[fic] #022 - Waste 4/6
Title: Waste
Prompt: #139 - The Last of Us
Pairings: Tao/Kris, brief!Tao/Sehun, Xiumin/Luhan, other friendships/brotherly relationships (Tao/Kyungsoo, Kris/Kai, Kris/Chen, Kris/Baekhyun)
Summary: The world has decayed and taken everything Yifan loved with it. He has grown cold to the idea of becoming attached, when all that stands between you and a lover is a Clicker’s teeth. But as he is tasked with another smuggling mission, crossing into dangerous territory, both Infected and Human can’t part him from his prize.
Rating: NC-17
Warnings: Gore, blood, lots of swearing, sexual content, attempted assault, violence, guns/bombs, and character death (includes mercy killing, child death, mentions of mass killings, and suicide)
Word count: 45,048
Zitao yawned a little as he nestled into the crook of Yifan’s side. “I’m so tired...” he sighed, snuggling into the warmth of the elder’s arm. “Are you gonna be up on watch duty?”
“Yup. Minseok’s gonna take care of later on, but I’m up first.” When he yawned again, Yifan ruffled his black hair and smiled. “Why don’t you go and sleep, kid. We need to be off early on if we’re gonna keep moving north.”
“About that.” Zitao glanced over to where Minseok was sat polishing and tweaking their weapons. “I don’t suppose...you’d need any extra hands on your way up? It’s just...,” He glanced out of the window, over the lonely hills and back towards the lights of Sariwon. “...I don’t think we’re gonna see our group again.” He sucked in his lower lip, chewing it between his teeth. “I didn’t wanna tell Luhan, I thought it’d upset him but...”
“We could always use extra hands.” Yifan nodded, smile widening as Minseok looked relieved. “You can come along with us.”
“Thanks. It’d kill me to be out here for much longer. It’s one thing to protect Luhan from bandits; it’s another to keep him from the Infected.” When he sighed that time, he seemed so much older, more rugged than before. Perhaps his worry for Luhan was weighing him down; Yifan could see that the older man cared for his companion very much. “I just want to keep him safe.”
“He’ll be fine with us.” Yifan reached out to rub his shoulder. “Both of you will.” Minseok appreciated the gesture, though Zitao couldn’t help but laugh.
“I’ll leave you two to bond then.” he snorted, while Yifan playfully hit him on the leg. “Where’s Luhan?”
“He’s checking stock in the other bedroom. Play nice, Zitao!” Yifan called over, while he and Minseok talked about what they did before the outbreak, snippets of music and games and the talk of football. But as Zitao entered the back room, all was quiet. He saw Luhan taking notes in a small book, counting the cans and ammo and weapons lain upon the table, making small notes as he did so. He looked up only briefly, a small smile on his face as he turned back to his books.
“Just counting everything from today.” he whispered, tapping the top of a can of beans. “Making sure we didn’t drop anything on the run.”
“It’ll be fine.” Zitao hummed, leaning against the window. “We can hunt for more on the way up to Pyongyang.” But as he heard the howl of an Infected, distant but no less frightening, he shivered against the glass pane. Luhan’s back went stiff. “Yeah, if we’re quick...we don’t need to worry.”
“We always need to worry now.”
“I’m not scared!”
“Why aren’t you scared?” It wasn’t so much a question, but rather an accusation. Luhan narrowed his eyes, looking uncharacteristically harsh, and walked over to the window. “There’s all this...all this shit going on in the world, and here you are. M-making jokes and...and-and acting like this is all just some kind of road trip.”
Zitao couldn’t help but blink in shock. Had he been acting so nonchalant? He didn’t mean it...but the fact that he had already been branded with a death sentence and escaping...well, it made the bite scar itch a little. “I, uh...well, I don’t see the point in living in fear. If we live in fear, we’re more likely to die out here. Besides, I’m scared of some things.”
“Like what?”
“Like being alone.” Luhan flinched. He clearly hadn’t expected that answer. Zitao hadn’t expected to voice it, but now that he had said it, he couldn’t help but explain. “I’m scared of being alone out here. I don’t think I could’ve made it without Yifan, and I’m scared of losing him. Of losing you and Minseok.” There was a pause for silence as Zitao grabbed a can of apricots in fruit juice to pick at the crumbling label. “And you? What’re you scared of?”
“Of those things. Those monsters out there.” His hand pointed out of the window, where all sorts of monsters lurked around in the darkness, ravenous for flesh and more hosts to add to their horde. “I’m scared of becoming one of them. They might still be people in there, trapped and unable to stop themselves. If that happened to me, I don’t know what I’d do.”
“It won’t happen. Besides, those aren’t people. As soon as they turned, they were long gone.”
“Like what Minseok says. About them passing on.”
“...I like to think that, at least. Comforts me. Whether I believe it? I’m still not too sure.”
Luhan made no obvious sign that he acknowledged the comment; Zitao put it down to sadness and exhaustion. No wonder, they had been running all day. “I’ll let you finish up here, I’m gonna stay with Yifan. Oh! While I’m here...” There was the soft sound of his backpack opening, and suddenly the younger boy had procured a soft plush toy. The exact same one that Luhan had picked up earlier. “I’ll not tell Min if you won’t. I’ll see you in the morning, okay?” Luhan just grunted, grabbing his pencil again from the table. “...Goodnight, Luhan.”
As soon as the door closed, however, the elder set down his pencil. He only had a few more lines left of the drawing, but he couldn’t bring himself to finish. He counted the tins of food again and again, all while the back of his hands started to tingle. He stared at the plush toy, reached out to toy with one of its antlers, cuddled it close to his chest and went to sit in the corner, eyes filling up with tears. As he crouched, his trousers hiked up a little, baring the bitten flesh to the cool of the night air.
It made him feel so stupid...so stupid.
-----
Morning was heralded by the warm sun through musty white curtains, and Zitao sneezed against the carpet he lay draped against. Yifan was busy with Minseok in the centre of the room, working through the remains of some kind of soup from a chipped porcelain bowl. The sound made him jump a little, though Minseok couldn’t help but grin as he watched the younger boy sit up and scoot over.
“How’d you sleep?” came the question, asked softly as a bowl was poured out and nudged towards him. “Best night I’ve had for months, to be honest.”
“Good enough.” He yawned, shedding the blankets draped over his shoulders. But he noticed they were lacking in number. “Is Luhan awake yet?”
“I let him sleep in. D’you want to call him in?”
Zitao wiped the grit from his eyes and headed for where the door led to the back bedroom, where he remembered Luhan counting the stock of the day. His soup was left on the floor as he padded towards the door, leaving it slightly to as he approached where Luhan was leaning against the wall.
But there was something off. He watched Luhan shudder, grunt and whine, while nervous tics send his muscles spasming. He wanted to reach out, to say his name, but as Luhan turned, he couldn’t find anything else leaving his mouth other than a guttural cry for help.
There was a scream, followed by a harsh bang. Zitao was thrown out of the room almost, pinned down by frail wrists while teeth snapped and lunged for the bare flesh of his neck. “Yifan! Yifan, help me!” It was Luhan, transformed and bleeding, his eyes wild and bleary as his lips curled back to bare bloody teeth. Zitao had him held by the throat but it wasn’t enough. Yifan ran for his own bag, for his own gun. Only to find his left ear ringing at the sound of a bullet flying by his head.
“Don’t you dare!” Minseok’s pistol was held right by Yifan’s ear, the cold steel digging into the skin. A cold sweat ran through him, while his hearing was still fuzzy but enough to hear Luhan’s hungry growls as he lashed for Zitao’s face. He had to help. Yifan pulled away from the barrel and felt the cold metal of his own gun, before the crack of another shot froze him solid.
Luhan lay on his back now, shaking and twitching as his lower jaw mechanically clenched and unclenched. His voice was high, thin, a mere wisp as he lay pitifully in the middle of the carpet, last throes of whatever life he had been given as an Infected slipping away with every second that passed. Hands scrabbled at his chest, where spurts of blood dirtied his graphic shirt and punctuated the entry point from Minseok’s gun. Zitao pulled away, curled up in the corner with his chest heaving. Luhan’s neck snapped back and forth, back and forth, going and going until he finally bled out over the dirty beige rug with a frightened whimper.
The gun hadn’t fallen from Minseok’s hand, but stayed there limp in his grasp. “Lu...Lu?” He leaned down, voice thick and broken as he tried to rouse his friend. He held tightly onto his hand, thumbs tracing circles on the back of bloody knuckles. Yifan crawled back to Zitao to check him over, before reaching outwards for the gun. It was shaking in the elder’s hand. “What have I done...oh God, what have I done?” Tears welled in his eyes as he stared at his hands, as if coated in the blood of the boy who lay on the floor. “L-Lu...”
“Minseok. Minseok, hand that gun to me. Put it on the floor, I’m coming to get it.”
“Lu...h-han, no...” Blood in Yifan’s veins turned to ice as the elder, tears and mud mixing on his cheeks, sneered and turned the barrel onto the taller man again. Zitao opened his mouth, only to grit it again when he saw Minseok’s head shaking. “It’s...not my f-fault.”
“Nobody’s saying it is, Minseok. Just put the gun dow-“
“It’s you...your fault.” Each and every that one finger wrapped around that jolted, Yifan cowered away. “It’s your fault!” He was hysterical, to the point of baring teeth.
“It’s nobody’s fault. Min...Minseok, put it down. Minseok, no.”
He couldn’t take it. He screwed his eyes shut, turning the gun to his own temple and squeezing hard on the trigger. Zitao’s hands came to clasp over his mouth when the shot rang out, but it didn’t help muffle the sound of the bullet spraying blood and gore all across the whitewashed walls and dusty portraits of happy families.
-----
“It wasn’t my fault...was it?”
“No, no, it wasn’t your fault.”
“Are you sure? Minseok said-“
“Minseok wasn’t quite right after what he did to Luhan. Even in the seconds he was alive, you could tell he wasn’t quite okay.”
“But we went running together, and I checked Luhan after Minseok. Luhan was with me, and I never knew.”
“It’s not your fault. And you don’t need to worry anymore. Look...come here.”
“...Is that Yixing’s place?”
“Yeah. Yeah, it is.”
-----
Yixing’s fortress. Well, it was certainly fortress-like. He had made good use of the old prisoner camps that North Korea was so famous for, but this time, it was not a case of people breaking out, but rather things getting in. It looked so out of place surrounded by sparse trees, a huge grey stain in the middle of nowhere...but Yifan had never been happier to find somewhere he knew to be safe from harm.
Hence the reason Yifan wasn’t too concerned when he saw the two sentry guards standing atop the large metal gates point their snipers down at him. “State your business!” one of the women snapped, sights trained on Zitao’s forehead. “Or turn around and go back the way you came!”
“We’re here to speak with Yixing. He knows us.” Yifan called back up, though the guards seemed unwilling to believe. Good, he thought, at least Yixing was teaching those in his care well.
The same soldier cried out once more. “And how does he know you?”
“An old friend. Go and fetch him, he’ll prove it.”
“You don’t need to fetch anyone, Amber. I can vouch for him.”
There came a third person on top of the gate, but it was not Yixing. Instead, the figure was smaller, thinner, but continued to possess that soft expression in spite of his soldier-like dress. His eyes glinted down at Yifan from atop his post, and his smile revealed that he indeed knew. Yifan threw him a wave, which was enough to have the gate opened, allowing Zitao to slip inside, with the elder at his heels.
As the gates were closed behind them, the man in camouflage trousers came to greet them, though the action seemed a little tense without Yixing there. “Yifan. It’s been a long while.” He greeted them coolly, brushing back his messy black hair with one hand, as he shook Yifan’s with the other.
“Too long, Joonmyun.” Yifan returned the gesture and nudged Zitao forward slightly. “This is Zitao, the guy I’m smuggling out of Korea.” Zitao only nodded slightly, bowing his head enough to seem respectful without being overly soppy. Such was not his style, and Joonmyun couldn’t help but smile. “How have things been here? Everyone okay?”
“We’re doing well enough, I suppose. Not had a break-in for nearly a year now, and even then, there were no bites.” He gestured at the camps around him, and the men, women and children surrounding him. There was no fear in them, only curiousness at the fact that there were two new people in their group. And even then, it wasn’t hostile. “We started to try and cultivate some of the land actually, to plants some crops with the fertiliser packs we found in the basements. We’ve got corn and wheat growing, so I guess that’s a good enough start.”
“And Yixing? How is he?”
“Tired...still a bit ditzy, I have to admit. But bless his soul, he works so hard. He’s in the generator room right now; they’re working on some kind of solar panel that a team managed to get when going south. I’ll take you to him now...in the meantime, maybe you can tell me what’s gone on with you in these past few years.”
Joonmyun led them through the crowds of people hustling and bustling through the camp, and Zitao only felt even more out of place. They were so dirty in comparison, and he couldn’t help but lick his lips as he saw some of the younger children digging in to what looked like grilled fish. Now that there weren’t as many pollutants in the water, life had started to return back to the impoverished nation, and Yixing’s group were making sure that they were respecting it well, it seemed.
Metal doors and long corridors of machinery led to the generator room, full of turbines and pumps and other massive machinery, where three figures could be seen adjusting the corners of a giant black panel. One of them, with shorter legs than the other, was quietly making notes and offering advice, while the other two girls tugged on the wires and pushed them back inside the main body.
Joonmyun ended up calling out, tapping the man on the back. “Yixing...look who it is.” When Yixing turned around, his half-lidded eyes suddenly seemed to bulge. Zitao watched as he almost stalked back to their side, eyes confused...before he threw himself as Yifan in a tight embrace. He burrowed his face into the crook of his neck, and Yifan reciprocated the action, laughing softly. And for some reason, Zitao couldn’t help but feel a little like a third wheel.
“Oh man...it’s been a while, hasn’t it?” Yixing pulled back and playfully slapped Yifan in the shoulder, eyes crinkled up as he smiled. “You’ve even gotten taller!”
“Meanwhile, you’ve shrunk a little bit.” Yifan retorted and patted the younger man’s head, though Yixing was quick to push him off and ruffle his messy black hair up again. “You’ve done good for yourself, ‘Xing!”
“I hope I have, at least! I lot of people rely on me in this camp, and I want to help everyone as best I can.” He glanced back to where Joonmyun was stood. “Though Myun likes to crack the whip sometimes.”
“Only when you’re sleeping!” Joonmyun retorted back, though the way he linked his hands with Yixing’s, the way he looked at him with such a soft eye...no wonder, really; they’d been friends since nursery, so it was little wonder that they had ended up getting together when there were no restrictions left to hold them back. He turned to face Zitao was a second, wiping some of the grit from his eyes. “How about you, kid? I don’t reckon I’ve seen you around before. You hungry?”
At the mention of food, Zitao seemed to brighten up, following Joonmyun at the heels and eagerly asking what they had to eat. Yifan couldn’t help but shake his head, tailing Yixing instead as he began to walk through the generator room, to where the private quarters were kept, and where the last few stragglers were cleaning the beds and removing the litter from the ground.
“Hey, um...I went home last year, y’know. Back to go and get some things, if they were left behind, that is. And...I went to yours too. I had a feeling that I might’ve seen you, so I grabbed what I could and...here...” Yixing walked over to a small duffel bag lain upon one of the beds, unzipping it to pull out a few papers and documents. And from them, he took a photograph.
Yifan almost recoiled as he looked at it. For it was a picture of himself, not long before the outbreak, when he and his family had a holiday in Canada. He was smiling - rare to start with - and Jongin was sat in his lap, eyes half moon-like as he was snapped in the middle of a laughing fit. And it made Yifan sick. He swayed a little as he held the photograph, staring at Jongin’s young face and thinking...thinking about it all. How he should’ve been the one to die, Jongin was so little...he was only small...so small...
“I don’t...I don’t want it...” he sighed, handing Yixing the photograph back. The younger looked ready to urge him to take it, but he was quickly rebuffed. “Anyway, I need to talk to you.” Yixing wiped his hands on his shirt and nodded, as if ready to talk there and then. “I...no, ‘Xing. We need to talk in private. It’s important. Where’s the location of the Fireflies now?”
“Last I heard, it was at the China Medical University...why?”
“Not here. Let’s go elsewhere.”
-----
“You want me to do what?”
Yixing was pacing around the room like a stalking tiger; naturally, the place he was living was something of a concern, but even then, he seemed on edge. But what Yifan was proposing...it was suicide! All Yifan did was sigh, fingers pressed to his temple. “Take Zitao to Shenyang, you can take him to the China Medical University. You know the path along the border better than I do, and I know I’d fuck things up if I took him myself.”
“But you wouldn’t. I’ve seen the way you’re around him; you wouldn’t let yourself fuck up.”
“What, like I didn’t with Jongin?”
There was an echo around the room, and Yifan could hear the tears thickening in his voice. For a moment, Yixing stopped his wandering, turning to his friend with a look of sympathy. They both knew what he had meant, and they both knew that the wounds were still fresh. Perhaps more so due to the fact that Zitao was still young. Jongin’s age, if he had managed to be saved. But he hadn’t been, and it’s my fault.
Yixing knew what he was thinking, and reached out to console him. “Yifan, that wasn’t your fault-“
“Don’t lie to me! It was because I trusted that guard. I trusted that he’d help us!”
“And how could you have known otherwise?”
“By being a lot fucking smarter than I was back then!” Glass fragmented around his feet, and he hissed at the feeling of shards in his knuckles. They prickled the flesh, and tendrils of red made their way down to the ground in sluggish droplets. But he didn’t scream out or cry, not when he was so up a height. “Like I am now. I know how the world works now; I know we can’t trust everyone. Hell, I can’t even trust myself anymore. Because that boy is the one last hope I have left that this entire world hasn’t gone to shit just yet, and if I fuck up...I...I won’t be able to forgive myself for what I’ve done.”
And despite all that, despite shaking blood away from his hand and cursing himself, Yifan found that Yixing didn’t just give up and agree. He started to shake his head, coming over and taking the bleeding hand between his own. “You...are really fucking stubborn, y’know that? You think you know what the best is for things, but you know jackshit.”
Yifan wanted to snap back at him. But he realised there was a grain of truth in there too. He wanted the best, he had hoped for the best...he didn’t know if he was the right man to deliver it though. “What do you want me to do then?”
“Accept the fact that you’re stubborn, that’d be a good start.” Yixing’s smile warmed him. “Accept the fact that you couldn’t split from that kid if you’re life depended on it. Don’t act so nonchalant, I’ve seen you look at him. And don’t you worry, I’m not judging!”
“What would it matter if I liked him? It only makes me feel worse that I could be the one to lead him down the road to dying.”
“But you’d also be the one to protect him. Zitao likes you; he doesn’t want to split from you if he could prevent it.”
“He’ll have to regardless! Kyungsoo wants him alone, he doesn’t want me tagging along.”
“So you’d cut off now?”
“It’d be less painful!”
Yixing didn’t voice his words any further. Instead, he finished plucking the shards of glass from Yifan’s skin, before reaching for the handle of the door to the machine room. “Fine. But I’ll need to tell Joonmyun. Hang on a second.” He was gone, only for a minute or two, before Yifan could hear raised voices, growing louder and closer as time passed by.
The door opened, and a glass bottle missed his head by mere inches.
“How dare you?!” Joonmyun had already stormed up to him, and he barely had time to defend himself, before a gloved fist came to sock him square in the jaw. He was small, yes...but Yifan’s jaw ached something fierce when the younger man was gearing up for a second blow. Only Yixing stood in his way, tugging him back. “You’re not fucking taking him! I don’t care if you were twins at bloody birth; you’re not making Yixing go on that run!”
“I have to go!” In comparison to Joonmyun’s screeching, Yixing sounded like a mouse. He drove himself between the two, holding Joonmyun fast by the hands. “Yifan doesn’t know the way, it’d be suicide!”
“If I lose you, it’d be a massacre!” His lover’s eyes were wild, shining with tears as Yifan recoiled to nurse his jaw. “Everyone needs you here, I need you here! And you just go...fucking... gallivanting off...what the fuck are we gonna do here?!”
“Baby, please-”
“No! You go with him over my dead body!”
Yifan didn’t want to imagine himself in either situation.
But a crackle of the two way radio saved him soon enough. “Joonmyun, pick up! That civvie kid you let in got out!”
The ground rocked beneath Yifan’s feet. No... “What?” Joonmyun barked back into his walkie-talkie. “How did he get out?”
“He left through the side truck entrance! He took one of our horses, sir!”
“...Fuck, I showed him the stables when we were on the way down to eat...okay, Amber, hold the front entrance and get a guard on the truck entrance too. If he comes back, make sure to let him in. I’ll give him a good hiding if he thinks about trying that again!” Yixing was already on his feet and grabbing his jacket though, and Joonmyun gave him a look as if he was completely crazy. “And where are you going?”
Yifan stood up and took hold of his gun. “He’s coming with me. I’m not letting Zitao get caught out there.”
“...If you get my Yixing killed out there-“
“I’ll not let that happen. If you punch me out for only asking him to escort, I’ll sure as shit bring him back without a scratch.”
-----
“It’s beautiful. Where did you get all the power from?”
“Didn’t you know that the guards shut it down during the first months? Flip a switch in the basement and everything’s on again!”
“You’re gonna get into so much trouble...”
“Shit, you think I care? I’m a Firefly now, I’m in trouble anyway!”
Zitao grinned and wiped his nose on his sleeve, watching as Sehun tugged on his jacket, though he didn’t miss the glint of the dog tags now adorning his neck, embossed with that blasted symbol. It flickered in the light of the newly-illuminated arcade, and Zitao couldn’t help but worry his teeth at it.
“Can’t believe you did that though...” he sighed, reaching out to hold the pendant between his hands. The insect upon it seemed to blaze as they passed underneath a series of blearing white light bulbs from the STRENGTH-O-METER. “You met Kyungsoo?”
“Yep. He was okay, I guess. Pretty quiet for a supposed rebel leader.”
“Isn’t that what makes him best?”
“How so?”
“Small and quiet. Good for stealth.”
“Huh. Didn’t think of that.”
Sehun was a peculiar character, he had to be honest. He hadn’t exactly fitted into the boarding school, and liked to cause a ruckus during the morning roll call. Perhaps that was why nobody gave a shit when he ran away; they were probably relieved, he’d said. But Zitao hadn’t expected him to return like this. They’d worked him hard, those Fireflies. He was lean now, though those muscles he had were certainly thickened out since departing two months ago. Even his hair was different, dyed a weird shade of creamy yellow that made him look a bit like a chicken. Apparently he’d found a bottle of peroxide while scouting, and poured in on his head as part of some weird dare with a bunch of other trainee Fireflies. Zitao didn’t complain though; it looked funny, but not in a bad way, and Sehun was always one to stick out from the crowd.
-----
Lucky for Yifan and Yixing, the area around the camp was relatively clear. Maybe the execution of the prisoners meant that there was little left to infect, little threat left aside from the bandits in Sariwon and the Infected straying over the border in search for food. But Yixing was high up enough, they were safe for now.
They both sat on horseback, galloping down the worn pathways in the hope of finding out where Zitao managed to venture off to. “Your boy is certainly...unusual. I mean, every bite victim I’ve seen who said they were immune turned in a heartbeat. You sure he isn’t the same?”
“Kyungsoo told me himself to smuggle him out of Korea. It’s been nearly two months since we left Hongdae...I’m pretty sure he’s gonna be okay.”
“Well...why did he run away?”
“Maybe he heard what you were gonna do?”
“And run off? He’s not that stupid?”
“He’s probably upset...there! Tracks!”
Freshly-kicked up dirt betrayed where Zitao had wandered off to, and they soon found themselves at a small outpost that stuck out like a sore thumb. Outside it, tied to a post, was a single chestnut horse, contently eating from a bag of oats that had been left at the side. Well, he’s definitely there. Yifan clambered down from the back of his mare and petted its side, while Yixing copied the action as they headed for the steps.
When he spoke again, Yixing’s voice was soft. “You probably need to talk to him.” he whispered, holding his gun a little tighter in his grasp. “I’ll stay outside and keep watch, okay?”
He didn’t find Zitao until five minutes of frantic searching, perched in the crook of one of the small rooms, lying in a hammock and reading one of the comics from his backpack. He only spared Yifan a fleeting glance, one that was vacant and uncaring. It was like going back to Hongdae, back to the brat-like child that had been insulting to hang around.
Yifan wasn’t impressed. “Where the fuck have you been?! Why did you run off?!” he near bellowed, though Zitao didn’t show much sign of reacting. “Joonmyun was worried about you, I was worried about you! How dare you run off when you know that Kyungsoo needs you?”
When he finally looked up again, Zitao just sighed. “You don’t really care, do you? When you’re ready to palm me off to Yixing like a toy. You couldn’t care less if I died out there or not.”
Of course I care. “Of course I’d care if you died!”
“Then why are you passing me on?”
I can’t trust myself. “Yixing knows the way better than I do.”
“Liar.”
I know. “C’mon. We’re going.”
A pause. A breath. Zitao refused to leave, though he stood up as Yifan’s equal.
“I’m not like him.”
“What?”
When he turned around, Zitao’s jaw was gritted shut. “I was told about Jongin. Joonmyun asked if I knew, and he told me when I said no.” It wasn’t until the muscle in Yifan’s jaw jumped that Zitao started to get angry. “You don’t need to baby me because of him! I can’t get infected, I’m a lot more careful-“
“Don’t. Don’t you...don’t you fucking talk about him.” A quivering finger was jabbed in the younger’s direction, and Yifan’s cracked lips became a snarl. “You’re...you end up stepping in territory you aren’t supposed to be in...when you mention him, so I suggest you quit while you’re ahead.”
Zitao refused to back down. “I know he was your brother, Yifan. And I know it still hurts you. But I’ve lost people too, people that were important to me. Don’t think I don’t know what it feels like-“
“You have no idea, boy.”
“Don’t call me that!” When Yifan reached out to shove him, Zitao was prepared, knees bent to push right back. “Everyone I’ve known and loved has died. Or left me behind like some goddamn toy that they were sick of playing with.”Another shove, this time with Yifan hitting the wall. “Except for you! You’re the only one who stuck around, and you passing me on to Yixing like some...s-some kind of throwaway doll? It’d only make me more scared to be taken away, to go with another person I don’t know. I’m not Jongin, Yifan. You don’t need to be scared for me.”
When Yifan regained is balance, there was a chill in the air. He wiped his face, eyes pricked with fragments of light. He could see Zitao’s lip quivering, but there were nerves struck deep as he dug up memories. He could taste the dirt in his mouth, here Jongin’s frightened squealing as he was scooped up into his arms. To think...Jongin would have been the same age as Zitao, had he made it to the bridge. But he hadn’t. Because Yifan was weak. He never should have taken the risk, never accepted Kyungsoo’s words, and never dragged Baekhyun into this mess.
Because if he couldn’t save his own brother, what was he worth on this mission?
Instead, he clenched his teeth. “You’re right...you aren’t Jongin.” He rasped, watching as Zitao relaxed. Only to flare up when he saw the fire in his eyes.
“And I’m not your brother. You’re going with Yixing, and I’m saying no more.”
-----
“Please...don’t go with them. I’ll never see you again.”
“But they...I can be someone there!”
“You’re someone to me! You’ll get killed...I-”
“Please, this is hard enough...”
“Then don’t make it any harder...Sehun, please...”
Sehun sighed. “I...” His words sounded hesitant, jarring. But then he grinned, that fiendish grin that Zitao had come to love. His fingers wrapped around the chain of the pendant, pulling it away in one quick tug. He threw it into some unknown direction, punctuated by the smashing of glass. “Fuck it. Fuck them.”
Whatever else he had been about to say was swallowed as Zitao lunged forward, a kiss on his lips as he wound his arms around Sehun’s broad shoulders. Thank goodness, the action had been reciprocated. When he pulled away, though his arms still held them tight, he was flushed red across the bridge of his nose. “I’m...I’m really sorry.”
But Sehun just smiled, copying the action again. “For what?” He leaned in again, taking a handful of Zitao’s grubby shirt and pulling him closer once more. “God, I’ve missed you so much...”
“M-me too.”
Where had Sehun gotten so good at kissing? Had the Fireflies shown him? It was a stupid thought, but Zitao’s brain was so confused, so melted and stirred up at the feeling of Sehun’s tongue running against his own, his fingers prickling against the scuffing of the breezeblock walls.
His ears were ringing as Sehun pressed closer, hands caging him, holding him, freezing against his stomach as blood-curdling howls rang in from the centre of the outlet.
-----
Zitao was busy on the perimeter, kicking cans as he usually would have done, had this been back in Busan where he was holed up for training. But no, it wasn’t there...this wasn’t in any way the same, and the last piece of similarity that he did manage to cling onto, amidst all the scars and the aching in his bones...was about to leave him high and dry with some other person who claimed to “know better”.
And it didn’t sit well in his stomach.
So when he saw Yifan and Yixing approaching- though the former looked significantly more bruised than before - he couldn’t help but glare. But Yixing only tossed him a set of reins, ones that he barely caught as the tan horse snickered and padded over.
“Get on up, then! We’ve got a few more hours before dusk falls in, and I wanna get to the Wall before I go any further than that...”
To be honest, Zitao couldn’t have cared less. He was being passed on like a toy, he wouldn’t grow attached to Yixing. No matter how nice he was, it would end up being passed onto Kyungsoo again, ready for the cure. It wasn’t a nice existence, by anyone’s standards.
And yet, as they trotted on through the trees, moved onwards through the forest until they reached the Wall...Yixing didn’t try to take him on. Instead, he only nodded to Yifan, who made sure to guide Zitao’s horse along his own side of the forking path. The elder smiled a little, though there was something else in his eyes. He couldn’t all that sure what it was, but it made him suddenly choke. “Yifan, you said-“
“I know what I said. But I think you’ll be needing to thank Yixing for...turning me around, at least.” He gestured to his cheek, where the bruise still lay on the skin. “And Joonmyun too. Knocking sense into me and all that.”
“There’s a place for you both, if you decide to come on back.” Yixing offered, offering Yifan a map and some other small supplies, which he tucked into his pocket. “You’re no strangers to us here.”
“Thanks, Yixing. Tell Joonmyun to take care of you good. He’s scary, and I’d hate to see what he looks like when he’s even more pissed than he was at me.” He glanced down at the map, where Yixing had drawn a large red circle on the paper. “China Medicine University. Are you sure?”
“Positive. But Yifan...” Yixing hadn’t turned just yet, and instead sucked on his lower lip in thought, as Zitao leaned a little onto Yifan’s side as they rested beside each other. “You’ll be okay, right?”
“We’ll be okay. Yeah, Zitao?”
All the younger could do was smile as he cantered after Yifan. He wouldn’t be leaving just yet.
-----
They barely had time to draw their guns and grab their knives, but they were somewhat fast enough. Zitao’s knife bit into the flesh as it usually did, until he fell onto his back underneath a woman with mangled, snapping teeth. There were shards of glass, splinters, something stinging against his arm as bullets rang out from Sehun’s pistol as he fell backward against bent scaffolding. He tugged on the Infected’s dank, greasy hair, making sure to strike right in the eye, as sprays of blood ran down his forearms when he twisted it back and forth.
But the stinging remained. Sehun stared at his arm, a look of sorrow etched on his blood-smeared face. Zitao didn’t realise, but the terror had already set in as he rubbed and rubbed at the bite mark on his forearm, over and over again, hoping it would go away, erased from existence.
“No...no, no...it’s not real, it’s...n-no...” he trembled, though his words were only a false hope.
Sehun knew, and reached outward to stop him. As he did so, he bared his shoulder, where the loose tank top was dyed with red from a mark that looked hauntingly familiar. He didn’t say anything else, but brought Zitao close, letting him beat against his chest with weak fists.
It was unfair. It was cruel. Why did this happen?
Zitao bubbled with rage, until it finally boiled over.
-----
When they managed to get the horses along the border, Zitao was barely awake in the saddle. Yixing had been careful in leading them along the North Korean border before his departure, and it wasn’t too long before they had managed to cross into Liaoning. Of course, while it had seemed easy, it was going to get harder; winter was coming, and here in Dandong, it came hard and fast with the Siberian winds bearing down upon them from the north. Memories of hot, dry summers seemed a distant memory, especially when he shivered atop his horse as leaves blew around them both. He only hoped that Shenyang wasn’t all that far away from Dandong...his geography wasn’t as on point as it used to be.
“CMU...Shenyang is usually about five hours if you were taking a car from here.” Yifan was busy fiddling around with an old-style map that Yixing had helpfully slipped him before their split. “On foot? Uh, about two and a half days, if you keep up the pace. Time which we don’t really have to spare.”
“Okay...what do you think we should do? We’ve got no car with us, and all of these ones...” Zitao swung out a leg at a decayed old Land Rover, which sent a cloud of rust rising from the bonnet. “...are falling to bits or they’ve already been plucked of anything useful.”
“Fair point. We’ve got no other choice, so I guess we just get a rest before night gets on us. Don’t want another bout of Infected on our tails.”
Yifan led their two horses up along the cracked asphalt path, where there seemed to be an old hotel beside the river. To be fair, though, it hardly looked like Zitao expected to; the walls were crumbling with neglect, paint flaking and spatterings of suspicious shades of red all along the walls. But it seemed quiet enough to be safe, and there wasn’t anything obviously Infected.
They managed to check through the building - cleared out pretty early, if the ransacked shelves were any indicator - and hunkered down in what was formally a penthouse suite, though it was pretty much missing everything but the bed. And while it had a suspicious red stain on the pillow, Yifan was much too tired to care, and flopped down onto it after turning it over so his cheek wouldn’t scuff against dried blood. Zitao took the same idea, and crawled in on the other side, taking hold of his torch and grabbing one of the comics he had taken from a passing house on the way through.
But as the night progressed and Yifan drifted in and out of consciousness to the sound of paper rustling and softened breathing, he found himself rather disturbed by the change in the sounds that thrummed in through his left ear.
Yifan wasn’t deaf, nor was he stupid. He could tell that Zitao was still awake, as much as he liked to think that he could pretend to be asleep when he was really up at three in the morning reading comics. And nor was he stupid enough to have not heard those kinds of sounds before. After all, they were both men...and they were still imbued with human urges and desires, no matter what the scenario was. Therefore, he couldn’t exactly slap Zitao on the wrist for what he was doing.
And yet, Yifan couldn’t help but still feel uncomfortable. He screwed up his nose as the faint sound of something wet seemed to echo around the room, as the scent of some kind of baby lotion reached him through the dank stench of mildew and damp...as Zitao’s quickened breath and soft whimpering became faster, before a low sigh escaped him alongside the sound of cloth being ruffled.
He didn’t want to turn around. And so he didn’t.
-----
The next morning, and it still seemed no closer to Shenyang. The only thing that had changed was the fact that Yifan felt very awkward sat on his horse, while Zitao blabbered away in the back as he went through the remnants of an old newspaper.
His awkwardness was somewhat justified. Because Zitao wasn’t exactly the cleanest of boys, nor the best at hiding things, Yifan had managed to stumble across some of the things he had been using the night previous during his escapades. The scent had indeed been baby lotion, for the bottle was still on its side, along with what looked like crumpled, softened paper. And alongside that, hidden between a stack of comics and magazines, was the cause of the problem, stolen from Jongdae’s bunker back in Korea. Then again, Yifan hadn’t pegged Zitao to being enticed by some of the more ludicrous of the pictures of boys and girls with their tops up and pants down.
Of course, Zitao didn’t seem to have noticed that Yifan had noticed...and piled in the magazine along with his comics and strung it to the back of his horse.
Yifan still didn’t say anything. And so he didn’t.
Even when the same thing happened that night...the same slick noises and the same soft whines...he didn’t turn around.
And perhaps he was grateful that he at least still had some integrity.
-----
PART 1 | PART 2 | PART 3 | PART 4 | PART 5 | PART 6
Prompt: #139 - The Last of Us
Pairings: Tao/Kris, brief!Tao/Sehun, Xiumin/Luhan, other friendships/brotherly relationships (Tao/Kyungsoo, Kris/Kai, Kris/Chen, Kris/Baekhyun)
Summary: The world has decayed and taken everything Yifan loved with it. He has grown cold to the idea of becoming attached, when all that stands between you and a lover is a Clicker’s teeth. But as he is tasked with another smuggling mission, crossing into dangerous territory, both Infected and Human can’t part him from his prize.
Rating: NC-17
Warnings: Gore, blood, lots of swearing, sexual content, attempted assault, violence, guns/bombs, and character death (includes mercy killing, child death, mentions of mass killings, and suicide)
Word count: 45,048
Zitao yawned a little as he nestled into the crook of Yifan’s side. “I’m so tired...” he sighed, snuggling into the warmth of the elder’s arm. “Are you gonna be up on watch duty?”
“Yup. Minseok’s gonna take care of later on, but I’m up first.” When he yawned again, Yifan ruffled his black hair and smiled. “Why don’t you go and sleep, kid. We need to be off early on if we’re gonna keep moving north.”
“About that.” Zitao glanced over to where Minseok was sat polishing and tweaking their weapons. “I don’t suppose...you’d need any extra hands on your way up? It’s just...,” He glanced out of the window, over the lonely hills and back towards the lights of Sariwon. “...I don’t think we’re gonna see our group again.” He sucked in his lower lip, chewing it between his teeth. “I didn’t wanna tell Luhan, I thought it’d upset him but...”
“We could always use extra hands.” Yifan nodded, smile widening as Minseok looked relieved. “You can come along with us.”
“Thanks. It’d kill me to be out here for much longer. It’s one thing to protect Luhan from bandits; it’s another to keep him from the Infected.” When he sighed that time, he seemed so much older, more rugged than before. Perhaps his worry for Luhan was weighing him down; Yifan could see that the older man cared for his companion very much. “I just want to keep him safe.”
“He’ll be fine with us.” Yifan reached out to rub his shoulder. “Both of you will.” Minseok appreciated the gesture, though Zitao couldn’t help but laugh.
“I’ll leave you two to bond then.” he snorted, while Yifan playfully hit him on the leg. “Where’s Luhan?”
“He’s checking stock in the other bedroom. Play nice, Zitao!” Yifan called over, while he and Minseok talked about what they did before the outbreak, snippets of music and games and the talk of football. But as Zitao entered the back room, all was quiet. He saw Luhan taking notes in a small book, counting the cans and ammo and weapons lain upon the table, making small notes as he did so. He looked up only briefly, a small smile on his face as he turned back to his books.
“Just counting everything from today.” he whispered, tapping the top of a can of beans. “Making sure we didn’t drop anything on the run.”
“It’ll be fine.” Zitao hummed, leaning against the window. “We can hunt for more on the way up to Pyongyang.” But as he heard the howl of an Infected, distant but no less frightening, he shivered against the glass pane. Luhan’s back went stiff. “Yeah, if we’re quick...we don’t need to worry.”
“We always need to worry now.”
“I’m not scared!”
“Why aren’t you scared?” It wasn’t so much a question, but rather an accusation. Luhan narrowed his eyes, looking uncharacteristically harsh, and walked over to the window. “There’s all this...all this shit going on in the world, and here you are. M-making jokes and...and-and acting like this is all just some kind of road trip.”
Zitao couldn’t help but blink in shock. Had he been acting so nonchalant? He didn’t mean it...but the fact that he had already been branded with a death sentence and escaping...well, it made the bite scar itch a little. “I, uh...well, I don’t see the point in living in fear. If we live in fear, we’re more likely to die out here. Besides, I’m scared of some things.”
“Like what?”
“Like being alone.” Luhan flinched. He clearly hadn’t expected that answer. Zitao hadn’t expected to voice it, but now that he had said it, he couldn’t help but explain. “I’m scared of being alone out here. I don’t think I could’ve made it without Yifan, and I’m scared of losing him. Of losing you and Minseok.” There was a pause for silence as Zitao grabbed a can of apricots in fruit juice to pick at the crumbling label. “And you? What’re you scared of?”
“Of those things. Those monsters out there.” His hand pointed out of the window, where all sorts of monsters lurked around in the darkness, ravenous for flesh and more hosts to add to their horde. “I’m scared of becoming one of them. They might still be people in there, trapped and unable to stop themselves. If that happened to me, I don’t know what I’d do.”
“It won’t happen. Besides, those aren’t people. As soon as they turned, they were long gone.”
“Like what Minseok says. About them passing on.”
“...I like to think that, at least. Comforts me. Whether I believe it? I’m still not too sure.”
Luhan made no obvious sign that he acknowledged the comment; Zitao put it down to sadness and exhaustion. No wonder, they had been running all day. “I’ll let you finish up here, I’m gonna stay with Yifan. Oh! While I’m here...” There was the soft sound of his backpack opening, and suddenly the younger boy had procured a soft plush toy. The exact same one that Luhan had picked up earlier. “I’ll not tell Min if you won’t. I’ll see you in the morning, okay?” Luhan just grunted, grabbing his pencil again from the table. “...Goodnight, Luhan.”
As soon as the door closed, however, the elder set down his pencil. He only had a few more lines left of the drawing, but he couldn’t bring himself to finish. He counted the tins of food again and again, all while the back of his hands started to tingle. He stared at the plush toy, reached out to toy with one of its antlers, cuddled it close to his chest and went to sit in the corner, eyes filling up with tears. As he crouched, his trousers hiked up a little, baring the bitten flesh to the cool of the night air.
It made him feel so stupid...so stupid.
-----
Morning was heralded by the warm sun through musty white curtains, and Zitao sneezed against the carpet he lay draped against. Yifan was busy with Minseok in the centre of the room, working through the remains of some kind of soup from a chipped porcelain bowl. The sound made him jump a little, though Minseok couldn’t help but grin as he watched the younger boy sit up and scoot over.
“How’d you sleep?” came the question, asked softly as a bowl was poured out and nudged towards him. “Best night I’ve had for months, to be honest.”
“Good enough.” He yawned, shedding the blankets draped over his shoulders. But he noticed they were lacking in number. “Is Luhan awake yet?”
“I let him sleep in. D’you want to call him in?”
Zitao wiped the grit from his eyes and headed for where the door led to the back bedroom, where he remembered Luhan counting the stock of the day. His soup was left on the floor as he padded towards the door, leaving it slightly to as he approached where Luhan was leaning against the wall.
But there was something off. He watched Luhan shudder, grunt and whine, while nervous tics send his muscles spasming. He wanted to reach out, to say his name, but as Luhan turned, he couldn’t find anything else leaving his mouth other than a guttural cry for help.
There was a scream, followed by a harsh bang. Zitao was thrown out of the room almost, pinned down by frail wrists while teeth snapped and lunged for the bare flesh of his neck. “Yifan! Yifan, help me!” It was Luhan, transformed and bleeding, his eyes wild and bleary as his lips curled back to bare bloody teeth. Zitao had him held by the throat but it wasn’t enough. Yifan ran for his own bag, for his own gun. Only to find his left ear ringing at the sound of a bullet flying by his head.
“Don’t you dare!” Minseok’s pistol was held right by Yifan’s ear, the cold steel digging into the skin. A cold sweat ran through him, while his hearing was still fuzzy but enough to hear Luhan’s hungry growls as he lashed for Zitao’s face. He had to help. Yifan pulled away from the barrel and felt the cold metal of his own gun, before the crack of another shot froze him solid.
Luhan lay on his back now, shaking and twitching as his lower jaw mechanically clenched and unclenched. His voice was high, thin, a mere wisp as he lay pitifully in the middle of the carpet, last throes of whatever life he had been given as an Infected slipping away with every second that passed. Hands scrabbled at his chest, where spurts of blood dirtied his graphic shirt and punctuated the entry point from Minseok’s gun. Zitao pulled away, curled up in the corner with his chest heaving. Luhan’s neck snapped back and forth, back and forth, going and going until he finally bled out over the dirty beige rug with a frightened whimper.
The gun hadn’t fallen from Minseok’s hand, but stayed there limp in his grasp. “Lu...Lu?” He leaned down, voice thick and broken as he tried to rouse his friend. He held tightly onto his hand, thumbs tracing circles on the back of bloody knuckles. Yifan crawled back to Zitao to check him over, before reaching outwards for the gun. It was shaking in the elder’s hand. “What have I done...oh God, what have I done?” Tears welled in his eyes as he stared at his hands, as if coated in the blood of the boy who lay on the floor. “L-Lu...”
“Minseok. Minseok, hand that gun to me. Put it on the floor, I’m coming to get it.”
“Lu...h-han, no...” Blood in Yifan’s veins turned to ice as the elder, tears and mud mixing on his cheeks, sneered and turned the barrel onto the taller man again. Zitao opened his mouth, only to grit it again when he saw Minseok’s head shaking. “It’s...not my f-fault.”
“Nobody’s saying it is, Minseok. Just put the gun dow-“
“It’s you...your fault.” Each and every that one finger wrapped around that jolted, Yifan cowered away. “It’s your fault!” He was hysterical, to the point of baring teeth.
“It’s nobody’s fault. Min...Minseok, put it down. Minseok, no.”
He couldn’t take it. He screwed his eyes shut, turning the gun to his own temple and squeezing hard on the trigger. Zitao’s hands came to clasp over his mouth when the shot rang out, but it didn’t help muffle the sound of the bullet spraying blood and gore all across the whitewashed walls and dusty portraits of happy families.
-----
“It wasn’t my fault...was it?”
“No, no, it wasn’t your fault.”
“Are you sure? Minseok said-“
“Minseok wasn’t quite right after what he did to Luhan. Even in the seconds he was alive, you could tell he wasn’t quite okay.”
“But we went running together, and I checked Luhan after Minseok. Luhan was with me, and I never knew.”
“It’s not your fault. And you don’t need to worry anymore. Look...come here.”
“...Is that Yixing’s place?”
“Yeah. Yeah, it is.”
-----
Yixing’s fortress. Well, it was certainly fortress-like. He had made good use of the old prisoner camps that North Korea was so famous for, but this time, it was not a case of people breaking out, but rather things getting in. It looked so out of place surrounded by sparse trees, a huge grey stain in the middle of nowhere...but Yifan had never been happier to find somewhere he knew to be safe from harm.
Hence the reason Yifan wasn’t too concerned when he saw the two sentry guards standing atop the large metal gates point their snipers down at him. “State your business!” one of the women snapped, sights trained on Zitao’s forehead. “Or turn around and go back the way you came!”
“We’re here to speak with Yixing. He knows us.” Yifan called back up, though the guards seemed unwilling to believe. Good, he thought, at least Yixing was teaching those in his care well.
The same soldier cried out once more. “And how does he know you?”
“An old friend. Go and fetch him, he’ll prove it.”
“You don’t need to fetch anyone, Amber. I can vouch for him.”
There came a third person on top of the gate, but it was not Yixing. Instead, the figure was smaller, thinner, but continued to possess that soft expression in spite of his soldier-like dress. His eyes glinted down at Yifan from atop his post, and his smile revealed that he indeed knew. Yifan threw him a wave, which was enough to have the gate opened, allowing Zitao to slip inside, with the elder at his heels.
As the gates were closed behind them, the man in camouflage trousers came to greet them, though the action seemed a little tense without Yixing there. “Yifan. It’s been a long while.” He greeted them coolly, brushing back his messy black hair with one hand, as he shook Yifan’s with the other.
“Too long, Joonmyun.” Yifan returned the gesture and nudged Zitao forward slightly. “This is Zitao, the guy I’m smuggling out of Korea.” Zitao only nodded slightly, bowing his head enough to seem respectful without being overly soppy. Such was not his style, and Joonmyun couldn’t help but smile. “How have things been here? Everyone okay?”
“We’re doing well enough, I suppose. Not had a break-in for nearly a year now, and even then, there were no bites.” He gestured at the camps around him, and the men, women and children surrounding him. There was no fear in them, only curiousness at the fact that there were two new people in their group. And even then, it wasn’t hostile. “We started to try and cultivate some of the land actually, to plants some crops with the fertiliser packs we found in the basements. We’ve got corn and wheat growing, so I guess that’s a good enough start.”
“And Yixing? How is he?”
“Tired...still a bit ditzy, I have to admit. But bless his soul, he works so hard. He’s in the generator room right now; they’re working on some kind of solar panel that a team managed to get when going south. I’ll take you to him now...in the meantime, maybe you can tell me what’s gone on with you in these past few years.”
Joonmyun led them through the crowds of people hustling and bustling through the camp, and Zitao only felt even more out of place. They were so dirty in comparison, and he couldn’t help but lick his lips as he saw some of the younger children digging in to what looked like grilled fish. Now that there weren’t as many pollutants in the water, life had started to return back to the impoverished nation, and Yixing’s group were making sure that they were respecting it well, it seemed.
Metal doors and long corridors of machinery led to the generator room, full of turbines and pumps and other massive machinery, where three figures could be seen adjusting the corners of a giant black panel. One of them, with shorter legs than the other, was quietly making notes and offering advice, while the other two girls tugged on the wires and pushed them back inside the main body.
Joonmyun ended up calling out, tapping the man on the back. “Yixing...look who it is.” When Yixing turned around, his half-lidded eyes suddenly seemed to bulge. Zitao watched as he almost stalked back to their side, eyes confused...before he threw himself as Yifan in a tight embrace. He burrowed his face into the crook of his neck, and Yifan reciprocated the action, laughing softly. And for some reason, Zitao couldn’t help but feel a little like a third wheel.
“Oh man...it’s been a while, hasn’t it?” Yixing pulled back and playfully slapped Yifan in the shoulder, eyes crinkled up as he smiled. “You’ve even gotten taller!”
“Meanwhile, you’ve shrunk a little bit.” Yifan retorted and patted the younger man’s head, though Yixing was quick to push him off and ruffle his messy black hair up again. “You’ve done good for yourself, ‘Xing!”
“I hope I have, at least! I lot of people rely on me in this camp, and I want to help everyone as best I can.” He glanced back to where Joonmyun was stood. “Though Myun likes to crack the whip sometimes.”
“Only when you’re sleeping!” Joonmyun retorted back, though the way he linked his hands with Yixing’s, the way he looked at him with such a soft eye...no wonder, really; they’d been friends since nursery, so it was little wonder that they had ended up getting together when there were no restrictions left to hold them back. He turned to face Zitao was a second, wiping some of the grit from his eyes. “How about you, kid? I don’t reckon I’ve seen you around before. You hungry?”
At the mention of food, Zitao seemed to brighten up, following Joonmyun at the heels and eagerly asking what they had to eat. Yifan couldn’t help but shake his head, tailing Yixing instead as he began to walk through the generator room, to where the private quarters were kept, and where the last few stragglers were cleaning the beds and removing the litter from the ground.
“Hey, um...I went home last year, y’know. Back to go and get some things, if they were left behind, that is. And...I went to yours too. I had a feeling that I might’ve seen you, so I grabbed what I could and...here...” Yixing walked over to a small duffel bag lain upon one of the beds, unzipping it to pull out a few papers and documents. And from them, he took a photograph.
Yifan almost recoiled as he looked at it. For it was a picture of himself, not long before the outbreak, when he and his family had a holiday in Canada. He was smiling - rare to start with - and Jongin was sat in his lap, eyes half moon-like as he was snapped in the middle of a laughing fit. And it made Yifan sick. He swayed a little as he held the photograph, staring at Jongin’s young face and thinking...thinking about it all. How he should’ve been the one to die, Jongin was so little...he was only small...so small...
“I don’t...I don’t want it...” he sighed, handing Yixing the photograph back. The younger looked ready to urge him to take it, but he was quickly rebuffed. “Anyway, I need to talk to you.” Yixing wiped his hands on his shirt and nodded, as if ready to talk there and then. “I...no, ‘Xing. We need to talk in private. It’s important. Where’s the location of the Fireflies now?”
“Last I heard, it was at the China Medical University...why?”
“Not here. Let’s go elsewhere.”
-----
“You want me to do what?”
Yixing was pacing around the room like a stalking tiger; naturally, the place he was living was something of a concern, but even then, he seemed on edge. But what Yifan was proposing...it was suicide! All Yifan did was sigh, fingers pressed to his temple. “Take Zitao to Shenyang, you can take him to the China Medical University. You know the path along the border better than I do, and I know I’d fuck things up if I took him myself.”
“But you wouldn’t. I’ve seen the way you’re around him; you wouldn’t let yourself fuck up.”
“What, like I didn’t with Jongin?”
There was an echo around the room, and Yifan could hear the tears thickening in his voice. For a moment, Yixing stopped his wandering, turning to his friend with a look of sympathy. They both knew what he had meant, and they both knew that the wounds were still fresh. Perhaps more so due to the fact that Zitao was still young. Jongin’s age, if he had managed to be saved. But he hadn’t been, and it’s my fault.
Yixing knew what he was thinking, and reached out to console him. “Yifan, that wasn’t your fault-“
“Don’t lie to me! It was because I trusted that guard. I trusted that he’d help us!”
“And how could you have known otherwise?”
“By being a lot fucking smarter than I was back then!” Glass fragmented around his feet, and he hissed at the feeling of shards in his knuckles. They prickled the flesh, and tendrils of red made their way down to the ground in sluggish droplets. But he didn’t scream out or cry, not when he was so up a height. “Like I am now. I know how the world works now; I know we can’t trust everyone. Hell, I can’t even trust myself anymore. Because that boy is the one last hope I have left that this entire world hasn’t gone to shit just yet, and if I fuck up...I...I won’t be able to forgive myself for what I’ve done.”
And despite all that, despite shaking blood away from his hand and cursing himself, Yifan found that Yixing didn’t just give up and agree. He started to shake his head, coming over and taking the bleeding hand between his own. “You...are really fucking stubborn, y’know that? You think you know what the best is for things, but you know jackshit.”
Yifan wanted to snap back at him. But he realised there was a grain of truth in there too. He wanted the best, he had hoped for the best...he didn’t know if he was the right man to deliver it though. “What do you want me to do then?”
“Accept the fact that you’re stubborn, that’d be a good start.” Yixing’s smile warmed him. “Accept the fact that you couldn’t split from that kid if you’re life depended on it. Don’t act so nonchalant, I’ve seen you look at him. And don’t you worry, I’m not judging!”
“What would it matter if I liked him? It only makes me feel worse that I could be the one to lead him down the road to dying.”
“But you’d also be the one to protect him. Zitao likes you; he doesn’t want to split from you if he could prevent it.”
“He’ll have to regardless! Kyungsoo wants him alone, he doesn’t want me tagging along.”
“So you’d cut off now?”
“It’d be less painful!”
Yixing didn’t voice his words any further. Instead, he finished plucking the shards of glass from Yifan’s skin, before reaching for the handle of the door to the machine room. “Fine. But I’ll need to tell Joonmyun. Hang on a second.” He was gone, only for a minute or two, before Yifan could hear raised voices, growing louder and closer as time passed by.
The door opened, and a glass bottle missed his head by mere inches.
“How dare you?!” Joonmyun had already stormed up to him, and he barely had time to defend himself, before a gloved fist came to sock him square in the jaw. He was small, yes...but Yifan’s jaw ached something fierce when the younger man was gearing up for a second blow. Only Yixing stood in his way, tugging him back. “You’re not fucking taking him! I don’t care if you were twins at bloody birth; you’re not making Yixing go on that run!”
“I have to go!” In comparison to Joonmyun’s screeching, Yixing sounded like a mouse. He drove himself between the two, holding Joonmyun fast by the hands. “Yifan doesn’t know the way, it’d be suicide!”
“If I lose you, it’d be a massacre!” His lover’s eyes were wild, shining with tears as Yifan recoiled to nurse his jaw. “Everyone needs you here, I need you here! And you just go...fucking... gallivanting off...what the fuck are we gonna do here?!”
“Baby, please-”
“No! You go with him over my dead body!”
Yifan didn’t want to imagine himself in either situation.
But a crackle of the two way radio saved him soon enough. “Joonmyun, pick up! That civvie kid you let in got out!”
The ground rocked beneath Yifan’s feet. No... “What?” Joonmyun barked back into his walkie-talkie. “How did he get out?”
“He left through the side truck entrance! He took one of our horses, sir!”
“...Fuck, I showed him the stables when we were on the way down to eat...okay, Amber, hold the front entrance and get a guard on the truck entrance too. If he comes back, make sure to let him in. I’ll give him a good hiding if he thinks about trying that again!” Yixing was already on his feet and grabbing his jacket though, and Joonmyun gave him a look as if he was completely crazy. “And where are you going?”
Yifan stood up and took hold of his gun. “He’s coming with me. I’m not letting Zitao get caught out there.”
“...If you get my Yixing killed out there-“
“I’ll not let that happen. If you punch me out for only asking him to escort, I’ll sure as shit bring him back without a scratch.”
-----
“It’s beautiful. Where did you get all the power from?”
“Didn’t you know that the guards shut it down during the first months? Flip a switch in the basement and everything’s on again!”
“You’re gonna get into so much trouble...”
“Shit, you think I care? I’m a Firefly now, I’m in trouble anyway!”
Zitao grinned and wiped his nose on his sleeve, watching as Sehun tugged on his jacket, though he didn’t miss the glint of the dog tags now adorning his neck, embossed with that blasted symbol. It flickered in the light of the newly-illuminated arcade, and Zitao couldn’t help but worry his teeth at it.
“Can’t believe you did that though...” he sighed, reaching out to hold the pendant between his hands. The insect upon it seemed to blaze as they passed underneath a series of blearing white light bulbs from the STRENGTH-O-METER. “You met Kyungsoo?”
“Yep. He was okay, I guess. Pretty quiet for a supposed rebel leader.”
“Isn’t that what makes him best?”
“How so?”
“Small and quiet. Good for stealth.”
“Huh. Didn’t think of that.”
Sehun was a peculiar character, he had to be honest. He hadn’t exactly fitted into the boarding school, and liked to cause a ruckus during the morning roll call. Perhaps that was why nobody gave a shit when he ran away; they were probably relieved, he’d said. But Zitao hadn’t expected him to return like this. They’d worked him hard, those Fireflies. He was lean now, though those muscles he had were certainly thickened out since departing two months ago. Even his hair was different, dyed a weird shade of creamy yellow that made him look a bit like a chicken. Apparently he’d found a bottle of peroxide while scouting, and poured in on his head as part of some weird dare with a bunch of other trainee Fireflies. Zitao didn’t complain though; it looked funny, but not in a bad way, and Sehun was always one to stick out from the crowd.
-----
Lucky for Yifan and Yixing, the area around the camp was relatively clear. Maybe the execution of the prisoners meant that there was little left to infect, little threat left aside from the bandits in Sariwon and the Infected straying over the border in search for food. But Yixing was high up enough, they were safe for now.
They both sat on horseback, galloping down the worn pathways in the hope of finding out where Zitao managed to venture off to. “Your boy is certainly...unusual. I mean, every bite victim I’ve seen who said they were immune turned in a heartbeat. You sure he isn’t the same?”
“Kyungsoo told me himself to smuggle him out of Korea. It’s been nearly two months since we left Hongdae...I’m pretty sure he’s gonna be okay.”
“Well...why did he run away?”
“Maybe he heard what you were gonna do?”
“And run off? He’s not that stupid?”
“He’s probably upset...there! Tracks!”
Freshly-kicked up dirt betrayed where Zitao had wandered off to, and they soon found themselves at a small outpost that stuck out like a sore thumb. Outside it, tied to a post, was a single chestnut horse, contently eating from a bag of oats that had been left at the side. Well, he’s definitely there. Yifan clambered down from the back of his mare and petted its side, while Yixing copied the action as they headed for the steps.
When he spoke again, Yixing’s voice was soft. “You probably need to talk to him.” he whispered, holding his gun a little tighter in his grasp. “I’ll stay outside and keep watch, okay?”
He didn’t find Zitao until five minutes of frantic searching, perched in the crook of one of the small rooms, lying in a hammock and reading one of the comics from his backpack. He only spared Yifan a fleeting glance, one that was vacant and uncaring. It was like going back to Hongdae, back to the brat-like child that had been insulting to hang around.
Yifan wasn’t impressed. “Where the fuck have you been?! Why did you run off?!” he near bellowed, though Zitao didn’t show much sign of reacting. “Joonmyun was worried about you, I was worried about you! How dare you run off when you know that Kyungsoo needs you?”
When he finally looked up again, Zitao just sighed. “You don’t really care, do you? When you’re ready to palm me off to Yixing like a toy. You couldn’t care less if I died out there or not.”
Of course I care. “Of course I’d care if you died!”
“Then why are you passing me on?”
I can’t trust myself. “Yixing knows the way better than I do.”
“Liar.”
I know. “C’mon. We’re going.”
A pause. A breath. Zitao refused to leave, though he stood up as Yifan’s equal.
“I’m not like him.”
“What?”
When he turned around, Zitao’s jaw was gritted shut. “I was told about Jongin. Joonmyun asked if I knew, and he told me when I said no.” It wasn’t until the muscle in Yifan’s jaw jumped that Zitao started to get angry. “You don’t need to baby me because of him! I can’t get infected, I’m a lot more careful-“
“Don’t. Don’t you...don’t you fucking talk about him.” A quivering finger was jabbed in the younger’s direction, and Yifan’s cracked lips became a snarl. “You’re...you end up stepping in territory you aren’t supposed to be in...when you mention him, so I suggest you quit while you’re ahead.”
Zitao refused to back down. “I know he was your brother, Yifan. And I know it still hurts you. But I’ve lost people too, people that were important to me. Don’t think I don’t know what it feels like-“
“You have no idea, boy.”
“Don’t call me that!” When Yifan reached out to shove him, Zitao was prepared, knees bent to push right back. “Everyone I’ve known and loved has died. Or left me behind like some goddamn toy that they were sick of playing with.”Another shove, this time with Yifan hitting the wall. “Except for you! You’re the only one who stuck around, and you passing me on to Yixing like some...s-some kind of throwaway doll? It’d only make me more scared to be taken away, to go with another person I don’t know. I’m not Jongin, Yifan. You don’t need to be scared for me.”
When Yifan regained is balance, there was a chill in the air. He wiped his face, eyes pricked with fragments of light. He could see Zitao’s lip quivering, but there were nerves struck deep as he dug up memories. He could taste the dirt in his mouth, here Jongin’s frightened squealing as he was scooped up into his arms. To think...Jongin would have been the same age as Zitao, had he made it to the bridge. But he hadn’t. Because Yifan was weak. He never should have taken the risk, never accepted Kyungsoo’s words, and never dragged Baekhyun into this mess.
Because if he couldn’t save his own brother, what was he worth on this mission?
Instead, he clenched his teeth. “You’re right...you aren’t Jongin.” He rasped, watching as Zitao relaxed. Only to flare up when he saw the fire in his eyes.
“And I’m not your brother. You’re going with Yixing, and I’m saying no more.”
-----
“Please...don’t go with them. I’ll never see you again.”
“But they...I can be someone there!”
“You’re someone to me! You’ll get killed...I-”
“Please, this is hard enough...”
“Then don’t make it any harder...Sehun, please...”
Sehun sighed. “I...” His words sounded hesitant, jarring. But then he grinned, that fiendish grin that Zitao had come to love. His fingers wrapped around the chain of the pendant, pulling it away in one quick tug. He threw it into some unknown direction, punctuated by the smashing of glass. “Fuck it. Fuck them.”
Whatever else he had been about to say was swallowed as Zitao lunged forward, a kiss on his lips as he wound his arms around Sehun’s broad shoulders. Thank goodness, the action had been reciprocated. When he pulled away, though his arms still held them tight, he was flushed red across the bridge of his nose. “I’m...I’m really sorry.”
But Sehun just smiled, copying the action again. “For what?” He leaned in again, taking a handful of Zitao’s grubby shirt and pulling him closer once more. “God, I’ve missed you so much...”
“M-me too.”
Where had Sehun gotten so good at kissing? Had the Fireflies shown him? It was a stupid thought, but Zitao’s brain was so confused, so melted and stirred up at the feeling of Sehun’s tongue running against his own, his fingers prickling against the scuffing of the breezeblock walls.
His ears were ringing as Sehun pressed closer, hands caging him, holding him, freezing against his stomach as blood-curdling howls rang in from the centre of the outlet.
-----
Zitao was busy on the perimeter, kicking cans as he usually would have done, had this been back in Busan where he was holed up for training. But no, it wasn’t there...this wasn’t in any way the same, and the last piece of similarity that he did manage to cling onto, amidst all the scars and the aching in his bones...was about to leave him high and dry with some other person who claimed to “know better”.
And it didn’t sit well in his stomach.
So when he saw Yifan and Yixing approaching- though the former looked significantly more bruised than before - he couldn’t help but glare. But Yixing only tossed him a set of reins, ones that he barely caught as the tan horse snickered and padded over.
“Get on up, then! We’ve got a few more hours before dusk falls in, and I wanna get to the Wall before I go any further than that...”
To be honest, Zitao couldn’t have cared less. He was being passed on like a toy, he wouldn’t grow attached to Yixing. No matter how nice he was, it would end up being passed onto Kyungsoo again, ready for the cure. It wasn’t a nice existence, by anyone’s standards.
And yet, as they trotted on through the trees, moved onwards through the forest until they reached the Wall...Yixing didn’t try to take him on. Instead, he only nodded to Yifan, who made sure to guide Zitao’s horse along his own side of the forking path. The elder smiled a little, though there was something else in his eyes. He couldn’t all that sure what it was, but it made him suddenly choke. “Yifan, you said-“
“I know what I said. But I think you’ll be needing to thank Yixing for...turning me around, at least.” He gestured to his cheek, where the bruise still lay on the skin. “And Joonmyun too. Knocking sense into me and all that.”
“There’s a place for you both, if you decide to come on back.” Yixing offered, offering Yifan a map and some other small supplies, which he tucked into his pocket. “You’re no strangers to us here.”
“Thanks, Yixing. Tell Joonmyun to take care of you good. He’s scary, and I’d hate to see what he looks like when he’s even more pissed than he was at me.” He glanced down at the map, where Yixing had drawn a large red circle on the paper. “China Medicine University. Are you sure?”
“Positive. But Yifan...” Yixing hadn’t turned just yet, and instead sucked on his lower lip in thought, as Zitao leaned a little onto Yifan’s side as they rested beside each other. “You’ll be okay, right?”
“We’ll be okay. Yeah, Zitao?”
All the younger could do was smile as he cantered after Yifan. He wouldn’t be leaving just yet.
-----
They barely had time to draw their guns and grab their knives, but they were somewhat fast enough. Zitao’s knife bit into the flesh as it usually did, until he fell onto his back underneath a woman with mangled, snapping teeth. There were shards of glass, splinters, something stinging against his arm as bullets rang out from Sehun’s pistol as he fell backward against bent scaffolding. He tugged on the Infected’s dank, greasy hair, making sure to strike right in the eye, as sprays of blood ran down his forearms when he twisted it back and forth.
But the stinging remained. Sehun stared at his arm, a look of sorrow etched on his blood-smeared face. Zitao didn’t realise, but the terror had already set in as he rubbed and rubbed at the bite mark on his forearm, over and over again, hoping it would go away, erased from existence.
“No...no, no...it’s not real, it’s...n-no...” he trembled, though his words were only a false hope.
Sehun knew, and reached outward to stop him. As he did so, he bared his shoulder, where the loose tank top was dyed with red from a mark that looked hauntingly familiar. He didn’t say anything else, but brought Zitao close, letting him beat against his chest with weak fists.
It was unfair. It was cruel. Why did this happen?
Zitao bubbled with rage, until it finally boiled over.
-----
When they managed to get the horses along the border, Zitao was barely awake in the saddle. Yixing had been careful in leading them along the North Korean border before his departure, and it wasn’t too long before they had managed to cross into Liaoning. Of course, while it had seemed easy, it was going to get harder; winter was coming, and here in Dandong, it came hard and fast with the Siberian winds bearing down upon them from the north. Memories of hot, dry summers seemed a distant memory, especially when he shivered atop his horse as leaves blew around them both. He only hoped that Shenyang wasn’t all that far away from Dandong...his geography wasn’t as on point as it used to be.
“CMU...Shenyang is usually about five hours if you were taking a car from here.” Yifan was busy fiddling around with an old-style map that Yixing had helpfully slipped him before their split. “On foot? Uh, about two and a half days, if you keep up the pace. Time which we don’t really have to spare.”
“Okay...what do you think we should do? We’ve got no car with us, and all of these ones...” Zitao swung out a leg at a decayed old Land Rover, which sent a cloud of rust rising from the bonnet. “...are falling to bits or they’ve already been plucked of anything useful.”
“Fair point. We’ve got no other choice, so I guess we just get a rest before night gets on us. Don’t want another bout of Infected on our tails.”
Yifan led their two horses up along the cracked asphalt path, where there seemed to be an old hotel beside the river. To be fair, though, it hardly looked like Zitao expected to; the walls were crumbling with neglect, paint flaking and spatterings of suspicious shades of red all along the walls. But it seemed quiet enough to be safe, and there wasn’t anything obviously Infected.
They managed to check through the building - cleared out pretty early, if the ransacked shelves were any indicator - and hunkered down in what was formally a penthouse suite, though it was pretty much missing everything but the bed. And while it had a suspicious red stain on the pillow, Yifan was much too tired to care, and flopped down onto it after turning it over so his cheek wouldn’t scuff against dried blood. Zitao took the same idea, and crawled in on the other side, taking hold of his torch and grabbing one of the comics he had taken from a passing house on the way through.
But as the night progressed and Yifan drifted in and out of consciousness to the sound of paper rustling and softened breathing, he found himself rather disturbed by the change in the sounds that thrummed in through his left ear.
Yifan wasn’t deaf, nor was he stupid. He could tell that Zitao was still awake, as much as he liked to think that he could pretend to be asleep when he was really up at three in the morning reading comics. And nor was he stupid enough to have not heard those kinds of sounds before. After all, they were both men...and they were still imbued with human urges and desires, no matter what the scenario was. Therefore, he couldn’t exactly slap Zitao on the wrist for what he was doing.
And yet, Yifan couldn’t help but still feel uncomfortable. He screwed up his nose as the faint sound of something wet seemed to echo around the room, as the scent of some kind of baby lotion reached him through the dank stench of mildew and damp...as Zitao’s quickened breath and soft whimpering became faster, before a low sigh escaped him alongside the sound of cloth being ruffled.
He didn’t want to turn around. And so he didn’t.
-----
The next morning, and it still seemed no closer to Shenyang. The only thing that had changed was the fact that Yifan felt very awkward sat on his horse, while Zitao blabbered away in the back as he went through the remnants of an old newspaper.
His awkwardness was somewhat justified. Because Zitao wasn’t exactly the cleanest of boys, nor the best at hiding things, Yifan had managed to stumble across some of the things he had been using the night previous during his escapades. The scent had indeed been baby lotion, for the bottle was still on its side, along with what looked like crumpled, softened paper. And alongside that, hidden between a stack of comics and magazines, was the cause of the problem, stolen from Jongdae’s bunker back in Korea. Then again, Yifan hadn’t pegged Zitao to being enticed by some of the more ludicrous of the pictures of boys and girls with their tops up and pants down.
Of course, Zitao didn’t seem to have noticed that Yifan had noticed...and piled in the magazine along with his comics and strung it to the back of his horse.
Yifan still didn’t say anything. And so he didn’t.
Even when the same thing happened that night...the same slick noises and the same soft whines...he didn’t turn around.
And perhaps he was grateful that he at least still had some integrity.
-----
PART 1 | PART 2 | PART 3 | PART 4 | PART 5 | PART 6