air like a pendulum, back and forth in almost-perfect momentum, fueled by the amazed gasps of the audience crowded within the circus tent. The performer is fearless like the rhythm of her heart that dances with the circus’ music yet a sudden volta in her movements has her knocked out of the air and falling without anyone to catch her except for the cold, barren ground. With her eyes that were clenched shut, momentarily comes the bliss of ignorance from the abyss that awaited her. How merciless it was as her frail body touched its coldness, her heart lurching out of her chest in a scream as her bones broke and shift underneath her skin.
“Lorelei!” he had called in the midst of the spectators stunned cries who made no effort to help the poor beautiful creature, her value only built upon the price of their circus ticket as they stand and inspect her misery. Amongst the performers that rush to circle around her, he scurries to her side, he who is the Hunchback that they look down upon and never could he stand up for himself with his back that weighs him down with the judgement of the world. “Oh god, she can’t breathe! She can’t breathe!”
“Previous injuries?” a voice dipping with demand and urgency had asked, foreign was the sound but it reached out in helping and that is when he first meets him. A young and beautiful man whose lips were pursed and eyebrows furrowed into concentration, knelt by his side and he found his gaze to suddenly falter, eyes landing once again onto Lorelei.
“She broke her arm a year ago or so…and her collarbone…sometime before that!”
The stranger’s nimble hands tear at the collar of Lorelei’s costume, revealing the swelling jut of her collarbone and his hands pressed into her right shoulder, feeling the shift of her bones. The man quickly spoke of his inspection, “Her collarbone is broken again, and shoulder dislocated causing pressure on the lungs. She can’t breathe.”
With every moment Lorelei is teetering over the edge of death, his own voice could barely string together his words as he helplessly asked, “W-what do we do!?”
“Nothing, I’m afraid,” the young man spoke, his words cutting away at every edge of hope but his own trained eyes sought out for another path, “We don’t have the tools to reset the bones.”
Jagged teeth gnaw anxiously at his bottom lip as his brain juggles for a straight line of thought. In order to reset the bone, force would have to be struck down onto the jutted collarbone and an idea dawned upon him as he reached out his hand, “Do you have a pocket watch? Give me it!”
Uncertainty flickers within the man’s eyes but whether it is because of his own voice that’s louder than he has ever heard it in courage and his heart that drums loudly within his ears in fear, the man slipped a hand into his coat and conjures a pocket watch between his fingers with the curl of his lips.
When it lands into his palm, life and death danced in the grip of his hand and the music would soon reach its end. It’s the encore of the night as he raised his hand centimetres away from the target that his eyes were locked upon and in the flash of an eye, he struck the pocket watch hard against the protruding bone beside her clavicle and Lorelei’s eyes fluttered open in an instant as life returned to her with a scream that opened up her lungs.
“Do you know how amazing that was!? You performed a surgery without any tools and on the spot!” the stranger exclaims, awestruck is the way his mouth falls open and looks at him in the eye with wonder, hand resting on the stretch of his shoulder. Yet in the slow moment of the bashful flutter of his lashes, the man lifts a hand to cradle the apples of his cheeks, sunken and dull, into the curve of his palm. Softly and inches away from his own, he moves his lips to speak, “But may I question why your face is like this?”
The Hunchback’s eyes are downcast in his tattered garbs, skin chalked white as wax so the beautiful man could not see the embarrassment that tinges his cheeks, “Because I’m a clown.”
The stranger brushes a thumb over his cheek, wiping away the white varnish and the hot droplet of tear that left a dampened trail on his cheek and declares, “No, you’re not a clown. You’re a physician.” The warmth of the man’s touch against his cold clay cheeks has him melting into the other’s hands and the Hunchback felt it then at this very moment, that this beautiful stranger could mould him into a human.
“I’m a doctor but I belong to the circus.”
The man’s voice flares with rage as he declares, “Well we shall get out of this bloody circus! I’m Do Kyungsoo, 19, med student, you are?”
“I have no name, they just call me the - “
Yet over the man’s shoulder are the ghosts within the Hunchback’s memory of his scars that are whipped across his limbs and their obsidian eyes weigh him down onto the spot as dread fills his throat. The men snarl, “Where do you think you’re going, Hunchback?”
The man’s hand flexes over his wrist in a firm grip and yanks him off the ground, shouting a “Let’s go!” before they leapt through the havoc, leaving behind the dust and the tumbles of the circus. The hoodlums are hot on their heels but Kyungsoo is cunning in his steps and Kyungsoo yells at him, “Do you trust me?”
“I don’t know - “ but before the Hunchback could properly respond, Kyungsoo has already dragged them both flying down a hole of darkness.
The taut belly of a lion sucked into its guts, its thunderous roar erupting through the circus ground like the cries of heaven continues to echo in his ears as Do Kyungsoo and he escape through the drains that night. Breathing heavily, they land on the pavement, bodies sprawled and arms spread out on the thick snow like angels underneath the London sky.
A paper moon rests high up in the sky where the Hunchback’s finger can easily touch but can hardly reach, he thinks mournfully. The Hunchback can only softly trace the edges of the paper moon where it shines the brightest like a silver lining that has never traced the days of his life. The illuminance of the celestial body basked him in its light, offering him the comfort of the night with a sky sparkling with stars that were already far gone. The paper moon seems to be in solace, smudges of it dampened with shades of grey and the beautiful man’s midnight hair shines with the threads of moonlight that weave through it.
“You’re no longer a clown now, are you?” Kyungsoo says, doe eyes sparkling with amusement, the slope of his straight nose beautifully sculpted by the crescent of a shadow that hung over his ivory skin. Within the distance, he can almost feel it, the warmth of a baby animal’s breath and his voice dies within his throat, star gazing the glimmer within Kyungsoo’s eyes. “You belong to me now.”
The Hunchback’s eyes trail after the drag of Kyungsoo’s silhouette on the pavement, following every rise and fall of the man’s leather shoes, his ears picking up every tap of the heel as they weaved their way through London’s midnight streets. Lamp posts dotted the scenery they flew pass like nighthawks, a mere contre jour against the golden hues of London’s night watchers.
London did not belong to unholy creatures like him and with each step, the eighteen year old could feel his own shadow lingering behind and swirling up to clutch at his ankles in warning to not go any further. The world would not treat him with any more kindness when cruelty is all he has ever known. The young man could not change the heart of the world but maybe, he could save his own.
Crossing over the threshold of Kyungsoo’s home, into the new world where he now belongs, he is astonished at the spacious realm furnished in an amber glow and white pillars stretched high to the clouds of the ceiling where marble rosettes blossomed. The Hunchback howls as suddenly Kyungsoo presses him against a sinuously carved column of marble and against the sacred white is an ominous darkness of the object that Kyungsoo held in his hand.
“W-what are you doing!?” the Hunchback shrieks but he is trapped and Kyungsoo has him held down with the brush of his lips sliding up the shell of his ear. The young boy has been lured into the lion’s den and whether Kyungsoo is the hunter or the lion, the boy will always, always be the prey.
“You’re not a hunchback,” Kyungsoo firmly states, keeping him in place with a thigh in between the younger’s legs that were almost knocking into one another as he trembled. Kyungsoo chuckles, almost like for a breath of air although the grip he had on him was relentless.
The Hunchback clenches his eyes shut with the faintest hue of light creeping behind his eyelids and soon enough, he will be swallowed up by the darkness. Soon enough his life would flash before his eyes in the mosaic of a nameless Hunchback, chalk white skin melting into wax when it nears the light of heaven and falling, falling, falling.
The seconds ticking by are eating away at his sanity and his heart lurches out of his throat as he screams on deafening ears. It pierces through him, sharp and slicing in between his flesh and soul as it sucks his blood because that is how he has always seen the abnormal curvature of his spine to be - his blood and flesh that he has to carry until he drops dead with it. Yet it’s draining out of him in rapid bursts and his entire body is washed over by a wave of prickling pain.
When his consciousness returns to him, it’s like a wave that returns to shore as he flutters his eyes open to the splash of Kyungsoo emptying a bucket out of the window. The boy wonders if the thoughts running through his head were as translucent as the teary semblance within his eyes.
“Your hunchback was simply abscess pus pooling into a lump. So really, you have no name nor are you a hunchback so what really are you? Are you really a doctor?”
Kyungsoo stalked his way over to the trembling boy, the weight on his back was gone but suddenly there’s another weight as Kyungsoo rests his hands on his knees. Pale legs were tangled with his, the touch of it making his body unable to react as it anchored him down like the words in his throat. Kyungsoo looked at him with expectancy, the slight tilt of his head like a sort of ticking patience as the question hollows out second by second.
Kyungsoo raises his hands to cradle the boy’s jaw, perfectly angular and smooth in his palms, “Have I overestimated your intelligence? How could a circus clown be a doctor, I wonder?”
“No, no!” the nameless boy chokes out and Kyungsoo hums in interest, fingers dancing along the nape of his neck like a game of hide and seek. The boy can never know where Kyungsoo is going to touch next, whether that soft palm is going to envelop his neck into a choke hold or caress it like a lover would and either way, it would make him breathless anyway. When the words finally escape his throat, it scratches against the air in weak syllables, “I’m self-taught, I learnt everything from stolen medical books and t-they wouldn’t hire a real doctor so they u-used me instead.”
“Pity, have you always belonged to the circus?”
The boy nods, a simple gesture yet heavy is the implication of it. Whenever he thought about it, under the stars of a torn ceiling, his eyes would wander and search for an answer in the colourless sky. Of why his mother and father would ever leave their kin, an infant crying for the help of the world, in a dark alleyway where it would warp his life in terrible ways that one could never imagine inflicted upon a human being. Yet once the baby is soon taken away by a stranger, the chill of the air biting at the thin cloth he was wrapped in, any guilt or remorse they could ever had sank into oblivion when the baby’s cries could no longer be heard.
Why, the boy would ask.
From where the boy laid down on his side, shoulder digging painfully into the ground beneath him, he looks through the opening of the tent. The moon hung over the hills that were specked with a forest of evergreen trees and in the summer, the leaves on their branches sway like sunlight flickering through the waves of the sea.
Yet if anyone else were to listen in to his sadness, the flooding thoughts that were like the confessions of a sinned man that to be punished; they would only think of him as being bitter. Though akin to a sinned man, he yearns for forgiveness because he never asked to be that way. It is then that the boy found his answer, he was an unholy creature, and even God has forsaken him.
The boy could have been a bastard child, the boy’s very own veins could have been plagued with a bloody illness and he understood. The boy could never hate his mother and father for they have created him.
With the shadows on his fingers and the stains on his skin, the boy would sketch the composition of his body onto parchment. The bowing of his back, the jagged column of his spine, he wanted to know of everything. Of the way his cervical vertebrae slides down into his neck rather than sliding up of it, the dipping curve between his thoracic vertebrae and lumbar vertebrae that cambered outwards. The boy desperately wanted to understand everything about the internal universe that makes us human as we are. The boy learnt that like how art isn’t straight lines or smooth edges, it would be abnormal for one to be normal and he finds solace within that, within the irrationality of the universe.
“You belong to me now, you understand? You will wash off that clown makeup immediately, you will trim your hair and you will be my assistant.”
Kyungsoo lifts up his arms, pushing them through the spaces of a leather harness that would straighten up and support his posture for the boy to finally walk. The boy couldn’t believe it, his heart already leaping against his chest in mirth even as the pain lingers, almost touching his bones.
The boy is astonished as his eyes peer up to where Kyungsoo now stands, smoothening the white ascot around his neck. The latter nods, as though he himself is confused by the boy’s bewilderment and when the tips of his shoes makes way to pass the threshold of the next room, Kyungsoo turns back to look at him. The gleam within his eyes told the boy it won’t be the last time he will see those large, bright eyes again and hope flickers within him like the flame of an ignited candle wick. It is all he can see and what continues to burn inside him even when it’s gone.
“I had a roommate but he’s gone now. His name was Kim Jongin, from this day onwards you will be Kim Jongin, understood?”
“Jongin?” the boy echoed the name with the uncertainty of his own voice.
Kyungsoo’s lips tug into a smile and the miniscule action carries away all the doubt that the boy could ever bear, “Jongin.”
On that very night, the nameless boy has been swept away into the dust, into the dark alleys of his memory and when he is found, he has become Kim Jongin. Hair trimmed and coiffed where it had once matted his forehead as tufts of raven hair flocked together in grime and chalk white skin scraped away for the natural bronze tint of his skin, raw and tender. Limbs long and lanky, standing at six feet tall is Kim Jongin.
The boy had never smiled as much as he did then, to the point his cheeks hurt because of happiness.
When Kyungsoo sought for him later on, a dinner table standing in between them with Jongin’s teeth sinking and gnawing at the tender flesh of a lamb cutlet, the man suddenly raises his hand to touch his face. Jongin sat picture-still with his lips coated in the drippings of the succulent meat, eyes studying the way Kyungsoo gravitates closer to him, guided by that touch. Underneath the pads of Kyungsoo’s fingers is a cheekbone under the stretch of taut bronze skin and he lightly brushes his slender fingers across it as he whispers, “You’re beautiful.”
Jongin gulps but he swallows down nothing, his throat is suddenly parched and it has his heart dropping to his stomach because of the way Kyungsoo’s looking at him. Kyungsoo seems to see more than the mirror does and he clucks his tongue, draping Jongin’s face under a veil of uncertainty as he lowers his chin, eyes downcast.
“Cutlery, use cutlery when you eat,” Kyungsoo chides softly, as though Jongin is a child and he guesses he really is with the way Kyungsoo dabs at the corner of his mouth with a handkerchief. As Jongin pierces a fork through the cooked flesh, Kyungsoo arches up an eyebrow at him and suddenly said, “Death can be temporary.”
“How can death be temporary?”
“Everything is temporary, Jongin. Nothing will ever stay the same.”
“Yes because this, too, shall pass. Death is the end and the beginning of everything, we are born dying and only in acceptance of that can we live to the fullest,” Jongin spoke yet Kyungsoo does not listen but rather has been listening to own thoughts within his head.
“No. No, no, Jongin. We can create life from the dead. We can make art that has fallen apart to be pieced together with your amazing hands, destined for this, into something entirely new. A living human being so the dead can breathe again, created by us.”
Jongin retorts, “No, Kyungsoo. That is ridiculous. There is no such thing as bringing the dead back to life and even so, that is a sin - “
“Centuries ago, lights would be considered as witchcraft. Science has pushed us to new heights, if medicine can now save a life, how can’t it save the dead?”
“But it’s impossible - “
Kyungsoo grins, bright and electrifying, “Let me show you the impossible.”
Kyungsoo leads Jongin to the medical student’s study room where it is an infinite universe of ideas transcending through the books that rested spine-to-spine on each bookshelf, immortal words from a cosmos of medical discoveries from the time of Hippocrates to Parkinson. Kyungsoo turns back to him, “All of these books will be yours. You can use all of them for reference at your utmost pleasure.”
What Kyungsoo shows him is phantasmagorical, he is like a magician as he tears away the cloth in crimson red grace and it is no illusion, no trick on the eyes as Jongin stares back at the pair of eyeballs that dangle in the water tank like peeled boiled eggs floating at the top.
The eyes are sharp in their gaze as though lined with shards of glass around the edges and they were like the eyes of God as it cut through his widened eyes, closing immediately as he wills for it to disappear. Yet they float there, submerged underneath the electrically conductive jelly and Jongin could not tear his eyes away from the sight even if he tried.
The eyes were dead, ashened like chisels of clay, cracked and bloodshot yet Kyungsoo’s eyes were warm like a summer tempest, wild and untameable. Nothing could ever stop the spark that crackled within him and the tide of electric current that zapped through the pair of eyes with the push of a lever, Kyungsoo calls the Lazarus Fork. Jongin could not believe his eyes and he weakly mutters, “Kyungsoo - “ before there is suddenly a third guest in the room.
“They live.”
Akin to the quivering wings of a crow, ebony wings marred with blood and the grime of the earth as they fluttered weakly against the gentle indifference of the world. The crow’s pure white eyes stared back at him, the human eyes stared back at him, blinking in adjustment to the light of the room as it comes back to life.
“No, something’s wrong.”
Kyungsoo turns to him, breathless, “What?”
“The oculomotor nerves, you didn’t connect them properly,” Jongin smiles in awe at the blinking organ, tracing the glass with his fingers, “That’s why they don’t move evenly.”
Suddenly his body is enveloped in warmth, Kyungsoo’s latching onto him and their bodies melt into a slow embrace that almost has Jongin lose his balance for a moment. The gentle squeeze of Kyungsoo’s arms around his waist has his breath hitch and even though Jongin feels goose bumps rising up his skin, he feels like he is burning up. Kindness is like pain, it can be felt even without touch.
“You’re perfect, absolutely perfect!” Kyungsoo gasps and he turns Jongin around to face him, once again a bright and electrifying grin plastered on his face. The man did not look any older than the youthful swell of his cheeks, “You’ll be my partner. You will be the heart of this research, you and me together!”
Two hearts are found and when they are bound together, they shall beat as one.
Research, Jongin discovers, entails human entrails stitched together with his nimble fingers. Lungs, livers, spleens, hearts, brains, everything that belonged within the internal universe of the human body became the missing piece of one of London’s wandering dead bodies. However they were the fitting puzzle pieces for their creation, Kyungsoo’s unholy creation, his vision, his grand masterpiece.
A creation that Jongin would soon discover to be a monster and the world would of course, remember the monster, not the man yet if one is to look closer, sometimes the monster is the man.
Yet Kyungsoo has given him life. Kyungsoo created him. Kyungsoo is the reason he sees the colours he has never seen before in the London sky when they take afternoon walks down the abbey. Kyungsoo is the reason why even if he can’t run, he can still walk and if he can’t walk then he shall crawl. The reason why he is Kim Jongin, the Kim Jongin who would rather bend than break and Jongin could never hate Kyungsoo, even if he tried because he created him.
Yet Jongin couldn’t say the same for his actions.
Hate the sin, love the sinner, they say and Jongin prays for him, on his knees every night because as his eyes trace the edges of the ceiling, the doubts creep in. The emptiness within his chest should not weigh him down as much as it should’ve, unable to get out of bed and get the memories out of his head. Why is Jongin doing this? It is a sin, isn’t it? Acting against the will of God?
Yet as Jongin creeps to Kyungsoo’s bedroom door, the elder rises from his pillow with a soft and tender mutter of, “Jongin...?” and beckons the younger onto his bed. The elder cradles his face within his palms, whispering almost subconsciously a gentle, “I love you,” and it feels as though those three words are enough to answer all the questions of the world.
Kyungsoo visits him one night in his bed. The night Jongin had destroyed the outline for their Prometheus, months and months of work with splatters of pig blood on the ground and Kyungsoo had been furious, shattered almost, like a broken man.
Flowers bloom within his mind as his hands graze Kyungsoo’s outer thighs that rested on the sides of his body, Jongin’s eyes deciphering the curiosity within the elder’s solemn orbs. As his palms map inches of Kyungsoo’s skin, Jongin feels more of the softness that was akin to petals, beautiful yet fragile to the touch. The elder’s scent awakens Jongin with each touch as the both of them inch closer to one another, Kyungsoo’s hot breath wisping over his lips like the whisper of a secret.
“You feel like God has wronged you.”
Rosebuds mar and crack the younger’s skin, cigarette butts digging in relentlessly, flashing in his memory like the blinding circus lights, and leaving behind the tar in scars that trail up his thighs.
Alabaster carved into the maze of his mind, the maze of the other’s beautiful yet sad eyes that Jongin became lost in. The body sits before him dipped in perfection with the way he has all of Jongin’s attention. Chin tipped up the slightest for Jongin to peek at the slightest sliver of the elder’s smooth and creamy neck where his Adam’s apple curved down to the dips of his collar bones.
“Homosexuality is a sin,” Kyungsoo whispers, his breath slithering across Jongin’s neck and a stray hand ignites the fire within Jongin’s loins, tapping once on the aroused flesh, “but that’s utter bullshit.” Jongin can only whimper, soft and weak as Kyungsoo digs his fingers into him. “You and I, we’ll create the modern Prometheus. We are our own Gods, Jongin. There is no Heaven or Hell but life.”
Life sounded like such a beautiful thing when it came from Do Kyungsoo’s lips when Kyungsoo is the only heaven and hell Jongin needs.
“I love you, Kyungsoo.”
The beating of Jongin’s heart within the nightly silence reaches a crescendo, Jongin’s heart yearning for the touch of Kyungsoo’s hand that he has never felt. In his mind, Jongin feels the ghost of Kyungsoo’s hand as it slides down the plane of his stomach. Jongin heaves in a soft breath as it begins with a soft touch. Jongin closes his eyes as the hold Kyungsoo had around himself grew tight.
There is the blur of a rosy blush and the tease of their fingers brushing like the daze of a summer day. The summer heat crawling up his skin like butterflies fluttering in his stomach along with the flutter of Kyungsoo’s long lashes that left him in a haze. When the both of them close their eyes, shutting their minds out from the world outside, there can only be felt the bliss within their ignorance.
I dream of a world
where hope replaces fear.
A world where a murdered man
can stand in court
to face his murderer.
Where a crippled soldier,
shrapnel in his spine...
...can be killed, healed,
then brought back to life
to walk again.
They lay together, as bare as the days they were born, holding onto one another and Kyungsoo has his cheek rested against his heart.
“You will always be my greatest creation, Jongin.” Kyungsoo whispers so gently, softly, sweetly and Jongin falls for the low dip of that hot breath, deeply, desperately and fondly.
“But living is suffering, isn’t it? You suffer because of me.”
“I love you, Kyungsoo. I love you,” Jongin utters with a burning ache that hollows out his entire being, “My heart is yours.”
Kyungsoo kisses him, the slightest brush of his petal lips and his voice trembles, “I will show you a new world.” Of the way dusk envelops the world in a flurry of colours that scrape across the sky in soft strokes and of the sun that sinks into the horizon for the moon and stars to rise, piercing and shining on a blanket of pitch black like diamonds. Of a world where there is no Heaven or Hell but life.
“I love you,” Kyungsoo says and the blade glistens under the slice of the moon in his hands, high up in the sky, dampened in tears of grey outside of the window. It had been with him all along and Jongin still, can only pray for him. Jongin prays that Kyungsoo won’t go to hell for this, please, please, please even as the knife is stabbed into his stomach, twisting and turning yet nothing burns more than the rain that hits his face, descending droplets on his skin like tears. They bleed into his skin, much like the way he realises Kyungsoo’s eyes are bleeding with hot tears.
“I will make you a God. My Prometheus, my Jongin.”
Jongin is the eye of a storm as he dies there within Kyungsoo’s arms and when life slowly escapes from his grip, the world bends and trembles at Kyungsoo’s beauty, the centre of his universe.
Two hearts are found and when they are bound together, they shall beat as one.
But not like this, never like this.
As before there was ever a monster, there was a boy and the man loved the boy first.
Title: Adagio
Genre: fantasy/sci-fi, romance, tragedy
Rating: NC-17
Side Pairings (if any): -
Warnings: [Click to view]character death
Word Count: 5k
Summary: As before there was ever a monster, there was a boy and the man loved the boy first.
Author's Note: dear yukimi, I actually have a 30k catboy soo waiting for you after this fic fest but unfortunately I couldn’t get it done in time but I will reach out to you about it after I tie it together. The fic is based on the same premise as the movie Victor Frankenstein and I’ve made it to be like a prologue to the classic tale most of us have heard about!! I really hope you enjoy it and I’m sorry if it’s horrible!
As before there was ever a monster, there was a boy.
Gracing the jut of his shoulder is a soft palm, as gentle as a gust of spring’s wind yet it awakens and tugs at the strings of his heart akin to one of a skilled puppeteer. The nature of the touch is one of curiosity and recognition, the golden glint of wonder within the stranger’s eyes sparking a warmth that leaves him breathless as his hands continue to tremble in his lap.
In one hand, he held the man’s pocket watch and the chain of it trails along the ground like the tail of a dead animal. The watch continues to tick in the palm of his hand like the steady rise and fall of the woman’s chest; body sprawled out on the ground in the way of a bird that could no longer take flight but she has escaped from death, all because of the pocket watch in his very own hand.
The breathing creature is an aerialist, having fallen from the grace of her body that swung high through the air like a pendulum, back and forth in almost-perfect momentum, fueled by the amazed gasps of the audience crowded within the circus tent. The performer is fearless like the rhythm of her heart that dances with the circus’ music yet a sudden volta in her movements has her knocked out of the air and falling without anyone to catch her except for the cold, barren ground. With her eyes that were clenched shut, momentarily comes the bliss of ignorance from the abyss that awaited her. How merciless it was as her frail body touched its coldness, her heart lurching out of her chest in a scream as her bones broke and shift underneath her skin.
“Lorelei!” he had called in the midst of the spectators stunned cries who made no effort to help the poor beautiful creature, her value only built upon the price of their circus ticket as they stand and inspect her misery. Amongst the performers that rush to circle around her, he scurries to her side, he who is the Hunchback that they look down upon and never could he stand up for himself with his back that weighs him down with the judgement of the world. “Oh god, she can’t breathe! She can’t breathe!”
“Previous injuries?” a voice dipping with demand and urgency had asked, foreign was the sound but it reached out in helping and that is when he first meets him. A young and beautiful man whose lips were pursed and eyebrows furrowed into concentration, knelt by his side and he found his gaze to suddenly falter, eyes landing once again onto Lorelei.
“She broke her arm a year ago or so…and her collarbone…sometime before that!”
The stranger’s nimble hands tear at the collar of Lorelei’s costume, revealing the swelling jut of her collarbone and his hands pressed into her right shoulder, feeling the shift of her bones. The man quickly spoke of his inspection, “Her collarbone is broken again, and shoulder dislocated causing pressure on the lungs. She can’t breathe.”
With every moment Lorelei is teetering over the edge of death, his own voice could barely string together his words as he helplessly asked, “W-what do we do!?”
“Nothing, I’m afraid,” the young man spoke, his words cutting away at every edge of hope but his own trained eyes sought out for another path, “We don’t have the tools to reset the bones.”
Jagged teeth gnaw anxiously at his bottom lip as his brain juggles for a straight line of thought. In order to reset the bone, force would have to be struck down onto the jutted collarbone and an idea dawned upon him as he reached out his hand, “Do you have a pocket watch? Give me it!”
Uncertainty flickers within the man’s eyes but whether it is because of his own voice that’s louder than he has ever heard it in courage and his heart that drums loudly within his ears in fear, the man slipped a hand into his coat and conjures a pocket watch between his fingers with the curl of his lips.
When it lands into his palm, life and death danced in the grip of his hand and the music would soon reach its end. It’s the encore of the night as he raised his hand centimetres away from the target that his eyes were locked upon and in the flash of an eye, he struck the pocket watch hard against the protruding bone beside her clavicle and Lorelei’s eyes fluttered open in an instant as life returned to her with a scream that opened up her lungs.
“Do you know how amazing that was!? You performed a surgery without any tools and on the spot!” the stranger exclaims, awestruck is the way his mouth falls open and looks at him in the eye with wonder, hand resting on the stretch of his shoulder. Yet in the slow moment of the bashful flutter of his lashes, the man lifts a hand to cradle the apples of his cheeks, sunken and dull, into the curve of his palm. Softly and inches away from his own, he moves his lips to speak, “But may I question why your face is like this?”
The Hunchback’s eyes are downcast in his tattered garbs, skin chalked white as wax so the beautiful man could not see the embarrassment that tinges his cheeks, “Because I’m a clown.”
The stranger brushes a thumb over his cheek, wiping away the white varnish and the hot droplet of tear that left a dampened trail on his cheek and declares, “No, you’re not a clown. You’re a physician.” The warmth of the man’s touch against his cold clay cheeks has him melting into the other’s hands and the Hunchback felt it then at this very moment, that this beautiful stranger could mould him into a human.
“I’m a doctor but I belong to the circus.”
The man’s voice flares with rage as he declares, “Well we shall get out of this bloody circus! I’m Do Kyungsoo, 19, med student, you are?”
“I have no name, they just call me the - “
Yet over the man’s shoulder are the ghosts within the Hunchback’s memory of his scars that are whipped across his limbs and their obsidian eyes weigh him down onto the spot as dread fills his throat. The men snarl, “Where do you think you’re going, Hunchback?”
The man’s hand flexes over his wrist in a firm grip and yanks him off the ground, shouting a “Let’s go!” before they leapt through the havoc, leaving behind the dust and the tumbles of the circus. The hoodlums are hot on their heels but Kyungsoo is cunning in his steps and Kyungsoo yells at him, “Do you trust me?”
“I don’t know - “ but before the Hunchback could properly respond, Kyungsoo has already dragged them both flying down a hole of darkness.
The taut belly of a lion sucked into its guts, its thunderous roar erupting through the circus ground like the cries of heaven continues to echo in his ears as Do Kyungsoo and he escape through the drains that night. Breathing heavily, they land on the pavement, bodies sprawled and arms spread out on the thick snow like angels underneath the London sky.
A paper moon rests high up in the sky where the Hunchback’s finger can easily touch but can hardly reach, he thinks mournfully. The Hunchback can only softly trace the edges of the paper moon where it shines the brightest like a silver lining that has never traced the days of his life. The illuminance of the celestial body basked him in its light, offering him the comfort of the night with a sky sparkling with stars that were already far gone. The paper moon seems to be in solace, smudges of it dampened with shades of grey and the beautiful man’s midnight hair shines with the threads of moonlight that weave through it.
“You’re no longer a clown now, are you?” Kyungsoo says, doe eyes sparkling with amusement, the slope of his straight nose beautifully sculpted by the crescent of a shadow that hung over his ivory skin. Within the distance, he can almost feel it, the warmth of a baby animal’s breath and his voice dies within his throat, star gazing the glimmer within Kyungsoo’s eyes. “You belong to me now.”
The Hunchback’s eyes trail after the drag of Kyungsoo’s silhouette on the pavement, following every rise and fall of the man’s leather shoes, his ears picking up every tap of the heel as they weaved their way through London’s midnight streets. Lamp posts dotted the scenery they flew pass like nighthawks, a mere contre jour against the golden hues of London’s night watchers.
London did not belong to unholy creatures like him and with each step, the eighteen year old could feel his own shadow lingering behind and swirling up to clutch at his ankles in warning to not go any further. The world would not treat him with any more kindness when cruelty is all he has ever known. The young man could not change the heart of the world but maybe, he could save his own.
Crossing over the threshold of Kyungsoo’s home, into the new world where he now belongs, he is astonished at the spacious realm furnished in an amber glow and white pillars stretched high to the clouds of the ceiling where marble rosettes blossomed. The Hunchback howls as suddenly Kyungsoo presses him against a sinuously carved column of marble and against the sacred white is an ominous darkness of the object that Kyungsoo held in his hand.
“W-what are you doing!?” the Hunchback shrieks but he is trapped and Kyungsoo has him held down with the brush of his lips sliding up the shell of his ear. The young boy has been lured into the lion’s den and whether Kyungsoo is the hunter or the lion, the boy will always, always be the prey.
“You’re not a hunchback,” Kyungsoo firmly states, keeping him in place with a thigh in between the younger’s legs that were almost knocking into one another as he trembled. Kyungsoo chuckles, almost like for a breath of air although the grip he had on him was relentless.
The Hunchback clenches his eyes shut with the faintest hue of light creeping behind his eyelids and soon enough, he will be swallowed up by the darkness. Soon enough his life would flash before his eyes in the mosaic of a nameless Hunchback, chalk white skin melting into wax when it nears the light of heaven and falling, falling, falling.
The seconds ticking by are eating away at his sanity and his heart lurches out of his throat as he screams on deafening ears. It pierces through him, sharp and slicing in between his flesh and soul as it sucks his blood because that is how he has always seen the abnormal curvature of his spine to be - his blood and flesh that he has to carry until he drops dead with it. Yet it’s draining out of him in rapid bursts and his entire body is washed over by a wave of prickling pain.
When his consciousness returns to him, it’s like a wave that returns to shore as he flutters his eyes open to the splash of Kyungsoo emptying a bucket out of the window. The boy wonders if the thoughts running through his head were as translucent as the teary semblance within his eyes.
“Your hunchback was simply abscess pus pooling into a lump. So really, you have no name nor are you a hunchback so what really are you? Are you really a doctor?”
Kyungsoo stalked his way over to the trembling boy, the weight on his back was gone but suddenly there’s another weight as Kyungsoo rests his hands on his knees. Pale legs were tangled with his, the touch of it making his body unable to react as it anchored him down like the words in his throat. Kyungsoo looked at him with expectancy, the slight tilt of his head like a sort of ticking patience as the question hollows out second by second.
Kyungsoo raises his hands to cradle the boy’s jaw, perfectly angular and smooth in his palms, “Have I overestimated your intelligence? How could a circus clown be a doctor, I wonder?”
“No, no!” the nameless boy chokes out and Kyungsoo hums in interest, fingers dancing along the nape of his neck like a game of hide and seek. The boy can never know where Kyungsoo is going to touch next, whether that soft palm is going to envelop his neck into a choke hold or caress it like a lover would and either way, it would make him breathless anyway. When the words finally escape his throat, it scratches against the air in weak syllables, “I’m self-taught, I learnt everything from stolen medical books and t-they wouldn’t hire a real doctor so they u-used me instead.”
“Pity, have you always belonged to the circus?”
The boy nods, a simple gesture yet heavy is the implication of it. Whenever he thought about it, under the stars of a torn ceiling, his eyes would wander and search for an answer in the colourless sky. Of why his mother and father would ever leave their kin, an infant crying for the help of the world, in a dark alleyway where it would warp his life in terrible ways that one could never imagine inflicted upon a human being. Yet once the baby is soon taken away by a stranger, the chill of the air biting at the thin cloth he was wrapped in, any guilt or remorse they could ever had sank into oblivion when the baby’s cries could no longer be heard.
Why, the boy would ask.
From where the boy laid down on his side, shoulder digging painfully into the ground beneath him, he looks through the opening of the tent. The moon hung over the hills that were specked with a forest of evergreen trees and in the summer, the leaves on their branches sway like sunlight flickering through the waves of the sea.
Yet if anyone else were to listen in to his sadness, the flooding thoughts that were like the confessions of a sinned man that to be punished; they would only think of him as being bitter. Though akin to a sinned man, he yearns for forgiveness because he never asked to be that way. It is then that the boy found his answer, he was an unholy creature, and even God has forsaken him.
The boy could have been a bastard child, the boy’s very own veins could have been plagued with a bloody illness and he understood. The boy could never hate his mother and father for they have created him.
With the shadows on his fingers and the stains on his skin, the boy would sketch the composition of his body onto parchment. The bowing of his back, the jagged column of his spine, he wanted to know of everything. Of the way his cervical vertebrae slides down into his neck rather than sliding up of it, the dipping curve between his thoracic vertebrae and lumbar vertebrae that cambered outwards. The boy desperately wanted to understand everything about the internal universe that makes us human as we are. The boy learnt that like how art isn’t straight lines or smooth edges, it would be abnormal for one to be normal and he finds solace within that, within the irrationality of the universe.
“You belong to me now, you understand? You will wash off that clown makeup immediately, you will trim your hair and you will be my assistant.”
Kyungsoo lifts up his arms, pushing them through the spaces of a leather harness that would straighten up and support his posture for the boy to finally walk. The boy couldn’t believe it, his heart already leaping against his chest in mirth even as the pain lingers, almost touching his bones.
The boy is astonished as his eyes peer up to where Kyungsoo now stands, smoothening the white ascot around his neck. The latter nods, as though he himself is confused by the boy’s bewilderment and when the tips of his shoes makes way to pass the threshold of the next room, Kyungsoo turns back to look at him. The gleam within his eyes told the boy it won’t be the last time he will see those large, bright eyes again and hope flickers within him like the flame of an ignited candle wick. It is all he can see and what continues to burn inside him even when it’s gone.
“I had a roommate but he’s gone now. His name was Kim Jongin, from this day onwards you will be Kim Jongin, understood?”
“Jongin?” the boy echoed the name with the uncertainty of his own voice.
Kyungsoo’s lips tug into a smile and the miniscule action carries away all the doubt that the boy could ever bear, “Jongin.”
On that very night, the nameless boy has been swept away into the dust, into the dark alleys of his memory and when he is found, he has become Kim Jongin. Hair trimmed and coiffed where it had once matted his forehead as tufts of raven hair flocked together in grime and chalk white skin scraped away for the natural bronze tint of his skin, raw and tender. Limbs long and lanky, standing at six feet tall is Kim Jongin.
The boy had never smiled as much as he did then, to the point his cheeks hurt because of happiness.
When Kyungsoo sought for him later on, a dinner table standing in between them with Jongin’s teeth sinking and gnawing at the tender flesh of a lamb cutlet, the man suddenly raises his hand to touch his face. Jongin sat picture-still with his lips coated in the drippings of the succulent meat, eyes studying the way Kyungsoo gravitates closer to him, guided by that touch. Underneath the pads of Kyungsoo’s fingers is a cheekbone under the stretch of taut bronze skin and he lightly brushes his slender fingers across it as he whispers, “You’re beautiful.”
Jongin gulps but he swallows down nothing, his throat is suddenly parched and it has his heart dropping to his stomach because of the way Kyungsoo’s looking at him. Kyungsoo seems to see more than the mirror does and he clucks his tongue, draping Jongin’s face under a veil of uncertainty as he lowers his chin, eyes downcast.
“Cutlery, use cutlery when you eat,” Kyungsoo chides softly, as though Jongin is a child and he guesses he really is with the way Kyungsoo dabs at the corner of his mouth with a handkerchief. As Jongin pierces a fork through the cooked flesh, Kyungsoo arches up an eyebrow at him and suddenly said, “Death can be temporary.”
“How can death be temporary?”
“Everything is temporary, Jongin. Nothing will ever stay the same.”
“Yes because this, too, shall pass. Death is the end and the beginning of everything, we are born dying and only in acceptance of that can we live to the fullest,” Jongin spoke yet Kyungsoo does not listen but rather has been listening to own thoughts within his head.
“No. No, no, Jongin. We can create life from the dead. We can make art that has fallen apart to be pieced together with your amazing hands, destined for this, into something entirely new. A living human being so the dead can breathe again, created by us.”
Jongin retorts, “No, Kyungsoo. That is ridiculous. There is no such thing as bringing the dead back to life and even so, that is a sin - “
“Centuries ago, lights would be considered as witchcraft. Science has pushed us to new heights, if medicine can now save a life, how can’t it save the dead?”
“But it’s impossible - “
Kyungsoo grins, bright and electrifying, “Let me show you the impossible.”
Kyungsoo leads Jongin to the medical student’s study room where it is an infinite universe of ideas transcending through the books that rested spine-to-spine on each bookshelf, immortal words from a cosmos of medical discoveries from the time of Hippocrates to Parkinson. Kyungsoo turns back to him, “All of these books will be yours. You can use all of them for reference at your utmost pleasure.”
What Kyungsoo shows him is phantasmagorical, he is like a magician as he tears away the cloth in crimson red grace and it is no illusion, no trick on the eyes as Jongin stares back at the pair of eyeballs that dangle in the water tank like peeled boiled eggs floating at the top.
The eyes are sharp in their gaze as though lined with shards of glass around the edges and they were like the eyes of God as it cut through his widened eyes, closing immediately as he wills for it to disappear. Yet they float there, submerged underneath the electrically conductive jelly and Jongin could not tear his eyes away from the sight even if he tried.
The eyes were dead, ashened like chisels of clay, cracked and bloodshot yet Kyungsoo’s eyes were warm like a summer tempest, wild and untameable. Nothing could ever stop the spark that crackled within him and the tide of electric current that zapped through the pair of eyes with the push of a lever, Kyungsoo calls the Lazarus Fork. Jongin could not believe his eyes and he weakly mutters, “Kyungsoo - “ before there is suddenly a third guest in the room.
“They live.”
Akin to the quivering wings of a crow, ebony wings marred with blood and the grime of the earth as they fluttered weakly against the gentle indifference of the world. The crow’s pure white eyes stared back at him, the human eyes stared back at him, blinking in adjustment to the light of the room as it comes back to life.
“No, something’s wrong.”
Kyungsoo turns to him, breathless, “What?”
“The oculomotor nerves, you didn’t connect them properly,” Jongin smiles in awe at the blinking organ, tracing the glass with his fingers, “That’s why they don’t move evenly.”
Suddenly his body is enveloped in warmth, Kyungsoo’s latching onto him and their bodies melt into a slow embrace that almost has Jongin lose his balance for a moment. The gentle squeeze of Kyungsoo’s arms around his waist has his breath hitch and even though Jongin feels goose bumps rising up his skin, he feels like he is burning up. Kindness is like pain, it can be felt even without touch.
“You’re perfect, absolutely perfect!” Kyungsoo gasps and he turns Jongin around to face him, once again a bright and electrifying grin plastered on his face. The man did not look any older than the youthful swell of his cheeks, “You’ll be my partner. You will be the heart of this research, you and me together!”
Two hearts are found and when they are bound together, they shall beat as one.
Research, Jongin discovers, entails human entrails stitched together with his nimble fingers. Lungs, livers, spleens, hearts, brains, everything that belonged within the internal universe of the human body became the missing piece of one of London’s wandering dead bodies. However they were the fitting puzzle pieces for their creation, Kyungsoo’s unholy creation, his vision, his grand masterpiece.
A creation that Jongin would soon discover to be a monster and the world would of course, remember the monster, not the man yet if one is to look closer, sometimes the monster is the man.
Yet Kyungsoo has given him life. Kyungsoo created him. Kyungsoo is the reason he sees the colours he has never seen before in the London sky when they take afternoon walks down the abbey. Kyungsoo is the reason why even if he can’t run, he can still walk and if he can’t walk then he shall crawl. The reason why he is Kim Jongin, the Kim Jongin who would rather bend than break and Jongin could never hate Kyungsoo, even if he tried because he created him.
Yet Jongin couldn’t say the same for his actions.
Hate the sin, love the sinner, they say and Jongin prays for him, on his knees every night because as his eyes trace the edges of the ceiling, the doubts creep in. The emptiness within his chest should not weigh him down as much as it should’ve, unable to get out of bed and get the memories out of his head. Why is Jongin doing this? It is a sin, isn’t it? Acting against the will of God?
Yet as Jongin creeps to Kyungsoo’s bedroom door, the elder rises from his pillow with a soft and tender mutter of, “Jongin...?” and beckons the younger onto his bed. The elder cradles his face within his palms, whispering almost subconsciously a gentle, “I love you,” and it feels as though those three words are enough to answer all the questions of the world.
Kyungsoo visits him one night in his bed. The night Jongin had destroyed the outline for their Prometheus, months and months of work with splatters of pig blood on the ground and Kyungsoo had been furious, shattered almost, like a broken man.
Flowers bloom within his mind as his hands graze Kyungsoo’s outer thighs that rested on the sides of his body, Jongin’s eyes deciphering the curiosity within the elder’s solemn orbs. As his palms map inches of Kyungsoo’s skin, Jongin feels more of the softness that was akin to petals, beautiful yet fragile to the touch. The elder’s scent awakens Jongin with each touch as the both of them inch closer to one another, Kyungsoo’s hot breath wisping over his lips like the whisper of a secret.
“You feel like God has wronged you.”
Rosebuds mar and crack the younger’s skin, cigarette butts digging in relentlessly, flashing in his memory like the blinding circus lights, and leaving behind the tar in scars that trail up his thighs.
Alabaster carved into the maze of his mind, the maze of the other’s beautiful yet sad eyes that Jongin became lost in. The body sits before him dipped in perfection with the way he has all of Jongin’s attention. Chin tipped up the slightest for Jongin to peek at the slightest sliver of the elder’s smooth and creamy neck where his Adam’s apple curved down to the dips of his collar bones.
“Homosexuality is a sin,” Kyungsoo whispers, his breath slithering across Jongin’s neck and a stray hand ignites the fire within Jongin’s loins, tapping once on the aroused flesh, “but that’s utter bullshit.” Jongin can only whimper, soft and weak as Kyungsoo digs his fingers into him. “You and I, we’ll create the modern Prometheus. We are our own Gods, Jongin. There is no Heaven or Hell but life.”
Life sounded like such a beautiful thing when it came from Do Kyungsoo’s lips when Kyungsoo is the only heaven and hell Jongin needs.
“I love you, Kyungsoo.”
The beating of Jongin’s heart within the nightly silence reaches a crescendo, Jongin’s heart yearning for the touch of Kyungsoo’s hand that he has never felt. In his mind, Jongin feels the ghost of Kyungsoo’s hand as it slides down the plane of his stomach. Jongin heaves in a soft breath as it begins with a soft touch. Jongin closes his eyes as the hold Kyungsoo had around himself grew tight.
There is the blur of a rosy blush and the tease of their fingers brushing like the daze of a summer day. The summer heat crawling up his skin like butterflies fluttering in his stomach along with the flutter of Kyungsoo’s long lashes that left him in a haze. When the both of them close their eyes, shutting their minds out from the world outside, there can only be felt the bliss within their ignorance.
I dream of a world
where hope replaces fear.
A world where a murdered man
can stand in court
to face his murderer.
Where a crippled soldier,
shrapnel in his spine...
...can be killed, healed,
then brought back to life
to walk again.
They lay together, as bare as the days they were born, holding onto one another and Kyungsoo has his cheek rested against his heart.
“You will always be my greatest creation, Jongin.” Kyungsoo whispers so gently, softly, sweetly and Jongin falls for the low dip of that hot breath, deeply, desperately and fondly.
“But living is suffering, isn’t it? You suffer because of me.”
“I love you, Kyungsoo. I love you,” Jongin utters with a burning ache that hollows out his entire being, “My heart is yours.”
Kyungsoo kisses him, the slightest brush of his petal lips and his voice trembles, “I will show you a new world.” Of the way dusk envelops the world in a flurry of colours that scrape across the sky in soft strokes and of the sun that sinks into the horizon for the moon and stars to rise, piercing and shining on a blanket of pitch black like diamonds. Of a world where there is no Heaven or Hell but life.
“I love you,” Kyungsoo says and the blade glistens under the slice of the moon in his hands, high up in the sky, dampened in tears of grey outside of the window. It had been with him all along and Jongin still, can only pray for him. Jongin prays that Kyungsoo won’t go to hell for this, please, please, please even as the knife is stabbed into his stomach, twisting and turning yet nothing burns more than the rain that hits his face, descending droplets on his skin like tears. They bleed into his skin, much like the way he realises Kyungsoo’s eyes are bleeding with hot tears.
“I will make you a God. My Prometheus, my Jongin.”
Jongin is the eye of a storm as he dies there within Kyungsoo’s arms and when life slowly escapes from his grip, the world bends and trembles at Kyungsoo’s beauty, the centre of his universe.
Two hearts are found and when they are bound together, they shall beat as one.
But not like this, never like this.
As before there was ever a monster, there was a boy and the man loved the boy first.