That Boy is a Monster
Title: That Boy is a Monster
Pairing: none
Rating: PG-13
Genre: AU
Disclaimer: I never claimed to be good at this.
"They're coming."
Zitao sat up in bed, his skin slick with sweat, hair sticking to his face and neck. His hands curled into fists around the sheets as he tried to catch his breath, eyes wide and head shaking to try and dislodge the nightmare. In the other room, he heard his roommate stirring, heard the footsteps as he tiptoed to the door.
"I'm fine," he called quietly just as Kris knocked on the door. "Go back to sleep..."
Kris opened the door anyway, peering around it at the shivering boy in the bed. His hair was sticking up, his eyes foggy with sleep and worry as he yawned. One look at Tao and he pushed the door open further and ambled in; his clothes were twisted on his body from tossing and turning, Tao noted, and he wondered if the man had been having as restless a night as he had been.
"Kris, get out," Tao protested as the groggy idiot crawled into bed next to him. It was futile to try and fight him when he was like this, and Tao knew it. He sighed and curled up as Kris wrapped his arms around him. "Fine..."
"Stop having nightmares if you don't want this," Kris mumbled, eyes already closed as he snuggled his shaking friend close. "Go back to sleep now."
Tao squirmed until he was comfortably nestled against the other boy and buried his face into his pillow with a sigh. He should have been used to this by now. It had been happening regularly since he and his friend had moved in together... he'd have a nightmare and wake up in various states of terror, sometimes screaming, sometimes crying, though always gasping for breath and trembling. Kris, who proved to be a lighter sleeper than Tao had counted on, would wake upon hearing the other boy's distress, and promptly climb into bed with him to try and calm him.
Tao hadn't taken to it kindly the first few times, but when he'd realised it was inevitable he'd given in and even grown to find it comforting. Kris had learned what he could and couldn't do after months of bed crashing; he no longer squeezed the breath from Tao as he slept, and he had stopped hiding his face in the crook of his friend's neck. More than once, Zitao had smacked Kris's forehead to wake him when he had started drooling on him.
Yes, they had adjusted well to each other.
Tao managed to fall asleep again after some time, his body curled into Kris's as if the big idiot were a protective cocoon. The nightmares, he had found, often didn't return when his friend was there with him; this held true for tonight as well. He slept soundly until the morning, and when they woke, Kris wobbled back to his own room and left Tao to get ready for his day.
Tao worked as a delivery boy for a small shop in the city. He spent all day every day on a bike, delivering packages to people and trying not to be run over by cars. It was an easy job, at least for him, and usually he would go about it cheerfully. After all, smiles were contagious, and a lot of people needed to catch them.
However, something today just wasn't right. He felt as if someone was following him; he was constantly looking over his shoulder, trying to catch someone who was just out of sight. People stared at him and whispered behind their hands. It made the hair on the back of his neck stand on end, and by the end of his shift he was exhausted from the paranoia.
He pulled the hood of his sleeveless sweatshirt up over his head and pedaled his bike back to the apartment, but even putting a barrier between himself and any eyes, and space between himself and the busy part of the city, didn't seem to be helping at all. He dropped his bike outside of their building, barely stopping to take the time to chain it up so it wouldn't be stolen, and headed up the stairs. Once he was inside, he was sure the feeling of safety would finally come back.
He was wrong.
The first sign that something was wrong was the fact that the door was ajar. There was a large black bootprint on it, a stark contrast against the otherwise bright white paint; it had been kicked open, the chain lock broken apart by the force. Tao tensed, his fists clenching at his sides, and he pushed the door open all the way, listening for any sound to come from inside. When nothing flew out at him, and when he heard not a sound, he very slowly stepped inside.
The flat had been torn apart. One of the old chairs at the now upended kitchen table had been shattered into pieces, and it lay scattered across the floor. The couch had been pulled away from the wall, and the television was across the room from its regular place, its screen cracked and dark. All the doors were open; Tao's bedroom door hung from one hinge, apparently having been forcibly ripped open. Both his bedroom and Kris's had been destroyed, their beds ripped apart and clothing thrown from closets.
Slowly, silently, Tao moved from room to room, barely assessing the damage as he looked around. Broken personal items were not what he was most worried about. He was fixated on finding one specific thing, and damn the rest of it.
But Kris was nowhere to be found, and Zitao found himself unsure if that was a good or a bad thing. Whoever had done this had spared not one bit of kindness. Their home was in tatters. If Kris wasn't here, that meant... he could be with this person. These people.
Tao felt in his pocket for his cell phone and blindly dialed Kris's number as he snatched a baseball bat from the other boy's room. If these people came back, he was going to be ready.
"Where are you?" he demanded as soon as he heard the click of the line picking up.
"Where are you?"
Tao froze in the middle of the decimated living room, his breath catching in his throat. He looked at the phone to make sure he'd dialed the right number; the man at the other end laughed.
"Who are you. Why do you have my roommate's phone. Where is Kris?"
"So many questions, Z. Maybe you should just be quiet and listen."
Tao bit his lip and clenched his fingers tight around the bat. He felt as if he'd been plunged into icy water, as if it was filling up his lungs and making it impossible to breathe. Nobody called him "Z". Nobody but them. Which meant that he'd been found, and that this was very, very bad.
"You're done running and hiding like a little rat. You're done with this rebellious phase as of now. It's time to come home."
"No." Zitao shook his head with a quiet growl.
The other end of the phone was silent for a moment, and then there was a rustling noise. A door opening. The sound of metal clinking against metal. And then Tao heard something that nearly stopped his heart.
A quiet whimper of pain.
"What are you doing?"
He could hear Kris, could hear the frightened breaths he was obviously fighting to silence. Tao swore under his breath, and when Kris cried out, begging the man to leave him alone, he swung the bat one-handed and smashed a hole in the living room wall.
"Hey! What the hell are you doing?!"
All he heard for a minute was Kris's ragged breathing and more metallic clinking. Then, finally, the man spoke again.
"It is time for you to come home. I'm sure your dear little... pet... would appreciate it if you'd simply agree."
Tao drew a slow, even breath and closed his eyes. He should have run... he should have never stopped running. Settling down and making friends was a bad idea and he knew it. Kris had been so nice to him, had taken care of him when he'd had nowhere else to go, and as a result... this.
"If I come in, will you let him go? He has nothing to do with this, you don't have to h-"
"Just come in."
The line went dead. A muscle tensed in Tao's jaw, and he squeezed the cell phone in an attempt to keep control of the anger boiling in his stomach. It didn't help, and he swung the bat again, punching another large hole in the drywall. This was worse than the situation he had nightmares about almost nightly. This was so, so much worse, because he'd gotten another person involved.
Trying to swallow down the nausea that threatened to overwhelm him, Tao moved into his demolished room and stripped off his work shirt. He only had a few minutes, he knew. They'd send someone here again. They'd probably dispatched someone right when he'd called, just in case they'd underestimated how cold Tao could be. In case he decided to leave Kris to them and disappear.
He slipped into a plain white tee shirt, pulled on a lightweight black jacket, and headed for the door, taking the bat with him. He could hear them already, at the bottom of the stairwell. They were waiting for him. Idly, he gave the bat a quick twirl, almost smiling at the sound of the metal as it moved through the air, and ran down the steps to meet them.
He would go, yes. But that didn't mean he wouldn't take a few down with him.
~ ~ ~
It had taken six men to subdue him, and Tao had taken out three of them before they'd managed to wrestle him to the ground. A hard blow to the head from one of the well-dressed men had left him reeling, and in the few moments of dizziness they'd secured his arms behind his back and snapped something heavy around his neck. He'd gone limp and closed his eyes, and they'd lifted him easily to toss him onto the seats of a waiting van.
He'd gone easy on them, and he was sure they didn't realise he had given up without much of a fight.
It hadn't actually been a very long drive to their destination, but to Tao it felt like a lifetime. When his head had finally stopped spinning, and he was able to think, all he'd focused on was what was going to happen to him... and what would happen to Kris.
They parked the van in a tall parking garage, four levels up. Tao had counted, his eyes fixed on the sliver of the windshield visible past the driver's shoulder. When the door slid open, they hauled him out and set him on his feet, hands gripping his arms and holding him upright.
"Don't try anything, Z..." one of the men hooked a finger into the tight, heavy collar they'd locked around Tao's neck and gave it a jerk, making his head snap back uncomfortably. "Nothing good can come of it. Understand?"
The man grinned at him, and Tao had to resist the overwhelming urge to headbutt him in the face and break his stupid nose. He had to behave, though. He had to be a good, emotionless little robot of a person, because if they knew how much he actually cared about Kris... he'd never escape this place alive. And it would be all Zitao's fault.
"Good dog."
They shuffled him into a waiting elevator; there was plenty of room inside, but they still pressed Tao against the back wall and held him there as the elevator descended. Two of them kept their iron grips on his arms, and a third grabbed a handful of his hair and smashed his cheek into the mirrored surface. He held the boy's head where it was, his grip sending prickles of dull pain along Tao's scalp.
Fourteen floors down. They were underground now, Tao knew. These were steps he'd followed before. Grimacing as the man finally let go of his hair, he moved willingly with them into a narrow corridor. He'd always hated this hallway... the lights illuminating the white walls and ceiling washed everything out, making people look like ghosts.
The heavy metal cuffs around his wrists clinked together as he shifted his arms, and the men dug their fingers harder into his flesh. Tao closed his eyes, listening to the squeak of metal as the door at the end of the corridor was opened and he was swept through. He didn't need to see to know where they were now... and to know he really, really didn't want to be here.
"This is Z?" the youthful voice was not the same one he'd heard on the phone; Tao kept his head lowered. "He doesn't look like much. Why has he got dirt on his face?"
"He fought."
"Ah..." Tao tensed at how close the voice was now, and he opened his eyes to find the man's face inches from his own. "Hello there."
The man couldn't have been more than a year older than Tao; there was a smile on his thin face, an expression that didn't really reach up to his eyes. Brown hair fell over one eye, but the one he could see clearly might as well have been full of ice for all the coldness he saw there. He was well-dressed, his suit obviously tailored specially to fit on his thin frame... he looked like a rich young brat.
Sounded like one, too.
"My name is Yixing. Everyone here calls me Xing, but you will call me sir." Tao wrinkled his nose in disgust. "I'm your new handler. That is to say... I own you. If you don't follow orders, you'll be punished. If you try to run..." he paused and gripped Tao's chin, lifting his head and meeting his eyes. "Well. You know what will happen."
He held the boy's gaze for another moment, amusement in his eyes at the clear defiance written across Tao's face. Finally, he let him go, patting his cheek as if he were a child before stepping away. He moved back to his desk, humming under his breath as he looked at the many screens mounted on the wall above it.
Surveillance. Tao's eyes flicked from one screen to the next, looking for a single image. He had to be up there... they had to be keeping an eye on him. They wouldn't just leave him unsupervised. Tao had been on those screens, had been watched every single moment he'd been here previously. Surely they were doing the same with Kris.
"Why are you still here? Take him to his room."
The men gripped his arms again, and Zitao growled as they tried to pull him from the room. He fought them, shaking his head and taking a few steps closer to Yixing when he got loose from one.
"Where is he." Yixing looked up and frowned at his obvious insubordination. "Where is Kris?!"
Yixing shrugged and tilted his head to the men; one slugged Tao in the gut, knocking the breath from him before grabbing his arm to try and haul him away.
"You misbehaved, pet. You should have known bad things would happen as a result."
Tao's entire body went numb as he tried to breathe, and his legs collapsed beneath him at those words. Bad things? Did Yixing mean that Kris was... was dead? Had they killed him? His body once more went limp, and the men dragged him from the room.
Pairing: none
Rating: PG-13
Genre: AU
Disclaimer: I never claimed to be good at this.
"They're coming."
Zitao sat up in bed, his skin slick with sweat, hair sticking to his face and neck. His hands curled into fists around the sheets as he tried to catch his breath, eyes wide and head shaking to try and dislodge the nightmare. In the other room, he heard his roommate stirring, heard the footsteps as he tiptoed to the door.
"I'm fine," he called quietly just as Kris knocked on the door. "Go back to sleep..."
Kris opened the door anyway, peering around it at the shivering boy in the bed. His hair was sticking up, his eyes foggy with sleep and worry as he yawned. One look at Tao and he pushed the door open further and ambled in; his clothes were twisted on his body from tossing and turning, Tao noted, and he wondered if the man had been having as restless a night as he had been.
"Kris, get out," Tao protested as the groggy idiot crawled into bed next to him. It was futile to try and fight him when he was like this, and Tao knew it. He sighed and curled up as Kris wrapped his arms around him. "Fine..."
"Stop having nightmares if you don't want this," Kris mumbled, eyes already closed as he snuggled his shaking friend close. "Go back to sleep now."
Tao squirmed until he was comfortably nestled against the other boy and buried his face into his pillow with a sigh. He should have been used to this by now. It had been happening regularly since he and his friend had moved in together... he'd have a nightmare and wake up in various states of terror, sometimes screaming, sometimes crying, though always gasping for breath and trembling. Kris, who proved to be a lighter sleeper than Tao had counted on, would wake upon hearing the other boy's distress, and promptly climb into bed with him to try and calm him.
Tao hadn't taken to it kindly the first few times, but when he'd realised it was inevitable he'd given in and even grown to find it comforting. Kris had learned what he could and couldn't do after months of bed crashing; he no longer squeezed the breath from Tao as he slept, and he had stopped hiding his face in the crook of his friend's neck. More than once, Zitao had smacked Kris's forehead to wake him when he had started drooling on him.
Yes, they had adjusted well to each other.
Tao managed to fall asleep again after some time, his body curled into Kris's as if the big idiot were a protective cocoon. The nightmares, he had found, often didn't return when his friend was there with him; this held true for tonight as well. He slept soundly until the morning, and when they woke, Kris wobbled back to his own room and left Tao to get ready for his day.
Tao worked as a delivery boy for a small shop in the city. He spent all day every day on a bike, delivering packages to people and trying not to be run over by cars. It was an easy job, at least for him, and usually he would go about it cheerfully. After all, smiles were contagious, and a lot of people needed to catch them.
However, something today just wasn't right. He felt as if someone was following him; he was constantly looking over his shoulder, trying to catch someone who was just out of sight. People stared at him and whispered behind their hands. It made the hair on the back of his neck stand on end, and by the end of his shift he was exhausted from the paranoia.
He pulled the hood of his sleeveless sweatshirt up over his head and pedaled his bike back to the apartment, but even putting a barrier between himself and any eyes, and space between himself and the busy part of the city, didn't seem to be helping at all. He dropped his bike outside of their building, barely stopping to take the time to chain it up so it wouldn't be stolen, and headed up the stairs. Once he was inside, he was sure the feeling of safety would finally come back.
He was wrong.
The first sign that something was wrong was the fact that the door was ajar. There was a large black bootprint on it, a stark contrast against the otherwise bright white paint; it had been kicked open, the chain lock broken apart by the force. Tao tensed, his fists clenching at his sides, and he pushed the door open all the way, listening for any sound to come from inside. When nothing flew out at him, and when he heard not a sound, he very slowly stepped inside.
The flat had been torn apart. One of the old chairs at the now upended kitchen table had been shattered into pieces, and it lay scattered across the floor. The couch had been pulled away from the wall, and the television was across the room from its regular place, its screen cracked and dark. All the doors were open; Tao's bedroom door hung from one hinge, apparently having been forcibly ripped open. Both his bedroom and Kris's had been destroyed, their beds ripped apart and clothing thrown from closets.
Slowly, silently, Tao moved from room to room, barely assessing the damage as he looked around. Broken personal items were not what he was most worried about. He was fixated on finding one specific thing, and damn the rest of it.
But Kris was nowhere to be found, and Zitao found himself unsure if that was a good or a bad thing. Whoever had done this had spared not one bit of kindness. Their home was in tatters. If Kris wasn't here, that meant... he could be with this person. These people.
Tao felt in his pocket for his cell phone and blindly dialed Kris's number as he snatched a baseball bat from the other boy's room. If these people came back, he was going to be ready.
"Where are you?" he demanded as soon as he heard the click of the line picking up.
"Where are you?"
Tao froze in the middle of the decimated living room, his breath catching in his throat. He looked at the phone to make sure he'd dialed the right number; the man at the other end laughed.
"Who are you. Why do you have my roommate's phone. Where is Kris?"
"So many questions, Z. Maybe you should just be quiet and listen."
Tao bit his lip and clenched his fingers tight around the bat. He felt as if he'd been plunged into icy water, as if it was filling up his lungs and making it impossible to breathe. Nobody called him "Z". Nobody but them. Which meant that he'd been found, and that this was very, very bad.
"You're done running and hiding like a little rat. You're done with this rebellious phase as of now. It's time to come home."
"No." Zitao shook his head with a quiet growl.
The other end of the phone was silent for a moment, and then there was a rustling noise. A door opening. The sound of metal clinking against metal. And then Tao heard something that nearly stopped his heart.
A quiet whimper of pain.
"What are you doing?"
He could hear Kris, could hear the frightened breaths he was obviously fighting to silence. Tao swore under his breath, and when Kris cried out, begging the man to leave him alone, he swung the bat one-handed and smashed a hole in the living room wall.
"Hey! What the hell are you doing?!"
All he heard for a minute was Kris's ragged breathing and more metallic clinking. Then, finally, the man spoke again.
"It is time for you to come home. I'm sure your dear little... pet... would appreciate it if you'd simply agree."
Tao drew a slow, even breath and closed his eyes. He should have run... he should have never stopped running. Settling down and making friends was a bad idea and he knew it. Kris had been so nice to him, had taken care of him when he'd had nowhere else to go, and as a result... this.
"If I come in, will you let him go? He has nothing to do with this, you don't have to h-"
"Just come in."
The line went dead. A muscle tensed in Tao's jaw, and he squeezed the cell phone in an attempt to keep control of the anger boiling in his stomach. It didn't help, and he swung the bat again, punching another large hole in the drywall. This was worse than the situation he had nightmares about almost nightly. This was so, so much worse, because he'd gotten another person involved.
Trying to swallow down the nausea that threatened to overwhelm him, Tao moved into his demolished room and stripped off his work shirt. He only had a few minutes, he knew. They'd send someone here again. They'd probably dispatched someone right when he'd called, just in case they'd underestimated how cold Tao could be. In case he decided to leave Kris to them and disappear.
He slipped into a plain white tee shirt, pulled on a lightweight black jacket, and headed for the door, taking the bat with him. He could hear them already, at the bottom of the stairwell. They were waiting for him. Idly, he gave the bat a quick twirl, almost smiling at the sound of the metal as it moved through the air, and ran down the steps to meet them.
He would go, yes. But that didn't mean he wouldn't take a few down with him.
~ ~ ~
It had taken six men to subdue him, and Tao had taken out three of them before they'd managed to wrestle him to the ground. A hard blow to the head from one of the well-dressed men had left him reeling, and in the few moments of dizziness they'd secured his arms behind his back and snapped something heavy around his neck. He'd gone limp and closed his eyes, and they'd lifted him easily to toss him onto the seats of a waiting van.
He'd gone easy on them, and he was sure they didn't realise he had given up without much of a fight.
It hadn't actually been a very long drive to their destination, but to Tao it felt like a lifetime. When his head had finally stopped spinning, and he was able to think, all he'd focused on was what was going to happen to him... and what would happen to Kris.
They parked the van in a tall parking garage, four levels up. Tao had counted, his eyes fixed on the sliver of the windshield visible past the driver's shoulder. When the door slid open, they hauled him out and set him on his feet, hands gripping his arms and holding him upright.
"Don't try anything, Z..." one of the men hooked a finger into the tight, heavy collar they'd locked around Tao's neck and gave it a jerk, making his head snap back uncomfortably. "Nothing good can come of it. Understand?"
The man grinned at him, and Tao had to resist the overwhelming urge to headbutt him in the face and break his stupid nose. He had to behave, though. He had to be a good, emotionless little robot of a person, because if they knew how much he actually cared about Kris... he'd never escape this place alive. And it would be all Zitao's fault.
"Good dog."
They shuffled him into a waiting elevator; there was plenty of room inside, but they still pressed Tao against the back wall and held him there as the elevator descended. Two of them kept their iron grips on his arms, and a third grabbed a handful of his hair and smashed his cheek into the mirrored surface. He held the boy's head where it was, his grip sending prickles of dull pain along Tao's scalp.
Fourteen floors down. They were underground now, Tao knew. These were steps he'd followed before. Grimacing as the man finally let go of his hair, he moved willingly with them into a narrow corridor. He'd always hated this hallway... the lights illuminating the white walls and ceiling washed everything out, making people look like ghosts.
The heavy metal cuffs around his wrists clinked together as he shifted his arms, and the men dug their fingers harder into his flesh. Tao closed his eyes, listening to the squeak of metal as the door at the end of the corridor was opened and he was swept through. He didn't need to see to know where they were now... and to know he really, really didn't want to be here.
"This is Z?" the youthful voice was not the same one he'd heard on the phone; Tao kept his head lowered. "He doesn't look like much. Why has he got dirt on his face?"
"He fought."
"Ah..." Tao tensed at how close the voice was now, and he opened his eyes to find the man's face inches from his own. "Hello there."
The man couldn't have been more than a year older than Tao; there was a smile on his thin face, an expression that didn't really reach up to his eyes. Brown hair fell over one eye, but the one he could see clearly might as well have been full of ice for all the coldness he saw there. He was well-dressed, his suit obviously tailored specially to fit on his thin frame... he looked like a rich young brat.
Sounded like one, too.
"My name is Yixing. Everyone here calls me Xing, but you will call me sir." Tao wrinkled his nose in disgust. "I'm your new handler. That is to say... I own you. If you don't follow orders, you'll be punished. If you try to run..." he paused and gripped Tao's chin, lifting his head and meeting his eyes. "Well. You know what will happen."
He held the boy's gaze for another moment, amusement in his eyes at the clear defiance written across Tao's face. Finally, he let him go, patting his cheek as if he were a child before stepping away. He moved back to his desk, humming under his breath as he looked at the many screens mounted on the wall above it.
Surveillance. Tao's eyes flicked from one screen to the next, looking for a single image. He had to be up there... they had to be keeping an eye on him. They wouldn't just leave him unsupervised. Tao had been on those screens, had been watched every single moment he'd been here previously. Surely they were doing the same with Kris.
"Why are you still here? Take him to his room."
The men gripped his arms again, and Zitao growled as they tried to pull him from the room. He fought them, shaking his head and taking a few steps closer to Yixing when he got loose from one.
"Where is he." Yixing looked up and frowned at his obvious insubordination. "Where is Kris?!"
Yixing shrugged and tilted his head to the men; one slugged Tao in the gut, knocking the breath from him before grabbing his arm to try and haul him away.
"You misbehaved, pet. You should have known bad things would happen as a result."
Tao's entire body went numb as he tried to breathe, and his legs collapsed beneath him at those words. Bad things? Did Yixing mean that Kris was... was dead? Had they killed him? His body once more went limp, and the men dragged him from the room.