Chapter Text
Wooyoung
The sun hangs in the sky like a pregnant spider.
Swollen and distended, it reaches its vast multitude of arms over the deep blue expanse, over the stagnant heat of the earth, and the city purrs in its embrace like it doesn’t know it’s being consumed.
Wooyoung closes his eyes. The light burns past his lids, paints his retina with ribbons of orange and red, radiation refracted endlessly in the microscopic tapestries of the skin. The heat feels like a pair of insistent hands on his cheeks; demanding, rough. His tongue lies dry in his mouth. He can feel himself baking.
He stares at the sun through his eyelids until it hurts.
Everything’s blue when he opens his eyes again; an equal and opposite force to the sun-brightened colors of flesh. The world is awash in it. Like menthol.
Wooyoung imagines a breeze. A car honks somewhere down on the street, somewhere far beneath the balcony of his apartment, beneath his feet. He should get up. Go back inside. San won’t let him hear the end of it if he fries himself out here again. And he needs to piss.
He stretches out his long legs in the cheap plastic sun lounge and yawns. The soles of his flimsy flip-flops scrape against the concrete floor of the balcony before bumping against the base of the glass railing. The heat has made him boneless and placid - like a good blanket would. It’s nice.
A door opens and closes somewhere inside the apartment.
Wooyoung cranes his neck to peek through the smudged balcony window with significant reluctance. Then turns back around. Sighs.
San bought food again.
It’s never a bad thing, really, but it’s not like Wooyoung can’t make his own fucking food.
San doesn’t even live with him. On paper, at least. Who fucking knows if he lives with him spiritually at this point. Philosophically. According to the theory of relativity.
“Young-ah!” Wooyoung hears him call. “There’s chicken if you want some.”
With a groan, Wooyoung hoists himself out of the sun lounge. It creaks and scrapes under his weight, and he nearly manages to topple himself over in the effort of getting himself upright without stepping in pigeon shit. The shadows of the apartment feel almost uncomfortably cool on his skin as he squeezes through the perpetually-stuck glass panels of his balcony door (maybe one day he’ll fix them, but that day is not today).
“You’re gonna get skin cancer,” San mutters as he saunters over to the kitchen table.
“I’ll die of liver failure at the ripe old age of thirty-five, thank you very much,” Wooyoung retorts, and grabs a fried chicken leg.
“Sweet lifespan.”
“Mm-hm. Nice, right?”
Wooyoung stuffs the entirety of the takeout bird appendage into his face, earning a bemused look from his best friend. San busies himself with opening his own container of food.
“What have you been doing today?” he asks.
“Uhh… woke up at noon. Cammed. Watched a doc about the Nuremberg trials.”
San makes a face at the middle entry on Wooyoung’s list. At this point, Wooyoung is completely aware of how his little side hustle irks his friend out, but he mostly just thinks it’s funny. Not everyone has the mental resilience to jerk it on camera for some middle-aged perverts for money. Wooyoung isn’t even gay. Just resourceful. And if San can’t appreciate that, that’s his personal shortcoming.
“How much did you earn?”
“A little. Enough.”
San seems to settle for that answer, taking another bite of his chicken.
“How about you?” Wooyoung asks. “What’d they have you do today?”
San makes a face like someone’s spat in his food.
“Paving. In thirty degree heat.”
Wooyoung grimaces.
“Well that’s shit.”
“Smells like shit, too. I hate the stink of bitumen.”
Wooyoung makes a vague noise of agreement in the back of his throat.
“Speaking of stink,” he points out, gesturing a chicken bone at the other. “It’s clinging onto you. You need to shower.”
“Yeah, I’m aware,” San mutters, pouting in that way he always does.
He makes quick work of the rest of his drumstick and turns to pull his sweat-drenched t-shirt over his head. Wooyoung makes a face at him as he tosses the offending item of clothing onto the nearest chair and walks over to the sink to splash his face with water.
“Man. Don’t do that in my kitchen. Where are your manners?”
“It’s fucking hot, Wooyoung-ah. I hate the heat. I wish it was winter.”
“Hey, it’s not my problem that you’re weak. You gotta respect the rules of the house you’re in.”
San turns back to face him, brow raised, wet strands of hair plastered to his forehead. He’s stupidly good-looking. Wooyoung’s fucking jealous. He wants to punch him in the mouth.
“What rules?” San asks. “You barely wear a shirt either half of the time.”
“I wear shirts.”
“If I can see your nipples it doesn’t count as a shirt.”
“Fuck off. It’s a statement.”
San doesn’t say anything to that - just raises his brows at Wooyoung, thoroughly unimpressed. Wooyoung smirks back.
It’s always been like this, for them.
Ever since middle school, when they’d first started hanging out under the guise of catching bugs together during recess - two losers entertaining each other in whatever ways they could, with bickering and shit jokes and even shittier activities. A couple of useless hobbies always shared between them - an unspoken rule more often followed than not. Attached at the hip. A group deal.
Which is why the next question bothers Wooyoung.
“What have you got planned for the night?”
He meets San’s inquisitive gaze over the kitchen table, chewing on the remnant of his last bite of fried chicken.
That, right there, is exactly what he hadn’t wanted to talk about.
“Oh, uhh… I was gonna go out.”
San raises his brows again.
“Out? Where?”
“A place at the edge of the city. There’s a party,” Wooyoung mutters, avoiding looking at San directly in the eye.
Something unsure flashes over San’s face for a split second. He knows he hasn’t been invited. He’s not going to invite himself. He’s going to nod and clean up the takeout boxes and go take a shower, and he won’t be here when Wooyoung comes back home from the rave.
The thought sits like a lump of dry ice at the bottom of Wooyoung’s stomach.
“You’re meeting your friends?” San asks.
“Yeah.”
God forbid he has other friends. God forbid he wants to hang out with literally anyone other than Choi San.
San fidgets with a chicken bone in the takeout container. The silence is making Wooyoung want to lock himself onto the balcony. And when the other speaks up again, he sounds like he’s trying to put on his best concerned parent voice.
“Well, text me when you get back home, okay?”
Wooyoung grimaces. It feels ugly.
“Can you stop acting like my mother for once? I can take care of myself.”
San scoffs at that, amused, like Wooyoung’s isn’t a fully grown man who knows what he’s doing. Like he’s a petulant five-year-old. And rather than dignify him with any kind of retort, San just starts cleaning up the food containers, tossing them into the kitchen bin.
Anger blossoms in Wooyoung’s gut and clambers up his throat, sharp and bright and venomous. He holds it between his teeth, bites it back and lets it settle against his molars.
“Whatever, fuck you,” he murmurs. “I’m gonna go piss.”
With that, he turns and strides off.
He needs to get fucking wasted tonight.
Yunho
The sound of the wet mophead slapping against floor tiles feels about as violating as a sound can be.
It squelches onto the hard surface, into the puddle of spilled milk in the process of pooling into the grouts, splaying its limp microfiber strands into the dirtied fluid like a dead octopus. Yunho drags its flaccid mass across the floor, staring dumbly at his own stunning inefficiency; at the way the liquid only shifts around in the grime and grease and spreads underneath the display shelves and doesn’t fucking go anywhere.
He’s so fucking hungover he feels like he’s going to die.
Tinny pop music sloughs out of the overhead speakers of the convenience store. Yunho’s pulse is in his teeth, his fingertips. The fluorescent lights flicker above him and he can’t stop thinking about the packet of cigarettes he’d so foolishly abandoned in the staff room.
His phone pings. Welcoming the distraction, he digs it out of his pocket and unlocks the screen.
hwa
got word from eunji-noona. tonight, 2200. old print house. in or out?
Oh hell fucking no.
Yunho would rather die than put another drop of alcohol into his suffering system. He stuffs the handle of his mop under his arm to keep it upright as he takes his phone into both hands to type out a shaky response.
you
not coming. don’t feel like drinking.
He continues his mopping efforts for a little while longer after that, until whatever remains of the contents of the milk container some kid had very graciously smashed is (mostly) gone. There’s a dogged bitch of a headache throbbing above his left eye socket. The air is too humid.
His phone pings again.
hwa
better stuff on offer tonight
you
like what?
hwa
jjong got e
you
oh, damn
is it legit?
hwa
come and see for yourself
Yunho sighs. Contemplates his life choices for a long moment. The door to the store opens and closes somewhere behind the shelves. He types again.
you
fine. see you then.
If there’s one thing Park Seonghwa is good at, it’s getting invited to places.
And when Park Seonghwa gets invited to places, that invitation automatically extends to his close-knit group of friends. They’re all really very good at getting invited to places, frankly, which is good news for their status in the local scene and bad news for the states of their livers.
Not that Yunho’s complaining. Being counted among Seonghwa’s friends means that he gets around. That he gets included in something that feels exclusive; that they’re all in on something cool. And it’s fun, if you disregard the hangovers. And if you disregard the fact that Yunho has to make time in his life for that, his part-time job, and full-time studies in biochemical engineering; his two shit jobs, as Mingi calls them.
Yunho closes the chat and opens another.
you
young-ah
something happening at the old print house tonight
wanna come with us?
It doesn’t take long for Wooyoung to respond.
wooyo
fuck yeah
Yunho smiles at his phone screen.
Wooyoung’s cute - the most recent addition to their little posse. It’s not like people usually come and go - their group might be a lot of things but it’s not a revolving door. Wooyoung had just had that energy about him, warm and immediate and open, like he’d already known them for years when he’d first struck up conversation with him and Mingi at one of Eunji’s bigger raves last month. He’s the kind of person who manages to toe the line of personability without straying into rudeness or uncomfortable overfamiliarity, and Yunho finds that commendable. Even Seonghwa had warmed up to him during that night, and that’s saying a lot.
It helps that he looks good. Sharp-featured, lean, a little rat-faced in the best possible way, sporting a silvery blond dye job that contrasts the gold of his skin. There’s something in his mismatched eyes and resting bitch face that make him look more abrasive than he actually is; the truth of him lies more in the bright smiles and the loud laughs, and the way he never hesitates to touch.
Really, he’s the exact kind of person who Yunho usually struggles to navigate around. He doesn’t know why he keeps jabbing at his queer little heart with people who have line-blurring tendencies.
Yunho texts Wooyoung the exact place and time and stuffs his phone back into his pocket.
By the time his shift ends, the sun is already bowing its head past the waterline - past the tall silhouettes of concrete blocks, casting its long, languid rays down the sides of them. The city glows and shimmers in the rapidly cooling atmosphere, humming its ever-present song through exhales of people and machines, of engines and infrastructure. Everything breathes out here - the same heavy air travels through every lung and every pipe, immutable and ever-changing at the same time. Yunho draws deep of it on his walk to the bus stop - fills his body with it, lets the pollution settle into him. Tries not to think about the paper he’s got due in two days, like just existing better in this moment is going to make his future disappear.
Inhale.
Exhale.
He needs to visit his parents this weekend. He knows they miss him, living far enough outside of the city to not see him very often. He misses them too.
Maybe he’ll head home early tonight - take something to knock himself down from the uppers and get some much-needed sleep so he can finish his paper tomorrow and have time to pack before Saturday. That way, he’ll have a chance of not looking like absolute shit in front of his mom and risk making her worry even more than she already does. It’s probably the least he could do, to at least try to take care of himself.
Sitting down onto the bus stop bench, Yunho gazes over the tops of the buildings across the street - at the silhouette of a crow against the vibrant face of the sky, strutting across the edge of the nearest rooftop.
It pecks at something, flies away, and the turning of the gaze into the setting sun makes sparks dance in Yunho’s eyes.
Seonghwa
“Shit, is that aburasoba?”
Seonghwa, in his superior years, is wise enough to know when to shield his food from the likes of Song Mingi.
“Mmh-hm,” he hums, and moves the bowl closer to himself.
“Aw, man,” Mingi bemoans, and pulls away to slouch against the backrest of his chair. “If I’d noticed that on the menu I would’ve ordered that too.”
“Well, I’m sorry for the state of your eyesight.”
Mingi groans again, like the universe has personally wronged him.
“Did someone piss in your rabokki?” a voice calls out to their left.
Jongho and Yeosang, each carrying bowlfuls of food, join them at the table.
“He’s trying to pity party his way into my aburasoba,” Seonghwa deadpans.
“Am not!”
“What time were we supposed to be at the venue again?” Yeosang asks.
Seonghwa swallows his current mouthful and digs into his pocket to extract his phone. The clock reads 20:34.
“In thirty. Mingi needs time to get his setup in order, and I promised we’d help Eunji-noona.”
Jongho leans over to peer at Seonghwa’s phone.
“You changed your lock screen.”
A small smile rises to Seonghwa’s face.
“Yeah.”
He turns his phone around to show the picture to the others across the table - a photo of his dog, carrying a stick that’s definitely too large for a yorkshire terrier. More like a whole branch, really.
“Aww,” Mingi coos, smiling like someone just handed him the sun from the sky. “Hodu’s so cute!”
“Where’s he staying right now?” Yeosang asks.
“He’s with Chaeyoung.”
Jongho chuckles at that.
“Your joint custody thing is still so fucking funny.”
“What’s funny about it? The dog can’t be with both me and her at once.”
“Yeah, I know, I know. It just makes it sound like Hodu’s your kid.”
Seonghwa makes a face at that.
“Hodu is my kid.”
“And your ex’s,” Mingi sneers. “You’re like a divorced dad in your forties.”
“I’m twenty-eight, Mingi.”
“Ancient.”
“Eat a dick.”
They all snicker over their bowls of noodles before settling into a companionable silence for a few seconds. The air of the noodle joint is hot and humid, laced with the scent of cooking oil and cleaning chemicals. It mingles with the hot steam from the aburasoba and wafts over Seonghwa’s face as he eats, and he’s sure it’s not doing his makeup any favors.
“I thought you weren’t DJ’ing tonight,” Yeosang remarks, mouth full of pork belly, glancing at Mingi over the table.
“I thought so too,” Mingi smirks. “But Eunji-noona practically begged me to perform again, saying nothing’s ever ripped as hard as my–”
“The other guy got food poisoning,” Seonghwa interjects.
“Yeah, the guy puked everywhere,” Mingi concedes with a warm laugh. “I’m bringing disinfectant wipes for the DJ booth.”
“Seems I have raised you well, son,” Seonghwa hums, and nods sagely.
Mingi snorts into his rabokki.
Thirty minutes later, they’re all gathered in the lukewarm twilight by the sea, the old, decrepit print house building looming behind them; all countless tons of concrete of it, painting a stark image against the blue haze of the dimming sky. There are no bird sounds; no seagulls shrieking above the shoreline. Just an infinite bath of brownian noise, of the sea roiling over itself and over gently eroding sand and rock.
A white van pulls up to the empty parking lot sprawling around them, and the short figure of Park Eunji climbs out of the front seat followed by a couple of her people: a quiet, slim-faced guy who goes by Joon, and Doyoon, a petite guy with tan skin and a lackluster dye job who Seonghwa knows to be good friends with Mingi.
An impish smile spreads onto Eunji’s thoroughly pierced face when she sees Seonghwa.
”Bright and early,” she grins. ”I like it. Big fan.”
She saunters over to them, past them, shorn head bobbing past below their jawlines, heading for the print house door. While Doyoon and Mingi busy themselves with a complicated handshake, she deftly lights a cigarette in and proceeds to rummage around in the numerous pockets of her cargo pants for keys.
”How’d you manage the keys?” Jongho asks. ”I thought the cops confiscated them last time.”
Eunji smirks sharply around the smoke in her teeth and turns the key in the lock of the aged metal door. The mechanisms shift with a pointed clack that resounds in the steel structure like a gunshot.
”Think again, babe.”
”Any insurance policy for tonight? I’d rather not run again.” Seonghwa asks as they step through.
”Tossed a couple of red herrings out there,” Doyoon chimes in. “As long as nobody snitches, we should be fine.”
The space is dark and cavernous - like a big concrete stomach waiting to be filled. Seonghwa can barely distinguish the ceiling from the shadows, but he knows of the giant hole in the roof above them, and of how it makes it seem like the space of the main hall reaches all the way up to the top of the building. It’s almost enough to give him vertigo.
“You’re one man short. Where’s the beanpole?” Eunji asks.
“Two men, actually. Yunho and Wooyoung are gonna be here at ten. Yunho had a shift to cover and he just told me he invited Wooyoung.”
“I didn’t know Youngie was coming,” Mingi grins, face brightening. “Nice.”
“The more the merrier,” Eunji singsongs. “Right, let’s get the gear out of the car, we haven’t got all night!”
They all get to work with the assured motions of people thoroughly used to packing and unpacking things at extremely short notice. Jongho hauls giant speakers across the hall with the aid of Joon and the van’s battered hand truck, and Mingi strides towards the makeshift stage at the end of the massive hall space - a precarious-looking thing of palettes and concrete blocks, stacked on top of each other in a way that might or might not be safe. He clambers on top of it with a few less-than graceful motions, aided by Doyoon. Having made it atop, he unzips his bag and extracts an old, banged-up laptop with more than a few worn-out stickers slapped on - his trusted workhorse, his pride and joy.
“Where’d you get the gear?” he asks as he places the computer on top of the table and plugs it in.
“You know how Kontrast went bankrupt recently? The club?” Doyoon smirks, picking up a cord snaking out of the audio interface and yanking it towards one of the bulky speakers. “They were getting rid of all their stuff, so I got these for half free. I’d say these might even be better than the ones the cops confiscated. Huge fucking sound.”
“No shit?” Mingi grins. “That’s amazing.”
Seonghwa, plugging a set of strobe lights into an extension cord, hopes that huge doesn’t translate to unwanted visitors, this time around.
Wooyoung
The music feels violent in the body.
It slams against walls, splits and splinters against massive concrete columns like wood parting on the blade of an axe - rattles around Wooyoung’s brain and chest like steel on steel and it feels fucking good, like nothing’s ever felt better before.
Flashing lights slow framerate down; it’s crawling shutter speed, delayed input. A simple degradation. Each electrical impulse writhes blindly around in the flesh. Wooyoung can’t see himself moving but can feel movement in the air around him, in the other bodies reflecting his own trajectory. Harsh noise blankets him in fiberglass, bright and sharp, and the manic pulse moves over him, into him, through him.
His heart is beating too fast. His heart is beating just fast enough. He feels like he could dance out of his skin.
Someone shoves a bottle into his hand. He drinks from it with no hesitation, not a single thought of warning in his head–
It’s water. Yunho presses up against him from behind, and Wooyoung can barely hear the words that he shouts into his ear over the music.
Stay hydrated, Young-ah!
Wooyoung laughs, pearly and clear. He turns and hugs Yunho, and he can feel every inch of sweaty skin plastering to the front of his shirt. He’s fucking drenched, so Yunho must have a point.
Yunho wraps his arms around his waist. Smiles.
“Anybody ever tell you you’ve got nice teeth?” Wooyoung shouts.
Yunho laughs incredulously.
“What the fuck?”
Wooyoung presses closer in a selfish pursuit for heat, wanting to feel more of the body flush against his. Just the simple sensation of something held to his skin is enough to make him shiver.
“Is this your first time rolling?” Yunho asks, still grinning.
“Ah??”
“You know– on E.”
“Yeah! It’s fucking great??”
Yunho laughs again, like it’s the funniest thing in the world. Wooyoung laughs with him. They tangle into each other on the stained concrete, among the other bodies, among the heat and the rhythmic tremor of the earth. Wooyoung can’t remember a time before this.
They dance until it feels like their bodies are physically giving out - until Wooyoung’s throat aches with thirst and his legs are cramping. And when they stumble to the side of the dance floor, slipping into the hum of people standing and talking and drinking and kissing, Wooyoung still feels like anything’s possible. The two find a palette to sit on to share their water and give their aching feet a rest.
“You ever do anything like this with, uh…”
“Oh, Sannie?” Wooyoung asks. “Nah. He’s bad with booze too.”
“That’s a shame,” Yunho chuckles. “You look like you’re in your element.”
“Right??” Wooyoung intones, gesturing wildly. “I feel like… like I wanna do something more, you know? Grow in some real fucking direction. Sannie’s just too careful, like he just wants to make sure I don’t fuck myself up, and sometimes that’s so fucking–”
“Suffocating?”
“Yeah! Like… don’t get me wrong, he’s fucking amazing,” Wooyoung continues to ramble, his words slurring into each other with how fast he’s speaking. ”He’s looked out for me almost my whole life. There was this incident a few months ago that landed him fucking community service and it was all because I’d been stupid– and now I feel some type of way about that that I don’t know how to deal with, and–”
“You think you’re in love with him?”
“Huh?”
“Do you think you’re in love?”
Wooyoung laughs unsteadily.
“No, what the fuck? I don’t like guys.”
“... Right.”
“Anyway, he’d probably never do something like this with me, even if I asked. Or then he’d just mother me the entire time.”
“Like I’m mothering you?” Yunho smirks.
“You’re just treating me well ‘cause you’re nice like that,” Wooyoung smirks, gesturing with the water bottle in his hand. “There’s a difference.”
“Yeah?” Yunho laughs. “And where’s the line, exactly?”
Seonghwa appears to their right. He’s with Yeosang and some trinket-faced lady Wooyoung’s seen around but doesn’t know the name of - but based on how people act around her, she must be a big name in the scene. They look good together, both owning themselves with complete confidence.
“You two coming down already?” Seonghwa shouts over the music with a smile, sweaty and out of breath.
There’s something electrified about him - strands of long dark hair stick to his face in erratic formations and there’s a wild look in his wide, cattish eyes.
“Come on, come dance!” he urges, grabbing Wooyoung by the hands, something pointed and manic about his playfulness.
“I’m good, you go on ahead,” Yunho laughs, and Wooyoung gets back onto his feet to follow Seonghwa back into the writhing crowd.
He doesn’t realize anything is wrong for a good long while.
He doesn’t hear the screams over the music, or know to interpret the restless ripples through the mass of bodies from where he’s floating high above himself.
Not until the music stops.
He sees it, then, refracted between the mute flashes of strobe lights.
There’s a man standing above the crowd, in the DJ booth - someone unfamiliar, an abstruse shape. Or Wooyoung assumes it’s a man. It stings his eyes to look at him.
Where’s Mingi?
It isn’t until Wooyoung looks a little closer that he sees the DJ, right there at the business end of that person thing’s arm, struggling to make sound through the squeeze on his neck. His movements look sluggish, like he’s on something - but Wooyoung knows for a fact that Mingi has been sober the entire night.
There’s something dark and viscous pooling out over his battered laptop, down the legs of the table.
Someone screams.
A primal, uncontrolled roil of panic rips its way through the crowd. The instant somebody moves, the crowd becomes liquid; a screeching, uniform mass, a senseless hivemind, a decentralized mad dash for the door.
Everything blurs. Wooyoung can’t do anything but get pushed around. He can hear his own blood roaring in his ears.
Where did Seonghwa go? Yeosang?
Somewhere in the air - close to the makeshift stage, and on the other side of it, and only a few meters away from Wooyoung - is an unspeakable sound.
It’s wet and too deep, like something ripping - things distorting in ways they shouldn’t be distorted. A snap. A scream, raw and urgent and blood-curdling. Then, echoed in equal force a few meters away.
Wooyoung can see people dropping, falling limply to the floor, and other people dispersing like ferrofluid around them.
He barely manages to stumble to the side before someone nearly takes him out barreling past - any motion into the direction of the door quickly grows more and more impossible as people rush towards the exit. Wooyoung sees a girl falling down and getting trampled just a few meters ahead of him, and is powerless to do anything to stop it. He sees people pinned against the doors of the print house, crying out for help as their bodies get crushed by the unstoppable human mass.
The doors are closed.
Why are the doors closed?
“Yunho!!” Wooyoung cries out, voice shrill and desperate. “Seonghwa-hyung??”
He can’t see them anywhere. He’s trapped here. They’re all trapped here.
Someone grabs him by the arm.
He whirls around with an alarmed yell, only to be faced with Yeosang and Jongo and the ice-cold fear written across both of their faces. Jongho is firmly holding onto Yeosang’s arm to keep them both from losing each other to the current of the crowd. Wooyoung thinks he sees blood on Yeosang’s face.
Wooyoung opens his mouth to shout something, to ask where everyone else is, to ask what’s happening, but the intent disperses like vapor in the air when a sudden force rips him back, to the side, away from the two others.
He can no longer feel Yeosang’s grip on him - instead, a cold bite of concrete at his back, a friction burn on the exposed part of his upper arm. It dawns on him, then, that he’s on the floor.
And there’s a body above his.
It’s cold, and it’s hard, and its shape is sharp like a serrated blade.
It holds him down by the neck and when it smiles at him, there is blood on its teeth.
Wooyoung thrashes, his own teeth exposed as he snarls at the person-thing in a desperate, panicked rage, clawing at the hand on his neck - clawing at anything he can reach.
He can’t stop it when the teeth descend on him, sink into his neck, deeper and easier than they should.
The shock of pain comes with a delay.
And when it does, fight or flight kicks in with more urgency than ever before; Wooyoung grabs at the person-thing’s hair, at his ear, and pulls. He can feel something come loose, something cold and wet gushing over his fingers and palm and down his wrist - and for a moment, the thing in the shape of a man jerks over him. His hold loosens and a scream rattles out of his bloody throat, furious.
Wooyoung bites back. He sinks his teeth into the nearest thing he can reach - into the skin and sinew of the wrist at his neck.
Blood, too cold, too thick, gushes onto his tongue, against his teeth. It tastes like copper and raw meat and the salt of skin - it invades his senses and his body like a sentient being, forcing its way down his throat and up his nose.
The person-thing recoils.
Wooyoung doesn’t stop to think before he’s clambering away, across the blood and dirt and dust and the splinters of wood on the concrete, away, towards the feet of people running, anywhere but where he just was. He thinks he can hear words shouted at his back - rough voices of strangers in the cacophony of rising and halting screams. ”Fucker bit me!”. ”So what, fucking bite back!”. ”He’s gonna turn like that!”. ”Who cares? The guys over there are turning ’em for shits and giggles - you’re fine!”
Warm wetness runs down the column of Wooyoung’s neck, seeps to the front of his shirt.
He’s bleeding from the neck - bleeding too much. Too fast.
He manages to reach a stack of wood palettes at the edge of the room without getting trampled by some miracle, and it’s then that he realizes that it’s the same palette he and Yunho had been sitting on, not five minutes ago.
Yunho isn’t there anymore.
Wooyoung feels pins and needles in his fingers and toes, creeping up his thighs, and the physical sensation of his diminishing blood supply concentrating into his guts and into his heart and his lungs, keeping them from failing before the rest of him, is so fucking scary he thinks he’s going to choke on it. He can feel the temperature difference between what’s outside of him and what’s inside - a sensation of warmth at the liminal spaces where the nerve endings of his guts are, contracting, retracting inwards. A whine crawls out of his throat. His vision goes hazy at the edges, and he can’t tell if it’s more because he’s crying or because he’s dying.
He does the only thing he knows to do in the moment and gets as horizontal as he can, a hand pressed to the torn mess of flesh on his neck in a desperate effort to stop the bleeding.
It doesn’t stop. He can only vaguely feel himself getting grabbed from the back again, and when the next bite comes, he’s unable to fight it.
It hurts. He’s pushed awkwardly against the palette, crumpled over himself like a ragdoll while the person-thing eats; grunts and groans and gargles into his neck, sick and nauseating and all-consuming.
Everything feels cold. Then it feels like nothing.
The sounds of his body breaking travel through the mass of him, into his ears, like the cracking of an ice sheet. Skin, ripping. Sinew stretching and tearing. Disarticulating cartilage, rocks hurled through the walls of the temple of his body. There’s no longer an inside or an outside, and nothing in him anymore that ends at the skin.
In those final moments, Wooyoung feels infinite.