Before the Fall [Chapter 4]
Rating: R [overall] PG [this chapter: language]
Pairing: GTOP
Disclaimer: Fine... I own 'em (in my head. Leave me alone ::pout::)
Description: Before man's fall from Grace in the the Garden of Eden, there was no such thing as sin. This is Jiyong and Seunghyun's love story. Set 5 years before the events of The Wages of Sin.
For a moment the two older men stared at each other, Vick’s face falling into a rather apathetic expression at Seunghyun’s wide-eyed incredulity. Jiyong’s eyes darted back and forth between them. There was tension here; he could feel it, like it was some living, breathing thing.A thing with teeth, and a penchant for biting. The atmosphere made him nervous, and he wasn’t sure if he should attempt to make his way out into the hall, or if he should hide behind Seunghyun. He didn’t know a thing about Vick other than what Seunghyun had told him, and what he’d said hadn’t exactly been flattering. Now that he saw him, in the flesh, Jiyong thought his twin probably hadn’t been exaggerating when he’d said Vick could charm a snake into biting itself.
Jiyong shuddered a bit when Vick’s eyes focused back on him, and his lips suddenly turned up into another of those devilish smiles.
“Seunghyun, did you do this?” he asked, motioning to the injured boy with a flick of his gloved hand. Jiyong caught the double-entendre he’d implied and scowled.
“He didn’t beat me or fuck me, if that’s what you’re asking,” Jiyong bit out, annoyed at this total stranger’s overfamiliarity, at his nonchalance at asking such an invasive question without regard to either his or his brother’s feelings. Vick’s eyes widened a bit at his tone, but so did his smile.
“Oh, I think I like you,” he said.
He looked like Seunghyun, he sounded like Seunghyun… but apart from these he was nothing like his twin.
“Jiyong, why don’t you go back to the bathroom. You left your chain on the sink.”
Seunghyun’s eyes never left Vick. It might have ticked Jiyong off if it didn’t unnerve him so much. He nodded quickly and turned on his heel.
“Get inside before someone sees you!” he heard Seunghyun hiss… at least he was pretty sure it was Seunghyun. It wouldn’t make any sense for Vick to be saying that, would it? Oh God, he was drunk and unstable, and (though he never thought he’d say this) having two men that looked and sounded like Seunghyun in the same room was going to be a singularly unpleasant experience right now.
His jewelry was lying on the edge of the sink, right where he'd put it before Seunghyun had started to cleanse his wounds. Jiyong took a minute to stare at himself in the bathroom mirror. His face looked swollen and terrible, and the florescent lighting was not doing him any favors. he contemplated grabbing the chain and running out the door, but his insatiable curiosity always got the better of him. Instead, he left the bathroom door open and strained his ears to hear the faint murmurings of the twins in the next room.
"I told you last time you called that I didn't want to have anything more to do with you if you were still insisting on… that career choice," Seunghyun said. He sounded not only annoyed, but scared. What was it about Vick’s 'career choice' that frightened him?
"Relax, brother. I'm still on a short leash. This is my first bit of downtime in five years. I thought you'd be glad to see me."
Seunghyun huffed.
"The last time I saw you, you fucked my girlfriend and then ran away. And now you're… I can't say it. I feel sick even thinking about it, Vick. Why would you tell me anything in the first place? That's got to be against your code, or rules, or whatever you have."
Now it was Vick's turn to huff.
"The only rule I have to follow is finish the job, or die trying. That's it. Everything else is open to interpretation, and you know how much I like putting my own spin on things. Besides, you wouldn’t tell anyone, would you?"
There was a moment of silence then, and Jiyong thought now might be a good time to exit the bathroom, and possibly the apartment. As he was pocketing his chain, however, Vick spoke up again.
"That’s what I thought. So, who's the bruised and beaten queer?" he asked, voice betraying no emotion save curiosity. "Hwayoung not doing it for you anymore?"
"This is another reason you're not welcome in my home. Can't you ever just be nice?"
Jiyong could hear the smile in Vick's next words.
"Would you tell me who he is if I asked nicely?"
And that's when Jiyong decided to introduce himself rather than listen to the men talk about him. He shoved his silver chain and piercings into his front pocket, and then he rounded the corner into the living room.
“You guys know this place is tiny, and I could hear everything you said, right?” he asked, not waiting for an answer from the two identical males who were giving him two different versions of the ‘surprised’ face. Vick’s eyebrows were raised high; Jiyong wondered if that was his only facial expression. Seunghyun’s eyes were wide, but darted away when Jiyong looked at him. He sighed and cocked his head toward Vick.
“I’m Jiyong. Kwon Jiyong. And I have to go now.”
Seunghyun started to raise himself from his seat on the couch, but Jiyong held up a hand and shook his head.
“I’ll be fine. Stay and talk to your brother. From what you told me, this is rare, so just stay,” he said, the last few words unintentionally coming out like a plea. “And thanks for helping me tonight, hyung.”
Without another word he slipped out the door into the 3rd floor hallway. He took a minute, once he’d reached the stairwell, to put his head in his hands and take several deep breaths. This was not what he’d wanted to happen tonight, not at all. All he’d wanted was to give Seunghyun a copy of his drawing and maybe receive a hug in return. Instead he’d gotten the living shit kicked out of him, and then he’d kissed the man who’d tended to his injuries. He’d fucking kissed him. He couldn’t take that back, and he couldn’t forget the guilty look in Seunghyun’s eyes when he’d pulled away and reminded him he had a girlfriend.
Jiyong would be the last person to say he had good judgment. He knew he was rash, and impulsive, and he let his hormones and emotions rule him more often than not. But kissing Seunghyun hadn’t just been rash, impulsive, and hormone-driven, it had been stupid as well. Things like this could end friendships. Things like this, had Seunghyun been anyone else, could also get him beaten up… again.
He let out the breath he’d been holding in a shuddering sigh, and ran his fingertips lightly over his swollen cheek. What he needed to do now was go home, get some rest, and plan what he was going to tell Junsuk at work tomorrow. He wasn’t even sure Junsuk would let him work looking the way he did. The frown that pulled the corners of his lips down also pulled the skin under his Buttercup Band-Aid, and he felt for it with shaky fingers. In a moment of overwhelming self-pity, he ripped the plaster from his skin, folded it in thirds, and stuck it in the pocket of his grimy jacket. He didn’t want to see that reminder of Seunghyun the next time he looked in the mirror.
Jiyong ran all the way home. It hurt; his ribs ached, and every muscle and joint in his body protested the pace, but he was too afraid of what awaited him in the darkened alleyways to stop. By the time he made it back to his apartment, tears of pain and frustration were rolling down his cheeks.
Why hadn’t he just gone home in the first place?
Why had he walked all the way to Seunghyun’s, bleeding and broken?
What had he expected to happen when he showed up drunk and injured?
Why had he kissed him?
The spray of the shower stung his tender flesh, but Jiyong scrubbed himself clean despite the pain. He didn’t bother toweling himself off before slipping under the covers of his bed, naked and shivering in the cold. Jiyong drifted off into a fitful sleep with those same four questions on his mind.
But it never occurred to him to wonder why Seunghyun had kissed him back.
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Seunghyun watched Jiyong dart out of his apartment with a pained look on his face. He was truly at a loss. One half of him wanted to race down the hallway and tell the boy to come back inside, to apologize for acting so out of line by letting him… by returning his kiss. The other half of him wished he had a teleportation device with which to zap Jiyong to the other side of the planet so he would never have to interact with his brother ever again.
It wasn’t that Seunghyun didn’t love Vick. For all the terrible, selfish things he’d witnessed his twin do over the years, he’d performed the (very) occasional kindness that temporarily redeemed his image. Seunghyun loved his brother, but he was also the closest thing to evil he’d ever known. They walked a thin line between love and hate, and at times like these, when Vick’s presence only complicated matters, that precarious balance began to tip more toward ‘hate’.
“Why don’t you go after him? You clearly want to,” Vick said, voice flat. Seunghyun had always found it frustrating that his brother was so unreadable. Was he mocking him, or was he being sincere? Ever the optimist, Seunghyun decided to give Vick the benefit of the doubt. He sat back on the sofa and ran his hands through his black hair.
“Yeah, well, that’s not what he wants,” he shrugged.
“So?” The notion of empathy seemed to amuse Vick.
“So I’m going to let him go home and sleep. You saw his face. He needs to rest in order for those injuries to heal.”
Vick leaned forward and decided to remove his black gloves. Seunghyun watched him pluck at the fingers, then draw off each leather covering gently, as if doing so pained him. When his hands were free of their casing, he saw why: Vick’s fingertips were red and peeling.
“Oh my God, Vick,” he breathed, blinking at the abused flesh dumbly. “What the… why are-”
“I’m a ghost,” Vick said with a grim smirk on his face. “Ghosts don’t have fingerprints. And don’t change the subject. We were talking about your little friend.”
Seunghyun sighed and leaned his head back against the cushions of the couch. Things with Vick were never easy, and they rarely went his way. This time wasn’t looking any different.
“Ask me nicely,” he said, throwing Vick’s words from earlier back at him. He cracked open an eye to find his brother staring at him, stonefaced.
“Oh my dearest brother, won’t you tell me who your whorish-looking friend is… please?”
Seunghyun snapped his head forward, then stood to his full height over his twin.
“His name is Jiyong. You know that. Use it, or next time I’m kicking your ass out of my home.”
Vick’s mask slipped, and he squinted up at his brother in glee.
“Think you can?”
“I can damn well try.”
The man in black sat back in the loveseat, fingers hovering over the arms, but never touching, and then he turned his hands palm-up in a gesture of surrender. Vick was fond of games of dominance, and even more fond of pushing Seunghyun into flares of emotional outburst. This one he could count as a draw.
“Fine. I’ll behave. Tell me about Jiyong. He looks… interesting.”
Seunghyun took his seat again, but kept the slight scowl on his face. “He saved me from a mugger a few months ago.”
Vick actually seemed surprised, genuinely surprised, by that information, but didn’t say a word.
“And then a few weeks later I saved him from being raped.”
“Now that I can believe. He is awfully rapeable,” Vick chuckled.
“That’s not funny. Not at all,” his twin spat. “It’s disgusting.”
“Humor is such a subjective thing,” Vick sighed, shrugging. “So you were even after that. Why do you two keep seeing each other? Is he a buyer? Seller?”
Seunghyun shook his head. Now they were getting into a subject to which Seunghyun himself hadn’t given much thought. He’d continued seeing Jiyong because the teen was vivacious, and full of energy, and he just… liked him. He had a foul mouth, but Seunghyun found it strangely endearing to watch the pink-haired spitfire curse like a sailor when he lost at an arcade game, or when he forgot the lyrics to a song they were trying (and failing) to sing. He was many things Seunghyun himself was not, but their disparities complemented each other rather than drove them apart.
He’d hardly realized he’d been voicing these things until another of Vick’s chortles reached his ears.
“If I didn’t know better, I’d say you were in love with the kid.”
Seunghyun looked into Vick’s black eyes to find no trace of malice there, just general amusement at his declarations.
“Don’t be ridiculous. I have a girlfriend.”
“Hmm,” Vick intoned, unconvinced but apparently unwilling to delve too deeply into that particular topic just yet. “So you keep saying. Where is Hwayoung, anyway?” he asked, head swiveling about as if he expected her to come flying at him from around the corner.
“She’s out. Won’t be back until tomorrow,” Seunghyun replied. Something in his voice must have caught Vick’s attention, because his eyes narrowed, and then he smiled his most disingenuous smile.
“Trouble in paradise? I’ll bet. What’d she do, insult your little fr- Jiyong?”
Seunghyun didn’t even notice Vick’s near slip-of-the-tongue. His twin was too perceptive, eerily so, and his words hit too close to the truth. All Seunghyun could do was frown and nod. Would it hurt to tell him about Hwayoung’s increasingly erratic and vicious behavior? Vick wouldn’t care, he never cared… why should this time be any different?
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He could still remember the first time he realized something about Vick was wrong. It was a few months after Hwayoung had come to the orphanage. Since Seunghyun, and by virtue of association, Vick (though that had not been his name at the time), had befriended her, she stuck to their sides like glue. They were her playmates, her confidants, her brothers. She came to them whenever she had a problem she couldn’t solve herself.
So when she trudged, sniffling and red-faced, over to where the boys were building a grand sandcastle in the sandbox, Seunghyun immediately asked what was wrong.
“I forgot to do my math homework, and if I don’t turn it in Lee-seonsangnim will p-punish me,” she wailed, her little hands gripping the stuffed green frog to which she was so attached. “But I can’t do it in time for class.”
Seunghyun patted her back comfortingly. “I’m sure it won’t be that bad,” he said, looking to Vick in askance, but the other boy just shrugged his shoulders and turned back to the sandcastle.
“She’s mean, Hyunnie! She… I was late to class yesterday, and she hit me. Forgetting homework is worse than being tardy, isn’t it?” Her lips trembled as she spoke. Hwayoung was terrified, and Seunghyun didn’t know what to do.
“Give your homework to me. I’ll do it for you,” Vick said. The look on his face said he was annoyed, but at what, Seunghyun wasn’t certain.
Hwayoung lit up in a huge, gap-toothed grin, and Seunghyun lamented being the chubby, stupid twin for the thousandth time in his life. It wasn’t fair that Vick was so slim, even if they had the same face otherwise. His brain also worked in a way Seunghyun wished his own did. He’d never felt more jealous, though, as when Hwayoung looked at him with stars in her eyes like she was doing now.
“Thank you!” she cried. She uncrumpled a sheet of paper from where she’d tucked it into the front pocket of her dress, and held it out at arm’s length. “I don’t have a pencil, though.”
Vick eyed the stuffed animal in her arms, and a look flashed across his face.
“I have a pen,” he said as he grabbed the paper, eyes never leaving the little green frog. “Hey, Hwayoung… is that your favorite toy?” he asked, head cocked to the side.
Hwayoung nodded.
“Can I have it?”
The girl frowned. “But… you don’t like stuffed animals,” she protested, not understanding yet what or why the boy was asking this of her.
“Yeah, but it’s only fair, right? If I do your homework for you, you’ve got to give me something in return, and I want that,” he said, motioning to it.
“Can’t I… will you take something else?” Hwayoung asked, her voice small. Seunghyun could practically feel the indecision rolling off of her in waves, and he wondered what his brother was thinking.
“No. I want the frog. Homework for the frog,” Vick said, as if he really couldn’t care less about what Hwayoung ultimately decided.
She looked from the boy in front of her, to the school building. Then she stroked her fingers over the frog’s green face, and she hugged the toy to her chest tight. “I love you, Hopper,” she whispered to it. “Don’t worry, he’s going to take very good care of you.” She kissed it between its black button eyes, then reluctantly held it out for Vick to take.
He clasped the frog and the homework sheet together and gave Hwayoung a winning smile. “Oh yeah, I’m going to take really good care of him for you.”
Four hours later, after school was out and dinner had been served, Seunghyun left his small group of friends to find his brother. Vick didn’t hang around the other kids. It wasn’t that they didn’t like him, even though he did tend to get physical with them when they messed with his baby brother. Rather, it was that Vick obviously didn’t like any of them. People were boring, he said, always doing and talking about the same stupid things. His nose was stuck in a book more often than not, and when that wasn’t the case then Seunghyun knew he would find him in the woods, building things out of old branches and pine straw; little forts from which he could watch the others without their knowledge. Seunghyun didn’t think anything about it at the time.
After half an hour of searching, and only that long until sunset, he finally found his twin making a small pile of twigs on top of another small pile of dried pine straw. He looked over his shoulder when Seunghyun’s weight snapped a branch, and he smiled at him. In his hands was Hwayoung’s frog, Hopper, and a plastic cigarette lighter. Seunghyun’s eyes went wide.
“Where’d you get that?” he asked, pointing at the lighter.
“Took it from a volunteer. I caught him smoking outside the school, and I told him I’d get him in trouble unless he gave me this,” he smirked, holding up the blue lighter and waving it about a bit.
“Neat,” Seunghyun grinned.
Maybe the way he’d gone about it was a little wrong, but now they had a lighter. As boys, few things were more exciting than fire, and Seunghyun was nearly giddy at the thought of burning little piles of scrap paper, watching them flare up and smolder red against the damp floor of the forest. He was excited about the prospect of using the lighter, until Vick held out Hopper in one hand and dropped him into the unlit makeshift bonfire he’d created. Seunghyun furrowed his brows at that.
“What are you doing?” he questioned, moving to grab for the stuffed animal, but Vick put a hand on his shoulder and shoved him back.
“This is mine now. I can do whatever I want with it.” And then he lit the kindling. The frog went up in flames, tall flames, and Seunghyun looked on in open-mouthed shock.
“But you- you said you were going to take good care of it!” he shrieked, horrified that his brother was doing this.
“I am taking care of it. She’s too old to be playing with dolls.”
“It’s her favorite toy!” Seunghyun protested, voice falling a bit in pitch and volume as the frog burnt quickly, its eyes melting, and its fluff disintegrating.
“I know,” Vick agreed. This seemed to amuse him greatly. There was a smile on his face that made Seunghyun’s skin crawl. Who was this person? “I didn’t want it, not really. I just wanted to see what she’d do. Now I know.”
Seunghyun watched in sick fascination as Vick’s smile grew wider, and then he laughed.
“People are too easy to control. Just the right words, and I can make them,” he snapped his fingers over the fire, “do whatever I want. Isn’t that great, Seunghyun?”
But all Seunghyun could do was stare at the remains of Hopper, and wonder when his brother would set his sights on him. Something inside of him died that night, burnt in the fire with Hwayoung's frog, and he never got it back.
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“No,” he replied finally. “We’re not gonna talk about Hwayoung, and we’re not going to talk about Jiyong. In fact, unless there’s something you need, I think we’re done here.”
Vick let a small frown mar his features. “Don’t you care why I’m here? Don’t you want to know why I’ve chosen now to visit?” he asked. His gloves were still in his lap, and he made no move to put them on or to stand. Seunghyun rubbed his face in his hands and shook his head.
“I don’t care. You’ve never done anything for me in that past that wasn’t conditional, and I don’t see you dropping by just to have a heart-to-heart. So no, Vick: I don’t want to know.”
The older of the two men let his face slip back into that impassive mask he wore, and he nodded. “Fine. I’m at the W in Gwangjin-gu. Ask for a Mr. Willis in room 1532 if you decide to start acting like a brother.”
“Mr. Willis?”
“Yeah. Yippie-ki-yay, motherfucker.”
Seunghyun just rolled his eyes. “We’ll talk, Vick, I promise. Tonight’s just no good. I’ve missed you, though. You’re a real bastard, but I miss seeing your face sometimes, you know?”
Vick stood and pulled on his gloves carefully, mindful of his shiny red fingertips. “You ever look in the mirror, Seunghyun?” There was a trace of humor in his voice, and when the men looked into each other’s eyes, they smiled. Seunghyun remembered what it was like when Vick would act sentimental, whether it was real or not, and it made him feel a little better about things, if only briefly.
“Go on,” he said, standing as well and opening the door for his twin. “I’ll call you later this week, alright? How long will you be in town?”
His twin stepped out into the hallway and gave him a little smirk. “Long enough. See you later, brother.”
He turned on his heel and walked slowly down the hall, hands in the pockets of his coat. Seunghyun watched him leave with a mix of emotions, not the least of which was dread at what was to befall him, Hwayoung, Jiyong -everyone- now that Vick had shown up in his life once again.
Now that Seunghyun knew he killed people for a living.
Pairing: GTOP
Disclaimer: Fine... I own 'em (in my head. Leave me alone ::pout::)
Description: Before man's fall from Grace in the the Garden of Eden, there was no such thing as sin. This is Jiyong and Seunghyun's love story. Set 5 years before the events of The Wages of Sin.
For a moment the two older men stared at each other, Vick’s face falling into a rather apathetic expression at Seunghyun’s wide-eyed incredulity. Jiyong’s eyes darted back and forth between them. There was tension here; he could feel it, like it was some living, breathing thing.A thing with teeth, and a penchant for biting. The atmosphere made him nervous, and he wasn’t sure if he should attempt to make his way out into the hall, or if he should hide behind Seunghyun. He didn’t know a thing about Vick other than what Seunghyun had told him, and what he’d said hadn’t exactly been flattering. Now that he saw him, in the flesh, Jiyong thought his twin probably hadn’t been exaggerating when he’d said Vick could charm a snake into biting itself.
Jiyong shuddered a bit when Vick’s eyes focused back on him, and his lips suddenly turned up into another of those devilish smiles.
“Seunghyun, did you do this?” he asked, motioning to the injured boy with a flick of his gloved hand. Jiyong caught the double-entendre he’d implied and scowled.
“He didn’t beat me or fuck me, if that’s what you’re asking,” Jiyong bit out, annoyed at this total stranger’s overfamiliarity, at his nonchalance at asking such an invasive question without regard to either his or his brother’s feelings. Vick’s eyes widened a bit at his tone, but so did his smile.
“Oh, I think I like you,” he said.
He looked like Seunghyun, he sounded like Seunghyun… but apart from these he was nothing like his twin.
“Jiyong, why don’t you go back to the bathroom. You left your chain on the sink.”
Seunghyun’s eyes never left Vick. It might have ticked Jiyong off if it didn’t unnerve him so much. He nodded quickly and turned on his heel.
“Get inside before someone sees you!” he heard Seunghyun hiss… at least he was pretty sure it was Seunghyun. It wouldn’t make any sense for Vick to be saying that, would it? Oh God, he was drunk and unstable, and (though he never thought he’d say this) having two men that looked and sounded like Seunghyun in the same room was going to be a singularly unpleasant experience right now.
His jewelry was lying on the edge of the sink, right where he'd put it before Seunghyun had started to cleanse his wounds. Jiyong took a minute to stare at himself in the bathroom mirror. His face looked swollen and terrible, and the florescent lighting was not doing him any favors. he contemplated grabbing the chain and running out the door, but his insatiable curiosity always got the better of him. Instead, he left the bathroom door open and strained his ears to hear the faint murmurings of the twins in the next room.
"I told you last time you called that I didn't want to have anything more to do with you if you were still insisting on… that career choice," Seunghyun said. He sounded not only annoyed, but scared. What was it about Vick’s 'career choice' that frightened him?
"Relax, brother. I'm still on a short leash. This is my first bit of downtime in five years. I thought you'd be glad to see me."
Seunghyun huffed.
"The last time I saw you, you fucked my girlfriend and then ran away. And now you're… I can't say it. I feel sick even thinking about it, Vick. Why would you tell me anything in the first place? That's got to be against your code, or rules, or whatever you have."
Now it was Vick's turn to huff.
"The only rule I have to follow is finish the job, or die trying. That's it. Everything else is open to interpretation, and you know how much I like putting my own spin on things. Besides, you wouldn’t tell anyone, would you?"
There was a moment of silence then, and Jiyong thought now might be a good time to exit the bathroom, and possibly the apartment. As he was pocketing his chain, however, Vick spoke up again.
"That’s what I thought. So, who's the bruised and beaten queer?" he asked, voice betraying no emotion save curiosity. "Hwayoung not doing it for you anymore?"
"This is another reason you're not welcome in my home. Can't you ever just be nice?"
Jiyong could hear the smile in Vick's next words.
"Would you tell me who he is if I asked nicely?"
And that's when Jiyong decided to introduce himself rather than listen to the men talk about him. He shoved his silver chain and piercings into his front pocket, and then he rounded the corner into the living room.
“You guys know this place is tiny, and I could hear everything you said, right?” he asked, not waiting for an answer from the two identical males who were giving him two different versions of the ‘surprised’ face. Vick’s eyebrows were raised high; Jiyong wondered if that was his only facial expression. Seunghyun’s eyes were wide, but darted away when Jiyong looked at him. He sighed and cocked his head toward Vick.
“I’m Jiyong. Kwon Jiyong. And I have to go now.”
Seunghyun started to raise himself from his seat on the couch, but Jiyong held up a hand and shook his head.
“I’ll be fine. Stay and talk to your brother. From what you told me, this is rare, so just stay,” he said, the last few words unintentionally coming out like a plea. “And thanks for helping me tonight, hyung.”
Without another word he slipped out the door into the 3rd floor hallway. He took a minute, once he’d reached the stairwell, to put his head in his hands and take several deep breaths. This was not what he’d wanted to happen tonight, not at all. All he’d wanted was to give Seunghyun a copy of his drawing and maybe receive a hug in return. Instead he’d gotten the living shit kicked out of him, and then he’d kissed the man who’d tended to his injuries. He’d fucking kissed him. He couldn’t take that back, and he couldn’t forget the guilty look in Seunghyun’s eyes when he’d pulled away and reminded him he had a girlfriend.
Jiyong would be the last person to say he had good judgment. He knew he was rash, and impulsive, and he let his hormones and emotions rule him more often than not. But kissing Seunghyun hadn’t just been rash, impulsive, and hormone-driven, it had been stupid as well. Things like this could end friendships. Things like this, had Seunghyun been anyone else, could also get him beaten up… again.
He let out the breath he’d been holding in a shuddering sigh, and ran his fingertips lightly over his swollen cheek. What he needed to do now was go home, get some rest, and plan what he was going to tell Junsuk at work tomorrow. He wasn’t even sure Junsuk would let him work looking the way he did. The frown that pulled the corners of his lips down also pulled the skin under his Buttercup Band-Aid, and he felt for it with shaky fingers. In a moment of overwhelming self-pity, he ripped the plaster from his skin, folded it in thirds, and stuck it in the pocket of his grimy jacket. He didn’t want to see that reminder of Seunghyun the next time he looked in the mirror.
Jiyong ran all the way home. It hurt; his ribs ached, and every muscle and joint in his body protested the pace, but he was too afraid of what awaited him in the darkened alleyways to stop. By the time he made it back to his apartment, tears of pain and frustration were rolling down his cheeks.
Why hadn’t he just gone home in the first place?
Why had he walked all the way to Seunghyun’s, bleeding and broken?
What had he expected to happen when he showed up drunk and injured?
Why had he kissed him?
The spray of the shower stung his tender flesh, but Jiyong scrubbed himself clean despite the pain. He didn’t bother toweling himself off before slipping under the covers of his bed, naked and shivering in the cold. Jiyong drifted off into a fitful sleep with those same four questions on his mind.
But it never occurred to him to wonder why Seunghyun had kissed him back.
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Seunghyun watched Jiyong dart out of his apartment with a pained look on his face. He was truly at a loss. One half of him wanted to race down the hallway and tell the boy to come back inside, to apologize for acting so out of line by letting him… by returning his kiss. The other half of him wished he had a teleportation device with which to zap Jiyong to the other side of the planet so he would never have to interact with his brother ever again.
It wasn’t that Seunghyun didn’t love Vick. For all the terrible, selfish things he’d witnessed his twin do over the years, he’d performed the (very) occasional kindness that temporarily redeemed his image. Seunghyun loved his brother, but he was also the closest thing to evil he’d ever known. They walked a thin line between love and hate, and at times like these, when Vick’s presence only complicated matters, that precarious balance began to tip more toward ‘hate’.
“Why don’t you go after him? You clearly want to,” Vick said, voice flat. Seunghyun had always found it frustrating that his brother was so unreadable. Was he mocking him, or was he being sincere? Ever the optimist, Seunghyun decided to give Vick the benefit of the doubt. He sat back on the sofa and ran his hands through his black hair.
“Yeah, well, that’s not what he wants,” he shrugged.
“So?” The notion of empathy seemed to amuse Vick.
“So I’m going to let him go home and sleep. You saw his face. He needs to rest in order for those injuries to heal.”
Vick leaned forward and decided to remove his black gloves. Seunghyun watched him pluck at the fingers, then draw off each leather covering gently, as if doing so pained him. When his hands were free of their casing, he saw why: Vick’s fingertips were red and peeling.
“Oh my God, Vick,” he breathed, blinking at the abused flesh dumbly. “What the… why are-”
“I’m a ghost,” Vick said with a grim smirk on his face. “Ghosts don’t have fingerprints. And don’t change the subject. We were talking about your little friend.”
Seunghyun sighed and leaned his head back against the cushions of the couch. Things with Vick were never easy, and they rarely went his way. This time wasn’t looking any different.
“Ask me nicely,” he said, throwing Vick’s words from earlier back at him. He cracked open an eye to find his brother staring at him, stonefaced.
“Oh my dearest brother, won’t you tell me who your whorish-looking friend is… please?”
Seunghyun snapped his head forward, then stood to his full height over his twin.
“His name is Jiyong. You know that. Use it, or next time I’m kicking your ass out of my home.”
Vick’s mask slipped, and he squinted up at his brother in glee.
“Think you can?”
“I can damn well try.”
The man in black sat back in the loveseat, fingers hovering over the arms, but never touching, and then he turned his hands palm-up in a gesture of surrender. Vick was fond of games of dominance, and even more fond of pushing Seunghyun into flares of emotional outburst. This one he could count as a draw.
“Fine. I’ll behave. Tell me about Jiyong. He looks… interesting.”
Seunghyun took his seat again, but kept the slight scowl on his face. “He saved me from a mugger a few months ago.”
Vick actually seemed surprised, genuinely surprised, by that information, but didn’t say a word.
“And then a few weeks later I saved him from being raped.”
“Now that I can believe. He is awfully rapeable,” Vick chuckled.
“That’s not funny. Not at all,” his twin spat. “It’s disgusting.”
“Humor is such a subjective thing,” Vick sighed, shrugging. “So you were even after that. Why do you two keep seeing each other? Is he a buyer? Seller?”
Seunghyun shook his head. Now they were getting into a subject to which Seunghyun himself hadn’t given much thought. He’d continued seeing Jiyong because the teen was vivacious, and full of energy, and he just… liked him. He had a foul mouth, but Seunghyun found it strangely endearing to watch the pink-haired spitfire curse like a sailor when he lost at an arcade game, or when he forgot the lyrics to a song they were trying (and failing) to sing. He was many things Seunghyun himself was not, but their disparities complemented each other rather than drove them apart.
He’d hardly realized he’d been voicing these things until another of Vick’s chortles reached his ears.
“If I didn’t know better, I’d say you were in love with the kid.”
Seunghyun looked into Vick’s black eyes to find no trace of malice there, just general amusement at his declarations.
“Don’t be ridiculous. I have a girlfriend.”
“Hmm,” Vick intoned, unconvinced but apparently unwilling to delve too deeply into that particular topic just yet. “So you keep saying. Where is Hwayoung, anyway?” he asked, head swiveling about as if he expected her to come flying at him from around the corner.
“She’s out. Won’t be back until tomorrow,” Seunghyun replied. Something in his voice must have caught Vick’s attention, because his eyes narrowed, and then he smiled his most disingenuous smile.
“Trouble in paradise? I’ll bet. What’d she do, insult your little fr- Jiyong?”
Seunghyun didn’t even notice Vick’s near slip-of-the-tongue. His twin was too perceptive, eerily so, and his words hit too close to the truth. All Seunghyun could do was frown and nod. Would it hurt to tell him about Hwayoung’s increasingly erratic and vicious behavior? Vick wouldn’t care, he never cared… why should this time be any different?
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He could still remember the first time he realized something about Vick was wrong. It was a few months after Hwayoung had come to the orphanage. Since Seunghyun, and by virtue of association, Vick (though that had not been his name at the time), had befriended her, she stuck to their sides like glue. They were her playmates, her confidants, her brothers. She came to them whenever she had a problem she couldn’t solve herself.
So when she trudged, sniffling and red-faced, over to where the boys were building a grand sandcastle in the sandbox, Seunghyun immediately asked what was wrong.
“I forgot to do my math homework, and if I don’t turn it in Lee-seonsangnim will p-punish me,” she wailed, her little hands gripping the stuffed green frog to which she was so attached. “But I can’t do it in time for class.”
Seunghyun patted her back comfortingly. “I’m sure it won’t be that bad,” he said, looking to Vick in askance, but the other boy just shrugged his shoulders and turned back to the sandcastle.
“She’s mean, Hyunnie! She… I was late to class yesterday, and she hit me. Forgetting homework is worse than being tardy, isn’t it?” Her lips trembled as she spoke. Hwayoung was terrified, and Seunghyun didn’t know what to do.
“Give your homework to me. I’ll do it for you,” Vick said. The look on his face said he was annoyed, but at what, Seunghyun wasn’t certain.
Hwayoung lit up in a huge, gap-toothed grin, and Seunghyun lamented being the chubby, stupid twin for the thousandth time in his life. It wasn’t fair that Vick was so slim, even if they had the same face otherwise. His brain also worked in a way Seunghyun wished his own did. He’d never felt more jealous, though, as when Hwayoung looked at him with stars in her eyes like she was doing now.
“Thank you!” she cried. She uncrumpled a sheet of paper from where she’d tucked it into the front pocket of her dress, and held it out at arm’s length. “I don’t have a pencil, though.”
Vick eyed the stuffed animal in her arms, and a look flashed across his face.
“I have a pen,” he said as he grabbed the paper, eyes never leaving the little green frog. “Hey, Hwayoung… is that your favorite toy?” he asked, head cocked to the side.
Hwayoung nodded.
“Can I have it?”
The girl frowned. “But… you don’t like stuffed animals,” she protested, not understanding yet what or why the boy was asking this of her.
“Yeah, but it’s only fair, right? If I do your homework for you, you’ve got to give me something in return, and I want that,” he said, motioning to it.
“Can’t I… will you take something else?” Hwayoung asked, her voice small. Seunghyun could practically feel the indecision rolling off of her in waves, and he wondered what his brother was thinking.
“No. I want the frog. Homework for the frog,” Vick said, as if he really couldn’t care less about what Hwayoung ultimately decided.
She looked from the boy in front of her, to the school building. Then she stroked her fingers over the frog’s green face, and she hugged the toy to her chest tight. “I love you, Hopper,” she whispered to it. “Don’t worry, he’s going to take very good care of you.” She kissed it between its black button eyes, then reluctantly held it out for Vick to take.
He clasped the frog and the homework sheet together and gave Hwayoung a winning smile. “Oh yeah, I’m going to take really good care of him for you.”
Four hours later, after school was out and dinner had been served, Seunghyun left his small group of friends to find his brother. Vick didn’t hang around the other kids. It wasn’t that they didn’t like him, even though he did tend to get physical with them when they messed with his baby brother. Rather, it was that Vick obviously didn’t like any of them. People were boring, he said, always doing and talking about the same stupid things. His nose was stuck in a book more often than not, and when that wasn’t the case then Seunghyun knew he would find him in the woods, building things out of old branches and pine straw; little forts from which he could watch the others without their knowledge. Seunghyun didn’t think anything about it at the time.
After half an hour of searching, and only that long until sunset, he finally found his twin making a small pile of twigs on top of another small pile of dried pine straw. He looked over his shoulder when Seunghyun’s weight snapped a branch, and he smiled at him. In his hands was Hwayoung’s frog, Hopper, and a plastic cigarette lighter. Seunghyun’s eyes went wide.
“Where’d you get that?” he asked, pointing at the lighter.
“Took it from a volunteer. I caught him smoking outside the school, and I told him I’d get him in trouble unless he gave me this,” he smirked, holding up the blue lighter and waving it about a bit.
“Neat,” Seunghyun grinned.
Maybe the way he’d gone about it was a little wrong, but now they had a lighter. As boys, few things were more exciting than fire, and Seunghyun was nearly giddy at the thought of burning little piles of scrap paper, watching them flare up and smolder red against the damp floor of the forest. He was excited about the prospect of using the lighter, until Vick held out Hopper in one hand and dropped him into the unlit makeshift bonfire he’d created. Seunghyun furrowed his brows at that.
“What are you doing?” he questioned, moving to grab for the stuffed animal, but Vick put a hand on his shoulder and shoved him back.
“This is mine now. I can do whatever I want with it.” And then he lit the kindling. The frog went up in flames, tall flames, and Seunghyun looked on in open-mouthed shock.
“But you- you said you were going to take good care of it!” he shrieked, horrified that his brother was doing this.
“I am taking care of it. She’s too old to be playing with dolls.”
“It’s her favorite toy!” Seunghyun protested, voice falling a bit in pitch and volume as the frog burnt quickly, its eyes melting, and its fluff disintegrating.
“I know,” Vick agreed. This seemed to amuse him greatly. There was a smile on his face that made Seunghyun’s skin crawl. Who was this person? “I didn’t want it, not really. I just wanted to see what she’d do. Now I know.”
Seunghyun watched in sick fascination as Vick’s smile grew wider, and then he laughed.
“People are too easy to control. Just the right words, and I can make them,” he snapped his fingers over the fire, “do whatever I want. Isn’t that great, Seunghyun?”
But all Seunghyun could do was stare at the remains of Hopper, and wonder when his brother would set his sights on him. Something inside of him died that night, burnt in the fire with Hwayoung's frog, and he never got it back.
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“No,” he replied finally. “We’re not gonna talk about Hwayoung, and we’re not going to talk about Jiyong. In fact, unless there’s something you need, I think we’re done here.”
Vick let a small frown mar his features. “Don’t you care why I’m here? Don’t you want to know why I’ve chosen now to visit?” he asked. His gloves were still in his lap, and he made no move to put them on or to stand. Seunghyun rubbed his face in his hands and shook his head.
“I don’t care. You’ve never done anything for me in that past that wasn’t conditional, and I don’t see you dropping by just to have a heart-to-heart. So no, Vick: I don’t want to know.”
The older of the two men let his face slip back into that impassive mask he wore, and he nodded. “Fine. I’m at the W in Gwangjin-gu. Ask for a Mr. Willis in room 1532 if you decide to start acting like a brother.”
“Mr. Willis?”
“Yeah. Yippie-ki-yay, motherfucker.”
Seunghyun just rolled his eyes. “We’ll talk, Vick, I promise. Tonight’s just no good. I’ve missed you, though. You’re a real bastard, but I miss seeing your face sometimes, you know?”
Vick stood and pulled on his gloves carefully, mindful of his shiny red fingertips. “You ever look in the mirror, Seunghyun?” There was a trace of humor in his voice, and when the men looked into each other’s eyes, they smiled. Seunghyun remembered what it was like when Vick would act sentimental, whether it was real or not, and it made him feel a little better about things, if only briefly.
“Go on,” he said, standing as well and opening the door for his twin. “I’ll call you later this week, alright? How long will you be in town?”
His twin stepped out into the hallway and gave him a little smirk. “Long enough. See you later, brother.”
He turned on his heel and walked slowly down the hall, hands in the pockets of his coat. Seunghyun watched him leave with a mix of emotions, not the least of which was dread at what was to befall him, Hwayoung, Jiyong -everyone- now that Vick had shown up in his life once again.
Now that Seunghyun knew he killed people for a living.