#mangomingki | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

bikerjongho · 2 years

Text

photomeister | jeong yunho

genre: fantasy, adventure, supernatural

characters: vampire photographer!yunho ft. bartender!wooyoung and fae prince!hongjoong

description: In order to help his friend Wooyoung heal, Yunho takes a big risk to frame a bad man using his camera.

word count: 10.2k

warnings: swearing, murder, blood, death, dead bodies

author’s note: SO MANY THINGS ARE HAPPENING. 1) this is the longest fic ive ever written for this acc 2) first fic ive written in so long and it feels so good to write again 3) I wrote this for nanowrimo 4) this is yunho’s long long long belated birthday present. finally the birthday fics are all complete god fucking bless 5) I strongly strongly strongly recommend you read corpsehands first in order to understand some nuances but you can still read this as a standalone (im gonna expand the corpsehands universe and try to write smth for all ateez members). anyways hi again. buckle up. get fucked. enjoy

taglist: @itsapapisongo @mangomingki @irehlevant @blueprint-han @bvlnoriyas @woosansang @yourlocaltimetraveler

part 2 of The Sinisterwise Series; masterlist here

A glass of the reddest Sanguine wine longed for Yunho on the wooden bar table, and the bartender that had made it for him ached similarly.

Wooyoung’s speakeasy job allowed him to talk to all sorts of unique faces, so there was never a shortage of conversation for him to enjoy while working and pouring illegal alcohol for all supernatural beings that knew about this underground establishment. Usually, the interactions filled him with life in the same way he could give life through his hands to corpses – but the death of his Seelie fae friend Helio had grasped him by the hands and had drained him of his vitality. Every time a Seelie fae entered the bar with their insignia pinned onto their cloak, Wooyoung was thrown back into the terrible past, his hands remembering all too vividly the feeling of Helio’s shirt on his fingers when he had gripped it and the color of the blood and bruises that coated Helio when he had laid motionless on the speakeasy floor. All of this haunted him, but what Wooyoung was most preoccupied with were Helio’s last words to him – “you saved me. Wooyoung, how?”

The words had tugged and gnawed at him so much that he couldn’t find it in him to speak to customers joyfully anymore. The truth of the matter was that he hadn’t saved Helio – he had removed his healing hands and had let Death take the reins away from him. He had watched the life leave Helio’s eyes. He had seen the funeral procession in the newspapers. Speakeasy frequenters couldn’t understand where their bubbly and amiable Wooyoung had gone – Helio’s death had broken him, and Wooyoung was helpless to find the pieces to stitch himself together again.

When the noise of the bar died down and customers left, Wooyoung was able to find a break in his schedule. He walked into the bartender’s lounge in the back of the speakeasy. On the table, next to a pile of papers one gust away from being strewn across the floor, was a brand-new candlestick telephone that Wooyoung had purchased with the speakeasy’s net gain of profit they had seen recently. Wooyoung spun the dial to a phone number he knew by heart, put the phone to his ear, and prayed that the recipient would pick up.

Wooyoung bit his lip while the phone buzzed. He had to answer the phone – Wooyoung had gone on months without getting better, and the recipient was one of few people he could trust and believed could make some real closure for him. The recipient couldn’t make Helio alive again, no one could, but perhaps he could be Wooyoung’s hands of revenge in the exact places where Wooyoung’s own hands had failed so fatally. Wooyoung didn’t know what he would do if the recipient wasn’t available.

Another ring. Wooyoung was nervous. Vampires were faster than this.

But then the phone clicked and Yunho’s warm voice was in his ears – “Hello?”

Wooyoung’s eyes welled up. “Yunho,” he said, warmth flooding through his body. “It’s Wooyoung. Yunho, I need your help.”

A few days later, Yunho traversed through a dim and busy street, his black coat whipping against the autumn wind. The rain didn’t help the dimness of the street, or the fact that the wind was pushing the rain onto him, but Yunho trudged on in his leather-clad boots. He slid by warlocks gossiping about potions and avoided werewolves that were on their way home for evening dinner, searching for the alleyway that gave the entrance to Wooyoung’s speakeasy. One hand held his umbrella and the other clasped a brand-new 1922 Kodak camera with a strap around his neck for extra support. There was nothing to photograph at the moment, and certainly, the rain would make it much harder to do so, but Yunho carried it around him like an appendage for the constant purpose that there might be something worth documenting. That was something Yunho had learned in his centuries of living – there was never a shortage of photographs to be taken, and when there were photos to be taken, those were the chances Yunho could grab to make his own story.

Yunho entered the alleyway containing the speakeasy entrance and threw it open. He was greeted with a pitch-black and musty-smelling hallway that contained more doors. The dark was no issue, he could see fine in the dark, but the smell overpowered his already powerful senses and left him reeling for a few moments while his nose calmed down. He could hear the faint tinging of glasses and laughter tens of feet away, and he used that to choose the right door to the speakeasy. Once in front of the door, Yunho knocked the specific pattern Wooyoung had told him – it changed every week – and a burly fae with muscles bigger than his head greeted him at the door. Yunho opened his mouth to say hello, but the bouncer interrupted his introduction. He poked at the camera in his hands and Yunho stiffened.

“You can’t bring witchcraft like this in here,” he said gruffly. His eyes narrowed.

Yunho, who was expecting worse from this large man, relaxed. His eyes glimmered as he became more relaxed around this bouncer. “It’s a broken camera,” he said, nodding. “Look.” Yunho picked up the camera and pointed the lens right at himself. “Take a look at the display.”

“Listen, I don’t know what you’re–” the bouncer began, but Yunho smiled at him so blindingly that he sighed. He looked at the display like Yunho had asked him, folding his beefy arms across his chest as he leaned in to see.

And instead of an image of Yunho, where the lens was pointing, the camera showed just the background around him. It was like the camera could see directly through him, an unimportant view when compared to the scenery around him.

“You see?” He said, laughing. “This damn thing is so bad at picking up things that even if I did take a photo, it wouldn’t be worth anything.” He flashed a toothy smile, fangs glimmering. The bouncer looked at him for a moment more, like he was contemplating kicking him in the rear to send him far outside of the store, and then his shoulders relaxed.

“Keep it as a necklace, bloodsucker,” he huffed. “And if I see you using it, I won’t hesitate to stake you.” His words packed power in them and Yunho didn’t doubt the truth to them, especially with a man as hefty as this one saying them. But Yunho was not fearful in the slightest – he had outsmarted all sorts of people with his angles and fast fingers, and he would do it a thousand times more. A meathead bouncer was nothing.

“Thank you very much, sir, will do,” Yunho said with no intention of doing, flashing yet another charming smile at the bouncer before slipping by his large frame and larger muscles before he could change his mind.

Yunho entered the bar and was hit with a cacophony of noise from drunks, customers, and workers alike. In the corner, he could hear a pixie whining about the stock market. In another, a group of vampires huddled and muttered over a stack of cards with drinks at their sides. To his displeasure, he could also hear the sound of the devil’s tango and the creak of the bed they were using to dance on the floor above the speakeasy. He decided to discard that from his hearing.

“Yunho,” a voice called out over all of the chatter. Yunho turned to the voice, already knowing who it was – Wooyoung, one of his greatest friends, stood at the counter in his bartender uniform with a wide grin. Next to him was a glass of dark red liquid that made Yunho’s eyes light up.

“Wooyoung,” Yunho said smoothly, sliding into a bar seat right in front of him on the counter. He flashed a smile similar to the one he had shown the bouncer, but this one had genuine intentions. He clutched his camera with his left hand while grasping the red glass with his right. “I assume this is mine?”

“That it is,” Wooyoung nodded. “It’s on the house.”

Yunho swirled the red liquid – Sanguine wine – around in its glass. A concoction of wine and blood, it was an extremely popular drink for vampires and unsurprisingly disliked by everyone else. “Thank you, Wooyoung,” he said, looking at him thoughtfully before taking a sip. The taste of blood hit his tongue first with the alcohol following closely behind; he savored it. “It’s good to see you.” He paused. “You said you needed my help for something?” Another pause. “And my camera?”

Yunho could see the weight in Wooyoung’s eyes, and when they had called he had heard it in his voice. Yunho and Wooyoung ran risky lives so it wasn’t unusual to see pain, weight, or fear in each other quite often – but this seemed especially bearing. Yunho’s eyes softened. “Wooyoung, I’m here now.”

Wooyoung gave a sad smile to Yunho. “Can you help me frame a bastard?”

Yunho sat up in his chair, his eyebrows raised. His mouth curled. “Oh?”

Wooyoung didn’t share his enthusiasm, and again, Yunho deflated for him out of respect. “There was this fae at the speakeasy one day,” Wooyoung began, and Yunho adjusted himself in his seat and held his drink tight while he gave his attention to Wooyoung.

Wooyoung dove into the details about this fae he had befriended for a short period, Helio, and his untimely death with an Unseelie fae. Yunho listened, silently drinking his Sanguine while stroking his camera in thought.

“And I know Helio was just somebody and I probably shouldn’t be affected by this as much as I am,” Wooyoung said, furiously scrubbing at a wine glass that he had been cleaning repeatedly for the entire duration of their talk. “But I am and I feel helpless. I want vengeance for Helio, Yunho. Vengeance in a way that would hurt all Unseelie fae, because I doubt Helio’s murderer was just an isolated case of violence. Can you help me?”

Yunho had lived through more deaths than the number of decades he had been alive. Hearing Wooyoung’s story brought it all back – Helio was next to a nobody to Wooyoung, but he had been undoubtedly someone to so many. Yunho thrived in the suffering of those with higher social status, those that could easily evade consequences for actions that would ripple throughout poorer communities, or those with less. It was his immoral duty to destroy people like this and his loving duty to ease his friend’s pain.

“Of course,” he said, and Wooyoung’s visibly now brighter eyes made him pleased with his decision. “What is it that you want me to do, though?” He quipped, tapping the table with his long fingers. “You said you disposed of his murderer already.”

“I have an idea,” Wooyoung smiled and leaned into the table, ready for a spiel. “Mitha, the land of the fae, has been going through a lot of political turmoil,” he began.

“The Seelie and Unseelie courts can’t get along. Each side is grasping for supporters but the fae are equally divided. For every fae that believes in goodness is another that believes in bloodshed.” Wooyoung pulled out, to Yunho’s appreciation, a photo of a man and placed it on the table for Yunho. Yunho craned his head to look at the man – a male fae.

A solemn fae with tricky eyes stared back at him. The fae sat on a red velvet seat and held at his side a black cane with a skull hilt. His hair was split evenly into two colors, white and black, but he was dressed in darker colors that suited the black part of his hair more than the white. Yunho wondered, idly and ironically, which side of the fae this one was on.

“This fae is Prince Hongjoong, an influential political leader in Mitha,” Wooyoung said while Yunho continued to study the photo. Yunho kept up with newspapers and somewhere, in the back of his brain, he thought he had seen him in the news before. It made sense – a man of this kind of caliber tended to grace the papers often. Yunho wondered if his publicity was usually the good or bad kind.

“So, you want me to kill this guy?” Yunho asked, raising his eyebrows.

Wooyoung snorted. “I know you’re not a murderer, of course not. I wouldn’t ask you to do that.”

Yunho touched his camera around his neck with a soft hand. “Mm, I’m not sure about that. I’m a shooter.”

Wooyoung grinned. “You’re funny. But I don’t want you murdering this man, dear Gods, I couldn’t imagine the hell you and I would be in if he perished by our hands.” He paused. “I want a worse fate for him.” Wooyoung leaned into the counter. “I want you to take photos of him.”

Yunho’s face remained even – he could feel the bouncer from earlier burning critical eyes in the back of his head. “Now that is something I can do.”

“I know you can,” Wooyoung grinned, finally placing down the glass he had been scrubbing nonstop. “Mitha won’t be a hard journey for you, will it?”

Yunho shook his head. “Nah,” he laughed. “It’s not too hard to get in when you have a reporter pass. It allows me access into lots of places.”

“I didn’t know you were hired at a reporting firm,” Wooyoung marveled.

Yunho’s eyes luminesced as he downed the last drops of his Sanguine. “Who said the reporter pass is mine?”

Wooyoung smiled so largely that his cheeks became round. “Yunho, you’re a little bastard, you know that?”

“The police call me that too often,” Yunho mused and then offered a cheeky smile to his friend. “Well, I best be going, then?”

Wooyoung glanced at the clock on the wall: Yunho had been here for an hour and a half. “Oh Gods, sure. Thank you, Yunho,” he said, bowing his head at him. “This means the world to me and more.”

“Of course, it’s no trouble at all,” Yunho smiled. “And it was good seeing you.” He snuck the photo of Prince Hongjoong Wooyoung had shown him and slid it into his coat pocket.

“Good seeing you too.”

Yunho got up from his seat and narrowly avoided hitting a very drunk goblin while doing so. He offered a perplexed look to Wooyoung, who only shrugged.

“I'll be in contact, but you'll probably see my work before you hear from me,” Yunho grinned, stretching his arms above his head, making him appear much taller than he already was.

“I’ll be on the lookout,” Wooyoung saluted. “Now, I should probably get back to my job…”

Wooyoung glanced around and saw a customer waiting to be served by him. It was a werewolf, one that was staring at Yunho like he was a stain on a white carpet. Wooyoung opened his mouth to tell his friend, but he realized Yunho had noticed him too, and his facial expression mirrored that of the werewolf’s.

Yunho was locked in Wooyoung's vision. "Yunho, no."

“About time,” the werewolf sneered at the two of them. “I’m being held up by one of that kind?” He bared his wolfish teeth at Yunho, even though it was Wooyoung’s fault that he wasn’t served immediately.

“Yunho, just go, you have more important things to worry about,” Wooyoung nudged, knowing that fights and quarrels were all too frequent at the bar, and to his relief, Yunho lost eye contact with the werewolf, but Wooyoung wasn't blind to the minute eye roll he did.

“Are you siding with him?” The werewolf roared, and Wooyoung stared daggers at Yunho, his hands gripping the wooden bar table so hard that his knuckles were white. His eyes pleaded for him to leave.

Yunho, luckily, obliged. “See you later then, Wooyoung,” he said with a little cheer in his voice, and Wooyoung watched him dart by the bouncer and exit the speakeasy.

He then dug up his bartender personality and a smile – and thought that if dealing with a crabby and impatient werewolf was hard enough, he couldn’t imagine the hoops Yunho would have to go through to successfully photograph Hongjoong in all of the right ways, but more importantly, in all of the wrong ways. He wished him the best of luck and then went to satisfy the werewolf.

The travel to Mitha was very similar to the travel to the Underworld – easy, relaxing, and methodical. As Yunho stood at the subway station waiting for the yellow train to Mitha, he watched demons, vampires, and spirits alike board the red train – the one to the Underworld. The yellow train was set to arrive in 20 minutes, but Yunho liked arriving early to watch people. His camera hung at his neck and his hands itched to grasp it and take photos – but there was nothing special about people traveling to hell. The mundane, while a good source for fabrication and framing, had a price to document because of the time it took to develop the photograph in a dark room. Yunho wanted his photos to be of substance, and photos of substance begged to have context; context he didn’t feel like making. He sat and twiddled his thumbs and ignored the Kodak.

Besides his camera, Yunho had his photographer license, a handful of Mitha’s coin currency tucked safely into his pocket, and a black satchel at his side. In the satchel were a few bags of blood and a change of fancier clothes. This would be an easy trip – there and back without a hitch. Perhaps he would journey through hell if he had time to spare after the photoshoot.

The yellow train arrived five minutes early at the station. Yunho was one of the first to stride onto the train and he didn’t waste any time stealing a comfy seat. As more creatures boarded the yellow train to Mitha, Yunho wondered why they were also on the train. Were they seeing friends or family? Were they on their way to work, which could explain why so many people were giving looks to Yunho, an outlier in their daily routine? He ignored their glances. They saw him; they were looking at his camera.

Cameras, while not a new invention, had a layer of scrutiny from the public. It was considered dirty work to be a photographer in the same way as it was dirty to be a prostitute. In a world where magic, uncanny encounters, and accidents existed, a perfect mechanical machine such as a camera was the antithesis of it all. Despite years of practicing espionage magic, a photograph could foil a warlock’s criminal plans immediately. Fae found ways to step over their curse of always telling the truth to cause trickery, but a photograph could dismantle that. The camera was a powerful tool used to twist media despite an immortal’s and all-powerful’s best efforts to maintain their image. And Yunho was a master of his camera.

It was also dirty to be a vampire, but without the blood in sight, it would take longer for people to realize he was one. He certainly wasn’t a fae – his ears weren’t pointed, his eyes, hair, and skin were a natural color, and he could very much lie his way out of anything – but there were plenty of warlocks who also looked almost human, like him. Yunho eased into his seat as the train began to move. There weren’t too many people riding today – most on the train were fae, but there were also a fair amount of vampires, warlocks, and to Yunho’s distaste, a werewolf. He wrinkled his nose uncomfortably.

“The politics of Mitha are always in turmoil,” Wooyoung’s voice echoed in Yunho’s head as he focused his attention on how his encounter with Hongjoong would go instead of the werewolf. “Their court is divided into ten Seelie and ten Unseelie fae to pass laws, but all fae regardless of side vote for both sides. Being a bipartisan politician is crucial to claiming a seat. That means all fae running for a seat in the court will advertise themselves as neutral as possible to appease all fae, but after the election, they will lose their bipartisanship and be extremely Unseelie or Seelie-oriented. And nothing will get passed. Prince Hongjoong is running as a Seelie, but I don’t think that’s where his true affiliations lie. The Unseelie have high hopes for him to win the seat because if he does, the court will be Unseelie-majority for the first time in decades.”

Yunho had interacted with Unseelie before, though it wasn’t always obvious which side they affiliated with by looks alone, safe for if they had either symbol of affiliation on their clothes. Even mannerisms weren’t a way to define which side they were on – Yunho had met the kindest Seelie bikers and the most callous Unseelie mothers. The most accurate way to tell was in how they carried themselves – there was a certain aura of disdain that the Unseelies held and a sense of benevolence that the Seelies had in their personalities. He wasn’t scared of Hongjoong, but he would be lying if he said wasn’t even a little nervous diving into fae territory as a vampire. Hongjoong had the high ground – and Yunho hoped he could swipe at his ankles when he wasn’t looking.

Yunho wasn’t even truly sure what his interaction with Hongjoong would look like. From the few times he had traveled to Mitha, he had visited fae that lived in the city or suburbs, fae that weren’t coughing up riches like the royal fae were. But Yunho did his best work in the moment – and his determination to help out Wooyoung kept him going, even with his anxieties gnawing at his extremities.

It took an hour for the yellow train to reach the major train station of Mitha. Once off of the train, Yunho asked an older female fae for directions to the castle of the royal fae.

She had looked at him, puzzled. “Are you sure you want to go there?” She had questioned, and Yunho had nodded.

“I’m sure you know how much the royal fae love having their photos taken,” he laughed, having absolutely no idea if that was true or not. It didn’t matter, because the fae had shrugged like it was indeed plausible, and then she gave him the directions to the castle.

It took another hour of walking to reach the castle. Unlike in the Midworld where it had been pouring rain, Mitha’s sun blazed across the buildings, pedestrians, and cars in the cities. It was a popular, and incorrect, belief that all vampires burned in the sun. And while a few did, Yunho was of the majority that didn’t.

As Yunho walked to the castle, he took note of the stores he saw. There was a store that sold canes that doubled as weapons, and it made Yunho think about the cane that Prince Hongjoong had in the photo that Wooyoung had given him. Another store advertised mail services across Mitha, Midworld, and the Underworld. Another store advertised Mithaized Underworld food, and next to it was a jewelry store that catered to fae’s pointed ears and unique skin tones.

The closer Yunho got to the castle, the fewer of these stores he saw. Like nature had seen the urbanization of Mitha and had scoffed, trees replaced buildings and stores. The absence of stores made the gorgeous castle in the distance that much more captivating and obvious to the eye.

As he got closer to the castle, Yunho now saw clearly the golden brown bridge that separated the mass of land Yunho was on from the castle ground. At the front of the gate was a group of guards. Yunho gripped his bag and his camera tighter. With the reporter pass that he had stolen, he didn’t think it would be much trouble to get into the castle.

He was right. The guard closest to him had taken a look at him and asked to see what was inside his bag – and gave a puzzled expression to the blood but didn’t say anything – before Yunho had flashed the guard with his reporter pass.

The photo on the pass was of a man that looked eerily similar to Yunho, and never once had anyone doubted that it was him. Yunho couldn’t even have his photo taken as a vampire, anyway. Jongho, the man on the card, could.

The guard was no exception, and let Yunho cross the bridge. He enjoyed the stroll, watching fish he had never seen swim in the moat below and admiring the intricate details of the wood of the bridge.

And once Yunho was inside the castle – and how thrilled he was to be, how was it this easy? – he was paralyzed with awe at the architecture in front of him. His hands itched at his camera, to soak in and capture every beautiful curve or corner he saw. On one wall was a magnificent photo of the royal family. Hongjoong, without his cane, was there with his parents and siblings. On the ceiling hung a chandelier with what must have been thousands of gemstones adorning it. On another wall were rows and rows of statues of what Yunho could only presume were past rulers. How easy it could be to stay here for hours, swallowing up the sublime divinity of it all and let his camera run dry – but he had to find Hongjoong. He pleased his artistic eyes just a bit longer before asking a nearby guard for directions to the Prince.

“You want to go to the throne room?” The guard sputtered when Yunho reached him and asked.

This was now the second time someone thought he was brainsick for wanting to see the Prince. “Well, yes,” Yunho said, scratching his head before pointing to his camera. “I’m here to take photos of His Highness Prince Hongjoong. I’m in support of his political program and wish to convince the public to vote for him.”

When he got no response, Yunho fished out Jongho’s reporter pass again. “See?” He said, flashing it to the guard.

The guard waved away the reporter pass. “No, that’s not what–” he sighed. He shut his eyes, contemplating something, and then opened them. His eyes held nothing. “Allow me to lead the way.”

The guard led Yunho through a hallway that, once again, brought Yunho close to tears. Long tapestries of the royal fae family’s logo adorned the walls in a rainbow display. Yunho opened his mouth to ask the guard who exactly each royal fae was on the wall, but he stopped himself when he saw how stiff and tight the guard was. It wasn’t a tightness that alluded to discipline and years of training, but a stiffness that came with nerves. It was the little things that Yunho picked up on, like the guard’s tentative steps as if one wrong move would lock his knees and send him to the rock-hard velvet floor of the castle, or the way he kept looking behind his shoulder at Yunho every few seconds.

Yunho tried not to let that get to him. Maybe the guard was fearful about something else. Some fae found vampires, by nature, unsettling and disturbing, which wasn’t much better; but he couldn’t shake the ominous feeling growing in the pit of his stomach like a parasite in a petri dish.

At last, the throne room was in front of them: a gleaming gold door with handles half of the length of Yunho – so very long. Yunho secured his bag one last time and made sure all of his belongings were accounted for, and then looked up at the guard to find him staring right back. Something in his gaze sent ice-cold sensations down Yunho’s spine, alerting all of the nerves in his peripheral nervous system.

“What?” He blurted out before he could think through being silent.

The guard gave him a solemn expression. “Are you absolutely sure you want to go inside?” He asked.

Yunho grimaced. “I traveled a long way to get here,” he said. “Of course I do.” He held the gaze of the guard a little longer. He then continued: “what are you so afraid of that’s inside there?”

The guard’s eyes grew weary. Even though they were the color of a lightning bolt, white-blue, powerful, and supernatural, they looked weighed down by the weight of something – some kind of fae secret, no doubt. One that Yunho suspected with a drop of his stomach, he would soon bear as well.

“Prince Hongjoong…” he said, and then shook his head. “No,” the guard said, talking to himself. “I am not scared of him. I am scared that you will be scared of him because you are naive. You do not know the ways of the Unseelie and how they like to work, and how they don’t like to work.”

Yunho was reminded of the fact that fae could not lie and his blood temperature dropped a degree. “Okay,” he said, thinking of Wooyoung and how he needed his help, “but I want to go in.”

The guard sighed with a note of finality, realizing that he couldn’t change Yunho’s mind. “Fine.” Without a preamble, he threw open the large, golden doors to the throne room.

The first part of the throne room Yunho noticed was the large, dark grandfather clock that hung ceremoniously in the corner of the room, the hands of it itching to hit the hour. It was two minutes until two. The perimeter of it, besides being marked with numbers to tell the time, had an engraving in the fae’s ancient language that had died off centuries ago. Yunho had just been turned when the last native speaker died, and he did not know the language. The body of the clock stretched to the floor, and the large metal pendulum encased in glass on the inside of it swung back and forth as a hypnotist would in their profession.

The clock was so significant that the blood all over the floor was only the second aspect of the room he noticed – he smelled it before he saw it, and he was surprised he hadn’t smelled it outside of the doors. He had long since learned to control his bloodthirst, so he didn’t feel the need to lap up the mess on all fours, but he did feel discomfort in his stomach as anyone would that had morals. Blood had been shed, recently, and why?

Yunho then saw Hongjoong, and he immediately understood. Yunho thought back to the old vampire tales his vampire friends had told him centuries ago that listed certain facial features and personalities as more bloodthirsty than others. Yunho had never believed them, taking them as jokes or old vampire’s tales only, but taking in Hongjoong, a little inkling of fear grew in his stomach and made him shudder.

The fae prince was seated on a throne much too tall for himself or any fae, a throne whose top almost reached the bottom curve of the clock. The prince had a long black cloak tossed over the edge of the seat of the throne and it splayed helplessly onto the floor beside him. One leg lounged on the armrest of the chair, the other knee-bent, and semi-parallel to the floor. One hand rested on the kicked-up knee, the other held that damn cane that never seemed to leave his side in all of the photos Yunho had seen of him. The prince’s crown glimmered with gold, which matched the details on his black shirt to an unsettling degree. Yunho thought if he would only smile, he would be admired by all of the women in Mitha. But what destroyed that image for Yunho was the prince’s face – a face that when described, would match the high bloodthirst requirements. Hongjoong wasn’t even a vampire, but his sharp eyes loomed over Yunho like a predator sizing up its prey. They were darker than obsidian, and the prince’s red mouth seemed curled upward in a state of perpetual arrogance. This man had the face of bloodthirst that the vampires’ tales fulfilled.

Yunho made eye contact with the prince, and he could have sworn he saw them glimmer.

“You brought me another one, guard?” Prince Hongjoong said boldly and boomingly, and Yunho had expected his voice to be deeper. It was higher, playful, and lackadaisical, and it reminded him of Puck from A Midsummer Night's Dream, a person from fae history. The prince smiled, and it was not a smile that would make women swoon. This smile was one of a lion about to eat supper. “That’s three back-to-back.”

Absentmindedly, Yunho heard the clock in the room tick. Only one minute until the hour. Prince Hongjoong swung his leg over the gorgeous armrest so both of his feet were planted firmly on the ground. His stance was wide, and he used his knees as armrests. He leaned in, and Yunho expected him to make a comment at him – a dirty vampire or a silly peasant. But then Hongjoong’s head cocked to the left, away from Yunho, and Yunho followed his laser gaze.

There were two more people in the room with them, so quiet and insignificant when compared to the burst of personality on the throne. The first one was a fae man – a commoner, based on his average clothing – that looked like he was about to pass out from anxiety due to the Prince’s stares. The second man was in the shadows, one that Yunho only saw because of his enhanced vision. He was cloaked from head to toe with not even his face visible due to the shadows his clothing gave him. He was a blur of darkness against the bright throne room safe for the enormous and bloody axe he held. The blood on the sharp end of it still dripped, staining the precious white floor with beads of coagulated red.

Hongjoong raised an arm and gestured to the commoner, his smile almost kind. “Why don’t you walk to the center of the floor now, boy?”

Yunho watched as the man followed the Prince’s command, taking uneasy steps to the center of the floor, overtop of the blood that had been spilled from someone previously. Yunho eyed the axeman warily. He itched to help out this commoner, somehow save him from this axeman, but he didn’t know what to do.

It was at that moment that the grandfather clock struck the hour. Hongjoong’s eyes narrowed with malice, and he turned his head to focus on the clock. The man in the middle of the floor also watched it, his eyes frightened and large. The grandfather clock, as grandfather clocks did, began its merry song of announcing to everyone in the room that fifteen minutes had passed since one o’clock, and then also thirty minutes, and forty-five minutes, and then, as if releasing pent-up happiness, the clock sang that it was now two o’clock, its chimes clanging merrily in an announcement.

This is what a normal grandfather clock did, but Hongjoong was still intently focused on the clock like it would do something extraordinary. No, Yunho thought suddenly. He looked at Hongjoong more closely, he looked at how his eyes were unfocused like he was looking directly above the clock instead of right at it. His blood chilled. He’s focused on the sounds the clock is making.

The clock began its first bong that one o’clock had passed. Yunho recognized it immediately as a different sound – he wasn’t sure what about it that was different, but it wasn’t what a normal grandfather clock sounded like. He took a second to spare a look at Hongjoong – and found his eyes were glazed with malicious delirium that had not been there seconds ago. The man in the center of the room began to sob raggedly.

The Prince stood up, his cape following him, elegant, dark, and oh-so-obsequious. Hongjoong thrust his cane so that it pointed right at the sobbing man, not caring that he was crying. His eyes were filled with fire, and the smile on his face radiated with violent lunacy. A giggle lept out of his mouth.

The skull cane in Hongjoong’s hand began to shake due to the shaking in the wielder’s body. Hongjoong’s head turned rapidly at the axeman, who had now walked out of the shadows. The man began screaming. Hongjoong’s shaking became worse and his smile widened. The clock bonged again – it was two o’clock.

“Kill him.”

It happened in an instant. One moment, the axe was in the axeman’s hands, and the next it was sliced three-fourths into the man’s neck. It had flown through the air like a hawk, finding its target with ease and spraying blood all over the room’s walls and floor.

The blood flecked onto Yunho. He screamed in surprise, but not before instinctually licking a bit off of where some had landed on his cheek. It tasted wonderful, but there were too many emotions swirling in his stomach with tornado-like tendencies for him to process it truly. He wanted to cry. He wanted to lick all of the blood off of his face. He wanted to murder Hongjoong. He wanted to melt into the floor. He wanted to stake himself. Instead, his hands found the camera around his neck.

Hongjoong did not protest, though he was focused on Yunho as the vampire fumbled around with his camera. The Prince knew what he was doing, there was no way he didn’t know what a camera was. There was a pride in his eyes that glowed as Yunho’s fingers found all of the right functions on his camera despite the fear that was traveling through his body and making him shake. He cranked the film and cocked the shutter, then took the photo – Hongjoong grinning menacingly on his throne, the victim with blood pouring out of his neck on the floor, and the sprayed out blood all over the white marble floor from when the axe had first made its impact. The axeman, who had done his job, was back in the shadows. Yunho wasn’t even sure he had made it into the photo. He would have to develop the film later to see.

A thought occurred to him amidst all of the fire alarms that were screaming in his head to get the hell out – if he could publish this photo in a newspaper, there would be no need for a photo shoot to frame Prince Hongjoong for Wooyoung. Yunho could do that all on his own with this photo. A smile tried to grow on his lips, but like a plant without sunshine, it wilted. A murder had just happened. He couldn’t smile at that.

When Yunho lowered the camera from his eyes, Hongjoong was staring at him with piercing and dark eyes.

Yunho opened his mouth to ask why he was looking at him like that, but Hongjoong was royalty. He was used to speaking first.

“You shouldn’t have seen that,” Hongjoong said serenely. He looked dazed like a child would be after eating a bag of candy. “You should not have seen that…” Prince Hongjoong paused, then inclined a hand towards him. “What are you called?”

Yunho did not lose eye contact with him, and he thought about his stolen photographer’s pass. “Jongho.”

Hongjoong nodded in a way that showed Yunho the question of his name was insignificant. “Jongho,” he said, tasting his name in his mouth and nodding. “Jongho, I’m afraid you’re going to need to die.”

“I already died fifteen hundred years ago,” Yunho said casually, instead of jumping back in terror like he should have. For a moment, he lost eye contact with the prince and noticed that the guard that had escorted him into the room was gone. He had no clue when he had decided to leave. It was just him, the corpse, his murderer, and this fae with a dark and iron hand. His attention was back on the prince. “Why do you want me dead… a second time?”

The prince eased back into the comfort of his throne like a beast succumbing back into the catacombs from which it came. The cane had not left his right hand the entire time he had been in the throne room, though he now held it with a much more relaxed grip. Hongjoong smiled at him, and it wasn’t a nice smile – it was one similar to the one that had been plastered on his face when the axe had found its target only minutes ago.

“You can’t let Seelie know that I kill,” Hongjoong yawned. “And you just took a photo of the murder.”

“You could have stopped me,” Yunho pointed out. “Though, I’m not sure you actually could’ve. Watching a person die in front of my eyes isn’t exactly something I see every day, and so I had to document it as a photographer.”

“It’s only okay to kill someone if it’s dinner in your book, bloodsucker,” Hongjoong nodded, his grin wider. Yunho had a sudden desire to twist Prince Hongjoong’s head off like a lid of pickles.

“But perhaps I should have been clearer,” the Prince continued, now tapping his fingers on the skull handle of his cane while Yunho fumed. “I honestly just wanted to see you squirm. It’s a shame you’ve died already, the first death is always the worst… though you know that already,” he smiled, and then his eyes narrowed. “You might die again, is what I am saying.”

Yunho opened his mouth to ask what that exactly meant, ignoring the Prince’s other comments, but Hongjoong was ready for him. “I have no say in if you die or not if I am a righteous leader, though I can make it happen,” Hongjoong said. “The Fate Clock will decide for me since fate has brought you here anyway without my request.”

Yunho eyed the towering clock in the room again, and thought about how when that clock had struck two o’clock, Hongjoong had ordered the axeman to kill the man. A worry grew in his stomach, and he glanced down at the corpse that was emptying its bodily contents onto the floor. “How?”

Hongjoong got even comfier on his large, large throne. A lazy smile appeared on his face. “The Fate Clock is an old relic from when my ancient ancestors were young,” he said.

Wonderful, Yunho thought. Fae magic.

“It has aided my royal family throughout since the inception of its life and will continue to aid my progeny when I am long gone,” Hongjoong continued. “It can determine if someone lives or dies by how useful they will be to my family.”

“If me releasing you with that photo will do good for my people, then the clock will chime in a major key,” he paused, “do you know what that is?”

“I’m dead, not deaf,” Yunho said mundanely, though he had never thought to dabble in music in his long life.

Hongjoong took this as an acceptable answer and continued. “If the Clock chimes in a major key at the hour, I will spare your life. Though if letting you spread that photograph will only cause harm…”

There must have been a rock in Yunho’s stomach, teetering against his kidneys, unsure if it should fall or not. It chose at that moment to plummet down to his feet.

“It will chime in a minor key at the hour,” Hongjoong continued, “and you will become just like this man at my feet right now.”

Hongjoong had backed Yunho into a corner. “It’s a harsh and cruel world,” Hongjoong said with cheer, “for people that don’t have power like me. I bless the silly thought that made you desire to come and see me, vampire. More bloodshed for me.”

Yunho looked down at the corpse on the ground, and realized with a sickening punch in the gut, that he would join him soon enough. He knew, and Hongjoong knew, that at three o’clock, the Fate Clock would chime. The Clock would chime in a minor key because surely no photo of a murder would be received well – and Yunho would be gone. Wooyoung would not be avenged. Helio’s death would be in vain, and at the price of Yunho’s. For the second time, Yunho would die, and for the first time, it would be permanent.

Yunho looked Prince Hongjoong directly in the eyes. “Then the Clock will chime in a major key,” he said, plastering on a kind smile and lying right through his teeth, “because I will never show that photo to anyone. I will only bring goodness and light to your reign, political career, and life.”

Hongjoong’s eyes glimmered. “I think you’d best benefit my life bleeding out on the floor at my feet, dear.”

The stare the two of them held could have cut glass. Hongjoong, powerful even when lounging in his chair, legs spread out in a move of dominance and fingers tapping on his cane thoughtfully stared at Yunho like he was considering all of the ways he could string Yunho’s useless and dead intestines across his wall artfully, and Yunho, feet planted firm into the ground with a strong grip on his camera on his neck and unwavering gaze to the prince. He was not going to die today. He convinced himself of this.

Hongjoong considered Yunho a bit more, looking up and down his lithe and lanky frame before sighing. “Well, I suppose I should let you sit comfortably for your final hour.”

Hongjoong was kind enough to let Yunho sit in an old, wooden chair that the axeman had dragged across the floor to him. It creaked under his weight when he sat in it and was terrified that if he moved, the chair would break apart and he would somehow stake himself during the fall. Perhaps that was Hongjoong’s plan all along – to quench his thirst for bloodshed that couldn’t wait an hour. Yunho had not thought about death so much for the full hour of waiting. Could vampires die by an axe? Was an axe how he would die? Was there a stake underneath all of that dark and bloodstained clothing that the axeman wore that would drive through his heart? Perhaps the axeman would just pull off a leg from the chair Yunho was seated in, or Hongjoong would drive his wooden cane to end him in a painfully majestic murder.

But Yunho was most upset about the promise he had made to Wooyoung, a promise that he saw slipping through his fingers like sand. He had wanted to come back victorious, to ease Wooyoung’s troubled heart, and now he wasn’t sure how his friend would ever know he had died. And how would Wooyoung cope with two deaths when he did realize? He didn’t want to think about it. He couldn’t think about failing Wooyoung. He had failed enough times with others for greater stakes.

Yunho inclined his head towards the large doors that had led him in here. Perhaps if he ran fast enough, he could escape Hongjoong’s wrath. But that’s still failing Wooyoung, he thought. Because even if you managed to get out and release the photo, Hongjoong would hunt you down and kill you anyway.

Thus, the hour passed by very slowly. Yunho was too into his thoughts to realize it was five minutes until the hour when Hongjoong spoke up.

“Five minutes,” he sneered, the glee of slaughter emanating off of his body like smoke from a fire. “Five minutes until you’re dead.”

“Five minutes until you let me go, alive,” Yunho said. If he was to die – again – he was going to stand tall and strong up until the very last moment. “Five minutes until I release that photo, and it will prove to be useful for your throne.” He just hoped the Clock didn’t know what photo editing was. He was shaking out of anxiety now, and he hoped Hongjoong couldn’t see it.

If Hongjoong had anything other than sanguinary thoughts, he did not show them. Like a slinky, he sunk deeper into his throne. He shrugged, and Yunho prayed to whatever higher power that controlled the Clock that it would be merciful on his already damned, vampiric soul.

The five minutes were up in an instant like Hongjoong had turned its ancient hands closer to the hour himself. At some point during Yunho’s melancholic reverie, the axeman had removed the body of the man from the center of the floor and had done a poor job of wiping up the blood. The place where Yunho would soon stand was a circle of bloody pink.

“You know where you must be,” Hongjoong leered, inclining his head to the circle. Yunho said nothing, but he did obey the Prince and stood in the center of the throne room. He gripped his camera tightly and watched the Clock. There was less than a minute left. If Yunho’s heart actually worked, it would be running a marathon.

Hongjoong also watched the clock, his smile turning wider and wider as each second passed. He stood from the throne, threw back his cape, and lowered his cane to the ground.

Ten seconds. Yunho held his breath, though he hadn’t been breathing anyway. Five seconds. Yunho gripped his camera tighter. If this was how he was going to die, he was going to give the people that ransacked his body a hard time prying it from his hands.

The Clock struck three o’clock. Like a symphony being orchestrated by a conductor’s baton, the clock began its song of telling everyone in the room that fifteen minutes had passed since two o’clock, then thirty, then forty-five. Everyone in the room was transfixed by the tune. The end of its song was nearing – the chime was coming. Yunho shut his eyes.

The first chime sounded in a wondrous major key, and if that was not music to Yunho’s ears, he didn’t know what was. He opened his eyes, and found Hongjoong at the center of his vision, his face perplexed and his mouth slightly open. His brows furrowed in confusion. The second chime came, in a major key just like the first. Yunho released his fingers from the camera. The camera was now soaked in sweat. The third chime was more defined than the other two, reverberating across the room. The axeman, who had stepped briefly out of the shadows, sunk back to where he was before.

Once the third chime had finished ringing, there was a moment of silence between Prince Hongjoong and Yunho. Hongjoong looked down at him from his elevated position and had the expression of a disappointed father to his son, Yunho. Hongjoong sighed quietly and put down his cane. His shoulders dropped.

“That does not happen very often,” he said, breaking the silence. “I wish I could kill you,” he said flatly, and Yunho was too shocked to snort at that statement.

“But the Clock is never wrong. Therefore, I grant you immunity and life for the betterment of my people, Jongho.” He sat back down on his throne, and Yunho did not mistake the pout on his face. “I cannot wait to see what that photograph will do when you release it,” he said, the bitterness most recognizable in the word photograph.

Yunho couldn’t drop the smile that was now plastered across his face. “As do I.”

Hongjoong flicked his wrists, and the doors to the throne room opened. The photomeister left. There was no time to take a relaxing trip to hell like he had said he would do earlier – he had a photo to develop.

The photo-developing process took anywhere from ten to fifteen minutes – it depended on how complex the photograph was. Once back in Midworld, Yunho rushed to his home and his own, private darkroom. In complete darkness, Yunho mixed the developer mixture with water. The not-quite photograph of Prince Hongjoong was wrapped in a reel that was placed in a film tank. Yunho poured the mixture into the film tank and then waited. He turned the lights back on and eagerly awaited the results of the photograph.

Yunho first saw the dark area where the axeman lay hidden develop, the darkest part of the photo. Black lines appeared quietly around the rest of the square, outlining Hongjoong, his throne, the corpse, and the blood that coated the floor. Yunho narrowed his eyes, studying the developing photo, and then a smile appeared on his face. His hypothesis that the axeman would be too dark to see in the photo was right – there was no way to tell he had ever been there. The photo continued to develop, and there was no sign of him ever appearing – Hongjoong got darker, the blood increased in saturation, the floor became whiter, and Yunho’s ego developed with it. A story brewed in his head – Hongjoong, a political candidate for the good and kind Seelie, was caught murdering the innocent with his own hand. There would be no editing needed for the photograph – it already said everything Yunho wanted it to say.

The photo finished developing. Yunho washed off the harsh chemicals and treated it with a protective treatment so that it would not be damaged in the sun, his hands shaking as he did so. The photo was a photographer’s dream, a landscape photo that was worth a ten-thousand-word story that Hongjoong was unfit to hold a court seat for the Seelie fae. There was no way that the public would believe any other story, not when everyone thought photography was indecent practice and akin to witchcraft. What the public didn’t know, was that as perfect and mechanical a camera was, there was an imperfect being behind it, snapping shots with their own vision, view, and perspective. Yunho had them wrapped around his fingers, and he would make them see whatever vision he wanted them to see.

Yunho let out a laugh as he exited his darkroom and pocketed the photograph. He threw on a coat – it was getting chilly, and the walk to the train station to Mitha was far. “My gracious thanks to you, Prince Hongjoong,” Yunho muttered under his breath as he left his house, feeling fueled by his own version of bloodlust, “for allowing me to live so that I might be a tumultuous effect to your reign.”

Yunho entering the Seelie newspaper room two hours later caused quite a ruckus. One fae by a typewriter blinked multiple times upon seeing him like she had never seen a vampire before. Another shrieked, but that may have been because Yunho had kicked the door open before entering in a six-foot-one-inch fury of a long dark cloak and vampiric sensuality.

“Hi, Seelie fae,” Yunho said, and then slapped the beloved photograph of Hongjoong onto the table so they could all see. “I need a story on this. Stat.”

Within the next few days, the political climate of Mitha changed rapidly. Even those not living in Mitha felt it and saw it because it appeared all over newspapers as an enormous story. Yunho’s photo was on the front page of every Seelie newspaper and on at least one page of non-fae newspapers.

Prince Hongjoong of the First Province of Mitha Violates Seelie Social Code, the headliner read. Experts predict that he will be disqualified from the ballot to obtain a Seelie court seat, underneath. And, gorgeously, Yunho’s photo was printed on thin, glossy paper, the colors vibrant and eye-catching. Hongjoong’s murderous eyes were looking directly at the camera, a detail Yunho had failed to see when he had developed the photo. Coupled with the smirk on his face, an assumption could be made that Prince Hongjoong had orchestrated every drop of blood on the floor beneath him and was proud of doing so. This was not someone fit to make decisions for Seelie fae. This was an imposter. Underneath the photo was the credit: Jeong Yunho, 1922, and those three words made Yunho’s spirits soar.

When Yunho walked into Wooyoung’s bar with a spring in his step, the bartender hollered a cry of excitement and knocked over the drink he was in the middle of making. “Yunho!” He screamed, then as a delayed reaction, his body shook in surprise that he had accidentally spilled his drink all over the table. “Did you–”

“I did,” Yunho grinned, and he hadn’t grinned wider than this in a long time. Wooyoung looked at him adoringly, with crinkled eyes and pink in his cheeks and teeth that shone in the odd bar lighting. Yunho took a seat in front of Wooyoung, who was in the middle of cleaning up the mess he had made. “I did see it. I can’t believe it.”

“That’s a damn good photo you took,” Wooyoung marveled. “How did you do it? Well, not how, but, you know… how? What sneaky Yunho thing did you do to frame that bastard like that? Oh, he’s probably hating you right now! He wants to kill you so bad, but he can’t!” He banged his fist on the table and shouted with happiness.

Yunho thought back to Hongjoong’s words before he had left the throne room: I wish I could kill you. If only Wooyoung knew.

“There was no editing,” Yunho grinned, allowing himself a moment of hubris as Wooyoung audibly and theatrically gasped. “That was just me and the perfect lighting and the angle of my camera.” He thought about telling Wooyoung about the clock – and he decided to when he saw how Wooyoung was vibrating out of his body every time he spoke. He owed it to him to tell him everything that had happened.

So he did – everything from the events leading up to the photograph, after the photograph, and Yunho’s terrifying hour on death row. Wooyoung clung to every word like a koala on a tree branch, his eyes growing like saucers at all of the right moments.

“And I honestly have no fucking clue why the Clock let me live,” Yunho said once he was finished with his story. “Because how is this beneficial to Hongjoong in the slightest? What does the Clock see that I don’t?”

Wooyoung quirked his lips while he cleaned up the last bit of the drink he had spilled. “I think it’s because the Clock helps all of Mitha, if I understand you correctly,” Wooyoung said after a minute. “Hongjoong missed an oversight that allowed you to live – something I suppose he missed because of how far that cane is up his ass.” Wooyoung, who was perpetually smiling, smiled even more. It was such a good sight to see him so happy. Yunho hadn’t seen him this cheery in months, and the feeling gave him warmth in his chest. Despite everything he had gone through to obtain that photo, seeing Wooyoung so satisfied made it all worth it.

“Thank you, Yunho,” Wooyoung said as if he were thinking the same thing as Yunho. “If I had known it would be this hard or life-threatening, I wouldn’t have asked you to do this. But you did it, and you did it with flying colors because you’re Jeong motherfucking Yunho. It makes me feel so good that innocent Seelie lives will be saved because Prince Hongjoong now won’t have political power.” He paused. “Or, not as much power as he could have had.” Wooyoung took a deep breath and beamed. “Fae with lives like Helio can now live.”

Yunho wished he could see Prince Hongjoong’s face right now – was he seething on his throne, clawing at the walls, crying his eyes out? – but he was certain that whatever reaction he had, it wouldn’t be as satisfying as Wooyonug’s glee right in front of him.

Yunho touched Jongho’s reporter card in his pocket and let a wave of sadness wash over him. He couldn’t save everyone, but he was glad to save Wooyoung. The happiness reappeared on Yunho as it had never disappeared, and it was his natural look – a man that would move mountains just to see a friend smile after months of grief. “And I would do it again.”

24 notes · View notes

mingkily · 2 years

Text

x the f word ~ s.mg x

CURRENTLY AIRING

starring: mingi x f! reader

features selected: small popcorn (3.9k), romcom, drama, erotica, friends to lovers

audience warnings: UNDER 18 DNI! language, alcohol, nsfw (oral - m & f)

skip the wait: @mangomingki | @yunkiwii | @absentcaryatid | @treasure-hwa

behind the scenes: so i’m in my thot era i think. also my tag list for nsfw is kind of reset, only tagging ppl i know are of age and read this kinda stuff!

synopsis: it’s the cliché. boy and girl are at a party, end up in bed, and have to figure out what happens to their friendship after the deed. but just because it’s cliché doesn’t mean it’s easy being the one to experience it

you don’t know how it happened. you’re pretty sure neither does he. except you don’t have any alcohol you could blame, because you didn’t drink anything. you’re fairly certain mingi didn’t drink enough to completely lose all composition, either, but who knows. not like you could judge, not like you know how much alcohol is needed for what degree of uncontrolled behaviour. you’re not sure if he drank enough soju to warrant having sex. you’re not sure what it was that made you have sex with him. it’s almost funny, how cliché this is, we’ve always just been friends but then it just happened and now i don’t know what’s up. at a party, too. at least you were at his place, at least you didn’t fuck in some stranger’s bed, but still. this is bad enough, as a look into the mirror confirms when you go to clean yourself up the next morning. you’re purple from the ears to your belly button, your thighs, too, and you doubt there’s any way for you to explain this away once you return to uni in two days. well, you clearly didn’t think that far last night, too busy trying to get his shirt off without making him stop attacking your neck. how the fuck did it even get to that point?

“you’re so pretty.”

that was how it started. it wasn’t like he never called you pretty, or like you never called him pretty, but he never looked at you like that when he told you that you’re pretty. but now he did. and you didn’t really know what to do with it.

you knew he’d drunk a little, though you hadn’t kept track of how much, had gone around to socialise while he played host (even though he wasn’t - seonghwa was, but since they lived together mingi decided to claim the title for himself, as well), before you returned to the living room and plopped down next to him. he’d looked at you in surprise, as if not recognising you, before his face lit up. and then he told you this. told you that you’re so pretty.

and you’d be lying if you said that you didn’t like it. that you didn’t care if he thought you were pretty. you were hoping he’d say more, though you’re not sure why. maybe it was just the way he said it, the way that was so different from his usual compliments. you didn’t like him, you were pretty sure, had been eyeing one of the guests all night in hopes that maybe something would happen, but it seemed like that wasn’t meant to be.

so here you were, with your best bro, leaning against him because you were getting kind of tired, and he told you that you’re so pretty. with an earnesty that made you look up at him again, even though you were so incredibly tired; now that you’d gotten to rest at all you crashed, ready to fall asleep immediately. but you still looked at him, and he looked at you, and then he leaned in and mumbled out something that kind of sounded like “okay?” and you could guess what he meant. and he wasn’t unattractive, definitely not, so you figured a small kiss couldn’t hurt. it wasn’t like it was in the law that you can’t kiss friends. you liked kissing, and you knew he wasn’t drunk enough for this to be questionable from your side at all. you knew he wasn’t completely knocked out, because he had been once and you’d been the one to drag him to bed because no one wanted to deal with him throwing up, and he most definitely would not have asked if it was okay if he was in that kind of state. so it was okay.

and then his lips were on yours. you were a little disgusted, you had to admit, by the taste of alcohol still on his tongue, but you decided to ignore it. you figured that pulling away and saying “ew” or something of the sorts wouldn’t really land well with him. and by the time he leaned in to kiss you again you didn’t really notice the taste anymore, and then it was nice. he was a good kisser, you guessed. not that you had that much experience, but you figured you’d know if he wasn’t. he was incredibly sweet, careful, too, trying not to come off too strong, and you appreciated that.

you didn’t know where to put your hands, so you opted for his hair, except just when you put your hand in his hair he leaned in even more, changed angle, and you ended up pulling at his hair. not hard, but you were about to apologise either way, until you heard what could only be a moan. and while mingi wasn’t off-his-ass drunk he was drunk enough to not be embarrassed about it, pulling you closer, less gentle now, until you pulled away. you just wanted to change positions, get into his lap because this was awkward, but your best friend immediately pulled back, looking at you worriedly, as if to ask if he’d crossed a line.

that worry disappeared when you got into his lap and straddled him, tired of the weird angle you’d been in before, your butt pressed against whoever sat next to you on the sofa, and mingi seemed delighted about this turn of events. his mouth was back on yours in a heartbeat, hands on your waist, pulling you tight, and by the time he’d moved to your neck you were more than aware of the fact that he had a boner. for some reason that only made you pull him closer, rolling your hips, even though you knew that this was where you should have stopped.

you didn’t stop there, and you didn’t stop when he asked you if you wanted to go to his room, and you didn’t stop when he gingerly took off your dress, and you didn’t stop when he left your entire chest covered in purple - you’d managed to give him his fair share of hickeys, too, by this point -, or when he proceeded lower, or when he painted your thighs purple as well, or when he took off your underwear, or when you felt him kiss you at the opposite end of where he’d put his mouth just minutes prior, or when his nose nudged at your clit, or when you got to experience first-hand just how long his fingers were, or when you buried your hands in his hair to keep him there when he got worried by how quiet you were (you weren’t the type to be loud during sex, and this action told him all he needed to know about whether you were enjoying this or not), you didn’t stop it when he drew the first moan of the evening out of you with his tongue, or when he decided he needed your juices for dessert, and you did quite the opposite of stopping when you grabbed his crotch - why was he still in his pants, anyway? -, pulling at his pants impatiently until they joined the rest of your clothes on the floor and he looked at you with an expression you’d never forget, you grabbed his dick and were embarrassed by how small your hands were in comparison, convinced you’d suck at this because you couldn’t even fit the entire thing in your hand, had to work with both hands, but if his sounds were anything to go by you had no reason to be embarrassed. where you were quiet, mingi was vocal, and it made you want to do better. so after his thighs had gotten the adequate attention you decided that it was too late to stop now anyway, and you took him in your mouth - as much as would fit, anyway - and you gave him a blowjob, mingi displaying admirable levels of self restraint as he kept himself from bucking up into your mouth, up until the very last moment, cumming into your mouth but still controlling himself enough to not make you choke on his dick, and you appreciated that, because you weren’t stupid and you’d noticed how the muscles on his thighs were incredibly tensed, twitching every now and then. he definitely wasn’t that drunk, you were sure.

and he was still the kind, caring mingi you’d befriended, taking a moment to calm down before he gave you a quick kiss and went to the bathroom, coming back with a glass of water and a couple wet wipes, cleaning up after the two of you while you got to get rid of the taste of cum in your mouth, throwing one of his boxers your way and putting on underwear himself, before collapsing on the bed and pulling you close to his chest. and then you fell asleep.

and that’s where you are now. or, more accurately, where you’re planning to return now after your trip to the bathroom that confirmed that you did not, in fact, just have an incredibly graphic wet dream about your best friend. bourgie brat has a small toilet in his room, something you usually tease him about but that you’re now incredibly grateful for. you don’t exactly want to meet anyone else - having to face mingi after all of this is bad enough.

you hope he’ll tell you that this doesn’t have to mean anything, that you’re still friends, just friends, but when he tells you exactly that upon your return you feel your stomach sink. and again you wish you’d drunk so you could pretend you were hungover, rather than hurt by the thought that to your best friend this was what you’d assumed it was, a one-night stand and nothing to worry or think about.

you nod, sit down on the bed while mingi goes to scavenge for a pair of pants that might fit you, throwing you some clothes before getting dressed himself.

and then he asks if you want to get breakfast, to which you just nod, and you don’t even realise that something’s off when he offers to make you pancakes. mingi never cooks.

you eat your pancakes sullenly, trying not to let him notice anything, and he’s too deep in his thoughts to be aware of your unusual silence. that is, until one of his flatmates comes into the kitchen, sees mingi making pancakes while his neck and thighs are bright purple and so is your neck, and decides to make a joke that isn’t at all funny.

“so either the sex was really good and you’ve got him on his best behaviour now, or the sex sucked and he’s trying to make up for it.”

mingi’s “shut up” gets interrupted by your “we didn’t have sex” - which is technically true, you rationalise with yourself, because usually people think that sex is p in v, and that didn’t happen, so you didn’t have sex and you don’t have to feel like a pathetic one-night stand -, and instead of getting mad at his friend the cause of your messed up feelings now looks at you completely baffled, his eloquence entirely gone as all he finds the words for is: “what?”

it’s fairly clear that something is going on here and that that something maybe isn’t meant to be broadcasted to everyone around, so you’re left alone, mingi still incredulously looking at you even after the two of you are alone in the kitchen.

“don’t look at my like that”, you tell him when you can’t bear it anymore, “you said we should just act like this didn’t happen so that’s what i’m doing.”

“no but i didn’t mean it like that”, he replies, even though he doesn’t even know how he meant it. he just said what was expected of him in that situation, really. he didn’t have the time to think about it. as long as you’re still friends.

“then how?”, and your poor pancakes have to deal with your hurt feelings as you reduce them to the particles everything in this world is made of.

“i don’t know”, he admits, and you sigh. you should have expected this. what did you think would happen if you fuck your best friend? because even if you’re trying to deny it, even to yourself, that’s what happened.

“yeah.”

you don’t have much more to say to that, continue angrily eating the pancakes he made for you, and he stands there, helpless, not sure what else to do so he just mass-prodcues more pancakes, anything to keep him at least a little busy.

by the time you’re done with your breakfast an impressive amount of pancakes is waiting for whoever wants them, because mingi isn’t about to eat until he knows if he’s messed up your friendship, and he isn’t about to discuss that in the kitchen. so he suggests that maybe you should talk, about, you know, in his room?

and there you are, sitting on his bed, an awkward air surrounding the two of you, until he says: “sorry. i shouldn’t have started anything.”

because obviously what’s wrong is that this happened in the first place, right?

“you were drunk. i should’ve stopped you. should’ve known that i shouldn’t have come to your room with you when you’re drunk. i should’ve made sure you won’t regret this.”

because obviously he just did it because he was drunk, right?

“you asked me like every two minutes if this was fine. and i wasn’t like, completely shitfaced drunk, just enough to get my head out of my ass and finally-”

there he interrupts himself. because obviously you’d never want to hear how he really feels about you, right? because obviously you want to just go back in time and prevent this so you can go back to just being friends without anything awkward and in-between going on between you two, right?

but he can tell from your expression that you’re about to argue, about to blame yourself even more and the last thing he wants is you thinking you took advantage of his drunk state when it very much had been him who’d almost dragged you to his room, so he decides you being mad at him for tricking you like that is better than you being mad at yourself.

“finally tell you that i like you.”

those words drop like a needle to the floor, everything else entirely silent as you try to take in what he just told you. he’s not just saying this because he can sense you’re upset, right? he’s not just-

“and like, not the best way to go about it, but i thought hey, i can just pretend i was completely knocked out if you make any weird comments about it. didn’t think you’d start thinking you like, forced me or something. though i should’ve been prepared for that, you’re always way too worried about hurting others even when they say it’s fine.”

he smiles, a halfhearted smile, trying to be at least a little funny as he tells you that he likes you, but he fails miserably. you just stare at him dumbfounded, can’t believe what he’s saying, so he continues because embarrassing himself is better than this tense silence that follows whenever he stops talking.

“i should’ve just asked you on a date i guess but like, how weird would it be if you said no? like that would’ve been so awkward, be honest.”

as if this isn’t. but it makes you smile, frees you from your frozen state, and “yeah, it really would’ve”, you admit, and when he hears that you’re still talking to him he mentally lets out an exaggerated, cartoonish “phew”, because really, he’d been convinced you’d just ask him when you should return his clothes before leaving and not coming back ever again.

“but this is super awkward too”, you add.

he lets out a short, huffed laugh, because it sure is, but it seems like the ice is broken now and you can actually talk about what happened.

the first thing you say is that you don’t regret anything, that it didn’t, like, suck or anything, as if you needed to specify that with how both of you looked, and then you apologise for acting weird this morning.

“i have a question, though. i’d say feel free not to answer but i actually really want you to answer.”

an awkward laugh from your side and the sound of blood rushing in his ears on his.

“you said that you like, kind of wanted the party to end up this way? but then why’d you tell me to just forget about it? did i like, suck?”

you know that isn’t it, that it’s not that you gave him a bad blowjob, but you are scared that he changed his mind after having seen you like that, naked and vulnerable and horny, and that he decided that he isn’t actually into that kind of stuff. into someone like you. that the idea he had of being with you was much better than reality turned out to be.

but that isn’t what happened, and even though he’s embarrassed he decides that he might as well. it’s not like it can get worse, really.

“well i mean, it looked like you got caught trying to sneak out when i woke up this morning, so i kind of just short circuited and said what they always say in the movies. like, we can still be friends, this was just a mistake, a one-time thing, whatever. this doesn’t change anything, you know the gist. as long as it gets you to not like, block me and tell everyone i have a small dick, i would’ve told you whatever, really.”

you nod, “mmh”, thinking of what to reply, but he doesn’t like the thinking pause, apparently, because he goes on to tell you: “actually i was kind of hoping to ask you out if that’s what you wanted to get at with that question. but like, it didn’t really seem like you wanted to hear that, you more looked like you’d just seen a ghost or something. so i decided to play it safe. sorry if that like, upset you.”

you know he’s serious, that he’s genuinely sorry and that it’s just the situation that makes everything awkward. and you appreciate that he even told you, because if you’d been in his place you’d probably have come up with the stupidest lie ever.

you don’t really know what to reply, though, kind of overwhelmed by it all, but you know he’s anxious and you know it’s not fair to just be silent and make him do all the talking. so you say the first thing that comes to mind, which is: “take two?”

he looks at you bewildered, even as you walk towards his little toilet, and now it’s your turn to feel anxious.

“you should go to bed if it’s gonna be authentic.”

because that’s exactly what he needs to hear in this situation. this certainly wasn’t your brightest moment.

“if what’s gonna be authentic?”

he looks so lost that you feel sorry for him.

“like, you can, uh… ask me out again?”

those last words are said in the same breath, hurriedly, because it’s embarrassing and you don’t want him to tell you that he doesn’t want to, but you know you have to say it.

“oh. okay.”

his reaction is a little underwhelming,but you get it. this is weird. the entire day has been weird so far. and in a funny twist of events, the fact that you sucked off your best friend isn’t the weirdest part of it all.

you take a deep breath, walk into the bathroom and then out right after, and you’re surprised to find that mingi actually went back to bed. he’s dressed this time, but you still remember how he looked when you first woke up, and part of you wishes you just hadn’t gotten up.

“uh, good morning”, he mumbles, then shakes his head.

“i mean, come here?”

he pats the space next to him and you tentatively walk towards him, still unsure where this will go even though he’s basically already spelled out his intentions for you.

“do you want to, uh, hug?”

why he’s more shy about asking you to hug than he was about telling you to cum on his face will probably remain a mystery forever.

you scoot closer to him and he wraps his arm around you, pulling you to his chest where his heart beats against your forehead, faster than you think it should. he seems aware of it, too, because he chuckles, embarrassed, “i get nervous when asking out pretty ladies”, and that joke - or whatever it was - seems to be what gives him the courage to actually get to the ‘asking out’ part.

“so, uh, do you want to go on a date? or two, i mean. as many as you want. i guess i’m asking if you’d consider dating me? not right now, no pressure, just whenever. like, an interest check?”

the more he says, the weirder the things he says get, but you appreciate that. it tells you he’s serious in what he says.

and you’re serious, too, when you say that yes, you do want to go on a date or two, and that you’d like to pre-order girlfriend benefits.

your way of phrasing it is possibly the worst way you could have phrased it, but mingi seems delighted, a smile lighting up his features that makes your stomach do flips, and you can’t help but smile as well.

“do you want a pre-order benefit? like, an exclusive gift, i guess those are still a thing, right?”

then he puckers his lips and you can’t help but laugh, and he laughs too, until you shut him up with a peck. then he looks like he just saw jesus in drag, shocked but not unhappy about it.

shocked enough to forget that he was supposed to give you a pre-order gift, because he demands you to do it again, and again, and again, and that’s how you end up spending the morning. you guess you should have read the fine print when signing up for girlfriend benefits. you’re not unhappy about it, though.

356 notes · View notes