Circle (3)
Circle
Pairing(s): HaeHyuk, HyukMin
Rating: NC-17
Warning(s): Incest, sex, character death, disturbing themes, gender switch, horror, graphic gore, etc.
Summary: Donghae does everything to protect and care for his twin brother, Hyukjae. No one comes between them. No one.
A life full of lies and deceit and an unconditional love that borders on dangerous; Donghae and Hyukjae are always running away from their dark past, but how long can the twins keep running for?
“I have dreams about drowning.” Hyukjae said quietly, “I’ve had them ever since I was a child. My... my mother drowned herself you see.” Hyukjae’s eyes flickered up to the partition and he could see the priest’s eyes looking back at him.“We get forgiven, don’t we, Father?” Hyukjae asked.
“Of course.”
“I’ve done some bad things. I’m afraid that the dreams are God’s way of telling me that I’m a bad person. I’m afraid it’s his way of warning me that I’ll be punished.” Hyukjae had looked back down, too ashamed to meet the priest’s eye. His fists were balled and his fingernails dug into his palms. No matter how hard he had tried to wash the blood out from underneath his fingernails, still some crimson remained. He dared not put his fingers in his mouth for the sickening taste of copper. Someone else’s blood. “I’m afraid that it doesn’t matter what I do now. I’ve lived a life of lies and deceit; I’m afraid that even if I put an end to it, it won’t matter... God already knows what I am.”
The priest paused before he spoke. “God may know what you are, but he also knows who you are.”
“There’s a difference..?”
“The things that you do do not define who you are. The person inside who has brought you here is who you are. The person who still believes is who you are and our Lord knows that. You must pray.”
“Thank you, Father.”
Hyukjae left the Confessional feeling only slightly better. He sat at the front of the church and prayed silently. There were other people in the church praying too. There was something about being in a church that made Hyukjae feel safe. He liked the smell and the peaceful silence only disturbed by the whispered prayers of others.
Before he left, he lit two candles. He didn’t know how long he sat there, head bowed, eyes closed and lips moving in silent prayer but when he left, the afternoon heat was intense. He liked the warm breeze it provided. He was barely out of the church grounds when he heard someone call his name. He turned to see a young man he recognised. The man was tall and slender looking. His dark eyes were fixed on Hyukjae and his plump lips formed a lopsided smile. His name was Kyuhyun.
“Hello, hyung,” he said, bowing awkwardly. Kyuhyun was always rather awkward in a boyish, cute way.
Hyukjae smiled weakly at Kyuhyun. He knew him from work - Kyuhyun worked for the IT maintenance department and always had to come and sort things out when they went wrong. Hyukjae didn’t think that he was particularly good at making friends but he somehow always managed to accumulate them. He wasn’t sure how it had happened but before he knew it, Hyukjae found himself going out after work with Kyuhyun for drinks, even though Hyukjae had never touched a drop of alcohol in his life and didn’t intend to.
“How are you?” Kyuhyun asked, “are you feeling better?”
“Pardon?”
“Sungmin told me that you were unwell.”
“Oh... Oh I feel better now. Thank you.”
Kyuhyun nodded, his thick bangs falling over his large eyes. Hyukjae smiled when he asked the inevitable question, “have you seen Sungmin lately?”
Kyuhyun always asked after Sungmin, it was cute really but Sungmin seemed oblivious to Kyuhyun’s affections. Maybe she wasn’t interested in him because he didn’t really appreciate her sweets, Kyuhyun prefered cold noodles or bulgogi, he drank beer instead of tea and didn’t understand anything that wasn’t about computers or video games.
“Not since when she came over to see me the other day.”
Kyuhyun nodded, his chubby cheeks flushing. “Well... I’m glad you’re better... I, umm... I’m going to go inside.” He said, gesturing vaguely at the church, “have you already been? We could go together-”
“I’ve just finished. I have to get home. I’ll see you at work. Bye, Kyuhyun.”
Kyuhyun bowed awkwardly again and stumbled a little over his own feet as he turned to go into the church’s grounds. Hyukjae smiled to himself, then as quickly as it had appeared on his face, it vanished. How could he smile after all he had done? He knew that, while events in one’s past can scar them, they didn’t always live in the forefront of one’s mind, sometimes, they could go whole days without thinking about the event even once. But he was smiling, laughing again like nothing had happened. Donghae wanted things to be normal and Hyukjae himself did too but... For a split second, he thought about following Kyuhyun back into the church and praying for forgiveness all over again. God knew who he was but what if who he was was a monster?
****
Donghae felt the empty space of the bed beside him where Hyukjae should have been It was early but a weekend. Hyukjae must have gone to church. Donghae didn’t believe in God. He hadn’t believed in God since they had lived in their first house back when they were kids.
Their old house was perfect, Donghae remembered the garden; their father liked to garden. He took inspiration for the beautiful gardens of Japan; they used to keep fish and have pretty lanterns. Their father would let Donghae help take care of the bonsai trees; he didn’t trust him with the fish ever since he went camping with Hyukjae and their cousins one weekend and hadn’t remembered to leave them any food - by the time he returned, they were all dead and floating on the surface. Donghae would spend a lot of his time in the garden with his father, working hard to make it look as beautiful as possible to impress his mother and Hyukjae.
Hyukjae had never been the outdoors type, he liked reading manhwa in the comfort of their bedroom and playing with stuffed toys. As he grew older, he acquired a taste for soccer, a taste perhaps forced upon him by Donghae who had played on the school team during junior and high school. One day he had returned home from soccer practise and announced that he was never going to play again. He never told Hyukjae why.
He missed the old house because of the way it smelled, woody and fragrant. Sometimes he could still smell it on Hyukjae when he nuzzled into his hair or kissed his neck. When he closed his eyes, he could remember everything about it, how they had made collages out of candy wrappers that their mother had stuck to the refrigerator to the smell when he opened the large toy box their father had made for them. He remembered watching rain fall out of the bedroom window with Hyukjae. They would hold hands and listen to the sound of it against the pane.
It had rained on the day their mother had died. Donghae had been in the garden when the rain suddenly came down hard yet soft. Hyukjae had been inside, he’d fallen asleep watching TV. It was cold. It was fall. When Donghae had come inside, it struck him that their mother hadn’t been to see either of them since they had come home from school. She had told them that she was going to take a bath but that had seemed like an awful long time ago. Sometimes she was like that, she’d spend time alone; their father had always told them that she needed it because she worked so hard and was stressed.
He remembered it vividly, the hallway was dimly lit and he could hear the rush of running water coming from the bathroom, the floor was wet and it soaked Donghae’s socks through to his feet. The hallway suddenly seemed longer than it was, stretching out before him forever.
He didn’t remember opening the door but he remembered it swinging open and seeing the tub overflowing before him, the water was a strange colour, swirls of red danced on its surface. She floated like the waterlilies in the garden pond; her face was serene and her skin had lost its colour. She was like a ghost. A beautiful ghost but a ghost nonetheless.
Donghae remembered turning the taps off. The water was running ice cold. Donghae knew; he didn’t have to touch her, didn’t have to check, he just knew that she was dead. He remembered not feeling afraid or panicked, he was positively calm, just like the expression on his mother’s face.
He remembered how his hands were cold when they touched Hyukjae to wake him. Hyukjae looked up at him blurrily. His skin was warm. He smiled sleepily but it faded as he looked up at his brother. “Donghae?”
Donghae remembered the way his voice cracked. “It’s... mum. She’s dead.”
He didn’t cry right away and that was something that he kept to himself. Something that shamed him greatly. Hyukjae had immediately begun wailing. “What?! Where is she?!”
Donghae shook his head sharply, like a dog being irritated by a wasp. Hyukjae had seen his eyes flicker back to the hallway and Hyukjae jumped to his feet, tears shining bright in his eyes.
“Don’t go in there.” Donghae told Hyukjae but he ignored him and ran. Donghae heard his brother shriek out in horror, shock and misery. He howled. Donghae covered his ears, his whole body was shaking but he wasn’t thinking, it was like his mind had frozen. Hyukjae called the ambulance. Donghae was still standing in the exact spot when the paramedics got there. Their father was called. When he arrived, he held Donghae tight, that’s when he cried; he cried because he should've done something, he had been in the garden all that time and she had been in the bathroom... Donghae had let his brother and his father down. This was his fault.
They had been in the hospital when Donghae’s eyes finally met with his twin’s. Hyukjae hadn’t stopped crying, his eyes were red. Donghae knew that Hyukjae was thinking the same thing, that it was his fault because he had been asleep in the living room all that time. Hyukjae had confessed to him as they had lay in bed together later on that night that he did feel guilty, so very guilty.
For months afterwards, Hyukjae suffered from night terrors. He didn’t use that bathroom in their house to the point where he made himself ill , waiting until he was at school or using public restrooms and he certainly didn’t bathe; he told Donghae that he had nightmares of white, withered hands reaching up from the plughole, grabbing his ankles and pulling him down the drain.
Their father suffered greatly. He became a virtual recluse and a heavy drinker, threatening Donghae and Hyukjae with violence and on several occasions, he had grabbed Hyukjae roughly and bruised him when Hyukjae had been unable to stop crying or misbehaved through grief. Donghae tended to the garden but without his father’s input, it floundered. The fish died and the plants wilted.
Donghae had never been close with his mother, she had always been cold and distant with them. He later learned that she suffered severely from bipolar disorder, only worsened by post natal depression. She’d never sought help and had only spiralled as the years progressed. She loved her family but she didn’t love herself and in the end, that’s probably what would have been most important. She worked hard to support her family, she took care of her sons and her husband but had never really got the hang of taking care of herself.
Three weeks later, their father committed suicide too. They went to live with their aunt, uncle and their cousins. Hyukjae had never liked living with his cousins. Their aunt and uncle were kind enough but Heechul who was two years older than them, enjoyed teasing him despite the circumstances. Ryeowook was nice, younger than Hyukjae and Donghae by two years, but he told on Hyukjae when he accidentally wet the bed once - still having issues with bathrooms.
It was when they reached fourteen that they moved on again, into a children’s home. Neither of them were sad to go.
Donghae stopped believing in God at this point. Maybe there was a reason for orphaning two young boys but whatever that reason was, Donghae failed to understand it. Hyukjae still went to church. He prayed every day. Donghae was almost jealous at Hyukjae’s diligence.
He could hear voices outside, Hyukjae and their neighbour, Jungsoo. Jungsoo meddled in people’s affairs; probably because his husband worked away so much he had no affairs of his own to be concerned with. He was harmless enough. Jungsoo might have been a friend of Hyukjae’s but on many occasions he had mistaken Donghae for his twin, something the pair were used to. Donghae had always been annoyed that Sungmin could tell them apart. He knew what a woman like her wanted - taking advantage of an innocent, orphaned young man would be easy for someone like her. Hyukjae had never been the cleverest of the pair of them so it didn’t surprise Donghae that Hyukjae hadn’t seen how poisonous she was.
He heard the front door close and Hyukjae’s footsteps on the stairs. When he came into the bedroom, he looked troubled slightly. He crawled onto the bed beside Donghae and nestled into him. He fit to Donghae like a jigsaw.
“How was church?” Donghae asked, putting an arm around Hyukjae. His hand massaged his brother’s back, feeling how tense every muscle beneath the skin was.
“It was okay.” Hyukjae said into Donghae’s chest, “I went to confession. Don’t worry, I didn’t say anything just... Just that I was afraid of God’s judgement.”
Donghae sighed and closed his eyes so that Hyukjae didn’t have to see the look in them.
“I know you don’t care but I do. I want both of our souls to be saved.”
Donghae wasn’t sure what to say to this. He couldn’t say the truth, that if there was a hell, he was sure that both of them would burn in it for eternity for all the things they had done.
“I don’t want to spend the rest of my life looking over my shoulder, Donghae.”
“It’s over now, Hyuk. I promise you.”
Hyukjae sighed. “It’s just something the priest said...”
Donghae scoffed.
“Don’t!” Hyukjae said indignantly, sitting up. “Don’t laugh! I don’t laugh at you.”
“I’m not laughing at you.”
Hyukjae lay back down, this time on his stomach and buried his head in the sheets. Donghae sighed and got out of bed. He could still see Jungsoo outside, talking to a different neighbour. He wondered whether something he had said had upset Hyukjae somehow. Maybe he wasn’t protecting Hyukjae the best he could - if he had been protecting Hyukjae properly then none of this had happened in the first place. The more Donghae thought about it, the more he realised that he was at the root of a lot of things that had gone wrong in their life.
Pairing(s): HaeHyuk, HyukMin
Rating: NC-17
Warning(s): Incest, sex, character death, disturbing themes, gender switch, horror, graphic gore, etc.
Summary: Donghae does everything to protect and care for his twin brother, Hyukjae. No one comes between them. No one.
A life full of lies and deceit and an unconditional love that borders on dangerous; Donghae and Hyukjae are always running away from their dark past, but how long can the twins keep running for?
“I have dreams about drowning.” Hyukjae said quietly, “I’ve had them ever since I was a child. My... my mother drowned herself you see.” Hyukjae’s eyes flickered up to the partition and he could see the priest’s eyes looking back at him.“We get forgiven, don’t we, Father?” Hyukjae asked.
“Of course.”
“I’ve done some bad things. I’m afraid that the dreams are God’s way of telling me that I’m a bad person. I’m afraid it’s his way of warning me that I’ll be punished.” Hyukjae had looked back down, too ashamed to meet the priest’s eye. His fists were balled and his fingernails dug into his palms. No matter how hard he had tried to wash the blood out from underneath his fingernails, still some crimson remained. He dared not put his fingers in his mouth for the sickening taste of copper. Someone else’s blood. “I’m afraid that it doesn’t matter what I do now. I’ve lived a life of lies and deceit; I’m afraid that even if I put an end to it, it won’t matter... God already knows what I am.”
The priest paused before he spoke. “God may know what you are, but he also knows who you are.”
“There’s a difference..?”
“The things that you do do not define who you are. The person inside who has brought you here is who you are. The person who still believes is who you are and our Lord knows that. You must pray.”
“Thank you, Father.”
Hyukjae left the Confessional feeling only slightly better. He sat at the front of the church and prayed silently. There were other people in the church praying too. There was something about being in a church that made Hyukjae feel safe. He liked the smell and the peaceful silence only disturbed by the whispered prayers of others.
Before he left, he lit two candles. He didn’t know how long he sat there, head bowed, eyes closed and lips moving in silent prayer but when he left, the afternoon heat was intense. He liked the warm breeze it provided. He was barely out of the church grounds when he heard someone call his name. He turned to see a young man he recognised. The man was tall and slender looking. His dark eyes were fixed on Hyukjae and his plump lips formed a lopsided smile. His name was Kyuhyun.
“Hello, hyung,” he said, bowing awkwardly. Kyuhyun was always rather awkward in a boyish, cute way.
Hyukjae smiled weakly at Kyuhyun. He knew him from work - Kyuhyun worked for the IT maintenance department and always had to come and sort things out when they went wrong. Hyukjae didn’t think that he was particularly good at making friends but he somehow always managed to accumulate them. He wasn’t sure how it had happened but before he knew it, Hyukjae found himself going out after work with Kyuhyun for drinks, even though Hyukjae had never touched a drop of alcohol in his life and didn’t intend to.
“How are you?” Kyuhyun asked, “are you feeling better?”
“Pardon?”
“Sungmin told me that you were unwell.”
“Oh... Oh I feel better now. Thank you.”
Kyuhyun nodded, his thick bangs falling over his large eyes. Hyukjae smiled when he asked the inevitable question, “have you seen Sungmin lately?”
Kyuhyun always asked after Sungmin, it was cute really but Sungmin seemed oblivious to Kyuhyun’s affections. Maybe she wasn’t interested in him because he didn’t really appreciate her sweets, Kyuhyun prefered cold noodles or bulgogi, he drank beer instead of tea and didn’t understand anything that wasn’t about computers or video games.
“Not since when she came over to see me the other day.”
Kyuhyun nodded, his chubby cheeks flushing. “Well... I’m glad you’re better... I, umm... I’m going to go inside.” He said, gesturing vaguely at the church, “have you already been? We could go together-”
“I’ve just finished. I have to get home. I’ll see you at work. Bye, Kyuhyun.”
Kyuhyun bowed awkwardly again and stumbled a little over his own feet as he turned to go into the church’s grounds. Hyukjae smiled to himself, then as quickly as it had appeared on his face, it vanished. How could he smile after all he had done? He knew that, while events in one’s past can scar them, they didn’t always live in the forefront of one’s mind, sometimes, they could go whole days without thinking about the event even once. But he was smiling, laughing again like nothing had happened. Donghae wanted things to be normal and Hyukjae himself did too but... For a split second, he thought about following Kyuhyun back into the church and praying for forgiveness all over again. God knew who he was but what if who he was was a monster?
****
Donghae felt the empty space of the bed beside him where Hyukjae should have been It was early but a weekend. Hyukjae must have gone to church. Donghae didn’t believe in God. He hadn’t believed in God since they had lived in their first house back when they were kids.
Their old house was perfect, Donghae remembered the garden; their father liked to garden. He took inspiration for the beautiful gardens of Japan; they used to keep fish and have pretty lanterns. Their father would let Donghae help take care of the bonsai trees; he didn’t trust him with the fish ever since he went camping with Hyukjae and their cousins one weekend and hadn’t remembered to leave them any food - by the time he returned, they were all dead and floating on the surface. Donghae would spend a lot of his time in the garden with his father, working hard to make it look as beautiful as possible to impress his mother and Hyukjae.
Hyukjae had never been the outdoors type, he liked reading manhwa in the comfort of their bedroom and playing with stuffed toys. As he grew older, he acquired a taste for soccer, a taste perhaps forced upon him by Donghae who had played on the school team during junior and high school. One day he had returned home from soccer practise and announced that he was never going to play again. He never told Hyukjae why.
He missed the old house because of the way it smelled, woody and fragrant. Sometimes he could still smell it on Hyukjae when he nuzzled into his hair or kissed his neck. When he closed his eyes, he could remember everything about it, how they had made collages out of candy wrappers that their mother had stuck to the refrigerator to the smell when he opened the large toy box their father had made for them. He remembered watching rain fall out of the bedroom window with Hyukjae. They would hold hands and listen to the sound of it against the pane.
It had rained on the day their mother had died. Donghae had been in the garden when the rain suddenly came down hard yet soft. Hyukjae had been inside, he’d fallen asleep watching TV. It was cold. It was fall. When Donghae had come inside, it struck him that their mother hadn’t been to see either of them since they had come home from school. She had told them that she was going to take a bath but that had seemed like an awful long time ago. Sometimes she was like that, she’d spend time alone; their father had always told them that she needed it because she worked so hard and was stressed.
He remembered it vividly, the hallway was dimly lit and he could hear the rush of running water coming from the bathroom, the floor was wet and it soaked Donghae’s socks through to his feet. The hallway suddenly seemed longer than it was, stretching out before him forever.
He didn’t remember opening the door but he remembered it swinging open and seeing the tub overflowing before him, the water was a strange colour, swirls of red danced on its surface. She floated like the waterlilies in the garden pond; her face was serene and her skin had lost its colour. She was like a ghost. A beautiful ghost but a ghost nonetheless.
Donghae remembered turning the taps off. The water was running ice cold. Donghae knew; he didn’t have to touch her, didn’t have to check, he just knew that she was dead. He remembered not feeling afraid or panicked, he was positively calm, just like the expression on his mother’s face.
He remembered how his hands were cold when they touched Hyukjae to wake him. Hyukjae looked up at him blurrily. His skin was warm. He smiled sleepily but it faded as he looked up at his brother. “Donghae?”
Donghae remembered the way his voice cracked. “It’s... mum. She’s dead.”
He didn’t cry right away and that was something that he kept to himself. Something that shamed him greatly. Hyukjae had immediately begun wailing. “What?! Where is she?!”
Donghae shook his head sharply, like a dog being irritated by a wasp. Hyukjae had seen his eyes flicker back to the hallway and Hyukjae jumped to his feet, tears shining bright in his eyes.
“Don’t go in there.” Donghae told Hyukjae but he ignored him and ran. Donghae heard his brother shriek out in horror, shock and misery. He howled. Donghae covered his ears, his whole body was shaking but he wasn’t thinking, it was like his mind had frozen. Hyukjae called the ambulance. Donghae was still standing in the exact spot when the paramedics got there. Their father was called. When he arrived, he held Donghae tight, that’s when he cried; he cried because he should've done something, he had been in the garden all that time and she had been in the bathroom... Donghae had let his brother and his father down. This was his fault.
They had been in the hospital when Donghae’s eyes finally met with his twin’s. Hyukjae hadn’t stopped crying, his eyes were red. Donghae knew that Hyukjae was thinking the same thing, that it was his fault because he had been asleep in the living room all that time. Hyukjae had confessed to him as they had lay in bed together later on that night that he did feel guilty, so very guilty.
For months afterwards, Hyukjae suffered from night terrors. He didn’t use that bathroom in their house to the point where he made himself ill , waiting until he was at school or using public restrooms and he certainly didn’t bathe; he told Donghae that he had nightmares of white, withered hands reaching up from the plughole, grabbing his ankles and pulling him down the drain.
Their father suffered greatly. He became a virtual recluse and a heavy drinker, threatening Donghae and Hyukjae with violence and on several occasions, he had grabbed Hyukjae roughly and bruised him when Hyukjae had been unable to stop crying or misbehaved through grief. Donghae tended to the garden but without his father’s input, it floundered. The fish died and the plants wilted.
Donghae had never been close with his mother, she had always been cold and distant with them. He later learned that she suffered severely from bipolar disorder, only worsened by post natal depression. She’d never sought help and had only spiralled as the years progressed. She loved her family but she didn’t love herself and in the end, that’s probably what would have been most important. She worked hard to support her family, she took care of her sons and her husband but had never really got the hang of taking care of herself.
Three weeks later, their father committed suicide too. They went to live with their aunt, uncle and their cousins. Hyukjae had never liked living with his cousins. Their aunt and uncle were kind enough but Heechul who was two years older than them, enjoyed teasing him despite the circumstances. Ryeowook was nice, younger than Hyukjae and Donghae by two years, but he told on Hyukjae when he accidentally wet the bed once - still having issues with bathrooms.
It was when they reached fourteen that they moved on again, into a children’s home. Neither of them were sad to go.
Donghae stopped believing in God at this point. Maybe there was a reason for orphaning two young boys but whatever that reason was, Donghae failed to understand it. Hyukjae still went to church. He prayed every day. Donghae was almost jealous at Hyukjae’s diligence.
He could hear voices outside, Hyukjae and their neighbour, Jungsoo. Jungsoo meddled in people’s affairs; probably because his husband worked away so much he had no affairs of his own to be concerned with. He was harmless enough. Jungsoo might have been a friend of Hyukjae’s but on many occasions he had mistaken Donghae for his twin, something the pair were used to. Donghae had always been annoyed that Sungmin could tell them apart. He knew what a woman like her wanted - taking advantage of an innocent, orphaned young man would be easy for someone like her. Hyukjae had never been the cleverest of the pair of them so it didn’t surprise Donghae that Hyukjae hadn’t seen how poisonous she was.
He heard the front door close and Hyukjae’s footsteps on the stairs. When he came into the bedroom, he looked troubled slightly. He crawled onto the bed beside Donghae and nestled into him. He fit to Donghae like a jigsaw.
“How was church?” Donghae asked, putting an arm around Hyukjae. His hand massaged his brother’s back, feeling how tense every muscle beneath the skin was.
“It was okay.” Hyukjae said into Donghae’s chest, “I went to confession. Don’t worry, I didn’t say anything just... Just that I was afraid of God’s judgement.”
Donghae sighed and closed his eyes so that Hyukjae didn’t have to see the look in them.
“I know you don’t care but I do. I want both of our souls to be saved.”
Donghae wasn’t sure what to say to this. He couldn’t say the truth, that if there was a hell, he was sure that both of them would burn in it for eternity for all the things they had done.
“I don’t want to spend the rest of my life looking over my shoulder, Donghae.”
“It’s over now, Hyuk. I promise you.”
Hyukjae sighed. “It’s just something the priest said...”
Donghae scoffed.
“Don’t!” Hyukjae said indignantly, sitting up. “Don’t laugh! I don’t laugh at you.”
“I’m not laughing at you.”
Hyukjae lay back down, this time on his stomach and buried his head in the sheets. Donghae sighed and got out of bed. He could still see Jungsoo outside, talking to a different neighbour. He wondered whether something he had said had upset Hyukjae somehow. Maybe he wasn’t protecting Hyukjae the best he could - if he had been protecting Hyukjae properly then none of this had happened in the first place. The more Donghae thought about it, the more he realised that he was at the root of a lot of things that had gone wrong in their life.