#we already knew jongkey shipped themselves

[smtown-tourist]

Shawols, can we all agree that it’s headcanon now that Taemin secretly writes SHINee fanfiction? 🤣💎🐰🦖🦊🐿️🐥

[wordsbyss]

Undead// JongKey Oneshot

Killing an Infected isn’t hard, it’s not. All it takes is a single shot to the head, only one bullet, and they’re down. It’s kind of ironic, when you think about it. A body that was once living and breathing, who has died and come back from the dead, can be taken out with little thought, little struggle.

It was this Infected that was hard to kill. Not because it was armored, or particularly smarter than the rest, but because of its face. It’s ugly, silver colored irises and blood shot surroundings, the gash on its left cheek that still had yellowish discolored blood oozing from the wound, allowing one to see into the mouth, where yellowed and blackened teeth lay amongst a dark gum line. The skin, which looked like it could made out of grey leather, cracking at the wrinkles of small, attempted facial expressions. Despite being disgusting, vile, awful, Jonghyun knew this man. He wished he had never seen him again, not like this.

The breakout began three years ago. The virus didn’t start overnight either. The news covered the case of a girl in Ukraine who had come down with a disease that had never been seen before for months. Documenting each time a new, state-of-the-art doctor flew internationally to find a cure for her. The entire world saw her decent, watched her succumb to her symptoms and condition. She started as a bright young girl, she had a family, a mom, dad, two sisters. She was a straight A student and seemed to have many close friends, like she had her whole life going for her. Her dream was to move to the United States and become a doctor. That is, until she was in the hospital of her homeland for the rest of her life. The world watched in awe as her mind was taken from her, as she began to become a living specimen that was actively rotting away, despite being taken care of. The globe went into a state of alarm on a fateful day, the day her pulse flatlined, but she was still breathing. She was still breathing and moving. It was at that point that things started to escalate. She became aggressive toward her caretakers, to the point where her wrists, feet, and torso had to be strapped to the bed she lay on. The doctors couldn’t do blood tests anymore, because there was none pulsing through her body. Her veins only held the residue of the blood that was once free flowing. After another month or so, her body became cold, almost completely rotted away. That was when the caretakers noticed their peers showing the symptoms the girl had at the beginning of her infection.

It takes someone around six months to nearly completely transform. To lose all of their memories, to be reduced to a walking lump of decayed and torn skin. The only instinct they have at that point, is to carry on the disease.

That’s what isn’t figured out yet, how it spreads. It’s theorized that it’s close ranged aerosol transmission. This means that the infectious particles are heavy, and die quickly without a host. The undead, as we call them, release these particles, and if there is a person close enough to them, the disease can be transmitted.

Two and a half years ago, half of the world’s population began showing symptoms. It was evident that the Virus was not selective. It took children, women, dogs, and every time it took someone, it took the same agonizingly long time for the virus to take full effect. Some people would find ways to avoid becoming mindless, some would study their memories every day, but it never worked. Some would simply kill themselves before they hit the five-month mark.

In three years, the population of the Earth has declined by 80%, and more go every day. This is a battle that the human race is not winning.

Three years ago, Jonghyun was happy. He didn’t have to worry about where his next meal would come from, or check his pulse every day to make sure it was still there. Three years ago, Kim Jonghyun moved in with his boyfriend of five years, Kim Kibum. They took their relationship slow, but they didn’t want it any other way. They were truly happy, they lived in a quaint little house in South Korea, in the suburbs of Seoul. Jonghyun worked as a lyricist, writing music and performing it at small gigs, like restaurants and parties, or sometimes even selling his music to entertainment companies for bigger artists to use. Kibum had his eyes set on design. He made all sorts of things, bags, patches, clothes, shoes. Kibum did it all. But both of their favorite pieces of Kibum’s was a set of matching patches he made for the two of them. The patches were simple, nothing as blingy or as decorated as his other works. He made them each a patch of a heart, Jonghyun’s heart was green, with a “K” embroidered in the middle in black. Kibum’s was the complete opposite, a pink heart with the letter “J” in the center, but in white. Kibum was proud of his work, he went on and on about how he used the color wheel to come up with the colors for the hearts, and how cute it was that their favorite colors happened to be complementary to each other. Eventually, they bought matching denim jackets to sew the patches onto.

This was easily the best time of both of their lives, they were genuinely content with their lives for the first time. They did what they loved, and they did it together. Sure, they didn’t have many friends, but at the time they didn’t need any. They had each other, and that’s what mattered.

One day, Jonghyun bought a ring fit for a king. Embellished with four petite diamonds, with a sizeable one centered between them, it glimmered every time the light hit it. He knew he would love it.

He proposed in the same park they met at. Kibum sitting on the same bench he had been reading a novel on, right in front of the beautiful fountain. He always said that the sound of the water cascading down reminded him of a mountain stream. That it calmed him.

Of course, Kibum said yes. They had already moved in together, the people that knew them already considered them a married couple, with how long they had been together.

Not long after that was when the virus became popular. When the girl came down with the infection, they didn’t think much of it. People are diagnosed with rare or unknown diseases all the time, and it wasn’t exactly in their realm of the continent. They watched the news, they saw the stories of the doctors trying to save her. They were there when they deemed her a lost cause, and they gasped for her caretakers when the news of their infections came out. But none of it was personal. They didn’t know any of them, Ukraine seemed to be worlds away.

It wasn’t personal until one of the caretakers came home. To Korea. Her reasoning was that she wanted to see the people she loved one last time, and she hadn’t been officially diagnosed yet. At this point, there wasn’t even a name for the illness, just, “The infection,” or, “The Virus.” Still, she lived nearly an hour away, on the other side of Seoul. It’s not like they would be in direct contact with her.

There wasn’t any news about her after she came back home. But people in Korea began to show symptoms of the Virus. Sweating, discoloration, dementia. Over 1,000 people were hospitalized within two weeks, and some were shipped overseas to international hospitals. This is where it became personal. Korea was put under sanctions. No planes or boats in or out of the country, except for medical. (What sense that made, no one understood.) Everyone was instructed that they should avoid contact with others as much as possible, to stay in their homes unless an emergency occurs. The government shut down. Suddenly, Korea was in anarchy. In panic.

It didn’t take long before the amount of Infected outnumbered the hospital space and uninfected staff. After that, they were out in the streets, hunting for the healthy. At this point, no one left their houses. They felt bad to be afraid of people, they pitied them, because all they had was an unfortunate infection, but a cure had not been discovered, and once the infected got their hands on someone, they didn’t let go. They held them until the infection was passed on or they were dead, using them as sustenance, they would eat their flesh, or attempt to use the colored skin as a cloak in order to attempt to make themselves appear healthy, as a way to get closer to the living. They would use their clothing, their teeth, or their eyes. They’d replace their own features with the features of their victims.

It was sick. They made Jonghyun and Kibum sick. To keep themselves safe, they boarded their windows, their doors, even the fireplace. They were able to live off of the reserves they had in the cabinets. But none of that changed the fact that, in bed at night, they would hear the sounds of the infected trying to lure the healthy into the outside, right outside their window. Or they would hear an unfortunate neighbor give in to their pleading, or be fooled by the sound of an infected baby’s cries, and then hear their screams as they were taken in. It always made them hold each other a little bit closer, grip onto each other a little bit tighter, but they also knew to cry a little bit quieter. Because they didn’t want to be next.

During the day, the couple entertained themselves with board games over coffee, or games they would make up. Kibum’s favorite was one that he made up on his own, named Guess That Song, and of course, he didn’t know nearly any of the songs Jonghyun would play, but it made him happy just to listen to him sing the songs, and playfully yell at him when he would purposefully guess the wrong one. Sometimes they would still take joy in their career hobbies, but it eventually became boring, after days and days of nothing else, they both wanted to venture to other things. Sometimes Kibum would try to write songs, he figured he would be an expert based on how much he’d seen Jonghyun write. But none of his lyrics rhymed, and he didn’t know how to play any instruments. Jonghyun also tried to take on Kibum’s hobby, he tried to design. They had everything that was needed in an office room in the house, and he would spend hours in there, just trying to make a shirt. The most he was able to do was make a small star patch and give himself dozens of needle pricks that rendered lots of kisses from Kibum and all of his fingers covered in bandages.

They tried to keep themselves busy, even when the power and water were shut off due to the companies that ran them being abandoned. It was a long few months in the dark, both of them desperate for any water they could find, and getting skinnier by the day. They were running out of water reserves from what they had frozen previously, and they were nearly out of canned foods. All they had was each other. As they both wondered if this would be the end of them, all they could do is find hope in each other. There was no connection to the outside world, no way to know if a cure had been found, only the nightly sounds of the Infected’s groaning escalating as more and more populated the area. As long as their noises were there, that’s all they needed to hear to know that things weren’t getting any better.

Sometimes they would fantasize about what it would be like if one day they were able to take down the boards on their windows and see the sun again. To unblock the doors and step outside and see the flowers, or smell the rain, without the fear of being torn apart. Of life being ripped away. Sometimes they would gain hope, that maybe, just maybe, they’d only have one more night’s sleep of having to deal with it. But each night was never the last.

When the day came, they weren’t ready for it. Jonghyun thought back to that morning nearly every day. The couple was still in bed, on the border between wake and sleep when they heard the strange noise. The banging, the sound of wood ripping off of wood. It only made sense for their eyes to shoot open, looking at each other in alarm for an answer, for reassurance. They both had suspicions they knew what was going on, but their minds tried to avoid it. Maybe it was a burglar, or a murderer, or someone healthy looking for refuge. But they could only deny it for so long, because the throaty groans of the Infected were unmistakable.

There was a hoard. And they were breaking in.

They both launched out of bed, ushering each other to the kitchen where they could see the light seeping in through the front door. Where greyish, decayed hands with long, rotten fingernails were able to be seen grabbing through the gaps in the door that they had previously ripped open. Snagging skin on the rough edges, cutting holes in their own flesh, but no blood pouring out. Only an ooze with a yellow tint.

They held onto each other the best they could, hand in hand, all they could do was watch. It felt like hours that they had simply stood there, mindless. They both knew it wasn’t, at most it was thirty seconds. After snapping out of the daze, they both began to run frantically around the house, finding anything sizeable to put in front of the door as barricades.

The Infected were able to destroy everything they used as blocks. Jonghyun and Kibum’s attempts were futile.

Jonghyun was standing in the living room, trying to figure out how to pick up the couch to put it against the door when Kibum walked in from the kitchen with a bottle of alcohol and a match. He set them both on the floor and walked over to him. Wrapping his arms around Jonghyun’s waist, he hugged him tightly, stuffing his face into his neck. He looked up at him and kissed him.

“I want you to go. I opened the back door. It’s safe back there, the path’s all clear.”

Jonghyun shook his head, assuring him that he wouldn’t leave him, that they’d go together. Kibum disagreed, telling him that there was no way. They would just chase them both as soon as they heard. The infected could run much faster than they could. He handed Jonghyun a knife, to protect himself, he said. Kibum hugged him one last time and then stepped away. Jonghyun still protesting and trying to find a way to convince him out of it.

Kibum kept his head down as he picked up the alcohol and matches, as he popped open the bottle cap and began to pour the contents on the floor by the front door.

He looked up one last time. Teary eyes meeting wide ones. Jonghyun stuttered, trying to push out words, he couldn’t. Kibum sighed, pushing him through the house and out the back door. He gulped, and as Jonghyun was just about to say something, he put a finger over his lips, reminding him to be quiet, because they could hear.

At this moment, Kibum heard the Infected break through their last barricade. They were in the house. He picked up their jackets, handed Jonghyun his, and shrugged on his own.

“Be safe, my love.” Kibum pecked Jonghyun’s forehead with a kiss. “I love you.”

Kibum shut the door, with himself inside.

Jonghyun couldn’t move, only stare at the locked door in front of him.

On the inside, he heard screaming. He heard fighting and lots of movement. He could smell the undead, even from out here. Finally, he heard Kibum’s scream. And then he watched as the house caught fire.

This is when he was able to move again. He turned around and ran, he ran and didn’t know to where. He had the knife Kibum gave him in his back pocket, but he didn’t run into any Infected. They had all been at their house.

It had taken Jonghyun awhile to truly cry over his loss. To come to terms with everything that happened over the course of that day. He had found a tree, in a park that he played in as a kid, that was perfectly climbable, and that’s where he spent the first night. Not that he slept, he spent the entire night staring at the stars, hoping to wake up from this terrible nightmare.

The next day, while he was walking, trying to find somewhere to go, he saw a healthy. A person. A real person. He was out in full black clothing, wearing a bulletproof vest and equipped with a utility belt which held two guns and a switchblade. Thinking on it, Jonghyun thought it was kind of humorous, as the boy was rather small framed and had longer orangish hair pulled back into a short ponytail.

He called out at the boy, hoping for some sort of sympathy as he was all alone with nowhere to go. When he turned around, he had already had his gun out and pointed at him. Jonghyun raised his hands in innocence, which shocked the boy. It had seemed as if this was the first time he had seen another healthy person as well. But Jonghyun couldn’t have been more wrong. The boy turned out to be very giggly and happy, he was very young, only sixteen years old. He introduced himself as Lee Taemin, and said that he would take Jonghyun to his “base.” And that he did. An old abandoned Korean military base had been reutilized. On the inside, it was bustling with people. People dressed how Taemin was, or others with small children who were cooking. When Jonghyun first saw this, he was following Taemin, who was leading him to their leader. But he couldn’t believe it. He couldn’t believe that this was here the entire time. That there were soldiers who fought the Infected, and even saved people and families and brought them here, but he had to lose his Kibum in the most tragic way. He was maddened that they didn’t help them when it came down to it.

He followed Taemin down a hallway, and looking in at former offices, he could see that they had been turned into living quarters. The office at the end of the hall is where they were goijng, and Taemin opened the door for Jonghyun when they got to it. Inside, was a man around Jonghyun’s age, surrounded by lab equipment and chemistry materials.

Taemin introduced him as Jinki, the brains behind their operation, and also as a former doctor, looking for a cure for the disease. Jinki had stopped what he was doing, and Jonghyun introduced himself. He asked Taemin to leave before he began to interrogate Jonghyun to assure he was well-hearted, and explained that he was going to allow him to stay at the base once he could test him to assure that he had no trace of the Virus. Jonghyun explained the entire situation, Kibum, the house, the fire, everything. He tried his best not to express his frustration on the topic of Jinki’s men not helping him and his fiancé after discovering that they have a small army that goes out to help civilians, because he knew it wasn’t their fault. They were doing their best.

Jonghyun was assigned into the army, because Jinki wanted Taemin to show him the ropes, and Taemin figured he would be a nice friend to keep around. So, for the next long while, Jonghyun’s life became following Taemin, and his best friend, Choi Minho, on their adventures into the outside world. He even got the uniform that Taemin wore the first time he saw him, blacked out, with a utility belt filled with weapons. He even joined them in saving a few people from their homes, but it was futile. Most of the survivors had already contracted the Virus. With no true cure in mind, Jinki ordered that people who had been diagnosed were to either be killed or put into isolation, based on how far along the process was, and how many symptoms they were showing.

Going out never failed to make Jonghyun reminisce, to make him wish for his best friend’s presence beside him. For so long, they dreamed of seeing the sunlight again, of going to the Han river and looking up at the clouds. Of being true human beings again. He hated that he couldn’t share it with Kibum. He hated that it was only him.

Eventually, Jonghyun became of status to go on outings alone. To be frankly honest, he didn’t hate it. He didn’t get much done, as the region had already been cleared by the rest of the team, but he still looked around nonetheless. He tried to take comfort in the silence of the city, once bustling with people, now, empty.

He never dared go back by the house. He knew he couldn’t handle going home. So, he didn’t.

One day, Jinki ordered a group of men consisting of his best soldiers, to use a utility vehicle to scower the northern part of the city on suspicion of a family held up there. Jonghyun was invited alongside Minho, Taemin, and a few others.

The ride was quiet. Minho drove. Mostly, people just looked out the window, watching the passing infected. Reach for the large, black vehicle. Under different circumstances, Jonghyun probably would have thought it was badass, a bunch of guys dressed in full black, with belts filled with weapons that he’d only previously seen in movies. But this, this wasn’t good. Who knew what they’d see on this mission, who knew if the family was even truly alive. The Infected had been increasing in intelligence, maybe it was all a trap.

One they were there, it was oddly silent. The squad leader ordered for them to split up, as Jinki had not given them an exact location on the family.

Jonghyun elected to go southwest from where the vehicle was, arguing that he knew the neighborhood, but in reality, he simply wanted to go as far away from his home as possible. It wasn’t a complete lie though, the region happened to be an area where his friends lived during his time in high school. Not that that mattered anymore. It’s not like, even with his knowledge of the area, that he could walk safely through it. He couldn’t walk safely through, as there weren’t any people to worry about, it was the lack thereof.

He walked through the decayed alleyways, filled with dried blood, and plant life overgrowth through the cracks of brick walls and splits in concrete. He spent nearly thirty minutes, hearing the others speak back and forth over the communication devices about there being no signs of human life. Formality calls, really. The utterances of the word “clear” after scouting a neighborhood and finding no one was something Jonghyun had learned to tune out, because most of the time, there was no one to be found. It wasn’t until Taemin came over the radio, breaking the formal code of the normal radio communication speak, exclaiming about the people he sees inside a house toward the north. The other boys responded, a crowd of voices crowding the channel, asking for the address, acknowledging his message, saying they’ll be there shortly.

Jonghyun began to make his way in that direction. He wasn’t ready for what he saw when he turned the corner between alleyways. An Infected. He hadn’t seen one since they were in the region. He was very far from it, but he knew that this was the only route to go back northward, to where Taemin was. He put his hand around the holster of his gun and walked forward, much more cautiously than before. As he inched forward, he began to recognize features of the Infected. Disgusting, all Jonghyun could think of as he saw the limp of the creature, and the blood and skin of some poor human who came into contact with the infected.

That was when the Infected turned its head toward Jonghyun, stopping him in his tracks. He recognized those eyes, that face. Kibum. His skin was burned and crisp, a type of leather. His eyes, bloodshot, dark. But they weren’t on his body, the Infected wasn’t Kibum. Only the disguise. Brown eyes, once filled with light and optimism, a darker brown that cast themselves in pain. His arm, connected to the infected, draped over its own as some sick costume, was somehow still thin, and somehow he could still tell that it was Kibum’s. The memories of that day all came flooding back, and for the first time, he imagined what could have possibly happened after Kibum shut that door on him. Yes, he assumed he died, that he burned to death, but he always refused to acknowledge the possibility that he died from a different reason. He was burned, but not enough for that to be the cause of death. His body, or at least the parts Jonghyun saw, had been taken out of the fire rather quickly. It broke his heart, to see the love of his life torn apart, his blood covering the infected that was hiding under him.

Tears streaming down his face, finally accepting that he was dead, and he wasn’t coming back, Jonghyun dropped to the ground on his knees. The Infected began to walk toward him and he couldn’t move, he didn’t see a point in moving. In front of him, was proof that the person he loved more than life itself, his partner in crime, his husband, was dead. He didn’t have a peaceful death either. He was ripped open, stripped of his skin, his eyes. Those beautiful eyes that kept looking at him with a sadistic hunger. It was walking over, slowly, but Jonghyun knew he had to make a choice. He’d have to choose between killing the infected, shooting the man who looked just like his love, or he’d have to let it kill him. He’d have to watch as Kibum killed him, or there’s the chance that he wouldn’t need his body, because he already had one, and Kibum would just come over and give him a hug, get close to him, just like old times. Just without the warmth, without the emotion, without the smiles and the laughs. He had to remember that this wasn’t Kibum. This looked like Kibum, but it was also the creature that killed Kibum. The reason he’d never be able to see Kibum again, the reason he’d never be able to kiss Kibum again, hold Kibum again. It killed Kibum. It put Kibum in pain. And it tore them apart.

It hurt that Kibum’s plan of setting them on fire didn’t work. That they may have had a chance if they ran. But he wanted to be the savior, he wanted to kill some of them so they couldn’t terrorize any more people, and he sacrificed himself for that cause.

Jonghyun hated the Infected. Looking back at the one in front of him, he couldn’t handle it.  He wanted it dead, but he sobbed looking at Kibum in front of him. He wanted to believe that it was actually him so he could just run up and hug him. He knew what would happen if he did, but he didn’t care. Not in that moment.

He saw the Infected’s mouth drool from not having the strength to close its mouth. Watching Kibum’s mouth open, Jonghyun heard every word, every sentence that Kibum had said to him. He fell into a trance, just listening, Hoping the words would come with a warm hug.

But two short sentences stuck out. “Be safe, my love. I love you.”

Kibum’s last words to him. He wanted him to live, while he couldn’t. He wanted Jonghyun to go on. He couldn’t just die and let what Kibum did be for nothing. He couldn’t turn into the thing he despised the most. Kibum wouldn’t want that, not after everything.

It took everything he had, and the Infected was really close at that point, only around two meters away, but Jonghyun got up to his feet and grabbed his gun out of its holster. He pointed it at the creature. Tears still cascading down his cheeks, flinging themselves off of his chin and onto his shirt, it already soaking wet.

He looked through the viewfinder and locked eyes on Kibum’s. He thought back to their relationship. The day of their first date, the day where Jonghyun asked if this meant that they were boyfriends. The day they moved in together, proposing, getting married. He remembered the cakes they baked, the passions they shared, the movies they watched together, their laughs and their cries. The remembered the day the news broke about the girl, and every news report after that. He remembered Kibum taking off work, declining fashion shows in order to stay at home and watch the news, in front of the television with a mug of tea. He knew that it was going to be bad. He remembered Kibum’s final kiss on his forehead, his last I love you.

He looked in his eyes one last time.

Bang.