#interesting how far a string can stretch when you don't know it's there;yeo & rang

[mythvoiced]

@jeoseungsaja | the GBEP

Another world, another time, perhaps even the exact same but under whatever foreign unknown circumstances, varied ever so slightly by some unknown variable, and Rang would have lunged. Away or at Yeo.

Perhaps he'd reached out with his free arm and given Yeo enough reason to never step closer again, a slash across his face, or whatever else his hand might do before Rang has the wits to recognize or realize or redirect. Whenever he strikes out in an attempt to be the one who makes bleed and not the one who bleeds, all rationale flies out the window, because he knows he's right in those moments.

There's no self-preservation if you stop to wonder who you hurt to keep yourself alive.

But this is not that other world, not that other time, and Rang freezes up instead.

A second turns into a minute. A sea made of blood and screams roars somewhere in the back of his head where he can't access it, stuck in the tunnel between the forefront of his mind and the battlefield of his memories. A moment of tension, a moment of decision-making, a moment where his chest fills with air and keeps it trapped, a moment seemed locked in a countdown to god knows what turnaround, until Yeo finally spares him of figuring out what he'd do if he hadn't let go.

The air leaves him with a breath he can neither describe as exhale nor as inhale. He softens it only to makes it silent, bites down onto it and tries to swallow it back into his chest. Something cold drags along his arm, metal pressed into his sleeve and Rang frowns for a moment, not able to tear his gaze away from what Yeo is doing long enough to see what with.

It'd be easier to be stuck between the jaws of something.

More comfortable.

Trapped under a mountain of frantic claws and snapping teeth, begging for a saviour out of sheer habit, and not thanks to any sort of genuine belief he might get saved.

He'd always been like that, as a child. Begging and calling for help because that's what the mouth of the dying does. Had a hand actually reached through and kept him from figuring out how fast he heals missing chunks of flesh, he might have bitten it off.

Nothing quite as scary as something unfamiliar.

Nothing quite as scary as watching, still as a statue, what Yeo is up to. Wondering, if he'll bleed out on this soil because Yeo had decided to rear his head and delivery his own brand of cruelty Rang seems to have been designed to be target of.

He doesn't consider himself a victim, oh no.

He doesn't deserve it, either.

It's just the way of the world, isn't it?

The first sound he makes is a hiss, hand - blissfully freed - shooting out, nails offered first to drag along the back of Yeo's hand, a subconscious reflex to get the pain away.

Then the pain fades on its own, though. There's no further tightening, there's no willful deepening of his wound, there's no tightening it unnecessarily to teach him a lesson. When Yeo pulls away, Rang feels as lost as a puppy handed a toy rather than a slap.

He stares at Yeo as though he isn't quite sure anymore which he'd been supposed to expect from.

Yeo is a mystery to him on his best days.

He's so damned stubborn, would rather bleed for his cause than simply pick a different cause. It's always unnerved him, Rang supposes it will always unnerve him and not because... because he gives a damn about his state.

But because it's idealistic and stupid.

Because a world that is good and kind enough for someone like Yeo to snap himself in half over and over and over again simply does not exist, and if it were to exist, it would not be theirs. He'll go god knows how many more centuries bleeding to death before he'll get it through that thick skull of his, Rang supposes. There's no stubbornness quite as violent and well-rooted as that of the righteous.

And yet, Yeo doesn't feel righteous, either. Too snappish when he wants to be, but it's a farse, isn't it? Be uncouth because gentleness would only make Rang bite again.

He hates the way it feels, instantly, the moment his arm connects with Yeo, the moment his weight is being supported by someone else, the moment he feels fabric against fabric. He hisses through his teeth again until the sound turns into a snarl and if it weren't for how much his leg hurt--

Actually, perhaps, he should simply have shoved Yeo back into the ground and limped his way out of here. Left him to deal with the consequences of Rang's actions. That's what he's good at, after all. Set the world on fire because he can't stop making sparks by striking his growls against his screams.

"You're one to talk," he manages after... far too long, a mumbled half-assed snap. His hand curls where it swings over Yeo's front. He wants to drag him down and make him eat the soil beneath his feet.

He wants him to not let go.

"You're ridiculous, every second time I meet you you're covered in more scratches than what else," he risks a glance, tries to wipe the terror off his features. "How hypocritical."

[mythvoiced]

# for the foxy bros :D

@jeoseungsaja | cell phone headcanons

—

- what your muse’s name is in mine’s phone The struggle here was to determine the level of 'insulting' Rang would go for KLDGFJKLHJHKL i think it might have changed depending on affection level, where it started out as 'asshole' then moved onto just his name 'Wang Yeo' and then circled back to 'ugly bastard' but this time with a subtle affectionate undertone; later down the line, Yeo calls and someone's looking over Rang's shoulder like 'who is ugly bastard' and Rang's 'my stupid annoying loud ridiculous embarrassing older brother whom i hate', then he picks up and just 'hyung?' in the softest lil brother voice

- what your muse’s picture is in mine’s phone Somehow I don't think Rang would ever snap a picture of Yeo or god forbid ask for one, so, unless Yeo ever drags him into a picture, as in, ropes him into taking a few together, Rang would probs just put a meme or something insulting, I'm thinking either something along these lines or these KDLGJFHJLG

- what your muse’s ringtone is in mine’s phone SO proud fans of the wonderful Alex Cinematic Universe and the particular corner of it dedicated to the wonderful Wang Yeo recall that he + travelling via boat/ship = nopesters, so you MUST believe me when I say that Rang, the moment he finds out about this, would put some random sea shanty as his ringtone just to spite him; doesn't make much sense because Yeo isn't around when he's calling, technically, you'd assume that, but Rang hears it, so it's good enough.

- my muse’s last text to your muse [ txt | ugly bastard | 03:36PM ] where are u

[ txt | ugly bastard | 03:39PM ] i'm freezing my ass off here if you had other stuff to do you could have said so

[ txt | ugly bastard | 03:43PM ] are you getting mauled by something again ffs

[ txt | ugly bastard | 03:51PM ] i'm siccing yuri on you if you don't answer in 5 mins

[mythvoiced]

@jeoseungsaja​ | just because Rang felt like being annoying

“A dokkaebi? Seriously? I wouldn’t even go near one if my life depended on it, and you’re telling me you’re in love with one, you’re either lying or have horrendous taste.”

[mythvoiced]

@jeoseungsaja​ | I’M?? FKDLH i’m sorry :’3

---

“I’ve known him longer than you have.”

It’s a debate no one had invited her to start but judging from the child-like urgency with which she throws it at his chest, it’s probably important enough to her to warrant an explosive start into a conversation that doesn’t have to exist.

“And he knows I’m trustworthy, that’s why. If anyone’s to blame for Mr Rang worrying enough to send me to check up on you, then it should be you. I don’t see why you should even be allowed to make him worry like this, so why don’t you think about that?”

[mythvoiced]

@jeoseungsaja​ | WAIT, HOLD ON A MOMENT LMAOOO, I GOT ONTO THE WRONG BLOG, I'm sending those last two again on the right blog (I apologize for the inconvenience, I'm a smol sleepy quokka who's also excited to send memes all around) "Why didn't you stop me?" FOXY BROS UwU MITSKI LYRICS

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A shrug.

“It was funny to watch.”

An admission.

Rang saunters over to Yeo and plants his feet firmly near him, toothpick picking away at nothingness between teeth that aren’t nearly as sharp as he’d like them to be. No, his tongue is a much sharper blade than the molars and canines that litter his mouth as if chewed out of someone else’s insides.

It makes due, to compensate the lack of strength and the way it will never neither match nor parallel strength of the likes exhibited by the fox he’s now standing next to. It makes due, to keep everyone at an arm’s length, to make sure they fear his bite as much as they fear the venom rolling off his tongue, spit like acid at their feet and directly down their throat if they do dare step close enough.

It’s a constant cycle of self-defence, morbid and misguided, brought to light along with an attack that comes too unprompted to continue being any form of defence against any form of perceived anything.

No, Rang does as he does and says as he says even the face of morphing relationships because it’s what he knows, because the patterns he’s shoved into his internal mechanisms are safe, because he always know what they lead to, because he’s familiar with pain and ache and because he’d rather not discover what might await him if he tries opting for another route, a different path, a calmer, more joyful approach to things he actually, secretly, likes.

Like Wang Yeo.

There was no reason for Rang to stand by and let the older fox handle the scenario as wrongly as it had turned out to be, with a misunderstanding the half fox had already known about, that led the circumstances to unfold in a mess that left the older fox spouting off against someone very much innocent, very much uninvolved with whatever it is that was busying him that morning.

But why should he?

He tilts his head to the side, an eyebrow shooting up into his hairline in that typical challenge of his, that acid he’s coated his own face with, the toothpick gracing dangerously close against his gums, his other hand kept in the pocket of his expensive trousers to feign nonchalance.

Why should he?

He hasn’t seen Yeo in a while. Why should he back him up in front of anything? Why should he care about resolving a situation for him? It’s not his job to make sure he doesn’t get in trouble, it’s not within his priorities to-

Lies.

But what else is he supposed to think? Is he supposed to acknowledge that he’s petty and childish? That he let Yeo make a fool of himself because they hadn’t seen each other a while and because it’s the only way he knows how to elicit reactions out of others, irritating them with his presence, making sure he’s too unnerving to turn away from?

He makes a curious sound, a non-committal surprised something, while his eyes widen, and the corner of his lips push themselves back further to allow for a wider smile.

He pulls the toothpick out of his mouth and points it at the older’s face. “What’s that? Are you embarrassed? The great Wang Yeo? Over something like this?”

[mythvoiced]

@jeoseungsaja​ | (transports over here IUWHEDIUH) "That's quite a scratch you've got there." (Yeo at Rang?? I'M?? I'M NOT SURE IF I CAN SEND HIM THINGS THROUGH HERE? FEEL FREE TO DISMISS IF I CAN'T ;W;) 400 RANDOM DIALOGUE PROMPTS

---

He hates this part the most because oh god does he long. No other predicament makes him acknowledge the lurching of his insides and the wailing of his guts for what he’s simply not allowed to have, than moments where he’s too weak to even realise he’s looking all of this and more straight into its ugly clawed-up face, rather than stubbornly looking away from it as he so often does.

Ache and pain, synonyms of an odd kind, where the poet will hear something in the former and something else in the latter. ‘Pain’ seems so bland, so simple, so direct and typical, because it is the word that leaves lips with more frequency when offered in easy conversations, in normal conversations, when all that is being complained about is the pain of something that hurts, momentary and new, fresh and sharp and present.

But ache, ache always sounds like age, deep and ancient wounds, where the festering infection there has taken up life and will and is wailing, day in and day out, the moaning and groaning of damned souls, reaching out through Yeomra’s icy hands to demand the attention of their former selves, those they mostly don’t even recall, begging them to change their ways, do better, do smarter.

Rang usually walks around with both: the scratch, oh how funny he is, understatement king of the century, is pain, simple and direct and red and torn open. Rang holds his torn up jacket against his bleeding leg and pretends it doesn’t hurt as bad as it actually does.

The rest, ache, old, deep, familiar in the same way a recurring nightmare is, or a piece of garment worn far too long, when fabric gets too heavy and sits too wrong on the skin, when he can’t rip it off no matter how much he’d want, when his insides ooze the pus of all the ‘why’s his inner child constantly cries. Rang’s fingers shake around the wound and he pretends there isn’t a lump wedged into his throat the size of a mother’s fist.

He hates this part because he doesn’t know how he’s supposed to react to it. He looks up and looks into Yeo’s face and shatters a little beneath the gaze, because this bastard is a god-awful liar, because this bastard will take every opportunity he can get to soften his blows and try to scold him into better ways as if he actually cared about the appearance Rang’s future would take, as if someone had actually found it in them to bother telling him ‘hey, maybe this isn’t good for you’, and of course it had to be this jerk.

He shatters beneath his gaze and those words because he has a million and one responses at the ready to get him to piss off, he’s had centuries to master the art of saying the wrong thing at the right time to get the kindest of eyes to turn awry and sour around their corners - not that he’s met much kindness, his reputation precedes him, or he wears it blandly enough on his sleeve to make sure it hits people before he meets them fully.

And he shatters beneath because he doesn’t want to say them, it’s so exhausting, it hurts, it aches, pushing away this aggressively, he has so many reasons to do it, so he tells himself, he’s a master at justifying his demeanour, but Yeo keeps showing up and he seemingly keeps giving a shit or a half and Rang is pretty sure his brain is shutting down at the pain in his leg and the exhaustion of a trauma weary mind leads him look at the thread holding him back and find how fragile it is tied into knots upon knots of Rang spitting whatever may be good into its ugly face.

Yuri.

No, that’s not the same.

Yuri depends on him, he’s the older brother, he’s supposed to look out for her, and he will, he does, because it’s easier, he’s found it ridiculously easy, what he has with her, the ability to pretend not to be himself because she makes him feel he just might not be, none of the mess he hides, just the bastard fox she looks up to because she likes the way he solves both problems and situations that aren’t with hard enough of a kick to leave an imprint.

Truth is, though, he never got to depend. Enter Yeo, and he walks with the ease and the slouch of someone who’s lived twice as much as Rang and seen ten times as much, but still decided to look at the world and fight for it.

That stupid attitude of his to get himself into trouble because he wants to look out for and protect people who don’t even know he exists, because he wants to right every wrong in existence, because he’d rather see himself brightly lit aflame than let a single innocent soul even come close to a still glowing piece of ash, and what does that make him? Does that mean he isn’t innocent? A knight with blood on his armour, and isn’t that beautifully realistic?

Isn’t Yeo real? In contrast to Rang’s stagnant nature, and the way he’s been staring into his face with a mental tremble he can’t shake and a thousand questions he doesn’t want to pose, who are you? What are you? Why do you act that way? Why do you care about so many things and so many people and when will you leave me? What for? When will you let me know, can I know the reason you’ll want to forget about me before it hits, so I can prepare for it?

It’s the only thing he gets, the ‘because you’re a monster’, so he needs to hear it, he needs to cling onto it, he needs to have it confirmed again and again and again because if people leave him for anything else, then, then what? How could that be, he isn’t any more than that, what else would it be? Not a single thing to stay for, his monster to leave for.

He drops his gaze and laughs, breathless and barely a sound out of his lips. He keeps staring at the way his knuckles are turning white against the red fabric, because only if he clutches it hard enough can he pray in earnest that Yeo won’t be able to see the trembling.

Why would Yeo care?

He has so much.

Never mind that other fox, and whatever her deal was, Rang hadn’t the guts to stick around long enough to even know her name directly from her mouth, and he’s not about to ask Yeo for an introduction. Never mind whoever makes Yeo stare into the air as if he’s found everything and more, all in the hands of someone else.

Yeo has a goal, too. A purpose. Whatever he did in his past, he atones for it. Whatever he wants to achieve in the future, he works for it. Rang can see it in the determination in his eyes, the swing of his sword, the way his feet fall on the ground, an elegance as if trained within palace walls, and the firm features of someone who won’t be deterred, because he’s doing the right thing, or thinks he is at least, because Rang never asks what it is he actually does and what he does it for and why would Yeo care when Rang doesn’t bother showing he does?

“Oh, you know,” he tries, and maybe his ears are ringing a little and maybe he can’t tell how harshly he’s breathing and he doesn’t know if it’s the numbness crawling up his leg and the coldness starting somewhere near it or how he’s not actually focusing enough to be pressing the jacket down on the wound to stop any sort of bleeding.

And he aches. He longs, because there’s so much he... 

“What’s playfighting with beings stronger than you without a few scratches to show for it?” He doesn’t have it in him, his jaws don’t come down, the bite lacks and never touches his words, instead he sounds as if he’s... well, joking, as if this is fine, as if he’s always been this self-deprecating and hasn’t he, sort of? Doesn’t he like to bully himself the most, out of all the options he frustratingly vocalises?

“We can’t all be so good at holding our own in a fight as you are, hyu-”

He freezes. Because he longs, and because the ring glistening through the button he’d lost burns into his chest every time he thinks of it and every time he believes to sniff something out that can’t remind him...

Because he just wants to belong, just once.

“Ah, this is pointless,” he throws the jacket to the ground with all the pent-up whatever shaking its way through his fingers and hopes to just have hell open up before him now, dragging him into its widest mouth, impaling him on its sharpest fangs.

Then he shoves at Yeo’s chest - get him out of the way, make him move, make him move, please just go, just go - because he’s in the way and he can’t stand up like this - shaky knees, the hand pressing into the ground to get him into a crouching position almost snaps at the wrist with the angle, the palm that reaches the older fox barely brushes against the fabric of his shirt.

“Get out of the way, how do you expect a guy to bleed to death in peace if you hover like that, huh?”