Memento vitae || Jongsang

2| Yield

Yeosang gradually inches closer to the other man - eyes staring blindly at something that he is not sure what is. His head feels foggy as he has trouble detecting how it unties the knots he has kept tightly wrapped until now. His skin is damp, still dripping with rolling water drops that drag his body with them down to the ground. Jongho is holding him, an arm wrapped securely around his waist as his body is gently wiped with any fabric that Jongho must have at hand. Everything tingles.

A startle runs along Yeosang's spine when the featherness of a touch is planted on his shoulder. Jongho kisses his skin lightly, soft lips caressing and treasuring him even in this situation. The boy closes his eyes leisurely while his tongue unknowingly slides across chapped lips and everything about Jongho envelopes him into a warm well-known caress. Hands running down over his slack arms, following his lines down until he cannot feel them anymore. Something soft is around him again, but he does not open his eyes to see.

"Come here Yeosang, you need to rest for a while," the knight gently moves his body forward until his legs are bringing him a little further away from the water. He barely finds himself shivering anymore when the wind curls itself around his exhausted corpse, but he is sure that if Jongho had not been there to hold him, he would have suffered even more.

His eyes flutter open with a stinging soreness, while the back of his head spreads in the dewy grass, and he looks up at the serenity of the moon's glowing. His lover is threading his fingers through his remnants of sooted hair, and Yeosang feels it as an attempt to soothe his own aching heart. The longer he stares, the longer he listens and feels. He believes it only has the opposite effect. Jongho's cold tears drip down and hit his hollow cheeks.

"It will be better.. I will make it better for you. Please keep this as my promise to you."

Jongho's tears are precious, graceful even and the scent lingering around him is even more enchanting as if it invites him closer. Yeosang does not even bother hiding them when the burning sensation of his eyes craves attention.

"I will give you my life, yes.. You can have everything there is left of me. Please.." Jongho presses and Yeosang knows he has seen the red irises by now.

But the boy would never let him do that, even if it meant he had to stuff his mouth full of mud to keep his teeth away from any blood. "Stop..." his hoarse voice clenches out of his throat, "I refuse to do it. How could you ever think of that as any sound option?"

He still notices the dead serious note to the gaze of the other, "Because it will help you regain your strength. We have to share the blood between us, for now.. It will not be enough to kill me."

"Trust me," he adds.

If they had not been in this situation; running away from their lives, Yeosang would have rolled his eyes playfully at the other, telling him how he already had proved to him that he was not someone to easily kill off. His head is filled with dread.

"But look at yourself... You are suffering just as much as I am," Yeosang flicks his eyes in another direction, a wavering sigh leaving his dry lips. It is not right to do, he thinks, biting the inside of his cheek.

But Jongho is crying because of him and just as much as he is in awe of seeing someone like him, being so much human, is pushing his guts into a mess of guilt and iniquity.

"You already know that is not true."

The boy swallows thickly, forgetting everything in just the few seconds it takes him to whisper his approval of the tempting offer, "Al..alright...I believe that you may be right."

Jongho sniffles and lifts his hand to wipe all the liquids away and dries it off on the grass. In the middle of that, a sudden smile bursts out on his face and he becomes oddly shy because of it all. Yeosang is not sure of what he sees is real, when his head is spinning the whole world around. He stares at Jongho with an inquiring and yet confused expression until the latter falls to the side, landing heavily down on the ground and lying still. For a moment Yeosang fears that the knight has passed out, but the feathery fingertips tapping against the back of his hand tells him that he is still awake.