Chapter Text
Look. It’s not like Yeonjun wanted to work in Seoul’s most prolific blood-bar, but desperation drives people to unexpected and often unpleasant lengths they would have never predicted being capable of. Serving drinks late at night wasn’t high on his list of careers he would’ve chosen for himself, but things had happened to play out to make this his reality. It was an unavoidable fact that to survive, Yeonjun needed money, and to make money, Yeonjun needed a job. Desperation made Yeonjun apply for the recently opened bartender position, and Sanguine must have been just as desperate to have gone ahead and hired Yeonjun on the spot.
Thus, Yeonjun was overworked and underpaid most nights to try to bring food to the table and pay the bills that never seemed to stop getting more expensive on a salary that was definitely not legal to pay, but the government had stopped trying to regulate the vampire-centric businesses, leaving them to do whatever they wanted regardless of the usual labor laws that were meant to protect the average citizen like Yeonjun from being too explicitly exploited.
Yeonjun had been eleven years old when the vampires had decided they were done lurking in the shadows and whispers of the night. They’d given humanity no choice but to learn to coexist with them. Yeonjun had been young enough to not fully grasp the gravity of the things happening around him, but old enough to remember a time when “vampire” was just a Halloween costume with cheap plastic fangs and thick accents.
It had only taken two years for the first drafts of the sham of an inter-species coalition to be proposed, and every year since then, there’d been new revisions of those documents on the news.
Seoul had changed a lot as Yeonjun had grown, adapted to operating like it was the child of a divorce with a reluctant split custody agreement between its guardians—the humans that founded it and the vampires that staked their claims within its roots. The new normal was this: when the sun was high in the sky, Seoul belonged to humanity, the city as alive as its daytime citizens, steady and quick like their beating hearts. When the sun set, vampires ran Seoul, and though they weren’t alive, the city certainly was under their supervision. At night, the neon lights of the bars and overnight businesses illuminated the streets, beckoning curious humans into their grasp like moths to a flame. Until dawn, every shadow held a promise and a smile from a stranger would flash a glimpse of a long fang, words dripping with the honey-sweet venom their bites were rumored to be laced with.
Sanguine was one of those businesses. A blood-bar known for its discretion and its regular rotation of powerful and influential humans and vampires alike. It ran almost like some imitation of a gentleman’s club. Entertainment was provided every night and an endless supply of donors kept the vampires fed and happy. The ground floor was where most of the clients were clustered, and where Yeonjun ran the bar. The upper second floor held the private feeding rooms for those that preferred to do their business out of the eyes of dozens of nosy onlookers, and in the basement, Sanguine hosted the lounges meant only for those with their name on the VIP list. No one used the lounges that weren’t screened thoroughly by the owner herself.
Naturally, business at Sanguine is always booming. Yeonjun’s work is never dull. He works the bar and serves drinks, cleans up messes and made idle chat with clients to loosen their wallets for a nice tip he could pocket. It was like any other bartending gig with the exception of how much blood Yeonjun would regularly find himself cleaning up. It always left a metallic taste in his mouth to clean up after the vampires who couldn’t be bothered to keep their feeding neat and tidy. After two years, Yeonjun has probably cleaned up more blood than most professional crime scene cleaners; he’s sure of it.
Yeonjun tries to avoid the night shifts if he can avoid it, but the differential is often the difference between groceries and a heating bill. Even if Yeonjun preferred to work the hours that most of the patrons were the humans wanting to half indulge in their vampire fantasies, he was often stuck working the evening shifts where most of the patrons were the vampires, and the human volunteers.
Sometimes his job was to escort dizzy volunteers to the employee lounge and force food and fluids down their throats to keep them from passing out. Sometimes Yeonjun’s job meant he sat beside his coworkers and calmed the tremors in their body as he carefully cleaned the mess of blood and torn skin from overenthusiastic vampires, sewing their skin shut if they refused to go to the hospital (most did). Most of the time, Yeonjun’s job was to swallow his discomfort and pretend that he wasn’t constantly on edge behind the bar so that no paying customer began to suspect the less than savory reality of a business run for vampires.
Being a bloodletter—a donor, as they liked to call themselves—would pay more than Yeonjun’s current position did, but the risk was too great, and the public scrutiny that came with the title made Yeonjun’s skin crawl. Humans and vampires looked down on those that sold pints of their blood off like it wasn’t what was keeping the careful peace between the species. What would happen if there wasn’t a steady supply of voluntary donors for the ravenous bloodsuckers? It was an unearned judgement, but Yeonjun wouldn’t subject himself to it. Maybe he earned less just making drinks and was barely scraping by every month, but at least all Yeonjun went home with was tips and unscarred skin. As tempting as it was, Yeonjun had always managed to scrape by without turning to those desperate means.
Tonight, Yeonjun is pulling a double. Despite being exhausted from his early shift, he was going to cover the graveyard shift until another coworker could be called in to relieve him. Evenings were too busy to just leave short-staffed, and Yeonjun needed the hours anyway, so there he was. The odds of someone showing up and taking over for the night weren’t looking like they’d be high in Yeonjun’s favor, which meant he was going to be here the entire night. The overtime pay might make up for how Yeonjun would be too exhausted to even blink by the end, but that was only a small consolation.
The dread is still heavy in his stomach when he decides to take his break before business picks up. There won’t be a good time for him to do it later, so he slips away as soon as he gets the okay.
Usually, Yeonjun takes his breaks in the staffroom. There is a worn-in leather recliner in the corner that he has unofficially claimed for himself, and nobody dares to sit in it besides him. He would usually be found collapsed on it, sometimes napping, most of the time trying to choke down something to eat or drink to make it through the shift. It wasn’t often—his appetite is all but gone when he is surrounded with the underlying coppery taste of blood on his tongue.
Yeonjun doesn’t go to the recliner this time. He beelines straight to the staff fridge, where someone had stocked what appeared to be a variety pack of an energy drink Yeonjun has never heard of, and then digs around his jacket in the locker for the pack of cheap cigarettes he had allowed himself to splurge on and the lighter; then, with his treasures in hand, Yeonjun lets himself out into the warm evening air in the alley just behind Sanguine.
Yeonjun cracks open the energy drink, wincing a little at how loud the noise had been in the otherwise muffled and quiet alley, and downs nearly half of it before going through the motions of lighting the end of a cigarette and wrapping his lips around it, letting the methodology of the motions sooth him.
Inhale. Pause. Exhale, slowly. Inhale. Pause. Exhale, slowly. Flick off the end. Inhale. Pause. Exhale, slowly. When the cigarette is burnt up, light another and start again.
On the third one, Yeonjun lets himself slow down and take another swig of the energy drink, not quite enjoying the taste but knowing it’s going to be what keeps him on his feet tonight. Maybe he should have grabbed a second one—Yeonjun could probably smuggle himself something from the bar, too, if it was really a bad night. The manager was usually too busy to notice if Yeonjun takes one of the cans from the bar.
Yeonjun flicks off the ashes again, leaning his back against the cool bricks of the side of the building, drops his head back and closes his eyes on the next inhale.
It’s exhausting to bring his arm up. It’s exhausting to breathe, actually, but he can’t remember a time he hasn’t been moving through the lead weights that were perpetually strapped on his limbs.
“You know, those things will kill you.”
Yeonjun’s eyes snap open at the sound of the intruder. He whirls around, dropping the cigarette butt and almost dropping the can in his hands, fumbling with it so badly some of it managed to slosh out and onto his fingers, leaving them sticky and uncomfortable. Still, it’s not as uncomfortable as the sight of the stranger standing casually just a meter away from Yeonjun, hands casually shoved into the pockets of the nice jacket he was wearing, eyes gleaming under the streetlights. Yeonjun can’t get a good look at the stranger, but he knows it is a man, and he knows that he hadn’t heard anyone approach him. It’s like the stranger had materialized out of thin air, and that alone raised the hackles on the back of Yeonjun’s neck.
“You look stressed.” The stranger continues, unbothered by Yeonjun’s lack of a response to him. “Your evening not going well?”
“I’m fine.” Yeonjun said wearily. “Just taking a break.”
“Oh, you work here?” He jerks his head to gesture to Sanguine.
Yeonjun nods slowly, because there’s no use hiding it when he knows that he’s wearing the easily identified work uniform. The stranger hums thoughtfully, taking another few casual steps to Yeonjun. It takes everything in him not to take a step back. His nerves are frayed and screaming that Yeonjun needs to get away from the stranger; it feels like if he takes his eyes off the man, something terrible will happen, but he refuses to listen to them.
“Has anyone ever told you that you look pretty in maroon?” The stranger is so close Yeonjun can vaguely make out his features in the dark, and the way the light catches on a pearly white tooth that looks far too sharp for comfort when he speaks. Yeonjun goes very still.
“I can’t say it’s come up.” Yeonjun straightens up to face the stranger fully. “But thanks.”
“Really? That’s a shame.” The stranger sounds genuinely baffled by it. “It really does suit you.”
He stops just a little away from Yeonjun, close enough that he could reach out and brush his fingers against the man if he wanted. Yeonjun forces his arms to remain lax at his sides, trying not to let his unease show. He is still close enough to make out some features; round eyes fixed on him with a surprisingly heavy gaze, a strong nose, and dark hair. He’s almost as tall as Yeonjun, not having to look up to meet his eyes.
“Are you waiting for someone?” Yeonjun takes the opportunity to create a little more space, shuffling back away from the door that led back into the building. “The entrance is in the front. This is staff only.”
“I’m meeting someone, but they appear to be running late.” The stranger shrugs his shoulders carelessly. He fixes Yeonjun with a curious stare Yeonjun can’t meet for long. “So, I figured I should get some air while I wait. It’s a good thing I did; you don’t mind a little company, do you?”
Yes, Yeonjun minded a lot, but his words fail him when the stranger leans over like they’re sharing a secret together. He still can’t look the man in the face, somehow. “You look a little tense. Have you had a long night?”
He nods stiffly. “A little.”
“I could help with that, if you’d like.” That’s when the stranger smiles, and there they are: sharp incisors just a little too long to be human, glinting in his mouth just behind a pretty smile. A promise in the night Yeonjun had no intention of receiving. The vampire continues in a soft voice Yeonjun knows is meant to sound alluring. “There’s better ways to relieve stress than those little things.”
There it is; the confirmation of everything Yeonjun fears. It’s a story Yeonjun knows intimately. A stranger in the night, charming and alluring, appears to someone alone and easy to pick off. They lower the guard of their target, promise them sweet nothings until they are offered what they crave, and when it’s over, the human will be left behind, dazed and bleeding, and the vampire will be long gone to find a new target. It’s all they will ever want, all they do.
This is another reason Yeonjun doesn’t usually leave the staff room for his breaks. He runs the risk of a vampire deciding to take liberties with him. Too bad for them, Yeonjun wasn’t on the menu, and he never would be.
“No, thank you.” Yeonjun shakes his head, voice tight with discomfort. “You should go wait for your friends. My break is almost over.”
The vampire sounds almost disappointed. “That’s a shame. You look like you could just a little relaxation.” He reaches out and brushes his fingers against the loose collar of Yeonjun’s shirt, unbothered by the way Yeonjun stiffens and holds his breath. He shifts a little closer, lips twitching into a private smile like he is amused by this all. The vampire’s gaze drifts to the nametag still pinned to his uniform. “Ah, you really are pretty in this color. It matches the flush on your ears, C. Yeonjun.”
Yeonjun scrambles out of reach, rushing to the door without turning his back to the vampire. “I’m not interested.”
The eyes are unreadable as they watch him, but the smile doesn’t falter. He tilts his head, and softly says, “Have a nice night, Yeonjun-ah.”
An uncomfortable chill runs down Yeonjun’s spine just before he slips back in through the door, locking it shut behind him and forcing his heart to slow back to a normal rhythm. Try as he might, the sound of his name in the vampire’s mouth echoes in his mind, just as the way the vampire’s gaze had been steady and far too intelligent for comfort. It hadn’t been hungry, and somehow that makes Yeonjun even more uneasy.
The vampire had looked satisfied, like he had already gotten exactly what he had wanted. Yeonjun doesn’t like it. For the first time, he wishes it had just been hunger he had seen; something that he could predict.
Yeonjun doesn’t have time to dwell on it. His break comes to an end far too quickly, and he finds himself too busy behind the bar to let his mind wander.
The bar offers a good view of everyone that steps foot into Sanguine. It gave him a good idea of what to expect if he caught how many people were coming in at one time.
This is how Yeonjun spots the trio of people that Mr. Lee—his manager—greets at the door with a polite smile and gestures for the group to follow him. There are two men, and one woman. The men are both tall, dressed like they’ve just left a work meeting and are finally loosing up their stuffy ties and blazers, while the woman looks perfectly put together. Her hair is long and loose down her back, her professional attire immaculate, and her heels almost put her almost at eye level with the two men. The two men both have dark hair, though one has his hair cut short and close to his head, and the other man has his in a more modern cut Yeonjun usually saw on the idols on the ads.
Mr. Lee was only slightly shorter than the two men. He was a tall human man with short greying hair and expensive taste in his work attire. There were laugh lines around his eyes that said more about his easy-going demeanor than anything else did, and he had a way of speaking that had put Yeonjun at ease almost immediately upon meeting him. Mr. Lee had been the one who had overseen Yeonjun’s training and had been the one to extend the offer of employment in the first place. It had been a miracle to Yeonjun at the time, who had been denied job after job due to being underqualified.
Maybe Mr. Lee had seen the desperation in Yeonjun’s eyes, back then, and had decided to throw him a pity bone, or maybe Sanguine’s high turnover rate made them just as desperate, but whatever it was kept Yeonjun from starving on the streets.
Mr. Lee leads the trio too the door that led to the underground floor that held the main source of Sanguine’s revenue: the private VIP lounges. He was speaking to them as he led them, gesturing calmly around the club as if to demonstrate why they would not be hosted on the ground floor, and as the trio gave a cursory glance around, Yeonjun accidentally made eye contact with one of the men, jolting with anxiety when he realizes it is the stranger from outside. Yeonjun knows he is recognized when the polite glance around the room becomes a sharp, focused stare right at him, knows that the curl of the stranger’s lips is identical to what it had been just outside.
Yeonjun quickly averted his gaze, snapping back into motion to return to his task instead of letting himself linger on the way the man had looked a little too curious at the sight of him, too. Maybe he wanted a drink? Yeonjun didn’t think it was likely. Not if what he had offered before was still fresh on his mind, but a man can’t be blamed for being optimistic.
The only people who were allowed downstairs were the type too important to be bothered getting a drink from a crowded bar. Politicians, company executives, those in positions of power and influence were hosted there. Only the owner of the business—someone Yeonjun only knew as Jiah— held the list of who was allowed and who was not, and so she was the only one who could hand over the keys to even grant access to use the lounges.
Nobody unimportant was allowed downstairs.
It was a little later that Mr. Lee returned and he pulled Yeonjun aside. One of Yeonjun’s coworkers was behind him, nodding at him as he slipped behind the bar. Yeonjun’s muscles relaxed—it looked like he would be able to go home and sleep a little, after all.
Mr. Lee didn’t tell Yeonjun the words he needed to hear to be officially allowed to go home, though. He looked oddly blank when he said, “I need you to handle our guests in the Rose Room for an hour while I handle another important client. Do you think you can do that before you head out?”
“Me?” He blinked in surprise. “I’ve never been down there.”
Mr. Lee ran his hand through his hair. “I know. Trust me, I wouldn’t ask if I had any other choice. But…” He trialed off with a grimace, shaking his head. “It’s just for an hour. Just serve some drinks, keep them happy until I can take back over.”
Yeonjun must have been tired with how easily he agreed to the request, not reading the stiff way Mr. Lee smiled at him. He didn’t even notice how he had personally led Yeonjun down the stairs and to the end of the hall, straight to a closed door Yeonjun has never stepped inside of before. He clapped a hand on Yeonjun’s shoulder, pausing and opening his mouth.
For a moment, Mr. Lee looked conflicted. He squeezed Yeonjun’s shoulder, and then let go, and his expression cleared. “Be careful, alright Yeonjun?”
“Yeah, of course.” He automatically said, the confusion making him feel a little uneasy. Mr. Lee didn’t let him sit with that feeling for long. He opened the door and gestured for Yeonjun to walk in.
The Rose Room was larger than Yeonjun had expected, illuminated in dim red lights and tastefully planted tea lights. The furniture was ornate and elegant, but still gothic enough to fit the theme of the bar. Light fixtures hung low from the ceiling, creating a falsely intimate atmosphere Yeonjun is shocked by as soon as he steps in.
The three people are sat speaking quietly among themselves. He’s sure they had heard him come in, but nobody moves to acknowledge him beyond a quick glance. He isn’t sure what to do, exactly, to keep these three people happy.
It doesn’t take long for Yeonjun to notice the trio are not human.
There is an unnatural stillness to all vampires. When they move, it always looks choreographed, like their body would only do the exact action needed from it. Humans were more vibrant and unrestrained with their movements, never truly still like the undead. They all have an uncanny agelessness to their features, too, like an artist had airbrushed them at the height of their beauty.
One of the vampires catches Yeonjun’s eye.
It was the stranger, and in this lighting, Yeonjun is suddenly far too aware of how clear his features are; he looks younger than the other two, though appearances didn’t really mean anything when it came to vampires. He looked like he could be Yeonjun’s age, or at least he might have been before he was bitten and changed. The vampire is what Yeonjun would call a pretty boy in every sense of the word. Pink doll-like lips on a heart shaped face and a striking combination of jawline and high cheekbones make him too pretty to look at, almost; the strong nose and his round eyes offer an interesting contrast, softening his features somehow. The vampire’s hair is dark, swept back in what could have been casual but Yeonjun suspected was carefully styled. He was in slacks and his blazer was draped around his shoulders lazily, his arms folded across his chest.
The pretty-boy vampire doesn’t seem interested in the conversation between his two companions. He slouches back on the seat like he had been forced to be here and wanted everyone to know how unhappy he was with that decision, a strange shift from what he had been like just outside. Yeonjun wondered if pretty-boy was an heir, or an assistant. Is that why he had been wandering around instead of politely waiting?
It’s like the thought draws his attention. Yeonjun tries not to visibly stiffen at the sudden acknowledgment. The vampire gives him a curious look, tilting his head ever so slightly to the side before he moves his attention to other matters, and Yeonjun forces himself to get through the next hour of his job without embarrassing himself.
It’s an easy job, at least. Yeonjun occupies himself with replacing the drinks on the table, and cleaning up around the bar what Mr. Lee must have spilled while he was in here. He doesn’t think about the pretty-boy or his vague proposition, or the unease he had felt and how silly he feels when the pretty-boy doesn’t appear all that menacing under proper lighting.
Of course, just when he feels comfortable, things fall apart.
The other man is the one who wraps a cold hand around Yeonjun’s wrist, stopping him from taking the empty glass from the table. The grip isn’t painful, but it is unbreakable, and that alone is enough to make Yeonjun uneasy.
The vampire smiles at him when Yeonjun checks his expression; it’s supposed to be charming, Yeonjun is sure, but nothing is charming when he is being held there by force.
“You’re pretty.” The vampire croons, an echo from earlier in a voice Yeonjun doesn’t find half as tolerable. A shudder of discomfort slides down Yeonjun’s spine, worse than before. “Jiah always sends the prettiest ones. What’s your type?”
“Pardon?” He tries to tug his arm free uselessly. The pretty-boy hadn’t grabbed him earlier, he can’t help but compare.
“Your blood type. What is it?”
“I don’t know.” He says slowly. “Please let go of my arm.”
“You don’t know your own blood type?” The woman asks with a light laugh. “How do you work here and not know?”
Yeonjun doesn’t turn to her, attention solely on the vampire grabbing him. “I’m not a donor. That’s not what my job is here.”
The man holding his arm looks amused. “That’s adorable. So, you’ve never been bitten before, have you?”
“No.” He tugs again. “Let go.”
The vampire smiles at him more widely. “I would love to be the one to show you what it’s like, then. Just a quick bite, yeah?”
The woman says from behind Yeonjun, “That was a terrible line.”
“No.” Yeonjun firmly says. “I don’t donate. I can get you someone that does that would be more than happy to satisfy you, though. I’m sure we have someone that suits your preferences on staff.”
“But you’re right here.” The grip on his wrist tightens painfully. “There’s no need to inconvenience anyone.”
“I’m not on the menu.”
Now the vampire rolls his eyes as if indulging Yeonjun’s joke. “Sure.”
“I said no.” Yeonjun snaps, ignoring the way the vampires expression hardens. “Let go of me.”
The offense is obvious at his rejection. It’s clear this vampire is not used to being told no, which was something that all of them had in common. They were all entitled, weren’t they? Because vampires fed on humans, and were stronger and lived longer, the entire species acted as if they were entitled to have whatever they wanted from the humans. Blood, business, power—they wanted it all. Yeonjun had always hated that about the patrons of the bar.
None of them liked that he told them no when they pestered him to donate. How dare a lowly human—something so far below them—reject their generous offer of being their chosen bloodbag for the evening?
Yeonjun’s eye twitches with the agitation of his wrist still not being released.
“Don’t be difficult, darling.” The woman says pityingly. Yeonjun risks a glance over his shoulder at her, not surprised to see her looking unimpressed with the scene. “Jiah wouldn’t have allowed you to come here if you weren’t on the menu.”
“I told you I don’t donate,” Yeonjun repeated, growing angry. “Get your hand off of me.”
Pretty-boy vampire catches his eye, then. He’s watching the scene with a hard to read expression, gaze flicking between his companion and Yeonjun. When he meets Yeonjun’s eyes, they shift into that curiosity again.
No concern; Yeonjun should have expected that. Empathy would be asking for too much, too.
There’s no choice in this, is there?
The realization comes with a sick twist of his stomach. The vampire grabbing him will bite him, and he’s sure the pretty-boy will also want a bite. The woman might indulge, as well, since her companions seemed to be leading by example. Three vampires to feed—assuming they each abided by the law to only take the legal limit of one-pint each, that was still about a third of the blood in Yeonjun’s body he would lose. He wasn’t under any illusion they would abide by those pesky regulations, though. When had the law ever applied to the rich and powerful? Rich and powerful vampires were more prone to change the laws if they weren’t already above it than to follow the rules they had drafted up.
The vampire suggests, his tone syrupy, “Why don’t you sit down?”
Yeonjun’s body obeys, taking a calm seat. He despairs when he realizes what is happening; compulsion. It’s the ony ability Yeonjun had always found the most uncomfortable about their species. The bloodsucking and the eternal life didn’t bother him quite as much as the built-in ability to override a human being’s autonomy. That, Yeonjun had always thought with a shudder, was the most nightmareish aspect of their new night-dwelling population. He had seen it happen before, heard stories of those who have been under the effects, but until now, Yeonjun has never experienced it. Horror creeps on him faster than his body can keep up even as the vampire smiles, not a bother in the world, even as Yeonjun’s skin crawls and his stomach threatens to choke him with bile.
“That’s good. Tilt your throat back for me.”
“Don’t.” Yeonjun chokes out. The vampire ignores him, standing up and looming over Yeonjun. His eyes are red; Yeonjun’s heart pounds. That, too, was a terribly monstrous part of their species. Their eyes became as red as rubies when they fed, unable to pretend to be human when it really came down to it. “Get your teeth the fuck away from me.”
“Asahi.” The pretty-boy says softly. “What are you doing?”
The vampire drawls, “Just taking a quick bite.”
It should be noted that Yeonjun’s brother Soobin is training to be a vampire hunter. Soobin spends his days with other novice hunters, learning from those that were more experiences how to survive and even win against encounters with vampires. Some of Soobin’s teachers had been in the business since vampires were still myths to the city. They were used to working in the shadows to eliminate the creatures that lived within them. Soobin is in it for the pay. The more he improves, the higher he rises in rank, and the more missions he is allowed to take on. Soobin’s stipend was larger the more he proved himself. It wasn’t a career Yeonjun would have wanted for his gentle and sweet younger brother, but Soobin was stubborn.
Soobin had been just as stubborn to teach what he could to Yeonjun, too. “Hyung, you have to survive a vampire attack, okay? You’re not allowed to die on me, too.”
Choi Yeonjun is not helpless. He can defend himself well enough, even if he is at a bit of a disadvantage at the moment. Soobin’s overzealous lessons at least gave Yeonjun an idea of what to do.
Yeonjun waits for the moment the vampire moves to bite him to move, forcing himself out of the compulsion by biting the inside of his cheek so hard he draws blood, and with his mouth flooded with the metallic taste, he kicks so hard at the vampire’s looming chest that it sends Yeonjun back along with the sofa.
He rolls out of the way of the reaching hands, scrambling onto his feet. The exit isn’t far, so he sprints for it. The vampire steps in the way; furious at the attack. Yeonjun thinks he should be the one that is angry here, not the creature trying to bite him against his will.
“Well?” The vampire seethes, his eyes flashing. Yeonjun backs up with each step he takes forward, not taking his eyes off the looming threat until he feels his back hit the edge of the low counter of the bar.
Yeonjun blindly reaches his hand out, grabbing the first heavy glass he touches and throws it right at the vampire. It dodges. The glass shatters on the wall beyond it with a terrible crash and rattle of the shards on the floor.
The vampire reaches him just as Yeonjun gets his hands on another glass. He shatters it against the creature’s head when it gets its hands on him, and though he hears the hiss of pain, it doesn’t work as the deterrent Yeonjun had hoped it would. Again, Yeonjun tries to run, and again the unfair advantage from the vampire means Yeonjun finds himself pressed hard into the ground before he knows what is happening, crying out and his head swimming when he knocks into the floor, his breath leaving him all at once. Even if the tight fingers clamped on the back of his neck didn’t hold him in place, the pain in the rest of his body would’ve kept Yeonjun imobile. He’s going to die here. It makes Yeonjun’s breath come too quickly in his crushed ribcage.
“Asahi.”
The vampire’s grip falters at the call of what Yeonjun is realizing is his name; he takes the opportunity to wriggle out of the hold, earning a sharp sting on the back of his neck in the process. The draw of blood must’ve been a distraction, too, because Yeonjun somehow manages to extract himself and rush across the room. He dives for the wooden end tables, turning them over as he secures his hand on one of the legs and stomps his foot down on the end, effectively snapping a jagged wooden makeshift stake out of it.
Yeonjun holds it tightly in one hand as he backs up, the other hand coming up to cover the back of his neck, wincing when he feels the sticky wet blood from the scratches on his fingers.
The vampires in the room are all staring at him now with varying degrees of interest. He doesn’t like the odds against him anymore now that they’re basically sharks in the water. Asahi—the one that had attacked him—stalks forward before the others, his nostrils flaring as he catches the scent of Yeonjun’s blood. Yeonjun bares his teeth and holds out his mockery of a weapon.
Asahi is almost amused as he closes in on Yeonjun; he backs into the wall, realizing his mistake too late. “You don’t even know how to use that.”
Yeonjun doesn’t even see when he moves. All he knows is that he is pressed to the wall, his head being forced to the side. He builds up a shout in his throat, blindly swinging the wood stake in his hand. Yeonjun can only be satisfied at the hiss of pain from the vampire for a moment before he feels the edge of teeth against his skin. Every part of him recoils at the sensation, his breath catching and his struggles renewed. Its useless, he knows, but Yeonjun can’t allow himself to be killed without at least putting up a fight. He isn’t going to roll over and go quietly. If the vampire feels like he is entitled to Yeonjun’s life, he will fight every step of the way.
Soobin would have been able to fight him off, Yeonjun thinks, furious and helpless all at once. Soobin was always stronger than him; Soobin had been the one who didn’t waver in the face of pain, the one whose lip didn’t wobble with tears when he bruised, the one that took to throwing himself at danger like it was second nature. Yeonjun had always been the one to hesitate. The weak one. Yeonjun was the one who fell and couldn’t get back up, the one who hid and covered his ears from the barrage of insults, the one who crumbled under the pressure to do better, to try harder, to actually be strong enough to keep everyone safe. If Yeonjun were Soobin, he wouldn’t be facing death. If Yeonjun were Soobin, he would have been strong enough to push the vampire closing his mouth around his neck off of him.
He is Yeonjun, though, and Yeonjun can’t do more than claw at the immovable monster over him and desperately shout, “No, don’t—”
Then the vampire’s teeth are no longer on his throat, and the pressure pinning him to the wall eases so much Yeonjun slides down it in a heap, catching his breath, head spinning as he stares at the strange, unbelievable sight before him.
The pretty-boy vampire is right behind Asahi, an arm casually slung over his shoulders. The pretty-boy’s expression is flat, almost bored, but Asahi appears to have gone still. It’s a friendly gesture, but something about the apprehension on Asahi’s face makes Yeonjun’s overworked brain ping with a warning siren.
“I would think that at your modest age, Asahi, you’d be cabable of some self-control.” The other vampire says lightly, not looking at him. He’s staring right at Yeonjun, eyes unreadable. They’re red, just like his companions. Maybe he just wants the first bite. Yeonjun shudders in revultion at the thought; pretty-boy’s eyes shift strangely. “Was I wrong?”
Asahi still doesn’t move. He is staring at Yeonjun, too, but there is something else making his eyes widen, gaze flickering around in a frenzy. He says, very quietly suddenly, “No.”
The pretty-boy vampire nods, humming. The arm he has slung around Asahi’s shoulders seems to tighten briefly, and Asahi winces. “I’ve seen newborns with better control. This is embarrassing, honestly.”
Asahi’s face pales somehow. He opens his mouth to speak, and then bites his tongue.
“He said no.” The pretty boy continues lightly, giving one final, friendly squeeze and then releasing him. Yeonjun is fascinated when Asahi ducks his head and rushes off almost too hastily. The pretty-boy vampire doesn’t even watch him go, instead squatting down to Yeonjun’s level and helping him sit upright, ignoring how Yeonjun cringes away from his touch.
Of course, that’s the moment the lounge door is flung open, and two people rush inside with hurried, ungraceful steps. Humans. “What happened here?”
“Don’t touch me.” He hears himself say, his tone not as sharp as he would have wanted. It’s strange how he can feel the tacky blood on his skin but doesn’t feel the tips of his own fingers, or the trembling lips he knows are moving. The vampire blurs around the edges, like Yeonjun has moved too quickly.
The pretty-boy meets his eyes, considers it, and then nods, backing off with his hands out in front of him like he really means no harm. Yeonjun doesn’t buy the act even for a second. He staggers to his feet, still holding the makeshift weapon in front of him uselessly.
“Careful.” The pretty-boy says quietly to him. “I didn’t hear anything break, but it still looked painful.”
“Fuck off.” He shifts away from the strangely docile acting vampire. “Don’t pretend to care now.”
He gets a frown as a response, his hands lowering.
Yeonjun, meanwhile, doesn’t get to process it before hard hands grip him by the shoulders, turning him so quickly his head swims. He hit his head harder than he must have thought.
Mr. Lee’s worry creased face floods Yeonjun’s line of vision. “What the hell happened?”
“They tried to bite me.” Yeonjun replies in a monotone, blinking furiously to get the specs of color out of his vision. “I said no. They didn’t like that.”
Mr. Lee swallows thickly, squeezing Yeonjun’s shoulders too tightly until he sees the way Yeonjun winces, and then he quickly releases him. “You attacked them.”
“I defended myself.” He shakes his head, wobbling. “They wouldn’t let me leave.”
“Are you alright?” The pretty-boy asks from his left. Yeonjun casts him a vicious side eye and snaps, “Fuck off,” because he is petty, and everything hurts and the room is not in clear focus and it’s all because he hadn’t wanted someone to suck his blood from his body.
“You—” Mr. Lee’s brow pinches, his eyes closing as he seems to visibly calm himself. “Wait for me in my office, Yeonjun. We’ll discuss what’s going to happen from there.”
His stomach sinks. “Am I fired?”
Mr. Lee glances behind him, then looks back at Yeonjun, and his hesitation is all the answer he needs.
His lip wobbles. “You can’t—You can’t do this to me. You should be kicking them out, not me. They should be getting banned for not accepting no as an answer.”
Mr. Lee purses his lips. “We’ll discuss this in my office, Yeonjun.”
“But…” His eyes sting. Behind Mr. Lee, a human women is standing with her arms crossed, her expression furious, and the other two vampires are just to her right. The woman is staring in his direction, but Asahi is staring straight ahead. Neither move to say anything. “But it’s not my fault. Why am I fired if it’s not my fault?”
“Yeonjun.” It’s said with a sigh, like Mr. Lee is tired of dealing with him. “Maybe you should just go. Take your things, and just go. Don’t come in tomorrow.”
He really can’t see with the way his eyes feel too wet, and his vision is spotty, and he really can’t help how shaky his voice is when he says, “This isn’t fair.”
“Go home.” It’s not unkind, the way Mr. Lee says it. It’s pitying, and if anything, that makes this entire situation worse. Yeonjun wipes at his burning cheeks furiously with shaking hands. “I’ll call you a cab.”
“Don’t bother.” He sways as he rips himself free from Mr. Lee. “It’s not like I can afford it anymore.”
Before he completely turns to the exit, Yeonjun catches one final glance at the pretty-boy vampire staring at him intensely, unnerved by it. He doesn’t like the attention, or how he feels a chill go down his spine when the vampire tilts his head considerately. Yeonjun forces himself to leave, pretending that every step doesn’t shoot pain up his spine and that he isn’t furiously blinking away the frustrated tears.
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Yeonjun’s dramatic exit is interrupted by the pretty-boy vampire following after him, catching up to Yeonjun easily just before he reaches the stairs leading to the ground floor. Yeonjun falters as the vampire stands in front of him, his heart pounding.
Is this where he gets ambushed? Now that he wasn’t protected under Sanguine, was the vampire just going to drain Yeonjun dry before he could even get outside? Maybe that was the price he was wanting for stepping in and stopping Asahi, somehow.
Yeonjun’s feet root themselves into the ground as the vampire reaches out for him. He flinches at the touch, cold and light and terrible. Pretty-boy doesn’t grab Yeonjun like he expected, though. He just fixes what Yeonjun realizes is the messed up neckline of his shirt, buttoning up some of the buttons until Yeonjun felt less exposed. The pretty vampire doesn’t say anything as he does this, nor does he say anything when he steps back and Yeonjun wraps his arms around himself.
“I’ll pay for your cab home.” He says. “Or to the hospital. It’s the least I can do.”
Yeonjun hears himself say, “I don’t need your pity cab.”
“Yeah, you do.” The vampire argues simply, voice calm. He glances up and meets Yeonjun’s eyes, and they’re dark and perfectly human again. He frowns as he takes in Yeonjun’s face. “That’s going to bruise. I’m sorry.”
“I hate bruises.” Yeonjun can’t stop the words, or how his eyes burn. “I-I hate you, and your stupid pity cab, and your stupid friend, and…and…” He shakes his head, biting his tongue against the groan of pain as it feels like his skull is rattling. “And I hate concussions.”
“I’ll walk you out. C’mon.”
Yeonjun shakes his head to protest but he can’t fight against the steady hold on his elbow from the pretty-boy. “Fuck you. You got me fired. You don’t get to be nice to me now. Take your pity cab and—”
The vampire snorts. How dare he laugh at Yeonjun?
“—And shove it up your ass.” Yeonjun finishes, pushing at the stubbornly steady shoulders of the vampire. He stumbles over his own feet as he’s led to the front for the cab. “Hey, my stuff—”
“Wait here. I’ll get your stuff.” Yeonjun receives a stern glare, and he matches it as best he can.
“You don’t even know what my stuff is.”
“I’m sure I can follow the smell of cheap cigarettes to the right stuff.”
“I’ll shove those cheap cigarettes up your cheap asshole.” Yeonjun counters, and the vampire laughs at him again before disappearing. He sways without the support, and he just catches himself when the vampire returns, hand on his elbow again and handing Yeonjun his bag of things. Yeonjun takes it with a huff. “That was a lucky guess.”
“Cab is over there.” The pretty boy leads him there, something like amusement on his features. “You know, it really is a shame you don’t donate, but I respect that. If you ever change your mind, though, I would love to be the first in line.” As they reach the cab, and the vampire helps Yeonjun ungracefully sit in the back seat, he pauses just before closing the door to add, “I’d make it worth your time, of course, and compensate you more than fairly.” A pause, and just before he closes the door, he says, “Just something to keep in mind. Have a nice rest of your night, Yeonjun.”
(Yeonjun doesn’t stay in the cab. He stubbornly slides out of the opposite door, ignoring the driver’s protests, and he stumbles his way home. There’s no way Yeonjun would allow himself to be in debt with a vampire.)
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I was fired. Yeonjun sits with the thought hysterically as he walks blindly through the night. I was actually fired. They almost killed me, and Mr. Lee fired me for it.
His throat will probably be bruised when he wakes later, along with the rest of him, and the gash on the back of his next stings dully. There might be a bruise on his forehead the next morning, which would be impossible to hide from his family. He would need to be gentler on his back, too, with how badly his spine is aching with every step he takes away from Sanguine. Yeonjun doesn’t want to think about what comes next yet, or how he’s going to break the news to Soobin. He isn’t sure how he’ll explain anything, if he’s completely honest.
He’s entirely numb as he goes home, and it’s still dark out. Yeonjun was supposed to be at work for another 4-hours to cover the double. The others will be asleep when he gets home, which Yeonjun counts as a blessing. He’ll have the chance to clean himself up before they notice, and maybe if he acts quickly enough, he can look through his mother’s old expired makeup and try to figure out a way to conceal the injuries. If he is quick enough to slip into his room, he might even have some time to sit with himself and pathetically cry about everything without alerting anyone to what has happened. Nobody needed to know how today had gone, but he knew it was only a matter of time before he had to come clean.
He honestly plans to wallow in his room until the sunrise, and then pick himself back up and put himself together enough to brace himself to tell everyone how much he has fucked up in the morning. It would be a great breakfast conversation. Good morning, everyone. You should enjoy the meal, because I don’t know where we will get the money for the next one, because I was fired.
They’d be so disappointed in him.
The living room is occupied when Yeonjun comes home.
He’s frozen as he takes in the sight of Soobin and his friends sprawled around the dim living room. Soobin is shocked at Yeonjun’s early arrival home, then delighted, and then worried. He rushes to him, engulfing Yeonjun in a clumsy hug. Yeonjun can smell the alcohol even before he’s painfully engulfed by his brother. Yeonjun awkwardly pats his back with one arm, wincing.
“Are you alright, hyung?” Soobin asks, stepping back to look at him. “Did something happen? You’re home early.”
Yeonjun opens his mouth to answer, then glances at the strangers in the house all staring at him. Soobin notices where his gaze has gone, and he brightens up.
“Oh! Hyung, these are my friends!”
The introductions are quick and simple enough. Han, Arin, and Renjun are each introduced to Yeonjun by an enthusiastic, tipsy Soobin. Yeonjun recognizes the names. Apparently, these were Soobin’s favorite people. He would go on and on about how cool they were, how much they’ve helped him catch up on all the foundational hunter trained that Soobin would need to survive out on an assignment. They’d saved his ass multiple times on group runs, apparently, and he’d formed a strong bond with each of them. Yeonjun thinks he might be more excited to meet the three people that made Soobin finally act his age if he hadn’t been looking forward to having a mental breakdown alone in his room tonight. Soobin is too serious most of the time, and it really was a relief to see the way he talks about fooling around with his friends and went out for something that wasn’t a job.
But Yeonjun had been wanting to wallow in his own misery, so all he can do is muster up a tired, insincere smile at them, and try to excuse himself.
That’s about the time that things had spiraled south.
It started with Han asking, “Sanguine, huh?” while eyeing Yeonjun with a disdainful once over, taking in his work uniform. The maroon silk shirt and black slacks is a distinct combination that most of the city recognizes as belonging to the staff of the most popular hotspot in Seoul. “That’s certainly a career choice.”
“You look a little drained,” Arin had added, giggling to herself at her wordplay. “Rough night?”
“Guys,” Soobin complained, whining a little. “C’mon.”
Yeonjun glances at where Soobin is trying to fight off a grin, only wiping it off when he meets Yeonjun’s eyes. Hunting gear is spread around the living room with scattered cans of beer around them. They couldn’t have bought it themselves; none of Soobin’s friends are old enough to drink, technically, and yet they all have a rosy flush to their cheeks. Maybe that’s what makes them brave enough to say these things to him, or maybe they’re brave ebcause they know Soobin won’t stop them. Maybe these kids feel brave because Soobin doesn’t correct them before, or maybe because Soobin must agree with them.
How many times have people said things about Yeonjun? Does Soobin keep what his brother does a secret? Does he join in? Maybe Soobin tells them about how Yeonjun isn’t a hunter because he was too weak for it. Maybe Soobin wishes Yeonjun were someone else, too. Maybe he remembers how Yeonjun had always been the first one to back down when things got hard; how Soobin had been the son that their father had wanted—strong and brave, sturdy like a tree in the face of the howling wind, too stubborn to bend.
It's funny. Yeonjun hasn’t thought about that man in a long time, but now he can’t help but wonder what he would have said if he knew how much Yeonjun was proving him right. He was just as useless as he’d been told; Yeonjun couldn’t take care of them.
Soobin has the decency to look ashamed as he averts his eyes and tells his friends, “Knock it off, guys. He’s not a bloodletter or anything. Yeonjun-hyung just makes drinks. Don’t make it weird.”
“Oh, really?” Renjun is snickering to himself now. “I’m sure he makes a great drink.”
Arin’s giggles grow louder, hiding her face with her hand and coughing when Yeonjun turns to her, unimpressed.
“Dude.” Soobin complains weakly, another glance at his brother. He doesn’t seem to notice how Yeonjun is carefully turned away from him as he puts away his backpack and slips his shoes off in the doorway, letting his hair fall over his face as a shield. It’s better that way, Yeonjun tells himself, even as another part of him is cracking at how Soobin hasn’t even seemed to notice that Yeonjun is not alright. It’s the alcohol, he reasons through the second wave of tears threatening to choke him.
Yeonjun is not a saint, but he likes to think he isn’t a bad person. Maybe he doesn’t help old ladies cross the street or walk an altruistic path of putting everyone before himself, but he isn’t terrible. Yeonjun helps when he can, even if it’s not often or much help. Money is tight, though, and he has people at home that depend on his income to feed. If not giving his spare money to the homeless in favor of using it to buy himself a treat so he doesn’t go insane every now and then is what karma is using as a measure of his morality, he knows he would come off as the scum of the earth.
Still, he doesn’t really think he’s not terrible enough to deserve the heckling he’s on the receiving end of from Soobin’s own friends. He really doesn’t think he’s done anything so wrong that—on top of being fired today for not letting himself be used as an involuntary bloodletter—he has somehow earned this sort of treatment from barely legal teenagers in his living room. And yet there Yeonjun stands, his arms crossed across his chest, unimpressed with Soobin’s choice of friends.
Yeonjun just wanted to escape into his room and cry—not stand there as a group of tipsy novice vampire hunters giggle to themselves and all but call him a bloodwhore. If he really were a bloodwhore, he’d still be employed right now and wouldn’t feel the wave of anxiety crushing him.
“Hyung is tired, and needs a nap.” Yeonjun says to Soobin, not looking at him.
The trio of friends start snickering among themselves again. Han whispers something to Arin he doesn’t catch but makes Arin cough with more giggles. Yeonjun bristles, trying his best to look as if the anxiety of being mocked to his face isn’t squeezing his already fragile chest with anxiety.
Soobin doesn’t look at Yeonjun as he sweeps past the younger boy to head to his room. His friends look disappointed that the source of their entertainment is retreating for the night, and when he tells Soobin to keep it down for the evening, he is aware of the annoyed glares he’s getting. There’s a flurry of whispers at his retreating back.
“Dude,” Renjun speaks, voice sympathetic. “I didn’t know your brother was like that. That must suck.”
Soobin doesn’t answer, and part of Yeonjun’s heart shatters. He falters, hands fisted in his shirt.
“Shh,” It’s Arin that speaks. “It’s not Soobin’s fault. You can’t control family.”
“Still,” Renjun insists, “It can’t be easy knowing that he has that kind of pastime.”
“Guys…” Soobin protests weakly. “He’s not…He really just makes drinks.”
“That’s what they all say,” Han speaks sympathetically. “He’s probably too ashamed to tell you he’s just another—”
Yeonjun doesn’t hear the end of the sentence, rushing into his room and slamming the door shut. He only feels a little guilty at the thought of possibly waking up the others, but it fades quickly. Kai is a heavy sleeper, and Taehyun is lucky enough that he is able to return to sleep quickly even if he is a light enough sleeper he always wakes when Kai gets sick.
In the privacy of his own room, Yeonjun breaks. He locks the door, then numbly makes his way over to his bed (his mom’s bed, actually. The mattress is old and sometimes he swears he can feel where she had died, and he never sleeps on her side but Yeonjun can’t bring himself to replace the mattress even if he could afford to). He barely makes it there before he simply drops on the ground on one side, draws his knees up, and digs his fingers into his hair. The burn of it is grounding enough as he spirals and drowns in his own frustration.
He can’t tell them he was fired; Yeonjun can’t do that to them when they were all depending on his admittedly shitty salary. Soobin clearly was already ashamed of him, so what would he think when he found out not even Sanguine would keep Yeonjun hired? What did that say about him if even the place everyone sneers and looks down on doesn’t think Yeonjun is good enough to keep on the payroll? Soobin would be so ashamed. Soobin already is ashamed of him.
He'd have to take more assignments, putting himself in more danger, and he would pretend he wasn’t exhausted when he came home and told Yeonjun about his day. He would pretend not to look at Yeonjun sometimes like he was expecting more from him, and looking away when he realized Yeonjun was simply not enough. Soobin would tell Yeonjun it’s okay, hyung. We’ll figure something out, like he wasn’t sighing and frustrated that even as the oldest, Yeonjun couldn’t just take care of them.
So, Yeonjun can’t tell them what happened.
He swallows the truth down and swears that he will do anything to prove that he is not failing them all with all of his inadequacies.
Here’s another reason Yeonjun needed his job at Sanguine: they were barely scraping by.
It wasn’t just Yeonjun and Soobin living in their home. It wouldn’t have been so bad if it was just them. They’d managed just fine by themselves after their parents had passed away, and it wasn’t a luxurious lifestyle, but the fridge was usually stocked and Yeonjun had been able to think beyond when his next paycheck would hit his bank.
Unfortunately, though, there were two other mouths to feed in the house, and though Yeonjun wouldn’t ever regret the decisions he had made that had left him responsible for who he now considered his closest family, he could still admit in the privacy of his own mind that it was much harder to care for them than he had thought.
An unfortunate fact is that Yeonjun has a bleeding heart, and Seoul has a lot of kids that fell between the cracks of the system. In the chaos of the first two years from the emergence of the vampires, and the new normal established, a lot of kids were left orphaned and without any options available to them. Families split apart through overenthusiastic fledgling vampires feeding from them before the guidelines had become stricter to protect the humans; Yeonjun’s family had been one of them.
Mom’s death was just like so many: she had been selling pints of her blood to the vampires for extra money to make ends meet and keep her children fed, and a vampire had gotten greedy and took too much before anybody could stop it. It was so common it was unremarkable, another statistic to drone about on the news no matter how devastating the results were for her children. Their older sister had died the same way; she had grown desperate enough to donate, and had just not come home one day, and they had known what happened even if no formal investigation was made and nobody had found her body.
The story was likely the same for a lot of the kids on the streets, so Yeonjun had a bit of a soft spot for them.
Thus, Yeonjun had opened the door to their home to two strangers that desperately needed someone to be there for them. There was Taehyun, who had an amazing head on his shoulders but a lot of bad luck on his side, and Yeonjun had insisted he finish school while he lived with them. He wanted to work to contribute to the home and ease some of the financial strain, but Yeonjun refused to allow it. There was also Kai who was just about a matching set with Taehyun despite them having been strangers at first. Kai, too, had wanted to work to do his part, but Yeonjun wanted him to study. Besides, Kai had seizures he struggled with that made most jobs available to him at sixteen years old difficult or even dangerous. Kai stuck to Taehyun’s side, mostly, because Taehyun was studying medicine in the future and he had made it his mission to be an expert in all things Kai.
He wouldn’t send them out into the world that would prey on their vulnerabilities.
Maybe it had been a mistake to take them in from a practical standpoint, and maybe Yeonjun should have been smart and been selfish and turned them away so that he and Soobin would be able to do more than simply survive and scrape by, but what was done was done. They meant too much to him too quickly and abandoning them was not an option.
So, Yeonjun had worked more, and despite his arguments, Soobin had also found his own way to make income. One day he had come home, giddy and looking queasy as well, and he had pulled Yeonjun aside from the younger members of the household and had told Yeonjun about the small guild of hunters that had promised to train and hire Soobin among their ranks. He’d nervously explained the risks he would be taking with each assignment, and that the pay wasn’t exactly consistent but it was good. It would be much better than nothing, and the higher in ranks he rose, the better the pay. It didn’t matter how much Yeonjun had protested, Soobin had already set his mind to becoming a hunter. It didn’t matter how many arguments they had over their respective choices of employment; neither budged on insisting on how necessary they were.
Stubbornness ran in the family. Their mom had been too stubborn to stop bloodletting, too, despite the risks and how unregulated it had been. She’d insisted nothing would happen to her.
Yeonjun should have been more stubborn about asking her to stay home with him that night.
He isn’t stubborn when Soobin shuffles awkwardly to his door and gives him an embarrassed apology for his friends through it, though. He isn’t stubborn when Soobin tells him they don’t know a damn thing about Yeonjun or what he does, or what their situation was, and they were assholes for judging him. Yeonjun just forgives him, because he is the oldest, and he is responsible for them all, and it’s his job to forgive and forget, and when Soobin softly tells him goodnight, Yeonjun returns it like every night.
(Even if the part of him that takes after his mother doesn’t want to let go of the way Soobin had allowed it to go on like that, how he had seemed to agree with his friends but didn’t want to say it in front of his brother. He doesn’t want to let go of how it had hurt so badly to know that even when he’d been doing everything he could to keep them alive, it hasn’t been good enough and Soobin had even been ashamed. Yeonjun had been proud he could contribute, and Soobin had just admit all he would ever see was that Yeonjun was just another bloodwhore, just like his friends had said.)
He couldn’t tell them. Yeonjun just had to be better. He had to do more.
Failing them was not an option.
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Desperation drives people to lengths they couldn’t have imagined. For Yeonjun, it drives him to the donation center deep in the city, filling out forms that blurred together with numb fingers and a pounding heart, allowing all the checks to be done, needles to draw his blood, background checks to be made. When they ask him where he works, they don’t appear surprised.
(He tries not to think about how they had eyed his bare throat with veiled interest.)
There is a simple process to become a bloodletter. It’s by far the most regulated and somehow lawless occupation in the city. First, the individual must officially add themselves through the national donor registry. Nothing else can be done unless they are within the system. There are no protections offered to any human that donates if they are not registered, and there is no legal requirement to be compensated for those occasions, nor any consequences to the vampire should something happen to you when donating. Once on the registry, the individual is free to stop by walk-in centers to make some quick cash, or free to advertise themselves through whichever forums are available online. He hadn’t had a need to go through this process before, had never intended to ever do so.
His sister had gone through a public forum; he remembers seeing her answering messages on it early in the morning, dark circles under her eyes, the beginning of bruises just below the collar of her shirt peeking out. She would always startle when she saw Yeonjun, as if she had forgotten he was even there. Sometimes, when her hair was down around her face, her shoulders sunk with defeat, her skin pale and tight around her bones and her nails picked raw from nerves, Yeonjun wondered if she was really there and if it wasn’t an apparition of his sister.
Later, he would desperately wish the fading wraith of her presence was still hunched over the kitchen table, greeting him with a tired but no less loving smile in the mornings. She had mom’s smile, he vaguely remembers. Dad used to mention it all the time. She took after him, but she smiled like their mother did.
Yeonjun becomes desperate enough to post an ad a month after he was fired; the next morning, Yeonjun wakes to a message with a time and a location, as well as a compensation offer that made his breath leave him. It was two weeks of work at Sanguine, just by donating. He’d be able to scrape by just a little longer. He swears his sister stares back at him when the phone screen goes dark, the reflection of a hollow, fading wraith staring helplessly back at him.
Desperation is a swinging axe above his head made of bills and starving bellies and empty cabinets of medicine desperately needed for Kai to manage his seizures; Yeonjun accepts the offer, and when the day comes and Yeonjun goes to the agreed upon location, he only has time to wonder why he was told to go to an office building when his vision swims, and a honey sweet voice says, “Sleep.”
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They leave him in a room with a final command: Wait, and don’t remove the blindfold.
Time blurs together in the dark. It could be hours that he has waited, or minutes, and Yeonjun wouldn’t know. The haze of the compulsion in his body and his inability to tell time apart without the use of his vision makes it that much harder to orient himself.
Being unable to see puts Yeonjun on edge. If his body would allow him, he would have taken the blindfold off by now and registered where he had been taken. He might have been able to distract himself by trying to catalogue the details of it, instead of being forced alone with his thoughts and his anxious heartbeat. It’s quiet in the room, but that only amplifies the sounds Yeonjun does hear.
A soft whisper of the breeze of the air circulating through the vents and how when it brushes against his skin, it feels like a feather. There’s creaks of the other occupants in the building moving around, muffled footsteps and occasional voices too far to really be heard. If he focuses, Yeonjun can hear the hum of the cars outside. Mostly, though, Yeonjun hears his own blood rush in his ears like an angry river, his heartbeat pulling the water like a tide. He hears the leather of the seat creak when he shifts to get more comfortable, his breaths uneven and the rush of air in too sharp and loud.
He tries to hold his breath at first, but all it does is leave Yeonjun dizzy, and then he tries to breathe as quietly as is possible until he finally gave up and allowed himself to disturb the deadly silence.
Yeonjun doesn’t feel real until the sounds approaching footsteps startle him back to his body, like claps of thunder in the silent sky.
The door opens soundlessly, closing with a soft click. Yeonjun finds himself straightening up in the seat, turning to face the direction of the sound quickly like he’d even be able to see it.
“Hello.”
Yeonjun flinches at how close the voice is. He hadn’t heard the new arrival move, hadn’t even heard them breathe, and suddenly they were right in front of Yeonjun, a cold hand resting on his shoulder.
“Your name is C. Yeonjun, right?” The vampire’s voice is familiar, soft and low and soothing as he speaks. He sounds young, but it doesn’t waver the way people Yeonjun’s age tend to waver.
Yeonjun struggles to open his mouth to answer, but in the end all he can do is nod silently. The anxiety spikes so much he feels unsteady even seated. The vampire only makes it worse when he settles another hand on Yeonjun’s other knee, the touch light and cold. Vampires have no body heat, he remembers uselessly.
“My name is Beomgyu.” The vampire introduces brightly, giving his knees a soft squeeze. “It’s your first time donating, right? I bet you’re scared right now; first timers usually are.” He pauses then adds quietly, “You must be. I can hear your heart racing.”
Donation. Yeonjun can’t help but linger on that word. He has always found it fascinating how misleading that term was. Calling this exchange a donation made it seem less monstrous somehow, didn’t it? The term makes this seem mutual, like Yeonjun giving his blood to the unnatural creature that needed it to live the way Yeonjun needed water was beneficial to all parties. They could write off this feeding system as a symbiotic relationship, wrapping up this farce of a donation in a neat little box with a bow that didn’t shine a light on how parasitic it all was. Donations were an illusion of a choice; the unspoken truth was that nobody really had a choice to donate. The vampires would take their blood from them regardless of if humans convinced themselves it had been voluntary or not.
The only thing the bloodletting system did for humans was compensate them for selling off their body.
The vampire—Beomgyu, Yeonjun reminds himself—is still waiting for his reply. He makes himself nod again, action jerky and his cheeks grow warm with a flush, his throat tight with sudden humiliation. It hits him, suddenly, that he really is about to let an unknown vampire sink his teeth into Yeonjun’s skin. He had sworn he would never go to these lengths, and yet here he was, waiting to be drained for a check in the bank.
“It is.” Yeonjun clears his throat. It was kind of a useless question to ask, wasn’t it? It had been on that stupid profile Yeonjun had filled out with shaking fingers and his heart in his throat. Yeonjun has never been fed from before, never had his blood used as a donation. He hasn’t even donated for human recipients in hospitals, much less to the vampires.
The vampire hums, his hands within another squeeze to his knee in comfort. “It doesn’t hurt very much, if that’s what you’re worried about. I wouldn’t hurt you.” He seems to shift closer, taking Yeonjun’s hands in his and flipping them over. A cold thumb rubs circles on the pulse-points. A light pinch on his skin makes Yeonjun flinch, trying and failing to bring his arms out of the vampire’s firm grasp. “Just a little pinch. You’ll barely feel it. I promise it’s less painful than a vaccine.”
Yeonjun swallows the nausea in his throat. He can’t reply when he’s trying not to throw up. The fact that he can’t see what the vampire is doing, can’t anticipate and brace himself for anything, makes his stomach recoil. It doesn’t help that it’s become obvious the vampire would easily overpower him. It’s not like he hadn’t known vampires were stronger than humans, but it was different to see how effortless it seemed to be for the vampire to not let him go. He could kill Yeonjun and he wouldn’t even know or be able to fight back.
Nobody would find him, Yeonjun realizes hysterically. If he died here, nobody would know to even start looking for him before his body had already gone cold and been discarded in whatever mass grave the victims of bloodlettings were tossed into. This was a horrible idea. He should never have come here, but he can’t leave.
Yeonjun doesn’t donate. He swore never to resort to it no matter how dire the situation got. The money may have been good, but Yeonjun had never considered it a viable option. It wasn’t even any moral or ethical reason that kept Yeonjun hesitant to do this; it was simply that he was terrified of dying. His mom had been killed by a vampire who took too much. She’d had the energy to come home, collapsing in her bed as Yeonjun fussed over her, trying to help her feel better. She’d told him eomma is just tired, Yeonjunnie, and he hadn’t believed her but he had laid down beside her, his head over her chest to hear her heart beating too fast but too weak, and he must have fallen asleep because when he next opened his eyes, it was to his little brother Soobin at the door asking for breakfast and his mother’s chest hollow and silent, her body cold around him, her arms wrapped around him tightly like her corpse didn’t want to leave him alone, either.
His older sister had died like this, too. She had taken the responsibility to care for them when their mother died, and she had tried so hard to work enough to feed them, but she had gotten desperate, too, and donated. She’d left one day looking excited at the prospect of a generous recipient, and she never returned.
Vampires are never gentle with feeding; Yeonjun has seen firsthand how violently they treated the humans they fed from. They tears fangs into skin like they are owed what’s beneath it, no regard to the ragged gasps of pain from the donors, or the feeble attempts to push them off. They take and take, only stopping when the threat of punishment from other vampires forces them to.
So, the vampire trying to assure him this will be painless is lying, but Yeonjun has no other choice. He’s just like his mother, just like his sister; he has no other choice.
“Hey,” Beomgyu asks, voice tinted with what Yeonjun almost thinks is concern. “Are you going to pass out?”
“Maybe,” he admits in a tight voice, barely realizing he hasn’t taken a solid breath until that word has knocked what little oxygen was in his lungs out of him.
Beomgyu makes a soft distressed noise, grip tightening on Yeonjun. “Please don’t pass out. I feel like a creep if I take from an unconscious human.”
“Well, we wouldn’t want that, would we?” Yeonjun gasps for breath. “Sorry. I’m trying.”
Beomgyu is silent long enough for Yeonjun to wonder if it might be kinder if Beomgyu fed from him when he was unconscious. Then, if he died, at least he wouldn’t feel it happening. The anxiety makes it hard to hear what he says when he finally breaks the silence, but he does register something like, “So easily frightened, aren’t you?”
The hold on his forwards goes away, the vampire suddenly feeling like a looming presence. Yeonjun shrinks back in the seat, unsure if the way his hackles are raising is justified or not. Still, he instinctively leans back and feels caged in, breath hitching when there are hands on the back of his head, fingers in his hair.
His heart pounds against his ribs like it’s making a valiant attempt at making a break for it. He throws his hands out in front of him like a barrier, scrambling to shift as far back in the seat as he can and shrink away from the vampire. “No, no, wait, I’m not ready—”
“Relax.” It’s a quiet murmur.
Something tugs the blindfold up and off, and Yeonjun blinks as light suddenly floods his vision.
Yeonjun blinks as the dim light of the room he’d been brought to slowly registers. It’s larger than he had expected, a sitting room with high ceilings and tasteful art prints hung on the wall, lit with dimmed lamps on various endtables scattered around the room. What surprises Yeonjun the most is how not gothic it is. He expected more candelabras, if he’s honest.
Then, Yeonjun’s eyes catch the vampire looming over him shift, and his blood turns to ice.
The pretty-boy vampire from the night Yeonjun had been fired stares down at him curiously, his hair more of a mess than before, and his features somehow softer in the soothing lighting of the room. He’s not dressed like a rich vampire like before; the pretty-boy wears a soft cream-colored sweater that must be a size too large.
Pretty-boy vampire has a name: Beomgyu. Beomgyu the pretty vampire that had helped Yeonjun stand after his colleagues had thrown him against the wall like a ragdoll just hours after having propositioned Yeonjun himself earlier that evening.
“There, that’s better, right?” Beomgyu smiles sweetly at him, the glint of a sharp tooth peaking when he speaks. He’s different; the intensity is missing, the disconcerting chill on the back of his neck conspicuously soothed. “It’s probably less frightening if you can see. I keep telling them to at least take the blindfold off when they bring someone in, but nobody listens to me around here.” He rolls his eyes good-naturedly.
“You’re…” Yeonjun gapes, “You were there when—at Sanguine, it was you. I’ve seen you before.”
Beomgyu’s expression brightens like he’s pleased to hear Yeonjun hasn’t forgotten him. He’s more expressive, too. Had he been this expressive before? “And here I thought you wouldn’t remember me.”
Yeonjun’s voice shakes. “Your friends almost killed me.”
Some of the warmth of Beomgyu’s expression chills, annoyance flickering in them. “I remember.”
There has to be a limit to how terrified someone can be before they pass out, and he wonders how much more of this situation he can take before his body can’t handle it anymore. He already feels sick, and now all he can think is how Beomgyu must be about to get revenge for how Yeonjun had treated his friend.
“Don’t worry, though.” Beomgyu’s expression eases again almost like he knew what Yeonjun was thinking. “I won’t hurt you. There are better ways to get your heart racing than that.”
He can only stare helplessly, hands uselessly between them.
Beomgyu tilts his head, “You look like you’ve seen a ghost. Do I look that bad?” And then the vampire pouts his lips, “I know I haven’t fed in a while, but it hasn’t been that long.”
“Are you going to kill me?” Yeonjun blurts, regretting it almost instantly and cringing away from the vampire even more. He’s going to merge with the back of the seat at this rate. “Sorry. I’m sorry. Please don’t.”
“No.” Beomgyu says with finality, no room for misinterpretations. He shifts closer to Yeonjun, staring right into his eyes sincerely. They hadn’t been this earnest before either, had they? The lighting wasn’t the best in Sanguine, but Yeonjun could have sworn Beomgyu’s eyes hadn’t been so easy to read before. He could have sworn he could look into them and see nothing but well practiced indifference. “I won’t hurt you, Yeonjun-ah. I swear it.” The vampire suddenly shows Yeonjun his hand, closed in a fist but with his pinky finger raised in the air. He gaped incredulously at the digit and the vampire’s cheeky face. “I’ll only take a little bit, and I’ll make sure it doesn’t hurt more than a tiny pinch. It’ll be over before you know it, pretty.”
“Okay.” Is all that Yeonjun is able to say after a heavy pause where Beomgyu just stared at him, waiting patiently for his words to sink in. When he gets the answer, the vampire’s expression softens. He brushes his knuckles over Yeonjun’s cheek, the cold temperature a startling contrast to how hot his face feels.
Beomgyu’s eyes dilate, lingering on his face for uncomfortably long before he diverts his attention to Yeonjun’s hands still acting as a barrier between them. He takes the right one into his grasp, bringing it up to his mouth.
Yeonjun holds his breath.
“Try to relax,” Beomgyu suggests, brushing his lips over the pulse point. Something in his expression shifts, and his mouth opens, baring his sharp, uncomfortably elongated fangs out from the cover of his pink lips.
Just like that, there isn’t a force in the world that would be able to stop the fear that slams into Yeonjun.
At Sanguine, Yeonjun had tried to never look directly at where the vampire patrons were feeding from the bloodletters. He usually kept himself too occupied with the general bar maintenance as an excuse to keep his eyes from straying over to that corner of the bar. On the rare occasions Yeonjun found himself without an immediate task to complete, he resolutely kept his gaze fixed on anything but where the sofas were and where the metallic coppery scent was strongest.
Once, Yeonjun’s curiosity had taken over him, and he had come to regret it instantly.
A vampire had met his eyes; glowing red to murky brown, the vampire had held his gaze and stared right through him. A human donor was securely held in his arms, one manicured hand tilting their head to the side for better access to the pulse-point her mouth was latched to, the other keeping the squirming human still. The donor had been clearly uncomfortable, their face drawn with pain. They kicked once when it seemed like the vampire bit them again, mouth opening soundlessly.
She had smiled at him when she had finished, like they had shared a secret. Her lips were red; her mouth was sticky with blood. She made sure to hold his gaze when she closed her lips back over the puncture wound, her eyes holding a promise. You’re next.
Yeonjun’s nightmares that day were of the red eyes and his flesh tearing, of his mother bleeding out beside him, of his own blood mixing with hers.
The vampires from that night had looked at him the same; hungry, cataloguing him like they were trying to see where the best place to bite him was. They didn’t care about what Yeonjun wanted because the only thing that mattered to them was tearing through the husk that the blood they wanted was kept in. If those vampires had bitten him, would he have looked like that human donor? Would he have been in pain, kicking out uselessly as he was slowly killed? Would those human women have been onlookers like Yeonjun had been, watching him die and not caring because at least it wasn’t them on the menu.
He’d had nightmares that night, too, and every night since, of sharp fangs and compulsion laced commands and the betrayal of his body encouraging the creatures killing him.
The sight of teeth about to sink into him is like Yeonjun pulled into another nightmare, except he knows this is real and that he is awake, and that pain is only temporary because he won’t live long enough for it to last.
Yeonjun must make some kind of sound, some kind of indication of how the fear is drowning him, because Beomgyu flicks his eyes up to look at him, gauging his expression. His eyes are red.
In hindsight, Yeonjun really should have expected the panic attack.
It hits him like a train, taking away all of his breath and rocketing pain through every muscle. He knows he is shaking because every part of his body aches with it, and he knows he kicked and tried to fling himself away from the threat of the vampire so desperately he had fallen ungracefully off the back of the seat, taking it down with him. Yeonjun was dimly aware of his mouth moving over what were pleas to leave him alone, his vision swimming and the blindfold still on his head slipping a little. He flinches when it falls over one of his eyes.
The vampire was still looming over him, reaching out terrible hands to stand him up with his teeth on display. He can only make another distressed series of words and noises, and when the hands touch him, he breaks with a sob.
“Breathe.”
Yeonjun can’t. He shakes his head, trying to focus, and it feels worse to see how everything around him is spinning, so he closes them again. The vampire says something else he doesn’t process. Vaguely, Yeonjun feels the tug of the blindfold back over his eyes, the sure tie of it on the back of his head.
“Breathe.”
This time, Yeonjun’s body obeys. As the panic attack slowly ebbs away, embarrassment occupies where all the panic had been. He finds himself shrinking into himself with mortification, tugging the blindfold off of his eyes and covering them with his palms. Maybe he would be able to suffocate himself if he tried hard enough.
“I am so sorry.” Yeonjun rasps, wincing at the sound of his own voice. He’s a wreck, isn’t he?
He takes the strip of fabric off of his head, then, and when he looks up, Beomgyu is frowning at him, sitting on the floor with his legs crossed. His cheek is rested on his fist, his other hand tapping thoughtfully on the ground. The way he peers at Yeonjun is uncomfortable.
With a heavy sigh, Beomgyu shakes his head. “This isn’t going to work. You’re too scared. I’ll have someone take you home.”
“No!”
Beomgyu pauses at Yeonjun’s outburst.
Desperation drives people to unimaginable lengths, Yeonjun thinks grimly. The backed up bills are fresh on his mind, as is the compensation amount this donation had offered. He swallows the bile down, hiding his trembling fingers in his lap.
Flushed with shame, Yeonjun begs, “No, I need that money. You don’t understand. I can’t just leave. I need—I need this money.”
“You just had a panic attack before I even bit you.” Beomgyu points out flatly. “Maybe you should ask for a raise.”
Yeonjun’s shoulders hunch. “I was fired. Your stupid friends got me fired, so how the hell am I supposed to do that?” Yeonjun adds spitefully, “You saw them fire me, or did you forget that?”
When he risks glaring at Beomgyu, he falters. The vampire is staring at him like he is a puzzle to solve, eyes seeing right through him with a considerate pout of his lips. He doesn’t like how see through he feels suddenly, but Yeonjun can’t take it back now. He tries to apologize anyway, only for Beomgyu to cut him off. “Do you really need the money that bad?”
Yeonjun burns with shame and humiliation, and the desperation makes his tongue loose. He blurts out his explanation rapidly, going on despite how much every word feels like he is exposing more and more of his failures. He explains the extra mouths to feed, how they depended on him and Soobin to keep them alive. He explains how Soobin had made a living off risking his life as a novice hunter because Yeonjun was failing his job as the oldest and not keeping them free from this burden. Yeonjun emphasizes the promise he’d made to care for them, how it was his responsibility as the oldest to do more, to take all of the burdens onto his shoulders, and how he failed at doing even that. Yeonjun had been selfish. Even when he had worked at Sanguine, he knew he would have made more money if he had also donated, but he had selfishly refused. He’d fooled himself into thinking it would be okay to earn less for his own comfort, and then he’d gotten himself fired for this, and failed them.
“I need to take care of them.” He explains urgently, digging his nails into his palms. His eyes sting with unshed tears that he isn’t sure are from the humiliation of airing out all of his faults and mistakes, or if it’s from the frustration of the helplessness of being in such a dire situation at all. “It’s my job to take care of them. I need this money, Beomgyu-ssi.”
“But you’re scared.” The vampire looks thoughtful.
Yeonjun purses his lips, having no defense to that. “Yeah, but I can’t afford to be. I need that money.” If Yeonjun is scared for five minutes, he can spare the others the fear of uncertainty of when their next meal will come.
“Do you want me to compel you?” Beomgyu offers, “You won’t feel afraid at all.”
Yeonjun shudders at the thought, hugging his arms around himself. “I would rather that not be an option.”
“Well, the only other option is to close your eyes and not look.” Beomgyu shrugs. “You were fine until you looked at me. Maybe if you don’t look, you can pretend you’re somewhere else.”
“I can’t just not look.”
“Just cover your eyes.” Beomgyu tells him, rolling his eyes. “Put the blindfold back on, or something. I don’t know, Yeonjun-ah. I’m just throwing out ideas.”
“The blindfold?” Yeonjun chokes. “What does that—How would that help?”
For the first time, he sees a crack of impatience on the vampire’s expression. “You were calmer when this was on you, and the blanket worked, too. Maybe you’re like a bird; if you don’t see, you don’t freak out.”
“That might actually make it worse.” A pause. “I’m not a bird.”
“Your heart is beating like you are.” Beomgyu stands up suddenly, reaching out a hand to help Yeonjun up, which he takes. He leads them to the loveseat near one of the dimmed table lamps, letting Yeonjun sit and joining him after he wandered off to grab something—the strip of cloth that had been his blindfold.
When he offers it out to Yeonjun, who eyes it with heavy skepticism, Beomgyu just rolls his eyes. “Didn’t you say you were desperate for the money? Just try it. I’m just trying to help you here.”
“Right,” Yeonjun mumbles, but he does slowly take the offered strip of cloth. “I’m sure your motives are entirely altruistic, here.”
“Exactly. I’m a saint.” The vampire smiles at him, flashing the points of his sharp incisors. Yeonjun shudders and reaches up to tie the cloth over his eyes, feeling self conscious as he voluntarily strips himself of his sight. “Well? Can you see?”
“I feel stupid.” Yeonjun complains, then adds, “No, I can’t see.”
“That’s nice. Give me your arm.”
Yeonjun wordlessly does, pretending he can’t feel his hands shaking. He jumps at the unexpected touch of Beomgyu’s hands steadying him, and it’s not comfortable to not know what’s coming, but Yeonjun can’t see the eyes locking on him. A thumb rubs soothingly right over where his vein rests just beneath his skin. Yeonjun sucks in a breath.
“Relax.” Breath fans over his skin, cold and raising goosebumps all along his arm and down his back. “I won’t hurt you. I don’t break pretty things.”
Then Beomgyu bites him, and Yeonjun loses the ability to makes words.
The teeth break the skin easily, drawing out a grimace and a hiss of discomfort from Yeonjun. It burns where the puncture wound rests for just a fraction of a second, and then the burn melts into a warmth that spreads itself all over his body. Tingles buzz pleasantly from the crown of his head to the tips of his toes, dizzying and electric all at once. Yeonjun’s body goes lax, slouching in the worn leather seats with a sigh. The teeth retract, tickling him as they just barely scrape over his skin. Wet lips seal over the wound, and then an equally wet tongue licks almost kittenishly at the blood leaking out, like it was taste-testing the meal. Then, with a strange tugging sensation, the vampire really starts to feed.
The buzzing grows so loud in his head it drowns out the strange rhythmic licks and sucks of the wound. The way he’s being tightly held in place is inconsequential. Yeonjun melts into the cushion, an airy noise sneaking past his lips. Everything drifts away, including Yeonjun, and he’s just warm.
The sensation is over almost too quickly. Yeonjun has barely sunk into the warm buzz in his head when Beomgyu gives a final lingering lap of his tongue against the wound and draws back, silent as Yeonjun starts to process the world around him again.
He’s breathing unevenly, and his wrist aches with every rapid heartbeat, but Yeonjun doesn’t feel like he’s on the verge of death. If anything, it’s like Yeonjun just woke up from a deep, well needed nap. When was the last time he had felt well rested? When was the last time his limbs hadn’t been heavy enough to sink him into his own thoughts?
“I’d say that went a lot smoother than earlier.” Beomgyu chirps, breaking the silence. “Did you know you’re anemic? You should really get some supplements.”
All Yeonjun can do is groan sleepily, not quite sure it conveys how much he can’t afford vitamins with the financial state of his life right now. Yeonjun doesn’t fight when he’s guided back to sitting up, held steady by the shoulders as he grasps out blindly for anything to keep him from passing out at the headrush the movement had caused. Stars dance in his vision.
“You’re wobbly,” Beomgyu teases, “Like a baby deer. Are you always like this, or is this just the effect I have on you?”
You give a vampire a little blood, and suddenly he acts like he’s charming. Yeonjun grumbles to himself. Was Beomgyu even really a vampire? Sure, he had just bitten Yeonjun, but there was a certain lack of melancholy to him that made Yeonjun doubtful. It contradicted everything Yeonjun thought he knew.
Vampires weren’t usually this cheeky and bright. In his experience, they were typically of the more serious sort. Yeonjun had just assumed they were a brooding sort of species.
Beomgyu was very chipper in comparison.
“It’s the anemia.”
“Ah right. There is that.” He hums wistfully. “If you just had a little more iron in you…” He trails off. Yeonjun is grateful, then, for the blindfold that keeps the vampire’s expression obscured from him. “Was that so bad?”
Yeonjun swallows thickly, only hesitating a little before replying. “No…It wasn’t as bad as I thought.”
He can hear what must be a pleased smirk in the way Beomgyu says, “See? I told you. Let’s get you all fixed up.”
That morning, Yeonjun is able to pay the bills, and he hides his bandaged wrist in the long sleeves of his sweater when Soobin spots him in the kitchen and greets him pleasantly.
“How was work, hyung?” Soobin asks him, going to start making breakfast for the day.
Yeonjun makes sure his sleeves aren’t riding up as he replies, “The usual.”
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On Wednesday, Yeonjun receives a call from Sanguine. He hesitates before answering, cautious when Mr. Lee’s voice is on the other end.
“Yeonjun-ah.” Mr. Lee greets, “How are you?”
“Fine.” He answers cautiously, slipping into his room for a little more privacy. “How are you?”
“Great.” The man laughs awkwardly. “Listen, Yeonjun. I know things were a little…tense the last time I saw you, but I’ve had some time to speak with Jiah, and she agrees it would be a shame to lose you. We want to offer you your old position back, if you’re not already working somewhere else, of course. What do you think?”
Yeonjun blinks, unsure if he’s hearing this right. “What?”
“I’m sorry for firing you, kid.” Mr. Lee sounds sincere, at least. “That might have been a bit of a hasty move on my part, so I’m here to fix it. You can have your old position back and…” He hesitates, clearing his throat. “You’ll get a pay raise, too.”
“I don’t understand.” He admits, feeling lightheaded. “You fired me. Why are you offering me my job back?”
There’s a beat of hesitation before he gets his answer. “You’re one of our best workers, of course. It was a mistake to let you go like that.”
“Oh.” He doesn’t know what to say.
There is a long uncomfortable silence until Mr. Lee clears his throat. “What do you say? Do you think you’d be willing to work with us again?”
“Um…” He’s staring down at his hand, then nods. “Sure. When should I…?”
“Come in on Friday.” Mr. Lee exhales with relief. “We’ll get your salary set up on payroll, then. It’s good to have you back, Yeonjun.”
“Yeah.” He knows he sounds odd, but he can’t quite hide the incredulity of his tone. “Thanks, Mr. Lee.”
꒷꒦꒷꒷꒦꒦꒷꒦꒷꒷
On Friday, Mr. Lee is more enthusiastic about getting Yeonjun a raise than he ever had been to pay Yeonjun before. He looks oddly nervous, smiling too much and giving in too easily to Yeonjun’s hesitant requests for the pay raise. Mr. Lee doesn’t shake his hand when it’s over, and he tells Yeonjun to come in on Monday when he feels better rested, and Yeonjun tries not to think too much about it.
He’s got a job again, after all.
Yeonjun isn’t about to question his luck.
꒷꒦꒷꒷꒦꒦꒷꒦꒷꒷
“Hi.”
Yeonjun startles out of his skin and whirls around behind the bar, almost dropping a glass he’d been getting ready to put away. Beomgyu is sitting at the bar, smiling brightly at him, his hands politely folded across the counter. He’s dressed more formally like the first time he had seen the vampire, in dark colors and elegant pieces worth more than Yeonjun’s new increased salary.
“Oh, it’s you. Hi.” Yeonjun relaxes, willing his startled heartbeat back to a normal rhythm.
“I see you have your job back.” Beomgyu’s eyes glitter, grin turning very pleased. “I’ll be seeing you more, then, won’t I?”
He glances around, surprised that nobody else seems to have approached the bar yet. “I guess? You come here a lot, then?”
The grin turns into a playful smirk. “Yes, I do come here often, Yeonjun. How forward of you to ask.”
Yeonjun’s ears burn. “That’s not—I didn’t say that.”
Beomgyu laughs, the sound bright and silly, and Yeonjun finds himself smiling despite himself. “Are you free, right now?”
“I’m working.” He gestures awkwardly to the counter and the lobby full of patrons that have still not asked for drinks yet, oddly enough.
“Just take a little break.” Beomgyu shrugs. “I’m sure your boss won’t mind. I’ll ask him, if you want?”
“Please, don’t.” He shakes his head quickly, glancing around and spots the very man in question is staring at Yeonjun across the bar, expression pinched. Yeonjun stares helplessly between his manager, and the vampire still smiling at him at the bar. He opens his mouth to tell Beomgyu he isn’t free until later, and then he gets a tap on his shoulder.
When he turns, confused, one of his coworkers is smiling at him, too. She doesn’t look at Beomgyu but she tells Yeonjun, “Hey, Mr. Lee said I should take over for you for a bit.”
He stares at her, then to Mr. Lee who is now talking to another client, and then to Beomgyu who looks far too satisfied in the flashes of lights. “Okay. Sure.”
Beomgyu perks up as he sees Yeonjun start to undo his apron, confused at the turn of events. “Oh, goodie. You’re free now. C’mon, I know where we can talk.”
He’s too confused to argue, and he can feel the weight of multiple eyes on him as Beomgyu leads the way to downstairs again. He falters at the steps, a vice constricting around his throat and his heart, and Beomgyu glances at him, worried. He frowns as he extends out a hand to Yeonjun, and he feels a bit silly when he takes it and is given a little comfort from it.
“Don’t worry, it’s just me. I just wanted to talk to you.” Beomgyu reassures.
Yeonjun, in what must be the stupidest decision he’s ever made, believes him. He allows himself to be led into one of the private lounges—not the Rose Room, thankfully—and ushered onto the seats. Beomgyu sits across from him, relaxing in the chair he chose as Yeonjun tries not to let his awkwardness show too much. He’s not doing a good job though.
This room is darker than the Rose Room had been, but warmer. The lights don’t flicker here, and there is no built in bar in the room. It’s just a lounge, albeit a little nicer and roomier than most would be.
“Did you need something?” Yeonjun asks, breaking the silence first.
“Are you glad to be at work again?” Beomgyu asks instead of answering, opening his eyes and watching him again. It’s a little creepy how much he stares, but Yeonjun guesses that must be a vampire thing. A lot of them like to stare, he’s noticed. “Are they paying you more than before?”
“Yeah.” He answers to both questions, frowning. “Why do you ask?”
“Oh, I’m just making sure you’re being treated fairly after that whole…mess.” He waves his hand through the air absentmindedly, frowning too. It eases quickly though. “They apologized, didn’t they?”
“They did…” Yeonjun narrows his eyes suspiciously.
“Good.” Satisfaction makes Beomgyu’s expression much lighter, his shoulders looser. “I’m glad.”
“Did you do something?” It feels ridiculous to ask, but there’s a nagging in Yeonjun’s head that insists that the smile Beomgyu has is not just a casual one. He doesn’t like the suspicion in his head, or how the pointed questions are insinuating Beomgyu knows far too much about his employment situation than a practically stranger should know.
“No, no.” Beomgyu shakes his head. Yeonjun doesn’t relax, and he finds himself correct to when Beomgyu adds, “I only suggested they reconsider their decision.”
Silence falls over them. Yeonjun can’t find the words to express the discomfort he feels, suddenly. Beomgyu seems to notice the tension, quirking a brow at Yeonjun. “What?”
“Did you get my job back for me?” Yeonjun blurt.
“Not really.” The vampire shrugs. “I don’t make any hiring decisions here, obviously. All I did was mention you were treated a little unfairly the last time. They seemed to agree with me.”
“Why?”
“Why did they agree?” He’s frowning.
Yeonjun shakes his head quickly, staring anywhere but at Beomgyu now. He finds himself fidgeting with his fingers, trying not to let his thoughts spiral too far. “Why did you mention that? You got me my job back, I’m not stupid. Why would you do that?”
Beomgyu purses his lips, then sighs. He rubs the back of his neck as he answers, “Consider it an act of good faith. I’m hoping it proves I’m not entirely awful.” His round eyes glance away, mouth puckering in a slight pout. “Is it working?”
Yeonjun can only gape at him, mind racing.
There are a lot of things implied in what Beomgyu isn’t saying, and it makes Yeonjun nervous. The casual dismissal of his influence without entirely denying it, the pointed questions, the way he walks through Sanguine like he knows he won’t be stopped going where he wants; it paints an uncomfortable picture in Yeonjun’s head. Beomgyu is important. Somehow, the pretty vampire before him is important enough to expect things to just happen for him. He’s important enough even a touch from him had made Asahi stop attacking Yeonjun when nothing else had. He is important enough Mr. Lee seems to be tripping over himself to give Beomgyu what he wants.
Yeonjun’s stomach rolls with nausea. He doesn’t like how little he knows about vampire politics; he can’t even begin to guess who this vampire might be, or why he holds such weight.
Beomgyu glances up at him when he seems to feel the way Yeonjun is just staring at him. His eyes crinkle with the dazzling smile he gives Yeonjun, teasing all of a sudden, “Like what you see?”
Yeonjun flushes despite himself, then blurts, “Are you some kind of vampire lord? Vampire chaebol?”
Beomgyu bursts into loud peals of laughter, throwing his body into it. He laughs with his entire being, and Yeonjun just flushes darker, embarrassed at his question. The anxiety still makes his heart beat like a drum in his chest.
It surprises Yeonjun extraordinarily ordinary Beomgyu looks tonight, all things considered. He’s dressed elegantly again, in the same dark tones as before, and still he looks too ordinary to be what Yeonjun now is sure is an important vampire figure. Where were the heavy gothic blouses and the Victorian-chic trousers that Yeonjun swore was in the wardrobe of every powerful and ancient vampire? Shouldn’t this boy, who had been in the most exclusive lounges at Sanguine, dress more like that? Beomgyu should look like he’s an ancient prince caught and frozen in time, not like a young model on his way to a photoshoot.
“I’m something like that.” Beomgyu finally answers Yeonjun, collecting himself from his laughing fit but smiling privately to himself. He rests his elbows on his knees, leaning forward with a terrible posture. “Why are you so curious?”
“You were there last time.” Yeonjun explains, feeling stupid. “Not everyone is allowed in the Rose Room, but you were, and just now, you didn’t even hesitate to bring me here. You made a suggestion and they gave me my job back, and a raise. I was literally blindfolded and knocked out to be brought to you to donate instead of just meeting you at a donation center somewhere. You’re something.”
Beomgyu hums but doesn’t deny that. “And your first thought is a chaebol? What if I was royalty? Maybe I’m the leader of my own scary league of vampires. Why chaebol?”
“Aren’t you a little young to lead any vampires?” Yeonjun frowns. “Aren’t your politicians ancient?” Oh, god, was Beomgyu ancient?
The vampire laughs again, but it’s more contained. He waggles a finger at Yeonjun, “I’m older than I look.” There’s a playful twinkle in his eyes that confuses Yeonjun. “Take a guess at my age. I bet you’ll get it wrong, though.”
Yeonjun freezes, wracking his brain for an answer that wouldn’t be offensive. Despite how at surprisingly at ease he felt the last time they’d met, Yeonjun is still distinctly aware he is alone in a room with someone that could easily kill him without breaking a sweat, and would more than likely get away with it without any issue. “Um…600?”
Beomgyu snorts, “I’m not that old.”
“Fifty?”
“That’s too young.” Beomgyu shakes his head like he is disappointed by Yeonjun’s inability to carbon-date his exact age with just a glance. “It’s somewhere between there. I think. I lost count ages ago.”
“Lost count.” Yeonjun echoes, the dizziness making him sway and slouch on the seat. “Right. Makes sense. That’s a lot of birthdays to count.”
Beomgyu nods enthusiastically. “Right? That’s what I said! How old are you, Yeonjun?”
“Twenty-four.”
“You’re almost thirty.” Beomgyu says wistfully. “I remember when I was your age…well, kind of. Good times. I think I was drunk for most of it.”
Yeonjun isn’t sure what he’s supposed to say to that, so he just stares. Eventually, Beomgyu shakes himself out of whatever memory he’d been reliving and smiles. “Hey, did you buy those supplements?”
“No.” He blinks at the subject change. “I can’t right now. Why are you even asking about that? We’re talking about—”
Beomgyu cuts him off with a pout. “I thought so. I got some for you, though. You should start taking them when you get home.” He reaches into the pocket of his jacket, then, and brings out a little box that he tosses to Yeonjun.
“You…what?” Yeonjun stammers, fumbling to catch the boxes. “Why?”
“Tastes better that way.” Beomgyu replied. “Duh.”
Yeonjun is too stunned to speak.
It seems Beomgyu catches onto his words too late. He cringes, “Oh, wait. I haven’t asked yet, have I? Sorry, I kind of got ahead of myself there.”
“What?”
“I wanted to ask if you’d be willing to make a deal with me.” He smiles with a shocking amount of boyish charm, looking surprisingly innocent despite how Yeonjun knows that he can’t be. “You donate a teeny bit of your blood to me every once in a while, and I’ll pay you fairly, of course.”
“What?” Yeonjun repeats, his voice cracking.
The vampire starts to look sheepish, but doesn’t back down. “I know you don’t donate. You made that clear, but…” He fidgets, surprisingly human in the act. “Well, it wasn’t so bad last time, right? I liked how you tasted, and I wanted more. I’m kind of picky when it comes to feeding, but you were perfect.” There’s a little bit of a wistful look in his eyes before he focuses again, pleading now. “You know I won’t hurt you, and I wouldn’t take too much. Only a little bit, just like last time. And you’ll get paid well; you said you needed the money right? I can help with that.” He pauses, and then adds, “And you have your job back here, so it’s not like you’ll be depending on what I pay you. That’s something you’re worried about, right? It’s handled.”
He can only stare, stunned, as the vampire before him fixes him with what can only be described as puppy eyes. “Please say yes?”
“You’re insane.” Yeonjun tells him, blinking rapidly. Beomgyu pouts, deflating. “Genuinely insane…but okay. Sure.” Maybe Yeonjun is a little insane, too. Maybe the bite he had received had injected some of Beomgyu’s insanity into his bloodstream, and this was the result.
Beomgyu snaps his head up so quickly, Yeonjun feels the whiplash for him. Do vampires even get whiplash? His eyes are wide, disbelieving. “Wait, really?”
“Yes.” He nods cautiously. “I mean…this is insane, and I don’t know why I’m agreeing, but…Sure. You’ve gone this far to butter me up, so…” He shifts uncomfortably in his seat as Beomgyu’s expression lights up. “I need the money, like you said.”
Beomgyu beams so brightly it outshines the actual sun, and even if Yeonjun catches sight of the sharper than normal incisors in his mouth, he can’t find himself too put off by it with how cute the vampire looks. If he were a dog, he’d be wagging his tail so furiously it would probably fall off.
“It’s a deal, then!”
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A new routine establishes itself in Yeonjun’s life:
Every few days, Beomgyu appears at Sanguine, waiting in one of the lounges for Yeonjun to slip away from the lobby bar to meet him. He’ll greet Yeonjun enthusiastically, and Yeonjun would find himself warming up more and more to Beomgyu each time, and by the third time Beomgyu calls for him, Yeonjun starts relaxing and teasing the vampire slightly. Then, Beomgyu would sit Yeonjun down, and he would wait for Yeonjun to close his eyes or cover them before taking a bit, always careful with his teeth, always gentle with handling Yeonjun through the way the bite makes him lax.
He keeps his promise of never taking more than a little of his blood at a time, and the dizziness that Yeonjun feels comes from the strange effects of being bitten itself. Yeonjun takes the supplements he’s been given, and he knows Beomgyu is pleased by the change. It’s a little unsettling to know that it’s because he is literally only improving the taste, but he doesn’t let himself linger on the thought.
He does linger after the bite, sometimes. Too relaxed to return to work, Beomgyu is always content to let Yeonjun loiter in the room with him for however long he needs to feel stable again. Mr. Lee doesn’t say anything about Yeonjun’s long disappearances, nor does he seem to complain about how sometimes Yeonjun has to go home early, too tired to continue. He just sends Yeonjun home with a strange smile that is far too understanding and far too all-knowing for comfort, and tells him, “Don’t worry about it. You’re working hard.”
They have idle conversations after Beomgyu helps Yeonjun wrap up his arm from the wound. Beomgyu is remarkably easy to get along with, and Yeonjun finds himself looking forward to what he has to say. It isn’t even the extra money Yeonjun is getting from the bites that makes him more eager to see Beomgyu anymore; he finds himself genuinely enjoying the vampire’s company. Yeonjun likes the banter they’ve fallen into, delighting more and more with how expressive Beomgyu is the more Yeonjun gets comfortable with teasing him.
Soobin does, eventually, question where Yeonjun is getting extra money from. It seems he’s finally had the chance to notice there is food in the house for longer than a day.
“I did a good job with an important client Mr. Lee had me work with.” Yeonjun had said, only half lying but still guilty at the way Soobin’s face bloomed with joy, his smile so wide it made Yeonjun’s cheeks hurt just to look at. “I’m in charge of the VIP lounges now. It came with a really nice pay raise.”
“Hyung, that’s great!” Soobin had insisted on celebrating, and Yeonjun had been more careful that day to hide his arms from wandering eyes.
Things were improving for them.
With consistent meals, Taehyun’s cheeks had stopped looking so hollow, his eyes brighter and even Kai’s seizures seemed less catastrophic with proper nutrition. (Or maybe that was wishful thinking.)
Soobin had started gaining weight, too, and growing broader. The meals and the additional hunter training he seemed to be up to as preparation for some rank assessment test was making Soobin fill out more in his shoulders and legs, his pallor less gaunt, too. Yeonjun hadn’t even cried over bills in two months, and was steadily making a dent in the overdue balances he had in his name.
It was amazing what a difference money could make.
Sometimes he caught Taehyun staring at him for too long, though, with eyes far too sharp for comfort. He was a smart kid, far too intelligent than any sixteen year old had any right to be, and he was observant. Sometimes Taehyun stared at Yeonjun like he saw right through him, expression indecipherable, and Yeonjun would have to resist the urge to tug his sleeves down over his hands in case those intelligent eyes caught a glimpse of the bandages Yeonjun hid away.
It was all worth it, though; the burdens were eased off of their shoulders and the weight of his own was lighter than before. If all Yeonjun had to do was let Beomgyu bite him every once in a while, he would gladly do so. It wasn’t much of a chore anyway, not when he was finding himself quickly growing fond of the pretty vampire.
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“You look like shit.” Beomgyu says as a greeting, frowning and pulling Yeonjun into the private lounge. It’s one of the smaller ones meant for small groups, with soft seats and a net of twinkling fairy lights on the ceiling, illuminating the space. It’s cozy rather than sultry. Yeonjun decides it’s his new favorite room in this entire building.
“Gee, Beomgyu, tell me what you really think.” Yeonjun grumbles, embarrassed as he lets himself be led to sit on the loveseat. “I’m fine. I just didn’t sleep well.”
“Why not?” Beomgyu is staring at him seriously. “Is something bothering you?”
“Kai had a seizure last night, and I couldn’t go back to sleep after he was feeling better.” Yeonjun shakes his head. “I worry.”
He catches the frown on Beomgyu’s face before he can shake it off. “I thought he was better? You said he was better.”
“He is.” Yeonjun insisted. “But he still has them. It’s not something that just…goes away.”
“Why not?” It’s almost cute how offended Beomgyu sounds. “Isn’t that what your doctors are for? To fix you humans up?”
“It’s not that simple.”
Beomgyu huffs, “It should be. For how fragile you all are, I thought your hospitals would be more efficient.”
Yeonjun just smiles and shakes his head. “Sorry. We can’t all have immortal health guarantees.”
“I could change him, if you want.” Beomgyu offers, expression serious.
There’s a flash of an image in his head: sweet Kai, forever young and no longer plagued with seizures. He imagines the baby-fat on his cheeks perpetually clinging to him, the gangly limbs of a teenager hitting a growth spurt he isn’t fed enough for never evening out. He pictures the sharp teeth and the red eyes and the horrible hunger on the sweet face, pictures the way those kind eyes would twist with pain at the knowledge that to survive, he must harm others. It would kill Kai to be changed; his heart was stronger than Yeonjun’s, he had always been better in all the ways that mattered, but for this, Kai was just as weak as him.
“No.” Yeonjun snaps before he can control his tone, startled by his own vehemence.
Beomgyu doesn’t seem bothered, though. “Alright. Well, do you need to rest? Did you eat? You need to eat, right?”
Sometimes, the way Beomgyu is clueless about things that Yeonjun finds instinctive is equal parts endearing and disconcerting. He’s so earnest about the questions he asks, Yeonjun knows it’s all in good faith, but something about the fact he has somehow lived a life so long that he’s forgotten what it’s like to be human makes Yeonjun uneasy. He talks like humanity is disconnected from him even though he once was just like them all.
“I ate before I left home.” Yeonjun reassures. He lets himself smile, then, cheeky and annoying, “You haven’t eaten though, have you? You look like shit, too.”
Beomgyu scowls, crossing his arms. “Well, my favorite source has been unavailable for a few days. Excuse me for being loyal.”
“Loyal.” Yeonjun snorts inelegantly, “Whatever. C’mere, before I get cold feet.”
“Should I turn the heat up?”
“No, it’s an expression. You don’t know that one?”
Beomgyu frowns, “I forgot it. Vampires are always cold, so…”
It makes Yeonjun giggle to himself, covering his laugh with a cough when Beomgyu eyes him sulkily. “Sorry. I won’t laugh.”
“You better not,” Beomgyu threatens without any weight to it. He reaches into his pocket and pulls out a familiar strip of fabric, holding it out to Yeonjun in a silent offering. “Can I bite you now?”
Yeonjun pretends to consider it, choking back his laugh when the vampire starts to look on the verge of complaining. He turns his back to Beomgyu, tilting his head back to tease, “Put it on for me? I’m too tired.”
He does laugh at the way Beomgyu rolls his eyes. It’s fun to tease him, now that he knows the vampire won’t bite his head off if he oversteps and accidentally insults him. He is less terrifying the more Yeonjun gets to know him. It’s almost ridiculous to connect the vampire he had met in the alley and the vampire before him as the same person.
Yeonjun closes his eyes as he waits for Beomgyu to settle the cloth over them, humming to himself and shifting so it’s easier for him to tie the back without catching any locks of his hair in it. Beomgyu is surprisingly careful with it all, much more than Yeonjun usually is. He’s usually hasty with tying it, feeling silly the entire time and doing his best not to combust with embarrassment if he thinks too hard about the fact that he’s such a coward he needs to have his eyes covered to be able to donate even a little bit of blood to a vampire.
The said vampire isn’t rushed, though. He takes the time to move Yeonjun’s hair out of the way and smooth it down, and even checks to make sure the blindfold isn’t bunched up or twisted somewhere. Yeonjun finds it oddly soothing to have the cool delicate fingers fiddling with his hair in the comfortably warm room. He had always enjoyed having his hair played with. His mother used to do so when he couldn’t sleep, and sometimes he tried to tug at his own strands of hair on the nights he is haunted by how much he misses her. It’s never the same. This brings a similar comfort; he feels warm, and treasured, and it’s still so different from how it had felt back then.
“Can you see?” Beomgyu asks, just like he always does. “Should I make it tighter? I didn’t want to make it too tight.”
Yeonjun opens his eyes to stare at nothing but the barely filter of light through the dark void. He shakes his head no, sitting up. Yeonjun must be more tired than he had thought, because the motion was a little sluggish.
Maybe he would go home early and take a nap tonight.
“It’s not too tight. It’s fine.” Yeonjun adds after a while, remembering there had been more than one question asked.
Beomgyu hums; somehow, the sound always feels louder like this the same way Yeonjun always feels more sensitive to every brush on his skin. It’s the unexpectedness of it all, he knows, but it doesn’t make Yeonjun any less reactive to each touch or sound he can’t anticipate. “Good.”
Just like each time, Beomgyu reaches for his arm and carefully takes it into his hands. He alternates where he will bite to avoid hurting Yeonjun too much, or so he had explained once. The bites may heal faster than a normal wound, but they still took time to heal, and they would still bruise for a little. This time, it was Yeonjun’s left arm that he handled, flipping it so that the inside of his wrist was facing up and rubbing his thumb over the vein. Just like always, Beomgyu shifts closer to make it easier to reach.
Something is different, though, that Yeonjun can’t quite place. It’s the same routine, the same steps, but Yeonjun knows something is different. Maybe it’s the way it almost seems like time is dragging on, or how he is far too aware of just how much distance there is between them. It’s like a chasm of space he suddenly finds intolerable. Beomgyu is cold to the touch like every vampire, and normally Yeonjun would be cringing at the temperature, right now he finds himself shifting closer. He seeks the familiar temperature blindly, knows that it leads to the same soft scent of Beomgyu’s chosen perfume. Beomgyu never smells like blood. The room is too warm, Yeonjun realizes. That’s what’s different. The room is too warm, so the cold press of the vampire beside him is a sweet relief.
Beomgyu’s thumb slows on the little circles it was drawing on his skin as Yeonjun moved. He seemed to grow too still when Yeonjun rested some of his weight onto Beomgyu’s cold side and sighed with relief, body relaxing even before the bite.
“You alright?” It’s barely a breath louder than a quiet murmur, but Yeonjun appreciates the consideration for his ears. They feel oddly attuned to the noises tonight the same way he feels a little more aware of the way the air shifts on his skin.
Yeonjun nods wordlessly.
Just like every other time, Beomgyu is careful with his teeth, and he soothes over the initial sting of the bite itself with a lap of his tongue, and just like every night, the warm buzz that floods through Yeonjun’s body makes his head swim.
Unlike every night, this time Yeonjun whines and falls onto the cold relief of Beomgyu’s body instead of away from it. His breath is a little harder to catch like this, and maybe being tired affects the bite more than Yeonjun had thought, because his head feels like it’s been stuffed with cotton. It isn’t an unpleasant feeling, but it is foreign to him.
Beomgyu takes what he needs, like every night, and Yeonjun finds himself inexplicably floating away from his own body, staring into the void the blindfold wraps him in, too awake and somehow too deeply asleep in a way he’s never felt before. Just like the other times, Beomgyu releases him rather quickly, but this time the warmth lingers, the buzzing persistent. He cleans the last drops from the wound and Yeonjun should be feeling the rush fade away, not intensify.
The world narrows to the creak of the sofa as Beomgyu shifts back, the contented hum and wet sound of him presumably licking his lips, the dull throb of his arm with each pounding beat of his heart. Yeonjun’s tongue is too heavy in his mouth to speak and articulate the sensation.
Yeonjun protests mildly when the vampire shifts around, jostling him. He swats lazily at him to make him sit still again, but he’s only jostled when he laughs. Sulking, Yeonjun lifts his heavy head and sits, swaying a little. Hands steady him before he can tip over. He’s always steady, isn’t he? Beomgyu is always ready to steady him. The thought sends another tingle through him not unlike the rush of the bite, but gentler somehow.
“Jjun?” Beomgyu asks, concerned.
He hums, soothed by the steady hands.
“Did I take too much?” He sounds worried, drawing Yeonjun closer as if he could gauge it with just a closer look. “Are you feeling dizzy?”
“No.” He says with some difficulty. He doesn’t recognize his voice, but he felt his lips move, so this must be him, right? “Feels nice. Floaty.”
“Does anything hurt?”
“No,” He says again. “Can I lay down now?”
Wordlessly, Yeonjun is helped to his side, his head rested on a pillow. He sighs in contentment, relaxing. Nothing matters but the pillow, not even the vague awareness that the vampire has gotten up to move around the room, or how he gently tugs Yeonjun’s arm out from under him to start cleaning up the wound. Yeonjun just rests his head, humming occasionally when asked if he’s feeling alright.
Nothing matters except for how Beomgyu at some point moves so close to Yeonjun’s face, he feels the barest brush of a nose near his chin. Yeonjun holds his breath, staring into nothing.
For just a moment, he thinks with an awful anticipation that the vampire is going to kiss him. He’s close enough Yeonjun swears they must share the same breath, Beomgyu’s hand wrapped around his arm. The point of contact lights him up, so warm he focuses entirely on it. His hands are soft, gentle in the pressure they use to touch him. Yeonjun can’t remember the last time hands have felt like satin on his skin. The other hand startles Yeonjun by brushing back his hair, a slight tug on each of his strands as they shift back into place in the wake of those fingers. Beomgyu lean in, but their lips don’t touch. Instead, it’s their foreheads, and the vampire exhales slowly, Yeonjun breathing it in greedily when the gust ghosts across his lips, and when Beomgyu slowly (reluctantly, almost) pulls away, Yeonjun knows he just barely lets out a petulant noise.
Beomgyu’s lips brush against the bite mark on his arm, soft and lingering and somehow a promise and a question all in one, but Yeonjun is too far from his body to know what the answers should be to the questions on his skin.
“Look at you,” Beomgyu breathes into his skin. “So…”
He doesn’t finish the thought, nor does he kiss Yeonjun anywhere else, and Yeonjun finds himself upset by it more than he would like to admit.
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Beomgyu insists on getting Yeonjun home that night. He stands closer to him than he has before, and he stubbornly refuses Yeonjun’s halfhearted reassurances that he’s perfectly fine to get home on his own. Yeonjun tries not to feel self-conscious in the car with how close they sit, and still too far. He doesn’t know where the clinginess comes from, but Beomgyu doesn’t seem to notice.
In front of his building, Yeonjun moves to step out of the car, surprised when Beomgyu follows.
“You can’t come in.” Yeonjun blurts, stopping Beomgyu.
He looks amused, though. “I wasn’t going to.”
“Then why step out of the car?” Yeonjun asks doubtfully.
Beomgyu smiles sweetly. “It’s polite.”
It doesn’t look like he’s lying, so Yeonjun slowly nods. He turns away, only taking a step towards his building before Beomgyu speaks up behind him.
“Yeonjun,” He turns at the sound of his name, curious. Beomgyu hesitates and steels himself. “Come see me tomorrow? Not at Sanguine.”
“Where, then?”
“There’s a restaurant my friend owns I think you’ll like.” He smiles shyly. “I’ll buy you a meal?”
Yeonjun’s cheeks flush at the implication, and despite knowing he shouldn’t indulge whatever this is, he says, “Okay. Just tell me where to meet you.”
It’s criminal how happy his agreement seems to have made Beomgyu.
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Yeonjun knows something is wrong when he swears he catches sight of Han on his way to meet Beomgyu. It’s not entirely impossible to catch glimpses of him; Yeonjun knows that he runs in the same circles as Soobin, so he would probably be seeing his brother’s shitty friends at some point. He would have completely written it off as nothing if he hadn’t seen Han looking straight at him, an unpleasant smile on his face that made Yeonjun shudder with revulsion. He was with another boy, shorter and with a hat over his head, probably another hunter. The other boy was looking his way, too, locked in on the sight of him like he’d been given something to puzzle out, or a target to focus on.
They stare at him across the station until Yeonjun’s train arrives, and he tries to shake off the chill when he turns his back to them to get in.
Soobin had terrible taste in friends, he thought, and made himself forget it as he made his way to the location he was meant to meet Beomgyu at.
They were meeting at a lounge Beomgyu had claimed excited and bright eyed as he mentioned that his friend could get them special perks. Yeonjun was excited, too, having been promised a meal that would make him weep, apparently. Beomgyu’s friend had talented chefs working in the lounge’s restaurant and was more than excited to show off to anyone willing to indulge.
He meets the very enthusiastic vampire just outside of the building, waving at him as soon as he is in sight and trying not to laugh when Beomgyu all but vibrates with energy when Yeonjun is close enough. He tries not to think about how strange it is to be meeting with a vampire outside of work, to be out in the open with the pretty boy dressed significantly more casual than he ever would at Sanguine. It makes Yeonjun a little flustered if he thinks about it too much.
Beomgyu looks normal like this; loose fit jeans and a dark long-sleeved shirt, and sneakers. He looks like someone Yeonjun would meet at the grocery store, not the exclusive VIP lounges of his job. It annoys him a little that even like this, dressed down, Beomgyu is still strikingly pretty. He supposes that’s part of the perks of being immortal, but it makes Yeonjun a little self-conscious. He feels, yet again, underdressed and depressingly underwhelming beside him. Maybe Yeonjun should have tried a little harder, but he’d been too nervous to put together an outfit like he used to like to do before.
It’d been a long time since Yeonjun had honestly indulged in his enjoyment of putting together unique looks. It’s a skill he must have lost by now; there was no other excuse to why he’d honestly thought it would be a good idea to wear old cargo pants and a sweater to meet with someone that pretty. Beomgyu didn’t seem to mind, at least. He was too excited, promising Yeonjun all sorts of dishes to make a comment on his appearance.
Dinner is great, and Yeonjun doesn’t quite cry but he is ready to propose to the main course after one bite, much to the amusement of Beomgyu’s friend. It’s another vampire, of course, and he is just as charming and bright as Beomgyu is. He seemed delighted to meet Yeonjun, apparently having already heard a lot about him. He’d tried not to startle or flush too darkly at that, unsure if he wanted to know what Beomgyu was saying about him. The fact he was significant enough to mention was worrying enough.
It really was a nice night, until he was returning from the bathroom and spotted Han stepping foot into the lounge with that same friend.
Yeonjun had frozen at the sight, heart beating loudly. Han hadn’t spotted him yet, too distracted taking in the view of the lounge. When Yeonjun eventually hurried back to where he’d left Beomgyu, he’d said, “Can we go? Please? Someone I don’t want to see is here.”
Beomgyu tilted his head, frowning thoughtfully, “Do you want them gone?”
“No,” he denied quickly, “I just want to go. Can we go back?”
They’d left, and Yeonjun hadn’t seen the duo again, but he swore he felt a heavy stare at his back.
Yeonjun hadn’t relaxed until they’d reached the safety of the car, and he had only allowed himself to shed the uneasy feeling of being watched when Beomgyu had told him the large building they’d pulled up to was his home.
“It’s safe there. But if you’re not comfortable, I can take you home.” Beomgyu has offered sheepishly. Yeonjun had bravely swallowed down the anxiety and said, “No, I’m fine.”
Thus, he ended up in Beomgyu’s bedroom, surprised by how normal it was, too. It was bright, lived in but not cluttered, and there was a humidifier turned on in a corner. The bed was made with charcoal grey sheets and he had several pillows in nice cool toned colors, and a soft blue rug in the center of the room. He seemed a little nervous to have Yeonjun inside, only relaxing when he had made himself comfortable on what looked like a futon in his room. It was too large to be considered a bedroom in Yeonjun’s eyes, considering his room alone looked like it was half the size of Yeonjun’s entire apartment, but he ignored that fact as best as he could.
“Who was it back there that upset you?” Beomgyu asked casually, making his way to his bed and collapsing back on it. Much to Yeonjun’s surprise, he’d stripped out of his outer layers, leaving him in just the undershirt and the loose jeans he’d worn earlier.
Yeonjun drew his knees up to his chest, hugging them and propping his chin on them. He made himself comfortable like this, surprisingly at ease despite being somewhere unfamiliar. “One of my brother’s stupid friends.” Yeonjun sighed, closing his eyes. “Nobody important.”
The vampire hummed from where his bed, “Yeah? What’s his name?”
“He goes by Han.” He lets all of his tension melt away as he reclines on the futon. “Some stupid kid.”
“How old is he?”
“Who? Han?” He frowns, thinking. “Probably Soobin’s age. Nineteen.”
Beomgyu hums thoughtfully, “You don’t happen to know his first name, do you?”
“No.” He frowns, sitting up to squint his eyes at Beomgyu. “Why are you so curious about him?”
The vampire sits up, smiling at him. “You’re pretty like this.”
“You’re changing the subject.” Yeonjun complained, choosing to ignore the compliment and the way his face burned with it. This was just a tactic to distract him, he was sure of it. “Beomgyu, I’m serious.”
“I’m just curious.” He finally said, earnestly. He leveled his large, sweet eyes at Yeonjun innocently. “I like knowing things about you. Is that so bad?”
Despite himself, Yeonjun knew he was smiling shyly at the answer. It was just to distract him, he knew, but Yeonjun had always been weak to compliments and sincerities like that, and maybe they meant a little more when they came from the very person he found himself thinking about more than was healthy. “Shut up. Don’t be weird and cheesy.”
Yeonjun is proud of just how hard he makes Beomgyu laugh—its the one that makes his whole body shake and fills the whole room, kind of annoying if he’s being honest but endearing nonetheless.
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Han corners him on his way home the next night.
Yeonjun had slept the day away on Beomgyu’s futon, and then when he woke he had spent some time lazily reading a book Beomgyu had left out on a desk in the corner of the room when he woke up and noticed the sun was still up. The vampire was, of course, still dead asleep. He was utterly still in bed, but his expression was sweet and peaceful. Yeonjun had never seen a vampire sleep—he was oddly disappointed that Beomgyu wasn’t hanging upside down from the rafters like a bat, but he supposed this was cuter. It was unsettling how slow his breathing was, though; Yeonjun had spent a long time watching to make sure he wasn’t imagining the barely there rise and fall of his chest. At least he wasn’t dead, though.
Well. More dead. Beomgyu was already dead because he was a vampire.
He left before Beomgyu had woken, leaving a note stuck to the door and then another note by Beomgyu’s phone on the nightstand, letting him know he needed to get home before he worried his brothers.
In hindsight, Yeonjun wishes he would have waited for Beomgyu to wake up and shamelessly bummed a ride from him.
It would save him the trouble of being jumped by two novice hunters in the middle of the night.
It should be noted that, although Soobin is the one that is training to be a hunter, Yeonjun isn’t entirely helpless. He’d been able to handle scuffles before, and has gotten himself out of some risky situations without breaking too much of a sweat or too many bones. Back when he’d worked at Sanguine, the maroon uniform had almost been a beacon for humans and vampires alike to target him, following him after either to either humiliate him or punish him for working with vampires (in the case the attackers were human) or to presume he was available to feed from like a walking donation invitation (in the case of vampires).
Yeonjun can defend himself, but when it’s two trained vampire hunting teenagers with inflated egos catching him by surprise, Yeonjun finds himself at a disadvantage.
They drag him into an alley after a short scuffle Yeonjun pathetically loses against, push him into the cracked brick wall until his back is aching and they taunt, “What happened to not being on the menu?”
Yeonjun grits his teeth. Somehow, being picked on by people who were his younger brother’s age is worse than being picked on by any random hunter. Something about kids that aren’t even old enough to buy their own alcohol having the audacity to push him around like this is more humiliating. He wants to punch their stupid smug faces in, but even with how young they are, they’re still trained bounty hunters and Yeonjun is not at his best after his time with Beomgyu.
“Leave me alone.” Yeonjun tells them tersely, trying to shrug them off.
They don’t budge, obviously. Han’s companion is pinning Yeonjun’s shoulder to the wall, Han pinning the other. When he draws his arm to hit them, he ends up getting them pinned at his sides, his knuckles scraping against the brick while he continues to try to get himself free. It’s a very well-coordinated attack; Yeonjun is almost flattered they’d given this much thought and effort into him when he had mostly forgotten about Soobin’s stupid friends.
“You know, you piss me off. You’re what’s wrong with this city.” Han remarks, curling his lip with distaste. “Soobin goes on and on about you, about how great his hyung is, how admirable you are. How hard you work.” He digs his fingers into Yeonjun’s shoulder, making him grit his teeth against the pain. “I was expecting someone a little more impressive when I met you. Someone worth looking up to. I thought you’d be a hunter, too, or at least someone with even a shred of dignity. It’s kind of offensive that you’re just another bloodwhore.”
“Don’t call me that.” Yeonjun snaps, regretting it when Han grins viciously at how Yeonjun has shown he’d been bothered. “Move so I can leave.”
“You don’t like it? It’s what you are though. I saw you.” Han shakes his head, disgust dripping from his words and marring his face into something ugly. “You have Soobin fooled into thinking you’re some great person, but I’m not so stupid. I saw you with that leech.” He leans in so close Yeonjun can smell the alcohol on his breath when he sneers, “Did you like it so much the first time you kept going back? You clearly aren’t making that much from it, so I can’t help but wonder if you’re not just another bite addict. You’ll let anything bite you, won’t you?”
He tugs at the collar of Yeonjun’s shirt, then, eying it curiously. He’s expecting to see marks there, Yeonjun is sure. When he doesn’t find them, Han diverts his attention to Yeonjun’s pinned arms. He draws back the sleeves; the disgust darkens into acrid contempt. He stares at the fading bites, at the most recent mark and the healing bruises, and when his other arm is investigated, there is much of the same. The companion digs his fingers into the bruises, scoffing. “What did I expect?”
Yeonjun reels back, just as disgusted by this all. “I have no idea what you’re talking about. You don’t know me, and you’re drunk. Go home and leave me out of whatever your issue is with my brother. It’s none of my business.”
Han’s companion laughs. “Soobin isn’t the issue; you are. Soobin’s pissed at us because of you. Whatever you’ve said to him to turn him on his real family—”
“Soobinnie is a big boy who can decide who he wants to spend his time with.” Yeonjun interrupts. “It’s not my fault you don’t make the cut anymore.”
“You pimp yourself out to some leeches and suddenly you think you matter.” Han’s expression darkens. His fingers dig into Yeonjun’s jaw, turning his face to look at him. Yeonjun resists the urge to spit in his face, if only because he doesn’t want to escalate more when he’s at the disadvantage. “This is your fault, actually. You, and everyone like you.”
“You have some serious issues, Han,” Yeonjun says, and all he gets for it is the companion’s fist to his stomach and blinding pain to accompany how the wind is knocked out of him. “Fuck!”
“You’re my issue.” Han shakes his head. He lets go, steps back. Taking his chance, he tries to create some distance, but the companion has shifted to force Yeonjun’s arms behind his back, not allowing him to face away from Han anymore. There is dread creeping down Yeonjun’s spine when he notices Han is drawing something from a weapon sheath on his body, something similar to where Soobin stored his daggers. Han’s hands are steady when he brings up the dagger. Even intoxicated, the intent is clear. “You’re a stain on Soobin’s good name. Everyone knows he has the potential to do more, and all you’re going to do is drag him down. You don’t matter.” He scoffs, then smiles unkindly. “It’ll be a shame when I have to tell Soobin that I found his hyung, tragically murdered by a vampire client. I’ll help him avenge you, of course. We both will, won’t we Garam? It’s what family is for.”
Honestly, of all the ways Yeonjun had thought he would die, being killed by one of his little brother’s delusional hunter companions was not high on the list of probably outcomes. He’d thought starvation would take him out first, or a rogue bus. Hell, it had been entirely likely that Yeonjun would have just taken matters into his own hands and ended it all if only so there was one less mouth to feed.
It happens quickly; Han’s grip on the handle of the long, curved blade is confident as he sweeps it in an arc meant to slice open Yeonjun’s throat. Garam—the companion pinning him in place—goes to cover his mouth when he draws in air to shout for help. No one will come and Yeonjun knows it, but he can’t help but to at least try. Maybe they’d at least get him to a hospital before he bleeds out, if he managed to draw the attention of a passerby. Garam’s large, calloused hands over his mouth stops that hope before it can really take root. There’s nothing he can do. He can’t move, he can’t get help, he can’t even breathe, really, with his the hand is partially covering his nose.
Yeonjun closes his eyes, terrified.
The blade never touches him.
Someone is between Yeonjun and the two hunters, a figure in white with broad shoulders and dark red hair. Yeonjun barely registers the strange newcomer before he is being ripped away from the hands that had been restraining him, stumbling over his own feet as his mind races to catch up with what is happening. The scene before him is changing too fast for him to understand.
The man in white has Han’s arm in a vice-like grip, twisting it and squeezing so tight Han cries out and drops the dagger, the clatter of it on the ground making Yeonjun flinch. Garam has been thrown back, a crumbled heap on the other wall, dazed but still conscious and groaning in pain. Yeonjun blinks, and the scene changes again. Han is on his knees, face red and crying out, and there is a large, sickening crack that makes Yeonjun’s stomach revolt against him, then a scream, and the man in white stares down at Han expressionlessly. Yeonjun vaguely recognizes the face, but he can’t put a name to it.
Yeonjun blinks again, and Garam is rushing at the man in white, anger in his eyes, and there is nothing Yeonjun can do but watch, horrified, as Garam’s chest is caved in by the man in white’s hand with a sickening crunch, a wheeze, and a wet pop he swears he can feel in his own chest.
Garam gurgles when he falls, twitching, gasping. Han shouts indistinguishable words, panic garbling them together with the ringing in Yeonjun’s ears.
Another blink, and there is another man in the alley. He’s familiar and so foreign to Yeonjun, round eyes narrowed with anger, jaw tight, and the gentle fingers are digging into Han’s delicate throat so hard , unbothered by the way Han claws at him. The vampire draws Han up until he is clawing at the arm, half on his knees, half trying to get his feet under him for stability, eyes flashing brilliant red at the sight.
Han pales, choking.
Blink. The vampire speaks in a low, menacing drawl Yeonjun has never heard before, something that sends a chill down his spine and his hair stand on end.
“Han Jisung.” It’s said with a flat stare. Han’s eyes are wide, petrified. “Nineteen. You have two sisters, ages 16 and 26. Your father is a hunter, too. He’s on an assignment right now in Daegu, but he calls every night. In fact…” Eyes flick to Han’s pocket. “He should be calling soon. Should we answer, so he hears your last words?”
Han is turning purple.
The grip on his throat tightens. The vampire with Beomgyu’s face smiles with none of the warmth or kindness of the Beomgyu Yeonjun knows. It’s colder, and mean, using Beomgyu’s voice in ways Yeonjun never wants to hear again. “You know who I am. Consider this a warning.”
Blink. Blink. Blink. Blink. Flashes he doesn’t want to see so he blinks so they fade away. Blink blink—
The alley is far behind him. He’s being ushered into the backseat of a car by none other than Beomgyu—Beomgyu, frighteningly unfamiliar with that icy expression and the vicious glint in his eyes, who’s hand had just been crushing Han’s throat with the same hands he used to smooth Yeonjun’s hair back trying to guide him in. Yeonjun flinches away from him in the car. The vampire doesn’t follow him in immediately as Yeonjun scrambles as far away from those hands as he can, instead standing outside the car door and staring back at where they’d presumably come from.
“Take care of that for me.” Beomgyu says to someone outside the car. “Leave them a message.”
Without waiting for confirmation, he slides into the back seat, slamming the door behind him with more force than was strictly necessary. He’s still uncomfortably and uncharacteristically angry, and only when the doors are shut does he seem to notice that Yeonjun has pressed himself flat against the other door, wide-eyed and ready to bolt. He has one hand on the handle, the other dug into the leather seat, his knees drawn up between them.
Just like that, the anger fades away, and all Yeonjun sees is the concern softening the set of his jaw, the dark look in his eyes smoothed over. He doesn’t reach for Yeonjun, but he says, “I won’t hurt you.”
Yeonjun swallows the lump in his throat. “Are you following me?”
“Yeah.”
The response is so blunt it baffled Yeonjun so badly he loses some of the terrified adrenaline. “Why?”
Beomgyu sheepishly smiles, “Just in case?”
The whiplash between how quickly the vampire before him had gone from frightening and serious to sheepish and charming is too much. He can’t wrap his mind around how quick the change had been, and how both versions seemed genuine. Yeonjun knows what putting on an act for people is like, but he isn’t sure which of those sides was the act and which was the true nature of the vampire in the car with him. Worse: Yeonjun doesn’t know which he preferred.
“Did you kill them?” He whispers, horrified. It was a stupid question. In between the blinks, he knows there is no coming back from the collapsed chest. They’re dead, because of Yeonjun. They are dead in an alley, chest caved in, bleeding, not breathing in a flattened ribcage, dead dead—
“I didn’t do anything. Technically.” Beomgyu reminds with a shrug. He doesn’t care. Yeonjun’s vision blurs. Beomgyu doesn’t care. “But they’re probably dead by now, yeah. Jimin works fast.”
Yeonjun’s stomach revolts again, and he gets dizzy with how violently the sudden urge is to throw up. “T-They’re Soobin’s friends.” He can’t breathe. “They’re kids.”
“They were Soobin’s friends, and I’m sure he wouldn’t be too happy to know his dear friends were trying to kill you.” Beomgyu’s tone sharpens, then quickly softens back up when he notices how pale Yeonjun has gotten, his hand over his mouth. He’s shaking, mind fixed on the unnatural concave surface of that boy’s chest, the shade of blue Yeonjun hadn’t realized a person could be, the stench of blood and the sweet notes of the perfume Beomgyu liked to wear. “Sorry. Don’t think about it. Just pretend it was a freak accident that killed them. Jimin can make it look like that.”
He’s going to be sick.
“Open the door.” Yeonjun breathes, desperately pulling at the locked handle of the door, then repeats with more urgency when Beomgyu doesn’t listen. “Open the door!”
Beomgyu’s eyes widen, but he doesn’t open the door, and Yeonjun throws up all over the expensive leather seats instead of the sidewalk where he’d intended.
In Yeonjun’s defense, Beomgyu should have opened the goddamn door.
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“Are you feeling better now?” Beomgyu asks hesitantly, sounding a lot like a scolded puppy when Yeonjun steps back into the room. His mouth tastes like mint and he’d changed into soft clothes Beomgyu had someone fetch for him. The vampire is sitting at the foot of his bed, fiddling with his fingers in his lap and gazing at Yeonjun with a pouty jut to his lips. He even sounds petulant and it’s unfairly adorable when he asks, “Are you mad at me?”
Beomgyu had brought Yeonjun home with him after he’d called for a new car, waiting outside of the first one beside Yeonjun, who had been feeling absolutely miserable and mortified. He had tried to look at the alley, but Beomgyu had stubbornly insisted that Yeonjun not see so he wouldn’t make himself sick again. The insistence had honestly made another wave of nausea spike, and he’d swayed, dizzy. He didn’t want to picture how badly the bodies must have looked if he wasn’t allowed to look. Yeonjun should have fought back more when Beomgyu had insisted under no uncertain terms that Yeonjun would be staying with him until the next night. They’d somehow managed to make it back before the sun had risen, much to Beomgyu’s relief.
He'd ushered Yeonjun straight into the bathroom to clean himself up, telling him there would be a change of clothes waiting for him when he was finished. Yeonjun had just nodded and accepted it all, and after taking a long hot shower and vigorously brushing his teeth to get the taste of bile out of his mouth, he felt slightly better equipped to face everything that had happened.
Yeonjun nods at Beomgyu’s question, moving sluggishly to sit beside him. Silence hangs heavy between them, Yeonjun struggling to figure out what to say, and Beomgyu alternating between staring at Yeonjun and then staring at his own hands. He clearly won’t be the one to break the silence, and Yeonjun really has no idea where to even begin.
Still, he has to try. “You killed someone for me.”
“Technically,” Beomgyu points out, “I didn’t touch them. Lethally. I didn’t kill anyone.”
“You told your…whatever he is to do it.” Yeonjun insisted, turning to face Beomgyu fully. “That means it was you.”
Beomgyu just purses his lips, not arguing that logic. Another heavy silence settles.
Desperate to understand, Yeonjun asks, “Why?”
“They were going to kill you.” Beomgyu said simply. “I was faster.”
“But why would you go so far?” He shakes his head, thoughts racing. “I don’t get it. Why kill them? How did you even know all those things? And—And why were you following me?” He rakes his fingers through his wet hair, pleading for answers after a pause. “I don’t understand why you went that far.”
Beomgyu’s lips turn down. “Did you want me to let you die?”
“No!” Yeonjun denies. “I just don’t understand why you—What you said to Han, I don’t—” He can’t put it to words. “Why?”
Beomgyu’s frown deepens. “Because I like you.”
“That doesn’t explain why you—” He huffs, frustrated. “Liking someone isn’t enough to go as far as you did.”
“I don’t think you understand.” Beomgyu slowly says, slowly and almost nervously reaching out and taking Yeonjun’s hand, fiddling with his fingers as soon as he sees that Yeonjun hadn’t drawn away. “I like you. I have a vetted interest in not letting you die.”
“You like me?” Yeonjun’s brain fizzles out, leaving him stupid and clumsy with his words. “You like me?”
“Of course I like you.” Beomgyu huffs, offended now. There’s a look to his face that gives Yeonjun the distinct impression that if Beomgyu were physically capable of blushing, he would be turning a lovely shade of red at that moment. As it is, Beomgyu won’t meet Yeonjun’s eyes, and though he tries to appear unbothered by his confession, he is failing to seem nonchalant. “You don’t really think I’d go out of my way to feed from just anyone, do you? Of course I like you. What kind of stupid question is that? If I didn’t like you so much, I wouldn’t have bothered stepping in back there. Donors die all the time, and it’s a bummer, but I wouldn’t have cared if it was anyone else. But it was you, and obviously I wasn’t going to let that happen, so I stepped in.” He paused. “Yeonjun, I literally pay you too high of a rate for how little I actually feed from you. How did you not know that I was obsessed with you?”
Yeonjun stupidly stares, his face hotter and hotter with every word he hears. “I thought…it was so I kept it discrete.” He trails off when Beomgyu’s shoulders bunch up a little. “Rich people things.”
“It was so you’d keep coming back.” Beomgyu grumbles, embarrassed. “So that you wouldn’t seek anyone else out.”
“Why would I seek anyone else out?” He gapes, stunned at the suggestion. “I don’t—I only ever let you take from me!”
“Good.” Beomgyu says viciously, and then he coughs into his fist and hastily amends, “I mean—Actually, no, that’s exactly what I meant.”
Yeonjun snaps his mouth shut, something like bravery rooting itself in his very cowardly heart. He grabs ahold of it to shift into Beomgyu’s space, pleased when he isn’t denied the closeness. “I thought it was a passing interest. Just…something you did with donors.” He swallows. “I thought I was the only one making it more than it was. I…” He shakes his head to clear it. “Since when?”
“You want an exact date?” There’s that look that makes Yeonjun think that if Beomgyu were human, he would be bright red. “I don’t know, Yeonjun. It’s not like I kept track of when I wanted to put my mouth on other parts of your body.”
“Just a rough estimate is fine,” Yeonjun squeaks.
A pause, and then in the sulkiest tone he’s ever heard, Beomgyu says, “Recently. It was recent.”
“Oh.” Yeonjun says very intelligently. “Okay. Great. That’s good to know.”
“What about you?” The sudden intensity of the question stuns Yeonjun into momentary silence. “Do you like me?”
The most embarrassing part about this entire ordeal is that Yeonjun doesn’t even have to think about his answer before he blurts out, “Kind of, yeah. I mean, there’s something there, but I haven’t really had the time to figure it out, so I don’t know if—”
Beomgyu kisses him, just a quick and rushed peck on the lips, and Yeonjun’s eyes go wide. Beomgyu seems shocked at his own actions, too. They stare at each other for a heartbeat, and then Yeonjun is the one leaning in for another kiss, hesitating in case he was wrong and Beomgyu had changed his mind after that failure of a first kiss. He didn’t need to worry—Beomgyu had taken the hint and cupped his face, steadying himself before he gave Yeonjun a true, proper kiss.
It’s perfect.
When Beomgyu pulls back, he very seriously tells Yeonjun, “I am obsessed with you.” There is a startling intensity to his eyes that steals whatever breath is left in Yeonjun’s feeble lungs. “I don’t feed from anyone else. I only asked for you because I recognized you from your profile as the guy from that night. I wanted to see you again.”
“So, you stalked me.” Yeonjun should be more horrified by this, but he feels oddly giddy at the thought. “That’s…wow. You were worried about being creepy, and you’re apparently stalking me.”
Beomgyu rolls his eyes. Emboldened by their actions, Beomgyu shifts to more comfortably reach for Yeonjun, brushing along his cheek. “Those are public records, first of all. Anyone could have gotten their hands on them. Second of all, it’s a good thing I did. If I hadn’t stepped in…” When he presses their foreheads together, Yeonjun lets himself relax. He hesitantly cups his hands over Beomgyu’s, keeping them on his face. “You’re safe because of me.”
“You didn’t need to do all that, though.” Yeonjun says again, just to be stubborn. “I didn’t need you to go so far.”
Beomgyu tightens his hold on Yeonjun, prompting him to open his eyes again, startled by the strange weight of Beomgyu’s dark eyes. He feels held in place by it.
Beomgyu strokes his thumb over Yeonjun’s cheek. “Of course you did, Jjun. You need someone to keep you safe, since you’re too busy keeping everyone else safe instead. Who is going to do that for you if not me?” He softens his voice to a lull, and the gentle touch on his cheek doesn’t stop, like he is trying to sink this truth into his skin. “Soobin? Kai? Taehyun?”
Yeonjun parts his lips to answer, only to stop when Beomgyu shakes his head. “No, sweet thing, they can’t. But I can. I will. You need me to do that for you, just like today.”
“I can take care of myself.”
The look Beomgyu gives him is adoring and indulgent, like he’s said something horrendously endearing. He presses a kiss to Yeonjun’s forehead, then to the tip of his nose, and then to his lips. “Yes, but why should you when I’m here to do it for you? Doesn’t that sound better?” Another kiss silences Yeonjun’s response. “You don’t need anything else, Yeonjun.”
“Y-You must really like me.” He manages to say, still caught in whatever strange atmosphere this night had shifted into. Maybe near death experiences make Yeonjun feel strangely docile. Maybe he just finds the comfort of this room so great that his walls have started to crumble. Maybe it’s the indulgent and softly amused glint in Beomgyu’s eyes that tells him everything is okay. Maybe Yeonjun is losing it, a little. “To say all that, and to…to kill someone for me.” A thought occurs to him. “You stalked him too, didn’t you? How did you know all that?”
“He upset you.” Beomgyu says simply. “I like when you’re happy, and he ruined it. Of course I handled it. I’m obsessed with you, Yeonjun. Isn’t it obvious now?”
“I’m starting to get it.” He remarks, shifting in his seat. Beomgyu’s eyes track every movement, like a cat. “You owe me an explanation though, later. You’re definitely some kind of vampire royalty. Nobody just…” He shakes his head, and a shudder of—fear? Thrill? Both?—goes down his back. Beomgyu’s smile turns more devious as he catches onto Yeonjun’s reaction, tension dissolved just like that, like it had never even been there. Like for a moment, he hadn’t scared Yeonjun a little.
“I’ll explain it later,” Beomgyu promises, “Whatever you want.”