the airdry series (66 ways to take your poison)
7.12
2,912 words
<< ways one through six
kyungsoo/luhan | the seventh way | PG
show me china (i don’t want the pretty lights or the scented skyscrapers, show me the brick painted alleyways and wanted papers)
It’s not his first time here but Kyungsoo thinks that maybe it is. He’s never seen China, not like this. Yes he’s seen the perfumed studios and the pretty lights and the uptown vendors, but that wasn’t China.
At least, not all of it.
Luhan’s the one that suggests they go out, tugging a beanie over his head as he stuffs stray tresses of pink under the rim. He refuses to wear glasses, says their too obvious out on the streets. The only celebrities that wear glasses out in public are the ones that aren't really hiding.
Loose shirts and jeans and cruddy bags and Luhan has Kyungsoo out in the midst of a downtown market that reeks of radish. But it’s exciting, all the neon lights that flicker with dead moths, the strong spices and herbal clumps and caged chickens.
The vendors here were gritty and toothless, the meat hanging out bare and the only form of transportation were the thin bikes that wheedled on by.
“Luhan,” Kyungsoo calls out despite himself. The Chinese boy had told him to keep quiet, that his accent was so strong they’d be able to smell the foreign on him. You're pretty, he'd joked, we wouldn't want to lose you.
But he’s lost sight of the other and his mind begins to chat with the worst of his nightmares and his vision is swimming: “You okay?”
He smiles over at him and he can feel his feet again, toes wiggling. “Keep close, okay,” Luhan murmurs then, arm around the younger. He nods and Luhan is leading him through the thickest of throngs, arm secure. Kyungsoo tugs at his cap.
He says something in Chinese but Kyungsoo doesn’t understand as he blinks away some of the looks the grannies are giving him. There’s a herb stall and a beading cart and vials that look to be rice vinegar remedies. He wants to stop and pick at them but Luhan won’t let go, pulling him along until the streets begin to narrow and the lights begin to dim.
Soon enough it’s just them and the occasional second story TV. He can smell the stone and taste the musk.
Luhan suddenly jerks to the left, ducking under a stray pipe as he ascends cemented stairs and Kyungsoo has the faintest idea that maybe Luhan’s been here before.
It’s damp but they’re still outside, the steps leading up to what looks to be a public balcony of sorts and Kyungsoo just kind of stands there while his pulse tries to catch up.
The wind picks up and he breathes in the fall air, crisp and cultured.
They can see it all from up here, the neon and the people and the market, and in the distance glows the city (and he thinks he can point out the back of their hotel from here). Luhan digs a triangle of kimbap from his sweater, tossing one over as he searches in his other pocket for another.
“A slice of Korea in a Chinese market,” he smiles.
Kyungsoo leans against the adjacent house and he thinks, as he watches the other unwrap the plastic, that Luhan looks best when he's hiding.
chanyeol/sehun | the eighth way | PG-13
it’s an infatuation, a fixation, an addiction; compulsion feigning passion
Sehun doesn’t go to school. He should be in his senior year, Chanyeol thinks, but here he is following him around like a fucking stray.
Chanyeol’s confronted him a few times (seriously kid, this is a lecture hall, you’ll get into some serious trouble if they find you here) but Sehun has this cocky air to him that declares that he probably doesn't care.
It’s not until Chanyeol begins finding sticky notes around his apartment that he starts taking pills for the headaches.
There's a calorie list of the contents of the kitchen on his fridge and a sticky in the tub telling him to let the Comet sit before rinsing. He finds one on his leg just as he's about to leave. Hyung, it says, I like this part most.
There’s more stickies, blues and yellows clinging to the walls and cabinets and sheets.
There’ll be a bit of traffic, they say, pack an extra sweater.
Make sure to eat the toast.
There’s a mouse hiding here. I’ll get him next time.
He grabs at them all in a panic and stuffs them down the garbage disposal, hands carding through his hair and he finds that the nights he stays up are the nights he doesn't come. But it's a temporary fix, and calling the cops doesn't help. A high school kid is leaving stickies in your apartment, they'd laughed, is she at least hot?
He buys an extra lock for the door even though it's against building regulations but it does him no good.
Your prescriptions are running low.
I’ll get more orange juice tomorrow.
Make sure to pay the bills, it’s harder to see in the dark.
You’ve run out of pills.
Baekhyun asks after him but he tries his best to keep the boy out of it. He sleeps in the tub now with the door strung in bells.
That wasn't nice, the note on foot reads, that was such a hassle.
The bells have been disentangled neatly and lain before him on the tile.
Hyung, I’ve hidden all the knives, please don’t try that again, red isn’t your color.
Why are you so pretty?
Your sister called, she left a message. You probably shouldn’t return it though, you don’t really have time to visit them right? You should be studying.
Hyung, I’ve left a present for you, happy birthday!
Why don’t you look happy?
I’ve taken the lightbulbs, but please, no more eating glass.
Hyung.
Your plants are dying, should I water them?
Hyung.
You have to eat you know.
Hyung.
Hyung.
I love you most.
sehun/baekhyun | the ninth way | PG
sehun and wonderbread (sehun in wonderland: alice should take notes)
He catches sight of a boy with rabbit ears and a cotton tail one Sunday morning. He ignores it.
Doesn’t stop him from stumbling into a rabbit hole later on when he’s spraying the weeds though. The rabbit shoots on by when he hits the bottom. He tries to find the stairs.
When that fails he opts to keep moving and comes across some rather talkative flowers. He sprays them with weed killer.
After disposing of the plastic bottle he shucks their carcasses and collects the sunflower seeds for later.
He finds a dinner table in the middle of the forest but keeps on going because that shit just ain’t right.
Along the way a smile slowly begins to form to his left, as if floating there and it opens up to coo, all gleaming teeth, “Hello there boy-”
He gives it the hand and continues on.
The floating smile persists though and returns later when he comes across a fork in the road, morphing itself into an ugly purple cat. “Which way to go, which way to go. If left is right then what is right-”
Sehun goes left before the cat has a chance to monologue.
Going left leads to caterpillars smoking bongs on shrooms and he swats away a floating letter. Eventually he comes across a suit of cards, pokers pointed at his chest and he stands there, brow cocked.
“Well?”
“He's wearing white, he's wearing white instead! The red queen,” they chorus as they shove him along, “the red queen will have your head!”
He’s led past the powdered people and the painted roses until he’s being forced on his knees and the red queen is turning to face him from the top of the stairs with hair that looks to be more maroon really.
The red queen, who happens to be male Sehun would comment dryly to any one who would listen, parts his lips, only to groan-
"Damnit Sehun, again?"
chen/lay | the tenth way | PG
native wolves and wild city mutts
Lay pats Tao’s head affectionately, placing a biscuit on the wet of his nose.
He hums and stands to full attention then, hands on his hips as he takes a gander at the frozen flatlands. A carpet of white and a bleached sky. He inhales air starched and iron pressed.
They’ve made it to the half-way point, the neon orange marker just but a few hundred yards in front of them. He whistles and Tao flicks the treat off of his nose and snaps at it, catching the biscuit clumsily. Kris watches, unimpressed before he begins licking at his paws, nuzzling at the furs in between.
“We’re almost there guys,” Lay breathes. Crisp, brisk, snap. The wind howls for a moment before dying down into the much preferred silence. Almost there.
Sehun noses at his leg.
He goes to pet the needy pup but stops, eyes squinting and there’s something out there, something moving, a long, willowy line-
His eyes widen and he whistles once more, this time more urgent and all the dogs are up as Lay swings onto the sled, hands grasping the soft padding of the handle.
“Yip yip,” he says and they shoot off, Kris and Tao in the lead as Sehun and Suho stumble to keep up. A rhythm is set and Lay recognizes the colors on the other’s sled easily.
It’s that native kid.
Chen.
He’s wrapped in furs and cloths from his tribe, face hardened against the brittle cold. His momentum outweighs Lay’s jumpstart sprint, and soon they’re neck to neck and it makes no sense, racing like this now. It’s the halfway marker, not the finish line tape, but there’s a look in the other’s eyes and he urges Kris to go faster with an arch of the reigns.
It’s there, the blur of orange and drifting snow it’s there there there and he’s not sure who passes first only that Chen’s hood has blown off, his fur skirting the air as brown locks whip at his face and Lay thinks, distractedly as time wills itself to sedate the moment, that this boy is beautiful.
Lay loses, but that’s okay, because so does Chen and really, they’d both expected it. They hadn’t really had time for fumbling hands and harsh pants and painted skin in the rocks, not when they were only a days length from the end, but it hadn’t stopped them.
Chen speaks in an ethnic language with a curled tongue that wills Lay to return next year too.
luhan/chen | the eleventh way | R
broken cigarettes and promise fumes
He’s always back here behind the shed, an unlit cigarette stuffed between thin lips and white teeth.
He’s always back there, just leaning against the sheet metal, eyes drawn half closed, breath steady. He doesn’t talk in school, and neither does Luhan. Not that that makes them brethren or anything- Chen has his reasons, Luhan doesn’t.
Luhan likes to watch him from time to time though, back behind the trees with a sketchbook and a stub of charcoal. Would he think it creepy, what Luhan was doing? Would he even bother looking at the pictures, and if so, would it do any good to let him?
Chen’s not overtly attractive, but he has a nice jawline and it’s his expressions, really, that get Luhan. He may not pertain to the golden ratio, but he has a rich persona that seduces Luhan, entices him.
He catches him one day, behind the hedge shaped oddly like a horse. He sneaks up on him and, in a whisper, asks, “Do you have a light?”
Luhan doesn’t, of course, he’s never smoked a thing in his life but Chen just shrugs and heaves himself up. He doesn’t ask about the picture, the one he’d been currently working the finer details on.
“Doesn’t it hurt,” he says then, “sitting like that?” Luhan shakes his head, eyes trained on the ground, throat constricting. Chen hums then, and Luhan’s eyes flutter closed.
It’s then that he feels a hand weave itself into his hair, not gentle but not harsh. Just there.
“You’re the Chinese kid right?”
He nods, and, finally, wills his eyes up.
It’s pure unadulterated desire that courses from ears to toes, electrifying his nerves until his skin is dancing. There’s a look in his eye and Chen seems to understand somewhat, lips quirked around white.
Luhan gives him head behind the shed, lips wrapped pretty around Chen’s cock. It becomes their thing really, and even still Chen keeps that cigarette in his mouth, fingers laced in faded pink locks.
“I’m trying to quit,” he says once, before Luhan has chance to say anything, “but the motion of it soothes me. I think, in all seriousness, being addicted is the safest way to live. It’s like a net, no matter how fast the world falls to shit around you, no matter how much you’ve fucked up, there’s always that one thing that can make you feel better, satisfaction guaranteed. It’s a chemical reaction, one that never fails and therefore you never have to worry.”
Luhan had dropped to his knees then and Chen had looked on with bored eyes. But then he says something and Chen stops for a moment, lips parted.
“I could be your addiction.”
A laugh then, a kind laugh, as if Luhan were but a silly child.
“But you’re not dependable, there’s nothing chemical about what we do. You’re not readily attainable at my every convenience, you’re not something I can shove in my pocket, hell, I wouldn’t even be able to wind down until we were somewhere private. Seems like a net of stress if you ask me.”
“Yeah, but I don’t have a price. I won’t kill you like they will. Besides,” he mouths at the boy’s pants, tongue trailing the zipper, “it’s not when or where, but the promise of what.”
tao/sehun | the twelfth way | NC-17
whip me up a good ol’ fashion love potion, mister
He’s one of the Estate General’s men. A boy of knighthood still learning to parry and thrust in the face of fear.
But, he gasps, toes curling, then again, the kid seems to be quite familiar on the thrusting front and gods Luhan had been wrong. They’re the same, he had said, on the field and in the bed. He’ll be a lazy one, he’ll have you do all the work mark my words, it’s in the expression.
He will, he’ll show him all the damn marks he wants, his body is littered with them. Finger-pressed bruises and red ribbons.
Sehun has a hand in his hair and a hand at the base of his throat as he pushes back in, and Tao keens, the candles growing as they feed off of the jumping pitch of his voice.
A few of the unlit ones ignite and Sehun stops to curl a smirk, though there’s a sense of wonder in his eyes.
“Should I be wary of fucking you too hard? You’re not going to set the inn on fire are you?”
Tao whimpers and wraps long legs around the boy as he attempts to urge him on, though his thighs are quivering and he lacks the strength to actually enforce anything. “I can control it,” Tao breathes, “trust me, just, just move.”
Sehun laughs and drops his face so their noses are touching, his slick back bent over the other as he grins something smug.
“You know, we’re supposed to hate each other, you and I. Templars and Augurers aren’t supposed to get along, and they’re definitely not supposed to fuck. They told me that my dick would turn green if I did, that your magic would taint it, shrink it even.”
Tao snorts, and Sehun slowly begins to rock and the older can’t help but let loose a whimper, breath heavy.
“Yeah,” he manages, “shrink it, fry it, grill it, it’s a- ah- specialty.”
“How do you do it,” Sehun murmurs against his ear then, pace slow and torturous and fuck. “That magic thing of yours, how does it work.”
“I’m sure they teach you all about us in the academy,” Tao grits out, fingers clasping at sheets, nails digging into the cotton of the mattress. “Devil’s work, am I right?”
Sehun shakes his head and he seems intent on getting a legitimate answer out of him and Tao thinks if he were to just reach over and give the boy’s dick a few tugs they wouldn’t be having this conversation, but seeing as how it was currently occupied-
“I’m serious,” he says, eyes heavy, “what’s it feel like, when you light candles and conjure shadows and dispel snow. Is it painful?” This is what’s painful, Tao wants to say, but he shakes his head instead.
“i didn’t lure you in here for chit chat little knight.”
Sehun scowls and he’s got Tao pressed into the mattress now, hands on either side of his head as he fucks him hard, stamina outlasting Tao’s, as he knew it would, and it takes him a few more thrusts before he’s grunting out his release, lips clenched between teeth.
“Stay for a bit,” Tao says later on, “stay for a bit and maybe I’ll tell you.”
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