The Other Side - Ch.6
Title: The Other Side - Ch.6 Author: kaybee38
Word Count: 3192
Rating: R (This chapter is really PG-15 though)
Pairings: Minho/Onew, ninja!JongKey, Cousin!Taemin
Genre:vampire, fantasy, sci-fi, character death
Disclaimer: SHinee is owned by SM Entertainment only
Summary: Minho’s a vampire, Key’s a shapeshifter, Jjong is a werewolf and Taemin is a vampire hunter. Jinki is the mortal object of Minho’s affection, or is he? Only Taemin, (Jinki’s cousin) knows the truth.
A/N: Jonghyun finds Minho, Taemin goes to a meeting, Key goes to work, and Jinki gets really, really drunk. This story is brought to you by this song.
[CH1] [CH2] [CH3] [CH4] [CH5]
The Other Side - Ch. 6
It was close to midnight. Jonghyun had been tracking Minho’s scent for over an hour before he finally recognized his surroundings. Smiling to himself, he stopped at a corner and glanced up at the half moon, letting its soft glow of light wash over him. The lunar energy all Lychans gained from the moonfelt like a spark of energy within him, a welcome feeling as it aided in the healing process of the various lacerations he now sported over his face and torso. The cool night air felt wonderful as it pulled through his fur like a lover’s fingers lazily massaging him. Sighing, he set off again. Neither running, nor taking his time, he padded his way down alleys between rows of warehouses and empty streets after Minho’s lingering scent. Most of the buildings in the garment district were empty after business hours, save for a few which were remodeled and turned into lofts like the one in which Jonghyun was currently approaching the back entrance of.
Jonghyun had considered shifting back to his human form in the alley, but, being that he hadn’t a stitch of clothing on him, he decided to take his chances and wait until he was safely inside.
The elevator doors screeched open and Jonghyun peered inside, to his relief, the elevator was empty and he stepped in, pushed the gate closed and poked a bloodied paw at the panel that would take him to the top floor. Relieved, he could tell by Minho’s scent that he’d been in the elevator recently. He only hoped that Minho was home alone and unharmed. Deeming his surroundings safe, Jonghyun took a deep breath and pushed his Lychan energy back into the corner of his mind like a recent memory, quickly shifting back to his human form bracing himself in a corner of the car against the wall and the floor for support. Shifting took a lot out of him and as he stood erect and cracked his back, he could feel the exhaustion setting in from the fight. He licked at the wound on his hand that had stopped bleeding, but still throbbed, and although it was already halfway healed, he knew it would leave a scar.
When the doors opened, Jonghyun was jolted back to reality by a shriek.
His neighbor, a single woman in her thirties who was on her way to her job as a night nurse, had gasped and dropped her purse at the sight of his naked form. She currently was blinking rapidly, staring bug-eyed at the wall of the elevator behind Jonghyun trying to remember how her lungs worked.
“Good evening.” He said with a friendly smile as if he wasn’t naked as the day he was born.
Then he gingerly stepped out of the elevator, around her frozen form and sauntered down the hall.
____________________________
Minho had been sitting in the dark, propped up against the back of the couch in the middle of the concrete floor staring out of the floor-to-ceiling windows for what felt like forever, turning Kyuhyun’s pearl-handled gun over and over in his hands, trying to put together the pieces of his disjointed life.
He remembered the proprietor of a small bakery that caught Minho, young lanky orphan trying to steal from the tip jar on the counter one rainy day. He nremembered being so scared he almost wet himself when the man cleared his throat behind him. He remembered being really scared when he ran to the door of the shop and in the blink on an eye, his escape was blocked by the very same man. He remembered how the man’s quiet voice and gentle demeanor relaxed him for some reason. How the baker had coaxed him back into the shop, talking to him for hours that night over delicate pastries and coffee while waiting out the storm.
Minho remembered Kyuhyun being the first human being he’d ever trusted. Until he realized that he wasn’t.
Human, that is.
It was the night that Siwon attacked him.
It felt like two needles were jabbed into his neck before he felt numb all over. The vampire’s venom contained a biological neurotoxin not fatal to humans, but the venom’s effects paralyzed Minho almost immediately. As he slid down the wall onto the pavement he remembered only bits and pieces of what happened next. Siwon’s face looming over his, grinning as his own blood dripped from his lips onto his trousers. He heard someone screaming, Siwon’s body flying through the air then hitting something hard with a sickening thud, Kyuhyun’s arms around him him crying. When he woke the next day, he thought he’d dreamed it all until he’d turned his head and saw Kyuhyun sleeping in the chair next to the bed where he’d stayed all night keeping vigil. His neck wrapped in gauze.
Kyuhyun explained that being bitten once had some side effects, like a hallucenogenic drug, but that no harm would come to him and he would not “turn” unless he was bitten again.
Twice.
Whether Siwon’s intent was to kill him or to turn him Minho never knew, but as Kyuhyun trashed his own apartment in a rage Minho realized that had never seen the man angry at all before that.
“There are rules!” he shouted.
“There’s an order to things, contrary to popular belief, we are NOT savages! Humans can’t just be turned on a whim! There’s research that must be done, bloodlines to consider, not to mention the mating process, and the council must agree to…” Kyuhun had stopped his tirade when he caught sight of Minho’s stricken face.
The older man rushed to Minho’s bedside.
“Minho I am so so sorry for this. Your whole life you haven’t been given a chance to chose the situations that you were thrown into, and here I have just thrust you into one more. I am so terribly sorry. Can you ever forgive me?”
“Turn me.”
Minho remembered feeling a sudden strength of conviction that he’d never felt before. He’d never been so sure of anything before in his entire life.
“What?”
“You said it’s my choice. I had no life before I met you, I was just a kid wandering the streets, stealing food to eat, I had nothing. If turning me means that I can stay with you, I’ll do it.”
Minho tugged at the collar of his oxford, rumpled from sleeping in it, and pulled off the gauze to reveal the scabbed over bite marks on his neck.
”Minho. No. You don’t know what you’re asking…”
”Yes I do! It means I am bound to you forever. You would be my master…or…” Minho looked down at the striped pattern on the bedsheets, struggling to find the right words.
“…my maker right?” Kyuhyun nodded, stunned.
“Please!” Minho turned back to Kyuhyun, his large eyes filling with tears.
”You could train me. Give me purpose. A reason to live.
Kyuhyun knelt in front of Minho at the side of the bed and reached out to stroke the younger boy’s cheek.
"Oh Minho. This….this is not living."
The vampire studied the boy for a long moment before speaking again.
”I will speak to the council and see what I can do. In light of the circumstances, it might just be the safest thing to do.”
Kyuhyun had been his brother, friend, mentor and he’d hoped even more, but that was all shattered when the vampire was mysteriously killed. The day Minho had found Kyhyun’s weapon of choice in a pile of the vampire’s very own ashes he’d wept for days only to walk away from the coven never to cry or return again. He thought the parts of his soul capable of feeling emotionally attached to someone had died that day.
Until he met Jinki.
_________________________________
“What the fuck?!”
Minho was startled out of his memories by Jonghyun’s angry face dropping from out of nowhere upside down over his.
“You told me to wait, so I waited, and then whaddya do? You leave me!”
Minho facepalmed realizing that Jonghyun had waited for him at the other end of the alley just as he’d asked, but he’d been so angry at Siwon, he’d just taken off for home instead. Jonghyun was half clinging, half hanging off of the back of the couch, chewing with his mouth open, munching on his second Power Bar as the empty wrapper of the first floated to the floor next to Minho.
He was hungry.
Hungry, naked and clearly pissed of.
“I-I’m sorry, I just…I was so angry I just needed to get away. I just…”
Jonghyun and Minho both jumped at the sound of banging at the door, then looked at each other. Jonghyun sniffed the air and grinned before dropping onto the couch as Minho slowly went to answer it.
“Somebody better open this Goddam door! I know you’re both in there you assholes!”
Key’s voice was muffled by solid steel, but his intentions were loud and clear.
They both let out a sigh, and Minho closed his eyes and ran a hand over his face. He barely had rotated the door handle before the door swung open and he had an armful of Key. It took Minho a moment to register what was happening, before he felt his shirt getting wet.
“Do you have any idea how worried I was, when that vamp woke up and the gun, and the arrows, and the slayer saw me, and there was so much blood…” he sobbed.
“Hey.” Minho pried Key from off of him just enough to look into the boy’s red face as he sniffed. Wiping away his own tears with the back of his hand,
“I’m fine Key. What are you talking about? What slayer?”
“Jjong didn’t tell you?”
Key turned towards the couch and then grimaced. Minho followed his gaze and then rolled his eyes when he caught sight of a still naked Jonghyun chewing on yet another energy bar, hair all over his head like he just woke up. Eyebrows raised, he looked back-and-forth between them and shrugged.
“What?”
________________________________
3 days later
Taemin stopped at the little dingy market nestled between the dry cleaners and the jewelry/electronics store looking both ways before stepping inside. As he shut the door behind him, he looked above him when he noticed that the little bell that usually tinkled announcing customers’ arrival had been replaced by a set of silver wind chimes. As he looked towards the old man at the register, he unbuttoned his sleeve, revealing the small Aramaic tattoo on the back of his wrist before running the same hand through his hair. The man at the counter gave him a once over, before returning his steely gaze to the newspaper laid out on the counter in front of him.
Taemin walked straight to the back of the store past a few customers and through a door marked “Employees Only” through a little break room, and right up to a wall. He wiped his palm over it as if looking for something, then looking over his shoulder to make sure he didn’t have an audience, he pulled one of his silver arrows from its quiver. He turned it in his hands and used it like a pen to write an invisible inscription on the wall, again in Aramaic. Within seconds, the inscription lit and crackled with electricity before the outline of a full-sized door appeared and did the same. It was outlined in an ethereal blue color which shifted as he pushed it open and stepped through. The entire wall returned to normal behind him as he crossed the threshold and into a large, old meeting room.
Taemin could smell the scent of old leather and cedar as he looked around observing at least 10 other similarly clad men and women seated around a large oak table. There was a clean-shaven man seated at the head in an ancient looking carved piece of furniture, more reminiscent of a throne than a chair.
He had jet-black shoulder length, impeccably coiffed hair and wore a tailored black sports coat with matching waistcoat over a blood-red silk oxford. Cufflinks the size of silver-dollars engraved with the same ancient language as Taemin’s tatoo clasped oversized cuffs together and glinted as he placed his elbows on the table and steepled his fingers in front of him. Raising his head his eyes narrowed slightly as he somehow managed to look down his nose even as he looked up over delicate platinum rimless glasses.
“Nice of you to join us Taeminnie.”
Taemin blinked once, but caught himself before he rolled his eyes at the nickname, deliberately meant to mock his youth.
“The House of Choi has made their presence known.” He reported.
_______________________________
Jinki couldn’t seem to get drunk fast enough.
As he took another shot of whisky, he lamented the dichotomy of his life. On the one hand, he was incredibly smart, graduated top of his class in high school, had finished college in 3 years magna cum laude. But he didn’t have enough confidence to get a job or was too clumsy to keep one so he went back to school. Currently working on his second Masters degree, everyone liked him and found him fun to be around, but Jinki really couldn’t call anyone a close friend. Well, except for Taemin, but he knew that his cousin felt obligated by blood to be his friend for some reason.
He had a high tolerance for pain, but was prone to debilitating migraines. He could seem to heal from any injury, but was so accident prone, Taemin once suggested padding every sharp edge of the apartment as he stitched up yet another one of Jinki’s head wounds. He himself was confident in his abilities in the areas of structural engineering and applied physics but when it came to simple conversations with one tall, dark and handsome barista he was incredibly weak.
And then there was the problem of him hearing things again.
He absently scraped the glass back and forth on the oak surface of the bar as he thought about the few relationships that he’d had in his life. Nothing ever lasted, or really started for that matter, as his clumsiness, his lack of self-esteem, or his general bad luck always seemed to get in the way.
“Stop that.” The girl tending bar snapped at him, snatching the tumbler from his hands before it could make contact with the bar’s surface again.
“You’re driving me nuts.” She muttered.
Jinki looked at her confused for a moment before mumbling an apology.
“Um, can I have another?” he asked. Or, at least that’s what he thought he said. What the bartender heard sounded more like: *”’R you my mother?” to which she barked out a laugh.
“I think you’ve had enough big guy. Here.” She said, shoving a glass of water in his direction.
“CL! I’m here!” a male voice called from across the bar, as a man stepped into view that Jinki had never seen before, but seemed familiar. He revealed a pretty pair of feline eyes as he removed designer sunglasses from an equally pretty face.
“Hey Key! Just in time. This guy’s had more than enough this evening.” CL thumbed over her shoulder in Jinki’s direction. Key set down what Jinki could only describe as a purse, which confused him because he was a man, right? And stalked over.
“Look asshole! Don’t think you can come in here and drink your sorrows away and not pay your tab. I have had it with…”
Key suddenly stopped his tirade and gasped.
“Holy shit it’s you!”
Confused, Jinki first looked up at Key who was now in front of him, and then began looking around trying to locate the person that Key was referring to. The rapid head movement made him dizzy and a little bit nauseous.
“He’s gonna pop Key.”
As the dizziness progressed Jinki held onto the bar as if he was alone on a capsizing ship.
“What the fuck are you doing here?” Key asked angrily. Recent events replayed in his mind as he tried to make seemingly unrelated events align themselves.
“What the fuck does it look like I’m doing?” Jinki responded in an equally incredulous tone.
Jinki peered up at the bartender before pushing his long hair off of his face for a better look.
“Do I know you?”
Key was about to be offended that Jinki didn’t remember him and then realized with a start that the last time he saw Jinki…Jinki was petting him in his feline form.
“Uh..no.”
Having convinced the contents of his stomach to stay put, Jinki realized that he was beginning the slow ascent towards sobriety much to soon as Key’s angry face went from hazy to clear for a moment. Patting himself down he found his wallet and took out a wad of bills to pay for his drinks.
“There. I’ve paid. Now give me one more shot!”
Key crossed his arms, studying Jinki for a moment. The man clearly had had one too many, and was obviously drinking away his demons. But he was paying. Before he could respond a cell phone started ringing. Key knew it wasn’t his, and when he turned to look at CL, she just shrugged. The annoying ringing continued, and when Key listened hard, it seemed to be coming from his inebreated customer’s direction.
Jinki, meanwhile, could not figure out for the life of him why no one would answer the goddamn phone.
“Are you just going to stand there? Or are you going to answer that?” Jinki mumbled into his sleeve as he rested his head on his arm across the bar. The insistent ringing was rattling his skull, and he was getting annoyed at the fact that the glass he was sipping from tasted like water and not whisky.
“Hmm I have that ringtone too.” Jinki mused.
“That’s because it’s YOUR PHONE YOU IDIOT!!”
Jinki almost fell off of his chair at the sound of Key yelling. He almost achieved the feat a second time as he reached for his leather jacket on the stool next to him with shaky hands, and tried to retrieve his cell phone. By the time he found it, it had stopped ringing. Exasperated, Jinki tossed it onto the bar.
“There. It stopped. Now stop yelling and get me another drink.”
Jinki needed to drown out the thoughts, the voices, the random dreams, and night terrors that were so real, they felt like memories, he needed to drown out Minho’s face, his touch…
Yep, he definitely needed another drink.
A/N: I tried really hard to make this chapter shorter, I really did, but if I cut it off where I wanted to, there wouldn't be any Jinki in it, and two chapters without Jinki kinda defeats the purpose of an OnHo story right? Anyhoo, this is my little tribute to Heechul since he's going to the army next week. *sniff* Dropped more clues this chap about who/what Jinki is, and I tried to show that Taemin does have a heart. Comments are love! (If the storm doesn't knock out our electricity, I'll have Chap. 7 up by Monday.)