#jongin247

seunghyun is frozen for a moment, paralyzed entirely except the ability to merely blink once, his whole brain grinding to an absolute halt as their eyes meet; seunghyun’s wide, deer-in-the-headlights aesthetic meeting jongin’s, half-lidded and calm. they stand just a few feet away from each other, but seunghyun can already feel a heat in the air, some sort of toxic radiation from his younger half-brother and to say he was scared of the shorter male would be an understatement. he’s seen what jongin can do, what he has done, what he’s capable of--and anyone who’s seen that should be scared of him.

his blood runs cold before racing through his veins like it’s a competition and he struggles for a moment to force air into his lungs. jongin is everything seunghyun hated about high school, every torment, every nightmare. younger than him by two years, jongin has managed far more intense feats than seunghyun even wants to try for. he’s heard all the stories, all the rumors, all the snide remarks and evil plans. he’s personally witnessed jongin beating people until his knuckles and his clothes are bloody, giant grin on his face, insanity lurking in the corners of his eyes.

he takes a step forward and seunghyun wants to shrink back, but he doesn’t. maybe it’s the fear rooting him in place or maybe it’s his body reminding him that if you run from a rottweiler, they feel more compelled to chase you. he stands his ground though, his figure unmoving even though the worry is very apparent on his face, while jongin comes up and casually takes the lighter from his hand, holding the flame up to his own cigarette before breathing it in.

“i uh… i’m surprised.” seunghyun finds his voice, even though it’s a bit too breathy. “don’t you usually light your cigarettes with hellfire or something?”

he’s not sure why he’s just made that joke, but jongin does turn to him and give a half-grin anyway. although, knowing jongin, that still might not be such a good thing. “usually i do, over a bonfire of my enemies’ corpses.” he tosses the lighter back to seunghyun, who catches it without dropping his eyes from the other. it’s a joke... right? just him bolstering up his own reputation of course...

for an awkwardly long while, neither of them speak. seunghyun does his best not to creepily stare at the other, pinning his eyes to the ground while jongin looks out over the view of the camp, everything seeming much smaller and more manageable from this distance. they both sip on their cigarettes and listen to the bugs and the birds around them. he doesn’t know what to say or how to break the ice—isn’t sure whether this is jongin making some kind of peace or effort to reach out to him, and whether or not seunghyun will reciprocate it. he hadn’t let him come to their father’s funeral, which had been a heavy blow. seunghyun isn’t sure he wants to accept any sort olive branch from someone so selfish. but then jongin speaks and the confusion ends abruptly.

“so i know we all hate gossip girl, and some of us more than others, but she does on occasion make some interesting points and the reason i’m here right now, forcing myself to breathe the same air as you, is because i just want to make sure that one particular point she’s made recently is wholly and entirely false. and i want to be clear about this, i’m not doing this out of some grand gesture to check up on you or anyone, this is merely me reminding you where the line is between what you can have and what you cannot have.”

“what?” seunghyun squints. “what are you talking about?” honestly, the sheer audacity--

“sehun,” he turns his head and looks directly into seunghyun’s eyes. “you’re not fucking him, are you?”

“I—what?” the world stops. it could collide with a meteorite right about now and seunghyun wouldn’t be able to notice.

“see the post said he seemed unhappy about you getting engaged to little miss park and while i thought it was hilarious, i’ve got to wonder why.”

seunghyun feels stuck like a bug, motionless and bleeding somewhere he can’t see. revealing his relationship ( or dysfunctional mess ) with sehun to anyone would be disastrous, especially to jongin. if sehun, the devil’s own best friend, is scared of him and what he might do.... “i, i don’t… that’s not anything to do with me—that, he might have just been upset because of sooyoung…” and then he winces because it sounds like he is trying to shift blame onto one of his oldest friends. he doesn’t want to put her in the warpath of someone like jongin.

but his little brother is shaking his head, his eyes glowing eerily, the corner of his lips tilted upwards. “you and i both know sehun’s preferences don’t swing that way.”

seunghyun gulps. he tries to think of something to say but nothing comes. his brain is full of broken gears that refuse to turn. his throat starts closing up.

“alright let me make this clearer for you,” jongin sniffs, breathing in the smoke and shifting entirely to look straight at the other. “i’m doing you this as a favor, actually, given the fact that you don’t really know who he is or what he’s done. see, me and my people are sharks, we own the ocean, we’re apex predators. and you always have been and always will be just a whale…” seunghyun winces a bit at the old insult that followed him around through his years at cheongnam. “you don’t belong with us.”

being insulted like this, using that old nickname once again to make him feel inferior, actually bolsters something inside seunghyun, catching alight like a pyre. his eyebrows thread together in a glare that sharpens as jongin steps closer to him. he wants to tell him to fuck off, even with how unwise that is, but he has to think about sehun in this equation as well. there’s a reason sehun always has to pick on him in public, there’s a reason they’ve kept themselves secret this whole time. seunghyun grips a fist tightly. “there’s nothing between sehun and i,” he finds his voice, albeit still quiet. “and even if there was, he isn’t your property—“

but he’s cut off by jongin’s laughter, a short outburst that reverberates from his throat, like a cackle but darker, and it sends a shiver down seunghyun’s spine. the mirth doesn’t reach his eyes. “of course he is. there’s no real backing out of a situation with me, once they get involved. i’m like cancer; i’m never really gone and there’s always a chance for a relapse.”

“that’s just stupid.”

“for them, yeah,” he looks back at the campsite, still grinning. “but then, i never really force myself on people, they end up liking it well enough on their own.” something simmers in jongin’s pupils as he drags on his cigarette. “i mean, just ask your friend jiyong.”

for the second time in the last ten minutes, all of seunghyun’s blood runs cold, the world turns a sickening grey. there’s an implication there in the way he says jiyong’s name, more than just a secret between them, more than just a past life in high school. something’s happened. what? what?! WHAT?! “wha….. what are you….”

“oh he didn’t tell you about our little ‘ride’ in his lamborghini?” jongin feigns a look of surprise. “i thought you two were best friends?”

seunghyun’s chest feels like it’s a thousand pounds and he can’t even wrap his brain around, not just the idea of the two of them together or that jiyong failed to mention this massive fuck-up, but that he got involved with jongin after knowing the relationship between him and his brother? why... why the fuck doesn’t jiyong ever care about staying away people who genuinely hate seunghyun? at least showing some measure of wariness, of caution, or even a moment’s hesitation? suddenly seunghyun is on fire, and he finds enough rage to bring him a step closer to the shorter male. “what the fuck have you—“

“speaking of fuck, he’s pretty good, but i’ve got to wonder if his parents know how nasty and gay he is. or his newest, pretty girlfriend. bora is quite a nice piece, huh? didn’t you like her at some point?” jongin drags on his cigarette once again, completely unaffected by seunghyun’s anger. “don’t worry, hyungie, you’re not the only one hurting over her choosing mr. enigma-- seems she’s got quite a few wet dicks up her ass.”

“i’m not hurting!” seunghyun’s voice raises, his frustration boiling over, his heart hammering against his chest. “you stay the hell away from them, you leave jiyong and bora alone! and all of them! you’re goddamn curse, jongin! they’re not your toys—not jiyong, not sehun, not even yoori!”

up until that last moment, jongin’s face was pretty placid and more or less just amused, but then the name yoori falls out of seunghyun’s lips ( an accident really, simply because he’d met yoori and been contacted by her recently to help her out with her finances, and her situation had been on his mind ), and something deep and dark and cold shifts inside jongin. his whole demeanor changes, like a sudden eclipse, all the amusement vanishes as his countenance sharpens.

jongin isn’t called the devil simply because he is fiery and prone to anger. there is something deeper inside him, something inhuman, an unfeeling, black mass, a hole where his heart should be.

“you don’t know anything about yoori.” his voice is calm but the words sound like they’re being spat out by a void.

“i know she doesn’t want to be with you. she’s doesn’t love you.”

“love is irrelevant. is that what you think i’m talking about? something that pathetic?” jongin tilts his head and seunghyun gets another glimpse of that pure, inhuman remorselessness inside him. “i don’t give a shit who loves me or not. love me or hate me, doesn’t matter, she still belongs to me. she always will.” he closes the distance between them tighter, coming up to closer to seunghyun’s frown, not even bothering to match it, as though his frustration is simply irrelevant. “just like sehun. you think he loves you? loves you, while he’s sucking cock in dark alleyways and going on dates with strangers? at the end of the day, i have what he wants. not you. i’m not lying to you, the truth is always worse, so trust me when i say; he’ll always be more mine than yours.”

“why do you even care so much?”

“because that’s what sharks do. they rip their victims to shreds.”

seunghyun doesn’t say anything to that, can’t force words past his lips because he knows he’s a bad liar and anything else he can think to respond with would only be futile and unnecessary. plus there’s too many thoughts in his head, too much white-noise, too much overload of information he would rather have died than find out about. he’s not wrong; there is something inside seunghyun that feels torn up now, attacked for no reason. but he meets the devil’s eye, stands his ground and doesn’t flinch or loosen his clenched fist, even as jongin steps away from him, passing him and heading back into the woods.

“you know the thing about whales, jongin?” seunghyun asks, motionless as one of the trees, not even bothering to look at the other. he can hear as his half-brother’s footfalls stop, although he’s sure he’s too proud to turn and look back at him also. “you can ask any marine biologist on the planet and they’ll tell you… great white sharks are deadly, but they’re actually no match for killer whales.”