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“You look hungry.”
Jeonghan’s hearing is sharp as any nocturnal hunter’s, but the statement is said to him, full-throated and confident, right as he passes by. Impossible to miss, and it turns Jeonghan’s head, curious to see what kind of person would speak so boldly to a vampire after midnight.
It’s just a kid, most likely a grown man by his own standards, but whether he’s managed two full decades of living or not means nothing to Jeonghan’s centuries. He’s dressed like any kid these days, loose, casual clothes, a cap, sneakers. Much more noteworthy is the direct gaze rimmed by unusually long lashes, the generous lips and unblemished skin.
Jeonghan glances around him, realizes he’s wandered into a seedier part of town, and puts two and two together.
“I didn’t realize it was so obvious,” he says. He’s not all that tempted, but talking to someone with a pretty face is more interesting than continuing his walk. At least for now.
There’s a bit of art to how the boy looks down to show off his lashes before looking Jeonghan in the eye and saying, “I can put a little color in your cheeks.”
Jeonghan marvels at how crass it’s all gotten now that vampires are known to humanity. No more hunting, no careful seduction, no more gripping terror that you might have been spotted and stalked back to where you plan to hide from the daylight. One can just wander down a dark street and see what’s on offer. Probably there’s even a delivery service in the works. In Jeonghan’s prime it took real cleverness to survive, subtlety and stealth, but anyone with a pair of fangs and a decently thick wallet must do just fine now.
“I’m sure you could,” Jeonghan says. The boy’s shoulders are broad, advertising his good health and promising the stamina to endure being drained of just a little bit more than might be considered sensible. His heartbeat is just audible if Jeonghan focuses, a faint, but strong and steady drum.
Jeonghan is hungry is the thing. His very existence is defined by hunger. He’s just not a vampire that held on to any fascination for humanity. When blood banks started being more common, and then synthetic blood became available he didn’t lament the replacement of his prey at all. Jeonghan has lived long enough that for every lovely, supple creature he found he had to feast on dying fellow passengers at sea, diseased soldiers, and all manner of unlucky riff raff straight from the gutter. A meal is a meal and the novelty of not having to endure a tedious conversation or unpleasant odor to eat was frankly a very welcome change.
Yet here he is, lingering in a familiarly grubby street, thinking that yes, the boy’s neck does look thick enough to be truly satisfying under Jeonghan’s teeth. Tucked under the corner of his jaw there’s even a lovely, tempting vein just visible beneath the skin, throbbing in time with his heartbeat.
“How about it then?” the boy prompts, and Jeonghan supposes he’d gotten lost a bit, just staring. It’s really been ages since he’s been around a human.
“What’s your price?” Jeonghan asks, telling himself it’s just idle curiosity. What does it cost a talentless hunter to get a taste of real human blood?
The boy quotes a price that seems almost insulting, barely half of what Jeonghan considers to be just walking around money. A crass practice, indeed, cheap enough to be beneath him. Jisoo would be disgusted with him for even considering it. Still, his curiosity is piqued. He inspects the boy again, looks at the whites of his eyes and finds him clear eyed and watchful. If he’s an addict he’s new to it, but Jeonghan suspects it's just the money he’s after, not the drugs it could buy.
Call it a charity case, then.
He must have taken a bit too long to consider, because the boy’s expression changes. There’s a sudden, stubborn set to his chin, and his full lips settle easily into a defiant, plump pout. “If you’re just window shopping you can move along.”
Jeonghan smiles, not put off at all by the loss of the facade. “Well,” he says, dusting off some of his own unused tricks and tilting his head so that some of his hair falls free from behind his ear. “Since you asked so nicely.”
Back comes the flirting at the promise of a payday, the hard purse of the boy’s lips melting into a smile big enough to reveal a dimple. “Let’s go somewhere private.” He jerks his head toward a hotel down the road, the sort of place where Jeonghan wouldn’t deign to sit on the furniture let alone feed.
“Mm,” Jeonghan says as he appraises his options. “Would you consider being a bit more adventurous on my behalf? Try somewhere a little more-”
“Swanky?” the boy interjects.
“Comfortable,” Jeonghan offers.
The boy takes a moment to deliberate, and Jeonghan finds it easy to be patient as he looks his fill. Upon reinspection, Jeonghan can’t help noticing interesting little details like the slight asymmetry of his eyebrows, or the awkwardly shaped ears peeking from under the boy’s cap. Finally the boy raises up one shoulder, a show of indifference belied by the quickening pace of his heartbeat. “You’re buying the room. It’s up to you.”
Jeonghan doesn’t make him wander far. A ten minute walk away is another hotel, a neat little box of glass and concrete boasting small, clean rooms. The boy stands quietly in the lobby while Jeonghan pays for the room, looking younger and smaller than he did amidst the dark shadows and harsh yellow street light. They are an obviously mismatched pair, nothing in Jeonghan’s tailored suit finding anything in common with the boy’s street clothes.
The receptionist’s face is carefully neutral as she announces, “We only have a double room available. Two twin beds.”
Jeonghan smiles back at her, lips kept carefully closed to avoid showing his teeth. “That’s perfectly fine, thank you.”
When Jeonghan turns back to the boy he’s fiddling with his phone, but he follows him to the elevators readily. As the floor numbers on the display climb along with the elevator, so does the boy’s heart rate. Outwardly, though, there’s no indication of the nerves but his sudden silence, and the deep, slow breaths he’s taking in an effort to calm himself.
Inside the room, Jeonghan places the two key cards down on a little desk placed near the door and turns on the lamp in the corner. It’s a weak light, but the boy seems more comfortable now that he is back among shadows.
“What’s your name?” Jeonghan asks.
“Coups.”
Jeonghan raises his eyebrows, but the boy’s mouth is back in a resolute, slightly downturned line. Coups it is.
“How shall we do this?”
The question earns Jeonghan another shrug, “That’s really up to you, isn’t it?”
“You know the effects of the bite, don’t you?”
Coups’s lips are quite expressive really, twisting now into something equally contemptuous and bitter. “Yes. That’s why someone will be here in twenty minutes, give or take.” He holds up his phone at Jeonghan with a flippant little wiggle.
If Jeonghan wanted to kill him, he’d need less than twenty minutes, but he isn’t so out of practice interacting with humans as to say that aloud.
“Take off your shirt,” Jeonghan says instead.
Coups doesn’t seem at all taken aback by the request. He sheds his jacket first, then crosses his arms and grabs the hem of his ridiculously large tee and then it’s off, laying a little heap on the corner on one of the two tins beds with the jacket. All at once, Jeonghan takes in the appealing swell of his shoulders and thick arms along with the bites: one low on his neck, near his collarbone, and another, more vicious looking one, at the junction of his elbow that’s clearly taking its time to heal. There is an old, green bruise around his wrist.
Jeonghan is struck with a fresh wave of contempt for the type of vampire who would come across a human offering themselves up and decide they want to pay to be cruel. Coup's raises an eyebrow at him when he looks back up at the boy’s face.
“Certainly not your first time then,” Jeonghan comments.
Coups spreads his arms wide, hardly able to deny it. “Easiest money you can make.”
Easy, perhaps. Foolhardy, most definitely. Beyond dangerous, without a doubt. For a moment, Jeonghan considers paying the boy for his time and leaving. He ought not to be contributing to such a depraved practice, but Jeonghan used to rob people of second chances nightly. He’s never exactly been a moral creature.
He comes to stand in front of Coups. They’re of a similar height so it’s easy to look him in the eye as he puts his hand on Coups’s bare shoulder and bids him to stand, centered, at the end of one of the beds. The boy’s skin under his fingers isn’t just warm, it’s hot in a way that surprises Jeonghan after so long. How overwhelming it must be, to be constantly burning up at almost one hundred degrees, silences never not disrupted by a beating heart, the need to inhale and exhale. It’s enough to make Jeonghan dizzy, all the noise and heat, and maybe that’s why he keeps his hand on Coups’s shoulder. He just needs to steady himself as he follows it up to Coup’s throat. He pauses for a moment with his thumb lightly placed over the boy's jugular as it jumps, rabbit quick, beneath his hold.
Jeonghan looks him in the eye again, seeing fear and resolve in equal measure. His eyes fall shut as Jeonghan applies a bit of pressure and bends his neck to expose the side with the unbroken skin.
He bites, sets his teeth into the flesh until an artery bursts and fills his mouth with blood. Coups tenses, the ropey muscles of his neck trying to turn to stone between Jeonghan’s teeth before the venom hits him and he goes soft, tender as filet mignon. Or so Jeonghan supposes; he died before ever tasting beef, let alone a good cut of it. He drinks his feast instead, salt and rich iron, spicy hormones and other chemical messengers including the ones trying in vain to warn Coups that he’s bleeding to death, to thicken and clot the blood in order to stop it from flowing out of the four neat punctures in his throat.
Jeonghan had forgotten what it’s like, had all but forced himself to forget the awful, all-consuming ecstasy of fresh blood from a beating heart. Distantly he feels Coups’s hands land on his shoulders, weak and scrabbling. For one wild moment he ignores it, not ready to stop, but then the boy’s knees give out and Jeonghan has to catch him before he falls. The sudden change in position breaks the seal of his lips against Coups’s skin and shakes him from his rapture.
Coups weighs next to nothing in Jeonghan’s arms, but he’s limp and useless and needs to be guided down the bed. Jeonghan climbs up on the bed with him, cups the back of his neck to keep his head lifted so that the blood beading on his skin doesn’t make a mess of the hotel’s white sheets. For a moment they just pant with their mouths hanging open, much too close, each shaken for different reasons. The boy struggling against the failure of his strength against Jeonghan’s venom, while Jeonghan is shocked by the ravening want currently clawing at his chest.
The smell of blood is still in the air, making it impossible to think. Coups flinches, a single, exhausted little twitch, as Jeonghan bends down, but relaxes again when all he does is lick over the punctures until they are sealed with blood too thick to flow. Jeonghan sits back finally, discovers he’s sitting astride the boy’s lap.
His body is hot, temporarily convinced it’s alive again with all this real blood in him. A thought occurs, one he hasn’t had in a decade or more, but under him Coups is struggling to push up on his elbows, to speak though he’s out of breath and his tongue is slow and clumsy.
“Shh,” Jeonghan whispers, placing a hand on his breastbone to push him back down.
Coups swallows hard, shakes his head like he wants to clear away the fog. “The money,” he says, finally clear enough to be understood.
Jeonghan pauses, then removes his hand from Coups’s chest and reaches for his wallet.
“Right here,” he says, pulling the cash out. The notion of counting it strikes him as painfully tacky, so he just shows the bills to Coups and tucks it into the front pocket of his jeans after he sinks back against the bed in relief.
“Okay now?” Jeonghan asks, and Coups nods once, satisfied. “Then sleep,” he says, a command that Coups is helpless not to follow when Jeonghan’s venom is still coursing through his veins. In an instant the boy is deep under, his eyes fall shut and the rapid rise and fall of his chest slows immediately to a steady, calm pace.
No longer held together by all the tension and bravado, he looks utterly exhausted.
Jeonghan sighs, Jisoo is always right. The bastard.
Gingerly, Jeonghan extricates himself from the bed. He licks his lips, imagining there is something still there to taste, and contemplates what to do next. The boy is the very picture of vulnerability, dead to the world, belly up, exposed, but there is a perfectly fine lock on the door and a companion likely on the way. Jeonghan needn’t stay. He took what was on offer and the boy was compensated handsomely for it. He can slip back into the night with a mostly clear conscience.
But Jeonghan is hungry, even hungrier than he realized. He presses the tip of his tongue to a fang hard enough to feel the prick of the razor sharp edge, and contemplates the gnawing emptiness in the pit of his stomach. There’s a reason he trained himself to ignore it, he’s always hated the pathetic desperation of needing something so badly, the way it consumed his thoughts. Now it’s been brought back to the center of his attention, and a few mouthfuls of blood are nothing compared to a desire that is nearly bottomless.
What to do about it, though, is a problem he has precious little time to solve.
He looks again at the boy, sleeping soundly with his black hair messily fanned out against white sheets, full lips parted. Jeonghan’s jaw clenches, viciously longing for the skin of the boy’s neck. He turns, frustrated, toward the door. On the desk lies a pad and paper, bright white and conspicuous in the circle of light cast by the lamp. It’s an option, possibly his only one.
Jeonghan writes a note, short and direct, but when he reads over the words he frowns. Jeonghan folds the note in two and puts it in his pocket, suddenly convinced it would be better to do nothing.
He reaches for the door, ready to leave, only to stop in his tracks when there’s a soft knock. “Seungcheol,” comes a voice. “Seungcheol, it’s me. You need to open the door.”
The companion has arrived then. Jeonghan takes a moment to straighten his clothes, smooths his hair behind his ear and pulls open the door. There’s a rather short fellow on the other side, and apparently Jeonghan's presence gives him a terrible shock. He recovers with admirable quickness, and looks adorably furious with Jeonghan.
“What are you- why are you still here?” he hisses. He has a bag on his shoulder and he clutches it protectively in front of him, like any second now Jeonghan will lunge at him. “Where is S-” He stops, lips closing tight around the name in a futile attempt to keep the secret.
Jeonghan steps aside. “He’s here.”
After a suspicious moment, the companion slips past him, rushing by like he’s not entirely convinced Jeonghan won’t reach out and grab him. Jeonghan glances at the empty hallway, knowing he could slip away now having fulfilled every possible obligation, but behind he hears a hushed, slightly panicked, “Hyung. Hyung.”
It only seems polite to clear up any confusion.
Back in the room he finds the companion crouched over Seungcheol, tapping surprisingly elegant fingers against the boy’s cheek with increasing urgency. Sensing Jeonghan’s presence he looks up, looking horrified and suspicious. “How much did you take?”
A little too much is the honest answer, but more accurately it was not enough to account for Seungcheol's unresponsive state. “It isn’t that. I made him sleep.”
The companion looks back down to Seungcheol, and touches the corner of his jaw, looking for a pulse. Jeonghan is quiet while he counts, waiting for the look on his face to change from outraged to wary.
“He’ll wake when the venom wears off in a few hours, but not a moment before,” Jeonghan says once it looks like he’ll be believed. “It-” he sighs, telling himself it’s ridiculous to bother, but on the other hand these idiots seem to need the obvious pointed out to them. “It’s a fine room, safe and quiet, and it’s paid through the night. There’s even two beds. Why not let him sleep?”
It’s difficult to say how old this companion is, everything from his height to his round features make him look concerningly young, but the stare he levels at Jeonghan is anything but childish. “You can leave now.”
Jeonghan finds he is offended at being so summarily dismissed, but he hasn’t anything he can say in his own defense. So he nods, agreeing it is time to go, then puts his hands in pockets. His fingers touch folded paper.
In a last wild impulse, Jeonghan pulls it free from his pocket. “Just one last thing, and I’ll go.”
The companion’s nose wrinkles like Jeonghan is waving around something far more repulsive than a piece of paper. “What’s that?”
“A thank you note,” Jeonghan purrs with affected charm. “I was raised to have impeccable manners.”
He takes a step toward the bed and Jeonghan could swear the companion puffs up like a cat, spreading his shoulders, tilting his elbows out. Jeonghan puts his hands up like he's insisting he’s not looking for trouble, helpless not to tease. “Just a note,” he promises, tucking the paper into the same pocket he left the money.
With that, there’s truly nothing more Jeonghan can do and so he leaves, as he’s been so brusquely bidden to do. The long hallway, the elevator, and the lobby feel like passing by cardboard backdrops, flat and harshly lit, insubstantial and strange. It’s not until Jeonghan steps through the door and out into the night that there’s any sense of reality. He sighs in relief, every day the world changes, but the night is always familiar.
Years of synthetic blood and stale platelets scrubbed clean and bland have dulled the edges of his senses. Nourished by fresh, living blood it's like a curtain has been pulled back, the sights and sounds all sharp and delicious. Even with all of Seoul’s light pollution Jeonghan’s preternatural eyes can pick out the stars in the sky. A slight smile turns up the corner of his lips.
He’s forgotten how beautiful the night can be.
Seungcheol wakes up like he’s underwater and coming up for air, with a sudden gasp and blind flail that feels a bit ridiculous when he realizes he’s not drowning, but lying in a bed. He whips his head around, but there’s no vampire looming, just Jihoon, looking exhausted and frankly a little annoyed. That's a good sign, reassuring. If Jihoon has it in him to be annoyed it means he's not worried and that means things are okay.
“Hey,” he croaks. Jihoon grunts at him, and starts rooting through his bag.
Seungcheol sits up slowly and touches his neck, feeling around with light fingertips until he finds the edge of the bandage Jihoon would have placed after inspecting and cleaning the wound. He presses down on it tentatively and, while the bite is tender to the touch, it is not that painful. Seungcheol suspects there won’t even be a bruise.
“Here,” Jihoon says, handing Seungcheol a bottle of water and a convenience store sweet bun. He waits patiently for Seungcheol to show that he can open both of them on his own. “You have to stop this,” he says after Seungcheol takes a sip of water.
Seungcheol shuts his eyes, too tired to have this conversation again, wanting to push pause on it right away. “Tell me another way for a high school dropout to feed five people, Uji.”
When there’s no return volley, he opens his eyes. Jihoon’s nose is wrinkled, but he's not spoiling for a fight. Seungcheol reaches into his pocket for the proof it was worth it, then tension in his shoulders releasing the instant he feels the crisp bills there. He pulls them out, not expecting to find a piece of paper, neatly folded, among them.
Confused, Seungcheol tosses it aside and counts the money. “Holy shit,” he says, not quite believing what he sees.
For all his talk, Jihoon’s eyes go wide as Seungcheol keeps counting, but a thought strikes and his brow furrows. “What did you let him do, Seungcheol?”
“Nothing!” Seungcheol swears. “A bite. That’s seriously it.”
Jihoon doesn’t believe it. He takes the money out of Seungcheol’s hands and counts it himself. “This is practically all of next month’s rent. For one bite?”
Seungcheol shrugs, just as baffled. When he remembers the vampire’s face, it was smooth and beautiful and perfectly enigmatic. “He seemed fancy.”
“Fancy?” Jihoon sounds unimpressed.
“Nice clothes,” Seungcheol says by way of explanation. He packs some more of the sweet bun into his cheeks and then washes it down with water. “Expensive shoes. Thought the usual place was beneath him. Fancy.”
It was more than that, but Seungcheol can't think of a way to describe the way he moved, the softness in his voice.
Jihoon is shaking his head anyway, fed up. “Can we go home?”
“Yeah,” Seungcheol agrees, standing up. His vision goes black for a minute, and in an instant Jihoon is there to steady him. It passes quickly and Seungcheol waves him off. “I’m fine.”
Jihoon stays where he is, skeptical until Seungcheol looks him in the eye, clear and direct. He huffs and turns away to go pack his bag. Seungcheol looks around for his clothes and spots his shirt and jacket on the rumpled sheets on the bed, right along with the unexpected note.
Seungcheol’s curiosity is finally piqued.
“Hyung, let’s go.” Jihoon says, already standing next to the door.
“One second,” he insists, unfolding the paper.
Come here next week, no new bites or bruises, and you’ll get double.
“What is that?” Jihoon asks.
“Just a weird note,” Seungcheol says, folding it and putting it back in his pocket. He needs some time to think about it. Double the money could buy new shoes for Chan and Mingyu, with plenty leftover for essentials, but there is too much left unsaid in the offer. The panicked moment when he was sure the vampire intended to drain him dry isn’t something he’s eager to experience twice.
“A weird note,” Jihoon repeats.
“Yeah,” Seungcheol nods, as he tugs on his shirt choosing not to weigh the risks versus the reward right now. “He was a weird guy.”
“I thought he was fancy.”
“Fancy and weird,” Seungcheol agrees. He grabs his jacket and shrugs it on as he’s walking toward the door.
“I didn’t like the look of him.”
Seungcheol stops cold. “He was still here when you got here?”
Jihoon nods. “He let me in. Said he made you sleep. And that he wanted to give you a thank you note.”
Seungcheol frowns, deeply unsettled by the thought of Jihoon fending for himself with a blood happy vampire while he was out cold. He grits his teeth and tells himself it's fine. Jihoon is perfectly fine. Seungcheol might even be able to work tomorrow and they have more money than they’ve seen in months. It’s late and they just need to get back to the apartment.
"Like I said. He was weird.”
Outside the hotel, there's a pink line growing steadily at the horizon. The sun will be up soon.