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The blood drips calmly up Soonyoung’s wrist as he traces his ruined knuckles with his lips. He can already feel the swelling under his eye ache as is starts to bloom, and he knows that tomorrow he will have a lilac blush across his cheekbone.
His tongue darts out across the split skin and he tastes his own blood — hot and warm and wrong. In front of him, the man cowers further into the alleyway, crowds his way closer behind the stinking bins. Foolishly, he’d thought that the small pocketknife he always carried with him would be enough to protect himself from someone like Soonyoung.
That knife protrudes from Soonyoung’s ribs now, settles deeper into his muscles with each breath. It hurts, of course it hurts. But Soonyoung is used to ignoring the hurt by now.
He smiles as he crouches in front of the man. The button of his jeans are still undone, his pupils blown wide with terror. The taste of blood is thick on Soonyoung’s teeth as he smiles, leans in closer and says, “Do not be afraid.”
“You’re getting lazy.” Minghao is slouched across the couch like he’s inviting Soonyoung to draw him. Which he may well be. “Three bodies found in the past two months. People will start asking questions.”
Soonyoung scoffs. “Never the right questions, my love.” He twists his hand in the thin strip of light that ekes its way between the curtains, admiring the scabs that have already begun to heal. He likes the way the fresh skin pulls taught as he closes his hand into a fist, enjoys watching the blood rush back as he relaxes. “You’ve nothing to fear from the police.”
“It’s not the police I am concerned about.” There is a darkness to Minghao’s eyes as he turns the page of the book he is pretending to read. “You have no idea who you are taunting by being so sloppy.”
A muscle jumps in Soonyoung’s jaw. “So teach me,” he urges, rolling onto his front and propping himself up on his elbows. The rug is thin and scratchy on his bare skin. “Show me.”
Minghao licks a finger before turning another page. “Later, darling. Later.”
Jihoon seems surprised when he first sees Soonyoung. “You’ve aged.” It’s almost a question.
One of Soonyoung’s hands flutters at his side, desperate to pat at the hairs dyed from grey to blond, to pull at the lines around his eyes that the kind doctor’s hands have smoothed away. “Hardly,” he mutters, and he reminds himself not to sound churlish.
He does not miss the way that Jihoon’s eyebrow tugs upwards, the doubtful tilt of his head. Nor does he miss the way the wine stains Jihoon’s teeth and lips an ugly blue, the stain on the breast of his shirt, the way the hem is coming undone on his left trouser leg. Smugly, Soonyoung smoothes his own immaculate suit and crosses his legs in front of him.
“He’s still around then.” Another not quite question. Jihoon’s breath smells like garlic and theres a herb caught in his front teeth. Soonyoung pauses from digging a piece of flesh from behind one of his teeth with his tongue to nod slowly. “Still the same?”
“Of course.” Soonyoung catches himself picking at the skin around his nail just before he draws blood again. “Always.”
He can’t remember the first time he met Minghao, just that one day he woke up in an apartment with a rotting wooden floor and the smell of decay under his fingernails, and that he was there in the corner of the room, watching.
Do not be afraid had been his advice, but it had sounded much more like don’t scream in amongst the dust of the half-lit room.
Soonyoung had barely waited until his leg had healed until he sprinted down the street, had lasted almost three days until he crawled back for another taste of Minghao’s bared veins. He felt Minghao’s loathing in his bones, tasted his sorrow in the back of his throat, and wanted nothing more than to smother the lonely look in his eyes.
So, he stayed.
“You’ll give it to me one day, right?” There’s a smudge of red at the corner of Minghao’s lips, which could be lipstick or could be worse. “I won’t have to wait forever.”
A sigh stirs up the deep blue of the heavily-curtained room. “You don’t want this, Soonyoung.”
Except that he does. Desperately. Something which he reminds Minghao of again and again when he is sober enough to put his mouth to use in forming the words. The bodies had been intended to prove that he can be trusted, but Minghao seems to be tiring of even that trivial joviality.
He rolls onto his side, ignores the way his hip clicks as he pulls his leg up to rest across Minghao’s stomach. “We could have this always,” he whispers. “We’d never have to change. Not for anything. Not for anyone.”
Minghao’s finger strokes the patch on Soonyoung’s temple where his scalp is peaking through more and more each day. “I’m not afraid of change, Soonyoung,” he murmurs, pressing a cold kiss to the meat of his throat.
And that feels like more of a curse than anything.