[fic] #022 - Waste 6/6
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
“Yifan...hold...hold still, okay? I promise it’ll only sting for a moment...”
“Nggh! Ah! Ah, ah, ah!”
“I know it hurts, it hurts...but please settle. It’ll help.”
“Nggh...ngh...”
“There you go...there you go...”
-----
Rather than the ragged breathing of Yifan’s chest, Zitao found himself awoken by bullets.
The sound of their guns made the glass in the windows shake, and he was soon stood up and peering through the glass, all traces of sleepiness long forgotten as his muscles snapped to life. They looked familiar...their clothes looked alike, the fierce glint in their eyes...that one girl, scanning the buildings they were clustered by.
Yoona. And she looked angry beyond all compare. “Come on out, boy!”
He’d been tracked. Oh, he was so stupid. Of course, Chanyeol wouldn’t have let him escape quite so easily, not when he was responsible for the killing of so many in his scouting group. And if they found Yifan they probably wouldn’t spare him a thought. He would be gone in a heartbeat, no questions asked, no mercy spared.
He needed to get away.
Zitao untied his own horse, quietly giving the other a sack of oats to keep her quiet, while he saddled up and prepared to ride. “They’re not going to get to you.” he whispered back to Yifan, wrapped tight in his blankets, panting softly into the cool air. “Please hold on. I won’t be too long.” He undid the lock on the garage door where he had found himself, before sliding it close with a final look back. I promise I’ll be back...okay?
And so he rode. He made sure to crash into their little raiding party, and hollered as he scattered them in a series of howls and snarls. But they were quick to recover, and his horse whickered as it skidded over the ice and snow on the roads.
“After him! Chanyeol wants him alive!” Yoona’s shriek carried easily over the fallen snow, as did the sound of carbines and shotguns, breaking away chunks of the tarmac beneath the horse’s hooves. “Kill the horse!”
But Zitao was much faster, and he knotted his fingers tightly into the reins and held his hips steady. “C’mon...a little further...” They couldn’t be allowed to get Yifan, he had to lead them away from here, away from here... “Just until the trees!”
A rogue bandit. The blast of a pump-action Winchester. The horse’s legs failing as the ground came up to meet his face.
He went tumbling forward, the horse’s frightened braying drowned in the snow as scarlet daubed his vision. He managed to free himself from the entanglement of his ride, whose legs were mangled and broken, pepper-like shots causing its chest to look torn and bloody. “No...no, no, no-“
“There he is!”
But just as he was about to backpedal, to try and slip away through the trees, something long and tough wrapped itself around his neck. “Keep still, boy!” The grip tightened even more, and he could feel his vision fading at the corners. The horse’s body. The bandits closing in. Chanyeol’s reddish hair hanging in front of his face. “I’m saving you!” Thrashing did no good to stop the tide of black coming to seep through him. He was so tired...so tired...perhaps it wasn’t that bad that he let himself sink under.
“There you go. Easy now...there.”
I’m sorry.
-----
Heavy panting was all that left Yifan’s mouth for the first few minutes, while his eyes flickered around the room wildly. He had no recollection, no memory...nothing about where he could have been, where he thought he was. He was so warm though, even though his breath was fogging in front of his face, and outside, he could see the start of a storm brewing. Snow...how long had it been?
And where was Zitao...
“Zitao!” He tried to sit up at first, until an extraordinary pain soon had him writhing back in the blankets and mattress once more. His stomach, it hurt so much...his fingers came down to trace against dimpled skin, against wires in the flesh, and he couldn’t help but gasp in shock at the sight of such a grizzly looking scar on his skin.
Until he remembered the sliding of the metal in his back, his roars of agony as he lay trapped on the metal pole. For now, he was fixed. But until he knew where Zitao was, he would never be okay. The pain in his body could wait; it was the fear in his mind that was currently beginning to eat him alive.
He called out once more, crawling on his hands and knees as he came to pick up his bag. Only his bag...but the dust on the table suggested another had once been there. It all came together in a heartbeat, all placing a piece of the puzzle into the final image. The backpack, the second mattress, the sutures, the fact that there were two bowls...the fact that Yifan was still alive.
Zitao was somewhere out there. And he needed to be found.
Ignoring the ache in his side was hard as he tugged a little at his jacket - he couldn’t remember wearing that...perhaps Zitao had gotten it for him? - and scrounged from the remains of the garage he found himself in. More medicine, anything to dull the pain, he gorged it until he was sure that he wouldn’t feel even a twinge. What good was he to Zitao if he was doubled over in agony? Nothing...one small fuck-up, one sign of weakness...and he was dead. They both were.
“Y’know, I thought that the kid would’ve put up more of a fight.”
“Me too. He thinks he’s so big and important. Ah well, better for us, I guess!”
The voices were unfamiliar, but Yifan couldn’t allow himself to take the chance. He concealed himself in the corner of the garage, where he was sure that those coming down the stairs wouldn’t be able to see him, holding tightly onto a Stanley knife found on the workbench. His breath settled, his mind calmed... slower... slower... until he wondered if he moved at the speed of light.
None of the bandits suspected it, the man in the corner of the room who fought like a man possessed. Even though they had guns, there was something about him. This stranger with such a fire in his eyes, such a loud roar that their knees shook...his neck crunched as he pummelled them into submission, leaving them disorientated on the floor. There was so much rage in his bloodstream, burning hot and red and bright, that he didn’t even feel the burn as the skin was pulled from his knuckles, leaving bloody blisters in their wake.
He just needed Zitao. And these poor fuckers would be the ones to give it to them.
The first one he went to was a young one, barely sixteen by his face. He whimpered as Yifan stepped over his weapons, Stanley knife in his hand. He grabbed the boy’s leg and dragged him close, watching as blood bubbled from his lips as he screamed...for the knife had cut him deep in his back of his knee. Blood welled between his fingers, hot and wet and steaming, as he cut the tendons and crippled his leg.
“Where’s the boy?”
“W-what boy?”
Squelch. He scraped against bone, drawing another scream. “Where’s the boy? Don’t make me ask twice. I’ll gouge your fucking veins out, and if your friend doesn’t say the same thing...I’ll be sure to make your deaths nice and slow.”
-----
Crunch. Squelch. Grate. Thud.
The lump on Zitao’s head started to throb as the curtains were peeled backwards, revealing the blurred outline of someone’s back, busying themselves over a worktable. Crunch. Squelch. Grate. Thud. The air was musty, clinging to his nostrils as he pulled himself up just enough to see the figure turn slightly, while a silver object clenched in its hand slammed against the wooden bench. Crunch. Squelch. Grate. Thud. Zitao moaned; the tang in the air, iron and familiar... He watched with a squint as the grubby cleaver came down onto the bench once more, taking curled frostbitten fingers with it to drop onto the floor.
Crunch. Squelch. Grate. Thud.
He dry-heaved a few times, but with a stomach empty for days, he was only left with saliva on the floor and an arched spine.
“Ah, nice to see you awake, sunshine.” The cleaver came to lie down on the table as the second wrist was detached. Chanyeol watched him crawled about and rummage for something to help him escape. But the cage he found himself it was tight as a vice; chain linked fences barely big enough to squeeze his wrists through, but just enough for Chanyeol to pass a tray of steaming food through. “Come on and have a bite to eat.” When Zitao made a move to kick it away, it only earned him a clicking of the tongue. “Rude...considering that I’m taking something out of my own stock to feed your sorry self. You should be grateful.”
“And you should get fucked if you think I’d eat...” The word never quite made it out, not when he was feeling so disgusted by it.
But Chanyeol just smiled, and pushed the plate back. “It’s deer and chicken. Promise that it’s got nothing else. Pinky swear, if you still believe that.” Zitao wanted to spit at him, but the growling of his stomach betrayed the gnawing hunger that settled in his body. It was enough to have him bend his neck and dip his fingers into the small chunks of meat, to have him slurp at the juices and finally relish the first proper meal for weeks. Stringy rabbit didn’t quite compare...though he had to remain vigilant, lest he end up with a mouthful of human flesh. “It’s okay, see? No problem.”
But as he swallowed the mouthful, he couldn’t help but snort. “Problem. When you’re a bunch of...you know...and you think I have the problem?”
“But of course. I mean...how many of my men did you kill? My friends?”
“When they fired on me? I had no choice but to put ‘em down.” That was no excuse. It was never an excuse. Zitao and Yifan killed because their lives were at risk.
“And we have no choice what to eat. You do what you need to survive and we do what we need to survive.” It seemed Chanyeol knew what was going on in Zitao’s head, and had already moved to find a way to counteract his argument. “You might die because of a bullet, we might because of hunger. Neither way is preferable...so we do what we must. And I believe that you can find it in your heart to understand us.
“I’m extending my hand to you, boy. You’re young, you’re loyal, and you have a good heart and a good mind. We need more people like you to help us. I only hope that...I can convince the others that you’re as good to us as I think you are.” He reached out to Zitao’s, knotting their fingers together beneath the bars as the younger’s eyes became misted. His smile became sincere as Zitao allowed such an action, as he reached through and held their hands together...
Before twisting Chanyeol’s thumb backward until it cracked in his hold. Chanyeol howled and suddenly lunged through the bars, grabbing a handful of his hair and bashing his cheek against the cage until he let go and fell to the floor. When Chanyeol pulled back, the sneer he wore...it was more dangerous than he could have imagined.
“Perhaps...you wish to die anyway? Tiny little chunks to feed our young ones? A noble cause for a noble boy, no doubt?” He leaned through the door, grabbing a small wooden splint as he prepared to wrap his hand. “Hey, Yoona? How do you fancy having fresh meat for dinner?”
The grin she gave him was enough to have Zitao cowering, though there was nowhere to hide as they opened the cage and lunged in to grab him tight. They seized his arms and legs with vice-like grasps, though, with an arm looked around his neck to complete the hold. But that left them vulnerable, because as Zitao suddenly twisted his torso to the side, throwing their weight and power off balance, Chanyeol’s hand strayed to within distance of his mouth.
And so he bit down hard.
“FUCK!” Chanyeol threw him down onto the table and beat at his face, eventually disorientated Zitao enough have his jaw loosen and let his hand go free. But not before he felt the tang of blood on his tongue, as he saw Chanyeol hiss in frustration at the sight of red tendrils creep down his forearm. “You little shit...I’ll be mighty glad to have you skinned and strung up like a pig! Yoona, the cleaver!” She passed him the bloody knife, clogged with dried blood and strips of skin, holding his forearms down as the man raised it to prepare for the killing strike.
Until Zitao’s mouth widened into a scream. “I’m infected! I’m infected!” Chanyeol didn’t look convinced, and only laughed deep in his chest. That was, until Zitao followed on, a sly grin on his burst lips. “And now...so are you.”
“Bullshit. You’d be dead long before now if you were.” Yoona snapped, her nails digging into the soft flesh of his forearm.
“No? Look at my arm. Go on! Roll up my sleeve!”
“Play along, Yoona. Humour the boy.” Chanyeol stabbed his cleaver into the table as he rolled up Zitao’s jacket sleeve. But his smile soon faded, the humour in his eyes, when all he could see was the scarred tissue of the bite wound on Zitao’s forearm. “No...this isn’t...” Another glance down at his hand, still bleeding all over the table. “You couldn’t have...”
“What was it you said, Chanyeol?” The blood in his mouth had never tasted so bitter, and Zitao relished the look of fear on his captors’ faces. “Everything happens for a reason?”
But the denial was still strong. “Nobody could have survived this long whilst being infected! Every turns in two days.” Déjà vu, really... “Though I have to admit, it looks like a very good fake.”
“That’s no fake.” Yoona had suddenly relinquished her grip, and was looking at Zitao as if he was a plague victim, ready to spread his filth upon her at the nearest instance. “That looks pretty fucking real, Chanyeol. Look at how it’s all bubbled up!”
“Yoona, calm down.“
“What the fuck else is it then? Who fakes shit like this?!”
“Then...my hand, it-“
In the split second that Chanyeol had pulled back to examine his hand, it was all too late. Zitao had reached for the cleaver embedded in the wooden table, had it clenched in his fist...had it embedded in the juncture of Yoona’s slim neck. She fell to the ground, her own grip pulled away as she fought to remove the blade lodged in her throat. Blood spurted out of the wound and onto the ground as he rolled off the table and sprinted out of the door, with Chanyeol raining bullets down on him as he did so. His knife, his pack, they were hanging outside; he would have been a fool not to take them.
“Where you running to, Zitao? Ain’t nowhere you can hide from me!”
But he had to find somewhere. Anywhere. The snowstorm and the white cloak it offered were the safest bet, the only way he could try and outwit Chanyeol. Yet the area was bigger than he imagined...these were foreign streets...foreign bandits...he was an outsider trying to escape the insider’s maze.
Then it occurred to him. To see these strangers, these murderers, these threats, he didn’t need to know the layout to be victorious, not when they would be begging for his mercy soon enough.
So as it came to him, as he stalked a lone sentry outside a butcher’s shop, plunging his knife into the crook of his neck and ripping, ripping, until his hands were drenched with red, the words that he was sure that only those Infected or those hideously insane would have considered listening to. There was no other explanation for the bodies he left behind, or why he considered creeping back into Chanyeol’s lair.
Rip. Tear. Fight. Kill.
-----
The area had been marked clearly, and Yifan knew that it was right. He hadn’t hamstrung the boy and strangled his friend for nothing, not when he caved in the younger’s brains with some of the workman’s tools found on the garage bench.
He knew they weren’t lying as soon as he saw wetness creeping on the boy’s dark denim jeans.
The storm hadn’t settled as he rode out over the snow-clogged paths, just far enough to see bodies in the distance, huddled around fire bins and glowing lights. This was the place, that he was certain of.
Yifan wouldn’t need an escape here. He wouldn’t be escaping without his charge. He would find Zitao, and that would be it. He needed him, and he knew that Zitao needed him back.
So as he reached out his shooting arm, quickly picking off the shadow in the blizzard and sending a spray of frozen blood against the wall, he felt no remorse. Not as he crushed another man’s skull into the ground beneath his heel, snapped the necks of two little teenage boys with guns too big for their hands...as he kicked over the bins to let their fire and fuel leak over the ground to set ablaze to the town.
For they would flood out, and until he found Zitao, he would pick them off, one by one.
-----
When Zitao returned for Chanyeol, he found his last Molotov to be a blessing. He would flush the fucker out into the open, ready to cut him down and make him beg, ready to set him alight so that his hair wouldn’t be the only thing that was red.
But as more flames began to lick over the town and force their way over the abattoir he was once captured in, he found himself trapped; he hadn’t knocked over any of the fires...this was the doing of another.
The smoke was thick, it was stinging to the eyes, but he kept running. It made his head so light though, until he wasn’t sure that he was even going in the right direction. Everything looked so similar, clotted with smoke and fire and all equally crumbling around his head.
“I knew I’d find you crawling back. Come to kill me, boy?”
Chanyeol, however, was as nimble as a weasel, slipping in and out of the debris and lashing with that hunting knife of his. He nipped at Zitao in jest, toying with the kill during the hunt, watching him squirm through the fire that haloed his base. The younger cried out as it nicked his shoulder, red running in rivers down the back of his jacket.
“I thought you might want to. You might want vengeance...but you never could.”
But there wasn’t any fun in merely poking his prey, and as he pushed Zitao down onto the ground, kicking him hard in the chest and stomach until Zitao wheezed through what felt like a cracked rib. “You think you’re some tough little thing, huh?” His voice, that mocking tone, it only became more biting as he watched Zitao struggled forward, towards where the chairs lay strewn and arching. “It’s so much easier to just give up, Zitao. Just learn to throw in the goddamn towel.” Another kick, and Zitao felt bile rush up to lap against the back of his mouth. The cinders were bitter on his tongue though, and he saw the flickering reflections grow in the light of the flames lapping at the old leather and wood, and it drove him on. Closer, closer, closer...until the steel-capped boot dealt him a hard blow into his side. “Still got fight in you, boy? I gotta say, there’s a fine line between admirable and foolish. And you’re treading on mighty thin ice around it.”
He showed no sign of stopping. Chanyeol was not pleased by that. “Let me go!” Zitao thrashed wildly as he was suddenly pushed down and rolled onto his back, one wrist seized between fingerless gloves as a pair of wiry legs forced his own thighs apart. “Leave me alone!”
“If you’ve still got fight in you, boy, I’ll be damned sure to burn it out of you, if it’s the last thing I fucking do!”
But while he was busy trying to struggle against the muscles of Zitao’s legs, there was another thing he should have noticed. Because as Zitao curved his spine, screaming out as his fingers frantically tried to reach for the handle that was only millimetres away, he should have seen. He should have seen as the younger’s fingers clamped around it, dragging the blade close and thrusting it up hard into the hollow of his chest.
And from then on, he couldn’t stop.
He raked the knife down the curve of Chanyeol’s rib listening to him howl and scream and curse and spit, before removing it with a sickly squelch. But he was not done, not by a long shot. For he forced it into the socket of Chanyeol’s right eye, and he couldn’t help but relish the howls of sheer agony as the eye inside was reduced to a messy, slimy pulp that clotted between his fingers and went under his nails. His shrieking was louder than the flames eating away at the building around him, louder than the crashing of rubble behind his back, louder than the screams telling him to stop as hands came to clamp around his belly and drag him back from the disfigured face of the man who he had been trapped by.
Yifan held him close and ran his fingers through his hair, to the sound of “it’s me, calm down, it’s me” and the soft replies of “he tried to...he wanted to hurt...”
He nestled Zitao close and pulled him up, deaf to everything around him. The building coming down around his back was the least of his concerns, when Zitao was sobbing his heart out in front of him.
Yifan wouldn’t let himself fail again.
-----
I thought you were dead.
I thought you were dead.
I...oh, Yifan...
Come here. Come here, Tao.
Don’t leave me again. Promise you’ll never leave.
Never.
-----
Spring came in full force as they reached the borders of Shandong Province, having rested well for the remains of winter, travelling by the day and seeking refuge as soon as the bleeding rays of the sun dyed the sky red. It was as Yifan had always done it, he said, back in the days of smuggling beside Baekhyun in the safe confines of Korea. The same applied here, though it seemed only more necessary, in a country where the population was swollen beyond compare and where they were in unfamiliar land.
But that wasn’t always bad. For Yifan fulfilled his word to Zitao, and he did indeed have a further “talk” with the younger about how they were going to...continue.
It was mainly in the quiet of the night that Zitao would turn in his hold, gently placing kisses on the elder’s cheekbone. Yifan would whimper in the throes of sleep, though his pupils would dilate as he opened his eyes, to see Zitao sitting up a little more, hands stroking his chest through the plaid shirt he wore. His fingers trailed slowly downwards as he undid each button, barely soft skin beneath...and the scar that marred it, forced there by the pole that pierced his side and left him unable to wake for months on end.
But it didn’t frighten him. Zitao saw it as a mark of bravery, a testament to his own survival as well as Yifan’s. So as he traced the ragged scar, pressing a kiss to the light curved lines, Yifan only groaned in the back of his throat. Zitao hushed him - even now, they were cautious, and slipped his fingers along the buttons on Yifan’s jeans.
“I love you,” he cooed softly, watching as Yifan’s eyes seemed to become blown in the darkness. “so much.”
The supplies from the hotel in Shenyang had stayed by his side, and he used them frequently so as not to allow their use-by dates to exceed any further. He had cleaned himself deep in every hotel they could find, stealing their water and other supplies in the hope that he could at least somewhat prepare the enema. Thank goodness nobody had watched him then, but it would pay off now. So he had no worries about prying himself open, eyes half-lidded as he sank his teeth into the flesh of his lower lip.
Yifan’s hands came to rest on his hips and guide him in his gentle ministrations, though he was always careful that it remained that way. Gentle. He drank in every small whimper as he sucked marks on Zitao’s skin with each centimetre he sank down, words of pure love hoping to cancel out the pain that was starting to emerge on the younger’s face.
It had felt so good that first time, to see Zitao’s flushed cheeks and his dilated eyes. It was so good to see him rock up and down atop his length, hearing every single word whispered as nothing but the purest love. And damn, he felt so good. Yifan found himself making the most inappropriate little whimpers when Zitao clenched around him, fingers fastening in the blankets beneath him. “How does it feel, Yifan?” Zitao would moan, bouncing becoming less rhythmic as he fucked himself on the elder’s cock. “To be...inside me?” He couldn’t even answer decently, and the younger knew, muscles fluttering as he felt Yifan tense. “Are you going to come, Yifan?”
That was all that was needed, and Yifan had to hold on to his hips, thrusting up to try and reach his peak. “Y...yes...”
“Do you...like it?”
“Y-yes.”
“I like it...oh!...too...” He fell forwards, letting Yifan suck the skin of his neck as he fell forward, the sweat on their skin holding them together. “C-can you...,” he paused, for he felt a little dirty asking about such a thing. “can you...come in me?”
Yifan wanted to ask why, whether he really wanted it, where on earth he had learned to sound so dirty, but to be fair, where Zitao swivelled his hips so nicely, head thrown back as he squeezed out a soft moan, he couldn’t find the decency to even form any syllable that didn’t sound like Zitao’s name. So he let Zitao twist once more, suddenly going unbearably tight, too tight...
Once more, and Yifan was gone. “I...love you...” He bit down a little more, making Zitao squeak in shock, before he let himself go, taut and tight and almost straining against the flesh above him, coating his insides in a way that made Zitao shiver right to the bone. “I love you, I love you!”
“I love you too- ah!”He came next, speared and full, and soon it wasn’t just sweat that was sticky between them. He felt a little embarrassed at the mess he ended up making on Yifan’s belly, but when he looked into the elder’s eyes, completely blown out of pure lust... “Can I kiss you, Yifan?”
They then decided to make it more of a regular habit.
-----
“Should we?”
“Y-yes, please...ohh...”
“But we’re so close to the University, you just brushed your hair, I- Tao!”
“I much prefer you calling me that when we fuck, y’know. Sounds a lot nicer on your tongue...hmmm, touch me there again!”
Yifan just rolled his eyes and pushed harder into Zitao from the pack, the satisfying slap of skin as the younger arched against the curve of an abandoned car making him drip with sweat, pooling on his collarbones and running down his chest. “I wondered if we should’ve even done that car sex back in Haixing. I wouldn’t have known you were such an insatiable pervert if we hadn’t.”
“Fuck! You love it, I know you do!” Zitao grinned against the bonnet of the car and crooned as Yifan’s fingers came to knot in the curls of his dark locks. “Harder, harder!” They had ended up finding out something of an exhibitionism kink on their way to Shandong, every week seemed to have at least one occasion where Yifan ended up pounding him into the side of a car. Within relative safety, of course. But even, there was something about the danger of it all that made Zitao’s stomach curl and tighten so pleasantly, in such a delicious way that it made his toes curl in his worn trainers, that made his back dip that little bit lower and he pushed himself back.
They rang in the new month of April with quite the bang, it seemed. Though Yifan didn’t really understand the joke, Zitao found himself in a fit of giggles as he cleaned himself out and pulled up his pants, shuffling his backpack onto his shoulder once again. “That was fun. I won’t tell Kyungsoo if you won’t.”
“You think he’ll know?”
“Maybe if I drop my pants and bend over for him to have a look? You’re a big boy, I hope you realise that.”
“Don’t you dare, mister.”
“Why not? I think possessive sex with you would be the hottest damn thing on the planet.”
Yifan just shook his head, helping Zitao a little by letting him lean on his body to recover from the limp of being fucked beside a car. Then again...perhaps possessive was right. He clung to Zitao like a parasite - pardoning the expression - and seemed intent that he should stay beside the boy and protect him at all costs. But even then, the word boy lost its meaning. Zitao was thicker than before, but still svelte enough to seem youthful. He was so feline in appearance, it made for quite the pillow talk. But he possessed that same cuteness and yet also the same harshness as he had in the first days of Hongdae.
Perhaps that was what Yifan loved the most, his fingers drawing circles along the younger man’s spine and up into the black locks of his messy poorly-cut hair.
“Do you think...maybe...Kyungsoo would let you come back with me?” he asked quietly, barely loud enough over the soft breeze.
“I don’t see why not.” To be fair, they didn’t even know why Kyungsoo had wanted him to come all the way to Qingdao. Obviously, it was something to do with his supposed immunity, but there was no reason why he couldn’t have returned with Yifan when he had finished doing what he was supposed to do. “He’s not unjust, I mean...he just wants everything to be okay with us. And if I help to find a cure? Well, I wanna be there!”
“But what if something happens to you?” Yifan sighed, taking hold of Zitao’s hands as he walked. “I don’t want anything bad to happen to you after you get there, Zitao...I mean, what if he won’t let you come with me?”
“Why would he do that?”
“What if they want to keep you? Like some kind of test subject? What if they hurt you?”
“Now you’re just being silly-“
But there nothing silly about the fears that lurked in the corners of his mind like ghosts. Especially when they were threatening to burst from the shadows and consume him. He only wanted Zitao safe. And to be selfish. “Come with me. We can go back to Yixing’s place, we can just stay there.” Yet Zitao only gaped at him, thinking him maddened if his face said anything. “I don’t want them to hurt you-“
At that, Zitao couldn’t help but sit down. He ran his hands through his hair, rubbed his neck, all with a pained smile on his face. “And what about everything we have been through? Hm? About Baekhyun, and Minseok and Luhan, about all the people we have seen die because of this?” The tears in his eyes hurt more than anything else. “What about you and me? We’ve been through...so much. But it can’t be for nothing. I love you too much to throw that away.”
Yifan was about to argue against it, about to try and reason that his selfishness was not unjust, that they could be happy...when the familiar deep clicking of an old adversary sounded from the bottom of the speedway they were walking along.
“Haven’t seen a Bloater for a while...” Zitao hummed to himself, loosening the pistol from his hip and holding the Molotov tightly in his other hand. “I’d love nothing more than to let it burn out here, so if it thinks I’m gonna let it get me when I’m so close...”
“Make that if they think. Look further down.” He pointed to where the first Bloater was idly pacing, clucking deep in its mangled throat. But there came another, and another, making three the final count as they staggered around in their search for prey. And with them, there came others, Clickers and Runners, soaking wet and scrabbling around in pools of water.
“Probably a burst water pipe under there...” Yifan reasoned. But as he looked over, the outline of Qingdao University sat on the horizon...they were too high to reach for the Infected, but too high and isolated to reach where Kyungsoo was waiting.
It didn’t help that the Runners were starting to spread out, and had caught their movement atop the road.
“Keep running!” But as they turned and continued through the remains of the vehicles, they soon realised that Infected had massed far beyond what they had hoped to encounter. They came further forward, screeching and clicking and roaring...until their backs pinned them to the concrete barriers, and the lapping water beneath it.
Zitao’s knees knocked together, and he looked ready to cry. “I can’t swim...”
“Then hold onto me. Don’t let go.”
Narrowly missing the claws tightening on their shirts, they jumped. But as they tried to stay together, it seemed as though Fate was against them. For Yifan’s shirt became caught, tangled in wires and cables, while Zitao continued to sink like a stone.
His figure was only just visible, arms splayed out and lips parting a stream of small bubbles. Yifan’s panic rose even more, higher and higher until he wanted to burst, before he managed to free himself from the steel cables, diving deeper to where Zitao lay in a bed of metal and concrete.
Hold on.
His head crested the water and he floundered for a moment, dragging the deadweight of the boy onto the rocks, ignoring the bullets that ricocheted above his head. No, all he cared for was Zitao...who was not breathing as he lay upon the stone. His hands trembled, oh they trembled, but he needed to try. Palm upon palm, pressing down hard into the centre of his chest.
Please, hold on.
“Hands in the air! Stay where you are!”
Zitao, please.
“Step away from the boy!”
Please.
“Take him out.”
Thud.
-----
As he came to, the light above him was blinding.
“You look like shit. But at least you’re alive.”
It wasn’t expected to hear Kyungsoo’s voice ringing in his head, or to see the figure of the Firefly leader at his bedside. “Been better.” he ground out through an aching jaw, ready to sit up and check himself for what wounds he had gained. Bandages draped his body and laced his limbs, and he could smell the tang of iodine on his skin. But as he looked around the room, green walls and white tiles, he found that aside from Kyungsoo and his guard, he was alone. And it was frightening. “Where’s Zitao?” He remembered the waves of the water, sucking Zitao out of his grasp and almost out to sea. It made him feel sick to the stomach, and he could feel his hands begin to shake. “Is he okay?”
Kyungsoo rested his hands in his lap. “You don’t need to worry. He’s safe and well.” There was something in his eyes, too bleary for Yifan’s confused mind to understand. “The water in his lungs has been cleared.”
“Thank God.” Yifan felt the relief wash over him and bathe him in the sweetest of feelings. He smiled to himself and stood up, though his legs were still wobbling. “Can I see him? I need to-“
“I said not to worry. You can go now.”
“But I need to see him.” Yifan didn’t care that he sounded desperate, that his voice was starting to crack with the strain. “I need to be there for him, I promised that I would. I promised that we would leave here.” He swung his legs over the bed, all the while ignoring the fact that the guard at Kyungsoo’s side was tapping her gun in a threatening manner. “Please...just let me see him, and we can go.”
There was no give. Kyungsoo only folded his arms and shook his head. “The doctors won’t let anyone into the operating theatre once surgery is starting. You can’t go and see him.”
The word echoed in Yifan’s head like a bell, until it was all he seemed to hear. Surgery... “What...w-what do you mean, surgery? Can’t I-“
“Yifan, you need to listen to me. The doctors found something strange in his scans, and they think they know might have caused his mutation. It changed in his brain. They can extract it; they can create a vaccine from his samples.” There was such elation in the leader’s voice, such happiness, that even his eyes seemed to glass over with a glow of complete relief. Yifan couldn’t understand. “A vaccine. Do you know what this means?”
That wasn’t the only thing he was thinking of. “But it...it grows in the brain.”
“...You can’t see him.”
That was the final straw. He knew what they meant.
Yifan’s face contorted into a sneer, and he rose up to his full height, easily dwarfing Kyungsoo. “No. You can’t do that.” When the leader tried to step in, he was almost on top of him. “You can find someone else, you are not taking him away from me, not now. You’d better get-” The female soldier raised her gun and swiftly knocked him in the back of the knees, until he was bent double, kowtowing to the Firefly.
“It’s what he would want. Ever since the start of this mess, he has wanted nothing more than to be rid of this all. And now he can be part of it. Yifan, you have to understand that this is bigger than him. Bigger than you and bigger than me.” His black hair hung in front of his eyes like a mask, but perhaps it was better that way; he wouldn’t see the look of sorrow in Yifan’s face as he tried to crawl back to onto his feet. “The world deserves this gift. You can’t hide it from everyone.”
“The world has taken so much from me already. I can’t...I won’t let him go too.”
“You think I find it easy? I knew Zitao when he was a kid, before all this shit even started. You think I wanted to groom him for this?” A dry left the shorter man’s mouth as his tongue flickered out over dried lips. “When I knew his parents, when I promised his mother that I’d take care of her little boy when we were alone? But I know that this cannot be hidden, this cannot be skipped over...not when we could save the last vestiges of humanity.”
But Yifan knew better. And he suspected that Kyungsoo knew the same. There was no humanity left that was worth saving. Rapists, murderers, thieves...even Yifan and Zitao themselves were reduced to cold-blooded killers in the effort to survive. Perhaps that knowledge made Yifan fearless, for he stood up, ignoring the ache of his abdomen.
“Liar.”
All pity, all emotion, every scrap of feeling soon drained from Kyungsoo’s face as he heard those words, until he was wearing nothing but a pale mask. “Escort him from the premises. Shoot to kill should he decide otherwise.” The soldier nodded slowly and jabbed her rifle into his lower back in a motion for him to move. “I’m headed out. Take care, Sooyoung.”
“Yes, sir.” As Kyungsoo left the room, Yifan found himself nudged towards the door, but in an opposite direction to the way the Firefly leader had taken. Sooyoung pushed him towards the exit, cold expression on her delicate face. “This way.”
“And if I refuse?” he couldn’t help but snap, though the jab of metal against his spine soon had him walking once more. “Yes, ma’am.”
“Cut the crap. I want you out of here as much as anyone e-”
In her speech, she hadn’t noticed that Yifan’s gaze had lingered to the receptionist’s desk, where two familiar packs were perched upon pegs, along with a series of weapons held behind a desk. And she failed to notice him swing his elbow around, knocking her barrel to the side, safely away from his body as he pinned her against the wall with his weight and strength. She squirmed and snapped, but was soon gasping in shock as her lungs fought for air.
“Where’s the surgery, what floor and what room?” She refused to talk, until he snatched the gun held at her hip and fired it into her belly, pushed up the gap between her combat pants and Kevlar vest. A second shot made blood dampen the front of Yifan’s shirt, and well at the corners of her mouth. “I haven’t got time, tell me!”
Her last breaths were laboured, but he heard the few shuddering words between her gasps of blood and air. “T-top...room t...twelve.” At least that earned a merciful death, as he fired another bullet between her eyes to the sound of voices down the corridor announcing the sound of shots being fired.
But his rage was much too large to be contained, too rampant to be held down with bullet or the fear of being found and forever split from Zitao’s side. It was pure fury, fury at the fact that thought they could decide his love’s fate without even thinking about what the consequences were.
He beat.
They would not get away with such a mindless act.
He sliced.
They would not take away from him something so precious.
He shot.
They would pay for what trick they had duped to be part of.
He killed.
They were lapping blood around his feet as he headed for the operating theatre.
As soon as he opened the door, he found himself paralysed. For Zitao was lying upon the table, peaceful...as if sleeping. But they had already started to prepare for the surgery, he saw, by the small square they had left on his head, where the hair had been shaved, indicating where they would perform the cut. Yifan began to tremble, uncontrollably so, as his lip turned to a sneer, his hand clenching tighter around the handle. The three doctors in the room all seemed to recoil, as if they knew what he was going to do in the next few moments.
“What are you doing here?”The head surgeon looked so small and frightened behind his green scrubs and mask, and he held out the only weapon he had; the scalpel with which he would cut Zitao’s head open and take his brain. “Don’t come any closer! We could save so many lives with this, don’t you understand?”
That infuriated Yifan more than anything else.
The red mist that clouded his vision only cleared when he found himself burrowing the scalpel into the surgeon’s carotid artery, twisting and twisting as he watched those terrified eyes roll backwards to white, letting him fall amongst the surgery tools. It returned for more when he strangled the nurse and drove a bullet into the third man’s head, an insatiable beast lusting for blood.
Only to calm as he nestled Zitao in his arms.
He was so small, so light, that as Yifan carried him in his arms, he feared he would break. His little one, his friend and his love, his last chance at happiness. While around him, the sounds of sirens and the ricochet of bullets tried to intimidate him, all he could think of was the younger’s gentle breathing as he escaped towards the heart unit.
Hold still, put your arms around me.
Tears streaked his face as he hoped that everything would be okay. “We’re okay.” The selfish part of him screamed yes, yes, yes, and he burrowed his face into Zitao’s limp arm, the plaster holding the IV needle still buried deep. This was no life. There would be no life unless he lived. “Everything’s gonna be...it’s gonna be okay.
No...n-no Jongin, you have to get up. And everything w-will be okay!
The elevator. He sprinted for it, Zitao hanging in his arms.
“Stay away from me!”
God please...don’t do this to me.
“Get back!”
His fist slammed on the elevator button, and he draped Zitao’s body to act as a shield. None of the Fireflies dared to fire, even as the doors closed, as he slipped down to the basement, as his knees gave out as he sat sobbing on the floor.
Zitao was so small.
Please, God.
But when he opened his eyes again, the click of a gun was all he needed. For Kyungsoo was waiting there, pistol poised to strike. “You tried to save him.” His voice was thick and heavy, and it looked like he had been crying. Tears he didn’t deserve to shed. “But you can’t. Nobody can be saved in this world. How long before the Infected get him? Bandits? Rapists and murderers?”
“What happens to him...you don’t decide.”
“He wanted it. He wanted to help.” That sent him rigid. Of course Zitao wanted to help. He was young and good, he didn’t want anyone else to die. ”You know he did.” The smaller man came closer, gun still in his hands, but slowly raising harmlessly. Yifan panted. No. He can’t take Zitao away. “Please...do the right thing, Yifan. He might save millions. Innocent lives.”
But what Kyungsoo said next shook Yifan to the core.
“The greater good, Yifan.”
-----
Bang.
-----
Zitao’s body looked so small in the back of the truck, and Yifan almost felt bad as he curled him there. His hands trembled in his sleep, he noticed, the chill of the car park. It struck a chord, something deep, and the fires that burned in him as he heard the last futile whimpers of a wounded man flare up like an inferno out of control. He forgot that his hands were capable of such delicate actions, draping the blanket of Zitao’s thin little legs, when all he could see was a thick red mist that ate away at the corners of his vision.
Because as he turned around, there were slick red trails in the concrete, handprints painted with red as a small man reached for the elevator. Yifan felt his lip curl, teeth shining in the dull lights of overhead, and his fingers found purchase in the back of blood-spattered hair.
Kyungsoo grunted, though his hands were too occupied trying to contain the flow from his belly. Yifan wondered if those were guts he saw, but paid it no mind. He wasn’t one to care, not when he remembered the small patch of shaved skin on the back of Zitao’s neck. The place where the needle would be inserted, where Zitao’s life would have been forced to come to a screeching halt. It was a car crash.
And he grimaced.
“Wait...Yifan.” Kyungsoo wasn’t one to beg, everyone knew. But as he raised a hand to shield himself, to try and hide from the tall figure that towered over him with the light shining behind his head. This was no merciful god, not by the way the sinew in his arms tensed, by the cold fire that burned in his eyes. “Let me go. Please.”
“But sir...there’s a little boy. He’s only a child, I don’t-...but...”
It fell upon deaf ears.
Please...God, God please...don’t do this to me, come on...c-come on...please God, don’t do this...please, God...
Followed by a sharp crack and splatter as a bullet hit him right between the eyes.
“Why...when you would just come after him.”
-----
The drive to the port was silent as a graveyard, and it made Yifan itch to know that he should have come to expect such a sound. For Zitao was still sleeping, murmuring softly every few minutes as stirring as he came around from the anaesthetic running through his veins. Yifan wouldn’t allow himself to turn around for anything, and only forgave himself a few glances through the rear mirror at the long legs curled up beneath the patchwork blanket.
He had heard snippets, whispers among the soldiers, that there were boats down at the Ocean University of China, ready to be deployed to bring Fireflies and supplies over from the peninsula. But to him, it just spelled a way to get back to Yixing as fast as humanly possible. Lucky for him that the path was virtually clear of any kind of resistance, be it from human or Infected.
But as he chained the pickup truck to the back of the small ferry he had managed to kick-start, there was a soft groan just under the thrum of the machinery. Though to his ears, it sounded almost deafening.
For in the back of the pickup, Zitao stirred. He blinked a little in confusion, wondering why Yifan was busy trying to pilot a shitty excuse of a boat across such calm and misty seas. The elder didn’t miss the way he stroked the back of his head though, his fingers straying over the small patch of skin where the dark hair had been shaved away in a small, neat square. Nor did he miss the words that came from his mouth.
“What...what happened?”
And every word he returned was nothing but potent poison on his tongue.
-----
I took you to the Fireflies.
Kyungsoo took you into a room to be analysed, and to study you some more.
But they...they had met dozens...before you.
Nothing they had worked.
They gave you back to me.
And told me to...to give up.
That’s what we’re doing.
We’re going home.
...
Zitao’s fingers were slow to trace over the ridges in the mark of his arm, over where teeth had cruelly ripped into him and ripped something out in return. Each groove seemed to make his skin crawl, and his fingers passed lightly over them, he couldn’t help but feel sicker with each glance.
It made Yifan notice. He pulled down the sleeve and moved to kiss his neck, while his fingers played with the hem of his shirt. He couldn’t help but let his head fall to the side at such gentle touches, though there was a certain look on his face, something had seemed a little too blank, if not trying to deny the touch. It made Yifan cringe inside, so he settled himself to only look back towards the crumbling road.
“Yixing’s camp isn’t too far away...” he sighed as they crested the hill, the wheels of the truck wobbling uncertainly back and forth as they slipped down the asphalt road. “I wonder how Joonmyun’s doing. Keeping ‘Xing tight on the reins, I guess.”
“I guess.”
Zitao didn’t listen fully as he looked back over his shoulder, into the back of the car where he had woken up to the most awful news, draped in hospital robes and with a mind dragged through grogginess by drugs. Since then, Yifan had been determined to erase those memories, and had took him close, resting him in his lap as he worshipped his skin with kisses and licks, while Zitao’s neck had lolled to the side as he rose up and down on his slick length. Every word, he had remembered, and it hurt to think that Yifan might not have maintained his facade quite so well.
I love you. I love you. I love you so much.
The backseat was stained with red and white. Perhaps it was to take away from the hospital robe scraps that lay on the floor, or the discarded gun, missing two bullets than what Zitao had previously remembered.
Because Kyungsoo wouldn’t have given up on him so easily. Not when his own mother had relied on the leader herself.
Yifan sensed his worry once more, and as they brought the truck to a halt outside the gates of Yixing’s fortress, his lips formed a sweet smile, raising the back of Zitao’s hand to press his mouth against it. “It’s okay. We’re safe here. Y’know...Yixing has a great territory. We only saw a bit of it when we first came here but...maybe one day you could come with me to see the hills on the furthest edge. It reminds me of the times I’d take Jongin out to the countryside and we’d go walking. You’d have liked him...Jongin would’ve liked you too.”
But Zitao couldn’t help but freeze. He paused for breath, a moment, anything to clear his head. He didn’t need the greed, the selfishness that he knew Yifan harboured beneath the flesh. He wanted...needed clarity. “Yifan, wait.” When he did, he found himself fumbling. “Yifan...when I was bit, I wasn’t the only one.”
“Zitao, everyone almost has been bit-“
“No, but listen to me. Sehun, he...he said we should have waited it out, go crazy together and I...I didn’t do that. Because of that, I’m here now. He isn’t. Then it was Baekhyun...then Luhan. I can’t...I...why am I still waiting?”
“I told you before. Their deaths aren’t your fault.”
“But I could stop them!”
“You have to just...Zitao, I’ve lived a long time, and I’ve struggled a lot with surviving here. And you find something to fight for, to live for, and I know you wanted to find a cure but that’s not an option now-“
“Swear to me.”
Zitao was cold in his voice, but his eyes were tinged with a longing sadness that made him ache inside. He wanted to know the truth, he needed to know the truth. Because there was something creeping beneath the skin, and it made him feel ill, knowing that there could be something withheld. Had he been awake, had he been there to know...but he gritted his teeth and stood his ground, in spite of the itching that had embedded itself beneath the flesh of his bite wound.
“Swear to me that everything you have told me...the Fireflies, Kyungsoo, what they said...swear that it is all true. That you...you aren’t hiding anything from me.”
He watched the iron settle in Yifan’s eyes, but they never left him. There was something there though, and he watched as Yifan set himself perfectly still, as if made of stone. He held out his little finger, only to link it with Zitao’s own.
“Swear.”
How could he. Zitao chewed his tongue and tried not to lash out, tried not to say anything. Because he knew there was something there, and it did not mean well. Yifan had lied, lied through his teeth, but seemed so convinced in it himself...that it had manifested itself to be nothing more than the truth.
In his eyes, it was the truth.
Kyungsoo was the wedge between them, and that he had been nothing more than a good force in a world of hate. Because everything had been ripped from Yifan, when he had done nothing but try to survive and try to help. He had tried to see the world in a good light; why else would they have helped Minseok and Luhan, why else would he had friendships with Yixing and Baekhyun and Jongdae...
But the world now was cold and cruel and harsh to those who were selfless. Yifan had realised that when his one last piece of happiness had almost slipped through his hands.
And strange enough to say...Zitao couldn’t find the gall to disagree.
“...Okay.”
-----
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
“Yifan...hold...hold still, okay? I promise it’ll only sting for a moment...”
“Nggh! Ah! Ah, ah, ah!”
“I know it hurts, it hurts...but please settle. It’ll help.”
“Nggh...ngh...”
“There you go...there you go...”
-----
Rather than the ragged breathing of Yifan’s chest, Zitao found himself awoken by bullets.
The sound of their guns made the glass in the windows shake, and he was soon stood up and peering through the glass, all traces of sleepiness long forgotten as his muscles snapped to life. They looked familiar...their clothes looked alike, the fierce glint in their eyes...that one girl, scanning the buildings they were clustered by.
Yoona. And she looked angry beyond all compare. “Come on out, boy!”
He’d been tracked. Oh, he was so stupid. Of course, Chanyeol wouldn’t have let him escape quite so easily, not when he was responsible for the killing of so many in his scouting group. And if they found Yifan they probably wouldn’t spare him a thought. He would be gone in a heartbeat, no questions asked, no mercy spared.
He needed to get away.
Zitao untied his own horse, quietly giving the other a sack of oats to keep her quiet, while he saddled up and prepared to ride. “They’re not going to get to you.” he whispered back to Yifan, wrapped tight in his blankets, panting softly into the cool air. “Please hold on. I won’t be too long.” He undid the lock on the garage door where he had found himself, before sliding it close with a final look back. I promise I’ll be back...okay?
And so he rode. He made sure to crash into their little raiding party, and hollered as he scattered them in a series of howls and snarls. But they were quick to recover, and his horse whickered as it skidded over the ice and snow on the roads.
“After him! Chanyeol wants him alive!” Yoona’s shriek carried easily over the fallen snow, as did the sound of carbines and shotguns, breaking away chunks of the tarmac beneath the horse’s hooves. “Kill the horse!”
But Zitao was much faster, and he knotted his fingers tightly into the reins and held his hips steady. “C’mon...a little further...” They couldn’t be allowed to get Yifan, he had to lead them away from here, away from here... “Just until the trees!”
A rogue bandit. The blast of a pump-action Winchester. The horse’s legs failing as the ground came up to meet his face.
He went tumbling forward, the horse’s frightened braying drowned in the snow as scarlet daubed his vision. He managed to free himself from the entanglement of his ride, whose legs were mangled and broken, pepper-like shots causing its chest to look torn and bloody. “No...no, no, no-“
“There he is!”
But just as he was about to backpedal, to try and slip away through the trees, something long and tough wrapped itself around his neck. “Keep still, boy!” The grip tightened even more, and he could feel his vision fading at the corners. The horse’s body. The bandits closing in. Chanyeol’s reddish hair hanging in front of his face. “I’m saving you!” Thrashing did no good to stop the tide of black coming to seep through him. He was so tired...so tired...perhaps it wasn’t that bad that he let himself sink under.
“There you go. Easy now...there.”
I’m sorry.
-----
Heavy panting was all that left Yifan’s mouth for the first few minutes, while his eyes flickered around the room wildly. He had no recollection, no memory...nothing about where he could have been, where he thought he was. He was so warm though, even though his breath was fogging in front of his face, and outside, he could see the start of a storm brewing. Snow...how long had it been?
And where was Zitao...
“Zitao!” He tried to sit up at first, until an extraordinary pain soon had him writhing back in the blankets and mattress once more. His stomach, it hurt so much...his fingers came down to trace against dimpled skin, against wires in the flesh, and he couldn’t help but gasp in shock at the sight of such a grizzly looking scar on his skin.
Until he remembered the sliding of the metal in his back, his roars of agony as he lay trapped on the metal pole. For now, he was fixed. But until he knew where Zitao was, he would never be okay. The pain in his body could wait; it was the fear in his mind that was currently beginning to eat him alive.
He called out once more, crawling on his hands and knees as he came to pick up his bag. Only his bag...but the dust on the table suggested another had once been there. It all came together in a heartbeat, all placing a piece of the puzzle into the final image. The backpack, the second mattress, the sutures, the fact that there were two bowls...the fact that Yifan was still alive.
Zitao was somewhere out there. And he needed to be found.
Ignoring the ache in his side was hard as he tugged a little at his jacket - he couldn’t remember wearing that...perhaps Zitao had gotten it for him? - and scrounged from the remains of the garage he found himself in. More medicine, anything to dull the pain, he gorged it until he was sure that he wouldn’t feel even a twinge. What good was he to Zitao if he was doubled over in agony? Nothing...one small fuck-up, one sign of weakness...and he was dead. They both were.
“Y’know, I thought that the kid would’ve put up more of a fight.”
“Me too. He thinks he’s so big and important. Ah well, better for us, I guess!”
The voices were unfamiliar, but Yifan couldn’t allow himself to take the chance. He concealed himself in the corner of the garage, where he was sure that those coming down the stairs wouldn’t be able to see him, holding tightly onto a Stanley knife found on the workbench. His breath settled, his mind calmed... slower... slower... until he wondered if he moved at the speed of light.
None of the bandits suspected it, the man in the corner of the room who fought like a man possessed. Even though they had guns, there was something about him. This stranger with such a fire in his eyes, such a loud roar that their knees shook...his neck crunched as he pummelled them into submission, leaving them disorientated on the floor. There was so much rage in his bloodstream, burning hot and red and bright, that he didn’t even feel the burn as the skin was pulled from his knuckles, leaving bloody blisters in their wake.
He just needed Zitao. And these poor fuckers would be the ones to give it to them.
The first one he went to was a young one, barely sixteen by his face. He whimpered as Yifan stepped over his weapons, Stanley knife in his hand. He grabbed the boy’s leg and dragged him close, watching as blood bubbled from his lips as he screamed...for the knife had cut him deep in his back of his knee. Blood welled between his fingers, hot and wet and steaming, as he cut the tendons and crippled his leg.
“Where’s the boy?”
“W-what boy?”
Squelch. He scraped against bone, drawing another scream. “Where’s the boy? Don’t make me ask twice. I’ll gouge your fucking veins out, and if your friend doesn’t say the same thing...I’ll be sure to make your deaths nice and slow.”
-----
Crunch. Squelch. Grate. Thud.
The lump on Zitao’s head started to throb as the curtains were peeled backwards, revealing the blurred outline of someone’s back, busying themselves over a worktable. Crunch. Squelch. Grate. Thud. The air was musty, clinging to his nostrils as he pulled himself up just enough to see the figure turn slightly, while a silver object clenched in its hand slammed against the wooden bench. Crunch. Squelch. Grate. Thud. Zitao moaned; the tang in the air, iron and familiar... He watched with a squint as the grubby cleaver came down onto the bench once more, taking curled frostbitten fingers with it to drop onto the floor.
Crunch. Squelch. Grate. Thud.
He dry-heaved a few times, but with a stomach empty for days, he was only left with saliva on the floor and an arched spine.
“Ah, nice to see you awake, sunshine.” The cleaver came to lie down on the table as the second wrist was detached. Chanyeol watched him crawled about and rummage for something to help him escape. But the cage he found himself it was tight as a vice; chain linked fences barely big enough to squeeze his wrists through, but just enough for Chanyeol to pass a tray of steaming food through. “Come on and have a bite to eat.” When Zitao made a move to kick it away, it only earned him a clicking of the tongue. “Rude...considering that I’m taking something out of my own stock to feed your sorry self. You should be grateful.”
“And you should get fucked if you think I’d eat...” The word never quite made it out, not when he was feeling so disgusted by it.
But Chanyeol just smiled, and pushed the plate back. “It’s deer and chicken. Promise that it’s got nothing else. Pinky swear, if you still believe that.” Zitao wanted to spit at him, but the growling of his stomach betrayed the gnawing hunger that settled in his body. It was enough to have him bend his neck and dip his fingers into the small chunks of meat, to have him slurp at the juices and finally relish the first proper meal for weeks. Stringy rabbit didn’t quite compare...though he had to remain vigilant, lest he end up with a mouthful of human flesh. “It’s okay, see? No problem.”
But as he swallowed the mouthful, he couldn’t help but snort. “Problem. When you’re a bunch of...you know...and you think I have the problem?”
“But of course. I mean...how many of my men did you kill? My friends?”
“When they fired on me? I had no choice but to put ‘em down.” That was no excuse. It was never an excuse. Zitao and Yifan killed because their lives were at risk.
“And we have no choice what to eat. You do what you need to survive and we do what we need to survive.” It seemed Chanyeol knew what was going on in Zitao’s head, and had already moved to find a way to counteract his argument. “You might die because of a bullet, we might because of hunger. Neither way is preferable...so we do what we must. And I believe that you can find it in your heart to understand us.
“I’m extending my hand to you, boy. You’re young, you’re loyal, and you have a good heart and a good mind. We need more people like you to help us. I only hope that...I can convince the others that you’re as good to us as I think you are.” He reached out to Zitao’s, knotting their fingers together beneath the bars as the younger’s eyes became misted. His smile became sincere as Zitao allowed such an action, as he reached through and held their hands together...
Before twisting Chanyeol’s thumb backward until it cracked in his hold. Chanyeol howled and suddenly lunged through the bars, grabbing a handful of his hair and bashing his cheek against the cage until he let go and fell to the floor. When Chanyeol pulled back, the sneer he wore...it was more dangerous than he could have imagined.
“Perhaps...you wish to die anyway? Tiny little chunks to feed our young ones? A noble cause for a noble boy, no doubt?” He leaned through the door, grabbing a small wooden splint as he prepared to wrap his hand. “Hey, Yoona? How do you fancy having fresh meat for dinner?”
The grin she gave him was enough to have Zitao cowering, though there was nowhere to hide as they opened the cage and lunged in to grab him tight. They seized his arms and legs with vice-like grasps, though, with an arm looked around his neck to complete the hold. But that left them vulnerable, because as Zitao suddenly twisted his torso to the side, throwing their weight and power off balance, Chanyeol’s hand strayed to within distance of his mouth.
And so he bit down hard.
“FUCK!” Chanyeol threw him down onto the table and beat at his face, eventually disorientated Zitao enough have his jaw loosen and let his hand go free. But not before he felt the tang of blood on his tongue, as he saw Chanyeol hiss in frustration at the sight of red tendrils creep down his forearm. “You little shit...I’ll be mighty glad to have you skinned and strung up like a pig! Yoona, the cleaver!” She passed him the bloody knife, clogged with dried blood and strips of skin, holding his forearms down as the man raised it to prepare for the killing strike.
Until Zitao’s mouth widened into a scream. “I’m infected! I’m infected!” Chanyeol didn’t look convinced, and only laughed deep in his chest. That was, until Zitao followed on, a sly grin on his burst lips. “And now...so are you.”
“Bullshit. You’d be dead long before now if you were.” Yoona snapped, her nails digging into the soft flesh of his forearm.
“No? Look at my arm. Go on! Roll up my sleeve!”
“Play along, Yoona. Humour the boy.” Chanyeol stabbed his cleaver into the table as he rolled up Zitao’s jacket sleeve. But his smile soon faded, the humour in his eyes, when all he could see was the scarred tissue of the bite wound on Zitao’s forearm. “No...this isn’t...” Another glance down at his hand, still bleeding all over the table. “You couldn’t have...”
“What was it you said, Chanyeol?” The blood in his mouth had never tasted so bitter, and Zitao relished the look of fear on his captors’ faces. “Everything happens for a reason?”
But the denial was still strong. “Nobody could have survived this long whilst being infected! Every turns in two days.” Déjà vu, really... “Though I have to admit, it looks like a very good fake.”
“That’s no fake.” Yoona had suddenly relinquished her grip, and was looking at Zitao as if he was a plague victim, ready to spread his filth upon her at the nearest instance. “That looks pretty fucking real, Chanyeol. Look at how it’s all bubbled up!”
“Yoona, calm down.“
“What the fuck else is it then? Who fakes shit like this?!”
“Then...my hand, it-“
In the split second that Chanyeol had pulled back to examine his hand, it was all too late. Zitao had reached for the cleaver embedded in the wooden table, had it clenched in his fist...had it embedded in the juncture of Yoona’s slim neck. She fell to the ground, her own grip pulled away as she fought to remove the blade lodged in her throat. Blood spurted out of the wound and onto the ground as he rolled off the table and sprinted out of the door, with Chanyeol raining bullets down on him as he did so. His knife, his pack, they were hanging outside; he would have been a fool not to take them.
“Where you running to, Zitao? Ain’t nowhere you can hide from me!”
But he had to find somewhere. Anywhere. The snowstorm and the white cloak it offered were the safest bet, the only way he could try and outwit Chanyeol. Yet the area was bigger than he imagined...these were foreign streets...foreign bandits...he was an outsider trying to escape the insider’s maze.
Then it occurred to him. To see these strangers, these murderers, these threats, he didn’t need to know the layout to be victorious, not when they would be begging for his mercy soon enough.
So as it came to him, as he stalked a lone sentry outside a butcher’s shop, plunging his knife into the crook of his neck and ripping, ripping, until his hands were drenched with red, the words that he was sure that only those Infected or those hideously insane would have considered listening to. There was no other explanation for the bodies he left behind, or why he considered creeping back into Chanyeol’s lair.
Rip. Tear. Fight. Kill.
-----
The area had been marked clearly, and Yifan knew that it was right. He hadn’t hamstrung the boy and strangled his friend for nothing, not when he caved in the younger’s brains with some of the workman’s tools found on the garage bench.
He knew they weren’t lying as soon as he saw wetness creeping on the boy’s dark denim jeans.
The storm hadn’t settled as he rode out over the snow-clogged paths, just far enough to see bodies in the distance, huddled around fire bins and glowing lights. This was the place, that he was certain of.
Yifan wouldn’t need an escape here. He wouldn’t be escaping without his charge. He would find Zitao, and that would be it. He needed him, and he knew that Zitao needed him back.
So as he reached out his shooting arm, quickly picking off the shadow in the blizzard and sending a spray of frozen blood against the wall, he felt no remorse. Not as he crushed another man’s skull into the ground beneath his heel, snapped the necks of two little teenage boys with guns too big for their hands...as he kicked over the bins to let their fire and fuel leak over the ground to set ablaze to the town.
For they would flood out, and until he found Zitao, he would pick them off, one by one.
-----
When Zitao returned for Chanyeol, he found his last Molotov to be a blessing. He would flush the fucker out into the open, ready to cut him down and make him beg, ready to set him alight so that his hair wouldn’t be the only thing that was red.
But as more flames began to lick over the town and force their way over the abattoir he was once captured in, he found himself trapped; he hadn’t knocked over any of the fires...this was the doing of another.
The smoke was thick, it was stinging to the eyes, but he kept running. It made his head so light though, until he wasn’t sure that he was even going in the right direction. Everything looked so similar, clotted with smoke and fire and all equally crumbling around his head.
“I knew I’d find you crawling back. Come to kill me, boy?”
Chanyeol, however, was as nimble as a weasel, slipping in and out of the debris and lashing with that hunting knife of his. He nipped at Zitao in jest, toying with the kill during the hunt, watching him squirm through the fire that haloed his base. The younger cried out as it nicked his shoulder, red running in rivers down the back of his jacket.
“I thought you might want to. You might want vengeance...but you never could.”
But there wasn’t any fun in merely poking his prey, and as he pushed Zitao down onto the ground, kicking him hard in the chest and stomach until Zitao wheezed through what felt like a cracked rib. “You think you’re some tough little thing, huh?” His voice, that mocking tone, it only became more biting as he watched Zitao struggled forward, towards where the chairs lay strewn and arching. “It’s so much easier to just give up, Zitao. Just learn to throw in the goddamn towel.” Another kick, and Zitao felt bile rush up to lap against the back of his mouth. The cinders were bitter on his tongue though, and he saw the flickering reflections grow in the light of the flames lapping at the old leather and wood, and it drove him on. Closer, closer, closer...until the steel-capped boot dealt him a hard blow into his side. “Still got fight in you, boy? I gotta say, there’s a fine line between admirable and foolish. And you’re treading on mighty thin ice around it.”
He showed no sign of stopping. Chanyeol was not pleased by that. “Let me go!” Zitao thrashed wildly as he was suddenly pushed down and rolled onto his back, one wrist seized between fingerless gloves as a pair of wiry legs forced his own thighs apart. “Leave me alone!”
“If you’ve still got fight in you, boy, I’ll be damned sure to burn it out of you, if it’s the last thing I fucking do!”
But while he was busy trying to struggle against the muscles of Zitao’s legs, there was another thing he should have noticed. Because as Zitao curved his spine, screaming out as his fingers frantically tried to reach for the handle that was only millimetres away, he should have seen. He should have seen as the younger’s fingers clamped around it, dragging the blade close and thrusting it up hard into the hollow of his chest.
And from then on, he couldn’t stop.
He raked the knife down the curve of Chanyeol’s rib listening to him howl and scream and curse and spit, before removing it with a sickly squelch. But he was not done, not by a long shot. For he forced it into the socket of Chanyeol’s right eye, and he couldn’t help but relish the howls of sheer agony as the eye inside was reduced to a messy, slimy pulp that clotted between his fingers and went under his nails. His shrieking was louder than the flames eating away at the building around him, louder than the crashing of rubble behind his back, louder than the screams telling him to stop as hands came to clamp around his belly and drag him back from the disfigured face of the man who he had been trapped by.
Yifan held him close and ran his fingers through his hair, to the sound of “it’s me, calm down, it’s me” and the soft replies of “he tried to...he wanted to hurt...”
He nestled Zitao close and pulled him up, deaf to everything around him. The building coming down around his back was the least of his concerns, when Zitao was sobbing his heart out in front of him.
Yifan wouldn’t let himself fail again.
-----
I thought you were dead.
I thought you were dead.
I...oh, Yifan...
Come here. Come here, Tao.
Don’t leave me again. Promise you’ll never leave.
Never.
-----
Spring came in full force as they reached the borders of Shandong Province, having rested well for the remains of winter, travelling by the day and seeking refuge as soon as the bleeding rays of the sun dyed the sky red. It was as Yifan had always done it, he said, back in the days of smuggling beside Baekhyun in the safe confines of Korea. The same applied here, though it seemed only more necessary, in a country where the population was swollen beyond compare and where they were in unfamiliar land.
But that wasn’t always bad. For Yifan fulfilled his word to Zitao, and he did indeed have a further “talk” with the younger about how they were going to...continue.
It was mainly in the quiet of the night that Zitao would turn in his hold, gently placing kisses on the elder’s cheekbone. Yifan would whimper in the throes of sleep, though his pupils would dilate as he opened his eyes, to see Zitao sitting up a little more, hands stroking his chest through the plaid shirt he wore. His fingers trailed slowly downwards as he undid each button, barely soft skin beneath...and the scar that marred it, forced there by the pole that pierced his side and left him unable to wake for months on end.
But it didn’t frighten him. Zitao saw it as a mark of bravery, a testament to his own survival as well as Yifan’s. So as he traced the ragged scar, pressing a kiss to the light curved lines, Yifan only groaned in the back of his throat. Zitao hushed him - even now, they were cautious, and slipped his fingers along the buttons on Yifan’s jeans.
“I love you,” he cooed softly, watching as Yifan’s eyes seemed to become blown in the darkness. “so much.”
The supplies from the hotel in Shenyang had stayed by his side, and he used them frequently so as not to allow their use-by dates to exceed any further. He had cleaned himself deep in every hotel they could find, stealing their water and other supplies in the hope that he could at least somewhat prepare the enema. Thank goodness nobody had watched him then, but it would pay off now. So he had no worries about prying himself open, eyes half-lidded as he sank his teeth into the flesh of his lower lip.
Yifan’s hands came to rest on his hips and guide him in his gentle ministrations, though he was always careful that it remained that way. Gentle. He drank in every small whimper as he sucked marks on Zitao’s skin with each centimetre he sank down, words of pure love hoping to cancel out the pain that was starting to emerge on the younger’s face.
It had felt so good that first time, to see Zitao’s flushed cheeks and his dilated eyes. It was so good to see him rock up and down atop his length, hearing every single word whispered as nothing but the purest love. And damn, he felt so good. Yifan found himself making the most inappropriate little whimpers when Zitao clenched around him, fingers fastening in the blankets beneath him. “How does it feel, Yifan?” Zitao would moan, bouncing becoming less rhythmic as he fucked himself on the elder’s cock. “To be...inside me?” He couldn’t even answer decently, and the younger knew, muscles fluttering as he felt Yifan tense. “Are you going to come, Yifan?”
That was all that was needed, and Yifan had to hold on to his hips, thrusting up to try and reach his peak. “Y...yes...”
“Do you...like it?”
“Y-yes.”
“I like it...oh!...too...” He fell forwards, letting Yifan suck the skin of his neck as he fell forward, the sweat on their skin holding them together. “C-can you...,” he paused, for he felt a little dirty asking about such a thing. “can you...come in me?”
Yifan wanted to ask why, whether he really wanted it, where on earth he had learned to sound so dirty, but to be fair, where Zitao swivelled his hips so nicely, head thrown back as he squeezed out a soft moan, he couldn’t find the decency to even form any syllable that didn’t sound like Zitao’s name. So he let Zitao twist once more, suddenly going unbearably tight, too tight...
Once more, and Yifan was gone. “I...love you...” He bit down a little more, making Zitao squeak in shock, before he let himself go, taut and tight and almost straining against the flesh above him, coating his insides in a way that made Zitao shiver right to the bone. “I love you, I love you!”
“I love you too- ah!”He came next, speared and full, and soon it wasn’t just sweat that was sticky between them. He felt a little embarrassed at the mess he ended up making on Yifan’s belly, but when he looked into the elder’s eyes, completely blown out of pure lust... “Can I kiss you, Yifan?”
They then decided to make it more of a regular habit.
-----
“Should we?”
“Y-yes, please...ohh...”
“But we’re so close to the University, you just brushed your hair, I- Tao!”
“I much prefer you calling me that when we fuck, y’know. Sounds a lot nicer on your tongue...hmmm, touch me there again!”
Yifan just rolled his eyes and pushed harder into Zitao from the pack, the satisfying slap of skin as the younger arched against the curve of an abandoned car making him drip with sweat, pooling on his collarbones and running down his chest. “I wondered if we should’ve even done that car sex back in Haixing. I wouldn’t have known you were such an insatiable pervert if we hadn’t.”
“Fuck! You love it, I know you do!” Zitao grinned against the bonnet of the car and crooned as Yifan’s fingers came to knot in the curls of his dark locks. “Harder, harder!” They had ended up finding out something of an exhibitionism kink on their way to Shandong, every week seemed to have at least one occasion where Yifan ended up pounding him into the side of a car. Within relative safety, of course. But even, there was something about the danger of it all that made Zitao’s stomach curl and tighten so pleasantly, in such a delicious way that it made his toes curl in his worn trainers, that made his back dip that little bit lower and he pushed himself back.
They rang in the new month of April with quite the bang, it seemed. Though Yifan didn’t really understand the joke, Zitao found himself in a fit of giggles as he cleaned himself out and pulled up his pants, shuffling his backpack onto his shoulder once again. “That was fun. I won’t tell Kyungsoo if you won’t.”
“You think he’ll know?”
“Maybe if I drop my pants and bend over for him to have a look? You’re a big boy, I hope you realise that.”
“Don’t you dare, mister.”
“Why not? I think possessive sex with you would be the hottest damn thing on the planet.”
Yifan just shook his head, helping Zitao a little by letting him lean on his body to recover from the limp of being fucked beside a car. Then again...perhaps possessive was right. He clung to Zitao like a parasite - pardoning the expression - and seemed intent that he should stay beside the boy and protect him at all costs. But even then, the word boy lost its meaning. Zitao was thicker than before, but still svelte enough to seem youthful. He was so feline in appearance, it made for quite the pillow talk. But he possessed that same cuteness and yet also the same harshness as he had in the first days of Hongdae.
Perhaps that was what Yifan loved the most, his fingers drawing circles along the younger man’s spine and up into the black locks of his messy poorly-cut hair.
“Do you think...maybe...Kyungsoo would let you come back with me?” he asked quietly, barely loud enough over the soft breeze.
“I don’t see why not.” To be fair, they didn’t even know why Kyungsoo had wanted him to come all the way to Qingdao. Obviously, it was something to do with his supposed immunity, but there was no reason why he couldn’t have returned with Yifan when he had finished doing what he was supposed to do. “He’s not unjust, I mean...he just wants everything to be okay with us. And if I help to find a cure? Well, I wanna be there!”
“But what if something happens to you?” Yifan sighed, taking hold of Zitao’s hands as he walked. “I don’t want anything bad to happen to you after you get there, Zitao...I mean, what if he won’t let you come with me?”
“Why would he do that?”
“What if they want to keep you? Like some kind of test subject? What if they hurt you?”
“Now you’re just being silly-“
But there nothing silly about the fears that lurked in the corners of his mind like ghosts. Especially when they were threatening to burst from the shadows and consume him. He only wanted Zitao safe. And to be selfish. “Come with me. We can go back to Yixing’s place, we can just stay there.” Yet Zitao only gaped at him, thinking him maddened if his face said anything. “I don’t want them to hurt you-“
At that, Zitao couldn’t help but sit down. He ran his hands through his hair, rubbed his neck, all with a pained smile on his face. “And what about everything we have been through? Hm? About Baekhyun, and Minseok and Luhan, about all the people we have seen die because of this?” The tears in his eyes hurt more than anything else. “What about you and me? We’ve been through...so much. But it can’t be for nothing. I love you too much to throw that away.”
Yifan was about to argue against it, about to try and reason that his selfishness was not unjust, that they could be happy...when the familiar deep clicking of an old adversary sounded from the bottom of the speedway they were walking along.
“Haven’t seen a Bloater for a while...” Zitao hummed to himself, loosening the pistol from his hip and holding the Molotov tightly in his other hand. “I’d love nothing more than to let it burn out here, so if it thinks I’m gonna let it get me when I’m so close...”
“Make that if they think. Look further down.” He pointed to where the first Bloater was idly pacing, clucking deep in its mangled throat. But there came another, and another, making three the final count as they staggered around in their search for prey. And with them, there came others, Clickers and Runners, soaking wet and scrabbling around in pools of water.
“Probably a burst water pipe under there...” Yifan reasoned. But as he looked over, the outline of Qingdao University sat on the horizon...they were too high to reach for the Infected, but too high and isolated to reach where Kyungsoo was waiting.
It didn’t help that the Runners were starting to spread out, and had caught their movement atop the road.
“Keep running!” But as they turned and continued through the remains of the vehicles, they soon realised that Infected had massed far beyond what they had hoped to encounter. They came further forward, screeching and clicking and roaring...until their backs pinned them to the concrete barriers, and the lapping water beneath it.
Zitao’s knees knocked together, and he looked ready to cry. “I can’t swim...”
“Then hold onto me. Don’t let go.”
Narrowly missing the claws tightening on their shirts, they jumped. But as they tried to stay together, it seemed as though Fate was against them. For Yifan’s shirt became caught, tangled in wires and cables, while Zitao continued to sink like a stone.
His figure was only just visible, arms splayed out and lips parting a stream of small bubbles. Yifan’s panic rose even more, higher and higher until he wanted to burst, before he managed to free himself from the steel cables, diving deeper to where Zitao lay in a bed of metal and concrete.
Hold on.
His head crested the water and he floundered for a moment, dragging the deadweight of the boy onto the rocks, ignoring the bullets that ricocheted above his head. No, all he cared for was Zitao...who was not breathing as he lay upon the stone. His hands trembled, oh they trembled, but he needed to try. Palm upon palm, pressing down hard into the centre of his chest.
Please, hold on.
“Hands in the air! Stay where you are!”
Zitao, please.
“Step away from the boy!”
Please.
“Take him out.”
Thud.
-----
As he came to, the light above him was blinding.
“You look like shit. But at least you’re alive.”
It wasn’t expected to hear Kyungsoo’s voice ringing in his head, or to see the figure of the Firefly leader at his bedside. “Been better.” he ground out through an aching jaw, ready to sit up and check himself for what wounds he had gained. Bandages draped his body and laced his limbs, and he could smell the tang of iodine on his skin. But as he looked around the room, green walls and white tiles, he found that aside from Kyungsoo and his guard, he was alone. And it was frightening. “Where’s Zitao?” He remembered the waves of the water, sucking Zitao out of his grasp and almost out to sea. It made him feel sick to the stomach, and he could feel his hands begin to shake. “Is he okay?”
Kyungsoo rested his hands in his lap. “You don’t need to worry. He’s safe and well.” There was something in his eyes, too bleary for Yifan’s confused mind to understand. “The water in his lungs has been cleared.”
“Thank God.” Yifan felt the relief wash over him and bathe him in the sweetest of feelings. He smiled to himself and stood up, though his legs were still wobbling. “Can I see him? I need to-“
“I said not to worry. You can go now.”
“But I need to see him.” Yifan didn’t care that he sounded desperate, that his voice was starting to crack with the strain. “I need to be there for him, I promised that I would. I promised that we would leave here.” He swung his legs over the bed, all the while ignoring the fact that the guard at Kyungsoo’s side was tapping her gun in a threatening manner. “Please...just let me see him, and we can go.”
There was no give. Kyungsoo only folded his arms and shook his head. “The doctors won’t let anyone into the operating theatre once surgery is starting. You can’t go and see him.”
The word echoed in Yifan’s head like a bell, until it was all he seemed to hear. Surgery... “What...w-what do you mean, surgery? Can’t I-“
“Yifan, you need to listen to me. The doctors found something strange in his scans, and they think they know might have caused his mutation. It changed in his brain. They can extract it; they can create a vaccine from his samples.” There was such elation in the leader’s voice, such happiness, that even his eyes seemed to glass over with a glow of complete relief. Yifan couldn’t understand. “A vaccine. Do you know what this means?”
That wasn’t the only thing he was thinking of. “But it...it grows in the brain.”
“...You can’t see him.”
That was the final straw. He knew what they meant.
Yifan’s face contorted into a sneer, and he rose up to his full height, easily dwarfing Kyungsoo. “No. You can’t do that.” When the leader tried to step in, he was almost on top of him. “You can find someone else, you are not taking him away from me, not now. You’d better get-” The female soldier raised her gun and swiftly knocked him in the back of the knees, until he was bent double, kowtowing to the Firefly.
“It’s what he would want. Ever since the start of this mess, he has wanted nothing more than to be rid of this all. And now he can be part of it. Yifan, you have to understand that this is bigger than him. Bigger than you and bigger than me.” His black hair hung in front of his eyes like a mask, but perhaps it was better that way; he wouldn’t see the look of sorrow in Yifan’s face as he tried to crawl back to onto his feet. “The world deserves this gift. You can’t hide it from everyone.”
“The world has taken so much from me already. I can’t...I won’t let him go too.”
“You think I find it easy? I knew Zitao when he was a kid, before all this shit even started. You think I wanted to groom him for this?” A dry left the shorter man’s mouth as his tongue flickered out over dried lips. “When I knew his parents, when I promised his mother that I’d take care of her little boy when we were alone? But I know that this cannot be hidden, this cannot be skipped over...not when we could save the last vestiges of humanity.”
But Yifan knew better. And he suspected that Kyungsoo knew the same. There was no humanity left that was worth saving. Rapists, murderers, thieves...even Yifan and Zitao themselves were reduced to cold-blooded killers in the effort to survive. Perhaps that knowledge made Yifan fearless, for he stood up, ignoring the ache of his abdomen.
“Liar.”
All pity, all emotion, every scrap of feeling soon drained from Kyungsoo’s face as he heard those words, until he was wearing nothing but a pale mask. “Escort him from the premises. Shoot to kill should he decide otherwise.” The soldier nodded slowly and jabbed her rifle into his lower back in a motion for him to move. “I’m headed out. Take care, Sooyoung.”
“Yes, sir.” As Kyungsoo left the room, Yifan found himself nudged towards the door, but in an opposite direction to the way the Firefly leader had taken. Sooyoung pushed him towards the exit, cold expression on her delicate face. “This way.”
“And if I refuse?” he couldn’t help but snap, though the jab of metal against his spine soon had him walking once more. “Yes, ma’am.”
“Cut the crap. I want you out of here as much as anyone e-”
In her speech, she hadn’t noticed that Yifan’s gaze had lingered to the receptionist’s desk, where two familiar packs were perched upon pegs, along with a series of weapons held behind a desk. And she failed to notice him swing his elbow around, knocking her barrel to the side, safely away from his body as he pinned her against the wall with his weight and strength. She squirmed and snapped, but was soon gasping in shock as her lungs fought for air.
“Where’s the surgery, what floor and what room?” She refused to talk, until he snatched the gun held at her hip and fired it into her belly, pushed up the gap between her combat pants and Kevlar vest. A second shot made blood dampen the front of Yifan’s shirt, and well at the corners of her mouth. “I haven’t got time, tell me!”
Her last breaths were laboured, but he heard the few shuddering words between her gasps of blood and air. “T-top...room t...twelve.” At least that earned a merciful death, as he fired another bullet between her eyes to the sound of voices down the corridor announcing the sound of shots being fired.
But his rage was much too large to be contained, too rampant to be held down with bullet or the fear of being found and forever split from Zitao’s side. It was pure fury, fury at the fact that thought they could decide his love’s fate without even thinking about what the consequences were.
He beat.
They would not get away with such a mindless act.
He sliced.
They would not take away from him something so precious.
He shot.
They would pay for what trick they had duped to be part of.
He killed.
They were lapping blood around his feet as he headed for the operating theatre.
As soon as he opened the door, he found himself paralysed. For Zitao was lying upon the table, peaceful...as if sleeping. But they had already started to prepare for the surgery, he saw, by the small square they had left on his head, where the hair had been shaved, indicating where they would perform the cut. Yifan began to tremble, uncontrollably so, as his lip turned to a sneer, his hand clenching tighter around the handle. The three doctors in the room all seemed to recoil, as if they knew what he was going to do in the next few moments.
“What are you doing here?”The head surgeon looked so small and frightened behind his green scrubs and mask, and he held out the only weapon he had; the scalpel with which he would cut Zitao’s head open and take his brain. “Don’t come any closer! We could save so many lives with this, don’t you understand?”
That infuriated Yifan more than anything else.
The red mist that clouded his vision only cleared when he found himself burrowing the scalpel into the surgeon’s carotid artery, twisting and twisting as he watched those terrified eyes roll backwards to white, letting him fall amongst the surgery tools. It returned for more when he strangled the nurse and drove a bullet into the third man’s head, an insatiable beast lusting for blood.
Only to calm as he nestled Zitao in his arms.
He was so small, so light, that as Yifan carried him in his arms, he feared he would break. His little one, his friend and his love, his last chance at happiness. While around him, the sounds of sirens and the ricochet of bullets tried to intimidate him, all he could think of was the younger’s gentle breathing as he escaped towards the heart unit.
Hold still, put your arms around me.
Tears streaked his face as he hoped that everything would be okay. “We’re okay.” The selfish part of him screamed yes, yes, yes, and he burrowed his face into Zitao’s limp arm, the plaster holding the IV needle still buried deep. This was no life. There would be no life unless he lived. “Everything’s gonna be...it’s gonna be okay.
No...n-no Jongin, you have to get up. And everything w-will be okay!
The elevator. He sprinted for it, Zitao hanging in his arms.
“Stay away from me!”
God please...don’t do this to me.
“Get back!”
His fist slammed on the elevator button, and he draped Zitao’s body to act as a shield. None of the Fireflies dared to fire, even as the doors closed, as he slipped down to the basement, as his knees gave out as he sat sobbing on the floor.
Zitao was so small.
Please, God.
But when he opened his eyes again, the click of a gun was all he needed. For Kyungsoo was waiting there, pistol poised to strike. “You tried to save him.” His voice was thick and heavy, and it looked like he had been crying. Tears he didn’t deserve to shed. “But you can’t. Nobody can be saved in this world. How long before the Infected get him? Bandits? Rapists and murderers?”
“What happens to him...you don’t decide.”
“He wanted it. He wanted to help.” That sent him rigid. Of course Zitao wanted to help. He was young and good, he didn’t want anyone else to die. ”You know he did.” The smaller man came closer, gun still in his hands, but slowly raising harmlessly. Yifan panted. No. He can’t take Zitao away. “Please...do the right thing, Yifan. He might save millions. Innocent lives.”
But what Kyungsoo said next shook Yifan to the core.
“The greater good, Yifan.”
-----
Bang.
-----
Zitao’s body looked so small in the back of the truck, and Yifan almost felt bad as he curled him there. His hands trembled in his sleep, he noticed, the chill of the car park. It struck a chord, something deep, and the fires that burned in him as he heard the last futile whimpers of a wounded man flare up like an inferno out of control. He forgot that his hands were capable of such delicate actions, draping the blanket of Zitao’s thin little legs, when all he could see was a thick red mist that ate away at the corners of his vision.
Because as he turned around, there were slick red trails in the concrete, handprints painted with red as a small man reached for the elevator. Yifan felt his lip curl, teeth shining in the dull lights of overhead, and his fingers found purchase in the back of blood-spattered hair.
Kyungsoo grunted, though his hands were too occupied trying to contain the flow from his belly. Yifan wondered if those were guts he saw, but paid it no mind. He wasn’t one to care, not when he remembered the small patch of shaved skin on the back of Zitao’s neck. The place where the needle would be inserted, where Zitao’s life would have been forced to come to a screeching halt. It was a car crash.
And he grimaced.
“Wait...Yifan.” Kyungsoo wasn’t one to beg, everyone knew. But as he raised a hand to shield himself, to try and hide from the tall figure that towered over him with the light shining behind his head. This was no merciful god, not by the way the sinew in his arms tensed, by the cold fire that burned in his eyes. “Let me go. Please.”
“But sir...there’s a little boy. He’s only a child, I don’t-...but...”
It fell upon deaf ears.
Please...God, God please...don’t do this to me, come on...c-come on...please God, don’t do this...please, God...
Followed by a sharp crack and splatter as a bullet hit him right between the eyes.
“Why...when you would just come after him.”
-----
The drive to the port was silent as a graveyard, and it made Yifan itch to know that he should have come to expect such a sound. For Zitao was still sleeping, murmuring softly every few minutes as stirring as he came around from the anaesthetic running through his veins. Yifan wouldn’t allow himself to turn around for anything, and only forgave himself a few glances through the rear mirror at the long legs curled up beneath the patchwork blanket.
He had heard snippets, whispers among the soldiers, that there were boats down at the Ocean University of China, ready to be deployed to bring Fireflies and supplies over from the peninsula. But to him, it just spelled a way to get back to Yixing as fast as humanly possible. Lucky for him that the path was virtually clear of any kind of resistance, be it from human or Infected.
But as he chained the pickup truck to the back of the small ferry he had managed to kick-start, there was a soft groan just under the thrum of the machinery. Though to his ears, it sounded almost deafening.
For in the back of the pickup, Zitao stirred. He blinked a little in confusion, wondering why Yifan was busy trying to pilot a shitty excuse of a boat across such calm and misty seas. The elder didn’t miss the way he stroked the back of his head though, his fingers straying over the small patch of skin where the dark hair had been shaved away in a small, neat square. Nor did he miss the words that came from his mouth.
“What...what happened?”
And every word he returned was nothing but potent poison on his tongue.
-----
I took you to the Fireflies.
Kyungsoo took you into a room to be analysed, and to study you some more.
But they...they had met dozens...before you.
Nothing they had worked.
They gave you back to me.
And told me to...to give up.
That’s what we’re doing.
We’re going home.
...
Zitao’s fingers were slow to trace over the ridges in the mark of his arm, over where teeth had cruelly ripped into him and ripped something out in return. Each groove seemed to make his skin crawl, and his fingers passed lightly over them, he couldn’t help but feel sicker with each glance.
It made Yifan notice. He pulled down the sleeve and moved to kiss his neck, while his fingers played with the hem of his shirt. He couldn’t help but let his head fall to the side at such gentle touches, though there was a certain look on his face, something had seemed a little too blank, if not trying to deny the touch. It made Yifan cringe inside, so he settled himself to only look back towards the crumbling road.
“Yixing’s camp isn’t too far away...” he sighed as they crested the hill, the wheels of the truck wobbling uncertainly back and forth as they slipped down the asphalt road. “I wonder how Joonmyun’s doing. Keeping ‘Xing tight on the reins, I guess.”
“I guess.”
Zitao didn’t listen fully as he looked back over his shoulder, into the back of the car where he had woken up to the most awful news, draped in hospital robes and with a mind dragged through grogginess by drugs. Since then, Yifan had been determined to erase those memories, and had took him close, resting him in his lap as he worshipped his skin with kisses and licks, while Zitao’s neck had lolled to the side as he rose up and down on his slick length. Every word, he had remembered, and it hurt to think that Yifan might not have maintained his facade quite so well.
I love you. I love you. I love you so much.
The backseat was stained with red and white. Perhaps it was to take away from the hospital robe scraps that lay on the floor, or the discarded gun, missing two bullets than what Zitao had previously remembered.
Because Kyungsoo wouldn’t have given up on him so easily. Not when his own mother had relied on the leader herself.
Yifan sensed his worry once more, and as they brought the truck to a halt outside the gates of Yixing’s fortress, his lips formed a sweet smile, raising the back of Zitao’s hand to press his mouth against it. “It’s okay. We’re safe here. Y’know...Yixing has a great territory. We only saw a bit of it when we first came here but...maybe one day you could come with me to see the hills on the furthest edge. It reminds me of the times I’d take Jongin out to the countryside and we’d go walking. You’d have liked him...Jongin would’ve liked you too.”
But Zitao couldn’t help but freeze. He paused for breath, a moment, anything to clear his head. He didn’t need the greed, the selfishness that he knew Yifan harboured beneath the flesh. He wanted...needed clarity. “Yifan, wait.” When he did, he found himself fumbling. “Yifan...when I was bit, I wasn’t the only one.”
“Zitao, everyone almost has been bit-“
“No, but listen to me. Sehun, he...he said we should have waited it out, go crazy together and I...I didn’t do that. Because of that, I’m here now. He isn’t. Then it was Baekhyun...then Luhan. I can’t...I...why am I still waiting?”
“I told you before. Their deaths aren’t your fault.”
“But I could stop them!”
“You have to just...Zitao, I’ve lived a long time, and I’ve struggled a lot with surviving here. And you find something to fight for, to live for, and I know you wanted to find a cure but that’s not an option now-“
“Swear to me.”
Zitao was cold in his voice, but his eyes were tinged with a longing sadness that made him ache inside. He wanted to know the truth, he needed to know the truth. Because there was something creeping beneath the skin, and it made him feel ill, knowing that there could be something withheld. Had he been awake, had he been there to know...but he gritted his teeth and stood his ground, in spite of the itching that had embedded itself beneath the flesh of his bite wound.
“Swear to me that everything you have told me...the Fireflies, Kyungsoo, what they said...swear that it is all true. That you...you aren’t hiding anything from me.”
He watched the iron settle in Yifan’s eyes, but they never left him. There was something there though, and he watched as Yifan set himself perfectly still, as if made of stone. He held out his little finger, only to link it with Zitao’s own.
“Swear.”
How could he. Zitao chewed his tongue and tried not to lash out, tried not to say anything. Because he knew there was something there, and it did not mean well. Yifan had lied, lied through his teeth, but seemed so convinced in it himself...that it had manifested itself to be nothing more than the truth.
In his eyes, it was the truth.
Kyungsoo was the wedge between them, and that he had been nothing more than a good force in a world of hate. Because everything had been ripped from Yifan, when he had done nothing but try to survive and try to help. He had tried to see the world in a good light; why else would they have helped Minseok and Luhan, why else would he had friendships with Yixing and Baekhyun and Jongdae...
But the world now was cold and cruel and harsh to those who were selfless. Yifan had realised that when his one last piece of happiness had almost slipped through his hands.
And strange enough to say...Zitao couldn’t find the gall to disagree.
“...Okay.”
-----
PART 1 | PART 2 | PART 3 | PART 4 | PART 5 | PART 6