Happy Holidays abbysidian! Exchange fic: "Corruptela"
Title: Corruptela
Rating: NC-17
Genre: AU, romance
Warning: violence, dubious consent
Summary: "It's my heart." Jaejoong says, stepping forward, "You can hear it." And Jaejoong's voice is soft, filled with reverence, amazed.
FOR: abbysidian
4283wc
The first time Yunho sees Jaejoong, he's wearing the uniform - all black cotton and cold silver, metal bat dragging on the ground as he walks along with his friends and speaks loudly, hair falling in his eyes and laugh being hidden behind a bruised hand.
He forgets.
--
There was a time wherein peace was kept by laws made by the government. When democracy and wealth existed, when tolerance was a huge leap away from being worldwide.
Yunho was born long after that time had ended.
--
He's born in a dark alley, slipping from the innards of a mother that dies as soon as the birth-maid makes him scream for the first time. Said birth-maid takes him home and for her own, and hides the truth from him until she gives birth to a perfect little girl named Jihye.
He doesn't care, much - he's too young to comprehend that. He's told the truth every day, until he's eight and can properly understand what it means to be raised but not born in a family. But he has a nice life, a father, a mother, and a little sister who looks at him with wide eyes and whose tiny little fingers wrap around his thumbs with a force that shouldn't exist in such a tiny body.
And then. And then he's fourteen, Jihye is twelve, and They come knocking on their door with gold rings and shiny-white teeth.
--
It works like this - there's no system, no government, but there's electricity, there's water. You gain electricity as long as you stay out of Their way, you can gain water in trade of labor. Mr. Jung used to paint wood, and as soon as he turned eleven, Yunho started learning how to cut the wood that his father would later paint and give to Them.
The job is simple, and it gives them enough water and electricity for Mrs. Jung not to work anymore. She does, regardless, smiling and talking about meeting her friends. They let her, even though they gain nothing more in regards of ration.
Food is grown by whoever wants it to, and traded without rules. A quilo for a liter, a liter for a quilo. Alcohol for meat and fruits for vegetables. A simple life, and good, if you follow the rules. The Jungs do, meticulously.
--
"We've been told you signed your kids for alphabetizing?" the youngest of the men asks, a slip of paper between his fingers.
"Not until-" Mrs. Jungs begins, voice wavering.
"We need more people now," the oldest of them says, skin like old sandpaper. "You don't have to give them in, but it would be nice." It sounds like a threat, and then - "It would be necessary help."
"Our oldest is fourteen," Mr Jung says, fists closed at his sides. "He helps chop wood."
The third man makes no move into stepping inside the house, but his eyes slide to Yunho and Jihye. "Is he smart?"
"Smart enough."
The men exchange glances, and the oldest one waves his hand in Yunho's direction. "Come along, boy."
He goes, not daring to look back.
--
He sleeps from seven to four, helps in digging out vegetables for breakfast at four-thirty, showers at five-forty-five, eats at six.
He shares a room with five others, all older but not taller than him. It's weird, being treated as the younger kid, being among boys older than him. They help him with his lessons, and pat him on the head when he does well. It's like his father, but not exactly - they don't have to, and that, somehow, makes the gestures seem warmer.
Years pass, and Yunho masters letters, forms sentences with long words. The boys he shared the dorm with leave, one by one, all with promises of writing but with envelopes that come once a month, then a semester, then a year, then never. Like he did to his family, leaving with a promise and breaking it as soon as he found himself crying over a letter that he couldn't write; a letter that was no use to people who knew not how to read.
He's given new clothes, instructed in the art of moving your body, of smiling pleasantly at his superiors. Ends up helping the younger boys that fill the dorm until he's the oldest one, and the Instructor responsible for him stares at him for a long moment, in a strangely hot winter day, before touching his shoulder and leaving him with a note specifying a local and time.
--
"This is Jaejoong," the Instructor says, hand a few centimeters short of touching the boy. Yunho raises one eyebrow at that. "You're a team, now. Try not to die." And with that he walks away, choosing another of the black-uniform boys.
"I'm Yunho," he says, extending his hand. The boy is pretty, all pale skin and pretty pink lips, dark eyes.
"Nice to meet you," the boy says, grabbing Yunho's wrist instead of giving him a handshake, and Yunho stops in mid-protest when the boy leans in and sniffs Yunho's wrist, and he freezes as the other keeps his nose there.
"Oh my god," he says, heartbeat sky-rocketing, and the other chuckles before pressing a kiss to his pulse and righting himself.
"You smell delicious." He has a smile on his face, small and full of sharp teeth. "It'll be a pleasure to work with you." And slips a ring through Yunho's finger, a ring made of metal and control.
--
"It's nice," Jaejoong says, wind ruffling his hair. They're outside, stationed beside the water well, Yunho checking water permissions carefully before nodding and letting the asker pass by him, beyond Jaejoong and to where the bucket is waiting to be thrown down and filled. "I haven't been outside much," he continues, coming closer to where Yunho is handing back a permission to an old lady with blackened teeth.
"I thought you would?" Yunho bites the inside of his cheek and notes another number down on the leather-bound book that registers who comes and goes, the clutch of the ring on his middle finger strange, like a weight that pulls him down. There are only three more slots open for today, but the line of askers is long enough for him to guess twenty. He's been on the line more than once when that happened, and seeing it from the other side, now, fills him with new perspective. He's nervous, suddenly, muscles locking tight from his back and down to his hand that shakes when he hands back the second to last permission allowed for the day. "For training."
"Not after I was taken." It's their first day working together. Somewhere on the concrete labyrinths that fill the center of the city, there's a building with a floor waiting for them. 'The Privilege', he had heard, before, when he was still just a wood chopper with full cheeks and confused stares at the written word. But that was years before, and now he can read, and now he has Jaejoong. "We're not allowed to go outside."
"You're the last one," he says to a boy with flaming-red hair, instead of thinking about Jaejoong and his paleness, the contrast between his hair and skin and uniform. Bad news for the people waiting in line, instead of thinking of tiny Jaejoong curling hands around a bat too big for him, a thin and teeth-missing Jaejoong learning how to fight and destroy, of a boy being taught to kill and maim and obey. A boy growing without a mother, without warm rest days, without the safety of family.
There's a shout, from a man near the end of a line, an agreement in the frown of the young girl that clutches her permission against his chest. A challenge, in a young boy who throws his basin at where Jaejoong was standing the last time Yunho looked.
A rebuke, as Jaejoong steps forward, growls a warning. The boy shouts again, followed by another that talks similar to him, and both advance, taking knifes that they're not supposed to own from the waist of their cotton pants. Advancing, taunts and curses spilling from their throats, anger, despair, thirst and filth all around them. Yunho feels sorry for them, considers taking a last bucket and sharing it with the others crowded around them, the ones that haven't said a word. Until a boy reaches Jaejoong and puts his knife through the darkness of the other's uniform.
And then, chaos.
--
"You did well," the Instructor says, looking at Yunho. Like Jaejoong is not there, at his side, blood drying on his knuckles, darkening his already dark uniform, face stained, eyes disturbingly blank. Yunho still shakes a bit, from before, but it feels worse, now. Now that they're being praised for destruction.
"We did as told," Yunho says at last, because the Instructor has raised his eyebrows at the prolonged silence.
"Yes, you did," The man says back, eyes scanning them. Yunho feels exposed, and resists the urge to step closer to Jaejoong. He shouldn't want to, anyway - he's dealt with more Instructors than with ever had with Jaejoong, and had seen more savagery from the latter than from the first, but it feels different.
"So we can go?" Yunho asks, itching to get Jaejoong on the darkness of their lodging, to make away with the blankness in his eyes. There's tension buzzing under his skin, and he's as terrified of Jaejoong as he is of losing him to whatever is keeping the other's emotions locked down at the moment.
"I think..." The Instructor taps his fingers against his desk - wooden, deep brown - before pressing his lips together and opening a drawer. "It's time to activate your rings."
"Wha-" Yunho opens his mouth and then catches himself, closes it, fidgets without moving his feet.
"You," the man says, turning to Jaejoong and extending a hand. Jaejoong starts unbuttoning his uniform shirt, practiced, quick, and Yunho can't look away. Skin, pale and layered with nuances of veins, of bones fighting to pop out, and broken, terribly, by metal, looping right above the high of his ribcage twice, pulled tight enough that the skin surrounding it is bright red. Silver, then, because anything else would heal. "Come." Jaejoong steps forward, and the Inspector takes a key out his pocket, fits it to the circle of silver that rests just above Jaejoong's heart.
As soon as the key clicks in, a rush fills Yunho's head, impossibly loud and terrified, fast-fast-f-a-s-t and he breathes in, too much, because what is that? He looks up, blinking fast, and finds Jaejoong's eyes, alight again, staring at him in wonder, lips parted.
"It's my heart," Jaejoong says, stepping forward, and the Instructor leans back against the table as Jaejoong takes Yunho's hand against the warmth of his skin. "You can hear it." And Jaejoong's voice is soft, filled with reverence, amazed.
"I can," Yunho says back, because the rhythm settles, gentler, matching the one burning against Yunho's fingers.
--
They're assigned to watch the well three times a week, to patrol the market for three other days. A day of rest, spent with Yunho soothing his aches on the bed tucked at the corner of the room he shares with Jaejoong, trying to get used to the way Jaejoong's heartbeat comes and goes, reading pamphlet after pamphlet on how the rings work, on how important they are, on how they should only be activated when they're working; spent with Jaejoong disappearing out the door, coming back with gentler lines on his face, ease on his steps.
No one bothers them, for a while. Even in the meal rooms, they're left alone, though Yunho notices Jaejoong trading glances with other uniformed men. Weeks pass, a month, and he starts to relax, to allow smiles to escape when small girls, shy, come to ask him questions. They avoid Jaejoong, but then again, most do, when they don't pretend that he doesn't exist.
And it should bother him, he thinks, but then he focuses on the machinery of Jaejoong's heart, on the way he shapes at the corner of Yunho eyes.
But disaster comes, in stages.
--
First, in the form of the boy who Yunho had believed Jaejoong to have beaten to death, that first day at the well.
Found dead, body wrapped in rope besides the water well and head floating on the bucket.
--
Then, in a voice that seems taken out of his nightmares, waking the whole city up at two, three, four am and screaming about freedom and equality and coming from every speaker, from every piece of electricity-based technology.
"I don't care about equality," moans a boy whose name Yunho might have known, as he sits beside him on the meal table. Besides him, sits another boy, stony-faced and tall, the silver in the buttons and cuffs of his uniform contrasting beautifully against the darkness of the fabric. "I just want to sleep."
"Of course you don't care about equality," the uniformed boy scoffs, wrinkling his nose at his meal.
Jaejoong snorts, looks up and shares a smile with the boy, while the smaller one shrugs and starts eating. "This is Yunho."
"Yes, you told me about him." Yunho blinks, turns to Jaejoong. "I'm Changmin," the boy says. He assesses the contents of Jaejoong's plate and gives a small smile when the other lets him reach for a slice of apple.
"And him?" Yunho asks, minutes later, when it's clear that the smaller boy won't get introduced.
"He doesn't care about equality," Changmin says, as if that means something, and is rewarded with a slice of apple fed at him from Jaejoong's own fingers.
--
Also unexpected; it’s a night when the full moon shines high in the sky. Yunho is alone, sitting in the beaten couch he had relocated to fit under the only bar-less window they're allowed in their dorm. He has a geography book open on his stomach, legs crossed together. Staring at the ceiling, trying to decode the music of Jaejoong's heart that sings between his ears, behind his eyes.
Jaejoong comes in, contained hurricane of fury and the bitter smell of alcohol clinging to his frame, wafting in waves from him, filling the room with its decadence. Yunho thought Jaejoong couldn't get affected, by alcohol, but there he is, proof, snarling when his fingers fail to unbuckle the belt keeping the pants of his uniform at his waist, clumsier than usual.
"Here," he says, putting the book down, standing up slow and lazy. Jaejoong's head snaps up, as if only now noticing him. Yunho stops where he is, two steps and a flare of fear away from reaching and doing what he meant to. "Jae?" he asks, low, scared.
Jaejoong inhales, deep, a growl starting from the center of him, chest to throat and through teeth that are longer than normal. Yunho barely has time to take a step back before Jaejoong is all over him, pressing Yunho's clothed back to the cool concrete wall.
"You," he says, and snarls, fingers closing over Yunho's chin.
"Me," Yunho says back, low, meek. Jaejoong snarls again, warm air stinking of alcohol washing over Yunho's face, making him scrunch his nose. "Let me," he says, feeling a tremble start at his hands but swallowing it back, teeth clinking together.
Jaejoong nods at him, brows still furrowed in anger, but shuffles back, letting go of him so that Yunho's hands can go down, unbuckle and pull the belt away, undo the buttons of his pants and push them down, mid-thigh. He stops, gaze fixed on the covered half-mast erection growing inside black underwear.
"Go on," Jaejoong says, face pushing forward, nosing at the edge of Yunho's jaw.
He has to raise a shoulder to dislodge Jaejoong's face, and then push him back by the shoulder before sinking to his own knees, mouth dry and head heavy. He pulls the pants down, and then pulls off the boots when fabric gets bunched in them. And takes them off, trying to look anywhere but at the pale expanse of Jaejoong's legs, the curve of his ankles.
"Okay?" he asks, making to rise.
"Stay," Jaejoong says, and Yunho does, biting the inside of his cheek, curling hands into fists at his thighs. And then Jaejoong is kneeling in front of him, face serious and expression unpleasant, palming at Yunho's shirt, pushing it up, raking nails at his exposed skin.
"Jae, no."
"Shut up," he says, biting at Yunho's neck, sliding a hand down and to press its heel right where Yunho's cock is starting to grow, too, shameful and unplaced.
"No, Jae." Yunho's hands are trembling as he sets them on Jaejoong's hair, the sharpness of his shoulder.
"Just." Jae takes Yunho's hips in his hands, opens his mouth below his navel, licks, bites at the skin covered in goosebumps, noses at the hair there. "Just let me." He sounds wrecked, sad, destroyed. "You smell so good."
Yunho stays quiet, then, lets Jaejoong move and take his body, pull his underwear off and mouth at his now heavy cock, lets him suck at the head.
"Please," he says, when Jae sucks hard, when a hand fondles his ball.
"Please what?" Jaejoong pulls back, mouth shiny with spit. Yunho is trembling, beneath him, trying not to arch his back and press closer, beg for his cock to find its way back into the softness of Jaejoong's lips.
"Why?"
Jaejoong laughs, shakes hair out of his eyes, sinks nails on the dips between Yunho's rib, looks down when blood pools there, goes down for a lick and then faces up again, smiles. "Isn't it funny that even now, you're the bitch here?" His eyebrows are kind, the bite of his teeth at the sharp of Yunho's hipbones is not.
"There are no bitches here," Yunho says, voice soft, sadder than he can ever remember it being before.
Jaejoong hums and licks Yunho's cock back into the warm wetness of his mouth.
--
And finally, in a blast, in the middle of just a normal day, making the floor shake beneath their feet and beating against their eardrums in a terrible boom:
"Stay here," Jaejoong says, eyes shining electric blue. On the inside of his clawed hands, the silver bat practically hums, sizzling where skin touches it. The smell of burning flesh surrounds them, but Jaejoong doesn't seem to notice and if he does, he doesn't care.
"Jae-" Yunho starts, because they know each other, somehow, after the time spent together, and Jaejoong is already burning, and Yunho knows, knows what's said in the dark between stacks of alcohol, knows what happens to children born with glowing eyes and long ears.
"And quiet." Jaejoong spares him a last look before standing and jumping over the desk they've been hiding under.
Yunho doesn't dare to look, despite the want to. He can hear, though, the blasts coming from outside and Jaejoong's bat connecting with glass, breaking it, and then a growl, two, the sound of flesh hitting flesh and Yunho is just sitting there, thinking of his mom and dad and sister; thinking of humanity and how easily Jaejoong heals, how easily he can go as if he's never been hurt, how his heart speeds and speeds and speeds and doesn't stop.
(Yunho sits there and wonders how many times Jaejoong had come close to bleeding out and walked away with skin unmarked and smile bitter.)
--
"Hey," a boy says, startling Yunho out of his thoughts. He'd been trying to focus on the rhythm of Jaejoong's heartbeat thumping through the ring on his finger, and in the process had tuned out his surroundings. Stupid and dangerous, but the boy smiles a kind smile before offering a hand to help him up. His legs shake and Yunho wonders how long he spent there. It's quiet outside, would be too quiet, maybe, if not for the murmurs being traded back and forth and how he can still hear Jaejoong's blood flowing through the bond between them.
"What happened?" Yunho asks, as the boy leads him outside, through crushed and burned remains of wood. He can spot Jaejoong in the distance, and as soon as he contemplates calling for him, Jaejoong turns to stare in his direction. From afar, he can see Jaejoong dismissing the others he was talking to, and then he's walking. They meet at the middle, and the boy nods at Jaejoong before disappearing.
"Yunho," Jaejoong says, hand closing around Yunho's throat, eyes half-crazed. "Yunho."
"I'm here," he says back, desperation rising to clog his airways, catching Jaejoong's wrist between his own and their eyes meet for a second before they start stumbling their way back to their dorm, eyes wide and hearts synchronized, desperate.
--
"You could be mine."
Yunho wriggles to lie on his back, and Jaejoong takes that as an invitation, walking from his bed and crawling between Yunho's legs, straddling him. It's a week later from the last time they touched. Yunho had spent that time searching for company anywhere else, and Jaejoong had disappeared every night, without fault. Not tonight, though.
"No, I couldn't," he says, turning his face to the side, chin lowering until it almost touches his shoulder. He can't look up, at Jaejoong, at the way the light frames his cheeks, colors his hair. It's dangerous, the way his breath scratches him inside when he thinks of Jaejoong's skin under his hands, his taste on the back of his gums.
"Why not?" Jaejoong's nose touches the place where Yunho's stomach is hiding behind layers of tissue, moves up until warm air is meeting the hollow of his throat.
"It's wrong," Yunho says, stupid and desperate. Wrong, after the blood he's seen spilled, after the atrocities he shut his mouth against. It's wrong, like the boys with glowing eyes that grow to be warriors and the girls with long ears that... "Please," he says, not sure what he's asking for. Forgiveness, or to forget. To touch.
"Not as wrong," Jaejoong says, and swallows back the cruelness of what they've done. "And we both want it," he continues, superfluous. Yunho wonders how he must smell, now. Lust, despair, sadness? And Jaejoong?
"And we both can't." Even as he lets their eyes meet, exposes his throat, stretches his body as to show more of his stomach. Defenseless like he was instructed not to be, ever.
Jaejoong raises himself to his knees, again, and his claws settle on the bumps of Yunho's ribs. Pale chest filling, sinking back. Inhaling what he can of Yunho, of them.
"Yeah, we can't," he says, finally, jaw clenching. "But we did. I did, take. A part of you."
And Yunho knows, from the clench on his chest, from taking the ring off yesterday and still being able to hear another heartbeat, louder than his own. He sinks his grown fingernails in the fragility of Jaejoong's thighs until the other sighs, shoulders slumping, and shakes him off, walks away, rolls into his bed and pretends to sleep.
It's okay, Yunho thinks, closing his eyes against everything, trying to focus on a single heartbeat - his, his his his his his his - and failing.
--
They're woken in the middle of the night, Yunho when Jaejoong's heartbeat starts to beat faster than normal.
"What's wrong?" he asks, eyes burning with exhaustion but adrenaline pouring through his veins, trying to distinguish shapes in the darkness.
"Don't you know?" Counters a voice that he's grown familiar to, in the past months. Yunho flips on the switch of the lamp near his bed, and there - a voice coming from Jaejoong's bed, where Changmin's hand clasps the whiteness of a bony shoulder.
"Know what?" Yunho wonders about charging at Changmin, calculates how long would he be able to distract the other from Jaejoong. Enough for him to run, but maybe not enough so that the two of them might come alive. Changmin looks harmless but is not, if the blood splattered all over his face is any indication. "Whose blood is that?"
"He doesn't care about equality," Changmin says, voice meaning And so he matters not, pulling Jaejoong until he's standing too, eyes fixed on Yunho and heart slowing. "Welcome to the revolution." Jaejoong leans against Changmin and Yunho should've known.
Should've known of the late nights away, and the wickedness of Changmin's smile, and the way Jaejoong grew quieter outside the house. He should have, but didn't.
"Let's go," Jaejoong says, pulling a bag from under his bed and motioning for Yunho to do the same.
He looks at them, instead, eyes wide. Here is, the most significant test in his life, the fight between peace and war, and he can only wager his choices based on the measurements of Jaejoong's mouth, based on the tilts of Jaejoong's head, of the belonging that beats louder than his own heart whenever he thinks of Jaejoong.
He inhales deep, lungs expanding beyond what's comfortable. The bag under his bed is heavy, and he looks around, finds empty space where he favorite books used to be. On Jaejoong's face, a smile, confident, private, all his.
They go.
--
They run, from then on, and Yunho spends most of their time terrified. Afraid of losing Jaejoong, afraid of losing himself, afraid for all the children with glowing eyes and pointed ears. At night, Jaejoong kisses him until their hearts beat as one, gently, unhurried, in love.
They don't find peace for a long time, but they find each other.
Rating: NC-17
Genre: AU, romance
Warning: violence, dubious consent
Summary: "It's my heart." Jaejoong says, stepping forward, "You can hear it." And Jaejoong's voice is soft, filled with reverence, amazed.
FOR: abbysidian
4283wc
The first time Yunho sees Jaejoong, he's wearing the uniform - all black cotton and cold silver, metal bat dragging on the ground as he walks along with his friends and speaks loudly, hair falling in his eyes and laugh being hidden behind a bruised hand.
He forgets.
--
There was a time wherein peace was kept by laws made by the government. When democracy and wealth existed, when tolerance was a huge leap away from being worldwide.
Yunho was born long after that time had ended.
--
He's born in a dark alley, slipping from the innards of a mother that dies as soon as the birth-maid makes him scream for the first time. Said birth-maid takes him home and for her own, and hides the truth from him until she gives birth to a perfect little girl named Jihye.
He doesn't care, much - he's too young to comprehend that. He's told the truth every day, until he's eight and can properly understand what it means to be raised but not born in a family. But he has a nice life, a father, a mother, and a little sister who looks at him with wide eyes and whose tiny little fingers wrap around his thumbs with a force that shouldn't exist in such a tiny body.
And then. And then he's fourteen, Jihye is twelve, and They come knocking on their door with gold rings and shiny-white teeth.
--
It works like this - there's no system, no government, but there's electricity, there's water. You gain electricity as long as you stay out of Their way, you can gain water in trade of labor. Mr. Jung used to paint wood, and as soon as he turned eleven, Yunho started learning how to cut the wood that his father would later paint and give to Them.
The job is simple, and it gives them enough water and electricity for Mrs. Jung not to work anymore. She does, regardless, smiling and talking about meeting her friends. They let her, even though they gain nothing more in regards of ration.
Food is grown by whoever wants it to, and traded without rules. A quilo for a liter, a liter for a quilo. Alcohol for meat and fruits for vegetables. A simple life, and good, if you follow the rules. The Jungs do, meticulously.
--
"We've been told you signed your kids for alphabetizing?" the youngest of the men asks, a slip of paper between his fingers.
"Not until-" Mrs. Jungs begins, voice wavering.
"We need more people now," the oldest of them says, skin like old sandpaper. "You don't have to give them in, but it would be nice." It sounds like a threat, and then - "It would be necessary help."
"Our oldest is fourteen," Mr Jung says, fists closed at his sides. "He helps chop wood."
The third man makes no move into stepping inside the house, but his eyes slide to Yunho and Jihye. "Is he smart?"
"Smart enough."
The men exchange glances, and the oldest one waves his hand in Yunho's direction. "Come along, boy."
He goes, not daring to look back.
--
He sleeps from seven to four, helps in digging out vegetables for breakfast at four-thirty, showers at five-forty-five, eats at six.
He shares a room with five others, all older but not taller than him. It's weird, being treated as the younger kid, being among boys older than him. They help him with his lessons, and pat him on the head when he does well. It's like his father, but not exactly - they don't have to, and that, somehow, makes the gestures seem warmer.
Years pass, and Yunho masters letters, forms sentences with long words. The boys he shared the dorm with leave, one by one, all with promises of writing but with envelopes that come once a month, then a semester, then a year, then never. Like he did to his family, leaving with a promise and breaking it as soon as he found himself crying over a letter that he couldn't write; a letter that was no use to people who knew not how to read.
He's given new clothes, instructed in the art of moving your body, of smiling pleasantly at his superiors. Ends up helping the younger boys that fill the dorm until he's the oldest one, and the Instructor responsible for him stares at him for a long moment, in a strangely hot winter day, before touching his shoulder and leaving him with a note specifying a local and time.
--
"This is Jaejoong," the Instructor says, hand a few centimeters short of touching the boy. Yunho raises one eyebrow at that. "You're a team, now. Try not to die." And with that he walks away, choosing another of the black-uniform boys.
"I'm Yunho," he says, extending his hand. The boy is pretty, all pale skin and pretty pink lips, dark eyes.
"Nice to meet you," the boy says, grabbing Yunho's wrist instead of giving him a handshake, and Yunho stops in mid-protest when the boy leans in and sniffs Yunho's wrist, and he freezes as the other keeps his nose there.
"Oh my god," he says, heartbeat sky-rocketing, and the other chuckles before pressing a kiss to his pulse and righting himself.
"You smell delicious." He has a smile on his face, small and full of sharp teeth. "It'll be a pleasure to work with you." And slips a ring through Yunho's finger, a ring made of metal and control.
--
"It's nice," Jaejoong says, wind ruffling his hair. They're outside, stationed beside the water well, Yunho checking water permissions carefully before nodding and letting the asker pass by him, beyond Jaejoong and to where the bucket is waiting to be thrown down and filled. "I haven't been outside much," he continues, coming closer to where Yunho is handing back a permission to an old lady with blackened teeth.
"I thought you would?" Yunho bites the inside of his cheek and notes another number down on the leather-bound book that registers who comes and goes, the clutch of the ring on his middle finger strange, like a weight that pulls him down. There are only three more slots open for today, but the line of askers is long enough for him to guess twenty. He's been on the line more than once when that happened, and seeing it from the other side, now, fills him with new perspective. He's nervous, suddenly, muscles locking tight from his back and down to his hand that shakes when he hands back the second to last permission allowed for the day. "For training."
"Not after I was taken." It's their first day working together. Somewhere on the concrete labyrinths that fill the center of the city, there's a building with a floor waiting for them. 'The Privilege', he had heard, before, when he was still just a wood chopper with full cheeks and confused stares at the written word. But that was years before, and now he can read, and now he has Jaejoong. "We're not allowed to go outside."
"You're the last one," he says to a boy with flaming-red hair, instead of thinking about Jaejoong and his paleness, the contrast between his hair and skin and uniform. Bad news for the people waiting in line, instead of thinking of tiny Jaejoong curling hands around a bat too big for him, a thin and teeth-missing Jaejoong learning how to fight and destroy, of a boy being taught to kill and maim and obey. A boy growing without a mother, without warm rest days, without the safety of family.
There's a shout, from a man near the end of a line, an agreement in the frown of the young girl that clutches her permission against his chest. A challenge, in a young boy who throws his basin at where Jaejoong was standing the last time Yunho looked.
A rebuke, as Jaejoong steps forward, growls a warning. The boy shouts again, followed by another that talks similar to him, and both advance, taking knifes that they're not supposed to own from the waist of their cotton pants. Advancing, taunts and curses spilling from their throats, anger, despair, thirst and filth all around them. Yunho feels sorry for them, considers taking a last bucket and sharing it with the others crowded around them, the ones that haven't said a word. Until a boy reaches Jaejoong and puts his knife through the darkness of the other's uniform.
And then, chaos.
--
"You did well," the Instructor says, looking at Yunho. Like Jaejoong is not there, at his side, blood drying on his knuckles, darkening his already dark uniform, face stained, eyes disturbingly blank. Yunho still shakes a bit, from before, but it feels worse, now. Now that they're being praised for destruction.
"We did as told," Yunho says at last, because the Instructor has raised his eyebrows at the prolonged silence.
"Yes, you did," The man says back, eyes scanning them. Yunho feels exposed, and resists the urge to step closer to Jaejoong. He shouldn't want to, anyway - he's dealt with more Instructors than with ever had with Jaejoong, and had seen more savagery from the latter than from the first, but it feels different.
"So we can go?" Yunho asks, itching to get Jaejoong on the darkness of their lodging, to make away with the blankness in his eyes. There's tension buzzing under his skin, and he's as terrified of Jaejoong as he is of losing him to whatever is keeping the other's emotions locked down at the moment.
"I think..." The Instructor taps his fingers against his desk - wooden, deep brown - before pressing his lips together and opening a drawer. "It's time to activate your rings."
"Wha-" Yunho opens his mouth and then catches himself, closes it, fidgets without moving his feet.
"You," the man says, turning to Jaejoong and extending a hand. Jaejoong starts unbuttoning his uniform shirt, practiced, quick, and Yunho can't look away. Skin, pale and layered with nuances of veins, of bones fighting to pop out, and broken, terribly, by metal, looping right above the high of his ribcage twice, pulled tight enough that the skin surrounding it is bright red. Silver, then, because anything else would heal. "Come." Jaejoong steps forward, and the Inspector takes a key out his pocket, fits it to the circle of silver that rests just above Jaejoong's heart.
As soon as the key clicks in, a rush fills Yunho's head, impossibly loud and terrified, fast-fast-f-a-s-t and he breathes in, too much, because what is that? He looks up, blinking fast, and finds Jaejoong's eyes, alight again, staring at him in wonder, lips parted.
"It's my heart," Jaejoong says, stepping forward, and the Instructor leans back against the table as Jaejoong takes Yunho's hand against the warmth of his skin. "You can hear it." And Jaejoong's voice is soft, filled with reverence, amazed.
"I can," Yunho says back, because the rhythm settles, gentler, matching the one burning against Yunho's fingers.
--
They're assigned to watch the well three times a week, to patrol the market for three other days. A day of rest, spent with Yunho soothing his aches on the bed tucked at the corner of the room he shares with Jaejoong, trying to get used to the way Jaejoong's heartbeat comes and goes, reading pamphlet after pamphlet on how the rings work, on how important they are, on how they should only be activated when they're working; spent with Jaejoong disappearing out the door, coming back with gentler lines on his face, ease on his steps.
No one bothers them, for a while. Even in the meal rooms, they're left alone, though Yunho notices Jaejoong trading glances with other uniformed men. Weeks pass, a month, and he starts to relax, to allow smiles to escape when small girls, shy, come to ask him questions. They avoid Jaejoong, but then again, most do, when they don't pretend that he doesn't exist.
And it should bother him, he thinks, but then he focuses on the machinery of Jaejoong's heart, on the way he shapes at the corner of Yunho eyes.
But disaster comes, in stages.
--
First, in the form of the boy who Yunho had believed Jaejoong to have beaten to death, that first day at the well.
Found dead, body wrapped in rope besides the water well and head floating on the bucket.
--
Then, in a voice that seems taken out of his nightmares, waking the whole city up at two, three, four am and screaming about freedom and equality and coming from every speaker, from every piece of electricity-based technology.
"I don't care about equality," moans a boy whose name Yunho might have known, as he sits beside him on the meal table. Besides him, sits another boy, stony-faced and tall, the silver in the buttons and cuffs of his uniform contrasting beautifully against the darkness of the fabric. "I just want to sleep."
"Of course you don't care about equality," the uniformed boy scoffs, wrinkling his nose at his meal.
Jaejoong snorts, looks up and shares a smile with the boy, while the smaller one shrugs and starts eating. "This is Yunho."
"Yes, you told me about him." Yunho blinks, turns to Jaejoong. "I'm Changmin," the boy says. He assesses the contents of Jaejoong's plate and gives a small smile when the other lets him reach for a slice of apple.
"And him?" Yunho asks, minutes later, when it's clear that the smaller boy won't get introduced.
"He doesn't care about equality," Changmin says, as if that means something, and is rewarded with a slice of apple fed at him from Jaejoong's own fingers.
--
Also unexpected; it’s a night when the full moon shines high in the sky. Yunho is alone, sitting in the beaten couch he had relocated to fit under the only bar-less window they're allowed in their dorm. He has a geography book open on his stomach, legs crossed together. Staring at the ceiling, trying to decode the music of Jaejoong's heart that sings between his ears, behind his eyes.
Jaejoong comes in, contained hurricane of fury and the bitter smell of alcohol clinging to his frame, wafting in waves from him, filling the room with its decadence. Yunho thought Jaejoong couldn't get affected, by alcohol, but there he is, proof, snarling when his fingers fail to unbuckle the belt keeping the pants of his uniform at his waist, clumsier than usual.
"Here," he says, putting the book down, standing up slow and lazy. Jaejoong's head snaps up, as if only now noticing him. Yunho stops where he is, two steps and a flare of fear away from reaching and doing what he meant to. "Jae?" he asks, low, scared.
Jaejoong inhales, deep, a growl starting from the center of him, chest to throat and through teeth that are longer than normal. Yunho barely has time to take a step back before Jaejoong is all over him, pressing Yunho's clothed back to the cool concrete wall.
"You," he says, and snarls, fingers closing over Yunho's chin.
"Me," Yunho says back, low, meek. Jaejoong snarls again, warm air stinking of alcohol washing over Yunho's face, making him scrunch his nose. "Let me," he says, feeling a tremble start at his hands but swallowing it back, teeth clinking together.
Jaejoong nods at him, brows still furrowed in anger, but shuffles back, letting go of him so that Yunho's hands can go down, unbuckle and pull the belt away, undo the buttons of his pants and push them down, mid-thigh. He stops, gaze fixed on the covered half-mast erection growing inside black underwear.
"Go on," Jaejoong says, face pushing forward, nosing at the edge of Yunho's jaw.
He has to raise a shoulder to dislodge Jaejoong's face, and then push him back by the shoulder before sinking to his own knees, mouth dry and head heavy. He pulls the pants down, and then pulls off the boots when fabric gets bunched in them. And takes them off, trying to look anywhere but at the pale expanse of Jaejoong's legs, the curve of his ankles.
"Okay?" he asks, making to rise.
"Stay," Jaejoong says, and Yunho does, biting the inside of his cheek, curling hands into fists at his thighs. And then Jaejoong is kneeling in front of him, face serious and expression unpleasant, palming at Yunho's shirt, pushing it up, raking nails at his exposed skin.
"Jae, no."
"Shut up," he says, biting at Yunho's neck, sliding a hand down and to press its heel right where Yunho's cock is starting to grow, too, shameful and unplaced.
"No, Jae." Yunho's hands are trembling as he sets them on Jaejoong's hair, the sharpness of his shoulder.
"Just." Jae takes Yunho's hips in his hands, opens his mouth below his navel, licks, bites at the skin covered in goosebumps, noses at the hair there. "Just let me." He sounds wrecked, sad, destroyed. "You smell so good."
Yunho stays quiet, then, lets Jaejoong move and take his body, pull his underwear off and mouth at his now heavy cock, lets him suck at the head.
"Please," he says, when Jae sucks hard, when a hand fondles his ball.
"Please what?" Jaejoong pulls back, mouth shiny with spit. Yunho is trembling, beneath him, trying not to arch his back and press closer, beg for his cock to find its way back into the softness of Jaejoong's lips.
"Why?"
Jaejoong laughs, shakes hair out of his eyes, sinks nails on the dips between Yunho's rib, looks down when blood pools there, goes down for a lick and then faces up again, smiles. "Isn't it funny that even now, you're the bitch here?" His eyebrows are kind, the bite of his teeth at the sharp of Yunho's hipbones is not.
"There are no bitches here," Yunho says, voice soft, sadder than he can ever remember it being before.
Jaejoong hums and licks Yunho's cock back into the warm wetness of his mouth.
--
And finally, in a blast, in the middle of just a normal day, making the floor shake beneath their feet and beating against their eardrums in a terrible boom:
"Stay here," Jaejoong says, eyes shining electric blue. On the inside of his clawed hands, the silver bat practically hums, sizzling where skin touches it. The smell of burning flesh surrounds them, but Jaejoong doesn't seem to notice and if he does, he doesn't care.
"Jae-" Yunho starts, because they know each other, somehow, after the time spent together, and Jaejoong is already burning, and Yunho knows, knows what's said in the dark between stacks of alcohol, knows what happens to children born with glowing eyes and long ears.
"And quiet." Jaejoong spares him a last look before standing and jumping over the desk they've been hiding under.
Yunho doesn't dare to look, despite the want to. He can hear, though, the blasts coming from outside and Jaejoong's bat connecting with glass, breaking it, and then a growl, two, the sound of flesh hitting flesh and Yunho is just sitting there, thinking of his mom and dad and sister; thinking of humanity and how easily Jaejoong heals, how easily he can go as if he's never been hurt, how his heart speeds and speeds and speeds and doesn't stop.
(Yunho sits there and wonders how many times Jaejoong had come close to bleeding out and walked away with skin unmarked and smile bitter.)
--
"Hey," a boy says, startling Yunho out of his thoughts. He'd been trying to focus on the rhythm of Jaejoong's heartbeat thumping through the ring on his finger, and in the process had tuned out his surroundings. Stupid and dangerous, but the boy smiles a kind smile before offering a hand to help him up. His legs shake and Yunho wonders how long he spent there. It's quiet outside, would be too quiet, maybe, if not for the murmurs being traded back and forth and how he can still hear Jaejoong's blood flowing through the bond between them.
"What happened?" Yunho asks, as the boy leads him outside, through crushed and burned remains of wood. He can spot Jaejoong in the distance, and as soon as he contemplates calling for him, Jaejoong turns to stare in his direction. From afar, he can see Jaejoong dismissing the others he was talking to, and then he's walking. They meet at the middle, and the boy nods at Jaejoong before disappearing.
"Yunho," Jaejoong says, hand closing around Yunho's throat, eyes half-crazed. "Yunho."
"I'm here," he says back, desperation rising to clog his airways, catching Jaejoong's wrist between his own and their eyes meet for a second before they start stumbling their way back to their dorm, eyes wide and hearts synchronized, desperate.
--
"You could be mine."
Yunho wriggles to lie on his back, and Jaejoong takes that as an invitation, walking from his bed and crawling between Yunho's legs, straddling him. It's a week later from the last time they touched. Yunho had spent that time searching for company anywhere else, and Jaejoong had disappeared every night, without fault. Not tonight, though.
"No, I couldn't," he says, turning his face to the side, chin lowering until it almost touches his shoulder. He can't look up, at Jaejoong, at the way the light frames his cheeks, colors his hair. It's dangerous, the way his breath scratches him inside when he thinks of Jaejoong's skin under his hands, his taste on the back of his gums.
"Why not?" Jaejoong's nose touches the place where Yunho's stomach is hiding behind layers of tissue, moves up until warm air is meeting the hollow of his throat.
"It's wrong," Yunho says, stupid and desperate. Wrong, after the blood he's seen spilled, after the atrocities he shut his mouth against. It's wrong, like the boys with glowing eyes that grow to be warriors and the girls with long ears that... "Please," he says, not sure what he's asking for. Forgiveness, or to forget. To touch.
"Not as wrong," Jaejoong says, and swallows back the cruelness of what they've done. "And we both want it," he continues, superfluous. Yunho wonders how he must smell, now. Lust, despair, sadness? And Jaejoong?
"And we both can't." Even as he lets their eyes meet, exposes his throat, stretches his body as to show more of his stomach. Defenseless like he was instructed not to be, ever.
Jaejoong raises himself to his knees, again, and his claws settle on the bumps of Yunho's ribs. Pale chest filling, sinking back. Inhaling what he can of Yunho, of them.
"Yeah, we can't," he says, finally, jaw clenching. "But we did. I did, take. A part of you."
And Yunho knows, from the clench on his chest, from taking the ring off yesterday and still being able to hear another heartbeat, louder than his own. He sinks his grown fingernails in the fragility of Jaejoong's thighs until the other sighs, shoulders slumping, and shakes him off, walks away, rolls into his bed and pretends to sleep.
It's okay, Yunho thinks, closing his eyes against everything, trying to focus on a single heartbeat - his, his his his his his his - and failing.
--
They're woken in the middle of the night, Yunho when Jaejoong's heartbeat starts to beat faster than normal.
"What's wrong?" he asks, eyes burning with exhaustion but adrenaline pouring through his veins, trying to distinguish shapes in the darkness.
"Don't you know?" Counters a voice that he's grown familiar to, in the past months. Yunho flips on the switch of the lamp near his bed, and there - a voice coming from Jaejoong's bed, where Changmin's hand clasps the whiteness of a bony shoulder.
"Know what?" Yunho wonders about charging at Changmin, calculates how long would he be able to distract the other from Jaejoong. Enough for him to run, but maybe not enough so that the two of them might come alive. Changmin looks harmless but is not, if the blood splattered all over his face is any indication. "Whose blood is that?"
"He doesn't care about equality," Changmin says, voice meaning And so he matters not, pulling Jaejoong until he's standing too, eyes fixed on Yunho and heart slowing. "Welcome to the revolution." Jaejoong leans against Changmin and Yunho should've known.
Should've known of the late nights away, and the wickedness of Changmin's smile, and the way Jaejoong grew quieter outside the house. He should have, but didn't.
"Let's go," Jaejoong says, pulling a bag from under his bed and motioning for Yunho to do the same.
He looks at them, instead, eyes wide. Here is, the most significant test in his life, the fight between peace and war, and he can only wager his choices based on the measurements of Jaejoong's mouth, based on the tilts of Jaejoong's head, of the belonging that beats louder than his own heart whenever he thinks of Jaejoong.
He inhales deep, lungs expanding beyond what's comfortable. The bag under his bed is heavy, and he looks around, finds empty space where he favorite books used to be. On Jaejoong's face, a smile, confident, private, all his.
They go.
--
They run, from then on, and Yunho spends most of their time terrified. Afraid of losing Jaejoong, afraid of losing himself, afraid for all the children with glowing eyes and pointed ears. At night, Jaejoong kisses him until their hearts beat as one, gently, unhurried, in love.
They don't find peace for a long time, but they find each other.