Chapter Text
Pain.
White-hot, monochrome pain.
Here, agony, amongst the stirile gray walls and blank linoleum tiling, the endless, windowless halls making his head spin. He stumbles through the maze of unmarked turns, bracing one hand against the wall in an effort to keep himself upright. The lights, industrial fluorescent, occasionally flicker, the world blinking in and out of existence, and in a flash of dark, he finds himself on the floor, legs collapsed beneath him.
He curses his vertigo.
One hand on the floor, he tries to push himself standing, but his wrist buckles under his weight, and he takes the fall on his elbow, the floor searing against the open cut on his arm. Pain, bright and hot, flares through his nerves, burning a path as it goes. Hongjoong sucks in a harsh breath through his teeth and tries to ignore the way his lungs protest the action.
Pain, pain, pain.
Some pain is dull, an ache that rests within his bones and only shows its face late at night, old injuries acting up in the cold and keeping him awake through the bleeding hours of dawn. Dull pain can be dealt with, cared for, soothed by a heating pad and a few pills.
Some pain is sharp—quick and piercing—but it’s the sort of pain that can be bandaged, that can be identified and sorted through with a bit of gauze.
Some pain is like unending fire, seething with brimstone agony and pulsing with molten anger, each drag of air into his chest more fuel for the overwhelming pain that has devoured him from the inside and spread out to every inch of his skin, burning, burning, burning—
Hongjoong grabs at the front of his shirt, hand spasming slightly. Crimson blooms beneath his fingers, the color bleeding across the white polyester of his shirt. Stains. He hates bloodstains. He hates the smell of bleach, hates Seonghwa’s disappointed grimace and the reminder that someone has been injured. There is no blood without pain, no cause for it to show unless someone has been hurt. There is no wound, however small, that didn’t cause one of his members some level of pain.
He should have worn black today.
Mustering his strength, he tries to move once more—a sharp stab to his abdomen, and he falls back against the wall. Fuck. He’s not sure if his ribs are broken, maybe just fractured, but every breath he takes feels shallower than the last and at this point even screaming out feels like too much effort. He manages a low whimper and wonders if he’s more likely to die from internal or external breathing at this point.
Die.
He might die.
Hongjoong chokes on a sob.
He wonders what his crew would think of him if they saw him here, blood smeared across his cheeks like tears. He wonders if they would still follow him, knowing how weak he truly was. He is supposed to be the pillar of support, the Captain, the face of the revolution, and yet here he is, bleeding out on government floors with the broken pieces of their mission scattered around him.
Supply run. It was supposed to be a supply run.
The government is the only one with pain killers, with half-way decent medical supplies or anything stronger than honey, alcohol, or a bit of powder. The outskirts of the city are desolate in comparison, the place a dirty, black film upon the Capital’s shining utopia, and Hongjoong would not trust any drug sold there, not unless he planned to take a particularly desperate gamble for his life.
Jongho. Jongho was injured, and they needed to help him. Their youngest. Their strong, beautiful youngest who Hongjoong has failed to protect from anything—
A strangled whimper. Everything hurts. Everything hurts. Everything hurts, and Hongjoong needs to get up, to check on his crew, to make sure they're okay, to make sure this sacrifice was not in vain and that they made it out safely.
But pain and he can only drop his head against the wall and slump further into himself.
Pain, pain, pain.
He wishes that it would just go away. Maybe one of the white-masked guardians will come by and bother to notice him here, will shoot him and that will be the end of it all. The end. The finale. Fade to black because he doesn’t want to face Seonghwa now, to face his admonishment—you are an idiot, Hongjoong, an absolute idiot—because Hongjoong took a stupid risk without telling anyone, disobeyed the plan in order to buy Yunho a little more time and got himself killed for it.
Killed.
Is he dead, yet?
If he doesn’t die here, Seonghwa is bound to kill him, so maybe he should just kick the bucket now and save himself the lecture. The tears. Fuck. He hates seeing Seonghwa cry.
Everything hurts but he thinks he lost feeling in his left hand a while ago, and he can’t move it anymore. His right eye is caked shut with blood, his left eye long since slipped closed, and maybe it’s better that he can’t see himself, see all the blood or the twisted, unnatural angle of his arm.
He’s not sure why, but he always thought that death would be a little less painful than this.
Death.
The rebellion.
If he dies, will the rebellion crumble with his name as well? He’s the Captain, after all, and Seonghwa has always been a better second-in-command than leader. The rebellion. Hongjoong has an ambition to chase, a promise to fulfill, a crew to look after. A crew. His crew. Seonghwa is better at looking after them than him, calm and understanding in contrast to Hongjoong’s prickly, abrasive nature, but Hongjoong is selfish, and he wants to see his crew again. Again. Death means no more agains, and it’s a terrifying thought.
Death.
Jongho. They need to get the supplies to Jongho.
Wooyoung’s birthday is soon, isn’t it? Hongjoong still needs to get him a gift—
Pain, but he has things to do, speeches to give, music to make. He doesn’t like admitting it to himself, doesn’t like being so vulnerable with his emotions, but Hongjoong is scared—terrified, even—of what death means, if it’s hell waiting for him on the other side or nothing but stark, empty whiteness. Endless hallways. Linoleum floors.
Hongjoong is scared, and he doesn’t want to die.
He doesn’t want to die.
He doesn’t want to die.
He forces a strangled sound through his teeth, something like help or maybe it's more primal than that, a sound of pure, distilled fear from the depths of his throat that rises up like bile. Lingers. Tastes bitter on his tongue.
A soft touch brushes his hair away from his face.
Hongjoong jerks back, instinctively reaching for his gun only to be met with another flare of pain in his gut. Moving. He needs to move because he needs to get away, but he can’t move because moving hurts, and—
Someone shushes him, laying a hand on his cheek. The touch is warm—warmer than Hongjoong would have expected. Gentle. A thumb brushes over his cheek, and Hongjoong lets out a shuddering exhale, exhausted. A second hand comes to cradle his face, and Hongjoong lets himself lean into the touch, lets his head lull to the side as someone else takes the burden of weight from his shoulders.
He can feel the way that they trace the rim of his eye socket, slowly, almost lovingly. He can feel the way that two fingers press against his left eye, a nail sliding into the crease of his eyelid and prying it apart, forcing it open.
Hongjoong whimpers in pain.
“Are you alive?” the person asks.
Person? Maybe not a person at all. The world is blurry and indistinct, everything but an impressionist dream of reality. Hongjoong can just make out the shape of something—a man?—crouched before him. Even with their face pressed so close, it’s hard to discern their features, hard to tell where reality ends and surreality begins, but Hongjoong can make out the lines of a smile, can catch the way that white teeth glint in the light.
An angel?
Are angels nice?
The person—angel?—sits between Hongjoong’s legs, staring up at him with wide, doe eyes. They seem fascinated, almost reverent, with how they dig their fingers into Hongjoong’s wounds, delighting in each keen of pain that slips from Hongjoong’s lips.
“You poor thing,” the angel pouts. It’s almost childish, that pout, but there’s something darker beneath it, something wrong, the bass notes ringing just a bit too low. It’s unnerving, the way it makes Hongjoong’s skin crawl, and how he can do nothing but sit there and let the angel hold him.
I’m not a thing, is Hongjoong’s first thought, which isn’t particularly helpful.
Help me help me help me help—is his second.
The angel just shushes him again, pressing closer until their nose bumps up against Hongjoong’s cheek, and Hongjoong can feel every breath they take against his skin. “Will you let me save you?” they ask.
What?
“If you can promise me something in return, I’ll save you.”
Hongjoong doesn’t know what he has to offer. He has neither coin nor the voice to negotiate with, neither information nor secrets to submit. He has only blood and pain and—
He lets out another whimper, the angel digging their nails into the cut on his lip.
Everything hurts, everything—
“Anything,” Hongjoong says, or tries to say, some broken word or another making it past his lips. His throat is dry, and using his vocal chords feels like scraping two pieces of sandpaper together, but desperation is a useful motivator, however cruel, and he needs to force his tongue to say something—anything—because he doesn’t want to die here. He doesn’t want to die.
Seonghwa would tell him that he shouldn’t strain himself so much. Seonghwa isn’t here to be his voice of reason right now.
Fuck, Seonghwa.
The angel seems to brighten. “Then,” they say, “in exchange for your anything, I’ll save you.”
The angel has a nice voice, Hongjoong thinks, soft and sweet but not sickeningly so. It’s rich like the good coffee roast Wooyoung manages to smuggle on occasion—like chocolate, maybe molasses.
A kiss, slow and a little metallic, the angel licking at the blood on Hongjoong’s lips like a kitten might.
Burning.
Everything feels like it’s burning.
Every bone in his body seems to writhe, twisting and breaking out of alignment—pain, pain, pain—before Hongjoong, perhaps mercifully, loses consciousness, and the world goes dark around him.
He wakes to an overcast sky.
He can see the faint imprint of the moon through the clouds, but there is no night in this city, everything lit by artificial light, the day extended into meaningless infinity. A broken street lamp flickers next to him, and Hongjoong lets out a soft groan of pain.
He’s not entirely sure where he is—in the city, he knows, in a back alley of some sort, the pathway narrow and cramped, but he has no idea where he is in relation to his crew, what direction north is when the sun is hidden from view. His head is pounding. He feels vaguely nauseous, and he has half the mind to cave in his own skull to banish the sensation.
Someone taps on his forehead. “You awake?”
Hongjoong doesn’t feel very awake.
“Did you die again?”
Again?
There, a man in front of him, hunched in a crouch and giving Hongjoong a soft pout. A man? The angel. Looking at him now, lit by neon and fluorescent, he doesn’t seem much like an angel at all. His features are sharp, almost feline in nature, and there’s no heavenly aura around him. Instead, his presence is marked by something darker, the shadows seeming to twist around him like dark pools of ink, coagulating and dispersing, never quite sticking.
Hongjoong purses his lips tightly, the skin turning white.
Beautiful. The man—angel?—is beautiful. There’s an elegance that runs through the lines of his figure, the way he curls his spine, the way he ghosts his fingers along the outline of Hongjoong’s knee, all of it so carefully poised. There’s power coiled in his muscles, wound along his tendons and intertwined with the ligaments like a predator ready to strike.
“Who are you?” Hongjoong asks, steeling his voice with whatever broken shards of confidence he has lying around. He can’t show fear, not here. He shoves the panic down his throat and prays not to cough it back up too soon.
The not-angel just smiles. “I’m San,” he says.
San.
That’s not very helpful.
Though passive for now, nothing about San seems harmless. He’s all sharp angles and lean muscle, feline eyes, dark aura. He has a smile on his lips, sweet, but a little too pointed to be kind, his canines just a bit too keen. He looks eager. Hungry.
Hongjoong lets out a shaky exhale.
San.
“You’re a demon,” Hongjoong says, and maybe it’s absurd. He’s never met a demon before, never even considered their existence, but if one were to exist, it would be San. San, that the word demon does so cleanly fit when angel is too pure and man too mundane.
San seems unperturbed. “Uh huh,” he says.
Hongjoong’s not sure if he wants to cry or scream.
He allows himself neither.