Chapter Text
The first spark of consciousness came with a glimmer of sunlight around a woman's head, so bright that he couldn't see her eyes. Her smile looked like his own. He'd seen it many times before; it was always the first thing he saw when he returned.
"Hey? You there?" said a man's voice.
Not being alone wasn't necessarily good. People got weird about him coming back from the dead. He'd dealt with everything from passing out, or having a religious epiphany, to trying to make him stay dead; people never ceased to surprise him. Fortunately he returned quickly once the regeneration kicked in, so he could swear he wasn't an alien, or a flesh eating zombie, or if all else failed, run. But his regeneration had slowed to a crawl. Something was wrong; something was in his veins, sharp like acid against the lining, ripping his blood cells open. He'd be afraid, but that part of his nervous system didn't seem to be back yet.
His eyes opened, and the first thing he saw was the silhouette of a head leaning over him. It was dark around them, not sunlight, but with his low-light vision it had somewhat the same effect. He couldn't see their face for all the gear they were wearing. Black, all of it. Goggles, face mask, turtleneck sweater with a jacket on top, hood up. But for a second, the image overlapped with the woman in sunshine and gave him a sense of familiarity and safety.
"Can you hear me?"
That was not the correct question. The question was 'can you answer me,' and the answer was 'no.'
"Squeeze my hand… uh… or…" The person took his hand. The burst of endorphins at being touched skin to skin jolted awareness into him, and his fingers twitched. Noticing the reaction, they lifted their goggles and pulled their face mask under their chin. The cheeks were cute in a handsome way, the kind a mother-in-law would want to pinch. The eyes appearing from under the goggles were glowing. Radioactive luminescence. This person was a freak too, same as him.
'Your eyes are pretty,' he wanted to say, but something was not right with his throat. He managed to raise his chin a touch, and swallowed hard twice.
"Oh, lemme get that off of you!" The dark figure disappeared and came back, and he heard a jangle of keys. He hadn't quite understood the feeling in his neck was pain until it lifted. He got a sense of weightlessness for a moment, like something had compressed him into a tight, heavy square, but now his self ballooned into the complex shape it should be. His healing made progress again.
"This has gotta be confusing, but you're alright, you're safe, no one's gonna hurt you. Those dogs are all gone."
That would be great, if he had the first idea what dogs this guy was talking about, or who he was, or where they were for that matter. Noises echoed, and the ceiling was very far away, telling him the size of the hall he was in at least. Thinking his vocal cords might have come back, he tested it and heard a rough, hoarse, "Eyes…"
Was that his voice? He couldn't remember it being that dark.
"What?"
"Eyes," he said again, trying to wet his dry tongue and lips. "Yours. Pretty."
A shocked giggle, full of frazzled disbelief, rang in his ears like pure joy. "This has gotta be the first time I've been hit on by a corpse!"
"Did I die again?"
"Yeah. Sorry, I couldn't stop them. Here." The man helped him sit up, and pressed a crude glass bottle into his hand, the surface lumpy and uneven. It was open, and the strong smell of alcohol bit his nose. "This'll clean your gut right out. I'm guessing you feel like dogshit gone through a blender right now."
"Thanks." He chugged. Pain was one thing, but it helped dull the disturbing feeling of his insides rearranging, systems and functions returning one by one, out of order. Dogshit through a blender was an understatement, but a topic he didn't want to linger on. He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. "Sorry, I… don't know who you are."
"I'm Choi Jongho."
"Song Mingi," he said, but it didn't mean much. It meant sunlight behind a woman's head, and a shift to hostility in people's eyes as they realized he was a freak, because he didn't usually look like one. It meant occasionally waking up in his own grave, breathing dying air, clawing through gravel.
Death ate away at his body even if it was temporary. His memory loss wasn't because his soul had left and come back, or anything esoteric like that. The worst damaged cells and connections were replaced rather than repaired, and the new tissue was blank, fresh out of the factory. The most recent years were permanently gone. What remained returned slowly, and with the oldest memories first. People with that inclination might call this the price of defying death. Mingi called it a fucking inconvenience.
Looking for context, he found himself sitting on the stone floor of an arena, with a wooden fence surrounding them in a circle. There were platforms further away, behind a fence, for an audience. Some of the dark stains on the floor and boards were definitely blood, and while the fresh ones were alarming, the layers of old ones were truly disturbing. He could play hard, but this was not his idea of a good night out.
The planks were haphazardly covered in dented and dirty metal plates; shoddy protection from the radiation that freaks gave off. Science couldn't explain it yet, but they seemed to carry tiny nuclear reactors inside them. So this place had pitted freaks against each other, making them fight for people's entertainment. Some chose a life like that, but Mingi was not that kind of person. Whoever had put him here, he doubted they'd given anyone else a choice either.
The only person there now, however, was the man helping him. The monochrome black, in an outfit that focused on function rather than form, could have made him intimidating, but the voice was sweet. There was a certain flair to his gestures and cadence to his speech that didn't rhyme with military discipline either, and he had an empty beer can next to him, and another in his hand, like he'd been sitting here a while.
Mingi found it unlikely but still asked, "Are you a soldier?"
"No, the gear is borrowed," Jongho said.
"Am I supposed to know who you are?"
"Nope. I've seen you, but I doubt you've seen me before."
"You're not exactly helpful," Mingi said, wondering about Jongho's calm reaction to a dead man sitting up.
Jongho chuckled and drank some beer. "Okay, hm… This is a rescue mission. You kidnapped someone I know, a celebrity called Angelface, from a Saero City convoy. I'm not really someone who wears City colors, normally, but…" He shrugged. "It paid well."
"Me? I kidnapped someone?" Mingi said. This didn't sound like him at all. Not that he could always defend his past self's choices, in fact he questioned them deeply more often than not, but he generally tried to avoid violence.
"It wasn't your idea," Jongho said. "I could tell something wasn't right. Your eyes… it was like looking in the eyes of someone gone nuclear; nothing there, nobody home. Except you obviously weren't nuclear. Guessing you were drugged or something."
Mingi rubbed his throat, and looked at the collar, discarded on the floor next to him. It gave him a faint impression of dread, but no memories. There were several bloody spikes on the inside; two longer meant to paralyze his vocal cords, and four shorter ones in what looked like copper, with tiny holes at the points. Leaking poison into his blood faster than he could heal it out. Clever and cruel.
"You don't remember any of it?" Jongho asked.
"No."
For the first time this lifetime, Mingi looked at himself. He was wearing a flamboyant, long red coat with elaborate black embroideries, black pants, and nothing else. Barefoot even. Show clothes. Come see the monkey dance. It was fucked up, but at least he looked great. His hands were huge, his waist small. The clothes were burned away in places, and he was in damn good shape; his thighs challenged the fabric of his pants, constricting him when he flexed. It made him happy, until he realized he must be this size because he'd needed to be, in order to survive.
"I guess this is like waking up after being blackout drunk," Jongho said.
"How long…?"
"You were dead for maybe half an hour. I've never seen someone come back after their hearts have stopped for that long. I was getting ready to bury you."
Mingi grimaced. If there was anything that could make dying worse, it was waking up underground and having to dig himself out. But hey, at least Jongho hadn't gotten around to that yet, or been about to burn him or cut him up for parts. "No, I meant, how long have I been here?"
"No idea," Jongho said. "You started attacking caravans and kidnapping afflicted a few months ago. Nobody felt like doing anything about it, until Angelface was taken, and the heroes rushed out to save him."
"Is he okay?"
"A little traumatized, probably, but who isn't," Jongho said with a shrug. "He'll be fine, he'll have the City's best docs and all the substances money can buy once we get him back there. Don't worry about that son of a dog. You've heard of him, right?"
Mingi shook his head.
"Well, these guys had. The biggest star of Saero City, right now. If they'd put him in the ring with you, you would have made rat guts of him, but they wanted him to sing. Gave us time to get here."
There was a scattering of gunfire outside, like fireworks lighting up Mingi's nerves and sending adrenaline through his veins. But his companion didn't even blink. It was followed by a loud bang and a faint tremble through the ground.
"Don't worry," Jongho said, while voices were yelling between more gunfire. "They're still cleaning up outside but this place is safe."
Looking in the direction of the noise, Mingi had spotted writing on a wall, high enough up to be seen from inside the ring. Someone had written with thick, white chalk, CHAMPION and CHALLENGER. Counting the many white lines under the former, grouped in fives like skeleton fingers, the back of Mingi's neck prickled with zips of ice cold. If that was for him, he'd been on a winning streak.
"It wasn't your fault," Jongho said, noticing what he was looking at.
Mingi wasn't as sure. "I can't remember."
"I saw the room in here that they kept you locked up in," Jongho said. "Nobody chooses that. San let himself get captured to find this place, and they put him in the ring, so he had to defend himself until Hongjoong and the rest of us got here. We were supposed to arrest you, not kill you, but you were kicking the living shit out of him."
Mingi drank another mouthful, keeping his eyes down to avoid looking at the billboard again.
"He'll be fine," Jongho said gently, before a cheeky grin grew on his lips. "Never thought I'd see that guy go down. Far as I know, he's never taken a loss before in his life, except to Hongjoong. I'll remember this fight, the next time he comes around to harass me for shit I didn't do, with that cocky ass attitude."
There was another shudder through the ground and an explosion, hollow and echoing. Mingi's senses were coming together, and he was starting to be bothered by a disgusting scent in the air. Blood and… worse. He breathed in the alcohol vapors through his nose before drinking again, welcoming the burn.
They drank together in silence until Jongho's beer ran out, and that was nice. Jongho felt like someone he knew and didn't have to put on social graces with. That he didn't actually know him was even better. Meeting people he'd known before was always a disaster, and friends were worse than enemies. No matter how much he explained about cells and regeneration, and that the physical part of him containing the memories didn't exist anymore, they felt if he'd really loved them he'd remember. With old enemies they got the chance to fuck with him again, but he didn't disappoint them.
"They really fucking hate us, but I didn't think even raiders would do this to people," Jongho said, looking around at the arena. "But I guess they don't see freaks as people."
The way Jongho said that word, he really didn't like it. But it wasn't a bad word to Mingi. It meant what he was; a freak of nature, a random mutation. Like cancer, except more interesting. And like cancer, most of the mutations killed the host, sooner or later. Mingi was a freak even among freaks; unkillable, so far.
"What do you call us?" Mingi asked.
"Huh? Us? Afflicted?"
Afflicted, on the other hand, felt stiff and clinical, it made them sound like a sickness. But sure. If that was what Jongho preferred, it didn't matter to Mingi.
"I call us diseased dogs, or maybe radioactive dickless shits if it's someone I really like," Jongho answered, making Mingi smile. "Feeling up to heading out and greeting your fans?" The outside had gone silent.
"Yeah," Mingi lied, and took another long swig of the liquor.
"Damn, you're heavy," Jongho complained, pulling him to his feet.
When he was standing upright, Jongho had to lean his head back to meet his eyes.
"Whoa," Jongho said. The flash of his eyes running over Mingi's form, and the genuine amazement in his tone, had Mingi's emotions jumping straight to smugness. That he needed to put an arm around Jongho's shoulders to figure out how to walk couldn't take that feeling from him.
They pushed through a broken door in the fence to enter the large barn the arena was built inside. Jongho seemed to see in the dark like Mingi did. He wished he didn't, though. "Fuck."
"Yeah," Jongho said. "Don't worry about it, these are the bad guys."
"This… Did I do this?" Mingi asked, stomach cramping and about to flip, seeing other stomachs trickling out onto the stone floor. The stench was overwhelming; he blocked off his sense of smell instinctively to escape it.
"No," Jongho said, pulling his mask back up. "It was Hongjoong. When he broke in here and saw you take down San, he, uh, lost his temper."
"Lost his temper." Mingi couldn't tell how many people were dead, because they were in parts. Bits of torn metal were embedded in the stone floor around, and through, them. Freed from guilt, the nausea sank down to rest between his lungs, instead of at the back of his tongue. As long as he hadn't done it himself.
"He was chosen as Saero City's first poster boy afflicted hero for a reason," Jongho said.
"Was the reason that he'd lose his temper if he wasn't chosen?" Mingi asked, and got a small chuckle in response.
"Y'know what? Maybe!"
They made their way through the hall. Mingi was unsteady, and absolutely not going to set his naked feet on… anything that had the slightest risk of squelching, so their progress was slow.
"That guy looks your size. Grab his shoes," Jongho said.
"No?" Mingi said, grimacing with disgust.
"Look, he doesn't need them anymore. You wanna walk the wasteland barefoot?"
Mingi sighed. No, he didn't. He also didn't want to wear a corpse's boots, but he didn't have a lot of options. "I don't like touching dead people," he said. He wished people wouldn't touch him, when he was dead. Not to undress him, sew him together, or dump him in pits and put generous amounts of dirt on top, or anything in that general category of things.
Jongho's turn to sigh. "Alright, stay here." He went and got the boots himself, and wiped them off with a corner of his jacket before handing them over. Black, with bright red soles from a sturdy synthetic waterproof material; stolen, no doubt, from City soldiers. "But don't get used to this kinda service. Do they fit?" Jongho looked very satisfied when they did.
They passed through a pair of big sheet metal double doors. Outside the hall, they turned out to be in a huge cave. There was a scattering of small rickety buildings, like a small village, between them and the cave mouth, visible as a dark arch, blocking the sky. As far as Mingi knew, raiders were nomadic, which explained why the buildings looked like a faint wind would knock them over, made of just sheet metal and the odd wooden board.
Half of them were in various states of rubble, however. Mingi and Jongho made it to the first building, before they heard people running and Jongho dragged him into the shadows. Three passed them, but the fourth paused and peered into the darkness. Jongho drew a handgun from his hip and pushed Mingi behind himself. Mingi was considering if that wasn't a stupid idea, when he healed and Jongho probably didn't, when the raider stepped into range and saw them. Mingi had expected a warning, but Jongho pulled the trigger.
He had time to shoot twice, hitting high in the shoulder, before the raider and his three friends who stopped and turned around at the noise, were yanked out of their vision. The cave went silent again. Mingi took a step forward, but Jongho lowered the gun and held him back. "It's okay," he said, just as they heard a new set of steps.
The person coming around the corner into view was obviously not a raider. He wore a clean cut blue uniform with a brown cape half over his shoulder, and a big logo on his arm. The most dominating feature was however two long, slim antennae sticking out of his head and gracefully falling down his neck and back. They shimmered in rainbow colors.
"Hongjoong," Jongho said.
"You're supposed to signal if you see enemies," Hongjoong scolded. "That's the entire point of a scout." He spotted Mingi and raised his hands, antennae lifting with a hum that cut into Mingi's ears and made him clench his jaw.
Jongho dove in front of Mingi again, and this time Mingi was glad for it. "No! He's fine, he's safe!"
"He is," said a new voice. "It's alright, Hongjoong. He's got no ill intentions whatsoever."
The man that came around the corner was much taller than the hero, maybe taller than Mingi, but slim and a little harrowed. His clothes were too fine for the wasteland, or had been before they'd gotten ruined. Hongjoong glanced back and took him at his word, dropping his stance. Jongho gave the newcomer an upwards nod and received the same in return.
"This is Angelface," Jongho told Mingi.
"Please," Angelface said with an embarrassed gesture. "Call me Yunho."
The name was rather appropriate. He was handsome in an almost eerie way. Few freaks looked pristine, healthy, and exceedingly normal, like this. Aside from the unusual eyes, Jongho's cheeks and forehead were covered in small scars, and Hongjoong's skin was faintly translucent in places. That Mingi looked the way he did was because his freak abilities could change how he looked; maybe Angelface could do that too.
Mingi didn't know what to say. He'd never had to apologize for kidnapping and attempting murder before, as far as he knew. "I… um, I'm glad you're okay," he mumbled, holding on to Jongho for more than physical support. "I'm Mingi." According to Jongho, he'd kidnapped this man, so the friendly smile Yunho gave him was deeply unnerving.
"Can you escort these two outside? The road should be clear now," Hongjoong asked Jongho. "I have to find San. He's most likely forgotten he's injured and will get himself killed."
"Sure," Jongho said, holstering the weapon. "If you're alright with going with this guy," he added, addressing Yunho.
"It's fine," Yunho said.
"Then I'm entrusting him to you," Hongjoong said, very pointedly.
"Got it, boss." Jongho made a very poor excuse for a salute, with a lot of attitude.
Hongjoong left, muttering under his breath, among other things something that sounded like 'brat.'
A couple of buildings further, they found Hongjoong had blasted a path quite literally. Everything from there and to the cave entrance had been reduced to rubble, including a wall and gate. It had probably been guarded to begin with, but now they could simply climb over the pile of trash to get outside.
What at first appeared to be more buildings outside, turned out to be raider vehicles. Living on the move, dodging roach-dogs and other wildlife, as well as justice, of course their homes needed to be reinforced against both attacks and radiation. Some of them were huge. Mingi wondered how they got the fuel to move these around; with all that metal, they had to be heavy.
The moon was rising and the stars were coming out; it was early in the night. Mingi took a deep breath of cool night air, feeling the wind move against his cheek and through his hair. The raider rides were fascinating, no two vehicles the same; modded, personalized, and repaired in a hundred different ways. The patches of gravel and sand sounded different from each other when he stepped on them; felt different too under the soles of his boots.
Caught by a surge of euphoria, his skin prickled, his dick got hard, not for any other reason than the feeling of being alive. He wanted to wash his face, eat something good, get off, and fall asleep next to someone. Why not this one, he considered, looking Jongho over. The guy was cute, the zero hesitation pulling the trigger had been kind of hot, and protecting him from Hongjoong even more so.
Jongho led them to where the rescue party had set up camp between two big trucks. Saero City property, judging by the lack of customizations aside from logos on the hoods that were the same as on Hongjoong's uniform. Three fires burned in a triangle, surrounded by a dozen people in identical military gear as Jongho. A few carried bigger weapons, standing guard further away. Between two fires, against the side of one truck, sat a few more rescued victims, wrapped in blankets and cradling steaming cups that smelled of herbs and spices.
A ripple ran through the place when they noticed Mingi. The victims cowered, and a lot of hands landed on stocks and handles, as all eyes turned to him. Jongho waved at them to calm down, but Yunho started explaining, firmly underlining that Mingi was no threat now and hadn't intended any damage before. Mingi would sit here by the side of the other truck, and not bother anyone. Once that was done, and Mingi had sat down, Yunho sat with him and Jongho.
Jongho froze up when Mingi put his head on his shoulder, but he was tired and sad, and Jongho was the only thing so far that felt good. The only person who wasn't scared of him. Except Yunho, but that was just weird. So Mingi might be like a newly hatched duckling, imprinting on the first person he saw, but so what? Good things were rare, and good people even more so; best hold on to them.
He zoned out, distantly listening to them talking. Yunho thanked Jongho for coming to his rescue, and Jongho downplayed the whole thing. "I signed on for the reward, not for you," he said, making Yunho laugh.
"Well, I wouldn't have blamed you if you'd stayed home," Yunho said. "Thank you."
Yunho's tone shifted a little darker and more intimate when speaking to Jongho, and Jongho's heart was beating fast, Mingi could feel it where their bodies were pressed together. Friends or… friends? Whether Jongho had a crush, or idolized the idol, it was cute. He hoped Jongho was happy, whatever was going on in his life other than this. He started drifting off, their voices disappearing into a comforting murmur.
The next moment he was violently shaken, with Jongho yelling "Mingi!" in his ear.
"Wha…?" He blinked confusedly at the wide-eyed expression.
"Oh, I'm sorry, I… wasn't sure if you were breathing." Jongho cleared his throat, embarrassed. "Everything's fine, go back to sleep."
Mingi yawned. Not that he was complaining, but was Jongho always this attached to random guys who kidnapped and tried to kill his friends? Jongho was blushing, too, but maybe that was because of his celebrity crush. When Mingi put his head back down, Jongho didn't tense up quite as much as the first time.
Yunho and Jongho went back to talking. It seemed like they both came from the City slums, and even if Yunho had a new and shiny life now since rocketing up to fame, he often returned to the slums to have a drink with Jongho and feel like a normal freak.
Next time Mingi woke up, a couple of hours had passed, judging from the sky. His mouth tasted like copper and death, and he felt like his joints should creak. At the center of the little camp, Hongjoong stood huddled over a drawing in the sand with a new guy, muscular and wearing the same blue uniform. Must be San. Instead of antennae, his hair and skin were two-colored, light and dark in irregular patches, like a fur pattern. He was gesturing animatedly while talking, sounding angry. Around them, the guns-for-hire were loading things onto one of the trucks.
"Hey, sleeping beauty is awake," Yunho announced. "Want to help pack up?"
"No," Mingi said, rubbing his eyes. Jongho was gone and he couldn't tell which of all the men in identical clothes, hoods up and masks on, might be him.
San threw a critical eye his way. "And shouldn't he be restrained? Is anyone even keeping tabs on him?"
"San, don't start," Yunho asked, scooting closer to Mingi to put a hand on his shoulder. "I said he's fine."
It was still creepy, but this time Mingi welcomed the immediate trust. Hongjoong scared him, and even if the old him had defeated San in the arena, that self had also had plenty of experience. How much of that was left in this body?
"Sorry," Yunho said, when San returned to the conversation with Hongjoong. "He isn't usually like this, but it's been a lot lately."
"Did I really beat him?" Mingi asked.
Yunho nodded. "I saw the whole thing. When they figured out San was there for me, they wanted me to see it. Sick fucking dogs." He shook his head, as if trying to shake out the burst of emotion that had leaked through in the last words. "Seeing me shook him up; he lost focus."
"Uh… speaking of, are you sure you're okay with… It doesn't feel weird that I'm here? You don't have to pretend to be okay with it, I understand."
"I knew something was wrong with you," Yunho said. "It's what I do. I read intentions. When you attacked the convoy, I couldn't sense you at all, as if you didn't exist, it's never happened before. It scared the shit out of me, to be honest. But now you feel like any other person. I know you meant what you said just now, and that's nicer than most people are."
The forgiveness made more sense now. Perhaps Yunho wasn't being nice just to get a chance to stab him in the liver.
Yunho took a deep breath, and glanced back at the cave. "I want to burn that damn place to the ground. It probably wouldn't make me feel better, but I just… want to blow it all up."
Mingi looked too, but he didn't have any emotional connection to the place. Whatever he'd gone through in there was gone, like it had never existed. "It's the only thing that's left," he said. "The ones who were killed, nobody will ever know who they were. The people responsible are dead, and I can't remember. So that place is like a… monument to the people who died in that ring."
He squirmed a little when Yunho's eyes filled with tears. What was he supposed to do if the man started crying; he couldn't hug the guy he'd kidnapped in the first place, and San would probably take his head off again. But Yunho leaned in by himself and planted a swift kiss just below Mingi's left eye.
"Thank you," he whispered. "That made me feel a little better." He got up and wandered over to the heroes, wiping his cheeks.
Mingi studied the many dark figures moving around them, looking for Jongho with increasing desperation. He felt adrift and exposed without… Ah, of course, Jongho's eyes. He would either be wearing goggles, or his eyes would be glowing. That didn't fit any of those people.
"Where's Jongho?" he called to Yunho. Yunho nodded at a lone figure standing some distance away, back turned. On guard duty.
Mingi got up, and San immediately called, "Where are you going?"
"San, please," Yunho said.
Jongho looked over his shoulder, saw them, and turned his attention back to the wasteland.
Not trusting he wouldn't say the completely wrong thing and make everything worse, Mingi shut up and drifted away from them, towards Jongho. Yunho talked San down, repeating what he'd said about how Mingi's mind had been impossible to get any contact with, but now it was totally normal.
Mingi didn't feel particularly normal, dressed like a storybook villain and wearing a dead man's boots, but it was getting better, little by little. "Hey," he said, coming up next to Jongho.
"Hey." Jongho didn't look at him.
"Is there a stream or something where I could wash my face?"
"Over there," Jongho said, and nodded to a corner by the cave mouth.
"I don't understand how I don't have a drop of blood on me. How did they kill me?"
Jongho looked up at the stars. "Hongjoong grabbed you. Snapped your neck, and this and that, without breaking skin I guess so no blood. Then San fried your nervous system. To make sure you stayed down. Sorry."
If Mingi would be fighting a monster pumped full of drugs that healed faster than you could cut it, he'd also want to make sure it stayed down. He shrugged. "Um… can you come with me over there? To the water."
Finally Jongho turned to him, if only for a moment to emote exasperation despite his eyes being hidden behind the dark goggles. "It's right over there. I'm on guard duty."
Mingi looked out over the flat, arid wasteland, nothing but sand and dirt. Not a hint of vegetation, nor any other form of life. "I think we'd see shit coming from over there too."
"You're a bad influence," Jongho said.
"Are you mad at me?" Mingi asked, because something was going on but he didn't have a clue what.
"No," Jongho said, but in a tone that said yes.
This wasn't a situation Mingi had expected to find himself in, a few hours into his new life. It felt like Jongho was sulking, but why? They'd barely met, Mingi hadn't had time to fuck up. He stepped in front of him, and lifted his goggles up on his head. Jongho took his hand to stop him but was too late. In the moonlight, his eyes barely glowed, and proved to be a solid matte black, like a starless night.
"Yunho likes you. He doesn't let strangers into his personal space easily," Jongho said.
Ah, if he liked Yunho, he might be jealous that Yunho had kissed Mingi's cheek. "Uh… I traumatized that guy, though, so I'm pretty sure he isn't… We kind of bonded for a second over hating that place, that's all. He's not my type." He wished he'd thought about what to say before he opened his mouth.
"He's everyone's type," Jongho said.
"If you kiss my cheek it'll overwrite him?" Mingi offered, out of ideas, turning his head to offer it up.
Finally Jongho smiled, and scoffed, pushing him out of the way so he could see the wasteland again.
"Come on, come with me," Mingi asked. "It's just over there, just for a minute."
Making a big show of not wanting to go, Jongho nonetheless hung the rifle over his shoulder and followed. The half minute they spent shuffling over there, kicking up little puffs of dust, Mingi caught Jongho looking at him twice. But he didn't say anything, so Mingi asked, "Did you say you came from the City?"
"Yeah. Saero City. You remember that, right? West coast, the old capital before the war."
Old memories bubbled up. Before the nuclear apocalypse. There had been a lot of wars in the three hundred years since, but when people said the war that way, they meant the end of the old world. He remembered learning about ash clouds and nuclear winter, the collapse of civilization and nearly every ecosystem. Humanity hanging on by a thread, and then the freaks started being born. They were both a blessing and a curse, often dying from their own mutations, and too radioactive for other humans to be around. But also better adapted to surviving in the wasteland, and resistant to radiation.
The raiders had convinced themselves that freaks were a plague, and if they were all killed, the land would recover to how it had been before the war. Some villages believed it too. It made no scientific sense at all, but then, neither did the existence of freaks, so who knew. Maybe they were poisoning the land.
Mingi crouched down by the little spring. The water was tinted brown, but it smelled okay; might just be sediments. In the end it didn't matter, it couldn't hurt him. He splashed his face and breathed out, for a moment just basking in the simple pleasure of cold water. Then he cupped his hands and drank, using the first couple of sips to rinse his mouth out.
"Don't drink that!" Jongho said. "It's contaminated!"
"Doesn't matter to me."
"Could be all kinds of parasites and shit in that… We have purified water in the truck, if you're thirsty."
"I just woke up from being dead for half an hour, and you're worried about a parasite or two? I can't get sick, or infested, or anything, really."
"You can suffocate, can't you? You still need air," Jongho said. "So you're not immortal."
Mingi got up. "I don't know, actually. Want to try?" He took a step closer, smiling and offering his neck, and Jongho backed up.
For a second, they stood in silence. Mingi's mind was running on overdrive, because Jongho wasn't afraid, he was fighting to keep his eyes from dipping. Mingi had spilled a bit of water on himself, and Jongho's gaze kept being drawn to the drops running down his bare chest. He took another step, and Jongho backed up until his back hit the cave wall.
Mingi looked him over, wondering how old Jongho was. The youthful plumpness of his cheeks was countered by the scars. Those cute round eyes could also be determined and hard. He deferred to the heroes in public, but alone with Mingi he seemed almost flippant about them and the rescue, and the gruesome scene in the arena hadn't noticeably fazed him. His outfit was too monochrome and shapeless to tell much about his body, and freaks were freaks anyway, their bodies rarely looked standard.
"What," Jongho said, getting uncomfortable under Mingi's scrutiny.
Another step took Mingi into range, and he set a hand on the stone to loom a little, soaking up how that felt. In his own memories, he was much slimmer and a little shorter. He was enjoying this upgraded body quite a lot, actually, and if he wasn't catastrophically misreading the situation, so was Jongho. "You keep looking at me."
"So?"
"If you want something, you should go for it. We could all be dead tomorrow."
"Terrible influence," Jongho said, amusement rounding his cheeks. "You keep looking at me too."
If Jongho thought that was some kind of counterplay, he was wrong. "Yeah," Mingi said. He nudged Jongho's chin to make him look up. Jongho immediately pushed his hand away, not allowing the touch, but accepted the eye contact. "Do you know what onyx is?"
Jongho shook his head.
"It's this stone, supposed to symbolize strength and discipline or something. Your eyes remind me of this onyx statue I saw once. Matte black, like a gem but not shiny. It was so smooth to the touch that it made stone feel soft."
Jongho blushed, giggled, and sharply cut that giggle off by clearing his throat. "You flatter like a sweet thing," he said.
"A what?"
A bit more color crept into his cheeks. "A whore."
"Nobody's paying me, but I guess I'm broke, so if you want to, I won't say no." Carefully, Mingi took another step closer, and set his elbow to the stone. Now he was very close, and Jongho wasn't leaving. Instead he saw Jongho's eyes light up; literally, because he shaded him enough that the glow returned. "Your eyes are damn pretty, you shouldn't hide them like that."
Jongho's glare warned Mingi not to get too comfortable. But when Mingi just stood there, the energy shifted. He could virtually see Jongho start thinking 'why isn't he doing anything?'
"If you want something you should go for it, I said," Mingi said.
"I heard you the first time," Jongho said. His little eyeroll tried to dismiss the tension, but still ended with him saying, "Maybe you should."
High simply on blood pumping in his veins again, wanting to dig his teeth into everything life had to offer, Mingi let himself sink lower. Without his hands touching, he pressed a kiss to the side of Jongho's throat, right below his ear. The spot he chose let him feel Jongho's racing heartbeat throb against his lips. Jongho's body heat was warming him, like a little sun; hot and hungry, and at the center of the world.
Jongho let out a sound, almost a moan. Pretty much a whimper. It went straight to Mingi's hips. Arousal zipped like lightning all the way out in his fingertips. "You good?" he asked.
"Mnn, you just… there's just… a lot of you."
Worried he was missing the mark with the looming, and getting intimidating, Mingi tried to lean back to give him some space. But suddenly Jongho was grabbing his coat so hard his fingers dug into Mingi's waist, firmly holding him in place. "Oh, it's a good thing," Mingi realized, cracking up in a big grin and unable to resist teasing. "You like it? You like 'em big, huh?"
He wasn't sure if the shyness was played up for effect or not, when Jongho cast his eyes down and answered, "Yeah." Unfortunately the attempt at modesty had only led his gaze back to Mingi's naked chest. He tried to take his hand back, but instead ended up licking his lips in what was probably more damning than the grabbing.
Mingi had decided he wouldn't touch Jongho unless Jongho touched him first, and Jongho's hands were both on his waist. So he let his fingers play in Jongho's hair just behind his ear, and trace down his throat. His ego was doing pretty well at this point, because Jongho's little shudders made him feel irresistible, like the man couldn't help himself. Jongho's breaths had deepened like a man parched, looking at clear, sweet water.
For a lot of reasons, Mingi didn't have his ambitions set on the stars here; he hadn't really thought he'd get this far. For now, he was only trying to demonstrate that if Jongho wanted to play, Mingi could play, no problem. He didn't have to hold back for any reason; quite literally so because Mingi was able to handle most weird freak quirks.
"I need to tell you something important," he said, lips so close they brushed Jongho's ear. "Are you listening?"
"Yeah," Jongho said. Mingi enjoyed the tension that came into his body from trying very hard to do as he was told.
"I don't just heal. I can be whatever you want. Hair and eyecolor, things like that are easy, might take a day. Body, well, if you want another inch, that might take two." He needed to see the reaction to that, and pulled back enough to see Jongho's face.
"You're fucking with me," Jongho said, boxing his shoulder. His blushing wasn't immediately obvious on his cheeks, his already rich warm skin only took a redder tone, but now it was creeping down his throat into the sweater, and blooming into a gorgeous shade of auburn red.
"Pick a hair color for me that you think I'd look good in."
Jongho looked up at the dark locks falling around his face and issued the challenge; "Blue."
"Blue," Mingi echoed. Unexpected, but interesting.
"But you can't grow smaller, can you?" Jongho said, a mischievous smile finding its way onto his lips. "What happens if I want you to take an inch off?"
"Hm, well, honestly… the only way to make something smaller is to… regrow it," Mingi said, with an accompanying grimace. Jongho burst into happy snickers. "So I'm really hoping you do like 'em big. Here." He took Jongho's hand and guided it down his front. "Check it out and tell me if you think it'll fit." The giggles abruptly stopped and Jongho's eyes grew rounder. When his fingers were made to curl around Mingi's cock, on top of his pants, showing him how much it filled his grip already, Jongho's lips parted with a small, sharp inhalation.
So focused on catching every tiny reaction, Mingi didn't notice anything around them. He was yanked away from Jongho very suddenly, and San stepped between them. Contrasting the hero's one dark eye, the light one really popped.
High on the desire-fueled delusion of being the big, delicious, perfect beast that Jongho saw him as right now, Mingi didn't even consider San a threat anymore. So small, so pissy, so pathetic. He'd beaten San in the arena; he'd only been taken down because Hongjoong had come to the rescue and they'd been two against one. He looked the hero over, letting a cocky smile grow fully onto his lips, and waited.
"You're supposed to be on guard duty," San said, talking to Jongho while staring Mingi down. "Go!"
Jongho looked to Mingi, which was a victory in itself. Mingi gave him a small smile and a shrug, trying to say he'd be okay, Jongho could do what he wanted. But judging from the way Jongho's eyes flickered, uncertain, and he slowly backed up and left, that had been a mistake. Note to self: Jongho wanted him to hold on.
Left were Mingi and San, locked into a silent battle. Mingi stuck his hands in the pockets of his coat just to demonstrate what a non-threat he thought the smaller man to be.
"I know you're trouble," San said.
"Just say you're sorry for killing me. I know you want to," Mingi countered.
San's eyes seemed to crackle with building power. The uniform was too clean for him to have worn it in the fighting ring, so he must have changed. That covered up any injuries Jongho and Hongjoong had implied existed, but the jacket collar wasn't high enough to hide extensive bruising around his throat. Mingi had almost strangled this man to death.
In the past, Mingi would have lost his nerve by now, but instead he felt an unfamiliar rush go to his head; this new body refusing to back down, confident in his ability to back up his words with action. He should apologize, but instead heard himself say, "You sure you want a go? You already lost once."
The victory tasted so, so sweet when San scoffed, and broke eye contact first.