Work Text:
In the hotel Sy has escaped to:
Seokyoon is already curled up in bed and thinking of him when he gets the call.
“Come back to me, little lamb..”
The sound of the words, hushed and cooing, cut through the phone. In that instant, Seokyoon wishes he had set the call to record, because the sharp puncturing feeling through his stomach at the noise is one he wouldn’t quickly dispose of.
Maybe if he could bottle it and have it anytime he wanted, Moonjo’s will wouldn’t call to him like this. It wouldn’t immediately make him fail in his goals. He wouldn’t clamber after it- drunk on praise, on the sound of the murderer from next-door begging for him.
Seokyoon hears the beep almost from outside his body as he hits the mute button on his phone screen, a groan tearing from his lips and his hand pressed between his legs.
“Surely you’ll come back to have lunch again.. baby.. I’ve missed you.”
The words are infuriatingly sure of themselves and sinister. Moonjo acts as though he’s innocent, as though the power he exhibits with only his presence is nothing. Seokyoon groans and shuffles awkwardly, his fingers teasing on himself.
He means to press the unmute button to reply, but his body decides to squeeze a sound from deep in him, calming and sweet over the open line, and Moonjo must want him dead with the way he responds.
“Good puppy. Listen, hear what you’re missing. Come back to me.” Seokyoon is crying softly, working his hand over himself. He hasn’t pressed the mute button again. What’s the point, he’s already been caught. He’s already moldable putty in this man’s deft hands.
What you’re doing is wrong, he means to say. Or maybe, I don’t trust myself around you, or my morality was twisted and broken and I couldn’t tell until you were gone, or, I feel compelled by you, swallowed by you, your voice echoes and I need the press of your teeth on any part of me, taking me and completing me in a lovely cycle, you pretty wolf,
I’m your lamb. Hurt me, kill me, maim me and use my remains. Please, please, please- and, oh no, that got out of hand. Even his mind cant hold it's ground under the pressure of that voice.
“You wouldn’t hurt me, would you honey?” it whispers. “You wouldn’t deprive me of you..”
“Ah!” Seokyoon shouts a little at that, his fingers speeding up. Moonjo hums softly and purrs. “You’re so expressive. It’s pretty, my darling. I like how honest it is. Come back to me, my perfect lamb.”
Seokyoon’s next sound is like a sob, stringing through him in shameful response to the praise.
He’s ugly crying, alone in a hotel bed with a siren dragging him back to a place he barely got the courage to leave. Dread and entrenched longing dig their way through his stomach.
Just that voice destroys him, brings back memories of his hand being softly pressed, scalpel in fingers, to the chest of a victim. The feeling terrifies him, but it also stings somewhere in his breast in a sort of pleasure-pain.
“You’re a mess,” Moonjo whispers. “I can hear it.” Seokyoon lets out a sob that is half internal groan.
“Meet me at Eden. I think it’s time I showed you something”
Seokyoon is shuddering and sobbing, bereft as the line clicks dead.
Sy throws a hoodie over his tank top and heads towards his doom. He travels through the train station and then, towards Eden, like he has done far too many times before. As he watches the buildings, he is unusually unafraid of being out after dark.
He thinks about his neighbor. Not Moonjo, but the one who had disappeared shortly after he moved in. The man had looked and acted eerily similar to Moonjo, and introduced himself as "Kihyuk".
Seokyoon thinks now that he knows more about Eden, Kihyuk might've been a killer too. It was in the way he smiled and how he held his hands, somewhat similarly to Moonjo.
Kihyuk had been easier to talk to, had seemed simpler- not stupid- but had fewer complicated motivations.
He'd been more blunt- unlike Moonjo, who's expression of his wishes was like a winding snake, an incessant and insidious climbing vine.
Kihyuk was the type of man you'd avoid on the way to your room, and he would've been easier to fight than Moonjo. He still awoke something squirming and desperate in Seokyoon's gut, but he had been more predictable.
Laughably, Seokyoon almost missed him, and the time before Moonjo had shown himself. Because oh god, pretty Moonjo, decadent Moonjo was so much worse. Manipulative Moonjo and his sweet voice, his eyes twin vehicles of hypnotism. Seokyoon is sure he could've survived Kihyuk if it meant forever being free of their pull.
Well, maybe that's where Kihyuk had gone: away, defeated. Taken in by the same pull that drew him forward.
As he enters the doorway of Eden, Moonjo is instantly present, gesturing. “This way..”
He’s under the spell. He’s dizzy, he’s imagining Moonjo’s hands around a cup, encompassing it, tipping it to his lips. He’s not sure if it’s a memory or a wish. In his mind, his neighbor is pouring poison down his throat..
His head spins. He is stopped by a familiar staircase, feet hitting the bottom step before he is aware he’s reached it. Moonjo’s hand falls to his back, turning him.
“We’re going down.”
Seokyoon is leaning into his hand, looking in front of them properly now, so as not to fall. He nearly does, though, when he hears a voice behind him and recognizes it isn’t Moonjo.
“There you are.”
It’s soft and lilting, unhurried and pleased in the same way Moonjo always is.
Moonjo’s appetite had been what enraptured Seokyoon. He recognizes that fact, as he hears it threaded through the speech of another. It isn’t simply Moonjo’s pretty face, his delicate eyelashes and the pretty curve of his neck, his shoulders and arms lean but clearly powerful.
It’s also how deeply and completely he feels want, making Seokyoon feel coveted and worthy of chasing after. He remembers the sigh of hedonism on Moonjo’s lips as the knife had been pressed into his hand, a big palm on his waist, steering him towards the sobbing captive he is meant to butcher.
This new voice is similarly covetous and grasping. It’s smiling, the curve of the speaker’s lips evident in the pronunciation of the words.
“You were right, Doctor, this one is worth holding out..” the new voice says. A hand lands on his shoulder, but he is petrified of turning. “You always do make me wait...”
Seokyoon lets out a gasp as he feels the edge of a knife touch his uncovered shoulder, head finally swiveling in panic. The blade is lifted and he hears a soft chuckle.
Behind him is a smiling man he’s never met, smaller than Moonjo in stature but equally as imposing. His neck is adorned with what Seokyoon thinks he recognizes as human teeth fastened to a chain, white charms on metal links that sit on his chest. He has a pretty face that could’ve been cute in another circumstance, but is the picture of hedonism and violence in its current capacity. Of course his lips are pretty, he eats. Of course his wrists have that lovely shape, he probably uses their delicate force with untoward ends.
He seems far more furious than Moonjo, exuding a sharp sadism born of fundamental frustration. Seokyoon could see him liking movement and violence, where Moonjo eats like a spider, draining and cooing and swallowing with an inhumanly red tongue and wetness on his lips- the words, ‘human meat’ their last grace.
But this stranger probably screams and uses his shoulders when he hits. He probably treasures the substance of human flesh just to rob it of its animation, to thrust it into object-hood. He probably squeezes, he probably smiles when he does.
His hands, smaller than Moonjo’s but pretty, grasp Seokyoon’s bare shoulder slowly and deliberately apply tension. Is he a doctor too?
Seokyoon catches himself asking the question, voice quiet.
“One of your dentist colleagues?”
“No, darling. But he does know about bodies from experience.. much like I do.”
Seokyoon remembers the incident that made him run, in vivid detail- the cold press of the scalpel in his fingers and the sweet call in his ear, one hand on his waist and another on his shoulder.
The praise had been a purr, encroaching on him like smoke, slithering under his skin and into his space without his consent. It made his stomach flutter in time with the moans in front of him. His brain had re-contextualized the sounds, cruelly.
But it also knew what they were, somewhere deep. Knew their context and still wanted them. The pain is part of Moonjo’s meal and Seokyoon knows it, it’s the person he stabs with his incisors and swallows with pleasured groans, not the meat. Seokyoon respects it somewhere fundamentally. It’s a sacrifice, and for that reason some part of him, trembling in horror and deep joy, wants to get the most out of a death if it’s going to happen. What would Moonjo say, what’s murder if it isn’t art, a waste of good material and a mess?
What’s death if it’s not bent towards the pleasure of a god? A god like Moonjo, or like himself. Both of them take, and their vengeance is right. Like deities they are capable of wrath, a holy wrath without explanation. Holy pleasure, holy pain.
Seokyoon is a small god, a hungry boy that likes plush sweetness- hands on him and coos of pleasure mixed with the types of crying only end of life can conjure. Moonjo wants to remind him of that- that he isn’t cruel- not without reason. But if he has one, well..
He doesn’t mind the hurt, or the cruelty. His tired brain is so sick of horrible dreams and pain, it could gorge itself on attention in any form. It wants sharp hands on him, his fate only a reassurance. It wants the monumental importance of watching death, of being alive and seeing somebody else suffer.
Is that power? Maybe, as a little god, and the kept concubine of Moonjo’s grasping empire, he eats screams and cries, whether his own or at his feet…
“Good find, baby..” purrs the stranger behind him, seeming to abandon his aloofness in order to coo, and going from disaffected and distant to close and soft. Seokyoon is sure he doesn’t use the word “baby” that often, unlike Moonjo. “Down, sweetheart” he says, and pushes Seokyoon so he startles and begins his descent again.
Sy is sure he won’t survive this. He’s seen Moonjo break his smoothness to push harshly before, and it was during somebody else’s murder. Maybe today, it’s his.
He’s sure he’s being lead to a dungeon and he should struggle, but the new man is holding a knife and Seokyoon can still hear the phrase “from experience” in his mind. He would be very surprised if Moonjo and his companion didn’t know how to fight.
Don’t you wanna see, though? A traitorous part of his mind whispers. Don’t you want to see how badly these beasts want you?
The big door to the basement squeaks open, and in a daze Seokyoon lets it. He thinks this is it, your last chance to get away but his limbs feel numb and there are two hands on his shoulders- one of Moonjo’s and one of the intoxicating new stranger's. They push him into a chair through the basement door and Seokyoon can hear the smile in the deep laugh behind him that sounds.
He registers a little that he wants to hear the new man talk again, and then that he’s a fool for wanting it. He’s like a bug, trembling in masochism as it is wrapped in spider-silk.
Do spiders ever pierce their prey, making them docile and sweet, like vampires? Do they bite and then softly bundle their meals?
“Who are you?” He manages to ask, not even really expecting an answer.
But, his voice cuts off and his chest suddenly feels hollow at the sight of a man beaten and bloody on the floor of a cell. It’s the gangster, barely recognizable through a sheen of blood and a marred tapestry of bruises.
Ah. Art.
He’d seemed like a decent guy, even going so far as to warn Seokyoon. Now he’s groaning weakly, looking up at the pair of predators and their unwitting accomplice.
“Yoon Jongwoo,” says the stranger and it takes Seokyoon a moment to realize his question is being answered, the stranger is Yoon Jongwoo. “Jongwoo” smiles and tilts his head, looking like a cat. “Wanna gut him, baby? ”
Seokyoon trembles as Jongwoo’s hand ever so softly grips his wrist. He’s smiling, a soft thing, his eyes shining and the knife levied. Seokyoon dimly registers he is being given the weapon, having it pressed into his palm.
“Don’t worry, Moonjo has mentioned you,” he says in a sort of doting tone, his hand finding Sy’s trembling wrist. “I know you wanna be forced.. coerced” his hand slides up Sy’s arm, the knife loosely held in trembling fingers. “Used..”
At that his quarry whines, lets out a sob like a child- as Jongwoo lets out soft responding coos, transferring his hands to Sy’s waist and running fingertips up his side.
His mouth is near his ear as he whispers, “Don’t you wanna be my rage? His sweet deliverance? Would you do that for me, pretty please?.. oh sweetheart, look, you’re shaking.”
So much for his previous assumption this man went light on the pet names. The sudden abundance of them has him shaking and almost moaning in the chair, humiliated and exalted and a horrifyingly ecstatic mix of the two.
“Hmm, tell you what, puppy..” the stranger’s finger rubs softly under his chin. Instead of feeling horror, he thinks, wow, they’re deliberate, clean fingers, delicate almost. Delicate and violent and so, so pretty. “Cmere. Let me hold you, and dance.”
———
His arm is lifted, like a puppet’s, as they crouch next to the crying ball of flesh. It is begging through it’s gag incomprehensibly as Jongwoo presses himself along Sy’s back, leaning on his shoulder.
Seokyoon things he knows what the gangster would say if he could, or at least he imagines it. Maybe,
‘You seemed alright. Please spare me. Were you their’s all along?’
He wants to cry, no, no I’m..
I’m..
He doesn’t have an explanation good enough, and it makes his mind seperate strangely from his body, watching his struggle from above.
I’m.. I’m..
His wrist is clenched in violent fingers, so deceptively strong. The man behind him has shifted to get a better grip, as he’s sitting there in a daze. His hand is maneuvered into a fist and secured on the knife’s handle.
“Listen, baby..”
Jongwoo’s whisper in his ear cuts loudly through through his mental fog, bringing him back in exactly the moment his hand is guided down, piercing the squirming flesh beneath him. The sound is like rebirth. It’s horrifying and beautiful, and he feels himself treasure it as hands run along his jaw. He’s trembling, held, buried in screams.
Oh right, Moonjo is still here, and doesn’t do well without touching.
Jongwoo jerks upward, still holding Seokyoon and the knife, and blood flows from the gangster’s chest, soaking his shirt. The man’s face is slick with spit and tears and he’s crying, moans and screams fighting through the cloth of the gag.
Another plunge, faster this time, and another, and another. The flesh beneath him is pliant- is waiting, is so perfect for the pretty man behind him, who doesn’t hesitate, whose body is frenzied and tense as he thrusts the blade up, and down, until the movement from under him dissolves into bloody silence.
But Seokyoon is still crying. The knife falls to the floor as his hand is released, and he nearly falls limp, only supported by Jongwoo, whose hands move to his armpits and then his ribcage.
“Lovely..” Jongwoo coos. He feels a nose along his neck, nuzzling, and then Jongwoo tips him backward onto his chest. “Shhh, sleep..”