#bathic's:pit

[bathic]

⌜It started with one unlucky volunteer with each new year, chosen from a folded slip of paper piled within an old ball cap. A retriever of answers, the bringer of solutions, messenger of the unknown— whatever false title the mayor could pin to the heads of the chosen only served as empty rhetoric. To you, at least. Everyone else soaked up the verbiage like sponge-brained sheep, crowding their trustworthy shepherd in a state of blind trust against the strange and unusual. It felt stupid to follow, and while your intentions weren’t to do so; the nosedive you take into the gaping mouth of the pit while trying to flee the hands of a real small-town monster only made you half as rash and just a quarter-inch naive.⌟

Current Word Count: 25k

Warning/Tags: Rain-Moth!Ateez, Hybrid!Ateez, Pirate!Ateez, Steampunk au, Science Fiction/Fantasy, poly!Ateez, Slow Burn, Abuse, Trauma, Kidnapping, Angst, Slow burn Romance, Eventual Smut, Human!Reader, Torture, Underground World, Explicit Language.

Chapters↴

It appeared in the spring.

A means to an end.

You were positive they were wings.

Another casualty to the pit.

It was a fantasy you couldn't understand the appeal of.

Maybe it will be if you survive.

Except there was no waiting.

Death was definitely in your foreseeable future.

You needed to get out.

Why should you listen to him anyways?

It's his game and nobody else's to partake in.

Fire and ice, oil and water, love and hate.

[bathic]

12. Fire and ice, oil and water, love and hate.

Word Count: 1.7k

Chapter Warning: Mild violence.

“Seonghwa, since you seem to have a lot to say on things not requiring your input. I’ll let you decide on her new alias.”

Those were the only departing words given and they weren’t even spoken to you. Rather, you weren’t even there. Not entrapped to a chair by shackles within the walls belonging to eight devious men. Not even your dreams could conjure something as outlandish as them. Wings, moths, birds, stags— why had the walls felt so alive?

Whatever Seonghwa replied back with sounded like running water, which clogged your ears in a loud rush. The door opening again was faint, far away and the shackles holding you bound to the ornate chair groaned lowly back into their hidden compartments. You wished your head would right itself, silence the pounding growing erratic in your temples. Gloved hands latched onto the tattered fabric that remained strong at your shoulders, and in the back of your buzzing mind did you register that it must be San.

"I would rather not. No part of me wants to have anything to do with her."

"So be it. San!"

It was a cold war raging behind that wooden door once it closed on your wary heels. You were glad to be spared of its bite.

San guided you without a word, grip firm in the remains of your shirt. He refused to even look at you, one eye obscured by a black eyepatch and the other remaining forward. You hated how completely helpless you felt. That taking the leap to escape what you thought was the biggest threat in your waking life only placed you right into the awaiting maw of something possibly far worse. Only difference was the exchange of one for eight, and the zero chance of finding a way out. How could you even return to the surface? Nothing but the distance from the pit's mouth to the city of glittering lights stretched close enough to the opening.

Abruptly, San stops in front of an unmarked door. You barely catch your bare toes into the flooring, narrowly running into the wings drawn closed on his back. But you were close enough to see the wispy hairs on them, a light fuzz that looked soft to the touch. He doesn't turn, instead speaking to you from over his shoulder. "Wait here."

His tone had every bit of warning in it. You didn't give him a reply and he didn't spare a second to wait on one, disappearing behind the door and leaving you alone in the corridor. A waft of something aromatic and warm danced on the air shoved out from the swinging wood, the scent alone causing your tongue to tingle. It reminded you of your father— actual father. When he’d spend autumn nights roasting a rarely purchased pig over a bonfire until crisp and golden. You hadn’t tasted or smelled nothing like it since you were seven, a life long gone. The memory makes the metal band on your finger burn. A phantom reminder of every day after binding you closer to the hell you’d suffer.

“What are you doing out here?” Seonghwa’s voice rattles you enough to turn away from the door San had gone through, eyes immediately zeroing in on the bloody spot on his lower lip. It hadn’t been there when he first came down during your interrogation or when he sought out Yunho in the cell next to yours. Not even in the captain's quarters did he appear anything but well-kept. However, as he stood with a good berth between you both, you could see not only his long black hair was disheveled but the dying traces of a lovers flush gracing his cheeks and neck. But his eyes didn’t give off any secret affections that might have been the root cause to his shift in appearance instead they burned with a nasty acidity aimed solely at you.

Before you can answer, he cuts through with another question. Just as potent sounding as the first.

“Where is San?”

You frown, jerking your head in the direction of the door. “In there.”

As if he had been pressed against the door with his ear pressed to the wood, San reappeared with a plate and a small serving bowl balanced in one hand while the other held the handle of a mug. He looks up once he’s cleared of the doors path, one eye widening just a smidgen upon seeing Seonghwa. His gaze flits to his lip and a knowing look overtakes his surprise.

“Your lip—“

“Hongjoong decided that you will be shadowing her while she is here. You are also responsible for naming the thing. If you catch wind of suspicious behavior, then you are to report to him immediately. Word of advice, “ He gives you a glare, one that you equally match. “Keep your new pet on a very short rope.”

~

Seonghwa rounds on Hongjoong the moment the door closes, and it is just them filling the space. He knows that the other is far from ignorant, but he can’t help feeling like a bystander to the shenanigans of a rightful fool. Not only did the so-called discussion fall way-side to Hongjoong’s taste for power but now you were here to stay— temporarily if he had anything to do about it.

“You must have gone completely mad if you think for a single second that her being here is a good idea.”

Hongjoong tilts his head, a coy little smile stretching across his lips. “Nothing new.”

It irked the dark-haired man even more when faced with the teasing nonchalance of his lover, for his worries held little significance to his captain.

“No, being out of your mind isn’t anything spontaneous but making absolutely stupid decisions without at least entertaining the only voice of reason you have here makes it painfully obvious that you lack anything above your shoulders, captain.” Seonghwa knew he was dancing close to the ring of fire surrounding them, its invisible flame growing wild at each oil-induced word.

Hongjoong wasn’t smiling so much as he was downright sneering, dark eyes narrowed into the sharpest of blades. He was, and the other knew it, coiled like the very serpent lurking in the darkest corners of his heart. But Seonghwa wouldn’t stand down, cower off with his wings enveloping him in a self-soothing manner. He was stubborn because he cared, and his caring nature made his stubbornness nonnegotiable even in the face of danger. Hongjoong was— is dangerous.

“You’ve grown yourself a pair of wings far too large, perhaps I should snip them a bit to remind you of your place, love.”

Fire and ice, oil and water, love and hate. Both men tiptoed such fine lines where in their passion lies a great hatred. Both knew that both understood one another down to the very marrow of their bones.

That’s why Seonghwa refused to duck away when Hongjoong fisted the front of his blouse between two ring-clad hands and shoved him hazardously onto the surface of his desk. Papers toppled over and fluttered to the floor, neither caring about the mess when Seonghwa buried his slender fingers into Hongjoong’s fawn-colored mullet, his grip tight and snagging, tugging his lover forward into his scowl-drawn lips and bared teeth. Hongjoong met him with an ugly force, the greeting of calcified bone sharp in their ears. Nothing tender resided between their snapping maws, not even the desire for carnality sparked a low blaze in their blood. No, this was malice in all its hunger to ruin.

Seonghwa yanks away when Hongjoong sinks his teeth into his bottom lip and tears through the skin until blood pools without restraint. His breathing is labored, skin hot enough to be suffocating. Hongjoong looks no better with the hurried rise and fall of his chest and hair mussed wildly. Then he sticks his tongue out and drags it across the remnants of Seonghwa clinging to the front of his upper teeth.

“You make me sick.”

“And yet you will still flutter back when the only light in this world is in my hands.”

The taller is quick to shove the other out from the space he claimed between his legs, moving to an unsteady stumble that didn’t cease even as he reached the door. Seonghwa refused to look back, knowing that if he did, the fight he has put up would fall wayside.

“Inform San that he will be taking our newest little charge under his wings. And do stress that his eyes and ears are my own. If I dare catch wind of even the smallest of infractions,” Seonghwa stares at the wood of the door, handle in hand. He could feel the tar-pools of Hongjoong’s gaze heavy on his back. “Then I will skin that puny creature from her scalp to her toes and make a flag out of her peeled flesh and whoever aids in her mutiny will be nothing but bone-dust.”

Seonghwa opens the door and swiftly closes it, his stomach churning in his throat.

~

“He said something horrible to you, didn’t he? Threatened you? Harmed you?” San knew when his mate was troubled by something and more often than not the aforementioned trouble tended to be Hongjoong and his malicious behavior.

Seonghwa scowled, “Mind your own, San.”

You shifted out of the way before Seonghwa could bulldoze you over, watching from the corner of your eye as he stomped down the corridor until he was out of sight.

“Lover's quarrel?”

Turning to look at San, you were met with a stony expression and a jaw that clicked with every tense clench. He settled a sharp eye on you, “Follow me.”

He swiftly moves around you and without a word, follows the same path as Seonghwa did with you hesitantly in tow.

════════════════════════════════════

Masterlist

[bathic]

3. You were positive they were wings.

Word Count: 2.4k

It wasn’t like you didn’t put up a fight. In fact, you might have looked akin to a wild alley cat spooked by the sudden stumbling of a late-night drunk deciding to seek refuge by the dumpster cat-you had been dining out of. But both men had a quickness to them, grappling at your arms and hauling you up onto your feet. And rather than letting you go on your merry (and very lost) way; instead, the shorter of the two began to tug roughly at your bicep, trying to turn you around so that your back was facing his front. It was bizarre how frantic he seemed, and his companion was no different. Yunho attempted to redirect you by your shoulders, but you simply swatted at his hands and jerked around in Wooyoung’s hold.

“Let me go!” You swiped a hand up and forward, grazing Yunho’s jaw. The hit hadn’t been backed with enough force to jerk his head to the side, but it did seem to stun him enough to stop his movements.

He looked down at you with wide eyes, perfectly visible to your own.

“Did… Did you just hit me?”

Wooyoung had also paused, mouth agape as he stared at Yunho and the slightly reddened skin that looked no more than a little discolored. It wasn’t severe, nothing that would leave lasting damage. If anything, it just appeared as if he rubbed at the spot a bit, maybe scratched it softly.

“Yes,” You found a bit of courage to bite into, allowing it to tether itself into your nerves, “—and I won’t hesitate to do it again.”

Yunho’s eyes bounced to Wooyoung’s from over your shoulder, remaining locked for several tense seconds before both men erupted into a loud fit of irrepressible laughter. Something flutters behind Yunho, catching your eye as it shakes with his entire body, expanding up and out until a shadow is casted over your entire form. A dusty grayish brown with white markings, fuzzy and shaped like a smeared raindrop were… wings? You were positive they were wings. A man with wings— a man with wings who lived in the pit in the wheat and wildflower fields of your small town out in the middle of nowhere.

And he was laughing, loud and deep within his belly, and those wings were fluttering with each heave and stunted breath.

Wooyoung was in your ear, equally as obnoxious in his cackling. Neither one of them sounded like bells, something often to describe a demure sound from a place of amusement, a notion you read in one of those paperback romance novels on the rotating rack at the convenience store. A rare moment of escape for you in the hours before hell broke the horizon on a horse. No, they were very much deep-chested and rough and made your inner ears vibrate like thousands of little marching drums.

“For a birdling, you sure are funny.” Wooyoung huffed the rest of his dying quips until he was no longer laughing to the high heavens.

Yunho finally ceased as well, although he seemed to be struggling a bit to contain what little lingering giggles he had within his puffed-up cheeks. His sight, however, finally anchored itself back onto you in a swirling pool of earthly soil.

“Can’t say I’ve met any that had a funny bone, unless they stole one. But taking another’s doesn’t really make you a court jester… just a thief.”

For some reason, that felt a bit like an accusation. One that was completely baseless and— wait, “Birdling? What the hell is a birdling?”

Wooyoung scoffs into your ear, both the feeling of his hot breath and the close proximity of his face to the side of your head makes you jerk away with a disgusted frown.

“Don’t play coy. We know what you are so you might as well give up the charade.”

You were positive that you looked like one of those bug-eyed fish out of water. Mouth opening and closing, eyes wide in reflected confusion.

Yunho’s wings catch your attention again, drawing closed in their descent against his back. “You have wings— how do you have wings?”

“All moth folk have wings. And don’t change the subject unless you want me to pluck each and every little feather from your wings, birdling.”

Truly, you couldn’t have been more depleted of knowledge than right at that very moment. They thought you were, what, something with feathers? A bird? That made sense— birdling. But you weren’t a bird, not even close.

“I’m not— I don’t have wings! Or feathers, or even a beak. Do I look like a bird to either one of you?” You frantically tried to sidestep Wooyoung but one of his hands enclosed around the back of your neck and held you with a surprisingly strong grip. Something that wasn’t put to use earlier when you were fighting against their attempts to subdue you. It made you freeze, and like a cold chill during winter, brought forth uncomfortable feelings encased in unpleasant memories. He was at your back, holding you by your scruff and stealing away bits and pieces of your soul with every infliction.

Yunho seemed to pick up on your change in behavior, head tilted, watching in rapt fascination at the color draining from the skin on your face. “I didn’t know birdling’s could change colors.”

Wooyoung’s interest was piqued enough to crane your head manually by his hand to take a look, a big mistake on his part. Once he got you facing him eye-to-eye, you waded up a good ball of spit on your tongue and launched it right onto the spot between his eyes. He jerked back with a yelp, the hand he had on your nape quickly removing itself in favor of wiping away the saliva. It was a small opening, but you’d take what you could get.

While you weren’t the strongest person in town, let alone a candle holder to the rest of the world, you did know that even with the smallest of force a good elbow to the gut could take anyone down a few pegs.

Unfortunately for Wooyoung, he’d receive that as well.

You jabbed the knobby end of your elbow right into his stomach, immediately stumbling off to the side as he buckled over and onto his knees roughly. Wooyoung groaned, cursing a string of expletives that would have made your long dead grandmother summon her favorite wooden spoon. Yunho, taken off guard by the quick turn of events, looked every part conflicted on whether or not he should crowd his companion and try to comfort him or make an attempt at grabbing you. His delay would only work in your favor, taking his momentary lapse in action to turn tail and run off into the alley settled between the building’s canopy you had fell through and its neighbor.

~

If this had been anywhere above, then managing to summon help would have been nothing short of easy. But down here, wherever here truly was proved to be much harder you realized. No matter what turn you took, left or right, alleyway or side-street, nobody was ever present.

Like a ghost town, not a single person in sight. Empty and desolate. You felt far from unnerved, even more-so upon passing discarded toys left on sidewalks, dishes with partially eaten food still sitting on iron wrought outdoor tables (not a fly or maggot in sight), laundry hanging from clotheslines in dead-stillness (you chanced a reach for a cleaner shirt and felt it was still damp, like it had just been hung to dry not too long before you appeared). But while everything seemed to be in a state of abandon, nothing had that forgotten appearance; aged and stuck to a time without use.

Not even the strings of lights that connected each building to each misshapen house looked timely. The bulbs were bright, clean of dust and bore a taunting glow of orange down on you while you scurried from one end of an unidentifiable street to the next.

At a four way stop, did you take a moment to ground yourself. It wasn’t a good idea, not when being out in the open like you were guaranteed immediate capture but you had been running and hiding for an undisclosed amount of time now and really— you needed to fucking think. Not once did you happen to see a street name, not even an address on the side of copper mailbox. Nothing told you of where you had managed to end up. For all you know, you could simply be a single block over or even a few streets down from where you landed.

The anxiety of not knowing just how screwed you possibly were made it all the easier for you to be suddenly thrown to the ground on your front. The impact knocking hard against your chest and shoving what air you had in your lungs completely out.

“Gotcha.”

Like an upturned beetle under a rock, you tried to scuttle away to the best of your ability but the hard press of a booted sole between your shoulder blades pinned you down in place. Now you were simply a butterfly stuck to a velvet board.

“You really aren’t the brightest bird in the flock, are you now, birdling?” Wooyoung sounded winded but that didn’t stop the cockiness in his tone from seeping through. He was beside himself, like the cat that caught the canary.

“Please, just let me go! I don’t— I have no clue what you’re talking about. I’m not a birdling, I swear!” You could feel the buildup of snot in your nose before you could even see the tears gathering at your waterline. “I fell in the pit— from above! I come from above, please, you have to believe me. I’m human—“

Something hits the ground by your head, and through the collection of saline, another pair of boot's dancing through your blurry vision.

“Human?”

Yunho looked down at you as you sniffled then to Wooyoung across from him. The younger looked equally as perplexed if not hesitant to give your babbling the time of day. That made the taller of the two’s brows furrow, the brown rucksack in his hand momentarily forgotten.

“I thought you said she was a birdling, Wooyoung?”

“She is! I know she is…” After a dip in silence, “I think she is…” He looked abash as he peered down at his foot still pressed to your upper back.

“Did you even check?”

“What do you think I was trying to do before you let her spit in my face and elbow me in the stomach!”

Yunho pointed an accusatory finger at Wooyoung, wings bristling under the redirected blame. “You should have checked first before coming to the baseless conclusion that she is— was a birdling!”

Wooyoung throws his hands up, the heel of his boot digging into your spine from his movement, making you wince into the cobblestone road.

“She could still be one!”

“Do you think if she was, she would have just flown off rather than stumble around like a cockroach without a head?”

That made you sober up just a smidgen, realizing that they had in some way, or another been watching you run through the streets and alleyways this entire time and decided to wait until you found a moment to stop to ambush you.

“I don’t know, maybe…” Wooyoung trails off, pulling his attention downward when he takes notice that you have quieted while they argued.

Yunho would have continued his barrage if not for the chime resounding from the semi-gold dome on his wrist. Wooyoung’s followed shortly after. And so did the empty streets, like the toll of a bell tower, ringing lethargic and heavy.

“Oh, that’s just great. Captain will have our wings over a mantle for being late!”

“This is on you. I won’t be taking the blame for your rashly crafted theories.” Yunho ignores Wooyoung’s scoff and his following pout, taking the rucksack in his hand and yanking it a few times through the air so that the belly of it would inflate.

“Pick her up.”

The boot was gone and in your mind, you could have attempted another try at escaping, but the back of your shirt was fisted, and the ground was pulled out from under your body. You only had a single second to see the bag in Yunho’s grasp before it was swiftly tugged over your head and cinched shut at the base of your neck.

“What—“

“Hush, you’ll draw attention.”

Like a drain stopper had been pulled from your ears, suddenly the streets had come to life with all sorts of sounds. Chatter of people, laughter of children, the scraping of shoes on stone and soft lure of music. You couldn’t see but you could feel— sense the presence of others around you. You weren’t alone in a ghost town anymore but that only made the already pile of mounting questions grow taller.

Where had everyone been this entire time?

“Please… you can still let me go. I won’t tell anyone—“

“Sorry, but letting you go is out of the question.”

Hands grabbed at your own and the rough drag of rope wrapped tightly around your forearms, encasing them together and knotted at the wrists far enough from any attempts at untying them. You yelp when you are picked up and not-so kindly swung over someone’s shoulder.

“If you feel sick at any moment, try to keep it from coming out of your mouth… or any other place.”

That was your only cue before you were airborne, the turbulence making your stomach flare up uncomfortably. An arm wrapped around the back of your legs with whoever’s hand curled to set on one of your knees. It wasn’t comforting in the slightest and just another reminder that you were helpless once again— as above, so below.

════════════════════════════════════

Masterlist

[bathic]

11. It's his game and nobody else's to partake in.

Word Count: 2.2k

Chapter Warning: Bodily fluids (vomit), Nearly being choked, Threats of gun violence, Restrained against will.

Certainly, this entire ordeal was deserving of a good hearty laugh. One that just ripped your belly down the center and echoed loud enough to rattle windows. Maybe in a less than real situation you would have. But being shackled to an ornate chair by the throat and wrists in the center path of a lunatic man’s sight had no effect on your funny bone.

You swallow shakily, feeling the metal around your neck catch against your skin.

“I have already told you everything. What fucking more could you want?”

Hongjoong taps the bowl of his pipe on the edge of his desk, his expression feigning thought.

"Everything? I hardly think you've scratched the surface. Plus," He pauses to aimlessly shift around a few of the papers on his desk, "beforehand wasn't even a proper discussion. Think of it more as a, hm, introduction. Just a little foundation laying so we aren't standing miles away from each other but rather a few feet."

“You’re crazy if you think I would want to stand anywhere near you— mile, foot, inches. I’d rather throw myself over that bridge your two puppets and I landed on.”

Hongjoong’s face nearly splits at the round of fitful laughter befalling from his lips. Seonghwa wasn’t amused in the slightest and Yeosang remained as unforthcoming with his thoughts.

“What a funny thing to say.” He gets up, arm retracting from Yeosang’s hip, “Self-sacrifice, you’d do that for little ole me? We’ve barely even managed to coexist in the same room for the second time today and yet you’ve announced how much you yearn to snuff out your light just because I wish to extend a hand of camaraderie.” You stiffen as he maneuvers around the edge of the wooden desk and struts closer to your restrained form, hands tightening into fists against the armrests.

He stops right at your left arm with a soft hum, lifting a ringed hand to lightly nudge a piece of stiff hair from your face. “I’ve got to say, I’m quite flattered.”

The bile rises quicker than you could have expected, sputtering from your chapped lips in thinly stretched ropes. You might have caught the warning signs if not for the thrashing of your heartbeat in your ears, the pulse on your neck tugging the skin taut.

Seonghwa’s nose scrunches at the way your upheaval clings stubbornly to your chin, his displeasure bleeding equally into Yeosang. His stoicism falls into a less than enthused expression at the vomit.

But Hongjoong remained unfazed, the twinkle of enjoyment dancing beneath long lashes as he watches you shutter and swallow against the burn marring your esophagus.

“Well, aren’t you just full of little surprises. I wonder what else you could do if I poked and prodded at you, hm? Maybe if I,” Your startled when his hand suddenly latches onto what little space is above your jaw and the shackle around your neck.

Surprisingly his grip was loose, teasing, but the weight of his palm dug hard enough down that your larynx begun to ache alongside the fancy woodcarving at the back of your head digging into your skull. “What else do you plan on coughing up, hm? Blood, more vomit?”

The prickle of tears blurred the vision of Hongjoong into a watery menagerie of muted colors, his fawn-colored hair mixing into the leathers of his clothing and the linen of his shirt. You could faintly make out the pounding of your fists on the armrests, the thumping of your heels on the floor and the rattling of the shackles holding you hostage to your imminent demise. The rush of your heart in your ears felt like a sendoff, erratic in its haste and ushering you into an inescapable abyss in time to the symphony of drums.

“Hongjoong— that’s enough. Your aforementioned claims of discussion are falling wayside under your own hand.” Seonghwa, finding the sight of your purpling face and snot and tear trails nauseating chastised from where he took root.

Yeosang shifted a bit, the desire to be anywhere but the captain's quarters remaining a tight-lipped secret for himself only to know. His loyalty was here, despite his only purpose amongst the crew going unused. He wouldn’t make a move unless Hongjoong gave the command.

Hongjoong pursed his lips, a childish pout misplaced on a man brimming with violent tendencies. But his hand fluttered away, not without leaving a few little nicks on the underside of your jaw from the jagged corners of his heavily embellished rings. Your immediate response is to gasp, heave and cough all at once in no specific order. The man was back at his desk, reclining at on the lip of it with his leg crossed over the other at the ankles. He was unperturbed by your fit, despite all the raucous noise you were making.

“Are you going to babysit every little thing I do?” His scoff irks Seonghwa. “Moons forbid, I take a moment to shit in peace and you’ll be at the door reminding me to squat for better bowel movement.”

“Could you be mature for a single second? Captain oh Captain, where does the line fall between your childish barking and the onset of premature lunacy?” Seonghwa stepped away from Yeosang with a hardened expression, heeled boots thumping heavily against the wooden flooring as he a rounded the desk.

“Oh great, another one of your prudish monologues.”

Hongjoong tilted his head to rest on his own shoulder, peering over at the other beneath long lashes. His eyes were deceiving a playful softness, a catty swipe meant to innocently rile Seonghwa up was in fact a knife hidden in the dark. The man was no stranger to the lurking threat despite the mischievous grin. It was cute and endearing when Wooyoung or Jongho would do it (when the latter wasn’t in a state of unhinged rage) but Hongjoong was neither of those things. Danger swathed him in a weighted blanket of pike’s and razor-wire.

Yeosang cleared his throat, stepping to Seonghwa’s side. Where one stepped, the other would follow just a half-step behind. Yunho joked that Yeosang was merely Seonghwa’s shadow come to life, the younger rebuked the thought with an accusation of childish imagination. But perhaps it wasn’t so far off. “Captain, I request we be dismissed. Our presence is providing nothing more than a distraction for you.”

Seonghwa’s head flew to the side at the supplication, but Yeosang refused to meet his probing stare.

Hongjoong clucks his tongue, “Run along, I forgot how sour your beloved gets when his bedtime routine is encroached upon.”

“I’m not leaving—“

“Hwa… please.” Yeosang’s tone dipped into a quiet urgency. His hand, with its natural tremble, curled around Seonghwa’s elbow.

But the taller refused to budge.

“No. I refuse to leave until I have seen whatever nonsense this entire ordeal is to bring.” Seonghwa, even in his most stubborn moments, never raised his voice at Yeosang. Instead, he cupped a hand on the man’s jaw, rubbed the pad of his thumb lovingly against the soft skin.

Yeosang wouldn’t fight against his love’s decision, rather he nodded in acceptance that he would be going to bed alone and slinked away to the door. You watched him as he approached, flinching once he got close enough to cause a stale draft to run over the exposed skin of your arm before passing in complete silence save for the solid thumping of his boots.

The door shutting brought the slight detour right back onto you. Like a centerpiece in an art gallery or a new animal exhibit placed on display for every pair of eyes in the vicinity to zero in on— you were on the frontline for the two men still present.

“Tell us a little about yourself.” Hongjoong’s casualness felt like the bucket of cold water that Yeosang had thrown on you.

“Like… Like what?”

He shrugs, nonchalantly picking at the skin around his nailbeds. Seonghwa had moved to another chair positioned adjacent to your own at a distance that was close enough if he felt like pouncing on you at any given moment but not near enough that his personal space was invaded. You concluded very quickly that he wouldn’t appreciate that one bit.

“How about a name? Simple enough. Tell me yours, and I will… indulge you in mine.” His gaze flickered up from his hand to you, the dark twinkle within them dancing in a teasing waltz.

Seonghwa scoffs from his seat.

You swallow, the raw feeling kicking up the urge to cough. Your hesitation doesn’t go unnoticed by either man.

“Do you even have one?” Seonghwa's inquiry had an icy jab to it.

“Of course I have a fucking name. Who doesn’t?”

“Watch the way you speak—“

“Or what—“

The sudden sound of Hongjoong’s hand colliding with the wooden surface of his desk cut the thread holding the spirally conversation, collapsing you and Seonghwa into a stunted silence.

“This is my time that you are both wasting by squabbling with each other.”

A bit ironic, you thought. The man who’s been playing with you like a cat with a mouse the moment you stepped foot in his quarters has a bone to pick when others do the same. It’s his game and nobody else’s to partake in.

Seonghwa looks away from you to fix his sight onto Hongjoong with a frown. “No more wasted than whatever you were doing moments ago.”

Hongjoong’s head tilts at the rebuttal, “What I do with my time is irrelevant.”

“So I have noticed.”

There’s a knock at the door that Yeosang had left through, breaking the surmounting tension like fine glass. A head pops in, one you can’t see but its shadow casts along the wall just off to the side.

“Captain.”

The voice isn’t too familiar, but you know it has to be at least one of the other men who was down in the brig during Hongjoong’s visit.

“What?”

“Mingi wants to know if he should continue to wait outside until you are finished with… her or go find somewhere else to sleep.”

Hongjoong sighed, hand coming up to rub at his eyes. “Tell him to practice some patience. I am in the middle of a delicate situation that requires a great amount of effort to—“

“Just tell him to go sleep with Yeosang, San.” Seonghwa wanted to be spared the tirade of the other— for his own sake and for his fellow lover.

The door closed once again just as swiftly as it had opened, and you would have rather the distraction to keep the heat off of you. But that was an unrealistic hope.

“Now, where were we? Ah, right.” With a twist and click, you were staring eye to eye with the barrel of a flintlock all within a singular breath. You couldn’t even piece together when he had moved from his desk, his form the centerpiece of your vision and yet here he was, standing just a short distance away and looking past his pistol at your disheveled face. “I don’t mind doing things with a bullet or two but that would mean going without an answer and I despise the thought of the unknown. Especially within my own walls.”

The cool metal pressed roughly against one of your eyelids, causing weird shapes to burst and bubble within the obscurity of your sight.

“You’d be none the wiser to just tell him. Unless you value your life so little to lose it over something so small.” Seonghwa piped up from his seat, tone lackluster and achingly bored.

You wished the shuttering exhale of your name wasn’t so shaken by the fear of having your life splattered against the intricate wood carving of the chair-back against your head. But it did, and the erratic movement of your one eye pressed closed by the mouth of Hongjoong’s gun vibrated the barrel enough for his hand to feel it.

He repeated it, swished it from cheek to cheek and let it roll off his tongue back to front. Then he smiled, impishly sharp before withdrawing the gun and giving it a light-weighted swing around his pointer finger.

“No, I don’t think so.”

Your brows furrow in confusion. What the hell did he mean by ‘I don’t think so’, that was your fucking name! Who was he to determine if your name was assigned to you like your very own clothing tag or not.

“I’m not… I’m not following—“

“I hate it, your name. It’ll be changed to something less unappealing.”

Seonghwa seemed to rattle out of his boredom, getting to his feet and approaching the shorter man with an incredulous look. “Please tell me you aren’t insinuating what I think you are?” And when Hongjoong’s casual hum met his dire question, it was all the answer the other needed.

════════════════════════════════════

Masterlist

[bathic]

6. Maybe it will be if you survive.

Word count: 3.4k

The worst thing wasn’t finding out that you had been stumbling around in circles the entire time after you had run off. Or even that, if you had just taken a moment to get your bearings instead of blindly wandering through tunnel after tunnel, you would have seen just the smallest traces of light pouring beyond the edge of one of the corners. The exit— or Northward Entrance was right there behind the outcrop of the wall.

That might have nicked your ego. Reminded you that despite your poorly executed escape from above, just barely making it on the whim; luck wasn’t on your side and the chances you thought you had were slim to none in the pit.

Perhaps going on the fly wasn’t the smartest thing, another hasty decision brought on by a spur of the moment decision during a small window of opportunity. One that, yes, you completely fumbled with your impatience. And now the consequences surrounded you with rusted bars and splintered floorboards which creaked and groaned every time you shifted. The man who had snagged you from your errant bumbling stood at the bottom of a well-worn staircase adjacent of the prison cell he shoved you in. He looked no older or younger than you, with a shapely jaw and wispy brown hair that laid flat against his forehead and hung longer where it was tucked behind his ears. Saddled with a beige peasant shirt fastened with a strappy holster in a darker washed leather, black trousers and clunky boots. His wings, brown and fuzzy, fluttered every so often against his back; the rounded ends reaching the crease of his knees where his shoes stopped (or began depending on where you considered a shoe started— at the toe or the tongue).

Something red smudged along the outer corner of his left eye and temple.

Not a single word passed through his lips since he brought you here, not even when you tried to pry him apart with a futile game of twenty-something questions. He remained as stoic as a fountain statue, tight-lipped and unblinking. The only bit of him that moved were his wings and the perimeter of his chest— inhale, exhale.

“Seriously? I’m beginning to put together a theme amongst the men here. Threatening and abducting innocent people because, let me guess, a completely hare-brained assumption about some absurd thing called a birdling— am I right? You can tell me that I am because I really can’t seem to grasp at the loose threads those other two idiots were rambling about aside from that.” You pause to catch your breath, resuming momentarily despite the man across from you not seeming the slightest bit interested in what you have to say. “Which I’m not for the record. I don’t even know what that is— a fucking birdling. Sounds stupid and childish and exactly like something the short one would have made up.”

You watch and wait, shifted forward onto your knees in front of the cell door, hands wrapped around the lower bars. Yet despite your attempt at trying to get him to at least tell you to shut up, he didn’t so much as sigh or twitch in his spot.

“Are you… some kind of law enforcement? Is that what this is, I’m being detained for something I didn’t even do. If anything, you should have those idiots put in here!”

Nothing.

The silent treatment was beginning to chew at your nerves, not that they weren’t already bitten to the high heavens from everything that has transpired within the last… well, whatever amount of time has passed.

Then it occurred to you of an aforementioned person of caliber, someone with a title and a rather demanding personality— at least you’ve gathered as much from that singular exposure out on that rickety landing.

“I want to speak to your captain.”

It wasn’t much, and to be fair it could have just been the slight of sight, but you swore you saw the corner of his mouth twitch. Like he was nearly tempted to snap back at you.

“That’s who we’re waiting on, right? I heard the little chat between him and the other two. Got to say, he’s a bit of an asshole—“

“You talk too much for your own good—“

“Don’t waste your breath, Yeosang. The weak only babble out of fear… as they should.” A new voice, and yet not so new at all suddenly drawled somewhere along the stairs obscured by your position and the shadows casted from the outcrop of the ceiling.

Each heavy booted foot landing on the wooden planks felt like the impaling of a nail into the line of your spine. You had to tighten your grip of the bars to keep yourself from flinching, the sound all-too familiar to the beast of a man that you lived with— every echo lingering like a ghost. The saliva that pooled into your mouth was every bit as bitter as the glare you were met with the moment the boots hit the common ground floorboards. Only difference between the two was that your spit was warm, and his eyes held nothing but a cold edge.

Truly when needed, the will to keep your mouth sealed shut seemed to elude you.

“Who are you?”

His head tilts to the side, causing the fawn-colored fringe hanging over his forehead to sway. “Who am I? Why, shouldn’t you know— you were insisting on speaking to me just seconds ago.”

Beneath the dim lights of the brig stood the very captain— a face to the voice of the hologram, a body to match the snide comments made by Wooyoung, the concept and the product molded together into a singular and very real person. Brown leather boots folded over at the tops worn by wear bled into baggy trousers decorated with varying buttons and fastened chains. An open shirt untied at his collar bones beneath the heavy sag of a trench coat layered by unrecognizable patches with odd symbols and miscellaneous intricacies amalgamized into a peculiar mixture as far as fashion went. Something very pre-of today yet you could with a bit of thought digging find some similar echoes of the same exact style worn by the younger crowd in town. His hair hung longer in the back with sides shaved short, ear sporting varying pieces of rudimentary jewelry; some gold, some bronze, some silver. Like he was indecisive and figured the best outcome would be all of the above, that reflected on his choice of rings lining both hands as well. The casual sway in them as he strode nonchalantly towards the cell caught every bit of light and made every other jewel glint like a visual warning.

You clear your throat from an invisible obstruction, "Ah, the captain..."

A single shapely eyebrow pulls upward, "Yes, the captain. The one you've deemed as 'a bit of an asshole'." He watches the way you wet your lips out of discomfort, the corners of his own seeming to curl at the action.

"Slip of the tongue."

"Of course, most baseless assumptions are."

You shift to stand, facing him eye-to-eye through the bars of your cell. "Speaking of assumptions," Swiping at the stiff grime-soaked fabric of your jeans with your sweaty palms didn't give you as much confidence as you wished for the feeling of dirt rubbing along your skin reminded you of how utterly gross you probably looked, "I have been wrongly accused of being something without any proper evidence by two of your idiotic friends. Not only that, but they jointly decided too not only man-handle me but also bring me here against my will. Now, I will ask kindly that you let me go without any trouble in exchange for my silence in regard to whatever lack of human ethics-"

“Let you go?” His question was trailed by a burst of laughter, one that rocked his shoulders and caused the wings that blended into the color of his coat to flare out to the side. They shook like leaves in the fall and emitted a soft whoosh.

You spared a glance over to the other man, seeing his expression just as blank as it was before the captain had appeared.

Had you been paying attention, then you’d notice that the laughter had stopped and the hand hurling down onto one of the bars right in front of you. The clang of metal hitting metal sounded off and startled you enough to stumble back. The captain stood closer to the cell; his face perfectly lined within the space between two of the bars. He looked at you like you were something insignificant, a nasty piece of nothing that deserved just as much— nothing.

“Bold or simply stupid, I can’t really decide on which of those fit your pathetic demands more.” His dark eyes look you over, nose scrunching in a show of disgust.

It wasn’t like you purposely chose to roll around in dirty street water.

“Tell me, what is so important about you that those two idiots would go through the trouble to bring you here? Hm, do you even know where here is?”

“Nothing… there’s no importance surrounding me. So, you are just as much in the dark as I am. And no, I have no idea where I am— I wasn’t even aware that the pit wasn’t just a big giant hole!” You throw your hands up only to let them fall down onto your thighs with a plap.

“Pit? Speak clearly for I have no patience for childish runarounds.”

One of his rings, on his right middle finger had the head of a wasp on it with emeralds for eyes. It was perturbing to look at. And to have looking at you.

You parted your lips to retort but several rounds of steps rushing down the steps not only hooked your attention but also that of the other two men. Yeosang turned first, greeted by the sight of a blonde head of hair and another mop of brown with chunky highlighted strands.

Both unfamiliar to you.

“I told you both to stay in the war room.”

“Jongho told Wooyoung, Yunho and Seonghwa that you were down here with the… whatever it is.”

“And? That required the both of you to come running down here— to what? Fight the unknown? Well, there it is.” A hand jerks in your direction and their attention follows it, landing on you.

The shorter blonde approached first, peering at you through the bars like an animal at the zoo. To be fair, you were beginning to feel like it.

“Could use a good bath.” He whispered, staring at you like one would upon seeing a dirty stray. Although with less pity and more casual nonchalance.

“Don’t get too close, Sannie… we don’t know if it’s a biter.” The taller of the two, with the discolored bits of hair sidled up beside the other with a hand wrapped around his bicep.

Yeosang scoffed, “Hardly a fighter let alone a biter, Mingi.”

“Doesn’t hurt to be cautious.”

Hongjoong stepped forward and latched a hand onto both men’s shoulders, yanking them back and to the side with a huff. This was to be an interrogation and yet all he has gotten so far was something about a pit and knowing how the meddling of San and Mingi would go, certainly nothing of use would be gained.

“You spoke of a pit… what is that and how does it correlate with you being here?”

“Yes, the pit… big, giant hole in the wheat fields up above. Couldn’t miss it unless you were blind.”

“Above?” San turned to Mingi who turned to Yeosang who simply shrugged his shoulders.

“Do you take me for a fool?” Hongjoong was once again pressed against the cell with a knit to his brows. He took no kindness to being made out like a brainless idiot.

You squinted at him, “You don’t believe me— how can you want answers when you refuse to acknowledge the one’s that I give you? A pit, large and wide from above, what is so hard for you to grasp? You are literally inside of it!”

“Never heard it called that before, do you think it has multiple names?” Mingi whispered to San from the side.

“I could ask you the same thing, how can I acknowledge any truth to your answers when you give me such incompetent ones? Truly, does it look like we are in a massive fucking hole?”

“Of course not! At least not in here, in whatever this room is. But out there… sort of.” You frown, realizing that no, nobody could tell they were in a ginormous hole even when on the landing or in that string-light city.

“Sort of?” He chuckles dryly, “Right, tell me more. How did you end up in all of this pit nonsense, hm? Take a tumble, hit your head, get a bit scattered.”

The man was openly mocking you, sneering through the bars of your prison with such contempt.

“You talk about me making you out to be a fool but what you are doing is the exact same thing.”

“That’s where you are wrong— I don’t need to do or say anything to make you what you already are… a blabbering liar, not even a fool could make up the utter nonsense coming from your mouth!” His hands slam against the bars, the echo of metal on metal hardly audible over his harsh breathing. Surely if a mirror was held before him, he would have a rapid dog reflected back.

“Captain.” Yeosang wasn’t exactly interested in stepping between his leader and the target of his ire but things were beginning to derail and unless he wanted to be held back to clean up a mess he’d rather avoid entirely (that and returning to his wing-bound covered in freshly spilled blood would set Seonghwa off into a frazzled state of clean-up mode), interjecting while the coals were barely starting to shift in temperature would right everything back on course.

“She was found wandering through the tunnels, not too far from the Northward Entrance. Yunho and Wooyoung couldn’t have been—“ But his relay in information was cut short by the captain's own voice, tone bearing no sort of interest in what the moth had to say.

“I don’t really care what and where those two might have been. Considering this,” Hongjoong juts a finger in your direction, the black polish on his nail catching your eye briefly. “Was their issue to sort in the first place and rather than keep a leash on her, they let her run in circles while fucking off in the whacon. So now, I will have to once again clean up the mess of two irresponsible idiots.”

Yeosang pursed his lips, decidedly accepting the decision to keep his mouth shut. San placed a hand on his shoulder as a silent means of solidarity.

“It could have been a simple mistake. Plus, wasn’t Seonghwa sent to get them? Perhaps they got distracted by his sudden appearance. You know how Wooyoung gets around him.” Mingi tried his own hand at appealing to the irate captain, his wing-bound, while also choosing to ignore the way Yeosang shifted in his peripheral. Perhaps that little detail could have been spared.

Hongjoong was silent, staring you down as you slumped against the back of the cell. It looked like he was pondering something, not exactly looking at you but rather through you at an indecipherable spot. And then his head tilts, one dangling earring pooling over his jawline. The curl of his lips made the hair on your arms stand on end, rising in salute of the goosebumps littering your skin. He was, in no other word, scheming. You could see it just by the sudden wicked gleam in his eyes.

“So, what I hear parting from my beloved Mingi’s lips is that Seonghwa is to blame, is that right? Hm?” His voice carries the same saccharine tone you’d heard him use on the landing, artificially sweet to coat the poison bubbling beneath.

Mingi’s eyes widened, quickly looking over at Yeosang. San still had his hand on his shoulder, but you could see the way his knuckles had turned white, and the grip made the peasant shirt he wore bunch up. Yeosang might have kept his features neutral but there was a fire in his eyes and a tick in his jaw. His own hands balled tightly at his sides.

“No— No that’s not what I’m saying—“

“Then I should scalp him of his pretty little wings and have him hang by the wounds from the Southway Bridge for being such a distraction to my crew. Seeing as nobody can seem to fucking function in his presence then I’ll just get rid of him entirely. Is that what I should do, Mingi? My wing-bound, my soul, my heart in every living beat…”

Every single word that fell past Hongjoong’s lips solidified one thing in your mind. That he was absolutely insane, a mad man far off of his rocker. San gripped Yeosang with both hands now, one around his waist and the other falling to his upper bicep. He seemed to tremble under the entrapment of his rage.

Despite the captain’s verbiage being directed at the tall man behind him, his eyes never strayed from you. Like the threat he was making against someone else wasn’t just dedicated to them, but to you.

“You are fucking sick.” You glared at him through the bars, planting your hands flat against the wall behind you.

Hongjoong’s lips peel back to reveal a perfect set of teeth, ones that he quickly swiped over with his sharp-tipped tongue.

“I wouldn’t be the notorious captain that I am if I wasn’t just a little bit depraved… birdling.”

You froze hearing that word, the accusation to start all of this mess, realizing that he had probably heard everything you had said to Yeosang before his abrupt arrival. He knew to an extent of why you were even in the tunnels in the first place, what had Wooyoung and Yunho insist on dragging you from the stringed-light city to be brought before their captain. You knew that word was spoken negatively, like an omen or some unspoken enemy shared between them.

You, in their eyes, were that enemy.

Suddenly the sound of metal clinking together tethered your attention into focus. Hongjoong had a keyring in his hands, gold in color, with several intricately shaped keys of varying sizes. One was shoved into the lock on the cell door. You looked up to see that he was no longer sporting that devious grin but rather a serious countenance devoid of his earlier sick-humor.

The door creaked open within his hand; eyes unreadable as he gazed at you.

“San,” Said man’s head jerked to attention, “Grab her and put her on her knees. I wish to see the wings that I plan to put above my bed.”

San hesitated for a minute second but ultimately did as he was told, letting go of Yeosang and beelining it to the cell. You knew this was a fight you couldn’t win. Not by a long shot. But you had to try. What was the point of getting this far without that— trying. Could you even consider this point as far? Maybe it will be if you survive.

════════════════════════════════════

Masterlist

[bathic]

5. It was a fantasy you couldn't understand the appeal of.

Word Count: 2.4k

Guts, innards, some kind of organ— whatever resided on the inside of the body that wasn’t bone and could rot without use always had a certain poignant smell to it.

That’s what the tunnel of the Northward entrance smelled like. A gag inducing smell of fish carcass and spoiled meat-product amplified by the abnormal humidity made your stomach churn in the most vomit-inducing way. You already felt on edge, walking to an undisclosed location in an undisclosed place with two complete strangers that have been anything but welcoming— it wasn’t like Wooyoung’s last spoken words to you made you feel like an honorary guest. In fact, he practically told you that you should have killed yourself when you had the chance.

A small insufferable voice at the back of your head seemed to agree with him, maybe you should have flung yourself off that landing. It’ll bring an end to a lot of things— the years of abuse, the trauma you carry in a tightly secured bag, every bit of emotional instability that has left you feeling more like a stranger than the woman you’ve grown to be.

The possibility of ever seeing the monster who has left more scars on your soul with the buckle of his belt would cease to end.

But wouldn’t that already be in motion? You’ve gone down into the wide mouth of the pit, far from that hollow shell of a home and away from the beast that stalks its faded periwinkle walls. Unless he, at some point after you did, dived in with the intent to recapture his beloved prey. Yeonjun often joked in the beginning that you were a canary, with sunflower yellow feathers reminiscent of the wild splendor of spring. But those little playful quips turned into solemn reminders; a canary with broken wings and clipped feathers confined to a rusted cage to never flourish once the winter snow has all but melted.

Something damp fell heavily onto your shoulder, immediately soaking into the fabric of your grime covered shirt. It pulled your attention from out of your dagger-ended thoughts in an instant, the warmth and awful smell made you gag hard. Like sewage and fish left under hours of constant daylight.

“It’s not so bad once you get used to it— if you do, you know, stay around long enough. That’ll be up to the captain.” Wooyoung hadn’t spoken a single word since telling you that you should have definitely ended your life while the choice was on the table. You had looked back at him with the deepest crease in your brow, sputtering a lilted ‘what?’ that was answered with the most nonchalant shrug. Then he shoved you forward by knocking his knees into the backs of your own, making you stumble over lumpy grooves in the floor.

Yunho remained silent, walking ahead without ever once turning around to see if you were still following along. In his left hand was a small oil lamp he had snatched up just a step past the tunnel entrance.

“What do you plan on doing to me?”

“I don’t plan on doing anything to you. However, I can’t speak for our leader. He’s not the most… friendliest of moths. To be fair, he’s kind of an ass—“

“Wooyoung.” Yunho had stopped dead in his tracks, making you halt and the other man to follow in kind. He didn’t turn, keeping his back to the both of you.

“But—! I love him— we love him. Couldn’t ask for a more stubborn, temperamental—“

“—Jung Wooyoung, you’d be a wiser man if you didn’t finish that sentence.”

The sound of someone new made you stiffen, toes curling into the damp ground hard enough that whatever made up the surface collected between your toes. Wooyoung bumps your shoulder as he passes by, huffing out a callous little laugh while rounding to Yunho’s side.

“All jokes, Hwa.”

Hwa wasn’t amused in the slightest, eyeing the younger man with pursed lips and an uncanny stare— all wide eyed and unblinking.

“Did Captain send you?”

“Yes, in fact, he did. Figured you both have dawdled long enough… plus his curiosity has peaked despite his anger.” Seonghwa’s gaze drags over to Yunho, “Don’t take it to heart. What he said, you know how he gets especially as of late with… everything.” A hand rises to wave almost elegantly about, motioning to nothing in particular.

“Yeah, right.”

“So where is it? The someone or something or what-have-you?”

Wooyoung reached back to snatch at your arm, expecting to feel the warmth from your skin and the dried grime along the hair covered surface but instead he pawed at empty air with a few outstretched swipes. His brows furrow, something Seonghwa mirrors as if he was also greeted by the opposite of what he was anticipating. Yunho looks between the two in confusion, turning his body to the side and glancing back at where Wooyoung’s arm is flailing about.

He expected to see you standing there, waiting in his shadow but instead there was nobody occupying the spot.

You were gone. The realization making Yunho curse under his breath. “She’s fucking gone.”

“Gone?! What do you mean—“ Wooyoung spins around in a rush and nearly topples over his big, booted feet, wings flaring out and whipping across the front of Yunho’s legs. The older bites back a hiss.

“What do you mean by ‘gone’? Who is gone?” Seonghwa wedges himself into the space between the two, glancing about from each fleshy wall of the tunnel as if the ruddy grooves would give him a clue.

“She— the someone! The one we found and were bringing back to Hongjoong. She was… right here!” Wooyoung jabs a finger at the spot he definitely remembers you standing in.

“Well, she clearly isn’t there anymore. Which means she’s running loose through the tunnels.” Seonghwa turned to fix Wooyoung with a hardened glare.

Yunho raises his wrist when the half-dome chimes, unfolding open and letting the blue hologram expand into sight. Wooyoung cursed at the sight of it while Seonghwa straightens, attention trained solely on the floating head.

”Hey.”

“Seriously, Jongho?!”

"Where are you?"

Choosing to ignore Wooyoung's outburst, Jongho continues albeit with a bit of cocky lilt. "Ah, Wooyoung... don't sound so happy to hear from me. Actually, you probably should. If only you knew what I know then you would rather it be my voice than captain's."

"Jongho, where is Hongjoong?" Seonghwa inquired without a second to spare. The chime was specific, one that was used solely by Hongjoong. The rest of them had their own, specifically created for identification purposes when trying to communicate from great distances-- and when the hologram communicator malfunctioned. Something in a long list of things needed to be fixed by Yunho and Wooyoung.

"Nuh-uh, I asked first."

Seonghwa pinches the bridge of his nose before, ever-so-sweetly, replying back with a strained smile that would go unseen by the man on the opposite end. "As cute as you are, I really don't find you at all endearing at the moment. Now, where is Hongjoong?"

"Captain's in the brig."

Yunho looked over at the other two with wide eyes, "The brig?"

“Why is he in the brig, Jongho?” There was a hint of urgency in Seonghwa’s voice, something that put both Yunho and Wooyoung on edge.

Nobody ever went down into the brig unless it was in use, not the crew and certainly not the captain. The last time it was occupied had been nearly five cycles ago. An unspeakable time shoved far into the dark and away from prying inquiries. Yunho could remember as clear as spring water near the Hot Coves of the captain's wrath when San had tried to bridge a conversation into the traumatic event, his intentions doing more harm than good. It would cost him a small price, but his sworn loyalty didn’t sway his devotion— to the crew, to his mated ties, to the captain. So, if Hongjoong was down there, that only meant one thing…

”Why else would he be there?”

The question was rhetorical— they all knew the exact reasoning, didn’t need it spelled out in front of their eyes to understand. But Jongho would do so anyways, cementing everyone’s thoughts into a tangible mass.

”You know what happens when pests end up in the web of a spider and unless either of you want your little…escapee gutted from belly to chin then you’d better get to running. And good luck, captain is in his foulest mood yet.”

The hologram shrunk and the half-dome retracted, leaving the three in complete silence.

“We are so fucked—“

Seonghwa scoffs, distancing himself slightly from the other two. “No, we are not fucked but you two are. I refuse to be dragged into your little mess.”

Yunho plows a hand through his hair, making the sweaty strands clump together into a human version of a bird's nest. “What do we do?”

“She couldn’t have gotten that far, not without some kind of preexisting knowledge of the tunnel system plus,” Wooyoung pauses to nudge a finger against the oil lamp still clutched in Yunho’s left hand. “—she’s as blind as a cave beetle without any light to guide her way. Shouldn’t be too difficult to seek her out.”

“Who even is she? You’ve completely avoided answering my earlier question… which, isn’t even worth having an answer for since I’m only partially aware of the ‘who’.” Seonghwa sighed, placing his hands on his leather-bound hips. Had he known this would have happened he probably would have forfeited Hongjoong’s clipped request of finding the two— three-time wasters.

Wooyoung looks to Yunho to answer but the taller avoids his gaze with a frown.

“Just… someone.”

“You wouldn’t have gone through all these inconveniences for just some someone, Wooyoung.”

He winces slightly, scratching at the skin on his cheek.

“Well, you see, it’s really a funny little story. Just a small jesting tale, a bit of joke foreplay—“

“He’s blindly sworn up and down that the ‘who’ is a birdling.” Yunho knew they were pressed for time and could not stand another round of Wooyoung’s bush beating.

Seonghwa jerks his head in Wooyoung’s direction, brows furrowed. “You brought a birdling here?!”

“No— yes— I don’t know! Maybe… I’m not completely sure and— and Yunho is just as guilty of the assumption!”

“Don’t put your blame on me! It was your idea to bring her here and let the captain—“

“Enough, both of you!” Seonghwa rarely raised his voice, but the dire situation was getting even more worse the longer they stood around and pointed their fingers at each other. “I’ve heard enough to know that you two are absolutely fucking brain-dead when it comes to making cognitive decisions.”

The two look away from each other with a properly scolded expression, perfectly mirrored and equally reflecting of the eldest’s words. Seonghwa was right, they fucked up and now was not the time to be focusing on how sour things were quickly becoming between the two.

If Hongjoong got a hold of you somehow, then they would be in deeper shit beyond just being late.

Yunho tilted his head in thought, “Who’s on tunnel shift?”

“Yeosang, why?”

It didn’t click at first when Seonghwa relayed the information but watching Yunho’s eyes widen and Wooyoung’s head nearly separate from his neck as he whipped it around to face Seonghwa with an equally nonplussed expression made the switch flick and the dawning creep uncomfortably along his folded wings.

His mated tie didn’t take kindly to strange happenings and unknown encounters, and his loyalty to Hongjoong and the crew rivaled that of San’s. Only difference between the two, however, was the latter lacked a body count.

~

The moment everyone’s attention was adverted, you ran. Took off down the tunnel blindly while trying to remember anything familiar about the turns and adjourning tunnels that seemed to drag on and on. You compared the connective system to that of a grand garden maze you’ve seen on prints of whimsical paintings lining the walls in the town library. Soobin often rambled about them like a madman, wondering what it’d be like to get lost within the manicured hedges, having time escape you with every twist and turn. You’d look at him with a raised brow, observing the way his eyes would gloss over from behind his round framed glasses. It was a fantasy you couldn’t understand the appeal of. Not even now, as you stumble in no direction in particular and all directions at once.

Everything was an exact carbon copy of itself— each tunnel bathed in fleshy reds and pinks that felt squishy and slick to the touch. The smell had grown to linger, weighing heavier in certain directions as you trotted down one end of a winding passage to the beginning (assumedly) of another. Rotten sea life and dank algae you’d often find growing into stringy sludge ropes around the mouth of the outside spigot after removing the worn garden hose. The thought alone mixed with the smell had you gagging without a single chance to catch it, making your chest and throat burn and the warm acrid taste of your saliva to pool uncomfortably in your mouth.

You pause to spit, hand resting against the slimy wall, second-guessing the almost uncanny shifting beneath your palm. If you acknowledged it (as if you weren’t already), surely more than just spit might make home inside your mouth. Bile churned uneasily in your gut, and the more you wished to ignore the undulating the more it sunk into your head that the walls were definitely moving. You stumble back and away, knocking into something hard and immobile.

Wishful thinking hoped it was just a normal wall or perhaps a stack of wooden boxes filled with something to aid in your hasty escape. But walls nor boxes could grow arms, couldn’t possess the type of strength currently crushing your throat and ribs.

And they certainly couldn’t talk either.

“You will stay quiet if you know what’s good for you.”

════════════════════════════════════

Masterlist

[bathic]

4. Another casualty to the pit.

Word Count: 3.1k

The heavy smell of rain and sodden soil permeated through the fibers of the rucksack. You would have thought you were back above, out of the belly of the pit, in your small town just after a downpour. But the constant blanket of humidity wasn’t just a haze on your skin but rather, a suffocating molasses lying thick in your lungs. You could feel the droplets congealing together at the back of your neck (or was it just sweat— it was hot after all), soaking into hair and dampening strands to stick like grass clippings of a freshly mowed lawn.

The bag over your head amplified everything in the worst of ways.

And the rope wrapped securely around your lower arms served no better, rubbing raw against your damp skin. A promise of water blisters to surely be present.

Landing was rough, having a shoulder digging into your stomach anything but pleasant. But knowing that you weren’t up in air anymore made the decision easier. Plotting had always been a past time of yours when lying awake at night (hard to fall asleep when raucous snores made sure to pluck at finicky nerves) or left alone to attend to the house. You’d even think of a thousand means to get far away when standing amongst the other towns folk and watching the mayor wipe the sweat from his upper lip and happily announce the sacrifice of another person for an inexplicable cause. And now, having been left in the silence of your rucksack with a mind that ran on every ounce of wind scattering caution— you’d try again.

“Down you go.”

The voice of Yunho, whom you have identified as the taller man that appeared secondary to the one that flew into you, was the one to offer his shoulder for you to uncomfortably fold over. He slipped you off by using the hand he had wrapped around the backs of your legs and settled you to— assumedly— face him. But that wasn’t your mark yet, the signaling flare within your head poised at the ready but not fingering the trigger just yet. You couldn’t risk doing this prematurely, not when this was most likely the only chance you had left; one cut down by more than half.

The ropes around your forearms loosened after a bit of tugging. Your heart pounded like drums in your ears, waiting, ready.

At that last slip of the rough fibers against your skin did you lunge forward. Blind as you were, landing several erratically thrown punches at least struck somewhere by the telltale push back against your fist.

“Hey! Hey— stop!”

Yunho tried to fend off your attacks, but having one clip him in the nose was enough to bring tears to his eyes and a stumbling retreat. Wooyoung wanted to laugh, yap at him about how it felt being on the receiving end of your spontaneous retaliations but the continuous buzzing of the bi-sphere on his wrist was like a lurking omen of unfathomable misfortunes. After the chiming had clocked itself for the turnover hour did the warning vibrations begin. He knew Yunho could feel it, catching the way he seemed to pick up speed in the remaining minutes before touching down on the rickety wood-rot landing.

You tore at the ties that cinched the rucksack over your head, yanking the brown bag off and throwing it off to the side where it plummeted over the end planks of the pier. Yunho was bent off to the right, hand cupped over his nose with a wince. Wooyoung stood off to the left, hands raised and inching ever so slightly towards you.

“Can’t say I liked that rucksack. Too drab, and itchy.”

You weren’t amused by his attempt at consoling you by making lighthearted jokes about the suffocating bag they had tied over your head. And it must have been known to him, if going by the pursing of his lips to the side.

“Okay, not the time. I get it.”

“Do you?”

It wasn’t meant to be a real question. More or less the stressing of how mentally frazzled you are by the last— to be fair, you had no clue how much time has passed. Could be hours for all you know. The thought conjured another; one you would have preferred never to have crossed your mind.

Had he alerted the town of what happened to you?

Would it truly have mattered if he did— another sacrifice ensured double the efforts and with that, closer to an answer. The mayor would preach as such, meaty hand curled around one flap of his ironed suit jacket while the other dapped a hanky at his forehead. You could almost picture Yeonjun and Taehyun’s expressions— eyes wider than the belly of the mayor, mouths parted to mirror their own shock at the news.

Another casualty to the pit.

Wooyoung locked his lips, shuffling forward at a cursory pace. “Mhm. Clearly, we’ve gotten off on the wrong foot.”

You scoff, stepping back with every minute inch forward he took. Like a slow dance, except neither partner is on the same playing field.

“You slam into me, threaten me, watch me run around only to pin me down like a bug with your boot, accuse me of being something I am not and have no knowledge of and then—“ You take a breath, finding your chest squeezed uncomfortably from your hurried ranting, “—then you shove a bag over my head and bound my arms and abduct me with the help of your flagpole of a boyfriend! So, your deduction from everything that has happened up until now is a major understatement.”

“Flagpole!?”

“Boyfriend!?”

The simultaneous outburst from both men would have been something to laugh at if not for every little circumstance leading up to this entire ordeal. Yunho, standing back to his full height, hand pulled from his nose to reveal a small blood streak, and a very ruddy tip looked at you like you had been the one to bag and bound him and sweep him away to—

Your gaze flickers from left to right, noting nothing but the wooden landing the three of you are on and a singular entrance to a cave. The outer walls looked wet, and oddly… squishy?

Wooyoung stops in his tracks with an exasperated scoff, “He is not— we aren’t— I mean… sometimes— okay more than sometimes— but we aren’t exclusive.”

Yunho tosses an offended look over at the shorter man, “Are you saying we aren’t boyfriends?”

“No— Yes— I mean, we are but like… you know, it’s complicated. You know that Yunnie.”

“Well, that’s news to me. I wasn’t aware of how complicated things were.” Yunho cast his gaze off to the side, the pilot goggles hanging around his neck swaying with the jerk of his head.

“It isn’t just— ugh, I’ve put my foot in my mouth again but look…” Wooyoung grows quiet waiting for Yunho to look at him, which he does, a bit begrudgingly.

A sigh, “It’s not you… it’s me.”

You couldn’t keep yourself from deadpanning, a complete bystander to the sudden soap opera taking place before you and the downward spiral of a sorta-kinda-maybe relationship between your abductors.

“Well, no shit it’s you! I mean for cicadas sake, Wooyoung. You can’t even be serious enough for a single second and treat this conversation with the utmost importance.”

Moth, in the midst of your anger, did you forget to truly analyze just what the hell these two men were. The tallest, Yunho, had wings. You’d seen them fully drawn at his back and felt the air they blew while incapacitated. You hadn’t really seen Wooyoung’s but squinting over at his form, beyond the brown leather of his short-cropped coat could you make out the darker fuzz lined brown of equally matching wings folded against his back. They couldn’t be real. No human could be born with wings. It was impossible, unheard of. A medical anomaly. Something only explainable by a genetic mutation.

Blame it on your small-minded outlook groomed by an equally smaller town but only those born with such abnormalities were freaks belonging to traveling circuses and sideshows.

But even then, you never heard of anyone with wings. Perhaps an extra set of arms and legs, maybe another head, or even some kind of disfigurement. And looking at either one of them— neither looked to be deformed in any kind of capacity unless they had an extra toe, or a tail hidden somewhere in their pant leg.

You hadn’t a single desire to find out.

“I am being serious! Look, completely serious Wooyoung having a completely serious conversation.” Wooyoung threw his arms out and waved them around, letting them fall after a brief moment to smack against the stiff fabric of his oversized jeans.

Yunho jabbed at the inside of his cheek with his tongue, looking at Wooyoung like he was the most frustrating creature to ever grace his presence. But there was a mask of hurt there, one that the taller tried to conceal by averting his gaze away to settle onto you.

Except you weren’t in the spot you had been before the two men began their petty squabbles.

While distracted, you moved to the edge of the landing, looking over the wooden ends to see exactly how far you may or may not be from any kind of ground. And much to your dismay— you couldn’t even see the illuminated city you had crashed down in. Only an eerie fog of ash-blue that curled ominously around the thicker wooden beams keeping the landing elevated against the cave entrance. Like an illusion of the sea in the night hours, the thick mist rolled and bubbled as if moved by an orchestrated tide brought forth from an invisible moon. Only difference is that if you were to fall into the ocean, you could keep afloat. But fog had no substance to it, and you would be no better dead after taking a step off the landing.

“Don’t do anything rash now— we can still talk this out, yeah?”

You fixed Yunho with a nasty little glare, “Are you fucking with me?” Ignoring the way he winces at your hostility; you ease even closer to the ledge. “You think after all of that, I would want to have a little chit-chat with you— either of you?!”

“Woah woah, hey, you’re getting a little too close to the edge there.” Wooyoung let out a nervous laugh, moving from foot to foot in an antsy manner.

A chime suddenly begins again but instead it is coming solely from the shorter man’s wrist, the golden semi-dome unfolding open and a blue beam with a gridded face comes into view. Wooyoung curses at the sight of it and even more so at the voice that comes out of its gaping mouth.

“I truly hope you’ve been snatched up by those pretty little wings of yours and swallowed whole by the South-End Jackdaw’s because then I will only have half a mind to be angry.”

You can only stare on, brows jumping upward and jaw slackened. It was like something out of a movie, one crafted by the progression of a futuristic world bathed under copper and grit.

“Not even a ‘hello’ or ‘how are you’? Captain, where are your manners?”

“Wooyoung—“ Yunho was swift to warn the younger, an all-knowing awareness to the tone and voice emanating from the projection.

The silence and stillness coming from the motionless face made you shift uncomfortably, the movement catching Yunho’s eye— you acknowledge the nonverbal warning to stay put.

When the voice stirs awake, it is sickly saccharine. “Wooyoung?”

“Yes?”

You couldn’t even brace yourself for the incoming screech, the vibrations from whoever’s voice causing the hologram to stretch and collapse and vibrate erratically.

“WHERE THE FUCK ARE YOU—”

Yunho was at Wooyoung’s side in a blink of an eye, one hand wrapped around the other’s forearm where the half-dome was located, cranking the limb up so that it was close enough for him to speak without having to bend down.

“We’re at the Northward entrance on the landing.”

“Then what is taking you both so long?! I’ll excuse the first few minutes of tardiness on Wooyoung,” The younger lets out a ‘hey’ in protest, “but I have different expectations of you, Yunho-ah. That’s why I sent you to accompany him in the first place— a big fucking mistake on my end.”

You wince at the same time Yunho does. A ripple effect of the brash scolding.

“Sorry, Captain.”

Yunho’s apology was soft, weak. A whisper that hardly parted his lips when spoken.

“Save it. I’ve heard enough "sorry's" to know they mean nothing but empty air.”

Wooyoung tugged his arm from Yunho, his grasp now slack. The younger cast a glance over at you, still standing by the ledge as a lone audience to the debacle.

“Captain, listen, we found something— er— someone and—“

“Meet me in the war room— and don’t make me wait another second.”

The projection shrunk and the half-dome reformed itself back into the partial spherical shape it was before opening.

“Well, that could have been worse.”

Yunho scoffed, “Why is it that when you fuck everything up, I get the blame! If you had watched where you were flying or better yet— left the… whatever she is alone, rather than meddle around in something you weren’t even sure of then we wouldn’t have been late, nor would I have gotten the tongue-lashing from Hongjoong.”

Wooyoung jabs a finger squarely into Yunho’s chest, brows furrowed over narrowed eyes.

“We were sent out to scout the area for anything suspicious and therefore— that,” He throws a hand in your direction, “is redeemable enough to be labeled as such.”

“That?!” Your outburst was ignored, falling upon ears that couldn’t care less for your feelings.

“Right, the thing you swore was a birdling but clearly is anything but is a means for suspicion. Do you even hear yourself? Did that fall knock all common sense out of that head of yours?”

That— Thing— at this point you weren’t sure what else the both of them could say to further drive your entire being further into the dirt. You were human, a person with feelings and emotions but the disregard either one had for you settled like a nasty jagged edged rock in your stomach that jabbed around until your nerves prickled. Both were no different from each other and exactly the same as him. The thought brought bile to your throat, a shaky swallow sending it right back down to burn within your chest.

“Good one,Yunnie. So, getting chewed out by the captain means you can start being a major ass now, huh? Does it make you feel good to lash out at me after acting like a kicked aphid just moments ago because I refused to lie and say our relationship was peachy while it is actually on the cusp of falling to fucking ruin? I mean, please, go ahead make us stand here and waste more of his time so he can really bite your head off because you want to rehash this pointless conversation.”

You, in that moment (and every moment between the two since you’ve gotten to this point), felt like a bystander looking into the window of a house and witnessing things you shouldn’t. And while that instance could easily be dealt with by you simply departing and carrying on your way and ultimately forgetting about it— this one wasn’t as opportunistic. You had nowhere to go except down through the fog and surely that would end with a very painful death. So, your only option was to stand there and listen on and try to keep your attention off to the side and hope that you could simply disappear before they remember you are still there and now unwilling aware of their… issues.

Yunho stands unmoving, glaring down at Wooyoung who refuses to back down beneath his gaze. Both are riddled with a palpable tension, running solid from one shoulder to the next. A lit match could easily spark something explosive.

“If you truly loved someone, you wouldn’t view this conversation as pointless.” Yunho refused to give anymore of his breath to the other, shouldering past him and directly beelining it towards you.

You readied yourself to be grabbed but Yunho simply stopped beside you, keeping his gaze trained to the entrance.

“Let’s go,”

Opening your mouth to protest, to refuse going anywhere else with the two of them, the word of rejection just barely crossing your tongue.

“No—“

“Either you come willingly, or I send you over the landing. You haven’t been afforded such an option up until now, don’t be stupid and throw it away. Hospitality isn’t granted to anyone— threat or otherwise.”

You wished to argue but the looming threat of being thrown over the wooden pier and ultimately to your death was enough to kill off any grievances. Rather, you curl your hands into fists against your upper legs to keep yourself grounded, to stave off from mouthing what would surely have you meeting your demise in a swift manner.

“The only way I’d cross over this landing is by my own volition.”

Yunho tilts his head a smidgen, “Good to know.”

He sets off to the entrance and you, begrudgingly, shuffle after him. Wooyoung remained quiet during the exchange, watching with a hardened jaw that clicked every so often and an equally stoic stare. He took up the rear, the tips of his boots knocking into your Achilles heel when you paused just outside of the entrance.

You could feel his breath shifting strands of grime coated hair at the back of your head, the heat from his body like a suffocating blanket.

════════════════════════════════════

Masterlist

[bathic]

1. It appeared in the spring.

Warnings: Eluding's to human sacrifices, Physical abuse, Sexual abuse undertones.

Word Count: 1.9k

It appeared in the spring. After the winter’s bounty of compacted snow melted into mud and soaked into a new growth of wildflowers and wheatgrass, a large commodious hole far bigger than the black and white printings of space craters on the moon smacked front and center on every newspaper in town. A spectacle for such a little town, where nothing ever happens, and new faces are a dime between a fresh mound of dirt and a wailing newborn.

But something about a giant pit in the middle of the wild wheat fields seemed to stir up a storm of blabbering mouths from high noon to the late hours of the night. No matter if you stood on the corner of Magnolia across from the feed and supply store or sat in one of the old rickety chairs in the ‘seen better days of care’ library— everyone talked. Except for you, or maybe you did, but never to anyone who asked. You’d keep your lips sealed, hoarding the secrets of small to yourself. While Ms. Cha spoke conspiratorially about the pit being some open byway directly from hell; all while clutching knobby jointed fingers into the worn leather of a bible, old man Lee spat and muttered around loose dentures that the hole was from some byproduct of an enemy attack, a warning out of many sure to come. Mr. Ahn who worked at the school was quick to step in with a more realistic theory— a sinkhole. A March rainstorm had flooded the fields just a couple days ago, a good couple feet of standing water and soft grounding could make such a phenomenon appear.

You didn’t care about the how or the why or the what. That pit was an answer to many of your inner pleadings stretching long and arduous over the years.

The beatings still burned heavily into your skin, welts like worms crawled over the flesh from one end of your body to the other. You could feel the rope burn around your wrists, the belt with a freshly shined buckle over your shoulder blades, the blood trailing over the stuck curve of your spine, the sting of dirt rubbing raw into your knees. There was an old lamppost in those wheat fields, right behind the house you refuse to acknowledge as a home; it lacked the inviting comfort from years of love and conditioning simple things into tender commodities. The light had long been broken, the bulb dead and broken from seasonal transgressions, yet that didn’t stop the moths from hovering around it. Seeking the waning fragrance of something long gone.

Those moments in the aftermath brought a sense of solidarity. You, tied to the post, left to your wounds in the dirt with nothing but the glare of the moon on your shredded back; the moths, aimlessly gathering around a mere memory, only to be faced with the same judging audience hovering over their heads. One and the same.

But the pit had swallowed that commonality.

Where that pole once sat was now the wide mouth of a seemingly bottomless hole. The lashes, the blood, the raw skin licked at by the cold of night, gazed upon by the watchful moon, the worn wood and broken light; gone. The moths, you wondered, over a day-old mug of flat cola; had they also in their mindless whims chose to follow the lamppost into the deep-seated throat of the pit? You never saw them again. But that could plainly be because you weren’t ever crossing their paths, seeing as the one thing that you both had in common was now nothing.

~

You stared at the poster like it would tremble beneath your scrutiny. Today, a new year, hardly an ordinary anniversary but something akin to an annual celebration marking the fourteenth year since the pit had emerged. That was fourteen less faces around town, fourteen missing amongst the odd three-hundred and something population recorded by the census in town hall.

Fourteen to be thought dead.

The raffle in town square had just been finished with the mayor swiping sweat from his top lip and reflecting far too many teeth towards the awaiting crowd. Between damp fingers was the newly anointed volunteer on a small rectangular piece of paper.

“As you all know, fourteen volunteers don’t seem like a lot when comparing it to hundreds. But fourteen years is a long time in any context— marriage, divorce, the life of a beloved pet, the day your child was born but, in the past, the food sitting in the back of your refrigerator…” Several rehearsed laughs floated over the crowd. It made your ears buzz unpleasantly. “Past a decade and nearly approaching a century, fourteen years of the unknowing. The pit, in all its cavernous glory, made its mark in our wheat fields, in our small town without a single trace of reasoning. Had us scratching our heads, tapping our chins, pace our porches and grow restless in its presence.” He pauses, shifting the microphone in hand— once to the left, thrice to the right. “But we’ve stood our ground against its silent existence! Never once did we plunge into the small-minded depths of hysteria. We stood strong, standing here now just as unmoved as the first year, the fifth year and the marking of ten whole years.”

Murmured agreement, some whoops of blind faith and the obligatory head bobbing— like the followers of some harebrained prophet. Sparing a glance about the gathered crowd, the looks of idolatry made a heavy rock of unease lay heavy in the bottom of your gut.

No amount of years passing could ever quell that sickening sentiment.

The buzzing in your ears continued while the mayor spoke his aimless words, something encouraging, something disheartening, something embraced.

“— Nobody is sent without a cause. Each person, big or small, young or old, serves a purpose. To bring us, this community, closer to an understanding of where the pit came from, why it chose us, and what it plans on doing once the time comes. We— all of us standing present now, will be better prepared for when that day arrives. Might be tomorrow, or possibly next Thursday or even one random day fifty years from now but we will be ready. Darkness has no hold over our heads, we will not be blindsided by the inevitable!”

Someone moves from beside you, easing into the empty spot with only a mild bit of stirring dust.

“He makes it seem like it is something that’ll end the world.”

“A fly could land in his grits, and he’d spew of bad omens.”

You deposit your hands into the front pockets of your well-worn jeans, not even looking at the owners of the quips.

“I think the late-night brandy binges have smoothed his brain out.”

“Might be early onset of dementia. Or is it Alzheimer’s?”

“Doubt it’s either one of those, he isn’t old enough… at least, I don’t think?” An elbow nudges you, “Think he’s old enough?”

“I think you both speak far too casually when either one of your names could be on that paper.”

“She speaks, finally!” A swift ‘shush’, and a pointedly glare from one of the towns leading gossip mills had Yeonjun snapping his jaw shut. But only for a moment, just until the woman turned her attention back to the droning mayor.

He was settling back onto you with furrowed brows and an overly dramatic pout. “You’d think the old hag would have been in a trance with how much she flaps her lips about the man… and the pit. Isn’t that how it goes? Someone hangs the stars or quotes something about love and cannibalism, maybe reads off some dead guy's poetry and the easily weak-minded fall into this glassy-eyed blind worship.”

“Just say rose-tinted glasses, idiot. You fill your mouth with a mile long amount of words when a term already exists for what you’re blabbering about.” Taehyun hardly blinked when Yeonjun craned his neck to peer over at him from your other side. He didn’t even move his head from its face-forward position, remaining completely settled on the mayor and that piece of paper between his fingers.

“— no sacrifice in is vain. Our fourteenth volunteer to mark the fourteenth year of the pit is…”

You hardly felt the harsh hand wrapping around your upper arm, nearly tugging your arm clean out of its socket.

“— Mr. Lee Kwangsun! It is an honor to have you taking this pivotal step towards retrieving knowledge not only for the town hall but your community of family and friends. You are delegated as a truth-finder, one that will be encapsulated for many generations to come! Everyone, let us give Mr. Lee a hardy send-off. One that’ll provide him comfort and strength in his descent.”

The applause was deafening, and that buzz from earlier grew louder. But not enough to keep the cold edge of the one belonging to the grip on your bicep from cutting through.

“I work my ass off with the expectation of coming home to a cooked meal and a clean house but instead, the sink is filled with half-washed dishes and there isn’t a single plate of supper waiting for me.” His voice remained as sharp as the buckle on his belt, both digging into and under your skin.

You wouldn’t fight him, not now and not every year in the past when he would do the same thing. The ring on your forefinger was a reminder of what you pledged yourself to, who you gave your freedom away to. You wished to look back and beg for help like you used to, to plead and cry and hopefully someone’s heartstrings would be pulled enough to save you. But when you do, Yeonjun’s shoulders are slumped inward, and Taehyun’s gaze quickly flickers away.

“Still hanging around those boys, huh? Whoring yourself out, making a spectacle in front of everyone, running my name into the dirt in front of everyone in town. You are more worthless than a bent nail.” He cared nothing of your footing, not of the pain in your arm or the macabre celebration going on around your retreating forms.

Old Man Lee had been chosen, the fourteenth volunteer of the fourteenth year.

~

The riding crop wasn’t new. Had been around since you were little, hanging from a nail by the kitchen doorway. It wasn’t his favorite to use, rather his trusty belt and shined buckle but he relented on putting it to service. Something about blood soaking into the grooves and being difficult to reach.

While you laid on your stomach, hands knotted behind your back and well-worn jeans pulled around your ankles on the bed you wished housed monsters underneath, the lashes of the crop raining down on your skin did something akin to finality settle within your chest. You hadn’t a plan, nothing sound that could offer the most success or even a complacent amount of comfort. But you couldn’t keep going anymore. Not like this. Not when your days ended with a belt and buckle, a riding crop, a wooden paddle, a rough hand, a booted foot. You wouldn’t linger in acknowledging the other means by his desire. Those instances made you want to curl up into your own flesh, burrow deep into muscle and organs and tissue until you felt like nothing could dig hard enough to reach you.

Thirty-seven licks and he was done. A panting mess that offered nothing but a last-minute wad of lukewarm spit on the back of one of your whip-red thighs. His hunkering steps departed from the room and continued down the short hallway towards the bathroom. You knew to wait, even if your mind was screaming for you to move now. But the water to the shower wasn’t on yet, and he would know you were on foot.

The riding crop, upon turning your head against the quilt stretched across the bed, had been thrown down beside you. You offered it a watery glare, shifting and jerking your hands around from within their rope prison to loosen the binding. He was getting sloppy, lazy. It used to be futile trying to free yourself but with a bit of tugging, the rope loosened, and you eased your hands from behind your back.

You paused, listening.

The water was on, the sound of hushed droplets gathering into loud pools on the bottom of the tub echoing through the paper-thin walls. This was your chance, one that wasn’t planned and had no thought behind it except— you needed to run.

You bite back the hiss of your jeans rubbing against the raw skin on your thighs as you pulled them up and fastened the button into place. Stilling again, you listen. The shower was still going.

The blur from the bedroom to the front door and clear off the porch was very dream-like. It didn’t even feel like you were running, in such a haste comparable to prey facing its inevitable demise. Escaping the jaws of cruelty knowing that they were always at your ankles, nipping at the flesh there with taunting vehemence. You barely heard the sound of the front door slamming open and the booming threats drawing the moon closer to watch.

There was a lot you failed to realize. The shower had turned off when you were halfway through the living room, that you left a clear path of bumped over objects in your wake, the door slammed closed and sounded off the alarm of your escape…

… and the pit.

~

It started with one unlucky volunteer with each new year, chosen from a folded slip of paper piled within an old ball cap. A retriever of answers, the bringer of solutions, messenger of the unknown— whatever false title the mayor could pin to the heads of the chosen only served as empty rhetoric.

To you, at least.

Everyone else soaked up the verbiage like sponge-brained sheep, crowding their trustworthy shepherd in a state of blind trust against the strange and unusual. It felt stupid to follow, and while your intentions weren’t to do so; the nosedive you take into the gaping mouth of the pit while trying to flee the hands of a real small town monster only made you half as rash and just a quarter-inch naive.

~

It may have been the fourteenth year, but you would be the fifteenth volunteer.

════════════════════════════════════

Masterlist

[bathic]

Happy Holidays everyone, here’s some spoilers for the next chapter of Pit that’ll be coming out sometime in January. 🤭

[bathic]

10. Why should you listen to him anyways?

Word Count: 2.2k

Chapter Warning: Minor altercation.

Cold water was the last thing you expected to be awakened by; the rush of the low temperature washing over you like a tidal wave in the summer making you jerk up and sputter. Stray droplets flew in rogue directions, some even collecting across your upper lashes to drip down onto your shirt. Meeting the unblinking eyes of Yeosang, bucket hanging from the casual grip of one hand, through the bars of your cell drew the unremarkable conclusion that he had just doused you in the liquid without a single care of your unconsciousness. But why would he? Perhaps he was seeing if he could drown you without having to go through the struggle of manhandling you under the water's surface. Or this might have been their means of bathing you.

"Seriously? A simple 'hey, wake up' would have done the job."

Yeosang drops the bucket without a single ounce of care to dig out something from his pocket. "It would have, the water also did the job just as efficiently."

You send him a rather wet glare under damp strands of hair; however, it shifted quickly when the familiar clinking of metal rattled within his grip.

"Get up."

“No.”

Despite the taste of some sort of freedom dangling right before you, the stubbornness woven within your person just couldn’t make it easy. Why should you listen to him anyways? A man who forced you here in the brig against your will, stood idly as the shirt was torn from your back (and barely clinging to your front by the remaining sleeve hem) and appeared to simply toss water on you and bark demands without offering a single reason. An ass he was just like his rotten captain.

Yeosang huffs, shouldering the cell door open and crowding into the square shaped space. You scramble backwards on your hands and heels but he’s quicker than you expected, grabbing at the tattered remains of your shirt against your chest and yanking you up in a singular breath. You scowled at him like a defensive dog, teeth bared, and lips curled away from teeth. He wasn’t impressed, by the casual lift of an oddly manicured eyebrow as if posing the inquiry of ‘really? Is that supposed to scare me?’.

“Captain wishes to discuss something with you— one on one.”

“I have nothing to say to that dirt stain of a man.”

The words carried over stray spittle, of which landed along the skin of Yeosang’s cheek. You watched his nostrils flare and the tick in his jaw jump with every silent clench. That was most likely your warning to back down, do as you are told and let what needs to happen play out and hope that there is a silver lining for you. Instead, the man twists you around and slams your front into the bars inside the cell. His hand is digging into the back of your head like he plans to completely sink the entire appendage through your skull and into your brain. Your jaw was aching from the impact, teeth digging into the inner skin of your mouth until the familiar tang of blood lightly coated your tongue. What breath you had was rattled out harshly through the uncomfortable squash of your nose against the rusted bar.

“It won’t take nothing more than a second to snap your neck at the base of your skull with a swift flick of my wrist. If you value your mouth over your life, then you will remain silent and do as you are told.”

You sputter out a reply that is, more or less, a wet gargle. You weren’t even sure if you had meant for a word or two to pass through but needing to affirm that you had decided to heed his threat and would (begrudgingly) follow his command until he has relinquished you to his oh-so beloved captain. Yeosang eased his grip slowly, far too slowly and took a few stray pieces of your hair with him that clung to the palm of his hand. The pesky little things breaking at your roots in sharp pinches.

His foot nudges the side of your right ankle, an action similar to a slap on the hindquarters of a horse. It was to get you moving and you did without resistance this time. Who’s to say next time (if there so much as to be a next time) that you won’t dig your heels into the floor hard enough to skin them just by the weight of your bullheadedness.

~

“Do you think this is a good idea? You know nothing of her motives, where she hails or who she may run with and yet you wish to have a private chat with her like two gossiping crickets? I truly wish I knew where your head was attached to your body, Kim Hongjoong because I’m afraid it isn’t on your neck.” Seonghwa paced back and forth in front of the unperturbed captain’s desk, running a ragged line in the wood beneath his boots.

Hongjoong pulled the oak pipe from his lips, a billow of smoke curling away at the corners of his mouth. “Where my head sits is none of your concern, Hwa. Rest your own for once and let your captain do his bidding as he pleases.”

“That is exactly why I can’t. Your biddings are nothing short of reckless and bordering the line of insanity-induced violence.” The man stops to run a delicate hand through his dark hair, slender fingers catching tangles and cruelly yanking at them until they break. It soothed him slightly to know something was at least yielding to him. Even if the action was causing more harm than good.

“Please, you are being overly dramatic. I just want to talk, nothing more nothing less.”

“Talk?” Seonghwa pauses with his heel parallel to the floor, “When is it ever just talk with you?” The oldest knew he was treading a fine line that’ll have him in the same state as Yunho, but his grievances weren’t being considered in the slightest.

Hongjoong places the pipe-end back between his lips, goading Seonghwa with a lift of an eyebrow to continue his tirade. The line was cast and the bait set to dangle right from the space between them. Seonghwa wasn’t the second in command, just the eldest with his age holding a smidgen of rank in the crew's arbitrary food-chain. But it’s not like that truly mattered, not to Hongjoong at least. They were all beneath him, snug within the grooves of his leather boots— even his wing-bound, Mingi.

“You afford a prisoner the luxury of idle chitchat, yet you lift both hand and foot to your mates until they bleed and bruise—“

“I barely touched Wooyoung, and Yunho could handle a bit of rough treatment. He’s an adult, Seonghwa, not a puny larva.” Hongjoong blows a plume of gray smoke harshly across the plains of his desk, casting the disarray of papers and accumulated objects into a suffocating haze. “If I didn’t know any better, I’d think you were accusing me of—“

“I am not pointing my finger at you, but I am trying to make you see how unreasonable you are being.” Seonghwa’s wings flutter in time with the heavy sigh shifting out of his chest.

“I fail to see what has you so uptight. So, what? I punished Yunho and Wooyoung for their actions according to how severely they fucked up and yet I am the bad guy. What kind of captain would I be if I rolled over and let my crew do as they pleased.” He eyes narrow, dark and bottomless. “A spineless one.”

Seonghwa’s jaw clenches, teeth grinding enough to click. “You would rather be seen as a tyrant than understanding? It does not take a weak man to listen. It does not make you any less of a captain to be merciful.”

Those words were hissed from the mouth of a serpent, one that had Hongjoong on his feet with a hand on the hilt of his favored pistol strapped at his hip. Seonghwa wished to believe that the action was a mere empty threat, but this particular one has been made quite a bit over the passing moon-cycles and each time the vacant look in Hongjoong’s eyes remained the same.

~

Yeosang gestured for you to halt with a raised hand. It trembled slightly in the momentary stillness before reaching forward and folding into a fist against the wood of a singular door. There was a gold placard at head-height, a cursive etching of “Captain’s Quarters” finely written into the metal.

The door flies open, air whooshing into the room, sucking at the front of Yeosang’s shirt and strands of wispy hair. Yeosang could feel the tension oozing out of the captain's private sanctuary, but he’d be none the wiser in keeping his inquiries snuffed out. At least for now, he will take the chance later when Seonghwa and him are in the comfort of their room to ask.

“No need to yank it off its hinges.”

Seonghwa had a sour look on his face as he gazed past his beloved and spotted your grimy form standing just a foot away. “That’ll be the lesser of our problems.”

He receded to the side, letting Yeosang step through and you, hesitating just a second longer than he would have liked. You knew it was stupid to entertain the thought of making another break for it, not when two of your captors stood hardly a hairs length away and Seonghwa could see the impulsivity written across each curve and dip of your face. That made his tongue click, loud.

The sound catches your attention.

“Are you about done wasting our time on chasing dead-ends in that incendiary head of yours?” His tone was harsh, the complete opposite of how he whispered to Yunho back in the brig.

Your upper lip curls just a bit, “Never.”

Seonghwa’s eyes narrow and the hand he still has wrapped around the brass knob of the door clenches and rattles. Oh, what he would give to just wrap his pretty fingers around your neck and snuff out your life and put an end to your sudden appearance— once and for all.

“Seonghwa, quit being a toad and let ‘er in.”

The voice of the captain was unmistakable, even in its lax state and almost tinkling with humor. He sounded like he found a good bit of fun in the way Seonghwa was vibrating against every single nerve and compulsive thought egging him on to lose his temper and wring you out like he would a wet rag.

You watch him slink further off to the side, making the entry to the room more spacious for you to slip in. Yeosang stood at Hongjoong’s left, arms crossed over his chest and ever-so stoic despite the wandering hand at his hip. You watch it dip and snag at the leather harness wrapped around his waist for just a fleeting moment.

“You wanted to talk?”

The relaxed form of the man who you watched beat Yunho, slumped and casually smoking from a pipe was like night and day. Hongjoong hums, painted nails drumming against Yeosang’s side. Seonghwa appears in your peripheral, lowered down into a blur amongst deep reds and rich emeralds.

“Ah, I only conduct discussions when seated. So, if you will— have a seat.”

Hands slammed down on your shoulders with an unusual amount of force, making your legs fold quicker than you have ever had the chance of witnessing before. Your backside landed on a soft cushion of a chair and while you would have taken just a smidgen of your attention to look at it properly, the sudden entrapment of your wrists, ankles and neck by copper shackles bursting from some hidden compartment in the gold framework turned every single thought into radio silence.

Hongjoong kicks his boots up onto the surface of his desk much to the vocal distaste of Seonghwa now coming to stand beside Yeosang, his own hand seeking out a small feel of his lover from the skin on the back of his neck.

“That’s better, hm? Never quite understood how some can even properly think let alone talk while busy on their feet. Seems too much of a distraction.”

You blinked, brows furrowing at how utterly nonchalant he was being despite having you restrained to a chair just for a something as mundane as a little chitchat. Then again, you did witness him harm two members of his crew without batting an eye nor giving them a chance to explain their selves. Which might have been partially your fault.

“Let’s begin then.”

Something about the way he smiles at you, fawn colored hair falling over his forehead with the tilting of his head sparked an uncanny feeling deep in your gut.

════════════════════════════════════

Masterlist

[bathic]

9. You needed to get out.

Word Count: 1.5k

Yunho was right when saying that someone would be coming down to check up on them (more or less for the man since he is considerably more important to the rest) but where he was correct meant everything else had been wrong. Rather than Seonghwa descending those stairs, it was someone entirely unrecognizable to you but intimately familiar to your neighbor.

“Jongho? What are you doing here? Where’s Seonghwa?” The questions were rapid fired, one right after another barely leaving room for answers.

Jongho, with his leathered pants, glinting buttons and dark hair simply shrugged. It wasn’t like he was banned from entering the brig, just not allowed to get close enough to the newcomer’s cell. His round eyes glance over at you, meeting your gaze in the fist-size space between two of the bars.

What Hongjoong doesn’t know, won’t hurt him.

“He’s busy with Wooyoung. Captain said I could come down here instead.”

“Bullshit.”

You turn your head off to the side to look at Yunho, assessing the furrow in his brow and the subtle curling of his hand.

The corner of Jongho’s lips quirk up, caught red-handed despite his little game just beginning. But that doesn’t mean anything, he still has the upper hand and one thing about the youngest crew member was that he loathed to lose. Even to his own mates.

So, he pouts, bats his wide eyes while slinking closer to your cell. His hands are tucked behind his back, out of sight and indiscernible for proper inspection. That unnerves you enough to move into the farthest corner you can, putting Yunho in direct line of your back and out of your sight.

“I’m hurt that you don’t trust me.”

“You’ve given me far more reason to be distrustful of you than the opposite. I’ll ask again— where’s Seonghwa?”

Jongho clucked his tongue, “What difference would it make? Me or—“

“Jongho?” The puzzled tone belonging to the aforementioned Seonghwa dragged the singular name from the bottom of the staircase. You could see his dark brows pinching together in a display of confusion.

The younger man sighed, turning on his heels to face the older. The timer on his fun seemed to end quicker than he would have liked, much to his visible disappointment.

“What are you doing down here?” Seonghwa’s gaze flickered towards the cells, more or less to Yunho before settling back onto Jongho.

“Just wanted to check on Yunho. He didn’t look too good after cap’n was done kicking him into the ground. Is that such a bad thing?”

"Coming from anyone else, no." Seonghwa moved further into the brig, "You know where you should be. I won't speak a word of your unadvised visit to Hongjoong, now run along."

The dismissal made Jongho pout, but nonetheless he backed away from the cells and disappeared up the stairs without a single word. Something unsaid was palpable in the tension, that much you could sense.

~

A meal wasn't guaranteed, nor was something as simple as a blanket. When you'd inquired about a bathroom, Seonghwa merely jutted his chin in the direction of a rusty bucket overlooked in the rust and silver of your cell.

"You...You expect me to piss in that?"

The man wouldn't even look at you, instead fussing lightly at Yunho's face through the bars of his own prison. "I expect nothing of you. Do your business how you want, where you want to. It makes no difference to me."

Something sour curled in the back of your throat, producing enough internal bitterness to look away from the two. You needed to get out.

“When will your captain let me go? He should have realized while he was down here that there is absolutely no use for keeping me hostage.” You didn’t even turn around to speak to Seonghwa, not even sure if he would answer back or care enough to give you an answer.

Someone sighs, the wispy sound irking you just a bit. “Do you live your life question by question?”

“Nobody gets far without asking them. So yes, every question I have either gets me two steps ahead or five back.” You pause, frowning. “So far it seems at the moment that I am stuck in a hamster wheel with a wet paper towel and a piece of dead meat. Going absolutely nowhere.”

Yunho, as quietly as he could, whispers, “What’s a hamster wheel?”

“Oh, poor thing.” Seonghwa’s voice shifts closer, the care in his tone misplaced. “Should the ground beneath your feet collapse and swallow you to save you from the misery you carry at the end of your tongue? Try as you might but pity has no place here. Whatever gathering you are trying to do by asking questions on what’ll happen to little ‘ole you are futile.” He’s right in front of your cell, the soft curve of his cheeks blending into sharp angles which dive into shadow-gathered caverns— a man both smooth and serrated.

“Fuck you. I don’t want you or your psychotic captain's pity. I want out! Let me out!” The speed of which you were up on your feet caused you to stumble off to the side, shoulder knocking into the bars on the adjacent side of which you had been facing. Fatigue settled heavy on your shoulders, causing you to slump a bit. Thirst, hunger, the tired ache in your bones and the phantom pain in your scars clawed beneath your skin all at once.

With the adrenaline thinning out, everything seemed to be throwing a fit from inside you.

“Hey,” Yunho had inched a bit closer to the cell bars right beside your own, “you don’t look so good. It’d be better if you sat back down, yeah?”

You land on your backside with a heavy thump, curing for arm to rest your heavy head on your knees. The fabric of your jeans smelt soiled and had stiffened uncomfortably after being soaked. You wanted to cry, perhaps the release in emotion would help you but know that once the tears dried and you couldn’t heave anymore then you’ll feel insurmountably worse than before your small breakdown.

“Will captain let us eat?” Yunho inquired after a few quiet seconds.

Seonghwa pursed his lips, eyes still settled on your balled form. “He hasn’t decided yet. If anything,” He switches to look over at his lover, a softness swirling about his gaze. “you’ll be let out on whatever conditions he has.”

You took a moment to peek at Seonghwa, to see him peering at Yunho through his cell bars with the smallest of smiles. A soothing gesture, one with the slightest of promise. Yunho looked at the man like he hung every single star in the sky, an equal reflection of care in his own eyes. That bitterness from before clawed at your throat once again and while many realizations would barge into your head like a meddling mother of an independent teenager, the knowing that you weren’t part of the equation in being let out made a heavy dent in your mind.

“What about her?”

“I didn’t ask. What he does with her is no concern to me.”

~

Long after Seonghwa parted with a few hushed words only meant for Yunho and what sounded like a smattering of kisses, someone else appeared in the brig with the tinkling of keys wrapping around each one of their footsteps.

“Ah, Sannie.”

“Captain says you can join us for supper.”

“And?”

“You are free to leave the brig, but he wishes to discuss something with you after everyone has finished eating.” San approached his cell with a ring of keys in his hand, shoving one of them into the lock and giving the chunk a metal a rough turn.

Yunho staggered to his feet, wings fluttering against his back as he neared the door. “Did he say anything about her joining?”

San chose to ignore your presence when he arrived but seeing as he couldn’t possibly fake it when Yunho draws attention to where you sat still curled around yourself in the neighboring cell.

“Don’t push it, Yunnie.”

It was a warning, one that Yunho wouldn’t fight against.

You counted down the seconds once they ascended those stairs and continued a little after just to make sure no one had decided to linger before uncorking the stopper on your emotions and letting them topple over and flood in uneven trails down your dirty face and land in fat droplets on the tops of your jeans.

════════════════════════════════════

Masterlist

[bathic]

8. Death was definitely in your foreseeable future.

Word Count: 1k

Chapter Warning: Graphic detailing's of previous violence.

You don’t think any amount of imaginative conjuring from places you’d never really seen or had the pleasure of being in the midst of could replace the brutal beating you’d bore witness to.

The sight of stray blood spittle coated the wooden floorboards in abstract blobs. Hearing the crunch of tooth or bone and the small wailing pleas made you sick to your stomach. Regret practically bubbled beneath your skin like a slice of cheese on heated bread. Perhaps you shouldn’t have said anything, kept your lips sealed and just let the verbal lashings continue. Those seemed to hurt the least, made it easier to bounce back from. But the feelings of being completely and utterly wronged by careless strangers brought forth a biting fight in you. Didn’t mean Yunho needed to eat the heel of a boot once-twice-thrice.

Consequences, that’s what it is.

Or at least that was what Yeosang had mumbled to Wooyoung who tried to gather his beaten partner into his arms only to be pulled away under the cold order for everyone (minus the incapacitated Yunho) to return back to the war room. Another, lesser command was given to San,

“Put her back in the cell.”

And one more for Mingi. His eyes just a tad bit watery.

“Throw him in the other one beside her.”

Both had hesitated for a moment, one that was a tad too long for the captain if by the narrow of his eyes and hollow cracking of his ringed fingers. You’d been scooped up none too gently and shoved back into your rusted birdcage while Yunho was lifted with a whole lot more care and dragged into the neighboring cell where he was lowered into a propped slump against the back wall. That was a little over an hour ago, give or take, by the rudimentary counting you’ve been doing beneath your breath. It was the only thing keeping your wits in the stagnant room. If your fingers weren’t covered in accumulated filth you’d probably be gnawing at the skin of your cuticles; a bad habit used to self-soothe.

You chanced a glance for the nth time to your right, whether it was to engage visually that the man also locked away was still breathing in his unconsciousness or to simply grasp at the estranged solidarity of not being utterly alone in such a mess. Either way it brought just the smallest granule of comfort. Even if he happened to be one of the reasons why you were even in this situation— and by extension; himself as well.

“I can feel… you starin’.”

Yunho had a cottonmouth, all swollen tongue and slurred speech. Figures he was awake, for how long you weren’t sure. Maybe he was never really asleep. Just playing possum. You couldn’t fault him for that if he was.

“Not staring just making sure you didn’t decide to kick rocks and fucking croak. Last thing I want is to be sitting here gagging on the fumes of your rotting corpse.”

The man shifts so that he’s cradled in the furthest corner away, one that happens to put him at a better position to face you. One of his eyes were swollen shut, lip busted, nose caked in a secondary wave of blood. The bruising and swelling along his cheeks and chin malformed the natural line of his face.

“How thoughtful.” He quipped in a tight voice, trying to maneuver his wings into a more comfortable position that wouldn’t have them crushed between his back the cell bars and wall.

You eyed him for a moment while he continued his shifting, finally glancing away to glare at the staircase that brought you down here and let everyone else ascend when the arbitrary fiasco was said and done. In true fashion, it was the staircase to hell. Or at least a smaller, more minor place of misery. If anything, the pit was the real door to damnation.

“Don’t suppose you know how long that lovely little prick plans on keeping us in here?” You took a chance on asking, figuring that since Yunho knew the man and all that he would have some kind of insight.

But much like a lot of things, you happen to be far from the bullseye.

“Nope… could be hours, could be weeks. All depends on his anger.”

“Great, just great.”

Death was definitely in your foreseeable future.

The lapse in silence was only brief, Yunho clearing his raw throat and huffing from the soreness of it.

“If you are worried then don’t be. Mingi will butter ‘im up in the next hour or two, it’ll at least work enough to get us an audience. Hopefully Seonghwa… he’ll be the easiest to sway.”

“That means he will let us out, right?” You didn’t want to appear hopeful but really, the possibility of this Seonghwa guy appearing and having some sort of empathetic reaction to the sight of your dirty appearance and Yunho’s pitiful state that he would let you both go (more or less— you) as an act of kindness made a bubble of desperation gather in your chest. One that was swiftly popped just as it formed.

“‘Course not. Just means he could put in a good word for us to the captain. We act like good little subordinates and then we have a higher chance of gettin’ out. Just gotta wait…”

You wanted to scream, lose your shit and punch at the cell bars but instead you scoffed. It was like calling customer service and getting transferred several times to different departments only to end up at square one without a single solution to your initial problem.

“Right… so is our chances at a hundred percent once he gets his dick rode?” Your jab wasn’t meant as a joke, but Yunho found it humorous enough to wheeze lightheartedly into a coughing fit.

“Can’t say I have an answer to that one… maybe I’ll ask Mingi later.”

Another scoff.

════════════════════════════════════

Masterlist

[bathic]

7. Except there was no waiting.

Word Count: 3.6k

Chapter Warning: Physical Violence.

“Wait—“

Except there was no waiting.

The man the captain ordered to remove you from the cell, San, moved without a hitch. One fingerless gloved hand snagged a hold of your left sleeve, balling the dirty fabric around his fingers and yanking you away from the wall with far more strength than needed. You stumbled over your feet, toes snagging against the wooden floorboards uncomfortably enough to make you hiss between your teeth. If and when you have a moment at some point (it was really seeming to be unlikely in your current situation), checking for splinters would be in the books.

Hongjoong’s eyes never wavered from your form, completely zeroed in on every bit of your wayward shuffling.

You tried to turn in the hold that San had on you, but his grip simply tightened, balled fist nudging roughly into your shoulder. The yanking and shoving ended with your knees hitting the ground, back facing towards every pair of eyes in the room. San’s hand still remained weaved in the fabric of your sleeve.

The positioning felt like an execution. On the knees, entrapped to the decided damnation of death before an audience with the licks of humiliation lapping hungrily at the open wounds of shame, despair. All that was missing was the rope, or the guillotine, or even the blade of some medieval axe or sword. Anyone of these men could be your finishing blow…

If you allowed them.

“Can’t we just talk this over for a second? Whatever it is you want to know or— or need to be made crystal clear, I swear I will be completely up-front and honest.” You angled your head off to the left to look up at San, but he refused to even engage in any sort of eye contact. That left the other two, standing off just past him shoulder to shoulder.

Yeosang, the one that had found you in the tunnels, stared at you without an ounce of emotion. Nothing in his stoicism betrayed how he felt, what he was thinking, or if he was inclined to heed your words. Beside him, Mingi at least bore no mask to his thoughts. He looked at Hongjoong with a nibbling of worry, something about the unspoken and self-made decision of the captain on the whim wrought an anxious jitter throughout his person. Violence was something he preferred to avoid especially when the hand that tended to wield it was his wing-bound, the light of his love.

The dawning settles again that nobody was to aid you. You are alone, just like above.

“I’ve grown exhausted talking to you. And to be completely fair, you had your chance to come clean but instead you decided to give nothing but useless utterances. Now,” Hongjoong moves closer, each heavily weighted step making you twitch restlessly on your knees. San’s grip remained firm, practically stretching your left sleeve far past its elasticity. “You will keep your mouth shut unless you want that wagging tongue of yours pulled cleanly out of your mouth.”

The threat felt like a suffocating blanket across your neck, his breath sounding far closer than it actually was. Hongjoong stood over your body, feeble in its attempts to turn, to keep him in direct sight. You were no different to him than the puny weevils that congregated in the Birch District. In fact, perhaps you might be related to them. A notion he plans to dig out of that brain of yours if you happen to not be the aforementioned birdling so keenly tacked upon.

“What… What are you going to do to me?” You inwardly cursed at how feeble you sound. Nothing of the momentary spirit of courage that drove you to dive into the pit and away from that monster of a man could be accounted for.

Suddenly the ring on your finger felt like his calloused hand around your throat and the ache of those lashes you had received on the backs of your thighs before your escape tethered you to those nights tied to the old lamp post beneath the unblinking eye of the moon. Where your company dwindled down to a small grouping of moths dancing against the fading yellow bulb.

Something seemed to press a bit urgently within your thoughts, like it wished to bring a bit of light to the subject. But that was quickly snubbed the moment another hand twisted into the back of your shirt, not at all mindful of what hair might be in the way.

“That has yet to be decided.”

There was just a split second between your fumbled gasp, the hand on your shirt yanking back with the dirty fabric woven between ring-laced fingers and the sudden onslaught of footsteps rushing down the singular staircase where you truly wished that the pit had a bottom to it. One that you would have preferred splattering against in an array of every spineless piece of you.

~

“Let’s be rational, Wooyoung. Yeosang wouldn’t do anything unless authorized to.” Seonghwa knew his wing-bound better than most, and while the moth wasn’t one to hesitate in defending not only their home but the rest of the crew if even the slightest bit of danger reared its head, the transgression to act was ultimately decided upon by their captain.

Wooyoung scoffed, scurrying as fast his legs would allow. The squishy floor of the tunnels didn’t offer much aid, not that they ever did.

“You think I don’t know that?! It’s the fact that Yeosang is patrolling the tunnels— or was, and Hongjoong is in the brig. Put the pieces together, Hwa.”

“It could just be a coincidence. We don’t know why—“ Seonghwa attempted once again at playing the middleman, a mediator in the realm of opposing that dire.

“Did you not hear what Jongho said! He knew about the birdling running off, which might I add couldn’t have been known unless she was found and then proceeded to tip us about Hongjoong being in the brig. What part of either one of those things is a fucking coincidence?”

“He’s got a point.” Yunho merely shrugged, casting a look over his shoulder at the oldest.

Seonghwa wanted to argue back that there could still be a slight chance that none of that correlated but even he knew from both Jongho’s cocky slight and the fact that so far none of the three have yet to encounter Yeosang despite having traversed through several of the tunnels assigned to his patrol route; adding on Hongjoong’s presence in the only place ever used when an intruder has been captured and kept in holding until dealt with personally— it all definitely went hand-in-hand.

“Fine, but please smother my curiosity over your distress. Why are you so hellbent on getting to the brig? Shouldn’t you be relieved that Hongjoong has custody over the supposed birdling?”

They were just outside of the entrance to the brig before Wooyoung even mustered up the words to reply back to Seonghwa, turning on his heels and fixing a picture-perfect expression of wide-eyed surprise. “Relieved? What for? Captain will have both of our wings fashioned as rugs in front of his study’s fireplace for letting the thing escape. We already have a punishment lined up for being late and now it’ll be doubled for the slip-up.”

Seonghwa’s brows raise, and Yunho couldn’t help but catch what his question was more-or-less implying. “Did you think our haste was out of concern for the runaway?”

“Of course not. I just wasn’t sure where your heads were at is all.”

“Well, it certainly isn’t there doing a backstroke with the birdling. And it definitely won’t be attached to our necks if we continue to stand around.” Wooyoung turned on a dime and practically threw himself down the stairs. Yunho wasn’t too far behind, although with less haste and more caution for his safety.

Seonghwa remained rooted for a moment, staring at the entrance and then at the tunnel’s moist ceiling.

“I have a terrible feeling digging beneath my skin and yet I cannot scratch at it enough to relieve its insistence.” His musings were only for his own singular audience, spoken out in a low hush.

~

The shock had worn off into panic which mixed into a concoction of embarrassment and anger. You wanted both to throw up and thrash around like a madwoman reaching the peak stages of insanity. But instead, like a defenseless newborn deer, you froze.

Hongjoong stood behind you with the back of your shirt in his hand, torn into nothing but an irregularly shaped rag. Your back, to him and everyone else, lay exposed to the stagnant air of the brig and the prying eyes picking apart every bit of bare flesh.

“Captain—“

You recognized Wooyoung’s voice now entering the scene, mixing into the fray of silence. But you wouldn’t budge, curling forward into yourself with the burning reminder of why you even escaped from above plastered all over your back. The grip on your sleeve refused to slacken, rather it tightened upon feeling you slump forward.

Hongjoong’s eyes narrowed, glancing from one stray beauty mark to the next, bouncing over bruises both old and yellowed to newer smudges of deep violets creating a path of pigmented steppingstones to raised flesh gnarled into ugly deformations. And while the scars, bruising and speckled flesh here and there were visually apparent what wasn’t, however, were the aforementioned wings usually accompanying the likes of bird-folk. He could picture them as clear as day— black like the Southend jackdaws, earthen dirt like the Westbound waxwings, lustrous blue-purple draping over the backs of the Northway martins— the list was still an ongoing task twisted into a roll of parchment and stabbed directly through the center and into his desk with a pocket dagger gifted by Seonghwa. The expected folding of two wings molded to your back for easy hidings beneath clothing and safe keeping when not in flight remained nonexistent.

You had no wings to your person. Not even the usual scarring associated with wing scalping could be seen. And none of the ones you did have were even remotely related.

Instead of providing a soothing wave of relief for the captain, it made him choleric. The hot burn of ripened fury mounting from the soles of his boot-clad feet all the way to his scalp, every nerve along the path sizzled under his skin, under his clothing.

He looked from San, who was gazing down at your back, curved over in your hunch of self-soothing, from the corner of his lone uncovered eye. Then swept his attention to Yeosang, also looking with a shielded expression. Mingi appeared confused, worrying his lower lip between blunt teeth.

“Well, would you look at that… not a single feather, wing nor scalping scar in sight. If I had to make a gigantic fucking guess,” Hongjoong turns, finally settling his eyes on the trio at the foot of the stairs— but more specifically, Wooyoung and Yunho. “I’d say there was no birdling to begin with. Just a pathetic creature cradled in the idiocy of two cretinous bastards.”

“Hongjoong-“ Seonghwa stepped around the duo with the intent to try and calm the captain down before he let the poison of his short-temper thrust irreversible daggers into the bond between the three.

Hongjoong took his strides in quick succession, reaching Wooyoung whose position placed him closer. His hand latched onto the long strands of hair at the back of the younger man’s head, using the leverage to yank Wooyoung’s head back and then forward as he all but dragged the latter over to where you still sat on your knees. Wooyoung yelped, hands immediately flying up to the one nestled within his hair, clawing wildly at the top of Hongjoong’s hand. Each snag of Wooyoung’s nails on his skin only added more oil to the fire, making it grow and fester. Yunho was quick to follow, knocking Seonghwa’s futile attempts in stopping him from the same fate as his wing bound. What kind of mate would he be, despite their mounting issues, to let his beloved suffer while he stood idle? He played a part in this entire incident as well; he was just as deserving of Hongjoong’s ire.

You stiffened upon feeling the thudding of their combined encroaching come to a swift halt somewhere behind you.

“Pry your lids open as far as they’ll stretch and take a good long look. Do you see any wings, Wooyoung? Perhaps a feather or fuzzy down? Tell me my eyes do not deceive me and that two of those scars out of several bunches belong to the possible removal of a pair of birdling assigned wings? Tell me!” Hongjoong’s grip constricted hard enough within Wooyoung’s hair that the younger could hear, let alone feel, the strands snap and break off. It wasn’t pleasant in the slightest.

“Please, captain, don’t hurt—“

“Bite your tongue good and hard, Yunho unless you wish to have it removed and served to you for dinner.”

Yunho knew he could use his height and stature to his advantage in disposing of Hongjoong’s grip on his lover, but he’d be granted a swiftly executed take-down not only by the captain's own wing-bound, but also by his two loyalists— Yeosang and San. Betrayer would be burned into his forehead for the act of mutiny and his death would hang on the walls of the captains' quarters. That thought didn’t disturb him as much as the reality of Wooyoung being widowed-bound, despite having seven other mates, some who wouldn’t mind doting on him with more than enough affection if needed but the severed threading holding their sacred bond together could never be healed. That was a living purgatory Yunho wouldn’t dare put Wooyoung through.

“No— I— I don’t see any wings— or— or feathers—“

“And? What about scalping scars? Do you see them?”

Wooyoung swallowed thickly, eyes dragging over your back from one jagged edge of a gnarly scar to the next.

“I don’t— I don’t see any, Captain.”

Hongjoong hums, pressing a whispered kiss against the outer shell of Wooyoung’s right ear. “Last question… do you see a birdling before us?”

You shifted, knees going numb beneath your dead weight and rigid body. It was like being put beneath a microscope or on a metal tray with your stomach freshly dissected for every curious eye to see.

“No, s’not a birdling—“

Wooyoung slamming into the ground startled you enough to jerk out of San’s grip, the sleeve he had in his hand stretching enough to cause the threading to snap. The leeway provided you with the space to turn, immediately zeroing in on the body just a foot or two behind you. Wooyoung groaned, not expecting the aggressive shove used by the hand in his hair so suddenly. If he had just a moment to prepare himself (although he should know by now how the captain’s actions usually framed themselves) then the impact against the floorboards wouldn’t have nearly hurt as bad as it did. His chin ached, having landed harshly enough to seal his jaw shut on his tongue. Blood soaked into his taste buds like soapy water does a sponge.

Yunho was quick to descend on his wing-bound, wrapping his arms from under his armpits and up his back to both cradle Wooyoung and inch him away to the sidelines.

Hongjoong watched every second as if he was looking upon two insignificant ants struggling to find somewhere to hide, somewhere that offered a shield of protection.

The thought alone made an uncomfortable laugh burst past his lips, his hands settling on his hips. You swore with enough focus that you could not only see but count several dark strands of hair caught within the facet of rings on his fingers.

“I’m glad you could clear that up for us, Wooyoung…” He pauses, wiping away a fictitious tear at the corner of his eye. “Truly, because I don’t think I could even imagine fabricating a false cause without a singular speck of viable evidence. But you— and your oh-so loving Yunho, seem to have quite the knack for it, hm?”

Seonghwa cleared his throat, casting a wary glance to the duo before side-stepping in front of them in a makeshift shield of his legs and lax wings.

“Hongjoong—“

“Captain; let’s not forget where we stand, Seonghwa. Unless you wish to be rattled around by the scalp as well.”

The threat had Yeosang easing forward, chest pressing to the side of Seonghwa’s arm while partially placing half of his stocky build before his lover. The soft touch to his waist would have provided an ounce of comfort if not for the erraticism of the captain.

“Captain,” Seonghwa pauses to clear his throat, hand curling into Yeosang’s waist to ground himself. “I will not regard your anger at Wooyoung and Yunho as unjustified but surely you could see reason for their actions?”

“Reason?” Hongjoong tilted his head over his shoulder, the movement eerily resembling that of a ball-jointed doll whose connective joint has rusted over making the action jerky and unsettling.

“Let me explain, please…”

The captain waved his hand, the signal enough to kick Seonghwa’s attempt at tampering down the other man’s anger into overdrive.

“They couldn’t have been sure on whether or not she posed a threat. Even by her own words that she wasn’t a birdling, that still doesn’t provide enough reasoning to just believe that she isn’t. And yes, checking her before coming here would have been a better course of action rather than—“

“We did— well, we tried but she kept fighting our attempts at seeing if she had wings or not beneath her shirt. Hell, she even managed to get away once.” Yunho cradled Wooyoung into his chest, concealing his bubbling affection when his wing-bound pressed tighter into his hold.

“I fought for a good reason! Tell me, would you stand idle while two strangers decided to not only ambush you but try and undress you?! I truly wish you would tell me that I am the one who is unreasonable.” You couldn’t believe the blatant attempt of making you out to be the problem, that because of your actions to protect yourself— you were the sole issue for everything up to this point.

“Is… Is that true?” Seonghwa wished to have asked that question with a bit more neutrality, but it came out far more imposing and daresay— interrogative.

Yunho looked abashedly to the side, bottom lip pulled down by the corners and a wince causing his eyes to crescent. Wooyoung mumbled something into his blouse, but it went unheard and unnoticed.

“For the most part… yes.”

“My ass!” You shuffled around to properly face the group convening behind you, ignoring the way San released the sorry excuse of a shirt sleeve from his hand to then latch onto your other one that fared in better shape. “Neither one of you even gave me the chance to explain myself— nor did you offer to hear me out! Instead, you both sandwiched yourselves against me and tried to remove my shirt while standing in that city of stringed lights. If either one of you would have just—“

“The city?” Mingi peers over at Hongjoong then down at Yunho and Wooyoung, his eyes abnormally wide. “Say you didn’t, Yunho.”

But the man in question didn’t answer, almost curling into himself and Wooyoung in his arms.

“Did anyone see you? Hear you? Know of your presence?” Hongjoong was teetering on the edge with his inquiries, dark eyes unblinking.

“No— I swear, nobody was around.” Yunho was quick to respond, looking up at Hongjoong then to Seonghwa and by extension Yeosang.

You, however, recounted differently those last moments before they lifted off with you thrown over the taller man’s shoulder. The sound of laughter, and communal din. Even silverware scratching and dinging against plates of food sitting idly on tables of iron wrought.

“That’s not right,” You mumbled, making San turn his head down at you with a narrowed eye. “I heard people laughing and talking and the scraping of forks and possibly knives on ceramic plates just a few seconds after they put a bag over my head. I’m not crazy— I heard it.”

Hongjoong said nothing, not after your divulging of information and not in the short seconds between him standing in the spot he had taken root to and the place that Yunho was holding Wooyoung. You stiffened, feeling a nasty twinge at the base of your throat upon witnessing the captain reel his leg back and hurling his boot covered foot squarely into Yunho’s chest just inches from Wooyoung’s head.

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Masterlist

[bathic]

Updating Pit tonight, even if my fingers fall off and I gotta use my toes to type. <3

[bathic]

2. A means to an end.

Word Count: 1.9k

The expectation was death, how could it not be when you’ve taken a headfirst stumble down into a cavernous hole. It had to have a bottom. A means to an end. A place where you’ll rest, where your bones will be shattered and scattered for soil to eventually cover, blood to water the ground and guts to feed the insects lying in wait.

But you didn’t.

Plummeting through inky darkness didn’t conclude with your demise but rather after what felt like hours (but simply a handful of minutes) falling down an infinite rabbit hole did the shadows fade from your vision and a cacophony of lights gather in a swirling tunnel below you. To you, in a fleeting thought, did they look to be dancing. Like fireflies in the summer, blinking in and out of sight. A part of it made you sick to look at, thinking that this was that metaphorical light at the end of it all. And of course, yours just had to be something drowned in bitter feelings. Summer and fireflies and the blinking of their lights in the humid evenings— dancing around your beaten body with ignorant glee. You loathed them.

You wished they would hurry to you and drown you in their luminescence. End every bit of your suffering through this free fall. Make the welts that have scarred over so much that the skin is bubbled and uneven, rough and layered, completely disappear.

With a pop, and the realization that there hadn’t been not a single sound since you’ve entered the pit, a grand orchestra of noises blasted through your ears and bounced around your head until it became too much to bear. Something wet caught around the curve of your earlobe and dragged like a dog’s tongue up and over the outer shell. You’d lift a hand to wipe at whatever it was, facing red stains that smeared across your fingertips when pulling your hand back to observe. The lights had grown brighter by now, their approach swirling together and stretching into finely pointed lines that threatened to snag your body and sink into every battered fiber of your wrought soul.

Wishful thinking or perhaps, depressive thoughts.

But no matter the steadfast approach of those lights, you wouldn’t be meeting them in any death riddled embrace. Instead, you and something else or another collide mid-air, the impact yanking you harshly off-course and barreling into a netted roof. You bounce harshly, smacking into the rope and flipping over the edge of it with what— or who— right on your heels.

The second landing proved much harder, clipping a well-worn canopy that didn’t stand a chance against you and the ‘who’ that tore right through its weak fibers. Below it was the ground, hard and wet. Your body hit it with a rather heavy ‘plap’, stomach down, halfway into a sludge puddle that jumped and scattered to soak into your clothing. A bit off from the mark was the tag-a-long, crashing into several stacked boxes that splintered into many fragmented chunks, some of which ricocheted off the backs of your legs.

Logically, you’d be dead. Realistically, you’d also be dead— or at least heavily injured to the point that death would be the only solution.

But you weren’t, just a bit dazed and pressed for the sweet feeling of air passing through your lungs; having it knocked and stolen never was a pleasant experience. The fabric of your jeans felt heavy and oddly sticky, clinging to your legs as you shifted onto your back, allowing more of the puddle’s remaining ichor to soak into the cotton of your tee. A small gripe at the back of your mind, groaned in hopes of it just being rainwater and not something vomit-inducing. You don’t think you’d be able to stomach the possibility of lying in… well, waste of some sort.

Beyond your bare feet was a groan capped off with several foul-mouthed grievances, a bit of shifting and the occasional wood bit sliding rough across the ground. It was stone, you could feel the partially smooth surface and bleeding jagged edges beneath your hands.

“Hey, are you dead? ‘Cause you better hope you are.”

You stir enough to bend a knee just as the owner of the voice (and the several rounds of pearl-clutching ramblings) was suddenly leaning over into your vision like a curious bird does a small and insignificant lizard. While his face was difficult to see with the varying stringed lights crossing over one another just above where you landed, what wasn’t was his clearly projected threat.

“Oh, guess you aren’t.”

Very much like a beetle who had been overturned by a handsy child, you scuttled as best as you could across the stony ground and away from the stranger, but the traction of your soaked jeans mixed with the wet stones only made you kick around in place comically. Well, at least he seemed to find it a little amusing if not by the teasing giggle and tilted head. Still, you couldn’t make out what his expression was.

The humor could very well be misplaced and the opening for some entirely different emotion— a close relative to his threat only seconds ago.

“Did the stag’s get your tongue or what?”

You coughed, throat feeling hoarse and dry as dirt after a month-long drought. “Stag’s?”

“Yeah, the stag’s— you know, down by the rot.” He waited for you to give any kind of indication that you knew what he was talking about but seeing as you still looked up at him like he was some kind of bizarre entity spewing utter nonsense (which wasn’t exactly far off); it was telling that you didn’t, in fact, know what he was referring to.

“Forget it, you clearly weren’t there. Otherwise, if you were then you wouldn’t have been able to say anything.”

You blink, once then twice and contemplate screaming for help but who, in actuality, would? In a foreign place that you happen to crash land into after nosediving into a gigantic hole, whoever resided here in this place are patrons of the pit. Mysterious and strange and foreign—

And possibly dangerous.

That thought alone settled a heavy rock in your gut, a wariness building up in the back of your legs that traveled all the way up your neck where the hair there stood on edge.

You hadn’t realized he had still been talking.

“— so that could really only be the case. Obviously only recently winged moths would fly as terrible as you. I mean, seriously, no offense but your form was atrocious. Who even fly’s straight down like that?” He pauses, and for some reason that makes you tense up. Nothing good came from a halted thought.

“Unless...” He starts after a brief moment, head eerily adjusted into an uncanny downward crane that looked ever more ominous by the obscurity of his face. “You aren’t a moth at all… say, what did you say you were?”

The warning sirens blared hard and loud within your head, screaming at you to move, to kick off the ground and run and to not be so helpless for once. Because that was what you were— are.

“I… I didn’t say I was anything.”

“Oh? I guess you didn’t. But that wasn’t the answer I was looking for; I want to know whether or not you are—“

“Wooyoung!”

The man quickly turns on his heels, and the ever-growing stronghold of his presence shrinks as another figure appears with some kind of flourishing of fabric at their back. You couldn’t tell by how the man standing by you seemed to block your sight from painting a fuller and clearer picture, but you assumed it was some kind of cloak.

“What the hell happened? I took my eyes off of you for one second and the next thing I see is you eating roof rope and disappearing to the ground.” Steadfast did the newcomer approach, oblivious of you soaking in stagnant puddle water.

Wooyoung huffs, kicking a booted toe at the stone ground. “Wow, Yunho, not a single— ‘Are you okay?’ or even, ‘Are you hurt anywhere? If so, let me kiss it better’. I’m really beginning to think that my well-being is nothing but lint on your blouse.”

“You and I both know that if you were well and truly injured then you wouldn’t be yapping to yourself.”

Yet he wasn’t, this Wooyoung. He hadn’t been talking to himself this entire time and he knew that, and you knew that and now you were sure that the freshly inserted stranger would come to know as well.

“Funny, but I wasn’t talking to myself.” He shifts his body to the side, enough to remove the wall blocking your view of whoever he was speaking to and give said person a shabby eyeful of your surely unpresentable form.

A tall man with broad shoulders and lanky arms and slightly humidity-curled brown hair stood perplexed at the sight of you. Like the unveiling of something unexplainable that— rather— than urged forth the need for further inquiries, just completely swiped everything into an empty space of utter silence.

You looked at him like he was another Wooyoung.

“Oh… hello.” His gaze jumps to the other man, a jolt of his eyebrows upwards feeding for an explanation.

“She’s the reason I crashed.”

“Her? Seriously?” Yunho glossed over you from the frazzled state of your hair to the dirt powdering your bare feet.

“You’re joking?”

Wooyoung throws his hands up, something on his back fluttering restlessly, the movement catching your attention. “Do I sound like I am joking? She smacked right into me and sent me hurling to the ground!”

“I did not— you… you… whatever you did or were doing had hit me hard enough to throw me to the side.” Not exactly sure what bug of confidence had crawled into your head, but you found your voice enough to retort defensively.

“If you had been watching where you were going and didn’t fly into my path—“

“Fly? I was falling, you motor-mouthed idiot!”

“Motor-mouth?!” Wooyoung took a stiff step towards you, his fists balled at his sides.

Yunho reached a hand out to latch onto his upper arm before he could close in on you any further. “A word, Wooyoung.”

The shorter man let himself be maneuvered several feet away, enough distance to drown their whispers into a dull hum. You couldn’t pick up what they were saying, only watching cautiously when Wooyoung’s hands fly up and wave around and Yunho clapping him on the back of the head before huddling him closer. It was like a barrier of secrets between the two of them, no space spared an opening to let anything slip through.

And then they went silent, turning to face you with partial obscurity graced by the shadows and lighting now at both of their backs.

You swallowed, wishing your tongue would have slipped down your own throat, suddenly regretting your outburst.

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Masterlist

[bathic]

your rain moth ateez series is SO good. perfect balance of humor <3

Thank you so much <3 , Got to have some humor in misfortunate times. 😌