Meridian ◈ Seungjin

39 ◈ Ecstasy

"A beast with three heads," Hyunjin muttered to himself as he pulled the navy stained uniform blazer back over his shoulders. His knuckles sliced on top of the wooden desk as he did so, each unconscious movement drawing his gaze farther from the dorm room, closer to the scenery outside; The concrete sidewalks bustling with few pedestrian students traveling from here to there, littered with light poles, the center of the campus in the corner, the sense of responsibility far away, completely unaware of the two piercing eyes stained scarlet watching them from the high floors of the dorm building.

He bit the sharp fangs into his lips until he felt the skin give beneath the points, his breaths murmuring as he spoke, "He's quick."

"Do you like it?"

The vampire adjusted his sleeves.

"Hm?"

"His intelligence. I already told you what I think. Do you like it?"

The vampire ripped his eyes away from the students trudging along outside to focus on the human behind him.

Jisung leaned forward as he sat delicately on the edge of the bed, his elbows balancing him atop his knees as he smirked idly. From where he was positioned, he seemed small. Vulnerable. Unaware, yet absolutely conscious of the affect that hunched position gave to his form.

His body swayed, moving fluidly, as if he was intoxicated off the golden glow filtering in through the window panels protecting them from the ivory hints of weather, as if he had been trapped inside of his own lazy smile needle pricked and draining from any gelatin holding his body rigid in the ending hours. He continued to nudge the vampire with his comments, his words dripping with ink as he probed, "Do you like him? But I've also seen the way you and Jeongin cling to each other. Which is it?"

"I'm not able to feel that way about someone. Least of all, a human," Hyunjin responded easily, as if the excuse was a second natured response to the quiet words. One he rehearsed countless times in his head. One he memorized, believing, swallowing down the lump it created in his grime slicked throat, the grit dragging into the rupturing veins. For a fact as chanted as that one, should he have even needed to tell the younger? Should he have even needed to say so?

The human shifted. He set his hands by his sides, leaning his weight back on their support as best as he was able to with the cheap mattress coils arguing in protest.In that shape, he squared off as his shoulders shrugged into the outline of his throat. He grew smaller, more compact, yet confident. Proud. He stood his ground as his body continued to bend and flex, as his body continued to drift in unseen tides like a wedge of driftwood floating in the open seas. His morbid curiosity returned as he pressed, less question, more a tease, as if he had already guessed and known the answer, "You're attracted to him?"

"Not quite," The vampire denied again. More firm this time. He could taste the bitter twinge of the executive denial on the tip of his tongue.

Because it was true, he didn't like him— He didn't like Seungmin. To start, the pair of them hadn't exactly tolerated one another until recently, and those circumstances were forced onto Hyunjin as blackmail, until the moment he willingly took up the reins of the show horse to follow the human's unending charge. Before that though, Seungmin was nothing more than a bully to him. A cruel, vile creature with six arms and twelve legs, carrying him with strengthened arms in a casket to his inevitable grave dug for him by the own human's hands. The tombstone of his person, waiting for him. Not a true death, but one of his heart, and his mind, as he slowly crumbled apart bit by bit to Seungmin's will once determined to smelter the vampire down to the finest bits of what made him stand.

Say, he had. Say, it was undeniably true that he had feelings for the one they were mentioning like he was some sort of estranged celebrity. In theory, if he had strange, mushy, happy, feel-good, emotions towards the human? Then what? Hyunjin was a vampire. Seungmin was a human. Two opposing forces, running to opposite poles, flowing against one another, grinding to halts while they tried to run in different directions. They were two figures, standing on two sides of a border, separated by a finite line, one which they could never dare to cross. Even in a perfect world, that divide was too large. The two sides, the two halves, run down the middle of the world, were too discordant from one another to ever hope to rejoin once again.