【♛】LAUGHTER AND DISTRESS;
it was as the fog started to thicken did jongsuk feel his skin crawl with something; something akin to - fear. he didn’t know why, he was never really afraid of fog before… but junho’s words hit him hard, the tone of his voice and the way he seemed so urgent. turning his head slightly, he took note of where they were and his hand tightened it’s grip with junho’s, “right.” he breathed, before making a right and trying to find a clear exit. it was then at that moment he made the mistake of glancing towards one of the mirrors on his right; and catching glimpse of snow - snow painted red with blood. he shook his head and swallowed thickly; the uneasy feeling from earlier setting in the pit of his stomach.
he tried to block out the sudden sounds of feet stepping on tiled floor and pulled junho closer, “you know - i figured this place would be fucked up…” he mumbled, biting the inside of his cheek and moving his arm to instead wrap around junho’s shoulder and pull him closer. if these mirrors show’d our worst fears - who knows what junho was seeing in their reflection.
his mind raced back to the words junho spoke that night; of his childhood.
so he held on tighter.
Simply hearing the vile voice of his father’s murderer so vivid and clear against his eardrums had opened a can of worms for the brunet. He hadn’t noticed Jongsuk’s own discomfort, not when he was pacing his own breathing, eyes directed towards the floor before he screwed them closed tight and scrunched his eyebrows. Like a ghastly parasite, he felt the old feelings of his past, emotions in which he had once believed he had forgotten, paranoia and anxiety chewing at him, sucking whatever stability he had built upon years and years after himself.
It was all just figments. Inwardly, the brunet tried to reassure himself as he felt Jongsuk move him closer, as he felt his love hold him tighter, yet despite the reassuring gestures his heart beat did not cease its pace. He felt hideous in that instance, vulnerability seeping within his pores at just one simple voice; a voice he hadn’t heard for in years.
“You may have been right,” Junho had croaked out in a rare instance of him agreeing to his beloved for once. His cheek pressed itself against the older’s shoulder and a hand reached out to grab his love’s forearm before he squeezed it. The attraction was silent thereafter, so much so that Junho could hear the mechanics of the fog machine mingle with the echoes of their footsteps. It took a few seconds before the younger was able to clarify that safety rested its golden touch upon them once more and, although he hadn’t remembered closing his eyes, he peered up at Jongsuk in order to register, for once, how the older man felt.
Taking a moment gaze at his love, Junho found the ghastly feelings that had bubbled in him vanish, that he was in the present and not the past. He was the fiend now, the nightmare that everyone had ought to fear. He was the reaper of souls, so powerful and manipulative. He was a man with no fear, for there was nothing else so vile and wicked that held a light to him.
In that moment of self-reassurance, the brunet failed to register the next event that was to unfold. It had happened in a flash, the sudden repugnant scent of rotten garlic and decay pummeling his nostrils as something else grabbed him, a rough and scabbed hand that had definitely not belonged to his beloved. He felt something sharp press against the major vein upon his neck and he was turned, faced towards a surly man who had loomed above him.
“Where’s your father?”
“He’s not here.” In reality, it had been Jongsuk’s grip upon him that had been twisted, whatever physiologic effect the fog they were inhaling getting to the worst of him. Rigid against the older, it wasn’t until the fictional blade that moved against his neck spurred a combustion of humiliation within the brunet, the reminder of how he had been played that night, fiddled to trauma he had never been able to get fixed, a tool for the thugs to use as his pleas eventually caused his dad to burst out in order to give himself up for his son’s salvation. Throttling himself away from the grip, Junho slammed his back against the glass wall and slid down, swinging out his knife as he snarled:
“Don’t fucking touch me!” He heard the man’s condescending laughter once more, this time joined with his past gang’s and his skin crawled.
