Archive of Our Own ^beta

The angular concrete building is just as ugly as Jongdae remembered it. If anything, its run-down state improves it. The tufts of moss soften the jagged edges, blend it more with the remote mountain landscape. An old, sleeping tiger, teeth filed flat.

It's still hideous. But finally harmless. The way the main gate hangs uselessly from rusted hinges chips at the tightness of Jongdae’s chest. Can't keep anyone in.

Can't keep anyone out.

Sledgehammer propped carelessly over the shoulder of his designer suit jacket, Jongdae strolls past the gates. No power on earth can hold him here ever again, but he still fights off a shiver as he steps into the building's shadow. The prickle along his spine lingers as he pushes aside a weakly-protesting steel door and walks into hell itself.

Hell, in the end, isn't fire or bottomless pools of consuming murk. It's dust. Cakes and clouds of it, threatening to fill his lungs with every footfall. But this hell already had its chance to destroy him. What doesn't kill you makes you stronger, so people say, and now it's only the effort of a thought to ionize the air around him, keeping the choking particles away.

The dust makes sounds echo strangely or not at all. This must be what astronauts feel like, or whoever had uncovered Pompeii. But it hadn't been a volcano to wreck this place the first time.

It had been ice.

Here's what people never say: what doesn't kill you leaves you broken. It poisons you inside, so you wish you were dead. What doesn't kill you leaves your empty shell alive as a mockery, in perpetual penance for the sin of surviving alone.

Alone is something he was never intended to be.

Through the sagging doorway to his left, faded posters still cling to crumbling walls. Eerie cartoon animals cavort around Hangul blocks in the aim of coaching nine children to read and write. Not all of them learned as quickly as lab-grown geniuses would be expected to, though. Some of them manifested their mental prowess in other ways, ways that weren't easy for their handlers to measure.

The nine of them are generally hard to quantize, and harder to control. The proto-water boy is called stupid and the meta-air boy is called lazy, but the proto-water boy says he doesn't want to learn things that help them make people scream, and that of course the meta-air kid prefers to live in dreams instead of this cruel reality. Then the true water-fused boy says that he and his counterparts should have tried harder to disrupt the gestation of the later iterations, which always makes the proto-water one quiet and withdrawn, which makes the handlers call him stupid again.

The hyungs had been too young to interfere with the second iteration, so that row of desks is full. But the true fire-fused boy and the proto-fire one would both rather chuck erasers at the lone proto-earth kid than copy out sentences that may make grammatical sense but that none of them have frames of reference for.

'My grandmother takes my sister and me to the zoo' means nothing to nine boys who have never seen anyone female, or anyone older than their middle-aged handlers. Who haven't yet been taken anywhere outside the compound they were created in. Who, when a zoo is described to them, immediately decide that they're already in one. This is a hilarious idea, so they spend the remaining portion of the lesson demanding the instructor show them images of zoo animals, and declaring themselves and each other to be some fearsome (or hideous) beast. The laughter gets louder and louder.

It wasn't until Jongdae had left this hell, had heard other, normal children laughing, that he'd understood that the laughter in these halls had always held the edge of a sob.

That edge of a sob still chokes him. As wrong as it was for them to build children into killers, it's worse for one of those killers to walk these halls by himself.

Movement at the corner of his good eye has Jongdae turning suddenly, body tense.

It's a small, fluttering thing, slipped in between the worn shards of the window.

A butterfly, pale gray, wings tattered.

Not a threat.

Jongdae’s lips try to curve as he gazes at it. Damn things always remind him of someone. The meta-water hyung had favored brightly colored ones, though. Yellow, blue, anything but the institutional white or dripping red that usually met their matching, mis-matched eyes.

That was a long time ago. Days—a daze—best forgotten. Like this place. Like all the names Jongdae once spoke into this air, including his own. It's fitting that this butterfly is the color of lost souls.

It flutters off, down the dim hallway, over the cracked, grimy tiles. Toward a doorway Jongdae still sees sometimes in his nightmares.

The Corporeal Testing and Analysis room is its official name, but the nine boys all call it the Scream Room. At first, it was merely used when the scientists wanted to measure some physical parameter to do with damage or healing or compensation. But motivating good performance in the field with rewards is only so effective for a group of element-fused boys cut off from the world except when they're released to kill. Who cares about superhero toys or violent video games when your real life is already both? And none of them are dumb enough to demonstrate attachment to anything their handlers could subsequently take away as a penalty. So sometimes, physical punishment is the shortest route to compliance.

"Eh, ice-hyung secretly numbed 'em right as they took me in, so it didn't even hurt this time," the true air-fused boy says as he flexes the stumps of three absent fingers. "Plus all I gotta do is beat my average kill rate on the next assignment, and they'll let healing-hyung fix 'em. My puzzle cubes won't even have a week of rest!"

That room. That room is where they made an eight-year-old boy their most willing weapon. And he hadn't even been the one strapped to the examination bench.

The butterfly drifts on, towards the yawning square of black. Heart suddenly racing, Jongdae’s feet move to follow it. Drawn like a string, like he always was to his favorite hyung. Foolish, that he's so attached. Lesson number one, that had been, and to a fragile little insect of all things. Making him think of hyung doesn't mean it is hyung. Hyung isn't here. Hyung isn't anywhere.

They made sure of that.

Jongdae jumps a meter when he steps through the doorway and triggers a low, familiar hum.

"Hello, Chenny-chenny."

The lightning surges out of him before his feet hit the ground. A blast to the chest, then a fork arcing to either side, leaving his reeling target nowhere to dodge. Then a sweep to the feet, followed with sending everything he's got sizzling into the downed form.

Except that's not how it goes. The shimmering figure lifts a hand, a shield blooming out to absorb the first blast. Instead of dodging, the figure stands, eyebrow quirked as the fork splits around him. Then he calmly hops over the foot sweep, and absorbs the killing blast with the unmarred, silvery shield.

Then the figure laughs, sending a jolt along Jongdae’s spine.

"Really, Chenny. Who was it that taught you those moves? You'll need some new ones to take me out."

"Dead," Jongdae pants. "The one who taught me is dead."

He frowns at the apparition. The one who'd taught him had been young, older than Jongdae but barely more than a boy himself. He hadn't even been three years past twenty when he'd been ripped away from those he'd meant everything to. This spirit, glittering softly in a shattered ray of sunlight, looks older. Still ethereal, that face, but more mature. Beauty sharpened, the better to twist the knife between Jongdae’s ribs.

"You're dead," Jongdae repeats, vision threatening to blur. "Healing-hyung said so. He never lied."

It's their healer's biggest weakness, per the boy himself. To be unable to ignore suffering? That he considers a gift, proof that he—and by extension, all of them—aren't the heartless killers their creators had intended. But to be unable to speak anything but the truth, even when that truth leads to more suffering? That's the part of himself the proto-water boy had hated the most.

So Jongdae believes him, despite the blind rage, the reflexive denial. The 'don't-get-attached' rule isn't meant to apply to each other. The handlers need all nine of them, and they need them to need each other. It's essential to the entire purpose of the place, so even when the nine of them had set out to destroy it, set out to escape, lethal consequences hadn't even been a thought. If you kill, you can't attempt recapture.

At first, everything had gone according to plan. Once you train a group of men to defeat any kind of security that stands between them and their targets, it's a joke to think they'll stay anywhere they decide not to be. So one Chuseok, when the staff is always the bare minimum necessary to feed the boys, they leave, damaging as much data and equipment as possible on their way out. Damaging the building itself. They're having a blast, laughing and playing around, reveling in their power, their indomitability.

Until the first long-range tranq dart hits Chanyeol in the throat. He drops like a stone, cutting off the gout of flame he'd been about to immolate the building with.

Suho, their self-named guardian and de facto leader, had pushed Diyo at their fallen brother. "Grab him and run," he'd commanded. "Hyungs will hold them off, then meet you where we planned."

They obey. For as much shit as the younger ones always give the pure-water guy, they don't argue in the field. They obey, and they survive. That's how it always goes. They always win.

But then Lay drags himself and Suho to the rendezvous point, badly injured, all white faces and red-stained clothes. He tells them all that Xiumin is dead. That he'd died to save all of them. And that the way to honor that sacrifice is to scatter, split up forever, never so much as speak each other's names—or their own—ever again.

Jongdae had believed him. He had never called himself Chen again. Had never once searched for those he'd spent the first twenty years of his life suffering beside. Yet now, the man he'd spent over a decade mourning is standing right in front of him, calling him by that long-forgotten name, with the edges of that beautiful mouth pulled into a smirk.

"Lay told you the truth. Xiumin did die that day. I go by Minseok now."

"Bullshit." Jongdae spits, ridding his mouth of the dust he'd swallowed along with his surprise. "You could be anyone." His fingers are still humming with electric irritation, but he shakes his head at the figure's meaningful glance. "So you watched some old training footage. That doesn't mean you know me. Surgery's good these days. It's not that hard to steal a face."

It's ridiculous to be so disappointed by this imposter's inaccuracy. But Jongdae still mutters, "you didn't even get it right."

The figure lifts a hand to his nearly-flawless face. "That scar on my chin? As you said, surgery's good these days. Anything you hate being reminded of, surgeons can just… erase."

Jongdae snorts. "You missed a spot."

The apparition gazes at him through beautiful, imperfect eyes. But the real proof of his identity is still glittering over his skin. Ice is a poor conductor of electricity, any idiot could research that. Anyone could figure out that Jongdae would have a better chance of hurting Xiumin with the sledgehammer lying at his feet than with the lightning surging through his veins. But no one else could silver themselves with living armor against a volatile foe.

Armor that is evaporating away as its owner juts plush lips into a teasing pout. "Chenny," those lips chide. "How could I erase what reminds me most of you?"

"You… you fucking asshole."

Jongdae lunges. Xiumin moves faster. They slam into the wall hard enough to shake plaster loose.

The kiss is bruising. So are the fingers at his hip, the fractured sheetrock at his back. Jongdae can't get enough. His own fingers stake purple claim against Xiumin’s biceps, his shoulders, his ass.

"Hyung." It's a growl, or maybe a moan. "Hyung."

"Chenny."

Xiumin bites down, hard enough that Jongdae tastes blood. It's definitely a moan now that escapes the seal between their lips, followed by Xiumin’s wicked laughter.

"Satisfied?"

Jongdae snorts, expanding his ionic barrier to exclude the kicked-up dust from around them both. Xiumin hums as it envelops him, but doesn't move away from Jongdae or the static licking over his skin.

"That you're alive? Sure. But otherwise? No."

Xiumin nods. He curves a hand against the right side of Jongdae’s face, running his thumb beneath Jongdae’s snowy lashes, the eye forever frosted blue.

"It hurt, didn't it?"

"No," Jongdae lies. They both know it's a lie. He'd screamed when Xiumin had frozen away his sight on that side, even though Jongdae had been the one to demand he do so. To make them equal again, after they had blinded one of his hyung's beautiful eyes.

It had been his fault, after all. They had done it, had forbidden Lay from ever healing it, because Jongdae had said no. He'd never said no again.

They're still beautiful eyes, the ice-pale one and the dark, searching one that still sees, has always seen straight into Jongdae’s very soul—or whatever passes for one, in a lump of man-shaped flesh not born of anything so divine as a woman. As the eldest, Xiumin had actually witnessed it, had seen all the rest brought forth, though he'd only been old enough to remember the iterations after his own.

The three of you were pulled screaming from that vat, he'd often said of Chen and his counterparts. They pulled you out screaming, and none of you have shut up since.

But Jongdae is speechless now. Except for one word.

"Why?" 

He only says it once, but the word hangs between them in that empty place, agony building in the tangible echo of the words Jongdae doesn't say— why did you leave me all alone?

"You know why."

Jongdae does know why. He knows what consequences came of losing the center of his existence. The static coating his skin arcs and crackles as he flashes hot with rage.

Consequences? No. They were choices. Coldly calculated ends.

Jongdae flashes hot, white, electric. He stoops to grab the sledgehammer. He brings it around with a yell. Chunks of plaster and chips of cinderblock go flying, but it's not enough. He brings the heavy sledge around five, six more times before he realizes he's sending ice shards ricocheting into the dust, not slivers of man-made stone.

"You'll bring the whole place down, you fool." There's an edge of fondness to Xiumin's voice that zaps hate into Jongdae’s lungs.

"That's exactly the plan, asshole." Xiumin doesn't get to be fond, not when he'd chosen someone else, everyone else. Jongdae punishes the now-exposed support pillar for his own youthful stupidity. For the mistake they had made, encouraging their creations to develop attachments to each other.

The thing about punishing one child for another's sin is that it doesn't take much for a certain leap of logic. A leap of heart, by the handful of them that still had one. If it upsets us to see our brothers suffer, then what about the brothers of those we kill? How much pain do we add to the world every time we step out into it?

Empathy is a terrible thing. Jongdae has no use for it.

Xiumin catches the head of the sledgehammer in an icy fist. Jongdae moves like lightning when he wants to, and still Xiumin seems to be in slow motion as he deflects the retaliatory hammer blow, hardens ice over his abs ahead of the electrified punch to the gut, curls a band of ice around Jongdae’s thigh to prevent the flying knee meant for his groin.

"Chenny," he chides, stepping close, hammer still trapped in one frozen fist. "You always were their greatest triumph."

"I hate them," Jongdae snarls. "I hate you."

"And we deserve it." Xiumin presses closer, claims Jongdae’s mouth, takes advantage of his half-lifted leg, now held to the side. He always aligns the molecules of his ice like the finest swordsmith, the bastard. Jongdae may as well be shackled with steel. Except steel would conduct his power, and he'd be out of it faster than anyone could blink.

Not that he's even trying to get out of Xiumin's bonds. He's always been pathetic for this asshole, after all. He kisses back, fiercely, ignoring any taste of saline.

Xiumin doesn't ignore it. He freezes Jongdae’s angry tears, flicks them away with small, graceful hands. His nails are varnished, the color dull yet metallic.

"My own spark."

"Yours." It's a sneer.

"Mine," Xiumin insists, pressing his hips to Jongdae’s undefended pelvis. Any heat there is adrenaline, rage, but Xiumin smirks like it's desire. "You've always been mine. It annoyed my counterparts, you know, that their opposites preferred each other, but mine saw only me."

"They should've started with fire," Jongdae huffs. "Water's too weak." Water ruined everything.

Xiumin smiles. Not a smirk this time, but pure amusement at this old argument. How many times had he said these same words, in this same tone?

"They'd never have been able to control you lot without us."

Jongdae gives the habitual answer, voice as cracked as the pillar he'd attacked. "Good. We don't want to be controlled." He's trembling. He knows Xiumin can feel it, pressed against him as he still is.

Xiumin must have learned mercy somewhere outside these walls, because he doesn't cup Jongdae’s face again, doesn't give him soft eyes. He rolls his body against him, nipping at his lip. There's a burr in his voice when he says, "And that's why, Chenny-chenny. I know you understand. It was your life I had to die for, too. Your freedom."

"I didn't want it." Jongdae rolls back against Xiumin, body sizzling where they touch.

"I know." Xiumin bites him again, up under his jawline, hard enough to bruise.

Jongdae twists away, sharply enough to deaden his own leg against its icy prison. Thunder crashes overhead as he yells.

"Don't you fucking dare. No way do you get to mark me, claim me, and then fuck back off to your non-death alone."

"Alone?" Xiumin shakes his head, even as he wedges his thigh further between Jongdae’s pinned legs. Ice blooms from his punishing grip on Jongdae’s wrist, crawling up his arm to wrap around his neck, a frozen collar to make him gasp. "Do you think hyung liked breaking you, Chenny? Do you think I didn't know?"

The ice around his thigh is moving now, crawling, tugging him to hop backwards, to slam against an unhammered wall. He's spread wide, both legs encircled, body elevated, neck encased, pinned like a butterfly on a board. Dust showers down around them, swirling like snow because it is snow, flakes a freezing sting against Jongdae's sizzling skin.

Even Xiumin's breath is icy as he hisses, pressed so close Jongdae can sense the rapid electrical pulses of his heart. "Do you think it was fun for hyung, knowing you'd hate all of us, hate everyone? Our brothers, for surviving. The world, for existing. Them, for killing me, but mostly me, for leaving you. Is that what I wanted to become to my own spark? His bitterest, most broken memory?"

"You still did it," Jongdae gasps. "You still left. On purpose, you left, you asshole."

"Because it was that or condemn us all!" Xiumin pulls away to glare at him, but he leaves an icy echo of himself behind. Frozen, probing, burning cold against Jongdae's core. "Chenny. How could I let you die?"

At least they'd have been together. But apparently Jongdae was the only one of them who'd cared about that.

He curls a lip. "You killed me anyway, dickhead. You're standing in my fucking tomb."

Xiumin stares at him. Those searching eyes finally seem to register the now-dusty suit Jongdae’s wearing. They go wide.

Then Xiumin laughs. Throws his head back and laughs, the full, rolling belly laugh so rarely heard within this hell. How many times had Jongdae missed hearing it since? How often had his hyung laughed like this for someone else?

"I knew it was you," Xiumin says finally, mirth still coating his voice. "I saved all the articles. 'Synergistic Methodology curse continues: another long-time employee dies from sudden heart failure.'"

"They knew it was me, too." Jongdae shrugs as best he can, given his icy restraints. "Shouldn't have taught me how to find people."

Tracking everyone involved with SM is easy. Ridiculously so, at first, until they catch on and start trying to hide. But no one can fully escape the internet, not if they want to stay connected with anyone. And what is the internet, really, except tiny pulses of electricity? At the beck and call of their most biddable creation. A well-trained, instantly obedient dog.

Until the leash had snapped.

Now he's more like a cat, really, toying with his prey. He lets each of them go a few months, a year, letting them think their remote satellite connection, their stolen or manufactured identity has been keeping them safe. The one in the Tibetan monastery really does take him a little while, mostly because he has to climb all the way up there without being seen. But all of them, in the end, fall to a sudden tightness in the chest, a stillness behind their ribs, eyes flicking frantically as they spin, desperate to see a killer whose face they already know.

It's a face they made, after all.

Every single person who had anything to do with the experimental program that created nine elemental children. Anyone who knew they pulled a squalling, crackling infant from a vat and handed it off to the only one of the rapt, water-fused toddlers that could withstand touching him. Anyone who, once that toddler became the only person really tethering that crackling boy to the world, had been on the payroll when they foolishly took him away.

Except he'd taken himself away, it turns out. And now he's laughing about it as an icy thigh stings against Jongdae's crotch. More thunder clamors overhead as Jongdae electrifies himself further. He doesn’t have to sit here and listen to this shit. The icy bonds hiss, starting to sublimate against his superheated skin.

"You did a little too well, though, hmm, my spark? Always the over-achiever. They're tearing this place down out of superstitious fear, so you don't get your poetic end. You wanted to kill them all, then die here, right? Crumble to dust in the very place they made me your weakness." Xiumin’s smirk is back. "For the one of us with the least humanity, you sure bring the most emo drama."

Jongdae struggles harder. But Xiumin's actively reinforcing the bands of ice, likely with Jongdae's own sweat. He could still get out. But not before he gets answers.

"Why are you here?"

Xiumin shrugs. "Same reason you are, more or less. To take my own swings at the place ahead of the wrecking crews. And... to lay a ghost." He lifts a brow.

"I'm not the ghost."

The smirk returns as Xiumin presses in again. "Oh, so you want to be the one to do the laying? But you are a ghost. Not even your fellow vampire-boy could track you down." He puts his mouth back on Jongdae’s jawline, teasing with icy lips and heated tongue.

Jongdae gasps. But answers, answers first. He twines his fingers into thick, black hair. Clenching his fist, he yanks Xiumin's head back to meet his glare. 

"Baekhyun knows?" Vampire indeed—like Jongdae, the master of light doesn't show up on camera unless he means to, except his ability extends to analog cameras, mirrors, and even in person. Plus he's always liked biting people. At least, he used to. Jongdae hasn't seen him since the escape.

"They all know. I had to ask whoever I could find, didn't I? You'd fucking disappeared, asshole. I was afraid I was too late, that I'd lost you forever."

Getting lost had been the point. Knowing how to seek means knowing how to hide, and Jongdae is the absolute best at finding people. An ability he'd used for revenge, except he'd been a dupe the whole time.

"You didn't lose me, you dick, you left me. That was your choice, not mine."

"Not a choice I wanted to make."

Jongdae uses his grip on Xiumin's hair to pull him into a biting kiss. "Don't give me that. We could have fake-died together."

"I wasn't even sure I'd wake up, myself! I couldn't risk you like that, not then." The ice closes in around them both. "I have much more control now, though. If you think I'm leaving this place without my own spark, you're dead wrong."

Xiumin isn't lying about his upgraded skills. He seems to have frozen more than the water in the air around them. The ice crawling down Jongdae’s chest is cold enough to burn. His vision dims around the edges as he gasps, not enough oxygen in his lungs.

The new ice sublimates in an instant. Jongdae coughs, glaring at Xiumin's twisted smile.

"What?" that smile asks. "That was your plan, wasn't it?" The smile disappears. "Too bad. You don't get to die here, you ungrateful brat. I've suffered far too much to save your ass." 

The ice melts ahead of Xiumin's hands, curving under Jongdae’s thighs to grip his cheeks. "Fuck, I missed this ass," he growls. "Who's been filling it for you while I was away?"

"You don't get to ask me that," Jongdae spits. "You weren't 'away,' asshole, you were fucking dead."

"I died to save this glorious ass." Xiumin pulls Jongdae’s pelvis to meet his. "Which I am about to thoroughly enjoy."

He leans back, putting distance between their faces, even as his hips push forward. His icy grip on Jongdae’s ass gives him leverage, precision, and he knows just how to use it. Even after all these years, he has Jongdae hard for him in moments.

"That's right," he gloats. "My own spark likes when it's painfully poetic, so…" Xiumin grinds Jongdae further into the disintegrating wall. "I'm gonna make you scream in the Scream Room. Right here against the wall Diyo dented with that one poor sod's skull."

Jongdae rolls his eyes up and back. It's still there, an obviously older, deeper divot than the general decay. Near the ceiling, it had always been a pain for them to patch, and then of course the nine of them had kept the patch from taking. Too wet to stick, too quickly dried, frozen, shattered, clawed out by a gangly teen with long enough arms to reach it.

In a war, trophies are important for morale.

Jongdae aims for a snort, but the hip against his crotch turns it into a grunt. "You're a sick fuck. And an arrogant one." He slaps at Xiumin's chest. "You don't get to have me. Not when you—"

Xiumin's growl cuts him off. Jongdae's pants give way, cut or torn from below. "I do get to have you, because you. Are. Mine, Chenny-chenny. You know you're mine. My own spark."

Jongdae snaps at the lips that try to take his. "I'm not yours. I hate you."

Xiumin pulls his face away. He nods, mouth grim. "I know. But you'll hate me and take me, my spark."

Jongdae flexes against the bands of ice holding him still, spreading him open. "I'll zap your dick off."

"Can't wait."

"I'll stop your heart."

"As if seeing your gorgeous face again didn't already do that."

"I will kill you, Kim Xiumin." Jongdae clenches down around the cool fingertip invading his ass.

"You won't. I'd deserve it, but you won't."

"I will," Jongdae insists. "I could. Right now."

"Do it, then." Xiumin drops all his defenses, fingers busy between Jongdae’s legs. "Just lemme get inside you first because Chenny. Chen. I need so badly to come home."

"There is no home for me," Jongdae huffs. Then he thrashes around the broad, blunt pressure against his hole.

"There is, my own spark. I made you go without for so long, but hyung is here now." He wraps his hands around Jongdae's waist and pulls them together, sinks inside, cool and thick, icy-slick. "I'm here."

"I still hate you." It's what Jongdae means to say, but it comes out as more of a groan. "Hyung."

"Chenny."

The bands of ice are suddenly gone from around Jongdae’s lower legs. Xiumin hooks his elbows beneath Jongdae’s knees, lifting his ass, curving around him, punching deep. Jongdae gasps at the sensation. It feels just the same, echoing his most treasured, rarely visited memories. It's Xiumin, the only one that moves like this, teases like this.

But there's an edge to it that Jongdae’s only felt once before, and it has him sending a flicker of lightning through himself, through the man inside him, around him, huffing into the air between them.

Xiumin's huff becomes a hiss and Jongdae kicks a heel against his ass, sets teeth to his shoulder. "Don't you fucking dare," he growls around the skin between his lips. "Don't you dare fuck me like it's the last time. You do not get to leave again."

Xiumin snickers. "You always were addicted to my cock."

Jongdae kicks him again. "Your dick's not that special," he dismisses. "You still owe me a fuckton of answers."

"Ahh, and since each one will re-electrify your crackling hate, I need to fuck you well in between?" He changes angles, sending sparks through Jongdae’s core. "Hyung isn't going anywhere."

He pounds into Jongdae, harder, faster. Jongdae can only moan and send more lightning through both of them. Xiumin's moaning, now, too, muscles tense and twitching.

"More," Xiumin growls. "Take it all."

Jongdae gives him more. He takes him right to the edge of a lethal jolt, holding him there bowed back and screaming as he unloads into Jongdae.

Then he drops to his knees, sweaty and panting. Jongdae snorts, flexing his suddenly-empty core to maintain some dignity instead of letting his heels dangle in the dust.

"Gonna leave me hanging, here?"

Xiumin huffs at the double question. Ice curls under Jongdae’s thighs, giving his abs a break.

"Call me hyung again."

"Why should I?"

"I'll suck you."

"You're already on your knees for me, hyung, may as well make that mouth useful while you're down there in the dust."

Xiumin hums at the honorific but curls a lip at the mentioned dust. He shuffles forward until he fills his hands with Jongdae's ass. "The things I do for you,"

Jongdae scowls down at the man between his thighs. "Shut up and suck already."

Xiumin does. He keeps his eyes lifted to Jongdae the whole time, crucified above him, still wearing the designer suit jacket even as Xiumin's spend drips from his hole. Jongdae’s not the only one to notice—Xiumin slides two fingers into him with an obscene squelch.

Jongdae swallows a whine as Xiumin's lips, tongue, and fingers take him apart. His mouth is hot and wet and then cold and slick and then it's hot again as chill is pressed against his prostate. There's no time to get used to anything before it's changing again, and Jongdae kicks at the wicked tease.

Xiumin only absorbs one heel to the shoulder before Jongdae’s ankles are also shackled. Jongdae writhes, lifting himself away from the tormenting fingers.

"Let me come, you dick."

"That's what dicks are for, right?" Xiumin smiles up at him. "I've waited too long for this, Chenny. Hyung wants to play. Why do you think I let you finish me off so early? Now I can focus properly on my own spark."

He curves his fingers as he swallows Jongdae down again. Jongdae groans, letting his head thunk back against the wall. It's too much and not enough, just like the first time he'd ever had Xiumin's mouth on him like this. 

The assignment's over sooner than expected, thanks to Xiumin's upgraded ability to freeze tracheas fully closed, no screaming, no bloody mess. So they're at the extraction point—an unused underpass—with an hour to kill.

Someone else had apparently used that underpass as a place to chill. There's an old wooden dining chair, dragged from who knows where, pulled up beside an empty construction spool. Someone's draped bright red fabric over it in a cheeky echo of a fancy tablecloth, and there's even a chandelier—sprawled upside-down on the cement, but still.

Chen laughs. "It's like a date in a drama, right? Some vagrant was trying to get laid." He sprawls in the chair and beckons. "Come here and sit on daddy's lap like a pretty princess. Look, I'll light it up for ya, so it'll be all fancy." He sends electricity through the downed chandelier, coating the place in a golden glow.

Xiumin snorts, rolls his eyes, and strolls over, unzipping his fly. He saunters right up to the chair that puts Chen’s face at exactly the right height. And Chen opens his mouth, smirking as Xiumin shoves himself between his lips.

The thing about training children to kill is that, as soon as their bodies develop adult urges, they scoff at anyone trying to tell them they're 'too young' to do that sort of thing. As if releasing a flood of dopamine for themselves or each other was somehow worse than releasing all the blood from some stranger's body. So all nine of them have been messing around since puberty. It hasn't become any less fun now that most of them are legal adults.

There's no meaning or emotion attached. They're all selfish partners, or at least defensive ones, insisting on tit for tat. Nobody likes—or admits to liking—being the one to take someone else's cock, except that by doing so, they're owed a warm hole in return. They all get satisfaction from whoever happens to be around, or their own hand if they don't wanna engage in the sometimes-lengthy negotiations of who gets to do what.

But Chen has a jealous streak. He's greedy. He wants all his hyung's moans and sighs, wants to be the only one to see the way his eyelids flutter and his bitten-red lips fall slack. So while he protests bending or kneeling for the rest—or at least, drives a hard and inescapable bargain—he never fusses if Xiumin's the one to suggest he satisfy. In fact he actively offers himself to his favorite hyung. Like now, he covers his willingness with crass demands, but like always, he's happy to be the one hyung uses.

He's gotten quite good at pleasing his favorite hyung, too. He knows just how to open his throat, how to swallow around the thick length to provide the most sensation. Hyung likes to take his time, draw things out, take himself to the edge before relaxing again, eager for more. He could probably spend the whole hour sliding in and out of Chen's mouth, only finishing when he hears the rumble of an approaching engine.

But that's not what he does.

He gazes down at Chen with heavy-lidded eyes, watching himself disappear between slick lips. His fingers are twined in Chen's hair, tight enough to give a constant sting, and, because he's a cruel bastard, he keeps asking Chen questions that he can't clearly answer with his throat stuffed full.

"You're hyung's own spark, aren't you?"

Chen nods, a tug against his already-tingling scalp.

"You like when hyung fucks your handsome face."

Another nod. It's not so much that Chen likes it as that he hates when hyung goes to anyone else.

"How many times have you swallowed hyung's load?"

Chen shrugs. More times than he's taken it up his ass, fewer times than he's had it spurted over his face or back or cock.

"And you never complain." Xiumin laughs. "It's one of the two things you never complain about, isn't it? 'Go eliminate these targets' and 'take hyung's cock.' You're ready to go, every time."

Chen nods. It's for entirely different reasons, his instant obedience to these (and only these) commands. Or maybe it's for the same reason. The only reason he does anything, really.

For the man watching him through one good and one useless eye. It was purposeful, that their good eyes are on opposite sides. Whenever they're looking at each other, they're always seeing eye to eye.

Xiumin cups his face with the hand not tangled in his hair. "You've earned a reward."

His thrusts quicken, and Jongdae flutters his throat, anticipating that reward will be a throatful of come. And it is, but it turns out not to be the only reward.

"My legs are jelly," Xiumin pants when he's done. "Get up—I'm taking the chair."

Jongdae stands so Xiumin can collapse onto the ancient but sturdy piece of furniture. Then he sucks cool night air into his well-used throat—a gasp as Xiumin pulls him near, fumbling at his fly.

"Tell anyone, and it's the last time this happens," Xiumin warns, and then he takes Chen to heaven.

Xiumin's mouth is still heaven, even if he isn't Xiumin anymore. Jongdae will learn to call him anything, if he keeps moving his tongue like that. Xiumin, or Minseok, or—

"Hyung." Jongdae's toes curl, hips trying to thrust despite their frozen bonds. "Hyung."

Minseok chuckles as he swallows everything Jongdae gives him. "So good for your hyung. Does this mean you've decided we're both alive? And staying that way?"

Jongdae glares. "You have to live so I can zap answers out of you. And I have to live, to do the zapping."

"Fair enough." Minseok stands, going over to a suitcase and retrieving a pair of flannel pants woven in bright blue and black, the colors echoing a butterfly's wings. "Put these on so we can finish what you and that hammer started."

Jongdae blinks as the ice retreats. When he walked in here an hour ago, in no way did he expect to end up standing bare-assed in the Scream Room, designer trousers in rags on the dusty floor, holding a pair of pajama bottoms and staring at a man he'd thought long dead but who's apparently alive enough to fuck and suck an incredible orgasm out of him and then—offer him a cup of water? From one of the six buckets surrounding the suitcase?

"The fuck?" Jongdae asks once he's had a welcome, refreshing sip.

"How else was I to catch a ghost?" Xiumin closes the suitcase and picks up a huge wood maul, head already shimmering with a layer of ice. "When we heard the place was condemned, we all thought chances were good you'd show up here ahead of the wrecking crews. So I made everyone else stay away so you wouldn't get spooked, and." He shrugs. "I've been here for three days."

"You hate dust," is all Jongdae can think to say.

"I don't hate you, though, my own spark." Xiumin winks. "And I've got a hygienically sealed tent in our old dorm room." He shoulders the maul. "It's been miserable without you."

Jongdae picks up his own hammer. "Yeah. Well. Don't fucking leave again, asshole."

The hammer and maul are loud as they smash through cinderblock. But the laughter of two sex-drunk former zoo animals is louder.

It only sounds a bit like sobbing.