Connection, Chapter 2
Title: Connection, 2/?
Author: radioheading
Rating: R, language and violence.
Characters/Pairings: Yunho/Changmin
Warnings: AU. Really, really, really AU.
Word Count: 2323
Summary: Changmin is cast out from his village, running through the woods wounded, dying. Something steps in to save him.
Changmin is not in his bed when he wakes. Sleep sloughs off in layers, consciousness seeping back in, alerting him to a solid heat pressed against his back and what feels like soft, buttery leather beneath him. He's too comfortable, not bothered by the washed-too-many-times scratch of sheets his mother made, cloth he doesn't dare complain about.
It would be easy enough for Changmin to relinquish the pesky thoughts that snag his mind like loose thread catching on ragged fingernails. He’s liquid-boned, lazy and keen to stay that way. He's happy here. It's like diving underwater and staring at the surface; safe, rocked by a body bigger than his own until his air runs out and he gives in to his lungs. Like the burn of carbon dioxide and held breathe, he senses something. Something mean and nasty, something just on the periphery of his thoughts, and now he’s surfacing, reaching toward the light of lucidity.
It touches down like a thunderclap, the memory of adrenaline-spiked fear, pain and the sharp teeth of rejection his village had bitten him with. He’s up in an instant, back slamming against the rough face of a cave wall. The stone is damp behind him, cool on skin that’s suddenly two sizes too tight. He’s hot, a flush moving over his ears and cheeks; he’s consumed by heat that doesn’t make sense. His shoulder should be throbbing, a bundle of screaming nerves and fevered muscles, but it didn’t protest his frenzied awakening. He should be dead. Blood loss, infection. Either could have been the final champion, but one should have won.
“You need to calm down,” he hears, a thick, just-waking voice that is more of a murmur than a command. He knows it, the wood-rustle of low-pitched wind shifting through trees. He thinks of the pause just before a storm and wonders if he’s been kidnapped. He can put a face to every voice in his village.
“Let me say it again.” They have to be close to the mouth of the cave, Changmin knows, because there’s dappled sunlight peering in from outside, splotches of fat yellow that illuminate the ground in pieces, just enough to give a shape to the man that sits up just a few feet away, rubbing his eyes before leaning forward onto his knees. “You need to calm down.”
“Who are you? What am I doing here?” Fear strikes a bold chord in him, a facade of confidence that gives his voice a sharp edge. Anger courses through him, a delicious trickle that needs an exit, a target, and Changmin has it locked.
“If I told you my name,” the man says, limbs unfolding gracefully, smooth arcs of long legs and arms as he pulls himself upright, “would you know me any better?”
Changmin likes reason. A cool head and aloof facts are his fuel, the sword that cuts through brawn like melted butter. But logic flees like a mouse chased by a cat, streaking out of his body, leaving him on the ropes of his instincts, ideas and urges he's never thought to use before. So when the body coming closer to his is within striking distance, he finds himself vaulting forward, hands reaching to trap, to fight, against all logic. A moment later, he's breathless, laid out on the ground, lungs clenching for oxygen they can't pull in fast enough. He didn't feel the tips of the other man's fingers as they grabbed his shirt, twisting deftly while the man himself stepped out of the way.
“Calm down,” he's told again, though it's even harder to listen to the directions when the man settles his weight on Changmin's waist, a straddle that aligns their sexes-something his length takes great interest in.
“You don't want to shift early,” he's lectured, the man leaning down to look him in the eye, sharp jaw emphasizing too-soft lips. They form the words, and Changmin hears them, but they mean nothing.
“Shift?” He asks, distracted. He's coming back to himself now, subdued for a moment and the heat of embarrassment replaces his anger. “Just-where am I?”
“You're halfway between your village and mine. It's a safe spot I come to when it's too late or I'm too tired to keep going.”
“My village...” A phantom flicker of agony winds its way through his shoulder, a buzz that breathes the dragon's breath of winter wind down his spine.
“And my name,” the man continues, “is Yunho.”
Two syllables, an easy roll off the tongue, but Changmin is busy spiraling out over facts again, a blazing red flag telling him that something is very, very wrong.
“They tried to kill me.” The truth is easier to acknowledge than he thinks it would be. His parents faces weave around his irises until they're all he can see, the guilt and shame and sorrow, and then, finally, heads bowed so they didn't have to watch him walk away, nothing at all.
“They would have.” Yunho leans closer, weight bearing down on the sharp angle of Changmin's hip bones. The other man presses him into the dirt underneath, the earthy smell silken soil that he scoops under his fingernails as they twitch against the ground. “But I found you.”
The flush of possession is glaring, dripping off Yunho's lips in a way that sends Changmin's hips unconsciously up, the new slant of friction sending a quiet 'oh,' out from between his parted lips.
“Why do I feel like this?” he asks, trying to talk himself into answers, into sense that's abandoning him in favor of of the low-slung throb working its way through his sex. “Why aren't I even hurt?”
He already knows the answer to the question. Because as much as his thoughts chant no no no, his skin remembers a second wound, one made with teeth and claws, a gentle press worried at after by the flat of a tongue that took no pleasure in the blood it cleaned away. No. No. Monsters don't exist and people aren't animals and you probably hallucinated the fucking arrow, Changmin. That's all.
Things go fuzzy after that. He falls still under Yunho, rag-doll limbs spread out, left to be arranged by the other man, who picks him up easily, like he's a child and he wishes he was, all innocence and games, so much less of the darkness grasping after his heart now. The monsters under the bed then were imaginary.
***
Time is a line of ants in front of him, the shifting rays of the sun as it infiltrates the cave entirely, handing its light down like a gift, though Changmin shivers despite its puddled illumination. The minutes are hours, and Yunho disappears for some of them, coming back to wave fruit under his nose, to growl in his throat softly when Changmin just allows his head to loll to the side, uninterested in the too-tart aroma of the apple in front of him, a scent he shouldn't smell, much less understand. The green skin bursts, pale flesh littering the floor of the cave when he slaps it from Yunho's hand. He expects to be hit, then, draws his chin down in preparation but all he gets is the dry slide of lips across his forehead, the kiss of words that draw uselessly past his ears.
“I couldn't let you go,” they hum, but he doesn't have the will to respond. Because now that he's figured it all out, his very next step is acceptance. One nod, one smile, one word and he's throwing in the towel, looking the impossible in the face and letting it fold him into its mix. So no, he doesn't respond to Yunho, doesn't do anything but sit slumped and avoid the other man's eyes, the wrong shade that's a reminder of another shape entirely, one with fur and fangs and beauty as terrible as it is great. The silence presses in after awhile, their presences overlapping and awkward, each unsure of where the other stands. Changmin's focus is poured into each breath, the in out repeat that takes his time and lulls him into an almost-sleep, a peaceful sort of glazed-over state where it's easy to pretend nothing he's seen in the last 24 hours is true.
“It's different when you're born this way, you know.” Changmin blinks Yunho back into focus and watches as the man gestures, one long arm curving back toward his eyes. He rubs at his temples, angling his head so the light shines in irises, a shade of azure that would absorb Changmin if he let it.
“It's with you from the moment you take your first breath. It's always there, at the back of your mind. The ability. Because, what you saw? The wolf?” A hitching noise, Yunho's knee hitting the ground-he's making himself smaller, trying to appeal to Changmin. “It's not a thing, or an animal, really. It's you, but closer to nature. A little wild, but you.”
“Let me show you.” Yunho's close enough for his breath to shift past Changmin's cheek, for him to hear the hope in the other man's voice. The only reason he turns his head, acknowledges the man-the thing-that saved him, he assures himself, is because of the light. It's a soft glow that doesn't belong to the burning sun above, that is coming from under Yunho's skin, a rush of white that steals away any and all thoughts brimming in the pressure-cooker of his mind. Everything is lit up, Yunho's eyes and mouth, the pads of his fingers and the delicate indentations on either side of his collarbones.
“Let me show you,” Yunho says again, reaching out to touch, the first contact spreading a rush of elation so thick Changmin's vocal chords stutter and he's murmuring nonsense, too caught up in the graze of Yunho's light hands to notice the other man has taken his garblings as a yes. But as the intensity of the radiance increasing, rivaling a star as it collapses, something sounds from the mouth of the cave, a shout of anger and fear.
“Yunho! What the fuck are you doing?”
And just like that, the lights go out. Or Yunho does. Or both. All that crouches in front of Changmin is a man, a beautiful man whose chest rises and falls in a quick pant, who's looking at him, chin cocked, sky eyes full and pleading so openly that his heart clenches, shuddering at the vulnerability there.
“Yunho.”
Changmin catches a flash of a man, a lithe body and cherub lips and down-turned eyes, a face creased with worry, but then Yunho slips past and the new man follows, shaking his head as he turns to follow.
“What are you doing with him, Yunho?” The second man breathes into his words so they're light, lifted by air that undermines their hissed content. “You turned him already? Before he even understands?”
“They caught him, Junsu. Do you know how I found him? Face down in the dirt, and arrow sticking out of his back. They were looking to make a point. They didn't want him to join us.”
“Would he have died?” The glint of steel in the stranger's voice, Junsu, apparently, dulls, fading reluctantly.
“His blood was slowing as I broke his skin. I didn't think he would make it through the night.”
“He did thought.” Wistful now, a little less anxious.
“And he'll be gorgeous. He already is.”
“You and your humans, Yunho. I've never understood the fascination.”
“Because you used to be one.”
They know each other. There's something between the two, not a relationship of lust and carnal need-but a bond of some sort. Their comfort is tangible, the ease with which they slip past conflict and move to joking jibes. They're friends.
“This is going to be rough on him, Yunho.”
“I know.”
“They usually have a month before their first moon.”
“Junsu. I know. Will you stay, help me help him through?”
Help him through? Yunho's tone is ominous, a signifier that something big is hovering just beyond his sight, but all he can focus on now is a rapidly accelerating itch that unfurls savagely just under his skin and muscles, a boiling heat that has him drowning, water water everywhere and not a drop to drink. A puppeteer controls his strings, flinging him this way and that, pounding his body into the ground in hopes to just get away from the sensation that's flaying him alive, the burning flare of agony working its way through every cell. A contortionist would envy the bridge his back imitates, the easy arch it forms as he screams through a particularly excruciating pulse. And like a flash of lightning, a light/dark snap, the pain goes all at once, slipping off to wherever it came from, leaving Changmin shaking on the ground, curled in like a baby, cheeks wet with tears that brush by his lips on the way to his chin. He's cautious, waiting for the second round, a surprise attack that would catch him unaware.
He doesn't hear Yunho come back in, doesn't even notice when the other man's grip wraps around his waist, tugging at the hem of his shirt. All of this is ignored, though, in favor of the sudden attention he pays to his own hands, skin that has taken on an eerie illumination, pale, at first, the intensity increasing as it crawls slowly over his body, absorbing like ink on blank paper.
Get it off, get it off!
“Changmin, it's ok!” More touching that he can't feel, clothes stripped off and now he's writhing, naked, trying to shake off the light that's swallowing him whole.
Author: radioheading
Rating: R, language and violence.
Characters/Pairings: Yunho/Changmin
Warnings: AU. Really, really, really AU.
Word Count: 2323
Summary: Changmin is cast out from his village, running through the woods wounded, dying. Something steps in to save him.
Changmin is not in his bed when he wakes. Sleep sloughs off in layers, consciousness seeping back in, alerting him to a solid heat pressed against his back and what feels like soft, buttery leather beneath him. He's too comfortable, not bothered by the washed-too-many-times scratch of sheets his mother made, cloth he doesn't dare complain about.
It would be easy enough for Changmin to relinquish the pesky thoughts that snag his mind like loose thread catching on ragged fingernails. He’s liquid-boned, lazy and keen to stay that way. He's happy here. It's like diving underwater and staring at the surface; safe, rocked by a body bigger than his own until his air runs out and he gives in to his lungs. Like the burn of carbon dioxide and held breathe, he senses something. Something mean and nasty, something just on the periphery of his thoughts, and now he’s surfacing, reaching toward the light of lucidity.
It touches down like a thunderclap, the memory of adrenaline-spiked fear, pain and the sharp teeth of rejection his village had bitten him with. He’s up in an instant, back slamming against the rough face of a cave wall. The stone is damp behind him, cool on skin that’s suddenly two sizes too tight. He’s hot, a flush moving over his ears and cheeks; he’s consumed by heat that doesn’t make sense. His shoulder should be throbbing, a bundle of screaming nerves and fevered muscles, but it didn’t protest his frenzied awakening. He should be dead. Blood loss, infection. Either could have been the final champion, but one should have won.
“You need to calm down,” he hears, a thick, just-waking voice that is more of a murmur than a command. He knows it, the wood-rustle of low-pitched wind shifting through trees. He thinks of the pause just before a storm and wonders if he’s been kidnapped. He can put a face to every voice in his village.
“Let me say it again.” They have to be close to the mouth of the cave, Changmin knows, because there’s dappled sunlight peering in from outside, splotches of fat yellow that illuminate the ground in pieces, just enough to give a shape to the man that sits up just a few feet away, rubbing his eyes before leaning forward onto his knees. “You need to calm down.”
“Who are you? What am I doing here?” Fear strikes a bold chord in him, a facade of confidence that gives his voice a sharp edge. Anger courses through him, a delicious trickle that needs an exit, a target, and Changmin has it locked.
“If I told you my name,” the man says, limbs unfolding gracefully, smooth arcs of long legs and arms as he pulls himself upright, “would you know me any better?”
Changmin likes reason. A cool head and aloof facts are his fuel, the sword that cuts through brawn like melted butter. But logic flees like a mouse chased by a cat, streaking out of his body, leaving him on the ropes of his instincts, ideas and urges he's never thought to use before. So when the body coming closer to his is within striking distance, he finds himself vaulting forward, hands reaching to trap, to fight, against all logic. A moment later, he's breathless, laid out on the ground, lungs clenching for oxygen they can't pull in fast enough. He didn't feel the tips of the other man's fingers as they grabbed his shirt, twisting deftly while the man himself stepped out of the way.
“Calm down,” he's told again, though it's even harder to listen to the directions when the man settles his weight on Changmin's waist, a straddle that aligns their sexes-something his length takes great interest in.
“You don't want to shift early,” he's lectured, the man leaning down to look him in the eye, sharp jaw emphasizing too-soft lips. They form the words, and Changmin hears them, but they mean nothing.
“Shift?” He asks, distracted. He's coming back to himself now, subdued for a moment and the heat of embarrassment replaces his anger. “Just-where am I?”
“You're halfway between your village and mine. It's a safe spot I come to when it's too late or I'm too tired to keep going.”
“My village...” A phantom flicker of agony winds its way through his shoulder, a buzz that breathes the dragon's breath of winter wind down his spine.
“And my name,” the man continues, “is Yunho.”
Two syllables, an easy roll off the tongue, but Changmin is busy spiraling out over facts again, a blazing red flag telling him that something is very, very wrong.
“They tried to kill me.” The truth is easier to acknowledge than he thinks it would be. His parents faces weave around his irises until they're all he can see, the guilt and shame and sorrow, and then, finally, heads bowed so they didn't have to watch him walk away, nothing at all.
“They would have.” Yunho leans closer, weight bearing down on the sharp angle of Changmin's hip bones. The other man presses him into the dirt underneath, the earthy smell silken soil that he scoops under his fingernails as they twitch against the ground. “But I found you.”
The flush of possession is glaring, dripping off Yunho's lips in a way that sends Changmin's hips unconsciously up, the new slant of friction sending a quiet 'oh,' out from between his parted lips.
“Why do I feel like this?” he asks, trying to talk himself into answers, into sense that's abandoning him in favor of of the low-slung throb working its way through his sex. “Why aren't I even hurt?”
He already knows the answer to the question. Because as much as his thoughts chant no no no, his skin remembers a second wound, one made with teeth and claws, a gentle press worried at after by the flat of a tongue that took no pleasure in the blood it cleaned away. No. No. Monsters don't exist and people aren't animals and you probably hallucinated the fucking arrow, Changmin. That's all.
Things go fuzzy after that. He falls still under Yunho, rag-doll limbs spread out, left to be arranged by the other man, who picks him up easily, like he's a child and he wishes he was, all innocence and games, so much less of the darkness grasping after his heart now. The monsters under the bed then were imaginary.
***
Time is a line of ants in front of him, the shifting rays of the sun as it infiltrates the cave entirely, handing its light down like a gift, though Changmin shivers despite its puddled illumination. The minutes are hours, and Yunho disappears for some of them, coming back to wave fruit under his nose, to growl in his throat softly when Changmin just allows his head to loll to the side, uninterested in the too-tart aroma of the apple in front of him, a scent he shouldn't smell, much less understand. The green skin bursts, pale flesh littering the floor of the cave when he slaps it from Yunho's hand. He expects to be hit, then, draws his chin down in preparation but all he gets is the dry slide of lips across his forehead, the kiss of words that draw uselessly past his ears.
“I couldn't let you go,” they hum, but he doesn't have the will to respond. Because now that he's figured it all out, his very next step is acceptance. One nod, one smile, one word and he's throwing in the towel, looking the impossible in the face and letting it fold him into its mix. So no, he doesn't respond to Yunho, doesn't do anything but sit slumped and avoid the other man's eyes, the wrong shade that's a reminder of another shape entirely, one with fur and fangs and beauty as terrible as it is great. The silence presses in after awhile, their presences overlapping and awkward, each unsure of where the other stands. Changmin's focus is poured into each breath, the in out repeat that takes his time and lulls him into an almost-sleep, a peaceful sort of glazed-over state where it's easy to pretend nothing he's seen in the last 24 hours is true.
“It's different when you're born this way, you know.” Changmin blinks Yunho back into focus and watches as the man gestures, one long arm curving back toward his eyes. He rubs at his temples, angling his head so the light shines in irises, a shade of azure that would absorb Changmin if he let it.
“It's with you from the moment you take your first breath. It's always there, at the back of your mind. The ability. Because, what you saw? The wolf?” A hitching noise, Yunho's knee hitting the ground-he's making himself smaller, trying to appeal to Changmin. “It's not a thing, or an animal, really. It's you, but closer to nature. A little wild, but you.”
“Let me show you.” Yunho's close enough for his breath to shift past Changmin's cheek, for him to hear the hope in the other man's voice. The only reason he turns his head, acknowledges the man-the thing-that saved him, he assures himself, is because of the light. It's a soft glow that doesn't belong to the burning sun above, that is coming from under Yunho's skin, a rush of white that steals away any and all thoughts brimming in the pressure-cooker of his mind. Everything is lit up, Yunho's eyes and mouth, the pads of his fingers and the delicate indentations on either side of his collarbones.
“Let me show you,” Yunho says again, reaching out to touch, the first contact spreading a rush of elation so thick Changmin's vocal chords stutter and he's murmuring nonsense, too caught up in the graze of Yunho's light hands to notice the other man has taken his garblings as a yes. But as the intensity of the radiance increasing, rivaling a star as it collapses, something sounds from the mouth of the cave, a shout of anger and fear.
“Yunho! What the fuck are you doing?”
And just like that, the lights go out. Or Yunho does. Or both. All that crouches in front of Changmin is a man, a beautiful man whose chest rises and falls in a quick pant, who's looking at him, chin cocked, sky eyes full and pleading so openly that his heart clenches, shuddering at the vulnerability there.
“Yunho.”
Changmin catches a flash of a man, a lithe body and cherub lips and down-turned eyes, a face creased with worry, but then Yunho slips past and the new man follows, shaking his head as he turns to follow.
“What are you doing with him, Yunho?” The second man breathes into his words so they're light, lifted by air that undermines their hissed content. “You turned him already? Before he even understands?”
“They caught him, Junsu. Do you know how I found him? Face down in the dirt, and arrow sticking out of his back. They were looking to make a point. They didn't want him to join us.”
“Would he have died?” The glint of steel in the stranger's voice, Junsu, apparently, dulls, fading reluctantly.
“His blood was slowing as I broke his skin. I didn't think he would make it through the night.”
“He did thought.” Wistful now, a little less anxious.
“And he'll be gorgeous. He already is.”
“You and your humans, Yunho. I've never understood the fascination.”
“Because you used to be one.”
They know each other. There's something between the two, not a relationship of lust and carnal need-but a bond of some sort. Their comfort is tangible, the ease with which they slip past conflict and move to joking jibes. They're friends.
“This is going to be rough on him, Yunho.”
“I know.”
“They usually have a month before their first moon.”
“Junsu. I know. Will you stay, help me help him through?”
Help him through? Yunho's tone is ominous, a signifier that something big is hovering just beyond his sight, but all he can focus on now is a rapidly accelerating itch that unfurls savagely just under his skin and muscles, a boiling heat that has him drowning, water water everywhere and not a drop to drink. A puppeteer controls his strings, flinging him this way and that, pounding his body into the ground in hopes to just get away from the sensation that's flaying him alive, the burning flare of agony working its way through every cell. A contortionist would envy the bridge his back imitates, the easy arch it forms as he screams through a particularly excruciating pulse. And like a flash of lightning, a light/dark snap, the pain goes all at once, slipping off to wherever it came from, leaving Changmin shaking on the ground, curled in like a baby, cheeks wet with tears that brush by his lips on the way to his chin. He's cautious, waiting for the second round, a surprise attack that would catch him unaware.
He doesn't hear Yunho come back in, doesn't even notice when the other man's grip wraps around his waist, tugging at the hem of his shirt. All of this is ignored, though, in favor of the sudden attention he pays to his own hands, skin that has taken on an eerie illumination, pale, at first, the intensity increasing as it crawls slowly over his body, absorbing like ink on blank paper.
Get it off, get it off!
“Changmin, it's ok!” More touching that he can't feel, clothes stripped off and now he's writhing, naked, trying to shake off the light that's swallowing him whole.