hold me 𐦍 yeonbin

002 ᯓᡣ𐭩

When Yeonjun blinks his eyes stay closed longer than intended. Kai appears in front of him, offering a glass filled with water as if expecting Yeonjun to interact with it.

Yeonjun doesn’t. Kai settles the water on the ground.

“I couldn’t find the first aid kit,” Kai says to Beomgyu.

“Soobin must still have it. Shit,” Beomgyu says. “Call him? See if he can bring it over.”

Kai leaves Yeonjun’s fading line of vision again.

“What’s your name?”

“You may not have my name,” Yeonjun says.

How arrogant for a human to assume he can steal the name of a pixie.

“That’s fine. Can I see your arm? You shouldn’t hold onto it like that. You’ll get an infection.”

Beomgyu’s hands match the color of his face and arms unlike the doctors in the lab with their cold, textureless blue hands. Beomgyu’s are warm as he lowers Yeonjun’s hand to see the raw skin where Yeonjun held a vice grip

Beomgyu gasps. “How did this happen?”

Concern. An emotion humans often fake to lower the defenses of the humans around them. It’s a trap, but Yeonjum doesn’t want to appear suspicious of the humans. He has to appear weak, like they can throw him around and rip him open whenever they felt like it. Keeping the human under the illusion of power will buy Yeonjun time. He hopes.

“I escaped,” Yeonjun says.

Beomgyu’s heartbeat skips and speeds up, ringing with confusion and something Taehyun would call pity. When humans view another creature as fragile or broken, they take pity on them. It’s humiliating—another emotion that Yeonjun feels under Beomgyu’s gaze.

How dangerous would it be to trust just these humans, Yeonjun wonders.

Curiosity killed the cat.

Yeonjun decides it isn’t worth finding out.

“From the hospital? Were you in a fight?”

“No,” Yeonjun says.

“A domestic dispute?”

“It doesn’t matter. Just...help me?” Pathetic.

“I’m trying to, but I need to understand what caused this damage.”

Maybe, Yeonjun thinks, Taehyun was wrong when he preached about all humans being vicious, selfish creatures. Beomgyu is the complete opposite. And more than Taehyun, Yeonjun trusts his own instincts.

“One of the...things with the shining red eyes ate me. I escaped.” Yeonjun winces at the memories as they catch up to him. His arm suddenly hurts more than it did when he made contact with the ground that caused the blood loss. “I scraped my arm on the rock outside. Fix it?”

Distrust. Confusion. An urge to understand. Yeonjun can read Beomgyu’s feelings like he is seeing his thoughts painted on his chest, which means his dust is returning. Slowly, but finally.

“I’ll be right back.” Beomgyu stands up, towering over Yeonjun for a moment before walking behind Yeonjun where he loses sight of him, and his body is too stiff with pain to turn.

A sound like running water comes from the back of the room, and Beomgyu comes back with a dripping red cloth, wringing it out all over the floor in his hurry back. None of the red bleeds from the cloth. The blood stained into it has been there too long.

Beomgyu lifts Yeonjun’s arm to study dirt-filled gash and uses the red cloth to wipe away the excess blood. It doesn’t do much to rid his gown of the stain. It stings and sends shivers up and down his arm but he doesn’t convey any sign of pain. He’s lowered himself enough.