Hunt

file one: hvc + lty

TWO YEARS LATER

"Are you awake?"

Vernon rolled over on his side to look at the boy who had spoken. Taeyong's jaw rested in the cleft of his palm, elbow propped against the headrest, and he was looking right at him with bleary eyes and a soft, sleepy expression which didn't match the rough cadences of his morning voice.

"I'm always awake," Vernon said gruffly, and pulled himself upright into a sitting position on their shared bed. The sheets slid down his bare abdomen as he did, exposing the angry red-and-violet bruise sitting just above his right hipbone. It had been a few days since he'd gotten it, but it still hurt like he'd gotten it yesterday. Vernon threw the sheets off, the jeans feeling tight and constricting around his legs as he moved them to get out of the bed.

"You should stay in a little longer," Taeyong said in a dry voice, not bothering to use up his energy in advice he must have known Vernon wouldn't heed anyway. "Rest up for today."

"No point," Vernon replied. He opened the wardrobe to pull out a random set of clothes before going towards the bathroom. "I'm gonna go take a shower," he said wearily. "Clean off the blood."

"Hansol, no," Taeyong started sadly, pushing himself up on the bed, but he had already slammed the door.

The water was cold when it hit his face, waking up his half-asleep mind. That's how he always was—half-asleep, never fully so. Despite all the running and kicking they had to do, he seldom managed to exhaust himself to the point of sleep, and even when he did, there were nightmares waiting for him at the threshold, always ready to wake him up again. Always lurking.

The water on the white tiled floor was the bathroom was tinted red from the remaining blood. He's managed to clean most of it up the previous night, but he'd been sloppy and tired and had missed a lot of it. No doubt it would have been a lot more if Taeyong hadn't helped clean it off him, armed with the torn t-shirt belonging to the Lee clan associate they'd killed, and an openly sad expression.

Vernon had gone a long time without losing control. The first few months after the death had been impossibly difficult, owing to the freshness of the wound and the distant at which Taeyong had held him. It had taken some time for the redhead to get used to him—to the new him, who lost control so easily and was impossible to reach. Slowly, surely, he had tried to pull Vernon back from the brink of insanity, but sometimes he still felt like he was hanging over the cliff, seconds away from hurtling to the sure death of the little control he had left.

When he got out of the shower, Taeyong was already up and ready, probably having used one of the other bathrooms in the house. Yeeun was there too, and didn't bother glancing up at his entry, being too busy engaged in conversation with the redhead.

The conversation had been too soft to be heard over the loud rush of water in the shower, but even now, Vernon could barely hear it. There was a buzzing in his ears, accompanied by a general lack of concentration which seemed to switch back and forth like an alternating current on its best days. Vernon had lost bits of his defining traits piece by piece over the years—the control had gone first, of course, right off the roof behind her when she fell. Then the calm.

Taeyong's eyes followed his movements with concern as he stepped into the room, glancing over Yeeun's shoulder at the files. "Are you tired?" he asked.

"Not at all," Vernon answered in an offhand manner, eyes not leaving the report. "The shower was pretty refreshing."

One thing he hadn't lost was the ability to lie impeccably.

Taeyong nodded, turning away from him. He could see through little white lies sometimes, but Vernon had yet to meet someone who could see through him like his skin was transparent. The one person who had had ended up dying.