Of Blood and Brooms - Chapter Five
Of Blood and Brooms
Chapter Five
It was cold, so cold, but there wasn’t a thing he could do to get out of it besides huddle beneath the small shelter the bridge could provide for him. He wasn’t quite old enough to understand that the deep hunger he felt was his body slowly starving and the weakness in his limbs couldn’t be a good thing. His little mind knew that in the daylight things were warmer, and eventually, at some point, even the nights wouldn’t be so cold anymore. It never occurred to him that alone and unfed he wouldn’t make it to see the summer nights ever again.
“Isn’t it a little chilly for one such as you to be out here?” a man asked as he paused beside the bridge.
It wasn’t good to be noticed. Being noticed got him chased out of the small space of warmth he had managed to find. Being noticed got him scolded and beaten with the coarse brooms that the ladies used to sweep in front of their husbands’ space in the market. Being noticed was bad, and he huddled further into the darkness, hoping that he couldn’t be seen.
“Despicable that they would leave one so young and fragile alone,” the man said, and he heard what he thought to be anger. The man crouched in front of where he was hiding and extended an arm. “Here, you need this, I think.” In his palm sat a bun of some sort, steam rolling off it into the cool air.
He could smell it and his stomach grumbled at the scent of it. There wasn’t a chance he could have remained hidden no matter how much he wanted to, not with the presentation of food. He scrabbled forward and snatched the offered food, devouring half of it before he had retreated back to the safety of his small corner. It would make him sick, eating so fast, but he was so hungry and couldn’t stop himself.
“Do you have a family?” the man asked, not moving from where he was crouched. He shook his head not thinking about the fact that the man wouldn’t be able to see him in the shadows. “Do you have a name?” the man continued as if he had.
“Jongwoon,” he mumbled around the last of the bun.
“Jongwoon, would you like to come home with me? I am an old man and miss the life a child can bring to a home. There would be more food and anything you could want there.” The man certainly didn’t look old to him, but who was he to judge, sometimes it was hard to tell the ages of the men with all of their formal clothing on.
“I’m a pest,” he repeated what he had heard screamed at him so often.
“That makes two of us then,” the man said with a smile. “Will you come?”
He nodded, the promise of food winning out over any fear that he might have had and moved forward. The arms that surrounded him were thin, but deceptively strong as they lifted him, and the fabric he was bundled into was warm. He saw the outline of the street and one of the fancy ways of transportation that important men carried by other men used, before his eyes sagged closed and he slept.
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“He is a child,” a feminine voice hissed, stirring him from his sleep.
“Oh and here I thought I had found a midget,” the man’s voice replied, sounding amused.
“Heechul!” she said sharply, “You cannot intend to drink from him.”
“Enough,” a smoother, older sounding male voice soothed. “Leave it be HaeMi. Go make something for when the little one awakens.”
The shuffling of feet signaled her leaving and he waited with eyes closed to hear if the others had left as well. “He’s already awake,” said the man whose voice he knew.
“A human would never have been able to tell. He plays pretend very well.”
“I imagine he has had a lot of practice while trying to survive,” a hand touched his face and he gave in and opened his eyes.
The man who had given him food was sitting on the edge of the bed watching him. Behind him stood another man in a loose white shirt and black pants that didn’t resemble anything remotely Korean. The man who had brought him here had changed into something like it, he noticed, and his long black hair hung freely down his back. Heechul, the woman had called him, somehow the name seemed to suit him.
Behind Heechul the other man stood with his hand on the back of Heechul’s neck. Heechul was leaning into his touch in a way that seemed relaxed and comfortable, as if this was something familiar. “What do you plan to do with him? He is too young for you to feed from and survive it, although no one would miss his body.”
He thought maybe he should be afraid of what the words might mean, but Heechul’s face expressed anger at the suggestion. “I don’t kill my food,” he hissed dangerously.
“I know,” the other man soothed. “In fact you save other peoples food. Peace Heechul. Know that there are some here who would love to kill him. A child’s blood is rich.”
“Jay,” Heechul hissed both with question and warning.
“Not me,” the other man said with a laugh. “I have no taste for youth. My taste lies in a more, animalistic direction.”
Their conversation was confusing to say the least but his answer seemed to satisfy Heechul. “It would have been a shame for him to have died.”
“It would have,” the man named Jay answered.
“Are you hungry little one?” Heechul asked. He tried to hide it, to make it so he didn’t seem like he needed anything, but his stomach rumbled and betrayed him.
Heechul laughed, “I take that as a yes.”
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Jay wasn’t mean, and he was a patient teacher, so was Jungmo who seemed to always be with him, but neither man was Heechul. It was Heechul who had insisted that he be educated and if he was to suffer, at the very least he would make the man suffer his questions. He knew the rules of never going in a room when the door was closed, he had been told more times than he could count. If he had obeyed that, then he would never get to go anywhere.
Not that it was necessarily a bad thing. He was thankful and he realized what he had been taken from, yet to any teenager all the closed doors could turn into a prison. A difficult mathematics problem was just enough of an excuse to go and interrupt whatever it was Heechul was doing. It couldn’t be that important anyway, nothing the man ever did seemed to be.
He didn’t bother knocking, that would be a waste of time and start a discussion he didn’t want to have. Turning the knob showed him that the door wasn’t locked and he opened it and pushed it open without announcing himself. The sitting room was empty, as he half expected it to be but the door to Heechul’s bedroom was cracked and he moved to it.
With his head raised, more than ready for the verbal battle that might be spurned at his entrance, he pushed the door open and froze at what he saw. Of all the things he had been expecting, oddly enough this hadn’t been one of them. Heechul was reclining on his bed, with a nude woman lying against him. One of his hands was clutching her breast and the other was doing something to her lower body that he couldn’t see from the angle he was standing at. Heechul’s mouth was attached to her neck and she released a long whimpering moan of pleasure.
Most disturbing was Kibum, a man who followed Heechul around like a puppy, who was watching them from the chair near the bed, a hungry look on his face. He had read enough to know what sex was but he had never expected to see something like this and the sight froze him right where he was.
Suddenly, as if called by the beating of his heart, Heechul looked up at him. The eyes that focused on him were blood red and gleaming with something animalistic. In the next second Kibum was in front of him so fast that he never saw him leave the chair, cutting the other man from view.
“Come,” he snarled, grabbing his arm and pulling him around and out of the room. “He hardly feeds enough as it is and the last thing he needs is you interrupting him!”
Kibum practically threw him into a chair and he went without protest, his eyes on the still open door. Snarling, a sound more animal then human, the man stormed to it and pulled it shut before turning to face him again. “How many times have you been told never to enter a closed room?!”
“Several,” he answered, strangely enough not frightened by the aggression the man was displaying.
“And you choose to disobey that?” Kibum growled.
“I needed help with a problem,” he replied calmly.
“You are a fool who Heechul should have put in his place long ago. He coddles you because you are still a child in his eyes.”
“It’s just sex,” he said, trying to sound more relaxed then he was.
“It is much more then sex, but I am surprised that you even know what that would look like. Yes she was finding pleasure by Heechul, because he let her. Otherwise,” Kibum stopped abruptly.
“Otherwise what?” he pressed.
“Never mind. Heechul will tell you when he is ready. Get out,” Kibum order, leaving no room to argue.
Heechul, clearly indisposed, wouldn’t be coming out anytime soon, so he rose and bowed politely before turning and heading towards the only other thing that could provide him with answers. The library.
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The door was ajar, he made certain of that this time before entering, and it swung open easily beneath the press of his fingers. Heechul was sitting before the fire in a deep armchair that didn’t look Asian in the slightest and flipping through a delicate looking text.
“You’re a vampire,” he blurted without preamble. Heechul flipped the page and continued reading as if he hadn’t spoken. “I know you are. It’s how you don’t look a day older then when you found me and why Jay was afraid you would drink from me when I was little.”
Heechul carefully picked up a small strip of fabric and placed it between two pages in the text. He then closed the book and set it on the small table beside his chair. “I should have figured you would remember that,” he said casually as he lifted his eyes to study the young man.
“You are,” he said firmly.
“So if I am, does it change anything?” Heechul asked calmly. Folding his fingers casually over his chest.
“No,” he said without needing to think. “Why haven’t you drunk from me yet?”
“That isn’t why I brought you home,” Heechul replied with a frown.
“But you have been feeding me for years, it is only fair,” he insisted.
“You are young and curious,” Heechul said with a smile. “And looking for a thrill. I will not be that by feeding from you. Leave if you chose.”
His face sat stubbornly and instead of moving to the door, he moved to the chair beside Heechul’s and sat. The man sighed. “Well if you insist on staying here and cluttering up my room, then at least you can sing for me,” Heechul murmured. He thought about it for a moment before he nodded and did as he had been asked.
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“He won’t eat,” Jay said softly, and not for the first time he wondered why they were coming to him. “He has to eat.”
“There are plenty of humans here he can feed from,” he knew he sounded bitter but he didn’t care.
“He won’t take them,” the other man in his room said softly.
“Not since he killed the woman on accident,” Jay said with a wave of his hand. He clearly didn’t care how many humans had been killed although he appeared to care a great deal for Heechul.
“You made him didn’t you? Just make him drink,” he hissed, not thrilled with this vampire’s attitude at all.
“It isn’t that simple,” the other man, Jungmo said in soothing tones. Then suddenly, “He calls you Yesung did you know that?” He had.
“You could get him to drink,” Jay said.
“So could you,” he countered.
“I would break him, you,” he paused for a moment, trying to find the right words to say perhaps to convince him, “you could complete him.”
“What about Kibum? He made him. You all can feed from your own children and gain strength,” he said irritably.
“You seem to know an awful lot about us,” Jay mused.
“You have a lot of books about vampires and someone insisted that I learn how to read,” he muttered, knowing the man could hear him fine. “Nothing on him though,” he said pointing to Jungmo, the man who wasn’t a vampire but wasn’t quite human either.
“We are working on that,” Jay said, running his fingers along Jungmo’s back affectionately. “If you chose to do nothing, then you leave me with no choice.”
“Boy it must really suck to be immortal,” he snapped, irritated with the conversation entirely.
“Not near as much as it does to be human,” Jay hissed.
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He should really know not to sneak into the rooms of vampires by now, especially when they were completely dark. It wasn’t something he had thought twice about when he had been little, but the natural light of day never made it into the rooms, and there was a distinct lack of windows in them all. Vampires wouldn’t be impeded by the dark, but he couldn’t see a thing.
The sitting room he navigated by memory, being sure to keep the object clutched in his hand away from his body so as not to hurt himself on accident. Once to Heechul’s bedroom, his memory could help him no further and he opened the door, slipping inside and pressing his back to its firm surface as soon as it clicked shut. Heechul was awake, he was certain of that much, even if he didn’t hear a sound in the room. Vampires didn’t need to breathe unless they wanted to talk, although Heechul usually did and it made him sound more human.
“Go away little song bird, before you can no longer fly,” Heechul’s voice hissed. He knew it was supposed to be a threat, but he heard too much pain and despair for it to be much of one.
“Where is Kibum?” he asked quietly.
“I sent him away.” The reply carried such force that he was fairly certain Heechul hadn’t simply asked the other vampire to leave. Kibum had been ordered away by a command from his Maker that he could not disobey.
“You can’t send me away,” he whispered.
“Go!” Heechul snapped and he wondered if he was supposed to feel an urge to flee. He didn’t.
“If you do not eat then bloodlust will set in and Jay will have to take care of you for the good of the Seethe. Why are you being stubborn?”
“I will do as I please,” the words came with an animalistic noise that was designed to scare but only made him feel sad.
“Not if I have anything to say about it,” he muttered. He lifted the object in his right hand and pressed the smooth sharp metal to his opposite wrist. Straight up, along the line of his arm, would do the most damage and produce the most blood and he added pressure as he slid the small dagger from his wrist up to towards his elbow. The bite of the metal as it parted flesh sent pain shooting up his arm and he cried out at the feeling of it.
“What are you doing?” Heechul hissed, but the intake of air for him to speak must have given him away since a second later cold fingers grabbed the hand that held the dagger and jerked the blade from him before he could draw it more than an inch or two up his arm.
That length was more than far enough and he could feel the blood leaving his body more rapidly then he had thought it would. Immediately his wrist was lifted up and something pressed to the cut. It should have hurt, his brain thought, but it only felt numb as it moved over the area again and again. It took longer than he would have thought for the blood to stop flowing and longer still for Heechul to be satisfied enough for his tongue to leave the freshly closed skin.
“If you want to kill yourself then leave this place,” Heechul growled and he heard hurt in the vampire’s words.
“I don’t,” he said weakly. “I knew you could close it before I died.”
An angry sound rose from the vampire. “I could have chosen to drink you dry before closing it. It would not be the first time I did so to a pathetic human.”
“That was an accident,” he said firmly and his body swayed lightly. He must have lost more blood then he had thought.
Heechul snorted, clearly disagreeing but not saying anything opposed as he wrapped an arm firmly around the swaying man’s waist. His eyes fluttered, and if there had been enough light to see by, he didn’t think he would be able to see anything more than blurry shapes anyway. Strong arms lifted him and he let unconsciousness take him, knowing he was safe.
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“Jay says you aren’t drinking again,” he said, crossing his arms over his chest and offering the vampire who was lounging in his bed an accusing look.
“So. I’m not hungry,” Heechul replied, focusing on the objects in front of him.
“Heechul you are doing needlepoint and you are not breathing just so you don’t have to smell me. I know I smell like lunch,” he said casually.
“Go away and tell Jay if he wants to send someone to check up on me he can at least send me Jungmo,” Heechul told him, carefully pulling a thread through his project.
“This pouting like a child is pathetic even for you,” he said with a roll of his eyes. “If you don’t eat I’ll just slit my wrist again.” Heechul’s head snapped up, his eyes red and glowing. “I mean it isn’t that hard, and you make the scar so faint.” He held out his wrist, displaying the barely visible line.
“I’ll let you bleed to death,” Heechul snarled.
“No you won’t,” he countered confidently. “Because you are afraid that too much blood will send you into bloodlust and then not only will I be dead but it will be from you killing me.”
“I can take any blade you have before you have time to use it.”
“I figured. So I’ll just bite my tongue. I hear that bleeds really well,” he said flippantly as if they were discussing weather and not how he could hurt himself.
“And I will take over your mind so you will do no such thing,” Heechul snarled.
“You won’t or you would have already. Easy or hard Heechul. Either way you are drinking from me today.”
“You don’t understand what it will do to you,” Heechul hissed in frustration.
“What? Arouse me? I imagine it would have last time too if there hadn’t been that whole pain thing. Who cares Heechul, I’m eighteen, I know what arousal is. I’m hardly innocent,” he shrugged.
“You have never fed a vampire.”
“Should I go feed Kibum first and then come back? I hear from the human snacks he is fantastic.”
“No!” Heechul’s anger and the quickness of his response gave him away.
“Then let’s do this shall we?” he said with a smirk, as he pushed away from the door and dropped his shirt to the floor. Heechul watched it fall and said nothing as he settled onto the bed and crawled closer. “Are you really going to feed from me around your needlepoint? I should feel offended.”
Slowly and with meticulous care, Heechul gathered the project he had been working on and tucked it all neatly back into its bag which he set gently on the floor. When Heechul was finished he watched as the young man climbed closer. He threw a leg over Heechul’s lap, settling on his legs facing him, and the vampire’s hands lifted to rest on his hips.
“I cannot control it,” Heechul said soft, watching him for a reaction. “The pleasure a vampire’s bite has depends on the vampire, but it also depends on how much they truly wish to hurt the person they are feeding from. What you walked in on previously was a feeding where I didn’t exactly want to hurt her, but I wouldn’t have cared either.”
“Your fingers probably helped hide the pain to,” he said casually.
“Perhaps,” Heechul admitted smirking. “The point, Yesung, is that I do not want to hurt you, ever. I suspect I can draw a sexual climax from your body with little more than my bite, at least the first time.”
“Rather confident aren’t you?” this conversation and the thumb that was moving slowly back and forth over his upper thigh eliminated any remaining nerves he might have had.
“No, positive,” Heechul murmured, leaning forward. The vampire’s breath ghosted over his neck and a shudder ran down his spine. “You are already aroused and I haven’t bitten you.”
“Am not,” he said stubbornly, although he couldn’t keep his hands from curling in the fabric of Heechul’s shirt.
“You are, I can smell it,” Heechul’s voice was a dark purr and his tongue swept over the side of his neck.
“You are too,” he countered, although he had no idea if vampires could experience arousal in a human sense. Heechul said nothing, and a moment later he felt something press in and through the side of his neck. It didn’t hurt, not like he thought it should, more like a strange pressure that shouldn’t have happened. Then, a moment after their entrance, pleasure exploded in his body.
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“I would think I would have been less aroused by your very sharp teeth being that close to my very important body parts,” he murmured, his chest heaving. Pleasure still zinged through his veins as an after affect but a part of him was more than a little proud it took more than a simple bite to produce that result now.
“Humans have very large veins in their groins. I would think one would need it to get blood quickly to certain areas,” Heechul purred. He locked eyes with the panting man before running his tongue slowly over the area where he had bitten moments ago. It was a pointless action, as Heechul’s puncture marks wouldn’t be there any longer than a few moments after he was finished, but it did send a pleasant tingle shuddering through his body.
“Mm, it will be a shame when we can’t do this anymore,” he murmured.
“It will,” Heechul agreed, settling his head on the thigh near where he had been drinking. “But all humans die eventually.”
“Not if they become vampires,” he said softly.
Heechul laughed. “No.”
“You changed Kibum,” he pointed out calmly.
“He was dying,” Heechul responded. It was an old argument, their responses coming almost automatic.
“I can make it so I am too,” he threatened and they both knew how serious he was about that threat.
“Patience Yesung. All things in time,” Heechul muttered.
“I don’t have all the time you do,” he reminded the vampire knowing that creatures that did not age occasionally had trouble remembering how fleeting life was for those that did.
“I know,” Heechul exhaled and his breath stirred a response from the tired body he was laying on. “Looks as though you do have a bit of blood left in your body after all,” he said with a smirk in his voice.
“I’ll show you a bit of blood,” he declared, reaching down and dragging Heechul upwards on the bed. When he rolled to put Heechul beneath him, it only worked because the vampire let him.
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“It is your twenty forth birthday,” Heechul murmured softly, stirring him from the half dazed state he had fallen into.
“I don’t remember when my birthday was,” he mumbled. “We always just guessed how old I was.”
“It has been eighteen years since I brought you into this seethe on this day. That makes you twenty four today,” Heechul said.
“So it does,” he muttered, rolling into Kibum’s side. He was the warmer of the two and while Heechul seemed to be all angles, Kibum had retained some muscled curves that were much more comforting for resting, especially after having been a snack for both vampires.
“Kibum how would you like to not be an only child anymore?” Heechul asked deceptively curious. That woke him up instantly. Vampires called the vampires that they turned their children, since they were directly responsible for the care and growth of them.
He looked between the two of them, observing the pleased and satisfied looks on their faces outlined by flickering firelight. “I think it would be nice to have someone else to share your bitching with for the rest of eternity.”
“Really?” he asked, not daring to hope that Heechul had agreed at last.
Heechul shrugged. “I figure it won’t be too much longer before I find you nearly bleeding to death on the floor because of your determination. I have already changed one child that way. Let’s make this a bit smoother shall we?” He lifted his own wrist to his mouth, biting into it quickly with his sharp teeth.
“Sip slowly,” Kibum advised him, smiling encouragingly.
He nodded and held Heechul’s wrist lightly, bringing it to his lips. The first taste was coppery with a hint of tang that he thought blood should taste like. Then the true flavor hit him and it was rich on his tongue, better then the finest thing he had tasted. He lapped at it hungrily and for the first time in the back of his mind he heard the satisfied purr of ‘mine’.
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He tried to shove the arm in front of his mouth away from him. He didn’t want to become a vampire, he would never want to be one of them, but the arm wouldn’t move. He couldn’t push it away. Struggle was his first response, and at the feeling of something still stuck in his neck, panic.
“Key,” a voice called, trying to sooth him. Abruptly he was released and the fog that had enshrouded his mind vanished. It had been difficult to tell where the vampire ended and he began and for a moment he felt as though the memories were his own. “Key it’s alright.”
The voice was Ryeowook’s and he shook his head to clear it. “I’m fine,” he muttered. Overwhelmed, but fine, although he didn’t say that. He had gotten a lot of information already from the vampire, but it wasn’t what he needed. A glance to the side and he found it watching him, his lips stained red from his blood. It didn’t look any happier then he was. “I’m not done,” he murmured. “I need to know.” What, he couldn’t say, because he wasn’t even certain what it was himself.
“Fine,” the vampire snapped after looking at Ryeowook for a brief moment. He moved closer and sank his fangs into the side of Key’s neck again and the witch was relieved at the sharp spike of pain he felt. If it had been anything like the bite from the memories he didn’t know what he would have done. The arm lifted to his mouth again and he had to stifle his gag reflex as he grasped it. He needed to know and once he did he didn’t have to have anything else to do with it ever again. With that thought in mind he closed his lips over the vampire’s bloody wrist and let his mind sink back into memories that were not his own.
Chapter Six
Masterlist
AN: So when I started this chapter I was thinking there would be a few Yesung memories and then we would just progress the real time plot... Well apparently my Yesung muse and my Heechul muse had been scheming and decided to jump me together... They thought it would be a great idea to tell most of Yesung's history and I'm just along for the ride... *sigh* There is a second half of Yesung's history that will get posted after the weekend since I will not be around internet for my computer and I'm not going to try and post that with my phone. lol.
Chapter Five
It was cold, so cold, but there wasn’t a thing he could do to get out of it besides huddle beneath the small shelter the bridge could provide for him. He wasn’t quite old enough to understand that the deep hunger he felt was his body slowly starving and the weakness in his limbs couldn’t be a good thing. His little mind knew that in the daylight things were warmer, and eventually, at some point, even the nights wouldn’t be so cold anymore. It never occurred to him that alone and unfed he wouldn’t make it to see the summer nights ever again.
“Isn’t it a little chilly for one such as you to be out here?” a man asked as he paused beside the bridge.
It wasn’t good to be noticed. Being noticed got him chased out of the small space of warmth he had managed to find. Being noticed got him scolded and beaten with the coarse brooms that the ladies used to sweep in front of their husbands’ space in the market. Being noticed was bad, and he huddled further into the darkness, hoping that he couldn’t be seen.
“Despicable that they would leave one so young and fragile alone,” the man said, and he heard what he thought to be anger. The man crouched in front of where he was hiding and extended an arm. “Here, you need this, I think.” In his palm sat a bun of some sort, steam rolling off it into the cool air.
He could smell it and his stomach grumbled at the scent of it. There wasn’t a chance he could have remained hidden no matter how much he wanted to, not with the presentation of food. He scrabbled forward and snatched the offered food, devouring half of it before he had retreated back to the safety of his small corner. It would make him sick, eating so fast, but he was so hungry and couldn’t stop himself.
“Do you have a family?” the man asked, not moving from where he was crouched. He shook his head not thinking about the fact that the man wouldn’t be able to see him in the shadows. “Do you have a name?” the man continued as if he had.
“Jongwoon,” he mumbled around the last of the bun.
“Jongwoon, would you like to come home with me? I am an old man and miss the life a child can bring to a home. There would be more food and anything you could want there.” The man certainly didn’t look old to him, but who was he to judge, sometimes it was hard to tell the ages of the men with all of their formal clothing on.
“I’m a pest,” he repeated what he had heard screamed at him so often.
“That makes two of us then,” the man said with a smile. “Will you come?”
He nodded, the promise of food winning out over any fear that he might have had and moved forward. The arms that surrounded him were thin, but deceptively strong as they lifted him, and the fabric he was bundled into was warm. He saw the outline of the street and one of the fancy ways of transportation that important men carried by other men used, before his eyes sagged closed and he slept.
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“He is a child,” a feminine voice hissed, stirring him from his sleep.
“Oh and here I thought I had found a midget,” the man’s voice replied, sounding amused.
“Heechul!” she said sharply, “You cannot intend to drink from him.”
“Enough,” a smoother, older sounding male voice soothed. “Leave it be HaeMi. Go make something for when the little one awakens.”
The shuffling of feet signaled her leaving and he waited with eyes closed to hear if the others had left as well. “He’s already awake,” said the man whose voice he knew.
“A human would never have been able to tell. He plays pretend very well.”
“I imagine he has had a lot of practice while trying to survive,” a hand touched his face and he gave in and opened his eyes.
The man who had given him food was sitting on the edge of the bed watching him. Behind him stood another man in a loose white shirt and black pants that didn’t resemble anything remotely Korean. The man who had brought him here had changed into something like it, he noticed, and his long black hair hung freely down his back. Heechul, the woman had called him, somehow the name seemed to suit him.
Behind Heechul the other man stood with his hand on the back of Heechul’s neck. Heechul was leaning into his touch in a way that seemed relaxed and comfortable, as if this was something familiar. “What do you plan to do with him? He is too young for you to feed from and survive it, although no one would miss his body.”
He thought maybe he should be afraid of what the words might mean, but Heechul’s face expressed anger at the suggestion. “I don’t kill my food,” he hissed dangerously.
“I know,” the other man soothed. “In fact you save other peoples food. Peace Heechul. Know that there are some here who would love to kill him. A child’s blood is rich.”
“Jay,” Heechul hissed both with question and warning.
“Not me,” the other man said with a laugh. “I have no taste for youth. My taste lies in a more, animalistic direction.”
Their conversation was confusing to say the least but his answer seemed to satisfy Heechul. “It would have been a shame for him to have died.”
“It would have,” the man named Jay answered.
“Are you hungry little one?” Heechul asked. He tried to hide it, to make it so he didn’t seem like he needed anything, but his stomach rumbled and betrayed him.
Heechul laughed, “I take that as a yes.”
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Jay wasn’t mean, and he was a patient teacher, so was Jungmo who seemed to always be with him, but neither man was Heechul. It was Heechul who had insisted that he be educated and if he was to suffer, at the very least he would make the man suffer his questions. He knew the rules of never going in a room when the door was closed, he had been told more times than he could count. If he had obeyed that, then he would never get to go anywhere.
Not that it was necessarily a bad thing. He was thankful and he realized what he had been taken from, yet to any teenager all the closed doors could turn into a prison. A difficult mathematics problem was just enough of an excuse to go and interrupt whatever it was Heechul was doing. It couldn’t be that important anyway, nothing the man ever did seemed to be.
He didn’t bother knocking, that would be a waste of time and start a discussion he didn’t want to have. Turning the knob showed him that the door wasn’t locked and he opened it and pushed it open without announcing himself. The sitting room was empty, as he half expected it to be but the door to Heechul’s bedroom was cracked and he moved to it.
With his head raised, more than ready for the verbal battle that might be spurned at his entrance, he pushed the door open and froze at what he saw. Of all the things he had been expecting, oddly enough this hadn’t been one of them. Heechul was reclining on his bed, with a nude woman lying against him. One of his hands was clutching her breast and the other was doing something to her lower body that he couldn’t see from the angle he was standing at. Heechul’s mouth was attached to her neck and she released a long whimpering moan of pleasure.
Most disturbing was Kibum, a man who followed Heechul around like a puppy, who was watching them from the chair near the bed, a hungry look on his face. He had read enough to know what sex was but he had never expected to see something like this and the sight froze him right where he was.
Suddenly, as if called by the beating of his heart, Heechul looked up at him. The eyes that focused on him were blood red and gleaming with something animalistic. In the next second Kibum was in front of him so fast that he never saw him leave the chair, cutting the other man from view.
“Come,” he snarled, grabbing his arm and pulling him around and out of the room. “He hardly feeds enough as it is and the last thing he needs is you interrupting him!”
Kibum practically threw him into a chair and he went without protest, his eyes on the still open door. Snarling, a sound more animal then human, the man stormed to it and pulled it shut before turning to face him again. “How many times have you been told never to enter a closed room?!”
“Several,” he answered, strangely enough not frightened by the aggression the man was displaying.
“And you choose to disobey that?” Kibum growled.
“I needed help with a problem,” he replied calmly.
“You are a fool who Heechul should have put in his place long ago. He coddles you because you are still a child in his eyes.”
“It’s just sex,” he said, trying to sound more relaxed then he was.
“It is much more then sex, but I am surprised that you even know what that would look like. Yes she was finding pleasure by Heechul, because he let her. Otherwise,” Kibum stopped abruptly.
“Otherwise what?” he pressed.
“Never mind. Heechul will tell you when he is ready. Get out,” Kibum order, leaving no room to argue.
Heechul, clearly indisposed, wouldn’t be coming out anytime soon, so he rose and bowed politely before turning and heading towards the only other thing that could provide him with answers. The library.
▪▫▪☼▪▫▪
The door was ajar, he made certain of that this time before entering, and it swung open easily beneath the press of his fingers. Heechul was sitting before the fire in a deep armchair that didn’t look Asian in the slightest and flipping through a delicate looking text.
“You’re a vampire,” he blurted without preamble. Heechul flipped the page and continued reading as if he hadn’t spoken. “I know you are. It’s how you don’t look a day older then when you found me and why Jay was afraid you would drink from me when I was little.”
Heechul carefully picked up a small strip of fabric and placed it between two pages in the text. He then closed the book and set it on the small table beside his chair. “I should have figured you would remember that,” he said casually as he lifted his eyes to study the young man.
“You are,” he said firmly.
“So if I am, does it change anything?” Heechul asked calmly. Folding his fingers casually over his chest.
“No,” he said without needing to think. “Why haven’t you drunk from me yet?”
“That isn’t why I brought you home,” Heechul replied with a frown.
“But you have been feeding me for years, it is only fair,” he insisted.
“You are young and curious,” Heechul said with a smile. “And looking for a thrill. I will not be that by feeding from you. Leave if you chose.”
His face sat stubbornly and instead of moving to the door, he moved to the chair beside Heechul’s and sat. The man sighed. “Well if you insist on staying here and cluttering up my room, then at least you can sing for me,” Heechul murmured. He thought about it for a moment before he nodded and did as he had been asked.
▪▫▪☼▪▫▪
“He won’t eat,” Jay said softly, and not for the first time he wondered why they were coming to him. “He has to eat.”
“There are plenty of humans here he can feed from,” he knew he sounded bitter but he didn’t care.
“He won’t take them,” the other man in his room said softly.
“Not since he killed the woman on accident,” Jay said with a wave of his hand. He clearly didn’t care how many humans had been killed although he appeared to care a great deal for Heechul.
“You made him didn’t you? Just make him drink,” he hissed, not thrilled with this vampire’s attitude at all.
“It isn’t that simple,” the other man, Jungmo said in soothing tones. Then suddenly, “He calls you Yesung did you know that?” He had.
“You could get him to drink,” Jay said.
“So could you,” he countered.
“I would break him, you,” he paused for a moment, trying to find the right words to say perhaps to convince him, “you could complete him.”
“What about Kibum? He made him. You all can feed from your own children and gain strength,” he said irritably.
“You seem to know an awful lot about us,” Jay mused.
“You have a lot of books about vampires and someone insisted that I learn how to read,” he muttered, knowing the man could hear him fine. “Nothing on him though,” he said pointing to Jungmo, the man who wasn’t a vampire but wasn’t quite human either.
“We are working on that,” Jay said, running his fingers along Jungmo’s back affectionately. “If you chose to do nothing, then you leave me with no choice.”
“Boy it must really suck to be immortal,” he snapped, irritated with the conversation entirely.
“Not near as much as it does to be human,” Jay hissed.
▪▫▪☼▪▫▪
He should really know not to sneak into the rooms of vampires by now, especially when they were completely dark. It wasn’t something he had thought twice about when he had been little, but the natural light of day never made it into the rooms, and there was a distinct lack of windows in them all. Vampires wouldn’t be impeded by the dark, but he couldn’t see a thing.
The sitting room he navigated by memory, being sure to keep the object clutched in his hand away from his body so as not to hurt himself on accident. Once to Heechul’s bedroom, his memory could help him no further and he opened the door, slipping inside and pressing his back to its firm surface as soon as it clicked shut. Heechul was awake, he was certain of that much, even if he didn’t hear a sound in the room. Vampires didn’t need to breathe unless they wanted to talk, although Heechul usually did and it made him sound more human.
“Go away little song bird, before you can no longer fly,” Heechul’s voice hissed. He knew it was supposed to be a threat, but he heard too much pain and despair for it to be much of one.
“Where is Kibum?” he asked quietly.
“I sent him away.” The reply carried such force that he was fairly certain Heechul hadn’t simply asked the other vampire to leave. Kibum had been ordered away by a command from his Maker that he could not disobey.
“You can’t send me away,” he whispered.
“Go!” Heechul snapped and he wondered if he was supposed to feel an urge to flee. He didn’t.
“If you do not eat then bloodlust will set in and Jay will have to take care of you for the good of the Seethe. Why are you being stubborn?”
“I will do as I please,” the words came with an animalistic noise that was designed to scare but only made him feel sad.
“Not if I have anything to say about it,” he muttered. He lifted the object in his right hand and pressed the smooth sharp metal to his opposite wrist. Straight up, along the line of his arm, would do the most damage and produce the most blood and he added pressure as he slid the small dagger from his wrist up to towards his elbow. The bite of the metal as it parted flesh sent pain shooting up his arm and he cried out at the feeling of it.
“What are you doing?” Heechul hissed, but the intake of air for him to speak must have given him away since a second later cold fingers grabbed the hand that held the dagger and jerked the blade from him before he could draw it more than an inch or two up his arm.
That length was more than far enough and he could feel the blood leaving his body more rapidly then he had thought it would. Immediately his wrist was lifted up and something pressed to the cut. It should have hurt, his brain thought, but it only felt numb as it moved over the area again and again. It took longer than he would have thought for the blood to stop flowing and longer still for Heechul to be satisfied enough for his tongue to leave the freshly closed skin.
“If you want to kill yourself then leave this place,” Heechul growled and he heard hurt in the vampire’s words.
“I don’t,” he said weakly. “I knew you could close it before I died.”
An angry sound rose from the vampire. “I could have chosen to drink you dry before closing it. It would not be the first time I did so to a pathetic human.”
“That was an accident,” he said firmly and his body swayed lightly. He must have lost more blood then he had thought.
Heechul snorted, clearly disagreeing but not saying anything opposed as he wrapped an arm firmly around the swaying man’s waist. His eyes fluttered, and if there had been enough light to see by, he didn’t think he would be able to see anything more than blurry shapes anyway. Strong arms lifted him and he let unconsciousness take him, knowing he was safe.
▪▫▪☼▪▫▪
“Jay says you aren’t drinking again,” he said, crossing his arms over his chest and offering the vampire who was lounging in his bed an accusing look.
“So. I’m not hungry,” Heechul replied, focusing on the objects in front of him.
“Heechul you are doing needlepoint and you are not breathing just so you don’t have to smell me. I know I smell like lunch,” he said casually.
“Go away and tell Jay if he wants to send someone to check up on me he can at least send me Jungmo,” Heechul told him, carefully pulling a thread through his project.
“This pouting like a child is pathetic even for you,” he said with a roll of his eyes. “If you don’t eat I’ll just slit my wrist again.” Heechul’s head snapped up, his eyes red and glowing. “I mean it isn’t that hard, and you make the scar so faint.” He held out his wrist, displaying the barely visible line.
“I’ll let you bleed to death,” Heechul snarled.
“No you won’t,” he countered confidently. “Because you are afraid that too much blood will send you into bloodlust and then not only will I be dead but it will be from you killing me.”
“I can take any blade you have before you have time to use it.”
“I figured. So I’ll just bite my tongue. I hear that bleeds really well,” he said flippantly as if they were discussing weather and not how he could hurt himself.
“And I will take over your mind so you will do no such thing,” Heechul snarled.
“You won’t or you would have already. Easy or hard Heechul. Either way you are drinking from me today.”
“You don’t understand what it will do to you,” Heechul hissed in frustration.
“What? Arouse me? I imagine it would have last time too if there hadn’t been that whole pain thing. Who cares Heechul, I’m eighteen, I know what arousal is. I’m hardly innocent,” he shrugged.
“You have never fed a vampire.”
“Should I go feed Kibum first and then come back? I hear from the human snacks he is fantastic.”
“No!” Heechul’s anger and the quickness of his response gave him away.
“Then let’s do this shall we?” he said with a smirk, as he pushed away from the door and dropped his shirt to the floor. Heechul watched it fall and said nothing as he settled onto the bed and crawled closer. “Are you really going to feed from me around your needlepoint? I should feel offended.”
Slowly and with meticulous care, Heechul gathered the project he had been working on and tucked it all neatly back into its bag which he set gently on the floor. When Heechul was finished he watched as the young man climbed closer. He threw a leg over Heechul’s lap, settling on his legs facing him, and the vampire’s hands lifted to rest on his hips.
“I cannot control it,” Heechul said soft, watching him for a reaction. “The pleasure a vampire’s bite has depends on the vampire, but it also depends on how much they truly wish to hurt the person they are feeding from. What you walked in on previously was a feeding where I didn’t exactly want to hurt her, but I wouldn’t have cared either.”
“Your fingers probably helped hide the pain to,” he said casually.
“Perhaps,” Heechul admitted smirking. “The point, Yesung, is that I do not want to hurt you, ever. I suspect I can draw a sexual climax from your body with little more than my bite, at least the first time.”
“Rather confident aren’t you?” this conversation and the thumb that was moving slowly back and forth over his upper thigh eliminated any remaining nerves he might have had.
“No, positive,” Heechul murmured, leaning forward. The vampire’s breath ghosted over his neck and a shudder ran down his spine. “You are already aroused and I haven’t bitten you.”
“Am not,” he said stubbornly, although he couldn’t keep his hands from curling in the fabric of Heechul’s shirt.
“You are, I can smell it,” Heechul’s voice was a dark purr and his tongue swept over the side of his neck.
“You are too,” he countered, although he had no idea if vampires could experience arousal in a human sense. Heechul said nothing, and a moment later he felt something press in and through the side of his neck. It didn’t hurt, not like he thought it should, more like a strange pressure that shouldn’t have happened. Then, a moment after their entrance, pleasure exploded in his body.
▪▫▪☼▪▫▪
“I would think I would have been less aroused by your very sharp teeth being that close to my very important body parts,” he murmured, his chest heaving. Pleasure still zinged through his veins as an after affect but a part of him was more than a little proud it took more than a simple bite to produce that result now.
“Humans have very large veins in their groins. I would think one would need it to get blood quickly to certain areas,” Heechul purred. He locked eyes with the panting man before running his tongue slowly over the area where he had bitten moments ago. It was a pointless action, as Heechul’s puncture marks wouldn’t be there any longer than a few moments after he was finished, but it did send a pleasant tingle shuddering through his body.
“Mm, it will be a shame when we can’t do this anymore,” he murmured.
“It will,” Heechul agreed, settling his head on the thigh near where he had been drinking. “But all humans die eventually.”
“Not if they become vampires,” he said softly.
Heechul laughed. “No.”
“You changed Kibum,” he pointed out calmly.
“He was dying,” Heechul responded. It was an old argument, their responses coming almost automatic.
“I can make it so I am too,” he threatened and they both knew how serious he was about that threat.
“Patience Yesung. All things in time,” Heechul muttered.
“I don’t have all the time you do,” he reminded the vampire knowing that creatures that did not age occasionally had trouble remembering how fleeting life was for those that did.
“I know,” Heechul exhaled and his breath stirred a response from the tired body he was laying on. “Looks as though you do have a bit of blood left in your body after all,” he said with a smirk in his voice.
“I’ll show you a bit of blood,” he declared, reaching down and dragging Heechul upwards on the bed. When he rolled to put Heechul beneath him, it only worked because the vampire let him.
▪▫▪☼▪▫▪
“It is your twenty forth birthday,” Heechul murmured softly, stirring him from the half dazed state he had fallen into.
“I don’t remember when my birthday was,” he mumbled. “We always just guessed how old I was.”
“It has been eighteen years since I brought you into this seethe on this day. That makes you twenty four today,” Heechul said.
“So it does,” he muttered, rolling into Kibum’s side. He was the warmer of the two and while Heechul seemed to be all angles, Kibum had retained some muscled curves that were much more comforting for resting, especially after having been a snack for both vampires.
“Kibum how would you like to not be an only child anymore?” Heechul asked deceptively curious. That woke him up instantly. Vampires called the vampires that they turned their children, since they were directly responsible for the care and growth of them.
He looked between the two of them, observing the pleased and satisfied looks on their faces outlined by flickering firelight. “I think it would be nice to have someone else to share your bitching with for the rest of eternity.”
“Really?” he asked, not daring to hope that Heechul had agreed at last.
Heechul shrugged. “I figure it won’t be too much longer before I find you nearly bleeding to death on the floor because of your determination. I have already changed one child that way. Let’s make this a bit smoother shall we?” He lifted his own wrist to his mouth, biting into it quickly with his sharp teeth.
“Sip slowly,” Kibum advised him, smiling encouragingly.
He nodded and held Heechul’s wrist lightly, bringing it to his lips. The first taste was coppery with a hint of tang that he thought blood should taste like. Then the true flavor hit him and it was rich on his tongue, better then the finest thing he had tasted. He lapped at it hungrily and for the first time in the back of his mind he heard the satisfied purr of ‘mine’.
▪▫▪☼▪▫▪
He tried to shove the arm in front of his mouth away from him. He didn’t want to become a vampire, he would never want to be one of them, but the arm wouldn’t move. He couldn’t push it away. Struggle was his first response, and at the feeling of something still stuck in his neck, panic.
“Key,” a voice called, trying to sooth him. Abruptly he was released and the fog that had enshrouded his mind vanished. It had been difficult to tell where the vampire ended and he began and for a moment he felt as though the memories were his own. “Key it’s alright.”
The voice was Ryeowook’s and he shook his head to clear it. “I’m fine,” he muttered. Overwhelmed, but fine, although he didn’t say that. He had gotten a lot of information already from the vampire, but it wasn’t what he needed. A glance to the side and he found it watching him, his lips stained red from his blood. It didn’t look any happier then he was. “I’m not done,” he murmured. “I need to know.” What, he couldn’t say, because he wasn’t even certain what it was himself.
“Fine,” the vampire snapped after looking at Ryeowook for a brief moment. He moved closer and sank his fangs into the side of Key’s neck again and the witch was relieved at the sharp spike of pain he felt. If it had been anything like the bite from the memories he didn’t know what he would have done. The arm lifted to his mouth again and he had to stifle his gag reflex as he grasped it. He needed to know and once he did he didn’t have to have anything else to do with it ever again. With that thought in mind he closed his lips over the vampire’s bloody wrist and let his mind sink back into memories that were not his own.
Chapter Six
Masterlist
AN: So when I started this chapter I was thinking there would be a few Yesung memories and then we would just progress the real time plot... Well apparently my Yesung muse and my Heechul muse had been scheming and decided to jump me together... They thought it would be a great idea to tell most of Yesung's history and I'm just along for the ride... *sigh* There is a second half of Yesung's history that will get posted after the weekend since I will not be around internet for my computer and I'm not going to try and post that with my phone. lol.