Ship/Member: Chan/Soonyoung Major Tags: violence, murder, minor character death Additional Tags: some blood, mention of alcohol & drugs, mourning the death of past selves Permission to remix: Please ask
(also posted on AO3) I had a lot of fun writing this
Chan is the first casualty. Chan was always going to be the first casualty.
Dino steps away with bloodied hands that will never be washed clean.
***
The first thing Chan learns is that Hoshi is not Soonyoung. Because Soonyoung wasn't Hoshi and it makes him shiver to think that maybe, maybe Soonyoung was never Soonyoung to begin with.
There is hidden machinery beneath Soonyoung’s face, Chan knows, small thin pieces of technology he doesn’t quite understand that runs along the right side of his face— he could trace over it with his eyes closed. There is hidden machinery beneath Hoshi’s face, Chan watches as it glows in the darkness of the night like neon veins stretching from his temple to his chin, like venom. It pulses with bioluminescence, something too animal to be machinery, and Chan wonders if it really is technology at all, if it ever was.
Hoshi catches him looking and smiles.
His smile, too, is like Soonyoung’s. It reminds Chan of winter, of a snowy dawn and tears running down his face. Soonyoung had been there — Soonyoung had always been there — for him. An anchor, keeping him grounded even when the waves had threatened to pull him from the shore and down into the depths. Snowflakes had clung to Soonyoung’s dark hair like little stars in an empty sky. Hoshi’s hair now is silver-white as if the snowflakes had melted and bleached it, his gaze is cold, but his smile is still everything Chan remembers.
The second thing Chan learns, shortly after the first, is the sound of a dead body hitting the floor. The sound of flesh falling into a pool of its own blood. The sound of Hoshi putting his gun back in its holster.
Chan is still Chan and he doesn’t dare look— doesn’t dare take his eyes off Hoshi.
“You’re going to have to come with me.” Hoshi says, but it’s Soonyoung who continues, “It’s not safe for you here now.”
“You’ve seen too much.” Hoshi says with Soonyoung’s voice.
Chan is prepared to mourn the Soonyoung he knew but the way Hoshi holds his hand out, the way Hoshi’s fingers intertwine with his, the way Hoshi helps him up and leads him away— it makes him pause. Soonyoung was never Hoshi, Soonyoung was gone before Chan ever could’ve known— but some of Chan’s Soonyoung still exists in Hoshi.
And that is a very different kind of mourning.
The third thing Chan learns is the weight of a gun in his hand.
His hand is shaking and he cannot stop it. He feels Hoshi’s unimpressed glare at the back of his head. His hand is shaking more than the person in front of him; the person whom Hoshi had gagged to stop the string of pleads and begs spilling from their lips.
“Any time today, if you will.” Hoshi’s voice is devoid of emotion yet dripping with disdain, with the venom that he’d gotten Chan to paint on his nails.
Hoshi doesn’t say his name, he never says Chan’s name— Chan wishes he would, just once.
“I can’t—” Chan’s voice is so much quieter than he’d meant to be, echoing in the warehouse and so much smaller beside Hoshi’s commanding presence.
“I can’t.” Hoshi parrots back at him, scoffing “You aren’t a child anymore, stop acting like one.”
The gun is heavy in his hand, the cold metal like needles into his palms from how tightly he’s gripping it. He knows all the parts— had learnt them over and over again, taking apart the gun and putting it back together under Hoshi’s careful watch until he could recognise each piece with his eyes closed.
There are tears running down his face now, tears that he wipes on his sleeve as quickly as he can before Hoshi notices. He doesn’t quite hide the little hiccups of his sobs in time though, and he can feel the faint distaste rolling off of Hoshi at the sound.
“Aim.” Hoshi’s voice is right beside his ear now, his chest almost pressed up against Chan’s back.
He listens. He follows. He places his other hand on the gun to steady himself.
“Shoot.”
Chan hesitates.
“Lee Chan.” Hoshi’s voice is a whisper now, a hiss, a viper lying in wait. His hand is on Chan’s shoulder. “Would you like to take his place instead? No? Then stop humiliating me — shoot. him.”
Chan pulls the trigger.
Hoshi lets out a low whistle as he steps around Chan and walks over to the corpse. The corpse that Chan put there. The one that Chan just shot. His shoulders are shaking again as he watches Hoshi carefully lift the corpse’s head back up off its chest. The gun slips from his sweaty hands with a loud clatter.
“A perfect shot — right between the eyes.” There’s awe in Hoshi’s voice. It makes Chan feel equal parts proud and sick to his stomach. He wishes he hadn’t done so well. “I knew you could do it, Chan.”
He wishes Hoshi would stop saying his name.
Chan is silent the whole way back to their gang’s hideout. He is silent and pale and almost completely motionless. As if it was his body that had collapsed back in the warehouse, lifeless and broken.
Perhaps it was.
There is a party thrown for him when they return, booze and drugs and cheering chants of Hoshi’s name— to the gang, Chan has no name yet but there is blood on his hands now and so he is finally one of them. Someone tries to pull him away from the crowd, their grin reveals fangs and doesn’t falter even when Hoshi steps between them and Chan with a raised eyebrow.
“C’mon, Hoshi, the kid just got his first kill — he needs a tat from The8.” They pout in a way that could almost be innocent, if Chan didn’t know where he was.
Hoshi turns to him, eyebrow still raised. It takes Chan a moment to realise it’s a question.
“Oh, uh, I don’t know…”
“It’s a tradition though, you have—”
Hoshi drags Chan away before he can hear the rest of their sentence and he is beyond grateful.
They’re in Hoshi’s corner of the living space when Chan finally finds (aided by the alcohol in his system) the courage to ask—
“Hyung,” he starts, waiting for Hoshi to finish his sip of his own beer bottle first before continuing, “do you have a tattoo?”
Hoshi laughs, twisting in his seat to pull his jacket down just enough to give Chan a glimpse of the dark ink running across his back and over one of his shoulders— although Chan doesn’t get a good look at what the tattoo actually is.
The following silence is neither unsettling nor comfortable, the sound of the party dying down but still audible through the metal walls of the hideout. In this moment of peace, Chan finds himself mourning, now that he has the time to. His fingers are still stained with crimson no matter how hard he washes them, his old life left in ashes and left far behind where he can no longer return to. He prepares two graves although he doesn’t quite know who the second person he’s mourning is yet.
It’s in the darkness of night, swinging in barely held together hammocks, that Hoshi nudges him with a ring-clad hand.
“Have you got a name yet?”
“You know my name, hyung.” Chan replies, painfully wide awake and unable to sleep.
“Tch, no, you need a name. You’re one of us now.” Hoshi huffs, “I’m Hoshi, and you’re…?”
It doesn’t take Chan long to decide. He’s been thinking about it on and off since he first took Hoshi’s hand. It’s a name he’s been testing in the cold moments he’s left alone, surrounded by four metal walls layered with rust and wondering if he’ll ever make it in this broken world. He knows his name.
“Dino.” He whispers it into the still air. “My name is Dino.”
“Welcome to the gang, Dino.” he can hear the way Hoshi’s lips curl around the sound. He likes it.
It’s Chan who mourns but it’s Dino that visits the graves he's prepared. It feels different now, standing in front of two engraved tombstones in his heart with snow swirling around his feet. Even in the burning heat of summer with his muscles aching and sweat sticking his hair to his forehead, he finds time to make the trip. It’s Chan who mourns but it’s Dino that visits the graves of Soonyoung and Chan.
And it’s Dino who shakes Hoshi awake one winter dawn. Outside the makeshift window — really just a hole in the metal walls — the first snow has begun to fall.
“I think I want that tattoo now.” He whispers and Hoshi sits up in his hammock immediately.
The tattoo parlour is still closed when they arrive— if it can be considered a parlour. It’s barely a small shack on the outside, looking as dark and unfriendly as the rest of the world they know. It shares a wall with the rest of the hideout but there’s a faint hum that Dino can’t quite discern. Snowflakes cling to the two of them as Hoshi calls The8 and Chan feels anticipation burning through his chest. There’s nerves there too, something between terror and excitement.
The8 turns out to be one of the taller members of the gang that Dino’s seen in passing before— sharpening daggers in the living area or painting on the rare days where there is peace and quiet. The runes on his arms always glow different colours and at different intensities — Chan wonders if they’re of the same magic as the right side of Hoshi’s face. Dino hopes he never has to learn how they glow when The8 is in a fight.
The door to the tattoo shack glows too but in a way that Dino is distinctly certain is technology, not magic. The8 steps through first and Hoshi pushes Dino in after. The inside of the building is far too large to fit within the walls he’d seen outside, the walls lined with tattoo art, stencils, and weapons alike. Hoshi pushes him forward again, guiding him towards one of the tattoo chairs and placing a binder of designs on his lap while The8 prepares his tools.
“The door was a portal.” Hoshi explains with a grin in response to the way Dino’s gaze can’t help but flicker back to it before settling on the designs in the binder. “The bigger designs are at the back of the folder, if you want something like mine.”
In the end, he decides on something smaller — a snarling tiger head on the inside of his wrist. He doesn’t miss the way Hoshi’s face lights up when he picks it or the knowing smirk on The8’s face as he readies his needle. Dino nods and tries to sit as still as he can while he gets inked.
(The fourth thing Chan learns is that tattoos fucking hurt.)
The fifth kill is no easier than the first. It still leaves Dino shaky and all too aware of the blood on his hands. The tiger on his wrist glares at him and he takes a deep breath. He doesn’t feel proud of himself like Hoshi tells him he should— of your progress, he says, you’ve come so far since you joined. He has, Dino knows he has, but he doesn’t have to like it. He can’t deny that he doesn’t feel as sick anymore— he’s still shaky, yes, but he calms down far easier, far more quickly, than before.
A hand tilts his head up roughly and Hoshi hums as he smears the blood oozing from a cut on Dino’s face across his cheek. It looks good on you, he’d said once when their lips had been just millimetres apart and Dino had responded with a confused impatient noise, wanting to get another kiss before they had to get back to the hideout. Blood, Hoshi had said, blood looks good on you.
There’s a new tattoo on Hoshi’s wrist; Dino sees it out of the corner of his eye. He steps back just enough to see it, holding Hoshi’s arm still in the air with one hand. There, in elegant black ink, is the image of a dinosaur skull, the ink of the eye sockets glowing faintly neon. It rests on the inside of his wrist, the same side and placement as the tiger inked into Dino’s skin. The meaning is clear. Hoshi leans down and Dino meets him halfway. Their kiss tastes like blood.
The last thing Chan learns is that this is his life now, and Dino’s just fine with that.
[FILL] if everybody's letting go, let's do it with both hands
Major Tags: violence, murder, minor character death
Additional Tags: some blood, mention of alcohol & drugs, mourning the death of past selves
Permission to remix: Please ask
(also posted on AO3) I had a lot of fun writing this
***
The first thing Chan learns is that Hoshi is not Soonyoung. Because Soonyoung wasn't Hoshi and it makes him shiver to think that maybe, maybe Soonyoung was never Soonyoung to begin with.
There is hidden machinery beneath Soonyoung’s face, Chan knows, small thin pieces of technology he doesn’t quite understand that runs along the right side of his face— he could trace over it with his eyes closed. There is hidden machinery beneath Hoshi’s face, Chan watches as it glows in the darkness of the night like neon veins stretching from his temple to his chin, like venom. It pulses with bioluminescence, something too animal to be machinery, and Chan wonders if it really is technology at all, if it ever was.
Hoshi catches him looking and smiles.
His smile, too, is like Soonyoung’s. It reminds Chan of winter, of a snowy dawn and tears running down his face. Soonyoung had been there — Soonyoung had always been there — for him. An anchor, keeping him grounded even when the waves had threatened to pull him from the shore and down into the depths. Snowflakes had clung to Soonyoung’s dark hair like little stars in an empty sky. Hoshi’s hair now is silver-white as if the snowflakes had melted and bleached it, his gaze is cold, but his smile is still everything Chan remembers.
The second thing Chan learns, shortly after the first, is the sound of a dead body hitting the floor. The sound of flesh falling into a pool of its own blood. The sound of Hoshi putting his gun back in its holster.
Chan is still Chan and he doesn’t dare look— doesn’t dare take his eyes off Hoshi.
“You’re going to have to come with me.” Hoshi says, but it’s Soonyoung who continues, “It’s not safe for you here now.”
“You’ve seen too much.” Hoshi says with Soonyoung’s voice.
Chan is prepared to mourn the Soonyoung he knew but the way Hoshi holds his hand out, the way Hoshi’s fingers intertwine with his, the way Hoshi helps him up and leads him away— it makes him pause. Soonyoung was never Hoshi, Soonyoung was gone before Chan ever could’ve known— but some of Chan’s Soonyoung still exists in Hoshi.
And that is a very different kind of mourning.
The third thing Chan learns is the weight of a gun in his hand.
His hand is shaking and he cannot stop it. He feels Hoshi’s unimpressed glare at the back of his head. His hand is shaking more than the person in front of him; the person whom Hoshi had gagged to stop the string of pleads and begs spilling from their lips.
“Any time today, if you will.” Hoshi’s voice is devoid of emotion yet dripping with disdain, with the venom that he’d gotten Chan to paint on his nails.
Hoshi doesn’t say his name, he never says Chan’s name— Chan wishes he would, just once.
“I can’t—” Chan’s voice is so much quieter than he’d meant to be, echoing in the warehouse and so much smaller beside Hoshi’s commanding presence.
“I can’t.” Hoshi parrots back at him, scoffing “You aren’t a child anymore, stop acting like one.”
The gun is heavy in his hand, the cold metal like needles into his palms from how tightly he’s gripping it. He knows all the parts— had learnt them over and over again, taking apart the gun and putting it back together under Hoshi’s careful watch until he could recognise each piece with his eyes closed.
There are tears running down his face now, tears that he wipes on his sleeve as quickly as he can before Hoshi notices. He doesn’t quite hide the little hiccups of his sobs in time though, and he can feel the faint distaste rolling off of Hoshi at the sound.
“Aim.” Hoshi’s voice is right beside his ear now, his chest almost pressed up against Chan’s back.
He listens. He follows. He places his other hand on the gun to steady himself.
“Shoot.”
Chan hesitates.
“Lee Chan.” Hoshi’s voice is a whisper now, a hiss, a viper lying in wait. His hand is on Chan’s shoulder. “Would you like to take his place instead? No? Then stop humiliating me — shoot. him.”
Chan pulls the trigger.
Hoshi lets out a low whistle as he steps around Chan and walks over to the corpse. The corpse that Chan put there. The one that Chan just shot. His shoulders are shaking again as he watches Hoshi carefully lift the corpse’s head back up off its chest. The gun slips from his sweaty hands with a loud clatter.
“A perfect shot — right between the eyes.” There’s awe in Hoshi’s voice. It makes Chan feel equal parts proud and sick to his stomach. He wishes he hadn’t done so well. “I knew you could do it, Chan.”
He wishes Hoshi would stop saying his name.
Chan is silent the whole way back to their gang’s hideout. He is silent and pale and almost completely motionless. As if it was his body that had collapsed back in the warehouse, lifeless and broken.
Perhaps it was.
There is a party thrown for him when they return, booze and drugs and cheering chants of Hoshi’s name— to the gang, Chan has no name yet but there is blood on his hands now and so he is finally one of them. Someone tries to pull him away from the crowd, their grin reveals fangs and doesn’t falter even when Hoshi steps between them and Chan with a raised eyebrow.
“C’mon, Hoshi, the kid just got his first kill — he needs a tat from The8.” They pout in a way that could almost be innocent, if Chan didn’t know where he was.
Hoshi turns to him, eyebrow still raised. It takes Chan a moment to realise it’s a question.
“Oh, uh, I don’t know…”
“It’s a tradition though, you have—”
Hoshi drags Chan away before he can hear the rest of their sentence and he is beyond grateful.
They’re in Hoshi’s corner of the living space when Chan finally finds (aided by the alcohol in his system) the courage to ask—
“Hyung,” he starts, waiting for Hoshi to finish his sip of his own beer bottle first before continuing, “do you have a tattoo?”
Hoshi laughs, twisting in his seat to pull his jacket down just enough to give Chan a glimpse of the dark ink running across his back and over one of his shoulders— although Chan doesn’t get a good look at what the tattoo actually is.
The following silence is neither unsettling nor comfortable, the sound of the party dying down but still audible through the metal walls of the hideout. In this moment of peace, Chan finds himself mourning, now that he has the time to. His fingers are still stained with crimson no matter how hard he washes them, his old life left in ashes and left far behind where he can no longer return to. He prepares two graves although he doesn’t quite know who the second person he’s mourning is yet.
It’s in the darkness of night, swinging in barely held together hammocks, that Hoshi nudges him with a ring-clad hand.
“Have you got a name yet?”
“You know my name, hyung.” Chan replies, painfully wide awake and unable to sleep.
“Tch, no, you need a name. You’re one of us now.” Hoshi huffs, “I’m Hoshi, and you’re…?”
It doesn’t take Chan long to decide. He’s been thinking about it on and off since he first took Hoshi’s hand. It’s a name he’s been testing in the cold moments he’s left alone, surrounded by four metal walls layered with rust and wondering if he’ll ever make it in this broken world. He knows his name.
“Dino.” He whispers it into the still air. “My name is Dino.”
“Welcome to the gang, Dino.” he can hear the way Hoshi’s lips curl around the sound. He likes it.
It’s Chan who mourns but it’s Dino that visits the graves he's prepared. It feels different now, standing in front of two engraved tombstones in his heart with snow swirling around his feet. Even in the burning heat of summer with his muscles aching and sweat sticking his hair to his forehead, he finds time to make the trip. It’s Chan who mourns but it’s Dino that visits the graves of Soonyoung and Chan.
And it’s Dino who shakes Hoshi awake one winter dawn. Outside the makeshift window — really just a hole in the metal walls — the first snow has begun to fall.
“I think I want that tattoo now.” He whispers and Hoshi sits up in his hammock immediately.
The tattoo parlour is still closed when they arrive— if it can be considered a parlour. It’s barely a small shack on the outside, looking as dark and unfriendly as the rest of the world they know. It shares a wall with the rest of the hideout but there’s a faint hum that Dino can’t quite discern. Snowflakes cling to the two of them as Hoshi calls The8 and Chan feels anticipation burning through his chest. There’s nerves there too, something between terror and excitement.
The8 turns out to be one of the taller members of the gang that Dino’s seen in passing before— sharpening daggers in the living area or painting on the rare days where there is peace and quiet. The runes on his arms always glow different colours and at different intensities — Chan wonders if they’re of the same magic as the right side of Hoshi’s face. Dino hopes he never has to learn how they glow when The8 is in a fight.
The door to the tattoo shack glows too but in a way that Dino is distinctly certain is technology, not magic. The8 steps through first and Hoshi pushes Dino in after. The inside of the building is far too large to fit within the walls he’d seen outside, the walls lined with tattoo art, stencils, and weapons alike. Hoshi pushes him forward again, guiding him towards one of the tattoo chairs and placing a binder of designs on his lap while The8 prepares his tools.
“The door was a portal.” Hoshi explains with a grin in response to the way Dino’s gaze can’t help but flicker back to it before settling on the designs in the binder. “The bigger designs are at the back of the folder, if you want something like mine.”
In the end, he decides on something smaller — a snarling tiger head on the inside of his wrist. He doesn’t miss the way Hoshi’s face lights up when he picks it or the knowing smirk on The8’s face as he readies his needle. Dino nods and tries to sit as still as he can while he gets inked.
(The fourth thing Chan learns is that tattoos fucking hurt.)
The fifth kill is no easier than the first. It still leaves Dino shaky and all too aware of the blood on his hands. The tiger on his wrist glares at him and he takes a deep breath. He doesn’t feel proud of himself like Hoshi tells him he should— of your progress, he says, you’ve come so far since you joined. He has, Dino knows he has, but he doesn’t have to like it. He can’t deny that he doesn’t feel as sick anymore— he’s still shaky, yes, but he calms down far easier, far more quickly, than before.
A hand tilts his head up roughly and Hoshi hums as he smears the blood oozing from a cut on Dino’s face across his cheek. It looks good on you, he’d said once when their lips had been just millimetres apart and Dino had responded with a confused impatient noise, wanting to get another kiss before they had to get back to the hideout. Blood, Hoshi had said, blood looks good on you.
There’s a new tattoo on Hoshi’s wrist; Dino sees it out of the corner of his eye. He steps back just enough to see it, holding Hoshi’s arm still in the air with one hand. There, in elegant black ink, is the image of a dinosaur skull, the ink of the eye sockets glowing faintly neon. It rests on the inside of his wrist, the same side and placement as the tiger inked into Dino’s skin. The meaning is clear. Hoshi leans down and Dino meets him halfway. Their kiss tastes like blood.
The last thing Chan learns is that this is his life now, and Dino’s just fine with that.