Meridian ◈ Seungjin

30 ◈ Yaldabaoth

"They're liars!"

Seungmin slammed his hands on the dorm room desk as he shouted,

"All of them!"

Hyunjin wordlessly watched the human's back squirm beneath the white collared shirt of their uniform, the uneven rise and fall in his lungs tugging ragged patterns across the line of his hunched shoulder blades, his body curled over the wooden surface to cover himself from the world. Gently, the vampire reached behind him to the door to latch the lock firmly shut behind him as he pressed off from the frame. He trudged forward, his shoes dragging mindlessly across the carpeted floors littered with various items his toes bumped against. Cautiously, he lectured at the back of those brown locks, "I told you. This, the whole, playing detective? This was a bad idea. You're going learn things that you don't want to know, and that's starting to become true."

"I don't give a shit what you think," Seungmin bit the response to Hyunjin, the hands pressed dangerously into the desk beginning to tuck into fists as he shifted his full weight into the support. His words daggered, pointed directly at the other, somehow didn't affect the vampire. The sharpness of the tone, the condescending disgust laced skillfully inside his vowels hurried between threads to fit into the finished product, the accusing scowl he tossed over his rattling shoulder, none of that affected the vampire. If anything, a disappointment sagged his lips into a frown. But even that feeling was as miniscule as the human's moments of genuine appreciation and happiness. Hyunjin found himself pathetically used to the hardened and defensive edge shot at him, the words ricocheting like ballistae rocks off limestone fortifications.

What affected him wasn't the defensive edge. It wasn't the armored walls around him, nor the Kelvar vest he wrapped around his torso to protect his besting heart, not even the threatening fists prepared to slung around toward him at any unwarranted moment.

Instead, it was the outline underneath the younger's button up, the faintest shuttering of his shoulder blades with the strangled exhales keeping him from drowning. It was the angle his head hung forward, low, the tuffs of hair falling before his eyesight to shade his expression away, as if he had discarded his ego to monstrous jaws clamping his ankles to the floor, to bow to a forlorned royalty demanding his presence. It was the uncomfortable shifts on his feet, rippling through to his hips, leaning his body wherever the listing of the high-rise tides rocked him. It was the things that made him seem small; Vulnerable, contrasting the juxtaposition of his unbeated confidence. It was the things which Hyunjin had never cared to note in his mind, before ignoring the finer details of the other and justifying the decision as  'He's an arrogant buffoon'.

Hyunjin shuttered, lips pulling back tight against his teeth as he hissed to himself, Don't start paying more attention to him, he's been nothing but an asshole to you.

As if to reflect that idea, as if to completely rid himself of slipping delicately into the refined building blocks stacked which made Seungmin who he was, as if to give himself a harsh slap back into the reality of the situation that he was a vampire and the other was a human, not the mention the fact they were hunting a notorious serial killer, Hyunjin shoved the softer thoughts to the farthest corner of his mind. He swept them off, threw them in his mental trash bin, and bluntly muttered, "You could try being a bit nicer to people. That might help your whole, 'Friends not being honest' problem."

"I don't care if he's honest with me or not," Seungmin sighed. His head seemed to drop even farther down between his hunched shoulders, his eyes peeping from the corner of his gaze to land on the vampire standing to the side-most bunkbeds. His stare trained on him as his features hardened, "Hyunjin, answer me, what did we overhear?"

"I don't know," The vampire honestly told, a shrug chasing the words off.

"That's what upsets me," Seungmin concluded. Carefully, he began to lift the dead weight of his head from the gravitational pull which reduced his powerful gaze down to minor notes underneath a larger picture. Eyes still trained on the vampire, the intensity of such almost causing Hyunjin to beg for forgiveness for a crime he hadn't even committed, the human turned on his heel. He leaned himself against the desk, nearly sitting atop the structure as he regained his balance. And his pride. The drop in his head lifted, the shuttering in his shoulders flat lined, until he was the same Seungmin which Hyunjin knew by heart. The only difference was, those unsure bits were forever ingrained within the vampire's memory. The bits of him which he wished to ignore, which he wished to rid his mind of, had been etched into his eyes.