JAERIM HAS A DECENT IDEA ABOUT WHAT SEYOON MEANS TO SAY AS HE PRESSES HIS CHEEK INTO HIS HAND. Vampires are terrible creatures. Many of them possess abilities that go beyond physical prowess; they can dominate the psyche itself, enforcing their will through the power of vitae. That means luring victims in like sirens, imbuing unsuspecting minds with crazed, nearly obsessive desires to please the vampire. Jaerim’s been on the receiving end of such dominance a handful of times; it strips you of autonomy, leaving you no better than a witless puppet at the mercy of a monster.
It’s impossible to tell whether Seyoon’s experienced that level of heavy-handed mind fuckery, but he seems to know something about it. Even so, the hunter would never guess exactly what crosses Jaerim’s mind.
His face would be red if he could still blush. The confidence with which he ran his fingers through Seyoon’s hair suddenly seizes gingerly within him, leaving him frozen for half a second while Seyoon smiles up at him. The moment passes quickly, and Jaerim draws his hand back by the time Seyoon stands, pressing it into his pocket once more, where he quietly digs his fingernails into his palm.
It hasn’t been long enough since he died that he’s forgotten what being a mortal is like. Hell, the embrace is burned so vividly into his mind that half of the time he still thinks of himself as a mortal. He’s drawn such a tight boundary between himself and the beast to keep it from swallowing him, and yet it’s still a part of him. It still dictates his hunger, and his hunger dictates him, and everything is so deeply intertwined that he can’t make heads or tails of it.
He is a monster. That’s an indubitable fact. However, in spite of everything… he still has capacity for thought, for empathy, for self-awareness. Everything that makes up human consciousness, he has it.
Jaerim rolls his shoulders. He looks upwards, gathering his thoughts. To be honest, he’d rather not think about this at all, but then Seyoon leans over with a glint of playful scrutiny behind his gaze as he examines Jaerim closely, and he can’t help but play along.
“Hey, Seyoon…” His lips curl into a grin around the syllables. “Why would I tell you my plans?”
He bumps his shoulder against the other, pushing into his space with the same impish look. “You’re too impatient for surprises, aren’t you?”
Laughter fizzles behind his lips, leaving him in a half-hearted scoff.
The sad truth is that Jaerim is completely ‘bitchless’, to borrow Seyoon’s phrasing, though the vulgarism isn’t even remotely far from what he’s heard from his brothers and sisters. He isn’t ready to admit that Seyoon’s the first mortal he’s taken notice of, though; that he’s been shamelessly stalking him for the past five weeks, so he swiftly moves on from the topic as they near their destination.
The bowling alley’s been abandoned for the latter half of the decade, as far as Jaerim can tell, which makes it entirely possible that Seyoon hung around here before its doors abruptly closed and never reopened. It wasn’t hard to deduce that the place had been used for money laundering when Jaerim broke in a few nights ago, given that everything inside was still in place, from bowling pins to racks of shoes, and a dozen or so cabinets that were gathering dust in the arcade section. He even found bookkeeping.
None of it is what Jaerim brought Seyoon for, though. He leads them to the back alley, where an employee parking space is fenced off by a tall, concrete partition. Jaerim jumps six-feet up with the grace and balance of a cat, turning on his heels and squatting down to pull Seyoon up, over, and onto the other side.
The lamppost at the edge of the property is all that illuminates the small lot, empty save for a singular pool table that sits near the back door, completely out of place. Jaerim doesn’t make a grand showing of it; he’s somewhat embarrassed of his make-shift date spot, and too reserved to even admit out loud that it’s an attempt at a date. Still, he spent a handful of hours walking around the neighborhood until he found this place.
Since there’s no electricity, he saw no other way but to drag the pool table outside. And, for the first time in… What, years? Jaerim walked into a mini-convenience store and paid for a 12-pack of beer with money stolen from a guy’s back pocket that he ambushed for feeding… Not too far from here, actually.
The beer’s still ice-cold in a small cooler that he found inside. Although dirty, it serves its purpose as Jaerim drags it over and leaves it next to the table for Seyoon’s discovery. It’s the same cheap beer he’d been drinking at the party.
“Alright, call your bet.” Jaerim walks over, handing Seyoon a cue stick. “What do I get if I beat you?”
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