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Minho startles awake when something crashes through the glass balcony door into his bedroom in the dead of night. Every instinct screaming for him to move, he’s on his feet in seconds, fumbling towards the door and trying to find something to protect himself with. It’s not until his hand curls around the base of his bedside lamp that he hears the quiet sobs over the deafening ringing in his ears.
“Hyung… hyung, it hurts…”
The lamp clatters onto the floor. “Jisungie?”
In the faint moonlight, he can make out Jisung’s shivering form curled up among pieces of broken glass. Minho rushes through the room.
“Jisung! What’s going on? How did you—” His voice falters when he reaches for his boyfriend and sees his clothes stained dark. Sickening smell of iron fills the air.
“It hurts it hurts it hurts it’s not healing I need—I need,” Jisung babbles, eyes squeezed shut tightly. A deep gash in his neck bleeds globs of half coagulated blood onto the plastic laminate as he squirms on the floor. “Fuckhyungithurtsithusrtsithurtsimdyingimgonnadie!”
“Shh, it’s okay, hyung’s gonna help,” Minho says, trying to calm him down. His hand trembles when he reaches to wipe Jisung’s tears, adrenaline and fear making him nauseous. Struggling to remember any of the first aid classes he’s taken in his life, he pulls Jisung’s head in his lap and turns him on his back so he can assess the situation. A distraught sob escapes him.
Under Jisung’s torn shirt is a gaping wound; the flesh of his torso’s all but torn off, just a gory mess of perforated organs and tissue so minced it could be scooped up with bare hands.
Vision blurring, Minho tries to breathe but it’s not working, there isn’t any oxygen in the air, just blood blood blood, too much blood.
“Hyung, fuck, ‘t’s not healing, hyung, I need... Chan… call Chan, I need…” Jisung wails and grabs his hand, smearing warm blood all over Minho’s numb skin. Then he opens his eyes and finally looks at Minho, red irises glowing midst the pitch-black sclerae and tears, gaze filled with unmistakable hunger.
“I need meat.”
Minho freezes. His whole world comes to a stop.
A ghoul.
A violent, instinctive flash of fear runs through him.
Jisung’s a ghoul.
His body grows cold. Then he’s hot, burning with adrenaline, instincts telling him to run, to fight. And then—
Minho sighs, relief washing over him.
He’s a ghoul.
His focus snaps back to Jisung when he starts to convulse and scream, more and more darkness staining the floors around them. “IT HURTS IT HURTS HYUNG IT FUCKING HURTS.”
Hurriedly, Minho lays him back to the floor, careful not to disturb his injuries.
“NonononononnoNO DON’T LEAVE ME!” he sobs, seeking Minho’s hand again. “Please don’t leave—I don’t wanna die, hyung. I’m scared.”
“You’ve gotta be quiet, baby” Minho hums, words catching in his throat, and wipes more tears off his cheeks. “I’m just going to find my phone and call Chan, okay? I’ll be back soon just—just hold on, everything’s gonna be okay.”
Jisung nods, his beautiful round eyes filled with pain and fear.
Minho runs to the kitchen where his phone is charging. He wipes the blood and sweat off his hands and frantically scrolls past his closest friends on the phone app to get to the alphabetical list on the bottom, hands trembling so bad he can barely select the correct contact.
Chan answers after the first ring. “Minho-ssi?”
When they first started dating, Jisung had given him Chan’s number as his emergency contact. Channie-hyung’s the closest thing I have to a family. Someone Minho can trust.
“Jisung’s hurt,” he blurts out, grip tightening around the phone. “He’s not healing, he needs—” The word dies on his tongue. He swallows and glances around the dark kitchen, eyes locking on the knife holder on the counter.
“Meat. He needs to feed.”
There’s rustling at the other end of the line. “Are you two safe there?” Chan doesn’t sound alarmed; his voice is as calm as ever. The handful of times Minho’s met him, he’s always been the same—quiet and composed, old beyond his years. Like nothing could rattle him because he’s been to hell and back already.
“I...” Minho glances at the wall-to-ceiling windows lining the whole exterior wall of the apartment. Dread runs through his veins. “I don’t know.”
“I’ll be there as soon as I can.” The line clicks close.
Minho pockets the phone, takes a deep breath, and starts gathering supplies.
He places a first aid kit on the counter next to a bottle of vodka and an assortment of towels and rags. With steady hands, he unzips the kit and takes out gauze, pads and the suture kit he bought a while back. After some hesitation, he closes the curtains to the kitchen-living-combo and reluctantly turns on the small light above the stove. He then goes to the knife rack and takes out the largest butcher knife he owns, the fancy one from Japan that Jisung got him for his birthday last year. Minho stares at his own reflection in the blade before he sets it down next to everything else.
Methodically, as if he were at work, he wets a rag with disinfectant and cleans the knife thoroughly. He stops for a moment to think before crouching down and using the knife to rip off the leg of his pants on the left side. Then he reapplies the disinfectant and puts the knife aside. He folds a couple of towels on the floor and places the rest on a pile next to his feet in case he needs them later. After some thought, he moves the whole first aid kit and its contents on the floor.
Done with the preparations, Minho opens the bottle of vodka and takes two large mouthfuls, hoping that the burn will help with his nerves. The taste makes his eyes water.
He washes his hands meticulously, skin rubbed raw by the time he counts to 180. Willing his heartbeat to calm down, he picks up one of the rags, takes the sterilized knife from the counter, and sits down on the towels.
The visibility isn’t great with just the range hood light turned on, but it’ll have to do. His knowledge of human anatomy is spotty at best, so Minho runs a finger along the back of his left leg, trying to feel the muscles underneath the skin. Then he pours antiseptic on a new rag and applies some on the area, from the bend of his knee all the way to the ankle bones. The sharp smell burns his nostrils, making him nauseous. He fills a clean syringe with the only local anesthetic he has on hand and injects it into a couple of selected spots on his leg.
Not patient enough to wait for the drug to kick in, he grabs one of the rags and balls it up. Taking a last deep breath, he puts the rag in his mouth and bites down.
Jisung’s sobs echo through the quiet of the night.
Minho picks up the knife.
꒷꒦꒷꒦꒷꒦꒷꒦꒷
“Jisung? Open your eyes for me, honey.” Minho kneels down and caresses Jisung’s cheek gently. He looks even worse under the warm glow of the bedroom light, soft skin covered in bruises and blood. “You have to eat.”
Jisung inhales sharply and his eyes snap open, red irises zeroing on the neatly tied bundle on the floor. With no regard to the gaping wound in his stomach, he rolls over in a blink of an eye and pushes Minho aside to get to it.
Minho watches, frozen—mesmerized, as Jisung rips apart the frayed fabric and hunches over the piece of flesh, tearing into it. He consumes it, shreds apart the fibers and lumps of tissue until all that remains are the crimson stains on his lips and the floor.
“Where’s Chan-hyung, I need more, it’s not enough, hyung, I’m hungry,” he mumbles, clutching his stomach, face twisting in pain.
“He’s coming,” Minho replies. His fingers itch to cup his face and comfort him. “Just a little while longer.”
“He’s not here?” Jisung shakes his head, as if to clear his thoughts. Already, some color’s returning to his face. “Then how…” He freezes.
Minho follows his gaze to his own leg and the poor excuse of a pressure dressing that’s slowly bleeding through despite his best efforts at stitching the skin back in place. He tries to angle the wound away from direct line of sight but it really fucking stings, and the small movement is enough to draw a whimper out of him.
“No, hyung, no no no no! Why would you?” Jisung cries, defeated, all fight leaving his body. “How could you?”
Minho crawls closer, pieces of tempered glass pressing into his skin, and reaches for him. “You were dying. I had to—I had to do something.” He needs Jisung to understand.
But Jisung flinches and backs off, putting more distance between them. Like a cornered animal, he scans the room for an escape until his gaze fixates on their reflection in the window to the balcony. For a terrifying moment, Minho fears he’s about to make a run for it, but then Jisung gasps and covers his face, hiding the red eyes behind his hands.
“Sungie, it’s okay,” Minho tries—pleads—but Jisung just shakes his head.
“I’m so stupid, I shouldn’t have come. This isn’t how it was supposed to go, you weren’t supposed to… I fucked everything up, I’m sorry, hyung, I’m so sorry—I was scared and didn’t know where else to go. I ruined everything.”
He’s spiraling and Minho needs to calm him down and fix this before it’s too late. If Jisung runs off now, Minho’s scared he’ll never see him again.
“I should leave. I have to go.”
“No!” Minho hurries to him, uncaring of the tiny shards of glass, their blood pooling on the floor, the way Jisung cowers away from him. He takes a hold of his arms that are still covering his face and pulls them down until they can see eye to eye. “Don’t ever run away from me. Ghoul or human, I don’t give a shit.” He drops Jisung’s arms and takes a hold of his face instead, thumbs pressing into his cheeks. “You can always come to me.”
Jisung whimpers, his eyes returning to their usual soft, brown color. “You don’t mean that. I eat humans. I… I’ve killed people.”
“And I eat animals,” Minho says and brings their foreheads together. “It’s just biology. I know you, Jisung, and you’re not a monster. You wouldn’t hurt anyone if you had the choice.”
Jisung’s breath stutters. He lays a hand on Minho’s thigh and curls fingers around the fabric of his pajama pants. “But article 119—”
“Fuck article 119,” Minho hisses and pulls back so he can look him in the eye again. He needs Jisung to see how much he means every word. “We’ll run to the ends of the earth if it comes to it.” The threat of a death penalty doesn’t weigh much when he has no intentions on living without Jisung anyway.
“You’re not gonna be doing much running with that leg of yours,” Jisung chuckles and wipes off the last of his tears. “Hyung, you cut off a part of your limb for me. What the fuck.”
He gives Minho a small, careful smile. “Who does that?”
Minho’s heart feels so large it must have pushed all the less important organs out of the way just to make enough room in his chest cavity. A crazed giggle escapes him, the pain and weight of everything slowly dawning on as the adrenaline and fear dissipate.
“Probably the first meal of mine that you genuinely enjoyed.”
Jisung shakes his head, looking terribly fond. “You’re insane.”
He moves forward, like he’s leaning in for a kiss, but hesitates at the last moment. Minho’s having none of that; he closes the gap himself, paying no mind to the taste of blood on his lips. Thankfully, Jisung doesn’t need much more convincing, and he cups Minho’s face, holds him like he’s something precious. Finding comfort in the familiarity of the act, Minho relaxes into the kiss.
This is what matters. All that matters.
Eventually, the pain starts to take its toll on Minho, so Jisung helps him to sit down against the wall to ease the strain on the injured leg. He leans his head on Jisung’s shoulder, allowing himself a second to just breathe.
“We need to show that to a doctor in the morning.” Jisung says, hand hovering over the dressings, as if scared of touching the area and causing more pain.
Minho scoffs. “I already looked at it. Diagnosis: I’ll live.”
“A human doctor,” Jisung says sternly. “Chan knows a guy. We can go after I’m healed enough to move.” It’s remarkable how much better he seems already, even if he’s still clearly in pain.
“Fine.” Maybe it’s not the worst idea to get a second opinion and have someone else fix his poor stitching job—it’s surprisingly difficult to operate on yourself. If worse comes to worst and they really do have to be on a run, he doesn’t want to slow Jisung down with his botched leg and risk their safety.
Jisung presses a kiss to his temple. “I’m gonna take care of you. Keep out of trouble. Keep you safe,” he mumbles, hand drawing comforting shapes where it lies on Minho’s thigh. “I love you, Minho-ya.”
Minho watches the sun rise somewhere far away, the first rays creeping through the broken balcony door. A moment of peace before they have to deal with the aftermath of the night.
He closes his eyes and burrows deeper into Jisung’s side, exhausted.
“I love you too, honey.”