Monster

48

Jinyoung doesn't make it home until so early the next morning that the others are still where they collapsed together on the couch from the exhaustion of the day and the stress of waiting for him to come back without any way of knowing if he would.

Cradling the file close to his chest he looks in the living room closet for firewood, but there isn't any. He'll have to chop some. He starts a pot of coffee before he does, taking the file with him out to the backyard, he sets it on a log and grabs the ax from the shed, getting to work on the kindling for the fire, and firewood to keep it going.

The others are still asleep when he comes back inside, arms heavy with wood. He lays it carefully by the fireplace and goes to pour himself some coffee. When he comes back, he does so with matches.

Its the crackling of the growing fire that finally wakes Jaebum.

"Jinyoung? Jinyoung! You're okay!" He quickly disentangles himself, hurrying to hug him, but Jinyoung doesn't even turn towards him, focused intently on the fire, one hand pressing the file firmly against the carpet. "What is that? Whats wrong?"

"Nothing you want to see"

"Are you going to burn that?"

"Its nothing you want to see" Jinyoung stokes the fire, putting another bigger log on it. It's almost ready.

"You can't just burn that stuff, it could have toxic chemicals in it!" Jaebum reaches for the file but Jinyoung rips it away from him.

"It's fine"

"What is in the file, Jinyoung?"

"I don't want to talk about it"

"You are being so difficult, what could be so bad?"

"I don't want to talk about it, please just drop it"

"I just want to understand whats going on, you never act like this, but you've been acting weird since Sehun broke in"

"Because I knew Sehun was here to get the location of the vault"

"Vault? Not a safe?"

"It's basically the same thing"

"It's not, but moving past that, why does it matter to you? Why try to keep it from them? If it's nothing important"

"Because," Jinyoung hugs the file close to his chest to protect it from Jaebum. "Because you all think he's so perfect just because he didn't torture children—"

"Kris tortured children??"

"I was a kid, Jaebum, I was a child, Suho—Junmyeon was almost as bad, he just wasn't crazy" The subject doesn't make Jinyoung cry anymore, but it does make him sick, and talking about it to someone else, Jaebum of all people, makes him sicker.

"Then what's in the file?"

"Nothing I want you to see"

"But what is physically in the file, papers, pictures?"

"Both"