(in)visible spectrum ; kaisoo ; space prison!au
Title: (In)visible spectrum
Rating: PG-13
Pairing: Jongin/Kyungsoo
Wordcount: 19,615
Warning: Lameness? Nothing happens, so boredom too. Unbetaed.
Disclaimer: EXO belongs to themselves and SME
Notes: (the coincidence is so funny, I started that fic in september so i obviously didn't know about exo's comeback. Let's thank the lord though, because their comeback has been better handled than this 'fic')
I've been struggling with the nastiest writer's block for the past three months, and this is what came out of it. So obviously it's not really good. I think it did what it was supposed to do though, which is helping me go through that writer's block. But anyway. It's bad.
And I'm even more ashamed because it was written for my dear and precious Agnes. Love, it was supposed to be a gift to help you deal with your first days in England, but I'm so late, oh dear god (but I'm early for Christmas haha). Also, this doesn't count as a fic for you. I promise, I'll write you something much better sooner or later.
Summary: Being born on Earth makes the Orion Belt Agency's prisons really dangerous, just like being Kyungsoo's enemy does, actually. Thank god, Jongin is only one of those.
The first time Jongin meets Kyungsoo, he's burning with anger and embarrassment. The prison's floor is dirty, sticky under his palm, but nothing is dirtier than the feeling growing in his chest. Of course, he was kind of expecting the bullying. He's no one after all, nothing, an Earthling, and although he somehow managed to earn himself some respect outside, mostly because of his shenanigans against the Orion Belt Agency, inside those walls, he's worth nothing. Frustration makes him grit his teeth as he lowers his head. Better not to do anything, and just get back on his feet wordlessly. The Spufanian who pushed him, a fine specimen of one of the dumbest species Jongin has ever encountered, is at least three meter high, and probably half as wide. His round and huge green face breaks into a loud peal of laughter when Jongin gets back on his feet, and he uses his hands, as large as plates, to make Jongin fall again. The push on his torso makes him lose his breath, and he coughs, lying on the floor, fighting his way through anger, so much anger, and humiliation.
Someone clears his throat. Both Jongin and the Spufanian -Osloa according to the crowd's cheers- turn around, just in time to see a man step up. He emerges from the crowd's circle with a calm, indifferent step, and glances down at Jongin. Just like the Spufanian, he has the distinctive features of his own kind. A short height, black hair and eyes just as dark clashing on a skin so pale it could be translucent; but more importantly, what looks like tattoos starting at the corners of his eyes in thin strips. They curve up towards his temples and then dive down past his jawline towards both sides of his throat, widening, until they disappear under the collar of his shirt. They only reappear on the man's naked arms, large silvery strips lazily reflecting the harsh light of the prison's cafeteria.
When the man looks at Osloa, red flashes on the strips, starting on his face and traveling down his body like some sort of electric impulsion. Even the tip of his hair turns red for a split second. Jongin feels his heart jump into his throat. A Magni. One of the rarest species. Rarest because their kind had been almost completely annihilated by the Spufanians themselves when the Orion Belt Agency decided to finally move its ass.
The crowd breaks into cacophony of whispers. Kyungsoo, Kyungsoo against Osloa, that's gonna be interesting.
And interesting it is. Osloa throws insults, nasty remarks about Kyungsoo's almost wiped out kind, his orange snake-like tongue licking his green lips with delight as the crowd erupts in mirth at his provocations. The only problem is that Kyungsoo doesn't flinch, doesn't even react. He just stares at the Spufanian with those bored eyes, and eventually, it gets to the latter.
“What are you going to do, uh?” Osloa snaps at Kyungsoo. “Stand there while I beat you down? That's why your people have lost against mine!”
At that, Kyungsoo lets out a long sigh. He finally pulls his hands out of his pockets, and starts walking towards the very confused Spufanian with small, but firm steps. The crowd's cheers die down until the atmosphere in the prison's cafeteria makes it hard to breathe, and Jongin, although still on the ground, is no exception. He watches with wide eyes as Kyungsoo walks towards Osloa, the latter obviously impatient to crush the Magni and have the prisoners cheering for him again. Kyungsoo is going to get himself killed, Jongin realizes. He's too small, too skinny. Jongin looks around him, but he doesn't see any guards.
Kyungsoo glances at him as he walks by him, but he draws back his attention on Osloa almost immediately, with that same lazy and bored expression. By the time he stops in front of the green monster, they're all holding their breaths.
Osloa has tilted his head down to see Kyungsoo, and Kyungsoo's head is thrown back. They exchange a look, and Osloa opens his mouth, a flow of dirty things to say probably ready to be spilled out. The thing is, he never gets to say them.
Kyungsoo hits him in the stomach with the flat of his hand, the gesture sharp and quick, so quick actually, that Jongin misses it because of a blink. When he opens his eyes again, Osloa is falling, and his huge body makes the cafeteria's floor shake under his weight when it crashes down. From where Jongin is, he can easily see the blood running down the Spufanian's chin. He gasps at Kyungsoo.
“You won because you were millions and we were only a few hundreds,” Kyungsoo says, hovering Osloa's unconscious face. “Not because you were the strongest, or the smartest. That would be us, asshole.”
And that's more or less what it takes for Jongin to be hooked.
That, and the nonchalance heavily coated with indifference that Kyungsoo displays as he glances around him, his eyes stopping on those who cheered the loudest for Osloa. Probably the Spufanian's friends, Jongin muses. He expects them to run forward to defend the dignity of their passed out brute of a leader, but none of them dares to make a move. The whole prison is trapped in silence, and Jongin himself is at a complete loss of words. Earthlings aren't the tallest amongt aliens, quite the contrary actually, but Kyungsoo is even smaller. No one around him does so much as raising their eyebrows -or scales, feathers or antennas- at him though. This is incredible.
Kyungsoo doesn't look sensitive to the silence around him, and the air, heavy on Jongin's tongue, almost too thick to reach his lungs, doesn't seem the slightest hard to breath for Kyungsoo. Jongin half expects him to stifle a yawn. Kyungsoo is a Magni though, one of the noblest kinds, and he would never show such a rude gesture. Instead, he considers Osloa's belly, whose size makes it look more like a mountain than a stomach, and climbs on it to finally sit down at the top of the green mass. His feet dangle in the void, childlike, and Jongin stares, mouth agape.
A few guards finally elbow their way through the crowd. Most of them probably watched the whole scene from afar, more amused than anything. The prison is on the outskirts of the Orion Belt Agency's territory, and so far away from the head offices, rules are easily swept aside. They're probably not paid enough to even want to stop a fight. Jongin knew the moment he got caught that he would be the only one he could count on to survive in that prison. No one would rescue him.
Well, that was before Kyungsoo. Jongin is still too dumbstruck to react to what happened, the floor under his palms even starting to warm as he finds himself unable to move. He watches, as if he wasn't part of the scene, the guards grab Kyungsoo's ankles and pulling him down. Kyungsoo lands on the ground with a graceful jump, and shoves his hands in his pants' pockets as soon as he regains his balance. He casts a bored look at the blast guns the guards point at him, and follows them diligently towards the exit of the cafeteria. Probably towards the high-security cells, which will most likely be Kyungsoo's punishment.
He looks at Jongin again when he walks past him, but this time, the eye contact lasts longer. Jongin can even make out the silvery splinter blown out in Kyungsoo's irises, their metallic color echoing with the strips disappearing under Kyungsoo's shirt. Kyungsoo doesn't blink once while they stare at each other. His gaze remains firm and so hard to read. Jongin opens his mouth with half a mind to thank the Magni, but words let him down. Half disappointed and half mesmerized, he watches Kyungsoo's small back retreat in the middle of those, shielded, of the guards. The next moment, the strange procession is gone.
“If I were you, I'd move my ass, like right now.”
Jongin turns around, baffled, only to find a pair of shoes identical to the ones he's wearing. Except maybe dirtier. He looks up and meets a pair of smiling eyes already staring down at him. The guy, whose lips stretch in a weird kind of smile, their corners curling up towards his jutting cheekbones, gestures towards the crowd over his shoulders.
“Now that Kyungsoo's gone...” the guy trails on, and Jongin glances between the man's skinny legs only to see Osloa's friends starting to come back to themselves. They're glaring at Jongin, and the only thing protecting the latter from a horde of really dumb, but really strong aliens is the nurse putting the little case that will allow him to levitate Osloa's body into the Nursery on the latter's belly.
“Shit,” Jongin mumbles. He jumps on his feet, but he's a few seconds too late already. Osloa is probably the king of the prison because now, the whole crowd looks pissed at him. Or maybe it's just because he's an Earthling.
“Shit,” he says again.
He glances at the man still standing next to him as the crowd starts to close ranks around them. His new friend answers his probably distressed look with a lopsided smile before grabbing his hand. Jongin barely has the time to startle at the surprisingly strong grip that the guy is already dragging him through the cafeteria. He must have a certain rank amongt the prisoners, because they all step aside, although very reluctantly. Glancing above his shoulder, Jongin realizes Osloa's friends are starting to move towards them.
“No lunch today!” the guy chants as they step through the cafeteria door. He keeps walking, his gait oddly jumping and his fingers tightly closed around Jongin's wrist. “You're not missing much though, today was Danrek day, and let me tell you, those stinking slugs know nothing about good food.”
Jongin merely hums at that, too busy checking if Osloa's friends are on their trail, but as the guy drags him further into the prison, navigating through the corridors as if he owned the place, it becomes clear that Jongin's safe-at least for now. A few minutes of nothing more than the sounds of their steps echoing through the corridors have him drawing back his attention on his new guardian angel. Unlike Osloa or Kyungsoo, he doesn't wear the feature of his kind on his body but, although he looks perfectly normal, Jongin knows better than to assume he's an Earthling as well. It's not until the guy looks over his shoulder that Jongin solves the puzzle as he's irresistibly calmed down by the unnatural smile.
“I'm Jongdae by the way,” the guy says. “And I'm a--”
“Chenzol,” Jongin finishes for him.
Jongdae flashes him another wide grin as he slows down and lets go of Jongin's hand.
“What gave me away? The lips?”
Jongin snorts. Honestly, it should have. Chenzols have the most unsettling lips, but Jongdae doesn't only carry the peculiar smile of his kind. He also has their ability to adapt to absolutely everything with a disarming ease.
“No,” Jongin shakes his head with a little smile. Chenzols usually are friendly. When you don't get in their way, because that... well, let's say it's never a good idea. “You act as if you were home, and honestly, only a Chenzol would be crazy enough to step up for an Earthling in a prison full of aliens.” He pauses, and adds. “My name's Jongin.”
Jongdae cackles.
“Kyungsoo isn't a Chenzol though, Jongin.” He beams at Jongin, his voice playing with his name. “He'd make a terrible one.”
Flashes of silver patches of skin and dark hair, dark eyes, dark aura flood Jongin's mind. He glances at Jongdae, who leads him in another corridor.
“Do you know him?”
“Kyungsoo? Of course I do,” Jongdae nods. “ We share the same cell. And from now on, it will be your cell too.”
Jongdae stops in front of a cell that he shows to Jongin with a large sweep of his arm.
“Home sweet home,” he grins.
Jongin glances at the cell -grey, dirty, exactly like his own- then draws back his attention to Jongdae, his eyebrows knitted together. He's grateful for the help back in the cafeteria, but following other people's orders has never been one of his skills. Friendly or not, Jongdae is obviously an outlaw, and Jongin never gives his trust that easily anyway.
“You could go back to your own cell,” Jongdae says with a grin, feeling Jongin's hesitations. “But Osloa's friends will come for you. Probably not tonight, because they're too stupid to take the initiative to get revenge without their stupid leader, but trust me, they will eventually. Kyungsoo is threatening enough to keep you safe, so if you wanna live, really...”
Jongdae concludes with a shrug, as if they were just discussing the weather. Jongin knows the Chenzol is annoyingly right. Just the fact that the guards would let him sleep in that cell instead of his own is enough of a proof. The guards don't give a shit about what happens inside the prison.
He sighs, his eyes following Jongdae as the latter almost jumps into the cell, whistling a cheerful tune. He plops down on one of the two bunks and moans contentedly as he stretches his body. His eyes meet Jongin's, slightly lighter than jet black, and definitely brighter than the harsh light flooding the cell.
“Also, if you really want to live, don't sleep in Kyungsoo's bunk,” he singsongs.
Jongin watches him slip his hand under his pillow and pull out a tiny metallic device that turns on with a light click. Blue letters appears in thin air, advanced technology drawing invisible pages that cast a faint glow on Jongdae's skin, cutting his face with harsh shadows. The Chenzol squints his eyes at the writing, the tip of his tongue darting out from the corner of his curled lips. Jongin watches him wordlessly, his own irises following the Chenzoli letters displaying news after news, but Jongdae doesn't look at him anymore.
The empty bunk is neat, and welcoming, but also very much forbidden. After one last glance at Jongdae, who is now chuckling at a new page of news, Jongin deflates. The cell's floor isn't much better than the cafeteria's sticky dirty one.
Not even a full week in prison, and he's already screwed. That's probably a record.
Jongin has heard a lot of stories about the Magnis. He's heard about rainbows on their skins, about emotions displaying in the purest form over their bodies, colors drowning their eyes and hair, but he understands, from the very moment Kyungsoo steps into the cell in the morning, that stories are stories and Kyungsoo... is different.
His hair is black, and the strips boringly silver when he stops and looks down at Jongin, barely reacting to Jongdae's laughing voice. (Hey you wanted to play hero, that's great but now you have a puppy!) Kyungsoo is still in monochromatic colors when Osloa's friends spit in his food during lunch. He's colorless when Jongin finally breaks out of his silence to talk to him, and he remains just as extinguished while Jongin's words fade out in front of his bored eyes. When Osloa gets out of the infirmary before dinner and quickly turns on his heels after spotting Kyungsoo in the corridor, Kyungsoo's face breaks into a smirk, but it's a shallow one. Jongin stares eagerly, but Kyungsoo's eyes remain black, his hair just as dark, and the silver on his skin, like the outskirts of a galaxy, doesn't light up.
Jongin remembers everything he's heard about Magnis. How people used words such as colorful and gleaming, but Kyungsoo is miles away from that. Thankfully, the uniform they have to wear inside the prison is of a flashy shade of purple, which helps to remind Jongin from time to time that colors actually do exist. Just not on Kyungsoo.
Jongin looks away from the latter's form, all straight and motionless lines as he's lying on his bunk with his eyes closed, and draws back his attention on Jongdae. The Chenzol was nice enough to let just enough space on his mattress for Jongin's butt. The prison might be just welcoming enough for the guards to let them wander and do whatever they want, but it's still a high-tech building lost in space, and god knows how cold it is on the floor. Needless to say that Jongin is silently praying that Jongdae won't go to bed too early, because he really doesn't want to risk his life by sleeping on the floor again. He would go back into his own cell, but the fourth passage of one of Osloa's friends before Jongdae and Kyungsoo's cell was dissuasive enough. Jongin has always played solo, but it doesn't mean he can't admit when a team is needed.
There's that, and also the fact that Kyungsoo is in black and white, and for some unknown reasons, it annoys Jongin so much.
“Are you sure he's a Magni?” he asks Jongdae, leaning towards the latter's shoulder.
Jongdae glances at him, the wave-catcher in his hands still displaying Chenzoli alphabet.
“He is,” he snorts. “One hundred per cent pure breed.”
Jongin ignores Jongdae's obvious amusement in favor of raising both his eyebrows at him.
“But then... shouldn't he be...in colors?”
Jongdae chuckles. “In colors?” he repeats. “You Terrans are so funny.”
Jongin forgets Kyungsoo for a short second, just enough to consider Jongdae with surprise. Terran isn't a word he hears a lot, and the few times he did, he was out of the Orion Belt Agency's territory, selling what he had stolen them. The Agency's ranking of the planets they colonized rules over the peoples living under their reign, especially when it comes to Mining Planets. Jongin would know it better than anyone else, Earth has never been more than the endless energy coming from its core for the Agency, and its inhabitants aren't worth a shit for them. They're even lower than those cannibal tribes in the north of the Agency's territory. They're Earthlings, and definitely not Terrans.
Something flashes in Jongdae's eyes, but it's too quick for Jongin to catch a real glimpse of it. The next thing he knows, Jongdae is looking away, back to the wave-catcher and news from his people. Jongin's heart is beating like crazy in his chest, and he's dying to ask, to demand more. Respect is a nice feeling, something that he had forgotten apparently.
“The only color I've seen on him was dark blue,” Jongdae blurts out. His voice is somewhere between serious and careless, teetering on a thin thread as though Jongdae himself wasn't sure what to display. When he blinks up at Jongin though, seriousness is far gone in favor of the usual mischievous look. “But it was a blue so dark that it was almost black actually.”
Jongin frowns, glancing at Kyungsoo, whose chest is still going up and down slowly. His eyes are still closed, and Jongin can see his lashes, surprisingly long, stand out against the prison wall. He's probably sleeping, Jongin realizes, but it doesn't ease the weight he can feel on his shoulders and pressing against his chest. It's like Kyungsoo, who's smaller than them, is filling the room and making the air around them still. Jongin feels incredibly tight in his uniform despite the fact that it's way too large for him.
“Dark blue?” he repeats slowly, eyes glued on Kyungsoo. He tries to picture dark blue, like the velvety night sky back on Earth, stretching over Kyungsoo's body, but somehow, the color can't seem to be able to cover the silver and black filling Jongin's eyes.
He wrinkles his nose and turns his head towards Jongdae, whose cat-like pupils are already staring at him.
“What does dark blue mean?”
Jongdae chuckles.
“How would I know? Have you seen him? He's not exactly easy to read.”
Jongin frowns. Jongdae's face is all wrinkles and smiling lines-in other words, unreadable- but Jongin is almost sure he's lying.
“You live with him though,” he says.
Jongdae nods, before gesturing towards Kyungsoo's still form with his head.
“As you can see, the conversation isn't really interesting.”
Jongin opens his mouth, now almost sure that Jongdae is leading him on, but before he can say anything, a third voice, lower, cuts him.
“Stop talking about me like I'm not here.”
Jongdae cackles, but Jongin's laugh dies in the pit of his stomach. He can feel himself blushing, which hadn't happened in years, and he's pretty sure Jongdae hasn't missed that. Of course he hasn't.
“As you can see, there are a few rules you need to follow, because you'd miss having only a dumb Spufanian as your biggest enemy, trust me.”
“Jongdae,” Kyungsoo thunders, his eyes still closed, his body still. He's like a statue, and his voice could be coming from anywhere, because it fills the room, from the floor to the ceiling.
Jongdae presses his lips in a thin line, but his laugh is still quite obvious in his eyes. He winks at Jongin, and draws back his attention to the wave-catcher. At that exact moment, the lights in the prison are turned off for the night, and darkness rushes into their cell. It crashes against the pale light radiating from the Chenzoli alphabet in a perfectly silent explosion that sends splinters of light around them. Jongin watches them nest against the walls, or shine bright in his peripheral vision, but mostly, he watches them stretch over Kyungsoo's body. Some of them catch in a few strands of dark hair, others are outlining the curve of his cheek, and the last ones are slipping between his fingers. It's not dark blue, and it's not really on Kyungsoo's skin, but it's still more colors than what Kyungsoo usually wears.
Maybe it's the long years of stealing, of breaking in and taking what isn't his, but, as he watches the pale blue splinters swim on Kyungsoo's body when Jongdae turns the page, Jongin feels more determined than he's ever been to crack Kyungsoo, just like he'd crack a security password.
As if sensing his thoughts, Kyungsoo finally moves after a few hours of stillness. He grabs the blanket under him, arches his body off the bed, and pulls it up to his chin. Just before burying himself under the sheets, he briefly turns his head towards Jongdae's bunk. The reflection of a letter that looks like a treble clef catches in his left eye, and Jongin clearly sees it staring back at him. He holds his breath, but the next second has Kyungsoo already disappearing under the blanket.
Luckily, Jongin has always loved a good challenge.
Jongin's conscience is far gone, buried deep in his being where the biting cold can't reach. His whole body has caved in, arms shielding his head and knees pressed against his chest in a poor attempt at keeping his body heat from fading away in the emptiness around him. It's almost comfortable, almost warm, Jongin has known worse after all. It doesn't mean that the regular bumps in his sides digging up his conscience and stirring it awake doesn't annoy him though.
He groans, wriggles away from the repetitive hits against his side. They're not painful, almost soft, but they're still shaking his insides like an earthquake, and forcing his attention out of its cocoon of sleep. The first thing that comes back to Jongin as he slowly surfaces is how cold he is.
“Fuck,” he grumbles, squeezing his eyes shut and frowning against the darkness printed on his eyelids.
For a short second, he dares to hope that whatever is attacking his ribs has given up, because it's gone. But then Jongin curls up again and hugs his knees against his chest, and it's back, only this time stronger. He opens his eyes, taken aback by the pang of pain echoing through his ribs, and he's met by a dark purple sneaker only a few inches from his mind.
“What the--” he blurts out as he jolts away from the sneaker.
It's attached to a pair of legs, also covered with that same ugly plum shade, and they go up, and up until they meet narrow hips disappearing under the too large uniform falling loosely over them. Then comes a chest, strong, and shoulders, square, which turn into taut biceps. Black eyes and hair, white and silvery skin rain on Jongin.
“Did you just kick me?” Jongin asks, accusatory, his voice scrapping the back of his throat.
Kyungsoo meets his grumpy tone with an eyebrow raising.
“I didn't just kick you. In fact, I've been doing it for the past ten minutes. You're quite hard to wake up,” he answers bluntly.
Jongin has to blink a few times to make sure he's not still sleeping. With his conscience taking back its spot, he finally notices the lights in the corridors, on again. One glance at Jongdae's bunk tells him that the latter is gone, but it's definitely morning, if the sheets tangled and dangling off the Chenzol's bed are any indication.
“Where's Jongdae?” he asks.
“Not here,” Kyungsoo shrugs.
Jongin stares, but Kyungsoo doesn't seem uncomfortable at all. He slightly frowns though, and adds, “He's rarely here during the day.”
His tone, so matter-of-factly, has Jongin nodding and mumbling Oh, I see, as if the whole scene wasn't ridiculous already. Silence follows Kyungsoo's last words, and Jongin hastily gets back on his feet, impatient to find back the semblance of superiority he has over Kyungsoo thanks to his longer legs. The pair of black eyes follow him as he rises, and Jongin soon realizes that Kyungsoo doesn't need to be tall to be impressive. It's the first time he's standing so close to the Magni, and all he wants to do is curl up and hides his face in his hands in embarrassment. He resolves to slagging his shoulders, but that only brings his face closer to Kyungsoo's face level, and the thought erupts over his skin in a burning red. Kyungsoo, of course, doesn't react. Jongin wonders if that strong aura he has around him, that quiet certainty of power, is something every Magni has. It's at least one thing that lives up to the tale.
“Now that you're awake, we should go to your cell and take your blankets,” Kyungsoo says.
Jongin snorts. “You're saying it as if you weren't the one who woke me up.”
Kyungsoo stares at him, and Jongin feels himself shrink.
“Sorry,” he mumbles.
He thinks he sees a crooked smile lingering on Kyungsoo's plush lips as the latter turns on his heels, but the absence of colors painting the silver strips on his skin, and the stillness of his shoulder line tells Jongin that he's most probably wrong. In all honesty, he doesn't want to take the risk and assume anything. Whereas it took less than ten minutes for Jongdae to act so friendly that Jongin would forget how nasty a Chenzol can be, Kyungsoo has danger stiffening the air all around him. He did knock out that stupid Spufanian so easily after all.
“Please don't make me wait,” Kyungsoo says, breaking Jongin away from his thoughts. He's standing in front of the cell, his bored eyes scanning Jongin's face.
To the latter's embarrassment, he lets out a horrendous yelp as he nods and hurries to join Kyungsoo. The latter is waiting for him in the corridor, and this time, Jongin is almost sure the Magni is smiling, but he's also too horrified to look up and check.
Kyungsoo takes him up the corridor, just like Jongdae did when they came back from the cafeteria, except that there's no running this time. It's like a punch in Jongin's ego, but he knows that Jongdae was right: nobody will bother him with Kyungsoo's around. He spots a few heads popping out of their cells to follow them as they walk through the prison, and he wonders how many of those aliens would have bullied him, harassed him or insulted him if he had been alone. He's used to it, of course -he's never had the luxury to feel anything other than small in such a big universe- but it still wears him out.
It's only after the third alien who rushes back into her cell when she spotted Kyungsoo and Jongin in the corridor, dragging her nine tentacles behind her, that Jongin feels the need to break the thoughtful silence lingering between him and Kyungsoo.
“I... I didn't really thank you properly for what you did back in the cafeteria,” he clumsily says. Kyungsoo glances at him, and Jongin feels almost thrilled to have his attention. “That asshole would have probably beaten me to death.”
Kyungsoo considers him for a short second.
“What's your name again?”
“Jongin. Kim Jongin.”
Kyungsoo nods, slowly repeating Jongin's name in that velvety and mellow voice of his. He wets his lips, and looks back at Jongin.
“Well, Jongin, I didn't do it for you. I just really hate Spufanians.”
Rather than feeling hurt by the revelation -he wasn't actually naive enough to think that Kyungsoo was only driven by heroism- Jongin slightly chuckles at the emphasis. Walking in the corridors next to Kyungsoo has at least one good side effect: Jongin is starting to feel like it's them against the rest of the prisoners, and it's almost making him comfortable enough to consider joking. This is no joke matter though, and he quickly lets go of his smile to make sure that Kyungsoo wouldn't think he is laughing at him. If the Spufanians had almost wiped out his own people, Jongin wouldn't probably be as calm as Kyungsoo is.
“I understand,” he chooses to say instead.
Kyungsoo looks at him, his eyes strong and deep. Jongin holds his gaze, but the eye contact has his skin itching. He's a grown-up man, and he has diced with death quite a few times before, but nothing has ever felt as intense as looking at Kyungsoo in the eyes. The usual indifference of the latter is gone, replaced by something that Jongin can't quite name.
“Maybe you can,” Kyungsoo finally answers.
He looks away, and Jongin is left frowning. He glances at the silvery expanses of skin standing out against the white of Kyungsoo's body, and they unsurprisingly bare the same shade of argent. Jongin is already quite bad at reading people, but trying to decipher Kyungsoo is like trying to peek at something through a brick wall. It doesn't help, of course, that Kyungsoo's feelings should be displaying in color codes and sparkles over his body. It's so frustrating.
“Are you the Terran thief called Kai?”
Jongin looks at Kyungsoo, taken aback. More than the fact that Kyungsoo has heard about him before, it's the Terran word that catches him off guard. Unlike Jongdae, Kyungsoo looks like he's standing by the word, and not that he blurted out accidentally only to regret it afterwards. He meets Jongin's eyes with a semblance of challenge, and Jongin answers with a bit more of defiance.
“Yes.”
Kyungsoo smiles at him, he actually smiles. It doesn't really break the black and white surrounding him, but it still flashes Jongin a bit of pink and red when Kyungsoo's upper lip stretches upward, and Jongin's heart falters.
“You're probably not really used to people calling you like that,” Kyungsoo says, his smile still hung on his lips, and somehow, it gets to Jongin.
“Definitely not,” he smiles back.
“Yeah, I figured so. What are they doing on Earth, already?”
Kyungsoo spits the word they with so much hate, that it catches Jongin off guard. Intrigued, he tries not to let his interest show as he answers.
“They're using its core for its energy.”
Kyungsoo doesn't say anything as he stops Jongin by grabbing his forearm. He leads him in a corridor on their left, and Jongin realizes that the cells they're now walking past look familiar. With a jolt, he points at one of the glass walls a few steps ahead of them.
“It's that one.”
“I know,” Kyungsoo nods.
The anger that was still palpable around him barely a second ago is now gone, reduced to a mere memory. Jongin sighs internally as he mourns the loss of what could have been his key to crack Kyungsoo. Maybe next time .
They walk into the cell, and Jongin is surprised to see that his cellmate's bunk is empty, deprived of the sheets that used to be all over it.
“Probably left for another cell,” Kyungsoo says, catching Jongin's surprise. “Didn't want to endure Osloa's frustration at your absence.”
“Pff,” Jongin sighs, half between bitterness and anger. “Coward.”
“Well, Osloa is three meter high.”
Jongin nods. “That didn't stop you from knocking him out,” he grins.
Kyungsoo smiles. “I'm actually considered really tall among my people.”
The thought has Jongin chuckling, and Kyungsoo looks quite proud of his joke. He gifts Jongin with another flash of pink as his lips stretch again. Jongin can't help but notice how handsome Kyungsoo actually is. He's nothing like the Beltets, those aliens so beautiful that they drive you crazy, but to Jongin, they have nothing on Kyungsoo. His beauty is quieter, and more than beauty, it's actually a strong game of pulls, but it just makes it better. It's drawing Jongin in, like the stars once did, and Jongin has only good memories about that time.
He looks away, a little smile perched on his lips, and all previous tension gone from his body. Under Kyungsoo's gaze, he finally grabs his blankets, and puts his pillow on the top of the pile of dark purple fabric he's holding. Upon seeing him with his arms full, Kyungsoo steps closer and grabs the wave-catcher in a small niche in the wall.
“Thanks,” Jongin says with another smile, to which Kyungsoo answers with a short nod.
They step out of the cell together, and Jongin doesn't look back as they walk away from it. He has no personal effects, aside from the wave-catcher that they're all handed when they're incarcerated to stay in touch with family and homes, and he stayed in the cell itself for a week only, so it's not like he has something to say goodbye to. Plus, he's leaving for his own safety, and even though he has always been more of a solo player in his life, he's smart enough to know when a team is actually a wiser choice.
“How did you know about me?” he suddenly asks, his train of thought taking him back to Kyungsoo saying his thief alias.
Kyungsoo's eyes don't leave the corridor as he answers.
“I know a lot about people going against the Agency.”
Jongin almost stops dead in his tracks, too surprised at what Kyungsoo is implying. Rebels, those people who live outside of the Agency's territory, in the darkness and the danger, are the biggest threat for the Agency. Since they're depicted as the number one enemies, being suspected of belonging to that group of aliens from various species is the best way to have your body floating among the stars somewhere in the darkest pit of the universe. Jongin can't help but wonder what Kyungsoo knows about the Rebels, and the thought that he's rubbing along with troubles bigger than him crosses his mind. He somehow manages to keep a straight face though. At least he hopes he does, because Kyungsoo glances at him, and even though Jongin has no idea what that sudden depth he spots in Kyungsoo's black eyes means, he knows that the latter is gauging him. Whatever Kyungsoo's test is about, Jongin doesn't want to fail.
“What about you? What have you done to end up in this nice and cozy place?” he asks as innocently as he can. It seems unlikely that the Agency would have let a Rebel in that prison, so close to the outskirts of their territory, and whose security level is quite laughable. But whatever Kyungsoo meant, Jongin takes it as he can: a window to try and learn more about his bodyguard.
Kyungsoo smiles, short and sharp, but it feels more like an inside joke with himself that something he intents to share with Jongin.
“They caught me stealing money during a top-rank Agent only party.” He looks at Jongin, and this time, the smile stretching his lips is directed at him. “They really didn't like how easy it was for me to empty their pockets right under their noses.”
Jongin snorts. “They probably didn't.”
Kyungsoo shrugs, and they fall back into a comfortable silence. Jongin's mind is roaring, going crazy over the few details he caught on Kyungsoo, and stopping here and there to wonder why it's that important anyway. He quickly brushes the question aside, and decides to consider the relatively long walk to his old cell and back a victory considering the amount he managed to catch on Kyungsoo. Smiles, peaks of bitterness and even a hint of humor that his posture never showed until there, and Jongin is positive that soon enough, colors will join the celebration. And damn, he can't wait.
So it's no surprise that the third colorless day has Jongin mixing dark thoughts in his head from where's he's sitting on the floor, his blankets now softening the harsh bite of the cold under him. He glances at Kyungsoo, still motionless on his bed, and still silent as he scrolls through the pages popping out of the wave-catcher. It's all written in the Agency's alphabet, plain letters that Jongin reads as they stretch over thin air. Where are his mother's stories about Magnis' colors, about their languages and their culture? He wants to shake Kyungsoo and literally throw up on him the hundreds of questions he can feel stagnate in the back of his throat.
It doesn't help that Jongdae is never here. Jongdae with his bright voice and his enthusiasm, Jongdae who actually talks to Jongin. He spends his days out of the cell, doing god knows what god knows where, and only comes back when Kyungsoo is already fast asleep (when he does come back). He also brought their meals directly into the cell, because he and Kyungsoo both thought it was safer for a while, but now Jongin is starting to feel like he's in a prison, a prison inside a prison, and the mise en abyme effect is giving him a nasty headache.
And Kyungsoo, Kyungsoo isn't what he should be, Kyungsoo is all black and white, silver and dead nebulae.
“Kyungsoo,” Jongin finally says, hours after he cracked an eye open in the morning. His voice struggles to leave his throat, finally managing to go past his lips only after it has dropped a little. Jongin winces at how unfamiliar talking already is.
“Mmmh,” Kyungsoo hums, thumb pressing on the wave-catcher to turn the page. He's reading something about the yearly summit the Agency will hold in a couple of days, where they'll revise the planets' sorting.
“Kyungsoo,” Jongin repeats, and this time, he manages to have Kyungsoo glance at him. “Do you know what keeps Jongdae so busy?”
“No. Probably people,” Kyungsoo says, scrunching up his nose in disdain. “He likes those. People.”
Jongin frowns, unhappy with the answer. “That's it? That's all you know? And what do you usually do when he's gone?”
“What do you mean 'what do I usually do'? Don't you see what I'm doing right now?”
At least, the long sigh emptying Jongin's lungs doesn't only leave him breathless, but it also has Kyungsoo finally looking away from the electronic device.
“It's been four months since you've been caught,” Jongin mumbles. “How did you not die of boredom?”
Kyungsoo frowns, annoyance creasing the skin between his eyebrows. To think that Jongin was already celebrating figuring him out! Disappointment has always made Jongin cranky, and a cranky Jongin doesn't sit well with silence.
“Why are you reading those articles anyway?” Jongin asks, this time louder. “Are you really hoping for a change?”
The mix between the mention of the Orion Belt organization and Jongin's biting tone seems to break Kyungsoo away from his lethargy. He lowers his wave-catcher, index finger swiping its left corner out of habit, and the letters disappear. Their pale blue halo fade to black and white on Kyungsoo's face as he turns his head towards Jongin.
“Aren't you?”
Jongin snorts.
“Why would I?” he retorts. “They would never pull the Earth out of the Mining list. Things will only get worse.”
Kyungsoo doesn't blink, but he doesn't run from Jongin's gaze either. He looks so still, so calm and in control, and it just pisses off Jongin more. He feels the heat bubbling up in his chest, and when it reaches his mouth, Jongin just lets it out in the ugliest words he's ever said.
“Ask Jongdae,” he spits, defying.
Chenzolae, Jongdae's planet, has been in the Civilian list since its colonization, eighty years ago. But the rumor has it that the Agency will place it in the Military list this year-which is the slightly more polite version of the Mining list. As a Civilian planet, Chenzolae was free to keep its government, as long as it obeyed to the Agency, and keep on living like they used to before the colonization. The Military planets though become huge bases, and hundreds of Agent families are sent there. Then comes the recruitment of the inhabitants, and next thing you know, their planet isn't theirs anymore, and they've turned into soldiers. Jongin knows how much Chenzols love their freedom, their wild forests and rivers. He also knows that their ability to adapt to everything, to grow flippers or to stop breathing if needed, is what the Agency is interested in the most. Such amazing soldiers.
Kyungsoo squints, and he finally sits up, his back slowly detaching from the bed. The hair on the back of his head sticks out in different directions, and the strands catch the harsh light. It's just more silver, Jongin thinks. Silver on black, how unexpected.
“You should keep hoping, Jongin,” Kyungsoo finally says, and it's the first time Jongin spots something lurking in his voice since their walk to get his blankets. He immediately jumps on it.
“I can't believe you, of all people, would lecture me about hope. Didn't they let the Spufanians kill your people? How's hoping going for you, Kyungsoo?”
Kyungsoo shrugs, completely unaware of Jongin's attack.
“More than anything, I think it gives me the duty to hope for a better future.” Kyungsoo pauses, and the seconds stretch into minutes. Just when Jongin thinks he is actually done, Kyungsoo breaks out of his stillness again, and adds, in a softer voice. “I think you should too.”
Jongin's anger doesn't stand up to Kyungsoo's quiet assurance, and he feels his resolve crumble, easily washed away by the black and white filling his vision. He's been so caught up in the lack of colors that he ended up mistaking it for an absence of feelings, but as he takes in Kyungsoo's posture, his hands on his knees, and the strong arch of his eyebrows, Jongin finds himself forced to admit that he was wrong. It's still a bit sad though, that hope and determination have to show on Kyungsoo with the same lazy silver reflections as every other emotions.
Jongin sighs, and slouches his shoulders as he presses his back against the wall. Kyungsoo probably feels his defection, because a little smile soon stretches on his lips.
“Do you really think things can change?” Jongin asks, and Kyungsoo shrugs.
“I'm quite resourceful.”
Jongin snorts. “Yeah, and very locked up too.”
Kyungsoo brushes away Jongin's words with a flick of his wrist. “Details.”
Jongin snorts for a second time, but this time it lacks in real annoyance. He wanted it to be an opening though, something that would lure Kyungsoo in and start a new conversation, but Kyungsoo obviously hears it as a conclusion. He drops the full stop over their exchange with a blink of his eyes, lashes curling against the softness of his cheeks, and he goes back to his previous occupation. His back falls on the mattress with a slight ooomff, and his fingers swipe across the wave-catcher. Letters erupt into thin air again, and Kyungsoo forgets Jongin again.
Jongin lets out another sigh as he crosses his legs under him. His toes scrape against the cold floor, and he winces. He's carefully tucking his legs in, his knees pressed together, when Kyungsoo talks again.
"You're really not pleasant when you're moody", he states, his eyes busy reading a new headline. "Please, work on that."
Jongin's head snaps up, and he stares at Kyungsoo, dumbfounded. From where he is on the floor, Kyungsoo's face is all curves and soft bumps, misshapen by the weird angle, but Jongin clearly sees his eyes focused on the letters.
"Uh?" he says, confused by Kyungsoo's matter-of-fact tone.
Kyungsoo glances at him, and the second their eyes meet, his lips break into a wide smile, a teasing smile which blooms over his face in tiny wrinkles and unsuspected expression lines. Taken aback, Jongin gasps, and the probably really dumb look on his face has Kyungsoo chuckling, low and soft. It takes an embarrassing amount of seconds for Jongin to finally realize that Kyungsoo is laughing at him, and the master of repartee he's usually so proud to be is buried deep inside--probably cooing over Kyungsoo's smile. Jongin fidgets, pouts, blushes, and ends up throwing his pillow at Kyungsoo who dodges it easily with another peal of laughter. The floor doesn't feel so cold anymore.
“What does Earth look like?”
Jongin looks up from his plate, taken aback by Kyungsoo's voice. It's not that it's particularly loud, or even aggressive and forcing. It's actually just unexpected. Kyungsoo rarely talks when they go out of the cell, so it makes perfectly sense that Jongin blinks a few times before he even starts thinking of an answer.
Today's been kind of adventurous, with Jongdae barging into the cell early in the morning, and telling them that he overheard Osloa talking about revenge, and Kyungsoo merely shrugging before dragging Jongin into the cafeteria for breakfast. Jongin has been super aware of huge and hostile aliens peeking at him, lurking behind the corners of the prison, but Kyungsoo's attitude hasn't changed a bit. Except, of course, that Kyungsoo never really talks during their lunch.
“So?” Kyungsoo asks, growing impatient. “Don't you remember your own planet?”
“No, I'm just trying to determine whether you really feel curious or you just want to get rid of me because you're sick of watching over me,” Jongin snaps back.
Kyungsoo doesn't really answer -it's another of his bad habits- but Jongin doesn't miss his posture, his elbows firmly planted on the table and the curve of his slouched back. His white neck stands out against the purple collar of his uniform, and it looks so fragile under the harsh lights of the cafeteria, but Jongin knows better. A few days spent watching Kyungsoo, for lack of talking to him, taught him just enough to be able to perceive the challenge in Kyungsoo's posture. Above the latter's shoulder, he catches sight of Osloa and his stupid gang gathered in the corner of the room, and even though Kyungsoo's can't possibly see them, Jongin would bet his life that the Magni knows they're watching him.
“Are you trying to start up another fight?” Jongin asks in a whisper as he leans above the table.
Kyungsoo shakes his head, but a little smile soon appears on his lips.
“I just want to know more about Earth. I have all the rights to be here, and so do you. If someone has something to say, then let they come. I do not guarantee, of course, that they would have enough teeth left to say anything else afterwards.”
Jongin deflates. Being in the middle of another confrontation in a prison full of aliens isn't really in his best interest, but he knows for sure that Kyungsoo wouldn't take no for an answer. He considers for a split second getting up and dragging Kyungsoo back into his cell, but the latter's strength, peacefully obvious in how defenseless he's willing to appear to his biggest enemy, would have Jongin making a fool of himself. He can't really go back in the cell by himself either, because Osloa would most probably follow him and kill him. Cornered, Jongin lets out another sigh.
“Who said Magnis didn't have a sense of humor,” he mumbles, and to that, Kyungsoo's smile grows bigger.
“I don't know,” he shrugs. “But they clearly never really visited Magnitis.”
Jongin snorts, but it's just for the show. Kyungsoo has cornered him, and he has no other choice than to indulge him. He will probably never be sure of it, but he can't help but think that all the events that led them in the cafeteria at that precise time weren't really coincidental. That's why Magnis are supposed to have colors on them when they feel something, Jongin muses bitterly, because they're fucking vicious and we need a warning.
“So?” Kyungsoo asks for the second time. He has won and he knows it very well. “I heard you're actually living in tunnels?”
“We are,” Jongin finally gives in, but not without a glare and a groan. “We've been for a few centuries because of how cold the temperatures are on the surface. During summer though, we're allowed to go into the Upper Tunnels, under the Glass Roofs, and there we get to see the sky, the sun and stars.”
“Don't you miss it during the rest of the year?”
Jongin shrugs. “I can't speak for everyone, but I did, of course. That's why I always made sure to be under the Glass Roofs for every sunset and sunrise during summer, when light hit the ice and exploded in colors. No winter could be long and dark enough for me to forget those images.”
Kyungsoo gives him a little smile before breaking the eye contact between them, and Jongin finds himself catapulted back into reality again. He glances over at Osloa and his friends, still in their corner, still plotting, and considers the words running through his mind, and the question heavy on his tongue. Kyungsoo looks up, and Jongin only then realizes how fidgety he is. He gathers his courage, because, really, after all he's been through, the life he's lived, he can't allow himself to be that intimidated by someone that small.
“And what does Magnitus look like?” he finally blurts out, just when Kyungsoo asks, in his usual low voice: “The Agency didn't build safe installations on the surface?”
Kyungsoo blinks at him, and Jongin feels himself blushing. So much for not being intimidated. He resolves to faintly shake his head and mutter a low nope that he hopes will be conclusive enough for Kyungsoo to forget his question.
It isn't, of course. Kyungsoo masters the art of the conclusive words, but Jongin obviously has still a lot to learn.
“Magnitus was beautiful,” Kyungsoo says. The slight stress on the past tense turns Jongin's blood to ice, and he immediately regrets asking, but he can't find it in himself to stop Kyungsoo. This might be it, he realizes, the moment he was so desperate to create, when he would finally, finally start to really understand Kyungsoo.
“It's a very small planet, mostly covered with water, and Magnitus is actually the name of our only city. We never really thought about giving a proper name to the planet itself, so I guess that's why it's named after the city.”
Kyungsoo smiles. Like the sunrise on Earth, it's white, cold at first, but Jongin starts to see colors caught in the icicle that Kyungsoo is. Until, at least, his smile fades away and darkness, even in the white of his face, clouds his expression.
“You really don't have to-” Jongin begins, but Kyungsoo stops him with a single glance.
“Our sun was pinkish, and it reflected so nicely on the water, but also on our houses. My family's house was blue, but on the canal where I lived, there were red houses, yellow ones, green, orange, and all different shades of all different kinds of colors.”
Kyungsoo's words echo with Jongin's mother's, with what she used to tell him, and Jongin easily falls back to visions of fantasy. This time, he tries to picture a smiling Kyungsoo standing on the doorway of a blue narrow house, higher than larger, his toes only a few inches from the quiet surface of an almost translucent water. The Kyungsoo in his mind doesn't match well with the rest of his daydream, because Kyungsoo has always been in layers of black and white for him, and against a pink sun and a blue house, he would stand out like the start of a deathly plague in a peaceful heaven. Jongin thinks about dark blue, and when he subtly paints the patches of skin on Kyungsoo's arms with the shade of the midnight summer sky on Earth, Kyungsoo suddenly belongs to the colorful vision in his mind. He'd have infinite and universe stretched over his skin, and liquid dark blue swirling around in the black of his irises, spattering the same velvety color on the tip of his hair.
Entranced in the absolute certainty that Kyungsoo would look even better than the sun and its golden pink rays, Jongin looks up, a dreaming smile perched on his lips.
“So there are colors in Magnitus,” he says.
He realizes a second too late that his words might have been offensive, but luckily for him, Kyungsoo doesn't seem a bit upset. Actually, he just laughs at Jongin's face, but even during those short seconds, he looks exactly like the tip of the cigarette Jongdae was smoking the night before. Like ashes, black and white.
“I know what you're thinking,” he says. “I know what people are saying about my kind, but those are just stories.”
Jongin doesn't bother to hide how disappointed he feels. He points at Kyungsoo's silver patches of skin on his arms and neck, and actually hears himself pouting when he finally asks : “So it's not true? Your emotions aren't linked to colors?”
Kyungsoo shakes his head. “It is true. But those stories... they are just fantasies.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean that privacy is important. Imagine dragging your ass around with a notice above your head stating how you feel. Most of us control our emotions so they don't show.”
Under Kyungsoo's heavy eyes, Jongin starts to feel embarrassed to have believed such stories, but somehow, it's relief that takes over his heart. Relief to know that the stories are not entirely wrong, but, most of all, that Kyungsoo's eternal black and white appearance doesn't come from a total lack of interest in Jongin. Under the alabaster and onyx of Kyungsoo's face, there could be colors, warmth. Jongin almost has to fight himself so he wouldn't stretch his arm across the table and rub the skin on Kyungsoo's cheek to see if the white indeed would flake out to reveal gold and emerald.
“I wish people would stop making legends out of my kind,” Kyungsoo says, Annoyance is dark on him, like everything else, but it still breaks Jongin away from his reverie.
“We're still alive,” Kyungsoo continues. “At least some of us are. We're not stories yet.”
Jongin watches him, the cafeteria and Osloa forgotten in the back of his mind. After watching dozens and dozens of sunrises turn ice, that element that forces Jongin and his kind to live like rats, into kaleidoscopes of the most beautiful colors, he would had never expected to find beauty in such dull colors-or actually more like lack of colors.
“Kyungsoo?” Jongin's voice is just a whisper, its ending syllable just high enough for Kyungsoo to guess the upcoming question, but there's no confusion on the Magni's face. He waits, patient. “Kyungsoo, what does dark blue means?”
Kyungsoo smiles, wide and sincere, and it spreads on his face, but somehow stops at his eyes. Jongin wonders if the colors hidden underneath all that white are sort of stopping the wrinkles to show in the corner of Kyungsoo's eyes. His smiles have grown more natural around Jongin, they've appeared more often, but his eyes are still black, still unreadable.
“I won't tell you,” Kyungsoo says, still smiling, still monochromatic. “I won't give you the key, Jongin. I never do.”
Jongin stares, and Kyungsoo stares back. He's still smiling, although his smile has reduced into an almost invisible curve. Jongin still takes his time watching it, though. Kyungsoo's lips look soft, so soft, but what he likes the most about them is the slight hint of pink outlining them.
“You should remind everyone that you're still alive when you'll get out of here,” Jongin says, half-there and half-lost in the contemplation of Kyungsoo's face.
Another smile greets his words, a bit mocking, but a lot bitter, and just like that, whatever was cutting the two of them from the rest of the world disappears and the cafeteria's noisy background rains on Jongin. He blinks.
“Trust me,” Kyungsoo says, slow and cold. “I will.”
1| 2
Rating: PG-13
Pairing: Jongin/Kyungsoo
Wordcount: 19,615
Warning: Lameness? Nothing happens, so boredom too. Unbetaed.
Disclaimer: EXO belongs to themselves and SME
Notes: (the coincidence is so funny, I started that fic in september so i obviously didn't know about exo's comeback. Let's thank the lord though, because their comeback has been better handled than this 'fic')
I've been struggling with the nastiest writer's block for the past three months, and this is what came out of it. So obviously it's not really good. I think it did what it was supposed to do though, which is helping me go through that writer's block. But anyway. It's bad.
And I'm even more ashamed because it was written for my dear and precious Agnes. Love, it was supposed to be a gift to help you deal with your first days in England, but I'm so late, oh dear god (but I'm early for Christmas haha). Also, this doesn't count as a fic for you. I promise, I'll write you something much better sooner or later.
Summary: Being born on Earth makes the Orion Belt Agency's prisons really dangerous, just like being Kyungsoo's enemy does, actually. Thank god, Jongin is only one of those.
The first time Jongin meets Kyungsoo, he's burning with anger and embarrassment. The prison's floor is dirty, sticky under his palm, but nothing is dirtier than the feeling growing in his chest. Of course, he was kind of expecting the bullying. He's no one after all, nothing, an Earthling, and although he somehow managed to earn himself some respect outside, mostly because of his shenanigans against the Orion Belt Agency, inside those walls, he's worth nothing. Frustration makes him grit his teeth as he lowers his head. Better not to do anything, and just get back on his feet wordlessly. The Spufanian who pushed him, a fine specimen of one of the dumbest species Jongin has ever encountered, is at least three meter high, and probably half as wide. His round and huge green face breaks into a loud peal of laughter when Jongin gets back on his feet, and he uses his hands, as large as plates, to make Jongin fall again. The push on his torso makes him lose his breath, and he coughs, lying on the floor, fighting his way through anger, so much anger, and humiliation.
Someone clears his throat. Both Jongin and the Spufanian -Osloa according to the crowd's cheers- turn around, just in time to see a man step up. He emerges from the crowd's circle with a calm, indifferent step, and glances down at Jongin. Just like the Spufanian, he has the distinctive features of his own kind. A short height, black hair and eyes just as dark clashing on a skin so pale it could be translucent; but more importantly, what looks like tattoos starting at the corners of his eyes in thin strips. They curve up towards his temples and then dive down past his jawline towards both sides of his throat, widening, until they disappear under the collar of his shirt. They only reappear on the man's naked arms, large silvery strips lazily reflecting the harsh light of the prison's cafeteria.
When the man looks at Osloa, red flashes on the strips, starting on his face and traveling down his body like some sort of electric impulsion. Even the tip of his hair turns red for a split second. Jongin feels his heart jump into his throat. A Magni. One of the rarest species. Rarest because their kind had been almost completely annihilated by the Spufanians themselves when the Orion Belt Agency decided to finally move its ass.
The crowd breaks into cacophony of whispers. Kyungsoo, Kyungsoo against Osloa, that's gonna be interesting.
And interesting it is. Osloa throws insults, nasty remarks about Kyungsoo's almost wiped out kind, his orange snake-like tongue licking his green lips with delight as the crowd erupts in mirth at his provocations. The only problem is that Kyungsoo doesn't flinch, doesn't even react. He just stares at the Spufanian with those bored eyes, and eventually, it gets to the latter.
“What are you going to do, uh?” Osloa snaps at Kyungsoo. “Stand there while I beat you down? That's why your people have lost against mine!”
At that, Kyungsoo lets out a long sigh. He finally pulls his hands out of his pockets, and starts walking towards the very confused Spufanian with small, but firm steps. The crowd's cheers die down until the atmosphere in the prison's cafeteria makes it hard to breathe, and Jongin, although still on the ground, is no exception. He watches with wide eyes as Kyungsoo walks towards Osloa, the latter obviously impatient to crush the Magni and have the prisoners cheering for him again. Kyungsoo is going to get himself killed, Jongin realizes. He's too small, too skinny. Jongin looks around him, but he doesn't see any guards.
Kyungsoo glances at him as he walks by him, but he draws back his attention on Osloa almost immediately, with that same lazy and bored expression. By the time he stops in front of the green monster, they're all holding their breaths.
Osloa has tilted his head down to see Kyungsoo, and Kyungsoo's head is thrown back. They exchange a look, and Osloa opens his mouth, a flow of dirty things to say probably ready to be spilled out. The thing is, he never gets to say them.
Kyungsoo hits him in the stomach with the flat of his hand, the gesture sharp and quick, so quick actually, that Jongin misses it because of a blink. When he opens his eyes again, Osloa is falling, and his huge body makes the cafeteria's floor shake under his weight when it crashes down. From where Jongin is, he can easily see the blood running down the Spufanian's chin. He gasps at Kyungsoo.
“You won because you were millions and we were only a few hundreds,” Kyungsoo says, hovering Osloa's unconscious face. “Not because you were the strongest, or the smartest. That would be us, asshole.”
And that's more or less what it takes for Jongin to be hooked.
That, and the nonchalance heavily coated with indifference that Kyungsoo displays as he glances around him, his eyes stopping on those who cheered the loudest for Osloa. Probably the Spufanian's friends, Jongin muses. He expects them to run forward to defend the dignity of their passed out brute of a leader, but none of them dares to make a move. The whole prison is trapped in silence, and Jongin himself is at a complete loss of words. Earthlings aren't the tallest amongt aliens, quite the contrary actually, but Kyungsoo is even smaller. No one around him does so much as raising their eyebrows -or scales, feathers or antennas- at him though. This is incredible.
Kyungsoo doesn't look sensitive to the silence around him, and the air, heavy on Jongin's tongue, almost too thick to reach his lungs, doesn't seem the slightest hard to breath for Kyungsoo. Jongin half expects him to stifle a yawn. Kyungsoo is a Magni though, one of the noblest kinds, and he would never show such a rude gesture. Instead, he considers Osloa's belly, whose size makes it look more like a mountain than a stomach, and climbs on it to finally sit down at the top of the green mass. His feet dangle in the void, childlike, and Jongin stares, mouth agape.
A few guards finally elbow their way through the crowd. Most of them probably watched the whole scene from afar, more amused than anything. The prison is on the outskirts of the Orion Belt Agency's territory, and so far away from the head offices, rules are easily swept aside. They're probably not paid enough to even want to stop a fight. Jongin knew the moment he got caught that he would be the only one he could count on to survive in that prison. No one would rescue him.
Well, that was before Kyungsoo. Jongin is still too dumbstruck to react to what happened, the floor under his palms even starting to warm as he finds himself unable to move. He watches, as if he wasn't part of the scene, the guards grab Kyungsoo's ankles and pulling him down. Kyungsoo lands on the ground with a graceful jump, and shoves his hands in his pants' pockets as soon as he regains his balance. He casts a bored look at the blast guns the guards point at him, and follows them diligently towards the exit of the cafeteria. Probably towards the high-security cells, which will most likely be Kyungsoo's punishment.
He looks at Jongin again when he walks past him, but this time, the eye contact lasts longer. Jongin can even make out the silvery splinter blown out in Kyungsoo's irises, their metallic color echoing with the strips disappearing under Kyungsoo's shirt. Kyungsoo doesn't blink once while they stare at each other. His gaze remains firm and so hard to read. Jongin opens his mouth with half a mind to thank the Magni, but words let him down. Half disappointed and half mesmerized, he watches Kyungsoo's small back retreat in the middle of those, shielded, of the guards. The next moment, the strange procession is gone.
“If I were you, I'd move my ass, like right now.”
Jongin turns around, baffled, only to find a pair of shoes identical to the ones he's wearing. Except maybe dirtier. He looks up and meets a pair of smiling eyes already staring down at him. The guy, whose lips stretch in a weird kind of smile, their corners curling up towards his jutting cheekbones, gestures towards the crowd over his shoulders.
“Now that Kyungsoo's gone...” the guy trails on, and Jongin glances between the man's skinny legs only to see Osloa's friends starting to come back to themselves. They're glaring at Jongin, and the only thing protecting the latter from a horde of really dumb, but really strong aliens is the nurse putting the little case that will allow him to levitate Osloa's body into the Nursery on the latter's belly.
“Shit,” Jongin mumbles. He jumps on his feet, but he's a few seconds too late already. Osloa is probably the king of the prison because now, the whole crowd looks pissed at him. Or maybe it's just because he's an Earthling.
“Shit,” he says again.
He glances at the man still standing next to him as the crowd starts to close ranks around them. His new friend answers his probably distressed look with a lopsided smile before grabbing his hand. Jongin barely has the time to startle at the surprisingly strong grip that the guy is already dragging him through the cafeteria. He must have a certain rank amongt the prisoners, because they all step aside, although very reluctantly. Glancing above his shoulder, Jongin realizes Osloa's friends are starting to move towards them.
“No lunch today!” the guy chants as they step through the cafeteria door. He keeps walking, his gait oddly jumping and his fingers tightly closed around Jongin's wrist. “You're not missing much though, today was Danrek day, and let me tell you, those stinking slugs know nothing about good food.”
Jongin merely hums at that, too busy checking if Osloa's friends are on their trail, but as the guy drags him further into the prison, navigating through the corridors as if he owned the place, it becomes clear that Jongin's safe-at least for now. A few minutes of nothing more than the sounds of their steps echoing through the corridors have him drawing back his attention on his new guardian angel. Unlike Osloa or Kyungsoo, he doesn't wear the feature of his kind on his body but, although he looks perfectly normal, Jongin knows better than to assume he's an Earthling as well. It's not until the guy looks over his shoulder that Jongin solves the puzzle as he's irresistibly calmed down by the unnatural smile.
“I'm Jongdae by the way,” the guy says. “And I'm a--”
“Chenzol,” Jongin finishes for him.
Jongdae flashes him another wide grin as he slows down and lets go of Jongin's hand.
“What gave me away? The lips?”
Jongin snorts. Honestly, it should have. Chenzols have the most unsettling lips, but Jongdae doesn't only carry the peculiar smile of his kind. He also has their ability to adapt to absolutely everything with a disarming ease.
“No,” Jongin shakes his head with a little smile. Chenzols usually are friendly. When you don't get in their way, because that... well, let's say it's never a good idea. “You act as if you were home, and honestly, only a Chenzol would be crazy enough to step up for an Earthling in a prison full of aliens.” He pauses, and adds. “My name's Jongin.”
Jongdae cackles.
“Kyungsoo isn't a Chenzol though, Jongin.” He beams at Jongin, his voice playing with his name. “He'd make a terrible one.”
Flashes of silver patches of skin and dark hair, dark eyes, dark aura flood Jongin's mind. He glances at Jongdae, who leads him in another corridor.
“Do you know him?”
“Kyungsoo? Of course I do,” Jongdae nods. “ We share the same cell. And from now on, it will be your cell too.”
Jongdae stops in front of a cell that he shows to Jongin with a large sweep of his arm.
“Home sweet home,” he grins.
Jongin glances at the cell -grey, dirty, exactly like his own- then draws back his attention to Jongdae, his eyebrows knitted together. He's grateful for the help back in the cafeteria, but following other people's orders has never been one of his skills. Friendly or not, Jongdae is obviously an outlaw, and Jongin never gives his trust that easily anyway.
“You could go back to your own cell,” Jongdae says with a grin, feeling Jongin's hesitations. “But Osloa's friends will come for you. Probably not tonight, because they're too stupid to take the initiative to get revenge without their stupid leader, but trust me, they will eventually. Kyungsoo is threatening enough to keep you safe, so if you wanna live, really...”
Jongdae concludes with a shrug, as if they were just discussing the weather. Jongin knows the Chenzol is annoyingly right. Just the fact that the guards would let him sleep in that cell instead of his own is enough of a proof. The guards don't give a shit about what happens inside the prison.
He sighs, his eyes following Jongdae as the latter almost jumps into the cell, whistling a cheerful tune. He plops down on one of the two bunks and moans contentedly as he stretches his body. His eyes meet Jongin's, slightly lighter than jet black, and definitely brighter than the harsh light flooding the cell.
“Also, if you really want to live, don't sleep in Kyungsoo's bunk,” he singsongs.
Jongin watches him slip his hand under his pillow and pull out a tiny metallic device that turns on with a light click. Blue letters appears in thin air, advanced technology drawing invisible pages that cast a faint glow on Jongdae's skin, cutting his face with harsh shadows. The Chenzol squints his eyes at the writing, the tip of his tongue darting out from the corner of his curled lips. Jongin watches him wordlessly, his own irises following the Chenzoli letters displaying news after news, but Jongdae doesn't look at him anymore.
The empty bunk is neat, and welcoming, but also very much forbidden. After one last glance at Jongdae, who is now chuckling at a new page of news, Jongin deflates. The cell's floor isn't much better than the cafeteria's sticky dirty one.
Not even a full week in prison, and he's already screwed. That's probably a record.
Jongin has heard a lot of stories about the Magnis. He's heard about rainbows on their skins, about emotions displaying in the purest form over their bodies, colors drowning their eyes and hair, but he understands, from the very moment Kyungsoo steps into the cell in the morning, that stories are stories and Kyungsoo... is different.
His hair is black, and the strips boringly silver when he stops and looks down at Jongin, barely reacting to Jongdae's laughing voice. (Hey you wanted to play hero, that's great but now you have a puppy!) Kyungsoo is still in monochromatic colors when Osloa's friends spit in his food during lunch. He's colorless when Jongin finally breaks out of his silence to talk to him, and he remains just as extinguished while Jongin's words fade out in front of his bored eyes. When Osloa gets out of the infirmary before dinner and quickly turns on his heels after spotting Kyungsoo in the corridor, Kyungsoo's face breaks into a smirk, but it's a shallow one. Jongin stares eagerly, but Kyungsoo's eyes remain black, his hair just as dark, and the silver on his skin, like the outskirts of a galaxy, doesn't light up.
Jongin remembers everything he's heard about Magnis. How people used words such as colorful and gleaming, but Kyungsoo is miles away from that. Thankfully, the uniform they have to wear inside the prison is of a flashy shade of purple, which helps to remind Jongin from time to time that colors actually do exist. Just not on Kyungsoo.
Jongin looks away from the latter's form, all straight and motionless lines as he's lying on his bunk with his eyes closed, and draws back his attention on Jongdae. The Chenzol was nice enough to let just enough space on his mattress for Jongin's butt. The prison might be just welcoming enough for the guards to let them wander and do whatever they want, but it's still a high-tech building lost in space, and god knows how cold it is on the floor. Needless to say that Jongin is silently praying that Jongdae won't go to bed too early, because he really doesn't want to risk his life by sleeping on the floor again. He would go back into his own cell, but the fourth passage of one of Osloa's friends before Jongdae and Kyungsoo's cell was dissuasive enough. Jongin has always played solo, but it doesn't mean he can't admit when a team is needed.
There's that, and also the fact that Kyungsoo is in black and white, and for some unknown reasons, it annoys Jongin so much.
“Are you sure he's a Magni?” he asks Jongdae, leaning towards the latter's shoulder.
Jongdae glances at him, the wave-catcher in his hands still displaying Chenzoli alphabet.
“He is,” he snorts. “One hundred per cent pure breed.”
Jongin ignores Jongdae's obvious amusement in favor of raising both his eyebrows at him.
“But then... shouldn't he be...in colors?”
Jongdae chuckles. “In colors?” he repeats. “You Terrans are so funny.”
Jongin forgets Kyungsoo for a short second, just enough to consider Jongdae with surprise. Terran isn't a word he hears a lot, and the few times he did, he was out of the Orion Belt Agency's territory, selling what he had stolen them. The Agency's ranking of the planets they colonized rules over the peoples living under their reign, especially when it comes to Mining Planets. Jongin would know it better than anyone else, Earth has never been more than the endless energy coming from its core for the Agency, and its inhabitants aren't worth a shit for them. They're even lower than those cannibal tribes in the north of the Agency's territory. They're Earthlings, and definitely not Terrans.
Something flashes in Jongdae's eyes, but it's too quick for Jongin to catch a real glimpse of it. The next thing he knows, Jongdae is looking away, back to the wave-catcher and news from his people. Jongin's heart is beating like crazy in his chest, and he's dying to ask, to demand more. Respect is a nice feeling, something that he had forgotten apparently.
“The only color I've seen on him was dark blue,” Jongdae blurts out. His voice is somewhere between serious and careless, teetering on a thin thread as though Jongdae himself wasn't sure what to display. When he blinks up at Jongin though, seriousness is far gone in favor of the usual mischievous look. “But it was a blue so dark that it was almost black actually.”
Jongin frowns, glancing at Kyungsoo, whose chest is still going up and down slowly. His eyes are still closed, and Jongin can see his lashes, surprisingly long, stand out against the prison wall. He's probably sleeping, Jongin realizes, but it doesn't ease the weight he can feel on his shoulders and pressing against his chest. It's like Kyungsoo, who's smaller than them, is filling the room and making the air around them still. Jongin feels incredibly tight in his uniform despite the fact that it's way too large for him.
“Dark blue?” he repeats slowly, eyes glued on Kyungsoo. He tries to picture dark blue, like the velvety night sky back on Earth, stretching over Kyungsoo's body, but somehow, the color can't seem to be able to cover the silver and black filling Jongin's eyes.
He wrinkles his nose and turns his head towards Jongdae, whose cat-like pupils are already staring at him.
“What does dark blue mean?”
Jongdae chuckles.
“How would I know? Have you seen him? He's not exactly easy to read.”
Jongin frowns. Jongdae's face is all wrinkles and smiling lines-in other words, unreadable- but Jongin is almost sure he's lying.
“You live with him though,” he says.
Jongdae nods, before gesturing towards Kyungsoo's still form with his head.
“As you can see, the conversation isn't really interesting.”
Jongin opens his mouth, now almost sure that Jongdae is leading him on, but before he can say anything, a third voice, lower, cuts him.
“Stop talking about me like I'm not here.”
Jongdae cackles, but Jongin's laugh dies in the pit of his stomach. He can feel himself blushing, which hadn't happened in years, and he's pretty sure Jongdae hasn't missed that. Of course he hasn't.
“As you can see, there are a few rules you need to follow, because you'd miss having only a dumb Spufanian as your biggest enemy, trust me.”
“Jongdae,” Kyungsoo thunders, his eyes still closed, his body still. He's like a statue, and his voice could be coming from anywhere, because it fills the room, from the floor to the ceiling.
Jongdae presses his lips in a thin line, but his laugh is still quite obvious in his eyes. He winks at Jongin, and draws back his attention to the wave-catcher. At that exact moment, the lights in the prison are turned off for the night, and darkness rushes into their cell. It crashes against the pale light radiating from the Chenzoli alphabet in a perfectly silent explosion that sends splinters of light around them. Jongin watches them nest against the walls, or shine bright in his peripheral vision, but mostly, he watches them stretch over Kyungsoo's body. Some of them catch in a few strands of dark hair, others are outlining the curve of his cheek, and the last ones are slipping between his fingers. It's not dark blue, and it's not really on Kyungsoo's skin, but it's still more colors than what Kyungsoo usually wears.
Maybe it's the long years of stealing, of breaking in and taking what isn't his, but, as he watches the pale blue splinters swim on Kyungsoo's body when Jongdae turns the page, Jongin feels more determined than he's ever been to crack Kyungsoo, just like he'd crack a security password.
As if sensing his thoughts, Kyungsoo finally moves after a few hours of stillness. He grabs the blanket under him, arches his body off the bed, and pulls it up to his chin. Just before burying himself under the sheets, he briefly turns his head towards Jongdae's bunk. The reflection of a letter that looks like a treble clef catches in his left eye, and Jongin clearly sees it staring back at him. He holds his breath, but the next second has Kyungsoo already disappearing under the blanket.
Luckily, Jongin has always loved a good challenge.
Jongin's conscience is far gone, buried deep in his being where the biting cold can't reach. His whole body has caved in, arms shielding his head and knees pressed against his chest in a poor attempt at keeping his body heat from fading away in the emptiness around him. It's almost comfortable, almost warm, Jongin has known worse after all. It doesn't mean that the regular bumps in his sides digging up his conscience and stirring it awake doesn't annoy him though.
He groans, wriggles away from the repetitive hits against his side. They're not painful, almost soft, but they're still shaking his insides like an earthquake, and forcing his attention out of its cocoon of sleep. The first thing that comes back to Jongin as he slowly surfaces is how cold he is.
“Fuck,” he grumbles, squeezing his eyes shut and frowning against the darkness printed on his eyelids.
For a short second, he dares to hope that whatever is attacking his ribs has given up, because it's gone. But then Jongin curls up again and hugs his knees against his chest, and it's back, only this time stronger. He opens his eyes, taken aback by the pang of pain echoing through his ribs, and he's met by a dark purple sneaker only a few inches from his mind.
“What the--” he blurts out as he jolts away from the sneaker.
It's attached to a pair of legs, also covered with that same ugly plum shade, and they go up, and up until they meet narrow hips disappearing under the too large uniform falling loosely over them. Then comes a chest, strong, and shoulders, square, which turn into taut biceps. Black eyes and hair, white and silvery skin rain on Jongin.
“Did you just kick me?” Jongin asks, accusatory, his voice scrapping the back of his throat.
Kyungsoo meets his grumpy tone with an eyebrow raising.
“I didn't just kick you. In fact, I've been doing it for the past ten minutes. You're quite hard to wake up,” he answers bluntly.
Jongin has to blink a few times to make sure he's not still sleeping. With his conscience taking back its spot, he finally notices the lights in the corridors, on again. One glance at Jongdae's bunk tells him that the latter is gone, but it's definitely morning, if the sheets tangled and dangling off the Chenzol's bed are any indication.
“Where's Jongdae?” he asks.
“Not here,” Kyungsoo shrugs.
Jongin stares, but Kyungsoo doesn't seem uncomfortable at all. He slightly frowns though, and adds, “He's rarely here during the day.”
His tone, so matter-of-factly, has Jongin nodding and mumbling Oh, I see, as if the whole scene wasn't ridiculous already. Silence follows Kyungsoo's last words, and Jongin hastily gets back on his feet, impatient to find back the semblance of superiority he has over Kyungsoo thanks to his longer legs. The pair of black eyes follow him as he rises, and Jongin soon realizes that Kyungsoo doesn't need to be tall to be impressive. It's the first time he's standing so close to the Magni, and all he wants to do is curl up and hides his face in his hands in embarrassment. He resolves to slagging his shoulders, but that only brings his face closer to Kyungsoo's face level, and the thought erupts over his skin in a burning red. Kyungsoo, of course, doesn't react. Jongin wonders if that strong aura he has around him, that quiet certainty of power, is something every Magni has. It's at least one thing that lives up to the tale.
“Now that you're awake, we should go to your cell and take your blankets,” Kyungsoo says.
Jongin snorts. “You're saying it as if you weren't the one who woke me up.”
Kyungsoo stares at him, and Jongin feels himself shrink.
“Sorry,” he mumbles.
He thinks he sees a crooked smile lingering on Kyungsoo's plush lips as the latter turns on his heels, but the absence of colors painting the silver strips on his skin, and the stillness of his shoulder line tells Jongin that he's most probably wrong. In all honesty, he doesn't want to take the risk and assume anything. Whereas it took less than ten minutes for Jongdae to act so friendly that Jongin would forget how nasty a Chenzol can be, Kyungsoo has danger stiffening the air all around him. He did knock out that stupid Spufanian so easily after all.
“Please don't make me wait,” Kyungsoo says, breaking Jongin away from his thoughts. He's standing in front of the cell, his bored eyes scanning Jongin's face.
To the latter's embarrassment, he lets out a horrendous yelp as he nods and hurries to join Kyungsoo. The latter is waiting for him in the corridor, and this time, Jongin is almost sure the Magni is smiling, but he's also too horrified to look up and check.
Kyungsoo takes him up the corridor, just like Jongdae did when they came back from the cafeteria, except that there's no running this time. It's like a punch in Jongin's ego, but he knows that Jongdae was right: nobody will bother him with Kyungsoo's around. He spots a few heads popping out of their cells to follow them as they walk through the prison, and he wonders how many of those aliens would have bullied him, harassed him or insulted him if he had been alone. He's used to it, of course -he's never had the luxury to feel anything other than small in such a big universe- but it still wears him out.
It's only after the third alien who rushes back into her cell when she spotted Kyungsoo and Jongin in the corridor, dragging her nine tentacles behind her, that Jongin feels the need to break the thoughtful silence lingering between him and Kyungsoo.
“I... I didn't really thank you properly for what you did back in the cafeteria,” he clumsily says. Kyungsoo glances at him, and Jongin feels almost thrilled to have his attention. “That asshole would have probably beaten me to death.”
Kyungsoo considers him for a short second.
“What's your name again?”
“Jongin. Kim Jongin.”
Kyungsoo nods, slowly repeating Jongin's name in that velvety and mellow voice of his. He wets his lips, and looks back at Jongin.
“Well, Jongin, I didn't do it for you. I just really hate Spufanians.”
Rather than feeling hurt by the revelation -he wasn't actually naive enough to think that Kyungsoo was only driven by heroism- Jongin slightly chuckles at the emphasis. Walking in the corridors next to Kyungsoo has at least one good side effect: Jongin is starting to feel like it's them against the rest of the prisoners, and it's almost making him comfortable enough to consider joking. This is no joke matter though, and he quickly lets go of his smile to make sure that Kyungsoo wouldn't think he is laughing at him. If the Spufanians had almost wiped out his own people, Jongin wouldn't probably be as calm as Kyungsoo is.
“I understand,” he chooses to say instead.
Kyungsoo looks at him, his eyes strong and deep. Jongin holds his gaze, but the eye contact has his skin itching. He's a grown-up man, and he has diced with death quite a few times before, but nothing has ever felt as intense as looking at Kyungsoo in the eyes. The usual indifference of the latter is gone, replaced by something that Jongin can't quite name.
“Maybe you can,” Kyungsoo finally answers.
He looks away, and Jongin is left frowning. He glances at the silvery expanses of skin standing out against the white of Kyungsoo's body, and they unsurprisingly bare the same shade of argent. Jongin is already quite bad at reading people, but trying to decipher Kyungsoo is like trying to peek at something through a brick wall. It doesn't help, of course, that Kyungsoo's feelings should be displaying in color codes and sparkles over his body. It's so frustrating.
“Are you the Terran thief called Kai?”
Jongin looks at Kyungsoo, taken aback. More than the fact that Kyungsoo has heard about him before, it's the Terran word that catches him off guard. Unlike Jongdae, Kyungsoo looks like he's standing by the word, and not that he blurted out accidentally only to regret it afterwards. He meets Jongin's eyes with a semblance of challenge, and Jongin answers with a bit more of defiance.
“Yes.”
Kyungsoo smiles at him, he actually smiles. It doesn't really break the black and white surrounding him, but it still flashes Jongin a bit of pink and red when Kyungsoo's upper lip stretches upward, and Jongin's heart falters.
“You're probably not really used to people calling you like that,” Kyungsoo says, his smile still hung on his lips, and somehow, it gets to Jongin.
“Definitely not,” he smiles back.
“Yeah, I figured so. What are they doing on Earth, already?”
Kyungsoo spits the word they with so much hate, that it catches Jongin off guard. Intrigued, he tries not to let his interest show as he answers.
“They're using its core for its energy.”
Kyungsoo doesn't say anything as he stops Jongin by grabbing his forearm. He leads him in a corridor on their left, and Jongin realizes that the cells they're now walking past look familiar. With a jolt, he points at one of the glass walls a few steps ahead of them.
“It's that one.”
“I know,” Kyungsoo nods.
The anger that was still palpable around him barely a second ago is now gone, reduced to a mere memory. Jongin sighs internally as he mourns the loss of what could have been his key to crack Kyungsoo. Maybe next time .
They walk into the cell, and Jongin is surprised to see that his cellmate's bunk is empty, deprived of the sheets that used to be all over it.
“Probably left for another cell,” Kyungsoo says, catching Jongin's surprise. “Didn't want to endure Osloa's frustration at your absence.”
“Pff,” Jongin sighs, half between bitterness and anger. “Coward.”
“Well, Osloa is three meter high.”
Jongin nods. “That didn't stop you from knocking him out,” he grins.
Kyungsoo smiles. “I'm actually considered really tall among my people.”
The thought has Jongin chuckling, and Kyungsoo looks quite proud of his joke. He gifts Jongin with another flash of pink as his lips stretch again. Jongin can't help but notice how handsome Kyungsoo actually is. He's nothing like the Beltets, those aliens so beautiful that they drive you crazy, but to Jongin, they have nothing on Kyungsoo. His beauty is quieter, and more than beauty, it's actually a strong game of pulls, but it just makes it better. It's drawing Jongin in, like the stars once did, and Jongin has only good memories about that time.
He looks away, a little smile perched on his lips, and all previous tension gone from his body. Under Kyungsoo's gaze, he finally grabs his blankets, and puts his pillow on the top of the pile of dark purple fabric he's holding. Upon seeing him with his arms full, Kyungsoo steps closer and grabs the wave-catcher in a small niche in the wall.
“Thanks,” Jongin says with another smile, to which Kyungsoo answers with a short nod.
They step out of the cell together, and Jongin doesn't look back as they walk away from it. He has no personal effects, aside from the wave-catcher that they're all handed when they're incarcerated to stay in touch with family and homes, and he stayed in the cell itself for a week only, so it's not like he has something to say goodbye to. Plus, he's leaving for his own safety, and even though he has always been more of a solo player in his life, he's smart enough to know when a team is actually a wiser choice.
“How did you know about me?” he suddenly asks, his train of thought taking him back to Kyungsoo saying his thief alias.
Kyungsoo's eyes don't leave the corridor as he answers.
“I know a lot about people going against the Agency.”
Jongin almost stops dead in his tracks, too surprised at what Kyungsoo is implying. Rebels, those people who live outside of the Agency's territory, in the darkness and the danger, are the biggest threat for the Agency. Since they're depicted as the number one enemies, being suspected of belonging to that group of aliens from various species is the best way to have your body floating among the stars somewhere in the darkest pit of the universe. Jongin can't help but wonder what Kyungsoo knows about the Rebels, and the thought that he's rubbing along with troubles bigger than him crosses his mind. He somehow manages to keep a straight face though. At least he hopes he does, because Kyungsoo glances at him, and even though Jongin has no idea what that sudden depth he spots in Kyungsoo's black eyes means, he knows that the latter is gauging him. Whatever Kyungsoo's test is about, Jongin doesn't want to fail.
“What about you? What have you done to end up in this nice and cozy place?” he asks as innocently as he can. It seems unlikely that the Agency would have let a Rebel in that prison, so close to the outskirts of their territory, and whose security level is quite laughable. But whatever Kyungsoo meant, Jongin takes it as he can: a window to try and learn more about his bodyguard.
Kyungsoo smiles, short and sharp, but it feels more like an inside joke with himself that something he intents to share with Jongin.
“They caught me stealing money during a top-rank Agent only party.” He looks at Jongin, and this time, the smile stretching his lips is directed at him. “They really didn't like how easy it was for me to empty their pockets right under their noses.”
Jongin snorts. “They probably didn't.”
Kyungsoo shrugs, and they fall back into a comfortable silence. Jongin's mind is roaring, going crazy over the few details he caught on Kyungsoo, and stopping here and there to wonder why it's that important anyway. He quickly brushes the question aside, and decides to consider the relatively long walk to his old cell and back a victory considering the amount he managed to catch on Kyungsoo. Smiles, peaks of bitterness and even a hint of humor that his posture never showed until there, and Jongin is positive that soon enough, colors will join the celebration. And damn, he can't wait.
So it's no surprise that the third colorless day has Jongin mixing dark thoughts in his head from where's he's sitting on the floor, his blankets now softening the harsh bite of the cold under him. He glances at Kyungsoo, still motionless on his bed, and still silent as he scrolls through the pages popping out of the wave-catcher. It's all written in the Agency's alphabet, plain letters that Jongin reads as they stretch over thin air. Where are his mother's stories about Magnis' colors, about their languages and their culture? He wants to shake Kyungsoo and literally throw up on him the hundreds of questions he can feel stagnate in the back of his throat.
It doesn't help that Jongdae is never here. Jongdae with his bright voice and his enthusiasm, Jongdae who actually talks to Jongin. He spends his days out of the cell, doing god knows what god knows where, and only comes back when Kyungsoo is already fast asleep (when he does come back). He also brought their meals directly into the cell, because he and Kyungsoo both thought it was safer for a while, but now Jongin is starting to feel like he's in a prison, a prison inside a prison, and the mise en abyme effect is giving him a nasty headache.
And Kyungsoo, Kyungsoo isn't what he should be, Kyungsoo is all black and white, silver and dead nebulae.
“Kyungsoo,” Jongin finally says, hours after he cracked an eye open in the morning. His voice struggles to leave his throat, finally managing to go past his lips only after it has dropped a little. Jongin winces at how unfamiliar talking already is.
“Mmmh,” Kyungsoo hums, thumb pressing on the wave-catcher to turn the page. He's reading something about the yearly summit the Agency will hold in a couple of days, where they'll revise the planets' sorting.
“Kyungsoo,” Jongin repeats, and this time, he manages to have Kyungsoo glance at him. “Do you know what keeps Jongdae so busy?”
“No. Probably people,” Kyungsoo says, scrunching up his nose in disdain. “He likes those. People.”
Jongin frowns, unhappy with the answer. “That's it? That's all you know? And what do you usually do when he's gone?”
“What do you mean 'what do I usually do'? Don't you see what I'm doing right now?”
At least, the long sigh emptying Jongin's lungs doesn't only leave him breathless, but it also has Kyungsoo finally looking away from the electronic device.
“It's been four months since you've been caught,” Jongin mumbles. “How did you not die of boredom?”
Kyungsoo frowns, annoyance creasing the skin between his eyebrows. To think that Jongin was already celebrating figuring him out! Disappointment has always made Jongin cranky, and a cranky Jongin doesn't sit well with silence.
“Why are you reading those articles anyway?” Jongin asks, this time louder. “Are you really hoping for a change?”
The mix between the mention of the Orion Belt organization and Jongin's biting tone seems to break Kyungsoo away from his lethargy. He lowers his wave-catcher, index finger swiping its left corner out of habit, and the letters disappear. Their pale blue halo fade to black and white on Kyungsoo's face as he turns his head towards Jongin.
“Aren't you?”
Jongin snorts.
“Why would I?” he retorts. “They would never pull the Earth out of the Mining list. Things will only get worse.”
Kyungsoo doesn't blink, but he doesn't run from Jongin's gaze either. He looks so still, so calm and in control, and it just pisses off Jongin more. He feels the heat bubbling up in his chest, and when it reaches his mouth, Jongin just lets it out in the ugliest words he's ever said.
“Ask Jongdae,” he spits, defying.
Chenzolae, Jongdae's planet, has been in the Civilian list since its colonization, eighty years ago. But the rumor has it that the Agency will place it in the Military list this year-which is the slightly more polite version of the Mining list. As a Civilian planet, Chenzolae was free to keep its government, as long as it obeyed to the Agency, and keep on living like they used to before the colonization. The Military planets though become huge bases, and hundreds of Agent families are sent there. Then comes the recruitment of the inhabitants, and next thing you know, their planet isn't theirs anymore, and they've turned into soldiers. Jongin knows how much Chenzols love their freedom, their wild forests and rivers. He also knows that their ability to adapt to everything, to grow flippers or to stop breathing if needed, is what the Agency is interested in the most. Such amazing soldiers.
Kyungsoo squints, and he finally sits up, his back slowly detaching from the bed. The hair on the back of his head sticks out in different directions, and the strands catch the harsh light. It's just more silver, Jongin thinks. Silver on black, how unexpected.
“You should keep hoping, Jongin,” Kyungsoo finally says, and it's the first time Jongin spots something lurking in his voice since their walk to get his blankets. He immediately jumps on it.
“I can't believe you, of all people, would lecture me about hope. Didn't they let the Spufanians kill your people? How's hoping going for you, Kyungsoo?”
Kyungsoo shrugs, completely unaware of Jongin's attack.
“More than anything, I think it gives me the duty to hope for a better future.” Kyungsoo pauses, and the seconds stretch into minutes. Just when Jongin thinks he is actually done, Kyungsoo breaks out of his stillness again, and adds, in a softer voice. “I think you should too.”
Jongin's anger doesn't stand up to Kyungsoo's quiet assurance, and he feels his resolve crumble, easily washed away by the black and white filling his vision. He's been so caught up in the lack of colors that he ended up mistaking it for an absence of feelings, but as he takes in Kyungsoo's posture, his hands on his knees, and the strong arch of his eyebrows, Jongin finds himself forced to admit that he was wrong. It's still a bit sad though, that hope and determination have to show on Kyungsoo with the same lazy silver reflections as every other emotions.
Jongin sighs, and slouches his shoulders as he presses his back against the wall. Kyungsoo probably feels his defection, because a little smile soon stretches on his lips.
“Do you really think things can change?” Jongin asks, and Kyungsoo shrugs.
“I'm quite resourceful.”
Jongin snorts. “Yeah, and very locked up too.”
Kyungsoo brushes away Jongin's words with a flick of his wrist. “Details.”
Jongin snorts for a second time, but this time it lacks in real annoyance. He wanted it to be an opening though, something that would lure Kyungsoo in and start a new conversation, but Kyungsoo obviously hears it as a conclusion. He drops the full stop over their exchange with a blink of his eyes, lashes curling against the softness of his cheeks, and he goes back to his previous occupation. His back falls on the mattress with a slight ooomff, and his fingers swipe across the wave-catcher. Letters erupt into thin air again, and Kyungsoo forgets Jongin again.
Jongin lets out another sigh as he crosses his legs under him. His toes scrape against the cold floor, and he winces. He's carefully tucking his legs in, his knees pressed together, when Kyungsoo talks again.
"You're really not pleasant when you're moody", he states, his eyes busy reading a new headline. "Please, work on that."
Jongin's head snaps up, and he stares at Kyungsoo, dumbfounded. From where he is on the floor, Kyungsoo's face is all curves and soft bumps, misshapen by the weird angle, but Jongin clearly sees his eyes focused on the letters.
"Uh?" he says, confused by Kyungsoo's matter-of-fact tone.
Kyungsoo glances at him, and the second their eyes meet, his lips break into a wide smile, a teasing smile which blooms over his face in tiny wrinkles and unsuspected expression lines. Taken aback, Jongin gasps, and the probably really dumb look on his face has Kyungsoo chuckling, low and soft. It takes an embarrassing amount of seconds for Jongin to finally realize that Kyungsoo is laughing at him, and the master of repartee he's usually so proud to be is buried deep inside--probably cooing over Kyungsoo's smile. Jongin fidgets, pouts, blushes, and ends up throwing his pillow at Kyungsoo who dodges it easily with another peal of laughter. The floor doesn't feel so cold anymore.
“What does Earth look like?”
Jongin looks up from his plate, taken aback by Kyungsoo's voice. It's not that it's particularly loud, or even aggressive and forcing. It's actually just unexpected. Kyungsoo rarely talks when they go out of the cell, so it makes perfectly sense that Jongin blinks a few times before he even starts thinking of an answer.
Today's been kind of adventurous, with Jongdae barging into the cell early in the morning, and telling them that he overheard Osloa talking about revenge, and Kyungsoo merely shrugging before dragging Jongin into the cafeteria for breakfast. Jongin has been super aware of huge and hostile aliens peeking at him, lurking behind the corners of the prison, but Kyungsoo's attitude hasn't changed a bit. Except, of course, that Kyungsoo never really talks during their lunch.
“So?” Kyungsoo asks, growing impatient. “Don't you remember your own planet?”
“No, I'm just trying to determine whether you really feel curious or you just want to get rid of me because you're sick of watching over me,” Jongin snaps back.
Kyungsoo doesn't really answer -it's another of his bad habits- but Jongin doesn't miss his posture, his elbows firmly planted on the table and the curve of his slouched back. His white neck stands out against the purple collar of his uniform, and it looks so fragile under the harsh lights of the cafeteria, but Jongin knows better. A few days spent watching Kyungsoo, for lack of talking to him, taught him just enough to be able to perceive the challenge in Kyungsoo's posture. Above the latter's shoulder, he catches sight of Osloa and his stupid gang gathered in the corner of the room, and even though Kyungsoo's can't possibly see them, Jongin would bet his life that the Magni knows they're watching him.
“Are you trying to start up another fight?” Jongin asks in a whisper as he leans above the table.
Kyungsoo shakes his head, but a little smile soon appears on his lips.
“I just want to know more about Earth. I have all the rights to be here, and so do you. If someone has something to say, then let they come. I do not guarantee, of course, that they would have enough teeth left to say anything else afterwards.”
Jongin deflates. Being in the middle of another confrontation in a prison full of aliens isn't really in his best interest, but he knows for sure that Kyungsoo wouldn't take no for an answer. He considers for a split second getting up and dragging Kyungsoo back into his cell, but the latter's strength, peacefully obvious in how defenseless he's willing to appear to his biggest enemy, would have Jongin making a fool of himself. He can't really go back in the cell by himself either, because Osloa would most probably follow him and kill him. Cornered, Jongin lets out another sigh.
“Who said Magnis didn't have a sense of humor,” he mumbles, and to that, Kyungsoo's smile grows bigger.
“I don't know,” he shrugs. “But they clearly never really visited Magnitis.”
Jongin snorts, but it's just for the show. Kyungsoo has cornered him, and he has no other choice than to indulge him. He will probably never be sure of it, but he can't help but think that all the events that led them in the cafeteria at that precise time weren't really coincidental. That's why Magnis are supposed to have colors on them when they feel something, Jongin muses bitterly, because they're fucking vicious and we need a warning.
“So?” Kyungsoo asks for the second time. He has won and he knows it very well. “I heard you're actually living in tunnels?”
“We are,” Jongin finally gives in, but not without a glare and a groan. “We've been for a few centuries because of how cold the temperatures are on the surface. During summer though, we're allowed to go into the Upper Tunnels, under the Glass Roofs, and there we get to see the sky, the sun and stars.”
“Don't you miss it during the rest of the year?”
Jongin shrugs. “I can't speak for everyone, but I did, of course. That's why I always made sure to be under the Glass Roofs for every sunset and sunrise during summer, when light hit the ice and exploded in colors. No winter could be long and dark enough for me to forget those images.”
Kyungsoo gives him a little smile before breaking the eye contact between them, and Jongin finds himself catapulted back into reality again. He glances over at Osloa and his friends, still in their corner, still plotting, and considers the words running through his mind, and the question heavy on his tongue. Kyungsoo looks up, and Jongin only then realizes how fidgety he is. He gathers his courage, because, really, after all he's been through, the life he's lived, he can't allow himself to be that intimidated by someone that small.
“And what does Magnitus look like?” he finally blurts out, just when Kyungsoo asks, in his usual low voice: “The Agency didn't build safe installations on the surface?”
Kyungsoo blinks at him, and Jongin feels himself blushing. So much for not being intimidated. He resolves to faintly shake his head and mutter a low nope that he hopes will be conclusive enough for Kyungsoo to forget his question.
It isn't, of course. Kyungsoo masters the art of the conclusive words, but Jongin obviously has still a lot to learn.
“Magnitus was beautiful,” Kyungsoo says. The slight stress on the past tense turns Jongin's blood to ice, and he immediately regrets asking, but he can't find it in himself to stop Kyungsoo. This might be it, he realizes, the moment he was so desperate to create, when he would finally, finally start to really understand Kyungsoo.
“It's a very small planet, mostly covered with water, and Magnitus is actually the name of our only city. We never really thought about giving a proper name to the planet itself, so I guess that's why it's named after the city.”
Kyungsoo smiles. Like the sunrise on Earth, it's white, cold at first, but Jongin starts to see colors caught in the icicle that Kyungsoo is. Until, at least, his smile fades away and darkness, even in the white of his face, clouds his expression.
“You really don't have to-” Jongin begins, but Kyungsoo stops him with a single glance.
“Our sun was pinkish, and it reflected so nicely on the water, but also on our houses. My family's house was blue, but on the canal where I lived, there were red houses, yellow ones, green, orange, and all different shades of all different kinds of colors.”
Kyungsoo's words echo with Jongin's mother's, with what she used to tell him, and Jongin easily falls back to visions of fantasy. This time, he tries to picture a smiling Kyungsoo standing on the doorway of a blue narrow house, higher than larger, his toes only a few inches from the quiet surface of an almost translucent water. The Kyungsoo in his mind doesn't match well with the rest of his daydream, because Kyungsoo has always been in layers of black and white for him, and against a pink sun and a blue house, he would stand out like the start of a deathly plague in a peaceful heaven. Jongin thinks about dark blue, and when he subtly paints the patches of skin on Kyungsoo's arms with the shade of the midnight summer sky on Earth, Kyungsoo suddenly belongs to the colorful vision in his mind. He'd have infinite and universe stretched over his skin, and liquid dark blue swirling around in the black of his irises, spattering the same velvety color on the tip of his hair.
Entranced in the absolute certainty that Kyungsoo would look even better than the sun and its golden pink rays, Jongin looks up, a dreaming smile perched on his lips.
“So there are colors in Magnitus,” he says.
He realizes a second too late that his words might have been offensive, but luckily for him, Kyungsoo doesn't seem a bit upset. Actually, he just laughs at Jongin's face, but even during those short seconds, he looks exactly like the tip of the cigarette Jongdae was smoking the night before. Like ashes, black and white.
“I know what you're thinking,” he says. “I know what people are saying about my kind, but those are just stories.”
Jongin doesn't bother to hide how disappointed he feels. He points at Kyungsoo's silver patches of skin on his arms and neck, and actually hears himself pouting when he finally asks : “So it's not true? Your emotions aren't linked to colors?”
Kyungsoo shakes his head. “It is true. But those stories... they are just fantasies.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean that privacy is important. Imagine dragging your ass around with a notice above your head stating how you feel. Most of us control our emotions so they don't show.”
Under Kyungsoo's heavy eyes, Jongin starts to feel embarrassed to have believed such stories, but somehow, it's relief that takes over his heart. Relief to know that the stories are not entirely wrong, but, most of all, that Kyungsoo's eternal black and white appearance doesn't come from a total lack of interest in Jongin. Under the alabaster and onyx of Kyungsoo's face, there could be colors, warmth. Jongin almost has to fight himself so he wouldn't stretch his arm across the table and rub the skin on Kyungsoo's cheek to see if the white indeed would flake out to reveal gold and emerald.
“I wish people would stop making legends out of my kind,” Kyungsoo says, Annoyance is dark on him, like everything else, but it still breaks Jongin away from his reverie.
“We're still alive,” Kyungsoo continues. “At least some of us are. We're not stories yet.”
Jongin watches him, the cafeteria and Osloa forgotten in the back of his mind. After watching dozens and dozens of sunrises turn ice, that element that forces Jongin and his kind to live like rats, into kaleidoscopes of the most beautiful colors, he would had never expected to find beauty in such dull colors-or actually more like lack of colors.
“Kyungsoo?” Jongin's voice is just a whisper, its ending syllable just high enough for Kyungsoo to guess the upcoming question, but there's no confusion on the Magni's face. He waits, patient. “Kyungsoo, what does dark blue means?”
Kyungsoo smiles, wide and sincere, and it spreads on his face, but somehow stops at his eyes. Jongin wonders if the colors hidden underneath all that white are sort of stopping the wrinkles to show in the corner of Kyungsoo's eyes. His smiles have grown more natural around Jongin, they've appeared more often, but his eyes are still black, still unreadable.
“I won't tell you,” Kyungsoo says, still smiling, still monochromatic. “I won't give you the key, Jongin. I never do.”
Jongin stares, and Kyungsoo stares back. He's still smiling, although his smile has reduced into an almost invisible curve. Jongin still takes his time watching it, though. Kyungsoo's lips look soft, so soft, but what he likes the most about them is the slight hint of pink outlining them.
“You should remind everyone that you're still alive when you'll get out of here,” Jongin says, half-there and half-lost in the contemplation of Kyungsoo's face.
Another smile greets his words, a bit mocking, but a lot bitter, and just like that, whatever was cutting the two of them from the rest of the world disappears and the cafeteria's noisy background rains on Jongin. He blinks.
“Trust me,” Kyungsoo says, slow and cold. “I will.”
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