Work Text:
Here’s the problem:
Minho doesn’t love his job. Believe it or not, working as a vampire hunter wasn’t exactly his first choice when it came to employment, considering his more than colorful past with the creatures. However, when he finally entered the workforce, there was, unsurprisingly, a dearth of job opportunities for people who had zero formal education as a result of spending the first eighteen years of their lives trapped in the basement of a corrupt coven serving as an unwilling blood bag.
Bang Chan, one of the people who had pulled him out of the coven’s basement all those years ago had, thankfully, offered him a job that Minho had reluctantly accepted after a few weeks of fruitless searching for a more socially acceptable job. Again, limited opportunities and all that, and rent must be paid.
Though Minho wasn’t a fan of his job, the people he worked alongside had grown on him. They worked as a team of seven, a small unit within a larger organization dedicated to tracking down and, for lack of a better term, removing rogue vampires and covens, much like the one escaped, from the general population.
Vampires had been introduced to society eons ago but had only begun to fully integrate within the last century. While most of them had assimilated easily, drinking donated blood and mingling with the rest of the population with little issue, several of the older vampires and clans resisted the change and fought to maintain their traditions. You know, the super fun traditions of hunting at night, draining humans, and kidnapping babies to serve their covens until they were drained when they turned eighteen. Traditions.
It’s why agencies like theirs even existed in the first place. The vampire councils in each city worked closely with the hunter agencies and commissioned them to control any vampire problems that actively impacted humans. In exchange, the agencies worked to coordinate blood donations and help integrate vampires into human society. It still feels violent and exploitative towards the vampires (not that Minho cares), but Minho wants little to do with most vampires, good or bad.
His job is also exhausting.
By virtue of Minho’s hated but necessary job revolving around vampires, it’s something of a given that he’s become just as nocturnal as the creatures he hunts and he’s no stranger to pulling all-nighters even on nights when he isn’t scheduled for a hunt. Tonight, he had managed to fall asleep at a perfectly reasonable 3:00 a.m.
Needless to say, he’s irritated when his sleep is disrupted by a disturbance at his door.
Minho's eyelids flutter open, heavy with sleep, as the rhythmic pounding on his door only grows louder and continues. His head pulses in time with the bangs on his door and he rolls over to check the clock. Groaning when he discovers only a few hours have passed since he had finally managed to drift off, he buries his head in his pillow and silently screams.
Hauling himself out of his bed and stumbling towards his door, steps heavy with sleep deprivation and irritation, he pauses briefly to check his proximity alerts for supernatural forces. He had commissioned Felix, a pretty hunter reassigned from Australia a few months before Minho joined JYPE with whom he works closely, to install them after a brush with werewolves on a hunt gone sour (don’t ask) and he’s immediately wide awake when he processes the fact that the indicator for vampire is bright red.
Grabbing a stake from the pile where he keeps his work supplies, he creeps towards the door. He hadn’t wanted to kill a vampire tonight (and he would absolutely be billing JYPE for overtime for this inconvenience), but he wasn’t about to lose sleep over another kill added to his resume. This vampire had a lot of nerve showing up at his house and disturbing his rest. Consequences and all that.
He yanks the door open only to freeze when he comes face-to-face with the vampire, who looks worse for wear. Because, shit, Minho knows this vampire and there was no reason why he should be injured, much less look like he was seconds away from his second death.
The familiarity jolts through Minho and he feels like there’s ice running down his spine. He lowers his stake and makes a confused noise.
“Seungmin? What?”
“Fuck,” Seungmin says, although it comes out more like a whisper, with how much pain he seems to be in. “Minho-ssi. You answered.”
At the sight of someone he recognizes, Seungmin’s legs give out and he collapses on the ground, leaning his head against Minho’s doorframe.
If this was a hunt, this would be where Minho kills him. This would be where Minho stakes Seungmin through the heart.
This would be where Minho watches him die.
Minho has enough experience with the creatures, both working under Chan at JYPE and before, to know that an injured vampire is still a dangerous vampire. He has the scars, the memories, and the nightmares to never be able to forget that particular lesson.
And yet, he can’t kill this vampire and watch him die, as he’s done so many times before. Because this is Seungmin.
Here’s the problem:
Seungmin is, to Minho’s great annoyance, one of the good vampires, a fact which Minho believes with a kind of fervor he thought he had left in the basement of the coven he served, buried under stones that are likely still splattered with Minho’s own blood to this day.
Minho knows Seungmin is good, however, because of the simple fact that Seungmin has saved his life.
During his last hunt, he had made an uncharacteristic mistake and ended up too far into the city, chasing a vampire that came with more violent friends than documented. He ended up cornered alone in an alley by five rogue vampires with a twisted knee and no escape plan.
Minho didn’t believe in God, not after he’d had personal experience with creatures that defy death and sink their teeth into little boys who aren’t big enough to fight back yet, not after he had to spend years working up the courage to wear shirts that exposed his neck. But at that moment, when a sixth vampire appeared in his line of vision, Minho had prayed that his death would be quick.
And then the sixth didn’t help the other vampires. He fought them off and picked Minho up, skinny arms never shaking under Minho’s weight. The vampire deposited him in the seat of a cab and fished through Minho’s pockets to retrieve his license with his address. Once they arrived at Minho’s apartment, he carried him into his apartment, helped him shower, placed him on his bed, and left. Minho would have chalked it up to a strange dream if it weren’t for the sticky note he found stuck to a takeout order from a restaurant a few blocks away the next morning when he finally had enough strength to get out of bed.
Hi,
I hope you’re feeling okay! I ordered you some food, so be sure to eat well!
Seungmin :)
(the vampire from last night, by the way)
Under his name, Seungmin left his number, and Minho, like the ever-polite man his mother had raised him to be before she had been drained by the same type of creature Minho was now communicating with, texted the vampire to thank him. Seungmin had responded and asked him to get coffee with him (“to make sure you’re really okay, Minho-ssi!”) and that was that.
After their first meeting for coffee (not a coffee date, as Seungmin had called it), Seungmin continued to text him and invite him for coffee and Minho continued to respond and join the vampire in the different shops around the city. Against his will, over the course of these meetings (“not dates, Seungmin!”) Minho had learned more about the vampire than he would like to admit. He knew Seungmin had been turned fairly recently, in a freak mugging by a new vampire who had been abandoned by his coven and couldn’t control his thirst. He knew that, prior to turning, Seungmin had been studying law at university but had to take a semester off to deal with the change and he was more upset than he let on about the disruption in his education. He knew Seungmin was meticulous and terrified of losing control. He knew Seungmin didn’t know his sire and his parents had cut off contact when they found out what had happened. He knew Seungmin was alone.
So, yes, he continued to meet up with Seungmin, because if he didn't, who knew what would happen to a vampire alone in the city? He could go rogue and Minho didn’t want to put in the effort of tracking him down to kill him. It would cut into his sleep schedule.
(And if he spent weeks tracking down Seungmin’s sire, identifying both the vampire’s name and frequent haunts, and requested personal time to do his job of killing rogue vampires, well. No one needs to know about it. Not even Seungmin.)
Minho kills vampires for a living and his most frequent contact outside of his crew is a vampire.
Life moves on.
Here’s the problem:
There is a pile of injured young vampire blocking the entrance to his apartment, which Minho only realizes when he hears Seungmin moan on the floor. Looking down at the floor, Minho sighs.
“If you knocked on any other door, you would be dead,” Minho states, exasperated.
Minho’s apartment is not in one of the vampire-friendly complexes that dot the city and he had chosen it for that specific reason. It makes him feel safe, or as safe as one can feel when they spend their nights tracking supernatural creatures. Vampires can only legally be in the building if they have been invited or are accompanied by a human.
Seungmin has come in alone. If anyone else had found him, it’d be grounds for hunters to be called.
He spots the way Seungmin’s eyes latch onto the stake in his hand and he takes a quick step back into his apartment to drop it onto his kitchen counter.
“But you’re my most favorite vampire hunter,” Seungmin drawls back when Minho has retaken his place in his doorframe. “Why would I go to them when I can go to you?”
Minho watches, the corner of his lips lifting briefly, as Seungmin tries to push himself up into a sitting position.
“And why do you need a hunter, vampire?” Minho asks.
“Can’t a vampire just visit a vampire hunter?” Seungmin asks, before wobbling and crashing onto his side. “Ow.”
Minho takes another step forward until he is standing over Seungmin. The color of his shirt is dark, as Seungmin obnoxiously leans heavily into the vampire aesthetic, but Minho can still make out spots of blood darkening the fabric and sticking the shirt to the vampire’s skin.
Minho is a vampire hunter. Minho spent eighteen years of his life as a blood bag. He should be relieved that another vampire is about to be removed from society, making Seoul feel that much safer for him.
Instead, he looks at Seungmin and feels pain at seeing the other so hurt. Seungmin is a vampire; he isn’t supposed to be hurt.
Leveling a glare at the vampire and trying very hard to not let the concern he feels bubbling in his body show, Minho pokes the vampire’s head with his toe.
“Do you need an invitation, or are we going to have this conversation in the hallway?”
Seungmin tips his head back with the pressure from Minho’s foot and smiles.
“I don’t need an invitation, but I would appreciate some help. Someone decided it would be a fantastic idea to cut my Achilles tendon.”
Crouching down to get Seungmin’s arm around his shoulders, Minho is treated to the sound of the vampire whimpering in pain.
“Seems like they cut more than just your Achilles, vampire.”
Seungmin huffs a laugh that quickly turns into a hiss when Minho stands them both up. Minho feels when the vampire goes completely limp and he rolls his eyes, stamping down the worry that rises in his stomach, before scooping Seungmin into a bridal carry to bring him into his apartment.
Seungmin is lighter than Minho expected and he briefly wonders if that is because of the vampirism or if Seungmin is just that small. It makes something protective flare inside him and he quickly abandons his original plan of depositing Seungmin on the couch in favor of taking him to his bed.
After setting the vampire down and mourning his newly washed white sheets, Minho takes a step back to evaluate. He’s not super concerned with the injuries that Seungmin has currently. Vampires heal quickly and once Seungmin feels well enough to leave, he’ll be able to feed and should be okay within the day, unlike Minho who can feel the old injury in his knee start to throb from the small strain of carrying Seungmin to his room and will likely have to add painkillers to his morning routine for the next week.
His bigger concern right now is what happened to Seungmin. All things considered, Seungmin is a low-key vampire. He buys his blood from the hospital, where it is willingly donated, so it couldn’t be humans who hurt him. Hunters like Minho only kill vampires that have been proven beyond reasonable doubt to be a danger to humans, something that would have been rigorously checked by any reputable hunter agency, so it couldn’t be hunters. Unless Seungmin has snapped in the three days since Minho has last seen him (something Minho can’t imagine the disciplined vampire ever doing), there is no logical explanation for the state Seungmin has shown up in. Whoever hurt Seungmin had a personal agenda, and Minho had no idea how the hunter agencies or the human police let it happen.
Minho shakes his head and decides that would have to be a problem for future Minho. He makes his way over to his dresser, pulling out a new shirt for himself, his old one stained with Seungmin’s sticky blood. After changing his shirt, he pauses for a moment before taking a set of new clothes for Seungmin as well. He makes a short detour to the bathroom for supplies, intent on cleaning the vampire before heading to bed.
There’s no reason to let Seungmin bleed all over his bed, Minho rationalizes. He was pretentious about his sheets—an unfortunate byproduct of not sleeping on a real bed during his childhood and only wanting the best now that he had access to one—and new sheets would be expensive. He doubts he could bill JYPE for living expenses, but if Seungmin ruined his bed, he would. Technically, the purchase would be vampire-related.
(There’s also no reason for Seungmin to wake up uncomfortable and covered in blood.)
Minho suppresses a snort when he makes his way back to the bed. Seungmin is fully asleep on his bed, mouth open, and looking very unattractive. So much for the great myth of vampire seduction. Eons of vampire lore struck down by one six-month-old baby vampire.
Minho doesn’t even attempt to wake him. He grabs a pair of scissors from the bathroom and makes quick work of Seungmin’s shirt. Any humor he has found in the situation quickly evaporates when he sees the extent of the wounds covering Seungmin.
In any other situation, he would have paused to admire just how pretty Seungmin is, his broad shoulders tapering down into an impossibly teeny tiny waist, but all he can focus on is the fact that Seungmin’s body is littered with slashes, some fresh and sluggishly bleeding, others in various stages of healing. He has a long line of aggressive burns tracing up the side of his torso and the imprint of a crucifix scorched into the center of his chest.
His arms are similarly maimed, with long parallel lines tracing up his forearms, burns interspersed throughout the carnage.
Minho breathes out slowly, trying to calm himself down. These marks were made with intent. He knows because he’s inflicted the same wounds on countless vampires throughout the years and, not for the first time, he marvels at the barbaric nature of his job.
“God, Seungmin,” he wonders out loud, despite the fact that his audience of one is unconscious. “Who did this to you?”
Carefully, Minho removes the rest of Seungmin’s shirt and cleans the vampire as best he can before replacing Seungmin’s shredded shirt with one of his softest ones. He repeats the process with Seungmin’s pants, only feeling slightly sick once when he sees the way both of Seungmin’s Achilles tendons have been severed, rendering the vampire unable to flee from whoever hurt him.
Once Seungmin has been cleaned of dried blood and dressed in Minho’s clothing, he takes a step back, satisfied. Without the loose dark clothing the vampire prefers, sprawled out on Minho’s white sheets in a white shirt and gray sweatpants with his fluffy hair haloing his head, Seungmin looks nothing like one of the terrifying creatures of the night Minho knows vampires to be. He’s just Seungmin.
Minho pulls his curtains shut, double-checking that no sunlight will be able to get in, before walking out of the room. The sunlight won’t kill Seungmin, as he learned at one of their meetings in a pretentious coffee shop over matching iced americanos, but it still isn’t a fun way to wake up. Minho looks back once at Seungmin, just to check that the vampire is still okay, before flicking off the lights and walking to the couch.
There’s no need to panic, Minho repeats to himself, making himself comfortable under a thick blanket. Vampires heal and Seungmin will be okay in the morning.
Here’s the problem:
Seungmin is not, in fact, okay the next day.
Minho wakes late in the afternoon and expects Seungmin to be up and moving, mostly healed, and pestering him to go to the new coffee shop that opened on Minho’s street last week. When Minho walks into his room, intending to get ready for the day, he’s instead greeted by Seungmin writhing in pain, blood soaking through the shirt Minho gave him.
“Seungmin, what?” he gasps out as he rushes over to the vampire in his bed.
“Hyung,” Seungmin whines and Minho’s heart clenches at the honorific. “Hyung, it hurts.”
Minho clambers onto the bed, pulling Seungmin’s head into his lap.
Poking the vampire’s forehead, before smoothing the crease that’s appeared due to the way Seungmin’s face has screwed up in pain, he chides the vampire.
“Breathe, Seungmin,” Minho lifts Seungmin’s shirt and his heart drops.
“What kind of knives did you let yourself get cut with, stupid vampire? These still look just as bad as last night.”
“I can confidently say that they were fucking sharp ones, hyung.”
Minho flicks Seungmin’s forehead.
“Take this seriously. You are supposed to be healing, Seungmin.”
“Can’t do that, hyung,” Seungmin gets out through his gritted teeth. “They soaked their knives in vervain.”
The world shifts beneath Minho’s feet. Normally, when exposed to vervain, the holy herb, vampires are weakened, and their abilities drained. Superstitious humans drink it as a way to ward vampires off from feeding, and Minho is not ashamed to admit he had consumed vervain-laced tea for the first year of his freedom, but hunters use it to kill. Blades soaked in vervain cut vampires deep and prevent healing. Minho knows how to use vervain to subdue and he knows how to use it to kill. Seungmin has been cut deep enough, and often enough, that he’s been bleeding out all night on Minho’s bed.
“Seungmin, you are going to die.”
At that, Seungmin giggles, and the sound is equivalent to a stake through Minho’s heart.
“Been there, done that,” the vampire smiles, flashing his fangs at Minho.
“Stop joking, idiot vampire,” Minho scolds. There’s a panic roaring inside him and his hands shake as they run over Seungmin’s body. “You have to help me figure out how to fix you.”
“Hyung,” Seungmin breathes. “It’s okay. You’re a hunter. You don’t fix vampires. You do the opposite. I just–”
Seungmin trails off, his breath stuttering, and, if he had any blood to spare, Minho knew he would be blushing.
Minho brushes the vampire’s hair off his forehead and hums, encouraging him to keep going. His mind is racing, trying to figure out a way to save this stupid, good vampire that has wormed his way into Minho’s life. He’s already lost his mother and his childhood. He’s not losing Seungmin as well.
When Seungmin begins speaking again, he’s quiet, his breath hitching with pain whenever he breaks to force a breath.
“I know you don’t heal vampires; you hunt them and you kill them. I know I’m going to die,” Seungmin pauses here to laugh again, a little hysterical. “Again. I’m going to die again. I should have died six months ago, but I didn’t and I’ve been alone ever since. I just didn’t want to die alone this time. It’s okay. I made it easy for you. There’s nothing else you can do at this point.”
Minho feels like crying and he’s unfathomably mad at this vampire for forcing him to care.
“What if I wanted to heal you? What if I don’t want you to die? What about me, Seungmin?”
Seungmin just hums, readjusting himself and relaxing more into Minho’s hold.
“Dying is so much nicer the second time,” Minho’s fingers tighten in Seungmin’s hair, and the vampire gasps at the silent admonishment.
“You aren’t dying Seungmin,” Minho insists. “You still owe me for our last coffee date.”
Seungmin’s soft laughter quickly turns into a pained moan and Minho’s heart falters.
“I thought they weren’t dates, hyung,” Seungmin says, grabbing Minho's hand when another wave of pain rushes through him, before finishing his sentence. “I’m sure you can find someone else a little more human to join you.”
Squeezing Seungmin’s hand in a silent plea for him to stay, Minho replies.
“What if I want to go with you?”
“Hyung, I’m not good company,” Seungmin protests. “I’m not human anymore and you don’t even like vampires!”
Using his grip on the vampire’s hair to force eye contact, Minho glares at Seungmin.
“You idiot, I like you.”
Seungmin gapes up at Minho.
“No, hyung, you can’t. I know you don’t talk about what happened before you became a hunter, but it’s not hard to put together. We hurt you.”
One of Minho’s hands drops down and pinches Seungmin’s side, a silent admonishment for taking unnecessary blame for something that happened before Seungmin had even turned. The action is a little distracted, however, Seungmin’s mention of his past throws him back to a memory he thought he had suppressed.
Back in the coven, there had been a vampire who had been punished too harshly by the elders. They had burned vervain into her skin with crucifixes and slit her wrists, then left her bleeding out for the next day. If she survived, she’d be forgiven. The young vampire had survived and she had been brought to feed from Minho.
Minho vividly remembers the vampire sinking her teeth into his neck and the voice of the elder telling him that the only way to survive a planned vervain attack was to drink blood directly from the source. He remembers the young vampire being pulled off him and the promise of the elder that Minho would not always be there to heal her after any mistake, so she needed to be careful. Minho remembers hoping that she wouldn’t survive her next punishment, that the vervain would burn her from the inside out.
Looking down at Seungmin, all Minho hopes is that Seungmin lives. And he knows how to make that happen.
“Fresh blood.”
Seungmin makes a confused noise and Minho clarifies.
“If you drink my blood, you’ll heal. You need fresh blood.”
Seungmin’s gaze immediately hardens and Minho can see the defiance in his eyes. Seungmin doesn’t know Minho the way Chan does, who found him in that awful place; the way Jisung does, who slept with him every night until he stopped waking up screaming; the way Hyunjin or Changbin or Jeongin or Felix do, who helped Minho become a person again. But Seungmin is smart. He has figured Minho’s past out and would never ask. Minho could carve his chest open and offer Seungmin his still-beating heart, and the vampire would still refuse. Because Seungmin is one of the good ones.
“No.”
“Seungmin, please,” Minho begs. “If you drink, you’ll heal. You won’t have to die.”
Seungmin shakes his head and tries to escape Minho’s grasp, but his body is too weak to make any real progress. He ends up collapsed in a heap mere inches away from Minho, and Minho pulls him back into his lap with a sigh.
“I trust you. Please.”
“No, hyung.”
“I will force those baby fangs of yours into my neck and make you drink, Seungmin.”
“You wouldn’t do that,” Seungmin states. “You can’t care about me that much.”
“Do not tell me what I can and cannot do, vampire,” Minho growls, pulling the collar of his shirt low enough to expose the side of his neck, his pulse beating fast.
Minho sees the way Seungmin’s gaze catches on where his heartbeat pulses through the thin skin on his neck. There is want in his eyes, yes, but it is not the hunger Minho is used to seeing from a vampire about to feed. There’s something else there that Minho can’t quite name.
Minho pulls Seungmin upright, spinning the vampire around so that they are eye-to-eye. Seungmin gasps in pain at the sudden shift and drops forward so his head rests against Minho’s collarbone. Seungmin coughs and flecks of blood dot his lips, dripping onto Minho’s skin. It is the closest a vampire has been to Minho’s neck since he was trapped in the basement, but he isn’t scared. He’s worried.
Still, Seungmin refuses to move.
“Seungminnie,” Minho grabs the back of Seungmin’s head and brings it to his neck. “Please. I don’t want to lose you.”
Minho feels the way Seungmin’s breath stutters before he’s blindsided by a pain he is far too familiar with. His body tenses and Seungmin immediately tries to pull away, his hands scrabbling at Minho’s chest. Minho refuses to let the vampire move, however, and his hand remains on the back of Seungmin’s head, urging him to keep drinking.
Minho loses himself in deep breaths, trying to keep his instinctual panic at bay and blocking out the memories flashing through his mind, and is only brought back to his body when he feels Seungmin’s tongue flash across his skin to close the wound.
Minho pulls away from Seungmin, slowly, carefully.
“Why don’t you smell scared?” Seungmin slurs, eyes hazy with the high vampires get when they have finally fed after starving.
“You know what I smell like?” Minho asks, appalled.
“I know what you normally smell like. You smell really–” Seungmin trails off, his cheeks flushing fully now that he has enough blood in his system.
“I told you before, silly vampire,” Minho responds, taking pity on Seungmin. “I trust you.”
He reaches down to wipe the blood from Seungmin’s mouth, but freezes when Seungmin’s fingers come up to trace the side of Minho’s neck, fingers outlining the bite mark. Minho looks at the vampire and sees the guilt flash across Seungmin’s face.
“I’m fine, Seungminnie. Stop looking like such a wounded puppy.”
“Fuck you,” Seungmin whines, petulantly. “Don’t you know how rude it is to call a vampire a dog? Werewolves are, like, our sworn enemies.”
Minho laughs and Minho feels a weight lift off his shoulders. If Seungmin feels okay enough to snark back, Minho won’t need to worry too much about a guilty vampire.
“You’re welcome, puppy,” Minho teases back. “You can repay me for my top-quality blood by telling me just exactly what you did to piss someone off enough to send you into a second grave.”
Minho pulls Seungmin tighter against his chest, watching the cuts on Seungmin’s body heal as he starts to explain. Apparently, the landlord of his apartment had seen him exit the hospital yesterday through the entrance vampires used to pick up blood and, despite having advertised his apartment as supernatural-friendly, had notified the entire apartment complex of the presence of a vampire in apartment 325. Several of his neighbors had not been pleased and had come for him right as Seungmin sat down for dinner.
“Turns out it was one of those ‘okay in theory, not practice’ things,” Seungmin laughs. “God, it’s like coming out to my family all over again.”
It isn’t exactly unexpected that vampires are mistreated. Hell, Minho works as a vampire hunter. Still, his heart burns thinking about Seungmin, scared and hurt and alone, and he reflexively tightens his hold on the vampire, as if he could physically stop any harm from coming to him with his own body.
“Now, what made you think you could take on an entire apartment complex on your own, baby vampire?”
“I didn’t really have a choice, hyung,” Seungmin whines.
“Well, I'm not going to let you do this on your own anymore, Seungminnie.”
Seungmin looks at him, eyes sparkling, before surging upwards to connect his mouth with Minho’s.
Minho leans into the kiss, smiling despite himself. He deepens the kiss and is pleasantly surprised when Seungmin reciprocates by sliding his tongue into Minho’s mouth. Minho, never one to be outshone, does the same. He expects to feel a flash of panic when his tongue brushes against Seungmin’s fangs, but all he feels is warmth.
When they break apart, they’re both panting.
Seungmin smiles up at him, fangs on full display, and Minho feels no fear.
Just love.