Unsight; (2/4); for muluhan

[perfectingart]

Dust sticks to his fingers as he presses the keys. Powdered time is pressed into the crevice between the notes, clogging their entrails.

The sound, however, is still crystalline, if not slightly out of tune, just from erosion. Baekhyun can play his way around these minor glitches.

It’s a songs that he used to sing with the personnel in that hell of a kitchen, hitting pans with spoons in a makeshift beat, the older helps chiming in with whispers, backing vocals. It’s a childish, merry phantasm. Baekhyun breathes in, as deep as it could go, then he wings into a hymn of tending gardens and worshipping suns.

His voice lifts, dips, the edges of it prickle with a melodious hoarseness.

It dies out, the song, the meagre poetry of it, as the original did, when the then they got scolded, or were too hungry to keep going. Baekhyun would always be the last one to stop.

Per contra, now his fingers don’t still. They find their way into pieces of the classics, seamless transitions, crescendos and the wilting drag of dispersed vibrations, and Baekhyun sways along, just like the creators did when on stage, lost in maladjustment.

All the keys are clean, he observes, the dust clumped together and fallen off the edge and by his feet, swarming like ghastly ants. The final two notes, a Si bemolle and a Do carry on, smoke in inert winds, and Baekhyun follows it, still in a tiny waver, to keep the sound alive and going. It is not insanity, but a good enough surrogate.

Through the petering silence, he grasps the fogged murmur of Suho bonding with Kyungsoo in his office, at last, something that is inarticulate, but an accepting warmness to one another.

Then over this, over the dimness, there is something paler, inscrutable, and Baekhyun’s attention spins outside, at the polluted darkness spilling beyond the window- and from there, he is being watched.

It is a presence he cannot penetrate. An unknown figure, their focus spellbound on Baekhyun. His perception is so vague, there is so little information he can sense, and all it does is gall.

His fingers touch the keyboard again. Baekhyun starts playing. Spruce breaks, six keys and some ebony, and the night is over, but Baekhyun’s melody isn’t.

“You always doll up for the tiny human,” Kyungsoo says. He’s lazing on top of a bookshelf, his front plastered to the ceiling.

“She deserves me at my best,” Baekhyun replies, passing by. Foreseeing what Kyungsoo will say is getting easier; now Baekhyun knows some Latin.

He shuffles around the office, gathering the papers Suho had forgotten home before leaving for his shift.

“What did she do to deserve you at all?” There is a frown to these words, but not on Kyungsoo’s face. Baekhyun hits the bundle of files on the desk, to align all the edges. He does so a few times, blank.

“Being my friend,” Baekhyun says truthfully, surprising himself.

Kyungsoo snickers, dull and acerbic. “It’s food.”

“Not when I’m not hungry.”

A soft sigh escapes Kyungsoo, his expression placid. He believes Baekhyun.

His palm encases around the elbow of an elderly woman, skin bunching up the grip, as she leans into him, disoriented.

“She’s ripped out her IV drip,” he informs the first passing nurse. She is young, with a cute button nose, and Baekhyun pushes the woman forward, so she stops gazing at him and tends to the matter instead. The hallway is otherwise empty.

Baekhyun walks out into the scant drizzle, looking at the desolated parking lot. “I just played philanthropist,” he says kiddingly to the building behind him. Suho hears, and laughs a tiny titter, dazing the patient in front of him.

He remains there, in the same place under the edge of the awning as the droplets fatten, crashing on the asphalt in a prattle. No one is waiting for him at home. He has no places to be.

Baekhyun grimaces, rubbing his tongue over an elongated fang until it warms from the friction. It is lethargy, ennui, a gust that lades on his shoulders, persistent, and Baekhyun is too strong to come apart under it. Boredom offers him an ache, something to cherish, yet he still loathes it.

The forest is in full bloom, swarming with furry nippers. He could go for a run, for a hunt, for a swim in the lake at the top of the mountain.

Plum begins smearing over the horizon. Baekhyun takes two steps forward into the warm rain when he catches the spindly pronunciation of his name, brittle from distance, and from the fervid penchant Taeyeon has for the word. Little flashes of him follow, his smile especially, stretching in a partly rectangular shape, the brilliant set of teeth bared in the process. She thinks it is adorable. She covets to make him happy.

The resolution of her mind is unusually limpid. He’s gotten closer to her than he deemed, formed a sturdier connection.

Baekhyun’s bangs are already sticking to his forehead. He spins on his heels and marches towards his car.

By the time he enters the peripheral district, he can already see through Taeyeon’s eyes. She is in a brightly lit bookstore, huddled in an armchair with a book that reeks of fresh ink. The font is a serif one, long-tailed. All Baekhyun can decipher is that it is something written in first person.

In another aisle of the store, alone, she keeps testing his name on her tongue, sliding it between the pages she’s leafing through, whispers and whispers until she reaches the belletrist section and finds something she likes. Even before she has it checked out, she dreams of being cocooned for hours with the read.

Outside the store, Baekhyun can pick up the difference in tonality, as if she was talking right in his ear. He sees and hears too loudly, the road befogged by the visions. The swarm comes to a halt as she slows down. Her path has been familiar, but now the neighbourhood around her is foreign. She doesn’t walk back. Out of some kind of bravery, she picks an alley and walks along the dark length of it.

“Human logic,” Baekhyun sighs, changing the lane.

The maze she’s dived in is almost by the very outskirts of the city, unlit and littered with glass shards. Baekhyun is near, a few swerves away, when garbled mites of thoughts pick at the messy bedlam of Taeyeon’s. A bunch of drunk dudes, two nearly passed out, one brimming with suicidal thoughts, and another three cracking up at untold jokes.

They are under the streetlight Taeyeon will reach in a few strides, once she takes the corner. They see her face.

It is nothing really explicit, but there is just the idea, the realization that they have power, that they can cause suffering. It’s viscid, putrid, and Baekhyun does not hesitate to cross over a red light, especially when they start sharing allusions, graphic ones, punctuated by bouts of sordid guffaws. They concur the idea. They entertain it.

She steps wholly into their field of vision, the relief of finding people dissipating in a second once she takes in the burly men. They feel excitement. Fucking excitement, and Baekhyun’s foot is flooring the pedal. Her fear washes over him. She thinks her legs will give out on her if she starts running now. She’ll be caught in no time.

Just a curb, a few seconds and Baekhyun is there, in front of her. Baekhyun’s stature is not imposing, but there is nothing soft about him, nothing that deems him amiable. It takes too long for them to scamper back, being they are inebriated, courageous enough to still consider pushing him aside and go for her anyway.

For a moment, he is ashamed. He has that urge too, to damage, to break them into pieces, just because he can , because it would be so easy. They would not even be able to comprehend how they’re not alive anymore. If he’s quick enough, Taeyeon would not see a thing, and it would seem as if they dropped struck by lightning.

It’s her cold hand creeping up his arm that makes him stop thinking about murder. He keeps his mouth tight, his canines protruding beyond normal under his lips. He moves his arm gently, a nudge, and walks her to the passenger seat.

He could also run them over with the car. He wouldn’t be caught with this either.

Then a small clatter of teeth resonates to his right, and Baekhyun looks over, to see her fingers intertwined in her lap, her thighs quivering as she tried to calm down.

Baekhyun steers back out on the main road, as fast as possible. “Your seatbelt,” he says once he gauges she won’t get into shock. Her reaction is prompt.

She doesn’t know what they were thinking. Baekhyun is glad. She is better off without even suspecting it.

He turns the heating on. It’s completely dark now. Her fear ebbs, the mild fluster of being in his presence taking its place.

“You have great timing,” she comments.

“My, thank you,” Baekhyun replies.

“I’m such a hero,” Baekhyun booms as he enters the villa. “Do we have any capes lying around?”

“I might have a cloak,” says Xiumin, lowering the newspaper in his hand. It’s from 1832, Beijing.

“That won’t do,” Baekhyun clucks.

Xiumin shrugs a tiny shrug, simpering tepidly.

In one of his notebooks, Baekhyun spells out Jongin with clean blue ink. He pronounces it too, a most melodious tumble two syllables.

It still feels like he is dreaming, some nights as he lays still on the carpet, as his mind projects on the ceiling that name being called for different purposes. With urgency, with tenderness, with anger. The figments of who he is- golden fur; vast, stupidly confident eyes.

It is staggering, after being the onlooker of so many thoughts, so many stories, to finally have some of his own, strong enough to overpower the surrounding ones.

Sunday afternoon, Baekhyun puts makeup on Sehun. He goes a bit overboard- peachy shadow on his cheeks, smog lining his eyelashes.

Baekhyun giggles, sneaky, along with Xiumin, who ends up dabbing a highlight in the centre of his lips.

“Heard it gives the illusion of volume,” he says. From near the door, Kyungsoo snorts, and Baekhyun notices right then just how much Xiumin is endeared by the sound.

“I’m not 2D,” Sehun mutters, trying to steal a few glances at himself on every shiny surface in sight. Cheating.

“You aren’t very 3D either,” Kyungsoo argues. “Your face is so flat.”

“It’s called a bitch face,” Sehun spits out. “And now it’s pretty.”

“It’s always been. You’re still not going anywhere,” Baekhyun says. Someday soon, he will. He will step back into the world he just left. But not now.

The curtains tremble from the slight breeze, dispersed rays of blonde pouring from the wide open window. It is warm enough now.

Strangely, she is not asleep yet.

Baekhyun doesn’t wait, nor does he go back, but he climbs up the lattice, starting to huff as he peeks his head over the sill. She is on her belly; head on the other side of the bed and socked feet climbing up the wall, chin in her hands as she hunches over the book.

He raps his knuckles on the wood to alert of his presence. “May I come in?” he croons, hushed.

She startles, elbows running away from under her as she face plants into the book with a thump.

“You’re really good at making my heart stop,” she says, half of it in the paper. Taeyeon faces him with a blush and a pursed smile. She put more meaning into these words than she intended.

“I’m a professional heart-stopper,” he says, also meaning it in more ways than one, as he leaps over the sill with momentum, and hitting his shin on the breadth of it. A prop- clumsiness. Baekhyun wheezes for a few more seconds, stepping deeper into the room.

She raises, legs folded under herself, meeting him upfront. Then Baekhyun is hit with the smell, gagging with it from the inmost breath he took in. It is all over her chest, her hair, he thinness of her neck. It draws stronger down, from the loose hoodie she’s submerged in, zip undone. It dangles off her shoulders, worn, discoloured, and fuzzy along the seams.

The rest of the room too. The tiny stuffed animals lining the shelf near the door. The clothes thrown on the desk chair.

Jongin’s been here, for quite long. He left her his hoodie, and gave her a hug before leaving.

Baekhyun rubs his hands together. There are no red lines on his palms from the lattice he just climbed, but there is rust residue.

She drags herself to the opposite corner of the bed, knocking the book down to the floor. She gathers all the covers and pillows under her back, making room for him.

Baekhyun slowly sits, for a moment forgetting to let his weight on it. Then the mattress sinks. “So far, you’re a great host,” he says with a slack smile, maybe in too much of a whispered tone, for she finds it sexy, her mouth parting a silver.

“You’re a great impromptu visitor yourself,” she replies, stretching the clothes on her to screen her slight state of undress.

Her eyes are rimmed pink. She’s reached page 232, and read all the way there in one go. It is from tiredness that she doesn’t question his arrival, rather indulging in it, being in a kind of dopey happiness.

“You disappeared after lunch,” he begins, to bait some explications.

“Had to help my friend with some homework,” she says. “I don’t even know physics, but he needs all the help he could get. That dork.”

Baekhyun is given how she perceives the warmth of him, the jokes, the frustration. Nothing crisp, nothing to offer the briefest amount of relief to his pining.

She shifts under his scrutiny, as she scrambles for a cushion from the mountain she is resting against, bringing it in her lap. The duvet is saturated with the fragrance, the cushion too.

He doesn’t even notice that he is sliding closer to her, allured, mindless, nose high in search for more, already so intense that it feels like syrup spilling down his throat. “You suck at physics,” he soughs in her space, his palm landing in the gap between her knees. Her lips split, a short breath escaping. It is the heady tint of human combining with the want within him the one blighting his withholding, and before he decides against it, his lips are hovering above hers, sucking in sappy moisture. She springs from surprise, her cupid’s bow making contact with the peak of his bottom lip, and Baekhyun sees, crystal clear, for that fraction of a moment, the thoughts of him swarming beyond the strata of her mind.

It is all gone once the touch is broken.

Baekhyun charges forward, seizing her mouth in an insatiate kiss, a hand over her nape, the other one bringing the hood over her head, for the flavour in it to seep into his probing tongue, indulgent. The representations are rich, bountiful- Jongin smiling, dimples on his cheeks; Jongin laughing, ivories bared, lovely peals; Jongin, shirtless and taut, chasing after her in the sand; the timbre of his voice as he retorts to her chiding, the pout he has on the timidity of his lips as he focuses on his studies; Jongin tearing up from a tiny cut on his thumb.

It is intoxicating, and Baekhyun ends up straddling her, caging her beneath him, lips demanding, and maybe too fast, too inhumane, as he pries the wetness of her tongue into his mouth, the hotness of her body into his skin. Baekhyun still wants like he never wanted.

She presses up into him, slower, overwhelmed, her arm winding around his waist. She seeks to warm him, of all things, as she nips on his lips. Then she gets daring, her tongue passing over his and into his mouth, the veins under her tongue hooking over his lower teeth, the sheer membrane over them ripping slightly. Baekhyun angles his head, nose in her hair for one last sip- Jongin eating, greasy lips stretched into a contented grin- then he pulls away, fangs retracting.

He forgoes panting until his head clears, and when it does, he notices hers, and does too.

The exposed skin above her waistband glistens in the lamp light, and it changes colour before Baekhyun’s very eyes, into finger shaped strokes. But her mouth is still open, eyes lidded heavily, body limp in the covers, and there is a faint tang of arousal to her.

“I’m sorry,” Baekhyun says, and he has to swallow, to clear the spit curds in his pharynx. Cicadas are roaring outside. “Didn’t mean to paint you.”

Her hands- trembling- come to tug down her blouse, covering the darkening bruise. She doesn’t feel any pain yet, the pounding of her heart still deafening. “It’s nothing,” she says, lifting herself against the headboard.

She is satisfied, something she tried not to wish for having come true. The flush of her skin is pretty, vessels dilated, lips puffy.

This is not what Baekhyun intended to create. This is not the person he yearns to have.

“I’m sorry,” he says again, stepping over the window.

He falls into the seat in front of Suho’s desk. The bleached glow of the computer skin drapes on his cheeks. There is repletion, high on the mounds, the softened edges of his poise, compared to seventy years ago when Suho had been a wreck of a man, alone and plagued by guilt, exactly like Baekhyun, and they decided to just stick together. He has a job now, knowledge, control over himself, a family, a purpose, and Sehun.

“Are you becoming a workaholic?” Baekhyun asks, and Suho lets out a titter, a jolly little puff.

“I don’t know. I’ll have to conduct some tests.”

He has not fed in so long, his eyes are almost black, and the shine of his skin is gone too. He looks so human like this. A contented one at least.

“Spotted a cougar on my way here,” Baekhyun says. His foot glides over Suho’s shin, all the way to the knee, an attempt at some sort of seduction.

“A cougar,” he repeats. He doesn’t move away from the touch, and one of his eyebrows twitches up. He finally looks at Baekhyun.

Cougars are his favourite.

Suho’s hunting style is the epitome of grace. Swift and gentle. Baekhyun never gets tired of watching him.

The cougar has a few scars along its flank, patches where the skin under its fur is uneven and paled. Suho kills it a short movement, his palm held vertical, a snap oh his forearm over the cervical column, and the animal is internally decapitated, already dead before it crashes to the ground. Suho kneels by it for a few short moments, piercing the flesh in multiple places. He hurls the drained kill over his shoulder and leaving it in the range of a clan of bears.

“So glad you look dead again. You looked too mortal before,” Baekhyun praises once Suho is next to him. His shirt is still pristine, white, collar firm, and he Adam’s apple bobs once until the button and back. He is smiling, dentures clean too. “Now let me run you down so you don’t end up demolishing Sehun.”

Suho sputters, dismayed, but with no intent to deny. He is already left behind, Baekhyun ahead of him over a few abrupt hills. There is a row of yellow, worn rocks at the base of the nearby mountain. Baekhyun likes jumping from terrace to terrace.

“That was a nice promenade,” he says, clambering to the top.

“It’s good for digestion.” Suho replies, sitting by, thigh next to thigh. They are the same length. Baekhyun huffs. Dad jokes, Sehun called these.

He hooks their feet together and begins dangling them.

They listen to a few recitals by diurnal birds. Suho thinks they are ugly, for they are roamers of backless- warts around their eyes and wings haphazardly feathered.

“Their song is beautiful though,” Baekhyun says. Most likely, it is a squabble between them, but that fury sounds good, nevertheless.

“What is your concern?” Suho asks once it dropped into silence. His legs still for a second, then they go back to a more careful draggle.

“I injured Taeyeon,” Baekhyun says. Even now, all he feels regarding that is dissatisfaction- the thirst flared within him outshines the remorse. “Her hipbone.”

“Where?”

“The middle of the left iliac crest. I did stop at the first fibre cracking, but maybe it was too late.”

Why? He doesn’t say it.

His unease lies beyond the damage in itself, rather curious as to how Baekhyun ended up hurting her in the first place. He has an inkling, one he can relate too much to. Baekhyun crossed a line, ventured, and as much as he dislikes it, to him, Sehun happened. So he can’t say anything. He can’t scold Baekhyun for it.

But for Baekhyun, it is not Taeyeon that he wants. His actual justification is laughable, worthy of reprimand. Baekhyun prepares to ask for it.

“Be nice to her. Hips take a while to heal. Unless the ilium cracked all the way to the base.”

“It didn’t.”

“She’s still wearing your bruises.”

Then silence, and the crashing roar of a still heart. Baekhyun knows it is from his own, and not from the calm steadiness of Suho's.

Kyungsoo keeps greeting him every morning.

“Hello, my saviour.” A smile, an enigma on his face. This time he finds Kyungsoo in the kitchen, something sizzling in a pan. Baekhyun catches the odour of freshly cut green onion leaves. It has a sting going up his nostrils, like the alcohol in the perfume Suho spritzes himself with so he smells of something instead of nothing.

That knife in his hand has a wide blade, new. The cutting board unpolished, a plank of old oak edged in thick husk. He’s moving fast, without following any recipe.

“I really liked these,” Sehun mutters, eyes on a little plate filled with tiny pancakes, edges crunchy. A circle of green is in the centre of each one. Slices of hot pepper perhaps.

Baekhyun turns to him. “You’re salivating.”

“I don’t mean to,” he says, and his nose wrinkles, swallowing the pooling of venom. He has no intention of tasting them. He meanders back to his room. But he recalls how he used to make them for himself, out of sparse ingredients he found around the house.

“Reduce that soy sauce,” Baekhyun says. “Not too thick.”

Kyungsoo smiles, a different one, and Baekhyun is hit again with his winsome ambiguity.

“Sure.”

Before long, he has a few small containers stacked on top of each other, packed in a pillowed case. “I think she will like it,” he says, pushing it to the edge of the counter.

Baekhyun assesses the offering, assesses Kyungsoo, and Baekhyun is mad at himself for even searching for a reason to doubt Kyungsoo’s intentions. He’s unsettlingly seasoned. It doesn’t suffice.

“Thank you,” he says, smiling.

“Oh, so it was for you,” Sehun blasts after him, head peeking over the doorframe. “What have you fucked up? Is it biiiig?”

“Colossal,” Baekhyun deadpans from the garage.

Taeyeon astounded, shimmying a bit in her seat out pure glee.

The feeling instils in Baekhyun as well, showing duly on his face as he pushes the package closer towards her. Watching her eat is captivating. Handling chopsticks, distinct chewing patterns for differently textured foods, different amount of spittle for different levels of consistency. The boxes contain grains, greens. They are such innocent things, things that do not steal life. But the sensation they give is meek. No human finds mind-blowing pleasure in feeding, not like his kin finds in blood.

Her affection grows swallow by swallow. A catalyst, an addendum. She shifts her weight side to side, subtly striving to get the waistband of her jeans to dig into the bruises, in the weakened bone. The ache rewards her prurience.

“That was one delicious apology,” she says, licking her lips.

She stops herself before wishing for him to have another reason to be sorry for.

The door of her house closes behind her, and Baekhyun twists the steering wheel just a few degrees, moves just a few centimetres, when the cry of an overexerted engine flies past him. From inside, Taeyeon’s father curses at the noise.

Baekhyun observes the speeding motorcycle. It is dirty, white mud splattered all over it. Sand in the crannies.

It beckons him. Baekhyun doesn’t desist.

His car catches up soon, but he doesn’t let them be parallel next one another. From this distance, his perception is already inhibited. His vision loses colour.

It’s serene, that specific kind, and he just knows who he is after. Emboldened, he goes faster, closer, and becomes deaf too. The motorcycle rounds him, keeping ahead at a steady pace.

It is semblant to a stroll, leisured, in a taciturn company, pretty scenery spilling around them as they rush on unlevelled asphalt. The sky is clean, oddly, washy blue and fanned, thin clouds. Baekhyun lets his arm out the window to be brushed by sunlight. It gleams, shine trapped in the translucent layers of his stale dermis. As though he is precious, something to be collected, or exploited- polished and spread out in a glass case. Else, he could play an advertisement panel, tacky, gathering frustrated clientele.

He remains obedient to the route drawn by the figure in front of him. It comes to a stop at the side of the road. On the right spans an open field, bestrewn in tender greens. On the other side, the woods climb sharply. Further up, it will culminate in the platform of a canyon. They’ve travelled quite far.

Baekhyun brakes his car behind the stilled motorcycle.

Jongin dismounts, a neat throw of a long leg over the body of the vehicle. His back is to Baekhyun as he takes the helmet off, hair lifting into the breeze.

Baekhyun braces himself, fingers gathering in a fist, for when Jongin will face him. He considers closing his eyes, to suppress the tremors starting to scamper up his spine.

It is too late for that. Jongin’s eyes arrest his, steeled. Swiftly, he nods to the side, to the woods he traipses towards until he can’t be seen anymore.

Baekhyun collapses in the chair, motionless, and he realizes, that he has already forgotten how he looks. Lean constitution, lush lips, clean cut jaw, bronze skin over it- all lost. He only recalls that he is stunning, a beauty to mar.

Out of the car, the scent has been brushed away by the wind. He still luxuriates in the remands stirring with vegetation. It brings him joy, unadulterated, novel, and now he is about ready to go have some more.

The trees are different here, older, more fragile, fat roots webbing out of the soil. He runs until the forest disperses, cancelled by the cusp of the cliff.

“You hurt her,” Jongin says into the open space before him. His tone is tolerant.

Baekhyun gazes at him, his hair, so dark until it catches the mottled rays, then it turns a rose gold, radiant. The sound of rushing water whirs in the background. Underneath Jongin’s peregrine incense, the air is fragrant with moss.

“I did,” Baekhyun admits. They are set apart by a distance similar to the width of the border. Baekhyun looks down. No flowers at his feet. A legion of red insects instead. “I wasn’t expecting it either.”

Jongin addresses him with a scoffing look, slightly verging on puzzlement. It is a change for the better, perhaps, less animus contouring his stance. A highlight nestles in the valley of his philturm. His mouth coils- his lips gloss with viscous saliva.

He is so painfully young, Baekhyun discovers. Vernal skin, the lustre of excessive sebum over it, a crowd of tiny whiteheads residing across his dimpled chin, redder counterparts fading by the edge of his temple. Twitchiness seems to be coursing through the hard panes of his muscles, swelling constantly, the fine lines showing through his thin clothing. His body grew before he did.

Baekhyun imagines what the vibe of his mind would be. Something peaceful, warm, kind of silly, imposing. If only he had any means of finding out. He’ll have to rely on facial cues now; a practice he got unused to.

“But why?” Sternness tumbles over the cracks of his voice.

Because of you, Baekhyun muses saying. It would be blunt and it would be true. But between them is a game that has been spuming, building up for a while. Putting a stop to it at this point would be a waste.

“Because I could.” Perhaps, Baekhyun meant to continue the sentence, to cushion it, but he now has a wet jaw and set of teeth around his neck, paws over his lower stomach. A minatory howl transfers into Baekhyun’s carcass from the wolf on top of him. He actually feels his skin succumbing, holing under claws, cilia pulled apart until the greyed pink of his flesh is exposed. The cracks of his thorax, ribs rattling in their hinges.

He’s so strong, and Baekhyun is helpless, so accepting of that helplessness, until he loops his fingers around Jongin’s the neck. It is thick, windpipe shielded by tensed tissues. The fur is soft, as soft as he pictured it to be. He squeezes until the wolf quiets.

Jongin doesn’t gasp for air. Baekhyun knows that if he wanted to, Jongin could rip his whole arm off in a blink. But he doesn’t. His paw climbs up Baekhyun’s body to his shoulder, where it presses Baekhyun’s neck further into his opened mandible.

Baekhyun wants to laugh. He feels pain. A bygone treat that lights up shut down functions, and it is terrific. Baekhyun rages for more, suffocating Jongin until he thrashes, the absolute tranquillity that came from being under Jongin rending away.

Jongin keeps pouncing on him, merciless, throwing Baekhyun on the ground and picking him up, his clothes shredding under his strikes, taking skin along, leaving him almost naked, but still standing.

It is nearly playful at some point, as they roll around and around, just about over the margin and into the frothing abyss under. Baekhyun’s fringe is shorn by the tips of Jongin’s claws as he aims for a blow that Baekhyun dodges, the clipping falling over his face. His back is bent over the brim; the waves seem to be calling for him. It doesn’t feel like oncoming death, but like aliveness, like protest, and Baekhyun will survive the fall and come searching for more.

But Jongin is already rolling them back into the shadow of the forest, hitches to his breath. He is injured too, bruises and pulled tendons, his left tibia fractured.

A scratch delicate scratch erupts as he shifts his head, and blood begins weeping in globules from the gash. Baekhyun stalls, maddened, and Jongin just keeps moving, keeps trying to immobilize him, and then there is even more blood coming out.

“Jongin,” Baekhyun manages to croak with the last sip of oxygen he found in his lungs. His hand comes to rest in the vicinity of the wound, gentle, a petting motion to make Jongin still. He frees his other hand and slaps a fistful of mud over his mouth and nose. The stink of mouldy leaves barely distils the ravishing aroma of Jongin’s blood, even as it clogs his nostrils.

Jongin freezes at the calling of his name, eyes questing for Baekhyun’s. He turns his face away, opposing the direction of the wind. Then he is blanketed by the expanse of a naked, burning boy, and Baekhyun sees the ripped skin, edges flaked, pigmentation bloated around them. He is panting, and there are hitches form whenever he takes in too much, and the injury has to stretch over the bones.

As he changed, Baekhyun’s thumb fell alongside the oozing lesion, right under his jaw, the rest of his palm cupping around Jongin’s nape. He feels it wetting, pooling, hot and thick as it spills over the digit. Jongin’s heartbeat is chaotic, whacking inside him.

Baekhyun finds himself clinging, bringing Jongin down into himself, holding close, and it is so warm and it smells so inviting. Baekhyun craves, an encompassing lust that wrecks him to the very core. Brazen, he press himself closer, face dirty, and noses into the wound he inflicted, whilst hoisting Jongin in his lap, bare thighs binding his torso.

“Don’t you dare,” Jongin whispers. Through his own tremors, Baekhyun can pick up the bewilderment. Baekhyun is not supposed to want him. He is supposed to be repulsed, indifferent. This is the dynamic their biology dictates.

Yet Baekhyun has his hands pressing into his back, bringing them chest to chest whilst he nuzzles in the juncture between his shoulder and his neck, around the crux of his thirst. He is mostly divested, pants tattered. There is so much on skin contact.

“Just a taste,” Baekhyun pleads, spitting out the dirt in his mouth. He can stop. He will.

Jongin pushes him off just so his eyes can bore into Baekhyun’s. His brows are furrowed, lips fused. Baekhyun wants to suck on them too, tug and savour, but later, when he’ll have earned enough affection.

From the wound, a trickle slides down the column of his throat to his collarbone. In the sepia cast by the lowering sun, it gleams purple.

Baekhyun’s mouth is on the trail in an instant, after Jongin keeps still for too long, not getting any tenser in his hold. He laps at that minuscule dribble, a dragged little bead, and it’s so fucking good that Baekhyun feels like falling into a fervid void, shattering in pleasure. Liquid pyre sparks on his tongue, spreading and eating away at his mucosa. This too offers a kind of pain, one that it soothes at the same time. Baekhyun is deranged from the sensation.

Jongin relaxes over him, a fraction, and when Baekhyun’s tongue darts over the actual laceration, lathering his spit over it, Jongin jerks, his hips canting forward into Baekhyun, once, then the taste is ripped away from him, and a wheezing Jongin is throwing him off.

He settles his back on the opposite tree trunk, slumped, his body battered, eyes wide.

As Baekhyun comes back down to coherency, he mirrors the stance.

Alarmed, straining against desire.

The date and hour stamped on the bag have Baekhyun fiddling with more vigour. The plasma is fresh too. He empties both packets in the first glass he finds.

Along his rib, he thought it was a scrap of his jacket that kept tickling him, but it is just a ribbon of his skin. The edges of the cut are clean, trim. There was no hesitance to Jongin’s swings. Baekhyun licks his thumb and spreads the wetness on the lapel, then he plasters it back on. At the very least, it will stop irritating him.

“I’ll prepare a bath,” Suho addresses him from his bedroom.

“Make it hot,” Baekhyun says. He feels cold, an illusion that needs alleviation.

In his wake, crumbs of gunk litter the floor as he climbs upstairs, one hand on the balustrade for support, and the other holding the glass. He settles it on the edge of the bathtub.

Baekhyun plucks the remaining scraps of his clothes off himself, and he steps into the pouring water. It pigments an ashen, grainy merlot, threads curling from his chasmal wounds. Smoke escapes from the blaze of his chest.

Suho enters holding a stack of towels in his arms.

Baekhyun heeds back to his glass, carelessly. He breaks off a part of the rim. The piece collapses into the liquid with a brief splatter. It wouldn’t be the first time he ate glass.

“When did this happen?” Suho asks, and Baekhyun looks at him. His makeup is still on. That’s why the blood is so fresh.

“An hour ago.” Baekhyun takes a few sips. The tub is almost full, and the intensity of the colour dilutes bit by bit.

“You’re still open,” Suho says. He sits on the edge of the tub, and dips a hand into the water. It is the hottest it could possibly be. The raising steam is thick. “Hurry with that,” he gestures to Baekhyun. The blood starts cooking a little, clumping.

Baekhyun downs it, the hefty volume expanding his stomach. The shard of glass is gone.

Suho studies the sorry state of Baekhyun’s body. Discomfiture shows on this face, barely-there folds that hide the turmoil underneath. He’s never seen a truly battered vampire, one to potentially require medical attention. Only if they were exceptionally weak, at least a decade of not having fed at all. But Baekhyun has-

“Don’t bring me more,” Baekhyun says, letting the glass capsize. “I feel inebriated.” He sinks further, immersing himself completely. The ripples of water bring out some of the mud that ended up stuck in his nasal cavity. A fever steeps inside his marrow. It seems to go deeper, to a place Baekhyun never knew could maim him.

“Where’s Sehun?” he wonders, just his mouth resurfacing. He can’t see Suho through the curtain of vapours and the slurry over his eyes. The moon is weak tonight.

A moment. “Contriving a natural disaster with Xiu," Baekhyun answers for himself. The inside of his mouth feels raw, as if it has been eaten by moths, rotten. Speaking abets its progress, gnawing the walls.

Baekhyun enjoys the flames of the water as it infiltrates into the cuts. Pain brings him afloat.

The jingle of Suho’s rumination leaks through Baekhyun’s elation. What kind of analgesic would work? If he even owns a needle strong enough to pierce stitches into his skin.

“I have found my singer,” Baekhyun marvels. Tipsy, he raises.

“Did you kill them?” Suho asks, prompt with dread. There is no amount of willpower that can keep leeches like them away from their melodists.

“Our enemy is pretty hard to kill,” Baekhyun replies. A beam makes its way to his lips, unyielding.

Suho notices just now how the fetor he’s been wearing dispels through condensation. Baekhyun loves it. A musk, opiate, like dried pomegranate. It was a fruit meant for the gods in his time. His mouth waters. Perhaps his heart cedes a faint throb.

“A wolf,” Suho says, still with stupefaction even though he knows there is nothing else that could ever harm a vampire. Baekhyun just watches the ripples of water near the edge of the tub. It’ll overflow, if Baekhyun moves too much.

“A sublime one,” Baekhyun summons. Memories of him are gauzy, but his beauty isn’t.

“Deus meus,” Suho thinks, mutters, at loss.

Baekhyun grins at the little outburst. “He made me so weak.” He stretches his leg. Easily, it pops out of his hip socket. “Pain is wonderful.” It takes a few tries to get it back in.

Suho ganders at him with apprehension, but he sees too, the unprecedented radiance surrounding Baekhyun despite how shredded he is. A smile sketches on his face, tiny, sincere. Without another word, he leaves Baekhyun alone.

The water keeps cooling. Absently, he notes the kindling thrumming throughout his body, his cock stiffened between his thighs. He hasn’t been in this state, in lust, in over a century. He has no inclination to quench it.

Baekhyun lets himself simmer into it. He is still mid-chase. It will build up to the inevitable anyway.

When both he and the water reach room temperature, he gets up, stepping on the towels. Looking in the mirror, his eyes have never been this colour.

Kyungsoo greets him with a hug in the morning, just as he descends into the foyer. His arms are delicate as they rest on Baekhyun’s back, going up and down. There was never any clear rancour coming from Kyungsoo, but barely now Baekhyun truly believes him, revelling in the gifted comfort.

Then something is being whispered in his ear, Kyungsoo on his tiptoes, to make sure no one else hears him. “Let it consume you.”

Baekhyun is allowed to intrude, just a few arches of memories, and he sees Kyungsoo in the embrace of something, someone furry. Attachment, and the fierce beacons of adulation.

He removes himself from Kyungsoo’s cradle. His hold isn’t gentle enough, and it irks the lazily healing casualties peppered all over his body.

Behind him, Kyungsoo chuckles. He knows what pleasure Baekhyun derives from this incident.

“I hope you’ll be more careful and not fall down the stairs again,” Suho says softly, lowering the X-ray sheet in his hand.

He begins signing up a prescription of a few ointments, painkillers. The surface of the bone is just the slightest bit split. It will patch up on its own.

Taeyeon makes to stammer something, her feet kicking under her from her perch on the consultation bed. Baekhyun subtly touches her shoulder, sending her a nod, pretending to have lied in order to hide the real reason of her injury. She smirks, playing along, ridding him of possible embarrassment.

“I’ll do my best, sir,” she says, hopping off. She leaves with a tiny smile, papers in hand.

“Thank you, father,” mocks Baekhyun, turning to him from the closed door. His words don’t brim with satire anymore- the amount has lessened.

“You’re finally accepting Sehun as your mom now?” Suho inquires, signing a bunch of documents. Thirty-three signatures in five seconds, Baekhyun counts.

“Oh, no, he is just your filthy mistress.”

The grimy office echoes Suho’s fine giggles.

On the opposite bank, lightning ramifies, draining into the wobbling herbage. It is dark enough for the flare of lambency to startle the lowering dusk. The wind strengthens, its tides braiding. Baekhyun’s clothes rustle along, quiet in comparison to the havoc of the river below.

When Jongin fought him here, it had been calm, sunny. Woe seems to suit it better.

Baekhyun’s shins sway off the cliff. The stone under him is fissured, brittle. He hasn’t had a free fall in a while. He likes the negligent cress of air around his form, easy, lenient.

His heel makes contact with the stone, hard, and it partially capitulates under his mass. If it happens once more, he will be plummeting into naught.

He is about to jump when he is stopped by movement. Feet dragging across pebbled ground.

Baekhyun looks to his left in time to see Jongin bypassing a thorny bush, coming fully into view afterwards. He’s not surprised to see Baekhyun- his strides don’t halt for a second.

He’s wearing just a pair of black jeans, waned and tarred by the knees. The trail of hair running from his navel and into his waistband is slim. He must be buying so many clothes; the strips of the ones he’s had on last time are still strewn over the trees.

“Will you come after me with a lighter?” Baekhyun asks, reining himself from cowering whilst Jongin’s redolence assaults him. “If I jump?”

He will fall to pieces between the rocks, taken by waves. He might still have enough strength in him to sew himself back together. That will take a few years.

Jongin is not healing very well either; infection gathered warmth around the fissures. Baekhyun observes how his pose is slightly askew, mindful. It is his fault. It is his venom forestalling Jongin’s repair, and it won’t speed up until it is all metabolized.

“I think I’ll just die too,” he says with a noncommittal raise to his eyebrows followed by a shrug. His voice. “And I don’t even have a lighter.”

“You could’ve killed if only you were a smoker,” Baekhyun states.

“That’s a shitty trade-off.” Jongin sights him flatly.

Baekhyun simpers, accompanied by a mirthful huff. A hint of a smile graces the ends of Jongin’s lips as well.

It is curious how they are both came here, as if they set up to meet. Friends that don’t need communication. Allied archnemeses. Baekhyun admits to himself that he longed for Jongin, having exhausted his ability to remember anything about him. Not because of thirst.

Jongin inches closer, guiding himself into a sitting position. Baekhyun huddles towards him to at least take a thigh off the unsteady stone. A few threads of grass stand proudly between his and Jongin’s hand.

A resolute jolt of thunder infracts through the clouds, its debris sprinkled over the course of a few blinks.

Perhaps, it has passed a longer while than he thought him just being next to Jongin, sedent, restraining himself from attempting to burglarize Jongin’s mind. It is completely sealed, immune to Baekhyun’s gift.

His mouth is opening into a soft hum as the storm falls into recess. It’s not a song, but a poorly articulated lisle of what the nannies used to sing to rented children. Then it mixes with one of the things he seldom catches Sehun bobbing his head to- shrill, catchy rasps. His pitch climbs higher, to eclipse the riling quiescence that comes from Jongin. He tunes it with the crackle of the leaves.

Jongin’s reaction is minimal. He doesn’t tense, doesn’t cringe, the knobs of his back prominent through his tee as he slouches, lax. Baekhyun’s voice doesn’t disturb him, not as much as it disturbs Baekhyun, being that he has to take in a bountiful inhale each time to keep the note. He masks it with a hiccup, swallowing the load of wonderfulness contained within the air.

The water under froths in high waves. The sky cracks further away. It doesn’t start to rain, instead the laden clouds glide away, leaving clean light behind. Baekhyun doesn’t even know when he’d stopped singing, when the sound drained out from him.

“There is nothing really special about you,” he says, provisional. Again, the impetus to douse the muteness. This kind of asphyxia is out of his dominion of comfort. “No beautiful mind, no outstanding wisdom,” he recites.

So why am I here, why do I care about you, who are you even. Baekhyun has no means of finding out whether Jongin caught the inferred meaning or not. Unnerving.

Jongin’s shin stretches next to his. Baekhyun’s sight hazes out the ferment of the abyss, and sees just the pretty bow of Jongin’s shoelaces.

“You can’t read me,” Jongin says, utterance swept into the current. It’s overrun with conviction, a smidgen of slyness. “How do you know it’s not beautiful?”

It is so bland, obvious, and Baekhyun is caught with his own dumb statement. All of a sudden, he laughs, unbridled, quivering as his nostrils flare, avid for Jongin.

“I’m a shape shifter too. Is that not special enough?”

He’s arguing, picking apart Baekhyun’s demurral. He has no reason not to like him. And Baekhyun would like to ask, would like to cut the chase, and say ‘Have you imprinted on me?’ If the response to that is negative, their fate ends here. Baekhyun doesn’t risk it.

“Plentifully special,” Baekhyun agrees.

He slides on entirely steady ground, part of the rock crumbling down. Jongin’s body heat washes relief over his wounds, and he hopes, his coldness caresses Jongin’s. He’s never felt anyone quite as warm, as lulling, as beautiful.

Jongin doesn’t move away.

The books in the library smell of pheromones and other pubescent secretions. Baekhyun primes his face into blankness and opens one of such textbooks to check the syllabus for the finals. Yet again.

A fountain pen twirls in his hand, from finger to finger and back, measured, a small circus show. He’s seated awkwardly in his chair to shield his broken ribs, now patched on the surface. The pages before him seem tedious, insipid at best.

Deathlessness doesn’t come along with exceptional memory. It fares quite well with autobiographical storage, but otherwise this is something he is on the same level as a mildly bright human. Yet this is just literature, it is too variable. These rants are pointless.

Baekhyun still pretends to study. At least it takes his mind off a certain thing.

Taeyeon is memorizing a piece of poetry under her breath, with a passé accent, as she tries to make sense of all the crap that’s being said about it.

She scratches her face, her pointer finger nail is always longer, at both hands, and the pimple breaks, a few microliters of blood ooze out in the vicinity of her nose. Baekhyun stares, a nice colour, nice density, but in the end, he hasn’t even twitched in his chair. He should be surprised that he is tempted so little, his reaction is so faint. It doesn’t happen.

She seems to not have even noticed, as she repeats a few lines of dialogue as if they were part of a play.

Baekhyun rips a fragment of tissue from the pack sticking out of her bag and presses it there. It permeates the fibres instantly. “Silly,” he says, and she likes the way he whispers, the pitch of it, and Baekhyun realizes that he’s barely put any breath into it.

She flushes before she shakes her head and turns back to her notes.

Baekhyun stares at the finger he used to press the tissue, at the residual pink left on the friction ridges of his finger. Like a dried rose petal. It means so little.

Because he found new blood. Someone to sing for him. Everything lacks in comparison with what Jongin had given him.

The sounds reach well beyond the perimeter of the house. Baekhyun goes faster, inquisitive, and inside, he finds Kyungsoo, his back to him as he faces the laptop perched on the piano. They’re moans, skin slapping skin.

He’s watching pornography.

“You’re defiling it,” Baekhyun opines, knocking on the wood of the piano as he peers at the screen. Intercourse is so gaudy when portrayed like this. This characteristic is also what brings it commercial success.

“I don’t think I’m the first to do that.” He slings a smirk over his shoulder up at Baekhyun. At least he hasn’t cleaned the piano. Baekhyun likes it like this, his propriety, untouched and still. But further, a portion shows the immaculate lustre of the black wood, ebbing out into fingertip shapes. A glance to Kyungsoo’s mind, and yes, Sehun had been pressed there and sucked off last night. Thankfully, not a scratch has been left on it.

They draw on viewing, blank faced, anchored in place. Then Kyungsoo opens his mouth and attempts copying one of the moans, the woman’s. It flows down his throat thinly, with reluctance. No exaggerated enough. Baekhyun remains impassive a little more, up until the pace of the couple picks up and he can’t stand anymore not correcting Kyungsoo’s technique. Then he tries it too, a reserved vocalism in sonority, but with the right enunciation. Kyungsoo attempts mimicking him, and it works to some extent, his wobble adding a kind of charm to it. Their voices blend in a cacophony of fake pleasure, a sort of singing, something ridiculous that buries the ones coming from the laptop.

Xiumin, Suho and Sehun find them like that, as if hysterical. “What the fuck,” Sehun says.

Baekhyun and Kyungsoo halt mid-moan and regard him coldly. “You’re one to talk.”

Kyungsoo snorts, pausing the video.

Baekhyun looks at his grin, pure, and deems that he indeed doesn’t mind this new friend, doesn’t mind having the loneliness he didn’t even notice gone.

Dreams keep coming to him, keep pushing him into clinging onto fragile fantasies, keep him thinking, roaming. He walks along the border, a drawl through florets whilst repose smothers him. Sometimes, Chanyeol lurks around in a slothful trot, his carnelian fur glistering in the moonlight. They make no contact, exchange no words.

Baekhyun can do nothing but walk and wonder- if Jongin is still in pain, if any of the other wolves condemn him, if they should move out of this town already, falsify another series of ID’s, buy a new house and pretend to need a heating system.

Neither of them asked. Baekhyun finds himself tying a tie around his neck and waiting for Taeyeon by her door, avoiding eye contact with her father. He tries not to laugh at all the scenarios he makes to harm him if he gets too daring with his daughter.

He muses, if Jongin were to inflict all that harm on him, and his hand lifts to splay on his side out of instinct.

He stands straight, her father appraising him with his jaw set. Baekhyun has never went, nor even been around for long enough to go to a prom. By this time, he would usually be on another continent, having set on fire yet another graduation diploma.

Then Taeyeon is stepping down the stairs and curling an arm around his, a jittery, lipstick-smeared smile on her face. Perhaps this is an experience worth having.

Baekhyun scents Jongin’s latency way before she is tugging him toward the fringe of the parking lot, away from the chatter at the entrance of the locale. Jongin comes into the glow of the street lamp, harsh shadows under his jaw, his eyelashes fanning under his eyes. Baekhyun can’t tell what expression his own face is wearing.

Taeyeon introduces them to one another, all jovial. They don’t shake hands, but merely throw some nods, some half-smiles overturned with innuendo before their connection is broken and Jongin focuses entirely on Taeyeon.

As he observes them, Baekhyun feels something, jealousy, the books often say, for the simple fact that she’s had more time to spend with him than Baekhyun did. That she’s got to witness him grow up, that she’s got his trust. Jongin is placid, in a slant of revelry, his cheeks full from simpering.

Inside, the music starts, all the other attendees rushing to enter. Jongin asks her for a dance, his arms opening elegantly for her to take. The melody seeps out thinly, just the beat making it through, but it suffices for them to clumsily sway.

Her hands wind around his shoulders, as she has to stand on her tiptoes even in her modest high heels to reach comfortably around him. Baekhyun is still watching, enslaved by the display, by the subtle, precise spin of Jongin’s hips and the gentility of his guidance on her.

Baekhyun measures- he will need to be on his toes too in order to wrap himself around Jongin’s tallness.

Their movements dissipate soon, Jongin pushing her away. Must be from the strain of his frail leg. Taeyeon didn’t notice him wincing. She turns to him, waving Jongin goodbye.

Baekhyun has his arm poised to enclose around Taeyeon’s waist, awaiting, but then he catches Jongin’s eyes, the whites of them stark in the shadow. Languidly, he lowers it, Jongin following the motion. The purse of his mouth softens.

Baekhyun has to hide the sudden burst of glee that laves over him, twisting on his heels, away from Jongin.

“What got you so happy?” she asks.

Baekhyun looks ahead, and catches their reflection on the glass of the doors, side by side, Taeyeon’s flowing dress cascading down her body, her skinny ankles peeking out from step to step.

“Looking at you,” he says instead, and they amble into the venue.

Baekhyun gives in and dances with her too. He can’t be nearly as neat as Jongin, but she is soft in his grasp, their footwork simple. Baekhyun only basks in whatever Jongin’s left on her. It is what he attracted him to her initially, and he still finds it pleasurable, heady to be in her proximity.

He offers a few dances, drinks a cup of soda that he tactfully excuses himself to throw up. He cheers for the others, for the small performances they employ in.

It doesn’t escape him how Taeyeon’s blinking is getting longer, deeper, the ends of her mouth curving into their usual droopiness. She’s always been an early sleeper.

Baekhyun lets her be, lets her gossip a bit more with her fresh ex-colleagues. If only she put a bit more effort, she would have gotten with at least a few more friends out of this. She is too sleepy to have any regrets now.

He takes her home, up to her room, being that she can no longer stand on her feet. Her father doesn’t say anything, sternly bidding Baekhyun a two-fingered good bye.

For a few moments, he bothers feigning that he’s not trailing after anything, anyone as he saunters through the forest. But he looks down, and his lacquered shoes are already on the path of the border, a spring to his pace.

It is a nice night, starry, warm. His eyes follow the twinkles. They’re duller now than they were when he used to gaze at them out of wistfulness.

He meets Jongin a few strides into the partition of the path, one aisle for the local hunters to take, and the other going straight between their territories. The forest bed is thicker, less stomped. Jongin is sprawled out on the tall grass, framing around him. Baekhyun rests on his side, cross-legged. They’re still close- the path is narrow enough. The serenade of crickets is hushed.

“Am I late?” Baekhyun asks. His tongue is weighted once he opened his mouth. The effect Jongin has on him.

He huffs, brief and reflexive. Baekhyun anticipated it, even without reading his mind.

“No.” Jongin turns to look at him, cheeks framed by rustling greenness; his other side clad in the turquoise veil of the night. Baekhyun can do nothing but stare.

His gaze dips, to the two bottles Baekhyun has nestled near him, taken out of the pockets of his suit jacket.

“You came with goods,” he says, curling until he is lying on his side, arms pillowing his head. Only his eyes are visible. It’s cute, Baekhyun thinks. He is cute all over, and it is too soon, way too soon for Baekhyun to already not know what to do with himself anymore.

“I played hero again and prevented kids from doing stupid things,” he says, aligning the bottles of vodka. A few of the prom attendees were mad, intending to pick fights, to avenge the bullying they’ve endured all through high school. They needed some of this liquid courage however. At least an altercation has been avoided.

“You played thief, you mean,” Jongin says, corrects. It is muffled, sill cute. Baekhyun doesn’t refute.

Jongin makes a motion with his hand, asking, and it takes too long for Baekhyun to get it and send one of the bottles rolling over the frontier and into Jongin’s grasp.

“I think I can get drunk,” he says, peering inquisitively at the clear liquid. “I’ve never tried though.” The small bubbles in it stir.

He opens the cap; his fingers slow, as though he does it unwillingly. Baekhyun contains a growl when the bite coming from it is strong enough to overpower Jongin’s. He lifts, his lip fitting around the hem of the bottle with the same alleged qualm. It tips into his mouth, a couple of generous mouthfuls bobbing down his throat.

More than a frown of distaste, he is bearing one of dismay. “It doesn’t taste like anything. It’s just…warm.”

It seems to be out of annoyance that he starts downing the liquor, half of it soon gone. He licks over his lip, the gleam swollen over them with the tip of a tensed tongue. Fortunately, Baekhyun is spared the sight once Jongin gets back to drinking, already having his last gulp.

“Now it’s time to wait,” he says. He is so calm, like he just inhaled a litre of water and not some weak poison. He settles on his back, smiling at a ladybug walking up his chest. It crawls until it gets lost in the folds of his shirt.

Baekhyun increasingly feels like he is part of a tale, an idealistic, slightly corny one as he coins the flitters in his stomach as being the proverbial butterflies. Reading is good pastime when he has an infinite amount of it, and he’s read many versions of this sentiment, yet in contrast, they all pale.

“A human would be in a coma by now,” Baekhyun says, to shut the titter that wanted to worm past his lips. Jongin’s time of reaction is lagged a silver of a second.

“The effect is barely there,” he says, picking the bug away and setting it free. Then sits cross-legged too, in front of Baekhyun. The pull of his pants over his knees is tauter than that of Baekhyun’s slacks. “The world is just spinning a little.” He makes a gesture with his fingers, a tiny gap between them. His fingers have long nails, the edges even. Then he frowns. “Which well, it was doing anyway.”

Baekhyun loses composure and smiles, its strength just shy of cutting his face in half. He sends rolling the other bottle towards Jongin. His grip on the neck is slacker, a bit disobedient. To an untrained eye, there would be no difference.

This one he drinks with comfort, with expectance, slow. Baekhyun is given a soft Jongin, eyelids dropped, and a looped, facile beam. He looks fragile, vulnerable, and Baekhyun is hit with how much he wants to make sure that nothing bad ever happens to him.

The string of flowers grows, hands working absently when he shoots a look to Baekhyun.

“What happens if a blood sucker drinks?” It is genuine curiosity, in the tone of an overindulged kindergartener. His glimming goes from the bottle next to him to Baekhyun’s eyes and back.

this story is continued
part iii