kim jae hyun. (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
boomvox) wrote in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
multiversallogs2012-03-04 10:06 pm
boomvox) wrote in multiversallogs2012-03-04 10:06 pm
Entry tags:
what about all those things we said
Who: Jae, Sunny. Monsters.
What: This is as close to the apocalypse as these versions have ever been - Sunny has good timing, Jae sucks at being a warrior.
Where: Creekside.
When: Towards the end of week 1.
Notes: Making up for failing while on hiatus, HERE'S A MILLION WORDS?
Warnings: Violence, disturbing imagery, tw for claustrophobia + drowning.
Weeks ago, over cocktails, Jae had asserted that if Baedal was an apocalypse, or a militant society, that he'd be useless – he's not a combatant, he's a DJ, he's only got so much rope and it's not going to do a whole lot beyond trip (or hang) himself in a war zone. Well, okay, that's a really mangled metaphor, but the point is: when the world began to fall apart, Jae locked his door and shoved a sofa up against his balcony windows and informed his various gigs he was canceling until further notice. (Everyone was, thankfully, quite understanding – one group hasn't gotten back to him, or anyone; he tries not to think about it.)
Two days go by and it's not eventful – Creekside doesn't get hit very badly right away, but it's not a go-getter area, and businesses stay closed and people mostly stay inside. Hooded wraiths float through the streets and find little in the way of prey, their oppressive aura chasing people indoors with even more certainty. Well, some people. After nightfall crashes and the sound of heavy but not wholly sinister footfalls echo through the neighborhood, and Jae surmises from his the floor in between his bed and the back wall that it must be looters. Baedal isn't so different from other cities, even now.
Hours into nightfall four days after the sky split, the power goes out. Unearthly groans and creaks stream through the air, and the ground trembles with the reverberation of it. People begin to mill about in their homes, and a timid knock brings Jae to his apartment door. The building manager, holding a pale lantern, quietly informs everyone that they all have to go - something is coming up from the river.
A safehouse compound advertised on the PnumeraRed49 cohort courtesy of Jae's downstairs neighbor seems to be their best bet – it's the closest, it's super-enforced, and the populations of his building and the one across the street won't overwhelm their capacity. If they can get there. And, god, that's the kicker; Jae stares down at his CiD and considers calling someone, one of his 'peers', who are out being proactive and helpful (or silent, he wonders – what about – fuck, everything), but then puts it away. He rips the entire chapter of protective spells out of the book Martel made him check out (he'll wince in apology later) and staples the pages together, folds it, sticks it in his jacket pocket. He shows up in the lobby (whispers and coats all around) carrying a box, and teams up with the calmest mother he's ever seen to pass out glowsticks to the kids (and some of the adults). A woman from across the street recognizes him from club fliers and they devise a shaky strategy, being the only two mages in the group (he can't really be calling himself that, can he?). She squeezes his hand near to breaking as they walk, quietly in a clumpy line, the two of them towards the back.
It's slow and terrifying work. Jae and Aria – the other mage, a produce clerk and student – draw lines in the dirt and on the pavement every time they have to stop and take cover. Despite it, they're attacked twice, by hulking, reeking, many-limbed black creatures dripping water and ichor, and by dawn when Jae runs his hand over the asphalt street to make a run, half of it's in blood – not voluntarily. He shakes as he works, and his head feels like it's going to cave in on itself; he barely remembers what he's writing, and he's not good at channeling it like this – he thinks the runes are useless and what's kept the creatures away so far has been the fact that the magic he can't control is still screaming STAY AWAY out into the astral realm. One monster that leaps from the shadows at them curls back immediately, making an unholy shriek, and Jae knows that it's because what happened to it is what happened to the doctors at the facility.
He thinks he should feel something. Surprise, at least, that he doesn't.
The sun comes up, grey and tinted with that unnatural aurora, and it becomes apparent that they're trapped. They're being hunted, and the magic barriers aren't going to hold forever – Jae knows, with an instinct he's never had before, that they aren't going to hold for more than another hour. He doesn't have the energy for much more, and the both of them, Jae and Aria alike, can sense (since when can he sense anything?) something much worse on their heels. Jae feels it like something walking over his grave, dark and familiar. He feels like he might throw up as he tells her what to do, but she listens, and he wonders with a detached underwater sort of feeling if he sounds more sure than he feels.
As Jae walks back the way they came, he pushes the group from him in his mind, like a physical thing – shoving, desperately, forcefully, with everything he has left, motivation and bravery and hope.
The river comes into sight, and Jae just – stops. He's too exhausted, battered, bleeding. The great hulking thinking that's even now moving towards him like a living shadow, black-skinned, covered in eyes and mouths, is too awful to look at. He sits (stumbles) to the ground and draws a circle around himself with his fingers, trying to cast a spell. In his head there's nothing to hold onto – the thing that's been following him, some monster born of his home world fused with the reality-breaking energy of Baedal, creeping after familiar magic to consume, has no emotions to manipulate. Jae raises his hand to his face and bites down in between his thumb and index finger, ripping open skin and coaxing out blood. He holds it up, pointing, almost aimless in his attempt at offensive magic, and he makes a plea in his head, if Shada's listening. Take my blood, just make this thing fuck off--
(At least it's not after the others.)
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He grabs hold of cracked concrete and tries to pull forward, his vision going back, and realizes with a distant thought his hand is still bleeding, before his body gives up and forces him to take in a breath in seizing involuntary self-defense, and he chokes.
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Dirt replaces with water as something great breaks through the earth from the river side, abruptly cold against that uncanny warmth. The monster breaking apart concrete and earth is big, but the hands that find Jae are human in size and shape and grip on his clothing, an arm, before cradling the back of his head as they rise together. Topside, earth churns, bubbles with mud, and the two men finally emerge to sprawl on the surface.
Sunny's hands clear dirt from Jae's face, his eyes and nose and mouth, and rushing life and healing and motivation to cough so he can breathe, floods warm through the mage's body. Sunny is not choking, but he is raking in deep breaths now that the air is available to him, hair plastered to his forehead, clothing wet, the colour of earth, eyes water-logged and blinking.
It's so he can talk, and say things like; "Jae? You're okay now. Can you open your eyes?"
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His chest hurts more than he could even put into words, and he looks at the other man, bleary from pain and the water in his eyes, gasping in air, winded, not quite able to speak just yet. He tries and he just coughs more, and then he does grab at Sunny again, terrified and acting on impulse from how much it hurts.
But he's breathing and alive. And that's certainly not lost on him.
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Sort of. He can see it written all over Jae's expression and body language, pain and fear of it, and says this so that Jae doesn't feel pressured to try to talk and tell him so. Sunny would like to get out of here, but he isn't confident in shaking up Jae's world too much with things like standing up or. Flying. He keeps a hold of him, Jae rolled onto his side so the contents of his lungs have somewhere to be ejected.
Meanwhile, it's something of a pleasant morning. Sunny shivers.
His hand seeks out Jae's as he waits out the other man's recovery, keeping up that steady encouragement of survival and healing. His lungs will still burn, but they won't burn for very long, nor suffer sickness from whatever it was he breathed in.
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"You heard me."
When he cut his hand.
(He doesn't sound one hundred percent coherent just yet.)
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"I did hear you."
A smile, uncertain, but his smiles are always sort of a default overstatement anyway, white and immediate. "We should go somewhere safe. Do you think you can stand? I'll help. I don't know if the cab service is running--" It isn't, officially, but he's seen some good Samaritans put the carriage and horses to use.
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It fades like a shadow, and he relaxes his hold on Sunny's hands, as if his manners are coming back to him before his coherency.
"Yes." Because he has to, and he's been through worse, so this can't keep him down, he refuses. Unsteady but determined he sits up then rises, feeling about a hundred aches and pains and the warm-wrong feeling in various places that suggest he's bleeding here and there, palpable even though he's drenched. Jae pushes his hair back and realizes his glasses are beyond long gone, and he hasn't been bothering with his tiny glamours for days now.
Lamely, "I must look like hell."
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There's a place nearby, he knows. He's kept a mental itinerary of the current safehouses announced infrequent and scattered on the network. The direction he sets them off on is that one, keeping his senses open to the sounds of anything approaching. From above and from below.
"But you got swallowed by a gross thing, so you should. I'm immaculate myself," he says, through the general coating of mud and grime. He can still taste that thing at the back of his mouth, he imagines, and it's taking him every bit of willpower he has to not think about it every other second.
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(Repression: fun for the whole family.)
He blinks at Sunny, not confused but accepting, like yeah actually you still are kind of cute right now, and that's not weird. How he's managing to walk right now is a mystery. A few times he does seem like he might say something, but he keeps quiet as he can feel the beginnings of nausea threaten his insides. A few surreal moments of silence later (it really is a nice morning), Jae seems to remember something, and - holy shit, his CiD made it, trapped in the breast pocket of his longsuffering jacket. He turns the thing on and by some miracle, it's still operational. But the network is a wasteland of uselessness, and the citywide one is Militia updates only - just as helpful.
"Have you been by yourself this whole time?"
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So, yes, sort of. His forays into danger have been solitary productions except when someone inserts themselves into it, like Stephanie's leap from nowhere, like Jae's not entirely on purpose summoning. With the other man on autopilot beside him, Sunny feels safe to tuck his hands into his own pockets, except-- there's a squelch sound that comes with it, and so now he's digging out dirt from them instead, hands flicking in a direction that is politely away from Jae.
He doesn't check his own CiD, clipped at his belt, but presumably it still works as well, of only because magic. "You looked sort of by yourself, anyway."
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"I was with the other people in my apartment building," he begins, and there's a pang of anxiety within him thinking about it, but he knows that he would not be able to deal with the idea of them having not made it so he sets the entire prospect aside, "And that - uhm, it was following us."
That last bit sounds like a question, almost, like he's trying to brush it off, and the next part sounds damn near like an apology, just shy of being mumbled, "So they went ahead."
It's not every day one gets to admit to having decided to sacrifice himself for other people. Jae's not sure how he feels about it yet. He's not sure if he expected to live, and isn't in any hurry to inspect whatever feelings were or weren't going through him before Sunny arrived.
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Sunny sort of walks with Jae with a Concerned look turned upwards at him for a few paces, then back at where they're going. That's so brave! But also concerning! Perhaps it isn't up for particular inspection right the fuck now, though, while they're walking in waterlogged shoes to the nearest structure that Jae can pass out in, that Sunny can put his own feet up in for a while.
They walk in silence before Jae will find himself the victim of a somewhat gentle, somewhat facetious side-hug. Squeeze. Let go.
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After another few moments of quiet between them stretch on, Jae reaches across without really looking and grabs Sunny's hand. Removing it from his pocket if necessary.
The memory that pops up is not entirely random but not anywhere near what all else he's been thinking of for days by miles and miles; Hayoung, a girl he'd known in Seoul, teasing him for taking to hand-holding and sitting against other boys so quickly. Most Americans don't, she'd said, and then explained 'skinship' to him as she ran her fingers through his hair, It's like friendship but with skin-on-skin that doesn't mean anything, you know? So not at all like what they were doing, at that particular moment.
And so this is probably weird.
He hopes they get where they're going soon. He thinks he's going to throw up or pass out or both.
Sunny's hand helps.
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His hand grips back, more secure than earnest, and Sunny deals a quick smile at the building faces to his other side. It isn't that Jae's personal trauma is something to smile about; it's that this could have ended a lot worse, for all that Sunny can do things.
It isn't even noon, yet.
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Apparently he looks even worse than he imagined, because when they get to the safe zone Jae's ushered in with an immediate efficiency that screams 'Oh god what the hell happened to you' without anyone needing to say it. He takes an offered water bottle but doesn't drink it, and the cot set up in the - grocery store supply room? he doesn't know where they are - is the best thing he's seen in years. He looks up, attempting to locate Sunny even as his vision swims; it feels like they were still walking just a heartbeat ago.
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- he had some protection magic on him, but then there was this other monster -
- got him out of the river before he drowned, probably antibiotics are a good idea -
- by the Gross Tar, we just ran. It might still be there, sure -
- no, I'm okay, I got there late -
that.
Someone gets a chair for him. Maybe they think he's related instead of just friends, or some dude he incidentally ran across in the process of being drowned by a tentacle thing. Sunny doesn't question, he just similarly does not drink from the water bottle he's given, and tucks clasped hands between his knees.
Maybe, he thinks, he'll stay for when Jae is conscious again. It would be a terrible thing for monsters to attack this place while the sacrificial hero slumbers.
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He says something - maybe Sunny's name or the beginnings of an unintelligible question - but he's asleep before he can clarify, all but crumpled onto the cot.
When a healer finally comes by (she doesn't mean to be so late, but there's a lot of people and Jae was breathing when he came in, so) she's surprised but pleased that nothing really seems to be wrong with him, though makes no verbal note to Sunny about any protection spells; perhaps it's worn off. She says he's probably just exhausted, and though she looks at the spots of blood here and there on his clothes, she has nothing to report. Apparently nothing turned up in her scan - and that's about that, really. Sort of anti-climatic. (And strange.) She says what she's done will help him sleep for hours versus days, considering how wrecked he must be. And that's good enough.
Jae dreams while he's asleep, but he doesn't remember any of it when he wakes.
One hand suddenly tightening on the edge of the cot and his eyes opening partway, gaze uncannily clear - he is awake hours later with a suddenness that doesn't seem like him. For a moment, in his alien stillness, he seems like another person entirely - and then the realization of where he is settles in, and that distant and cold look shutters away like it had never been there to begin with. Jae lamely reaches out to steal his water bottle off the floor, the rest of him still curled.
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He does actually move around the safehouse, though, once he's made his decision to hang out a time. He speaks a little to the people dumped with the responsibility of organising things. He finally gives in to eating some food so that people don't ask why he isn't and also because it makes him feel better regardless. He finds rooftop access and listens a little to the weather before trudging back in and resuming his post. He cleans up and accepts a change of clothing. But that he is there when Jae does stir possibly gives illusion he never left.
He's on the network, texting at someone's post. A folded set of jeans and a sweater are laying on the end of the cot, and at sign of motion, Sunny pauses and lifts his head, watching that little transition and then Jae going for the water.
"The earth says hello."
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Sunny speaks and Jae pauses for a moment, fingers around the cap of the water bottle, and his gaze flickers up. Expression tinged with surprise at first, Jae blinks the sleep out of his eyes and smiles, still tired but nowhere near the desperate exhaustion of earlier.
"Hey."
Aaand his voice breaks from tiredness and dehydration. Smooth. Jae winces and goes back to his water bottle, internal mantra about equal to 'fml' for a minute.
Take two: "I didn't think you'd stay. Has everything been okay? How long have I been out?"
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Because Jae obviously required one, for reasons that were only partially to do with being eaten by a river monster seeing as the medics deemed him more or less fit for society. "And everything has been okay. The frontside goes into quiet mode if anything pointy or slimy explores the street, and they avoid trouble.
"Your CiD," he glances towards where it rests nearby, "keeps chirping. That's probably a good thing."
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"Probably," he agrees, about the CiD, though he doesn't pick it up just yet. A few more minutes isn't going to kill anyone. He takes a larger swallow of water and winces a little against his will, all the muscles in his throat and chest still pissed off at him over that whole drowning-in-ichor thing. Besides soreness and the tender puling on his skin here and there he recognizes as bruises, though, he feels okay; he must have done that protection spell right after all. Huh.
Jae looks up at Sunny, feeling both faintly sheepish and sincere. "Thank you. For everything." He cracks a bit of a smile. "I should have said it sooner."
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He flicks a glance upwards to see if anyone helpful looking is wandering close by, but doesn't hail them down like one might a waiter. "Do you need anything? I mean," he qualifies, in case Jae thought Sunny was being a needless motherhen, or anything, "I'd be mad if you exploded after all the trouble I went through."
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"I'm okay." Mildly chagrined. "I mean I'm not awesome, but I don't feel like I'm going to keel over."
He finally picks up his CiD, and after clicking through it, is visibly relieved.
"My neighbors made it."
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Sunny is relieved because he's a good person, and relieved too for Jae's sense of purpose that whatever he thought to put himself through for their sake was worth it after all. "They'll be glad to know you're okay too, probably." Another glance up, this time, but this has less to do with seeking help. He thinks Jae is smarter than what he's about to say--
But it's just how it is. "I told them I sort of just showed up... late," he says. "And that I dragged you out of the mud. It's mostly correct."
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(With that in mind, he suddenly feels a bit guilty and more than a bit embarrassed that he - wow he really did hold his hand all the way across town, didn't he? What a tool, Jaehyun. Be a useless human some more, it's totally cute.)
Jae clutches his CiD and types something in with his thumbs, hiding whatever feeling might have been visible on his face by looking down. He thinks about being lucky to be here in this shelter, and at the same time, he feels a certain anxiety start to quell inside of him at the idea of being trapped there, sitting around.
When he looks back up- "I don't think I'll stay here."
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He doesn't say that, though. By nature, he isn't very bossy. "Where will you go?"
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No. He's leaving.
"I'm gonna go get my boss," he says, and hopes he sounds more sure than he feels. "There's a lot of texts going around asking what we should be doing and I think - like, apparently," he gestures with his CiD, "the girl who runs the shift before mine at SMB is stuck in her basement." Jae has a small moment of pride for not saying Or something.
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Itches it now, though, flakes of dirt beneath his blunt nails. "Okay. Are you going alone?" Also blunt, that question, without particular leading implication with regard to whether Sunny thinks that's unwise or wise or if he's volunteering, even if he probably is.
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Wetting the tips of his fingers in his water bottle, Jae reaches out and moms Sunny's jaw, almost absent, like he didn't think too hard about doing it. Quietly, "I saw in my room with the lights off for a week. Now I can feel things in my head and I never have before. Not even when I was actually studying as a kid. I can't stay l- you know, stuck here."
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He's considered it, what he saw today, how magic interacted with Jae and how it fed from his blood, but this mightn't be the time. There's stuff to do first before he can start dropping totally innocuous questions about that sort of thing, and always that internal debate about what is and is not his business.
"Okay," he says. "Well, I wasn't planning on staying either." He smiles brighter, then, in a way that is almost a question.
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When he pulls his hand back he hesitates, catching that not-smile (or thinking he did) and finding himself - surprised. He wrinkles his nose briefly, trying to hide whatever weird emotion starts to twist in his stomach, and then: "If you're - I mean. Going my way, I wouldn't hate not getting eaten again."
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Like, you know, Sunny put in a bunch of work so that wouldn't happen, and it'd be unfortunate for it to go to waste. His smile flattens, wry, and he shrugs off whether or not he was going that way originally. He hadn't expect to shoot up the length of the Gross Tar when he'd been-- 'summoned' implies more deliberation than what that was, but either way.
"There's still some daylight, if you're planning on going today. I don't know if that's a good thing or a bad thing, actually, but sometimes cover of darkness is overrated when it's monsters."
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For now, though - his expression turns sheepish. "I'm okay with waiting until the morning. I should probably eat something and - change." Suddenly stricken with the realization of how death-warmed-over he must look, Jae's shoulders slump. "I can't really see either." His glasses, man.
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Well, no rush in worrying. Sunny nods at assertion that moving around can wait for the morning, even if he is embarrassingly fit to keep going like a supernatural energiser bunny, but some sleep might be good for the soul all the same. "I'll be your seeing eye guide," he asserts, merrily, before he pushes himself up to stand, and points towards the folded clothing that's been donated, probably a little big to compensate for Jae's lanky size, but--
"If you want to get out of that stuff, there's that. And there's food upstairs. Sandwiches."
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So he gets cleaned up and gets something to eat, and decides he can mull over things like magic and senses and why he feels both nervous and happy that Sunny is staying with him... later.
For now, though, he's got dirt under his nails, and about ten people to call and harass. He hopes, somewhere in the back of his head, that this doesn't blow up in his face.