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lunaxmadel · 4 months

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highways: in color

minghao x reader 4.8k words dystopian au sexism and totalitarian regime warning

minghao curls and uncurls his fingers around the handles of his bike; the leather of his gloves soft and coarse all at once at the palms of his hands. he swears he can smell the scent of paint and spray cans even through the fabric. if he focuses hard enough, he could count each splatter of color that stains his hands, even when he can’t see them. blue; like the color of the sky, like the color of the official logo of palatium, right by the knuckle below his index finger. orange, like fire, like heat, like the shocking and provocative frills of jun’s jacket; a slim, but still visible line across his right palm. a dot of green stains his pants.

secrets are dangerous, in a place like palatium. minghao tiptoes on a fragile line already; features blatantly other (his eyes are too large, they say, his nose too characteristic of his ethnicity. it’s too obvious he’s not from here) and his crimes too loudly spoken of. it’s almost dizzying, how fast the narrative changes, how quickly he’d gone from heroic rescuer to enemy of the state. wonwoo tells him to keep his head low, to close his ears to the whispers and accusations. minghao appreciates the advice.

he’s just not very good at following it.

____________________

the thing that minghao misses the most, the thing that reminds him vividly, almost eerily of his home country, is painting. he’d been a commodity, of sorts, back then; words like ‘artist’ and ‘genius’ and ‘prodigy’ tacked onto his name, spoken in soft, admiring tones. colors splashed against canvases; yellows and reds and blacks and blues. smudges of color on his face, underneath his fingernails, the smell of wet, thick liquid.

there was a shirt he used to wear back then, whenever he painted. white, soft fabric and bold, black letters. what font was it again – times new roman? – what did it say? freedom? such a foreign concept. but minghao remembers that shirt, remembers the sensation of smooth fabric against his skin, and somehow that keeps him sane on the days when he feels like he might burst.

once he’s safely out of sight, tucked away in a private nook right outside town, he gets off his bike, rips the gloves off of his hands. he shrugs his backpack from his narrow shoulders, clutches at the straps as he steps over rotten wood and grey stone. the air smells almost clean here; the sound of leaves rustling in a faint wind making minghao’s ears twitch to attention. if he closes his eyes and pretends, maybe he could hear the hums of birds, the hurried steps of forest animals.

pretenses are important in palatium, they keep you alive. daydreams, on the other hand; they’ll end up killing you. something metallic and hollow smacks against something else inside of minghao’s bag. not too far now, he promises, as if the contents of his bag have minds of their own. or maybe it’s himself that he’s reassuring. who can tell, these days.

the cans of paint he got from one of wonwoo’s girls. wonwoo hates when people refer to them like that, does not like the implication. the girls don’t mind, especially not the one who had gotten minghao the cans. they know how much wonwoo puts on the line for them; they wear the title as a badge of honor. not that it matters. what matters is that the girl had smuggled paint for him. minghao doesn’t ask how, only listens to the way the cans clink together in his bag.

the abandoned house, he’d found on his own. creaking floors and moldy corners; it’s a wonder the building still stands. remnants of whoever used to live there lingers in every room; a sundress there, a golden pen there, picture frames with nothing in them. it’s the most haunted thing minghao has ever seen, but it’s his, in a sense, and nothing else really is anymore. the inside walls used to be white, he thinks, the exterior of the house a faded red. when he first stumbled upon the uninhabited home the inside had turned a dull sort of yellow-y color. when he enters now, there are colors everywhere; symbols and drawings of his own creation. it feels like walking into an alternative universe. a world of his own.

when he steps inside this time, though, there’s someone else there.

you’re staring at the wall directly in front of him, your back turned to him. you do not see him enter, but there’s no doubt that you hear the way the door moan as he pushes it open. for a moment minghao thinks he’s been caught; that you’re an enforcer come to take him away. he imagines every public execution he’s been forced to witness, puts himself right in the center of it; the mental image enough to block his airways. it’s not until you twist around to face him that he realizes that you’re a woman. he hates himself for his first thought, then; that he has the upper hand.

“ah,” you mutter, gaze dropping from minghao’s face to his hands; stained with color and pale at the knuckles with the strength of his grip at the straps of his bag. “so you’re the one who’s been painting my house.”

____________________

it’s not your house, per se, minghao finds out. it is– actually, it is quite an impressive story; your parents rebels way back when the peacekeeper first took to power. professors, the both of them, too smart, too educated to bow down as easily as most of the masses. their marriage had been ‘voided’, your mother promised to another man; a man more suited to her genetics. the house had been their summer home, at the time. a quaint little cottage. minghao suspects it must have been quite cozy, at some point.

they had managed to stay hidden for seven years, a feat so impressive that minghao doesn’t even believe it at first. you’d been born in the very room you’re both standing in, spent the first years of your life here.

and then the enforcers came.

that explains the two graves in the garden behind the house.

“in town they call me lee,” you tell him, a stubbornness tinting your tone, a sort of distaste covering your tongue as you utter the last name, the one shared by the orphans of palatium. “but that implies i’ve been saved,” you spit. “at least that’s the intention.” minghao understands what you mean, has seen the posters and heard the sermons about the charity of the silent nuns. what goodness they all possess, dedicating their lives to the unfortunate children whose parents are lost either to illness or to sin. that’s clearly not the way you look at it.

minghao glances around the room, at the walls and at the droplets of paint staining the old floors.

“i’m sorry for intruding,” he tells you uncertainly. it feels strange, offering an apology freely. he hasn’t done that since he lived in a free country. “and for ruining your walls.” minghao used to be very proud of his creative abilities, used to relish in the way people looked at his artworks in exhibitions. he feels awkward, now; exposed, almost as if he’s been doing something wrong. he has, he supposes. painting is, after all, illegal.

“oh no,” you breathe, turn your head back to look at the nearest wall. there was this town hall building in his country that minghao used to love visiting. a bright house made of bricks; a clocktower in the middle of it all, a garden on the right side. minghao’s never been particularly good at realism in his art, but somehow the painting reminds him of that building anyways. “it’s beautiful,” you tell him, voice soft and airy.

“where is that?” you ask, fingers gliding along the painting. his own fingertips itch as if he’s the one dragging his hand over the surface. he feels coarse canvases beneath his thumb. “you’re not from here, are you?”

minghao blinks. “you guessed that just from a painting?”

laughter fills the space, makes the room feel ridiculously large and horribly cramped all at once; the sound of your voice echoing through the living room and tickling at his neck. “no,” you admit. “everyone knows who you are.”

at that, he grimaces. the only way his existence in the middle districts could be any more eye catching was if they put up posters proclaiming his crimes, and the government’s mercy for letting him live in the middle districts rather than the lower. the more he thinks about it, the more surprised he is that they haven’t actually done that.

“i heard you got at least twenty people across the border before you got caught,” you whisper. it’s not something minghao hasn’t heard before, the words following him everywhere he goes. a scandal, they call it. unheard of. should be executed. he nods his head slowly, does not trust his voice. “that was very brave,” you continue, mouth curling into something sad, something strangely reminiscent of a smile. “i’m sorry this is your reward.”

____________________

most people minghao know are born into the country known as palatium; his friends the first generation of adults who know nothing but the closed off walls and the strict regime. he can’t help but thinking you, more than anyone else, has been truly exposed to what it means to be a citizen of palatium; what it takes– what it takes; what it steals, robs, rips away from you, strips and destroys and tears from the very crevices of your soul. the first time – that is, the time after the first – he finds you at the house after your somewhat unorthodox introduction, it’s behind the house. trees hang over the roof as if they threaten to cave the ceiling in, as if they want to consume the house entirely.

he’s not sure what possesses him to go looking for you; he’s already been at the house countless times without your presence. somehow, the house feels emptier, now. so he looks. it’s not hard to find you, there aren’t many places to hide, and when he spots your hunched over form through a window (there’s a draft there, as if the winds beckons him in your direction) he feels a sort of tug. for a moment he’s not even sure that he should approach. in the end minghao’s still too curious for his own good.

“the artist returns,” you murmur, back turned to him. that seems to be your way of greeting. minghao doesn’t know how he’d mistaken you for an enforcer the first time; as you stand in front of the two wooden crosses, there’s nothing that’s not small, vulnerable about you. distinctly feminine, though he can’t stand that even he has started thinking that way. it’s unnerving, how easily one’s mind is reshaped.

“i hope i’m not intruding,” he mutters uncertainly, gaze dropping to look at the graves. there are no names there, but then, there are probably no bodies either. bodies aren’t buried in palatium.

you shrug, a barely there lift of your shoulders. you turn to look at him. there is red along your lines, like a rim of blood framing your eyes. you’ve been crying. minghao understands the compulsion, he feels like he wants to cry all the time.

you rub at your eyes, unbothered by how obvious that gesture is. “of course not,” you tell him with a twitch of your lips. you lean your head back, glance at his backpack. “i know you usually come on mondays.”

when minghao was an artist, people sought him out all the time. twitter dms, small compliments while in the line at starbucks. he wasn’t a celebrity, but he was known enough to never be lonely. he had forgotten what it felt like to be sought after. to have your quirks remembered and accomodated.

“i was wondering,” you continue, clearing your throat. for the first time, you remind him of the women he’ll see in the streets in town; meek and docile and almost afraid to look a man in the eye. it’s not because the gaze is familiar, or the stance is the same, somehow you remind him of the meek women purely for the difference in your coyness. in those girls, the ones who seem to have given up on freedom (freedom; like minghao’s shirt, like the studio that smelled of paint and freshly picked flowers), diverted gazes are a sign of subservience.

subservience. what a word. what a backwards way of life. minghao remembers his mother talking about the marches she participated in when she was young; the demonstrations for equal rights and equal pay. he wonders what the women of palatium would think of such a thing.

in any case– when you divert your gaze, gnaw on your bottom lip as if unsure whether or not your words are appropriate, it does not look like, does not feel like subservience. it looks like having power, and choosing to give it away. it makes minghao tingle, in a way that he hasn’t in a long, long time. it makes him want to paint.

“i was wondering if i could–” you pause, and minghao does not doubt that you’re weighing your options. he thinks he can guess at your thought process just by looking at the way your eyebrows furrow, echoing the slight frown that curls your mouth. ‘on one hand’, you’re probably telling yourself. ‘he’s in the same boat, he’s breaking the law, too.’ you blink, hands tangling into the fabric of your worn, too big sweater. ‘on the other,’ you might argue, ‘he’s got a lot more to prove, a lot more to win by turning me in.’ clarity takes precedence in your expression; you’ve made up your mind. “if you could show me how to paint.”

half empty cans of paint clink and clank together in his backpack. if he closes his eyes, minghao can hear the sound of the wind, can pretend to hear the buzz of insects and the hum of birds. minghao doesn’t need to close his eyes, the sight in front of him is welcome, for once.

____________________

minghao’s gloves feel scratchy against his skin, feels like a sort of prison of their own. like they’re coiled around his throat rather than covering his paint stained hands. no one really asks any questions about them anymore, though some used to be very curious. seokmin still eyes him almost distrustingly, as if he’s hiding something. minghao supposes that he is; only wonwoo knows about the cans of paint.

“you’re different,” jihoon notes, nursing his black eye with a wet cloth against his face. minghao wonders if he knows who you are, if you grew up at the same convent. it’s a possibility, a probability, even. but minghao does not ask, has learned that questions are just as dangerous as confessions. there’s a tint of teasing coated on the fluid tones of jihoon’s voice. not for the first time, minghao thinks that the smaller man could have the voice of a singer, had singing been allowed in palatium. it would certainly suit him more than the fights in the underground. “have you finally assimilated?”

the word is a joke, more than anything else. a part of the speech the peacekeeper had held in order to use minghao to spread the government’s propaganda. look, they’d say. here’s a heathen, a sinner. we will give him a chance to assimilate, to understand that our way is the way of righteousness. minghao has never been further away from assimilation. he thinks about fingers covered in blues, in reds; in purple. he wonders if you ever got the stains off your skin. he should get a second pair of gloves, just in case.

he never sees you in town, though he knows you must live somewhere. there are ghettos and apartments reserved for the lees of the country; cramped rooms and broken showers. seokmin and jihoon lives on a shared square of space, sleep on the hard mattress in shifts. he wonders who you share a room with. he wonders how you are, when you’re not surrounded by color.

“i don’t know,” minghao murmurs, so delayed that jihoon doesn’t seem to catch on at first. jeonghan sits in his corner, his jaw tight. thinking about the risks he’s taking, no doubt; minghao has heard the pretty man has found himself a partner. unmatched. that’s dangerous. that’s asking for it.

minghao’s stomach knots. he grasps for a distraction, finds that each subject that sticks to his mind is a distraction that needs a distraction on it’s own. “where’s wonwoo?”

silence. things are happening, minghao knows. things that are bigger than a hidden house and splashes of color.

“the woman from the lower district,” seokmin replies with a voice that drips of suspicion. “she’s taking him to see the firestarter.”

‘the firestarter’, that’s jun; leader of the aberrants. there was a time when the factions were visibly divided, when they only met for fights and for shows of power. things are happening. minghao has seen the tall man from the high district whisper words of information into jihoon’s ears during fights, has seen the blows grow softer with the passing months.

minghao should care. this is the important stuff. all he can think of is color, and a shirt with the word ‘freedom’ on it.

____________________

one of the upsides of being born in a free country, is that minghao is much quicker to recognize things, feelings that his friends don’t know the name of. seokmin might always be suspicious, but he rarely knows what he’s suspicious of. it’s just a general, constant feeling. minghao knows why he’s suspicious. when he’s scared, he knows why he’s scared.

when he enters the house, two months after the first time he did so, and he feels his heart pound loudly in his chest at the sight of the back of your neck (there’s a smudge of yellow there, he wants to rub it away with his thumb), he knows what that means, too.

his breath catches when you turn around to greet him. there’s something about it, about the light flooding through the glassless windows and giving your skin a strange, inhuman sort of glow. about the wall in front of you, the one that used to have his town hall building on it, but that’s now covered in squiggles and shapes and abstract symbols. it’s not something he would’ve put on display, back when he was an artist, but it’s something he would’ve decorated his wall with; something he would’ve privately held closer to his heart than his other works.

a month ago, you might’ve said ‘oh, minghao.’, in that wondering, pleasantly surprised tone of voice that makes minghao’s neck prickle. ‘it’s not monday.’ you might’ve observed. now, his spontaneous visits are not so unexpected anymore. minghao likes to think that you come around more often, too, because you’re as eager to see him as he is to see you. now, he’s greeted by a soft smile, a softer voice, just a murmur of ‘hello’.

he sits beside you, watches as you let your fingers flit across the canvas – because that’s what it is; not a wall, not a decaying surface of wood, but a canvas – fingers decorated in color. blues and yellows to create a vibrant green. reds and blues to create rich, royal purple. he gives you a pair of gloves that he’d managed to trade his weekly proviants for. his stomach rumbles, protests against the lack of food, but it’s worth it for the look of adoration when he’d handed you the leather that resembles the pair in his own back pocket.

you tell him about your parents, about your first memories from before the enforcers came. about peace, about solitude. you know a few letters, you proclaim with pride. your parents had made sure of that, before they perished. it breaks his heart, how pleased you are as you press your index finger against the surface in front of you, scrawl an awkward, not quite right ‘a’ there. b, c, d, e. that’s the extent of your knowledge. that is it. that’s all you have to cling to. minghao’s mother would have screamed.

he tells you about his own childhood, about growing up in a free country. he tells you about his mother, about the women’s marches and the co-ed universities. you marvel, hang onto his every word. ‘i’d love to visit some time,’ you tell him. he knows he shouldn’t say anything, that false hope is as poisonous as anything in palatium, but when he opens his mouth, the words still fall out. ‘i’ll take you some time. we’ll go together.’

and maybe it’s selfish, maybe it’s dangerous, but he still thinks that it’s worth it for the way your face lights up, mouth wide enough to cause a strain to your cheeks. that time, when minghao has to leave, you stand up with him, perched on your toes. you put your hands on his shoulder and you kiss his cheek. there’s something strange in the expression on your face, something minghao can’t quite decipher. but then that might just be due to the swimming, dizzying feeling in his stomach.

(love, love, love. such a strange thing, such a paradox. it makes minghao feel weak, vulnerable, exposed. it makes him feel strong, invincible. he didn’t think such a thing existed in such a dull, colorless place as palatium.

in the back of his mind, he thinks about jeonghan; who always seems to be walking on pins and needles, always worried, always waiting for bad news.

the spot your lips have touched on his face feels warm, even hours later when he’s racing kwon soonyoung and dino of the aberrants. he doesn’t even care that he loses.)

____________________

when he enters the house – your house? his house? yours? shared? minghao’s head spins – there’s a sort of tension lining the walls. a heaviness that not even the childish yellow suns and exaggerated flowers painted along the tired wallpaper of the house can quite manage to alleviate. you’re sitting in front of the wall you were staring at the first time minghao had seen you. there are different paintings there now; your first meeting feels like a lifetime ago. minghao can’t even remember what he used to paint before you.

minghao sits down next to you, feels an unbearable urge to reach for your hand where it lies fisted in your lap. asking someone if something’s wrong seems like a useless exercise. the answer is either going to be ‘yes’ or a lie, and there’s not much to do about it regardless. still, he asks, voice careful; barely above a whisper. you exhale. the look on your face is not so much coated in sadness as it is in resignation. and that might be worse.

“i have to tell you something,” you murmur, fingers reaching to fiddle with a folder lying right in front of you. the paper is beige, official looking. there’s only one reason to give a woman a folder. minghao’s heart drops. you lift your gaze, then, turn your head around to look at him. maybe you’re a good actress, maybe you have everyone fooled with your coy smiles and your soft voice. you don’t fool minghao.

“yeah,” you croak, facade almost completely falling as your lip twitches. you push the folder around on the dirty floor. you open it. as per the laws, you cannot read, and as such the folder consists only of images. there’s the blue palatium logo at the top, engoldened with the symbol that represents the soulmate method of marriages. underneath are pictures. minghao recognizes the face. “i’ve been matched.”

“choi seungcheol,” minghao says. the name has never sounded so bitter, the face of the high district racer never looked so much like an enemy. minghao never carried the same sort of disdain towards the nobles as his allies did; right now he swear he would rip seungcheol apart limb by limb had he had the chance. you must see the anger on his face, because you swiftly close the folder and hide it underneath your folded legs.

“he seems nice enough,” you hum, lift your arm gingerly to place your hand at his shoulder. your nails dig into his skin. somehow the pain grounds him. “i had a suspicion he was part of the nobles,” you continue, the twinkle in your eyes muted but still ablaze, still more alive than anything minghao has experienced in his five years living in palatium. “he didn’t seem like– like how i expected him to be.”

minghao puts his hand over yours. your fingers interlace. minghao can’t get himself to look at it, too afraid that the sight might completely unravel him. “you’ve already met with him?”

“a few times,” you reply vaguely, your voice tight.

minghao thinks back to his shirt back when he was a painter – a real one, one who sold pictures; not someone who just painted because it was all he could do to keep himself from going crazy – the one with the word ‘freedom’ on it. he feels as if caterpillars are crawling underneath his skin. the font, it wasn’t times new roman, he suddenly remembers. but surely it was something with serifs.

“a few times,” he repeats, only distantly aware of the sound of his own voice. he sounds hollow, like the sound of empty cans of paint clinking together in his backpack. “why didn’t you tell me?”

you sigh, untangle your fingers from his own. instead, you let them wander along the lines of his face, touch unhurried and fingertips leaving goosebumps in their wake. it strikes minghao that he won’t get the chance to get used to that sensation, that he’s barely caught up to the erratic beat your presence brings to his heart. there are a lot of times – or maybe just one unending, five year long instance – where minghao feels like things are not fair in palatium. this knowledge, this shattering sort of revelation still manages to throw him off, to make him choke.

“what good would it do, minghao?” you murmur, the question inherently rhetoric. the answer is easy, of course; it wouldn’t do any good. it would only have brought an earlier end to this thing that never even got to start. “i didn’t want you to know until you had to,” you add, and for a moment that makes minghao angry. angry that he has been kept in the dark, angry that you made a decision without him. he shakes this feeling before it festers; in truth you do not owe him anything. in truth you are entitled to the few choices you are allowed to make. he catches your hand as it makes its ascent towards his hair, brings it back down to his cheek.

for some reason he can only think of sans serif fonts; arial, calibri, helvetica. the palatium logo has a serif font; one minghao has never seen before. one that looks grotesque and horrible where minghao’s freedom shirt looked clean, sophisticated. for the life of him he can’t remember the name of the font.

“minghao, i–” you stutter, and for a moment your expression is completely open. there are many emotions he can’t remember the name of anymore, the sensations muddled and exchanged for a monotonous, but necessary indifference. fear. worry. helplessness. shadows of things that are too heartbreaking to name. your eyes look wet. your clear your throat. “take care of my house for me, will you?”

(if minghao kisses you then, hungrily and desperately and with a mouth far too open, if he swallows your breaths and curls his fingers around your ears, pulls you close and sobs into your mouth, unable to speak in any other language than a physical, silent sort of language, then that is between you, minghao and a house that belongs to no one, and to the both of you.

if promises slip between lips and get tangled with the kisses, if forbidden words are whispered between clinking teeth and echo-y cries, then that is a secret for the two of you to bear together.)

perpetua, minghao thinks as he steps towards his bike. the font on his shirt was called perpetua. he remembers because it reminds him of the word ‘perpetual’. ‘everlasting’. ‘never ending’.

he wonders if the heavy, crushing feeling in his chest is perpetual.

#this is such a great series you guys #svt fanfic

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