#before (?) taeil left for jp?

[eclipsenoir]

“what have you done to yourself?”

@antiresolution + this thing

The night was rapid-falling through the hours for pitch-black dusk until the point of touching ungodly territory, much like a voice, throttled with fear, could climb octaves to a deafening shriek. Following it was an ominous quietness in the gym, dawning in the stifled corners and burying in cracks and fissures of the old place. A little later came Wenhan, with his ever-engulfing presence and his familiar smell, permeating the air with the obscure nature of a shiver passing through a landscape.

Taeil perks up at the sound of a door slamming shut. Abandons the punching bag he’d been hurting for a time so long he couldn’t bother to keep count, and brings unprotected knuckles to light’s scrutiny, where Wenhan can see. Taeil doesn’t attempt to flee the other’s vigilance and instead meets him in earnest with a brushstroke of purple hues colouring across a cheekbone in greeting. Dusts the moon’s caress from them with his violence. What hardness he possessed just two minutes ago falters briefly, a crack in the earth, before he picks it back up. Stolen more by the blinding agony finally finding peace and pulsing in his bones than the hands that belatedly reach for him.

“What have you done to yourself?” He hears Wenhan question in mandarin, the dip of concern in his tone doing little to soothe. Taeil closes both ruined fists in his palms and feels his skin pull taut and raw around bone, like leather. As a fool would, he grins despite.

“What does it look like? I’m destroying my hands to keep some steam off my balls. You know how it goes, don’t you?” He responds in korean, bluffing. “Oh, I know... Since you came, swing at me.”

“You’re hurt, you idiot.”

This time Taeil twists his tongue around chinese syllables. “No, I can handle it. I’ve been through worse before so this is nothing. Now come on, hit me.”

“I will if you don’t stop.”

“You think I’ll stop? Don’t be a pussy, Wenhan. Hit me just once–”

Wenhan suddenly strikes him with the speed of a crack-whip. Lightnight clutches at his jaw as he catches on a hairsbreadth too late. But being in possession of experience and reflexes, instinctively softening the blow, Taeil clenches his teeth and his eyelids shut as his neck twists sideways, away from the fist that lights up his vision. The shock of such an abrupt attack seals all noise he could release hostage within his sternum, but the exchange for such pressuring impedance is borrowed awareness. So he backpedals with just two steps back, and forces recovery quickly enough in anticipation of the next blow that doesn’t really follow up.

Across from him, Wenhan is still rooted still in the blurred shadows, flexing hard knuckles like he hadn’t just squarely decked someone in the jaw. The lamplight crowds around the joints, his dark eyes, highlighting the perfect arch of his nose; the splitting image of a phantom. Taeil approaches him again with what might be idiocy dressed in bravery, this time taking an offensive stance with bare shoulders squared. Under a dark sweep of lashes linger the piercing regard of his gaze, saturated with equal parts of controlled concentration and amusement. His stomach clenches viciously with pleasure and his jaw burns scarlet.

“You actually fucking hit me.” Murmurs Taeil, cracking uglily bruised knuckles and trying to wear an incredulity that’s quickly dwarfed by his swelling delight. Up close, the bleak light casts harsh angles on his face and equals his cheekbones to Wenhan’s own. Washed in it they look like two blades without their sheaths, though not matching at all in sharpness.

For the first time since he’d come in, Wenhan smiles, carried onto his handsome face by a fleeting chuckle. It doesn’t reach his eyes. “You were whining too much... I did you a favour.” Then he shifts out of place and starts to widen their berth, only slightly.

Taeil follows those footsteps made of air, keeping his own pace steady, flatfooted and toes engaged as his fists. “Fuck you. I didn’t actually think you’d do it but now I know for sure that you will, try again. Allow me the pleasure of a spar with you, for real this time.”

“I’m going to make you regret this.”

“I don’t care. Fists and legs.”

This time Taeil is the first to strike and in his wake, causes a fell surge of fists to take flight between them, knuckles carrying harnessed fury and reaching destinations unplanned. Some only kiss the stuffy breeze coming from the cracked window nearby. The world becomes a blur of limbs and laboured panting, rocking to and fro with a near sultry undertone. But instead of a spar, to Taeil it feels more like a dance on waters mirroring heaven. Wenhan being so fleet-footed, with his dragged soles across the cold floor, was a tempting mirage. Moving in such a way a professional performer would claim their stage; a sort of graceful edge of raw artistry at his heel that Taeil himself lacks. 

But Taeil thinks he doesn’t need it, for after all, brute force had always been his forté. He forgets fast about protesting bones, a sore jaw and seamlessly counters every lunge, parries around Wenhan’s fists and legs, and swings his own with blitzing speed. Unhesitant to break any bone or floodgates of red. Going into the offensive, then defensive, recovering with the diligence of a feline; he’s a reckoned force in his element, a two-sided blade pirouetting in a ballroom.

Finally, the night sighs outside, as if it already saw the truth in the very first jab, when the staccato tune the two had been waltzing through finally crescendos, then flatlines entirely into a shared spool of heat and threaded silence.