Super Junior {various pairings ; High Technology (15/?)}
Title: High Technology (15/?)
Fandom: Super Junior (AU, !cyberpunk)
Pairing: Siwon/Sungmin, Hankyung/Heechul, Kyuhyun/Zhou Mi, Kangin/Eeteuk, Kibum/Donghae, Yehsung/Ryeowook, other pairings implied.
Word count: 4,394
Rating: PG-13
Summary: The micro-chips let the government keep tabs on your every move; the video cameras let the government know when they need to start paying attention. Get rid of the chip in the back of your brain and you can slip under the radar, and do whatever the hell you like. It's not like they're the bad guys, but it's not like they're the good guys, either.
A/N: I've done that thing again where I'm planned everything I want to write at the end, and have no real way/understanding of getting to that point. I do this with everything. It's my major writing flaw. But I seriously want to get as much of this done before Nanowrimo starts (I said this last year r.e. mutant!au and that worked out well). I don't understand why this fic keeps growing. It's not the kind of reality I wanted at all.
High Technology (15/?)
Sungmin and Siwon had made their way back to the orphanage after Kyuhyun had dismissed them for the day. It seemed like they'd both gone there without even really thinking or talking about it, some sort of subconscious agreement, but in reality, Siwon had merely followed Sungmin's footsteps, placing all his trust in him for that short space of time. It was easier to do that than try to think for himself.
The women at the orphanage were not so happy to see them this time around. No doubt they had heard rumours too. Neither of them were particularly good catches now that one of their old friends was on a murderous rampage. Still, they said yes when Siwon asked if they could spend a couple of nights there, arranging for them to have their own room at the back of the building. There was not so much a bed as a collection of throws on the ground, but it would do until they found somewhere more permanent -- if they managed to do so.
Siwon sat Kaechan in his lap, letting her play with his fingers, as he watched Sungmin at the window. He was frowning, like something about the view bothered him, index finger tapping the wood. They sat in silence for a good ten minutes, Sungmin lost in thought, Kaechan beginning to struggle on Siwon's lap, restless and possibly hungry. She stuck one of his fingers in her mouth. Wincing, he pulled it out and got to his feet. "I'm going to see if they've got any milk ready," he said.
"He's going to try to rescue him," Sungmin said suddenly.
Siwon stopped, Kaechan reaching up for his hair, hands just coming short of it. "Who, Hankyung-hyung?"
"No." Sungmin shook his head, turning to face Siwon. The frown had fallen away, but he still looked worried and thoughtful. "Kyuhyun."
"You really think so?" Siwon was doubtful; Kyuhyun might have proven that Heechul was simply being controlled, but he had definitely seemed more bothered by the prospect of being attacked than going for any heroic rescue.
"I have an inkling. I think he's got some sort of a complex about these kind of things. You know. Like he's so guilty about what he did to Zhou Mi that he'll try, no matter how roundabout his methods are, to help other people."
"But that's good, surely." Siwon shifted Kaechan onto his other hip, where it was harder for her to reach his hair. She settled against his shoulder, toothless gums chewing his collar. "Wanting to rescue Heechul-hyung is a good thing."
"Is it?" Sungmin caught the expression on his face, and threw his hands up, as if Siwon was about to physically attack him. "No, no, it is. But I'm worried about it all. There must be something that we don't understand yet. Why did they choose Heechul? Why have they chosen to do it now? There must be something that we're missing, and it's bugging me that we don't know."
"Can you ever really know what those people are thinking?"
"But this seems deliberate, somehow. Heechul has history with that place. It's not that they just randomly chose one of us. It's not the same as if they took me, or, I don't know, Kibum. It's the person most likely to be affected by being back there. The person that we were most likely to doubt because of his mental state."
"Why wouldn't it be the same if they took you?" Siwon said blankly.
Sungmin smiled, and shook his head. "Go feed her. I'm just talking in circles, and you're focusing on the wrong thing."
"You'll never be the wrong thing."
A roll of the eyes. "Seriously, go feed her before either one of us starts to cry."
Siwon smiled, and left the room, heading to the kitchen to see how much milk he could find. It was somewhat of a hard-find at the best of times, and now that the market was gone, heaven only knew where people would get it.
Bouncing Kaechan in his arms as he walked, he wondered idly what would happen to her if they were killed trying to rescue Heechul.
"You do realise that it was actually idiotic, right?" Shindong asked, cutting the engine to the van and twisting in his seat. "Not just because of what Sungmin pointed out. I mean, neither of you can drive. What the hell were you expecting to do?"
Kyuhyun groaned, knees pulled up to his chest on the desk chair, face hidden. He waved a couple of fingers in Shindong's direction. Zhou Mi muttered something in his sleep and turned over. "I had you," Kyuhyun said in a muffled voice. "I knew you could drive us places."
"Only because I realised what an idiot you were being. Come on, Kyuhyun. Starting thinking."
"Who are you, my mother?" Kyuhyun looked up, some dark on his face, which cleared quickly, leaving behind only dark shadows under his eyes.
"You're too tired to think straight, Kyuhyun."
"What the hell am I supposed to do about it though?"
"Sleep?" Shindong flicked his finger against Kyuhyun's forehead, not giving a damn about the swat at his side as he slid past Kyuhyun's chair to start messing with the futon that they had rolled up back there. He stretched it out -- there was now not much floor space at all, if any -- and then with a flourish he billowed out the sheets and caught Zhou Mi straight across the face. He batted at it, and then sat bolt-upright.
"Kui Xian?" he asked frantically, apparently lost as to where he'd found himself. Kyuhyun stretched across and took his hand. Zhou Mi's eyes searched his face. "I thought you'd gone," he said soberly.
"No, still here," Kyuhyun said. He didn't comment on Zhou Mi's strange reaction, so Shindong didn't say anything. "I'm going to have a nap though, so you should go back to sleep."
"Wazzafray," Zhou Mi said, and slumped back onto the bed, already asleep before his head hit the pillow.
Rolling his eyes at Shindong, Kyuhyun crawled onto the futon. "Just an hour," he said, already most of the way asleep.
"Promise," said Shindong, crossing his fingers behind his back.
Now that Kyuhyun was sleeping, he settled into the desk chair, keeping one eye on the monitor showing the area around the van, while searching through the television channels until he came to the official news broadcast.
The fire from the market wasn't something that even the privileged over in the nice section of time had been able to ignore, but the news was simply stating that a fire had broken out in an abandoned building. There, the newsreader seemed to say, with her solemn smile and demure suit, you don't need to worry about that anymore.
And over in the warm, well-lit houses in their straight streets lined with trees and greenery, people nodded, reassured. They didn't need to worry about it. It didn't concern them. Who cares if something caught fire in the places that they don't go into? So then they switched the television off and -- shit, Shindong remembered it so well -- the children do their homework, and the parents talked about their days.
Of course, not everyone had the patriarchal father. Many of them did, of course; you could spot them by their wives. Always the mousy ones, who hovered behind their husbands no matter what. You could even tell from their kids, sometimes. The boys were always self-assured, the girls never lifted their eyes from the floor.
He was so lost in his thoughts about a past that he usually tried to keep far from his mind that he missed the knock on the door of the van, and nearly shot Yehsung in the head when the door opened. "Jesus Christ!" Yehsung yelped, diving out of range of the gun that Shindong was pointing at him. "I knocked!"
"Sorry, sorry." Shindong put his gun down on the table, one hand over his racing heart. "I didn't hear."
Yehsung clambered in, tip-toeing around Kyuhyun's body on the floor. "How long as he been out?" he asked, looking down at it. Zhou Mi's arm had slipped off the bed and was smushed against Kyuhyun's face, but he hadn't woken up.
"About twenty minutes. He said to only leave him for an hour, but I think I might mistime it and leave him until tomorrow morning."
"If he complains, tell him that the resident doctor ordered it." Yehsung took the seat next to him, their knees pressed together. "Kind of cramped in here, huh?"
"I hadn't really noticed."
Yehsung grinned, turning his head a little so he could half-see the television. "Watching the news?"
"In a manner of speaking. It's on, so I guess I'm watching."
"Anything to do with Heechul?"
"Only the fire, but they came up with a bullshit excuse for that. No one who watches these things is going to bother with that."
They sat in silence for a while, Yehsung watching the television. Eventually he said, "I found a place to stay."
Shindong, arms stretched above his head, said, "Oh, really?"
"Yeah, it's this little...room, I guess. It's just off the old library, you know?" Shindong nodded. They knew it was a library because a sign on the outside said it was. The inside had been completely gutted, all the books either destroyed in the purges or burned for warmth by various people, and now it was the home of a collection of the homeless. "Down an alley. It's got this curtain stretched over the front. Donghae and Heechul--" He stopped, gave a tight smile. "Yeah, it's there."
"Ryeowook with you?"
"Yeah." Yehsung reached out and switched the television off. It was showing some sort of game show, probably an old re-run from back when things like that were still made, with all of the actual funny parts cut out. "The library is where a lot of the people from the market are migrating to. Minho, Taemin and Onew ended up there, and Key's badgering to join them."
"If Heechul goes after either of them again, then other people will get caught up in the crossfire."
"Yeah, that's what I tried to tell him. Jonghyun won't allow it anyway. Key's still in too much pain to be on the move. I don't have enough painkillers to help him that much though." He searched through his pockets and pulled out a packet of tablets. "Sleeping pills," he said to Shindong's curious look. "For if Kyuhyun says that he absolutely is unable to sleep. We can't have him running on no sleep, not now."
"Why?" asked Shindong, as if he didn't know why. "What are we doing now?"
Yehsung gave him a blank, despairing look. "Don't act innocent with me. You know as well as I do that we're going after Heechul."
"I had an idea," Shindong said with a shrug. "You know. That we would be. Seeing as we all love him. God only knows why when he insists on taking my car for rides around the city."
"And when he keeps stealing all the sleeping pills I reserve for Ryeowook," Yehsung said. "I don't get it either but there we are." He stretched, and stood up. "I should get back. I just wanted you to let people know where I am."
"Fine. We'll still be here tomorrow, at least."
"Great," called Yehsung, already swinging himself out of the van. Zhou Mi's eyes fluttered but he didn't open them. Yehsung closed the door behind him and started back to where he'd set up his temporary surgery. There was no electricity in the room, and no way of heating it up, but the place held important memories for him, and he hadn't been able to think of anywhere else to go. Ryeowook seemed to think that choosing a place to set up was his privilege, and so hadn't suggested anywhere of his own.
When Yehsung pushed back the curtain of the new surgery, Ryeowook was asleep, piled under a selection of blankets. Key was also asleep, but lying between Jonghyun's legs, who was eating some sort of snack. He held it out to Yehsung. A large, dry biscuit of some kind, that looked pretty unappetizing. "Want some?" he asked cheerfully.
"Pass," said Yehsung. He pulled a blanket further up on Ryeowook, then sank down next to him. "Where did you get that?"
"Went to see Taemin," Jonghyun shrugged. He saw that Yehsung was about to interrupt. "Don't worry, I didn't tell him where we're staying. Key was just bugging me to find out if they were okay, so I went to meet them. He gave me it."
"They're okay? They don't need treatment?"
"No, they're fine."
"Good. How was Key while I was away?"
"He complained of some pain, but it hadn't been that long since he'd taken some other pills, so we held off and eventually it seemed to pass."
"Great."
Silence stretched on, the only sound the noise of Jonghyun's snack crunching. There was some movement from Key, and then his hand reached up and pulled on Jonghyun's collar like a vice. He looked down at what Key signed at him, then said, "Hey, you have anything to drink?"
"Uh, sure." Yehsung reached over for the bag of things Ryeowook had packed, and pulled a bottle of water out and tossed it over to Jonghyun. He unscrewed the lid and tried to hold it to Key's mouth, who rolled his eyes and took it off him to drink from normally.
Ryeowook moved in his sleep, and one of the blankets fell off him. Yehsung took his chance, shifting all of them until he too could lie down, Ryeowook's body tucked in around him. "Jonghyun," he said. Jonghyun looked up, the last part of his snack sticking out of his mouth. Yehsung fought down a smile. "Listen, Ryeowook has a tendency to, well, sometimes he gets nightmares, and sometimes he can scream. If he wakes you up, don't worry about it."
Jonghyun cracked a smile that was completely devoid of humour, a strange look on his face. He was usually always in good humour. "Hyung, we lived in the market. You guys never saw what could happen down there at night. Screaming, at least, is something we learnt to sleep through."
Slightly disturbed by this news, Yehsung just nodded, and lay down, turning on his side and pulling the blankets in around him. Ryeowook mumbled, and shifted so that his head somehow found itself under Yehsung's chin. Before he fell asleep, Yehsung cracked open an eye and found Jonghyun signing something with over-the-top hand movements, Key's mouth stretched into a wide grin, and Yehsung really, really hoped that soon they'd be that carefree again.
SIX YEARS EARLIER
He stumbled through the streets, dripping blood onto the pavement. A couple of beggars lurched forward at him, then saw the knife he still held in his hands, and shied back again. It wasn't as though Shindong was threatening them with it, but they knew better than to attack someone with a ready weapon. He looked like enough of a threat anyway, coated in blood and spilling some of his own to boot.
He didn't know where he was. His panic had carried him there, his brain imagining the screech of Institution sirens with every footsteps. He told himself that they wouldn't come after him, and it was probably true; what interest would they have with the son of a family that lived on the margins, someone who had no reason to come to their attention, even if said son had just killed his father.
He could still feel the sting of the blows against his body as he tried to put as much distance between him and the house he'd lived in. The knife that he still clung to had made some marks on his own body before he'd used it for his own ends, but he was too scared to stop and take stock of them.
He didn't notice, either, how the street lamps faded off, as beggars became more and more frequent. Average his family may have been, but they still lived in a manner different to this. His family had courted the interests of the upper families, his mother always trying to make their family more than what they were.
It was her that he could hear ringing in his ears now, tripping his way unthinkingly into the darkest part of the city. Her screams. Her despair. It hadn't started with her, though she had been shouting at the beginning to. It had started with his sister, only fourteen, screaming and screaming as their father lashed out in a drunken rage. How many times had they been in that situation? Jinhee screaming, his mother shouting for him to stop, Shindong trying to restrain him.
But knives? They'd never featured in the situations that occurred almost every night. Just how far gone had his father been when he'd snatched the blade up off the kitchen table? And how blindly had Donghee leapt in front of it to shield his sister, trying to grab the weapon before it could do any damage?
And how, how had it then ended up in his own hands, plunging over and over again into his father's body? That had been when his mother had started screaming.
He wasn't watching where he was going, and caught the shoulder of a young man walking in the opposite direction. It was glancing at best, but the man fell backwards onto the floor, looking stunned. Shindong wouldn't have noticed it if the man next to him hadn't immediately yanked the back of his collar, while demanding, "What the fuck are you doing, fatso?"
Shindong panicked. He turned, flinging out the arm with the knife. If it had been a real attacker, he wouldn't have done that well; the man, with a shaved head and a tattoo on his neck, simply grabbed his wrist and practically crushed it to make Shindong drop it. Feeling confused, and lost, and completely vulnerable, Shindong sank down to the floor alongside the man he had knocked there.
The man still standing bent down and picked the knife up, tucking it away somewhere. "Weirdo," he muttered, and held a hand out for the other man to take. He took it gratefully, but while the other one tried to stalk away, he stayed still, looking down at Shindong. "Come on, Sungmin, we don't have time for this."
"No, hyung--" The other man leaned over to look Shindong in the eyes. He was very thin, cheeks almost hollow. "Are you okay?" he asked in a voice that was soft and nonthreatening. "Is any of that blood yours?"
The older one made a despairing noise. "You're too nice, Sungmin. The guy knocked you down and tried to stab me. And look at him," -- seeing the way Shindong was struggling to form words -- "he can't even talk."
Sungmin straightened up. "Do you always have to be such a brute?" he wanted to know.
"Yah, who do you think you are, Eeteuk-hyung?" The unnamed man rubbed a hand at the side of his head, then addressed Shindong. "Hey, you're not hurt, are you?" Shindong still didn't say anything. "See, he's not. Let's go."
"I think I killed someone," Shindong blurted out.
"Uh, that's nice."
"Kangin-hyung, you seriously -- Are you okay? Do you need any help?"
Shindong could, now that he'd stopped, feel the pain of various injuries, the cuts and bruises that the night have given him. He didn't know the people in front of him at all, but then he didn't know where he was, or what he was supposed to do now. He didn't know if his dad would survive or not, and either way, he couldn't, and didn't want to, go back home. Swallowing his pride and his fears, he said, "Yeah. I need some help."
CURRENT DAY
"Ooof," said Eunhyuk, as Donghae tried to lower him into a chair and only managed to drop him. Wincing, he reached behind him and pulled out an empty glass bottle. He put it down on the floor, and glanced at Kibum who was standing in the doorway. He was simply staring, blank.
It took Kibum another couple of minutes before he was able to step into the room. Donghae was flitting around the place, moving most of the furniture to the walls, clearing a large space in the middle of the room. Clouds of dust drifted into the air, making Eunhyuk cough, a pained expression on his face as he clutched at his ribs. When Kibum eventually did step inside, Donghae turned to give him a wide smile.
"Eunhyuk can sleep down here," he said. "There are rooms upstairs, right?"
"Yes," Kibum said slowly. "Though I'll have to clean them."
"I'll help!" Donghae said. His cheerful nature usually reassured Kibum; it was like Kibum didn't need to speak when Donghae was willing to do all the talking, but today, back in this house, Kibum didn't think he could handle it. Part of him was pissed off that they were intruding like this, even while he knew that he'd offered the place as a shelter.
He hadn't made the climb up the stairs in three years, and the stairs creaked a lot more than he remembered. The paintings that hung on the walls were crooked, and one of them, a blown up photograph of his mother, lay on the floor. He picked it up and lay it back against the wall. Donghae didn't say anything.
There were three rooms on the first floor, and Donghae attempted to enter the first one on his left, which had been boarded up at one point. Kibum reached out a hand and gripped his forearm, almost too hard. "No," he said.
"Oh." Donghae took a step back, and swept his hair from his face. "Is that where..."
"Yes." Kibum averted his gaze from the open doorway. He knew what would be in there anyway; empty syringes, half-eaten meals that would be rotting by now, a mess of clothes and blankets that he'd thrown around in his pain at the withdrawals. He let go of Donghae's arm and walked forward an amount.
He stopped in front of a room whose door was closed. It had been his mother's room. What had happened to her body? She surely wasn't still here, the smell of it would fill the entire house. Maybe someone had come and taken her away, some kind neighbour, or maybe even just looters. But still, he was too scared to open it in case she was still in there, a decomposing mess.
"We'll avoid this room too," he said, and walked down to the end of the hallway where there was the spare bedroom that had once belonged to his brother before he'd been killed. There was a double bed in there, a cupboard that he opened to reveal clothes practically covered in moths. He slammed it shut again and there was a screeching noise as Donghae shoved open the window behind him.
"Only this room?" he asked. "Both of us in the same bed?"
"It's not like we haven't shared a bed, hyung," Kibum said. He felt exhausted being back in this place, and so flopped down backwards onto the bed. The springs creaked, one of them digging into his back. They sure as hell weren't going to be comfortable here.
"I know that, but I didn't know if you'd want--"
Sometimes Kibum really hated the ways that they found to keep fooling the other one into thinking that what they had wasn't serious. This stuttering, faltering, half-hearted way of never quite saying what they wanted to say; it made Kibum angry and stressed and, most of all, it hurt, when he knew that he was more in love than he'd ever been before in his life.
"Kibum, are you okay with us being here?"
Kibum opened his eyes, hands behind his head, to look at Donghae leaning against the window frame. "I asked you to come, didn't I?"
"I know but you don't seem happy about it. I don't want to intrude, and I'm sure Eunhyuk doesn't either."
Kibum shrugged. "It's not you being here that I'm not happy about. It's being here full stop."
"Then why are we?"
Kibum closed his eyes again. "Because I couldn't think of anywhere else to go, of course."
A shout from Eunhyuk below drew Donghae's attention, and he left the room without saying anything else. Kibum got the feeling that his flippant attitude had annoyed Donghae a little, but so long as he stopped asking questions, he didn't care.
The truth was that there was a reason they were back at the house that he'd grown up in. He'd been surprised to see that it hadn't been occupied by anyone, not even some of the homeless, but then maybe the taint of death still hung around it. What had happened there was probably still too fresh in people's minds. It had only been three years, after all.
He had demons that he needed to face, and he knew that by coming here, he would be forced to look them in the eyes. He had no doubt that some of the others would be doing the same thing, and he wondered if they'd do better than him. He didn't think he was capable of going into the room that he'd been locked in three years earlier. There would be too many reminders of the mistakes he'd made in the past, and possibly, too much temptation. There was a reason he never did any business with the drug dens.
Sighing, he rolled on his side, looking at the dusty window. Sharing a bed with Donghae. Maybe it wouldn't come to that. Maybe Donghae would choose to sleep downstairs with Eunhyuk. A thought like that should have raised some jealousy, but instead it made him feel relieved. There would be no pressure, then. He wouldn't have to awkwardly re-categorise their relationship like he had done the last time Donghae had crawled into his bed when they hadn't even had sex. It seemed to bring a level of normalcy to their relationship that he didn't think Donghae would be willing to follow up on.
Fandom: Super Junior (AU, !cyberpunk)
Pairing: Siwon/Sungmin, Hankyung/Heechul, Kyuhyun/Zhou Mi, Kangin/Eeteuk, Kibum/Donghae, Yehsung/Ryeowook, other pairings implied.
Word count: 4,394
Rating: PG-13
Summary: The micro-chips let the government keep tabs on your every move; the video cameras let the government know when they need to start paying attention. Get rid of the chip in the back of your brain and you can slip under the radar, and do whatever the hell you like. It's not like they're the bad guys, but it's not like they're the good guys, either.
A/N: I've done that thing again where I'm planned everything I want to write at the end, and have no real way/understanding of getting to that point. I do this with everything. It's my major writing flaw. But I seriously want to get as much of this done before Nanowrimo starts (I said this last year r.e. mutant!au and that worked out well). I don't understand why this fic keeps growing. It's not the kind of reality I wanted at all.
High Technology (15/?)
Sungmin and Siwon had made their way back to the orphanage after Kyuhyun had dismissed them for the day. It seemed like they'd both gone there without even really thinking or talking about it, some sort of subconscious agreement, but in reality, Siwon had merely followed Sungmin's footsteps, placing all his trust in him for that short space of time. It was easier to do that than try to think for himself.
The women at the orphanage were not so happy to see them this time around. No doubt they had heard rumours too. Neither of them were particularly good catches now that one of their old friends was on a murderous rampage. Still, they said yes when Siwon asked if they could spend a couple of nights there, arranging for them to have their own room at the back of the building. There was not so much a bed as a collection of throws on the ground, but it would do until they found somewhere more permanent -- if they managed to do so.
Siwon sat Kaechan in his lap, letting her play with his fingers, as he watched Sungmin at the window. He was frowning, like something about the view bothered him, index finger tapping the wood. They sat in silence for a good ten minutes, Sungmin lost in thought, Kaechan beginning to struggle on Siwon's lap, restless and possibly hungry. She stuck one of his fingers in her mouth. Wincing, he pulled it out and got to his feet. "I'm going to see if they've got any milk ready," he said.
"He's going to try to rescue him," Sungmin said suddenly.
Siwon stopped, Kaechan reaching up for his hair, hands just coming short of it. "Who, Hankyung-hyung?"
"No." Sungmin shook his head, turning to face Siwon. The frown had fallen away, but he still looked worried and thoughtful. "Kyuhyun."
"You really think so?" Siwon was doubtful; Kyuhyun might have proven that Heechul was simply being controlled, but he had definitely seemed more bothered by the prospect of being attacked than going for any heroic rescue.
"I have an inkling. I think he's got some sort of a complex about these kind of things. You know. Like he's so guilty about what he did to Zhou Mi that he'll try, no matter how roundabout his methods are, to help other people."
"But that's good, surely." Siwon shifted Kaechan onto his other hip, where it was harder for her to reach his hair. She settled against his shoulder, toothless gums chewing his collar. "Wanting to rescue Heechul-hyung is a good thing."
"Is it?" Sungmin caught the expression on his face, and threw his hands up, as if Siwon was about to physically attack him. "No, no, it is. But I'm worried about it all. There must be something that we don't understand yet. Why did they choose Heechul? Why have they chosen to do it now? There must be something that we're missing, and it's bugging me that we don't know."
"Can you ever really know what those people are thinking?"
"But this seems deliberate, somehow. Heechul has history with that place. It's not that they just randomly chose one of us. It's not the same as if they took me, or, I don't know, Kibum. It's the person most likely to be affected by being back there. The person that we were most likely to doubt because of his mental state."
"Why wouldn't it be the same if they took you?" Siwon said blankly.
Sungmin smiled, and shook his head. "Go feed her. I'm just talking in circles, and you're focusing on the wrong thing."
"You'll never be the wrong thing."
A roll of the eyes. "Seriously, go feed her before either one of us starts to cry."
Siwon smiled, and left the room, heading to the kitchen to see how much milk he could find. It was somewhat of a hard-find at the best of times, and now that the market was gone, heaven only knew where people would get it.
Bouncing Kaechan in his arms as he walked, he wondered idly what would happen to her if they were killed trying to rescue Heechul.
"You do realise that it was actually idiotic, right?" Shindong asked, cutting the engine to the van and twisting in his seat. "Not just because of what Sungmin pointed out. I mean, neither of you can drive. What the hell were you expecting to do?"
Kyuhyun groaned, knees pulled up to his chest on the desk chair, face hidden. He waved a couple of fingers in Shindong's direction. Zhou Mi muttered something in his sleep and turned over. "I had you," Kyuhyun said in a muffled voice. "I knew you could drive us places."
"Only because I realised what an idiot you were being. Come on, Kyuhyun. Starting thinking."
"Who are you, my mother?" Kyuhyun looked up, some dark on his face, which cleared quickly, leaving behind only dark shadows under his eyes.
"You're too tired to think straight, Kyuhyun."
"What the hell am I supposed to do about it though?"
"Sleep?" Shindong flicked his finger against Kyuhyun's forehead, not giving a damn about the swat at his side as he slid past Kyuhyun's chair to start messing with the futon that they had rolled up back there. He stretched it out -- there was now not much floor space at all, if any -- and then with a flourish he billowed out the sheets and caught Zhou Mi straight across the face. He batted at it, and then sat bolt-upright.
"Kui Xian?" he asked frantically, apparently lost as to where he'd found himself. Kyuhyun stretched across and took his hand. Zhou Mi's eyes searched his face. "I thought you'd gone," he said soberly.
"No, still here," Kyuhyun said. He didn't comment on Zhou Mi's strange reaction, so Shindong didn't say anything. "I'm going to have a nap though, so you should go back to sleep."
"Wazzafray," Zhou Mi said, and slumped back onto the bed, already asleep before his head hit the pillow.
Rolling his eyes at Shindong, Kyuhyun crawled onto the futon. "Just an hour," he said, already most of the way asleep.
"Promise," said Shindong, crossing his fingers behind his back.
Now that Kyuhyun was sleeping, he settled into the desk chair, keeping one eye on the monitor showing the area around the van, while searching through the television channels until he came to the official news broadcast.
The fire from the market wasn't something that even the privileged over in the nice section of time had been able to ignore, but the news was simply stating that a fire had broken out in an abandoned building. There, the newsreader seemed to say, with her solemn smile and demure suit, you don't need to worry about that anymore.
And over in the warm, well-lit houses in their straight streets lined with trees and greenery, people nodded, reassured. They didn't need to worry about it. It didn't concern them. Who cares if something caught fire in the places that they don't go into? So then they switched the television off and -- shit, Shindong remembered it so well -- the children do their homework, and the parents talked about their days.
Of course, not everyone had the patriarchal father. Many of them did, of course; you could spot them by their wives. Always the mousy ones, who hovered behind their husbands no matter what. You could even tell from their kids, sometimes. The boys were always self-assured, the girls never lifted their eyes from the floor.
He was so lost in his thoughts about a past that he usually tried to keep far from his mind that he missed the knock on the door of the van, and nearly shot Yehsung in the head when the door opened. "Jesus Christ!" Yehsung yelped, diving out of range of the gun that Shindong was pointing at him. "I knocked!"
"Sorry, sorry." Shindong put his gun down on the table, one hand over his racing heart. "I didn't hear."
Yehsung clambered in, tip-toeing around Kyuhyun's body on the floor. "How long as he been out?" he asked, looking down at it. Zhou Mi's arm had slipped off the bed and was smushed against Kyuhyun's face, but he hadn't woken up.
"About twenty minutes. He said to only leave him for an hour, but I think I might mistime it and leave him until tomorrow morning."
"If he complains, tell him that the resident doctor ordered it." Yehsung took the seat next to him, their knees pressed together. "Kind of cramped in here, huh?"
"I hadn't really noticed."
Yehsung grinned, turning his head a little so he could half-see the television. "Watching the news?"
"In a manner of speaking. It's on, so I guess I'm watching."
"Anything to do with Heechul?"
"Only the fire, but they came up with a bullshit excuse for that. No one who watches these things is going to bother with that."
They sat in silence for a while, Yehsung watching the television. Eventually he said, "I found a place to stay."
Shindong, arms stretched above his head, said, "Oh, really?"
"Yeah, it's this little...room, I guess. It's just off the old library, you know?" Shindong nodded. They knew it was a library because a sign on the outside said it was. The inside had been completely gutted, all the books either destroyed in the purges or burned for warmth by various people, and now it was the home of a collection of the homeless. "Down an alley. It's got this curtain stretched over the front. Donghae and Heechul--" He stopped, gave a tight smile. "Yeah, it's there."
"Ryeowook with you?"
"Yeah." Yehsung reached out and switched the television off. It was showing some sort of game show, probably an old re-run from back when things like that were still made, with all of the actual funny parts cut out. "The library is where a lot of the people from the market are migrating to. Minho, Taemin and Onew ended up there, and Key's badgering to join them."
"If Heechul goes after either of them again, then other people will get caught up in the crossfire."
"Yeah, that's what I tried to tell him. Jonghyun won't allow it anyway. Key's still in too much pain to be on the move. I don't have enough painkillers to help him that much though." He searched through his pockets and pulled out a packet of tablets. "Sleeping pills," he said to Shindong's curious look. "For if Kyuhyun says that he absolutely is unable to sleep. We can't have him running on no sleep, not now."
"Why?" asked Shindong, as if he didn't know why. "What are we doing now?"
Yehsung gave him a blank, despairing look. "Don't act innocent with me. You know as well as I do that we're going after Heechul."
"I had an idea," Shindong said with a shrug. "You know. That we would be. Seeing as we all love him. God only knows why when he insists on taking my car for rides around the city."
"And when he keeps stealing all the sleeping pills I reserve for Ryeowook," Yehsung said. "I don't get it either but there we are." He stretched, and stood up. "I should get back. I just wanted you to let people know where I am."
"Fine. We'll still be here tomorrow, at least."
"Great," called Yehsung, already swinging himself out of the van. Zhou Mi's eyes fluttered but he didn't open them. Yehsung closed the door behind him and started back to where he'd set up his temporary surgery. There was no electricity in the room, and no way of heating it up, but the place held important memories for him, and he hadn't been able to think of anywhere else to go. Ryeowook seemed to think that choosing a place to set up was his privilege, and so hadn't suggested anywhere of his own.
When Yehsung pushed back the curtain of the new surgery, Ryeowook was asleep, piled under a selection of blankets. Key was also asleep, but lying between Jonghyun's legs, who was eating some sort of snack. He held it out to Yehsung. A large, dry biscuit of some kind, that looked pretty unappetizing. "Want some?" he asked cheerfully.
"Pass," said Yehsung. He pulled a blanket further up on Ryeowook, then sank down next to him. "Where did you get that?"
"Went to see Taemin," Jonghyun shrugged. He saw that Yehsung was about to interrupt. "Don't worry, I didn't tell him where we're staying. Key was just bugging me to find out if they were okay, so I went to meet them. He gave me it."
"They're okay? They don't need treatment?"
"No, they're fine."
"Good. How was Key while I was away?"
"He complained of some pain, but it hadn't been that long since he'd taken some other pills, so we held off and eventually it seemed to pass."
"Great."
Silence stretched on, the only sound the noise of Jonghyun's snack crunching. There was some movement from Key, and then his hand reached up and pulled on Jonghyun's collar like a vice. He looked down at what Key signed at him, then said, "Hey, you have anything to drink?"
"Uh, sure." Yehsung reached over for the bag of things Ryeowook had packed, and pulled a bottle of water out and tossed it over to Jonghyun. He unscrewed the lid and tried to hold it to Key's mouth, who rolled his eyes and took it off him to drink from normally.
Ryeowook moved in his sleep, and one of the blankets fell off him. Yehsung took his chance, shifting all of them until he too could lie down, Ryeowook's body tucked in around him. "Jonghyun," he said. Jonghyun looked up, the last part of his snack sticking out of his mouth. Yehsung fought down a smile. "Listen, Ryeowook has a tendency to, well, sometimes he gets nightmares, and sometimes he can scream. If he wakes you up, don't worry about it."
Jonghyun cracked a smile that was completely devoid of humour, a strange look on his face. He was usually always in good humour. "Hyung, we lived in the market. You guys never saw what could happen down there at night. Screaming, at least, is something we learnt to sleep through."
Slightly disturbed by this news, Yehsung just nodded, and lay down, turning on his side and pulling the blankets in around him. Ryeowook mumbled, and shifted so that his head somehow found itself under Yehsung's chin. Before he fell asleep, Yehsung cracked open an eye and found Jonghyun signing something with over-the-top hand movements, Key's mouth stretched into a wide grin, and Yehsung really, really hoped that soon they'd be that carefree again.
SIX YEARS EARLIER
He stumbled through the streets, dripping blood onto the pavement. A couple of beggars lurched forward at him, then saw the knife he still held in his hands, and shied back again. It wasn't as though Shindong was threatening them with it, but they knew better than to attack someone with a ready weapon. He looked like enough of a threat anyway, coated in blood and spilling some of his own to boot.
He didn't know where he was. His panic had carried him there, his brain imagining the screech of Institution sirens with every footsteps. He told himself that they wouldn't come after him, and it was probably true; what interest would they have with the son of a family that lived on the margins, someone who had no reason to come to their attention, even if said son had just killed his father.
He could still feel the sting of the blows against his body as he tried to put as much distance between him and the house he'd lived in. The knife that he still clung to had made some marks on his own body before he'd used it for his own ends, but he was too scared to stop and take stock of them.
He didn't notice, either, how the street lamps faded off, as beggars became more and more frequent. Average his family may have been, but they still lived in a manner different to this. His family had courted the interests of the upper families, his mother always trying to make their family more than what they were.
It was her that he could hear ringing in his ears now, tripping his way unthinkingly into the darkest part of the city. Her screams. Her despair. It hadn't started with her, though she had been shouting at the beginning to. It had started with his sister, only fourteen, screaming and screaming as their father lashed out in a drunken rage. How many times had they been in that situation? Jinhee screaming, his mother shouting for him to stop, Shindong trying to restrain him.
But knives? They'd never featured in the situations that occurred almost every night. Just how far gone had his father been when he'd snatched the blade up off the kitchen table? And how blindly had Donghee leapt in front of it to shield his sister, trying to grab the weapon before it could do any damage?
And how, how had it then ended up in his own hands, plunging over and over again into his father's body? That had been when his mother had started screaming.
He wasn't watching where he was going, and caught the shoulder of a young man walking in the opposite direction. It was glancing at best, but the man fell backwards onto the floor, looking stunned. Shindong wouldn't have noticed it if the man next to him hadn't immediately yanked the back of his collar, while demanding, "What the fuck are you doing, fatso?"
Shindong panicked. He turned, flinging out the arm with the knife. If it had been a real attacker, he wouldn't have done that well; the man, with a shaved head and a tattoo on his neck, simply grabbed his wrist and practically crushed it to make Shindong drop it. Feeling confused, and lost, and completely vulnerable, Shindong sank down to the floor alongside the man he had knocked there.
The man still standing bent down and picked the knife up, tucking it away somewhere. "Weirdo," he muttered, and held a hand out for the other man to take. He took it gratefully, but while the other one tried to stalk away, he stayed still, looking down at Shindong. "Come on, Sungmin, we don't have time for this."
"No, hyung--" The other man leaned over to look Shindong in the eyes. He was very thin, cheeks almost hollow. "Are you okay?" he asked in a voice that was soft and nonthreatening. "Is any of that blood yours?"
The older one made a despairing noise. "You're too nice, Sungmin. The guy knocked you down and tried to stab me. And look at him," -- seeing the way Shindong was struggling to form words -- "he can't even talk."
Sungmin straightened up. "Do you always have to be such a brute?" he wanted to know.
"Yah, who do you think you are, Eeteuk-hyung?" The unnamed man rubbed a hand at the side of his head, then addressed Shindong. "Hey, you're not hurt, are you?" Shindong still didn't say anything. "See, he's not. Let's go."
"I think I killed someone," Shindong blurted out.
"Uh, that's nice."
"Kangin-hyung, you seriously -- Are you okay? Do you need any help?"
Shindong could, now that he'd stopped, feel the pain of various injuries, the cuts and bruises that the night have given him. He didn't know the people in front of him at all, but then he didn't know where he was, or what he was supposed to do now. He didn't know if his dad would survive or not, and either way, he couldn't, and didn't want to, go back home. Swallowing his pride and his fears, he said, "Yeah. I need some help."
CURRENT DAY
"Ooof," said Eunhyuk, as Donghae tried to lower him into a chair and only managed to drop him. Wincing, he reached behind him and pulled out an empty glass bottle. He put it down on the floor, and glanced at Kibum who was standing in the doorway. He was simply staring, blank.
It took Kibum another couple of minutes before he was able to step into the room. Donghae was flitting around the place, moving most of the furniture to the walls, clearing a large space in the middle of the room. Clouds of dust drifted into the air, making Eunhyuk cough, a pained expression on his face as he clutched at his ribs. When Kibum eventually did step inside, Donghae turned to give him a wide smile.
"Eunhyuk can sleep down here," he said. "There are rooms upstairs, right?"
"Yes," Kibum said slowly. "Though I'll have to clean them."
"I'll help!" Donghae said. His cheerful nature usually reassured Kibum; it was like Kibum didn't need to speak when Donghae was willing to do all the talking, but today, back in this house, Kibum didn't think he could handle it. Part of him was pissed off that they were intruding like this, even while he knew that he'd offered the place as a shelter.
He hadn't made the climb up the stairs in three years, and the stairs creaked a lot more than he remembered. The paintings that hung on the walls were crooked, and one of them, a blown up photograph of his mother, lay on the floor. He picked it up and lay it back against the wall. Donghae didn't say anything.
There were three rooms on the first floor, and Donghae attempted to enter the first one on his left, which had been boarded up at one point. Kibum reached out a hand and gripped his forearm, almost too hard. "No," he said.
"Oh." Donghae took a step back, and swept his hair from his face. "Is that where..."
"Yes." Kibum averted his gaze from the open doorway. He knew what would be in there anyway; empty syringes, half-eaten meals that would be rotting by now, a mess of clothes and blankets that he'd thrown around in his pain at the withdrawals. He let go of Donghae's arm and walked forward an amount.
He stopped in front of a room whose door was closed. It had been his mother's room. What had happened to her body? She surely wasn't still here, the smell of it would fill the entire house. Maybe someone had come and taken her away, some kind neighbour, or maybe even just looters. But still, he was too scared to open it in case she was still in there, a decomposing mess.
"We'll avoid this room too," he said, and walked down to the end of the hallway where there was the spare bedroom that had once belonged to his brother before he'd been killed. There was a double bed in there, a cupboard that he opened to reveal clothes practically covered in moths. He slammed it shut again and there was a screeching noise as Donghae shoved open the window behind him.
"Only this room?" he asked. "Both of us in the same bed?"
"It's not like we haven't shared a bed, hyung," Kibum said. He felt exhausted being back in this place, and so flopped down backwards onto the bed. The springs creaked, one of them digging into his back. They sure as hell weren't going to be comfortable here.
"I know that, but I didn't know if you'd want--"
Sometimes Kibum really hated the ways that they found to keep fooling the other one into thinking that what they had wasn't serious. This stuttering, faltering, half-hearted way of never quite saying what they wanted to say; it made Kibum angry and stressed and, most of all, it hurt, when he knew that he was more in love than he'd ever been before in his life.
"Kibum, are you okay with us being here?"
Kibum opened his eyes, hands behind his head, to look at Donghae leaning against the window frame. "I asked you to come, didn't I?"
"I know but you don't seem happy about it. I don't want to intrude, and I'm sure Eunhyuk doesn't either."
Kibum shrugged. "It's not you being here that I'm not happy about. It's being here full stop."
"Then why are we?"
Kibum closed his eyes again. "Because I couldn't think of anywhere else to go, of course."
A shout from Eunhyuk below drew Donghae's attention, and he left the room without saying anything else. Kibum got the feeling that his flippant attitude had annoyed Donghae a little, but so long as he stopped asking questions, he didn't care.
The truth was that there was a reason they were back at the house that he'd grown up in. He'd been surprised to see that it hadn't been occupied by anyone, not even some of the homeless, but then maybe the taint of death still hung around it. What had happened there was probably still too fresh in people's minds. It had only been three years, after all.
He had demons that he needed to face, and he knew that by coming here, he would be forced to look them in the eyes. He had no doubt that some of the others would be doing the same thing, and he wondered if they'd do better than him. He didn't think he was capable of going into the room that he'd been locked in three years earlier. There would be too many reminders of the mistakes he'd made in the past, and possibly, too much temptation. There was a reason he never did any business with the drug dens.
Sighing, he rolled on his side, looking at the dusty window. Sharing a bed with Donghae. Maybe it wouldn't come to that. Maybe Donghae would choose to sleep downstairs with Eunhyuk. A thought like that should have raised some jealousy, but instead it made him feel relieved. There would be no pressure, then. He wouldn't have to awkwardly re-categorise their relationship like he had done the last time Donghae had crawled into his bed when they hadn't even had sex. It seemed to bring a level of normalcy to their relationship that he didn't think Donghae would be willing to follow up on.