stay. [bts/taekook vampire fanfic]

intro

The phantasy of endless youth is many times perceived as a kind of an ethereal dream. It is something unreachable for people, which makes them long for it more. Only the idea of it can trigger many romantic visions.

How exciting would it be to see events taught in history classes take place in real time? Being able to influence the shape of them, to remember them? How great would it be to stay young and beautiful forever? To be able to open our hearts to more than one lover throughout the course of not only decades, but centuries? How thrilling would it be, being able to make adolescent mistakes over and over again? Finding a way to always experience new things so deeply connected to youth?

If you look at it this way, no wonder longevity is appealing to so many. People tend to look at things they cannot have and imagine how good they must be. However, the dark side of the issue stays unclear to them. Not only that: they refuse to see it, because if they did, the dream would easily become a nightmare. 

Kim Seokjin could tell you all about it. He has been cursed with the infinite juvenescence, condemned to lose everyone he had cared about. When his family found out, they considered him an abomination, a monster of sorts. He still remembers the disgust reflected in their faces the moment they realised why their youngest son was not aging at all. Despite all of his efforts — learning how to eat without feeling sick, learning how to walk in the sun without feeling nauseous, learning how to act human while not being one —, they figured it out. And since then, everything went downhill.

They locked him up in his room, not letting him out. In his parents' eyes, he was no longer their child. They could not stand looking at him, and even though he could have got out of the room without any big effort, he didn't. The only time he would leave was at night, so he could feed himself. He was not sure if his family ever noticed, but he doubted it — he was smart, always making sure no one caught him in the act.

He was well aware of how life around him continued. He could sense his parents aging without ever seeing them. Of course, he could have watched them out of the window when they were out in the garden, but he refused to do so — it would just hurt more. They had their own life, and he was not part of it. He was just a beast hidden behind a sealed door. Until one day, his older brother offered to both of his parents to leave and live with him in the city.

He hoped they would open the door and look at him for the last time; his mother with tears in her eyes, still feeling at least a little bit of love towards him. His father, putting his strong hand on his shoulder and squeezing it, the way he used to when he was still a boy. His brother would say something witty as he always did, and they would laugh — this time, their laugh would be much more bitter, but a laugh nevertheless.

None of that happened. They left without saying anything; they did not even unseal the door. As if he had never existed at all. 

Even now, after so many years, he is unable to forget the rage that rose inside of him the night they moved out. He is unable to forget how his fists bled when he tore down that door, demolished the room his parents slept in and broke some statues that were living in the corridor. He is unable to forget the ache in his chest when he stopped for a minute, seeing a family portrait depicting the time when he was still human. Back then, they were a happy family. The knowledge that he had lost them for good made him tremble, and finally — after years of keeping it all inside — he wept. If the world had been fair to him, he would have been forty-seven at the time his parents left the house. And yet when he looked into the mirror, a face not older than twenty years was looking back at him.

And the only reason why was that one sentence she told him before her teeth pierced the soft skin of his neck, before he even realised what was happening. The sentence that he kept replaying in his head over and over again.

"You are way too beautiful to grow old." 

*

oh damn, i still can't believe i am actually publishing this. i dunno what to say. sorry if it's not good, i guess.