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Chapter Text

The night they run away, it rains. 

That’s why it makes such a fucking mess when Jackson hauls the body out of the facility and into the shed. The raindrops drips into the hole on the body’s chest, flooding out a mixture of blood and rainwater onto the ground. If the flowers planted on the dirt in a last ditch attempt to humanize the place weren’t dead before, there’s no way in hell they’re alive now. Youngjae doesn’t know much about growing daisies, but he’s sure blood has nothing to do with it.

“Youngjae,” Jackson says, tired and breathless from the long trek. He has a splatter of blood on the side of his face, small droplets of red against the tan of his skin from when Mark had squared, aimed and fired roughly an hour ago. “Open the door, please.”

He has his hands on a dead body, one their friend had murdered in cold blood roughly an hour and a half ago with no regret, one that had a heart beating before Mark put a hole in his heart, and still, Jackson is as well-mannered as he always is. Please . Nobody else would have remembered basic courtesy amidst the chaos and the fact that the body’s face is still scrunched up in pain, but of course Jackson would prove him wrong. 

Youngjae puts the stiff legs of the body down on the dirt and brushes past Jackson to open the door behind him. The shed will be a tight fit, since the body has long limbs and broad shoulders and height that almost seems intimidating compared to Yugyeom’s. Youngjae thinks this is the moment it should click for him, what a horrible thing he’s doing, crumpling up a dead man into a shed as one would do to an unnecessary scrap of paper into a trashcan. He isn’t sure if it’s good or not when he feels nothing but relief over it. 

The wound spills blood onto their hands when they prop the body upright into the shed. It is a tight fit, and they have to turn his neck into a strange angle while trying to fit him in. The blood drips onto the hardwood floor, a steady tick, tick, tick, and Youngjae wonders if he’ll run out of blood any time soon. Jackson locks the shed’s door and pockets the keys with bloodstained hands. 

A few yards away from where they are, the exit to the facility is open. It would take a few minutes for Youngjae to run from the body he just helped hide and the murder he just helped cover up, from Jackson , and get to a police station so he can get away with this scot-free. 

There’s still a chance, he thinks. From the way Jackson pauses, he seems to think so too.

Youngjae only pauses for the length of a heartbeat, not here nor there, but he doesn’t do it. He just stands there, the rain soaking him down to his frozen bones and washing the blood from his hands, making a pool of blood and dirt at his feet. Jaebeom gave them an out, sending them where the exit was, gave them a chance to run and leave.

He could run with Jackson. They could start over, just the two of them, in the village-town a few miles ahead. Youngjae could become a teacher like he’d always wanted to, and Jackson would finally get to go on that first date he’d always pestered Youngjae for. They could forget about the last twenty-four hours completely. 

But when Youngjae thinks about leaving, he suddenly thinks of Jaebeom and Mark sitting in the director’s office with blood on their linked hands and of Jinyoung scrubbing the blood out of the floor with tears in his eyes and Yugyeom pulling Bambam away from the blood on the floor and covering his eyes so he won’t see that everything is fucking falling apart, and he just can’t move .

He knows it’s the same for Jackson because he’s the one who leads him away from the fence. His hand slips into Youngjae’s. It still feels like it always did, a touch of warmth and a touch of home, and the dirt beneath their feet squelches as they walk back into the facility.

An hour later, they’re in the truck. Mark doesn’t have the gun in his hands anymore, but he still won’t look at anyone and stays in the very corner of the back of the truck like he doesn’t trust himself not to kill them if they come too close. Jaebeom and Jinyoung are sitting shoulder to shoulder, heads bent against what Youngjae assumes is the plan of escape. In front of them, where the machines and boxes are stacked up, Bambam is fiddling with his wires again. Yugyeom is the one holding the gun this time. His hands are shaking though he tries not to let it show.

It’s still raining mercilessly by the time Jackson steers the truck out of the facility and onto the highway. 

/ / / /

The first thing Youngjae realizes when he wakes up is that he’s no longer in the truck. He’d fallen asleep twenty three hours into the trip, head bent at an awkward angle and arms at his sides like a limp rag doll propped against the steel of a cargo truck, eyes falling shut against his own will on the grounds that he hadn’t slept in a while. He remembers fleetingly watching Jackson stumble into the back while Yugyeom went to the front, remembers Jackson laying his head on Mark’s lap despite Mark flinching away like he’d been hit at the contact.

But he wakes up somewhere soft, his head featherlight and rested, and there’s a hand gently playing with his hair. It’s warm, like his bunker in the old facility whenever Bambam would sneak into his bed before the alarm went off. Youngjae almost doesn’t want to open his eyes.

“I know you’re awake,” says a familiar voice. It’s Jinyoung, a little bit serious and a little bit playful as he’s always been. There’s a hand around Youngjae’s waist and the one in his hair brushes some out of his eyes. “Your breathing speeds up when you’re no longer sleeping. You know that, right?”

He didn’t. Youngjae doesn’t know much about the human body in general. He makes machines, builds them bit by bit, unit by unit until they function as they’re engineered to. It’s always Jinyoung who knows about heart beats and blood flow and emergency first aid, the one who lectures them about blood clotting and healthy sleeping patterns. 

“We’re in the warehouse,” Jinyoung continues, still stroking Youngjae’s hair. He’s probably propped himself up on his elbow so he’s looking down at Youngjae’s face. “It’s hyung’s friends’. We should be okay here for a while.”

For a while.

You’re on the run, Youngjae-ah, he thinks. Of course it’s only for a while.

“But don’t worry.” Jinyoung says. The fingers that had been splayed over the curve of Youngjae’s waist crumple into a fist around the material of his shirt. Youngjae wonders if he’s scared, if he feels lost, if he misses his sisters and wants to go back, if he regrets it. “I’ll figure something out for us. We’ll be okay.”

“I trust you,” Youngjae tells him. He doesn’t open his eyes even when the first tear drips onto his cheek, even when the air catches in Jinyoung’s throat like he wants to cry a little more than he already has. The hand in Youngjae's hair moves away and Jinyoung sniffles.

“I know,” he says. His voice breaks a little. Youngjae had never seen him cry before that night in the facility and today. He must be hurting quite a lot. “I know, Youngjae-yah, I know you do.”

Even though his eyes are closed, Youngjae can feel the light filtering in from an open window. It’s a new day, and it’s no longer raining.

Chapter Text

The warehouse is even bigger than the old research facility. There’s so much space that the seven of them can choose their own lab areas instead of being crammed into the same place out of compulsion. Within the first month, they’ve made a common area to rest in, seven lab cubicles to work in and a dorm to sleep in. They each have a mattress and a couple of drawers to store their personal belongings in. The bathrooms are a touch too small, but it’s okay.

It has to be. Jinyoung’s friend is doing them a huge favor by being an accomplice to the crimes they’ve already committed. It doesn’t seem fair to not be okay with what they have.

Jackson gets used to it. He gets used to the sound of Jaebeom throwing screwdrivers around late into the night, gets used to the sound of Yugyeom pacing around first thing in the morning. He gets used to hearing Youngjae tossing and turning when he’s trying to sleep, to the sound of Bambam dislodging his arm and his eye every night before he lays down. He gets used to the sound of Jinyoung talking to Mark every night before the two of them fall asleep, shoulder to shoulder, close enough but not touching. He gets used to not hearing Mark say anything to anyone.

When they’d lived at the facility, Jaebeom’s lab had been so far into the building that he never heard him hissing fuck, FUCK whenever he got frustrated, Yugyeom’s so far that he never heard him anxiously bustling around. Jinyoung used to be his roommate, but he never used to jerk upright in his bed in the middle of the night. Bambam always listened to music while disassembling so he never heard him hissing in pain if he twisted something, and Youngjae didn’t toss around so much before. 

They’ve all changed. Some more than the others, but they’ve changed.

Jackson gets out of bed at seven in the morning to find Yugyeom poking around with Bambam’s left eye. He has his tweezers and glasses on. It would almost be comical, how he’s wearing an oversized Superman shirt and sweatpants while holding a tweezers to Bambam’s eye as it blinked from red to green, but it isn’t.

“You should take better care of yourself, you know,” he’s saying. His voice is quiet, warm like the first sip of tea as the dawn breaks over the horizon. “I’m not always going to be here to do this shit for you.”

It occurs to Jackson then, how scared they must have been when they’d had to run. Neither of them had anything to do with it. They hadn’t shot the gun in a moment of fear, they hadn’t scrubbed the office floors until the blood was gone and they hadn’t thrown the gun into the sea and they hadn’t hidden the body and driven the truck into a new city. For all intents and purposes, neither of them had anything to do with it. Bambam is a scientist and an experiment rolled into one person, and Yugyeom is just a freshly-graduated AI expert. Neither of them are criminals.

“The day you go is the day I go too,” Bambam says. He used to talk with a sharp edge to his voice, but since the accident and the successive surgeries, he slurs a lot, and his voice is very soft. “And it’s my eye, asshole. I can’t exactly reach inside and remove stuff from it.”

“You could.” Yugyeom says. One of his hands removes a particularly large piece of dust from Bambam’s eye, and the other holds his jaw in place. His fingers keep ghosting on the sides of his lips. “It’s nothing you couldn’t learn if you tried.”

“I don’t want to learn,” Bambam insists. Yugyeom stops moving, and for a moment, his eyes flutter across Bambam’s face like he’s trying to commit every detail of his face into memory. They’re close enough that the fleeting wind could propel them forward just slightly and their lips would brush. “If I have you,” Bambam says, voice barely above a whisper, and his silvery fingers creak slightly as they move to  brush the bangs out of Yugyeom’s eyes and cups his cheek, “then I shouldn’t have to. And you’ll be here, won’t you?”

There’s a pause. Outside, the wind rustles the trees and the fence creaks. Inside, there’s the sound of Mark’s equipment being shifted around and Youngjae humming from the kitchen area.

“Always,” Yugyeom finally tells him, and lets Bambam pull him down until he’s hunched over him and his face is buried in the crook of Bambam’s neck. “I’ll always be here, I think.”

Always.

Jackson leaves the room feeling like his heart is lodged in his throat, like it’s the first time he’s falling in love. It’s the sixth and seventh time, and it still feels like he’s free falling towards the ground knowing he’s going to break a few bones while landing.

/ / / /

The aftermath of the murder had been messy. 

Mark fired the gun six times. One and two pierced the director’s chest, clean and sharp, and three and four missed and hit the wall behind him. Five and six were fired seconds after the director fell to the ground, the bullets passing exactly where his forehead would have been had he stayed on his feet. There was blood everywhere, spurring and spluttering from the bulletwound and then from the cuts on the director’s hands as he grappled for his own life on the ground. 

The only person who screamed was Jinyoung. He’d immediately rushed over to the body, instinct taking over his brain yelling at him to stay where he is, and he’d tried to close to wound with his hands. Jackson remembers the distraught look in his eyes when he tried to stop the bleeding, telling the director to open his eyes.

The sleeves of his white coat were stained a bloody red, the color of sky in LA the first time Jackson met Mark, red on his cheek when he hurriedly swiped his hand over his face to wipe the sweat away. Jinyoung had cried when Jaebeom had told him that not even he could bring a dead man back, and Jackson had held him until he’d stopped shaking.

Mark hadn’t cried even once. He hadn’t cried when Yugyeom had flinched away from him, hadn’t cried when Youngjae had turned around and vomited at the sight of the body in the room, and hadn’t even flinched when Bambam had said, “This is all your fucking fault,” at one point.

He still hasn’t cried. Jackson always hauls his mattress to Mark’s and lays it down next to him so they can sleep together like how they used to when they were kids, and Jackson stirs awake because Jaebeom’s done the same thing on Mark’s other side after he’s done in the lab. Jackson always wakes up with his hand laced with Jaebeom’s in the empty space where Mark was. 

It’s not like he ever says anything, but they all know it. He’s the reason they’re all here, and that eats him up more than he cares to admit. He can’t touch them like he used to because he thinks he doesn’t deserve to, he doesn’t talk to them like he used to because he thinks they all hate him, and he dedicates all his time to working on his prototype so he won’t have to think about it. He doesn’t reply when they tell him that he’s not to blame. Some days, his eyes are emptier than the halls of the facility and his smile is stretched too thin like a rubber band.

When they were kids, Mark used to take the blame for all of Jackson’s stupid pranks. In the Academy, Jackson had put an inflatable cushion in one of his professor’s seats, but it had been Mark who’d stayed back to clean the lab benches later. He’d done it wordlessly and hadn’t asked for anything in return.

It’s because I love you, dumbass. He always used to say, and it probably didn’t mean anything, but it had always stuck with Jackson. Maybe that’s why he always falls asleep listening to the sound of Mark’s heart beat under the flat skin of his palm, a heathy thud-thud in the exactly epicenter of his chest, and hopes that he’ll let Jackson take care of him for all the times he’s taken care of Jackson.

Always is, as Jinyoung liked to say when he was drunk and missing Jaebeom after he moved to the US, a little more serious than forever. Forever signifies a time, from point A to whenever that ends at point B, and then it’s over. Always signifies a point A, and its impossible to tell where point B is, or if it’s there at all. Forever will end after you’re no longer able to speak the words, but always will stick around even if you say it once. 

Yugyeom will always stay for Bambam, even if shit gets harder to deal with. Youngjae will always love them, even if it ended up turning him to fugitive. Jaebeom will always comeback for the six of them, even if he doesn’t think he’ll make it out of it alive. Jinyoung will always take care of them without thinking twice. Mark has always looked after Jackson, so Jackson will look after him too. 

They’re all alone in this world now, the seven of them.

When the moon shines through the vent in the warehouse and the light dances on the sharp cut of Mark’s sleeping face, he thinks that means they’ll always have to be there for each other. 

(Until the end of time and then some more, whenever that is.)

Chapter Text

The first night they hear sirens, no one sleeps.

Jaebeom tells them it’s nothing serious and that the sirens were probably from another few towns over, but it does nothing to quell the tension in the room. Bambam watches Jackson restlessly turning from side to side, hands braced against his ears like he’s trying to shut off the noise, eyes wide open even though he hasn’t slept properly in a while. Yugyeom is sitting up, book in his lap and glasses askew on his nose, but Bambam knows he isn’t focusing on the words because he flinches whenever the sirens seem to get louder. Youngjae’s eyes are shut, but his knuckles are turning white where’s he’s gripping the edge of his dusty pillow, breath coming out a bit faster than it would if he were really sleeping. Jinyoung has the gun. He refuses to let the rest of them touch it.  

It seems even colder in the warehouse. The sirens aren’t coming any closer, seventeen and a half kilometers away where they’re driving in circles, but with every moment that passes, it seems to inch closer and closer to them.

Half of his vision is tinted red and the other half is normal. His heart runs slower than the rest of theirs. His arm is made of metal and false nerves, the ball and socket joint of his shoulder rusted with age and fingers cracking due to lack of maintenance. He’s not human. He hasn’t been for a while, not completely. Still, he knows what guilt is. He doesn’t feel it himself, but he knows their eyes are stinging and their throats are closing up and their shoulders are slumping like the weight of the world rests on them.

Despite running away to protect themselves, despite knowing what they did was right, deep down, they all know it’ll have to end someday.

Bambam’s always been a bit of a coward. In the academy, he hated sneaking around because he was always afraid of being caught. When he started working for Jaebeom, he didn’t talk to him a lot because he was scared of the way he never smiled. The night he’d almost died, one of his real arms a safe distance from where he’d been knocked over by the machine, choking on blood while Yugyeom begged him to keep his eyes open, he’d been too scared to come to terms with the fact that he was going to die. 

And here he is now. Less human than he was that day, a robotic, synthetic arm to replace the one he’d lost, heart stable and alive despite it all, struggling to come to terms with the fact that the sirens might come knocking at their door soon, and that the end is near.

It’s scary. 

It’s sobering.

We might not make it out alive, he thinks.

“It’s okay,” Jaebeom says, like he’s reading their minds. He’s always been brave where it matters, always so fucking noble like his heart was forged from the purest of gold. He smiles lopsidedly when he meets Bambam’s eyes. “It’ll be over by tomorrow. We’ll be fine.”

The we’ll have to be goes unsaid. Bambam swallows the lump in his throat, trying to ignore the way the fissures in his heart feels like they’ve been opened all over again when he realizes no one believes him despite wanting desperately to, and he closes his eyes.

Half of the world isn’t red anymore. It’s blissfully dark, and he feels cold all over.

/ / / /

Before Bambam’s real arm was switched over to a robot one and his heart slowed down and one of his eyes became glazed with a rosy red, before the facility and the cold walls that never became more like home, before Jinyoung and Jaebeom and Yugyeom and Youngjae and Jackson and Mark, before he became less human than he was before, before he fell in love many times over until his heart was intertwined with six others to form seven broken pieces together in a single puzzle, before everything -- there was Thailand.

Bambam hasn’t been home in years. He doesn’t recall the blistering heat or the layers of greenery he sees on the videos. He doesn’t remember the roads with ridges on it, the seasonal fruits or the rows and rows of stalls in markets. He doesn’t even remember his old home aside from occasional tid-bits he gathers from photo albums. His entire family lives in Korea, scattered across different areas of Gangnam. (Away from the facility.) Mark used to talk about the purple-tinted sky in California and the palm trees lined up against the beach and the waves in summer, nostalgia tinged in his voice like he longed to go back, but Bambam didn’t have any of that.

When he thinks of home, he thinks of Yugyeom throwing an arm around his back and pulling him close. He thinks of Youngjae laughing until his eyes disappear into crescents, thinks of the warmth of Youngjae’s hands against the side of his cheeks as he cooed jokingly at him. He thinks of the feeling of Jackson ruffling his hair and telling him he did well, smile etched onto his lips like he’d never leave. He thinks of Mark breaking into a smile wide enough to put the sun to shame and holding his hands, both when it was real and when it’s metal. He thinks of Jinyoung’s lips on his forehead and his soulless laugh. He thinks of Jaebeom and how it always feels to lean against him when things get hard.

It’s not a place. It doesn’t even come close to it. Home is supposed to be somewhere you can immortalize all your good memories, and people die.

And yet, when Bambam wakes up the next morning to the sound of blissful silence, half his vision red to the sight of Yugyeom and Youngjae curled up together under a blanket while Jackson and Jaebeom sleep facing each other like symmetrical half moons, Jinyoung in between them like a barrier with his eyes shut, Mark wide awake and watching him, he doesn’t think he’d ever want to be anywhere else.

Mark notices him looking and smiles, a bit rough around the edges and a beat too late. He’s had it hard for a while now, always putting distance between him and them like he’s punishing himself even though the crime he committed was more out of compulsion and less out of choice, but he’s trying and his heart is in the right place.

This is temporary. They’ll find you. You can’t run forever.

Heart slow but still alive, the consequences of their actions at his heels waiting for him to slow down, free-falling and hopelessly in love despite knowing it won’t be forever, Bambam smiles back.

Chapter Text

The old research facility’s basement used to be where they shoved all the useless prototypes in after they started malfunctioning, just as a storage space until they sent them out to the city to be incinerated. It was mostly vacant too, enough space for all the shit they had to throw out on the regular because the director didn’t like their plans, enough space to hole up and hide after a bad day, enough space to make out (usually with Mark, because Mark was always up for entertaining Jaebeom’s stupid ideas) in, enough space to walk around in with Nayeon so he could show her all the cool stuff he was working on. 

Then, one day, without an explanation, without offering a single reason, the basement was shut down. Director Park had stuck a notice outside the door, telling everyone to stay out of it regardless of whether they needed it or not, and that was that. 

Jihyo had protested vehemently against it, because she felt that it was unfair to lock up so many prototypes when they could easily save the material and reuse it again. Jaebeom had been equally vocal about it, because Jihyo had a point. Still, the director had said no, and eventually they shut it down for good.

A couple of weeks later, Han Jisung the intern went back to the city. None of them saw him leave. Tzuyu left a while after. Yeji too. Then in progression, everyone seemed to go back to the city, one after the other, and no one aside from the higher ups seemed to know about it. 

No one was supposed to go in the basement.

But after a month, or maybe it was two, Jinyoung did.

To this day, Jaebeom doesn’t recall exactly what propelled Jinyoung to open the door the director was so vehement on shutting in the first place. He only remembers passing by the corridor just as Jinyoung screamed, loud enough to startle the prototypes to life, and he remembers dropping the box in his hands to find him. He recalls the ground underneath his feet turning into ice, his blood curling up like an imploding can under pressure, his heart stuttering and stuttering because Jinyoung sounded scared and he remembers almost stumbling straight into a wall on his way there. 

Jihyo had met him near the bend which would lead to the basement, bewildered and slightly scared of how loud he was screaming. She had asked him if everything was okay, flustered and frenzied, but he can’t remember if he answered her or not. 

The ventilation in the corridor that lead to the basement was terrible. It was hot when the two of them found Jinyoung, still screaming in terror at something he was seeing, his hands clenched into fists where they’d been slammed against the ground, tears streaking his cheeks like water on an aged canvas.

He remembers seeing Jihyo stop at the doorway, pausing for the length of a heartbeat where she registers what she’s seeing, and then flinching back like she’s been hit as she began to step back, further and further away from the open doorway until her back hit the wall. She wasn’t screaming. He also remembers that Jinyoung’s hands had been cold enough to rival ice when he’d held them to try and calm him down.

“Don’t look,” Jinyoung had choked out, his voice hoarse and strangled. His knuckles were turning white around Jaebeom’s wrists. Jihyo was still sobbing into her hands. “Don’t look, hyung, don’t look. Promise me, don’t look.”

And Jaebeom, heart pulsing in his throat like a monster come alive, had turned his head and looked .

Sana was suspended mid-air by a wire, blood dripping from her open mouth as she shifted like a pendulum. Jisung was on the ground, sprawled messily in a pool of his own blood, clumped up from days of resting. Yeji, Lia, Ryujin, Jeongin, Seungmin, Hyunjin , Dahyun and Changbin — propped up in chairs, bleeding from lashes and cuts all over their bodies. Jeongyeon on the wall, her palms nailed to the wall like Christ, blood dripping from her slit neck. 

The signs around their necks read trial followed by sections of numbers, and then, in red, bold letters: FAILED .

The numbers were the experiment codes. Failed meant they were dead.

All of them had allegedly left the facility for vacation weeks ago. Yet, there they were, tortured and dead and shoved in a basement with no true resting place, all of them just children .

“Oh my god,” Jihyo had gasped in between sobs. A prayer of disbelief and a cry for help rolled into one. “Oh my god, oh my god, oh my god, oh my god, oh my god, help. ”

And yet.

Yet.

No one had come. 

/ / / /

He’s not stupid enough to think he’d have been spared if he’d chosen to turn a blind eye towards the dead staff in the basement and stay. It would have been Yugyeom who was next, or maybe Bambam, or maybe Youngjae. One by one, they’d all end up in the basement, blood running out of their bodies in rivers, failed experiments among many others alike.

That’s why, in a sick, twisted kind of way, he’s really glad Mark fired the gun that day.

They don’t have anything anymore. The intelligence are on their case, not close enough to know where they are but close enough to know they’re alive, and if they do get caught, the consequences won’t be pretty. Jail time, a public trial, penalty by death, an unregistered prison in Panama where officials eager to avenge Director Park would be lurking, doctors ready to smother them to death if given the chance for ruining their perfect illusion of utopia, pills to speak the truth, separation . If they go back, they’ll be arrested. If they continue running, they’ll run out of places to hide in. It’s like standing at the spot where a single road diverges into two and seeing hell at the end of both.

It’s not fair, on any of them. Mark killed the director because the director would kill him if he didn’t kill him first. Jackson and Youngjae had helped hide the body because they knew if the authorities found the body they’d never see the light of day again. Yugyeom and Bambam had burned the data in the director’s office because they knew the documents would paint them out to be guilty. Jinyoung had tied up the guards and locked them in a chamber full of narcotic gas because he knew they’d kill them if they could. 

And Jaebeom had planned their escape because he could handle dying, but he couldn’t cope with the thought of a scenario where he’d have to watch the other boys die in front of him. 

There’s no name for what they are. The seven of them, that is. It’s strange because it used to be just Jinyoung who made his heart flip and his hands shake and his brain run out of things to think about, who made him want to smile regardless of how ugly the world was beyond them, who made him want to try . Now, though, it’s all of them.

Mark makes him feel like there’s a glowing, new-born star in the center of his chest where his heart should be and the light is flowing through his veins. Yugyeom makes him feel like he’s seventeen and stupidly stumbling over his words trying to be taken seriously again. Youngjae makes him feel like there are flowers in his lungs where his bronchus extends into bronchioles, tiny lilies and bed roses crowding his chest until he can’t breathe anymore. Jackson makes him feel like he’s coming home for the first time in days, of the sun melting the top of his ice cream in summer and the waves that always softly crash against the beach at night. Bambam makes him feel light-headed and airy like he’s opening his eyes after a long night of sleep. Jinyoung makes him feel like he’s on top of the world.

As the sun sets, another new day faded into nothing, one day closer to their demise, Jinyoung lays his head on his shoulder and begins to read a book. His eyes are tired and his hands are cold. ( Don’t look, promise me, don’t look. ) Youngjae lays his head on Jaebeom’s other shoulder, too distracted to read, head full of thoughts he won’t vocalize, and quietly closes his eyes. Mark settles next to Jinyoung. His eyes shine for a split second when he looks at Jaebeom, before he smiles a little and closes them. Jackson lays his head on Mark’s lap and holds his hand in his, fingers running over the bumps and bruises on his skin, and seems to think for a bit before he gently kisses his palm. Bambam’s arm creaks steadily as he settles next to Youngjae and quietly plays with his hair. And Yugyeom smiles, melancholic and wary, trying desperately to look less worried, and lays down next to Bambam, close enough for their hands to touch.

Being with all six of them makes his heart feel less like it’s frozen and more like it’s too big for his chest. Being with them, despite all the events that have transpired, despite the blood and gore and the pain they’ve experienced together, makes him feel like there’s something more to live for. 

No one ever talks about it. They just lean on each other, trust and believe in each other wherever they can, because it’s all they have left. 

Beyond the warehouse, the sky is bleeding a soft orange mingled with purple. They’re safe for today, but tomorrow is hard to tell.

Chapter Text

In the dream, everything is all wrong.

It’s the night he kills the director. He knows because everything is the same as it was then. There’s the gentle patter of rain against the roof, the hollow sound of machines whirring floors below, the office ordered exactly as it should be. The director is sitting at his desk, a murderer’s hands folded neatly in front of him, prim and proper as he’s always been. The trophies and awards on the shelf above his head glimmer like the sea during the night. One of them has a bloodstain on it, and Jihyo isn’t breathing on the ground, the cut on her head spilling rivers onto the tiles.

“Mark,” the director says. Even in the dream, this part is the same as it was the night it happened.  “What do you have in your hand, son?”

It’s a gun. He’d taken it on a whim when he’d heard Jihyo scream. The hand clutching it is shaking so much and his fingers seem to absorb the cold of the gun itself. Even in the dream, he felt sick just holding it, felt like his lungs were on fire when he thought of what he was about to do.

He’d promised Jaebeom he wouldn’t do it. Held him close enough until their hearts beat together as one, a reminder that they must go on for themselves despite the dead bodies in the basement, scared and afraid, and promised him that he wouldn’t do anything until they had a plan.

But if he didn’t do it now, then they’d all be next.

Most of the dream passes by exactly the same. The director gets Jihyo removed from the tiles, her blood smeared across the tiles like red paint on a canvas, and he talks to Mark about something or another. Mark replies where necessary. The hand holding the gun is shaking. At one point, Jinyoung appears. And then Jaebeom, both of them behind Mark, trying to pull him back. Then Youngjae, backed up against the wall because of all the blood in the room, Jackson holding him. Yugyeom, not moving an inch after he freezes at the doorway. Bambam behind him, barely breathing at the sight in front of him.

He never remembers what makes him push Jaebeom and Jinyoung away and take the gun out. He only remembers the sound of Jaebeom’s breath catching in his throat as he surges forward like he wants to stop Mark. He only recalls the scream that tears out of Jinyoung’s throat when he cocks the gun, only recalls the string of no, no, no, no, no, no that escapes Yugyeom’s lips like a prayer, the sound of Bambam’s arm creaking as he raises it to muffle the shout of horror he lets out. He only recalls the sound of Youngjae dropping to the ground, hands on his ears, eyes clenched shut and curled into himself.

Jaebeom, he thinks in the dreams, like he had that very night, adrenaline making his hands shake and his heart stutter like an engine brought to life, the fire in his lungs burning until everything felt too hot to bear with. I’m sorry, baby .

And then he fired the gun.

In reality, bullets one and two hit, bullets three, four, five and six missed. He remembers hearing Youngjae scream, hands shaking over his ears, flinching like he was afraid the bullets would hit him. He remembers Jackson closing his eyes and curling up like he couldn’t watch anymore. He remembers Yugyeom turning around and clamping his hands over Bambam’s eyes, telling him not to look while his voice shook. He remembers Jaebeom trying to hold Jinyoung back when Jinyoung’s knees gave away and he fell to the ground. He remembers his own heart beating like a broken jackhammer, out of rhythm and broken, and remembers nothing else.

In the dream, he fires six bullets. The director’s face changes to Jinyoung’s, and the bullet hits him in the chest. Jinyoung screams. Mark blinks, barely registering it, wanting to scream, and the director’s face changes to Jaebeom. Jaebeom, always so fucking noble, always so fucking brave, doesn’t scream. Mark blinks again, heart sinking like it’s weighed down by stones, and the director’s face changes to Yugyeom who’s crying when the bullet hits him. Then it’s Jackson, who looks so pained and betrayed and real when he says Mark’s name. Then it’s Youngjae, eyes almost as wide as the gap on his chest, and he isn’t smiling. And then it’s Bambam, who looks just like he had the first time he’d told Mark he loved him, nineteen years old and eyes shining with the light of a thousand stars. He’s bleeding, his hand on the wound, and he smiles. 

“You killed them,” dream-Director says. He sneers. “You killed them, son.”

Then he wakes up, heart at his throat, and breathes .

It’s always too quiet when he wakes up, and he always manages to startle at least one of the others awake when he does. Sometimes it’s Yugyeom, who’ll watch him with dark eyes while he struggles to breathe for a good minute, who’ll reach over and hold his hands until he feels fine, and then hold him close until he falls asleep again. On bad days, it’s Jackson who’ll stay awake with him, head on his shoulder and hands interlaced or drawing mindless patterns onto his palm until his heart slows down and he’s breathing fine again. Jaebeom sings to him, songs from ten years ago neither of them recalled the words to, his voice light despite the burden on his shoulders being heavier than the world. Bambam tells him that he’s here and that he won’t go anywhere, trying despite reassurance not being his forte, and his metal hand would brush the hair out of Mark’s eyes and pats his cheek. Youngjae distracts him, telling him about his current work and kissing him in between until he felt like he could sleep again. Jinyoung reads his book, quiet enough to keep the rest of them sleeping but loud enough for Mark to hear, and it always comforts him.

“We’ll be okay,” Jackson murmurs one night. His hands are always so warm, and his voice makes Mark shut his eyes and breathe a little easier. “I believe in us, you know.”

A length of a heartbeat passes, static and silent.

“I believe in us too,” Mark tells him, quiet and barely there, and despite the odds, he hopes.

/ / / /

Seven months into captivity, they get found out.

It’s not by the cops, thank fuck, but by a local security guard with a gun. He recognizes their faces immediately - the intelligence had it out for them, ten million US dollars to bring them dead or alive, and he had a family to look after. He’d found it suspicious that the lights were on and came to investigate, jumping over the fence and picking the lock until he’d made it inside, and hit the jackpot. The more he talks, voice harried and in a frenzy, eyes wild and alive, the sicker Mark feels.

It’s already bad enough as it is. They’ve been found out, and now they’re going to be locked up. Mark will be publicly executed, Yugyeom and Youngjae thrown into a maximum security prison, Jackson sent back to his home where he’d be publicly put to trial for aiding and abetting a murder, Jinyoung put to trial for all the unregistered experiments Director Park had accused him of conducting, Jaebeom left to die somewhere where they’d never find him. Bambam would be taken apart by whichever company paid the most for him, and then they’d kill him too. Not a single one of them would retain their research license, and their families would have to watch them die, one by one until there was no more.

The room seems to close in on itself when the man sneers and says, “Gotcha.”

And then it gets worse, because Jinyoung has the gun.

Mark expects him to scream when he fires the gun, expects him to flinch and recoil and maybe miss, but he doesn’t. His hands are straight and the aim is perfect, the bullet sailing at an incredible velocity as it hits the man. His eyes are sharper than the edge of the scalpels his so fond of, his jaw slightly tensed and his hand immovable even after the bullet has been fired.

No one else screams either. Youngjae flinches and looks down, Jackson hisses like he’s been burned and Jaebeom looks away, but that’s it. 

The man dies on the floor of the warehouse, three bullet wounds bleeding crimson onto Yugyeom’s journal and lab notes. Jinyoung puts the gun down, moves quietly, and closes the man’s eyes. He’s saved countless people, dug sharpenels out of Sana’s arm after an accident at the facility, dug knives out of Jisung’s torso after he got into a fight, wrapped up cuts on Youngjae’s hands, kissed the bandages on Mark’s nose after he broke it, breathed life into dying people because that’s what he did. He didn’t look like a murderer, and his hands are bloody and beginning to shake.

“We have to go,” Jaebeom says. He looks so tired, eyes dull and ringed red, and Mark wants nothing more than to pull him closer until there’s no space between them and tell him he’s done well. “Get some things you might need. We leave soon.”

No one asks where, because they all know he has no idea. 

An hour later, they’re set to leave. The sun is almost gone by then. Jackson holds his duffel bag over his shoulder and links his fingers with Youngjae’s, smiling a little at him. Youngjae is holding a book and his bag. He’s got more water and medicine in there than his own belongings. Bambam slips his tin hand into Mark’s and squeezes his hand. He doesn’t smile. Yugyeom is carrying the gun again. Jinyoung is holding onto Jaebeom’s hand like he’s afraid he’ll disappear if he lets go. The warehouse is a lot colder than it used to be and the dead body is starting to gather fleas.

Mark’s never been very brave. Neither have the rest of them. That’s why they’ve never talked about it, this thing between the seven of them that connects them and pulls them close. The thing where they’re all in love with each other, a love so deep that they gave up everything to run away, a love bitter and sweet and all at once, a love that’s like sunshine during a rain shower, and yet they won’t say anything about it. 

They have nowhere to go now. Optimism aside, all they’ll have is a couple of days before they get caught.

And maybe that’s what makes Mark say, “I love you. All of you,” with a tremor in his voice, loud enough for them to hear and yet quiet enough for it to not echo.

There’s a pause the length of three heart beats, six pairs of eyes on him as the full moon stares down.

“We know,” Youngjae says. He smiles, not a full one but a soft, half-smile that makes his eyes slightly smaller, and he shrugs. “We love you too, hyung. Always have.”

Always have.

Always is a long time, significantly longer and more different than forever, and it settles in his heart and refuses to leave.

He’s never been the bravest, nor the best at loving, but he closes his eyes and allows himself to feel for the first time in months when Yugyeom pulls all of them closer until they’re all holding each other. It’s like coming home, like breathing for the first time in a long time, like walking around aimlessly and suddenly hearing the sea come alive in the distance, like belonging somewhere after years and years of being desolate.

And then they move. Forward, because there’s nowhere else to go.

Chapter Text

They disappear into the forest. The path will lead them to the nearest village, and the nearest village will lead them to their fate.

Jinyoung’s cheek is pressed against the back of his shoulder where he’s clinging onto him, legs wound tight around his waist and fingers laced loosely around his neck. The gun is hanging from his left hand, the fingers looped through its trigger. It keeps hitting against Yugyeom’s chest when he steps into a pothole. Jinyoung isn’t sleeping, his breathing pattern a little faster than it usually is, but his eyes are closed. He hadn’t asked to be carried, but he’d had a long day. He deserves this.

The trees are intimidatingly tall and the shadows they cast on the ground look like ghosts. Yugyeom swallows his panic down and resolutely continues moving. 

“How much longer ‘til we reach the town?” Youngjae asks. He’s carrying one of Mark’s bags, the one that has all the lab notes, but he doesn’t look like he needs help. If anything, the unsmiling line of his lips and the furrow of his brow tells Yugyeom that he won’t give up until they’re wherever they need to be.

“Six hours.” Jackson says. The gravel crunches under his feet. The moon spills its light into his eyes when he looks at Youngjae. “Tired, Youngjae? I think we can make a stop here. It’s dark enough that no one will notice.”

“No,” Youngjae says. He looks so tired that Yugyeom wants nothing more than to lay down with him and forget the rest of the world. “I just want to know what we’ll do once we get there.”

In the forest, amidst the smiling stars and the trembling trees, amidst the darkness and the shadows, the silence rings hollow.

Jaebeom’s hands are shaking again. He clutches them into fists, the curve of his nails digging into the flesh of his palm, knuckles stained a fleshy pale white. His jaw is tense, and the curve of his mouth is pulled into an obvious grimace.

“I don’t know.” He finally says, a confession as hollow as the silence around them. Then he looks up, still not smiling, and says, “But trust me, okay? I’m not going to let anything happen to you all.”

(“Don’t worry,” he’d said, the night he’d told Yugyeom about the bodies in the basement and why Jinyoung woke up screaming. His hands were so warm even though the cold of the lab made him shiver, and his eyes were sharp even as they flitted from Yugyeom’s face to the wall behind him. “I’ll protect you. All of you, yeah?”)

Yugyeom doesn’t think anything’s going to be okay. He hadn’t thought of it then, and he isn’t thinking of it now.

“I don’t want to get separated from you guys,” Bambam says, after a brief pause. His voice cuts through the tense air like a knife, and there’s a tell-tale creak as his tin fingers clutch into fists. Yugyeom wants nothing more than to hold him and let the world melt into nothing beyond them,  wants to do the same to all of them so they’ll be away from all of this.  

“Then you won’t.” Mark murmurs. There’s the sound of his bag being lowered to the ground, leaves under it crunching, and then he links his fingers through Bambam’s and squeezes their interlinked hands together, a sort of promise. “No one’s going to leave anyone behind. That’s why we’re family, aren’t we?”

Family is an odd word for what they are, but at the same time, it makes sense. Family is a group of people who love each other. And Yugyeom doesn’t know much, but he knows in his heart, that they all love each other so much that they wouldn’t mind doing what it takes to be together.

They’re all a little mad here. A little insane, a little lost, a little broken, a little hurt, a little scared, a little uncertain, but mostly, they’re a little more in love as time passes. 

“I’m tired.” Youngjae says, barely audible. Jaebeom hooks an arm around the back of his neck and pulls him close. His head is tilted towards the full moon and Youngjae’s face is buried in his shoulder. “I’m so, so tired , hyung.”

“I know.” Jaebeom says. He closes his eyes and the moonlight casts a shadow on his face. “But hold on just a little more. We’ll get there.”

Jinyoung’s grip tightens around Yugyeom.

“Just a little more,” he murmurs, and then they move again.

/ / / /

The town they’re headed to is an industrial one. Tall buildings, few people, even less chances of getting caught. More places to hide, at least until they know where to go from there. Maybe the police will be there, maybe they won’t. It’s all a blur at this point. Yugyeom’s tired, his legs hurt and his heart feels like it’s been dunked in acid over and over again, flesh dissolving into nothing, veins bursting and rendered useless, and he doesn’t know what’s happening anymore.

Jinyoung’s walking on his own at this point, the gun still in his hands, walking shoulder-to-shoulder with Youngjae. His shoulders are slumped and his hands are shaking. 

“A few miles more,” Jackson tells them. He’s carrying Mark on his back now, and Yugyeom is carrying his bag. Mark is sleeping, an angel’s face rested on his shoulders. He looks beautiful despite the cut on his face and the blood dripping down his lip. “I could get us in and lock everyone else out. There’s a good vantage point on the Central Building, let’s go there and see where we could stay.”

All cities are protected by a set of codes exclusive to the government only, but things like that don’t matter to Jackson. Yugyeom nods, and they continue on their way again.

Three and a half hours later, they’re in the city. Three hours and forty minutes later, Jackson changes the code of the city, the gate reactivated and much stronger, while the rest of them catch their breath against building walls and sit down to rest their legs. Three hours and forty five minutes later, the police arrive.

“Run!” Jackson hisses, when the first blue light flickers on from a distance, and Yugyeom grabs Mark, the one closest to him, and they take off. The others follow behind, Youngjae and Bambam hand-in-hand, Jackson dragging Jinyoung along while Jaebeom follows.

It’s a cold night out. The wind races past him when he runs, his heart speeding up more and more, but Mark’s hand feels warm in his.

It feels like all those times they’d run from the facility on their rare nights of rebellion, the seven of them in masks and hoods running through the streets trying not to laugh, and oddly, it makes Yugyeom feel warm all over, from the tips of his toes to his messy hair. It feels like all the times they’d run through the lab itself, after Nayeon started a prank war that always ended with someone going to Jinyoung to get a broken nose fixed. 

We’re all going to die, Yugyeom thinks, as the blue and red lights fade out into nothing behind him.

It feels like being home, he thinks again, and he laughs.

He laughs because he’s still alive. He laughs because despite everything, despite all the plotting and the planning and the lies and deceit and all the director’s attempts at splitting them up, they’re still together. He laughs because he’s still alive.

“Fuck,” he hears himself say. “Fuck, we’re still alive .”

Then Mark laughs too, and then Youngjae, and then Jackson, and then Bambam, and then Jaebeom, and then Jinyoung, until they’re all laughing at the utter ridiculousness of it all, how they’re still alive despite having been destined to lose it all and die seven months ago, and then they speed up. 

The building they stop at is the tallest one in the city. The biggest one, where if you were to fall from the top, you wouldn’t survive. 

And it's like this, on the fire escape of the tallest building in the industrial city with the cops at their heels with a gun in his hands that has no bullets, the railing turning into ice beneath his hands while Bambam laughs loud enough to scare a crow into flight, that Yugyeom realizes it's not as bad as he thought it would be. Youngjae laughs too, his fingers linked with Bambam's tin ones, and when Jackson lets out an excited yell, he follows with enthusiasm. Jaebeom is watching the police helicopter whizzing above their heads like he's taking it apart in his head while Jinyoung leans his head against his shoulder and closes his eyes. The corner of his lips are lifted up in a barely there, soft smile. He looks like he feels right at home, even with blood on his hands. 

He meets Mark's eyes, and Mark smiles at him. Despite the sirens and the chaos, Yugyeom smiles back, and for a moment, just for a moment, the world is whole again.

They won't make it out of here alive and together. It'll have to be a choice between the two, and Yugyeom thinks it's an easy one.

Chapter Text

The first time Jinyoung realized he was in love with his six  best friends, he’d been drenched in Bambam’s blood.

It was the night of the accident, deliberately designed to kill Bambam, and he’d been trying to seal the sound on the side of his arm to control the blood until Mark could finish the arm. His head had been fuzzy with fear and he’d barely breathed. Bambam’s eyes were getting glassier by the second, his screams dying out into nothing, his bloody hand (the one still attached to his body) gripped onto the sleeve of Jinyoung’s lab coat begging him to not let him die. Everything had been moving too fast, all at once, but to Jinyoung, he was moving too slow.

Youngjae had been asking him what to do next. He’d been so scared that day. It must have been hard for him. Jackson was holding Yugyeom and telling him everything was going to be okay and that Jinyoung-hyung would look after Bambam and protect him with his life, and Yugyeom had cried so much that his voice had disappeared after a while. He could hear the sound of Mark and Jaebeom arguing all the way from the lab, both of them yelling at the other about the mechanics of the arm, and he’d wanted nothing more than to shrink into the ground and melt into the shadows until he was no more.

Jinyoung had never believed in God, too logical and too accustomed to how cruel the world was for it, too angry and too wronged, but that day, he’d shut his eyes amidst the chaos, heart beating like a dull bell, and prayed that the lord protect them from everything, because it didn’t matter if he lived or if he died as long as the six boys he loved were fine.

He’d realized it then, that there would be no him without them and no them without him. Coming to terms with it hadn’t hurt at all, and it made him realize that regardless of everything, they must go on. 

That was months ago. 

Now, months later, on top of the tallest building in the industrial city crawling with cops ready to take them alive so they could pay for the crimes they committed, it still doesn’t hurt, and he still loves them as much as he did yesterday.

Two hours later, the cops crack Jackson’s code and flood into the city. Ten minutes is all they have before they’re arrested.

And being arrested means being alone.

And Jinyoung’s too used to six hearts beating in sync with his, so he thinks he’d rather not be alone again.

And maybe that’s it. Maybe that’s what propels him to reach over to the railing and climb on the other side, his hands cold and his heart feeling like it’s about to pop out of his chest. Or maybe he’s just fucking tired, or maybe he just doesn’t want to run anymore. Or maybe he’s just fucking crazy, just like the news said he was.

No one stops him either, so maybe they’re a little insane too. 

“What are you doing?” Yugyeom asks. He leans over from behind the railing and wraps his arms around Jinyoung’s waist, holding him close.

“I’m leaving, Yugyeom-ah.” Jinyoung leans his head back into the warmth of Yugyeom’s chest and closes his eyes. The wind is cold and harsh and he just wants it to all be over. “I can’t live on when they catch us. I won’t live on without you guys.”

There’s nothing left when they get caught. They all know it, so one by one, they all climb over the railing and stand next to him too. 

Beneath them, the police cars are starting to swarm the ground. The light from the helicopter focuses on the seven of them.

“I love you,” Jaebeom says. His fingers are loose around the railing and the smile on his lips is fond. “All of you. Always. I’m sorry I wasn’t better when you needed me the most.”

“You were the best.” Bambam says. His eye flickers red. “I love you all too. Always.”

“Me too.” Youngjae says. He smiles. “If I have another always, I hope it’s with all of you.”

“That sounds nice,” Mark murmurs. He’s closest to Jinyoung and his eyes are warm. “I love you all too. Always.”

“Love you all,” Yugyeom adds. He’s smiling too. The police sirens draw near.

“I’m happy I met you all.” Jackson tells them. Jinyoung watches him tilt his head towards the sky, the moonlight in his pupils, and wants nothing more than to see him smile, always. “I love you all, so much.”

“Get off the railing, and calmly put your weapons down. I repeat, get off the railing, and calmly put your weapons down.”

“I love you all,” Jinyoung chokes out. He doesn’t know why he’s crying, but he smiles at them. “I’ll always love you guys. See you on the other side, yeah?”

And there’s a pause the length of a heartbeat, and he closes his eyes, and lets go of the railing. 

Everything slows down as he falls, his gut plummeting horrendously at the strength of gravity acting on him. He shuts his eyes against the wind and clamps his mouth shut and hopes that it will all be over soon.

When he opens his eyes against the strength of the wind, there are six figures falling with him, serene and peaceful amidst the chaos of the police sirens and the screaming and the flashing lights, and he swears he sees angel wings blooming from their backs.

Six angels in flight, and the flightless man they saved together.

Seven hearts beating in sync, until the very end.

For the first time in months, blood on his hands and soul a little more worn than it was when this all began, his heart rests easy, and he lets himself breathe. Maybe he’ll collide with his six angels, or maybe they’ll fly together. Whatever it is, he doesn’t think it matters in the end.

As long as it’s their always, he thinks everything will be okay.