Could I request a (reaction I guess? Idk? Scenario? Whatever fits?) For Exo finding out their crush is actually older than them & has a kid? Ty if you decide to 🙏🥺 (and even if you don't, ty for sharing your writing here!)
Minseok:
✿he met your child before he met you
✿he was out trying to find his cat so she could eat dinner
✿the cat was playing with your child
✿while he was calling for tan you were calling them to have their own dinner
✿he promised they could play together again and handed his number over
✿your child and tan are best friends
✿when he hears faint knocks on his door he knows it’s your child ready to play with his cat
✿he thanks tan every night for helping him find you
✿it’s nice to watch tan socialise
✿it’s also nice to get time with you
Junmyeon:
✿you’ve told him stories and keep him up to date with your child
✿they never met until you went to spend a weekend at the exo mansion
✿he spends so long getting a room ready for them
✿he knows pretty much everything about them so he can get them everything they love and need
✿exo don’t interact!!!!!!!!!
✿your child was very shy when they first met the prince
✿but after a few hours of goofing together they’re best friends
Baekhyun:
✿he pretty much kicks your door down the second you give him the go ahead to meet your child
✿he comes with arms full of things you’ve told him your child likes
✿they’re gonna bond instantly because he’s a huge idiot
✿buys himself a “worlds best dad” mug after one day with them
✿he’s so grateful to be able to have a mate and a child all in one go
Kyungsoo:
✿he doesn’t have alot of experience with kids
✿he’s been around them and cared for them for small amounts of time
✿but he’s never sat down and got to know one
✿he listens to every single word your child says
✿he remembers everything about them
✿their bonding thing is watching cooking shows
✿your child likes when he points out that they’re doing it wrong n making fun of them
Jongin:
✿Y E S
✿he collects godchildren
✿so he’s excellent with kids
✿he studies your routine and tries his best to fit in and help out
✿he loves telling your child stories of his past
✿and your child loves to hear them
✿they’re young but now they’re an encyclopaedia of supernatural information
Sehun:
✿when he finds out he’s sad that you’ve already gone through such a big step without him
✿it also sends him into a little depression session because if you’re changed you’re gonna see your child age and die and that’s gonna be hard will you let him change your child too????????? why is everything so hard junmyeon come figure his life out for him
✿another big problem is that he’s been babied by exo for years
✿is he ready to grow up???
✿the second he meets your child the answer is yes
✿he is very old and mature and ready to be a parent
✿being with your child is a thrill to him
✿he loves going to parks and reading kids books and watching cartoons
✱ Summary: Your life as the princess is predictable. Your fate, you assume, is written in stone. But fate is something that never unfolds the way it’s expected to. Fate is what turns your life upside down. Fate is what lands you in the arms of a member of a powerful vampire clan. And it’s fate that has you falling in love with him.
[ 11:47pm ] You close your eyes and take a shaky breath, only smiling and saying hi when necessary. You’d spent 2 hours at this god forsaken party and you were ready to leave. The only reason you were here in the first place was because your boyfriend, Baekhyun , had been looking forward to this club opening for weeks. He had been by your side, holding your hand, but after you 5th self-introduction, you found yourself all alone in the crowd. After a few lonely drinks you look down at your watch and huff impatiently.It’s been an hour, where the hell is he. You start to push through the crowd, a few hungry gazes look you up and down but you keep going. When you make your way through the crowd on the dance floor, you find a conspicuous closet that’s seemingly empty with a sign marked ‘do not enter’. It wasn’t until you opened the door that you realize that this closet was not empty. The space was being filled by some girl in a short, tight black dress and your boyfriend. His face was nestled in the crook of her neck ,his arms around her waist. Her face showed a look of pure ecstasy, but her eyes were flat and dull.“Baekhyun?? What the hell! I waited for you in that stupid room for an hour and this is what you were doing? I came here because you told me that it wouldn’t be fun without out me yet you sneak off with some plastic skank in a 5 dollar dress?” You scream. Baekhyun doesn’t turn around, he barely even flinches, so you start to walk over to him “Baekhyun I loved you. And i thought you loved me too…” You said. You shoved the girl’s arm off of Baek’s shoulder, and it falls limply to the ground, along with her body. Her face was still frozen in the same state and her eyes were lifeless. You feel you heart rate quicken, “Baek?” You ask stepping back slowly. Baekhyun turns around slowly then stares at you, dark eyes boring into your soul. Your eyes move from his to the blood dribbling down his chin. You feel a scream catching in your throat, one that won’t come out, one that’s choking you. Your feet start moving without you asking. Before you know it, you’re running away. You run as far as your legs will carry you. Which is only a few blocks away from the club.“Where are you going? I’m your ride, remember?” Baekhyun yelled, eyes glinting with disappointment. Anywhere away from here… You think. You hear him running behind you so push on, your lungs burning with exhaustion . Just 2 hours ago Baekhyun was your loving boyfriend who took you for ice cream and bought you gifts. But now… now you don’t know what he is.“Y/n, slow down… Let me explain…” He said. Baek sounded out of breath, so when you were sure you were ahead of him, you stopped dead in your tracks. “How the hell are you going to explain that? She looked dead. I need to call an ambulance.. No i need to call the police…” “I didn’t want you to find out this way…” Baek whispers in your ear. “No… this isn’t happening this can’t be happening” You whisper. Your feet start to move again, taking you away from Baek… “What are you so afraid of?” He yells, causing you to stop dead in your tracks. He had dried blood smeared on his cheek, and two of his teeth… no, fangs, were gleaming in the moonlight. Baekhyun looked godly. Godly and deadly. Which is one terrifying combination. “You…” You manage to squeak out before running away.
[a/n: ew it’s literally 2 yrs old and it’s so unbelievably bad im sorry u had to read that. Also we hit 200!! Ty for enjoying my random drabbles that I come up with on the spot ]
“Midnight Stranger” (NSFW Vampire!Baekhyun x reader)
The night is when most things find a solution and other problems appear. The streets were full of things you wanted or not during this time. You knew this so well but still decided to follow a stranger. He was dressed in an outfit that looked elegant from the back. Despite his impeccable sense of style, something had to be odd enough to make you follow him from behind. You were worried. The man was walking like after the next two or three steps were his last ones, like he was about to collapse. You heard him groan as his right hand went to his neck, seeming to loosen up the collar of his shirt by opening a button. After that move, his body made a turn and disappeared between two buildings, in a dark, narrow and strangled space. You bit your lower lip in doubt. Sure, the streets were empty at this late hour but that person needed help. It was all so wrong, but not knowing this, you still followed him.
"Excuse me, a-are you ok there?" You half shouted for the stranger, as you watched his figure hiding in the shadows. He was kneeling only on one knee, his right hand was hiding his face, fingers being pushed in his messy hair. At the sound of your voice, his hand lowered slowly from his upper part of his face revealing a pair of dark brown hungry eyes. The contour of those eyes that were now watching you was a bloody red shade.
"I might be ok. With your help." He finally responded while getting up and letting his arms fall elegantly next to his sides.
As he stepped closer, you could see all of the details. The first thing that caught your attention was his dark look. Black shirt, black blazer, black trousers, contrasting the pale shade of his skin. The rays of the full moon were falling perfectly on his cheekbones like he demanded it. Eyes, following his face, you discovered something even bolder. A metal ring that was holding onto his lower lip, a chain falling from it and ascending to his ear. While starring at it, you realized that you became speechless in front of him.
"Cat got you tongue?" He asked before starting to ask himself how would your tongue feel in a kiss.
You swallowed hard, not having any answer prepared. Seeing this and observing how you did not move, the dark and mysterious stranger chuckled. Oh how you should have ran away. Now it was too late, wanting it or not, you became his prey. While his full lips were curved into a sly smirk, his fingers dexterously got rid of the ring. Why was he doing that?
"What are you doing?" You finally backed up because the distance between you two started to dangerously decrease.
There was something hypnotizing in his gaze. No, not the red that contoured his eyes was to blame. His way of looking at you was the thing that was pulling you in his trance. He was starring at your shoulders, neck, like he was analyzing, looking for the best place, hearing your pulse getting louder and calling for him. Your back swiftly hit a wall when he decided to lean in closer to you, catching the collar of your white satin shirt. He smelled your scent and as he parted his lips you froze in place, understanding everything. A pair of sharp fangs were hidden by his lips.
"You are so nervous, it's cute. A sight like this should be appreciated more." He whispers closely to you, licking his fangs the tip of his fangs while looking straight into your eyes. His left knee touched the wall from behind you, going up, between your thighs, opening them.
"Is it because of my shaky hands?" You asked and raised an eyebrow, trying to snap out of it at least for some moments and look like none of his gestures was affecting you. The elegant vampire did not answer right away but before you could even react, you felt how cold fingertips sneaked from your shirt to the side of your windpipe on your carotid artery. A red light danced in his irises as he felt your blood flow from below your skin was hitting his fingertips.
"It's because of your pulse." He explained close to your ear before letting his hand slide lower on your neck, shoulder, arm, finally stopping at your left hand, holding it. "I want you closer." He decided and pulled your arm, turning your body around in the process. Your back was suddenly against his chest and you were trapped, this was the first step and you knew it.
"L-let go of me! Please!" You said, feeling the hardness of his chest on you.
"Keep those lips for something more pleasing than telling me to let you go." He responded while as you watched the wall you were facing, his hands slowly slid down on your sides and stopped on your hips, griping them tightly. "Look how I am going to do this." He whispered while pulling your lower half against his. "Since you are being such a good girl, I'm going to tell you a little secret. If you relax, it won't hurt that bad."
As he said that last part, his right hand traveled to your chest exactly where he wanted. His fingertips ghosted over your erected nipples that were now even visible through your shirt. This type of embrace should have been warmer if you weren't curious enough to follow this vampire and get in this trouble. Wanting to start to unbutton your shirt, he felt how your body tensed up again, so he decided to keep on helping you relax. The left hand that was holding your hip, now snaked behind the waistband of your jeans and lingerie, stopping only when his fingers touched a warm, wet, more vulnerable part of you from between your thighs.
"Someone is going to enjoy this more than I will, it seems." He said, his hot breath mixing with the cold air, floating like smoke coming out of his mouth. As his fingers slid up and down in a slow motion, getting your intimate part wetter and more sensitive, you felt how his face got closer to your neck. The right hand that unbuttoned your shirt went up in your hair, pulling on it slightly so that your head was tilted to the side, exposing your neck. "Don't worry, doll, not yet." He said as his lips started to kiss your neck. As if it wasn't enough for him that you were shaking, your breath hitched when one of his fingers gently slid inside you. Repeating the motion but increasing the rhythm gradually, a moan escaped your lips.
"More." The vampire demanded, adding another finger inside you. "I want to hear more of you, enjoying what I do to you." Another moan was heard from you when you felt how cold, solid fangs were slowly sliding on your neck, following the line of your pulse. "Hold onto me, love." You wanted to ask why but everything got clear when his fangs finally pierced your skin.
His lips were quick to soothe the short pain that was quick to fade away because of the pleasure he was giving you. His moves slowed down as warm liquid invaded his mouth, sweetly. "I hope you choke on it." You told him, trying not to move too much.
"I'll give you something to choke on later." He responded after retrieving his fangs from your skin, licking any drop of your blood that fell on your skin, lower to your collarbone. After having a taste of you, the vampire stopped and moved slowly away, but not letting you go yet. You weren't done and also he was not done with you yet. "Let's go to my place." He simply said grabbing your chin.
"What do you have in mind?" You asked breathlessly, starring at how his lips were tinted with a reddish shade because of your blood.
"I want to make you mine in other ways."
Author’s Note: This came as a natural thing for us I think, hope we got you in the mood, in our little universe/story. -Mod Subyss
This was actually something we did for Halloween but I think that it works anytime lol. We had so much fun planning this post and colaboration.-Mod Deftone
Genre(s): Supernatural!au / vampire!au / witch!au / x OC (Alice)
Group(s): EXO
Pairing(s): Kim Junmyeon x OC / Wendy Son x OC (platonic)
Summary: While on a run, Junmyeon discovers a halfling in trouble. He decides to help her.
Warning(s): Mentions of blood / murder
[Masterlist] [Moodboard]
He runs through the forest, the wind bushing the hair out of his face as he makes a turn.
It’s been a stressful couple of days for Junmyeon. If it was not for Junmyeon and his brothers, a war would have started between a group of incubi and a vampire coven. And on top of that, he hasn’t eaten for weeks, too occupied with work.
Suddenly, a whiff of blood hits his nose before a loud cry does. Junmyeon sniffs deeply, enjoying the scent of human blood lingering the air. His body reacts before his own mind does and he starts to run towards to source.
But he sees something he doesn’t expect.
Instead of a human laying almost dead on the floor, blood pouring out of their wounds from probably falling off the cliff; a young girl sits against the cliff wall, her body and clothes almost entirely drenched in blood and crying her eyes out.
Junmyeon sneaks near, hiding behind a tree as he watches the girl closer. He notices that the girl is a vampire, her physical age may be not older than twenty-one.
He decided to help her and steps closer to her, only to step on a twig and it snaps, making her head snap up, her eyes scanning her surroundings in fear.
Her eyes find Junmyeon’s figure and she yelps in fear, jumping up from her seated position and press her body into the cliff wall.
“It is okay”, he whispers while holding up his hands, showing her he’s harmless. “I am just like you, see”, Junmyeon opens his mouth, his sharp teeth on full display, matching hers.
She stays silent and watches him, her eyes often shift from the threes and the grass back to him.
He now notices that her eyes have two different colours; red and brown.
She’s a halfling.
“My name is Junmyeon and I want to help you. Would you allow me?” He slowly puts his hands in front of him for her to take.
The girl nods slowly while sniffing, laying a bloodied hand in his own.
“Do you know how to run?”, he asks her in a hushed tone. The last thing he wants is to scare her.
She shakes her head, eyes big and her gaze shifts all over his face.
“Hold on tightly, okay?”
Another nod.
Junmyeon breathes deeply in and out, ignoring the smell of human blood on the halfling and running towards the only place he knows is safe for her. The coven’s house.
He rapidly knocks on the front door, almost flitting the wood in half out of frustration.
“What do you want?!”
The door gets thrown open and a really angry Wendy stands in the opening, an apron tied around her waist. As she sees Junmyeon and the bloodied girl standing behind him with scared eyes, her faces soften and she lets them in.
“Oh my Goddess, what happened dear?” She looks with motherly worry to the girl, seeming lost.
“Can you please take care of her for me while I get some business done? I just really need to finish—”
“It’s okay, go.” Wendy points to the door with her head.
Junmyeon thanks her with a brief hug before turning to the girl behind him. “I will be back, I promise. This is Wendy and she will take excellent care of you.”
He gives her one last smile before rushing out of the house, leaving a gush of wind where he once stood.
“Why won’t you go to the bathroom and get into the tub. I’ll turn off the stove and help you clean up, is that okay?”
The girl nods.
Wendy points the way to the bathroom and the girl walks towards it, her eyebrows raised in wonder as the bath is already filled with soapy water and a lot of bubbles.
She undresses and steps into the clean water, the blood washing off of her. The water turns in this filthy mix of red and the blue of the soap.
She sighs sadly, not understanding what is wrong with her. The only thing she knows is that she’s a monster.
A soft knock is heard on the bathroom door before Wendy’s voice. “Can I come in, dear?”
She nods, only to realize that Wendy couldn’t possibly see that so she gives a soft, “come in”. Her voice feels a lot more coarse in her throat then she thought.
The door opens and Wendy steps inside with a slight smile as she sees the girl sitting in the water, hugging her knees.
She grabs a loofah and begins to wash the blood of her back.
“Why are you helping me? You don’t even know my name.” Her voice sounds weak as she looks slightly behind her, into Wendy’s golden eyes.
Wendy laughs. “Junmyeon doesn’t ask a lot of help. When he does, it’s mostly because he has a really good reason for it.”
The girl hums, chewing her broken lip.
“And giving a name is powerful. So I understand why you won’t give me yours.”
“It’s Alice.” Her reply is soft but not unheard by Wendy.
She gives the loofah to Alice and smiles, happy that the girl trusts her.
“When will Junmyeon return? And what’s wrong with me.”
“You have a lot of questions, and I understand. I’ll leave you to finish up and get dressed to have some food downstairs, okay?”
Wendy leaves Alice with a pile of clothes on the sink and Alice gets washed up, scrubbing away all the blood on her face and in her hair.
It’s been a month since Junmyeon left Alice in the caring hands of Wendy. Alice knows she has to trust Junmyeon to come back, but a small voice in the back of her head says that he isn’t coming back.
The others of Wendy’s coven, Red Velvet, came back from their jobs and travels and helped to explain what happened to Alice.
When a vampire drinks a human dry, until there is not a single drop left in their body and doesn’t give the human their blood, they will transform in a Halfling. Half-human - half-vampire, these creatures are living on the edge between two worlds.
They can both enjoy human food and blood, walk mindlessly in the sun, and, if lucky, have control over a power. Halflings can also do the same things as normal vampires; run at super speed, are inhumanly strong, and can charm humans.
But, they're weaker. Sometimes only half as strong as a ‘normal’ vampire. Halfbloods also have two different eye colours: the one they had as human and red. It, again, shows that they are in the middle of two worlds and technically don’t belong anywhere.
That’s why some vampire despises them. They are underdeveloped and will never be as strong as a ‘normal’ vampire.
Only if a royal pureblood vampire graces them with love and offers them blood, the Halflings will become fully transformed vampires.
Because of Alice’s eye-colour difference has Wendy given her a ring dipped into a glamour potion, protecting Alice from the harsh world.
Wendy also gave Alice a job in her potion shop. There she spends her days filing the ingredients, labelling them, and helping customers finding what they need.
A lot of people and creatures mostly mistake her for a witch but are soon to remembered by her sharp fangs that she is everything except a witch.
Sometimes, Alice has to get new ingredients from the market in the town centre, just like today.
She manoeuvres swiftly through the crowd of fur, scales, and feathers with her basket in hand and cloak draped protectively around her body. It was a gift the coven gave her after she got control over her newfound powers as a Halfling.
Everything goes smoothly as she gathers every ingredient from Wendy’s list and ready to return as something in the corner of her vision catches her attention.
It is Junmyeon. He looks briskly at her before diving into an alleyway.
Her eyes grow big and she quickly follows him, wanting to see him again.
As she walks deeper and deeper into the alleyway, she gets further away from the crowd.
Suddenly, some brutal force slams her against the dirty brick and Alice gasps for air, letting the basket fall out of her hands and the content sprawls over the ground.
“Well, what a pretty little thing you are”, she hears in her ear and she recognises the smell immediately.
This is a banished Siren.
Wendy has told about them. She told how dangerous these creatures are since they pray on unsuspecting souls and morph into the person they desire the most before luring them in and sucking all their life force out of their bodies and leave them to die.
“Looks like this little vampire has a crush on the prince, doesn’t she?” The Siren taunts while deeply breathing in Alice’s scent.
‘Thank god for the coven’s powerful spells’, she thinks while struggling to get out of the grasp of the Siren.
“I wouldn’t do that if I was you”, warns a dangerously low voice behind the both of them and the Siren turns around, fear in their eyes.
The Siren immediately releases Alice and hurries out of the alleyway, scared for its life.
Alice slides down the wall with tears streaming down her cheeks, her whole body shivering with fear.
Two strong arms wrap around her body and lift her up. She recognizes the familiar smell and looks up, to Junmyeon.
“Wha- what are you doing here?”, she asks dumbfounded.
Junmyeon smiles slightly and pulls Alice on her feet, dusting off the dirt from her cloak. He holds up his hand and Alice takes it almost instantly.
As Junmyeon leads her out of the alleyway, he says; “I came to search for you. Wendy said you went to the market and... and then I couldn’t find you so I followed your scent.”
Alice snatches the basked out of Junmyeon’s hand as she also lets go of his hand, what surprisingly was a lot harder than she thought.
“No. I don’t mean ‘here - here’ but as ‘why are you here, now’.” Alice makes air quotations while chewing on her cheeks, anger rising in her.
Jumyeon sighs and looks down, putting his hands in his pockets. “I was... I was scared”, he mutters, avoiding her eyes.
“You were scared? Of what?” She knits her eyebrows together as she lets her arms fall beside her.
“How am I going to─ don’t you feel that weird feeling when we touch, that urge to be close to me and to talk to me? A weird desire you can’t explain?”
She looks down, thinking deeply. Yes, she did dream of him nearly every night for the past month, but she just ignored it and said to herself that it is because he was the first person who helped her after she was bitten.
But now he lays it out so flatly, she acknowledges that she has a weird desire to be close to Junmyeon, so she nods.
“That’s because we are bound by faith─”
“Like soulmates?”, she interrupts him and Junmyeon nods.
“Yeah, like that.”
A daring smirk creeps on her face and she takes a step closer to Junmyeon. They’re chests almost touch and she can feel his breath feathering on her face.
Junmyeon’s hands fly to her waist to pull her closer to his body, breathing in her perfume.
“I didn’t want to scare you away from me. I am known to be quite possessive of what’s mine.”
Alice giggles. “And since when am I yours?”
Junmyeon looks dumbfounded at her bluntness, finding it quite charming.
“You didn’t ask me to be yours”, she continues what makes Junmyeon laugh.
“Is that how you do it in the mortal world?”
Alice scoffs and hits his chest. “Don’t act so old.”
“I am old. But if that is what is my lady wants, that is what my lady gets.”
Junmyeon takes a step back and drops to one knee. “Alice, would you like to do me the honour of being mine?”
A bright smile creeps on Alice’s face as she nods happily.
Junmyeon jumps on his feet and kisses her on the lips.
When he pulls away, she looks up and says; “wait... can you now make me a fully transformed vampire?”
Junmyeon blinks a couple of times. “Where did you hear that?”
“Well, Wendy told me when a full-blood Vampire of royal descent gives his love and blood to a Halfling, he or she will become also a full-blood Vampire.”
He laughs loudly as they walk back to the shop. “My darling, the love you are thinking of is not the same it actually is. Wendy sugarcoats everything.”
Alice’s face falls after half a minute of deep thinking and her face turns beet red.
“You have so much to learn, my Halfling. And I am glad to teach it all to you.”
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.
