#lovelele.

“There is nothing left for me in this world!” Donghyuck cries to the audience, anguish palpable with his every word. There are tear tracks on his cheeks, glistening under the limelight. He points to himself, overwrought with emotion, and weeps. “I have given everything! Everything! And still, I am undeserving.”

Chenle knows these lines by heart. He knows it all – every move, every step Donghyuck takes. He can feel it on his skin – the scarlet fabric Donghyuck wears when he rushes across the stage, when he kneels to the floor and scrabbles for the knife. It’s rough, it’s heavy – it should’ve been his to wear. And God knows he would’ve suited it far better.

It should've been him in the middle of that stage all along.

Chenle looks to the opposite wing where others stand and watch, transfixed on the star of the show. His eyes search until they land on Renjun, dressed in green, hands fisted around the dark fabric, who he finds already staring right back. Come here, Chenle mouths, and if this were any other night the response would have been immediate – Renjun stepping backstage, rushing through the crossover, ever at his beck and call. Tonight he shakes his head and averts his eyes, pink lips pressed into a tight line. Chenle watches as Renjun’s eyes drift to Donghyuck and feels the bile rise in his throat.

It’s quiet now. Donghyuck stands in the middle of the stage, staring at the knife in his hands that will bring his character salvation. The room is silent with anticipation; the audience on the edge of their seats. There’s not a single sound – no clanking of forks and knives on Johnny’s precious plates, no rustling of clothing when someone shifts in their seat, no hurried whispering between posh patrons – Chenle can’t stand it.

When Donghyuck breaks the silence, the audience hangs onto his every word – even regulars who’ve seen him utter the lines a dozen fucking times. His voice grows calm. Resigned. Sounding everything like he did all those months ago when he took this from Chenle and had the audacity to pretend like he deserved it more.

“There is nothing left for me,” Donghyuck says.

His voice is a dulcet lullaby designed to deceive, but Chenle knows better. There is blood in that voice, blood in his beady, doe eyes, and the mesmerizing way he moves and smiles to disarm. It’s easy – being drawn, falling prey to him and his striking demeanor. He had fallen for it too, before – almost let himself be swept away into the illusion of complacency for second place. But no matter how greatly he likes to pretend, Chenle was born of artifice, into a family that thrives off fraudulence and had nurtured his innate passion for triumphing above all. He’d found his senses, after a while. Now, he knows better.

Chenle scowls – feels all the rage inside him bubble to its boiling point, keen to spill over the pot and splatter those around him.

He has no right. No right. Donghyuck has no right and yet, he’s still there – standing centerstage.

A rueful smile graces Donghyuck’s lips as he tugs his head up high, bares his neck for the audience, and stutters out a breath. He raises the knife to his throat with a trembling hand and hesitates –

Chenle holds his breath. The silence that preludes feels deafening.

Donghyuck’s eyes are wide. Gasps echo across the room and Donghyuck’s mouth falls open – in shock, in horror – but no sound makes it out. He stumbles back, and the knife clatters to the ground as he wraps both hands around his neck. His hands are dyed crimson – grasping and clawing at his throat as if it would stop the gushing liquid that begins to taint the scarlet of his dress.

Chenle wonders if the cut is deep enough.

Donghyuck falls to the floor, knees hitting the stage with a thud, and slumps on the ground like a marionette cut from its strings. He gasps. He bleeds. Red on honeyed skin, on slender fingers, pooling into the cold floor. He bleeds and bleeds, and the red overflows through torn flesh, thick and strong.

Beside him is the knife that glints harshly beneath the spotlight. It’s bright, blinding – enough to tear your eyes from the tear tracks shining across Donghyuck’s cheeks if you weren’t looking for them.

Donghyuck heaves, shakes. He’s terrified – it kills him all the quicker. Geled lights flood the stage and drown the scene in red. Then, he stills, gazing listlessly above, looking every bit like a painting delicately stroked to perfection.

There are only a handful of performances on stage that Chenle has witnessed and would describe as art truly brought to life. This makes the fucking list.

Chenle wants to laugh. Of course. Even in his final moments, Donghyuck hypnotizes, commands the room, and delivers a performance from death’s door. He simply must shine. Donghyuck always shines.

The audience gives him thundering ovation. In another life, Chenle imagines he would be sitting there, among the self-important, entitled nobs who come to watch and pretend like they understand theatre. Fools who think the world revolves around them – who won’t notice it until it’s too late.

The curtain closes with agonizing slowness.

Donghyuck still lies there, eyes glossy, lips parted. Taeyong calls his name in whispers, eyebrows furrowed, urging him to stand, make his way through the drawn curtains, give his adoring house his gratitude with a smile, and take his bow.

The applause continues.

Chenle shifts his gaze to the other side of the stage and catches Renjun slipping away, behind others who begin pushing and craning their heads for a look.

Donghyuck won’t get up.

Donghyuck won’t get up, but no one crosses the playing area. The audience’s claps begin to waver behind the cover of the curtain, replaced by the standard clamor of mindless chatter and clanking of forks and knives. He still needs to take his bow, but the audience have already made excuses for him.

No one approaches Donghyuck until Taeyong himself finally jostles his way through the gaggle of performers on the opposite wing. He stops right before the pool of red, looking down with a blank stare. Chenle sees the way his mouth falters, lips shaping themselves to the sound of Donghyuck’s precious name. Then, he kneels, white pants soaking in the warmth still oozing out and Chenle can see the moment it clicks.

Taeyong does his best to appear calm — as much as one possibly can when one realizes they have a fresh corpse in front of them — and waves Ten over with a hand, pulling him close to whisper in his ear. Ten is better, at hiding the shock or whatever it is he must be feeling right now, offering not a single change in his expression — just a simple nod at whatever Taeyong must have told him before he’s rushing offstage.

People are beginning to whisper behind Chenle, some tense, some spiteful and low, but all unsubtly audible.

This is taking too long.

Chenle steps closer downstage, where Jisung stands next to the pulley, waiting with eyebrows furrowed tight and lips pressed into a line. When Chenle’s fingers wrap around the thick rope, Jisung shifts his gaze from centerstage and looks at him, half-dazed.

“What are you doing?” Jisung whispers, eyes flitting from him to Taeyong, who still hasn’t left Donghyuck’s side.

Chenle raises his eyebrows and murmurs, “He needs to take his bow.”

Jisung’s still looking at him with confusion plastered all over his face when Chenle pulls on the rope, and the velvet curtains jerk open, halting the white noise of the house. Oh, what a scene it truly is, to capture an audience twice over.

Taeyong freezes in his spot when he realizes he is no longer under the curtain’s protection, white pants damped in red, hands on Donghyuck’s limp frame as he tries to pull him up. It should not take all that much for onlookers to realize why Donghyuck had not taken his bow this time, but Chenle stands there, counting too many fucking seconds.

Someone screams – then the drag of a chair, scraping against the black marble floor, and then –

“He’s – he’s dead!” The voice shakes. Chenle can’t pinpoint where within the crowd it’s coming from. “He’s actually – oh my god, he’s fucking dead –”

The shouts begin, the gasps and shrieks – from the audience, from backstage. Wives reach for their husbands, husbands reach for their mistresses. They rush from their seats, knocking chairs down in their haste, ignoring Johnny’s futile attempts from the bar to appease the havoc.

Large hands grab at Chenle’s arm, and he realizes it’s Jisung tugging him away from the pulley before they’re sent tumbling down onto the floor. A light falls from the batten in the chaos, and Chenle flinches as it hits the ground, shattering into little fragments and broken shards that cast red speckles of light across the stage and into the wing. In the field of his vision, he sees Taeyong crying now, clutching Donghyuck’s body tightly.

Such an uproar hasn’t happened in the cabaret in a while.

Jisung still clutches his arm, asking if he’s alright in a voice Chenle can barely register in his head amidst the turmoil. The light flickers, casting red across Chenle’s face. He exhales – breathes out his despair, his horror.

Truth be told, despite the alluring sights Jeju has to offer, Jisung harbors no desire to be here. He would like to believe there was no need for him to be either. Only under the threat of his father has he returned when he had left so eagerly the year before. 

Jisung watches from where he sits as the Chinese pupils saunter to the cold river bank with hushed murmurs. They do not look his way. Huang Renjun, Jilin’s heir, and Zhong Chenle, Shanghai’s second scion. It’s as the saying goes: Birds of a feather flock together. They make to discard their glaring red robes, both adorned with intricate dragons of golden thread and stunning peonies of white when Renjun falls in, half undressed, at Chenle’s hand.

Chenle laughs.

It’s bright – much too loud for the breaking dawn. 

The smile that graces Chenle’s lips grows into another laugh as Renjun pulls him into the cold bite of the river, his robes already hastily discarded and kicked off to the side. Chenle resurfaces and Jisung watches as sodden hair falls over bare shoulders and sticks to pale skin – raven strands on untarnished marble.

Jisung stares.

No birdsong could ever convince him to stay. This one would be no different.

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Zhong Chenle is boisterous and that falls well with Lee Haechan, heir of Jeju. 

The clatter of their swords rings harmoniously, every strike parried with ease, every attack dodged or deflected. It is not easy to make a spar flow like water but they make it look effortless. A simple conversation between their blades, a dance of blow after blow after blow. 

Haechan smiles at Chenle after, the same type of brightness Jisung had seen on Chenle by the river. 

Jisung scowls.

Much has happened since then.

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What Jisung hates most about Zhong Chenle is that he shines much too bright. 

In a place where Lee Haechan already shines, it is only becoming for the two to join hands. They become inseparable – truly two sides of the same golden coin, two halves on the same whole. They call attention to themselves easily, but it is easy to tell that their broad, divine smiles are only meant for the other.

Huang Renjun is left alone. His face mirrors the emotions within Jisung’s heart, longing well hidden behind a glare.

Jisung begins to hate the glorious blaze of the never-setting sun.

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Jisung hates.

Jisung yearns.

There is no room left for him or Huang Renjun, who will never shine as bright.

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The desire for home lessens within him, but there they are all sent unwillingly.

They arrive far too late. Seoul is gone – fallen. His mother is missing, and his father is dead, stripped bare and hanging down the gates to the place he used to call home with pride. Barbarians, he shouts, at the people who have invaded his gates, long limbs and broad chest fueled with fury.

They return to Jeju with heavier hearts, bleeding hearts, but already Jisung feels a hollowness – a gaping cavity right where his heart should be.

Chenle keeps him company in the garden and pretends not to notice the tears that fall from his eyes. There is a burning glint – bloodlust, perhaps – residing within Chenle’s eyes that tells him he’s ready for the battle. For the inevitable war.

Chenle does not apologize as the rest did – does not offer his condolences as the rest did. Instead, he shuffles close, smiles – that bright and burning smile – and intertwines Jisung’s hand with his. Jisung watches the curve of Chenle’s full lips, the exact shade of fresh blood. 

Jisung mourns.

“We’ll kill them all,” Chenle says quietly, and in Jisung’s ears, it sounds like a promise.

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The war begins.

It has been months since the slaughter of Jisung's family. Since the loss of his home.

Months since Chenle had taken his hand, and promised the lives of the bastards who had taken everything from him.

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The war begins. 

Only now it begins.

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The war has long begun for Jisung.

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Blood stains the only thing he has left of his family.

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Renjun enters the tent, and Jisung averts his eyes from his sword. It is the first time in weeks that he sees the Jilin heir for longer than a glance.

"Jisung," Renjun greets, curt and quiet. 

Jisung does not show him the same courtesy and keeps quiet, biting at his lip. 

Renjun takes his seat beside him, and pulls him closer by the hand so he may do his work, finish, and move on to his next patient. 

He has changed; changed in the way one must during war, much like everyone else. There are some things that Renjun manages to keep: his face, staying unmarked and porcelain; his hair pinned back as it always is now, still long and neat in the midst of war. But no longer does he wear his red robes around camp with pride.

Unlike Chenle, Jisung thinks. Whose hair now falls only to his shoulders. Chenle whose red robes still glare in the field of combat, tainted and darkened by the blood he has learned to so eagerly spill. 

Jisung winces as his wound is cleaned.

The process is quiet. It always is. Jisung prefers it this way.

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"I used to think we were the same," Renjun murmurs near the end. "I've seen the way you look at him. The stares, the longing."

Uneasiness blooms inside Jisung's chest. He ignores it.

"I used to think we were the same," Renjun says – pauses – wrapping the cloth around Jisung's wound before he meets his eyes. "But I was wrong."

"You covet him."

Renjun stares at him, accusing, resentful; Jisung refuses to look away. And what of it? he wants to say, but the words die on his tongue.

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Renjun finishes and Jisung counts the seconds until he leaves but Renjun pulls him closer, murmuring in a voice so quiet that Jisung could perhaps pretend that he'd heard him wrong. "You covet him, but you will never have him." 

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The words haunt Jisung for longer than he will ever admit.

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When Renjun dies, Jisung almost feels satisfaction making a home of his chest. 

It is quick – a merciful death. Better than he deserved.

Jisung did not know him well, but he knew him enough. Enough to have had heinous fantasies of taking matters into his own hands, taking blood into his own hands. But Renjun's corpse drops to the floor and Jisung sees the way Chenle's heart falls along with it. 

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The battle is over but Chenle pushes for more. Chenle thrashes in their hold – screams and cries, laughs as they pull him from the battlefield. He does not stop his screams, even after they've dragged him inside the tent. They resort to restraining him, binding him with rope as if he were the enemy, gagging him in a futile attempt to keep him quiet. 

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Chenle calms long after nightfall. They untie him with cautious looks, wariness deep-set within their eyes, but Chenle only smiles at them, as if they had not kept him tied to a chair while he grieved his loss. He is still bright, burning – blinding underneath the darkness of the night and Jisung refuses to find it within himself to look away.

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Jisung finds him again later that night, drowning in his sorrow, far from the field of red and camp. Far from all that Renjun had left behind.

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"We'll kill them all," Jisung whispers, and hopes that Chenle does not take it as a promise.

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The war rages on for too long.

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Jisung wonders how much blood must still be spilled for peace.

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Chenle kisses like the battles he fights – fucks like the war he leads and guides to victory. 

Jisung wouldn't have it any other way.

Chenle fucks him often – climbs into his bed whenever he likes, which becomes every night they find themselves free long enough to find release. And when Jisung begins to drown in the blood that he takes, he gets on his knees and takes refuge between Chenle's thighs. 

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Renjun was wrong.

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Renjun was wrong. 

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Jisung has him. 

He had paid his dues – in blood, in scars, in suffering, and now, Jisung has him. Chenle is his, and he is Chenle's, and any man who would dare to disagree is a fool. 

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How could he not be mine, Jisung thinks, when he comes back to me every night?

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Chenle is a terrible, demanding creature, clothed in the same red Jisung had first seen him in by the river – in the red that he demands when he steps into the battlefield, in the red that he takes from the crying bodies of men their age that bleed to never see another day.

Jisung wants and wants and wants.

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