#also this is me dying mad that knives never gets any cool figures.

[bobosbillionsknives]

Concept sketch for a Knives planet gunsmoke figure set because I'm completely fucking insane and I'm losing my mind

[the-wlw-cafe]

Supercorptober 2020 - Day 10: Ice

Read it on ao3 here!

TW: discussion of the possibility of rape (no rape takes place), major character injury, implied terminal illness. This one is bittersweet y’all!

Lena couldn’t feel her legs. It was an improvement over the searing pain she’d felt in the first two hours of fighting her way through the four feet of snow covering the plains. Back then, breaking though the frozen layer at the top and feeling the solid, sharp edges cut along her skin had felt like knives slashing at her with every step, but now there was nothing but numbness. She wasn’t sure how she was still walking, or even why. The chances that she’d make it were grim, and they became darker with every minute that passed, every moment closer to sundown.

Sundown was of course a relative term, she hadn’t seen the actual sun in years, always covered by an impenetrable layer of dark grey ash that the bombs had spewed into the sky. But it’s absence could still be felt, and without the light of the moon or the stars the nights had become black as tar, making it impossible to see the hand before your very eyes.

She’d come past several abandoned houses and smaller settlements, most of the buildings long since collapsed from the accumulated weight of the ash and snow on their roofs. There’d been no sign of people living, or even just passing by there. Maybe she should be glad about that. Lex had told her all manner of horror stories about the people outside the city walls: bandits, murderers, cannibals. All of them out for their their wealth, their lives, their house and home, and Lex was the only one who could protect her from the wastrels outside. He’d built an empire out of nothing, just to keep his little sister safe.

His concern for her safety only extended as far as she was willing to obey him, and the moment she’d stopped believing the lies that spilled from his lips whenever he opened his mouth he’d been more than happy to sentence her to exile. Death would probably be a more apt description of her punishment, but Lena could see why Lex wasn’t overly fond of it. It did sound a lot less civilised.

“This brings me no joy, Lena”, he’d announced to the tribunal, “but justice must be served.”

It sure didn’t seem that way when he’d gleefully recounted all the things the outsiders would do to her should they get their hands on her – he’d gloated that if she froze to death in the plains she should count herself lucky. Lena was inclined to agree.

She wasn’t sure whether it was the exhaustion that made the corners of her vision darken or if dusk was already approaching. There was a coppery taste in her mouth, she assumed she must have bitten her tongue with how bad her teeth were chattering. She was stumbling now more than she was walking, and she hoped it was only the dwindling daylight that made the tips of her fingers seem darker than the rest of her skin.

She fell.

Thrashed her way out of the snow.

Got up.

Took a step.

Knees buckled.

She fell again.

It dawned on her then that this was it. She tried to get her muscles to obey, but try as she might, they wouldn’t. All that was left for her to do was to curl into fetal position there in the snow, close her eyes, and wait.

At least she didn’t feel the pain anymore.

She didn’t know how much time had passed when she saw the light. It was flashing brightly behind her closed lids, and the scared 4-year-old catholic girl inside her she’d tried so hard to repress believed for just one second that it might be the light of heaven.

Then, through the sound of her chattering teeth, she heard voices approach.

“Kara, holy shit, there’s someone there!”

Rapid footsteps were approaching her now, her panicked mind sent into overdrive with visions of her brother’s hateful sneer as he raved about rampant disease and savages driven mad with hunger and breeding stock. It imbued her with a last burst of adrenaline-borne strength, as she crawled backwards, away from the light.

“Is she...is she dead?”

“No, she’s moving!”

Trying to get away was an exercise in futility. They’d quickly caught up with her, two figures looming over her, barely more than silhouettes as the flashlights they were holding were the only source of light. One of them took a step closer, knelt down beside her, and Lena squeezed her eyes shut again.

“Please”, she whispered in a voice barely louder than the rustling of fabric as the outsider pulled her into a sitting position, not in a terribly rough manner. What she was pleading for she couldn’t say, perhaps mercy, perhaps a swift death. Whether her pleas were heard she never found out, because as the outsider tried to help her to her feet with the help of the second figure, the world spun on its axis as she lost all sense of up or down, and she sunk into a deep, deep darkness.

She drifted in and out of something akin to consciousness. There were disjointed memories, she was unsure which ones were real and which ones her mind made up for her, pushed beyond its breaking point. She could remember someone lifting up her hand and holding a cold glass of water to her lips, tilting it ever so slightly as to only let a couple of drops wet her lips at a time, there were voices around her, footsteps, the smell of burning wood and acrid smoke.

The first time she truly woke up, she thought herself back in the city. It had always smelt of fire there, of the furnaces beneath the earth ever hungry for more sustenance.

“She’s resting, Kara, and you looking over my shoulder constantly won’t make it better. Please, go outside. Go help Mike clear the path to the outhouse since you both completely skimped on ice duty after you found our guest.” The voice was female and somewhat gruff, she sounded like she was speaking through clenched teeth. She was also totally unbeknownst to her. Her pulse quickened as it fully occurred to her that she was in the hands of a group of outsiders. They hadn’t killed her yet, and from what she could feel her body had been deposited on a somewhat soft underground, maybe an old, stiff mattress. She was alive, she’d been kept alive, at the expense of precious resources, so they wanted something from her.

“She was dying, Alex!”

“Kara! Outside!”

Hurried footsteps disappeared off somewhere, and Lena assumed the woman called Kara had left the one called Alex to her devices. Lena kept her eyes shut and breathed slowly, hoping to overhear more, maybe getting a solid idea of what these people wanted from her, finding out what she had to do in order to stay alive. But Alex remained silent at her side, until she heard the rustling of fabric and the touch of the woman’s hand on her forehead, startling her into foolishly letting out a gasp.

“Awake, huh?” Alex asked. There was no use in denying it. She opened her eyes and turned to face the person currently taking her temperature. She was a young woman with short cropped auburn hair, a stern crease between her eyebrows. As Lena let her gaze sweep across the room, she found herself in a large hall of some sort, some kind of factory, if she had to guess. The walls were tall and grey, the only light filtering in from tiny windows near the roof. There were several mattresses strewn across the floor, she could see about half a dozen from where she was lying but she supposed there were several more hiding behind the shoddily made privacy screens of wood and cardboard that intersected the room at regular intervals. The middle of the room gave way to a makeshift fire pit, probably the only source of warmth in the night.

“Do you want some water? We couldn’t get you to drink much while you were out.”

Lena nodded, gratefully, not quite trusting her voice not to tremble if she tried to speak, and she didn’t dare show any sign of fear or weakness, not when she didn’t yet know what the outsiders needed from her. She needed to grip the glass of water with both hands as to not let it slip from her weakened grasp. She noted that both of her hands were wrapped in bandages, but they worryingly, they were still somewhat numb. The liquid felt warm on her lips, probably not quite cooled down from boiling just yet.

“You were lucky Kara and Mike found you when they did. They were the last ones out for the night, and you definitely wouldn’t have made it until the morning. It was pretty stop and go as it is, my mom and me took turns watching over you.”

Lena nodded absently while forcing herself to drink in small sips as not to make herself sick, while her mind raced again. Alex had mentioned blood relatives, so this was a familial community, and they cared for their sick, even if they didn’t belong to them. They didn’t seem to be nomadic either, if the structures they’d erected were anything to go by. She allowed herself a sigh of relief. It could have been much, much worse. At least she didn’t have to expect to be used for their entertainment and be abandoned after the novelty had worn off. What duties awaited her in this commune she didn’t yet know, but she was certain wanton cruelty was not one of them. The sound of footsteps quickly approaching dragged her back to reality.

“Alex, the path to the outhouse is clear, Mike was almost done by the time I arrived, so I – you’re awake!”

It was Kara, the woman Alex had sent away previously.  She was wrapped up in a thick coat that was covered in snow up to the waist, half of her face hidden behind a red woollen scarf that covered her mouth and nose, only her blue eyes and some strands of blonde hair that had come loose from the fur-lined hood were visible. When she set eyes on Lena, they seemed to widen in something Lena hesitated to call joy.

“How are you feeling?” she asked, almost bowling Alex aside in her eagerness to sit down next to her mattress.

“Right”, Alex said, “you keep an eye on our mystery guest, and I’ll fetch mom and let her get a look at her injuries too.”

She stood up and vanished behind one of the privacy screens, leaving Kara to plop down gracelessly into a cross-legged position at Lena’s side.

“I’m Kara”, she said, “I was the one who-”, here she paused, pulling a face, wrenching the scarf away from her face and turning away from Lena to spit something out.

“Sorry, got lint in my mouth”, she grinned sheepishly, her cheeks and the tip of her nose adorably pinkened by the cold.

“Anyway, Mike and me found you out in the snow.”

“I know, Alex told me”, Lena replied, and found her voice hoarse with disuse but otherwise steady.

“Oh, Alex is going to be so glad to see you awake too!”

That gave Lena pause. Alex didn’t seem hostile in any way, but she also wasn’t exactly jumping with joy to see her on her feet again.

“Why’s that?”, Lena asked. The suspicion must have been clear in her voice, as Kara lifted her hands in a placating gesture.

“Well, when we brought you in, we didn’t exactly have an unoccupied sleeping place lying around, so I left you mine, which meant I had to bunk with Alex like I used to when we were kids – she’s my sister – and...well, all I’m saying is that she’ll probably be glad to have some privacy with her girlfriend again.”

Lena couldn’t disguise the way her breath hitched at the word girlfriend. It seemed impossible to her, utopic even, to have a relationship built from love with another woman and have it be recognised by others. Lex had always been obsessed with progeny and the triumph of the human race. He hadn’t ostracized her for her attraction to women, yet he’d always been convinced that eventually, she’d move past what he called selfish desires and marry a man for the sake of the greater good.

“So where do you come from?”, Kara asked. “We’ve had contact with a few nomad groups moving south, trying to find warmer climates, but since Brainy says it’s a futile effort because the ash clouds must cover at least the entire northern hemisphere we’re staying put where we are.”

Lena couldn’t tell her the truth. She knew the city’s walls were guarded, and up until now she’d been complacent in the shooting of the folks who came too close to the gates, too cold and hungry and desperate to heed the guard’s warnings. She knew that through years of keeping quiet and living in fear of her brother’s retaliation there was more blood on her hands than she could ever hope to wash off.

Kara must have caught her hesitation, because she backtracked at once.

“You don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to. I’m only asking because if there are still friends of yours out there, we can probably put together a little search party.”

Lena shook her head. “No, there’s nobody out there. I’m alone.”

“Not anymore”, Kara said, reaching out to touch Lena’s shoulder affectionately, making her heart race. Lena would have laughed at herself if she wasn’t so stunned. Were she came from, affection had never been freely given, it was a reward for when she’d acted according to Lex’s designs, the carrot as opposed to the stick of forced labour down below, keeping the furnaces roaring. It was almost terrifying to be awarded it now, even though she’d done nothing to deserve it, in fact, the opposite was the case as she’d clearly refused to tell Kara the truth about where she’d come from. And yet, she couldn’t help but lean into the touch.

“I’m Lena”, she told her instead, offering at least some amount of information to appease her. The answering smile she received was brilliant.

Their moments was over when Alex returned, and older blonde woman she assumed to be her mother in tow. She introduced herself as Eliza, and asked Lena all manner of questions about her health, whether she was having difficulty breathing, and whether she was experiencing any localised numbness. When Lena told her about the numb feeling in her fingers, she frowned, but didn’t seem to distressed.

“Listen, Lena, I know this might be hard to hear, but when we found you, the frostbite in your fingers, especially in the pinky and ring finger of your right hand, had progressed very far. We didn’t want to risk necrosis, as we don’t have the proper equipment to fight a sepsis, should it come this far. I’m sorry we couldn’t involve you in the decision, but you were unconscious, and time was of the essence.”

Eliza spoke in a calm and patient manner, but it did nothing to lessen the impact of her next words:

“We had to take off the pinky and ring finger of your right hand.”

Her words were enough to turn Lena’s stomach, and she found herself senselessly clinging onto denial. “No”, she whispered, “no, that can’t be true, I would know…”

“Phantom sensations are a very common occurrence -”

Lena couldn’t hear her anymore, she’d started tearing at the bandages around her hands, despite Alex’ and Eliza’s protests because she needed to show them, needed to prove them wrong…

She retched on an empty stomach when she’d pulled enough layers aside to see it was true, two of her fingers were just gone, two short stumps under the reddish brown stains on the bandage where they should be. She knew she was hyperventilating, distantly chastising herself to get a grip, but the nausea and panic made it impossible, her breath coming more and more shallow until -

She faintly realized someone was holding her. She was being cradled in strong arms, someone was holding her hair from her face, and as she tried to force her panicking senses to zero in on the touch she realised it was Kara’s voice murmuring into her ear, telling her to breathe slowly, in one two three four, out one two three four five. Eventually the attack abated, and Lena sunk heavily into Kara’s arms, not even having enough strength left to feel humiliated at her display.

She didn’t pass out again, not physically, but her mind certainly checked out of reality for a time. When she became aware of herself again, the noise of people talking reached her ears.

“Brainy checked the fuses and I had a look at the cables, and there’s nothing wrong with them, so the problem has to be with the turbines, and we need to get them back online ASAP or the growbeds are going to pay the price.”

“I can do that”, Lena murmured before anyone had the chance to interject. She opened her eyes and realised with an embarrassed flush that Kara was still holding her. The blonde let her go when she started to squirm away.

“I can do that”, she repeated. Whoever had controlled the electricity in the City had controlled the power, quite literally, so she was raised to know her way around all kinds of sources of electricity. And it was high time to prove to the community that she was more than just a mouth to feed, that she could pull her weight, that she was worth the trouble they’d gone to to keep her alive.

“Are you sure?” Alex questioned with a raise of her eyebrows. “You just woke up today, you should rest some more.”

“I’m sure”, Lena said, projecting all of the certainty she didn’t feel into her voice. “I can do it.”

Nobody fought her on it, even though Kara looked like she was about to.

The issue, as it turned out, was once again the frost. Lena was told that the community had taken refuge in a hydroelectric power plant, one they’d actually gotten up and running again after the bombs had dropped. They had to regularly send people out to stop the formation of ice on the river that powered it in order to keep it operational, but since Kara and Mike hadn’t finished their duty last night it seemed some leftover water inside the turbine had frozen and expanded, wrenching key parts of the mechanism out of place. Nothing seemed to be past saving, thankfully, and Lena went to go about the tedious work of instructing Brainy, who they’d referred to in case of trouble with the turbines on how to fix them. To be perfectly honest, Lena had no doubt that Brainy would have proven just as capable to handle the problem as she was, but he didn’t complain. Lena was just glad to have found an area to prove her worth. As she watched Brainy work on the turbines, the exhaustion caught back up to her, and she had to sit down on the hard floor propped up against the concrete wall, just to take a little break, to close her eyes for just one second…

When she opened them again, she found herself back on the familiar mattress again, blue eyes staring down at her in concern.

“Lena! Don’t you dare scare me like that again, gosh, we all knew you weren’t ready but you seemed so sure!”

“Did it work? Are the turbines back online again?”

Kara just made an exasperated noise, like it was Lena who wasn’t making any sense at all.

“Yes, it worked”, she finally cried, gesturing around them. Lena now realized that the area was now illuminated by floodlights now. “But Lena, you passed out again!”

So what, Lena thought, and noticed only at the scandalised gasp Kara let out that she’d said the words out loud.

“Okay, I think we need to put some ground rules down.”

Lena almost breathed a sigh of relief. This was territory she was familiar with. Maybe this community would start making more sense to her as soon as she knew whose authority to respect, which places were off limits and at which times she was expected to speak or hold her tongue.

“Rule number one: If you feel at all sick, or weak, or if you’re injured, you tell Alex and Eliza and you let someone else take over your chores for the day.”

This wasn’t at all what she’d expected, but she nodded anyway. Even more confusing was that, despite this rule being titled rule number one no more rules seemed to follow, and Kara seemed placated with her response.

“Dinner will be ready soon”, Kara said, the abrupt change in topic almost making Lena choke on thin air. “Hope you like turnips!”

There were more, unspoken rules, but they were baffling all the same. Rule number two she found out about very quickly, when Kara asked her, blushing and stammering adorably, whether she’d be alright with sharing a mattress.

“You can say no if you want to, I can just stay with Alex, I’m sure she won’t mind...much.”

“It’s fine, Kara, it really is”, Lena said, despite an unexplainable surge of nerves. She’d never shared as much as a room before. It was the novelty of sharing a bed that made Lena’s heart beat out of her chest as they lay next to each other, stiff as boards. She didn’t dare entertain any other reason as to why her skin tingled with electricity in the places their skin touched.

Rule number two was that she was expected to speak her mind. Lena really wasn’t keen on finding out how far this rule extended, and what the exceptions were.

She lacked the common sense to know that rule number three was more of an in-joke among the outsiders as it was law. A young man named Winn, who was more or less the authority when it came to the growbeds where they grew turnips, potatoes and carrots, showed her around the greenhouses as soon as she was well enough to take on some duties.

“Welcome”, he said, swinging his arms like windmills in an excited gesture, “to my secret grow operation. Don’t narc.”

“Please laugh at his jokes”, a young brunette whom Lena remembered being called Nia stage-whispered. “He gets so mopey when they don’t land.”

Nia, as it turned out, was very easy to work with. She was the youngest in the group, and she’d also joined the community the most recently, and she was overjoyed to no longer be the newest member. She didn’t talk about the circumstances of her joining much, and Lena didn’t pry – it would be very hypocritical of her to expect the truth from others but hide her own. She soon became very fond of Nia, she easily made her feel welcome, and she had a way of intuiting whenever Lena needed a break but didn’t dare ask for it. She still was overcome with spells of nausea and dizziness, especially when she caught a glimpse of her mangled hand while working.

“I don’t actually remember much of it”, Nia blurted out one day as they were clearing the growbeds of weeds. It was astounding, really, how weeds seemed to thrive even in these conditions. “I was very young, and very sick. My family were moving south, like a lot of people did, and my sister dragged me here because my parents had heard there was a doctor living here. Eliza and Alex took me in, and helped me get better, and when they went to find my family again, they’d already up and left.”

There was a long pause in which they silently worked side by side.

“I don’t remember much, but I know that my parents wouldn’t have left me behind, not if they believed there was still hope.”

There’s an accusation in there somewhere, but Lena doesn’t comment on it. What would she have said anyway? Siblings can be like that sometimes? My own brother abandoned me to die alone? She just reaches out to place a hand on Nia’s shoulder, like Kara did with her once, and she hopes her smile conveys more than she has the words to say.

The change in their sleeping arrangement happens gradually, so gradually that Lena doesn’t even notice until she finds herself one evening with her head resting literally on Kara’s chest, with Kara’s hands running idly to her hair. She forces herself to breathe calmly as soon as she notices, as if Kara was a very shy deer she ought not to disturb. Was this strange? Was it wrong? It couldn’t be. She felt more at peace than she’d been in a long time, and her sleep was more restful than it had ever been behind the walls of the City. She didn’t dare bring it up, for fear of calling attention to it meant Kara putting a stop to this unspoken ritual of theirs.

Not everyone in the community welcomed her with open arms. It really didn’t bother her all that much, she couldn’t imagine trusting a perfect stranger that had washed up in the middle of their tight-knit group either. There was Kara’s cousin Clark and his pregnant wife Lois, and while Lois was perfectly civil towards Lena, there was no disguising the look of distrust in Clark’s eyes whenever Lena so much as looked in his wife’s or Kara’s direction. Nor could James, whom Kara claimed to be an old family friend, hide the way his eyes followed Lena’s every move. But it was fine, it was to be expected. At least that’s what Lena told Kara, after she’d had a fight, a proper shouting match with the two about getting to know Lena for who she is and not who they expect her to be. At least whoever plans the chores has the common sense not to put them in the same group.

Lena really doesn’t mind the judgement, but what she does mind is Mike’s constant advances on her. “He gets...excited when there’s someone new in the group”, Alex explains with a frown, as if there’d been similar problems with him before. Lena isn’t quite sure whether she should reject him. Sure, the thought of being with him made her stomach turn, but Lena wasn’t sure whether she could let the chance to establish a proper foothold in the community. She needed the security, just because she was liked by Kara and Nia, and tolerated by Alex and Eliza, didn’t mean that she’d be safe should it come to infighting. So she endured his flirting, and smiled politely to cover up the urge to cringe whenever he would touch her arm in a manner that was to frequent to be truly accidental.

Kara, of course, read her like a book.

“I’ll beat him up for you if you want to”, she’d said, the determination in her voice bordering on scary. “I mean it.”

Lena didn’t doubt that for a single second. She smiled patiently.

“I don’t mind his attention”, she lied effortlessly, “I think I might come to like him some day.”

“But that’s not what love is supposed to be about!” Kara cried. Love – what  a cute concept. It was all very Kara.

“It’s not about love”, Lena tried to explain. “I want to stay here.”

“Then stay!”

As if it was that easy.

“You shouldn’t have to force yourself to like him”, Kara said. “You can just tell him to back off.”

“Oh, I’m sure he’d love that.”

“That doesn’t matter! It’s your choice, and if he doesn’t like it, that’s his problem. If he makes trouble, I’ll beat him up, as I promised.”

“Kara-”

“No, Lena. Your right to stay here doesn’t depend on who you date. And if anyone tells you anything different, they can have a word with me.” Kara squared her shoulders demonstratively, and Lena had to swallow. She’d never really noticed how muscular her friend was, but now that she knew, it was difficult to take her eyes off her straining biceps.

“I’ll always protect you”, Kara whispered, and Lena was glad the blonde took this exact moment to take her into her arms, because it meant Kara couldn’t see the way Lena had to dig her teeth into her lower lip to stop it from shaking.

Mike didn’t take it well. He pouted and made passive-aggressive remarks, he threw her nasty looks over his turnip stew and demanded to no longer be assigned chores alongside Lena, which Lena was rather fine by her. He got over it eventually. He had nowhere else to go, and in a community that had no choice but to rely on each other there was no place for long-held grudges. They got along because they had to. He actually managed an apology for his behaviour some weeks later, hands buried in the pockets of his worn jeans and eyes stubbornly averted. Lena took it, because it was the best she was going to get from him, and she couldn’t afford to have an axe to grind.

Rule number four was basically common sense: You don’t go onto the ice alone. Ice breaking duty was always assigned in pairs, to have someone to call for aid should something happen. It was a necessity Lena soon became all to aware of when she shared ice breaking duty with J’onn, one of the eldest members besides maybe Eliza. She’d been there when she saw him lean heavily on his icepick, and, moments later, collapse into a heap out on the ice, his breath coming shallow, moaning in pain. She’d called for Alex and Eliza while dragging him inside to safety. The other’s soon helped carry him to his assigned bunk, where Eliza immediately started tending to him.

“Is he sick?”, she asked Alex, but before she could answer J’onn emitted a sound Lena first thought to be a dry cough, but soon she understood that he was laughing, a pained, horrible laugh devoid of mirth.

“Four atomic bombs dropped over North America, and she asks me if I’m sick”, he coughed. “We’re all dying of something out here.”

The words shouldn’t surprise her, but they hit her like a ton of bricks as the words echoed in her mind, and they continued to do so whenever she saw Kara struggling for breath after completely mundane activities, when she saw how tired Winn always looked no matter how much sleep they got, when she saw how little weight Lois was gaining despite being pregnant.  

They sent out hunting parties too, sometimes. They seldom brought home more than a meagre rat or a squirrel if they were lucky, but they went out anyway. Lena suspected it was more to avoid cabin fever than to find a sustainable source of food. She’d come to look forward to these moments, as Kara always volunteered to be her partner. She’d come to adore the quiet out there, no matter the cold, and she’d become addicted to the way Kara’s hand found hers almost automatically whenever they walked next to each other.

On a day like this, clearer than most she’d seen, she noticed it: On the horizon in the distance, one large column of acrid black smoke was rising into the clouds above.

“The City”, Kara explained, and Lena closed her eyes at the assault of memories, the empty-eyed workers shuffling down to the furnaces under threat of exile, the air that hurt to breathe and the sneer of her brother.

“It seems so close”, Kara remarked.

“Don’t worry, they don’t leave their walls”, Lena said quickly in an effort to calm her friend, then quickly tacked on: “So I’ve heard.” She cringed at how bad she’d gotten at lying ever since she didn’t really need to do it on a daily basis.

Kara regarded her with an unreadable expression for a long time. Then:

“We all know, you know? That you’re Lena Luthor.”

Lena stared at her, wide-eyed. “But how...why”, she stuttered, suddenly forgetting how to form complete sentences.

“Most of us are exiles ourselves. It’s why Clark and James have such a hard time trusting you, because they were suffering and they can’t see you were suffering under Lex as well.”

Lena stood there, dumbfounded. Whenever she thought she’d found a system of rules to operate by, Kara came along to uproot her view of the world.

“How can you even look at me, after all my family has done to your family?”, she whispered.

“Because I know you”, Kara stated, as certain as one could be about anything. “And I’m glad you’re here.”

“I’m glad I’m here, too”, Lena murmured, resting her head on Kara’s shoulder, and Kara’s answering smile was so bright she almost didn’t notice the sunshine that had landed upon Kara’s features. When she did, she couldn’t help the soft gasp that escaped her.

“Kara, look!”, she squealed with abandon, pointing towards the crack in the clouds that let a singular ray of sun escape to dapple the frozen ground with light. They stood there, shadowing their eyes with their hands and staring directly into the sun like a pair of idiots, huddled closely together.

“Maybe this will be the last long winter we have to see”, Kara said, her eyes teary, not only from the brightness of the sun.

“Yeah, maybe”, Lena answered, closed her eyes, and hoped.

[kruegersgirl]

Reborn (Flash Fiction May 2017)

“You lost man?” Victor looked up to see who had spoken, and nearly fell back. Standing in front of him was six feet of lanky punk. He had to crane his neck to see her face. She towered over him, her hair spiked a mile high into a neon pink mohawk.

      “Dude? Are. You. Lost?” The girl repeated, clipping each word. “You realize you’re in line for the No Life concert, right?”

        “Yes.” Victor could barely get it out, choking on his nerves.

        The girl was smiling now, less intimidating than just a moment ago. Victor was still too scared to look her in the eye. He tried staring at her boots, but then he imagined what all those spikes could do, and decided to look at his own beat up Chuck’s instead.

        The girl looked him up and down, sizing him up. He was obviously out of place in a plain t-shirt and khaki shorts.

        “What on Earth are you doing here dude? You look like you’d be more at home at Comic Con, church camp, something. Anything but here really.”

        “Probably.” Victor continued looking at his shoes while he explained himself to the girl, trying not to think about all the Marvel posters he had hanging up in his room. He told the girl, whose name he learned was Laura, he had been trying to find a story for the school newspaper when he found an ad for the show and thought he would check it out.

        “So…You just decided to come out to a punk show all by yourself?”

        “I don’t really have any friends I could have asked. I had to sneak out just so my mom wouldn’t offer to come.” Laura laughed at that, remembering her first concert. She hadn’t been alone, but she had snuck out so her mom couldn’t ask questions.

        “That takes balls kid,” Laura said as she playfully punched him in the shoulder. “You’ve got me now though.”

        “What? Really?” This threw a wrench in Victor’s plans to just stand on the sidelines and watch. He had always been more of an observer than a willing participant.

        “Your first show can be a tough one, you’ll need some help.” Laura smiled at him, as intimidating as she was at first glance, her smile was strangely calming to Victor. Knowing that he wouldn’t have to survive this alone, also allowed his heart to slow down to something closer to a regular rate. “You’re lucky this place is even still open,” Victor gave the girl a quizzical look, “the punk scene is dying dude. Fewer and fewer bands play. Fewer people come out. It’s fucking capitalism man, kills everything good.”

        They waited outside the building mostly in silence. From the outside, it could have been any warehouse plopped on the outskirts of downtown. The marquee and old show flyers pasted all over the front were the only things that really made it stand out.

        Laura turned to Victor once the line started to move.  “You don’t have any knives or anything on you, do you? When we get to the front they’re gonna check us both.” She had spewed it all out so fast that Victor could barely keep up, but he understood the gist and nodded that he didn’t have anything on him. “Security didn’t used to be this tight. It used to be you could just walk straight in, enjoy the show. Then one day a metal-head decided to pick a fight with a crusty and got stabbed. Now everyone gets checked. Thoroughly.”

        Victor tried not to let his shock and confusion show. He had a vague idea of what a metal-head was. They had their own table in the cafeteria at school, and they pretty much kept to themselves. What the hell is a crusty though? He decided he could ask Laura about it later.

They made their way through security with no problems and proceeded to a sketchy looking man with a full beard, and beer belly. He scanned Laura’s ticket and then motioned for her to go through the double doors that led into the venue.

        Victor fumbled in his pockets, having somehow managed to lose his ticket in his mad dash to get everything back in his pockets. Finally, he found it in his back pocket, unfolded it, and handed it to the man. He too was motioned through the double doors.

        As he entered the building a thudding bassline hit Victor square in the chest. He thought for a moment that maybe the band had already started playing. When he caught up with Laura, and they rounded the corner though, there was no one on the stage. There were a couple guitars, mic stands, and a drum kit surrounded by more amps and monitors than Victor could count. Laura pulled him over to a spot about 10 feet back from the left side of the stage. She kept quiet while Victor took a moment to take it all in.

        He looked all around him, failing to combat the complete sensory overload that was overtaking him. Another song came over the PA system, less intense than the first, but still just as loud. He thought he vaguely recognized the singer’s voice.

        The room itself was fairly plain. The walls black, though you could barely see them for all the flyers and graffiti. The tile floors were covered in various stains, and were chipped away in places exposing the concrete beneath.

        Victor looked up and noticed the balcony spanning the back of the venue. A few people were filling in the barstools that were set out, but in the dead center there was a solitary older man, dressed much like Laura. She noticed Victor staring, and decided to give him a bit of insight.

        “That’s Johnny Spleen,” she had to yell over the speakers. “He’s the guy that owns this place. He made some money in his band, Tiger Spleen, and came back here to jumpstart the city’s music scene.” Laura waved up at the man and he nodded back. She turned her attention back to Victor, “he’s a cool dude. He comes to every show the venue puts on. He’s the one that makes sure everything goes smoothly.” Victor just nodded, still too overwhelmed to say anything. The two stood in silence as the venue filled up. Laura talked to a few people as they passed by, but spared Victor any awkward introductions.

        Finally, the lights cut out and the crowd erupts into a jumping, shouting mass. Four shadows come out onto the stage and get their instruments ready. Spotlights erupt on the figures. They nod to each other and the drummer counts them in. They launch into the first song without a word, the stage exploding with light as they do.

        Victor’s breath catches in his chest with every beat of the kick drum. Personal space doesn’t exist as the people around him dance and jump in response to the band on stage. He isn’t sure what to do. Too awkward and unsure of himself, Victor slightly nods his head to the beat and watches. Laura is still beside him, jumping in place, screaming at the top of her lungs, fists in the air, totally uninhibited.

        Around him, Victor could see puffs of smoke rising toward the metal ceiling. The whole room was beginning to develop a strange, unpleasant odor that Victor guessed was a mixture of pot and sweat.

        To their right, a ring of people surround a mostly empty patch of dance floor. The few people still inside the circle are running into each other, pushing each other. Fists are flying in every direction, but even though they’re beating each other up they seem to be having the time of their lives. The people on the perimeter of this spectacle push back every time someone gets too close to the edge, keeping the madness at least somewhat contained.

        “It’s called a mosh pit. Lots of fun, little painful though.” Laura leaned in to yell into Victor’s ear. Mosh pit wasn’t a completely foreign term to him, but he had never seen one up close.

        Before he knew what was happening Laura grabbed him by the arm and was pulling him into the circle. “What the f--,” his words were cut off as a two-hundred-pound brute rammed into him, knocking him to the floor. Victor tasted blood. The guy stopped long enough to pick him up like a rag doll before continuing his journey of insanity around the pit.

        Victor looked around and saw Laura across the pit from him, just as care-free as ever as she slammed her body into a wall of people. Victor worked up his nerves and jumped in head first. If he felt awkward standing on the sidelines, it was nothing compared to how he felt now. His movements felt robotic and he had to fight the urge to apologize to everyone he ran into.

        The longer he was in the mosh pit, the freer he felt. All his loneliness, all his insecurities seemed to melt away with every bit of contact. He was hot, and sweating, and the whole pit smelled like a locker room. He actually began to enjoy himself. By the end of the song he was laughing as he bounced off the other people.

        The music stopped, and everyone took a breather while the band’s front man went on about the state of the government and the capitalist pigs that really ran the country. Victor bent over, hands on his knees trying to catch his breath. He was already sore, and trying to think up a story to explain the bruises to his mom when Laura walked over to him. “Come on kid, let me buy you a drink.”

        “I’m only 18, I can’t drink.”

“You can when you’ve got a twenty-one-year-old buying for you. Just stay a little ways back from the bar so it doesn’t look too suspicious.” Victor followed her to a pillar supporting the balcony where she told him to wait. Victor came back to his senses as she walked back over to him, beers in hand.

        “Why did you pull me in?” By now the music had started back and he had to yell to be heard.

        “Well you sure as hell weren’t going to jump in yourself, someone had to give you some…encouragement.”

        “I could have died!” Victor knew that he was being dramatic, but he wanted to make her feel at least a little bit bad about what she had done.

        “You weren’t in any real danger. It wouldn’t have been a real punk show for you if you hadn’t gotten in a mosh pit. It’s one of the most fundamentally punk things at a concert for fuck’s sake.”

        Victor, for the first time in a long time, felt at peace. No one in the building had been out to hurt him, or ridicule him, everyone was there to enjoy the music and just let go.

        “So are you gonna come back?”

        “Only if I get to throw you in the mosh pit next time,” the smiled at each other and he knew that he had found his place. “Also, what the hell is a crusty?”

[dawnstruck]

i think i’m entitled to your body

Yoonbum’s eyes are black mirrors, reflecting Sangwoo’s madness back at him.

[Read on AO3] Rated Explicit. Warnings: Rape/Non-con

Iconography.

Sangwoo, in essence, is a creature of habit.

He doesn't have OCD or anything stupid like that, but he believes in maintaining a certain order. So he keeps his apartment clean and his clothes nicely folded and put away. His aftershave and hair gel bottle stand by the sink with their label facing forward. He goes shopping every Thursday afternoon, and once a months he drops by the library to return his books and check out some new ones.

He generally also has a strict routine when it comes to his victims, mostly just for efficiency's sake.

First he charms them, then he wines and dines them, then he fucks them, then he chains them, tortures them, kills them. He makes them enjoy his presence first, makes them cum and quiver and hungrily lick their lips at him. That's half of the thrill for him, to turn things around like that, to confuse them, to watch the sudden whiplash realization in their eyes as they begin to understand that this is happening.

With Bum, things are different. This is one of the reasons he is even still alive. Because he is something new, something unprecedented, something aberrant.

Girls moan Sangwoo's name when he's got his tongue on their clits and his fingers up their cunts, but they start screeching as soon as they see the knives. Yoonbum stares up at Sangwoo and his baseball bat like a pious man whose prayers have just been answered by a capricious god and he says I fell in love with you.

Still Life.

The thing with people is that they are quite boring when they are dead. There's that short surge of adrenaline when he kills them, of course, but that only lasts so long.

Bum, he decides, is more entertaining when left to live.

Aesthetic.

The radio is idly playing old love songs and Sangwoo sits at the kitchen table while he watches Bum scrub the floor.

Bum is wearing his old outfit, the one the CEO's daughter had worn. It's one of Sangwoo's favorites, just because it's such a familiar sight. The crop top rides up every time Bum leans forward, exposing his white spine, vertebra by vertebra, before sliding back down again. The folds of the skirt are splayed around him and his ankles peek out from under it. His knees are perpetually blue with bruises, but his broken legs seem healed now, at least superficially. The soles of his naked feet face towards the ceiling. They are slightly dirty, which is why Sangwoo told him to clean to fucking floor in the first place.

He makes Bum shave his legs now, too, because the hair is kinda off-putting. Bum ends up accidentally cutting himself more often than not, but the droplets of blood welling up and the smooth expanse of skin make it worth it.

Bum's fringe swishes across his forehead and he pushes it back with a careless forearm.

He's almost pretty this way, dressed like a girl and working like a woman. He really deserves a reward.

“Hey, Bum,” Sangwoo says and sets his feet down on the still wet floor, “Let's go out tonight.”

Pastiche.

He enjoys dressing Bum, using his miscellaneous collection of trophies. The shoes and coat are what Bum wore when he first broke into the house. The skinny jeans Sangwoo bought for him on their last shopping trip, from the girls' section no less, because Bum was too tiny for anything else. The shirt is a leftover from Sangwoo's high school days, from before his military service had made him buff up, but it still hangs off Bum's narrow frame like a flag of surrender. The many wrinkles, however, just barely disguise the outline of the old bra Bum is wearing underneath, the off-white one Sangwoo had found in his trashy apartment. His favorite, though, are the deep red panties, the ones that looked quite nice on the girl from two weeks ago, but that are rather too snug around Bum's front, making him wriggle in discomfort.

It's like a little secret that only he and Sangwoo know about.

“Try to look more alive tonight,” Sangwoo tells him, “Last time, the others thought you were demented. They thought I had been roped into babysitting my dumb little cousin or something. I had to explain that we are friends and that I actually like you. Embarrassing as hell, let me tell you.”

Bum ducks his head but gives a quick nod.

“Just smile a little,” Sangwoo says and ruffles his hair, “I'm sure they'll like you.”

Fauves.

The bar his friends choose is a nice one. Sangwoo has been here before, but not in a while. He frequents other establishments when he is actively hunting, not wanting to risk that someone might remember his face and connect it to the disappearance of whatever girl he took home that night.

The lights here are dimmed, the music loud enough that you have to raise your voice a little to be heard all the way across the table. They are a rambunctious group, so it's no problem, really.

Bum is by his side, crammed into the corner of the bench, drowning in his heavy coat. Sangwoo casually leans back, putting his arm up onto the backrest. He doesn't touch him, but Bum shrinks anyway. Sangwoo smirks into his drink.

On the other side of the table, the guys are teasing Jun about something and it takes Sangwoo a while to catch on. Apparently, they caught her looking at edited pictures of some k-pop band and, hah, she is one of those girls who is into gay guys. Everyone's laughing now and her face is red, but she does not even deny it.

“It's just wrong,” Seong-Ho says, carelessly flapping a hand, “What kinda guy would do that?”

“A gay one, Seong-Ho,” Nari says with a roll her eyes, “That's kind of the point.”

“Still,” Seong-Ho insists. He's always too loud, to direct. He wouldn't know subtlety if jumped into his face and bit him. Though subtlety probably wouldn't do that.

“What about you, Sangwoo?” Hwan asks in that moment, leaning across the table, “Would you kiss a guy?”

“Ah,” Sangwoo makes a show of thinking about it, lifting a finger to his mouth, “If he were really cute, I guess.”

There's surprised laughter and Seong-Ho yells, “No way!”

“I would, I would,” Sangwoo insists playfully and then, just for the hell of it, proves it.

The back of Bum's head feels fragile in his cupped palm, like the skull of a newborn, like an overripe peach that will bruise too easily. Amid the music spilling out of the speakers overhead, Bum's breath is little more than a wheeze.

There's laughter all around them. Bum quivers, a rabbit in a snare. Move and you'll suffocate. Don't move and eventually just stave. His lips are cool and bloodless. Sangwoo angles his head and pushes his tongue in.

He makes it dirty, revels in the jeering and giggling of his friends. They are so easily entertained by such ordinary things. It's just a kiss but all they see is depravity. Sangwoo wants to show them what it's like to cut a heart open.

Well, he thinks when he pulls back and Bum's mouth is wet with saliva, maybe he had shown them that anyway.

“And this,” Nari says, “Is why Jun likes that kinda stuff.”

“What, what?” Seong-Ho says, “I still don't get it.”

“Because that was hot,” Nari insists, “Two guys making out is hot.”

“It's not,” Seong-Ho groans, “They're just... C'mon, girls are much better.” “Double standards,” Nari complains and elbows Jun in the side as though asking for backup, but the blush is still high in Jun's cheeks and she seems incapable of speech.

Bum is red, too, but it's a different kind, embarrassed, yes, but sort of sick and feverish.

Just a kiss, Sangwoo thinks. Just a kiss does that to him.

And he'd never thought of fucking a guy before, but lately the idea has taken root in him like a cancer, changing his very being to the core. It's too late to purge it now; he's let it fester for too long.

Palimpsest.

Yoonbum is a great many things, has been a great many things, always depending on what Sangwoo wants him to be. A little monkey kept for entertainment. An obedient lapdog. A child that needs to be taught how to play by the rules. A victim. His mother. A comrade. His lover.

Sangwoo barely lets the paint dry before he starts on another work of art right on top of it.

Grotesque.

There used to be that slightly sick smell about Bum, like a dying animal. He's almost bizarrely  underweight, but lately he's been filling out a little. Sangwoo has been feeding him well. He's still not much to look at, but Sangwoo likes the way his bones make the shadows bow on his skin.

He spreads his hand across Bum's concave belly, runs it up to his chest, so his thumb is on the right nipple and the tip of his little finger on the left. He grins. Bum is so small, childlike and feminine and just this side of morbid.

Bum sucks in a shallow breath and turns onto his front, presenting Sangwoo with his ass, so Sangwoo hooks a finger into the waistband of Bum's panties and pulls them down a little.

There's still hair there, on the pale cheeks and running along the crack, and Sangwoo grimaces in distaste. It's not too bad, he guesses, but for next time he'll have to figure out a way to get rid of that.

“Huh,” he says, pressing a thumb to the hole, surprised by how velvety soft it is. He's never done anal before, since most girls don't exactly offer on the first night, and it's not like Sangwoo ever gives them a chance for a second.

He closes a hand around Bum's upper arm and turns him onto his back, before leaning over to fish for the plastic bag from the drug store he went to a couple of days ago.

“I bought lube,” he explains, weighing the bottle in his hand and popping the lid open. The smell is neutral. He doesn't like any of the scented, self-warming shit, so this is just some random cheap brand.

When he scoots back, Bum has turned back onto his stomach. Sangwoo frowns.

“Turn around,” he says, pushing at Bum's shoulder, and Bum obeys, if reluctantly.

“I looked this up online,” Sangwoo explains, squirting some of the lube onto his fingers, “Sleeping with guys is a little more complicated. But I guess if you're used to taking that huge dildo, I don't have to be too careful.”

Bum lets out a shuddering breath, but pushes the panties down all the way, shimmying out of them until they are tangled around his ankles. His dick is still limp, but Sangwoo doesn't care about that for now.

He lets his lube-covered finger circle around the clenched hole a couple of time, waiting for Yoonbum to at least marginally relax into the touch. Then he dips in, just the tip, shallowly thrusting. It's unlike what he expected.

It's not like a girl, not like a girl at all. But while girls are hot and tight, Yoonbum is even hotter and tighter. It seems impossible that Sangwoo could actually fuck him, but he had seen the dildo and that was bigger after all. Still, he feels himself getting excited at the thought of actually pushing his dick into that heat.

He'd been vaguely curious before but now he has made up his mind. With a quick hand he adjusts himself in his pants, while the other lets his middle finger push deeper into Yoonbum.

He adds another finger soon, starts out gradually again, but then crooks his fingers like the online articles had instructed him to, and – there.

Bum's breath hitches and he bucks his hips. His eyes are wide and when a whimper escapes him he presses his hands over his mouth, as though surprised by the sensation.

Sangwoo, however, is distracted by how Yoonbum is clenching down around him, even as he repeatedly scissors his fingers. It's pure muscle down there and Sangwoo can't wait to actually fuck him.

Patience, though. Patience.

He takes his time, more or less, properly opening Yoonbum up, until he is subtly writhing against the sheets, but then he reminds himself that Bum has done this before, in a way, that he should be able to handle it.

With his free hand he shakes the pack of condoms from the plastic bag, wrestles it open and pulls out a condom. He carefully tears the wrapper with his teeth and then he pushes down his underwear to get at his dick. He has to pull his fingers free from Yoonbum to properly roll the rubber down; it barely takes a few seconds but as soon as he is done, Bum has rolled over again.

“What the hell, are you really that much into doggy?” Sangwoo snorts, “C'mon, it's no fun if I can't see your face.”

This time, it's more difficult to maneuver Bum around. His hands are clenched in the bedroll and Sangwoo has to knock his knees aside to get at him.

Bum is full-on shaking now, one of his arms thrown across his eyes as though to hide himself. His hesitant erection is wilting again. Sangwoo wrinkles his nose, annoyed by the pathetic display.

“Geez, I'm not going to rape you,” he sighs, before grabbing Yoonbum by the hips and then pulling him forward so that his ass is snug against Sangwoo's hard cock.

Yoonbum whimpers but does not move again. His breath is shallow and rapid. Sangwoo frowns.

So far, Bum had always wanted all of this. He had wanted to kiss Sangwoo, to jerk him off, too suck him off, to kiss his feet and massage his shoulders and wash his hair. He's supposed to be begging for this, too.

In the faint moonlight streaming in through the window, Sangwoo can see the shiny scar tissue crisscrossing along the blue pulse of Yoonbum's wrist.

Dick in hand, Sangwoo takes a moment and thinks about what little he knows. Bum has never exactly been forthcoming about the details of his life, clamping up whenever the subject arose, even though Sangwoo had told him about his own past the moment they really met. He had thought that Bum was just a loser who didn't have any hobbies beside stalking, that he was embarrassed about how no one wanted to keep him around. But maybe there is more to it than that.

Slowly, he connects the dots.

“Your uncle, huh?” he says dispassionately, watching as Yoonbum flinches violently, and that's enough confirmation. It's really too much of a cliché, but Sangwoo mainly finds himself disappointed by the fact that Bum is not a virgin anymore.

He's glad he bought the condoms, though. He doesn't watch to catch anything.

“Hey,” Sangwoo reaches out, prying Yoonbum's arm away and revealing his face. Bum is crying now, the sobs raking his body, and it's really a quite pitiful sight.

Sangwoo bites the inside of his cheek.

“Stop crying, it's annoying,” he says, though it does little good. Yoonbum merely presses his other hand over his mouth, feebly trying to silence himself. His tears should be ugly and they are, but there is something about them, too. Something innocent.

Distantly, Sangwoo finds himself wondering when the abuse might have started, whether Bum had been a still a kid, whether anyone ever noticed or cared. He wonders if Yoonbum actually tried to kill himself over it or whether the cuts on his wrists were just cry for attention. He wonders whether Bum always knew he was gay or whether that realization only hit him when he came for the first time with his uncle's dick up his ass.

“Bum,” he Sangwoo says, bowing down to nuzzle his face against Yoonbum's neck, “This is our first time. I want to enjoy this with you. Don't you wanna make me enjoy it?”

His tone his persuasive, saccharine sweet. It's the voice he always uses to take Yoonbum hostage with, the one that made him understand that chains were no longer needed between them. All Yoonbum wants is to be loved and Sangwoo's words can paint such a pretty picture.

And really, a few moments later, Yoonbum's milk pale arms twine around Sangwoo's neck like the tendrils of a young plant and Sangwoo presses a sweet kiss to his tear-stained lips.

“There you go,” he whispers, “Thank you, Bum. Thank you.”

He reaches between them then to take himself in hand and guide himself in. Yoonbum is still tense, still shivering, but he hides his face against Sangwoo's chest this time and lets it happen.

The size difference between the two of them is really rather ridiculous, and Sangwoo wonders whether he could crush him just with his body weight alone. Instead, he presses farther in, until Bum's back arches, his head falls back and his mouth forms a perfect little o-shape.

Sangwoo gives a smug little smirk. That first time he'd allowed Bum to jerk him off, Bum had been blushed at how big he was, but now he was feeling the full extent of it.

Yoonbum's ass, in turn, feels incredible. It's definitely different than take a girl, the angle is a bit off, and it's even tighter than expected. Sangwoo groans lowly.

“That's it,” he praises into Yoonbum's starving ear, “You're doing so well.”

Bum lets out a stuttering breath, forcing himself to relax; then he presses back.

“Yes,” Sangwoo says, pulling out and immediately fucking back in, “You've wanted this for a long time, right?”

He thinks of Yoonbum in his shitty little apartment, splayed on the equally naked mattress and furiously fucking the dildo into himself, like an animal wanting to be mounted. A surge of arousal hits Sangwoo and sits up again, pulls Bum into his lap instead and keeps thrusting up.

Bum's crooked legs try to find purchase on the sheets but he whimpers in pain, hoists his upper body up instead, his thin arms quivering under his own weight and the force of Sangwoo's thrusts.

Soon, his hair sticks to his forehead and, when Sangwoo looks closely, he can see sweat like dewdrops collecting in the hollow of his collarbone.

Sangwooo grunts again, digging his thumbs into the grove of Bum's hipbones as he keeps him in place. And a criminal should not be leaving fingerprints, but this is more a question of an artist claiming his masterpiece.

Yoonbum, it turns out, sounds quite lovely when he comes.

Diptych.

Afterwards, Sangwoo pulls him close, so that Yoonbum's head rests against his chest. Their naked bodies are still entangled with each other, half-wrapped in the sheets. It would not work any other way. Remove one and the scene is destroyed, the meaning lost.

They belong together, juxtaposed like this. This is how it was meant to be.

Surrealism.

Yoonbum is full of surprises. Yoonbum doesn't make sense. Yoonbum does not stab him, but tries to feed him rat poison. Yoonbum begs to suck his dick, but flinches when Sangwoo brushes a strand of hair from his face. Yoonbum tries to escape but hides from the nosy police officer.

Since Yoonbum showed up, it's as though Sangwoo's world has been titled, bit by bit. At first he didn't notice, but one day he looked up and everything was off and he couldn't quite recall how things had been before.

He's not sure what to make of it. It should feel like a loss of control but instead he merely finds himself intrigued.

So he waits. And he waits. One day, he is bound to find an answer.

Impressionism.

It's a Sunday and Sangwoo does not feel like studying. His professors are always lenient with him, even when he hands in his homework late, so he's not too worried about lazing about.

They are lying on the sofa together, with some dumb action movie playing on the TV. Sangwoo's eyes are on the screen, but he isn't really watching.

He's got Bum pulled into his lap instead so that Bum lies cradled against his chest, but if he glances down along the bridge of his nose he can see the tension coiled in Bum's shoulders, in the line of his neck.

Sangwoo bought some cheap chocolates at the corner store and he's been dropping single ones into his mouth at irregular intervals.

“Hey, Bum,” he says now, chewing on another praliné, “Want a taste?”

He tilts Bum's chin up to kiss him, to push the remnants of sweetness into his mouth. The mixture of molten chocolate and saliva is honestly somewhat gross, but there is always something intimate about sharing bodily fluids with someone. Maybe Sangwoo will do him bareback after all one day. It's a nice thought for the future.

“Okay, this sucks,” he says a few minutes later when he has finally given up on the movie and is reaching for the remote control. He hesitates.

“You wanna keep watching?” he asks with a sideways glance at Bum.

Bum, fingers curled into Sangwoo's shirt, quickly shakes his head.

“Alright,” Sangwoo says and presses the off-button. The screen goes black. “Next time, you get to pick.”

He leans his head back against the armrest then, looking up at the wood-paneled ceiling. His hand comes up to settle between Bum's protruding shoulder blades.

A few minutes later, Yoonbum has fallen asleep.

Self-portrait.

It's quite strange to think that Yoonbum's life seems to be the inverse of Sangwoo's. Sangwoo killed his parents to escape them, but when Yoonbum was orphaned he ended up in the hands of his uncle. Yoonbum stalks people to get them to like him but keeps getting caught while Sangwoo kills the people who trust him too easily and no one suspects anything. Yoonbum, a really sweet gentle guy if you get down to it, but easily written off as a creep, and Sangwoo, who is constantly underestimated, misinterpreted, just because he has a nice smile.

They really are made for each other, in a macabre sort of way. Their jagged edges fit where previously Yoonbum had cut his wrists with them and Sangwoo had sliced through people. They fit and they match and someday, maybe, they will even merge and become one, indistinguishable from one another. Maybe it's already started.

“I love you,” Sangwoo says and the words quietly echo off the steamed up bathroom walls. He brushes the wet hair out of Bum's face, laying him bare, even though they are both already naked.

“I love you,” he repeats and Yoonbum's eyes are black mirrors, reflecting Sangwoo's madness back at him.

Abstract.

Yoonbum's gaze is liquid, his voice gossamer. He's a whore who learns to ride Sangwoo's cock with little prompting. He still cries sometimes, lachrymose as he is, though most days he is more demure than deceitful. He kisses like he smiles, with panic crouching at its edges, but he is always there when Sangwoo returns after vagrant hours, and usually that is enough.

He's a parasite who has dug his roots into Sangwoo's flesh, or maybe its a symbiosis, or maybe they are not living things at all.

So they fall asleep next to each other and there's something cathartic about the sunrise now, something almost sanguine.

Sangwoo thinks of slaughter and of the steel he keeps in his basement. Yoonbum mumbles in his sleep, rolls over to bury his nose in Sangwoo's side of the pillow.

Death, Sangwoo knows, would really be too easy.