New Blood

by bohema

Summary:

Jooyeon had his sights set on getting a kitten. Not the furry kind, though, but the kind that came in the shape of a sweet, slightly lost boy named Ode. The others only rolled their eyes, calling it another whim, another passing fixation. Turning a human was out of the question, and yet, somehow, the kitten crossed their threshold and, before long, slipped into their bed, too.

Chapter 1: The Stray Kitten

Notes:

oh mama, FINALLY some ot6 crap from me... only took me three years after joining the fandom. better late than never, i guess??

also, just a heads-up, this fic might contain some trigger topics like violence, sex work, blood & injuries, suicidal behavior, so yeah, be careful with whatever the hell my brain decides to come up with ♡

“If you don’t let Ode live with us, I’m gonna tear you all apart in your sleep,” Jooyeon declared with the same absolute certainty as if he were stating the sun would rise in exactly ten hours and thirty-four minutes and that he’d need to slather himself head to toe in SPF before daring to step outside, even for a second. Not that he planned on leaving the house before the harsh glare softened against the city skyline again, though. Of all of them, he was the most nocturnal predator, drawn to neon lights and the raucous thrills the streets had to offer. 

Phone clenched in his hands, he lounged sideways across the soft chair, legs dangling over one armrest, head thrown back onto the other, dark hair spilling toward the floor, its pink-tipped ends stark against the wood. A shame, really, that it wasn’t falling over his face the way it usually did, getting in his eyes, in his mouth, driving him half-mad. He practically hated it, but the thought of cutting it off felt even worse, so his gaze was unobscured for once, carrying a mix of wild confidence and something almost petulant.

“He’s like… a stray kitten! Small, helpless, so damn cute!” Jooyeon jabbed a finger toward the ceiling, his dark brows furrowed in righteous indignation. “You want him to get killed by the dogs out there? You heartless bastards!”

Letting his head loll back, Jooyeon took in the scene upside down. Jungsu, who had been laughing at something on the TV, just waved him off, the dim light catching on his earring as he turned his head. Jiseok, who was seated in his usual spot on the floor at Gunil’s feet, one leg bent, the other stretched out to show off obnoxiously bright socks covered in cartoon shrimp, let out a loud snort.

“Oh God, not the kitten thing again,” he groaned. “Gunil-hyung already tried domesticating you. We’ve got more than enough pets in this house.”

“Exactly!” Jungsu jumped in immediately, though his eyes never left the TV. “Are you gonna clean up after this kitten? Or do you expect me to do it? No, kid, live your life peacefully, no kittens required.”

“You don’t even know his real name,” Jiseok pointed out. “You wanna bring some stray into our house, and you don’t even know what the hell he’s called? What kind of tragic love story is this?”

Jooyeon bristled. He shot a glance in the other direction, checking on Hyeongjun, the last one he hadn’t yet taken in. Predictably, Hyeongjun looked completely indifferent. The guy barely engaged in these conversations, always tucked away in his own corner, just like right now, curled up in an armchair by the curtained window, pencil in hand, sketchbook balanced on his knees, giving him no word of support, even when Jooyeon was counting on it.

What a… killjoy.

“Maybe I don’t know his name,” Jooyeon admitted, rolling onto his side and propping himself up on his elbow. His voice softened, dropping into something dangerously close to fondness. “But I know other things.”

Like the way Ode laughed, slightly breathless, like he’d been caught off guard. The way his fingers curled around the microphone when he sang, knuckles tense, the slightest tremor in his voice when he got lost in a song. The way he always tilted his head when he listened to Jooyeon talk, as if he actually cared, as if he wanted to remember every stupid thing Jooyeon said.

The way he let Jooyeon call him Odie, even though he pretended to hate it.

“Ode is just… one of a kind,” Jooyeon stretched his words out again like he was singing rather than speaking, theatrical, raw, the way he used to in his golden years as a rock star. “He’s so fucking amazing, it’s insane! He even knows 5 Seconds of Summer, can you believe that? I’ve spent seven goddamn years waiting for someone in this country to have the taste to appreciate Luke Hemmings! This is fate!”

Jiseok couldn’t hold it in anymore and snorted again, but this time he actually burst out laughing, noisily slurping blood through a striped straw held between his full lips.

“Oh well, if he knows 5SOS, then that’s it,” he said, licking his mouth. “Never mind the fact that he works at a karaoke bar and probably knows every song they’ve got. Bring him in, man. We’ll put him in the kitchen. He can make our coffee.”

“More likely, he shall find himself making coffee out of me,” Gunil muttered, finally looking up from his book, a leather-bound, ancient thing, filled with notes written in his own calligraphic script from a decade ago. Jooyeon had once peeked inside and nearly died of boredom; he was pretty sure it was the true weapon against vampires, far more effective than sunlight. 

Gunil, as always, was immaculate, because of course, he was, even though it was just another evening at home. Expensive suit, tie only slightly loosened, dark hair slicked back like he was expecting a board meeting to break out in the living room. Jooyeon didn’t get it. Why look like that when you could wear hole-ridden socks and a shirt stretched out beyond salvation? Like the one currently hanging off Jooyeon’s own shoulders. The only thing that softened Gunil’s image even slightly was the round glasses perched on his nose, and maybe the way his hand absentmindedly brushed through Jiseok’s hair, the latter sprawled contentedly at his feet. Perhaps that quiet devotion was the only thing keeping Gunil from detonating on the spot.

“Jooyeon-ah,” he said, his voice carrying such solemnity it could drown a man. He spoke like the organ in an old cathedral, measured, deep, grand, but unbearably tedious. “Pray, enlighten me: did you deign to summon even a flicker of that formidable intellect before inaugurating this, if I may, discourse? Am I correct in assuming that the young man you so ardently champion enjoys good health, a stable domicile, respectable employment, and a future enviably secure by the standards of this unforgiving capital? Or, dare I presume, has your magnanimity been ensnared by a fleeting apparition whose true nature eludes even your own keen perception?”

“A fleeting apparition?!” Jooyeon lurched upright so fast the blood rushed to his head, his phone slipping from his grasp. The screen flashed as it tumbled, smacking against his leg before landing face-down on the floor with a dull thud. He barely noticed. He was already on his feet, pivoting toward the trio, eyes blazing. 

“Hyung, you should see him! He’s… he’s…” He flailed his arms as if trying to scoop the right words out of thin air. “He’s living like some tragic heroine in a shitty romance novel! There is no bright future! He needs a goddamn savior! Just like in those stories! You’ve read them!”

Jungsu sighed heavily, dragging a hand down his face before lazily patting the armrest beside him like he was soothing some invisible presence or maybe just himself. His fingers tapped idly against the fabric in a quiet, absent rhythm that somehow made his exhaustion even more obvious. Then, with a slow turn of his head, he leveled Jooyeon with a look so flat, so full of resigned disbelief, that Jooyeon could practically hear the unspoken “You ridiculous child.”

“Some people just live their lives, but you keep wasting your precious energy on nonsense,” Jungsu scolded, his voice carrying the kind of familiar exasperation that meant he had already given up on changing Jooyeon but would still complain about it. “How much sleep did you get today? Three hours? Four? You should be worrying about yourself, star. How do you expect to take care of anyone else when you can’t even take care of yourself?”

Jooyeon ignored him, not even bothering with an indignant sigh. Instead, he turned his attention back to Hyeongjun, who was being way too quiet to properly call himself Jooyeon’s childhood friend. 

“Come on, Hyeongjun-ah,” Jooyeon drawled sweetly, resting his elbows on the back of the nearest wooden chair. “Tell them. Tell them I’m right. Tell them that he needs to be saved from that shithole he’s stuck in.”

The graphite of Hyeongjun’s pencil scraped against the paper as if deliberately emphasizing his silent indifference. He didn’t look up until he finished the last stroke of whatever he was sketching. Only then did he glance at Jooyeon, raising a brow. There was no annoyance in his expression, just that particular brand of irony that always made Jooyeon feel like he was losing.

“Hosts in Gangnam can make more than you do,” Hyeongjun stated flatly, setting his pencil down on a scrap of paper. “And by ‘more,’ I mean about two and a half times your earnings, excluding the side jobs.”

Jooyeon took that jab like a slap to the face. His hands shot up, and he barely managed to stop himself from knocking over the empty vase sitting in the middle of the table.

“Money isn’t everything!” he exclaimed so fiercely that it was as if he truly believed this would be his final, irrefutable argument, one strong enough to shake even Gunil. “Tell me, has even one of you regretted ending up in this house?!”

There was a pause, a few moments of silence thick with something ominous.

Hyeongjun took his time as if intentionally stretching the moment before finally exhaling, shrugging almost imperceptibly.

“Yeah, I did,” he said.

Three words.

Just three fucking words.

They split the air like a lightning strike, leaving behind nothing but ringing emptiness.

Jooyeon stared, wide-eyed, his breath catching in his throat as if the shock had punched him square in the chest. His mouth opened, then shut again, like his mind refused to process what he’d just heard.

“You… did?” he echoed, balancing on the razor’s edge between anger and something far more fragile.

Something clawed at his ribs, something deep, ugly, and unfamiliar, something he wasn’t used to showing.

“I did,” Hyeongjun repeated.

Jooyeon felt his blood boil. His whole body tensed, fingers curling into fists before he forcefully crossed his arms as if he could physically hold himself together, like he was cradling something wounded, maybe his pride, his memories, or the years they had spent as inseparable halves of the same whole.

“You…” he started, but his voice cracked, his throat burning with the words he didn’t know how to say. “Do you even understand that the only reason you’re sitting here alive is because of me?! You were already fucking gone, and I— I couldn’t just let you—”

His hand sliced through the air, frustration coiling so tightly inside him that it hurt.

He had done what any best friend would do, hadn’t he? He had saved Hyeongjun. He had brought him home. He had given him a second chance.

Hyeongjun just exhaled slowly, eyes steady in a way that made Jooyeon’s insides twist.

“Jooyeon-ah,” he drawled, exhausted. “When someone puts a noose around their neck, it means they don’t wanna live.”

The words landed like a punch, a direct hit to the gut.

“Giving them immortality at that moment?” Hyeongjun continued, tilting his head slightly. “That’s the exact opposite of what they wanted. I thought even an airhead like you would understand that.”

“Y-you…!”

“Exactly,” Jiseok chimed in from across the room, his voice light, almost teasing. He had moved to perch on the armrest of a chair, idly swinging one leg while resting a hand on Gunil’s shoulder. “What, you think you’re playing a hero? You do remember Hyeongjun spent years complaining about how you didn’t let him die, right? Or were you too busy basking in your own righteousness to notice?” He tilted his head, lips curling. “I mean, hell, I had to pull his sorry ass out of a bathtub more than once. Patch him up, sit there while he glared at me like I’d just ruined his grand fucking finale.” Jiseok let out a short laugh. “So tell me, Jooyeon-ah, what makes you so sure this Ode of yours wants to be saved the same way? That he even wants to be like us?”

The words landed like blows, but before Jooyeon could recover, Jungsu delivered the next punch.

“Yeah, Jooyeon-ah,” he drawled, nodding along as if Jiseok had just solved the meaning of life. His expression was something between amusement and exasperation, like he was watching a kid throw a tantrum over a lost toy. “Did you even ask him what he wants? Or did you, as always, just decide for him that he’s miserable and needs saving?”

His tone was light, but the weight of his words crashed into Jooyeon like a truck. His whole body tensed, hands instinctively planting themselves on his hips in sheer frustration. 

Like hell Ode likes his life the way it is.

Jooyeon didn’t need to ask to know. He could see it, plain as day, in the way Ode carried himself, in the way he talked about the future, or rather, didn’t.

What did they know, anyway? None of them knew what it was like to stand in front of someone and see it, crystal clear, that they were drowning and didn’t even realize it.

If Ode couldn’t see it himself… then somebody had to do it for him.

Jooyeon opened his mouth, ready to hurl every argument he had left, but before he could, Gunil, having waited for the perfect moment, allowed himself the smallest of smiles, a brief twitch of his lips that disappeared almost instantly, leaving his expression as composed as an old portrait.

“My darling,” he said solemnly, each phrase crisp and deliberate as if his own words demanded as much attention as the Holy Scripture itself. “Permit me a candid inquiry: how, in your esteemed judgment, does one define the state of requiring salvation? If a man’s toil is recompensed, his flesh sustained, his mind occupied with purpose… then I must remind you, fatigue and a haggard countenance alone do not suffice to warrant our intervention.”

Jooyeon refused to back down. The fire inside him only burned hotter, consuming reason, scorching through every protest that didn’t fit the truth he knew. Did they really not get it? Or did they just not care? They sat here, untouched, walled off in their quiet little sanctuary, living in comfort while the world outside rotted. 

Jooyeon had seen it, heard it. He knew what Ode’s laughter sounded like when it was meant to please, how his voice softened when he played along, when he let himself be someone else’s good time. He had watched the way Ode held himself after long nights, like something left out in the rain, worn thin, used up. He could still smell it, clinging to the edges of his memory — blood, sweet and sharp, laced with cheap perfume and the sting of spilled alcohol. 

Jooyeon’s nails bit into his palms, breath coming sharp and uneven. 

If none of them would see it for what it was, then fine. He’d just have to make them.

“Are you fucking kidding me?!” His voice cracked like a whip, raw and furious, as he jerked his shoulders and snapped his glare from Gunil, who had already buried himself in his book, turning the page with infuriating composure, to the empty armchair where Hyeongjun had been sitting before getting up and leaving the room without a word. His childhood friend. His supposed best friend. How convenient. 

Jiseok only tilted his head, watching Jooyeon with something almost amused, like he was waiting to be entertained. 

Jungsu squinted at him, brow furrowing, as if trying to make sense of messy handwriting.  

Jooyeon’s whole body tensed, his hands curling into fists at his sides.

“You seriously decided for me that he’s fine there? You didn’t see his face! His eyes, for fuck’s sake! Say whatever you want, but no one can live in that place. It’s not a home. It’s a fucking prison.”  

Gunil raised a hand, fingers barely twitching, signaling for silence. Because Jooyeon still carried the faint aftertaste of the early 2000s, because discipline, as he liked to joke, had evaporated from him along with the last traces of natural light in this house, it took him a second to actually shut up. 

Then Gunil turned that steady patience on him, the kind that meant he would speak uninterrupted, and Jooyeon had no choice but to listen.

“This is all profoundly affecting, Jooyeon-ah,” he began, slow and deliberate, pressing each word into the space between them as if he were delivering a sermon on the moral foundations of Protestant ethics. “Yet I must entreat you to recall that the edicts governing this maison are immutable, its raison d’être singular. This dwelling does not exist for the comfort of mortals. They seek us only when no other recourse remains when the abyss menaces them; only then is it within our purview to extend deliverance.”  

Jooyeon rolled his eyes so hard he almost saw the back of his skull.

Gunil always talked like he was some grand preacher addressing a congregation of thousands, not the leader of a small house of vampires.

Here we go again.

Another speech about their “mission.” Another lecture on morality.

As always.

Yet, beneath that voice, suffocating his fire like a blast of winter air rushing into a stifling room, something in Jooyeon still rebelled. It made his nerves pulse in sync with the dull thud of the fridge door closing in the kitchen. Hyeongjun, who clearly had no interest in the argument, was already rummaging through the bags Jiseok had brought. Fucking groceries.  

Jungsu let out a lazy yawn and turned back to the TV. 

Gunil returned to his book again, flipping a page as if the conversation had already left his mind. 

Only Jiseok kept watching, lips quirking, clearly entertained by the show.

The mundanity of it all pissed Jooyeon off, and not because it was boring, but because today, it fed his fear that these old bastards would just build a wall of empty philosophy in front of his plea, that they’d go around in circles, and the threat he was trying to save that guy from would stay right where it was, outside their cozy, half-removed existence.

His feet started pacing around the long dining table, pointless, quick, and too lazy-looking, yet jittery as hell, like a rockstar who, years after debut, still hadn’t learned to wear even one of his hard-earned millions with dignity. In other words, just Jooyeon, exactly as he had been twenty years ago.

“Oh, for fu-uck’s sa-ake!” he burst out again, dragging out the vowels, exaggerating as if it might somehow make him sound more persuasive. That was useless; no one in this house ever understood anything. “Were you even listening? The abyss? Hyung, every goddamn night in that place is a potential abyss for him! You talk about letting him choose, but what’s the fucking choice? No one there has a choice left! Have you seen that place? It’s a swamp! A fucking miserable swamp!”

“A swamp?” Jiseok drawled, lazily amused. “Is that the same ‘luxurious establishment’ you were raving about last month? With the soft couches and perfect decor?”

Jooyeon met his gaze, and in it, he didn’t see sarcasm. It was more of a quiet, ironic challenge, silently saying, “Well? Explain that one.”

“That was… before,” Jooyeon mumbled, suddenly feeling the heat rise to his ears. “What, you guys have amnesia? You didn’t hear what I just said?!”

As Hyeongjun passed by Jooyeon, he muttered, “You said it was nice there.” His brow furrowed slightly, his voice soft but laced with that thin, unmistakable layer of jollification. He dropped back into his chair, lounging as if none of this truly concerned him, and took a sip from his glass.

Jooyeon’s jaw clenched at the sight. The blood inside was practically frozen, condensation clinging to the glass like frost on a windowpane. Even the cup itself looked like it had been sitting in a damn ice bath. Jeez. He hated cold blood. 

“Now it’s a ‘swamp,’” Hyeongjun continued, licking a stray drop from his lips. “Interesting. Seems like the karaoke bar magically remodeled itself overnight.”

“That’s not the point!” Jooyeon snapped, jabbing a finger in the air. “Seeing what they do to him, that’s the fucking swamp! That’s what it is! You all just sit here in your damn chairs, talking about morality and principles, while he’s suffering!” 

He glared around the room, hands twitching like he wanted to shake them all until they understood, until they saw what he had seen: Ode’s red-rimmed eyes, the way he kept his head down, his breath uneven like he’d been trying too hard not to cry, the angry mark blooming on his cheek, stark against his smooth skin, the imprint of someone else’s hand. They hadn’t seen it. They hadn’t heard those muffled sobs behind a locked door, hadn’t watched him flinch at a touch, hadn’t felt the weight of his silence and the way it screamed louder than anything else.

“What, do I have to go back? Sneak in a fucking camera just so you can put yourself in his place for one goddamn second?!” The words ripped out of Jooyeon, more raw than he intended. His voice cut through the air, hoarse, as if exhaustion had finally seeped into his frantic desperation. “You’ve built yourselves a cozy little den and forgotten that, out there…”

A faint scratching sound interrupted him. Hyeongjun was sketching again.

“Forgotten what, Jooyeon-ah?” 

He lifted his head. His voice was quiet, almost polite, but his stare was heavy, like the weight of an execution order. That gaze sent a chill farther than any words could.

Jooyeon froze.

Forgotten what?

Why the fuck were they looking at him like they didn’t get it?

“It’s all rot!” he spat. “Parasites. Beasts. The people those beasts are about to kill.”

Hyeongjun said nothing. He only dragged his pencil across the page again, outlining the edge of a shoulder or whatever he was drawing right now.

Gunil, now the sole focus of Jooyeon’s simmering, disorganized rage, remained completely composed. He watched Jooyeon with that same measured patience as if waiting for him to run out of steam, to see reason on his own.

Before Gunil could respond, Jungsu exhaled sharply and cut in, his voice mild but firm, “You’re all emotions, Jooyeonie. You’re not thinking it through.” He leaned forward slightly, studying Jooyeon with something almost like pity. “You don’t get it, do you? You were born like this. You don’t know what it’s like to be human, to feel the weight of time the way they do, to have a life that actually ends.” 

He shook his head, eyes flicking downward before settling back on Jooyeon. 

“You think you’re saving him, but what if this isn’t for him? What if he ends up hating you for it? Would you really wanna see him curled up here, desperate to escape? Trapped in a body that won’t ever let him go?” His gaze turned sharper, more pointed. “He probably has family, friends, people he loves, people he doesn’t wanna lose. If you turn him, he’ll have to. And when they’re all gone, what then?”

A soft thud broke the silence as Gunil closed his book.

“I shall presume this caprice of yours will dissipate in due course,” he said flatly.

“It’s not a fucking caprice!” Jooyeon shouted. “It’s a necessity!”

 

— 🦇 —

The sliding door jerked open with an awful creak, shredding the hollow karaoke bliss into pieces, muffled by the bass, tangled in the songs from the neighboring rooms, where strangers’ voices fought to drown out the loneliness that rang louder than any illusion. Jooyeon pulled it aside almost mechanically in one smooth motion, and the next second splintered into shards, poisoning the air around him.  

The first thing he saw was him.

Ode.

On his knees.

Jooyeon’s breath hitched. 

That boy, with short auburn hair and a voice that could melt into honey, the boy who had tangled himself into Jooyeon’s thoughts, into his nights, into the small, hidden spaces of his heart, was kneeling, but not in some dramatic collapse with a mic in hand, stretching out the last chorus.  

His fingers were digging into the man’s knees, knuckles white. His shoulders shuddered as he gasped, choking, his throat closing around something too thick, too deep for his mouth to take. A strangled sound broke from him as he pulled back abruptly, coughing. 

The man above him groaned in irritation, his fingers harshly, possessively tightening in Ode’s hair, crumpling copper strands in his fist like a handful of dry grass. His other hand rested on the couch, relaxed, amused, like he had all the time in the world to enjoy the sight.  

Ode’s shirt was undone. It had slipped down, the fabric pooling in soft folds at his elbows, leaving his collarbones and the curve of his trembling shoulders exposed to the dim light. The deep shadows cut across his skin, emphasizing every shiver, every breath that shook through him. His lips were swollen, inflamed as if bitten raw, wet with saliva that trickled in a thin, silent thread down his trembling chin; they quivered as he tried to regain control of his breathing, his eyes shimmering with unshed tears.  

“Can’t even suck properly,” the man spat, yanking Ode’s head back by the hair, forcing him to look up. His neck stretched out, Adam’s apple bobbing with a strained swallow.

The man’s voice was repugnant, vile, thick with contempt. For a split second, Jooyeon wanted to tear into his throat, fangs first, until there was nothing left but silence. Consequences be damned. To hell with Gunil’s rules about not attacking humans. To hell with the fact that he was standing in the heart of Gangnam, where revealing himself would mean cold steel shackles snapping shut around his wrists.

Jooyeon’s body refused to move, though.

His breath caught, the sickening curl of nausea twisting deep beneath his ribs. Rage boiled inside him, violent and unrelenting, but beneath it hid something much worse, something clawing up the walls of his chest with freezing nails.

Ode flinched, giving just one tiny, involuntary jerk and letting out a strangled breath. 

The man’s grip only tightened, yanking him back into place. Damp strands squeaked between his fingers.

Ode’s lips parted slowly, obediently, hopelessly as he whispered, “I… I’m sorry, I’m trying.”

There was no plea, no protest in his words. It was all resignation, carved into every syllable. Ode gave the quiet, empty kind of surrender that came when all other choices had already been stripped away.

The man snorted.

“Trying?” He grabbed Ode’s cheeks, squeezing hard enough to force his lips apart. “Trying like shit, you little whore. What, you need a lesson? Maybe I should give you a proper one. Teach you how to do it right?”

Ode barely had time to inhale before the slap cracked through the air, sharp and impatient.

Jooyeon flinched. The sound lashed across his nerves, searing into his skin like sunlight burning through flesh, merciless and all-consuming. His vision wavered, but the red blooming across Ode’s cheek was vivid enough to anchor him in the present, to carve the moment into his memory like an open wound.

Ode made a small, broken sound, almost imperceptible, but Jooyeon heard it, too, and it sank its claws into his chest, twisting, tearing, setting his insides alight.

Ode swallowed hard, his head bowing in submission. Jooyeon saw his slender fingers tremble as they pressed against the man’s thigh, tightening against the fabric like he was grasping for something to keep himself together. His breath was short, uneven, but his voice… steady, maybe a bit too steady for this kind of shit.

“Sorry,” he murmured. “I’ll do better.”

He moved again, leaning in, parting his lips, closing them around the man’s flesh as if nothing had happened, as if this was absolutely normal, as if he was used to this.

Ode wasn’t just enduring or just obeying. 

He was giving in.

That “sorry” wasn’t a plea for leniency or a quiet rebellion waiting for the right moment to break free.

It was the final surrender, and Jooyeon couldn’t bear it.

What the fuck was happening here?

What kind of place was this, really? What kind of services did it offer? Jooyeon had always thought Moonlight was just a karaoke bar, a dimly lit refuge where pretty boys and girls poured whiskey, laughed at bad jokes, let you believe, just for a moment, that you were charming. He thought the worst thing that could happen here was an overpriced bill at the end of the night.

Ode should have been smiling, swaying to the music, throwing back his head to belt out that damned chorus of Teeth, eyes glinting. He should have been winking, batting his lashes, grinning as he crooned, “Some days you’re the best thing in my life.”

The worst part wasn’t the kneeling, the trembling shoulders, the swollen lips that struggled to take some filthy fucking dick.

It was the scent of blood.

At first, Jooyeon didn’t know where it was coming from, but then he saw a thin, glistening cut on Ode’s cheek, right where the slap had landed. The bastard wore a heavy ring on his right index finger, and the sharp edge must have split the skin, so now, the syrupy-sweet scent filled Jooyeon’s nose, seeping into his bones. 

It didn’t bring hunger, though. He didn’t want Ode, didn’t want to press his lips to the wound and inhale deeply, letting the taste bloom on his tongue.

Instead, a savage, all-consuming fury was possessing his body. His gaze locked onto the man, and his fingers curled into fists so tight his nails dug into his palms. He wanted to strike him, rip him, destroy him, tear this fucker apart, make him choke on his own insides, smear his guts across the expensive leather of this shitty couch.

“Get your fucking hands off him, asshole,” Jooyeon’s voice came out low, rough, almost a snarl.

The man’s head snapped toward him, irritation flickering in his bleary eyes before twisting into caution.

Ode looked up, too. His lips were still parted, breaths unsteady, the flush on his cheeks not from pleasure but humiliation. For a split second, something passed through his gaze.

What was it? Surprise? A silent plea? Or… fear?

Jooyeon didn’t get the chance to find out. Before he could move, before he could lunge and tear this bastard away from Ode, a presence loomed at the doorway. 

That was security.

A heavy hand landed on Jooyeon’s shoulder, firm, not quite painful, but making its message clear: You don’t belong here.

“You can’t be in here,” the guard said evenly. “Please, leave.”

Jooyeon’s pulse roared in his ears. He started forward, but another hand clamped around his wrist. That wasn’t exactly an iron grip, but it was a steady warning. He knew that if he threw a punch now, they’d toss him onto the street like trash.

Then what? What would happen to Ode?

On the couch, the man barely spared him a glance. He only scoffed, fingers tightening in Ode’s hair, making him flinch.

“Last warning.”

Jooyeon knew he had no choice, and yet, as they dragged him back, he fought against it, muscles coiled, teeth clenched.

Ode looked at him. 

His eyes were still blurred with tears.

 

— 🦇 —

Three days. 

Seventy-two hours. 

An endless number of seconds, splintering in Jooyeon’s mind like the crackle of an old vinyl record, one of those Jungsu still liked to play in the evenings.

Jooyeon couldn’t shake the image from his head. No matter how hard he tried to drown it out with guitar riffs, cigarette smoke, even the acrid burn of fermented blood — nothing worked. He saw Ode on his knees over and over again, heard his hoarse apologies, saw his tear-streaked face frozen in the doorway as they threw Jooyeon out.

Now, here he was, sitting right next to him.

It was the same karaoke bar, the same private booth, but it felt like a different reality.

Ode snapped his fingers in front of Jooyeon’s face. Once, twice. Paused. Then snapped a third time before leaning in, tilting his head, studying him from a new angle.

“Earth to Jooyeonie,” he drawled with a light chuckle, deftly working the remote in his other hand. “Something from Måneskin? Panic! At the Disco? Or should we go back to your beloved 5 Seconds of Summer? You’re a fan, right? I remember.”

Shit.

He really remembered?

Jooyeon only shrugged in response, lips curling into a lopsided smirk, but he didn’t look away. Couldn’t, because Ode gleamed, shimmered, like a stage under concert lights, like city neon on a rainy night. Everything about him felt like a play of light and shadow, honed to perfection. Was he just a performance, though? Or was there something real beneath it all?

Jooyeon’s throat felt tight.

He should’ve laughed it off, made a joke, said something cocky, but that damned nickname, slipping so effortlessly from Ode’s lips, sent heat curling low in his stomach. It was ridiculous, absurd, but it was him, saying it, letting it roll off his tongue with that same playful ease, like it belonged to him.

His music taste — Måneskin, Panic! At the Disco — it was perfect, completely aligned with Jooyeon’s own.

He wanted to grab Ode by the cheeks and kiss him stupid.

“You should just grab the mic and sing.” Ode tilted his head back, stretching his spine with an easy grace. “You’ve got an insane voice, seriously. Like you weren’t made for karaoke. Like you belong on a stage.”

Jooyeon flinched and masked it with a scoff.

When Ode was probably five, Jooyeon was already blowing out speakers with raspy demo tapes, living in basslines, unraveling through chords. He still lived that way. Only now, he hid behind a hundred pseudonyms, selling his songs to others, releasing them incognito, collecting royalties from hits sung by voices that weren’t his, all so the world wouldn’t notice his face never changed, never aged.

“You flatter me,” he muttered, but Ode only grinned, teeth flashing like a tease.

“Maybe. Or maybe I’m just telling the truth.” His eyes lingered a little too long, scanning Jooyeon’s face, searching for something. “Well? What are you singing, rockstar?”

Jooyeon didn’t answer.

He couldn’t.

Because fuck, it was still there, still burned into his mind: the red mark on Ode’s face, the spit he’d wiped from his mouth, the way his body had bowed forward as rough fingers tangled in his hair. Jooyeon could still hear that hoarse, obedient “Sorry,” could still feel his own rage blistering beneath his skin, clawing for release.

And now this? This flirting?

It should’ve made him smirk, should’ve fed into his usual cocky deflections, but all he could do was stare at Ode’s mouth, no longer swollen, no longer trembling, just a little damp as he pursed his lips in a mock pout, pushing him for a reaction.

Was it because he liked Jooyeon?

Or because it was just part of the job?

Jooyeon never feared questions, but this one, he refused to ask. His lips felt glued shut, sealed with the dried blood of unspoken doubts. He couldn’t focus on the song list, couldn’t make himself choose between Måneskin and Panic! At the Disco, couldn’t even breathe properly, because in front of his eyes was no remote, no screen, no Ode with his bright-eyed enthusiasm, but just a memory, turning into a wound Jooyeon didn’t know how to stop pressing.

“Three days ago…”

Ode looked up, pausing, remote still in hand. Jooyeon swallowed. A dull, burning ache coiled in his gut. He half-expected Ode to avert his eyes, to flinch, to deflate. Jooyeon expected to see exhaustion, fear, a silent plea hidden behind his smile, silently saying, “Get me out of here.”

Instead, Ode only arched a brow, lips twitching into a smirk.

“Oh, you didn’t know?” He pointed the remote at Jooyeon like a teacher’s stick, then leaned in closer, voice dropping to a whisper. “We offer all kinds of services here. You wanna try it too?”

He smiled.

Oh, fuck.

Jooyeon wanted to sink his teeth into him, not from thirst, but from sheer, feral frustration. The crack inside him widened, the hollow, gnawing anger chewing at his ribs, but he couldn’t force out a response. He was too focused on the caramel strip of skin above Ode’s collar, where a bluish vein pulsed, too aware of the steady rush of blood beneath it.

Ode wasn’t waiting for an invitation, though. Before Jooyeon could pull back or even breathe, he was already moving, sliding onto his lap like liquid, like it was the most natural place in the world for him to be. The movement was smooth, effortless, practiced, and enticing. Ode fit against him too easily, pressing down just enough to make Jooyeon’s breath hitch, and fuck, he was moving, just slightly, slow and teasing, the way someone would when they danced or when they rode.

Jooyeon barely caught him by the waist, too fucking slim for his own good, so slim the fingers nearly touched around him.

“Well?” Ode murmured, pressing closer, his breath ghosting over Jooyeon’s lips. “I can make you feel good, you know. Not just with my mouth, either. Any wish, for the right price, baby.” He dipped lower, the tip of his nose brushing along Jooyeon’s jaw, down to his neck. “And I haven’t had anyone yet tonight. It’ll be tight. You’ll like it.”

His voice was smooth, low, almost purring, and it made Jooyeon uneasy, because fuck, he wanted to lean in, nuzzle into Ode, slide a hand up the back of his neck, grip his hair, and see if he’d arch into it. 

His fangs ached. 

His body responded too easily to the warmth, the weight, the way Ode’s hips rolled just enough to remind him what was being offered.

Was this how he did it? Did he climb onto the laps of drunk men the same way? Did he let them grope him, press their mouths to his throat, shove rough hands up his shirt? Yank him like something they owned, like something to use? Fuck him without care, without hesitation, leaving bruises, leaving blood?

Jooyeon’s stomach twisted.

Lust was fleeting. The consequences lasted longer. If Ode was offering himself, it wasn’t out of some grand passion but because he knew exactly how to tempt, how to seduce, how to make a man think with something other than his brain.

Fuck, that was definitely working.

Ode shifted in his lap, slow, deliberate, his body fitting against Jooyeon as if he belonged there, as if he’d always belonged there. Then, with a lazy sort of grace, he slid one hand behind his own back, fingers searching, curling, until he found Jooyeon’s wrist.

Jooyeon tensed.

Ode didn’t hesitate. He pulled Jooyeon’s hand from his waist, guided it downward, over the curve of his ass, warm and soft, a perfect handful beneath Jooyeon’s palm.

Jooyeon exhaled sharply. He didn’t mean to, but his fingers twitched, gripping instinctively, sinking in just enough to feel the give, the way Ode’s breath hitched at the contact. A low, hushed, wrecked sound escaped Ode’s lips, hot against Jooyeon’s ear.

“You feel that?” Ode whispered. “I could ride you slowly, let you feel every inch. Or take you fast, let you fuck me deep.” His teeth grazed the shell of Jooyeon’s ear, his hips rolling just enough to make the heat in Jooyeon’s stomach twist into something unbearable. “Either way, rockstar, you’d love it.”

Jooyeon almost groaned.

It would be so easy. Ode felt so fucking good, so pliant, so willing, and his scent was making Jooyeon dizzy. His cock was already half-hard in his jeans, pressing uncomfortably against the fabric, and fuck, Ode had to feel it, had to know exactly what he was doing.

Ode’s light fingers, deceptively casual, trailed along Jooyeon’s jaw before pushing a stray strand of hair behind his ear. He leaned back just enough to look at Jooyeon, eyes dark, lips parted. 

“You’re big enough,” he murmured, gaze flicking down, the implication obvious. “Kinda impressive, actually. Guess it fits, though.”

Jooyeon clenched his jaw. He didn’t know what he hated more: how easily Ode played him, or how badly he wanted to play along.

Instead, he exhaled through his nose, fingers slipping from Ode’s skin. His hands dropped to his sides as he leaned back against the couch as far as it would allow.

“I’ll leave you a nice tip,” he said evenly. “Just for the company.”

Ode smirked, tilting his head, eyes glinting.

“You know,” he drawled, “rich but generous clients turn me on so much.”

His words were light, teasing, but what was behind them? Was he testing? Searching? Letting know something just shy of the truth? Jooyeon couldn’t tell.

“If you change your mind,” Ode whispered, soft but sure, “I’m always available.”

He lingered a moment longer, watching Jooyeon. Then, with a slow stretch, he slid off his lap, heat disappearing, weight lifting, leaving him cold and unsteady.

 

— 🦇 —

Gunil studied him with lazy indifference, but Jooyeon knew better that it was a deception. That look, the way he leaned back ever so slightly as if granting Jooyeon room to push further until he burned himself out, was a test, a trial he had to pass if he wanted to get what he came for.

“Necessity,” Gunil echoed, drawing out the word until it curled into something mocking. “And what necessity, pray, might that be? You scarcely comprehend it yourself. Or have you, perchance, succumbed to the boy’s allure?”

“That’s not the point!” Jooyeon snapped, barely keeping himself from outright shouting. That was so stupid, childish, and reckless to be so desperate to prove something to those who had already made up their minds, but he couldn’t help it. “He’s not like the others. He hasn’t rotted in that damned place yet. And I won’t let him.”

Jiseok laughed.

Jungsu sighed.

Hyeongjun kept sketching, only a slight raise of his brow betraying any reaction.

Gunil watched Jooyeon as if what stood before him wasn’t just a heated outburst but something that might actually be worth his attention. 

“So be it,” he said, his voice level, yet no less weighty. Jooyeon felt something inside him tighten, stretch taut, and tremble like a string on the verge of snapping. “You shall present him to me.”

He said it like he was agreeing to examine a rare bottle of wine or an exotic animal, for amusement only. He gave no promises, no guarantees. All Jooyeon could pull out of him was just a possibility, making him want to grab those words and shake more out of them, even though he knew that it would be useless.

“Tomorrow, we go to Moonlight,” he bit out.

“Très bien,” Gunil said, and as if that alone was enough, he reopened his book, cutting off the conversation with an effortless flick of his wrist.

Jooyeon’s eye twitched. 

As if the pretentious ass couldn’t just say ‘okay’ in Korean like a normal person. As if his own goddamn language, already stiff and archaic in Gunil’s mouth, all measured syllables, and lofty phrasing, wasn’t enough. No, of course not. He had to sprinkle in French like they weren’t standing in a dimly lit room in Seoul, like this was some refined salon debate from not just the last century, but the one before that, one Jooyeon hadn’t even been around for. Ugh.

Jooyeon exhaled slowly through his nose, willing the tension in his shoulders to ease. 

Gunil had already dismissed him, turned the page both literally and figuratively.

Something inside Jooyeon raced forward, tearing, trembling, and maybe it was a premonition. 

Chapter 2: Rabid Mutts

The glass doors hissed open right in front of Jooyeon, smugly, like they were scoffing in his face. The karaoke bar spilled out toward Gunil and him like an old friend reaching for a hug with a knife tucked behind the back. Everything screamed for attention, tried to gleam and glimmer, shoved itself into the eyes. The ceiling lights poured down thick honey-colored light, licking the marble floor with a warm glow that seemed to beg, “Come on, just look, just admire me!”

Jooyeon walked in first, hunched over. The first slap to the face was the smell, it was lemon-scented chemicals, plastic lilies, cloying cheap perfume, blended into a radioactive cocktail, shaken up in a rust-stained steel shaker that really should’ve been thrown out a decade ago.

The lobby stretched forward like a grotesquely symmetrical intestine. Velvet benches lined both walls, pristine and untouched, like sitting on them was somehow forbidden. Fake plants drooped at awkward angles, their ridiculous green looking like props from a child’s playset. The gold trim in the corners looked like the idea of luxury belonging to someone who had never actually seen it up close.

Jooyeon hated that this place still looked better than half the joints in Seoul. Pretty on the outside, rotten inside. That was Gangnam all over: glowing signs, polished doorknobs, and behind them was nothing but stench, lies, and the reek of spoiled grins. 

He’d hoped this place might be different. He was wrong. The rot here was the same.

The front desk stood right in the middle, clean and polished like a crime scene after a janitor’s been through. Above it, a neon sign purred out ‘Moonlight’ in swirling letters, blinking slightly out of sync, slow and lazy. The sight alone used to knock in his chest like a foul-tempered owl, like the one haunting his window these days, hooting just to piss him off. Now his heart only ticked there, like a quiet metronome.

His sneakers slapped against the floor. He marched forward, jaw tight, eyes ignoring the mirrors, the plastic plants, and the fake calm dripping from every surface.

Gunil walked beside him, radiating such lazy indifference that Jooyeon wanted to punch him more than if he were mocking him outright.

“Ah, my dearest,” Gunil drawled in his usual lofty cadence. “Your ardor, so unceasing, incandescent, and positively operatic, never fails to amuse and, dare I confess, to captivate. You proceed with the tenacity of one wholly resolved to extricate some pitiable wretch from the innermost sanctums of perdition itself. And yet — may I hazard a heretical inquiry? — upon what authority do you presume he seeks deliverance at all? The cosmos abounds with avenues, my darling, and many a soul elects the path of dissolution not out of ignorance, but of preference. Indulge me this audacity: there is no peculiar and rarefied nobility in the artful cultivation of one’s own demise.”

Jooyeon rolled his eyes, scoffed, and muttered through clenched teeth, “You don’t know shit.”

“Alas, mon très adoré, it is you, I fear, who resides most serenely within the luxuriant folds of a most exquisite and intricate delusion,” Gunil sighed, dramatically, with a sort of refined weariness, tucking his hands into the endless depths of his dark chestnut coat. “You gaze upon him and discern, through the gauze of your romanticism, the silhouette of a seraph exiled, an orphan of celestial origin, rudely expelled from empyrean grace. And yet, has it not once occurred to your estimable intellect that perhaps he is no angelic casualty, but a creature most volitionally cast down? One who savors, with decadent delight, each slow and deliberate step in his descent?”

A creature most volitionally cast down?

What a load of pretentious crap.

If Ode had ever had a real choice, not some illusion of one, but a real goddamn choice, he wouldn’t be here. Wouldn’t be kneeling on some sticky-ass carpet that reeked of spilled liquor and a thousand scuffed boots. Wouldn’t let strange hands crawl over him. Wouldn’t listen to drunk laughter slobber down his neck, or feel every hot, foul breath reeking of discount whiskey from a mile away. Wouldn’t take the slaps on his sharp cheekbones without a word, like it was just part of the fucking deal.

Jooyeon was sure of it: Ode never asked for this. Never chose this road. Wouldn’t have said no to rescue, wouldn’t have kept rotting with a smile on his face if he had any other way out.

Ode was sweet. Maybe too sweet. Like a dumb kitten darting onto a highway, reaching for any hand that didn’t hit him. Searching every face: maybe there’s kindness in this one? Maybe someone, just one fucking person, will be gentle for once?

Jooyeon sucked in a loud breath and crushed that thought like a cockroach under his heel.

Behind the desk was the same girl as always, fussing with the bottom hem of her fitted vest. Her black-and-white uniform clung to her body like a bloated tin can stuffed with spoiled stew: touch it and it’d burst.

She straightened up, spine snapping into a perfect vertical line, neck stretched tall. Slapped on a rehearsed smile and moved along the exact route her job dictated: a bend, a polite lean forward, then a nod, like she didn’t live, but just followed commands. She looked like someone they installed with the furniture, bolted to the floor, doomed to work here until the end of time.

Jooyeon didn’t know her name, because he always refused to look down at the name tag pinned to her chest, three handwritten syllables too easy to ignore, but he’d memorized her face. Seen it too many damn times not to. She always looked up from under her lashes with those big, round eyes, had the kind of innocent features that belonged to a kid, and smiled with lips lacquered like a Barbie doll. Smiled even when she said “Shut up and deal with it” to Ode, like it was just casual advice from a big sister. No venom in her voice. Just routine.

Jooyeon stepped up to the desk and slammed his elbows down onto it, hard enough to make it shudder.

“I need Ode,” he said. No hello, no please, no politeness. He wasn’t here for that shit today.

The girl blinked twice, like she was trying to calculate how nervous she should be, before answering in a syrupy tone, “Sorry, he’s with a client right now. Would you like me to find you someone else?”

“No.”

The word snapped off his tongue and cracked through the air.

Jooyeon scoffed, eyes dropping to the countertop between them, jaw clenched so tight it hurt. He could feel the rage starting to boil, whistling inside him like an old metal kettle about to scream.

What, seriously? Did this chick really not get it? Was it not blindingly obvious he didn’t want anyone but Ode? Had she not noticed he kept showing up here, day after day, like he was on a leash, not for the damn karaoke or the booze, but only for him? Had she never clocked that the only one who ever walked into a booth with Jooyeon… was Ode?

Hadn’t she made any mental notes when Jooyeon had almost started a fight in here when he saw Ode on his knees in front of some drunk bastard, tears in his eyes and a massive red handprint blooming across his cheek?

Fuck.

The memory flared behind Jooyeon’s eyes like a sharp burst of lightning, searing the inside of his skull, and once it was there, it refused to go. His brain wouldn’t stop, kept conjuring up images of Ode, probably once again trapped alone with some filthy bastard and his greedy hands, clutching at that honey-smooth skin until it squeaked under the pressure. Someone was probably shoving a dirty dick in his face, yanking out those rye-colored strands by the root, or maybe slamming him down onto a couch, crawling into his pants, whispering cheap, sticky nothings into his ear, fucking him hard and loveless like it was a slaughterhouse and Ode was just enduring it, barely whimpering out little gasps and apologies from somewhere deep in his chest.

Jooyeon nearly threw up right then and there. He dug his fingers into the edge of the counter so hard they might’ve snapped.

Then another thought darted in, just as fast.

What if it wasn’t like that tonight? What if, by some miracle, Ode got lucky? What if, for once, he was with someone decent? A human being, not some rabid mutt who called themself a client? What if it was someone like Jooyeon, someone who didn’t press, didn’t scream through soju breath, didn’t bark orders between gulps, didn’t force Ode to kneel and choke on someone else’s dignity alongside his own? What if, right now, Ode was actually smiling, blissfully tipsy, cheeks flushed all pink, curling into a gentle hand that treated him exactly the way he deserved to be treated?

The image should’ve been comforting. Sugarcane-colored hair being smoothed back by a stranger’s hand, those shiny lips parting around the lyrics of a dance track. It should’ve helped. So why the fuck did something crack inside Jooyeon like thin ice under a soldier’s boot? Why did his throat start to burn? Why did his ribs clamp down around his lungs, tight and ugly? Why, for the love of God, did Jooyeon want to charge in there, grab Ode by the wrist and drag him out, rescue him even when there was technically nothing to run from?

Fuck.

He felt like a wild animal.

“We’ll wait,” he rasped out. “Tell him I’m here. Just… tell him to swing by when he’s…”

The word prickled in his mouth.

“…free.”

The girl behind the desk froze, just for a heartbeat, like a crappy car engine sputtering out before restarting. Then she pulled that fake calm over herself like a stiff uniform, head to toe.

“Alright,” she said. “Will you be waiting here, or should I get you a booth?”

Jooyeon tapped the counter twice with a chipped black nail, sharp and irritated, trying to smother the sour, lopsided grin spreading over his lips. He almost laughed in her face. A booth? Really? Like this was some casual Friday night karaoke thing? Like he wasn’t here to drag someone out of hell?

He tilted his head back toward Gunil, glancing at him over his shoulder. The man hadn’t moved, still standing there like some ancient statue, phone crammed to his ear.

“Well?” Jooyeon asked, lifting a brow.

Gunil didn’t really look at him, just flicked an eye in his direction, a silent warning shining in the corner of his gaze. Then he sighed, cupping the receiver.

“It would appear that your resolve remains unswayed by either entreaty or caution, and that you are fully intent upon proceeding in accordance with your personal adjudication of the matter,” he said. “So be it. I merely implore you: do refrain from attributing the ensuing consequences to my person, whatever disarray may ensue.”

“Fucking poetic,” Jooyeon muttered, rolling his eyes, and turned back to the desk. “Yeah. We’ll take a booth.”

Gunil let out a long breath behind him, something between frustration and resignation. Jooyeon could already hear the quiet symphony of judgment brewing in his skull, a philosophical rant about wasted time, the futility of waiting, how they could’ve been doing something meaningful.

Although, knowing Gunil, that “meaningful” shit probably meant rereading moldy books and brooding in candlelight like a tragic widow. So Jooyeon wasn’t exactly in a rush to apologize.

Gunil tapped his foot with theatrical restraint, radiating mute annoyance while the girl checked through a fat folder of bookings and reservations. Eventually, he addressed his increasingly frantic caller in a dry, measured tone, “Regrettably, I must withhold the dubious honour of my direct involvement in this affair. I am, however, compelled to express my sincere conviction that my participation is by no means requisite. Your commendable tenure, cultivated discernment, and unwavering allegiance to the institution in question render you more than adequately equipped to manage this… predicament, which, if I may be so bold, has been lamentably mischaracterized as a catastrophe of epic proportions.”

Ah, yes, Gunil’s preferred leadership method: delegate absolutely everything, then let the hotel stew in its own mess while he lounged on a couch with some obscure tome written by a long-dead philosopher. Not that it ever stopped the chaos, of course.

Just last week, Jooyeon had come home at the crack of dawn, still reeking of booze, cigarette smoke, and that weird lavender polish they used in the casino halls, only to find Gunil exactly slumped with a dusty book in one hand, phone in the other, while a woman’s voice shrieked so loud on the line it probably cut through the soundproofing all the way to Hyeongjun’s room upstairs.

Apparently, some shitfaced guest at PLUTO had decided he was immortal, tried to cross over to the next balcony via the building façade, and (shockingly) gravity won.

Gunil, unfazed, had listened to the manager’s hysteria about lawsuits, press, cleanup teams, and PR disasters, then replied with what, for him, counted as a curt response, “Summon whomsoever you deem fit, be it an infernal emissary brandishing his pastoral trident or the entirety of the celestial bureaucracy, resplendent in its ceremonial absurdity, so long as I am spared further exposure to this cacophonous operetta. Avail yourself of any and all measures that may expedite the dissolution of this regrettable conundrum. I must reiterate, I possess neither inclination nor obligation to embroil myself in mankind’s perennial, and frankly tiresome, penchant for heights. With that, I take my leave. May reason, however theatrically imperiled, yet prevail.”

The next morning, over breakfast, Jooyeon stumbled across a headline “Billionaire or Astronaut? Tragedy at the PLUTO Hotel.” He snorted so hard his coffee nearly came out his nose. Jungsu arched a curious brow at him from across the table.

The funniest part? By the weekend, the hotel was packed to the brim like nothing had ever happened. Nobody seemed to care that, barely twenty-four hours ago, someone had been splattered under the panoramic windows like a fucked-up smear painting. The guy was supposed to be some major investor, maybe a startup messiah, or more likely another grifter slinging crypto-NFT snake oil. In those circles, the line between genius and clown was dangerously thin. Especially when the clown knew how to monetize a workshop on “conscious leadership” and couldn’t shut up about Paulo Coelho.

The one thing Jooyeon knew for certain was that the bastard fell beautifully. Dead center, right onto the marble edge of the flowerbed, like he’d aimed for it. Someone ought to carve it in stone: “A star fell here. No more wishes accepted.”

And yet, for all its tragicomedy, the money kept flowing. Guests with shiny watches and sparkless eyes continued to throw obscene amounts at a chance to spend a couple of nights watching the sunset over the Banpo Bridge. Nothing seemed to kill their appetite, not the blood on the decorative pines, not the morning scandal in the lobby, not even the cops casually unspooling yellow tape across the property. PLUTO, essentially, was a place built on inhuman luck. Nothing else could explain the kind of derangement or indifference it thrived on.

They still couldn’t find a free karaoke booth.

Jooyeon had already sighed in frustration a few times, fidgeted with a strand of hair near his temple, and tapped a bank card in time with the music against the marble countertop, sharp, irritated clicks echoing into the space like an unspoken reminder that he had way more important shit to do than just stand around pretending to be patient. The chip on the black plastic caught the chandelier light, bouncing it into his eye, and he caught himself zoning out, watching it roll across his pupil. Sleeplessness and a low hum of hunger had their way with him: everything seemed a little too bright, a little too loud, a little more absurd than it really was.

When three girls passed by, glittery, loud, reeking of sickly-sweet strawberry lotion and night freedom, he almost laughed again. They pushed aside the velvet curtains, disappeared down the hallway, leaving behind a cloud of perfume and a chirping like canaries. Jooyeon followed them with his eyes, not because he was interested, but because he was bored, because he wanted something, anything, to pull his mind away from the gnawing feeling that nothing was going according to his plan.

Then, slicing through the buzz of tipsy voices, bottle clinks, and bursts of laughter, came a scream. Rough. Ragged. Breaking apart. It wasn’t a drunken “woo!” or a girl’s giggle. It scratched and clawed its way through the music, through the curtains, through every fake smile in the room. It wasn’t loud, but it didn’t need to be. One twitch of his ear caught it with brutal clarity.

Jooyeon knew that voice. Would’ve recognized it even if the whole of Seoul started screaming in unison, tongues buried deep in his eardrums.

In the next second, the air trembled. A wave of blood-scent crashed over him, thick and hot like steam in a jjimjilbang. Jooyeon inhaled, almost automatically, and his fangs answered at once, though sluggishly, like an old beast yanked from its den. The ache in them was dull, background noise, a biological ping rather than true craving. Sure, hunger sank its claws into his spine, dragged its nails along his ribs, howling, “Go. Find. Take. Drain. Keep.” But his heart was hammering a completely different rhythm, fast, frantic, terrifying to the bone.

That scent, laced with sweet, raw fear? He knew that one too.

It belonged to Ode.

Jooyeon moved.

Someone shouted behind him in a high-pitched voice, heels clattering after, but he didn’t hear a thing except the looping squeak of a throat being squeezed shut. He didn’t give a damn. The curtains parted under his hands, letting him slip through like a blade. The bass still thudded from the walls, muffled and menacing, but only the blood mattered. Only it called to him now, like a fucking prayer.

Jooyeon walked fast, nostrils flaring, drinking in the caramelized scent that led him down the dim hallway, past closed doors, past laughter, past murmured conversations, past the voice of the front desk girl still trailing behind him, fading into the din. Then, suddenly, came dull thuds and a choked sob right where the blood hit the strongest, cloying in his nose.

The door slid open fast and cracked hard against the frame.

Ode was on the floor, like a porcelain vase shattered into pieces. His body trembled, fine fractures running through him, breaths gurgling wet and broken. His copper hair, normally fluffy and a little messy, clung to his forehead in soaked, dirty strands, like someone had dunked his head in a cheap cocktail. His lower lip was split, swollen into a bloody blotch. A bruise bloomed across his cheek. The one visible eye gleamed with tears that hadn’t yet fallen but were already waiting, collecting light from the TV screen flickering across the room.

Someone was pinning Ode to the worn-out carpet, making his back bend at an unnatural angle.

His Ode.

A heavy, meaty hand crushed Ode’s wrists to his back. His Ode, whose bones crackled under the pressure, whose fingers twitched helplessly. The other hand (fuck that hand!) was already at his waistband, tugging it down, yanking it low until scared golden skin peeked out from underneath.

Heat surged up Jooyeon’s spine, exploded into his veins, lit up behind his eyes in a burst of furious red as another punch landed right under Ode’s ribs and made him jerk and whimper out again.

“I didn’t steal anything!” Ode gasped, voice thin and full of panic. “Please, let me go! I didn’t take anything!”

He was crying.

His kitten was crying, and that bastard kept hitting him, over and over, not listening to a word. Punch after punch. Calm, practiced, like Ode wasn’t even a person, just a bag to beat the stress out of. A thing to break.

The man bared his teeth, stinking of alcohol, and spat through them, “Shut the fuck up, you little bitch. You’re gonna pay for everything.”

No, Jooyeon thought distantly. You’re the one who’s gonna pay for everything.

He lunged.

Grabbed the bastard by the collar and yanked so hard two buttons popped off and skittered to the floor. The man barely had time to register the sight of Jooyeon’s face before he was flying across the room like a ragdoll. His back slammed into the wall with a crunch so sharp it made Jooyeon’s teeth ache, and the furniture scattered like scared butterflies. Glasses tumbled from the low table, shattered, and spilled alcohol across the carpet like a dark, spreading bruise.

Jooyeon saw nothing but his own rage, blazing through him, dragging his body forward like a feral animal. He didn’t even register grabbing the man by the throat until he felt the vein fluttering fast under his fingers. Then, only then, did he notice the look of raw fear twisting the man’s face.

The asshole was huge. Broader than Jooyeon. Heavier than Jooyeon. Probably spent every night at the gym flexing for girls who couldn’t care less. Now he was wheezing, clawing at Jooyeon’s slender wrists, scratching, kicking.

Pathetic.

He thought he could fight back? That he could stop this?

What a dumbass.

“You fuckin’ psycho?!” the man rasped, frothing spit at the corners of his mouth. “I’ll— I’ll fucking—”

“What?” Jooyeon said, cold. “You’ll fucking what?”

Jooyeon slammed him against the wall again. The plaster cracked. A nearby chair toppled and landed on its shoulder, barely hanging onto the edge of the table. The bastard dropped to his knees, hacking and staring up at him, terror blooming wide beneath his sagging eyelids.

Oh.

Yeah, this was Jooyeon’s favorite part.

He tilted his head to the side, grinned like a predator, and drawled, “So? What the fuck are you gonna do to me now, huh?”

The man snarled like a mad dog and lunged to knock him down, but Jooyeon was faster. His fist connected with the bastards’s cheekbone, sending a wet crack across the room. Flesh squeezed between bones split open. The asshole’s head jerked sideways, and two thick drops of blood slid to the floor.

God, that felt so good.

But the second Jooyeon shook off the liquid clinging to his knuckles, leaving faint smears behind, that “good” twisted into disgust. The blood clung to his skin in a hot embrace, but it felt wrong, off. It didn’t smell like the vibrant sweetness that usually stirred up his hunger. It reeked of rot, like cheap wine soured in the sun.

His jaw peeled back into a snarl.

“You were all bark a second ago, weren’t you?” Jooyeon purred. “Where’s all that big man energy now, you piece of shit? Not so fun when you’re the one getting beat, huh?”

Where was all that cocky confidence, the air thick with it, stinging his nostrils when this fucker had Ode on the floor? Ripping at his hair, smashing his ribs, yanking his pants down like he had any right?

Where is it now, you fucking coward?!

Jooyeon grabbed him by the collar and yanked him upright. The man howled and thrashed, babbling incoherently, flailing like a dying insect. Pathetic. Useless. Let him scratch, squirm, punch. What the fuck could he possibly do?

Nothing.

Because Jooyeon wasn’t some washed-up rocker with a death wish and a half-assed brawl fantasy. He was a hungry vampire. Power pulsed through him like a current, cracking under his skin, barely containable. If he wanted to, he could tear this piece of shit limb from limb. He could count his ribs and break every last one. He could sink his teeth into that fat neck and paint the floor with his blood.

Poetic, wasn’t it?

And most importantly, just.

His fingers tightened.

God, he wanted it so badly.

But then someone grabbed him under the arms and yanked him back.

Before he could even register what was happening, his feet left the ground. The security guard, a brick wall of a man, thick arms, a blank expression, dragged him across the room. The air shot from Jooyeon’s lungs, but his body moved faster than his brain could catch up. He twisted, thrashed like an animal, snarling, “Let me go!”

He fought the grip, but the guard held firm.

Then Jooyeon's gaze snapped forward, locking onto that bastard who, just a minute ago, had almost ripped his poor kitten to shreds. But no one was dragging him out. No one was slamming him down. The other guard was helping him up. Patting his shoulder. Whispering to him like he was some fucking victim in a tragedy.

Rage exploded in Jooyeon’s chest, knocking the breath from his lungs.

He turned his head, needing to look at anything else, and locked eyes with Gunil, standing just a few steps away. He’d been there the whole time. Just standing. Watching. Doing nothing.

“Hyung!”

Jooyeon spat the word like a curse. He wanted Gunil to do something, to step in, to fix this shit, at least to see how fucked up it was and stop standing there like he was watching a fucking play.

But Gunil kept watching. Kept letting that bastard breathe like he hadn’t just been beating the hell out of Ode. The man still had blood smeared on his chin, his clammy hands shaking as he wiped his mouth.

“That… that fucker attacked me!” he wheezed, pointing a trembling finger at Jooyeon.

Then he spun around, scanned the room, spat on the floor, and shrieked, “And that little whore robbed me! Where is that ratty bitch?!”

Jooyeon blinked slowly.

There was a ringing in his ears. His skull felt split down the middle.

This…

This pathetic, whining piece of shit.

A few minutes ago, he was twisting Ode’s arms behind his back, tearing at his clothes like he owned him. And now? Now he was standing there playing the fucking victim?

“Oh, fuck you!” Jooyeon snapped. “You were about to rape him, you fucking scum! And now you’re crying ‘cause I punched you?! You serious?!”

The guard barely managed to hold him back. Gripped him by the chest and hauled him further away. Pain flared in Jooyeon’s ribs, but he didn’t even feel it. His brain was a red siren, screaming.

The bastard flinched, ready for another blow, but then, realizing the odds were in his favor, his face twisted back into a sneer.

“That little brat asked for it,” he hissed. “Should’ve kept his hands outta other people’s pockets! Fucking whore!”

Like a punch to the gut.

Jooyeon froze, sinking his fangs into the inside of his cheek.

Ode wasn’t a thief. He wasn’t a whore. He was… a kitten. His kitten. Fragile, precious, too soft for a place like this. Someone Jooyeon should’ve been shielding, warming, keeping safe. And this sack of shit dared to talk about him like that, like he was…

A thousand needles stabbed down his throat.

Jooyeon opened his mouth. He wanted to scream. He wanted to lunge at that fucker and bite his fucking face off, rip the skin off with his teeth, bathe in blood and righteous fury because how dare he…

But he didn’t get the chance.

A low, polite cough came from the right.

Jooyeon whipped his head around.

Gunil was still there. Still in the same spot, arms folded, watching everything unfold with that same detached calm, like this was nothing more than another minor inconvenience. Just another tedious scene in a play he never wanted tickets to. His face was the same blank canvas it always was, whether listening to hotel staff complain or ignoring Jooyeon’s rants the night before.

Only once he had Jooyeon’s full attention did he finally exhale and arch an eyebrow.

“Jooyeon-ah,” he said quietly, with maddening composure. “Mon très cher, I entreat you… Nay, I beg of you with what dwindling patience remains, exercise, if only this once, the elusive art of composure. Your perturbations, however impassioned, are unlikely to alter the immutable structure of reality.”

Exercise the elusive art of composure?

Exercise the elusive art of fucking composure?!

Jooyeon’s teeth ground together. His breath came faster, his fingers twitching with the primal urge to destroy something or someone, to pin Gunil to the wall and choke the life out of him until he finally shut the fuck up.

“I swear to God, hyung,” he hissed, “I’m gonna fucking strangle you in your sleep.”

Gunil’s lips twitched just a little. Maybe he almost smiled, maybe he considered scolding Jooyeon in front of witnesses. But in the end, he did neither.

“Mm,” he purred, infuriatingly serene. “And I, within the admittedly modest confines of my own emotional constitution, find myself harboring sentiments of an analogous nature. Not, I hasten to clarify, so impassioned as to necessitate your untimely dispatch in the dead of night, but time, as ever, unfolds in unpredictable ways. Who is to say what whimsical inclinations the morrow might bring?”

Jooyeon could bite his fucking throat out.

But then that shrieking bastard had to drag all the attention back to himself again. Still had the balls to run his mouth, scream like a victim, fucking breathe, gulping down air like the whole goddamn world owed him something. He fixed his eyes on the girl in uniform and jabbed a fat finger in her direction, face blotchy and red.

“Why the fuck are you just standing there?!” he barked. “Do something already! Where’s that redheaded whore who stole from me?! Where is she, huh?!”

“Listen here, you piece of shit,” Jooyeon exhaled, his eyes flashing with fury. “He’s not a whore.”

The man raised an eyebrow and gave a filthy little smirk.

“Oh really?” he spat. “And what, you getting all riled up ‘cause he’s your fiancée or something? Listen to me, you fucking leech. If he sucks dick for cash, then he’s a whore. It’s not complicated.”

Silence fell.

Jooyeon’s pulse slammed into his skull like a hammer. His whole body filled with weight, and his vision blurred under the pressure of a rage that shattered teeth.

He shut his eyes.

Inhaled, deep.

Exhaled.

He was better than this. That cockroach wasn’t worth his fury, or a clean shot straight to the jaw.

There was only one thing that mattered now.

Where was Ode?

A cold shiver slithered down Jooyeon’s back.

His gaze swept the room. Shattered glass on the floor. Chairs knocked over. A wide-eyed girl, pale as death. That blood-smeared bastard’s slobbering mouth. The brown sleeve of Gunil’s coat. The beefy nose of the security guard still clinging to Jooyeon like he was about to leap from his arms.

But Ode wasn’t anywhere.

Did he bolt while Jooyeon was dealing with that asshole?

Good.

Smart boy.

“Gentlemen,” Gunil spoke at last. “If I may interrupt this rather theatrical exchange, it strikes me as both unwise and unbecoming to transfigure this lamentable incident into a full-fledged spectacle. Might it not be infinitely more judicious to resolve the matter with decorum, without descending into tumult or courting unnecessary bloodshed? After all, we are, I presume, men of reason, capable, if not predisposed, to act with a modicum of restraint.”

Jooyeon barely heard him.

No, he heard him, of course, but the words slipped right past his ears, dissolved in the air, because who gave a shit what Gunil was saying if Ode wasn’t even here anymore?

The guard’s grip loosened just enough. One beat of hesitation was all Jooyeon needed to wrench free, slam him aside with his shoulder, and bolt, no glance back. His body launched from the private room into the corridor. His pulse throbbed in his throat, fists curling on instinct, nails digging arcs into his palms. Every drop of his vampire senses had already honed in on the faint trace of Ode’s blood, threading through the stale air of the karaoke bar, hiding beneath alcohol fumes, sweat, and the cheap rot of overused cologne.

He inhaled deep and let the scent pull him forward, past dim hallways, drunken booths, and velvet curtains, through neon mist, glossy surfaces, the lacquered lie of Gangnam’s glamour. The farther he went, the more the world peeled back, faded and shrank. The air turned thick, stuck to his skin, reeked of trash. Asphalt slicked beneath his shoes with puddles, gasoline, and piss. Cracks glimmered under the last sickly streetlight at the mouth of the alley. Somewhere nearby, black runoff gurgled in the dark.

A small flash sparked ahead.

A battered green lighter trembled in the dark, stuttering in rhythm with a flicker barely biting through the shadows.

Ode stood slumped against a concrete wall, and Jooyeon had never seen him look worse. The white shirt that should’ve been crisp and tailored to his fine figure now hung like a wrinkled sack, collar ripped, blotched in red. Harsh handprints starred the bare skin of his collarbone, rising along his neck and blooming across smooth flesh. His face was swollen from hits, a line of dried blood dragging down from the corner of his lip. It made him look younger somehow. More fragile than ever.

Cold clawed at Jooyeon’s gut at the sight, and a tight lump prickled up his throat.

With Jooyeon, Ode always smiled or tossed smirks like coins, quiet scoffs, glittering eyes, a body that moved with effortless charm. But now he just looked so tired. So wrecked that Jooyeon wanted to go back and tear the bastard apart limb by limb, just to make sure this never happened again. To keep his kitten safe. Happy. Whole.

The cigarette shook between Ode’s skinny fingers as he struck the lighter again and again, coaxing a reluctant flame to kiss the tip. The amber glow flashed across purplish bruises, then vanished. He finally lit it, stuffed the lighter back in his pocket, and took a long drag, closing his eyes, holding the smoke in like it might pour warmth into him drop by drop. Like it was more than just cheap tobacco. Like it gave him comfort, safety. Like a tender lover, lips pressed to his soot-smudged temple, whispering, “You’re okay now.”

Jooyeon stared, guts twisted into knots.

It wasn’t just that Ode clung to the wall like that smoke was the only thing keeping him upright. It was the way his bruised lips parted. The way his throat bobbed. The way ugly blotches peeked out from beneath the chewed-up collar like wilted flowers. The way the smell of his warm, fresh blood lingered thick in the air.

Jooyeon stepped forward, his shoe scuffing softly against the asphalt, and Ode flinched, spine slammed back against the concrete, cigarette nearly tumbling from his fingers.

“Jesus,” he exhaled, voice shaking, but the wave of relief was clear, washing over the panic. “You scared the fucking shit outta me. I thought that asshole came back to finish the job.”

Jooyeon tilted his head a little, took another step closer, but couldn’t find the words.

His instincts hissed and clawed at the inside of his skull. Bite him. Mark him. Take him. Sink your fangs into that soft throat. Feel his skin split beneath your teeth. Taste him, his sweetness, his heat, his life.

Fucking animal reflexes.

He had to talk. Say something. Not bite. No more bruises. No more pain. Just a few words. Anything. Something to make Ode feel safe again, even if that safety meant handing him the key to the tiger’s cage.

“…You really need a smoke right now?” Jooyeon asked at last, forcing a smile that didn’t quite reach his eyes. He tried so damn hard to look calm, even as everything inside him cracked and shattered against the bars of his own ribs, vision tinted red, beast clawing at the leash for a taste of easy prey.

Ode gave an awkward little smirk, but it vanished quickly into a grimace. His sharp brows pinched together over the bridge of his nose because his lip, already stretched too thin, split again, and a slow trickle of blood crept down his chin.

Oh, for fuck’s sake.

Jooyeon swallowed hard, his teeth clenching so tight it hurt.

The sweet scent intensified, maddeningly so. It choked him. Wrapped around his nostrils, settled thick at the base of his tongue, and slipped into his lungs uninvited, setting up camp like it owned the place.

Ode didn’t seem to notice how Jooyeon’s focus started to blur. Or maybe he did. Hard not to, with Jooyeon’s pupils blown wide like he’d just snorted a line of cocaine, while his limbs, on the other hand, trembled like a junkie shaking apart from withdrawal. Either way, Ode didn’t ask, didn’t comment. Just wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, smearing the red ribbon across his chin and knuckles. The hurried motion only made the smell worse.

Jooyeon squeezed his eyes shut.

It had been far too long since he’d fed on blood while it was still hot, still living, spilling out in fierce, rhythmic bursts from the body itself.

Things had been different with his family, the biological one, the one who’d left him years ago. Back then, they’d done it the proper way. Tore into arteries and drank straight from the source while it was still pumping. They could afford to. They had no reason to trade in that rawness for blood bags and cold storage.

Under Gunil’s roof, though, rules reigned supreme. No snapping at humans. No sinking teeth into flesh. No hunting, not for hunger and definitely not for sport.

So now, with fragile, disheveled, achingly alive Ode right beside him, Jooyeon was losing his mind from hunger.

He screwed his eyes tighter, yanked his head away, and forced himself to drown the craving in Gunil’s voice, echoing like a bell through the halls of his mind.

“Pray remember, beloved: we are not mere brutes, compelled by primitive impulse to satiate every carnal desire, nor are we condemned to servitude beneath the caprices of the flesh. My injunction is explicit: under no circumstance shall you draw sustenance from those whose hearts yet beat, unless they themselves, with full cognizance and volition, offer such a gift. This, I declare, is not merely command, but covenant.”

When Jooyeon opened his eyes again, Ode was shivering, barely perceptibly, rubbing one shoulder with his free hand to fend off the cold. Winter had already retreated, replaced by the softer chill of spring, but there was no way a human could stay warm in a soaked, clinging shirt. He must’ve run out of the karaoke bar in a rush, pants barely on, no jacket, no scarf, nothing to shield his skin, still marked up with fingerprints like scalding burns.

Jooyeon didn’t think twice. He yanked off his jacket, thin leather already cracking at the elbows. It wasn’t made to keep anyone warm, just to look cool. Which, considering Jooyeon had never felt cold a day in his life, was all it was good for.

The metal studs caught a flicker of distant lamplight, and the chain on the belt gave a soft clink as he held the jacket out to Ode with a hesitant, “Here.”

He braced himself for a refusal, something like “I’m not that cold” or “I’m fine,” but Ode just wedged the cigarette between his teeth, freeing a hand to take it. He slung the jacket over his shoulders, gave a slight roll like he was trying to meld into it, letting it swallow his shivering frame whole.

He must’ve known that this shitty excuse for outerwear wouldn’t warm him up even a degree, but he didn’t complain. Just took a long drag and exhaled a tight ribbon of smoke along with a half-suppressed, half-delighted chuckle.

“This jacket is so fucking sick,” he muttered.

Then, after a beat, his voice turned playful. “Suits you, though. You’re a real rockstar, huh?”

He giggled suddenly, so sweetly Jooyeon had to fight not to pull him in, press him to his chest, and warm him up properly.

“Then I guess you’re a detective,” Jooyeon snorted. “Was it the chains or the existential doom in my eyes that gave me away?”

Ode hummed thoughtfully, tilted his head back against the wall, and blew out another cloud of smoke.

“Bit of both. The spikes helped too. And those cute little skulls,” he said, tapping the chest area where a painted sugar skull stretched across the jacket. He winced at the motion but didn’t whimper. Just kept going. “They’re whispering to me. Telling me you smash guitars on stage when I’m not around. I’d bet a grand you have to fight off fangirls with a bat.”

Jooyeon rolled his eyes.

“You’re a dumbass,” he said quietly.

Ode just smiled wider.

“Thanks,” he said, suddenly soft. “For the jacket. And for, you know, dealing with that asshole.”

Jooyeon’s mouth twitched in disgust, but he didn’t say anything. Just turned his head, listening to the low hum of the city a few blocks away.

No way he could admit how fucking good it had felt to tear that bastard apart. No way he’d confess that if not for Gunil and the bouncers he wouldn’t have let the fucker leave in one piece.

“You’ve got like… a radar or something,” Ode purred. “You always show up right when someone’s about to kick my ass.”

“Not always,” Jooyeon muttered.

“Mmh, yeah, guess you’re right,” Ode said, squinting like it hurt to agree. “And last time wasn’t…”

He trailed off, stuffing his mouth with smoke again.

“Wasn’t what?”

Ode waved the cigarette dismissively.

“It wasn’t that bad. You didn’t have to, you know, intervene.”

“You were crying.”

“Just a little,” he grumbled, puffing up in defiance. “After you barged in, the guy got real pissed. Barely paid me anything.”

Jooyeon’s eye twitched.

Ode kept going like he hadn’t noticed.

“Not blaming you or anything, don’t get me wrong. He probably just, I dunno… didn’t feel like it? Or maybe I was really suck—”

“Oh for fuck’s sake, will you shut up about that already?”

Ode smirked and let another lazy stream of smoke drift out.

Then, after a beat, Jooyeon blurted, “You didn’t actually steal anything, did you?”

Ode raised an eyebrow, grinning out of just one corner of his mouth.

“Well… maybe just your heart?”

Jooyeon recoiled like the line smacked him in the face with a hot frying sun. It was so cheesy it left sunburn, but it still hit its mark, landed square between the ribs, because fuck, it was true. Ode was still that reckless little alley cat Jooyeon had wanted to rescue from a trash heap the moment they met.

Alright, maybe the second time they met.

The worst part, honestly, was that Ode at least suspected what Jooyeon wanted and more likely, knew it perfectly well.

“Kinda bold,” Jooyeon snorted. “Aren’t you afraid I’ll ask for it back?”

Ode’s smirk widened. He took one last drag from his cigarette and stubbed it out on the wall, grinding the ember into the concrete with a hiss. Then, without warning, he leaned in, fingers hooking the collar of Jooyeon’s T-shirt to pull him closer, erasing the space between them to almost nothing. His palm slid up to cradle Jooyeon’s jaw, turning his face left and right while his fox-like eyes examined every inch of skin with unsettling precision.

“You didn’t get hurt, did you?” he asked, brushing his thumb right at the corner of Jooyeon’s mouth, pressed thin with tension.

Jooyeon swallowed, loud and sharp.

Ode looked like he’d survived a fucking plane crash. He should’ve been worrying about himself. Jooyeon should be checking if he could still breathe, if he was about to keel over and collapse on the freezing concrete any second now.

The guy probably wouldn’t even make it out of bed tomorrow. Humans didn’t…

Right.

Ode didn’t know.

He didn’t know that every bruise, every scrape Jooyeon might’ve earned in that fight would fade without so much as a goodbye. He didn’t know Jooyeon could take beatings ten times worse and not flinch, not stagger, not break. He didn’t know that the real tussle wasn’t dodging fists, it was fighting the urge to lean in and lick the blood from his lips.

God, his fangs ached so bad.

Ode’s fingers lingered on Jooyeon’s sharp cheekbone for a moment longer, then slowly withdrew.

“So you’re my white knight now, huh?” he said with another lazy grin, eyes glinting with mockery.

Jooyeon arched his brow. Barely. It didn’t even fly up to the pink strand of hair stuck to his forehead. Just tilted diagonally, somewhere between “Are you fucking serious?” and “God, you’re such a dumbass of mine.” But before he could throw back some withering comeback, Ode leaned in and kissed him on the cheek.

Soft. Barely there. But it hit like a cannon.

Jooyeon didn’t jump back like a startled gazelle, no, but his spine snapped straight, hands clenched in his front pockets, and his face lit up in a traitorous blaze of red. He hated that. Hated his fucking cheeks. Hated the body that betrayed its one and only owner. Hated the boy who kept worming deeper under his skin like there was a damn reservation for him under Jooyeon’s ribs.

He exhaled through clenched teeth, voice sharp and dry with irritation, badly disguising how flustered he was, as he snapped, “You got a kink for this or something? Nearly die, then throw yourself at the guy who saved you?”

Ode shrugged, as nonchalant as if they were talking about morning coffee or a cigarette at 2 a.m.

“What else am I supposed to do?” he drawled. “My mom used to read me fairy tales. The princess always kissed whoever saved her.”

Jooyeon shook his head slowly, like he was trying to knock the thought off his temples, but whatever spell Ode cast had already sunk its claws into his burning ears.

Ode looked ridiculous. Beat to hell, reeking of cheap tobacco and fruit-scented lotion. Small, mouthy even when wrecked, and somehow shy inside the mouthiness. The kind of kid people walked all over, then tossed back into the world like a defective product.

Jooyeon, though, wanted to keep him. Just a little longer. Maybe take him home. Even if that home meant corpse-coldness and a bone-deep fear of the sunrise.

“Princess, huh?” Jooyeon snorted. “So, what, this happens to you often, princess? The whole getting your ass kicked thing, I mean.”

“Never this bad,” Ode sighed, tipping his head back against the wall. “But drunk assholes… they tend to lose their fucking minds. So… yeah. It happens.”

Jooyeon clenched his jaw so hard he thought his fangs might fall out of his gums.

It happens.

The phrase echoed inside his skull.

That shouldn’t be normal. Not for Ode. He didn’t deserve that. Didn’t deserve to be thrown to the wolves, those rabid fuckers pretending to be human. Didn’t deserve to be abandoned in a world that ate people alive and spat out their bones.

“You do realize that’s totally fucked up, right?” Jooyeon finally managed to choke out.

“Everyone’s got their own brand of fucked-up,” Ode said with a half-smile. His fingers kept twitching, fiddling with the sleeves of the jacket, tracing circles over the red welts blooming on his wrists. “What, you planning to rescue this little princess from her stupid tower?”

“I just don’t want some asshole hurting her again.”

Ode snorted, covering his widening grin with a trembling fist. “Shit, the more you talk, the more I feel like I owe you a blowjob.”

“Tempting,” Jooyeon said before his brain had a chance to stop him, before it could generate anything remotely dignified.

His gaze flicked to Ode’s lips, still streaked with dried blood. One second of hungry staring was all it took to mentally slap himself. Jooyeon straightened up immediately and buried the heat behind the blank mask.

“But no thanks. Drop it. That’s not why I’m helping you. I’m not— there’s nothing in it for me. No strings. If I wanted something, I’d just pay for it. I’ve got the money, you know.”

“Sure. I’ll save my gratitude for someone who actually appreciates it, then.”

Jooyeon tilted his head slightly, narrowing his eyes at him.

He should’ve said something, tossed out some dry, snarky remark to match Ode’s weird back-and-forth, which the kid clearly wasn’t ready to let go of.

Instead, his brain looped a single thought: how pale Ode looked beneath the flickering yellow streetlamp. His usual caramel skin had drained to gray. No healthy flush, no warmth in his shivering hands. His whole face was almost white like candle’s wax, veins dark under his eyes, shadows sunk deep beneath his cheekbones, and a kind of exhaustion that couldn’t be masked by swagger, bravado, or even that stupid, painfully charming smile.

Jooyeon wasn’t a doctor. He wasn’t Jiseok. Couldn’t glance at a person and name their illness in a breath. But he’d seen enough, lived enough to know: Ode looked like shit.

It made Jooyeon so furious it burned under his ribs, clenched his jaw, put a thought in his head that something in this world had gone fundamentally wrong. That someone so fucking precious could be beaten like that and still try to keep it together, still crack jokes, still move lips split clean down the middle.

Ode wasn’t a vampire. He wasn’t going to heal in an hour. Wasn’t going to get up, powered by nothing but anger. He could break just as easily as a dry twig.

Jooyeon didn’t know who he wanted to strangle more: the asshole who hit him, or himself, for suddenly being so… unbearably scared. Scared to lose Ode. Scared to even imagine it was possible. That someone like him could be crushed, wiped out like a fucking bug.

“You’re not going back there,” Jooyeon said suddenly. It wasn’t a challenge. Wasn’t blurted in the heat of the moment. It came out like an order. Calm. Final. Like the decision had already been made for both of them.

Ode froze. Stopped fidgeting with his sleeve. Blinked too fast, like he was trying to shake something off his lashes. Or maybe out of his head. A thought he hadn’t considered before, that he could just not go back. That he didn’t have to. That no one had the right to make him get back on all fours for drunk customers, not even for another second.

He let out a long breath. His shoulders dropped. Then he tilted his head back, thunking it against the rough concrete wall. Chin tipped up, he stared at the sky, a dull smudge, high above and barely visible through the alley like through a net.

“I’ve got a shift until five, actually,” he muttered. “Boss is probably throwing a fit ‘cause I’m off screwing around somewhere instead of working.”

“Fuck them.”

Ode huffed. His lips twisted in a tired attempt at a smile. He was quiet for a beat, looking off to the side. Then he murmured low, “I should at least go grab my phone.”

“You left it there?”

“Kinda hard to grab your stuff when someone’s beating the shit out of you.”

He went quiet. Shut his eyes. Took a deep breath. Didn’t say anything for so long that Jooyeon almost thought he’d fallen asleep.

“But honestly…” he started again, voice small, “I don’t wanna go back. What if that bastard is still there?”

“Then don’t,” Jooyeon said flatly. “Fuck it. Screw the phone. I’ll buy you a new one. Just don’t go back.”

“Oh? Rich boy wants to be my sugar daddy?”

“Shut up.”

“Adorable,” Ode purred, still not opening his eyes. “You do like keeping me close, huh?”

Jooyeon didn’t answer. Because yeah, he fucking did. Because no matter how blank he kept his face, his hands were jammed into his pockets so hard they ached. Because all he wanted was to cradle this smart-ass, bruised-up, worn-down boy in his arms, rock him gently, hold him to his chest and never, ever let go. He wanted him to stop joking like he was too tired to care, to stop hiding behind those busted smirks and acting like none of it mattered. He never wanted to see him bloodied again. He just wanted Ode to be safe. To be alive. To be his.

“I hate it when things I like get broken,” Jooyeon said at last. He tried to keep his voice calm, but it cracked around the edges.

Ode cracked one eye open and gave him a lopsided look.

“ Things, huh?” he said, smiling faintly but without malice.

“You know what I mean.”

“Mm.” Ode nodded. “Nice to be someone’s favorite… thing.”

His smile turned a bit crooked.

“Well! No phone, then. Guess I’m falling asleep tonight without the hour-and-a-half playlist of ocean waves and guided meditations. Hope you’re happy, you tyrant.”

Jooyeon opened his mouth to snap back (not that he had anything particularly clever lined up, but he needed to bite somehow, needed to push back against this stupid warmth clogging his throat), when Ode kicked off the wall, peeling away like something uprooted, and headed out of the stale-smelling alley with a heavy sigh.

He made it a step, maybe two, before his body suddenly wobbled to the side.

Jooyeon didn’t catch on right away. Just felt it: fingers clamping onto his shoulders, Ode’s full weight sagging into him.

“Shit,” Ode hissed, gritting his teeth.

Jooyeon caught him on instinct, no panic, no noise. Just moved quickly and gently, like he was handling fragile glass.

“It’s fine,” Ode mumbled through a wince. “Just… dizzy, that’s all.”

He twitched, trying to straighten up again, to take another step, but his legs had already given out, refused to hold him. Jooyeon barely got his arm around Ode’s waist and elbow before he would’ve gone down face-first into the grimy asphalt.

Something twisted in Jooyeon’s chest, like he’d slammed his own heart into a vise.

“Easy, easy,” he breathed. “Don’t move. Sit down. Let me…”

Carefully, almost reverently he lowered Ode to the ground and crouched beside him, drawing him close. A second later, Ode’s head was resting on his lap. It shouldn’t have meant anything. Just softer than asphalt, that’s all. But that just lit Jooyeon up from the inside like a fucking flare.

He sat there, breathing slow, counting his exhales, trying not to show how bad his hands were shaking or how thick his throat felt. He wanted to stroke Ode’s hair, press a palm to his cheek, but he didn’t move. Just looked down at his face: lashes drawn tight, a crease between his brows, skin pale in a way that felt wrong, almost frightening.

“I’m fine,” Ode said again. “Don’t freak out. Just… got a little wobbly. It’ll pass.”

Jooyeon didn’t believe him.

Ode shifted slightly, turning so the back of his head was on Jooyeon’s thigh instead of his cheek. His body tensed for a second, then relaxed as he found a more comfortable angle.

His eyes weren’t open wide, but beneath the fringe of lashes, Jooyeon could see the murky gleam of them, like lake water under fog. They were staring straight at him. Desperate, raw in a way that made Jooyeon want to curl up into a single atom and disappear.

He didn’t even have time to speak. Ode let out a tiny whimper and his face contorted in a grimace, sharp and unreadable. Those thin fingers slid down to his ribs, touching them gently, like they were scared of what they might find.

“Hope nothing’s broken,” Ode muttered. “No way I can afford a hospital. But fuck… that hurts. A lot.”

Jooyeon clenched his jaw so hard it creaked. Rage buzzed in his knuckles, pure and deadly. He could kill the bastard who did this. No question. Smash him against the wall, grind him into the pavement, erase him. Because no one had the right to do this to Ode.

He was about to say something, anything, even if it was useless, offer comfort, a lie, a thread of hope. But just then, Ode let out a weak snort, like he was laughing at himself, and a tear suddenly slid down his cheek. Jooyeon felt something inside him drop into an endless void.

“…So I’m really gonna die like this?” Ode whispered, barely audible. He sounded lost. Childish. His lips trembled, his voice cracked, and it was the most terrifying sound Jooyeon had ever heard. Not groans, not fists landing, not blood splattering but this.

“No,” Jooyeon rasped. “No, you’re not. Hey. Hey! You hear me?”

He was already shaking him, gently, carefully, patting his cheeks, his shoulders, like he could catch his slipping consciousness with his hands.

Ode’s eyelids fluttered, his eyes rolled back.

Jooyeon knew: this was bad. Very bad.

“Hey, Odie! Don’t you dare pass out! You hear me?! Open your eyes!”

He was nearly shouting now. His throat burned. Panic loomed over him like a tidal wave, monstrous and unstoppable.

Ode stirred. The corners of his lips twitched up, just a little. His eyes cracked open. He looked at him, exhaled, and murmured with a slow, pained smile, “…Jooyeonnie… you’re… really hot when you panic…”

“The fuck?”

Jooyeon didn’t even know what pissed him off more: the fact that Ode was flirting while teetering on the edge of death, or the fact that he wanted to shut him up with his hand over his mouth, so he’d stop wasting his strength on this kind of bullshit.

“Are you fucking insane?”

Ode gave a breathy chuckle, like he wanted to add something, but his eyes slipped shut anyway. Jooyeon held his breath, listening.

He was still breathing.

He felt Ode’s chest rising and falling, shallow and shaky, but still there. Still alive.

“You’re staying alive, got it?” Jooyeon whispered. “I didn’t give you permission to die tonight.”

Ode’s lashes fluttered, soaked and stuck together with tears like rain-wet threads. A delicate tremor ran across his lips, like a plucked string, quivering with soundless pain.

Jooyeon didn’t even know where he found the patience not to snap, not to howl, not to sob. His fingers trembled, but when they brushed through Ode’s hair, they were gentle. Tender. Like the soft wind rustling newborn leaves.

He stroked Ode’s head, that he allowed himself, and muttered whatever came to mind, half under his breath, words without meaning or order, just anything, if it kept that fragile body from slipping away beneath his hands.

“You hear me?.. Odie, come on… please… I’m begging you…”

Ode turned his head slightly. His lips moved, and Jooyeon leaned closer.

“…home… you’ll… carry me home, right… I… there…”

“To the hospital,” Jooyeon burst out. “You hear me? I’m taking you to the hospital. Just hang on. Don’t close your eyes.”

“Can’t,” Ode interrupted with a whisper. “I… don’t have… money…”

“I don’t give a shit! I’ll pay!” Jooyeon snapped. “I’ll pay for everything. Just—”

He didn’t finish.

Ode suddenly let out a ragged sob, then choked. His whole body seized up, curling inward. He started coughing, high-pitched, broken, gut-wrenching. The kind of cough that belonged to someone who didn’t have much time left. A muffled, uneven squeal slipped between his teeth. Then a sharp, convulsive inhale, and something dark spilled from his mouth.

Blood.

Thick, black like crude oil. It slid down his chin, soaked the frayed edge of his collar. Jooyeon felt his entire body halted in horror, in real, ice-cold terror that gripped his spine and gnawed into his bones.

“Odie,” he whispered. “Odie, don’t you fucking dare. Don’t you fucking die.”

But Ode didn’t answer.

His eyes rolled back, lids sagged, lips parted as if he wanted to speak, but couldn’t. His body went limp, insubstantial, as if the soul had already slipped out, leaving behind only an empty shell. Jooyeon grabbed his face, his shoulders, shook him, called his name again and again, but it was useless.

He didn’t even notice his own tears until they burned down his cheeks. Panic scorched his throat, his hands, his thoughts. He tried to think of what to do, where to go, how fast, but every answer shattered against one unbearable truth: he wouldn’t make it in time.

Even if the hospital were right across the street, it wouldn’t matter.

Because Ode was dying. Right now. In his lap.

And there was only one way to keep him alive tonight.

Chapter 3: Licking Raw Wounds

Thin plastic squeaked under Jungsu’s reddened fingertips; the lid refused to snap into place, and he couldn’t stand it when a container stayed even slightly ajar. Too many years working with things that could leak, stain everything around, and rot at the bottom of a bag had left him with the reflex to wrap stuff up as if even the apocalypse wouldn’t break through.

“Here,” he said, handing the container to Jiseok, who still looked like he was mentally curled up in bed with the blanket pulled to his chin. His hair was sticking up every which way, gone was any trace of the half-decent grooming he usually managed to boast to his mirror. “Hyeongjun made this for you.”

Inside were neat slices of tamagoyaki with a golden crust and, of course, not a single drop of milk, since Jiseok’s stomach couldn’t handle even that, though he often forgot about his intolerance. Next to it nestled a tightly rolled gimbap with pickled radish, chopped into perfect little pieces.

Jiseok was still squinting like the hallway light was stabbing at his eyes, even though one of the four bulbs was about to give up the ghost, flickering like a dying star announcing its end. He didn’t grab the container right away, just blinked dumbly at it for a couple of seconds before wrapping his sleepy hands around it.

“And this too.” Jungsu shoved an opaque little bottle into his hands, its plastic yellowed with age. The label had long since peeled off, leaving only a ragged stripe of glue, but you could still tell by the shape that it used to be a strawberry yogurt drink. They didn’t reuse it for the sake of the environment; the reason was much simpler: in a bottle like this, no one would guess what you were really drinking if you were careful enough. “Make sure you eat. Don’t need you going feral from hunger and chewing on someone’s blood tests.”

Jiseok snorted but didn’t argue. He took everything as ordered and shoved it in his bag. A few sluggish moments later, he was pulling on a windbreaker, zipping it up under his nose, and muttering how badly this sudden substitution screwed him over, but honestly, he didn’t sound pissed. More like he was grumbling out of principle. He wasn’t the type to refuse when asked, but he was the type who treasured every damn minute of sleep like he was still just a normal human being.

When he finally stepped out the door, he didn’t even glance back. Just slung the bag over his shoulder, tripped a little on the curb, and hopped into the cab that had just pulled up. Jungsu stood watching the car until it disappeared around the corner, only then shutting the door behind him. The lock clicked far too loudly in the near-empty space, but the sound was instantly swallowed by the dense quiet of the night.

He let himself turn slowly and head deeper into the house, passing the slippers abandoned in a squawking heap by the stairs, into the living room where the air held the faint, tolerable bite of burnt-out incense. Gunil loved burning it far too much, and hated even more throwing away the charred stubs by morning.

Jungsu yawned and sank onto the couch, which groaned long and low beneath him, like it was scolding him. He switched on the TV, immediately lowering the volume to a bare whisper out of habit, even though the only other person home was Hyeongjun upstairs behind his soundproofed walls, and that guy probably wouldn’t wake even to an explosion.

Jungsu leaned his head against the armrest, trying to ignore the springs aching under his weight and settle in. He wasn’t planning to sleep. He just wanted to wait until Gunil came back, talk for a bit, swap a couple of words and a “good night.” Usually, that alone was enough to keep the night from turning into a meat grinder, tearing his mind into scraps. After a chat with the older man, dreams came less often, and when they did, they weren’t as cruel.

Light spilled across the floor from the screen, cutting the room’s shadows into long triangles. The TV shuffled lazily through the late-night news. The anchor read the report in a steady, faintly hypnotized voice.

“…Another attack. The unknown assailant struck near Seoul Station last night. Police suspect it’s the work of a serial killer…”

Jungsu frowned slightly. The corners of his mouth twitched, and a cold weight sank in his chest. He’d heard those words too many times over the decades — killer, psycho, maniac. People didn’t understand why it happened. They called the marks on necks ritualistic symbols, not realizing the “unknown assailant” was nothing more than a hunger out of control, leaving only a sickening slurp behind in dark alleys.

Rolling fully onto his side, Jungsu tugged the pillow from under himself and pressed his nose into the corner. It smelled of dried wormwood, juniper, and lavender. His bed smelled the same. Gunil had insisted on that. He said nightmares grew lighter if you surrounded yourself with herbs that evil spirits hated, and then he’d sat sewing split pillow seams by hand, pricking his fingers now and then and muttering high-and-mighty curses like, “May it all be damned for eternity.” Jungsu hadn’t stopped him just to watch.

The anchor’s voice kept spilling from the box. The screen flipped through shots of an empty street taped off in yellow, then the police chief’s grim face, then charts blurring into nonsense. Jungsu blinked a couple of times, trying to pull his focus back, but his body wouldn’t listen. His eyelids sank over bloodshot eyes, and his mind drifted into fog.

The frozen walls of the hospital returned. Jungsu was ankle-deep in a mash of blood and half-melted snow trampled into slop by army boots. His fingers barely bent, his breath rasped raw out of his throat, while voices cried out desperately around him, endless shouts of “Doctor! Doctor! Do-octor!”

He stared at a soldier with a torn-off leg, jerking like a fish stranded onshore.

“D-doc…” the boy rasped, maybe nineteen at most. His lips were blue, pupils twitching uncontrollably. He clutched at the shredded fabric of olive drab pants where his thigh ended in ripped flesh and splintered bone. “D-doc, I… I…”

He tried to lift his head but only choked, coughing on the bitter mix of frost and gunpowder in the air. Jungsu was already kneeling beside him. His hands, stone from fear and cold, fumbled between the medical kit and the ruined body. He tried to get a tourniquet on. He knew it was too late. Knew the blood loss was already too much, that the kid was hanging by a thread, but he still acted the way they’d drilled him, pressing down, pulling tight, while in the back of his skull one last hope throbbed: maybe I’ll make it.

“Cold…” the soldier whispered. Frost clumped his lashes together. His eyes were fixed on the dusty ceiling. He fished out a crumpled scrap of paper from his pocket and pushed it weakly toward Jungsu. “Mother… give this to her…”

“You’ll tell her yourself, hear me? Hold on.”

Jungsu didn’t even notice when the burning tears started rolling down his cheeks.

It wasn’t the first time.

There had been the boy from Busan, the one whose face got half blown off. Another, barely older than a kid, from Gwangju, died in Jungsu’s arms while he tried to stitch his stomach shut. Dozens had slipped away right in front of him over those six months of war. He no longer remembered all their names, but he remembered every face he hadn’t managed to save or hadn’t been quick enough to. He remembered the gallons of blood, the shredded American field jackets, the shrapnel buried deep into young flesh.

The hospital was damp and suffocatingly cramped. Wind howled through cracks in the windows. Someone coughed behind a flimsy curtain, someone mumbled delirious nonsense, and someone screamed “Omma!” when a gut-shaking blast tore the air apart. Jungsu flinched, shielding the boy beneath him with his own body.

The second explosion hit harder, enough to make the walls tremble and swear they’d collapse in minutes. Glass cracked, spraying icy shards that peppered his shoulders. Plaster rained from the ceiling. Jungsu squeezed his eyes shut until his temples burned. A high-pitched ring swallowed everything.

The soldier under his chest no longer moved.

Jungsu wanted to scream, howl, beg for help, even though he knew none would come. He didn’t know anymore who he hated more: the war, the enemy, or his own stubborn heart, still beating in his chest, forcing him to keep watching people die every damn day. In his thoughts, his prayers weren’t about surviving till morning, but about finally dying and bringing that endless death toll he was forced to witness to a halt.

He couldn’t bear it any longer. This wasn’t what they had taught him at university. No cadaver practice could’ve prepared him for his hands drowning in fresh blood every single hour.

Jungsu woke with a gasp, sucking air in through his mouth.

His heart hammered in his chest like a blacksmith’s sledge.

His whole body shook, drenched in cold sweat.

His brain still clung to the scraps of the dream where the dead boy lay sprawled on a cot in a lake of scarlet, the air thick with groans and screams. A stray draft licked at Jungsu’s bare heels, but he was home, where the war had ended seventy years ago, and what echoed in his skull wasn’t shells cracking hospital walls but the slam of a heavy door against plaster.

“Jiseok! Jiseok!”

“Jiseok, you home?!”

Jungsu rubbed his eyes, squinting into the strip of light spilling in from the entryway as he pushed himself up, his nerves jolting at the sound of familiar voices, broken, raw with a panic that bordered on madness. He hadn’t even managed to sit all the way up, only tossed the pillow aside and leaned on one elbow when Jooyeon burst into the living room, his shoulder nearly tearing the doorframe off.

Rage blazed in his eyes. Jungsu had seen that look before, in 1952, when a soldier dragged his brother’s body through a barrage and screamed, “He’s still breathing, he’s breathing, what’s wrong with you, are you blind?!”

In the dim living room, the smell of fresh blood hit like a storm. It slammed into Jungsu’s face, settled under his palate, set his fangs aching with the familiar sweetness.

That same blood streaked dark lines down Jooyeon’s bitten lips and chin, while his wet hands gripped the tall, skinny body slumped against him. The figure was wrapped in a black leather jacket studded with skulls, rusted chains, and spikes that kept falling off, the same jacket Jooyeon had been fixing in the kitchen not long ago, cursing about the “fucking glue.” Jooyeon never let anyone touch it, never even trusted it to dry cleaning, but now, from beneath its collar, a neck jutted pale as bone, smeared with filthy rivulets of blood. The coppery head of hair, chopped short and matted into clumps, lolled helplessly to the rhythm of Jooyeon’s frantic steps. A hand with knotted fingers clung weakly to Jooyeon’s T-shirt, barely holding on.

Oh no.

Jungsu understood before Gunil stepped in behind Jooyeon, thin as a smoked-out cigarette, wearing that look he always had after a pointless fight. No words were needed to know who it was. “The kitten” — that was what Jooyeon had called him, with such raw tenderness it made Jungsu’s chest ache.

Jooyeon had been going on about this kid for three weeks, at least. At first, in fragments, muttered while making instant noodles at night and swearing at the TV. Then more and more, louder and louder, until he was practically shouting. Jungsu had never seen Ode’s face, not once, but he’d heard enough to know that Jooyeon was obsessed, and that was something to pity.

Maybe the boy himself deserved a little pity too, but here, it wasn’t going to be any better for him than in the karaoke bar.

Jooyeon should never have bitten him just to drag him home.

He had no damn right.

“Jooyeon-ah!” Jungsu’s voice came out like a growl, dragged long and hoarse in warning. It pushed itself up, looming over their heads, on the edge of snapping into a shout. The younger one flinched like he’d just been whipped across the neck, but even Gunil’s presence didn’t slow Jungsu down one bit.

Gunil was supposed to keep the kid in line. He was the one who should’ve drilled it into Jooyeon’s skull that in this house, nobody turned humans. Especially not Jooyeon, who had already made that mistake once before.

Gunil could usually rein in all of them — Jooyeon, even Jiseok when he spun out of control — which is why Jungsu couldn’t wrap his head around what the hell they were doing back home with a half-dead kitten bleeding out in Jooyeon’s jacket.

“I didn’t have a choice!” The words tumbled out of his blood-smeared mouth in a rush, desperate and shaky. “You didn’t see what he did to him! He beat him up! He was blacking out! Kept saying his ribs hurt! I— I—”

Jungsu froze, watching how carefully Jooyeon held the boy, like he was cradling a crystal vessel that could shatter with one wrong move. One hand locked under Ode’s knees, the other braced his shoulder blades, and that unnatural tenderness made something in Jungsu tilt and quake inside.

He had seen Jooyeon in a hundred skins: furious, hurling chairs against the wall; laughing, cracking jokes until dawn; turned on, grinding between his thighs; blank, taking punches with a stone face. 

But never like this.

Jooyeon’s lips trembled, and a sound slipped out of his throat, dangerously close to a sob. Desperation lit his eyes, lashes sticking with wetness, and he swallowed hard against the knot strangling his insides. He fought the tears like if he let them spill here, in front of the older vampires, he’d break completely.

Jungsu couldn’t help it; he almost felt sorry for him, but the thought of Jooyeon sinking his fangs into Ode ripped that pity to shreds, leaving behind nothing but a searing rage in his chest.

Even if the kid was dying, Jooyeon had no right to bite him.

Jungsu’s hand curled into a fist. His feelings slammed into each other, sharp as glass shards flying in every direction.

“Do you even realize what you’ve done?” he asked. “If we leave him unsupervised, let him go through the turn alone, he won’t last. With these injuries, he’ll probably die.”

Gunil exhaled heavily, dragging a hand through his tangled hair and grimacing as silence thickened like a weight pressing down.

“We have to do something,” he muttered.

“Jiseok! Where is he?!” Jooyeon jerked up suddenly, head whipping around, eyes darting frantically. “Wake him up!”

Jungsu knew instantly why he was searching for Jiseok. He wanted to hand the kitten over to him because Jiseok had never once walked away from medicine, not a single day in his life. He hadn’t run from blood and the death-rattled gasps the way Jungsu had, a decade ago. Jiseok was still a doctor, still pulling the sick out of their beds, still cutting into flesh with steady hands. Jungsu had stopped long ago, stopped patching up torn stomachs, stopped dragging people back from the brink, left the ER behind, and learned to live with the idea that he didn’t have to hold anyone’s life in his hands anymore.

One look at how Jooyeon pressed Ode to his chest, and there was no doubt: the boy had become precious to him, like a real treasure. Naturally, Jooyeon wanted to entrust him not to Jungsu, but to Jiseok.

“He’s not home,” Jungsu answered flatly, staring right into the younger’s eyes. “He went to work.”

Jooyeon’s face twisted. The bloodless scraps of his lips even seemed to pale as he clenched his teeth hard, though Jungsu doubted his half-short-sighted eyes, especially in the dark, but he clearly heard Jooyeon shove a curse through his fangs.

“Then you,” he spat, almost like an order. “You do it.”

Jungsu bit back the huge urge to explode on him, to yell, lash out from shock and helpless anger. 

Now wasn’t the time for that.

He sucked in a slow breath, pulling the frost of the room into his lungs and forcing himself to drown every unnecessary emotion. He had to clear his head, block out Jooyeon’s desperation bleeding through every move, block out Gunil’s quiet worry showing in his eyes, block out Ode’s ragged, weakening breath tearing at the air. If he didn’t want the boy to die right here, right now, Jungsu needed cold logic, calculation, the memory still burned into him from years of emergency care.

He was the only one here who knew what to do. Jooyeon, Gunil, and Hyeongjun didn’t. They couldn’t wait till dawn because by then the kitten would be gone. Sure, they could try dragging Jiseok out of work, but a half-empty clinic wasn’t going to release him in the middle of the night, and anyway, Jungsu wasn’t about to dump that problem on him when he could take control himself.

Yes, Ode looked bad, but he was still breathing, still holding on. Compared to the soldiers gasping for air in the frozen hospitals of the fifties, this didn’t look hopeless.

“Gunil-hyung, light.” Jungsu’s voice cracked through the room, sharp and hard enough that he barely recognized it himself. Usually, he babied the younger ones and spoke softly, even indulgently with Gunil, but now his words lashed the air like a whip.

Gunil obeyed without a word. He stepped back, found the switch, and slapped it. Bright light poured down from above, stabbing their eyes until they all flinched shut. In Jooyeon’s arms, the boy moaned and jerked weakly.

“Put him down,” Jungsu ordered. Jooyeon obeyed, stepping to the couch and laying Ode onto the cushions with such painful care that it knocked the breath out of Jungsu. He had never seen him like this, the same Jooyeon who tossed books when he got bored, wrecked furniture by accident or fury, shattered the old pocket watch Jungsu had inherited from his father without even faking regret. Now, he handled a half-dead boy like he was holy, wrapped trembling arms around him, bent close at every faint whimper. Jungsu only caught fragments of words from Ode’s lips, it was “please,” “don’t,” and “I’m hot.”

Jungsu dropped to his knees. For a few seconds, he only studied Ode’s face. His lip was split, bleeding sluggishly. One cheek was swollen, bruised deep. His lashes clumped with sticky wetness. Shimmer streaked his cheeks in broken silver tracks. His eyes barely stayed open, dull and glassy, nothing like the brightness Jooyeon had raved about when he’d called him the most beautiful host at Moonlight.

The weight pressed down on Jungsu’s chest, but he forced it away and stretched his hand out, brushing the back of his fingers across Ode’s forehead. His skin burned. Fever had already sunk its claws into him.

Jungsu let his touch slide lower, to the hollow of his throat, finding the damp heat. The boy’s heart thudded fast, erratic, like it was trying to punch its way out.

“High temperature,” Jungsu said. “Pulse is unstable.”

He spoke not only to keep Jooyeon and Gunil informed, but to anchor himself, to focus, to start sketching out what had to come next.

He lifted one of Ode’s eyelids, staring into the pupil.

There was no reaction to the light.

“He’s unconscious,” Jungsu said.

Jooyeon was already leaning over the back of the couch, bent so far his long hair almost tickled Jungsu’s nose. His eyes clung to Ode, his voice barely above a whisper as he kept saying, “Kitten… kitten, you gotta stay with me. You hear me? Don’t fall asleep.”

The boy answered with a thin, helpless sound. His lips moved, but no words formed clearly enough to catch. He was rambling about broken skies, about too many hands and teeth, before his breath stuttered and turned into jagged sobs.

“Jooyeon-ah, strip him,” Jungsu ordered, keeping his voice steady. “And don’t stop talking to him.”

He lifted his palm from the boy’s neck, pushed up from his knees, and forced himself to stand straight. His spine popped like dry twigs, but he allowed no hesitation. Jungsu stepped toward the door, and at once Jooyeon’s whisper struck his back, holding Ode on the ragged edge of consciousness. He spilled words that nearly broke under his own breath: promises, pleas, oaths that everything would be fine. To Jungsu’s ear, it sounded almost alien.

He crossed into the kitchen, yanked the refrigerator open, and the yellow light slashed across his face. He reached for the top drawer, tugged the plastic lid open, and the sharp reek of medicine and alcohol stung his nose.

His fingers slid over boxes, ampoules, folded instructions — everything Gunil had left behind. Cardboard edges cut at his skin, glass clinked as it rolled under his fingertips. He moved fast, but his gaze caught every detail, stripping away the useless.

He needed just one thing, and it was painkillers. He had to inject Ode with at least a minimal dose, dull the sharp edge of agony, buy a little time. After that, he could think about glucose, vitamins — anything to keep the body afloat while it tore itself apart and tried to rebuild.

His hand found a familiar pack, the same one Gunil had used last month when his back had left him barely able to stand. Hope flared hot in Jungsu’s chest, only to crumble into ash the second he looked inside. The box was empty.

“Shit,” he hissed, slamming the lid shut with a dull crack. A heartbeat later, he shoved the refrigerator door closed so hard the bang rattled through the whole kitchen.

His chest gave a painful jolt.

He couldn’t waste a second on rage.

Jungsu spun on his heel and strode back to the living room. His arm shot up, finger stabbing directly at Gunil.

“You’re driving to the pharmacy. Now,” he snapped. “Listen closely. I need painkillers in ampoules, syringes and needles, an IV set, saline, glucose, calcium gluconate, vitamins B, C, D—”

He exhaled sharply, realizing the list was already too long.

“I’ll text it,” he added. “There’s a 24-hour pharmacy by Yeongdeungpo Station. They’ll have the basics.”

Gunil nodded, but hadn’t taken a step before Jooyeon cut in.

“I’ll go!” he shot back, already tensing like he’d bolt. “I’ll get there faster.”

“No,” Jungsu’s answer came flat, unyielding.

“Jungsu—”

“You’re staying,” Jungsu cut him off, leaving no room for argument. His shoulders squared, his glare sharp under his brow. “He needs to know he’s not alone. Someone has to keep him awake. Someone he actually knows. So stay. Talk to him. Hold his hand. I don’t care what else you do, just stay with him.”

Jooyeon froze. His fists clenched, trembling for a heartbeat with raw frustration, but he didn’t beg. He only exhaled through his teeth, harsh and loud, before leaning closer to Ode. His palm covered the boy’s narrow, weakened fingers, so light now they felt like smoke in his hand.

Without a word, Gunil pulled his coat collar high against his neck and strode out of the living room. The front door slammed shut behind him, a draft snapping the curtains by the window.

Jungsu snatched his phone off the coffee table. His fingers flew across the screen, hammering the list into a curt message. At the same time, he threw an order over his shoulder, “Jooyeon-ah, bring him to my room. The couch is too small; he needs a bed.”

Jooyeon lifted his head, met Jungsu’s gaze, and obeyed at once. Carefully, he slid his arms under Ode’s fragile body, pulled him tight against his chest, and rose. The boy groaned, his body jolting with a stab of pain, and Jungsu barely held his face steady, refusing to show what twisted inside him. He knew Jooyeon could haul a piano upstairs without breaking a sweat, but for Ode, every step, every tiny movement was another blow to the ribs, a fresh lance of agony under his skin. That’s why only Jungsu’s first-floor room could spare him needless torment from… transport.

The message whooshed away, the screen blinking confirmation. Jungsu dropped the phone back onto the table like it had burned his palm, then turned and strode for the hallway.

In the bathroom, he snatched a plastic basin from the shelf in one motion and shoved it under the faucet. Water crashed in a heavy stream, drumming against the bottom, spraying over the sides. Jungsu’s eyes stayed fixed on the swirling surface, refusing to wander. Cold water was all he had right now.

He ground his teeth. 

Ode’s body was breaking down, rewiring itself, and even the smallest thing could decide if he survived.

When the basin filled, Jungsu shut the tap, tore a fresh towel from the shelf, slung it over his shoulder, and hurried toward his room, careful not to spill a drop.

The door stood open. Jooyeon had already laid Ode on the bed and dropped to his knees beside him. He gripped his hand, whispering comfort on repeat, but his voice trembled, his face twisted in helplessness. The boy’s shirt was gone, his sweat-slicked skin sticking to the pale blue cotton sheets. On his right side, a massive bruise spread wide, almost swallowing the tattoo beneath it. The words under his ribs, “Always Be Thankful,” warped and blurred across the swollen flesh.

Jungsu’s eyes caught on the letters, and the thought cut him like a blade: thankful for what? For the fists that left him like this? For the vampire venom surging through his veins, dragging him through hell instead of letting him die quickly? Was he even capable of gratitude for anything right now?

Jungsu saw the desperation in Jooyeon, understood the fire in him to save and hold onto the boy, but Christ, Jungsu had been where Ode was now, torn open and bleeding out. He had wanted to die, even knowing it was selfish to wish for an end while he was supposed to be saving other young men. He hadn’t asked for anyone to sink fangs into his throat and give him a second chance by making him an immortal leech. When the fever finally broke and the thirst came alive in him, when he realized his wounds were knitting shut with unnatural speed, it hadn’t been gratitude that hit him but sheer, suffocating horror. He had hated the one who turned him more fiercely than he ever hated the North Korean artillery that shredded the field hospital in Hoengseong to pieces.

This wasn’t Jooyeon’s first time, either. With Hyeongjun, it had been just as reckless. He was his childhood friend, his favourite human boy. Jooyeon had cut him down from a noose without a thought, never asking if he wanted this life. Hyeongjun had staggered through the house for weeks afterward, hunting new ways to kill himself, and all Jooyeon saw in it was an excuse to keep him near. Now he’d latched onto Ode, desperate to trap him by his side, and once again hadn’t asked a thing about whether the kid was ready for what came next. Jungsu knew damn well the boy wouldn’t be thrilled when he realized what being a vampire meant, what it meant to lose every last scrap of humanity he had left.

Jungsu stepped closer, lowered to his knees beside the bed, and set the basin gently on the floor. The towel slipped from his shoulder. He plunged it into the icy water, wrung it tight, and without a second wasted, pressed the saving chill against the boy’s burning skin.

The night had only just begun.

— 🦇 —

Jungsu knew sleep wouldn’t come tonight when the weight pressed against his chest. Dreams had long since turned against him, full of torn bodies and broken voices, clawing him awake in a cold sweat. Worse than the nightmares was the thought of missing something — one ragged breath, one sudden silence, the moment Ode slipped from his reach while he was lost to the dark. So he kept his eyes open, forcing them to trace the ceiling, the shadows, the fragile rise and fall of the boy’s chest.

Ode’s breathing was uneven, shallow, but it was there, and as long as it was there, Jungsu would not allow himself to abandon him.

The clock on his phone read 7:03 AM.

Jiseok would be back soon, fresh off his shift, arms loaded with the supplies Jungsu had insisted on. Gunil had managed the pharmacy run by Yeongdeungpo Station, but some things hadn’t been there. Others Jungsu refused to entrust to anyone but Jiseok. 

Ode’s body was breaking itself down even as it rebuilt. Cells burning through glucose faster than a fever patient, muscles twitching from calcium depletion, organs straining to keep rhythm while his blood turned itself inside out. The shift was violent — marrow rewriting itself, nerves firing like live wires under his skin. Without the right balance, shock could take him before the change did.

Jungsu had done what he could with scraps: a syringe of painkillers, an IV line taped awkwardly to the wall in place of a proper stand, saline dripping slowly and unevenly. It wasn’t nearly enough. Every shallow breath Ode drew told him that. The boy’s body needed more — sugar, electrolytes, iron, anything to keep the heart from stuttering as it tried to relearn its own beat.

He stretched his neck, rolling out the stiffness in his shoulders. The exhaustion was bone-deep. He had spent the night tending to Ode, wiping down his fevered skin with a wet towel, keeping watch as his body trembled through wave after wave of pain.

Jooyeon had been a restless presence at first, pacing the room like a caged animal, flinching every time Ode made a sound. Jungsu had finally ordered him to sleep, voice firm, unwilling to let another overexhausted body complicate the situation. So, now it was just the two of them, Ode and Jungsu, one still lost in the throes of transformation, the other keeping watch. Ode didn’t know it yet, wouldn’t know much of anything for a while, but he wasn’t alone in this.

The boy had only just stopped jerking in pain, his body no longer fighting itself as violently. Maybe it was the second round of painkillers finally dulling the worst of it. Maybe it was just exhaustion winning out. Either way, his breath had evened slightly, his frame gone slack against the sheets. 

Jungsu’s gaze traveled over the damage laid bare in the dim light: bruises smeared across his ribs, his arms, the curve of his jaw. The ones on his thighs, though, were worse. Dark fingerprints, pressed deep enough to linger, spoke of possession, of men who thought payment turned something into theirs to take.

Jungsu’s fingers curled against his knee. 

He exhaled slowly, pressing the tension down into something colder, something manageable. 

Jooyeon had fought for this, had shouted himself hoarse the night before, lashing out at their indifference, saying, “How could you not see it, how could you not care?” He hadn’t wanted to say it outright, had tripped over his own words, hesitated, floundered, but the meaning had been clear. Jungsu had found him later, long after the argument had burned itself out, slouched in his room with his bass resting against his thigh, fingers absently plucking the same note over and over. His eyes had been hollow, fixed somewhere beyond the walls.

Jungsu had asked him, and Jooyeon, fumbling, avoiding certain words as if saying them might make them more real, had admitted the truth that Ode wasn’t just selling his innocent company, that some men wanted more. 

Now, here he was, dragged out of whatever hell he’d been drowning in, and Jungsu had to make sure it hadn’t been in vain.

The sheets were damp beneath Ode’s skin, soaked through with sweat. Jungsu reached for the towel he had set aside earlier, wrung it out over the basin, and pressed it carefully to Ode’s burning forehead, and a faint sound escaped the kid’s lips at the contact. Jungsu’s hand stilled for a moment before continuing, slow and deliberate.

“You’re alright, kitten,” he murmured as he smoothed the cloth over Ode’s collarbone, down the planes of his chest, careful over the bruised ribs. “You’re not alone.”

Ode didn’t stir, but his breathing hitched just slightly, barely perceptible.

Jungsu stayed there, kneeling at the bedside, working through his exhaustion one measured movement at a time. Outside, the world was shifting toward daylight, but inside, behind drawn curtains, night lingered just a little longer.

Light, confident footsteps in the hall signaled Jiseok’s arrival before the door even opened. Jungsu exhaled slowly, bracing himself for the inevitable barrage of commentary.

“The fuck do you need an IV stand for?” Jiseok’s voice carried the sharp edge of someone who’d been up all night and had already lost patience. “And all these meds? Wait, don’t tell me Gunil-hyung’s body finally decided immortality isn’t for him? What is it this time? His back again? Swear to God, one of these days, he’s gonna wake up, and his spine’s just gonna fold in half like a damn deck chair.”

Jungsu rolled his eyes but said nothing. Jiseok was always the first to complain, but also the first to drag Gunil onto the couch and dig his thumbs into the knots in his shoulders, pretending it wasn’t some embarrassingly transparent form of affection. The guy was like a black cat, acting all prickly before rubbing up against you like he hadn’t just insulted your entire bloodline.

Behind the wall, Jiseok barely took a breath before continuing, “Please, please, don’t tell me Jooyeon lost his mind, got high as shit, and now you’re playing babysitter. You know he can’t handle that crap anymore. We’re not in the ‘90s, when the grass was more friendly.” 

Jungsu’s expression flattened instantly. That was a topic he had zero interest in revisiting. Jooyeon’s recklessness already set his teeth on edge; he didn’t need to hear Jiseok, of all people, dredging up old stories like he hadn’t pulled the same shit under the excuse of ‘scientific curiosity.’

Jiseok paused, but then his voice turned wary as he suggested, “Wait, shit, don’t tell me it’s appendicitis. You know that idiot eats like a raccoon with a death wish.”

“Says the guy who forgets to eat at all,” Jungsu muttered under his breath without bothering to answer properly. There was no point because Jiseok would see everything himself soon enough.

The door swung open, and just as expected, he stepped inside and stopped dead.

“What the actual fuck?”

His gaze locked onto the half-conscious figure in the bed, pale beneath the sheen of sweat, IV tubing trailing from the crook of his elbow, sides mottling from bruises, ribs shifting too sharply under the skin. 

Jiseok’s shoulders tensed under the wrinkled fabric of his uniform. His hair was damp at the temples, the exhaustion in his face accentuated by the faint blue shadows under his large eyes. He had both hands full: a plastic bag of supplies clutched in one, and the other weighed down by a bundle of groceries. Slung over his shoulder was a long, narrow case — the IV stand, most likely, still folded inside, just as Jungsu had asked.

Jungsu pushed himself up from the floor, crossing the room in a smooth motion to relieve him of the weight. The plastic rustled as he took the bags, setting them down carefully beside the bed. 

Jiseok didn’t move, still staring at Ode like the situation would make sense if he just squinted hard enough.

“I thought we had an agreement,” he muttered, running a hand down his face. “No fucking kittens.”

“He was half-dead. Jooyeon said someone at Moonlight did a number on him. Beat him real bad,” Jungsu declared. “At least, that’s what Jooyeon claims. I can only hope he didn’t do it himself just to have an excuse to turn him.”

Jiseok let out a long breath, shaking his head and mumbling, “Fuck’s sake.” 

He glanced at the makeshift setup, at the medical supplies Jungsu had asked him to bring, then unstrapped the case from his back with a grunt. After tossing it aside, he finally sank into the soft chair, moved from its usual spot in the corner, now placed beside the bed, where Jungsu had spent most of the night watching over Ode.

Jiseok sighed heavily. 

“You know, because of this, I had to take a taxi home instead of the subway,” he babbled. “You owe me money.”

Jungsu huffed a quiet laugh, and it was the closest thing to amusement he’d managed all night and into the morning. 

“Put it on my tab,” he said, reaching for the case and snapping it open. His hands moved without pause, assembling the IV stand, slotting each piece with clean clicks. He stripped the bag of solution from the wall, secured it on the hook, and tightened the line until it ran straight and neat.

Jiseok lasted barely five minutes in the chair before the restlessness broke through, knee bouncing, fingers tapping against his thigh. For him, sitting still that long already meant the clinic had drained him more than he’d ever admit.

“Alright,” he said at last. “I need samples.”

Jungsu closed his eyes, inhaled through his nose, and exhaled through his teeth. 

“Absolutely not,” he almost growled in response.

“Come on,” Jiseok scoffed, already rising from the chair. “Don’t be so sentimental about it. We need data. For the sake of, you know, science.”

Jungsu’s grip on the IV stand tightened, but he didn’t stop him. Maybe because he knew Jiseok would do it anyway. Maybe because some small, logical part of him agreed.

Ode barely stirred when Jiseok pressed fingers under his jaw, tilting his head slightly to the side. His hands, cold from the night air, still held a faint pinkish hue at the fingertips. Jungsu watched as he moved with a precision that only came from practice, efficient, detached, but not unkind.

Jiseok’s gaze swept over Ode’s face, sharp and measuring. He slid a hand into his uniform pocket and pulled out a penlight. A click split the quiet, and the beam cut across Ode’s eyes. The pupil shrank, slow and heavy, still nowhere near alert.

He snapped his fingers by Ode’s ear. The boy flinched, giving them a faint twitch of his brow, a flicker of movement, and nothing more.

“Blood first,” Jiseok murmured, already reaching for the carefully cultivated mess on the bedside table, the remnants of a long night’s work. Then, he glanced at Jungsu. “Threaten me all you want, but I’m drawing some from the arm.”

Jiseok tore the sterile packaging open and slid the gloves over his hands. He snapped the seal on the alcohol swab, wiped the inside of Ode’s arm in quick, deliberate strokes, and pressed his fingers along the vein until it rose beneath his touch. He drew out the double-ended needle, locked it into the holder with a steady twist, and aligned the steel against skin. He drove the point in cleanly, precisely, without any hesitation.

Ode made a small sound, his face scrunching in discomfort.

“If you make him suffer more than he already has,” Jungsu began, voice low, “I'll beat your ass.”

Jiseok didn’t even flinch, though a smirk tugged at the corner of his mouth, barely there.

“Oh?” he teased. “Look who already loves the new kitten more than old Jiseokie.”

Jungsu’s scowl deepened, but he didn’t bite.

Dark liquid filled the tube, swirling in thick, slow ribbons, and Jiseok’s expression shifted, fascination and calculations running behind his eyes.

“Viscosity is different already,” he murmured, half to himself. “Could be fibrinogen. I’ll have to run tests.”

Jiseok withdrew the needle in one smooth motion. A single drop of blood welled before being wiped away, erased in a swipe of clinical precision. Jungsu reached for the bandage, but Jiseok stilled him with a firm hand to the wrist.

“Wait.”

The two of them watched.

For a breath, the wound remained like any human’s would, formed as a neat puncture, a bead of dark red welling at the surface, but then, right before their eyes, the edges of the wound began to draw together. Not instantaneous, not full vampire speed, but undeniably faster than human. 

“Now that’s interesting,” Jiseok hummed low in his throat, impressed.

Jungsu exhaled sharply through his nose, forcing himself to stay still as Jiseok worked on another sample, saliva this time. A gloved thumb pressed down on Ode’s lower lip, parting his mouth with clinical detachment. The swab slid across the inside of his cheek, unhurried, precise. Ode barely reacted, caught somewhere between fevered exhaustion and the sluggish pull of half-awareness. Jungsu could only watch, jaw tight, something simmering low in his ribs.

“You’ll check those for secretion changes?” Jungsu asked, grudgingly. 

“Obviously,” Jiseok replied, clicking the sample container shut with an air of satisfaction and setting it aside without looking. “Got a microscope for a reason.”

He straightened, rolling his shoulders back before jerking his chin toward his bag. 

“Side pocket, get the bottle,” he said, almost politely. “Wanna see his reaction.”

Jungsu’s eyes snapped to him, sharp with suspicion and a trace of irritation as he asked, “You still have some left?”

Jiseok only raised a brow, waiting.

With a quiet scoff, Jungsu yanked the zipper open. His fingers found the bottle easily. It was definitely heavier than it should have been, which meant Jiseok had been lying through his teeth about finishing it. Well, that was typical enough for him.

Jungsu tossed it over without care, and Jiseok caught it one-handed.

“You were supposed to drink that,” Jungsu muttered, the words carrying a familiar edge of reprimand.

“Didn’t feel like it,” Jiseok said, twisting the cap loose. He dipped two fingers into the thick, dark liquid, the scent of blood flooding the air with a metallic sharpness. He lifted his hand and held it near Ode’s mouth, letting a single bead tremble before sliding down to his lips.

Ode’s chest heaved, a sudden gulp of air dragging through his teeth. His mouth opened, tongue pushing against cracked lips, and his hand twitched upward, desperate, reaching for Jiseok’s wrist. He couldn’t hold on; his strength bled out before it reached his fingers, but the movement jarred the IV line, making it sway.

Jiseok smeared the next droplet across Ode’s lips, streaking them dark red. Ode’s tongue darted out, licked it clean, swallowed greedily, as though the taste alone could drag him back from the edge of death.

Jungsu watched the boy’s hunger flare with nothing to feed it, watched him cling to the trace of blood as though it were salvation. Part of him wanted to demand Jiseok pour more, give more, but reason cut through. No one knew what a full dose would do when the turning hadn’t finished.

“Oh, you’re gonna be fun,” Jiseok grinned, razor-thin and knowing. 

“Are you done?”

Jiseok hummed, “Yeah, I got what I needed.”

Jungsu exhaled heavily, sinking into the chair as he pressed his fingers to the bridge of his nose. His head throbbed. Not from exhaustion or hunger, though, but from Jiseok himself, from the way he always managed to be this insufferable.

Jiseok, utterly unbothered, leaned over Ode once more, studying his face as if cataloging every detail for later. Then, with a quiet sort of amusement, a touch almost absent-minded in its fondness, he pressed a quick kiss to his forehead.

“Welcome to the family, little one.”

Notes:

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