sophluorescentmusing

[sophluorescentmusing]

sunbleached colt v.2

“I didn’t know you had a brother,” Chanyeol murmurs, pointing at the characters carved into the ancient, gnarled oak that drapes itself across the back of the property. The leaf-dapple dances across the crown of his head, turning deep brown a richer shade of chestnut, and then atop his shoulders and his back. “Baekbeom?” His fingertips press to the bark, and Baekhyun feels the touch against his own skin—phantasmic, supernatural. 

“He was a couple of years older than me,” Baekhyun says, following just a pace behind his friend. The stickers and the burrs hiding in the grass prick the balls of his feet, but the cool touch of the oak-shaded dirt beneath soothes the ache and the sting and the biting hurt of them.

“Was?”

“He passed.”

“How old was he?”

“Nine.” Baekhyun shrugs his shoulders, finally joins Chanyeol right near the trunk of the oak. He rubs his thumb across the jagged lines enscribing both his and his brother’s names, and then across the jagged, Roman letters spelling out the names of some of their friends (Baekbeom’s more than Baekhyun’s—he never carved anything after Baekbeom’s burial… didn’t feel right). “I was seven. Don’t remember too much.” 

What he means to say is he spent most of the funeral trotting about, hiding under decorations and getting underfoot. It hadn’t quite sunk in that Baekbeom wasn’t going to climb out of his coffin and be home for dinner. The realization that he’d be buried came later, when the earth was being shoveled down onto a box that sounded far too-hollow (the body inside much too small to fill it and create the resonance of a life well-lived). 

He can feel Chanyeol’s gaze on him. Not for the first time, he thinks Chanyeol can see through him much better than he lets on. He plays the fool at school—clowns throughout the lessons—but humor requires cleverness, and Baekhyun has long since realized that when everyone’s eyes close and their heads go thrown back with laughter, Chanyeol watches. He takes note. He learns. He adapts. 

He is much more observant than he lets on. Perhaps, that is why Baekhyun has enjoyed allowing him close. He sees the same things Baekhyun does, and just maybe, that suggests he’ll see something in Baekhyun too—something the others do not.

“Sorry, anyway. I’m sure it was tough.” Chanyeol watches him sink to a crouch, and then find a good root to lounge against (wary of making the seat of his pants wet with the moist earth beneath the tree; his mother’d kill him if he came back with mudstains on his church clothes). “Is that why you don’t like Church so much?”

“I like Church.”

“We’re out here—”

He motions towards the churchyard, only a short stroll away. The evening sun has sunk down to hang at the bell-tower—haloeing the pointed roof like it were a saint itself. Soon, the world will turn from the calm, reddened gold of the sunset to the quiet, tranquil lilac of the melancholy time between day and night—twilight (not quite). 

“—Missing the last of your father’s sermon,” Chanyeol finishes. He lingers on his feet for a second longer than he ever needed (as though he is unwelcome to sit, relax next to Baekhyun; or perhaps, it’s that he’s wary to) before awkwardly sinking down onto his knees (his pant legs will stain with dirt and moss) and then onto his haunches. He folds his gaingly legs over themselves, ends up cross-legged and tugging at the weeds left to grow wild beneath the tree root (where a lawnmower blade would catch and bend out of shape, and so will never tread).

“What does liking… or not liking Church have to do with my brother?” Baekhyun drawls. His gaze flicks from the innane weeding Chanyeol’s started at and flickers back to the churchyard. He probably won’t ever tell Chanyeol that Baekbeom’s grave sits in the cemetery sectioned off on the side—it’s one of those half-honesties, and he doesn’t like things that aren’t black and white (nevermind if he’s saying something fully-false, or fully-right). 

“Everything’s about dying,” Chanyeol says bluntly. “How to live so you know where you’re going when you die. How to live—how to die.” His gaze slants toward Baekhyun, as though realizing the stark quality of the conversation. When Baekhyun’s expression betrays nothing (he’s long since mastered the calm, apathetic smile that covers all pleasantries): “Just figured it would make things uncomfortable.”

“That doesn’t bother me.” Baekhyun can see his jaw twitch. He wants the honest answer, and he thinks he’s not getting it. He isn’t, but he is. The truth is inarticulable. Baekhyun will not waste the words. He’s done so before, and it came out all-wrong, and he’d gotten lashed for it. “He died young.” I’m certain he went on to Heaven. He had all the sacraments he needed—wore his scapular. Yeah. Baekbeom hit the pearly gates, and went further. 

Meanwhile, Baekhyun breathes out faint clouds of gravel-dust, sweats the stink of miasma, and cries bitter-salt. Hell’s haunting him. He was marked for it from the moment the monster came in the night, and has been running headfirst for it since he licked ecstacy from his fingertips (explorative, curious, debased). 

“D’ya like him much?”

“He was my brother.”

“Yeah, but did you like him?”

“He tattled.”

“Not an answer.”

“Most days. I wanted to be him.”

“How much?”

He wanted to peel his skin off his bones and wear it like a coat; wanted to wind the muscles that make the chords and speak in a voice that wasn’t his own; wanted to have a body untouched by the Devil and sacred for it.

[sophluorescentmusing]

sunbleached colt v.1

The choir-loft provides a distance with his father equivocal to the distance he feels with God. The rafters join in the place just above the stained-glass window behind his head, and this is where the sermon is caught and sent rebounding back upon the congregation. The booming, bone-shaking quality of it, as visceral and loud as it would be spoken down his collar, rattles Baekhyun’s lungs each time he remembers to suck in a breath. Despite the overbearing volume of it all—the feeling of being spoken down to, even when he is so removed from the communal body—Baekhyun enjoys the reprieve of the loft. He enjoys the physical distance, even if it is not possible for him to cleave himself from the mental one.

He does not often have the freedom to dash up the stairwell (skipping every other step and neglecting the handrail with wayward callousness) separating the vestibule from the nave, but he’d caught a stroke of luck as though it were a bolt of lightning (and in this, he feels himself Iupiter and not his thieving, mercurial son) and his mother had attending the morning ceremony, and left her sons to attend the evening. 

Baekhyun looks down from the loft. 

Baekbeom sits in the family’s usual spot.

His shoulders are a rigid line; his back rod-straight. At his side, there sits a girl, and as Baekhyun watches, she attempts to lean against her loverboy’s arm—only to be sloughed off. Idly, Baekhyun thinks that the two of them will have to get better at their pretense; Marie Leblanc is pregnant, and if the two families are going to survive the whispering, gossiping little birds at communion—his brother and his girl will have to get better at the besotted love affair. A quick marriage, and a quick kid, can be explained away without the scourge of a shotgun’s remark.

Just so, he empathizes with Marie. She’s in his class at school, though a year older (held back because she’s slow with her reading—the letters getting all mixed up in her head). She seems to have a genuine affection for Baekhyun’s brother, and is only now becoming familiar with the cold, unpenetrable distance native to the men in his family. He wonders if, had she known of it before Baekbeom’d fucked her, realized it then… if she’d have high-tailed it and gone without him all-together. Wonders whether she is more separate from himself, or in fact, more the same. 

His hands twitch in his lap. The anger that courses through him is the cold sort that starts in the spine and needles its way into the head. He wants to clench his fingers to fists—and at that thought, is struck by an image of swinging on his brother and feeling the catharsis when his knuckles break against jawbone or nose. Just as soon, he dismisses the emotion. It feels like one of his father’s (heavy-handed and just), and he has always preferred his mother’s careful deference.

Instead, he laces his fingers together prayerfully, and resumes his meditation. His father’s sermon washes over his back, his shoulders, and cascades back down atop the congregation gathered at hand—as though it is the booming voice of God itself echoing back upon them, and not their too-mortal preacher.

He doesn’t listen to the words; he’d stopped doing so years ago. Hypocrisy is the most difficult of beasts to reconcile, especially to a child’s mind. His world was black and white, and suddenly, there were shades of grey—shadows, even, cast across faces. Now, it is easier to recognize the beats between the lies. It is easier to see how the preacher uses the needle of the Word to sow his seed.

There is a rustle, a rumble, a groan.

The congregation stands.

Baekhyun rocks onto his feet with them, tardily as always, but the effort is made nonetheless. Were his father’s steel-eyed gaze not watching him where he stood, he’d perhaps have stayed sitting. But it is watching him. He is watching him, and under that gaze, Baekhyun sweats like a sinner.

Call.

Response.

Call.

Response.

It comes, and it goes. Baekhyun whispers some things. He only mouths others. Under his father’s glare, Baekhyun’s mouth moves—his tongue a parrot, even if the words are not his own. 

Again, like the quiet roll of distant thunder, the congregation moves as one—from standing, to kneeling—and sermon becomes the climax. Baekhyun thumbs the pages of the hymnal shelved on the back of the pew just in front of him. He listens to the flutter of the pages, and then even that is drowned out by the drone of the preacher’s voice.

It isn’t until communion that Baekhyun rises from his aching knees. There is no one else in the loft, and so it is natural for him to pick his way down the aisle and into the shade of the stairwell. 

The cooridoor spits him out in the vestebule—the foyer—and he lingers by the great doors leading into the nave until the last few pews rise and empty into the aisle as well, starting their slow procession towards the altar, for communion with the Father.

He does not know it yet, but here is where he meets Park Chanyeol. He’s leggy and strange, awkward with his swagger—but he’s new, and the novelty is what draws eyes. After all, Baekhyun’s own seem pinned to the stranger’s back—staring daggers without meaning to. He’s curious, and his curiosity has always been the sort that eats someone up.

Together, they progress forward.

In his wake, Park Chanyeol leaves the scent of cut-grass and motor oil. 

In his wake, Park Chanyeol casts a deep shadow. 

In his wake, Baekhyun follows.

When it finally comes that Baekhyun stands before his father, he finds his gaze slanting off to the side, where a communicant holds the wine—the Blood. He watches Chanyeol tilt the golden chalice, and traces the bob of his Adam’s apple with hungry eyes. 

The Body is placed in the middle of his tongue, and his gaze flits back to the preacher only long enough to see the ire of quiet, tampered disproval, before he drops his gaze to the floor.

He does not return to the loft, instead lingers in the vestebule for the final homily and the dismissal. He does not go seeking out his brother, nor his father, nor that stranger in the pews. He turns, and goes out into the twilight. His mother will shoulder any wrath sent his way, but only so long as she knows it is coming.

Baekhyun legs it, kicking up gravel and dirt under the gleaming, grinning maw of the moon. 

[sophluorescentmusing]

HOUSE OF THE MORNING STAR IV.

“Leased by the Lord Separ,” Baekhyun murmurs.

“They were unimportant to him, then,” Jongdae remedies. He is slow about approaching the map and its onlooker. He is certain there are many secrets to be revealed upon it, though he is just as certain he already knows some of the political headaches regarding the southrons. 

Baekhyun blinks. The corner of his mouth twitches. Then: “Perhaps.” He has exchanged his armor for plain, black robes and polished, leather boots. Still, the earthiness of his digger’s fiefdom clings to him—metal enshrouds his fingers in bands and rings, it encircles his wrists and pierces through his earlobes (crawls up the shell of them, too, in simple studs and hoops). 

Jongdae allows his gaze to slide comfortably down the lines of the Duke’s robes—the motion of it naturally appraising. That his gaze slides from the ducal figure onto the map—roving across the waterways and the flatlands of the depicted hells—is as easy to explain away as a habit of nature as it is to be accused of conniving. 

Baekhyun’s voice interrupts: “Look openly, Baron, if you wish it.” There is that dogged manner of speech again—so unlike Baekhyun’s typical tongue and tone. He had been crass when Jongdae sat the throne; he had spoken like the men he emulates by skin and flush of blood, by sweat and scent of having lived. His quiet, needle-sharp utterances now are wrong, even if they do more suit his station because back then, though Baekhyun held rank equal to him—the Great Duke is as much king as he who wears the crown and holds the septre—in practice, it was he who panted beneath Jongdae’s boot and not the other way around.

“Has your master sought to refine you?” Jongdae asks, tipping his head. Nonetheless, he does not ignore the invitation. His eyes flit across the scene on the map—watching as legions of grey, fish-headed pawns march towards the southron reaches of the river (where they stand opposing a conglomeration of different colored beast-pawns—not yet attacking, but waiting for their mark). 

Baekhyun laughs lowly. “Do I strike you as having been refined?”

“Of course not,” Jongdae replies. “Though you speak as though you’ve been.”

“I flay you with tongue, Baron. It is a victory sweet in its simplicity.” 

“Your tongue has better use.” Jongdae trails his fingers across the table’s edge, until his blunted nails scratch the meat of Baekhyun’s hand, until his thick-fingers can wrap birdlike-wrist. 

He pries Baekhyun’s grip from the table’s edge as gently as someone like him is able. He places it instead at the curve of his waist—above rectangular hipbone, below the ribs. Baekhyun’s fngers are long—if both his hands were to wrap Jongdae’s waist, he dares to think his fingertips might chance at touching. He drags the conversation elsewhere, to the doubt (disbelief, moreso) lingering in the back of his mind: “Is it the truth? You were not illuminated?” 

“About my purpose? Or yours?”

“Is there a difference?” He glances at the map again, allows Baekhyun to step behind him. His other hand finds Jongdae’s waist, but he does not strain to see if he can link his grip. His hold rests like an anchor—heavy and heated. 

Jongdae reaches for one of the fish-headed pawns, plucks it up. While he waits for Baekhyun to answer the greater question, he asks also: “Is the effect the same? Is this a map of god’s?”

Baekhyun presses his nose to the back of Jongdae’s neck and inhales the scent clinging to the grease in his hair, the sweat on his skin. Then, he laughs in a rumbling way, reminiscent of the drilling in the mines (muffled, but ever-present). “The effect is the same, Baron. Invoke the troops.” His eyelashes flutter against Jongdae’s nape, and then, his chin perches atop his shoulder, watching the deliberation on the board. “You remember how to play the game.” 

With the neat cruelty of a suturing needle, Jongdae drops the fish-headed pawns among a pocket of lions. “The Dantalion Baron is out of position.” 

[sophluorescentmusing]

ROUTINE

“Make yourself familiar with the Angels, and behold them frequently in spirit. Without being seen, they are present with you.”

—  St. Francis de Sales

There is routine on the Pythia. Jongdae wakes, washes, enters his chapel and performs his prayers. Sometimes, he writes and other times he reads. At lunch, he visits the voyager’s mess-hall. After, he performs more prayers, does more writing, and reads contemporary events. At dinner, he visits the voyager’s mess-hall. After, he performs more prayers, leaves his chapel, washes, and sleeps. 

Within the routine, there are familiar faces.

Dr. Jessica Anís joins his pilgrimage to the dining hall each afternoon and each evening. She is a peculiar woman—born to refugees within the Verdensraadet Circle (Greeks, he thinks, who managed to settle in one of the Scandinavian countries shortly after the climate collapse)—with a manner that ostracizes her from the rest of the Pythia crew. He thinks this background lends her a particular extroversion when it comes to him (she knows the history of the collapse, which people suffered it greatest). He needed only greet her once, ask about the pendant resting in the divot of her throat, and he had earned himself a companion on the vessel. She is too shy to make conversation frequently, and Jongdae has come to realize he should not prod for it. As it stands, he is glad enough to have company as he eats to not feel so set apart from the remainder of the crew. 

There is also Sarawut Vaiyasingha, who passes the chapel infrequently on his way to one of the engineering bays. Jongdae had greeted him once, invited him inside the sanctum, and had been declined (politely, but resolutely; Jongdae knows when someone wavers and can be convinced and had been surprised Sarawut had seemed so stout in his beliefs). Though the man has not ventured inside, he often calls out a greeting through the gaping door, sometimes other news. Jongdae, in turn, offers him the occassional comment on events back on Earth, as he has received through the Church’s channels. 

And lastly, there is Johannes Ikkala—the maintenance man for his level, and like Sarawut, he meets Jongdae infrequently (mostly in the hallways between points in Jongdae’s routine). He is a boisterous man (earned his position on the Pythia not for aptitude, Jongdae thinks, but for personality) and often engages in conversation that expands to the point of being too much. Jongdae does not invite him into the chapel; he is only human, and thinks God can forgive him for selfishly wanting his peace. Nonetheless, Johannes is vulgar enough to bring variety into the day, and it quiets Jongdae’s restlessness for the most part.

However, there eventually comes a morning that the routine breaks entirely. The soog-chapel, as it had come to be called, does not see as many visitors as its companion chapels. This is partly an effect of its location residing at the top-most level of the voyager (directly above the largest of the heat-shields but just below the radiation-nets, which gives it an arid, desert-like heat) and partly an effect of its chaplain. His being a C.C.M is familiar enough—the Church’s crusader-missionaries are common in the age of expansion, of exploration—but his dual-dogma with Korea’s Sin-ui Geom, better known as the soogs, is unfamiliar to a host of Verdensraadet expansionists. And what they are familiar with, that soog-reputation, precedes him and colors the perception of those interacting with him.

Hence his lonesomeness, and why finding a visitor sat beneath the awning skylight—where the chapel is most scorching—is most extraordinary. 

His intrigue bursts into flame. 

“The heat reminds you of home.” 

His voice echoes.

Recently, the Pythia had stopped at Aldebaran (the “Sun in the Yoke”, or more affectionately, the Yolk—evoking an image of an egg’s golden center) to perform maintenance on the secondary, nuclear engine reserved for emergencies (such as malfunction of the raditation-nets). Jongdae had wondered if the docking would cause a transferrance within the crew: if some would join and others leave, but had not known if that was true until now.

The garb and garmentry of the visitor in the chapel is alien. 

“Hm? Yes, somewhat-” The voice is muffled beneath a mask held in place by long, metallic sheets. The garment weighs down the man’s frame and the mask eats the volume of his voice, but on Aldebaran the garments have purpose. The weight keeps the lighter cloth-fabric stuck to the body through even the strongest of the star’s solarwinds. The material (it is not of the homeworld, something even the Aldebarani humans cannot quite understand, an element x of a sort) reflects the radiation on the star—volleys it in such a way that the silken undergarments can absorb the broken, energy particles through the woven metal and convert them to what is necessitated by the body.  The science of it all is non-sensical, yet, it works. 

Humans would not have built upon a star without it working. Could not have built upon a star.

“-these days Aldebaran is colder—this heat is more similar to it than ever before.”

“I would not have known.” Jongdae knows that the soog-chapel had become nearly uninhabitable while the ship docked just outside of the star-made-planet’s atmosphere. He cannot even begin to fathom a heat that is worse. “Do you miss the heat, then?”

“I miss home, and with it, the heat.” The cloaked figure turns, their sheet-veil of tightly woven metal tinkling and clinking with the motion. The sound of it reminds him of the ringing of bells (though not as resonant, nor as musical) but evocative in a way that cannot be disregarded. It stares at Jongdae through a deep, sapphire-colored mask—convex, leaving the features of the face beneath it indistinguishable. Speaking to someone who will not show their eyes, nor their expression, is difficult, unmooring. Jongdae will adapt.

“So, you find home in the heat.”

A ghost of a laugh: “If that is how you wish to put it.” The Aldebarani resumes their forward-facing vigil, but their shoulders remain slackened and relaxed. When Jongdae finally completes his journey down the center aisle and comes up even with their pew, he sees their hands are also loose in their lap (gloved in black sunleather and full of mystery).

“Father Kim Jongdae,” he introduces himself. He takes a seat in the same pew, but on the opposite end of the aisle.

“Imyobyun Baekhyun.”

“You have significance on your homeworld—imyo designates it, no?” The reading in his routine… he often seeks to educate himself on relevant matters, and given that Aldebaran was so close for so long, he had taken to reading on it. Besides, Jongdae finds that knowing the culture across the gap of strangeness is the first step in bridging it. Once familiarity exists, there is space for the mind to be open to the Word (be it God’s, or the Verdensraadet’s). “What is your field?”

Again, the sapphie-face turns to him and peers with unknown emotion. Jongdae would like to imagine it is curiosity. He cannot know, though. “Diplomacy.”

“We are similar then.”

“You think of your god as diplomatic.”

“God is common-ground. All know Him.”

“Even I?”

The corner of his lip twitches: “God is in the heat.” 

He does not expect the laughter; it is quiet, beginning in the chest, and sweet. There is nothing derisive, mocking about the tone, just the clarity of joy freely expressed. Perhaps, if anything, there is a note of disbelief (touched by comedy, not so much condescension). “How long have you waited to say so, Father Kim? Since we spoke of the heat’s significance to me?”

“Before then. I chose the topic of conversation, didn’t I?”

Baekhyun laughs again, more quietly now. His hands clasp together, and for a moment, Jongdae thinks he is deliberating whether or not he wishes to remove his mask. Whether the deliberation occurs or not, Jongdae cannot know. What he does come to realize is that his Aldebarani-visitor will not remove his mask, not today. Baekhyun dwells comfortably in his mystery, seems to read Jongdae easily and therefore knows that the unknown sparks curiosity in him like flint and steel.

Jongdae refrains from gawking and returns his gaze to the altar at the head of the chapel. The silence stretches comfortably between them, until Jongdae cannot bear it: “Did you come here only for the heat, or for something else?”

In the quiet that follows, he listens to the hum of the radiation-nets and the distant whir of the heat shields. He listens to the creak of Baekhyun’s metal-cloak rising and falling with each inhalation and exhalation. He listens to the tlick of his nails ripping to the pick of his inattentive fingers. 

“As you said: god is in the heat.”

Baekhyun rises then, and he leaves.

[sophluorescentmusing]

OBSESSION

The light illuminates every ridge of his spine as he arches his back impossibly—naked tits pushed towards the ceiling, nimble fingers roving across the plane of his stomach, up his sternum, and finding their home encircling his beautiful throat. 

Jongdae remains where he stands and inhales evenly. “They do not give you enough attention?” He asks, projecting his voice thunderously loud, despite his low tone. He waits, watches as the image reconstructs itself. The pisté had started as the only source of light, but as the image changes, the red glow of their observers’ masks begin to illuminate all down the fighting strip. What was once an empty audience becomes full. 

Atop the strip, Baekhyun shivers helplessly. The hand not clutching his throat slides into his silver-hair; it twists and tugs and coaxes the first depraved, wanton moan from Baekhyun’s lips. 

Jongdae raises a single brow. 

He wonders just how long Baekhyun will perform for him. 

And each time, he wonders how long he will allow it.

At present, it is a distraction he cannot afford. The image does not extend—this he can tell: Baekhyun’s power is concentrated, tangibly hot as it singes the mind—and so it leaves him feeling vulnerable. He is all-too-aware of the calm, restrained visitor stood behind him. He wonders if Baekhyun is just as aware, or if he is blinded by his obsession.

The pisté’s light-strip flickers. 

In the blackness, there is silence. 

A second later, it resumes its strength, its electrical current humming loudly. In the illumination, Baekhyun’s hand has left his throat and gripped his cock. The tendons in his arm flex. His thighs quake. His eyelids flutter. He bites his lip. He is beautiful like this. Distracting. Jongdae wants him like this, torn apart by desire and begging for more. 

The pisté’s light flickers, but this time, never loses its light entirely. Jongdae blinks, and when his eyes open, Baekhyun is sat on the edge of the fighting strip polishing the long, metal line of his sabre. He is clothed and the room is empty. His electric blue eyes (artificial, artificial, artificial) flit beyond Jongdae, to the visitor at his back, and then back: “What’s this?” 

[sophluorescentmusing]

FOXFISH

Kwangjang Market, Seoul Summer 2015

The heat of the market—inherent to this place, both for crowd and its quality of vendor—creates a thick sheen on his skin; it stokes up the amygdala like wind to the blaze, sets it to shivering and bleating and raring to leap into panic.

Exposure therapy. 

He’s trying it, not that he’d been advised to do so, but because he’d heard somewhere along the line that is was an overly accessible way of working through your emotions (perhaps Chanyeol at one of their infrequent lunches? It seems a sentiment more native to someone like Kyungsoo, who is easy-going and unflappable—more calm and peaceful than the former—but Baekhyun cannot summon the conversation to mind enough to decide one way or another). He thinks that, if the method were recommended by someone more clinical, professional, that it would come with parameters and advices beyond simply diving into it blind. Baekhyun’s always been impulsive with the heart, with healing and trying to heal. Thinks he can grab it up from the mold and shape it into what he needs at the snap of a finger.

The thought translates down his nerves. His thumb and middle-finger touch, press, and slide. Snap. 

The rabbit thumping against the walls of his heart does not falter in its pace. His sweat has made his T-shirt stick to the small of his back. He thinks, to some degree, that the exposure is helping. He allows the crowd to press to him, to move him propulsively into the depths of the market (where the only sign of a breeze is the one high over-head, ruffling through the international array of flags strung across the ceiling). The first time he’d come here (after the accident, he’d been many times before) he’d come earlier in the morning, and had still needed to step off to the side—out of the walking river between food stalls—and eventually leave the market entirely.

This second time, a month later, and he feels like each time a stranger’s knuckle knocks against his own his conviction grows; each time a stranger’s feet nearly trip up in his, he feels his steps become more certain. He hinges on the sound of laughter, of the murmuring and the humming and the talking. He makes a distraction of the noise, of the crowd, of the bright array of colors, of the plethora of scents—spicy, sour, savory, sweet. Not so much that he misses the noodle-stall he’d ventured here for, but enough that the heat does not seem so thick as it clings to his skin.

A greeting touches his tongue as he approaches the stall, but does not leave it. He’d come here as a kid. He recognizes the woman behind the counter (Park Seul-ki imonim), gracing everyone with a smile. He doubts she will recognize him. 

His sneakers scrape the wood beneath the bench as he braces, steps up and over, leg-by-leg. He finds that it’s easier to do things in that mechanical way (almost robotic, computerized, line of code by line of code—and he’s taken by a memory of his programming class in college, of his code failing and his father trying to explain his mistake despite not knowing the first thing about the language). 

Half-way onto the bench, he almost loses his balance. 

Catches himself, and he sits.

It’s not until his elbow knocks against the man’s next to him that he gets out of his head. Just quickly enough to catch the tail-end of: “—all right?” And that all-too-recognizable glint of concern laid across the words. 

Baekhyun glances sideways—catches a fox-face made soft by pity. God, is he that transparent? “Yeah, thanks.” His tone’s too flat (his music teacher would have given him so much grief for that); he cringes, but doesn’t apologize, or offer any explanation. He just sighs deep, feels entirely unlike himself, and orders with the noona helping imonim. 

The name: mul-naengmyeon rolls of his tongue with swiftness. What better way is there to chase away the heat than with the cold? But he is not so quick as to request his modification. The business of the dinner rush (influxed with both foreigners and tourists from other parts of the country) has noona reeling away to expertly handle another guest. 

He’ll just pick the cucumbers off the top of the soup.

It’s hard to ignore the way his chest constricts, tightens up like its been cinched with a rope.

It’s harder to ignore the lump in the back of his throat, sitting heavy on his tongue.

It’s hardest to allow himself to feel as he feels, and feel warranted to it, because he thinks himself silly. A little cucumber stands to make him crumble? Pathetic. 

“You sure?” That voice again.

Baekhyun blinks back the sting in his eyes. Irritation prickles at him. His tongue’s always been sharp when he’s over-worn. But, even as he turns, ready to draw a metaphorical line in the sand between himself and this stranger who thinks himself obligated to an answer—

“—Your soup, Baekhyun-ie.” 

The bowl is set before him, cucumber garnish nowhere to be seen.

He’s tardy with his thanks. The gratitude gets caught in the lump in his throat, but this time, manages to leap off the tip of his tongue. 

“—Cause you really don’t seem all right.” Imonim has moved on to the next guest, entrepreneurial despite her extension of kindness. In the gap she leaves, the fox at his side has chosen to continue his interrogation. 

“What’s it matter to you?” Baekhyun murmurs. He’s able to keep the acidity out of his tone. Nostalgia has twined with the grief and the overwhelming dirge of the day, and it has softened him—even if the irritation remains simmering. He doesn’t look at the stranger, but plucks metal chopsticks and a soup-spoon from the tin offered to each customer. 

“Well I suppose it doesn’t matter at all.”

“So then?” Baekhyun drawls, trailing off and raising his brow as he speaks. He stirs the broth and the garnish together, weighs if he should add lime atop it all (and after a glancing deliberation, decides to go without).

“My friend would say I’m chasing good karma.” That quiet, tumble of a half-laugh is more soothing than Baekhyun wished it were. It distracts his rabbit-heart, and the pause lingers. “I can leave you alone…” But he doesn’t want to. 

Baekhyun’s not unused to kindness. 

He’d been spoiled with affection growing up.

This elicits nothing more than the familiarity of that time.

“The heat’s getting to me—that’s all,” Baekhyun offers. He takes a bite of the noodles. His eyes flutter shut. For a moment, the crowd of the market is far away. Then, he blinks, and sound resumes him. “I’m hot-blooded or whatever,” he says, figuring it doesn’t hurt to fib early and wayleigh any potentially forthcoming questions. 

“Here I was thinking the heat didn’t seem so bad tonight.” There is the half-laugh again. “You must not come often, then?”

“No, not really.”

“Seul-ki recognizes you, though.” He noticed. 

“Imonim must remember the terror I was when I was younger.” He does not say aloud he’s ruffled by the lack of honorific, but he is. This stranger with his fox-smile is abrasive (yet charismatic), is insolent (yet politely kind, too). 

“You must have been some terror to have her recall your name. She always says her memory’s too bad to recall mine.” 

“Do you prompt her to call you by name?” Baekhyun sideyes him again, but the stranger is unfazed. His grin has not faltered—though it has thinned as he chews a bite of his food. His cheeks stretch across his bones. His eyes crinkle good-naturedly. Still, he has a sharpness to him—something that creates a disharmony of him (one Baekhyun cannot quite discern).

“Of course. I am her most loyal customer.” His voice pitches, becomes louder, and another plate of banchan is set down between the two of them. 

Along with it: “Behave, Jongdae.” With the same formality and strictness of one’s mother.

Seul-ki moves on, once more compelled to attend her other customers.

“You seem more a terror than I was.”

This time, the laugh is loud and unabashed—a bark of mirth.

“Perhaps!” 

[sophluorescentmusing]

CERULEAN AFFAIR

He thinks it will become easier. It does not. He is caught by the appeal of the unapproachable, the unattainable; he endears himself to the chase (roving, running, reaming to an end). It is not until there is an absence of the adoration he has always thought firmly established (seemingly unshakeable) that he feels his heart squeeze into something misshapen that lodges itself like a solid rock at the base of his throat. 

“What’s gotten into the two of you?”

Minseok is more observant than he lets on. Jongdae had realized it first when Minseok turned out to be the only one to needle him—to seemingly dig his nails into the messy, meaty parts and pull them exposed. Minseok watches, and he watches carefully, but he is blunt about confrontations. 

“Hm?” Jongdae acts distracted.

He is not. Partially, but not wholly.

“He’s acting frigid. He doesn’t do that.” He being Baekhyun. Minseok is like a bridled-horse, blind to what goes on in his peripheral. He pretends that he is not, but he is, and it delights Jongdae in many ways (he hates the feeling of being flayed open, of being understood, and if Minseok cannot glimpse the whole picture—as observant as he is—then he’ll never understand it all). Frigid is too strong a word; a misnomer for the state Baekhyun’s in.

Jongdae slants his gaze sideways. “He doesn’t,” he hums. “He’s not.” And Minseok’s gaze glints with curiosity, but the expression passes him. He is not so close with Baekhyun; the relationship between them professional (granted, with a few spare moments of unprofessionalism—but that’s how all things with Baekhyun get to be). 

Earlier, Baekhyun’s thin, nimble fingertips had pet the sleeve of his sweater—dipped beyond the cuff just barely and scraped his nails against Jongdae’s wrist. Just as quickly, the touch had retreated. Baekhyun knows what’s coming; knows that everything’s lost now (not that Jongdae thinks he ever truly held out hope). Then, Junmyeon had nudged his knee to Baekhyun’s, and the moment passed. That too is curious, but Jongdae’s not certain he wants to pry into it. Jealousy is one of those emotions he finds uncomfortable, and he thinks his discomfort would be amplified double to be jealous of Baekhyun of all people.

Things will settle, and they will pass.

[sophluorescentmusing]

HOUSE OF THE MORNING STAR III.

The warship has grown close enough that its propulsion has reshaped the river; it sends the water crashing over the banks and flooding into the fields and the meadows; it throws the water against the factories like it makes to knock them down. It has a sound too: mechanical and industrial (the whistling of steam and also the thunderous rumble of oil-guzzling, combustion engines), but also a moaning and a groaning and a wailing that reminds Jongdae of a time so buried in the recesses of his mind, it takes a moment to totally discern.

By the time he has recognized the mimicry of the Fall (the soundless gasp of air cleaving through singed feathers, the quiet whine of iron chains dragging him from the heavens), the sound has ceased. All-together. It stops.

The warship’s hull opens—the plates breaking from one-another like a mechanical dance. He sees in his mind’s eye fabric unraveling, and wonders if the Grand Duke’s needle-point intricacy with his machines comes from his observation of Jongdae’s own elegance with needle and thread. As the plating unfurls, the vessel halts (abrupt—immediate) and sends behind it a surge of water that uproots the pilons of the serf-docks and fisheries, that tears away the rocks shoring the banks, that floods out at a depth that is sure to knock plenty from their feet and put them at the mercy of the drowning, or the bludgeoning with debris.

The warship contorts. The body of it continues this mechanical unfurling until it has metamorphosized entirely—opened to let the Grand Duke disembark with his envoy.

But the Hells are not at war.

The ducal-cohort (it would be the ninth, the Leviathan’s most beloved warriors) remains on the steel gangway shoulder-to-shoulder, sword-to-sword, with shields and lances at front and back, parting like the river had for the warship when the Grand Duke finally does disembark in his mechanized armor, with his morning-star and flail strapped to his back.

Jongdae breathes evenly. Arousal flickers in his gut, but does not singe through his veins. He may not be immune to Baekhyun’s posturing, but he is aware of it enough to tamper his desire. More than, he knows Baekhyun would not allow them to so blatantly, so publicly clash: not unless it involved Jongdae’s being put underfoot (and Jongdae will never allow it in his own lands). 

“Baron.” The invocation echoes from within the helmet, but does not lose its strength. It has rasp—a rich quality wholly unique to Baekhyun and his affection for emulating Man. He is distant in this way; Jongdae would never make himself so lowly as humanity. “We have business.”

Jongdae is not in the habit of being told he has business. Even in the years immediately after his Fall, Baekhyun does not presume to command him (and in the few instance in which he’d tried, Jongdae had slung it back at him like a whip). He has not stepped so blatantly into command, but he nears it. Irritation swells in the back of Jongdae’s throat—disarrayment at the idea of humiliation (though not experienced in this exchange, not yet) soaks through his blood. 

“Follow me.” He is curt—in tone and manner. He turns, and the simmering embarassment of having Baekhyun interrupt his peace disappears as soon as his back faces the Grand Duke. He walks back into the castle-keep with the mechanical knight on his heels panting like a hound. This, if nothing else, reminds him of what he had once held in hand: power, heady and exhilarating. 

Inside, Baekhyun’s sabatons clink with his every step; a note above that noise is the quiet hum of electricity—the thrumming of the arcane channeled alchemically through the suit. 

He leads the Duke to the Great Hall, and then, beyond it. 

Baekhyun has not stepped into the Tower of the Morning Star since its relocation downriver. He seems familiar with the room, however. The hum of his armor seems to sing, and its wearer remembers to step delicately around the insignia painting the floor (lest he incur Jongdae’s ire). “Speak: you are not welcome.”

“I am not ever welcome,” Baekhyun remarks. He reaches for the lip of his helmet and drags it from his head—the plating rippling so as to let him go without requiring and manuevering of his crown. It reveals familiar, glittering eyes and a sweat-sheened expression. Jongdae’s tongue sweeps his bottom lip; it is not hard to imagine the salt of Baekhyun’s skin.

“What is your business here?”

“I come on behalf of the King. You know that we no longer share interests.” 

In the past, that would have singed Jongdae’s pride, but as it stands, he sees through the goading, swallows a growl, and knows that once he has wrung the nature of this visit from Baekhyun’s tongue, he’ll have the dog-knight wring his cock. “And what could the King possibly want that he could not send in a letter?” He strides through the tower solar and takes a seat at a supping table bearing an unopened bottle of wine, chalice, and book.

Baekhyun follows him. His armor takes up too much space. He fills the room, and suddenly, a place that is comfortable transitions—becomes intimate. Jongdae does not feel that he controls it, though, not so long as Baekhyun retains the reason for his visit. It is not until he sits opposite Jongdae (legs straddling his chair lazily, contemptuously) that he answers:

“He did not illuminate me. I am to escort you to the House of Separ.”

The silence is deafening. “Invitations are best received through missive,” he grits.

“It is not an invitation.”

Jongdae’s knuckles crack across Baekhyun’s face, the backhanded slap so vicious that the rings decorating his finger tear open the daemon’s skin. “You come into my—” Baekhyun surges across the table at the sound of his snarling. His plated hands catch Jongdae at the elbows and the weight of him—armor and all—sends them both crashing to the carpeted floor. 

[sophluorescentmusing]

THE VOICE OF GOD

The gloves are removed long before the mask. Baekhyun has skin colored a pale-gold and fingers that are lithe and thin; on Earth he would be said to have had a musician’s hands (and at that thought, Jongdae wonders if Aldebaran had been a place where music had credence, weight, and if so, if Baekhyun would’ve been interested in the artform). Here on the Baetylus, he has hands suited for the medical deck, ones that could nimbly suture even the most atrocious of wounds caused by the machinery found in the belly of the voyager. 

He is aware of his hands’ beauty. It shows in the way he pinches his leather-covered fingertips and drags the glove from his hand like a caress. His knuckles are blushed a faint purple, and he is reminded that Aldebarani humans have long since bled blue (the iron in the blood reacting with oxygen, but also one of the mystery elements absorbed by the citizens of Aldebaran). The black leather is tucked into the back of the pew in front of Baekhyun, among the missalettes and songbooks that have never seen use during the voyage, and likely never will. 

Baekhyun’s hands return to his lap. “Your chapel is always so empty. For someone meant to convert the masses, you do poorly.”

Jongdae blinks, raises a brow. “My mission is not designed for the Baetylus, nor those who join her crew. If someone happens upon my chapel, I will speak to them—conversion is a strong word, I prefer to have conversations, make suggestions towards enlightenment, but I am loathe to force it.” He folds his own hands in his lap, mimics the way Baekhyun tucks his thumbs into his grasp, the way his fingers interlock in pairs (rather than interlocking as singlets). “Once the Baetylus lands in the outerworld territories, my mission truly begins.”

“And then, you become he-who-converts.”

“Why do you think my way will change?”

“You wear on your vestements the seal of the Verdensraadet.”

Jongdae could play as though he were a fool, but he thinks Baekhyun will see right through the farce. “The Catholic Cruzado Missionário forbids the bearing of arms. I was theirs before I was the Verdensraadet’s.” 

“And before you were the C.C.M’s, you were the S.U.G’s,” Baekhyun points out. His fingers unlace themselves and smooth down his metallic cloak. “I am Aldebarani. If you mean to suggest you are a peaceful missionary, you must think me foolish.

“The Sin-ui Geom have changed over time.” Still, they are the Swords of God. Baekhyun is right to locate his history, and to remind him of it. He is being duplicitous with someone experienced enough to see through it, and truthfully for no reason other than habit. “Then my initial question remains: why do you think my way will change? Perhaps, it is just as I am.”

“Patient, but strong-handed when the time requires it,” Baekhyun muses, seemingly marrying the idea of Jongdae as someone who sits in an empty chapel awaiting the curious, and the idea of Jongdae as the soog-missionário who ekes out the faith by way of the sword. “Is the faith evoked by blood as strong as that chosen through consideration?”

[sophluorescentmusing]

DUNE II.

Shishakli bathes in the flames. That is both how it ends, and how it begins. 

Chani lies naked beneath the skylight in the gardens, and imagines that with the sear of the sun, her flesh peels from her bones, eyes melt in her sockets, and ashes catch in the wind. She skates blunt finger-nails down throat and sternum, down the valley between the ribs and the flat, muscled plain of her stomach. Shishakli bathes in the flames, but Chani burns in them. 

Her fingertips scrape through the hair at her mound—index twisting the curls around her fingers. She is moist with memory, sweating beneath the heat of it and the sun. Eventually, she ventures further—slips her nimble fingers (calloused by years handling the blade) against her sex. Her chest spasms: a half-breath. Her lips part. Her eyelids squeeze shut.

Shishakli tongues at her in memories tinged ruddy with spice. Her hands grip Chani’s thighs, thumbs digging into her skin, and she splays her open with force Chani would allow no other to have. She slings Chani’s legs over her shoulders (in her waking state, Chani only crooks her knees, plants her heels to the blanket she’d laid across the cool, stone, palace path) and mouths at her core. Her nose brushes Chani’s clit, her tongue presses into Chani’s slit, and she groans to fill Chani’s pleasured quiet.

A door opens, the sound of it distant.

The memory searing her eyelids flickers, wanes with her changing attention.

Her forefingers slip across her clit, dip into her body, and she quakes beneath her own ministrations.

A voice begins, ends.

“Chani—” An inhalation, a breath.

Her eyes slit open. Her movements still. “Outworlder.” Witch. Anger blazes through her (she sees Shishakli keel over and scream) and passes from her. Chani’s fingers slide from her body; she sits up, propping herself on her hands and ignoring how her chest heaves with the pleasure taken from her so coldly. “Be gone.” 

“You always come here when you hurt.” Irulan has never mastered her tones, her emotions. The masks worn by Jessica Atriedes and her son are impervious, well-mastered, and make Irulan’s attempts look pale and unseemly. Chani feels contempt for the woman, and also pity; she understands the yearnings of the heart, even if how she loves Paul will always be different from the silver-witch’s.

“I find peace in the quiet.” Her womb feels knotted and twisted and choked of life. She’d sloughed out a child that never breathed, and with it her water, her blood. Paul Muad’dib does not offer much comfort when it happens. She knows him, and knows what relief looks like, even when etched among the grief. She knows Paul Muad’dib had seen, and still, had allowed to happen. It is when her desert mouse fails to offer her the comfort she so needs that she steps away, wades into the memories, and seeks out Shishakli’s hawk-eyes and firm hands.

Irulan sits.

Her pale limbs fold like the fabric of her dress.

She looks small sat upon the stone.

A woman of her breeding would be unaccustomed to anything less than a throne.

I told you be gone, but the words do not find voice. Chani wades in the unknown, wishing she had her lover’s prescience or Shishakli’s conviction. In the time since Muad’dib became Lisan al Gaib, she thinks she has lost conviction—was convinced back too easily, and now sits in this fog, this cloud of will-she-won’t-she. “Why are you here?” She asks instead. She picks up the slip-dress she had worn into this humid abode and drapes it over her lap. 

Irulan’s gaze follows the movement. “You don’t go to your husband.”

“Muad’dib and I have our own ways.”

“He does not come to me when you leave him.”

“Do you expect him to?” She doubts many things of Paul, but his faithfulness to her is the easiest of covenants he can keep. It no longer impresses her, though she had thought it more paramount when she were younger. He would have her, wholly and totally, if he could prove his faithfulness to other covenants—but his faith lies in his Path, of which she has not the prescience to see and to know. It divides them as clearly as the Shield Wall separates the city from the worms.

“I wish he would.”

“You wish on an impossibility.” She has felt and thought many things of Irulan, rarely kind. Now, pity sits on her tongue with the weight of stone—unignorable. “Find another lover.”

Irulan scoffs, an unpretty sound. Chani flickers back to the memories. Shishakli had liked to scoff at her, too. The sound was less impervious, more kindly exasperated. But Irulan still creates nostalgia. “The Emperor would rejoice to remove me from my position, and adultery would only allow him the impetus. A man can have a concubine, but not a woman.”

“You think yourself unequal; this is Arrakis.” She waves a hand frivolously. Her sticky, moistened fingers catch the sunlight. Privately, she is of the belief that Paul could not flay a woman for being in love, for seeking affection wherever it could be had. So much of him had drowned in the worm-water and the ensuing storm, but there is still a shadow of the boy he was, the boy that emulated his father (he who they say ruled with his heart). “Do you expect my intercession?”

“No. I would not ask it of you.” Irulan falls quiet at her own admission. She has thoughtful eyes—large, wide, white. The Eyes of Ibad have not yet developed—and may never, considering how the woman keeps from the culture of her husband and her people and it makes her more telling than Chani believes she would want herself to be. “I apologize for my interruption. I wondered if you would be alone, if he sought you out after your partings.” 

“He does not.” Her body feels awash with cold. The breeze filters through the palace always, guided by careful architectural choices. Only now does it seem to touch her skin and chase away the searing touch of sunfire. “I come here to be with my memories. Nothing more.”

She stands then, drags her dress over her head. “Stop looking for love in Paul Muad’dib, Princess.” She gathers her blanket in her arms. “You people stripped him of his heart, put him on his Path. You will find yourself disappointed at every turn.”

With that, Chani leaves Irulan with her ghosts.

[sophluorescentmusing]

With spring, however, comes the rain. And at the first patter of it down on his padded jacket and hood, he knows he’ll have to take a moment—step aside and wait for it to stop. So, he ducks into the first cornerstore he sees (hopping onto the stoop and swinging open the glass door with gusto) and breathes a deep sigh of relief at the wall of warmth he walks right into.

At the counter, a slouching man straightens up; his hair (permed and dyed? a bit fried, but he somehow makes the style work) flopping into his eyes for a bare second before he cards his hand through it and reveals a bright, youthful face. Junmyeon’s first thought is that he could’ve been an idol with a face like that (and it’s not so much that he’s handsome—which he is—but that he looks approachable). 

“Welcome in?” There’s a lilt to the words that suggest uncertainty. It’s followed by a faint string of laughter. 

Junmyeon brushes it off. He thinks he just caught the cashier by surprise. “Just dodging the rain,” he says, gesturing out of the door. “Do I need to make a purchase?” Because some places are like that, and it’s not as though he’s hurting for cash. He’d gladly nurse a cup of ramyeon and a soda while he waits for the spring-shower to slacken and disappear. 

“You can,” the cashier remarks—what’s that on his nametag? Baekhyun? “But, you don’t have to.” It looks like he has something else on the tip of his tongue (and restraint doesn’t seem to be a practice he’s particularly familiar with, glancing at the rings decorating his fingers, the stickers on his namebadge, or the charms on his phonecase), but he holds back. Instead, he plasters a smile on his face and waves to the racks of snacks and the coolers of milk-teas and other products.

Junmyeon settles on the cup ramyeon he’d envisioned, and pairs it with a can of cola. Clutching both in hand, he returns to the counter. 

Baekhyun rings up his choices, takes the crisp note Junmyeon offers him, and then, presses a button opening the register drawer. It’s empty. The very next second, he fishes out a zipper-pouch and starts counting the change from it. 

“What’s the point of a register if you don’t—“

“Well, there’s money in it when we’re open,” Baekhyun interrupts, looking up through his lashes to meet Junmyeon’s gaze. He raises a brow, challengingly, as if to dare Junmyeon to keep talking himself into a hole. “But, we closed—“ he flips his wrist over (that’s a nice watch) and glances at the face of it ”—about ten minutes ago.”

“The door was unlocked.”

“I was deciding if I wanted to call my ride and lingered too long.” He hands Junmyeon his change and puts up both his hands in surrender. “I’ve learnt my lesson! Never again!”

“You could’ve said something,” Junmyeon tries. He feels the hot flush of embarassment creeping up his shoulders and neck. He doesn’t even want to go use the ramen-making kiosk now. Hell, he wants to head back out into the rain (not emphatically, he’s not that much of a masochist) more than he wants to linger around and keep the store open.

“Well, normal people would read the signage? Or, ask? I don’t—“

“Normal people would try the door, and assume its open if it’s—“ 

The shop-bell rings. Another customer slips inside and begins perusing the aisles.

Both Baekhyun and he snap to silence. “You still haven’t locked the door!” Junmyeon hisses, volume barely over a whisper. 

Baekhyun’s eyes narrow; his lips flatten. He points at Junmyeon, and then the ramyeon in his hands, jerks his thumb at the door, and then shrugs exaggeratedly: “I have no idea why not!” In the very next moment, he’s grinning. It’s a smile born from absurdity, as though he can’t believe his luck, but it’s a genuine one. And this one makes Junmyeon’s heart stutter for a bare second. Woah. “Just go sit down, hyung. I’ll lock the door after this other paying customer. And you can wait out the rain.”

“What—“

“Noona! Hurry won’t you! I was supposed to close ten minutes ago!”

[sophluorescentmusing]

THE BEAST CONSUMING THE KHIMERA

It lies amidst maroon velvet, violet silk, and golden wool upon embroidered pillows, braided blankets, and luxuorious furs. As he watches: it stretches; its ribs distend freakishly towards the heavens, the thinnest swathe across the bone like a mountain, and the cleaving troughs between each rib like a valley. Its fingers curl, nails digging into palm and kneading up turquoise blood. Its mouth gasps open, and in the exhalation is a moan steeping with satisfaction—orgasmic… supremely delighted. 

The indigo-sun of the wayworld streams across its golden skin, and reflects without dimming, and instead prismatically—glossy and unyielding to absorbtion—from the zāsr’s chimerical eyes. 

And so:

He is Noticed. 

Om’auh—its name, delivered on the whisper between this second and the next. Names have power, and this one is given to him honestly, without obscuration. For this reason, Jongdae is wary to put it through his lips, to let himself taste it on his tongue. Instead, he takes the touch of it—the searing brightness of the sound and the strong, black depth of the meaning—and he gives the near-god a name befitting a human (a false-name, without power): Baekhyun—that which is both the light and the dark. 

“Your master is mine as well—” The words are resonant, rich, and deep—but with the quality of something submerged in the sea. Jongdae remembers, for the first time (though he ought to have been more presently aware prior than now) that this is a dream, but not his own. “—But even he is mastered by another.” There is a pause, and in the echoing of the phrases, the tone shifts and becomes uncertainly certain. The words straddle a place between acknowledgement, honesty, ignorance, and dishonesty. 

Jongdae does not think the sōryeon itself is unknowing of its own meaning, he does not think the beast itself is uncertain of its own meaning. It is duplicitous (blithely so; it stretches across misunderstanding comfortably, as though that is its natural habitat). He thinks it means to make a fool of the boy whose dream he has hijacked into. 

“No?” Playful, now, it rolls from its back to its stomach. The line of its spine dips low, curves golden ass, and disappears into the shadow of its sex—if the zāsr is so possessing of a quality. The golden skin seems to meld with the velvets and the silks and the woolen, woven blankets. It reaches into its treasure-filled bedding and draws a thick, bear pelt across its shoulders. Its nudity has been rescinded. It is not quite clothed, but it is no longer for Jongdae’s eyes to pour over.

“You know my Master of House?” Sehun’s voice does not echo the same. There is clarity in the articulation, in the speech. The shyness that is inherent to Sehun still tampens the words, but atmospherically, it feels closer. 

Jongdae had followed him here—he thinks (he knows this is Sehun’s own dream)—but he cannot pick Sehun’s wraith from the room in which he stands, from the vantage at which he observes. “Junmyeon would have—“

“Ah- Emin K’m masters nothing… not even you, darling little bird.” The sōryeon—Baekhyun, Jongdae remembers (the thought more searing and intense than it would be had he thought it himself, of his own conviction)—pushes itself onto its hands and knees. The great draping of fur atop its shoulders amasses not unlike a beast with raised hackles, not unlike the lion’s mane enveloping the chimera’s throat. “Come closer,” it beckons. 

The atmosphere of the dream wavers.

Jongdae dare not move his feet. 

He can taste fear in the air; he can also taste the anticipation. 

The atmosphere of the dream changes. Sehun steps forth and the voyeur goes falling through the threads, pushed abruptly and unrepentently. 

Jongdae wakes back in the palace. His night-sweat tinged with the sweet spice of ichor-wine. 

[sophluorescentmusing]

DOG GOSPEL; OG PREMISE

Any meeting that takes place offshore, on the dock of some rich motherfucker’s yacht is a problem. Zhang Yixing isn’t in the habit of entertaining such meetings, normally he would send an underling or pass on the invitation to his father to be dealt with, but this particular invitation had come not from some sleazy middle-man’s tipoff. 

It’d come from his mother: “Nagasaki Port. They’ll expect you on the docks for eleven. The boat is named the Sobyulwang Cheat.” She’d recommended he bring a trusted guard with him, but Yixing does not trust any of his men stationed in Nagasaki, and so he has gone alone.

He’s worn dress-shoes, though he laments the choice as he steps through oil-ridden puddle after oil-ridden puddle. He’ll have to throw the shoes out by the end of the night—the oil will eat up the expensive soles and the shoes will be worthless before long. The rest of his outfit does not fare much better. His shirt sticks to his chest from the after-storm humidity. His pants pull uncomfortably around his thighs.

Tonight does not scream fortune to him. 

The port is always in motion, and yet, the directions he’s been given send him to the quieter side of the business docks. He does not run into anyone as he nears the waters, as he nears the private docks. Not until he’s close enough that the very people who have invited him can pick him out. 

Two men with shoulders as broad as mountains, jaws square and boorish, and eyes like half-moons appear from the shadows of a shipping container. “You’re the representative for the Central River Company?” One of them asks. He speaks brusquely, business-like. He is poorly pronounced in Yixing's native language.

Yixing offers nothing more than a curt: “Yes.” 

The weight of his gun sits comfortably in its holster. His heart beats against it. His body keeps it warm. 

The two guards fall into step alongside him. Neither makes a move to pat him down. If this is because they’re stupid, or because they acknowledge there’s no chance in hell Yixing isn’t armed, he’s unsure. He wants to bristle, but he does not. He merely follows were they lead. 

It doesn’t take long to reach their destination. The Sobyulwang Cheat is a medium-sized yacht—not so large as to grab undue attention, but certainly rich enough to spell out the success of its owners. She’s lit up modestly, just the interior salon and the barest corners of the deck, and floats silently in the night-black water of the Nagasaki Bay. He can see the shadow of movement through the cabin windows, but curtains block out any further information.

He’s brought aboard the ship with little preamble. Still, his person is not searched.

The guards lead him to the salon door, and then, they stop. The message is clear: proceed alone. 

Yixing rolls the tension out of his shoulders, perhaps the only sign that he had been tense, and then presses the pneumatic button to activate the salon cabin’s doors. They slide open silently, and unleash the gentle music of the interior, the soft din of conversation, and the scent of food, drinks, and smoke—some of it acrid but natural, like tobacco, other more chemical and searing, like that of cocaine. If he’d had doubts about the scene he was walking into—he hadn’t—they would have been alleviated just by this. 

He steps inside, but is not welcomed. Few people turn to look his way, and those that do judge him and move on within the blink of an eye. All except for one. Yixing is accustomed to picking out the wolf among the sheep. He’s observant, keen—normally knows when someone’s gaze lingers on him a beat too long. 

The feeling right now is intense. 

Though, as Yixing’s eyes rove across the room, he can’t quite nail down the source.

He moves it to the back of his mind, compartmentalizing it among every other observation he has made, and moves towards the bar. The woman working it is dressed cleanly, pristine—her hair pulled back into a slick bun. Her shirt is buttoned up to the collar and her apron is ironed flat. Yixing’s used to sleazy looking bartenders—the sort that have been drinking and flirting all night. She is most certainly not that. 

Nor does she take his order. 

She pours something preselected—what looks like baijiu. 

Yixing doesn’t drink. Not excessively. Cocaine is more his vice.

He accepts the drink nonetheless. 

When he turns away from the bar… that’s when he spots the gaze that’s been on his back. Normally, when caught, the looker would look away. This man does not. And since he has been unabashedly staring—continues to unabashedly stare—Yixing allows himself the chance to do the same.

This man has eaten arrogance like one would a delicacy. He has digested it. He has metabolized it into the very core of his body’s mechanisms. His limbs are stretched out languidly across the salon couch, taking up far more space than he needs to, and yet this is most obviously a calculated decision. Something to put the others on edge, to force them into their smaller spaces.

His hair is tussled, like he’s had a quick fuck before he strolled in here—and strolled is the word, not an ounce of this man’s countenance suggests he accounts for others in any meaningful, chivalrous way. He is all depravity. 

Under Yixing’s watchful eye, he leans his head back and exposes the long, lithe line of his throat. There’s a gold necklace there bearing a crucifix (not a cross, he must enjoy the brutality of wearing an execution like a noose), as well as a necklace of white, polished pearls. He flirts with the idea of feminity, of safety—and yet crushes it in the same breath.

Yixing’s fascinated. Still, all he does is tip his glass, take a sip, and ready himself to move on—to give the rest of the room some of his attention—when the stranger brings some of his limbs inwards, clears a spot for him on the couch. Yixing would be a fool to ignore the invitation, especially considering what kind of gathering this is. 

He strides forward. If this man exudes arrogance, then Yixing exudes confidence. 

He takes a seat—the cushions are plush, warm from the proximity to the man—and then he leans inward. In Japanese: “You own the boat?” He’s not sure when he settled on this observation, but once it’s out, he agrees wholeheartedly with his gut.

“You like her?” The stranger’s laugh is like liquor… molasses to be specific—slow, moody. “I use her to flirt.” 

“Do you now?”

“Certainly.” There is a brief lull, both of their gazes roving over the room. Now that Yixing has taken his seat, he has drawn attention. Some of it is unwelcome (he can read plotting in some of the looks), some of it is curious (veiled interest, some jealousy here and there). 

The language changes, now to Mandarin: “You are Zhang Yixing, are you not?” 

“Who’s asking?”

“Bian Boxian. I own the White Tiger Club in Seoul.”

Yixing’s never heard of the club. He has however heard of Se Horangi-pa. One of Korea’s only four, organized syndicates—it would have been impossible for Yixing not to pay attention to the name. It’s the first he’s ever dealt with them in person, though. Assuming this Bian Boxian is one of theirs.

Boxian continues: “Everyone is here for me, gege. But I’m here for you. Come upstairs?”

“How’d you get a message to my mother?” Yixing asks instead. “She does not travel.” She is one of those women who has remained in her homeland her entire life—she has traditionalist thoughts and values (at least, as much as she can when she married into crime). She’s not the sort of person Yixing would imagine fraternizing with the Korean mob. Not by choice.

“She took tea with a friend of mine, once. They kept in touch.” Nothing more, nothing less. Boxian’s grin is shark-like, and yet, Yixing does not feel threatened. He feels like he stands on the cusp of some precipice, and yet, there is gold, wealth, fortune at the bottom. “Come along, gege.”

[sophluorescentmusing]

PULP-STICKY PALMS

In their youth, he volunteered more frequently to be the martyr—or at least, that is what he posited it to be back then, when the others were as wary and skittish as newborn foals—but as they’ve aged and grown to suit their skin and their bones, he’s relinquished the role to those that flourish in it. And this early martyrdom had made him seem the exhibitionist, but in truth, he is the opposite; so self-critical as to be absorbed, self-conscious as to be vain, he approaches his own sexuality and image through the lens of the watcher, the observer, the Eye of Fame (but also something more personal, like the eye of a lover). And so, while he seems the performer, he feels that he is the voyeur. He doesn’t experience the self-exposure so much as he watches it from that strange out-of-body place from which he watches all things. 

As Baekhyun’s pushed down onto his knees, he thinks himself out-of-practice.

The hands on his waist are firm, not-quite-mean. Kyungsoo has never managed to hone his interaction like that, at least, not with Baekhyun. He’s a little too similar (they both find themselves crushed by the weight of having chosen this life, and both are too self-devoted to do anything but excel at it) and so he never quite manages to pinch Baekhyun just right—to cause him that ache he sometimes… oftentimes… yearns for. His lips press against the knobs of Baekhyun’s spine: slow, languishing kisses from tailbone to axis. His body curls overtop Baekhyun’s naked back. He’s a solid weight, a solid warmth.

Baekhyun’s watching more than he’s feeling. His eyes are closed, and his breath hums out those little noises of pleasure, approval, appreciation. Still, he’s watching. He feels disembodied from the experience, though no less enjoying of it.

His gaze slits open. He stretches his arms out across the downy carpet upon which he’s been pressed, and looks across the room to whichever one of the couches first lands in his line of sight. Perhaps it’s instinct that Junmyeon’s the one sitting there, first to fall under Baekhyun’s unwavering gaze, or perhaps its fate. Nonetheless, it’s his pale feet that sit at the edge of the coffee-colored cushion and his pointed fingers that curl over the arm of the furniture. He looks like he belongs in Baekhyun’s home—sinking into the deep, brown interior like its as much his as it is Baekhyun’s. Baekhyun doesn’t quite know how to explain it.

“Junmyeon-ah,” Baekhyun purrs, somewhat growled by the way his chin is pressed to the carpet and his chest to the ground. He’s strained in the best way; with each breath, his lungs expand to the fullest and the muscles in his back pull taut and the joint of his hips begins to ache at the press and the steadfast way Kyungsoo just doesn’t let him relax. “Tell him what to do.” Not that he doesn’t think Kyungsoo could guess and come up with the right answer. 

Maybe, he just struggles with relinquishing control more now than he had when he was younger. He thinks that, back then, he’d found power in being the center of attention, the core of the desire filling a room. He doesn’t think he’s the core now (not with Minseok leaning so adoringly into Jongdae’s shoulder, not with Sehun vying for Chanyeol’s attention, even though he’s stretched out against Junmyeon’s side). He thinks he’s the inciting event, the one that’s going to force the desires out into the open, where everything is plain. But he doesn’t think they’re all awkward enough, strange-with-eachother to have the same command as he did back then. 

[sophluorescentmusing]

HOUSE OF THE MORNING STAR II.

“Did you take into consideration the ramifications of your boon?” He asks, once he has sat at the head of a table spanning the length of the great dining room. Jongdae does not raise his voice; it carries just fine, leaping and bounding across the heavy stone floors and oak-born ceilings. This has become routine for the two of them… the distance, if not the conversation. 

Baekhyun has not yet taken his seat, but the clangor of the steel joints, of the iron plates, of the weaponry and the chainmail makes him command the room in the same way as he would sitting at the opposite head. He pays Jongdae no mind, though a doggish smile graces his face. His sweaty hair hangs in his eyes as soon as he peels his helmet free from his head. His nimble fingers unlace the breastplate clinging to his chest and send it clattering down, down, down onto the hard ground. It will have dented, Jongdae thinks to himself, but Baekhyun rarely takes care of gifts freely given. He prefers what is hard-fought and won. “I consider no one other than myself, Baron. You are familiar with that, do not play the fool.” 

Sometimes, language feels foreign in Baekhyun’s mouth. He has a penchant for more crass, low-born ways of talking, but he seems to know Jongdae feels mocked when he actually puts on a speech answerable to his station. 

Baekhyun continues, unlacing the plates of armor covering the fronts and backs of his thighs: “If you ask whether I was aware of what would become of my request, yes—of course. I did not care.” Then, these also clatter to the ground. He does not bother freeing his feet from the metal, many-jointed boots. Instead, he clicks forward—one step, two steps, three—and finally takes a seat at the opposite end of the table. “Does it vex you?”

Yes. 

Jongdae refuses to admit the fact; he also refuses to lie of it. Instead: “Your house must be preparing well for the coming festival, in light of your success.” The river will run through his mill and charge the equipment inside Jongdae’s expanse of factories and textile mills, but the floodwater will eventually overpower the mechanism. His governance has never relied on the water for power, not when fear is so much more farmable. Baekhyun’s governance is different.

“As the water recedes, the mines drain; and as it passes the dam, it powers the fleets of vehicles and machinery and suits needed to dig deeper into the Earth,” Baekhyun tells him. His smile has softened just shy of ceasing, but the action comes from inattention and not emotion. “The Feast will come, and it will go. House Separ will be richer than the King by the end of it.” 

“Do you still lie at his feet and pant in his lap?” Jongdae snipes. 

“Lick and suck and swallow, too.” Baekhyun’s eyes glint. “Miss me, much?”

“I could have you with a word.” Jongdae’s fingertips dance a hurried, inane beat. He hates when Baekhyun visits his court—he loves it. 

[sophluorescentmusing]

There was a time when the purple-hued bay filled him with a distinct sense of loss, but those days have come and gone. Now, when he twists from the top of the ladder to throw his gaze down the dunes, across the white-sand beach, and overtop the water… he finds the color reassuring. It won’t be long before the thick, rolling storm clouds in the distance bring the teal-green sea-water up to the shore and rising overtop it.

A sailboat rocks not far out, daringly diving over waves—sometimes cutting through them. “I’m going to go out one last time, since there’s a breeze,” Junmyeon had said.

Breeze. Hah. The wind’s been tearing through the village since the storm started forming earlier in the week, and therefore, way too windy for Junmyeon to be out on the water, but of the two of them, he’s beginning to think Junmyeon’s the more stubborn. He hadn’t argued. Just offered a simple: “Be safe. Wave me down and I’ll go grab help.”

Someone would have to drag him kicking and screaming onto a boat, and Baekhyun’s not above eating the humiliation of helplessness sometimes. He’s more than happy to go get a neighbor to play hero. Though, if the situation was dire, even he thinks he would swim out to sea for Junmyeon. But only for Junmyeon.

He turns back to the half-boarded window he’s been preparing in anticipation for the storm. The hammer handle has grown slick from sweat, and his hand is beginning to cramp, but this is also the last of them that has to be protected from flying debris. He’ll tough it out. And after, he’ll go down to the beach to spectate properly. He’ll dig his toes into the sand and wrap a towel around himself to save his sensitive skin from the sand skating up in the wind. Maybe, he ought to bring a tent.

No. He shakes his head. It’ll blow away.

Just as quickly, he’s grinning at the thought, at the foolishness of it, and at the comedy.

Junmyeon’d find it hilarious too.

[sophluorescentmusing]

IN SYMPATHY...

He squeezes his eyes shut tighter, as if this will prevent wakefulness from overcoming his body. His head pounds, and the searing light streaming from between the slats of the open blinds does nothing to help. Baekhyun’s not certain exactly what has woken him up until he hears the tell-tale sound of movement in body of the apartment. If the sun is up, Minseok will have driven himself to work. So, if the sun is up and there’s someone in his apartment then it is most certainly Kim Myunji—Minseok’s mother. The sound is loud enough that he can hear it, despite his head feeling half-underwater most days. She must be on a mission today. Lucky him.

Baekhyun groans and places a hand across his closed eyes. He could whimper; the darkness of just that little motion soothes the ache behind his skull something magical. Once he collects the strength for it, he’ll reach for the pillow on Minseok’s side of the bed, pull it across the sheets and overtop his head.

Except, as he lets his hand fall away to do just that (prepared to brave the searing sunlight for just a minute), the room falls into shadow. There’s the distinct sound of the blinds being pulled. Myunji. Then, her voice (grating against his senses, but he would never tell her that aloud): “Put some clothes on; I made breakfast for you.”

Then, the door shuts with a thud that rattles his head.

Fucking Myunji. He loves her; he hates her.

Baekhyun blinks open his eyes, fighting the immediate urge to prop himself up and scan the room. The blinds are drawn and the window and door is shut. There is nothing to be afraid of, nothing that can jump out at him. He sits up eventually, after his breathing has relaxed back to that sleepy languor not riddled with pain (though his head still aches, and will only worsen throughout the day).

Myunji’s set a washcloth and bowl next to the bedside. Baekhyun feels a stroke of fondness for her, the same he’d felt when the blinds had been shut, as he reaches out and wets the rag. He wrings it between strong, capable hands, before pressing it to his face. It helps to wake him up, to dissuade the laziness of sleep from crossing back over his features. It also helps to soothe his headache. She understands so much of his suffering (and also so little).

He swings his legs over the edge of the bed and stands. The longer he moves around, the more easy it will be to stay moving around. “What brings you in?” He asks, once he’s dressed himself, opened the bedroom door, and entered the living room. “Minseok said you were focused on the move.” She’s moving out of the mountains and closer to the southern sea (which, in Baekhyun’s opinion is a fool’s move, but… who’s he to say).

“His father’s getting on my nerves.” She pats the cushion next to the coffee table. A bowl of cooked rice with egg, soy, and seaweed, as well as a side plate of kimchi’s already been set out for him. “And my friend invited me to the market with her this morning now that things are going back to normal.”

Hah. As if.

Baekhyun contains his want to scoff aloud. Instead, he sinks onto the cushion and folds his knees up under himself as neatly as he can. “Did you buy anything interesting, in that case?” And Myunji shows him some of the clothing she has bought, as well as a new glass of nail polish. He offers then, to paint her nails after they have finished eating. It feels like a simple way of returning the favor, of showing her that he appreciates her visits (that sometimes, he needs them). “I ought to start thinking about what to get Minseok for his birthday.” It’ll be the first year Baekhyun actually celebrates it with him, though they feel as though they have known each other much longer.

It is the similarity of experience (even if they both went through so much different).

He continues: “What did he used to like?”