Unsight; (1/4); for muluhan
For: muluhan
By: ANONYMOUS
Word count: 36,687
Warnings: killing animals and people, blood, violence, graohic sex, needles, mention of dubcon ideation
Ratings: NC-17, R
Summary: Baekhyun never knew. And never is a long time.
Author's note: Alternative title is: Twilight, but better. Alternative summary is: The title, but better. Sehun talks like Tumblr.
Her voice cracks when her whisper soars into a mute scream. Eyelids wide, breath short and sweet. The smog of fuel and burning oil clots between them- the engine is still running.
Steel wrinkles deeper under his palm as he shuts out the gale of oncoming thoughts. A few more cracks as the door gives in. The ring on his finger tries to break the bone.
Baekhyun looks up, at the lazy simmer of never-ending gloom, whilst counting seconds. Her warmth is all over him, insistent, and it breaches, scars within him.
In a blink, he is gone.
“She smells…” Suho starts. His mind halts, its ticking delayed. Blankness doesn't veil it.
“She reeks,” Baekhyun says, two floors lower, eyes on the furthering truck. “Of dog.” No inflection to his statement. It tugs a grain of worry from Suho.
“A new one.”
Baekhyun is still inhaling profoundly, feeding on the lingering stench as it burns to the very borders of his defunct lungs. He is not quiet enough for Suho to miss the quake of it.
“Sehun will be tempted by that,” Xiumin pronounces with a grimace. His gums peek out, an enlivened pink to them as his lip stretches beyond amusement. The blood flows in slim rivulets between the tiles, straight dribbles that slow down as they thicken, darken.
Baekhyun steps on a trail. It halts for a second, then smears along the edge of the sole. The fading aroma of it wafts in the air. “He will be on his knees, licking all of this clean.”
“He’s sick enough of rabbits.”
“He hasn’t managed a deer yet.” Baekhyun picks up from the imagery in Xiumin’s mind. Four failures, same animal, its almost unimpressed eyes at Sehun’s attempts. Then the vivid, unmeaning flux of colour that is Xiumin’s memory of the taste of fresh blood. He had caught a bear. Baekhyun notices the healed parallel gashes going from his neck to his nape. Residue from the chafing of the claws on his clothes. White powder.
He needed it. The dullness of his gaze is gone. The dead hue of them wasn’t default. Baekhyun smiles, stepping away from the still plash of crimson and grabbing the broken bag from the floor. Still a few mouthfuls in it, but it is nearly expired. He wrinkles his nose.
“He’ll make it soon.”
Xiumin is not giving up.
Baekhyun pours the rest of the blood in the sink, chasing it with some hydrogen peroxide.
With a dull cadence, the cobwebs beneath her skin wring, iridescent in the darkness. They swell weakly, petering out toward the ends, caramelized. She is dehydrated.
Baekhyun glides away from the windowsill, wary with his steps as the fibres of the floorboards shatter under his presence. From behind him, streams of air penetrate into the room, and her body twitches, skin breaking in gooseflesh. It is still nippy, Baekhyun recalls, patches of mushy grey snow still adorn the sides of the road.
He liberally crowds the curtains over the window, rather than closing it, as he would not risk having the rusty metal frame groan again.
Toeing on the links between the boards, he manoeuvres himself into a chair; the back of it piled high with thrown clothing. He sits on the very edge of it, rigid, weight off the cushion, to not mangle the plush of it. The room is too crammed to allow ample movement. Baekhyun appeases to his surroundings from his place.
He peers long and calm at her figure twisted on the bed. Her bare legs are tossed over the comforter, spread apart, as it barely covers her from mid-thigh up. Purple, black floral motifs, curling around paleness. An intermittent wiggle to her toes, synchronising with the flutter of her eyelashes. Holey, threadbare shirt tight over her chest from how it bunched under the inverted bow of her spine, the circling bumps of an areolae poking through. Long strings of hair knotted around her throat, one of it lining over her chin and stopping at the rose of her softly cleaved mouth.
Ticks of three wrist watches, a too rapid wall clock- and another one, which is thought dead but still grants a second from era to era, compose the sound stripe of this night. The bawl of nocturne bugs is still shy; the season for their awakening has just begun. Her exhales are so short.
Baekhyun’s gaze pivots. It is an infantile room. Hoarding of bagatelle, paint faded. Childhood gifts received with dislike prefaced by a polite smile. Tower of books, thicker and thicker, daffodil grease at the edges of the pages, read once, twice, too many times. Pieces of obsolete technology, cases cracked, filled in with shiny glue that is now cemented with dust.
He smiles, he feels, the stretch of it allured by underlying amusement. It is a space that speaks of clinginess, and the everlasting chase with something that never comes back, never waits for you. Being mortal enables this kind of tendency.
Baekhyun has forgotten.
His head carefully settles on the rest as he relaxes into the chair, emboldened by the unforeseen calmness he finds in this plight. The sentiment deepens, then stabilizes as he stares and stares at the rhythmical clutch of her fingers around a fistful of comforter, entranced. He even breathes; shallow, through his mouth, matching the rhythm with hers.
It creeps gently into the tranquillity, the rupture of it, in the form of a fragmented tickle composed of blotches of colour. Baekhyun listens, sees, keen as the spectacle tentatively unfolds, now conducted by disfigured memories- unfinished faces and places. They get louder, catch shape, twining with words, lips to say them.
Baekhyun is still smiling, stiff cheeks plumping. Her dream courses into ridiculousness, as all do. Monsters and fruit salads.
When Baekhyun had been human, an abused little kitchen help at the mansion of some skimpy counts, his only refuge had been dreamland- a heaven where his blistered skin would stop hurting. They had been fun, memorable, worth elaborating throughout the day, whenever he could afford himself some escapism. Too often, he would end up believing that he is part of that utopia. Then twenty lashes would slice through his back, and Baekhyun would believe no more.
To nurture this newfound melancholy, Baekhyun focuses his all on the flashes of her mind. They follow no story line, there is no protagonist-just the petrified vista of a scenery so vivid that it ascribes desolation. It remains like this for a few of her heartbeats, until it loses saturation and blurs, becoming the backdrop of a person now poising in the centre.
She feels happy, safe, comfortable.
She knows this person, she sees them clearly, beams right back at them.
But Baekhyun cannot distinguish this visage, the lineation of them diffuse, melting into the overcasting monochromy. It loses more and more contour, edges gone by the time her gladness peaks, flourishes with ardour.
The chair creaks as he jerks forward, as if proximity would wipe away the opaque wash of her dream. It all bears a semblance to blindness, an ailment that leaves a chasm in the arsenal of his senses.
Baekhyun frowns, a cursory slit cutting between his eyebrows at tissue that has not been folded in a long time. He remains there, rooted in his spot, until the sky starts catching light, and her awareness rises, mixing in.
Baekhyun passes the first curb, a hexad more to go until he reaches the house, and he can already pick up the buzz of Suho’s occupancy. He looks to his left, where a baby snake is looping around a corroded pine tree. It struggles and struggles, then the branch snaps and falls to the ground.
He blinks, then keeps walking.
The door isn’t even shut behind him and he is assailed with malaise, dread, a strewn little storm, all of it Suho’s. Sehun is near him, soundless, and it is because of this that Baekhyun knows that this is bad, because Suho’s affection for Sehun is so strong that it rarely falls in second place in his thoughts.
Baekhyun shuts it out, aiming to play dumb, unaware, at least for now. He pads loudly to the fridge to grab a bag. Four left. He takes the smallest one, for her sleep has been restless this time around, a lot of stirring, sweating, and it has inflamed a tiny figment of thirst within him, the bite of his canines indenting inside his lip. It merely annoys.
He follows the noise coming from the veranda, iterant snaps of metal, overripe rust at the joints, and he comes into view with the delicate arch of Suho’s thumb over the rings of the scissors.
Baekhyun takes a seat on the sofa, nibbling off the tip of the bag. It is too cold, stale, lacking vibrancy, and for a second, Baekhyun recoils. A shard of ice slips into his mouth. It’ll take a while for it to melt. He gathers a few more shards before he feels soothed.
In front of him, Sehun’s legs are stretched out, his back hunched for Suho to reach him easily. His scissors are poised with purpose, a grace to his grip as he judges the fall of the strands around Sehun’s face. Strong brows, strong bone structure. A beauty to him that speaks of sturdiness, the illusion of it. On more than one occasion, Baekhyun understood the attraction.
The light is weak, a silver glow filtered through the green of the surrounding forest. Sehun’s eyes dart to the bag in Baekhyun’s grip, once, twice, dully. He is sated, not a trace of famishment, but it is the domineering whim of curiosity that makes him fixate on it.
“It really isn’t very good,” Baekhyun says, swallowing the ice, just as a Suho cards his hand again through a tuft of hair, leaving its ends dripping. One drop slides down his forehead, the length of his nose, and then into Sehun’s mouth. “Not as good as that, anyway.”
Suho snorts, genuine amusement, pure, lone, occupying his thoughts for a fraction. He snips off an angle next to the temple.
“Haven’t seen this face in so long,” Suho breathes, so quiet, syllables formed in his throat and left hanging there. A tender smile on his lips, telling of the florets of love behind it. He cleans up some more, the volumes cleaning up into a frame around Sehun’s features. He scrapes it back and forth with that sculpted ivory comb he’s had since he was a little prodigal son. It will perish to dust pretty soon.
Baekhyun proffers the last sip in the bag to Suho, to dissipate the warm surge between the two. They can never have enough privacy in his company. It is a welcomed distraction.
He hesitates, intent on the outstretched hand before he snatches it. It is in a vulturine manner, a too tight grip, and Baekhyun reads restlessness into it. Suho is surprised himself at his little fit, but only after he has drunk it all, a bead smearing at the edge of his mouth, thinning down his chin. His eyes glaze over. It is not satisfying, Baekhyun knows, but it adduces comfort. Usually. But not this time.
Suho’s memory sizzles, figments of it surfacing. He is thinking of human blood, of biting. A young, candied collum dying under his jaw.
Sehun lunges to kiss him, neck craning, opened lips landing on Suho’s. He is immediately denied, pushed down by a relentless force. Sehun whines, but doesn’t fight it. Leastways, Suho’s abysmal daze is shattered.
Baekhyun laughs, light peals that dissipate into the night. It curbs the thoughts, but not the mood.
“Who is it?” Baekhyun asks, after Suho has not even bothered to wipe off the stain on his face. He clips two millimetres wrong, too high above the brow bone. He evens out the edge, cutting more, purely preoccupied with it. Sehun can’t stop glimming at the crusted smudge.
“A friend.” Suho says, in dissonance with his reverie. It is someone whom he was close with, but not pleasant. Tolerance at best. A bond forced by circumstances. Two snippets of murder flicker, shameless feeding.
Suho regards him warily.
“You woke up together,” Baekhyun says. This is a part of the story he wasn’t aware of. Sehun’s interest in piqued too, but dimly, subdued by his mint lust.
A few jiffies, an imperceptible nod. Suho gets back to clipping, so much faster, his ancient scissors snipping away. He enjoyed hairdressing when he was young, a craft of the peasants, ridiculed for it. The muddied son of an upper class family. Suho still carries a few manners of that time; still too polite, still careful, attiring himself in garments akin to regalia, a dignity to him, a little obsession with hierarchies.
The new thing Baekhyun finds out tonight is that he hadn’t been kidnapped alone. There was another young man taken along, another snobby heir, and they’ve both been transformed during the raid.
This friend doesn’t abstain from humans.
“We’ll welcome him accordingly,” says Baekhyun. Suho puts the scissors down.
Sehun stands and turns around, checking his reflection in the window. He likes it. Baekhyun likes it too.
“I’m hot,” Sehun says. Baekhyun tries not to titter, but he does anyway. He enjoys arid humour.
“And there’s a…,” Sehun begins.
“Oh yes yes,” Baekhyun gets himself off the sofa, starting to unbutton his shirt. “I stink, yes.” It itches, slightly, too. He lets the cloth fall to the floor.
Baekhyun then licks his finger and wipes away the blood from Suho’s face. “Now you’re hot too. We are all hot.”
Baekhyun has a small empire of bottled pigments in a corner of his room. In the morning, he cakes it up on his face, dense layers, to bury the sparkle of his cheeks. The sun looms over the clouds, sometimes breaking through, and Baekhyun will glow and will blind. Secrecy is not to be jeopardized.
The pile of silver contact lens wrappers grows, and this time, it spills over the little bin, pooling at the base. He leaves them there. It is his only way of keeping track of how many times he’s gone out among the earthlings.
His eyes are a vile brown after he puts them on, pupils seemingly blown to the very limit. The red will bleed through in just a few hours.
But he is colourful, in the end, looking sick enough to seem alive. A yellow tint on the high panes of his face instead of the streaky pink given by the dormant copper in his veins. The blue shadows are mildly willed away, falling into a mauve that can be attributed to the grievous atmosphere.
He’d claimed to be suffering of some form of Cyanosis when he registered for this school. Thyroid malfunctions, a pinch of anaemia, too. Had given so many details of his condition, falsified documents from Suho, that it ended up vague, entirely too believable, and had also gathered a sympathetic grin from the secretary, lipstick riving.
Baekhyun plays the lead in a curtained masquerade, and chasing the spotlights makes him disregard just how damned he is.
It is raining already.
Taeyeon is shuffling in place next to her truck, backpack dangling off the crook of her arm and the hood of her hoodie cloaking most of her face. She is waiting for him. It is for the third day in a row that she’s lingered, expecting.
Baekhyun approaches her quietly, footfalls completely muted. The last student enters the building- no one else is left in the parking lot. Baekhyun forgoes prudence, and just sneaks at his natural pace, rounding her back and springing in front of her. Her heart does a yummy little jump, effervescent surprise squeezing it before she even registers his arrival.
Then she smiles at him, focusing. Luminosity marbles in her irises. Gladness, want condensed in the gesture.
The predator in him is glad for this reaction, for her clinging to him, considering him a potential friend, for she still has no one else to stick to.
He smiles, tight and real, corners of his mouth narrowed so his canines don’t peek out, and concentrating the joy in the curvature of his eyes.
“Nice to see you, stranger,” Taeyeon says, a shy blush crawling up her cheeks. Her scent is unsullied, still wearing all the sweat-soaked then dried skin cells. She is a late night showerer. For breakfast, she’s had something high in carbohydrates, toast perhaps, white, strawberry jam. It brews leisurely- in half an hour, she’ll be at her sweetest.
Her beam is still so wide, relentless. Baekhyun shall stop pondering over her hypothetical edibility.
“Bet you say that to every stranger,” he quips.
“Just to those who won’t quit being strangers already.” Her retort is quick. It fell directly on her tongue, not processed beforehand.
Baekhyun chuckles, a thin sound that gives the impression that he has been taking deep breaths all along. “Visited my sick aunt,” he offers to her escalating curiosity.
It is not even entirely a lie. His aunt had been very sick at some point indeed, and she should’ve died because of it. Instead, she quelled with Baekhyun’s fangs sinking into her upper trapezius- he didn’t even make it to the jugular- as he was in a frenzy. He sucked all the cancer out of her. The life too.
“We’ll be late,” Baekhyun reminds. He allows his shoulder to brush hers in an invitation.
Inside the building, eyes draw to them. Baekhyun is aware of how he roams the young minds; how concerned they are of his general peculiarity. They think he is diseased, a weird genius, a rich brat, out casting himself out of arrogance. There is also fright, a kind that is found unreasonable, as he seems unnatural, synthetic even, human but not entirely, and they all tumble in the pit of the uncanny valley because of it.
Rivulets of whispers disperse in their wake. Taeyeon keeps close to him as they walk step in step.
Baekhyun doesn’t bother listening.
He drives Taeyeon home after classes are over. The rainfall has been heavier than usual, and the tires of her truck would have made for a risky ride.
Her scent seeps and seeps into the upholstery, and after she’s closed the car door, halting to send him one little hand wave before going inside the house, Baekhyun gauges that it will take a while for it to rinse off. He lowers all the windows.
As he wheels back on the road, he catches the scrutiny of her father through the thin curtain. It is a bad impression- Baekhyun’s car is too nice. It shifts to disappointment, to him thinking that Taeyeon may be a gold digger, then disappointment at himself for thinking this, then bitterness filling in the memory of his wife leaving him exactly for a man with wealth, with stability.
Baekhyun accelerates.
Sehun had dived into the forest, dallying in the very heart of it. He’s with the birds- always liked the sound of them, their colour. It is a pleasure that goes a bit against his demeanour- he is such an excitable boy, impatient- and then here he is, seeking quietude as a hobby.
He’s been rooted in the same spot, barefoot and shirtless, completely unmoving, trying to coax an owl to sit on his shoulder.
Baekhyun’s contacts have begun running down his cheeks, all melted. The tracks are parched by the time they reach the line of his jaw, and in front of him, Sehun’s neck finally lolls to a side as the talons of the bird curl under his collarbone. Sehun is so still that the bird makes to bite at him, sink into him, as if he is inanimate.
“I made a friend,” Sehun says, airless, muscles undulating, and nothing escaping. He locks the gold of his eyes with the gold of the owl’s, and it tenses, speckled feathers flaring. “This should tickle,” Sehun ponders, sensing the contact. The thin skin of his neck isn’t thin anymore, anesthetized. He remembers in detail how ticking should feel. It should make him giggle.
He’s just barely passed the stage of a newborn. Baekhyun doesn’t tell him how it will get so much worse, so plain.
Sehun shrugs, then the bird flies off.
“That was short,” Baekhyun utters, eventually drawing near. His shows are leather, soles thick. It’s hard to slither on the forest bed whilst wearing them.
“We’ll meet again,” Sehun says. He remains frozen until the owl is out of his field of vision. Then he twists to meet Baekhyun, launching himself in an embrace.
“Missed me so much,” Baekhyun says flatly, even as he goes soft in the hold. Sehun noses into his coat. He likes the scent of humans so much. More than anything, it is because he misses them, but he refuses to admit this to himself. Hence Baekhyun links his hands around his back, keeping him there as he delves. It is weaker too, from the mist.
Baekhyun feels him inhaling less and less, his proximity slackening. He’s caught whiff of the abeyant malodour of mutt.
Wind rustles powerfully. Sehun puts distance between them. His nose wrinkles.
“Are you washing me?” Baekhyun asks, laughter in his voice. Branches snap around them. Then an entire tree. He’s not very good at manipulating his power yet. Or he just dislikes the stench that much.
“I am.” The wind intensifies.
“Hey, you have a buddy of the wrong species too. Now stop before you make it snow.”
In the dwelling silence, Baekhyun reads worry and longing in Sehun’s mind. It is a first for such unease to take the pedestal.
“They’ll be back soon,” Baekhyun says. Suho and Xiumin are in the city over to get a bigger supply of blood, to make sure that their upcoming friend is kept satiated. “Until then though,” he continues, removing his attention from Sehun’s thoughts, “let’s catch something.” Just for the fun of it, for how it speeds up time.
“Are you considered a catch too?” Sehun is too smug.
“Darling, stick to your rats.”
“Bitch,” Sehun whispers, bolting for his life.
Baekhyun rolls his eyes. “Kids these days. Where the fuck did all the respect go?” he mutters, leaping right after him.
It passes the cusp of twilight when Baekhyun stops.
Up north, the timbers thin out, giving in to smooth pastures. He’s almost out of the county. Sehun is outside his range- his endless legs privilege him with a baffling speed. Alas, he relies more on brute decisions than rigorous assessment of his surroundings. Perhaps he is a bit lost.
Baekhyun follows the rim of a tiny meadow, the middle of it faintly illuminated- it’s only Waxing Crescent. Beyond it, Baekhyun comes to a halt. Three lanes of thin footpath cut through the thickness of the forest.
Baekhyun steps on the discoloured ground. It lacks softness, nearly impermeable, well-trodden.
He presumed the border would be something more aggressive. Massive walls reaching to the sky, made out of ferroconcrete. Barbed wires. A clean, impassable division.
Instead, tiny flowers are just starting to close along the trail. Anemone. Viola Odorata. Ficaria Verna. Almost fairytale-esque.
As he veers east, he meets traces of Sehun. He is indeed far away, having taken after a family of young foxes. They make for a fun chase rather than a meal. Baekhyun considers joining him, just to tease, and he almost steers off the byway when he stiffens, stricken.
A sip of that fragrance carries through the air, more intense whilst mingled with the vapour of flora. It is heady, bright, crude, nothing like the trampled sample ferried by Taeyeon’s flesh. The owner of it might be nearby, and Baekhyun is embedded in his spot, searching, insight unchained. Everything else falls to naught around him, as he dismisses each detail.
All he attains is an influx of composure, a cardinal form of it, but no other proof of another presence.
Through this tumult, he does register the ripple breaching his periphery. Twigs break, heavy footsteps, four of them, a rattle that quickens. The animal is after him, even though his behaviour presents no threat.
Baekhyun just shifts slightly, pinning over a dash so fresh, almost warm now. The owner could be within reach.
Before Baekhyun can react, he’s slammed to the ground, entombed as he sinks into the mud from the brute weight on top of him. He is unresponsive, having lost balance after he's been barrelled into with such force. Baekhyun lets it be, curiously, relishing in the sensation. The animal keeps attempting to shred him to pieces, and Baekhyun just lays there, serene.
Oversoon, the pressure is gone in a clutter of long limbs. The silent crick of a fracturing spine beneath layers of fat and muscle. The boar manages a quarter of a scream, then some feeble noises, gagging as they peter out. Its neck is not completely twisted, keeping the heart beating a bit longer, so blood can pulse into Sehun’s mouth.
Baekhyun’s stare flops to the side. It is a huge one, well fed. Sehun can barely straddle it. His ecstasy is thunderous.
A cackle commences above, beads clashing on leaves. It peels away the dirt on them, and Baekhyun doesn’t blink, so the dirty water falls into his eyes. He can taste it at the back of his throat- chalky.
“Not bad at all,” Sehun mutters, a liquidly pitch to it. The boar is dead now. Sehun wasn’t even hungry.
“Swallow before you speak,” Baekhyun chides. The chalk builds up. A flash of lightning slays through the darkness.
Baekhyun drags himself over and licks over the punctures Sehun left.
“I hate this kind of fur,” he says, spitting the strands stuck over his lips. It is not bad at all, indeed, iron-rich and hot. Baekhyun has no desire to have any more.
“The one thing bunnies are better at,” says Sehun.
“You’d know.”
He is proud of himself, accomplished. He’s finally made a significant catch, and it was elegant just right too. It wasn’t that Sehun couldn’t kill, it was that he would make a mess- crushed organs flying everywhere, carcass splintered. If such a cadaver were to be discovered, it will make news. Brave people venturing around looking to hunt down a beast would be quite the nuisance. Hosting a graveyard with all their leftovers isn't an option either.
The boar has no visible damage on it. Even the perforation of Sehun’s fangs is discreet.
“I can’t die,” Baekhyun says. “You can’t die either. Not anymore.”
This was what made him do it, the prospect of Baekhyun being in danger, being hurt. It was this debris of humanity that made him slaughter properly.
Why did I have to worry about that then? Sehun doesn’t voice this query. His stance is sharp, and his eyes even more so.
“I…don’t know.” Baekhyun says, too true, and it must convey on his face, as shortly, Sehun nods and stops thinking about it.
“Do I still have to bury this?”
“No. But you can still say a prayer or two.”
Sehun scoffs. He’d been a diligent church boy, but against his will. “I don’t think God’s power is invested in me anymore.”
Before they leave, Baekhyun lingers, listens- no movement, and the scent is all washed away and riveting into the mud.
A metal cooling box sits on the kitchen counter. It is bigger than usual.
“A greedy friend he is, I see,” says Baekhyun, stepping into the yellow glow feathering out of the villa. Xiumin faces him, donning a pleasant smile. Suho is in just entering from the garage.
“I really hope he’s changed,” he says. A tall stack of papers is nestled in his arms.
Sehun is then looming over him, as filth from both of them pools on the floor. Baekhyun’s foundation has stained the front of his black shirt. He’s wearing a few grass blades in his breast pocket.
Xiumin studies them. “You two had fun, I presume.”
Suho isn’t happy though, flying by his side in a flash, worry etched on his face. Sehun is covered in sludge too, dark on his alabaster torso, and cherry on the inside of his lip. Xiumin advances as well, rapt on Sehun’s appearance.
“So much fun,” Baekhyun says, jumping a bit on his feet to shake off as much of the icky fluid as possible, before he is going for the box. He opens it, peeks at the labels, closes the lid.
Sehun is smiling so bright. Baekhyun is stifled by the triumph emanating from him.
Xiumin turns to him, mock-disdain on his face. “After battling with this for five years, can’t believe you’re the one taking the victory away from me.”
“It was a baby boar,” Baekhyun lies, for some reason. Suho is running fingers through Sehun’s wet hair. There is arousal between them. “It’s only a mini victory,” he continues. ”You’ll be the one making him take down a tiger.”
They both gaze at Sehun and Suho, their closeness. They know it is bad when they see another puddle forming on the floor from Suho’s hand, clear and turquoise tinted. He’s so enamoured he can’t even control his power.
“This will be a loud night,” Baekhyun says, grimacing at the images he picks up from them. Xiumin mirrors the expression.
Sehun’s hands are on Suho’s hips. In vain, they search to bruise already.
“Extremely loud?” Xiumin asks, fright in his tone.
“Extremely loud.”
They link gazes, agreement in them. They walk out.
He ends up pursuing refuge in Taeyeon’s room- yet again. His attire is unchanged, dirty, but dry at least.
Baekhyun leans on the sill, not touching anything else around. Her dream has already started, her body writhing lightly. The act is in a familiar place now, on a bridge thrown over a deserted river. She is riding a giant chicken, and cheeping along.
He doesn’t laugh, but he senses the fester of it in his chest. The absurdity never eases.
Often, even as the dream hollows, the boy doesn’t appear. He may be mentioned, just a figment of him; a hand holding hers, a dimpled chin- and Baekhyun still can’t see them. The boy is entirely concealed.
It keeps Baekhyun coming back from more, as a means to satiate the curiosity, the searing intrigue. Perhaps it is a form of vulnerability to have something take control of him like this, make him risk so much.
This time, the boy doesn’t appear. Baekhyun waits, testy, a little more than absolutely silent.
On her nightstand rests a tiny bouquet of cobalt flowers.
He manages to hop out the window the moment her eyes crack open, a sound of confusion spilling over her lips.
“He’s on our estate,” Suho says asudden, fixing a point over the horizon. His thumb slips from Sehun’s mouth, who was sucking on it, head thrown back and eyelashes in a flutter. The human blood that had been smeared on it is all gone- Sehun is initiated.
Baekhyun has had immediate gratification, nothing intimate, controlled like this.
“I’ll fetch him,” Baekhyun says, “I’m the one everyone loves at first sight.” He yearns to leave them have the moment, dropping the files that he has been looking through. Patient records, healed enough to race their way to a slow death.
He leaves them in disarray on the desk- he’ll come back to them later; then jumps out the balcony.
It will be a short walk, Baekhyun appraises only a few strides into the woods, grasping the tendrils of sentience. Nothing definite as of yet, but enough for him to have what to hound. The newcomer is near. Baekhyun can even hear the movement through the dry greenery.
Then the clarity fades to the left, perpendicular to Baekhyun’s direction. Its headway hastens.
“Bloody hell,” Baekhyun groans, launching into an urgent sprint.
A tree shrilly breaks off the skyline, taking down another few little ones with it. Baekhyun discerns the static of teeth attempting to sink into ossified flesh, collisions, and snarls of anger.
He finds them when there’s a paw on Kyungsoo, where his sternum has caved in under the pressure, grey innards peeking through the fracture. A string of saliva drips from the open snout of the wolf on Kyungsoo’s face, at the corner of his lips, before it slides further inside through the gap of them. Utmost disgust bursts in Kyungsoo’s mind, and it is then that Baekhyun reacts, throwing himself at the wolf, pushing it off, then standing above Kyungsoo.
He lifts both palms, coveting to tell that he means no harm. The tension on the spine of the animal doesn’t lessen, its curvature taut. Baekhyun takes a few steps back until Kyungsoo is isolated between him and a tree trunk.
The suspicion shifts, its wide orbs incising into the coral of Baekhyun, for Baekhyun’s hostility is dim, barely even there. The wolf approaches half a stride, searching, and Baekhyun is slapped with even more of that miasma, as suspiciously kindling as it is. The wolf comes even closer, its head aligned with Baekhyun’s shoulder.
It is dizziness that Baekhyun feels, faint on his legs, as he collapses a bit into Kyungsoo. The wolf’s ears twitch, stance softening. Its fur is rust coloured, cuts of white around its paws. It has a young glow, thin, as if the strands have just grown.
Before he catches himself, he feels himself smiling, overtaken by a quaint brand of merriment. He has the urge to reach out and touch, palm already moving for it.
The wolf growls, a cunning rumble as its teeth flash, just as Kyungsoo escapes and aims a kick. Baekhyun snaps an elbow into his chest, the sutured cavity reopening under the force. He has reacted too late; the wolf’s shoulder is dislocated. Kyungsoo struggles under Baekhyun’s hold.
Like this, he retreats until they have passed back into their territory, and he can see the wolf no more. He turns in time to see Suho, a frown twisting his forehead, and Sehun towering behind him.
“Hello, love,” Kyungsoo greets, shattering the silence, as he advances towards the pair. He pushes a part of his guts back in through his ribs, and it seals just as he stands in front of Suho. For an instant, his eyes go over him, up at Sehun, before reverting down. “Oh. It seems I stand no chance of seducing you now. What a pity.”
Baekhyun picks at the cloth of the couch, at the stitches making up its pattern. He keeps at it until it comes undone all along the edge. His body is prostrated over the thin mattress, over some books too, and they dig into his stomach, where his organs would be pulsing if they had any reason to.
He catches fragments of the conversation downstairs. It is mainly Xiumin’s voice responding to Kyungsoo’s kind of slurred words. He has a dirty, unpolished manner of talking, not having mingled with humans very much.
“Haven’t had a roll in the hay with a mutt in a while,” Kyungsoo says, serenity in his tone.
Baekhyun almost hears Sehun rolling his eyes. Within Suho, composure prevails. They will accept this friend in the family. They have nothing better to do than to clump together at this point.
Sehun is thinking things from time to time, for Baekhyun- basically gossiping. Baekhyun finds himself chuckling when Kyungsoo smiles and he has such full lips and his smile is heart shaped? Sehun panics a little. What if Suho still wants him? My lips aren’t that fucking great, goddammit.
Baekhyun rolls around until he lands to the floor, and picks at the threads of the carpet now, his legs dangling out of the wide-open French doors. It rains on his soles, warmer than his skin.
It is Xiumin who gives the briefing on the border, the armistice, the “You will not touch any human.”
“A war these days won’t be as fun anyway,” is Kyungsoo’s manner of agreeing to the terms. Behind the guise, there is frankness.
“You’re a doctor now?” Kyungsoo asks Suho then, and he is bending over in the chair. Baekhyun has so many sets of eyes to see the whole scene through, he doesn’t even have to be there. “Suits you,” he says when Suho doesn’t reply. “As the leader of this little clan. A proper mama. Please be mine too.”
He’s my daddy, you don’t get to call him mama, motherfucker, Sehun seethes, and even Kyungsoo is amused by how intense his glare is.
“Oh, you’re so fresh,” Kyungsoo notes, intent on Sehun. Sehun wants to lynch him.
“We’ll see,” Suho acknowledges tightly.
The meeting breaks soon, Kyungsoo and Xiumin sneaking in the library, Xiumin aiding to the conversation from time to time. Xiumin likes him, his idiosyncrasy, as coarse as it could get. Sehun is busy ravaging Suho, for there is doubt, jealousy that needs to be eliminated, and Suho is so amused and feels so loved. Baekhyun will reassure him about how fucking whipped Suho is, but another time, after this whole ordeal stops being funny.
Baekhyun is left in silence, just him and the memories. There is a zing through his body, from where he had contact with the wolf. It brings satisfaction; and also a deeper sting, greediness for more. Even through the absolute blindness, he had deciphered how the urge to slash had waned in the wolf, how he had softened. It wasn’t just Baekhyun. So there is a chance.
It loops, a broken replay, as he twists bit by bit, tufts of the carpet braided through his fingers. And he feels as if he is sleeping, weightless, dopey, dreaming a ridiculous dream starring a nameless hero.
“There’s my saviour,” Kyungsoo salutes as Baekhyun walks out on the driveway. A string of bird faeces is still dribbling down the windshield of his car. Baekhyun glimpses him blankly. At least he is wearing clothes, decent ones, Xiumin’s, so too decent.
“Do you want to be my slave already?” he asks. It is still too early to pretend smugness. The sun is barely raising, lazy. He leans on the hood of the car- he has a while to spare for the new family member.
“I want your name at least.” Turns out, for Kyungsoo is not too early to be smug.
“Baekhyun,” he offers. It still doesn’t sound the same way his mother used to enunciate it. It never will.
“I’m-“
“I know yours. You refer to yourself in third person. And you are quite loud about it too.”
“Kyungsoo,” he finishes anyway.
Baekhyun sees that his smile is indeed heart-shaped, even if there is no cordiality to it, just a set of bared teeth, with the fortunate framing of deceptive lips. It is the pleasantry smile, the ‘I must appease’ smile. He can almost imagine him as the fussy son of some fat aristocrat as he bosses people around that are not his to boss.
Still, there’s something different about him from last night, a bit less transparency. Baekhyun doesn’t mind, not at all, he finds. One less pandemonium to make sense of.
“I’m thrice your age,” Kyungsoo says. “Perhaps more.” He’s 400. And he is right.
“Try twenty times,” Baekhyun counters. He checks his reflection in the window of Suho’s car next to his, and notices a smudge of unblended foundation on his right cheek. He taps at it until it fades in with the rest. Calculations don’t really come together in Kyungsoo’s mind. “I died at seventeen. I’ll always be seventeen, and seventeen year olds go to school. Brings me a little peace, as if I belong there.”
“Stop prying,” Kyungsoo says instead, as a smirk too enigmatic adorns his lips.
“Can’t.”
The perplexing expression redoubles. He knows about Taeyeon. Without having had any contact at all, he knows about her. The trace is gone, fast.
Baekhyun becomes distressed as he searches through the bleak fragments of latency. He’s hiding so well. He isn’t 400 for nothing.
“I’ll help you.”
Taeyeon’s hair is slick, greasy at the roots, bangs garnered on either side of her forehead. She hasn’t washed it last night, as she usually does. She hasn’t been home.
“You haven’t studied,” Baekhyun spoke, sliding over with his pen in hand to correct something on her homework. It is good enough for starter. A tiny smile turns the corners of her mouth, caught, and Baekhyun is hit with the briefest splash of recollection, a blur among the clear.
“Been over at a friend’s overnight. It was his birthday.”
“You’ve got a friend?” Baekhyun asks, with fake surprise, searching. Her fist lands on his shoulder, and Baekhyun forgets to relax, so the flesh doesn’t dent. Belatedly, he flounders to the side, as if he is not stone.
“He’s been my friend for a while now. Though,” Taeyeon’s nose wrinkles, but fondly so. “He’s a snotty brat who finally turned eighteen.”
Baekhyun laughs, the nice crinkly sound as his mouth opens wide. Eighteen. Probably not a lie. This boy might as well have only roamed this earth for eighteen years. He isn’t offered get any more glimpses of him. “A snotty brat,” Baekhyun repeats slowly.
“I grew up with him. I’ve got to stand him now.”
“You have a bad taste,” he winces. “I’m offended. We should break up.”
“You’re a high quality friend,” she counters, shaking her head, the pencil in her hand starting to tremble. It is a bit of anxiousness, an indulgent simpler carving all the way to her eyes, and Baekhyun realizes it at the same time as she does, at this very moment, that she has sunken in the pit of infatuation with him. She didn’t mean to, she didn’t approach him out of romantic interest. She’s near just to gratify fascination, to keep alienation at bay.
Baekhyun takes a bite of his sandwich, chewing deliberately. “Highest quality,” he corrects, after swallowing. It is abominable, but the upward tilt of his mouth has not dissipated.
Her stare persists on his, and maybe she sees the dissolution of the lenses, and the darkness spreading in rivulets until his waterline, to the monster leering in the depths.
She doesn’t.
Taeyeon bends back over her book. “Professor Lee really doesn’t like me,” she mutters, noting down the details of another problem.
When the bell rings, and they have gathered all their supplies, Baekhyun chances a touch to her, just the inside of her wrist, just two fingers of his ghosting over the suddenly jumpy pulse there. It is weird, feeling the phantom feeling of his cheek filling, with coldness instead, but it burns all the same.
It was too short for her to remark the temperature difference.
Baekhyun waits at the gate of the local hospital. The building is small and dingy, plaster chipped off by the edges of barred windows. Baekhyun idles near a couple, each cradling a cup of vending machine coffee. It is cheap enough to conquer the smell of drilled, leaking veins.
He has so little to listen to, and it is somewhat comforting, how blank people’s minds can be once swamped in pain.
The lab coat is trailing around Suho’s shoulders as he approaches. His nametag is sloppily hanging by the opened needle going through his pocket. Baekhyun fixes it for him once he is near enough.
“We’re going for a little chat over the frontier,” Suho speaks. Baekhyun reaches for the car keys in his coat before his intention to do so is even formulated.
“Does Kyungsoo intend to seek revenge?” he inquires. They would’ve heard movement by now of he teased the border, an entire pack of angry mutts all over their property. It’s a week later, and still quiet.
“He doesn’t?” Suho’s eyebrow twitches. Distress there, yet again, from that thing that he keeps concealing from Baekhyun.
He shrugs. “He’s too careful with me. Masks himself with mathematics quite often.”
“Ah, he was a little genius when mortal.”
“In Latin,” Baekhyun adds, already walking toward Suho’s car. It is a serious car, unlike his, meant for a kid with a just-gotten licence. Driving isn’t entirely unpleasant.
Along the road, it is a frail little blueberry bush that marks the border. Late in spring, the token of their enmity sprouts white, bell shaped blossoms. The scenery changes rapidly, tall houses built like shacks, and people busying themselves outside, in open yards of similar construct.
The place has a certain charm, one to warrant an adventurous childhood. Baekhyun keeps the speed steady, legal. People keep crossing the street haphazardly.
A row of rusty vehicles lines the house they are looking for. It is fenced, spread out in tiny wings, indeed resembling a den to an eye that knows what to look for.
Chanyeol’s head peeks over the tall fence, and he steps onto the stone road just as Suho and Baekhyun do. The stench is dense. Baekhyun stops from coughing his lungs out out of courtesy, whilst Suho still braves a sneeze, relaxing immediately after, pleasance accenting his face.
Chanyeol has a sight bend at his knees, chest pushed forward. It is not exactly a fighting stance, but nothing too welcoming either. There are some fine wrinkles on his face, and they smooth out ever so slightly as Suho smiles at him, all warm and docile.
It’s the third time they meet like this. Once- the collision, twice- the armistice.
“Mingling so much these days,” Chanyeol begins, eyes entirely on Baekhyun. He’s meant to say this for a while. “Too much.” He’s thinking of Taeyeon. He’s had her on his motorcycle, watched her take walks on the beach with the blurry-faced boy. The snarl darkening his lips is caused by protectiveness.
“I’m not breaking any of the stipulations, nor do I mean any harm,” Baekhyun replies. She is loved in this family, it seems.
“Doesn’t she tempt you?” Chanyeol spits out, not even a question, riled by Baekhyun’s tone. Too business-like, distanced, to be used on nutriments. Yixing comes to stand next to him, sparsely attired, and tenses at the tension Chanyeol is exuding. The reek of the boy around them is faint. Baekhyun doesn’t dwell on it.
“She doesn’t,” Baekhyun states.
Chanyeol scoffs, a raunchy scorn. The fury is a little over the top, pure, a splattered wave of it. Yixing mirrors the sentiment, albeit weaker.
Suho is looking at him, an inquest, a nod. “No harm,” he repeats.
Chanyeol trusts Suho, and he himself dislikes that he ended up trusting such a creature. But he does, nonetheless. His right fist unclenches.
“What about the new sucker?”
It’s Suho’s time to smirk, somewhat pleased, a short sag to his shoulders before they straighten again. “Your boy ensured that he won’t step out of bounds.”
Pride in Chanyeol, a smirk too. “Did he?”
“You’ve seen the collateral damage,” Suho reminds. He did see the wreck of the scene. The pine tree has just started to rot. It doesn’t catch worms.
“No hard feelings then,” Chanyeol says. “Control the new sucker though; Jongin said he is a bold fellow.”
Jongin.
“He’s daring, surely, but also old enough to be able to abide by a few little rules,” Suho is still smiling, fallen back into affability. “He’s part of our family now,” he continues, timbre hardening. Don’t mess with him, it conveys, not even a warning, but a promise.
With a hint of reluctance, Chanyeol accedes. Yixing has already turned back to the house.
Chanyeol’s eyes pass over Baekhyun’s one last time, rigid. He has questions. Why would he be in her proximity. Why would he allow her to get close. Why did he save her.
“Same reason anyone would,” Baekhyun responds, getting back in the car. It doesn’t wipe out Chanyeol’s suspicion, but it does Baekhyun’s.
The sky is clear enough for the galaxies above to sprinkle their twinkles over them. Baekhyun spares them a glance, gone worlds, before he comes back to the tumbler of blood in his hand. It is fuller than Sehun's, placed in the middle of his thigh. The rest of Sehun’s limbs dangle off different branches. There is something different about him, an assured slant to his body, his bearing. Maturescence that also brought along a heightened level of agitation. If Suho didn’t keep him away from human blood for so long, perchance he would be someone else entirely.
Baekhyun goes a bit higher, draping himself over the highest branches, the last possible one that can support his weight. It’s a mere thirty metres above the soil, and Baekhyun looks down, waiting to be afraid, to tremble a little, to feel the urge to fall. It doesn’t come. His eyebrow rises disinterestedly.
“Do you regret this yet?” Baekhyun inquires. With his nail, he carves a little circle in the bark for his glass to sit.
It is not too soon to ask. Sehun is not a kid anymore, not a fragile thing. Baekhyun can’t see him anymore as the proof of Suho’s impatience, mistake, thirst, want. He’s not Suho’s cantante anymore. Five years is enough for stagnation to have settled in.
“Now I’m not alone,” Sehun says. Baekhyun hears words being picked, dismissed, late nights entertained only by the glow of a computer, boring books about war and traumas, disapproving parents who insisted on overlong bouts of fasting. He lusted over love. “Being alone felt way worse than the transformation.”
Baekhyun’s always been a alone before, as he is now. He had no time to feel lonely, or to even desire the opposite.
“You’ve visited inferno and still deem loneliness worse,” he says, an echo, for maybe he could relate.
Sehun climbs higher too, a leg hooked with Baekhyun’s as he settles on the opposite branch. There are four millilitres of blood residing on the bottom of his tumbler. His eyes change colour, sangria in the centre around the pupil, and a bright gold around the edges. He hasn’t had a big enough amount of blood to completely change the shade.
Baekhyun finally touches his own glass, downs it, then lets it fall through his fingers. It tumbles through full twigs until there is the thud of it piercing the ground.
“Xiumin won’t be pleased that you did that,” Sehun says. He has a digit in his tumbler, scooping the coagulated blood over the rim and into his mouth. It is weird how the pinkness of his lips never dimmed out. It remained there, even after he died.
“You stole these from his beloved trinket cabinet, didn’t you,” Baekhyun kind of accuses.
“He’s such an old lady,” Sehun says, and he drops his glass too. It stacks up on Baekhyun’s, breaking it. The shards keep together.
“Come dry my hair,” Baekhyun says, jumping off. It feels like flying, through the smell of young pine and woodlands, searching for an anchor.
“I’ll give you a perm,” Sehun whispers from still up in the tree, zings of mischief in the promise.
“You daren’t.”
Sehun’s laughter is so goofy. Baekhyun hates himself for mirroring it.
Baekhyun ditches history. He can’t stand the way the past is portrayed- a pretty play on a shaky podium hoping for ovation. It wasn’t like that.
In lieu, he sits in a corner in the cafeteria, and when the break starts, Taeyeon sifts for him in the busy room. Baekhyun waves.
Her walk is diffident, a shimmy to her shortened strides. Baekhyun smiles at her all the same, colour draining into her cheeks at the sight. The backpack she puts on the table is plumper than usual. Her greeting is curt.
The core of her apple is thin, browned by the crests, when she tosses it in the bin, and with the same hesitance opens her bag. A heap of fabric spills out, teal, loosely knitted with thick, nappy thread.
She stretches it out with a confident grip, and bends over the table to wrap the scarf around his head and neck, until only his eyes remain uncovered. It wears the same scent her clothes have, something suave with a terse sting.
“Nobody likes freezing,” she says kindly, hiding an end under a loop so it doesn’t unravel. Taeyeon remembers their touch.
Baekhyun is gazing at her, starched, unblinking.
It is romance, the inception of it, genuine, blooming inside of her as she takes in his visage. She thinks he’s cute. She wants to cuddle him.
Baekhyun is appalled, an old growl bubbling within and confined within the scarf. The beast is offended.
“I was enjoying it,” he says, still silent.
At the same time, he can’t help cherishing this gift, this intention.
“Lies.”
this story is continued
part ii
By: ANONYMOUS
Word count: 36,687
Warnings: killing animals and people, blood, violence, graohic sex, needles, mention of dubcon ideation
Ratings: NC-17, R
Summary: Baekhyun never knew. And never is a long time.
Author's note: Alternative title is: Twilight, but better. Alternative summary is: The title, but better. Sehun talks like Tumblr.
Her voice cracks when her whisper soars into a mute scream. Eyelids wide, breath short and sweet. The smog of fuel and burning oil clots between them- the engine is still running.
Steel wrinkles deeper under his palm as he shuts out the gale of oncoming thoughts. A few more cracks as the door gives in. The ring on his finger tries to break the bone.
Baekhyun looks up, at the lazy simmer of never-ending gloom, whilst counting seconds. Her warmth is all over him, insistent, and it breaches, scars within him.
In a blink, he is gone.
“She smells…” Suho starts. His mind halts, its ticking delayed. Blankness doesn't veil it.
“She reeks,” Baekhyun says, two floors lower, eyes on the furthering truck. “Of dog.” No inflection to his statement. It tugs a grain of worry from Suho.
“A new one.”
Baekhyun is still inhaling profoundly, feeding on the lingering stench as it burns to the very borders of his defunct lungs. He is not quiet enough for Suho to miss the quake of it.
“Sehun will be tempted by that,” Xiumin pronounces with a grimace. His gums peek out, an enlivened pink to them as his lip stretches beyond amusement. The blood flows in slim rivulets between the tiles, straight dribbles that slow down as they thicken, darken.
Baekhyun steps on a trail. It halts for a second, then smears along the edge of the sole. The fading aroma of it wafts in the air. “He will be on his knees, licking all of this clean.”
“He’s sick enough of rabbits.”
“He hasn’t managed a deer yet.” Baekhyun picks up from the imagery in Xiumin’s mind. Four failures, same animal, its almost unimpressed eyes at Sehun’s attempts. Then the vivid, unmeaning flux of colour that is Xiumin’s memory of the taste of fresh blood. He had caught a bear. Baekhyun notices the healed parallel gashes going from his neck to his nape. Residue from the chafing of the claws on his clothes. White powder.
He needed it. The dullness of his gaze is gone. The dead hue of them wasn’t default. Baekhyun smiles, stepping away from the still plash of crimson and grabbing the broken bag from the floor. Still a few mouthfuls in it, but it is nearly expired. He wrinkles his nose.
“He’ll make it soon.”
Xiumin is not giving up.
Baekhyun pours the rest of the blood in the sink, chasing it with some hydrogen peroxide.
With a dull cadence, the cobwebs beneath her skin wring, iridescent in the darkness. They swell weakly, petering out toward the ends, caramelized. She is dehydrated.
Baekhyun glides away from the windowsill, wary with his steps as the fibres of the floorboards shatter under his presence. From behind him, streams of air penetrate into the room, and her body twitches, skin breaking in gooseflesh. It is still nippy, Baekhyun recalls, patches of mushy grey snow still adorn the sides of the road.
He liberally crowds the curtains over the window, rather than closing it, as he would not risk having the rusty metal frame groan again.
Toeing on the links between the boards, he manoeuvres himself into a chair; the back of it piled high with thrown clothing. He sits on the very edge of it, rigid, weight off the cushion, to not mangle the plush of it. The room is too crammed to allow ample movement. Baekhyun appeases to his surroundings from his place.
He peers long and calm at her figure twisted on the bed. Her bare legs are tossed over the comforter, spread apart, as it barely covers her from mid-thigh up. Purple, black floral motifs, curling around paleness. An intermittent wiggle to her toes, synchronising with the flutter of her eyelashes. Holey, threadbare shirt tight over her chest from how it bunched under the inverted bow of her spine, the circling bumps of an areolae poking through. Long strings of hair knotted around her throat, one of it lining over her chin and stopping at the rose of her softly cleaved mouth.
Ticks of three wrist watches, a too rapid wall clock- and another one, which is thought dead but still grants a second from era to era, compose the sound stripe of this night. The bawl of nocturne bugs is still shy; the season for their awakening has just begun. Her exhales are so short.
Baekhyun’s gaze pivots. It is an infantile room. Hoarding of bagatelle, paint faded. Childhood gifts received with dislike prefaced by a polite smile. Tower of books, thicker and thicker, daffodil grease at the edges of the pages, read once, twice, too many times. Pieces of obsolete technology, cases cracked, filled in with shiny glue that is now cemented with dust.
He smiles, he feels, the stretch of it allured by underlying amusement. It is a space that speaks of clinginess, and the everlasting chase with something that never comes back, never waits for you. Being mortal enables this kind of tendency.
Baekhyun has forgotten.
His head carefully settles on the rest as he relaxes into the chair, emboldened by the unforeseen calmness he finds in this plight. The sentiment deepens, then stabilizes as he stares and stares at the rhythmical clutch of her fingers around a fistful of comforter, entranced. He even breathes; shallow, through his mouth, matching the rhythm with hers.
It creeps gently into the tranquillity, the rupture of it, in the form of a fragmented tickle composed of blotches of colour. Baekhyun listens, sees, keen as the spectacle tentatively unfolds, now conducted by disfigured memories- unfinished faces and places. They get louder, catch shape, twining with words, lips to say them.
Baekhyun is still smiling, stiff cheeks plumping. Her dream courses into ridiculousness, as all do. Monsters and fruit salads.
When Baekhyun had been human, an abused little kitchen help at the mansion of some skimpy counts, his only refuge had been dreamland- a heaven where his blistered skin would stop hurting. They had been fun, memorable, worth elaborating throughout the day, whenever he could afford himself some escapism. Too often, he would end up believing that he is part of that utopia. Then twenty lashes would slice through his back, and Baekhyun would believe no more.
To nurture this newfound melancholy, Baekhyun focuses his all on the flashes of her mind. They follow no story line, there is no protagonist-just the petrified vista of a scenery so vivid that it ascribes desolation. It remains like this for a few of her heartbeats, until it loses saturation and blurs, becoming the backdrop of a person now poising in the centre.
She feels happy, safe, comfortable.
She knows this person, she sees them clearly, beams right back at them.
But Baekhyun cannot distinguish this visage, the lineation of them diffuse, melting into the overcasting monochromy. It loses more and more contour, edges gone by the time her gladness peaks, flourishes with ardour.
The chair creaks as he jerks forward, as if proximity would wipe away the opaque wash of her dream. It all bears a semblance to blindness, an ailment that leaves a chasm in the arsenal of his senses.
Baekhyun frowns, a cursory slit cutting between his eyebrows at tissue that has not been folded in a long time. He remains there, rooted in his spot, until the sky starts catching light, and her awareness rises, mixing in.
Baekhyun passes the first curb, a hexad more to go until he reaches the house, and he can already pick up the buzz of Suho’s occupancy. He looks to his left, where a baby snake is looping around a corroded pine tree. It struggles and struggles, then the branch snaps and falls to the ground.
He blinks, then keeps walking.
The door isn’t even shut behind him and he is assailed with malaise, dread, a strewn little storm, all of it Suho’s. Sehun is near him, soundless, and it is because of this that Baekhyun knows that this is bad, because Suho’s affection for Sehun is so strong that it rarely falls in second place in his thoughts.
Baekhyun shuts it out, aiming to play dumb, unaware, at least for now. He pads loudly to the fridge to grab a bag. Four left. He takes the smallest one, for her sleep has been restless this time around, a lot of stirring, sweating, and it has inflamed a tiny figment of thirst within him, the bite of his canines indenting inside his lip. It merely annoys.
He follows the noise coming from the veranda, iterant snaps of metal, overripe rust at the joints, and he comes into view with the delicate arch of Suho’s thumb over the rings of the scissors.
Baekhyun takes a seat on the sofa, nibbling off the tip of the bag. It is too cold, stale, lacking vibrancy, and for a second, Baekhyun recoils. A shard of ice slips into his mouth. It’ll take a while for it to melt. He gathers a few more shards before he feels soothed.
In front of him, Sehun’s legs are stretched out, his back hunched for Suho to reach him easily. His scissors are poised with purpose, a grace to his grip as he judges the fall of the strands around Sehun’s face. Strong brows, strong bone structure. A beauty to him that speaks of sturdiness, the illusion of it. On more than one occasion, Baekhyun understood the attraction.
The light is weak, a silver glow filtered through the green of the surrounding forest. Sehun’s eyes dart to the bag in Baekhyun’s grip, once, twice, dully. He is sated, not a trace of famishment, but it is the domineering whim of curiosity that makes him fixate on it.
“It really isn’t very good,” Baekhyun says, swallowing the ice, just as a Suho cards his hand again through a tuft of hair, leaving its ends dripping. One drop slides down his forehead, the length of his nose, and then into Sehun’s mouth. “Not as good as that, anyway.”
Suho snorts, genuine amusement, pure, lone, occupying his thoughts for a fraction. He snips off an angle next to the temple.
“Haven’t seen this face in so long,” Suho breathes, so quiet, syllables formed in his throat and left hanging there. A tender smile on his lips, telling of the florets of love behind it. He cleans up some more, the volumes cleaning up into a frame around Sehun’s features. He scrapes it back and forth with that sculpted ivory comb he’s had since he was a little prodigal son. It will perish to dust pretty soon.
Baekhyun proffers the last sip in the bag to Suho, to dissipate the warm surge between the two. They can never have enough privacy in his company. It is a welcomed distraction.
He hesitates, intent on the outstretched hand before he snatches it. It is in a vulturine manner, a too tight grip, and Baekhyun reads restlessness into it. Suho is surprised himself at his little fit, but only after he has drunk it all, a bead smearing at the edge of his mouth, thinning down his chin. His eyes glaze over. It is not satisfying, Baekhyun knows, but it adduces comfort. Usually. But not this time.
Suho’s memory sizzles, figments of it surfacing. He is thinking of human blood, of biting. A young, candied collum dying under his jaw.
Sehun lunges to kiss him, neck craning, opened lips landing on Suho’s. He is immediately denied, pushed down by a relentless force. Sehun whines, but doesn’t fight it. Leastways, Suho’s abysmal daze is shattered.
Baekhyun laughs, light peals that dissipate into the night. It curbs the thoughts, but not the mood.
“Who is it?” Baekhyun asks, after Suho has not even bothered to wipe off the stain on his face. He clips two millimetres wrong, too high above the brow bone. He evens out the edge, cutting more, purely preoccupied with it. Sehun can’t stop glimming at the crusted smudge.
“A friend.” Suho says, in dissonance with his reverie. It is someone whom he was close with, but not pleasant. Tolerance at best. A bond forced by circumstances. Two snippets of murder flicker, shameless feeding.
Suho regards him warily.
“You woke up together,” Baekhyun says. This is a part of the story he wasn’t aware of. Sehun’s interest in piqued too, but dimly, subdued by his mint lust.
A few jiffies, an imperceptible nod. Suho gets back to clipping, so much faster, his ancient scissors snipping away. He enjoyed hairdressing when he was young, a craft of the peasants, ridiculed for it. The muddied son of an upper class family. Suho still carries a few manners of that time; still too polite, still careful, attiring himself in garments akin to regalia, a dignity to him, a little obsession with hierarchies.
The new thing Baekhyun finds out tonight is that he hadn’t been kidnapped alone. There was another young man taken along, another snobby heir, and they’ve both been transformed during the raid.
This friend doesn’t abstain from humans.
“We’ll welcome him accordingly,” says Baekhyun. Suho puts the scissors down.
Sehun stands and turns around, checking his reflection in the window. He likes it. Baekhyun likes it too.
“I’m hot,” Sehun says. Baekhyun tries not to titter, but he does anyway. He enjoys arid humour.
“And there’s a…,” Sehun begins.
“Oh yes yes,” Baekhyun gets himself off the sofa, starting to unbutton his shirt. “I stink, yes.” It itches, slightly, too. He lets the cloth fall to the floor.
Baekhyun then licks his finger and wipes away the blood from Suho’s face. “Now you’re hot too. We are all hot.”
Baekhyun has a small empire of bottled pigments in a corner of his room. In the morning, he cakes it up on his face, dense layers, to bury the sparkle of his cheeks. The sun looms over the clouds, sometimes breaking through, and Baekhyun will glow and will blind. Secrecy is not to be jeopardized.
The pile of silver contact lens wrappers grows, and this time, it spills over the little bin, pooling at the base. He leaves them there. It is his only way of keeping track of how many times he’s gone out among the earthlings.
His eyes are a vile brown after he puts them on, pupils seemingly blown to the very limit. The red will bleed through in just a few hours.
But he is colourful, in the end, looking sick enough to seem alive. A yellow tint on the high panes of his face instead of the streaky pink given by the dormant copper in his veins. The blue shadows are mildly willed away, falling into a mauve that can be attributed to the grievous atmosphere.
He’d claimed to be suffering of some form of Cyanosis when he registered for this school. Thyroid malfunctions, a pinch of anaemia, too. Had given so many details of his condition, falsified documents from Suho, that it ended up vague, entirely too believable, and had also gathered a sympathetic grin from the secretary, lipstick riving.
Baekhyun plays the lead in a curtained masquerade, and chasing the spotlights makes him disregard just how damned he is.
It is raining already.
Taeyeon is shuffling in place next to her truck, backpack dangling off the crook of her arm and the hood of her hoodie cloaking most of her face. She is waiting for him. It is for the third day in a row that she’s lingered, expecting.
Baekhyun approaches her quietly, footfalls completely muted. The last student enters the building- no one else is left in the parking lot. Baekhyun forgoes prudence, and just sneaks at his natural pace, rounding her back and springing in front of her. Her heart does a yummy little jump, effervescent surprise squeezing it before she even registers his arrival.
Then she smiles at him, focusing. Luminosity marbles in her irises. Gladness, want condensed in the gesture.
The predator in him is glad for this reaction, for her clinging to him, considering him a potential friend, for she still has no one else to stick to.
He smiles, tight and real, corners of his mouth narrowed so his canines don’t peek out, and concentrating the joy in the curvature of his eyes.
“Nice to see you, stranger,” Taeyeon says, a shy blush crawling up her cheeks. Her scent is unsullied, still wearing all the sweat-soaked then dried skin cells. She is a late night showerer. For breakfast, she’s had something high in carbohydrates, toast perhaps, white, strawberry jam. It brews leisurely- in half an hour, she’ll be at her sweetest.
Her beam is still so wide, relentless. Baekhyun shall stop pondering over her hypothetical edibility.
“Bet you say that to every stranger,” he quips.
“Just to those who won’t quit being strangers already.” Her retort is quick. It fell directly on her tongue, not processed beforehand.
Baekhyun chuckles, a thin sound that gives the impression that he has been taking deep breaths all along. “Visited my sick aunt,” he offers to her escalating curiosity.
It is not even entirely a lie. His aunt had been very sick at some point indeed, and she should’ve died because of it. Instead, she quelled with Baekhyun’s fangs sinking into her upper trapezius- he didn’t even make it to the jugular- as he was in a frenzy. He sucked all the cancer out of her. The life too.
“We’ll be late,” Baekhyun reminds. He allows his shoulder to brush hers in an invitation.
Inside the building, eyes draw to them. Baekhyun is aware of how he roams the young minds; how concerned they are of his general peculiarity. They think he is diseased, a weird genius, a rich brat, out casting himself out of arrogance. There is also fright, a kind that is found unreasonable, as he seems unnatural, synthetic even, human but not entirely, and they all tumble in the pit of the uncanny valley because of it.
Rivulets of whispers disperse in their wake. Taeyeon keeps close to him as they walk step in step.
Baekhyun doesn’t bother listening.
He drives Taeyeon home after classes are over. The rainfall has been heavier than usual, and the tires of her truck would have made for a risky ride.
Her scent seeps and seeps into the upholstery, and after she’s closed the car door, halting to send him one little hand wave before going inside the house, Baekhyun gauges that it will take a while for it to rinse off. He lowers all the windows.
As he wheels back on the road, he catches the scrutiny of her father through the thin curtain. It is a bad impression- Baekhyun’s car is too nice. It shifts to disappointment, to him thinking that Taeyeon may be a gold digger, then disappointment at himself for thinking this, then bitterness filling in the memory of his wife leaving him exactly for a man with wealth, with stability.
Baekhyun accelerates.
Sehun had dived into the forest, dallying in the very heart of it. He’s with the birds- always liked the sound of them, their colour. It is a pleasure that goes a bit against his demeanour- he is such an excitable boy, impatient- and then here he is, seeking quietude as a hobby.
He’s been rooted in the same spot, barefoot and shirtless, completely unmoving, trying to coax an owl to sit on his shoulder.
Baekhyun’s contacts have begun running down his cheeks, all melted. The tracks are parched by the time they reach the line of his jaw, and in front of him, Sehun’s neck finally lolls to a side as the talons of the bird curl under his collarbone. Sehun is so still that the bird makes to bite at him, sink into him, as if he is inanimate.
“I made a friend,” Sehun says, airless, muscles undulating, and nothing escaping. He locks the gold of his eyes with the gold of the owl’s, and it tenses, speckled feathers flaring. “This should tickle,” Sehun ponders, sensing the contact. The thin skin of his neck isn’t thin anymore, anesthetized. He remembers in detail how ticking should feel. It should make him giggle.
He’s just barely passed the stage of a newborn. Baekhyun doesn’t tell him how it will get so much worse, so plain.
Sehun shrugs, then the bird flies off.
“That was short,” Baekhyun utters, eventually drawing near. His shows are leather, soles thick. It’s hard to slither on the forest bed whilst wearing them.
“We’ll meet again,” Sehun says. He remains frozen until the owl is out of his field of vision. Then he twists to meet Baekhyun, launching himself in an embrace.
“Missed me so much,” Baekhyun says flatly, even as he goes soft in the hold. Sehun noses into his coat. He likes the scent of humans so much. More than anything, it is because he misses them, but he refuses to admit this to himself. Hence Baekhyun links his hands around his back, keeping him there as he delves. It is weaker too, from the mist.
Baekhyun feels him inhaling less and less, his proximity slackening. He’s caught whiff of the abeyant malodour of mutt.
Wind rustles powerfully. Sehun puts distance between them. His nose wrinkles.
“Are you washing me?” Baekhyun asks, laughter in his voice. Branches snap around them. Then an entire tree. He’s not very good at manipulating his power yet. Or he just dislikes the stench that much.
“I am.” The wind intensifies.
“Hey, you have a buddy of the wrong species too. Now stop before you make it snow.”
In the dwelling silence, Baekhyun reads worry and longing in Sehun’s mind. It is a first for such unease to take the pedestal.
“They’ll be back soon,” Baekhyun says. Suho and Xiumin are in the city over to get a bigger supply of blood, to make sure that their upcoming friend is kept satiated. “Until then though,” he continues, removing his attention from Sehun’s thoughts, “let’s catch something.” Just for the fun of it, for how it speeds up time.
“Are you considered a catch too?” Sehun is too smug.
“Darling, stick to your rats.”
“Bitch,” Sehun whispers, bolting for his life.
Baekhyun rolls his eyes. “Kids these days. Where the fuck did all the respect go?” he mutters, leaping right after him.
It passes the cusp of twilight when Baekhyun stops.
Up north, the timbers thin out, giving in to smooth pastures. He’s almost out of the county. Sehun is outside his range- his endless legs privilege him with a baffling speed. Alas, he relies more on brute decisions than rigorous assessment of his surroundings. Perhaps he is a bit lost.
Baekhyun follows the rim of a tiny meadow, the middle of it faintly illuminated- it’s only Waxing Crescent. Beyond it, Baekhyun comes to a halt. Three lanes of thin footpath cut through the thickness of the forest.
Baekhyun steps on the discoloured ground. It lacks softness, nearly impermeable, well-trodden.
He presumed the border would be something more aggressive. Massive walls reaching to the sky, made out of ferroconcrete. Barbed wires. A clean, impassable division.
Instead, tiny flowers are just starting to close along the trail. Anemone. Viola Odorata. Ficaria Verna. Almost fairytale-esque.
As he veers east, he meets traces of Sehun. He is indeed far away, having taken after a family of young foxes. They make for a fun chase rather than a meal. Baekhyun considers joining him, just to tease, and he almost steers off the byway when he stiffens, stricken.
A sip of that fragrance carries through the air, more intense whilst mingled with the vapour of flora. It is heady, bright, crude, nothing like the trampled sample ferried by Taeyeon’s flesh. The owner of it might be nearby, and Baekhyun is embedded in his spot, searching, insight unchained. Everything else falls to naught around him, as he dismisses each detail.
All he attains is an influx of composure, a cardinal form of it, but no other proof of another presence.
Through this tumult, he does register the ripple breaching his periphery. Twigs break, heavy footsteps, four of them, a rattle that quickens. The animal is after him, even though his behaviour presents no threat.
Baekhyun just shifts slightly, pinning over a dash so fresh, almost warm now. The owner could be within reach.
Before Baekhyun can react, he’s slammed to the ground, entombed as he sinks into the mud from the brute weight on top of him. He is unresponsive, having lost balance after he's been barrelled into with such force. Baekhyun lets it be, curiously, relishing in the sensation. The animal keeps attempting to shred him to pieces, and Baekhyun just lays there, serene.
Oversoon, the pressure is gone in a clutter of long limbs. The silent crick of a fracturing spine beneath layers of fat and muscle. The boar manages a quarter of a scream, then some feeble noises, gagging as they peter out. Its neck is not completely twisted, keeping the heart beating a bit longer, so blood can pulse into Sehun’s mouth.
Baekhyun’s stare flops to the side. It is a huge one, well fed. Sehun can barely straddle it. His ecstasy is thunderous.
A cackle commences above, beads clashing on leaves. It peels away the dirt on them, and Baekhyun doesn’t blink, so the dirty water falls into his eyes. He can taste it at the back of his throat- chalky.
“Not bad at all,” Sehun mutters, a liquidly pitch to it. The boar is dead now. Sehun wasn’t even hungry.
“Swallow before you speak,” Baekhyun chides. The chalk builds up. A flash of lightning slays through the darkness.
Baekhyun drags himself over and licks over the punctures Sehun left.
“I hate this kind of fur,” he says, spitting the strands stuck over his lips. It is not bad at all, indeed, iron-rich and hot. Baekhyun has no desire to have any more.
“The one thing bunnies are better at,” says Sehun.
“You’d know.”
He is proud of himself, accomplished. He’s finally made a significant catch, and it was elegant just right too. It wasn’t that Sehun couldn’t kill, it was that he would make a mess- crushed organs flying everywhere, carcass splintered. If such a cadaver were to be discovered, it will make news. Brave people venturing around looking to hunt down a beast would be quite the nuisance. Hosting a graveyard with all their leftovers isn't an option either.
The boar has no visible damage on it. Even the perforation of Sehun’s fangs is discreet.
“I can’t die,” Baekhyun says. “You can’t die either. Not anymore.”
This was what made him do it, the prospect of Baekhyun being in danger, being hurt. It was this debris of humanity that made him slaughter properly.
Why did I have to worry about that then? Sehun doesn’t voice this query. His stance is sharp, and his eyes even more so.
“I…don’t know.” Baekhyun says, too true, and it must convey on his face, as shortly, Sehun nods and stops thinking about it.
“Do I still have to bury this?”
“No. But you can still say a prayer or two.”
Sehun scoffs. He’d been a diligent church boy, but against his will. “I don’t think God’s power is invested in me anymore.”
Before they leave, Baekhyun lingers, listens- no movement, and the scent is all washed away and riveting into the mud.
A metal cooling box sits on the kitchen counter. It is bigger than usual.
“A greedy friend he is, I see,” says Baekhyun, stepping into the yellow glow feathering out of the villa. Xiumin faces him, donning a pleasant smile. Suho is in just entering from the garage.
“I really hope he’s changed,” he says. A tall stack of papers is nestled in his arms.
Sehun is then looming over him, as filth from both of them pools on the floor. Baekhyun’s foundation has stained the front of his black shirt. He’s wearing a few grass blades in his breast pocket.
Xiumin studies them. “You two had fun, I presume.”
Suho isn’t happy though, flying by his side in a flash, worry etched on his face. Sehun is covered in sludge too, dark on his alabaster torso, and cherry on the inside of his lip. Xiumin advances as well, rapt on Sehun’s appearance.
“So much fun,” Baekhyun says, jumping a bit on his feet to shake off as much of the icky fluid as possible, before he is going for the box. He opens it, peeks at the labels, closes the lid.
Sehun is smiling so bright. Baekhyun is stifled by the triumph emanating from him.
Xiumin turns to him, mock-disdain on his face. “After battling with this for five years, can’t believe you’re the one taking the victory away from me.”
“It was a baby boar,” Baekhyun lies, for some reason. Suho is running fingers through Sehun’s wet hair. There is arousal between them. “It’s only a mini victory,” he continues. ”You’ll be the one making him take down a tiger.”
They both gaze at Sehun and Suho, their closeness. They know it is bad when they see another puddle forming on the floor from Suho’s hand, clear and turquoise tinted. He’s so enamoured he can’t even control his power.
“This will be a loud night,” Baekhyun says, grimacing at the images he picks up from them. Xiumin mirrors the expression.
Sehun’s hands are on Suho’s hips. In vain, they search to bruise already.
“Extremely loud?” Xiumin asks, fright in his tone.
“Extremely loud.”
They link gazes, agreement in them. They walk out.
He ends up pursuing refuge in Taeyeon’s room- yet again. His attire is unchanged, dirty, but dry at least.
Baekhyun leans on the sill, not touching anything else around. Her dream has already started, her body writhing lightly. The act is in a familiar place now, on a bridge thrown over a deserted river. She is riding a giant chicken, and cheeping along.
He doesn’t laugh, but he senses the fester of it in his chest. The absurdity never eases.
Often, even as the dream hollows, the boy doesn’t appear. He may be mentioned, just a figment of him; a hand holding hers, a dimpled chin- and Baekhyun still can’t see them. The boy is entirely concealed.
It keeps Baekhyun coming back from more, as a means to satiate the curiosity, the searing intrigue. Perhaps it is a form of vulnerability to have something take control of him like this, make him risk so much.
This time, the boy doesn’t appear. Baekhyun waits, testy, a little more than absolutely silent.
On her nightstand rests a tiny bouquet of cobalt flowers.
He manages to hop out the window the moment her eyes crack open, a sound of confusion spilling over her lips.
“He’s on our estate,” Suho says asudden, fixing a point over the horizon. His thumb slips from Sehun’s mouth, who was sucking on it, head thrown back and eyelashes in a flutter. The human blood that had been smeared on it is all gone- Sehun is initiated.
Baekhyun has had immediate gratification, nothing intimate, controlled like this.
“I’ll fetch him,” Baekhyun says, “I’m the one everyone loves at first sight.” He yearns to leave them have the moment, dropping the files that he has been looking through. Patient records, healed enough to race their way to a slow death.
He leaves them in disarray on the desk- he’ll come back to them later; then jumps out the balcony.
It will be a short walk, Baekhyun appraises only a few strides into the woods, grasping the tendrils of sentience. Nothing definite as of yet, but enough for him to have what to hound. The newcomer is near. Baekhyun can even hear the movement through the dry greenery.
Then the clarity fades to the left, perpendicular to Baekhyun’s direction. Its headway hastens.
“Bloody hell,” Baekhyun groans, launching into an urgent sprint.
A tree shrilly breaks off the skyline, taking down another few little ones with it. Baekhyun discerns the static of teeth attempting to sink into ossified flesh, collisions, and snarls of anger.
He finds them when there’s a paw on Kyungsoo, where his sternum has caved in under the pressure, grey innards peeking through the fracture. A string of saliva drips from the open snout of the wolf on Kyungsoo’s face, at the corner of his lips, before it slides further inside through the gap of them. Utmost disgust bursts in Kyungsoo’s mind, and it is then that Baekhyun reacts, throwing himself at the wolf, pushing it off, then standing above Kyungsoo.
He lifts both palms, coveting to tell that he means no harm. The tension on the spine of the animal doesn’t lessen, its curvature taut. Baekhyun takes a few steps back until Kyungsoo is isolated between him and a tree trunk.
The suspicion shifts, its wide orbs incising into the coral of Baekhyun, for Baekhyun’s hostility is dim, barely even there. The wolf approaches half a stride, searching, and Baekhyun is slapped with even more of that miasma, as suspiciously kindling as it is. The wolf comes even closer, its head aligned with Baekhyun’s shoulder.
It is dizziness that Baekhyun feels, faint on his legs, as he collapses a bit into Kyungsoo. The wolf’s ears twitch, stance softening. Its fur is rust coloured, cuts of white around its paws. It has a young glow, thin, as if the strands have just grown.
Before he catches himself, he feels himself smiling, overtaken by a quaint brand of merriment. He has the urge to reach out and touch, palm already moving for it.
The wolf growls, a cunning rumble as its teeth flash, just as Kyungsoo escapes and aims a kick. Baekhyun snaps an elbow into his chest, the sutured cavity reopening under the force. He has reacted too late; the wolf’s shoulder is dislocated. Kyungsoo struggles under Baekhyun’s hold.
Like this, he retreats until they have passed back into their territory, and he can see the wolf no more. He turns in time to see Suho, a frown twisting his forehead, and Sehun towering behind him.
“Hello, love,” Kyungsoo greets, shattering the silence, as he advances towards the pair. He pushes a part of his guts back in through his ribs, and it seals just as he stands in front of Suho. For an instant, his eyes go over him, up at Sehun, before reverting down. “Oh. It seems I stand no chance of seducing you now. What a pity.”
Baekhyun picks at the cloth of the couch, at the stitches making up its pattern. He keeps at it until it comes undone all along the edge. His body is prostrated over the thin mattress, over some books too, and they dig into his stomach, where his organs would be pulsing if they had any reason to.
He catches fragments of the conversation downstairs. It is mainly Xiumin’s voice responding to Kyungsoo’s kind of slurred words. He has a dirty, unpolished manner of talking, not having mingled with humans very much.
“Haven’t had a roll in the hay with a mutt in a while,” Kyungsoo says, serenity in his tone.
Baekhyun almost hears Sehun rolling his eyes. Within Suho, composure prevails. They will accept this friend in the family. They have nothing better to do than to clump together at this point.
Sehun is thinking things from time to time, for Baekhyun- basically gossiping. Baekhyun finds himself chuckling when Kyungsoo smiles and he has such full lips and his smile is heart shaped? Sehun panics a little. What if Suho still wants him? My lips aren’t that fucking great, goddammit.
Baekhyun rolls around until he lands to the floor, and picks at the threads of the carpet now, his legs dangling out of the wide-open French doors. It rains on his soles, warmer than his skin.
It is Xiumin who gives the briefing on the border, the armistice, the “You will not touch any human.”
“A war these days won’t be as fun anyway,” is Kyungsoo’s manner of agreeing to the terms. Behind the guise, there is frankness.
“You’re a doctor now?” Kyungsoo asks Suho then, and he is bending over in the chair. Baekhyun has so many sets of eyes to see the whole scene through, he doesn’t even have to be there. “Suits you,” he says when Suho doesn’t reply. “As the leader of this little clan. A proper mama. Please be mine too.”
He’s my daddy, you don’t get to call him mama, motherfucker, Sehun seethes, and even Kyungsoo is amused by how intense his glare is.
“Oh, you’re so fresh,” Kyungsoo notes, intent on Sehun. Sehun wants to lynch him.
“We’ll see,” Suho acknowledges tightly.
The meeting breaks soon, Kyungsoo and Xiumin sneaking in the library, Xiumin aiding to the conversation from time to time. Xiumin likes him, his idiosyncrasy, as coarse as it could get. Sehun is busy ravaging Suho, for there is doubt, jealousy that needs to be eliminated, and Suho is so amused and feels so loved. Baekhyun will reassure him about how fucking whipped Suho is, but another time, after this whole ordeal stops being funny.
Baekhyun is left in silence, just him and the memories. There is a zing through his body, from where he had contact with the wolf. It brings satisfaction; and also a deeper sting, greediness for more. Even through the absolute blindness, he had deciphered how the urge to slash had waned in the wolf, how he had softened. It wasn’t just Baekhyun. So there is a chance.
It loops, a broken replay, as he twists bit by bit, tufts of the carpet braided through his fingers. And he feels as if he is sleeping, weightless, dopey, dreaming a ridiculous dream starring a nameless hero.
“There’s my saviour,” Kyungsoo salutes as Baekhyun walks out on the driveway. A string of bird faeces is still dribbling down the windshield of his car. Baekhyun glimpses him blankly. At least he is wearing clothes, decent ones, Xiumin’s, so too decent.
“Do you want to be my slave already?” he asks. It is still too early to pretend smugness. The sun is barely raising, lazy. He leans on the hood of the car- he has a while to spare for the new family member.
“I want your name at least.” Turns out, for Kyungsoo is not too early to be smug.
“Baekhyun,” he offers. It still doesn’t sound the same way his mother used to enunciate it. It never will.
“I’m-“
“I know yours. You refer to yourself in third person. And you are quite loud about it too.”
“Kyungsoo,” he finishes anyway.
Baekhyun sees that his smile is indeed heart-shaped, even if there is no cordiality to it, just a set of bared teeth, with the fortunate framing of deceptive lips. It is the pleasantry smile, the ‘I must appease’ smile. He can almost imagine him as the fussy son of some fat aristocrat as he bosses people around that are not his to boss.
Still, there’s something different about him from last night, a bit less transparency. Baekhyun doesn’t mind, not at all, he finds. One less pandemonium to make sense of.
“I’m thrice your age,” Kyungsoo says. “Perhaps more.” He’s 400. And he is right.
“Try twenty times,” Baekhyun counters. He checks his reflection in the window of Suho’s car next to his, and notices a smudge of unblended foundation on his right cheek. He taps at it until it fades in with the rest. Calculations don’t really come together in Kyungsoo’s mind. “I died at seventeen. I’ll always be seventeen, and seventeen year olds go to school. Brings me a little peace, as if I belong there.”
“Stop prying,” Kyungsoo says instead, as a smirk too enigmatic adorns his lips.
“Can’t.”
The perplexing expression redoubles. He knows about Taeyeon. Without having had any contact at all, he knows about her. The trace is gone, fast.
Baekhyun becomes distressed as he searches through the bleak fragments of latency. He’s hiding so well. He isn’t 400 for nothing.
“I’ll help you.”
Taeyeon’s hair is slick, greasy at the roots, bangs garnered on either side of her forehead. She hasn’t washed it last night, as she usually does. She hasn’t been home.
“You haven’t studied,” Baekhyun spoke, sliding over with his pen in hand to correct something on her homework. It is good enough for starter. A tiny smile turns the corners of her mouth, caught, and Baekhyun is hit with the briefest splash of recollection, a blur among the clear.
“Been over at a friend’s overnight. It was his birthday.”
“You’ve got a friend?” Baekhyun asks, with fake surprise, searching. Her fist lands on his shoulder, and Baekhyun forgets to relax, so the flesh doesn’t dent. Belatedly, he flounders to the side, as if he is not stone.
“He’s been my friend for a while now. Though,” Taeyeon’s nose wrinkles, but fondly so. “He’s a snotty brat who finally turned eighteen.”
Baekhyun laughs, the nice crinkly sound as his mouth opens wide. Eighteen. Probably not a lie. This boy might as well have only roamed this earth for eighteen years. He isn’t offered get any more glimpses of him. “A snotty brat,” Baekhyun repeats slowly.
“I grew up with him. I’ve got to stand him now.”
“You have a bad taste,” he winces. “I’m offended. We should break up.”
“You’re a high quality friend,” she counters, shaking her head, the pencil in her hand starting to tremble. It is a bit of anxiousness, an indulgent simpler carving all the way to her eyes, and Baekhyun realizes it at the same time as she does, at this very moment, that she has sunken in the pit of infatuation with him. She didn’t mean to, she didn’t approach him out of romantic interest. She’s near just to gratify fascination, to keep alienation at bay.
Baekhyun takes a bite of his sandwich, chewing deliberately. “Highest quality,” he corrects, after swallowing. It is abominable, but the upward tilt of his mouth has not dissipated.
Her stare persists on his, and maybe she sees the dissolution of the lenses, and the darkness spreading in rivulets until his waterline, to the monster leering in the depths.
She doesn’t.
Taeyeon bends back over her book. “Professor Lee really doesn’t like me,” she mutters, noting down the details of another problem.
When the bell rings, and they have gathered all their supplies, Baekhyun chances a touch to her, just the inside of her wrist, just two fingers of his ghosting over the suddenly jumpy pulse there. It is weird, feeling the phantom feeling of his cheek filling, with coldness instead, but it burns all the same.
It was too short for her to remark the temperature difference.
Baekhyun waits at the gate of the local hospital. The building is small and dingy, plaster chipped off by the edges of barred windows. Baekhyun idles near a couple, each cradling a cup of vending machine coffee. It is cheap enough to conquer the smell of drilled, leaking veins.
He has so little to listen to, and it is somewhat comforting, how blank people’s minds can be once swamped in pain.
The lab coat is trailing around Suho’s shoulders as he approaches. His nametag is sloppily hanging by the opened needle going through his pocket. Baekhyun fixes it for him once he is near enough.
“We’re going for a little chat over the frontier,” Suho speaks. Baekhyun reaches for the car keys in his coat before his intention to do so is even formulated.
“Does Kyungsoo intend to seek revenge?” he inquires. They would’ve heard movement by now of he teased the border, an entire pack of angry mutts all over their property. It’s a week later, and still quiet.
“He doesn’t?” Suho’s eyebrow twitches. Distress there, yet again, from that thing that he keeps concealing from Baekhyun.
He shrugs. “He’s too careful with me. Masks himself with mathematics quite often.”
“Ah, he was a little genius when mortal.”
“In Latin,” Baekhyun adds, already walking toward Suho’s car. It is a serious car, unlike his, meant for a kid with a just-gotten licence. Driving isn’t entirely unpleasant.
Along the road, it is a frail little blueberry bush that marks the border. Late in spring, the token of their enmity sprouts white, bell shaped blossoms. The scenery changes rapidly, tall houses built like shacks, and people busying themselves outside, in open yards of similar construct.
The place has a certain charm, one to warrant an adventurous childhood. Baekhyun keeps the speed steady, legal. People keep crossing the street haphazardly.
A row of rusty vehicles lines the house they are looking for. It is fenced, spread out in tiny wings, indeed resembling a den to an eye that knows what to look for.
Chanyeol’s head peeks over the tall fence, and he steps onto the stone road just as Suho and Baekhyun do. The stench is dense. Baekhyun stops from coughing his lungs out out of courtesy, whilst Suho still braves a sneeze, relaxing immediately after, pleasance accenting his face.
Chanyeol has a sight bend at his knees, chest pushed forward. It is not exactly a fighting stance, but nothing too welcoming either. There are some fine wrinkles on his face, and they smooth out ever so slightly as Suho smiles at him, all warm and docile.
It’s the third time they meet like this. Once- the collision, twice- the armistice.
“Mingling so much these days,” Chanyeol begins, eyes entirely on Baekhyun. He’s meant to say this for a while. “Too much.” He’s thinking of Taeyeon. He’s had her on his motorcycle, watched her take walks on the beach with the blurry-faced boy. The snarl darkening his lips is caused by protectiveness.
“I’m not breaking any of the stipulations, nor do I mean any harm,” Baekhyun replies. She is loved in this family, it seems.
“Doesn’t she tempt you?” Chanyeol spits out, not even a question, riled by Baekhyun’s tone. Too business-like, distanced, to be used on nutriments. Yixing comes to stand next to him, sparsely attired, and tenses at the tension Chanyeol is exuding. The reek of the boy around them is faint. Baekhyun doesn’t dwell on it.
“She doesn’t,” Baekhyun states.
Chanyeol scoffs, a raunchy scorn. The fury is a little over the top, pure, a splattered wave of it. Yixing mirrors the sentiment, albeit weaker.
Suho is looking at him, an inquest, a nod. “No harm,” he repeats.
Chanyeol trusts Suho, and he himself dislikes that he ended up trusting such a creature. But he does, nonetheless. His right fist unclenches.
“What about the new sucker?”
It’s Suho’s time to smirk, somewhat pleased, a short sag to his shoulders before they straighten again. “Your boy ensured that he won’t step out of bounds.”
Pride in Chanyeol, a smirk too. “Did he?”
“You’ve seen the collateral damage,” Suho reminds. He did see the wreck of the scene. The pine tree has just started to rot. It doesn’t catch worms.
“No hard feelings then,” Chanyeol says. “Control the new sucker though; Jongin said he is a bold fellow.”
Jongin.
“He’s daring, surely, but also old enough to be able to abide by a few little rules,” Suho is still smiling, fallen back into affability. “He’s part of our family now,” he continues, timbre hardening. Don’t mess with him, it conveys, not even a warning, but a promise.
With a hint of reluctance, Chanyeol accedes. Yixing has already turned back to the house.
Chanyeol’s eyes pass over Baekhyun’s one last time, rigid. He has questions. Why would he be in her proximity. Why would he allow her to get close. Why did he save her.
“Same reason anyone would,” Baekhyun responds, getting back in the car. It doesn’t wipe out Chanyeol’s suspicion, but it does Baekhyun’s.
The sky is clear enough for the galaxies above to sprinkle their twinkles over them. Baekhyun spares them a glance, gone worlds, before he comes back to the tumbler of blood in his hand. It is fuller than Sehun's, placed in the middle of his thigh. The rest of Sehun’s limbs dangle off different branches. There is something different about him, an assured slant to his body, his bearing. Maturescence that also brought along a heightened level of agitation. If Suho didn’t keep him away from human blood for so long, perchance he would be someone else entirely.
Baekhyun goes a bit higher, draping himself over the highest branches, the last possible one that can support his weight. It’s a mere thirty metres above the soil, and Baekhyun looks down, waiting to be afraid, to tremble a little, to feel the urge to fall. It doesn’t come. His eyebrow rises disinterestedly.
“Do you regret this yet?” Baekhyun inquires. With his nail, he carves a little circle in the bark for his glass to sit.
It is not too soon to ask. Sehun is not a kid anymore, not a fragile thing. Baekhyun can’t see him anymore as the proof of Suho’s impatience, mistake, thirst, want. He’s not Suho’s cantante anymore. Five years is enough for stagnation to have settled in.
“Now I’m not alone,” Sehun says. Baekhyun hears words being picked, dismissed, late nights entertained only by the glow of a computer, boring books about war and traumas, disapproving parents who insisted on overlong bouts of fasting. He lusted over love. “Being alone felt way worse than the transformation.”
Baekhyun’s always been a alone before, as he is now. He had no time to feel lonely, or to even desire the opposite.
“You’ve visited inferno and still deem loneliness worse,” he says, an echo, for maybe he could relate.
Sehun climbs higher too, a leg hooked with Baekhyun’s as he settles on the opposite branch. There are four millilitres of blood residing on the bottom of his tumbler. His eyes change colour, sangria in the centre around the pupil, and a bright gold around the edges. He hasn’t had a big enough amount of blood to completely change the shade.
Baekhyun finally touches his own glass, downs it, then lets it fall through his fingers. It tumbles through full twigs until there is the thud of it piercing the ground.
“Xiumin won’t be pleased that you did that,” Sehun says. He has a digit in his tumbler, scooping the coagulated blood over the rim and into his mouth. It is weird how the pinkness of his lips never dimmed out. It remained there, even after he died.
“You stole these from his beloved trinket cabinet, didn’t you,” Baekhyun kind of accuses.
“He’s such an old lady,” Sehun says, and he drops his glass too. It stacks up on Baekhyun’s, breaking it. The shards keep together.
“Come dry my hair,” Baekhyun says, jumping off. It feels like flying, through the smell of young pine and woodlands, searching for an anchor.
“I’ll give you a perm,” Sehun whispers from still up in the tree, zings of mischief in the promise.
“You daren’t.”
Sehun’s laughter is so goofy. Baekhyun hates himself for mirroring it.
Baekhyun ditches history. He can’t stand the way the past is portrayed- a pretty play on a shaky podium hoping for ovation. It wasn’t like that.
In lieu, he sits in a corner in the cafeteria, and when the break starts, Taeyeon sifts for him in the busy room. Baekhyun waves.
Her walk is diffident, a shimmy to her shortened strides. Baekhyun smiles at her all the same, colour draining into her cheeks at the sight. The backpack she puts on the table is plumper than usual. Her greeting is curt.
The core of her apple is thin, browned by the crests, when she tosses it in the bin, and with the same hesitance opens her bag. A heap of fabric spills out, teal, loosely knitted with thick, nappy thread.
She stretches it out with a confident grip, and bends over the table to wrap the scarf around his head and neck, until only his eyes remain uncovered. It wears the same scent her clothes have, something suave with a terse sting.
“Nobody likes freezing,” she says kindly, hiding an end under a loop so it doesn’t unravel. Taeyeon remembers their touch.
Baekhyun is gazing at her, starched, unblinking.
It is romance, the inception of it, genuine, blooming inside of her as she takes in his visage. She thinks he’s cute. She wants to cuddle him.
Baekhyun is appalled, an old growl bubbling within and confined within the scarf. The beast is offended.
“I was enjoying it,” he says, still silent.
At the same time, he can’t help cherishing this gift, this intention.
“Lies.”
this story is continued
part ii