SBB 2012 Entry #07: Vessel (1/2)
Title: Vessel
Pairing: Taemin/Onew, Key/Onew
Rating: NC-17
Final Word Count: 15,075
A vague echoing laughter rang through the hallways of the abandoned palace. Abandoned by its original owners that was, as girls and boys ran throughout the maze of lavish rooms and spiraling staircases. Decayed and paled as it might have been from its former glory, neither its elegance nor extravagance was lost.
The underworld had a way of bringing back to life what the living had forgotten.
-
Eunsook felt heavy, like her flesh had bloated. It wasn’t like she had been feeling great ever since - well, ever since something or other - but this feeling of being trapped down by her own weight stirred new feelings of disgust and unease towards being conscious. She tried to roll to her side but found that there was some kind of weight on her chest. Her brain panicked at the realization of its paralyzed state. Her eyes widened towards the figure napping on her chest.
A tangle of thin limbs unfurled themselves as a small yawn escaped and she realized it was a boy. His face looked childlike but his skin was grayed and sunken around his eye sockets and cheekbones. His eyes blinked up at her surprisingly bright, considering the tired state of his body, as he finished rearranging himself on top her.
“Hi pretty.”
He smiled at her, his small bony hands stroked through her hair. Eunsook thought about opening her mouth, or turning away from his touch, but found that while she could still feel everything happening to her body, it was otherwise disconnected from her brain.
He leaned down over her to bring his lips to her hair line and used his thumb to pet her hair.
“Fuckkk…” he breathed in deeply, “you even smell still alive.”
Something seized in pain inside Eunsook as she tried to scream.
“Taemin! Get the fuck off of her!”
The dark haired boy pouted as he pulled back. He stayed straddled over Eunsook for a while longer, as if to ask if the boy in the doorway if he’d really meant it, but eventually he pulled off with a sigh.
“I just wanted to lick her teeth.”
“So you can steal them and make a necklace again? I told you last time, you brat, stop touching my fucking things.”
“Can’t I take one? Just to suck on?”
The other boy glared back, unaffected by the whining.
“At least open her mouth so I can see them.”
The blonde from the doorway stepped forward with an air of exasperation as he scolded the other.
“Taemin, if I have to tell you not to touch my things one more time, I’ll tell your new boy toy how much you like to ride his older brother’s cock.”
Taemin smirked. His lips pulled all the way up the sides of his face.
“But, darling Key, he has already walked in on us.”
Key laughed, “Is that so?”
Taemin nodded, sickeningly proud.
“And you’ll never guess which set of Chang brothers have a thing for incest.”
Key’s eyes rolled back as he scoffed at his younger companion.
“Fuck off before I make you.”
The dark haired boy’s face fell again. “But I want to watchhh.”
“I’ll bring you some of Joon’s hair if you don’t.”
Taemin curled his lips in, conflicted over which was more worth it.
“Fine. If he finds out it was for me though, I’m trashing your next party.”
“When do you not?” Key remarked. The dark haired boy ducked out of the room.
He turned to the girl on the bed.
“I’m sorry, you probably feel like shit right now, but I think someone ought to tell you, you’re dead.”
-
Despite Eunsook ’s protests in her head that there was simply no way this could be true - she was healthy! she was young! - Key carefully explained to Eunsook how she was in fact very, very dead. She had been brought that night to where the underworld and the living separate after taking too many sleeping pills and Key, well Key had just been lucky enough to find her body unattended while it waited on the other side of the river.
Key wasn’t really into the habit of bodysnatching, he was a just bit of a collector. It was what he was known for. When humans deserted things, ram shackled and debauched, he would take the ones worth saving back with him to the underworld. Not many people liked going back up after they discovered what was down below, and it was a time consuming, often frustrating process carrying things back over to the other side. Not to mention on the more black market side of things. Many didn’t think it was worth it, but Key had become exceptionally good at it. The best, in fact.
What he actually did was hard to pinpoint. Key just was.
And was he ever.
It was hard to look away from him, to not want to be around him, to not want to please him.
It helped that he knew some good people as well. People who knew things before they were in print. People who knew how to do things. Because just collecting raw gems didn’t make you rich, and it certainly didn’t make you loveable.
One of those people was Jonghyun, a restorer and also his best friend.
Jonghyun fixed up the things Key brought him, and together they ran a successful business deep down in the belly of the underworld. Things were a little grey, in terms of legality, morality, stuff of that nature. But while Key was lavish and over the top, he knew how to make sure that if he showed off something nice, anyone important received a gift twice as fancy. And Jonghyun, he made sure no one knew about things really worth bragging about.
-
“So I’m sure you’re distressed about not being able to move or speak and all. I’m dying to find out what your voice sounds like actually.” He tilted his chin playfully. “Well, I guess not dying.”
“It’s because your body hasn’t thawed. Your body goes cold when you die and stays frozen until you make it across the river. While you never really, reheat, shall we say, to what you used to be, you can’t move or speak until you’ve properly thawed. Lucky for you, I know just how to do it. But you’ve got to understand you’re going to be very weak at first and I don’t want you jumping up and trying to run away. I know Taemin was a bit of a bother but, trust me.”
He pulled part of the covers back and looked down at her solemnly.
“I’m the only one who can help you. Understand?”
He waited for a bit, as if he expected her to respond, before finally nodding, placing his hand just inside the top of her blouse.
She felt a peculiar tingle spread over the surface of her skin, making her itch. She blinked.
“Good,” he smiled, “now try breathing.”
She let her mouth fall open slightly before sucking in a breath and breaking the invisible film over her throat. She wheezed slightly, finding the whole process much more difficult than she remembered.
“Good girl,” Key cooed, blowing warm breath all over her face. “Soon you’ll be good as new.”
-
Eunsook wasn’t sure when her mind decided it was okay to trust Key, but with no one there to bother her for an explanation she didn’t really care. It made things easier didn’t it? She had someone that was now ultimately responsible for her, someone that wasn’t her. And while ideally she would have gotten to pick who that was, it seemed like she was lucky enough. If she’d had to choose, she never would have. She didn’t like having to dress herself, or deciding what to order. The demand any heavy choice being made frightened her, and made her feel trapped. She much preferred to be the child that never had to grow up, but refused to follow the house rules. Just because she wanted rules in her life, didn’t mean she wanted to follow.
She was supposedly dead, living in a palace in the underworld with a man who had basically stolen her body in what could at best be described as a shady procedure. It wasn’t really like it was a decision of trust so much as an accepting of her circumstances. She really wasn’t strong enough to run away, and she recognized that. She had no clue what was even beyond her door. She needed to get back her strength so she could walk around, figure out why Key had brought her there, and the best way to get out.
If she wanted to go back.
They had talked a little since Key had reanimated her body. Key did most of the talking, complaining about everyday life as if Eunsook understood what it meant when he said that Taemin needed to be more careful about where he was stealing body parts from, or that Minho needed to stop being a shithead and start running the city properly.
Sometime on the second night - in between feeding her spoonfuls of soup and telling her a story about how Taemin had spent months waiting for a particularly beautiful girl to die so he could skin her before she could make it over to the other side, only to find that she had died in a fire, rendering her skin useless - he had asked Eunsook why she killed herself.
“I didn’t kill myself.”
Key raised an eyebrow. “Okay sweetheart, then tell me how you got here.”
She shifted.
“I took some sleeping pills and I didn’t wake up.”
Key nodded.
“You know you were on file as suicidal.”
She shook her head. “What file?”
Key tapped his chin thoughtfully.
“You really didn’t kill yourself on purpose?”
“No.”
He nodded again.
“This is better than I thought.”
He kissed her temple as he set the bowl of soup down on nightstand next to her.
“Sleep well Eunsook . I’ll see you tomorrow.”
-
The fourth day Eunsook needed a bath. She had been getting herself to and from the bed to the bathroom attached to her room just fine, but she had not had a bath or shower in far too long and even though all she did was sleep and listen to Key tell her about the going-ons of the underworld, she was starting to feel like her muscles needed to be stretched and her hair washed and god did she need a fresh set of clothes.
She woke up before Key returned that day, or night, was it night? Did they have night and day here? Her room, while large, did not have any windows, and she certainly hadn’t ventured outside the big wooden door yet. But maybe after she took a bath she would explore. While Key had told her not to try and run away, he said nothing about walking around, right?
As she turned on the giant faucets to begin filling the tub, she thought about what she had found out so far. It seemed that in the underworld, while you were dead and could not go back up to the living world (well strictly speaking you couldn’t, but you certainly weren’t supposed to go back and absolutely not supposed to stay) people here weren’t really all that… dead.
The underworld was teeming with life, the rules here were just a bit different. It was still a world. And people apparently talked about other worlds, how they had heard from a friend that so and so used to be in another realm where everyone was reincarnated as an animal. They told horror stories about the people waiting in purgatory, a spot where no one was able to sleep or drink and were surrounded by nothing but clouds, forced to wait indefinitely until their fates changed.
People didn’t really know about other realms though, or what happened in them.
Key had told her you couldn’t create in the underworld. She had asked him how he was able to throw such parties though, or do anything really, if that wasn’t allowed.
“Well it’s not like prepared feasts drop out the fucking sky, but you start creating big things, too many things, and people start disappearing until the rest learn their lesson.”
The way problems got dealt with, well they seemed to really just let people police themselves for the most part. If no one cared, it wasn’t against the law. But when too much unrest occurred that the elusive people in charge disagreed with, those troublemakers simply disappeared.
Eunsook turned off the water as it got close to rim of the tub, and tested it with an arched toe.
Even more curiously was that no one seemed to age here, you were apparently stuck with the body you came in... how long had Key said he had been a part of the living dead?
-
“She’s the one.”
Jonghyun sighed, pushing his glasses up his nose with the back of his hand.
“You know Taemin is going to tell everyone about your…side project, if you don’t come through on that hair for him.”
“What a little cuntrag. You know he has plenty of shit for his stupid little voodoo shop, right? Fuck knows how big his personal collection is. I know I owe him for that reanimation powder, but what a nasty habit to indulge.”
Key stuck his tongue out in disgust as he rolled his eyes. So typical.
Jonghyun laughed sadly. “Key, I’m serious. No one can find out about this or they’ll move you, maybe worse.”
“You know they can’t move me to another realm.”
“Yeah, that was the maybe worse part. Look, I thought you outgrew this fantasy.”
Key’s eyebrows knit together.
“Ouch.”
He crossed his arms in front of his chest and stared down at Jonghyun.
“I didn’t mean it like that.”
“Jonghyun, we’ve been friends for how many years now? I know we said we never wanted to try it again, but I’m willing to risk it for this.”
“Yeah, but do you have to end things now?”
“I’m not ending anything, crybaby. I’m starting something.”
-
“Look who’s up,” Key beamed as he dropped his coat.
Eunsook smiled a little, surprised at how happy she was to see Key again.
“I brought you a present.” He set a package next to her on the bed. “Clean clothes,” he grinned, reaching to tuck a piece of her hair behind her ear, “your hair’s wet.”
“I took a bath,” she replied.
“Good for you! Feeling better then?”
Eunsook nodded. She had to tell him what she had been wondering since she first woke up in this room four days ago.
“Hey Key?”
Now or never.
“Yeah?”
“Why am I here? Like, why did you bring me here?”
Key seemed a little surprised by the question, but not upset. She chewed at the corner of her mouth as she waited to see what he would answer.
“Because I’m the only person that knows how to get you back.”
“To the living world you mean?”
He bobbed his head up in down in agreement, scratching underneath his nose with his thumbnail.
“Why?”
Key paused as if unsure whether he should tell her or not, tapping his foot nervously against the stone flooring before nodding as if to tell himself yes, yes he should.
“Because I’ve always wanted a son.”
-
“No, no, nonononono.”
“I’m telling you that you can go back!”
“But I never killed myself! I shouldn’t even be dead!”
“Yes, that’s great I know that, but you are dead.”
“But I fucking shouldn’t be!”
“Eunsook, do you know how rare a case like this is? I know Taemin takes bits and pieces of people here and there, but stealing an entire body? Do you have any idea how difficult that is?”
“I don’t care how hard it was! It’s my fucking body!”
“I know, okay? If you want to stay here that’s your choice. I’m just making you an offer where you get something you want, and I get something I want.”
“Why can’t you just have a baby with someone here?”
“What did I tell you about creating? You think they’d let me make a fucking baby down here? Are you shitting me? Look, your body isn’t registered. You’re off the map.”
“I…” her shoulders shook as her voice cracked. Despite the confusion and panic of her whole situation she had managed to find it all a little exciting really. Harmless fun, like a nice vacation complete with quirky characters. She had been certain it would end, even if she had been unsure when, so long as she was patient. But now… this was the cost to return home?
Key wrapped his arms around her, letting her cry onto his shoulder. She felt upset for letting herself be comforted like this, overwhelmed and unsure how she felt about him, about the situation. But thinking about it wasn’t really on her list of things to do.
-
Key left Eunsook to give her some space. She stayed in her bed for a while, unsure of how to collect her thoughts as they danced around in her head in a panic. Eventually she rolled to her side and saw that Key had left the door cracked open. It was time for that walk.
“Eunsook , I can get you back, just like you want. All you have to do is carry my child.”
Was it selfish to be unwilling to carry a life in return for being given hers back?
She walked barefooted though the passageways, peeking in room after empty room. They were all decorated exquisitely, but no one besides her seemed to be inside the palace, making each lamp creepy and every oversized armchair seem like a monster. Faded gold detailing gave everything a haunted vibe like they were pieces in a museum, belonging to people now long gone, preserved only for show.
Carry my child. Carry my child.
It sounded so strange in her ears. Just the words hurt, uncomfortable in her stomach already. She had never wanted to be a parent before, she certainly didn’t want to now. Could she let something grow inside her if it was a task?
“Boo.”
A lanky boy jumped down from behind statue in front of her path, grinning widely as if he knew the world’s best joke.
“Taemin.”
“You shouldn’t walk around by yourself, princess.”
Eunsook stared back at the boy.
“Aren’t there people with nicer teeth you could be pulling?”
“Aw, you remember me then!” He twirled around her gracefully. “But, my pretty princess, I want yours.”
“I don’t think Key would approve of you taking teeth from his child’s mother.”
Taemin scowled slightly before his eyebrows rose in surprise and he straightened to full height.
“So you’ve done it then? Or no, no you haven’t. I can tell, I’d be able to smell it on you if you had. But he’s told you. Why, is our sweet little Eunsook perhaps, a runaway?”
“I was exploring.”
Taemin nodded somberly as he held his hand behind his back, and began to circle Eunsook .
“Mmm, mmm, yes of course. That room must have been dreadfully boring. Well!” he clapped his hands together loudly, startling her. “I guess that means you should come with me then! I can show you lots of things I promise are very, very un-boring.”
“I’m not going anywhere with you,” she huffed.
“Oh, but you should,” he pouted, fairly cutely for a psychotic collector of human parts. “I promise I won’t hurt you. In fact, I’ll return you back to Key completely untouched. If, of course, that’s what you want.”
Eunsook swallowed uncertainly. She was still valuable to Key. So much so, she was sure Taemin wouldn’t be willing to invoke his wrath… but still.
“Okay.”
“Okay?” he beamed brightly.
“Yeah.” She smiled a little. An exciting adventure. The least she could do was make the most of it.
“Well come on then! You’re gonna like this.”
-
When Taemin said he was taking her to his shop, she assumed that they would only be going to his shop.
Taemin however, was not interested in that idea in the least.
“Are you fucking kidding me? I’m not sitting around where I work all day. You’re in the underworld, don’t you want to party?”
“I highly doubt you sit around all day. Anywhere.”
She moved some clutter to the side as she tried to keep up behind Taemin. It smelled like ground spices and fresh meat with a distinct dampness to the floor and walls, like if there had been a garden above Mrs. Lovett’s pie shop.
Eunsook was not actually one for parties. Even though she liked the idea of them she just hadn’t really been to many, and none of the ones she had gone to had really been that much of a party to her. And now, with how important it was that she not be on anyone’s radar, she was unsure why Taemin thought the nightlife would be a great idea.
“What do you mean ‘it’s fine there’ll be hundreds of people’? That sounds exactly like why I shouldn’t go!”
“Darling, darling, darling princess. Look, I’m going to fix you up real nice so no one will even realize how blotchy your skin is, and we are going to go to a masquerade ball. No one is going ask who you are. And besides, I’m dressing you as someone else. There’s nothing more fun than letting people assume and seeing where it gets you.”
Eunsook sighed heavily as she poked a pretty silver box with a pearl clasp.
“Okay, I guess.”
It was kind of right up her alley, but a strange part of her felt compelled not to let Taemin know that.
“Okay, I guess? God, how about a little enthusiasm? Shit, don’t touch that! My frogs are in there.”
In the end, through a variety of creams and potions and mumbled incantations - as well as a suspicious sniffing of a powder that seemed more for Taemin’s personal benefit than a part of the process - Taemin completely changed Eunsook’s look. Her hair became long and blonde, wavy and flowing down her back as opposed to her normal brown hair parted down the middle. Her eyes had been changed from dark hazel to green - Taemin somehow blowing out the flecks of natural green in her eyes to completely overtake the iris, making them look alien-like in intensity - and were rimmed completely in black kohl. He had given her a stunning black dress that stretched over her, and a dark green and black feathered mask was tied around her face with a velvet ribbon. Taemin hummed at his own work.
“Let me pluck your eyebrows,” he begged.
“No.”
“But I’m sooooo good at it. Like ungodly good. I’m obsessed with eyebrows. Look at mine! They’re perfect. Purrrfect.”
“You only want to pluck mine so you can keep the hairs.”
He smiled. “It’s not like I would do anything weird with them.” When she blinked back at him in response, he shrugged before grinning boyishly.
“Time to see how alive the dead can be.”
-
The party was just like Eunsook had imagined a party should be. It was held at a gothic style cathedral, the doors flung wide open as people spilled out onto the cathedral’s stone steps and into the streets. Thousands of candles decorated the place, and it was a wonder nothing caught on fire. There was food and drink everywhere you turned, someone offering you strange items every which way. People were singing and playing music up on tables, around the pillars, laughing and dancing with ribbons as they chased each other about.
Eunsook was particularly fascinated by one game a group of people were playing, where one person would sit atop the other’s shoulder and wrestle a person sitting on top another’s. People were crashing to the ground left and right and yet they only laughed harder and kept drinking as another group tried again, the failed participants rolling around on the ground happy as could be.
“Come here,” Taemin whispered excitedly as he pulled her into the cathedral by her wrist. The inside of the building was amazing, the walls and ceilings covered in intricate designs, the stained glass incandescent as religious figures loomed over the proceedings. Here, a much more formal style of dance was taking place, people twirling to the music in a hypnotizing way.
“Excellent.”
Taemin smiled at her as she realized they had joined the circle of dancers moving gracefully around the edge of the room. She had never been a great dancer, but Taemin seemed to more than make up for that, leading her effortlessly through the movement.
“Taemin, thank you for taking me here tonight.”
He grinned happily.
“You just make such a lovely princess.”
She felt her heart pound, unsure why she felt so flustered by the statement. It must have been the party, the affect of the night, of being out like this.
“Taemin, tell me why Key wants me…”
“To have his kid? I think it’s a terrible idea to be honest. He doesn’t want you to ‘go to waste’, but neither do I really. And trust me, you are worth more than just your lovely gleaming teeth.”
“Does he expect me to raise the child on my own as well?”
“You can’t have children in the underworld,” he scoffed, “kids would fuck up everyone’s fun.”
He dipped her backwards playfully, licking a stripe up the side of her neck, making her head swim as the weight of her hair suddenly felt immensely heavier. She thought if he let go like this, her head would keep tilting back forever.
Focus.
“I don’t understand the rules of this realm. Why are only certain people here and not others? What other parts of the underworld are there?”
Taemin gave her a look, as if uncertain why she was asking the question.
“Don’t you know? Eunsook , everyone here committed suicide.”
“What do you mean, everyone?”
“I mean everyone. That’s why there are no kids. There’s the rare younger teen or two, but you can age up with a little black magic.”
“I don’t get it, what’s real and what’s not with this black magic down here?”
“It’s pretty much the same as up there, you can’t always tell what’s real or not. But doesn’t that apply to more than just magic?”
“So Key?”
“Yep. And his biggest regret for some reason is never starting a family. He was the last person in his line and he feels some kind of responsibility to carry it on or something. Kibum’s always wanted an heir.”
“Kibum?”
Taemin laughed again.
“I still call him that sometimes. We’ve known each other a lot longer than we ever would have been able to comprehend before. Look princess, I know you want to go back to your old life, and you didn’t kill yourself and all, but I don’t think this is all that bad. Just think of it as moving.”
“What if Key gets caught keeping me here like this? Or trying to take me back? If I do stay, I don’t want to go on the books just yet.”
“Of course you don’t. That would make your little adventure here fairly final wouldn’t it? If Key gets caught, well, that would be a problem. And problems have a funny way of disappearing.”
“What do you mean disappearing? Moved to another realm?”
“That’s what some people think, but you can’t really know for sure.”
Eunsook frowned. “You know though, don’t you. You know what would happen to him.”
Taemin swallowed thoughtfully. “You know what it’s like to sleep, right? To sleep and not dream?” They continued to dance to the music in silence as Eunsook thought.
“How old were you?”
Taemin hummed. “Mmm, that’s a little personal, don’t you think?” He reached down and palmed her ass with a smirk. “But I guess I don’t mind. Fourteen. I’m not telling you why, so don’t bother.”
She took a breath. Okay. This wasn’t overwhelming for her, not at all.
“Hey, I’m going to go smoke. You want to come?”
“Like cigarettes?”
He stared back at her like she had just said something ridiculous.
“No, like pot. Can you not tell I’m a stoner?”
“I-”
“Whatever, too late princess. Someone wants to dance with you.” He grinned as he spun her around to face an incredibly handsome man with an eye patch over the left side of his face coming towards them.
“Had a friend kill him with a gun. Crossed through his brain and came out the lower right by his ear. He keeps his hair long to cover it. Funny how shit like that counts even though he didn’t technically do it,” Taemin whispered, nipping Eunsook ’s right earlobe with his teeth as the man approached.
“May I cut in?”
“I was just stepping out.”
Taemin bowed and waved goodbye as he disappeared into the crowd.
The man smiled at her.
“Shall we?”
-
“I can’t believe - how fast you can run high.” Eunsook stood wheezing next to Taemin in an alleyway outside the cathedral after an unfortunate encounter with the girlfriend of the man she had been dancing with.
“Fuck man, did you see her face?” Taemin giggled to himself, as if it was a clever inside joke.
“Taemin! How could you do that to me!”
“Do what?”
“Leave me with that guy when you knew he had a girlfriend!”
“I thought everything would be peachy keen! I can’t believe he kissed you though. Oh man was that funny.” Taemin turned to lean his entire body against the wall, sighing at the relaxing pressure across his front, speaking more to himself than her now.
“You know he’s like, ahahaha, Key’s- oh fuck this is so twisted. Hahaha, sheeet son.”
“You purposefully dressed me up as the love interest of the prince of the underworld, without telling me, and expected everything to go just peachy?” She was yelling in disbelief at this point, she punched him on the shoulder. But she couldn’t help enjoying the ridiculous adrenaline high from escaping just in time, the frantic relief.
“He’s like vaaaaguely the leader of one stinking city in the underworld, he isn’t even really in control of that much anyway because he sucks ass. So calm your tits.”
“There you are.”
A fuming Key stood in tall leather boots at the edge of the alleyway.
“Ho shit,” Taemin whispered loudly, “your baby daddy done foouunddd you.”
-
“I can’t believe he took you out like that.”
Key walked at an aggressively fast pace, heels clicking on the cold stone as Eunsook trotted along behind him.
“I agreed to it, I’m really sorry. I just wanted to get out for a bit and think.”
“Really? Did you do lots of productive thinking?”
He stopped and spun around. “That was mean of me, I’m- Taemin, he puts me on edge sometimes. Of course you wanted to get out, I know you weren’t trying to run away and even if you were, that’s fine.”
Key looked up at the sky and blew cold air out his mouth and nostrils, swinging his hands back and forth.
“Look, you’re free to go, honestly. I just - the fact you aren’t on the books yet makes you valuable to more than just me. And that makes it dangerous for you.”
“Key?”
“Yeah,” he sighed, “what is it?”
“Can I stay at your place a little longer?”
He made a huffing noise as his breath filled the air again, looking like smoke.
“Of course, stupid.”
She smiled as he took her hand.
-
Eunsook woke up with a cold sweat forming on her back. She could feel it. Right under the surface of her skin like bugs burrowing beneath, crawling. She wiped ineffectively at it. It wasn’t there to be wiped away.
“Hmpft.”
She froze and then twisted to the side. There was Taemin at the foot of the bed, staring at her with his eyes glinting onyx. She wasn’t even sure how she could make out his eyes from his skin or hair. It all looked black.
“Taemin?”
His disapproving laugh gave him away. He didn’t look sorry about it either.
“What are you doing?”
“I don’t understand why you care so much,” he retorted. His willowy frame seemed to shift, and yet she was sure he stayed in the same place, unmoving. Maybe his bones were swaying? Maybe her eyes were.
“I never ask you what you’re doing. I let everyone do as they like, and all I expect is the same, simple courtesy.”
“What am I stopping you from doing, Taemin?” She rubbed at her eyes.
Was he moving? She wasn’t sure why it was bothering her so much. The tone of Taemin’s voice, the bubbling hatred behind his words were much more concerning than that he had been watching her sleep, for what she could feel with a cold sort of certainty was for a lot longer than just now. Or just this night.
He didn’t answer. It was like he hadn’t thought she would have the balls to ask him such a question. His lips curled in response without him thinking.
“Why do you hate Minho so much?” Eunsook tried.
Taemin glared angrily, fuming. She held his gaze, it felt like a test, to see if he could frighten her. He acted like he was casting a spell, but she trusted his ego that he would never do something to her without her consent. Not with magic, at least. That would cheapen it for him.
If she was going to deny Taemin something it would be because he scared her off. And that was more upsetting to Taemin than anyone else around him.
He turned around and rushed to the entryway, but lingered at the doorframe as if waiting. So she followed.
It felt like they were traveling through a swamp. There was a late summer night warmth to it, a dark and boggy quality. They came across a stone house, tucked inside dark towering trees, thick and creaking.
He motioned for her to crouch down, and he followed suit, hiding beneath a window that was well-lit from the inside. It was mostly empty inside the house, some giant impressive pieces of furniture spaced out and covered in dust, with only certain portions looking like they were ever used.
A fireplace was in the center of the room, ashes swept to the side like it was used frequently but never cleaned. A piece of wood snapped in half from the flames and the fire crackled loudly. Eunsook jumped a little, but didn’t make a sound.
Still Taemin put a filthy hand over her mouth.
She left it there, unfazed as she stared through the window, clutching the sill with her fingertips, waiting patiently for whatever was about to come.
Minho entered the room. It felt like he took up more space than the last time she saw him. His stance felt urgent, commanding. Key followed behind, staying in the entryway. He seemed uncharacteristically uncomfortable, not like the livewire of jittering he had from nerves when something was driving him crazy. Instead he displayed a very calm, resigned sadness; like he was ashamed, self-conscious.
He still held himself tall, but he was stiff, his arms wrapped around himself.
She wanted to look at Taemin, to ask him a question. But she could tell it was better to just keep looking ahead. It would come.
Sure enough, soon a few words were exchanged. She watched their mouths knowing it didn’t even matter what they were saying. Soon Minho was pushing Key up against a wall and Key seemed to simply be trying not to cry, no protest or embrace.
It felt extraordinarily private. Old and secret. Taemin should have never shown her this, and knowing how Key wouldn’t even be upset, would be hurt if he knew she’d found out…that made her feel sick.
But a certain sense of . . . excitement, came from knowing. She felt privileged to have this moment even if it was never hers to take, shivering with the overpowering rush of knowledge.
Taemin took his hand from her face and started rubbing them together, slowly, muttering to himself with his head bowed to focus on a spot on the ground in front of him.
They started to be able to hear the muffled sounds of louder noises from inside the house that made her gut churn. Goosebumps rose across her skin.
“Here, this should help.”
In one fluid motion Taemin slipped forward and she moved in response without even thinking. She slid down beneath him as he rocked over her, touching as much skin of his as he could to hers. He was hot. The contrast of their skin against one another’s burned the surface of hers. Her insides felt only colder.
His breath was heavy and warm across her face and neck. She had to close her eyes at the start of an exhale hitting her.
They began to kiss and she wasn’t sure who started it, but they were both doing it now. Her heart sped up as she could feel Taemin’s body straining against hers.
She flipped them, using gravity and the weight of her hips to take Taemin by surprise, but it didn’t seem like he wanted to fight her. His breathing was even worse when their mouths parted, and now his breath was trapped between their faces, her hair creating a curtain around them.
She rolled her hips down and forward, again and again as Taemin struggled not to whine underneath her. She watched his features, the way his nose scrunched, how his eyes fluttered. His lips and teeth and tongue, how they were unable to stay in place. He was shifting. He was shifting.
She couldn’t be sure how close he was, she didn’t have much to compare it to, but when he sucked in an especially heavy breath, she stopped.
His eyes flew open and the jarring stare into her own made the little hairs across her neck stand on end. His hands grabbed aggressively at her waist and tried to force the motion back, but she pushed up higher and he growled. Something, something black and slimy, escaped from his mouth as if it had been inside his cheek or behind his tongue the whole time. He coughed violently and it strained the skin around his ribs. She couldn’t see it the moment it hit the ground and she didn’t care. She hit him once across the face, just hard enough to get him to release her hips, and walked away.
-
Taemin pushed aside strings of onions and meat hanging from the rafters, the only way to ensure they stayed dry. He tripped over a box of some sort, a pouf of cinnamon and white powder exploding into the air, cursing as his toe throbbed. He balanced with his spine curved into a side saddle back-bend on one hand and one foot.
“Ugh.”
He swung his other leg over onto a stack of old books, pilfered magazines and photos from Key to pull his body to safety, removing his hand cautiously from the gunk he had accidentally landed in. He shook it without being able to remove any, scanning around the room until he found a rag, filthy and moldy, but good enough get whatever it was off his hand before he threw up from the stench, or worse, it reacted to something on his skin.
He had been waiting to make it home all day - this thing here, that thing there more important than getting back to his shack - knowing once he got here he would go to sleep and not leave for days.
He jumped and rolled onto the safety of his giant bed. Which, giant as it was, only had a small space available for him to stretch out on, in a very particularly horizontal way. He toed his shoes off and crossed his feet at the ankles, exhausted but still humming from the last long couple days.
He closed his eyes and tried to keep his hands still and folded on his lap, but ended up scratching at himself, readjusting a little before looking around. He sort of wanted to. . .
But his hand, his good hand, still had the remnants of something on it. If only he wasn’t so lazy he could look and find out. Or better, go out back and properly wash it off with the hose.
His eyes went back to the dresser. Perfect.
He had only had them for that time he had needed to make sure Minho and none of his men would wake up for twelve hours, but afterwards he had really had no use for them. They weren’t dried yet, although he could tell some of the smaller ones were getting there, but when he picked off a middle one and it felt just like that rubber egg he had used several weeks ago, he didn’t regret having procrastinated throwing them out.
How wasteful.
The rest of frogs look back at him incriminatingly, strung by their mouths from hooks spaced across the edge of the dresser.
And Key had thought frogging was stupid.
“Packrat my ass, I use all of my shit,” he justified to himself as he slid a little farther down and dropped his pants just below his ass.
His eyes closed again, not really wanting the aesthetics of it to interrupt his fantasies. He pictured Eunsook with rope wrapped around her tits, both above and beneath, making them bulge obscenely, her nipples pointing out in different directions. He smiled to himself, and laughed a little at the relatively cold feeling of the dead frog’s mouth going around the head of his cock.
He thought about her pouting, upset, and flashes of her smirking without realizing it, when she had done something she was proud of. That one time she had gotten off without ever knowing he’d seen her.
It had started as almost an accident. He had come at the normal time he always did, on the afternoons he showed up, but he figured she must have lost track of time, or thought he wasn’t really coming that day. She had been laying stomach down across the bed in jeans, particularly tight jeans where the inseam seemed to rub right into . . . well her. She kept shifting and adjusting, as if trying to rid herself of something uncomfortable that had ridden up. At first he had thought it was funny, why be so modest? If she had a wedgie just fucking pick it out. But then he realized that wasn’t it at all, and when she finally moved to the corner of the bed to rub and press against it to finish herself off, he had almost interrupted her to have the thrill of catching her in such a state. Something to hold over her head. But then she finished faster than he expected, and when her eyes reopened, blown and dark. . .
Fucking his best friend’s baby mama. Yeah, that wasn’t something he was supposed to think about.
He cringed a little as his dick slipped too far into the dead frog’s gut, crushing internal organs, and the sound more than the feeling distracted him in an unpleasant way.
It wasn’t like he purposefully wanted things he wasn’t supposed to. It made sense to want to like, well want to fuck, Eunsook, didn’t it?
He rolled so he was on his left side now, curled slightly and speeding up his movement, not wanting to drag this out.
-
“Taemin, what was that thing you wanted to do with that one girl’s skin?”
“What? I don’t know, now focus.”
Eunsook lay curled in a ball on her side, lazily blinking at Taemin. He was trying to show her how to hide a lighter up her sleeve, but she really could not have been less interested. It was cool when Taemin did it, and it wasn’t like she didn’t want to be able to either,just…not right now.
“You aren’t even listening to me,” Taemin whined. He squatted next to her and reached out a finger to poke her stomach. “Your tummy’s really soft.”
Eunsook turned red, sensitive about the pouch of fat that rested just below her navel. “Fuck you.”
Taemin’s head lifted as he flicked black hair out of his eyes. “Hey, I have one too. Look.”
He lifted his shirt with one hand, pulling up directly from the center as he pushed up into a kneeling position, so that his abdomen was directly in front of her face. Sure enough, perfectly framed by the draping V of fabric, was a slender curve to Taemin’s stomach. It started at his navel and gently sloped out and then back in, dropping down into the waistband of his pants. She felt her breath hitch, and tried to disguise it with a displeased sounding ‘pfft’. “Yours is smaller.”
“Yeah, but I’m a boy.”
The way Taemin whined the last word just made Eunsook more upset. She shoved out a hand to push Taemin’s backwards, but he trapped it against his stomach and leaned into the motion.
“Wanna finger my belly button?” he grinned. It took Eunsook longer to react than she expected. “No! Let my hand go.”
“But it’ll be fun, come on!”
Eunsook rolled to her other side as Taemin pouted for a bit, trying to stare guilt into her back. He nuzzled his way under her elbow and looked up with big eyes. “Then can I finger yours?”
“Why would you want- no.”
He twisted his mouth back and forth as he thought.
“Wha- Taemin! You can’t lick it either!”
Taemin stopped, tongue still hanging out of his mouth, as he made eye contact with Eunsook. His face completely blank as he lowered his head back down slowly and deliberately licked down and into her belly button, finally flicking his tongue back out.
“That was not fun,” she stated.
Taemin smiled. “For you,” he corrected.
Key threw open the door, a stormy look on his face.
“Come on fuck knuckle, stop playing with my things and make yourself useful.”
“Wow, rude much?” Taemin laughed though, nice and light, and while Key was still tapping his foot impatiently, obviously tense, he seemed to relax with just the knowledge of where Taemin was.
“Be back soon princess,” Taemin winked as he jumped off the bed.
“Not likely,” Key grumbled, “Minho’s gotten in an argument with someone important from a town over, and they’re about to tighten security down by the river crossing.”
“But we still have all that-”
“Yeah, not even hidden semi-properly in the boathouse, because someone decided to lace the flask with their new experiment.”
“That was the best night of your life and you know it.” Taemin smirked just from the memory.
“Way down on the list, like not even top fifty, and it certainly isn’t worth the price of losing that load; so you better apologize to Jonghyun or he’s not meeting us down there, and I’m torching your shack.”
Taemin imitated Key’s face as he mouthed the words back to Eunsook childishly. She smiled despite herself as he twirled to leave.
A bony hand caught on the edge of the doorway as he leaned so just his face was visible in the doorway again. “Speaking of torching, did you mean the burnt girl?”
Eunsook blinked. “Wha-? Oh. Yeah, that one.”
He grinned. “Was gonna make a lampshade.”
-
They all stood outside the castle in the early morning light, the spoils of their trips tinted a pale, cold blue.
“You can have one thing.”
“Okay. I want some straws.”
“Straws?”
“Yeah,” Eunsook beamed, “I like straws.”
Key looked almost disgusted, like she had asked for something terribly perverted that everyone else but her seemed to realize was unmentionable. He tilted her chin up with his hand but she only continued to smile brightly.
“Are you alright? I mean out of all the things.”
Taemin swatted Key’s hands away protectively.
“How can you question such a pure and honest request, you scoundrel! The angel has asked for some straws, it is your duty to fulfill her wish, or death and plagues shall rain upon us!”
“What the fuck do you want them for?” Key asked, ignoring Taemin’s theatrics.
“I just feel more fancy with them,” she shrugged.
“And why wouldn’t you! A cold beverage slipping down your throat is twice as nice when sucked delicately through a straw!”
Taemin held Eunsook’s hands in his own as they were about to pray together.
“I promise you fair maiden, you will receive your straws.”
“Taemin, I’d appreciate you not trying to cover up your drug habits by pretending to be charming.”
“Oh Key, if you want to talk addiction I think we all know who has more than just ‘nasty habits’”
Taemin stood, his entire demeanor suddenly matching Key’s. While it felt intimidating on Key, it was something Eunsook had grown accustomed to. It felt like his natural state. But on Taemin, it felt wrong. Unstable.
“In fact, let’s skip the word addiction. That sounds far too fun. It’s much more pathetic than that, isn’t it? What would you call it? A dependency?”
Key sighed. “Just fuck off for a bit, okay? It’s been a long night.”
“Right, disappointed you’re too tired for your normal nightcap, aren’t you?”
Key looked back at him silently.
“I’ll be around if you want something again.”
next
Pairing: Taemin/Onew, Key/Onew
Rating: NC-17
Final Word Count: 15,075
A vague echoing laughter rang through the hallways of the abandoned palace. Abandoned by its original owners that was, as girls and boys ran throughout the maze of lavish rooms and spiraling staircases. Decayed and paled as it might have been from its former glory, neither its elegance nor extravagance was lost.
The underworld had a way of bringing back to life what the living had forgotten.
-
Eunsook felt heavy, like her flesh had bloated. It wasn’t like she had been feeling great ever since - well, ever since something or other - but this feeling of being trapped down by her own weight stirred new feelings of disgust and unease towards being conscious. She tried to roll to her side but found that there was some kind of weight on her chest. Her brain panicked at the realization of its paralyzed state. Her eyes widened towards the figure napping on her chest.
A tangle of thin limbs unfurled themselves as a small yawn escaped and she realized it was a boy. His face looked childlike but his skin was grayed and sunken around his eye sockets and cheekbones. His eyes blinked up at her surprisingly bright, considering the tired state of his body, as he finished rearranging himself on top her.
“Hi pretty.”
He smiled at her, his small bony hands stroked through her hair. Eunsook thought about opening her mouth, or turning away from his touch, but found that while she could still feel everything happening to her body, it was otherwise disconnected from her brain.
He leaned down over her to bring his lips to her hair line and used his thumb to pet her hair.
“Fuckkk…” he breathed in deeply, “you even smell still alive.”
Something seized in pain inside Eunsook as she tried to scream.
“Taemin! Get the fuck off of her!”
The dark haired boy pouted as he pulled back. He stayed straddled over Eunsook for a while longer, as if to ask if the boy in the doorway if he’d really meant it, but eventually he pulled off with a sigh.
“I just wanted to lick her teeth.”
“So you can steal them and make a necklace again? I told you last time, you brat, stop touching my fucking things.”
“Can’t I take one? Just to suck on?”
The other boy glared back, unaffected by the whining.
“At least open her mouth so I can see them.”
The blonde from the doorway stepped forward with an air of exasperation as he scolded the other.
“Taemin, if I have to tell you not to touch my things one more time, I’ll tell your new boy toy how much you like to ride his older brother’s cock.”
Taemin smirked. His lips pulled all the way up the sides of his face.
“But, darling Key, he has already walked in on us.”
Key laughed, “Is that so?”
Taemin nodded, sickeningly proud.
“And you’ll never guess which set of Chang brothers have a thing for incest.”
Key’s eyes rolled back as he scoffed at his younger companion.
“Fuck off before I make you.”
The dark haired boy’s face fell again. “But I want to watchhh.”
“I’ll bring you some of Joon’s hair if you don’t.”
Taemin curled his lips in, conflicted over which was more worth it.
“Fine. If he finds out it was for me though, I’m trashing your next party.”
“When do you not?” Key remarked. The dark haired boy ducked out of the room.
He turned to the girl on the bed.
“I’m sorry, you probably feel like shit right now, but I think someone ought to tell you, you’re dead.”
-
Despite Eunsook ’s protests in her head that there was simply no way this could be true - she was healthy! she was young! - Key carefully explained to Eunsook how she was in fact very, very dead. She had been brought that night to where the underworld and the living separate after taking too many sleeping pills and Key, well Key had just been lucky enough to find her body unattended while it waited on the other side of the river.
Key wasn’t really into the habit of bodysnatching, he was a just bit of a collector. It was what he was known for. When humans deserted things, ram shackled and debauched, he would take the ones worth saving back with him to the underworld. Not many people liked going back up after they discovered what was down below, and it was a time consuming, often frustrating process carrying things back over to the other side. Not to mention on the more black market side of things. Many didn’t think it was worth it, but Key had become exceptionally good at it. The best, in fact.
What he actually did was hard to pinpoint. Key just was.
And was he ever.
It was hard to look away from him, to not want to be around him, to not want to please him.
It helped that he knew some good people as well. People who knew things before they were in print. People who knew how to do things. Because just collecting raw gems didn’t make you rich, and it certainly didn’t make you loveable.
One of those people was Jonghyun, a restorer and also his best friend.
Jonghyun fixed up the things Key brought him, and together they ran a successful business deep down in the belly of the underworld. Things were a little grey, in terms of legality, morality, stuff of that nature. But while Key was lavish and over the top, he knew how to make sure that if he showed off something nice, anyone important received a gift twice as fancy. And Jonghyun, he made sure no one knew about things really worth bragging about.
-
“So I’m sure you’re distressed about not being able to move or speak and all. I’m dying to find out what your voice sounds like actually.” He tilted his chin playfully. “Well, I guess not dying.”
“It’s because your body hasn’t thawed. Your body goes cold when you die and stays frozen until you make it across the river. While you never really, reheat, shall we say, to what you used to be, you can’t move or speak until you’ve properly thawed. Lucky for you, I know just how to do it. But you’ve got to understand you’re going to be very weak at first and I don’t want you jumping up and trying to run away. I know Taemin was a bit of a bother but, trust me.”
He pulled part of the covers back and looked down at her solemnly.
“I’m the only one who can help you. Understand?”
He waited for a bit, as if he expected her to respond, before finally nodding, placing his hand just inside the top of her blouse.
She felt a peculiar tingle spread over the surface of her skin, making her itch. She blinked.
“Good,” he smiled, “now try breathing.”
She let her mouth fall open slightly before sucking in a breath and breaking the invisible film over her throat. She wheezed slightly, finding the whole process much more difficult than she remembered.
“Good girl,” Key cooed, blowing warm breath all over her face. “Soon you’ll be good as new.”
-
Eunsook wasn’t sure when her mind decided it was okay to trust Key, but with no one there to bother her for an explanation she didn’t really care. It made things easier didn’t it? She had someone that was now ultimately responsible for her, someone that wasn’t her. And while ideally she would have gotten to pick who that was, it seemed like she was lucky enough. If she’d had to choose, she never would have. She didn’t like having to dress herself, or deciding what to order. The demand any heavy choice being made frightened her, and made her feel trapped. She much preferred to be the child that never had to grow up, but refused to follow the house rules. Just because she wanted rules in her life, didn’t mean she wanted to follow.
She was supposedly dead, living in a palace in the underworld with a man who had basically stolen her body in what could at best be described as a shady procedure. It wasn’t really like it was a decision of trust so much as an accepting of her circumstances. She really wasn’t strong enough to run away, and she recognized that. She had no clue what was even beyond her door. She needed to get back her strength so she could walk around, figure out why Key had brought her there, and the best way to get out.
If she wanted to go back.
They had talked a little since Key had reanimated her body. Key did most of the talking, complaining about everyday life as if Eunsook understood what it meant when he said that Taemin needed to be more careful about where he was stealing body parts from, or that Minho needed to stop being a shithead and start running the city properly.
Sometime on the second night - in between feeding her spoonfuls of soup and telling her a story about how Taemin had spent months waiting for a particularly beautiful girl to die so he could skin her before she could make it over to the other side, only to find that she had died in a fire, rendering her skin useless - he had asked Eunsook why she killed herself.
“I didn’t kill myself.”
Key raised an eyebrow. “Okay sweetheart, then tell me how you got here.”
She shifted.
“I took some sleeping pills and I didn’t wake up.”
Key nodded.
“You know you were on file as suicidal.”
She shook her head. “What file?”
Key tapped his chin thoughtfully.
“You really didn’t kill yourself on purpose?”
“No.”
He nodded again.
“This is better than I thought.”
He kissed her temple as he set the bowl of soup down on nightstand next to her.
“Sleep well Eunsook . I’ll see you tomorrow.”
-
The fourth day Eunsook needed a bath. She had been getting herself to and from the bed to the bathroom attached to her room just fine, but she had not had a bath or shower in far too long and even though all she did was sleep and listen to Key tell her about the going-ons of the underworld, she was starting to feel like her muscles needed to be stretched and her hair washed and god did she need a fresh set of clothes.
She woke up before Key returned that day, or night, was it night? Did they have night and day here? Her room, while large, did not have any windows, and she certainly hadn’t ventured outside the big wooden door yet. But maybe after she took a bath she would explore. While Key had told her not to try and run away, he said nothing about walking around, right?
As she turned on the giant faucets to begin filling the tub, she thought about what she had found out so far. It seemed that in the underworld, while you were dead and could not go back up to the living world (well strictly speaking you couldn’t, but you certainly weren’t supposed to go back and absolutely not supposed to stay) people here weren’t really all that… dead.
The underworld was teeming with life, the rules here were just a bit different. It was still a world. And people apparently talked about other worlds, how they had heard from a friend that so and so used to be in another realm where everyone was reincarnated as an animal. They told horror stories about the people waiting in purgatory, a spot where no one was able to sleep or drink and were surrounded by nothing but clouds, forced to wait indefinitely until their fates changed.
People didn’t really know about other realms though, or what happened in them.
Key had told her you couldn’t create in the underworld. She had asked him how he was able to throw such parties though, or do anything really, if that wasn’t allowed.
“Well it’s not like prepared feasts drop out the fucking sky, but you start creating big things, too many things, and people start disappearing until the rest learn their lesson.”
The way problems got dealt with, well they seemed to really just let people police themselves for the most part. If no one cared, it wasn’t against the law. But when too much unrest occurred that the elusive people in charge disagreed with, those troublemakers simply disappeared.
Eunsook turned off the water as it got close to rim of the tub, and tested it with an arched toe.
Even more curiously was that no one seemed to age here, you were apparently stuck with the body you came in... how long had Key said he had been a part of the living dead?
-
“She’s the one.”
Jonghyun sighed, pushing his glasses up his nose with the back of his hand.
“You know Taemin is going to tell everyone about your…side project, if you don’t come through on that hair for him.”
“What a little cuntrag. You know he has plenty of shit for his stupid little voodoo shop, right? Fuck knows how big his personal collection is. I know I owe him for that reanimation powder, but what a nasty habit to indulge.”
Key stuck his tongue out in disgust as he rolled his eyes. So typical.
Jonghyun laughed sadly. “Key, I’m serious. No one can find out about this or they’ll move you, maybe worse.”
“You know they can’t move me to another realm.”
“Yeah, that was the maybe worse part. Look, I thought you outgrew this fantasy.”
Key’s eyebrows knit together.
“Ouch.”
He crossed his arms in front of his chest and stared down at Jonghyun.
“I didn’t mean it like that.”
“Jonghyun, we’ve been friends for how many years now? I know we said we never wanted to try it again, but I’m willing to risk it for this.”
“Yeah, but do you have to end things now?”
“I’m not ending anything, crybaby. I’m starting something.”
-
“Look who’s up,” Key beamed as he dropped his coat.
Eunsook smiled a little, surprised at how happy she was to see Key again.
“I brought you a present.” He set a package next to her on the bed. “Clean clothes,” he grinned, reaching to tuck a piece of her hair behind her ear, “your hair’s wet.”
“I took a bath,” she replied.
“Good for you! Feeling better then?”
Eunsook nodded. She had to tell him what she had been wondering since she first woke up in this room four days ago.
“Hey Key?”
Now or never.
“Yeah?”
“Why am I here? Like, why did you bring me here?”
Key seemed a little surprised by the question, but not upset. She chewed at the corner of her mouth as she waited to see what he would answer.
“Because I’m the only person that knows how to get you back.”
“To the living world you mean?”
He bobbed his head up in down in agreement, scratching underneath his nose with his thumbnail.
“Why?”
Key paused as if unsure whether he should tell her or not, tapping his foot nervously against the stone flooring before nodding as if to tell himself yes, yes he should.
“Because I’ve always wanted a son.”
-
“No, no, nonononono.”
“I’m telling you that you can go back!”
“But I never killed myself! I shouldn’t even be dead!”
“Yes, that’s great I know that, but you are dead.”
“But I fucking shouldn’t be!”
“Eunsook, do you know how rare a case like this is? I know Taemin takes bits and pieces of people here and there, but stealing an entire body? Do you have any idea how difficult that is?”
“I don’t care how hard it was! It’s my fucking body!”
“I know, okay? If you want to stay here that’s your choice. I’m just making you an offer where you get something you want, and I get something I want.”
“Why can’t you just have a baby with someone here?”
“What did I tell you about creating? You think they’d let me make a fucking baby down here? Are you shitting me? Look, your body isn’t registered. You’re off the map.”
“I…” her shoulders shook as her voice cracked. Despite the confusion and panic of her whole situation she had managed to find it all a little exciting really. Harmless fun, like a nice vacation complete with quirky characters. She had been certain it would end, even if she had been unsure when, so long as she was patient. But now… this was the cost to return home?
Key wrapped his arms around her, letting her cry onto his shoulder. She felt upset for letting herself be comforted like this, overwhelmed and unsure how she felt about him, about the situation. But thinking about it wasn’t really on her list of things to do.
-
Key left Eunsook to give her some space. She stayed in her bed for a while, unsure of how to collect her thoughts as they danced around in her head in a panic. Eventually she rolled to her side and saw that Key had left the door cracked open. It was time for that walk.
“Eunsook , I can get you back, just like you want. All you have to do is carry my child.”
Was it selfish to be unwilling to carry a life in return for being given hers back?
She walked barefooted though the passageways, peeking in room after empty room. They were all decorated exquisitely, but no one besides her seemed to be inside the palace, making each lamp creepy and every oversized armchair seem like a monster. Faded gold detailing gave everything a haunted vibe like they were pieces in a museum, belonging to people now long gone, preserved only for show.
Carry my child. Carry my child.
It sounded so strange in her ears. Just the words hurt, uncomfortable in her stomach already. She had never wanted to be a parent before, she certainly didn’t want to now. Could she let something grow inside her if it was a task?
“Boo.”
A lanky boy jumped down from behind statue in front of her path, grinning widely as if he knew the world’s best joke.
“Taemin.”
“You shouldn’t walk around by yourself, princess.”
Eunsook stared back at the boy.
“Aren’t there people with nicer teeth you could be pulling?”
“Aw, you remember me then!” He twirled around her gracefully. “But, my pretty princess, I want yours.”
“I don’t think Key would approve of you taking teeth from his child’s mother.”
Taemin scowled slightly before his eyebrows rose in surprise and he straightened to full height.
“So you’ve done it then? Or no, no you haven’t. I can tell, I’d be able to smell it on you if you had. But he’s told you. Why, is our sweet little Eunsook perhaps, a runaway?”
“I was exploring.”
Taemin nodded somberly as he held his hand behind his back, and began to circle Eunsook .
“Mmm, mmm, yes of course. That room must have been dreadfully boring. Well!” he clapped his hands together loudly, startling her. “I guess that means you should come with me then! I can show you lots of things I promise are very, very un-boring.”
“I’m not going anywhere with you,” she huffed.
“Oh, but you should,” he pouted, fairly cutely for a psychotic collector of human parts. “I promise I won’t hurt you. In fact, I’ll return you back to Key completely untouched. If, of course, that’s what you want.”
Eunsook swallowed uncertainly. She was still valuable to Key. So much so, she was sure Taemin wouldn’t be willing to invoke his wrath… but still.
“Okay.”
“Okay?” he beamed brightly.
“Yeah.” She smiled a little. An exciting adventure. The least she could do was make the most of it.
“Well come on then! You’re gonna like this.”
-
When Taemin said he was taking her to his shop, she assumed that they would only be going to his shop.
Taemin however, was not interested in that idea in the least.
“Are you fucking kidding me? I’m not sitting around where I work all day. You’re in the underworld, don’t you want to party?”
“I highly doubt you sit around all day. Anywhere.”
She moved some clutter to the side as she tried to keep up behind Taemin. It smelled like ground spices and fresh meat with a distinct dampness to the floor and walls, like if there had been a garden above Mrs. Lovett’s pie shop.
Eunsook was not actually one for parties. Even though she liked the idea of them she just hadn’t really been to many, and none of the ones she had gone to had really been that much of a party to her. And now, with how important it was that she not be on anyone’s radar, she was unsure why Taemin thought the nightlife would be a great idea.
“What do you mean ‘it’s fine there’ll be hundreds of people’? That sounds exactly like why I shouldn’t go!”
“Darling, darling, darling princess. Look, I’m going to fix you up real nice so no one will even realize how blotchy your skin is, and we are going to go to a masquerade ball. No one is going ask who you are. And besides, I’m dressing you as someone else. There’s nothing more fun than letting people assume and seeing where it gets you.”
Eunsook sighed heavily as she poked a pretty silver box with a pearl clasp.
“Okay, I guess.”
It was kind of right up her alley, but a strange part of her felt compelled not to let Taemin know that.
“Okay, I guess? God, how about a little enthusiasm? Shit, don’t touch that! My frogs are in there.”
In the end, through a variety of creams and potions and mumbled incantations - as well as a suspicious sniffing of a powder that seemed more for Taemin’s personal benefit than a part of the process - Taemin completely changed Eunsook’s look. Her hair became long and blonde, wavy and flowing down her back as opposed to her normal brown hair parted down the middle. Her eyes had been changed from dark hazel to green - Taemin somehow blowing out the flecks of natural green in her eyes to completely overtake the iris, making them look alien-like in intensity - and were rimmed completely in black kohl. He had given her a stunning black dress that stretched over her, and a dark green and black feathered mask was tied around her face with a velvet ribbon. Taemin hummed at his own work.
“Let me pluck your eyebrows,” he begged.
“No.”
“But I’m sooooo good at it. Like ungodly good. I’m obsessed with eyebrows. Look at mine! They’re perfect. Purrrfect.”
“You only want to pluck mine so you can keep the hairs.”
He smiled. “It’s not like I would do anything weird with them.” When she blinked back at him in response, he shrugged before grinning boyishly.
“Time to see how alive the dead can be.”
-
The party was just like Eunsook had imagined a party should be. It was held at a gothic style cathedral, the doors flung wide open as people spilled out onto the cathedral’s stone steps and into the streets. Thousands of candles decorated the place, and it was a wonder nothing caught on fire. There was food and drink everywhere you turned, someone offering you strange items every which way. People were singing and playing music up on tables, around the pillars, laughing and dancing with ribbons as they chased each other about.
Eunsook was particularly fascinated by one game a group of people were playing, where one person would sit atop the other’s shoulder and wrestle a person sitting on top another’s. People were crashing to the ground left and right and yet they only laughed harder and kept drinking as another group tried again, the failed participants rolling around on the ground happy as could be.
“Come here,” Taemin whispered excitedly as he pulled her into the cathedral by her wrist. The inside of the building was amazing, the walls and ceilings covered in intricate designs, the stained glass incandescent as religious figures loomed over the proceedings. Here, a much more formal style of dance was taking place, people twirling to the music in a hypnotizing way.
“Excellent.”
Taemin smiled at her as she realized they had joined the circle of dancers moving gracefully around the edge of the room. She had never been a great dancer, but Taemin seemed to more than make up for that, leading her effortlessly through the movement.
“Taemin, thank you for taking me here tonight.”
He grinned happily.
“You just make such a lovely princess.”
She felt her heart pound, unsure why she felt so flustered by the statement. It must have been the party, the affect of the night, of being out like this.
“Taemin, tell me why Key wants me…”
“To have his kid? I think it’s a terrible idea to be honest. He doesn’t want you to ‘go to waste’, but neither do I really. And trust me, you are worth more than just your lovely gleaming teeth.”
“Does he expect me to raise the child on my own as well?”
“You can’t have children in the underworld,” he scoffed, “kids would fuck up everyone’s fun.”
He dipped her backwards playfully, licking a stripe up the side of her neck, making her head swim as the weight of her hair suddenly felt immensely heavier. She thought if he let go like this, her head would keep tilting back forever.
Focus.
“I don’t understand the rules of this realm. Why are only certain people here and not others? What other parts of the underworld are there?”
Taemin gave her a look, as if uncertain why she was asking the question.
“Don’t you know? Eunsook , everyone here committed suicide.”
“What do you mean, everyone?”
“I mean everyone. That’s why there are no kids. There’s the rare younger teen or two, but you can age up with a little black magic.”
“I don’t get it, what’s real and what’s not with this black magic down here?”
“It’s pretty much the same as up there, you can’t always tell what’s real or not. But doesn’t that apply to more than just magic?”
“So Key?”
“Yep. And his biggest regret for some reason is never starting a family. He was the last person in his line and he feels some kind of responsibility to carry it on or something. Kibum’s always wanted an heir.”
“Kibum?”
Taemin laughed again.
“I still call him that sometimes. We’ve known each other a lot longer than we ever would have been able to comprehend before. Look princess, I know you want to go back to your old life, and you didn’t kill yourself and all, but I don’t think this is all that bad. Just think of it as moving.”
“What if Key gets caught keeping me here like this? Or trying to take me back? If I do stay, I don’t want to go on the books just yet.”
“Of course you don’t. That would make your little adventure here fairly final wouldn’t it? If Key gets caught, well, that would be a problem. And problems have a funny way of disappearing.”
“What do you mean disappearing? Moved to another realm?”
“That’s what some people think, but you can’t really know for sure.”
Eunsook frowned. “You know though, don’t you. You know what would happen to him.”
Taemin swallowed thoughtfully. “You know what it’s like to sleep, right? To sleep and not dream?” They continued to dance to the music in silence as Eunsook thought.
“How old were you?”
Taemin hummed. “Mmm, that’s a little personal, don’t you think?” He reached down and palmed her ass with a smirk. “But I guess I don’t mind. Fourteen. I’m not telling you why, so don’t bother.”
She took a breath. Okay. This wasn’t overwhelming for her, not at all.
“Hey, I’m going to go smoke. You want to come?”
“Like cigarettes?”
He stared back at her like she had just said something ridiculous.
“No, like pot. Can you not tell I’m a stoner?”
“I-”
“Whatever, too late princess. Someone wants to dance with you.” He grinned as he spun her around to face an incredibly handsome man with an eye patch over the left side of his face coming towards them.
“Had a friend kill him with a gun. Crossed through his brain and came out the lower right by his ear. He keeps his hair long to cover it. Funny how shit like that counts even though he didn’t technically do it,” Taemin whispered, nipping Eunsook ’s right earlobe with his teeth as the man approached.
“May I cut in?”
“I was just stepping out.”
Taemin bowed and waved goodbye as he disappeared into the crowd.
The man smiled at her.
“Shall we?”
-
“I can’t believe - how fast you can run high.” Eunsook stood wheezing next to Taemin in an alleyway outside the cathedral after an unfortunate encounter with the girlfriend of the man she had been dancing with.
“Fuck man, did you see her face?” Taemin giggled to himself, as if it was a clever inside joke.
“Taemin! How could you do that to me!”
“Do what?”
“Leave me with that guy when you knew he had a girlfriend!”
“I thought everything would be peachy keen! I can’t believe he kissed you though. Oh man was that funny.” Taemin turned to lean his entire body against the wall, sighing at the relaxing pressure across his front, speaking more to himself than her now.
“You know he’s like, ahahaha, Key’s- oh fuck this is so twisted. Hahaha, sheeet son.”
“You purposefully dressed me up as the love interest of the prince of the underworld, without telling me, and expected everything to go just peachy?” She was yelling in disbelief at this point, she punched him on the shoulder. But she couldn’t help enjoying the ridiculous adrenaline high from escaping just in time, the frantic relief.
“He’s like vaaaaguely the leader of one stinking city in the underworld, he isn’t even really in control of that much anyway because he sucks ass. So calm your tits.”
“There you are.”
A fuming Key stood in tall leather boots at the edge of the alleyway.
“Ho shit,” Taemin whispered loudly, “your baby daddy done foouunddd you.”
-
“I can’t believe he took you out like that.”
Key walked at an aggressively fast pace, heels clicking on the cold stone as Eunsook trotted along behind him.
“I agreed to it, I’m really sorry. I just wanted to get out for a bit and think.”
“Really? Did you do lots of productive thinking?”
He stopped and spun around. “That was mean of me, I’m- Taemin, he puts me on edge sometimes. Of course you wanted to get out, I know you weren’t trying to run away and even if you were, that’s fine.”
Key looked up at the sky and blew cold air out his mouth and nostrils, swinging his hands back and forth.
“Look, you’re free to go, honestly. I just - the fact you aren’t on the books yet makes you valuable to more than just me. And that makes it dangerous for you.”
“Key?”
“Yeah,” he sighed, “what is it?”
“Can I stay at your place a little longer?”
He made a huffing noise as his breath filled the air again, looking like smoke.
“Of course, stupid.”
She smiled as he took her hand.
-
Eunsook woke up with a cold sweat forming on her back. She could feel it. Right under the surface of her skin like bugs burrowing beneath, crawling. She wiped ineffectively at it. It wasn’t there to be wiped away.
“Hmpft.”
She froze and then twisted to the side. There was Taemin at the foot of the bed, staring at her with his eyes glinting onyx. She wasn’t even sure how she could make out his eyes from his skin or hair. It all looked black.
“Taemin?”
His disapproving laugh gave him away. He didn’t look sorry about it either.
“What are you doing?”
“I don’t understand why you care so much,” he retorted. His willowy frame seemed to shift, and yet she was sure he stayed in the same place, unmoving. Maybe his bones were swaying? Maybe her eyes were.
“I never ask you what you’re doing. I let everyone do as they like, and all I expect is the same, simple courtesy.”
“What am I stopping you from doing, Taemin?” She rubbed at her eyes.
Was he moving? She wasn’t sure why it was bothering her so much. The tone of Taemin’s voice, the bubbling hatred behind his words were much more concerning than that he had been watching her sleep, for what she could feel with a cold sort of certainty was for a lot longer than just now. Or just this night.
He didn’t answer. It was like he hadn’t thought she would have the balls to ask him such a question. His lips curled in response without him thinking.
“Why do you hate Minho so much?” Eunsook tried.
Taemin glared angrily, fuming. She held his gaze, it felt like a test, to see if he could frighten her. He acted like he was casting a spell, but she trusted his ego that he would never do something to her without her consent. Not with magic, at least. That would cheapen it for him.
If she was going to deny Taemin something it would be because he scared her off. And that was more upsetting to Taemin than anyone else around him.
He turned around and rushed to the entryway, but lingered at the doorframe as if waiting. So she followed.
It felt like they were traveling through a swamp. There was a late summer night warmth to it, a dark and boggy quality. They came across a stone house, tucked inside dark towering trees, thick and creaking.
He motioned for her to crouch down, and he followed suit, hiding beneath a window that was well-lit from the inside. It was mostly empty inside the house, some giant impressive pieces of furniture spaced out and covered in dust, with only certain portions looking like they were ever used.
A fireplace was in the center of the room, ashes swept to the side like it was used frequently but never cleaned. A piece of wood snapped in half from the flames and the fire crackled loudly. Eunsook jumped a little, but didn’t make a sound.
Still Taemin put a filthy hand over her mouth.
She left it there, unfazed as she stared through the window, clutching the sill with her fingertips, waiting patiently for whatever was about to come.
Minho entered the room. It felt like he took up more space than the last time she saw him. His stance felt urgent, commanding. Key followed behind, staying in the entryway. He seemed uncharacteristically uncomfortable, not like the livewire of jittering he had from nerves when something was driving him crazy. Instead he displayed a very calm, resigned sadness; like he was ashamed, self-conscious.
He still held himself tall, but he was stiff, his arms wrapped around himself.
She wanted to look at Taemin, to ask him a question. But she could tell it was better to just keep looking ahead. It would come.
Sure enough, soon a few words were exchanged. She watched their mouths knowing it didn’t even matter what they were saying. Soon Minho was pushing Key up against a wall and Key seemed to simply be trying not to cry, no protest or embrace.
It felt extraordinarily private. Old and secret. Taemin should have never shown her this, and knowing how Key wouldn’t even be upset, would be hurt if he knew she’d found out…that made her feel sick.
But a certain sense of . . . excitement, came from knowing. She felt privileged to have this moment even if it was never hers to take, shivering with the overpowering rush of knowledge.
Taemin took his hand from her face and started rubbing them together, slowly, muttering to himself with his head bowed to focus on a spot on the ground in front of him.
They started to be able to hear the muffled sounds of louder noises from inside the house that made her gut churn. Goosebumps rose across her skin.
“Here, this should help.”
In one fluid motion Taemin slipped forward and she moved in response without even thinking. She slid down beneath him as he rocked over her, touching as much skin of his as he could to hers. He was hot. The contrast of their skin against one another’s burned the surface of hers. Her insides felt only colder.
His breath was heavy and warm across her face and neck. She had to close her eyes at the start of an exhale hitting her.
They began to kiss and she wasn’t sure who started it, but they were both doing it now. Her heart sped up as she could feel Taemin’s body straining against hers.
She flipped them, using gravity and the weight of her hips to take Taemin by surprise, but it didn’t seem like he wanted to fight her. His breathing was even worse when their mouths parted, and now his breath was trapped between their faces, her hair creating a curtain around them.
She rolled her hips down and forward, again and again as Taemin struggled not to whine underneath her. She watched his features, the way his nose scrunched, how his eyes fluttered. His lips and teeth and tongue, how they were unable to stay in place. He was shifting. He was shifting.
She couldn’t be sure how close he was, she didn’t have much to compare it to, but when he sucked in an especially heavy breath, she stopped.
His eyes flew open and the jarring stare into her own made the little hairs across her neck stand on end. His hands grabbed aggressively at her waist and tried to force the motion back, but she pushed up higher and he growled. Something, something black and slimy, escaped from his mouth as if it had been inside his cheek or behind his tongue the whole time. He coughed violently and it strained the skin around his ribs. She couldn’t see it the moment it hit the ground and she didn’t care. She hit him once across the face, just hard enough to get him to release her hips, and walked away.
-
Taemin pushed aside strings of onions and meat hanging from the rafters, the only way to ensure they stayed dry. He tripped over a box of some sort, a pouf of cinnamon and white powder exploding into the air, cursing as his toe throbbed. He balanced with his spine curved into a side saddle back-bend on one hand and one foot.
“Ugh.”
He swung his other leg over onto a stack of old books, pilfered magazines and photos from Key to pull his body to safety, removing his hand cautiously from the gunk he had accidentally landed in. He shook it without being able to remove any, scanning around the room until he found a rag, filthy and moldy, but good enough get whatever it was off his hand before he threw up from the stench, or worse, it reacted to something on his skin.
He had been waiting to make it home all day - this thing here, that thing there more important than getting back to his shack - knowing once he got here he would go to sleep and not leave for days.
He jumped and rolled onto the safety of his giant bed. Which, giant as it was, only had a small space available for him to stretch out on, in a very particularly horizontal way. He toed his shoes off and crossed his feet at the ankles, exhausted but still humming from the last long couple days.
He closed his eyes and tried to keep his hands still and folded on his lap, but ended up scratching at himself, readjusting a little before looking around. He sort of wanted to. . .
But his hand, his good hand, still had the remnants of something on it. If only he wasn’t so lazy he could look and find out. Or better, go out back and properly wash it off with the hose.
His eyes went back to the dresser. Perfect.
He had only had them for that time he had needed to make sure Minho and none of his men would wake up for twelve hours, but afterwards he had really had no use for them. They weren’t dried yet, although he could tell some of the smaller ones were getting there, but when he picked off a middle one and it felt just like that rubber egg he had used several weeks ago, he didn’t regret having procrastinated throwing them out.
How wasteful.
The rest of frogs look back at him incriminatingly, strung by their mouths from hooks spaced across the edge of the dresser.
And Key had thought frogging was stupid.
“Packrat my ass, I use all of my shit,” he justified to himself as he slid a little farther down and dropped his pants just below his ass.
His eyes closed again, not really wanting the aesthetics of it to interrupt his fantasies. He pictured Eunsook with rope wrapped around her tits, both above and beneath, making them bulge obscenely, her nipples pointing out in different directions. He smiled to himself, and laughed a little at the relatively cold feeling of the dead frog’s mouth going around the head of his cock.
He thought about her pouting, upset, and flashes of her smirking without realizing it, when she had done something she was proud of. That one time she had gotten off without ever knowing he’d seen her.
It had started as almost an accident. He had come at the normal time he always did, on the afternoons he showed up, but he figured she must have lost track of time, or thought he wasn’t really coming that day. She had been laying stomach down across the bed in jeans, particularly tight jeans where the inseam seemed to rub right into . . . well her. She kept shifting and adjusting, as if trying to rid herself of something uncomfortable that had ridden up. At first he had thought it was funny, why be so modest? If she had a wedgie just fucking pick it out. But then he realized that wasn’t it at all, and when she finally moved to the corner of the bed to rub and press against it to finish herself off, he had almost interrupted her to have the thrill of catching her in such a state. Something to hold over her head. But then she finished faster than he expected, and when her eyes reopened, blown and dark. . .
Fucking his best friend’s baby mama. Yeah, that wasn’t something he was supposed to think about.
He cringed a little as his dick slipped too far into the dead frog’s gut, crushing internal organs, and the sound more than the feeling distracted him in an unpleasant way.
It wasn’t like he purposefully wanted things he wasn’t supposed to. It made sense to want to like, well want to fuck, Eunsook, didn’t it?
He rolled so he was on his left side now, curled slightly and speeding up his movement, not wanting to drag this out.
-
“Taemin, what was that thing you wanted to do with that one girl’s skin?”
“What? I don’t know, now focus.”
Eunsook lay curled in a ball on her side, lazily blinking at Taemin. He was trying to show her how to hide a lighter up her sleeve, but she really could not have been less interested. It was cool when Taemin did it, and it wasn’t like she didn’t want to be able to either,just…not right now.
“You aren’t even listening to me,” Taemin whined. He squatted next to her and reached out a finger to poke her stomach. “Your tummy’s really soft.”
Eunsook turned red, sensitive about the pouch of fat that rested just below her navel. “Fuck you.”
Taemin’s head lifted as he flicked black hair out of his eyes. “Hey, I have one too. Look.”
He lifted his shirt with one hand, pulling up directly from the center as he pushed up into a kneeling position, so that his abdomen was directly in front of her face. Sure enough, perfectly framed by the draping V of fabric, was a slender curve to Taemin’s stomach. It started at his navel and gently sloped out and then back in, dropping down into the waistband of his pants. She felt her breath hitch, and tried to disguise it with a displeased sounding ‘pfft’. “Yours is smaller.”
“Yeah, but I’m a boy.”
The way Taemin whined the last word just made Eunsook more upset. She shoved out a hand to push Taemin’s backwards, but he trapped it against his stomach and leaned into the motion.
“Wanna finger my belly button?” he grinned. It took Eunsook longer to react than she expected. “No! Let my hand go.”
“But it’ll be fun, come on!”
Eunsook rolled to her other side as Taemin pouted for a bit, trying to stare guilt into her back. He nuzzled his way under her elbow and looked up with big eyes. “Then can I finger yours?”
“Why would you want- no.”
He twisted his mouth back and forth as he thought.
“Wha- Taemin! You can’t lick it either!”
Taemin stopped, tongue still hanging out of his mouth, as he made eye contact with Eunsook. His face completely blank as he lowered his head back down slowly and deliberately licked down and into her belly button, finally flicking his tongue back out.
“That was not fun,” she stated.
Taemin smiled. “For you,” he corrected.
Key threw open the door, a stormy look on his face.
“Come on fuck knuckle, stop playing with my things and make yourself useful.”
“Wow, rude much?” Taemin laughed though, nice and light, and while Key was still tapping his foot impatiently, obviously tense, he seemed to relax with just the knowledge of where Taemin was.
“Be back soon princess,” Taemin winked as he jumped off the bed.
“Not likely,” Key grumbled, “Minho’s gotten in an argument with someone important from a town over, and they’re about to tighten security down by the river crossing.”
“But we still have all that-”
“Yeah, not even hidden semi-properly in the boathouse, because someone decided to lace the flask with their new experiment.”
“That was the best night of your life and you know it.” Taemin smirked just from the memory.
“Way down on the list, like not even top fifty, and it certainly isn’t worth the price of losing that load; so you better apologize to Jonghyun or he’s not meeting us down there, and I’m torching your shack.”
Taemin imitated Key’s face as he mouthed the words back to Eunsook childishly. She smiled despite herself as he twirled to leave.
A bony hand caught on the edge of the doorway as he leaned so just his face was visible in the doorway again. “Speaking of torching, did you mean the burnt girl?”
Eunsook blinked. “Wha-? Oh. Yeah, that one.”
He grinned. “Was gonna make a lampshade.”
-
They all stood outside the castle in the early morning light, the spoils of their trips tinted a pale, cold blue.
“You can have one thing.”
“Okay. I want some straws.”
“Straws?”
“Yeah,” Eunsook beamed, “I like straws.”
Key looked almost disgusted, like she had asked for something terribly perverted that everyone else but her seemed to realize was unmentionable. He tilted her chin up with his hand but she only continued to smile brightly.
“Are you alright? I mean out of all the things.”
Taemin swatted Key’s hands away protectively.
“How can you question such a pure and honest request, you scoundrel! The angel has asked for some straws, it is your duty to fulfill her wish, or death and plagues shall rain upon us!”
“What the fuck do you want them for?” Key asked, ignoring Taemin’s theatrics.
“I just feel more fancy with them,” she shrugged.
“And why wouldn’t you! A cold beverage slipping down your throat is twice as nice when sucked delicately through a straw!”
Taemin held Eunsook’s hands in his own as they were about to pray together.
“I promise you fair maiden, you will receive your straws.”
“Taemin, I’d appreciate you not trying to cover up your drug habits by pretending to be charming.”
“Oh Key, if you want to talk addiction I think we all know who has more than just ‘nasty habits’”
Taemin stood, his entire demeanor suddenly matching Key’s. While it felt intimidating on Key, it was something Eunsook had grown accustomed to. It felt like his natural state. But on Taemin, it felt wrong. Unstable.
“In fact, let’s skip the word addiction. That sounds far too fun. It’s much more pathetic than that, isn’t it? What would you call it? A dependency?”
Key sighed. “Just fuck off for a bit, okay? It’s been a long night.”
“Right, disappointed you’re too tired for your normal nightcap, aren’t you?”
Key looked back at him silently.
“I’ll be around if you want something again.”
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