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It’s been seven months, a week, and four days.
He looks exactly the same. Eunseok has to remind himself, again, that he will always look as he did that day he changed, even when Eunseok’s own face is so heavy with wrinkles he won’t be able to recognize himself in the mirror.
Eunseok loves summer. Sungchan is always muttering about his wet socks as they walk across campus, but the rain is soothing. A rhythm on the windows, like a hush over his ears. Uncrowded streets, everyone hiding indoors. Waking up and wondering if it’s night or day.
Eunseok eyes the thumb that flicks the lighter. One, two, three, four times until it catches. Fingers shaking. Stupid.
The hand falls away, the stranger offering a shy laugh in return for the offered thanks. Eunseok doesn’t need to hear the conversation or be able to read lips. Standing across the street, inside a brightly lit 7 Eleven, he knows the conversation by heart. He’s seen this play before.
Wonbin turns his big eyes up at the man and smiles, his lips curling behind the cigarette he hasn’t taken a single drag off. Do they ever notice he doesn’t smoke?
The bell above the door chimes. The rain is warm and sticks to his skin. He’s probably absorbing eight kinds of toxins. Turning around to grab his abandoned umbrella is a thought that flits across his mind briefly, but then there is the green light at the crosswalk, there is Wonbin’s hand in the crook of an arm, there are Eunseok’s fingers digging into his shoulder.
“Hello,” Wonbin says.
Eunseok’s thumb fits into the dip of his collarbone. When the rain hits the top of Wonbin’s head, it steams up around him, like a halo.
“Hello?” The man says.
“You could smell me,” Eunseok says. It’s not an accusation, just the truth, but he tries not to cringe at how it comes out so childishly.
“I could,” Wonbin agrees. He flicks the cigarette off somewhere on the sidewalk. “Did you want me to interrupt your dinner?”
“I’m interrupting yours.”
Wonbin’s grin sends a zip of lightning up Eunseok’s spine. Of course, after all this time, it’s a natural reaction. Prey can’t help but feel a rush when they’re being hunted. It’s survival.
The man clears his throat. Eunseok can’t believe this dickhead is still here. Wonbin’s gaze doesn’t fall from Eunseok’s.
“Well,” Wonbin says, “are you taking me home?”
It would be a cliche, to say that Wonbin isn’t like other vampires. But cliches are okay when you’re dating someone, or almost dating someone, at least this is what Seunghan says.
“Cliches are cliche because people think the same things, because we all feel the same way in the end, and isn’t that a good thing? That humans all come back together?”
Eunseok doesn’t want to take advice from someone who’s in love with a guy who wouldn’t care if he lived or died. At least Eunseok knows for a fact that Wonbin cares if he lives, because he lets him.
Wonbin’s grip is tight around his wrists. He likes the way Eunseok’s pulse beats into his palms, how it quickens when he realizes he’s trapped.
Wonbin has such a slight frame, a slender figure that floats through the room, more like a dancing ghost than anything. People like to do things for him, not only because he’s beautiful, but because he looks incapable. Fragile. Eunseok knows better. It’s easy for Wonbin to hold him down, even when he struggles.
“You look different,” Wonbin says. He presses his nose under the line of Eunseok’s jaw. His tongue flicks out to taste the toxic rain and sweat mixing on his throat. He sighs, his grip relaxing a modicum, and his hips press heavy against Eunseok’s. “But you still taste the same, don’t you?”
How would Eunseok fucking know?
He rocks his hips up against Wonbin’s, pursing his lips in an effort not to outright frown. He doesn’t want to give Wonbin the satisfaction of pouting. He’s not that desperate for it.
Wonbin’s tongue again, cold, cold, melting ice slipping over his skin. Eunseok’s hair stands on end.
“Did you miss me?” Wonbin murmurs.
He’s such an ass. Eunseok forgot how much he hates him.
“Shut the fuck up,” Eunseok says. “Fuck me.”
“Fuck you,” Wonbin agrees. His fangs find their home in the curvature of Eunseok’s neck, but he doesn’t bite down. Not yet. He’ll wait for Eunseok to be on the edge, to lose his sense of self and dignity. He always waits for Eunseok to ask. He always waits to be wanted.
He’s a gentleman like that.
It’s been a year, three weeks, and six days since the first time Eunseok saw his face.
“Mind sharing?” Wonbin asked pleasantly.
Eunseok wasn’t fond of sharing anything, actually, but he watched Wonbin’s smile tilt sideways and felt oddly charmed by the glint of his white, white teeth under the dim yellow streetlight. Around the corner, the door to the bar he worked part-time thumped with music. Last year’s greatest hits blurted onto the street as a few other college kids spilled out ungracefully, laughing.
Wonbin kept smiling. His eyes were big and dark and unwavering. Eunseok didn’t know him then, didn’t know anything, not even his name which would become so familiar on his tongue, but his pupils only blew so wide when he was hungry.
Eunseok shrugged and passed him his already lit cigarette. What was a little saliva swapped between himself and some hot guy? He’d done worse with his spit in a dark alley.
Wonbin’s fingers shook as he took it. He didn’t lift it to his lips, just kept staring at Eunseok’s face, his neck, his shoulders, his neck, all while smoke curled off the tip, disappearing into the air between them.
“Actually,” Wonbin said. “I need a favor.”
His words lisped as they fell out of his mouth, like his tongue was catching on something in its rush.
Eunseok wasn’t ugly. He was used to being looked at, often. Wonbin’s relentless stare sent goosebumps crawling down his arms. In the pit of his stomach, there was a tight ball of instinct that told him at once that he should run, and that stepping closer to this man might lead to something interesting.
“What kind of favor?” Eunseok asked, reaching for the wasted cigarette. There was no cinematic spark of electricity once they touched, Eunseok’s fingertips slipping over Wonbin’s. Still, Wonbin reacted as though he’d been struck. He jerked his head back, his nostrils flaring.
As Eunseok made to lift his hand toward his mouth again, he realized, in fact, that he could not move. Wonbin’s hand had closed around his wrist, keeping him still. His fingers were cold. So cold that they made Eunseok’s bones ache.
“Um,” Eunseok said.
“Sorry,” Wonbin said, his voice low. As he tugged Eunseok forward, he was helpless but to go, his attention fixed on Wonbin’s eyes, the blackness so stark. “Sorry, someone’s following me and I’m– I’m out of time.”
The words didn’t register fully until far later. At first, Eunseok tried to say something, he was sure, but language ceased to function in his brain as Wonbin pressed his icy lips to the center of Eunseok’s palm, dragged his tongue all the way down his middle finger.
The cigarette dropped.
“It won’t leave a mark,” Wonbin promised, before pricking a white fang into the fleshy part of Eunseok’s fingertip.
Eunseok could not, genuinely, believe what was happening. As he sucked on Eunseok’s finger, Wonbin’s cheeks glowed pink, his pallid face filling with color. He looked like a painting. The streetlights blurred, his mind going fuzzy and blank. And then, he didn’t need to believe, or think, anything at all.
“That’s what you get for talking to strangers,” Sungchan said. Despite his admonishments, he was gentle as he lifted the icepack from Eunseok’s forehead, inspecting the bump where his head had hit the pavement after passing out two steps from the bar’s front door.
“Are you slutshaming me for taking a smokebreak?” Eunseok asked. He touched his bruised skin – wet, cold cold cold – and suppressed a shiver. “Will I live?”
“I think you’ll be fine.”
“Anyway,” Eunseok said. “I thought they usually fed off, you know, like, necks. I didn’t think I needed to be so protective over my fingers.”
Sungchan’s lips twisted in and out of a smile. The bastard. “If they’re hungry, anything will do.”
“Wow,” Eunseok said. “I did not need to know all that.”
He leaned his forearms on the bar, watching Sungchan finish cleaning up all the glasses, wipe down the sick and bartop, sweep the floor.
“Do you think,” he started as they locked the door behind them, squinting at the sunlight peeking between tall buildings. “Do you think Shotaro hyung might know him?”
Sungchan cut him a glance. “Didn’t know that getting your blood drawn would make you fall in love so quickly.”
Eunseok wasn’t ordinarily violent, but Sungchan deserved the push, the fall on the pavement, the scab on his knee that predictably healed after his next date night.
“Why did we ever stop doing this?”
Behind him, Wonbin trails his fingers down Eunseok’s spine. It’s unnerving in a particular way; after feeding, full and sated, Wonbin warms, so Eunseok can barely feel his touch.
Is he joking? Tugging at Eunseok’s sensitivities? Eunseok doesn’t feel like facing him to try to read his expression and drag out his meaning, so he keeps his eyes closed, face half-pressed into his pillow.
“Hyung?”
Eunseok’s muscles tense under Wonbin’s prodding hands. Wonbin had been older than him before they met. Last year, they were the same age. Why does the bastard have to rub it in, that Eunseok is growing up while he stays still?
Wonbin’s laugh rings in his ears as he flips over. His cheeks burn as Eunseok pinches and pokes, jabs and twist, wrestles him into the mattress until his slender hips are framed by Eunseok’s thighs. He lets Eunseok hold him there. He looks up at him, his smile big, his eyes bigger, and doesn’t move a centimeter as Eunseok’s heartbeat grows so loud in his own head that it must be a pounding drum to Wonbin.
“You disappeared,” Eunseok says. He squeezes Wonbin’s wrist. Maybe if he holds on tight enough, he can leave a bruise on his pale skin, just for a few minutes, while his own blood flows through Wonbin’s veins.
“Oh,” Wonbins murmurs. “Did I?”
He had been here one minute, his mouth on Eunseok’s neck as Eunseok’s skin tingled, sleep pressing in on all sides of his vision. He had held Eunseok close, petting his hair as their body temperatures met. It had been stupid – Eunseok’d had an animation final due the next morning that he’d abandoned, exhausted, preferring instead to lie next to Wonbin as long as he could. He’d also slept through Wonbin leaving, and awoken to an empty apartment.
Eunseok’s grip tightens. “Remember? You sucked me dry then never came back.”
Wonbin’s lips twitch into a grin. Eunseok kind of wants to punch him square in the fangs. He kisses him instead.
Wonbin’s teeth catch on his lips, poke his tongue. Wonbin fists his hand into Eunseok’s hair and pulls him back. Eunseok can feel his pulse behind his eyes. Wonbin didn’t drink enough to leave him exhausted, but he’s lost his stamina for this push and pull.
“I did come back,” Wonbin mumbles. “Of course, I’ll always come back.”
Maybe Eunseok was crazy. Maybe he was haunted.
“Maybe you have a crush.”
Eunseok would have done something diabolical like stab his pen through Sungchan’s hand or knocked his head sideways with his sketchbook, but he was too tired. Covering shift after shift, his class schedule damned, just for the chance to see a certain someone again left him touchier than usual. But, dragged down by missed sleep, his body was too heavy to do anything about it.
Besides, he was probably right.
Eunseok tapped his pen on the corner of his current page, absentmindedly watching the ink splay like freckles over another bare neck, identicals of which spanned every preceding page. He couldn’t make any of his drawings match the man, but who could?
Bare skin, slender fingers, big doe eyes. Not what one would ever anticipate to be a threat to their life. Or, if Eunseok’s nights kept going the way they were, a threat to his dick and the looming development of carpal tunnel.
It had been three weeks, two days, thirty-four minutes. Give or take.
“Don’t worry,” Sungchan continued. “He’ll come back. I’m sure you’re very tasty.”
Eunseok snapped his sketchbook shut. “I need a cigarette.”
“Don’t pass out again, please!”
Since it happened, the alley had glowed with more charm than Eunseok had given it credit for. A little dirty, a little dark, a little narrow, sure. But if beautiful creatures started crawling out of every nasty sidestreet, Eunseok might start feeling more adventurous.
Something was off that night. A chill was starting to creep under the layer of heat, a breeze blowing his hair off his forehead. The ends of his hair tickled the tips of his ears. He smoked a cigarette. Then another.
“Got a light?”
Like a prayer, answered.
“Are you religious?” Eunseok asked.
As he turned, he found Wonbin where he’d first found him. Though, he suspected, it was Wonbin who had been doing the finding.
He didn’t even pretend to smoke this time. He just stood there, his hands in his pockets, body long and relaxed. Some twisted alleycat that you couldn’t get rid of once you had made the mistake of feeding it once.
“Not especially,” Wonbin answered. “But the universe usually surprises you.”
“I didn’t expect you to show up again,” Eunseok said.
“Me neither,” Wonbin said.
“Are you stalking me?”
Wonbin smiled. Eunseok was surprised that his teeth were still nice, but normal to look at. Nothing that would betray any function for piercing through flesh.
“I felt bad,” Wonbin explained. “I usually don’t just jump on people like that. It was just… a bad situation. And you happened to be there.”
“What a coincidence,” Eunseok said flatly. He finished his cigarette, flicked it away somewhere into the dark. “Happy I could help.”
“Can I do anything to return the favor?”
“Sure,” Eunseok said. He thought for a moment. He wondered if Wonbin could hear his heart beating. “I’m curious, though.”
“About?”
“The teeth. Show me.”
Wonbin sucked in a sharp breath, glancing down the alley to the street. Only a few people were milling around, too distracted by their own blurry nights to notice Eunseok stepping closer to a vampire.
“I probably shouldn’t,” Wonbin said finally. “But. You can feel them.”
Eunseok wanted to point out that he had already felt them, but Wonbin was taking his hands, guiding them up to the sides of his face. Eunseok let his fingers brush over his smooth cheeks, dipped his thumb into the hollow beneath his jaw, where he should have felt a pulse. There was nothing.
Wonbin opened his mouth. Not a lot, but enough for Eunseok to slip his thumb inside. He massaged along his gum, pressing none too gently. Then it was there. The point – the tip. Eunseok pushed his thumb up until he felt the pop of his own skin against Wonbin’s fang.
Wonbin looked up at him and did not move.
If he could hear Eunseok’s heartbeat, he might fall into base instinct. When a predator finds vulnerable prey, what is left but the killing?
Eunseok withdrew his hand slowly, dragging his thumb over Wonbin’s lip – a long, thin streak of blood trailing after it.
“Good boy,” Eunseok murmured.
Wonbin licked his lips.
“Do I taste good?”
“Fuck,” Wonbin said, tongue lisping against his extended fangs, darling white and peeking out between his lips. “Don’t ask stupid questions.”
Eunseok grinned. He swiped his tongue over the pad of his thumb. Not bad.
“Alright, creature of the night. Let’s go.”