black treacle (1/1)
pairing: kai/d.o
rating: rly light R
warnings: some blood and gore
wordcount: 3.6k
summary: Testing the effects of the bond isn’t always a good time.
notes: its been almost a year since i posted the first part of this au so here’s part 3 finally lmao. don’t get 2 jobs, kids
part 1 | part 2
There’s something about watching Kyungsoo read that makes Jongin hungry - or maybe it’s just something about Kyungsoo. Alternatively, it could be the fact that he’s hungry more often than not, these days. He hasn’t eaten properly in what feels like weeks; refrigerated blood is alright, but it doesn’t sate him the way something fresh would.
Kyungsoo would just tell him to go out and hunt, like he’s told him a thousand times already, but Jongin can feel the disdain whenever he says it. He glances over to him, watches his turn a page in the thick, ancient-looking spellbook he’s studying so intently. Obviously Kyungsoo doesn’t want him to go out and kill someone, but if he wanted this bond so badly, he should’ve known that it would be necessary - especially if he wasn’t going to feed Jongin himself. Which he’s still insisting he won’t do.
But Kyungsoo refusing to let Jongin drink from him is an entirely separate problem. Jongin doesn’t understand what the big deal is; he’s bitten Kyungsoo twice already, and both of those times there was no issue. Shouldn’t he be trusted not to drain him, or otherwise kill him, or whatever Kyungsoo seems to think is going to happen? Unless it’s something else that’s making him hold back, but… Jongin has no idea what else it could be. If only the bond could tell him that.
It’s strange, though, the bond - more often than not, Jongin can barely feel anything aside from the hint of magic in the air around them. He supposes that’s to be expected, what with how fresh it is, not yet finished settling into the two of them. One thing he has noticed, however, is the weird thrum he’s started to feel at the tips of his fingers sometimes, almost like having a pulse used to feel. He hasn’t told Kyungsoo about it yet, wanting to see if it grows into something more first - and the thrum isn’t as strong when he’s hungry, anyway. The feeling of being empty kind of dims everything else. He’s sure that his whole body would be growling from hunger, if it could--
Kyungsoo suddenly slams his spellbook shut, startling Jongin out of his thoughts. “Can you stop that?”
Jongin raises his eyebrows. “Stop what?”
Kyungsoo hunches his shoulders and rubs the side of his neck. “You know what.”
His fingers brush over the two tiny scars there, and Jongin tries his best not to stare. “Do I?”
“Yes, you do,” Kyungsoo grumbles. “You’re thinking about feeding.”
The word sends another pang of hunger through Jongin, and Kyungsoo winces, covering the scars with his palm. Jongin watches the discomfort roll across his face with interest. “You can tell what I’m thinking?”
“I can tell when you want to sink your teeth into my neck,” Kyungsoo clarifies flatly.
“What does it feel like?” Jongin asks, gaze flickering back to the hand Kyungsoo has clamped over the teeth marks, but Kyungsoo turns his body away with a glare.
“That doesn’t matter. The point is that you’re distracting me.” He moves his book over and opens it again. “Can you leave so I can focus?”
Jongin bristles at his dismissive tone. “You don’t want to figure out what’s going on? Why you can feel what I’m feeling?”
“It must be part of the bond,” Kyungsoo says, flipping through the pages with an exasperated sigh.
“But don’t you want to find out--”
“No, I don’t,” Kyungsoo cuts him off, but he doesn’t look up. “I want to finish reading this.”
Jongin growls, deep and rumbling through his chest, but Kyungsoo hardly reacts, keeping his gaze on his book. He isn’t even turning pages anymore, just glaring at the words so he doesn’t have to look at Jongin. Jongin wants to step closer and tug his chin up himself, force Kyungsoo to actually meet his eyes for once - but a flicker of magic keeps his feet planted where they are.
He snarls in annoyance. Of course he can’t hurt Kyungsoo; their stupid, insufferable bond is rock-solid on that point. Sparing just a moment to maliciously hope Kyungsoo never gets his focus back, Jongin turns and stomps out of the room.
He leaves the house as loudly as possible, slamming the door shut behind him even though he could’ve left silently through a window. It’s probably all in vain, anyway, as Kyungsoo rarely apologizes after pissing him off, but it makes Jongin feel marginally better. He shoves his clenched fists into his pockets and starts off through the dark neighbourhood, not headed in any particular direction. The night is young and he could be miles away in a few minutes if he so desired, but tonight he walks, the slow pace giving him the time he needs to cool off.
At some point, his aimless wandering finds a path to follow. One moment Jongin is on an empty street with nothing but his thoughts, and the next he’s ended up somewhere familiar - the grim, imposing form of his coven’s house seems to curve out toward him, calling him back. Curious, Jongin hops up the crumbling front steps and pushes the front door open.
It’s been a while, but the house is just as dark and musty as it was the last time he was here. Inside, it’s quiet - it’s not as if there’s any heartbeats to be heard, but Jongin can still tell that the house is empty. Everyone else must be out hunting.
He doesn’t need permission to go up to his own room, though. He eyes the long, twisting staircase and can almost hear Kyungsoo’s voice in his head. Did you only leave so you could go sulk somewhere else?
“I’m not sulking,” he grumbles to himself.
“Didn’t say you were.”
Jongin whirls around at the new voice, fangs bared - and comes face to face with Taemin, standing in the open doorway and giving him an unimpressed look.
“Surely you’re not so old that doors weren’t a thing then you were alive,” he deadpans, raising an eyebrow and shutting the door behind him. “Right?”
“No, I--” Jongin cuts off, deflating. “I didn’t notice. Sorry.”
Taemin shrugs. “Whatever, it’s your house. And it’s not like anyone else cares much about the draft, anyway.” He stares at Jongin expectantly for a long moment, but Jongin doesn’t know what to say. Eventually, Taemin rolls his eyes. “So? What are you doing back here?”
Jongin remembers the sharpness of Kyungsoo’s voice and immediately pushes the thought down. “Like you said, it’s my house.”
“Well, yeah, but you’ve got somewhere else to be, don’t you?” Taemin asks, almost in a drawl. “Or is your owner alright with you being out so late?”
"I don't care if he’s alright with it or not," Jongin huffs, anger flaring back up for a second before he processes the rest of Taemin's words. "And he's not my--"
"I'm joking," Taemin snickers, waving him off. "It's whatever. I'm just glad you're back, everyone else is boring." He slides his arm over Jongin's shoulders, tugging him close with a smile on his face. "Let's do something fun. You hungry?"
Jongin is, more than ever. His whole body aches when he thinks about it. There's something else there too, aching a little, something entirely different from hunger - but hunger still outweighs whatever it is, and Jongin pushes it to the back of his mind and lets Taemin lead him away from the house.
They end up in the city, flitting through shadows between buildings and skimming over moonlit rooftops, and Jongin feels like he can breathe again. How did he ever give this up, the thrill of the hunt, the night at his command? Out here, Kyungsoo seems miles away - and he probably is, given how far they run before Taemin slows down.
"Here," Taemin says excitedly, stopping at the edge of their current roof and crouching to peer down at the street below. "That one, see him? With the fake teeth."
Jongin follows his gaze down to a man dressed in a shiny black coat, with studded boots and hair styled to fall into his face. Even from several storeys up Jongin can see his heavy eye makeup, the beginnings of roots showing in his dyed-black hair, and of course, the plastic fangs protruding from his mouth just far enough to make his whole face seem uneven. Jongin shakes his head with a snicker. "Seriously?”
“Yeah, why not?” Taemin laughs. “You see anything better down there?”
Jongin glances up and down the rest of the street, but it’s near deserted, and the goth man is the only one walking alone. He shrugs and leans back from the edge. “I thought Jinki had you on some health kick, is all.”
"I can eat whatever I want," Taemin says with a petulant sniff. “Besides, I’ve seen that one here before. He and his weird friends get together to talk about their hot vampire fantasies.” He looks up at Jongin with a grin. “They have, like, wet dreams about being bitten.”
Jongin snorts. "Not about being drained, though."
“Well, you never know.” Taemin glances back down and licks his lips. “Alright, he’s turning into the alley. Are you coming? You can have the first bite.”
Something nudges at Jongin’s thoughts just then, the same off-feeling from all the way in the back of his mind where he had shoved it away. It’s more insistent than before, though, and Jongin can’t help but focus on it. It doesn’t feel familiar like any thought of his own, more like something reached into his brain and put it there for him - and that’s all he has time to think before it explodes into colour behind his eyes.
There’s-- blood. A lot of blood, red and hot and bubbling up from a wound under someone’s hands - Kyungsoo’s hands, and Kyungsoo’s heartbeat thundering in his ears, and Kyungsoo’s mind reaching out to Jongin’s, pleading for help, screaming--
And then it’s gone, leaving Jongin with nothing but the thrum in his fingertips, matching the same frantic beat as Kyungsoo’s heart.
“No, I - I have to leave,” he says, stepping back from the ledge. He isn’t hungry anymore.
Taemin whirls around to stare at him, frowning. “What? Jongin--”
But Jongin is already gone, flitting away across rooftops towards the dark city outskirts. The thrill from earlier is replaced by desperation, a pit in his stomach that he hasn’t felt in what seems like lifetimes. How did he end up here, some bitter voice in the back of his mind pipes up, giving up a hunt for the safety of a witch, a human - but Jongin ignores it, feels for Kyungsoo’s heartbeat, keeps his eyes ahead.
He barely thinks about the route, letting muscle memory take over and lead him to the house. He can smell the blood as he gets closer, but it’s - wrong, not nearly as sweet as it was on his tongue, licked off his teeth pressed against Kyungsoo’s neck--
It’s only once Jongin is inside the house that he realizes the blood isn’t Kyungsoo’s at all. He follows the trail of dark red splotches from the front door to the living room couch, and finds not his small witch writhing in pain - but Sehun, the human-shaped werewolf that he had scared off days before, now bruised and bandaged and asleep. The blood is his, dark and thick and wolven in such an obvious way that Jongin isn’t sure how he missed it, especially with how much of it there is blooming red under the white strips crisscrossing Sehun’s bare torso.
Kyungsoo must have done this, Jongin supposes, trying to match up the frantic images in his mind’s eye to the scene before him. Sehun showed up half dead, and Kyungsoo tried his best to help. Jongin can almost tell exactly what the wolf’s wounds are, what with how the blood seeps through the bandages - a long scrape down his right side, various cuts and teeth marks and bruises congealing across his ribs, and a deep, ragged gash curving up from his abdomen, throbbing in time with Sehun’s sluggish heartbeat. Werewolves are supposed to heal themselves, Jongin knows, but Sehun’s shallow breathing isn’t exactly reassuring.
It must not have been for Kyungsoo, either, judging by the various bottles on the coffee table. Some Jongin recognizes as potions he had watched Kyungsoo brew, ones for muscle pain and good dreams and keeping the cold out, but others murky and unfamiliar. Most have red smears around their lids and corks, as if hands slippery with blood had tried and failed to get them open.
Jongin takes one last wary look at Sehun before turning away to search for Kyungsoo. The heavy scent of werewolf blood is draped over half the house, not very appetizing but distracting nonetheless, so Jongin relies on the sound of Kyungsoo’s heart to lead him through the house.
Jongin finds him in front of the kitchen sink with the tap on and running down the drain. It looks like he got his hands halfway to the water and then forgot what he was doing, paused with his palms held up, sticky with half-dried blood and trembling. Jongin approaches quietly and turns off the water, settling silence over the kitchen - with the exception of Kyungsoo’s heartbeat pounding in Jongin’s ears.
Kyungsoo doesn’t even look up until Jongin has come to stand right next to him and murmurs his name. “O-oh, you’re here,” he starts, trying to give Jongin a smile, but it comes out weak and he looks down at the floor instead. “You missed all the excitement.”
“What happened?” Jongin asks softly, and Kyungsoo’s fingers twitch where they’re still hovering above the sink.
“To Sehun? I don’t know,” Kyungsoo admits. “He showed up like that. He said he was in the woods and something attacked him, and he… he dragged himself all the way here.” He glances up and Jongin and back down again, shaking his head. “I did what I could, but... there was so much blood. I’ve dealt with blood before, I mean, I live with you--” He doesn’t laugh, and neither does Jongin-- “but this is… it’s different, it just, it kept coming and it was warm and Sehun could’ve--”
He cuts off, clamping his mouth shut against the words. Jongin takes another step closer and Kyungsoo turns away from the sink to face him, his hands still held stiffly out. He stares down at his red palms and lets out a shuddery breath. “And now I’m too scared to wash my hands,” he says, his voice cracking just above a whisper, “because if the blood doesn’t come off, I don’t know what I’ll do.”
Jongin folds his hands over Kyungsoo’s and tugs them up gently until the red-stained digits are nearly brushing against his mouth. He pauses there, watching Kyungsoo carefully, giving him a chance to take his hands back. Kyungsoo stares up at him, his expression half wary and half… something like pleading. He doesn’t pull away, though, so Jongin takes his index finger into his mouth and licks at the half-dried blood on Kyungsoo’s skin.
Kyungsoo’s breath hitches a little, but he doesn’t move. The tremble in his fingers melts away under Jongin’s tongue, and his heartbeat slows enough to be a pleasant thrum working its way up Jongin’s arms.
Jongin swirls his tongue around each of Kyungsoo’s fingers and licks over his knuckles and palms until the blood is gone. He lowers Kyungsoo’s hands carefully and lets them go, watching his face, but Kyungsoo’s eyes never leave his own, and neither of them move apart. It takes nearly a full minute for Kyungsoo to take a breath and come back to himself, and only then does he drop his gaze.
He stays close, not fidgeting but staring down at the space between the two of them. He’s biting his lip, though, struggling with the words for something - Jongin wishes he could have another split-second glimpse into Kyungsoo’s thoughts, just for this.
A knock on the door interrupts them both and Kyungsoo jumps back, startled, his careful words apparently forgotten. He laughs a little nervously and glances back at Jongin as he leaves the room, but Jongin sees him run his fingers over his now-clean knuckles just before he turns the corner. Jongin follows him.
He flits ahead a few steps to open the door before he can, making sure Kyungsoo stays behind him. On the doorstep are two young men. Jongin narrows his eyes. They smell like--
“Werewolves,” he grumbles.
“Vamp,” one of the werewolves grumbles right back. “You got a reason to be here?”
“I could ask you the same thing,” Jongin growls, but snaps out of it when Kyungsoo touches his arm.
“Let’s figure out who they are before we pick a fight,” he suggests dryly, then looks at the two wolves with raised eyebrows. Jongin does the same.
“Minseok,” the first wolf says, gesturing to himself, then to the other wolf, “and Luhan. Sehun is in our pack.”
“We tracked his scent here,” Luhan explains, still bristly, “so where is he?”
Jongin is ready to bare his fangs at the second wolf, but Kyungsoo taps his shoulder gently, and Jongin begrudgingly steps back to let the two wolves into the house. They make a beeline for the living room, automatically zoning in on their packmate.
Sehun stirs when they enter the room and immediately tries to push himself up, but his weak limbs only get him about halfway before the other two wolves are at his side, pressing him gently back down.
“Hey, pup,” Minseok murmurs, brushing Sehun’s hair out of his eyes. “How are you feeling?”
Sehun closes his eyes, trying to take a deep breath but cutting off with a wince. “Not good.” He shifts a little, giving them all a glimpse of the bloodstained couch cushions underneath him. “Kind of gross.”
“We’ll take you home and get you cleaned up,” Luhan assures him, hovering protectively just behind Minseok.
“Do you know where you are?” Minseok asks, brushing his cheek. “And how you got here?”
“Kyungsoo’s house,” Sehun answers, bracing his arms to try and sit up again. “I came here after I-- ouch.” He flops back onto the cushions, brow furrowed. “I was in the far woods. It got dark out so I started heading back, but I got-- I don’t know. Jumped.”
“By who?” Luhan asks immediately, tensing like he’s ready to bolt outside and go after the culprit.
“More like by what,” Minseok says, shaking his head. He traces his fingers over the bandages on Sehun’s side, stopping when he squirms. “Something with sharp teeth.”
After a beat, Luhan looks over at Kyungsoo. “You’re the one who patched him up?”
The sudden question catches Kyungsoo off-guard, and he stammers a little. “Y-yes, but he - he lost a lot of blood, you’ll need to--”
“His body will heal itself, now that he’s with us,” Luhan explains. He pauses, narrowing his eyes at Kyungsoo. “Do you know you smell like vampire?”
“My bad,” Jongin speaks up, fixing Luhan with a glare. He doesn’t like werewolves much to begin with, and he definitely doesn’t like them looking at Kyungsoo like that.
Luhan shifts his gaze to Jongin and growls, but Minseok touches his elbow and he quiets down almost immediately. “We’re not here to start a fight,” Minseok says, stern, and Luhan gives Jongin one last sideways glance before helping Minseok lift Sehun from the couch.
Luhan half-carries him out the door - it looks a bit comical to Jongin, Sehun being held upright by the shorter wolf - and Minseok moves to follow them, but hesitates. He turns to Kyungsoo and holds his gaze.
“Thank you for helping him,” he says quietly, a gravity to the words that even Jongin can feel. “We owe you.”
It takes Kyungsoo a moment to find his voice. “I-I really don’t mind,” he starts, but Minseok is already gone, the door closing, and then it’s just Kyungsoo and Jongin alone in the house.
A few seconds pass in silence, and when Jongin is sure that the wolves have truly left, he refocuses on Kyungsoo and steps over to him. He touches his shoulder, and feels stress ricochet up his arm in a sharp snap. Something else of Kyungsoo’s he’s become an antenna for, he supposes - but at least Kyungsoo isn’t shaking anymore. “You alright?” he asks. It comes out softer than he means it to.
Kyungsoo sighs, and Jongin feels his stress dissipate some. “Yeah.” A pause. “Tired.”
“Go up and sleep, then,” Jongin says, nudging him towards the stairs. “I’ll clean up down here.”
Kyungsoo gives him a weird look, searching his face - Jongin takes the opportunity to search Kyungsoo’s right back. He really does look tired, his lips dry and the skin beneath his eyes beginning to bruise.
“Go,” Jongin repeats, and after a moment, Kyungsoo does. He shakes his head as he mounts the stairs, but he’s smiling halfway up, and he pauses near the top to look down through the railing at Jongin.
“Thank you,” he calls quietly, and scurries up the rest of the stairs - although he’s not quite quick enough for Jongin to miss the new pink in his cheeks.
Jongin waits until he hears Kyungsoo’s bedroom door creaks shut, then turns away from the stairs to survey the mess that is the living room. Best to get started sooner rather than later, he sighs to himself, and rolls up his sleeves. Dawn is only a few hours away, and all that blood won’t seep out of the couch cushions on its own.
> this au has started to stress me out can u tell
> i’m retiring to write fluffy suchen for the rest of my days (jokes)
> ALSO I’M RLY SORRY @ SEHUN
rating: rly light R
warnings: some blood and gore
wordcount: 3.6k
summary: Testing the effects of the bond isn’t always a good time.
notes: its been almost a year since i posted the first part of this au so here’s part 3 finally lmao. don’t get 2 jobs, kids
part 1 | part 2
There’s something about watching Kyungsoo read that makes Jongin hungry - or maybe it’s just something about Kyungsoo. Alternatively, it could be the fact that he’s hungry more often than not, these days. He hasn’t eaten properly in what feels like weeks; refrigerated blood is alright, but it doesn’t sate him the way something fresh would.
Kyungsoo would just tell him to go out and hunt, like he’s told him a thousand times already, but Jongin can feel the disdain whenever he says it. He glances over to him, watches his turn a page in the thick, ancient-looking spellbook he’s studying so intently. Obviously Kyungsoo doesn’t want him to go out and kill someone, but if he wanted this bond so badly, he should’ve known that it would be necessary - especially if he wasn’t going to feed Jongin himself. Which he’s still insisting he won’t do.
But Kyungsoo refusing to let Jongin drink from him is an entirely separate problem. Jongin doesn’t understand what the big deal is; he’s bitten Kyungsoo twice already, and both of those times there was no issue. Shouldn’t he be trusted not to drain him, or otherwise kill him, or whatever Kyungsoo seems to think is going to happen? Unless it’s something else that’s making him hold back, but… Jongin has no idea what else it could be. If only the bond could tell him that.
It’s strange, though, the bond - more often than not, Jongin can barely feel anything aside from the hint of magic in the air around them. He supposes that’s to be expected, what with how fresh it is, not yet finished settling into the two of them. One thing he has noticed, however, is the weird thrum he’s started to feel at the tips of his fingers sometimes, almost like having a pulse used to feel. He hasn’t told Kyungsoo about it yet, wanting to see if it grows into something more first - and the thrum isn’t as strong when he’s hungry, anyway. The feeling of being empty kind of dims everything else. He’s sure that his whole body would be growling from hunger, if it could--
Kyungsoo suddenly slams his spellbook shut, startling Jongin out of his thoughts. “Can you stop that?”
Jongin raises his eyebrows. “Stop what?”
Kyungsoo hunches his shoulders and rubs the side of his neck. “You know what.”
His fingers brush over the two tiny scars there, and Jongin tries his best not to stare. “Do I?”
“Yes, you do,” Kyungsoo grumbles. “You’re thinking about feeding.”
The word sends another pang of hunger through Jongin, and Kyungsoo winces, covering the scars with his palm. Jongin watches the discomfort roll across his face with interest. “You can tell what I’m thinking?”
“I can tell when you want to sink your teeth into my neck,” Kyungsoo clarifies flatly.
“What does it feel like?” Jongin asks, gaze flickering back to the hand Kyungsoo has clamped over the teeth marks, but Kyungsoo turns his body away with a glare.
“That doesn’t matter. The point is that you’re distracting me.” He moves his book over and opens it again. “Can you leave so I can focus?”
Jongin bristles at his dismissive tone. “You don’t want to figure out what’s going on? Why you can feel what I’m feeling?”
“It must be part of the bond,” Kyungsoo says, flipping through the pages with an exasperated sigh.
“But don’t you want to find out--”
“No, I don’t,” Kyungsoo cuts him off, but he doesn’t look up. “I want to finish reading this.”
Jongin growls, deep and rumbling through his chest, but Kyungsoo hardly reacts, keeping his gaze on his book. He isn’t even turning pages anymore, just glaring at the words so he doesn’t have to look at Jongin. Jongin wants to step closer and tug his chin up himself, force Kyungsoo to actually meet his eyes for once - but a flicker of magic keeps his feet planted where they are.
He snarls in annoyance. Of course he can’t hurt Kyungsoo; their stupid, insufferable bond is rock-solid on that point. Sparing just a moment to maliciously hope Kyungsoo never gets his focus back, Jongin turns and stomps out of the room.
He leaves the house as loudly as possible, slamming the door shut behind him even though he could’ve left silently through a window. It’s probably all in vain, anyway, as Kyungsoo rarely apologizes after pissing him off, but it makes Jongin feel marginally better. He shoves his clenched fists into his pockets and starts off through the dark neighbourhood, not headed in any particular direction. The night is young and he could be miles away in a few minutes if he so desired, but tonight he walks, the slow pace giving him the time he needs to cool off.
At some point, his aimless wandering finds a path to follow. One moment Jongin is on an empty street with nothing but his thoughts, and the next he’s ended up somewhere familiar - the grim, imposing form of his coven’s house seems to curve out toward him, calling him back. Curious, Jongin hops up the crumbling front steps and pushes the front door open.
It’s been a while, but the house is just as dark and musty as it was the last time he was here. Inside, it’s quiet - it’s not as if there’s any heartbeats to be heard, but Jongin can still tell that the house is empty. Everyone else must be out hunting.
He doesn’t need permission to go up to his own room, though. He eyes the long, twisting staircase and can almost hear Kyungsoo’s voice in his head. Did you only leave so you could go sulk somewhere else?
“I’m not sulking,” he grumbles to himself.
“Didn’t say you were.”
Jongin whirls around at the new voice, fangs bared - and comes face to face with Taemin, standing in the open doorway and giving him an unimpressed look.
“Surely you’re not so old that doors weren’t a thing then you were alive,” he deadpans, raising an eyebrow and shutting the door behind him. “Right?”
“No, I--” Jongin cuts off, deflating. “I didn’t notice. Sorry.”
Taemin shrugs. “Whatever, it’s your house. And it’s not like anyone else cares much about the draft, anyway.” He stares at Jongin expectantly for a long moment, but Jongin doesn’t know what to say. Eventually, Taemin rolls his eyes. “So? What are you doing back here?”
Jongin remembers the sharpness of Kyungsoo’s voice and immediately pushes the thought down. “Like you said, it’s my house.”
“Well, yeah, but you’ve got somewhere else to be, don’t you?” Taemin asks, almost in a drawl. “Or is your owner alright with you being out so late?”
"I don't care if he’s alright with it or not," Jongin huffs, anger flaring back up for a second before he processes the rest of Taemin's words. "And he's not my--"
"I'm joking," Taemin snickers, waving him off. "It's whatever. I'm just glad you're back, everyone else is boring." He slides his arm over Jongin's shoulders, tugging him close with a smile on his face. "Let's do something fun. You hungry?"
Jongin is, more than ever. His whole body aches when he thinks about it. There's something else there too, aching a little, something entirely different from hunger - but hunger still outweighs whatever it is, and Jongin pushes it to the back of his mind and lets Taemin lead him away from the house.
They end up in the city, flitting through shadows between buildings and skimming over moonlit rooftops, and Jongin feels like he can breathe again. How did he ever give this up, the thrill of the hunt, the night at his command? Out here, Kyungsoo seems miles away - and he probably is, given how far they run before Taemin slows down.
"Here," Taemin says excitedly, stopping at the edge of their current roof and crouching to peer down at the street below. "That one, see him? With the fake teeth."
Jongin follows his gaze down to a man dressed in a shiny black coat, with studded boots and hair styled to fall into his face. Even from several storeys up Jongin can see his heavy eye makeup, the beginnings of roots showing in his dyed-black hair, and of course, the plastic fangs protruding from his mouth just far enough to make his whole face seem uneven. Jongin shakes his head with a snicker. "Seriously?”
“Yeah, why not?” Taemin laughs. “You see anything better down there?”
Jongin glances up and down the rest of the street, but it’s near deserted, and the goth man is the only one walking alone. He shrugs and leans back from the edge. “I thought Jinki had you on some health kick, is all.”
"I can eat whatever I want," Taemin says with a petulant sniff. “Besides, I’ve seen that one here before. He and his weird friends get together to talk about their hot vampire fantasies.” He looks up at Jongin with a grin. “They have, like, wet dreams about being bitten.”
Jongin snorts. "Not about being drained, though."
“Well, you never know.” Taemin glances back down and licks his lips. “Alright, he’s turning into the alley. Are you coming? You can have the first bite.”
Something nudges at Jongin’s thoughts just then, the same off-feeling from all the way in the back of his mind where he had shoved it away. It’s more insistent than before, though, and Jongin can’t help but focus on it. It doesn’t feel familiar like any thought of his own, more like something reached into his brain and put it there for him - and that’s all he has time to think before it explodes into colour behind his eyes.
There’s-- blood. A lot of blood, red and hot and bubbling up from a wound under someone’s hands - Kyungsoo’s hands, and Kyungsoo’s heartbeat thundering in his ears, and Kyungsoo’s mind reaching out to Jongin’s, pleading for help, screaming--
And then it’s gone, leaving Jongin with nothing but the thrum in his fingertips, matching the same frantic beat as Kyungsoo’s heart.
“No, I - I have to leave,” he says, stepping back from the ledge. He isn’t hungry anymore.
Taemin whirls around to stare at him, frowning. “What? Jongin--”
But Jongin is already gone, flitting away across rooftops towards the dark city outskirts. The thrill from earlier is replaced by desperation, a pit in his stomach that he hasn’t felt in what seems like lifetimes. How did he end up here, some bitter voice in the back of his mind pipes up, giving up a hunt for the safety of a witch, a human - but Jongin ignores it, feels for Kyungsoo’s heartbeat, keeps his eyes ahead.
He barely thinks about the route, letting muscle memory take over and lead him to the house. He can smell the blood as he gets closer, but it’s - wrong, not nearly as sweet as it was on his tongue, licked off his teeth pressed against Kyungsoo’s neck--
It’s only once Jongin is inside the house that he realizes the blood isn’t Kyungsoo’s at all. He follows the trail of dark red splotches from the front door to the living room couch, and finds not his small witch writhing in pain - but Sehun, the human-shaped werewolf that he had scared off days before, now bruised and bandaged and asleep. The blood is his, dark and thick and wolven in such an obvious way that Jongin isn’t sure how he missed it, especially with how much of it there is blooming red under the white strips crisscrossing Sehun’s bare torso.
Kyungsoo must have done this, Jongin supposes, trying to match up the frantic images in his mind’s eye to the scene before him. Sehun showed up half dead, and Kyungsoo tried his best to help. Jongin can almost tell exactly what the wolf’s wounds are, what with how the blood seeps through the bandages - a long scrape down his right side, various cuts and teeth marks and bruises congealing across his ribs, and a deep, ragged gash curving up from his abdomen, throbbing in time with Sehun’s sluggish heartbeat. Werewolves are supposed to heal themselves, Jongin knows, but Sehun’s shallow breathing isn’t exactly reassuring.
It must not have been for Kyungsoo, either, judging by the various bottles on the coffee table. Some Jongin recognizes as potions he had watched Kyungsoo brew, ones for muscle pain and good dreams and keeping the cold out, but others murky and unfamiliar. Most have red smears around their lids and corks, as if hands slippery with blood had tried and failed to get them open.
Jongin takes one last wary look at Sehun before turning away to search for Kyungsoo. The heavy scent of werewolf blood is draped over half the house, not very appetizing but distracting nonetheless, so Jongin relies on the sound of Kyungsoo’s heart to lead him through the house.
Jongin finds him in front of the kitchen sink with the tap on and running down the drain. It looks like he got his hands halfway to the water and then forgot what he was doing, paused with his palms held up, sticky with half-dried blood and trembling. Jongin approaches quietly and turns off the water, settling silence over the kitchen - with the exception of Kyungsoo’s heartbeat pounding in Jongin’s ears.
Kyungsoo doesn’t even look up until Jongin has come to stand right next to him and murmurs his name. “O-oh, you’re here,” he starts, trying to give Jongin a smile, but it comes out weak and he looks down at the floor instead. “You missed all the excitement.”
“What happened?” Jongin asks softly, and Kyungsoo’s fingers twitch where they’re still hovering above the sink.
“To Sehun? I don’t know,” Kyungsoo admits. “He showed up like that. He said he was in the woods and something attacked him, and he… he dragged himself all the way here.” He glances up and Jongin and back down again, shaking his head. “I did what I could, but... there was so much blood. I’ve dealt with blood before, I mean, I live with you--” He doesn’t laugh, and neither does Jongin-- “but this is… it’s different, it just, it kept coming and it was warm and Sehun could’ve--”
He cuts off, clamping his mouth shut against the words. Jongin takes another step closer and Kyungsoo turns away from the sink to face him, his hands still held stiffly out. He stares down at his red palms and lets out a shuddery breath. “And now I’m too scared to wash my hands,” he says, his voice cracking just above a whisper, “because if the blood doesn’t come off, I don’t know what I’ll do.”
Jongin folds his hands over Kyungsoo’s and tugs them up gently until the red-stained digits are nearly brushing against his mouth. He pauses there, watching Kyungsoo carefully, giving him a chance to take his hands back. Kyungsoo stares up at him, his expression half wary and half… something like pleading. He doesn’t pull away, though, so Jongin takes his index finger into his mouth and licks at the half-dried blood on Kyungsoo’s skin.
Kyungsoo’s breath hitches a little, but he doesn’t move. The tremble in his fingers melts away under Jongin’s tongue, and his heartbeat slows enough to be a pleasant thrum working its way up Jongin’s arms.
Jongin swirls his tongue around each of Kyungsoo’s fingers and licks over his knuckles and palms until the blood is gone. He lowers Kyungsoo’s hands carefully and lets them go, watching his face, but Kyungsoo’s eyes never leave his own, and neither of them move apart. It takes nearly a full minute for Kyungsoo to take a breath and come back to himself, and only then does he drop his gaze.
He stays close, not fidgeting but staring down at the space between the two of them. He’s biting his lip, though, struggling with the words for something - Jongin wishes he could have another split-second glimpse into Kyungsoo’s thoughts, just for this.
A knock on the door interrupts them both and Kyungsoo jumps back, startled, his careful words apparently forgotten. He laughs a little nervously and glances back at Jongin as he leaves the room, but Jongin sees him run his fingers over his now-clean knuckles just before he turns the corner. Jongin follows him.
He flits ahead a few steps to open the door before he can, making sure Kyungsoo stays behind him. On the doorstep are two young men. Jongin narrows his eyes. They smell like--
“Werewolves,” he grumbles.
“Vamp,” one of the werewolves grumbles right back. “You got a reason to be here?”
“I could ask you the same thing,” Jongin growls, but snaps out of it when Kyungsoo touches his arm.
“Let’s figure out who they are before we pick a fight,” he suggests dryly, then looks at the two wolves with raised eyebrows. Jongin does the same.
“Minseok,” the first wolf says, gesturing to himself, then to the other wolf, “and Luhan. Sehun is in our pack.”
“We tracked his scent here,” Luhan explains, still bristly, “so where is he?”
Jongin is ready to bare his fangs at the second wolf, but Kyungsoo taps his shoulder gently, and Jongin begrudgingly steps back to let the two wolves into the house. They make a beeline for the living room, automatically zoning in on their packmate.
Sehun stirs when they enter the room and immediately tries to push himself up, but his weak limbs only get him about halfway before the other two wolves are at his side, pressing him gently back down.
“Hey, pup,” Minseok murmurs, brushing Sehun’s hair out of his eyes. “How are you feeling?”
Sehun closes his eyes, trying to take a deep breath but cutting off with a wince. “Not good.” He shifts a little, giving them all a glimpse of the bloodstained couch cushions underneath him. “Kind of gross.”
“We’ll take you home and get you cleaned up,” Luhan assures him, hovering protectively just behind Minseok.
“Do you know where you are?” Minseok asks, brushing his cheek. “And how you got here?”
“Kyungsoo’s house,” Sehun answers, bracing his arms to try and sit up again. “I came here after I-- ouch.” He flops back onto the cushions, brow furrowed. “I was in the far woods. It got dark out so I started heading back, but I got-- I don’t know. Jumped.”
“By who?” Luhan asks immediately, tensing like he’s ready to bolt outside and go after the culprit.
“More like by what,” Minseok says, shaking his head. He traces his fingers over the bandages on Sehun’s side, stopping when he squirms. “Something with sharp teeth.”
After a beat, Luhan looks over at Kyungsoo. “You’re the one who patched him up?”
The sudden question catches Kyungsoo off-guard, and he stammers a little. “Y-yes, but he - he lost a lot of blood, you’ll need to--”
“His body will heal itself, now that he’s with us,” Luhan explains. He pauses, narrowing his eyes at Kyungsoo. “Do you know you smell like vampire?”
“My bad,” Jongin speaks up, fixing Luhan with a glare. He doesn’t like werewolves much to begin with, and he definitely doesn’t like them looking at Kyungsoo like that.
Luhan shifts his gaze to Jongin and growls, but Minseok touches his elbow and he quiets down almost immediately. “We’re not here to start a fight,” Minseok says, stern, and Luhan gives Jongin one last sideways glance before helping Minseok lift Sehun from the couch.
Luhan half-carries him out the door - it looks a bit comical to Jongin, Sehun being held upright by the shorter wolf - and Minseok moves to follow them, but hesitates. He turns to Kyungsoo and holds his gaze.
“Thank you for helping him,” he says quietly, a gravity to the words that even Jongin can feel. “We owe you.”
It takes Kyungsoo a moment to find his voice. “I-I really don’t mind,” he starts, but Minseok is already gone, the door closing, and then it’s just Kyungsoo and Jongin alone in the house.
A few seconds pass in silence, and when Jongin is sure that the wolves have truly left, he refocuses on Kyungsoo and steps over to him. He touches his shoulder, and feels stress ricochet up his arm in a sharp snap. Something else of Kyungsoo’s he’s become an antenna for, he supposes - but at least Kyungsoo isn’t shaking anymore. “You alright?” he asks. It comes out softer than he means it to.
Kyungsoo sighs, and Jongin feels his stress dissipate some. “Yeah.” A pause. “Tired.”
“Go up and sleep, then,” Jongin says, nudging him towards the stairs. “I’ll clean up down here.”
Kyungsoo gives him a weird look, searching his face - Jongin takes the opportunity to search Kyungsoo’s right back. He really does look tired, his lips dry and the skin beneath his eyes beginning to bruise.
“Go,” Jongin repeats, and after a moment, Kyungsoo does. He shakes his head as he mounts the stairs, but he’s smiling halfway up, and he pauses near the top to look down through the railing at Jongin.
“Thank you,” he calls quietly, and scurries up the rest of the stairs - although he’s not quite quick enough for Jongin to miss the new pink in his cheeks.
Jongin waits until he hears Kyungsoo’s bedroom door creaks shut, then turns away from the stairs to survey the mess that is the living room. Best to get started sooner rather than later, he sighs to himself, and rolls up his sleeves. Dawn is only a few hours away, and all that blood won’t seep out of the couch cushions on its own.
> this au has started to stress me out can u tell
> i’m retiring to write fluffy suchen for the rest of my days (jokes)
> ALSO I’M RLY SORRY @ SEHUN