there's a voice and it's a pretty voice
that keeps me waking up
runs the shower water over me
pours the coffee in my cup
but each day as it fades away
and my hair slightly grows
i wonder if i'll ever see
just how our story goes
Author’s Note: lord i have missed this world soooo much. this chapter is brought to you by the NYC subway system, a 4 hour drive home, and late nights editing. please welcome this world back with open arms <3
Song for this chapter: This Isn’t The Place - Nine Inch Nails
Genre: Vampire!Chanyeol; horror; thriller; drama; suspense; eventual smut
Pairing: Chanyeol X Reader (oc; female)
Rating (this chapter): R
Warnings (this chapter): explicit language; graphic depictions of violence; graphic depictions of blood
Word Count: 6,890
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When the stone of the temple was not weathered, eroded beneath the wind, the rain, and the hands of time; when the dye on his silk robes was vivid, fresh, and soaked into the cloth with meaning and symbolism, Chanyeol felt everything with the whole of his heart. To him, the world was limitless - in its beauty, in its joy, and its grief. He wanted everything, all the best and worst parts, all the horror, strife, and bliss, in a fullness that would make his body ache and his skin tingle from the stimulation. Back when he was human, Chanyeol was alive.
Beneath the blanket of his taut skin, his blood flowed freely, furiously, tenacious in its desire to clutch every emotion by its throat. Many things came easily to Chanyeol - his laughter, his loving words, his breath, his gentle touch, but the easiest of all was his blush. His blood flowed with nothing but sentiment, liberated in an adrenaline rush brimming over with feeling again and again until his cheeks were coated with the stain. He loved deeper and cried harder, let passion take complete control of his mind, his heart, his soul until all of him was painted and contorted into something raw.
Always, he could not control the speed of his pulse and the spread of the heat across his skin, barreled over by the force of his own surrender. Always, his full lips would swell and blossom into the most vivid red -
red -
red -
The fire was holy, he felt that down into the marrow of his bones. The ore and flame were thunderous with their purpose, roaring in the kiln like the voices of every angry god. Each day, he thrust his hands into the great maw of the flame, into the mouth of righteousness, and baptized the glass in the sanctity of its tongue. Into the glass, he would blow his truths, his secrets, twisting in the flame until all his anguish took shape. They flowed from his lungs: words of love and loss and devotion, filling and encircling the molten glass until all his secrets were swallowed by the fire and trapped within the glass. Deep into the red -
red -
red -
The flowers were in a state of decay, withering beneath an autumn frost that came just as quickly as the season. The flowers were in a state of decay, browned and black, and surrounded by the shattering glass statues of the temple garden. Chanyeol was dying, bleeding and whimpering, silent in the way he stared at the sky, but around him there was screaming. With each fissure in the glass, he heard his own voice, three times as loud and breaking open with the woe of feeling - the woe of dying.
Chanyeol was dying, and all around him there was screaming
screaming -
screaming -
It’s your own voice that wakes you, tearing through your chest at a volume that makes you think your lungs and chest have ruptured, split open from the strength of your howl. The shrillness of it echoes around you, bouncing off the walls and dragging you begrudgingly from a restless sleep. Head full, swimming with words and voices that do not belong to you; skin crawling with the texture of fabrics and wounds you have never felt, your body is trapped in an agony that feels like a stasis. This is how you live now, or so you think, perpetually bleeding out and into the world, leaving yourself with nothing until you have completely disappeared.
This is all you are now, you think, memories of too many bygone lives with nothing of your own to bind or keep you.
Even before you are wide awake or aware, senses returning to you slowly as if trapped in the thick tar of your fatigued brain, you can feel a tepid sweat seeping from the pores of your skin. This is not a fever. You are not ill. You are bloated and leaking with lives lived and lives lost, and the stress of containing them all is spilling over into your bed sheets.
It's your own voice that wakes you but it's the pain, the sheer misery of it, that pulls your eyes open and makes you choke on your tongue. Wet and heavy it slides back in your mouth, making you gag and gasp as your back arches off the bed and vaults you forward. The stiffness of your muscles, the calcium snap and metallic crack of your joints catches you off guard as you move, making you question how long you’ve been trapped in the skeleton of your bed. You feel less pliable now, less human and flexible both in your body and your will. Instead you are something comprised of wood and metal, something constructed and made beneath the hands of men - a synthetic thing waiting to be used.
Midway through the arch of your spine, strong arms envelop your waist and aid in the lift, immediately easing your weary bones with their touch. On instinct, you cling to the body that owns them, trembling, quivering, and forcing yourself not to weep. For a while you remain this way, allowing yourself to be calmed and comforted by hands that seem to move within you - taking the pain, taking the discord, pulling it from you in a steady tugs that allow your mind to clear. In these arms the fog of your trauma dissipates, silencing the voices - Chanyeol’s voice, others you don’t recognize, your own - and soothing the jagged pain that runs from your head and into your arm.
In these arms, you start to remember.
Chanyeol had been dying - was dying - no, he was dead. Twice now you’ve witnessed it - first in a technicolor nightmare you cannot process, but only now do you remember the visceral way he faded at your knees, body becoming an altar for your mourning. On his back, he was bleeding. On his back, he was not breathing.
Four bullet holes, counted in quick succession like the horsemen of the apocalypse, bringing death, destruction, war, and a hunger for a thing you’ve come to think of as a sickness. Four bullet holes, tearing open his chest with liquid silver, and dropping him like iron at your feet.
A knife had torn through your skin, dragged from the crook of your elbow to your wrist in one smooth line. It surprised you, if only because you’d forgotten it, how red your blood is, red enough to be almost black in its intensity. It surprised you, if only because somewhere along the way, you’d forgotten you were living.
Not long after, you’d passed out, dropping into someone’s arms with a whimper that sounded so unlike the tormented wail that had been building in your chest. It had been sucked from you, poured onto someone else’s tongue, and you had been left with nothing but a warm, dark night.
You should be dead. This thought erupts in your mind with blinding clarity. You and Chanyeol should be dead. Instead, you are sobbing, clutching to a person and wishing you could be buried. The act of living is causing you too much strife as late, and you think death would be a gift of relief for you. You think you’d accept it well, peacefully and with pride.
As your mind settles and your heart carries on, beating in a strong, deafening rhythm within your breast, soft words fall over you. You hear them first as though they are at a distance, far away and asking you to reach for them. When you stroke them, they seem to ground you, pull you back to reality, piecing you together with the strength of their calm.
‘You’re breathing.’
Yixing.
For a brief moment, you allow yourself to relax into his hold, folding yourself into his arms with a sigh. His closeness feels like a luxury, a comfort you hadn’t known you missed or needed. For a few serene, blissful seconds, you think this is the closest you’ve ever been to him. For a few serene, blissful seconds, you think this is the hardest he’s ever held you. Firm, tangible, and protective.
But then you remember it, not just the pain of it but the visceral horror of it. His empty, sad eyes as the knife ripped your arm apart. His empty, sad, yet tempted eyes as you bled into Chanyeol’s pale mouth. His sad, complacent eyes.
All at once, you are repulsed, overwhelmed by an abject shock that brings bile into your throat. You push him from you, wide eyed and seething, wanting to be as far from him as possible, and glance down at the arm you know should be little more than mangled flesh.
But there is nothing, not even a scar.
‘I didn't think you would want to look at it.’
His voice is a breath away from a whisper, tentatively showing you kindness and reminding you that such gentleness exists in unseen places. Part of you feels grateful for it, grateful that you won’t have a permanent reminder of all the ways your life is no longer your own and suddenly belongs to too many things - both physical and metaphorical. Part of you is grateful, but a larger, more hostile part of you, wants to see it, wants to touch the mark they left on you. You want to see it, keep it, and internalize it, so that while it means your life belongs to something and someone else, at least you would have armor to wear when you are free.
‘Why did you let him do it?’ you ask, voice cold and rough, refusing to look away from your skin. In your throat, your voice feels like a shard of glass, a knife cutting and slicing away at all your feminine parts. You’re glad for this, as you do not have it in you to be soft. Not anymore.
Yixing adjusts awkwardly on the bed, bringing his eyes down to your arm and joining you in fixation on the memory. You spat ‘him’ off your tongue with such venom, you think he is reeling, choosing his words carefully to neither insult you nor his brother.
‘This was not something I wanted for you,’ he states simply, as though it should satisfy you - as though it could.
‘Why did you let him do it?’
Repeating the question makes you feel like a warrior, someone thirsty for a reckoning, and when you bring your eyes to his face, you’re surprised to find the same expression on his own. He’s tired, looking worn, pale, and slightly purple beneath his eyes. Hell has descended upon him, you can see it in the way he looks at you, slightly vacant and forcing himself to be soft. That is how you’ve known him and seen him, but beneath this facade is a wrath toiling away at all his kindness, making him into something glorious and dangerous.
Momentarily, you remind yourself that you were not the only one who suffered, that he had been preparing for a loss of an unprecedented magnitude while you were bleeding into an open throat. You remind yourself of this, but you do not let yourself be moved. And so you wait for his reply, expression impartial and impassive, while he returns the same to you in kind.
‘You cannot make me choose,’ he replies, stern and unyielding, and harder than you've ever known him to be. ‘You don’t have that right.’
Relief floods your veins at the harshness in his tone, glad to have a fight, glad to have him call you out on the impossibility of your request. Of him, you are asking the world and implying that he deliver the sun; you are asking him to be someone he is not and likely could never be. The summation of this tragedy is the choice between your life or Chanyeol’s death, neither a thing he wants but one he could not survive. The summation of this tragedy is allegiance and, much like yours is owed to no one, his is not owed to you.
Somehow, you find this makes it easier to acquiesce to his tone, reminded briefly of your first meeting. The peril is different now, far removed from where you were just days ago, but the feeling still remains the same. He’s offering you context and semantics, and you are handing him fighting words that are comprised entirely of projection. It was not Yixing who hurt you, not physically, and it likely never will be, but he was there and he saw it, and you cannot help but feel scorned by his broken promise.
‘I don’t blame you,’ you clarify, breathing deeply through the fire that burns in your chest, ‘not directly. You didn’t do it, but you were idle and that hurts just as much.’
The words are heavy as they fall from your lips, filling the air with what you think should feel like tension, a pressure in the air brought on by the movement of your tongue. You wait for it with bated breath to feel it, to watch Yixing become compressed under the weight of your accusations, but it does not come. Instead, he takes all of it, all of your hurt and all of your disdain, and welcomes it beneath his skin to let it dissolve.
‘Your blame is free to be placed as you choose,’he says coolly, almost too human to bear and suddenly removed from his previous state of mind. ‘That is your right.’
It strikes you that he’s good at this, the knowledge that apology and forgiveness were always his strengths. On the day you met him, you walked into his memory with little care for his privacy, unable to know or control your own strength. On the day you met him, you violated the only person who wanted to piece you together. And even while you were doing it, moving through his mind as if it belonged to you, even while you were tearing through his emotions and making him feel regret and woe for the first time in centuries, he had forgiven you.
Strength, more than comparison, was what that meant to you - of character and of heart. Strength was what he came to represent to you, strength and kindness and honesty. He had been all those things for you, and you think you could try to be the same, if only once.
‘You forgave me my transgression the moment I enacted it,’ you say, holding his gaze intently and hoping he believes you. ‘I can do the same for you.’
He regards you calmly for several seconds, taking in your words and catching your meaning. Cocking his head to the side, he smirks, playful, honest, and wholly himself.
‘I am not asking forgiveness,’ he says evenly, confidently, and at this you smile.
‘Neither was I.’
For a while you both remain this way, conversations living and dying on your tongues without ever greeting the atmosphere, knowing smiles playing at your lips. For a while you both remain this way, lingering somewhere close to friendship while both still too painfully aware of the trauma that’s passed between you from the very start.
With a heavy sigh, you break from his stare, glancing at your hands in your lap. Focusing on Yixing’s face makes it too easy to pretend things are fine, that you are fine, and good, and safe. Focusing on Yixing makes it too easy to forget. ‘You hurt me, but you’re still the only one I trust.’
Reaching to place both hands on your temples, he lifts your head up to look at him. He's serious, open, and offering you all of him for the taking. You feel a door open behind your eyes, scratching at you as it swings open - his door.
‘I hurt you but it was not my wish,’ he says, inviting you in, and suddenly you are full.
You see yourself from Yixing’s eyes, sobbing, pleading, bleeding - a seemingly pathetic creature who fancies herself ferocious. Hands starting to tremble, he forces himself to remain immobile as he watches you die, spilling yourself all over Chanyeol's mouth, neck, and shirt. As you pale, Chanyeol blooms, starting to gasp beneath the onslaught of your blood and rejoicing in the flood. Suho neither moves nor changes his expression, just holds your arm in place as their Sire bleeds back into life.
It’s been less than a minute, but he sees your collapse likely before you can feel it. Your eyes roll back into your head, whites of your eyes momentarily giving you the expression of a goddess, but your body crumbles, heavy and hard, and Yixing is the one who reaches for you. His reflexes are fast and he stops you before you hit the floor, preventing more damage to the shell that once was your body.
Immediately his hands are at your head, desperately trying to find you, to connect with you, but all that's left are threads, small and frayed, and he thinks if he were human he would feel the adrenaline of fear.
Without his hands to hold him and sedate him, Chanyeol’s eyes open and he heaves himself from the desk with incredible energy. Immediately his gaze finds you, pale and dying, and a terrible growl rolls through him, fully alive, beautiful, thriving.
‘Yixing,’ he spits, blood spraying from his lips and onto his shoes, enraged to living at such a great cost. ‘Heal her.’
‘I’m trying,’ Yixing barks, never before so terse with his Sire, though he does not bother to apologize.
Chanyeol ignores this disobedience, and instead drops to the floor beside you with a whine that does not go unmissed by his brother. Pulling at your eyelids with his fingers, Chanyeol whispers to you and only you.
‘Come back to me, Hero.’
And then, Yixing finds you.
Yixing departs from you with an embarrassed smile, one that makes you think he would be blushing if he could. The kind of smile that says he knows what you've seen, but he too has seen fragments of your own life, the cost of such a connection.
‘Context,’ he whispers, hands folding gently in his lap. ‘Dance used to be one of my favourite hobbies, too.’
You don’t have long to ruminate on this topic because, suddenly, you feel it, an oncoming storm that burns like an inferno - hot, heavy, and all consuming. Turning to glance around the room, you see Chanyeol leaning against the wall across from you with his arms folded and his lips pressed into a thin line. Something about him seems different, more vivid, but you cannot place it, though looks almost as though he swallowed the sun.
Beside you, Yixing reaches for your cheek with a focused expression. At his touch, warmth blossoms deep inside your soul, spreading into your fingers, toes, and bones, as though he were carving his own name into spine and becoming the fluid. Invigorated, your heart becomes strong and steady in its rhythm and you no longer feel tired or worn from the reality of your life.
All at once, you are ready for battle.
Yixing removes his hand from you, but leans in slowly to reach your ear.
‘For your fighting words,’ he whispers, pulling back to smirk at you before rising and leaving the room altogether.
It takes a mighty effort, heaving your legs over the side of your bed to sit straight and tall and poised. The blanket falls from your body, leaving you exposed to Chanyeol’s eyes. Now, you can see that you have sweat through your shirt, revealing the black bra you’ve been wearing for days and your slick skin beneath the fabric. As if in a dream, the sensation of moving to cover yourself or hide your body, the act of being timid, crosses your mind but you don’t bother to do anything with it. You don’t think there’s much left of you Chanyeol hasn’t taken, or seen, and his eyes are not roaming your body with a hunger.
Perhaps it’s this knowledge that stops you from covering yourself, the knowledge that Chanyeol has already had all of your most vulnerable parts. It strikes you then that this is the difference beneath his skin - your blood cascading down his throat, your blood pumping through his body in its slow, useless cycle. It’s your flavor that makes him look utterly, truly radiant, and all at once you are grateful Yixing let you be a battalion. You find Chanyeol’s presence here offensive after he’s already taken so much.
‘How long have I been out?’ you ask, voice cool and low as you stare at him.
Chanyeol doesn’t bother to move towards you, simply watches you as though you are something nuclear, something that could reap souls at whim and he is choosing to keep his distance.
‘Three days,’ he says, matching your tone. ‘You lost a lot of blood.’
The nonchalance in his speech makes your hands grip the edge of the mattress, squeezing the seam and the fabric until your knuckles turn white.
Scowling, seething, and burning, you snap. ‘Am I supposed to be grateful?’ you sneer, falling slightly forward from the force of your contempt. ‘Am I supposed to be happy someone took the time to heal me? That you’re alive?’
Cocking an eyebrow at your derision, Chanyeol merely shrugs his shoulders. ‘You are allowed to feel whatever you like.’
At this, you launch yourself from the bed, fueled by a fire that burns hot on your heels and singes all the kindness Yixing might have salvaged within you. Having lost so much blood, you think standing, walking, living should be a problem, but you make it to Chanyeol in three great strides and find putting your hand upon his throat to be something akin to eclipsing paradise.
You clench your fingers, tight and hard, against the cold steel of his neck. It’s wider than your small hand, but you compensate by pressing hard against his Adam’s Apple, pressing into the center of his throat with all your might.
‘This was forced upon me!’ you hiss, standing on your toes to bring your face close to his, and pushing your hand harder against his bones as you speak. ‘And it will never happen again. I am not a farm for you or this coven.’
He leans forward, unphased by your violence and your rage. Had you not been trying to eviscerate him, you would find his body language almost romantic.
‘You speak as though this is routine,’ he intones, eyes cold and empty.
He places his hands on your waist, and you almost feel the warm spread of trepidation building at your spine, but rather than pull you to him he pushes you back and walks you slowly to your bed. Eerily, he looks over you, never once breaking your eye contact. ‘I assure you, you will not become a habit.’
When you are finally seated, he turns from you and paces, gazing at the ceiling while he runs a hand through his hair. Once more, you find him ruminating over you as though you are something to be solved and you hate it - you hate him for trying to deduce you, to unmake you into something simple.
‘How the fuck can you stand there and be so calm?’ you demand, feeling wild and untamed in your fury.
He rounds on you, frustrated and tired and wholly not in the mood to fight with you. ‘You forget I suffered, too.’
‘Yes,’ you spit, sarcasm rolling off your tongue, ‘you died. And it’s my blood that brought you back.’
‘Yes, your blood.’ he retorts with a sneer, pointing a threatening finger at you. ‘Your blood that now lives inside me. This was not a choice - for either of us.’
Rolling your eyes with a scoff, you release an irritated, exhausted laugh. ‘Fuck, is that supposed to be comforting?’
‘You can take it however you wish, Hero,’ he snaps, effectively ending this conversation. ‘I merely wanted to give you my thanks.’
Silence washes over you, tense and paradoxically comfortable in its understanding. Both of you are flooded now with memories, thoughts, and emotions that do not belong to either of you - never should have belonged to either of you. You see him, though you do not know why, and he certainly sees all your most human mistakes and all the ways his world has made you into something else. You don't think he feels guilt or remorse, simply accepts both parts of you as your true whole.
You remain this way for many minutes, until Chanyeol finally sighs and points at your bed, silently asking to sit beside you. You aren't sure why, but you nod your head, perhaps glad to see him willing to bear witness to all your unending questions.
‘What happened?’ you ask once he finally settles on the mattress.
It's a loaded question, one that can be taken too many different ways. For three days, you've been out, tilling away at all the devils and graves in your mind. You know the timeline of what brought you here, to this moment, but you don't know why. You think that's what has chased you for so very long: why?
‘I told you I thought I was about to be betrayed.’ He doesn't look at you as he speaks, instead staring at the wall as he brings you back to the night you both died.
‘Yes, I remember.’
‘I find it ironic that it happened so soon,’ he drawls, traces of a blind, magnificent rage still filtering through, ‘but I truly had meant to give you answers. There has been a mole in the coven for some time, centuries even. The danger has wormed its way in, even between the bars outside.’
Still he does not look at you, and while you know that he doesn't need to, that he's seen so much of you, you are now voice in his head, you wish he'd at least give you some respect while he alludes to your misgivings.
‘You’ve made it perfectly clear I started this war, time and again,’ you say, bored with the repetition of this accusation.
This makes him turn to look at you, his expression firm and his fire reduced to mere embers. ‘You may have been the catalyst, but you did not start it. It’s been brewing long before your birth. It’s likely you were born with this gift because of the war.’
He's open with you, more open than he's ever been in his life but still he means to reduce you into something small and easy to handle.
‘Stop minimizing my existence into a symbol!’ you exclaim, slapping the bed with your fist as you narrow your eyes. ‘I’m a living, breathing person, and I’m so much more than that.’
‘You are right,’ he concedes, eyes warm and sincere. ‘I won’t make the same mistake again.’
Satisfied with the genuine answer, you find holding his gaze to be difficult, too powerful and inviting for all the questions that still turn in your mind. Instead, you turn away to look at your hands. ‘Who was that outside the bars? He had some kind of vile.’
‘Jinsoo. The Sire of a coven that means to end me.’
You find yourself nodding, the knowledge of death having radiated off him like tidal waves. Through even the camera screens, you could see the power and the control coursing through his entire being ‘That’s why he felt like death...a voodoo doll.’
Still, the memory of it makes you uncomfortable, makes your shoulders shift on the bed and your body wrack with a shiver. All of your skin you can feel him - looking, penetrating.
Sensing your discomfort, Chanyeol takes this opportunity to speak, though it does not help to ease your distress. ‘As a Reader, you can sense the intent of all things, all people. If he meant to kill me, you would have felt it - even if I was going to live. You see what could be, not what will be.’
‘Well, shit, can't anyone just figure out what could be,’ you sigh, exasperated with yourself and this frustrating ability. ‘I could kill myself in here. You could tear my throat out whenever you feel like it. A lot of things could happen, but that doesn't mean they will.’
‘And that is why you are lethal,’ he affirms. ‘You see the final possibility with absolute clarity.’
‘I wanted to protect you.’ You don’t mean for the words to be laced with disgust, as if you find him toxic and revolting, but the alarm you feel at the notion you could want such a thing terrifies you, makes you recoil from it like frightened child.
Chanyeol suddenly becomes somewhat sheepish at this, glancing around the room to place his eyes anywhere but your face. For the first time, he is uncomfortable having to give you an answer and it only makes your breath hitch as tension builds in your chest. ‘Yes, because you have an allegiance to me. You power will make you feel tethered to me and my right as sire.’
The reality and notion of this hits you hard, right in the center of your soul, and sends you caving into yourself. For a moment, you are winded, shocked that you’ve been fated to this from the start. Eventually, you move past the shock and find that, while you have known for days that your life is no longer yours, you had no idea how possessed you truly were.
‘Great, so now I'm just at the mercy of, what, the universe?’ you ask, eyes pleading with him to help you understand. ‘You?’
‘This is not a conscription of your will,’ he explains, turning to you as he attempts to soften his expression, though you don’t think he could ever truly be such a thing. ‘Your instinct will tell you to protect the sire, but only you can choose to do it. That is nothing but your own choice. How you feel about me moved you to action.’
Again, you are silenced by his genuine explanation, words of fight and argument nowhere to be found in your mind, perhaps already surrendering to the notion that, even if you say them, they will have no effect. Again, you are silent, so Chanyeol continues.
‘Every Reader I’ve ever encountered,’ he says, evenly and fighting a tension in his voice that sounds like awe, like he wants to be amazed by you, ‘has remained passive, seeing the possibility but never enacting their will. Those around them, they are the ones who choose the path while the Reader sees the fate.’
He reaches for you, but stops himself, unable to follow through with any intimacy.
‘You keep choosing,’ he whispers, instead. ‘I need you to keep choosing.’
‘I have no feeling towards you,’ you say, though even as you say the words they feel partly untrue. Always, you are moved by himd, by the fire in his soul. Always, you are moved to be near him, wishing to be burned by him and no one else.
Chanyeol tilts his head to the side as he takes the words in, a small, sad smile playing at his lips. The sadness you find, however, is not for your rejection, but for your own internalized dishonesty. ‘Lying has never looked good on you, Hero.’
‘I have no feeling,’ you repeat, even weaker than before, and somewhat vacant in yourself.
‘I know you think this, but your body and soul are telling you otherwise.’
Chanyeol turns the words between his lips, letting them fall as a fact and not as an insult. Like this, he does not give you the room for argument, nor does he spur within you any indignation that could make you counter his statement. Rather, you simply are forced to accept that, within you, there already has been a betrayal against yourself. Always, you’ve thought of yourself as someone who loved only when love was given in soft, gentle, obvious shapes. To think of affection building within you in a dark space, in a space where sentiment, kindness, and tenderness are warped into something monstrous makes you feel less human than any of their words or names could.
‘Had you been impartial,’ he continues, suddenly feeling the weight of his words himself, ‘you would not have left your room. Had you been impartial, you would not have shot Taeyong.’
This he offers to you with ease, a conversation on bullet holes and bleeding words far more comfortable and natural on his tongue than the whim of emotion. This he offers with ease and you take it, with greedy hands and fingers, clutching eagerly at the memory of somehow shooting an invisible thing. You remember little of it, only the need to ensure Chanyeol kept breathing and the way the trigger felt beneath your fingers.
The first time you shot a gun, you were unsteady and unnatural, awkward in your hold of the gun and terrified of the sound. That night, your finger released the bullet from the barrel as though it was the only thing it was meant to do, the whole of your life leading to that precise moment. Even as you think back on it, there was never any pause to aim, just the knowledge that you would hit him and therefore he would bleed. You wanted him to bleed.
You wanted him to die.
Hazily, you’re reminded that he was stabbed, his chest torn open by a hunting knife and starting to smoke. He lived through it though, you think, memories of his screaming filtering through as Yixing dragged you away from the battleground. He lived, and suddenly your mind is desperate to go on a search for him, to tear him limb from limb.
‘May I tell you something, Hero?’ Chanyeol says, peering at you sternly to try and call you back to yourself. He pulls you back, slowly and with the intensity of his eyes, until you remember yourself and are able to speak.
‘Why would you want to tell me anything?’ The paradigm shift of his tone does not go unnoticed by you, his sudden desire to ask for permission rather than give or take of his own choosing making the hairs on your arms stand on end. This does not feel like him, your soldier. This feels like Chanyeol, the one you dreamed and the one you saw, and then one you know you can never see again.
‘Have I not already told you a great many things?’ he asks, expression faltering and morphing into one of curiousity.
‘Yes, but this feels personal.’
‘Perhaps,’ he says, with a slight shrug.
For several seconds you think about it, his request. You turn it over in your mind and ask if you want to be filled with more things, more thoughts and ideas that aren’t yours. The implication of his question could mean a great many things: comments on the war, comments on your blood, comments on the pieces he owns of you now. And you decide, not because you truly want to know what he has to say, but because you want to see how far you are able to be stretched and pushed without breaking.
‘You may.’
‘I fear,’ he begins, refusing to turn away from you and instead wanting to watch every piece of your visage as he speaks, ‘for the first time in my four centuries as Sire, I may not be doing what’s best for my men.’
In the wake of his words, he studies you carefully, anticipating your reaction. His confession feels like a test, a challenge to your will, your voice, your mind as it accepts its circumstances. This is not the confession of a man asking for advice, he is asking you to change for yourself, to know and understand the world you live in, and to become a part of it rather than an accessory.
Furrowing your brow, you challenge him right back. ‘Why are you telling me this and not your men?’
‘Because to burden a soldier is to lose a war,’ is his simple reply. ‘And I’d also like to earn your trust...I’ve made as much clear before.’
‘Is this about Yixing?’ you scowl, catching watch you think is his meaning. He saw how you were with Yixing, the development of the closest thing you think you could find to a friend, and already he wants to tarnish it.
‘It involves Yixing’s life, but it is not about your relationship with him, no.’ There’s an impartial tone to his voice tells you he simply does not care about your relationship with Yixing, only cares that your life and his, and all the members of his coven, continue without disruption. Your desire for a connection is nothing compared to his desire to survive.
You see that in him, much the same way you see the will to live in yourself. You’ve been orbiting around Chanyeol and grabbing at all the parts within him you find familiar, and only now do you realize that you are as much like him as anyone else he chooses to Sire. And so, because you too think you could break the world if it meant you would live, let both him and yourself know that you could have the will of a dragon.
‘Perhaps you should view me as a soldier, then.’
Saying it feels like tasting relief, saying it feels like taking back control. It’s a sentence that would never have crossed your lips mere weeks ago, but now, it feels like the only thing you know about yourself to be true.
‘Would you fight for us?’ he asks, eyebrows raised in surprised. ‘With us? As a choice?’
‘You’ve called me Hero without ever giving me the opportunity to prove that I am.’ You mean it, every word as they fill your breath. They’ve called you Hero in jest and in spite, and now you think you want to own the title and wear it as a crown.
At this, he smiles, and the shape of it alone, all kind and warm and honest, catches you off guard. ‘You’ve taken and created those opportunities yourself. By choice.’
He sees this in you, likely has been seeing it in you since you were removed from the trunk. His openness and admission of it make you feel warm, like a honey is being drizzled down your throat, and for a moment you let yourself be the same kind.
‘Your fire has never scorched me, only acted as kindling for my own,’ you admit, though you cannot be sure why. ‘I imagine if you truly wanted to hurt me you would have by now.’
‘I still may,’ he reminds you. ‘Others here may.’
‘You won’t.’ Of this you are sure and confident. At any point, your throat could have been slit and given to a tongue, eager and greedy. He tasted you in his mouth and on his teeth, awake and angry that the would was made for him alone. He’s had the chance to hurt you and never has he taken it. ‘And you won’t let them. There is value in me.’
Chanyeol takes your shoulder and squeezes, making sure you listen to everything he is about to say. ‘You are valuable, Hero.’ He means this, with all of him. He’s burning alive beneath the truth of it and making sure the flames of this eat at your skin. Eventually, the strength of the hold and the intense heat pouring into your bones becomes too much for you to bear. You remove yourself from him and he does not fight you, looking instead at his hand as if it has betrayed him as he continues.
‘There is a job for you, though I cannot force you into it. You suspected this long ago, but contrary to your belief I am not in the habit of taking from women.’
‘The fuck are you implying?’
‘I will need you to witness something,’ he explains, hands lifting to visibly smooth out all your edges, ‘something I fear my turn you into someone you do not recognize. It will cause you pain.’
‘I’ve seen a lot of things that have changed me in ways I can’t even fathom,’ you bite out, teeth grit from the memory and the knowledge of who you’ve become. ‘I am no longer the person you found in that trunk - I haven’t been since D.O. bound me.’
‘This is not about bravery, it was never about bravery.’ His tone is fierce, adamant that you understand him and make this choice for yourself. Of your own volition and without his hands to guide you. ‘This is about how far you are willing to go to survive - to help us survive. Are you ready to push yourself into something you cannot call human anymore?’
And so you choose. You choose because it is the only thing that seems to make sense, anymore. You choose because it is the only thing that makes you feel free.
