Sweet Sacrifice (part 1).
Title: S̜͚͜w̸̨̧̭̭͓͖̼̝͕̬̺e̳̭̠͢e̢͓̙t̴̛̜͖͇̫͡ͅ ̧͓͇̠͕̼͉Ś͙̠̱̖̖͙͔̹͘a̢͚̗̭͓͇̮c̮͚̘̲͕̺̀r̻̭̯̳̜̟̞͜͟i̡͚͈̠͍͟f̙̺̀͢ì̫̞̟̦̰̮̺̺̙̀͢c̭̝͍͕̪̩̦̺e̛͈̘̗͚͉ͅͅ
Group: EXO
Pairing: Baekxing
Rating: PG... for NOW...
Length: mere 2,139
Summary: In this chapter, Yixing isn't mugged; instead, he brings something interesting home.
A/N: this is for brandnewwind happy halloween yall
It’s midnight. It’s exactly midnight, twelve o’clock, zero-zero-colon-zero-zero, brightly indicated on the screen of Yixing’s cheap cellphone. Upon obtaining that information, Yixing quickly shoves the phone back into his pocket, not turning the screen off, leaving it to glow through the battered denim fabric. In the streets, there’s no one. It’s indeed midnight.
It’s the very first time Yixing gets off work this late. His late night debut, one could say. He could’ve left early, but a colleague had needed his help with her upcoming wedding, asking him about his opinions on dresses and fancy decoration, and he couldn’t let her fret about it all alone, even if he knew nothing about weddings. As a result, both of them left much later than usually - her, in her sister’s car, and him, on foot.
A lamplight wheezes, its light threatening to go out. It’ll soon be winter, as the wind tells, and Yixing finds himself snuggling his scarf up his face.
“It’s cold,” he tells the scarf, a hint of apology in his voice. “Why is it so cold?” The scarf doesn’t answer.
It’s not a polite thing to say, but Yixing didn’t live in a good part of the town. The streets around there are full of alleys, empty of people, and the police doesn’t come as quick. Even though he has no money on him, it could be bad if he found trouble in there. How would his mother feel if he got hurt while away from home?
Yixing starts walking faster.
The satchel on his back sways, brushing against his jacket, and the sound resonates in the silence of the night. It isn’t totally silent, merely because it’s Seoul, but the sound of traffic is so mild and so distant that it harmonizes with the wind. If a pebble falls on the concrete, the sound can be heard from a block away. It’s frightening. But he’s almost home.
A lamp cracks and goes out across the street, and Yixing hears, very clearly, the sound of a body falling to the ground. His breath freezes in his startle. What could it be? He glances towards the sound - and finds a person lying on the sidewalk, curled around itself, face down, towards the pavement. Against anyone’s better judgement, he quickly crosses the lane, casting a glance to the side to see if there were any cars. There weren’t.
“Hello,” he calls out, and it feels like the entire city could hear him. The person apparently didn’t. “Hello!” he tries again, now much closer, kneeling down to help the person up. “Are you okay?”
The person stinks of trash and sweat, as if they hadn’t shower in weeks. Yixing ignores the stench, still trying to make them notice him. What if they were having a stroke, or a heart attack? He has to help them! “Hello, please talk to me. Are you okay? Are you awake?”
At last, after some fumbling and shaking, the person turns around to face him. Their eyes are hooded, unfocused, and Yixing is now even more worried that they might be dying.
“Huh,” they say weakly. Yixing finds the voice to be manly, and starts mentally referring to the stranger as a ‘him’. (Unbeknownst to himself, he is right.) “Help.”
“Oh,” Yixing frowns sadly. This poor guy! He tries pulling him up. “Can you get up?”
“I’m hungry,” he says instead. Yixing pulls him up. His knees wobble. “I’m dying.”
“I’ll help you,” Yixing promises him, trying to remember if he has anything edible back at home to offer to the dying man. “Hold me. I’ll help.”
The man grabs Yixing’s arm, holding onto it as tightly as he can, and his feet barely rise from the floor as they walk the distance to Yixing’s apartment. The streetlamp cracks, and goes out one last time.
Upon arriving, the first thing Yixing does is to lay the stranger down on the couch and give him some water. As small as the stranger is - not much smaller than Yixing himself, but Yixing is aware that he’s not all that tall to begin with - his legs drape over the couch’s arm uncomfortably, and his whole body looks cramped and limp. Yixing laments not having a bigger couch, and kneels down beside the stranger to offer him water.
“What’s your name?” Yixing asks as the stranger drinks the last drop of water in the glass. His eyes remain hazy, as if he was about to pass out. However, he musters enough strength to breath out:
“Baekhyun.” Is what he says. Yixing nods.
“I’m Yixing,” he greets back, patting Baekhyun’s shoulder by way of a handshake. Baekhyun’s eyelids flutter. “I’ll get you some food.”
During the way home, Baekhyun muttered almost endlessly about how hungry he was. His delirious monologue went from simple ‘I’m hungry, I’m so hungry’ to ‘I could melt, if I melt I could become rain, acid rain’, back and forth from whining to full blown madness. It was good, Yixing thought, for it didn’t let him forget to feeed the stranger when they got home.
Well then, now they’re home, and Yixing is rummaging through his fridge for food while Baekhyun perishes on the couch. All he finds is some carrots, water, vegetable juice and rice. Healthy! He figures he can make some carrot fried rice of some sorts, and prepares to mince the ingredients (the carrots).
“Are you allergic to carrots?” Yixing remembers to ask. The answer doesn’t come, as all he hears from the couch is light panting and quiet whimpers. Yixing decides to take the risk, and starts chopping up the carrots. “Hang in there, okay? Don’t die.”
Still no reaction from Baekhyun. That must be a bad sign, Yixing figures. Doesn’t this usually happen to people who are dying? They lose connection with the real world as they drift towards the light? “Baekhyun sshi?” No answer. Yixing strains his hearing, searching for any sign that Baekhyun isn’t breathing, and, in his distraction, “Ouch!” He cuts his finger with the knife.
“Oh no,” he whines as he admires the injury. He ended up cutting the tender part of his index finger, and it’s not a deep cut, but it’s bleeding rather profusely. Momentarily forgetting about Baekhyun, Yixing stumbles into the living room, intending to grab some bandages - and jumps in startle when he bumps against something in his way.
It’s Baekhyun.
Yixing faces Baekhyun with wide eyes, not quite knowing what to say. As he recovers from the scare, heartbeat slowing down, he starts to notice how weird that is; Baekhyun, who could barely move his feet just a minute ago, is suddenly standing upright in front of him. Not only that either - all signs of the previous delirium are gone. On Baekhyun’s face, Yixing sees two wide, vivid eyes, and a facial expression of pure alarm.
“Baekhyun… sshi…?” Yixing mutters, half worried, half confused. The blood starts to trail down his finger, reaching his palm, and it’s like he can hear the tension in the air, hissing like a hot cymbal.
Baekhyun’s eyes fall from Yixing’s own gaze to his mouth; then, to his neck; and it trails down, mimicking the slow, hot movement of the blood that starts to stain Yixing’s right wrist, going down to his collarbone, chest, arm, forearm, hand, and the blood…
Yixing takes a guess. He offers his bloody hand up, for Baekhyun to - to touch, inspect, or to do whatever it will make to snap him out of that strange fascination. And he wonders if he imagined it, the shudder that shakes Baekhyun’s thin frame all-so-slightly.
It all happens in a second.
Baekhyun’s pupils flare, wide like a child’s, then contract, tight as a beast’s. Yixing barely has time to breath before Baekhyun’s hand is around his wrist, smearing blood against his pale skin, and his mouth is on the wound, and then around the wound, tongue warm where it touches the injured flesh. In his shock, Yixing only blinks, not reacting in any way as Baekhyun sucks the blood of his finger like a kitten being fed.
Strange.
Or not so strange, now that Yixing has seen Baekhyun’s long, sharp canines.
It’s over as suddenly as it begun.
“-I’m so sorry, I really am, I didn’t mean to do this-,” it seems to Yixing that Baekhyun is back to the delirious mood from before, muttering endless apologies as he backs away from Yixing himself, one hand over his mouth as if in disgust. Yixing glances at his own finger. Still bleeding.
“Hm,” Yixing frowns. He hoped it’d have stopped since Baekhyun sucked on it. So he still needs to bandage it after all… he reaches for the medicine cabinet, right under the small television, and watches as Baekhyun gives two steps back. He then decides to ask: “Are you a vampire, Baekhyun sshi?”
Baekhyun’s facial expression freezes. Yixing seizes the momentarily lack of reaction to fetch the bandages from the cabinet, and to clumsily wrap one around his persistently bleeding fingers. He’s a little worried, because he can’t remember whether he bled over the carrots or not. If he did, it’d be bad? He gets to his feet, and glances over to Baekhyun, who’s frowning rather deeply at him.
“?” Yixing tilts his head questioningly.
“Did you seriously just,” Baekhyun is not feral, like he had been a minute ago, or horrified, like he had been right after that, when he makes this question; he’s confused, rather intensely so. “Did you just outright ask me if I’m a vampire?”
Yixing thinks. Then, he makes a little ‘oh’ sound, nodding. “Sorry for assuming something like that. But you looked like you had,” he forgets the Korea word for fangs, so he signalizes pointy teeth with his fingers over his mouth. “Also, you drank my blood.”
Baekhyun stares at the floor, simultaneously cornered and enlightened. “I see…” he mutters, and Yixing nods happily in agreement. “So… if I really were a vampire, what would you do about it?”
Oh… Yixing hadn’t really thought about that. He glances around, probably searching for the answer in his small, humid living room. After some minutes of leisure thinking, Yixing reaches a conclusion.
“I can’t cook carrots for dinner anymore,” he affirms. But he has second thoughts. “Or can I?”
Baekhyun visibly doesn’t know what to say.
Half an hour later, they’re happily eating carrot soup and rice for dinner, sitting on the floor as the TV plays a news show none of them are watching. Yixing, for himself, is much more interested in Baekhyun than in whatever the newscaster say at the moment - after all, it’s the first time he meets a vampire.
“So, you can eat normal food too?” Yixing asks as Baekhyun devours the meal in front of him, looking much healthier than when Yixing found him, even if he still looks sort of raggedy.
“Yep. It’s like snacks. Like fast food for humans,” Baekhyun affirms, drinking the soup in one big gulp. “No nutritional value whatsoever, but tasty.”
Yixing frowns at ‘no nutritional value’. Baekhyun looks like he’s in desperate need of something nutritive. “What’s healthy for you, then? Blood?”
“Yeah.” Baekhyun is expressionless. “Doesn’t have to be human, though,” he quickly adds. “I usually drink cow or chicken’s blood. Sometimes, pig’s. Whatever is available.”
“You look like you haven’t eaten in some time,” Yixing voices his worries, glancing at the carrot soup in Baekhyun’s hands. The vampire avoids the question glancing at the television. “Did something happen?”
Brief moment of silence. After barely a minute, Baekhyun confesses: “I ran out of money.”
That’s a mishap Yixing is thoroughly familiar with. He hums sympathetically. “I see.”
“And, despite whatever you have heard about my kin,” Baekhyun quickly adds, eyes still on the television. “I don’t attack humans. I refuse to.”
“Even when you’re hungry?” Yixing tilts his head.
“Specially when I’m hungry,” Baekhyun emphasizes, scratching his nose to feign nonchalance. “Attacking humans to nourish myself would make me no more than a beast.”
Yixing can see where that’s coming from, but still… “You didn’t attack me earlier,” he tells him, raising his injured hand. “I cut myself. So, it’d be okay if-”
Baekhyun interrupts him by putting a hand on his shoulder. On his face, there’s a sad, tired smile. “It’s a little more complicated than that.”
It has a final tone to it. Realizing that the philosophical reasons behind vampire diet is not a subject to be discussed at the moment, Yixing settles to inviting Baekhyun to stay over for the night, and making him a bed in the living room, the only room with enough space for it.
“Would a mattress be okay? I’ve read that vampires sleep in coffins and such…”
A suppressed sigh. “A bed would be just fine, thanks.”
Group: EXO
Pairing: Baekxing
Rating: PG... for NOW...
Length: mere 2,139
Summary: In this chapter, Yixing isn't mugged; instead, he brings something interesting home.
A/N: this is for brandnewwind happy halloween yall
It’s midnight. It’s exactly midnight, twelve o’clock, zero-zero-colon-zero-zero, brightly indicated on the screen of Yixing’s cheap cellphone. Upon obtaining that information, Yixing quickly shoves the phone back into his pocket, not turning the screen off, leaving it to glow through the battered denim fabric. In the streets, there’s no one. It’s indeed midnight.
It’s the very first time Yixing gets off work this late. His late night debut, one could say. He could’ve left early, but a colleague had needed his help with her upcoming wedding, asking him about his opinions on dresses and fancy decoration, and he couldn’t let her fret about it all alone, even if he knew nothing about weddings. As a result, both of them left much later than usually - her, in her sister’s car, and him, on foot.
A lamplight wheezes, its light threatening to go out. It’ll soon be winter, as the wind tells, and Yixing finds himself snuggling his scarf up his face.
“It’s cold,” he tells the scarf, a hint of apology in his voice. “Why is it so cold?” The scarf doesn’t answer.
It’s not a polite thing to say, but Yixing didn’t live in a good part of the town. The streets around there are full of alleys, empty of people, and the police doesn’t come as quick. Even though he has no money on him, it could be bad if he found trouble in there. How would his mother feel if he got hurt while away from home?
Yixing starts walking faster.
The satchel on his back sways, brushing against his jacket, and the sound resonates in the silence of the night. It isn’t totally silent, merely because it’s Seoul, but the sound of traffic is so mild and so distant that it harmonizes with the wind. If a pebble falls on the concrete, the sound can be heard from a block away. It’s frightening. But he’s almost home.
A lamp cracks and goes out across the street, and Yixing hears, very clearly, the sound of a body falling to the ground. His breath freezes in his startle. What could it be? He glances towards the sound - and finds a person lying on the sidewalk, curled around itself, face down, towards the pavement. Against anyone’s better judgement, he quickly crosses the lane, casting a glance to the side to see if there were any cars. There weren’t.
“Hello,” he calls out, and it feels like the entire city could hear him. The person apparently didn’t. “Hello!” he tries again, now much closer, kneeling down to help the person up. “Are you okay?”
The person stinks of trash and sweat, as if they hadn’t shower in weeks. Yixing ignores the stench, still trying to make them notice him. What if they were having a stroke, or a heart attack? He has to help them! “Hello, please talk to me. Are you okay? Are you awake?”
At last, after some fumbling and shaking, the person turns around to face him. Their eyes are hooded, unfocused, and Yixing is now even more worried that they might be dying.
“Huh,” they say weakly. Yixing finds the voice to be manly, and starts mentally referring to the stranger as a ‘him’. (Unbeknownst to himself, he is right.) “Help.”
“Oh,” Yixing frowns sadly. This poor guy! He tries pulling him up. “Can you get up?”
“I’m hungry,” he says instead. Yixing pulls him up. His knees wobble. “I’m dying.”
“I’ll help you,” Yixing promises him, trying to remember if he has anything edible back at home to offer to the dying man. “Hold me. I’ll help.”
The man grabs Yixing’s arm, holding onto it as tightly as he can, and his feet barely rise from the floor as they walk the distance to Yixing’s apartment. The streetlamp cracks, and goes out one last time.
Upon arriving, the first thing Yixing does is to lay the stranger down on the couch and give him some water. As small as the stranger is - not much smaller than Yixing himself, but Yixing is aware that he’s not all that tall to begin with - his legs drape over the couch’s arm uncomfortably, and his whole body looks cramped and limp. Yixing laments not having a bigger couch, and kneels down beside the stranger to offer him water.
“What’s your name?” Yixing asks as the stranger drinks the last drop of water in the glass. His eyes remain hazy, as if he was about to pass out. However, he musters enough strength to breath out:
“Baekhyun.” Is what he says. Yixing nods.
“I’m Yixing,” he greets back, patting Baekhyun’s shoulder by way of a handshake. Baekhyun’s eyelids flutter. “I’ll get you some food.”
During the way home, Baekhyun muttered almost endlessly about how hungry he was. His delirious monologue went from simple ‘I’m hungry, I’m so hungry’ to ‘I could melt, if I melt I could become rain, acid rain’, back and forth from whining to full blown madness. It was good, Yixing thought, for it didn’t let him forget to feeed the stranger when they got home.
Well then, now they’re home, and Yixing is rummaging through his fridge for food while Baekhyun perishes on the couch. All he finds is some carrots, water, vegetable juice and rice. Healthy! He figures he can make some carrot fried rice of some sorts, and prepares to mince the ingredients (the carrots).
“Are you allergic to carrots?” Yixing remembers to ask. The answer doesn’t come, as all he hears from the couch is light panting and quiet whimpers. Yixing decides to take the risk, and starts chopping up the carrots. “Hang in there, okay? Don’t die.”
Still no reaction from Baekhyun. That must be a bad sign, Yixing figures. Doesn’t this usually happen to people who are dying? They lose connection with the real world as they drift towards the light? “Baekhyun sshi?” No answer. Yixing strains his hearing, searching for any sign that Baekhyun isn’t breathing, and, in his distraction, “Ouch!” He cuts his finger with the knife.
“Oh no,” he whines as he admires the injury. He ended up cutting the tender part of his index finger, and it’s not a deep cut, but it’s bleeding rather profusely. Momentarily forgetting about Baekhyun, Yixing stumbles into the living room, intending to grab some bandages - and jumps in startle when he bumps against something in his way.
It’s Baekhyun.
Yixing faces Baekhyun with wide eyes, not quite knowing what to say. As he recovers from the scare, heartbeat slowing down, he starts to notice how weird that is; Baekhyun, who could barely move his feet just a minute ago, is suddenly standing upright in front of him. Not only that either - all signs of the previous delirium are gone. On Baekhyun’s face, Yixing sees two wide, vivid eyes, and a facial expression of pure alarm.
“Baekhyun… sshi…?” Yixing mutters, half worried, half confused. The blood starts to trail down his finger, reaching his palm, and it’s like he can hear the tension in the air, hissing like a hot cymbal.
Baekhyun’s eyes fall from Yixing’s own gaze to his mouth; then, to his neck; and it trails down, mimicking the slow, hot movement of the blood that starts to stain Yixing’s right wrist, going down to his collarbone, chest, arm, forearm, hand, and the blood…
Yixing takes a guess. He offers his bloody hand up, for Baekhyun to - to touch, inspect, or to do whatever it will make to snap him out of that strange fascination. And he wonders if he imagined it, the shudder that shakes Baekhyun’s thin frame all-so-slightly.
It all happens in a second.
Baekhyun’s pupils flare, wide like a child’s, then contract, tight as a beast’s. Yixing barely has time to breath before Baekhyun’s hand is around his wrist, smearing blood against his pale skin, and his mouth is on the wound, and then around the wound, tongue warm where it touches the injured flesh. In his shock, Yixing only blinks, not reacting in any way as Baekhyun sucks the blood of his finger like a kitten being fed.
Strange.
Or not so strange, now that Yixing has seen Baekhyun’s long, sharp canines.
It’s over as suddenly as it begun.
“-I’m so sorry, I really am, I didn’t mean to do this-,” it seems to Yixing that Baekhyun is back to the delirious mood from before, muttering endless apologies as he backs away from Yixing himself, one hand over his mouth as if in disgust. Yixing glances at his own finger. Still bleeding.
“Hm,” Yixing frowns. He hoped it’d have stopped since Baekhyun sucked on it. So he still needs to bandage it after all… he reaches for the medicine cabinet, right under the small television, and watches as Baekhyun gives two steps back. He then decides to ask: “Are you a vampire, Baekhyun sshi?”
Baekhyun’s facial expression freezes. Yixing seizes the momentarily lack of reaction to fetch the bandages from the cabinet, and to clumsily wrap one around his persistently bleeding fingers. He’s a little worried, because he can’t remember whether he bled over the carrots or not. If he did, it’d be bad? He gets to his feet, and glances over to Baekhyun, who’s frowning rather deeply at him.
“?” Yixing tilts his head questioningly.
“Did you seriously just,” Baekhyun is not feral, like he had been a minute ago, or horrified, like he had been right after that, when he makes this question; he’s confused, rather intensely so. “Did you just outright ask me if I’m a vampire?”
Yixing thinks. Then, he makes a little ‘oh’ sound, nodding. “Sorry for assuming something like that. But you looked like you had,” he forgets the Korea word for fangs, so he signalizes pointy teeth with his fingers over his mouth. “Also, you drank my blood.”
Baekhyun stares at the floor, simultaneously cornered and enlightened. “I see…” he mutters, and Yixing nods happily in agreement. “So… if I really were a vampire, what would you do about it?”
Oh… Yixing hadn’t really thought about that. He glances around, probably searching for the answer in his small, humid living room. After some minutes of leisure thinking, Yixing reaches a conclusion.
“I can’t cook carrots for dinner anymore,” he affirms. But he has second thoughts. “Or can I?”
Baekhyun visibly doesn’t know what to say.
Half an hour later, they’re happily eating carrot soup and rice for dinner, sitting on the floor as the TV plays a news show none of them are watching. Yixing, for himself, is much more interested in Baekhyun than in whatever the newscaster say at the moment - after all, it’s the first time he meets a vampire.
“So, you can eat normal food too?” Yixing asks as Baekhyun devours the meal in front of him, looking much healthier than when Yixing found him, even if he still looks sort of raggedy.
“Yep. It’s like snacks. Like fast food for humans,” Baekhyun affirms, drinking the soup in one big gulp. “No nutritional value whatsoever, but tasty.”
Yixing frowns at ‘no nutritional value’. Baekhyun looks like he’s in desperate need of something nutritive. “What’s healthy for you, then? Blood?”
“Yeah.” Baekhyun is expressionless. “Doesn’t have to be human, though,” he quickly adds. “I usually drink cow or chicken’s blood. Sometimes, pig’s. Whatever is available.”
“You look like you haven’t eaten in some time,” Yixing voices his worries, glancing at the carrot soup in Baekhyun’s hands. The vampire avoids the question glancing at the television. “Did something happen?”
Brief moment of silence. After barely a minute, Baekhyun confesses: “I ran out of money.”
That’s a mishap Yixing is thoroughly familiar with. He hums sympathetically. “I see.”
“And, despite whatever you have heard about my kin,” Baekhyun quickly adds, eyes still on the television. “I don’t attack humans. I refuse to.”
“Even when you’re hungry?” Yixing tilts his head.
“Specially when I’m hungry,” Baekhyun emphasizes, scratching his nose to feign nonchalance. “Attacking humans to nourish myself would make me no more than a beast.”
Yixing can see where that’s coming from, but still… “You didn’t attack me earlier,” he tells him, raising his injured hand. “I cut myself. So, it’d be okay if-”
Baekhyun interrupts him by putting a hand on his shoulder. On his face, there’s a sad, tired smile. “It’s a little more complicated than that.”
It has a final tone to it. Realizing that the philosophical reasons behind vampire diet is not a subject to be discussed at the moment, Yixing settles to inviting Baekhyun to stay over for the night, and making him a bed in the living room, the only room with enough space for it.
“Would a mattress be okay? I’ve read that vampires sleep in coffins and such…”
A suppressed sigh. “A bed would be just fine, thanks.”