long gone.

feyjaeyong​:

| tw: mentions of suicide |

jaeyong doesn’t really buy it. seoyun essentially says he would’ve been fine without him and that he convinced himself not to kill himself because of him in the same breath. jaeyong didn’t know that. he was too wrapped up in himself, too unable to process emotions to think that seoyun still suffered beyond the day he got those scars on his arms. would seoyun have been better off without him? probably, if he was even still alive without him. it’s not something jaeyong wants to ask about, so it remains nothing but a thought carving out a place for itself in his mind, a thought that will linger for a while. “okay,” jaeyong relents. “it felt like you needed me,” but he ends up laughing. “i would’ve,” missed seoyun’s dick, he means, because that’s easier to admit than missing anything else about him. it’s hard to remember who he was before huangjun now, before he learned the art of emotion, but he thinks even then he would’ve missed seoyun, even if he didn’t know how to name it. maybe it would’ve been like daeyong, with him moving on easily and without grief, or maybe it would’ve been too much to lose them both.

because even if seoyun hated him, or pretended to, jaeyong still had him; he was still some reliable, persistent presence in his life, whether he was visiting jaeyong in the hospital or in between sheets with him or yelling at him. he would’ve missed the attention and the love if he lost him while they were still dating, and the…familiarity if he lost him after. it’s something else he wants to tell seoyun but knows won’t help, because jaeyong can miss him or want him gone all he wants and still never be able to give seoyun what he wants from him.

to jaeyong, the ring was simply a thank you– a token of the depth of his appreciation, some repayment of the debt he owed seoyun for the care he gave to both him and huangjun. he wasn’t thinking beyond that, and seoyun’s words make his heart heavy in his chest. did he know? was there any part of him that recognized the significance of those rings, of that gesture? if there was, he still only meant it as a token of friendship. he wouldn’t have minded their fates being woven together if not for seoyun’s feelings, if it wasn’t something tragic. seoyun is right. jaeyong knows it. there’s a lot he never should’ve done. he looks down at the ring again, and he nods slowly, resigned. there’s another apology on his lips, but he’s apologized enough. seoyun is probably tired of hearing it. he knows he’s tired of saying it. 

i wish things could be different. but they’re not. “me too,” jaeyong practically whispers. “i’ve been trying,” to love you. i’ve been trying so hard, seoyun, please believe me. he doesn’t know if it’ll be helpful to tell him how much he’s thought about it, about what it would take to love him, if he could in this universe, if he could in any universe. he doesn’t know if it’s worth mentioning that he wants to and is afraid to all at once. it’ll probably only sting. it stings jaeyong, because he knows they’re so close. he knows the answer is yes; in another life, he could love seoyun, maybe even if huangjun leaves him one day in this life he could, but for now, he doesn’t. he doesn’t love him, and he can’t, or surely he would love him already, for all of his trying. 

it’s hard to imagine a life where they all love each other and are all happy, though. every time he tries, his chest hurts, because that means jaeyong watching huangjun love someone else, and even if he did love seoyun, it could never be enough. it could never be enough to cure that pain, to make it worth it, and maybe that’s the real problem. even if he did love seoyun, he couldn’t be with him, and in some way, isn’t that worse? doesn’t it hurt more to have something so close to in reach but just past your fingertips, rather than having no hope at all?

so maybe jaeyong shouldn’t say anything. maybe he’s already said too much. his words only make everything worse. the best thing, for both his and seoyun’s sake, is to not give seoyun any hope: to make them being together seem impossible. it is, isn’t it? he could never leave huangjun even if he wanted to; he told him he wouldn’t. he could never be happy with huangjun loving anyone else. that’s it. in the end, it doesn’t matter if he loves seoyun at all; it just matters that they could never be happy together. they are doomed to something tumultuous and dangerous, chaotic and ill-fated.

he wants to tell seoyun he doesn’t regret meeting him, but it’s easy for him to say. he’s only in pain because seoyun is. he doesn’t know if seoyun has ever hurt him once; meanwhile, causing seoyun pain is the only thing jaeyong has ever done for him.

there’s one thing. there’s one thing jaeyong wants to say that might make things worse, but that he thinks he would regret keeping to himself. “i want you to know,” he begins, slowly, like he’s thinking through each word before it leaves his mouth. “even when…i was dating you just for fun, and even when we were fighting afterwards, i liked it,” and he laughs a little. he looks down, at his own hands, at seoyun’s laying on the bed. he wants to hold his hand, because it’s what they’ve always done: comforting each other through the physical, even if it means nothing, but that doesn’t go along with not giving seoyun any hope, so jaeyong holds back. 

“i was happy with you. maybe not all the time; i think that’s impossible. but i was happy with you.”

cw; drugs, mental health/depression

he wants to cry. he probably would be if these fucking drugs didn’t dry him out and make his eyes itchy and tearless. he wants to disappear even if it means reappearing somewhere else. there’s a pain that’s settled so deep into seoyun’s soul that some days he forgets that he’s carrying it. there’s no escaping it now; nothing to do but sit here and stew in it, to let it grow until seoyun is all but certain that it’s going to swallow him whole. he wants to go home. he wants to stop feeling. he wants...

seoyun wants to be loved. desperately. years spent with too many bodies and not enough souls, hands that were warm to the touch but left too quickly and were never spared a second thought. he wants what jaeyong and huangjun have: unwavering, two people who would go to the ends of the earth for one another over and over again. he wants jaeyong’s passion and huangjun’s gentleness and all the eccentricities they share between them. he would settle for one if he can’t have both, wanting so despairingly to belong, to be part of something. family. he doesn’t have any left. 

who would go to the ends of the earth for seoyun? it’s miracle enough that jaeyong picked his broken body up off the street in the same city. alone, dying on the pavement. how can a person recover from the moment when he realized that no one would care when he’s gone? sure they might miss him for a little while, but who would pluck weeds and leave flowers at his grave? even daeyong might grumble about being put out of seoyun’s home at first, but he has someone else to take care of him now. they would forget about him and kang seoyun would die two deaths. the very thought makes his bones feel cold.

“it doesn’t matter,” he chokes out, voice strained and raspy. jaeyong could still like him. it doesn’t change anything. “i know you liked it. i know you were happy. why else would you keep letting it all happen?” he faces his caretaker if only to shoot him an accusatory glare, only to look away again immediately. it still hurts. “but it doesn’t matter. because... because...”

the strangled half-sob that forces its way out of his throat hurts. he follows the horrible sound with a gasp, cracked ribs and tender limbs tensing painfully. it’s a reminder that no matter how much he wants to get up and leave this place, to run away and try not to feel anything ever again, he can’t. he’s stuck here, too weak to do anything but lay still and suffer. and bring down the mood of everyone around him like some infectious parasite that saps happiness out of everything it gets close to. seoyun’s so sad he feels like he may be sick. or it might just be the pain or the drugs, or both.

“i don’t have anyone.” he doesn’t know if jaeyong understands this. if he’s ever understood what it’s like to be truly alone. jaeyong has always had family. he's always had a confidante, whether it was daeyong, or pretended it was seoyun, or now huangjun. he’s always been loved by someone even if he didn’t love them back. seoyun can’t help but be a little bitter, but mostly he just doesn’t know how jaeyong could ever understand how this feels. how the rejection cuts a little bit deeper with their history. he wonders if jaeyong knows that seoyun feels like his messy ex is the only one who really knows him. 

“i want to go home,” it’s hardly more than a whimper, a quiet plea for this pain to stop. he knows he can’t, that it’s not safe to move him yet without doing more harm. he’d like to keep his leg functional when this is all over. he’s not even sure where home is; his late parents’ house never felt like it belonged to him, too big to be comfortable even with daeyong there. this certainly isn’t it either. 

feyjaeyong​:

“you shouldn’t–” move. seoyun shouldn’t move in this state, no matter how much he wants to find a more comfortable position, but as always, seoyun is stubborn. jaeyong knows if he tells seoyun to do something he’ll only want to do the opposite. huangjun is the one of the pair of them that has any chance of getting seoyun to listen, so jaeyong simply frowns at him as seoyun anchors himself on his arm and sits up. jaeyong winces at his sound of pain, but the silence that follows is uncomfortable. jaeyong knows better than to think seoyun won’t explain the why; surely it’s why he moved in the first place.

he almost feels sick, and he doesn’t know why. maybe it’s because he wants to forget. he wants to ignore seoyun’s feelings for him so much that they eventually go away, and talking about it doesn’t accomplish that goal. maybe it’s because of the guilt that comes with every reminder, chained to every thought surrounding seoyun’s feelings for him. seoyun loved him once; there’s still something of that left now, or something new that bloomed in the wreckage of their past relationship. 

sometimes he still wonders if he could’ve loved him with more time, but time wasn’t the problem. he knows he couldn’t have– not without some outside catalyst for his self improvement, because seoyun wasn’t enough. he’s stopped asking himself why now, because he can never find the answer, and it only frustrates him. 

huangjun is just different. maybe it was because seoyun had no real softness to rub off on jaeyong, harsh more often than not even though jaeyong understood seoyun’s love. it just wasn’t transformative. it wasn’t paradoxical and both intense and tender at once. it wasn’t what he needed. he doesn’t know if anything in the world other than huangjun could’ve fixed any of jaeyong’s broken parts.

in the end, it doesn’t matter, because there is only this jaeyong, and this seoyun, and…heartache.

that’s the best word for what he feels when seoyun finally speaks.

“i’m not scared of much,” jaeyong chuckles with the slightest smile, some attempt at reassurance, some desire to lighten the mood, to fix something, but he knows it doesn’t. he doesn’t feel any better, at least. part of jaeyong wants to be optimistic, wants to cling to this something that he did for seoyun even at his worst, but it must be bitter for him now; it must be bitter to know the only reason the person you loved didn’t leave you was because they saw you as something to use.

“you…needed me,” jaeyong says, because the vulnerability is contagious, because he feels like he owes seoyun his honesty after their time spent in a year-long farce. maybe it will only hurt more. maybe it’ll make everything worse, but it weighs heavy on jaeyong’s heart regardless. he needs to lift that weight. “i liked that. it made it easy to do what i did.” it was wrong. jaeyong knows now. fun, but wrong; he’s trying to do less terrible things now. bit by bit, he tries to make up for the evil that drenches his past. “i’m still sorry.“

he almost says i wish i never did it, but does he? jaeyong tries not to spend too much time regretting. he’s already spent too much on the what if’s. he did it. it brought he and seoyun here now, and he can wonder what paths would’ve led to something different all he wants, but he has to face reality regardless. the reality is, if he never did what he did, he might not know seoyun beyond some distant acquaintance. he can never decide if things would’ve been better that way or not.

softer doesn’t feel like an insult anymore, now that he’s away from his parents’ influence and sees the beauty in being gentle and meaning it. he smiles softly too, although it’s sad, and he lays his hand on the bed, splaying out his fingers, showing off what used to be seoyun’s ring, now on one of jaeyong’s own fingers. it’s murky– murkier than it’s been in a while. “i used to hate this ring,” he admits, and he smiles, a little more sincerely. “i never wanted anyone to know how i was feeling, but i kind of wonder, if i had it back when we were together, and i wore it…what it would’ve looked like. if it would’ve been clear because i didn’t feel anything, or…dark because i didn’t feel anything.” that’s not the point though, just jaeyong practically babbling. he sighs quietly.

“i think i’ll keep wearing it until you want it back– if you ever do,” and jaeyong doesn’t know why he hopes he does. it just doesn’t feel like it belongs to him anymore. “i’m…stupid sometimes. it might help me realize what hurts me and what helps me. i don’t think i know that all the time.”

he pauses, but not for too long. “i didn’t mean to make you love me– or like me –again.” what did he mean to do, then? “i don’t really know what i was doing, i guess,” he laughs. “i just felt like i owed you, for taking such good care of huangjun, and me, too. i knew my words weren’t worth anything anymore. ‘thank you’ didn’t feel like enough, but i did mean what i told you.”

he almost says it again: that he wants him to be okay, but his mind flashes back to the last time he said those words, and the kiss, and seoyun’s tears, and figures it’s better left unsaid. i want to see you happy doesn’t seem right either, because it seems like the follow up is i just don’t think i can be part of that. all i do is hurt you, and he doesn’t know if seoyun is ready to accept that yet. it certainly won’t aid in his recovery process. (he doesn’t know if he’s ready to accept it yet, either.)

“i have a lot of nice things to say about you too but i don’t know if it would make things worse or not,” he says with another small scoff of a laugh. there’s a lot he wants to do that might make matters worse. he doesn’t want to lead seoyun on; he is working so hard not to hurt him. it feels like holding his breath, and he’s already exhausted.

“seoyun…” he says again, after some silence, because a question has been haunting him. “do you wish i never went to you with that vampire bite?” do you wish you never loved me? “do you wish we never met?”

content warning: drug mention, injury mention, suicide mention/suicidal thoughts

“i never needed you,” his voice is sharp, a severeness and seriousness to his expression that he didn’t even know that he was capable of in this drugged and injured state. “i was just fine without you. i would have been fine without you too. you were able to make me believe everything because i let you. ‘cause i wanted something to look forward to, ‘cause you made me feel special and like someone would miss me if i killed myself. even when it was just sex, i could still convince myself you’d miss my dick if i caved and offed myself successfully. and it worked.” he wants to believe that he was in control, that he knew what he was doing. maybe he was, just willfully ignorant the whole time. maybe he’s only fooled himself into believing that recently.

oh, he’s still bitter. bitter that he was tricked into loving jaeyong so much, bitter that jaeyong loved him back. the bitterness bleeds into now, with seoyun feeling so much for jaeyong with so little in return. maybe it’s their destiny, a cursed fate. or maybe it’s just seoyun’s craving for self-destruction, a way to make himself feel something, even if it’s just a pain deeper than that of his injuries. he wishes he had the energy to reach over and shake jaeyong, to cry and scream and demand to know why he’s not good enough to be loved. he knows it’s crazy. he knows that even if he did, he wouldn’t get an answer.

seoyun looks down at jaeyong’s hand instead, focusing carefully on the ring. his ring. well, it used to be. one part of a set of three... maybe he thought it meant something at the time. it doesn’t; he knows that now. since he left it and ran away it doesn’t seem like it belongs to him anymore. he doesn’t belong to a set of three; why would he own the ring that does. 

“it would’ve only show something if i made you sick,” he wants to touch it, to take it back. but it’s not his anymore. he doesn’t belong here. “it was always black on my hand. mental illness, y’know? i stopped looking at it ‘cause i already felt awful, i didn’t need a reminder of it.” he still feels awful. and only some of it is the pain of his injuries and jaeyong’s shitty stitches. he wishes that his hands were steady enough to redo some of them himself. they’ll do the job in any case.

seoyun has always been perceptive. maybe he knew, consciously or not, that the three rings belong together. three parts of a whole; together for a thousand years and never once separated, at least not for long. maybe centuries ago three others had worn them, joined together by forces they couldn’t explain. maybe one person kept them safely close together, all on one hand, clinking against each other and reminding each golden band of its others. seoyun wants his ring back. but more than that he wants what he thought it promised; another thousand years together.

“the rings belong together,” he says simply, eyes heavy with sadness more than fatigue, “so it doesn’t belong to me. you should have never given it to me.” saying it out loud hurts in ways he didn’t expect. he turns his head away from jaeyong even though there’s no where to hide; he wants to bury the burning feeling in his eyes away. he wants to hide the threat of tears from jaeyong, who surely will only feel more guilty when he spots them. that’s not what seoyun wanted. that’s not why he’s here, why he called jaeyong to save his life. he shouldn’t have done that either, he realizes. maybe it would have been better just to die.

he just listens instead. to jaeyong’s apologies, to telling him how unwanted he is in much kinder words. jaeyong only owed him. he only used seoyun to save his boyfriend and himself. even his thanks feels like another fang piercing his skin, the tip driving right into his heart. seoyun doesn’t belong here. he’s known it from the beginning but in his pain and suffering he could pretend that he had a place even just temporarily. he wishes he could get out of this bed, to pick up his things and just go home. he wishes he didn’t feel so much, that the numbness would come back and he wouldn’t have to deal with this pain. even the nice things jaeyong has to say have barbs in them.

feyjaeyong​:

confusion. maybe that’s the word to best define jaeyong’s state with an injured seoyun in his life. exhaustion, maybe even more accurate. he has school and work and playing nurse to someone he convinced himself he may never see again, that he was okay never seeing again. frustration– that too, because at the end of the day, jaeyong is still selfish, and all he really sees is that he and huangjun can’t catch a break, nevermind seoyun.

he just wanted time to breathe, to heal, to live in peace after the hell jaeyong put them through. for someone as dramatic as he is, he wanted something simple, something easy, something painless.

seoyun back in his life is not that, let alone seoyun almost dying. he’s had plenty of time since saving seoyun’s life to think about that fact, and what he would’ve done if he failed, if seoyun lost too much blood, if jaeyong had to sit through a funeral with far too few people mourning someone that loved him when he never deserved it.

he thought about it, and settled on the fact that he didn’t care enough. no devastation, no real ache in his heart, but maybe he just isn’t moved by the hypothetical. maybe death means little to him, if he cared too little when he found out about his twin brother’s supposed death. he didn’t mourn then, either. maybe he’d do the same if seoyun didn’t make it: move on, process it within a year, be haunted by how he failed him next may.

the guilt he feels now is ironic, where he didn’t have any when he pictured seoyun dying. he knows he should. he doesn’t want seoyun to die, even in all of his former anger, even if he might’ve thought he did once. 

jaeyong’s life would just be easier without him. and he thinks seoyun’s life would be easier without him, too. he knows he hasn’t done a single thing but hurt seoyun in all of their time together. it doesn’t feel like he saved his life. it doesn’t feel like he did anything good, like he just prolonged some kind of deep suffering. he still didn’t want him to die. he doesn’t regret picking up the phone. it’s just…sad. he doesn’t know if they’ll ever be able to look at each other again without it hurting.

he doesn’t know how long he’s been here at seoyun’s bedside, watching him breathe, to make sure everything is working as it should, and because…he doesn’t know why. because he can’t stop thinking, because every rise and fall of seoyun’s chest is a reminder that seoyun might’ve received the worst of all the wrong jaeyong has ever done. he remembers laying his head on that chest, once, listening to a heart that he knew beat for him, a heart he knew he would smile through shattering one day.

he wonders if any of it was real. he’s wondered that for months, ever since he knew he was in love with huangjun while seoyun still lurked in the shadows of his life. he liked him; he had fun with him, beyond just toying with his feelings, otherwise he would’ve gotten bored and been the one to cut things off. the physical attraction was real. the love…when he searches his memories, everything feels cold, incomparable to the warmth he carries with him everywhere now. it is all sharp and rough, nothing soft like he knows love to be. no willingness to sacrifice, no desire for seoyun’s happiness, never wanting the best for him.

when he said he never loved him it was true. the real question is can he ever? does he want to?

he’s almost too lost in thought to even notice seoyun stir, but his eyes refocus and he sits up straighter in his chair. he reaches a hand out toward the bedside table, ready to catch the cup of water should seoyun’s medication induced clumsiness spill it. all is well, however, at least until seoyun opens his mouth.

jaeyong chuckles, because it’s what jaeyong always does, because of course he doesn’t know, at least not anymore. when he inhales, it’s deeply, air filling his lungs as a pit opens in his stomach. i loved you. it’s what jaeyong wanted back then, but now it stings. “no,” he replies, quiet, and he almost hopes seoyun doesn’t elaborate.

jaeyong’s so quiet. it feels weird, uncomfortable, like something heavy sitting on seoyun’s chest. jaeyong is never so quiet. he was always loud, confident, the center of attention. but then again, jaeyong has changed recently. some of those sharp edges have been softened out, some of the intensity he once had not, lost, but hidden behind something else. mellow, or at least as much as one of the hair trigger songs can be. he thinks that he had seen the illusion of this before; jaeyong pretended to soften out when they had dated. but this time it seems real. he doesn’t drop the act when huangjun isn’t watching, he doesn’t have to stop and think about what words will wrap him tighter around his finger. seoyun can appreciate that the change is good for jaeyong. he can’t help but feel sore that it has nothing to do with him, despite loving him first.

he wants to sit up in bed. so he tries, but is met immediately with loud, painful protests from his injured leg not wanting to be moved from its comfortable position. but seoyun can’t talk like this, even in his dizzy medicated state. he reaches for jaeyong for help, wordlessly asking for support as he drags himself upright. his head spins and he regrets his own stubbornness only for the moment, a soft groan of complaint finally escpaing him.

the quiet hangs there still, almost as if seoyun had forgotten about what he said. or maybe understood the ‘no’ as a plea not to say anything more. but neither is the case, the thoughts still weighing heavily on his mind until the dam breaks and they spill out on his tongue. he just needs to catch his breath for a moment first, the struggle of moving and the pain that followed taking his breath away for a moment. obviously he’s not on that high of a dose if he’s still feeling anything at all.

“you saw me,” he finally breathes, voice soft as if telling a secret. “at my worst. when i didn’t want to get out of bed. my scars, my story. and... even though it was just... fun to you... you decided to stick with me. you never pitied me.” it had meant a lot back then. it would still mean a lot now, but the way jaeyong looks at him isn’t the way seoyun wishes he would (even if seoyun also wishes that he wouldn’t wish that). “you had no idea what you were getting into. but it didn’t scare you away either.” he wonders, briefly, if he would have had that with the new relationship that he ruined all too soon. that person hadn’t known all of seoyun yet; he had been carefully introducing the best parts of himself first, hoping that they’d be good enough to outweigh the other baggage. he screwed that up too quickly to ever know.

eyes close. he’s still tired, he doesn’t want to sleep. that’s all he does these days and he’s sick of it. maybe he just doesn’t want to see the inevitable apology on jaeyong’s face now. he already knows it: i’m sorry, seoyun. an apology for not being able to care that way, for caring about huangjun too much to let someone else in. seoyun doesn’t blame him. he just wishes it were different.

@feyjaeyong​

content warning: drug mentions, not really a hospital but might seem like it, injury

he wakes up in an unfamiliar bed. the angle hue of the lights aren’t the same as what he expects in his own bedroom. he studies a ceiling of which he doesn’t know how to read any of the cracks, as if in another country in a language he doesn’t understand. seoyun is confused every time he drags himself back into consciousness, prescription-grade painkillers and a general weariness slowing a normally sharp mind. he’ll remember soon enough, from the feeling of sheets that don’t belong to him, to the faint herbal scent that doesn’t belong to his own home but is familiar all the same. he’s in huangjun’s apartment, this time as the patient. and in the same moment he remembers where he is, he recalls why he’s there. he feels like he’s been hit by a semi truck. maybe being mauled by a werewolf is a comparable experience.

the medicine makes his mouth feel dry. he turns, looking for a water cup, and finds company at his bedside instead. looking at jaeyong hurts in a way too. a dull ache, not nearly as painful as the slow to heal gashes in his limbs, but heavy and present all the same. he’s quiet, like he’s trying not to be noticed, as he reaches for his water. the cup is heavier than he remembers, either refilled while he slept or what’s left of his limbs yet to find their strength now that he’s awake, or some combination of both.

his head is fuzzy from the medication; he probably told his caretakers to give him too large of a dose. seoyun can’t blame himself; he’s only halfway to being a doctor and he’s missing clinicals while bound to this sickbed. he’ll be behind when he’s finally able to return to classes. he’ll have to repeat the semester. but maybe that’s not too bad; maybe he’ll end up in clinicals with kyuhwan if recovery takes long enough. he wouldn’t mind it too much as long as he had a friend there with him. maybe he’d know how to prescribe the right dose of medication to himself if he was able to attend his classes, though.

far-away eyes finally focus in on jaeyong, trying to figure out what exactly he’s doing there. tending to the injured seoyun, obviously, but why right now? why not stuck to huangjun’s side where he so clearly belongs? even that thought sends a painful ache through seoyun’s chest. has he ever belonged by anyone’s side? will he ever? the sigh he breathes is long, sending painful shudders through him where aching ribs expand and contract.

feyjaeyong​:

| tw: blood |

“okay,” jaeyong assures him. “i’ll get it for you,” and i won’t let a wolf take you out like they did with your dad. part of him is furious; the wolf is so lucky it’s dead. if seoyun didn’t need him here, it would’ve met a far worse fate than death at seoyun’s hand. somehow, he feels like he failed, too. jaeyong, a song hunter sworn to protect humans, sworn to kill all supernatural creatures, jaeyong who lost sight of his purpose in the past months without his family to push him forward in it. maybe he needs something like this. it shakes him up; hopefully it shakes him awake, too. he needs to do better. he needs to kill them all. 

seoyun grabs onto his arm, and the anger drains from his body almost instantly. for some reason it makes jaeyong want to cry. maybe it’s because it’s familiar and unfamiliar at once, both weak and desperate at the same time. desperation isn’t foreign to them, but the lightness of it is. he can’t remember the last time seoyun touched him like he wanted him for anything, let alone softly. it’s because he’s dying. jaeyong knows. seoyun’s life is in his hands in all the ways jaeyong never intended. if seoyun dies here, will his spirit live on? will he forgive him from wherever he goes next, if there is anywhere? 

no. he can’t think about it. there’s no room for uncertainty. he has nerves of steel. 

(he needs them, god, he needs to have them, he needs this to be the one thing his parents taught him that he doesn’t fail at now that he’s left them.)

“seoyun,” he says instead, leveling his voice, making effort not to let it shake with the emotion welling up in him. it’s gentle but firm at once. let go. he’s free soon enough, and he focuses on seoyun’s leg. he puts pressure on it first with one with some of the abundance of gauze he brought with him (and it’s a good thing he did, now that he’s looking at what he’s working with.) 

he situates himself so he can elevate seoyun’s leg with one hand and still apply pressure with the other. “when do i rinse this out? now, or do i wait until the bleeding stops more?” he doesn’t know when that’ll be. seoyun’s blood soaks the gauze and stains his hand far sooner than jaeyong is ready for. “fuck,” he mutters, and he has to lower seoyun’s leg to keep pressure on it, then takes more gauze out of his backpack, pressing more to the wound “i probably have to just rinse it out now, don’t i? i don’t think i have enough saline for everything, but i have room temperature water. i think i need to get it bandaged up as soon as possible. are you really going to make me give you stitches? when should i do that?” jaeyong remembers how to give stitches, it’s just the order of everything he isn’t certain of with an injury this severe.

he doesn’t blame seoyun for not knowing he’d answer. if their roles were reversed, jaeyong would know seoyun wouldn’t pick up the phone for him anymore. not like you’d call me for anything else, he nearly says, but moments like these require thought before he speaks, and he realizes they aren’t helpful to seoyun’s survival here. he holds them back. he chokes back the lingering bitterness, and that strange feeling of privilege in being the one seoyun called that lingers too. “i figured it was important,” he says instead, voice soft, and maybe seoyun’s head is clear enough to decipher the meaning in between the lines of those words. jaeyong hopes he doesn’t think too hard about it.

this is the moment in the movies where confessions pour from lips, air heavy with finality and fear, but jaeyong doesn’t feel any of it, or he doesn’t let himself. seoyun will survive, so there’s no need, even if he had anything to say. maybe it’s that irrational confidence, or maybe jaeyong can simply never be vulnerable with seoyun. maybe he is so stubborn that he would hide the truth even from a seoyun just barely clinging to life.

does he have anything to confess? it feels like he should. it seems fitting for him to say i love you, like the universe waits for it, like it leads him to it even now, but jaeyong doesn’t want to lie to him. maybe, when he’s certain there’s nothing he can do to save him, he will. maybe it would be merciful to lead seoyun into death knowing he is loved. (no, jaeyong knows even a dying seoyun wouldn’t believe him. even now, it would be cruel.)

the truth is that jaeyong doesn’t love him, but maybe in another life he could. he hopes, if seoyun dies here and gets another life after this, that it’s that one. 

“i don’t want you to die,” is the best he has, and maybe it’ll be funny later. maybe he’ll remember seoyun’s confession to him being i don’t hate you, and he’ll laugh about it. “so don’t, okay? i’m gonna need you to do a little work to stay with me.” 

jaeyong’s hands on him hurt. and as much as instinct begs seoyun to try to pull away from the pressure on his deepest wounds, he forces himself to stay in place. he broke out in a cold sweat long before help arrived and he trembles under the pain, through the terrifying chill that runs through his whole body. but he leans into the uncomfortable sensations, determined to still feel them, determined to live. his breath comes in shorter gasps, his heartbeat throbs loudly in his own ears. but it’s still beating, despite all of the blood and pain. he tries to count the beats to stay present and aware.

“flush it first,” he pants, fighting the urge to sit up and attempt to do it himself. he needs to stay down, to save his energy and keep as much blood as possible still inside his body. “then stitch. then bandage. it’ll be fine.” it has to be fine. even if jaeyong’s stitches are ugly and bulky and lack all of the refinement and training that seoyun’s would. “leave a gap for drainage.” he closes his eyes, struggles to breathe through the pain, “or else my leg- my leg’ll... you’ll trap bacteria in me.” he should have taught jaeyong more. or he should have called a kang who actually knows what they’re doing. seoyun wasn’t thinking when he mashed the call button for this particular contact. he’ll never be able to explain to himself what he was thinking, why he reached out to jaeyong of all people in this moment.

he could have been happy to keep avoiding him. maybe eventually he could have forgotten about him, both of them. seoyun could’ve let the sham that was their former relationship fade to nothing more than an old memory. he could have let go of the feeling of jaeyong’s hands, the sound of his voice in the morning, the way his own fingers would catch in his hair. he could have forgotten about huangjun’s gentle smiles, the way he handles his tea set like a loving mother, his quiet power that could stop a storm simply by asking. maybe seoyun would have met someone else, eventually. someone who would hold his heart gently, who would love his brokenness genuinely. maybe he wouldn’t have really been happy, but he could have been content.

but the universe decides otherwise. she pulls them back together, again and again; no matter how far the tide strays from the shore it always comes back in. maybe there really was no one else he could have called other than jaeyong. maybe they’re not friends, maybe they were never really lovers. maybe fate ties them together anyways. seoyun doesn’t think this deeply on it in his fragile state; he can’t. he can only focus on sensations, on clinging to every word as if it’ll be the last he’ll ever hear. if he steps too close to the void and could look in with a clear mind, he might have been able to see the patterns. he might have known that even if he never left, even if he stayed away, somehow they’d always end up here.

feyjaeyong​:

jaeyong laughs, and he hopes this small hint of their usual banter is a good omen for seoyun hanging on until he gets there. “i said the radio, not my music,” jaeyong points out. “but you’re right, the radio usually sucks and i didn’t bring my music with me, so i guess you just get to listen to the car. i’ll try to keep talking too. shouldn’t be too hard.” it’s true. jaeyong has always been good at talking; maybe now he can finally put it to use for a good cause– give something seoyun to focus on aside from the white noise of the car’s engine and the bumps in the road. 

jaeyong winces. it sounds painful. “okay,” he repeats, like earlier, same uncharacteristic gentleness that becomes more and more common for him by the day. “i’m on my way. i’m almost there, okay? hang on.” even if he doesn’t want to hear it, he’s thankful for the sounds of seoyun’s agony, because at least he knows he’s still conscious. 

he listens as seoyun lists off the injuries, lips settling into a small frown. he tries to picture the injuries in his head as he drives, and what he’ll do once he gets there so he doesn’t waste a single second. it’s already been too long. he accelerates a little more, and he prays for no traffic, just in case there’s some higher power in the universe that hasn’t already decided he belongs in the worst imaginable afterlife. (seoyun doesn’t deserve that though, and maybe that’s enough. seoyun deserves this life, and a chance to make it something he wants to keep.)

“alright,” he replies, and he’s as ready as he’ll ever be. he keeps talking; he runs over the protocol for treating the injuries that he thinks he knows, and asks questions like should i clean the wounds the way they are or bandage them right away? am i going to need to give you stitches or will you let me take you to someone else? 

he’s just about there, and when he pulls up to seoyun’s exact location, he sees a wolf laying in the middle of the street. he realizes then: this is familiar. jaeyong was also mauled by a wolf once– also just barely managed to kill it before it killed him, its teeth still buried in his neck even as he passed out from the blood loss. he sits at the wheel too long, staring, daeyong’s screams echoing in his head again, but he reminds himself that daeyong is fine. sure, daeyong is a werewolf; for a song, maybe it’s a fate worse than death. but he is alive, and it quiets the screams. he reminds himself there is someone else here who very well might not be alive if he’s too slow, so he reaches for the supplies in the passenger’s seat and jumps out of the car.

he needs to move the wolf. “it would’ve been funny if i ran over you,” he says, because humor makes it easier when in reality he is afraid, irrationally so, not even of seoyun dying, just…he doesn’t know. he needs to move the wolf. “i can get it off of you but i don’t want to make anything worse,” he admits, and he hesitates too much, god, he just needs to do it. he goes for its head first, opens its mouth to make sure it doesn’t take any of seoyun’s skin with it when he pushes it off, and the wound looks gruesome. he’s afraid the wolf is putting pressure on the injuries, and that seoyun will only bleed more once the body is gone.

no, they’ll deal with it. he carefully lifts the great beast off seoyun, then turns and unceremoniously dumps it onto the ground beside them, kicking it for good measure. fuck you, dog. “okay,” he whispers, taking in the visual of the injuries he’s working with for just a split second before he unpacks the backpack with everything he thinks he needs. he brought enough to handle this (he hopes so, anyway.)

he gets to work on the leg first, because it looks worse, even if seoyun didn’t confirm it was himself. “i can do this,” he assures seoyun before he expresses any of his concerns that jaeyong knows are coming. (maybe it’s a little for himself, too.) 

the world is just starting to get dark, his eyelids getting a little too heavy. the rumble of a nearby engine rouses him somewhat, forcing eyes open and straining for only the smallest movements to see if he can catch a glimpse of jaeyong’s car. and if it’s not jaeyong... oh well. at least he won’t die here alone on the cold pavement. at least there will be someone here to witness his final moments, to lie to him and tell him it will be okay, or maybe freak out at the scene they stumbled across as if it’s worse for them than the bleeding man on the ground. at least he’ll be in someone’s stories, immortalized in their memory.

but it is jaeyong, not a stranger, and seoyun has slightly more confidence in his chances of survival. he’s no kang healer, but he learned quickly, and he’s here. he’s better than nothing. he hears him speak, but the words don’t quite make sense. they don’t process, stick in his mind as anything other than familiar sounds. seoyun isn’t doing well, but he’s holding on. his grip on life has been weak for years, but suddenly it’s desperate, clinging to whatever threads are left. the ringing in his head and pulse beating in his ears certainly doesn’t help either.

it’s not until jaeyong moves the wolf that seoyun has any sense of what he’s saying or what’s going on. he doesn’t move, not because his neck or back are injured, but to save what little energy he has left. he’d love to shift into a more comfortable position to die in, but not while he still has a chance at life. “i’ll want my knife back,” he mumbles, tongue heavier in his mouth than it had been before, “’s my dad’s...” is he here right now? is seoyun close enough to that edge that if he looks around, he’ll see him again? he’s afraid to; he doesn’t know if he’d see the man or the pulpy monster he became.

he reaches for jaeyong, grabs his arm with the uninjured hand, to hold onto something of this world, something still alive. he doesn’t know how to explain it, the constant exhaustion, the desire to give up, and the frantic need to live. he doesn’t know if jaeyong would even get it if he could find the words. he knows he has to let go too, that his grip is probably weak enough to just gently tug out of. jaeyong needs both hands free to treat him, to actually bring him back closer to the side of the living.

feyjaeyong​:

“fuck,” jaeyong mutters under his breath. of course it’s a werewolf. jaeyong is a song hunter; he is a warrior more than he is a healer. he would take tracking down and killing a wolf over patching someone up any day, but he doesn’t have a choice in this. seoyun has no other help coming, even if he should, even if there are countless people better equipped for this situation than jaeyong, as much as he hates to admit it. surely seoyun knows at least one other kang hunter he could’ve called.

(part of jaeyong wonders if seoyun thinks he’s going to die, if he called him because he doesn’t want to die with a stranger. jaeyong doesn’t know how to feel about that possibility, about the chance that he might be the one seoyun chose to die with.)

“okay,” he answers, and he finds the closest blanket. he doesn’t want to ruin any by getting them covered in blood, but he knows huangjun won’t mind once he finds out why it’s gone missing. he’ll buy them an even better blanket after this.

he keeps the phone against his ear, using one arm to sling the backpack over his shoulder, then pick up the blanket. he hears a noise on the other end of the line, but he hears seoyun speak, more distant now, before he can question anything. “yeah,” he replies; he’s still there, and he nearly asks are you okay? which is almost comical. what he means is what did you do with the phone? but there are more important matters at hand. “stay on the phone,” he reminds him, and he rushes out the door.

he’s in no state to wait for the elevator, so he takes the stairs, and it’s a near miracle he doesn’t fall in the way he charges down them. when he gets to his car, he tilts his head, holding his phone against his shoulder with the side of his face as he takes out his keys. he throws the blanket and his backpack into the passenger’s seat, then hops into the driver’s seat.

he puts the phone on speaker, then sets it down on the car’s console. “want me to turn the radio on for you?” jaeyong jokes once he starts the car, because he can’t help it, because it’s the only way he survives moments like these.

it’s only now, when he’s at the mercy of the road, that the small voice of doubt speaks up in the back of his mind for the first time. seoyun could die. seoyun is dying, right now, on the other end of that phone. it almost gives him enough time to feel afraid, to feel powerless, but not quite. for now, jaeyong is still calm, even as he speeds down the road, takes every street he knows will have the least traffic.

“tell me what your injuries are,” jaeyong says, louder than before to make sure seoyun can hear him over the hum of the car. “and tell me what i need to do when i get there.” jaeyong has faith in his own abilities to treat seoyun’s injuries, but a refresher wouldn’t hurt. more than that, he wants to keep seoyun talking– wants to give him something to tether him to the present and keep him from drifting off to somewhere unreachable. 

stay on the phone, jaeyong says, as if seoyun had any thought of hanging up right now. he’s lucky the phone works at all after the thrashing the werewolf put him through. but there’s no clever quip on his tongue, no angry remark back at jaeyong right now. just a quiet “i’m still here,” between gasps panicked gasps for air. he’s tired. he’s losing blood too quickly. maybe he should have called an ambulance, but what are the paramedics going to say about the corpse of a wolf in the middle of the city? seoyun doesn’t want to open that can of worms. he just wants to survive this.

instead he tries to focus on the distant sounds of jaeyong on the other end of the line; the sound of doors opening and closing, unidentified rustling, car keys jingling. he’ll be here soon, he keeps telling himself. just hang on. breathe. it’s still difficult, heart racing a mile a minute. 

seoyun turns his head to look at the dropped phone when he hears particularly loud rummaging from it, and then jaeyong’s voice comes through again. “want me to turn the radio on for you?” seoyun almost laughs, some unidentified pain killing the humor before it really finds a place on his face or in his voice. “no, your music sucks,” he manages, a tight gasp of pain coming shortly after. the adrenaline wore off some time ago; he feels the full pain of the impact on his torso in full now. “god, it hurts.” he groans now too, a low sound of agony not unlike a dying creature.

he tries to take inventory of himself on jaeyong’s request. his head feels foggy, unfocused, and he’s not sure if it’s shock or blood loss getting to him. it scares him either way, completely helpless to prevent neither one nor the other. “lacerations... fucking dog bites... left forearm and right leg. the leg’s worse, multiple wounds... they’re deep. canine bites are always bigger under the surface,” he reminds jaeyong, and himself, that things are so much worse than they look. even if he’s not dying, he has weeks of recovery ahead of him. god, how is he going to attend his clinicals?

feyjaeyong​:

maybe it’s fate that jaeyong has the night off. (jaeyong believes in fate more now than he ever has.)

his classes today were in the early afternoon, so he has some much deserved time in the evening to rest. jaeyong isn’t as tired these days as he was a month ago, but he still feels it: the wear and tear of bouncing between classes and a job and hunting and time with his boyfriend. in some ways it’s unfortunate that tonight is his night off, because where jaeyong would usually like to spend time with huangjun, he has an appointment.

in the end, maybe that comes down to fate too, and when his phone rings, and he hears why, any of his prior disappointment vanishes.

when his phone rings, he wonders what seoyun wants. he wonders how long he’s been back since he left that note on his kitchen counter saying he’d be gone for a while. it shakes him out of his nearly-successful attempt to wipe the traces of seoyun out of his life, leaving him forgotten, some unfortunate and unneeded part of his past. because he and huangjun have built a life, and it is a life without the shadow of seoyun and his affections lingering over them– or it was.

they’re happy, or almost, and here seoyun is to saunter back in and ruin all of it.

jaeyong can’t help but feel it, and yet he still doesn’t hesitate when he answers the call, because part of him knows there’s no reason for this. what reason does seoyun have for calling jaeyong, when seoyun was the one to turn his back on him the last time they saw one another? when seoyun was the one that left? when the last piece of contact was a ‘fuck you’ from jaeyong over text left unanswered?

maybe part of him knows there’s something wrong. more than anything, he just wants to know.

“y–” he doesn’t even get to utter the yes? he intended to before seoyun’s voice breaks on the other end of the line, and a small pit opens up in his stomach. “okay,” jaeyong replies, calm, almost reassuring, but he isn’t, not really. why? why would seoyun call him? he wants to ask. why didn’t you call a fucking ambulance, stupid? but it must be something seoyun doesn’t want to explain.

he called him because he doesn’t have anyone else. jaeyong knows. what he didn’t know was that seoyun still had him at all. 

he does. there isn’t even a moment where jaeyong considers hanging up and leaving seoyun to die. maybe he’s still angry, or maybe he’s not, but it’s not enough to leave seoyun alone at a time like this. he doesn’t want seoyun to die; he especially doesn’t want him to die alone.

“what happened?” he asks, and he leaps into action. he finds his hunting backpack, dumps out most of the contents aside from the first aid kit, then raids the medical supplies he and huangjun keep at the apartment. it’s more now than ever, their silent understanding that it was just them now, that there was no kang healer on call for them anymore, that they needed to take care of each other because no one else would come. there’s some irony in this, but it goes unappreciated as jaeyong shoves as much as he can into his backpack. “what should i bring, i mean. well– tell me that first, then tell me what happened. stay on the phone.” 

something is tight in his chest. jaeyong doesn’t know how bad it is– what exactly seoyun needs help with –but it sounds dire. yet even then, if seoyun is on the precipice of death, jaeyong is still the one he calls, and he calls him jae. he’s…glad.

it’s not the same satisfaction as it once would’ve been, knowing seoyun still relied on him this much, knowing seoyun had no one better to call, something about the power. no, it isn’t that. it’s almost something warm, like it’s some kind of honor. 

he didn’t know that there was space for more fear until he feels the relief that is jaeyong’s voice on the other side of the line. the conscious seoyun couldn’t think about the fact that he might not pick up, that the unanswered text on his phone was their final interaction. no, he would have known he was doomed if that had crossed his mind; he would have given up and been beyond saving even if some good samaritan did find him, broken and bleeding on the side of the road. seoyun tries to take a breath, cut very short by pain and shock and coming out as a tiny gasp instead.

“werewolf,” his words are short, each one a labor of breath that’s coming in increasingly shorter, shallower pants. “chewed up... i don’t think-” he has to gasp for breath again, “-don’t think that anything’s broken.” not limbs, anyways. his ribs feel awfully bruised from the impact of the dead beast. he hasn’t been able to move away from the corpse yet; it heightens the anxiety that already comes from shock. “bring a blanket. i’m in shock.” he can feel himself sweating now, the cold sinking in deeper.

i don’t want to die, the thought still feels foreign in his mind, the words not finding shape on his lips through struggled gasps for air. he lets the phone fall from his ear, clatter against the pavement. he doesn’t hang up, he’s just not going to waste his strength holding it in place. instead, he uses his good arm to try to apply pressure to the deepest gash in his leg. despite all his practice and training, his stomach turns. not just from pain, but from the way the flesh shifts more than it should under his palm, a subcutaneous layer ripped from the tissues beneath; it’s the perfect breeding ground for all of the bacteria living on the side of the street where he lay.

“jae?” he doesn’t know if jaeyong is still on the phone, if he can even still hear him from where it lays just a couple of inches from his head. “are you- you still there?” am i going to die alone? at least his rings aren’t burning him, silver still sitting comfortably on his skin a sign that despite the attack he’s still very much human. “hurry.”

he shivers. it’s the shock, the last cool breeze of winter not quite ready to surrender to spring, the puddle of blood rapidly cooling around him, his own sweat against his skin. he’s brought hunters back from this state dozens of times but he hasn’t experienced the helplessness of it himself until now. he’s frustrated despite the fog creeping into his head. seoyun knows exactly what to do, exactly where his kit is and which antibiotics and painkillers he would bring. he can imagine his own hands, steadier and with much more strength than the ones he currently possesses, dragging a surgeon’s needle and thread, closing the wound. will jaeyong know to leave a gap unstitched for drainage? will he rinse out the injuries with saline for any debris before he gets to work? seoyun taught him some things, but it’s been a long time. 

tw: blood, npc death, mentions of suicidal thoughts

@feyjaeyong

the snarl that echoed off of dark buildings made his blood turn to ice, freezing him in place. it’s the sound of seoyun’s nightmares, those horrible growls, screams, wet muscle and cracking bone sounds that have haunted him so many years later. in that moment, he forgets everything that isn’t raw, uncompromising fear. 

he knows the feeling of a silver blade in his hand, a tool that was taught to him as a child. but it wasn’t the one that was drilled until it became instinctive. no, the kangs studied the needle and scalpel more diligently. seoyun had been a fair hunter, competent enough when he’s prepared and focused. but this is an ambush. no time to build up his courage, to decide what weapon is best for the enemy at hand, to brush up on skills that he doesn’t practice nearly as much as he should. this is a test of improvisation and seoyun has never been very good at working on the fly.

heavy footsteps pace around him, a slow circular arc. werewolf. he knew it already, but seeing the massive furred body out of the corner of his eye brings a new panic to his chest. this isn’t the full moon, the werewolf shouldn’t be so aggro on a normal human. but it still circles him slowly, hackles raised and lips curled back in a savage snarl. seoyun’s brain starts allowing him to think coherently again just for a moment to realize that the beast is sizing him up, testing just what he is. it should have occurred to him that letting a couple of werewolves live in his home would get their scent all over him. he never thought that he’d be mixed up in the middle of the so called werewolf war.

carefully, he reaches behind him, fingers finding the knife he wears on the back of his belt. even if he hasn’t seen live combat in months, his father’s voice echoes in his head, never leave home without it. it’s silver. it will do against this monster.

he’s slower than a werewolf. he’ll never be as strong. but when the beast finally lunges at him he forgets how powerful they really are, how it only takes a blink of the eye before he can feel the beast’s breath against him. seoyun only gets half a moment to act; old training comes back to him, protect the chest, face, throat, arms up in guard, left arm in front to save his dominant arm from the worst of the attack. he feels teeth on his forearm and seoyun strikes, letting the blade flash against the thick skin of the werewolf’s shoulder.

it makes the beast back off, if only for a moment, but he can feel the punctures in his arm. the wolf must’ve tasted his blood the same way the blade did. they eye each other, size each other up. the creature lunges again, and again seoyun is too slow. it feints, what he thought was going to be another lunge for his neck goes to his leg instead, teeth tearing through his jeans and into the flesh below. he panics. the blade flashes again, this time only glancing off the maw in a shallow cut. the wolf snarls his pain but doesn’t let go. he shakes and seoyun can feel his flesh being ripped from muscle, teeth sinking deeper into his limb. he screams, agonized.

the creature doesn’t let go for more than a moment. it finds another place on  his leg to bury its teeth and shakes again, tearing seoyun apart like a dog toy. he can’t breathe through the pain, through his own screams. seoyun realizes he could die like this, in the jaws of a monster. maybe it’s because it’s a werewolf, or because the pain is too intense to let him go quietly, peacefully. he realizes, despite everything, he doesn’t want to die. at least not like this. he reaches for the werewolf, his blood staining the beast’s fur as he wraps his fingers around the creature’s ear. with a mighty effort, he rides the next great shake, the force rattling the teeth in his head as he wrestles with his own strength to hang onto the monster. with a pained cry, he drives the knife into a yellow-gold eye. the painful howl hasn’t left the werewolf’s lips as the light in the remaining eye goes dark, the brain of the beast irreplaceably damaged by a silver blade.

seoyun can only lay there, his blood mixing with the monster’s as he tries to catch his breath. the wolf still has its mouth around his leg, no life left in those jaws to bite down again. but the last of seoyun’s strength had gone into that final blow, a lifesaving measure that he wasn’t sure he had in him. 

he realizes then that no one is coming for him. no one will look for him if he’s not home for dinner in an hour. not even daeyong or the new werewolf he keeps bringing around. no one answered his screams, made to stop the savage animal attack on the college kid just trying to take a shortcut home. he could die here, he realizes, bleed out before anyone even knows he’s gone. the thought terrifies him in a way that it hasn’t in a long time.

with his good arm, he fishes through his pocket. by some miracle, his phone is still there, albeit with the screen shattered at some point in the skirmish. at least it turns on. location, he thinks first, unsure if he’ll be able to give directions even if someone picks up his call. he shares it. and then mashes the call button. he can feel the cold setting in, his heartrate picking up. shock. this isn’t good.

just get away. anywhere, it didn’t matter, as long as he was far enough that he could stop thinking, put everything out of sight, out of mind. it’s how he finds himself on a beach in the middle of february surrounded by sand and the quiet roar of waves licking greedily at the shoreline as if trying to swallow up the earth. far from seoul, from the illicit surgery in his late father’s house, from the people who haunted him there. far from his own mistakes. he had already gone this far when he realized he couldn’t outrun them, that his own consciousness was sure to torture him regardless of the environment. the epiphany hadn’t motivated him to give up and go home, but it did stop him from going any further.

seoyun has come to sit on this beach every morning since arriving here. he watches the sun rise on the worst of his sleepless nights. other times he sets an alarm just to make sure he can come see it. there’s no one out here at this hour except for the stray seabird. he watches one now as she hops around, digging her beak in the sand looking for something to eat. he wonders if she has a family, a flock somewhere nearby, or if she’s just as lost and alone as he is.

✂ ── BLACK AND GRAY

“that bad, huh?” jaeyong chuckles. it must be, for him to receive this sympathy from seoyun, more unexpected to jaeyong today than most days. maybe he expects a you’re fine, or a scolding, and really, “it doesn’t feel that bad.” it hurts, sure, but give it some aloe and a few hours and he could get back to training if need be. he was trained to endure pain, how to fight through it, how to not be slowed down by an injury, how to survive even with odds stacked against you. sleeping on it tonight might be a bitch, but he’s been through worse– physically, at least. 

so yeah, seoyun is right. he is lucky it’s only this. at the same time, however…if only seoyun knew. it’s far from only this. “it’s not that bad,” he repeats. “well, you’re the medical expert, so i guess it is, but it doesn’t hurt that bad.” maybe it’s just typical jaeyong bravado. truthfully, he doesn’t know. part of him feels numb at his core now, physically, emotionally, jaeyong’s mind shutting down after the tribulations of the day.

he doesn’t have the energy to argue, and maybe that’s indication enough of his true struggle– his exhaustion, his demoralization. he sits as seoyun demanded. when he returns with pills in hand, jaeyong takes them with a smile that’s small, all silent gratitude. he swallows them, and ignores the pain of this movement alone. a cool cloth. jaeyong gives seoyun a single nod of approval, because he knows how these things go. he and daeyong would help each other like this, back when these burns were shared.

“almost died today,” he chuckles, as he always does, even as his throat grows tight. “twice actually, i think,” he says, voice strained. what a way it would be to go: in training of all things, alone. sometimes, he thinks the best thing that could’ve happened was him dying alongside daeyong. (daeyong who didn’t actually die; maybe death would’ve been better for both of them.)

he was never supposed to be alone like this– alone but not alone. he still has people. he still has a life; he is still social and exuberant, both sincerely and embellished, but everything is different. he thought he filled the emptiness daeyong left with other things: recovery from an injury, training to get back in form, band practice, more hunting, huangjun. yet there is still something missing that he now knows he will never really replace. he’s felt it ever since the head hunt, feelings he never dealt with– that he never felt. it was like everything with daeyong was synchronized– like he had to learn how to walk again, how to breathe again.

he feels that now too, and he wonders if there’s something wrong with his lungs today, because he can never seem to get quite enough air.

“if it was just a little worse i’d be sending you to the hospital,” seoyun doesn’t sugarcoat things, he doesn’t make the situation out to be anything more or less than what it is. jaeyong’s back is bad. how he got to this point seoyun doesn’t know; he doesn’t think he wants to know either. “i’m not a real doctor yet. they’ve got people who specialize in this sort of thing.” he’s been setting bones and sewing up skin for as long as he can remember; sometimes the people around him have to be reminded that he can’t bring them back from the dead. as much as he claims to hate jaeyong, he doesn’t actually want to see him dead.

seoyun just doesn’t know how he can laugh like this; surely every breath, every tiny pull of his lungs expanding under his skin, hurts anew. this is torture, plain and simple.

he dabs the cloth carefully across jaeyong’s tender flesh, trying to suck away as much of the heat as possible, and trying to recall what he had been taught; bandages should be the nonstick kind, don’t leave it uncovered, but clothes will irritate the blisters. he doesn’t have his full first aid kit with him, he doesn’t have the right kind of bandage. better to leave it uncovered than something get stuck to the irritated area.

“was it your parents?” he only knows a little about the song family’s training regimen, just the bits and pieces that jaeyong had once confessed to him. it feels like a lifetime ago, back when seoyun thought that he meant something to someone, that it was trust that made jaeyong tell him these little truths and not some cruel manipulation. the memories are all tainted now; every gentle word and kind touch turned to poison in seoyun’s mind. he knows there was some truth though, just none of the feelings were real.

feyjaeyong​:

| tw: abuse, torture, suffocation |

seoyun knows. of course he does. jaeyong lets out a breath of amusement, because of course seoyun knows. jaeyong wonders where he went wrong, to let someone know him as intimately as seoyun does– still does after more than a year without him. (without, but still with, between his sheets, beneath his hands.)

maybe it was too much honesty, betraying jaeyong’s preferred mystery. maybe he liked seoyun back then, somewhere within his game of apathy. did he care for him, even with intent to hurt him all along? does he care for him now? if seoyun hadn’t broken up with him, where would they be?

he doesn’t know the answer to any of those questions. (he thinks about them too much to still not know.)

they would be a trainwreck– a house fire, surely, as they always were. sometimes he misses it: the volatility, the detonation of it all. 

maybe they trained a part of him to like the burning.

but his back still hurts, even if it’s all familiar: seoyun, the pain, like deja vu even if he’s never quite been here before. it’s familiar when he mutters, “you just want me to take my shirt off,” too, even if it lacks its typical cocky fire. he wants to maintain normalcy, but seoyun already knows, and jaeyong can’t breathe. he feels like he’s drowning– like he’s still stuck at the bottom of the sea, still weighed down. 

(they put him in a box today– an unceremonious version of a coffin. he climbed into it without a fight, knowing he would lose, knowing if he resisted it would be worse, knowing he needed this. he is fearful again. he is shakable, unsteady, unreliable, and they need to fix it. he knows. he let them bury him underground, an experience that wasn’t new, but wasn’t the same without his twin brother holding a shovel above him. this time, it was his sister, still strong, still trustworthy, but not daeyong. not daeyong. he clutched the walky talky they sent with him, and listened as his sister spoke over the line.

this time, he needed to solve a riddle before they would dig him up. he needed to prove he could keep his wits about him even in his nightmare scenario, even terrified. 

“what disappears as soon as you say its name?”

“air,” he tried.

“that’s not it.”

it was true, though. with every word jaeyong spoke he lost air. his breathing quickened despite his best attempts at composure, thoughts raced. wind. no, that wasn’t it.

“what disappears as soon as you say its name?” jaekyung repeated, and he heard something familiar over the static. he swore he heard his voice.

“daeyong?” 

“what?”

“dae…” voice small, broken. he didn’t know if his throat felt tight from fear or the memory of him, the lack.

“jaeyong,” jaekyung says over the walkie talkie.

“i know!” he fired back. what disappears as soon as you say its name? 

“a dream,” he tried. he knew it wasn’t it, but he needed to try. he couldn’t breathe. he pounded against the top of the box with his free hand, like that could do anything to save him. he could still hear his voice saying his name.

“jaeyong.”

“dae?”

“jaeyong, no. please,” jaekyung hissed over the line.

“daeyong!” he yelled anyway, finger still pressed on that button to speak his family on the soil above him.

“jaeyong, he’s gone,” his sister pleaded. he could hear the grief in jaekyung’s voice, too– the fear, the pain. “jaeyong! come on!” he heard her breath catch, and he wondered if she felt it too– that choking feeling. “focus! what disappears as soon as you say its name!”

jaeyong sobbed. he couldn’t breathe. “dig me up,” he begged. “i can’t do it. dig me up.”

“yes you can!” jaekyung argued. “jaeyong, you can do this. i know you can.” she spoke quickly, but somehow still firmly, even with the tears he could hear in her voice too– just like a song. “what disappears as soon as you say its name?”

“uhhhh,” and he stared listing off names, anything he could think of that might even come close, and jaekyung’s silence indicated his failure. then he got it. “silence! silence.”

“yes! that’s it!” jaekyung exclaimed. “dig him up! please!” he heard her yell. 

“jaeyong,” she returned her attention back to him. “you’re okay. you’re going to be okay. “

“jaekyung,” he whined, but he couldn’t find words. i want to see him. i miss him. 

“i’m sorry,” she replied, a quiet sob over the line. 

he sprung up as soon as he was able, out into the fresh air, the wind blowing so welcome, and then immediately collapsed onto the ground, weak and lightheaded, only realizing then how tear-streaked his face was. 

he half expected his brother to greet him, that panic in his eyes reserved only for jaeyong, disappearing and replaced by the nonchalant confidence the song twins shared in the face of anyone else. instead, it was just the faint sound of jaekyung sobbing as she crawled across the dirt toward him and put a hand on his back.

then came the shower. for screaming. for giving up.)

he takes his shirt off as requested, and turns, showing seoyun his back. it’s just short of blistering, still red and angry. “so, doc…” he croaks, but he smiles anyway, even through the pain, even if seoyun can’t see, and even if it’s exhausted. “how do i look?”

seoyun frowns, biting back some retort about how jaeyong never has to be asked more than once to strip. it’s not appropriate right now and seoyun knows a song distraction when he hears it. if he argues with jaeyong now, he’ll never see the injury. and if he never sees the injury, who knows what dumb thing jaeyong might do. he taught him a little bit once, but seoyun knows better now than he did a year ago. about healing and medicine as well as other things.

he lets out a quiet hiss of sympathy when he finally sees jaeyong’s skin. he lets one hand hover above the tender flesh, not touching but feeling the heat roll off of it feverishly, even now that the source of the burns is likely long gone. any larger or any hotter and it’d be beyond what seoyun feels capable of treating at home; he’d cart jaeyong off to the burn unit himself in that case. but this much is manageable, though likely horribly painful. even peeling off his own shirt must’ve angered jaeyong’s poor skin.

“you’re lucky it’s only this,” he explains, taking his hand back and frowning rather seriously. “i know it hurts. burns are a bitch.” slow, sensitive. they seem to hurt forever.

the med kit he brings with him to huangjun’s place isn’t properly equipped for treating burns, but it’s better than nothing. “sit down and don’t move,” he instructs his latest patient, a firmness in his voice that has nothing to do with the person in particular in front of him and everything to do with slipping into the mature, confident young man he needs to be when treating hunters two or three times his age in the surgery at home. he leaves no room for argument, though he’s sure that jaeyong will find a way to argue anyways.

feyhuangjun​: 

seoyun’s subtle petulance is amusing, even as he steps back to watch huangjun like the attentive caretaker he is. huangjun wears the faintest smile to match as he carefully sets his tools across the counter: tray, cups, pitcher, daiwan, towel, all laid out with practiced ease. but even in his gentle, focused calm, he doesn’t hide the small disappointed pout that crosses his lips at the mention of the microwave, his eyes flickering to seoyun as if to indicate he should never mention the microwave and tea in the same breath again, before returning to the task at hand.

he is smiling again when he nods in response to seoyun’s inquiry, his expression warming up visibly. it is hardly an exaggeration, his love for tea, for the tradition and artistry behind it, for the end result of a complex and unpredictable set of flavors and aromas, for the history sculpted into the dishes and steeped in the leaves. he understands why witches operate with herbs and steam - to craft a proper batch of tea is almost like crafting the nectar of time itself.

he accepts the filled kettle from seoyun with a thankful nod of his head before placing it back on its base and setting the temperature display to read ninety-seven celsius. 

after taking a moment to confirm the water is heating, huangjun turns back to open an overhead cabinet, contemplating a colorful and generous selection of teas in various containers before pulling out two types of oolong, weighing them carefully against each other, one bag in each hand. he pauses, turning to survey seoyun curiously, eyes mildly intense and narrowed just slightly, as if he might read seoyun’s mind if he thinks hard enough.

the amount of honey in his original cup of tea was overwhelming, indicating, perhaps, an unexpected sweet tooth in his taciturn companion, and seoyun’s knowledge of tea is minimal, suggesting anything too bitter might turn him off of tea completely. so huangjun selects the bag in his right hand, a loose leaf ginseng oolong, one of his favorites, before returning the other tea to its spot in his collection and shutting the cupboard gently. he takes a moment to open the bag and smell it himself, a silent moment of indulgent appreciation for himself before he offers it to seoyun with a soft smile, indicating he might try the same, should he feel so inclined.

one moment huangjun is silently threatening him to never use the microwave to heat water again (which seoyun absolutely will, just maybe not in huangjun’s presence) and the next he’s smiling, visibly proud that his affection for the hot left water has been noticed. seoyun still doesn’t get the appeal, but who’s he to knock someone else’s passions? at least it’s tea and not, like, serial murder. jaeyong’s had his claws in huangjun for a while but there’s still a gentleness to the other young man that seoyun wouldn’t have expected to see there.

he watches with quiet curiosity of his own as huangjun rummages through another cabinet, a measuring glance spared in his direction. he understands he’s being read, predicted, but seoyun’s more fascinated than self-conscious; it’s like taking a buzzfeed personality quiz without having to put in any of the effort of actually answering any questions. he finds himself even anticipating the results. is one of huangjun’s hidden talents being able to match any person, even an avid coffee-guzzler like seoyun, to a tea?

finally, one is chosen. seoyun, used to the more dilute smells of the cheap, stale teabags buried somewhere in his kitchen, takes a big sniff when the opportunity is presented to him. it’s not a bad smell, but his nose isn’t prepared for the strength. the tickle in his throat has him coughing into his elbow, hurriedly followed by an apology: “sorry, it doesn’t smell bad, i just wasn’t ready for it!” that was the rudest thing he could have possibly done, though entirely unintentional. before huangjun can change his mind about the tea, seoyun assures him that it’s really not that he doesn’t like it. “it smells nice, i promise.”

seoyun isn’t all that good of an actor anyways. surely huangjun has to believe him.

feyhuangjun​:

his sleeps are no longer restless, made still as death with the help of medication provided by seoyun. nobody talks about where the small pills come from, and it isn’t difficult for huangjun to deduce it’s nowhere legal. but his nightmares are lesser now, less concentrated, less vivid, so he doesn’t complain. there is no more waking up in the night convinced his blankets are trying to strangle him, no more peering through the darkness at a face that he only recognizes as jaeyong’s after several long moments of being sure it is another phantom come to end him.

huangjun is endlessly grateful for seoyun’s expert care. there is tension lingering in the air between seoyun and jaeyong, but tension seems to be a permanent fixture in his life since he began pursuing a life of monster hunting. jaeyong is more tender now, in his demeanor, in his touches, but he is still jaeyong and there will always be a sheen of chaos and destruction radiating off of him, in spite of his apparent newfound softness. seoyun has the bedside manner of a professional, albeit a bit young and a bit crude, unrefined, smudged by the fact that his experience comes from sewing up werewolf bites and replacing blood stolen by vampires. 

and huangjun is nothing if not polite, so he gives no indication of reluctance when seoyun offers him a freshly made cup of tea. he can tell almost instantly that it’s wrong, in the way it looks and the way it smells, the way even the mug’s handle is hot to the touch, a telltale sign it’s been in the microwave. but he gently blows across the surface and takes a careful sip anyway, doing his best to smile softly. but the smile quickly melts into what can only be described as a grimace as huangjun silently sets the mug down again (oversteeped, too sweet, irradiated water, it’s all wrong, so very wrong). and then, without any further ado, he stands, touching seoyun on the shoulder in indication that he should follow him back to the kitchen.

he’s encouraged not to speak for the sake of his recovery, which is an easy feat for the young man who spent his early teenage years mute. he is experienced in communicating clearly without words. so he says nothing as he begins to pull one of his more treasured tea sets from the cupboards, a more traditional set made of glazed, painted clay, one of halmeoni’s: a small green teapot with a weave-wrapped handle and four modest half-circle teacups, all decorated with faint black foliage and balanced on a small wooden tray.

then he makes a show of retrieving the electric kettle from its perch in the corner, lifting it deliberately to show seoyun, and moving toward him to slip it into the caretaker’s hands with a soft, knowing smile, his eyes flickering indicatively toward the sink.

the quiet doesn’t drive him as crazy as he thought it would. maybe it’s because seoyun is used to it, having lived alone in a large house for a couple years now. maybe it’s because he never feels like he has to guess what huangjun is trying to tell him; even without words, he can understand him as clearly as if he could speak right now. it’s how he knows that his tea is decidedly not good, even as he watches huangjun try to smile through it. how he lies without ever opening his lips.

“it can’t be that bad,” he protests, still convinced that nothing he did was actually wrong. it works fine for his cheap instant coffee every morning, why wouldn’t it work for tea? huangjun gets up and walks away, and seoyun takes a sip out of the mug himself. he doesn’t like tea to begin with, but the honey makes it taste alright. just what was the other complaining about?

he follows huangjun into the kitchen anyways, just a beat behind, and watches as piece by piece, the tea set is pulled out from storage. it’s pretty, seoyun has to admit, but also seems impractical. or maybe just a little dated; no one their age is going out to tea parties. there’s a joking complaint about huangjun turning seventy next year that never quite makes it off his tongue, still a little unsure of what sort of friendship they’re supposed to have right now if any at all.

“yes, i know what the electric kettle is,” he understands the show, the fact that huangjun is scolding him for overlooking the little appliance in the first place. in seoyun’s defense, this isn’t his home, isn’t his kitchen, and he has no idea where anything is. it’s rude to rummage through cupboards and drawers. “what’s the difference anyways? the microwave made the water just as hot.”

feysang​:

there’s no reasoning to his actions. his impulses drive all his little whims and wishes, and he’s just along for the ride. so yes, he sleeps with people he finds attractive, but there isn’t anything more to it but that. he’s not looking for a relationship even if he’s gotten with his past partners, it was only because it was easier to agree than to reject them. it’s actually surprising the amount of people who fall in love after just one night together. sang can’t imagine having a heart that troublesome.

so when seoyun seems to be content with a simple arrangement, it’s sang’s dream come true. there’s a level of trust he’s put into the man to keep it that way, and so far it’s been rewarded. waking up next to a beautiful face is a luxury in of itself, and he’s happy to provide.

the thought makes him laugh a little, rolling to lay on his side with the blanket tucked beneath his arm. it’s a little chilly with the gap between them, so he snuggles in closer and shuts his eyes again. no use waking up this early, but habits remain habits even after years. he would’ve gotten up already and started on breakfast for the two of them, but sloth has an iron grip on him this morning. he’s sure seoyun doesn’t mind, though.

he falls back into a light sleep, suspended between daylight and slumber. his hand rests gently on seoyun’s waist as if to secure his place, tethering himself to the peaceful moment he could’ve only dreamed of in the past. ah, he could die right now satisfied.

his peace is broken when he hears seoyun’s voice and feels him shifting beside him. sunlight filters into his vision and he pulls away from seoyun’s back to look at him.

“mm…no,” he answers before burying his face into the blanket. it smells like them. gross. “go back to sleep.”

he likes sang. he likes the way he snuggles closer to avoid the morning chill even if he can’t stand the feeling of cold fingers and toes creeping up on him. he likes the hand on his waist tethering him to another human being, keeping him locked in this moment for just a little longer. mostly he likes how uncomplicated it is. sometimes seoyun thinks sang is perfect; on the nights they’re together he can reap all the benefits of the boyfriend experience without actually having to put the time or emotional energy into keeping one.

unfortunately for sang, seoyun doesn’t fall back asleep once he’s awake. there’s no going back to the peaceful darkness, not when the sun is up and there’s bad coffee to be made and cold cereal to eat. he smiles anyways at the antics sang pulls, groaning and requesting a little more rest that seoyun simply cannot provide. though he does allow himself to lay there for a few more minutes before he decides to reach over the bedside table for his phone, taking the covers with him less for modesty and more to keep their warmth. and maybe also to steal them from sang just a little bit.

on a whim he decides to snap a picture of his friend and bedmate before scrolling through whatever messages and news he missed overnight. no one would ever know it’s sang with his face buried away like that, but seoyun finds it cute enough to keep. he doesn’t do it often enough, but there’s something to capturing these comfortable moments to save for a not so good day. something he can look at later and hopefully still smile. satisfied with his scrolling through posts he doesn’t care about for now, he drops the phone back where he got it.