Entry #21 (PART 1)
Title: All The Colours Of Your Rainbow
Pairing: KyuHae, unrequited!QMi. Romance/Fantasy.
Rating: NC-17
Summary: Life’s hard being a kid with wings and the ability to see all the true colours of the world, especially when your parents think you’re a demon. As Kyuhyun grows up, he finds it only gets worse before it gets better.
Kyuhyun gives himself wings when he’s eight years old.
Kyuhyun is a good boy. Every Sunday he goes to church with his parents. He believes in God and sings hymns, and gets told he has a lovely little voice, which makes him proud. His father passes him the Bible, and his mother strokes his hair while she reads Exodus or Luke or whatever the minister is reciting that day, and Kyuhyun bows his head and prays.
He prays for sunshine, and for those new roller blades for Christmas, and for Sungmin to stop going off with Hyukjae because it’s annoying, and Hyukjae already has a best friend, and Kyuhyun doesn’t want to be alone. Kyuhyun prays for miracles.
At the end of the service, his parents go home. He stays and helps the minister tidy up while his mother makes dinner and his dad reads the daily newspaper, because the minister is a trusted friend, a man of God, and Kyuhyun’s parents want him to grow up to have Responsibility and Humility. Kyuhyun doesn’t know what these things are, but he wants them too, because then his parents will be happy with him.
They start at the front of the church, at the font, and the minister says, every time, “This water is holy, Kyuhyun. The Lord himself blessed this water.” Kyuhyun wonders what would happen if he drank the water, because surely water is water, and even if God blessed it, it would only turn into wine, wouldn’t it? That’s what the Bible says. Or Kyuhyun could walk on it, but maybe there’s not enough water in the font for him to do that.
One day the minister goes into the back room of the church. The phone had been ringing insistently for over ten minutes and he’d finally decided to stop ignoring it, saying, “Would you sort out the leaflets for me while I take this call?” as he leaves.
Kyuhyun nods, and a few seconds later, he hears the minister mumbling to someone, voice too low for him to make out the words. Kyuhyun looks at the leaflets and he looks at the holy water, agonising over the decision because the minister said to tidy, but this chance may not come along again, and he wants to know what’s so special about water.
Curiosity gets the better of him, and he walks hurriedly to the font, looking over his shoulder to check the minister’s not coming back.
He doesn’t bother using his hands, just steps onto the font’s concrete base and leans over the bowl. He hopes it doesn’t turn to wine because wine doesn’t taste very nice, all bitter and gross, and the fumes from his dad’s wine glasses make his head spin and then he feels sick.
Hesitant now, he dips his face in the water until his head is completely submerged. It’s cold, colder than he’d thought it would be, and when he opens his eyes he sees the bottom of the bowl and nothing else. It’s hard to drink under water, but he manages, swallowing a gulp of it. It tastes musty. He waits for a few seconds more, then, when nothing happens, starts drawing back, disappointed.
He’s just thinking that God needs to work on his blessings when the pain starts wrenching at his back. Shocked, he jerks his head completely out of the water, but some strange force yanks it back in, like invisible hands are pulling at his hair. Eyes wide, he claws at the font, frantically trying to free himself. A few of his nails break into the stone but he barely feels it, not compared to the agonising burn running in two vertical lines down his back, so horrific he screams, bubbles pouring out of his mouth and bursting at the surface.
He’s on fire, his back is going to crumble into ash, God’s punishing him for touching the water, he’s going to die because he can’t breathe, and he can’t get his head out of the water.
He’s going to drown and burn to death at the same time.
Just as he’s about to inhale, a hand clasps onto each of his arms, ceasing their desperate scrabbling at the font, and Kyuhyun finds himself rising out of the water, tossing his head back and taking in the biggest breath he can, before opening his mouth and wailing with the pain of it all.
Someone lies him down on the floor of the church, on his stomach, and Kyuhyun has to tell them he needs to go on his back, because the ground is cold and his back is burning up, but then the agony multiplies by ten thousand and his vocal chords stop working. His body strains, back arching like a bow, arms stretching out in front of him, cuts forming at the side of his mouth it’s open so wide, and he passes out to a new, strange weight on his back and an odd fluttering sound in his ears.
When he wakes up, the pain has gone. His t-shirt lies in tatters around him and his spine is curving backwards slightly because there’s something on his back now, but he doesn’t care. His mother’s arms are holding him and she smells warm like laundry detergent, familiar and safe, and he’s crying into her dress before he can tell himself to be a big boy.
“There, there,” she says, haphazardly patting at his hair. There’s a little patch of wet forming in the material of her dress. Kyuhyun clutches at it. His father is talking to the minister, pacing up and down the aisle, footsteps echoing.
“- you can’t tell anyone, they’d crucify him. Maybe literally. I just-“
“I won’t. The Lord has performed this miracle. It is not for the world to gaze upon and ridicule.”
“Thank you. Thank you. We’re going to take him home. Please don’t tell-“
“You have my word.”
“Thanks. Thank you.”
Kyuhyun whimpers, their talk confusing. He’s tired, and aftershocks of pain are still trembling up and down his limbs. His back feels inflamed and sore, nothing compared to earlier, but enough to make him cling to his mother and whisper, “I want to go to sleep.”
She cards her fingers through his hair, the gesture calming even though she’s tugging too hard, and hoists him more securely into her arms. She always complains that he’s getting too old for this treatment now, but he can usually persuade her to carry him around like a baby if he’s feeling sleepy or lazy. He notices that she’s holding him differently to normal, wrapping her arms around his waist and pressing her palms to the centre of his back. It works. It’s not right, but it works, and Kyuhyun keeps having to blink to stop his eyes falling shut, so he doesn’t say anything.
They get to the car. Instead of placing him in the back like she normally does, his mother lets him sit on her lap as they wait for his father to leave the church. Kyuhyun turns to look out the window and sees his reflection in the glass.
He stops breathing.
Two pure white wings lie folded against his back, so large the tops of them jut above his head, feathers unruffled and smooth. He flexes the muscles in his back and they twitch, edges rising slightly, wingspan increasing, and Kyuhyun gasps. If he pushes just a little more, they’re going to spread fully, and who knows how wide they’d go. They could touch the sky. They could touch the moon. But all they’re going to touch is the sides of the car if he does it in here.
They’re so pretty. Kyuhyun puts his hand on the car window and stares at his reflection all the way home.
He looks like an angel.
--
Kyuhyun’s parents don’t like the wings. They don’t say anything, but Kyuhyun knows. He can tell by their mistrustful glances, the way his father goes to lengths to avoid touching them, how his mother bites her lip whenever Kyuhyun flutters them where she can see.
Kyuhyun loves his wings. When he’s alone in his room he lets them unfold and the edge of each one touches the opposite wall, a veil of light stretching the whole width of the room. Which is, admittedly, not very big, but Kyuhyun is proud because other eight-year-olds would surely have a smaller wingspan than this. He wonders if they’ll grow as he does, or if they’ll stay the same size for the rest of his life. Or if they’ll just drop off one day, as quickly as they came, and he can go back to school and be normal again.
He thinks he’d miss not having to use blankets though, if they did fall off. When he goes to sleep, all he needs to do is put his pyjamas on, get onto the mattress and let his wings wrap around him, far warmer and softer than any duvet, large enough to cover his whole body. Cold is a thing of the past when you’ve got two huge quilts attached to your body.
The first school day after his accident, Kyuhyun’s mother calls the school and tells them he’s going to be withdrawn. They protest it. They don’t want to lose their brightest pupil but she is insistent, explaining that she has gathered all the material needed for home schooling. She isn’t lying. His lessons start a scant hour later, and he learns about multiplying tens and hundreds whilst sitting on the sofa in his living room. He thinks she’d teach better if she’d look up from her notes once in a while though.
The main problem is, the wings won’t retract. Kyuhyun knows there isn’t the remotest chance of him going back to school with them permanently visible, but it’s just not an ability he possesses. He’s tried, straining at them with all his might, but they’d stayed resolutely outside his body, not making the slightest twitch inwards.
His parents don’t let him out at all anymore.
A month or so after that day at the church, Kyuhyun sneaks into the fields by his house one night. He’s been planning this since it happened, how to make sure his parents don’t see him, made all the easier by the fact that they don’t check on him before he goes to sleep anymore. They’d caught him once, enveloped in his wings, and goodnight kisses had been replaced with horrified stares and whispers behind his door.
His dad’s voice. “He’s- he’s a monster.“
“Shh, shh, he’ll hear you, he’s not deaf.”
“We have to get rid of them, we have to, I can’t look at him anymore.”
“He’s still our boy.” His mother’s voice had cracked around the words.
The night is cold, wind rustling in his feathers, blowing them out of place, and Kyuhyun stands in the middle of the field, feeling his wings strain against the holes in his t-shirt - holes his mother had cut into all his clothes - as he expands them as far as he can. He laughs long and loud with how good it feels to finally stop holding it in, to let his body be the way it should.
He tries to beat his wings but it aches, and he only manages to move them a few inches either way before he has to stop. He pants, breath puffing out fast and condensing into little clouds in the cool air as sweat slides down his temples.
“Practice makes perfect,” he says to the emptiness.
For the first time in a month, he’s happy.
--
There is a boy called Donghae, and he’s Kyuhyun’s only friend now. Donghae used to be Hyukjae’s best friend, but then Kyuhyun left school, and now Sungmin and Hyukjae are best friends.
“But I don’t mind, because I hang out with Heechul and Siwon in school now, and I figure we can be best friends at home?”
Kyuhyun’s parents let Donghae come over because Donghae’s mother and father are ‘God-fearing Christians who are raising their child to be the same way’, and that is apparently a trait all of Kyuhyun’s friends must possess now. The only condition is that Kyuhyun can't breathe a word about the wings. They're his little secret, they say, cajoling, betrayed by the slight trace of fear in their eyes that this 'secret' will be out and the world will know what a little freak they have for a son.
Kyuhyun finds it's easier to cope with the sudden loss of affection from his family when he has Donghae to talk to. Donghae spends hours at Kyuhyun's house almost every day, except for when he has homework. Kyuhyun hates those days because he has to sit in his room with nothing but his video games for company, and Sonic is cool but he can't talk back, and Kyuhyun just wants someone to talk to, sometimes.
He has to wear oversized sweaters to hide the wings. His mother, without fail, catches him before he goes outside and forces some baggy monstrosity over his head, no matter how hot it is, and Kyuhyun will sit on tree branches with Donghae all evening, sweating in the heat of the summer nights, wishing he could take the layers off.
Donghae doesn’t ask many questions, hasn’t even asked why Kyuhyun gets home schooled now, but it's only a matter of time before Donghae gets curious about Kyuhyun’s odd clothing choices. "Why do you wear these huge sweaters all the time?" he says, plucking at Kyuhyun's sleeve. "It's boiling out here."
Kyuhyun shifts from side to side, stares at the ridges in his fingernails. A thousand excuses flash through his mind, 'I get cold easily, I don't want bugs to crawl on my skin, to stop me getting sunburn', each one more stupid than the last, until he blurts, "I have wings."
He cringes, expecting Donghae to snort with laughter and tell him to stop kidding. Maybe even glare at him for being such a liar and leave, and then the only thing Kyuhyun would ever speak to again would be his PlayStation.
"Can you show me?" Donghae leans forward, eyes shining, grin genuine, and Kyuhyun blinks. Slowly, he peels the sweater off, folding it: hood, left arm, right arm, horizontal, vertical, just so he doesn't have to make eye contact. Donghae's gasp is telling enough though, and Kyuhyun smiles, unfurls the wings just a little in order to hear the surprised intake of breath again. "They're. Oh my god."
"Do you like them?"
"They’re… so awesome. Can I touch them?"
Kyuhyun hesitates. He wants Donghae to touch them, if it makes him happy, but nobody's hands but his own have ever been within ten centimetres of them before. They're... personal.
"No," he says, and Donghae pouts at him, lower lip trembling. Kyuhyun sighs. "If I get down, I can show you my full wingspan though."
"Okay!" Donghae smiles, flashing his teeth. He shimmies down the tree trunk, landing catlike at the bottom with a grunt. He holds his hand high in the air and Kyuhyun takes it, swinging himself down, unconsciously flaring his wings to make the leap smoother.
"Wow."
"Thank you." Kyuhyun concentrates, grinning, pleased, when his wings respond, rising up and out.
Donghae reaches out to touch one, pulling back and making out like he's coughing into his hand when he remembers Kyuhyun's earlier rejection. "Can you fly?" he says through fake coughs.
Kyuhyun scowls and kicks at the dirt with the toe of his shoe. "Not yet. But I will someday. Someday I'll fly out of my house and away from this place forever."
"You'd leave me?" Donghae pouts again, and Kyuhyun has to fight back a giggle at how frown-y he's gone. "You'd leave me to go and have adventures and fight crime and be a superhero and gets loads of money in rewards?"
This requires no thought process whatsoever. "Absolutely."
Donghae considers. "So would I.”
"My parents think I'd be the villain." Kyuhyun climbs back up the tree, going from branch to branch, higher and higher, using his wings to balance himself, until he's right at the top. "My parents think I'd be the villain but I'd do the right thing, Donghae, I would." He stares directly into the sun until white spots dance in front of his vision. "You believe me, don't you?"
"Yeah. Yeah, I do." Donghae tilts his head to the side, eyes creasing up as he tries to look at Kyuhyun past the brightness streaming through the leaves of the woods. "You sort of look like an angel, you know."
Kyuhyun tilts his head back. He smiles. And then he flies off the top of the tree.
--
"I can't believe you'd be so stupid." Kyuhyun's father's hands clench and unclench at the steering while as he rants. "I can't believe you'd do something so unbelievably selfish. Anyone could have walked by and seen you, and if they'd taken your sweater off, then where would your mother and I be? Everyone would know we'd raised the kid with the fucking wings and you'd be taken into some laboratory to be tested on and we'd have to live with the shame forever."
Kyuhyun buries his head in his hands, blinking fast to push the tears back. If his father is swearing, it means Kyuhyun has been very, very bad. No video games for a week bad, and with his broken leg currently lying unmovable in a cast, he was going to need all the entertainment he could get. He wouldn't be going outside for the considerable future, undoubtedly.
"Why would you do it anyway? What the hell possessed you to jump off a fucking tree?"
Kyuhyun's voice comes out a hoarse whisper. "I felt like I could fly, Dad." It sounds so stupid, even with the wings digging into his back from where they're squashed between him and the car seat. Of course he can't fly. He'd been practicing for ages now, and he still couldn't hover more than an inch off the ground for three seconds. His father was right, he had been stupid, and selfish, and if he wasn't more careful in the future he could find himself being taken away to a Laboratory. Whatever a Laboratory was, it didn't sound good.
Kyuhyun's mother decides to chip in. "Is it that Donghae's influence?" she asks, words short and clipped.
"No!" Kyuhyun lifts his head, giving a beseeching look to the back of his mother's seat. "It was all my idea. He was so shocked when I jumped, and he was so worried..."
Donghae had yelled wordlessly as Kyuhyun had hurtled to the ground. He'd all but sprinted to Kyuhyun's side, kneeling down and shaking his shoulders, shouting his name to wake him up.
"My sweater," Kyuhyun croaked, flicking a wing towards it. He needed to get it on and fast, before anyone came along.
Donghae laughed, unbelieving. "You care about your sweater when your leg's all messed up like that?" Nonetheless, he'd manoeuvred it over Kyuhyun's head without jarring him too much, worrying at his lip all the while.
“Thanks.”
“We need to get you home.” Donghae dug through his pockets until he found his phone. He poised his fingers above the keypad. “What’s your house number?”
“Please don’t ring them…” At a look from Donghae, Kyuhyun trailed off, closed his eyes. Acquiescing, he recited the number and Donghae tapped it into the phone. Kyuhyun’s parents were going to kill him. Kyuhyun was actually going to die for this.
They’d turned up, white-faced, not two minutes later. They knelt next to him, casting furtive looks into the trees as if people were hiding there, waiting to jump out and snatch Kyuhyun’s clothes and run off with them, revealing his deformity.
“What happened?”
Before Kyuhyun could communicate, no, no, don’t, with his eyes, Donghae had started babbling. “He just jumped out of the tree! It was so scary, I thought he was a goner, I thought he was definitely dead; it’s so high up, how is he alive? I’m so glad he’s not hurt, I mean, he’s hurt, his leg is all funny, but he’s not really hurt, it could have been a lot worse. Are you gonna take him to the hospital, Mrs Cho? Can I come? Please? Can I sign the cast too?”
Kyuhyun’s mother just stood there, blank and treacherous as a calm sea, and Kyuhyun let his forehead rest on the soil. He could hear his father puffing out measured breaths of air, heard Donghae’s talk fading into nothingness, and tried not to think about what he was in for once Donghae was out of sight.
“Maybe another time,” Kyuhyun’s mother had said.
“Another time Kyuhyun’s hurt?”
She ignored this. “I’ll ring your mother, get her to pick you up.” She took Donghae’s hand and led him out of the forest. Kyuhyun felt the vibration of his father’s footsteps approaching him through his head. Vibrations of Doom, he thought, and laughed inwardly. His leg really hurt.
His father grabbed his arm and hoisted him roughly off the ground. Kyuhyun’s leg stuttered over the ground and he gasped as the pain spiked and flared.
“I’ll deal with you later,” his father hissed, lifting Kyuhyun into his arms. “Just as soon as I pay your medical bills.”
Standing awkwardly outside his house, hip cocked, weight resting on his good leg, Kyuhyun thinks his dad has more than delivered on his promise. He doesn’t look like he’s going to run out of steam any time soon though, so Kyuhyun bites his lip and prepares himself for the inevitable blow.
Kyuhyun leans backwards, making space between himself and the man in front of him that only fills up again just as quickly as he crowds Kyuhyun against the side of the car. When his father speaks, his voice is quiet and firm, as though he’s speaking the Gospel of John and wants Kyuhyun to believe every word. “Your wings are useless, Kyuhyun. They don’t do anything. They just hang there, for all the world to see, like some disgusting testament to your abnormality. And you are abnormal, boy. Mark my words; the Lord will not let you into Heaven. You won’t pass through the Gates, descend the Stairs, sit with Christ, because even when you look like an Angel, I know that you are nothing but a Demon, and He… He will know that too.”
Kyuhyun watches his father stride into the house, his mother trailing his steps. A few tears starts to fall down his face, but he doesn’t let them go far, wiping them away with the back of his hand so roughly he leaves little red patches on his skin.
There’s a sudden ache in his right wing. Kyuhyun frowns, scrabbles at the edge of his clothes and skitters his hand up his back until he finds the sore spot. Something comes away in his fingers, a residual twinge, and Kyuhyun pulls his hand out to see a feather, dark grey at the edges, curling and withering in his palm.
Weird, he thinks, pocketing it. That’s never happened before.
--
He should have known the water at dinner had something in it. It had tasted so odd, but they’d said - no, promised - that there was nothing wrong with it, that he was just being stupid. And he’d been stupid for believing them, because now he can’t move his arms and legs and the room’s spinning so he can’t focus and the ceiling’s raining all over him. Little drops of water making rainbows in the air as the candlelight shines on them. It’s pretty.
Kyuhyun squeezes his eyes shut tight.
There are noises around him. Blurring, one moment sliding into the next. He hears something that sounds like, “Powwrrrcrriiiiisssttcompeellssyou,” and he realises with a muffled shock, as though it’s hitting him through a casing of cotton wool, that his parents are finally trying to exorcise him.
Kyuhyun opens his eyes and, with great effort, manages to hone in on the man in his room. He’s pacing around the bed, leaving a smudged echo of himself in his wake like someone had taken Kyuhyun’s vision and smeared it to the side. Hands in wet paint. The guy has something in his hand. Kyuhyun notices belatedly that it’s full of water, and then his eyes are stinging and he closes them again. He attempts to fight down the panic but it keeps clawing up his throat and his mouth won’t work to swallow it down.
He whimpers.
It attracts the attention of the man, who smothers a gasp and flicks more water, ducking his hand in the water faster than before, muttering a litany of words under his breath. Christ, Christ, Christ, he says. Kyuhyun fights at the ropes around his wrists. There’s pain building in his back, a deep, throbbing ache, and the urge to spread his wings to full mast is almost overwhelming. They spasm underneath him, bending and folding, and Kyuhyun arches his spine and screams, screams as a cracking noise splits the air and his wings burst out, ripping the ropes to shreds.
The priest or whatever the hell he is doesn’t move, fear freezing him in place. Kyuhyun looks at his florid, hypocritical face and feels the anger rise in him, an inexorable wave of howdarehehowdarehehowdarehe and his wings begin to tremble, hummingbird fast, until he’s rising up and hovering, wraith-like, in the corner of the ceiling.
His vision starts flickering as though he’s winking with his right eye then his left, minute changes in colour and perspective, barely noticeable.
These eyes are not his own.
The priest opens his mouth, molars and tongue and bubbles of saliva; rasps wordlessly. Kyuhyun’s wings ripple and the wave crashes, rage threatening to drown him at the ugly sound, so fucking hideous; disgusting human noises. He sees the man as though through water, a system of mucus, bronchioles, swallowing and gulping, fine mist spray of spit on his lips. Kyuhyun’s mind lurches.
“Your eyes!” the priest shrieks. Kyuhyun flinches, and something beyond his control reaches out his arm and lashes at the man’s face. The priest screams, blood trickling from his broken mouth, mingling with the sweat on his pale fleshy face. His arms flail around uselessly at the air in front of him, but Kyuhyun has already retreated. “Monster!” He makes a dive for the door, hands shaking so hard the door handle rattles but doesn’t turn. “Demon. Demon. Fuck this!”
“Boo,” Kyuhyun says, and the consequential adrenaline rush allows the priest to wrench the door open and flee down the hallway, sweating and bleeding profanities. Kyuhyun watches the mud brown trail he leaves behind fade into the air. Smoke tainting the atmosphere. Invisible. Kyuhyun’s eyes click back into normality and he throws his fist into the wall. It leaves a dent, but doesn’t hurt too much. He enjoys the cool rush of air as his wings stop vibrating and he hits the bed again, then turns his face into his fear-smelling pillows and cries.
Later his parents will force their way into his room, past the chest of drawers he pushes against the door, past his will for them to leave him alone, and they will shout at him for being a demon and for smashing the top of the wall in, you freak, and how did you even get up that high? They will deprive him of food for a day or two to teach him a lesson, and then it will be back to his regularly scheduled programming.
Kyuhyun brushes the blackened feathers off the bed. They crumble into dust on the floor.
--
Kyuhyun thinks a little differently about things after that. He talks back less, hates a little more; his mind is always preoccupied with the image of his wings gone black around the edges, even when he’s indulging in his only escape - Donghae. He is still the only vice Kyuhyun’s parents allow him, on the proviso that Kyuhyun never breathes a word about ‘his deformities’. It makes him laugh to think how they’d react if they knew he’d told Donghae barely two months after it had happened. They’d go batshit. Worse than batshit. Psycho.
In books, they say you’re only supposed to see how ugly the world is when you’re old. Kyuhyun is ten and a half and all he sees is the evil and the cruelty and the hate wherever he looks, and it isn’t fair. He wishes he’d never been so curious that day. He wishes he’d never had to go to church. He wishes God didn’t exist to curse him like this. He wishes he couldn’t see the filth everyhere, even in Donghae now, but he can. It’s hovering there, underneath the surface, just waiting for Donghae to grow up so it can make him like all the others. The older Donghae gets, the more the violence-black and the lust-red swirls up to cling to the deep blue of his Colour.
If he Focuses, the Colours rise up from everyone like heavy translucent clouds. Once, he and Donghae had sat on a park bench and Kyuhyun had told him the Colours of everyone who had walked by. Pink, green, orange, aquamarine, crimson, navy. Sometimes it changes when things happen. Kyuhyun has watched the Colour of a girl getting kissed by her boyfriend change from grass green to mint within the space of two seconds. He’s also seen a child’s sky blue Colour turn to anguished purple as his mother scolds and smacks him for getting lost. He’d felt sad seeing that wonderful pure blue get swallowed up in sadness, but it hadn’t lasted long, all the purple vanishing without a trace as soon as the kid had been scooped up into his mother’s arms. Kyuhyun had clenched his hands into fists and walked away after that, resigned to going home to his own pathetic excuse for a mother.
Children are the only ones without the violence-black and the lust-red in them, and a couple of disabled people he’s come across. Even the nuns and the monks have it. Religion is nothing when God’s devoted are evil too. Hell, Kyuhyun’s God’s chosen and there’s black all over him, soiling his white Colour. God gave him wings and he’s filth, so what does that say about the rest of the world?
He has to Focus to expose the world, and the experience is so unpleasant it almost outweighs the benefits of seeing people for what they really are. It scared the ever-living shit out of Donghae at first, what his eyes do. He’d been more than freaked out himself the first time he’d seen it in the mirror, all those foreign irises superimposing and shifting over his own, the strange tugging at his brain in a million directions. The whispering. He’s not alone in his head anymore when the Focus starts.
Donghae is Kyuhyun’s personal guinea pig when it comes to testing the Focus. Donghae acts like it’s all one big adventure, something fun and special to pass the time, but he doesn’t know how Kyuhyun needs this. Needs to practice. These are just more skills he has to sharpen, like learning to read or basic numeracy. He can’t let these abilities go to waste, not when they could prove to be so useful.
Since the Colours came into Kyuhyun’s life, he’s wondered if he can touch them. If his fingers will ease into gooey softness, scrape and squeak as if against glass, pass through it like it’s nothing but thin air. For all he knows, it could be, and Kyuhyun’s just gone insane somewhere down the line. It’s not completely out of the realms of possibility.
Unsurprisingly, Donghae is all for it when Kyuhyun brings it up; sits cross-legged on Kyuhyun’s bed, hands on his knees like he’s meditating. He’s the most sombre Kyuhyun has ever seen him and he kind of wants to laugh. There’s a chance Kyuhyun will stick his hands into Donghae’s Colour and Donghae will get messed up emotionally, but the risk is negligible. Practically nothing, and it will be righted in a few days. That’s what the Voices have said anyway, and if you can’t trust the voices in your head, you might as well just jump in the sea.
“What are you sniggering about?” Donghae says, wary.
“Oh, nothing. Shall we do this?”
“What, shall I trust the manic laughing guy who wants to fondle my soul?”
“Why the fuck not?”
“Do it, Mister Magic.”
Kyuhyun sits across from Donghae and stills his thoughts. Almost immediately, that sickly, jarring feeling of ten thousand unfamiliar minds warring for space in his head starts up, and Kyuhyun lets his head tilt back while he fights it out.
Donghae watches avidly. Kyuhyun can almost feel his gaze on his skin. He opens his eyes, used to the flashing vision now: Donghae’s an inch to the right, hair more reddish; flash, and he’s a tad closer, image turned sepia. Kyuhyun tugs his customary sweater over his head, tucks it under himself, murmuring, “Works better when my wings aren’t trapped.”
He’s just about to swipe his fingers across the flame-flickering edges of Donghae’s Colour when the shit hits the fan.
“Mother!” Kyuhyun snatches his hand back and hides it behind his wings. Caught with his hands in the proverbial cookie jar, he thinks, slightly hysterical. Goddamnit. Fuck.
Silhouetted at the door, his mother’s face turns from shocked to furious to icy-blank so fast Kyuhyun can barely keep track of the changes. He loses the Focus, and his mother flinches almost imperceptibly. Kyuhyun winces. His breaths start to quicken and he can’t stop them.
“Donghae,” she says, soft as ice cream, teddy bears, candyfloss, but her hands are clenching so hard at the doorframe her knuckles bulge. “I think you should go home.”
“But Mrs Cho-“
“Leave!”
Donghae scrambles off the bed, shooting Kyuhyun a look of such fierce apology that he feels overwhelmed.
“Good luck, Kyuhyun,” Donghae says, and darts out the door. Kyuhyun puts a hand to his mouth, squeezes his lips into an unrecognisable shape and hopes to hell he gets out of this one alive.
“When did you tell him?”
Playing dumb is always a good option.
“About what?”
“About the fucking wings!”
Or not.
“It was…” Kyuhyun hesitates. “It was that day I broke my leg. Donghae took my sweater off; I couldn’t stop him. He was just trying to make my leg more comfortable, I swear. And I made him put it back on me, once he knew people would see…”
“You’ve been lying to me for over two years, Kyuhyun.”
“I’m sorry.”
“But you’re not, are you?” She lunges across the room and yanks at his arm, pulling him in so he’s barely inches away from her face. “You’re not one bit sorry for all the hell you could have caused this family.” Her voice drops, becomes dangerous, and her grip tightens around his wrist. He stifles a cry. Of all the things he won’t do, it’s give her the satisfaction of knowing he’s scared out of his wits. “You disgust me. Don’t think I didn’t see those eyes. Devil’s eyes; how did I raise a child like this? What did I do wrong to the good Lord?”
Kyuhyun swallows, lifts his chin. “This isn’t my fault.”
“Shut up! This is entirely your fault!” She gives him a shake. “If your father had walked in on this, he would have killed you, so be fucking thankful that God granted you the mercy of having it be me stepping through that door.”
She lets go of him. Kyuhyun gasps as her nails release from his skin. “I can’t even stand to touch you,” she says, turning her back on him. Her hands smooth her hair down but end up clutching at the ends of it until they frazzle. “I’d ban you from seeing that boy but I don’t know what you’d do to me in return. That poor priest…” She takes a moment to gather herself. “No leaving this house for two months. No TV or videogames, and the only books that you’re allowed are educational. I won’t tell your father- no, not because of you, because I don’t want him going to prison for assault. No dinner tonight, either.”
With that, she leaves, door slamming shut behind her so hard it echoes. Kyuhyun sits on the bed and looks down at his trembling hands.
He actually got off pretty lightly, considering.
--
When Kyuhyun is fourteen, he wakes up and his wings are gone. He bolts upright, cold from the night spent without his personal blanket. His hands hit his back with a smack as he searches, tracing scarred ridges so fast it hurts, and holy shit, holy shit, the wings are gone.
Does this mean he’ll get to be normal again? Has the Focus gone? Will his parents-
Kyuhyun bends forward as the familiar weight materialises on his back again. He breathes, in, out, struggles to collect up all the fragile, newborn hopes, shattered now, tucks them into the crevices of his brain. For a few seconds, he’d actually thought, actually started creating a future of bright sunrises and goddamn bunny rabbits, gambolling across a landscape of his choosing. Rainbows and ribbons.
Fuck.
He stands and walks to the mirror, eyes mapping out every feather and quill, every subtle brush of colour, every light void. They don’t look any different: still pure white streaked with lust-red, violence-black a thick mar around the edges. He closes his eyes and clenches the muscles connecting his wings to his skin. A loud sucking noise, as though all the air had been sucked out the room, a flare of pain, and they’re gone. Gone as if they’d never been there. Nobody would ever even know they’d existed in the first place.
“Mother!”
As soon as the word leaves his mouth, Kyuhyun regrets it. He needs to play this carefully. This could be the single best thing that has happened to him since he was cursed.
“What?”
“Don’t worry about it!”
If he does this right, he could possibly have his parents back. They’d always been harsh, even before the wings, but it had been infinitely better than this. Yes, Kyuhyun thinks, his life ‘til now had been cruel and unusual punishment, but here’s the golden opportunity to make it okay again.
Donghae helps him practice. They go out to the woods, to their favourite spot in the trees, and Kyuhyun pulls off his shirt and lies prone on the ground. Donghae is practically bouncing: all these years and Kyuhyun never let him touch the wings once, but he’s got a free pass today. Permission to touch as much as he wants, and all he has to do is prod those odd, scarred ridges in return, to see if Kyuhyun can keep the wings in under the stimulation.
Kyuhyun never counted on it feeling so good. The first caress of Donghae’s fingers and he’s smothering a gasp, nerve-ends firing, and he shifts his hips against the ground restlessly.
“They’re so beautiful,” Donghae says, breathless, running the backs of his hands down the side of his right wing. The feathers rustle softly. “You selfish bastard, not letting me touch them before. Keeping all the pretty to yourself.”
“Shut. Shut up,” Kyuhyun rasps, trying to keep his breathing under control. Trying and failing by the way Donghae’s looking at him, all concern and barely masked joy at having finally got his hands on Kyuhyun’s wings.
“Dude, am I making you uncomfortable?” He pouts, childish as ever, and adds, “I can stop if you want…”
Kyuhyun’s never heard him sound so reluctant in his life.
“No, no, carry on, I’m not uncomfortable.” He grinds his hips against the floor as imperceptibly as he possibly can.
“Good,” Donghae says, sweeping his hands to the centre, pressing down hard. Kyuhyun jolts, can’t repress the moan reverberating in the back of his throat.
“Ohh.”
There’s a silence and Donghae’s hands still. Kyuhyun waits for the bomb to drop.
“Oh, you like that, do you?” There’s a wicked smirk in Donghae’s voice and Kyuhyun blushes, glares at Donghae the best he can through a thick veil of yesneedmore, and are these wings wired to his cock or what? This is ridiculous.
“I’d like to see you talk when you’ve got someone fucking groping your- Ah! Bastard!”
Donghae grins, licks his lips, slow and filthy.
“Smug little shit,” Kyuhyun says.
“Stop talking, it’s interrupting my molestation.”
Five minutes pass and Kyuhyun’s sweating and shaking, biting his hands to stop himself moaning too loud, and to keep them from delving into his pants. Donghae’s breathing is laboured behind him, and there’s an odd flush to his cheeks. “Fuck,” he mumbles. “Fuck. This is hot.”
Kyuhyun’s too far gone to talk. He keens, high-pitched and embarrassing, but he can’t find it in himself to stop, not when Donghae’s digging his fingers into the crease where his wings meet his back and Kyuhyun’s fucking his hips down on to the floor, and, “Finish yourself off, Kyuhyun, Jesus Christ, just-“ and he rolls his hips hard, once, twice, and comes all over the inside of his jeans.
For a moment, the only sound in the woods is the slight rustling of leaves and the almost imperceptible hitches in Donghae’s breath, and then there’s a deadweight crushing his wings.
“Back the fuck up, dude. These are fragile.”
Donghae lifts himself off carefully, then ruins it by licking his finger and poking it right into the space between his wings. Even if Kyuhyun hadn’t just come like a freight train that would have been completely un-arousing.
“Bitch! You better run!”
Kyuhyun fights back a laugh at how fast Donghae springs up and sprints in the opposite direction, arms flailing high above his head, screaming, “Not my virtue, you can’t have it!” Kyuhyun chases after him and tries not to think of the virtue they’d both just lost, but the image of their ruined Colours creeps unbidden to mind anyway.
Everyone’s a sinner.
--
It becomes their dirty little secret. Kyuhyun’s sure Donghae doesn’t see it that way, more like something fun to pass the time, but he’s not the one who has to see the evidence of it painted on his wings the next time he looks. One time, Donghae’s wiping Kyuhyun’s come onto the grass when he lets out a shout, gesturing to the wings, and Kyuhyun sees the red extend just a little, tendrils of it advancing a bare centimetre towards the edges.
“What is it?” Donghae breathes, running a finger along the tracks.
Kyuhyun rolls over, stands up, faces the cloudless sky. “A virus. A curse.”
“A sin,” Donghae finishes, and Kyuhyun smiles, strained. He’d never needed to explain a single thing to Donghae; he’d always just known. Instinctive.
“The Voices don’t like it.” He’d tried Focusing while he’d jerked off once and the results had been disastrous. They’d become infuriated, switching up in his head so fast Kyuhyun’s head had span. He’d thrown up over the side of his bed to the tune of, “Nonono, not this, not like this,” and the memory of it is still enough to bring rise to the shame inside, sickly-sour bile scorching his oesophagus.
“Teenage kicks.” Donghae shrugs. “We’re not hurting anyone.”
“No,” Kyuhyun agrees. Except maybe they’re hurting God or the angels or some stupid shit like that, when he all he’s ever wanted is to make them happy with him. It’s like salt in the wound, knowing this wasn’t their intention for him.
“Want to practice your wing retraction technique again?”
“Sure.”
Kyuhyun has become a sort of expert at keeping his wings in under pressure, but he’s not sure if having Donghae feel him up is quite the same as his mother prodding at the scars with the end of her sweeping brush. Kyuhyun shudders. Definitely not the same.
The last day of Kyuhyun’s so-called training, Donghae throws a stone, a freaking stone, at the centre of his back, then kisses him senseless as he strokes up the smooth, wing-free stretch of skin. Kyuhyun almost forgives him the rock-shaped bruise - almost. It’s not something he can bring himself to do in the grand scheme of their one-upmanship, even for the sake of their first kiss.
He allows himself to savour it for a few seconds, commit it to memory, before smooshing Donghae’s face up into a mess with his hands. He dives for cover as cursing, Donghae leaps at him, face marked up with red creases.
They spend the next ten minutes rolling round the forest floor making out, so Kyuhyun chalks it up as a draw.
That night, Kyuhyun falls asleep with his wings out, covering him as usual, thinking he’s going to miss his portable duvet. It’s a sacrifice he’s more than willing to make. Morning dawns, pale and wan, and Kyuhyun takes the stairs three steps at a time, jumping into a cat-crouch at the bottom.
“Mother! Mother, the wings are gone! Father, look!” And they make him take off his shirt, and his dad slaps the scars a few times with the back of his hands, which stings like a bitch, but Kyuhyun bites back the ow that wants to come out and keeps the wings inside. His mother takes his hands in hers, meets his eyes for the first time in years. Goes to talk but chokes up as soon as the words meet the back of her teeth.
“Proud of you, son,” says his father, gruff. He smacks Kyuhyun’s shoulder and gives it a little shake. The shake of fatherly approval, Kyuhyun thinks, ignoring the need to go into Focus so he can see the changes in their Colours. He bets his mother’s acid green would be fresh apple, his father’s grey practically silver.
He bets his own Colour has its own grey lining from the lies.
And still, Kyuhyun’s never seen the sun shine quite so brilliantly before.
--
He supposes it was only a matter of time before life turned around and gave him the middle finger, but he hadn’t thought it would be quite so soon.
It’s frightening. How a study session degenerates into making out which leads to frantic rutting through layers and layers of clothing but still feels just as good as skin-on-skin contact. Or so Kyuhyun imagines, because they’ve never really gone further than this, and hands, and the fact remains that they’re getting off on Kyuhyun’s bed and the wings are out because that generally helps things along, for both of them, not just Kyuhyun, so fucking hot, you don’t even know what they do to me, and it’s careless. So careless.
They throw open the door with the force of the government behind them, Korea’s Supernatural Experimentation Unit emblazoned on their chests. Their faces are blank, ominous white canvasses as they tear Kyuhyun off Donghae and keep them separate, and oh my god, they’re wearing anti-contamination suits. They’ve come to take him away.
And only Donghae knew about the wings.
Kyuhyun thrashes, scratches his nails down the arms of the guys holding him, kicks at their shins as hard as he can but they’re not budging. “Who did you tell?” he says to Donghae, breathing harsh from exertion.
Donghae stops struggling and turns so pale he’s almost translucent, as though Kyuhyun could shine a light through him and make patterns on the wall behind. He doesn’t even bother trying to hide it, good religious upbringing, whispers, “My parents,” and Kyuhyun remembers, all those years ago, his own parents saying, “God-fearing Christians, raising their child to be the same way,” and he wants to be sick.
“Shut up,” the guy behind him says, but Kyuhyun ignores him.
“How could you?”
“I- Kyuhyun, I don’t know, I’m so-“
“Don’t fucking- Don’t say sorry to me-“
A crackly, electronic-sounding voice cuts in, but Donghae’s eyes, bloodshot and watery, don’t flinch from Kyuhyun, and Kyuhyun can’t keep the betrayal from his gaze. ‘Why?’ he mouths, and at the same time the voice says, “You have the right to remain silent,” like Kyuhyun is some criminal when he’s done nothing wrong, he never fucking does anything wrong.
“Kyuhyun!” his mother screams from the doorway, and when Kyuhyun turns to face her, it’s with the Focus, eyes flickering too fast to keep up with the change, finally settling so she’s glowing yellow, the lines of her body clashing with the government official, stars against street lights, as he tries to wrestle her away.
“Don’t take him from me!”
It’s his mother’s words that tip him over the edge, accepting him for all he is two minutes too late, and Kyuhyun’s wrenching out of the hold he’s in, rising up to hit the ceiling, the very air vibrating with the wings’ movement. The awe is palpable, and he’s a beast, a magnificent beast escaping the cage after years of confinement, and these zookeepers are getting their comeuppance.
The Focus defines, sharpens, zooms in on Donghae, and Kyuhyun laughs, he’s a goddamn camera, and thinks, I fucking love you, you traitor, I love you. The Focus soars out of control and the Colours are blinding, and then they’re all on the floor, unmoving but still alive, except for Donghae, never Donghae, Donghae gets to stand, and Kyuhyun-
Kyuhyun flies right out the window. His wings bring half the wall down with him.
(PART 2)
Pairing: KyuHae, unrequited!QMi. Romance/Fantasy.
Rating: NC-17
Summary: Life’s hard being a kid with wings and the ability to see all the true colours of the world, especially when your parents think you’re a demon. As Kyuhyun grows up, he finds it only gets worse before it gets better.
Kyuhyun gives himself wings when he’s eight years old.
Kyuhyun is a good boy. Every Sunday he goes to church with his parents. He believes in God and sings hymns, and gets told he has a lovely little voice, which makes him proud. His father passes him the Bible, and his mother strokes his hair while she reads Exodus or Luke or whatever the minister is reciting that day, and Kyuhyun bows his head and prays.
He prays for sunshine, and for those new roller blades for Christmas, and for Sungmin to stop going off with Hyukjae because it’s annoying, and Hyukjae already has a best friend, and Kyuhyun doesn’t want to be alone. Kyuhyun prays for miracles.
At the end of the service, his parents go home. He stays and helps the minister tidy up while his mother makes dinner and his dad reads the daily newspaper, because the minister is a trusted friend, a man of God, and Kyuhyun’s parents want him to grow up to have Responsibility and Humility. Kyuhyun doesn’t know what these things are, but he wants them too, because then his parents will be happy with him.
They start at the front of the church, at the font, and the minister says, every time, “This water is holy, Kyuhyun. The Lord himself blessed this water.” Kyuhyun wonders what would happen if he drank the water, because surely water is water, and even if God blessed it, it would only turn into wine, wouldn’t it? That’s what the Bible says. Or Kyuhyun could walk on it, but maybe there’s not enough water in the font for him to do that.
One day the minister goes into the back room of the church. The phone had been ringing insistently for over ten minutes and he’d finally decided to stop ignoring it, saying, “Would you sort out the leaflets for me while I take this call?” as he leaves.
Kyuhyun nods, and a few seconds later, he hears the minister mumbling to someone, voice too low for him to make out the words. Kyuhyun looks at the leaflets and he looks at the holy water, agonising over the decision because the minister said to tidy, but this chance may not come along again, and he wants to know what’s so special about water.
Curiosity gets the better of him, and he walks hurriedly to the font, looking over his shoulder to check the minister’s not coming back.
He doesn’t bother using his hands, just steps onto the font’s concrete base and leans over the bowl. He hopes it doesn’t turn to wine because wine doesn’t taste very nice, all bitter and gross, and the fumes from his dad’s wine glasses make his head spin and then he feels sick.
Hesitant now, he dips his face in the water until his head is completely submerged. It’s cold, colder than he’d thought it would be, and when he opens his eyes he sees the bottom of the bowl and nothing else. It’s hard to drink under water, but he manages, swallowing a gulp of it. It tastes musty. He waits for a few seconds more, then, when nothing happens, starts drawing back, disappointed.
He’s just thinking that God needs to work on his blessings when the pain starts wrenching at his back. Shocked, he jerks his head completely out of the water, but some strange force yanks it back in, like invisible hands are pulling at his hair. Eyes wide, he claws at the font, frantically trying to free himself. A few of his nails break into the stone but he barely feels it, not compared to the agonising burn running in two vertical lines down his back, so horrific he screams, bubbles pouring out of his mouth and bursting at the surface.
He’s on fire, his back is going to crumble into ash, God’s punishing him for touching the water, he’s going to die because he can’t breathe, and he can’t get his head out of the water.
He’s going to drown and burn to death at the same time.
Just as he’s about to inhale, a hand clasps onto each of his arms, ceasing their desperate scrabbling at the font, and Kyuhyun finds himself rising out of the water, tossing his head back and taking in the biggest breath he can, before opening his mouth and wailing with the pain of it all.
Someone lies him down on the floor of the church, on his stomach, and Kyuhyun has to tell them he needs to go on his back, because the ground is cold and his back is burning up, but then the agony multiplies by ten thousand and his vocal chords stop working. His body strains, back arching like a bow, arms stretching out in front of him, cuts forming at the side of his mouth it’s open so wide, and he passes out to a new, strange weight on his back and an odd fluttering sound in his ears.
When he wakes up, the pain has gone. His t-shirt lies in tatters around him and his spine is curving backwards slightly because there’s something on his back now, but he doesn’t care. His mother’s arms are holding him and she smells warm like laundry detergent, familiar and safe, and he’s crying into her dress before he can tell himself to be a big boy.
“There, there,” she says, haphazardly patting at his hair. There’s a little patch of wet forming in the material of her dress. Kyuhyun clutches at it. His father is talking to the minister, pacing up and down the aisle, footsteps echoing.
“- you can’t tell anyone, they’d crucify him. Maybe literally. I just-“
“I won’t. The Lord has performed this miracle. It is not for the world to gaze upon and ridicule.”
“Thank you. Thank you. We’re going to take him home. Please don’t tell-“
“You have my word.”
“Thanks. Thank you.”
Kyuhyun whimpers, their talk confusing. He’s tired, and aftershocks of pain are still trembling up and down his limbs. His back feels inflamed and sore, nothing compared to earlier, but enough to make him cling to his mother and whisper, “I want to go to sleep.”
She cards her fingers through his hair, the gesture calming even though she’s tugging too hard, and hoists him more securely into her arms. She always complains that he’s getting too old for this treatment now, but he can usually persuade her to carry him around like a baby if he’s feeling sleepy or lazy. He notices that she’s holding him differently to normal, wrapping her arms around his waist and pressing her palms to the centre of his back. It works. It’s not right, but it works, and Kyuhyun keeps having to blink to stop his eyes falling shut, so he doesn’t say anything.
They get to the car. Instead of placing him in the back like she normally does, his mother lets him sit on her lap as they wait for his father to leave the church. Kyuhyun turns to look out the window and sees his reflection in the glass.
He stops breathing.
Two pure white wings lie folded against his back, so large the tops of them jut above his head, feathers unruffled and smooth. He flexes the muscles in his back and they twitch, edges rising slightly, wingspan increasing, and Kyuhyun gasps. If he pushes just a little more, they’re going to spread fully, and who knows how wide they’d go. They could touch the sky. They could touch the moon. But all they’re going to touch is the sides of the car if he does it in here.
They’re so pretty. Kyuhyun puts his hand on the car window and stares at his reflection all the way home.
He looks like an angel.
--
Kyuhyun’s parents don’t like the wings. They don’t say anything, but Kyuhyun knows. He can tell by their mistrustful glances, the way his father goes to lengths to avoid touching them, how his mother bites her lip whenever Kyuhyun flutters them where she can see.
Kyuhyun loves his wings. When he’s alone in his room he lets them unfold and the edge of each one touches the opposite wall, a veil of light stretching the whole width of the room. Which is, admittedly, not very big, but Kyuhyun is proud because other eight-year-olds would surely have a smaller wingspan than this. He wonders if they’ll grow as he does, or if they’ll stay the same size for the rest of his life. Or if they’ll just drop off one day, as quickly as they came, and he can go back to school and be normal again.
He thinks he’d miss not having to use blankets though, if they did fall off. When he goes to sleep, all he needs to do is put his pyjamas on, get onto the mattress and let his wings wrap around him, far warmer and softer than any duvet, large enough to cover his whole body. Cold is a thing of the past when you’ve got two huge quilts attached to your body.
The first school day after his accident, Kyuhyun’s mother calls the school and tells them he’s going to be withdrawn. They protest it. They don’t want to lose their brightest pupil but she is insistent, explaining that she has gathered all the material needed for home schooling. She isn’t lying. His lessons start a scant hour later, and he learns about multiplying tens and hundreds whilst sitting on the sofa in his living room. He thinks she’d teach better if she’d look up from her notes once in a while though.
The main problem is, the wings won’t retract. Kyuhyun knows there isn’t the remotest chance of him going back to school with them permanently visible, but it’s just not an ability he possesses. He’s tried, straining at them with all his might, but they’d stayed resolutely outside his body, not making the slightest twitch inwards.
His parents don’t let him out at all anymore.
A month or so after that day at the church, Kyuhyun sneaks into the fields by his house one night. He’s been planning this since it happened, how to make sure his parents don’t see him, made all the easier by the fact that they don’t check on him before he goes to sleep anymore. They’d caught him once, enveloped in his wings, and goodnight kisses had been replaced with horrified stares and whispers behind his door.
His dad’s voice. “He’s- he’s a monster.“
“Shh, shh, he’ll hear you, he’s not deaf.”
“We have to get rid of them, we have to, I can’t look at him anymore.”
“He’s still our boy.” His mother’s voice had cracked around the words.
The night is cold, wind rustling in his feathers, blowing them out of place, and Kyuhyun stands in the middle of the field, feeling his wings strain against the holes in his t-shirt - holes his mother had cut into all his clothes - as he expands them as far as he can. He laughs long and loud with how good it feels to finally stop holding it in, to let his body be the way it should.
He tries to beat his wings but it aches, and he only manages to move them a few inches either way before he has to stop. He pants, breath puffing out fast and condensing into little clouds in the cool air as sweat slides down his temples.
“Practice makes perfect,” he says to the emptiness.
For the first time in a month, he’s happy.
--
There is a boy called Donghae, and he’s Kyuhyun’s only friend now. Donghae used to be Hyukjae’s best friend, but then Kyuhyun left school, and now Sungmin and Hyukjae are best friends.
“But I don’t mind, because I hang out with Heechul and Siwon in school now, and I figure we can be best friends at home?”
Kyuhyun’s parents let Donghae come over because Donghae’s mother and father are ‘God-fearing Christians who are raising their child to be the same way’, and that is apparently a trait all of Kyuhyun’s friends must possess now. The only condition is that Kyuhyun can't breathe a word about the wings. They're his little secret, they say, cajoling, betrayed by the slight trace of fear in their eyes that this 'secret' will be out and the world will know what a little freak they have for a son.
Kyuhyun finds it's easier to cope with the sudden loss of affection from his family when he has Donghae to talk to. Donghae spends hours at Kyuhyun's house almost every day, except for when he has homework. Kyuhyun hates those days because he has to sit in his room with nothing but his video games for company, and Sonic is cool but he can't talk back, and Kyuhyun just wants someone to talk to, sometimes.
He has to wear oversized sweaters to hide the wings. His mother, without fail, catches him before he goes outside and forces some baggy monstrosity over his head, no matter how hot it is, and Kyuhyun will sit on tree branches with Donghae all evening, sweating in the heat of the summer nights, wishing he could take the layers off.
Donghae doesn’t ask many questions, hasn’t even asked why Kyuhyun gets home schooled now, but it's only a matter of time before Donghae gets curious about Kyuhyun’s odd clothing choices. "Why do you wear these huge sweaters all the time?" he says, plucking at Kyuhyun's sleeve. "It's boiling out here."
Kyuhyun shifts from side to side, stares at the ridges in his fingernails. A thousand excuses flash through his mind, 'I get cold easily, I don't want bugs to crawl on my skin, to stop me getting sunburn', each one more stupid than the last, until he blurts, "I have wings."
He cringes, expecting Donghae to snort with laughter and tell him to stop kidding. Maybe even glare at him for being such a liar and leave, and then the only thing Kyuhyun would ever speak to again would be his PlayStation.
"Can you show me?" Donghae leans forward, eyes shining, grin genuine, and Kyuhyun blinks. Slowly, he peels the sweater off, folding it: hood, left arm, right arm, horizontal, vertical, just so he doesn't have to make eye contact. Donghae's gasp is telling enough though, and Kyuhyun smiles, unfurls the wings just a little in order to hear the surprised intake of breath again. "They're. Oh my god."
"Do you like them?"
"They’re… so awesome. Can I touch them?"
Kyuhyun hesitates. He wants Donghae to touch them, if it makes him happy, but nobody's hands but his own have ever been within ten centimetres of them before. They're... personal.
"No," he says, and Donghae pouts at him, lower lip trembling. Kyuhyun sighs. "If I get down, I can show you my full wingspan though."
"Okay!" Donghae smiles, flashing his teeth. He shimmies down the tree trunk, landing catlike at the bottom with a grunt. He holds his hand high in the air and Kyuhyun takes it, swinging himself down, unconsciously flaring his wings to make the leap smoother.
"Wow."
"Thank you." Kyuhyun concentrates, grinning, pleased, when his wings respond, rising up and out.
Donghae reaches out to touch one, pulling back and making out like he's coughing into his hand when he remembers Kyuhyun's earlier rejection. "Can you fly?" he says through fake coughs.
Kyuhyun scowls and kicks at the dirt with the toe of his shoe. "Not yet. But I will someday. Someday I'll fly out of my house and away from this place forever."
"You'd leave me?" Donghae pouts again, and Kyuhyun has to fight back a giggle at how frown-y he's gone. "You'd leave me to go and have adventures and fight crime and be a superhero and gets loads of money in rewards?"
This requires no thought process whatsoever. "Absolutely."
Donghae considers. "So would I.”
"My parents think I'd be the villain." Kyuhyun climbs back up the tree, going from branch to branch, higher and higher, using his wings to balance himself, until he's right at the top. "My parents think I'd be the villain but I'd do the right thing, Donghae, I would." He stares directly into the sun until white spots dance in front of his vision. "You believe me, don't you?"
"Yeah. Yeah, I do." Donghae tilts his head to the side, eyes creasing up as he tries to look at Kyuhyun past the brightness streaming through the leaves of the woods. "You sort of look like an angel, you know."
Kyuhyun tilts his head back. He smiles. And then he flies off the top of the tree.
--
"I can't believe you'd be so stupid." Kyuhyun's father's hands clench and unclench at the steering while as he rants. "I can't believe you'd do something so unbelievably selfish. Anyone could have walked by and seen you, and if they'd taken your sweater off, then where would your mother and I be? Everyone would know we'd raised the kid with the fucking wings and you'd be taken into some laboratory to be tested on and we'd have to live with the shame forever."
Kyuhyun buries his head in his hands, blinking fast to push the tears back. If his father is swearing, it means Kyuhyun has been very, very bad. No video games for a week bad, and with his broken leg currently lying unmovable in a cast, he was going to need all the entertainment he could get. He wouldn't be going outside for the considerable future, undoubtedly.
"Why would you do it anyway? What the hell possessed you to jump off a fucking tree?"
Kyuhyun's voice comes out a hoarse whisper. "I felt like I could fly, Dad." It sounds so stupid, even with the wings digging into his back from where they're squashed between him and the car seat. Of course he can't fly. He'd been practicing for ages now, and he still couldn't hover more than an inch off the ground for three seconds. His father was right, he had been stupid, and selfish, and if he wasn't more careful in the future he could find himself being taken away to a Laboratory. Whatever a Laboratory was, it didn't sound good.
Kyuhyun's mother decides to chip in. "Is it that Donghae's influence?" she asks, words short and clipped.
"No!" Kyuhyun lifts his head, giving a beseeching look to the back of his mother's seat. "It was all my idea. He was so shocked when I jumped, and he was so worried..."
Donghae had yelled wordlessly as Kyuhyun had hurtled to the ground. He'd all but sprinted to Kyuhyun's side, kneeling down and shaking his shoulders, shouting his name to wake him up.
"My sweater," Kyuhyun croaked, flicking a wing towards it. He needed to get it on and fast, before anyone came along.
Donghae laughed, unbelieving. "You care about your sweater when your leg's all messed up like that?" Nonetheless, he'd manoeuvred it over Kyuhyun's head without jarring him too much, worrying at his lip all the while.
“Thanks.”
“We need to get you home.” Donghae dug through his pockets until he found his phone. He poised his fingers above the keypad. “What’s your house number?”
“Please don’t ring them…” At a look from Donghae, Kyuhyun trailed off, closed his eyes. Acquiescing, he recited the number and Donghae tapped it into the phone. Kyuhyun’s parents were going to kill him. Kyuhyun was actually going to die for this.
They’d turned up, white-faced, not two minutes later. They knelt next to him, casting furtive looks into the trees as if people were hiding there, waiting to jump out and snatch Kyuhyun’s clothes and run off with them, revealing his deformity.
“What happened?”
Before Kyuhyun could communicate, no, no, don’t, with his eyes, Donghae had started babbling. “He just jumped out of the tree! It was so scary, I thought he was a goner, I thought he was definitely dead; it’s so high up, how is he alive? I’m so glad he’s not hurt, I mean, he’s hurt, his leg is all funny, but he’s not really hurt, it could have been a lot worse. Are you gonna take him to the hospital, Mrs Cho? Can I come? Please? Can I sign the cast too?”
Kyuhyun’s mother just stood there, blank and treacherous as a calm sea, and Kyuhyun let his forehead rest on the soil. He could hear his father puffing out measured breaths of air, heard Donghae’s talk fading into nothingness, and tried not to think about what he was in for once Donghae was out of sight.
“Maybe another time,” Kyuhyun’s mother had said.
“Another time Kyuhyun’s hurt?”
She ignored this. “I’ll ring your mother, get her to pick you up.” She took Donghae’s hand and led him out of the forest. Kyuhyun felt the vibration of his father’s footsteps approaching him through his head. Vibrations of Doom, he thought, and laughed inwardly. His leg really hurt.
His father grabbed his arm and hoisted him roughly off the ground. Kyuhyun’s leg stuttered over the ground and he gasped as the pain spiked and flared.
“I’ll deal with you later,” his father hissed, lifting Kyuhyun into his arms. “Just as soon as I pay your medical bills.”
Standing awkwardly outside his house, hip cocked, weight resting on his good leg, Kyuhyun thinks his dad has more than delivered on his promise. He doesn’t look like he’s going to run out of steam any time soon though, so Kyuhyun bites his lip and prepares himself for the inevitable blow.
Kyuhyun leans backwards, making space between himself and the man in front of him that only fills up again just as quickly as he crowds Kyuhyun against the side of the car. When his father speaks, his voice is quiet and firm, as though he’s speaking the Gospel of John and wants Kyuhyun to believe every word. “Your wings are useless, Kyuhyun. They don’t do anything. They just hang there, for all the world to see, like some disgusting testament to your abnormality. And you are abnormal, boy. Mark my words; the Lord will not let you into Heaven. You won’t pass through the Gates, descend the Stairs, sit with Christ, because even when you look like an Angel, I know that you are nothing but a Demon, and He… He will know that too.”
Kyuhyun watches his father stride into the house, his mother trailing his steps. A few tears starts to fall down his face, but he doesn’t let them go far, wiping them away with the back of his hand so roughly he leaves little red patches on his skin.
There’s a sudden ache in his right wing. Kyuhyun frowns, scrabbles at the edge of his clothes and skitters his hand up his back until he finds the sore spot. Something comes away in his fingers, a residual twinge, and Kyuhyun pulls his hand out to see a feather, dark grey at the edges, curling and withering in his palm.
Weird, he thinks, pocketing it. That’s never happened before.
--
He should have known the water at dinner had something in it. It had tasted so odd, but they’d said - no, promised - that there was nothing wrong with it, that he was just being stupid. And he’d been stupid for believing them, because now he can’t move his arms and legs and the room’s spinning so he can’t focus and the ceiling’s raining all over him. Little drops of water making rainbows in the air as the candlelight shines on them. It’s pretty.
Kyuhyun squeezes his eyes shut tight.
There are noises around him. Blurring, one moment sliding into the next. He hears something that sounds like, “Powwrrrcrriiiiisssttcompeellssyou,” and he realises with a muffled shock, as though it’s hitting him through a casing of cotton wool, that his parents are finally trying to exorcise him.
Kyuhyun opens his eyes and, with great effort, manages to hone in on the man in his room. He’s pacing around the bed, leaving a smudged echo of himself in his wake like someone had taken Kyuhyun’s vision and smeared it to the side. Hands in wet paint. The guy has something in his hand. Kyuhyun notices belatedly that it’s full of water, and then his eyes are stinging and he closes them again. He attempts to fight down the panic but it keeps clawing up his throat and his mouth won’t work to swallow it down.
He whimpers.
It attracts the attention of the man, who smothers a gasp and flicks more water, ducking his hand in the water faster than before, muttering a litany of words under his breath. Christ, Christ, Christ, he says. Kyuhyun fights at the ropes around his wrists. There’s pain building in his back, a deep, throbbing ache, and the urge to spread his wings to full mast is almost overwhelming. They spasm underneath him, bending and folding, and Kyuhyun arches his spine and screams, screams as a cracking noise splits the air and his wings burst out, ripping the ropes to shreds.
The priest or whatever the hell he is doesn’t move, fear freezing him in place. Kyuhyun looks at his florid, hypocritical face and feels the anger rise in him, an inexorable wave of howdarehehowdarehehowdarehe and his wings begin to tremble, hummingbird fast, until he’s rising up and hovering, wraith-like, in the corner of the ceiling.
His vision starts flickering as though he’s winking with his right eye then his left, minute changes in colour and perspective, barely noticeable.
These eyes are not his own.
The priest opens his mouth, molars and tongue and bubbles of saliva; rasps wordlessly. Kyuhyun’s wings ripple and the wave crashes, rage threatening to drown him at the ugly sound, so fucking hideous; disgusting human noises. He sees the man as though through water, a system of mucus, bronchioles, swallowing and gulping, fine mist spray of spit on his lips. Kyuhyun’s mind lurches.
“Your eyes!” the priest shrieks. Kyuhyun flinches, and something beyond his control reaches out his arm and lashes at the man’s face. The priest screams, blood trickling from his broken mouth, mingling with the sweat on his pale fleshy face. His arms flail around uselessly at the air in front of him, but Kyuhyun has already retreated. “Monster!” He makes a dive for the door, hands shaking so hard the door handle rattles but doesn’t turn. “Demon. Demon. Fuck this!”
“Boo,” Kyuhyun says, and the consequential adrenaline rush allows the priest to wrench the door open and flee down the hallway, sweating and bleeding profanities. Kyuhyun watches the mud brown trail he leaves behind fade into the air. Smoke tainting the atmosphere. Invisible. Kyuhyun’s eyes click back into normality and he throws his fist into the wall. It leaves a dent, but doesn’t hurt too much. He enjoys the cool rush of air as his wings stop vibrating and he hits the bed again, then turns his face into his fear-smelling pillows and cries.
Later his parents will force their way into his room, past the chest of drawers he pushes against the door, past his will for them to leave him alone, and they will shout at him for being a demon and for smashing the top of the wall in, you freak, and how did you even get up that high? They will deprive him of food for a day or two to teach him a lesson, and then it will be back to his regularly scheduled programming.
Kyuhyun brushes the blackened feathers off the bed. They crumble into dust on the floor.
--
Kyuhyun thinks a little differently about things after that. He talks back less, hates a little more; his mind is always preoccupied with the image of his wings gone black around the edges, even when he’s indulging in his only escape - Donghae. He is still the only vice Kyuhyun’s parents allow him, on the proviso that Kyuhyun never breathes a word about ‘his deformities’. It makes him laugh to think how they’d react if they knew he’d told Donghae barely two months after it had happened. They’d go batshit. Worse than batshit. Psycho.
In books, they say you’re only supposed to see how ugly the world is when you’re old. Kyuhyun is ten and a half and all he sees is the evil and the cruelty and the hate wherever he looks, and it isn’t fair. He wishes he’d never been so curious that day. He wishes he’d never had to go to church. He wishes God didn’t exist to curse him like this. He wishes he couldn’t see the filth everyhere, even in Donghae now, but he can. It’s hovering there, underneath the surface, just waiting for Donghae to grow up so it can make him like all the others. The older Donghae gets, the more the violence-black and the lust-red swirls up to cling to the deep blue of his Colour.
If he Focuses, the Colours rise up from everyone like heavy translucent clouds. Once, he and Donghae had sat on a park bench and Kyuhyun had told him the Colours of everyone who had walked by. Pink, green, orange, aquamarine, crimson, navy. Sometimes it changes when things happen. Kyuhyun has watched the Colour of a girl getting kissed by her boyfriend change from grass green to mint within the space of two seconds. He’s also seen a child’s sky blue Colour turn to anguished purple as his mother scolds and smacks him for getting lost. He’d felt sad seeing that wonderful pure blue get swallowed up in sadness, but it hadn’t lasted long, all the purple vanishing without a trace as soon as the kid had been scooped up into his mother’s arms. Kyuhyun had clenched his hands into fists and walked away after that, resigned to going home to his own pathetic excuse for a mother.
Children are the only ones without the violence-black and the lust-red in them, and a couple of disabled people he’s come across. Even the nuns and the monks have it. Religion is nothing when God’s devoted are evil too. Hell, Kyuhyun’s God’s chosen and there’s black all over him, soiling his white Colour. God gave him wings and he’s filth, so what does that say about the rest of the world?
He has to Focus to expose the world, and the experience is so unpleasant it almost outweighs the benefits of seeing people for what they really are. It scared the ever-living shit out of Donghae at first, what his eyes do. He’d been more than freaked out himself the first time he’d seen it in the mirror, all those foreign irises superimposing and shifting over his own, the strange tugging at his brain in a million directions. The whispering. He’s not alone in his head anymore when the Focus starts.
Donghae is Kyuhyun’s personal guinea pig when it comes to testing the Focus. Donghae acts like it’s all one big adventure, something fun and special to pass the time, but he doesn’t know how Kyuhyun needs this. Needs to practice. These are just more skills he has to sharpen, like learning to read or basic numeracy. He can’t let these abilities go to waste, not when they could prove to be so useful.
Since the Colours came into Kyuhyun’s life, he’s wondered if he can touch them. If his fingers will ease into gooey softness, scrape and squeak as if against glass, pass through it like it’s nothing but thin air. For all he knows, it could be, and Kyuhyun’s just gone insane somewhere down the line. It’s not completely out of the realms of possibility.
Unsurprisingly, Donghae is all for it when Kyuhyun brings it up; sits cross-legged on Kyuhyun’s bed, hands on his knees like he’s meditating. He’s the most sombre Kyuhyun has ever seen him and he kind of wants to laugh. There’s a chance Kyuhyun will stick his hands into Donghae’s Colour and Donghae will get messed up emotionally, but the risk is negligible. Practically nothing, and it will be righted in a few days. That’s what the Voices have said anyway, and if you can’t trust the voices in your head, you might as well just jump in the sea.
“What are you sniggering about?” Donghae says, wary.
“Oh, nothing. Shall we do this?”
“What, shall I trust the manic laughing guy who wants to fondle my soul?”
“Why the fuck not?”
“Do it, Mister Magic.”
Kyuhyun sits across from Donghae and stills his thoughts. Almost immediately, that sickly, jarring feeling of ten thousand unfamiliar minds warring for space in his head starts up, and Kyuhyun lets his head tilt back while he fights it out.
Donghae watches avidly. Kyuhyun can almost feel his gaze on his skin. He opens his eyes, used to the flashing vision now: Donghae’s an inch to the right, hair more reddish; flash, and he’s a tad closer, image turned sepia. Kyuhyun tugs his customary sweater over his head, tucks it under himself, murmuring, “Works better when my wings aren’t trapped.”
He’s just about to swipe his fingers across the flame-flickering edges of Donghae’s Colour when the shit hits the fan.
“Mother!” Kyuhyun snatches his hand back and hides it behind his wings. Caught with his hands in the proverbial cookie jar, he thinks, slightly hysterical. Goddamnit. Fuck.
Silhouetted at the door, his mother’s face turns from shocked to furious to icy-blank so fast Kyuhyun can barely keep track of the changes. He loses the Focus, and his mother flinches almost imperceptibly. Kyuhyun winces. His breaths start to quicken and he can’t stop them.
“Donghae,” she says, soft as ice cream, teddy bears, candyfloss, but her hands are clenching so hard at the doorframe her knuckles bulge. “I think you should go home.”
“But Mrs Cho-“
“Leave!”
Donghae scrambles off the bed, shooting Kyuhyun a look of such fierce apology that he feels overwhelmed.
“Good luck, Kyuhyun,” Donghae says, and darts out the door. Kyuhyun puts a hand to his mouth, squeezes his lips into an unrecognisable shape and hopes to hell he gets out of this one alive.
“When did you tell him?”
Playing dumb is always a good option.
“About what?”
“About the fucking wings!”
Or not.
“It was…” Kyuhyun hesitates. “It was that day I broke my leg. Donghae took my sweater off; I couldn’t stop him. He was just trying to make my leg more comfortable, I swear. And I made him put it back on me, once he knew people would see…”
“You’ve been lying to me for over two years, Kyuhyun.”
“I’m sorry.”
“But you’re not, are you?” She lunges across the room and yanks at his arm, pulling him in so he’s barely inches away from her face. “You’re not one bit sorry for all the hell you could have caused this family.” Her voice drops, becomes dangerous, and her grip tightens around his wrist. He stifles a cry. Of all the things he won’t do, it’s give her the satisfaction of knowing he’s scared out of his wits. “You disgust me. Don’t think I didn’t see those eyes. Devil’s eyes; how did I raise a child like this? What did I do wrong to the good Lord?”
Kyuhyun swallows, lifts his chin. “This isn’t my fault.”
“Shut up! This is entirely your fault!” She gives him a shake. “If your father had walked in on this, he would have killed you, so be fucking thankful that God granted you the mercy of having it be me stepping through that door.”
She lets go of him. Kyuhyun gasps as her nails release from his skin. “I can’t even stand to touch you,” she says, turning her back on him. Her hands smooth her hair down but end up clutching at the ends of it until they frazzle. “I’d ban you from seeing that boy but I don’t know what you’d do to me in return. That poor priest…” She takes a moment to gather herself. “No leaving this house for two months. No TV or videogames, and the only books that you’re allowed are educational. I won’t tell your father- no, not because of you, because I don’t want him going to prison for assault. No dinner tonight, either.”
With that, she leaves, door slamming shut behind her so hard it echoes. Kyuhyun sits on the bed and looks down at his trembling hands.
He actually got off pretty lightly, considering.
--
When Kyuhyun is fourteen, he wakes up and his wings are gone. He bolts upright, cold from the night spent without his personal blanket. His hands hit his back with a smack as he searches, tracing scarred ridges so fast it hurts, and holy shit, holy shit, the wings are gone.
Does this mean he’ll get to be normal again? Has the Focus gone? Will his parents-
Kyuhyun bends forward as the familiar weight materialises on his back again. He breathes, in, out, struggles to collect up all the fragile, newborn hopes, shattered now, tucks them into the crevices of his brain. For a few seconds, he’d actually thought, actually started creating a future of bright sunrises and goddamn bunny rabbits, gambolling across a landscape of his choosing. Rainbows and ribbons.
Fuck.
He stands and walks to the mirror, eyes mapping out every feather and quill, every subtle brush of colour, every light void. They don’t look any different: still pure white streaked with lust-red, violence-black a thick mar around the edges. He closes his eyes and clenches the muscles connecting his wings to his skin. A loud sucking noise, as though all the air had been sucked out the room, a flare of pain, and they’re gone. Gone as if they’d never been there. Nobody would ever even know they’d existed in the first place.
“Mother!”
As soon as the word leaves his mouth, Kyuhyun regrets it. He needs to play this carefully. This could be the single best thing that has happened to him since he was cursed.
“What?”
“Don’t worry about it!”
If he does this right, he could possibly have his parents back. They’d always been harsh, even before the wings, but it had been infinitely better than this. Yes, Kyuhyun thinks, his life ‘til now had been cruel and unusual punishment, but here’s the golden opportunity to make it okay again.
Donghae helps him practice. They go out to the woods, to their favourite spot in the trees, and Kyuhyun pulls off his shirt and lies prone on the ground. Donghae is practically bouncing: all these years and Kyuhyun never let him touch the wings once, but he’s got a free pass today. Permission to touch as much as he wants, and all he has to do is prod those odd, scarred ridges in return, to see if Kyuhyun can keep the wings in under the stimulation.
Kyuhyun never counted on it feeling so good. The first caress of Donghae’s fingers and he’s smothering a gasp, nerve-ends firing, and he shifts his hips against the ground restlessly.
“They’re so beautiful,” Donghae says, breathless, running the backs of his hands down the side of his right wing. The feathers rustle softly. “You selfish bastard, not letting me touch them before. Keeping all the pretty to yourself.”
“Shut. Shut up,” Kyuhyun rasps, trying to keep his breathing under control. Trying and failing by the way Donghae’s looking at him, all concern and barely masked joy at having finally got his hands on Kyuhyun’s wings.
“Dude, am I making you uncomfortable?” He pouts, childish as ever, and adds, “I can stop if you want…”
Kyuhyun’s never heard him sound so reluctant in his life.
“No, no, carry on, I’m not uncomfortable.” He grinds his hips against the floor as imperceptibly as he possibly can.
“Good,” Donghae says, sweeping his hands to the centre, pressing down hard. Kyuhyun jolts, can’t repress the moan reverberating in the back of his throat.
“Ohh.”
There’s a silence and Donghae’s hands still. Kyuhyun waits for the bomb to drop.
“Oh, you like that, do you?” There’s a wicked smirk in Donghae’s voice and Kyuhyun blushes, glares at Donghae the best he can through a thick veil of yesneedmore, and are these wings wired to his cock or what? This is ridiculous.
“I’d like to see you talk when you’ve got someone fucking groping your- Ah! Bastard!”
Donghae grins, licks his lips, slow and filthy.
“Smug little shit,” Kyuhyun says.
“Stop talking, it’s interrupting my molestation.”
Five minutes pass and Kyuhyun’s sweating and shaking, biting his hands to stop himself moaning too loud, and to keep them from delving into his pants. Donghae’s breathing is laboured behind him, and there’s an odd flush to his cheeks. “Fuck,” he mumbles. “Fuck. This is hot.”
Kyuhyun’s too far gone to talk. He keens, high-pitched and embarrassing, but he can’t find it in himself to stop, not when Donghae’s digging his fingers into the crease where his wings meet his back and Kyuhyun’s fucking his hips down on to the floor, and, “Finish yourself off, Kyuhyun, Jesus Christ, just-“ and he rolls his hips hard, once, twice, and comes all over the inside of his jeans.
For a moment, the only sound in the woods is the slight rustling of leaves and the almost imperceptible hitches in Donghae’s breath, and then there’s a deadweight crushing his wings.
“Back the fuck up, dude. These are fragile.”
Donghae lifts himself off carefully, then ruins it by licking his finger and poking it right into the space between his wings. Even if Kyuhyun hadn’t just come like a freight train that would have been completely un-arousing.
“Bitch! You better run!”
Kyuhyun fights back a laugh at how fast Donghae springs up and sprints in the opposite direction, arms flailing high above his head, screaming, “Not my virtue, you can’t have it!” Kyuhyun chases after him and tries not to think of the virtue they’d both just lost, but the image of their ruined Colours creeps unbidden to mind anyway.
Everyone’s a sinner.
--
It becomes their dirty little secret. Kyuhyun’s sure Donghae doesn’t see it that way, more like something fun to pass the time, but he’s not the one who has to see the evidence of it painted on his wings the next time he looks. One time, Donghae’s wiping Kyuhyun’s come onto the grass when he lets out a shout, gesturing to the wings, and Kyuhyun sees the red extend just a little, tendrils of it advancing a bare centimetre towards the edges.
“What is it?” Donghae breathes, running a finger along the tracks.
Kyuhyun rolls over, stands up, faces the cloudless sky. “A virus. A curse.”
“A sin,” Donghae finishes, and Kyuhyun smiles, strained. He’d never needed to explain a single thing to Donghae; he’d always just known. Instinctive.
“The Voices don’t like it.” He’d tried Focusing while he’d jerked off once and the results had been disastrous. They’d become infuriated, switching up in his head so fast Kyuhyun’s head had span. He’d thrown up over the side of his bed to the tune of, “Nonono, not this, not like this,” and the memory of it is still enough to bring rise to the shame inside, sickly-sour bile scorching his oesophagus.
“Teenage kicks.” Donghae shrugs. “We’re not hurting anyone.”
“No,” Kyuhyun agrees. Except maybe they’re hurting God or the angels or some stupid shit like that, when he all he’s ever wanted is to make them happy with him. It’s like salt in the wound, knowing this wasn’t their intention for him.
“Want to practice your wing retraction technique again?”
“Sure.”
Kyuhyun has become a sort of expert at keeping his wings in under pressure, but he’s not sure if having Donghae feel him up is quite the same as his mother prodding at the scars with the end of her sweeping brush. Kyuhyun shudders. Definitely not the same.
The last day of Kyuhyun’s so-called training, Donghae throws a stone, a freaking stone, at the centre of his back, then kisses him senseless as he strokes up the smooth, wing-free stretch of skin. Kyuhyun almost forgives him the rock-shaped bruise - almost. It’s not something he can bring himself to do in the grand scheme of their one-upmanship, even for the sake of their first kiss.
He allows himself to savour it for a few seconds, commit it to memory, before smooshing Donghae’s face up into a mess with his hands. He dives for cover as cursing, Donghae leaps at him, face marked up with red creases.
They spend the next ten minutes rolling round the forest floor making out, so Kyuhyun chalks it up as a draw.
That night, Kyuhyun falls asleep with his wings out, covering him as usual, thinking he’s going to miss his portable duvet. It’s a sacrifice he’s more than willing to make. Morning dawns, pale and wan, and Kyuhyun takes the stairs three steps at a time, jumping into a cat-crouch at the bottom.
“Mother! Mother, the wings are gone! Father, look!” And they make him take off his shirt, and his dad slaps the scars a few times with the back of his hands, which stings like a bitch, but Kyuhyun bites back the ow that wants to come out and keeps the wings inside. His mother takes his hands in hers, meets his eyes for the first time in years. Goes to talk but chokes up as soon as the words meet the back of her teeth.
“Proud of you, son,” says his father, gruff. He smacks Kyuhyun’s shoulder and gives it a little shake. The shake of fatherly approval, Kyuhyun thinks, ignoring the need to go into Focus so he can see the changes in their Colours. He bets his mother’s acid green would be fresh apple, his father’s grey practically silver.
He bets his own Colour has its own grey lining from the lies.
And still, Kyuhyun’s never seen the sun shine quite so brilliantly before.
--
He supposes it was only a matter of time before life turned around and gave him the middle finger, but he hadn’t thought it would be quite so soon.
It’s frightening. How a study session degenerates into making out which leads to frantic rutting through layers and layers of clothing but still feels just as good as skin-on-skin contact. Or so Kyuhyun imagines, because they’ve never really gone further than this, and hands, and the fact remains that they’re getting off on Kyuhyun’s bed and the wings are out because that generally helps things along, for both of them, not just Kyuhyun, so fucking hot, you don’t even know what they do to me, and it’s careless. So careless.
They throw open the door with the force of the government behind them, Korea’s Supernatural Experimentation Unit emblazoned on their chests. Their faces are blank, ominous white canvasses as they tear Kyuhyun off Donghae and keep them separate, and oh my god, they’re wearing anti-contamination suits. They’ve come to take him away.
And only Donghae knew about the wings.
Kyuhyun thrashes, scratches his nails down the arms of the guys holding him, kicks at their shins as hard as he can but they’re not budging. “Who did you tell?” he says to Donghae, breathing harsh from exertion.
Donghae stops struggling and turns so pale he’s almost translucent, as though Kyuhyun could shine a light through him and make patterns on the wall behind. He doesn’t even bother trying to hide it, good religious upbringing, whispers, “My parents,” and Kyuhyun remembers, all those years ago, his own parents saying, “God-fearing Christians, raising their child to be the same way,” and he wants to be sick.
“Shut up,” the guy behind him says, but Kyuhyun ignores him.
“How could you?”
“I- Kyuhyun, I don’t know, I’m so-“
“Don’t fucking- Don’t say sorry to me-“
A crackly, electronic-sounding voice cuts in, but Donghae’s eyes, bloodshot and watery, don’t flinch from Kyuhyun, and Kyuhyun can’t keep the betrayal from his gaze. ‘Why?’ he mouths, and at the same time the voice says, “You have the right to remain silent,” like Kyuhyun is some criminal when he’s done nothing wrong, he never fucking does anything wrong.
“Kyuhyun!” his mother screams from the doorway, and when Kyuhyun turns to face her, it’s with the Focus, eyes flickering too fast to keep up with the change, finally settling so she’s glowing yellow, the lines of her body clashing with the government official, stars against street lights, as he tries to wrestle her away.
“Don’t take him from me!”
It’s his mother’s words that tip him over the edge, accepting him for all he is two minutes too late, and Kyuhyun’s wrenching out of the hold he’s in, rising up to hit the ceiling, the very air vibrating with the wings’ movement. The awe is palpable, and he’s a beast, a magnificent beast escaping the cage after years of confinement, and these zookeepers are getting their comeuppance.
The Focus defines, sharpens, zooms in on Donghae, and Kyuhyun laughs, he’s a goddamn camera, and thinks, I fucking love you, you traitor, I love you. The Focus soars out of control and the Colours are blinding, and then they’re all on the floor, unmoving but still alive, except for Donghae, never Donghae, Donghae gets to stand, and Kyuhyun-
Kyuhyun flies right out the window. His wings bring half the wall down with him.
(PART 2)