Chapter Text
Hot breath on his face. A flash of light reflected in dark, faded blue eyes, the color of a dark sky lit by the moon, briefly turning them silvery pale, like the moon itself. The weight of a body on top of him. Rapid heartbeat to match his own. Rapid breathing. In fear? Anger?
…Excitement?
~~~
Chan’s eyes snapped open and, with trembling hands, he turned on the faucet, letting the cold water run over his hands, dragging streaks of brown and red across the white sink and down the drain. An attempt to wash away more than just the filth as vivid recollection kept his body and his mind suspended in that moment.
A chill ran down his spine, nothing to do with the frigid water encompassing his hands.
~~~
A low grumble, feral and animalistic. The hairs on the back of his neck standing on end. A hand pressed to his throat. His life flashed in those moonlit eyes. A request…no, a threat for him to submit.
Never.
With practiced ease and a swift and controlled motion, Chan pushed his assailant to the side and used that momentum to roll himself off his back and on top, gaining dominance.
Now the fear was clear to see as moonlit eyes widened and lips parted with a gasp, followed by even more rapid breathing that washed over him.
You’re mine now.
~~~
Chan ducked his head and gripped the edges of the sink, bracing himself, the silence broken only by the sound of the running water. He stared at his whitening knuckles, still streaked with dirt and blood, only partially washed off.
The soap dish rattled slightly.
He took in a sharp breath and released his grip on the porcelain. The rattling stopped. He let the breath out again and turned off the water, listening for a moment, but there was no sound coming from the other room. Yet. He lifted his eyes to the mirror to check the door behind him, but froze as he stared into his own eyes. The brown seemed to flash silver for a moment with the recollection of another face, not his own, only centimeters away.
What are you doing?
Breath against his face, filling his lungs. The ghost of a touch—a hand pressing against his chest, a weak attempt to push him off—sent a tingle down his skin. He tilted his head back and then slowly closed his eyes.
~~~
“Don’t…” Those lips trembled, matching the trembling of the hand pressing against his chest, trying to put space between them. “Please…”
Aside from that lone touch, he had stopped all struggling as his chest rose and fell with quick and panicked breaths.
Chan stared down at his prey, the pleading look in those piercing, moonlit eyes, the way his breaths pushed out between his soft lips, the dirt and traces of blood streaked down his face and into his dark hair, tangled with leaves, his hand gripping the back of Chan’s hand that was now wrapped around his throat, his fingers long and delicate, belaying the strength of his grip as he pulled at Chan’s hand, trying get free.
Nothing about his appearance bespoke the beast within, the monster of Chan’s deepest and darkest fantasies…nightmares.
No, the man Chan had pinned below him on the forest floor was nothing but beautiful.
~~~
The ghost of the hand on his chest tightened to a fist, grabbing a handful of Chan’s shirt, knuckles pressed against his clavicle. Chan opened his eyes again and the lingering sensation faded away.
He was standing, alone, in the pristinely clean bathroom of his suite on the eighth floor of a luxury high rise in the middle of Seoul, the only evidence of the forest, of his prey, of that moment, was the grime staining his hands.
At least in this room.
~~~
Moonlit eyes darted back and forth as the two men remained suspended in this moment and then locked with brown ones again. Chan kept his hand pressed against his throat, his body pinning his prey’s body, but made no other move.
His heart beat to the pulse he felt under his fingers.
“What…” his throat shifted as he swallowed hard under Chan’s grip, “what do you want with me?” But despite his fear, he also didn’t seem able to tear his eyes away and his grip on Chan’s hand loosened, his fingers gently shifting across his knuckles, now cradling Chan’s hand as if it wasn’t still wrapped around his throat.
When Chan didn’t immediately respond, his prey gripped his shirt for a moment, and then suddenly pulled him down closer to his face, his hot breath once again hitting his cheek with its intoxicating scent. Chan’s hand, braced against the ground near his prey’s head, was the only thing that kept their faces from colliding.
“I asked you,” a voice hissed in Chan’s ear, that breath now stirring his hair, “what do you want with me?”
A cold chill and horrifying exhilaration flooded through Chan’s body as he felt the brush of soft lips against his neck and then the gentle scrape of teeth. He was greeted with a breathy laugh as he released his grip on his prey’s neck.
“You.” Chan breathed into his ear before pushing himself up again, creating space once more. Those deep blue, moonlit eyes lit up for a moment, the fear giving way for a…curiosity.
Then fear flooded back in as that spark went out.
The sparkle of silver, a click of a lock, and the clink of a chain.
Chan was on his feet again while his prey remained on his back, staring up at him, his breath seemingly caught in his throat. Moonlit eyes trailed down from Chan’s face, slowly to his hand and the sturdy silver chain dangling from his fingers.
“It’s over, Hwang Hyunjin. You tried…but you were never going to escape me.” To emphasise his point, Chan gestured with the chain.
Hyunjin lifted his hand, the one that, moments before, had been pressed against the heart of the man standing over him, and stared in fear at the silver shackle around his wrist, the other end of the chain attached to it. He snarled and tugged at it, only to be immediately greeted with a burning sensation that caused him to sit up and curl himself around his hand. “What is this?” His eyes darted back up to Chan before returning to the cuff on his wrist.
“Silver.” Chan stared down at Hyunjin, his face now a mask, his years of training kicking in, trying to banish that moment.
Hyunjin snapped his gaze back up to Chan. “Hunter,” he spat out.
Unmoving, unfazed, expression cold and calculating, Chan simply stared back at him. “Wolf.”
~~~
Chan heard a moan coming from the other room and his heartbeat quickened. In a furious rush, he turned the faucet back on and scrubbed the rest of the grime off his hands before marching out of the bathroom, pulling off his shirt as he went. With a well calculated aim, he tossed it across the room, over the starch white covers on his bed and into a hamper by the mirrored closet doors.
He didn’t even give his success a second glance as he entered the hallway, his footsteps quiet and resolute on the carpet.
But two doors down, he slowed.
Another moan.
Chan’s eyes darted to the side at the closed door.
What am I doing?
His eyes snapped forward again and his pace returned to normal, his gaze now fixed on the end of the hallway. Despite the perfectly maintained climate of the hallway, the rooms, this whole suite, a shiver still ran down his body and his hairs raised at the sound of another moan, now from behind him, still trapped behind a door.
He passed two more doors on either side and then a wide open entrance that led to an elegant dining room and a kitchen beyond. The hallway widened into a large lobby, mirrors lining one wall, an elevator door on the other. The ceiling was dark, covered in geometric shaped lights that matched the clean modern feeling and decor of the rest of the space. Across from the hallway entrance was another hallway that stretched further, past the lobby. More doors. More rooms. More silence.
With a sigh, Chan picked up his equipment bag he had dumped unceremoniously by the elevator doors and was about to turn back toward his room, but he paused. His eyes flicked to the keypad by the elevator.
There’s no reason to.
Despite his internal protest, he typed in a code and pressed a button, his actions greeted by the sounds of a lockdown. The keypad flashed red for a moment, illuminating his face.
There are other safe houses.
He returned to his room, finished cleaning up, showered, and changed into clean, expensive, white clothes, all the while, the moans echoing in his ears, the only other sound in the silence, as if determined to drive him insane. Ignoring them as best he could, he went to the kitchen to prepare some food.
Enough for two.
Finally, he couldn’t stand it anymore. He ripped the towel off his shoulder and threw it down onto the counter before marching out of the kitchen and back into the hallway, following the soft sounds of moaning. He unlocked and whipped open the door.
“You will be silent.”
In the middle of the floor of a small, bare room, lit with red, sat a man in chains, his legs crossed and his hands gripping his shaggy, dirty, black hair as he hunched over, rocking back and forth slightly. His head lifted slowly as his hands dropped into his lap.
Dark, faded blue eyes flashed with moonlight.
“Let me go,” whispered Hyunjin, but his plea was met with a cold and unyielding stare. In a flash of almost inhuman speed, he was on his feet and the chains pulled taut as he strained against them. “I didn’t do anything! Let me go!”
Chan didn’t flinch even as Hyunjin’s face came within centimeters of his own. “You exist.”
The chains stopped clanking as Hyunjin relaxed a little, leaning against the pull of the chains, giving his body the oddly distorted look of a marionette tangled in its strings, accentuated even more by the red glow overhead. He looked up at Chan again, their eyes meeting.
Then he spat on his face.
Still unflinching, Chan reached into his pocket and pulled out a handkerchief that he used to wipe his face off. He carefully refolded the square piece of fabric and returned it to his pocket before looking back at Hyunjin. “Your kind is a plague. This city, this country is falling apart because of you. It must be cleansed.”
A low, barely perceptible rumble escaped Hyunjin as he craned his neck, getting his face even closer to Chan’s and once again, Chan felt the heat of his breath brushing his skin. Hot. Intoxicating. He felt the sensation of bared teeth scraping against his neck, remembering the terror…and exhilaration of that feeling, that memory sending a renewed flood of chills across his body, like a million pins pricking his skin.
A vein popped in Hyunjin’s temple as he strained for that last centimeter he would need to be able to sink his teeth into the hunter. “Then why am I here? Instead of a pile of ash on the forest floor?”
The hunter didn’t respond. He watched as Hyunjin’s eyes darted up and down his captor, trying to seek a withheld answer, anything beyond the mask. But Chan’s face remained stoic and still, his eyes never wavering, rimmed dark, hooded by the low light, turning his brown eyes nearly black, a stark contrast to his blonde-dyed hair, now bathed red in the light.
“If you’re hoping I’ll tell you where more of us are, don’t bother.” Hyunjin finally stepped back, the chains dangling off his long, lithe body, once again, giving the impression of a broken marionette. “Everyone I know is dead.” The wolf tipped his head back, but his eyes remained fixed on Chan, a humorless smile tugging at the corners of his mouth. “You know that.”
As abruptly as he entered, Chan turned and left, but just as he was about to swing the door shut behind him, Hyunjin called out to him.
“You say we’re a plague, Bang Chan,”
Chan paused, his hand gripping the door, his white knuckles the only indication of his unease. He knows my name. How?
“But we were here long before you started hunting us,” the wolf continued. “Did you ever stop to think that maybe you are the reason the world is burning to ashes? Not me?”
Chan slammed the door shut and walked away.
~~~
The rest of the evening was less eventful. Chan finished making food, silently brought a portion to Hyunjin, and then left just as quickly to go sit down at his desk to pour over maps, charts, and reports from the others. Apparently, his old mentee and his team had hunted down, caught, and lugged a truckload of wolves to the North Korean border to release them there. Lee had always been a bit softer. Didn’t have the stomach for killing.
Their northern neighbors had no such inhibitions.
A message pinged. Someone wanted to know why the main Seoul safehouse was in lockdown. Chan’s hands hesitated over the keyboard as he formulated in his mind the reason why he’d brought this particular wolf here to be locked up. His eyes unfocused for a moment. A tremor ran down his arm, manifesting as a twitch in his hovering fingers.
Fingers wrapping around his throat. Soft lips against his neck, forming a kiss.
He closed his eyes and tipped his head back, letting out a breath that stirred the stillness, the silence. Lips parted. The scrape of teeth against his skin.
The moment passed and he slowly lifted his head, opening his eyes again to stare at the message. As if someone else’s hands were the ones typing, he responded, letting them know it was closed for a maintenance issue.
‘Sure thing, Boss,’ was the simple and trusting reply.
Am I going crazy now?