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a fire burns inside me.
The first kiss was like fire searing his soul, confirming his greatest hope and worst fear. It was a cruel trick played on him by the universe: here was the man he’d been waiting his entire existence for – and he was human. Human, and the most precious thing Jaeyun had ever touched.
How could it have happened like this?
He’d told Sunghoon as such, when he had broken their sweet kiss, heavy breaths dancing across Jaeyun’s lips; “This isn’t – I mean – you don’t want to be with me. You know what I am.”
And Sunghoon had kissed his nose and his forehead and his cheeks until Jaeyun forced himself to look up at him again. He found eyes the color of obsidian, in the candlelight flickering around them, staring back at him – eyes the color of starry nights when they were the only two people in the world, the color of ink scribbled onto a page meant for no one else but Jaeyun, eyes the color of home – and he melted. Yes, Sunghoon knew what he was but he also knew who Jaeyun was. And for that, he loved him. The rest of it didn’t matter.
Jaeyun never realized how slowly time could move.
Waiting for Sunghoon’s eyes to reopen, wrestling with his thoughts and inner demons, it seems to Jaeyun that time is inching forward, moving with all the urgency of a lazy, sunbathed housecat.
That is to say, not at all.
Every few hours Heeseung lets himself into the chamber, eyes wide and full of concern as they always are, burning into Jaeyun – but he never speaks. Just tells him that he needs to eat, that sometimes the process happens like this, “remember how long it took Jongseong to turn?” with that kind smile of his. But Jaeyun can see the nerves in it, the way those eyes flick to Sunghoon’s limp, unmoving body every second he lingers in the room.
It never felt like this with Jongseong.
Every few hours Jaeyun refuses the blood Heeseung proffers with a wave of his hand, gaze stuck on Sunghoon (it’s not like he can look away, even if he wanted to); if Sunghoon doesn’t survive this, then Jaeyun doesn’t want to, either. It’s simple, something the rest of them can’t seem to wrap their heads around. “You’re being dramatic,” Riki had said, with his brightest tone of voice, the other day, in an attempt to lighten the mood, to get Jaeyun to focus on something else besides the boy in his room. The boy caught between life and death because of Jaeyun, because of who he is – but Riki has never been in love. He’s never known the way it feels to be one with someone like this, to hold so much devotion in your heart that it feels like it will burst.
When he is strong enough, sometimes Jaeyun touches him. Reaches out and brushes heated skin with gentle fingers, traces the little lines on his face that he never could when Sunghoon was conscious. Living. He doesn’t even flinch from Jaeyun’s icy fingers, not like he used to; how can he, just out of death’s reach, suspended between moments like this? Unable to think, unable to feel?
Jaeyun doesn’t remember much about the limbo before his transformation. According to Heeseung, none of them do; it’s so rough on their bodies that their minds just… put it – the pain, the nihility and desolation– somewhere where it can’t be reached, so they don’t have to remember it ever again. It’s a comfort for the future, but it balks in the face of the present, a present in which Sunghoon is suffering. Changing.
After the fifth day, Heeseung leaves them alone, and Jaeyun hears him telling the other boys to do so, too.
“He’ll come out when he wants.”
As if he could. The tether that binds them together, that draws him to Sunghoon, is slackening, inch by inch, Jaeyun can feel it – he can’t leave, can’t put more distance between them. Can’t let Sunghoon go alone.
Eyes flicking beneath his eyelids, Sunghoon doesn’t stir. Still.
Their kind doesn’t sleep, something that thrilled Jaeyun to no end when he was younger. They could spend their nights doing whatever they wanted, for forever. But how Jaeyun longs for sleep now; to pass the time, to dream.
On the sixth day, he tugs Sunghoon’s journal into his lap, a thick, leatherbound volume – almost completely full, and his heart swells at that – that Jaeyun asked him to keep, if only for selfish reasons. And so he did, carving any dreams he’d have into its papers with ink, in looping, elegant script, reminding Jaeyun of everything he took for granted when he was still human. Some nights, the dreams were nothing more than mundane retellings of his day; other times, he’d give the journal to Jaeyun to read and he’d find the newest passage, written with a heavy, shaking hand, splatters of ink strewn across the parchment, and his heart would ache.
No matter the dream, Sunghoon would write it down just for Jaeyun, and he reads over them now, remembering what it was like to settle back against Sunghoon’s lean chest a mere ten days ago, warm breath tickling the hairs by his ear – warm, yes. Sunghoon was always warm. Even when snow fell and he’d drag Jaeyun out to play around on the frozen lake near the mansion, ears and nose pink like flowers, gliding across ice like he was born to do it – he’d hug Jaeyun, breathlessly happy, laughing, and Jaeyun could feel it. Him. The warmth that was Sunghoon, echoing through every part of his body and into Jaeyun, until he pushed Jaeyun away because he was just as cold as the snowbanks –
He won’t have that when he wakes up.
Jaeyun sighs and closes the journal, setting it aside as he stands up. The rise and fall of Sunghoon’s chest grows less and less apparent as the days wear on, which isn’t necessarily a good thing. The transformation – Jaeyun’s blood, the poison in it, trying to circulate through his system – could be killing him, in the way that he can’t come back from. The way that won’t resurrect him. His skin, however pallid, is still warm though. Warmer than it was yesterday, he thinks. Though that could just be his imagination, playing tricks on him, deluding him into thinking –
Yes, he tells himself. Yes. Sunghoon is going to make it. He promised. Jaeyun promised.
He touches Sunghoon’s face once more and then curls back up in the chair by the fire, reaching for the journal again. Sunghoon will come out of this, and they’ll be together, and everything they went through, everything Jaeyun did for him, for them – it’ll be worth it.
“J-Jaeyun.”
His voice was hoarse, breathless, a kiss against Jaeyun’s ear, and he shivered at the sound of it, at the sensation of Sunghoon’s nails grazing the skin between his shoulder blades, the slow roll of his hips as he ground against him –
Jaeyun gripped him tighter, a moan escaping his lips, and Sunghoon guided him into a kiss as his fingers slid up into his hair. And all Jaeyun knew was heat. The heat of Sunghoon’s tongue against his, of his sweat-slick body slotted against his, of his own desire swirling and coiling in the pit of his stomach, fingers trembled as they reached between the two of them to wrap around their cocks –
And Sunghoon gasped, throwing his head back, exposing his slender neck –
His pulse thundered throughout his body and Jaeyun met it with an open-mouthed kiss, sucking hard, teeth scraping skin he could easily puncture, and then Sunghoon would be his in every way he could be – how wonderful that would be, he thought; to be Sunghoon’s, and Sunghoon would be his.
Jaeyun stopped himself before his fangs could come out, dragging Sunghoon into another kiss instead to silence the need aching throughout his body. He couldn’t ask that of Sunghoon, not when it felt more and more like a curse the longer Jaeyun lived.
They had this, and it was enough.
“Sunghoon,” he murmured, quickening his pace to match the desperate little noises they shared, breaths and moans and gasps that no one else has heard, and Sunghoon’s name tastes so good on his tongue –
They came together, slicking Jaeyun’s hand with wet, sticky warmth, and he laid back against the pillows as Sunghoon retrieved a cloth to clean up with. Naked skin alight from the fire still crackling in the hearth, he crossed the room quietly, and Jaeyun.
“What?” Sunghoon said softly, reaching for Jaeyun’s messy hand with the rag. A blush painted his cheeks, looking like a sunset in the orange hues scattered around the room.
“Nothing. You’re just beautiful.”
His blush deepens and Jaeyun giggles at the sight of it, tugging him down when he finishes with the cloth, hoping his kiss says what words can’t.
On the eighth day, Heeseung returns to the room. Jaeyun smells it before he hears him or sees him – he’s brought blood again. The severe, metallic scent of it – distinctly animal, freshly spilled – sends pangs through Jaeyun’s body that leave him torn between hunger and nausea and he’s so tired. Eight and a half days without feeding, eight and a half days just sitting here, waiting, waiting –
“I thought I would try something.”
Heeseung’s soft voice chimes throughout the room, and Jaeyun doesn’t know if he’s talking to himself or not; he doesn’t look at Jaeyun for a response. Instead, he sets the wooden bowl down on the table beside the bed and props Sunghoon’s head up with as many pillows as he can get his hands on (which, decidedly, is not a lot since this is a house full of sleepless vampires, after all), and Jaeyun watches as he tries to get Sunghoon’s limp form to drink. The blood pools between his half-parted lips and then dribbles down his chin, vainly, staining his white shirt in crimson rivulets. Heeseung sighs and sits back, balanced on the balls of his feet, and sends a look that is hardly subtle in Jaeyun’s direction.
“Would you like to help me, Jaeyun?”
He moves without thinking, setting the journal aside once more, and slips onto the bed beside Sunghoon. His limbs are heavy and difficult to maneuver, shirt and sheets sweat-damp, but soon Jaeyun sits behind him, holding him the way Sunghoon used to hold him. Chest to back, letting Sunghoon rest against him, as close as they can be. He feels the heat of his body through the clothes they wear, and it’s shocking when he reaches out to cup Sunghoon’s jaw: his skin all but scorches Jaeyun’s, as if a fire has started within him.
“Fever’s a good sign,” Heeseung murmurs as he holds the bowl up again.
He’s right. Once Jongseong’s fever came on, it was maybe twelve hours until it broke and he woke.
Jaeyun holds onto that as they feed Sunghoon, as he kisses Sunghoon’s bloodstained lips after Heeseung leaves, as he finishes off what’s left in the bowl. As he holds his beloved, and waits, and hopes.
Twelve hours pass, and nothing. Then the eighth dusk turns into the ninth dawn and Jaeyun feels broken. Nine days. It’s practically unheard of, especially with a fever this high, for so long.
Outside of the room, he hears Heeseung and Riki. They’ve lived lives longer than Jaeyun and Jongseong combined, have seen the rise and fall of so many days and nights, so many kingdoms and nations; they know more than Jaeyun could ever hope to know, and maybe it’s that that brings tears to his eyes when he makes out their words.
“We have to prepare for the fact that Sunghoon might not make it,” Riki murmurs, and he must be whispering as quietly as he can if he sounds this muted to Jaeyun’s ears.
“I can’t,” Heeseung says, just as softly, and Jaeyun squeezes his eyes closed as he catches the rasp in his voice. “Because losing Sunghoon means we lose Jaeyun too, and I can’t…”
Riki doesn’t respond, and Jaeyun knows he’s trying to make sense of it again. But for as long as he’s lived, all that he’s seen and done, he’s never been half of something made whole. He’s never given his heart and his soul and everything that he is to another being. And Jaeyun can’t make him understand the feeling. Can’t make him understand that, without Sunghoon, there’s a wound in his heart and his soul. A void that cannot be filled, a mark that cannot be erased. It makes him ache even now, holding Sunghoon close, weak breaths skittering across his skin, because he did this to himself, to Sunghoon.
Jaeyun had hoped and wanted too much, and now he’s paying the price with the one thing he never wanted to give up.
Blood.
It smelled like Sunghoon, like stars dying, sharp and hot and Jaeyun couldn’t move quick enough. Tearing through the forest, faster than even Riki, he felt cumbersome. Lumbering. As if he was dreaming.
All around him, he could smell Sunghoon. He was in the melting snow, the blooming flowers, the blood dripped along the edge of the path –
A trail, Jaeyun realized, as his thoughts caught up with his desperation. A trail that the hunters didn’t know about, he hoped.
“He’s nearby.”
Heeseung’s voice sounded through his head, as if he was next to him, and Jaeyun knew he was right; his heart didn’t need to beat but he felt it in his chest, thunderous, because Sunghoon’s heart was beating. Because they were close.
That was all he needed.
“It’s been almost twenty-four hours,” Jongseong whispers.
He’s watching Sunghoon with unfocused eyes, as if it pains him to actually look at him. Jaeyun, meanwhile, can’t stop analyzing and cataloguing every little detail. Eyes flittering like mad beneath thin, veiny eyelids. Shallow, intermittent breaths. Sunken, pale skin. The heat radiating off of him like a fire.
Almost ten days, and he’s still hanging on. Jaeyun can hardly sense him, though; a flicker of life buried somewhere Jaeyun can’t reach.
Heeseung tells him it doesn’t have to be something to fear; he’ll die either way. The only difference is that he’ll open his eyes a few seconds later… or he won’t.
Jaeyun feels like he’ll lose his mind waiting for it, the last breath; how, no matter what happens, the moment Sunghoon’s heart stops beating, it’s going to change him. As long as he lives – whether that’s long and sweetly, with Sunghoon at his side, or not – he’ll always, always remember the way it felt when his beloved died.
“He’ll make it, I know he will.”
Jaeyun looks at Jongseong, and when their eyes meet he finds himself managing something that feels like a smile. For all his self-isolation, he’s grateful he’s not going through this alone. And neither is Sunghoon.
He couldn’t hear anything over the sounds of his own sobs – not the hunters’ footsteps as they fled, alive because Jaeyun had lost his nerve; not Jongseong and Riki right at their heels; not the words Heeseung spoke; not the beating of Sunghoon’s heart.
Too late. They were too late.
And now –
“ – do it, Jaeyun. Now.”
He looked up into wide eyes the color of wet earth (wet with Sunghoon’s blood, hunger flashes through Heeseung’s gaze, but he’s stronger than this), into the face of the man who found him, who led him to Sunghoon whether he meant to or not, and he knew Heeseung was right. If Sunghoon were to live it needed to be now… but he’d be hunted forever. They all would, for breaking the humans’ rule, for taking someone as precious as Sunghoon from them. For Jaeyun’s selfishness.
“I can’t,” he whispered, willing Sunghoon’s eyes to open, he’d give anything, please – “They’d never leave us alone. And… and his family…”
“They lose him either way,” Heeseung murmured, reaching out to press his fingers against Sunghoon’s pulse. Jaeyun could feel it stuttering throughout his own body, the weakest it ever was, not like this, please – “But you don’t have to lose him, too, Jaeyun.”
“I…” He looked down at Sunghoon again, at the dark red mess of his waistcoat, at his blood-slick fingers clutching Jaeyun’s jacket. It wasn’t supposed to happen the way it did, how foolish and stubborn he’d been, Sunghoon dashing between Jaeyun and the hunter without thought, without care, because he loved him – “I…”
Heeseung sighed, pulling his hand back, and his fingers were a shade paler than Sunghoon’s still-warm skin. “It’s your choice, but he doesn’t have much longer.”
Jaeyun closed his eyes and leaned down, cupping the back of Sunghoon’s head to prop him up better, to bring him closer. He nuzzled his neck, nose brushing that frail pulse, remembering when it would thrum and throb beneath his lips, when he could feel it just by being near him. When he thought it could make his own heart beat again. He kissed it gently, a silent apology, an “I love you” he didn’t trust himself to say aloud, before brushing his lips against the spot below it, fangs protracting, grazing the skin.
The moment he bit down, Heeseung left the hunters’ hideout, left Jaeyun alone with his beloved.
His last breath comes later that night, just before the tenth day ends, and it paralyzes Jaeyun.
He hears Jongseong call for Heeseung, for Riki, hears the last feeble beat of Sunghoon’s heart as if it’s his own, feels the ground sweep out from beneath him as he cradles Sunghoon’s head in his lap – and then, nothing. Silence.
He pleads to anyone that will listen, to the gods that had forsaken their kind long ago; to Heeseung standing beside him, hand heavy on his shoulder; to Sunghoon, dead dead, he’s dead, his eyes won’t open, Jaeyun feels it in his soul, open your eyes, please, please –
A breath later, a breath he doesn’t need – a breath passes.
He sees eyes the color of obsidian staring back at him – eyes the color of warm winter nights, wrapped up in each other and a thousand blankets because Jaeyun’s skin is so cold but Sunghoon can’t stand not touching him; the color Jaeyun loves more than any other, eyes the color of home – and he melts.
Heeseung’s hand tightens on his shoulder before letting go; his footsteps, Jongseong’s and Riki’s too, the low thud of the door as it closes – Jaeyun hears them, but he doesn’t care. Not when Sunghoon’s here, he’s –
“You’re here,” he whispers.
Sunghoon shifts a bit and blinks as if getting used to the light, eyes full and tinged red. “It felt like an eternity.” His voice is hoarse from near two weeks of disuse, but Jaeyun almost cries at the sound of it. To think, he could’ve gone the rest of his existence without hearing it again, oh love… “I-I didn’t know what was happening, I just… I knew you were here. Waiting for me. I could… I could feel you.”
“Of course I was.” He allows himself to touch, to trace the little moles on his face that even the transformation couldn’t take away from him. Sunghoon’s nose scrunches up and he smiles; Jaeyun exhales, feeling the weight of the universe lift off his shoulders. “I’m yours, love, as long as you’ll have me.”
“I guess I don’t have a choice, do I?”
He’s teasing, Jaeyun knows it, knows that smile… but it hurts as if he’d meant it and he breaks, every ounce of stress and pain from the last two weeks spilling over as tears from his eyes. Immediately, Sunghoon shushes him gently and holds him tight, head tucked against his chest, and Jaeyun swears he can still hear his heart beating. “I – I didn’t know what to do, you were dying and I – I – “
“It’s all right.” Long fingers sift through his hair and Jaeyun misses his warmth but not as much as he’d missed him. “We never had the chance to talk about it but I wanted this life, with you. I’d take any life I could get, as long as you’re there with me.”
“You’re not mad at me?” Jaeyun whispers, lifting his head. Those sweet, dark eyes look back at him and he never wants to go without them again, never wants to be apart from Sunghoon again.
“Of course I’m not.” Sunghoon closes the distance between them and rests his forehead against Jaeyun’s, cupping the back of his neck, breathing only because his body still thinks it needs to. “If it was reversed…”
Jaeyun tangles his fingers in Sunghoon’s bloodstained shirt, eyes fluttering closed. “You stepped in front of the hunter. You – you risked your life for mine – “
“Because I love you, and I know you’d save me because you love me, too.”
The thought, however untimely, tears a laugh from Jaeyun’s throat. It quickly turns into a sob and he shakes his head, hair rustling against Sunghoon’s. “Surely you could’ve picked a less traumatic way for us to prove our love.”
He feels more than sees Sunghoon’s grin, brushing against his own lips. “Next time, I promise.”
Their mouths meet and Jaeyun sinks into it, into Sunghoon, drawing him as close as he can. He tastes like blood, like melting snow and blooming flowers, like life, and he is Jaeyun’s and Jaeyun belongs to him.
Forever.