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Fall arrives in a haunting battering of ocean wind and gauzy fog rolling in from the tide. The west end of the island becomes home to an outcropping of brightly colored mushrooms, what Yangyang’s grandmother called fairy circles. He’s always accidentally killing them where they stand, flattened little heads that deliver toxic spores where he walks.
Fall also delivers Hendery back from purgatory. He’s been gone for a month, Kun had said it’d be better this way. That Yangyang didn’t need to see the aftermath. The aftermath of Hendery being chewed half to death by a werewolf and growing extra teeth. It’d be good this way, Hendery in the safety of the pack, ripping himself to shreds under the full moon.
Yangyang didn’t like that. Not his Hendery, soft-skinned and loyal, turned into something needing a cage. His Hendery didn’t bite. He didn’t have the claws for it, just a smart grin and white teeth.
Things change though, like Hendery being nearly decapitated in his own backyard, change. Yangyang hates change. Ten chides him for it because it's a bad habit to have when you’re roped into the primordial unremitting afterlife of being a bloodsucker.
He doesn’t know why it makes him so nervous, Hendery being back.
He remembers the first time he’d spoken to Hendery. It’d been a night during the summer, a humid night spent out on the beach with Donghyuck and Renjun. He’d fed that night, messy and coarse with grains of sand mixing with the blood on his shirtfront. They’d ended up in the 24 hour convenience store, looking for popsicles, that was Donghyuck’s thing. Having something in his mouth to annoy Renjun. Donghyuck’s other thing was pushing Yangyang into handsome strangers. Hendery’s hand had been faltering and impossibly soft where he caught Yangyang by the small of his back, saving a shelf from becoming yet another casualty of the night.
Donghyuck shuddered with a laugh a few rows down, Hendery didn’t know that, he was human and could probably only hear the way borrowed blood pounded in Yangyang’s chest.
Yangyang remembers the way his chest ached, just for a second, righting himself and taking a step back, human warmth imprinted on his lower back and the sound of blood rushing. Staring unabashedly at Hendery who stood in the middle of that convenience store, school uniform damp from fog and charming in the way you’d think about small animals. The swiftness of his heartbeat and how he’d looked so sweet Yangyang wanted to crush and kill him. He briefly wonders if this is how Renjun feels around Donghyuck.
“Hey,” Hendery had said, in his low voice, sweet and cloying. He said it like a question.
It made Yangyang smile, stepping backwards with a full mouth of bright sharp teeth. “Hi.”
And that had been the end of the beginning, before the walks together and revolving around each other’s usual haunts. Hendery’s being the edge of the filmy soccer field, early in the morning, shingled with dew and cut grass. Yangyang’s was a little different, drifting in and around places where Renjun wouldn’t bitch about a world-class sunburn, like the old psych ward and the elderly cemetery at night.
While Hendery was gone, Yangyang was forced to third-wheel with Renjun and Donghyuck, trailing behind them on cold morning beach dates. Xiaojun never wanted to leave the house, reserved to keep his head in a book or watch Mark Lee through the attic window like a creep. That left Yangyang to watch uncomfortably as Renjun linked hands with Donghyuck’s dainty white gloves, parading their melancholic romance over Yangyang’s head. He wanted to gag but mostly he wanted Hendery back so he could take him on a stupid foggy beach walk instead.
“Stop scowling you’re scaring the birds,” Donghyuck tells him, dainty features pinched in a look of disdain. He hated moping. He also hated Yangyang scaring his birds, his eager carnivorous creatures with brutal beaks and pearly feathers ruffling in the bay breeze. Donghyuck tossed a chunk of raw meat out onto the beach for them to scrap over.
Yangyang wanted to hiss at him, or throw a rock but instead he just scowled deeper when Renjun took a napkin from his pocket to clean the red of fresh meat from Donghyuck’s fingers before slipping the gloves back on.
“Listen,” Donghyuck starts, absently stroking Renjun’s cheek as a thank you, “Just because your boy is gone for a few weeks doesn’t mean your life is over. You’re a vampire, it already is. You have centuries to live and you can’t spend the rest of your existence sulking.”
Yangyang wants to tell him that he so could if he wanted but there’s no use arguing with Donghyuck. Donghyuck is like this annoying little 700th century soul in the body of a nineteen-year-old goth ballet prodigy. There’s no fighting him. Or Renjun, who despite being Yangyang’s brother, never intervenes in his and Donghyuck’s squabbles.
“Whatever,” Yangyang bites, no real malice behind it, “I’m going to go home so you two can be disgusting by yourselves.”
While he’s trudging away, he thinks he hears a faint thank fuck from Renjun but decides it would be better for himself to pretend it was just the wind.
He doesn’t go home, not yet. He wants to make a stop first.
The graveyard is overgrown and marshy in places, if Yangyang didn’t have the primal adaptation of not tripping over his own feet he’d probably have trouble navigating the slopes. Wildflowers swim in pools of miniature valleys between burial sites and moss covers the earth in a downy cloud of green.
Grave water slushes up against Yangyang’s boots as he picks his way to the back of where the iron-wrought gate encircles this little crush of woodland, visible from the high school.
It’s quieter there, Hendery always liked this place best. There’s proof carved into the gnarled oak, Y + H, carved with the bite of a sharpened pocket knife.
Yangyang sighs out, breath puffing out cold and parting at the fog. He lets himself miss him here, drops the posturing and sulky frown for something a little more honest. Something he’s scared he’s losing the longer he’s dead, undead.
He misses Hendery like a lung, it’s painful and whittling and makes him nervous in a way he’s never felt before. Like dreams of losing something, the panic ebbs in his throat like can’t figure out where Hendery went. Like he’s a base need. He is.
That night there’s a cracking noise at the front door, the crash of a valuable vase, and the sound of Ten’s archaic latin cursing.
Then, there’s Yangyang’s name being called from downstairs.
Nobody had to call him, Yangyang could smell it, Hendery, and something musky too like wet dog. Renjun is there propping him up in the frame of the front door, he’s sopping wet and crumpled and unlike how Yangyang is used to.
“You’re back?” Yangyang asks immediately, stepping towards him, needing to feel him. Something was wrong.
Hendery doesn’t answer, eyes opening and closing and visibly shivering.
“Hunters,” Renjun explains, having no trouble holding up Hendery’s hollow frame. “Seelie pond, they must have taken him on the moon. Get him from me please, he smells like dog.”
If Yangyang needed air he would have gasped. Instead he took Hendery, not prepared for the feeling of skin on skin. He’s soaked, nearly blue and dripping all over Ten’s foyer.
“Take him up to your room, Yang, get him some clothes and we’ll call Kun to make sure they’re okay.” Ten looks worried but Yangyang is almost sure it’s worry for his floor varnish and not for the hypothermic werewolf.
Yangyang does what he’s told, carrying Hendery to his bedroom and distributing him on his bed. He looks bad.
“Hendery, can you talk?”
There’s just a shiver at first, and Yangyang gets a look at his face. He’s missing his usual healthy glow. He looks gaunt, shadows contouring his eyes and chin deeper. He’s still devastatingly handsome.
Hendery coughs a little, “Yeah.”
It doesn’t sound promising but Yangyang can work with it. “I’m going to change you into different clothes alright?”
Hendery nods.
Peeling off his clothes is a bit of a process with how they stick to his body, plastered with pond water and crushing easily under Yangyang’s wanting hands. Hendery shivers up against him, sniffling.
“S’cold,” he whines somewhere into Yangyang’s pulse. His breath is cold and makes Yangyang shiver.
“One sec Hen,” he palms up Hendery’s back, doing his best to warm him up from the outside in. It doesn’t work too well because there’s Hendery’s cupidity for warmth, pressing impossibly closer. His chest and shoulders are bony, reminding Yangyang of a doe or a small bird, his thin intricate inner workings pressing forward with a fondness for life.
Yangyang’s hands fumble deftly for the waistline of his pants.
Hendery stills for a moment, slender fingers halting in their venture up Yangyang’s back and burrowing into his sweater.
“Okay?” Yangyang inquires, wanting to make quick work of getting Hendery into new clothes.
Hendery mumbles something muffled into Yangyang’s neck that he doesn’t hear very well and when he taps on Hendery’s throat to ask him to repeat it Hendery tells him, “Don’t look at my dick.” Yangyang laughs.
Yangyang doesn’t look, he’s too focused on how it worries him that Hendery can’t seem to shake the cold fast enough.
He stares at Hendery’s back, swallowing hard, fixated on how his shoulder blades jut out like delicate wings, moving under soft skin. There’s something innately avian about it. Like a thin-boned bird, lithe and striking, like he’d blink his big owlish eyes and lift into the sky if Yangyang didn’t grab him fast enough.
Hendery slides the sweater over his head, disappearing under the fabric then comes back up for air. He’s almost drowning in it and it makes Yangyang’s lungs swell with a deep sigh.
“It’s so, so big on me,” Hendery tells him, throat raw.
“Don’t complain, it’s cute,” Yangyang chides, stepping forward to roll Hendery’s sleeves to an acceptable length.
Hendery ducks his head at that, bashful and glowing under the lamplight.
Yangyangs tongue curls kittenish into the back of his mouth, fingers tightened around Hendery’s wrist. He doesn’t want to speak, he doesn’t trust himself.
That’s when things go to shit and Hendery slips forward, knees buckling and eyes fluttering shut.
Yangyang isn’t the most perceptive of his kind, but in hindsight, not noticing the telltale signs of wolfsbane poisoning was a bit of an ammature move on his behalf. Donghyuck would say that’s because Yangyang is sick and demented and wanted to eat Hendery so bad he didn’t even notice that drowning had been the least of his worries. Whoever had pushed Hendery must have pricked him with it.
Yangyang has to suck it out. That terrifies him.
He never wanted to do this, which is a lie but he’d never wanted to act on it. Thinking about holding Hendery down and biting him open is different from actually doing it, Yangyang learns.
“I’ve have to bite you Hen,” he hates this. “It’s the only way to get it out of you. Is this okay?”
Hendery’s eyes flutter for a moment before he nods, swallowing. His eyebrows draw together and he whines, pawing at Yangyang’s shirt. “Yeah, yeah.” He doesn’t look like he can say more than that.
There’s remorse when Yangyang mouths over his pulse, seeking out the rushing warmth under his skin. He can hear his heart beating so fast, like a field mouse.
He bites down, nothing at first then, blood, tangy with poison but so, so, sweet underneath. It's almost too easy, biting through the soft muscle. It makes him feel like protecting Hendery so much more, hyper aware at how easily his skin breaks. It makes Yangyang whine, shoving closer, cherishing the give that came with being alive. How Hendery’s skin was so soft and easy to sink his fingers into, pulse battering at his throat like wings in a cage.
He mourns the mouthful that he pulls away to spit out, it’s a great waste and an ugly scene. Caring for Hendery can be ugly though, his sweet precocious Hendery doesn’t need to be easy just needs to live, another inhale of blood. This one doesn’t taste as heavy, it’s lighter and so much more-- Hendery.
The boy under him puts a hand to Yangyang’s hard stomach, not to push him away or to pull him closer, just to feel him. That makes Yangyang stutter against him, having to fight not to swallow which causes a bit of the red to dribble from the corner of this mouth. He spits then suctions more, repeating the process for a fuzzy amount of time, gripping at Hendery wherever he can get his hands. Hendery’s blood starts to run sweet when his heartbeat slows, hands weakly scrabbling at Yangyang’s shoulders.
With a final pull of just sweet, Yangyang pulls back, mouth ruddy and dripping.
Hendery is so beautiful like this, a mess of a neck and fluffy hair sticking to his forehead. Yangyang leans in to kiss his cheek, leaving a gross bloody print.
“Better?”
Hendery nods, eyes still cloudy. “Kiss me?”
Yangyang kisses him. If he tastes the coppery tang of his own blood he doesn’t say anything. Hendery has always been handsome, pretty in the way that gives you congestive heart failure or makes you commit arson. Pretty in the way that makes Yangyang want to kill things.
He read somewhere that the human urge to crush adorable things alive has a word for it, it’s called “cute aggression” or something like that, it has something to do with dopamine. Yangyang isn’t human anymore though so it’s probably just a side effect of his monster brain’s hunger for killing things.
Either way his hands are gentle when they hold Hendery’s jaw at just the right angle to kiss him senseless. There’s no violence in the way he runs his hand up Hendery’s vulnerable sides, just an unexplainable sweetness and desire to make Hendery belong to his pale shimmer.
It’s probably the congestive heart failure making his hands weak.
Hendery’s hands come up to push under Yangyang’s sweater, searching for some kind of warmth. The brush is chaste and so, so, sweet in the way that Hendery usually is.
“I missed you,” Hendery tells him, honest. Yangyang adores him. He tells him that. Hendery does his hiccupy laugh then tilts his head like he wants Yangyang back at his pulse. “Feels sticky,” he tells him, “clean it up.”
Yangyang doesn’t need a better reason to lean back in and lick over the closing wounds. It's a gentle reminder that Hendery is different now, the way his skin knits itself back together so seamlessly. Hendery gasps, hand coming up to tangle in Yangyang’s hair. Yangyang can hear his heart beating a mile a minute.
Yangyang kisses up his chest, lips dragging sweetly over the rise and fall of Hendery’s little bird chest.
“Did it hurt?” Yangyang asks, because it’s eating him up inside like a disease, the need to know if Hendery is okay.
Hendery lifts his head a bit, chin doubling in this silly attractive way that makes Yangyang suck a bruise into his ribs.
“The bite? No you were gentle,” Hendery tells him, nicely.
Yangyang’s laugh skirts up Hendery’s front, cold breath making him push closer to Yangyang. “Not that Hen, the,” he pauses not knowing what to call it, really, “your… changing.”
He tilts his head hoping that said what he meant to say, the older he gets the more words he loses. Ich hab dich vermisst rests on the edge of his tongue, that’s what he means. Bist du verletzt?
Hendery is really quiet then, busy pulling Yangyang up for a proper kiss, this one tastes less like blood and more like teenage boy.
When he pulls away he covers part of Yangyang’s chin with the palm of his hand, “It’s okay Yang, you can’t save me from everything.” A breath of air, “It hurt, it hurt so bad. But I’m all back together now, just different now ‘kay?”
Yangyang doesn’t like that answer, he hates that he wasn’t there.
“Show me how.” He props himself up over Hendery, eyes attentive and watchful.
Hendery blinks which only contributes to the growing knot in Yangyang’s chest where he thinks about how he’s laying on a boy who’s more like a deer, shaky legs and big doe eyes. His sweet creature.
Hendery laughs a little and warns him, “I, I don’t really know how to do this yet. I'm new at it.”
Yangyang nods for him to go on, needing to see the damage for himself, what happened because he was a few minutes too late.
Hendery nods too and casts his eyes down, his nose twitches like he might sneeze then he blinks hard and looks back up again.
His eyes are this warm amber, shining, his full pupils reducing to slits. He’s predatory.
His flighty little bird turned opalescent freak. Yangyang loves him so much. He says that and it startles Hendery so much he blinks his eyes back to normal.
“You love me?”
Yangyang nods, feverish, cupping the back of Hendery’s neck and kissing him right under his jaw. “I love you, I love you.” If he could dream he’d dream of this moment. Of holding Hendery under him, all warm and protected with his blood in his mouth. Telling him the truth.
Hendery laughs so cutely for a second then tells him back, “I love you too.”
Then Renjun knocks at the door and yells, “Don’t be naked! Kun is here and his kid better be alive!”